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When he finally registered the presence of a tail, Montparnasse knew with a sickening finality that it was too late.
He had a disconcertingly excellent memory for faces and names, which had served to keep him alive all these years in Paris’s underbelly. It served now to tell him that he had seen this particular face far too many times lately for safety, and that he was in trouble.
He glanced nonchalantly over his shoulder, then looked forward. Still there. Now that he’d noticed, it was remarkable he hadn’t done so earlier. Right now, the man was wearing an odd assortment of clothes; lace cuffs spilled from the sleeves of a beribboned frock coat, which was unbuttoned and revealed a vividly patterned waistcoat with a high black velvet collar and a loosely tied blue cravat. He’d been wearing no less bizarre outfits the other times, his memory supplied.
God, this spy was good. Just slightly too absurd to be taken seriously, definitely didn’t look as if he was trying to avoid attention, somehow achieving perfect harmlessness along the way.
Montparnasse focused. He’d seen this fellow laughing with the revolutionary den in the Musain, sometimes the Corinthe; he’d be doing more than just himself a favor, then. What was the name? Jean Prouvaire, called Jehan. Montparnasse allowed himself a predatory smile.
He couldn’t afford to lose Prouvaire; he always had that little notebook about him, might already have gathered dangerous information.
Montparnasse possessed grace and lack of compunction enough to off a copper in the street, but the spy could have compatriots nearby. Being already compromised, he needed another solution. He needed an alley.
------
Jehan had left the Musain early, having caught a flash of well cut dark coat and wolfish expression passing by the window.
He’d wriggled upright from where he lay upside down across his friends’ knees, dashed a hasty addendum to the night’s notes, gotten ink all over his hands, flicked some at Joly, straightened his flowerpot, and ducked out of the door.
Although it was bitingly chill outside, he was warm and delighted with life, love and friendship; the thrill of observation added delicious piquance.
He sang low as he walked. The sharp-faced hunter he’d first noticed last Tuesday passed under an open window, and with catlike ease twisted to avoid a vase that sailed out of it on a flurry of argument. Jehan admired.
That smoothness of movement was what had first caught his eye, on a night when he’d been teased by Courfeyrac into drinking more than he ought and was unusually aware of his surroundings. Walking home, Courfeyrac near and talking fast and liquid to Combeferre, he’d sensed a ghost of passage and a lightening of pocket; with dreaming lucidity, he tracked the mercurial pathway of the thief through the crowd and was struck to the quick.
He’d taken to following the shadow-thief around whenever their paths crossed; there was a wild beauty in his face and movements, and Jehan often had to stop and scribble a sketch of an impression of a phrase that floated into his head.
A dark muse, dangerous and glorious - Jehan felt drawn to him, a moth to flame.
He caught a flash of coattails disappearing around a corner, and hurried forward, eyes alight.
------
Montparnasse waited, calm, for oddly-dressed Prouvaire to enter the alley. When he did, he seemed oblivious to the loss of his subject until he’d gone several meters into the narrow way; then his steps slowed and he looked about curiously for the dark figure he’d been following.
He didn’t have time to turn around. Montparnasse’s knife appeared glittering in the air below Prouvaire’s cravat, and pushed him towards the wall. Jehan’s eyes went wide and pale as moons as the point pricked in.
Montparnasse gazed at him, impassionate.
“I would ask why you were following me, but I frankly don’t give a damn.” His voice came cold and clear.
He moved the point upwards and turned the knife so its edge rested against soft skin. Tilting his head, he savored the moment, and pressed the knife in slightly. Jehan didn’t make a sound, but his eyes went luminous and wider, if that was even possible; a droplet of blood welled slowly, dripped down the blade onto the handle.
Montparnasse reached deft fingers into Jehan’s coat, carefully withdrew the notebook and slipped it in his own pocket. Then his eyes returned to Jehan’s, which were dark with something Montparnasse couldn’t place.
A pause. Then Montparnasse slit his throat.
Jehan twitched involuntarily back against the wall; his eyelashes fluttered erratically and a hand flew up to press against Montparnasse’s stomach. Fingers scraped across his skin and tightened in the cloth.
With a soft sigh, Jean Prouvaire slid down the wall, leaving a bright smear on the bricks. The hand wrapped in Montparnasse’s shirt dragged him down into an awkward crouch, but he didn’t pull away. A ribbon in Jehan’s hair caught on a brick and slipped out. He made a small noise of distress, and Montparnasse nearly had to stop himself from reaching out to snag the ribbon and braid it back in.
To his deep surprise, something unfamiliar coiled tight around his heart.
He looked from the ribbon back to Jehan, and felt something like desperation buzz in his head. Prouvaire lifted a hand to his neck, but didn’t try to stop the bleeding; his hand was too small, anyway, and it was soon soaked in blood. The lace cuff was sodden.
Jehan reached up to Montparnasse’s face, fingers slick with scarlet. Inside, Montparnasse recoiled, but something kept him still as Jehan painted something on his cheek, a look of faint concentration in his eyes.
Then the hand slid away, dragging a trail of blood down Montparnasse’s face. He blinked in horror.
Jehan was dead.
Montparnasse staggered upright. The hand that had grabbed his shirt fell away, dropped to the pavement, long, inky fingers still curled. He clutched the knife in his hand reflexively, then looked down at it. It gleamed red. His fingers spasmed, and it clattered to the stone.
There was an inexplicable, terrible weight in the pit of his stomach.
Normally, Montparnasse would have simply straightened his cravat, checked his hair and walked on without a second glance, but pretending that this was like any other routine disposal only got him to the mouth of the alley. His boots felt dipped in treacle and his hand tingled unpleasantly.
He let out a breath and pretended it wasn’t shuddering, whistled a snatch of Gavroche’s latest ditty and ignored the waver.
But he couldn’t force himself out into the street. He felt dead eyes prickling the back of his neck, and it frightened him. He wanted to scream.
Montparnasse cursed, and stepped into a shadowed doorway to wait - for what, he couldn’t have said. His gaze flicked back down the alley, to where Prouvaire slumped small and lost, face pale in the gathering twilight. His fair hair had drifted forward like a corona. Montparnasse was glad of that. It hid his eyes.
Bile rose in his throat, and he choked.
He faced toward the street again. He couldn’t bear to turn his head; it felt riveted in place. Threads of laughter drifted from the street, and Montparnasse strained to process the faces of the groups that passed by. He’d seen Prouvaire several times in company with a very specific set of bousingots; if he could find them without drawing himself to their attention... god, he must be out of his mind. But, for some reason, he couldn’t leave the body here.
At last he spotted one of the people he was looking for amongst the throng. This was Courfeyrac, and he looked tipsy.
Montparnasse softly whistled a set of piercing notes, and one of the mômes scrounging in the gutter looked up sharply. Montparnasse stepped out of his overhang and partially into the street, and crooked a finger at the kid. He skittered up, alert.
“See that fellow in the hat over there?”
Courfeyrac’s hat was distinctive, and the child only spared a fleeting glance into the crowd before he nodded.
“Get him over here. Don’t say anything about me.”
The runt waited. Montparnasse flicked him five sous, and he pocketed the coin and ran.
He still couldn’t pin down why exactly he was doing this, but he shifted back into the shadows, pulled his hat low, and went still.
It was a minute or two before the gamin returned, a hat in hand. He dropped it at the mouth of the alley, then darted away, having no more reason to stay than the coin he already had.
“Little bastard stole my haberdashery!” cried Courfeyrac to another man as he skidded up to the alley. The other man - Joly, if memory served, which it always did - was laughing hysterically, until interrupted by a bout of sneezing.
“The audacity of little folk round here,” muttered Courfeyrac as he bent to pick up the hat, now crumpled and muddy. He moaned; Joly sneezed, then smiled through a laugh and said, confidingly, “You should just give up on hats.”
“But no! It is they who give up on me!” exclaimed Courfeyrac; then he stopped and peered through the dusk into the alley. He poked Joly. “Is that Jehan?”
Joly squinted, then, puzzled, “Must’ve been drunker than we thought when he left.”
“He didn’t drink that much, though. I was watching,” Courfeyrac said mildly.
His expression was tense.
“Stay here,” he said to Joly, who had started forward. Joly glanced at him, then obeyed. Courfeyrac stepped lightly into the alley. The breath of his passing fluttered Montparnasse’s cravat.
Then he cried, “Oh, my God, Jehan,” and ran. He’d seen the dark spreading over his clothes, the comet’s tail on the wall. Courfeyrac fell to his knees by the crumpled body, whispering his name, hands passing frantically over his friend’s chest, looking for a wound. When he found it, he seemed to sag like a marionette with its strings cut. Joly was at his heels.
Montparnasse heard Joly’s broken, “My God.” Joly twisted around, ran to the street, screamed, “Combeferre, get over here right now!” He ran back and skidded to his knees, grabbing Jehan’s limp wrist. “I can’t feel a pulse,” Joly cried.
Courfeyrac made a quiet, sharp sound; he’d seen Jehan’s lost ribbon, forlorn and abandoned on the ground. He picked it up as if it might sift to ashes, smoothed it out, braided it carefully into Jehan’s hair.
He slowly bent forward to gather Jehan into his arms, infinitely gentle. He leaned his forehead on the dead man’s shoulder and sobbed, an awful crunching that settled leaden in Montparnasse’s throat.
Joly reached forward to brush Jehan’s hair out of his face, hand unsteady. A feather that had been tucked behind his ear fluttered out and landed on the ground.
Another student, tall, in a thick patched coat, arrived breathless at the alley. Combeferre. A golden-haired man strode up behind him, then stilled, became marble.
Combeferre’s face had gone gray.
He walked quickly into the darkening alley, knelt beside Jehan, placed a heavy hand on the back of Courfeyrac’s head and silently stroked his curls.
“Let me,” he said quietly.
Courfeyrac sank onto his heels as Combeferre cupped Jehan’s lolling head and slid an arm under his legs. Exquisitely careful, Combeferre got to his feet, cradling the lanky body of his friend close to his chest. His eyes were terrible.
Joly choked at the pool of blood on the pavement. His hands opened and closed, helplessly, on his knees.
Courfeyrac stood up slowly. Blood marked his forehead, but he didn’t seem to notice. Then his face twisted and he punched the wall once, twice, three times, until he was whimpering and his knuckles were bloody. Joly reached up to grab his wrist.
“You couldn’t have done anything,” he said, voice strange, and pulled himself up, not letting go of Courfeyrac. Courfeyrac looked at him, bright with anguish, and opened his mouth; but Joly shook him.
“Stop it. Blame yourself later,” he said fiercely. Courfeyrac shuddered from head to toe, but didn’t move to shake Joly’s fingers loose. Then they both turned to follow Combeferre, who was walking slowly and had just reached Enjolras.
A thrill of fear slid down Montparnasse’s spine when he looked at the man who stood as if etched of steel, whose eyes reflected Combeferre’s. His eyelashes gleamed wetly, only adding to the metallic tension that coated him.
“My rooms,” he said. “They’re nearest.”
Joly touched Jehan’s dangling foot, hesitant, then said, “I’ll get the others,” and disappeared into the crowd.
Moving gently, Enjolras threaded his fingers into Jehan’s hair; he stroked his cheekbone with a thumb, then bent to press a kiss to his forehead. He closed his eyes; a tear fell glittering to dusty curls.
Montparnasse didn’t breathe until they had gone from his sight; his lungs ached dully.
He stayed hidden in the doorway until the lamplighters had come round and the street had emptied of all but the most persistent drinkers. Only when he could barely see his boots distinct from the paving did he remember the notebook he’d taken, heavy in his pocket.
Gingerly he fished it out. (He was irrationally surprised that it wasn’t dripping with blood; it ought to have been soaked, should howl guilt, but it was small and clean and shabby.) He opened it, and for a moment, he couldn’t understand what he saw.
It was full of fragments of writing, couplets, sonnets, scraps of cloth and daubs of color, a lock of hair, a multitude of things. The last page had only six words written on it: “Vive la France! Vive l'avenir!” There was a smudge of ink below it, as if the author had been so enthusiastic in writing the words his quill nib had snapped. Montparnasse felt dizzy.
This wasn’t a drab criminal documentary, some police agent’s scrawling spy-work; it was poetry.
His cheeks flushed hot. No more pretense, no more lies; he had murdered, from fear and straightforward self-absorption, but that was normal, he expected it of himself, relished it; moreover, he had killed a little poet.
His mouth was dry and dusty; he licked his lips and tasted blood. For a moment he was confused - then he remembered Jehan’s fingers on his skin and the flaking crust of blood on his cheek and at the corner of his mouth. He felt his heart crack, pain so excruciating he nearly expected his eyes to water; but he hadn’t cried for eighteen long years and the only thing he could feel on his face was the ghost of wet blood.
He stepped as if in a dream into the street.
Somehow, he ended up at the Gorbeau tenement; when he saw Eponine sprawled idly against the wall, blanket over her legs and playing with a pebble, an image of Jean Prouvaire irretrievable and dead flashed behind his eyes. He staggered, and Eponine looked at him curiously. Then she started up, and disguised a flash of concern with caustic words. “You look a fright.”
He twitched away from her prodding fingers. “Don’t touch me,” he hissed, raw, and Eponine’s eyes sharpened. She looked more closely at the blood-marks.
“That a star on your cheek? Alors, it’s even got a tail,” she said, but her voice was soft.
Montparnasse looked at her blankly. “A star.”
“A shooting star, I guess,” she amended, her eyes searching his.
Oh. He hadn’t known what Prouvaire had painted. Eponine caught the way his gaze slid away from hers, the faint tremor that flickered over his face.
“Hey, sit down. You’re shivering,” she said, and in doing so herself gestured to a spot beside her. He hesitated, then complied.
She was silent then, for which he was intensely grateful. Eponine understood him far better than anyone else he had ever met, although that wasn’t saying much.
A rustle of cloth made him turn his head; it was Eponine sliding close enough to spread her blanket over both their knees.
------
He woke with his head on Eponine’s shoulder and his hair in his eyes. He could see a bruise that the darkness had hidden the night before spreading mottled over her neck and shoulder.
She felt his eyes open.
“What happened?” she asked quietly, not moving. He didn’t lift his head.
“I was a fool.” His voice was bitter. “I don’t know, ‘Ponine, I think I killed a bit of myself this time.”
“Sans blague, idiot. You were always going to cut yourself on that thing,” she muttered, rough.
He closed his eyes again; they felt hot and raw, as if filled with sand. He couldn’t summon the energy to move, and he dozed again, Eponine’s arm warm around his shoulders. She began to hum, low and sweet.
------
That night Montparnasse found himself slouched at a corner table of the Musain, observing and unobserved. Eponine had cleaned the blood off his face, tactfully ignoring the pain in his eyes, and fixed his hair into a semblance of his usual dandyish disarray. He’d brought her a stolen loaf of bread in return.
He had killed so neatly as to avoid any spatter of blood on his clothes. So that was all right.
Enjolras was talking quietly with Combeferre at a long table near the fire; his golden head seemed dimmed, and the flames danced shadows rather than light across his face. Combeferre was grave and sad, and his hands dug into the worn wood of the table as if it was the only thing keeping him upright.
Courfeyrac, talking with Joly and Bossuet, only made one pun; when he realized he had, he flinched as if someone had slapped him. He disengaged abruptly and went to curl up in the ratty armchair beside the fire. His dark eyes reflected the firelight like mirrors.
Joly, who sat on the ground before Bossuet, tucked between his ankles, sighed and leaned his head against Bossuet’s knee. He didn’t smile when Bossuet began to stroke his hair, only turned and pressed his nose with more intensity into the rough cloth.
Bahorel sat near Grantaire, methodically shredding a notice from the clergy into tiny pieces. Grantaire watched him, quiet, spinning the stem of his wineglass idly between his long fingers. He had hardly drunk from it, and Montparnasse gathered from the surprised look the waitress wore whenever she glanced towards Grantaire that this was far from the usual state of things.
Feuilly was building a house of cards. Every so often someone’s slammed bottle would send a ripple through its foundations, and it would collapse, spreading cards like snowflakes around the room. He didn’t bother to pick up the ones that had fallen to the ground; he would simply use all the cards within reach, then pull a new set from the pockets of a slumbering drunk who snored at the table behind him. Fan-maker to architect.
There was a small round table by the window that no-one had gone near since Montparnasse arrived. It was covered in a drift of paper; a drooping daisy sat on a stack of books near the window. Its pot had dark fingerprints around the rim.
They didn’t stay late. By the time the battered clock on the mantelpiece struck twelve, only Grantaire remained, to all appearances asleep on the table. Montparnasse got soundlessly to his feet; as he passed the small window table, he pulled Prouvaire’s notebook from inside his coat and slid it onto the table. Then he slipped outside.
When he glanced through the window, he was startled to see Grantaire at the table, looking down at the notebook. Montparnasse stopped to watch; Grantaire stroked its cover as if it were a lost kitten, then reached behind him to pick up a pitcher of water.
As he poured a little into the daisy’s dusty pot, he looked up, and caught Montparnasse’s eye through the speckled glass.
For one frozen moment Montparnasse had the terrifying sensation that somehow, Grantaire knew, could see what he had done as clearly as if he had shouted it, was going to leap through the window, tear him to pieces, crush his skull, rip out his heart.
The moment passed. Grantaire looked down and moved away from the table.
Montparnasse couldn’t decide whether he was glad or not.
--------
May hardened, heated, fused into June, and Montparnasse stayed. He listened as revolution bubbled, as figured shadows swayed fiery the seething mass of Paris. He waited in the corner and sharpened his knife and stole a musket and bullets and powder; he made cartridges. He didn’t let himself think about why.
When the barricades arose, he fought and killed, and died with a bullet meant for Courfeyrac in his chest.
It was no less than Prouvaire would have done.