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It is quiet in both places, but the one is a quiet of fear and grief and cloying pain, while the other is simply empty.
Eventually, Marius finds that he prefers the emptiness.
At first, he’d dreamt fitful and sharp, jagged and sickening when he wasn’t screaming; this empty space had come later. Perhaps he’d simply forgotten the way.
He always wakes painless, but the eyes of the people who stare ceaselessly seem more frightened by these soft pauses than by the others that had come before. The seraphim with its eyes whirls dizzy in the shadows. It makes his head hurt.
He closes his eyes and falls again through downy gray holes and questing hands, into darkness.
------
It doesn’t feel empty, this time. Had it ever been? He can’t remember.
“Ah, Marius,” a voice sighs by his ear. Cool fingers on his forehead. A touch at his jaw, and he tilts his head, obeying.
“Well, it’s still not cholera, at least. Joly?” The voice is dry, a twist of smile in the words.
What.
He opens his eyes against the light, but it doesn’t hurt. He can’t see much of anything, really; fuzzy shapes waver and pulse around him. But - at the same time, sort of - overlaid - he can see clearly a sunlit room, people standing, sitting - a faint murmur of conversation -
“I’ve got it, I’m coming, hello Marius, how do you feel?” Joly’s voice is anxious, but he moves with assurance, carefully swiping the damp cloth in his hands across Marius’ forehead. Joly settles into a chair (a chair?) beside him, eyes bright but clinical as he examines his face. “Not so bad this time, I think. You really ought to be getting on with things!”
Joly’s voice makes no sense.
This makes no sense.
Then the hand carefully wiping crusted blood at his temple stills.
“Combeferre, his eyes are open.” Joly’s voice cracks from happiness to panic.
There is a general rustle around the edges of Marius’ perception. The fog condenses, a little, shifts and sharpens, focuses. A firm hand comes down across his eyes, and someone says, “Shh.”
Marius senses motion, a gathering around him. “No.” His voice is rusty, wobbly. “No, I - ”
He thinks it is Joly’s finger that stops his lips.
And then he hears Courfeyrac’s voice, and something inside him cries out as if shot. Over the sudden leaping of his heart, he tries to remember.
“Marius - I’m sorry, and heaven knows but we aren’t delighted to have you here, with your silly coat and - well, frankly, you are incapable of tying a decent cravat,” and he thinks he feels a hand push his hair behind an ear, “but... you’re needed. You are loved, Marius; die, so be it, but do not make others die for lack of you.”
He can’t, he can’t remember why his eyes are burning and his heart’s jackrabbit thumping, he doesn’t know what’s happening and suddenly his mouth is coppery with fear.
Joly is whispering to Combeferre, too fast for Marius to catch, but he hears bits of Combeferre’s measured replies. “You may well be right... yes... no, none of us could... I don’t know... well, and maybe it is possible...”
Marius can’t feel Courfeyrac anymore, and soon even the firm hand across his eyes disappears.
Suddenly Combeferre’s voice is much closer, and addressed to him.
“Listen, Pontmercy - you shouldn’t be here. Physically, you’re improving; we’ve found you several times, helped you, I hope, but we can’t get you back with you conscious - well, present, at least. You’re going to have to find the way yourself.”
Marius opens his mouth; the ghostly weight of Joly’s finger lifts.
Combeferre’s still talking. “We didn’t have that option; you, however, have a relatively un-riddled body to go back to. It ought to be possible, but you have to do it soon, I think.”
“Do what?” The wobble is gone, but his voice still cracks. “I can’t remember - how I... what happened, I... don’t, I can’t - ”
“Ah. Well, that may be more of a problem.” Marius feels Combeferre move away.
There is a pause, long, heavy with silence. Then a gravelly voice cuts through the smoke.
“Think of me,” Grantaire hums softly, “if you survive.”
His voice is wry, but clear. “Drink for me,” a chuckle, “the wines I knew.”
Bossuet picks up the thread - of course, Lesgle of the ever-present humor. “Don’t forget me just for my lack of hair,” and Marius smiles, shakes his head slightly, I could never, and it’s true, the words have summoned a terrible image of blood snaking ribbons over dark skin, into eyes darker for their emptiness, but Bossuet continues, “and clean up the flat Joly and I shared.”
The past tense seems to sneak up on him, and Marius sees him move forward to grip Joly’s shoulder. Bossuet laughs to himself. “It tended towards disrepair.”
Marius feels warmer; the space glows around him, like desert sand. The next line is a sighing susurrus. “Think of me, if you survive.”
He can see Courfeyrac again, mischievous smile and dancing eyes. “Wear for me,” his teeth flash bright, “some stylish clothes.”
He leans over Marius, mock-serious. “Friend, your choice in garb is terribly poor.”
Bahorel rumbles a laugh in the distance. “Yes, you dress as if washed up on a shore.”
Marius looks back at Courfeyrac. His voice is kind, sweet, sad. “Just take mine.” Marius finds his hand taken up and fingers curled over an ornate key. “I need no more.”
His eyes prick hot and an image of Courfeyrac draped bloody and shattered over the wreck of an upturned cart burns behind his eyelids. Pardieu. His mind blanks in horror; but Courfeyrac strokes his fingers and whispers, “The good times too, mon ami, little cabbage-gazer.”
The shadows ripple. “Think of me, if you survive,” someone sings.
“Tell yourself,” replies Grantaire, but his voice is not at all sarcastic, “that sweet old lie.”
Enjolras’ voice cuts clean and pure, sincere, “Pro patria mori, decorum est,” and Grantaire, oh, Grantaire’s eyes are shiveringly clear, unshuttered and plain, accepted.
Combeferre is quieter. “We were scored and passed by life’s greatest test.”
Feuilly comes up to Marius, searches his eyes. “Do not weep, Monsieur, for us.”
Feuilly, thoughtful and friendly, impassioned, fierce; Feuilly, crushed and powder-stung and dead.
They’re all dead. So what is he?
Marius’ thoughts are clearer now, but the shadows are not; they swirl around him like the depths of the Seine.
A bell-like voice rings clear. “Please do try; if you should die, there’d be no-one left to sing.” It is Jean Prouvaire, intrepid, cornflower true Jehan who died alone in an alley where his friends couldn’t reach him, with nothing but his fiery will to give him strength.
He isn’t alone now.
Enjolras, ever lit by purpose, adds, “The world needs to know what we had to say.”
“And Cosette loves you, as flowers the day,” murmurs Jehan. Marius’ heart seizes, then incandesces.
Cosette.
And everything, everyone, all of his senses, the place-that-is-and-is-not-empty implodes like a whirlpool; there is an eternity of falling floating down up forward and Marius opens his eyes.
“Thank God,” his grandfather cries, and throws himself across Marius’ chest.
A phrase echoes and fades in his skull; a parting whisper. “Think of me, and stay alive.”
Only when the shaken doctor begins to change his bandages does Marius become conscious of a pain in his hand. When he uncurls his aching fingers, Courfeyrac’s key winks saucy from his palm.
------
It had been in the pocket of his coat, at the barricade - a coat that, along with all his clothes, had been ruined by blood and smoke and sewer muck, and thrown away.
Nobody can tell him how the key had ended up in his hand.
So he does what he can. He finds Joly’s address through a contact at the university; bribing the landlady proves unnecessary - there is someone inside, a butter caramel woman with bruised eyes and exhaustion in her fingertips.
She nearly shuts the door in his face when he fumbles for his pocketbook. Hurriedly, he blurts, “Bossuet sent me,” and freezes at the quiet sharp noise she makes.
Her name is Musichetta, and she lets him in. They talk for an hour; she is kind and funny, but there are two shivering holes in her heart and they catch jagged on her tongue. He feels useless, but he gives her all he has, and promises a monthly stipend.
When he returns home, he writes her address on a loose slip of paper and leaves it on Cosette’s dresser. They would get along, he thinks.
Marius never used to drink, and doesn’t now; but he goes to the Musain and orders a glass of wine, lets it warm his lungs and throat, savors.
He finds Combeferre’s rooms stripped bare by an anxious landlord fearful of police reprisals; this is unsurprising, given Combeferre’s tendency towards arms-hoarding. Enjolras’ rooms are untouched; Marius is let in without a murmur. He takes the books, the pamphlets, the stacks of paper and letters; there is a spare room in grandfather Gillenormand’s house, and Marius turns it into a library. Courfeyrac’s books, too, he stores there.
Marius can learn on his own equally well as he can by listening, and he sets himself the daunting task of acquainting himself as dearly with these revolutionary tracts as ever the dead had been.
And it hurts, it hurts like claws and fire in his heart, but he holds Cosette close, and she kisses away the worst edge of agony and teases him into a smile.
He wears Courfeyrac’s favorite waistcoat to his wedding, with a bluebell in its buttonhole.