Fic: L'homme qui aimait la France (AI/Les Miserables), R
Title: L'homme qui aimait la France
Author: amproof
Fandoms: American Idol/Les Miserables (book)
Rating: R
Word count: 6200
Highlight to read pairings, includes spoilers: ( skip) :Adam/OFC, Adam/Sarver, Adam/Cook (UST), Kris/Katy (UST), other minor pairings may be implied.
Highlight to read warnings, includes spoilers: ( skip) : prostitution, multiple character deaths.
Thank you: goseaward for the beta. Great to work with you again, bb! chounette for translating the title for me. athenejen for the wonderful mix. Finally, scribblinlenore for hosting this challenge. chosenfire28 for the poster, done for ontd_ai's Idol Gives Back dollar drive.
Notes: Written for blackdress_adam. This story covers a blip in the 1500 page novel. It may mean more to you if you have read it, but it's not necessary to understand basics of the story. Title translates to "The man who loved France"
Summary: While the students play at revolution under Cook, their impassioned leader, Adam is selling himself to survive on the unforgiving Parisian streets--and letting the flames of revolution into his heart as well.
Prologue
General LaMarque, the common people's only friend, has died. The right-wing Orleanists are set to take power. Across Paris, makeshift barricades are popping up, made of whatever can be cobbled together from bits of wood, furniture, and trash, and manned by idealistic young men who believe in a better tomorrow and by desperate fathers and mothers who need a better today. In one such barricade, you will find a young man with hair the color of the sun, whose only love is La Patria, his country, and another who has lost the woman he loves. One has come to the barricade to die; the other, to live, and live strongly, if only for one night.
This story is not about that barricade. Instead, let us focus our attention on one a few streets over. It is not so large as the first (which is itself smaller than others), but the people who stand behind it are no less dedicated, and there are those amongst them who fight for reasons that have little to do with patriotism, though they might argue that they all fight for love. In fact, it might be noticed that they are not so different from those others--perhaps not so different from you or I.
The night has fallen on June 5, 1832. The silence lasts but a moment, everything so still that one could imagine being able to hear the breaths from those friends on the other barricade, or perhaps a hint of a song drifting over. And then, the first musket fires, and the battle begins.
#
The Rosalind Cafe had been a promising place once, before the students discovered it. Madame Abdul had not minded them at first, but then she had discovered their their rhetoric ran long and their wallets short. Still, they would not leave, though bit by bit they drove her other customers away. Now, even the flowers lining the windowsills had begun to droop in despair. The poor little cafe had once been a place to relax, perhaps flirt a bit, and then it grew, as a new thing should, into maturity, and now it had reached perhaps the point of death--not by old age, but by conviction, and stubbornness, and violence. Madame Abdul secured her straw hat upon her head as she shut herself into the cellar with the wine bottles. Overhead, she could hear the clattering of feet running back and forth and shouts for ammunition, with the occasional interruption for gunfire. Then a moment of silence before it began again. She stood guard over the bottles.
On the upper floor of the cafe, a few students were positioned at windows, aiming their muskets out, but not shooting, because there was not enough ammunition to waste on frivolous shots. They cast looks of scorn behind them now and then, but mainly left the figure sprawled on the floor in the darkness of the boarded windows and spouting the occasional curse alone.
Adam swore and pulled his knees a little closer to his chest, and the bottle of wine a little closer to his lips and tried to tune out the shouting, the gunfire and running, the cries for more ammunition. His head was a little fuzzy--this was his fourth bottle that he was finishing up--so it wasn't so much a problem to ignore the hullabaloo going on; it was more an issue of keeping conscious at all. He was certain of one thing, though. Underneath the table was a very good place to be.
"Get up and fight!"
He forced his eyes open to stare blearily up at David. The leader of this joke. David. The giant-killer. Perhaps this was why people had faith in him, for there was no greater Goliath than the French Government. Who else but a David could bring it down? But they were going to die, every one of them, and Adam seemed to be the only one who cared. Let the others go running up the overturned furniture they called a barricade and get their heads blown off. He was just fine where he was, thank you very much.
Cook shoved a broken piece of timber into Adam's hands. What I am supposed to do with that? Prop a door open? Cook kicked him, too, a sharp nudge against his hip, for good measure, Adam guessed. "Useless piece of shit," Cook said, and then he was gone.
Well. He'd take sleep over this any day. He settled back against the wall and closed his eyes. Why should he fight now? There was a time when he'd looked at David differently, had wanted to be near him and hadn't even cared that he was barely tolerated because he made no secret of not believing in 'the cause'. He had seen more life than most of these children playing war games, even though he wasn't much older than these apple-cheeked university students. He knew that as long as there were people in the world, there would be those below and those above, always stamping down. A group of students spewing political dribble wouldn't have any effect on that at all, no matter how many fliers they distributed.
#
The thing those students always forgot was that they had come to him. This was his cafe that they had tumbled into one day and which was now taking fire. Granted, Adam didn't own it, but he was happily drunk in a corner of it every day ('happy' in that he could not move or think), and had been for months before Cook had wafted in, bringing the others and their rhetoric with them. He had ignored them at first--at the end of the day, his only need for company came from a bottle, but Cook had clambered onto a table and started talking, a profound, intense kind of talking, and Adam couldn't help himself. He started moving closer. He couldn't remember the last time he'd gotten near a person without incentive, but each time he saw the students he edged closer and closer to Cook until at last he was practically beneath Cook's table, gazing up admiringly at him. Normally, Adam wouldn't have looked twice at him--although that didn't say much, he rarely looked twice at anyone who wasn't waving money--if his speechifying hadn't already drawn him in. Now that he had a look, he could see the fire in the man's eyes, too. He wanted to be closer to him, to feel and absorb the energy that was wafting off the man.
The students' rhetoric was all an impossibility. They were all going to get killed for it, and nothing would have changed. He said this out loud, though he wasn't sure if he meant to as he was fairly well drunk. He was shouted down immediately and got up and cursed them back. He closed his mouth when something inside him tugged him down, something that didn't want Cook to hear. He glanced over to see if his outburst was noticed. Cook had always seemed to tolerate him before, in the way a person might put up with an insect rambling across one's carpeting if the person was already in his chair with his feet up and not inclined to remove himself from that position to stamp on a bug. Cook looked at him coldly, as if he were about to get up from his metaphorical chair. Adam raised his chin in challenge, stood a bit taller. Even from across the room, Cook managed to seem larger, and it was Adam who turned away first. When he looked back, Cook had resumed his conversation with Giraud and Johns as if nothing had happened.
As usual, Archie was in the middle of things, scampering back and forth, nipping bits out of the pockets of the actual customers when his attempts to rouse them to revolution went ignored. He presented his treasures to Cook, and looked indignant when Cook scolded him. He thumbed his nose and stuffed them away, looking as if he would go skulking off, but Adam noticed that the boy didn't go far from Cook, either. He sequestered himself in a place where he had a clear view of Cook, and, after a sufficient amount of recovery time, bounced up and was again underfoot.
Each day faced Adam with the same choice: should he venture into the cafe that was once his daily retreat and from which the students' songs now poured forth, or should he follow the beckoning finger and flashed pocketbook? He used to only go inside the cafe at night, but if he went during the day, he would have more time near them because they filtered in in the early afternoon when their lectures at the University ended. He didn't know why, perhaps would not let himself think about it too deeply, but he wanted to be there when they were--when Cook was. Adam thought of himself as a practical person. He followed the pocketbook. Sometimes (usually) the women asked to see him again after, perhaps thinking that since they had just given him money, he would take them someplace nice and treat them. The men didn't ask, just turned up again, over and over, the exchange of money protection for them, something that let them justify putting their cocks into another man's mouth, although it was a justification that Adam did not try to understand. He just pocketed the money and used it to live another day.
There was a preacher who stood on the corner opposite with fliers of his own, and always with a smile. He didn't talk about Hellfire and damnation like the minister who beckoned the hordes into the cathedral each Sunday. This preacher's message was of love and joy and hope--all those things that didn't have any business being thought about in the gutters, much less shouted. Adam supposed that he needed to lift his voice, though, since he was so small that otherwise he wouldn't be noticed. There was a girl, too, and the preacher was in love with her. Adam could tell this even from his distance. She walked past once a day, trotting quickly behind her father, and the preacher's head always turned to follow her. She loved him, too. Adam could tell by the way her head would wobble just slightly. They never said a word to each other, perhaps because of her father, perhaps because they were too shy. Blushing virgins. Neither of them ever gave any notice to Adam, the hooker relegated to the shadows of a building pock-marked by the Revolution that none of them remembered, but which the students still talked about like it had never stopped.
#
The Inspector stood with his back as straight as the pillar he was lashed to. His eyes were the only part of him that moved, sliding from window to window, coolly observing each of the students as they moved and shouted. Occasionally, one of them would stand in front of him and poke him, wave the pistol that their leader had put on the table beside him and say, "I hope I'm the one who gets to kill you," to which he would blink slowly while his lips pulled into a smirk. There was another of them behind him. If he strained his peripheral vision, he could see the muddied shoes, unmoving since he had been recognized by the urchin and jumped upon. It was a corpse, perhaps. He had heard their leader order the dead be laid out downstairs. Perhaps this was one they didn't care about. That was the thing with youthful passion--it burned fast and flamed out easy. In contrast to this forgotten corpse, a young man's body lay upon a table a few feet away, hat clutched in its cold hands, this one evidently more important than the rest. A row of full wine bottles had been placed around it, which no one touched, as if to do so would desecrate the body. This was the first dead, so a deal was made of it. They would all be dead soon. Once they realized that, the order would stop being so important to them.
When Sarver said this, casting his voice out into the somber moment, the leader's lieutenant had stormed over and slapped him, sending his head backwards into the pillar. The gun was brandished again and, "First and last shall matter, first to be our guide into the next life, and last, because he will be the one who sends you into Hell. I shall pray that I am last." Sarver had no patience for threats, no care for them at all, and had stared at the man until he went away. He wondered idly why an Australian would mix himself with French politics, but to ask would mean speaking to the filth. His job was not to question, anyway. It was to infiltrate and report back. Since he had failed in that, his job now was to die. He only had to wait, which, in effect, made it the easiest thing he had ever done.
#
Occasionally, the students' conversation spilled out of the cafe and into Adam's corner. It was still nonsense to him, things he had heard a million times before, but he listened anyway, for that one voice that stood above the rest. One voice that drew Adam's attention away from the young woman he was silently fucking against the wall, which made him put his hand over her mouth to quiet her moans as she gazed lovingly, lustfully, at him.
"What I am saying," this voice said, "is that there can be a France for all of us, for all people, as citizens. That we must all be together. That is the key to life. Let us be as one!"
There followed an uproar of cheers from those who had followed Cook out of the cafe, but also some cries of mockery from others who had gathered around looking for a show.
"My country is my mother. I would die for her, if in doing so I could make her better for my children," he went on. The woman climaxed and Adam quickly knelt between her legs to lick her clean and then stepped away as she pulled her skirts down. She smiled at him and made a show of pulling out her pocketbook. He accepted the reward as humbly as was reasonable and feigned embarrassment when she made the usual motions of suggesting another engagement. Finally, he helped her with her buttons and returned her to the street as casually as if she had just taken a wrong turn and gone into the alley by accident. As innocently as if he were nothing but a gentleman who was showing her the path that she had meant to be on.
He was out of the shadows for only as long as it took to send her on her way. Then he stepped back. It was easier there, safer. He didn't belong out in the light, and the ones who came to him knew it, too, always pushing him back into the dark. Sometimes he thought that he only existed within its confines. He could look out, though, and so he looked now and observed Cook. In the daylight, his features were plain, apart from a swath of brown hair that flopped across his forehead. A crowd was clustering ever larger around him, as if they could all feel the gravitational force that made him its center, too. Adam saw the preacher on the other side of it, his head almost lost among the taller ones surrounding it. The only other times Adam had seen him silent were in the brief seconds each morning when the young woman walked past, but he was silent now, and watching Cook as intently as all the rest, excepting a handful of jeering onlookers who had peppered themselves into the audience.
Seeing the preacher made Adam hesitate. He had been about to step towards the crowd, one foot hovering just outside the shadow, but then Cook smiled at the preacher as if welcoming him in, and the preacher moved forward into the crowd to get closer to him. A slick burn that Adam had only felt a few times in his life welled up within him. He knew it as jealousy, and with it surged a new hatred for the preacher, which he accepted and embraced. Until that moment, the preacher had been only a minor nuisance, a soundtrack to his day that blended into all the other noises of the street. He had been easily ignored.
Before Adam's reaction could fully seat itself within him, a single gunshot sounded out and the crowd scattered. Only Adam, the preacher, and Cook remained, now joined by another man that Adam knew too well. The sound of his coat as it swished down the alley towards him, the scratch of his trousers against Adam's cheek, the weight of his cock on Adam's tongue, the lightness of his fingers stroking behind Adam's ear, all of these things Adam could catalog from his memory. The only thing he could not summon up was the man's name.
"Something you gentlemen were discussing?" he said, putting his pistol back into its holster.
"Only praising my mother," said Cook.
"Your mother must be a fine woman to draw such an audience," he said dryly.
Just as cold, Cook answered, "She is, Inspector. Truly, she is."
Inspector? He hadn't known. He tamped down on rising panic. He could go to prison. Hard labor. This man could make that happen, and he'd never said a word. What had he been doing?
"Well. Good day, messieurs," the Inspector said, and, with a smug smile, continued on his way.
Cook turned to watch him go, and as he did, his gaze landed directly on Adam. For a moment, he paused and Adam's breath stuttered. He could fall into those eyes--he would follow those eyes anywhere. He was savvy enough to recognize that he was being assessed and judged in that glimpse, and familiar enough with its twin on hundreds of other faces to know that he had failed whatever test he had been subjected to. It had never occurred to him to wonder if Cook knew how he lived, or to ask himself what Cook would think of it. He felt a deep, burning shame, but he pushed it down, made his face stone, and stared back. Then the gaze was gone and Cook had returned his attention to the preacher, nodded at him, and then walked into the cafe. Adam thought about following, but the shadows held him back.
He did not enter the Rosalind Cafe that night. Instead, he found his succor inside a distant cafe that was as quiet as his had been before the students invaded it. It only proved what fools his students (he had started to think of them in this possessive) were, for each day they ranted about the growing change, how in cafes across Paris there were others just the same, but in this cafe the closest thing the patrons came to demanding change was from a man asking for a different type of sugar for his tea.
The next day, after the young lady walked by with her father, the preacher went into the cafe. The same thing the day after, and the day after that. Adam stopped himself from following, although each day it was more difficult. It wasn't until a week later, when he saw Cook on the street talking to the preacher, when Cook reached his arm out to him, and the preacher hooked his untarnished hand through Cook's elbow, as was the custom for students when they walked together, that Adam finally stepped out of the shadows and returned to the cafe.
He walked up to the table where Cook sat with maps spread out in front of him, and pushed down his scorn. Children playing at strategy.
"I want to help," he said.
David looked up with an expression that was little more than disdain. "You want to help us? Go out and gather others to our cause? You? Who make no effort to hide how you laugh at our belief that we can change France for the better, and in changing France, change the world! You who look out those doors and see filth and act as if you would keep it that way! What do you have to believe in? I pity someone such as you." He turned his attention back to the charts spread in front of him, a motion he had probably used many times over with recalcitrants to signal a closed conversation.
Adam grabbed David's wrist and forced the man to pay him attention, which he did, twisting around
with an annoyed huff and slitted eyes. As Adam spoke, his voice trembled as he attempted to keep himself in check. "That filth is where I spend every moment of my life. How dare you insist that I would have it unchanged. How very dare you. As for what I have to believe in" -here his grip tightened, fingers pushing into the fragile bones of David's forearm- "I believe in you."
David opened his mouth. A gasp escaped before any words could issue forth, but by the time he formed a response, Adam had snatched the fliers from the table and stormed out of the cafe.
#
A sturdy wall is good for many things. Holding up a ceiling, holding down a floor, providing a barrier against bullets, but let us not forget its most noble use, supporting the shoulders of love-broken young men who slump against it. For to such young men, life has no meaning, and death holds no fear. Without a beloved, what use do they have with living? Kristopher sat with his musket across his knees, waiting dumbly. When he had first seen Katy's father inside the barricade, he hadn't known what to think, but the man had not even noticed him. He had arrived wearing a National Guard jacket, which he had stripped off and given to a younger man to allow him to escape the barricade without catching the watchful eyes of the soldiers outside it. Then he had picked up a musket and proceeded to silently follow Cook's orders, although his shots were aimed at mattresses hanging in windows, causing them to drop onto the barricade and thus bolster it, rather than at soldiers. Caught in his own thoughts, he never spoke, apart from a "no thank you" delivered in a British accent when someone offered him a snifter of brandy. (Kristopher, huddled in his own cloud, noticed none of this.)
Their ammunition, already low, was reaching dangerous levels. In only a matter of time, he would be dead. The pain of being abandoned by his Katy would be gone. He wondered if Archie had been successful in delivering the letter to her, in which he had pledged his love and declared that tonight he would die because he could not live without her. She would find it honorable, he was certain. The roads were closed around the barricades, so the boy would not be able to get back. This would be his second selfless deed, saving the boy's life. The first, of course, was dying rather than live without love. There was nothing more selfless than that.
A shout pierced his miserable thoughts. It was Cook, bellowing as if his soul had been ripped from him. "Archie! No!"
The cry roused him, and Kristopher leapt up and ran towards the voice.
#
"Should I call you 'Inspector' now?"
Suddenly, the Inspector's hand shot out and closed around Adam's throat, shoving him against the stone wall and stopping up his air. "Are you threatening me?"
Adam thrashed against the grip until it loosened enough for him to gasp out a negative reply.
"Good," the Inspector said. "Now go about your business."
For a moment, Adam thought he was being dismissed, even though the man had come to him, making his way through the maze of streets to find him, but then he was being pushed down with one hand, while the Inspector undid his own trousers with the other.
Adam wetted his lips with his tongue. Habit took over. The familiar cock seemed heavier now that it had the stint of law attached, and the man even more stern. Adam expected that he would no longer feel inclined to pay since his secret was out--he sucked off a handful of gendarmes in exchange for being left alone--but a moment after he had swallowed down the Inspector's result, a few coins clunked to the ground beside him. He edged his knee over to cover them. Thieves had no shame, and the hungry had no pride; neither would bat an eyelash over darting up to a man with a cock in his throat and stealing from him. Adam held the Inspector on his tongue until he softened and slipped out. Only then did he swallow. He held perfectly still as the man laid his hand on Adam's head in the usual way, which was not especially caring, nor did it feel like he was trying to steady himself. Then he shook his cock and stuffed it back into his trousers.
"What's your name?" Adam asked, looking at the man's feet.
"So you can report me?"
Adam shook his head. "No." He forced himself into a submissive tone. This man could crush him. He thought it only fair that he knew his name. The Inspector moved away. Adam turned, slightly, following mostly with his eyes. The coins pressed into his knees.
"I've seen you with those students," the Inspector said. "You're smart enough to know they'll get you killed. Take my advice and stay away from them. Your talents don't lie in rebellion."
Adam waited for the other shoe to drop, for the innuendo of 'lie' to devolve into "whore" and "slut", but it didn't. The Inspector left, never looking back or giving his name. Adam carefully moved his knee and picked up the coins. He stared; closed his eyes, opened them, and stared again. A five franc piece was in his hand.
He had never seen one before, hadn't been sure they existed.
He shoved it into his pocket. Tonight, he would eat like a king.
#
Simon watched as his daughter's suitor stumbled over the barricade carrying the boy's body. The young man was bleeding at the temple where a bullet had grazed him when he'd gone out to fetch the corpse. The little basket that the boy had been using to gather ammunition from the dead soldiers was under one arm, but it had toppled, and was mostly empty.
Simon still wasn't sure if he had come to the barricade to save the young man's life, or to make sure it ended. Adopting Katy had changed him for the good. Surely losing her would turn him back into the hardened criminal he had been for forty years before she came into his life. And yet, could he deny his child love? What kind of selfishness was this? The young man handed the boy over to his leader, and Simon followed with the others as they trooped upstairs.
The boy was laid down on a table alongside another man, the only other corpse in the room. Simon bowed his head when the young man uttered a short prayer (It hit him, then, exactly who this young man was--the preacher who he and Katy walked past each morning--he should have known, should have recognized his speechlessness as infatuation), but when it was finished, he glanced around the room.
His eyes landed on the man tied to the pillar, and he saw the man gazing calmly back at him. Then he noticed the gun on the table and understood.
A few words to Cook, a gentle reminder of what he had done to help the cause, himself, a stranger to them, and he had permission. He picked up the gun, untied the prisoner, and marched him towards the stairs.
"I might have guessed it would be you, Cowell," the Inspector said, grim-faced and smug.
"Walk," Simon gritted out, and shoved Sarver forward.
Kristopher looked out the window, saw two figures scrabbling over the barricade, one moving awkwardly due to his hands being bound and the other clutching a gun, and understood. He recognized the Inspector, who was a good man and kept order in the streets. If he could get to Cook in time, convince him to reverse the order, perhaps he could yet save a life, since he had failed to save the boy. He started down the stairs, wobbling a bit from dizziness, and paused to steady himself and wipe the blood from his forehead.
A single shot rang out.
Cowell returned, alone.
#
Five francs bought quite a lot of food, and quite a lot of wine. Adam stacked it on the table, downing glass after glass as quickly as Madame Abdul could bring it until she finally just left the bottle and told him to please himself. The cafe was, for once, not peopled by speechmakers. Adam was the loudest one present, the closest to a speech he gave was to bellow for another bottle and the closest he came to causing a ruckus was when he toppled off his chair trying to pinch Madame Abdul's bottom. When he pulled himself back up, Kristopher was sitting, uninvited, at the empty chair opposite him.
"Shouldn't you be somewhere soaking in Cook's admiration?" Adam asked. He carefully pulled the bottles closer to him so the preacher did not get any ideas of sharing. To Adam's mind, wine should only be communal under certain circumstances. First, that someone else had paid, and second, that sex would shortly follow.
"Shouldn't you be?" Kristopher answered back. He snatched up a chunk of bread before Adam could move it away, and popped it into his mouth, chewing primly.
Adam reddened a bit at this, slightly resenting himself for being so obvious, but equally hating Kristopher for mentioning it. "Cook has no admiration for me," he snapped. "I'm not such a fool that I don't realize that. He basks in you, though. You, he favors, and if you think no one else can see you glow in it, you might be better off returning to your post. How many souls have you saved lately?" This was cruel, Adam knew, and Kristopher's cheeks pinkened nicely in response. "Or was your ecumenical purpose already sabotaged by the promenade of a blonde young miss?"
Kristopher's face seemed to crumple at that, and he fell into a deep silence, which Adam filled by emptying his wine glass and refilling it, opening his third bottle to do so. Silent, Kristopher wasn't too difficult to look at, and separate from Cook's admiring glance, he was almost tolerable. Adam was getting a pleasant buzz from the wine. A few more glasses, and he might start to consider sharing. The preacher was malleable, perhaps, and could be bent in pleasing ways. Adam rarely (never, if he was honest) fucked for free, but the prize of taking a man of God would be a payment of its own kind. Then Kristopher sniffed and pulled himself up, and the feeling passed.
"You're deluding yourself if you think you'll ever find favor with him, or that he cares for me the way you want him to care for you. Cook's love is la Patria, and no human will sway him from her bosom," Kristopher said.
Adam's laugh was sharp and loud. Such self-delusion, though that shouldn't surprise him coming from a preacher. "You are his great hope--the youthful, vibrant future who lift France and make it great again. That is what he sees in you. In me, he sees the dregs, the beaten down who the revolution cannot save." He fisted the neck of the bottle, and shoved himself to his feet, bottle waving. "I am the symbol of its imminent failure."
Kristopher seemed about to respond. Adam turned away rather than be subjected to a parable. Giraud came in at that moment, with Archie behind him, both breathless and red-faced. Adam dropped back into his chair as Kristopher turned towards them. Adam breathed in relief that he had been spared a self-serving response.
"The barricades are going up! Cook is downstairs now. Come on, the fight begins!"
Kristopher rose immediately, his small fists clenched with an eagerness that did not sit well on a preacher's shoulders. "Where shall we build?"
Archie stepped beside him, bright face shining. "Here, citizen. We build it here." They clamored down the stairs together. All around, the other patrons hurriedly began to exit. Adam looked out the window and saw them streaming down the soon-to-be-blocked streets. He leaned out and shouted, "Cowards! Don't you recognize a fine day for a rebellion when you smell it?" Having done his part, he picked up his fourth bottle, got up from his chair, moved it out of the way, and sat down beneath the table, back against the wall and feet stretched out in front of him.
#
The drunk is not roused by noise, nor gunfire or collapse of rubble or startled scream. It is silence which awakens the drunk from his stupor, and the silence that comes before death is the deepest kind. This is the silence which will always wake the intoxicated and bypass that usual step where one is dragged clumsily out of grogginess and bring him immediately to bright awareness.
This was the state that Adam was in from the moment he lifted his head. In front of him, three tables had been pushed together, including the one he had been passed out beneath, and a pale hand hung off it. He sat up a bit and swallowed down bile as he recognized Archie's chewed nails. A measure of rope lay loosely on the floor, circling a pillar, as if someone had once been tied to it. He swept his gaze over the room. Dead men lay in window sills, slumped over their muskets. Adam did not linger on them, except to note that Kristopher was not among them. His sight landed, at last, on the man standing against the wall, his chin up, and tiny smirk on his lips as he faced the two soldiers taking aim.
"Wait," Adam called out. His voice broke the silence, and startled the soldiers enough to make one of them turn around. Adam moved towards them, his movements fluid and sure (though to the soldier watching, they appeared as the lurch of the drunk, which in fact saved Adam's life as he approached.) Adam reached the wall and stood beside Cook.
"You have missed one," he said to the soldiers. Then, he clasped Cook's hand, silently asking permission. Cook squeezed back and, for the first time, looked upon Adam as though he might do more than tolerate him. He might, perhaps, respect him, might love him. To Adam's surprise, however, this did not matter to him. He had known from the moment he sat on the floor with his wine that his death was near. The only mystery had been how it would happen.
"It would be my honor," Cook said, and Adam flushed with pride and loyalty. For Cook had loved his country, while Adam had adored the man who loved France. Cook would die now for his country, and Adam would die beside him, not for him, but with him.
They faced forward together, hands still clasped.
The soldiers raised their rifles, aimed, and fired.
Epilogue
The victors will call it an insurrection, the smashing of pesky insects beneath the well-heeled boot of rightful power, but those who died on the barricade and those who fought and lived will call it something else: Revolution.
Si César m'avait donné
La gloire et la guerre,
Et qu'il me fallût quitter
L'amour de ma mère
Je dirais au grand Césare:
Reprends ton sceptre et ton char,
J'aime mieux ma mère, û gué!
J'aime mieux ma mère.
If Caesar had given me
glory and war
and if I must abandon
the love of my mother
I would say to great Caesar:
Take your scepter and chariot
I love my mother more, alas,
I love my mother more.
The End
-------------------------
L'amour est la révolution (and revolution is sometimes love)
a fanmix by athenejen
for "L'homme qui aimait la France (The man who loved France)"
Download Link: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=7D4N6RD3
1. Bethany & Rufus, "Isn't That So?"
You gotta go where your heart say go
Isn't that so?
2. Citizen Cope, "Nite Becomes Day"
Things have been getting real hectic these days
An eye for an eye, a spade is a spade
They're shooting him down and he's running away
That was their turn
3. The Basics, "With This Ship"
I try to send a message
But you don't want to hear it...
I don't wanna go down with this ship
4. The Flash Girls, "Neil's Reel/Star of the County Down"
Down a boreen green came a sweet colleen
And she smiled as she passed me by...
No maid I've seen like the brown colleen
I met in the country down
5. Bob Marley & the Wailers, "Redemption Song"
Emancipate yourself from mental slavery
None but ourselves can free our minds...
Won't you help to sing
These songs of freedom
6. HorrorPops, "Boot2Boot"
Everything they possibly can do to us has been done
Now it's on
The line has been drawn
Bring it on...
We're tired of being wronged
7. Muse, "Invincible"
Sharing the struggle
They will pull us down
But please, please let's use this chance
To turn things around
And tonight we can truly say
Together we're invincible
8. The Cure, "Closedown"
Always the need
To feel again the real belief
Of something more than mockery
If only I could fill my heart with love
9. The Airborne Toxic Event, "Papillon"
I swear to God that this doesn't hurt
When you stare like that, you put on that act
You say something and then you take it back
And I feel as though I've done something wrong
Oh, how I miss you when you're gone
10. Thievery Corporation, "Revolution Solution"
The paradox of poverty has left us dismayed
Sliding democracy washing away
The toil of the many goes to the fortunate few
The revolution solution
Oh, I've come to join you
11. Everlast, "What It's Like"
God forbid you ever had to walk a mile in his shoes
'Cause then you really might know what it's like to sing the blues
12. British Sea Power, "No Lucifer"
Several Lucifers come
And we can beat them all
13. The Chills, "The Oncoming Day"
I think of words to tell you
I find nothing fine enough to say
Nothing worth anything
Nothing worth nothing
Nothing left in this lump of grey
That even vaguely says I love you
In a way that pleases me
So I'll let the oncoming day say it for me
14. The Duke Spirit, "Neptune's Call"
Take this hand only once
Yeah I will try to be as pure as you
And make this stand only for one
Yeah I will try to be as pure as you
15. Mazzy Star, "Fade Into You"
I want to hold the hand inside you
I want to take a breath that's true
I look to you and I see nothing
I look to you to see the truth...
Fade into you
Strange you never knew
Fade into you
I think it's strange you never knew
16. Tom McRae, "Mermaid Blues"
Shape your mouth to fit these words of war
I see the arrows falling backwards, burning for a cause
I'll swim with you until my lungs give out
17. Bethany & Rufus, "No More Songs"
Hello, hello, hello
Is there anybody home?
I only called to say
I'm sorry
The drums are in the dawn
And all the voices gone
And it seems there are no more songs
Author: amproof
Fandoms: American Idol/Les Miserables (book)
Rating: R
Word count: 6200
Highlight to read pairings, includes spoilers: ( skip) :Adam/OFC, Adam/Sarver, Adam/Cook (UST), Kris/Katy (UST), other minor pairings may be implied.
Highlight to read warnings, includes spoilers: ( skip) : prostitution, multiple character deaths.
Thank you: goseaward for the beta. Great to work with you again, bb! chounette for translating the title for me. athenejen for the wonderful mix. Finally, scribblinlenore for hosting this challenge. chosenfire28 for the poster, done for ontd_ai's Idol Gives Back dollar drive.
Notes: Written for blackdress_adam. This story covers a blip in the 1500 page novel. It may mean more to you if you have read it, but it's not necessary to understand basics of the story. Title translates to "The man who loved France"
Summary: While the students play at revolution under Cook, their impassioned leader, Adam is selling himself to survive on the unforgiving Parisian streets--and letting the flames of revolution into his heart as well.
Prologue
General LaMarque, the common people's only friend, has died. The right-wing Orleanists are set to take power. Across Paris, makeshift barricades are popping up, made of whatever can be cobbled together from bits of wood, furniture, and trash, and manned by idealistic young men who believe in a better tomorrow and by desperate fathers and mothers who need a better today. In one such barricade, you will find a young man with hair the color of the sun, whose only love is La Patria, his country, and another who has lost the woman he loves. One has come to the barricade to die; the other, to live, and live strongly, if only for one night.
This story is not about that barricade. Instead, let us focus our attention on one a few streets over. It is not so large as the first (which is itself smaller than others), but the people who stand behind it are no less dedicated, and there are those amongst them who fight for reasons that have little to do with patriotism, though they might argue that they all fight for love. In fact, it might be noticed that they are not so different from those others--perhaps not so different from you or I.
The night has fallen on June 5, 1832. The silence lasts but a moment, everything so still that one could imagine being able to hear the breaths from those friends on the other barricade, or perhaps a hint of a song drifting over. And then, the first musket fires, and the battle begins.
#
The Rosalind Cafe had been a promising place once, before the students discovered it. Madame Abdul had not minded them at first, but then she had discovered their their rhetoric ran long and their wallets short. Still, they would not leave, though bit by bit they drove her other customers away. Now, even the flowers lining the windowsills had begun to droop in despair. The poor little cafe had once been a place to relax, perhaps flirt a bit, and then it grew, as a new thing should, into maturity, and now it had reached perhaps the point of death--not by old age, but by conviction, and stubbornness, and violence. Madame Abdul secured her straw hat upon her head as she shut herself into the cellar with the wine bottles. Overhead, she could hear the clattering of feet running back and forth and shouts for ammunition, with the occasional interruption for gunfire. Then a moment of silence before it began again. She stood guard over the bottles.
On the upper floor of the cafe, a few students were positioned at windows, aiming their muskets out, but not shooting, because there was not enough ammunition to waste on frivolous shots. They cast looks of scorn behind them now and then, but mainly left the figure sprawled on the floor in the darkness of the boarded windows and spouting the occasional curse alone.
Adam swore and pulled his knees a little closer to his chest, and the bottle of wine a little closer to his lips and tried to tune out the shouting, the gunfire and running, the cries for more ammunition. His head was a little fuzzy--this was his fourth bottle that he was finishing up--so it wasn't so much a problem to ignore the hullabaloo going on; it was more an issue of keeping conscious at all. He was certain of one thing, though. Underneath the table was a very good place to be.
"Get up and fight!"
He forced his eyes open to stare blearily up at David. The leader of this joke. David. The giant-killer. Perhaps this was why people had faith in him, for there was no greater Goliath than the French Government. Who else but a David could bring it down? But they were going to die, every one of them, and Adam seemed to be the only one who cared. Let the others go running up the overturned furniture they called a barricade and get their heads blown off. He was just fine where he was, thank you very much.
Cook shoved a broken piece of timber into Adam's hands. What I am supposed to do with that? Prop a door open? Cook kicked him, too, a sharp nudge against his hip, for good measure, Adam guessed. "Useless piece of shit," Cook said, and then he was gone.
Well. He'd take sleep over this any day. He settled back against the wall and closed his eyes. Why should he fight now? There was a time when he'd looked at David differently, had wanted to be near him and hadn't even cared that he was barely tolerated because he made no secret of not believing in 'the cause'. He had seen more life than most of these children playing war games, even though he wasn't much older than these apple-cheeked university students. He knew that as long as there were people in the world, there would be those below and those above, always stamping down. A group of students spewing political dribble wouldn't have any effect on that at all, no matter how many fliers they distributed.
#
The thing those students always forgot was that they had come to him. This was his cafe that they had tumbled into one day and which was now taking fire. Granted, Adam didn't own it, but he was happily drunk in a corner of it every day ('happy' in that he could not move or think), and had been for months before Cook had wafted in, bringing the others and their rhetoric with them. He had ignored them at first--at the end of the day, his only need for company came from a bottle, but Cook had clambered onto a table and started talking, a profound, intense kind of talking, and Adam couldn't help himself. He started moving closer. He couldn't remember the last time he'd gotten near a person without incentive, but each time he saw the students he edged closer and closer to Cook until at last he was practically beneath Cook's table, gazing up admiringly at him. Normally, Adam wouldn't have looked twice at him--although that didn't say much, he rarely looked twice at anyone who wasn't waving money--if his speechifying hadn't already drawn him in. Now that he had a look, he could see the fire in the man's eyes, too. He wanted to be closer to him, to feel and absorb the energy that was wafting off the man.
The students' rhetoric was all an impossibility. They were all going to get killed for it, and nothing would have changed. He said this out loud, though he wasn't sure if he meant to as he was fairly well drunk. He was shouted down immediately and got up and cursed them back. He closed his mouth when something inside him tugged him down, something that didn't want Cook to hear. He glanced over to see if his outburst was noticed. Cook had always seemed to tolerate him before, in the way a person might put up with an insect rambling across one's carpeting if the person was already in his chair with his feet up and not inclined to remove himself from that position to stamp on a bug. Cook looked at him coldly, as if he were about to get up from his metaphorical chair. Adam raised his chin in challenge, stood a bit taller. Even from across the room, Cook managed to seem larger, and it was Adam who turned away first. When he looked back, Cook had resumed his conversation with Giraud and Johns as if nothing had happened.
As usual, Archie was in the middle of things, scampering back and forth, nipping bits out of the pockets of the actual customers when his attempts to rouse them to revolution went ignored. He presented his treasures to Cook, and looked indignant when Cook scolded him. He thumbed his nose and stuffed them away, looking as if he would go skulking off, but Adam noticed that the boy didn't go far from Cook, either. He sequestered himself in a place where he had a clear view of Cook, and, after a sufficient amount of recovery time, bounced up and was again underfoot.
Each day faced Adam with the same choice: should he venture into the cafe that was once his daily retreat and from which the students' songs now poured forth, or should he follow the beckoning finger and flashed pocketbook? He used to only go inside the cafe at night, but if he went during the day, he would have more time near them because they filtered in in the early afternoon when their lectures at the University ended. He didn't know why, perhaps would not let himself think about it too deeply, but he wanted to be there when they were--when Cook was. Adam thought of himself as a practical person. He followed the pocketbook. Sometimes (usually) the women asked to see him again after, perhaps thinking that since they had just given him money, he would take them someplace nice and treat them. The men didn't ask, just turned up again, over and over, the exchange of money protection for them, something that let them justify putting their cocks into another man's mouth, although it was a justification that Adam did not try to understand. He just pocketed the money and used it to live another day.
There was a preacher who stood on the corner opposite with fliers of his own, and always with a smile. He didn't talk about Hellfire and damnation like the minister who beckoned the hordes into the cathedral each Sunday. This preacher's message was of love and joy and hope--all those things that didn't have any business being thought about in the gutters, much less shouted. Adam supposed that he needed to lift his voice, though, since he was so small that otherwise he wouldn't be noticed. There was a girl, too, and the preacher was in love with her. Adam could tell this even from his distance. She walked past once a day, trotting quickly behind her father, and the preacher's head always turned to follow her. She loved him, too. Adam could tell by the way her head would wobble just slightly. They never said a word to each other, perhaps because of her father, perhaps because they were too shy. Blushing virgins. Neither of them ever gave any notice to Adam, the hooker relegated to the shadows of a building pock-marked by the Revolution that none of them remembered, but which the students still talked about like it had never stopped.
#
The Inspector stood with his back as straight as the pillar he was lashed to. His eyes were the only part of him that moved, sliding from window to window, coolly observing each of the students as they moved and shouted. Occasionally, one of them would stand in front of him and poke him, wave the pistol that their leader had put on the table beside him and say, "I hope I'm the one who gets to kill you," to which he would blink slowly while his lips pulled into a smirk. There was another of them behind him. If he strained his peripheral vision, he could see the muddied shoes, unmoving since he had been recognized by the urchin and jumped upon. It was a corpse, perhaps. He had heard their leader order the dead be laid out downstairs. Perhaps this was one they didn't care about. That was the thing with youthful passion--it burned fast and flamed out easy. In contrast to this forgotten corpse, a young man's body lay upon a table a few feet away, hat clutched in its cold hands, this one evidently more important than the rest. A row of full wine bottles had been placed around it, which no one touched, as if to do so would desecrate the body. This was the first dead, so a deal was made of it. They would all be dead soon. Once they realized that, the order would stop being so important to them.
When Sarver said this, casting his voice out into the somber moment, the leader's lieutenant had stormed over and slapped him, sending his head backwards into the pillar. The gun was brandished again and, "First and last shall matter, first to be our guide into the next life, and last, because he will be the one who sends you into Hell. I shall pray that I am last." Sarver had no patience for threats, no care for them at all, and had stared at the man until he went away. He wondered idly why an Australian would mix himself with French politics, but to ask would mean speaking to the filth. His job was not to question, anyway. It was to infiltrate and report back. Since he had failed in that, his job now was to die. He only had to wait, which, in effect, made it the easiest thing he had ever done.
#
Occasionally, the students' conversation spilled out of the cafe and into Adam's corner. It was still nonsense to him, things he had heard a million times before, but he listened anyway, for that one voice that stood above the rest. One voice that drew Adam's attention away from the young woman he was silently fucking against the wall, which made him put his hand over her mouth to quiet her moans as she gazed lovingly, lustfully, at him.
"What I am saying," this voice said, "is that there can be a France for all of us, for all people, as citizens. That we must all be together. That is the key to life. Let us be as one!"
There followed an uproar of cheers from those who had followed Cook out of the cafe, but also some cries of mockery from others who had gathered around looking for a show.
"My country is my mother. I would die for her, if in doing so I could make her better for my children," he went on. The woman climaxed and Adam quickly knelt between her legs to lick her clean and then stepped away as she pulled her skirts down. She smiled at him and made a show of pulling out her pocketbook. He accepted the reward as humbly as was reasonable and feigned embarrassment when she made the usual motions of suggesting another engagement. Finally, he helped her with her buttons and returned her to the street as casually as if she had just taken a wrong turn and gone into the alley by accident. As innocently as if he were nothing but a gentleman who was showing her the path that she had meant to be on.
He was out of the shadows for only as long as it took to send her on her way. Then he stepped back. It was easier there, safer. He didn't belong out in the light, and the ones who came to him knew it, too, always pushing him back into the dark. Sometimes he thought that he only existed within its confines. He could look out, though, and so he looked now and observed Cook. In the daylight, his features were plain, apart from a swath of brown hair that flopped across his forehead. A crowd was clustering ever larger around him, as if they could all feel the gravitational force that made him its center, too. Adam saw the preacher on the other side of it, his head almost lost among the taller ones surrounding it. The only other times Adam had seen him silent were in the brief seconds each morning when the young woman walked past, but he was silent now, and watching Cook as intently as all the rest, excepting a handful of jeering onlookers who had peppered themselves into the audience.
Seeing the preacher made Adam hesitate. He had been about to step towards the crowd, one foot hovering just outside the shadow, but then Cook smiled at the preacher as if welcoming him in, and the preacher moved forward into the crowd to get closer to him. A slick burn that Adam had only felt a few times in his life welled up within him. He knew it as jealousy, and with it surged a new hatred for the preacher, which he accepted and embraced. Until that moment, the preacher had been only a minor nuisance, a soundtrack to his day that blended into all the other noises of the street. He had been easily ignored.
Before Adam's reaction could fully seat itself within him, a single gunshot sounded out and the crowd scattered. Only Adam, the preacher, and Cook remained, now joined by another man that Adam knew too well. The sound of his coat as it swished down the alley towards him, the scratch of his trousers against Adam's cheek, the weight of his cock on Adam's tongue, the lightness of his fingers stroking behind Adam's ear, all of these things Adam could catalog from his memory. The only thing he could not summon up was the man's name.
"Something you gentlemen were discussing?" he said, putting his pistol back into its holster.
"Only praising my mother," said Cook.
"Your mother must be a fine woman to draw such an audience," he said dryly.
Just as cold, Cook answered, "She is, Inspector. Truly, she is."
Inspector? He hadn't known. He tamped down on rising panic. He could go to prison. Hard labor. This man could make that happen, and he'd never said a word. What had he been doing?
"Well. Good day, messieurs," the Inspector said, and, with a smug smile, continued on his way.
Cook turned to watch him go, and as he did, his gaze landed directly on Adam. For a moment, he paused and Adam's breath stuttered. He could fall into those eyes--he would follow those eyes anywhere. He was savvy enough to recognize that he was being assessed and judged in that glimpse, and familiar enough with its twin on hundreds of other faces to know that he had failed whatever test he had been subjected to. It had never occurred to him to wonder if Cook knew how he lived, or to ask himself what Cook would think of it. He felt a deep, burning shame, but he pushed it down, made his face stone, and stared back. Then the gaze was gone and Cook had returned his attention to the preacher, nodded at him, and then walked into the cafe. Adam thought about following, but the shadows held him back.
He did not enter the Rosalind Cafe that night. Instead, he found his succor inside a distant cafe that was as quiet as his had been before the students invaded it. It only proved what fools his students (he had started to think of them in this possessive) were, for each day they ranted about the growing change, how in cafes across Paris there were others just the same, but in this cafe the closest thing the patrons came to demanding change was from a man asking for a different type of sugar for his tea.
The next day, after the young lady walked by with her father, the preacher went into the cafe. The same thing the day after, and the day after that. Adam stopped himself from following, although each day it was more difficult. It wasn't until a week later, when he saw Cook on the street talking to the preacher, when Cook reached his arm out to him, and the preacher hooked his untarnished hand through Cook's elbow, as was the custom for students when they walked together, that Adam finally stepped out of the shadows and returned to the cafe.
He walked up to the table where Cook sat with maps spread out in front of him, and pushed down his scorn. Children playing at strategy.
"I want to help," he said.
David looked up with an expression that was little more than disdain. "You want to help us? Go out and gather others to our cause? You? Who make no effort to hide how you laugh at our belief that we can change France for the better, and in changing France, change the world! You who look out those doors and see filth and act as if you would keep it that way! What do you have to believe in? I pity someone such as you." He turned his attention back to the charts spread in front of him, a motion he had probably used many times over with recalcitrants to signal a closed conversation.
Adam grabbed David's wrist and forced the man to pay him attention, which he did, twisting around
with an annoyed huff and slitted eyes. As Adam spoke, his voice trembled as he attempted to keep himself in check. "That filth is where I spend every moment of my life. How dare you insist that I would have it unchanged. How very dare you. As for what I have to believe in" -here his grip tightened, fingers pushing into the fragile bones of David's forearm- "I believe in you."
David opened his mouth. A gasp escaped before any words could issue forth, but by the time he formed a response, Adam had snatched the fliers from the table and stormed out of the cafe.
#
A sturdy wall is good for many things. Holding up a ceiling, holding down a floor, providing a barrier against bullets, but let us not forget its most noble use, supporting the shoulders of love-broken young men who slump against it. For to such young men, life has no meaning, and death holds no fear. Without a beloved, what use do they have with living? Kristopher sat with his musket across his knees, waiting dumbly. When he had first seen Katy's father inside the barricade, he hadn't known what to think, but the man had not even noticed him. He had arrived wearing a National Guard jacket, which he had stripped off and given to a younger man to allow him to escape the barricade without catching the watchful eyes of the soldiers outside it. Then he had picked up a musket and proceeded to silently follow Cook's orders, although his shots were aimed at mattresses hanging in windows, causing them to drop onto the barricade and thus bolster it, rather than at soldiers. Caught in his own thoughts, he never spoke, apart from a "no thank you" delivered in a British accent when someone offered him a snifter of brandy. (Kristopher, huddled in his own cloud, noticed none of this.)
Their ammunition, already low, was reaching dangerous levels. In only a matter of time, he would be dead. The pain of being abandoned by his Katy would be gone. He wondered if Archie had been successful in delivering the letter to her, in which he had pledged his love and declared that tonight he would die because he could not live without her. She would find it honorable, he was certain. The roads were closed around the barricades, so the boy would not be able to get back. This would be his second selfless deed, saving the boy's life. The first, of course, was dying rather than live without love. There was nothing more selfless than that.
A shout pierced his miserable thoughts. It was Cook, bellowing as if his soul had been ripped from him. "Archie! No!"
The cry roused him, and Kristopher leapt up and ran towards the voice.
#
"Should I call you 'Inspector' now?"
Suddenly, the Inspector's hand shot out and closed around Adam's throat, shoving him against the stone wall and stopping up his air. "Are you threatening me?"
Adam thrashed against the grip until it loosened enough for him to gasp out a negative reply.
"Good," the Inspector said. "Now go about your business."
For a moment, Adam thought he was being dismissed, even though the man had come to him, making his way through the maze of streets to find him, but then he was being pushed down with one hand, while the Inspector undid his own trousers with the other.
Adam wetted his lips with his tongue. Habit took over. The familiar cock seemed heavier now that it had the stint of law attached, and the man even more stern. Adam expected that he would no longer feel inclined to pay since his secret was out--he sucked off a handful of gendarmes in exchange for being left alone--but a moment after he had swallowed down the Inspector's result, a few coins clunked to the ground beside him. He edged his knee over to cover them. Thieves had no shame, and the hungry had no pride; neither would bat an eyelash over darting up to a man with a cock in his throat and stealing from him. Adam held the Inspector on his tongue until he softened and slipped out. Only then did he swallow. He held perfectly still as the man laid his hand on Adam's head in the usual way, which was not especially caring, nor did it feel like he was trying to steady himself. Then he shook his cock and stuffed it back into his trousers.
"What's your name?" Adam asked, looking at the man's feet.
"So you can report me?"
Adam shook his head. "No." He forced himself into a submissive tone. This man could crush him. He thought it only fair that he knew his name. The Inspector moved away. Adam turned, slightly, following mostly with his eyes. The coins pressed into his knees.
"I've seen you with those students," the Inspector said. "You're smart enough to know they'll get you killed. Take my advice and stay away from them. Your talents don't lie in rebellion."
Adam waited for the other shoe to drop, for the innuendo of 'lie' to devolve into "whore" and "slut", but it didn't. The Inspector left, never looking back or giving his name. Adam carefully moved his knee and picked up the coins. He stared; closed his eyes, opened them, and stared again. A five franc piece was in his hand.
He had never seen one before, hadn't been sure they existed.
He shoved it into his pocket. Tonight, he would eat like a king.
#
Simon watched as his daughter's suitor stumbled over the barricade carrying the boy's body. The young man was bleeding at the temple where a bullet had grazed him when he'd gone out to fetch the corpse. The little basket that the boy had been using to gather ammunition from the dead soldiers was under one arm, but it had toppled, and was mostly empty.
Simon still wasn't sure if he had come to the barricade to save the young man's life, or to make sure it ended. Adopting Katy had changed him for the good. Surely losing her would turn him back into the hardened criminal he had been for forty years before she came into his life. And yet, could he deny his child love? What kind of selfishness was this? The young man handed the boy over to his leader, and Simon followed with the others as they trooped upstairs.
The boy was laid down on a table alongside another man, the only other corpse in the room. Simon bowed his head when the young man uttered a short prayer (It hit him, then, exactly who this young man was--the preacher who he and Katy walked past each morning--he should have known, should have recognized his speechlessness as infatuation), but when it was finished, he glanced around the room.
His eyes landed on the man tied to the pillar, and he saw the man gazing calmly back at him. Then he noticed the gun on the table and understood.
A few words to Cook, a gentle reminder of what he had done to help the cause, himself, a stranger to them, and he had permission. He picked up the gun, untied the prisoner, and marched him towards the stairs.
"I might have guessed it would be you, Cowell," the Inspector said, grim-faced and smug.
"Walk," Simon gritted out, and shoved Sarver forward.
Kristopher looked out the window, saw two figures scrabbling over the barricade, one moving awkwardly due to his hands being bound and the other clutching a gun, and understood. He recognized the Inspector, who was a good man and kept order in the streets. If he could get to Cook in time, convince him to reverse the order, perhaps he could yet save a life, since he had failed to save the boy. He started down the stairs, wobbling a bit from dizziness, and paused to steady himself and wipe the blood from his forehead.
A single shot rang out.
Cowell returned, alone.
#
Five francs bought quite a lot of food, and quite a lot of wine. Adam stacked it on the table, downing glass after glass as quickly as Madame Abdul could bring it until she finally just left the bottle and told him to please himself. The cafe was, for once, not peopled by speechmakers. Adam was the loudest one present, the closest to a speech he gave was to bellow for another bottle and the closest he came to causing a ruckus was when he toppled off his chair trying to pinch Madame Abdul's bottom. When he pulled himself back up, Kristopher was sitting, uninvited, at the empty chair opposite him.
"Shouldn't you be somewhere soaking in Cook's admiration?" Adam asked. He carefully pulled the bottles closer to him so the preacher did not get any ideas of sharing. To Adam's mind, wine should only be communal under certain circumstances. First, that someone else had paid, and second, that sex would shortly follow.
"Shouldn't you be?" Kristopher answered back. He snatched up a chunk of bread before Adam could move it away, and popped it into his mouth, chewing primly.
Adam reddened a bit at this, slightly resenting himself for being so obvious, but equally hating Kristopher for mentioning it. "Cook has no admiration for me," he snapped. "I'm not such a fool that I don't realize that. He basks in you, though. You, he favors, and if you think no one else can see you glow in it, you might be better off returning to your post. How many souls have you saved lately?" This was cruel, Adam knew, and Kristopher's cheeks pinkened nicely in response. "Or was your ecumenical purpose already sabotaged by the promenade of a blonde young miss?"
Kristopher's face seemed to crumple at that, and he fell into a deep silence, which Adam filled by emptying his wine glass and refilling it, opening his third bottle to do so. Silent, Kristopher wasn't too difficult to look at, and separate from Cook's admiring glance, he was almost tolerable. Adam was getting a pleasant buzz from the wine. A few more glasses, and he might start to consider sharing. The preacher was malleable, perhaps, and could be bent in pleasing ways. Adam rarely (never, if he was honest) fucked for free, but the prize of taking a man of God would be a payment of its own kind. Then Kristopher sniffed and pulled himself up, and the feeling passed.
"You're deluding yourself if you think you'll ever find favor with him, or that he cares for me the way you want him to care for you. Cook's love is la Patria, and no human will sway him from her bosom," Kristopher said.
Adam's laugh was sharp and loud. Such self-delusion, though that shouldn't surprise him coming from a preacher. "You are his great hope--the youthful, vibrant future who lift France and make it great again. That is what he sees in you. In me, he sees the dregs, the beaten down who the revolution cannot save." He fisted the neck of the bottle, and shoved himself to his feet, bottle waving. "I am the symbol of its imminent failure."
Kristopher seemed about to respond. Adam turned away rather than be subjected to a parable. Giraud came in at that moment, with Archie behind him, both breathless and red-faced. Adam dropped back into his chair as Kristopher turned towards them. Adam breathed in relief that he had been spared a self-serving response.
"The barricades are going up! Cook is downstairs now. Come on, the fight begins!"
Kristopher rose immediately, his small fists clenched with an eagerness that did not sit well on a preacher's shoulders. "Where shall we build?"
Archie stepped beside him, bright face shining. "Here, citizen. We build it here." They clamored down the stairs together. All around, the other patrons hurriedly began to exit. Adam looked out the window and saw them streaming down the soon-to-be-blocked streets. He leaned out and shouted, "Cowards! Don't you recognize a fine day for a rebellion when you smell it?" Having done his part, he picked up his fourth bottle, got up from his chair, moved it out of the way, and sat down beneath the table, back against the wall and feet stretched out in front of him.
#
The drunk is not roused by noise, nor gunfire or collapse of rubble or startled scream. It is silence which awakens the drunk from his stupor, and the silence that comes before death is the deepest kind. This is the silence which will always wake the intoxicated and bypass that usual step where one is dragged clumsily out of grogginess and bring him immediately to bright awareness.
This was the state that Adam was in from the moment he lifted his head. In front of him, three tables had been pushed together, including the one he had been passed out beneath, and a pale hand hung off it. He sat up a bit and swallowed down bile as he recognized Archie's chewed nails. A measure of rope lay loosely on the floor, circling a pillar, as if someone had once been tied to it. He swept his gaze over the room. Dead men lay in window sills, slumped over their muskets. Adam did not linger on them, except to note that Kristopher was not among them. His sight landed, at last, on the man standing against the wall, his chin up, and tiny smirk on his lips as he faced the two soldiers taking aim.
"Wait," Adam called out. His voice broke the silence, and startled the soldiers enough to make one of them turn around. Adam moved towards them, his movements fluid and sure (though to the soldier watching, they appeared as the lurch of the drunk, which in fact saved Adam's life as he approached.) Adam reached the wall and stood beside Cook.
"You have missed one," he said to the soldiers. Then, he clasped Cook's hand, silently asking permission. Cook squeezed back and, for the first time, looked upon Adam as though he might do more than tolerate him. He might, perhaps, respect him, might love him. To Adam's surprise, however, this did not matter to him. He had known from the moment he sat on the floor with his wine that his death was near. The only mystery had been how it would happen.
"It would be my honor," Cook said, and Adam flushed with pride and loyalty. For Cook had loved his country, while Adam had adored the man who loved France. Cook would die now for his country, and Adam would die beside him, not for him, but with him.
They faced forward together, hands still clasped.
The soldiers raised their rifles, aimed, and fired.
Epilogue
The victors will call it an insurrection, the smashing of pesky insects beneath the well-heeled boot of rightful power, but those who died on the barricade and those who fought and lived will call it something else: Revolution.
Si César m'avait donné
La gloire et la guerre,
Et qu'il me fallût quitter
L'amour de ma mère
Je dirais au grand Césare:
Reprends ton sceptre et ton char,
J'aime mieux ma mère, û gué!
J'aime mieux ma mère.
If Caesar had given me
glory and war
and if I must abandon
the love of my mother
I would say to great Caesar:
Take your scepter and chariot
I love my mother more, alas,
I love my mother more.
The End
-------------------------
L'amour est la révolution (and revolution is sometimes love)
a fanmix by athenejen
for "L'homme qui aimait la France (The man who loved France)"
Download Link: http://www.megaupload.com/?d=7D4N6RD3
1. Bethany & Rufus, "Isn't That So?"
You gotta go where your heart say go
Isn't that so?
2. Citizen Cope, "Nite Becomes Day"
Things have been getting real hectic these days
An eye for an eye, a spade is a spade
They're shooting him down and he's running away
That was their turn
3. The Basics, "With This Ship"
I try to send a message
But you don't want to hear it...
I don't wanna go down with this ship
4. The Flash Girls, "Neil's Reel/Star of the County Down"
Down a boreen green came a sweet colleen
And she smiled as she passed me by...
No maid I've seen like the brown colleen
I met in the country down
5. Bob Marley & the Wailers, "Redemption Song"
Emancipate yourself from mental slavery
None but ourselves can free our minds...
Won't you help to sing
These songs of freedom
6. HorrorPops, "Boot2Boot"
Everything they possibly can do to us has been done
Now it's on
The line has been drawn
Bring it on...
We're tired of being wronged
7. Muse, "Invincible"
Sharing the struggle
They will pull us down
But please, please let's use this chance
To turn things around
And tonight we can truly say
Together we're invincible
8. The Cure, "Closedown"
Always the need
To feel again the real belief
Of something more than mockery
If only I could fill my heart with love
9. The Airborne Toxic Event, "Papillon"
I swear to God that this doesn't hurt
When you stare like that, you put on that act
You say something and then you take it back
And I feel as though I've done something wrong
Oh, how I miss you when you're gone
10. Thievery Corporation, "Revolution Solution"
The paradox of poverty has left us dismayed
Sliding democracy washing away
The toil of the many goes to the fortunate few
The revolution solution
Oh, I've come to join you
11. Everlast, "What It's Like"
God forbid you ever had to walk a mile in his shoes
'Cause then you really might know what it's like to sing the blues
12. British Sea Power, "No Lucifer"
Several Lucifers come
And we can beat them all
13. The Chills, "The Oncoming Day"
I think of words to tell you
I find nothing fine enough to say
Nothing worth anything
Nothing worth nothing
Nothing left in this lump of grey
That even vaguely says I love you
In a way that pleases me
So I'll let the oncoming day say it for me
14. The Duke Spirit, "Neptune's Call"
Take this hand only once
Yeah I will try to be as pure as you
And make this stand only for one
Yeah I will try to be as pure as you
15. Mazzy Star, "Fade Into You"
I want to hold the hand inside you
I want to take a breath that's true
I look to you and I see nothing
I look to you to see the truth...
Fade into you
Strange you never knew
Fade into you
I think it's strange you never knew
16. Tom McRae, "Mermaid Blues"
Shape your mouth to fit these words of war
I see the arrows falling backwards, burning for a cause
I'll swim with you until my lungs give out
17. Bethany & Rufus, "No More Songs"
Hello, hello, hello
Is there anybody home?
I only called to say
I'm sorry
The drums are in the dawn
And all the voices gone
And it seems there are no more songs