Archive of Our Own ^beta

I saved every letter you wrote me... 

Montparnasse's apartments have little in them. Better to be able to pack and go at a moment's notice, always on the run from the law. On his (illegally gotten) writing-desk, he keeps three personal posessions. The first is a small knife, easy to conceal within a coat or cravat, which has served him well in the more... delicate cases. The second is a gold chain taken from a bourgeois- Tholomyes, his name was, or something like that- which has become a sort of twisted good-luck charm. The last thing is a stack of letters- written on the expensive paper that the rich schoolboys use- stuffed inside a mahogany lockbox.

From the moment I read them, I knew you were mine, I thought you were mine, you said you were mine...

He used to look at them often, smile his rare smile, hope he didn't turn pink in the face. The writer was a wealthy young boy, the kind of person Montparnasse and his gang of thieves generally stole from. In fact, that was how they met, late at night, him watering his garden and Montparnasse looking for something to plunder. It was the sort of connection that formed, inexplicibly, in an instant.

Do you know what Angelica said, when we saw your first letter arrive? She said, be careful with that one, love, he will do what it takes to survive... 

His name was Jean Prouvaire, but he called himself Jehan, stating that there were too many Jeans around anyways. It had become a bit of a laughing subject around the Patron-Minette, stone-cold Montparnasse and his petit fleur, and Clasequous and the others had warned him not to get too attached to him, that Romantics rarely turned out any good, and that it was better to rob them than court them, for his family had a pretty penny. Flighty student, from one lover to the next.

You and your words flooded my senses. Your sentances left me defenseless, you built me palaces out of paragraphs. You built cathedrals...

A poet. That is what Jehan was. A poet. Twisting and wrapping words like vines around his fingers, carefully weaving them in a net around his heart. Letters full of sultry love declarations, witty notes and satire, and haunting, lyrical ballads, all tied together with the brush of ink and the flourish of a pen. He had swept Montparnasse in with his trawl of phrases and prose. And even if he had wanted to escape, he would not have been able to. He had shone rosy light on his dreams, his fantasies of a beautiful world, where people like Montparnasse's- not friend really, more like assistant- the Thenardier girl, would not be left to starve, where everyone had a voice, and flowers grew freely in the streets of Paris.

And when you were mine, the world seemed to burn...

This small-statured boy, who was almost birdlike in his build, had flipped Montparnasse's world upside-down. He was no longer simply living day-to-day, aiming to survive, nothing more. He had something to live for, in the stolen moments. Like the silly girl's fixation on that dumb Pontmercy boy, only Jehan was intelligent, and attractive, and seemed to match Montparnasse toe-to-toe, line to line. 

You published the letters she wrote you, you told the whole world how you brought this girl into our bed...

He was an idealist, that was for sure. A member of some group who spent time in the backroom of an old cafe, writing and speaking and discussing politics and ethics and all sorts of things Montparnasse didn't have time to care about. Oh, if only Montparnasse was richer, or less wanted by the law, perhaps that could've been him. Or perhaps not. He was not, in general, a firebrand. More like a shadow in the night, that's there for a minute and then gone with the day.

In clearing your name, you have ruined our lives...

Perhaps that was his downfall. His writings, his words, his secrets that he couldn't keep secrets... his hopes for the future of others had taken his own future, and Montparnasse's too.

Do you know what Angelica said, when she read what you'd done? She said you've fallen for an Icarus, he's flown too close to the sun...

That horrible June day. That awful, horrible day where Montparnasse had walked out at night with the intention to do some pickpocketing, only to come across the ruins. And laying in a corner, his Jehan. Shot through the skull. He remembers shouting to the night, wondering with tears running down his face, who did this, who shot his little flower? And the next day, seeing in the papers, hearing through the grapevine, that there had been an insurgence, a group of rebels that had tried to start a revolution in the streets, of course, it had been quickly put down by the Guard, and there was no more threat to the public...

Jehan's name was only in a footnote.

You and your words obsessed with your legacy, your sentances border on senseless and you are paranoid in every paragraph, how they percieve you...

Long live the future. He had said. Vive l'avenir. Chanting a future that didn't ever come. He had wanted to make a difference, stir up fire in everyone the way he'd stirred up fire in Montparnasse, only in their heads and not their hearts. Why not live in the now? Why not run away with him, like he had asked? They could be alive and in love together. But no, he had followed the free-flying passion that led people to do things that destroy them, like moths to a flame. And he turned Montparnasse to ice.

You, you, you, you...

Jehan's name was the only one in his mind. He forgot everything and everyone, and his days became an endless litany of him, him, him, interspersed with why, why, why. Why him? Why not Thenardier, the old crook who'd never dealt an honest deal in his life (not like Montparnasse had much superiority there). Jehan was the better of the two, and there were times when Montparnasse doubted he deserved him. Why not some nameless, faceless person he'd seen in passing? Why had the world in all of its cruelty, taken the one person Montparnasse truly cared about?

I'm rereading the letters you wrote me, searching and scanning for answers in every line, for some kind of sign, of when you were mine...

In moments of weakness, Montparnasse sometimes finds himself plunging the key into the lockbox, poring over pages and pages of writing. He can feel Jehan in them, feel a brush of fingers against his neck, a warmth against his side, a flutter of hummingbird wings. As if Jehan was not a person, but a whirlwind of vivacious energy condensed into a human form, like he was the smell of springtime and new roses and melting snow, and the laughing breeze. He can close his eyes and imagine for a moment that he is there, sitting next to him, about to laugh and grab his hand and say something about this flower, or this long-dead author...

The world seemed to burn...

He opens his eyes and the dream fades. And he shoves the tear-stained letters back into the box, promising never to look at them again, wishing that the world had taken him instead.

I'm erasing myself from the narrative, let future historians wonder how Eliza reacted when you broke her heart...

There are moments of bitterness too. Where he's almost angry at his love, for breaking him into pieces. Foolish, kind, stubborn, hopeful Jehan, who had so much to live for and thrown it all away. He began targeting people he didn't use to, people in the ranks that could've killed his love. He doesn't just settle for robbing either, he shoves his dagger into their stomachs, watches the red cover the stones. He stays under the radar, the person that nobody could quite apprehend. His own little revolution.

You have torn it all apart and I'm watching it burn, watching it burn..

And he begins to take more risks, be more sloppy, live on the edge of a knife, because what more could they do to him, capture him? He'd die first. And if worst came to worst, at least he might see Jehan again...

The world has no right to my heart! The world has no place in our bed! They don't get to know what I said. I'm burning the memories, burning the letters that might have redeemed you...

One night, cold and tired and utterly defeated, he flings the silver key to the box into an open sewer grate, watches it sink into the murky water. But it's not enough. Not enough. He flings the wooden box itself into the fireplace, sees it all go up in smoke, cauterizing the wound in his heart, fighting pain with more pain, on the border of insanity. He sees Jehan in a feverish delirium, a half-dreamlike state, forming from the orange whisps of smoke, holding him close, whispering words he cannot understand, smiling his smile and laughing his laugh, blood dripping from his hair like rain, saying it's all right mon chat noir, ma chere, come closer, come closer. He is forced to back away only when the edge of his waistcoat catches on fire, and after shaking his head to clear it, having a cup of water, the illusion is gone.

You forfeit all rights to my heart! You forfeit the place in our bed! You'll sleep in your office instead, with only the memories of when you were mine! 

What has become of him? Is this, this monster, this shadow incarnate, is this what Jehan saw in him, a killer? Murderer? Outlaw? He rarely sleeps, he walks the streets alone at night, feeling like he is the ghost, and Jehan is the only one who can bring him back to life. Every stolen coin, every pilfered jewel, is nothing, nothing compared to Jehan. Nothing matters anymore, and Montparnasse is reduced to a shell of himself. Survivng, not truly living. Half hoping he'd just die, so he could see Jehan, talk to him outside of dreams and drunken stupors...

I hope that you burn.

He hopes, with every fiber of his body, every nerve in his burned-out mind, that wherever Jehan Prouvaire is now, it's better than the rotten world he left behind him.