"I thought we'd have more time." Roselyn leaned her cheek against his back. "If he hadn't seen you, we could have put it off." He could feel how rigid she was against his body. The pressure of her fear was not comforting.

"Put what off?" He broke the grip of her arms and turned to look down at her, but he was not prepared for the force of her anxiety. He found he could say no more.

Taking his arm, she led him toward the bed. "Get in," she ordered, then looked toward the locked door. Her voice grew distant, as if she were thinking out loud. "Standing up was too much of a strain for you, and you've collapsed."

He didn't move and resisted her insistent shove when she noticed that he hadn't obeyed her. "What's going on?" he asked.

"That officer is here because of you."

He nodded. "And I'm here because of father."

"He bargained for you."

Shocked, he only stared at her until she was forced to break the contact by lowering her head briefly. "Please, Michel, get into bed and be sick," she said without looking back up at him.

He allowed her to sit him down, then rested back against the pillows. Roselyn tucked the blankets close around him, up to his waist. As she appraised her work, she said, "Maybe he won't ask you to sign it yet."

"A parole agreement?" He could not make himself sound as angry as he wished. He was too frightened. Yet he also knew he shouldn't blame his sister for the trap where he now found himself. In the distance, he could already hear raised voices, his father's dominant. After taking a deep breath with his eyes closed, he said, "If I must, I must." He pointed toward the stand by the hall door. "Hand me that pitcher."

Instead of doing exactly as he asked, Roselyn dipped her fingers into the water and splashed him a little. She paused, her expression questioning. He didn't think it was convincing enough, so he snatched at the pitcher.

When she didn't release it, he tried harder to pull it from her hands. Most of the water splattered across his face and neck, not as smoothly as he planned. He sneezed instinctively and began coughing. Roselyn nearly dropped the empty pitcher. "Good enough," he wheezed between coughs.

The voices outside had stopped for a moment. Then M. Enjolras was heard saying, "Do you hear that? My son is still very sick. I can't allow you to--"

"He was well enough to get to the window. I know my duty," answered an unfamiliar reedy voice. Then a sharp knock sounded on the door. "Open up. I must see Michel Enjolras immediately."

Enjolras waved Roselyn toward the door as he fought to still the coughs. She set the pitcher back on its stand, and searched through her key ring. "Just a moment, monsieur," she called.

He dabbed excess moisture from his face with the edge of the sheet and rearranged the quilt to hide the fresh water stain as his sister put the key into the lock. A few deep breaths helped him calm himself. He recalled the self discipline that had kept him focused all those years. By the time the officer, shorter than he'd seemed in the courtyard, stepped into the room, Enjolras had as much control of himself as possible under the circumstances. He noticed gratefully that Roselyn seemed determined to keep the man from approaching too closely.

"Step aside, mademoiselle," the man said.

"Not unless you can assure me that you will respect my brother's delicate condition." She looked not at the officer, but at her father still in the doorway. M. Enjolras seemed puffed with anger.

"I have only to conclude my business, and then I'll be gone." The man's tone was deferential, but a certain tightness around his mouth betrayed his continued irritation as he shoved her aside. The restraining hand M. Enjolras hurried forward to lay on his daughter's shoulder seemed to be all that prevented her from slapping the intruder.

"Are you Michel Victor Enjolras?" he asked Enjolras.

Enjolras nodded carefully, then said very quietly, "I am."

"You were arrested June sixth in Paris on various charges, including treason, related to the armed--"

"I have never been told the exact charges," he said even more quietly. He wasn't sure if interrupting the man was the best idea, but he could think of no other way to take charge of the conversation without seeming to do so.

Certainly the man's reaction to being cut off did nothing to change Enjolras' first opinion of him. Not one line of the man's carefully ordered expression altered, but his face darkened. Enjolras barely heard his low, "That's no excuse."

"This is what I was telling you, Marcoux," M. Enjolras said. "He has not been awake long enough for any serious discussion."

Enjolras refused to acknowledge the icy glare his father directed at him.

"I doubt, even now," M. Enjolras continued, "he's strong enough for this interview."

Marcoux looked between father and son as if trying to see through their charade. Finally, he nodded. He reached one thin hand into an inner pocket of his coat, and withdrew a thick sheaf of papers. As he unfolded it, he said in a patronizing tone, "I am  the officer in charge of parolees in this district." He stepped nearer to Enjolras' bed.

With the aim of preventing Marcoux from coming closer, Enjolras coughed deliberately and wiped some of the beaded water from his cheek. He dried his fingers on the rough surface of the quilt. Marcoux swallowed and halted still a foot or two from the bed. He cleared his throat. "To speed this interview, I'll summarize the salient points of the charges."

For several moments no one spoke at all, then Marcoux began. Treason was the first and most important charge. Even in summary, the specifics sounded grim. Through the stifling quiet, Enjolras heard Roselyn gasp. So she hadn't known all of it either. He refused to look at Roselyn or his father, keeping his eyes focused on a spot in the middle of Marcoux's forehead as he strained for every sound within reach -- Roselyn's attempts to hide her reactions, his father's explosive sighs, and Marcoux's dry, nasal voice.

With every officer's death being counted as murder, Enjolras didn't understand how his father could possibly have gotten him out of prison. His had been a lesser barricade he knew, but as its sole survivor and leader, he carried the whole responsibility for its actions on his shoulders. He knew he'd get a full explanation of his father's bargain soon enough, but he suspected that he wouldn't approve of it.

"Only 14 charges of murder?" said a familiar voice. "I thought there were many more than that?" Grantaire, pretending to ignore him, looked over Marcoux's shoulder at the list.

His surprise must have shown, because Roselyn asked, "Michel, what's wrong?" She added, "Pardon me, monsieur," to Marcoux when he stuttered to a halt and glared at her. M. Enjolras took his chance to yank at the man's elbow and whisper something to him. Marcoux turned his annoyance on him instead, and M. Enjolras pulled him into the corner, putting his large frame between the officer and his children.

Before Enjolras could answer, Grantaire approached Roselyn, who obviously couldn't see him. "Your sister?" He circled her, scrutinizing her from the toes of her shoes to the crown of her dark hair. "How lovely. Too bad I can't truly enjoy the experience." He blew a kiss at her, and then turned grinning to face the invalid.

"Can you hear me?" Roselyn asked. She stepped through Grantaire and reached out to feel her brother's forehead. Despite the dousing they'd both given him just prior to Marcoux's arrival, most of the moisture that clung to her hand was fresh sweat. He brushed her away impatiently, still intent on Grantaire.

"Please," he said, "leave me alone." He hoped that Grantaire would listen, and that Roselyn would think he was speaking to her.

"I will not," she and the ghost said at the same moment. Enjolras looked from one to the other and back.

"Not now?" The quaver he could not keep out his voice turned the statement into a plea.

Grantaire smiled and backed up several steps. "If you didn't need me I wouldn't be here." As he neared the window, the light glimmering through and around the ghost flared momentarily. Enjolras blinked. When he opened his eyes Roselyn was leaning inches from his face, but she didn't make the mistake of touching him again.

"You can't do this," she whispered. "I don't know what's wrong, but this must stop."

"I can't do anything about it," Enjolras said as he tried to peer over her shoulder.

"But I can." Roselyn straightened up, then swept around the bed toward the two men arguing in the corner.

As her voice joined the melee, Enjolras leaned toward his ghostly tormentor. "By all that we held dear --"

"You are all that I hold dear." All trace of humor was gone from the ghost's voice.

In his effort to keep it quiet, Enjolras' voice cracked, "Then by the Cause even you gave your life to in the end, go now." He took as deep a calming breath as he dared. "I promise you that later I am yours."

A hint of genuine pleasure brightened the ghost's ugly face, then he bowed and faded from sight. Enjolras watched the empty spot a moment longer to be sure that he would remain gone, then slowly realized that the voices had stopped. He was surrounded by silence for less than a breath until Marcoux loudly clapped his hands together.

The crack startled him, but the face he turned to Marcoux revealed as little as possible.

"I don't care if you're mad -- you can converse with demons all you want in prison." Marcoux absently crossed himself as he advanced on the bed, the sheath of papers once again in his other hand. "Either this is signed here and now --" He dropped them into Enjolras' lap. "Or I take you back to prison."

Enjolras looked down at the top sheet, only recognizing his name. He could not force his eyes to focus to read anything else.

"Michel, please sign it," Roselyn begged him, stepping up to his side from the left.

"If you do as he wants, he'll leave us in peace," his father added from the right.

Marcoux held a pen between Enjolras' nose and the papers. "I'm waiting."

Surrounded as he was, Enjolras felt he had no choice, and took the pen. When Marcoux indicated an empty space just above M. Enjolras' carefully precise signature, Enjolras wrote his name, unfamiliarly burdened by his given names. He repeated the process twice more.

The man of the house did not wait for his son's signatures to dry. "You will go now," he told Marcoux and held open the hallway door until the man scurried out through it. He followed him, and closed the door behind himself.

Without a word, Roselyn examined the region near the window. He let her, hoping that when she found nothing, she'd leave. "Who?" she asked.

"No one important," he said.

She crossed herself as Marcoux had. "Not a demon?"

Enjolras shook his head, "Just a self-appointed guardian angel."

"But you promised yourself."

How he wished that his sister didn't have such a strong interest in the mystical. He kept his voice flat. "I owe him at least that much."

She nodded. "You'll need more water," she said, then left, taking the empty pitcher with her.
When he was certain she was gone, Enjolras peeled back the soaked sheets and slipped out of the bed to the floor. He no longer had the strength to stand. The carpet was rough against his knees and palms as he crawled across it. As soon as he felt the sun-warmed boards beneath him, he sat back on his heels and waited for Grantaire's inevitable return.

Enjolras didn't notice when he fell asleep. However, he didn't fight against the mist of dreaming, and as it cleared, he recognized the Blvd. Saint-Michel, oddly deserted despite the strong sunshine. Walking along with the speed of remembered vitality, he soon approached the familiar façade of the Café Musain. He hesitated before entering, dreading what he might find inside. But his promise to Grantaire, however grudgingly he had given it, drove him into the building.

The main room seemed unchanged from his memory of it. None of the dozen or so people occupying it noticed his entrance, but he had expected that. He had no wish to be noticed. On the upper floor, the door to the back room at the end of the corridor proved more effective a barrier than the street door had. He stood outside until that dreaded voice emerged, calling him in.

"Don't stand out there forever! I may be dead, but I have better things to do than wait for you to grow old staring at the door."

Enjolras pushed open the door and stepped into the room. Except for Grantaire, the room was deserted. He could see the ghost's face by the light from the window. The map of France that hung on the far wall mocked him with its faded colors. He walked across to it and traced the road from Paris to his home in the southwest, then laid his palm flat against the heart of the country. "I'm sorry, my Patria. I was not strong enough for you."

"Quit feeling sorry for yourself," Grantaire said. "Instead sit down and have a drink."

Enjolras only looked at him. He did not even remove his hand from the cool, flat surface of the map. "I said I would come. Why did you want me?"

"To talk. Isn't that always what we do here?" Grantaire poured colorless wine into both the short glasses that rested on the small table before him. His back was to the wall in the corner to the left of the inner door. "Or are you afraid to talk to a dead man?"

"I'm not afraid," Enjolras lied. He turned slowly and leaned his shoulders back against the map. Unlike his first encounter with Grantaire, some of the pain of his real body penetrated his dreams. Now that he was standing still, the ache was harder to ignore. He folded his arms, allowing the gesture to relieve some of the tension in his back. "What harm can you do me? Or what good, for that matter?"

"A great deal of both," Grantaire conceded. "Now please sit down before I have to demonstrate." He gestured emphatically to the chair opposite him at the table.

Enjolras did as he was told, with all the exaggerated care of a guilty school boy called before the headmaster. Once seated, he stared down into the clear wine and watched the cool moist beads form on the outside of the glass. "What do you want?"

"Why should I want anything?" Grantaire asked. "I'm dead. I have no needs." Glass chimed against glass as the ghost refreshed his drink.

"Then you don't want to rip out my heart."

"Oh, that. I was angry. That's what's been bothering you?" Grantaire pushed his friend's glass closer. "Have some. It's only wine."

His first taste was cool and sweet, too sweet, almost like unfermented white grape juice instead of wine. The second was more tart, and he felt the warmth of the alcohol spread into his veins. Without speaking, he drained the glass. Grantaire refilled it as silently. A second glass was needed before he could look directly at the ghost.

Words did not come as easily as he'd hoped. "I can't change it," he said slowly. "Nor would I if I could. I can only hope that, in the end, it was not a waste."

"I'm not asking for an apology."

"Then what do you want?"

"It's not what I want that is important."

This was getting nowhere. Enjolras was tired of asking Grantaire questions and not getting any answers. He looked away, hoping his impatience didn't show in his expression.

Grantaire sighed and leaned back in his chair. He swirled the last of the wine in his glass before swallowing it. As he poured more, he said, "You believed with all your heart that we did the right thing. I could see that, even when I tried to divert you from it. Do you still believe it was right?"

Instead of answering, Enjolras leaned forward with his elbows resting on the table, his chin on his clasped hands. After a few minutes, he said, "I do. You knew that before you asked."

"I didn't ask if you still believed in your Cause? Even I have no dispute with wanting to help other people. I asked if you still thought that fighting in the streets against impossible odds was the right response to Lamarque's death."

Impossible odds? He hadn't seen it that way. He'd thought that all it would take to create a public uprising was for a handful of brave souls, like he and his friends, to take the first step. It was only supposed to be the beginning. Not the end. He knew he hadn't been alone in that belief. "I had no way of knowing --"

"I knew!" Grantaire stood abruptly and pointed across the table, his extended finger only an inch from Enjolras' nose. "I tried to show you, but you wouldn't see. You were blind!"

Enjolras scraped his chair back in alarm and pushed Grantaire's hand aside. "I thought you were afraid."

"I was. For you." Grantaire reached for his glass again. "I was there in 1830. I saw how it broke your heart to see Louis Philippe elevated to the throne. I couldn't bear to see that happen again, or worse." The look he fastened on his friend pleaded for understanding.

"What could be worse?" He sipped from his third glass of wine, and allowed his pain to roughen his voice.

"What happened," Grantaire said and sat back down. "Do you know what you need?" he asked.

Enjolras shook his head.

"You need a woman." He raised one hand against the inevitable denial. "No, no." The ghost indulged in one brief chuckle before declaring, "When it comes to that, you're a saint. I meant you need a woman's opinion. They see life differently than men do."

"I've done so. I asked my sister, and she thinks I was saved by an angel."

"What does she think you were saved to do?" Grantaire leaned across the table and looked into his friend's eyes.

"Succeed."

That simple answer seemed to irritate Grantaire. "So as soon as the doctor gives you leave, you're going right back to Paris and starting over again?"

Enjolras nodded. "Anything less would be a betrayal."

"And when that fails? Do you expect to survive a second - no! A third time?"

"It must succeed," Enjolras insisted, "or I must give my life to it." Why couldn't Grantaire understand that his survival was an abomination?

"Then you may as well wake yourself up and jump out your bedroom window. Or perhaps the lovely Roselyn still has that laudanum. Less painful."

"I don't want to die with France's future so uncertain!"

"Then think of the alternatives," said a new voice from behind Enjolras. He'd been sitting with his back to the door, but he hadn't heard anyone come in.

"No one really wants to die," Feuilly said as he sat between Enjolras and Grantaire, "but it's a reasonable choice when there's no alternative." He held another glass and wine bottle, this one red.

The appearance of the second ghost shredded the reality of the dream causing Enjolras to lose all sense of the edges of the room. An inner radiance surrounded Feuilly brilliantly, making the sunlight from the window unnecessary.

Seeming to ignore Enjolras' open stare, Feuilly splashed wine into the empty glasses and said, "Death is no hardship, when the sacrifice was for the Republic, a life given gladly and freely." He flourished his own glass and took a sip.

Grantaire emptied his glass and reached for the bottle, only to be restrained by Feuilly's slender hand covering its mouth. "Not so fast, my friend. Wait for us." Grantaire shrugged and sat back as if it didn't matter to him.

When Feuilly reached the last swallow in his glass, he set it down and looked sideways at Enjolras. "Aren't you going to drink that, Enjolras?" he asked and pointed to the untouched wine, glittering like a molten ruby, in Enjolras' glass.

The effect of his previous two, or was it three, glasses made it seem perfectly reasonable for Enjolras to answer, "It looks too much like blood."

"I can assure you," Grantaire said, "it doesn't taste like it." Thwarted in his attempt to get more of the red wine, he'd resorted to drinking directly from the white bottle.

"Does the sight of blood bother you now?" Feuilly asked gently.

Enjolras started to shake his head, then he remembered the blood that dripped from the fingers of the dead girl as they'd pulled her from Marius' grasp and how his own blood had dried on the flag. Blood had flowed abundantly that day, and it hadn't slaked Patria's thirst. He swallowed back the bile that surged up into his throat before he could speak. "It's not the sight of it, so much as the idea."

"You're no killer, Enjolras," Feuilly said, "That's not your nature."

"Ask the people I've killed whether or not I'm a killer!" He spoke more vehemently than he meant. "Even Grantaire called me a butcher."

"I told you I was angry," Grantaire mumbled as he shook his empty bottle.

Enjolras picked up his glass. Instead of the warm salt and iron he almost expected, the wine tasted sweetly heavy, like fine port. As he drained the glass, he felt slightly dizzy.

After soberly refilling all three glasses, Feuilly tilted his to each friend in turn. "The future can be shaped by the man who carries the honor of his friends closest to his heart."

"That's no toast," Grantaire complained. "Can't you think of anything better?"

"It's the sort of toast a man could make to himself when he's drinking alone."

"Am I alone?" Enjolras suddenly asked.

"Does it matter? What better do you have to do?" asked Grantaire.

He shrugged. "Plan. Try again. Make it work." His answer didn't sound convincing, even to himself.

"Does it have to come down to fighting in the streets?"

"It doesn't have to," Enjolras conceded, "but I can't see what else to do."

"Find another way," said Grantaire.

Feuilly nodded his agreement but did not say anything. The silence filled the room, and when Enjolras looked around Grantaire was gone. His remaining friend rested his chin on one delicate hand as he watched him.

"Did you ever ask yourself why everyone fought?" Feuilly asked.

"I thought that each of us had glimpsed, to a greater or lesser extent, the glory of the future we hoped to create." He had seen it in their eyes from time to time, but now that Feuilly asked, he wondered if it was only his own reflection he had seen.

"That's true for most. But what about Grantaire? He had trouble keeping sight of reality, much less stealing glimpses of the future."

Just the question Enjolras did not want. "I suppose he saw it in me. I lived in my dreams, perhaps too much."

"That's not my place to judge, but I can see you find it far too easy to judge yourself." Without Grantaire there, Feuilly seemed impossibly more vivid. He leaned closer to Enjolras and put an arm around his shoulder.

As with Grantaire earlier, Enjolras could not make himself shrug off the ghostly touch. He felt comforted. "What else could it have been?"

"Friendship, admiration... some kind of love that only Grantaire could understand. Does it really matter?"

"You're the one who asked. Remember?"

"So I did. Now why was that?" Feuilly removed his arm from Enjolras' shoulders and leaned back in his chair, one thin finger resting against his chin. He smiled faintly.

"Even he was there by choice, just for different reasons than many--most of us."

"That should tell you something."

"You can't convince me it wasn't my fault that you--"

"Died? You can say the word."

"When I saw we couldn't win, I intended for us all to die," Enjolras growled. He looked down at his own body, hoping to indicate the one that slept in the world outside the dream. "I never meant this to happen."

"But it has, and now you must live with it. Don't throw your second chance away. Find something better." Feuilly looked over his shoulder at the outer door, as if he were listening to a voice only he could hear. He turned back to Enjolras. "I have to go. You won't forget?"

"Never," he promised, then watched Feuilly walk through the door. He didn't hear any footsteps on the stairs outside.

Though the room had regrown to its real proportions, it had also gotten unbearably hot. Several glasses of the dream wine made Enjolras sleepy, so instead of trying to shake himself awake, he fell asleep at the table with his head cradled on his arms.

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