3A/N: A short companion piece to 'The Road to Far Out East' using original characters (excluding Combeferre) from my Combeferre/Eponine three-shot 'The Guide and the Gamine'.
August 1914. Combeferre tries to say goodbye to his parents after being called up to fight on the Western Front and his mother remembers the gangly, bespectacled boy who climbed trees to catch moths.
Disclaimer: As I am not Male, French or living in C19th Paris- how can I possibly own Les Miserables? I am simply trying to convey my love for the beloved guide into something cohesive-please don't sue me!
I'll never leave you
August 1914
Don't go.
Please don't go.
We need you.
Your family needs you.
Please.
Think of your sisters! What will we tell them when Juliette comes home? And Anna… She's only three! How can you even think about doing this to her? How could we possibly explain…?
You'll get yourself killed. You know you will; you'll have your nose buried in a book and you won't see the shells and the wire and oh my boy…Don't go. Please don't go.
Your family needs you Henri; can't you see that?
He can't look them in the eye as he shoulders his pack and touches his cap to the shadow of a man whom he once had the honour of calling father. The man who stands before him on the top step of the farmhouse with its' tumbling border of wild, slashed pink roses sparked through with the softly sweet scent of honeysuckle looks little more than a ghost of a person now; his face ashen with worry intermingled with the dread of realisation; his wide, dark eyes which his son has inherited shielded behind the customary Combeferre wire framed spectacles now resembling little more than silent oceans of unquenchable grief as he nods in reply to the act of courtesy.
His uniform of thick, stoutly woven khaki feels oddly oppressive on his skin, tugging at his chest, pulling its' thick fingers deeper and deeper into the high, hard collar with every moment he stands there; the weight of the newly buffed boots feeling as if they have been plunged into buckets of wet lead and will make him topple over if he even thinks about moving just one inch.
Sudden, unwanted tears prick painfully at the corners of his eyelids as he finally manages to tear his gaze away from the silent spectre that was his father onto his mother; still with the flour splattered apron she had worn whilst bringing out the steaming dish of freshly baked apple crumble from the oven. The apple crumble that was his favourite and yet he had hardly been able to truly swallow a single mouthful; simply forcing each mouthful down a throat which refused to swallow, soft, sweet acidic goodness feeling like molten lava to his barren tongue.
His mother watches him now, her face wiped blank with grief, the only live thing seeming to be her eyes; wide and dark like his own and sparked through with flecks of fiery hazel; her hands twisted in the flour dusted linen of her apron. She knows how much it hurts him to go like this. To drop everything, everything that makes him who he is, his books, his collections of moths and rare books on hieroglyphics which he went all the way up to London to bargain for, his precious, wire framed, chrome bicycle now stored safely under a mountain of dust sheets in the tumbling down outhouse which plays house to a ragtag band of grumpy old chickens who, despite their spirits are the best layers for about ten miles, his attic bedroom with the sloping beams and rickety bookshelves which he constructed himself when he was twelve…
She can't bear it. When the news came through; news of war, news of the Kaiser's assignation, news that would sweep down into their sleepy little village like wildfire and pick off their men one by one, she hadn't really believed it. None of them had. Isabelle had been home for a fleeting, blissfully brief visit from her VAD training at the local hospital and had flown back there in a blur of blue skirts and white caps tumbling off her mane of chocolate coloured hair, the exact replica of her brother's as soon as the newsreader had uttered the fateful words…
Don't go.
Please don't go.
She wants to run at him, run at him and fold him into her arms like she had done so many times when he was a child and had fallen from a tree on one of his frequent expeditions into the knurled branches collecting moths or woken from one of the fever induced nightmares he had experienced when suffering from measles aged six and protect him from all the ills that she knows will befall him; but she can't bring herself to move. She can't bring herself because she also knows how much this means to him. Knows that he wants to fight for his beloved country, fight so that one day life and liberty can at last be restored, fight so that the sacrifice of so many gone before him can be remembered and yet…
And yet he looks so young, so painfully young standing straight to attention before her, his kit bag shouldered, his spectacles fastened with a length of string to stop them from slipping down his nose. She almost expects the oppressive khaki to fall away, the years to slip back and for her beloved only boy to be a boy of nine years old again- freckle faced and lone nosed with a row of wonky teeth that had been straightened before he went away to Cambridge and knobbly knees forever smudged with mud and grass stains from his frequent tumbles…
A moment passes. A moment that feels like a lifetime and yet is simply the length of a ragged, tear stained breath as she fights to keep herself composed. He needs her to be strong, she knows that and yet as his mouth opens; his teeth biting down on his lower lip in the age old way he has when playing for time and searching for the right word, she can feel the tears threatening to burst their boundaries.
'Mother…' It's a choked whisper, a desperate, anguished plea, a cry in the dark by a man who is little more than a child at heart as he trips towards her; almost falling into the warmth of her embrace as she pulls him close, hands reaching up almost automatically to card themselves gently through his tangled mop of chocolate coloured hair.
'Hush now', she whispers as the sobs come; thick, choking, silent sobs landing in a broken mess of unspoken pleas and bitter, desperate regrets against her bosom. 'Hush now Mon petit Papillon', the age old nickname that she thinks Juliette dreamt up for her best beloved older brother when she was five and Henri thirteen; a lanky lad with knobbly knees with the shadowed stains of grass and mud still visible on the platform just about to away to public school for the first time rising to her tongue as easily as breathing and she feels the boy in her arms let out a choking sob of relief as he buries his head further into the darkness of her collarbone.
'I'll never leave you,' he whispers finally, brokenly when speech comes in some coherent manner once more. She nods, drawing him up and out of the embrace; palms reaching to cup his salt stained cheekbones, gazing into the shining liqueur coloured eyes before her. What will those eyes; those gentle, tender eyes have seen when he comes home? If he comes home?
She doesn't know and doesn't want to think about it as she nods and presses a lingering kiss to his cheek. Somewhere in the sun splashed sky the faint melody of a skylark can be heard, soaring up and over the hedgerows and into the bright blue abyss.
She feels his hands take hers, the rough warn callouses bred from years of leaking ink pens and rough leather satchels silently roving over her own as he squeezes, the warmth of known skin giving her a small glimmer of comfort as the touch is broken.
'I'll never leave you'.
Months later, when the news finally, finally comes through with Isabelle in a blur of blue, white and steel chrome that her first child and only son has been wounded at the mud drenched blood bath that was the First Battle of the Somme and is recovering in a field hospital somewhere in Northern France plagued by gas blindness and shrapnel wounds, she will remember those words. She will remember those words. She will remember them and hold them, clutch them desperately to her heart as she clutches the tattered remains of his last letter, the paper frayed from much thumbing, the writing a barely legible black scrawl. She will remember the warm, salty wetness of his cheek beneath her touch, of the fire locked deep within his blind, brown orbs as he forced her that age old lopsided grin which, when he went away to school, she could hardly remember and now, will never forget.
'I'll never leave you Maman. Don't forget that. Don't ever forget that, either of you. Send my love to my sisters. Kisses, if they'll have them to Juliette and Anna and a hug to Isabelle. Tell her I'm sorry that I didn't get to say goodbye.
Your loving son,
Corporal Henri Combeferre.
Grenadier Guards.
Fin
A/N: Please feel free to read and review! I'm doing final semester 1st year exams at the moment (not this second but you know…) so any comments, questions, constructive criticisms etc will be gladly received and will keep me going through revision!
Much love and enjoy x