Hi guys! Thank you so much for clicking on my fic – I'm really looking forward to sharing it with you all! Okay, first things first:

- The name of the fic (Who will seek me at nightfall?) is a quote from the wonderful and talented writer, Vera Brittain. It comes from her poem The Superfluous Woman, if any of you were wondering. I absolutely adore her poetry and thought this line from her poem suited the atmosphere I'm trying to create in this fic!

- I'm using a bit of creative licence in this fic to add an element of angst to the plot (mwahaha!). I know that Feuilly isn't actually Polish but for the purposes of the fic (and the historical elements) he is going to be Polish in this au.

- Lastly, if there are any mistakes or historical inaccuracies, they are entirely my own. Also, I (obviously) do not own Les Misérables. It will always belong to our great overlord, Victor Hugo. And without further ado, enjoy the fic, my fellow E/É lovers!

From the moment the door opened, Marius could tell two things: Enjolras was furious and terrified. He regarded Marius with a concoction of these emotions, more commonly known as annoyance.

"Well?" He finally enquired, his eyebrows nearly touching the waves of his fringe. "Are you just going to stand there collecting raindrops on your shoulders or what? I'm rather busy," he said, tossing his words at his friend's feet.

Marius straightened his jacket, shaking sprinkles of rain off his shoulders, and fixed his eyes on Enjolras. He could see a storm brewing in his eyes. Not wanting to get on the bad side of Enjolras (especially not when he was clearly vexed), Marius added a note of seriousness to his facial expression, hoping it was convincing enough.

"What is it, Enjolras?"

The young revolutionary's dauntless mask melted away, now matching his taut posture and said, "Marius, you have to help me." He put a hand on Marius's shoulder and guided him into the cottage. His eyes swept over the street before he squeezed the door back into its frame.

Marius shrugged off his jacket and hooked it on the stand slouching next to the door. Enjolras was already striding in the direction of the kitchen, not delaying any explanation, as usual. To Marius's surprise and confusion, a red-eyed, hunched-over Feuilly was propped up on a chair at the kitchen table with a cup of something half-warm wrapped between his hands.

Instinctively, Marius crossed the room and placed a hand on his friend's shoulder blade. He looked over to see Enjolras leaning over the opposite side of the circular table, his head hung. Probably sensing Marius's puzzled stare, Enjolras raised his head, hair cascading into his face. Exasperatedly batting it away, he fixed Marius with a shaky eye before uttering the most dangerous words imaginable:

"They're coming for him."

Then Marius understood. He could feel his spirit sinking into his shoes. He looked at Feuilly who had his head in his hands, his friend's tears steadily pooling on the kitchen table. "They" could only mean one thing. The Nazis. Marius's thoughts were consumed by his bitterness towards them. Les Amis had agreed that they were like predators, preying on Europe only to present the spoils to their leader: Hitler.

Marius had forgotten that the Germans were hunting Poles. And here, shivering underneath Marius's hand, a Polish student sat, weeping like a child that had lost a parent. He had lost far more than that. He had lost his country, his family, and his pride.

Marius knew that his next words would make or break the validity of his support for Feuilly in the coming months. Bracing himself by taking a deep breath, Marius used his exhale to say, "Well, they can't catch you if they can't find you. And if our childhood holds any accountability, you're bloody brilliant at hide and seek."

A couple hours later, the real reason why Marius had come started taking shape: the biweekly meeting of Les Amis.

Marius had shown up sooner to discuss the developments of the supreme French Resistance group, La Résistance, with Enjolras. Now that the meeting had commenced, Marius tried to deliver their message as briefly and thoroughly as he could to the four other people sitting around the kitchen table: Enjolras (a frown carved between his eyebrows), Combeferre (chewing on the end of his pencil), Feuilly (a mug of ration coffee delicately wrapped between his hands), and Jehan (mindlessly doodling on the paper in front of him with a blunt pencil). Even in the dimly lit kitchen, Marius could see that their eyes were serious and their faces were hard: France was on the line and none of these people dared risk losing it again.

"They don't want us to go looking for trouble. At least, we mustn't draw attention to ourselves. The only way to successfully pull off a blow to the Germans is by involving the masses. And the masses aren't ready," Marius said, trying to make his point as clear as possible without coming across as defeatist.

"What brought this on?" Combeferre asked.

"Couple weeks ago, fifteen September, two resistance fighters – no idea who, they didn't say – attacked German soldiers here, in Paris. They were punished, obviously. La Résistance don't know their sentence, though. But they're sure, and I rather agree with them, that the Germans will use those fighters as an example. A case in point of some sort. And when they do, La Résistance wants us to distribute flyers at the university. As many as we can, as quickly as we can so that we can –"

"Involve the masses," Enjolras concluded, nodding thoughtfully. His hands flew over the paper in front of him, making notes in that indistinguishable handwriting of his. He paused, scratched his eyebrow with the back of his pencil and continued scrawling on the page. Finally, the frantic rasping of pencil on paper stopped and Enjolras looked up at Marius. "Did they say anything about how we're supposed to print these flyers?"

Marius nodded eagerly, relieved that Enjolras was asking questions that prompted his memory. "They've offered to lend us a press from a man who used to own a telephone book factory. Two weeks, I believe, was their time constraint. We just have to get our own ink and paper. I have enough saved up to cover half the flyers they want us to print." Marius paused to take a gulp of coffee. The warm, energising liquid was all that could calm his frayed nerves. "However," Marius continued, wiping a trickle of coffee off his chin with his sleeve, "they said if this one is successful, they'll probably ask us to do it again and then they'll lend the press to us on a permanent basis and subsidise the costs of the ink and paper for us."

Enjolras raised his eyebrows in a surprised, yet grateful manner and the gesture was echoed across the table.

"Well," said Jehan, crumpling up a piece of paper that contained a caricature of Hitler with a large upper lip sporting his signature moustache and tossing it over his shoulder into the withering fire, "it's not a deal we'd get just anywhere, so I say we take it."

"Plus," piped up Feuilly, "if we can get into La Résistance's good books, they'll let us help when they arm themselves."

"Who thought you'd be the violent one?" Combeferre teased, giving him a knock on the back. "That's our marble friend over there's job." He pointed to Enjolras, who was scribbling away with his unruly hand, oblivious to his friend's comment on his fighting spirit. "But I think they'll want to keep that type of resistance to a minimum for now."

"But we all know that, whatever La Résistance says now, actual conflict will be unavoidable," Jehan said, his face falling at the reminder that fighting might be necessary.

"Regrettably so," Combeferre nodded, rubbing his eyes and taking a gulp of coffee.

"Well, I suppose it's not too different from actual conscription," Jehan said. "That's the one thing the Germans did that actually doesn't make me want to write an elegy for them."

All the heads around the table bobbed, except for Enjolras's who was still lost in thought scribbling his notes.

"I mean, if it weren't for the enlistment being voluntary, this one here would be in trouble," Marius said, giving Feuilly a sympathetic pat on the back.

Feuilly raised his eyebrows and nodded his head. "Well, yeah. The Germans are meticulous," he accentuated each syllable and made slicing gestures with his hands to show exactly how meticulous they were. "I mean they'll be pretty thorough with who they let on the battlefield. Don't want any rogues like us on there, eh?"

A few chuckles reverberated around the table, lightening the damp mood by a fraction.

"But, just to come back to the point," Combeferre said, eyeing Enjolras's note-making which was becoming slower, "they don't want us to take part in any armed resistance for the foreseeable future?"

Marius shook his head. "They didn't say anything about armed resistance now. We need the masses before we can do proper damage to Vichy France. They just want us to lie low for a while."

"Won't be for long," Enjolras muttered under his breath, finally finishing up his notes.

Combeferre frowned. "But it makes sense for us to lie low. Gain support from the masses. We all saw we can't do much without them except lose more people who are willing to fight for the cause."

Shaking his head, Enjolras looked up at the meagre assembly in front of him. "We must lie low. But there's a good reason for it. La Résistance is about challenging Vichy France, right?" Four heads hesitantly nodded. "And they've got an army. An armed infantry. The masses are people with little or no experience in combat. But we've got something they don't have. Something to fight for. If Vichy France dominates us, the Nazis also indirectly dominate them. They don't actually have anything to protect. Not their power nor their dignity."

"But they do have the artillery to blow us to bits," Feuilly put in, an epiphany slowly dawning on his face.

"Gee, you're a cheerful one tonight, aren't you?" Jehan mumbled.

Feuilly ignored him, his voice picking up speed as he realised what needed to be done. "The people don't have any ammunition. I don't know what sort of weapons La Résistance might have, but they'll be severely outnumbered. The only way we can get weapons is by stealing them from Vichy France themselves."

As the depth of Feuilly's conclusion sunk in around the table, Combeferre started collecting everyone's coffee mugs and took them to the basin to wash. Amidst the running tap water, Jehan spoke: "La Résistance don't need soldiers. They need criminals."

"Kamikaze ones at that," Marius murmured, his head in his hands.

Enjolras stood up, his stance demanding attention. His hair waved in all directions, his hands were in the air in gesture, and the deepening frown lines on his brow were hard to miss. But the passion in his eyes made him look collected, calm even. "France is our country. We cannot lose her. Not for anything. That means we become anything that she needs to heal her wounds, be it forger, thief or rebel. If you won't do that, get out of here, because I only deal with patriots." A thunderstorm was rumbling in Enjolras's eyes as they slid over the faces around the table. They all remained still as statues.

Combeferre stepped closer from the basin and put his hand on Enjolras's shoulder. "Don't worry, we're with you, chief."

Marius exhaled sharply and patted Feuilly on the shoulder. "Now that we've got that behind us, what's happening to our refugee over here?"

"We're going to hide his ugly face so the poor Germans don't have to see it," Jehan said teasingly.

Feuilly chuckled wryly and said, "I won't eat much and I can forge ration cards and coupons with all the extra time."

Combeferre turned around from drying off the last of the mugs. "Potential fugitives of ours shouldn't lie to us, Feuilly. You've never been one to skive off meals."

A laugh rippled through the room and to everyone's surprise, Enjolras was next to speak. "Feuilly, you're staying here whether you like it or not, because Combeferre and I are the only ones with a basement, so that's that. Plus, I can give you manual work to do while we do the fieldwork. So, yes, I'll be taking you up on your offer to forge coupons. God knows we need those by the rate the Germans are stealing our food."

Combeferre flopped into his chair again, the tea towel slung over his shoulder, and nudged a stack of paper towards Feuilly. "And you can go ahead and start on those coupons right now. I'm starving."