i think we’ve all had a laugh about the idea of valjean bringing home the wrong barricade boy to cosette….but consider…..the following…………..
The man was awake. After a week of feverish mumblings, bloody coughing fits, and uncontrollable nightmares, the man was lucid. And he was angry.
“Where am I?” He demanded a second time, backed up in a corner so he could see the large room and all of its occupants.
Cosette took a deep breath, but she was unable to keep out the edge in her voice. “Again, you are in the house of Gillenormand–”
“Who?”
“Gillenormand. You don’t know him, but you knew his grandson, M…” Cosette’s breath caught in her throat. How could it be that this young man was here, was alive, when it could have so easily been a different student in his place? Cosette did not wish death on anyone, but she did wish life upon the boy she’d fallen in love with. “Marius Pontmercy.”
That gave the man pause. He stood in the corner on shaky legs and sweat tarnished clothes. His blue eyes flashed dangerously around as if everyone, Cosette, the doctor, the maids, everyone that was staring at him, was an enemy. “Pontmercy?”
The doctor was standing behind Cosette, a couple of yards away from the man. “Son, you really should be lying down. Your wounds are–”
“Is Pontmercy here? Are any of them?” The man was looking at Cosette as if she held the key to his understanding, to things suddenly not seeming so impossible anymore.
Cosette felt tears burning her throat. “No. I’m sorry.”
The man’s back hit the wall softly. His legs were no longer sufficient to support him. He voiced the truth that would poison the air around them both for years to come. “They’re all dead.”
Cosette nodded slowly.
Tears caused the mans voice to tighten. “But I’m not.”
Cosette spoke softly, “No. You were saved.”
The man’s face broke into a distressed expression. “Why?”
“Because…” Cosette couldn’t hold her tears back anymore, “Because only one of you could be saved and you were chosen.”
“Why?!”
“I don’t know! Just thank God you have your life!” As she spoke, her voice high and broken, the man slid down to the floor, his chest heaving with sorrow. “Thank God that you were saved from sharing the fate of your friends! They are dead but you were given a second chance!” Cosette fell to her knees, her dark skirts gathering around her like Death’s storm clouds.
The man grasped at his blond curls, suddenly feeling the burn of every bullet wound in his chest like he was receiving them again. “I don’t want to be without them.”
Cosette looked up at him, at Enjolras, and felt their unlikely connection. The one that only those who have lost, and been forced to carry on, can feel. “But here we are.”
Enjolras tries to keep the faith, he really does. For months and months and months he drowns himself in his work, anything to breathe life back into the fast-fading embers of revolution. But they are out, were choked of oxygen in perfect sync with the last man–boy, the last boy–who died that day.
Grantaire was right. He was always right, and Enjolras had ignored him like the naïve fool he was.
The work never takes off, bleeding out of him until there is nothing left to Enjolras but a shell. Everyone is afraid after the June Rebellion, no one believes in the cause anymore. No one believes in anything.
Enjolras has no one, has nothing. Cosette and her father are kind enough, but they are nothing but reminders of what he once had and his role in destroying it all. He hasn’t spoken with his family in years, and he hardly sees the point in re-establishing the contact now.
So he drowns himself in vices, anything to help him forget: whatever alcohol is on tap–he hates the flavor, hates the burn, but it’s a means to an end; the opium dens, littered with people who have long-since forgotten who they are; he picks fights he has no stakes in, just to feel passion about something once more.
And one night, he is invited into a familiar place with a familiar energy. Young faces crowd around a charismatic leader, bright as the sun. They hold onto and cherish his every word like a lifeline, like the truth they so desperately need it to be.
Enjolras sits in the back. He watches, and he drinks. Occasionally, much to the chagrin of the followers, he’ll speak up–never about his experiences directly, and often in long, ambling, sideways retorts, but the point is always eventually made, only to be brushed aside by the hubris of the leader and his confidence in the people.
But in his heart, Enjolras sees that spark alive again–not in the people, but in the leader–and Enjolras desperately clings to that ember and the belief that were this leader ever in his place, he would have kept going, would have kept the faith, and would make the change he preaches.
“Enjolras, you are incapable of believing, of thinking, of willing, of living, and of dying.”
He replies in a grave tone:–
“You will see.”
OH MY GOD who gave you the right
Published
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