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1833:
In the shadows, Valjean sees a figure lurking, face peering out from behind a pillar. An old spark of curiosity lights in him, despite his weak condition. It’s a girl, he thinks, dressed in boys’ clothes. He doesn’t recognize her, though she looks at him as if he is someone she knows well.
He must be hallucinating. He’s old, and sick, and probably dying. Cosette sobs by his feet, but for once he is too tired to comfort her. Her new husband does it for him, rubbing her shoulders. She’s beautiful, his daughter, all grown up and married.
He realizes that the girl isn’t really watching him. She’s watching the couple, not quite jealously but… protectively. With a sort of sad fondness, borne through being unable to truly belong with them, but wanting to desperately. He knows the look from the mirror.
Her hair is long, and dark, and her frame is small and skinny. She looks like someone who he’d give alms to on the street.
“Monsieur?” Valjean realizes with a start that she’s referring to him. Her voice is low and ragged and full of smoke, yet with a richness underlying it. Cosette always bemoaned, as a girl, that she would like to be a singer, but didn’t have the voice for it. This girl, Valjean thinks, might’ve had a knack for it.
That doesn’t explain what she’s doing in the chapel, but Valjean barely wonders. He doesn’t own the chapel, anyhow, and why shouldn’t she seek shelter?
“Yes?” Valjean responds.
“Come with me,” she beckons.
Valjean, with effort, gets up and comes closer to her. Her hand is wounded- does she need a bandage?
It’s only when he sees another face, familiar with short golden hair, that he understands.
1834:
Nicholas is very cold. He huddles beneath an awning, but the snow keeps on blowing into his small frame. He’s made it through two winters since the boy who’d give him old coats stopped coming around, but this one is somehow more biting than the last two put together, especially after his coat was stolen. It doesn’t help that he hasn’t had a meal in days.
It’s so cold and the clothes on his back are wet and frozen and he has no shoes. The nighttime is the worst part, he knows, and he is just so, so tired. He knows if he falls asleep, he may not wake up. The cold takes you quick, they say, before you even know you’re gone.
He’s tired, though. Can’t feel cold when you’re asleep. Just a few minutes, he thinks. Just a few minutes…
Someone is stroking his back. He feels warmth all around him, like a blanket. He feels a weight against his side.
He peeks open his eyes. There’s a coat draped over his back, but there’s no snow and no awning. Just the sad face of the boy from two years ago.
“I’m so sorry,” the boy- no, man says, brows furrowed. “I should’ve left you more.”
What is he apologizing for? “S’okay, citizen”- that’s what the man likes to be called, he remembers.
“I should call Gavroche. You know Gavroche, right?” He’s about to say of course, everyone knows Gavroche, except that’s not right, because Gavroche is dead, dead in those uprisings back in the summer of 1832.
That’s when it hits him. That he is dead too. He had gone to sleep in the storm and not woken up. The coat man must also be dead. He sets this out in his mind with a kind of certainty that comes from having to rely on oneself for survival.
“I’m dead, aren’t I? You are too.”
The man nods. “Yes. I’m sorry.”
“Not cold here, though.”
“No, it isn’t.”
Nicholas thinks on that for a moment. “Hey, what’s your name?”
“Feuilly. It’s Feuilly.”
An odd name, but a name nonetheless. “I’m Nicholas.”
He smiles, sadly, but at least he’s smiling. “I know.”
1835:
Montparnasse is dying. He knows it, this time. He reflects on this for a moment, and finds it disappointing. He’d always been immortal, the devil haunting the streets of Paris, but all it took was a knife and a well-placed strike to undo that conjecture.
Really, he’d been expecting this. Ever since the summer of 1832, his priorities had shifted. No longer was he content with petty theft and armed robbery, he now had bigger and more prominent targets. Members of the National Guard had started to… disappear, and Montparnasse probably should’ve been a little more careful.
He’d crept up on one in an alleyway, but the man was bigger and stronger than he expected, and had a weapon on him as well. Steel had met the soft part of Montparnasse’s throat, and here he is, bleeding out onto the pavement.
Through a hazy film of pain, he sees movement in the corner of his eye. Pale skin, red hair- Jehan.
Shadows do not touch the figure, who seems as though illuminated by some strange light. Copper strands in a careful braid mingle with darker bloodstains behind his ear, and he’s dressed badly- of course he’s dressed badly.
“My love,” he says, bending down to stroke Montparnasse’s cheek. The visions of Montparnasse’s dreams have finally made their way into the waking world, just in time for him to leave it.
“Jehan,” he says, or tries to say. What comes out is a low gurgling noise, but Jehan only nods, as if in understanding. He moves one cool hand over the wound, as if trying to stem the blood, futile as that would be.
Montparnasse floats in that place between life and death as he smiles up at Jehan. The pain is an afterthought in his mind, and it’s only when Jehan thumbs a tear off the other man’s cheek that he realizes he has been crying.
1837:
Manon Combeferre coughs, sputtering. She reaches for her glass of water, but finds her hand falling to the wayside before it’s halfway there, too weak to complete the journey. Her throat is parched, but she is tired, so tired. Her whole chest aches.
She could call the doctor, perhaps, but he demands money, money Manon doesn’t have. All of her savings were spent on sending young Alexandre to the Polytechnic, and well-
No use dwelling on that, she thinks. She makes another attempt for the water glass, groping along the dresser, but her fingers shake so badly that she nearly knocks it over in the process.
“Maman, you need to drink,” Alexandre says from the doorway.
Manon has always thought herself a realist, and it’s a testament to how sick she truly is that for a moment, she doesn’t question the sight of her son standing before her, young as the day he died, worry etching his brow.
“Alexandre,” she croaks. Always the gentle one, her son. Always wanting to save lives, not end them.
“Maman, you should call for the doctor. Nevermind the cost.”
“Nonsense, Alexandre. It is too late. Why else would you be here?”
Her son’s eloquence gives no answer to that. Manon must be hallucinating, or dying, or already dead.
Over five years ago, her son had died during the riots following an old General’s funeral. He would never finish his schooling. Now, there are three horrible wounds in his chest as he stands by her bed, imploring.
Almost sheepishly, he looks at her. “I’m sorry, Maman.”
“For what?” Manon asks, followed by a fit of coughing.
“For leaving you alone,” Alexandre replies.
“None of that,” she says, straining to meet his gaze. “I am proud of you.” Her son, who fought for liberty. The grief never spilled over into bitterness, not once in the five hard years that followed.
Alexandre rests a hand on Manon’s shoulder. Snow falls outside.
Manon dies without regret.
1842:
In the darkness, Henri shifts, a moan escaping his lips before he can stifle it. There’s a pain in his abdomen that burns the strength from him, leaving him weak and shaking. He feels beads of sweat on his forehead- fever. Even crying hurts.
He should call out for Papa, for Maman, but he’s too exhausted to raise his voice above a whisper. Breathing is even harder.
“Henri?” A strange voice calls out to him.
“Who are you?” Henri gasps, far too lost in the sickness to be afraid.
The person steps closer and Henri notices wounds on him, staining his clothes with red droplets of blood. The man doesn’t seem hurt, though. He looks almost like Papa, if Papa were much younger and had a moustache and beard.
“I’m Jean Bahorel, your uncle.”
Uncle? Henri doesn’t have any uncles, not alive ones anyways. His Maman has no siblings and his Papa’s only brother died before he was born. “I don’t have uncles.”
“You do. I had to leave before you were born, though.”
It all makes sense to Henri then, somewhere in his fever-choked mind. He’s the man that died ten years ago, the year he was born. Henri scrunches up his face. He doesn’t want to die.
“I don’t want to die.” He doesn’t realize he’s said it aloud until the man lays a hand, surprisingly gentle, on his shoulder.
“Nobody does. I didn’t.”
How did his uncle die? Henri figures it must have something to do with the blood on his chest.
“C’mon, kid.” Henri doesn’t have the strength to get up, so he closes his eyes instead. Finally, the pain recedes and Henri can sleep.
1848:
The bullet hits Remi square in the chest, knocking him back from the barricade. In the chaos, nobody notices, spare the child who stands atop it, looking down.
The bullets don’t touch the child. Each one seems to miss him by a narrow berth. The child is the one whose face has haunted Remi for twelve long years.
“Well, officer,” the boy says, using the title for playful mockery rather than true respect. “Served your penance, haven’t you?”
Remi does not know what to say to that. It’s true that guilt has eaten at Remi for twelve years since the last time he truly saw the little boy, and it was because of him that he betrayed his post to join this uprising. He’d be an adult now, thinks Remi, probably have learned a trade.
The roar of the crowd, around him. The voice of the boy, rising above it, high and clear. The child taps his foot, impatient.
Remi finds something shift deep within himself, a change in paradigm, and he finally feels it, finally feels more than guilt and grief and a sense of duty long since misplaced. He believes in it, believes in this cause that the little boy and his student friends fought for, the one he fights for now, the one he turned traitor against his own comrades to carry through. He believes in it, he believes in it, he believes-
“What’s your name?” he asks, with what very well could be his dying breath.
“Gavroche,” the boy says, with pride. “Are you coming or not?”
Remi gets up, leaves everything behind, and follows him onwards.
1871:
Adele Pontmercy crouches behind the wall of paving-stones, reloads her musket, and fires. She’s not very ladylike, hair wild and face dusted with gunpowder. Some of the men told her she ought not to be fighting, but she fixed them with blue eyes, laughed, and told them if they truly believed in equality, they would leave her be. She believes in this just as much as they do.
It’s nearly exhilarating, Adele thinks. Passion and conviction sit heavy in the air, the adrenaline coursing through her veins.
The exhilaration lasts until she raises herself on a stone, craning to get a better shot, and-
Points of pain explode in her stomach, and she falls the wrong way and feels another, in her collar. The world spins, everything hurts, and she thinks of her Papa, her Maman, her sister and brothers. The thought almost hurts more than the wounds.
Somewhere in the back of her mind, she knows that there is no recovery from an injury like this. She has done all she will ever do.
Then, there is an apparition. He looks like an angel, except for his clothes, which are Parisian and nearly forty years out of date. He stands in the no-man’s-land, unperturbed by the rush of musket-fire. His hair is long and golden, like hers, but his eyes are dark rather than blue. There are eight wounds in his chest.
A memory tears loose from the recesses of her brain, stories told by her sad-eyed Papa of schoolboys on battlefields.
“Thank you, Adele,” he says- how does he know her name- and stretches out his hand. “You’ve done so well.” The man’s eyes are sad, but his posture is steady. He tilts his head.
“You were one of them,” she whispers, sliding back and forth between life and death. “Papa’s friends.” He nods.
“Yes.”
“I’m to come with you, then?” Adele was never one for religion, and this resembles no holy book she knows.
“Yes.”
With a final effort, Adele reaches out and takes his hand.
1871:
Musichetta is not afraid, is not sad, is not worried, is not anything at all. The sentence for this sort of treason is death, but that’s silly, really. Martyrdom draws people to a movement like moths to a flame. Anyways, she’s lived sixty-five long years. Death doesn’t scare her.
She does wonder what became of Adele, the little firecracker (so much like another, long ago). Had she been shot down in the fighting? Or captured and sentenced, like Musichetta? Or, God willing, escaped or hidden away? She hopes so. Oh, how she hopes so. Twenty-six, so young. Musichetta has lived a long life, but hers should just be beginning.
The next day, she stands and waits for her death. Seeing the others fall is more of a punishment, many of them so young, so full of life.
She hears bickering behind her.
“Oh, stop fussing, Joly, she can’t hear us yet.”
“I know, Lesgles, leave it be!”
“Boys,” Musichetta chokes out, a low throaty sound like a frog parched for water.
“‘Chetta?”
“You’re here.” There’s Joly, glasses all askew, and Bossuet, bald as ever, young and bright and- Musichetta laughs at her own pun- spirited. Whatever little fear death held over her leaves her body.
“We’re here, ‘Chetta. We’ve been waiting.” Bossuet smiles, a soft sad little thing, and Joly reaches up to pat her shoulder with a spectral hand.
The bullets hit her, but they are there, and that is what matters.
1885:
Marius awakens in the hall of a building. In front of him, he notes, is a door. The other realization he has, perhaps belatedly, is that his hands are no longer wrinkled and veined. He is young again, no longer seventy-four. He feels only twenty.
He can remember Cosette by his side, their children (minus one, for fourteen years there had been an empty chair at the table, its absence jarring even though most of the others had moved away) around him, and the feeling of letting go of a great burden that one was unaware of carrying.
He inspects the door, a little nervously. He supposes that behind it, he might find whatever sort of Supreme Being exists in the universe. Perhaps he will be judged- on what? He frets about this for only a brief moment. If the latest estimates of population are correct, there’s no way any being, supreme though they may be, would be able to put such an influx to trial without being caught in a hellish backlog of tedious paperwork.
He knocks first, but a moment later he steels himself and turns the knob, pushing open the door.
Inside, there is no deity or otherwise religious figure. Instead, there is a person who launches himself like a cannonball at Marius. He flinches before realizing that the man has captured him in a friendly embrace.
“C- Courfeyrac?”
“Marius!” Courfeyrac says, a veritable ball of excitement. “Marius, you’re late!” Marius takes in the sight of his grinning friend and their surroundings- a simple apartment room- and finds himself unexpectedly choked with tears. He jerks away awkwardly, crouching on the floor as puddles well in his eyes.
“Marius? Why do you weep?” Courfeyrac bends down as well, concerned. He places a bracing hand on Marius’s shoulder. “Oh, don’t cry, Marius!”
Marius only hiccups, seeing the room through blurry eyes. “I’m- I’m quite all right.”
Courfeyrac launches into a spiel, detailing the doings of Les Amis in his absence- “Enjolras and Grantaire get along surprisingly well now, and Jehan has found his street-thief lover,”- his thoughts on worldly events- “Oh, I could strangle Thiers, I really could, the bastard, though Enjolras may beat me to it,”- and his own delight at seeing Marius again. “You’re welcome, of course, to my spare mattress, at least until Cosette arrives!”
Marius interjects, a bit anxiously. “Is- my daughter. Is she here?”
Courfeyrac’s mouth widens in understanding. “Adele? Of course. I’ll take you to her in a moment, the others have been dying to see you as well.”
Marius, overwhelmed, simply melts into Courfeyrac’s arms.
1895:
Monique sees her family crowded by her bed. Her daughter and son, and their daughters and sons, plus a few others. She knows very well she’s dying- she’s very old and she’s been getting weaker by the day, and she’s proud of her life and the family she’s built for herself.
Then, the door opens and another figure sidles in. Monique must truly be dying if she’s hallucinating in such a fashion. Dark curls, stubble, a stained green waistcoat…
It’s Rene. It’s her brother.
Monique was only twelve when Rene died in the June revolts. They say he was drunk. Worse things, too, when they heard he died holding hands with another insurgent. But Monique remembers her brother quite clearly for having spent such a long time without him.
“Monique?” Rene says, tilting his head a little cheekily. “Have you missed me?”
“Ever so much,” Monique says, smiling.
Rene laughs, and it’s so free from the bitterness she remembers he carried with him. “You can meet my friends now. I always said you were too young, but now I think you’re old enough.”
“Bastard!” Monique says, or maybe she just thinks it, but he inclines his head either way.
“Whenever you’re ready, little sister.” And that’s what Monique is, she’s a little sister even though she’s spent so long as an only child. She never truly stopped being one, or thinking of herself as one. Her parents may have remembered Rene as troublesome, a drunk who couldn’t get a decent job, but to Monique he’s always been the one who picked her up and spinned her around and let her look at his paintings.
Monique dies smiling.