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The world turns to thunder and fog around them and Pietro’s quick whirlwind, Wanda’s scarlet, Enjolras’ fire only clear scant inches to breathe while their friends are coughing and choking around them.
“‘Ferre!” Enjolras calls, “Courfeyrac!”
There’s coughing, and choking, and they stumble towards the noise.
When they get there, when the smoke dissipates and they can breathe again, no one is there.
“Where’ve they gone?” Enjolras is turning, the hems of his red coat swirling wide, the small faded stitches of gold fading in the bleak light. “Where are they!”
There’s no one else around them. Wanda can sense minds in the buildings around them, hiding, but police, officers, soldiers…
The minds she sensed have gone now, enemies and friends both.
She rests a red-nailed hand on Enjolras’ sleeve. “They’re gone,” she says softly. “They’ve been taken from us.”
Pietro is swaying from foot to foot, rolling on the balls of his feet. “Then,” he says, and his voice is certain, as certain as he only usually is for Wanda, “we will get them back.”
“Where are they, then?” Enjolras is bent over a desk, one of Courfeyrac and Combeferre’s well-prepared maps spread out, pinned down at the corner by flat thumbtacks.
Under his thumbs the paper is singeing.
“Police cells?” he says and Wanda wonders if he realises how much he is talking to himself in his half-minded hope to hear his friends' voices and advice again.
Pietro is already running recon on every set of cells in town - both police and the hidden basements of gangs but she thinks they all have already guessed where they have gone.
They were targeted because they too were protesters, after all.
Enjolras is shaking as he looks up at the castle.
“You killed them,” he says.
“Every last one,” Wanda confirms. Pietro, at her side, is smiling viciously.
“And yet-” He shakes his head, starts swearing in French. If their friends were here he’d have a speech but it’s just them. No Jehan tucking flowers into Pietro’s curls, no Eponine to dance with, no Grantaire making surly sarcastic comments.
Just them. Apollo, and two unbelievers.
“It’s been a week,” he says, in Sokovian. “A week. Will they even be alive?”
“We will find out,” Pietro says, already straining to break through the castle’s defences.
“We will find out,” Wanda repeats. “And if they are dead, we will take our vengeance out in full. Every life, every brick, every stone. Until nothing of them stands.”
They can see Enjolras’ rage curling out of his fingertips in flames.
Enjolras is striding down a corridor, burning out the eyes of any HYDRA soldier to come near. When they get too close or try to ambush him around a corner he screams fire into their faces, melting flesh until the air smells of burning meat.
“This way,” Wanda says, pulling Pietro down another corridor, a deeper one. “Take the guards out for me.”
She could do it herself of course, people can make a reasonable attempt at dodging her brother’s speed but none can evade her scarlet, but she needs her focus for other things.
Under her fingers the first lock comes undone.
“Combeferre.”
He’s standing, wary, in the corner.
“We’re getting everyone out. Can you keep everyone together?”
Wariness flickers over his mind, worry and the soldiers said we were betrayed.
But, for his friends, he will stand firm. He always has.
He nods.
Click, click, click, is the sounds of the locks coming undone. She can see new colours shifting over their minds, not dull and mild like those of so many, not the gunmetal grey of the soldiers, but some new-polished brightness like Pietro’s, like Enjolras’.
When they see the flowers - still living, still bright - curling in Jehan’s hands, they realise their friends have gifts too, now.
Bahorel is rowdy, close crowded around Bossuet and Joly and Jehan, reaching around them like a protector. Betrayed sings through his mind, and suspicion, but he stays close to Combeferre.
“Is that everyone?” Pietro asks, as Wanda works on the lock holding Eponine’s cell. “Andrei, Andrej, ‘parnasse, Grantaire, Ep… is that everyone?”
Eponine’s cell door clicks open, her eyes already darting towards Grantaire. “Where’s Gav?”
She races ahead of them, long dark legs carrying her down rough-floored corridors. Bare feet should be slowing her but care for her brother overrides that and if anyone understands that, it is the twins.
“What happened?” Wanda asks, running behind her, and only Pietro’s hand at her elbow keeps her from stumbling.
“You betrayed us!” Ep snarls, fingers thrown out towards a guard who spasms in response. “You betrayed us and they did this to us and just go away!”
Betrayal coiling through all their minds makes far too much sense now.
“‘ponine,” Pietro says, following along behind. “You can believe that we’d hurt any of the Amis, if you want, but you know we’d not hurt you, or Jehan, or you brother.”
“Once,” Wanda reminds her, “We were children just like him, on the streets, fighting for ourselves. We remember.”
Eponine is still wary as she watches her - and it hurts , it hurts to see her look at her like she is a stranger but-
“They took Gav from us,” she says. “Took him below. Said they wanted to see if children adapted better - Andrej was too old but Gav, and this little blonde girl, they-”
Anger burns through Wanda like a wildfire.
“Gav!” Eponine yells, pulling the door open after zapping the pad.
“‘Ponine!” He bounces up to her launches himself into her arms, already being carried after only a nanosecond.
“The girl, the other one-”
“Lorna,” Gavroche says. “Her name is Lorna.” His voice is quiet, soft and almost uncertain. “They keep her drugged.”
“Where?” Pietro asks, already rocking on his heel. Gavroche points.
Enjolras stands in the courtyard burning any bullets which come too close into slag. This is reckless, he knows, but he is furious, anger like the very sun burning in his belly, and he knows, like this, his power bolting through him like hares through stubble-fires, he looks unspeakable, gold and copper and molten metal, like some statue come to life.
“Apollo,” says a voice, in what could only be Grantaire’s rasp.
And suddenly, his anger is burning white hot.
Cosette is curled against Marius, frowning like he’s seen Wanda do when the minds around her are too much. Beside her Marius has his chin tucked atop her hair, eyes half-closed. Jehan’s flowers are blooming and growing in his hands, Bahorel’s muscles seem even larger than they ever were and ever-small Andrej is making the cobbles under his feet slick with ice. Beside him, with every twitch and tremble of Andrei, pebbles roll this way and that.
“What did they do to you?”
The only reason he doesn’t die from the opportunistic hail of bullets at his back is the waved hand of a small green-haired girl.
“We need a way out.” That’s Musichetta, eyes already assessing the situation.
Beside her, Courfeyrac lets out a sigh, “Internet,” he breathes, like it’s some blessed thing.
“Are you streaming this?” Grantaire asks him and Courfeyrac’s eyes flicker open.
“I am now.”
Grantaire grins, and he tucks his little flask back into his pocket.
“Apollo?” he says. “Hit me with everything you've got.”
“What?”
Enjolras’ exclamation is matched by just about every one of the Amis.
“R, he could kill you, you don’t know-”
“Bahorel is right, R, you can’t just-”
“They betrayed us-”
“They came to get us out,” Grantaire says. His eyes are fixed on Enjolras’. “And I know how much energy I can handle. They never even scratched the surface.”
Grantaire can feel it, Enjolras’ power, warmth and fire, burning and cleansing, energy of pure light and heat wrapping around him.
Delving into him.
He curls a hand, sees his bones backlit by the warmth and heat. “Good,” he says to Enjolras. “Now give me more. I’m blowing this place to kingdom come.”
Enjolras pours his fire into Grantaire, so much heat it’s pouring off him, until there’s more fire in Grantaire than Enjolras could ever hold on his own.
He half thinks He only ever believed because of me- before Grantaire strides forwards.
“Right you fucks!” R calls, echoing off stone walls. “Wanna see what you’ve actually gone and done?”
The shockwave he looses reminds the twins of the bombs, and they’re behind him. He’s aimed it forwards - light, heat, kinetic energy, everything, aimed directly at the skulltopus fuckwads that imprisoned them and tortured them and trained them into weapons.
With a creaking groan the walls of the castle begin to crack.
And fall.
They stand, in the courtyard, as the castle turns to rubble around them.
Everyone is silent for about three seconds before Gavroche yells “FUCK YEAH!” at the top of his lungs.
Pietro, Marius and Jehan let out shaky, relieved laughs, Wanda yells, along with Bahorel and Feuilly. Combeferre and Courfeyrac lean against each other.
Enjolras simply stares at Grantaire.
“You’d think I’d grown a second head,” he mutters.
“You fought,” Enjolras says.
Grantaire shrugs, like it’s obvious. “For you,” he says. “For them. I don’t give a fuck about the cause but you… . I don’t have much to fight for. But I’ll fight for it when I have to.”
It is suddenly very hard for Enjolras to swallow.