i. You remember the night you met Jeanne. You remember the rain drizzling cold on your dark hair. It‘s the cause of all your troubles.
ii. Jeanne is destined for misery, not divinity. None of the soldiers seem to realize this. Sometimes you can see a crown of gold on Jeanne’s brown cropped head and it looks far too heavy. Sometimes you try to imagine a Jeanne who has the chance to grow old. You can’t.
iii. The first time you kiss Jeanne it is messy and sloppy and wet. Your hands are grasping unpleasantly at her slender shoulders as if you’re trying to press your body into hers. You smell gunfire and you taste sweat and blood and water and freedom on your tongue. The rain slicks your hair wet to your face and all you can hear is your treacherous heart drumming Jeanne, Jeanne, Jeanne in morse .
iv. Revolutions never end. They barely stop to breathe. A revolution is always a war, and wars are brutal and sharp. The peace of a better dawn aches with the promise of no pain. This is Jeanne‘s preaching, her gospel and when you hear her holy words spiced with fire and the certainty of God you know where you belong. Venturing back outside into a world that’s cruel and vicious has never been an option.
v. Are you ashamed of us?, Jeanne asks one night. It’s too dark to see her. Silhouettes on dirty sheets, the smell of gunpowder and fire still clinging to your nose. You deny it vehemently. Are you ashamed of our cause? You deny again. Then why would you want to live in a world that is? You have no answer. Jeanne weighs your lives against the greater cause and against freedom and acceptance and equality among all people, and what are you supposed to say? There‘s always a cost to every revolution, even if it‘s a success. It always leads to death. You will lose Jeanne and that means more than any political movement ever could. But Jeanne will never understand, so you close your eyes, hides in the crook of Jeanne‘s collarbone, keep silent and count the drums of Jeanne‘s beating heart that introduce war.
vi. You sit at the foot of the barricade, soggy, tired, cold. It’s the first time you’ve been this close for days. We need to go. Jeanne’s voice is gentle. She mumbles into your hair. I know, you say but neither of you move. Jeanne’s arms tighten around you protectively, breath warm. You let yourself have this. Just this once. Just for a moment. Because soon you’ll have none left.
vii. You know you’re not going to win. What is a woman to a world not ready for the future? Not ready for a better dawn? You‘ll fall down, hard and fast, and when you fail you get a front-row seat. You watch the rain raging into a storm and you see the troops holding themselves ready for the next attack. You wonder if you‘ll stick around long enough to see Jeanne die. You hope you won’t.
viii. Fate, it seems, will always be against you.
ix. The sky opens up and pours its tears because the sky understands. It bawls and weeps for the sacrifices that will be made. You think it appropriate and you hold out your hands to wash them clean in the rain. Blood drips down your arms from where you pressed your palms on someone’s wound long enough until the doctor arrived. You understand that sometimes the earth desires more than rain to slake its thirst.
x. It‘s all a blur. There’s gunfire and chaos, the smell of burned flesh and the dirt of the streets, and you feel as if you’re standing in a slaughterhouse, unafraid. You can’t help but search for Jeanne, clinging to the only hope you have left that you‘ll see her once more; her eyes, her smile, her name. Jeanne‘s radiating a light so bright and pure like a prophet burning in the middle of a battlefield. It scares you. You see the bullet slicing right through her and feel the phantom pain with all your senses. Golden eyes lose their shine, lips lose their color, and a soft, sweet stinging pain wraps you as Jeanne touches the ground. Destiny accomplished. No glory, no future, no cheers and no light anymore. Nothing. A shrilling terrified sound fills your ears and you need a moment to accept that it is your own voice. You yell and howl until the desperation renews your strength but your sobs choke you. Your eyes wet red from unshed tears, your body trembles with a force you didn‘t know you still held. Nothing on your body is left uncorrupted. The canons blow the furniture, bullets fly rapid from both sides, screams, shouts, cries, moans. You barely feel the gunshots, or maybe it’s all you feel, but you only see Jeanne, stricken, still upon the floor, lifeless, silent.
As your body fails you and you fall down on the floor, next to Jeanne‘s body, your bloods mix. It is almost saintly.
xi. Silence and powder impregnate the air. All is blurry, all is grey. The sky is red like fire, red like a new dawn, red like the blood that the rain washes away from people who used to be full of hope and life. Jeanne lies down in the dirt besides their allies, blood piercing through her rags and gunpowder clinging on her face. You can still imagine the softness of her lips when you kiss her. Your arm hangs useless at your side, wrecked from bullets, blood dripping down and highlighting the pavement. Your heart carries a burden of a guilt you will never forgive.
xii. The rain stops.
- Every revolution has a price or: Jeanne D’Arc reimagined in the French Revolution | r.m - published in Tales
