"And Hell followed with him." {Open}.
Let’s lay one thing down on the line; everyone dies. There’s no immortality in the real world, you can be taken off this earth as easily as you were brought into it. And you will be. Some people die of natural causes, fast asleep and some people fight for their lives, but come up short. Either way, everyone goes at some point. You can run from it, hide from it, but when it’s your time, there’s nothing you can do to avoid it. It’s inevitable and it’s terrifying. You can claim to welcome death, but there’s always going to be fear there, fear of the unknown.
Now what would it be like to sense death? Maybe not your own death, but the death of others? To see them go before they even take their last breath? Perhaps the idea excites you… Having control of someone’s fate. Or it could frighten you, after all, who would want to see all their friends die and then have to go face them the next day? How do you tell them what you know? How can you protect them from it? Can you protect them from it?
The answer to that? Well, it’s a double sided coin. You could probably keep them from going to the theater that day, lock them away from the rest of the world, but one day death will come knocking again, and this time he won’t be swayed. So you’re powerless, and all that’s left to do is wonder what you could have done to change it, when the truth is there’s nothing you could have done to stop it. Can you even imagine it? Images, visions of people’s last moments on earth? Would you even wish that upon your enemies?
Enjolras didn’t ask for it, he wouldn’t have accepted it if someone offered it to him, but for some reason he’d been cursed with the eyes of a prophet. It had been happening to him all day, throwing him into weird trances, forcing him to watch strange dreams unfold.
Or nightmares, if you will.
It must have been because he was the leader that he was seeing such things, it must have been because he’d organized the whole uprising himself. And now he’d have to see the impacts of it first hand, before they day had even come. Why was that? Was it someone’s desperate attempt to change his mind? Make him stop all this foolishness before someone really got hurt? Or was it just a product of a twisted mind that had been subjected to less that four hours of sleep for the last month and a half. He couldn’t really be sure, but they were hard to ignore.
He’d seen everything, each one of them fall… He’d wept for hours on end, huddled himself in a corner, banged his head against the wall and begged for mercy. But they didn’t stop and everyone was more gruesome then the next. The worst part of the whole thing? He hadn’t seen himself die yet. He was almost afraid he’d live and have to live with all of them gone. He’d never forgive himself, he’d probably through himself into some unmarked grave and wait for death to come. He couldn’t live, he wouldn’t live, it wouldn’t be fair.
Were these their true fates? Could he let them all die for some… Misguided vision of a brighter tomorrow? No, he wouldn’t. He’d call the damn thing off, he’d tell them there wasn’t a chance they’d win. No one was going to throw their lives away for this. But he’d known that death would come with this, he knew that it was par for the course… So could he let it happen? What difference did it make now that he knew?
Was he so driven that he’d lost all humanity? Every damned ounce of it? Thoughts crept into his head, unspeakable, cruel thoughts that he’d never be able to forget. The devil on his shoulder hung the red flag high and let it wave, whispering that they’d all had it coming, that this was part of revolution… That they’d be remembered as heroes. The angel hug their head and spoke calmly, praying that he’d reconsider the whole thing or even drop the idea all together.
So there he sat, head in hands, eyes burning from tears he’d not long ago shed, arguing with himself. It was a sad sight, truly, he didn’t look like a leader, he didn’t look like the man they’d all admired so. He looked like a lost child, a broken little boy… He hummed a little tune, one of revolution, but stopped every so often to suck in sharp breaths. How was he going to face them again?
