another addition to the les mis/thg au bandwagon
Jean grows up in one of the nice parts of district 4, a practical gilded cage of wealth and extravegance. The peacekeepers smile at him because he's a Prouvaire and his parents managed to score a place in the elite by manufacturing weapons for the Capitol and throwing the most extravagent parties of the year. With that kind of money he'll never have to work a day in his life.
But everyday when he drives back school (he's not allowed to walk, his parents say it's dangerous, and maybe they're right, because nothing enrages the fishermen quite like a spoiled rich boy) he sees the only barely standing houses, the ruined buildings, the hunger, the way that they all walk with their shoulders hunched and their eyes hollow. He befriends one of the dock workers, Feuilly, Jehan thinks his name is, and as their friendship grows and he sees the side of the establishment he would rather have ignored. Enjolras, his childhood friend, whose family is even richer than his, is fascinated by the accounts Prouvaire gives him after swearing him to secrecy, and under the stars in hushed voices words like liberty and revolution are thrown around, though neither think it will ever amount to anything. But for once, they dare to dream, of a world without peacekeepers and barbed wire and hunger games.
Jean writes with a feverish pace, his usual flowery sonnets and soliloquoys turning in to something grittier and harsher, something real. His anger becomes paint on a canvas, his anguish the paintbrush. Sometimes he'll read them to Feuilly, when he's sure no-one is around. But word gets out anyway and he becomes a hero of the working class under the alias Jehan, his lines whispered just lowing enough so the supervisors and peacekeepers can't hear. His success buoys, and egged on by Enjolras a student union is formed with other like-minded students who h, he first in centuries, with meetings in a diferent members basement each week with the cover of being a newspaper club. For the first time, they dare to think their dreams will be more than that.
But all in vain. Because just a few months later at the reaping, Jehan's name is called, and no matter what slip Effie had taken out of the bowl it wouldn't have mattered. Enjolras knows this, and he screams as Jehan is taken away and instictively runs towards him, because where others see a martyr or a revolutionary he sees a little boy picking flowers who had a smile for everyone. He pushes his way through the crowd, running as fast as he can, but the peacekeeper's bullet is faster.
