“Did you do it? What did it cost?” - j.
For a moment, he couldn’t quite breathe. A parade of faces flashed in front of his eyes, first whole and happy, then bloody and lifeless and grotesque in death. His friends, his soldiers, even his father…
Bahorel, too still and too quiet in death. Prouvaire, captured and courageous until the end, and dead alone somewhere on the other side of this tiny street. Courfeyrac, extinguished so easily, as if his profound radiance was naught but a candle to be blown out. Joly, never again to extract enthusiastic philosophy and science from the mundane. Lesgles, no longer laughing, at last snared by the machinations of fate ; Feuilly, fingers stained not by paint but by blood ; Combeferre, silenced of eloquence and robbed of bright twinkling wit.
His father, condemned to death by his own hand and his own voice, killed in the darkness of some back street like a dog.
He saw his own hands pulling the trigger again and again and again, his knuckles white and his fingernails blacked with powder, the gun hot against his skin. He saw the artillery sergeant, the sniper, dozens of others slain by his bullet, by his sword –––– his own countrymen, albeit on the wrong side of history. He saw again the man called Le Cabuc, bleeding at his feet, dead by his own hands.
“ Everything that matters. ”
Against his will, his eyes drifted down towards his hands, now weaponless except for the broken stock of a rifle and what was left of their once-proud flag. So much blood spilled, enough to stain him red to the bone, and yet there was nothing to mark his skin except a few splatters of red and the blackened aftermath of burnt powder. But what did that matter ? Everything that he had cared for in this life were gone now. All that was left for him to do was die ; even his life felt an inconsequential price now, when he had already lost all that mattered, when he had paid ten times over with every friend he watched die before him.
The sound of footsteps at last chased him up onto the second floor. Distantly, as if through a haze, Enjolras saw a small platoon of soldiers mount the final few steps and converge into some vague formation before him. The metallic clinking of guns clicking into place drifted up to his ears, deadened as if through a fog. A dozen muzzles, pointed unerringly at his chest, and Enjolras took a final deep breath. His fingers clenched tight around the tattered flag, raising it high above his head in a final gesture of rebellion. The flag, a weapon in his hand, the city at his back, and his father’s ghost in the corner of his eyes ; that was more than he had right to ask for in this last moment. The weapons rang out –––– the world went white with the spark of gunpowder –––– for a moment, all was pain, deep and piercing and unrelenting –––– everything went dark, starting at the edges and rapidly swallowing up the rest.
Forgive me, Papa. I tried. I did.