"Stand, citizens!" He rallies them with a wave of his musket, barely visible through the smoke of death surrounding them all. And they do stand by him, they stand by him for as long as he could ask and longer, defending the barricade to their last breath. And he watches them fall.
He himself fights tirelessly, nearly succeeding in not cringing when each swing of his sword meets with raw, delicate flesh, eliciting a cry of agony from the unfortunate victim. He did not cry out as each shot he fired brought a blue and red uniform crumpling to the ground, resisting the urge to utter the cries that they never could.
Finally, his ten men had become two and Courfeyrac, with blood running from his hands and legs and ears and places he couldn't even tell, finds himself utterly unable to stand any longer. His head is spinning as he collapses, weak and disoriented from blood loss and more death and violence than he's seen in his entire life. Still, he tries to stand, desperate visions of liberty that had once seemed so near, friends that were no more, family that may never know of his fate running through his mind.
He watches helplessly as the one remaining man who fought alongside him is pierced by a bayonet through his neck.
In an effort to avoid looking at the grizzly sight, he turns his stiff neck as best as he can. He only succeeds in moving mere inches, but it is enough for him to no longer have to watch the gruesome death of the man who had fought so valiantly for a new France which he would never live to see. However, upon turning he still finds no respite.
A national guard soldier lays next to him, eyes wide in pain and a large gash in the side of his neck causing him to gurgle on his own blood. Courfeyrac can see the man's face, can count the freckles across his cheeks, and he feels a pang of empathy. He is wounded and dying, and looking at him Courfeyrac can see that the young man is surely no older than he, maybe even younger. And he is left to wonder; did he do this? Was it his own sword which felled the young soldier?
He wants to say something; he would give anything to be able to comfort the young man who could easily have been a friend. He reminded him a bit of Marius, almost- the same youth, the same dark eyes and dark curls, and the realization cuts him worse than any bayonet could be capable; his young friend's heart was at this very moment likely still, never to beat again. This thought only makes him all the more desperate to comfort the soldier, do what he was unable to do- what he should have done- for Marius. Yet it seems as if his mouth is melded shut, and as blood slowly seeps out of the wounds all over his body, he feels himself slipping away. His eyelids begin to rapidly grow heavy, so heavy he finds that he can no longer keep them open, and his eyes slowly begin to close….
And suddenly, everything explodes.
For one terrible moment, Courfeyrac is wide awake as he is flung through the air, the blast of the cannon hitting the barricade hard. He is sent flying, slamming back into the wall of the Corinthe before falling to the ground.
The deathblow has come, he realizes with a sinking feeling, all hope of seeing any of his loved ones again suddenly fading away. It isn't fair; for all that he had lived, he would still die alone and unseen. It isn't a proper end to such a bright life, and he knows it.
A heavy piece of debris sits on his chest; he finds himself barely able to take in a breath, and when he does he chokes on blood. He can taste the iron in his mouth, and a small stream runs out of the corner of his parted lips and down the side of his face.
"Courfeyrac!"
Above the bangs and the screams of dying, he can hear his name being called out frantically from some distance away. He is unable to move, but is relieved of the duty when a face suddenly appears over him, moving the heavy debris off of his chest and allowing Courfeyrac a painful breath.
It is a young, haggard looking man, with heavy bags under his eyes that suggest not having slept all night. His glasses, thrice broken, barely stay on his face from where he had tied the two halves of them with a small strip of cloth, likely taken from someone's shirt. His age is indeterminable- he had the look of someone fairly young, who seemed to have aged decades over a very short period of time. His dark hair hangs wild around his face, ragged and matted with blood, and his skin is an ash gray.
I know this man, Courfeyrac realizes. This is a friend, and a close one. However, he is unable to find a name in his head to match the haunted face, and this hurts his subdued consciousness most of all.
The man seems to know that it is hopeless, but still he tries. "Please, Courfeyrac," he murmured, choking on his own words, as he pulls a strip from the end of his own, already torn shirt and wraps it tightly around one of Courfeyrac's heavily bleeding wounds. "You cannot die, not like this, not now- please." His voice breaks on this final word, and suddenly Courfeyrac knows exactly who this man is.
"Combeferre…" he murmurs, or at least tries to; it comes out more as an awful gurgling sound, but his friend is able to decipher his words all the same.
"That's right." He clutches Courfeyrac's hand tightly before looking up and calling out another name that Courfeyrac cannot understand. "Joly has the rest of the bandages- or what's left," Combeferre explains, turning back to him. His voice seems to be coming as if through a tunnel, and Courfeyrac blinks in confusion, struggling to keep his eyes open.
"I-" His words are broken off by his choking on his own blood, and Combeferre shushes him, calling out for Joly again and squeezing Courfeyrac's hand tighter.
"Please," he murmurs, leaning close to Courfeyrac's face. "It will be alright. Please…" Courfeyrac's eyes are blurring, but he's almost sure he can see tears in Combeferre's eyes. "Don't die on me. Not you. Not you too."
But Courfeyrac can barely make out these final words. He's falling, falling backwards into a void of which there is no end, and as he slips away he can still feel Combeferre's hand in his as his friend sobs his name over and over.
And then he is consumed by darkness, and the tight grip fades away along with everything else, into nothingness.
AN: I love you all too. Have a nice day, now.