here lies everything
He's barely breathing as he gazes at the carnage around him: bodies lay bleeding, painting the Parisian streets red, soldiers and allies alike ceasing their breaths in order to achieve his dreams. Allies, he thinks, for remembering that they were friends would hurt worse than the bullet wound that ails his shoulder.
the world i wanted at my feet,
He won: the revolution was successful, at least in terms of his survival. Several other stragglers, none of whom he had ever bothered to learn the names of, wept pitifully to the left of him, though he barely noticed it. His ears were ringing, mind whirling. He won.
my victory's complete.
He marches forwards, followed by the few survivors of the massacre. There is something warm and sticky beneath his feet, and he does not have to look down to know that blood clung to his previously clean boots, already so soaked with the life liquid that they burned as bright a red as his torn jacket. Red, the blood of angry men, he remembers saying. Or was it simply red, the blood of men?
so hail to the king
"Death to the King!" He hears a voice in the growing crowd behind him, and suddenly they delve back into chaos. Rocks are thrown, voices roaring into one angry song, and he finds that his mind has wandered back to the Musian, nothing more than wreckage now, where he and his allies ( his friends, dead and gone ) screamed with voices far more jovial than these. Still, he joins them.
( everything you ever )
He is not sure why he is not ecstatic. He won, he won, he won: the people are congratulating him, rushing forwards to shake his hand, and faintly he can feel someone fretting over the blood streaming down his arm, but he can barely feel it any longer. He won, this was everything that he wanted.
arise and see:
He looks around, feeling almost as though he is dreaming. While he'd always loved the color red, angry and fierce and free, all of the red around him was making his stomach churn. He glances away for a moment, attempting to clear his mind, to push away the faces of people whom he would never get to see their new world.
so your world's benign
The King begs. He is not so strong when surrounded by his angered civilians, not so powerful when there is a gun pressed to his temple. He is almost surprised when the King bleeds the same red as his fallen compatriots had. At the end of the day, he realizes, all men bleed red. He decides that he does not like red any longer.
so you think justice has a voice?
The people turn to him next. The King is dead, and for a week there is bliss. Well, bliss and anarchy. No one knows what to do, no one knows who to follow, and seeing as he was the one who had pulled the trigger, the one doused in royal red blood, the responsibility falls on him. He does not smile as he is voted into France's first democracy, does not bat an eye as he is announced to be the beginning of a new golden age. They would have made jokes like that, he remembers.
and we all have a choice?
He does not want to be any form of ruler, he realizes, for it feels simply like glory. Basking in the fire of a glory that burned through so many people, glory that he never asked for. All that he'd ever wanted was equality, democracy, freedom: he'd never realized that came at such an impossible cost. Never entertained the fact that perhaps the people wanted something a little bit different than he.
well now your world is mine.
There's nothing that he can't do. As a leader he's had power before, been the center of attention. He could bark out a command and have it followed, though now it seems that people swarm to obey him. It's too much power, too much control, too much responsibility. And, he realizes, none of them are his friends.
( everything you ever )
While he's not working alone, several other branches of the new government aiding him in their rule, he's never been more lonely. There are always people around him, protecting him from the people, ( people like him ) none hold more than a polite conversation with him. He no longer has to rally others to his call, he no longer has to ignite fire in the people around him: his purpose has died with his allies. His friends.
and i am fine
He visits the Musian. He's spent copious amounts of money to fix it, to restore it to its former glory, the little shop identical to the night before the revolution. He sits at the same table, though more often than not, it is empty. No one dares to enter: there are men that swear that the dead linger there. Anyone to see his eyes could almost believe that it's true.
now the nightmare's real
Two years later, and their faces are fading from his mind. He can remember the sounds of their gut wrenching screams, he wakes gasping to them every night, but their faces are fading away. He remembers that the street gamine had long dirty hair and sad eyes. He remembers that one smelled of brandy, and one with crazed curls and a woman on his arm each night. He remembers his closest companion, a soft spoken man kinder than he could ever be. He remembers he loved them each, and remembers how they believed that he did not care, his emotions ever hidden behind his marble features.
( everything you ever )
France flourishes under his rule. The people are happy, and his vision has come true, yet since that fateful day, rumors manifest themselves into Parisian legend, and he is given another nickname: the man without a smile. It is ironic, he thinks, when he smiles sardonically at that. Marble does not smile.
and i won't feel a thing
But marble cracks.