Author's Note: Combeferre's POV, as he reflects before the barricades fall. "He" is Enjolras, in case there is doubt on the subject (except for a brief time where he talks about someone else, confusing, I know), but this isn't necessarily slashy, although I am a fan. By the way, I do not own Enjolras, nor Combeferre, nor anyone else from the brilliance that is Les Miserables. Oh, and Enjolras's "Let others rise to take our place," and therefore the title come from the musical. I would also like to apologize for my obsession with comma ridden, almost-run-on sentences. It's just how I write.

I tried. I really tried. Everyone comes to a time when they see that the world is flawed, and they try to change it. I was one of those who tried with revolution. One of many, at the time.

Everyone also comes to a time when they realize that they are not going to succeed. Of course, some come to that conclusion with less grace, and with more stubbornness to receive the fact. Others will never come to it at all, having fallen much to soon, and still others will face the fact as thought it means nothing. As though death was an abstract sentence in the contract, "Didn't you read it when you signed up?"

I knew he would see it that way, that he could stand fearless and proud in the face of death, merely asking others to take his place, our place, one day. Our place, as though we were anything without him. Most of us are lesser mortals; most of us would prefer not to die, not when our only absolution, our only comfort, is that one day someone else, in five years or fifty, will also die like this. Most of us would like to know that we didn't dream of the future for nothing, we didn't love and lose for nothing, that we didn't survive this long for nothing.

But I don't resent him, not for taking me with him to this end. I asked to follow, if only to watch. Sometimes I could be his conscience, sometimes his friend and confidant; it didn't matter, so long as there was something. He lent me his faith and his vision, and I promised to die. However it may sound, the trade was fair.

But I have to wonder. When he asked others to stand and take up the fight some day, I wondered if he was right, if they would stand. Then I remembered, I remembered the children who had stood by us, not so long ago. So young, yet so certain. He'd asked them to leave, and few of them had.

I'd convinced one of them. Asked him to have a future, for my sake. I don't know if he listened to me, but maybe when he decides to change the world, he will find a better way than I have.

It was enough for me, to have something to believe in, to believe in him. But I am ashamed, somehow, to only be able to say that I tried, that we tried. He deserves better than to have a failed, better than to have failed at this thing that was his life. I want to give him a world that is not flawed, or at least less so. A world that his vision changed. I want him to have seen it, in some way.

Perhaps, is there is life after death, he may. When our cause sees happier days, and when, as it will never find a better leader, it finds someone who can see this changed world before he is gone. He may be there then, in some way. I can hope for that, at least.

Because I cannot give him that world, as much as I might wish to. Even if it has only ever been my wish to.

Because he his falling, and I am following him.