It was the talk that Marius couldn't stand. It was the talk that kept him awake at night, and reminded him of everything they had lost.
His friends were dead. All of them. He could hardly stand the pain: it was constant and unrelenting; in the dead of night Marius would lie awake, mourning over them. He would turn away from Cosette. He could not let her suffer with him, he had to be her support. But while she slept he let the grief wash over him, and let the tears roll over his nose and cheeks.
Enjolras would not have cried. He was sure of that: the man would have braved the anguish and fought on, even if he was the last one left. Marius smiled sadly, gazing up into the darkness of the ceiling. If only he could be so strong.
Grantaire. Perhaps he'd drown himself in drink to wash away the pain. But if he could live again...If any of them could live- Courfeyac, Joly, Feuilly...It was a lonely world for Marius.
He loved Cosette. He loved the life he had begun with her. But there was that part of him that would be forever consumed by loss.
Perhaps he could bear it, if these thoughts came only in the dark of the night, when he was comforted by silence. But he was not that lucky.
The first few months were the worst. Marius would take walks about the city for hours at a time. He thought physical exhaustion would ease his aching mind. He hobbled along, cane in hand, stopping only when the pain in his leg became unbearable. No one dared bother him.
But it was during these walks that he came to the deepest realizations of his anger, his hate, and his unyielding sadness. He could not help but overhear the talk of the women as they hung their laundry out on the lines, or carried their baskets to market.
"Did you see those boys, those students who went to fight at the barricade?"
"It's a shame really. Died for nothing, they did."
"Foolish."
Marius clenched his fists and closed his eyes. He could not speak his mind- not here, not to these people. How could he express how insensitive they were, calling his friends foolish? These brave young men who gave their lives for the peasants of France. These boys who would never see another day. And all those who had fallen just for their association- Eponine, the boy Gavroche. They had died to free the very people who had abandoned them.
What right did they have to insult them? How could they forget them? Marius could not stop the wetness forming in his eyes. He looked down at the ground.
"Nothing ever changes."
Of course not. It would never change until the people united. But they were afraid. Enjolras had thought better of them: he had believed they could unite, and rise up against their oppressors. He had believed that Paris would come to the aid of the courageous revolutionaries, and that there would be a glorious new day for France.
He had believed a lot of things.
But he had realized the truth before the end. And yet he had stood strong: he would not abandon those who had abandoned them- those who could not hear.
They had died for nothing. Just a few hopeful schoolboys on a lonely barricade at dawn, waving the flag against the enemy until the hail of bullets took them, one by one. The ultimate sacrifice- and it bought nothing at all.
Even with new grief and the pain of loss, nothing had changed. Marius would suffer in silence, but what did that matter to those who were dead? The women would still struggle to feed their children. The people would still cling to a distant hope for a new day, one so distant that no one really believed. Not like the boys at the barricade had believed.
Life would go on. And only Marius would glance into the now silent cafe, and breathe a sigh for the days gone by. Only Marius would feel agony when he passed a woman on the street, and heard her say softly,
"Did you see them lying side by side?"