HEAVEN AND EARTH
There is no sense in trying to explain that what cannot be explained, so we will reduce it to just three points: light, warmth, reward. The rest, we are told, is within us. This is Heaven.
There is nothing else about the place itself that can be described, but it does not need to be. The people who arrive there are the ones more worthy of words. Currently two men lay in the glorious nothingness. Their story was over and they were awaiting the epilogue, or the sequel.
They had brought with them that vital thing found within us, which, again, cannot be explained. The epilogue had come. One of them awoke and looked at the face of the other.
"They have killed a good man," Enjolras said gravely.
"They have killed a great one," said Grantaire, looking at the place where their hands met.
The two parted, and rose seperately.
"We have come to the right place." Enjolras said. "What do you see?"
"Only you."
"At the opening of Paradise?"
"Only you."
Enjolras smiled.
There are many things that cannot be seperated, and two such things are Heaven and Earth. They merge into each other sometimes. We have a word for that.
"I expect nothing from you, nothing more than what you have already given," said Grantaire to Enjolras. "This is your natural home. And if you choose to dismiss me-"
"You think so little of me!"
"No-"
"You think so little of yourself, you would choose to walk eternity alone, after dying to ensure I did not? What surreal logic!"
"I didn't know what might come after. Any promise of eternity, it was the last thing on my mind-"
"Finally, you praise yourself from your own lips. Walk beside me."
They walked in silence, in mist and in sun. The centuries turned, and they looked out at their country.
"See," said Enjolras, with a bright and beautiful smile. "Our work was not in vain."
"No," said Grantaire quietly. Enjolras in his rapture had let go of his hand.
He found himself looking in every corner of the new world, the basements and the alleys. And then he burst, "You and I inhabit different spheres; you have the one closer to heaven. You look out at the future and see only beauty, but I can see the ugliness in this. There's so much of it. A new millenium may have dawned, but people never change. The destitute, the drunk and the damned still live here!
"Wait," he suddenly said. "There's you."
He looked harder.
"No...not you. But he looks like you and acts like you. He could be carrying a piece of your soul. And this one is the same, and this one. How have you done that?"
Two spheres drew closer, and the twenty-first century glowed.
"There is Courfeyrac, and Combeferre. There are many of them, many of each of us. Not me, though. There's a Gavroche! But he's well fed, and his parents love him."
Enjolras stared outwards but then inwards, to Grantaire.
"Of course you are there," he said. "You're that one- and that one- that one with the hand on the shoulder, that one searching in the dark. He or she who values love above all. The future is thine! How could you not be there?"
"I'm glad I am," said Grantaire.
"As am I."
These things were not necessarily happening in that order, they may have been happening all at once, or stretching from one end of time to another.
"You called me a good man," Grantaire said.
"I shall continue to."
Their friends were among them and had been for some time: they walked on overlapping paths, flickering in and out like stars.
"Good men do not sit in the darkness, drunk and berating their fellows, awaiting the apocalypse."
"Bad men do not rise to offer comfort and company when the apocalypse comes. Bad men do not hold others in such high esteem that they ask them permission to die!"
Grantaire gave a wry smile, not realising it was shared. "I could not live in a world you had flown from, not when I wanted to fly by your side. Through your eyes I could sometimes see, through your heart I could sometimes feel, beneath your fingertips we could both touch the world. What is a man, without those vital things?"
"You have always had them," said Enjolras. "I was keeping them for you. You may have my things in return. I want you to be whole."
Grantaire touched his face. It was the first time he had ever done so.
"Thank you," he said.
Pieces of the world shimmered around them, heaven and earth touched. Still-anchored souls, safe in their own centuries, might have seen two ghosts.
"You must not lie at my feet, you must rise to meet me as you once did," Enjolras said. "The universe does not place one of us above the other. Nor should we."
They kissed then. All spheres joined.
"Lead me to the world," said one of them.
"Lead me to yourself," said the other.
Onwards.