A/N: Gavroche's death from Grantaire's point of view. I wrote this ages ago, before I'd really got into fanfiction and so if any characterisations are off, please feel free to tell me! Disclaimer: As I am not male, French or living in C19th Paris, how can I possibly own Les Miserables- please don't sue me! Much love and enjoy! x
Those final violet hours
The night is hot, the air sticky with the cloying stench of blood, sweat and fear. Fear that laps at leaping hearts like fire, hearts banging painfully against cages of bones, weeping hearts; weeping for a world that is crumbling, slipping like fine, black ash between cupped hands, a world that should have been ready to ignite and leap, fiery wings spread, like a phoenix soaring gracefully out of the ashes of the old world, its wingtips drenched with scarlet blood; a tribute to the fallen as it soars through the cold, clear sky of the new. A new world. A new world dancing on cold lips, as fleeting as the brief cackle of a passionate kiss placed upon rough, warn skin, quivering with fear.
Cold, calloused hands fumble through layers of cotton, slick with sweat, sticking to hard, muscular skin that quivers at a touch that is as blissfully brief as butterfly wings brushing sun kissed skin in summer. A girl's twinkling laugh floats across the heat of a summer meadow. Brushes of cotton against smooth, tanned skin. A name rises to your lips and you try to bite it back, that name that is fighting through a mouth laid barren with fear; fear of what? Of death? No. Surely not. Voices wash over you and you hear it once again. Feel it, like the soft notes of a long forgotten aria that floats through the sticky night air; as cold and as refreshing as water is to a dying man. Staccato notes filter through air thick with fear and the fiery, smoky stench of gunpowder. Wet gunpowder clogging to the dark depths of stolen barrels. You remember the rain. Remember his face. Their faces. He was too young. He shouldn't be here, shouldn't have been there. Shouldn't have seen what he saw, standing in the flickering shadows. She was too young. A pale, oval face coated with a mask of salty tears as he watches Marius cradle her limp body in his arms, chest heaving with the painful weight of suppressed sobs as he continues to shake her useless corpse; desperately trying to ignite the fire of life that has been snuffed out like a candle in the wind.
You remember Combeferre and Courfeyrac moving silently towards the corpse lying limply across his chest in a final embrace. Her hair is a sodden mane of dark rats tails trailing down his upper arm, a mane of dirty ebony as he releases her at last, his hands slipping off her pitifully thin frame; clutching fingers falling from her sodden dress, hands stained scarlet with a final tribute from a weeping, broken heart. You never caught her name, you realise now; the girl who is now a corpse, her dress clinging pitifully to a skeletal frame. One of many… names soon to be forgotten in the chaotic mêlée of battle. The rattling wails of the muskets are silent now. Smoke embraces sleeping guards. Masks are down. The silhouette of a shadow slips silently into the darkness. You feel the cold, comforting weight of a wine bottle being pushed into hands that feel as if they have been turned to ice. Somehow the bottle is raised to your lips, but you hardly taste the wine. It slips down your throat like fire and burns feeling back into your numb chest. A small, comforting weight presses itself into your side and you look down, vision blurred slightly by tears and rain and no doubt the alcohol which allows the edges of the world to be smudged slightly by the comforting blackness of the muffled fire surging through your bloodstream.
You think of Joly, all wide eyes and wringing hands as he tries to reason with you about the dangers of drinking alcohol in excess and feel the cold ghost of a smile tugging painfully at the corners of your lips as the warm, wet weight shifts slightly, one hand creeping slowly up to grasp at the tattered lapel of your jacket. Trembling fingers crawl silently up the taught tendons of your neck and cling to you; short, sharp nails digging into the trembling gooseflesh. Gavroche. A hand moves slowly up his neck to ruffle the tousled mop of dirty blond hair. An angelic devil. You smile and let him burrow himself deeper into your chest; relishing in the small, solid weight, the thudding, fluttering iambs of his heart pressed against your own.
A shadow flickers across your path and you look up to see the grey haired stranger from earlier flanked by a pale faced Combeferre and a shivering Bahorel moving silently up towards the look out post where Marius kneels up on a broken bookshelf; shattered glass digging painfully into ripped cotton trousers, a musket shaking in trembling hands as he leans it on a jagged sheet of glass to keep it steady. Voices flutter on the still night air, fractured fragments of conversation as you watch the stranger place a steadying hand on a shaking shoulder as he raises a tear stained face to take in the shadowy profile, hands gripping the splintered wooden edge of the shelf as if he is terrified that he will be lost in the blackness of oblivion if he even dares to think about letting go. In your arms, Gavroche stirs sleepily; a skinny ball of life slowly unravelling itself as the sky slowly slips into the dark, velvety blackness of midnight. You try to smile down at the impish face, but it doesn't come, tugging painfully at the corners of your mouth before falling away into nothingness.
A/N: Please feel free to read and review! Comments, questions, suggestions, constructive critisms are love! Much love and enjoy x