How I Choose to Remember

by Sarah1281

After the Revolution of 1848, everyone is suddenly very eager to hear all about the attempted revolutions that came before. Marius was at one such revolution and people beg him to tell his story. They don't appear to be willing to leave him alone without giving them something, so he shall simply have to find something to tell them. It will even be the truth or something like it.

How I Choose to Remember

Disclaimer: I do not own Les Misérables.

Note: Based on a kink!meme prompt.

The year was 1848 and Marius couldn't quite believe what had been happening. Now, after all this time, there was revolution. There was a republic. This was the glorious second republic that his friends, eighteen years ago and then – less fortunately – sixteen years ago had fought and died for.

And now everyone was so eager to glorify the past. The first revolution, the revolution that had been stolen, and even that almost-revolution.

Marius had played his part earlier this year. He had not done anything too dangerous with a family to care for but Cosette had realized that the world needed to change the minute he broke down and finally told her the truth about her father and she would not have him sit this one out for her.

Some of the older revolutionaries (and Marius supposed that meant him for all that he was not yet forty) had fought before. Marius had not been interested in 1830 and had almost accidentally arrived at the fight in 1832 but everyone wanted to hear his story.

He had tried to put them off but they just would not stop asking and he was starting to think that it would be best to just give them something to absorb before they went off pestering the next youthful rebel.

What could he tell them, though? That he had only fallen in with Les Amis in the first place because someone in his law class happened to recognize his name on his trunk as he drove past after leaving his home? How he had been an ardent royalist most of his life and it had taken the death of the father he had never known to make him a Bonapartist and the death of his somewhat-distant friends to convince him of republicanism? How he had only gone to the barricades to die? How could he do that?

But maybe…Most everyone who was involved with that time period was dead. His grandfather and aunt were long dead. Thénardier and Azelma would be in America if they were still alive, he supposed. And who else besides him and Cosette had made it through? Cosette knew most of the story but he rather thought that she would understand.

Marius took out a piece of paper and was about to start writing when he realized that he had absolutely no idea where to begin.

Any account of the barricade would have to explain why he survived. Well, he survived because Valjean had taken it upon himself to personally rescue him from his own attempted suicide. Why had he done that? Because Cosette loved him. How had he known that Marius would be at the barricade? Well, there was that letter sent by Gavroche explaining that since he had not been able to find Cosette again after they had suddenly and abruptly left and Éponine had taken the letter Cosette had left explaining where she had gone? Why would Valjean have left so suddenly like that, barely leaving Cosette time to sneak a way of finding her to him? Why would Valjean go to the barricade to risk his life to save a boy he had just learned the existence of? Well, Valjean was a self-sacrificing martyr and seemed to believe that he must be perfect in order to have any chance of being just as good as any other man. Where had this belief come from? Probably those nineteen years spent in prison. How had he come to transform himself from a hated and hateful ex-convict to the saint who had saved everything for everyone?

It had never sat right with him that people did not know that. He might be long-gone but he was far from forgotten.

This story would not be an easy one to tell, would it? He could not just start at the barricade. Everyone else was doing that and without the context the whole thing just became meaningless. Without the context all they had were snippets of these brave young boys killed before their time. It was sad, yes, but it was a barricade like every other. Well…perhaps not like every other. His barricade had been the only one which had fallen more-or-less to a man. There had been three survivors that day. One of them had killed himself that very night, one of whom had so unjustly wasted away due to Marius' own idiocy, and one of them was left behind to remember them and to hope that he could keep their memory alive through his words even when he himself was gone.

From what he had pieced together afterwards, secure in his pardon, the barricade had been massacred so because – ironically enough – Marius had saved it earlier. If he had just let it fall like it was supposed to chances are they all would have been arrested and sent off to Belgium in exile like the rest (though he would not put it past Enjolras to be the only person actually executed out of sheer stubbornness). Sure some would die in the fighting but it would not be quite so brutal. He had tried to help and had made everything worse. The others would have told him not to think that way, he was sure. Or maybe he just suspected. He hadn't known them as well as he would have liked and it was so long ago now. But Courfeyrac would not have blamed him. He could not help it, however.

But where to start, where to start…Any mention of Valjean's criminal past (and how could he not mention that? That had to be told to explain why Marius had even been there in the first place!) would have to begin the year he got out of prison. 1815, the year that his wife had been born.

Javert had not actually been there at his father-in-law's release but what could he do? Just randomly introduce him as an anonymous ex-guard who had been stationed at Toulon at some point during his father-in-law's extended stay? That might have been what happened in real life but his audience would never stand for it. Characters had to be established.

And so Javert would actually be there to release Valjean. None of the notes Valjean had left behind that Marius was working off of (because Marius had learned more of the story from Thénardier than from Valjean himself) ever mentioned Javert insisting on referring to Valjean by his first prison number but it really went a long way towards demonstrating that Javert felt nothing but contempt towards the convicts who he believed could never change. Once a thief, forever a thief and whatnot. Show don't tell.

He had to quickly explain why Valjean was in prison in the first place as people would want to know and would probably assume the worst if left to their own devices. Years ago, when he had first been told, he had been so horrified by the fact that he was a convict that the facts of the crime, the broken windowpane and stolen loaf of bread, had barely registered. And maybe it would not make a difference to his audience but he had to put that out there.

Javert would accuse Valjean of being a thief, he would correct him about the loaf of bread, Javert would insist that he was a house-robber, and Valjean would rightly point out that it was ridiculous to consider breaking a window robbing a house.

Valjean had written down much of his thought process about why he had done what he had done and how he had judged himself and slowly turned wicked and whatnot but…Really, he was hoping to keep this below a thousand pages. So his sister's seven small children were all starving as they had had literally no food for several days but it was highly likely that he could have asked to borrow the bread or waited since they weren't going to die?

Too many qualifiers to make forcibly sympathetic. To have one of the children near-death, though, as well as the starvation…that would do it. Who could blame a man for trying to save a dying child? There was the unfortunate implication that the child would have died since Valjean was arrested but wasn't that the case in reality, too? Without a provider and with seven small children, who knows what happened to them? The youngest child and the sister had made it to Paris but maybe the rest were dead. Who knew? Not Valjean and not him. Better just stick to the sister's child. There would probably already be people wondering about the fact that those two were never mentioned again, never mind the other six. But hopefully they'd be able to read between the lines that never being mentioned meant that Valjean never saw them again. Hopefully.

People were just not naturally inclined to think well of convicts. Just look at what he had done! Decades after Valjean left prison behind him and after graciously gifting him with a Cosette who adored them both, Marius had still balked and fed into the man's already powerful insecurity complex and led to the man's death!

He'd have to show them. Show them how Valjean, when he got out, really was just so appreciative of his newfound freedom and overcome by everything and just trying to get a new start when everyone he met were terrible people and not letting him stay or giving him enough money and treating him like a dog. From what he could gather, that was actually not far off what had happened.

And then there was the bishop. Bishop Myriel, Monseigneur Bienvenu. Of course he had just welcomed him in and allowed him to stay the night, completely heedless of the fact that he was a convict! That sort of thinking really should have gotten him murdered but, well, God did look out for him apparently. Marius felt that he had a pretty good understanding of the man since he had gotten a full sixty pages of the man's life story and everything he had ever believed in ever from Valjean but he supposed that since the man had made such a big difference in his father-in-law's life it was understandable. But still a little much.

Then Valjean stole the silver. He knew that the bishop was a good man, he knew it so why…Marius did not understand. Valjean did not seem to have understood, either, just saying that he acted by instinct. Well didn't an abused dog bite the hand of those whose tried to help him? They were just too far gone to appreciate the good that they were being given. But instead of putting him down, the bishop lied to the police when they brought back the would-be thief and gave him those very candlesticks that still decorated their mantelpiece. Thank God that he had been caught. If not, who knew what might have happened? He would have just wandered around, lost and drowning, unaware of the true gift the bishop wished to give him.

Then there had been that matter with little Gervais and Marius thought he understood, he really did. He had just been so lost and confused and barely paying attention. He had been fighting his own salvation and his body rebelled against his heart and he hadn't even realized it. That had been why he had to go on the run, because otherwise it was straight back to Toulon.

But that complicated things, didn't it? No, better just have Valjean explaining that he was treated terribly when he did not deserve to be and it turned him hard because cruelty and pain were all he had known for so long and then he was confused by the bishop's love and forgiveness and so changing his life around. And he broke parole to get a fresh start and away from all those idiots who would treat him like the dirt beneath their feet even when he had changed.

Marius thought that he was to be commended, a little, in that all he had ever done to the man was hint strongly that he would like him to leave. It was inadvertently cruel (he had done it that way specifically so it would not be cruel!) and heartbreaking but nothing like this.

So then Valjean didn't really say what happened until he got to Montreuil. There was a whole story about how he had become mayor and the factory and all of that and it wasn't like it wasn't interesting but…Oh, who was he kidding? He did not find that even remotely interesting.

So they could just start with the poor people complaining about how poor they were, the factory workers trying not to complain about how awful working in a factory was, and then things started happening. Cosette's mother, Fantine, was fired because her child had somehow been discovered and no one had any idea how that had happened so he'd have to just make it up.

Well, the women's factory was supervised by a forewoman, of course, but it would just be so much easier if it were a foreman who wanted to have sex with Fantine but, being a wonderful and virtuous woman, she said no. The foreman was already resentful and when Fantine carelessly left a letter from the Thénardiers demanding more money and a fellow factory-worker grabbed it for no apparent reason and told everyone about it, he jumped at the chance to fire her.

Ah, but he had already introduced Valjean into the scene hadn't he? He never would have sat by and done nothing. He hadn't even known who she was until she told him after Javert had arrested her. He could rewrite it and have 'Madeleine' come in later but…Oh! What if Javert was up waiting in his office? It was his first day as a new inspector and Valjean had been expecting an inspector but not this particular one and he was so terrified that he was going to get arrested that he couldn't even see or hear anything else and barely remembered to tell his foreman to be as patient as he could while dealing with it before leaving.

And then Javert, who always seemed to be there and who had strengthened his suspicions over years of careful observation, would have to have a reason for suspecting Valjean and for ultimately telling Paris about him. He didn't have time to write out years of careful observation! Well, he could, actually, but no one would actually want to read it. He was just struck by a powerful sense that he had seen Valjean before and Valjean claimed that they had never met at all and yes he was absolutely sure of it.

Then the cart crash. Maybe it was too much to have it follow directly after their meeting so Valjean could not keep his secret for five minutes with Javert there but it saved him a scene change. The cart crash was a good thing to include. Not only did it offer more substantial evidence of Madeleine being Valjean because normal people just could not lift carts like that but it also proved that Valjean was still a saint because he knew Javert was there and almost recognized him and he still risked everything to save a stranger. Actually, apparently old Fauchelevent had actually hated him for being successful or something. No need to get into that, though. He was just some random old guy.

Of course Javert was suspicious but there was still no proof and he wasn't about to accuse his superior without proof! Unless, of course, he was really pushed.

That brought in Fantine. He did not want to do a disservice to her sacrifices by trivializing them and he did not want to get too gruesome for Cosette's sake. Before her fall, after her firing, she would have a lovely bit where she could explain how she was a good person, really, and life had just ruined everything for her, her lovely dream. Once everyone was sympathetic towards her he could quickly go through her fall from grace. Cutting her hair, becoming a prostitute, then straight to that man who had thrown snow down her dress.

Except who even did that anyway? It was such a strange thing to do. No, it would be a struggle to get people to feel badly for the prostitute who attacked a man for a 'prank' so how about he tried to solicit her services, she turned him down, and he tried to force himself on her? There was no one alive who could blame her for scratching him!

No one except Javert the unyielding of course. The real Fantine had apparently been half-crazy by this point and extremely bitter and hateful towards Valjean. Perfectly understandable but it rather detracted from the sympathy, he thought, so best just have her crying about her desire to protect Cosette. She could not go to jail because then Cosette would die.

Javert remained unmoved and possibly a little skeptical about Cosette's existence. After all, surely there had been some criminals who were not at all sympathetic who pretended that they were mixed in with all the real victims like Fantine? Had he not stumbled upon Thénardier sending his daughters out with letters doing just that?

Valjean, reiterating once again that the man had had no idea, stepped in to see her and the day was saved. Or at least for five minutes. For some reason, even though Valjean had promised to send for Cosette more than two months passed between that promise and Fantine's death and he had not done as he had said. Sure, he had sent money and tried to get them to send her but did it really take two months for him to see that they were never going to and he'd have to send someone to get her in person?

It made Valjean look kind of bad and Marius could not possibly hope to explain it so why not tweak it a little? Of course that had not happened. Just a few days after the near-arrest, still within plenty of time for Valjean to have just gotten the Thénardiers refusal and thus justify why he had not gone himself, Javert would tell him about Champmathieu's trial.

Now, there had apparently been a pretty unlikely set of coincidences that had added up to make people believe that this was Valjean (including one either idiotic or just plain malicious ex-convict who had first 'identified' the man) but did anyone really care about that? He didn't think so. The fact that they looked a lot alike would have to suffice, especially since that was what half of Javert's suspicions were based on.

He thought it was probably best to avoid the part about how Valjean had only reluctantly agreed to go to Arras after making up his mind half a dozen times not to do that and that he was well-aware that the town would rip itself apart should he go (which it did. But not before the entire town turned on their savior the minute they heard the c-word. Convict. What was so damn terrifying about that? He wished he could remember). It was best not to include the part where he kept hoping that he would not make it even as he drove down to Arras and actually sat in court for over an hour before finally admitting to who he was right before Champmathieu was found guilty.

No, instead he had a brief moment of panic where he did not want to abandon his workers but he could not abandon that innocent man either. Well, probably innocent. Who even knew about those apples? But he was not Jean Valjean at least.

Fantine's death. Fantine's death was unavoidable but he thought that maybe he could be a little more tasteful than reality had seen fit to be.

He could keep her last thoughts focused on Cosette while Valjean tried to reassure her (though he knew he was lying since she was dying and he had to flee). It was foolish of him to return to Fantine instead of leaving. Foolish but heartwarming. Marius supposed that that had summed up most of what Valjean had done since meeting the bishop.

He had read with horror how Fantine had been struggling but happy until she had looked up to see Javert and then Javert had started ranting about how Valjean was a convict and Fantine was going to jail and nothing was going to stop the law any longer and Fantine had just been so overwhelmed that she died. That…sounded a bit odd, actually. Sure, doctors always said patients should not be allowed to get too excited but getting too excited that they died? Did things like that really happen?

Well, in this case they should not have. Why couldn't Javert just wait quietly outside until Fantine died or was asleep or something? It was clearly not far off and it wasn't like Valjean was going anywhere. Maybe he had tried. Did Fantine spot him when he walked up or was he trying to respect her dying until she had drawn attention to him and there was little point in holding back?

He would give Fantine her peaceful death and then Javert would come in.

It would not do, he decided, to have Valjean demand that Javert leave him alone for a moment to say goodbye to Fantine before peacefully surrendering, having the entire town turn on him because they were just all terrible people who did not deserve him, breaking out of the town jail, hiding his money, then being arrested when he tried to get over to Montfermeil to rescue Cosette. The story of how he had faked his death after saving a sailor was very heroic but it just added too much complication.

Instead, since Cosette still had to be rescued, Valjean did not go quietly. In fact, he and Javert were going to have a sword fight right there in the hospital. Well, Javert had a sword. He was sure that Valjean could find a piece of wood or something.

If he was going to have a swordfight then he'd want Valjean to win since he was Cosette's sainted father who he owed his life to. Besides, it was hard to think of a man who could singlehandedly lift a cart losing a fight. But it was a sword against a block of wood and Marius just could not get past that. But if Javert won the fight then how could Valjean escape?

Well, just because he was beaten didn't mean that he couldn't still flee, did it? He was sure that there was some sort of a window in the hospital for him to jump out of. Ah, but if he could jump out the window then why couldn't Javert do the same and follow him? Jumping out the window had to be seen as a foolhardy measure that Javert would not emulate even to capture Valjean.

Perhaps the window was on the first floor? But that would severely injure Valjean if not outright kill him. Water? He could jump out into a river and maybe Javert couldn't swim or thought that Valjean was going to drown. And…it wasn't winter when this had happened but Cosette had recalled that she met her father on Christmas Eve. That was a sweet symbol, the both of them getting a family for Christmas, just the sort of thing that people loved.

If Valjean were not rearrested then he would have gone straight to Montfermeil and to Cosette and jumping into a river in December was insane and desperate so of course Valjean (who had once been buried alive to sneak into a convent and not even for the purpose of sex like Bahorel or Courfeyrac might have been willing to do) would do it. Javert, however, would not.

And then he'd switch straight to Cosette in Montfermeil and-wait. Since Valjean and Javert were going to confront each other and have an epic swordfight then they should probably be saying something to each other. Nothing too fancy, just Valjean earnestly trying to get Javert to let him rescue Cosette, Javert refusing because he was under the strange impression that Valjean was evil or something, Valjean pointing out that his initial crime was really no big deal, and then they would argue about their world views while accusing each other of not understanding them.

Oh, and he had heard something once about Javert having been born in a jail and he thought that that went a long way towards explaining him. How could he put that in there, though? That was hardly the sort of thing one advertised! But why not throw it in here in the context of Javert insisting that of course he knows Valjean and men like him could never change and he would know given his own vast experience with them.

And that brought him back to Cosette. She would have been so wonderfully sweet and sad and adorable, regardless of what she claimed about that time. And her mother had just died so she should be longing for her, no matter that her mother had actually been gone since she was a toddler and so it did not make sense that she even really knew who that woman was. It was just too sad to think of Cosette not remembering her mother, especially since that was really the case.

That brought him to the Thénardiers. They were always so difficult. He had seen firsthand just how monstrous they were living next door to them at the Old Gorbeau House. He couldn't help but feel a little fondness for that decrepit old building given his knowledge that Cosette and her father had once lived there as well though he did not know if it was in his room or the Thénardiers. He hoped it was his. If he had only known then he might have died of happiness.

The male Thénardier with his desire to rob, kidnap, and finally even kill a kindly old gentleman and his beautiful and perfect daughter who only sought to help him, who forced his daughter to cut herself breaking a window for sympathy and was pleased by the usefulness of that pain, who had seemed utterly untouched by the deaths of his wife and two of his children…This man was perhaps the most objectively monstrous. But the female Thénardier was the one who wanted to hurt his darling Cosette just for daring to be happy.

The female Thénardier sent Cosette out alone in the middle of the woods at night to fetch some water, insulting her and her mother in the process while pampering her daughter Éponine. Azelma seemed a decent enough girl from the little he knew of her (even if she had inherited her father's surprisingly successful slavery empire) but what had she really done that impacted him or their barricade in any way? She didn't even have a tragic death to remember! There was no need to mention her. That might sound callous but the story was complicated enough as it was and he was supposed to be talking of the barricade. He was currently about nine years away from that.

He had not known Éponine before her family had lost the inn but he liked to think that she was happy.. Maybe even slightly spoiled but certainly not malicious to his dear Cosette. He did not know much of the Thénardiers back then, either, since Cosette's memory was so vague about that time and she didn't like talking about it. Even Valjean had barely spent any time with them and so Marius would just have to guess about these things.

He knew that the Thénardiers were abusive. He had seen it and heard it and they threw poor Gavroche – not that he would let you call him that – out on the streets and that was just not something you did to a child, no matter how little he seemed to mind. But he found that he could just not bring himself to write of Cosette being abused to that extent. It was true, he knew, but it broke his heart.

Better to just stick to some light-hearted antics with the Thénardiers robbing everyone in their inn blind. He knew that they were in perpetual debt and had lost the inn and thought that this might have done both.

The female Thénardier had seemed a little contemptuous though still deferential enough the one time he had clearly observed her. Was that anything? He felt like that should be a thing. But who knew if even that was a con as she took the time to rob the man who she was complaining about her husband to.

Little Cosette, determined to try to keep her spirits up, sang to herself in the woods. She had said that she had never been afraid of her father but come on. A strange man (still wearing his fine mayor clothes, he supposed, since he had not had to secretly escape) coming out of nowhere while she was alone in the woods at night? She must have had some self-preservation instincts, making it with the Thénardiers for long enough to have been rescued. It was just ridiculous for her not to have been apprehensive initially.

He wrote out Valjean urging her not to be afraid and to show him where she lived before realizing that he hadn't asked her name. He almost changed that since it was a little creepy (his sense of creepiness was much more attuned now than it was when he had first met Cosette) but, from what he knew, Cosette's father had always been – completely understandably – rather awkward. He himself had grown out of that stage but circumstances had just foisted that in his father-in-law.

Cosette always had the cutest stories of herself and her father but Marius had never seen it since Valjean had been so unhappy to be in his presence. He had initially read that as simple dislike (and given the lengths that Valjean had taken to avoid him, that was not entirely unreasonable) but given all of those downright painful compliments the man had bestowed upon him on his deathbed, that had not lasted. Marius hadn't even been able to understand why.

Yes, he felt that he was a decent enough person worthy of being liked and loved but the only thing that Marius had ever done for Valjean (aside from sort of saving his life via Javert but given his criminal background that was a mixed blessing and he had never known of Marius' part in that) was to make his daughter happy. That was always enough for Valjean but it had meant the end of Cosette and Valjean's happiness together and the end of Valjean's happiness at all.

When Valjean learned that the child before him was Cosette, Marius decided that he would smile at her and bow. He would remove his hat and call her Mademoiselle before offering to carry her heavy bucket for her. How could she possibly resist?

And then when they returned to the inn, Cosette was swinging off of his arm as he walked.

It was a nice, silly mental image and, though he had never seen such a thing, he was sure that someone as powerful as Valjean could get along easily like that.

In truth, Valjean had stayed the night at their inn before being forced to purchase his beloved Cosette like a slave (his blood still boiled when he thought of that but he did not blame Valjean since he had not been left with a choice, particularly on the run as he was) and Valjean had even had to step in to save Cosette from a beating.

No.

This was his reimagining and he preferred the version of the story where Valjean took her with him right there. He was full of noble purpose and that all-present guilt (that man…when things were going wrong it was always somehow all his fault and when they were going well then he had to go away lest his mere presence ruin everything. He had not been prepared for that at twenty-three). The Thénardiers ignored his declaration of sacred vows to try and get him to come in and sit down so that they could rob him. Thénardier even took Valjean's hat at some point but Valjean just gave him a 'Please. I've been around' look and grabbed it back.

Then they moved on to the actual bargaining. To show their disregard for Cosette without having to be explicit, Thénardier wouldn't remember her name. The female Thénardier did and the two of them pretended Cosette was sick with really obvious fake-coughing to get more money out of Valjean for medicine despite how much they had already received. Apparently Fantine had been a major source of income for them despite how desperately poor she was. The Thénardiers were despicable.

Valjean wouldn't fall for such a transparent ploy, of course, and quickly just gave them their money and got out of there. Oh, they would not accept the first more-than-generous offer (and he would know that Fantine owed no more money since he had been paying for her for weeks) so he just flatly handed down 1500 francs for her.

And though the real Thénardiers had not seemed particularly interested in what Valjean had in store for Cosette and might well have turned her out on her own without Valjean's intervention, that did not sit right with Marius. Being the Thénardiers, they didn't really care, didn't press for an answer, and were mostly just trying to make Valjean feel uncomfortable but he would have them ask if Valjean's interest in Cosette was at all…untoward. Because that really was the obvious thought when a strange man came to take a small child away with him.

And the fact that he was on the run would have given off some sort of indication to people like this (particularly so in real life where he was not dressed as a gentleman but had money to throw around like he was one).

Valjean, naturally, was outraged at this and just threw the money at them and requested that that end the matter. But he was a man of manners and so he did thank them though Marius imagined that it was with rather less sincerity than even the most gullible of people would believe.

Then they left and Valjean went out to surprise Cosette with a really expensive doll she had been eyeing earlier. Catherine, he believed it was called. And while Valjean promising to be both father and mother to her seemed a bit odd to Marius, it did still seem like something that he would say and Cosette swore that she had viewed her father as both as a child.

Then they would go to Paris because…it was nearby, perhaps? And it was easy to hide in such a large city as opposed to a smaller village where any newcomer attracted the attention of everyone and gossip could kill. And since he had Valjean's own words that Cosette was the only person he had ever loved (he doubted it, frankly, because you didn't risk prison to feed starving children you didn't love but it was almost the same thing after nineteen years in prison and eight alone), he thought perhaps Valjean should have a chance to wax poetic about Cosette. Everyone should have a chance to wax poetic about Cosette.

And this was one of the few things to ever make Valjean happy. It was silly, perhaps, but even though nothing he wrote could change the past, he wanted to try and give his father-in-law as much happiness as possible before he so carelessly destroyed it all.

Because Valjean went straight from Montfermeil to Paris and Javert was well aware that he was alive as well as knowing a little something about fleeing fugitives, it only made sense that he would be at the gates of Paris to try and catch Valjean.

It sounded a little far-fetched that Valjean would manage to use a rope from a lamp to scale a wall with a small child but, well, it had been what happened and he did not know how to otherwise have Valjean escape. Coincidentally, when Valjean came down to the other side, he was in a convent and meeting a gardener who just happened to be the same man that he had saved from that cart and who had not only heard nothing about Valjean's convict past but was eager to repay that debt.

He and Cosette would stay in the convent for a few years and then, when the police had forgotten about him and Cosette was a lady, Valjean would be safe to move them into a nice, isolated house where he had eventually come across her. That was the benefit of real life as opposed to works of fiction, he supposed. What was a fortune coincidence in reality came off as a bit contrived in fiction. Maybe he should just leave it at Fauchelevent agreeing to help them and let his audience draw their own conclusions. They could assume the nuns helped him find the house in 1824 if they wanted to, though Valjean would have been a fool to deny Cosette of a readily available fine education.

He should probably give another report on Javert, too. He was upset that he couldn't find Valjean when he had been so close. Marius had no way of knowing but personally rather doubted that Javert really sang something to the stars that could very easily be mistaken for a love song about finding Valjean while walking very dangerously on the ledge of a tall building.

Then again, you never knew.

He knew that Javert was not a villain and that he had saved Valjean's life at the Old Gorbeau House (even though he did not know who he was saving) and by all accounts all he had ever done was uphold the law (until that night he helped to save him and let Valjean go but he had killed himself that night, too, and was widely believed to have been driven mad at the hands of his friends at the barricade). Still, with Valjean as the sympathetic hero and Javert hell-bent on returning him to prison – all in strict accordance with the law – some people might be confused.

Maybe silly not-quite love songs and dangerous tall building habits would help make him seem more human.

And then…and then what? The stage was set for why they were in Paris and not even he thought that the story of Cosette growing up had anything to do with the revolution so he would need to move things ahead. It had taken a few years for him to meet the revolutionaries and Cosette and end up at the barricade with Éponine and Valjean but this was already getting rather lengthy so perhaps an accelerated timeline might help?

Alright, then. It was 1832, maybe a week before the barricades and quite possibly less.

Everyone was very miserable so he might as well right a nice 'everyone is miserable' scene. Gavroche would be in it because he couldn't actually think of any other place to put Gavroche and he couldn't just leave him out after his tragic death at the barricade and the fact that, without him, Marius would be dead. Actually, without a lot of people that that would be true but without him Valjean never would have come to save him.

And that gave him an opportunity to show Les Amis giving passionate speeches and passing out pamphlets riling up the people or something. He…actually wasn't entirely sure what they did since he hadn't been paying much attention in the few weeks that he had actually attended their meetings.

But maybe…he was never really one of them and had only gone to their meetings for lack of anything else to do, left over Napoleon of all people, and gone to their barricade in despair over Cosette.

He embarrassed him to think about.

But this was his story and he could alter it however he chose.

So maybe he had never been a real revolutionary. He believed in the ideals of the revolution now, didn't he? And he had gone to several meetings and fought at the barricade! But with everyone there dying for what they believed in, how could he possibly say that he went there because he figured that everyone was going to die and had promised Cosette that he would die without her so he went over there to fulfill that promise?

Oh, to think that he had ever thought that Cosette had expected or even wanted him to keep that promise! It horrified him now to think of how close he had come and how much pain that would have brought her!

But he had been young and foolish and in love and determined to try and honor her in that way if he could not do anything else for her. And while he was so, so thankful to be alive it was a little embarrassing to think that he was one of only two survivors given that he was only there to get himself killed and no one else was (well, besides Éponine).

But what if he hadn't? What if he had been just like one of the others? Even Grantaire had had more revolutionary spirit than he had at the time, being willing to actually show up to the revolution just because Enjolras had been hosting it. Sure he thought they would probably all die but that wasn't why he was there!

So that was settled. Marius the lovesick fool who couldn't seem to do anything right and yet things seemed to fall into place around him was out and Marius the dedicated revolutionary and close friend to more than just Courfeyrac was in.

So he would be right there giving passionate speeches with them, maybe standing right up there besides Enjolras.

And when that was over he would just happen to see Cosette as she walked by. They wouldn't have been giving passionate revolutionary speeches in the garden at Luxembourg so she probably wouldn't have even been there if she hadn't been giving alms with her father. That was a good way of introducing her adult self, he thought, showing her unflinching charity towards those less fortunate than herself.

He thought that it seemed a little…sudden that they would fall in love at first glance but the compressed timeline was not giving them many options. Besides, though they had seen each other around all the time before falling in love, it really only had been one glance and they had known so perhaps all that other time didn't matter.

And since the Thénardiers recognizing and attacking him had played such a big role in scaring Valjean and convincing him to leave the country in the first place, maybe he should have something like that here. Why not just have it right in the middle of his falling in love with Cosette? It would give him time to stare lovingly at her. He wouldn't be able to heroically save Valjean then but, well, he hadn't exactly managed to do that the first time around even though Valjean did owe his life to his intervention. Well, probably. Without him spooking the criminals by telling them that the police were coming (and thank goodness they were too stupid to wonder why Éponine had thrown them a note saying that instead of just outright telling them which would be faster) then it was possible Valjean would have managed on his own but Marius did not have much he could say he did well back then and he would rather like to keep the small bits he hadn't managed to completely bungle.

They were con artists so they would have Éponine keep watch and have…well, they'd need help, wouldn't they? It wouldn't just be the Thénardiers versus Valjean. Maybe Patron-Minette? They were a criminal organization back then, weren't they? Who knew, they might even still be around. They wouldn't take orders from the likes of the Thénardiers but all they needed to be was thuggish bodies to threaten Valjean.

They would lure him in by claiming that there was a child that hadn't eaten all day and appealing to his overgenerous nature. Perhaps they would have merely taken the money that he would give the 'child' (actually the female Thénardier who was pretending that a bundle of cloth in her arms was a sick child) and perhaps he would have still had his henchmen try to rob him.

Or maybe whether or not they were going to rob him depended on how much money he gave. But, of course, unless he gave everything then their greed might have demanded they take more. On the other hand, if they just conned people instead of bodily robbing them they were less likely to attract the attention of the police and could stay in the same spot for longer.

Valjean would willingly go with them because he was Valjean but not take Cosette because he was not an idiot. They would try their routine and, before it became clear if Valjean would see through it (how could he not with nineteen years in prison? That had to be good for something) the female Thénardier would recognize Valjean. It had to be her because if Thénardier couldn't even get Cosette's name right then he would not be credible to recognize Valjean after all this time. And if she weren't a crook, perhaps Javert should have employed her and saved a lot of time in Montreuil.

Not that that would have been good for anybody. Unless, perhaps, her not being a crook meant that she was kinder to poor Cosette.

Valjean denied having been the one to take Cosette but they still wanted money because apparently the exorbitant amount of money they had already made off of Fortunately, though his arms were grabbed, Éponine called out the warning for Javert (he sort of liked to think of Javert as a super policeman despite him not having much to do in this tale besides chasing after Valjean so it wasn't enough for her to say it was the police, she had to warn them about Javert specifically) and everyone stopped what they were doing.

Javert was annoyed by all the crime and public disorder in the days leading up to the revolution and picked Gavroche up to inspect him because why not? He tried to assure Valjean, who had grabbed Cosette and was conspicuously hiding his face, that once he pressed charges the thugs – whose names and crimes he knew all about, of course – would be locked up forever but Valjean wasn't about to risk Javert recognizing him and so fled the moment Javert's back was turned. That and the Thénardiers claiming that the girl with him had been someone named Cosette who was not Valjean's natural daughter and he suspected that this was Valjean and was suddenly a lot less interested in the common criminality of the people before him.

And even though Javert had, in reality, arrested everyone here he was just going to let them go. Why? Mostly so he didn't have to waste time on their escape. Plus before Javert had come in witnessing a near-murder and here Javert just saw that they were probably threatening him and the witness fled. He was pretty sure that the fact that Valjean himself was a convict had little to do with it, as least as far as Javert was concerned, because the law was the law was the law was the law.

That brought him to Éponine. Éponine that strange and sad child, destined to be beautiful but brought down by circumstances. She had made him so uncomfortable but he had owed her so much and though she tried to kill him she had also saved his life in the end. He didn't know what to think about her. He had never been able to give her what she was looking for, if she'd even known, in life. Say he had loved her. He never would have been able to, she was just too broken and strange and frankly frightening, but what if he had? She still would have been starving had sometimes homeless. She still would have known the inside of a prison too young been too fond of the bottle. Her teeth would still have been falling out and she would have probably been...courting a man who would just as soon kill her. She still would have been a tragedy and a disaster and not entirely of sound mind.

When the time had come for them to have children, Cosette had suggested that they name a daughter after Éponine because she had saved his life and led him to his love but Marius hadn't been able to stomach the idea. The thought that she had stolen the letter from Cosette and then brought him to the barricade to die because he did not love her was too much for him. And then she had only told him the truth (and enabled him to alert Valjean to the fact that he had needed a rescue) because she thought that if she kept this from him then he would be mad at her in heaven but if she told him that she was killing him and kept him from seeing his light one last time because she claimed to love him (and what kind of love was that? Certainly no kind he had recognized) then everything would be forgiven.

Not. Likely.

He had learned to forgive since then but his daughters were Fantine and Euphrasie.

He had always been able to pity her and now that she was forgiven, he wished that he could have done more for her. All the poor girl had really wanted from him was for him to call her 'tu' and he couldn't even manage that most of the time. But perhaps, here, he could try and give her a little something. She would never have his love but she could at least have his friendship. The real him never would have been able to be friends with someone like that (then or now come to think of it) but dedicated revolutionary Marius would have. He would not have really registered that she was female and in love with him but he would have enjoyed spending time with her and given a small measure of happiness.

And while he was trying to make things just a little bit better for her, while she was still impoverished and the child of those terrible people (he found it harder and harder to believe that Thénardier had really saved his father's life but how exactly did one go about being mistaken about that? And he knew the value of having one's life saved even if he had not only done nothing to repay the favor but hastened the death of his savior), he could at least make her unconditionally pretty. Her teeth could stay, her skin could look like it wasn't going to fall off of her bones, she did not need to fall into the bottle. No mention need be made of Montparnasse aside from his being a part of her father's gang. She definitely did not need to be mildly crazy. She could just be a normal girl, the kind of girl she might have been if life had been kinder though she was still poor.

And because they were friends and she would know a whole lot more about finding people than he did (though there was no need to delve deeply into his story, he could at least mention that his rich grandfather was a royalist to explain why they were estranged and why there were so many things that he did badly), he would simply ask her to find Cosette instead of waiting for her to spontaneously offer. He still wasn't sure why she had done that if she had fancied herself in love with him. Perhaps she knew that they could never be and had just wanted to make him happy back before she grew unable to stand his happiness and tried to kill him? Perhaps it was cruel to ask a girl who loved him (this Éponine, he allowed, could love him even if the real one could not) to find the girl that he loved but did not even know the name of but both versions of him had been blind to her feelings and forcing her to have to offer seemed crueler still. He could also give her a proud moment of being affronted when he tried to pay her to do a favor for a friend.

That would take him to the Musain Café since, now that he was rewriting history to make himself one of the revolutionaries, he would need to be at the meetings and he would have to show one of those to introduce everybody (well, introduce some. There were a lot of people there) if he wanted their deaths to be as tragic as they were supposed to be written from his perspective as sort-of one of them.

Enjolras, of course, just wanted to talk about their revolution. With only a day or so before that revolution, that made sense no matter who you were. Marius might have literally never seen Enjolras doing anything other than speechify or sit quietly working while everyone else was having fun but he supposed that Enjolras must have been more human sometimes, even if Grantaire had never seemed to see it in favor of going on about fine marble.

He would probably be late because, to be perfectly honest, these fictional versions of his friends were lucky that he had even remembered to show up at all once he had seen Cosette.

Someone would ask him what was going on, probably Grantaire as he had really not cared about their revolution and so he'd start to wax poetic about Cosette. The real him had not even admitted that there was a girl, let alone told Courfeyrac anything about her and had usually avoided him when the subject came up. He couldn't really explain why that was but there was nothing like suddenly having no one to confide in to make a man wish that he had taken advantage of the chances that he had.

He could tell Cosette most things but he could hardly take his concerns about Valjean's secret convict past to her! Though if he did maybe they could have resolved that before Valjean was on his deathbed…Thoughts to consider if he ever somehow redid his life or something. But then he'd already know what a saint Valjean was and…oh, never mind.

Once he was induced to start speaking of Cosette, he was sure that it would be very, very difficult to get him to stop.

Grantaire would take his lovesick rambling as an excuse to try to get Enjolras' attention because he used everything ever to try and get Enjolras' attention.

Enjolras would ignore him, he thought, but come to complain about Marius distracting everyone anyway which was almost as good. If he had any sense, he would have just stopped talking when Enjolras came over to complain but, well, Cosette. He probably would have even tried to get Enjolras to come around about love even though had he succeeded then he half-suspected that (in this universe where they had not formed as intimate a connection as they had in their true pasts) Cosette would have forgotten the awkward boy she had just met in favor of a man affectionately and not incorrectly known as Apollo.

Fortunately, Enjolras' feelings on romance when there was a revolution to be had could best be summed up as 'Who cares about your lonely soul?' Oh, that was good. He was going to use that. The others probably did care because they asked but not Enjolras. Never Enjolras.

Then, since they were already there and so close to the revolution, why not have Gavroche pop up and announce that General Lamarque was dead? It was – probably – completely inaccurate but it saved a lot of time and was nice and easy, making use of existing characters. He was going to have to see if he could find a way to work in the boy's relation to Éponine somehow. Not that they ever chose to mention it.

Everyone was suddenly a lot more focused, absolutely convinced that the people would rise. And it was hard to remember, so many years after the fact with his bright young friends rotting in their graves for too many years, but there had been reason to believe that the people would rise. He had paid so little attention to any of it but there had been.

'Like the flowing of a tide, Paris coming to our side.' Yes, Courfeyrac, always. But tides went in and out just like the spirit and loyalty of their people. Who knew if even this revolution and new republic would last? He hoped that it would but it was just so hard to believe anymore when the people fighting today just looked and sounded so much like the people who had fought and been wrong and died back then.

And wasn't that about time for him to take his leave? He didn't belong there, in this moment of hope and idealism. Éponine could show up to lead him to his love and Enjolras would give him a look but what else could he do. It was Cosette.

He hadn't really introduced Cosette yet and he felt like he probably should. He didn't want to spend too much time on his love story (well, actually he'd be happy if he could just write nonstop about that and not any of the death and misery that everyone else went through but that wasn't relevant) but she needed to show up at some point as she was indirectly why he was still alive. Maybe she would not have much to do as an adult since her only involvement in the revolution was through him but he was sure that that would be fine. Cosette was just an amazingly wonderful person that she did not need a lot of time for people to fall in love with her.

First he would need to mention that she was, in fact, thinking about him and wanting him to find her. Cosette had been embarrassed to admit that in reality she had been starting to forget him. Not really, she swore, but had he never seen her again sooner or later she would have moved on. Sooner or later he probably would have just wasted away in despair. He understood her impulse to apologize but it was really unnecessary. She was not even able to go look for him (or get someone else to do it) like he had her and it was a long shot that they would ever meet again. Her way of living without him was a lot healthier than his.

And then…well, Cosette had never been a very curious person. Not at first. She remembered so little about her life before her father and the impressions that she did get scared her so she had never thought too hard about it. And then all she had ever known was her father's eccentricities that he had never explained so she had grown up knowing that she would never get any answers and so not even thinking to question. That had all changed once she had realized that her blind acquiescence to what the people she loved had decided had played a part in her father's death. He had tried to make her see that with her father and himself agreed to keep the two apart (and it was so difficult to blame himself but if it meant sparing her the blame then he would do it and gladly) that they would not let her stay in his life and she had acknowledged that but still wished that she had done more or at least tried.

He did not think that people would understand that, though. And he had to somehow get across the fact that Cosette did not know the truth and was, though she could never admit it to herself, chafing under her father's loving isolation.

So Valjean would come in right after she expressed her desire to see Marius again and to get something more out of life (he did not mind the implication that she fell in love with him because he was the first boy she really looked at because she could have easily stared at other boys and hadn't) and noticed how lonely she looked. He wished that he could do something, of course, but would not explain why he wouldn't.

She tried to get answers while still maintaining that she loved and respected him and they almost argued as he refused to tell her anything at all. Marius would have thought that he could have come up with some kind of story to explain it in all the years but, well, he hadn't. And even if he had managed to come up with something that wasn't illegal, there weren't really any positive reasons for hiding yourself away. He could not even use the Thénardiers trying to reclaim Cosette as that was cruel and she did not truly remember anyway. Valjean had spent most of his life in fear and he would not inflict that upon his daughter.

Defeated, Cosette went out to the garden to stare longingly through the gate.

He was making his way there, led by Éponine and in his unthinking joy perhaps hurting Éponine a little when he twirled her, and – just possibly – quoting some of those words that he had put in his booklet for Cosette. 'In my life you have burst like the music of angels, the light of the sun…'

Oh, he could so clearly recall his unbridled joy at the thought of finally, when he had nearly given up hope, seeing her again!

And she had just…been there and suddenly he had just forgotten all about Éponine.

He liked to think that he was much less awkward in real life (though he could barely remember what he had said, so caught up in every word that she had spoken) but with his general awkwardness at that point it would not surprise him even a little if he had just begun by confessing his love and later asking her name. Actually, come to think of it, it had taken them awhile to get around to names, hadn't it? Though he hadn't actually said that he was doing everything wrong.

Then after they introduced themselves they sang about their love and Éponine was singing in the background about how he was never going to love her. It was very sad, true, but also a little rude to just cut into someone else's love song like that. They had nothing to feel guilty about. Then Valjean must have heard something or just went to check on Cosette and she wasn't there as he came to make her go back inside and Marius just barely managed to avoid being seen.

She went inside and he left and sort of forgot that Éponine was still there. It was a good thing, too, because who better to chase Valjean away than the Thénardiers? He had never been sure just why Valjean had planned on going to England just then. Obviously he was worried about his cover but why then? It couldn't be seeing Javert because that had been months before this.

He would have to make it up then.

Thénardier (he didn't think the woman would be with him for something this crude) was there with his gang. Given how little he seemed to care that his son, wife, and daughter were dead (if he even knew) he thought the best way to get that across and to try and move him from vaguely comedic figure to outright sinister figure was to have him not recognize Éponine and call her a hussy. One of his men knew who she was and that might have had some unfortunate implications all on its own.

Thénardier tried to make Éponine go home as they didn't need her and she clearly saw what was going on because she had had experience with these things and was, in some ways, more worldly at seventeen than he was even now. She tried to talk them out of it. Why? Who knew. He wasn't there anymore. Perhaps she did not want to see anyone hurt. Perhaps she could not hurt him in this way. They would not listen so she threatened to scream. Her father threatened her and so she did. It was too dangerous to rob it, then, as everyone would be on their guard and the police might even come.

Éponine stood by still as Valjean decided that that clearly feminine-scream must be Javert and it meant that Javert had found him after all this time. That…didn't actually make a lot of sense and made it sound like not only did Valjean think that Javert was obsessed with him but was mildly obsessed himself if that was his first thought. But perhaps it was just the paranoia of seeing Javert earlier that day.

Valjean would take no chances and had no reason to stay in that particular house. Until earlier that evening, neither had Cosette. She had tried to plead with him when he wanted her to pack immediately and set off but he was too busy worrying about himself and what would befall her if he were caught to pay any heed to her cries. She had managed to leave a note but once more Éponine took it. Perhaps he should not judge this altered version of Éponine too harshly, though. While in real life he had gone to the house to look for her, here he had just met her and was busy with the revolution so probably would not have thought to find her again until after the barricade, by which point he would be dead with no Valjean to save him.

Once Éponine took the letter….well, Marius had no way of ever knowing if this had happened but it would not surprise him in the slightest if she had wandered around in the rain talking about how much she wished he loved her. That was something suitably dramatic enough to suit Éponine and her regard for his 'passionate nostrils.'

Oh, but now so much was going on at once in those last, desperate hours before the funeral! This Éponine did think to tell him that she saw Valjean and Cosette driving away and he had desperately rushed to the garden to try and find her, even pounding on the door and wouldn't that have been awkward if Éponine had been mistaken or the trip was shorter than she'd thought and Valjean had come to the door. Valjean and Cosette were leaving and sitting pretty far apart in the carriage, each lost in their own worry and unhappiness. Enjolras was thinking happy thoughts of building barricades. The Thénardiers were trying to rob people. Javert was planning on going undercover even though he was a rather well-known police officer (especially in this version where he was literally the only police officer that ever appeared in the tale and therefore seemed to be the only one in all of France). The revolutionaries (including the Thénardiers who were still there to rob things) were all hoping for a better day to come. Éponine was still miserable because she was on her own. He…probably actually had a choice to make this time. Whereas before it was 'no Cosette so must die at barricade' here it might actually be 'must find Cosette but must not abandon brothers of revolution. Will find Cosette when this is done.' And he and Cosette, of course, would be thinking about their lost love while Valjean just wanted to get as far away from it all as he could.

Did he even speak English? Going to England was probably not the best plan if he didn't. Perhaps Belgium might have been better.

Then it was the funeral. He had barely bothered to respond to the invitation Courfeyrac had issued to the funeral. What if he had said yes? He certainly wouldn't have known that he was attending a rebellion. Would anyone have told him or would they have assumed that he was not quite that oblivious?

He liked to think that had he actually been at the funeral and the start of the rebellion that he would have acquitted himself admirably. He didn't do too badly at the barricade (for all that he sometimes wondered if the mass-deaths were his fault since he was the reason their barricade took so long to fall and theirs was the only barricade to end so tragically.

He wrote out a nice funeral rebellion scene from what he had read of the accounts of others and tried to make his part impressive but nothing overly pretentious since he had not actually been there. Everyone was so nervous and tense when they all started chanting about how the people would rise. Do you hear the people sing, singing the songs of angry men…And then they started to storm out and take over the funeral hearse but it wasn't until one jumpy soldier panicked and perhaps didn't even intend to kill an innocent woman that it turned violent. Perhaps it was inevitable. What would happen if no one fired? Someone would have to fire eventually or else the rebels would have stood there forever and the just claimed that street.

Then came the barricade. He liked to think that he could be more professional than Grantaire who did not believe in anything but Enjolras if he was there and so he would tell Grantaire, who was back at the barricade and flirting with a girl on his lap, to get off his ass because it had started. But wait…didn't he put Grantaire at the funeral? He had no idea if he was really there or not but since he, Marius, had been there why not Grantaire? Though he had no idea how he had managed to get from the funeral to the Café so quickly. Maybe he needed a drink after all of that and before the rest started.

Enjolras would need a spy and what better way to involve Javert than to have him volunteer to help spy? It was a better plan than whatever he was planning originally with his empty gun and his clear police identification and his sitting quietly in the corner working.

And then time had passed and Javert came back. He gave them some information and Gavroche saved the day by identifying him as a police inspector who, by virtue of not sharing this fact, was probably a spy. His defiant 'shoot me now or shoot me later' and 'death to each and every traitor' removed any doubt that might have been there.

Marius, despite it all, had a deep-seated respect for Inspector Javert and so he decided that it took Grantaire and Courfeyrac to hold him back and even that wasn't enough as he still managed to punch Enjolras in the face and had to be taken down with a weapon before being tied up properly to await a future execution.

And then the guard would have come, he supposed.

Marius had not actually been present for this, for "Whose there?" "French Revolution!" but he had heard about it, afterwards. It became part of the legend.

The shooting had started after that and then…Well as much as he tried to find another reason for it, perhaps these National Guardsmen were just more violent and bloodthirsty than the ones at the other barricades, the only reason he could think for it ending the way it did was the fact it had taken too long to bring that barricade down. And the only reason that that had happened…

He wrote this part out quickly, trying to make it take as little time as possible. The barricade was being breached only a few short minutes after the fighting had started. Some would have died but not everyone. At that point, with Valjean not yet there, he was the only one who might have died who had not been meant to die and whatever happened to any of the others could only have been the same or better than what had really happened to them. But he hadn't been thinking of that. He had just wanted to save them. Like everything in those days, however, it all went horribly wrong.

He took that gunpowder and threatened to blow up the whole barricade, killing all of the National Guardsmen if they did not did not retreat. They pointed out that he would kill himself, too. Well of course he would. He was the one holding the gunpowder. That was actually a little insulting that they thought they had to tell him that. He hesitated briefly but he would have done it. His friends would have understood. Oh, but perhaps he had better put someone getting annoyed with him for nearly killing them all because it was one thing to go out fighting but another to just be blown to hell by Marius trying to save them. He picked a name out of the air. Combeferre. Combeferre who had gone on at length about how those five men had a duty to leave even though everyone was there to die. Well, it wasn't perfect but it would do.

And while everyone at the barricade accepted at least the possibility of death, the National Guard expected to mostly survive that insurrection. Marius knew that more than likely the ploy would work.

And it had. But someone had tried to shoot him before he had a chance to blow them all up and if he was going to write about his mistake then he could also give Éponine her proper death. For all that his being driven to suicide was largely (though not entirely) her fault – and only in reality, not this version – she had still died to save him. She had outright told him as she lay dying that she still wanted him to die but did not want to watch him die but she had intended to save him for a few minutes or hours still and she had, however unintentionally, saved his life in general as he had never managed to get himself killed after that.

Éponine saw the gun trained on him. He had seen it, too, but what could he do? He could not back down and, even shot, he could still light the fuse. She had pointed the gun at herself. He wished she had had pointed it away from anybody but perhaps there had been no time. He said 'perhaps' because she had come there to die just as surely as he had. Well, not here. Here she had not been seeking death but had had no choice but to die if she wanted him to live.

He had taken the time to wait with her while she had died because he had known her and she had died to save him (and then he was transfixed in horror after hearing her confession) and since they were friends here he felt he should do more. She would have appreciated dying in his arms, he thought. He was going to take out the part where she asked him to kiss her corpse because while he could understand a girl who loved him wanting a final kiss before she died, wanting to be kissed after her death just stank of desperation. He did not want that part of Éponine, as prevalent as it was in reality, to taint her final moments here.

As her friend, he would have been devastated and she would have tried to comfort him, he thought. She was always trying to make him feel better even if his problems tended to be more of the 'I must find a girl' variety than the 'everything about my life is terrible and I literally have nothing to live for but a boy who barely remembers me' kind. She would have to give the letter but she would just apologize for taking it and not telling him and not be incredibly creepy and talk about her plan to kill him.

And then she would be gone and they would lay her body respectfully with the others.

It might seem a little callous for him to read the letter immediately after Éponine was gone but sitting there sadly would not have helped anyone and he would have known, as he had in reality, that he could die at any moment and didn't want that to happen before he saw what she had written. Besides, he had thought he would never see her again! Of course he had to know what she had written.

He didn't really need to include the contents of the letter. The only important part (well, important to the story. He could still tell you exactly what that letter had said) was that it gave her new address.

One of the reasons he had asked Gavroche to deliver the reply was because he had just found out that he was a Thénardier as well and had wanted to save him since he had failed to save the sister. But how could he really just randomly introduce a family relationship here at the barricade? Just because that was how it had really happened didn't make it seem any more organic. But even without outright mentioning their relationship (they were still related in his head even if he never wrote it down), he still had a letter to send and a kid to try and save and who better to deliver a message than Gavroche who made his living doing things like that?

Gavroche would take the letter to the house and of course Valjean would answer the door because he was always paranoid and that night more paranoid than most. And then he would still require payment because Gavroche was Gavroche and needed to eat. Who needs charity when you've got honest work?

He didn't actually see how Valjean reacted to the letter he sent about how he loved Cosette and was going to die (he was going to change the wording of that note just a little to make it less embarrassing now) but he didn't really have to. He knew that Valjean had tried to separate them when the two had just been staring at each other and never spoke and that once he had decided to rescue him from the barricade he made an otherwise impossible marriage go forth smoothly and the moment the marriage was done he began to withdraw from Cosette's life (not fast enough for his tastes, Marius thought shamefully) when he knew for a fact that doing so would kill him.

Valjean was devastated at the announcement that Marius and Cosette were in love and knew that it would literally ruin his life. He went out on a suicide mission to save Marius anyway.

In real life, of course, Valjean was already a member of the National Guard and the idea that he had managed to be recruited into that despite being a convict never stopped being incredibly funny to him. Valjean would probably have been upset at his amusement but, well, the irony! Plus he was practically the only member of the National Guard on the right side that night but Valjean couldn't have cared less about the revolution. He didn't want to have to get into all of that on how, exactly, he had come to be a member of the National Guard so he could just change that to Valjean hitting a member of the National Guard on the head and stealing his uniform.

He had to come dressed as one not, as in reality, so he could save a man but so he wouldn't get himself shot trying to approach. And yes, the others National Guardsmen probably thought it was weird that one of their own was going by himself to see the barricade but it's what really happened and so it must have all worked out.

They let him in the barricade, of course, but even if it hadn't been for Javert being a spy then they still would have been suspicious. In reality, he had vouched for Valjean as he was Cosette's father but here he did not know this man and so everyone trained their weapons on him. Admittedly, it would be a pretty poor spy who openly dressed as a member of the National Guard and then tried to win their trust but if they let that convince them to trust the man and he was a spy then it would actually be a brilliant tactical decision.

They probably wouldn't have shot him since they did not shoot Javert and they actually knew that he was a spy but he probably would have been tied near Javert. Gavroche might be able to identify him but he only saw him for two minutes so there was no guarantee he was not a member of the National Guard. But what if snipers came? Marius could vaguely recall Valjean shooting at a sniper's helmet and everyone wondering why he did not shoot to kill or even wound since he had proven his shooting abilities later on. Valjean could grab the gun that Enjolras had confiscated and shoot at the men here, proving what side he was on. And since everyone else's attention was focused on him, he would be the only one to notice the sniper's sneaking up on them so that he was the one to alert everyone and save the day.

As such, Enjolras would be sure to thank him and Valjean would be quick to take advantage of this to get permission to execute Javert.

Javert would expect to be killed but Marius knew that he drowned himself so something else must have happened. What, he couldn't begin to imagine. Javert would probably taunt Valjean the same way he had taunted the others (well, in this story not necessarily in real life) and Valjean would just sort of cut him loose and tell him to go. Javert wouldn't want to listen because Valjean was a convict and he didn't like pesky shades of gray getting in the way of his black and white world (or at least that was how he had been described after his death) but what was he going to do if Valjean wouldn't kill him? Go back inside and get someone else to? He probably didn't actually want to die at that point even if he killed himself a few hours later.

He'd try and work it out, he supposed, figuring that Valjean just wanted something from him. But Valjean did not. To prove his good intentions (though this part could not possibly have been true because Valjean could not have been that stupid with Cosette to consider, especially since he didn't know if Marius was going to live and Cosette would be scandalized and possibly destitute) he would even tell Javert where he lived. Though seriously that would be the stupidest thing to do ever so there's no way that actually happened.

Then Javert reluctantly stumbled away to get away from Valjean insisting that he was a good person. He would have no reason to try and save Javert since Javert was not someone who had helped him here and so when they heard the gunshot it did not matter how long it took. Marius liked to think that, saint or not, Valjean would have aimed the shot to hit very near Javert's head. Javert would have been in no real danger as Valjean was an expert shot but Valjean really deserved that after everything Javert put him through as he wasn't going to allow himself any other satisfaction.

Then it would be night because the attacks did not resume for a few more hours. The students should probably have a nice bonding moment where it was made clear once again how close everyone was and how much they had to live for. It meant more when someone like Enjolras died when they had a future and everything going for them than it did when someone like Éponine did since she had literally nothing in her life and was probably happier to just end it now. That did not make Éponine's death any less sad, just sad in a different way because dying here was her happy ending while there was so much else Enjolras could have done.

And someone must have said his name at some point so Valjean knew who he was. Though Valjean was very quiet the entire time he was there, whatever quiet introspection he must have been going through did not suit the medium of this book very well and was unknowable to Marius anyway so he'd have to make something up.

Well…he wanted Marius to live, obviously, since he was there to save him and he would know that Marius was as close to a son as he was going to get if he married Cosette. He was probably feeling very old and looking toward the end of his life since he had resolved to go die right after the wedding. And was it just him or was that really melodramatic? Even after all this time, his just literally refusing to live anymore if Cosette were not by his side? They had spoken to the doctor after he died. He hadn't literally starved to death but he had refused to get up or eat or drink all that much water towards the end and if it wasn't exactly suicide then it was pretty close! Not even he had been that bad when it came to never seeing Cosette again and, unlike with Marius himself, that was entirely (mostly) his own choice!

But anyway, none of that was going in here. Instead, the night passed quietly for them while all of the other barricades fell. Enjolras offered them all one last out but no one took it because that sounded far more heroic. Anyone who really needed to leave could do so quietly instead of letting everyone know they were abandoning them. And then the attack came again. They didn't have much gunpowder and so Gavroche went out to get more. Courfeyrac had to be bodily held back from going after him. He did not know if Gavroche and Courfeyrac had really been close but if any of the students would have watched out for Gavroche then Courfeyrac would have. Once Gavroche was shot (he can still remember this. Gavroche singing his defiance and those monsters in the National Guard shooting a 'warning' shot and then shooting to kill and Gavroche, oh poor brave Gavroche, being worth so much more than any of his cowardly murderers) then Courfeyrac dashed out to bring him back in and at least the National Guard had the decency not to kill him for darting out there as well.

It wasn't like he didn't understand that the National Guard would be signing their own death warrants if they let Gavroche retrieve that ammunition but he was a child. He never would have tolerated being addressed as thus but that was what he was. A child with no chance, no choice, no hope, no future who never got a chance to grow up and realize this for himself.

Things got hectic after that. Men running to locked doors, begging to be let in but to no avail. Everyone was being shot, he was shot, he knew nothing of what had happened. He hadn't seen Grantaire in ages, had assumed he had just fallen asleep drunk upstairs. He probably had. He had not recovered in time to see Enjolras clutching a flag and resting Christ-like out the window while Grantaire was lying at his feet, a perfect representation of their relationship in life. He did not have to make up that that had happened, though, because it had made a big enough impact on the National Guardsmen that killed them that that story had survived to reach his ears.

Enjolras, alone but defiant to the end, patiently waiting for death. They didn't want to shoot him but he was the leader of that particular barricade and had killed one of their own leaders and would not deny it. They still hesitated and that gave Grantaire time enough to stumble out of nowhere, grasp what had happened, and proclaim himself – probably for the first time – to be a believer in the cause and a fighter for the republic. He had made his way over to Enjolras, heedless of everything else, and asked 'Do you permit it?' Enjolras smiled and took his hand and they had died together.

He was changing so much of the story already but he would not change that, not for anything.

Valjean had escaped with him in the sewers because there was nowhere else to go, not with him carrying a half-dead revolutionary even if he was still dressed as a National Guardsmen (and he hadn't been in reality). He had told Cosette that her father had carried him like a babe and that was the story he was sticking to, no matter what he knew of the filth of the sewer system. It just made the rescue all that much more impressive but at the same time…he'd rather just move quickly past that.

Thénardier was there to show him the way out, of course, because he had to have seen him there in order to later let Marius know the truth of his survival and think that he saw Valjean with a dead body. He had managed to cut a strip of cloth from the body – that is to say, Marius – to prove the story but, well it was kind of a stupid idea. Yes it proved what happened to Marius himself because he had the clothes he had been wearing preserved and could fit the strip of fabric into the missing bit but what if he had been literally anybody else? What did an old strip of fabric prove? No, Thénardier could take his family ring instead. He did not actually have it with him at the time but maybe revolutionary Marius brought it with him from his grandfather's and would wear it to a barricade. Well, real Marius couldn't make all the stupid choices now could he?

And then he ran straight into Javert because his grandfather's people had said that two men had brought him home and who else besides Javert would take a look at the absolutely filthy and probably frightful-looking Valjean, and an apparent corpse and offer to escort him home? Why would Javert for that matter? But running into Valjean again gave him another chance to arrest him that he failed to take and explain why he promptly went and committed suicide.

Well, sort of. He still didn't really get it but apparently Javert was just really inflexible about things like good guys and bad guys (What was he, five? Even Marius at that point had been a little more understanding about Thénardier if not the man who really deserved that understanding). He needn't escort Valjean home, just let him pass when Valjean begged for just one more hour to save Marius' life.

Javert decided he could not live in a world where he owed his life to someone whose morals he did not approve of and where stealing a loaf of bread one time thirty-seven years ago did not make you the scum of the Earth forever and so he jumped into the Seine. Kind of melodramatic as well but it was the best he could do. No need to have him bother to resign and write a list of suggestions for improving things as a suicide note as that would take up too much time and just be weird. And frankly his idea was a lot more dignified than the generally accepted 'Well, I guess he must have been crazy.'

Then he was recovering and time was passing. The average citizens tried to justify their refusal to stand up and help his friends and others like them fight for them by dismissing them as foolish little schoolboys who had never held a gun despite the fact that most of them had been at the barricades in 1830 and knew exactly what they were getting into. He had not been, had barely been aware of it, but the rest were different and they did not deserve to be dismissed the way they were. The people thought that nothing could change? Well perhaps it couldn't if all they did was stand around and watch as heroes were cut down.

Marius had actually gone to the Café Musain once he had recovered and the place had been completely rebuilt and it was hard to believe that it had once been a battleground, had once been a place where his friends had fought and died. He had been shot there! And that near-death had made it so hard to clearly recall what had happened and explained why he had let himself forget Valjean's presence for how could something from the barricades belong in his happy life with Cosette? (It turned out Valjean had agreed but he had never meant to…Even when he thought he was a vile criminal, he had never wished harm on the man! Never wished him to die.)

He had missed the others, certainly, particularly Courfeyrac. But he knew that revolutionary Marius, with his actually believing in the cause and attending meetings, would miss them more and he tried to put his feelings into words, hoping that that would be enough.

Cosette was the reason that, even as distant as the others had been at times, he had survived losing all of them and everything else that had happened on the barricade. He did not want to bore his audience with tales of the many long hours that Cosette had just sat quietly with him, comforting him with her presence but he did not want to diminish how much she had done for him either so it was best to put all of that in just one scene.

Cosette was trying to get him to focus on their new life together and how she was never going to leave him like everybody else while all he could think about was who had saved him. Eventually, she got through to him and – though nothing verbal had ever really been said – Valjean was watching them, completely unnoticed, and sadly agreeing to let Cosette and Marius be together and have their happiness even though it would destroy his own.

Then Cosette left and Marius tried to welcome Valjean to the family but he was having none of it. He could not bring himself to write out those tortured last few weeks while he and Cosette were blissful so he would be kinder and only allow for a short (though unspecified) amount of time to pass between this moment and his eventual death.

If Valjean was not going to wait until after the wedding then he would at least wait until only a short while before the wedding to force himself to leave.

Valjean admitted to having once stolen a loaf of bread to save his sister's children (well, saying 'sister's son' really flowed better here but it was for them all) and gone to prison for nineteen years. He had broken parole and Cosette knew nothing. He did not want to hurt her by telling her, even though he was completely wrong about Cosette knowing being more painful than him just up and leaving. He definitely did not want to risk being caught and disgracing Cosette even though Javert appeared to be the only true threat and he was dead by then.

Here was where Marius was far kinder to himself as well. He did try to stop Valjean, however tentatively. He was just completely overwhelmed by it all and knew that Cosette would not just passively accept her father going missing. But Valjean would hit both of their weak points when he appealed to Marius to do this for Cosette's sake. How could he not do anything and everything for her sake? And then Valjean disappeared.

Cosette was devastated, of course, and did not understand or accept it but he was able to comfort her the same way that she had comforted him.

And then came the wedding and it was the most perfect thing ever, even if no one they really knew was there and it was all friends of his grandfather. He had forgotten to mention that the two of them were no longer estranged but such things happen after one party nearly loses the other and the second party has months before he could even think of leaving. Besides, Cosette deserved better than the room next to the Thénardiers.

Cosette was happy but almost wistfully so since her father did not come to her wedding and his absence on that day when he should have walked her down the aisle would be most glaring. She would not complain, though, not on this day and not to hurt him since he supposedly played no part in it.

Since he was not going to drag out Valjean's abandonment, that meant that the Thénardiers would have to crash the wedding. They would, too. And since he had never gotten around to having them get arrested, that meant that the female Thénardier was still around, as well.

He would be angry and horrified by their presence at his wedding since they were criminals (and maybe even say something about how Éponine deserved better because every version of Éponine really did) and then they would try to blackmail him. Since it would take too long to get into, here he did not believe that Valjean murdered Javert nor robbed Madeleine (He still cursed his stupidity about that last one sometimes. He knew that they were both convicts who gave generously and appeared like respectable, saintly men. Why didn't he connect them?), the only thing keeping him from seeking out Valjean was the man's own wishes. And once he saw that ring and confirmed that, though they tried to tell him Valjean was a murderer, he was a savior instead? Well, how could he not grab Cosette and go try to find him.

But not before absolutely not giving Thénardier money to start a slavery empire and instead just punching him, getting Valjean's location from him (How did he know? Well, how did he know about any of the rest? If he could unravel Madeleine then he could find Valjean), and throwing him out of the wedding.

This day's blessings are not over yet. That was what it was supposed to be.

But, inevitably, they came too late.

It hurt him to think about Valjean alone in the convent waiting patiently to die. It hurt even more to write about and so he sent the ghost of Fantine to keep him company, to thank him for his deeds when no one else would so blinded were they by society's unforgiving rules, and to lead him to heaven.

That was when Cosette rushed in, demanding to know if he was alright and asking why he would leave her. He didn't answer, of course, because he never did. He just reveled in her presence and asked, unknowingly heartbreakingly, if he was forgiven for the sins committed too long ago to possibly matter anymore.

Marius would try to explain himself then, to apologize, and to let Cosette know just what a saint her father was while there was still time. Valjean wouldn't be very interested in that, though, preferring to gaze upon Cosette and think himself fortunate that – having been driven to his death – he could at least see his beloved daughter once more. Cosette would tearfully beg him to live and that would make him smile and promise to try but it was too late. He would give her the confession (as if there was anything he really needed to confess at this point), the story of the woman who had always loved her and gave her life for her and the man who had turned from hating and only learned to love (relearned after Toulon, perhaps) when Fantine entrusted Cosette to him.

And then it would be over.

Cosette would be as heartbroken as she was when it had really happened, sadder than he had ever seen her and he could only cling helplessly to her and wonder why his mistakes could have such tragic consequences but thanking God that he had not arrived too late as was the case with his own father.

And as for Valjean…he would be led away by Fantine and see the bishop again and finally end up in that great barricade in the sky where all of his friends were and Fantine and where they were all happy and free and could finally stop fighting and stop suffering. A land that maybe they would all see one day. A land that maybe, just maybe, this newest revolution was going to bring about.

Javert wasn't there, though, and he hoped that people did not think it was because his suicide consigned him to hell (although, chances are, people would absolutely think that). He just could not see Javert being happy at treasonous barricade heaven and since it was heaven he simply would not be there. He could be at lawful ordered society heaven or something.

And…that was that. He and Cosette had mourned and recovered and lived and loved and had a family and fifteen years had passed since that day.

That was the story of the revolution, or at least how he would have liked it to play out, and let the people make of that what they would.

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