Author's note: This is directly inspired by a prompt on tumblr, which I would be happy to provide to anyone interested. The gist of it is "Modern AU with Les Amis as criminals." Though it is marked as a chaptered story, each chapter should be able to stand on its own. They may build on each other as the worldbuilding gets more elaborate but I don't foresee any multi-chapter arcs. If that changes I'll mark them clearly.
Disclaimer: Les Miserables belongs to the Estate of Victor Hugo and the producers of both film and musical. I am earning no money from this work of fiction.
What the news calls them depends on the day and the current trends in public opinion. Gang is always a popular label, with dangerous criminals appearing nearly as often. Sometimes it's even terrorists, if the networks are feeling brave or controversial. To government officials they're dissidents, dangerous and threats to national security. Satirical columns and websites call them freedom fighters and dare anyone to object. Kids on the street, the ones with no home and no bread and no future, call them crazy or inspirational and definitely not to be fucked with. Some call them the future's best hope, some call them the bringers of certain destruction.
They call themselves Les Amis.
The name was Enjolras' idea, a holdover from back when they thought this could all be sorted out peacefully. Les Amis de l'ABC they'd been then, most of them students, all of them hopelessly naïve. Friends of the abased, allies to the oppressed, speakers for the voiceless. Enjolras had shown up every day bursting with new ideas and inspirational slogans and grand visions of the future. He'd burned with undiluted, earnest conviction and his fire drew the others to him like moths to a flame until they too began to believe.
Five years and countless failures later Enjolras still burns, but his flames have turned into agents of destruction, incinerating any who get too close. His idealism darkened to anger to hatred to rage. He inspires destruction now, drives his friends to create chaos instead of revolution, to obliterate what cannot be moved. He'd tried playing by the rules and managed nothing, had followed the script given to people like them and been spurned by the very populace he sought to raise up. Enjolras is no longer Apollo, burning with the sun's pure light, but Lucifer, thrown from the heaven he loved and determined to bring it all crashing down to join him.
Les Amis are more than willing to help.
"The tyrant's speech is tomorrow." Courfeyrac leans back slightly in his chair, looking around at the group. They meet in an abandoned café, once owned by the Patron-Mignet gang, now given to Enjolras and his friends. "Are we prepared?"
Around him the other members of the group nod. Some grin. Jehan flicks his lighter on and it gives his delicate features an almost demonic glow. Eponine's produced a knife from somewhere in the folds of her ragged clothes and has it balanced on one finger.
"We need to make a statement," Enjolras says. Alone of all the Amis he carries no weapons. Enjolras strides through the destruction his friends create and no one dares touch him, not even his most avowed enemies. "They're expecting us."
"Well then, let's not disappoint." Bahorel grins wolfishly. Next to him Grantaire nods and drains the last of his bottle of wine. His hands are steady despite the amount of alcohol in his system, and he watches Enjolras' every move out of habit now rather than necessity. Alone out of all of them Grantaire has retained a shadow of their original ideals, spray-painting messages of freedom and revolution across Paris' buildings and bridges in sprawling handwriting.
"It's been a while since we did something big," Marius observes. "Maybe they think we're gone for good."
"Their mistake," Bahorel says. Of all Les Amis he enjoys the chaos the most. Jehan might revel in the indiscriminate destruction of fire and Eponine might draw her strength from the moment when a peaceful crowd turns to a riot but Bahorel personifies chaos itself, a gleeful Ares who cares more about the fight than its outcome.
The others all nod. Combeferre pulls out a crumpled diagram of the Champs Elysees and starts going over the plan one last time. Eponine's knife has vanished back into her dress and her sharp eyes follow Combeferre's evocative gestures closely. Next to Marius Cosette leans forward, hands folded daintily in her lap and face arranged into an expression of pleasant interest. Cosette will flatter you as she kills you and her once delicate white gloves are stained rust brown with blood.
They break for the night at last, scattering alone or in pairs as they head back to their homes. Enjolras stays in the now deserted café, pouring himself a glass of wine and prowling up and down before the unused fireplace. Even in the darkness his eyes seem to glow slightly with the inhuman light of conviction and anticipation.
The packed Champs Elysees rings with cheers. Feuilly, with a performer's sense of timing, cuts the power just as the president's speech reaches its apex, and Combeferre lets off a round of bullets aimed at the president and his entourage just a moment after. None of them touch the man himself – his guards have been well trained and they dive to get him out of the way the moment the microphone fails. Cosette and Marius turn on the crowd they infiltrated and Jehan starts counting down the thirty seconds before he can start the blaze. It hasn't rained in several days, unusual for Paris, and the city is ripe for burning. Enjolras and Grantaire wait from their vantage point a little ways removed from the crowd, the one unarmed as ever and the other holding a can of spray paint in one hand and an unlit Molotov cocktail in the other.
Jehan lights his fuses and the screams of the crowd increase. Eponine darts in, face alight with delight and with hunger. She's got knives in both hands, sliver blades gleaming in the growing fire. Within minutes her face and arms are covered in blood. She moves lightly, childhood ballet training combining with an adolescence spent picking pockets to give her almost impossible grace. Hers is a dance of murderous intent as she drinks in the crowd's fear and sinks her knives into their flesh. Bahorel too wades into the crowd, wolfish grin back as he knocks a man down and watches his fellow civilians trample him to death.
Grantaire has slipped off, picking his way through the outer edges of the crowd towards the presidential palace. The president and his entourage are in as much chaos as the spectators, though they're mostly untouched by the spreading violence. He gets behind them with little trouble and opens his can of spray paint, unlit cocktail carefully at his feet.
In the crowd Eponine and Cosette cross paths, both spattered with blood from the veins of others. They exchange grins, Eponine's manic and Cosette's eager. Light as birds both, with smiles that hide razors and fingers coated in poison. Bahorel pushes past them, expression filled with unholy delight. Jehan moves through the growing riot to join him and the two stand back to back, lithe poet matching robust fighter blow for blow.
The sound of sirens heralds the arrival of the authorities. Enjolras, previously removed from the main fighting, strides through the crowd which parts for him like an obedient sea. He stands face to face with the head of the National Guard, his beautiful face terrible in the flickering light of the growing inferno. The guardsmen raise their guns when they see him and he raises his hands, not in surrender but in challenge. They are streaked with red paint, drops of which fall to the ground like blood.
"Stand down!" the chief guardsman barks. "Or we shoot."
"I am the people," Enjolras replies, voice pitched above the roar of crowd and fire. "You cannot shoot a dream."
The guardsman makes a vicious hand gesture, the order to shoot. Within moments the air is thick with bullets. When the smoke of discharging guns clears Enjolras is nowhere to be found. A pair of red handprints sit defiantly where he stood mere moments before, paint still fresh. The rest of the Amis have similarly vanished from sight, leaving nothing but the still blazing inferno, a trail of dead bodies, and Grantaire's scrawled slogans to mark their passing.
Joly and Combeferre patch them up. The battered television in the back of the café runs footage of the riot. Grantaire's graffiti is not shown on tv, but it doesn't matter. It's been seen by those who matter and already word is spreading that this is only the beginning. The Amis have been active for five years, but this is their most audacious appearance in months and the authorities are suddenly antsy.
Combeferre finishes bandaging the last of Bahorel's wounds and turns towards Enjolras, face set. The blond leader was left not completely untouched; some stray bullets nicked him and his left hand sports a bright red burn. He pulls away from Combeferre's touch. "I will keep my scars," he says. "As long as France bleeds then so do I."
Combeferre and Courfeyrac exchange glances, more than accustomed to their friend's stubbornness in this respect.
"You cannot bandage the wounds of France if you die of your own," Combeferre says firmly. "And you won't make much of a symbol if you grow weak with blood loss and infection."
Courfeyrac joins them, deliberately brushing against the still sluggishly bleeding flesh wound in Enjolras' side to make him grit his teeth in sudden pain. "Festering wounds are hardly dashing," he agrees. He sports a bandage of his own around his head and Combeferre bats his hand away before he's quite made up in his mind to touch it again.
In one corner of the room Marius sits with Cosette and Eponine, the three of them deep in conversation. They joined the group last, disaffected civilians all, each with their own story. There's Marius, whose father's loyal service to the government earned him only scorn and an unmarked grave, Cosette, raised by a convict, heart full of dreams crumbled into ash, and Eponine who's experienced the brutality of the system first hand in a way the others can barely imagine. No one knows how they met each other, or how they work as a trio, but they're as inseparable as Joly and Bossuet, as perfectly complimentary as Enjolras, Combeferre, and Courfeyrac. They're laughing now, heads bent together in shared merriment. Combeferre takes advantage of Enjolras' momentary distraction to dab burn cream on his hand and looks completely unrepentant when Enjolras shoots him a glare.
In the back of the room the television continues to play the news as one guest after the other assures the loyal public that the dissidents will be found and captured. At his table next to the screen Grantaire pours himself another drink and salutes the defense minister promising stricter curfews and threatening martial law should the criminals not be brought to justice, a sardonic grin on his face. "Vive la république," he says dryly and drains his glass.