Until the Earth is Free

Author's Note: A rare treat of an update (if another short chapter, ugh), though chances are there won't be another one 'til my return. I never expected to get a chance to write at all, let alone finish my Les Misérables oneshot, which you can now find on my page if you want to give it a read. It's called "You Raised My Child in Love" and is yet another story about Valjean and Cosette, though not a necessarily fluffy one ... Before I get too much off track though, please enjoy this chapter, luckily it isn't critical to this story's semi-plot so I won't leave you on any cliffhangers. I'm cruel, but not that cruel. and don't forget to leave a review on your way out!

One Important Note: After some consideration, I have decided to introduce chapter titles. While they won't be listed in the content of the story, they will be named in the browse function. I'm noting this because the next several titles will be taken from the lyrics to the Peg Dolls' nursery rhyme from the Doctor Who episode Night Terrors (season 6, episode 9). This will apply up to about chapter fifteen or sixteen.

Disclaimer: If I owned Les Misérables, I would be an old man over 200 years old. That would be rather strange. Take the hint that I do not in fact own Les Misérables.

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Chapter Eleven: Tick Tock Goes the Clock

August 11, 1831
297 days left

The graveyard was completely silent that morning, save for the cawing crow perched on a headstone. It belonged to an old woman who'd died in her bed, illness finally taking her ever-weakening body. That had been almost fifty years ago now, and now the stone was cracked, overgrown with moss, and covered in bird droppings, the engraved letters that spelled out the woman's name too worn to make out. Only the year she had been born was legible, that being the year 1717. A nearby headstone was much newer, only three years old. The deceased in question had been a young woman just twenty-one years old. The stone angel statue watching over her grave, with her severe wings spread out and her hands held out as if in prayer suggested wealth, but nobody had come to visit the grave in a very long time. A small bouquet of flowers sat at the foot of the headstone, wilted and covered in ants and the grass was not trampled. The crow on the old woman's headstone, bored, bristled its feathers, cawed again, and took off with a flap of his wings, leaving only a stray feather behind. The crow flew over the cemetery, still cawing unpleasantly. A young man just entering the graveyard ducked as the bird swooped and narrowly missed his head. The man shooed it away. "Away with you, bothersome creature! Go and rest on a tree and let me alone."

When the bird stubbornly perched itself on the nearest headstone - this one about twenty years old, belonging to some child, a boy of nine years who'd drowned in the Seine - Jean Prouvaire glowered at the crow. "I believe I told you to go away, my friend. To see a crow is one thing. To see a crow in a graveyard is bad luck indeed." When the bird did not move, he sighed and made his way down the overgrown path to the tree he liked to sit under and this time, the creature stayed put.

The student seated himself on one of the tree's fat roots and produced his small notebook, his pen, from the satchel he wore. The small notebook was tucked into a small pouch sewn to the bag's inside, and was well hidden amongst his fat law textbooks. A few months ago, there'd been no need to hide this notebook but recently, as its pages has filled with revolutionary, radical ideas, he'd decided it was best if the notebook remained a sort of secret, on the off chance his bag was rummaged through by ... well, someone. He knew that the search would not be thorough, having endured them numerous times before. Just a brief look before the bag was returned with a nod and he was sent off on his way.

It was here he best liked to write his poems. This cemetery was scarcely ever visited and Jehan felt the privacy. It was quiet here, when there were no crows screeching away. Indeed, he could spend over an hour hunched over the notebook, scratching away, only leaving when his pen ran out of ink and he was forced to return home to fetch his inkwell, which he disliked taking with him to his classes as it had a habit of leaking, and he saw little point in purchasing a new one. It was in privacy that his quiet genius was truly unleashed, the words spilling from mind to page - everything from haikus to free verse, sometimes even the limericks that irked him so if Courfeyrac nagged him into it - all in neat, tidy script carefully contained and confined, organized in a way his creative mind was not.

As his hands flew across the pages and his mind raced in a way the strict orderliness of the essays he submitted robbed him, Jean Prouvaire did not notice as the crow silently soared back, finding a place to roost on a branch above him. There, it stayed, watching over him in shadow.

::

August 12, 1831
296 days left

Enjolras' apartment was in its usual state of disorder. And the young man himself was in a state of panic, as he paced through the rooms. Or more accurately, climbed over stray pieces of furniture as he wrung his hands in frustration, tugged at his blond curls. He often got like this when under stress, and he was under stress more times than he could have fathomably counted. He found himself unable to do anything but wander the rooms, growling, screaming in frustration.

He was due to host a meeting today, as he always was. Yesterday was one of the rare occasions he had not done so, for Jehan had shown up at his door begging for more time to write the revolutionary poetry he should have finished days ago. And Joly, who lived only a few tenements down, had decided he was ill again. And Combeferre was supposedly too busy. Had Enjolras not been so tired, and had he not been struggling to write out the meeting's speech, then he would never have relented. But he had been tired. Utterly exhausted. So he'd agreed to run the meeting the next day.

Now, it was six o'clock, just two hours until the meeting was due to begin. And his speech was still unprepared. If he were a reasonable young man, like Combeferre, then he would have sat down at once to write in a hurry. But he was not reasonable.

The hour ticked by. At last, Enjolras gave in. He took his coat - a drab gray, like all boys of his class would wear - from its place where it was thrown over the mantle and, after shrugging it on, hurried to the Musain. He would simply have to improvise, something he found himself doing more and more often these days. It wasn't a great concern, for while he knew how to write a stirring speech, he was perfectly capable of making one up on the spot. Even so, he hated doing that - the others looked up to him as if he were a God, and they could always tell whenever he was simply pretending to have prepared his speech beforehand.

This was what it was like in his mind. The thoughts got ahead of themselves, and before he knew it, he was contradicting himself, only to go back to his previous opinion. Everything was plagued by thoughts of his revolution, a brilliant scarlet promise. Now, as he dashed down the street, he was spinning a speech in his head, deciding what was required next. The next step in birthing a new world.

And scarlet. All of it a harsh, angry, brilliant red of promise ...

Despite his haste, Enjolras was the first to arrive in the room upstairs. Not even a drunken Grantaire was present, or an overeager Gavroche. Usually, the boy would have been at the bar, drinking water and nibbling at the small cakes the bartender sometimes gave him out of charity. The man never listened to Gavroche's stubborn protests of, "I don't need no charity ... " and gave him the cakes anyhow. Today the little urchin was nowhere to be seen, and while Enjolras would usually be angered that nobody had arrived yet, today he was grateful. He collapsed into a chair, taking a look around the room's atmosphere. It was unchanged since his last renovation, and whether or not the Musain's owner was aware of his vandalism, he was unsure.

After what might have been an hour, the door to the upstairs room swung open. Enjolras glanced up to see Gavroche waltzing in. The young urchin shut the door behind him and pulled himself up to sit atop the counter in the back. His legs swung, heels hitting against the wood and making an irritating thwack every second or two. Gavroche seemed oblivious to this fact as he shed his vest and grinned broadly. "Hello, Enjy!" he said brightly.

Enjolras had returned to his musings. "Mhm," he answered.

Gavroche was stung by his friend's lack of a response, but he didn't show it. The grin he wore did not fail him and he returned to swinging his legs, making a point of hitting the wood hard with his feet in the hopes of irritating Enjolras, wishing he had shoes so as to make an even greater sound. When Enjolras showed no signs of yelling in frustration or scolding him, he retrieved his vest from where it had fallen on the floor. From its pockets he produced several small, worn strips of cloth in blue and red. At a time, they had been cravats and handkerchiefs, which he'd swiped from a display outside a shop on a visit to the wealthier parts of town. Holding them out in his small palm, the young boy crowed, "Look at what I've got."

Enjolras looked. "Whatever are they?"

"It is cloth," Gavroche retorted. "Cravats and handkerchiefs, once. I stole 'em meself. Thought we could wrap 'em around the wine bottles for decoration in here, seein' as they are in your favorite colors, Enjy." He smirked.

"Red and blue are the colors of the French flag," Enjolras said heavily, but he took the strips of cloth anyhow, secretly pleased with the boy. "And don't call me Enjy," he added.

In the next half hour, he worked silently on his speech while Gavroche set to work at carefully wrapping the strips of cloth around some of the wine bottles in the room. Once every so often the boy would attempt to strike up a conversation, only to be admonished by Enjolras, who was "trying to focus, for heaven's sake!". The sharp note in the young man's voice would temporarily silence the urchin, but in five minutes he would forget and again start going off on whatever came to mind, be it the weather outside, the opera he'd slipped into a few days ago, or even just what he made of the rats that scuttled through the slums in which he lived. When Gavroche came to the topic of his opinion on ladies' parasols, Enjolras realized the urchin was only doing this to irritate him. A threat to skin the boy alive was what it took to silence him in the end.

The eventual meeting went well. Much progress was made. Courfeyrac and Feuilly knew a place to purchase proper rifles. Jean Prouvaire had completely filled his notebook with revolutionary poetry and had just bought a new one. Bahorel had captured the interest of a lovely young woman he'd met in the street, in the name of their cause. Joly was recovered from his supposed malady. Marius showed up, and on time too! Enjolras' speech went well, and this time, nobody knew he had mostly improvised.

When the meeting was over it had begun to rain heavily. Gavroche pressed his nose against the window in misery. "Don't worry," Courfeyrac told the young boy, ruffling his hair. "If you wish you may spend the night in my flat."

"All right," Gavroche agreed. "But only if I race you there!" He knew his way to Courfeyrac's flat better than he did that of any other members of les amis. in fact, he was certain he could have gone with his eyes closed, but there was the risk of being run down by a passing carriage. And more than anything, he was up for a challenge.

"Very well, then," Courfeyrac agreed with a grin, and from there he and the boy raced from the room and down the stairs, laughing, him not caring that he was acting anything but his age of twenty-five. On his way out, Courfeyrac knocked over a chair draped in red tablecloth, where it made a noise loud enough to startle the Musain's customers downstairs.

The red fabric of the tablecloth gathered on the floor, pooled like blood.

Scarlet blood of angry men ...

::

In the heart of the city, near where the Arc de Triomphe de l'Étoile was nearly finished in its construction, two girls dressed in rags atypical of the wealthy neighborhood walked down the Champs-Elysses. They were following strict instructions from Thénardier, obeying only for fear of the beating he promised if they did not complete his task. He had ordered them to search for potential houses to rob the next night, discover who had a dog on watch or which home had the lowest fence. And most importantly, who had the best of riches. As far as the work he gave them, it was a kind task. Easy. Simple. To Éponine, it was almost instinctual, now.

"This home is a good one," Azelma said as she stood on her tiptoes to see over the low brick wall built around the house in question. "No dog in the garden."

"Number 47," Éponine noted. "We shall keep it in mind, then, Azelma." She didn't care about the robbery, but she did care about food on the table. A while back, even a month ago, she would have rebelled. She would have refused and taken the beating while maintaining her pride, her last shred of dignity. Now, she was smaller and weaker, doing what she was told. Heavens, she was becoming her sister. She knew that. And yet, she accepted it.

As the sisters looked closer in attempt to see through the windows, a crow fluttered down and decided to take its perch on the branch of a small bonsai tree in the home's garden. It was Azelma who saw it first. "Oh, no!" she cried. "We cannot take this house now."

"Whyever not?"

Azelma huffed in annoyance. "There's a crow. Can't you see it?" She pointed at the crow in question, who was still perched on the branch and ruffling his feathers.

Éponine looked. "I see it," she answered. "It's a lovely crow."

"Oh, why, you know what crows mean. They symbolize death," Azelma argued. Her hazel eyes were wide. "It's an omen, 'Ponine! If we rob this house then one of us shall surely die. It's been marked, you see." She turned away from the house and quickly began to walk away from it, apparently already having made a stubborn, sincere choice. Cursing, Éponine raced after her.

"I do believe you had told me it was ravens that signified death?" she said once she'd caught up with her sister.

"Oh, it's both," Azelma explained. "Ravens and crows."

"That sounds silly to me."

"It most certainly is not silly. You mustn't say that, 'Ponine."

Éponine laughed at her sister's superstition, but she dropped the subject. Instead, she stopped to inspect the next house and the two girls set to work at examining it. Were there gardeners? Maids? Dogs? They fell back into character easily, and the morbid crow was forgotten. But while it was forgotten, it still in fact existed, and long after the two girls in rags had turned a corner, it flapped its wings and called out before flying off and shadowing their steps.