BOOK FOURTEEN:

All Things Must Come to an End

Enjolras' Final Orders

Enjolras leaned against the barricade. He wondered when he would no longer feel Aurelie, then his wonder ceased. In this moment of clarity, he realized he would feel her, always, as long as she lived and breathed on this earth. He always had. Always.

Feuilly took charge of the redoubt, overseeing the men who placed the final cobblestones near the door to the café. When Enjolras caught Feuilly beckoning him over, he gently closed his eyes to clear the moisture that had been blurring his vision for several minutes now.

His heart was heavy. His body was heavy. His soul was heavy.

But as these men were all about to die, he forced himself to be present instead of wishing he could change the past. It was all he could do, now. Options had been presented, choices had been made, these which he had to live with and which he would have to die from.

"We're finished here," Feuilly said, brushing his palms together to clear the debris, then wiping them on his trousers.

"And the kitchen?" Enjolras asked, turning to Combeferre.

"Nailed shut," he responded. "Let us pray our wounded men will survive the assault."

Enjolras nodded firmly, refusing to think any further about the horrors that were about to transpire.

"Upstairs?" he asked.

Courfeyrac grinned. "Cobblestones are all in place. Heads will roll."

Enjolras turned to two men holding the axes. "Have those ready to chop up the staircase after we're up," he told them, his voice clipped but profoundly calm. He turned to address everyone in the area. "Everything we have left must be loaded and at the ready; muskets in hand, pistols at hips. Have your swords within reach for when our ammunitions run dry."

"And who will be drinking that?" Bossuet asked Enjolras, pointing at the dozen bottles of Aqua Fortis at their feet.

"They are," Enjolras said gravely.

Bossuet nodded at this, having suspected this answer already. "We'll take them up," he told Enjolras.

Aurelie heard a commotion coming up the stairs and shirked behind the billiard table. She watched Bossuet and Joly set the bottles of Aqua Fortis on a table just to the side of the staircase, then rush back down. She returned to her determined post at the front window; the post she would not leave.

It only then struck her that if they'd brought the bottles here, it was here they would run to for their last stand. She gazed around the room, her head swimming against a current of thought as she studied her options. She still had time to run, but that was most certainly not an option she would come close to considering. Not now. Her mind had made the decision without her consent, and determination was now fighting against her. Fighting away what was right for what was wrong.

There was the attic where citizens were hiding, though the army could end up there as well. For the first time, this anxiety was not out of fear of Enjolras spotting her. This was fear that the National Guard would when they inevitably had killed them all and would search the grounds for any surviving members of the Les Amis de l'ABC.

And still, if she died, she would die as a family.

Her eyes settled on a closet near Grantaire, hardly noticeable with its boards lining up directly with those that surrounded it. It would be the best she could do, and the very most, it seemed.

In surrender, she turned back around to peer through the hole.

Preparations for an attack are always methodical, and in this slow pace, Enjolras was able to stand in the middle of the street and survey those around him. The stones had been set in all windows: the barricade, while taking a beating, still stood strong, serving the purpose it had lived to be. He felt that since men like these were to die, their death should be a masterpiece.

He beckoned over Marius. "When it begins," he began, as though it hadn't even begun at all. "I'm to give the last orders inside. You will stay and keep watch."

Marius nodded. He had promised Aurelie he would protect Enjolras, and would until he died. When the men were offered an escape, he should have insisted Enjolras leave instead of whispering his vote in hopes Enjolras would understand. Let everyone know that he had a wife in the form of Aurelie; someone they all loved deeply. They would have let him go. It was Enjolras who would not have allowed it, and Marius knew the reason he hadn't. It would have destroyed his life from here on to be sold out to those who venerated him. So the most Marius could do was live up to his promise even though they were both to die.

Enjolras spoke his final orders with determination and resignation:

"Twenty men at the barricade, now. Six in ambush at the window of the first floor to open fire on the assailants through the loopholes in the cobblestones. Shortly, when the drum beats the charge, let the twenty from below rush the barricade. Those who arrive first get the best view."

The barricades death throes were about to begin.

And the moment Enjolras completed his final orders, the drum beat the charge.

The Death of the Barricade

Enjolras ran for the barricade and deftly climbed atop and to the left, placing his body in the nook between the stairs and the great rise. He could see between splinters of wood from this obscured position that on the other side, National Guards were running toward them, the drum picking up tempo, bugles blaring in the distance.

Against the cannon fire, the barricade held as sappers approached with axes, behind them men with bayonets.

The assault was so frenzied that for a moment the barricade was overrun with assailants; but it shook off the soldiers the way a lion shakes off dogs and was covered in besiegers the way a cliff gets covered in snow.

They would reappear. Scale. Meet death at the hands of those on top. Fade. Scale again.

Enjolras had the entire barricade in his head, as he always had. He held himself in reserve while they still could, allowing the barricade to serve its purpose. He saved all his strength and ammunition, at one point eyeing Marius at the opposite end to be sure he was doing the same. When he turned back and noticed two soldiers a meter in front of him, he saw them fall in that very moment without the soldiers ever meeting his eyes.

It was at a second glance that he found Marius now fighting out in the open. They had fallen from Marius' gun, and he wielded a sword as deftly as a dancer. He was making himself the target over Enjolras, sacrificing himself first so Enjolras could lead until the final body had fell.

They were losing their bullets, but not their wit.

Enjolras saw that Courfeyrac had lost his cap and began to laugh, drawing attention to himself from Bossuet, who followed his eyes and asked of Courfeyrac, "What happened to your hat?"

"They finally got rid of it for me with cannon fire."

While not joking around, they spoke of their higher call.

"Does anyone—" cried Feuilly bitterly, "understand these men"—and with that he began to list many names, known to all of them—"who promised to come and join us, who swore they would help us, and who were bound to do so in all honor. These men who were to have been our generals and who have deserted us!"

Combeferre smiled gravely. "There are people who observe rules of honor the way you and I observe the stars: from afar."

Still the barricade held. Thousands to the few, but it was the few who had a fortress. Atop the high wall, they could shoot down upon any soldier whom they felt had grown too near, and it was done with ease, one bullet able to kill them without the careful aim one needs from a distance.

Aurelie watched from her nest, amazingly calm. She had come to accept the inevitable in a way she'd thought she had days ago, but only realized it in the last hour. Her acceptance was serene. There was no separation save for the cobblestones; the glass having been shattered by the cannon that killed the two men earlier. Still, from above like a bird, the picture was clear.

She saw the blood soak their coats from their wounds, and with their very few bullets and chipped swords, these men had turned to Titans. Like the peaks of the highest mountains, many men tried to be the first atop the world, and failed over and over again.

Despite the macabre scene, Aurelie watched on with pride, a pensive smile on her lips. These men—these Titans—her nearest and dearest—men she had loved—These men and their barricade were perfection to their final breaths.

In the next half hour, Bossuet was killed. Feuilly was killed. Courfeyrac was killed. Joly was killed. Combeferre, run through with three thrusts of a bayonet to the chest just as he was lifting a wounded comrade, only had time to look to the sky as he breathed his last.

Aurelie swore he met her eyes.

She said each of their names aloud as they fell, so each man had a woman who loved and honored them.

With their positioning on either side of the barricade, though fully atop and leaning against staircases, Marius and Enjolras fought on. Aurelie could barely recognize Marius from his many wounds, most to his head. His face was covered in blood, yet he fought on, the dead giving reckoning to each and every man who dared near him.

Enjolras, in an act of defiance to the world and God, was still unscathed. Not a scratch on his skin, not a tear in his clothes. When he attempted to fire with his musket and found it empty, he threw it at a soldier hard enough to kill the man with the force of it, then picked up one of the swords. He swung left, then right, then left again, slicing men open. When he lost one of his four swords, he simply picked up another until all he had left was a stump.

With no more generals left, their dead bodies now a part of the barricade, a cannon fired at the top, its aim to bring down what they could not with soldiers meter by meter. While the balls themselves did not breach, they were making dents. We explain the repulsive actions of this army by saying that those who fired the cannons paid no mind to their own men ahead of them at the barricade, continuing their attempts to scale as Enjolras and Marius, on either side, kept up their fight. These National Guardsmen were disposable in the eyes of the generals who ordered the fire, and were killed by their kinsmen who lit the fuse.

But Aurelie noticed that the rubble was giving a slant to the barricade on both sides, killing two birds with one cannonball. This made it easier for those soldiers to climb as the top began its descent, an avalanche; a glacier's cleave.

These were things only a bird could see, but as the men noticed the National Guardsmen were now able to scale the top, Aurelie watched her beloved insurgents begin a new direction: fight or flight. The moment self-preservation won out, and they made for the café—their redoubt—with the same wishful thinking that had struck Aurelie: that perhaps this unholy place would offer their salvation. A tower in a fort offered more safety than the ground below, but the wall had been breached and the tower would fall.

At the same time, the flash of self-preservation struck Aurelie as it had those on the ground. And in this, forgetting what her backup plan had been, she spun in circles in the room wondering where she would go. It seemed the room spun in the opposite direction, every wall a blur, not a table seen.

But God's light shone on the closet in the back behind the second floor bar. Behind Grantaire. And she stumbled toward it, needing a hold on a chair and table here and there along the way, still in great pain and dizzied by her fear. Taking Grantaire's hand, she pulled with all her might, which was very little. For a drunk asleep, he had some rigid muscles and would not be dragged to salvation behind her, God not allowing this sad man his chance to survive.

If he'd even let her survive.

Inside, the seams shut cleanly, and it was dark save for a knot in the wood with which to look out from. From here it took an act of faith that Enjolras would not perish below where she could not see, as she had determined with her soul. God would not take him until he was in her sights because she had willed it so.

Unaware of what was taking place on the second floor, Enjolras had backed from the barricade with a sword he'd lifted from the body of Courfeyrac. He'd also managed another from Feuilly, and it was slid at his side in a sash for when the sword he currently wielded was chipped to nothing.

He kept his body in consistent motion so a bullet aimed would sail by. It was the bullets without aim he had to worry about, and he continued to yell, "Stay back," aware of his greatness, and it seemed many guardsman heeded his warning, strangely backing from him rather than taking an opportunity to out man him.

When a sergeant disobeyed him, Enjolras sliced him through.

This sent the guardsmen into a frenzy, faces red with rage, and still Enjolras was miraculously spared, if only for this moment.

His back to the café, he held the door open for those few left. "No other way in, so make your run now!" he hollered. In all this, he was the bravest man who had ever lived while shielding his fellow insurgents while they rushed inside. It was only when he thought the last man had entered and was to turn and follow that he noticed Marius off to his right, fighting openly.

A second can last minutes, and in his pause, he took in the sight of his closest friend whom he knew could only see the world through a red veil of blood in his eyes. He didn't think of the times he'd doubted him, only swelled with pride and respect for the boy who had once hated him, the boy he'd once thought naïve, the boy who had turned around and joined his side as a man. Who had proved to him more than all how right they'd been about the state, the republic, when even a few of the rich could see the world for what it was. Marius, soon dead, was proof that they had done right here.

Enjolras caught the final bullet in his moment of salute; the bullet that struck Marius' collarbone and took him to the ground. All of this had taken place in no more than a second, and what followed took less:

Enjolras said a prayer for Marius, thanked him for bearing witness to his marriage, then saluted him for his bravery and love.

The Fortress Serves its Purpose

The door, pulled behind Enjolras with such force that it severed five fingers from a guardsmen outside, was shut and sealed. Briefly glancing at the bloodied nubs on the floor, Enjolras noted that it was the least of the mangling that would be inflicted from here. He looked forward to leaving these men with scars so they would forever remember how the few had risen and fought bravely for what they believed in.

Aurelie could hear the banging on the building now, such force that the structure shook as if in an earthquake that would shatter the globe. Dust above rained down on her; she could feel splinters tickle her nose on their fall.

She knew not why it was such a relief to hear Enjolras call out below, "Let's make them pay through the nose for us."

He was dead, already. But his voice only strengthened her resolve to see this through, and watch with fire as the Les Amis killed off the pawns of their corrupt monarchy. Kill those who had killed them. And God was answering her prayers that he live until she could see him take his final breath, which led her to believe that she was safe. Accepting that the loss of Enjolras' life was God's plan, he had returned her acceptance by making it on her terms and at her time: Enjolras had made it to the building.

Enjolras was now at the point where he only had time to think of his own death, and with this, what it would mean to Aurelie. It was a mere matter of minutes now. He secured the door with a bar, bolted it with the key, wrapped a chain and padlock. When he heard a click of a gun beside him, no fire, he faced a comrade known as Thibaut; the son of a butcher.

Thibaut's munitions were gone, so Enjolras handed him his own.

Clapping a hand on the man's back in honor, thanking him with this action for fighting alongside him through this war, Enjolras turned around. There were six in total, including him. Without a word, he nodded toward the staircase, then walked by and calmly made the climb to the second floor.

Each step resonated with him. He remembered every time he'd made this climb; to drink, to argue, to preach, to plan. To listen to stories and share his own. To share friendship with those he'd watched die today.

He thought of Aurelie cresting the staircase the night he'd met her. He hadn't seen her, but he'd felt her that night, as he always did. Always. He imagined an angel had floated inside, remembered how playful she was; naïve with equal strength to volley with the best of them.

The more stairs he took, the more they veered in Aurelie's direction. The day he'd watched her sell all her clothes. The evening he'd told her he'd fallen in love. The argument that had nearly ended him. The night they'd kneeled in the church. The night they'd sworn before witnesses. The night she'd told him she was giving him the gift of a life.

Once atop, everything caught up swiftly and he looked behind him to find men hacking away at the staircase with their axes. Not one was trapped below, the staircase having disappeared in their wake of destruction.

Peering through the hole to the ground floor, he saw the door below receive similar treatment as the stairs from the assailants; the head of an axe finally breaching their castle wall.

Peering through the hole of her own, Aurelie saw his red jacket. That is not to say he never wore anything else, but it was in this jacket she'd met him, and in this jacket he'd sworn his love. And it was in this jacket that he would die.

Enjolras pointed without a word to the windows. It went understood, and his comrades ran over and pushed the cobblestones onto the heads of the men below. He heard the screams and grunts as he lethargically closed his eyes to take in each sound. His work was indeed a masterpiece for all men, and he would not allow this war to be erased in the cloud of history. Those left alive would tell of the day they faced him and his comrades; the day the barricade had risen and brave men had fought for what they believed in. Those guardsmen who died would die knowing he had raised the bar and fought like a lion. These guardsmen and soldiers were the few; they were the ones who would go unremembered. It was the masses who had risen against the government who would be written about, not those who fought for it.

The world was about to change.

Below them, the assailants were desperately trying to find a way up while Enjolras pointed at the bottles of Aqua Fortis. Each man picked up two and, in order, one at a time, threw them down, the bottles smashing against the men below. As the healthy took the place of the mangled, they too received the same treatment until no bottle was left.

We do no more than to tell it like it was when we describe this awful carnage. The besieged, alas, uses anything he can as a weapon. Greek fire did not dishonor Archimedes; boiling pitch did not dishonor Bayard. All war is horrifying, and there is absolutely nothing to choose from in any of it.

Aurelie could hear the screams below, watched as no man screamed above. They were far from calm; they were wild with frenzy, yet Enjolras silently forced reserve upon those left.

She heard the gunshot and watched a man at Enjolras' side fall. Enjolras jumped, shaken, and it could have been him. It would be him in moments, but he had led this party and deserved a prettier death than to be shot through the floorboards in these final minutes.

With no bottles left, Enjolras grabbed what he could, flinging a chair down the hole that had once been the staircase. Then another. He got his hands around part of the broken banister and swung with madness. Gunfire shot through the floor, taking the rest of his men with it until Enjolras could do nothing but back away, force them to face him head on.

All he had left was the barrel of his carbine, and he watched the men, most disfigured with wounds, give each other a leg up. He would lunge at moments to bash the head of one making too much progress, but they were too numerous at this point and able to rise from the hole as demons rise from hell.

Aurelie had a sobering moment: Did she honestly wish to see her love fall? Could she bear it without a scream that would leave her dead as well once found? Could her heart keep beating once Enjolras' had stopped?

A heart can only take so much torment, and hers was, at this point and time, enervated. Her heart had swelled the night she met him and, impossibly, had grown larger with each day they spent together. It was too large for her chest, so perhaps it should stop with his.

These are questions we all ask of ourselves seconds before an inevitable, yet the answer remains the same, had it been posed long before. All these questions are superfluous hesitations and stalling in moments of panic. "How does one handle death" is an extraneous question; the answer is that we handle it because we have to.

The moment passed with a resolute answer.

She would not turn away. She had his strength in equal measurement, and if he would die bravely, she would match that bravery in honor of him. She had made her choices, every choice hers and hers alone. The choice to love, the choice to stay. The choice to marry, the choice to risk. The choice to be brave, the choice to accept a weakness.

This choice—the choice to keep her eyes open—would be her last. From here, she'd have no choices, because if asked later, her choice would have been for him to live. Her choice would have been to steal him away and deliver him to safety.

He had made the choice to deliver hers, and she would return that by honoring him without looking away.

When love is forever lost, what choices are left? She would be a ghost from here. Hollow and constrained by the prison of life. But she would have her child, her copy of Enjolras, to live for.

With one hand pressed on her abdomen, the other against the wall, she watched. And no matter how horrifying it got, she would not blink.

The Epitome of Death with Honor

Enjolras finally had no option other than to back himself away and behind a billiard table near the window, clutching the barrel of his carbine in case any man came close enough to strike. Some moments are clearer than others, and this one, with the aid of the summer sun, was atmospherically charged. He gripped his fear for the love of it now, as Aurelie had only shown him what fear was a few nights before.

There is honor in fear. Fear is what gives a man the will to fight and the will to die with both fear and honor at once.

He had chosen suicide.

He was about to be murdered.

The first to safely breach the second floor pointed at Enjolras. "That's him," he said to the others who joined him. Five. Ten. "I saw his gold hair when he shot our gun captain. We kill him here and now."

Aurelie's breath remained even, she was stoic in posture with her whitened lips in a defined frown. She knew not how she would react in that last second, but for now, she would hold her head high despite no one knowing she was here.

"Go ahead," Enjolras said firmly, then wet his lips, every muscle in his body tensed and ready for the blow.

With this, he threw down his carbine with force and folded his arms over his chest in defiance, renouncing the right of these men to do so, and they would have to live with killing an honorable, unarmed man.

Daring to die well always moves other men.

The frown turned into a rebellious purse of her lips as she saw the men hesitate. A few guns were lowered to the ground as the assailants didn't know what to make of him, a testament to Enjolras' ability to terrify. Aurelie's smile was one of anger; a smile of pride, a standing ovation to Enjolras. All the chaos had dwindled and it was now silence that shook the building, no longer the clamor of men trying to take it down.

There is not calm in the eye of a tornado, there is stillness.

Two very different things, and these men, now rattled, were left having to face the result of their tempest, the God in Enjolras judging them and finding them wanting.

This was exactly why Aurelie saw a guardsman lower his gun completely to the ground and look to the others.

He quietly said, "I feel I'm about to shoot a flower."

Again Aurelie's mouth morphed, this time into a pensive, loving smile. Enjolras had given her flowers, but he had always been the rose in a bouquet of weeds when placed against those he would offer. His stem the black of his trousers, the bud the red of his jacket.

She knew not how she would react when the petals fell, but for now, she would smile in the remembrance, the flower already marking his funeral.

Enjolras counted. It was taking twelve men to take him down. Twelve men to one lion.

The sergeant shouted: "Take aim!"

In silence, the guardsmen raised their guns.

But the very same officer who had hesitated over his beauty and honor intervened once more, placing a gentle hand on the sergeant's arm.

"Wait."

Enjolras jutted his chin forward, lower lip prominent with disdain. He eyed the man levelly as the guardsman stepped forward, looking him straight in the eyes. Just as he would not stand for his own weaknesses, he would not stand for another's.

But he did recognize receiving honor from one with honor.

"Would you like us to put a blindfold over your eyes?"

Without a movement of a muscle, Enjolras said, "No."

He would look bravely at the cowards when they fired. They would see his eyes and remember them later. They too would speak of his bravery. They would have to sleep at night with what they had done for a corrupt king.

Aurelie could not see the man's face, but she saw the way his head hung low. There was no hope; hope had disappeared long ago. But she softened once more, her chin quivering.

"Was it really you who killed the gunner sergeant?" the same guardsman asked, and through his tone, Aurelie knew he hoped Enjolras would deny it. The guardsman was hoping he could save Enjolras' life.

Enjolras did not move. He did not offer a nod, no look of regret, though his regret had been a burden carried through the morning.

"Yes."

Just then, Grantaire raised his head from the table. It is not sound that wakes the man dead with drink, it is silence. The fall of the world around him had only solidified his deep slumber, the sounds a lullaby to a sleeping child. This break, due to Enjolras' last stand of honor, had jolted him awake, and Aurelie watched him jump to his feet.

Still, he lethargically stretched his arms to the sky, yawned, and a moment later, she recognized his understanding. While having missed the last eight hours, he saw every step in a singular second. Behind his eyes, he saw the barricade fall, the repost overtaken, Enjolras the last of his friends left standing.

His waking had gone unnoticed by both Enjolras and the soldiers. It was only Aurelie who could see the entire room as the scene unfolded. While Enjolras had the focal point of the men, the soldier's backs were to the wall she hid behind.

"Take aim," the sergeant called once more, and guns snapped to the ready.

This was when Grantaire interrupted by shouting: "Long live the republic! I stand with him!"

Aurelie did not know how she would react once it was over, but knowing an inevitable outcome, she did not feel her heartbeat could continue on through another delay.

"Long live the republic!" Grantaire shouted once more, then stumbled across the room.

Enjolras stared into Grantaire's eyes in wonder. He could not fathom what Grantaire was doing, but knew inherently why it was done. And with this, he held his head higher than before while maintaining his eye contact with Grantaire, who would look nowhere else.

He'd loved Grantaire, however harshly, but this was the first action Grantaire offered that had won Enjolras' deep respect.

Aurelie watched Grantaire, driven by purpose and love, plant himself beside Enjolras in front of the guards. Grantaire was standing in her place. And through Grantaire, Enjolras was sent love from both.

"You might as well kill two birds with one stone," Grantaire said to the men, then turned to Enjolras. Brows raised, he asked humbly, "Will you allow it?"

And in the most sobering moment, Enjolras understood every action Grantaire had ever made. And as he shook Grantaire's hand with a smile, he felt Aurelie. Through Grantaire's love, he returned it to the man and let it flow through the conduit to wherever she was. He could still feel her, and would feel her in death, always.

In the second before the guns fired, Grantaire followed through with his promise. That these men would kill them both with one blow, and he swiftly stepped in front of Enjolras so any bullet that entered him would traverse through his body and into the man he loved. In this, they would be connected. In this, he was honoring both Enjolras and Aurelie.

And indeed, the bullets exited Grantaire's back and entered the body of Enjolras. They fell together, Aurelie's name on Enjolras' lips.