Gunfire.

The scorching smell of the powder, the sky erupting in brilliant light as the ground trembled from the artillery, the mad scramble to gain the higher ground, not for yourself, but for the good of your nation.

This was war.

War, in all its horrific, dehumanizing, morbid glory.

When one was on a battlefield, it was almost all you could possibly think. The opposite forces were not an army, anymore, they were fiendish monsters, to be exterminated at all costs.

The young Marquis stood in the epicenter of the turmoil, the stench of blood and sweat, and the cries of the dying and the killing flooding his senses. It would have been dreadfully disorienting if his eyes were not focused solely on one man. His brother. Well, brother-in-law. Well, his wife's sister's husband. Whatever relation he had to Gilbert was irrelevant. He was Louis, and he'd been Gilbert's closest friend since he was thirteen.

Now, he was in a vicious battle with a faceless man wearing the colors of the French revolution. He was obviously exhausted, and his sword arm was growing sloppy from fatigue. The battle raged on around Gilbert as he watched his brother struggle, unable to help, or even call out. Helpless, as the enemy tripped Louis up onto his back, and, with a blood-curdling scream, only one of the many that day, perished at the enemy's sword.

Gilbert could only release a choked cry of grief, frozen, as he was, or stuck to the ground.

His brother, if not by blood, or even marriage, then by bond.

Gone. Slain by the revolution Lafayette himself had begun.

Warriors did not cry.

But men did.

The Marquis sunk to his knees in agony, his heart in his throat. Still, for some reason, his voice was choked, but tears flowed freely down his cheeks.

Louis…

He had failed him.

"Laf!" It was Laurens' voice. "Look out!"

Gilbert looked up just in time to see the British cannonball collide with his face, just like his father, so many years ago.

He woke up screaming into the rug, Adrienne kneeling over him, and desperately shaking his shoulder.

Adrienne.

She was here. The last nightmare he'd had, he had awoken to the cold stillness of his cell, the same nightmare he'd slept to rid himself of.

"Addy…" He hoarsely breathed, just then realizing how he was clinging to her, and shaking like a leaf.

She didn't speak, only wiped at his face with a handkerchief, drying his tears, he realized.

Great. He'd been crying.

"I fell out of bed?" He guessed, after a moment had passed, and he'd gotten his bearings.

"No, you walked." She smiled softly, with an amused twinkle in her eye. "You were calling for Louis."

He hummed in affirmation. As long as he was conscious, he'd really prefer not to allow his mind to dwell on such dark subjects as his brother. Too much pain. While it had only been a dream, the truth was that Louis had perished, not in noble combat, but under the blade of Madame le Guillotine.

He tried to tell himself it wasn't his fault, that if he hadn't started the revolution, someone else would have. But that was not how Gilbert did things. He was a man of action, and he had to make it his fault. No man could have stood by while his people were oppressed by the King and the idiot of a Queen. Adrienne claimed he was only bitter towards her because she enjoyed making a fool out of him, and there may be some truth to her notion. After all, a man could only get laughed at for falling flat on his face so many times before he started some form of revolution.

All those dying in the Reign of Terror… they could pin all the blame onto him.

"Would you like to talk about it?" Adrienne gently guided him back to the bed, brushing a soft hand over his hair.

Sacre Bleu, he had missed the way her hands felt on his face, the way she leaned her head against his shoulder when he embraced, her, the very scent of her. She was his everything, and being deprived of her presence for so long only made him desperate for her all the more. "No, thank you, my love." He sighed, holding her close. "I'd rather just forget it all."

As if he could.

Ever since solitary, he'd been having the most frightful nightmares, and he'd always been a sleep walker. Those two put together, he really was a handful for his wife. On the ship to America, he'd nearly wandered off the edge, into the sea, a few times.

As he closed his eyes, a fleeting thought crossed his mind, that he really needed to sort things through with Thomas, and find a plan of action. After all, he couldn't keep mooching off his hospitality forever. Until then, though, he was content, and grateful. Not everyone had been given the escape means that he had, and he was most likely the luckiest member of the Noblesse out there.

Fact check: Louis was Adrienne's older sister's husband. He and Lafayette were very good friends. This I know. However, the bit about him being killed by the revolutionaries, I made up. However, I would not be shocked to discover it was true, too.

TheOnlyHuman.