A/N Thank you to everyone who reviewed, followed and/or favourited. In other news, which I forgot to mention last chapter, it was my first Fan fiction anniversary on March 1st; it was also the day I turned 18! Yay me, I'm an adult (in England anyway). Unfortunately, as I'm so ridiculously busy at the moment, the anniversary one-shot I had planned kind of fizzled out into nothing. Oh well, exams take precedent over fan fiction sadly.

Enjoy the chapter; there are a few surprises!

Disclaimer: Les Miserables does not belong to me. A true travesty.

Chapter Thirty-three

Enjolras barely dared to breathe, the cold caress of the knife pressing against his windpipe an uncomfortable reminder of how close he was to death.

"Where did you hear that?" Le Faucon asked in a soft, slow whisper, the muscles of his arm standing out clearly as he trapped the younger man immobile against the wall.

"Rumours," Enjolras said quietly, fear catching heavily in his throat, "nothing but smoke and air; they are of no consequence."

"Be cautious of what you speak, comrade." The pressure behind the knife increased fractionally. "It does not do to heed bar room tales and whispered lies."

"If they are lies then why are you so affected by them?" Enjolras questioned simply, his calm exterior belying the rapid pounding of his pulse. In another breath the knife was gone, along with the pressure holding him against the wall.

Rene retreated across the room, his knife once again hidden, the movement as untraceable as a magician's slight of hand. He paced restlessly for a moment, his posture and the discomfort he radiated reminding Enjolras unmistakably of a wild animal that had been captured.

"My story may serve as a warning to you," Rene said, halting his aggressive marching and swinging around to face him in one swift movement. "But I promise you now, that if I impart this tale to you and you betray me…I will not hesitate to kill you."

"You have my word of honour," Enjolras promised solemnly, fear and curiosity causing him to feel a little light-headed. He returned to his previous seat, his eyes never wavering from his capricious host.

"When I was a young man, I was very different to how I am now. I had no motivation in my life, no cause to which I could attach my energies. I roamed widely, searching for something I could not name. I went to England, Spain, Italy, Corsica, Switzerland, working as I went. Everywhere I went I saw the same things; rich and poor, strong and weak. Very rarely did I see those of position help those in need. It burned at me, like a splinter caught under my skin, as I tried to understand why. Everyone says, 'It has always been like this. Nothing changes and nothing ever will', but I wanted to know why." He leant heavily on the table, braced by his forearms. "I eventually returned to France, no further enlightened, feeling only heartsick and bitter. France revived me; she healed my dry and arid soul, her beauty and familiarity soothing my spirit." A smile brushed his lips briefly as he spoke of his homeland. "I joined the army eventually; I had no other options and in the naivety of youth, for I was still young at this point, only about your age, I thought that I might be able to help people. I thought that I might be able to use my position for the good of others." His face hardened, as if steeling himself for a painful blow. "I had not been in the army long when I met a young woman. She had been cast off by her family, abandoned by all, and was starving to death on the streets. Despite the scepticism of my fellow soldiers and the sneers of many of the officers, I took her under my protection, ensuring her safety and trying to give her a second chance at life." A bitter chuckle worked its way out of his chest, "Over time I became romantically inclined towards her, feelings she apparently reciprocated, and we began a relationship. Therefore, it was somewhat of a surprise to me when I entered the set of rooms that I rented for us to find her in a rather…intimate entanglement with a man who was, at the time, my superior officer." He let out another harsh laugh that made Enjolras inwardly flinch at the pain held within it. "In my surprise and foolishness I assumed that he had forced himself on her. The injustice of it," his tone was mocking, "caused my gallantry to rise nobly and I charged into the situation, pulling him off her and giving him a good beating. She screamed at me to stop and I did," he gave a dark smile, edged liberally with menace, "eventually."

"He wasn't attacking her, was he?" Enjolras asked quietly, fairly sure of the answer.

"No, he was not. It turns out that she had been sleeping with him for a good six months, and was going to run away with him in a week after stealing every sou I had. Unfortunately, the amount of noise this little incident had generated meant that several soldiers came running, which was not ideal as I then had several witnesses to me assaulting a superior officer. I was put on a court martial, my lover abandoned me and refused to testify in my favour, as if it would have done any good, and I was sentenced to hang." Seemingly lost in his own thoughts for a moment, he smoothly spun a pen through his fingers. When he spoke again his voice was a murmur so low Enjolras had to lean forwards to hear it.

"It was as I sat there, locked in that fetid stinking cell, listening as my own gallows were built, that I began to dream. I began to dream of a place where no man's word was worth more than another, where all men were allowed a trial, a real trial, not the sham of a hearing I had received. All through that last night I dreamed, and with every breath I took, anger simmering through my veins, that dream began to grow. It began to grow and spread and take shape beneath the willing hands of my imagination. Animated by the heat of injustice that I felt, it soon became a shining sword of equality balanced in my hands; a dream of what could be and it was then…in that moment, I knew I could not die that day, I would not die, for I had a higher cause at last, a larger goal." He dropped the pen onto the table with a sharp clatter, breaking the spell he had effortlessly woven over both of them, his voice returning to being brisk and sharp. "When my time came to be taken to the gallows, I was prepared to escape, or die trying. I was no longer going to be complaisant to my own fate; reckless courage and my newfound resolve made me twice the man I had been before. The execution was at dawn and as I was no one important there was almost no one present; just a priest, two guards and the man who had stolen my lover as a witness. Hah!" he huffed a note of thin laughter, "He came to gloat more like. As they moved to tie my feet together I struck out, knocking out the first guard with a kick to the head. The second guard was my ally, a friend who has stayed with me all these years; Giles. He cut my hands free, gave me a pistol and turned a blind eye as I shot the man who had tried to have me executed." Here Rene stopped and grimaced, acknowledging Enjolras look of shock.

"It is an act that in hindsight was not the wisest, but I was young and foolish and filled with an anger that had nowhere to go. I do not regret it, but I would not do it again if given the opportunity." He approached Enjolras slowly, looking more like the man that Enjolras knew and respected than the bitter cold-eyed stranger that had pinned him to the wall and threatened his life. "Do you understand what I am trying to show you, Enjolras?" Rene asked softly, his dark eyes probing deeply into Enjolras' own, the weight of his experiences giving him more gravitas than ever before. "Men such as us do not walk the easy path of love and family. We walk a higher path, one of noble ambition, in search of a better world for all. As it says in Romans verse 12:2 'Do not be conformed to this world, but be transformed by the renewing of your mind, in order to prove by you what is that good and pleasing and perfect.' We live in this world, but we are not of it; we have renewed our minds and have accepted the task of altering the world for the better. Do you see now?"

Enjolras did not answer, his head bent deep in thought. Some of the things that Rene had spoken of had struck a chord deep within him, a ringing note that vibrated throughout his whole body. Yes, men such as Rene and him and the Amis and all of their allies walked this higher path…Aimee among them. He would not give Aimee up, because there was no need for it. Resolved, he raised his head to meet Rene's eyes, prepared to argue his point and stand his ground. The older man must have seen the stubborn set of his jaw and read the message in his eyes, for his own narrowed slightly in anger for a brief moment, but then relaxed.

"Have it your way if you must, Enjolras," he conceded wearily, "but I cannot say I haven't tried my best to warn you." The conversation now apparently over, he pulled a bundle of papers towards him. "I have managed to pull together a plan of sorts in regards to this weapons supply of which you informed me. In a week, you and I and two of your lieutenants – whomever you wish – will be leaving the city to arrange the transfer." He glanced up quickly, "Does that suit you?"

Enjolras quickly scanned the papers before him, reading numbers, directions, and lists of money with a relating name (probably bribes) that made up the plan to bring the guns and ammunition into the city. "I would like to bring Courfeyrac and…Bahorel," he said after a short pause, "though if they are not available I shall reconsider."

"Perfect," Rene replied, making a small note in neat handwriting, "just ensure that you are prepared for a rough journey. We shall be travelling by horseback and sleeping rough to avoid detection." He flashed a suddenly teasing smile up at him, "Are you bourgeoisie boys prepared for those kind of conditions?"

Thrown off balance by his ever-changeable nature Enjolras smiled uncertainly back at his ally. "We will do our best," he promised.

"Go on," Rene gestured, "be off with you. I'm sure we both have much to do and there never seems to be enough hours in the day to complete it all in." He rounded the table and pulled Enjolras into a brief embrace. "I hope you do not think less of me now that you know the truth," he said, a sudden wary pleading in his eyes, written in the striking lines of his face.

"Of course not," Enjolras assured him, wondering if that were the truth. "If I thought less of you for your past wrongs, wrongs that you are now trying to correct…well, I would not be very well suited to this path now would I?"

"I knew I was right to choose you as an ally, mon ami," Rene said with a grin. "Enjolras, with men like you by my side, I am sure anything is possible. After all, there is only one thing stronger than all the armies in the world, and that is an idea whose time has come."

"The time is near," Enjolras agreed, a spark of excitement flashing to life within him at the thought. "I shall speak with the Amis tonight about the weapons supply," he promised, moving away to retrieve his satchel. "I shall see you soon."

"Indeed you shall," Rene called after him, his peculiar choice of words making Enjolras feel strangely unnerved.

He exited the building with Giles at his side, a curt nod serving as their only farewell. As he walked away, aware of the eyes trained on him until he had exited the yard, he attempted to sort through his thoughts, separating and objectifying and analyzing to the best of his ability. Despite all this, his thoughts came back to the same cause, the same reason, the same effect; he needed to speak to Aimee. He needed to see her and hold her and assure himself that he was doing the right thing. Before he realized he had made the conscious decision, he found his feet leading him to the omnibus route that would take him to the Theatre de la Reine.

So eager were his steps and so focused were his thoughts that he never even noticed the shadow that slipped from building to building behind him.

As it transpired, Aimee was having just as much of a curious day as Enjolras and at that present moment was cowering behind a row of seats as the prima donna of the Theatre de la Reine threw a tantrum of epic proportions.

"How is she supposed to replace me?" Evangeline screeched, her normally attractive face red with anger and twisted with rage. "She is a nothing! A nobody! She has only been here for a few months!"

"I am sorry, Evangeline," Chavenage said attempting to be placating, but instead had to duck sideways as a heavy music book came flying through the air towards him. "I am sorry," he tried again, "but the new patron of the theatre was quite insistent. He wants Mademoiselle Lyon to take the main role…"

A prop vase was the next projectile to be thrown at the hapless theatre manager, narrowly avoiding his head and exploding into a hundred pieces in the main aisle not far from Aimee's feet.

"The bloody patron of the theatre wouldn't know talent if it leapt up and smacked him around the face! Who the hell is he, anyway? Nobody has ever even seen him!" The enraged soprano was past being reasoned with, her fury stripping away the sophisticated air she gave herself and revealing her gutter accent to all of those present.

"It's only for one night," Leblanc commented from the slightly safer location of a box on the right of the stage, "it's not as if he asked her to do the rest of the run."

"It is the closing night!" Evangeline howled, attempting to hurl another book of music at her other manger, but it fell short, sending a flurry of paper to settle over the front seats. "The closing night of the performance is the one that will be remembered the most. How can you let this happen?" With that final accusation she collapsed in a sobbing heap on the floor.

"We have no choice…" Chavenage said, wringing his hands together in consternation, unsure of how to continue. Leblanc, Aimee noticed, merely rolled his eyes and settled back to read his newspaper.

"I refuse to do the rest of the run," the snivelling soprano threatened, pulling herself up into a sitting position, moving so that her black hair fell becomingly around her nearly bare shoulders, "if you want her so much, then have her play the part!"

"Oh, please do stop with you dramatics, Evangeline," Leblanc remarked dryly, "for we are not going to come running after you if you make empty threats like that. You will perform in the rest of the shows except for the final night when Mademoiselle Lyon will take the lead, as per the instructions of our new patron, who, might I remind you, is the person keeping all of us in a job."

The no-nonsense delivery and the pointed reference to the precarious position she had placed herself in prompted Evangeline to rise gracefully from the floor, wiping away her crocodile tears with exaggerated emotion. "As my manager commands," she whispered demurely, her voice quavering slightly, though the look she gave Aimee, now her rival, was positively murderous.

Once Evangeline had departed from the stage, Aimee turned wide-eyed to Chavenage. "Why on earth would your patron want me to do the closing night?" she asked. "I'm only in the chorus and have that one little solo. Why would he think I was talented enough for the lead role?"

Leblanc laughed softly, though there was more melancholy than humour in the sound. "Well, you are very different from your mother in that respect," he commented, folding his paper down and pushing it aside. His position above her meant Aimee had to tilt her head fairly far back to see him and even then his face was in shadow. Seeing her look of confusion Leblanc expanded. "She was very confident, very self-assured." He smiled slowly at some personal memory. "She would work so hard to illustrate to everyone how good she was, to prove that she deserved to have the parts she was given." He shifted his gaze to Chavenage, "Do you remember what she used to say? 'Actions speak louder than words…'"

"'And music fills the spaces between the two'," Aimee finished softly, remembering how her mother's wisdom had helped her the night before. All at once she had a burning need to see Enjolras again; to see him and feel him and hear him and just be with him. To feel her skin warm under his touch, to taste his flavour on her tongue, to breath in his scent and feel the hot brush of his breath… She started from her imaginings as she realized one of her managers was speaking to her.

"I asked if you were feeling unwell," Chavenage repeated, concern in his eyes, "you seemed quite flushed all of a sudden…"

At this comment, coupled with what she had been thinking about, Aimee felt her skin flush again even as she denied feeling unwell and, after excusing herself, escaped to the safety of her closet-sized dressing room. She closed the door definitively behind her and leant against it, her chest rising and falling in hurried breaths. Pressing a hand to her forehead she felt the heat there and allowed herself an indulgent smile at the realization that merely thinking about Enjolras had provoked such a reaction from her.

Her moment of peace was short lived however, for only a few minutes after she had entered a sharp rap came at the door. Before she could grant permission to enter the door opened to admit Evangeline. She fixed Aimee with a bitter, hard stare, her mouth puckered with displeasure.

"I don't know what you did to advance you career," she hissed, "how low you stooped…but I intend to find out."

"Evangeline, I…" Aimee tried to break in to protest her innocence, but the older woman cut her off.

"And once I find out," she said, advancing into the tiny room, crowding in Aimee's personal space in a poisonous cloud of powder and expensive perfume, "I will use it to destroy you, piece by miniscule piece, until you are another forgotten nobody with a shattered reputation and no hope of ever stepping foot within a theatre again in your life!"

"Get out." Aimee was surprised at the force with which she spoke, and judging by the expression on Evangeline's face, so was she. "You will not speak to me that way," she continued, spurred on by the anger beginning to heat her blood, "I have done nothing to deserve this treatment. I had no knowledge of the arrangement until today, so don't you dare," her rise in volume startled them both, "threaten me. Now leave this room."

Evangeline did not move, impotent fury balling her hands into white-knuckled fists. "I am better than you in every single way," she spat, "and I will not be upstaged by some….some….gutter rat!"

Assuming a calm she did not truly feel, Aimee borrowed one of Grantaire's favourite gestures, one guaranteed to aggravate. Raising one eyebrow sardonically, she looked the other woman up and down slowly as she spoke. "That accent you were using on the stage suggests you are speaking from experience. Perhaps that is how you got to where you are now?"

Whatever the reply was going to be to her provocative statement remained unspoken, for just at that moment the head of one of the young stagehands appeared around the edge of the partially open door.

"There's a young monsieur at the stage door for you, Aimee," he said, taking a few moments to understand that he had walked in on a very tense situation, his young eyes widening slightly as he looked from one to the other.

"Thank you, Maxence," Aimee said sweetly, standing and gesturing for her rival to leave, which she did with extremely bad grace.

"Bloody hell," Maxence muttered, "she did not look happy!"

"You could say that," Aimee replied, glad that she was free to leave. Her brow furrowed as she realized what Maxence's message had been. "Maxence!" she called around the door, just catching the boy before he turned the corner.

"Yes?" he asked, hurrying back down the corridor, his mop of brown hair falling into his eyes.

"The young man, at the door?" she asked. "What did he look like?" In the brief second that he considered his answer, several scenarios flew through Aimee's mind. Someone had been arrested. Someone was dead. Someone had come for her.

"He was…blond," Maxence said eventually, "and quite tall. Sounded sort of posh, but didn't look it." He shrugged helplessly, "I don't know. He's just a guy."

"Did he give his name?" Aimee prompted, a smile tugging at her mouth, fairly sure who was waiting for her.

Maxence blushed, his dusky skin darkening. "Oh, right. He said he was called Enjolras, Julien Enjolras. He said that you knew him."

"I do, thank you, Max." Grabbing her light cape from behind the door, she exited and locked it, pocketing the key. "I'll see you tomorrow," she called, walking away. "I've got to start rehearsing for the show!"

"Yeah, I heard about that," he grinned, "I was up in the gods. In fact, thanks to Evangeline I'm pretty sure most of the theatre heard about it!"

Aimee laughed in agreement as she waved farewell, her feet feeling as if they had wings as she ran to the stage door. As she exited the building Enjolras looked up from where he had been staring at the floor, deep in thought. Without a second thought she flung herself at him with a sunny giggle, her hands gripping at his shoulders as his caught her around the waist. He swung her around in a circle or two, a warm chuckle rolling through him that she could feel vibrate through her where she pressed against him.

"Hello there," she breathed, pressing her forehead to his. "This is a pleasant surprise."

"I wanted…I needed to see you," he said, setting her back on her feet but not breaking eye contact. "It's been a long day."

She kissed him sweetly. "Better?"

He smiled wryly. "A little. How was your day?" As he asked he took her arm, leading them back out onto the street.

"Interesting," she acknowledged. Seeing his questioning look she said, somewhat reluctantly, "I've been asked by the theatre's patron to do the closing night of the show…in the lead role."

"Really!" he sounded delighted. "That's good, isn't it?"

She tangled her fingers with his as she thought. "Well, yes, I suppose. It has earned me a few enemies though."

"You'll be fine," he assured her, shadows colouring his voice for a moment. "When will this be?"

"Next week," she said, wondering why an almost pained look crossed his face at her words.

"I won't be here," he admitted, looking at her guiltily. "I've got to go away somewhere with Rene next week. We've got some…items to collect."

"Are you referring to them as 'items' because they are illegal?" Aimee queried, a sharp knife of disappointment burying itself under her ribs. His inability to answer immediately, as well as the shifty look in his eyes gave her the answer.

"It's fine that you can't be there," she assured him. "There's no need to feel guilty. You have a job to do that is far more important that my show. Besides," she gave a cheeky smile, "this may be only the beginning. Who knows, I may get my own show if the patron likes me enough."

"You would deserve it," he said genuinely. "Do you really not mind that I can't see you perform?"

"Of course I mind," she answered honestly, but took the sting out of her words by bringing his hand to her lips, "but you have a very good reason for being absent."

At her words he gave a small chuckle, as if at some private joke, but gave no explanation. They walked in silence for a few more minutes, just pleased to be in each other's company. Almost against his own volition his mind crept back to Rene's words from that afternoon. "Men like us do not get happy endings. We devote our lives to the people, to the cause, and, if necessary, sacrifice our lives in aid of achieving our dreams."

A moment later he felt Aimee squeeze his hand gently and the knot of worry wound tight inside began to ease somewhat. He glanced across at her, catching the fond look she gave him out of the corner of her eye as they walked, the love shining there catching at his heart. Yes, he had made the right choice, and no one would ever convince him otherwise.

A/N I hope you enjoyed and please review!

Until next time, mes amis!

Libz