A/N: Sad Barricade Day! I would wish a happy one, but alas! it is not a happy day. This is some barricade angst, told by the point of a National Guardsman. The three featured here, Rene, Laurent, and Jean are probably eighteen or nineteen, and this is the first time they've ever fought. I could've written that in there somewhere, and I tried to, but I wanted the story, and the story alone.

Disclaimer: I don't own Les Mis, or Bossuet, or Joly, or Combeferre, or the barricade, but I do own Laurent, Rene, Jean, Benoit, and Arnot. At least, I think I do…ponders

The barricade fell silently. One moment there was noise, and then the next there was none. I was one of the few who had gotten over the pile of chairs, tables, and stones, and we fought like banshees. I shot a bald man who was in the act of reloading his musket first. Another man ran at me, only a bayonet in hand, I swung my own around, slicing open his bicep. Then I was pushed out of the way as Rene shot him at point-blank range.

The man collapsed against me, and I felt a scraping as his hand draped over my shoulder. Rene helped me set him down.

"You all right, Laurent?" he asked me. "You're bleeding." And so I was, from a cut that stretched nearly from my elbow over to my shoulder blade, from his bayonet.

"I'm fine," I told him. "I've been hurt worse."

But something made me pick up the man's bayonet. I tucked it in my own bayonet sheath.

All that happened in less than thirty seconds.

I heard a grunt behind me, and whirled, thinking it was some dying man trying to hoist his gun. Rene and Jean must have had the same idea as I had, for the next moment our bayonets were in his chest.

He was hoisting a wounded man. It was then that the silence fell. There was still a little bit of fighting, but it wasn't loud, save for the occasional grapeshot fired from our side. We simply stood there. The wounded man moaned, and then expired.

Jean crossed himself. Rene stood transfixed. I murmured, "He was trying to help someone else. He was—practically innocent."

Jean looked at the wounded man, and crossed himself again, then fell to his knees. Rene gasped, and collapsed in a near faint. I sunk to the ground.

Arnot. Captain Arnot. In his blue National Guard uniform, with the leather cross-straps, with the government-issue gun. The last words I had heard him yell were "Long live the King!"

Out moment of horror was shaken by Captain Benoit, who yelled, "Duclos! Bouteiller! Thierry! Over here! Now!"

Rene was the first to stand. He looked resolute, and like a seasoned Guardsman. His eyes flickered over us. "We'd better get going." He sent a tormented look at Arnot and the Revolutionary, and then turned and walked away. Jean stood and walked in the other direction, away from Benoit and the barricade, ignoring his cries of "Thierry! Get back here!"

I was faced with two choices. Go off, live my life, never show my face as a Guardsman again, which would mean leaving Paris at least. Or go join the group of men planning to search the houses nearby.

I could only think of one thing: how much was I willing to give up for France?

I remained where I was, transfixed, unable to move.