A/N: I don*t even know what to say. Writers block and real life calling. But I'm still here. and I will finish this.

Anyone still reading...?

Chapter 70: Through the eyes of another

You forgot the first rule of the fanatic: when you become obsessed with the enemy, you become the enemy!

The chaos in front of him was unspeakable.

Javert clenched his fingers and barked out orders at the national guard members, who, all of a sudden, had found themselves without a captain, but instead within a siege.

It was of little effect. Theoretically, he would have had authority over them, but he doubted that even the familiar voice of Aviolet would have been able to cut through the thicket of screams and cries and shouts that disrupted this place of silence so thoroughly.

It was a mess indeed.

Javert was not a coward but a man in command of his senses with a habit of keeping a clear head, and so he refrained from throwing himself into the thicket as well. He instead opted for gaining a better overview of the situation.

A couple of well-known faces – students, all of them, but apparently with a remnant of decency – were shielding the coffin from a mindless, brainless onslaught of the masses that seemed to have neither reason nor purpose.

Javert had always abhorred crowds. Whatever little wit a single man might have, one could trust a crowd to erase even the last inking of it.

Unfortunately, a group of national guards without guidance was little better than a bunch of crowds. Without the shepherd, the sheep ran around aimlessly.

It almost seemed like a fair, with the screaming and the hustle – it certainly was as disgusting as one – but there were faces on which Javert distinguished blood, people limping in earnest, a few bodies motionless on the floor.

This was, most definitely, for all its randomness, not a circus.

He wondered what options were left to him. His men seemed incapable or unwilling to obey to his command, and he was equally reluctant to enter the thick of the battle to try to calm down spirits and ultimately arrest the troublemakers on either side. So all that he could do was rely on his own person – not an unfamiliar sentiment as such – but there was little he could do.

Retreat was a coward's exit, and he would not take it and so in the end, he turned to the inspector's way without remorse.

Observation.

The panic was pure, deep, unadulterated and overpowering.

Civilization had long smoothed out the rougher edges of his personality, had turned the coarse, uncouth commoner and prisoner into a respectable member of society, but it was fear, panic and surprise that brought back to light what had been hidden deep within.

With a roar that barely seemed human, Jean Valjean shoved aside the few people that still separated him from where the coffin was falling down from the cart, the sound of his voice deafening out the brighter, but shrill scream of Cosette as she did reach Marius in time to push him aside – but not in time to leave.

The heavy stone object slid down, the ugly sound of wood splintering as it broke what remained of the wooden barriers around it, and maybe, just maybe also the bones of the girl trapped underneath.

The coffin hit the floor, stone challenging stone and both remaining unchanged. It came to rest in a strangely lopsided, precarious looking, leaning position. Fortunately, the lid had apparently been fixed, sparing them the gruesome sight of a corpse in the first stages of decay, but it was a small grace only.

Valjean dived headfirst into the chaos, barely noticing anything that surrounded him, his whole regard, his whole being focused on the sight of the single, pale arm that stuck out from under the coffin, motionlessly.

"Get to one side", he roared, to no one in particular, brutally shoving aside the boy Pontmercy, who, in pale, unmoving shock, stood staring at the coffin, and started to push against the heavy item, only barely noticing out of the corner of his eye how a dark shadow jumped back lithely just so.

And then, he began to push in earnest.

The coffin had been made with all decorum and effort belonging to the wealthy boy Ramon Deleric had been, and thus it was fiendishly heavy, but at least, he could grip it well. And for all its weight, it was still meant to be moved, by four men, of course, and not by one, but still it was a feasible task.

And fear accomplished the rest.

There had been little need for him to employ the strange talent of force he had been gifted with during the last years, but for some reason it had remained, unscathed, to resurface in this critical moment, utterly at his command.

He gathered everything that was in him, hands blindly gripping the carved ornaments of holy symbols and put his weight behind his arms. He pushed, muscles straining, his whole body shaking with the effort involved, but he prevailed, and after a horrifying moment of panic, during which he thought he would not make it, the coffin began to move.

Its position had been lopsided to begin with, and now, brought out of balance, it toppled and fell. The resistance the coffin had put up against his push stopped, rather suddenly, and he had to take care not to stumble behind, brought forward by his own momentum.

He caught himself in time and heard another, sickening thunder as the coffin finally hit the floor and this time, the lid gave way, sliding off the protection – narrowly missing again the dark-skinned girl who jumped aside in a quick reflex – and revealing the waxen face of Ramon Deleric.

Jean Valjean spared him nothing but a passing glance. Instead, he whirled around to what the moved coffin had revealed.

The relief was immanent.

Cosette, apparently, had shown a quick reaction as well and had pressed herself precariously between the wheels of the wagon, half crouched, half lying in what was certainly a very uncomfortable position. She looked at him with wide eyes, but he couldn't have cared less.

She was in his arms, just a split second later, as he lurched forward and pulled her out of her sanctuary. "You stupid girl", was all that he remembered saying, but there must have been more, words tender and angry. Later, he recalled none of them, remembered only that his daughter was alive, his daughter was safe, and amidst the chaos, he was holding her again.

She was like a tiny bird in his arms, all soft curves and delicate angles, and yet it was this embrace that showed him more than anything else how much she had grown, how much of a woman the little girl in the woods had become.

It was terrifying, exhilarating and, to some extent, sad.

In his rapture, he took a moment to realize that she was not crying.

Some ingrained reflex, maybe some expectation of society, told him that he should be expecting tears by now, but when he returned to his senses, he realized that not only sobs were conspicuously absent, but also her hand was softly stroking his back, up and down, up and down.

As if she were the one giving comfort.

She also had yet to apologize.

This seemed so absurd, so disturbing, that he instantly withdrew a little to throw a gaze at his daughter's face.

There was some terror there, some remnant of the hectic moment she had just been caught in, and yet, much of her worry, much of her delicate frown seemed to be not so much for herself; but for him.

He wondered who this woman was.

And Marius Pontmercy, with immaculate sense of timing, chose the most unfavourable moment to pipe in.

"Cosette?" The urgency in his voice was clear and vibrant, and she almost flinched and broke his gaze. "Are you hurt?"

Jean Valjean was not sure what in the behavior of the young man triggered his ire, but he was well beyond the point of caring and lashed out without thinking.

"You!" he yelled, all the relief and anger taking reign. "How dare you?!"

The young man took a step back and frowned, puzzled and confused.

"What… are you…"

Jean Valjean was not in the mood to let him finish.

"How dare you! I invited you into my home and this is how you thank me? Trickstering my daughter into running away!"

Marius blinked hectically a few moments, but when he shook his head, the motion was firm.

"My… apologies", he said, obviously forcing his voice into a more determined tone. "But…"

"He wasn't involved", Cosette intercepted, fully releasing her father from her embrace and rolling back onto her heels to gain some distance. "He didn't even know I had left."

"Or that you were here", Marius confirmed, interrupting himself almost in mid-thought. "Why were you here..?"

"Good question. Why were you?"

Jean Valjean, his initial rage cooling slightly, but not quite yet abating, whipped his head around to face his daughter again. She was hesitating for a moment, and the dark-skinned girl – with significantly better sense of timing than Marius had had – took this moment to step in.

"Whatever it is Monsieur, if you pardon me saying this, you should not discuss it here."

As if her voice had conjured it into existence, Jean Valjean felt himself become aware again of the uproar and chaos around him, the screams and cries of people, soldiers shouting, women screaming. Somewhere, the wail of a woman was heard and the sounds around him were cacophonic.

As much as he hated to admit, the creole was in the right. And he did not hesitate for long. With a curt, and not very polite "Come with me", he grabbed Cosette's wrist and with almost brutal determination pushed through the crowds towards the exit of the cemetery, not caring who stepped in his path, barely caring whom he had to shove aside.

Definitely not caring if Pontmercy or the other woman would follow.

"Inspector!"

From the tone and volume of the voice it was not the first attempt at getting his attention, but it was the first attempt that reached him. With effort, he tore his gaze away from the back of the man, who, dragging a girl behind him that seemed not to be resisting but had a hard time following none the less, raced out of the cemetery, and faced the speaker instead.

A tall soldier, towering over him by almost half a head, but spindly, as if the mass of a normal human being had just been spread out further than was deemed appropriate. Javert was certain he had been introduced – he had been some aide to Aviolet and was thus probably next in line for command – but he could not remember the name and it was not to be helped.

"Yes?" he asked sharply, trying to push the image of the retreating man and the young woman out of his mind.

This was not the time to give in to absurd musings.

"Orders, Inspector", the man asked, sounding slightly nervous. "What are our orders?"

Javert turned away from the national guard and took in the pandemonium around them. Where until a few moments ago, there had been two fronts – the soldiers on the one side, the visitors on the other, now the situation was not so clear. The loss of their commander had left the soldiers without any direction, and so most of them tried to stand their ground, keeping the rest of the people at bay.

No organization. No goal.

As for the rest of the crowd, it was not much better. Here and there, a couple of students had taken to attacking a random national guard – for lack of weapons usually with bare fists – but this did not seem to be a directed attack either. Luckily, the crowd of mourners was not quite as homogeneous as it first had seemed, and so all kinds of human behavior could be found.

There were those who fought, and those who tried to hold the fighting back. There were those who simply looked for an escape route from the cemetery – much like the overly strong man that he had just seen pushing aside the coffin of Ramon Deleric.

Cattle, he thought. Nothing but cattle.

They would be easily herded again.

"We need to assemble again. Bring them here. We need to form a front against them, standing side by side. There's nothing to be gained if we let ourselves be divided."

The young man responded with a curt nod and set to work immediately and with an efficiency that was admirable enough. And Javert, watching his progress, had time again to dwell on the scene that he had just witnessed.

The show of strength had been impressive indeed. A stone coffin was a heavy thing, and to push it aside like this was a deed that only few men would have been able to do.

And yet.. it seemed too much of a coincidence.

The trace had been lost years ago in the streets of Paris, the trace of a convict on the run and…

And his foster daughter.

Javert frowned. Now that little detail had, in the course of the years, completely escaped his mind, but now that he remembered it, it made his suspicion more than just a little more likely.

A girl somehow connected with Pontmercy…

Blonde locks, frail figure… she had been but a small child then, but at least the resemblance was not too unlikely.

But could it be true…?

And what would he do from there?

Finally, he had chosen visibility instead of piety and had climbed onto a broad, proud tombstone made of solid granite, almost a meter high and therefore well capably of providing him with an exposed position. Of course, there was danger in this – an exposed position also could lead to him becoming a target fairly quickly, but Enjolras was short of options and this had to be stopped.

The whole crowd which had amassed around the grave of Ramon Deleric was in uproar, and with people pulling every which way, he painfully realized that Eponine had been right indeed.

This was not the crowd to start a revolution with.

There were the courageous students, of course, some of whom had lost their temper and taken up the fight – prominent, but not exactly chief among them was Bahorel – but many were confused, running, trying to calm the crowd or to just leave the cemetary.

He was not sure if he could move them into consolidated action if he tried. And he hated that he had been proven wrong on that score.

But it was not to be helped, and Enjolras had never been keen on escaping reality. And so, the path to revolution blocked for today, he instead opted for the unusual path of de-escalation.

For a moment, he simply stood, erect tall and proud, motionlessly above the swirling chaos. He was collecting his thoughts, wondering what this very different speech could – should – be like, when he noticed a peculiar motion in the crowd.

A few people had realized he was standing there and had stopped what they were doing to turn their gazes to him. First only separate people, one here, one there, but where one started, soon groups of two or three were to be found.

He was attracting attention, and obviously so, standing exposedly as he was.

And yet he fell to thinking how the situation would be if Combeferre or Feuilly were standing here in his stead.

The words of a street rat, the rough voice of Éponine was ringing in his ears.

She had said little enough, a few words, but what words they had been…

They had been too powerful to ignore, the insight in them too acute to brush aside. He had not been able to forget what she said, and every time that he called forth the nightly conversation in his apartment, he was torn by the odd mixture of gratefulness and confusion that he seemed to associate with her lately. Éponine, silent shadow following Marius, had quite come into her own during the last days, and it had been a truly glorious sight.

Even though she had forced him to stare into the face of a few things he preferably would have avoided. And yet Enjolras was not above admitting that this might be for the best in the end.

Insight prompts growth, Combeferre would say, his dear, trusted, clever friend, now lost somewhere in the crowd. And growth prompts wisdom.

Enjolras smiled despite himself. You will make me a wise man yet, Eponine, he thought to himself and marveled at the fact that he did not regret it.

In fact, he would have wished she were here now.

But it seemed as the deed would have to be done in solitude.

This was a path he knew.

"My friends", he began, speaking to the many – many – eyes that had turned to him during his reverie, and even more to those who hadn't yet. And again, louder, making his voice carry over the shouts and the fighting, the chaos and the screams. "My friends!"

That earned him a few more faces and he felt a small, satisfied smile. So his voice, his skill was gaining attention as well. He was not reduced to the strange effect Eponine had mentioned. He was still what he thought himself to be.

Maybe, in the end, he was both.

"I implore you!" He raised his hands in a calming gesture. "I implore you to stop!"

Few only followed that command, and he was not surprised. He continued, his voice carrying wide over field and graves.

"This is a day of memory, this is a place of memory. This is what brought us here."

He gestured with his left towards the center of the brawl, the ruin of the coffin of Ramon Deleric, the coffin of Evaristide Galois, furiously guarded by a group of his friends, apparently ready to use whatever was at their disposal to spare him the fate of Deleric.

"We came here for them. We came here for Evaristide Galois, who died in the early morning hours. We came here for Ramon Deleric, who was killed by a plot of the most vile nature. They were our friends, but now their struggle is at an end."

Indeed, some of the fighting died down, the struggle still going on in enough areas to be dangerous, but Enjolras could feel the strength of his words taking hold.

"And look what has happened. There have been deaths, yes, but look who died! I see guards and commoners alike, and it was more than one shot that we all heard here. We are puppets, puppets on the strings of others!"

A murmur wandered through the crowd, and even through the assembled squadron of national guards.

"Someone is playing us, skillfully, like a complex and delicate musical instrument. There was rage at this place, yes, and someone exploited it. We ask for change? Yes we do. We want to know why these young men had to die? Oh yes we do!"

A few cheers and claps here and there showed him that the enthusiasm was slowly turning towards something more productive. He raised a calming hand.

"But what happened here? Someone tried to force our hand. All of ours." That he would once, in a speech, refer to commoners and national guards alike; that his wide gesture would encompass all of them as equals was something that Enjolras had not foreseen in his wildest dreams. And yet, it was logical and suited the purpose. If only for a while.

"Instead of being goverened by a king and his subjects, are we now being governed by assassins?" He shook his head in exasperation. "You can't be serious! Are we naïve, are we stupid enough to have our world shatter by the deeds of an agent provocateur with an agenda of his own? I implore you, friends, think again."

There was some unease wandering through the crowd. This was far from any of his usual speeches, and people were realizing it. And yet, he felt that he still had the attention of his audience and intended to make the most of it.

"My friends", he said, "let me propose an alternative path. Let us all do what we came for here."

He carefully shifted his stance on the tombstone so that his whole body was now facing to where the dead were lying.

"Let us remember. Let us remember Evaristide Galois, young man and outspoken, full of promise and intelligence. A friend, a model, a true warrior as well as a philosopher. A man who died in the early morning hours, a lonely death at dawn. And let us remember Ramon Deleric, who died when the Corinthe was destroyed, when someone exploded a barrel right in this city, right among us, in a place where a celebration was held. Let us remember the deaths they died, and let us remember the hands that brought it about. And let us mourn. Let us shed tears for what they were. Let us shed tears for voices that will never ring, for stories that will never be told." For a moment, he had to push aside the image of raucous, unruly curls and a coarse, dirty song, annoying in its audacity and innuendo. A clink of glasses, a wild, unbound laugh.

Graintaire.

He pressed his lips together and soldiered on.

"Let us weep for the friends they were to us. Let us weep for the promise they were to the world."

He let his gaze wander around the crowd, assessed them. Most of them had amassed in front of them which left a fairly clear escape route at his back.

Good, he thought. There was time to deliver the final message.

"And let us continue. Their lives and deaths have taught us lessons, and valuable lessons they were. Of menace and force, but also of goodness and hope. Let us treasure this memory as sacred. My friends, there will come a day when these memories, these lessons, the ghosts of the deceased themselves will stand in front of each and every one of us asking the same question, and that question will be 'what will you do'. And then, when you recognize this moment, remember them, remember what they stood for, remember what happened to them, and what happened to us. That, my friends, not today, but that will be the day where we truly honor their memory."

For a moment, the silence was leaden as the message to the crowd sank in. And then, he heard a grim clapping, first one, then another and another, as people took up the gesture and passed it on.

Enjolras, giving a quick glance to the tense national guards at the far side of the crowd, decided that this was his call to leave.

"No."

Javert raised a calming hand, and the gesture alone caused the hand of the spindly National Guard to whip around towards him in fury.

"What?"

"I said no." He placed some more coldness in his voice and the message sank in, for all the unease that was clearly visible on the young man's face.

"This was a call for rebellion!" The exasperation was clear in his voice, and some part of Javert's heart was only too readily sharing the anger and outrage as well. But he had to admit, Enjolras was clever, and thus he must be clever too, not the dog, who attacks at the slightest opportunity, but like a cat, toying with its prey and luring it into traps.

Enjolras had played this well, and there was nothing to be gained from him today.

"It was subtle enough", Javert answered. "Not all will have understood, and those who have are lost already anyway. But he is right. Whoever staged this little show wants the uproar to happen here."

The National Guard frowned, and Javert, although not very keen on explaining himself, decided that it would be less troublesome to make him actually understand what the issue was.

"Someone tried to have a war breaking out here and now. From what Enjolras says – he is many things, as far as I can tell, but he is not a liar – it was not them. And certainly it was not us."

He ignored the tiny voice refusing to leave, that whispered 'or was it…?'

It was difficult.

"So the question is as always – in whose interest would it be to have a riot break out right here, right now?"

The National Guard's frown deepened.

"I don't know" he said.

Javert nodded.

"Indeed. Neither do I. And that's why we hold our peace."

For now, he thought. But it was not necessary saying that. Enjolras being the troublemaker he was, things would not stay calm for long.

"I'd rather turn right if I were you."

He flinched, but when he whirled around it was only Eponine, slipping out of the shadows like one born of it. No matter where she had gone to, she seemed more or less unscathed, unless one counted the large dent that was visible in her new dress, a bit of fabric peeling down along the skirt, showing a blink of almost white underskirt.

She was pale, though, and something in her eyes was wary.

"Why?"

She cocked him a tiny smile.

"Cause you're not stupid and would prefer not to be seen."

Enjolras was not quite as familiar with the neighborhood of the cemetery than he was with the Latin Quarter, but he was certain that the same was not true for Éponine.

She seemed to be knowing extremely well what she did. And there was no reason to doubt him.

"Indeed", he answered to both of her assumptions and wondered when it had become a familiar thing to do to rely on her guidance in the shadier areas of Paris.

"So right", she concluded and turned on her heel, already setting off in the direction.

Enjolras frowned. Something about her was distant, odd strangely different from before.

"Are you alright?"

She turned around only half way, and her profile betrayed nothing.

"Of course", she said. "Right as rain. Why shouldn't I be?"

Because you don't act like you are, Enjolras thought, but it seemed to personal an observation to utter. And he remembered that Eponine valued her privacy. This was a trait they shared.

And so he decided not to prod.

"Well then", he said instead, straightening and moving on to business. "Lead the way."

She did.