Chapter 38 - Give it a Good One
The dead were laid out in a neat line when Javert approached the barricade.
Their faces were blackened, their skin smeared and stained.
Some of them stared up at the empty sky with unseeing eyes. Some of them lay with their mouths open in a permanent sigh of pain. Their breath had been snatched away. The blood lay still in their bodies.
Javert approached them with a numb and vacant expression on his face. He looked upon the dead, trying to remember what Grace had said each of their names were in the brief time he had been with them. The thick-armed one, who had given him his beating. The doctor, who had been killed in the second attack, his golden glasses-frames shattered and broken on his empty face. The dark-haired one, who had barged in on him and Grace when they had been in bed in her lodging rooms… All of them lay still and unmoving at his feet.
He wished he'd learnt their names. If nothing else, they deserved to have their names spoken aloud by someone who knew them in life.
He had seen dead men before, had seen their still and twisted faces strewn across dozens of battlefields. But it was strange to think how he had seen these boys, their faces animated with life, mere hours ago. How he had heard their voices. Watched them talk with one another.
Now, they were gone. They were nothing. Just the husk left behind now their soul had gone elsewhere.
"Is this the leader?" A Guardsman called out to Javert.
A pair of soldiers heaved a limp body down beside the row of dead. His chest was peppered with bleeding holes. His clothes in tattered rags. The body's golden-blonde hair had come loose from its ribbon and hung partially over his face. But Javert knew him in an instant.
He bent low and brushed the hair from out of Enjolras's face. His dark brown eyes were filmy. Empty. That firm but beautiful expression he had born in life was now lax and slack.
He felt the shiver of a sob in his chest. It had been a mere handful of months ago that he had sat across from this boy's parents and promised them that he'd try to keep him from harm. He'd failed. He'd failed so, so awfully.
"Sir?" The Guardsman asked him again.
Javert snapped his eyes up off the body of the boy.
"Is that him, Sir?" The soldier said again. "Is that the ringleader?"
Javert couldn't summon the words, no matter how hard he tried. His throat constricted with pain as he looked down the row of the dead before him. They were all so young. Not much older than he himself had been when he'd first journeyed to Egypt. And now they were gone. A line of wasted lives.
He nodded his head silently.
The National Guardsmen grunted and moved to walk away.
"Are there more?" Javert asked, suddenly finding his voice. "Are there any more dead?"
"This one was the last one to surrender." The soldier responded, pointing to Enjolras's body. "Even when all the others were dead, he refused to give up. Retreated into the tavern over there and wouldn't lay down his arms. Bet he wished he had after he'd taken a few musket shots!"
The National Guardsmen shared a few callous laughs between them, but Javert remained stone-faced.
"But there are no more?" He asked again, his voice laced with panic. "No other bodies to be collected?"
"What do you mean?" The soldier asked. "Should there be?"
"Is everything alright, Inspector?" Malloirave asked, suddenly appearing at Javert's back.
Javert straightened up and swallowed down the sorrow in his throat. He turned to face Malloirave, evasively looking away from his prying eyes. Since his little 'outburst' at the marksmen on top of the apartment building, his mentee had been keeping a close eye on him. Luckily, Malloirave had managed to make up a quick excuse to explain Javert's odd reaction. He'd told them something along the lines of "Inspector Javert has just returned from a gruelling and traumatic undercover mission. His behaviour is bound to be a little erratic…." Nevertheless, although Malloirave had lied to excuse his strange behaviour, Javert still felt his suspicious eyes on him.
"Are there any missing faces here, Inspector?" Malloirave asked him, gesturing to the line of bodies. "You spent time amongst them, after all, Sir."
Grace..! Javert wanted to scream at him. Grace isn't here.
Neither was Jean Valjean and the Marius boy who he had spoken to before he had been outed by that ragamuffin child.
Still, he couldn't even pretend for a moment that he was just as concerned for their well being than he was for Grace. Each moment his eyes spent searching the rubble and ruin of the fallen barricade, his guts twisted with agony. He almost didn't want to look through the wreckage, just in case his eyes found her cold, empty face looking vacantly up at the sky in the same way the boys at his feet were.
"No…" he responded weakly. "No, they're all here."
He walked away from the line of dead, his limbs heavy with dread.
Javert's mind was spinning. The bile in his stomach churned uncomfortably as he thought. He didn't understand. Grace had told him that the barricade would not fall. She had told him that the tide of history would flow in her favour.
And she had lied.
She had lied to him.
"Why, Grace?! Why did you do that?!" He whispered aloud to the empty air.
He hated himself for believing her. He detested himself for being convinced to leave her side. He had escaped the eye of the storm and abandoned her to it.
But if he ever banished the terrible deadening feeling of dread he felt inside him, then he might have the time to be angry at her later.
All he wanted to do now was just find her. Find her. Find her and hold her close to his racing heart.
Tears sprung in his eyes. Gunpowder and cannon smoke still hung heavy in the atmosphere around him. He tried to blink away the mist. Tried to peer through the thick clouds of smoke in the hopes that she might walk through the smog, like an angel appearing through the clouds for him.
But something inside him knew it was pointless to search for her. When he'd looked out into the no-man's-land in front of the barricade, he'd seen a person crawling through the rubble and rats. And he'd tried so hard to stop the bullets from flying. He'd felt the uncomfortable squeeze of the intuition in his guts…
Perhaps that figure had been one of the boys he'd seen laid out in that line of dead. If there were no more dead to be collected, then it had to have been…
But then why had he felt such a dreadful, awful need to stop the marksman from shooting? Why was the intuition still squeezing away at his stomach?
It didn't feel right to walk through this world.
Every step he took felt ugly and uncomfortable. There was something strange and hazy sitting over his mind now. Like he'd walked into the wrong reality and it was trying to reject him. Because, in his mind, this world shouldn't have happened. The barricade should have triumphed. The men on the ground should be alive and celebrating victory. And Grace should be at his side.
"Shall I make the report to the Comte de Lobau, Sir?" Malloirave asked behind him. "All of the insurgents are accounted for?"
He took a moment before he replied. He laboured over his words again.
"Yes…" he said hesitantly. "That's all of them."
Even after everything that had changed, everything that had happened, he still felt discomfort in lying to his superiors.
Malloirave did not press further. He nodded to him and walked away.
Left alone, Javert was at a loss for what to do with himself. He approached the now destroyed barricade. The mountain of timber was now crumbling and cannon-bashed. He could see the holes that the Gribauval's had punched through the wood. He could smell the blood in the air…
The ghosts of the dead boys danced along the now mangled parapet. He could see the shadows of their lives climbing up the timber and scrambling over the crates. They shimmered with happiness and hope. Javert was close to tears as he remembered their joyous voices when they'd known their first taste of victory. In a way, he was happy that he'd never heard those voices turn to terror.
But Grace would have.
She would have been here when the cannons bashed the barricade to pieces.
She would have been here when the air turned thick with screams.
"Where are you..?" He whispered aloud. His voice cracked with fear. His thighs trembled with dread. "Where are you, Grace? Where are you?!"
The bile in his stomach churned and twisted again. He bent his head low to the floor, trying to fight off the dizzying feeling of nausea that gripped him. The backs of his eyes hurt. The light of the dawn felt harsh and sharp. Since the boys had given him his beating, the inside of his head had felt like scrambled egg. He knew the familiar feeling of being punch-drunk. He'd had plenty of knocks to the head in his past. But he couldn't afford to give in to it now.
"Where are you? Where are you?" He repeated erratically. Again and again. "Where are you? Where are you?"
Until his eyes snagged on something.
A small hole in the floor.
The sewer-grate would have been unnoticeable, had the cover not been slightly askew…
Javert bent to the ground, touching a tentative hand to the iron cover and sucking in a sharp breath. He darted his eyes around the host of soldiers and Guardsmen who now walked amongst the conquered barricade. No one looked his way. Nobody paid him or his sewer grate much mind.
He dared to hope. Perhaps in the morbid mess of the barricade's conquering, Grace had managed to escape.
He peered down into the murky depths. The blackness was stifling. The darkness, utterly consuming.
Javert looked about again. There was no one near to disturb him. No one to follow him. Not even Malloirave. If he was quick, then he could slip down into the sewers with no one to mark him…
He seized the iron cover in both hands, hauling it to the side. A pungent waft floated up from the sewer, smacking him in the nose, but this did not deter him. Just as Grace had taught him to do, he dangled his legs into the darkness first, pausing only for a moment to take in a deep breath. And with a push, he propelled himself into the blackness.
"GYAAAAAHHH! Don't shoot me!" A voice shrieked around the tunnel.
Javert's chest roared with alarm. Despite the voice's plea, he drew his pistol and turned to point it in the direction of where the shriek had come from.
The pale yellow light from the street above illuminated Thénardier's fear-stricken face. He cowered against the wall of the sewer, both hands outstretched towards Javert.
"You?!" Javert sneered, lowering his weapon. "What are you doing here?"
"Oh, Inspector! It's you! It's you!"
Thénardier hurriedly stuffed his hands into his pockets, and Javert noticed that his fingers had been stacked with rings and other jewels…
"I was just…" Thénardier began, his trousers jingling with coins. "I was just… making sure the National Guard had down here covered."
Javert ground his jaw together. He seized Thénardier by the collar and hauled him against the wall. "You've been looting, haven't you, you leech!"
"No, sir!" Thenardier screeched, but Javert was not fooled.
"I saw plenty of braggards like you at Waterloo! Every battle I took part in! There were dogs like you, sniffing around the corpses, hoping to get lucky. Have you no shame, Thenardier?!"
He roared into his face. Let his anger and contempt for the man show. Normally, he would have kept his emotions in check, especially in front of men like him. But he was exhausted and distraught, panicked and punch-drunk…
Thenardier shrugged off his grasp with a viciousness he'd never seen from the punitive little man before. He sneered at Javert and spat at his feet.
"As far as I can see, Inspector…" he growled maliciously. "...You're down here amongst the sewer rats, a breath away from Hell, just like me."
"I would never dream of robbing the dead." Javert spat back.
"Who d'you think cleans up after all the odds and ends? Who do you think takes away the bodies when law and order is upside down? When you've finished killing each other?! Who do you think does it?!"
Javert was struck dumb for a moment. He had no response for Thenardier's accusations, because he truly had never considered it before. Even still, the man's pock-marked and disgruntled face made him feel nauseous with disgust.
"You're no better than a dog. A stray dog!" Javert growled.
"But I'm a dog that's gonna survive this mess." Thenardier chuckled cruelly. "That's somethin' that the stiffs up above can't say."
Javert swallowed hard. It was truly an upside down world where Thenardier could thwart him with his words and twisted logic…
"Did… did you see anybody else down here?" he asked the man weakly.
"That way." Thenardier pointed, his voice gruff. He barely looked up from his palm as he inspected a gold ring in his hand.
"Who was it?" Javert pressed, hungry for whatever information he could get.
"That kid that our Eponine fancied. Looked dead as a dodo to me. And that fella you twisted my arm off for information about… Jean Valjean."
Javert went cold. Jean Valjean. Survived the barricade. Of course, he would have muddled through the mayhem when so many others had not. Was he prepared for another confrontation with him? Another face-to-face meeting with the past?
But perhaps Grace was with them. Maybe Thenardier had failed to notice her in the dim and the dark of the sewer. He hoped to God that was the case…
"How long ago?" he asked abruptly.
"I dunno. Half an hour, maybe?"
Javert took off in the direction Thénardier had pointed in.
"You better keep your wits about you, Inspector!" Thénardier called after him. "Valjean's a dog too, and he knows how to fight!"
Javert didn't stop even for a moment. He would have taken off running down the sewer pipe, if he could have seen where he was going. But he stumbled on, half blind, through the darkness, wetness pounding underneath his feet.
He wished he'd brought a lantern. Or perhaps he should have asked Thénardier for a candle. Instead, he found himself back in the labyrinth of twists and turns, the burning smell of sewage singing his nostrils and his eyes clogged with darkness.
He felt like a child in the womb. Unaware of the outside world and floating in utter blackness. When he had come to the sewers with Grace, they had seemed like a calm, subterranean haven from the chaos of up above. Now, they felt like the blackest circles of Hell.
Sometimes he would see faces in the dark. People he knew weren't really there, but reached out to him, like the souls of the condemned, abandoned to purgatory. People from his past, each tormented by the sin of their life: He saw his mother's hands, reaching out to him from out of the walls, her voice raw and screeching. He saw Camille, her dark features twisted and ugly with covetousness and greed. He saw Froid, the ice of his own frigidness turning his lips blue. He saw Burgelesse, his face still marred with those buboes and sores he'd buried him with outside Acre. He saw Peyrusse, his legless body clawing up at him and calling him the 'son of a whore' again. He saw the Chefs des Services of Toulon, handing him his bastonnade, blood dripping from the nails. He saw the Prisoner on the hulks, who he'd let the seagulls eat when he'd died in his watch. He saw Fantine, her wide eyes choking and large as she struggled for breath in the last moments of her life once more.
His head pounded right behind his eyes as he fought away the faces. The past had rushed up all around him in the darkness of the sewers, and now he was about to drown in it. Once or twice he found himself swaying from side to side, crashing into the brick wall beside him. He had to force himself upright, compel himself onwards. And just like a child in the womb, eventually he started to hear vague and distant noises…
He paused.
Javert lent himself up against the wall of the sewer, panting heavily and head swimming with emotion. He listened intently. For a moment, he thought it was another hallucination. Another tormentor from his past. But it was real. He felt the tingle of the vibration in his ears. The noises sounded warped and strange. Like an animal bellowing in a slaughterhouse…
Still, he gathered his courage and walked on. If there was someone else down here with him, then he had to follow them. No matter how deep into the darkness they were.
The noises grew to become voices. Grunts and sighs. And a scraping sound. Something being dragged through the wetness and the filth of the tunnel.
"Valjean!" He cried out into the darkness. His voice echoed off the stones. A booming command.
Javert heard a gasp in the darkness. Something small and frightened.
All of the sounds halted, and Javert could sense the tension and fear echoing down the sewage pipes to him.
He stumbled on, and the clamouring voices in front of him resumed their noises too.
"Valjean!" He called out again, quickening his footsteps.
He was getting closer. He could hear more distinct words in the noises now. There was a child. He could hear him crying in the blackness. And another voice, straining under the weight of something and trying to soothe the child's fright.
"Please, sir, I can't carry 'im anymore! My arms hurt!"
"Keep going, little one! Just a bit further!"
"Valjean! VALJEAN!" Javert roared after them.
"Who is that, sir? I'm frightened..!"
"Ignore it. Just a ghost. Keep going. We're almost there."
Javert stumbled through the sewage, until he happened upon a small ray of light spilling down from the roof of the pipe. He had to blink a few times at what he saw. What the light had illuminated. It looked like a monster with two backs and too many arms. A sprawl of flesh and legs. It took him much too long to realise that he was looking at a man, bearing another man over his back. A young boy held up his legs with feeble arms, and the two of them were trying to carry the unconscious man through the pipe.
The young boy gasped in fear and turned around. Javert instantly recognized him as the little ragamuffin that had outed him to the boys of the cafe. Before, his face had sung with cockiness and cheekiness, but now, all he saw was just fear.
But then, the mass of arms and backs turned around too. And there was Jean Valjean.
"I knew it would be you." Valjean said, panting through his teeth.
"Valjean…" Javert breathed. "Who do you bear on your back?"
He couldn't see their face in the darkness, but his guts were tight as he squinted through the shadows. The body was still. Utterly unmoving.
"The boy. Marius." Valjean responded. "He was shot. And he needs a doctor's care."
Javert let out a long sigh, but his shoulders did not relax even a fraction. He had prayed with everything in him that it wasn't Grace on Valjean's back. But that meant something even more terrible had to be true…
"Where…where is Grace?" He asked, heart thumping. "Tell me, have you seen her? Did she escape with you?"
He glanced around them, hoping to find her crouched at their backs, concealed in the dark. Hoping beyond hope that she was here somewhere…
"No, she did not." Valjean said solemnly. There was weight to his voice. Heavy as iron.
Something about the way he said it made Javert go still.
"So, where is she?" he said, his throat tight with dread.
"You mean…she weren't with the others back there…?" little Gavroche piped up.
"Boy, don't!" Vajlean cut in sharply.
The pain of fear wound itself tighter around Javert's heart. It was becoming difficult to breathe. Difficult to stay upright.
"What…What do you mean?" he asked tentatively. "You know where she is. I see it in your faces! Please, tell me!"
Valjean looked at the ground, not wishing to meet the Inspector's eyes.
"Prisoner 246- Valjean…" he stuttered, correcting himself. "Please. I beg you. Tell me where she is. You helped to save my life, I… I will concede that perhaps you are a good man, just like Grace said. I'll give you whatever you desire. You'll walk out of this sewer a free man. I'll abandon my duty to bring you to justice forever. You never need look over your shoulder again. Just tell me. Tell me!"
"Javert…" Valjean sighed.
"TELL ME!"
"She's dead, Inspector." the little boy said flatly.
For a moment, Javert lost all grasp on space and time.
He floated in the darkness without a soul. Without a body.
The voices of his past went quiet all around him. And there was nothing. Nothing but emptiness and silence.
Jean Valjean winced as the words struck forth into the air. He bent his head low and tried to fight back the tears that welled in his eyes. He had clearly wanted to spare the Inspector from hearing the news so abruptly, but now there they were. Out amongst the sewer rats and the muck.
"They shot 'er." Gavroche continued. "When she went out into no-man's-land to go looking for extra bullets."
He was swimming in nothingness. He felt it about his face, his ears, his eyes. And he might have felt afraid of drowning in it, but his heart was still and dead. His soul had fallen out of his feet. There was nought inside him. Nothing to feel pain or anguish or fear anymore. Nothing.
"Javert, I am truly sorry." Valjean said heavily. "I would have tried to spare her life too, but she and Enjolras conspired together whilst we were all resting and… and before I knew what she and her cousin had planned, I heard the gunshot..."
He let the words wash over him. He heard them and did not at the same time. He waited for them to sting. For them to hurt, but they didn't.
There was nothing. There was nothing.
"No one could venture out there to fetch her back, else they too might have been shot." Valjean said.
"And then the cannons started blastin' off." Gavroche uttered, his small eyes a little clouded. "And there was no way I was stickin' around there with all the other stiffs!"
"Boy! A little sensitivity!" Valjean chided.
"You saw this?" Javert asked, his voice so quiet, it was a raw croak. "You saw it happen?"
"We heard the shot. She didn't come back." Valjean stated.
"I asked you, did you see it or not, man?!" Javert roared, striding up to Valjean until his nose was almost parallel to his.
He stopped, just short of his face. He could smell the sweat on Valjean's forehead. The boy slung over his back groaned in pain and feebly lifted his head, flopping back down a second later.
But Javert did not take his stormy eyes off Valjean. Something sparked between their gaze. Something stronger and more powerful than fire. More powerful than the force that had drawn them together and apart, together and apart, all these years…
"She's gone, Inspector." Valjean said gently. "I am sorry. I know how it feels to be away from the ones you love when they leave this place. It is a pain that never dies. But I do not deliver this blow to you barely for the sake of malice."
"I've hunted you across the years. You've lied to me before. I have taken everything from you before. You…you just want to twist the knife. Punish me for all I've done to you over the years!"
"I blame you for nothing." Valjean said, shaking his head softly. "All you did was perform your duties to the Law. You did what you believed right."
"What's right…" Javert breathed. "What's right… The stars have fallen from the heavens. The sun has risen in the West. If she is gone, nothing is right anymore!"
There was nothing Jean Valjean could think of to say. There was just sadness in his eyes. Sadness and sympathy.
The man that he had beaten and whipped on the hulks, who he had slapped a parole paper into the palm of and pushed out the door, who he had chased out of his comfortable life in Montreuil-sur-Mer… he felt sympathy for him.
And he knew that it was no ploy.
His brow crinkled into a small frown. The last dying kicks of his cold heart.
"Look me in the eyes and tell me." He said to Valjean softly. Feebly. Pleading with him to rescind everything he had said prior begging him to declare it all as a hoax at his expense. "Look me in the eyes and tell me the truth."
"I think you know the truth within your heart already." Valjean whispered quietly. "I'm sorry, Inspector. She's dead."
The words found their target. They hit hard and they hit fast. Javert staggered back, away from them all. He let the dark nothingness reclaim him and he went striding off back down the sewage tunnel.
"Inspector…? Javert!" Valjean called after him. "Come with us! We are close to the escape!"
"There is no escape for me now, Valjean." He mumbled back darkly, leaving both the boy and the men at his back. "None."
She could hear her Mum's voice talking to her.
Telling her about the Sunday roasts she'd had the last time she'd gone to the Langdales. The crisp roast potatoes, the steamed and buttery greens, the succulent slices of pork…
Such an inane conversation. One that she had half-listened to on the phone with her Mum the last time they had spoken.
But she listened to each excited inflection. Each sigh of delight. She tried so hard to perfectly reconstruct the sound of her Mum's voice, until she could almost visualise her floating in the darkness in front of her. Her face moving in the void of nothing.
It was a pleasant sort of ache. A happy, floaty kind of feeling. Like the soft sensation of pins-and-needles when her foot had fallen asleep, but all over. She had expected death to be painless and empty. But this was okay. She had her Mum and the sound of her voice, and that almost made her forget about the tingle in her skin.
Her mother talked about Paddy and Max, the spare room in her house up at the Lakes, what she'd been feeding herself recently, even asked her for the millionth time if she was okay…
She adored it. Every moment of hearing her voice and seeing her after so long apart. Even if it was banal or irritating. She didn't care. Her Mum's voice meant home. She was home. Back with her Mum.
Until suddenly, she saw her Mum stop in her monologue and turn to her, a frown on her face.
"You aren't gonna give up now, are you bab?"
It took her by surprise. Knocked the wind out of her a little. The feeling of that tingling intensified for a second…
"What do you mean?"
"Well, it's just…the last time you spoke to me, you said 'I'm not leaving, Mum' and 'This is my city'."
"Yeah, well…that was before." She responded, a bit weakly. "That was different."
"And you're alright with never coming home?" Her Mum asked nonchalantly. "That'll be a shame. I'll have to tell Gordon to put all the gym gear back in the spare room…"
"I did want to come home, Mum." Her voice was shaky, weak, and her body tingled with those strange pins-and-needles. "I wanted to come home. I wanted to see you again more than…more than…"
"More than what?"
She blinked, the pins-and-needles surging to something intense and strong. "Don't make me say it."
"More than anything?" Her Mum pressed.
She nodded, bowing her head low.
"And what about him? Do you think he'll be disappointed?"
The pins-and-needles grew fiery. Yes, it would be hard leaving him when it seemed like she'd only just found him. But for him… she got the feeling that when she let go, he'd be lost in a sea of cold stars.
"He's survived worse than this."
"Yes, but… it's such a shame for him. To have to be so brave."
"He's strong."
"You're strong." Her Mum said firmly. "And brave too. You could be each other's strength."
She thought for a moment. Thought about everything her Mum had said to her. She didn't really want to give up. She didn't really want this to be the last vision of home she ever saw. She didn't really want to leave him to his misery and solitude. There was still too much she wanted to tell him, to show him, to do with him…
"How?" She asked with a scoff. "I'm dead, aren't I?"
"Oh come on, bab. You're too stubborn for that." Her Mum said with a jovial laugh.
The laugh sent a ripple of pain through her arms.
"Alright, so how do I do it?" She asked tentatively.
The tingle in her arms spread down her legs. Deep into her stomach. Behind her eyes.
"It will probably be quite painful."
"Yeah, I figured."
"And you'll have to try and get out of there."
"If they don't shoot me again first."
The pins-and-needles grew fierce and strong. It was an all-over burn. Both inside and out. God, it was going to hurt when she woke up…
"Are you ready?" Her Mum asked.
She chuckled to herself dryly. "I should have known."
"Known what, bab?"
"If this is my story, then there's no way that they'd let the main character die, is there. That would be a shit ending."
Her Mum gave her one last brave smile. "Then give it a good one."
...
And then she woke up.
Face covered in ash, eyes glazed and murky.
That tingle that she'd felt all over her body roared into agonising pain.
It had her gasping. Coughing. Wanting to scream, but not being able to stop her panting gulps of pain for long enough to draw breath.
Her ears were ringing. Her mouth was dry. And for a moment, she thought she'd woken up inside a coffin.
Through the mist of pain, the sky above her looked like it had grown a ribcage around her, and she was now entrapped around it.
God, it did hurt. A pain so bad she thought that it was going to split her open.
And it came back to her in a flash of terror: the crawling through the rubble, the looting of the dead, the first rays of dawn that made the rats scatter around her, the counting of her breaths, the trembling of her hands…
And then she remembered the sound of the world catching fire. A sudden, sharp sound that had made the pins-and-needles start. Then nothing. The world had fallen into blackness.
That's when she'd heard her Mum's voice. That's when she'd had that lilting, calm sort-of death.
And right then, she couldn't believe that she'd given that up.
She made her first noise then. A pitiful mewl of pure panic and agony. There was something massive in it, however. Something defiant and strong.
Even the smallest twitch of her body in that ribcage prison had her consumed with pain. She wanted to dry-heave, but she fought it down, knowing that the sudden, jerky movement would send the pain soaring into the stratosphere.
She could just about will her right arm into movement. It came to rest, hovering over her face, shaking and covered in blood. She stared at it for a moment, wondering where the redness had come from, her mind working slowly.
Oh… she thought, her eyes widening at her bloody fingers.
That's what the sound had been. That's why the pain had begun. And that's why she had slipped into blackness.
Oh… she thought again, letting the hand flop to her side. Someone shot me.
After a few seconds of panting quiet, she searched over herself for the offending wound. Her hand met with a slick, sticky patch of wetness just above her right hip. Her clothes had been soaked through. She could feel the warmth of it right the way down her leg.
A groan leaked out of her mouth as her fingers danced over the tear in her clothes. Still, the fact that she was awake, that she hadn't bled to death, gave her a shot of hope. Perhaps the bullet had missed anything vital.
But how had she come to be half-buried in this ribcage? She glanced up above her, glaring through her misty tears and saw that her prison was made of timber. It looked like the hull of a small boat, or maybe a large barrel… She couldn't tell exactly what it was, but she was sure it had come from the barricade. And that worried her; The barricade had been standing strong and upright the last she recalled. So why was she now buried beneath its rubble?
Her breaths became shorter and sharper as her mind jumped from thought to thought. What had happened? Where were the boys? Who had won? What had happened to them when she'd failed to come back with more bullets for them?
Where was Valjean?
Where was Enjolras?
Where was Javert?
She closed her eyes, taking in a long and deep breath. She tried to calm her racing thoughts and think pragmatically.
From the soft light of the sun beyond the timber, it looked like the early morning. But an early morning shining on who as the victor? If she called out for help, and the wrong people came looking for her, then there might be another bullet waiting for her. But if she stayed quiet, then what would become of her in her already half-constructed coffin?
She tried pulling herself upright. A mistake.
Pain ground its way deep through her body. Twisting its way like a gnawing ferret deep into her bones. She clamped her jaw tight together as a sigh of agony hissed out of her.
"Oh fuck..! Oh fuck…!"
She felt more oozing blood come from her wound. The dizzying pull of nothingness threatened to take her again and she almost passed out. But she tried to concentrate on her breaths. Long, deep breaths. One at a time. Until the searing pain had subsided a little and she didn't feel like she was on the edge of passing-out.
But then a noise made her snap open her eyes.
It sounded like a rat, or maybe a stray dog, scrabbling over the rubble above.
She couldn't see. Couldn't tell what the noise was. But it moved with speed over the timber above her. The wood and rubble creaking and groaning. She tried to stay as still as possible, but her frightened breaths would not be stilled. Staring up at the ribcage of timber, she couldn't help but let out a small whimper of fright.
The noise stilled. And she knew that whatever it was had heard her.
She tried not to scream as she heard the scrabbling sound approach her little timber coffin. Tried not to cry when she saw the beams and wood being ripped away from over her. The sun was harsh and dazzling when it spilled itself over her, and she blinked a few times as she waited for her vision to clear.
"My dear Grace…" a voice called down to her.
She opened her stinging eyes to find the Story Teller hovering over her. His strange, mercurial gaze taking her in, in her pitiful state, with one swoop up and down her body. She didn't have the strength to respond to him. The last time she'd seen him had brought her pain and heartache, and she'd told him in no uncertain terms to leave her alone, but she couldn't help but let out a small sigh of relief when she saw his face.
"Oh, my dear Grace…." he sighed again, moving to bend to her side. "How ironic that our fates now seem reversed from the moment of our first meeting."
Grace didn't reply, merely rolled her eyes and groaned. It felt like he was about to muster up some kind of verse…
"There's more to the story, than what just appears. A war written story, from blood and from tears."
She let out a small, dry cough. A tiny show of annoyance that she hoped the Story Teller picked up on.
"Let me help you." the Story Teller said, deciding that pretty lines of poetry were perhaps saved for later.
He scooped a hand underneath her back and tried to push her up into a sitting position. Grace groaned and grunted the whole way there, grinding her teeth so hard together that she thought her molars would crack. But she did not pass out. She did not let the pain take her again.
"Who won?" she ground out when the worst of the throb had subsided.
"What?"
"Who won?!" she repeated again, harsher and more forcefully. She was in no mood for delicate and pretty conversations.
There was a pause. A silence that seemed to stretch on just a little bit too long.
Grace looked at the Story Teller. Met him head-on with her searching stare. And her heart broke when she saw pain in his eyes.
"Oh God…" she murmured, tears misting her vision.
"I'm sorry, my dear Grace. But I could not rewrite the end of the story. Not for anyone…"
Grace didn't respond. She couldn't think of what to say. The storm had ravaged everything. It had destroyed everything. And she could sense that it had carried everyone off with it.
She hung her head low to weep. The retching sobs that leaked out of her body made her wound pang with pain. But it was slowly being dwarfed by the pain that awoke in her heart.
"Are they all..? Are all of them..?" She couldn't complete the sentence. Couldn't speak it into existence.
The Story Teller nodded his head grimly.
Grace scrunched up her eyes and sobbed. She said their names out loud, unsure of why she felt the need to. But each one quavered their way off her tongue in a dreadful roll-call. A part of her dying with them after each name she spoke.
"Courfeyrac… Bahorel…Feuilly… Grantaire…Marius…"
She paused before the last one.
She felt the absence of him, like a hole in the sky.
The face of her stubborn and beautiful 'cousin' flashed before her eyes. The last time they'd spoken, in the tavern when she'd volunteered to go searching for bullets, he'd let her see a little of his old warmth and golden charisma, and as she pictured his face, softer and gentler than normal, she pictured it as it had been in that moment. Not knowing it was the last time they'd ever speak to each other. Not knowing that it was the last time she'd ever hug him close and feel his life, warm and vibrant, on her skin.
"Marcelin…Oh, God… Marcelin…"
She shook her head softly as her cries grew fiercer. She had tried so hard to save him from death. To put herself in between him and danger. But in the end, her tries had counted for nought.
She sent up a silent plea for forgiveness to Jocelyn. Her boy, her son. He was now lying dead out there somewhere. And she didn't stop it. She couldn't stop it. And that guilt alone felt strong enough to kill her…
"And you would be laid out beside them all, had the blasted barricade not covered you with its debris." He added, shaking his head.
"This was always going to happen…" Grace breathed. A fog cleared in her mind, and she could see the futility of it all so clearly now. "They were always going to die. I know that now. Why do I know that now?"
"It's easy to know the story once it has already told itself."
"But you made me love them." She said, looking him deep in the eyes. Her bottom lip quivered as she spoke. "You made me know them and love them and cherish them all. They were my friends. My friends!"
"That is the sorrow and the majesty of this tale. It gives a name and a face to the revolution. A terrible humanity to the tragedy."
He let Grace cry for a moment, the tears spilling down her face and her shoulders rocking. When she had stilled a little, he rose to his feet and tried to help her up. She was as shaky as a newly born deer on her feet, and she would have dropped straight back to the floor had the Story Teller not supported her under her arm.
"What…What about Javert?" She panted out, feeling light-headed and woozy. "Where is he? You said… you said they laid them all out side by side. Was he there? Did he see them?"
"Most likely."
"Oh God." Grace groaned.
A bad feeling started somewhere deep at the back of her mind. If he'd been at the barricade after it had fallen, if he'd seen all the others spread out, cold and dead, before him… It wouldn't be such a leap in thought for him to assume she'd died too.
"I need to find him." She said firmly. "I think… I think he's going to do something awful."
The Story Teller nodded in terrible acknowledgement of that bad feeling she had.
"Javert's soliloquy…" he breathed, fear in his face.
"Soliloquy?" She asked with a frown.
The Story Teller was silent for a moment. His breaths grew closer and closer together and that fear in his eyes fired into a flame.
"Perhaps…perhaps I can change one small thing…" He said hurriedly. "Perhaps there should be a small spark of hope at the end of all of this…"
"What? What are you talking about?" Grace asked, panic rising in her throat. "Please, no more riddles and shadows. Please let me remember… Surely the finale's passed now. The story is over. I know there's more. Let me remember!"
He looked at her for a long, pensive moment. "I suppose… what harm would there be now if you knew the tale you found yourself in..?"
"Tell me! Tell me!" Grace pressed, sensing that she was close to getting what she wanted.
A beat of silence echoed between them. The Story Teller let out a long and conceding breath.
"Brace yourself, my dear Grace."
"Wha-?"
The Story Teller touched a hand to her forehead… and her mind exploded into a symphony.
She snapped her neck back, eyes bulging wide as the wall between her and remembering blew itself apart.
Her body shivered and convulsed. The music from that symphony whirled around her skull. All the notes at once, all the lyrics screamed at the same time.
Everything that had seemed just out of reach, just out of her grasp, thrust itself into her mind. So suddenly and so quickly that she thought she might choke on it.
She remembered. She remembered…
"Les Misérables!" she cried up at the sky. Her wail was like a banshee. Like the scream of a war-widow. "You put me into Les Misérables!?"
"You chose it! You picked up Victor Hugo's novel off the ground yourself!"
"Because it looked the biggest!"
"It is a rather meaty tome, I will grant you that…"
"And the music I've been hearing… Oh my God, no wonder I couldn't stop it from sounding off in my mind! The amount of times I've played 'On My Own' or 'I Dreamed a Dream' for my voice students..!"
"My dear Grace, you must focus now!" The Story Teller said heatedly. "Do you remember the fate that befalls your beloved Javert?"
She went cold. A bolt of ice stabbed its way down her spine. In her mind, she could now see a baritone on a bridge. Lots of dry ice. A soliloquy…
"Oh God, no…"
"That is why we must make haste!" the StoryTeller added quickly, hauling her over the rubble. "Do you know where the Inspector might go if he is feeling lost or pensive or alone?"
"I… I know where I'd go." she said, limping and wincing with each step she took. "If I wanted to feel closer to him…If I thought I'd lost him… I know where I'd go…"