Enjolras isn't a statue, really (solo_patria) wrote in valarlogs, @ 2013-02-16 03:09:00 |
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Current mood: | determined |
"We are the priests of the republic"
Who: Enjolras, Dream Les Amis
When: Friday Night/Saturday Morning/1832 Revolution
Where: The Barricades
What: A dream, becoming judge, and getting schooled by his dream self.
Warnings: Violence warning.
Notes: All direct dialogue is Hugo, by way of the Hapgood Translation
Time had progressed here in the dreams and Enjolras, and his fellows were here, on the barricade that he had hoped for, planned for, and stretched out before them. He didn’t know what things had passed before then, from the time that they had planned til now, but he knew well enough what things meant now, as he watched his trusted lieutenants, his amis, and the others who’d come with them, settle for the night, in most, perhaps all of their cases, the last night that they would spend together here on this earth.
Their cause was righteous, and their cause was just, and the attempt, at least the attempt at insurrection, a government for the people like the one stolen two years ago was the important thing now. Should they all die here at the barricade, they would have done their best, their duty to Patria, to each other. It was the last thing that he had to offer, and while he would prefer to give her his service and his love for longer still, he was prepared, they were all of them prepared to do what needed to be done, Combeferre, Joly and Bossuet, Jean Prouvaire (odd, how he thought of Jehan in such formal tones here, he didn’t know what that business was about) , Bahorel and Feuilly, who had not mentioned any of the dreams yet, who weren’t even on the network, and, he realized with a start, Courfeyrac, who, though he had trusted him completely in the past of the dream world, he had several reasons to doubt in the last week.
Grantaire was nowhere, and he wondered that Dream! Enjolras had seemed to treat that as a given. The Grantaire he knew was not one who would have completely abandoned them, even if he didn’t agree with the cause, and no Marius, which, all right, given that Marius was stupidly in love, and not just with Napoleon here, he could understand a little, but it still was odd not to see his face among the men gathered either. He wondered when they last had spoken, if he’d said anything before they’d left to begin building, and, honestly, not just to them.
Over in a corner, while other men made bullets for the morning, his friends had gathered, here in the parts of the barricade that still resembled the Corinth, where they had drank and spoken in the past, seeking each other out in their last hours, and there was that part of him that wished he might let down his guard enough to go to them, that he was as easy in his affections as they seemed to be now, listening to Jehan reciting verses of some sort. ...His own?
Enjolras had no head for poetry, had other things to focus on for now, as he turned his attention back to watching the sentinels he’d stationed. There was little else he could do now, he could not let them go to their deaths without ensuring he had done all he could to preserve their lives. Being prepared to die, and for his friends to die, and knowing it was likely did not mean he was prepared to throw them away through failure on his part to ensure all was well.
He would do better for them here at his position, and he wouldn’t have known what to do if he was there among them for that matter, so he stayed. And waited as time passed, the light of a torch catching the scarlet of the flag, that same flag from Grantaire’s painting, he thought, and shuddered as he remembered how they’d found him. Would he wake from this in the same state? He hated the idea of someone coming in to find him, well, like that.
Time passed, a volunteer came to them, was revealed to be a police spy by a boy who seemed familiar though Enjolras couldn’t have named him and was sure he hadn’t seen him in the waking world, and was taken prisoner. He named himself a judge over this man as he was taken prisoner, exercised judgement again later as a man who had come to join their cause shot an old man in a nearby house, disgracing the barricade, the insurrection, everything that they had come here for. He could not be allowed to stay, he could not be let go, and there was one thing, only one to do for it.
Enjolras had him by his hair, forced the man, who was much larger, to his knees there at the barricade, giving him one last minute to gather his thoughts, to pray as he would, but knew that the decision he had made was final and it must be carried out. He timed that minute on his watch, calmly put it away when the time had passed, put a pistol to the man’s head and shot, because he had no other choice but to be comfortable with it.
“Throw that outside.” he said, voice still collected, as cold as it was, but considering what he had done, it was no less than the man had deserved, and at times, justice must be carried out by one’s own hand, when it mattered most.
Then he looked up, and faced those who had come to stand with them.
“What that man did is frightful, what I have done is horrible.” He’d killed so Enjolras had had to do the same. Discipline had needed to be maintained there at the barricade above all other places. “Assassination is even more of a crime here than elsewhere; we are under the eyes of the Revolution, we are the priests of the Republic, we are the victims of duty, and must not be possible to slander our combat. I have, therefore, tried that man, and condemned him to death.”
“As for myself, constrained as I am to do what I have done, and yet abhorring it, I have judged myself also, and you shall soon see to what I have condemned myself.” He added, glancing at the others there, knowing at least that his friends understood, saw that look in Combeferre’s eyes that told him his most trusted friend would stand beside him to the end of wherever this went, went on to tell him they would share his fate.
‘Thy’, Combeferre had said, Enjolras noted, filing that away to examine later, in the waking world. Thy implied a closeness that he didn’t think he had with any of them in that world yet, a closeness that he wished to have, that he could give them if he pushed himself, if he opened up more, if he would let the others in. He’d try, he told himself, feeling guilty and judged before himself, even as he continued speaking, adding further words that damned Enjolras in the modern world as strange as that might seem:
“One word more. In executing this man, I have obeyed necessity; but necessity is a monster of the old world, necessity’s name is Fatality. Now, the law of progress is, that monsters shall disappear before the angels, and that Fatality shall vanish before Fraternity. It is a bad moment to pronounce the word love. No matter, I do pronounce it. And I glorify it. Love, the future is thine. Death, I make use of thee, but I hate thee. “
“Citizens, in the future there will be neither darkness nor thunderbolts; neither ferocious ignorance, nor bloody retaliation. As there will be no more Satan, there will be no more Michael. In the future no one will kill any one else, the earth will beam with radiance, the human race will love. The day will come, citizens, when all will be concord, harmony, light, joy and life; it will come, and it is in order that it may come that we are about to die.”
He finished speaking those words, words Enjolras would keep with him as he went through his days, through classes, in the weeks ahead, looked at those who had gathered as he’d dispensed justice, and knew that he was right, but also that his words should now apply to him as well. If Love was to be the way of the future, perhaps he’d do better to start using that now.
He woke up with a start, turned to his phone, and even though it was the middle of the night, started typing at once.