6A/N: Combeferre survives the barricade of June 1832, but at a price that he is unwilling to pay.
A/N: As I am not Male, French or living in C19th Paris, how can I possibly own Les Miserables? I am simply trying to convey my love for Victor Hugo's epic novel into something cohesive- please don't sue me!
82. Memories (Les Miserables)
When he comes to, he has no memories.
He has words, but does not understand where he got them from for his brain remains as blank as a new sheet of parchment; ready to be scrawled across with thin, black ink.
After a while, although he doesn't know how long a while is, he finds that he has movement too.
It's a fluid movement, no jerky as he'd feared; or thought that he'd feared, because he does not even know what fear is any more; but a movement performed with the regular ease of someone who has had control of a body for years.
But movement and words do not compensate for his lack of knowledge.
It is knowledge he craves; craves like food; a desperate, yearning hunger erupting in the pit of his stomach and cries for nourishment that he does not know how to supply.
He has no name for himself he realises.
He has no name for himself, nor does he know where he is; locked away in a flickering half darkness that stinks of sweat and urine and something…
Something rotten…
'Awake, are you?'
The words, laced with contempt, make him flinch.
The voice stirs something in him, something gripping his heart in the tight-fisted embrace of an old friend, something that he feels he has seen, lost within the darkness of another life.
Defiance.
It's a feeling that had once engulfed him as he stood gazing out at a city whose name he now had no memory of, a rubble of buildings glowing in a the blood red dawn.
It's a feeling that he had felt even after all was lost and an unknown creeping creature threatened to lay waste to all that he had fought for.
It's a feeling that greets him as an old friend, one that flares and ripples and lets him breathe for a moment that he hadn't known existed.
The darkness around his eyes is fading; but even as he tries to blink away the remnants of the fog that clouds the remnants of his vision; it still refuses to abate completely.
Your glasses were taken from you when you were recovered from the barricade.'
The voice, because it is just that; a voice slipping and sliding through his conscious as he struggles to regain his vision tells him; the words blank of all emotion.
Barricade.
His brain latches onto the word like a drowning man clutching at a scrap of driftwood, fingers scrabbling to gain a better grip.
Barricade.
An image flickers through him; the image of a fortress rising up to meet a tattered scrap of indistinguishably coloured cloth; burnt and broken and yet, despite everything, still flying.
The image of a shadow leaning out of the darkness, the weight of a body slumped against his own, the sudden shock of pain piercing his windpipe.
'You are a rebel. A traitor in the eyes of the King; His Most Righteous Majesty King Louis Philippe of France.'
The same non-existent voice is caught with something that he can't place.
'Once you are deemed fit, you will be tried and executed for High Treason.'
The words wash over him; the meanings that they must have had once now meaningless to his strange, blank mind.
He wishes that he could understand them fully.
He wishes he could, because somewhere in the darkness, he can feel the old feelings returning; the old hopes, the old dreams that had consumed him for so long that have, with the blink of an eye being swept from under him; creeping up upon him.
Was it really worth coming back if all he is going to do is die at the hands of the firing squad?
Better to have died the first time!
Better to have died and known that his death would have meant something, then to die condemned for an act that he cannot remember!
'You will be brought out at dawn', the voice says again, but he hardly hears it.
In the silence he feels his lips move, cracked skin scraping over itself to form words that he doesn't know he has.
The words themselves mean nothing to him, but it is the memories that they conjure which matter.
It is the memory of a pale faced man with ice blue eyes rippling with concern; a mask of cold composure slipping dangerously in the silence.
It is the memory of a band of brothers; glowing in the promise of their potential, bathed in the light of a new dawn that is rising like a phoenix from the ashes of a broken, bleeding city.
It is the memory of the sharp shock of a bayonet, an anguished scream rippling through the darkness.
'Forgive them. Forgive me. Please.'
A/N: Please feel free to read and review! Comments, suggestions, constructive criticisms etc are like chocolate to my brain!
Much love and enjoy x