Disclaimer: Les Miserables belongs to Victor Hugo.

Author's Note: So, this is my first attempt at Les Mis fanfic. I am always open to constructive criticism, whether it be about the writing itself or about characterization. Happy Barricade Day, and hopefully someone will enjoy!

The Path Still Chosen

He wakes in darkness.

Except it isn't really darkness. It is emptiness, absence, unbecoming, unbeing, the moments of peace lurking behind the cacophony of the world, and he sinks into it for a brief period. He lets the darkness envelop him, hold him, comfort him as the memories of pain and loss play through his mind.

This time they fell to an enemy they never even got to lay eyes on. They had suspected it would end like that, but they had hoped… always, they had hoped. If enough people rose with them, if enough took their side, if they were clever enough in creating their defenses…

They were outgunned from the start, though. Try as they might, try as they would, they couldn't get their hands on the types of weapons that the regime had. And no amount of physical fighting prowess and valiant determination was helpful when the enemy was planes guided by children a hundred miles away, dropping bombs as though the world was one great video game.

"You're not much more than a child yourself." The voice is male, young adult, and he opens his eyes to find that a gentle, sourceless illumination has replaced the darkness.

"I'm twenty-two." The words slip from his mouth, quiet, falling into the empty light. It is a familiar number, a haunting number, and a shiver runs down his spine.

"Yes." The young man sitting across from him, perched on a beam of light as though sitting on a rock, smiles slightly. His hair is a dirty brown color, his skin a similar shade, and his eyes seem to shift with each movement of his head, from black to brown to a piercing, vivid blue. "This is the fourth time you've died in your twenty-second year, isn't it, Enjolras?"

That name isn't the one he bore this time. It's a familiar name, though, an important one, and he stands slowly to face the young man across from him. "Where is this place?"

"You know where we are." The young man smiles again, a sad, gentle expression, and Enjolras wonders if he truly is male. It could be a woman's body, curves hidden behind the loose white shirt, the dark black pants. There are no shoes or socks on the young adult's feet. "We're between."

Enjolras nods, slowly, feeling that these are words he's heard before. These are questions that he's asked before. "You're going to ask me to choose."

"Always." The young man stands, hands going into the pockets of his black pants. Pockets Enjolras isn't certain were there before, but it doesn't really matter, not here. Whatever is needed is made, here; whatever form is most appropriate is donned.

Which is why Enjolras isn't surprised that the hair which falls across his face is a bright blond, different from the black hair he had in this last life. Sometimes things return to the beginning, to the point where it all started, before they can move forward. "The others?"

The young man's smile vanishes, all expression disappearing from his face. "Three hundred and sixty-nine people died in the bombing, including over fifty civilians."

Enjolras closes his eyes, draws a deep breath, and lets it out in a soft sigh. "We tried. I had everyone who could, who would, leave before they began. I didn't want any needless bloodshed."

"I know." The young man, young woman, young person reaches toward him, touches his cheek gently. There are no tears here, from Enjolras or from the one who mimics human form to talk with him, but their sorrow is palpable anyway. "You fought as you always do, with bravery and honor, with determination tempered by compassion."

"I do what anyone in my place would do." Opening his eyes, Enjolras meets the shifting colors of the gaze before him. "I do what must be done. The others… Combeferre, Coufeyrac, Bahorel, Jehan, Joly, Bossuet, Feuilly, Grantaire—"

It's easier to name them by those names, somehow. Those men died long ago, and he has mourned their loss many times since then. To name his friends, the ones who stood beside him until moments ago, to ask if they died by his side once more…

"One died trying to drag your body to safety."

Grantaire. The one who follows him always, from life to life, the connection between them a strange but impossibly strong thing, and he remembers the man standing at his side. He remembers the flash of the explosion, the impossible heat, and he hopes that Grantaire died as quickly and with as little pain as he did.

"One died trying to tend the wounded, when they bombed the hospital."

Joly, directing the evacuation of those too injured to fight, slipping from general to doctor and back again with a gracious ease that belied his usual tense persona.

"One died uploading images of what was being done to the Internet."

Coufeyrac, and Enjolras smiles at that, a soft, sad expression. Coufeyrac had been certain that the Internet would assist them, that if they could simply show their shadow-friends around the world what was happening, why they were fighting, then they would win more assistance. Maybe it was true. Hopefully. Probably, and if so then perhaps the images of their deaths will have some use.

"Three more died from the bombing, trying to hold the rebels together, trying to keep communication lines open. Combeferre, Bahorel and Feuilly. Their deaths were part of what Coufeyrac showed the world."

Enjolras doesn't ask how this being knows what names he's putting to the familiar souls. He simply nods, mute, a sorrow beyond words or tears choking his breathing.

"One more will die shortly, standing on the rubble where the wounded had been, where his dearest companion had been."

Bossuet, standing where Joly fell, and Enjolras nods again. It's a fitting end for him, if endings can be judged fit or unfit, and at least it means that the two of them won't be separated for long.

"The last will die three days from now, following a farcical trial. He will speak clearly, and his words will move hearts, but it won't be enough to spare his life."

Jehan, the poet, the wordsmith, and at least he will be heard during the last days of his life. At least he will have that chance. "That's all of us. We all died this time?"

Usually one of them survives—sometimes two. Well, once two of them survived, but they were meant to walk through life, through lives, at each other's side. The survivors never seemed to live long, because no one had been gone for more than one of Enjolras' passes through the world, but it was still a comfort to know that they had some time of peace. To lose all of them again, for no one to have even the extra twenty years or so that was their usual allotment… it's a heavy blow. "Do we succeed? Do our deaths buy what we were paying for?"

"You're here, Enjolras." The young man tilts his head to the side, questioning, and there is somehow both compassion and warning in his expression. "I've told you what happens to your men."

"Yes, as you always do." Enjolras stares straight at the young man, not allowing his eyes to drop though they desire to. This is not a being that is stared at for too long; those shifting, multi-colored eyes were never meant to be studied too intently. "But what happens to the people we fought for? If we touched hearts, did we touch enough? Will things change now?"

"Will that knowledge change your choice?" The young adult steps forward, head tilting to the opposite side, eyes slitting as his gentle expression fades to something more dangerous. "If I tell you yes, it worked, will you do something different than if I tell you that no, it didn't?"

"I…" Enjolras' eyes drop away, to the floor of shifting illumination on which they both stand. "No. I would choose the same, either way."

"Then I haven't made a mistake in telling you what I did." A hand, gentle as the slightest breeze, presses on his chin, brings Enjolras' eyes up again. "I tell you of your friends because you love them dearly, and I believe you have a right to know how quickly or slowly they will follow you. I don't tell you to cloud your mind with guilt or doubt."

It isn't guilt. It isn't doubt. Or not mainly guilt and doubt, though there may be some small speck of those hesitancies in his heart. He is only human, after all. But his desire to know what this young man could know, may know, must know, if he is what Enjolras believes him to be, that isn't built solely on guilt and doubt. How can the spark of just revolution continue if he fails to know what will bring change? If he never gets to know which actions, which words, which ideals move people, how is he to adapt his tactics?

"You will see." The young man shrugs. "If you choose to continue, you will learn in your new life, and you will see, and you will make choices fitting to the world in which you find yourself."

"How many times have we done this now?" It's a simple question, but Enjolras can't quite come up with an answer. There are too many faces, too many names, but they all bear the same spirits, and he always loves them.

"If you choose it, this will be your eleventh time, Enjolras." There is compassion in the young man's eyes, but it's somehow a terrible thing, full of certainty, full of pain, full of life.

"And the others?"

"They follow you. They share your fate."

Enjolras frowns, pulling back, anger flooding his veins at the possible implications. "Do you mean—"

"They choose." The young man shrugs again, stepping back, hands returning to his pockets. "They always have the choice, but they always seem to choose you. To choose each other. Ever since you first led them, Enjolras, there has been a connection between the nine of you that many would envy."

"We are… whole together. We complete each other. We work well together." They are all true statements, and yet none of them are quite the right one. They are bound together, the nine of them, by loyalty and love, by ideals and ideas, and Enjolras smiles as he imagines the others here. How would each react? Who would stare this being in the eyes, and who would flirt, and who would dismiss the whole thing?

"You've died for them ten times, Enjolras." Brown hair falls forward to cover the shifting eyes as the young man turns his head away. "The others have died for them nearly as often. You could choose a more peaceful path, if you wished."

"I've died for them ten times." Enjolras nods slowly, a smile tugging at his mouth. "But I've never been able to grow old in a land where our ideals are more than ideals. I've never watched my friends age, marry, have children, die of more natural causes than gunfire and swords and bombs. I've never had to face the time after the revolution, when corruption threatens everything."

The young man nods, and there are tears in his eyes as he shakes his hair away from his vision, crossing his arms. "Your choice?"

"The same as it always is." Stepping back, squaring his shoulders, Enjolras smiles fondly at the young man. "Until I can live for them, until that's where you need me most, I am quite content to die for them."

XXX

Somewhere, a child with blond hair and blue eyes is born.

The child's gender doesn't matter. Maybe he is male; maybe he is female; maybe he is neither, or both.

The child may lose his blond hair. His blue eyes may fade, darkening, though they will always have a depth and fire to them that surprise those who stare into them. Or maybe he will keep them, this time; maybe this is how he needs to look again.

He will grow, and he will learn, and he will see where the world is broken. He will see where it can be repaired, and how, and he will speak of his ideas even when it is dangerous.

He will be loved by eight people. Others may love him; others almost certainly will. It is hard for parents not to love their children, after all; and there will be other souls that he will meet who will touch his heart and be touched by him in turn. But there is something special about these eight, something precious and familiar, and he will love them dearly almost from the moment he meets them.

He may die again in his twenty-second year.

He may die earlier.

He may die later.

He may live, and love, and perhaps find a time and a world for children and laughter and the imperfect embodiment of hope.

That choice, after all, has never been entirely in his hands.