"FAILURE!" Wails a voice in my ears.

It's a genderless screech, burning my all my sense receptors with an electric fire.

"You've failed me," whispers another. A man? No. A woman. Patria.

My Patria.

"I've failed you." I can't tell if my words are said out loud or in my head.

"I have failed you!" I cry out again, this time my voice is a desperate scream akin to the one shouting back at me.

"My Patria. My Patria." I think I'm speaking, at least. What position am I in? I think I'm curled up in a ball on the floor. No, I'm standing. Am I? I am. I am standing. Shaking from the cold, though my skin is slick with sweat. I think it's sweat. The blood of my enemies? The blood of my friends? More likely. Perhaps the tears of Patria.

My Patria.

I've let you down.

I'm so sorry.

I must have screamed that last thought, because my throat is raw, and there's a barbed snake climbing out of my throat and onto the floor. No, I've imagined the snake.

What have I imagined? Did any of this actually happen? Did I lead my friends, my country, my Patria, into a doomed fate?

Yes.

All my fault.

Me.

My folly.

My folly!

Joly! Joly! You're gone! Your last words are on your tongue. I can't make them out. You're ashamed of me, I know it.

"All you, Enjorlas! All you! This is all your fault!"

That's what they must have been. It's all clear now. My revolution is happening in front of me, and all my friends are dying. Again? I don't know. Surely this is the first time this has all happened, although I know what's going to happen before it does, so does it not make sense that I have lived this before? I don't know. I don't know. I don't know.

I just don't, Patria.

I don't anymore.

I never did.

Wait, yes I did.

I did what?

Patria, it's all my fault! My center! My guide! My poet and cynic and craftsman. They were my children, and I let them run to their deaths. I might as well have murdered them.

I did murder them.

They followed me to their deaths, and I live.

And in living, I have failed.

You, Patria, I've failed you, and every other thing I've ever crossed on this planet.

I've failed it all.

I'm a neophyte. I'm a drowned, rotting corpse at the bottom of the ocean, under the lowest rock of the lowest trench, covered in hundreds of tons of putrid carcasses and debris.

"You're a failure, Enjolras! It's all you! It's always been your foolishness, and now everyone you love is gone because of you, and there's nothing to show for it but your miserable existence." Where are these tortured cries coming from?

—

The pair of guards trails the drunk between them like a deadweight corpse, for he is refusing to walk. When they reach his cell, they have to prop him against the wall in order to open the door. They then proceed to throw him in like a sack of flour.

The drunken fool doesn't mind. Hell, it doesn't even hurt; not after what he's been through. He'll have hell to pay in the morning, though, once he realizes his and bruises and cuts.

—-

My cynic!

Not mine. Not my cynic. But the old cynic nonetheless.

Surely I must be dead at this point. How else could the cynic be here?

"I'm so sorry, cynic."

He's not moving.

Of course he's not moving, he's dead.

But he's breathing?

I'm going mad, he's not breathing. Who am I kidding? I've been mad. All my fault, too. It's all my fault. I'm so sorry, my dead cynic, my dead friends, my vengeful Patria.

I'm sorry, okay, stop shouting at me! And get this corpse away! Just make it all stop, even though I deserve every bit of it. All of this, I deserve it, I know.

"I KNOW!" I'm exclaiming. Tears are running down my face. Are they mine?

My body is in so much pain.

I deserve it.

I'm so sorry, my Patria.

Claim me, merciless sleep, and replace my waking nightmares with unconscious ones.

—-

Grantaire awakes upon a cold, dank surface and with a pounding in his head. Each breath is met with a sharp, stabbing pain to his chest, and his vision is too blurry to be able to make out any of his surroundings, save the fact that it's dim. The only illumination is unnatural: a lantern in the corner, out of his reach. No way for outside light to enter.

His eyes are forced shut when he retches all over the floor.

When they open again, he can focus a little better, as the churning in his gut has subsided.

He is now able to take better stock of his surroundings.

He's in a tiny room. There is a mattress in the corner, undoubtedly straw, by the lumpy and uncomfortable look of it. The floors and walls are stone – rough, uncomfortable, unforgiving stone, as he realizes that his body is aching all over from his uncomfortable sleep. He turns around slowly, so very slowly, as not to agitate his stomach again, and sees a door made of wood. There's a tiny window with bars over it.

He's not dead. He's in prison.

Looks like he didn't get enough alcohol in his system to finally snuff himself out, just enough to get him landed in jail this time.

The dead silence is broken when he shuffles to crawl over to the mattress. He lies down, the prickly material digging into his skin, when he hears a hushed whisper from the dark corner of the room.

He turns to see a crazed man hunched up into the fetal position, angrily muttering to himself. Closing his eyes, Grantaire tries to ignore him, but finds that the incessant chatter isn't helping his headache at all.

"Would you shut up?" He croaks out.

The man stops his rambling and looks up at Grantaire. "My cynic. The cynic. My Patria is punishing me. I deserve this. CYNIC! COME TO PUNISH THE DAMNED ONE? Deliver me to my fate." His head drops again and he recommences his intelligible murmuring.

Grantaire's jaw is left slack with shock. This crazed man is like nothing he's ever seen before: though he looks like a broken, messy disaster, barely an excuse for a human being, as he resembles an animal, there is something strange about him. Something… familiar. Something about the matted blond disaster atop his head, or the ferocity in the blue eyes that stood out so starkly against his face covered in dirt, scars, and dried blood.

"Enjolras?" He asks tentatively.

With every fiber of his being, Grantaire is hoping the creature will ignore him. This man cannot be his beautiful leader, his fearless angel of light! This here is a crazed fool, the scum of the earth, rotting away in a jail cell. His physical pain is completely forgotten and a gnawing void eats its way into his chest, attempting to consume his entire soul, and his body along with it.

"Grantaire, the cynic, my cynic, the only one with any sense…"

And with Enjolras's words, Grantaire what was left of the scraps of his spirit crumbled once and for all.

He had always known that his leader had died at the barricade; what he did not know was that his body lived on; and barely at that. "No." It was physically impossible for Grantaire to believe this. "NO!"

There he was, standing at the barricades, the light catching his golden hair. He was Apollo, a beacon of light, truth, and hopeless optimism that everyone looked up to, but none so much as the neophyte Grantaire. For there was one reason and one reason only for the cynic, and that was his perfect, flawless leader – Enjolras: Enjolras, the brave, the ruthless, the physical embodiment of faultlessness. He was the sole reason for his wretched existence.

He had heard that he died an honorable death: that the beautiful man went out in a romantically epic hailstorm of bullets and spite. His leader was supposed to have fought to the very last breath and then died with honor.

Seeing the empty shell of an individual shuttering in the corner was too much to bear. Grantaire could no longer cling to his fantasy of a grand death for his angel of truth. In his mind was permanently impressed this horrible memory that no amount of drink would ever allow him to forget. His angel had fallen.

—

My cynic is beyond tears. "Grantaire," comes a quiet breath. My own, I believe? Does my voice sound so strange on my lips?

He's lying down, his breath coming in ragged gasps. He looks pathetic. Is this how I look?

"Do you live, Grantaire?"

Like an animal, I slink up to him; I touch his face, his shoulders, his hair. He feels real underneath my hand. Real, alive, warmth.

"Shh," I coo, trying to soothe him. "I've failed, I know, I've failed."

He looks up at me with sad, brown eyes and shakes his head.

I'm crying, I think, because my face is wet and my voice is trembling when I whisper "hold me."

And he, the sole survivor, musters up the strength to wrap his arms around me and hold me with a strength I have never felt before.

Wow, this was really taxing to write. I hope you all like (read: aren't too emotionally scarred by) it.
The whole "descent into madness" part was kind of cool and strange to write… it was a lot of stream-of-consciousness. I haven't ever gotten that bad, but I've had some issues in the past, so I drew from those experiences when I wrote this.

Thanks for reading! x