Setting: Canon Era

Rating: T

Genre: Friendship, Supernatural

Characters: Marius, Éponine, Courfeyrac, Enjolras, Gavroche, Jehan, Combeferre, Bahorel, Joly, Bossuet, Grantaire, Feuilly, Cosette, Jean Valjean, Javert

Warnings: character death and timey-wimey shenanigans

Word Count: 844

Ça Recommence

I: Through the Looking Glass

"If you don't have time to do it right, when will you have time to do it over?" – John Wooden

Smoke billowed around him, suffocating him, and yet it is the only thing that conceals him away from sight. The National Guard fired at them from every direction, the barricade long since overrun. From the corner of his eye, he saw Courfeyrac felled by the ricocheting grapeshot, but he had no time to grieve, not yet. Suddenly, a bullet pierced his collarbone, and he could feel his consciousness slipping away. At that moment, with his eyes already closed, waiting for death, he felt a strong but seemingly gentle hand grab him. "They have taken me prisoner, and I will surely be shot."

Marius Pontmercy awoke with a jolt, and found his friend's green eyes staring at him.

"I see you have decided to wake up, my friend. I was worried when I did not see you return last night," Édouard de Courfeyrac greeted, his face still leaned in close to Marius'.

Then, upon seeing the shocked look on his friend's face, he asked. "What's wrong? Did your amour reject you? Why, you look as if all the humours have been drained from your body."

Marius blinked, as if breaking out of a trance. "The funeral?"

"Is today. Are you coming with us? Enjolras and the others are waiting outside."

Marius arose from the mattress. "I saw you die, Édouard." He sat up from the matress and grabbed Courfeyrac's arm to prevent him from leaving. "The revolution failed."

"Which means that we will succeed. Prouvaire once told me that in some cultures, they believed that dreams tell us the reverse of what is to come." Courfeyrac laughed as he tried to loosen Marius' grip.

A dream. That's what it was, nothing more. It was still the 5th of June. His Cosette has not left him. His friend is still alive. Marius breathed a sigh of relief, and let go of Courfeyrac.

Courfeyrac huffed in mock annoyance. "Come now, you have ruined the sleeve of my new coat." He smiled at his friend. "Then, I will see you in a republic later." With that, Édouard de Courfeyrac reached for his sword cane and left. Marius stood alone in the middle of the room, hoping that Courfeyrac is right.

He wandered around the city, taking a different route from the one in his dream. At around noon, he turned back, stopping only at the baker's shop to buy a loaf of bread. This he feasted on when he reached the apartment at Rue de la Verrerie.

When he finished, he started once again on his aimless walk when the portress caught up to him as he was turning around the avenue corner.

"Monsieur Pontmercy!"

"What's the matter? What do you want?"

"There is someone looking for you."

"Who is it?"

"I don't know, sir."

"Well, where is he?"

"In my lodgings."

At the same time, a small freckled creature emerged from the portress's lodge. It was that unhappy girl, Éponine, clothed in what Marius realised was the same worker's clothes she had worn in his dream. All at once, he saw a vision of it in his mind. Éponine, covered in her own blood, who took for herself the bullet meant for him, her dying confession of love, the letter.

He needed a moment to stop himself from shaking before he spoke. "Have you a letter for me?"

The child bit her lip before affirming it. "I – yes. It's from your beloved, Monsieur." She hastily gave him the letter before turning to leave. "Pardon, Monsieur. I shouldn't have come here."

Marius halted her. "Stay with the portress, Éponine. The streets are not safe. There are riots today."

Éponine hesitated, while their portress protested until Marius gave her five francs to do what he requested of her.

Marius did not go to Rue Plumet that night. He had no doubt Cosette's letter contained the message that she was no longer there, even if he had not opened it yet. Instead, he went to Rue de la Chanvrerie, for he determined to save Courfeyrac's life as he did Éponine's.

Marius arrived to witness the barricade being overtaken. He was too late to save them, and he cursed himself for believing in his seemingly prophetic dreams.

Bahorel was shot as he tried to raise the flag, hailing the Republic as he fell, defiant to the end. The place descended to chaos soon afterward. Courfeyrac was hit by a bullet as he tried to shield Gavroche. This was in vain, for the bullet traversed through his body and also hit the gamin. Enjolras died alongside Combeferre as they were fighting the National Guards atop the barricade.

Marius himself was taken before he had the chance to find out the fates of the remaining insurgents. He was swiftly executed by a firing squad. "Just like Prouvaire," he thinks as the report sounds.

It is when he wakes up once again on the dawn of June 5th that he begins to doubt if everything is really a dream.

If you want to blame anyone, blame Pilf's nonnies for placing this firmly in my mind.

Don't worry, I'm not abandoning my other on-going stories for this.

The title comes from a line in "La Journée est Finie."