Morning dawns over Paris on the fourth of June, 1832, and several people across the city think they have just woken up from a terrible dream.

Enjolras splashes tepid water on his face from a basin and tells himself it is not an omen. Joly checks himself for a fever. Courfeyrac swears off drink and doesn't mean it; Grantaire swears off drink of dubious origin and means it even less. Inspector Javert, sitting up in his hard bed, shakes himself as though dislodging dust from his shoulders, and forgets about it.

At the breakfast table in Rue Plumet number 55, Cosette deposits two poached eggs on her father's plate and asks him cheerily what he dreamed of, as she has on so many other mornings.

And as Jean Valjean has done so many other times to the same question, he lies. "Nothing," he says with a smile, and takes a drink of his coffee. He is too preoccupied to notice the trouble etched on Cosette's face, too.

None of them make a mention of their dreams to anyone, until Marius comes in late to the ABC meeting that evening.

"You look as though you've seen a ghost," says Joly, but the words taste uncomfortably familiar.

"Not a ghost," says Marius, pale and distant. "A dream. I saw a girl on the street… that I met last night in a dream."

"How romantic," coos Grantaire, fluttering his eyelashes. The others laugh, though not as heartily as they might. The room has gone oddly quiet.

"No, I mean it," says Marius insistently. "I mean she was the same girl. I met her the same way, I bumped into her on the street. She was with her father… she was wearing blue…"

"We don't have time for this, Marius," Enjolras cuts him off, but the tightness in his voice does not sound entirely like impatience.

"I've had some strange déjà vu as well," says Feuilly slowly. "Unsettling dreams last night."

Bahorel snorts. "You can have dreams of anything. I dreamed I came to a meeting and here I am," he says. "It doesn't mean I'm a prophet!"

"I've had a funny feeling all day…" Courfeyrac is saying.

"I didn't want to say anything…" puts in Bossuet.

And just as everyone starts eagerly agreeing over each other, Grantaire's voice cuts in above the others.

"I dreamed we had our revolution," he says. The other voices falter. Enjolras fixes Grantaire with a look that Grantaire steadily returns. "We lost," he says, staring Enjolras in the eye.

There is a silence.

"I died," says Jehan in a small voice into the quiet of the room.

"We all died," says Grantaire, looking away from Enjolras. He wets his lips. Enjolras looks elsewhere too. "We all died."

Marius crosses his arms unhappily over his chest, but says nothing. Neither does anyone else.

"Look," says Combeferre, frowning, "None of this means our dreams are going to come true. It's like Bahorel said, you can have dreams of anything. We're anxious, we've got our plans on our mind, that's all that-"

He breaks off with his eyes on the top of the stairs, and everyone turns around to see who it is. It's Gavroche, looking around at them and breathing hard like he's just run a long way. They all know exactly what he's going to say.

"General Lamarque is dead."

The rest of the night is dedicated to frantic last-minute preparations, and Enjolras forbids discussion of their apparent shared dream. It stops nobody, of course, but they keep it out of his earshot. The next day dawns and Lamarque's funeral happens just as they all remember, the building of the barricade, the assembling of the National Guard. None of the boys raise a peep on the subject, until the spy Javert shows up.

"But that's-" starts Bossuet, but Combeferre has seen Enjolras move toward Javert and stills Bossuet with a held-up hand.

Enjolras, to most of the boys' surprise, shakes Javert's hand and speaks with him quietly. The rest pretend to go about their business, but when the inspector leaves, they all but leap on their leader.

"Don't you remember he's a spy?" cries Feuilly.

Enjolras turns to them. His eyes are bright and he is almost smiling.

"And he doesn't know we know that already," he says. "I've given him a false story and he will carry it back. We're now one ahead."

When it sinks in, the young men grin at each other. A nightmare not to be fulfilled but to be learned from-the thought makes them more cheerful than they've been since they woke up from it.

They arrest Javert upon his return, but he is barely tied up before the next attack comes.

This time, Eponine is not the first to fall. It is Bahorel, who, when Enjolras stops Marius from climbing the barricade with the powder barrel, tries to hold off the advance with nothing more than a gun out of shot, and a shout, and his own broad body.

He takes a bayonet deep just under his left clavicle. Courfeyrac shoots the soldier who stabs him, but Bahorel falls off the barricade and lands on his back with a sickening thud. When the rain starts to fall the powder is already safe inside, but Joly is kneeling next to the gasping Bahorel, trying fruitlessly to keep the blood in his body with only a handful of bandages.

He turns tearful eyes up at Enjolras, who is standing over them, but Enjolras has no solution to offer him. His face impassive, the rain dripping from his hair, he watches the first of his men die with a cold weight in his chest.

Combeferre has difficulty convincing the others not to waste shot killing Javert in revenge, but he manages. Of course Enjolras remembers the old man who shows up presently, but there is too much going on, too much to keep track of, and again he misses the soldier who nearly shoots him. The old man does not.

He is shoving a pistol at the man before he has finished requesting the charge of their prisoner. The man looks surprised, but Enjolras has just seen that Bossuet has a wound at the shoulder and he does not have the patience to play his role properly.

His men are bleeding around him. He feels like a fool for trusting in prophetic dreams.

When Valjean, in the alley behind the Musain, cuts Javert's bonds, he has a queasy feeling of familiarity at the action, at how it is not as strange as it should be to look this man in the eye for the first time in nine years. If Valjean feels uneasy, though, Javert looks hunted.

"You must not," says the inspector sharply. He is as tense now as any other man might have been a moment before, expecting death. "You must not, I cannot let you."

"Get out of here," says Valjean.

"You can't," Javert hisses.

Valjean shoots the gun in the air, and despite his protests, Javert only pauses and stares at the other man for a few moments before he takes a few staggering steps backward, turns, and flees.

For his own reasons, Grantaire corks his bottle before he falls into it and does not sleep through the morning. Instead he fights with the others at dawn, and falls off the barricade locked together with a solder that had nearly shot Enjolras in the head. There are shots fired when they hit the ground. Neither climbs back up.

Courfeyrac dies curled around Gavroche when the barricade is breached; Gavroche dies with the second bullet meant for Courfeyrac.

More survive to be executed than did in their dreams. They are executed anyway. Eponine is shot searching the still-warm dead for the missing Marius.

Javert is waiting for Valjean at the end of the sewer, but he says nothing this time, just trains his gun on his adversary. Valjean says nothing either. He only looks Javert in the eyes, tries to remember something.

If he recalls it, he doesn't say. He walks on undeterred. When he is gone, Javert puts his gun away and falls into the Seine, as he knows he is supposed to.

It is not until the dead of Paris wake again on the morning of June fourth that they begin to doubt they are dreaming.