A/N This is very AU with a twist of fantasy added for fun. Inspiration struck in the weirdest place, and this was the result. Enjoy.

To Walk In Sunlight

Fighting don't make no sense
Staring at the sun
We are only poor men
Staring at the sun
Walking through the dust again
Staring at the sun.

He is walking through a vast, grassy field, the sun burning down on the back of his bowed head. The air is scorching against his face, and the grass prickles his bare feet. Am I dead?

A girl stands at the top of the field, her pale hair blowing in the fierce wind. Her face is concealed by the shadows thrown by great stone arches, standing sentinel around her.

At the sound of his footsteps, she turns to face him. Blue eyes meet the darkest of browns. She holds out a hand, creamy skin marred by burnt, black runes.

"Are you an angel?" he asks.

"If you want me to be," she replies.

The angel visits him in his fever-ridden dreams. She sometimes appears out of a swirling silver mist, the black runes standing out against the pallor of her face.

Sometimes they are flying, high above Paris. He can see a huge barricade, a victorious people. We won, he thinks dizzily to himself as they swoop and dive in the cool, flowing air.

But often he finds he is trapped behind his own barricade, held back by his angel as he watches his friends die. Courfeyrac taking a bullet in the stomach. Éponine throwing herself in front of Marius. Gavroche collecting bullets, brave until the very last.

Their faces blur in his mind, and all he can see is the spreading red stains across their clothes, the terrible blankness in glassy eyes that were once so full of life.

He has killed them. It is his fault.

Sounds reach him long before sight does. A fire crackles, and rain pounds on glass. A girl sings.

When he finally opens his eyes, she is hovering over him, a damp cloth held in one hand. They regard each other for a few seconds.

"Who are you?" his voice is weak, trembling with the effort of forming coherent words. "Where am I?"

She pushes pale blonde hair behind her ear, revealing a series of black marks patterned across her sharp collarbone.

He answers his own question. "You're the angel," he coughs. "Am I dead?"

"No," she says, her dark gaze steady.

"The barricade?"

"Fallen," she places the cloth on his head, ignoring the choked-back sob.

"My friends?" he is barely daring to hope. They could have escaped. They have to have escaped.

"In heaven," she soothes, speaking like one would to a fretful child.

"How do you know?" his vision is blurring with unshed tears.

"I have my contacts," a smile lifts the corners of her mouth.

"How…" he is bewildered.

"That tale is not for now," she says matter-of-factly. "Sleep."

It is a few days later that she finally allows him to sit up in the bed, propped up by tattered, faded pillows. A canopy drapes from the ceiling, fluttering in a gentle breeze, obscuring the rest of the apartment from his vision.

She perches on the end of his bed, her white dress and glass necklace revealing the runes burnt across her collarbones, winding around her thin arms, along to the tips of each finger.

"How are your wounds?" she asks, gentle.

"Who are you?" he stares at her, suddenly angry at the mysterious girl who saved him from death, parted him from the only people who ever cared.

She raises an eyebrow. "I asked if your wounds were healing, not for another question."

His eyes blaze. "And I asked who are you?"

They glare at each other for a few seconds, then she laughs. "I'll make you a deal. You tell me if you feel any pain from your wounds, and I will tell you anything you want to know."

"They don't hurt," he says, immediately.

"Then my healing salve works, evidently," she relaxes against the foot of the bed. "I feel as if I'm going to be here for a long time. Fire away."

"What your name?"

"Alcyone," she says. "Like in the myth. I know yours. Gregoire Enjolras."

"Yes, yes," he says, impatiently. "Why were you in my dreams?"

She shrugs. "I don't know. I tend to have that effect on people."

He leans back against the pillows, raking a hand through his golden curls. If only Combeferre was here…or Courfeyrac…they would tease and laugh and philosophize and make this whole conversation easier. She glances down.

"Why did you save me?" his voice is quiet now, almost resigned.

She looks up from her hands. "I couldn't let an angel die," she says, sadness colouring her tone.

"Who are you?" he whispers.

Angels walk the earth, disguised creatures of goodness and light. They are the seraphim.

But where there is beauty, there is also ugliness.

Demons slither under the surface of the ground, corrupting all those they touch. They are the devils.

I was born of an angel and a mortal girl possessed by a demon. My father was banished from heaven, and my mother went mad from the devil inside of her.

When my mother died, my father took me to live with a band of fallen angels.

They taught me many things. How to deal in wishes, and how to disappear. They tattooed the runes on me so that I'll never been alone. They showed me how to create portals between our world and the next, how to bribe the angels of heaven, how to heal, to make potions, to fight.

When the seraphim came to destroy them, I was eleven years old. They pushed me through a portal, and I ended up here. Paris, the city of love.

I had some money, I bought myself this garret, and made it my own. I made a name for myself. They call me the wish-dealer, the disappearing girl.

And when I saw you, I knew that you couldn't die. Someone with so much beauty and goodness could not succumb to the horrors of death when he had so much more to do in his life, so many more people to help.

You are the true angel here, you will upraise the people from poverty, and bring light into the world.

That is who I am, and why I saved you.

Weeks later, when he is recovered, he wakes up back in his own flat. It has been tidied, the books organised, the clothes put away.

The map of the republic from the back of the Café Musain has been draped across his wall, along with the torn and bloodied red flag from the barricade.

There is a note on his table.

I will watch over you.

Do not try to find me.

Years pass. He tries to forget about his angel. But when he is asleep, she returns to his dreams, always kissing him once on the forehead before he wakes up, wishing she were here again.

During the daylight, he tells himself he's being idiotic, and if she doesn't want to be found, she won't be found.

He tells himself that she'd be happy with him taking on the pro bono cases in the courts, and winning them. Speaking with a republican society in the evenings, all the while feeling the hole his friends left in his heart. They prepare for another revolution. This one will be successful.

One night, the night of February the 22nd 1848, sixteen years after their first encounter, he awakens suddenly to find her standing over his bed, her white gown billowing around her in the breeze from the window.

There are lines on her face, more runes obscuring her features.

She is a girl of silver and gold, courage and faith, glass beads and burnt runes. In the weak moonlight, she is an angel. Her almost-invisible wings beat softly at her sides.

"Alcyone," he says, slowly.

She doesn't reply, instead reaches out and loops a silver necklace with black symbols on it around his neck.

"For luck," she whispers, leaning forward and kissing him, properly, on the lips. When he doesn't move, she pulls away, staring at a point above his head.

"Alcyone," he repeats, tangling a hand in her loose, pale hair.

"I won't leave you," she says absently. "When the time comes, I'll be right there beside you."

"What are you talking about?"

"The time is near for great change," she tells him, finally looking him straight in the eyes. "And I don't know…I don't know whether you'll be alive at the end of it."

Tears trail down her pale cheeks, silent and silver. He pulls her down to sit next to him.

"Sshh," he whispers. "Life will go on without me. If I can die in the service of my Patria, I'll be happy."

"I don't want you to go," she says.

"I'll see my friends, and I'll see you when your time comes," he soothes, rubbing his hand awkwardly on her back, unused to comforting a weeping woman.

"No you won't. I've told you before. Children born of the devil are barred from heaven," she raises her eyes to look at him.

"You will go to heaven, Alcyone. I will fight if you do not."

She kisses him, her hands tangling in his hair. He moves his arms around her waist, pulls her close. Her body is warm against his, her lips soft. He can feel the raised shapes of the runes under his fingers.

She takes his hand, touches each of her runes with it. "Luck," she says. "Angelic Power. Stamina. Strength. Healing. Fearless. Love."

"You are beautiful," he murmurs, staring unashamedly as she pulls off her gown. The runes trail down her back around her waist, down the insides of her legs and around her ankles, reaching out to each little toe, glowing faintly in the dark.

She reaches out her hands. "Hold me," she says. "Hold me, and then maybe I won't lose you tomorrow."

They wake in the morning in tangled sheets, her fair head resting against his shoulder.

They can hear beating drums, the shouts of angry men.

"I must go," he says, pushing himself up on one arm. "They've elected me as lieutenant of one of the barricades."

"I will go with you," she says, stubborn, swinging her legs out of the bed.

"They will not allow a woman to fight," he pulls on his clothes, ties a red sash around his waist. Pins on his cockade.

"Then I will be a man," she walks to his wardrobe, pulling out a shirt and a pair of trousers. She takes a spare cockade, pins it to the jacket. Tucks her hair up in a cap that is lying on his table.

Enjolras winces. That cap…it belonged to one of the bravest girls he ever knew. Éponine, a girl who was willing to sacrifice herself for love…

He hopes with all his heart that Alcyone isn't thinking of repeating the actions of a desperate girl who died sixteen years ago.

They wait, behind one of the largest barricades, blocking the entrance to the Faubourg Saint Antoine. It rears up towards the sky, a towering wall of furniture and omnibuses, stories high and hundreds of metres long.

She watches as he stands atop a box, preaching to the devoted followers on this corner of the barricade. His blue eyes blaze with a passionate fire, and his voice rings out.

"Liberte! Egalite! Fraternite!" the masses shout.

No-one spots the sniper in the neighbouring window. No-one hears the whistle of the bullet over the screams of the mob.

But she does.

In one instant, she is up the barricade, pushing him aside. The bullet enters her body just below her heart, crimson blood pours out of arteries, soaking the shirt of his with the colour of the revolution.

He catches her in his arms as she falls, cradling her tightly to his chest.

"Why, Alcyone?" there are tears pouring down his cheeks, he, who is always stoic, always calm.

Men swarm into the house, drag the sniper out. Execute him with a gunshot to the head.

"You were not ready to die," she chokes out. There is blood on his hands, blood in her hair.

"Neither are you," he whispers, brokenly. "Angels aren't supposed to die like this."

"Angels protect those that they love," she traces a pattern on his bare arm, weakly raising her hand to cup his face.

The crowd has fallen silent, watching the two of them silently, compassion shining deep in their eyes.

Her breath is a rattle in her throat. "Win for me," she whispers. "Make them pay for what they've done to the people of this city."

"I will," he vows. "I will."

The light drains from her eyes. She is still.

He carries her down the barricade, horribly light in his arms. He is numb. His angel is dead.

Men take their caps off as he brings her past.

A girl died today to save one of their leaders, a man she loved.

They will remember her.

He fought without a care for his life after she died. But there was no bullet, no sword-stroke to end his pain. All those he's loved have gone on, and he's been left, alone and bereft in the world of the living.

Their victory is hollow without her, he thinks. She is not here to laugh, to celebrate at the abdication of the king and the re-birth of the Republic for which they'd fought so hard.

He sleeps alone in his bed at night, the old nightmares of his friends' deaths added to by the blood pooling across Alcyone's borrowed shirt. He killed them. With his longing for a better world, he killed them.

As spring becomes summer, the lofty ideals of February fade. The National Workshops are closed down, leaving many of the working class unemployed.

Anger erupts between them and the government, and it is with a sinking heart that Enjolras watches them build barricades in the streets once more, exchange bullets with the soldiers, and die in their multitudes.

It is a hopeless endeavour, like the summer his world was shattered, sixteen long years ago. He sits alone by his window, wondering what would happen if he were young again, out there on the streets fighting for what he believes in.

His younger self would berate him for sitting idly by whilst men risk their lives. But the wiser, older part of him tells him that revolution lost him his friends, his family, Alcyone.

But when Louis Napoleon is elected as president, the new Republic finally crashes and burns. France is restored to the old order, and republicans are treated as criminals. Enjolras could cope with a new political system wobbling on unsteady legs, but now, with the outright denunciation of his once-beloved Republic, his outrage and passion return with a vengeance.

He starts to attend secret society meetings again, organise rallies, to hand out leaflets. Whilst other members of his group are circumspect, careful, he is reckless, speaking in front of the Palais de Justice, and the Tuileries. They tell him to take care, but he never listens.

It does not come as a surprise to him when he is arrested. They take him to La Force, lock him in solitary confinement, a dark, dank cell with water dripping in the corner.

He stays there for days on end, enduring the beatings, the starvation. He starts to hallucinate, to imagine he can see his friends, Courfeyrac bounding around the room, Combeferre telling him to shut up, Joly scratching his nose with the end of a cane.

Other times, all he sees is Alcyone, the runes inked on her body black against the pale skin. She smiles at him and kisses him, and when he wakes up, she is not there.

Eventually, they drag him out before the jury. His passion for justice has re-kindled, and he speaks confidently in his own defence about the rights of man. Admits to being behind several riots. But he won't give away the names of his associates, no matter how hard they press him.

"Tell us their names, and you won't be executed," the judge stares him down.

"I'm not afraid of death," Enjolras raises an eyebrow, coolly. It would be a blessing, to close his eyes and never wake up.

"Tell us their names," the prosecution presses.

"No," he is firm. "Why would I allow good men to be arrested because of me?"

He knows what the sentence is before they tell him. Execution.

Then it's just days in his cell, counting down the hours until he will see his loved ones again.

They come for him early, on the morning of June the sixth, 1850. Eighteen years after the deaths of his friends.

They hack off the back of his hair, the grimy collar of his once-clean shirt.

"Do you have any last wishes?" they ask.

"No," he replies, calmly.

"Would you like to spend a few moments with the priest?"

"No," he's never been particularly religious.

They manacle his hands and his feet, lead him out into the prison yard. It is sunny, the skies are a pale eggshell blue, and the birds sing.

It means so much to him to walk in the sunlight towards his death.

The priest kisses him on the forehead. He pays no attention as they read out his crimes, say prayers for his soul. The crowd watching is silent.

"Do you have any last words?" they ask.

There is so much he could say. But he settles for one thing. "Man was born free, and he is everywhere in chains. Those who think themselves the masters of others are indeed greater slaves than they."

They lead him to the base of the guillotine. The silver blade is glittering. The executioner stands, holding the rope. He refuses the hood they try to put over his head, lets them push him down into kneeling, his head resting on the wooden block.

In the distance, a group of people materialize. They float across the heads of the crowd towards him, shimmering as the light touches them. He catches a glimpse of glasses, a bottle, a cane. A white dress and pale hair.

They are here.

The blade is lifted up, the wooden frame creaking in a gentle breeze. He closes his eyes. There is a rush of wind, a stabbing pain in the back of his neck, then nothing.

The sun shines on a garden. The air is heavy with the scent of flowers, lily-of-the-valley, lilac and something else he can't name. The grass is soft and vibrant under his bare feet, and the wind is gentle on his face.

A cluster of people stand at the other end, gathered around a stone bench. Their heads are bent together, and they are laughing over something.

He walks towards them, his heart pounding in his chest.

One of them looks up, a little boy, dressed in dark trousers and a tattered green jacket, blonde hair like a halo around his head.

"Enjolras!" he screams, flinging himself in the direction of the young man.

Enjolras staggers backwards as he catches Gavroche in his arms, holds him tightly.

The scream alerts the other people, and they turn to look at him. He holds the gazes of his friends for the smallest of instants, and then they're there, around him, hugging him, speaking to him, crying. Courfeyrac is laughing, an arm around the waist of a smiling Éponine. Combeferre has dropped a book on the ground, and Jehan is weeping openly.

"I missed you all so much," Enjolras says to them, re-memorising the faces that had begun to fade from his memory. Grantaire beams at him.

"We were watching over you, every second of every day," Combeferre tells him. "You did us proud, my friend."

There is a creak of a gate, the swish of fabric on the floor.

"Someone else has been waiting for you," Bahorel says, a glint in his eye.

His friends step aside.

Blue eyes meet the darkest of browns.

She takes his hand.

"You were right."