A/N: A third year medical student with dark hair and wire-framed spectacles is found clutching at the handrail of a bridge crossing the Seine, wanting to jump.

A short, angsty piece featuring Combeferre and Courfeyrac with mentions of potential suicide so please feel free to draw your own conclusions.

Disclaimer: As I am not Male, French or living in C19th Paris- how can I possibly own Les Miserables? I am simply trying to convey my admiration for Victor Hugo's masterpiece into something cohesive- please don't sue me!

In the ocean washing your name off my throat

They find him kneeling on the bridge crossing the Seine; one hand clenched over the handrail as if it is the only thing that is going to keep him from doing what he set out here to do on this cold, windswept, rain battered evening in late January. His fingers are almost frozen in their grip, the knuckles turning slowly white with pressure as they clench at cold metal; so that at first glance he looks more like a statue than a living, breathing human being whose mind is capable of doing so much good, of spreading so much hope to a world where that faint, white voice of progress and change has been snuffed out so repeatedly that it is incredible that it still survives; locked deep within the hearts and minds and souls of those passionate few who strive to make the world they live in a better place.

It is only the convulsive, sobbing shudders of his thin shoulders; the shivers wracking his lanky frame, shaking him as if he were little more than a ragdoll which give him any sign of life. His eyes are squeezed firmly shut; the full force of the wind and rain hurling itself against his trembling body and yet silent rivers of scalding salt are just visible through the mask of dripping, freezing rainwater that bathes his face; clinging to his hair so that it looks like a drenched, dampened halo as the howling wind freezes it to his forehead.

He has lost his glasses.

He has lost his glasses and below him, below the bridge the river continues to rush and roar through the throbbing heartland of the city; an inky strip of churning, seething water slicing through the streets like a scar across skin. They pull the police car up a good distance away; remembering the desperate, panicked voice on the line back in the warm comfort of the station; the breathing fast and ragged; almost reaching the danger of hyperventilation, the words barely audible through the thick, convulsive sobs.

'My friend… He's missing… He went out about two hours ago, said he needed some air and he… He hasn't come back… He doesn't have his phone on him, at least I think he doesn't… I've called and called but he won't pick up… Could you?'

'It's all right son, just calm down. Deep breathes, that's it. It's all right. I'm just going to ask you some basic questions and I need you to calm down. What's your name?'

'Francis… Francis Courfeyrac… My friend… Combeferre…. Henri Combeferre… He's 6ft 2'' with glasses and a long nose that got broken in a fight, third year medical student at Necker Infirmary… Please… Please you have to find him… I've tried…'

'OK lad, we'll look for him. Now, I need you to calm down so that I can ask you a few basic questions; nothing to worry about.'

'No! No… You don't understand… Please…' The voice on the other end of the line cracked into a broken, shouting, sob.

'Son, please; we will look for him, it's our job but first you've got to calm down.' A moment's pause. Then a slow, halting swallow; the line crackling ominously.

'Right, that's good. Now, try and keep calm. Take deep breaths and take your time. When was the last time you saw your friend?'

The questions had been answered slowly, haltingly, broken by tearstained sobs which made the officer's heart twist painfully in his chest and now; finally, after what felt like years of driving through the rain washed night; the blurry glare of headlamps distorting themselves in a blur of blinding white and yellow through the windscreen they reach the bridge; the boy with the mop of ebony curls and wide, hazel eyes blurred with tears huddled in a borrowed coat in the back seat.

'Courfeyrac. My name's Courfeyrac. Well, Francis really but…'

A heavy, calming hand to his shoulder.

'It's all right son, we know. We know. Just calm down, that's it. Deep breaths.'

Combeferre doesn't look up when he hears the roar of the police car wailing itself up and onto the bridge. Doesn't acknowledge the sudden slamming of a car door and the shout of a rough, male voice with a thick Parisian accent. Instead he stares at his hands clenched around the icy railings; watching the soft tightening of the 2nd dors interosseus as his fist clenches, the slight relaxation of the intertendinious connections when it eases out.

Hands are so difficult to draw in an anatomical sense he thinks; as he remembers the hours spent pondering over his textbooks, trying to recapture the fluttering of fingers, the slight tightening of the 2nd metacarpal bone when a fist is formed.

A sudden lump of sorrow tightens in his throat, pushing through the skin, fighting to be free.

The world, or what is left of his world seems to be passing with painful slowness through a brain numb with cold, pain, guilt, grief and shock as the grip clutching at the handrail trembles slightly; the icy, rain washed metal slipping and sliding through suddenly nerveless palms. His eyes are open; but the world is a blur of colours and shapes for somehow in the rain and the pain filled, confused anger and sudden, inexplicable hatred and self loathing that had crashed over him in those desperate, reckless minutes after he had stumbled from the apartment; he had lost his glasses and so the world is a blur of colours and shapes which, try as he might; he can make no sense of. He is blind now. Blind to the world, blind to the pain, blind to his very existence and yet why does the world keep turning, why does he keep living, why does his heart keep beating as it strains against his ribcage, when all he loved, all he cared for, has gone where; try as he might; he cannot follow?

'It's my fault… It's all my fault…' The words stumble through icy, soaking lips like some desperate, throbbing mantra; the rhythmic repetition the only thing that is keeping him grounded in a reality which he really wants to just forget, to lose himself within the crushing, senseless oblivion of nothingness; a reality that means nothing now that the one thing keeping him whole is gone and it is all his fault. All of it. The world continues to turn. He continues to live second by second, minute by minute, hour by hour, day by day, week by week and allows the guilt to consume him.

'You should've protected me', the voice that he hopes he will never hear again and yet secretly yearns to hear over and over again rises up through his shattered psyche before he can stop it. The blazing azure orbs that he knows, knew so well seem to scorch his soul, blasting down all the walls he has so desperately tried to build in order to protect himself and yet their very foundations crumble at the slightest touch. 'I tried to protect myself- you saw it! But they were too strong and you did nothing Combeferre!' The blazing, glorious, furious archangel bears down upon him in a blaze of fury; his hair a drenched halo bathed in an almost otherworldly light, his wide, blue eyes little more than shards of glacial glass ablaze with hatred; passionate, contempt scorching off his being in a white hot waves of unbearable, unendurable agony.

'You stood by and did nothing! I trusted you and yet you stood by and did nothing!'

Nothing… Nothing… Nothing… You did nothing… The words seem to bore into his very soul, tormenting him, torturing him over and over again until a sudden, stifled, sobbing scream bursts from his lips as without warning he feels his head drop onto the frigid metal of the railing and wishes for it to be over.

'I'm sorry! I'm so sorry! I tried… I tried Mon Petit but I… I couldn't reach you… I'm sorry...'

The wind cuts through him; a howling, icy metallic bite of cold that makes him double over against the bridge, tears leaking from blind brown eyes freezing on his face; his whole body wracked by sobs he can't stop. Sobs he doesn't want to stop.

His feet tremble slightly as they slip over the wood beneath his feet; the toes catching, curling, clenching on nothing but air and somewhere deep within his brain he can hear screaming. Can see blood blooming in a sickening river of scarlet against marble skin, drenching a halo, azure orbs widening in sudden terror, a silent scream ripped from lips the colour of drained peonies. You did nothing!

He had tried. He had tried and yet when he had finally managed to fight his way through the darkness and chaos, had managed to find his phone to call Courfeyrac and Joly, had ripped off his jacket and pressed it too the wound in a desperate attempt to staunch it, but it had been too late. The blood had seeped through the shirt, a ghastly darkening scarlet stain blossoming against a woollen jumper. The eyes were glassy with the purity of the pain, the pupils dilated as he had cupped the mess of golden curls in his palm, streaks of lifeblood staining the skin and begged him to hold on, clutching the limp, cold hand in his and wept the name over and over again as the passionate flame of life had slowly ebbed away in a trickle of blood blooming through his mouth.

He was still kneeling, clutching at the limp form of his closest friend, his brother when the paramedics arrived, the electric blue wail of the ambulance screeching through the silence, meaning nothing because it wasn't meant to end this way. Their night was meant to end up in the warm, fire bright safety of the flat with rugs and books and mugs of Courfeyrac's speciality hot chocolate as the news credits rolled. Not here. Not like this.

Hard, unknown hands had tried to prise his hands away, firm yet gentle words making no sense whatsoever as he had simply clung harder; unable to speak, unable to move because that would mean letting him go and he wasn't prepared to do that yet. 'Come on son, we've got to get you out of here'.

Is that voice real or locked inside his head like so many of the other voices that continue to plague him? Is anything real? Is he real? He thinks he is, thinks so because he can hear the steady, slightly erratic thumping of his heart as it strains against his ribcage; grounding him to a life that in reality was over the day his best friend's blood smeared in a stain of scarlet against his palms. 'Monsieur, I need you to step away from bridge. That's an order.' The voice he doesn't know is calm and yet he finds that he still can't trust it. He feels his feet waver slightly, slipping towards the edge, towards the churning mass of black water, slipping ever nearer towards oblivion.

'Monsieur, I need you to step away from the bridge'. Dimly he hears a car door slam and another voice which he does recognize rising through the rain soaked air. His eyes are closed, his face a rain washed mask and he doesn't look up.

He hears footsteps, feels hands on his shoulders, the calloused palms grounding him to a reality that makes no sense and yet he makes no move to follow them.

'You should've protected me. It's all your fault'.

His knees threaten to buckle as a silent, sobbing scream crashes through his throat, slicing through the rain soaked night. A mop of ebony curls pressing themselves tightly against his forehead; long fingered hands tightening convulsively around his shoulders, hazel eyes blinded with tears as his body is spun round and pulled into an embrace which he can't return; one hand still quivering on the rail.

'Come back… Come back Mon Petit… Please come back…' Come back from what? From that desperate, hellish night that had started as a walk home from a club and had ended in a flash of metal, a burst of blood and the cold, white tiles of A&E, clinging to a plastic chair, mouth dry, hands slick with sweat, blood cutting through his skin complete with the knowledge that is all his fault and still the hands on the clock above the reception desk crawl like elongated black snails across a blank, white face? From the doctor's face, tight, hard, grey with exhaustion; his dark eyes betraying what his mouth could not.

'I'm sorry. I'm so sorry.'

Come back from the screams, the disbelief, the lies, the hands holding him, pulling him close, the shouting sobs, the pressure of the floor tiles digging into his jeans as his legs buckled? Come back from the automatic doors opening and bodies rushing, shouting, a blur of noise and hands and harsh, white strip lights; hands everywhere, holding him, embracing him, feeling for him even though he was lost long ago?

'Come back to me 'Ferre. I need you. We need you. Come back.'

He remembers a poem that Jehan had given to him for his birthday two years ago. Not Waving but Drowning by Sylvia Plath. Remembers an angel with a drenched halo of golden curls and blazing orbs of brightest blue alight with happiness standing on a table, glass in hand, giving a birthday speech.

'Come back to me Combeferre'.

Feels himself turn into a chest; the suppressed sobs cutting painfully through his chest; heaving through his ribs in sharp bursts of agony as the hands draw him close; a mop of ebony curls pressing itself hard against his forehead, clinging to him; their tears for their friends, for their lives or what was left of them mingling in the icy, rain soaked darkness.

'Come back to me'.

Fin

A/N: Please feel free to read and review! Comments, suggestions, questions, constructive criticisms etc are like chocolate to my brain and will help me through my reading for University.

Also, to those who are interested, I've revived my Canon era AU Amis survival fic 'Out of the Darkness' and would really like to know what you guys think, so please feel free to go and read and review that- it would mean the world to me!

Much love and enjoy x