A/N: An unknown insurgent on the barricade of June 1832 remembers the sacrifice of those whose dreams had built it.

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 love for Victor Hugo's epic novel into something cohesive, please don't sue me!

Oneshot

Love, thine is the future

The darkness of the barricade haunts his dreams.

The shadows of the great mass of humanity rising up to meet the tattered tricolour flag that still fluttered faintly within the bloody remnants of those dreadful June days.

The shadows of the men that he had fought alongside; passionate, righteous men whom he had hardly known and now would never know, caught up as he had been in the spur of the moment on the Rue St Michel when the mass of students, of workers, flashes of humanity all brought together in a seething mass of humanity desperate for change.

In the darkness of his dreams he sees the silhouette of a stranger; a stranger with an almost god-like presence, radiating hope and light and life rising far above the barricade, clutching the tattered remains of a scarlet flag.

He sees ice blue eyes blazing with anger; glaring down at a prisoner whose crime he does not know; the ringing weight of a loaded carbine heavy in the sudden silence.

He sees a God, an Antinous incarnate, his voice ringing with cold, clear composure across the silent streets; hearing, without really understanding what he's hearing or why he's hearing it; the sudden crack of emotion, the rage turning to pain, turning to fear for those he has lead to their untimely deaths.

Sees the slightest tremor of the marble fingers as the carbine is cocked, the minutes seeming to stretch on forever.

'You have one minute. Pray or ponder'.

Even now he can feel the cunning edge of death drifting into his bones. Can feel the bite of the fever that has plagued him for so long drifting slowly back into his consciousness.

Even now he can see the flicker of anguish flashing across the marble mask that has remained impassive for so long, see the sudden reaching for the hand of another. The hand belonged to a medical student, he remembers now; a softly spoken, bespectacled revolutionary, whose fire burnt no less brightly as soft, oak brown eyes saying what words could not; a silent cry across a sleeping city that would soon wake to the slaughter of so many of her finest men.

'We will share thy fate'.

And share it they would; share it as pain that was not experienced alone. Pain that was made bearable by the thought that by some slight chance, their sacrifice would go on to mean something.

An imperceptible shiver cuts through him at that; at the cold, clear gaze that would have brought lesser men than the National Guardsmen who had cornered the last two standing in the upper room of the Musain; to their knees. A gaze that had blazed from a mask stained scarlet with the blood of so much injustice.

'Shoot me'.

A powder trail of eight bullets, he was told later, by the chief of police; words that had been spat against his cell wall as he slipped in and out of consciousness; silently wishing that this could be his end.

No more. Not for their sakes. Please. No more.

Eight bullets to symbolise the inner circle of men that he had hardly known and yet in those dark and desperate hours had felt as if he had come to know them as intimately as he did his own family

His final thoughts before he succumbs at last to sleep is the image of eight men rising out of the ashes of their battered, bleeding city.

A band of brothers bathed in the hesitant light of a golden dawn that is slowly creeping up from the depths of the horizon, bringing with it the prospect of a new life, a new life that is filled with the hope that those young men whose passion seemed to radiate off them like fire would one day see their dreams realised and their cause that has germinated and grown until it has encompassed the whole of Paris, fulfilled.

Somewhere in the crevices of his fever broken brain, he thinks that he hears a voice that he doesn't recognise; a voice that is brimming over with hope for a future that it would never live to see.

Love, thine is the future.

Fin

A/N: Please feel free to read and review! Comments, suggestions, constructive criticisms etc are like chocolate to my brain!

Much love and enjoy x