Red and Black~~Les Miserables One-Shots

The Blood of Angry Men

A/N: So, this is my edited version. It's been changed for non-fanpeople to understand. It's not yet due for school, but I doubt I'll be changing much else. It's quite a bit better than the first unedited draft which is the first "chapter" of this "story"

More to say at the end.

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Cannons exploded; guns fired; shells found their targets; people fell. The world was in chaos.

None of this produced any sort of effect on the man slumped over the back of a chair, dead drunk, out cold. In the midst of the explosions, of the yelling, Grantaire did not stir.

It was the sudden silence when all the gunfire ceased that woke him. In the first moments of consciousness, Grantaire perceived a horrible, empty ringing resonating in his skull. He did not move, at first disoriented and unsure of where he was. He lay there, draped over the chair, much of his mind still in the clutches of sleep. His head throbbed and pounded, the resulting pain of which occupying the majority of his addled brain.

The sound of heavy footsteps snapped him into the present.

The barricade, he was at the barricade. The rebellion was underway. And what about his friends? Courfeyrac, Feuilly, Combeferre, Joly, Bahorel, Bossuet, Prouvaire...Enjolras? Were they alright? Was he alright? Grantaire could not possibly imagine the fiery passionate Enjolras imperiled, for that man was, in the drunk's mind, a god.

Gavroche was gone, Grantaire knew. Even with his alcohol-impaired mind he could all too clearly recall holding the boy close as the last wisps of life left him. Grantaire must have passed out shortly after that, as he had no recollection of anything that had happened after the young gamin's death.

By having knocked himself out by drink, Grantaire had let down the others who'd needed all the help that could be gotten, especially after the people of Paris abandoned them, and Grantaire felt rotten for that. He'd always been useless to everyone, the drunkard who served only as a bad example. If he had failed his friends and allowed them to die without giving any assist...

The footsteps grew steadily closer. It was clear they were made by a group of people clad in heavy boots. Each footfall was synchronized and measured.

Must be soldiers, Grantaire thought with repulse.

He moved not an inch and made his breath as shallow as he could in attempt to appear dead to the soldiers. Having not yet opened his eyes even the slimmest crack, Grantaire was as yet oblivious to the scene which surrounded him. Had he seen that the soldiers were stepping over and occasionally on the bodies of those who'd fought at the barricade, he would have leapt up and made a target of himself for the soldiers to shoot. Alas, he did not know, and he did not move.

Grantaire's hope that his friends were still alive dwindled with every footfall that was met with no resistance. If they were alive, they would be fighting. His friends were not like himself, who would give in and submit; they would fight tooth and nail till the very end. Grantaire had to conclude by the lack of commotion that they had already met their ends.

The people to whom the footsteps belonged did not pause for a moment in passing the form of the young man draped over a chair. He was not moving, and was therefore assumed to be dead like the others. The soldiers' attention was instead turned upward, where faint scuffling sounds could be heard.

Grantaire, too, heard the sounds, and allowed the hope that at least some of his friends were still there to settle once more inside him.

Seven gunshots pierced the air. Three heavy somethings fell to the floor above Grantaire's head.