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Five Les Mis Fusions I don't Know Canon Well Enough To Write More Of (Thankfully) (2/5)
OKAY HERE IS THE NEXT ONE ENJOY (??)
***
Enjolras woke to a throbbing headache and the blurred sight of another's face leaning close over his. He blinked several times, but the spectre was still there.
"Oh good, you're back," Grantaire said, moving away. He sounded sober, which was wrong. His waistcoat was streaked brown-red with blood and worse, and riddled with bullet-holes.
"You're dead," Enjolras said dumbly, as the memory of his last moments of consciousness returned to him.
"I was," Grantaire answered. "So were you, in fact. I think you'll find it's less of an impairment than you expected."
Enjolras sat up. His waistcoat, too, was stained with blood: some his own and some Grantaire's, from the bullets that had passed entirely through him. He pressed a finger through one of the charred holes but found only firm, healthy flesh behind it. "I died," he repeated, trying to understand what had happened. "The Guard were here, and you- you asked permission to die with me- it was a grand gesture, a martyrdom for liberty."
"It was also a grand hangover cure," Grantaire said sardonically, and then, to Enjolras's pained expression, "Don't mind the headache- you'll get accustomed to the presence quickly enough. Now get up, hurry, and come with me- they'll be here to rob the bodies soon, and when I'm sober I'm far too ticklish to pretend to still be dead through that."
"Come with you where?" Enjolras asked. "It is ended - there's nowhere left to go."
"Where else to go when you've just died? To Holy Ground," he said.
*****
Gavroche was not unaccustomed to being awoken with a kick, and he knew well enough to stay as still as any other lump of rags in the street.
"I know you're awake, boy," the too-familiar voice attached to the kick said. "Damned little fool, anyway. You're no good to us as a kid."
"Just take his head, for what it's worth, and get it over with," another voice screeched. "We've tarried too long as it is, we need to get out of here."
At that Gavroche opened his eyes, safety be damned, for he knew that voice all too well. "Mum died in prison," he said. "What's she doing here?"
His father leered down at him, a death's-head smile, a nicked and dented sword held casually in one hand. "This is the land of the dead," he said. "We're all dead here."
Gavroche lay in the killing-field before the barricade, the bodies of soldiers and revolutionaries alike still strewn about him. It had not seemed strange to him that he was not dead, for even in the moment it had happened he had not believed in it, but now the strangeness of it all struck him very suddenly. A few strides away the woman who had been his mother, as hale as ever, held his sister Éponine, who was dressed in ragged boys' clothes. She was caught with a cruel grip on her wrists as she struggled, and cried, "Don't you dare hurt him! If you do I'll leave, you won't be able to keep me here, and I know you! I'll tell them where you hide! I'll tell them how to kill you!"
Her mother slapped her hard across the face and she cried out in pain. "I'd like to see you try, you little hussy. You wouldn't last a day out there by yourself, not as you are now, such a tempting little morsel."
"I don't care. I wanted to die. I haven't got any reason to live anyway."
Gavroche saw the line of red across Éponine's face where a stolen ring had scratched her, from her mother's hand, and drawn blood; and he saw, too, as it healed before his eyes, blue sparks sealing it back into unmarred white skin. He'd seen his parents heal from small wounds like that, all of his life: they had all known that to fight the elder Thénardiers was hopeless because no blow ever truly injured them for more than the span of a moment. Now, seeing his sister heal the same way, the wounds of her death still showing in the marks on her clothes, he began to understand.
"Don't damage the girl, she's just become interesting and we've put far too much time and effort into her to waste it," the father said, not looking away from him.
"She can take a lot more damage than that now, can't you, dearie?" was the reply, accompanied by a choked-off scream from Éponine. Then Gavroche began to realize what else it could mean, to be able to take any injury and not be able to die of it.
"If you let him live I'll stay," Éponine said, breathing hard. "I'll stay with you. I'll help you. I'll do as you say."
"You swear it?" he growled, still crouched over Gavroche.
"I do. I swear."
"You can do nothing to me," Gavroche mouthed at him. "I was never yours."
"I almost want to let you live just to see what you'll turn into," he answered, and hauled Gavroche roughly up by the back of his jacket.
"I ain't going to mother him forever," his mother shouted. "Little bitch won't keep her promise anyway."
"Oh, I know," her husband answered. "So we're going to take him somewhere safe. Somewhere he'll be kept. And she'll know that if she breaks her promise, she'll know we know where to find him. No, the old priest will take care of matters if we drop him at his door."
****
Javert fought himself back to life: he choked and sputtered on the foul Seine water in his lungs and struggled against the inhumanly strong arms that hauled him up onto the solid surface of the quai.
The arms, of course, belonged to Jean Valjean, for there was no other who lived to spite him so.
"Why would you force me to live?" he cried out, before the other man could speak.
"I force you to nothing," said Valjean, sitting him upright on the quai, though he kept one supporting arm about him as he continued to cough.
"It was my choice to die." he said, when he could speak again.
"It is God's choice that you must live."
"What would you know of such things?"
Valjean laughed, a dark convict's laugh. "I died at Toulon," he said. "But I did not notice I had died until I was free, for in the galleys, what difference did it make? And then I met a man of the church, who told me what I was, and what I could become, if I used this miracle of God as it was meant to be used."
Javert only looked away. This was more of his talk of redemption and grace, then. Javert had heard enough of that, and more than enough: he had jumped from a bridge to escape it.
"Now I don't speak in metaphor," Valjean continued. "Creatures such as you and I cannot be granted rest through so simple a matter as drowning. Look:" He produced a small blade from his pocket, and without the merest flinch, drove it wholly through the back of his hand, so that the tip protruded from his palm. Then he drew it back out, and Javert watched as the wound in his hand sealed itself as quickly at it had never been.
Valjean offered him the knife, hilt first. "You will find, if you wish to try it, that you've the same new ability," he said.
From another man, he might have expected a trick, a strategy to induce him to injure himself, but he could not make himself believe such a thing of Valjean, not tonight, and so it must be true. Javert took the knife. He would do nothing so blatant as slitting a wrist, however tempting the thought; he merely cut a short line across his palm, and watched as the flesh healed over before the blood had even time to well from his veins. He stared at it. "You would have me believe that I am some sort of uncanny creature who cannot die."
"You can die," Valjean answered him. "You died tonight. You left your letter of resignation with the police, and there are witnesses who saw you jump from the bridge and not resurface. You cannot go back. By all laws of man and nature, you have died. It is only that you also live."
"If I cannot choose death, and I cannot go back, what is there for me?" Javert demanded.
"That is your choice," said Valjean. "I pray only that you choose better than you did when you jumped. As for your more immediate future--" he paused. "The Bishop of Digne told me that when I was ready to truly become who I could be, I should visit an ancient church on the banks of the Seine, in Paris, and speak to the priest who has been there since before its first stone was laid, and who would offer refuge and counsel to one such as myself. I don't know if you are ready yet, but I know that you are more ready, now, than I was, for a very long time after." He stood, and held out a hand to Javert to pull him up.
Javert put the knife in it.
Valjean's face twisted into something that might have been some kin to a smile. He put the knife back into his pocket, wiping the blood as he did, and held his hand out again.
This time Javert took it, and rose.
****
Bahorel woke in the shadow of the cathedral of Notre Dame, in the darkness of the morgue of Paris. He had woken in a line of dead men often enough, over the course of a long and violent existence, that he had the technique of it down to an art. The first thing he did was look around him for any living man who might cry out at his awakening; and the second was to feel around for the presence of any others like himself, who might attack him in his disorientation. He saw only one other being in motion, but the presence told him it was a man like himself, a man he knew well. "Prouvaire!" he called, as he rolled smoothly to his feet.
Jehan Prouvaire turned at his cry, and began to move toward him, stepping daintily between the limbs of the dead men. He had, Bahorel observed, already re-arranged several of his bright draperies to hide, as well as he might, the marks of wounds that had killed him. Bahorel frowned down at his own waistcoat, which was currently rather more daring than even he might prefer, and brushed uselessly at the mark of a particular bayonet wound which he was rather certain had been inflicted post-mortem.
"Leave your clothes, Bahorel," Prouvaire said, "we've more important worries at the moment." Bahorel would have protested at the patent unfairness of this, but Prouvaire continued, "Have you found any of the others?"
"I've not been conscious five minutes," Bahorel returned, "How would I have done so?"
As the two of them (discounting Grantaire, as it was generally the safest bet to discount him) were the only ones among their group of friends who had any previous experience of Immortality, they were likely to be the only ones who had yet awoken. And yet they had reason to believe, having that peculiar ability of their kind to notice such things, and Bahorel having made a particular effort to channel a certain type of men into one particular cell of the revolution, that others of the corpses around them might soon be stirring again as well. He immediately set out to walk among the dead, paralleling Prouvaire. Under cover of the dark they searched for the feeling of a new young Immortal on the verge of coming into life, for they had both known that for most of their friends, death on the barricade would not be final.
Bahorel found Courfeyrac first, not yet fully awake and just beginning to make himself felt in that other sense that marked their kind out to each other, and then Prouvaire found Feuilly, who woke at a touch and looked around him in confusion as his friend spoke to him softly.
Bahorel moved on, and, feeling no presence, was about to turn to the next row, when he stopped short at one man. He did not yet emit the marker of an Immortal come into his second life, but Bahorel knew him all the same: it was Combeferre. Bahorel laid a hand on his wrist, and felt it to be, while too cool for a healthy man, far too warm for a corpse that had laid this long on the cold stone. He frowned, and pushed up the edge of a sleeve, so that he could feel for a pulse as Combeferre himself had once shown him how to do. It was there - weak, and far too slow; for a moment Bahorel was convinced he had imagined it, so unlikely as it seemed in company with the three great stab wounds; but he saw fresh red blood still seeping, and so he shouted, "Prouvaire! Have you found Joly?"
"Not yet, but I think I feel him somewhere in that corner--" he pointed. "Why?"
Bahorel looked down. "I don't think Combeferre's dead yet - but just barely." And then he frowned at the small mark that just showed out of the bottom of the shirt-sleeve where he had pulled it up; revealing it farther, he saw a tattoo; two concentric rings and a cryptic marking within done in blue, covering the whole of the inner wrist. He made a small sound of satisfaction, of one who has had a long-held suspicion confirmed, and added, "And I think we might want to keep him that way."
He had only time to tear open the front of the coat and shirt to reveal the wounds more fully before Joly approached, Bossuet trailing behind him as usual, the others approaching as well until all - nearly all - of the friends were united once more. "Clear away and let me get a look at him," Joly said crossly. "And someone find me a light."
They scattered, and despite everyone's pockets having been emptied while they were dead, a lit candle was soon acquired and held carefully for their medical friend. Finally, finishing his examination, he said, "He might yet live; anotherh miracle's not impossible, as it's a miracle already that he's lived this long. If the wounds are properly cleaned and closed, and if he can be brought to a place where he may rest and be healed without further danger or jostling."
Prouvaire and Bahorel shared a look. "St. Julien's?" Prouvaire asked.
"It's just across the river," he answered. "We'd only need to steal a boat."
"Having settled that," said Joly, "What I would like to know is why I yet live. And you - I saw you die."
"That is something that I'd rather not explain here in the morgue, however appropriate our poetic friend will say the atmosphere is--"
Prouvaire gave him a blinding smile.
"--But let us all go to the church across the river, and I think many things may be revealed."
***
Several hours previously, Father Darius, at home in the rectory of the Church of St. Julien-le-pauvre on the bank of the Seine, listened to the sounds of the artillery-fire dying away as the last of the barricades fell, sighed, and put an extra kettle on for tea.
Then he thought better of it, and having no third kettle, filled the saucepan with water, as well.
***
This wins the award for "One I Am Most Likely To Play With More". Only I'd have to read the book first, and then I would probably decide that all of my characterization here is wrong, and anyway I'm now only interested in [minor character who doesn't even have an AO3 tag yet] [or even worse, Marius]. Anyway, here are some other things that happen in this 'verse:
Valjean leaves Javert with Darius for a few months while he goes off to cut ties with Marius and Cosette, set up some more new identities, and fake his death of Victorian Novel Disease. In the interim Darius and Javert somehow become fast friends over tea and chess and there are Many Philosophical Discussions. Valjean has never actually had a proper Immortal teacher, so once he's tied up his loose ends the two of them go off together to find one/learn from each other.
Grantaire takes Enjolras as a student without bothering to ask his opinion on the matter. They still fight as much and as intensely as ever, and Enjolras' shameful failure to actually die for Patria changes the topics of argument less than you might think, although it does change the stakes some, and there are more likely to be drawn swords involved now. There are many, many things that Grantaire declines to tell Enjolras about his past and about Immortality. At some point it is discovered that any place where the blood of patriots has been shed for France counts as holy ground when challenging Enjolras, which basically means: all of France.
Les Amis and friends take a break from overthrowing tyranny to use poor Darius's church as their home base to plan and implement Operation Rescue Eponine [And The Other Pre-Immortals The Thenardiers Have Been Training Up], with Gavroche in the forefront. In the meantime various canon immortals show up and various people acquire teachers. Darius sends for Amanda to help with Gavroche, as she's taught a child immortal before, but she ends up pairing off with Courfeyrac instead. Jehan practically has a spontaneous coronary when Grantaire's friend Lord Byron drops in, even though he's several centuries Byron's elder. Joly somehow manages to still be a hypochondriac despite being physically unable to get sick, and is very interested in Quickening as it relates to the body's magnetic fluids, at least until he takes his first one, at which point he has a panic attack.
Combeferre spends a great deal of time healing from his wounds, but once he's come to awareness of what has happened, has absolutely no idea what he's supposed to tell the Watchers about all this. Darius tells him that if there's anything he wants to record but not pass on, he has a small collection of similar Chronicles hidden in the church, and Combeferre spends several days reading without even breaking for food, and then goes and has a very private conversation with Grantaire.
I am sure other things happen too, but really I think I've done enough already.
The other problem with writing more of this is that trying to give canon, and what it has to say about death and duty, the respect and thought it deserves, while also magically bringing everyone back to life, would take, oh, at last report, several hundred thousand words. And I'd have to do it while writing well-researched 1830s France and Enlightenment philosophy. I have other things to do with the next ten years of my life.
I hope.
***
Enjolras woke to a throbbing headache and the blurred sight of another's face leaning close over his. He blinked several times, but the spectre was still there.
"Oh good, you're back," Grantaire said, moving away. He sounded sober, which was wrong. His waistcoat was streaked brown-red with blood and worse, and riddled with bullet-holes.
"You're dead," Enjolras said dumbly, as the memory of his last moments of consciousness returned to him.
"I was," Grantaire answered. "So were you, in fact. I think you'll find it's less of an impairment than you expected."
Enjolras sat up. His waistcoat, too, was stained with blood: some his own and some Grantaire's, from the bullets that had passed entirely through him. He pressed a finger through one of the charred holes but found only firm, healthy flesh behind it. "I died," he repeated, trying to understand what had happened. "The Guard were here, and you- you asked permission to die with me- it was a grand gesture, a martyrdom for liberty."
"It was also a grand hangover cure," Grantaire said sardonically, and then, to Enjolras's pained expression, "Don't mind the headache- you'll get accustomed to the presence quickly enough. Now get up, hurry, and come with me- they'll be here to rob the bodies soon, and when I'm sober I'm far too ticklish to pretend to still be dead through that."
"Come with you where?" Enjolras asked. "It is ended - there's nowhere left to go."
"Where else to go when you've just died? To Holy Ground," he said.
*****
Gavroche was not unaccustomed to being awoken with a kick, and he knew well enough to stay as still as any other lump of rags in the street.
"I know you're awake, boy," the too-familiar voice attached to the kick said. "Damned little fool, anyway. You're no good to us as a kid."
"Just take his head, for what it's worth, and get it over with," another voice screeched. "We've tarried too long as it is, we need to get out of here."
At that Gavroche opened his eyes, safety be damned, for he knew that voice all too well. "Mum died in prison," he said. "What's she doing here?"
His father leered down at him, a death's-head smile, a nicked and dented sword held casually in one hand. "This is the land of the dead," he said. "We're all dead here."
Gavroche lay in the killing-field before the barricade, the bodies of soldiers and revolutionaries alike still strewn about him. It had not seemed strange to him that he was not dead, for even in the moment it had happened he had not believed in it, but now the strangeness of it all struck him very suddenly. A few strides away the woman who had been his mother, as hale as ever, held his sister Éponine, who was dressed in ragged boys' clothes. She was caught with a cruel grip on her wrists as she struggled, and cried, "Don't you dare hurt him! If you do I'll leave, you won't be able to keep me here, and I know you! I'll tell them where you hide! I'll tell them how to kill you!"
Her mother slapped her hard across the face and she cried out in pain. "I'd like to see you try, you little hussy. You wouldn't last a day out there by yourself, not as you are now, such a tempting little morsel."
"I don't care. I wanted to die. I haven't got any reason to live anyway."
Gavroche saw the line of red across Éponine's face where a stolen ring had scratched her, from her mother's hand, and drawn blood; and he saw, too, as it healed before his eyes, blue sparks sealing it back into unmarred white skin. He'd seen his parents heal from small wounds like that, all of his life: they had all known that to fight the elder Thénardiers was hopeless because no blow ever truly injured them for more than the span of a moment. Now, seeing his sister heal the same way, the wounds of her death still showing in the marks on her clothes, he began to understand.
"Don't damage the girl, she's just become interesting and we've put far too much time and effort into her to waste it," the father said, not looking away from him.
"She can take a lot more damage than that now, can't you, dearie?" was the reply, accompanied by a choked-off scream from Éponine. Then Gavroche began to realize what else it could mean, to be able to take any injury and not be able to die of it.
"If you let him live I'll stay," Éponine said, breathing hard. "I'll stay with you. I'll help you. I'll do as you say."
"You swear it?" he growled, still crouched over Gavroche.
"I do. I swear."
"You can do nothing to me," Gavroche mouthed at him. "I was never yours."
"I almost want to let you live just to see what you'll turn into," he answered, and hauled Gavroche roughly up by the back of his jacket.
"I ain't going to mother him forever," his mother shouted. "Little bitch won't keep her promise anyway."
"Oh, I know," her husband answered. "So we're going to take him somewhere safe. Somewhere he'll be kept. And she'll know that if she breaks her promise, she'll know we know where to find him. No, the old priest will take care of matters if we drop him at his door."
****
Javert fought himself back to life: he choked and sputtered on the foul Seine water in his lungs and struggled against the inhumanly strong arms that hauled him up onto the solid surface of the quai.
The arms, of course, belonged to Jean Valjean, for there was no other who lived to spite him so.
"Why would you force me to live?" he cried out, before the other man could speak.
"I force you to nothing," said Valjean, sitting him upright on the quai, though he kept one supporting arm about him as he continued to cough.
"It was my choice to die." he said, when he could speak again.
"It is God's choice that you must live."
"What would you know of such things?"
Valjean laughed, a dark convict's laugh. "I died at Toulon," he said. "But I did not notice I had died until I was free, for in the galleys, what difference did it make? And then I met a man of the church, who told me what I was, and what I could become, if I used this miracle of God as it was meant to be used."
Javert only looked away. This was more of his talk of redemption and grace, then. Javert had heard enough of that, and more than enough: he had jumped from a bridge to escape it.
"Now I don't speak in metaphor," Valjean continued. "Creatures such as you and I cannot be granted rest through so simple a matter as drowning. Look:" He produced a small blade from his pocket, and without the merest flinch, drove it wholly through the back of his hand, so that the tip protruded from his palm. Then he drew it back out, and Javert watched as the wound in his hand sealed itself as quickly at it had never been.
Valjean offered him the knife, hilt first. "You will find, if you wish to try it, that you've the same new ability," he said.
From another man, he might have expected a trick, a strategy to induce him to injure himself, but he could not make himself believe such a thing of Valjean, not tonight, and so it must be true. Javert took the knife. He would do nothing so blatant as slitting a wrist, however tempting the thought; he merely cut a short line across his palm, and watched as the flesh healed over before the blood had even time to well from his veins. He stared at it. "You would have me believe that I am some sort of uncanny creature who cannot die."
"You can die," Valjean answered him. "You died tonight. You left your letter of resignation with the police, and there are witnesses who saw you jump from the bridge and not resurface. You cannot go back. By all laws of man and nature, you have died. It is only that you also live."
"If I cannot choose death, and I cannot go back, what is there for me?" Javert demanded.
"That is your choice," said Valjean. "I pray only that you choose better than you did when you jumped. As for your more immediate future--" he paused. "The Bishop of Digne told me that when I was ready to truly become who I could be, I should visit an ancient church on the banks of the Seine, in Paris, and speak to the priest who has been there since before its first stone was laid, and who would offer refuge and counsel to one such as myself. I don't know if you are ready yet, but I know that you are more ready, now, than I was, for a very long time after." He stood, and held out a hand to Javert to pull him up.
Javert put the knife in it.
Valjean's face twisted into something that might have been some kin to a smile. He put the knife back into his pocket, wiping the blood as he did, and held his hand out again.
This time Javert took it, and rose.
****
Bahorel woke in the shadow of the cathedral of Notre Dame, in the darkness of the morgue of Paris. He had woken in a line of dead men often enough, over the course of a long and violent existence, that he had the technique of it down to an art. The first thing he did was look around him for any living man who might cry out at his awakening; and the second was to feel around for the presence of any others like himself, who might attack him in his disorientation. He saw only one other being in motion, but the presence told him it was a man like himself, a man he knew well. "Prouvaire!" he called, as he rolled smoothly to his feet.
Jehan Prouvaire turned at his cry, and began to move toward him, stepping daintily between the limbs of the dead men. He had, Bahorel observed, already re-arranged several of his bright draperies to hide, as well as he might, the marks of wounds that had killed him. Bahorel frowned down at his own waistcoat, which was currently rather more daring than even he might prefer, and brushed uselessly at the mark of a particular bayonet wound which he was rather certain had been inflicted post-mortem.
"Leave your clothes, Bahorel," Prouvaire said, "we've more important worries at the moment." Bahorel would have protested at the patent unfairness of this, but Prouvaire continued, "Have you found any of the others?"
"I've not been conscious five minutes," Bahorel returned, "How would I have done so?"
As the two of them (discounting Grantaire, as it was generally the safest bet to discount him) were the only ones among their group of friends who had any previous experience of Immortality, they were likely to be the only ones who had yet awoken. And yet they had reason to believe, having that peculiar ability of their kind to notice such things, and Bahorel having made a particular effort to channel a certain type of men into one particular cell of the revolution, that others of the corpses around them might soon be stirring again as well. He immediately set out to walk among the dead, paralleling Prouvaire. Under cover of the dark they searched for the feeling of a new young Immortal on the verge of coming into life, for they had both known that for most of their friends, death on the barricade would not be final.
Bahorel found Courfeyrac first, not yet fully awake and just beginning to make himself felt in that other sense that marked their kind out to each other, and then Prouvaire found Feuilly, who woke at a touch and looked around him in confusion as his friend spoke to him softly.
Bahorel moved on, and, feeling no presence, was about to turn to the next row, when he stopped short at one man. He did not yet emit the marker of an Immortal come into his second life, but Bahorel knew him all the same: it was Combeferre. Bahorel laid a hand on his wrist, and felt it to be, while too cool for a healthy man, far too warm for a corpse that had laid this long on the cold stone. He frowned, and pushed up the edge of a sleeve, so that he could feel for a pulse as Combeferre himself had once shown him how to do. It was there - weak, and far too slow; for a moment Bahorel was convinced he had imagined it, so unlikely as it seemed in company with the three great stab wounds; but he saw fresh red blood still seeping, and so he shouted, "Prouvaire! Have you found Joly?"
"Not yet, but I think I feel him somewhere in that corner--" he pointed. "Why?"
Bahorel looked down. "I don't think Combeferre's dead yet - but just barely." And then he frowned at the small mark that just showed out of the bottom of the shirt-sleeve where he had pulled it up; revealing it farther, he saw a tattoo; two concentric rings and a cryptic marking within done in blue, covering the whole of the inner wrist. He made a small sound of satisfaction, of one who has had a long-held suspicion confirmed, and added, "And I think we might want to keep him that way."
He had only time to tear open the front of the coat and shirt to reveal the wounds more fully before Joly approached, Bossuet trailing behind him as usual, the others approaching as well until all - nearly all - of the friends were united once more. "Clear away and let me get a look at him," Joly said crossly. "And someone find me a light."
They scattered, and despite everyone's pockets having been emptied while they were dead, a lit candle was soon acquired and held carefully for their medical friend. Finally, finishing his examination, he said, "He might yet live; anotherh miracle's not impossible, as it's a miracle already that he's lived this long. If the wounds are properly cleaned and closed, and if he can be brought to a place where he may rest and be healed without further danger or jostling."
Prouvaire and Bahorel shared a look. "St. Julien's?" Prouvaire asked.
"It's just across the river," he answered. "We'd only need to steal a boat."
"Having settled that," said Joly, "What I would like to know is why I yet live. And you - I saw you die."
"That is something that I'd rather not explain here in the morgue, however appropriate our poetic friend will say the atmosphere is--"
Prouvaire gave him a blinding smile.
"--But let us all go to the church across the river, and I think many things may be revealed."
***
Several hours previously, Father Darius, at home in the rectory of the Church of St. Julien-le-pauvre on the bank of the Seine, listened to the sounds of the artillery-fire dying away as the last of the barricades fell, sighed, and put an extra kettle on for tea.
Then he thought better of it, and having no third kettle, filled the saucepan with water, as well.
***
This wins the award for "One I Am Most Likely To Play With More". Only I'd have to read the book first, and then I would probably decide that all of my characterization here is wrong, and anyway I'm now only interested in [minor character who doesn't even have an AO3 tag yet] [or even worse, Marius]. Anyway, here are some other things that happen in this 'verse:
Valjean leaves Javert with Darius for a few months while he goes off to cut ties with Marius and Cosette, set up some more new identities, and fake his death of Victorian Novel Disease. In the interim Darius and Javert somehow become fast friends over tea and chess and there are Many Philosophical Discussions. Valjean has never actually had a proper Immortal teacher, so once he's tied up his loose ends the two of them go off together to find one/learn from each other.
Grantaire takes Enjolras as a student without bothering to ask his opinion on the matter. They still fight as much and as intensely as ever, and Enjolras' shameful failure to actually die for Patria changes the topics of argument less than you might think, although it does change the stakes some, and there are more likely to be drawn swords involved now. There are many, many things that Grantaire declines to tell Enjolras about his past and about Immortality. At some point it is discovered that any place where the blood of patriots has been shed for France counts as holy ground when challenging Enjolras, which basically means: all of France.
Les Amis and friends take a break from overthrowing tyranny to use poor Darius's church as their home base to plan and implement Operation Rescue Eponine [And The Other Pre-Immortals The Thenardiers Have Been Training Up], with Gavroche in the forefront. In the meantime various canon immortals show up and various people acquire teachers. Darius sends for Amanda to help with Gavroche, as she's taught a child immortal before, but she ends up pairing off with Courfeyrac instead. Jehan practically has a spontaneous coronary when Grantaire's friend Lord Byron drops in, even though he's several centuries Byron's elder. Joly somehow manages to still be a hypochondriac despite being physically unable to get sick, and is very interested in Quickening as it relates to the body's magnetic fluids, at least until he takes his first one, at which point he has a panic attack.
Combeferre spends a great deal of time healing from his wounds, but once he's come to awareness of what has happened, has absolutely no idea what he's supposed to tell the Watchers about all this. Darius tells him that if there's anything he wants to record but not pass on, he has a small collection of similar Chronicles hidden in the church, and Combeferre spends several days reading without even breaking for food, and then goes and has a very private conversation with Grantaire.
I am sure other things happen too, but really I think I've done enough already.
The other problem with writing more of this is that trying to give canon, and what it has to say about death and duty, the respect and thought it deserves, while also magically bringing everyone back to life, would take, oh, at last report, several hundred thousand words. And I'd have to do it while writing well-researched 1830s France and Enlightenment philosophy. I have other things to do with the next ten years of my life.
I hope.