I watch stand there, watching only the slick, silver knife in his hand. The knife I wanted my death to be poured and spread upon. My blood must be there; this must be some sort of dream! He must have killed me. This is only a temptation by Satan himself. Stars, they are there, I stare at them. They remind me of mine Lord. I snap back. If this is a temptation, I must fight it. I yell, and scream, and swear I shall be back. He screams for me to run, and I do.I run, and run. The gunshots, the yells and screams. The awful temptation of the dream. I come back, and I see the dead boys on the barricades. A young, little child dead at the front.

He lies there, his blood soaking his back and the man he was lying on. I look at him. Three shots. That's all it took. It is a bit of impress on my mind. Most men are gone in one. Then I see him. God. Lord. A boy -- no, now a man, lies over the barricade. Draped over a mess of ladders, wagons, chairs.

You could not tell he was bleeding.

I remember seeing him, in the moment. He stood atop his barricade, and screamed at the soldiers, as though somehow, that would stop them. He took the great red flag, and waved it -- waved it like wind through air. He was shot then. He lies over the blood-red flag, a blanket on the bed of the barricade. He lies and bleeds there, his body waiting to be taken and forgotten in a pit of few.

And I run, away, so far away.

Everything is bloody. War, the thing I have known. Order, it is stained. Revolution is crumbled.

But the dream is still there. I must wake myself up. I must.

I see it -- the bridge over the River Seine.

Ah -- through this will be God, and I shall be in the real, and Valjean will be behind bars.

The cold black river.

I throw myself off.

I reach for the stars on instinct -- and now I realize they were never there.

I cannot live with this dream.

And now I will be free.

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