The SEQUEL to Avenir! The second book in Let Others Rise: The Series
Enjolras, Courfeyrac, and Les Amis journey to the future and attempt to reunite with Avenir and save the peaceful city of Paris from the ever-present threat of the society of Mars...
I have Disney to thank for these next set of chapters - you'll see elements of Tangled and Frozen :)
These next chapters are also causing me to change the rating to mature because there's some dystopian elements that I don't want people getting affected by, so consider this your trigger warning and only read what you are comfortable reading!
I should also mention that the dorms in this story are split into "boys" and "girls" dorms only, by what can be assumed to be an anti-LGBTQ+ government. However, there obviously would have had to have been more genders present in the story than the two dorms they were sorted into; keep this in mind!
~ Vive La France ~
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I awoke, and I was back.
I was back...but not in Paris.
I was back there, in Marseilles.
In horror, I smelled the painstakingly familiar stale air of my old dormitory.
It was like I had never left...and then a scarier thought crossed my mind...
Had I ever left?
I was lying on my cot, in the darkness, and I quickly sat up, rubbing my head.
Everything was painfully familiar. I prayed this was only a twisted dream...
I felt involuntarily for the artifact, the one thing that could explain any of this...and there it was, in my pocket. It felt...smaller. Astonished, I felt a clean cut where the second half should have been.
Oh no...it was broken again. Did Enjolras have the other half?
Enjolras.
And then, a flood of memories...Enjolras, Jehan, the meetings in the back room of the Café Musain...each memory came crashing back like a tidal wave. Oh God, oh God...if I remembered it all, it had to be real...
Kissing an unconscious Enjolras, Enjolras running his hand through my hair, his whisperings of "I love you..." and "Avenir..."
Memories of the one who had named me...
"Enjolras..." I spoke into the silence. I heard the familiar sounds of my fellow dormmates breathing, and suddenly I was back at the labor camp, where us, the Unnamed, were hoarded and forced to...
I pinched myself, and did not wake up in Paris. This was no dream.
I shivered. What would the warden say? What would they do to me, if I was actually back? Javert had broken me out of here in what felt like centuries ago...and now what? How would they punish me?
Had I even left?
I had to find out for sure what had happened...even if that meant getting in trouble. Perhaps I had travelled back in time, before I ever got in trouble at the labor camp...
Who was I kidding? I was always in trouble...
I had to know.
I slowly stood, and walked to the lightswitch on the other side of the room, my body automatically trained to weave among the cots of snoring girls. I felt for the switch, braced myself, and flicked the switch.
The lights turned on, and the small room was flooded with light.
"Ouch! Hey, what-?"
"Ack!"
"Not again!"
The girls in the dormitory snapped awake and turned to glare at me as a warden stormed through the dormitory.
"It's that book again," whispered the girl who had named herself Sasha.
Déjà vu much? My eyes shot over to my bed, where the book Les Misérables was nowhere in sight.
"Actually, it's not," I snapped, crossing my arms and staring down the warden. "Go ahead, punish me for turning on some lights."
"Oh, you're up," the warden drolled mildly.
"So I am. You haven't changed much," I snapped again.
"Do you want isolation already?" she screamed, snatching my arm and wrenching it so far up behind my back that I dropped to my knees and stars burst across my vision...
They suddenly sent me flying to my knees and wrenched my arm so high up my back that I heard something pop. I cried out, and I heard a loud crack and a flash of light...
My mind was racing, flashing back to the day they took my brother from me...
"STOP!" I yelled helplessly. "Sasha, anyone..." My eyes flickered to the eyes of the other Unnamed...
It was useless. We all knew what would happen if we tried to help someone being punished. Anyone who stepped in to help would get twice the punishment. The girl I was before meeting Enjolras would have done the same thing.
Ignoring my pleas, the warden dragged me out the door as I gripped onto the bedpost, anything...ignoring the lashes that struck me and thinking of only one person, the one who gave me strength...
Over the screams and obscenities being sworn at me by the warden, I struggled to keep my mind on Enjolras.
Be strong, don't let yourself get isolated again! I thought, as I let go of the bedframe, threw my hands backwards, and screamed as loud as I could, "ENOUGH!"
Instantly, a shimmering mass of billowing light streaked from my hands and hit the warden square in the forehead.
(A/N – think Elsa when she's upset!)
The rest of the girls in the dorm screamed as the rest of the light streaked toward the concrete walls of the dormitory, crumbling them with an earth-shattering noise which sounded almost as loud as what I had heard right before my world went dark in Paris.
"LOOK OUT!" I screamed, scrambling to my feet and staring in astonishment at the warden, who was knocked out cold. I stared down at my fingertips, which were glowing.
