I wonder, about that. I've not had to use the tenses differently before. I find some comfort in the fact he lives, at least, and that we could have time with him.

It feels...almost right somehow. He belongs yet to that world, after all.

[He is not thinking of Cosette as he says this, only of Marius's place at home, and well...]

He is not the one among us who I would have chosen to have live, whose life I'd thought to arrange spared from our barricade, yet...I am still that there is one who came away from it.

And if we are memories to Marius, particularly you, then you exist still, in his thoughts and mind, yes? That is something, even though we are dead now.