LA FÉE VERTE - ÉPILOGUES

La Fée Verte

Une nouvelle en cinq chapitres

Épilogue

La lumière d'un nouveau jour

I. Enjolras (et Combeferre)

There are different ways of arguing about civilization. Combeferre and Enjolras explore all of them.

When he thinks of Enjolras, he does not think of Paris. It is the strangest of things, for they had really found themselves in Paris. It was in the capital that they uncovered their shared machinery-- as though their friendship had been built in some far-distant era, and been lost, had somehow gone unseen, till they found it at last: the two of them, together, and set to work with their excavating. It had already a shape and purpose, their friendship. It was perfect, in every feature complete. Combeferre alone could never have designed such architecture, such elegant interlocking.

When he thinks of Enjolras, he thinks of Aix-en-Provence, and of a late summer evening in 1828 when they walked through the countryside, slow in the dusk, hardly even speaking. They heard the doves cooing in the treetops; heard cowbells, and the rustling of sheep; and the heat seemed to hang like smoke in the sultry, lavender-scented air. Enjolras had been very quiet throughout the whole visit. Combeferre's mother had said, "Such a private young man," but Combeferre had thought: that is not it, precisely. 

Out in the country there was kind of cleanness. Combeferre noticed it then as never before. He knew Enjolras did too; Enjolras had said, when they stopped for breath, leaning against a fence-post, "You might think that there was no one on earth, that the human race had been erased from every surface. What a relief it would be, to just start over. Don't you ever think?"

"I think," Combeferre had started-- then stopped. "The houses would still be there; the fields would still be tilled; the roads would still be here, the Via Augusta that the Romans built, and so would we ever really start over?"

Enjolras had looked down. "I take your meaning."

"Do you?"

Enjolras had not answered then, but simply walked on. Combeferre was not affronted; their style of conversation did not open or close, but paused for long spaces and then resumed. So they continued, into the stillness. At times the sky contained great flocks of starlings, that rose and fell and swooped; then sometimes an eagle-owl would come haunting, after.

So perhaps it was not so startling when they heard, from the fields, the hi-bou! hi-bou! of one such owl, seeming very near them. Enjolras stopped as if transfixed.

"It is only an eagle-owl," Combeferre said. "Bubo bubo. Some of the farm-people think they are very unlucky, but I do not credit it."

"No," Enjolras said. "It is not rational."

"It is Roman, that old belief, I suppose-- one thinks of the sola bubo that called Dido to her death."

Enjolras was looking out into the shadows. It was twilight, not quite so dark yet that Combeferre could not see the shape of his face, or the fall of pale hair that framed it; but dark enough that all seemed washed of colour, lit only spectrally by the full moon. At the horizon, the light was not out yet: the sun had only just sunk from view, and some blue remained, a last trace of brightness. 

Then from the far fields came the sound of wingbeats: Combeferre stepped back, meaning to let it pass. 

But Enjolras stepped forwards, closer. He stretched out his right arm, with an expression of entrancement.

"Don't," Combeferre said.

Something gripped the fair leader's coat, and alighted on Enjolras' forearm in one slow swooping movement. Combeferre heard Enjolras catch his breath, saw his right wrist sink briefly. 

Enjolras nodded gravely. Combeferre watched with a sensation that he was dreaming. It was almost painful: Enjolras' right forearm trembling under the weight...

He said in alarm, "Enjolras--"

"No; it's all right. Only it startled me."

At the last the wind stirred, and, without warning, swept off. Enjolras watching go unreadably. The sleeve of his coat was badly torn; there was, Combeferre thought, blood underneath. But neither of them spoke for long stunned moments. Even then, it was only to turn their course homewards. They walked together. Silence was on them: the silence of the monastery, where monks held their tongues in some holy presence. Combeferre was not sure he believed in any gods, but he believed in something, something else, something holy. 

"Yes," Enjolras said, when they were back in Arles, Combeferre's hometown --abruptly, without preface; continuing the thread of their past discussion. "I take your meaning; only I wish--"

Moths were scudding in darkness about them: Korscheltellus lupulina, looking for their lamps. Moonlight made Enjolras' profile troubled. Combeferre could read most of his expressions. "Yes," he said, "but civilization moves forwards, only forwards, and never, ever back-- not even for you, or for Saint-Just."

"Do you know everything that I wish?" His look at pre-emption was almost a pout; his voice was petulant. 

Combeferre had to laugh. It was a good, warm sound, and it swept the wilderness from them. "I am sure," he said gravely, "you are a well of rare wishes."

Enjolras said pensively, "Perhaps I am." His cheeks were flushed, from fading annoyance, or some emotion that he had suppressed. He could have been an emperor, in his haughty grandeur, but he was not; he was only Enjolras, and Combeferre's breath caught just for a moment.

"If it returns your dignity," he offered, keeping his voice light, "I am convinced you know my every wish."

Enjolras frowned at him. "No. How could I? You are quite opaque."

Combeferre sighed rather fondly, and flicked his shoulder. "You know," he said.

-----------

Later, he cleaned the wounds on Enjolras' forearm.

 "I'm afraid," he said, squinting, "that this may scar."

"It doesn't hurt," Enjolras said. He was sitting quite calmly, without his shirt on. Combeferre could see the marks of his ribs, faint shadows like the strings of a harp. (He did not know why he thought this.)

"Whether it hurts is not the issue."

"I'm not afraid of scars."

"That does you no credit." He wound a bandage about the wounds. The muscle below his fingers jumped and tensed. He kept his touch light. There was pain there, he thought, though Enjolras would not admit it. "You ought to be more afraid. Perhaps of some things."

"Why?" Enjolras tilted his head, curious.

"You could die."

"I think it is very likely."

"Of something trivial, of nonsense. And what if, later, a sacrifice is demanded? Like--" He could not think of a Roman martyr. They had all gone out of his head. "Like Mucius Scaevola."

"He did not die," Enjolras pointed out. "Well-- one supposes he did. But before, during the siege of the Etruscans, when he was brought before Porsenna, he placed his hand in the sacrifice-fire to show that he feared neither pain nor death."

Combeferre took Enjolras' right hand and folded it gently, holding it within his fist. "I am not quite ready to call you Left-Handed."

"They released him, though. The Etruscans. He lived."

"Courage does not make you immortal."

"Not courage," Enjolras said. He lay back on the bed where he was sitting, raising his right arm over his head and peering at the bandage with clinical interest. "And why should you care so much? After all, it is my body."

Combeferre, still perched on the edge of the bed, watched him: his clean lines, all sharp curves and angles, the cove where the wings of his collarbone met. He had once been as white as Carrara marble, but now the sun had burned him some. A spray of freckles, impish and unsolemn, showed at his cheekbones. His hair, in defiance of natural law, seemed to have darkened; it was gold now, with a fiercer and brighter glow, where once it had been colourless. Combeferre let himself think, He is beautiful. He did not let himself say it aloud. It did not need to be said.

Instead: he said, "Someone must keep your hand from the fire, or patch you up when you have burned it."

He shucked himself of shirt and lay beside Enjolras. It was too hot for them for them to curl together, or even touch skin-to-skin. A lazy wind from off the Arc de Triomphe stirred the open curtains, smelling faintly stagnant. It was a smell, Combeferre thought, of green things growing: of a wet dark aliveness. He shivered abruptly. Again his bare skin prickled. An animal instinct, to ward off death. 

Enjolras, restless, shifted. "What is the answer?" he said suddenly, after a moment.

"What?"

"Why do you care how I live?"

Combeferre sighed. "I am not answering that."

"Why?"

"Because you know the answer."

"I--"

Combeferre reached out and drew him close, despite the heat. They were so near to one another: breath to breath in the shadows. Enjolras hmmed, a quiet and comfortable noise.

"You know," Combeferre said. 

--------

So now in Paris, the summer gone, when he looks at Enjolras, he thinks back to Enjolras' arm outstretched: an omen that Combeferre could not-- would not-- interpret. He thinks this in Enjolras' study, when they have worked into twilight and are made gaunt by the glow of the lamp. Enjolras, his hair tied back, frowns at a broadsheet. There is ink on his cuff from a leaking pen, and he hums very slightly in hard concentration, and there is nothing fierce about him, not remotely. Yet all the same, the scars remain, where they gripped him: white marks like scraped letters under his sleeve. Like the stone inscriptions scholars find in Persia or Scandinavia, eons old-- a form of writing that no one can read. 

Enjolras sighs and drops the paper. "I feel like Marat," he says. "Some centuries ahead of my time; less a politician than a mad prophetess."

"Well," Combeferre says gravely, "you are too clean to be Marat. You have spent not one night in the sewer, I would guess; but as for prophetesses, you would make a very fine one. You have just the complexion. Shall you give me a prophecy now?"

Enjolras wrinkles his nose. It is such an unexpected expression, on his face, that Combeferre cannot help but laugh. Enjolras scowls. "I prophesy that you will fall into the Seine."

"That is very tame, as prophecies go. You ought to consult Jehan; I am certain that he could make it wilder, probably by involving bears in it."

"I find my prophecy perfectly sufficient."

"And what if I do fall into the Seine, tomorrow or the next day? How will you feel then?"

"I shall set up on the Pont Neuf as a fortune-teller, and profit abominably from my gift."

Combeferre laughs again, enjoying the picture thus painted. "And you will have a dancing bear, which will please Jehan, and a crystal ball, and a little silken tent, and a brazier from which exotic smoke rises--"

"It sounds like a most unappealing future."

"Yes. You had better stick with outrageous sedition."

"Mm," Enjolras says, dissatisfied. "If only sedition felt more different from fortune-telling, as an activity."

Combeferre comes to sit close by him. "You do not feel, however, that you are Cassandra."

"No. The reverse."

"Your prophecy--"

"-- is happiness," Enjolras says simply. "And yet no one believes me."

"It is a very curious thing," Combeferre agrees. "No one is happy, yet propose they may be happy-- offer a schematic for their transfiguring-- and they resist. They want nothing of the sort."

"They want a sort of happiness-as-object. An egg they could break, a golden egg from a children's story, and--" he made a brief, explosive gesture. "Out comes happiness. A kind of mist in the air, a humour in the body. The nation of people. No, I know what you will say; you do not like nations."

"A nation is a kind of fiction."

"Perhaps, but necessary." There is starting to be a certain radiance in his expression. Some men shine when they are in love, when they are rich, when their business is flourishing; but Enjolras is like a sword, and he shines in conflict. Combeferre has never quite learned not to be dazzled.

"You are picking a fight," he says fondly. "Very well; shall we argue nations?"

Enjolras tilts his head; looks at him unreadably. "Would you like that?"

"You are the one who raised the subject."

"Yes." Enjolras looks down. His attention is caught by the ink on his sleeve; he rubs at the small dark blot, distracted. "People cannot imagine being happy," he says after a moment. 

He does not look up. "They have never been happy. How do they know what it is like? They know only desire. And desire is, at least, a familiar thing. How frightened they must be, to think they will lose it, to stretch out their hands--"

"How frightened we must be," Combeferre says. His throat is tight. "We too are people."

"Yes," Enjolras says. "Even you and me."

He glows still, though the fight has gone from him. Combeferre experiences the impulse to touch his cheek. He does, before he can stop himself; he does. Enjolras sighs and shuts his eyes. He turns into the touch fractionally, as Combeferre gently brushes across his cheekbone, soft. They do not speak. The lamp flickers, light rebounding through the room. Combeferre feels sick with tenderness. He is no fool; he knows that tenderness has no biology; and yet it unquestionably acts as an ailment. It alters the composition of the body. The blood seems to slow; the heart expands, discovering its capacity. 

"Perhaps," he says, "this is the problem with happiness: one never knows how large or small it is, how many levels deep. Dig too far, and you may only destroy it. On the other hand, there may be -- underneath the surface, that one has not known -- something unseen for centuries."

Enjolras does not open his eyes. "Waiting," he says.

"Yes; waiting to be known. Waiting to be inhabited." He moves his hand, softly, reassuring, to the nape of Enjolras' neck. He feels he is gentling some wild creature, coaxing it to trust him. Come close; I have neither ill will nor weapons. Carefully, he unties the black ribbon that holds Enjolras' hair back from his face. He cards the flat tangles with his fingers. Enjolras lays his cheek to the desk, allowing him a greater range, then folds his arms and buries his face completely.

"You will have ink on your nose," Combeferre warns. He had not moved the broadsheet.

"I don't care. Prophesying is tiresome work. Please keep talking to me."

So Combeferre smooths out the spill of his hair, and continues to speak: not about nations, nor any agitating subject, but about a proposition to cure all madness with dreams-- "I have heard it from a hypnotist; he was most compelling, and the idea of it is sound, I think--" and a child he encountered with a very pronounced stutter-- "It cannot be physical, but then, what is physical? Is the soul not physical? It must have an energy--" and so on, until he is quite tired of talking, and Enjolras has fallen asleep. 

Quietly, Combeferre picks through the room: tidying papers, dousing the lamp, closing the curtains, and curling finally, fully clothed, on the chaise-longue. He has spent so many nights here that one more can hardly figure; and he sleeps easier, he thinks, to know that Enjolras is in the same room, to hear the faint sound of his slow breathing. 

He should dream, he thinks, of collapsing, of owls descending, of Persepolis or Icelandic sagas. But he doesn't; he dreams warm comforting dreams, of summer and the Pays d'Aix, and awakes very rested, with sun on his face. Enjolras is still slumped over the desk. By the time he wakes, Combeferre has fetched water and washed; his hair is freshly damp.

Enjolras, as ever at morning, looks cross. He scrubs at his eyes with the back of one hand. (Each morning for him is a battle renewed; a war that he fights with day's forces.) "I woke up and I did not see you. I thought for a moment you'd gone," he says.

"What, and leave you alone in your time of darkness?" Combeferre flicks a bit of water at him. "I would never do such a thing."

Enjolras does not try to dodge the water. It glints on his hair, a corona of beads. He is watching Combeferre, sleep-shy and rumpled. There is a smudge of newspaper ink on his chin, yet still dawn is trying to make him glorious. He lowers his eyelashes. "I know," he says. 

--------

Winter makes work at the Hôpital Necker. Combeferre leaves every day in the high cold dawn, and sometimes returns to his lodgings near midnight, breathing frost onto the scarf round his neck. His hands cramp from writing notes and holding surgical implements. He often feels that he is walking through water. Perhaps one night out of six or eight, he will find Enjolras waiting for him, or else asleep already: in a chair, on the floor, face-down in a book. Combeferre becomes accustomed to shaking him awake, and tipping him towards the bed, and tumbling after, exhausted. Rarely do they have the chance to debate; Combeferre worries his thoughts will stagnate, like this. And yet, all the same, he likes waking up in that haze of warmth, Enjolras' hand draped across his waist. He likes their drowsy, fumbling talks. Enjolras once drooled all over his pillow, fallen asleep midway through explaining why Protestantism had not liberated England (as Combeferre had been arguing).

The work gets lighter, and Enjolras' visits more frequent. Winter is a season, too, of speechmaking: in cabarets and coffee shops, in dark corners of the arrondissement...People are hungry, and people are cold; and they cannot see any reason to believe that they will grow less hungry or less cold. It seems no less likely that they will rise to form a republic, that they will throw off the chains of squalour.

So Enjolras and Combeferre bend their heads together, by the ample fire of Enjolras' lodgings, and for a time it is there that they sleep and wake-- Combeferre first on the chaise-longue, and then in Enjolras' bed, when Enjolras says muzzily, "No-- it is cold without you, and I think... I think I dream less."

When they go to the Musain now, to meet the others, Combeferre is aware of a growing change: Enjolras seems distant, and somehow fiercer. When he enters a room, men stop laughing. Combeferre thinks of the Louvre, where, the previous April, he had chanced to see a statue: part of Bonaparte's spoils. A gladiator, Greek, his arm upheld, with no shield where a shield should be; and on his face, not fear, but a kind of resignation. He was naked, and facing the enemy. He was wild, and alone, and he knew his fate, the fate of every animal thing. 

Prouvaire says, after a meeting, "He is grown so solemn, our leader. Grantaire says he is like a marble that speaks."

"It is amazing that, in a room with Grantaire, anyone gets a chance to speak. Much less a marble." Combeferre is tidying up; he is drinking the last coffee. Most of the Amis have gone by now. In the doorway, Enjolras speaks with Feuilly.

Still, Prouvaire lingers. "Do you think a man could turn into stone? Trolls do, of course, but perhaps only in stories."

Combeferre sighs. "Are you asking my medical opinion?"

"I don't know. I suppose I am not clear on the distinction. Have you not a sort of holistic opinion? Can I ask your opinion as a human being?"

Prouvaire has this disingenuous habit of not quite looking at you while speaking, but instead lowering his eyelashes as though he is shy, or perhaps just very meek. You are not meek, Combeferre thinks, so say what you mean.

"I know of no case in history," he says, and drinks the rest of the coffee: down to the dregs, grainy and black.

That night, he lies beside the fire and watches Enjolras read-- not law books, but a letter from a dissident acquaintance, who has had to flee abroad for his life.

Enjolras makes an even unhappier face. Despite his republican principles, he is a man who likes delicate things; Combeferre pictures him in a log cabin, eating sweet corn and bear-steaks, and he immediately chokes with laughter. Enjolras scowls, and kicks one bare foot at him. Combeferre seizes his ankle and pulls. Enjolras tumbles to the carpet, protesting indignantly. 

They struggle, laughing. Combeferre pins him by the wrists in a moment, straddling his waist. Enjolras' breath heaves. His hair is a current of bronze on the rug, in the dark and light of the fire's moving. Combeferre looks at it in wonder, and at Enjolras: at the fair lashes, the fine high bones of his cheeks, and the pale skin that once was marred by freckles-- now perfect, all of it, perfect, a piece of perfect beauty. 

He bends and kisses Enjolras urgently on the mouth. He has no thought to expect anything; what he wants is to mar its perfect bow, to leave a mark. He does not expect, certainly, for Enjolras to return the kiss, savage, gasping, straining till Combeferre releases his wrists. 
Then his hands are tangled in Combeferre's hair, pulling him down, and Combeferre's own hands make fists in the rumpled cloth of Enjolras' shirt, pushing it up until Enjolras sheds it. Now Combeferre can wander the lines of his body, that perfect set of harp-string ribs-- how could he not have wanted, before, to spread his hands across them?  He leaves bruises in untidy patterns, a scatter-spray down to Enjolras' hips; and then lower, as Enjolras kicks off his trousers. He knows how to do what it is he wants to do; he knows how to touch Enjolras' prick, so that Enjolras, already hard, cries out and digs his fingers in the carpet. He knows how to make him keep crying out, using his mouth and his fist, and he does, until Enjolras' body is shaking, muscles quivering at his abdomen; until Enjolras says brokenly, "Oh, oh, please," and comes, biting down on his own lip. 

Combeferre swallows, tasting only the taste of the body. He rests his forehead against Enjolras' stomach, feeling the breath shudder in and out. His palms are damp on Enjolras' hipbones, fingertips pressed into soft bare skin. He is still aroused, and yet content to lie here, listening to Enjolras make noises of soft amazement-- or he thinks this, till Enjolras shifts him over, tipping him on his back, and kneels over him.

"I have never," Enjolras says, and looks almost frightened. His cheeks are flushed, his hair disarrayed, little bruises blooming red across his skin, and Combeferre gazes at him wonderingly.

He says, "You are perfect."

Enjolras undresses him carefully, serious and breathless, then touches him in the same way. 

"Oh," he says, when Combeferre makes noise, as though he was not expecting it. 

There is something dreamlike about his hands on Combeferre's body, his long fingers wrapped around Combeferre's prick, the flicker of his tongue against Combeferre's chest, tasting, marveling. Combeferre cannot keep from thrusting upwards, from grabbing hungrily at him. At last Enjolras settles against his body, an unbearable press of skin to slick skin. Enjolras' hand is still working between them; it is achingly slow, and delicious, and every stroke make Combeferre shudder. Above him, Enjolras looks wide-eyed with wonder, and flushed with a kind of happiness. Combeferre blinks at him, dazed, made stupid with pleasure, and in a voice of revelation, says, "I, I have always-- always-- oh!"

Enjolras smiles like a summer unfolding. "I know," he says.

--------

"Citizens," Enjolras addresses the assembly. "The Bourbon lily has long proved a weed-root of corruption that spreads its vices throughout our clean soil. That is, I say to you, the soil of France-- the soil that for so long sustained our forefathers, the soil that honest men till with their hands. Has the Bourbon defended it? No! He has fled it! And now his poison penetrates the land. What nation can be a nation under such a tyrant, a king who desires not to spill his blood for the land, but to suck from it the lifeblood, the livelihoods of others?"

"No nation!" a man in the crowd cries out, and is echoed.

Enjolras affirms it: "No nation. No garden can flourish, that shelters such a lily. We must uproot this weed, this poisonous plant; and we will have no more leeches draining our soil, no more tyrants who leech the soil of France! we must do as you would do in your very own gardens, we must tear out this weed with our own bare hands!"

Enjolras, Combeferre supposes, has never had a garden of his own. He does not look prepared to uproot weeds with his hands; he looks slender, fierce but very small-boned, his hair shining, his coat immaculate. Only-- there is a certain wildness to his eyes, a remote look, like marble, cold and very clean, which makes you think that he could, if he so chose, uproot anything, anything. He stretches his hand out, leaning towards the crowd, and for the space of a heartbeat Combeferre thinks of dark wings beating the air into shadows, of welling blood. He forgets to breathe.

Later, they lie in bed together: Enjolras draped on Combeferre's chest, Combeferre sifting fingers through his hair, idly talking nonsense. "But could an animal ever be a citizen? I have known some geese of very great intelligence. Or ghosts, say... I do not mean to endorse ghosts, for I am flummoxed by their mechanism of existence, but should one appear--mmph." His words are muffled by Enjolras' fingers, fumbling up to cover his mouth.

"No," Enjolras declares to Combeferre's clavicle.

"Well, as you wish." He subsides, and instead devotes his attention to the anatomy of Enjolras' ribs. He maps their muscles, then those of the shoulder joint, then from the triceps down to the tendons at the wrist.

"I am not an anatomical model," Enjolras announces without lifting his head.

"Hush." Combeferre's fingers find the scars, thin little marks raised against the skin. Four and four. He traces them and retraces them. He feels a brief shiver of dread.

Enjolras shifts in dissatisfaction. "You are unhappy; I can sense it."

"No," Combeferre says immediately, and then, unable to resist, "How?"

"I do not know. It is a kind of stillness. You have a taxonomy of stillnesses. Taxonomy, is that the word?"

"Almost."

"At any rate, a stillness. I sometimes feel--" he is interrupted by a yawn-- "that you are a house I used to live in, years ago, perhaps when I was a child, or even before then, and I can almost remember the shape of the rooms, even as I am discovering them, of perhaps you owned the house and brought me to it, and now you are leading me through it again, or..." He stops, and Combeferre thinks him asleep. But after a moment, he drowsily says, "And I have always known you. And always wanted to know you. It resists logic."

"I am not reassured; you suggested once that you would like to sweep the earth clean of houses."

"Not personally. Only-- if there were to be a disaster."

"Ah. Now I am reassured."

"I would rebuild you," Enjolras says. "I would rebuild your house. It is the only... the only thing." He spreads his one hand in an expressive gesture.

"I scarcely know how to interpret that." 

"The only thing large enough to contain me." Enjolras sighs, and presses a kiss against Combeferre's shoulder. "You are pleased to be obstinate. You know, and you have always known what I mean."

Combeferre wants to say, I do not know if I know. He wants to be more obstinate. He wants to say, Please, explain it to me, in mechanical terms. But he see the problem: there are things that one can't ever say. There are things one can barely understand. There is, he thinks, a taxonomy of love, a taxonomy of happiness; there's a language of nerves and skin, of self. They have scarcely begun exploring it. He wraps his arms around Enjolras. Embracing, sheltering, holding him in.

"Mm," Enjolras says, half-asleep. "Yes, I mean I..." He does not finish the sentence.

"I know," Combeferre says.

 
Notes on this segment:

1. In the Aeneid, Dido hears a lone eagle-owl (Bubo bubo) crying before her death. 
2. Don't even get me started on Saint-Just's plans for a rural Spartan civilization.
3. "Scaevola" means "Left-Handed."
4. I think the infamous Thomas Carlyle is originally to blame for the idea of "Cassandra Marat."
5. The cuneiform alphabet (used for the "Persian" inscriptions to which Combeferre refers) was first deciphered by a French scholar in 1836, which for some reason strikes me as very tragic in this context.
6. The statue in the Louvre is the Borghese Gladiator.
7. "The Bourbon lily/weed" is of course the French monarchy, exemplified by Louis XVIII and Charles X.

********************************************************

II. Grantaire

Grantaire, affecting an expression of disgust, slung an arm around Bahorel’s shoulders and turned to the door. “Come on, let’s go dance with pretty girls at the Grande Chaumière. There’s nothing to be found here tonight but the twittering of songbirds, or perhaps of dreamers, which amounts to the same thing: a great deal of noise, which gaping simpletons take for the sublimest of music, but which in reality signifies nothing and accomplishes nothing, except in the case where the prattlers are birdies of ill omen trumpeting a glorious bloodbath to come. Truly I don’t know why I come to the Musain anymore. The wine is bad, the birdsong is ear-splitting, and Louison has a most unbecoming wart on her chin. I’m better off breaking my feet trying to keep up with the grisettes and their can-can."

As he left, Enjolras caught his sleeve. Grantaire stopped short.

"Why do you keep coming here, Grantaire?"

A strange expression spread over Grantaire’s misshapen face. “Madness," he said. “Intoxication. Both. It must be, because I know of no good reason why I should seek out such a sorry flock of dreamers."

-

That night, tolerably drunk and rejected by all the grisettes he’d pursued, Grantaire dreamed. Sprawled across his empty bed, he dreamed he saw Enjolras in the guise of St Michael, trampling him underfoot without seeing him as Grantaire lay insensible in the gutter outside the Grande Chaumière. Enjolras drew his sword and launched himself into the heavens, and Grantaire barely had time to press a kiss to the heel lifting itself from his face as the air resounded with the beating of mighty wings.

He awoke to find that he’d soiled his sheets in the night. Cursing himself, cursing the dance-hall absinthe that had given him such grotesque dreams, cursing whatever demon had given him bad luck with women so that it could invade even dreams such as that one with lust, he rolled over and groped on the floor for a bottle of brandy. In the absence of any magical spring of Lethe, he’d have to settle for whatever measure of oblivion his aqua vitae would grant him. Above all he was determined not to think about it. It meant nothing, after all. It was only a dream, and what were dreams but the meaningless twittering of the mind as it slept?

"There were three beautiful sisters -- very fine and delicate; the first had a red dress, the second blue, and the third pure white. Hand in hand they danced beside the calm lake in the moonlight. Thet weren't elfin girls, they were humans. Everything there smelled so sweet, and the girls disappeared into the forest. The fragrance grew stronger; three coffins, with the beautiful maidens lying in them, came gliding from the darkness of the woods and away over the lake; fireflies flew round them, shining like little hovering lights. Are the dancing girls sleeping or are they dead? -- The scent of the flowers say death; the evening bell tolls for the dead!"
"You make me so sad... Your scent is so strong, I can't help thinking of the dead girls! Ah -- is liberty really dead?"
Kling, klang, went the hyacinth bells. "We're not ringing for liberty, we don't even know that! We're only singing our song -- the only one we know!"

A hangover would have been a kindness. Instead Grantaire woke to depressing sobriety and a flat that felt more like January than early April. The combination was merciless enough to bring the dream with him whole cloth into waking awareness; for long moments it was more real than memory, and he had some trouble placing himself in his surroundings. When memory came, it was no comfort.

It had been temperate enough in the flat last night, or at least as well as he could remember before he'd switched to the serious intoxicants; a cold front must have come in overnight, winter's last little jab at him and his fellow Parisians. And of course he'd been in no shape to set the kindling in the stove. He hadn't even managed to crawl under the duvet, just passed out in his shorts on top of the bed. No wonder he was freezing and dreaming of the North.

The problem with sleeping so much was that it left plenty of REM time for the psyche to come up with really creative forms of sabotage. Throw a great deal of very old absinthe and eau-de-vie into the mix, and you were asking for trouble. This one, he had to admit, took the prize. Decades it must have been since he'd read (or heard?) that particular story, if it was a day, and the subconscious still remembered. 

Giving in to base necessity, the stubbled young man got up and relieved himself, then went and turned on the heat before returning to the bed and bundling up in the layers of bedclothes. He knew perfectly well that he'd been sleeping far too much of the time lately, and why, but the animal comfort of a warm, rumpled bed was too compelling on a morning this cold. Of course his little bender last night hadn't been an answer. He really ought to know better by now, but somehow, it had just seemed the appropriate response to the events of the past few days.

At least he and Enj were speaking to each other again, more or less, even if it had taken all of Courf's cajoling and wheedling to make it happen. Too bad drinking himself into unconsciousness hadn't made him feel any less jealous of the others' easy, obvious certainty of their places in Enj's life. Not their fault, he knew, and he hated feeling that way. It was just hard not to want what others were given so freely.

What would Enj be doing on a morning like this?

Stop it, he told himself wearily, pulling the pillow over his head. Stop driving yourself crazy, stop feeling sorry for yourself, stop lying about like a sloth and get up, parbleu! Go finish your degree, and then, go find a new place to live, a new life somewhere. What the fuck are you waiting for?

He toyed idly with thoughts of alternate identities, careers...

Out running, probably, the insufferable bastard. Or maybe he only wants people to think he's that disciplined. Maybe he's curled up in bed right this minute, drinking cocoa.

He groaned, disgusted with himself, and socked a fist into the other pillow.

Wished he didn't still feel the dream-pressure of that soft mouth against his, lips cool at first, but warming with his kiss.

Parbleu, you're pathetic.

Tell me something I don't know, he snarled at his incessant inner commentator, and threw the covers back savagely, swinging his feet to the floor.

Tired, but feeling better than he had in a long time, he grabbed a bottle of Merlot and sat down on a crate in the middle of the room, surveying his progress.

The afternoon had turned gray while he'd worked, the sky heavy with threatening snow clouds, and the light outside already felt like dusk, though it was barely after four. If he was going to get out of Paris tonight, it would have to be soon. Probably, the wise thing to do would be to wait out the storm—but it felt so good to be doing something finally, after so many months of hiding, that he thought it best to let momentum carry the day. He didn't want to spend another night in his flat; he'd seen too much of it these past months. He'd stay in a hotel if he had to.

Besides, he thought maybe he'd had enough sleep for a while. This morning's nightmare, if one could call it a nightmare, had stayed with him all day, the images too vivid to forget easily. He wasn't eager to revisit the strange country of his subconscious any time soon. Not that he was above a little revisionist history now and then—but revisionist history mixed with fairytale motifs was a bit much to take.

Shaking his head, Grantaire finished his drink and got to his feet, checking the labels on the boxes and crates one last time before slinging his carry-all over his shoulder; he left the bottle of Merlot on the table by the door, turned off the light, and locked the door behind him.

He really couldn't have said what made him tell the cabby to turn toward the Left Bank, and then towards Notre Dame rather than Marseille. It wasn't on the way. It certainly wasn't likely to turn out to be the wisest thing he'd ever done. But the words were out before he knew it, and taking them back would have been...he didn't know. Some kind of admission.

Traffic was worse than he'd hoped, everyone hurrying to get home before the snow, and it quickly became obvious that he should have taken the Métro. By the time the first feathery white flakes began to blow across the carriage doors, they were at a standstill, still almost a mile from the river. The dark student leaned forward and paid the driver, saying that he'd get another cab on the next block. The bastard laughed good-naturedly. "Bonne chance," he warned, but Grantaire ignored him and climbed out of the warm, dry cab and into the snowy twilight.

Of course, the cabby had been right, and there wasn't a shuttle to be had between Saint-Honoré and the Louvre. Construction at the museum stop of the Métro forced him out of his way by three blocks, and even the wind seemed to be trying to make him turn back, gusting north off the Seine and stinging his eyes with snow.

Some small, not entirely rational part of him was beginning to entertain the superstitious idea that if he stopped moving for too long, the fabric of reality would shift slightly around him, and he'd arrive at the quay to find that no barge was moored there. It wasn't the first time it had snowed in Paris in April, not by a long shot. The previous year, there'd been snow on the ground into the first week of May, he remembered. So why did it feel as though the forces of the universe were arrayed against him?

The snow was falling thick and fast by the time he emerged from the Métro station and turned toward the river, turning his collar up against the cold. It did little good; he was already wet through. At least he still had his boots, he thought a little crazily. Thank goodness for small mercies. Now as long as he didn't meet up with any korrigans or sinisterly regal ladies, he'd be doing fine.

In spite of his apparently slipping hold on reality, the barge was right where he'd left it. He couldn't help the relief he felt, the knot in his stomach unclenching a little at the sight of its familiar silhouette, the lights of Notre Dame ghostly behind it. But by the time he reached the bottom of the steps, he could see there were no lights at the portholes, and Enjolras was nowhere in evidence. He jogged to the edge of the quay anyway, but no Enjolraic buzz rewarded his persistence; the fair leader  wasn't home.

At a loss, Grantaire stood there for a moment, hands in his pockets, shivering a little and fighting an unexpectedly intense pang of disappointment. For a while there he'd thought.... Well, never mind what he'd thought. Life sure as hell wasn't a fairy tale. If anyone ought to know that,  it was him.

The temperature was dropping. For a fleeting instant he toyed with the idea of going inside anyway, waiting for Enjolras to come home... but he pushed the thought away, irritated with himself. It had been an impulse, and a poorly conceived one at that. Better just to go. It wasn't as though anything he might say could change anything. He permitted himself one last look, then hoisted his carryall higher on his shoulder and turned back toward the steps.

Once more back on the street level, he hurried through the ever-thickening snowfall, head lowered and hands buried in his pockets; still, for no reason he could have explained, he passed the entrance to the Métro and kept going on foot, numb to the miserable weather. He felt disjointed and equally numb on the inside, as if a weight were being lifted from him with each step, but one that left an ache of infinite, cold grayness in its place. He should have been glad to be freed at last from the ties that had held him so long. Should have been grateful for the twist of fate that had saved him from suffering one last unpleasant scene. He let his feet carry him back across the bridge to the mainland, back to the Right Bank, feeling nothing but the soft, glistening layer of snow crunching under his boots.

The steady rhythm of his long stride helped some, and after a while he began to feel a little better. Thoughts of the South cheered him. Time for some sunshine, far away from Paris and its unrelenting concentration of crowds. Just thinking of it made him aware once more of the cutting gale and the penetrating cold; he hurried towards the next block, spotting an entrance to the Métro across the street.

So intent was he on his destination that he never saw the slow, inevitably disastrous spin of the stagecoach that had taken the corner too fast for the road conditions; so thick was the snow that he didn't see the carriage headed straight for him until it was already well into its slide.

The hooves made no sound on the wet pavement. He had time only to notice the oddness of that before he felt the blunt smack of impact, bone against steel.

"Unbelievable," said a familiar voice, the buzz heavy and sweet as opium. It made him sit up too fast. "Hey, easy. Easy. You all right?"

Enjolras swam into focus, crouching over him with a half-worried, half-bemused expression. He smelled of wool and woodsmoke, and he had snow in his hair.

Grantaire tried to move, then thought better of it as his head throbbed, and blinding pain shot through his right wrist. When the worst of it passed and he could breathe again, he was sitting on the cold, wet sidewalk, clutching at the blond's red peacoat, his broken wrist cradled in his lap. Enjolras' gloved hand gripped his arm. "Yeah," he managed, grimacing and trying not to pass out. "What the hell happened?"

"You got hit by a carriage," the fair leader informed him solemnly.

"Thanks for the news flash. I meant, what the hell are you doing here?"

He looked apologetic. "I pushed you away, just in time."

The dark young man blinked. "You're not serious."

"Well, you shouldn't have been crossing where you were, you know. Especially not in this wintry weather."

In response, closed his eyes and just shook his head mutely, at a loss for anything coherent to say to that. Other complaints besides his wrist were making themselves known: bumps and bruises and cuts, nothing serious. "Anyone else hurt?" he asked at last, flexing his wrist as the bones started to knit themselves back together.

"Just shaken up. The driver said something about taking you to the hospital, but I think I talked him out of it."

"Remind me to thank you later."

They spent several minutes persuading the small crowd of onlookers that Grantaire was fine and would be sure to get himself seen to by a doctor. Enjolras gave a convincing performance as the Good Samaritan—aided, no doubt, by his considerable experience in that role of a rebel leader. It didn't hurt that no one particularly wanted to stand about arguing the point in the snow; in a remarkably short time, they were alone on the cobbled pavement. En tête-à-tête at last.

That lilywhite gloved hand was warm on the tireur's right arm. He probed the lump at the back of his head gingerly.

"Bad?" Enjolras said, and the apology was real this time.

In response, Grantaire shook his head, fighting the temptation to let the blond lean against his solid strength. "Another minute, that's all." The awkwardness was back. It hadn't changed, not in four months, and he knew he shouldn't have expected anything to be different now, just because strange forces were at work. He wasn't sure he wanted to think about the odds involved in this particularly unlikely set of circumstances, or what it might mean.

When the pain had subdued, he reached out a numb left hand and let Enjolras lever him to his feet; they stood there for a moment, the awkwardness acute.

"Can I give you a lift somewhere?" the fair leader asked finally.

The lush sighed, an attempt at lightness he didn't feel. "You've got to be joking."

Enjolras smiled a little, but it was forced. He'd noticed the carryall. "The Pays d'Aix? The Camargue, maybe?" he said quietly, watching the dark young man's expression.

And Grantaire found he couldn't maintain the effort at casual bravado any more. He was cold, and sore, and shaken up, and the snow was still falling mercilessly, the flakes coming down in thick, wet clumps that dusted Enjolras' golden hair and narrow shoulders and clung to his eyelashes in a way that hurt to look at. "I'll manage, thanks," he said, and took more satisfaction than he should have at the little flare of hurt in the other man's eyes.

"Okay," the fair leader said at last, nodding slowly, his face too controlled. "If that's what you want."

Something let go within the martial artist's chest, like a lotus unfurling at nightfall. He blinked. "You know it isn't," he said. Then blinked again, fiercely, because there was something in his eyes, and it wasn't snow. Mortified, he pulled away and averted his face.

Enjolras, damn him, took a hesitant step forward, closing the distance between them. "Grand... R?" His tone was half-disbelieving, half-hopeful, a sweetly vulnerable sound that undermined every attempt the fair leader himself was making at recovering his cool, uncaring detachment.

"Don't," he warned, but had to stop because his voice had betrayed him.

"Grand'R..., talk to me," Enjolras urged, still too close for comfort. "I thought we were past this."

The other young man turned on him. "Why? Because you say so?"

Stung, the fair leader paled, then two spots of colour appeared on his cheeks, the flush of his own answering anger. The soft lushness of his mouth turned to hard lines. "Damn you," he grated out. "What on Earth do you want from me?"

"Nothing! That's the point, don't you get it? I want nothing from you! I just—" he broke off.

"What?" Grantaire moved, one quick step closer, his left hand flexing as though he would have liked to seize Enjolras by the wrists; apparently he knew better, though, and his hand fell back to his side without making contact. "Tell me."

The blond's control snapped, four months of silence giving way in the face of that irresistible demand. "I want you not to look at me like that any more," he said bluntly. "I want to stop hurting, R. I want for none of it ever to have happened." His frustration and despair welled up. "Parbleu, what do you think I want?"

Dark hazel eyes blazed in response. "You really want to know? I think you want me to make it easy for you. I think you want me to be the bad guy, and the odd one out. Because if you convince yourself I'm the one who's not willing to see reason, you can pretend it doesn't matter that you're running away." His expression dared the fair leader to deny it. "Am I close?" He was without mercy, eyes demanding, revealing a hurt that ran deep and had never healed.

Yet Enjolras didn't answer. Couldn't answer. A wash of heat rose in his chest, swept through his body with merciless insistence, making his eyes burn and his throat ache with the desperate effort to contain it. Close enough, he would have said if he could.

I never needed anyone before I met you.

He knew he should go now. Knew that if he didn't, the unthinkable was going to happen. The pressure in his chest was unbearable.

"Don't you think I want those things, too?" Grantaire asked then, voice harsh with feeling. "Don't you think I've wished things could have been different?"

The wave of heat crested, escaped on a soft breath that betrayed everything. "Oh, R..."

The lines of Grantaire's uneven face altered, a subtle shift that took maybe two seconds—two seconds in which everything between them changed. The hazel eyes widened almost imperceptibly... and then lit with a deep, clear-burning flame that Enjolras felt like the first sweet breath of springtime. Grantaire reached out then and did what he'd been wanting to do since he had first opened his eyes to find Enjolras crouching over him; he brushed the soft snowflakes from the golden silk of his hair. Almost at once, new ones started to take their places.

Enjolras caught his hand before it could fall away and took it between his own gloved ones, drawing it close to his chest, an odd little gesture that made Grantaire's heart turn over, his breath catch. The world shifted, reshaping itself around the unlikely center of their joined hands.

"Do you believe in fate?" Enjolras asked at last, when he could.

Grantaire shook his head, bemused. "Never did before."

And he was thinking of the glittering fractal facets of a snowflake, dizzyingly infinite. "I never did either," he admitted. "Funny, though, us meeting like this. Maybe someone's trying to tell us something."

Enjolras smiled crookedly. "On the other hand, maybe I've been following you around town just waiting for the chance to cross your path."

"Either way," Grantaire shrugged, unfazed.

"Yeah?" Enjolras' voice was rough.

And the dark young man leaned forward and kissed him, long and sweet, Enjolras' mouth soft against his own, warm enough to thaw the coldest heart.

By the time they broke for air he was breathless, gloved hands wound in the thick hair, pressing himself into the warm opening of the other man's coat; he found he was shivering, the sudden heat almost painful after being cold for so long.

Opening his eyes, Grantaire sucked in a breath. His mouth opened, then closed, gasping like a fish out of water. He cleared his throat. "You never said anything," he said at last.

"You never asked," Enjolras countered.

The hazel eyes questioned him seriously, with an intensity that made his heart beat faster. "And if I'm asking now?"

The young blond stroked the back of his lover's neck, feeling the strength of the fine, corded muscles, the faint shudder of response that ran through Grantaire's body. "Let's go home," he said, "and you can ask me that question again. Because I think my answer is going to take a while."

And Grantaire, wisely, did not argue.

Blinking, the fair-haired young man stares at him, something swelling up in his chest. Grantaire, brilliant, impossible Grantaire, thinks that of him. Thought that of him. He wants to retort with something biting, but he sounded so earnest when he spoke, and he is so tired of people seeing him only as ice, so amazed by someone thinking of him as light. "That's... not what I was expected."

He laughs, ugly and a little self deprecatingly this time. "What can I say? I live to surprise."

"That's not what I meant," Enjolras snaps, voice firm with steel more than ice, fixing Grantaire in place with his eyes, mouth curving in a scowl. "You're... ugh. I don't even know what I am to do with you! You're intelligent, and honest to my face, and you came to speak to me, and you think the things I make are beautiful, and you're just... you're impossible!"

It's his turn to blink, cheeks ruddy with embarrassment and surprise. "... I think I'm to take that as a compliment."

"You are," Enjolras agrees, and looks back down at his hands. He looks over at Grantaire, who believes more in actions than love, who praises and insults him in the same breath, and he knows he would be in for fighting and whatever strange things lurk in his eyes that Courfeyrac hasn't specified. He thinks of the potential problems this could pose and how badly it might end.

Still, he rises, offers a bare hand to Grantaire. "Shall we head back in? I'm sure they've missed us, by now."

"I'm sure they've missed you," Grantaire says, but affectionately, and takes Enjolras' hand without a moment of hesitation, and Enjolras draws him to his feet. He leads him back toward the doorway, and light spills out over the tiles at their feet.

Like a vine to a trellis, Grantaire seizes on all the support he will never have on his own. For his every weakness, Enjolras has a strength, for every vice a virtue: he counters drunkenness with sobriety, cynicism with belief, unspeakable lusts with chastity. Grantaire can never hope to be him, but he can admire him from afar.

One night, to his shock, he finds Enjolras crumpled up at the table after a meeting, whispering, "I can't."

"Drink," he says, an offer he's made a thousand times, "you'll feel better." And Enjolras, to Grantaire's great surprise, accepts the absinthe and drains it with a grimace.

"You know what it's like to doubt," Enjolras says hoarsely. "Does it ever stop hurting?"

Grantaire does not answer, but takes his idol into his arms and presses a kiss to the marble forehead. Enjolras, the mist of the green fairy already clouding his eyes, looks up and kisses him fiercely on the mouth, clinging to him for comfort. Grantaire, bewildered, accepts the kisses and the desperation and the taste of the alcohol on Enjolras' breath.

The next morning, his Apollo does not shine half so brightly anymore. Grantaire keeps drinking, and looks away.

-------------------

Silence. Grantaire blinked several times -- he was awake, finally. The room was sideways -- very well; his head lay on the table, his face partially obscured by his own arm.

Why was it so quiet? Grantaire suddenly remembered the barricade that they had been building, last thing he remembered before the all-encompassing darkness of the drunken slumber that had overtaken him the day before.

Voices.

“Was it you who killed the artillery sergeant?”

“Yes.”

“Do you want us to bandage your eyes, then?”

“No.”

Hearing the second voice, Grantaire sat up immediately, ignoring the pains that shot through his back, his neck, his head. He saw some dozen soldiers at the far side of the room, their backs to him and their guns pointed at ... Enjolras.

“Vive la république!” 

The words were out of Grantaire’s mouth before he could stop himself. He stood, feeling more awake than he had in a long time.

“Vive la république,” he repeated, louder, with more emphasis. Could there be another way, a better way than that which was now presented to him? For a brief, blinding moment, the future showed itself to Grantaire, when it had always been clouded and obscure to him before. The future he saw, with shockingly stunning clarity, was without Enjolras, without his light, his ideals, his convictions, his beauty.

“Vive la république. I belong to it.” His voice was firm, his resolve unwavering, his eyes clear, his posture steady. There was no questioning this decision. There was no changing his mind -- not that he wanted to. This was the only right way. He had not felt this clear-headed in many years.

“Shoot us together, kill two birds with one stone.” He crossed the room, moving around the soldiers and the broken billiards table, to stand beside Enjolras.

Softly, almost gently, Grantaire turned to face Enjolras and ignore the soldiers that now aimed their guns at him as well. “If you’ll allow it?”

Enjolras said nothing, only smiled, that dazzling smile that had haunted Grantaire’s conscious and subconscious mind for so long, and clasped Grantaire’s hand in his own in a gesture of brotherly solidarity.

In this moment, this brief moment, Grantaire slowly smiled too -- a real, genuine smile, without doubt, scepticism, cynicism, or disbelief, but a real smile, for here was finally something to believe in. Everything else, all of the past, all of the future, gone, obscured by the brilliant light of this single shining moment, a moment in which Grantaire almost felt time come to a stop around him. It was an intoxication that was far sweeter than any he had achieved with the Green Faery or the wine, an intoxication that he did not want to come to an end, an intoxication from which he never wanted to awaken. His whole world right now was enveloped in this moment: the press of Enjolras’ hand to his own, the beauty and warmth of that smile; the smells and sounds of powder being discharged from guns and cannon, and men being captured and killed and shoved, and a barricade built the day before being forcibly dismantled again. And through it all like a beacon of light through the fog, was Enjolras. Enjolras’ face and body were covered in grime, powder, dirt, blood -- whether his own or others’ Grantaire could not tell -- and none of this detracted from his beauty or his presence; indeed, only added to the power that the other man’s blue-eyed gaze seemed to have as it fell upon Grantaire, in this moment which seemed to last forever and which Grantaire never wanted to end.

“Terribly sorry, old fop,” said the National Guard, who - if it was worth anything - really did mean it. “It’s just - regulations and that. Rum luck you’ve got. Untouched the whole time, what?”
Enjolras, who had until this point been attempting to embody the spirit of Liberté herself in a square-shouldered pose against the wall, nodded curtly. Enjolras, as the reader knows, possessed of both an unearthly beauty and charming but terrible nature that sends this narrator into convulsions of ecstasy. But that is a story for another time.
The Guardsman sighed and repeated, “Rum luck, what. I say, would you like a blindfold at least?”
“No,” said Enjolras, at once a vision of light, freedom, justice and the refined sort of manners that come of an impeccable upbringing. “Thank you, but I should think not.” He blinked once, and the assembled Guards were forced to lean forward in unison so as to secure a better view of his impossibly sweet, blue eyes.
“Ah well,” said the Guard who had spoken before. “As you do, then.” He raised his rifle slowly, then lowered it again as a second figure arose with a clatter and the clang of fallen bottles from a little table in the back of the room.
Grantaire, the reader remembers, had fallen asleep here the day before and remained in this state throughout the entirety of the battle. Jolted awake by the sudden, jarring silence, he straightened his monocle and stumbled over his upturned chair, suddenly hyper-aware of the entire situation. This is not an uncommon occurrence for a drunkard awakening from an alcohol-induced slumber, as any party-goer or regular drinker can attest, but rather a skill that develops out of necessity; one must be able to quickly and accurately assess to what extent one has made a fool of oneself the night prior in order to react to a potentially offended or angry host.
“I say,” said Grantaire in a clear and firm voice. The assembly blinked, surprised, for it did not suit him at all. He crossed to Enjolras’ side and turned to stare down the Guards. “I say,” he repeated, “if you’re going to shoot him, comrades, you’ll have to shoot me as well, what. Solidarity and all that.”
“Grantaire.” Enjolras stared at him.
“Enjolras, old chum?”
“Are you drunk?”
Grantaire shook his head regretfully. “On nothing but a sudden and inexplicable enthusiasm for the Revolution, old top. I finished off all my wine last night - as well as a rather impressive row of tumblers of stout, absinthe and brandy - and now it appears I’ve been imbibed with the spirit of the Republic itself. Liberty, justice and equality for all, what.”
Turning to the assembly of Guards, who had begun fiddling with their rifles so as not to disturb what had clearly become a rather private and tender moment between the priest of the ideal and a surprise convert, he adjusted the sit of his monocle and added cheerfully, “So, as you were, men. Ready, aim, fire and all that. We’ve a special running today - a two-for-the-price-of-one affair. I expect it will translate very well into the official report. A stunning show. The entire Revolution summed up in the thud of two bodies hitting the floor. Shakespeare couldn’t have staged it better himself, though I’m sure he’d have been tearing out his rummy little beard in an attempt to do so. Pointy little thing it was, what. I say, do you think it would have suited me?”
He held his hand up to his chin as an example for Enjolras’ critical, cornflower blue eye.
“No,” said Enjolras at last. “But, to be fair, I don’t think anything suits you.”
“Alas,” sighed Grantaire sadly, then brightened once more. “I say, Enjolras, old hare, I rather forgot to ask you - silly of me - but would you mind terribly, that is, would you permit it if we go down together? Last display of solidarity in the face of adversity and all that, straight-backed and proud until we crumple in a bloodied heap, bosoms heaving with the last, revolutionary breaths and cries of ‘long live the Republic’ on our lips - all that sort of thing, what?”
Enjolras, flooded with an all-encompassing affection that rounded out all the cornery bits of his soul and completed his metaphorical transformation into the Successfully Well-Rounded Ideal, smiled sublimely and took the convert’s hand into his own.
There was a momentary lapse as the two were given time to press the wrinkles from their trousers, straighten their jackets and - in Grantaire’s case - re-adjust the sit of their monocles. They looked dashing - and revolutionary to the last word - as the report sounded.

**************************************************************

III. Cosette et Marius

It was simple as that, really. The socialite and his mistress gone, gods know where to, in whatever place. They were real upper-class twits; not good, sensible rulers and were even worse parents. They just took off one day, first the lover and then the mistress whom he had left on her own in a men's world.
Cosette could not remember them; she was just a three-year old. When her mother stayed at the Sergeant's inn, the landlord and landlady were instantly charmed by the little one and whisked her away, promising to take up their time for a few days at most. The old M. Fauchelevent was supposed to take up her mother's place during her absence, ever since that deathbed promise. He was already retired and well aged. No one thought too much about a few days and so he accepted.

However, the few days turned into weeks, then months and finally - years. They brought so much more gray into the guardian's hair. He loved his little ward Cosette and she adored him in return.

(The Companion, by Saniikka - https://archiveofourown.org/works/13174839?view_full_work=true -, adapted to a more realistic Mariusette AU)

Finis.

Thank you, thank you! *big grin* This is, hands down, the most awesome Christmas present I've received this season (actually, scratch that; it's the best I've received *ever*, because it was made). I love your choice of subjects - Grantaire's past, particularly as an artist, has always particularly appealed to me - and your depiction of Grantaire's gradual fall (and ultimate redemption) from aspiring, if less than serious, artist who didn't want to go home to social drinker to degenerate substance abuser; the crowd he hung out with, and how it changed with his habits - or rather, how his habits changed with the different groups of people (love Courfeyrac's cameo!); how his rambling thoughts (laced with a dash of the classics) became, through the inhibition-lifting influence of alcohol, rambling speech; and how his relationship with Enjolras evolved over the years - specifically, I love how you've explained why book!Enjolras still gave him chances - because he'd known R from back when he was still more or less sober and had his head on straight. The story is not only believable, it is almost poetically tragic in its rendering of R's journey. The OF/PD epilogue, in this context, not only pulls everything together but also makes it all the more poignantly beautiful (I had a knot in my throat by the end). It makes me want to pick up my pencil and illustrate it to kingdom come. 

Once again, thank you so much. :D

Oh yay, I am so glad and relieved that you actually liked it! There were plenty of times I was worried and thinking, "oh god this is so weird and bizarre and I hope the readers like it at all--"

Subconsciously, I have always wanted to explore what was going through Grantaire's mind during Orestes Fasting... because you knew there had to be some mental shift. But this scene appeared to me while I was on lunch at work, so I scribbled it down as best I could, and took it home and transcribed it into the fic, which was still maybe halfway done in the middle at that point! I guess you could say I wrote the end before I finished the beginning! :) I never did write in a straight line though. Anyway I hoped it didn't come across as desperately off-key or overdone or caricatured, so I am very very very pleased that the epilogue worked so well for you! :D

and YES PLZ if you want to illustrate it to kingdom come I will cheer you on every step of the way (even if, uh, it has to be slapped with all the mature tags and hidden behind protected links! ;) )

Absolutely gorgeous! So much here that I love...from little touches like Enj's favourite stories (Hyacinth! Grin!) to the final moments from his POV (in his epilogue). Your Grantaire is certainly living the life that Hugo hints at, a life of which the Amis are only a part, but which come to dominate the whole. I like your Courfeyrac (always bouncing and out of people's lives, connecting them) and your Enjolras with his stillness and reserve, pulling R up with just a word when he rants. 

And poor Grantaire. There's a wonderful line in one of the Brontë bios about Branwell, and how people had tried to tug his reputation in all directions. This biographs treats him sympathetically, within the context of his squandered talent, his addictions, his depression. I wish I had the book in front of me, but the line ran something about him being a man lost in a mist.

Grantaire here is a man lost in a mist, some of it his own making, some of it probably from inherent psychological makeup, and some of it from circumstances beyond his control. He's neither the useless wastrel or the unfortunate victim on Enjolras' indifference that we see so often in fanon, but rather a complex figure who ultimately rises above just pathos. This isn't suicide by National Guard either - he dies with dignity, and an affirmation that some things are worth believing in, even if what he dies for is perhaps not entirely what Enjolras dies for.

:D I'm glad you enjoy it too! I've come to like the fic more and more as I read it and see how other people view it as well.

It's a story I fully intend to revisit as part of a larger story arc, so this is probably not the last we'll see of Grantaire, in this context. :)

I have a hard time believing that Grantaire was not ever at any point interesting or useful or a worthwhile friend to Enjolras, just from their interactions in "Enjolras and his Lieutenants". Enjolras would have scorned his suggestions and rejected his offer to help completely out of hand if that were the case. Because Enjolras takes him seriously, there's therefore got to be something between them other than the believer disdaining the sceptic, despite what Hugo says in "A Group Which Almost Became Historic". Enjolras and Grantaire have this interesting underlying story which was just dying to be teased out, so here (some of) it is.

I admit the chance to write about drunken, drug-filled orgies and Grantaire being the man about town was especially appealing as well. :)

The chance to illustrate such drunken, drug-filled orgies, even more so. I'm doing research now; I hope *nobody* ever finds my research folder!!

Oh FABULOUS! :) I absolutely cannot wait to see the, er, fruits of your research.

Found the quote - it was actually from Francis Grundy, who knew Branwell, and was used by the biographer I mentioned:

"Patrick Branwell Brontë was no domestic demon - he was just a man in a mist - who lost his way."

Like Branwell, Grantaire died standing up.