Work Text:
They line the bodies up neatly on the street because it is all they can do. The people who had been trusted to raise the banner high—the people who had failed to do so, who had closed their doors against gunshots and cowered in their homes pretending not to hear the screams of dying men—now they kneel on the street with blood on their hands, scrubbing at the cobblestones.
They stare around at the wreckage, picking up pieces of their own furniture, tossed down from windows the day before (was it really only yesterday?). The barricade still stands. They think it will be the last to go. Red flags still wave in the wind, echoing with the rallying cry of the men who died raising them.
Eyes are drawn to the alleyway where they lie, but no one looks at the schoolboys’ bodies because no one wants the reminder of what they stood for and what they could have won. No one looks to them even as they speak of courage and valor, of heroism, of hope.
No one looks at the man with dark curls, so well known for the ink that moved across his skin without his will, who lies cold alongside his friends. His sister had sobbed over him, hands cradling his cheeks, forehead pressed to his as she whispered my brother, my brother, my brother and painted the words on his arms. (No one saw; his bloodstained sleeves cover the letters.)
No one looks to see lettering of gold appearing on Grantaire’s face, hero and fighter in swirling script, as if written by the hand of an angel.
No one but the mortician sees the words that hide under his clothes, poetry in the blue of summer skies, romance in the pure red of love.
The man marked in blue and red and gold and lead is buried alongside his friends, and only now does the ink in his flesh still.