Chapter Text
Enjolras was about to carry on his Cause. With a capital C, because it was that important. He really wanted to be listened to at Uni, but noone was willing to believe him when he proclaimed that life carries on after death and because of this can be restored. Nope, nobody believed him – Les Amis aside, they always believed in him. So he was going to prove them wrong, to prove all of them wrong. He wasn’t in some kind of insanity state, he was just so tired of people who just didn’t listen. It was very important to him that his companions saw reality as clearly as he was seeing it.
So he was going to put his mind and effort into his Cause and recreate life, in order to make them see, and by doing so, make them believe, that this was the real scientific progress. First, he needed a fresh body to work on. Maybe one with the less brain damage possible. And with all his limbs in full function, or, well, at least in full function when he was still alive. He also needed the body to be male, or he would have felt embarrassed all the way through the process because of female-nudity and he didn’t need to be distracted while working on such an important task. Nope nope.
He asked Joly, who was specializing at the local hospital but who was now confined in the morgue to check on corpses because of his bad behaviour during a class with professor Javert, and, lucky him, a guy from campus without any kind of relatives had just died, like, less than ten hours ago, and noone had claimed his corpse. He had been found in an alley, at the back of a bar: he had drunk himself to death. His liver and pancreas crushed down, Joly explained. They were already damaged, though; he was a heavy drinker, an alcoholic. Well, now Enjolras needed a few organs, too.
He asked Combeferre and Courfeyrac to help him set out the workspace, his lab, and God, he really felt like Victor Frankenstein now. He needed a lot of electricity to make this work; the whole process relied on electricity to succeed. So he needed also a tank full of water in which immerge the body, but he had to be careful on the intensity of the current or he would end up frying the corpse instead of bringing him back to life.
There were many things to be careful of.
That same night he started working on the body.
*
Enjolras didn’t succeed. The guy’s corpse laid there, drowned in the tank, not giving any signs of life. The two machines attached to him – one signalling heart functions (dead), the other signalling brain functions (also dead) – didn’t seem to be picking up any kind of input from him. It was frustrating. It was wrong. Enjolras had been wrong. He was wrong. He hadn’t succeed. He was feeling so angry with himself, with his work, with his stupidity. He wanted to kick every single piece of equipment in his lab. He wanted to cry, throw himself on the ground and tear all his blonde hair off. Instead, the electroencephalograph started monitoring, other machines started biping, Enjolras stared, until the corpse in the tank raised in a sitting position, so fast that he threw almost all of the water on the pavement.
When he turned over, Enjolras thought he was the most beautiful being he had ever seen.
Then he realized. What have I done?
*
The corpse didn’t speak. Not a single word. Enjolras was growing uncomfortable. But then he realized that maybe he just need to teach him how to speak, read, and write again, that maybe coming back from the dead erased all of what you had learnt during your life. Later, he thought.
Enjolras helped him out of the tank, helped him standing, because the corpse – well now ex-corpse (was he then an ex-living before all this? ) – couldn’t even remember how to walk properly, he noticed, and then gave him a robe and a towel and tried to dry him off. This close, he had a better opportunity to look at him. He had a slightly crooked nose - but this wasn’t his fault, it was this way even before he died -, full lips and a rough scar under his chin, where Enjolras had to open him and reassemble his jaw because this guy had had the indecency of starting a fight with someone before dying and of ending up breaking his fucking jaw. If he hadn’t scanned him with X-Rays now he wouldn’t even have known that. Same for his left eye. It was so full of broken capillaries that he had to replace it, and so there was another slightly less bad sewed scar that surrounded his left orbit. And, because of curse Enjolras couldn’t find another eye of the same deep, wonderful blue of this guy’s eyes, they now were of two different colours: one blue and one dark green. He didn’t, at least, needed to shave his hair, so the dark curls were still in place.
Actually the ex-dead-now-alive-guy looked more like that Sally doll from The Nightmare Before Christmas than Frankenstein’s monster. And that was kind of cute.
The guy was looking oddly at him and Enjolras realized he was staring. So the ex-corpse recognized when someone was being creepy, uh. The guy arched an eyebrow, deforming his face impossibly more, and Enjolras, now embarrassed again, finished quickly drying him off and then stepped away, extending his hand.
“Hi” he tried. The creature eyed him curiously. “My name in Enjolras, I’m your creator”
Some seconds passed, and Enjolras was almost withdrawing his and when the guy gripped his, and shook it with force. He tried to spell out his name, and failed. Enjolras, without expecting it, started laughing. He taught him how to pronounce it correctively, and when he saw the creature, his creature now, smile, he smiled too, and felt light-hearted like he hadn’t felt in years.
Then he snapped out of it, and remember, realized, and felt sick.
*
After three days of hiding him from his friend because he wasn’t ready and neither was the creature so Courf why do you want so badly to scare him off for life? Enjolras finally learned his name.
Enjolras had brought him back home with him, because he didn’t want him to spend his first night alone, and then he thought he might as well stay there for the rest of the time because Enjolras himself was actually too scared to go back to his lab. It just creeped him out.
So he had given his new resident a room – his apartment was big enough for three but he had never been in need of a roommate – and brought him food and talked to him a lot in order to make him learn again to speak more quickly. The creature was actually starting picking up some words on the second day of his new life, but it was on the third that he stopped Enjolras as he was standing up from the bed they were sitting on and said “I’m Grantaire” and then “I think you’re beautiful”.
Enjolras dropped his cup of coffee on the floor.
*
So the creature was named Grantaire, and once he had started talking, Enjolras found it difficult to stop him. He was always ranting about something, but sometimes he also said useful things, like when Enjolras had asked him if he was finding it hard to learn to read again, and Grantaire had answered him “No, it’s not hard because it’s not like actually learning again, it’s more like remembering. It’s awesome.”
And because of memory, Enjolras always remembered that he had altered the course of nature for his goddamned Cause, and now he was feeling guilty for the pathetic life he was offering to Grantaire. What if he would have never been able to let him meet his friend? What if society could never accept him? What if he had better let Grantaire stay dead?
But then he looked at him, at how marvellous and wonderful he was, and he decided that he was responsible for him , and that he had to make his new life worth living, and that he was going to protect him but not hide him from the world. With time, Grantaire would meet Les Amis and go out on his own, and then maybe Enjolras would feel less miserable.
*
One day Enjolras came back from Uni and Grantaire wasn’t there. He started panicking. He called all his friends, and asked them if they had been to his home without his permission and then had left leaving the door open or if they had met Grantaire and kidnapped him. When he had made sure nobody had let Grantaire escaped, he started panicking worse, and fled his apartment. On the stairs outside the building he met Grantaire. He was impossibly more beautiful under the sunlight, his dark hair shining and the scar on the left part of his face was healing beautifully, and when his eyes met Grantaire’s, all he could see in them was deep devotion and admiration. Then he also noticed the cigarette.
“Where have you been?” he snapped, not meaning to do that, actually.
Grantaire’s face fell. “I’ve been doing shopping. The fridge was empty and I needed some supplies.” He muttered, exhaling, and looking at his feet.
“Supplies like cigarettes?”
“No, like sketchbooks, pencils, paint and canvas. I’m sorry I took your credit card, it won’t happen again.”
Enjolras shook his head. “That’s really not the problem, I was just scared to death! You weren’t home and I panicked- wait, you paint?”
Grantaire still didn’t raise his head. “I started drawing doodles on a newspaper, and I remembered I was an art student.”
“You what.”
Enjolras dragged him inside and locked the door. Then he started looking for Grantaire on Facebook.
*
“Do you remember him?” he asked Grantaire, scrolling down his Facebook’s friends list.
“Nope.”
“Him?”
“Nope-Nope.”
“Her?”
“No. God Enjolras, I’m tired, can we watch a film instead?” Grantaire clinged onto his arm, trying to tear him way from his laptop.
“But you need to know if someone who cares about you is looking for you! Someone like him, ore him, or her, or-”
“Wait,” Grantaire stopped him “I know her.” He pointed out a girl named Eponine. Enjolras clicked on her profile. In her profile photo she had jet black hair and tanned skin, and she was smoking a bong with another guy. “I know her since I was five, actually.”
“Really? You, you need to meet her! Tell her that you’re okay, that you’re alive, that-”
“I’m not that ready yet.” Enjolras felt sad. “I want to met your friends first.”
He agreed.
*
Firstly, he introduced him Combeferre and Courfeyrac. They were Enjolras closest friends and his seconds in command, and he trusted them with all his life. Or, well, he trusted Ferre to be the intellectual self he always was, and then hoped that Courf would be lesser the self he always was. The latter didn’t turn out this way though.
As Courf saw Grantaire he started jumping, and hugging him, and smiling, and making face at Enjolras as screaming “Why did you hide him from me Enj? Why?”
Combeferre tried to restrain him but he was difficult. Grantaire was, as predicted, scared to death.
*
The next day Enjolras found him sitting outside, in the balcony, with a cigarette in his mouth and a pencil in his other.
“What are you drawing?” Enjolras asked, curiously. He had never seen any of Grantaire sketches before.
“I’m trying to draw the landscape but all that come out on the paper is you actually.” He said, than blushed.
Enjolras thought he was cute, than blushed himself.
“You know,” started Grantaire “you really look like Apollo, I should start call you that.”
“You really shouldn’t”
“No way Apollo”. He grinned.
*
Then he met Jehan and Marius, and then again Joly and Bossuet.
Joly wore gloves when shaking Grantaire hand, than said “You know, I’m the one who give your corpse to Enj so that you could come back from the dead. I’m like your fairy-mother!”
Enjolras was going to strangle him. Grantaire find them both amusing enough to actually spend some time with them at the local bar where he sometimes sneaked off – thinking that Enjolras wouldn’t notice when he actually noticed – under Enjolras’ strict supervision.
Grantaire was an alcoholic. Almost an ex-alcoholic, but every time he saw even only a small drop of alcohol he felt the urge to drink (himself to death). Enjolras noticed this, too, and when he came back from the bar smelling of pure vodka and soaking alcohol from every pore he was the one who helped him out of his clothes and put him to bed, leaving him a bottle of water and a pack of aspirin for the morning after.
Enjolras wasn’t happy to see him drink that much, and to distract himself he started talking to Bossuet about what he had read that morning on the newspaper, some new law about to cut more founds from schools institution and how unfair was that, and how they needed to protest and then Grantaire started laughing and Enjolras turned to face him and snapped “What.”
“You’re not going to change the system, Apollo. It is too corrupted for your candour to restore it. Keep it in mind, don’t fool yourself.”
They spent the rest of the night at the bar fighting, and so Enjolras discovered that Grantaire was a cynic and a sceptic, and that he didn’t believe in anything.
*
Grantaire was crying in the bathroom. He was locked him and he wasn’t letting Enjolras enter.
“Grantaire come on! Open the door!” he knocked again, trying for the handle. It didn’t open.
“Go away! I don’t want you to see me!”
Good, Grantaire was having a break down. It was about to happen eventually. Enjolras had always hoped never but as always his hopes weren’t even considered.
“Please Grantaire open the door! If you let me, we could figure this out together! Please Grantaire, I can’t see what’s wrong if I can’t be there with you!”
“It’s me! I am wrong! I am an ugly, worthless being and I want you to go away!”
Enjolras was going to kill himself before he let Grantaire think this about himself, so he went looking for his spare key that opened every door in his apartment and finally entered the bathroom.
Grantaire was sitting in the bathtub desperately crying and tearing at his face with his nails.
“Stop!” Enjolras ordered, and Grantaire did. “Why are you doing this to yourself?”
“I am ugly.”
“You are not Grantaire, I swear to you you’re not, and if you think you are because of the scars than it’s my fault and you should be mad at me not-“
“I was ugly and worthless even before I died” and so he started crying again and scratching at his face again.
“Grantaire stop” he took his hands, and moved them from his face. “Look at me,” and his uneven, unmatching eyes meet him and he felt light-hearted as the first time he saw them open. “You are not ugly, you are not worthless. I think you’re beautiful, I think your art is beautiful, I’ve never met someone as extraordinary as you and my only regret is that I’ve given you your life back without asking you if you actually wanted it.”
“I wold born thousand times if it meant that I could live thousand lives with you” Grantaire murmured.
That night they slept in the same bed because Enjolras was scared Grantaire would disappear or hurt himself. Then he realized those were all excuses and that he just needed to keep him close.