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Enjolras.
The heavy footsteps of a dozen men moving around the Musain rattle the walls, the floors, dragging him from his slumbering stupor. Distant screams pierce through the air and all Grantaire can smell is blood and death. He has never been upon a battlefield but he knows now how it feels.
Enjolras.
He knows where he wants to be - longs to be - even as the cold colours of familiar walls around him blur together in his tired haze, all his senses overwhelmed with it, the tang of alcohol soured on his tongue, muted gunfire and death rallies echoing around him. His fingers brush against the worn surface of the billiard table as he stumbles to his feet, the absent and pointless thought crossing his mind as to how old the thing is, wondering whether it had ever seen gunfire before.
Enjolras.
He’s there, right there across the room, like a beacon in his red and gold waistcoat, blonde curls loose about his face and eyes wild; a cornered animal not willing to lay down and die without a fight. His predators surround him and yet his teeth are bared and his expression curbed in such a way that if he feels a single drop of fear, it doesn’t show. Except he’s not fighting, he’s not fighting, and that look upon his face speaks volumes greater than any Grantaire has ever read. It sees the bloodshed and the terror and the war outside in the streets and calls them victory. It sees the death and calls it history. He’s lost - Grantaire knows now that they have lost - but Enjolras knows too that they have won, because his death will mean something. He always knew it was coming, and that it would.
Grantaire’s heart stops in his chest with the revelation. He swears it never beats again.
Absently he wonders if any of their friends have escaped the gunman. They are his only sunlight, his happiness dependent on their presence, their warmth and their laughter. He has known so much despair and yet so little of it in their company, and the thought of them departing permanently from his life brings him an exquisite pain. He has lived years in their orbit now; Combeferre, surely the smartest man he’s ever know. Surely more patience for him than anyone has held in the span of his entire twenty-nine years. Courfeyrac, with all his wit and exuberance and passion. Prouvaire, whose pure and passionate existence alone he knows is enough to keep each of them fighting their battles, and even Pontmercy, with whom he’d shared the pains and promises of the rapture of love. Feuilly, Bahorel, Joly, Bousset… no, if Enjolras is here, he knows it to be over. Their fearless leader is surely the final stand.
But he is still standing.
“Take aim!”
Grantaire can’t tell which of the guards speaks, which is the sergeant, but a dozen rifles raise in unison, their butts held firm against uniformed shoulders.
They haven’t seen him. They’re fixed on Enjolras now; a promise of death. And Enjolras is fixed upon them too. The staircase is mere metres to his left and Grantaire could easily pass behind the billiard table and escape down them, slip away unnoticed.
“Vive la Republique!” The words have left his mouth in a powerful cry before he knows it. “Count me in.”
There are eyes on him now, but he notices only the fierce gaze of Enjolras as he strides forwards towards the firing squad, away from the staircase. In a million lifetimes, he would not take it down. His eyes stay fixed on his Orestes as he passes through the enemies lines. More words exit his lips with equal ferocity, but Grantaire himself does not hear them as he falls in line beside Enjolras in front of the muskets.
You’ll see, say the echoes of his memory.
“Will you permit it?” He asks instead. He’s asking with every unspoken feeling he has ever spared for the man beside him, with a swollen heart. The pain of the loss of their friends is harrowing, even excruciating, but a life without the sunlight would be the death of its worshipper. He had been a blind man for so long, but it was fully realised in that moment: he needed Enjolras as violently as his lungs needed air. He loved him. He would rather die here.
Their eyes remain locked, turned away from the guards. Enjolras reaches blindly for his hand and grasps it in his own, something new in his expression as their fingers entwine, a smile upon his lips both resolute in its anticipation of what followed and fulfilled all at once. Grantaire thought himself stood across from a saint in that moment, or perhaps a god, a heavenly glow expressed from behind his Apollo’s golden curls.
If this was to be it, then so it would be. This was all he needed.
He hears the gunshots fire and feels Enjolras’ fingers tighten even further around his own. The pain is searing like fire within his very soul, his knees giving out beneath him, his head finding the floor of the Musain in moments, and then its over.
Until it isn’t.
Grantaire can’t say how much time has passed when he comes too, only that his once barraged senses are shaken instantaneously by the silence.
No footsteps. No screams.
No gunfire.
His arm aches where it hangs limply above his frame, supported by something he’s gripping so tightly like it's the only thing keeping him hanging on to life.
There’s no way he should be.
Enjolras.
Feebly he squeezes the hand clasped so tightly in his own, acutely aware of its limpness in response. Grantaire gasps like he’s taking his first breath as he shifts from the floor onto his elbows. His body is trembling and the pain in his chest is no less severe than it had been the moment the bullets tore through him. The dust has settled around him, coated him, and his gasping turns to choking as he reaches his knees. Blood has soaked his shirt, right through his waistcoat; three puckered holes in the fabric mock every breath he takes. He must be dead, he thinks, because there is nothing logical that explains otherwise.
But if death is feeling the pain of dying forever more, he wishes he had known. He would have tried harder to live.
He keeps his hand in Enjolras’ as he stands up, rasps his name. Squeezes again, once more to no response. In the back of his mind he already knows what this means, but it doesn’t bare thinking about.
The tears streak his dirty face as their fingers finally part, only for his to find Enjolras’ shoulders, trying to gently wake him from his slumber. He’s stood almost perfectly where he had been, a marble statue but for his head tilted down. His chest is littered with holes that match Grantaire's own.
He does not move.
Knowing he would find it makes it no less painful to bear. Grantaire grits his teeth against a desperate scream of pain and devastation. He takes Enjolras’ face in both palms, trembling as his fingers brush away those heavenly curls in a way he’d never have been permitted, and raises it to meet his eyes once more.
They are open still, but the light has gone out. The sun has gone out, Grantaire realises all at once.
The silent tears on his face turn into a sob that racks through his whole body. The motion shakes him like an earthquake, swaying Enjolras from his crucifixion against the wall and his limp body falls forwards into Grantaire’s arms. He sinks to his knees, sinks both of them down until he’s cradling Enjolras in his arms and staving off the panic rising in his chest by clutching his hands so tightly into Enjolras’ clothes that all the men in the world would not be able to rip him from him.
No logic can make sense of why and how he’s still alive, but he wishes it weren’t so, wishes their roles could be reversed so that the sun could shine on in endless day and he would sweep away the darkness as his own memory sunk into obscurity.
Even now, he knows in his heart Enjolras would never let that happen. Even for him. No death in the face of adversity deserved to go unrecognised and no lost life should go uncelebrated. Every person alive or dead was owed more than that - Grantaire feels the tethers of his earthly doubts start to loosen as he clutches that cold body to his own, as if his own warmth could revive it. He stays there for as long as there is silence in the Musain, cursing existence, cursing love, and cursing that in death, Enjolras had made Grantaire see at last. Made him believe.
Only when he finally hears movement in the streets does he move again. He makes to stand, but can’t bear to part from the body in his arms, not yet.
Sitting Enjolras back against the wall where he had been pinned, right beside the window, Grantaire holds his face one more time. Brushes perfect curls back from his delicate features, mapping small details to memory that he’d never been able to perfect in all his paintings over the years. It feels treacherous to complete the task now, but someone has to turn Enjolras into history. He cannot die merely a man.
He closes his eyes, once he’s sure he can bear too. It’s easier to look at him with them closed, if he avoids looking at his blood soaked chest; it’s almost as if he’s sleeping peacefully.
Finally, Grantaire leans forward. He’s on his knees on the floor beside him, face still held delicately and helplessly in his hands, and he closes the space between them to press one chaste, anguished kiss to Enjolras’ lips.
After a moment’s deliberation, he carefully removes Enjolras’ waistcoat and takes it with him.