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The summer is hot and rather muggy in Paris—only sometimes, not always, but this is one of those summers, and Grantaire still wears long-sleeved shirts and jeans, if only so no one comes for him in the middle of the night with Registration papers and nightsticks. But when he’s home—in his small flat east of the Notre Dame—he doesn’t need to wear a shirt at all, and can see the ink rolling under his skin, always changing shape.
If he breathes—if he doesn’t try and hold the ink under his collar (with willpower or with drink), he can feel it wrap around his ears, slither under his fingernails, itching to bleed into the world where it’s forbidden to be like him.
He looks at his palms, images shifting and moving with every pulse of his heart, and the colours swim, brightening and fading periodically, until, at the crook of his elbow, the colours manifest into a person above the pulse point, his moving artwork obscuring the blue of his veins.
And Enjolras looks out from his skin, impassioned and shouting, decrying Mutant Registration (as the legislation moved from the States to Europe, only a few years before). Grantaire can’t hear him—not really, only in his memories, but his mouth still moves, a picture from a couple days before.
He grabs his shirt from where it’s draped over the sofa and pulls if over his head.
-
Enjolras loves the summer—and he stands out more or less, depending on his mood. The warmth and the sun either emphasise or obscure what he can do—and both of these things are useful. Obscuring so he can get into position for riots and protests. Emphasis for leading the protests. Combeferre has said there is something quite so terrifying or awe-inspiring than when light bursts from Enjolras skin, splattering the crowd with sunspots and heat.
Today is a day where both were useful—limiting the solar system in his chest until he could rise up against the steps of the capitol building, before bursting out and blinding the Registrars, the more subtle mutants coming up from the crowd, rising up with him, and the others who can’t hide quite as well swooping from the alleyways and rooftops.
There will be no Mutant Registration, not while Enjolras lives and breathes.
-
Grantaire had only wanted to buy some booze—just to restock his refrigerator. And one of his favourite places is just down from the capitol—and he hadn’t thought that through he really hadn’t. Just as, it appears, Enjolras didn’t think this entire uprising through very well. Because while he definitely blinded the Registrars, he didn’t seem to consider that where mutant presence was likely, the Law would be hot on their heels.
And this is, obviously, now the case, as police officers sprint, padded down and armed with the Mutant Vaccination.
This, Grantaire realises, is something that is about to go very wrong very quickly.
And so he drops his bottles and runs toward the crowd, rolling with righteous anger, led by the man who would be the Sun.
The ink beneath his skin boils.
-
The mutants are being surrounded—which harms them, only a little. Enjolras holds the flames in his throat, waiting to use them should any of the officers—police or militant—get too close to his brothers and sisters. But the officers, all of them, are aiming not at the rolling mutants, or the swarming ones (forming ranks of defenses on the outside of the officers).
They, instead, are pointing at him.
(“Cut off the head and the snake shall starve.”)
And Enjolras considers that, perhaps, he has made a grave mistake—if not a mistake, then a miscalculation. He should have considered this—should have thought this through more.
A shape—a person, dressed in a green long-sleeved pullover—is shoving through the crowd, dark curls bouncing with the movement, and Enjolras isn’t sure if he feels comfortable or outraged that Grantaire would bring himself where he has no real right to be.
“Enjolras!” Grantaire shouts, climbing up the stairs two at a time, heaving in air as shadows cast themselves on the lining of his shirt—underneath his shirt. Underneath—? “Enjolras, those guns are packed with vaccine. The mutant cure. You need to get out of here, everyone needs to get out of here.”
“Grantaire,” Enjolras tries to sound gentle, tries to at least convey the absolute needlessness of his presence here. “This really is not the time to be speaking out against the Mutant cause, please, just go home—“
“Apollo,” a voice on a loudspeaker booms, and one of the more decorated officers is holding a megaphone, off the capitol steps to the left. “Now is the time to surrender, otherwise we shoot.”
“I’d like to see you get away with that,” Enjolras snaps, sparks bursting from between his lips.
“Citizen,” the officer says, his megaphone turning just slightly to where Grantaire stands before him, “it would be in your best interest to back away and get out of the area as quickly as possible.” And Grantaire stands there, looking between Enjolras and the officer, his knees quivering as he turns toward the man with the megaphone.
“No,” he murmurs, and there’s no way that the man can hear him. (Enjolras wants to tell him to go, to run, to—) “No,” Grantaire says louder, “I’m not going anywhere. You want him, you have to go through me.”
(Oh no, no, no, this is not Grantaire’s fight—as he has said countless times, as he’ll—)
“So be it,” the officer replies, holding his hand up, and pausing ever so slightly. Before he brings it down in a signal for all the weapons aimed at him to fire. And they do.
Grantaire holds out his arms, as wide as he can get them, and Enjolras would laugh if it weren’t so sad—and then colour bursts from his fingertips and his spine, swirls crawling up his neck and around his ears. His skin ripples with pain and his green shirt falls away in tatters, the colours spreading and evolving with more speed than Enjolras can adequately describe as twelve pillars—and then people—stand around Grantaire and Enjolras, catching every shot with a piece of their bodies, moving and adjusting where compensation is required.
“I am one of them!” Grantaire shouts—and the twelve people, men and women alike, oh, oh (oh those are the Greco-Roman gods, oh)—declare themselves the same, speaking in tandem with a voice that shakes the building and causes the shifting crowd to still and fall silent. “I am one of them,” he says, softer this time and looks over his shoulder at Enjolras, his face completely coloured by whirling storms of colour—the only think marking him as Grantaire at all is the bright blue of his eyes swimming in a sea of unfamiliar shades.
His arms come down out of their protective position and his knees give out from the exertion.
And Enjolras considers this day a victory—only marginally—but he needs to live to fight another day. As do his friends. As does mutantkind.
When the gods melt away, Enjolras and Grantaire are gone—as are the mutants who slipped away in the distraction that had been provided to them.
The tatters of Grantaire’s shirt are all that are left behind.
That, of course, and the single vaccine-filled piece of ammunition that had made it past the protective gods underneath Grantaire’s skin.