Work Text:
He stumbles back into the TARDIS with the Doctor, paint-splattered and grinning from ear to ear. Arcadia in the twenty-sixth century is amazing, and the art is like nothing he could ever have imagined. It's color and texture and light and sound, and so entwined with the Arcadian social justice movement that the two concepts are absolutely inseparable--Enjolras would love it.
The thought twists at his heart as he's scrubbing the paint from his skin, and he tries to put it aside. Even if he asked the Doctor to take him back tonight, he wouldn't be able to tell Enjolras about it. Enjolras would think he was raving, and he'd give him that look, the one that's worried and frustrated and fond all at the same time.
Grantaire misses that look. He's got the whole of time and space to explore, and all he wants is for Enjolras to look at him like he's a fool and ask him how much he's had to drink this time. He wants to listen to those impassioned speeches, and argue with him just to see that fierce light in Enjolras' eyes focused on him. He's homesick, not for a place, but a person.
"All right," the Doctor says brightly, when Grantaire is dressed and standing in the enormous control room of the TARDIS. "When would you like to go? And where?"
He takes a deep breath. "Home, I think."
The Doctor turns to look at him, his forehead crinkling like he can't decide whether to frown or smile. "Home? For now, or..."
"For good. Please don't think I'm ungrateful," he adds in a rush. "All of this, it's been--wonderful, amazing, indescribable. But I need to go back. Enjolras is already convinced that I'm incurably unreliable. He thinks I'm off getting drunk every time I leave with you. In fairness to him, I probably would be doing that, if I hadn't met you, but still. I tried to convince him to come with me last time, but he wouldn't. He thought I was trying to get him to desert the barricade--of course the time thing made no sense to him, it barely makes sense to me. But Enjolras belongs there; the people need him. And he'll need the rest of us to help him rebuild the republic--even me."
"No," the Doctor says gently. "No, he won't."
"What do you mean?"
He looks down and fiddles with a control panel, and then with the buttons on his cuffs. He can't meet Grantaire's eyes, and Grantaire knows what he's going to say before the words leave his mouth.
"The rebellion fails."
"No. It can't." Grantaire's refusal is automatic. For all his cynicism, all his loudly-shared doubts and prophecies of doom, he has always cherished a spark of hope, a buried belief that they--that Enjolras--could not fail. "Enjolras will convince the people to rise up, and we'll overthrow the king and bring about a second republic, and--" His voice catches. "It can't fail," he repeats, pleading.
"Fear can have a terrible hold over people. More powerful than even your friend's passion. The people are hungry, yes, but they are fearful, too, of the king and his army. They would rather be hungry than dead."
The rebellion fails. Grantaire rejects it with every fiber of his being, but the Doctor has never lied to him, and he knows the future as well as the past, because he has seen it. "What happens to them?"
The Doctor looks at him, sorrow in his eyes, and then looks away.
"Everyone?"
"The romantic one, Marius--he survives. He's the only one."
"And Enjolras..." He doesn't want to hear it, but he has to know.
"He's the last to die. He dies alone, with the red flag of the revolution clutched in his fist."
Grantaire is an artist; he cannot help but see the image spread before him, the bleak ruin of their rebellion, and Enjolras, blood on his face and in the golden fall of his hair--
No. It cannot be allowed to happen--it is as simple as that. "We have to warn them. Most of them have enough sense to desert a sinking ship. Not Enjolras, of course--we might have to keep him with us for a while, until we can make him see reason--"
"They wouldn't believe you. You wouldn't believe it, if you hadn't seen it for yourself."
"Then show them. Drop in on the barricade with the TARDIS and show them all of your impossible things. God, Joly would have a fit of joy just to see the nanogenes at work. If you give them proof, they'll understand. It doesn't have to end the way you say it does. We can change it. Can't we?"
There is no response. Grantaire grabs the Doctor by the lapels of his tweed blazer and shakes him. "You're the Doctor, aren't you? Take us back and fix this."
"I can't."
"You won't," Grantaire snaps. He lets go of the Doctor and steps back, glaring.
"No. I can't. Some things can't be changed. Too much of history depends upon it. Even if we tried, the time-stream would right itself. The people who should have died will still die; the fights that should have been lost will be lost in the end. No matter what we try to do, the rebellion fails, and everyone who fights in it dies."
"For nothing."
"No," the Doctor says softly. "Not for nothing. The people might be too afraid to fight with you now, but they'll remember. The Second Republic dawns in 1848--it doesn't last very long, but in 1870 a Third Republic begins, and it lasts for seventy years. A lad from St. Michel, a friend to your little Gavroche, will be instrumental in the uprisings that lead to the Second and Third Republics--and he will be inspired by your friends and their barricade. Without your failure, they could not have had success. The whole history of Europe would be changed, and not for the better."
So Enjolras, with all his brilliant, passionate oratory, has been right all along. There is use in what they're doing--there is hope, even if none of them will live to see it. Grantaire swallows past a sudden ache in his chest. "Take me back anyway."
The Doctor looks up. "What?"
"Take me back to the barricade."
"I've just told you, there's no point in trying to change things."
"I don't care. I belong with them."
"I'm not going to let you kill yourself just to prove a point. You people don't get regenerations, remember?"
"If I'm only going to get one death, I should probably make it count for something. You said it yourself--everyone at the barricade dies. Well, I'm part of the barricade, so you have to take me back. If they can't win, if we can't save them, then...at least I can be with him, at the end. At least he won't be alone."
For a moment, he thinks the Doctor is going to refuse outright. Instead, he only sighs and shakes his head. "I don't even know if I can do it. It's a fixed point in the time-stream, it's almost impossible to get close..."
"You can. You have to."
Grantaire leaves the control room, following the winding corridors to the room he's more or less claimed as his own. There isn't much there; he hasn't taken many souvenirs from their travels. There's a piece of shell from a blue-sand beach a thousand light-years away, and a tiny microchip that plays symphonies whose harmonies extend beyond the range of human hearing.
And then there's the painting he'd done between destinations, a sketch of Enjolras in gold and red. He thinks about taking it with him, but he doesn't need it. It's no more than a pale imitation of reality, anyway.
There's a wardrobe in the room as well, a vast oaken thing that operates on the same principle as the TARDIS itself--it is far, far larger on the inside. Grantaire has worn the clothing of a hundred different times and places while he's traveled with the Doctor, but he knows exactly where to find what he is looking for.
Tucked away in a chest, folded neatly, are his clothes. He feels more like himself when he puts them on, like he's donning his personality along with the fall-front trousers and the green vest, the stiff collar and the cravat that is always in artful disarray. These are the clothes he's going to die in.
He's going to die. He wonders if it will hurt.
On the way back to the control room, he passes a window--or what looks like a window, at any rate. He doesn't know if the TARDIS even has something that could be called an outer wall, so it's possible the image is just a projection. In it, the long spiral arm of a galaxy stretches out, millions of pinprick stars glittering in perpetual night. When he first saw a view like this, he spent hours seeking his own star, awed and dismayed to find that there was nothing special about it at all. How could such an unimpressive spot of light have spawned such misery and miracles? So many heroes and villains? How could such a tiny spark contain all the fire and blood of a thousand revolutions?
More than ever, he wants to be home.
In the control room, the Doctor is fiddling with levers and dials. For all the time Grantaire has spent with him, he hasn't the faintest idea what any of it does. He can't tell triumph from disaster, a right turn from a wrong one. On one memorable occasion he had failed to tell forward from reverse, and they'd spent six weeks stuck in an ancient Greek village while the Doctor tried to sort things out. Grantaire had passed the time in painting deliciously naughty red-figure vases and burying them in the hills to alarm future archaeologists.
Since then, he's left the navigation strictly up to the Doctor, but he still engages in what the Doctor calls "backseat driving" from time to time.
"Any luck?" he asks, leaning on a relatively unimportant part of the console.
"Maybe." The Doctor frowns and adjusts a dial. "There's a window. It's small, and it doesn't give you much time--five minutes, maybe, before the end. But I think I can get close enough to leave you where you need to be. That is, if you're sure about this?" he adds, almost casually.
Grantaire knows that the Doctor doesn't approve of his choice. To him it's tantamount to suicide, choosing death when there's a viable alternative. But it's just like the Doctor said--humans don't get regenerations. A meaningful death, with no hope of resurrection, is a concept that is altogether foreign to a Time Lord. "I'm sure," he says.
"Hang on, then." The Doctor hauls down on a heavy silver lever. Grantaire clings to the console for balance as the TARDIS shudders and jolts, buffeted like a ship on wild seas. And then it stops.
The Doctor crosses to the door and pushes it open. He nods. "Perfect."
Grantaire follows him and looks out. Beyond the door of the TARDIS is a dusty corner of the Musain's upper room. Grantaire can hear the sounds of battle below, echoing up through the room's great open window. He wonders how many of his friends are dying out there.
He looks up at the Doctor. "Are you sure he'll be here?"
"Yes. Any minute now--all you have to do is wait."
Grantaire holds out a hand; there is still paint on the back of his palm, a swirl of gold and green. The Doctor frowns at him for a second, and then reaches out to shake his hand.
"Thank you," Grantaire says. "You've shown me things I could never have imagined, not in a thousand years, and I can't tell you how grateful I am."
"I could show you another thousand years, you know," the Doctor replies. "Just say the word."
"No. Thank you, but...this is where I belong." Grantaire steps over the threshold, into the dust and dirt of the nineteenth century. The air is heavy with the smell of gunpowder.
"Does he know?"
Grantaire stops and looks back over his shoulder. "Know what?"
"How much you love him?"
He smiles and shakes his head. "No," he says. "But he will."