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When they come together, it is one piece at a time. And they realize reality the same way.
When Combeferre and Enjolras meet as kids, they do not try to explain how they instantly know each other’s quirks and idiosyncrasies, but they know them. When Courfeyrac and Combeferre get together, the explanation of how their hands instinctively trace the planes of their bodies that illicit the loudest moans and the softest sighs is lost in the mingling of their breaths. When Jehan and Grantaire meet, they do not understand how they see their compliment in each other’s eyes; all they know is their vices will work in harmony and flowers in braided hair will blur in a room full of smoke, sweet and bitter on a wine-soaked tongue singing songs strummed on an old guitar. When Bahorel meets Feuilly at the gym and later takes him out for drinks, he doesn’t question how his laugh is a familiar lullaby in his ears, or how his calloused fingers are so familiar on his skin, he just knows it is. Bossuet doesn’t understand how his bad luck turned around for the moment he met Joly and Musichetta, but he thanks God it did. Marius and Cosette don’t have the answers for how they met so randomly or how they fell in love so fast, but they are together, so it doesn’t matter.
They come together, pair meeting pair, meeting group. They find each other and find the Musain. It feels like home to them. The dark wood walls, the musty leather seats, the broken spines of the broken books on broken shelves-- it all feels familiar.
Together they begin to realize it.
Jehan sees it first, a slight flicker in the back of his mind when he looks at Combeferre. His glasses are different, his sideburns longer, his face a bit more plump. He brushes it off. Then he sees it with Enjolras. His hair is shorter, a little dirtier. His eyes are darker, more menacing, infinitely more terrifying; they are the eyes of a man about to go to war, not a riot. He finds it harder to ignore. It happens with everyone. Bahorel has more scars and his nose is broken; Joly’s nose is redder, as though being constantly rubbed; Courfeyrac is paler but his eyes are brighter. Marius is thinner and so is Feuilly. Bossuet’s frame is frailer. Musichetta has more curves. Cosette’s hair is longer. Grantaire’s teeth are yellow. He looks in the mirror and his own hair is shorter and his shoulders just barely broader. He keeps all this a secret.
One day he tells Grantaire, high as kite, his head resting in the man’s lap as he moves to his second bottle of wine. “I’ve been seeing things Grantaire.”
“What’s new?”
“No, no, no,” he said, sitting up. “Not just when we’re here, but out there,” he gestured around them, as though encompassing the entire universe. “In the Musain, at school, everywhere. But it’s always just with our friends.”
Grantaire’s eyebrows knitted together. “What are they like”
“Slight changes. Barely there, just in the face or body shape. And just with our friends. Only them, only us.”
Grantaire nodded. “You see scars on their face that weren’t there? Their hair changes length or there’s… there’s something in their eyes you can’t place?”
Jehan grabbed Grantaire’s face with both hands and nodded emphatically. “Yes! Yes, exactly like that. You’ve seen it too! It’s not just me. We have to tell them.”
Grantaire laughed, falling backward and pulling Jehan next to him. “Yes, but it’s the hippie and the drunkard who are seeing things.”
Jehan elbowed him in the ribs. “I still say we tell the others.”
“If you want,” Grantaire conceded.
Two days later they were all convened in the Musain, excepting Enjolras. He couldn’t make it; he had to get permits for their next rally. Jehan noticed even their environment shifted. The wood changed color, the leather was less torn, the pictures on the walls were hung straighter.
They shared what they saw.
The others nodded, their eyes widened. Grantaire was scared they thought they were crazy.
He was wrong.
“I’ve been seeing the same things,” Marius said carefully.
“And me,” Feuilly whispered.
Mutters of confirmation and agreement followed them around the table.
“This is some sort of shared hallucination isn’t it,” Joly muttered. “Like folie à deux but with twelve of us.” He paused. “Folie à douze.”
Combeferre shook his head. “I doubt there could be shared hallucinations between this many people.”
“Then what the fuck could it be?” Bahorel asked. “We’re all seeing the same exact things with same exact people.”
Courfeyrac laughed. It was strange matter he thought, but also nothing overly serious. “What if we were all friends in some past life and we were destined to meet again,” he joked.
There was a pregnant pause.
“But no, what if that’s it?” Cosette said. “What if that’s why everything we do together just works?”
Musichetta shrugged. “A lot of faiths believe in reincarnation.”
“Is it really so impossible to believe?” Bossuet added.
“It’s a distinct possibility,” Combeferre nodded.
Courfeyrac scoffed. “You’re not all serious, are you?”
“Deadly serious,” Jehan said, leveling Courf with a gaze.
Grantaire leaned forward and hid his face in hands, rubbing his eyes. “As apt as I am to not believe in this idea, it’s either this or admitting we’re all collectively insane.”
“Are you saying we should…” Bossuet hesitated. “Are we actually going to look into all this? We’re legitimately going to try to find our past selves?”
“If they exist,” Combeferre reminded him. “It’s a slight possibility but I don’t want to deny it.”
Musichetta nodded and stood. “Then research it is.”
They spent the next few weeks in the college library. They decided to start close and move back. They went back eighty years to the thirties with no result; twenties nothing; turn of the century nothing; 1890s nothing. They filtered through documents, photos, birth certificates, newspaper clippings from around the world and found nothing.
Enjolras, who was absent from the first meeting didn’t ask questions. They were preparing for a rally and he was too caught up with planning to notice anything out of the ordinary. All he cared about was that they got their work done and they did.
They spent three weeks searching and found nothing. Until one night Bossuet called out from behind a stack of newspaper slides.
“Guys…” He said tentatively. “I think I found something.” The others gathered around him and he moved to show them what he was looking at. It was a newsprint engraving of a burning barricade. Next to it were three portraits. He pointed to Combeferre and Courfeyrac. “Is it just me, or does that look a helluva lot like you guys and Enjolras? And by ‘helluva lot’ I mean exactly.”
They were all staring wide eyed at the portraits. They all felt a bad curdling in their gut.
Combeferre shook his head slowly. “It’s not like looking at a photo of someone else. It’s like looking at one from a few years ago; something’s off, but it’s unmistakably you.”
“The article’s in French,” Courfeyrac said. “Marius, can you translate it?”
Marius stepped forward and started reading. “’The leaders of the insurrectionist group, Les Amis de l’ABC, died with their followers on the barricades erected in the streets two days ago. The republicans formed the barricades after disrupting General Lamarque’s funeral and refused to surrender at command of the National Guard. Most of the republicans were killed in the resulting battles. The president of the group (pictured top left) Alexandre Enjolras was executed with another member, identified as René Grantaire after the conflict. Also pictured: Clément Combeferre and Félicien de Courfeyrac, vice presidents. Total casualties are estimated at over 800 National Guardsmen and republicans.’”
“Shit,” Bahorel whispered.
Combeferre was leaning on the table, Courfeyrac on him. Grantaire had fallen into a chair and was staring blankly at a wall.
While the others stared at the wall trying to process the fact that not only had they apparently lived in nineteenth century France, but they all supposedly died violently in a failed revolution, Musichetta and Cosette were frantically searching for more about the rebellion. Eventually the others got up and started helping them, turning their nerves, fear, and shock into productivity.
The June Rebellion it was called. They found old documents on everyone: Bossuet had signed away his old estate, Marius and Cosette‘s wedding certificate; Musichetta had a daughter, it turned out. They found her birth certificate. They found a portrait of Jehan with what was one of his poems. They found Bahorel‘s name listed on a betting pool for an underground boxing tournament. They found Feuilly‘s name in a work roster for a factory. They found Joly in a class roster from a medical university. They found a transcript of one of Enjolras’ speeches. They couldn’t find anything on Grantaire however, except a single painting of a park with figures lounging on the grass; they recognized them to be themselves. They only knew it was his by the characteristic ‘R’ in the bottom right corner.
Cosette held the print of the painting out to him. He took it gently. His hand traced over the lines, the brush strokes showing faintly in the print. He rested his touch just a bit longer on the one that was obviously Enjolras. The light was centered on him and made his hair shine gold. From the looks of it, he even incorporated gold leaf into the painting. He blinked out of his trance and read the bit about the painting. It was in a private collection now, it said. He got up to make a copy of the page.
They found the death tolls from the rebellion. They found all their names-- All except Marius, Cosette, and Musichetta, the lone survivors. They found their death certificates.
They sat around a large table, each holding their respective documents, silent.
Courfeyrac was the first to speak up. “If this is how it ended last time,” he said, shaking his death certificate, “what the fuck does that mean for us now?”
Jehan shook his head. “Times are different. We’re not going to cause a two day long battle over abortion. A rally, a riot, a sit-in, yes. A revolution? You can’t do that anymore.”
“We could still die, though,” Grantaire said solemnly. “Look at this. We probably will. An officer will get a bit rowdy, beat us to death. We’ll get shot by someone who thinks we’re the antichrist. There’s lots of ways to die in the twenty-first century.”
“But we’d anticipate it. We’d be more careful,” Bossuet said.
“Doesn’t fucking matter,” Grantaire said, getting up. “Not when you’re fucking with destiny.” He left.
The group stayed after his departure. Ten souls on their second round sitting around a table.
“Do we tell Enjolras?” Marius asked, fiddling with the corners of his marriage certificate.
Combeferre leaned his head on his hands and muttered, “I don’t think he’d believe it. Not even if he’d been seeing the same things we have. He wouldn’t have the time to worry about it. He’d brush off any evidence we bring him unless it was related to the rally.”
“I think we should tell him though,” Cosette said.
“At least tell him we found something for him to look at when the rally business is over,” Joly said.
Combeferre sighed, “Okay. We’ll do it.”
So they waited until the rally was done with. It was successful, no fights, just mildly irritated police officers. They managed to turn a few good people over to their cause.
Two days after it was finished they brought the matter up to Enjolras. They sat him down after his rants at a meeting. He had noticed something was off. Everyone looked nervous. Grantaire hadn’t fought with him at all. He wasn’t even drinking.
“Enj,” Courfeyrac started. “We had a meeting about a month ago. It was when you were off getting the permits. We thought it was about something unimportant but it turns out it wasn’t”
“I told them that Grantaire and I were seeing some weird things,” Jehan jumped in. “We said they were subtle changes in facial features and such. But it only ever happened when we looked at the people here.” He gestured around to the group.
Enjolras nodded. He thought he saw something in the corner of his eye sometimes, but he brushed it off as a trick of the light. He still brushed it off.
“We found out we were all seeing the same things,” Courfeyrac continued. “We thought it was weird. It was a joke, at first, that we were are all some sort of weird reincarnations, but we decided to look into it anyway. You know, just to prove we were wrong.”
“But we found a lot of things,” Combeferre said. “We would have brought you copies of the stuff, but the library wouldn’t let us.”
“There were portraits, birth certificates, degrees, rosters,” Joly listed off. He paused. “Death certificates.”
Combeferre sighed. “We found various documents on the June Rebellion of 1832 in Paris, Enjolras. There were portraits of us. You, me, and Courf, in the newspaper the day after it ended. Little things are different, but it was us, Enjolras.” He took the blonde’s hands in his own. “We found things about the others too. The names match. The faces match. We’re almost exactly like we were in the nineteenth century.”
“You think that we’re the reincarnated souls of dead Frenchmen from the 1830s?” he said incredulously, his eyebrows raising to dangerous heights.
“I thought the same thing,” Courf said. “But you didn’t see the pictures. You didn’t see the death certificates. It was eerie. It felt so wrong.”
“I don’t see any other explanation as to why our entire group has doppelgangers who had their own group almost two centuries ago,” Combeferre said. “Two groups of twelve people separated by 180 years who look exactly alike, share the same name, and are involved in similar activities?” He shook his head. “The probability of that happening is next to impossible.”
The group was nodding emphatically around him.
“And that’s just the objective evidence,” Bossuet said. “You also have to take into account what we’ve seen and felt.”
“There’s a connection to those documents,” Jehan said. “To the portraits. It’s us, you can feel it.”
“At least come to library and see them,” Marius asked.
Enjolras scoffed and stood. “I’d love to, but I have a meeting with a professor I’m going to be late to,” he said bitingly.
Grantaire, who had remained silent the entire time stood then. “The least you could do is not be a dick about it,” he said loudly.
Enjolras turned to look at Grantaire. His gaze softened as he noticed something shift slightly in the man’s eyes. A memory perhaps.
He turned and walked out of the café.
The days moved on. Each individual, excluding Enjolras, looked more into their pasts. Enjolras stayed in denial. He didn’t remember their lives the same way as the others. His glimpses weren’t as strong. He saw shifts in the sunlight, in the darkness, times when it truly looked like a trick of nature. He thought they were crazy but he humored them.
After meetings they sat around the table. They discussed what they found. Enjolras sat back and listened. He thought it was weird that there were people who looked and acted like them, but he didn’t believe in the reincarnation theory.
Grantaire would sit back during these meetings too. He listened just like Enjolras. He did his own research into his own past but it was never shared. Unless he was with Jehan in his room.
The smoke wafted through the air. Jehan lay on his back on the floor, his long hair splayed out around him. He held a joint in one hand and stared contemplatively at the ceiling. Grantaire sat cross-legged on his bed, holding a guitar loosely in his hands. A few wine bottles were emptied around him and he clambered over them to reach down to snag the joint from Jehan. After inhaling and exhaling, he leaned back over the bed.
“You know our whole past life thing we got goin’ on?” He asked.
Jehan hummed in response, closing his eyes.
“I’ve been looking into that and past-me was completely in love with past-Enj. Like, some of my paintings survived and all of them feature him.”
“You mean like your paintings now?” Jehan replied, turning to Grantaire, his eyes slowly blinking open.
Grantaire swatted at Jehan. “Yes, exactly like my paintings now,” he replied sassily. He flopped over again. He spoke but his tone of voice was changed: “Am I destined to fall in love with him every cycle we go through?”
Jehan climbed up on the bed and lied next to Grantaire. He nuzzled his neck and kissed his shoulder. “Maybe. But isn’t that beautiful?”
Grantaire laughed sardonically. “Everything’s beautiful to you.” Grantaire began to hum softly and Jehan looked up. “Is that Death Cab?”
Grantaire broke off. “Maybe. Wasn’t really thinking about it.”
Jehan sighed and cuddled closer to Grantaire.
The meetings continued which now arbitrarily included after-discussions of their research. They all had somehow managed to come to terms with it. Even Enjolras just kind of accepted that he would never understand. He just sat back and said nothing and let them believe.
Grantaire had taken to bringing his guitar to meetings. Most of the time he held out on his strumming until after everyone had left, taking to scribbling on a piece of paper or in a small notebook in the presence of the others. Sometimes he would decide to annoy Enjolras a bit and play loudly and rudely during his speeches, backing the cutting words of politics with a guitar version of an Irish jig. But still, he was never thrown out.
One day after a meeting, Grantaire stayed behind. It had gotten to the point where they were talking about their deaths. Most people couldn’t find much, Combeferre and Courfeyrac had found the most, being the leaders of the group. Most could only find simple death certificates, maybe the location of a burial plot if they were lucky. As per usual, Grantaire stayed quiet.
He didn’t talk about what he did find out about his death. Nor what he remembered.
He leaned back in his chair now, fingers brushing over the neck of his guitar. He slowly started playing. It was a song he found; it encapsulated the memories floating through his head. He sighed softly before he started singing with the modified lyrics he added.
That night Enjolras had forgotten some of his books. He rushed out of the meeting because he remembered he had to do something and half way to his apartment he noticed the absence of the weight of his books. He turned around.
He pushed open the doors of the Musain. And walked up the stairs to the upper room. Halfway up, he heard the singing.
Love of mine, someday you will die
But I’ll be close behind.
I’ll follow you into the dark.
Enjolras paused and leaned against the stair rail. He vaguely recognized the song, probably heard it on the radio once or twice. He recognized Grantaire too. His voice was softer though. It wasn’t harsh or grating or mocking like it normally was. It caressed the words and pulled them from his lungs like billowing smoke.
Just our hands clasped so tight
Waiting for the hint of a spark
If heaven and hell decide
That they both are satisfied
Enjolras slowly ascended the stairs. Grantaire’s eyes were closed, or looking down, Enjolras couldn’t tell. But the man couldn’t see him. He stayed in the corner as the words drifted his way.
If there’s no one beside you
When your soul embarks,
Then I’ll follow you into the dark.
In revolutionary school
As vicious as Musain rule
I got my feelings bruised
By a leader in red.
I dropped the bar
As he told me, R,
You’re good for nothing fool
And I heard every word that he said.
The memories came flooding back.
He could see Grantaire again, not as he currently was, but back then. He remembered how he looked then: more scarred, his teeth yellow, his nose had obviously been broken, his hair was longer and more tangled, but he was still undeniably beautiful to Enjolras. He remembered what it was like: they were fighting the monarchy, they were planning for war, they wanted an uprising as destructive to their opponents as 1789. That year, those four numbers, were spoken with worship and dread amongst their friends then. He remembered the funeral. He remembered leading the people. He remembered Rue Saint-Denis; he remembered Rue Saint-Martin; he remembered the barricades.
He remembered the first night. The shots that were fired. He remembered how Marius saved them all. He remembered the girl who died. He remembered them still hoping. “The nineteenth century is great, but the twentieth will be grand.” He remembers his speech. Then the last battle.
His friends had fallen. He stood alone and he remembered accepting his fate.
He remembered Grantaire rising. He remembered him crying out and his words having the clarity they had now as he sang, but they were stronger.
“Permets-tu?” he remembered.
He remembered the feel of Grantaire’s calloused hand in his own.
He remembered a flare of light.
He saw Grantaire, his eyes still downcast as his fingers pulled the last strings of melody from the guitar. He strode across the room and Grantaire looked up, surprised. He grabbed his face and pulled him into a kiss.
Grantaire’s hands fell from the guitar and wrapped around Enjolras’ waist.
Enjolras broke away and Grantaire pulled back like he did something wrong.
Enjolras kissed his forehead, his cheeks, his neck to placate him. “I remember,” he whispered against his skin. “I remember everything. I’m so sorry I didn’t see it sooner. I remember.”
Grantaire’s hands tentatively lifted to lift Enjolras’ chin up to look him in the eye. “What do you mean by ‘remember everything’?”
The words came out in a rush. “I remember the nineteenth century. I remember everything you guys have been talking about for months. It’s all there and it’s all back. I remember the rebellion and the battle. I remember our deaths. I remember falling in love with you then like I fell in love with you now--”
“Wait you’re in love with me?” Grantaire balked.
“Yes, you idiot. Why else would I keep you around when you back my discords on marriage equality with fucking Taylor Swift songs,” Enjolras brushed it off.
Grantaire blinked, disbelieving. “Wait you love me?”
“I just said I did.”
“And you’ve always loved me? It’s not just because you suddenly got on the same drugs as the rest of us?”
Enjolras sighed. “Yes. You took some warming up to, but I have loved you for quite a while now.”
“And you didn’t tell me?!”
“I thought you didn’t feel the same.”
“Enjolras,” Grantaire began, his eyes wide with disbelief, “Everything I paint or draw involves you.”
The man shrugged and kissed Grantaire’s forehead. “It doesn’t matter. The point is I love you and if what I remember is correct, you love me, and this time around, I am determined to have more than five seconds with you.”
Grantaire slowly smiled. He couldn’t believe what was happening, but he wanted to. So he kissed Enjolras softly and whispered against his lips, “Five months?”
Enjolras scoffed and kissed along Grantaire’s neck. “Five years. Or more.”
“Five lifetimes?” Grantaire laughed.
“How do we know we’re not already on our fifth lifetime?”
“I’m hoping,” Grantaire replied simply as Enjolras leaned in for another kiss.