Bruised Marble
For once, the back room of the Musain is quiet.
Enjolras isn't sure why; it's a Friday evening and usually many of the Amis are gathered, the main nine of them at the very least, but tonight it's only him, alone with a barely touched glass of white wine at the corner table. Combeferre was at Necker, likely for a very late night. Courfeyrac had convinced Marius out to the theater. Joly had blushed and said something about taking Musichetta to dinner, and Bossuet was accompanying Bahorel to a new café to speak with another group. Feuilly had been here earlier, but he'd been exhausted after a long day, and Enjolras had sent him home. Jehan had taken cold and was burrowed up in his rooms. And Grantaire…well there was really no telling where Grantaire was. His knowledge of Paris was so endless it was easy for him to get lost in the night, never found unless he wished it, and Enjolras suspected he preferred it that way.
He pushes his still open law books and assignment aside, looking down at the half-finished pamphlet on which he cannot seem to focus. He picks up his pen once more, but even as he poises it above the paper, the words in his head only moments ago fly off, leaving his mind devoid of anything except fractured, dismembered fragments of his own thoughts. A rare darkness creeps in, revealing stormy memories in flashes of lightning. Just today he'd seen a mother wailing outside her apartment as the body of her husband was taken for burial, no doubt killed by the cholera epidemic and lack of any money for even the hope of a cure. Last week Combeferre had returned home late, visibly distraught after being unable to save a child who had starved to death because of the bread shortage, brought in far too late. Two weeks previously they'd held a meeting in conjunction with another student organization and a group of textile workers Feuilly brought in. The meeting was broken up by the police, and Enjolras, along with Bahorel and one of Feuilly's friends, spent the night in jail. Enjolras rubs unconsciously at the bruise in the center of his chest from his altercation with one of the officers, who had at first attempted to arrest Jehan rather than himself, something for which Enjolras would not stand.
"Do statues bruise, I wonder?" the officer had mocked, kicking Enjolras with his boot and knocking him flat to the ground, knowing Enjolras couldn't fight back for risk of being in jail longer than was necessary.
He sighs, feeling the crushing weight of something he cannot quite name resting painfully on his chest and spreading through him with ferocious persistence, burning, aching, and stealing his breath. He closes his eyes and light pushes away at the darkness threatening him, visions of the future dancing in bright orbs before his closed lids, just on the edge of his fingertips. He can feel their warmth, but he cannot quite touch them. He opens his eyes again, resting his head in his hands and threading fingers through his hair, tangled from the harsh winter breeze outside.
Statues don't bruise, he muses, but he is no statue, as the painful, ugly bruise on his chest certainly proves. If he were a statue he would not be subject to these intense flights of melancholy among his usual confidence, optimism, and utter belief in the beauty and potential of the future, of mankind as a whole. He sees through the walls of the years, sees the day that all France, and hopefully all people, live in liberty, in equality, their voices heard, listened to, the world where there is no need for the barricades they so dutifully plan now, barricades that are inevitably drenched in the blood of friend and foe alike. If he were a statue he would not feel such empathy, such fury and compassion and indignation that it threatens to burst through him and combust into raging hot blue flame. He knows that future exists, feels that certainty in his very bones, and it is his dearest wish to spread that belief to as many people as possible in order that they too, might fight for that vision. He does not insist everyone fight on barricades or make the sacrifices he and his friends and other comrades are willing to, but as he's learned from Combeferre, from all of his treasured friends, there are many ways in which one might help create that better world. There is that potential in everyone, and it frustrates him when they cannot see it, when they are drowned in their own apathy, their eyes shaded by their harsh circumstance.
But he will fight for those people too, in hope that his belief, the belief of men like his friends, will be enough for them all, will be enough to show everyone the world they all dream of can come to exist through revolution, and then with any luck, through blessed human progress.
He sits up when he hears the door open behind him, turning around to see who's coming in to join him.
"Enjolras?" Grantaire asks, running one hand through his unruly mane of near black curls, an unopened bottle of wine and an empty glass in the other. "Here all alone?"
"Not anymore, apparently," Enjolras quips. "What brings you here?"
"Lack of anywhere else to be, really," Grantaire says, looking a bit uneasy and very sober. "I can go if you'd like to be alone."
"If I needed very desperately to be alone I would go home, not occupy a public space," Enjolras says, pointing to the chair across from him. "Do sit, if you like. It's not a bother to me; I could use the company perhaps, as I am not getting very much done."
Grantaire does as asked, setting the wine aside without opening it and eyeing Enjolras' book and paper laden table.
"Aren't you going to drink that?" Enjolras asks, raising one eyebrow.
"Oh," Grantaire replies, looking oddly startled. "I…"
"As you can see," Enjolras says with a small smile, softer now as he sees Grantaire looking unsure. "I have my own wine. So please feel free to open yours."
"Untouched wine," Grantaire points out, smiling slightly now in response. "And I have not previously had to half carry you back to your rooms as you so graciously did for me recently, so you understand my hesitance."
"Simply do not drink to excess then," Enjolras says, turning back to gaze forlornly at his pamphlet.
"Were it only so easy," Grantaire mumbles. "Having trouble with your pamphlet and your assignments?"
"I'm afraid my mind is rather unfocused this evening," Enjolras says, turning back toward Grantaire.
"The marble lover of liberty himself lost for words," Grantaire remarks wryly. "I'm shocked."
"I am in no temperament to argue," Enjolras says, suddenly feeling incredibly weary, pressure building behind his eyes, feeling as if someone has poured sand into them.
"I wasn't aware those were fighting words," Grantaire answers, uncorking his wine bottle and pouring, burgundy liquid swirling most elegantly down into the glass as if this is Grantaire's new art form in place of painting. "And even when I am at my most wretched you scarcely ever take the bait."
"You are forever referring to me as 'fine marble' and to yourself as 'a great wretch,'" Enjolras says, rubbing at his temples. "Neither is true, and both references frustrate me immensely."
"You have never seen fit to bring this up before," Grantaire says, looking bewildered yet intrigued as he sips his wine. "But we are quite opposite ends of the spectrum; you the burning light and I the blinding darkness."
"I am not nearly as perfect as you imagine, and neither are you as flawed as you insist," Enjolras shoots back, rising suddenly from his chair and striding across the room to stand by the window, Grantaire's eyes following him, silent.
Enjolras looks out the window as the sun sets, the dying light filtering in weakly through the glass and spraying it orange. Pink mixes with the darkening blue on the distant horizon as people walk down the streets of San-Michele, the markets closing up shop for the day as night creeps in, inviting a whole different sort of activity from day. Paris is oddly quiet at this transitioning time of day, stuck between day and night, light and dark, sleep and waking.
"Do you recall when I was arrested a few weeks ago?" Enjolras asks, breaking through Grantaire's stunned silence.
"Yes," Grantaire, one finger tracing circles around the edge of wine glass, eyes locked on Enjolras as if death itself could not rip away his gaze.
"When I stopped the officer from arresting Jehan, he questioned whether or not statues bruise," Enjolras says, noticing that Grantaire averts his gaze the minute Enjolras looks into his eyes.
Grantaire doesn't answer, still pointedly looking away, his breaths quicker than normal.
After a moment's thought Enjolras removes his black coat, kept on due to the chill outside, unties the cream-colored cravat Courfeyrac had given him on his last birthday, and undoes the buttons on his dark red waist-coat that matches the color of Grantaire's wine.
"Enjolras, what on earth?" Grantaire asks, pushed back into speech as Enjolras undoes the first few buttons of his white shirt, revealing the expansive bruise beneath, dark purple tinged green as it heals, shaped like the imprint of a boot.
"Marble does not bruise," Enjolras says, his voice hoarse with sudden emotion, with the need to make Grantaire see, to make everyone see.
He is only human. He flies, but he knows he will always fall from the sky, knows his wings cannot hold him up forever as if he were a bird meant for flight. He is not so foolish as Icarus, thinking that his wax wings will never melt as he flies closer and closer to the sun, but each time they do he will rebuild them and try again and again and again until he sees the future they all envision, the future his friends embody, or he will die trying. He does not wish death, no, but he will accept it if it comes, tri-color flag held high.
Grantaire stands, walking slowly over to Enjolras, eyes wide as he gazes at Enjolras, eyes trailing down to the bruise. Enjolras takes one of Grantaire's hands and presses it to the injury, wincing at the tenderness of the still healing skin, the pain of the still healing muscle that both Combeferre and Joly suspect was internally bruised further when the officer pinned Enjolras down on the ground in the same place he'd kicked him.
"You see?" Enjolras questions, a glint of a challenge in his eyes. "I bruise as any man, and if you touch the bruise it causes pain. Each time I see a starving child on the street, each time I see a woman roaming the streets on my walks home at night, forced into selling herself only to put food on the table, each time I see working men count their sous at the market, making each bit stretch until they receive their pay again, each time I think on the fact that the people have no voice, no say in their own lives, it feels as if another bruise forms on my soul, very like this one on my chest."
"Then why fight?" Grantaire asks, voice husky as he tentatively tightens his grasp around Enjolras' hand, both still resting upon Enjolras' chest.
"Because it is worth it," Enjolras whispers, voice reverberating with passion as tears prick his eyes, unbidden but irreversible. "There is a path, Grantaire, and greater men than myself have paved it throughout history, have improved, have made the lot of mankind better. If I can inspire people to believe in that better world, if I can dedicate my life to improving the lives of the people in this country, of freeing them from the chains of the poisonous institution of monarchy, then I will have done something. I will have tried. That future all flooded with the dawn exists, I know it."
His voice is ragged, shaking with intensity as he ceases, breathing in deep to regain his air flow.
"Don't you see?" Grantaire asks. "Perhaps you are not as perfect as I imagine, but I am as flawed as I say. You fight, you light up the world with your belief and I merely drown in my unbreakable skepticism. I am a great wretch."
"No," Enjolras insists. "I see the potential in you. I see it sure as I stand here. I've seen the gleam of brimming belief when you sit among us, I've seen the way you put love into each stroke of your sketches when you sit apart in the corner, I've seen your true smile when you look around at all of us and think no one is watching. I know how well read you are when I managed to pick apart one of your discourses. Yet you loathe yourself, you proclaim skepticism and yet plant yourself among the most fervent idealists. I cannot claim to understand you, but I can claim to know that you sell yourself far short of your potential."
"I cannot be you, Enjolras," Grantaire says, stepping back and attempting to withdraw his hand, but Enjolras does not let go.
"I am not asking you to be me," Enjolras presses, still holding tight as Grantaire steps back. "I am asking you to be the best version of yourself. I'm asking you to look at me as a person, and not as an idol to be worshipped. I am a cracked mortal, Grantaire, a cracked mortal completed, corrected, and made whole by my friends, a man perhaps more driven than most, but a man nonetheless. Nothing more."
Grantaire steps closer again, eyes memorizing Enjolras' face, desperation written within them.
"Then you will bleed as any man does," Grantaire says, and Enjolras breathes in relief at this understanding. "And the path before you, it is most certainly bloody. If you bleed, Enjolras, I will also. You run through my veins sure as the wine I drink."
"I do not want you to die for a cause you do not believe in," Enjolras insists, furrowing his brows and dropping Grantaire's hand, feeling the familiar frustration mix with an odd, touching, shock at Grantaire's words.
Grantaire steps fully forward now, joining Enjolras at the window as the sun falls further in the sky and light floods through the window, bathing them both in the golden hue; Squares of light and dark cast shadows into the room beyond, the rays brightening Enjolras' blonde locks and bouncing into Grantaire's dark green eyes. Grantaire puts his hand out once more, looking at Enjolras for permission to touch the bruise. At Enjolras' nod, he does so.
"If you die," he begins. "If it comes to that, I will try with everything in me to stand by your side, if you will have me. But I will stand beside Enjolras the man, not Enjolras the god among men. Does this satisfy you?"
Enjolras smiles now. "Yes. You are not as stubborn as you appear, sometimes. Though it would make me happier if you were promising me you would live, rather than die."
"I can try in the meantime, before your barricade," Grantaire says, voice tremulous. "Perhaps it is because of your humanity that you make me feel like someone again, give me slightest hope that the world is not all pain and sorrow and bitterness, that not all men are selfish and hateful, that the world is not lost."
"It isn't," Enjolras says, gazing back out the window, noticing something falling from the sky. "Snow."
"Coming down thick," Grantaire remarks. "Seems we are stuck here until it ceases, then."
"Indeed," Enjolras replies, feeling suddenly very unsteady on his feet from the rush of emotion and unrelenting thoughts. He is certain it's been hours since he ate, and he can picture Combeferre's disapproving, worried expression in perfect clarity. He grasps the windowsill, feeling one knee threatening to buckle beneath him.
"Easy there," Grantaire says, placing one very tentative arm around Enjolras' waist. "Allow me to help you back to your chair? And perhaps get us both something to eat?"
Enjolras nods, allowing Grantaire to settle him in his chair, the fire behind them flickering warmly on his back.
"Is there something in particular that occupied your thoughts so that you forgot to eat?" Grantaire questions.
"There was a woman on the street earlier," Enjolras admits, looking back up at Grantaire but feeling strangely very far away from the room in which he sits. "She was crying because her husband's body was being taken away for burial. Cholera, I assume, and far too poor to afford medicine. I stopped and gave her a few francs, enough to hopefully buy herself and her children some kind of decent meal, but it won't bring her husband back. I want to be able to prevent that situation for other women, wish there could be less widows and fatherless children. So I turned to writing the pamphlet that's due to the printer Feuilly found for us in a week or so, but I found I could not focus. I want to focus, it is the only way forward, the only way to start preventing more of those instances."
"You look exhausted," Grantaire says, blunt. "I am not Combeferre or Courfeyrac, I'm afraid, and know better than to try and get you to sleep as they might be able. But perhaps some proper food will reinvigorate you?"
"Perhaps so," Enjolras says, relaxing a little. "See? You are full of ideas and are endeavoring to help a friend in need. Not such a wretch after all."
A true, wide smile curves at Grantaire's lips. It's hesitant, it's unsure, but it's there, and seeing it sends a warmth to Enjolras' heart. As Grantaire reaches down to wrap Enjolras' discarded coat around his shoulders, Enjolras squeezes Grantaire's fingers, the tips of his own ghosting over Grantaire's palm for a few fleeting seconds.
Grantaire's smile widens and he turns away toward the stairs, cheeks reddening from either the cold or a blush, Enjolras isn't sure which.
"I'll be back in a moment, oh fearless leader who forgets to eat," Grantaire says, blanketing the intimate moment with a dash of humor. "Don't get the tables and chairs revolting while I'm gone."
Enjolras chuckles lightly, watching until Grantaire's dark head disappears down the stairs, the door to the back room closing behind him. He looks out the window once more, the inky black sky replacing bright blue, the moon rising overhead, illuminating the night. The stars scatter out from it, tiny pinpricks of light varying in size and shape. They are much like his friends, he muses, all unique, but each casting light into the dark spots of the world, always bright, and always returning each night without fail.
Yes, he thinks. Much like the rising of the sun and it's setting, much like the moon and it's companionable stars always brighten the black sky of night, the future they all fight for, the one they believe in so fervently, will inevitably come. It will take sacrifice, it will take work, it will take bloody barricades and violence and man against man. But he knows that this fight will hand the torch off to the peaceful progress Combeferre speaks of with such beautiful eloquence, sees that future alive in his mind as sure as he draws breath.
He so desires to see it in reality, desires to walk the streets of a free French republic, but even if he does not live to see it, the vision in his mind is enough as long as it comes to pass.
It will, his heart tells him. It most certainly will.