I have decided, against my better judgment, to post something to an account that I previously decided would remain a graveyard of my previous writings forever.
This fic is based off the legend of Pygmalion and Galatea, but it ends much less happily than the original. Based of this lovely fanart: tanssintaivaankannenalla. tumblr post /49718889246 Take out the spaces and you'll be fine.
The block of marble gleams slightly in the light from the window that reflects off its rough edges. The canvas tarp that covered it lies crumpled in a heap around the base. Grantaire walks slowly around the stone that will be a statue, and looks for the lines and angles hidden inside the cool quiet marble, telling him what to sculpt.
There. The outline of a man - he can just see the shape hidden inside the unhewn contours. Tall, proud, defiant - the rest will come to him in time, but now he knows what to look for.
He scribbles a charcoal sketch on a loose scrap of paper, a mess of lines and smudges as a draft for the sculpture itself. The thick black smears give rough shape to the limbs and body that the stone will set free.
•
Grantaire begins working on the statue the next morning. Most days, he sleeps late and stumbles out of bed around noon with the last traces of alcohol throbbing horribly in his brain, but today the first weak rays of dawn that find their way through the age-spotted windows see him hard at work with the chisel and hammer, determinedly pounding the unyielding stone into shape and form. He's not sure what propelled him to rise with the early twittering of the birds and root himself in this work, but the idea of the statue has lingered on the fuzzy gray fringes of his dreams all through the night and he feels he has no choice but to obey it.
It's long past noon when his stomach loudly reminds him that he hasn't eaten since last night. He blinks at the noise, slowly emerging from the trance he hasn't realized he was in. His hands are shaking, he notices, his fingers white with dust, and he doesn't bother to clean them before tearing a piece off of a loaf of bread. He nibbles it half heartedly, barely noticing the taste as he circles around the block of stone and examines his progress.
It's getting there. Still far from a man, but the contours have more shape and form than a mere block of marble. They flow and stretch and bend in a way that suggests life buried under this shroud of stone.
Grantaire can see it now, can see the lines and surfaces waiting for him, as though his gaze can pierce through all the excess rock and reach the finished statue waiting underneath.
A man of fire holding a flag that shines and flows like blood...
He picks up the chisel; returns to his work. The half-eaten bread lies forgotten on a cluttered work table.
•
Somewhere a church bell tolls midnight, and Grantaire breathes out loud and slow like a thirsty man who has just put the bottle down after a long drink.
Has it really been that long?
The statue before him now has the vague shape of limbs - legs planted into the ground, one slightly farther forward than the other; shoulders back, arms at the sides, one hand clutching the flag.
The face is still undefined, and the unhewn surface seems to whisper in the stillness, begging to be given shape. And Grantaire wants to, he wants so badly to keep going, but his hands are shaking and his knees can barely support him, and above all, he needs to sleep.
"No," he says aloud, then flees from the workroom and collapses into his bed.
•
The next morning he rises from restless dreams of stone fingers and shouts and a red flag streaming and snapping in the cold dawn air. Barely awake, he stumbles to the workroom, takes a long drink from one of the half-empty wine bottles lying in odd places about the room, and then the chisel and hammer find their way into his hands and he begins to work again.
•
Over the next few days, the statue begins to take further defined shape under Grantaire's relentless efforts. He still can't quite fathom what keeps him bent over the stone with chips flying in his face, hour after hour, day after day - but something about the face and body and inner fire that the chisel and hammer are coaxing out of the solid rock enthralls him, transfixes him. He wants to see more, learn more, see the finished person stand in front of him and stare at him with eyes of stone.
It takes him a long time to admit that it's become an obsession.
•
[ in his dreams, each night as the statue works its way towards completion, the young man stands in front of him, and with every passing day his features grow clearer. like emerging from a fog, like wiping a window clear of condensation, like a collection of lines and colors that only form a shape when viewed from one specific angle and are now rotating into position. grantaire watches the emergence and waits with bated breath ]
•
There's something intensely personal about drawing the approximation of a warm living form from cold marble. He comes to know the subject's body exquisitely well: the tendons rigid with barely-concealed tension, the rounded protuberances where bones push at the skin, the small hollow where two muscles join. It's a process more intimate than lovemaking, and it leaves him breathless sometimes.
He wishes he could know the young man's name.
•
[ in the background of his night visions are shouts and crashes and the deep-throated roar of a bonfire, but they're muffled and far away. the face is still assembling itself before him, and that is all that matters ]
•
It's a week into his work and the sculpture is beginning to breathe properly, perhaps, to emerge from shroud of rock under which it has been silent, waiting. Grantaire has never been given to glorifying the human form in his art like so many others - people are people, and he will depict them with all their flaws and fallacies - but as he hammers the final details into the body, chest and hipbones and navel and curve of the spine, he can't help but notice that this seems to be an exception -
a few more marks around the face and -
it's done.
[ somewhere in that world where dreams live on into the day, the young man steps out of the mist ]
Grantaire stumbles backward, his chest heaving, as though surfacing from deep water
[ and waits ]
and there's silence in the room. A ray of sunlight streams through the window and edges the statue's right side in blazing gold, and Grantaire stands still, taking it in for the first time
A naked young man standing straight and tall and proud - motionless, but with the anticipation of motion, as though looking out over a field where a battle will take place. His shoulders are back, tense and hard as though a taut string runs through them, hands holding a flag that flows down over his feet. Right knee bent slightly inward, perhaps, as though hinting at some uncertainty that he would never show the world. His crown is wreathed in wild curls of hair, and his face stares straight ahead, set and determined and extremely beautiful.
Grantaire takes a step forward
[ reaches out a hand ]
and stops with his fingers an inch from the stone.
[ the young man stares at him, then turns and disappears back into the fog.
wait, calls grantaire, stumbling after him. wait! ]
•
That night he gets more thoroughly drunk than he's been in a long while, and the next morning he drags himself out of bed and leans his pounding head against cool marble. Breathe in. Breathe out.
•
He starts polishing the statue. At first it's necessary to remove the stray chisel marks and turn the rough stone to pristine shining smoothness, but it quickly becomes just an excuse to run his hands over the marble, feeling the slight roundness of muscle, the chain of bumps running down the spine, the sheer sensation of life that could almost leap out of the stone at any second.
It's a statue. If you were to cut it open, there would be only rock. No bones, no sinew, no veins except those of darker stone lancing through the marble. Why does it feel so real?
•
[ it's real in his dreams, and the young man finally stops and turns to look at him. real, living flesh and blood, hair of sunlight, eyes of fire, lips parted as though on the verge of speaking - but he never does.
grantaire stretches out a hand, and the vision takes it. his grip is firm, warm flesh and it's startling, almost ]
He's started drinking more. He's nearly constantly drunk now, because the statue won't let him go. He doesn't want to let go of it. The vision of that face staring ahead, as though preparing for something - for what? - defying someone - who? - holding up the flag as a beacon, a symbol - of what? for what? - and he is mesmerized, completely pulled in. He walks around the statue, gazes at it from different angles, presses his fingers to its chest and murmurs, Where did you come from? Where did you
[ come from? asks grantaire, and the vision never answers, because he is just that, a vision, something grantaire constructed from his own mind that has taken on a semblance of life. he created an idea to have something of power and resolution in his uncertain wine-sodden life, and now he is falling in love with his own creation
in love
falling ]
•
"You're not real," he says. "You're just an idea. An escape. You shouldn't be doing this to me."
The statue stares back, eyes blank white all the way through
[ the piercing color of blue flame ]
and the room is holding its breath.
Grantaire is drunk and frustrated and standing in front of a beautiful creature that is his and yet never really will be, and so he lurches forward and presses a long kiss to the cold marble lips, forcing himself against the solid surface as though he could just melt through and become stone forever, cool and quiet and safe -
and he realizes what he's doing, and jerks back, lips now colder from the contact.
"I'm sorry," he says to the empty room. Inside his chest is a burning bundle of shame, confusion, and terrible, terrible longing. It smolders tightly, burning a hole in him like parchment paper.
The polished face gazes at him, impassive, and Grantaire flees unsteadily to his room, collapses on the bed
[ and the young man kisses him back with the same passion and fire that imbues everything about him, lips and fingers warm and moving and full of life that grantaire clings to like a dying man. breath intermingling, hands twined through hair, teeth clicking together, and grantaire feels himself falling farther and farther into this beautiful delusion and doesn't care, doesn't care ]
•
He stares at the world, wavy and blurred and tinted a rich sickly green through the glass of the wine bottle, and wonders how much it would take to just drink himself into oblivion and never resurface.
He wonders just how mad he's gone.
•
[ blue eyes and golden hair and fire and ice and it's beautiful, but it's not enough never enough ]
•
The sun is rising and Grantaire is only mildly drunk, but he's staggering and his vision is unfocused. He wonders how long it's been since he's eaten, or had a decent night's sleep beyond shifting in and out of half-dreams full of that one beautiful face.
The sun is rising vaguely; the birds are beginning to sing. That tight ball of pain and regret and longing is still burning within him, slowly turning his insides to ash.
The statue returns his gaze levelly, and the world is empty and unsteady around him.
"I'm sorry," he says, without quite knowing to whom he is apologizing, and turns his face away.
This has to end now. This will end now.
Something inside of him snaps.
•
[ somewhere in the dream world at the back of his mind, the young man takes a step backwards and looks at him with warning eyes, and grantaire wants to turn away ]
- hands are shaking, goddammit, and he was never that good at tying knots already -
[ but he can't, just keeps staring, locked, into his imaginary lover's burning gaze ]
- dragging a chair to the center of the room, an old rickety wooden one -
[ and his eyes never let go of that face as the world dissolves ]
•
•
•
The rope was old and frayed and made of linen, clumsily tied to the rafters, and it gave out half a minute later. He fell like a wine-sodden sawdust-filled ragdoll onto the marble plinth, where the cold stone quickly leached the remainders of living warmth from his body.
The sun had fully risen by the time they found him, curled at the base of a statue that stood above him and stared ahead with fiery eyes, daring anyone to try to harm him.
Perhaps it believed he was only dreaming.
I'm far more active on ao3 than ff these days, so if you want to find me there, then my username is vriskacircuit. My tumblr is dalek-parties-are-always-rubbish.
Please leave a review, because I really genuinely want to know what can be improved.