It starts with Enjolras, and it finishes with him.
It starts with a late autumn day and asphalt darkened by rain. It starts with a bus journey into London, to take part in a demonstration they never reach.
There are nine of them who decide to go. Marius drops out at the last minute. Grantaire, sort of surprisingly, doesn't.
The rain sheets down. Everyone's talking. Of course they are; most everyone on that bus is going to be at the demonstration. Most everyone's got something to say.
No one pays that much attention to the five boys and four girls sitting near the back. Their voices are animated; strident, even, in some cases, but no louder than those of anyone around them.
They aren't extraordinary. They aren't any different to any of the others on that bus. Grantaire, sitting with her feet pulled up onto the seat and her head resting against the window, knows that. But her friends are buoyed up by the idea of doing something. They won't shut up.
Jehan's half-listening; he's got a bright blue earphone piping music into one ear. Combeferre's reading – recently, Bahorel, of all people, has got her into sci-fi, and now she's blasting through 1984 with intermittent exclamations about the intricacy of the plot or complaints about the lack of character-depth.
The rest of them are going on about Tories and elitism and lack of opportunities for students as though it's the most important thing in the God damn world. Grantaire represses a sigh. Important, fair enough, but there's not a lot they can do about it, demonstration or not.
And anyway, she's tired. Her dad's working away again and now the house is painfully quiet. She's tried filling the silence with loud music, but you can't sleep with some old classic rock compilation blowing your eardrums out.
So last night, she'd finished the bottle of Absolut vodka that Courfeyrac left at her house the other week, and she'd read a bit, and messed around aimlessly on the internet. And now she can't keep her eyes open.
They're drifting shut, actually, when it happens, and so she doesn't really get it, at first. (Do any of them, really?)
But they're sliding in their seats; grabbing, yelling, and it's funny at first – but then the bus driver's swearing and he's obviously lost control and things are moving so fast blurring jolting churning lifting out of nowhere too fast too fast won't stop won't -
stop.
It's all quiet, then, except for this ringing in her ears. She imagines that her eyes are sealed shut; that she couldn't open them if she'd tried.
But they're not, are they? So Grantaire opens her eyes.
The window she'd been leaning against is now the floor beneath her. The seat rises behind her in a torn green column. The roof is misshapen; concave. When you think about these sorts of scenarios in your head, everything's all dark. But it isn't like that; it's morning, and the light is steaming in through the smashed windows just the same as it was when they were whole.
People are stirring; calling out in thin, plaintive voices.
Grantaire notices things in little bursts; brief, blistering illuminations of reality; of oh my God this is happening. Courfeyrac's dark reddish hair, matted with blood. Joly's eyes opening and closing slowly; dazedly blinking. Jehan leaning over Feuilly and shaking her shoulder repeatedly; urgently, his face a little white moon of terror.
And Enjolras.
He's facedown; inert; jolted out of his seat. His right arm is bent at an odd angle. And oh God, she doesn't think she's ever seen him so still.
She wants to move, but she can't seem to make herself do it. Her limbs are weighed down; caught up; something.
Don't be stupid, she tells herself, he's okay. He's fine.
Grantaire doesn't do false hope, but there's always a first time.
Her eyes are slipping shut again. Far off, she can hear Joly struggling; thrashing; panicking. And Jehan saying Feuilly's name. And a low, half-stifled, bone-deep groan of pain from someone who might be Bahorel or Combeferre. She doesn't wait to figure it out. She lets her eyes close fully and none of it exists anymore.
