Grantaire heard the shot, but his winesoaked consciousness registered it rather as a tearing. A barked order and bootsteps on a staircase. He muttered, stirred and saw him. Impaled on the wall in an impossible stance: standing, head bowed, the whole supported by the set of his feet and the spreading stain on his shirt. Grantaire crossed to join his leader, seconds too late. They were still shooting below, and now above.
He pulled the boy off the wall, like taking down a crucifix. Knelt with him to the floor, Enjolras white and pliant except the spreading wound. Pulled him close, chest to chest, and kissed him just on the lips. Limp fingers splay against his own wrist as he feels for the slowing pulse so he can tell them later precisely when France died. He faded out not long after, back against the wall and Enjolras' blood staining his shirt more indelibly than wine.
Darkness intruded at length and the screaming was, little comfort, coming from outside rather than his dream. And he lay cramped and hungover on the floor, Enjolras' head heavy on his shoulder. Closed his eyes to it again and realizes belatedly that this time he missed nothing; the screeching outside accompanied by the more welcome sound of Enjolras laboring to breathe. Unhealthy, fluid-choked and far too light, but enough to separate life from death a little. Better than expected for a man caught full in the chest. It needed a doctor, but Grantaire had stepped over theirs with half his face gone.
He had to release Enjolras for a minute - to lay the boy beside Combeferre, button his jacket over the stain on his shirt, and hope the screaming means they're letting people in. He's probably the only one here who reeks of wine and not gunpowder. Which might not help him get Enjolras out. It took too long to negotiate the ruin of the staircase by lantern, longer to get Enjolras down it as well. Students above and Guardsmen below - no-one had come to clean up their mess.
He didn't see a living guard until the cordon, which consisted of one surly gendarme bored with guarding corpses who wanted to know his business. "My cousin. I came from the Montedour." He let the man have a look at Enjolras, and the mess blood makes of a white shirt.
"Why do you not go back?"
"The cemetery is this way."
That sufficed.
It was two months before Grantaire could say with any certainty that Enjolras would recover, first from the bullet and thence from the fever that left him tied to the bed, raving. And when his eyes were clear again the ordeal had etched lines into his face and laid a pallor like a shroud over his bright aspect. For a time he did not speak, watching Grantaire as if a stranger, without interest. Grantaire too fell silent; without words, with a glass or three of wine, he could pretend it was old times and the boy in his bed was yet the unquenched firebrand.
When he did it was sudden, like all his moods. "They are all dead." Grantaire turned at that voice, hoarse and rasping, and looked long at the gaunt, shadowed figure.
"They are," he confirmed.
The invalid bowed his head. When the silence reached a breaking-point, Grantaire murmured an apology to the gods, Apollo most of all, and poured Enjolras a glass of the only comfort he knew.