AN: Oh man we are at the home stretch, folks. The ending of this fic has actually been OFFICIALLY written, it just needs tweaking, and I am still homeless but STICKING WITH IT and I do it all for you my little macaroons
also a round of applause to Panera Bread for providing me with internet even if I can't afford any of their food
also have you noticed that this has been a really sneaky ship fic because if you haven't: sorry, this has been a really sneaky ship fic, FAIR WARNING. It was actually supposed to be a LESS sneaky ship fic before it got completely away from me (you might be a little blindsided by the end, all my precious ships have just been going on in the background). But the one fully-realized ship in this whole thing is in this chapter, yay!
Enjolras wakes up on the fourth to knocking on his apartment door. He already knows who it will be as he pulls on his dressing gown and goes to answer it.
"We need to talk," Combeferre says. Enjolras only nods and steps aside to let him in.
"The meeting?" he says.
"Courfeyrac's going to take care of it," Combeferre says. Enjolras nods again, looking at the floor.
"I'm sorry," he says after a moment.
Combeferre shakes his head. "It's not about that," he says. "I don't… I don't really blame you for that." Enjolras takes an apple from a box on the table, but doesn't do anything but stare at it and wait for Combeferre to continue. Combeferre takes a deep breath. "Do you remember when you handed our spy—the inspector—to Monsieur Fauchelevent?" Of course he remembers. None of them have forgotten a moment of that first fight. "Enjolras…" Enjolras looks up from his apple and Combeferre meets his eyes. "That was wrong."
To his surprise, Enjolras just nods and looks back down at his apple.
"I know," he says. "It was... crude. Barbaric. Not justice at all. I saw that they knew each other, I knew what I was doing. But what else, then? We'd have to kill him ourselves. I saw a way to keep any of us from shooting a man in cold blood, and I took it."
Combeferre is surprised. "That was why?"
Enjolras looks up and smiles thinly. "I reserve little selfishness for myself, but if I can't be selfish for my men I'm not much of a captain."
"You've been a fine captain," says Combeferre. A pause. "He never died."
"Who?"
"The police inspector. He never died at Fauchelevent's hand, anyway. We… misinterpreted their history, I suppose. Fauchelevent let him go."
Enjolras considers this. "Good," he decides. "Good. One less death."
"You sound like me."
"Not such a bad thing." He opens a cupboard and takes out a knife, then sits down heavily in a wooden chair. Combeferre comes over and sits in the other without being asked.
"They'll rise someday, Enjolras."
"Someday," Enjolras agrees. "But not today. As much as I wish it… this revolution will not see them rise."
"Is dying for France not everything you thought it would be?" Combeferre asks.
"No, that's just it. It's exactly what I thought it would be. Bloody, brutal. It's death. I was prepared for death." He cuts the apple in his hand in half. "I just wasn't prepared for so much of it."
"Yes, I was led to believe dying would be more permanent."
"No, that's… that's not really what I mean. I mean…" He swallows. "It's good to die for France. It feels good. It feels… right. It always does, no matter how wrong everything else may be. Like a thing I'm meant to do. I always knew I would die in the revolution, even when we started—oh, don't frown at me like that, it was so long ago." He sets down the knife and halved apple to scrub his hands through his hair, his eyes fixed on the middle distance. "I would go down with the barricades whether we won or lost. And that first time, standing with the sunlight on my back, holding…"
He flexes his left hand on the table and wets his lips. He goes on without finishing the sentence.
"I knew I had been right. About me, at the least. But all of you—"
"We fight because—"
"Because you want to, I know," he says, waving Combeferre off. "But wanting to fight isn't the same thing."
Combeferre doesn't say anything. Enjolras looks up at him, and his eyes are sad.
"We're just boys," says Enjolras. "All of us. I never really realized it until the first time I watched my friends die afraid. It doesn't mean we can't make a difference. But… there are too many of us, too young too… too full of love and life, for dying to be the destiny of all of us."
Combeferre feels like he ought to be arguing the point about Enjolras' own destiny, but his friend has always been a blazing torch rather than a lamp, burning himself out in one go for the sake of dispelling the darkest part of the night. Combeferre's throat tightens.
"Well, what else are we meant to do?" he says. It is not a rhetorical question.
Enjolras looks at him, solemn, and slides the other half of the apple across the table to Combeferre. "We're going to do this once more."
The fifth dawns cloudy and cool. Enjolras is awake to see it leave dew on the Paris roofs. He dresses and walks as slowly as he dares to the street the funeral procession will take. The city is only just starting to break out of the silence of night, the only sounds of the early risers low and sleepy. He drinks it in, the peace so soon to be broken, memorizes the shine of the morning on the windows of the buildings.
There is nothing, he decides for the ten thousandth time in his life, that he would not do for this city.
The streets soon begin filling with people also on their way to the funeral procession, and by the time Enjolras reaches the road, they are a procession of their own, moving silently in the same direction for the same purpose.
The Amis all know easily where to find each other now despite the crowd. He sees Jehan first, who smiles and waves. Courfeyrac is with him; Enjolras joins them and leans against a lamp post, listening as Jehan consults Courfeyrac about a dilemma between two possible rhyming lines. Combeferre joins them, and Feuilly. Bahorel shows up wearing a different eye-catching waistcoat than the battle before. No Marius. No Bossuet or Joly. Enjolras reminds himself that he's glad they're not here. He'd have liked to see them, though.
The funeral proceeds just as it always has, and when the people break the sidelines and flood the street behind and before, Enjolras' heart hammers in his throat just as hard as it did the first time. He stands on the hearse and waves the flag with all his strength and the people, his people, the people of Paris, are singing all around him, and his friends stand with him ready to fight, and if Enjolras has ever been really, truly, perfectly happy in his life, it's right now.
Then they round the corner to the National Guard, and there's work to be done.
They're lucky, or else they are blessed after all, that they lose no one in either the first attack or the evening assault. Enjolras is careful, but he is always careful. And there are less of them to protect but there are also less of them to fight. They have had revolutions where they don't lose anyone until the morning. It has happened before. There is no reason to take it as a sign.
Enjolras doesn't know if he's more of a fool or less of one for believing in signs after all this.
The others, at any rate, are in high spirits—or higher, anyway, than usual-at the lack of death. They sit on the barricade and sing and pass around a bottle of wine and smile at each other. It's a picture not unlike that first night, with a few changes— the presence of Javert, stolidly cleaning guns in the corner, and Valjean next to him, handing him new and taking the cleaned ones. And Éponine, sitting with her knees bumping Combeferre's and teasing him so he blushes. In addition to the faces missing is Grantaire's, though only because he's sitting inside, keeping his own company. Enjolras can guess why.
Enjolras crosses to where Javert and Valjean sit. "Monsieur, Inspector. If you could, I'd like a word?"
"Of course," says Valjean. "What is it?"
"I'd like to speak to you both in private," Enjolras says. "I need your help."
While the others wait for the dawn outside on the barricade, Grantaire stays in the Musain alone—supposedly to drink, although he hasn't been giving it his best effort today. By the time the evening starts to fall, he's slackened his intake to the point where the haze has mostly cleared, and he sits slumped over an almost empty bottle lost in his own thoughts and scratching shapes into the bar with a coin.
He can hear a particular voice having a low conversation in the next room with the inspector and Fauchelevent, the door open, but it's not loud enough to make out. He's listening just to the timbre of it, drowsing a little to the sound. His favorite sound.
Enjolras's voice is serious and intent, the sound of his plan-making voice, though Grantaire can't imagine what kind of plans he still has to make. The addition of Javert to their forces can't possibly be so much of a game-changer.
After a few minutes Fauchelevent leaves, but the inspector stays for a minute more. When their murmured conversation ends, Grantaire glances up through the door to see Enjolras shaking the inspector's hand grimly. He hears a "Thank you." He looks back down at the bar. Grantaire keeps his eyes firmly down as the two of them pass through the room on the way to the barricade, Enjolras probably to give another speech or count guns or some such thing.
Except he doesn't pass through. The sound of his footsteps stops behind Grantaire, and there is a pause during which Grantaire doesn't mean to hold his breath.
"May I sit here?" Enjolras says quietly.
Grantaire almost laughs. "If you like." he says.
Enjolras sits down in the chair next to him. Neither speaks for a moment.
"People keep asking me why we're not… all right anymore," Enjolras says.
Grantaire nods. "Me too."
"I didn't know we fought so much that not fighting was so notable."
Grantaire glances up and lifts an eyebrow. "You didn't?" When Enjolras doesn't answer immediately, Grantaire returns his eyes to the bar. "Anyway, it wasn't just our not fighting."
Enjolras knows what he means. For a while, between the delicate understanding they had come to and the day it had come apart, there had been something good, something beyond just the absence of bad, solidifying between them, in casual exchanges, in smiles and silences and fighting side by side. Enjolras finds himself wishing there had been time to figure out everything it was.
"I'm not sorry," says Grantaire.
"I am." Grantaire looks up, as if trying to determine if Enjolras is serious, and Enjolras looks steadily back at him. Of course he's serious, when has he ever not been serious, but the look on his face is as intent as he's ever worn on a soapbox and Grantaire is pinned by the full force of it. He cannot look away.
"I understand… why you did it," Enjolras says. "I understood even then. But you couldn't be right, I couldn't stand the thought of waking up the next day in a world where you were right, where I was supposed to be alive, whether it had been the fourth or the seventh."
"None of us want to be the last one. None of us want to be alone. But you're—"
"You don't understand, it isn't being alone. I wasn't afraid of being…" He squeezes his eyes shut, his expression pained. "I wouldn't have been alone," he says instead.
Grantaire scoffs. "You would never have spoken to me again."
"I'm speaking to you now."
Grantaire doesn't have a reply to that. He just chews the inside of his cheek and fiddles with his bottle.
"The more I watch my friends die, the more I value them for standing with me despite," Enjolras says. "The more I lose them all for something we never quite achieve, the longer I have to stop and think before I do it all over again."
Grantaire frowns. "I'm sorry. Am I hearing you losing faith in the glorious revolution, Apollo?" it's his old mocking words but with none of the gaiety. He actually feels a little sick to his stomach.
Enjolras shakes his head, but slowly. He traces with a fingertip one of the shapes Grantaire scratched with his coin.
"No. Only… rethinking my priorities." He smiles a little at Grantaire. "I feel I understand you more than I once did."
"When you… The last time, standing on the barricade. Not even fighting. You… for God's sake, don't do that again, Enjolras. Don't do that to me again." There's something they're not saying about Grantaire being able to ask Enjolras not to do that to him in particular. Something about Enjolras not scorning the request. Both of them notice it. Neither of them point it out.
"I won't," says Enjolras.
"They will never rise. You're fighting for their freedom but they'll never help you or thank you." If Enjolras ever believed him he doesn't know what he would do, but he has to try, has to do anything he can to keep Enjolras from one more needless death. Enjolras only smiles sadly.
"Someday they will," he says.
"But not today. End this. God, please. Please end this." There are tears in his eyes as he begs. Enjolras reaches over and covers Grantaire's hand with his. Grantaire stares down at their hands.
"I'm going to," he says. "It's just this once more. Combeferre and I talked about it—one more."
"And then what?"
"And then I'm done. No more fighting, no more revolutions. I wanted to make sure you and I… stand right with each other tonight. That I have you with me."
After a moment's hesitation, Grantaire turns his hand palm side up under Enjolras'. Enjolras clasps his hand immediately.
"Enjolras," Grantaire says slowly. "Whether you'd been sorry for anything or not… whether you'd laughed at me or spit in my face, I would fight with you if you asked me. And maybe that's my failing." He shakes his head. "We stand right. Nothing you do could change that for my part."
Enjolras nods. "I know," he says, "and I—"
"Appreciate it," finishes Grantaire. "I know."
"No," says Enjolras. "That's not what I was going to say."
Enjolras tightens his fingers around Grantaire's, who looks up. He's not expecting Enjolras' face to be so close. When they kiss, it isn't all the things they've been trying to tell each other, but it's a lot of them.