Author's note: Apologies again for the long absence, I haven't forgotten you all. I am just very busy with original work but I'm working on this too. Also, I apologize if this one isn't very well edited. I opted for posting it quicker. I'll go over it later. Thanks for your understanding.
21
When Enjolras opens his eyes again, an orange stream of fading sunlight is pouring from the crack in the closed curtains of the window. He is alone in the room but he is sure Joly must be nearby. Most likely Combeferre as well. They would not leave his side easily so soon after the operation. He feels simultaneously touched and disquieted by the attention. Their presence has a peculiar effect on him and he is willing to guess that his emotions are behaving in quite the opposite way to what his friends would imagine. He has once infected their minds with thoughts of revolution, letting his own feelings overflow and wrap around them and soak them through. They infect him now in a similar way. When he is alone, his disease seems more bearable and the thought of his death does not disturb him so much. When he is alone, his mind is quiet and in order. But when his friends are with him, he feels like he is being tossed around by the waves of a stormy sea. There is so much pain, hope, stubbornness, despair, love, fear, loyalty, grief and compassion, all focused on his person, that he is afraid he is losing sight of the line between his feelings and theirs. To feel calm about his impending end becomes more difficult when he constantly sees evidence of how desperate they are to keep him. He has always seen himself as the symbol and instrument of a higher cause but he is unable to prevent the people he loves very dearly from seeing him as an important piece of their world which they are about to lose. Perhaps it is the slowness of it which makes it more difficult. He remembers the barricades where in the heat of the fight more than one life has been lost, but then there has not been enough time to think what could be done, rarely enough time to attempt and fail at saving anyone. It is difficult to part with a living person and so his friends are now subjected to the grief of death without the opportunity to move on. When he spends too much time with them, he begins to think in a similar way and that is when he wishes for time to go by faster. He wants to live or die but not to be dying and watch people suffer for it. He feels responsible for prolonging their suffering. He doesn't like the fact that his death will not be in anyone's service and he wonders now if in addition to dying for nothing he is trying to live for nothing. Unlike the revolution, it seems that this fight with consumption can never be won and perhaps all he is achieving is making things more difficult – another hope killed, another disappointment, another battle lost for his friends.
And yet, there is always the instinct to fight. The fight which seems to make up most of his very core refuses to leave him.
There is a fly somewhere within the folds of the curtains. He can hear it buzzing and hitting the glass, trying to get out. Why does a fly throw itself at a barrier it has seen it cannot cross? Why does it not simply give up and save itself some pain and effort, forego the disappointment after every failure? Perhaps because it can see the other side – so close, seemingly so reachable. Because hope is not always logical, and it sometimes comes uninvited.
He pushes himself up on his elbows and is momentarily dismayed to find out how weak he is. His arms are trembling, barely able to support his weight and he feels a wave of dizziness wash over him along with a sharp bolt of pain. Nevertheless, he pulls himself to a sitting position. The exertion causes him to gasp for breath quite badly and he presses a hand to the thick bandage which covers his chest. The pain he is all right with but the inability to control his muscles does not sit well with him and he flatly refuses to accept it. He has told Combeferre that he would have been able to walk out of the clinic and he is still sure he could have done it then. The few hours of sleep have actually made it more difficult. He feels stiffer now, drowsier, weaker and even slightly faint. He wills those feeling away, telling himself he is merely still sleepy. He has always hated sleeping during the day. He swings his legs over the edge of the bed and carefully straightens up. He stands there for a few moments, keeping his right hand on the wall, until he is sure he will not collapse. Then he lets go and walks to the window. Dusk is falling rapidly outside when he opens the curtains, the gray wave of an early evening chasing away the last gilded rays of sunlight. There is buzzing next to his ear. He opens the window and chases the fly out. The air of Paris hits him in the face and he closes his eyes. The whole mixture of small background noises washes over him.
It's buzzing, too, isn't it?
Enjolras sighs at the small immaterial voice in his head which has begun bothering him in the last few months. Don't talk nonsense to me, Grantaire, he thinks, not now. But the voice continues.
The buzzing of a giant fly hitting a barrier, wanting to break through. Paris, France, a whole great organism striving for something. Who will open the window for them if you don't?
Since when do you believe there is anything worth striving for beyond the window, Grantaire? You are only trying to somehow bind me to this world by duty, as if it is a matter of will to stay. You have made an all-powerful god out of me and you pray to me like the ancient Egyptians prayed to their Pharaoh, as if he was the Sun. It is everything I have never wanted to be and still it pains me to disappoint you. I cannot cure the ill any more than I can feed the hungry on the streets. I wish I could reward your faith, even if it is misguided, because it is faith nonetheless. But I cannot. It is not within my power whether I live or die. All I can do is to try and teach you again to believe in things that cannot die.
Perhaps I am not your god but the glass of your window and it is time you moved beyond me.
End Note: Grateful as always for any reviews, and I love you all.