"None," said that other, "save the undone years,
The hopelessness. Whatever hope is yours,
Was my life also."
– WILFRED OWEN, "Strange Meeting"
"Would you like your eyes to be bandaged?"
Had he woken up in time to hear those words, or were they still echoing in the humming air as he jerked back into consciousness? But he'd heard them all right and was curious, because he wondered what they meant.
During his long slumber, Grantaire had been vaguely aware of sounds in the background – mumblings and dull thuds – but nothing too disturbing. Now his eyes were open, he saw with crystal clarity what he had missed.
Please let this not be real . . .
The Corinth tavern looked as though it had been torn apart. He turned to the man next to him to ask him what had happened, and glazed eyes looked back at him, and he realised that the man was dead. With an involuntary gasp of horror he jerked up, bumping another body with his elbow as he did so.
There were three dead men slumped against his table, and the table-top was slippery with their blood. Previously they had shielded him from view but now he realised that he was sitting bolt upright and staring around himself with the air of a rabbit caught above ground with the hounds bearing down upon it.
Then he became aware of what was happening on the other side of the room.
There was a large group of National Guards – all bloodstained and dishevelled, and he could see their shoulders heaving hard from their exertions. Lying on the ground between them and him were more bodies. None of them were his friends, but he recognised one of them as a man from the Barriere du Maine.
What was happening at the other end of the room? There were ten or twelve National Guards lined up, presenting their muskets as if for . . .
Grantaire screamed, pulling his hand away from the map. His hands were hooked into stiff claws of shock, so the parchment ripped down the centre. But that hardly mattered, what mattered was he needed to get far away from the map, far away from this terrible vision. This was different to the others, as bad as they had been. This was very different. This was something he actually remembered, he had actually seen through his own bleary eyes.
A line of National Guards aiming their muskets at –
NO!!!!! ANYTHING BUT THIS!!!!!! YOU CAN'T MAKE ME REMEMBER THIS!!!!!!
i know i can't you must remember it by yourself but i'm here and i'll try to help you
A single man stood before the execution squad. From this far across the room, Grantaire could see who it was, and it was as though the bottom fell out from his heaving stomach. This man wasn't looking at him – his eyes were disdainfully sweeping across the Guards standing before him, even the two officers standing off on one side. His arms were folded and his head was thrown back. His bright hair was dishevelled, and his eyes blazed fiercely.
This man was going to die. And that was the very worst thing Grantaire could have ever imagined could happen in this world.
Stumbling blindly against a table, Grantaire heaved it out of his way with another wild scream before attacking a couple of chairs in an equally senseless manner. One flew dangerously close to the crow's head, and with a startled caw it flapped to a safer position. Trembling and moaning, Grantaire then slumped to the floor.
steady on boy
But it was useless. Its reasoning would fall on deaf ears. The boy was trapped in his own personal hell, and there was no way out but through. He would have to remember this most terrible thing so he could use its power and focus his strength.
Not that that made it any easier to watch.
Grantaire's eyes widened in shock and horror. He tried to cry out then, but no sound passed his lips. It was as though no sound was permitted at all, as if the whole world was being forced to fall silent and mark this man's passing.
say his name grantaire
But the boy was five years away, and in a completely different room. The look of stricken horror on his face mirrored the one he must have worn back then, watching a dozen impassive figures dressed in blue preparing to destroy the one thing he loved above all else. But still he fought the memories, as though there was a chance that he could stop all this and sink back into the blissful darkness.
you will have to remember this boy you will have to look
Enjolras stood before an impromptu firing squad in the upper room of the Corinth tavern. All that stood between him and his assassins was a skewed billiard table, the final barricade between his life and his death. And it was a barricade which would be scaled all too easily. A broken carbine lay on the floor a few feet away, where the rebel leader had cast it when he had accepted that this was the end.
The sergeant, a dapper man of Enjolras' height and build, stood to the side of the squad. He cried in the imperious voice of the righteous, "Present arms!"
Grantaire jumped to his feet, his tattered coat of many sorrows whirling about him. His eyes still wide and staring, but they did not see the cold emptiness of the Café Musain. He opened his mouth to cry out –
Those two terrible words jerked Grantaire back to reality. What was happening in front of him would happen very fast unless . . . unless he could stop it. But what could he do? Distract them of course. Perhaps if he could make them all look around, then Enjolras would be able to flee, or grab one of their guns and fight back.
"LONG LIVE THE FRENCH REPUBLIC!"
"I'M ONE OF THEM!"
Arms flung wide, the boy stood tall and proud, his head thrown back. As if by spreading his arms out, he could draw the twelve musket balls unto himself and save the man he loved and revered. But that was impossible, that was history. Those balls had found their target and nothing could ever take that back. Not that the boy understood any of that. For now, he was living in the past . . . and dying in it.
The cry had its desired effect. Every last one of the National Guards turned around to look, their faces suddenly blank with surprise. And Enjolras looked too, as quickly as they had. The question in his eyes was all too clear: What are YOU doing here? Obviously he had been forgotten in the tumult of . . . of . . . however long it had been. The executioners and their victim remained staring at the man at the other end of the room for perhaps four whole seconds.
Please, take this chance, run, attack, do something!
But in his heart of hearts, Grantaire knew that that was impossible. Not only would the Guards be able to shoot Enjolras down as soon as he moved, but Enjolras himself would never move. He would stare death in the eye as he had faced life – levelly, and with the courage he had always possessed. For at least another five seconds, absolutely nothing happened. It was clear that the Guards were unsure of where this man had come from, and what his intentions were. In one crazy moment, Grantaire thought to himself, "If I turned around and slowly sauntered out of here, hands in my pockets and whistling, I wonder what would they do?" But he pushed that thought away with disgust.
His impulsive plan had failed. Once again, Grantaire had failed. No surprises there. What was there to do now? One thing left, surely. And who knew? Maybe, just maybe this would atone for all his past mistakes, his pathetic faltering and stumbling in the wake of something so much better?
Stepping around the table, he began the long, long walk towards the far wall of the Corinth.
Nobody made a move to stop him. Nobody moved at all.
The boy slowly walked towards the other end of the back room of the Café Musain. His blank eyes were fixed in the middle distance, gazing at the face of a haunting shade who was dead to everybody in the world except him. All of a sudden, a wry smile twisted across his lips. "Might as well kill two . . ."
". . . birds with one stone."
But what sort of birds, Grantaire wondered. A soaring eagle and . . . and a gobbling turkey, or a great ungainly jackdaw.
The closer he got to the other end of the room, the better he could see Enjolras. He grew no less bright with the closing distance between them, but more details were evident. At first he had thought Enjolras had been bruised about the face, but those were just gunpowder stains marring his alabaster skin. The few splashes of bright red blood across his white shirt did not come from him. In fact, it looked as though he was not injured at all.
But he did see the sweat shining on Enjolras' brow and upper lip. Whether this was from exertion or fear, he could not yet tell. Please not let it be fear. He shouldn't know how to be afraid. If it is fear, then that proves once and for all that this has all really been for nothing.
Enjolras remained looking steadily at the approaching Grantaire as he walked around the pool table to stand at his side. This was perhaps the closest that Grantaire had ever actually been to his golden idol. Close enough to touch. All of a sudden, he was ashamed, he wanted to look away from the deep blue eyes. He saw understanding in those eyes . . . Enjolras knew full well what he was planning to do.
He's not going to allow this to happen. Oh God, please don't let him push me away now. Because if Enjolras spurned him, if he turned to the commanding officer and said in his haughtiest of tones, "I do not recognise this man," then all would be lost. He would maybe be arrested, but more likely laughed at and thrown out into the streets amongst the blood and the loss and the smoke. But before that, he would have to see Enjolras shot, and taste the bitter end as he watched this blazing flame extinguished with a snap of Death's bony fingers.
Yes, better to die with him. Honour to die with him. Please let me stand beside you.
He looked up into those eyes, and spoke with a voice so low that perhaps the Guards would not be able to hear it . . .
"If you permit it."
Was that hesitation that flashed across Enjolras' eyes? Fear, sudden uncertainty? Then Enjolras smiled – a smile Grantaire had seen on perhaps only three or four occasions before, and never directed at him. A fleeting smile, as soon as it flickered across his lips it was gone again. But there were more words in that smile than could ever be said aloud.
Grantaire felt his eyes fill up with tears, and furiously blinked them away. He didn't want tears to blur this moment, he wanted to be able to die remembering this face with perfect clarity, see those eyes looking back into his without rancour or distaste, only trust and friendship and love.
Movement distracted him. It was Enjolras raising his right hand and holding it out to him. A pale hand with strong, slender fingers that were stained with both ink and gunpowder, the nails broken. But right now, that hand as beautiful as that of Christ Himself.
Standing up against the wall of the back room in the Cafe Musain, Grantaire looked up at a man who was not there, and reached out his own hand. Trembling, the fingers grasped at shadows, entwining with flesh only he could feel.
The execution squad might as well not have existed during this precious, precious moment. Grantaire certainly did not remember them. He knew that he was going to die, but all of a sudden he wasn't concerned about death. If he was able to die now, with this smile and this hand clasping his, then perhaps he'd been wrong all along and there was meaning to this poor world after all.
Very distantly, Grantaire heard the sergeant repeat the order "Present arms."
For perhaps one second, he thought about turning his head and looking down the musket barrels as imperviously as Enjolras had. But he knew immediately that he would not have the strength for that. And besides, he did not want to stop looking at that face for one moment.
The intensity in Enjolras' eyes never lessened. Again, Grantaire could read their message loud and clear. Keep looking at me, his leader was saying without words, don't pay attention to them. Keep looking at me, and everything will be all right. This is nearly over.
His fingers tightening over empty air, Grantaire swallowed and nodded. "I won't look away."
You poor boy, the crow thought. You poor, poor boy.
"Take aim."
The vaguest flash of silver and wood out the corner of his eye. Again, he was tempted to look but resisted . . .
Grantaire was trembling now. Tears rolled freely down his cheeks and he let them fall, unaware that he was crying.
"Fire!"
Grantaire heard the crashing thunder as twelve triggers were pulled on twelve muskets. He saw the flash of gunpowder and smelt the hideous stinging reek of their smoke. But before that, he saw something so terrible, so bad . . .
Those blue eyes that had become his entire world now widened and bulged with an agony beyond all words. The magic was gone from those eyes then, and the spell was broken. All of a sudden, Grantaire could see Enjolras' entire face. He could see the grimace of an unspeakable pain before those lips parted in a wordless cry which could not be transcribed into any human language.
There was pain in those eyes. Pain and fear and misery and guilt beyond all human imagining.
Then those two burning lights went out forever.
The hand around his tightened and then suddenly fell limp. Startled, Grantaire let go of it before he realised he had done so. Enjolras' slender frame was whipped around by a hideous forceful power. He sagged forward for a moment, as if he had been punched in the stomach – which he had been, if one thought about it – and something red flew forth from his lips.
Grantaire felt something spray across his face and arms and identified it before he could stop himself.
Then Enjolras was sent crashing back into the wall with enough force to make his head jerk back once before it slammed down, as still as sudden death.
The boy jerked back into the wall himself, as if feeling the bite of the musket balls. His fists pounded against the unfeeling stone and plaster. The crow heard his scream, and its heart bled for him.
But this was nowhere near over yet.
It felt like five hours, but it took Grantaire perhaps five seconds to realise the most horrible truth of all.
He was still alive.
Somehow, he did not understand, as his panicked brain processed what he had just seen, none of the balls had hit him. Had every last man in that firing squad had his musket trained on Enjolras? Had they even SEEN him standing there?
The blood still felt warm on his face, and he could taste its salty metallic tang. Enjolras' blood. The blood of an angel – a Christ crucified with musket balls instead of nails against a tavern wall.
Grantaire slumped to his knees, still pressed against the wall. His eyes were squeezed shut, but the tears still streamed from them. His entire face was a jagged rictus of pain and wild grief as he remembered this hideous vision.
HOW DID THIS HAPPEN?????????
i'm sorry boy so so sorry this was not your fault can you hear me this was not your fault
Grantaire fell to his knees in front of the dead man. He tried to look up into Enjolras' golden face, but felt warm blood drip down from above like the bitterest of rains. The tears of God Himself, falling onto a garden of misery and bleak, black flowers that opened their petals to bathe in the trauma of it all.
He opened his mouth to scream, whatever was necessary to let all this pain out of a body too pathetic to hold it all . . .
The boy's hands were smarting from pounding against the wall, but he was unaware of it.
Grantaire did not hear the muffled, disconcerted panic amongst the National Guards who realised that they had botched the job in the worst of possible ways. He did not see them all look helplessly to one another, then to their two officers, silently pleading to be told what to do.
He did not see the arrogant smile slowly slipping from the young sergeant's face as he looked upon this grotesque pas á deux. He did not see the look in the older officer's eyes as he roughly shoved the sergeant out of the way, grabbing for his own pistol.
He did not hear the officer's muttered curse, and nor did he hear the click of the pistol's hammer being cocked.
All he saw was the bleeding broken corpse that was once Enjolras, who had been more full of light and life than any of them, as if he were already made of the stuff of another world, a better world. The blazing sun he had stretched out towards was now gone forever. What was left apart from the approaching darkness he no longer cared about?
Then a pistol was fired and the shadows fell.