But what the hell is this world coming to?
– METALLICA, "Fight Fire With Fire"
All right, the crow thought to itself, no need to panic. This was completely unexpected and totally unwarranted, but no need to panic. Nobody had witnessed the murder and its charge had not been hurt. Nonetheless, the boy had not been brought back to beat a drunken ex-sergeant to death, and the bird knew that there could possibly be repercussions further down the track. It hoped that they would not come. In theory, the crow took no sides on these missions – it merely guided its charges on their journey, providing strength and moral support. In practice, however, it had learnt more about human suffering than it had ever imagined possible, and now it could sympathise with the boy's anger. What that fool had done to the boy's friend was wrong.
Which didn't make what the boy had done right. It was love (and a force of supernatural power, of course) which brought these souls back, but it had a tendency to blind them with depressing regularity. Grantaire had been sitting on an upturned box in the alley for several minutes now. The crow had decided to give him a bit of time to reflect on what he had done and see if he began sensing that something about this scenario was blatantly wrong. It looked like that was not going to happen.
There were three or four large empty wooden crates piled in one corner of the alley. Grantaire had not noticed them before, but after he let the body drop to the ground, he had backed away from it and sat down on one of them. He drew his knees up to his chin and wrapped his arms around them, unable to keep from trembling. Not once did his gaze leave the broken corpse lying on the other side of the alley; he smelt the blood hanging heavy in the damp air and he could see the brains ooze from the broken skull, gleaming faintly in the distant lamplight.
A few feet up the wall, directly overhead of the corpse slumped on the cobblestones, more blood was splashed across the mortar and uneven stones. This also gleamed. The corpse's face was turned slightly towards Grantaire, its expression slack and empty. The ground around the body was stained with inky blackness, but it was difficult to tell where the blood ended and the natural shadows began.
For the second time in his life – actually, that wasn't the right word was it? – his existence, his face and hands were sticky with another man's blood. But this was very different. The blood of this second man had been shed in the name of the first, and he had done it himself. He had killed Lucien Gautier as punishment for a wrong the man had committed without caring, and which he had barely remembered without prompting.
If he was completely honest, Grantaire had never really believed in anything much. The lofty sentiments and ideals his friends had bandied about made little sense to him. Liberty, equality, fraternity . . . empty catch phrases that had meant little or nothing in the overall scheme of things. But he'd had at least a vague idea that perhaps most men on earth had a right to exist the way they chose. To exist at all.
So much for that one, then. I've just killed a man.
And all of a sudden, this concept was not quite so horrifying as it once might have been. After all, wasn't he himself proof that perhaps Death was not quite the ultimate end to all that everyone made it out to be? Without being aware of it, Grantaire curled both his hands, as if they were still grasping Gautier's throat. As he did that, he recalled the man's flesh beneath his cold fingers and smelt the fear and pain radiating off his sweat-stained flesh.
". . . a wet-behind-the-ears student playing at being Saint-Just . . ."
Lucien Gautier had known nothing and cared nothing about Enjolras, and yet he had taken pleasure in his defeat and committed an atrocity terrible enough to make one of his own comrades turn away in disgust.
Bastard. Monster. Demon.
Grantaire's only regret now was that he had killed him so quickly. Why had he even approached him in the first place?
I only wanted to see what he had seen.
Or had he? As he had approached Gautier in the street, he had told himself that he only wanted to test out this strange power, see if he could look through Gautier's eyes. But even then had he been lying to himself? Had Gautier's fate been marked as soon as Grantaire had seen him staggering up the street with his companion? Or had it been marked before then, when he had stood over a broken marble statue and done the unspeakable? Before then, even? When did men become wicked?
"And THIS is the libation of holy water!"
The voice and those mocking words rose up and choked him. Closing his eyes, Grantaire fought to control himself once more, fought the hot tears welling up behind his eyes. He clenched his fists tighter still, his nails digging into the palms of his hands to the point that the flesh grew numb. To combat the mocking voice he concentrated on the pounding of his Lazarus heart, as its racing beat slowly receded and grew quiet once more.
The boy was beginning to cry again. This would not do. Although it knew that he knew no better, the crow could not help but be angry. It fluttered down and landed a few feet in front of Grantaire, between him and the body.
well that one deserves top marks for artistic impression boy
That bloody bird again! With a grunt of fury, Grantaire struck out at it with his fists. It eluded him easily, merely hopping back a couple of paces and glaring at him once more.
what are you going to do dash my head against a wall until it breaks
There was no mistaking the tone of the bird's Voice. It was well and truly pissed off. Grantaire was used to having that effect on others. But that didn't make him any less angry either. "That man desecrated Enjolras' body. He couldn't do that and live."
oh so that's your decision is it
"I made it my decision."
listen that man was an arrogant ignorant swine of the highest degree i'm not contesting that but you weren't brought back to kill him
"Look," Grantaire said with a sneer, spreading his bloodied hands, "if it's that much of a problem, then why don't you just bring him back too?"
I have to be patient, the crow thought to itself. The boy isn't making things any easier for me or for himself, but I have to be patient.
it's not me you should be declaring war on grantaire
"Well, who is it then?"
The crow sensed the anger and frustration in Grantaire's trembling voice and knew that the process had started. A new and dread purpose was beginning to flood through his limbs, but he would need to identify and understand it before he could control it. Inflicting pain was what he was here to do, he understood that perhaps, but not on just anyone. Unnecessary violence could corrupt him, endanger him.
the people who really hurt your friend
That horrible bitter smile twisted along Grantaire's lips again. With a one-shouldered shrug, he raised a hand and pointed at the body lying beyond the crow. The inference clear.
i am going to really have to spell this out aren't I
Grantaire glared back at the crow, the fury in his eyes matching the bird's. "So far you haven't come close to scratching letters in the dirt, let alone spelling things out."
all right let's look at this another way you understand you were brought back to complete something yes
"You don't ever seem to tell me anything else."
don't give me that boy it doesn't achieve anything
The boy glowered some more, but he leaned back on the box, resting his back against the wall and remained silent and receptive. The bird took a moment to glance out towards the street. If anybody did happen to pass, the boy, the crow and the corpse were obscured safely enough by shadows, but some inner force would start urging the boy onwards if he remained in any one place for too long.
now listen to me and answer from your heart do you have any idea what you were brought back for
Again, Grantaire was tempted to answer "No". But if he did, he would be lying. The suppressed urge which had been flickering within him since he relived his death in the back room of the Café Musain had burst into flame and now there was a name for it. Everything was beginning to make a horrible sort of sense. And what was that the bird had said a few moments ago, about declaring war?
do you know grantaire
"Yes," he whispered.
tell me
He tried to speak, but could not. After a pause he tried again, forcing the word out past his cold lips and into the open air. "Vengeance."
It's out in the open at last, the crow thought. He'll have to face it now, surely.
now let's just assume for the moment that you were right to kill that man that you were brought back to hunt down a dozen or so men who pointed their muskets at enjolras one afternoon and shot him down in cold blood
The crow had picked its callous words carefully, and saw the expected reaction. Grantaire's brow creased, and his eyes and fists clenched shut once more. But it could see that Grantaire was still thinking behind the bitter mask of pain, contemplating its words and searching for a conclusion.
so that would mean that you now had to find every single one of those men all of whom probably didn't even know his name and punish them all for doing their job and it wasn't just them was it does that mark every national guard who assaulted the barricade that day for death does something about that plan of attack seem even remotely wrong to you
When Grantaire opened his eyes, he was looking down at his own hands, streaked with Gautier's blood. The sight of it suddenly nauseated him. Without saying a word, he rose and looked about. He could see a barrel a few feet away, placed underneath a broken gutter high above. Water still dripped down, and a closer investigation revealed that the barrel was close to overflowing. What else could be in there apart from the water was something he preferred not to think about, but it would serve his purpose nonetheless.
Plunging his hands into the icy water, he half-expected to see the blood lift off his skin and trail away in liquid ruby ribbons. Of course, though, the light was so bad that the water itself might as well have been black as pitch. The coldness shocked him and did not abate when he rubbed his hands vigorously under the water, clumsily nudging the sleeves of his coat up, and submerging his arms up to the elbows. He could feel his very fingers going numb, but did not stop furiously scrubbing.
He did not need words to answer the crow's question, and it knew it. He could see it out the corner of his eye, perched on a broken crate and trying to pin him with its inscrutable black gaze.
grantaire i don't have all the answers i won't lie to you about that
Standing straight again, Grantaire turned around to face the crow, shaking the excess water off his hands before using the coat to dry them with. "How long has it been?"
the year is eighteen thirty seven
"WHAT!?!"
you and your friends died five years ago
He blinked at the crow in bewildered anger. "Five years? Why wait so long? Or, on the other hand, why stop at five years? Why not five centuries?" He took a step forward, his voice a low hiss of fury. "Just what the hell am I supposed to do?"
i think we're going to have to learn that together
But the boy was no longer listening. Trembling slightly, Grantaire felt his feet give way beneath him and he slipped down against the wall to the uneven cobblestones. Although he was still looking in the direction of the crow, his eyes were fixed on some point beyond it. "Five years," he whispered. "Plenty long enough to rot a carcass. Good God, we'd be nothing but bones by now." Then his dark eyes found focus once more, and his furious gaze snapped back towards the crow. "What did you do to me? And why me? Why not one of the others?"
why were you at the barricade grantaire
The question caught him completely off guard. "What?"
why did you join them
Grantaire snorted. "I wouldn't say that I 'joined' them. Unless slumping at a table in a drunken coma can be counted as a valid form of political protest."
Words spoken flippantly, but they echoed hollowly in his heart. Even if he had been stone-cold sober he seriously doubted that he could have been instrumental to their fight. Even stone-cold sober, he knew Enjolras would have been reluctant to accept him after so many previous disappointments. When Enjolras had spoken so harshly to him, he had seriously contemplated rising to his feet, staggering out the doorway and walking on unsteady feet away from the Corinth – this tavern that would become a charnel-house in a matter of hours.
But he had stayed. What could possibly be left to him, if they no longer breathed? Well, I know the answer to that question now, that's for sure. "They were my friends. I couldn't sit on my arse elsewhere in Paris listening to the gunfire and knowing that they were killing themselves."
oh i think there is more to it than that
"You do, do you?" He spoke bitterly, because he knew the crow was right.
their fight was never yours and they knew it you would have been forgiven for leaving
"I didn't want to leave," he muttered.
all right but why did you stay
"Because it seemed as good a place as any else to be."
The crow's dark eyes flashed. It looked angry again. Its Voice thundered through Grantaire's mind.
you want to know why you and not any of the others i'm trying to answer that question but I can't do that if you won't try to answer mine for goodness sake just get over yourself in all your lauded cynicism for a moment and co-operate
The crow's anger made his head hurt.
"I STAYED BECAUSE OF ENJOLRAS!" The fury in his own voice helped blot out the pain somewhat, but only momentarily. "You think I didn't know what would happen? I was there in 1830, I knew they wouldn't get off so easily a second time. But I stayed for him. I never believed a fucking word he said but I believed in him. Work that one out. I wanted to show him that despite all my other miserable failings I was capable of staying there for him. THERE! ARE YOU HAPPY NOW?" Visions of blood and pained blue eyes whistled through his mind, and he buried his head in his arms, fighting against them.
The crow felt Grantaire's anger raging against it with the might of a gale force wind. Bowing its head it withstood the fury and waited until it abated. When it looked up again, Grantaire was still huddling in his borrowed coat, trembling ever so slightly.
i think you just answered your own question
Very slowly, Grantaire lifted his head. His eyes were still wet with tears, but there was a haunting vacant look in them that the crow did not like at all. It had seen it many times, but it still hated it.
"He was everything I couldn't be. I think that's why he fascinated so, sick as that sounds. Noble, austere, nauseatingly idealistic . . ."
your other half
He looked up, startled by the unexpected truth. The crow returned his unblinking gaze. "Choose your own words," Grantaire shrugged, still feeling completely numbed on the inside. Slowly, carefully, he pulled himself to his feet. The crow flew up into the rim of the water barrel and remained gazing solemnly up at him.
"What did they do wrong?" Grantaire asked the bird quietly. "Can you tell me that? What did they do that was so wrong they deserved to die like that?"
like i said grantaire i don't have all the answers
Grantaire snorted again and began to move away. Then the crow's Voice cut through him like a hot knife.
but they're not the ones standing before me asking that question are they
He snapped his head around and looked back at the crow. "What do you mean?"
your friends know why they died
"And so do I," he countered automatically.
i'm listening
"I wanted to die with Enjolras. To prove to him I was capable of that, at least."
Again burning visions swam up to greet him, and again he tried to push them back.
and why did enjolras die
"Why did Enjolras live? For the idiot cause he'd doubtless been championing since he could walk and talk."
you speak contemptuously of his principles and yet you admired him why is that
The crow was genuinely curious.
"Because he had the courage to believe in something so abstract, and he could make others believe in it too." Grantaire almost spat the words. "He was a constant marvel to me. How could someone be so completely convinced that they're in the right? Even the 1830 debacle wasn't a big enough slap in the face to give him pause for thought."
but something was
The statement struck him in the pit of his already churning stomach. Grantaire looked away from the crow, towards the corpse lying on the other side of the alleyway. He didn't want to ask the crow what it meant. He knew what the crow meant.
He'd seen the look in Enjolras' eyes as he'd died. There had been guilt and fear and doubt. And as long as his lungs breathed and his heart pumped blood around his living dead body, that look and that pain would remain a part of him.
perhaps he wasn't as uncorrupted as you thought
Grantaire looked back at the crow, and the crow saw that icy fury in his eyes once more. "You take that back."
The crow sensed that they were approaching the crux of the matter. Although the boy was looking at him in that horrible way again, this point would have to be forced home if he was to understand. It shuffled on the rim of the barrel but did not look away.
your god of the absolute died doubting himself and what in the entire world did you have to believe in except for him
"I knew he was no god!" Gods don't bleed, he added bleakly to himself. But, much as he loathed the crow for what it was telling him, he knew that it was right. That truth was carved across his own heart.
The crow flapped its wings and cawed harshly. Its "words" slammed into Grantaire with all the force of musket balls and he reeled against them.
his faith gave his life meaning and his life gave meaning to yours without his conviction what was he and without him to believe in what were you your fates were intertwined boy sorry but that's the brutal truth and you saw when he died that something had killed that faith and conviction without it he was nothing and without it you were nothing
Grantaire stood motionless as a statue and returned the crow's gaze, no longer fighting against its Voice and its horrid truth. Perhaps he understood now that there was no point in fighting – if he was to have any hope of completing his dark mission, he would have to embrace this pain and accept it as his own.
has it ever occurred to you that perhaps you did mean something to him after all you were the only one out of any of them who saw the man behind the marble masque and he knew it all too well
"I never understood him."
you loved him for what he was not what he represented but that's beside the point what you must ask yourself now is what could have happened to him that was terrible enough to kill the things that gave him meaning and purpose what happened that made him doubt himself what evil polluted his dream
Grantaire opened his mouth, hoping that some impromptu cynicism would spew forth. But the weapon that had served him best during life was temporarily inactive, leaving him nothing but naked honesty. "Is that what I'm here to find and destroy?"
The crow sighed inwardly. The boy had finally stopped fighting against it.
sure looks that way to me
There was another rumble from above. Grantaire looked up past the dark walls looming over him, towards the thick clouds enveloping the sky. Somewhere beyond those clouds were the stars. Beyond the stars were . . . Did he know? Where had he gone, after he had been killed, and where were his friends? Even now, he wasn't sure if he believed there was a Heaven and Hell, but all of a sudden this world seemed even colder and bleaker than before. He was here, and he was alone.
"But what does any of that mean now?" he asked the crow flatly, still looking up. "I thought death was suppose to render Man's petty trials and tribulations redundant. I thought that was supposed to be the monstrous joke of it all. It wasn't fair – nothing much in this world is, I suspect – but he died. We all did. Why couldn't you just leave it at that? Why couldn't you leave us in peace?"
who said anything about peace
He looked back towards the crow. It had not moved. "What?"
i said who said anything about peace
"I heard you," Grantaire snapped, "I want to know what you mean."
i can't speak for the others but what makes you so sure that enjolras is at rest
Grantaire's voice was trembling, and that look of fearful uncertainty was back in his eyes. "I . . . I don't know. He always behaved like he had a bloody death-wish and that wish was granted, wasn't it? He got his riot –"
i thought we'd just been through this you saw with your own eyes what was stolen from him now you tell me how he could have lost that marched his friends into an early grave and be at peace
"WELL, WHAT'S THAT GOT TO DO WITH ME???"
absolutely everything my boy your reliance on him connected you to him in a way neither of you could possibly have comprehended and it worked both ways you were the only one who could criticise or challenge his principles and because of that you meant something to him that the others did not
"So?" He had begun pacing unsteadily across the stones, like a caged and cornered animal that knew there was nowhere left to run.
you dared to hope that dying together could solve the conflict between you sorry but that obviously wasn't the case
No . . .
But the Voice continued remorselessly.
ever since you died you've been completely lost to each other the others all moved on but you and he could not – his pain trapped him in a prison of isolation and because you could not connect with him you've been wandering your own twisted path of limbo
Cold tears trickled from Grantaire's eyes, but he barely noticed them. He desperately wished that he could contradict the crow but knew he could not. Its words cut into him like razors because he knew that they were true. "So the only way I can free myself is by freeing him. Why can't he free himself?"
i don't know grantaire but i do know one thing
"What's that?"
The bird flapped its wings decisively, and looked at him steadily.
someone or something out there heard your twin songs of sadness echoing through the land of the dead and decided that you were both worth saving this is your only chance and your only hope grantaire find the evil that shattered your friend and destroy it do that and you can be with him again
"And finally get to prove to him that perhaps I'm not such a failure after all."
if you want to look at it that way yes there's that too but the stakes are considerably higher now aren't they
The crow watched the boy closely as he considered this. A sad smile twisted across his lips, and he gave that one-shouldered shrug again. "Well, I've certainly got nothing now. What is there to lose?"
With that, the boy turned around and slowly walked towards the mouth of the alley. He didn't give the corpse a second glance. With another soft caw, the crow launched itself into the air and skimmed noiselessly across the few yards that separated them. It landed on the boy's shoulder as he stood looking up and down the street. Not a soul to be seen.
A sharp unexpected wind was blowing through streets, scattering papers and leaves and other pieces of detritus. The clouds were thinner in some sections, and the ghostly silhouette of a moon could be faintly discerned, allowing sickly pale beams of cool silver light to hit the glistening pavement. The cool wind bit into Grantaire, but it was nothing compared to the coldness surrounding his heart. He felt the crow shiver and lean closer against him. It had been silent since the alley. And then . . .
a penny for your thoughts
He walked on in silence for a few moments before replying.
"I need a drink."