This is just a little ficlet, in which Enjolras is the one musing over Greek mythology, for once!
Any other God.
Apollo.
It is whispered, reverently. It is a comparison that they will not allow him to dispose of, one they argue was made for him.
Beautiful Enjolras, dedicated Enjolras.
No.
Enjolras is never enough, not when they can have an immortal instead. Perhaps their pretence that it is a god that leads them instead of the painfully flawed, that gets them through the fear of failure. Perhaps they believe themselves protected, having found favour.
They don't realise that it is often the gods favourites who suffer the most tortured of fates. Apollo's Troy burned, after all.
Apollo. Always Apollo. He blames Grantaire for the label; the drunk is responsible for many things, this endless tag being the worst. It was Grantaire who had pointed out the similarities, and it was Grantaire who had deemed him an adequate stand in.
Grantaire threw the name around as a supposed compliment, and the others had all caught on to it. Intelligent like Apollo, they all agree. Stunningly attractive, like Apollo. Eyes of ice, just like Apollo.
Hard and self-centred, just like Apollo. Petty and jealous, like Apollo. Free and flamboyant, like Apollo. He wonders if they attribute those aspects of the god to him when he is no longer in the room.
Any other god, and he would have born the name as he had all the others these past few years. Pretty boy. Rich boy. Naïve child. Silly child. They were ones forced on him by class and a strict desire by those of his own to make sure nothing changed, by people who didn't claim to know him or considered themselves ready to die by his side.
Arrogant, like Apollo. Traitoress, like Apollo. Self-serving, like Apollo.
Atlas carried the weight of the world on his shoulders, Dionysus was the God of theatre and therefore invented many of the masks that Enjolras wore. Artemis stood for purity, Athena for the good war. Zeus led, Achilles died for what he believed in.
But it is Apollo they chose, and it is Apollo they continue as their mantra, their call. He feels a part of him fall to pieces each time the cursed name is used, and he wonders if there was ever a chance of them succeeding, when none of them can see past the marble statue of their leader that they have somehow mistaken for a deity he couldn't be striving harder not to be.
It is a compliment only to those who care about the superficial. That his 'friends' see him in this light is a failure on someone's part, although he is not sure whose. Can he blame them for not knowing, or is he at fault for not being convincing enough as a human?
Or any other God.
Cruel, like Apollo. Transparent, like Apollo. Heartless, like Apollo.
Forever alone, like Apollo.
He's starting to forget who Enjolras even is. He's certain now that the others never knew who he was, in the first place.
Apollo.
The name has damned him more than a thousand guards ever could.