Uh, hello, tonal shift. But I figure if the play's got "miserable" in the name, I can switch from fluffy modern AU to way-dark almost-canon.

A lil bit of Wicked, in which Enjolras is the Elphaba of my dreams and Grantaire is a somewhat vague Fiyero. (Although it doesn't come up in this scenario, Grantaire and Fiyero are the same person, and I will fight anyone who says otherwise.)

CW for violence and suicidal content, though nothing too graphic.

III.
"No Good Deed"
Wicked

Enjolras had never felt pain before this moment. He thought he had. He'd spent seventeen years in the southeast provinces, under the thumb of a violent, royalist father and a bitter, distant mother. He'd grown up learning how to grit your teeth and keep silent. Scars didn't exist if no one saw them but you.

He escaped his father's beatings on a scholarship to Paris, boiling over with self-righteous anger and wild ambition. He'd vented it into fistfights with the privileged aristocratic boys of the Marais, who mocked his provincial accent and studious nature—dozens of fights, each of which he'd lost.

Just six months ago, he'd been jumped in Saint-Michel on his way home from a protest. Beaten by three men and robbed of his jacket, his watch, and all the money he had to his name.

But none of those had really been pain.

Not like this.

He screamed before he could stop himself. It echoed loud beyond his closed eyes. A strangled, shattered sound. He lay on the ground, crumpled on his side where he'd fallen. Somewhere. He didn't know where. His memory wouldn't stitch together. He couldn't remember why everything hurt. Why his leg throbbed, thick and sticky with warm blood. What had happened to his chest, causing the sharp stab of what must have been multiple broken ribs.

Find out where you are, he told himself. Make sure you're safe, and then figure out what to do. One thing at a time. He spoke to himself with the same forced calm he'd turned to in childhood, the kind of levelheaded rationality that could fight off panic like nothing else could.

Taking his own advice, Enjolras forced his eyes open. He saw nothing but a stone floor pooled with his own blood. He tried to sit up, but the movement ripped another scream from him. His vision narrowed, blurred black at the edges. How had he—

The Corinthe.

Panting, he sank down onto his back, staring at the ceiling. He remembered now. The Corinthe. Cornered in the top floor of the wineshop with fifteen National Guardsmen at his throat. He fought as many as he could. Shot four, beat another unconscious with the broken end of his pistol. He could not fight fifteen. They struck him over the head with their guns, threw him to the ground. A gunshot was too quick an end for a rebel. They would let his death linger. Pistols, fists, feet, one after another until the last blow he remembered, a kick to the head. And then, nothing.

Apparently they hadn't killed him. He didn't know why.

He forced himself to sit up. The whimper that escaped him wasn't dignified, but dignity had never seemed less important. He leaned his back against the wall behind him. Without help from the stone, he couldn't keep himself upright.

This, he could see now, was not the Corinthe.

He was in a small, dark room, stone floor and walls and little else. Behind him, moonlight streamed through a narrow barred window. He must have been unconscious for hours. They had taken him to prison. Away from the Corinthe. Away from the bodies.

The bodies.

Vomit rose in his throat, but he forced it down. He remembered that now, too.

The bodies, strewn across the floor of the wineshop. Abandoned. His friends' bodies.

Courfeyrac. His bright, youthful face silent. That ever-present smile vanished. His eyes had been open when he died. God only knew what he'd seen.

Combeferre. Enjolras' first friend in Paris. His roommate for three years. His brother. Face rent with a bullet through the cheek, deep enough to reveal the bone beneath.

And—

His breath caught.

Enjolras' eyes had finally adjusted to the thin moonlight. He had grasped enough consciousness to understand where he was, and why.

And to see that he was not alone in this cell.

There, right beside him. So close he hadn't even seen. A dark-haired man. Tall. Lightly bearded. Older than Enjolras, but not by much. Eyes closed. Barely breathing. Bleeding from three bullet wounds, two in the arm and one in the chest.

"Grantaire," he whispered.

Grantaire's hand was outstretched, almost touching Enjolras' foot. Even unconscious, he had been reaching out.

"No," Enjolras said to no one. "No."

Do you permit it?

"No."

He did not permit this.

He remembered everything now. Merciless memory.

Grantaire. Broken and bleeding. One more disaster on his head. One more to add to his ever-growing supply.

Heedless of his pain, he pulled Grantaire toward him. Cradled Grantaire's head in his lap like a sleeping child. His fingers stroked Grantaire's hair. They came away wet with blood.

How many times had he dreamed of doing this? Hundreds of times. Every time they'd met at the Musain, he'd thought of this, of holding Grantaire close, of running his fingers through Grantaire's hair, of being alone with him in the dark, listening to his heartbeat. He'd burned for it. Would burn for it. Why, now, did he remember everything?

He remembered Grantaire sprawled at a back table in the café, tossing vulgar interjections into the pauses between Enjolras' words. Enjolras had gritted his teeth and fought not to think about the slant of Grantaire's sly smile, the seductive confidence in every one of his movements, the way Enjolras' name sounded like a caress in his mouth.

He'd thrown himself into work like a coward. Pushed the feeling away. He would wake in the middle of the night with Grantaire's name on his lips, brushed with sweat, consumed with desire. And instead of savoring it, instead of knocking on Grantaire's door and making something of it, he would light the lamp and write feverish speeches until dawn. The work always mattered more. The work. He'd flung aside his own happiness, worked himself into illness and anxiety and exhaustion, weathered bitter loneliness, for the work.

For this?

The prison door opened, admitting a rush of light and two men. Wild and desperate, Enjolras held Grantaire to him. He would die to protect him—the only one left to protect, the only one he'd ever longed to keep safe. But the men didn't care what Enjolras wanted. One swift kick to his side, and Enjolras crumpled sideways with a scream. The man's boot had caught his shattered rib. Through the pain, he couldn't fight. The guards gripped Grantaire, one by each arm, and dragged him out of the cell.

For questioning.

And then, after that?

"No—" he said, staggering up.

The door slammed shut.

"Grantaire!"

Enjolras screamed it. Didn't mean to. His brain crumbled, lungs collapsed, everything devolved into those two syllables, ripped from his throat until his voice cracked.

He dragged himself toward the door, but there was no handle on the inside. Of course not. What was done was done. What he'd done was done. Breathing heavily, he took his head in his hands.

"Whatever they do to him," he said aloud, to the stillness of his cell, "let him feel no pain. Please, God. Let him feel nothing."

What was he saying? What good were his words? What God was he praying to? Damn God, the two-faced bastard. How dare he. Of all of them, of all of anything, the one man who deserved to live.

Sweet Grantaire, the innocent cynic.

To see his body dragged from a prison cell like a piece of garbage no one would claim.

Grantaire would die.

Because of him.

Grantaire would die because of him.

Had Enjolras really believed in revolution? Liberty? Justice? Death was part of all three. Freedom was always paid for in blood, always. Yet somehow death still shocked him. He couldn't have understood what he'd asked for. Did he really want revolution? Or had he only been seeking attention? The love and approval of his working-class friends—he isn't like the other aristocrats, they would say, he isn't like his father. He's a friend of those who suffer, though he doesn't suffer, doesn't know what it means. This one belongs to us.

The question hurt more than he would admit. He didn't know the answer to it.

Enjolras had kept his emotions hidden for twenty-two years. There was no room for them, not in the world as he knew it. He couldn't remember the last time he'd cried. But this, now, was not crying.

He wept.

Wept without sound or motion. The tears had taken control of themselves. They fell without consent from his body and left clean tracks through the blood on his cheeks. He didn't brush them away.

The National Guard thought Enjolras was a murderer. A traitor. Worthy of death.

They were right.

He'd betrayed his friends. They were dead because of him. Even with Grantaire in his arms, Enjolras couldn't save him.

There was only one punishment for traitors of that nature.

Enjolras felt the weight in his jacket pocket as if it had appeared there that very moment. It had been there all along, of course. But it had not edged onto his consciousness until he needed it. He sat up onto his knees and dropped one hand into his pocket. The pads of his fingers brushed along cool metal.

His tears blended into laughter, both at once. It sounded like a mad ghost.

They hadn't taken it from him. The pride of the king's justice, paragons of the law itself, and they hadn't taken it from him.

God might be a two-faced bastard, but at least he was an excellent listener.

Courfeyrac and Combeferre had been like brothers to Enjolras since the day he arrived in Paris. Combeferre had found him a place to stay. Courfeyrac had introduced him to the Musain. Both had protected him when his father—drunk, angry, belligerent—had turned up on Enjolras' doorstep and threatened to turn him over to the magistrate as a seditionist.

Yet, as Enjolras caressed the metal in his pocket, it was Grantaire's voice he heard in his head.

It would help, Apollo, if I knew you were waiting for me when it's over.

The door opened again, admitting another pair of guards. Different ones. They edged back in alarm, seeing the pistol Enjolras had drawn from his jacket pocket.

"Disarm, or we'll shoot," the guard said, drawing his own gun.

As if Enjolras cared for anything less than his life. He'd never done a good deed in his life. All of it failure, all of it disaster. But he could do one now.

If you'll permit it, R, he thought.

Whenever you're ready, Grantaire said in his head. I won't be long.

Without speaking a word, Enjolras pressed the pistol against the roof of his mouth, closed his eyes, and fired.