Part Five: A Difference of Opinion
Grantaire forces his eyes away from Enjolras, down to the table that his hands are resting on until he can trust his eyes to stay on Bahorel, Jehan, Monet, and Feuilly rather than gazing beyond them. He may have managed to drag himself away from the alpha, from the siren call of Enjolras' power and the instincts that it resurrects so easily, but keeping his attention away from the alpha is another matter entirely. He will manage, though. He will interact with the rest of the pack. He will come to know them, get a feel for how they interact, and decide if he really is considering their offer of a place in their society.
Besides, it doesn't really matter where he is or where he looks. The entire pack hums with Enjolras' power, a steady, beautiful thrumming just below the level of hearing. The entire room smells of the pack, of safety, of surety, and since the pack-smell is based in part on Enjolras it means the entire room smells a little bit like him.
"You look somewhat stunned." Monet smiles as he speaks.
"He just met Enjolras." The quiet humor in Jehan's voice is unmistakable. "A face of beauty, a body honed to grace, a soul of sharp steel. If he wasn't stunned, I'd say there was something wrong with him."
"That was one of those Oriental poems, wasn't it?" Bahorel grimaces, shaking his head as he turns to Grantaire. "He's prone to poetry, unfortunately. It's much better when he's not speaking it as it comes into his head, though he does have a tendency to flatter our illustrious leader and the rest of us with his verses."
"It's not flattery if it's true." Jehan keeps his head low, but his eyes are angled upward to glance at Bahorel, and the corners of his mouth are turned up in an expression of contentment and joy. "You have the soul of the wild in you. Enjolras has the soul of the revolution. Using words to try to capture the flavor of those essences may be an unachievable task, but that doesn't make the effort any less worthy."
Grantaire stays quiet, gaze traveling between the four pack members sitting with him. The conversation has the familiarity of a well-visited topic, and all four wolves seem quite content with the situation.
Turning his attention from the group he's sitting with to the room at large, Grantaire tries to look at the pack and their den from an unbiased viewpoint. If he's really considering joining this pack, and he must admit to himself now that he wants to, then he should know what it will entail.
Enjolras sits at a table with Combeferre and Courfeyrac, the three of them bent over a handful of books and scattered papers. The three are lost in conversation with each other, their expressions showing eagerness, joy, determination. Even when Courfeyrac shakes his head emphatically and jabs a finger down at the paper Enjolras is writing on there is no hint of tension.
Many alphas would bite a subordinate who took a liberty such as that, showed with such unrestrained passion a disdain for anything the alpha was saying. Enjolras simply raises his eyebrows and turns to Combeferre, an expression that could almost be a faint smile gracing his face.
Bahorel clears his throat, and Grantaire gives a guilty start, turning his attention back to the four at his table. He will not be distracted by Enjolras. He will focus on the rest of the pack first, because they will be as important as Enjolras is in determining whether this will truly be a safe and secure place to call…
He can't even finish the thought, and a self-deprecating smile rises to Grantaire's face as he lifts his glass of wine in a silent toast to the other wolves. Their opinion of him will matter, as well, and he needs to start making an impression as more than a wonder-struck pup.
"You could join them." Bahorel's grin takes on a wicked edge. "They always welcome additional commentary on their plans. I'd recommend studying up on your knowledge of the great political activists and thinkers of the last two thousand years or so, though. If you need a shorter reading list, Enjolras is most fond of—"
"Bahorel, be kind." Jehan cuts in, laying a hand on Bahorel's arm. "He's still getting used to Enjolras, as I said."
"I think I should wait a bit before joining them in whatever endeavor they're planning." Giving another self-deprecating grin, Grantaire raises his glass in another toast. "Preferably I will wait until I can be articulate in front of him—them."
Keeping his eyes carefully away from Enjolras, Grantaire scans the rest of the pack's small den. The tables are well-used. There's little evidence of fur or claws having been present in the room, further proof that this isn't their primary den, that this is a place they have claimed as their own but that isn't as secure as a pack's primary den has to be. There's very little so far as decoration on the walls, but what there is brings Grantaire's thoughts screeching to a halt.
Setting his drink down slowly, he raises one hand to point at the map carefully pinned to the wall. "That's a map of the Republic."
Bahorel grins.
"Observation and tact are clearly not his strong points." Feuilly murmurs under his breath, but not quietly enough to keep Grantaire's better-than-human hearing from picking up the words.
Monet laughs, a rich, vibrant sound.
Jehan glares at the more dominant wolves, bringing their laughter and soft comments to a quick close. Turning to Grantaire, his expression softens and he nods gravely. "It is."
"That could mean trouble for you." Grantaire frowns between the four wolves, not certain where to focus his concerns. "I know this is one of your places, but still, to brandish beliefs that the humans have been killing over for the last three decades…"
"It's what we believe in." Bahorel's smile has faded, replaced by a mask of solid, unwavering determination. "It's what our pack's fighting for."
"But—I don't…" Grantaire stumbles to a halt, frowning. "But it's… human."
"Are we not human, then?" Feuilly raises his eyebrows, taking a slow drink while he studies Grantaire.
"Well… I mean, we look like them for about half the time, but…" Grantaire shrugs hopelessly, looking to the other natural-born wolves. "We're Children of the Pack. We're werewolves." The human word feels strange in his mouth, but perhaps it will mean more to this impossible wolf. "We aren't human, no, and thus the affairs of humans aren't our affairs except where they threaten our existence."
"Tyranny threatens the existence of everyone who lives under it, be they human or something… more." Feuilly's stare is icy cold, the hint of a growl in his voice. "I will not stop caring about the people I share the world with simply because I have become something… something…"
"It's all right, love." Monet moves so that he's pressed against Feuilly's side, the female wolf's head rubbing against Feuilly's in a gesture of comfort. His eyes meet Grantaire's, and he remembers to lower his head in deference to the two higher-ranked wolves. "He's a stray. He doesn't understand."
"I understand a great deal." Grantaire can't help but raise his eyes to meet Monet's. "I think I understand more about humans than most natural-born wolves would, having lived in their company for the last several years. I understand that they change governments like they change clothes, that they fight over who will be dominant as fiercely as any wolf does, that their packs have grown so large they have become unwieldy and unkind, and that they will happily shed blood in the name of whatever alpha they find most palatable. I understand that if they knew what we were, they would most likely slaughter us all. I understand that their problems have been several centuries in the making, and that all of their attempts to correct them in the last few decades have resulted in even worse problems. I…"
Grantaire pauses, face warm, eyes dropping down to the table again as he registers the looks the other four wolves are favoring him with.
"Yes?" Bahorel gives the prompt, sounding almost amused. "Do continue."
"I seem to have lost my train of thought." Grantaire mumbles the words, head still down, fists clenched. Why did he have to do that? Why did he start speaking and not stop? Insulting these wolves about something that they obviously care about, when he really doesn't have much knowledge of the topic or caring either way, was not what he set out to do.
"I'd say it's rather you had several trains of thought that became a tangled mess. It's a rather beautiful political mess, though, entangling our species' rather taciturn and difficult relationship with humans with their own difficult and brutal relationships with each other. There's certainly a good thesis in there somewhere." Bahorel drains his glass in a few swift gulps before setting it firmly on the table. "I'm also quite certain it's not one that we agree with."
"Try making an argument one point at a time, Grantaire, and we'll try to share our beliefs with you." Jehan speaks gently but with no less force or determination than Bahorel. "Perhaps we can come to some sort of understanding."
Grantaire hesitates. "And if we don't come to an understanding… what happens? You'll refuse to allow me entry to the pack?"
Feuilly shakes his head, frowning in annoyance. "Your entry to the pack and our politics aren't the same thing, stray. They may be entangled, slightly, but only in so far as I'm sure you wouldn't want to be in a group that endangers itself for a cause you don't believe in."
Grantaire says nothing, trying to keep his expression neutral. Normally he would agree. Normally he would say having anything to do with buying trouble, with getting involved in the human's revolutions, was something he didn't want. He can still feel the weight of Enjolras' power, though. He can still hear the echoing silence of the words he won't let himself think—home, pack, safety—and he isn't sure, anymore, if he'd really willingly turn his back on them because of something as petty and human as politics.
"What do you think of humans, Grantaire?" Monet asks the question, still leaning against Feuilly.
"I think…" Grantaire hesitates, eyes sliding over Feuilly without actually settling on the other wolf. "I think they're a great deal like us. I think they're capable of greatness and compassion but more often could be said to be petty or cruel or brutal."
"Compassion…" Jehan fixes Grantaire with a bemused look. "That's not a word I've heard many of the Pack use with such reverence. Loyalty, certainly, and love, but compassion is different than either. Compassion is caring for the other, for the one not self, not Pack, and that is a concept that many of our people find… difficult."
"At one point, maybe." Grantaire shifts uncomfortably, frowning as he meets Jehan's gaze. "Not for the last two hundred years or so, though. Compassion is something that extends to all wolves, to all Pack members, be they of your pack or not, because we need to stand together against…"
Feuilly smiles wryly. "Against the humans?"
Grantaire doesn't really need Bahorel's hand on his head to guide him in dropping his gaze, his shoulders, showing proper obeisance to the more dominant wolves. It doesn't bother him, though, to have the reminder. "They slaughtered our kind, along with any others that they determined were different, were heretics. Loyalty to our species has become as much a part of Pack thinking as loyalty to ones own pack-mates."
"Meaning that our people are capable of learning." Monet makes the assertion, tipping his chair back. "Our people are capable of extending compassion to others that our instincts don't dictate. If we can love and defend other wolves simply for being Pack, why can't we extend the same courtesy to humans? We are all sentient, sapient creatures. We share the same Earth. We share the same cities. We breathe the same air, and suffer under the same catastrophes."
"They've tried to exterminate us every time they've found some of our kind." Grantaire shrugs his shoulders. "It's difficult to have compassion for someone who has no compassion for you."
"I'd say that's the very definition of compassion, actually." Jehan's hand tousles Grantaire's hair, a gesture of fondness, of reassurance from a higher-ranked wolf to a lower one. "Besides, they attack us because they fear us, just as we hide from them because we fear them. If there were, instead of fear, understanding; if there were camaraderie instead of division; if there was education instead of myth, imagine what kind of progress could be made."
"So you're potentially risking your lives for these human rebellions in order to bring understanding?" Grantaire suddenly sits straight in his chair, head thrown back, all pretense at submission gone. "You're actually considering telling humans what we are?"
"Not right now." Bahorel reaches over again and tilts Grantaire's head down, his hand firm but not rough. "We're not fools. We'll educate people when they're ready, make sure that revealing ourselves won't lead to a bloodbath. And it's not just to win ourselves allies that we speak of revolution and rights. People have a right to a government that represents and supports them. People have a right to choose their leaders, not have them thrust upon them in the name of some divine right."
Grantaire blinks, frowning down at the table in confusion. "You really believe that? Despite how the Pack works?"
"It really doesn't contradict how the Pack works." Patting his hand gently, Monet offers him a comforting smile.
"I'm fairly certain it does. The Pack is like the monarchy, with the alpha as the king and everyone slotting into place beneath him."
"No." Feuilly shakes his head. "If you think in very general terms, I suppose it seems that way. But you said the most important argument against that in your rant. Werewolves have alphas, yes, but we have no central government. We have small packs, and wolves choose their own pack. Wolves choose their alpha, and the alpha chooses the wolves in his pack. The monarchy is, instead, imposed upon people—upon the Pack, though I know most wolves claim to have no caring or concerns about who leads the humans. No human can choose a different king, not without giving up their family, their home, their livelihood."
"And having people choose and change their alpha would be better?" Grantaire raises his eyebrows, the skepticism clear in his voice. "People have no way of telling who has power and who doesn't. We can smell who should be an alpha, who has the power to hold a pack together. All humans have is words, and many of them aren't even terribly good with those. How are they going to find people to lead them, and who's to say that the ones they choose won't be worse than the ones they have?"
"It can't get much worse, Grantaire." Jehan speaks slowly. "People are dying. Children starve in the street. Women sell themselves in desperation. Men search for work and find nothing, or worse, work and are given virtually nothing for it. And their alphas, the ones who claim they are given the divine right to lead them, do nothing, staying in their world of opulence, occasionally giving murmurs of sorrow for their pack-mates dying in the cold. The winter is not just bitter for strays. And how much worse to be a human freezing, to have someone who claims to be your alpha and cares little for your well-being or, worse, blames you for freezing while he holds all the firewood!"
"Men are capable of recognizing good leaders." Feuilly glances at Enjolras, and Grantaire barely manages to keep himself from following suit. "Humans may not scent power, but they can sense it in their own ways. And they respond well to compassion, and they can be educated to make even better choices than the ones that their hearts see."
"The last time the humans tried a republic, the streets ran red with blood, and our people cowered for fear that we would be discovered and add Pack blood as a spice to the massacre." Grantaire doesn't remember it, but every wolf born to their generation has been told of the fear, of the confusion, of the hesitancy to do anything and the desperate measures taken to protect Pack homes when the Change was unavoidable.
"What happened before was regrettable. Given the right leaders and the right timing, though, we could keep something like that from happening again." Bahorel, too, glances at Enjolras, a fond smile sliding across his features. "We don't intend to die, Grantaire. I've no interest in being a martyr, or in making any other men into martyrs. It may still happen, true, but I would much prefer to see the new world that I fight for."
"We refuse, however, to be ashamed of our beliefs. Hence the map." Jehan gestures toward the object that had sparked the whole debate. A sly smile touches the other man's mouth. "Besides, a hint of danger makes life that much more exciting and worthwhile to experience, doesn't it?"
"While the excitement part is undeniably true, the worthwhile is something that could be debated." Grantaire smiles, studying the other four wolves again. "Not tonight, though. I fear I'm outmatched in any debate when there are four of you to one of me. I also suspect that you've had much more time to formulate your thoughts and theories on the subject than I have. Perhaps another night?"
It's a bold statement. It assumes there will be another night. It assumes the pack will keep him with them, for a little bit, at least.
It earns laughter and smiles and a flurry of hands on his head, arms around his shoulder. He doesn't care that they tilt his head down, placing him in a position of submission, making his stance align with his scent.
They listened to him.
They cared about what he said.
They're gentle when they correct him, seeming more amused or bemused than angered by his oddities.
When Enjolras calls the pack to order later in the evening, suggesting that they go home, Grantaire is given barely a moment to hesitate before Jehan and Bahorel each take one of his arms, dragging him along with the pack. He will sleep with the pack, in their den, in the place that they call home. He will have a chance to Change in safety if he wishes, to stretch legs that haven't seen nearly enough work the last few weeks.
It will make it more dangerous for him if they decide, later, that they don't want him. They may decide it's too dangerous to simply turn him loose, that his knowledge of them is too exact. It would be wiser for him to turn them down, to pull away, to make an excuse.
He doesn't even try, because it doesn't matter anymore.
If they will have him, he will join this pack, no matter how strange and incomprehensible their ideals.
If they won't have him, if they decide that they don't want him after giving him this taste of companionship and belonging… then their potential desire to kill him won't really make all that big a difference, in the end.
