pro_patria_mortuus | (no subject)

As it happens, Grantaire is in his lodgings. He is asleep. This would be very nearly civilized, except that he has not quite made it to the bed, and is instead sprawled on the floor with his head pillowed on the bottom of a duvet. Points for effort, Grantaire!

Enjolras knocks, waits, knocks again more sharply.

Grantaire might not be in. He might equally be in a stupor.

"Grantaire. Are you there?"

The response is a snore.

Yes, then. Enjolras regards the door with brief exasperation.

If this were a less important matter, he might wait. That doesn't seem prudent. (If Grantaire were a closer friend, he might have a key in any case, but that has never been an option between them. For -- many reasons.)

He knocks again, louder. Pitches his voice louder as well: "Grantaire, I must speak with you."

The next snore explodes into an attack of hacking coughs and sneezes, followed by a thump, indicative of a failed attempt to stand.

Enjolras will wait.

Unless it begins to seem as if Grantaire has fallen back asleep after all.

The wait is long enough that the issue might seem in question, but eventually there's a series of groans, followed by a shuffling sound.

The door pulls back, revealing Grantaire's bleary face.

The intensity has never left Enjolras, but it's come to the fore now in a way it hasn't in some weeks, like a hunting dog given prey again after convalescence, or a window-glass cleaned of smears. This is the old Enjolras: half his attention fixed fully on the present moment and the man in front of him, the other half absorbed in compelling matters inside his own head.

(Also, ignoring the fumes of old wine and any irregularity's of Grantaire's apparel. But Enjolras has always been good at setting aside irrelevancies.)

"Bossuet has come."

For a long moment, Grantaire stares; then, carefully, he places an unsteady hand on the door. It swings wider, and Grantaire grips it more tightly, for balance.

"Did you expect," he says, after a moment, forming his words with careful enunciation, "that I would be amazed? Never think it. Your arrival, Enjolras, exhausted my capacity for it. Now I should not be surprised if the great pear himself were to walk in the door tomorrow. Bossuet has come? Very well. Punctuality was never his strong suit."

For all his care, his voice is shaking, very slightly.

Enjolras is not a man much gifted at softening hard news, in part because he sees no benefit to doing so. This must be said; he says it.

"He's alive. He's come directly from the Glorious Days, from 1830."

This is perhaps not a conversation to have standing in a doorway, but Enjolras will not push his way into Grantaire's rooms. Even in Paris, over the course of years, he saw the outside of Grantaire's lodgings but never the inside. It's not a question of tidiness or hygiene, it's merely that -- well, there's an awkwardness there, there are reasons; he will enter when Grantaire invites him in, and not before. That's all.

Grantaire just sits straight down in the doorway and begins to laugh.

Not unexpected, all told. (Enjolras will never understand Grantaire.)

He crosses his arms, settling back to wait it out.

"Order and progress," Grantaire gasps out between breaths, tears of mirth streaming from his eyes. "The rational course of events, from one to the next, in accordance with enlightened logic -- ah, Enjolras! If the universe is conspiring at anything, it's to disprove such an antique myth."

Enjolras's mouth twists a little in impatience, but he says nothing.

It's hard news, and a deeply strange turn of events. He knows it. Grantaire will react in his own way; that's fine, that's his prerogrative. When he's willing to be serious, Enjolras will be here.

Eventually the laughter slows; Grantaire's head rests on his knees, his shoulders still heaving occasionally.

He wants to say that he's grateful for the news, though it's only half true. It would have been something, to have the news sprung on him. Still, Bossuet, at least, would have understood the joke.

"And what have you told him?" he asks, at last. "Of our merry situation here?"

There are a great many jokes Bossuet understands that Enjolras does not. He's never had much of a knack for it.

"That I am from June of '32, as are you. Gavroche too -- he was there. That there are... things which it would be better to arrange differently, between his time and ours."

He breathes out. With Bossuet, the understatement was carefully done, a bit of delicate wording for the middle of a public place, and the awareness between them that Bossuet was choosing not to ask yet about the things Enjolras was choosing not to say. With Grantaire, now, the weight of it tugs at something in his throat.

But there's the hope, too, like air to banked embers. Bossuet is here, and there's work to be done. True, meaningful work; work that, if done exactly right, could matter.

"You remember, he caught a flowerpot to the head in the tumult. He was concussed still, he was weary. It seemed better to let him rest before we discussed details. He's taken a room," and he gives the number. "He's Bound."

"Things," Grantaire echoes.

He looks up, mouth twisting. "You would prefer then, I take it, that we continue to refrain from referencing the fact that even now we molder in our graves. Very well. I'm sure I give a most convincing impression of vivacity."

A little taken aback, "No."

"I have no intention of lying to him. On the contrary. I'll tell him tomorrow."

He's not looking forward to the conversation, but that doesn't matter. It's important. And even if it weren't, between the cruelty of a hard truth and the cruelty of a lie, Enjolras will always choose the former.

"He comes from 1830, Grantaire." Enjolras's gaze fixes intently on the man slumped before him; he leans forward slightly, as though he could make Grantaire understand through sheer intensity. (It's never worked that way.) "Two years. My hope is to use that time."

Grantaire's eyes widen in startlement, then narrow -- kindled, in spite of himself, with a certain degree of intellectual curiosity.

If Enjolras is saying what he supposes --

"Pray, continue. I am rapt."

"We made the best choices we could with the information we had. But there were things we couldn't know. Some of them mattered very much, in the end. That certain men in power would break their solemn word of honor, that rain would ruin the powder, that this time the Guard would not turn in any great number." A small gesture: and so forth.

"This is a chance to make those choices again, with better information. At the least, to save more lives. At the best, to change the course of events."

Grantaire stares up at him. Then, at last, he clambers to his feet (relying heavily, it must be said, upon the door for support as he does so.)

"Perhaps," he says, "you ought to come in."

It seems the obvious thing -- even Grantaire, least revolutionary of all the habitues of the Musain has some sense of discretion -- and only once he's taken a step back in does it occur to him that his room, wildly unkempt and strewn with clothes every which way, is no fit place for Enjolras. Well, for a serious discussion with anyone, but especially --

(Enjolras half-lifts a hand -- but Grantaire is already committed to hauling himself upright with the door by that point. His arm drops back to his side.)

"Thank you." He follows.

He shows no sign of noticing any of the mess. Whether this stems from courtesy or from a genuine disregard for the material world in the face of abstract principles is, of course, a matter open to interpretation.

...It must be admitted that there's no immediately obvious place to sit. Well, standing is fine.

Grantaire looks distractedly around, knocks a pair of trousers off the room's one chair and tosses them across the room, then says, almost apologetically --

"If we are to discuss the overthrow, not only of the government, but of all principles of time, history, life and death -- interruption, it seems to me, would be inopportune."

Still, he hesitates at the door, not yet closing it.

"Yes."

The odds of interruption by anyone in a position to affect events in Paris of 1830 or 1832 seem extremely low. Nonetheless, caution is sensible. Firmly ingrained in all of them, as well; Enjolras would not have given any further details, out in the hall.

Nor with the door open. He waits in the nearest spot of available floor space, just inside the door.

It's enough. Grantaire shuts the door.

As his hand falls away from the knob, he seems not to know quite what to do with himself; he runs his fingers through his hair, folds his hands behind his back, takes a few confused paces to the other side of the room. Then he turns back to Enjolras.

"A series of actions have taken place. You and I are the result of them. For a result to affect its cause, it's like a babe birthing its mother. Quite a sight to behold, I would imagine -- but the natural design fails to encompass it." He's pacing again, unevenly, steps marked with hesitation." Ah, well, that's how it seems to me, but I'm only a stupid man, after all; take pity on me, Enjolras, and explain these things to me."

"To be honest, I don't understand it. I wouldn't have thought it possible."

"But it has occurred. Bossuet is here: he is manifestly from that time. The first thing he asked me was why I was in a wineshop rather than helping to take the Hôtel de Ville. He's here, and he is Bound. A man need not understand all details of a situation to take advantage of its consequences."

"How will the changes unfold? I don't know. What will the consequences be for you and me, here, and the others with us? I don't know that either. But we have this chance. I see no reasonable course but to take it."

The strangeness of saying words like this not to Combeferre, but in conversation with Grantaire of all people, is a quiet, nagging feeling of disorientation. But there's a gift in it, all the same. Never before could he have imagined having such a discussion with Grantaire; and yet here they are.

Grantaire pauses again, reaching out to brace his hand against the wall, fingers splayed.

What will the consequences be? Surely, surely the world won't sit tamely back and allow itself to be unraveled by a ghost; it's some dim sense of this, more even than of the political dangers, that caused Grantaire to invite Enjolras in and to shut the door. Not that a closed door is any protection against forces such as these.

A wiser man -- or a man who loved himself better -- would balk before the risks.

But, as he's already stated, Grantaire is not a wise man, and as for himself -

- well, what's one ghost? Or, for that matter, one death? Nonexistence, after all, was all he ever asked for.

Slowly, he begins to smile.

"You'll chastise me," he says. "Well! That's fair, it's a serious matter. Forgive me if I laugh, but I can't help it -- it's the best joke I can conceive of playing on the universe. And how this universe deserves it!"

"I don't understand you."

There's no exasperation in his voice, no harshness; no chastisement. Only bemusement.

"Ah, well -- never mind!"

Enjolras has never understood the cruel, meaningless pranks of the universe to begin with. If he ever did understand, he wouldn't be able to be Enjolras.

"Only know that I'm with you. Believe it!" He turns to face him directly, his face a fierce grin. "I'll tell you, Enjolras, I'll be the soldier I never was for that. Man against man, it's a farce. Man against time -- that's sublime!"

What does it signify that the time that Enjolras wishes to rewrite contains the only meaningful moment of Grantaire's life -- that any alteration of history would likely consign him back forever to the drunkard's heap?

It doesn't signify, not in the least. Perhaps Enjolras' success may cause Grantaire as he is now to disappear, and not know what he's missed -- or perhaps it will cause the universe itself, twisted beyond sustaining by the force of the paradox, to snap in two. And wouldn't that be the best joke of all!

"Very well," says Enjolras, slowly.

Is the man drunk? He didn't think so -- he still doesn't truly -- but he's almost acting it now.

Perhaps only intoxicated with possibility. Grantaire cares nothing for the revolution, Enjolras knows that, but the possibility of saving their friends--

For that, yes, he'll believe Grantaire's wild words. He returns the smile: smaller, his own fierceness tightly contained, but present in its way. "Very well."

"Though I doubt it will come to soldiering. All we can likely do is give Bossuet as much information as we can."

"Ah, well, if it's information! If you look in the rubbish heap --" Grantaire taps the side of his head, significantly. "-- it's not inconceivable that you'll sometimes find a treasure or two. I'll do what I can."

He pauses, then, and looks directly at Enjolras, and asks, in a different tone, "Do you believe me?"

Enjolras returns the look. Directness is his natural state. "I do."

If it were one of the others, no more words would be needed. But then, if it were one of the others, the question would never have been asked.

"I don't understand the joke you see. But I do believe you. And I've always known you to be capable."

Capable, and loyal -- there has never been doubt of Grantaire betraying them. It's only a question of whether he would ever feel motivated to turn his skills to any serious purpose. But here, after death, in a bar filled with the impossible, it seems he's found that motivation.

"Indeed?"

Startled, Grantaire laughs again, though it's a slightly different kind of laughter. "Then the past has already been altered! Still, if you say it, I'm certainly no man to doubt you. I became afflicted with belief in you long ago."

"I doubted whether you would use your talents, not their existence."

Directness is Enjolras's natural state.

"Is there anything else you'd know from me now?"

If not, he has work to be about. But if Grantaire does have questions, he's welcome to ask.

"Only if there's anything else you'd tell me." Grantaire's eyes flick to the closed door, and he takes another step back, to lean against the wall. "I won't keep you here."

Enjolras considers. Shakes his head.

"No."

"After I've spoken to Bossuet, I'll tell you of it."

Grantaire nods.

"I hope I'll soon speak to him myself."

Another flash of a grin, there and then gone.

"He's a man who laughs."

Enjolras's mind is already on plans and tactics, the autopsy of a failed revolution and the changes that might remedy some of its disasters. But all the same, his lips twitch at that sally.

He knows himself. If lack of laughter's a fault, then yes, it's one of his.

Grantaire is on the other side of the room; it's not so large, but still, it divides them. Enjolras doesn't reach to press his arm or shoulder as he might otherwise. Instead, after that brief instant of humor, he turns to let himself out.

Enjolras leaves.

Another man might take a moment to consider the vast tangle of emotions generated by the conversation of the past few minutes.

Grantaire, being Grantaire, takes the far more sensible route of circumventing all emotions whatsoever by going straight back to his interrupted sleep.