pontmercyingtilthecowscomehome:
My own thoughts on the barriere du maine incident, heavily influenced by the awesome @toomuchsky
Feelings ahead! Canon era, implied one-sided Grantaire/Enjolras
Grantaire doesn’t explain where he got the vest.
It’s easier that way. Easier than admitting how it had been thrown on the floor, years ago, covered by other clothes, boots, books, all the debris of a life spent not caring about anything.
Easier too, than admitting the first time he’d heard Enjolras speak, he’d gone back to his apartment, and wine bottle in hand, he’d dug out the garment, dusted it off… and finished his wine before he could think of doing something as foolish as actually trying it on.
No, those days were long gone.
Once, Grantaire had been such a foolish youth, younger than even Enjolras had been that first time they’d met, that first time the Apollo of the Musain leapt on top of a box to proclaim his opinions on justice. And when he’d been young, he believed he could change the world.
Instead, the world changed him.
Grantaire had once burned so brightly, believed so deeply, that his convictions filled every aching emptiness inside him. But convictions, like promises, can be broken so easily.
Oh how the world broke all his convictions, all his promises, all his hopes.
When it was all over, those years ago, when the rebellion had amounted to nothing, and all his impassioned words faded into the silence of a room devoid of friends, Grantaire had given up.He shed convictions as one takes off a coat, a vest, and then a shirt. Each truth more deeply held, and each one removed left him even colder.
He’s been cold ever since.
Stripped of any fire of his own, he both clings to and is ashamed of his need for that light Enjolras offers.
Because Enjolras’s passion was once his, his words echo what Grantaire once said.
He’d quoted all the proper philosophy back at Enjolras today. Prudhomme, the Social Contract, the Constitution. What Enjolras had taken as mockery had been the recitation of a route prayer an atheist no longer believes.
But he wants to believe again. Enjolras makes him want to. The way the man burns with conviction, the power in all he says, Grantaire craves that for himself more than any drink. Which was why he agreed today, to help. To go to the Barriere du Maine and rally the people there.
Today he tells himself it will be different. That he will finally let the smallest spark of Enjolras’s beliefs re-kindle his own.
That’s why he’s gone back for the vest. To pretend to be once more the man he had been. The man that, truthfully, Enjolras might have been proud to call friend, or at least, respected. He knows he doesn’t deserve the respect now. An angel is allowed to scorn a non-believer.
The vest no longer lies on the floor. Ever since he began to attend the meetings of the ABC, he’s moved it to hang on a hook on the wall. Some mornings, he touches the red fabric, wondering, daring himself to try it on.
He never does.
Not til now.
It’s probably a warning sign that the vest is too tight.
Some things will never fit again, no matter how much one tries.
Some things were never meant to work together at all
Maybe, much like there could only ever be one sun in the sky, there could only ever be one true believer in mankind’s goodwill.
He heard Courfeyrac once say that many of the Amis believed Grantaire aspired to be Enjolras
THey didn’t know he had once been him. How could they? All of them came to Paris a year after the last student rebellion had failed. Failed not by blood and death, but simply by the students abandoning the cause, replacing it with other pursuits.
So, it is not in mere adoration that Grantaire watches Enjolras, but concern too.
He is not sitting on the floor, staring up at a perfect statue, made to be marveled at.
No, he is watching, and waiting, for the day the young man who had been made to play a god would tumble from the tall pedestal his beliefs had placed him atop of.
It’s a long fall down from that lofty height, and it’s a descent he knows all too well.
He will not let Enjolras suffer the way he did.
Grantaire will be there, somehow, at the end. As no one had ever been there for him. When all that Enjolras believes comes crashing down, Grantaire has promised himself (silently, and never soberly) that he will find a way to give him his belief back.
I believe in you.
Enjolras had thought it a joke, when he’d said that. Not realizing that was simply Grantaire’s reason to exist. As long as he believed in Enjolras, then Enjolras would never be abandoned, the way he had been. For now, the Friends of the ABC surrounded him, but Grantaire was too much a skeptic to believe they would always remain. Courfeyrac’s collection of flirtations would finally settle on one dashing beauty, and he would be gone. Combeferre would perhaps find a more worthy academic pursuit. And slowly, surely, all the others would leave.
All but Grantaire. He, unworthy, undeserving, of the word friend, he would remain, when all else; convictions, friends, hope, had fled from Enjolras.
And he could only hope it would be enough to save him.
¯_( ಠ_ಠ)_/¯ 