sirenspull_logs | A very French Invasion

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A very French Invasion - BACKDATED

WHO: Deadpool, Enjolras, Eponine, Grantaire
What: An invasion of HoA. Grantaire wants to see Enjolras (cue awkward reunions) and Eponine doesn't really know what she wants, but will find herself watching Deadpool.
When: 17th December -in the afternoon
Where: HoA mostly.
Warnings: Well, Enjolras is a slave, so slavery? Erm......... I don't THINK we need any more warnings... Stand by for updates if needed.

Eponine manages to get them all, doesn't she? Or at least it seems that way to her. Men. Men who want her to drop everything and lead them to houses to reunite with their true loves or fallen comrades. Men who don't seem to notice that they ask her to drop everything to do such a thing. Men who don't see how much it pains her to obey.

She doesn't have to do what Grantaire asks her to do. He's nothing. He means nothing to her, and Enjolras, without Marius close by, ceases to be important to Eponine too. Especially after his attitude towards her. And yet, when Grantaire asks her to take him to Enjolras, Eponine barely hesitates before consenting to lead the way.

She can barely understand why, but it's instinct. These men, they are friends with Marius, and she feels, somehow, by helping them, that she is helping Marius too. The Amis make her feel a part of something, accepted almost, instead of the beggar or the whore or the teenager goaded into working for free. They bring her closer to Marius, to the person she so desperately wants to be and the society she so desperately wants to be a part of. She wants their friendship though, their approval; even their conversations. Talking to such a good person is the highlight of her week. So she'll help them, even though she doesn't want to go anywhere near HoA. Even though she never wants to see Deadpool again... though she misses him. Love? No, it was never love. Eponine doesn't know love. Wouldn't know it.

She peels the potatoes quickly, chopping roughly, before setting them in a pan of water. Not bothering to clean up her peelings or put the scrubbing brushes away, Eponine hurries Grantaire back out of Hattie's, and together, they start the walk to HoA.

Away from the house, Eponine feels less confident and more awkward with Grantaire. She doesn't have the intellect to understand what he says, which makes her feel ignorant. She doesn't know what to say, what would be appropriate to say to such a man. She tries to pretend he is Marius that she can talk to, but that illusion only makes her more tongue tied. In the end, she trudges in silence, pondering how to explain her absence at work to M'sieur Gold.

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"Me..." Enjolras finishes for him. "It was me... It was always me..." The realization is fast and hard, and has the impact of a bullet. "Grantaire, I don't want that. I don't..." He inhales and exhales. "I don't want your blood on my hands. the others, they died for the same cause I did. But not you... Grantaire please..."

Oh, no. No, he hadn't meant for it to hit like this...

But Enjolras sees. Enjolras really sees, and he hasn't drawn back.

Grantaire feels torn open, exposed as he has never been before, but he plunges, reaching again for Enjolras' hand, for both hands. Trying to catch onto something solid. Making certain this was... That all of this is actuality.

"Enjolras. Enjolras. Please don't--The choice was my own. You were correct, I made the choice, and you..." He smiles even as his hands shake slightly, his eyes bespeaking joyful pain. "You are who you are. For all that you gave me, unknowing as it was, don't make this a curse. You've no idea what you... All of that time, and I never... I have never doubted who you are. And I cannot say just what or how much that has meant to me.

"For that enormity, death is no cost, at all."

Edited 2013-01-02 04:51 (UTC)

When Grantaire's hands touch his, Enjolras flinches. There is an instant where he looks like he will pull back and vanish again like he did when Grantaire first arrived.

Instead, he leaves his hands in Grantaire's. His face of finely carved alabaster remains impassive. But, he blinks, and a tear rolls over his pale cheek.

"If I gave faith to someone without it then that is something. But, I know what I gave you... cold looks and disdain. I gave you the back of my shoulder and that was all. Mes Amis were so full of hope and faith and love but you... I only saw something dark in a cluster of bright lights.

Maybe I should have known better."

"No, mon ami, you saw clearly. I am as close to negative being as any man alive can come. My declarations of rampant disbelief are not mere bravado, and in general, I spoke not beyond what I saw. The world's light to me is largely obscured and broken, fractured by the thousand lies that we are told and all that we so foolishly would force the world to be. At times, I am surprised to find I do not drain the joy of others. But no one listens, no one wants to listen, and so others are immune. And so I have been allowed to reside among others.

"You saw... what most see. You saw what you believed. And how could a creature of such light ever perceive the intentions of one so shaded as I? Not that I was fully hidden, but... Such men become nonentities."

Slowly, almost not daring the attempt, Grantaire moves one hand to wipe the tear from Enjolras' cheek. "But you must give yourself some credit. You tolerated my presence, if coldly." An odd expression, some incongruously warm smirk, crosses his face. "Leave a man the smallest spark of light--call it truth, hope, beauty, or whatever you may--and he will train his eyes on it and grasp hold in the darkest night.

"You were there; that was enough."

Enjolras keeps his deep blue eyes fixed on Grantaire now while he speaks. He pulls his breath and tenses when Grantaire touches his cheek, but he does not withdraw.

"I had a purpose and was blind to all else. I will not apologize for that. And yet, if I had it to do over again..."

"You would do the same, would you not? Knowing what you did, and how?"

He keeps his hand against Enjolras' skin, fascinated by the closeness and the feel of it, the warmth that truly does run beneath this marble. And those eyes, what is there to read in those eyes so near, so suddenly open...

Grantaire is alive and adrift, sensing almost too much to truly feel any of it now. "If that is blindness, call it blindness of the highest order. We are at our best when truest to ourselves, when truest to some fixed point or idea, and when have you been anything but purposeful? When have you been anyone or anything save Enjolras, singled-minded vision and all?"

Enjolras continues to blink back tears, not moving his face, still accepting the touch.

"I can't say. I wouldn't have changed anything regarding the barricade or anything else. I couldn't. But you..."

"I? What would I change? What could I change? Ever at odds and singular, I amount to little enough.

"Had there been welcome..." A shrug. "What use in suppositions? We wrote our lives up to the end. Here, we may write on. Our lives carry on, and we must find our ways."

Without further reflection, Grantaire moves to kiss Enjolras on the forehead, a gesture long-awaited and lacking hurry, light and deeply honest.

Enjolras' breath hitches, and he holds it. The gesture of reverence twists the knife deeper and he closes his eyes against the pain, just feeling Grantaire's closeness, and the lips on his forehead. He wants to pull away, push him off, but he remains stock still, accepting it like a penance.

When he breaths again he exhales one phrase.

"Forgive me."

Impossible to say how the act has been perceived. Stillness may be a sign of disgust, of shock, of welcome; whatever the case, it is at least not repulse. Enjolras has received the gesture, and this is more than Grantaire could have asked for.

"There is nothing to forgive, my brother."

He is holding Enjolras' hands again, and simply gazes, his self inexpressibly open. This man and this martyr, this boy of the golden hair and golden soul, so long distant and admired, has at last opened his arms.

"I knew that you'd say that. But please... you call me brother. You have more than earned that... but forgive me all the same."

"If it is your wish... Know that I bear you no ill-will. That I admire you for the very force of vision that may have born some blindness. That if there was pain, it has always been a small price to pay. And again, a thousand times over, that you have shone into my darkness the only light I have known for years, for what seems a jagged eternity.

"If you require it, I absolve you. So far as you believe yourself guilty, I offer my forgiveness, bound as it is with my affection."

The breath he pulls i ragged and there's a small choked noise of pain in it. Then, he swallows hard and opens his eyes. Grantaire's words seem to have steadied him.

He opens his eyes. The rims are red and his lashes are wet and thick with tears, but he seems to have resolved himself. He squeezes Grantaire's hands.

"Thank you. If I can tell you... when the time came, I was grateful to have someone by my side. To know that, even then, I did not stand alone."

It is magnificently strange, both terrible and beautiful, to see Enjolras so affected. The day the angels cry, the day the world cracks open and all of the questions are for once, if only for one glorious moment, silent.

And he can't hear them. The questions are silent, quelled by the actuality at hand, in his hands and in his eyes, the voice that fills his ears with unforseen triumph. It's too much, almost; he can't think about it, but allows himself to feel and follow the living pulse. In this moment, the world simply is, and Grantaire truly exists in it.

"Now know that you never will. So long as I am here, you need not meet the world alone, nor march without companionship. So long as I draw breath, I will remain. If all dances in chaos, I will ground it; I will form a fixed point of existence. Something... There is clarity here. And I almost do believe..."

But the thought is too far, and Grantaire is not in the mood for chasing it. "It was an honor, Enjolras, to stand by your side."

"And that is not a debt I can repay. But,I will spend whatever days we have here trying. I am your servant and your friend."

"There is no more that I could ask." Grantaire is all warmth, and suddenly he feels himself released from the weight of innumerable concerns and doubts. That Enjolras has spoken so! That his eyes relay such truth! Rising and attempting as well to pull Enjolras up, Grantaire laughs with an unweighted buoyancy never heard in the cafe, nor ever in Paris.

"Though I might as that you think on it not as a debt. Smile, Enjolras; there is light in the world, after all!"

Enjolras watches him quietly, with a troubled sad expression. With almost agonizing slowness, it draws itself into a sad smile.

"I've never seen you like this. It's nice."

"Yes? Well, yes, it is... For me, certainly. I scarce know myself, and if I stop to think--" He shakes his head, half-turns on his heel in what is almost an impromptu dance step. He continues to move as he speaks, gesticulating broadly, stepping without burden. "But this is not the time for examination or the weary toil of what-is-means or what must be. It is not a time to hide behind words and phrases, nor to bemoan the world--though sure I will return to my railings soon enough.

"Or perhaps not. Perhaps this is more than some passing euphoria, perhaps this is the dawning of a new day. That a man may die, only to live for the first time..."

Now he turns and returns to Enjolras. "But tell me, how is it with Enjolras? How looks the day for my paragon?"

[Enjolras cannot help but shake his head as he watches Grantaire's jubilation. It does make him feel a little better. His smile widens again, and he chuckles softly.

But when the subject comes back to his situation, his expression grows grave again. He unconsciously tugs on his sleeve cuffs again.]

I thought we had this conversation already.

He blinks, caught off-guard. What did...?

Oh. Oh! He'd quite forgotten about that; it--the topic that Enjolras is so set on avoiding--is background information, and hasn't worked its way into the now.

Or hadn't, until Enjolras raised it once again.

Grantaire tries to shake it off, smiles. "No, no, never mind about that. Now. I mean now, how stands the world for you at this moment, as you and I and we stand? For this, this now is all that need be accounted for.This now it what counts, and this now is where I ask."

"I'm glad that you're here. And I'm grateful for your friendship and forgiveness. It is a great relief to not be alone, and to have at least one of my comrades returned to me. I am pleased with this at least.

Be secure in that."

"So shall I be." He bows, allowing himself to fall back into the reassuring tide of belief. He is unwilling to release this unaccustomed giddiness (for who knows if it can last, who knows if it will return) and reaches for Enjolras' arm. "Now come, Enjolras, will you dance with me? Just a turn around the room, a celebration of reunion and discovery, or worlds so suddenly open."

"What? Let me go... I..." But Enjolras has to laugh as he tries to pulls his arm back.

He's never danced before. Even when he lived in his mother's house and was pressed to attend balls, he never did dance.

"I only gave you one glass of wine and you're drunk."

"Ah, mon ami, does this seem like wine to you?" Grantaire leads Enjolras into a sort of waltz, a series of steps learned in Paris and adjusted to suit Grantaire's impulse. Dance had first appealed to him as a way to pass time and enjoy the company of ladies, and while he is no master, he possesses more grace than might be expected. "I am drunk as you have never seen me before. In this moment, I am not the child of wine's obscurity, but of joy's effusiveness. I am strange, and I am myself more than ever. Do you know? In Paris, I danced to evade, or I think I may claim as much. Now I dance for the pleasure of it.

"And you... Where did you learn to dance, Enjolras?" It is a gentle prodding, no more. "Ah, but your head was too full of burning dreams, ce n'est pa vrai? Those who fly above the earth need never deign to learn its steps."

Edited 2013-01-03 17:32 (UTC)

Enjolras doesn't dance so much as is dragged. He fumbles awkwardly, half trying to free himself and half trying not to be pulled off his feet.

"We won't for much longer if you keep throwing yourself around the room. Control yourself and let me go! Me? Dance? What an absurd idea."

But there is no heart in the reprimand, coldness or anger.

Edited 2013-01-03 17:35 (UTC)

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