FIC: Silent Night (Les Miserables, Enjolras + Grantaire, PG)

[winter]

This is fyrie's birthday present :) Totally inspired by the 25th Anniversary Tour, but it can also work in a book context.

Summary: Enjolras and Grantaire, in the night before the dawn


SILENT NIGHT

Paris at night was not silent.

It should have been. It should be silent like a funeral procesion, the hooves of the horses falling in beat with the feet of the mourners. A drum where the soldiers waited, maybe, and someone crying softly in the night.

Instead, Enjolras heard an argument over a woman, three different and equally drunken songs, and beyond them the sursurrus of a city that treated night as an opportunity to show even more of its variety. The sounds reached his perch on top of the barricade and floated into the sky, leaving his men at peace. He was guarding them against the distraction of life, or maybe just standing guard over a tomb where they yet breathed.

He stared into the night, willing it to silence.

The next sound came from behind him, wood creaking under strain. Someone was climbing up the barricade, and Enjolras turned to lay into him. This was his station, awake, to let others rest in peace.

Grantaire. Of course, passed through Enjolras's mind. No-one else would be this foolish.

The drunken fool was quieter than Enjolras would guess, dragging himself up slowly until he was sitting at Enjolras's feet.

"You should sleep."

"I slept before. And I will sleep again. Soon." Grantaire waved at the fires the soldiers had lit in the middle of the crossroads.

"You should go," Enjolras said. He crouched down. Things like this should not be said out loud. "There are drunks enough in the street. The soldiers won't notice you."

Grantaire shrugged. "And then what would I do?"

Enjolras extended his hand. Grantaire's coat was rough, the seam torn. "Survive."

"And drink more," Grantaire finished. "Nah. Maybe - maybe if I had talent enough to make this matter, make people remember you. But I'm not smart enough for that. I'm of more use here."

"What use are you?" Belatedly, Enjolras remembered that one did not say these things to people's faces.

"At a guess?" Grantaire leaned close. He must have found water instead of wine, he didn't smell of it as much as usual. "Remind you that you're human."

Enjolras's brows pulled together.

"You tend to forget that. With your looks, I don't blame you," Grantaire added. "But when we're talking people, not the idea of revolution - d'you think we'll survive the dawn?"

Enjolras looked out towards the fires and past them, at the clamouring night. "No. And no-one will care."

"Does that matter?"

"It would be better if we mattered," Enjolras said. "France needs a revolution. France needs a spark."

"Each time France gets a revolution, they get drunk, then sober up and find a new madman to put a crown on his head."

Enjolras turned his head, looking straight at Grantaire. It was dark enough that the other student was a shadow in the night, the outline indistinct with the mess of his hair. "Then why are you here?"

"France doesn't matter," Grantaire said. "Revolution doesn't matter. But you matter."

For a moment, Enjolras didn't hear the city.

"The guys matter. Gavroche matters. Gavroche matters a hell of a lot."

"Yes." Enjolras was glad he would not remember Gavroche's death past the coming morning.

"That's what I always thought about the big revolution," Grantaire said. "The reason they got at the Bastille was because the French Guard was on their side. And that was because those guys - those were their brothers and wives and kids in that crowd. So they said screw it and threw their lot with the revolution. Do you think they cared a wit about all the pretty speeches and the National Assembly?"

"Possibly not," Enjolras admitted.

"Pretty speeches don't matter when it comes to blows. When it comes to blood." Grantaire waved his hand. "We're all together here. We live together. We die together. That's what matters. And that's what people will remember."

He waved an open bottle. Enjolras reached for it and took a drink.

"Good," Grantaire said. "You're starting to get it."

"Late," Enjolras said.

"Better late than never."

"And this is - reminding me that I'm human?"

Grantaire laughed. "Reminding you that you've got friends. It's just one step, but it's a big one."

"Why?"

"Because a stone statue can't lead us to battle in the morning. No matter how pretty it looks."

Enjolras felt his lips twitching.

Beyond them, Paris was not silent. It lived.

FIN

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