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Grantaire doesn’t know where Gavroche came from.
He doesn’t know if any of them do, to be fair, the boy just appeared one day picking pockets and causing mischief and spouting revolutionary ideologies that feel too large for his small frame. They all know exactly as much of Gavroche as Gavroche wants them to – he’s slippery, quicker and cleverer than a child his age has any right to be. Grantaire would pride himself in knowing a bit more of Gavroche than the others, but still – he’s no idea where he came from. It’s hard even to know when he joined them.
Gavroche doesn’t have parents to speak of. Or, if what Grantaire has put together is true, he has them, but they aren’t worth a damn and he tries to avoid them. The Amis try somewhat collectively to look out for their young companion, though whether he’ll accept the help is dependent on his mood and the weather and who’s offering.
And here’s the thing: Grantaire worries.
He worries for all of his friends, for the inevitable outcome of their thrice-doomed revolution, but most especially he worries for Gavroche. He knows, deep in his bones, that when push comes to shove and guns are in hand, no one will be able to make Gavroche run, leave, hide. He will be at their sides, flitting around the barricade like a bird, thinking himself immortal as the rest of them do.
Grantaire knows he is mortal, and worse: so are his friends.
(And people wonder why Grantaire drinks as he does – he himself wonders how anyone else faces the world knowing everyone they care about is doomed and does not drink.)
Time is ticking down, now, the urgency of every meeting increasing. There are guns stored in near everyone’s rooms, and those not storing guns collect ammunition or other supplies deemed necessary. Enjoras insists that the time for revolution nears, that all they need is a sign, and then –
“Listen everybody!” Gavroche’s little voice cuts through the chaos of their meeting, interrupted as it has been by Marius mooning over some girl he hardly even met. They fall silent, every eye in the room watching Gavroche. He’s climbed onto the table amongst Combeferre’s papers, though carefully not standing on anything but wood. “General Lamarque is dead.”
And then Enjolras is off and running again, though he does Gavroche the courtesy of gently lifting him off of the table first. It’s a tad incongruous, the image of this disheveled revolutionary resting such a gentle hand on a child’s shoulder, or perhaps it would be were this any other child. This being Gavroche, himself a disheveled revolutionary – if a very small one – it strikes as a bit less odd. The boy rarely allows any of them to lift or maneuver him, even when it would be easier, but he looks up to Enjolras enough not to kick him for trying.
Once Enjolras is perched on the stair again, deep in his oration, Grantaire waves Gavroche over.
“Good work,” he says quietly.
“I know,” replies Gavroche, crossing his arms over his chest. He can’t quite conceal the pleased look about his eye at the praise, though.
Grantaire laughs, drawing a longsuffering glance from Joly. Combeferre and Courfeyrac take over from Enjolras, and Grantaire stands. This seems to be the end of their meeting, or at least the end of their being inside where wine is easily accessible. He tucks Gavroche against his side as they follow the others outside. Gavroche must be in a good mood, or perhaps can just tell that Grantaire needs a bit of grounding, because he doesn’t wriggle away.
Feuilly is speaking now, and Grantaire’s ear can’t help catching on the word martyrs. He squeezes Gavroche’s shoulder.
Now he squirms. “I want to go closer.”
“You’ve seen Feuilly before,” says Grantaire.
“Grantaire,” Gavroche says, shaking his hand off. “Come on, it’s fine, I’ll be fine, it’s just –“
Someone pushes through the crowd abruptly, waving a flag, and nearly plows right over Gavroche since he’s well below most of the Amis’ eyeline.
“I just don’t want to see you get hurt,” Grantaire says, quiet. “Any of you.”
“You could always leave,” Gavroche says, his brow furrowed.
“You’re funny.” Grantaire tests his luck and ruffles Gavroche’s hair, which earns him a hard whack on the arm and the kid ducking away to dart forward in the crowd.
And the thing is, he’s right. Grantaire could leave. Grantaire could have left the moment he realized he was going to watch his friends die, but it wouldn’t change the fact they were gone. Best he can do is stay close, stay involved, and then at least he’ll probably die with them instead of alone.
He just wishes they weren’t going to take a ten-year-old boy down with them.
(No, that isn’t right. He wishes none of this were going to happen, but it’s too late, it’s too late, it’s been too late since the first time he met Enjolras, since the first time since he met any of them, and now he is cursed to stand by and watch. To go so far as to participate, if not necessarily to help, because he is utterly unable to let go.)
Anyway, he follows, swept up in the crowd and his friends’ energy, keeping half an eye on Gavroche as he weaves in and out because he can’t protect everyone but by God can he at least try to protect Gavroche.
He tries to catch Enjolras’s eye, his ear, though he isn’t entirely sure what he intends to say – to resume his teasing, perhaps, or to plead desperately that he ask Gavroche to stay out of the way. The boy wouldn’t listen to Grantaire if he begged, but Enjolras might be able to make a dent in his resolve if he were so inclined.
(Grantaire wonders what Enjolras would say to that. He’s pretty sure that Enjolras doesn’t consider him capable of sincerity, or at least would find it as incongruous as Grantaire himself finds the gentleness with which Enjolras handles Gavroche.)
It doesn’t matter, in the end, because he catches Enjolras’s attention for all of forty seconds. He gets a firm grip to the upper arm for his troubles, a look that says they’ll talk later – though likely only on the matter of Grantaire not taking things seriously enough, as ever – and then Enjolras is moving away, pulled back into conversation with Courfeyrac before Grantaire can even open his mouth.
He doesn’t see Gavroche again until they start assembling the barricade. Building seems too formal a word for the hasty stacking of whatever furniture they can find. When Grantaire catches sight of him, the boy is tailing a stranger a bit too closely, some volunteer from outside of their immediate circle. He’s older than most of them by a wide margin, and he looks passing familiar to Grantaire, but he can’t immediately place him.
He catches Gavroche by the shoulder, pulling him back as the stranger volunteers to scout the enemy.
“But he’s –“ Gavroche says, and Grantaire hushes him. He glances back at the stranger, and thinks he might almost be able to place him in a uniform of some sort, which would account somewhat for Gavroche knowing him.
“Let it be, for now,” offers Grantaire. “You’ll know the right moment when it comes.”
“If you say so,” Gavroche replies, his tone a little petulant. He acquiesces, though, and lays off of shadowing the man.
He, being ten years old (give or take) and on the small side, takes immediately to perching as high as he can on the barricade. Unfortunately for Grantaire’s nerves, this puts him distinctly in the line of potential fire.
At least, despite his best efforts, no one will give him a gun.
Every time Grantaire catches the boy’s eye, he waves for him to get down in sharp motions. Gavroche has been avoiding looking at Grantaire for a while now.
Their scout returns, and finally, finally, Gavroche starts to climb down. Grantaire has half an ear on the report the scout is giving, most of his attention on making sure that Gavroche doesn’t just leap down the last few feet to the ground.
“- planning to hit you from the right,” the man finishes.
“Liar!” Gavroche chirps. He’s perched on a mostly-upright chair about halfway up the barricade.
The man starts to move, a lurch as if he intends to make a run for it, but Grantaire – who has been waiting for something like this since Gavroche first pointed the man out this morning – has a firm hand on his shoulder before he can go anywhere.
“I know this man,” continues Gavroche, hopping the rest of the way down. “His name’s Inspector Javert!” He comes to a surprisingly heavy landing just in front of Javert and Grantaire, his tone going singsong and playful. “So don’t believe a word he says, ‘cause none of it’s true – this only goes to show what little people can do!”
It echoes a little song Grantaire has heard Gavroche sing a few times, usually when he’s most pleased with himself for accomplishing something he’d been told he wouldn’t be able to. Gavroche ends his little speech with a rude hand gesture right in Javert’s face, which draws a few snickers from the students.
“Bravo, Gavroche, you’re the top of the class,” Grantaire says. Gavroche grins.
“What do we do with him now?” Jehan calls from behind him.
“Tie him up and bring him inside,” Enjolras decides, over the cacophony of everyone chiming in their opinions. “We don’t have the time to vote on what else to do with him.”
Grantaire ends up involved in this process, being the one already holding the man in place, though a few others step in to help as well, either with holding him or keeping guns on him. Grantaire lets someone else take the job of tying the spy’s hands together, his own hands too shaky for reliable knots. There’s a shout and a gunshot outside, and Grantaire startles, casting around to make sure everyone is accounted for.
His eye lingers longest, as ever, on Enjolras and then on Gavroche, who’d followed them inside. Of course at the sound of guns, the boy turns on his heel and darts back out. Grantaire, trusting the others to have this well in hand, follows.
Gavroche has come up short just outside the door, his eyes fixed on something at the base of the barricade, his breathing coming shaky and shallow. Grantaire tracks his gaze to find poor Marius sprawled on the ground, holding a girl Grantaire recognizes but doesn’t know, both of them covered in what must be her blood. This can’t be Marius’s mystery love, she looks too poor and him not quite the right shade of devastated, but if nothing else she must be a friend.
They’re speaking softly, too softly for Grantaire to hear clearly, but there are clear tears in Marius’s eyes, and the girl is growing quieter and unsteadier with each breath. She tries to reach for him, to graze fingers across his cheek, but falls still and limp against him before she can. Marius holds her close against his chest, pressing a gentle kiss against her bloody hair.
Gavroche makes a small, pained noise and sways unsteadily into Grantaire.
Others are moving past them, closer to Marius and the girl’s body, but Grantaire stays, wrapping an arm around Gavroche’s small shoulders.
“Éponine,” he says, his voice small.
“Who was she?” Grantaire asks, even as he hears someone else ask Marius the same question.
“My sister.” It’s barely a breath, and Grantaire knows no one but him can hear it. “I hardly knew her, but she was my sister.”
“Oh,” says Grantaire.
“Don’t say you’re sorry,” Gavroche snaps, a shadow of his usual attitude flickering back.
“Alright,” Grantaire says, “I’m not.”
“Right,” says Gavroche. Then he turns his head and buries his face in the side of Grantaire’s coat for a moment. His shoulders don’t shake with hidden sobs, but one of his hands is clinging tight to the fabric of the coat behind Grantaire’s back.
“You could leave,” Grantaire offers, soft.
“You’re funny,” Gavroche mumbles into his jacket.
Grantaire shifts him away, dropping to a knee to look him in the eye. “Gavroche, I’m serious. No one here would judge you for leaving – in fact, I’m sure we’d all be relieved to know you were safe.”
“I’m staying,” says Gavroche. He meets Grantaire’s gaze, his expression flat and unyielding. “I can’t leave you all. Not now.”
His gaze flicks over to Éponine’s body, now being gently untangled from Marius and lifted by Feuilly, Combeferre, and Bossuet. Grantaire isn’t sure where they intend to put her, besides out of sight. He isn’t sure anyone else will get the courtesy of an intentional resting place.
Gavroche pulls away, walking slower and more deliberately than usually, and stoops to pick something up from the ground near the base of the barricade, half tucked under a piece of broken furniture and forgotten. It isn’t until he holds it out to Marius that it becomes clear what the object is – a cap, stained in blood. Éponine’s, most likely.
Marius stares at it for a long moment still in Gavroche’s outstretched hand before taking it and tucking it under the sash he’s tied around his waist. Gavroche nods once and turns on his heel to follow the others to wherever they’re putting her body.
There’s another new arrival climbing over the barricade, of at least an age with Javert if not older and dressed in an army uniform. He insists that he’s a volunteer, but everyone is warier now than they were before.
Grantaire half pays attention – half participates in the conversation, even – though his primary aim is in finding something to drink. The inevitability of tragedy feels crushing once again.
He’s interrupted in his goal by more gunshots, a proper volley this time which is returned by his friends. He doesn’t do anyone the disservice of reaching for a gun himself – it would be a waste of a weapon that could be in better hands and a waste of ammunition that wouldn’t find its target – and it’s all he can do not to just track Enjolras’s path since for once Gavroche is not actively trying to get himself killed.
Enjolras is almost shot, by a sniper high in a building, but their new volunteer saves him with a shot of his own. Grantaire bites down hard on the inside of his lip to keep from calling out.
As the volley dies down, Gavroche tugs on Grantaire’s sleeve. “Can I have some of your wine?”
“No,” Grantaire says without tearing his eyes from Enjolras. He’s speaking with their new volunteer, too quietly for Grantaire to hear clearly.
“It’s been a stressful day; I feel like I deserve some.”
Grantaire finally turns toward him. “Tell you what, kid. We survive all of this, you can drink all you want.”
“I’m holding you to that,” chirps Gavroche, almost sounding like himself again.
“Of course you are,” says Grantaire. He ruffles Gavroche’s hair, and he doesn’t even smack him for it.
(The only real sign that Gavroche might be afraid, for himself or for anyone, is that he is gravitating to Grantaire on his own more than he usually would. Usually, he makes a show of his independence, but today he seems, for once, willing to be cared for.)
Grantaire has certainly missed something for his conversing with Gavroche, because when he reattunes with the wider group he realizes that there is once again a cacophony of mixed assent and dissent surrounding Enjolras – now alone. Their volunteer is out of sight, and the cacophony becomes coherent to Grantaire in an instant when he hears a gunshot from behind the café.
Enjolras’s eye meets Grantaire’s across the group, just briefly. Grantaire shakes his head, but knows trying to engage him in conversation would be useless.
It all feels useless.
Grantaire settles in with his bottle, hoping to dull the inevitability of it all somewhat. Gavroche darts off, probably to make his case for a drink to someone else. There’s a reshuffling of watch – Courfeyrac taking Enjolras’s place at the lookout – and a hand on Marius’s shoulder pushing him down to take a seat.
“Rest,” carries across the quiet street in Enjolras’s firm tone. Marius looks reluctant, his own restlessness an echo of Grantaire’s, but he does as he’s bid.
Feuilly leads off a drinking song as wine is passed around – the maudlin sort, wistful and slow, rather than anything that will actually raise spirits.
Grantaire’s mouth is moving before he’s really given it any thought, the crushing weight of his friends’ mortality threatening to drown him if he doesn’t say something. He has the good sense to keep it more or less on Feuilly’s melody, which no one seems to appreciate.
Perhaps he can understand their distaste, as he finds himself face-to-face with Enjolras himself, asking the man the thing he’s been stewing over for weeks and months.
“Will the world remember you when you fall? Can it be your death means nothing at all?” His voice catches, his brain catching up with him, and he chokes on his last question. “Is your life just one more lie?”
The others resume their song with determined optimism, singing about friendship and possibly dying. Not dying?
Grantaire hardly notices. Enjolras is still in front of him, eyes wide and brow furrowed. It isn’t an angry expression, which is what he’d expected, nor quite pitying. On any other man, Grantaire would call it gently sorrowful, perhaps sympathetic.
On Enjolras, after all this time, it feels almost mocking in its gentleness.
He reaches for Grantaire, his mouth open around half-formed words he doesn’t quite let out, and it’s hard to tell whether he intends it to but the hand falls just at the base of Grantaire’s neck, where it meets the shoulder. His thumb rests against Grantaire’s jaw, his fingertips wrapped gently around the back of his head.
Grantaire cannot help but flinch away.
(He has been trying to catch Enjolras for days, trying to hold his attention long enough to voice a genuine, sober concern, and been brushed off. On the eve of his inevitable, inescapable death this tenderness feels like a slap to the face.)
He walks as far as he can, to where a building wall meets their barricade, and downs the rest of the bottle in his hand. He is not as drunk as the others – as Enjolras – might think or expect him to be, but he desperately wishes he were. His eyes prick with tears that he wishes he could will away.
A weight hits Grantaire’s back, and before he can process being startled or confused, a pair of small arms lock tightly around his waist. He’s still startled, honestly – Gavroche has never hugged him before, and it’s distantly surprising to entertain the idea of Gavroche hugging anyone. He drops a hand onto Gavroche’s, and the boy startles, pulling away.
Grantaire turns. Gavroche is staring at him, wide-eyed and scared. Grantaire sighs and drops to one knee, half-meaning to just put a hand on his shoulder but ultimately just opening his arms and letting Gavroche tumble into them. Gavroche’s arms are tight around his neck, his face pressed into Grantaire’s shoulder. Grantaire can’t suppress a sob as he returns the hug.
“You think we’re all going to die,” Gavroche says into the fabric of Grantaire’s collar.
“I’m afraid we will,” corrects Grantaire. “I’m terrified to lose you. To lose everyone.”
“You won’t lose me,” says Gavroche. His grip on Grantaire’s jacket is vicelike.
“Oh, Gav,” Grantaire murmurs. “You can’t promise that.”
Gavroche shakes just barely perceptibly on his next breath, and he releases Grantaire, sliding back out of his arms. His eyes are red with unshed tears and he scrubs at them hard with one of his sleeves. “We’ll be fine.”
“Right,” Grantaire says distantly. “Right.”
Everyone seems to be settling in to rest for the night, on the assumption that they won’t be attacked again until morning. They have a sentry, of course, but everyone else is finding a spot to curl up and try to catch a bit of sleep. Grantaire doesn’t know if he’ll be able to, but he sits anyway, half propped against what might once have been a table. There is just enough space between him and the wall for Gavroche to wedge himself, should he choose to.
Perhaps it should be less surprising when he does, squishing into the gap Grantaire has left and letting him wrap an arm around his small shoulders so that he can use Grantaire as a pillow. It feels, from the way his breathing slows and his sharp grip on Grantaire’s shirt – which he hadn’t noticed until now – releases, like Gavroche falls asleep quite quickly.
Grantiare does not. He finds himself looking up at the stars above them, unable to clear his head. He does not want to watch his friends die, but Gavroche – he has to convince Gavroche to leave before the fighting starts again in the morning. The idea of anything happening to him is unthinkable.
Please, he finds himself thinking, almost a prayer, let him survive this.
There’s a creaking and a soft sound of feet, someone moving. There is a pause, then quiet voices. Grantaire glances over, unsurprised to find that Enjolras is the one moving around, heads together with Combeferre. He is surprised when he and Enjolras lock eyes, the other man having looked up just after Grantaire looked over.
Enjolras’s gaze lingers on Grantaire and Gavroche for a moment, his brow furrowing, and then he returns his full attention to Combeferre.
Grantaire sighs. He’s uncertain of what to make of Enjolras’s expression, but he is bone tired and emotionally drained and can’t begin to parse it now.
He must fall asleep, because the next thing he knows is waking up to the sound of shouting from the other side of the barricade.
No one has come to join them.
Gavroche grips Grantaire’s shirt again. When Grantaire looks down at his face, for a moment he sees clear, undisguised fear in his eyes.
There is a beat of silence, then Enjolras exhales loudly. He looks run ragged, the weight of the failure of the people of Paris to join the cause sitting heavy across his shoulders.
“I intend to stay,” he says. His voice is quiet, but carries clearly across their little clearing. “But if no one has come to join us – let’s not waste lives. All the women should leave, and anyone with children. Gavroche. And – and anyone else who wishes. There will come another day for you to fight.”
Grantaire kneels, pulling Gavroche to his feet as he does so. People are shuffling about, saying their goodbyes. Grantaire puts his hands on each of Gavroche’s shoulders, gripping hard.
“Go.”
“I won’t,” says Gavroche. “I won’t leave you.”
“Gavroche, please,” Grantaire begs, “you are ten years old. Do not stay here to die.”
“What about you?” Gavroche says. He glances up and over Grantaire’s shoulder briefly, and Grantaire wonders who he’s looking at. “Will you stay and die here? Will you leave me to fend for myself again?”
“Gavroche,” says Grantaire, soft.
“Enjolras would let you leave,” says Gavroche. “They’d all understand. If you left with me.”
“I’m not your father.”
“Thank God for that. You’re better. You – you care about me. More than anyone else ever has.”
“I do,” Grantaire says. “So please, please listen to me when I ask you to survive.”
Gavroche stares at Grantaire for a long moment, his eyes shining with unshed tears. He darts forward to hug Grantaire tightly again, so briefly Grantaire barely gets his arms around him in return, then steps back. “I’ll try.”
“I will hold you to that,” says Grantaire, though he won’t because he’ll be dead. Perhaps he’ll haunt the kid. “Now go.”
“I – goodbye,” says Gavroche.
Grantaire sighs. “Goodbye.”
Gavroche leaves. Grantaire knows that he leaves because he doesn’t look away until he’s sure the boy is gone, he knows. And when Gavroche is gone, Grantaire stands, stretching and shaking out his limbs.
Enjolras is watching him again, brow furrowed, in the midst of the flurry of movement.
Grantaire approaches him, tentative. “Is something the matter?”
“You stayed,” Enjolras says. His eyes flick toward the path Gavroche had taken as he left.
“Of course.”
“I thought you might go. With Gavroche.”
“And leave you all to die without me?” Grantaire says, more direct than he really intends to be. “I may not be good for much, Enjolras, but I would never have been able to live with myself if I left you here.”
“Grantaire,” Enjolras says.
Grantaire looks away, no longer able to meet Enjolras’s eye. “You’re not getting rid of me yet.”
Enjolras doesn’t say anything else to him, called away over by someone else to address an issue. It’s all weighing on Grantaire, especially as he overhears that they’re running low on ammunition.
“There’s plenty of dead soldiers on the other side of the barricade,” someone says, distant to Grantaire’s ears. “But collecting from their pockets would be dangerous –“
There’s a scuffle as someone – Marius? – tries to volunteer and is grabbed and talked down. Lord, the man has a death wish, worse than the rest of them.
Grantaire doesn’t realize that Gavroche has snuck back until it’s too late. Until he’s volunteered and darted through a gap, his little voice bright and clear in the still morning.
“Gavroche!” he shouts, trying to follow. “Gavroche, don’t you fucking dare! Gav, come on, you promised! Get back here!”
Someone’s arm is around Grantaire’s waist, someone else has a firm grip on his upper arm, and they haul him down from the barricade. When he hits ground level, he stumbles away, his back to the barricade. It’s bad enough that he can hear this. He doesn’t need to watch.
Gavroche is singing again, his playful little tune at odds with the circumstance.
A shot rings out, and Gavroche pauses. He doesn’t cry out in pain, though, so hopefully it missed. He picks up his song again, a little slower as he moves a bit more carefully.
Another shot. This time Gavroche makes a sharp, startled noise alongside it.
Grantaire flinches.
Gavroche resumes his song. He sounds like he’s in pain. He sounds like he’s getting closer, though.
“Gavroche!” someone calls, and Grantaire turns.
Gavroche is almost to the top of the barricade, a bag triumphantly clutched in his hand. His face is screwed up in pain but he’s still singing.
Another shot rings out.
Gavroche stops singing.
He’s looking down, past Enjolras who waits below him, at Grantaire who cannot help staring back. His mouth forms the shape of sorry, but he doesn’t voice the word. Grantaire blinks hard to clear his eyes of tears.
Gavroche tumbles into Enjolras’s waiting arms, limp.
Grantaire stumbles forward, his feet feeling clumsy and uncertain underneath him. He doesn’t have to say anything or touch Enjolras to get his attention – he is already turning, already searching out Grantaire amongst their friends. He places Gavroche into his arms with more tenderness than Grantaire has ever seen from him, not letting go until he knows that he’s fully settled. His fingers graze against Grantaire’s forearms, and his expression is wide-eyed and stunned.
Grantaire hardly notices.
Gavroche is never still, has never been still, the boy too full of childhood’s boundless energy to settle into stillness even in sleep. It feels stunningly, achingly wrong to see him limp and unmoving. Grantaire can feel that he isn’t breathing, can feel his blood seeping into his sleeves and waistcoat as he carries him away from the others, but he cannot help foolishly trying to wake the boy. Gavroche has always been prone to tricks, to pranks, to play –
“You said you were going to leave,” Grantaire mutters uselessly. “You said you were going to survive.”
There are more gunshots, from his cohorts and from the enemy. Grantaire hardly notices, shaking Gavroche’s shoulders as he stands with his back to the barricade.
“Please,” says Grantaire. “Please.”
Gavroche, dead, does not reply.
Someone cries out, a sharp sound of pain followed by the heavy sound of a grown man falling onto the broken furniture of the barricade. Then another. Another.
Grantaire’s friends are dying all around him, the quick-witted child who’d made a brother of him is dead in his arms, and Grantaire –
He lays Gavroche down inside, near his sister. He combs his fingers through Gavroche’s wild hair, straightens his collar. Presses a gentle kiss to the top of his forehead.
Grantaire turns back to the barricade.
Many of his friends have already fallen, bodies strewn about the barricade with little grace. Enjolras is still standing near the center, their flag in hand.
Grantaire climbs to join him.