Last Prompt || Qui Es-Tu Maintenant? Who are you now?
Biggest Dream: I’m thinking about this. A lot of possible existential answers, but let’s keep it simple. I want to create something beautiful enough to hang on the wall of a gallery. I want to be able to do this without fear.
Greatest Fear: To forget. I don’t want to forget. Let the world change me, but don’t let it fucking allow me to forget.
What Makes You Laugh: Your face.
What Makes You Mad: Your face.
What Makes You Cry: I still don’t cry. Also, your face.
Your Best Trait: My beautiful beautiful handsome face.
Your Worst Trait: I can’t take things seriously.
Are You Happy Right Now?: Yes.
“Go fuck yourselves and your fucking rally. I’m going to sleep.”
It was these words that changed everything. Grantaire often wondered what would have happened if he hadn’t said them. If he hadn’t been at the right place at the right time. Would everything be the way that it is? It’s an odd question. If things had been different, would they be different? Whatever the answer to that question is, the events that happened happened as they did.
It all started with a thick, thorn-plated armor of fear. Afraid of letting the world see him, afraid of letting the world hurt him again. It had been some time since his maman had died, and it didn’t matter because he couldn’t even remember through the haze of alcohol and adrenaline. There was also the obsession that brought the sweet in bittersweet, his burning admiration for his Apollo, the one beacon that gave him something to follow in the darkness, at least for a little while. He drowned himself in addiction and obsession and laughter and laziness. He slept through the day and drank through the night, only functioning because he had to, refusing to achieve, refusing to let himself be anything but the drunk cynic. If no one expected anything of him, no one would be disappointed in him.But even his spiny armor couldn’t hide how much he cared. He cared for his friends. He cared too much and hated it, and even the added scent of alcohol did nothing to mask it.
When he said those words, and accepted those drugs, and let swirling reds and blues and greens and pinks and yellows feather into his black-and-white life, completely by accident, it pierced through it all. It was ripped away from him like a band-aid from a paper cut. His bottles thrown down the sink, out the window, stolen from every nook and cranny of the house. His mask not just unmasked, but burnt to a crisp, as if it had never even been there. As if to say, I can see you, I wish the world could see you, too. It’s entirely possible that he replaced his addiction, obsession with another. It’s entirely possible that his armor was dismantled by gentle fingers and walks by the Seine.
But it was not just him. It would be a lie to say that his shining beacon of light didn’t change him at all. The friends he had kept since day one, and the new friends he had made by circumstance and persistence. Without them, without the beliefs that he had clashed with, without the anger and tumult, without the punches to his face and the kicks to his pride, he would not be who he is now.
The events that happened happened as they did, and this is the result. Grantaire. Unashamed to admit that he is happy, that he is a little bit in love, and that maybe, just maybe, he is worth something.
The story is over. The windows close. The sun goes down. The sun will rise for all the days of April 1969 and thereafter, through Woodstock, the first pair of feet on the moon, Jim Morrison’s death, the Dark Side of the Moon, the end of the Vietnam War, the first Star Wars film, the death of John Lennon, the fall of the Berlin Wall, the end of the Soviet Union, Dolly the sheep, the new millenium, to today, and tomorrow, through concerts, and revolutions, through love and heartbreak, through the beginning of lives and the end, but we will never again see them through these cynical pair of eyes.
Will he continue his education? Will he find his name in a gallery? Will he marry? Will he have children? Will he ever return to his beautiful Paris? Will he ever see his friends again? Will he remember, in fifty years’ time, a little house in the middle of Paris, and the people who lived inside? Will he remember all the laughter, the anger, the hate, the jealousy, the happiness, the smiles, the parties, the music, the alcohol, the drugs, the passion, the fiery belief that they could change the world, the naivety of believing it would never end?
We will never know. We will never know how many of these sunrises he was there to watch, or if he kept his promise--not a day after twenty-nine. We will never know how he breathes his last breath, or who he breathes it with. The life that he lives after this story is no longer mine to tell. It is time to leave Grantaire alone.
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