top five grantaire reincarnation aus
He knows it’s the twentieth century and they need to fight for freedom because if they won’t do it now, there will never be hope. He knows countless souls has died in fights all over the world and time and that it’s never worked before is not an excuse (even if it is true). He knows all that and still he wouldn’t join the revolution if it wasn’t for Apollo, if it wasn’t for his stupid faith in humanity. So he helps make signs and he takes part in all the marches and shouts all the right words. But he still drinks after every demonstration to forget that it won’t change anything, that even Apollo with all his divine powers can’t make people see. And there comes a day when he drinks too much, like they all told him at some point with their eyes and sad smiles, and his mind is foggy and his legs are trembling when he marches and he looses the sight of his friends (they insist upon calling him one of them, they insist they were all friends; he has no energy left to argue), every head in the crowd suddenly looking the same. Someone pushes him out of the way and his knees give in under him and he stays on that street corner for far too long (he knows he falls asleep). And when the ashes settle all the bodies look the same too; he only recognises Apollo’s because of the red jacket, blood stains almost invisible on it.
“Make it look effortless, make it look like anybody could do the same, make it look as if your body couldn’t move any other way”, the words probably run in his blood by now, in every drop of sweat, and he resents every single one of them. Because why can’t they show the audience that they love what they’re doing? All the teachers expect them to be flawless, to come to rehearsals before dawn (which is only possible for him because Bossuet wakes him), to sleep and breathe ballet, and he does, he really does. So why can’t he show it with every turn of his body, why do they want him to be a machine?
Until one day a representation from a school at the other end of country comes for a visit to do a long-planned collaboration and first the students are all asked to sit down and watch the newcomers dance. Grantaire’s breath catches and finally, finally he thinks he understands. There are six of them on the stage and they all move like it’s the most natural thing in the world, even the parts he knows are difficult suddenly seem easy, seem effortless, and he falls in love with it all over again.
He only keeps buying the newspaper because it’s a visible sign that he’s trying and sometimes late at night — when Eponine is not there to talk to him about shitty customers she had to deal with — he needs that. Plus there’s a crossword. But the ad is the most ridiculous thing he’s ever seen so he has to answer it (and he really wants to see who the hell still uses a newspaper anyway. Apart from him, that is). He doesn’t actually expect to get the job since he has exactly zero skills required for it, which Combeferre tells him at the very beginning, but the stunning man laughs at the joke Grantaire makes and that is that. He truly has no idea what to do, he’s never taken care of a sick person, but he listens to nurse’s suggestions and tries his best. After a week he wonders why the fuck isn’t he fired yet (naturally he asked Enjolras that; apparently sarcastic remarks are all it takes). After a month he’s friends with everyone in the house (and who needs that big of a house?) and Musichetta is trying to get him to bring over some of his paintings (“they would look lovely in the music room, I’m sure and you can’t argue!”). After a quarter a day that first laugh he realises he’s fucked (you can’t be in love with your boss, can you?). But there’s no backing out now, not when he’s more alive than he was in years, when he’s actually happy (you can ignore love and still function, can’t you?). Only he learned all he could about the disease Enjolras has so really he’s not surprised when he comes into his room one morning and finds it already crawling with people, all of them breathing but one. (No, you can’t.)
For all their understanding, his parents haven’t taught him much. But what they have helped him understand, were all the ways in which humans are connected with each other and with the universe. He might not (want to) remember his father’s face but he does remember all the lives he lived. Some of them come only in vague images and some of them in graphic details he’d give anything to forget. There aren’t any names, dates, concrete places, not really, but he can still see the same people showing up in his lives. Never in the same order though, in the same circumstances, the world can’t be that predictable. He feels in his bones that those people belong to him and he remembers what it felt like to die alongside them, a warm hand in his own, a smile that haunts him in his dreams. He knows he shouldn’t, that it’s not how it works, that he’s supposed to wait and see what the world has in store for him this time but he can’t help himself, he searches for them. Only it’s a futile task and some days he wonders if he lost all his chances because of it. And even when he wakes from a nightmare with a name on his lips, it’s too little to find Enjolras and he knows that too. Some days he wishes his parents haven’t taught him anything at all.