kernow | ➳ i am a ghost, just a mirage

[ He's mocking him. Has to be. There's simply no way someone independent of their group and time would have experienced the same supernatural phenomenon. He doesn't even know how they managed it, the violation of nature that it is.

Enjolras can feel himself step back but it all feels...muffled somehow, an out of body experience undercut by a dull ringing in his ears. Enjolras thinks back to finally finding Combeferre and Courfeyrac, to finding them all, tears shed for the life they'd all lost too soon; in the same breath, he recalls his mother's cold stare as his father had threatened him to cease voicing his delusions, of what sort of caged life awaited those insisting to voice madness. He can feel that tell-tale headache coming on again as he tries to make sense of what's been claimed. ]

...Remi, this isn't funny. I don't know what you're playing at, but whatever you've been drinking it's no excuse--

[ It's a low blow, and he knows it even before the words pass his lips. ]

[ R winces and laughs a moment later, sounding half deranged as he shakes his head. ]

I knew it. There’s the Enjolras I knew, fearless leader you are; you can take someone objecting to you, and you can’t accept what you don’t understand. Alexandre.

[ Rémi let’s the name shift sit for a moment. He takes a step toward Enjolras and stands breast to breast. ]

You’re missing one. There is one person who died with the rest the day your barricade fell— and I deserve your mockery, sure. But damn if I’ll tell you about him when you can’t accept what I’m telling you. Ask Courfeyrac about a man named Grantaire and maybe you’ll believe him, hm?

[ Enjolras looks stricken at the use of that name, his real name, and the knowing snipe that comes with it. There's something horrifyingly hollow about Remi's laughter as it hits his ears, and Enjolras can feel his chest ache, though either from his heart or the long-gone bullet wounds he couldn't say. ]

Stop it. He would have told me something like that, I would remem-- [ He catches himself, heart tensing with the realization of what he's just owned to, how it must sound. The hallway feels too open, too exposed... ] Why are you saying all of this?

Edited (fecking formatting) 2020-03-19 23:28 (UTC)

[ Grantaire steps back looking genuinely confused, and he embellishes it with a hand-throwing shrug and a look around. A scoff gets his next tirade going. ]

Why live, Enjolras, if we’re going to be born again in the same place with the same friends? Why argue about society, knowing it’s going to just go on no matter what and humanity is fucked? Why do I even breathe knowing that you can’t or won’t listen— actually, openly listen— to what I’m saying, that it doesn’t matter? I’ve argued with you enough to probably deserve that. It’s only fair that now you wonder why I even bother. It’s all for naught. Why anything, really?

[ He gestures to Enjolras, mostly upward given his height, and looks at him breathing raggedly. A step toward Alexandre and R ceases shouting, his tone both pleading and disappointed. ]

I’m telling you this because I think it’s important that you know. Take what you will of that, I guess. I just thought someone whom I was in a relationship with might listen and believe in what I have to say. I believe in you, you know. I just hoped it might be reciprocal at this point. You don’t remember who I was. Fine. That’s probably for the best, honestly. But you know who I am now, and thought maybe it was different now. [ He smiles and his voice drops lower again. ]

This time, I was wrong.

Because that's all that should matter! I can't claim to know why or how I am here, to know the past stranger you say you are, but good god, why shouldn't another chance like this be capitalized upon?!

[ He hears himself claim it openly again, this secret he had sworn to himself not to voice outside their group for fear of all the consequences it entails; but didn't Combeferre and Courfeyrac warn him, the danger in keeping this unsaid forever...? And what of Remi's claims, of this Grantaire and Courfeyrac's knowledge of a man absent from his own memories? He's said enough now to see he is earnest, but Enjolras cannot find any comfort in this; instead, overwhelming anxiety crashes over him. ]

I don't mean to hurt you, but I can't force myself to reclaim memories that are not there. Please, regardless of what you claim, I don't want to dwell on those ghosts. I want this life now, with you, because I lov--

[ His voice feels strained, broken as he says it again more softly: ]

...I love you.

[ Grantaire’s rebuttal doesn’t make it to his larynx, struck down by the admittance. As his face itches and he swallows, other words echo: You are incapable of believing, of thinking, of willing, of living, and of dying.

Wit dies in favor of self depreciation. R shakes his head and otherwise stays frozen where he stands. ]

My very existence pisses you off too much for that.

How can you say that?!

[ Where Enjolras was shrinking back from Remi before, he surges forward, all too close. He can feel his head spinning with everything processing at once, a dull pounding keeping time with his heart. ]

All I want to do is see you, talk to you, even when you make me mad. I like it when you text me random crap out of the blue, or when you show me these hole in the wall places I wouldn't have ever found on my own, even when you push me to think through my argument with your snarky quips. God, I...I just want to be with you.

[ He takes a long breath, staring at Remi as if to will him into belief. Looking at him, he see wisps of The Man that past life, curling around Remi's figure like smoke and creating a mixture of cravat and t-shirt, linen sleeves and hoodie. Enjolras pushes it away with a shake of his head, forces himself to focus on Remi's face.]

I'm...I'm sorry I never told you about my past, and that I can't remember yours. But isn't this enough...?

[ R looked at him cautiously, trying his best to not shrink back again when he came toward him. It works, in that he actually can feel Enjolras’ breath on his hair as he looks up to try and reconcile what he’s saying with their unknown-to-Enjolras past life and what Alexandre is telling Rémi. ]

You... you don’t have to apologize. Not for that, anyway. [ He snickers and his chest aches hollowly. He can’t look at Enjolras and takes a small step back unconsciously. ]

You’re not breaking up with me?

[ Enjolras takes in Remi’s avoidant gaze, his shrinking posture, and swallows hard. ]

...Is that what you want?

[ R shakes his head, taking another step back as he holds his head. ]

No.

[ His head aches, and he looks up and sees the modern Alexandre donned in the red waistcoat, bayonet at his side, haughty and glaring at the drunken man who had stumbled onto a half built barricade at Rue Saint-Denis. Go home, Grantaire. You refuse to sober up and be useful so leave us. ]

But you don’t know who I am, Alexandre. I want this now. I want you and I. I’ve loved you for a long time. [ Rémi’s voice cracks but he swallows the lump and slumps against the wall closest to them. ]

I’m not angry. I’m not blaming you- but I feel that you resent me for remembering and are angry and confused about having your memories buried. I can’t bear to be there for that and be a constant reminder of it.

Edited (take one down pass it around ) 2020-03-20 19:03 (UTC)

Then it shouldn't matter who we were.

[ His insistence is biting, desperate; it's not to say he thinks Remi's prior life, this Grantaire, and is meaningless. (with every thought it, every mention, the name brings with it a dull ache, like memories of the bullet wounds that had once riddled his body; but these last memories won't come, why won't they come--) But god, a part of his mind wishes no one had remembered anything at all. What good is a second life if the unshared traumas of the first form yet another barrier to their happiness?

Enjolras fists grip tightly then flexes it a few times, looking as if he wants to punch a wall and cry all at once.]

I don't resent you. [ No one in the empty hallway is convinced by this statement. ] I just don't...why can't you just let it be?

[ R presses his lips, squinting and looking at Enjolras for a long moment. There are subtle mouth movements and his head cocks to the side so slightly as he considers that and tries to answer him succinctly. He inhaled through his nose, chest heaving, before he replies to the question.

There’s no sarcasm or laughter in his eyes. R looks bedraggled, exhausted, and ill, as though he would lie down and sleep against the wall if he could. His chin lifts to avoid looking too piteously at Apollo’s anger-tinted despair. ]

I don’t deserve honesty after keeping this from you. Before you point that out. But I ask you to consider this, if you can. Would you ‘let it be’ if the situation was reversed?

[ Enjolras' jaw clicks back and forth as he lets the question settle, anger and frustration and sadness all clearly warring on his features.

It's a fair question, and one he more than knows the answer to; however, the hypocrisy of that answer is completely unpalatable, and Enjolras can already feel himself pushing the logical inconsistency out of his mind--

Isn't this exactly what he accused you of being? So willfully blind to what you don't want to know? Tearing your way through to your own desired conclusion, the means to that end be damned?

His whole body is tense, shaking slightly as he finally answers, in a clipped tone: ]

I--I need some space. To think. I'm sorry.

[ He doesn't even wait for Remi--Grantaire's reaction before he leaves. His chest heaves as his walking pace quickens out of the hall, and the weight of it all feels unbearable. ]

➳ i am a ghost, just a mirage

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