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to the barricade
Jun. 7th, 2017 06:56 am[dated to June 5th and 6th in game]
Grantaire blinks his eyes open, and he is in the Corinth.
This isn't an unfamiliar situation, for him. The experience of waking up here, itself, is not, in his memory or in a dream; so often that is what he remembers and that is where his dreams take him, to the in-between feeling of being roused by something. By silence. To the reality of the situation flooding into him like a shock. That immediate clutch of horror and sickness at his chest, the settling of death and desperation into the wine shop.
The strangest part, he reflects, is that he recognizes that, that he must be dreaming. He never has before. But in the unwoken purple light of the shop, the wood feels realer under his fingers than perhaps it ever has. It smells: he had forgotten the smell of Paris, and the food and wine soaked floors of the Corinth, and of death. Overwhelmingly, of gunpowder. He doesn't feel drunk, only disoriented and sick with recognition and confusion, though his last wine bottle sits turned over in front of him.
No: the strangest part is that it is not silent. As he tries to take stock, guns fire outside, there is shouting. His friends should be dead on the floor. They always are, already. Enjolras, at least, should be standing before him, and a cluster of National Guard ready to execute the leader. In dream to dream it differs: once he was a corpse, rotting away, cursing Grantaire, in others he does not wake exactly but is only there to die. A few times the friends have been from the island or city: Marie, Tunny, Julie, Dorian, Neil, or even Edgar instead of Joly, Combeferre, and Courfeyrac left alone to die. Or Ferre and Courf have been wearing their city clothes, another life stolen from them.
They are not here. Outside, the shouting becomes more desperate, closer, and he unsteadily stands. The floorboards creak, a particular board he could have recalled but would never have thought of.
Has he been sent home?
He turns, pale.
Grantaire blinks his eyes open, and he is in the Corinth.
This isn't an unfamiliar situation, for him. The experience of waking up here, itself, is not, in his memory or in a dream; so often that is what he remembers and that is where his dreams take him, to the in-between feeling of being roused by something. By silence. To the reality of the situation flooding into him like a shock. That immediate clutch of horror and sickness at his chest, the settling of death and desperation into the wine shop.
The strangest part, he reflects, is that he recognizes that, that he must be dreaming. He never has before. But in the unwoken purple light of the shop, the wood feels realer under his fingers than perhaps it ever has. It smells: he had forgotten the smell of Paris, and the food and wine soaked floors of the Corinth, and of death. Overwhelmingly, of gunpowder. He doesn't feel drunk, only disoriented and sick with recognition and confusion, though his last wine bottle sits turned over in front of him.
No: the strangest part is that it is not silent. As he tries to take stock, guns fire outside, there is shouting. His friends should be dead on the floor. They always are, already. Enjolras, at least, should be standing before him, and a cluster of National Guard ready to execute the leader. In dream to dream it differs: once he was a corpse, rotting away, cursing Grantaire, in others he does not wake exactly but is only there to die. A few times the friends have been from the island or city: Marie, Tunny, Julie, Dorian, Neil, or even Edgar instead of Joly, Combeferre, and Courfeyrac left alone to die. Or Ferre and Courf have been wearing their city clothes, another life stolen from them.
They are not here. Outside, the shouting becomes more desperate, closer, and he unsteadily stands. The floorboards creak, a particular board he could have recalled but would never have thought of.
Has he been sent home?
He turns, pale.
