Who: Grantaire When: Nighttime, over the course of a few days. Ending on Wednesday. Where: R's apartment What: Little do his friends know, R's been Dreaming and isn't exactly handling it well. Elements contained herein: violent Dreams, plot, and R on a bender. UPDATE: R's friends come to check on him! Rating: R(ish) for drinking and other illicit substances. Status:Narrative: Complete. Action: In-progress.
It had been several days since Grantaire had been in contact with his friends. His phone had died a while ago, long forgotten by his clouded mind, but even while it had been working, he'd been ignoring it. His door was locked tight, and if there was ever a knock, he didn't pay it any attention. As far as anyone knew, R was M.I.A.
Grantaire was fixated on an idea. He was impassioned, something to which he was very unaccustomed in his daily life. His usual character didn't permit it. But there was an Idea. A Thought. It was stuck on repeat in his mind, and he was unable to shake it or chase it from his mind. It was too raw, too real that it could not be a mere dream. His friends had described similar experiences, and Grantaire rightly denied them the satisfaction of acknowledging his familiarity with those types of dreams.
"Go sleep somewhere else!"
But this time it was too much. The expression on his beloved Enjolras' face did he just say that? as Grantaire was spurned from his side during the only truly important stand Les Amis would ever make. It was their end. Grantaire knew it even if they did not. Anger and heartbreak welled up, yes, but also fear. A bone-chilling fear penetrated to the deepest parts of his core. Grantaire had never been so impacted by anything in his life. The man who believed in nothing, that night, knew what it must feel like to have faith. Not in a deity or an ideal, but in a person. He'd always felt that inside him, but the Dream crystallized it. It rattled him. To believe in Dreams, no matter how realistic ...could it be a memory? not just a figment of drink and sleep?, was against what Grantaire stood for. He would not... no... could not admit these thoughts to his friends. It was all the worse that it seemed his Dreams and theirs were intimately entwined. Grand R knew. His Dream-self knew. He had wisdom that his friends would not see. They would all die. They would die for nothing. Grantaire could not fight for their cause, expelled from the barricade as he was, but how could he possibly continue on alone?
"Let me sleep here-- until I die here."
Grantaire's whole apartment was covered in speckled sheets. Thin, ugly smoke hung in the air with an earthy smell and the scent of alcohol. Grantaire was days past wine and well into much worse. The absinthe hit him hard in his current mental state, so he drank even more to try and find himself in it or else drown trying to. He would slip in and out of consciousness at odd intervals, and when he was awake, he was manic. The green fairy came to him like a ghost. Grantaire would sit and converse with her as if she were flesh and blood in front of him. He chased her and would always find the bottle again and again. Reality and Dreams blurred, and only in this did Grantaire find his footing.
When it began, Grantaire stood facing a blank canvas. With one edge on the floor, it stood taller than the man himself and was wider than his arms. Brushes and paint surrounded it (hence the sheets all around) but had remained untouched for days. Until now. When Grantaire closed his eyes, he could see the horror in front of him. The barricades erected to a hopeless cause, led by a beautiful godly man who shone like the sun. Phantom music rang in Grantaire's ears while two colours swam in his vision: Red and Black.
It began slowly. What began as the fumbling of an amateur steadily gained purchase as forgotten? muscle memory kicked in. Grantaire didn't think, didn't plan his next stroke or consider the overall painting. As the alcohol took him slowly and steadily into his Dream-self, he abandoned even the brushes, manipulating the paint with his bare hands when he could not hold the instrument steady enough anymore. He would occasionally pass out for periods of time, awaken to drink more, stare at the canvas, and start back to work on it. His eyes never saw what it was he was doing, only the image in his mind that haunted him like a vengeful spirit. Grantaire knew all their faces, rising to him out of the smoke as if reaching from the underworld. Even now, he could hear their voices-- hear his own-- singing for a revolution that was doomed from the word "go". But still he persevered. Grantaire's Dream-self revealed what Grantaire himself did not know about himself. Faced with that reality, faced with that vision... it was a stark reminder why the man had taken to the bottle in the first place.
Grantaire's arms were stained with red. Crimson and scarlet. The blood of angry men. Black and darkness. The dark of ages past. Despair. Passion. These strong emotions consumed him like the madness of Herakles. The curse of Dionysus. Nero and Caligula would have cowered before him. He would not rest, not really, until it was out of his mind. Grantaire didn't eat, didn't sleep, until finally it was done. His body collapsed from exhaustion, bloody red paint smeared across his body.
"Grantaire, you're incapable of belief, of thought, of will, of life, and of death."
Above him, in the canvas, rose a wooden barricade. A red flag held by a youthful Apollonian man. The backs of his friends surrounded him. Cannon fire roared in the distance. And there was pain. Scrawled on the bottom of the painting like a signature were two words: "Tu verras."
Grantaire slept like the dead, and there was no waking him.