#thisdoorcanbeopened

"--towards a brighter future for the human race,” says Enjolras, convincingly, and is rewarded with thunderous applause.

The gathered crowd is so noisy he almost misses the sardonic drawl of hands coming from the front of the room. Anywhere else and he’d miss it. But Grantaire is standing with the rest of their friends close as can be, and Enjolras hears the slow clap.

He’s been warned about Grantaire. Briefed. Grantaire’s file was one of the high-priority briefs passed over when Enjolras was cognizant. When he felt the biting hunger for information on who he was, after the shock of emerging into being.

“Who am I?” He’d asked. They often ask that first.

“This is who he was,” the others say, passing over the information of his life in binders. “This was what he did. This was what he wore and what he liked to eat.” The file they pass over last, Grantaire’s, is thick. Someone calls it a phone-book, a word without any meaning. “This was who he loved.”

The others have mostly accepted him. Enjolras catches their wondering stares and does not turn away. He knows who he is, he feels it in the fiber of his bones. He has only been alive three weeks. He has been alive twenty-four years. Now it is so easy to understand who he was. He knows who he is.

The others understand and try to fill in the blanks. They inform him, gently, how Enjolras would have acted, or what his opinion was on this or that. They are full of suggestions. They reach out to touch him sometimes, checking that he is real, and he bears through the inquisition with a tight smile and a fraying patience, as he always would have done.

He knows who he is, knows that his instincts are as real as anyone’s. That is why the failed approach at Grantaire smarts so badly.

Since Enjolras’ restoration, all have greeted him save Grantaire; all have looked him over and touched him save Grantaire. Grantaire, who manages to never be in the same space alone, who has managed to be so often somewhere else.

The one attempt to engage him in his quarters was a catastrophe:

“May I come in?” They had started like this, slowly, with nightly talks to take the edges off their daily clashes. Enjolras read all about it in his files. Grantaire was unwilling to let history repeat.

“No.” Grantaire’s hip was angled into the airlock, keeping it open; as soon as he stepped away it would close. “I’m sorry. I’m so sorry. But you’re not him. You’re a damned fine facsimile, and it’s not your fault. I don’t blame you. You didn’t do anything but come back wearing his face.”

“Grantaire,” said Enjolras, his voice rough, because: in reading over their files he had fallen in love all over again. He had pored over their life together, and come to understand that they were only element missing following his return. His friends confirmed it: he’d been too unforgiving, too narrow-minded, until he’d accepted Grantaire as his partner. Grantaire provided the balance that rendered Enjolras’ ongoing movement humane. He was missing now.

Grantaire had shook his head. “I can’t look at you,” he said. “Forgive me.”

Then he stepped back from the airlock.

A week ago. A lifetime.

Now with the crowd dispersing, Enjolras can still hear the ring of Grantaire’s sarcastic clap. It should be an affront to him, to his event. He should be angry. He knows, with certainty, that Enjolras would feel this way.