lathori asked: ExR. Labyrinth AU. Go. (You know you want to)
Babe, you GET me. I assume you mean “that time where modern AU Enjolras made the most ridiculous wish ever and subsequently made Grantaire’s life miserable,” of course.
- Here’s the
thing. Enjolras doesn’t believe in what
he can’t see and touch and handle with his own two hands. The ideal
of freedom is only something he believes in because he can see it on the
smaller scale, but he’s not religious or spiritual or what have you because it
just doesn’t even occur to him.
- So when Marius tells
him to be careful what he wishes for, all wide eyes and earnest voice, because Marius’
mother used to tell him warning stories about the Goblin King, Enjolras laughs
at him. He’s particularly unkind about
it because Marius interrupted a meeting where they were actually getting things done for once with this nonsense, and
because it’s the twenty-first century and they’re past fairy stories. Marius is offended, and insists that he knows those stories are true.
- “Is that so,” Enjolras says flatly, and Marius nods emphatically. “Fine, we can test that. I wish–”
- “Enjolras, don’t,” Marius yelps.
- “—that the Goblin King would come and take all of France away, right now.”
- Okay, in Enjolras’
defense, this might be the first time in anyone’s memory that Marius was right
about anything, ever. That doesn’t make
the realization that he’s suddenly standing alone on an unfamiliar hill over a
landscape of red and gold, facing what must be the Goblin King from Marius’
mother’s stories, any more pleasant.
- The Goblin King is
very much not what Enjolras would have expected, if he had expectations. He’s not tall and thin as a willow wand, he
doesn’t have long fair hair and a handsome face. Tall, yes, almost a head taller than
Enjolras, but broad through his shoulders and built like a fighter, with a riot
of black curls and middling-tan skin swirled with color up his throat and
cheekbones, as if someone had spilled paints over him. He’s dressed all in black, a long formal
cloak clasped over one shoulder with an emerald the size of Enjolras’ palm and
every part of him clad in some kind of dark armor, a crown of twisted metal
resting on his hair. Enjolras can’t
actually make a definitive judgement about his
face, though, handsome or otherwise, because of the thunderous scowl
twisting it out of shape.
- “A country,” the Goblin King says flatly, his arms crossed over his chest and his gloved finger tapping dangerously against his arm. His voice is deep and rich and just a little hoarse around the edges, and Enjolras utterly fails to keep from gaping just a little. “You wished away your entire country.”
- “Um,” Enjolras says, drawing a complete blank for possibly the first time in his life. “It wasn’t on purpose?” The Goblin King glares harder and Enjolras swallows. “You could just give it back.”
- “That is not,” the King hisses through his teeth, “how it works. How it works is that you wish something away, and I come and take it. I offer you an exchange, and if you take it, I keep the prize. If you do not, you run my Labyrinth. If you win your way to my castle at the center, you keep your prize, if you lose, I keep it. I cannot just give it back to you.”
- Enjolras takes a deep breath. If there’s a way these things are done, he had better do this right. “So what’s the exchange?”
- The Goblin King stretches out a hand and gives Enjolras a sharp prod in the chest. A clock with thirteen hours marked on its face appears over the Goblin King’s shoulder. “You don’t get an exchange, because I don’t want your prize. You will run my Labyrinth inside of the thirteen hour time limit, and I expect you to win, may all the gods have mercy on us, because I have a kingdom to run and it does not consist of France!” His snarl disappears, replaced by a smile that makes his eyes glitter, pacing closer to Enjolras. “Because if you do not win, I won’t have them in my Labyrinth, causing my real citizens trouble.” His voice goes soft as he leans in to whisper in Enjolras’ ear, his breath cool on Enjolras’ neck. “If you fail, I will drive your people out of the Goblin City, and let them try their luck on the outskirts of the Underground. And wouldn’t that be…quite a pity.”
- “You can’t,” Enjolras breathes.
- “You think you can command me?” the Goblin King asks, arching an eyebrow, so close that Enjolras can feel the hem of his cloak ripple in the wind. “I am wild.”
- The Goblin King fades
like a mirage, and Enjolras bolts toward the outer wall of the Labyrinth. There’s a…something, there, a creature that’s
a little shorter than him and feminine, human-looking, but with skin that looks
like smooth granite and hair that chimes like metal fibers. She laughs when he demands outright to know
where the door is, and points, and remarks that he might do well, with that
attitude. The great double doors creaks
open and Enjolras runs into the Labyrinth, thinking for all of a second or
three that this will be easy.
- Except that it’s
apparently not a labyrinth or a maze or anything, just an unendingly long
corridor. He doesn’t have the faintest
idea how long he spends searching for a turn, any turn at all—his watch is
ticking backward for some
god-forsaken reason, in fits and starts—only that, by the time he leans the
back of his head against the cool stone, he’s breathless and sore and feels
like he’s being watched. It might be the
Labyrinth itself, but it feels more like the Goblin King. So Enjolras takes the moment to recite a few
of his more choice comments on the concept of monarchy and divine right and
dictatorial ruling systems, and there’s a chuckle, low and dark and a little
bit wicked, on the next gust of wind.
- Enjolras groans and
pushes himself away from the wall, lurching forward off balance, and almost
falls straight through what he definitely
thought was another wall. It turns out
to be no such thing, rather a cleverly concealed break in one wall leading to a
new nest of passages. Picking at random,
Enjolras turns right, and there’s a laugh from behind him. He whips around and sees the stone woman from
the door, smirking at him with teeth like glass.
- “His Majesty Grantaire would like to suggest that you try the other direction, but naturally is forbidden to offer help,” she says, sounding amused. “You’d better hurry before he loses patience with the people overrunning his city and starts setting the goblins on them.”
- “He can’t hurt them unless I lose,” Enjolras says with more confidence than he feels.
- “Goblins don’t need to hurt you to make you miserable,” she says, definitely laughing at him now. She clicks her stone tongue in imitation of a clock ticking. “Time is short.”
- “Can you show me the way to the castle at the center of the Labyrinth?” Enjolras asks, not caring if it’s rude, because rudeness worked with her before. “Miss, uh…”
- She brushes her
silver steel hair over her shoulder and says, “Eponine. And I could show you some distance…for a
price.” She arches her eyebrows at him
and Enjolras yanks off his watch without a second thought, holding it out. Eponine takes it, considers it, and clasps it
onto her own wrist.
- Eponine leads him
confidently through the corridor, silent except for the scrape of her bare feet
against the cobbles, around a dizzying series of corners and through landscapes
that shift like a dream. She comes to a
stop at the mouth of a hedge maze and wordlessly gestures to it, Enjolras’
watch gleaming on her wrist, and disappears into the stone walls like a ghost.
- Enjolras walks into
the hedge maze. He’s hopelessly lost in
minutes, the weight of the Goblin King’s eyes—Grantaire’s eyes, he thinks, remembering what Eponine called him—on
the back of his neck. He comes to his
tenth dead end and shouts in frustrated rage, slamming a fist into the hedge.
- It sinks in, and he
finds a thick branch under his fingers.
Sturdy, he thinks to himself, eyeing the hedge differently now and
shoving the sleeves of his red jacket up past his elbows to free his hands. He reaches up and finds another grip, braces
his foot, and pulls himself up, and up, and up, until he’s sprawled awkwardly
over the top of the hedge. The wind
laughs at him again, and he scowls as he gets to his feet as best he can.
- “You’re a bastard, Goblin King,” he snarls, looking toward the end of the hedge maze and wobbling over the top toward it, and the forest beyond. “And the concept of absolute monarchy is archaic and unsustainable and—and—and terrible.”
- “If you want to be the one to introduce the Labyrinth to the concept of democracy,” the Goblin King’s voice drawls from thin air, almost making Enjolras fall right off the hedge again in shock, “do give me a few days’ notice to depart the premises, would you?”
- “Fuck off,” Enjolras mutters.
- The voice hums
reprovingly and says, “Language, fair prince.”
- By the time Enjolras
reaches the far edge of the hedge maze and scrambles down to the grass outside,
his arms and hands are scratched to hell and back, and he’s in a truly foul
mood. He stalks into the forest, trying
to orient himself as best he can toward the citadel he can see in the distance.
- It’s possible he
should be paying more attention, he allows when he stumbles through the edge of
the trees into a garden. It’s pretty,
thick beds of unfamiliar red and gold flowers weighing down the air with their
perfume, high stone walls cradling the whole thing like a secret.
- Enjolras doesn’t
stand a chance. The first moment he
takes a deep breath of the flowers’ scent, he wavers, blinking slow and
sleepy. A tree spirit with long chestnut
hair and an alarmed expression bursts out of the closest stand of rowans and
catches him as he sinks into darkness.
- Enjolras wakes up,
cradling his aching head. The dream
clings, lingers, something strange about goblins and labyrinths and…a man…
- The Musain is loud
and happy, Joly and Bousset holding the room captive with another story of
Bousset’s ongoing misfortune. The
firelight is warm, candles glowing off laughing smiles and smooth wood tables,
and in the back of the room is R, his eyes fixed on Enjolras over the top of
his ever-present bottle. There’s paint
smeared over his cheek, up his throat, and something about his gaze is heavier
than ever.
- The dream doesn’t
matter, Enjolras decides, unfolding himself from where he dozed off on the
table. His friends are here, all of
them, and they have a revolution to plan, against…someone. A king.
He starts talking and their eyes turn to him, and R’s stare doesn’t
waver.
- R picks a fight and
Enjolras rises to the bait. It’s not
unusual, but it’s bitter this time, snarled words across the room, and R leaves,
the shadows of the room rippling in his wake.
- One day slips into
the next, so that Enjolras barely remembers anything between one meeting and
the next. R is back, odd given their
fight the night before, and the revolution is underway, making good
progress. They fight again, bitter and
furious, and R leaves, emerald-green bottle in hand and tattered shadows
clinging.
- The next night. The next.
A week turns into two. Every
night would be perfect, Enjolras would be so happy, surrounded by his friends,
his amis, as they change the world,
if R wasn’t there and determined to go to war.
The cynic acts like Enjolras is missing something crucial, like he’s
actually worried for Enjolras’
safety, and isn’t that a riot, when they’ve never gotten along before.
- The twelfth
night. R looks even more disheveled than
usual, his hair a riot of curls and paint smudged liberally over his skin.
- “You’re going to die!” R snarls, sitting in his preferred corner like a king in court, with a wine bottle for a scepter. “Wake up, Enjolras, and look around!”
- “Just because you have nothing that you believe in does not mean that the people won’t fight for us,” Enjolras snaps back, angry, so angry, because doesn’t R see? Doesn’t R see how much he could do if he bothered, how much any person could do?
- R laughs, twisted and humorless, and takes a drink, and says, “So wrapped up in your schemes of revolution, Enjolras. You will get all of your friends killed, and then you will die of the guilt, fair-haired hero, and where will the world be then? Where will your beloved Patria be, without you to save her?”
- Enjolras does not care to be mocked, but it always seems to end here with R. “Our dream will not die, even if we do.”
- “Oh, yes,” R drawls, “the dream, the glorious dream. Once upon a time, there was a very foolish boy who thought to steal the unwanted dreams and uncared for children of the world, and give them a place to belong, a kingdom of lost things and wished-aways, and he grew up angry and alone, the villain of every story. Tell me, Enjolras, what will you do if your dream becomes one of those? Would you fight to reclaim it?”
- “For once in your life, R,” Enjolras says, cold, “be serious.”
- R comes to his feet like a tidal wave piling up, graceful and inevitable and terrible, leaning across the table until it feels like he’s inches from Enjolras, even across all the space of the room.
- “Do not command
me, fair prince, even here in your own little kingdom,” he says, and this quiet
lethality is something Enjolras hasn’t heard from him before. “I told you before: I am wild.”
- The words strike
memories like flint to tinder, and Enjolras rocks back on his heels as the
voices around him fade, figures withering away until it’s only him and R—him
and Grantaire, the Goblin King. Grantaire is still holding the bottle, long
fingers stroking the neck absently, but he’s back in his dark cloak and a loose
black shirt and trousers, his crown resting on his curls. It’s odd how much Enjolras feels he’s come to
know the man over the course of this hallucination, this dream—and he knows
that this, the Musain in an age before electricity and smartphones, is the true
dream, now, with his memories returned to him.
- “Time is short, fair prince,” Grantaire says, arching an eyebrow at him. “And as much as I have enjoyed this interlude—and your determination to keep me here—I still have custody of some sixty-eight million French citizens. You have one hour left to complete my Labyrinth.”
- The number goes through Enjolras like a knife. “An hour?” He fights to breathe for a moment and growls, “You tricked me! Delayed me with this—whatever this is!”
- “I have done
what is required of me,” Grantaire replies instantly, implacable as the tide,
as the orbit of suns. “The Labyrinth
trapped you, with the garden of dreams, and you expected my presence, so I
came. I have spent the better part of
two weeks—subjectively—attempting to wake you before your time could run out
and you would be trapped in the dream until you died. I am bound by more rules than you know, fair
prince, and actively helping a Runner is forbidden. A nudge is all I am permitted, and so I
tried.”
- He has, is the thing,
Enjolras realizes abruptly. Wake up, Enjolras, and look around, he
remembers.
- “Why?” Enjolras asks, curious. “Why did you try to wake me up? It can’t just be because of the country.”
- The look
Grantaire gives him is almost pitying. “Humans
really are depressingly dense. You had
better hurry. Your time is running out.” He vanishes, and the last of the dream
shatters like glass.
- Enjolras opens his eyes in a garden outside a walled city with a citadel just past it, and doesn’t see any of the wickedly sweet red and gold flowers. He’s not sure how he got to the city, either, because it was still miles from him when he fell asleep, but he’s not going to look a gift horse in the mouth. Distances seem arbitrary here, miles being eaten up in minutes and inches taking hours.
- He heads for the
gate and finds it open, two goblin guards standing on either side. They mutter excitedly when they see him,
something vague about princes and castles and kings, but don’t get in his
way. The twisting maze of the Goblin
City is bad enough, as obstacles go, and Enjolras is relieved that the
inhabitants seem perfectly willing to let him past. He can’t imagine trying to navigate this
insanity with them trying to stop him,
particularly since, while an individual goblin seems harmless, their advantage
in terms of numbers is enormous.
- It takes him longer
than he would have liked, getting through the Goblin City.
- He pushes open the
great front doors of the castle just as the first strike sounds, a great bell
ringing out to announce that he’s lost.
By the time the second strike comes, he’s already running, relieved that
there’s a straight hallway from the doors to what appears to be a throne
room. He fetches up at Grantaire’s feet
as the invisible clock strikes five.
- “I’m here,” he pants. Grantaire is sprawled comfortably in a simple throne with a curved back, the room scattered with goblins—and chickens, oddly—and human wish-aways, all of Enjolras’ own friends. Joly and Bousset are leaning against the throne, laughing, while Courfeyrac talks in broad gestures and Jehan talks solemnly with a goblin, and Grantaire is smiling when he turns to Enjolras. The question of whether or not his face is a handsome one is answered abruptly: not typically so, but yes, especially when he smiles.
- “Yes, so you are. Cutting it rather fine, though, aren’t you, fair prince.” Enjolras starts to protest and Grantaire holds up a hand, eyes laughing, and says, “I think you had better quit while you’re ahead, Enjolras, or hadn’t we learned our lesson about speaking without thinking today?”
- “I can take my friends back with me? I can take everyone?”
- “Well, I’m sure
as stars not keeping them, so you had better.”
Grantaire pauses, his smile fading into something more serious, almost
soft. “Unless you would prefer to stay.” Enjolras laughs, sharp and triumphant, and
Grantaire’s face closes up, and he says, “Yes.
Probably wise. You can take your
people, Enjolras. Do get out of my
kingdom.”
- Between the closing
of Enjolras’ eyes in a blink and their opening, the world shifts and rearranges
and they are home. Paris is bustling
outside the window, cars roaring past and confused voices shouting amongst
themselves. Oh dear God, do they all
remember? Enjolras doesn’t even want to
think about the fallout from that. It
only appears to have been a few hours, though, the back room of the Musain lit
by sunset. None of them are quite ready
to move from their exact spots, staring around at each other in shock.
- “I am…so sorry,” Enjolras finally says, raking his hands back through his hair. They aren’t scratched up anymore, the injuries healed to a latticework of faint scars.
- Joly laughs. “Oh, don’t be sorry, it was fun. Don’t do it again, but it wasn’t bad.”
- “Grantaire’s a good guy,” Courfeyrac confirmed with a nod.
- “He threatened to send an entire country into some kind of nether realm!” Enjolras protests, gaping.
- “Well,” Combeferre says, pulling off his glasses and giving a smudge a thoughtful rub with the hem of his shirt, “if you think about it, you basically took advantage of the rules he’s bound by to send an invading force into his country. I think he could have justified much worse than a few threats and we should all be grateful that he was such an accommodating host.”
- Bahorel laughs, loud and booming, and says, “I think we should invite him for a drink.”
- “You’re insane,” Enjolras says, mildly horrified.
- “No,” Jehan says, serene. “He seems lonely. It’s a good idea.”
- “Please tell me
you’re joking.”
- They’re not
joking.
- Courfeyrac hunts down
a piece of paper with an actual letterhead on it—Enjolras didn’t know the
Musain had stationary, but Louison is full of surprises, and remarkably calm
when she tells Enjolras that she would appreciate it if no one else wished her away,
as she has restocking to do. They have
Feuilly do the writing because his script could make a grammar school teacher
cry for how tidy it is, and someone—not
Enjolras—lets Courfeyrac dictate.
- Dear Goblin King,
You are formally invited to the Musain whenever you want. Drinks are on us.
Sincerely,
Les Amis - “All of you are completely insane,” Enjolras says. “I don’t think he’s going to want to come.”
- “Oh, why not,” Bousset says cheerily. “Because you beat him? If the way he was watching you was any indication, I doubt he cares that much.” Enjolras stares blankly and Bousset shakes his head as if witnessing a tragedy. “Enjolras, you are the dumbest smart person I know. Courf!”
- Courfeyrac appears as if by magic and pats Enjolras on the cheek condescendingly. “It’s all right, Enj, you’ll catch up. Now,” he says, setting the note in the middle of a table. “I wish the Goblin King would come and take this note away, right now!”
- Grantaire shimmers into existence, like shadow pooling and becoming solid, and he looks annoyed, dressed in the full armor Enjolras remembers from their first encounter. “I am not a messenger pigeon, and the next time I am summoned to this bar, I will light it on fire,” he says to no one in particular, eyes flickering away from Enjolras. He holds out his hand and Courfeyrac hands over the note. Grantaire glances down at it and his mouth cracks into a bit of a grin, and a wave of his hand dismisses the armor and cloak until he’s dressed in plain black clothing again. “You lot invaded my kingdom today and tried to teach my goblins about Marx, you’re absolutely correct that drinks are on you.”
- “Grantaire,” Enjolras says, and his eyes focus on him at last, his good humor fading slightly. “What are you doing here?”
- “I was summoned,” Grantaire says coolly. “There are rules, like I said. Is that permitted, fair prince?”
- “I—of course,” Enjolras says, taken aback. “I just assumed you were bound to the Labyrinth or something.”
- Grantaire’s eyes
warm again, just slightly. “Only when
she’s in an ill temper,” he says dryly, folding his long limbs neatly into a
chair. “I have had a remarkably long
day, and I believe I was promised alcohol, if that offer still stands.”
- Joly cheers and a
bottle of wine is produced for Grantaire, and the meeting goes on as they usually
do, full of light and laughter and teasing and unproductive tangents, and all
the while the Goblin King sits at one of the tables and watches Enjolras. It’s an odd sense of déjà vu, back to the
dream from the flowers.
- This time, though, Enjolras lets himself watch back, and when an argument
about the concept of monarchy arises, Grantaire is grinning when he leans
forward to join in.
