Anonymous asked: would you share the ofpd thought?
well, ages upon ages ago (a.k.a. probably last week or so)
sarah531 shared a headcanon that for a moment enjolras didn’t recognize grantaire and mistook him for an angel
and the thought sort of builds off of that.
ok so you know how enjolras is marble and angelic and all that and he’s so beautiful that it gives the guard pause and that wakes grantaire up? and you know how grantaire’s been unconscious since well before le cabuc?
and you know how that chapter could be considered enjolras’s fall from grace because it’s the time he kills someone, the moment he sacrifices his moral high ground and such for the sake of The Ideal Future? it’s both the moment when he’s saint michael and the moment he falls from grace like lucifer
and grantaire isn’t awake to see that — he’s not awake to hear enjolras condemn himself for it, either; he’s not there and doesn’t know that enjolras has implicitly condemned himself to die for the cause.
well i imagine that they see each other as angels in that moment when their eyes meet over the shoulders of the guard — i imagine that grantaire makes eye contact with enjolras for a little instant before he cries out that he’s one of them. i imagine that this is the moment of the transfiguration, the moment of revelation that makes this apocalypse and not armageddon.
and i think they see angels in it, i think that grantaire choosing to rise and die with enjolras redeems enjolras’s death and negates his self-condemnation. grantaire doesn’t necessarily know the specifics of what happened, but the text says that he rose and knew what had been transpiring while he slept. i think he knows — he has to — that enjolras has transgressed and he doesn’t care.
and of course the fact that grantaire can choose to die at enjolras’s side is grantaire’s sanctification. this is the elevation of Love to its highest form, where it gives grantaire the ability to stand and act. this is where he can embrace right action and through it access belief, because ultimately, belief is less important than what love can do and what love can make you do.
so i basically feel like in the press of hands, in the question, in the smile, there’s a prayer, but it’s not aimed at god but at each other.
and it’s a prayer of thanksgiving.