Chapter Text
Some things cannot be taught.
From the time Grantaire was born, he had been a natural. His mother had cursed and wailed and damned the man who had left her behind to raise him on her own. All things considered, she did the best she could, but there is only so much that one human being can withstand. On his sixth birthday, she packed a small suitcase and pinned a note to the front of his coat. She deposited him on a train car and waved goodbye. He never saw her again.
His destination was his father. Through the kindness of strangers, he managed to find his way to the theatre where his father was presently engaged. His father, of course, was a magician.
Grantaire’s father was none too happy to see him, and Grantaire had never been particularly good at controlling his emotions. He set the curtains on fire and as his father set them to rights with a snap of his fingers, Grantaire thought he saw a spark of interest in his father’s eyes.
The lessons began the next day. Grantaire could set things aflame, fling objects against the walls, cause watches and clocks to combust. What he could not do was put them back together again. His father watched him and tried to correct, working with him to reassemble the objects he shattered and putting out the small fires he set.
After two weeks, the gentleman came. Grantaire was called backstage after his father’s show, and his father introduced him to a gentleman whose name slipped in one ear and out the other. His father put Grantaire through the paces, having him set and extinguish a handkerchief, launch a vase against a wall and repair it, make the gentleman’s pocket watch explode and then come together again. The gentleman nodded and beckoned Grantaire forward.
Grantaire stepped forward hesitantly, and presented his hand when asked. The gentleman fit a silver ring on the third finger of his right hand, and just as Grantaire was about to protest that it wouldn’t fit, it began to shrink. At first, he was delighted at this display, but his delight soon turned to fear and then to pain as the ring slowly sank into his skin, leaving behind a mark that would last a lifetime.
After Grantaire left, his father and the gentleman remained.
“Your own son?” the gentleman asked, idly pulling his gloves back on. “Are you really willing to risk so much?”
“I do not risk. I know that I will win,” his father boasted. “We have a deal, oui?”
“Oui,” his companion agreed. “I will, of course, let you know when I have found my champion. As you had first move last time, I believe that it is mine by rights.”
“Of course. And the venue?”
“Will be determined once I have assessed the skills of my player.”
“Surely you don’t mean to pick an urchin up off of the streets.”
“Nothing quite so crass, my dear man. I have far bigger plans in mind.”
These plans included a young boy named Enjolras. Five years old, the son of an aristocrat, wanting for nothing. He was walking in the yard, observing the flora and fauna of the garden when the gentleman approached. Enjolras had never been a shy child, even around adult strangers. When the gentleman had promised him the chance to change the world, he leapt at it, as any young boy would. It sounded like an adventure, did it not? And a brighter young boy could not have been found in that particular area of Paris (for Grantaire was currently en route to London with his father for the next tour of his father’s shows).
Enjolras never saw his parents again, but as he grew older, his memories faded, and all that remained were recollections of a gentleman whose name who could never recall, who visited him periodically in his youth and provided him with everything he could need and the best instruction available (though had he known how much his instruction differed from that of his fellow young men, he may have reconsidered his opinion of the gentleman.)
On his eighth birthday, the gentleman gave him a gold ring, far too large for his slender fingers, but once placed on the third finger of his right hand, it began to shrink. It sunk into his skin, leaving an imprint, and he could feel that something had changed. The next day, his instructors were dismissed and he began to study exclusively with the gentleman.
Enjolras had not been born with anything other than his personality to differentiate himself from the world at large. The gentleman, however, believed that all things could be taught, if given enough time and discipline. Enjolras was taught how to mix concoctions that could do wondrous things, taught symbols that if written in a certain way and in a certain place could bring down an empire, taught how to be charming.
Grantaire’s lessons were very different. He knew he was being trained, but for what, he was uncertain. His father would speak sometimes of besting his opponent, though he had no idea what kind of challenge this was. Much of his training centered on learning to control his power, learning how to channel it into a productive force rather than a destructive one. He learned to create, though he learned there was no way to create something from nothing; for everything, there must be a beginning and an end.
He learned the tricks that his father employed during his show. He learned how to dress himself without using his hands. He learned how to manipulate fabric to appear far richer than it was. And he learned how to heal.
The one lesson he hated most was the one that would be most useful to him. His father taught him how to heal himself, but this was not without a price. They started small. His father would slice open the tips of his fingers with his pocketknife, and make Grantaire heal them, one by one and then all ten at once. As soon as he mastered this and could do it without so much as blinking, his father shattered his wrist, and told him to heal it. It took much longer for Grantaire to perfect bone setting, but came to excel at it.
Grantaire grew up hating his father. Enjolras grew up ambivalent towards his gentleman.
On Grantaire’s eighteenth birthday, his father died. He received letters of condolences from his father’s friends and colleagues, but could not bring himself to begin to answer them. The entire flat that they had rented smelled of rotting flowers. Grantaire could not bring himself to throw them away.
This was not out of grief for his father’s death. Rather, he was grieving for the fact that his father was not truly dead.
His father’s last trick had not worked the way he’d planned. He had meant to disappear, to become invisible, to turn almost into a pane of glass. He had only half succeeded, and was more ethereal being than man. Grantaire felt no pity for the man who had made his life hell.
Two years passed. Grantaire held séances to make his money, falsifying communication with the dead through small, though clever, tricks. He could never stand the way the families cried afterwards. Part of him wanted to tell them it was a scam, but he had to keep himself alive somehow. He dove into the bottoms of as many bottles as he could find, ignoring his father as much as he could when the man would appear behind him at the most inopportune times.
As if the constant berating about his drinking was not enough, Grantaire’s father would not sway from his position that Grantaire try to improve his skills. Grantaire was having none of it, and snapped that he was as good as he was possibly going to get. His father stalked off, muttering about wasted potential, and Grantaire ignored him, having no use for a man who had never truly helped him.
On Enjolras’s eighteenth birthday, the gentleman set him up with a flat of his own, furnished with the books he was to study in his free time. His free time would come after the job that had been arranged for him. He was to work in tandem with the renowned Jean Prouvaire on his latest project, whatever it may be.
Prouvaire had had a number of successful projects in recent years, and all by the age of twenty one. There were the multiple plays, the ballet troupe, the acting company, the list went on. He seemed to live a charmed life; everything he touched blossomed.
His newest project, Enjolras was assured by Jean Prouvaire, was going to be the biggest and brightest star in the constellation of Prouvaire’s career. Jehan, as Enjolras was to call him, had taken an immediate liking to Enjolras, and told him that he would be a godsend on the newest project.
“Someone to ground me,” Prouvaire explained. “To keep me from flying too close to the sun, as it were. To keep my ambitions in check.”
Enjolras had replied that he would do the best he could, if only he knew what the project was.
Jehan took him aside and beckoned him close, leaning in to whisper in his ear. “A circus,” he murmured. “The likes of which have never been seen by god or man.”
Enjolras had merely nodded, as yet unknowing how much this circus would cost him.