wings_of_a_swan | In which there is a bit of quiet time

In which there is a bit of quiet time

Enjolras is in room number 89, which seems appropriate.

The room itself is decorated, or rather not decorated, in much the same way that Enjolras's rooms in Paris were. Though with rather fewer candles. And no stove, yet it's a perfectly comfortable temperature--is it spring or summer here? Is it always spring or summer here?

Combeferre takes in the window, the books scattered here and there, the walls bare except for the Declaration of the Rights of Man--and a flag. A red flag, with holes and stains that could only be blood.

The barricade's flag.

Combeferre blinks hard, and looks away. If he weeps now, it won't be quiet sobs and tears, but the sort of howls that would frighten the neighbors, if there are neighbors. And if they are capable of emotions like fear.

He turns to see Enjolras looking at him. He suspects Enjolras is worried. Combeferre wants to reassure him, but it's not so easy to think of how.

"There's nothing to be concerned about, my friend," Combeferre finally says, knowing it's not his best effort. "After all," he adds drily, "we're both dead. What more can happen?"

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Enjolras puts a hand on his shoulder and squeezes gently. For the moment, he doesn't say anything.

He's not precisely worried -- not precisely. It's only that he remembers. He remembers the barricade, and he remembers what it was like to come here after, even having had the time to look at the soldiers' guns and know they were about to fire.

And he knows Combeferre.

(The clothes are on the bed, the bottle of water and plate of food on the nightstand. They'll keep until Combeferre wants them.)

Combeferre follows Enjolras's glance to the clothes on the bed, and remembers that he still reeks of battle and blood.

"I suppose I should...wash, and change." He looks around for a pitcher of water, and sees none. "Is that bottle of water for washing as well as drinking?"

"Probably," Enjolras agrees, though he doesn't drop his hand just yet.

"No; there's a bath and a basin in the little room there." With quite marvelous plumbing.

He remembers, with a sudden immediacy, his first night in this room. Exhausted, filthy, covered in blood, the hot water bubbling forth endlessly. How he'd thought in a haze what Combeferre would think of these wonders, the speculation he would murmur about boilers and fuel and piping. At his ear there'd been only silence, then, and he'd had to force away the memory of Combeferre's face twisted as bayonets pierced him. Seven voices' worth of silence. It's a peculiar, disconnected feeling: the immediacy of memory, doubled with the reality of this room.

He steps forward, heedless of that reek and blood, to embrace Combeferre once more. It will be briefer, unless Combeferre wants otherwise.

"My dear friend. It's so very good to see your face."

Even under the circumstances.

Combeferre returns the embrace, overcome by his still-desperate need for contact, but he pulls back after a moment. He will not shed tears again, not now. He will attend to what's immediately required--and then, well. He has infinite time for tears, it seems.

He doesn't say anything, just squeezes Enjolras's shoulders before letting go and turning to the little room.

And then halting in utter confusion when he opens the door.

Enjolras had been watching his face. He smiles faintly at what he sees, and slips past him into the room.

The bundle of clean clothing goes in a corner; a plug goes into the drain of the bathrub. He twists a knob and water begins to gurgle forth into it.

Enjolras raises his voice a little over the noise. "It seems this is common in the future. Clean water, hot and cold, at the turn of a spigot. As expected as a bucket would be for us."

Months later, this is still a marvel. It's still a gift. Once he learned from Simon Tam about the causes of cholera, infinitely more miraculous.

Bossuet had mentioned something, about how he had learned the connection between dirty water and cholera from those who had clean water much more readily available. But Combeferre had never imagined this. Clean, pure water, available at the turn of a knob! No firewood needed, no hauling water up several flights of steps--none of that. Just a simple mechanism, manageable even by someone with very little strength.

Combeferre doesn't know whether to marvel at this glory, or to curse the fact that it came so late.

He thinks, perhaps, he should simply concentrate on washing the blood off, and worry about whether to rejoice or mourn later.

Yes.

Every gift of the future -- every sorrow lifted, every burden eased, every needless horror expunged -- is a shining flame of hope, and a bright light that casts into sharp relief all the pain of their poor France.

Enjolras shows him hot and cold, how to turn the spigots off when the tub is full, and then leaves him to it.

The bathroom door closes quietly behind him.

Combeferre, despite everything, spends some time simply playing with the hot water spigot. He decides it's time to stop when he feels the all-too-familiar tightness in his throat again.

He emerges, clean (at least, physically) of men's blood, and dressed in clothes that don't stick to his skin.

Enjolras has taken the time to change, too. He didn't give the mess a second thought in the bar, but to be sitting around in his room with fresh clothes available and to forgo them with the blood of friends and strangers a bright smear across the linen -- to sit like some ghoul or gargoyle among his other friends once they come -- no. No.

So his shirt and cravat and waistcoat -- and jacket and trousers, when a brush of the hand across black fabric met dampness and faint staining -- have all been bundled into the laundry and replaced with fresh, his cockade switched from one lapel to another. The Milliways laundry is formidable. It will take care of Combeferre's bloodstains as it did Courfeyrac's and Joly's. (Enjolras's own clothing was as thoroughly ruined as Combeferre's waistcoat and shirt will be, but that's a slightly different matter.)

He's also taken the time to draft a brief note to Courfeyrac: Combeferre's arrived. In my room. --Enjolras. That note has been handed over to a rat in the hallway, with instructions to find Courfeyrac and deliver it as soon as possible. Similar notes for the others rest in his pocket, to be passed on a little later.

Combeferre will find him settled in one of the room's two chairs, in a familiar abstraction of thought. Still, when the bathroom door opens, he turns and smiles a little.

Combeferre notices that Enjolras has changed, albeit into nearly identical clothes.

Which makes sense, since Combeferre just got blood all over him. Combeferre feels vaguely sorry about that, but he wouldn't be at all surprised if laundry were not a problem here.

His own bloody clothes from the barricade are crumpled into a pile in his hands. "How does one dispose of these?"

Combeferre can't help returning Enjolras's smile as he asks the question.

"There's a laundry of some kind." Enjolras has no idea whether it's run by humans, rats, or advanced machinery like Bar, or even magic; all he knows is that it's formidably efficient, and he's never met anyone who seemed to be involved with it in any way. "They'll pick it up and either return items clean or dispose of them."

He's rising as he says this, to indicate the hamper. He'll leave it outside the door once Combeferre's clothes have been added.

For many reasons, that's not something that needs to lie around for a day or two.

"It's a strange place," he adds, with rueful sympathy. "Unlike anything I've ever heard of, from any philosopher or theologian. But not a bad one."

"Not a bad one," coming from Enjolras, is significant.

"You said nearly all of our friends were here," says Combeferre. "Who is--or perhaps I should ask, who isn't?"

He has an idea, from Gavroche, but he'd like to hear it confirmed.

Quietly, "Feuilly and Prouvaire are not."

He'll give Combeferre a moment, after those names.

"Not yet, at least. But there's Courfeyrac, Joly, Bossuet, Bahorel, Grantaire. Gavroche."

"Besides our friends -- the spy, Javert. The old volunteer; he goes by Fauchelevent. His daughter, I'm told. Gavroche's sister. And then plenty of others not of our time, even not of our world."

Feuilly and Prouvaire. He sees Feuilly's face, alight with enthusiasm, and then bitter with betrayal. He hears Prouvaire's voice ringing out before the gunshots silenced him. Why wouldn't they be here? This place cannot be hell, Combeferre has concluded. So it's not that they're undeserving of punishment, though they both assuredly are. Then why, when they died alongside their friends, wouldn't they share the same afterlife?

Well, Prouvaire died separately--but that evidently didn't stop Bahorel from turning up. And Feuilly had died in the same onrush of soldiers that had felled Joly and Bossuet.

Whatever the reason, and Combeferre is certainly not going to stop pondering that, he won't see them, at least not soon.

But--Courfeyrac. Combeferre will see Courfeyrac again, and that thought is like a ray of sun. And Joly, and Bossuet and Bahorel, and Grantaire. He will see them again. His last memories of them won't be of them mired in carnage.

Or, in Grantaire's case, drunk and unconscious at a table. "Yes--I met Gavroche, and he told me some of this." It's only when he hears it from Enjolras, though, that it begins to sink in as truth. "As well as some other, stranger tales." But the question of necromancers can wait for another time. "Are they nearby? I need hardly say I wish to find them, and soon."

Combeferre's voice cracks on "soon." But then he has to interrupt himself for a massive yawn.

He continues, however. "I suppose Grantaire didn't manage to escape the Guard, then?"

Combeferre's stomach twists as he speaks. Grantaire didn't deserve such an end, gunned down as an afterthought because he was too drunk to get out in time.

Enjoras's brief silence, his gaze for the moment cast down, may well be read as confirmation.

Until he lifts his eyes to Combeferre's, and speaks. "Perhaps he could have. But no. He stood up at the end to be shot with me. He chose to die as one of us, with 'Vive la Revolution' on his lips."

Perhaps Grantaire couldn't have escaped. But it doesn't matter; he never thought to try.

"He died by your side?" Combeferre is stunned, and yet not. The thing makes a kind of sense, partly for reasons Enjolras would prefer not to acknowledge.

Combeferre can't help feeling a certain joy, despite hearing that Grantaire did indeed die a bloody death (and would Grantaire have preferred living after they all perished? Evidently not). Rousing himself to stand with Enjolras must have been a triumph of all that was best and most beloved in Grantaire. "It will be so good to see him again."

Unfortunately, he inadvertently punctuates this with another yawn, and remembers it has been more than a day since he last slept.

"Yes."

There's a light in Enjolras's gaze too, and a small smile just touching his mouth. Grantaire was his friend only in a complicated way; a gulf stood between them, composed of mockery and incomprehension and other things Enjolras prefers not to name, bridged by mutual friends and by hope and by habit; to a large extent, that remains true even now. And yet there's another bridge as well. This is the pride of stubborn hope vindicated, and of another's courage acknowledged.

His face softens, a moment later, as he looks at Combeferre. The man is very nearly swaying on his feet; he's as comprehensively fatigued as Enjolras has ever seen him. "I should have gotten you a nightshirt instead."

Well, it won't be the first time one of them has had cause to borrow a nightshirt along with a bed. He touches Combeferre's shoulder again, lightly. "The others' rooms are nearby. I can send them a message to come, if you'd like. But I think perhaps you should sleep first. They'll all understand."

No, Combeferre wants to say, bring them here now, this instant, or I'll go pound on their doors, but I must see them at once, see them breathing and whole.

When he starts to say that, though, it ends up coming out as "Noawrmmmph." He cuts off the yawn, but he knows Enjolras must have noticed. And in truth perhaps it would be better to see his friends when he can converse with them instead of just yawning at them and then falling asleep on someone's shoulder.

"You might be right." It's a grudging admission. To know Courfeyrac is right there and not to see him, after watching him fall, is painfully absurd.

He understands the impatience entirely. In Combeferre's place he would be burning with it. And what an absurd thing, that hunger and fatigue and bodily limits would follow one past death -- and yet it seems they do, at least in this peculiar afterlife.

Enjolras has never bowed easily to his own bodily limits. They frustrate him deeply, when he lets them, though he has great patience with those of others. Combeferre is the same. It's a pitfall they both know well, in themselves and in each other.

"They'll all understand," he says again, gently, and his grip tightens slightly on Combeferre's shoulder. It's all he says; this decision must be Combeferre's.

Of course they will, which doesn't change anything.

"A nap," Combeferre finally says. "Will you promise to wake me in two hours?"

Two hours, he judges, should be more than enough to render him minimally coherent once more.

"Of course."

Two hours: the sleep Enjolras advised and neither of them took at the barricade. Just last night, for Combeferre.

It's a practical compromise, an amount between need and desire.

Edited 2014-12-12 20:17 (UTC)

The significance of two hours doesn't escape Combeferre. He remembers how each of them spent those final sleepless hours, the vigilance and the tension and the quiet. Remembers Feuilly, painstakingly carving his heart's final cry into cold uncaring stone.

Combeferre looks down at his clothes. He's willing enough to sleep in them, but perhaps it would be better to change. "Do you have a spare nightshirt?"

"Yes."

He fetches one from the drawer, hands it over. But--

"Combeferre." This is gentle again, but differently. Instead of a friend's compassionate concern -- though that remains -- his voice now has the tenor of a hymn, hushed under the vault of the sunlight sky. "Listen. France will establish a republic. It's a longer and harder road than we dreamed of, but still, at the end is a true republic, one that lasts. Universal suffrage, compulsory education, clean water, medical care available to all with governmental underwriting. The national motto once again Liberty, Equality, Fraternity, oak and fasces on its coat of arms in a grand parliament of nations. And not only France: republics will spread across Europe -- across the world. Even Poland, even Greece." Eventually. But it's not the road there, the deaths and betrayals and conquerors and partitions he's speaking of now: it's what was won at the end of the road, and the achievements that were only fierce dreams while they lived.

"I'm not speaking only of belief, my friend. People come to Milliways from all worlds; there's a library, vaster than anything you've seen. I read of the French Republic in a history book. Set down as accomplished fact, its continuation taken for granted. The rights of all humanity seen as an inevitability."

Edited 2014-12-12 20:44 (UTC)

Combeferre's fingers tighten on the nightshirt, and he looks at Enjolras with a sudden wild grin.

It's not that he doubted this, ever, but to hear it confirmed, confirmed from Enjolras as a known fact--

"You know this? You've heard it from people from our world?" That 'all worlds' is intriguing, and is filed away for future inquiry.

Bossuet had spoken of people who had ready access to clean water, of people with much greater scientific knowledge, who could work miracles of health and healing, and that had been thrill enough for Combeferre to hear. But Bossuet had been, of necessity, frustratingly vague about many things, able only to say that he had encountered versions of Enjolras and Courfeyrac from 1832, and that they had told him of future pitfalls the Amis would encounter in their 1832 effort, and of ways to prevent cholera.

"There is proof?"

Take me to the books, he wants to say, if not my friends, then at least the papers and the documents that will show me what you speak of. He doesn't doubt Enjolras for a second, but he wants to see, and for a moment he feels almost awake again.

Edited 2014-12-12 21:08 (UTC)

Enjolras makes a small gesture, not negation but qualification, even as his own quieter joy shows in response.

"Books. From people, it's harder to say -- I've heard similar from some, but it's hard to say who's from our world, and who from another Earth, merely similar. Though it's heartening to know that, as well. But I asked for a book of the history of my own France, to be certain. The Bar -- it's a fantastic mechanism, I don't understand it in the least but it's been reliable -- it assured me that the provenance was correct."

There were horrors in that book. Many of them he grieves still, even from this distance of decades and death.

But to know this -- to know this, to be able to tell it to his friends, to think of what it means for France and for humanity -- it's worth any price he could ever have paid.

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