Bossuet's awake, though he hasn't made any dramatic moves yet, like getting dressed or leaving bed for longer than it takes to use the bathroom and grab something to read. (Or at least to hold while he stares at the blue ceiling and waits for the modern painkillers to kick in.)
He props himself up on an elbow when Joly returns. "Have you been sneaking off to study behind my back? You are incorrigible; by rights I should--Joly. Joly, what is it?"
Lesgle takes the Guide and glances at it briefly; he's read it before. "Which part?" He's not trying to be flippant. He's just not sure what's on Joly's mind.
(The usual mental catalog would begin with some distressing encounter at the medical school, some dissection more troubling than can be laughed off or some patient more pitiable than most. Or bad news from home, a family illness. But that was in Paris, and in life.)
He props himself up too, turning to point out the relevant line.
Some patrons may have died in their home worlds, and have ended up here as a sort of afterlife. They can leave for three days or so, but will return to the bar afterwards.
"This. About us. That we can leave. Not like you did with the Labyrinth, on purpose, anywhere, if someone else escorts us, we can go-- I should--I hadn't even thought about it!"
"You knew? Why didn't you say anything?!?" he's not angry, only incredulous. "I could try, there are people here- that old man from the barricade, Enjolras said-- even that officer- if it works it would be so much more certain than that, that stupid telegraph I've been trying to redesign!" He's sitting up again, sprained leg at an angle, the better to flail about.
There's really no good way to finish that sentence. "I didn't think of Fauchelevant," he says after a pause, truthfully enough. "The old eccentric from the barricade. I've only met him once. And I suppose there's Pontmercy's bride-to-be. She comes here now and then."
Bossuet does not particularly want to be sitting up, but he does it anyway. "I didn't know it was possible until recently."
By which point, he'd come to the conclusion it was better left alone. But that's not a conclusion Joly is likely to share.
" You didn't think--?!? No, of course not, neither did I. Maybe it's this place. Maybe it's being --" he laughs, fast and breathless. "Marius' fiancee, yes, that's perfect! She would understand."
If he could walk more easily, he'd be pacing. As it is, he's managed to wind one corner of the sheet around his hands so tightly they've almost gone cold. He drops it to grab Bossuet's shoulders. He's not smiling.
"You do understand-? It's three days, just three days, but -- I could send my parents a message! And I-we could at least see her again."
Yes. Lesgle has the feeling of walking beside a chasm, so narrow as to be barely visible and so deep as to have no end. The space between people makes itself known like that sometimes. It happens so rarely between him and Joly that it feels all the worse now.
He shuts his mouth too. And then opens it again because conversation is one of the few things that reaches across that chasm between individuals. "I think it struck me very hard when I was speaking to Fauchelevent about Marius, telling him what a fine son-in-law he'd have, all that--as you'd do for any friend, you know. It struck me that I was--that I was a ghost. That to say any more to them, to the living, to interfere, was nothing other than a kind of--" He stares at his hands. "A kind of despotism of the dead. The imposition of an opinion that they should no longer heed. It struck me that the living were no longer mine."
Of course I would. Like he was being asked if he'd like to try a new cafe, or move apartments, or cover someone else's bets,of course. Because of course, because this is Bossuet.
There's no argument for it. It's completely unfair in a case like this. Joly looks away.
But he listens. And there's any number of arguments to the rest of it, he's had them with himself some nights while he was tweaking his transmitter's designs and checking history books for dates on communications breakthroughs, and he worked it through then, and--
"I know."
He still can't look at Bossuet. He looks at the sheets instead. "All of it. I know, I don't--" He waves one hand and then lets it fall back on the bed. "But I- I thought. If we could, if there were some way to just say something, to let them know we're all right, to know they're all right-- to know she's--"
His voice is back in his head again, too loud and too shaky, so he cuts it off and stares at the sheet he's twisting up.
Lesgle slides his hand over, almost diffidently, to take Joly's. "What would you say?"
(He is not going to say aloud, because it would be terrible and because Joly certainly already knows, that he doesn't miss Musichetta the way Joly does. He hopes it isn't a defect in him: certainly he'd liked and admired her. Loved her, if you want to put it that way. A most loveable person. But he hasn't lost any long nights' sleep over leaving her behind. Probably it is a defect in him.)
Joly stops twisting the sheet around and puts his other hand over Bossuet's. He opens and closes his mouth like he's priming a water pump.
"My parents-"
--that's not the question, but it's the first thing that comes out--
"I just want them to know. To know I'm all right, they don't have to worry, my soul isn't in eternal torment or anything,I have to--don't I have to try to tell them? And Musichetta--"
Which is the question. And he goes dry again for a moment. But now it's said.
"Musichetta, I don't know. I don't. Let her talk. I...we'd fought over it sometimes, you know?" He laughs, and it's shaky, but it's a real laugh. "Just give her the chance to say she'd told me so."
He runs his thumb across Bossuet's knuckles. There are so many other things he would say if he could, apologies and remembrances and wishes, but he can't think of how, or of any way that wouldn't twist into the very sort of cruelty Bossuet had mentioned, exactly what he doesn't want. "I just want to say goodbye, I suppose. So we both know that it is goodbye. That it's all right, to, to not worry, to not... consider us, our opinions. To be free."
He's not sure when he started crying. He laughs again anyway. "To not feel haunted."
He leans so that his shoulder touches Joly's. It's an awkward position, but he doesn't want to be any farther away than that. (He wants to tug Joly close, wrap an arm around him. But affection can be a terrible constraint on a man's speech.)
"Yes, I know. --Especially about letting her say she told you so. Not very gallant of us, taking the last word from her. Musichetta."
Oh, hell. Lesgle rubs his free hand across his own face, then touches Joly's hair lightly. "I suppose we could try."
Now Bossuet does pull him close, fiercely close, folding Joly up in his long arms.
Joly's right. They can't. It's one thing to try to strive, even after death, for France, for the people, for the future. Even a dead man may care about those things. But the individual people? They've gone beyond the grasp of the dead, unless the dead are terribly selfish.
(Which they are, in their way. Lesgle, selfishly, has been painfully happy with Joly's appearance here in the afterlife, has been jealously enjoying every moment and fearing that some conversation like this would separate them. Selfish, and he knows it.)
"She's a remarkable woman," he says finally. He doesn't know if Joly wants to talk about Musichetta, or not, but he should know that he can. "And you know I love your family."
It's much easier to cry when there's someone to hold on to who isn't clearly needing it to stop; and oddly, it's much easier to finish crying too. He's knows he'll go through this again, grief won't end in a night, but he's mostly through this squall, his breathing even again. Far enough along to laugh.
He tilts his head enough to talk. "My family liked you too. Good solid trustworthy sort that you are." His family's idea of Lesgle was always amusing, but Joly's not completely teasing in repeating it.
He laughs a little as well. "Yes, quite. A steady, level-headed law-student, a little older than you. Just the sort of person a father wants to see guiding his son around Paris."
The paternal Joly may have been slightly mistaken about a few things, yes. "--God, I remember sitting with your father in the library, drinking hot coffee and talking about Combeferre with desperate earnestness. You had the sense to be sick in bed for a week..." Maybe it's not the time for reminiscence, but it's a fond memory.
It is, and Joly's actively giggling. "I was tragically ill and in the country to preserve my very life. Bahorel said so. What better proof do you need?" He misses Bahorel too, and Combeferre. But he finds missing them is still like missing someone away for a journey, with every expectation they'll return;something only a little sharper than pleasant anticipation.
"And Bahorel would know all about heading down to the country to preserve one's life." Lesgle's the same, when it comes to the rest of their friends: he's confident they'll be along sooner or later.
He scrubs his face again with a hand, extracts himself from their tangle to flop back down onto the bed, and tugs ever so gently on Joly's sleeve. That's enough semi-verticality for one hungover morning. "You were sitting in bed reading and drinking lemonade while I had to fall back on my most respectable memories of Meaux."
While he talks, languidly enough, he's watching Joly for any signs that the subject is too tender for conversation. They still aren't speaking of Musichetta, he notices: well, that's understandable.
Joly's grinning. "I still say I won that game on the carriage with-oh, damn. I'm sorry." He gets off the bed long enough to grab a glass of water from their tap (and it's still a delight to watch that, see a glass fill up so easily) and grab two of the tablets they'd gotten from the infirmary.
"Here--it's late enough for you to take these, now." He sets them both on the questionably gilted nightstand before flopping back down on the bed. "I am dreadful, I used your head as an excuse to leave Autor earlier and I still forgot. I don't know why you put up with me." It's said with the tone of one who knows he will, nonetheless,definitely be put up with, while he sprawls out on the aggressively blue sheets.
"I ask myself the same question; and yet, here I am, lying feebly under the gaze of cherubs of questionable taste..." He arranges a pillow more to his satisfaction and closes his eyes with a contented, cat-like smile. "Autor seems like a nice chap; I'm glad you've met him. Try his croissants some day."
Joly is terribly mistaken, of course; he only won that game in the carriage by inventing rules. And that doesn't count. He'll argue the point...some other time.
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merryeccentricities
no subject
Date: 24 Oct 2014 11:09 (UTC)He props himself up on an elbow when Joly returns. "Have you been sneaking off to study behind my back? You are incorrigible; by rights I should--Joly. Joly, what is it?"
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Date: 24 Oct 2014 16:07 (UTC)What is it? Right. He hands the folded copy of the Guide over.
"Did you know this."
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Date: 24 Oct 2014 16:22 (UTC)(The usual mental catalog would begin with some distressing encounter at the medical school, some dissection more troubling than can be laughed off or some patient more pitiable than most. Or bad news from home, a family illness. But that was in Paris, and in life.)
no subject
Date: 24 Oct 2014 16:32 (UTC)Some patrons may have died in their home worlds, and have ended up here as a sort of afterlife. They can leave for three days or so, but will return to the bar afterwards.
"This. About us. That we can leave. Not like you did with the Labyrinth, on purpose, anywhere, if someone else escorts us, we can go-- I should--I hadn't even thought about it!"
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Date: 24 Oct 2014 16:38 (UTC)Oh.
"It needs to be with someone, through the door going to--to their world."
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Date: 24 Oct 2014 16:47 (UTC)no subject
Date: 24 Oct 2014 16:59 (UTC)There's really no good way to finish that sentence. "I didn't think of Fauchelevant," he says after a pause, truthfully enough. "The old eccentric from the barricade. I've only met him once. And I suppose there's Pontmercy's bride-to-be. She comes here now and then."
Bossuet does not particularly want to be sitting up, but he does it anyway. "I didn't know it was possible until recently."
By which point, he'd come to the conclusion it was better left alone. But that's not a conclusion Joly is likely to share.
no subject
Date: 24 Oct 2014 17:18 (UTC)If he could walk more easily, he'd be pacing. As it is, he's managed to wind one corner of the sheet around his hands so tightly they've almost gone cold. He drops it to grab Bossuet's shoulders. He's not smiling.
"You do understand-? It's three days, just three days, but -- I could send my parents a message! And I-we could at least see her again."
Right. It's out.
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Date: 24 Oct 2014 18:10 (UTC)"I'm not sure it would be a kindness, Joly."
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Date: 24 Oct 2014 18:50 (UTC)"Well it's better than other ways I've heard since I was here."
That sounds horrible. His voice is weird and flat and far away again.
"You don't have to come."
...That sounded worse.
He shuts his mouth hard against that voice.
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Date: 24 Oct 2014 18:58 (UTC)He shuts his mouth too. And then opens it again because conversation is one of the few things that reaches across that chasm between individuals. "I think it struck me very hard when I was speaking to Fauchelevent about Marius, telling him what a fine son-in-law he'd have, all that--as you'd do for any friend, you know. It struck me that I was--that I was a ghost. That to say any more to them, to the living, to interfere, was nothing other than a kind of--" He stares at his hands. "A kind of despotism of the dead. The imposition of an opinion that they should no longer heed. It struck me that the living were no longer mine."
He hasn't been able to say this to anyone.
no subject
Date: 24 Oct 2014 19:37 (UTC)There's no argument for it. It's completely unfair in a case like this. Joly looks away.
But he listens. And there's any number of arguments to the rest of it, he's had them with himself some nights while he was tweaking his transmitter's designs and checking history books for dates on communications breakthroughs, and he worked it through then, and--
"I know."
He still can't look at Bossuet. He looks at the sheets instead. "All of it. I know, I don't--" He waves one hand and then lets it fall back on the bed. "But I- I thought. If we could, if there were some way to just say something, to let them know we're all right, to know they're all right-- to know she's--"
His voice is back in his head again, too loud and too shaky, so he cuts it off and stares at the sheet he's twisting up.
no subject
Date: 24 Oct 2014 20:10 (UTC)(He is not going to say aloud, because it would be terrible and because Joly certainly already knows, that he doesn't miss Musichetta the way Joly does. He hopes it isn't a defect in him: certainly he'd liked and admired her. Loved her, if you want to put it that way. A most loveable person. But he hasn't lost any long nights' sleep over leaving her behind. Probably it is a defect in him.)
no subject
Date: 24 Oct 2014 20:58 (UTC)"My parents-"
--that's not the question, but it's the first thing that comes out--
"I just want them to know. To know I'm all right, they don't have to worry, my soul isn't in eternal torment or anything,I have to--don't I have to try to tell them? And Musichetta--"
Which is the question. And he goes dry again for a moment. But now it's said.
"Musichetta, I don't know. I don't. Let her talk. I...we'd fought over it sometimes, you know?" He laughs, and it's shaky, but it's a real laugh. "Just give her the chance to say she'd told me so."
He runs his thumb across Bossuet's knuckles. There are so many other things he would say if he could, apologies and remembrances and wishes, but he can't think of how, or of any way that wouldn't twist into the very sort of cruelty Bossuet had mentioned, exactly what he doesn't want. "I just want to say goodbye, I suppose. So we both know that it is goodbye. That it's all right, to, to not worry, to not... consider us, our opinions. To be free."
He's not sure when he started crying. He laughs again anyway. "To not feel haunted."
no subject
Date: 24 Oct 2014 21:22 (UTC)He leans so that his shoulder touches Joly's. It's an awkward position, but he doesn't want to be any farther away than that. (He wants to tug Joly close, wrap an arm around him. But affection can be a terrible constraint on a man's speech.)
"Yes, I know. --Especially about letting her say she told you so. Not very gallant of us, taking the last word from her. Musichetta."
Oh, hell. Lesgle rubs his free hand across his own face, then touches Joly's hair lightly. "I suppose we could try."
no subject
Date: 24 Oct 2014 21:48 (UTC)...But it's been weeks in their world. Months, from the reports he's heard. Pontmercy's fiancee, how long must that have taken to arrange?
And their bodies have surely been claimed, and buried, and all the eulogies said, and time and time...
It would not be a kindness.
Even with Bossuet's hand in his, he can't stop his own from shaking. "No." There's no eulogy for the living. Even if they're gone. "No. I can't."
He doesn't have anything else to say, so he stops trying to do that, either.
goodbye, goodbye.
no subject
Date: 24 Oct 2014 22:35 (UTC)Joly's right. They can't. It's one thing to try to strive, even after death, for France, for the people, for the future. Even a dead man may care about those things. But the individual people? They've gone beyond the grasp of the dead, unless the dead are terribly selfish.
(Which they are, in their way. Lesgle, selfishly, has been painfully happy with Joly's appearance here in the afterlife, has been jealously enjoying every moment and fearing that some conversation like this would separate them. Selfish, and he knows it.)
"She's a remarkable woman," he says finally. He doesn't know if Joly wants to talk about Musichetta, or not, but he should know that he can. "And you know I love your family."
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Date: 24 Oct 2014 23:57 (UTC)He tilts his head enough to talk. "My family liked you too. Good solid trustworthy sort that you are." His family's idea of Lesgle was always amusing, but Joly's not completely teasing in repeating it.
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Date: 25 Oct 2014 00:21 (UTC)The paternal Joly may have been slightly mistaken about a few things, yes. "--God, I remember sitting with your father in the library, drinking hot coffee and talking about Combeferre with desperate earnestness. You had the sense to be sick in bed for a week..." Maybe it's not the time for reminiscence, but it's a fond memory.
no subject
Date: 25 Oct 2014 00:36 (UTC)no subject
Date: 25 Oct 2014 01:06 (UTC)He scrubs his face again with a hand, extracts himself from their tangle to flop back down onto the bed, and tugs ever so gently on Joly's sleeve. That's enough semi-verticality for one hungover morning. "You were sitting in bed reading and drinking lemonade while I had to fall back on my most respectable memories of Meaux."
While he talks, languidly enough, he's watching Joly for any signs that the subject is too tender for conversation. They still aren't speaking of Musichetta, he notices: well, that's understandable.
no subject
Date: 25 Oct 2014 01:21 (UTC)"Here--it's late enough for you to take these, now." He sets them both on the questionably gilted nightstand before flopping back down on the bed. "I am dreadful, I used your head as an excuse to leave Autor earlier and I still forgot. I don't know why you put up with me." It's said with the tone of one who knows he will, nonetheless,definitely be put up with, while he sprawls out on the aggressively blue sheets.
no subject
Date: 25 Oct 2014 12:32 (UTC)Joly is terribly mistaken, of course; he only won that game in the carriage by inventing rules. And that doesn't count. He'll argue the point...some other time.