After Many Things

[merryeccentricities]

The dream with the inventory and the surplus of penguins is familiar; that the penguins take off flying is (also familiar) not at all, and Joly blinks half-awake in some confusion. Which turns to panic because he's gone he's gone where is he, and that sets him gasping, awake completely.

As soon as he is entirely awake, the weird panic vanishes. No one is missing; Bossuet is right next to him, the cats are asleep on the furniture that they should least be sleeping on, and even the beetle is still on the ceiling where he'd flown last night before they could put him in his warren.

Joly rubs his eyes and curls up closer to Bossuet again, already starting to fall back asleep , half smiling. Maybe they'd both had a little too much last night (last week) after the fireworks, but that's all right, everything's all right, they're both here and Bossuet is missing Guignon she's gone too--

Joly frowns. He's used to fretting, but there is...nothing wrong? Maybe things are a little complicated now, but it's a complication he doesn't mind. Of course he is upset, they're all upset with the political situation being what it is,all that fighting at the barricade just to see another king--

He blinks and sits up. He hasn't thought about the barricade in weeks, really; not since the anniversary. And the barricades of 1830 haven't been on his mind in months and months, even though it just happened--

--three years ago.

Maybe he's having a stroke? Or drank something he really shouldn't have? That would be comforting, he knows how to worry about medical problems.

He's just sure he isn't having one.

"Um." he says, very quietly, to a room somehow missing everyone who should be in it.

Comments

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

Lesgle is in the middle of a very nice but altogether unpublishable dream when Joly sits up. He pushes his face deeper into the pillow. Guignon can take care of whatever is happening--

What? Guignon will take care of--what? Did he just consign Joly to bad luck?

He tries to make himself open his eyes (but mmmm, Musichetta was so enthusiastic about Joly's bravery at the barricade) (no, that's a dream) (not only is it a dream but it's the wrong barricade altogether) (Musichetta is--)

Eventually he manages to heave his face up from the pillow, look at Joly, and make a noise like muhh.

[merryeccentricities]

Joly smiles, and reaches out to touch Nossuet's cheek- it's all right, go back to sleep. Whatever's making him uneasy isn't anything he needs to go waking up the house for--

oh, wait, the cats are already awake and climbing on the bed. Of course. Humans are moving, why shouldn't they? It's hard to feel existential unease in the face of mewing catchildren all trying to climb up his arms. Joly uselessly tells them to shhh and tries to push back the blankets without knocking morning-flaily cats over on Legle.

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"It's all right, I'm awake!" This is at best a quarter-truth. "I'm on my way to awake. I'll be there any moment, the last leg of the journey is in sight--"

Yaaaaawwwwwwnnnnn.

And now he's sitting up, scooping up whichever kitten comes to hand first. "What's up?" He looks to Alcmaeon to measure the situation, finds no Alcmaeon, and wonders who this "Alcmaeon" could be, anyway.

[merryeccentricities]

"Nothing-- it's really nothing-- a bad dream...?" Except it was an entirely unalarming dream, if a little odd. Joly thinks as he gets up and sets about the important business of feeding cats. " Maybe we had too much to drink? Or..."

He looks over at Bossuet, still in bed, and rubs his eyes. "...I feel like we've...misplaced something?"

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"I'm sure we had too much to drink, but--hm." Meta pours herself hastily out of his arms, much more interested in the person who's getting breakfast ready. Lesgle scratches his beard.

"Birds," he says finally. "There ought to be more birds."

[merryeccentricities]

Joly actually pauses a moment in setting down the cat's bowls to sigh in relief. "Oh good, I thought-- yes yes, I'm sorry--"

Cats fed and propitiated with scritches, he starts work on coffee and breakfast for the larger mammals of the house. "I feel like we should have birds, yes. But not just birds?" The feeling of dreams, or memories, is actually becoming clearer the more he wakes up. "They were...they were important."

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"Yes, it was a question of something a bit more serious than your auntie's finches or a grisette's canary..." He watches the cats eat, and tries to remember. Birds, birds, but they were talking birds, thinking birds, little thinking people.

Lesgle yawns hugely, and then "--Alcmaeon! Yours was Alcmaeon, wasn't it? He was just like you. Well--I know that doesn't sound flattering, but it is, he was a bright little fellow..."

[merryeccentricities]

"Yes!" Joly grins. "--No, no, I liked him-- well, that's..underselling it a bit..."

He leaves the coffee to brew and settles back on the bed. "...And you had Guignon, except that wasn't her name, but I can't remember what her name really was? And they were very important, very-- it's that dream-thing, isn't it, where something's so important that you can never explain it? But she was dear, too. Just as you are. I mean, exactly as you are, it was the same thing? --You and her-- and--and did we have the same dream?!?"

In a way it's nice to not be the only one remembering odd things, but this is even more baffling.

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"Yes, Guignon. And really her name was--Eutychia, I think." He touches Joly's shoulder, just about where a little bird would be sitting, if such a thing could be encouraged to live in a room with so many cats. "My dear Joly, I know we have everything in common, but dreams--that's taking it a little far! Also, look, someone has had the good sense to put away the book that was on my nightstand and find me something better to read. No, I think we've been living our lives--someone's lives, that is--this last week."

[merryeccentricities]

Joly blinks. Come to think of it, the general disorder of the room is slightly rearranged... "Er. Yes. The last week, you think? The last thing I'm sure of was...Bastille Day?"

It occurs to him as he says it that if Legle's memory shifted over earlier, he's going to have to make an utter idiot of himself again. The thought makes him almost snort laughter. He spreads his hands over his face in a possibly vain attempt at composure.

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"Yes, I was tending bar; we had a pretty good turnout--oho, Joly, I hope that Hotspur knight got back to his stable or wherever he lives, without breaking his neck, poor man--and, hmm--"

Oh, right, and then they'd had a conversation. Which Joly looks to be remembering too. Lesgle elbows him heartlessly. "I believe we're engaged to marry, now. Have you set a date? Or is that my job?"

[merryeccentricities]

Bossuet is a horrible person. Joly aims a pillow at him the best he can, given that Joly is laughing to the point of tears now, before opting to just fall in Bossuet's general direction and then try to cover his face.

He's laughing too much, he knows he's laughing too much, but the idea of either of them actually planning a wedding is too much, and it's such a relief against the persistent feeling of wrongness (Alcmaeon is gone am I) after (the barricade the new king) everything.

(am I dead)

That thought, faint and out of place as it feels, does sober him up enough to make eye contact again, though he's still giggling. It's a confusing thought, not a painful one; he knows he's dead, he's been here for almost a year, all of them are here. And what do birds have to do with that?

"How much do you remember?" He's still smiling, but it's all right, it's all right! He can have a conversation now. If Bossuet isn't going to be terrible and set him laughing again.

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"Well, we can salvage our respectability like any so-called Madame Whoever and her shopkeeper and their five children, and have it that we've been married all this time. How dare you imply otherwise?"

Oh all right, he'll behave. He runs his fingers through Joly's hair. "Hm. Hm, hm. There were the--birds--that's the wrong way to put it, of course, but it will have to do for now. But also we had just... It was like 1830 again. That summer, after. --Do you remember the other birds? Enjolras with an eagle, of course. Bahorel with--something loud and very very red.""

[merryeccentricities]

Joly is very seriously balancing a pillow on one arm held in the air now. It falls half on his face, and he laughs again. "And so my reputation is saved.--Thalia! Bahorel's bird. Some sort of parrot. They visited me in the infirmary; she stole my pens. And- Combeferre had a raven, I don't remember the name."

He bites his lip, thinking."I know all of us had birds, and that was...that was strange, for the world? I had a talk about that. I remember best the things that happened in Milliways, but I know those selves weren't from Milliways, and..." He frowns hard, thinking "...everyone had those--animals?--where we--they-- were from? But I can't remember most of them, except the ones I saw here."

He doesn't bother saying who he's really trying to remember. Legle is probably trying to call up the same image. Had Musichetta been another bird? Or something else entirely? Joly keeps talking, trying to spur memory now.

"--Prouvaire had a black swan, it was lovely. I didn't see Feuilly, and I can't quite remember how he was now, only that he was another bird. Had another bird!" Had? Had been? The explanation is right on the edge of that strange doubled-memory.

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"Of course if we had the five children too, it would lend some color to the story. After all, how could we have had them all if we weren't married? --Hey!" He rescues Joly from under the pillow and goes back to playing with his hair. "Mm, Feuilly's was something green, something you never quite expected it to be..."

Yes, he's thinking of Musichetta too. He doesn't think she had--was--a bird. Something soft and sleek; but that brings him back to his dream a little too vividly, and he laughs at himself under his breath. "1830, though. 1830, but we were all of us coming and going from here. I wonder..."

How did that turn out?

[merryeccentricities]

Joly waves at the cats. "Are you denying our children your name?--And you with so many. Heartless, I call it heartless." He grins and burrows closer to Legle in a spirit of pure betrayal.

But 1830, the other 1830. The other France. "I don't know..? I don't remember anything of that life past our time in Milliways, at all. I'm sure we weren't Bound, there..." He frowns. "I wonder why-- that, why then?" Now he wants to know too.

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"Cats are not children. We've had this talk before, Joly..." He falls silent, pulling at bits of memory, but everything that he has of that other France really is like a dream, a dream fading fast. "I suppose that's really a, a world, though? A universe? Where we all have our, our--daemons? Was that the word?"

[merryeccentricities]

Joly puts a hand over his heart when Bossuet denies the cats. "It's true! Oh, they grow up so fast." His smile loses some of its teasing edge when Legle when Legle mentions the daemons. "Yes! That's it. And I remember...oh, how they felt, but not much else? And most of that in Milliways. But it must have been something real, anyway, if we both remember it." He's still smiling, but he frowns a little now too, reaching up to touch Legle's cheek. "Is that--?" Is that all right is a foolish question, but he's not sure what Lesgle thinks of Other Thems, overall.

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

Lesgle smiles crookedly at him. "I don't know that I care to have my soul taken out and popped back in again, after I've professed so long not to believe in such things."

[merryeccentricities]

Joly grins. "Oh, I have lots of theories about that. Would you like me to tell you about brainwaves, and potential electromagnetic projections, or the possible way that the energy of the human body would interact with the medium of--of--" he claps his hands together in triumph and sits up. "-- Aether! They had actual aether in that world! And oh, I did have a lot of theories. I think it entirely explainable without getting religious, if you want to avoid that."

He blinks as he thinks that over. "--What part of us do you think came through here? Do you suppose our actual bodies fell through our doors?" It's not an argument. Joly's been wondering this himself for a while.

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"Hm! You mean--us us, not the, ah, the usses that were here with their, ah, daemons? I--well, I certainly feel as though I have a body. I eat, I sleep, I confess that I have an amorous disposition--but hmm, I suppose you mean, ah, was there--was there something left in Paris?"

[merryeccentricities]

Joly smiles and shoves at Legle fondly for the amorous disposition remark. "--Yes, I suppose. I'd say that it makes the most sense to assume something like the Federations's transporters, with our bodies being, oh, sort of remade on the way here, and that works for some of us, but I...remember opening the door..." He frowns, but only in attempted recollection; shaken as he had been, he barely remembers arriving in Milliways at all. The 1830 of the daemons, dreamlike as it's becoming, is still more immediate than his own June 7th.

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

He squeezes Joly's shoulders at the little shove. "I...hm, I admit it, I have no explanation whatever. I have always assumed that there were--well, call them earthly remains if you like." Lesgle waggles a hand at the phrase: ooh, genteel. It's easier than saying he'd assumed there was enough left for a funeral. "Do you have any plans to study it?"

[merryeccentricities]

Joly catches one of Bossuet's hands in his and hmms cheerfully, thinking. "I was studying it at first. But then it didn't seem very pressing, and there was so much else to learn. But if other versions of us are going to start coming in and borrowing our time here I may have to consider it again."

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

Lesgle twines their fingers together comfortably. "Well, you know I'm always a willing subject for study, happy to sit under any array of blinking lights or buzzing buzzers. --So I suppose they're back in their world now? I wonder if one could send a message in any way."