never_shall_yield: (Reaching)
Javert ([personal profile] never_shall_yield) wrote in [community profile] milliways_bar2013-09-09 06:59 pm

(no subject)

He has slept most of the day. He wakes up as numb as he was before. It is well. It will allow some necessary things to be done - to dress in normal clothes, with a cravat to cover the marks at his neck; to write a letter to Queen Amy, apologising for his absence and returning a week's wage; to eat a meal and think nothing of it.

He can do none of these things. His hand is too swollen to tie a knot, to hold a pen or a knife. He settles for a simple white shirt, fastened awkwardly with a pin at the throat, and does not look at himself in the mirror. And then wanders downstairs, and chooses a chair directly in front of the Observation Window.

This is not Purgatory, and the exploding stars are not there to mock him. He still hates them. But he can feel nothing, so why not look upon the view? They seem a rather suitable backdrop for his lack of thoughts. 



[OOC: Open until the weekend!

ETA
Hokay, exhaustion is winning the battle. I'm calling slows because ugh, work tomorrow. And I can't type straight. THANK YOU TO ALL WHO TAGGED. I have love for you. *flings it* I'll be around tomorrow to continue <3 <3 ]
pro_patria_mortuus: Enjolras in profile, head bowed, rifle in hand. (marble lover of liberty)

[personal profile] pro_patria_mortuus 2013-09-11 06:44 pm (UTC)(link)
Enjolras is at the bar, in quiet discussion with the air and the notes he receives in reply. After a few sentences from each party, the napkins which hold Bar's side of the conversation vanish, and in their place appears a small stack of newspapers. (Some are respectable newspapers, some the cheap and sensationalist canards; all are French, and dated 6 or 7 June, 1832.) Enjolras collects them and turns away to find a table.

He wears black, head to toe, saving only his white shirt and the bright splash of the cockade pinned with care to his lapel. Bar gave him a wardrobe composed more than half of mourning dress. It seems fitting to him: for his friends who were his brothers, and for his country.
pro_patria_mortuus: (you're no longer a child)

[personal profile] pro_patria_mortuus 2013-09-11 07:24 pm (UTC)(link)
To say that this is not how Enjolras would have expected the spy to greet him is an understatement.

He gives Javert a cool, assessing look.

(The man looks awful. Enjolras notes this; wonders at it; does not comment.)

What he does say is, "I do."

It's a tool of the monarchy, a mere mouthpiece for the ministers' propaganda, and reading it rarely gives Enjolras anything but irritation at best. Reading Le Moniteur's assessment of the uprising will be infuriating. Still, valuable. It's important to know what's being said, not merely by those whom one agrees with.
pro_patria_mortuus: (you're no longer a child)

[personal profile] pro_patria_mortuus 2013-09-11 07:54 pm (UTC)(link)
Enjolras is accustomed to cafés where the owner subscribes to newspapers to draw in clientele, and they may be read by any who wish to do so. The choice of journals often says something of the owner's politics, or at least of his habitual customers' politics; still, they are available. Besides, as he has not yet found employment, the newspapers come like his clothes and food from Bar's charity. He has no good cause to refuse.

He passes it over, with a short nod, and looks around for another free table.

There are none nearby. The only empty chairs are at tables already occupied by groups: a cluster of chattering girls, two men in intense discussion, a couple gazing fondly at each other, a strange inhuman creature hammering at a peculiar device.
pro_patria_mortuus: Enjolras in profile, head bowed, rifle in hand. (marble lover of liberty)

[personal profile] pro_patria_mortuus 2013-09-11 08:13 pm (UTC)(link)
Enjolras does not care in the least about Javert's headache, whether it worsens or improves. But there is no point in standing around, and the invitation is made; he may as well sit rather than trek across the entire room like a petty child.

He inclines his head with an ironic lift of his brows, and sits.

The topmost newspaper is Le National. Liberal, but legal, and thus too mouse-colored in its opinions for Enjolras as a rule. Very well.
pro_patria_mortuus: (you're no longer a child)

[personal profile] pro_patria_mortuus 2013-09-11 11:49 pm (UTC)(link)
Enjolras returns his look over the top of his own paper.

Le National may not be as radical as Enjolras would like -- its editors favored the sop, as he sees it, of constitutional monarchy in '30, and have only been spurred towards republicanism now that Louis-Philippe's ministers restrict the press's freedoms more and more tightly -- but it will still be far too leftist for this policeman's taste.

"The editors stand with the people."

So that's a yes.

The mun is pretty sure, from her hasty research. If it wasn't true in the real world, it is in the world of Les Mis!
pro_patria_mortuus: (you're no longer a child)

[personal profile] pro_patria_mortuus 2013-09-12 12:16 am (UTC)(link)
"Do you."

He cannot think what the man's about. Such a greeting as he gave when Enjolras arrived, and now this strange, grudging civility -- and that makeshift splint on his hand, and the weary ground-down pallor of him, here in this place where Enjolras has thus far seen no events but café chatter.

He does not deign to reply to the first comment.
pro_patria_mortuus: (is it simply a game)

[personal profile] pro_patria_mortuus 2013-09-12 12:30 am (UTC)(link)
Irritation crosses Enjolras's face -- caused, it must be admitted, by the pettiness of the insult as much as its existence.

"And you have not attempted to make a café owner into a tyrant, that you might offer him your services to trample your liberty along with others. Very good. We have both avoided becoming a child's parody of our political views. I'm sure it's a great relief to you."

"Come, citizen, this is below you."

If he wishes to debate matters of substance, Enjolras will certainly do so. Otherwise, he has plenty of unpleasant news to read.
pro_patria_mortuus: (is it simply a game)

[personal profile] pro_patria_mortuus 2013-09-12 01:47 am (UTC)(link)
Wordlessly, Enjolras returns his attention to his newspaper, and its bitter defense of patriots shot down or arrested for standing up on behalf of their countrymen, all across Paris.

He has no interest in being baited by a dead spy.
pro_patria_mortuus: Enjolras's dead body hanging symbolically out a window (a tomb illuminated with the dawn)

[personal profile] pro_patria_mortuus 2013-09-12 05:29 pm (UTC)(link)
"Yes, if you mean Grantaire."

If he hadn't -- or if Javert does mean another -- this would be welcome news, whoever the messenger. This is why Enjolras's reply is equally civil.

(Gavroche is another who qualifies, broadly speaking, but Enjolras still thinks of him as a child, an impish shadow to certain of his friends. Grantaire, for all his many faults and shortcomings, comes more readily to mind.)

He rests his thumb against a column of text, marking his place for a moment on a paragraph worth rereading. He would rather any of his true friends share his table now; every sentence of every news item brings a tumult of thoughts and sentiments, and he has no one to share them with. Well, they are not here.

"I requested clothing, and Bar gave me these. It's fitting. For my brothers, and for my country which suffers."

The way he says brothers, it means not brothers of blood -- Enjolras has none of those -- but his friends and dearest comrades. In truth, it's more for them; if Enjolras adopted mourning purely for a nation oppressed, he would never have left it off in all his life.
pro_patria_mortuus: Enjolras and Grantaire, standing together, proudly staring into the camera (at a firing squad) (Orestes sober & Pylades drunk)

[personal profile] pro_patria_mortuus 2013-09-12 07:06 pm (UTC)(link)
"He was there."

Upstairs, dead drunk. Enjolras does not say that.

It's true. He won't deny it. He disdains it. But Grantaire died as one of them, for and with Enjolras, giving perhaps all his nature could give; Javert is a police spy, whose first words to Enjolras in this place were an attempt to throw fresh griefs in his face.

Enjolras is not so base as to provide him ammunition to direct at another.

He will not say Grantaire fought. He did not. But, for better or for worse, and until the end only by a technicality, he was present.
pro_patria_mortuus: (we strive towards a larger goal)

[personal profile] pro_patria_mortuus 2013-09-12 07:50 pm (UTC)(link)
"I am not."

Enjolras sits back slightly, regarding Javert with a level stare.

"But I wonder, inspector, that you think I will tell you more than you saw of my friends and our work. You are dead, you cannot inform on anyone, very well; whether or not the old citizen did as he said, you cannot expect me to grieve your death. Nonetheless, a spy has no right to those answers."

"If you wish to know more of my beliefs, I will tell you. Even of myself. But nothing of my friends, and nothing of the course and strategies of our fight. Do not expect it."
pro_patria_mortuus: (here upon these stones)

[personal profile] pro_patria_mortuus 2013-09-15 01:37 am (UTC)(link)
Not dead at all?

Come to think of it, he never said that he was; but he implied it, and spoke of this place as Purgatory, and he speaks now as if this is a recent discovery. Enjolras will come back to this matter.

But for now: "I have never turned against my country." He would sooner cut off his own arm, or his own head. "Only against a citizen who would call himself king."

"Have you read The Social Contract?"
pro_patria_mortuus: (here upon these stones)

[personal profile] pro_patria_mortuus 2013-09-15 02:05 am (UTC)(link)
Of course he has not.

"You asked the circumstance."

"I read the works of great thinkers. I looked at the suffering around me. I thought about the causes of that suffering, and whether those root causes were inevitable or needless. I found other men who thought as well of these matters, and I tested my premises and my conclusions in discussions with them, so that what remained was certain. That is how."

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