This sort of thing must happen every day.

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

It's not the first time Bossuet has wandered into a bar after getting hit on the head. And it's probably not the first time someone has wandered into this bar after getting hit on the head. But here we are.

He had been walking towards the sound of gunfire. The unfamiliarity of that particular experience--or perhaps the still-tender lump on the back of his head--had given everything a dizzy dreamlike feel. Terribly exciting, but a bit nauseating as well. The sort of sensation that can get a person lost in a half-familiar set of streets and alleys, and make a person think it might be wise to step indoors just for a minute. Just to ask directions, just to get out of the July evening heat. Of course most doors were shut. There was a riot on, possibly even a revolution. But this particular door had opened and--right, here we are.

The new arrival is a dusty young man with a dented hat in his hand and a green-and-gold cravat wound around his head. His coat might have been fashionable in Europe of the early 1820s, back when it had its full set of matching buttons. His tricolor cockade, at least, is new and clean: a festive splash of blue-white-red pinned over his heart. Vive la République. And hello?

((OOC - new player, new character! Bossuet/Lesgle is coming in from the beginning of France's July Revolution in 1830; his friends might remember that he fell to friendly fire (...someone dropped something on him from a second-story window, good work) and went missing for a bit at the time.))

((--and I'm out for the night, will try to get back to the threads tomorrow. Back for slow-times but I don't think I can juggle any new threads unless we've talked about it already? Thank you all!))

Comments

[street_sparrow]

(OOC: grins We call it Millitime and it happens more often than not. :D)

Gavroche isn't expecting instant recognition, in the circumstances. He nods. "The fighting's just outside your door. This is going to sound like a strange question, but what year is it?"

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

Just outside your door sounds ominous. Bossuet freezes for a moment: but as no gendarmes burst into the place to shoot him on the spot or drag everyone to prison, he takes the boy to mean just around the corner. Which is still nearer than he'd thought, since he can't hear any shouts or gunshots or horses--

"Ah. 1830...? Thermidor, of the year thirty-eight?"

[street_sparrow]

"...that explains so much." He smiles ruefully. "My name is Gavroche. You may know an eight-year-old gamin of that name, who hangs around and runs errands...?"

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

He narrows his eyes. Children change considerably from eight to their teens, but Lesgle can make out a resemblance. "Gavroche and I owe one another ten sous. But..."

[street_sparrow]

"Yes, and we never paid each other back", he remembers. "That was me, ten years ago. This place... is special. There are people here from far in the past, and the future, and other worlds altogether."

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"You can keep my ten sous a little longer, as I don't have yours." Whatever the boy's joke is, it's surely very clever, but Lesgle's head is pounding and he can't quite catch the humor. "Ah...have you seen Monsieur Joly? The one with the curly hair, usually staring at his tongue in a mirror?"

[street_sparrow]

"Not here", he says a little sadly. "Not yet. You'll surely see Enjolras and Grantaire, if you stay around."

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

Grantaire would know a place where the first drink is free. But-- "Enjolras comes here?" He looks around, and some of the strangeness is sinking in. He rubs his face. "Have you seen Enjolras today?" When had he last seen Enjolras? "Since noon?"

[street_sparrow]

"Not today", he admits. "He might be in his room, or in the library."

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"On a day like this?" With the king shaking in his shoes? What is the joke here? Lesgle looks uneasily over his shoulder for the door.

[street_sparrow]

Gavroche follows his gaze.

"...you can see a door, can't you?"

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

His gaze keeps moving until it hits one of the staff doors. Bossuet hadn't particularly studied the door he came in by, but that surely wasn't it. "I might be a bit out of my element," he ventures.

[street_sparrow]

"All right, so that's a no." He sighs quietly. "It'll reappear, sooner or later. It's called being Bound, when people can't find their way out for a while. S'pose I should tell you some of the ins and outs of the place."

[pro_patria_mortuus]

Golden hair is as distinctive across a crowd as a bald pate, at least in most company. It must be admitted that Milliways is full of distracting forms, both in color and in strangeness; nonetheless, Bossuet may notice the familiar figure coming down the stairs.

(Enjolras's clothing would not be out of place in 1830; two years doesn't make so much of a difference, and Enjolras has never cared to be on the cutting edge of fashion. The bright tricolor on his lapel, too, will be no surprise. But the black and grey of mourning are new. A close eye might discern, too, the two years of greater age in his face -- though perhaps not, as Enjolras has always looked both older than his age and years younger.)

The precise moment at which he spots Bossuet is entirely visible. His face lights up, brighter than anyone at Milliways (except Grantaire, Gavroche, and now Bossuet) will have seen. "Bossuet," he breathes, too quiet to be heard across the bar, and then he's hurrying, as close to running as the barroom will allow.

[street_sparrow]

Gavroche hears, turns, and intercepts Enjolras just long enough to murmur in his ear.

"He's from 1830."

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

Lesgle's still looking for a sensible door, and he quickly spots his friend. His face brightens to match Enjolras's--though it quickly turns perplexed. "You here? Why, I would have thought you'd be taking the Hôtel de Ville--I haven't missed an entire revolution, have I?"

[pro_patria_mortuus]

Enjolras is reluctant to let himself be stopped, even by a friend. Still, Gavroche's hand on his arm is urgent enough that he lets himself be drawn to a halt, and bends enough to let Gavroche speak in his ear. The words, few though they are, are galvanic: his attention snaps sharply to Gavroche.

Low: "You're certain?"

Gavroche's face is all the answer needed, though the boy nods anyway.

Enjolras's eyes close, just for the briefest moment -- and then he turns back to Bossuet, and his focus with it.

"You haven't. You won't." He can't help the small smile, despite the situation. To see a friend -- any friend, particularly such a dear one! -- is a gift beyond measure.

Enjolras's hand twitches slightly, an uncharacteristic urge to rake his fingers through his hair repressed. So much to say, some of it difficult to explain and some of it cruel, but it must be said, for both their sakes -- and because if Bossuet is from '30, then there's a chance to change things; there's a chance to set June of '32 right. It must be taken. It must be done right. Enjolras's mind, formidably honed to tactical purpose, is already at work planning his course.

But for now, what he says is, "You must have noticed this is not precisely an ordinary wineshop. I don't know how to explain it without sounding too fantastical to believe -- save that I'm the man saying so."

That last is a little dry. It pleases certain of his friends, Bossuet among them, to tease him for his lack of imagination in many arenas. Since this is accurate, Enjolras can hardly complain.

[street_sparrow]

"Oh, good", Gavroche says cheerfully, back to irrepressible as ever. "Enjolras can tell you the ins and outs instead."

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

He reaches to clasp Enjolras's arm, if he'll permit it.

Bossuet will be (was) wearing the same coat in 1832--had been wearing it unapologetically since the 20s--so other than Joly's cravat bandaging his head and giving him a piratical look, there's nothing that would obviously mark him from 1830. Except, maybe, the look of someone new to revolution and keenly hopeful about it.

Keenly hopeful...and increasingly confused. "You know I will believe anything you say. But--"

But.

[pro_patria_mortuus]

Permit it? Welcome it. He clasps Bossuet's arm in return, with the fierce joy of fraternity, and the only thing he hides is how difficult it is to let go after.

"I know."

To both parts of that.

His lieutenants, his friends -- oh, how he has missed them all.

"Then I will tell you that this place is called Milliways, and it's somehow outside the normal world. A man may come here without intending to, or knowing of it, from any country, from any year. He comes, he leaves soon or is obliged to stay longer, but when he goes back through the door it's to the moment he left."

That will do for a start. The more difficult parts will come.

[street_sparrow]

"I'll go and get you that drink. They only serve the best here."

And off he scurries to leave the men to talk for a few minutes.

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

Much fraternal clasping-of-arms. Maybe a little less fierce on Bossuet's part, considering that he just saw Enjolras this morning, in good health, but still. There has been fighting since then, and men have surely been hurt more seriously than he.

"Enjolras, when I said I would believe anything you told me... " He rubs the back of his neck as an uncomfortable thought occurs. Just how seriously was he hurt? When people speak of other worlds, worlds where men come without intending it-- "I know we've all mixed our share of metaphors and flown some high fancies in our day. Once I convinced Joly for three entire days that Bahorel had been raised by wolves--at least, Joly believed that I believed it and Bahorel played along--"

Gavroche's offer of a drink stops him at the beginning of a complicated and unhelpful anecdote. Good. He shoots him a grateful look. "--I was going to ask just how figuratively you mean it when you say outside the normal world."

[pro_patria_mortuus]

It's a fair question, given some of the metaphors Enjolras has come up with in flights of rhetoric.

However: "Not at all."

He knows how it sounds. All he can offer is his seriousness, and the evidence of Bossuet's senses.

Bossuet's... possibly somewhat concussed senses, considering that lump on his head and Enjolras's memory of the events of '30. Well, it can't be helped.

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

Definitely a bit concussed. He's aware of it himself: ordinarily a hundred jokes would be at the tip of his tongue, but instead Bossuet finds himself saying, "I don't understand."

[pro_patria_mortuus]

Enjolras regards him for a moment, both fond and assessing, and as gentle as Enjolras is capable of being.

What are you supposed to do for a man who's been struck on the head? Let him rest. Keep him awake, he thinks, unless that's for something else. He wishes Combeferre were here, or Joly -- well, he always does, and that can't be helped either.

"That's all right," he says. "It isn't urgent. Come, sit. I promise you won't miss anything."

Bossuet wasn't gone for unduly long back in the Three Glorious Days. And knowing what happened then, what happened later -- this is important.