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]

"Wine", Gavroche announces, returning with a bottle and - optimistically - three glasses. "Have we got a table?"

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

Tables and wine? Bossuet could navigate that with far more of a bump on his head than he's had. He steers them over to the nearest spot to sit--because yes, sitting, sitting sounds like an awfully good idea--and watches them both. Gavroche (impossible, Gavroche is a little street kid) had been trying to explain, and Enjolras is trying to explain (and if you want to be flexible about space-time situations, two other people are trying to explain), and--

--Really, Bossuet's going to try to get it. But sitting down, first.

[pro_patria_mortuus]

To the table, yes. Enjolras takes a seat next to Bossuet.

In this company, he'll even accept a glass -- though only one, as ever, and he'll drink very lightly.

"How is your head?"

He remembers that Bossuet took no lasting harm. Still.

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"The day has not been kind to it! You people with your fine thick manes can't appreciate how vulnerable a bald man is. I think this time it really was roof tiles." He'll be all right, he's had the very best of 1830s medical-student battle-field care and no doubt Joly will plague him with leeches as soon as there's time, but...yes, it hurts.

He had closed his eyes. Now he opens one, checks that Enjolras and overgrown-Gavroche are still there. "Or--perhaps I have died and come to another world." It doesn't feel like nearly enough of a joke. "I would have liked something a little more useful than a death by roof-tiles."

[street_sparrow]

"You aren't dead", Gavroche tells him with certainty, pouring the wine. "And you look like somebody already looked at it?"

[pro_patria_mortuus]

"Half a flowerpot."

He remembers. Joly fretting, laughing off his worry, fretting again the next moment; Bahorel joking, dropping in the rough reassurance of a veteran; Bossuet himself showing up amiably befuddled and quite upright with a fist-sized lump on his head, just as he is now.

Enjolras presses a hand to Bossuet's shoulder, looks him in the eye. "Bossuet. Be at ease. I swear to you by the republic we hope for: you are not coming here from death. Think of it as a peculiar dream if you like. But you'll return to 27 July, hale as you were, except that lump Joly's fretting over."

Enjolras, when he wants to, has a gravity that's magnetic: it draws the eye, it draws the belief. Human hearts are a lodestone attuned to sincerity.

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

Lesgle doesn't think he could dream such a convincing Enjolras. But he'll accept the assurances--and Gavroche's assertion that he's not dead. "Half a flowerpot. Well, then, I must not die, not for anything less than a full flowerpot. Joly must not sacrifice his favorite cravat for anything less than a full flowerpot."

Or the republic. "Not to argue with a dream, but--why? Why be here?"

[street_sparrow]

"Nobody knows. Something, somewhere, chose to bring you here now. What it is, and why, we can only guess."

[pro_patria_mortuus]

Enjolras's grimace is slight, wry, no answer but the answer's lack. His slight gesture, as he sits back, says the same.

"Why? I can't answer that."

Ask Combeferre, and get six answers, all hypotheses, none affirmed. Ask Prouvaire. Ask any number of others; Enjolras's philosophy is always to an earthly point.

"What to do now that you are -- well. That's another matter."

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"What to do, then. We'll call it Bad Luck that brought me here." Bossuet smiles over at Gavroche. "We're old friends, Fatality and I. --But Enjolras, yes. What to do? I know I'm a lazy reprobate but this is a bit much even for me."

He gestures lightly to his own tricolor cockade and to the one on Enjolras's lapel. "I feel a certain reproach. The Bastille didn't fall in a dream."

[street_sparrow]

Gavroche smiles at him, then flicks a glance at Enjolras.

"Well, if you're asking what most people do around here, there's a very complete library, or there's a lake and woods in the back if the outside is your preference."

[pro_patria_mortuus]

Gavroche's answer is to an interpretation of the question that had honestly never occurred to Enjolras. The daily business of one's day, very well, there's food, there are books, there's nature. Bossuet is from the barricades of les Trois Glorieuses; he's from a time and place that matters; so far as Enjolras is concerned, the only important things to discuss are ones that matter likewise.

(Bossuet's health and wellbeing are on that list. But they're not the only items.)

His brief and faintly bemused glance at Gavroche doubtless shows this opinion, but he lets the boy finish. Bossuet may as well know that information as well. Why not?

He folds his hands beside his cup, tasted once for sociability and then for the moment forgotten. "Now we come to the strangeness again."

"You see, you came from the 27th of July, 1830. I can say for certain that you're not dead, that you'll return in good health, that you'll find us at the Hôtel de Ville a little before 7. The reason is that I came here from June of 1832."

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

Libraries and lakes and woods are good things to know about--and once Bossuet starts exploring he'll be glad for the knowledge. But yes, at the moment he's still very much in the middle of tearing down a monarchy. Or trying to. (Though Enjolras's bemused look is enough to make him grin at Gavroche. Has he ever tried to drag Enjolras along for a picnic in the park? You can lead a revolutionary to nature but you can't make him notice the flowers.)

But. Yes. Strangeness. Lesgle is good with numbers; give him a minute and he can convert June 1832 to the republican calendar and tell you how old each of his friends will be. But it's still a challenge to imagine it as a real time. "June of 1832," he repeats. "I take it the date becomes significant?"

[street_sparrow]

"Very." His grin of amusement back at Lesgle is fleeting. "Enjolras, I... think you were going to tell him?"

[pro_patria_mortuus]

"Yes," Enjolras says, to Bossuet.

"I'll tell you all of it later. But there are certain events between your day and mine that it would be better to arrange differently."

He knows that Lègle will draw conclusions from what Enjolras is saying and what he is not saying, from his cockade and his clothes of mourning. A knock to the head doesn't befuddle a man more than alcohol can, so far as he knows, and Bossuet's mind is keen under any circumstances. But there are details that don't need to be gone into just now.

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

Bossuet holds his gaze a moment and nods. He's come to too many possible conclusions for any great peace of mind--but it can wait. This isn't the dear old Musain, where they could pin whatever they liked to the walls and shout about Bonaparte.

"Well. I'm in no state--and no world?--to knock over a throne by myself just now. Suppose a man had been told by a doctor to lie down and not exert himself. Where would he go?" He divides the question equally between Enjolras and Gavroche.

[street_sparrow]

"The infirmary?" Gavroche suggests. "If he should be observed. Or there are private rooms upstairs."

[pro_patria_mortuus]

"There are doctors, yes." Enjolras is no more doctor than Bossuet, and has (he incorrectly thinks) less recollection of what Joly told him recently on the subject. He will let Bossuet be the judge of whether he ought to consult them.

"As for rooms, the proprietors extend credit nearly indefinitely, especially to those without funds. I have rooms which you'd be welcome to share, though there's only one mattress. Grantaire too, doubtless."

Bossuet has roomed with all of them enough that he feels comfortable with that last statement -- though Grantaire will have to be located, and then to have matters explained to him, as a prerequisite.

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"I'll do without a doctor, I'm sure," Bossuet says hastily. He's not exactly looking forward to the leeches. Or the bed rest. Or the weak broth suitable for an invalid. Or being dosed.

"But--ha. I've showed up at Grantaire's door unannounced too many times already this summer. I'll give the poor fellow a rest--and you, too, if there really are rooms to spare? And an endless tab...? 'Without funds' describes me precisely just now."

[street_sparrow]

"Not quite endless. But it can go months or years without being called in." He grins. "Just don't get lost in the corridors."

[pro_patria_mortuus]

Surely he doesn't need to warn him about the forest on the first day--

This is Bossuet.

"Nor the forest outdoors," says Enjolras, a little wry.

"Come, if you're ready. I'll show you how to order whatever you need."

Enjolras has never entirely reconciled himself to ordering from the rats. The system seems to work well enough, but all the same unless he's quite preoccupied he prefers to order directly from the bar. In this case it seems by far the easiest course to introduce Bossuet to that first.

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

Bossuet can use all the warnings there are. "I'll trail a ball of thread behind me as I go, like Theseus. In fact, I should really be doing that everywhere..." He stands up, wincing a bit at he jolt to his head. "Show me?"

He's been trying not to think about the rats.

[pro_patria_mortuus]

"A tripping hazard," points out Enjolras, placid and straightfaced, as he rises from his chair. (Sorry, Gavroche; he's still had only a swallow or two of the perfectly decent wine.)

He would like to say there are no minotaurs here, but it seems a rash statement.

He links arms with Bossuet, a gesture as much of physical support and steering as of affection. It seems warranted on all counts -- but particularly the former.

[street_sparrow]

Gavroche finishes his wine and appropriates Enjolras' glass, picking up the bottle as he trails after them.

"And don't go down to the - carriage-house. It stretches for miles, my friend Jay's started mapping it."

[tire_moi_mes_bottes]

"The carriage-house. Requires mapping. Are we going to get lost between here and the bar?" Enjolras is right about tripping hazards: Enjolras and Gavroche are probably right about most things. Bossuet happily lets himself be steered.