milliways_bar | (no subject)

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Spring has come to Milliways, in full warmth. The grass is greening, and the trees are in bud, and so forth. There are even trees in the mountains that are covered in pink flowers.

Were they there last year? Were they, in fact, there last week? Enjolras is not entirely certain on either count.

On the other hand: Milliways. He'll ask Bahorel, or Combeferre or Joly, if he thinks to bother, but he may not.

At any rate, he's sitting at the base of one of the pink trees, on a convenient flat rock. He has a book with him, as usual, but he's currently ignoring it in favor of an abstraction of thought.

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It's good silence. It's Enjolras silence, which is familiar, and comforting, and uncluttered. It gives Feuilly space in which to look down at his hands, which are still smeared here and there from the charred wood of the burned stable. He's just come from working there.

"Enjolras," he says, suddenly and without preamble. "Do you remember how we had to argue with the married men at the barricade--fathers, men with families--how we had to argue to make them leave?"

"Yes."

Of course he does. It took all the eloquence any of them could muster -- him, and Combeferre, and Marius, all layering arguments and persuasion atop the others' words -- to get even a few to leave instead of dying with their brothers.

He's looking at Feuilly now; listening, patient, waiting to see where this is going.

Mmm, well, Feuilly is waiting to see where this is going, himself. He's picked up a twig, something that had broken off the tree, still with the blossoms on. To watch him, he's fully absorbed in studying the structure of the flower.

"Of course you do. I remember feeling--just a little bit--smug? That I wouldn't have to go."

Hmm.

Enjolras laces his fingers together on his knee. "It was easier to be spared the choice."

In the end the fighters decided among themselves, as a group, whose dependents needed them the most. Who had to leave, for the sake of others. No one would ever have pointed to Feuilly or Enjolras as candidates for that, nor any of the others of them here at Milliways.

"But then, we chose long before not to be in that position. We prioritized the fight in our lives."

"Yes, we did. --I don't think for any of us, any of us here now, it was a difficult choice." Oh, some of them certainly had thought of marriage, families, somewhere off in the future, but somewhere off in the future is a comfortably distant place.

He glances at Enjolras, then back down at the little branch in his hands.

Enjolras shakes his head. No, he never got that impression either.

And he could say more -- has said more, other times when they've discussed this matter, what one sacrifices in life for what -- but. "What's brought this to mind, my friend?"

At friend, he leans briefly into Enjolras, shoulder to shoulder.

"Mmmh. I--oh, I was very--frustrated--with Harry Percy the other day." (Someone was frustrated with Harry Percy? Surely not.) "He had had an adventure," Feuilly continues, somewhat dryly. "I don't know if you've talked to Lesgle or Joly lately, but they had something like it too--chasing off into the woods after strange beasts, having--visions-- I don't know. Not in the Labyrinth, but a bit like it. He...found he could go back to his world, just for a little time, with a choice: to fight or to see his family. --His wife had a son, you know, after he died. Monmouth told him of it. Well, anyway. He chose to be at Azincourt, with Monmouth's army."

Edited 2016-03-30 21:07 (UTC)

Enjolras nods, a little, at the part about chasing into the woods after strange beasts, but he waits for Feuilly to finish before he speaks.

"I haven't seen them, but Bahorel and I had something similar. I was meaning to tell you of it. But -- not like that, with a choice. Or with our own world, of course." Of course because they'd have been told instantly, if it were that. "I hadn't heard about his."

He's frowning, thoughtful. It's a cruel choice. Cruel even when the answer's clear; it forces you to reiterate what you already know, what you've already chosen. That's valuable too -- isn't that kind of pursuit of harsh truth and stark choice a reason Combeferre is such a dear friend to him? -- but it matters who's forcing that question, and why.

"I see why that's on your mind."

And: Azincourt. Well.

"You and Bahorel?" He'll have to ask about that, later. But having started the conversation, it wouldn't very well be fair to chase after the first topic change he can find. "--Mmh. Of all the pointless wars to fight in, going to support the old Plantagenet claims to the French throne? To land Monmouth has probably never set eyes upon, nor intends to."

Yes, he's done more reading up on the campaign, since the disagreement with Harry. Feuilly likes to know what he's angry about. "Of all the cynical wars! I wouldn't have thought Harry could--"

He very, very gently puts the blossoming cherry twig down on the ground. "It didn't sound like a difficult choice for him. But then--but then we all went gladly enough to our own fights."

Edited 2016-03-30 23:13 (UTC)

Enjolras grimaces: yes, indeed.

But--

"He's not a cynical man," he agrees, thoughtfully. "Not at all."

Maybe enough to not see the cynicism even in King Henry of England's invasion at Azincourt, if it were put to him in a cleaner light? Hard to say.

"And I think -- in a way it's been hard for him to have only Monmouth here of his own nation. There are Englishmen enough of centuries later, but that's different. He snapped once at Bahorel -- well, Bahorel -- for speaking ill of 'his king', about the invasion. Bahorel said, should he pretend to cheer over the invasion of his own nation, and Harry said of course not, and it blew over fast, you know them. And he can hardly be said to have unmixed loyalty to the crown. But to his fellow soldiers, the rest of the army, maybe them."

He's been looking forward, into memory and his thoughts, speaking thoughtfully. He glances at Feuilly, now.

"But that's only half the issue."

And it's important, but it's also something that they've known from the beginning, and it's not what Feuilly started with an oblique discussion of.

"No--no, he's not a cynical man. At all." Feuilly's ears have suddenly gone pink. Thank you, Enjolras: he really needed to hear that from someone else. He should have known to come to talk to Enjolras sooner. "Harry's not a cynical man, and he--he doesn't see it in other people, not easily. Just to know that the army was outnumbered, the men sick and weary--that would be a clear duty."

His ears are going even pinker, but he laughs a small and rather tired laugh. "And I could have seen that more clearly, if I hadn't been--well, yes. It's hard for me to see someone throw away, with so little regret, an only chance to see his child. But it seemed obvious to me at the time, on the barricade, that the men there would want to stay."

Edited 2016-03-31 12:33 (UTC)

"Of course it is," Enjolras says quietly, and reaches over to press Feuilly's forearm lightly.

Of course it is.

"Was it so little regret?"

He has no way to judge, really. He hasn't spoken with Harry about any of this.

At the touch, he leans again into Enjolras's shoulder for a moment. "It seemed like it. But he had just come back from the battle, he was still--oh, elated, from the fight. And we haven't spoken since. --But at the barricade, if any of those men's families had been there to hear them arguing their right to stay, to fight and die with us, I don't think they would have heard much regret in their voices."

Enjolras leans back, for that same moment, a comfortable and fraternal press of weight and presence.

"No."

Enjolras can hardly find it in his heart to chide them for that. They fought for their families, and for the great mother and sustainer of all Frenchmen, their nation. But he knows, too, that he doesn't understand a father's point of view, and that he's never been the most tender or domestic of men; friends have pointed out this often enough, sometimes fondly and sometimes critically.

He's thinking over Harry, now, though. Harry Percy, earl's son of the fifteenth century, honorable and forthright and hasty, who loudly proclaims himself proudest to be a soldier first and always. "And -- I don't know how he feels about this. We haven't spoken about any of it. I didn't know he had a family, even. But he's always seemed to me..."

How to put this. "There are things he speaks of easily. Promptly. War, honor, affront, friendship. Sometimes without thinking much about what he's saying, of course. Other matters, one has to coax him to reflect on. And after that, wait for him to put into words. One gets the impression that he's surprised by it, every time. You may have better luck than I, though. But perhaps that's part of it?"

Edited 2016-03-31 18:01 (UTC)

From the tone of Feuilly's voice, he has no criticism either, for the men who hadn't wanted to leave the barricade for their families. They had been in their own family, just then, a family of sympathy and action. (Which is, after all, the only kind of family Feuilly has ever known: anything else he can come up with, on the subject of family, is an observer's speculation.)

Harry Percy, though. And family. He listens to Enjolras, with a small fond smile. Yes, there, that's Harry. "That's--no, it's just as you say. He's--it takes him time to find out what he's thinking, if it isn't on those subjects. Well, that's how he was trained--how he was raised. I didn't have the patience just then, when we were talking, but I can talk to him again."

Feuilly laughs a little. "We'd all of us--us from Paris--be a poor set of friends, wouldn't we, if we had stopped talking together at the first misunderstanding."

Enjolras smiles back, a small warm flash of amusement.

"Or demanded patience at every moment, on every subject."

They've worked through their disagreements, all of them, whenever they've arisen; worked to an agreement, or an agreement to disagree, or to a comfortable familiar wrangling over details with an understood bedrock beneath. But it's been work, at times.

And with anger, at times. Jean-Jacques Rousseau abandoned his children, but he adopted the people; he adopted the people, but he abandoned his children. It's not as if Feuilly and Enjolras have never disagreed sharply, especially in earlier years.

Yes. Well. Feuilly tends to be circumspect in his mentions of Rousseau: he's learned, from Enjolras and for Enjolras's sake, to appreciate Rousseau's works, but he's never felt warm admiration for the man.

But that's Rousseau, who isn't here. At the moment Feuilly is just glad to have found Enjolras, who is here, and who has as always helped with his insight. (Feuilly has never understood people who call Enjolras unworldly; he's uncosmopolitan, certainly, but never disconnected from anything important.)

He leans back against the trunk of the tree and stares up into the flowers. They really are remarkable. However they came to be here, they're welcome. "He is a good friend, you know. Harry."

Enjolras glances at him; a little inquiring, but more affectionate.

"Yes."

Everything he's seen of Harry, and of Harry and Feuilly's regard for each other, has indicated that.

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