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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Enjolras gestures equivocation.

"It's the first time I've seen that precisely. But the landscape here is often strange. Malleable. Especially deep in the forest."

...Yeah.

"Milliways is very strange," he admits, with eloquent (and audible) understatement.

"Ha. Yes. I have come to see that. I will be happy to return home, I confess," he says.

Or is that an indelicate thing to say, in the present company? Um.

"--though of course we will return."

Slightly, but Enjolras would prefer frankness to delicacy anyway!

He grins, just a little. "I understand."

"I think," he adds, reflectively, "it must be even stranger if one comes from life. After dying -- it's nothing I could ever have expected, but at least one expects something other than ordinary life. To have everything just as usual through that door, it must be even more disconcerting."

"Yes, precisely," Marius says with relief: relieved to be understood, relieved to have sidestepped any awkwardness.

"Of course, there are moments I find I hardly recognize my life on that side of the door, either," he says. But that's an idle thought, he wouldn't know how to explain it, and certainly not to Enjolras.

"As-- as Cosette's father is now very well, and as I do expect we shall be returning to Paris very soon, I had been hoping to find you, to speak to you once more about-- to receive, when you have them, anything you wish me to-- bear back with me."

"Yes."

Enjolras straightens slightly, drawing without a thought into his habitual intensity.

"I have notes to give you, in my room. To pass on to those in Montmartre we spoke of. I'll have to tell you how to deliver them -- I know you're scrupulous, my friend, but it's not wise to write down too much."

"Yes, of course," Marius says with a nod. "You know the best and safest way, I do not doubt."

It was rather his business to, yeah.

"I'll also," he says, "give you a few more names." Or nameless descriptions with points of contact, either one. "Men you can go to if you have any need, who would help a veteran of the June barricades without asking any questions. But be careful. It's no one whose arrest I heard of, but the fates of such men rarely make it into newspapers. I can't be certain of how they fare now, months later."

Marius nods again. "Yes, thank you. I will take great care. But how do you suggest I-- make myself known to them? They will have little enough cause to trust me, and though I may tell them I fought in June, they will have no reason to believe it."

Enjolras, for a brief moment, smiles faintly. "You don't have a deceitful air as a rule, Marius."

Enjolras trusts his honesty, and up to a certain point, his discretion. But his observation skills? Well. Maybe -- but all the same, there will be a little bit of extra selection in the contacts he gives Marius.

"But there are also certain words and signs that will mark you, to the right eyes, as someone who can be trusted."

"I hope I do not," Marius says worriedly. "But I should think such men would have every reason to be cautious. But-- thank you."

"Yes," Enjolras says, thoughtfully. "We do."

"But it's also true that one of the foundations of our beliefs is fraternity. And as a pragmatic manner -- too little caution is dangerous. But too much caution, and one cuts oneself off from allies. It's a balance, always."

He frowns, nodding still. It had not occurred to him, of course-- but it is logical. At a certain point, one must trust. It's... not the part he has ever been best at.

"And is there anything you would like me to-- to bring when I return?"

Enjolras thinks, though it's mostly unnecessary, then shakes his head.

What he wants is Paris, and France. To feel her soil and paving stones under his feet, to breathe her air, to work again for her freedom. Newspapers he can get from Bar, or food that tastes like home; no other little trinket is worth asking after, even if it would be worth something to know this or that came from Paris by a friend's hand. That's never been his style of sentiment.

"Only any news you might have come by. But I thank you for the offer."

"Of course," he says. "I will be sure to let you know."

Enjolras smiles at him, small and brief and warm.

He's very sincerely grateful. And besides that, it's still very good to see Marius well; to see a friend, alive, breathing, continuing the work, scarred but whole and earnestly, awkwardly himself.

"Shall we go for the notes now? Or would you rather wait?"

"Oh-- we might go now, but I do not wish to interrupt you," he says. "But it seems to be it would be better to have them to hand-- that I might leave whenever Cosette wishes, and draw no attention by asking her to linger."

"You're interrupting nothing. In any case, this would be more important."

He rises, stuffing his book in his pocket, with a small gesture towards the bar building some distance away. Shall they?

Marius nods and falls into step beside Enjolras. "I am very glad to be able to be of use."

Enjolras understands that sentiment very well indeed.

He smiles at Marius, small but warm, as they set out across the grounds.

Javert is, thankfully, nowhere to be seen, and it's not so far a walk to the bar. And then up the stairs, and to room 89 with its placard and its... decor.

"Oh," says Marius as he takes in the room. And then, eloquently, "Um."

There's a lot to take in before his gaze even reaches the flag above the desk, but he starts at the sight of it.

"Is that--?"

Enjolras looks very wry. And starts to say something about Milliways and its decor, but -- well.

"Yes," he says, a little gently, and nothing like offhand.

That flag is a sacred symbol, always.

"One of them. It was in my hand when I arrived here."

He can give more details if Marius wants them, but he suspects Marius does not.

He doesn't, not really, though there is a perverse part of him that wants to ask. It occurs to him, not for the first time, that he still doesn't know how it all ended.

He's been staring at the flag; he turns away.

"The-- the papers, then?"

Enjolras clasps his shoulder for a moment, silent and bracing.

"Yes -- just a moment."

They're in his desk, a small bundle tucked away at the back of a drawer. (His desk, which the flag is pinned up over. You're welcome, Marius.)

He passes them over, and then gestures Marius to a seat on the couch, from which it's easy to avoid looking at the flag if he wants to continue avoiding it.

Next: the contact information that doesn't get written down, and won't be.

Marius tucks the bundle carefully into his pocket, takes a seat on the couch (he can't stop peeking at the flag out of the corner of his eye, then forcing himself to look away).

He listens carefully to Enjolras's instructions-- all the more so to prove, despite his admittedly well-earned reputation for scattered dreaminess, that Enjolras need not fear that it will be forgotten.

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