Other Verses

[clayforthedevil]

Bahorel wakes up on the floor in front of the fireplace, caught in a ridiculous multiplicity of blankets, pillows, and Jehan's elbows, which are, in Bahorel's considerable experience, far more omnipresent and wrathful than any God. It's all so far from unusual that he has a rare moment of confusion-- this could be Paris, and his old apartments. He shakes the confusion off, along with several pillows, one of which makes a reproachful yowl as it falls.

Bahorel grins at Marguerite, who blinks at him in offense. "Your pardon, Mademoiselle." He sits up, stretches and yawns in time with the kitten, and looks around to assess the damage of the night before. There's none especially evident; judging from the general scatter of overcoats and waistcoats, they both seem to have managed to get somewhere along the line of ready for bed before getting bored with consciousness. He looks for his coat and grins to see the poppy from the Labyrinth still vibrant in the lapel. That goes on a high shelf, away from curious kittens with unknown opium tolerances.

Jehan, at some point, apparently managed to turn his own shirt into something of a straightjacket, arms pinned to his own head and sleeves knotted. Bahorel untangles him, and lets Jehan thump back down into the pillows with the steady unconsciousness of a naturally deep sleeper who also notably overdid the mead last night.

Which leaves Bahorel free to go about his morning with his usual energy and lack of concern for quiet. By the time Jehan wakes up, Bahorel and the kitten have both eaten, stretched, and aggressively groomed themselves for the day. For the kitten, that means it's time for a nap; for his part, Bahorel is properly sprawled on the couch, reading.

Comments

[vive_lavenir]

"Indeed!" Jehan makes a dramatic gesture with his arms, and just misses hitting Bahorel in the nose. "And maybe we argued with him even while we were living--maybe our souls reached out to his, without our knowing, and communed with him, and that helped lay the foundations for what he wrote later. We just don't know. Either way, it's an enthralling idea." He pauses.

Jehan pulls his arms back in, huddling. "Of course, the greatest arguments are within the self. Do you know, I once spent a whole day and a whole night wrestling with myself, because two characters in my epic poem were at cross purposes? It was a glorious thing. My soul was a battleground." He smiles at the memory, then returns to the present moment. "And that's Bossuet's theory, you say? We're 'fictional', as you call it--except we can't be, we're real because we feel ourselves to be--but it's possible, so this theory says, that we're created by Hugo, that we and others in this book people the terrain of his mind."

Bossuet might have been shaken by this. Jehan is enchanted. He sighs. "What an exquisite thought."

[clayforthedevil]

Bahorel tilts his head to dodge the flailing, then reaches out with rather more coordination to rest a hand on Jehan's shoulder, rubbing idly at the fabric of the new doublet. "--But they were still aspects of your soul, you'd say, those characters." It's a statement, but a questioning one.

[vive_lavenir]

Jehan frowns. "I would--at first" he says. "They began as part of me, and I felt them to be so. But as I developed them, they became independent of my will, as if they had wills of their own. They acted and talked without my conscious design. I could still feel and understand all they felt, but I wasn't telling them to feel or do anything. All they did, they did spontaneously."

He looks at Bahorel. "Who's to say they couldn't break free entirely, and do things without my knowledge or volition? Perhaps they would still be part of me then, as we're all part of the Infinite. But the relation between god and human is quite different to that between a puppet and a puppet master, isn't it?"

Jehan is now too excited to rein himself in, if he even wanted to. "Artists are like the Maker, after all, pouring heart and soul into their creation, and finding it good. Am I a god to the lovers and heroes I write of? I create their worlds, their hearts, and let them run free in my fancy. Why not be a god? Not as the Infinite, of course, but as Zeus, or as Gaia, or Apollo."

Jehan smiles, staring wide-eyed at the ceiling, for a long moment, before the present discussion takes hold of him again. He adds, making a face, "If Hugo is our god, I'm glad indeed we broke free of him. As we must have. I will not believe he invented Milliways."

[clayforthedevil]

"Hugo's spawned a veritable army of Athenas, then-- or something maybe stranger." Bahorel rolls over enough to tap a finger against the book's pages. "I had you read that so you'll understand-- the people he names, it's close. I know, just as far as I lived it, and a few other details you'll spot right away, that it's not entirely accurate to the lives we knew. But it's close. And I'm willing to bet it's close for everyone else in there too."

Which makes for complications. "And several of them come to Milliways. The spy Javert, who you had such a charming encounter with last night. Valjean--who goes by Fauchelevent, now-- who came to help the barricade after you and I were dead. Fauchelevent's daughter, Pontmercy's fiancee-- maybe his wife, by now. Their lives are there, too."

[vive_lavenir]

"That strengthens all of our speculations, then. Either Hugo created our own world--living in a Paris of his own, of course, because a Hugo could only grow in a Paris, but he's created a separate world with its own Paris--or else his mind and soul connected with those of people in our world, somehow. Not just ours, but everyone you listed."

No matter which is true: Jehan is enraptured.

But he still scowls at the mention of the spy. "Yes--the spy's alive, in a material sense. How did that come to be?" Jehan can't imagine Enjolras or any of them allowing it, unless perhaps Combeferre urged mercy for some reason.

"And it would be good to meet Pontmercy's wife! She must be a sensitive soul, to be a match for him."

[clayforthedevil]

Bahorel laughs. "Oh, she's a bright young soul; a far brighter and bolder spark than him! It's well; she'll keep him living in the world. Give her a few years and she'll have a fine little circle in Society."

He frowns, mood shifting. "But that's in a few years. Right now, damn! She's a convent-school girl, and as innocent as any nun could want her to be. And her life's all laid out inthose pages-- hers, and her mother's. There's not a godforsaken thing wrong in either of them, nothing that should shame any honest soul. But for a young lady in Society, just starting up-- it's ruin enough to know that her mother was never Madame Fauchelevent, isn't it."

It's a bleak certainty, not a question. "Enjolras spoke to her father. She might at least be forewarned. But Monsieur Fauchelevent--" Bahorel shakes his head. "He helped at the barricades. He's the one who saved Marius. But he's also the one who saved the spy." Bahorel shrugs. Fauchelevent had taken no oaths of loyalty to the cause, after all. "I don't believe it was for any gain; he stood to lose by it more than anyone. Hah, he hardly had reason to expect any of us would be troubled by it later!"

But now: Milliways.

[vive_lavenir]

Jehan is, perhaps, more sensitive to the morbid young Pontmercy than Bahorel. But even he must acknowledge that it doesn't take much to be brighter and bolder than Marius Pontmercy.

"I hadn't considered that aspect--but you're quite right, yes, if Hugo wrote of any scandal attached to someone's name--that might do her no end of harm."

Jehan frowns. "Why would her father save the spy, then? If not for gain?"

Surely it wasn't for liking. The spy was repulsive.

[clayforthedevil]

Bahorel shakes his head. "Morals. The man's out to save lives at any cost, if his story there's at all accurate."

At any cost, even the risk of other lives. But Bahorel recognizes that that's not a sort of math that comes naturally to everyone. "He doesn't have any killing in him; some men just don't. If you asked him, I don't think he could give you any reasons beyond that. Let it be--the spy lives, we don't; we know about this story, and he, at least for now, doesn't. Hiy!"

The last is in response to little Marguerite leaping from under the sofa to seize his coat-sleeve, and landing claws-out on his hand. He scoops her onto the sofa-cushion and grins as she attack the Terrifying Giant Hand again. "You found this one at the Temple of Bast?"

[vive_lavenir]

"He sounds like a saint," Jehan muses. "Exceptional purity of heart, which can't suffer any taint, regardless of the circumstance--" Saints aren't always helpful, but they are admirable.

He smiles at Bahorel playing with Marguerite. "Yes, the Temple of Bast--I believe she's a gift from the goddess herself. A good luck token, or perhaps a protector."

[clayforthedevil]

"Good luck telling him that--truly, I wish you the highest success if you try. The man is suffering from a crushing humility. I expect he'd hide from a thank-you." Bahorel knows that humility happens to some people. It seems horrible.

Marguerite, like all cats, knows nothing of such human frailties and has begun her attack on his entire arm, without regard for it being several times her length. Kitten claws won't get through a suit-coat; still, he appreciates the effort, and makes encouraging noises at her attacks. "--Joly does swear by cats as guardians in the Labyrinth." And in everything else. "Or is she meant to be your guardian here? She's rather permanent, if her work was meant only for that maze."

[vive_lavenir]

"Humility is a curse," Jehan says, dreamily. "It's ignorance of one's nature as part of the Infinite, that's all--such a sad thing."

"I rather think she's my guardian here, or else why would Bast have sent her with me from her Temple, and even from the Labyrinth? There were other kittens there. But none of them came with me. Just her." Jehan runs his finger over the top of Marguerite's fuzzy head.

[clayforthedevil]

"That's promising, then. It's been appallingly safe, so far. Police and cannibals regardless. "

Come on, kitten. Turn up an eldritch horror.

[vive_lavenir]

"Well, you're here," Jehan points out. Bahorel is almost an eldritch horror, after all. Especially now since he's dead. "And I'm here. So it can't be too safe."

Possibly Jehan overestimates his own dangerousness.

[clayforthedevil]

Bahorel laughs, in amusement and approval. "You may be right about yourself, at that. A writer, in a place visited by escapees from stories--oh, it's not just us, if bloody Father Christmas and fairies are running around, it's certainly not just us---who knows? Maybe Mlle. Marguerite is here to keep an eye on you for the gods' sake."

It's an amusing idea, and not an entirely idle one. Stories and poetry had weight back in their Paris; it might be a force on another level, here.

[vive_lavenir]

"Oh!" Jehan turns around and pushes himself up onto one knee. "I hadn't considered this--but what a thrilling, terrifying thought--do you think I might encounter the characters I've created here at Milliways?"

[clayforthedevil]

Bahorel props himself up on elbow and shrugs. "Why not? It would make as much sense as anything else here, surely."

[vive_lavenir]

Jehan bites his lip. "But what if they hate me?"

[clayforthedevil]

"A good question. I certainly would have disagreements with any creator who claimed responsibility for us--though your characters might at least feel you put a little more sense into their situation. But what if they do hate you?"

Maybe not an immediate problem; but in Milliways, not an impossible one.

[vive_lavenir]

Jehan regards Bahorel, startled. "And perhaps we might even meet our creator here," he murmurs.

"Well--I suppose you might say I feel a paternal interest in them. Or a godly one, if it isn't hubris to say so. Who wants to be hated by his creation?"

[clayforthedevil]

Bahorel props his chin up on one hand, opening his other for Marguerite's continued combat practice. "You should know, then; or else who would? You've lived with them. Have you given them reason to hate you? Are they the sort who would?"

He'd be glad to fight Hugo, with words or fists, if the man showed up in Milliways; but then he would have done the same in Paris, if the fellow had ever been willing to have a fair match. And whatever Hugo wrote their introductions had surely known that, unless he'd penned the whole thing in a trance.

[vive_lavenir]

Jehan frowns. "The villains, perhaps," he says. "But I'd like to think even they would understand and appreciate the rightness of their stories for their characters, for their very souls--even if their stories are sometimes tragic."

He sighs. "I'd like to think it, but I'm not sure. And even the ones I'm sure of--I can't even be truly sure of them, because if they've developed independent wills, then they can craft their own characters, and move beyond what I made of them. Perhaps even move beyond what I know. As we have. Even if we're Hugo's creations, I don't think he knows we're in Milliways!"

[clayforthedevil]

"Hah, no, if that reprobate knew about this place he'd be here himself." There's no judgement in that. Who wouldn't love to visit a library with an endless open supply of booze and very friendly patrons?

"Anyway, why should your characters bother with you, any more than they would some other man? If you'd get along with them, then you would; if you wouldn't, you won't. If you feel responsible for them--" he shrugs. "You gave them what you thought they needed. It's no less than any parent should do, and if you failed them it's because you didn't know better. The most devoted parents can't keep a man from his own bad choices." As Bahorel has reason to know. "If they want to claim their life is theirs to be upset about, and not yours to command, I don't see how they can blame you for its turnings."

Bahorel would quarrel with Hugo, if he met him here, just as he would have back in Paris; over politics, or questions of society. Over his own fate? Ridiculous. "And the world they live in-- hell, there's no way Hugo built our whole France; it exists in universes where we don't. So you're probably not at fault for the world in your stories, either-- no more than any man's to blame for the world he makes around him, anyway."

[vive_lavenir]

"I did write those turnings," signs Jehan. "But I hope you're right." He brightens. "I can read Hugo's work and see how we diverge from it, anyway. And do you mean to say you've encountered people from universes where we don't exist in any form, but France is still there? Does Hugo exist in those worlds? Is there anywhere we exist but no Hugo?"

[clayforthedevil]

"Ah, complicated question!" But the right sort of question.

"I know there are universes where neither of us exist; I 've seen some books from them, with nary a mention of us, or Hugo-- or in some cases, of the damn Bourbons and the Restoration at all."

Bahorel folds his hands under his chin and considers. "Not counting Milliways--? Hm, haven't run into anyone who knew of us and not of him. But that's a hard thing to look for-- who would remember us, outside that book? None of us lived to write our story. And few of the fighters of those days are remembered at all, in most histories.--And it's not as though everyone here is from our time, or later, either, so we might live in their world yet, and they wouldn't know it."

[vive_lavenir]

''I wonder if we might get to those universes via the Labyrinth," Jehan muses. "You went to another Paris- how different was it?"