clayforthedevil | And now we turn to my beautiful city

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One minute Bahorel's in the treetops, working on his ongoing project, and the next he's in Feuilly's room, reading.

And utterly crammed into one of Feuilly's chairs in a ridiculously formal posture. He'd at least expected Feuilly to see the practical side of sprawling--

he realizes that this means we're all back in the same moment his watch (Feuilly's watch) starts to chime.

"Enjolras?--No, just now. Asleep? How--Right, I'll be there."

He's not sure how he's dressed, he's not sure what Feuilly might have been doing-- but he's already out the door and running downstairs to meet Enjolras, with whatever news he has from the other side of the door.

Paris.

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"It was Halévy's Les souvenirs de Lafleur by the Bourse," he says quietly, "and Auber's Gustave III at the Opéra. Those were the ones with posters I saw."

These aren't the theaters Bahorel's talking about. He's right: Enjolras has no idea where to look for those posters, and didn't notice any if he passed them.

But for his friends who care about theater, who weren't there to see -- for them, when he happened to pass the posters he did notice, he tried to remember what the titles were.

"I wish you all could have come." He's said this. It remains true. "I can't see her with your eyes, my friend, but..."

But.

(Her: la ville de Paris, la France. Either, both.)

The noise Bahorel makes is almost something like a laugh. "Wish for the others. I'd have been useless." He's grinning now, but his voice is serious.

"No--I envy you, and it had to be done, and it's a wonder the chance came, and I'd have given everything to go--and it would have killed me. I'd have come back to my body and dropped like a stone. I've barely been breathing here as it is; if I'd had a chance for real air I'd have gone under for good as soon as I was back here." He looks at Enjolras with a touch of real concern. "I don't know how you're up and walking."

There's no stumbling or stammering as he says any of this; it's just the truth. And it's absurd, in its way, and he knows it. His smile is real, even if he's still a blink away from crying again.

At the noise that isn't quite like a laugh, Enjolras reaches out to press his shoulder, in turn.

And then -- well.

"It was so strange, being in Valjean's body. His body! -- to be in Paris, and yet not myself, and reminded of it every step, every time anyone looked at me. In a way I suppose that helped."

"The door let me out into his garden, behind walls. Thank God it wasn't on a street corner. I don't know what anyone would have thought -- that the old man was having an attack of some sort, probably. But then there was work to be done. And I could do it."

There still is. Telling his friends; this conversation, right now. It's something to do that's worth something -- real work, even only a few days of it. Something to do, in Paris, for the cause, even if only in small ways. A burst of water, to sustain him in the drought of Milliways.

(His friends are water, too. They're only the reason Milliways isn't the hell it could be; the only reason he could tell his father in a dream, I'm very well, I swear it, and mean the words. But it isn't the same. Nothing like the same.)

Edited Date: 2015-11-16 07:23 am (UTC)

He smiles a little at Enjolras' description of the odd experience of a changed body, and frowns a moment at his mention of the strangeness of Paris.

"I wonder whose Paris it was...yours, mine? Another one as little different?" Work to be done, either way--it's a reminder.

"I saw my mistress-- Sophie, who had the print shop? -- back during Halloween. It seems that happens here sometimes, the living and dead talking somehow." He shrugs. "You might remember she shared our sympathies, more or less." Well. Not enough that they hadn't quarreled; but enough to risk her freedom and livelihood in the cause. "I told her what I could--I hadn't known you'd have the chance to visit yourself, then-- and anyway there's some things she can act on that we can't from here."

He frowns a little, thinking. "--It changes things, we know that. Even if it's not by much. It changes the history."

He walks quietly for a moment, not through, but thinking. This is not the sort of political conversation that had much practical use, when they were alive.

"Hard to say. I've wondered that."

In a way, it doesn't matter. Not enough to ask Valjean the detailed questions that might (or might not) clarify things. Work to be done, either way, indeed.

His face clears into recognition at had the print shop; yes, that he remembers, Bahorel's mistress with the print shop that would print seditious material sometimes, and her own convictions about republicanism and the relative priority of certain causes, who was involved in her own groups and activities. There's a great deal about Bahorel's love life that Enjolras neither knows nor cares to pay attention to, but the print shop and his long-term mistress's connection to it, yes.

"Yes. I dreamed of my father."

There's not really a lot more to say there. Though if Bahorel wants to ask any questions now or later, he'll readily answer them.

Anyway, he nods, at the end of all this. Yes -- one way or another, however the universe (or universes) work, they know this: in acting from Milliways, beyond the grave, with the right information given to the right living people, they can change things. At least a little, and maybe enough.

"--It all changes a little. Maybe a lot. From what Joly and Combeferre said, the Paris they saw, where it all went right for our fight--not much changed, and then everything did."

It's not idle philosophy. "How long--if everything we do has an effect, any effect-- how long before the Paris we might sometimes reach isn't ours at all anymore? Before our information becomes useless? And how would we know?"

He's not being rhetorical, and he doesn't expect Enjolras to have an answer, either. But it's something to consider.

"Before," Enjolras says thoughtfully, "I asked Bar for newspapers of my world. French histories of my world, specifically, and she gave me a call number for the library, when I read of France's later years."

That will always be bittersweet, and always complicated. The happiness of later centuries, and the horror and the grief.

That was only a minor strangeness of Paris, but it was there: to walk down a street, every inch of it so familiar that it made his heart ache, and to think sometimes in fifteen years this will happen here, in forty this, in a hundred and five that. But that was a Milliways perspective, that layering of history upon history, and it largely receded before the overwhelming immediacy of truly being in France.

"She might be able to do the same if we ask precisely enough."

"It's worth trying to find out. --Our networks won't last. Something like this--I know we all had people we were reaching to. If it had been next year, even later this year, some of them would be gone; will be gone. And we may not even know who."

And maybe not the same ones he'd guess, with them shifting things around. "It's not as if the people we know are the ones in the papers day to day; that's the problem." On a lot of levels.

Enjolras nods. He's thought about this, to some extent, though he's thinking more deeply now; it's always different to hear someone else's thoughts moving in parallel with your own, or along different lines.

And Bahorel's right. Some of them will be gone -- to prison, to exile, to cholera or duel or injury gone septic, summoned home by family need, any of a dozen fates that could strike without warning, and often without the slightest note in a newspaper or history book.

"Even without that... The codes will change. Soon enough our ways of making sure a message goes to the right ears will only be enough to say the writer of this knew something in '32."

That may be an entirely moot point. They may never get another chance like this. (He may never see their own France again. He moves on from that thought; he knows, he's known with every breath of Parisian air and then Milliways afterwards, but it's for later.) But if they do, if they get any kind of chance to do real work in Paris again -- then what month and year it is, in which world, will matter deeply to what use they can make of that chance.