tu_vas_triompher | (no subject)

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hotspur

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It turns out that you can't actually just lie around in the grass forever; for one thing, bugs start biting you, and other residents come strolling by or want to visit the stable, and the day wears on. So Feuilly had gone to his work--belatedly--and Harry had gone about whatever Harry does--presumably horse things? Knight things?

And Feuilly had set himself to start his painting and his translation work an hour earlier the next morning. He'd fit more hours into the day if he could, but until Joly or Combeferre discovers something along those lines, he'll just sleep less! It's a workable plan!

So Feuilly has circles under his eyes as well as bruises under his shirt when he wanders to the stable in the late afternoon. With his practice sword! With his practice sword held rather awkwardly, because he's not sure if he and Percy actually have a...scheduled...arrangement to meet...? But, you know, he's just. Wandering over to the stables. With a sword.

Like you do.

Well, also a basket of food. He'd been hungry after their training session.

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"There is some magic in this coffee, sure." Well that merits a shove back, naturally. "A week together? I would like that very well. Why, could my poor, frail nobility be but as hardy as thee--"

He's pretty sure Combeferre or Joly has told him what's in coffee, but it escapes his mind. "We'll start you out on--on plenty of milk and sugar in the coffee so it doesn't overpower you--hey!" Hey, that shove made him lose his grip on his end of the blanket. Feuilly scrambles to retrieve it. "--and make you learn the Rights of Man by heart."

"The Rights of Man? Ist some catechism?" He holds tight to his end of the blanket, because God forbid the English ever willingly cede territory to the French.

Hey, England delivered this bit of territory to the French in person. Feuilly hugs it extra close when he gets his portion back under control.

"--Well. I wish it were." He scrubs his face with his free hand and tries to think. A document built on four hundred years of philosophy that came after Harry Percy's death? "It's--when people have tried to think of the best way to govern themselves. The best way to make laws. It's--well, what do you think of, of Social distinctions can be founded only on the common good?"

"What does it mean?" Yes, he seems to be beginning a match of blanket tug-of-war as he asks it, but the question seems sincere anyway.

He refrains from saying but I want to know what it means to you. Hasn't Harry met him halfway so far? There's letting someone make his own mistakes, and then there's swatting him down before he can start.

(While he is thinking, Feuilly is engaged in wrapping himself inexorably in the blanket. He may be a mild fighter, but he's excellent when it comes to curling up in a tiny tight defensive ball.)

"Well--the common good, that would be what's good for all the people. Social distinctions, I think you can tell what that is."

(Any resemblance to a hedgehog, with his hair sticking out of the blanket, is purely coincidental.)

Hotspur edges closer, which is absolutely not surrendering his share of the blanket, it is a cunning tactical decision.

"And so it is to say, those who are great must look to those beneath."

....right. All right. "Well--they should. But why are some people called great? And some said to be beneath? If you say that social distinctions should be founded on the common good..."

He hunches the blanket another quarter-turn around himself.

"Why, how else should it be? Some must rule, must they not?"

Well he'll just scoot closer, then.

"Sure, there needs to be government. But founded on the common good."

Soon Harry's going to have to either give up his grip or make some alternate tactical approach.

Edited 2015-07-02 22:42 (UTC)

"Why so-- a king can serve the common good, can he not? Or a lord? Indeed, he must, or he deserves not the title."

--yes, fine, he lets go. But then he gives Feuilly a nudge, just in case the whole hedgehog bundle is tightly wrapped enough to tip over.

"Can and should! You're right." (Eh, so he'd give a somewhat different answer to someone else; Harry's time has had no Robespierre and no Saint-Just to make things clear.). "But how does he come to be a king or a lord?"

He doesn't tip over, but he probably would with just a slightly harder push.

Edited 2015-07-02 22:54 (UTC)

Harry laughs. "Why, 'tis a catechism indeed. He is born to it-- or takes it, if he is called Henry Bolingbroke."

Is he giving up for good? Is it a tactical retreat? We just don't know. But he does seem to abandon the blanket effort, drawing his knees up to his chest and folding his arms on top of them.

"And where the hell does 'founded on the common good' come in then?"

Feuilly peers out from the blanket roll and relents, shrugging it down more loosely on his shoulders. He didn't mean to scare Harry off! (This is the approach of a person who apologized after disarming his foe.)

"Why, I know not," Hotspur replies, growing a bit frustrated with what seems to him a very circular conversation. "But someone must rule."

"Yes, but--birth makes a bad argument for governing, if the thought is the common good--"

He shakes off the blanket and looks over to Harry, all earnestness now. Feuilly doesn't want him to hate the subject. There's nothing worse for learning. "But you know--these are thoughts for a future past my time."

"Then how comest thou to know of them?" The sentence begins with the intention of belligerence, but this resolve seems to fail halfway through.

"Well--all right, this Declaration of the Rights of Man, that's from before I was born. Not much, ten years or so. The people who wrote it governed France--and then power was taken from them, and we've had an emperor and kings since." He's wincing inside at the oversimplification, but hopefully it doesn't show. "My friends and I were fighting to, to restore that kind of government. We--well. You know. But coming here, I've found out that it does work eventually. I just mean--I just mean that I'm--I'm talking about things I'd like to be, things I wanted to be, things that I think should be. But I'm not--it's hopes for a future, my hopes, it's not a catechism."

Ah, damn. Conversation is a thread, and it can fray and snap. He rubs his face with both hands, tangling his fingers in his hair.

"I should not have called it so. I did not mean to mock it." His tone is less contrition than extreme gravity. He didn't mean to, never meant their playful conversation to spill over into taking lightly something that means so much. He reaches forward and lays a hand on Feuilly's arm.

Feuilly looks over at the touch, and after a moment smiles wryly. "Eh. You didn't mock it. And I didn't mean to sound like a schoolteacher. No one needs that."

Hotspur matches the smile. "I have some need of one, I think. Thou knowest-- the things I know are worth fair little here, but thou canst-- thou, thou--"

His embarrassment at his stuttering incoherence shades over at once into an expression of irritation. He tightens his hand on Feuilly's arm a moment, then lets go.

"--Thy shirt is damp yet."

But the things Harry Percy knows are worth knowing. "Ehhh," Feuilly says again, which is profoundly articulate of him, and gives his hair another fretful tug before Harry lets go of his shirt. "--Well. Do you have a spare? Over there in the stable?"

"I do," he says, very relieved to have his very pathetic attempt at changing subjects taken up. "I cry thee mercy, I did not think of it. I will--" He starts to stand. "Or wouldst come?"

Yeah, like Feuilly is any better at changing subjects.

He's already getting to his feet, and mumbles, "Oh--well--why don't I come with you--" which gets a little lost in remembering to collect the blanket. And the basket.

It's a graceful transition.

Hotspur throws an arm around Feuilly's shoulders (because everything's fine! we're friends being jovial!) and steers him into the stable, back into the tack room. There's a narrow cot, a small hotplate and coffee pot, and a little shelf with battered, American dime store paperbacks in amongst walls of saddles, bridles, and the pervasive smell of leather.

There is also a little corner which Hotspur seems to have tidily colonized. He makes a beeline for it: a little pile of linen, a pair of shoes to swap out for riding boots, a hat that Bar gave him presumably in deference to the fashions of his time (or of Shakespeare's time, or whatever uncertain blend of the two his clothes are) but which he has never actually worn. From this assortment, he pulls out a shirt and offers it to Feuilly (it smells just a bit horsey, a bit Hotspury-- he wore it the day before, but he figures the other one he has is worse).

Edited 2015-07-03 01:45 (UTC)