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[tu_vas_triompher]

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.

Comments

[tu_vas_triompher]

He takes a breath and clears his head. It's not so different from his usual work, in some ways. Well. All right, it's entirely different, but there's something about letting his hands work that quiets some of the more intrusive thoughts around the edges of his mind.

Neither his grip nor his stance are close to good, but it's clear that he does remember some things from the day before; he looks a little more at ease in his joints and limbs.

Today probably has to be more practice and less play, doesn't it.

[harryhotspur]

"O, 'tis not so bad..." He circles around, nudging corrections and adjustments here and there. As he does so, he says, "Ah, I nearly forgot-- I met a friend of thine."

[tu_vas_triompher]

He lets himself be nudged and corrected like any dutiful trainee--and then lifts his head and looks around at the word friend. "Oh? Who--? There are a few of us here from, from Paris."

...he should probably...explain about some of them.

[harryhotspur]

"He was called Lesgle-- ay, hold thy head just so!" He tucks a hand under Feuilly's chin to hold it at the proper elevation. "Thou needst not look to thy feet, they are still there."

[tu_vas_triompher]

He definitely startles at that, wide-eyed for a very brief moment and forgetting to breathe. But! Right! Chin up! He fights the automatic urge to look down at his feet, having just been told not to, which results in a distinctly perplexed look.

"Oh. Um. Lesgle--yes--he's--what did you make of him?"

Because now that he thinks of it, he can't exactly imagine how that meeting could go.

[harryhotspur]

A smile twitches at the corner of Hotspur's mouth at the sight of Feuilly's expression, but he doesn't laugh-- indeed, his expression shifts instead to a faintly embarrassed one. "I think we-- I would have any friend of thine as mine, but I think we did not-- understand each other."

...yes, that's Hotspur for 'I nearly punched him.'

[tu_vas_triompher]

"Um," says Feuilly helpfully. It might be at the faintly embarrassed expression, or at his own startled reaction, or just at the question of Lesgle.

Let's go with that one! "Um. He's--he really is a good man. And very brave at the barricade--in our battle. --He really is a friend of mine, I'd trust him with my life. But he has a joke for everything." And yes, that can rub a person the wrong way, for sure.

...and Lesgle probably had no reason to rein in his sarcasms for the sake of one Harry Percy. Oh, dear.

[harryhotspur]

"I own I little knew what to make of it," he says. "I spoke sharply to him, I do confess it. I hope--"

But he doesn't seem to know what exactly he hopes, and stops. (Well, yes he does, he hopes Feuilly doesn't think less of him for it, but he's not about to say that.)

[tu_vas_triompher]

That, at least, Feuilly can laugh over. "He'll live." Or well, you know, okay, no he won't but anyway. "He probably earned it. And he likes an argument almost as much as Bahorel does, as long as there's a lot of words. --Hm, let me think--you've met Enjolras, and you've met Bahorel. And Lesgle, and--well, I don't think you spoke to Prouvaire." Prouvaire was around to witness the Bahorel fight, a moment of great pride for Hotspur for sure.

"--there are a lot of us."

[harryhotspur]

"Ay, so I said to him!" Harry agrees, nodding fervently. "And sure thou'rt glad of the company. So I said to him too, but did not mean to say-- do not mean to say--" Augh, words. "I am not glad thou'rt dead, nor thy friends."

...yeah, somehow that's not right, either.

[tu_vas_triompher]

He's laughing, still, but the fervent expression makes him put a hand on Harry's arm. "Thanks." Unlike some people, Feuilly's not going to pretend he doesn't know what the man means. "--But this isn't a bad place to be. And there are good people here. --Ah, hm, let me think, I could tell you about the others--but you can make your own impression--you've heard a little about our politics and our fight--"

[harryhotspur]

"Ay, if you would-- if only to even the odds," he notes with a small smile (a joke? can it be?). He claps a hand on top of Feuilly's. "For it seems some of them do know of me."

[tu_vas_triompher]

Feuilly makes a bit of a wry face at that. He's still not altogether sure where the Shakespeare play and the real history fit together, and that's not even taking into account all the possible differences in different worlds.

"Well. You've met Enjolras." He could say more about Enjolras, but Harry's met him, and Enjolras hardly needs Feuilly's introduction. "You've met Enjolras. There's Combeferre--a medical student, and Joly is another medical student. Courfeyrac, a law student. Prouvaire is a poet--you saw him the other day, maybe, outside with Bahorel?--he's a, a very gentle man, but also fierce."

It would be unfortunate, very unfortunate, if Harry took Prouvaire's shy manner the wrong way. Everyone else, he thinks, can manage himself without any protective introduction. Courfeyrac's bright good nature speaks for itself; Combeferre's integrity and Joly's cheerful brilliance. "--Oh. And there's Grantaire."

[harryhotspur]

"A goodly company," Percy says. "I will be pleased to meet them, as they are your friends." ...and hopefully the next introductions won't be the unmitigated disasters the last two were! "And all-- they all...?"

[tu_vas_triompher]

"All--oh. All died, yes." He has to look away a moment at that. Oh, Feuilly's come to terms with it, but it's still hard not to think sometimes But if only Joly were there to explain to the medical school or Surely Prouvaire could have been spared, they didn't have to shoot him--

Feuilly rubs at his nose vigorously to forestall anything like a sniffle. "We didn't all come here at once. I don't know why--we just showed up here at different times."

[harryhotspur]

Percy tightens his hand on Feuilly's.

"And thou didst know it?" The question seems to burst out against his will. "The moment thou didst arrived, thou knew'st what had befallen thee?"

[tu_vas_triompher]

He's a little startled, but answers readily. "Yes. Well--I don't know how it was for the others but I--" He leans his practice sword against his knee and pushes his now-free hand through his hair. "Well, I had--time to know I was dying. Before I came here. But yes. I knew when I got here."

Feuilly is willing to believe that Hotspur isn't dead! Isn't...all the way dead! He looks at him, and hopes his rather jumbled answer is of some use?

[harryhotspur]

One hand clasping clearly is not enough for this conversation-- he claps the other to Feuilly's arm and gives that a squeeze too. "Ah, my friend-- my friend-- if it must be, I would it had been quickly done--"

Feuilly's actually dead, he died, and for some reason that fact had not seemed entirely real to Hotspur until now, until he can picture the men he has seen die bloody and slow but now with Feuilly's face, and oh yes it's glorious to die in battle, to die in honor, to die for a great cause (as he has no doubt at all that Feuilly did)-- but at the moment mostly it just seems unfair and he knots his fingers into Feuilly's sleeve, just a bit, to conceal their slight trembling.

[tu_vas_triompher]

Bahorel would probably hit Feuilly for trying not to cry right now, if he knew. But he is trying not to cry; he didn't mean to cause this distress, and he doesn't want to compound it with--with tears or words or anything--

Looking down and away somehow turns into resting his forehead on Harry's shoulder and just trying to breathe. "--I'm sorry."

[harryhotspur]

Harry brings a hand to rest on the back of Feuilly's head.

"Nay, 'tis I who am-- it is not just, it is not just, thou wast robbed of thy--"

[tu_vas_triompher]

He should protest; he should point out that many other people died that day, some harder than he did; and he was proud of the fight and his friends; and now he's quite all right--

He ends up just breathing for a while, his face pressed hard into Harry's shirt, until he can shake his head and lift it and say something incoherent about how they'd all known it might happen and still it was a good way to--

It's harder than you'd think to say the word, isn't it? Die?

Anyway, see, he's breathing now, and a little red-faced, and as alive in this place as anyone could want, and so is Harry.

[harryhotspur]

Harry still has one hand braced against the back of Feuilly's head, and now he slides it round to cup Feuilly's cheek, which is a little red, because there is blood under there, because he is alive or at least something that looks like it.

He has protested, in his time, that he is no good at talking-- which is a bit silly, of course, because he's perfectly capable of talking incessantly-- but only about himself, about ideas, about what must be done. When it comes to what has been done, what is praiseworthy, what deserves-- condolences? sympathy? he doesn't even know what-- he is, as now, entirely at a loss. So he just leans his forehead the little way down to press it against Feuilly's.

[tu_vas_triompher]

That's fine. That's fine, Feuilly can stand there like that and close his eyes and not think very much for a little while.

Eventually he pulls himself together and raises a hand to swat at Harry's shoulder, protesting his own self-indulgence, but it turns into just resting a hand on Harry's chest instead.

After that, he can pull himself together, and laugh softly under his breath at the both of them.

[harryhotspur]

"I did not mean to speak of it," Harry says, his voice low. "It has-- it has been all this morning on my mind."

[tu_vas_triompher]

"I don't mind. Speaking about it, I mean. --What do you remember from your fight? Before you came here?"

It's not exactly the same as saying that he's pretty sure Harry is as dead as he is. For one thing, he's really not sure.