Labyrinth

[tu_vas_triompher]

One moment, the Labyrinth doorway. The next, a narrow bed in a cold room. A scuffling sound at the window pane, sparrows landing and then taking off again. An argument in some other room, muffled by walls but not very well: Go to hell, you're not my husband, you can't come here and talk like that to my kids.

It's all in French.

Comments

[harryhotspur]

Harry becomes aware of it all in pieces, unsure which actually woke him-- the bird, the cold, the shouting. He hovers for a moment in hazy half-sleep, then is abruptly jolted to full waking by his own body: a fit of fierce coughing that makes his chest burn and his shoulders shake. He flops back on the thin little bed, wheezing. Ow. He's been ill, yes, but it hasn't felt like this.

Slowly, he opens his eyes. The room is unfamiliar, too completely to be waved away as the distorting effects of a fever. And-- wait, hadn't he gone into the Labyrinth? He carefully pushes himself upright.

[tu_vas_triompher]

Go sober up--or die in a ditch, I don't care. I'm off to work now and if any of your clothes are still here when I get back, I'm selling them!

There's not much room to describe: it's small, holding very little furniture besides the bed. Cot, really, nothing so substantial as a bed. What furniture as there is, is covered with stacks of papers, and more have been pinned to the wall. A red and white flag serves as a curtain for the window.

[harryhotspur]

He swings his legs over the side of the bed and stands. The movement makes him momentarily light-headed, but even when that passes, he doesn't feel-- right. His body, like the room, feels wrong in ways he can't pin on a fever.

His hands look wrong. He looks down: his feet look wrong. But the hands, they aren't-- they aren't his, but they look familiar all the same, somehow?

He shuffles over to the window and jerks back the makeshift curtain to see if he can get any kind of look at himself in the glass.

[tu_vas_triompher]

That sends startled sparrows spreading out over the rooftops. This room must be up in the attic of a tall city building.

But yes, there's a reflection! The reflection of a very young man, twenty or twenty-one, growing a bit of fuzz on his chin, below a shock of blond hair, wide-set eyes, and a snub nose.

Harry probably recognizes him.

[harryhotspur]

whatwhatwhatwhat

Harry stumbles back from the window in a fit of coughing that turns into laughter and then back again. He runs his hands over his-- Feuilly's-- face, his hair.

What the hell kind of Labyrinth trick is this?

He pokes around until he finds some clothes: trousers, shirt.

[tu_vas_triompher]

There aren't many options when it comes to the clothes, but as he's looking he might find a few things of interest. Well...some of more interest than others. A stash of books--small compared to Feuilly's hoard in Milliways, sets of correspondence neatly tied with string, a small set of paints, more newspapers, and a cavalry saber.

[harryhotspur]

The saber's the real prize, obviously: he sits down to inspect it.

[tu_vas_triompher]

It's a handsome sword, though without much ornamentation and missing any scabbard, and showing signs of hard use in the past. A notch in the blade has been inexpertly smoothed and the grip has been repaired in one place with leather that doesn't quite match.

While Harry is studying the sword, someone raps twice on the door and calls out I'm already running late and so are you if you're still here. It's the voice of the woman from the argument earlier, and her footsteps can already be heard clattering down the stairs.

[harryhotspur]

--oh god and he's going to have to speak French.

He rises to call back to her, but it sounds like she's already gone. He sets the sword aside and carefully pushes the door open anyway.

[tu_vas_triompher]

Yes, she's gone. Two doors over, a half-dressed man is staring down the hall; when he notices Harry he makes a rude gesture. "The hell are you looking at?"

[harryhotspur]

"Not at you," Harry retorts, and is startled to hear it come out in French without effort-- Feuilly's French, different from the courtly French he grew up speaking.

[tu_vas_triompher]

"Fucking better not be!" It would be more impressive if he were more dressed, and if he weren't already shuffling back into his room. Harry has the hallway to himself, for what it's worth.

[harryhotspur]

Harry is very tempted to reply, but-- no. He's Feuilly, and holds Feuilly's reputation in his hands. If any of this is real. Probably safer to assume it is.

But since the door is open, since he's dressed, he decides to venture into the hall.

[tu_vas_triompher]

It's a narrow hall with three doors on one side, and two doors and a stairwell on the other. And quiet now, though there are sounds from downstairs.

[harryhotspur]

Sounds! Well, let's follow the sounds, certainly. He wonders dimly, as he makes his way down the stairs, where that woman thought he ought to be.

[tu_vas_triompher]

The next hallway looks much like the first, though a little wider and with bigger windows at either end. All quiet here. But the sounds are condensing into the bustle of a family in the morning, on the next floor down.

This next hallway's walls have been papered, and a carpet runs down the floor. Only two doors here: each apartment on this level must take up half the building.

[harryhotspur]

Iiiiinteresting. It's nothing like any building he knows. He makes his way down and down, and finds himself at last opening the door out to the street.

[tu_vas_triompher]

As he heads down, the building gets progressively nicer. Whoever lives on the floor above the ground floor apparently has the whole space to themselves, as there's just one door off the stairwell. But the ground floor seems to hold kitchens and such in the back, and a shop in the front: a shop selling eggs and butter, as Harry can see when he comes out into the street.

(In this bottom hallway, there's an elderly woman smoking a pipe who stares at him without comment.)

It's early morning out here on the street, and people stride along the cobblestones with their heads down against a light rain.

[harryhotspur]

The pipe smoke, and then the sudden damp, cold air of the street sets him coughing again. He braces himself against the frame of the door as he tries to catch his breath, and dimly wonders if he should go back up. But all those stairs are an unpleasant prospect in this wheezy state, so he presses on.

(After all, it's Feuilly's body, but he's still Harry.)

[tu_vas_triompher]

The streets are busy-busy-busy. It's mostly people dressed as Harry now is; they all look like they know where they're going and what they're doing. Halfway down the street someone has parked a wagon to unload many small barrels and lug them into another shop. The horse makes a spot of stillness in all this bustle.

Someone comes up behind Harry. It's the old woman from the hallway, with her pipe. "Hey. Hey--Feuilly, right? You're not out of work, are you?"

[harryhotspur]

He turns towards her and, --ugh, that pipe. He angles away slightly, brings his sleeve to his mouth so he doesn't cough in her face.

"I--" He has no idea what the answer is. "Why do you ask?"

[tu_vas_triompher]

She pulls her shawl a little closer around her face when he coughs. "Look," she says, not too unkindly, "I know you paid the first two months up front so it's not my business, but if you're out of work right now..."

[harryhotspur]

"No," Harry cuts in immediately. "No, I just--" why do people not go to their job

"No," he says again, firmly. She said it's none of her business, so he just won't elaborate. "I have work."

[tu_vas_triompher]

"Mmmh." A tangle of little kids runs past them and she draws her skirts out of their way without looking. "Are you sick?"

[harryhotspur]

"It's nothing. A cold, it's nearly gone." He's never been this easy with Feuilly's type of French before-- he's not entirely sure he actually is now, or if something in the Labyrinth is translating it even to his own ears. "Anything else?"