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

[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?"

[tu_vas_triompher]

She purses her lips. "I was just going to say, if you're sick, there's some soup left over from the Laurents' dinner last night. I could heat it up for you. But you know your own business."

[harryhotspur]

Oh. Shoot.

"That's very kind of you," he says quickly. "Thank you. That would be-- very nice."

He can't muster much of an appetite, but he should eat. And it's something to do besides aimlessly wander the strangely busy streets.

What is he meant to be doing here anyway? Maybe a dragon will leap out of the soup pot and he'll have to fight it?????

...seems unlikely, somehow.

[tu_vas_triompher]

No dragons seem likely to appear, it's true. All that seems likely, as the woman shepherds him back to the house and into the kitchen, is that she will ask him a dozen questions he doesn't know the answer to. Luckily, she doesn't really wait for responses. She gets chattier and chattier as the soup heats:

"So is it true what Agathe said, that the whole family you lodged with before got sick and died? Terrible, it's terrible when things like that happen. Here I am, seventy years old, and I'm never sick. But you say you're getting better... Of course it would be worse if just the parents died and left children, and that happens too, all the time, so it's probably a blessing it was the whole family... She said you came from down south, right? Was it Lyon? It was Lyon she said, I'm sure, but you've been here since you were a kid, so you know your way around. Sometimes we have people living here who just got to Paris and they don't know anything, they stand in the street and stare all around... an orphan she said you were, didn't she? One of those foundlings. You know, I don't think they should ever have started those doors for girls to leave babies with the priests, it lets them get away with too much. But then, I'm seventy, it's not like I'm going to be leaving any foundlings lying around any day soon..."

[harryhotspur]

Harry is very used to just letting speech wash over him (unfortunately, especially when it's from women), but he tries not to look too troubled by the things that pop out. This is his life, after all, none of this is new to him.

How old is Feuilly now, he wonders? The indistinct reflection in the dirty glass didn't make it clear.

God, she's still talking. He feels an impatient comment bubbling up, but another wave of coughing gives him time to pause and reflect. He's supposed to be Feuilly, right. What would he say?

"How long have you, um, kept this house?"

[tu_vas_triompher]

"...told Agathe I didn't want to pick up after young men living by themselves but she swore you'd be all right. Not that she's one to judge, did I hear her telling that man of hers to get out? Just about time, or I was going to talk to the police about him...are you sure you're sick? If you're well enough to go walking in the street, I'd think you're well enough to walk to work, but it's not my business...you do look like you're running up a fever still..."

She nods and sets down the bowl in front of him. "Now that's good soup, not just a broth, real pieces of chicken in there, so you eat it up. Me? I've been porter here for, oh...let me think, it was after my husband died, and that was eighteen years ago, so call it seventeen years here?"

[harryhotspur]

Now that it seems plainer she won't take illness as a reason to toss him-- or, more importantly, Feuilly-- out on the street, Harry admits, "I might have a touch of fever still."

Enough to make him feel oddly clammy, anyway. He brushes his hair back and, yes, there's sweat on his forehead. But the soup smells good, and the warmth of it feels even better. He tries for a moment or two to remember Feuilly's way with table manners, but quickly gives it up and digs in eagerly.

[tu_vas_triompher]

"Mmmhm, I thought you might." She purses her lips again when he digs into the soup, but settles for an audible under-the-breath Well, what do you expect, who's going to go around teaching foundlings manners. "You can stay down here in the kitchen if you want. It's warmer here. Do you think you'll get one of those little stoves for your room up there? You'll have to pay for the good ones, the cheap ones can kill you, maybe burn down the whole house while they're at it. I always thought they were trouble but it's true those rooms do get cold up there. If you do get one, I know a man who--"

There's a sudden urgent knock on the kitchen door and it swings open, a woman of of forty or fifty stepping through in the middle of a sentence of her own: "--Mere Bernard, look, did you see Feuilly go out, I went up to his room and--oh!"

She stares. "There you are. What's going on? When you weren't at work I got to worrying! Are you sick? --Is he sick? Good God, Mere Bernard, I asked the boss to let me run back and check on him, and when I didn't hear any noise in his room I thought Jesus he's dead, he's got what killed poor Manon and all of them and I was just about dead myself from fright opening the door, but here he is! Eating soup! Here you are!"