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 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!"

[harryhotspur]

He nods as he slurps down the soup-- mm, yes, stove, yes, burn the house right down, right-- but looks up, startled, when the woman bursts in.

"I'm-- here," he agrees, bewildered. "I'm, I was--" Whoops, coughing. Actually, he thinks, that's probably best. He has no idea what to say. I wasn't on my way to work because I don't know where it is or how to do my job?

[tu_vas_triompher]

"Eating soup!" She's already bustling over, and she's going to plant a firm hand on your forehead, Harry, sorry. "Mmm, that's a fever all right. But you haven't been throwing up, have you? I don't think it's what Manon had."

There's a little quaver of fear in her voice, and she gives his shoulder a little shake. "Look, Léon, I can't stay. I'll tell the boss you're sick. --Mère Bernard, listen, there's a big blanket in my room, I want you to help him get it onto his bed when he goes back up. Yes, I know Michel is still there, but he's leaving-- I can't stay, just--" She shakes Harry's shoulder again.

[harryhotspur]

"I can go," Harry says, instinctively stubborn, realizing far too late that she has handed him a perfect excuse to not have to try and hide his inability to paint fans.

[tu_vas_triompher]

She presses her hand to his forehead again. "No. No, you rest up. It's all right, the boss likes you, he's not going to fire you for one day being sick. It's the slack season anyway."

For all that she'd said she couldn't stay, she seems to have time to issue a barrage of instructions to the older woman: where the blanket is, where there's a loaf of bread she should leave with Feuilly, what to say to Michel if he complains about it, what to say to Michel if he's still here by noon, what to say to Michel anyway because she is done with him, what to do if Feuilly is getting sicker in the afternoon.

Then another shake of Harry's shoulder, and she's out the door.

[harryhotspur]

"Who--" He begins to ask, but right. A coworker, apparently, and one who's out before he can thank or offer any kind of farewell. That sort of brisk fussing, he thinks, seems to suit Feuilly perfectly. And he's glad, as a shiver runs through him-- does that mean the fever's getting worse, or better? He can never remember-- that there is someone to do it-- that Feuilly wouldn't have been left to confusedly wander the streets of Paris.

"I will have that Michel out for her, if he won't go," Harry says, because really, it seems only right to offer something.

[tu_vas_triompher]

The old woman laughs at that--and then ruffles his hair, as the departing Agathe had done. "You won't fight a kitten right now. That's all right, he's nothing much, he'll go. Now look, you Feuilly, you go on up, and I'll be up in a minute with that blanket. I need to clean up first, I don't like to leave dishes about, it's always tempting of course but if you go down that road once the next thing you know they're piled up and you don't have a clean pot to cook with, and the cats get in there and the mice when the cats aren't around...."

Maybe you should flee now, Harry.

[harryhotspur]

"I could," Harry mutters, but happily seizes his chance to slip away.

His progress up the stairs is slow and dizzy, and he has to pause on several landings to steady himself or to cough then catch his breath. At one stop, someone pokes their head out of the door and gives him a dark look, so he hurries onto the next. By the time he reaches Feuilly's room, he all but topples onto the bed, wheezing. Ugh.

Or perhaps more accurately: ugh, poor Feuilly. He wonders if this is real, an actual-- moment, or memory, or just something the Labyrinth made up.

[tu_vas_triompher]

It's quite a long time before Mere Bernard comes up the stairs to see about the blanket for him: he might be asleep by then. But she does do it, eventually, and she leaves the loaf of bread for him, and a covered bowl of soup as well, and fresh jug of water.

And yes, she talks the whole time.

[harryhotspur]

He's not quite asleep-- he's awake enough, at least, to slip in a "Thank you, madame," at some point when she takes a breath. And once she's gone, he eagerly takes up the blanket and nestles himself into it. He's drifting off, he can't help it, which seems like a waste of a Labyrinth adventure, but-- maybe there will be a dragon when he wakes up?

[tu_vas_triompher]

No. Sorry, Harry, still no dragon. When he wakes he's sprawled on a cold floor as if he'd just fallen there in a heap; Feuilly is a few feet away. It's the same cathedral-maze room they'd come to before.

[harryhotspur]

Harry groans loudly when he realizes where he is. Not this place again. WHEN HE IS GONNA GET THE SCARY LABYRINTH EVERYONE TALKS ABOUT.

Okay, but upsides: his own vestiges of flu are a marked improvement over how he was feeling as Feuilly just seconds ago. Also, you know, he's back in his proper body.

"Feuilly?" he calls.

[tu_vas_triompher]

Feuilly groans as well, and slowly sits up. "--Harry? You're here? Thank God. I was in your--" In his body? In his life?

[harryhotspur]

"Ay!" He is still feeling a touch too dazed to venture all the way to his feet, but he scrambles over to Feuilly's side eagerly. "And I in thine!"

[tu_vas_triompher]

Feuilly winces away automatically, and then leans against Harry when he realizes his arm doesn't hurt any more. "You'd broken your arm. In a tournament? Was that--did that happen?"

[harryhotspur]

He laughs. "Ay, it did! 'twas the Earl of Cambridge did it. And thou-- thou hadst some cough upon thee. Thou wert newly come, I think, to thine abode. The hostess there was... talkative."

[tu_vas_triompher]

"Yes, that's what--um. What Kate said, that it was the Earl of Cambridge. That your horse was lame." He feels his face going hot, and puts his mind to Harry's description instead.

"A cough? I don't--" He's lived in a lot of places. With talkative people. "Oh--oh. I think I know--I had just moved into the building where one of the women at work lived. I was, oh...twenty? Years ago. I got sick."

[harryhotspur]

"She, she!" Harry agrees eagerly. "Some man she had about the place, and would have him out-- I know not if he left." He frowns. He should have tried to stay awake to see.

...but also. "Thou-- saw'st Kate?"

[tu_vas_triompher]

"I don't remember if he left. That is--I remember there was a man, but I think they broke it off and then came back together a few times--" Shrug. "I missed two days of work, that time, I remember that. I was lucky I'd paid some rent ahead of time."

He's turning a bit pink again, remembering that particular room: his first that he'd had all to himself, so he'd been proud of it, but not a place he'd particularly have planned to show Harry.

Then again, Harry wouldn't have particularly planned to introduce him to Kate that way. "Yes. She was looking after you. Uh, and me, I guess. There was some soup..."

[harryhotspur]

"I hope she was not too sharp with thee," he says dryly. "--with me. I own I do not recall much of the days that followed the fall."

[tu_vas_triompher]

"Sharp?" He shakes his head. "She said you'd been unconscious--or feverish--for three days. She was worried. I--tried to make her less worried?"

Feuilly laughs uneasily. "I liked her."

[harryhotspur]

"Why, she is a woman-- she must worry, 'tis their natural condition. As did thy women, thine hostess and thy friend!" He laughs, then sobers slightly. "But indeed, they were good to thee. --as ever was my wife to me."