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]

"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."

[tu_vas_triompher]

"People mostly are," he says. "Kind. Did you--how did you get on with them?" Agathe, he remembers with great fondness: she had taken him under her wing when he had arrived in Paris at twelve. That porter, though, he doesn't remember very clearly at all. Just that she had talked more than she had listened, and had required a fair amount of forbearance.

Which...isn't necessarily Harry's strongest point!

[harryhotspur]

Are they? If pressed, he thinks he'd disagree.

"I had but little space to speak," he says dryly. "But I was glad of their kindness, bewildered as I was. I might well have done naught but wander the streets without them."

[tu_vas_triompher]

"Wander the streets!" Feuilly laughs, startled. "I don't remember going out at all. I think I just hid in my room, and--yes, I remember, the porter yelled at me through the door to ask if I was dying or out of work or what."

He leans against Harry's shoulder, quiet. "You may have done better than I did, there."

[harryhotspur]

"Nay, never," he laughs. "She did lure me from the street with soup, like a bird to a trap."

[tu_vas_triompher]

He drops his forehead to Harry's shoulder now and laughs as well. "Soup. There seems to have been a lot of soup all around. Kate had soup, something your father ordered..." He laughs again. "Let's have something that's not soup, when we get back to the bar."

[harryhotspur]

"She is a strict nursemaid," Harry sighs, leaning his head against Feuilly's. "Belike she will force it upon us."

[tu_vas_triompher]

"Belike she will." He smothers a yawn. "Well, we can ask for something else."

[harryhotspur]

He gives Feuilly's arm a gentle cuff. "Art weary?"

[tu_vas_triompher]

He starts to deny it, on instinct, but breaks off with a laugh. "Yes. Yes, I am. Come on, let's head back?"

[harryhotspur]

Oh, good. If Feuilly admits it, he doesn't have too. He ruffles Feuilly's hair, then scrambles to his feet so he can offer him a hand up.