psalm_onethirtyone | "I Was Lost... In Your Spell..."

We got about an hour into Scotland, PA, before they shoved Duncan into the fryer and now she is a traumatised, shaking, and crying little Soujin. I know why they tell me not to see movies rated R for violence. I'm pathetic. I'm a pacifist. I cannot deal with it.

And... um... I wrote fic?

Two Nicolas pieces, and Jehan/Bahorel for

mhari.

Nicolas dreaming:

Sightless

All around him he smells salt. It's everywhere, astringent, strong. It smells like home, but stronger. Nicolas puts his hands out in front of him, into the darkness, then turns about, slowly, and finds there's nothing within in an arm's length on any side. He kneels, unsure, and places his hands flat on the ground. He feels sand. It is like home. He lifts a handful and sifts it through his fingers, soft and silky and dry. He isn't terribly near the ocean, then.

He hears footsteps suddenly, and feels a tiny spray of sand as the little girl crashes into him. She's shorter than he is on his knees, and she trembles, and her clothes are torn. She's also crying, and he wraps his arms about her gently. Somehow, it doesn't surprise him that she trusts him and doesn't run away. Of course he's glad she's not afraid of him like his other children, but somehow he knew she'd not be frightened. She sobs into his shoulder, and he strokes her hair.

"Mon enfant..."

She begins to touch his face with one of her hands, even while crying, poking him and pressing her fingers in between his lips and in his ears.

Of course, she's blind as well.

Nicolas feels as though this girl is not his daughter because he adopted her as such, but because he really is her father. He whispers comforts to her, and delicately pushes her hair back from her face, touching it as she did his.

He doesn't have any money in his pockets, but it doesn't matter now. He doesn't need to give anything like that to her. All he needs to do is tell her it's all right, and reassure her with his careful, gentle hands.

Nicolas awakens from the dream slowly, lying on his side in bed. He sits up, almost confused. There's warm coming in the window, so it's morning. He rakes his fingers through his tangled hair, yawning in a contemplative manner.

He dresses, feeling vague, trying to remember everything about the blind girl in the dream. Her hands were dreadfully cold, and thin. He remembers her fingertips poking his eyelids. Suddenly, more than anything, he wants to find her. He's certain she was real.

"As they say, a dream come true. They say it is a wondrous thing to have one's dream come true," he mumbles to himself, tying his cravat. Evidentially, though the warm in the window proves the sun to be out, it's early, for otherwise Combeferre would be here, making sure he's all right. Nicolas rubs the back of his hand over his chin, feels the roughness. He steps over to the chair by his bed, takes his overcoat from it, and pulls the coat on. It's a better overcoat that one stolen from him a month ago. Longer. Bigger pockets.

He walks to the door and slips out happily. Freedom is waking up early in the morning.

And this morning, he's going to search for his dream.

Nicolas wanders the streets as he always does, going to the same places he always goes to, kneeling in the same spot he always does, feeling stone instead of sand beneath his knees. He holds out his hands with money, and refuses sternly to allow even the quick retreats to hurt him.

When his children are gone, he stays for a little while, thinking of them. He does love them so. Soon, soon he will free them. He will give them all happiness, and see that they are taken care of. He will look after them, as a father should.

It occurs to him that the best way to find his dream is to ask for her, instead of waiting for her to come to him. Perhaps he is a bit fanciful in believing a dream can come true, but he chooses to be logical now and not rely on coincidence to find the dream.

He wanders, in his usual way, to a new place, where there will be new children, and gives to them most of what he has left. He gently catches the sleeve of the last boy to leave.

"Monsieur," his son protests.

"Mon garcon. Is there a blind gamine in this city?"

"Probably loads. Don't see how they live, though."

Nicolas pauses at the momentary setback. "Can you tell me where one of them might be?" he asks at last, disturbing the boy's efforts to tug away.

"'Course. There's one living in an alley by the Rue de St. Jacques."

"Merci, merci." Nicolas gives him a few coins more, and the boy escapes.

Nicolas begins his quest.

He asks, every few streets, if he's still going in the right direction, and it's affirmed, or else he's turned about. At length he finds the Rue de St. Jacques, and feels his way along the walls of the houses, venturing a bit into each alley. Finally, he hears movement in the back of one and reassuringly tells the unseen, "Don't be afraid." He continues forward, fingertips just brushing the wall.

New footsteps approach, haltingly, and the girl's voice asks, "Who are you?"

Nicolas stops in surprise. She's far older than he imagined. Her voice is far older. Almost fourteen, perhaps.

"Nicolas. I..."

She stops before him, and reaches out to touch his face. "Nicolas?" Her fingers explore his ears and the curve of his lips just as his dream did. She makes him think of himself. But her fingers are bleeding ones, like others that touched his coat, and he pities her and loves her, because she is his daughter. "I don't know you, though."

"I am also blind." He, in turn, lifts his fingers to her face. He feels as though he were surrounded by snow: everything is quiet, in a muffled sort of way. It's as though they were singled out.

Her face is cold; her nose is cold, her lips are cold, her eyelids and forehead and ears are cold. Her lips are also chapped and also bleeding a little. She speaks again while his fingers are touching them, and he startles at the movement.

"Oh, but... Then I don't understand. Did you come looking for me?"

"Yes..."

"Because I'm blind?"

"Yes. Because I dreamed of a blind girl, and I wanted to know if she existed. But you're only half-her. You're different," he adds.

The girl laughs, and it's such an odd thing, to hear her laugh. Her voice seems as though it weren't meant for laughing. Not that it sounds meant for weeping, but that it sounds odd to hear her laugh with it. Nicolas blushes.

"I'm sorry, monsieur, that I'm not the right girl."

"It doesn't matter," Nicolas whispers. Everything he has left in the nice, large pockets, everything he can gather up he does, and he takes one of her hands and presses it all upon her. "I apologise."

For a moment, he expects her to refuse, but she doesn't; there is the faintest of rustlings as she puts it, he supposes, in her skirt pocket. "Merci, monsieur."

"Merci, mon fille." He retreats back into the open street, hearing her harsh, odd laughter behind him. He wanders back along the streets, sighing just a little, and feeling strangely disillusioned.

It's not always good to have your dream come true.

~~~

Nicolas being lectured...

Blind

Nicolas wakes early the following morning, but this morning he has no desire to get up and try to elude Combeferre. He lies in bed, running his fingers over his face where the girl did, and feeling cold inside. Dreams, dreams, dreams. He wants the revolution, he longs for it. It's more important now than ever before. Everything is. He depends too much on his Amis. He must do some things alone or they will never believe in him. He needs to make more speeches and rally ever more men. He needs to call them to him, and build his barricades in the streets of Paris. He needs to save his children.

He still feels cold inside, and it occurs to him that he's lonely. He thinks for a moment, childishly, that he wants Feuilly. Dear Feuilly, the man who reminds him of his children, with cold, worn fingertips, and the pleasant voice. He hasn't been with Feuilly in a few days now, and he rather misses him.

He turns over sharply as the door opens, and the familiar tread - that which belongs to Combeferre - enters.

"Nicolas?"

"Bonjour," he says tiredly.

"Nicolas." Combeferre draws over the chair and sits by the bedside. "Nicolas, I keep meaning to tell you. I know you care for the street children, but you can't continue to give money away like this. You just can't afford it."

"I'd give them everything."

"I know you would, but you can't. Be sensible. I know you can be sensible. You can't have much left by now. You don't have a job. You refuse to borrow money. You can't do this."

"I can. I don't intend to stop."

"Nicolas!"

Nicolas sits up, and catches both Combeferre's hands. "No, you don't understand! How could I stop? They expect me. They know when I come that I'll give to them. How could I just walk past them without doing so? I can't get a job. No one will hire a blind man. I can't borrow because I'd never be able to pay it back. But you can't tell me I ought just stop giving to them. They know me. I love them."

Combeferre sighs. "I know, I know. I know." He strokes back Nicolas' hair the same way Feuilly did a week ago.

"It's May, non? Lamarque is fading fast. I shan't need my money to last much longer anyway."

"I suppose that's true..." Combeferre sighs again. "Well, you'd best get up. You're growing a lovely beard."

"Oh--" Nicolas laughs, somewhat shakily. "I am, aren't I? All right." He takes a deep breath, regains his composure, and climbs out of bed. "And-- Combeferre? I'll try to give not... quite as much."

"Thank you," Combeferre says gratefully, and embraces him quickly.

Nicolas begins to feel a little less cold.

~~~

It turned out to be more about Bahorel than Bahorel and Jehan, and took obscene amounts of research. And I wrote it before seeing Scotland, PA.

Chronology

Luc Bahorel hated poetry. It seemed to him to be a tremendous waste of time. When smaller, he loved his father to tell him stories of heroes and dragons and the subsequent bloody battles. When older, he discovered Shakespeare, and fell in love with Macbeth. But he wouldn't have called that poetry. He danced in storms and shouted the lines at the thundery skies. Once upon a time, he sat on a fence amidst the majestic hail and called out to the world the grief of Macduff with his young, clear voice.

"--All my pretty ones? Did you say all? O, hell-kite! All?"

He fell forward off the fence, feeling something out of place, and looked around to see a tall man in a long black coat standing on the other side. The man smiled, and told him,

"I was lost in your spell. Do you enchant the skies often?"

Luc fled, and soon after surprised his mother by refusing to go out in the rain any longer.

He never spoke to anyone of the incident, but he treated Macbeth with a little fear, and didn't read it quite as often. A little while, and he stopped quoting it. He assured himself he didn't love it any less, but it was a childhood thing... He had no time for childish things now.

He grew older still, left home for the city of Paris, and took a fancy to the tales of other men. He preferred history to a tragedy, and adventure to history. He despised poetry more than ever before, and decided firmly that Macbeth really was more of the stuff. He discarded his copies of Shakespeare with an odd sense of relief, and bought Hugo's Bug-Jargal instead. He joined the ABC society after listening to a speech in the street that caused a small riot.

He met the poet Jehan Prouvaire at the Café Musain in the year 1828, fell in love, fell out of love, fell back in love, learned it to be reciprocated, obtained a lover, and instantly found himself in an awkward position. Jehan wrote poems constantly, all the time, and got ink everywhere. Luc put up with poetry because it made Jehan happy, but he was exasperated to find every kiss left him with blue or green ink on his face and clothes.

"If I'd just gotten a nice girl, I wouldn't be covered in ink all the time!"

"If you'd just gotten a nice girl, you'd shout at her because you couldn't stand being covered in perfume all the time," Jehan said mildly.

Jehan wrote poems for Luc, but Luc had a surprisingly bad memory and kept forgetting where he'd put them. He could never find them anywhere. Jehan suspected Luc's fireplace knew, but he refrained from mentioning this.

Luc still danced with thunderstorms, but in a very different way now. He supported all revolutionary causes, turning himself into a finely carved stereotype with his fellows in Les Amis. They regarded him as man who would sooner smash windows than see a good play. In actuality, he was there in 1830 when Hugo's Hernani came out on stage, though he was the cause of the riot that followed. Approving of the play, he struck the man behind him who did not. When all hell broke loose, he laughed. He went to Jehan's apartment afterward with a cut lip and a nasty gash in his arm, feeling proud and tall and light-headed and as though he had defended the greatest piece of literature on earth and won, though this was not strictly true.

Luc lay on the bed, grinning at the ceiling in the best of spirits, and Jehan sat beside him, worrying and fussing.

"Jehan, you are fluffy. You are fluffy to the infinite. That's what I like about you." He sat up and caught Jehan in his arms, kissing him and smearing his shirt with blood. "Revenge. That's revenge for all the ink on my poor shirts! Oh, my fluffy."

"You're not drunk," Jehan said happily, not minding, "and yet you're acting it."

"A good fight is far more intoxicating than a good wine," Luc informed him.

In 1831, he purchased Hugo's Notre Dame de Paris, and called it a fine tale, but he also bought second-hand a copy of Macbeth in English, although he never read it.

In February of 1832, Luc Bahorel ceased to hate poetry. He couldn't help it. He kissed Jehan's ink-stained hands, became a sentimental fool, and grew overall exasperated with himself. Histories were better than tragedies, adventures better than histories. An insurrection was worth more passion than a simple love affair. Victor Hugo was highly superior to Jehan Prouvaire. Nevertheless, he stopped burning the poems he received, and began to actually read them. They were pretty little things, useless and soppy, and yet there was a peculiar charm to them that captured him. He was highly irritated.

In April, he heard that Macbeth would be played in a matter of months, and tried to pretend he didn't care, but he skimmed through the second-hand copy and every line seemed familiar. At last, he told Jehan with some pleasure that they would be going to the theatre on June seventh.

"You'll see the most splendid and horrific play ever written. A drama that instils in its viewers more revulsion and fascination than any ever written," he declared. "A finer play has not been seen before. You'll love it at the same time you wish to hide your face from it. I can't wait to see your reaction."

Jehan giggled and kissed his cheek, leaving a smear of black. "Silly. I'll be delighted."