pro_patria_mortuus | (no subject)

Whether Enjolras has been asleep for a night, or a week, or some other and less easily definable stretch of Milliways time is a matter for metaphysical speculation. Not his, however. So far as he's concerned, he went to bed last night; now, slowly, he wakes.

The sunlight is bright on his face. There's a faint background noise of gurgling from Combeferre's copper still in the bathroom. The sheets are twisted around his feet, and Jeanne is--

No. There's no eagle on the bedpost, and why would there be?

Enjolras rouses himself enough to sit up, and scrub his hands over his face and through his tangled curls. That dream was not only long and extremely vivid, but it seems to be persistent. Scraps and shreds of it still hang about the morning air. One moment he's entirely present in the moment of this morning, and the next moment he's nearly convinced that Jeanne is a flash of white in the corner of his eye.

(The eagle -- the soul-birds that followed around each of them -- is obviously some unfathomable construct of dream-logic. But the rest of the dream is easy enough to account for. A vivid dream of coming from 1830 along with several of his friends, with action and anger fresh in their hands, with the Milliways library at their fingertips, with the ability to bring home notes and facts and forewarning and even microscopes and water filters -- it's easy enough to see how his mind manufactured such a thing. Even now he aches with the fierce urge to be doing something about it all. That's nothing new that this dream brought; every single day at Milliways he's felt that fierce aching frustration, and every day he's set it aside.)

He scrubs his face again, and extricates his feet, and goes to start the coffee and wash up.

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Enjolras had already let go of Combeferre's hand to gesture: this first, then that. Now he nods, rising, and collects both their cups. "Yes, let's do that."

A glance out the window on his way to the coffeepot, to assess the height of the sun. (He'd still rather a clock, but they seem to run temperamentally here, in this place where time runs strangely, and anyway Joly's pocketwatches don't really function as watches no matter how well they counterfeit it. He has a clock on a shelf, but he verifies it with the sun when he can.) "Some of them will be up, but we might as well wait a little while. Then we can use our watches to contact everyone together."

More coffee for both of them. He doesn't even bother to ask if Combeferre wants any; the answer is nearly always yes, and certainly first thing in the morning.

Combeferre nods, and accepts the coffee refill with a grateful murmur.

"Do you think Grantaire will wish to be involved?"

Enjolras considers the question seriously.

(He doesn't bother to point out that others of their friends understand Grantaire's perspective on any subject, ever, much better than he does. This is for several reasons, but one of them is that nobody who understands Grantaire very well is in this room right now.)

"It's hard to say. He may -- certainly we should ask him. He wanted to be involved with the work with Bossuet before, he helped with it, though he seemed to see it all as some kind of great joke in a way I never understood."

This is because Enjolras is completely unequipped to understand nihilistic cosmic jokes, among other things.

"Still. He may."

"That sounds very like him." Combeferre only gets the joke on an intellectual level; he cannot laugh at it. "But I agree, we should ask him to meet us with the others later."

Enjolras nods, agreeing, over his coffee cup.

"This will certainly be an ongoing project."

Even the first effort, aimed squarely at their selves from the world with daemons, will take time to pull together.

"Yes." Combeferre drains his coffee cup, and checks his unreliable watch and the sun. "The others won't all be awake for an hour or two, if then--shall we go to breakfast, in the meantime?"

Combeferre sometimes remembers things like breakfast, when there's nothing else very immediate grabbing his attention, and when he's finished his coffee but knows having more on an empty stomach will be unpleasant.

"Yes."

Breakfast, and then work to be done. It's a good feeling; it settles something restless deep inside him to have a clear end to work towards, and something concrete to do about it, and each of them with their own part to do. He smiles at Combeferre, small and unplanned and bright with affection, and presses his shoulder briefly as he stands.

"We'll speak with the others after that."