pro_patria_mortuus | (no subject)

Entry tags:

joly

(no subject)

Enjolras is in his room, settled on the sofa with a book on the history of Thedas that he borrowed from the library. Every so often he makes a note in his commonplace notebook.

Combeferre isn't in, but he left the television playing his favorite channel, one which shows documentaries about the natural world. Enjolras turned the volume quieter and left it at that. Right now a man is enthusing, with measured speech and deliberate enunciation, about the wonders of water in subterranean caverns.

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only

Joly sits down on the couch, runs a hand over his hair, and laughs a little. "I just had a conversation with Javert, down in the Bar. He had a message for you--well, I suppose I'm cooperating with the police, shameful of me! But he said--" Joly closes his eyes for a moment, remembering the exact words "' Tell your friend Enjolras not to make any other trips to Paris. If I find him there again, spreading my name through your little groups, I will ...ensure.." Joly's pretty sure that was the word "-- ' and even more swift and thorough fist lands on them than I would have, er, otherwise.'"

Joly laughs again, a little tired, in the way he always is after conversations with Javert or men like him. "He tried to make it sound much more threatening, of course."

"Of course."

Enjolras can picture it well enough. His mouth twists for a wry moment, not without a little distant humor. Perhaps Javert marched up to Joly to deliver the message, and then reprimanded him for conversing with a policeman?

"How did he learn of it, do you know?"

It was always a chance that Javert would guess, or that the wrong ears would hear of an old bourgeois man with a limp no matter how many precautions Enjolras took. But he did take as many precautions as he could. And from the sound of that threat, Javert might know something for certain, rather than merely guessing.

It's always hard to be sure how much weight to put on Javert delivering a threat or an ultimatum to Enjolras instead of all of them. He seems to conceive of Enjolras standing in for all of them, as a hierarchical leader and commander, in a way that's frankly insulting. But there's the wording, too; it's specific.

Joly shakes his head. "He didn't tell me--the warning was his last comment before we parted. I..." he thinks it over, then huffs. "I could have tried to find out more. I just--" He just didn't want to push it farther, for reasons he's professionally sworn to keep secret even from his friends. "it wasn't a good time to try for it. I suspect if you ask him, he'll tell you outright. More than he'd tell me, I think." Because yes, Joly has noticed that Javert has a certain idea about Enjolras. Your golden leader. His mouth quirks a little.

(He'll tell Bossuet about that later, and they'll laugh. But Javert's strange fixation isn't Enjolras' fault, and Enjolras knows about it. There's no reason to pass along the insult with the message, surely.)

Enjolras touches his arm briefly. "That's fair."

A conversation goes as it goes, and Joly's assessments are trustworthy. If it wasn't a good time to try for more information, then it wasn't a good time, that's all. They'll work with what they have now.

(And yes. It makes no sense whatsoever that Javert would tell Enjolras outright, but from past evidence, he quite probably will.)

"It's hard to say what he knows and what he only guesses. But I don't know what he thinks that threat will change for any of us."

"I don't know what he was thinking of it, I really don't." Joly taps his fingers against his knee for a moment. "Sometimes it's as if he--thinks we haven't considered that we might get in trouble, which--!" Joly laughs, and holds his hands out helplessly. They're all dead, what else is there to say on that front?

"But I think it's a useful warning all the same-- at least we might speak to Monsieur Fauchelevent when we see him again, and let him know we were noticed."

Enjolras grimaces. "Yes. I'm sorry for that."

He is, very sincerely, and he'll apologize too. He knew it was possible that someone would remember an old bourgeois man with a limp, and that word of that would pass to the one member of the Sûreté who would recognize such a vague description. But he tried very hard to pass all word anonymously, unremarked and unrecognized.

Well. He tried; he failed. Horribly poor repayment for such a great kindness as Valjean did them. He'll be upfront about it as soon as he sees the old man again.

Joly reaches out to press his shoulder. "At least we know word did get out. Maybe to someone clumsy enough to let Javert hear about it somehow, but it's still being talked about." He thinks for a moment. "I...really don't believe Javert will act against Monsieur Fauchelevent. So if it's only reached him, in some ways, he might be the safest of officers to hear about it. Not that he doesn't need to know, or that we didn't slip, but I don't think there's an immediate danger to him."

He thinks, he's not certain--not as he would be if Javert spoke about Fauchelevent the same way and was more stable. But it seems fairly sure.

"Fauchelevent agrees."

Which is not enough to entirely count on, so far as Enjolras is concerned, but it's still important information, especially as months pass and Valjean's certainty remains.

"I'm sure I did keep his name out of it. Unless someone recognized his face from some prior knowledge. But it may be that Javert only heard a description, and knew Fauchelevent is a man who knows him. That people were switched is no secret around Milliways."

And Milliways has a new bizarre happening every week, it seems, but the ephemerality of gossip was never something they counted on.

It wouldn't matter how much Javert learned or how he learned it, if only he weren't a spy, and still able to do immense damage to good people in Paris.

Joly nods. "I hope we'll see M. Fauchelevent soon, and can tell him. I--if we don't, his daughter comes here sometimes. I don't know if...if she knows, or should know, anything of it."

He's not exactly asking Enjolras for guidance in how to handle telling a woman news, here. But it's a point of fact to note.

Enjolras nods.

"I don't know either. She married Marius afterwards, so she has to know a little, but..." A shrug.

But maybe only a little. Bahorel and Combeferre both feel strongly that she needs to be told about Hugo's book, by her father or otherwise. But illegal activity that the men of her family are suspected of, or genuinely guilty of, that's something else -- and ignorance is a protection for everyone, often.

(The narration, as always, would like to apologize for the 19th century. Enjolras has shed some habits of thought, but others remain. And anyway, there were plenty of them who kept secrets from both the men and the women of their families, for safety's sake.)

"She might bring him a letter, if it seemed warranted, I suppose."

Flat | Top-Level Comments Only