pro_patria_mortuus | (no subject)

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When you're young, athletic, dead, and bored at Milliways, the available hobbies get surprisingly limited. In other words, for those who enjoy sparring, there's a whole lot of time to practice in.

Enjolras and Chuck Hansen, as they frequently do, have been killing some time this way. So when they come down the stairs, perfunctorily cleaned up but still kind of sweaty, it's in order to head to Bar for something to drink.

"--in case you aren't holding enough stuff," Chuck grouses, as they round a table.

Enjolras returns the mild look of someone who's heard this complaint before, but doesn't entirely understand it. "They are handy," he points out.

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"You know," Chuck says, suddenly thoughtful, "someday I'm going to find out Paris used to be just this great big mountain, and you didn't think it was worth mentioning."

At a nearby table, Edgar glances up in recognition of Chuck's voice, and almost immediately in perplexity about the content.

"Who used to be what now?" he asks, pitched to carry the few feet between them.

Enjolras's wry smile flashes for a moment. "No, Paris was never all Mountain-dwellers."

Okay he knows a Montagnard joke is going to fly over Hansen's head, but come on, it was right there.

He was going to say something else about walking sticks, and their non-combat uses, but then Edgar speaks up. He's seen him around, and thinks they spoke briefly one time, but doesn't know him at all, by name or by personality. But Enjolras is a generally friendly guy, if reservedly so, so he answers readily, and amiably: "He's not a fan of walking sticks."

Chuck rolls his eyes at Enjolras -- he can hear a joke even if he has no idea what it's about. Which means it probably wasn't a good joke, was it? Eye-rolling is warranted.

"I like walking sticks if they're useful," Chuck says to Enjolras though he grins at Edgar. He has a bruise forming on one arm in the shape of one, but he doesn't seem to mind. "Paris is this fancy city in France. It's got the Eiffel Tower?"

He never knows what Edgar's heard of. "D'you know each other?"

Edgar gives the other man an assessing glance. "Don't think we've met, no."

(It still feels so weird to say that.)

Chuck nods. "Edgar's my roommate," he tells Enjolras, hand tipping towards Edgar. "He's kind of a big deal on Mars."

He then points at Enjolras with the same hand. "Enjolras beats me up. And he's a French political guy from history."

"Oh, and -- we're all dead," he finishes, grinning as he checks the last important part of introductions off his mental list.

(It wasn't a very good joke, Chuck. The eyeroll is definitely warranted.)

Enjolras snorts at beats me up. "We spar," he corrects mildly, under Chuck's continuation, but it's more by way of expansion than actual objection. Chuck's gotten much better about beating him up in turn! But, yes.

There's visible, if muted, surprise and interest at the bit about Mars. (His assumption is now that Edgar is a Martian, from a world where Mars has men who look entirely human to the casual glance.)

"Good to meet you." He doesn't offer a hand, because that's not really a social reflex of his time, but he'll respond readily if Edgar does.

"Likewise," says Edgar, who's grinning a bit at Chuck's introductions. He doesn't offer a hand either; meeting-for-the-first-time rituals are still new enough to him that he won't think of it without a reminder.

"French, is it? Knew a lady once who spoke French. Don't know much else about it, sorry."

"France is Atlantic," Chuck explains, "kind of frenemies with England? Anyway," he says, "the important part is they think fighting with walking sticks is normal."

Frenemies? Sure whatever. He'll ask later, maybe.

"I know less than that about Mars," he offers, "so we're even."

He also knows very little about Australia -- sorry, Chuck -- but he's learned more about that one since coming to Milliways! Mars is still pretty much a blank slate, especially without knowing Edgar's universe.

"Nah, Mars in't where I come from, I just visited. Made some friends, saved a runaway critter, killed a horrible monster, you know." That last is in an outrageously casual tone; he grins as he says it.

"Care to sit down?"

Chuck's already kicked out a seat and flopped into it before Edgar has finished asking. It seems like it's going to be an actual conversation. He leans in on his elbows, pushing a seat out for Enjolras with his foot.

He orders Gatorade and water off of a waitrat, but otherwise doesn't contribute to the conversation yet -- he doesn't know what he'd say. It's weird, knowing two people who don't know each other.

Enjolras adds his own order for water, absently courteous, as a quick aside. He's aware that Gatorade is a healthy future thing, but it's weird.

Anyway, he's not quite grinning back at Edgar, but his face has definitely brightened in amused response. "Thank you," he says, taking his own seat. Back to the Mars part: "Through Milliways? And -- a horrible monster?"

It seems like the kind of story Edgar's interested in telling, at least in brief, and Enjolras is interested to hear! So.

Edgar's asked for a Coke; he's long since gotten used to the fizz, and decided he likes the acid-sweet sting of it.

"Through Milliways, yeah. Ran into this little baby monster out back -- they call em thoats, ride on their backs and use them to carry loads? Ugly great lumps they are, so when I say 'little baby' I mean like half the size of this table here -- anyway it had run off from its mum, I followed it, two of us wound up in this vast fuckin desert in the middle of nowhere --"

He's gesturing animatedly as he speaks, hands spreading wide on vast fuckin desert.

"Where you bounce," Chuck interjects, because this is a very important story element.

Enjolras is listening with the earnest attention of someone hearing an intriguing story engagingly told, and trying very hard to picture it.

He's only half-succeeding. But he's trying!

Chuck gets a slightly confused look at the bit about bouncing, though. The look is turned to Edgar, a moment later: you bounce?

"Bounce," Edgar confirms. "Like, you take one step and if you're not careful you go flying twenty feet like you've got some kind of fuckin magic springs in your shoes. Something about gravity being different on Mars."

He illustrates with one hand on the tabletop, forming a tiny walking figure with two fingers and springing it through an unlikely series of arcs.

"So there's me and this pitiful little baby thoat, no idea where the fuck we are, and here's this wall of sand coming at us, so we found a cave to wait out the storm. Except already in the cave is this great ugly sucker monster that thinks it wants to eat us, and it's too late to run, so --" He shrugs, spreading his hands again. "Had to kill it, didn't I.

"Tars Tarkus -- he's a proper man from Mars, they call it Barsoom there -- his people found us the next day, and Tars helped get me back here. He said they call it an iljat, the sucker monster thing."

"He's a bloody garbage heap," Chuck offers to Enjolras. Then, reluctantly: "Not because of the helping part. That's okay."

He's glad you aren't even more dead, Edgar.

"That's fascinating," he murmurs, about the gravity.

He doesn't understand it in the slightest, of course. But it's fascinating! He'll tell his more scientifically minded friends about it, and they'll probably think out loud at him at much more detailed length about the mechanics or implications or whatever. (Which he also won't understand, mostly, but that's all right.)

Anyway, back to the story. And the iljat, which he's vaguely picturing (probably incorrectly) as some kind of huge desert-dwelling octopus.

"I don't know him," is all he has to offer on the subject of Tars Tarkus, the helpful garbage heap of a proper man from Mars. So say whatever you like about him without fear of offense or hope of agreement, guys.

"Ah, he's all right," says Edgar, without much heat at disagreeing with Chuck. "You'd know him if you saw him, most likely -- taller than anyone you've ever met, no hair on him, sort of green-colored, and four arms."

Chuck rolls his eyes, but doesn't hold out. It's Edgar who Tarkas gave a huge concussion to, so he guesses that technically the beef lies there.

He'll still hold it against Tarkas forever.

Enjolras's brows lift sharply, and he breathes out a brief laugh.

"Yes," he says, in dry understatement, "I think I'd find him memorable."

"You must have confused each other a great deal, if all his people are like that."

"Oh yes," says Edgar with relish. "Bit of the advantage to him, though, since there's people on Barsoom who look more like us. And they'd already met an Earth man once. Oh, thanks --"

That's to the waitrat, which has reappeared with a tray of all their drinks.

"Thanks," Chuck echoes, grabbing his water and bottle of Gatorade off the tray. It's ice blue, and labelled Striker Eureka! with its name repeated in hanzi. There's an animated drawing of a jaeger and bulldog on it, and Chuck makes a face.

He really prefers Crimson Typhoon flavor, but it's on him for not specifying.

"Yeah, Dejah Thoris looks basically human," Chuck says. "She's a scientist around here."

(A third absent thanks, and here's his water. It doesn't have any interesting branding.)

"Really?"

Huh.

"How varied are the Martian peoples, then? Do they all coexist?"

Sorry, Edgar, he'll notice that he's grilling you about Mars in a moment. And then he'll -- well, at least offer some openings for a subject change, if Edgar or Chuck doesn't actually want to spend a while infodumping about Barsoom. But he's too intrigued to have noticed quite yet.

Edgar swallows his first gulp of Coke. "Dunno for sure; you'd have to ask Dejah or Tarkas about that. All I know is there's the regular people, the big green people, and some fuckin weird animals."

He grins. "Brought the baby thoat back here with me when that was all over, 'cause they said she was spoiled for work after that. She's huge now, lives in the stables out back."

"She's all legs," Chuck says, walking his left hand in place on the table. He looks to Enjolras. "What about you? Been touristing anywhere?"

Enjolras spends a second thinking over the creatures in the stables before his eyebrows fly up: wait, that thing? "Eight of them?"

Legs, he means. If yes: golly. Huge ugly great lump, all legs is definitely accurate.

Anyway, Chuck's question. "New Orleans," he says, with a small smile. "There's a man here who lives there, who extended an invitation to everyone to come visit during Carnival. I would have preferred a quieter time, but still, it was wonderful to see the city."

Really, really wonderful. To see a living city, full of people going about their individual daily lives, breathing and loving and fighting and celebrating and grieving and caring and alive -- it was a gift beyond measure.

At least some of this sentiment is probably audible.

(He's also had some weirder Milliways experiences -- the Labyrinth, the time he and Bahorel followed a kirin into a magical land -- and he'll mention them too if this conversation continues along these lines, but they didn't feel the same as walking into a French-speaking city, in 21st century America, at Carnival time. And once, in Valjean's body, he went back to Paris, but nothing about that was touristing.)

Edited 2017-07-30 05:52 (UTC)

Edgar grins at Enjolras's realization, and nods: yup, eight of them. That's my girl.

He sobers a little when the man talks about the city. And debates internally a moment, before saying the next thing.

"Never seen a city proper," he says, "less you count the Thark one. What're they like?"

Chuck hesitates. That's clearly a question for Enjolras, and Enjolras is pretty good at getting poetic about Paris, but Chuck is pretty sure he hasn't seen any proper cities. And he's not sure if Enjolras could explain a city in anything like a straightforward manner.

"You know how -- uh," he breaks off, not sure if trying for straightforward was a bad idea, and glances a bit helplessly at Enjolras. "Well, a little bit of sand's different from a beach, right? Like -- completely different, not just bigger. People are like that, if you get enough of them. Cities are...."

He shrugs, uncomfortable, and drinks.

Edited 2017-08-13 04:34 (UTC)

"They're alive," Enjolras says softly, and with great feeling.

He'd have said that even before his death. But now, there's a lot more weight to it.

In spite of Chuck's doubts, though -- and it's a good thing Chuck didn't say that about proper cities, because Enjolras is the kind of Parisian who thinks Paris is the best and most proper city in any world -- Enjolras is actually quite familiar with the idea of people who've never seen a city. Plenty of people in his day lived and died in the countryside, and never went too far beyond their own village. Granted, he isn't imagining the truth of what Edgar grew up with instead, but all the same he takes the question in stride.

"Full of people, full of buildings. There's an energy to a city, a mood, a sort of personality. But it's made up of thousands of individuals, each living his own life, each worrying about his own concerns and doing the best he can. And all of them close on top of each other, in the streets, in houses and apartment buildings. In a village, everyone knows everyone; the stranger is obvious at a glance. In a city, a man might know his neighbors well, might be born and raised in a certain quarter, might be a regular at a café where the other drinkers call him fellow and the owner witnessed his marriage, might have a circle of the dearest friends imaginable, but he can still lose himself in a crowd; he can still walk as a stranger among strangers, very easily. There are always more citydwellers to meet. Always something new. A city is noisy, crowded, dirty, full of art, full of joy, of hunger, of thought, of innovation, of wonders. It's humanity, concentrated."

Enjolras, it may be apparent, loves the city. (And humanity.)

It's ... so close to the way he grew up, and at the same time so unimaginably different. Even the Front wouldn't have been like that, he realizes dimly; even they wouldn't have had that.

"Well," he says slowly, and has to swallow. "Sounds different all right."

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