pro_patria_mortuus | Entries tagged with bahorel

Harry Percy is thinking of trying to join Security. So, apparently, is Brienne of Tarth.

And, it seems, both of them want to learn more of unarmed combat, and ways to join or stop a bar brawl without the dangerous escalation a sword brings. A good goal, and a sensible one. Even without the question of Security work, it's sensible.

Bahorel agreed, when they brought the question to him. Which is why he's arranged for Enjolras to join himself and the two of them in the practice room they use for sparring.

The Milliways grounds are limited, no matter how much magic expanse of forest they contain, and doubly so to someone who hungers quietly for a city. Still, they're a change of scene, and a way to stretch one's legs. And they're pretty too, which Enjolras is largely oblivious to, but many people including his companion are not.

So: Enjolras and Bahorel are walking, arm in arm, beside the lake.

Bahorel is attempting to explain something about the logistics of television show creation. In the interests of clarity, he's restraining his (strong) artistic opinions to frequent asides.

Enjolras is at a table with a book and a plate. (It contains some crumbs that used to be a chicken sandwich, a mostly untouched small cake of the sort that Bar persists in giving him unrequested, and -- inexplicably -- a small candy heart with the incomprehensible word LOL stamped on it in pink. Enjolras has no particular desire for candy, especially of a self-evidently joking sort, and thus has ignored it.)

More importantly, he has a book about the history of Ysalwen's Thedas, which he's reading thoughtfully.

The bar is bustling, as often. A few of his friends are about; the spy is across the room, monitored but outwardly ignored. Enjolras has no intention of speaking to him without cause, if he's given a choice in the matter.

Bahorel was volubly gleeful at the prospect of learning swordfighting from a genuine medieval English knight who lived and made war with his longsword, and equally gleeful at the prospect of teaching him canne de combat. Enjolras isn't surprised at all by this; it's why he felt comfortable making the offer to Harry Percy in the first place.

This would probably be true even without Bahorel's current level of boredom. As it is, he'd probably leap at the chance to teach canne de combat to a dressmaker's dummy.

(A poor analogy. He's probably already done that, too.)

At any rate, the idea being mutually agreeable and their schedules being largely free, Enjolras and Bahorel and Harry have made their way together to the practice room upstairs.

Cubefall is a three-day carnival, according to Bar's explanation. At sundown on the third day, everyone who transformed themselves will return to their original shape, unless they choose otherwise.

Enjolras still has no personal desire to change shape. He has little curiosity on the matter, and no sense of whimsy to be touched. The symbolism of the holiday, with its themes of rebirth and renewal and burning down the old world to forge a better future, touches him deeply, but even that wouldn't be enough on its own to get him to do something like this.

But for his friends -- for Combeferre and Joly's delight in science, for Bahorel's rough and physical companionability -- and, it must be admitted, for the dumbfounded delight that he knows will greet this action from every single one of his friends -- for that, halfway through the afternoon on the last day of Cubefall, he asks Bar for his viewscreen again.

He looks over the options again, though he knows them, and he knows which he'll select. Then he taps the third option.

Abruptly, a golden, lean, leggy dog stands where Enjolras was an instant ago.

For several moments the dog is unnaturally still, utterly motionless except for the swell and fall of ribs in breathing. Even his eyes don't move, except the reflex of blinking. It might be a statue of a dog, graven in fine gold wood and set in place.

Then he shakes himself all over, and all at once it's not a statue but a dog. Carefully at first, and then with growing ease, he trots outside.

It's a clear, fine night at the end of the universe. The afternoon was warm and sunny; it's night now, well after midnight, and the sky outside the window is bright with strange stars. By the Milliways calendar, capricious creature though it is, today was June 5. It's June 6 now, technically, in the dark hours between midnight and sunrise.

On this date, in 1832, Paris was an eventful place. A morning funeral, an uprising -- by afternoon, barricades -- by the evening of the 6th, violently and brutally suppressed.

Enjolras and Combeferre are still awake. They're not discussing the date, or past events. Indeed, they've discussed such things very little today. They have, instead, been reading. Every so often one or the other will read a passage aloud, or comment upon it, and then a conversation will unfold: a discussion of the future, or a friendly argument about its proper shape or interpretation. When silence falls, it's to resume reading, not to brood in silence.

If every so often one or the other of them seems to be reading more slowly than usual, and looking through the pages of his book -- or if a heavy silence falls in the middle of an argument, and is not immediately filled -- well, doubtless it's only distraction.

When Enjolras and Bahorel return from a sparring session to room 89, it's with the idea of the loan of a book, and drinks, and doubtless conversation. It turns out, however, that Joly and Combeferre are already in the room.

This is fine, of course; it's no trouble whatsoever. And the rooms are as much Combeferre's as Enjolras's. It's only that Combeferre and Joly are elbows-deep in some kind of experimentation which distracts a certain amount of attention.

There are weird devices that beep and blink with multicolored lights. There are wires and whirring noises. There's a green liquid that's steaming somewhat ominously, although Joly catches Enjolras's glance and assures them both in a bright voice that it's perfectly safe. (Bahorel looks faintly disappointed to hear it.) There's Combeferre's pterosaur specimen, decanted from its jar and hooked up to one of the weird devices, which is producing a warbling wail like a drunken songbird.

It's not worth asking about the experiment just yet, let alone inquiring what world and time those mechanisms might have come from. Enjolras leaves Bahorel to ask anyway, and poke at things, and generally make a nuisance of himself. He himself goes to wash up.

A few minutes later, in shirtsleeves with a freshly washed face and hands, he returns to the main room. He's just in time to see a fountain of brightly colored steam shoot for the ceiling. The little devices are shrieking and warbling, and Joly makes a startled sound -- Enjolras has covered the distance to the table, he's reaching to pull them away, whoever's nearest, out of danger -- but just as his hand closes on Combeferre's sleeve, either his vision wobbles or the air itself does, and they're somewhere else.

Quiet falls like a weight. The table with its devices and bubbling liquid and pickled pterosaur is still there, but the devices have gone silent. Joly is here, Bahorel, Combeferre; his arm is solid under Enjolras's hand.

But under their feet is lush greenery. Strange plants surround them, and a blue sky overhead. The air is warm and swampy and full of unfamiliar odors. There are buzzing noises, and a clattering of strange insects, and somewhere far off a bleat deeper than any sheep or goat. No walls. No buildings; no civilization; no humans in sight, except their little cluster. Nothing familiar at all.

For a heartbeat, they're all wide-eyed.

Then Bahorel is shouting with laughter, and Joly exclaiming and Combeferre starting to sputter questions.

Suddenly there's a loud buzz, and a large dark shape falls from the sky in a rapid, erratic path. Enjolras pushes forward on instinct, putting himself in front of Combeferre, sees Bahorel doing the same--

And they're back in his familiar room at Milliways, just as they were, except that there's a beetle the size of a small dog on the table, tucking its wings away.

(It's only later that any of them will realize just how many days passed in the course of those few moments. This is why you shouldn't play with pterosaur corpses and time-manipulation devices you don't fully understand, kids!)

"Please keep an eye on your watch," Combeferre requested. "I'd like to try using the watches to communicate with you from the Labyrinth. I want to test it and see if it works."

Enjolras dutifully kept an ear out for the watch's speaking chime, and checked it occasionally as well, just in case he had failed to hear it. He received one message, fairly promptly, saying that Combeferre believed they were approaching the Labyrinth. Then, what seemed to be hours, at least insofar as one can tell at Milliways. (Despite his occasional absent-minded checking, Joly's watches are useless for timetelling purposes.) Then another message: this one brief, reassuringly calm and cheerful, and apparently from inside the Labyrinth, but with sound that came and went like a candle flickering in wind.

For the rest of the night, nothing more.

Time at Milliways is strange. Enjolras knows that. Time in the forest is even stranger; he knows that too. If there's no particular evidence they're safe, neither is there particular evidence they're in danger.

All the same. He doesn't sleep well; he wakes at every noise that might possibly be a chime. In the early morning, he goes to find Feuilly.

Feuilly is answers the door with a book in one hand and his hair standing on end, looking as if he's been awake for some time, which is either an indication that Milliways time is being peculiar again or merely an indication that it's an interesting book. When the situation at hand has been discussed in as much detail as possible, they spend a little while longer discussing the Soviet Union, with watches open on the table beside them.

The watches don't chime.

Their course of action is clear. The conversation lulls; Enjolras picks up his watch, moves the hands to 12, speaks into it to everyone who's listening. He waits for an answer from the Labyrinth too, and hears only from Bahorel, in his room down the hall and eager for the advenutre of a rescue mission.

Grantaire doesn't answer, but apparently he's listened to the little voice-message that's left behind, because when the others gather by Bar, he's there too. He blinks at them with his usual faint bleariness, but follows along readily as they start across the lawn, making for the trees. It's good to see. Grantaire cares about his friends, that's always been plain to see, but it's good to see him acting usefully on their behalf as well.

Bahorel has a large pack. Enjolras hasn't inquired into its contents.

Grantaire has a bottle. Enjolras hasn't inquired into its contents either, although in this case it's easy to guess.

He's never ventured through the Labyrinth's doors, but he does know more or less where it is. Bahorel likewise, it seems. It's some ways along, where the forest meets the mountains.

There are a few exercise rooms scattered about Milliways, of various sorts and various levels of formal construction. A room with weights and a punching bag; a room with mirrors and a barre and strict signs about which shoes one is permitted to wear; a room with fewer mirrors, a closet full of various kinds of padding, another closet with practice implements like rods of wood and bamboo, a wood floor, mats of strange blue plastic to unfold or ignore.

It's in the last of these that Enjolras and Bahorel have been recently engaged in vigorous (and friendly) attempts to pummel each other.