A/N Arc Four! We're not finished writing this up yet, but we're far enough through (it's quite a bit longer than the previous ones and they really do get longer and longer from here on in) that I feel happy starting the updates again. If you haven't already done so, I recommend reading Into the Fire, To Right This Wrong, and Scurrilous Phantom before reading this story as otherwise not much is going to make sense. The chapter titles are taken from Baroness Orczy's The Scarlet Pimpernel, being like all our chapter title sources one of the inspirations for this series. Please do review and let us know what you think. There's little external drama in this Arc, being mostly focused on Les Amis - but Arc Five has enough external drama for both of them, so enjoy!

Sythar and TW.

Mes Amis - I do not know what to say.

Lucien Courfeyrac was at a loss. He walked down the steps from Joly and Lesgle's apartment, stopped, turned and looked back up in time to see Lesgle cheerfully shutting the door behind him, calling something over his shoulder to Feuilly. And... there it goes... watch for it... there. Shut. As in on him. As in with him on the other side.

Lucien ran a hand through his hair, well, well... and well. That was an interesting thing, wasn't it mes amis? Amis? Hm. Perceval, is it? Perceval. Well. Would have been nice to know that a while ago, M. Scaramouche. He considered things from one side and then the other and came to the conclusion that he had never really seen the other side of a door - not when he himself had not been perfectly and extremely ready to leave, or every other party had already left or passed out... Funny thing, a door.

Funny thing all round.

He was - utterly and completely - unsure what to think, so he turned his steps towards Dominic's house, trying to rearrange the mess he'd made to his curls as he went. Madre di Dios.

As usual, Bahorel - being the overly trusting soul he was (or possibly just being completely certain he could take anyone who decided to walk in if he didn't want them to be there) had left the door open, so Lucien slipped in and headed for the small, messy living area. "You home, Amigo?"

"Yeah... in here."

"Hey..." he located him sprawled across a couch which had seen many many better years and at least three better patchings, looking through a paper and chewing on the end of a twig. Where had the twig come from? Who knows. "I just went past Joly's and..." See... Grantaire's out of prison - and he's holed up with the charmingly unromantic and unfashionable twins - and they've got Poland with them and appear to be playing house. Kettles and boiled eggs and bread and butter and all.

"You too?" Dominic didn't look up from the paper, his lips forming a thin thin line around the twig.

Uh... "You know then?" If you know, mon cher cher cher amigo, dearest drinking buddy and friend among friends - why didn't you tell me? Warn me, maybe.

"Yes. I know."

Not promising, that. Lucien dusted a portion of the only other safe chair in the room and sat down, trying to find the cheerful side of the story. Cheerful - huh - oh yeah, Grantaire's not going to hang anymore. That's good. Honestly, mes amis, that preyed on my mind a lot, that did. More than my classes and more than my mother's injunctions to put dried lavender in my drawers... "Oh. So at least he's out, right?"

"Oh, yeah, s'pose so."

"...and he's being pretty nice about the whole thing." Like - eh - the whole 'we walked out on you and inadvertently caused you to go off and get arrested through a ridiculous series of mishaps' thing.

"Mhm." Dominic turned a page in the paper and looked unimpressed. Either Charles X was doing something incredibly fascinating or his fears were founded. He had simply ceased being visible and audible. How else could all his cher amis be ignoring his sense, and style and wit and cleverness and fashionable dress...

Don't you start on me, Dominic Bahorel. "Right. Are you going to not talk to me now too?"

With that, the paper dropped and he received a slightly apologetic shake of the head. "Oh no, of course not, ami..."

Uh huh. Not that I'd usually ask such a silly thing, of course, but there's this sneaking feeling you get when you watch four grown men talk at the speed of a galloping horse without pausing to take breath and let you have a word in edgewise. "I'm not suddenly invisible, am I?"

"Funny," Dominic drawled. "I'd thought I was."

Oh. Lucien laughed a little and grinned and neither felt exactly cheerful and happy. "You too, huh?"

"I'll say." A snort. Yes, amigo, that just about sums it up all around.

Lucien stretched out his legs and sighed. "They just... it's like I didn't even count." So many far more important things for them to be talking about. Oh yes. Yes, amis, I really have aboslutely no idea what that particular little shared joke referenced and thank you so much for making me feel so included. Really.

"Like you were suddenly part of the furniture?" Dominic looked about as pleased as he felt, face twisted into something of a scowl as he picked away at a gaping hole in his couch's overcoat. Now, amigo - if she were a grisette, she'd slap your face for that sharp as you please.. but seeing as she's the belle old grande dame she is - you may escape unscathed. Maybe.

"At least a piece of furniture would have been useful."

"That's true." Dominic laughed rather bitterly, and Lucien felt a little better to know he wasn't the only one being treated as though he were Very Nice Really But Not Quite Old Enough To Participate In The Games. Pah. I wrote the games.

And then there was the other thing about it. He picked at his teeth with a hat pin that he'd found in his pocket - whose was that pin? - and gave Dominic a little side-long glance. Stop me if you've heard this before, amigo... "You know, I thought we were supposed to be his friends."

"So did I... so did I. It's crazy."

"...dam' if I know why I'm even letting it get to me, though," he added, putting the hat pin back. Cecile? Suzette? Helene?

Dominic growled a little and shrugged his shoulders. "Why wouldn't it get to you? It's a bitch."

Yes, amigo, thank you for putting that so succinctly. "Well... it's not like I should mind th' crazy bastard has got a few more amis now." No, no. Dammit, I don't mind. He can become friends with all of Paris if he likes - more power to 'im, I say. Let the world be friends and let the femmes be happy and let there be love for all. For a moment he almost managed to feel happy about things.

Bahorel - curse him for a cheap bastard who wore his winter coat in summer - spoiled that smartly and with his usual finesse. "It's not that he's got a few more amis. It's that he's got them instead of us."

That was it exactly. Au'voir contentment. You were here such a very short time... "Yeah, and after all that trouble we went to getting Combeferre to talk to Enjolras about him, too."

"You'd think he could be a little more grateful," Dominic added, rather sulkily.

"Yeah - not act like I'm a damn enfant who doesn't know anything..." Lucien rubbed at a patch on his trousers and frowned very hard. "Hell didn't he ask us to help him out instead of Joly and L'aigle and even Feuilly?"

That, amigos, had been the nail in the coffin, the icing on the cake, and the guillotine in the middle of the soiree - eh? Even Feuilly, whom Grantaire hadn't even liked until days ago.

"Yeah. Really." Dominic was in agreement, and Lucien couldn't help but wonder if this would get sorted any easier than he was going to get that particular red-wine stain out of his new ivory coloured cravat.