Joly

Joly did not go to him.

Enjolras came to him.

Joly found him in one of the free clinics as he was prepared to check on a few patients. The room was kept separate from the others, housing the terminally ill. The best anyone could do for those people was to keep them comfortable as they slowly faded from this realm of existence.

The cholera panic was a bit more contained since the revolution, but it wasn't gone entirely. Like Joly, there were plenty of other doctors attempting to secure better treatment for the sufferers. But even then, the deaths proved to either be spontaneous or lingering only up to a few days.

And then there were the victims of a few small counter-revolutions against the Republic, stemming from people terrified of the past and unable to move forward without the familiarity of a monarchy.

Bossuet had told him not to worry about such things, that the bourgeois will soon have more to do than strike out against them. Joly responded that people had once said the same thing about the students.

Bossuet had shrugged and wrote a few more lines in the play they had been writing.

Joly had been too busy to see Enjolras since the month's end, and while he hadn't seen all that had been done to him, he had heard about the rest from Combeferre, and only because Combeferre came to request medical supplies from him in order to treat certain wounds. Joly had given them over without much thought, figuring he could make up the loss with Bossuet when they raided a hospital with far more implements that any place set up to treat the poor and disenfranchised.

He hoped that would change shortly.

Bossuet, for his part, hadn't seen Enjolras for entirely different reasons and he couldn't blame time or a workload. Joly allowed him to keep his reasons, understanding them while at the same time not liking them. But Bossuet would come around on his own in good measure.

Enjolras stood next to one of the beds, staring down at the patient. The woman in the bed was still, not fighting for her life or shifting with the pain. She had been given tranquilizers to keep her out of reality, and Joly wasn't certain if she'd come out of them or go peacefully.

Joly stayed in the doorway, his task forgotten momentarily as he watched Enjolras. The room wasn't kept locked, of course. Anyone could come in, and sometimes a few family members dropped by to give their final regards.

Of course he'd want to be with the people, Joly thought. He always did, but he really should cover up in case something is contagious.

He felt his heart clench when Enjolras reached down and touched the woman's wrist, lithe fingers moving against the gradually slowing pulse.

"What does she dream?"

Enjolras' voice cut into Joly's consciousness and he blinked while he shifted his notepad, abruptly needing to do something to prove he hadn't been staring. "Uh.."

"Is it comforting to her?"

"It..I don't think she dreams of anything. She's drugged, you see. So her mind may either be seeing the fantastical or perhaps nothing at all," Joly finally stammered out as he went to check on the few patients as was his original intent.

"I hope she's dreaming," Enjolras said, placing her arm back upon the bed with infinite gentleness. "I don't see it anymore, Joly."

This was not a conversation Joly wanted to be having. He felt uncomfortable and awkward and wished he could just do something medical so that he wouldn't feel this way and so Enjolras' voice wouldn't have that hint of need within it. "See what?" He asked, even though he didn't want the answer.

"The vision. The ideal. I try to place the symbols, but it all falls to pieces. I can't envision the world." Enjolras gestured, as he was sometimes wont to do, as though taking an object and putting it into place. "I try. I try constantly because I know of precious little ways to think, but it all goes utterly blank. Yet instead of a white canvas, I see an endless supply of blackness."

Definitely not a conversation Joly wanted to have, and he took his time checking the temperature of another patient. "Well, we won," he said with false cheer. "We won so we're living in that future, right? Maybe that's why you can't see it. Because it's now immersed in reality."

"Maybe…" Enjolras trailed off, his gaze straying to another patient.

Joly hoped that would be the end of it. He wanted to ask Enjolras how he was besides the lack of the metaphorical, but the words would sound utterly flat. So he kept his back to his friend and continued his efforts. He was blinking a lot more which wasn't good for either his charts or his notes.

"Are you happy?"

Not a question Joly had been expecting. Still, he answered with an automatic response. "I am comfortable. Content, really. There's a hope that wasn't completely there before. The inevitable has come to pass, all that's left are the details, and once they're sorted out, I think I'll be very happy."

"Then I don't think the ideal has come to pass just yet. If it had, there wouldn't be so many within this room."

Joly's teeth clenched and he hoped his silence would get it across to Enjolras that he didn't want to talk about this.

No such luck.

"Mankind moves at is own pace, but the revolution is not yet done. Not with the counter-revolutions and quite a few people in the committees just waiting for a sign of the foreign nations to converge upon us and stifle our fledgling state."

Joly breathed in and breathed out once. Twice. Tried to gather his thoughts. "Are you not optimistic?"

"I am. I don't believe the other nations will come against us. The committees in place are good men who won't let the mistakes of before happen. We know better now. I am merely saying that the ideal is not yet in place so I don't think that's really a valid reason for me not being able to see that world anymore."

Joly couldn't see Enjolras but he could hear a new strain in his voice. It was the same strain within his own as he struggled to figure out what new disease was killing a patient. It was a need for answers, a clawing, demanding need because the reality was just too horrendous without some form of logic or a path to make things better.

Enjolras was searching for that path.

Joly had no answers. All he had was awkwardness. "I can't help you there," he said, moving to tend to the next patient.

There was a pause.

"No, I don't believe you can. Nor should you. I shouldn't impose."

It wasn't imposing, Joly wanted to say but he couldn't. He feared his own voice breaking, and he was doubtful anything he said could possibly help Enjolras. His scribbles were starting to grow more furious and a droplet of water splashed upon his clipboard, obscuring the words. He wished to throw it down and leave the room and all of its contents behind.

Enjolras shifted a bit on the bed, turning himself so that he faced the dying woman. "Do you think death is peaceful?" He asked, which caused something to snap in Joly.

"For pity's sake!" He yelled, turning around to face Enjolras, face a bit blotched with a few tear tracks upon his cheeks.

Enjolras looked at him in stark surprise at first, and then the expression turned into something Joly never wanted to see. Enjolras looked lost. Completely and utterly lost as his clear blue gaze searched Joly's face not for answers this time around.

Signs, Joly knew. He thought it bitterly ironic that the both of them were searching the other on cues for how to respond.

Finally Joly sighed. "Can't you just-" He struggled to find the words and when nothing came to him, he settled on the ones he didn't want to say but had little means to express himself otherwise. "Can't we both just pretend it's all right?"

The words hung in the air and Joly equally wanted to take them back and let them stay in-between the two of them. He was being selfish, he knew. Enjolras wanted to talk and he wanted to pretend and he knew there was no middle ground in this.

He yearned for Combeferre who would know what to do, what to say. Who would be able to speak to Enjolras on the metaphorical and move his thoughts away from the still-breathing corpses on the bed, and then he would turn to Joly and request something, maybe some medication to help keep Joly away from this…whatever this was.

Enjolras slowly lowered his gaze. "Of course," he said. "Of course."

Joly felt his heart break, but he had lost his moment and going to Enjolras to embrace him now would make a mockery of it all. But in that moment, he wished he could take it all back. It wasn't Enjolras' fault as to what happened to him. It wasn't Enjolras who was crying on a clipboard, trying to pretend everything was fine. It wasn't Enjolras who feared trying to talk to a friend, to open up, Joly corrected himself.

But it was Enjolras who complied with Joly's wishes and all Joly could do was try to ignore the omnipresent sadness that emanated from his friend that gnawed on his own guilt.

He wanted to apologize. He didn't dare. And suddenly, he couldn't stand to be around Enjolras a second longer.

"Let us speak on other matters." And still, it was Enjolras who pressed, who smiled at him which only served to tear at Joly's heart further. "I heard you were starting another clinic."

"I am," Joly replied and even his voice sounded clinical, detached. "We're hoping to get better funding."

"I can try writing to the committees for you. I know a few names. Quite a few from Marseilles."

"That would be very helpful. You could probably word it all better than me. Focusing more on the logistics of aiding the sick rather than myself trying to focus on the emotions."

"Something like that, yes." There was a pause that stretched out longer than necessary. "You take such good care of them all, Joly."

The praise wasn't sarcastic. Enjolras was always genuine. It sliced through Joly's skin like a razor. "You should probably go."

Once again, the words were out before Joly could stop them. This time, Enjolras didn't wait to digest them. He stood up quickly, as though he had been expecting the dismissal for some time. "Of course," was all he said.

Joly was getting tired of hearing those words. As Enjolras passed him by, he had an impulse to clutch at his friend's arm, to apologize, to tell him that he wasn't any good with this, that he didn't know what to say and that it hurt him so badly that he couldn't help that he would rather the situation just depart from him all the sooner. Because if Enjolras remained, he would only hurt him more.

It was Enjolras who halted in the doorway. "You should come by and visit sometime when you've the convenience."

An open invitation. Joly swallowed back a thousand responses. "I will," he said, though he didn't think he would. Not until Enjolras was better. Not until he could master his own feelings and not heave them onto his friend who already looked as though he was carrying the burden of the world.

"Enjolras," he said, turning around to face the doorway, but Enjolras was already gone. It was just as well.

He wasn't sure what he was going to say anyway.