He lied to us. Lied. Lied to us, mon ami. He lied like that's suddenly some sort of ... really like that's an excuse for sitting here and looking at the table cloth and picking at a pasty and just... just... sitting. Winecask, they all said. Lying winecask, a friend who is not a friend. Lying winecask, unlucky Eagle and silly little pretty Joli. What a trio we are, mes amis. I wonder, if Joli and I were in prison and set to hang would they just sit and think 'well, they lied to us..."

And L'aigle owes me ten sous...

Really... he'd not expected to get hurt coming out like this to declaim the news to all assembled at the Cafe Musain. Apart from the news that they had to declaim - and dieu, dear dieu that had been a shock in the morning. After all the talk of interrogations and spies and the police tracking them down to their homes and making a mess all over their nice clean steps which Maurice would really really not like, he'd slept uneasily and more than once woken to the clear and unbidden thought that he wished very much Grantaire had done all this on his own and not involved his Joli or himself in the madness. Then the newspaper had revealed that an unnamed radical had been sentenced to death for treason. It was a shock tactic, Maurice had explained rather nervously, setting and resetting the table and having three sugars in his coffee when really, really, cher you shouldn't be having any at all... and blinking over and over again at the headline as though that might make it go away.

Daniel hadn't understood what he had meant until a bit later when he realised that this... this what they were feeling, all fear and anger and worry and tension and need to do something right away before the end could happen in a big horrible black ropey lump, this was what the police had intended for M. Scaramouche's confederates to feel.

Grantaire. Executed. M. Scaramouche - gone. It was a sobering thought. Just not sobering enough and now he was standing outside in the cold air with bruised knuckles wondering if Bahorel was going to call him a liar next. Perhaps being Pedrolino meant that he could go get hanged and they wouldn't notice or bother doing anything but stare into their coffee cups and make quips about whether or not Enjolras was quite done making faces at Combeferre's notes while Combeferre wasn't looking.

Winecask, he thought sadly, rubbing his knuckles. Winecask, Eagle, Joli. Did they ever see us to begin with, cher? Did they really?

As though he knew that Daniel is thinking about him - and sometimes Daniel almost wonders if somehow Maurice can just tell because he's so smart, really he is, even if they do call him small and little and pretty - Maurice and Harlequin together walked out of the cafe. "Daniel?"

Just his voice is enough to remind him that this is all a lot bigger than being offended or hurt feelings or not liking the way someone keeps saying 'he lied' without once saying 'he saved us too' and Daniel dropped his head a bit. Oh you great unlucky fool, if you'd not punched Bahorel, maybe he'd have helped and now there's only the Unlucky Eagle and His Growing List, Silly Little Maurice and His Coffee, and The Fanmaker and his Poland left between the Winecask and the Noose. "I made a mess of things, didn't I."

Instead of agreeing apologetically and pointing out the strategic implications of his actions, Joli just said very simply, "No, not at all. I thought you were great."

"Really?" he smiled just a tiny bit. Because really, Joli would know what was great.

"Yeah. He needed that telling off."

Behind the rush of gratitude... and thank you, cher, I needed to know you thought so too, because really, cher, I just do things sometimes and aren't we all fortunate I didn't bust my hand on his jaw? Daniel felt the anger again, and clenched both fists not quite caring that one of them hurt. "I don't like how they act as though you are funny - or a joke. It makes me angry."

Even if I don't always do anything about it because I'm too good-natured, ami, I really am. Good-natured and rather dim from the sounds of it. Dim like a pair of glasses all fogged up. Maurice put a hand on his shoulder and made everything better almost immediately.

"I know. I know," it sometimes startled Daniel that the others couldn't see the strength in Joli. Just because he was smart enough to know that one could get ill didn't mean he was defined by a large medical journal and a small mirror to check his tongue with. There was this, too, and so many, really so many other things. "But at least it means no one's going to guess."

"I suppose." He nodded and couldn't help grinning a little at how very Scaramouchean the practicality of that statement was. Now what was it that was happening to them? Was Grantaire mad and infecting them with his crazy, gloriously dramatic, multicoloured madness? It struck Daniel then that he had actually gotten away with punching Dominic Bahorel - brawler and boxer and terror of any self-respecting cafe and wineshop in Paris. "Dieu... I'm lucky he didn't hit me back!"

Maurice chuckled. "Yeah, you are! I'd have had to get between you."

Rare indeed was the time that Daniel Lesgle, he who was born with a black cat in his lap under a ladder and over the shards of a broken mirror while his mother wore green and somewhere a left-handed groom looked at a left-handed bride before their wedding, could comment on his good luck. "...maybe my luck is changing, eh?" Let us hope and pray so. If just for the sake of a Winecask Who Lies. "So what are we off to do now?"

"We're going to find Feuilly and go do this."

It still surprised him, just a little only I promise, cher, that they could even think of these things without Grantaire. "Good." We're going to go do this alone. Us three out of all the Amis. "...dear dieu I'm a better friend to him and I don't even like him that much." Nightmares. Lists of Things I Never Want To Happen To My Joli. Visions of Hangmen and Nooses in his breakfast coffee...

"Afraid so." Maurice sighed a little. Perhaps they were both too soft-hearted to be masked spies. But Daniel rather thought it suited them better than the alternative.

This decided, his made a face and a grimace that said 'I don't Know What Friends Are Anymore, Cher, Excepting You Of Course' and said "That's sad," and meant it. "Let's go get Alexandre."

"Let's," and there was the bright, the frighteningly manic glint again, and cher I think you can stop drinking coffee now, you've had enough. More than enough. Definitely.

He was even more convinced of this fact by the time they reached Feuilly's place, Maurice having taken several inadvisable short-cuts, had a furiously energetic argument with an elderly man who had tried to sell them some dead cats and Maurice would go into all the details on why this was unhygenic, and finally all-but sprinted up the steps to Feuilly's door, which was flanked on either side by a slightly artistic pair of small and very hungry looking plants. Maurice knocked on the door while Daniel, having regained his footing on the luckiness ladder, promptly careened into one of the plants and put it out of its hungry misery.

Feuilly opened the door and gave them both a hooded, guarded look which seemed to indicate that Daniel had perhaps not been the only one afraid of police footsteps in the night. Though, of course, Feuilly had even less to fear, as if the Spy and the Policeman asked the Winescask Who Helped You? then Feuilly's name would not even come up. He wasn't sure whether to feel envious or superior and tried to feel both at once just in case.

Which was a little difficult as he was currently trying to apologise for the death of the starved plant.

Feuilly shooed them inside and shut the door firmly behind them, not bothering with pleasantries. "Forget the plant. We've got to worry about Grantaire."

Lying Winecask, Daniel thought grimly, and felt of a sudden even more upset. Why were they the only ones who cared? At least Combeferre and Enjolras hadn't known who Scaramouche was. "Oui... we do." He recalled that Feuilly, as their Only Other Friend and Partner in More Crime Than I Think Being in A Republican Group Really Qualifies Me For, had not been privy to the latest developments. Oh cher, reallly, how lucky for me. I get to be the one who tells him. "Seems we've found out why he went looking for trouble."

"Oh, dieu." Feuilly frowned a little in obvious concern that made Daniel feel oddly relieved. "Who told him to go jump in the river?"

It would almost have been ironic, that exact phrasing, if it weren't so damned sad. Daniel wondered if Grantaire would appreciate the irony of it all. Their Papa Scaramouche seemed capable of finding a laugh in anything. Perhaps even he would not quite have the diaphragm (thank you, cher Joli) to laugh at his own impending death. In salute to the lost irony, Daniel simply said, "That would have been Enjolras."

"...I was joking," Feuilly said after a long and nasty pause. "He actually said that?"

"Afraid so," Maurice managed to look sombre, which was a definite improvement on the tight fixed grin he had been sporting.

Daniel nodded. "Sounded like it."

To his credit, Feuilly did not question this, simply saying a quiet and fervent , "Oh mon dieu." He was silent, apparently in thought, and then added, with surprising perceptiveness, "I be Combeferre was really pissed at him when he found out."

"Incredibly," Maurice said succinctly.

The episode deserves more comment than that, cher. "Combeferre actually walked out."

Feuilly proved him right, eyebrows shooting up to his hairline and eyes opening wide. "Actually walked out?" Because really? Combeferre did not walk out on the Glorious Leader. Ever. Not even when Enjolras made impolite remarks about studying.

Such a moment deserved emphasis, so Daniel nodded. "walked out."

"After which," Maurice said, sitting on the arm of the sofa and picking at it absently, "we had a bit of a... confrontation with Dominic and Lucien."

Thank you, Cher. Thank you for the 'we'. Really, cher, you didn't have to say 'we'. You could have said 'Daniel'. But you didn't. He laughed a little anyway, and clarified for Feuilly, "I punched Dominic."

He'd never really gotten to know Feuilly very well. A practical quiet sort of fellow, he'd thought. Very serious, very intense, and god save you if you mentioned Poland. He'd never really considered the man as a friend per se. More of a comrade. But when Feuilly simply raised both eyebrows in an impressed sort of way and with no indication that he had any doubt as to whom was in the wrong, said merely "What did th' bastard do?" Daniel wondered why they had never been friends before.

"Made fun of Joli." It came out as something of a growl, and he saw Maurice shrug a little at Feuilly as though to say 'Really, just don't mess with my Daniel'. Was it the fact that he'd punched someone or the fact that the someone was Bahorel?

Whatever it was, it wasn't currently important in the least. "Anyway," he said, feeling out of place derailing the conversation as though M. Baldpate actually had some idea where things should be headed for once. "Considering the fact that no one else is going to help him," it's so much more useful to sit around in cafes and drink wine and coffee, after all. "Let's do something about Grantaire."

"I was hoping you'd get to that soon," Feuilly said.

Pedrolino, mon cher Harlequin, has filled his office reminding us all. Please... take over. He looked at Maurice rather desperately, having absolutely no clue how to start a meeting about breaking someone out of prison and really, Maurice had already done this once.

"All right." Harlequin or Maurice or whatever he was meant to call him, pulled the papers of the prison out and laid them across Feuilly's rather small dining table. "I have the plan of the Prefecture and all the notes we made last night here."

Recognising the slight tension in Maurice's shoulders as well as the surreptitious glances he was making towards Feuilly's - Alexandre's - kitchen as a request for more coffee, Daniel sighed a little and made his way over to the kitchen to light the stove and put some water on to boil. When he finally returned, Alexandre was deep in discussion with Harlequin, bent over the papers with each of them jabbing at different parts and rattling off suggestions at a frightening rate.

As he put the coffee down on the table, Alexandre was saying, "Did we decide which direction to come from?"

That, mon ami, I know. "Seemed to be that the north side is better to approach from." He leant over and tapped the map with a finger, and Alexandre all but leapt on it, tracing the route himself from where Daniel was pointing to through the buildings and the various cells.

"Right." He gave a succinct nod, as though pleased, and Daniel hoped very hard that this was making a lot more sense to one of the others than it was currently making to him.

Joli was drinking his second cup of the coffee already. "All right then. North side."

"And me as distraction, how'm I going to do that?" Not that I'm not highly relieved that I'll be distracting them and not you, cher...

His Joli looked him up and down for a moment and then simply said, "You should impersonate a guard." As though it was the most logical thing in the world and really, why hadn't everyone thought of it yet?

"...a very... bad guard?" he asked tentatively, able to see the merit in it... and I am trusting you here, cher. I am. Really. It's just a little hard to see how we're going to...

As if he could read his mind, Maurice clasped his hands around his coffee cup and got that look on his face. His contemplative look when he was turning over a new piece of work for an essay or puzzling all the holes out of one of Daniel's arguments for an assignment. "Yes. Yes, I think so." His voice was Harlequin's voice, confidant and cool, despite a slightly higher pitch due to the coffee. "We'll take out the first guard and give you his uniform, and then you can go distract the others."

"Yes sir!" Daniel saluted smartly, and smiled a little to see Maurice trying to hide a grin.

"Are we going to need weapons?" Alexandre interjected.

Maurice considered it seriously, obviously going over their options in his head. "I don't know, are we?"

"Honestly," and Daniel was a little surprised to find himself participating once more. In the Amis meetings he frequently stayed silently at the back except when someone needed a cheerful joke about luck, or a story about no luck or someone to tell them what a very fabulous idea theirs was. Yet here he was with his Joli and Feuilly, and they were making real honest plans together. "I think not. Apart from something to overpower the guards... perhaps one gun. In all reality, mes amis, if it comes to a fight then we've already lost."

Alexandre didn't blink or look surprised or ask what had happened to the real Daniel. He just nodded. "Fair enough. What are we going to do about the first guard? Just knock him cold?"

"Well, we could always chloroform him," Maurice said calmly.

Well, if you've got the chloroform, cher... "That might be the best recourse." He paused mid nod... a thought crossing his mind, and then another. Problems. Questions. "I have two questions," he said out loud and quelled a sudden ridiculous urge to raise his hand.

Joli looked serious and drank more coffee. "Ask away."

"First..." he paused and made a face involuntarily. "We know it got a bit rough. What if he's badly hurt? How do we get him out?"

Rather to his dismay, Maurice simply made an identical face and finished his coffee. "That... is a very good question."

Cher, you were meant to answer it. "Second," and this one was even less pleasant. "Uh... if this is a protracted and melodramatic was to kill himself... what if he doesn't want to leave?" After all, Grantaire was a dramatic man. He might not appreciate his glorious moment of sacrifice being wasted.

Again, neither of his companions seemed eager to answer the questions, Alexandre merely making an 'Ooh,' noise while Maurice frowned and worried his lip and then said rather tetchily and worriedly, "I hadn't thought of that..."

And he hadn't meant to worry them or make them upset or unhappy, he'd just thought... thought that perhaps... he shrugged. "It just... seemed to me that might be a problem?" Apologetically because I don't want to ruin your plans or anything, cher.

"Well, it could be," Maurice said reasonably. "Depending on exactly how strongly Enjolras told him to go kill himself."

The words rose unbidden as they so often did when he really didn't want to remember something and never did when he had an exam. "What did he say? 'We ended by agreeing that the only way we could get along is if he were to remove himself from the earth entirely'?"

There was a brief silence in which Joli nodded, and Alexandre - having not been there to hear it the first time, winced in sympathy for their departed drunkard. After a moment or two, Daniel sighed. "I suppose we'll have to cross that bridge when we come to it, eh?"

"I suppose so," Maurice said slowly.

It seemed he had killed the mood of plans and ideas with his morbid questioning, and cher I am so very sorry. I am really. So he sat down at last and looked at the map and asked something else to distract them. "So... once we've got to him, how do we get him out?"

Ideas flowed once more, pens were used as mock weapons, as pointers and even to pick teeth - much to Maurice's horror. There was too much coffee and worry and tension and a buzz like a hum of urgency. Not much time before he's dead. The winecask, the liar, the saviour and the friend.

Our friend.