A/N - To everyone who has reviewed and not recieved a reply, my apologies. I'm trying to juggle work, family, study and a hundred other things as well as my writing schedule at the moment, so forgive the delays, i will get to you, I promise. :) To La Farfalla - thank you for the fascinating review, I'll reply at length in due course! - Sythar
They were both very kind, very very kind, and it wasn't so very surprising that Lesgle and Joly had taken to spending so much time with Feuilly. Jehan thought that Joly and Lesgle fit together and created a surfeit of cracks and strengths so that in the end the crack overlaid crack and strength over strength and it was like dew on a spider's web, a beautiful imperfection that worked better together than Jehan thought they could have apart.
Feuilly too - somehow lent more to the pair than he took from them. It was the polarisation, the balancing out of the oposite forces, the gemini alike as twin stars sharing and knowing it seemed sometimes every minute detail of each other. Like once Jehan had seen a flower petal under a glass in Combeferre's rooms, magnified so big and bright and huge that there were crystal-like feathery gems layered over and across and so close to each other like embroidery on air. The gemini were like that, so intercrossed that they made one fabric together. They often seemed to see and know more about each other than those around them, instinctual gut knowledge that was open and honest and simple, while Feuilly saw everything and everyone but showed as ltle of himself as he could. His own self, Jehan suspected, was his most precious comodity and he was loath to give too much out in case he never got it back.
And together they seemed to work. In fact they were working to well that Jehan could not remember the last time in the past month or so that he had seen Joly or Lesgle without Feuilly turning up soon afterwards.
He was musing on this unexpected but beautiful representation of brotherhood when the door opened and Joly himself came in trailing Grantaire. An odd side-note to the friendship between Joly and Laigle and Feuilly was their adoption of Grantaire as a satelite. The drunk had previously spent most of his more sober moments (and really a lot of his less sober moments too) with Bahorel and Courfeyrac, but since appearing to fight with them, he was now attached to the Gemini like a leech.
Jehan frowned - of all the times for Grantaire to intrude! He was so very bad at taking anything seriously at all and this was so very important.
Laigle got up. "Maurice... cher..."
"Oh, hello," Joly looked rather tired, but managed his usual warming smile and nod for Jehan - even if he didn't know yet that really Jehan had made an awful mess of things today, it was nice of him to nod like that. But why couldn't Grantaire go away and not bother them today? Jehan tried giving him a stern look, but not very hopefully. The first time they met he had tried to talk seriously to Grantaire and Grantaire had laughed at him and spoken nothing but half-soused nonsense and refused to take even one thing seriously, not the beauty of science or the complex loveliness of literature nor even the importance of nobility. Enjolras was, of course, quite right about Grantaire. He was a man without faith, and Jehan felt both an ache and a horror for him and of him.
"Joly..." he said as steadily as he could. "I need to talk with you."
Joly widened his eyes in surprise and had to fix his glasses as they attempted to spring off the end of his nose. "What's the matter?"
"It... it's private." Feuilly and Lesgle already knew, of course. But there wasn't any need to involve Grantaire in this - and he had no wish to reveal his faults in front of the man. Luckily GrandR seemed to have sensed in a way which might or might not be traceable to the amount of absinthe he had imbibed (Jehan had a secret suspicion that once enough alcohol was processed by the liver there had to be some reaction which might or might not have created some sort of nascint sixth sense - it was a very silly idea and a very small one and not something he spent much time considering but it would obviously explain how someone as essentially oblivious as Grantaire could sometimes have a moment of insight) and had gone to seat himself on an armchair and started fiddling with items laid out on the coffee table.
"All right," Joly said slowly. "We can go in the kitchen?"
Oh thank you. "Please."
Joly led the way into the kitchen and out of sight of Grantaire and Feuilly and Lesgle. where Jehan could feel a little less stared at and a little more composed now that they were actually doing what he had come there to do. He managed to get the whole story out again, and found somewhat to his surprise that it had become easier on the third telling, though he still felt tearful and upset by the end - imagining all the things that might be happening to poor poor Combeferre.
Joly had been quite wonderful as an audience, listening attentively and making the right horrified noises at the right places. Now he had finished, Joly stared and blinked and said, "Oh dieu, Jehan..." and somehow it all felt even worse than it had before.
"I thought..." he felt a little stupid all of a sudden for thinking that Joly might have access to the elusive Harlequin when none of the rest of them did. "since you... you know Harlequin... you could ask him... you know..."
Joly nodded slowly. "I can try to get in contact with him... not exactly easy but... good god..."
"Do you think he'd let me help?" It was the question that had been burning in his soul since he had started running here. If only they would let him help to prove how much he regretted leaving Combeferre behind. If only he could do something to truly make up for what he'd done. If only Enjolras would believe in him again and Combeferre would be free and everything could maybe be quite all right once more...
But Joly was shaking his head. "I don't know... Scaramouche doesn't like to get anyone involved he doesn't have to..."
Oh. Scaramouche. Jehan found that in focusing on Harlequin so much he had quite forgotten the strange mysterious and elusive figure that had lead both the prison break and the unmasking of the hated spy. "Oh. Oh yes, Scaramouche." The hero who would rather fish for a man than teach him to fish.
"I'll do my best," Joly said carefully, biting his lip and looking worried. "Really I will."
Poor Joly. Now it was up to him, and Jehan knew how hard that could be. "...can I... talk to him?" If at least so that someone could say thank you for everything he had done so far. No one had done that yet. The hero fished and left the nets bursting and walked away while they ate. A strange arrangement and a stranger man.
"I...I'll ask him when I see him," Joly said, misunderstanding a little. "Sometimes he used to just leave messages." Not Harlequin, Joly. No. I want to talk to Scaramouche just once without him turning into smoke or running up onto a roof and out of sight. It's quite annoying in a way that he will not allow the possibility of him being a man as well as a spectre. It leaves the illusion that none of us could aspire to do what he does.
"Oh. I... I guess I understand. Enjolras will want to - see him, you know. I should... I should go." He knew he sounded disappointed, but it had been a very long and horrible day and all he wanted was to make sure that the people they needed would get their message and perhaps that a few words of gratitude got passed on. That was all.
Joly smiled at him weakly and pushed a few things into place on the bench. "Jehan... don't worry. They know what they're doing. They can get him out if anyone can."
No! No, don't you understand? It's not just that! "But I want to help!" he burst out all at once. "It... I want... I want to make it up to both of them!"
"I'll tell him that," Joly said sincerely, smiling a little and not - Jehan thought - perhaps in the 'there there, cheer up, it'll pass, Jehan' way people had sometimes.
"Thank you," he said. "I'll go tell Enjolras I've talked with you."
Joly nodded. "Thank you."
And that was it. He nodded to Joly, and then walked out of the room and nodded to Feuilly and Lesgle in the living room. Grantaire appeared to be attempting to assemble something out of the items on the coffee table with no great success, and didn't even look up - not that this particularly mattered. It was all right. Jehan left and started back for the cafe and it really was all right, it really was, he told himself firmly. Scaramouche and Harlequin would get word and would come. They had to. Sometimes when you were starving you needed the fish before you could be taught how to cast a net.
