❧ Out ❧ Of ❧ Time

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[jondrette]

Eponine glared at his extended hand, before rearing back and spitting. Disgusting, that he would offer her his hand, and in the same sentence, refuse to end her suffering. She was hungry, she ached. She would not take his hand, nor his pity.

"I will heal, as will my pride," she said shortly. With some difficulty, she pushed herself up into a sitting position, her eyes on the man in the dim light.

"They'll make you, you know. They told me as much. Before their latest round of treatments." She coughed, running the back of her arm over her mouth. The clothing they had them in now, the simple linens, were dirty, and far less conservative than they should have been. Of course it didn't matter, given how often hers were lifted up by orderlies or other inmates. "We'll die in here." Unless she could get out.

[vivelavenir]

He cringed still at the spit; less at the feel of it, and more nearly at the meaning behind it; and went to wipe it on that thin and cloying fabric at his side. He did not mind being dirty (though he would have enjoyed the dignity of shoes more than he could care to admit), and the stench had long since ceased to bother him. Modesty had been most difficult hurdle to leap, and considering what they demanded of the pair, the first to see itself brought to its knees.

He felt piteously that he could not oblige what she asked, but it could not be her real desire, and he could no more commit that crime against goodness than he could commit that crime against his personal beliefs; those beliefs being the only thing they could not rob him of, or so he clung to the hope of.

"Without being too vulgar, mademoiselle, it does not work in that manner." And there, the loss of some modesty showed itself, in that he would even broach the topic. But how they expected two human beings to copulate in such filth and discomfort, barely knowing one another (perhaps loathing, on the part of she who had just suffered such torment), watched, starving, aching, itching for some change of scene or light or comfort... well.

Perhaps it was a near look at poverty in their biggest cities, Jehan thought, idly. Perhaps people did come together like that, perhaps they might even enjoy it.

But he could not get it to work even had he wanted to. Not like this.

"We may yet." Agreed, taking back up his seat, across the room from her. Death might be a blessing. Were that they could hasten it.

[jondrette]

"You shall call me my name, if you want to address me. I won't take for your mockery any other way," she said the moment he called her mademoiselle. It was a silly thing, but she hated to be called mademoiselle. It always seemed to be handed to her mockingly. Like she was not worthy of a true title.

By now, she was up, and leaning against the wall, peering out with dark eyes from under darker hair. "Is it? Then tell me, how does it work? You're not going to stick it up my ass, if that's what you want." A phantom smile played on her lips at the remark. Cruel, cutting, but apropos. "I know how it works better than you do. You can't even put it in the right hole."

She shouldn't be arguing, harassing him, she knew somewhere deep down. But she didn't have time for niceties. She had never been a nice girl.

[vivelavenir]

"I did not mean it in jest." He gave, sighing through the fingers that he leaned his mouth against; face to hands, hands to arms, arms to knees, knees to chest, as much as they could be with the current dressing arrangements. His tone was exasperated, but that too he chided himself for... for she must be used to mockery, to say such a thing. And to cruelty? Certainly.

"I'm sorry." More gently, this time. "I will call you 'Eponine' then, if you wish it so."

At her own biting, rude remarks, the lack of subtlety in every word, callous and crass, he again felt the cringing threatening his expression, but smoothed it out with a thumb, literally. Letting it splay against the side of his cheek to mould the clay of his skin neutral, he noticed with some detachment that it was rough now in places where usually it was not, without help of soap and a blade to keep it clean and smooth. Such thoughts, so far beside the point, helped to keep his calm: focus through un-focus.

When he returned to the physical reality of Eponine's words, leaving behind the physical reality of his cheek, he could only flick a brief glance up at her, and shake his head.

"I shalln't do anything you do not wish me to, worry you not." Which was as polite a manner of saying that he did not intend to cause her that particular pain, without stating which. Even if she could do so, his mouth did not easily form the same words. "But I also will not do anything I do not wish to." Which meant that 'right' spot or 'wrong': both options were negated.

"Sit, please; you are wounded."

[jondrette]

"I wish it," she said coolly. Anyone speaking to her kindly was treated with caution. So often those around her had been making a mockery of her. Poor, pitiful Eponine. See that crazed look she gets in her eye, let's all watch the girl be driven mad, see what happens. No, any kind word was met with suspicion, and now, certainly, was no different. She'd made that mistake before, listening to a kind doctor. He'd turned out to be the worst one. Why would men go out to find women when they had so many of them here.

"No, I will sit here and worry that we will die here," she said dryly, her tongue heavy in her mouth. She could still taste the metallic bite of her own blood. "Or perhaps I shall stand- if you haven't forgotten, we are all wounded. We are in a hospital, are we not?"

[vivelavenir]

"The hospital that wounds to heal is easily confused for a prison; you must excuse me if I find myself forgetful that we are kept by doctors and not wardens." Came the glum reply, making no further effort to coax her into any more comfortable position. It was not for him to decide, and so long as she did not stand with the inherent goal of heckling or harassing him, nor with the intent of injury upon herself, he saw no gladness in starting another needless argument with her.

It was all needless arguing, since they had been pressed in here what seemed like days ago, with the single bed and its thin mattress, the cracked walls, the high, useless lantern. The time had been punctuated by a few rounds of treatment upon the realization that they had no complied, and the treatments were barbaric, and did not inspire him to action with her anymore than they inspired him to hope for anything much better than dying here.

"They must keep other men; so surely, they will free you of your burden with me soon, and deliver you to someone more willing. If that is your wish, then wish for that."

[jondrette]

"I think I'm here for you," she said slowly, her voice drawling along the floors. "they keep other men, and the orderlies and doctors use me alike." she could be so open about it, that, if nothing else, was a terrible tragedy. Then again, her life had always been filled with such things. The world that Jehan came from did not lend itself to such depravity. Or at least, not out in the open. Behind closed doors, and that was another story all-together.

Case in point, her cell-mate.

"If they wanted me with someone else, they would have done it. It's you they're trying to cure today. Right now, they're laughing, saying my cunt's been good for everyone else, why not you?"

[vivelavenir]

Perhaps it was far too childish, far too boyish, to turn colours at her words. But words were powerful creatures to Jehan, and while it was not as if he had never indulged in a vulgarity himself, he still found him pressing his cheeks closer into his palms and knees, brandishing a burning red on their surface.

It made his chest clench to think of how ill they used her; so far from whatever the care was that she had truly needed. So easily used, because no one stood for her, and who might find the voice to argue on the side of the insane against venerated, educated staff? Who would stand in a court of law in Paris and vouch for the slut before the doctor?

Not that he would call her such, for women taken when it was not their will nor their desire, even those with such strength of personality as this: those women were truly victims.

He must look foolish, foppish, blushing at these things in name that she had lived in person. And as his heart clenched for her reality, his stomach did so for their situation. If this was true, and the simple fact was that she should suffer so long as he would not have her: then was he not being terribly selfish, and a party to their evil?

And yet, would committing an evil to cure another and make way for a third really be so progressive?

He did not know the answer, nor did he think she'd care for such philosophy.

"Then I can only apologize, Eponine. I can only be sorry that I cannot do it to you too, and that you may think me a monster or an idiot, or both, in either case. But you would not cure me, should I even be truly ill... and I cannot believe that, even were it possible-- this cure-- and accomplished, they would be kinder to you for it." He shook his head again, and closed his eyes. "There is no cure for those of us who are wrong in thought, rather than in mind. I'm sorry. For us both."

[jondrette]

Jehan, she had surmised, was older than her. Eponine was no more than seventeen, and uneducated. She could read, though that she kept to herself, out of worry for what the doctors would do to her if they found out that she could. It was above her station in life. Why should the dirty whore from the streets know how to read? Why would they want her to have any possible way out of this dank and dirty hell? Even if it was only with her mind.

"Do not apologize. I do not want to hear it, and I do not want your pity, either, if that is what you want to give me instead," she snapped, her words cut sharp on her teeth. "I don't care for your words. They mean nothing to me. You cannot pay for anything with words. You can make promises and break them just as easily. It would be simple to pretend. To tell them you'd been cured, I don't care if you are or aren't. They'll let you out, sooner than they'll let me go." Where would she go, anyway? The whore house, that was all that was left for her. After she'd been left here, she no longer knew what happened to her family. They'd want nothing to do with the mad girl they'd left to rot.

Deep in her chest, a laugh began to bubble, breaking fourth in the still air in the cell. "You are a funny man, I will have you know!"

[vivelavenir]

"Sympathy, rather than pity."

But is sounded derisive even to him, as if instead of distinguishing which he felt, he was instead correcting her choice of words. Either way, it did not matter. He did feel sorry for her, and pity bled into sympathy, and he could no more help one or the other than he could help needing air, and he could no more make of himself a man rather than monster to her than he could make love to her, and frankly, why bother?

She was contrary, and hardened, and gritty. She had every right to be. And if he were to sit there simpering over her situation, she should no more feel warmly towards him than if he had stood there railing back, calling her every cheap name and deriding her for being so heartless, such an ill companion, such a compound of the terrorizing that was already daily-faced.

If he admitted it to himself, he sometimes came dangerously, appallingly close to hating her. Unable to separate himself from her situation, equal in this squalor and misery, sometimes pity was difficult and resentment, vitriol tried to steal away and take its place. Shame kept it in check.

Pity was the lesser of two wrongs, when one's mind was too tired to figure out how to be right.

Brows raising, he looked up again.

"I'm funny? How do you mean? And I will say it, then. I will tell them that we have done what they asked, and I will try to put on as convincing an expression as every line of my face is capable of." And God help them if they thought to check, in whatever manner they used for such things.

But her laugh was disconcerting, in the meantime.

[jondrette]

"You're a rich man. How can you be sympathetic to my plight? All we have in common is this cell, this bedlam. The doctors would have your cock in me, and that is where it ends." She rolled her head back, feeling the uneven stones below her hair. A brush would be nice. But she wasn't allowed things like that. Everything became a weapon in her hands, and the doctors knew it well.

Her laugh, strangely hollow, echoed through the chamber, and once it stopped reverberating, it was then that Eponine spoke. "Because, m'sieur, you will not fuck me. I am willing. To fuck me would mean that both of us would be out of here, but you will hold yourself to some abstract idea of honor. There is no honor here. We are beyond god and government. To the people of Paris, we do not exist. We are less than human. But you will keep conducting yourself as if you were."

Eponine inhales, a rattling breath.

"We will tell them, then. And we shall see what they say. But it is on you."

[vivelavenir]

Under normal circumstances, he would explain as calmly as possible. With emotion, but logic too: how it was possible to feel sympathy for anyone, if one put themselves into it, heart and mind. But with the hunger gnawing at his insides, and the pain gnawing at his nerves, and her vulgar language gnawing at his patience, he felt himself less able to hold himself to those standards.

The laughing did it in.

Rubbing at his temple with an agitated breath out, he countered, "So a rich man cannot feel sympathy, when he is in the same boat as the poor woman, because why-? Because their lot is the same, and he ought to save his sympathies for himself? Or because he has not known enough suffering in his life to understand her years of it? Perhaps both! After all, if my sympathy is deficient, and you are telling me so, then you fit in well here; for the entire building is rooms in which one human tells another human in which ways they fall short." Snorting through his nose, he pressed his forehead closer to his knees, and went on with uncharacteristic shortness, "Laws are made and kept not by who is right, not by who is good; but by who is strongest. Perhaps I don't agree with Government, or perhaps I do not agree with God even. They are powerful, but not good! There, then, you see? It is not simply my strangeness in not wanting to take you that makes me fit company for these walls. God is wrathful, not good. The law is wrathful, not good. And though we may be beyond both, there is honour here if I decide it, there is humanity here if I decide I wish to pay for it in suffering, and you cannot stop me." Insisted. Petulant, almost.

"I will tell them, then. I will tell them, and insist, and even swear it. But I will not do it, and even if I did; you would not be out of here anymore than I. For the rich man is kept until his family is poor with paying for him, but the poor woman is kept for what? For good." She paid for these treatments with her body, and that was the grotesque truth. "And that is why I may feel sympathy for you." That her lack of wealth meant, if anything, death would come slower or harsher, and freedom? Perhaps not at all.

"But you will let me pay for my humanity with my flesh, for that is the wealth that I alone own and decide the use of."

[jondrette]

Oh, was he still speaking? It was hard to tell, the way his words fell on deaf ears, and rattled around in this cell. She could not bring herself to care what he said. He could cut her with words if he wanted, but knives were far better used for torturing her. "Then I do fit in well here. And this place shall be my grave. Perhaps I will be burned for warmth. Or they will boil my bones for broth. Perhaps they will drown me, as they attempt to treat me, or my body will give out when my soul has already been murdered. Your words are nothing new to me. Nothing I have not already said or thought."

Slowly, she let herself sink down the wall until she found herself nearly prone. "Your honor will hurt us both. But go fourth! Pound on the doors and tell them that you did it. They shall ask you how sweet I tasted, how warm I felt wrapped tight around your cock. Tell them I moaned for you, they shall like that, that I am as tight as ever. They will be eager to hear I know my way around a bedchamber. Go now and tell them! Then perhaps we shall be given a crumb."

[vivelavenir]

"Must you continue!"

Snapped, loathing, truly, the way she railed on. Perhaps she was mad, or merely mad at him. Perhaps it was undutiful, and ungentlemanly, and unfair to yell at her in return. But he did not want to hear those things, and had not her talent for tuning out.

"A moment, and I will. But with your laughter, and this calling out, they will not possibly think those the sounds of enjoyment you so strongly suggest I promise were made. Please... Eponine, please. Just give me a moment. Rest. I'm sorry, I should not have yelled-- rest."

[jondrette]

That got her attention and Eponine immediately stopped her laughter, turning towards him, her eyes wide. When men snapped, moving from one emotion to the other... Bad things followed.

Silently, she moved towards him on all fours, coming to do just as he told her to. To rest, her head against his arm. Had he been sitting differently, she would have placed her head on his lap in a truly childish gesture. But she was a child. Or should have been. She was seventeen, her childhood ripped from her. And this was where it got her.

"You are the first to apologize for it."

[vivelavenir]

When she softened, it became easier. In that dim light which outlined her thinness, she went from being gaunt (as the ghosts and skeletons who reached for the ankles of mortal in moralistic stories) to simply frail (like the old woman who had a troubled step on uneven cobbles-- an old women, confined in young skin, hanging on old bones.) As soon as she leaned on him, that spell that takes one from garish to girlish was complete.

He picked up his head a little better, and with a muted look of apology, shifted to put an arm about her-- slow, so she might pull away, if it were unwanted.

"Then I apologize for those who did not apologize, too." Wetting his lip, he tried to take in the injury to her form; bruises to her cheeks, the way her hair matted, faintly wet... "Are you cold?"

[jondrette]

His arm was unexpected, and for a moment, she froze, unsure if she wanted to bolt to the other side of the room or remain. In the end, she laid against him again, drawing in on herself, her knees to her chin. They could reach her chin with no difficulty, as starved as the small girl was. Her bones folded neatly in on themselves, without much but skin and sinew to keep them apart.

Here, against him, she could feel how she had been shivering. Or perhaps she had just started. No- it had been a constant, another thing she had gotten used to and put out of her mind.

"And in the summer, I am hot," she said by way of agreeing.

[vivelavenir]

"A truth if ever there was one."

He agreed, with a warmer tone slipping in, a sigh that curled into the briefest laugh, though without very much humor.

Carefully drawing her nearer, and with another, more mumbled apology, he went to rub the arm that was not stationed against his side, to attempt to draw life back into it.

"I prefer summer to winter. The heat is annoying, perhaps; but cold is vicious." A pause, and then, "Sleep, if it will come to you? It takes some time, what-- what we had discussed earlier. I will count for twenty minutes, and then call to them, if you want the rest."

[jondrette]

His touch was so gentle, Eponine had to will herself not to throw her arms around him, to cling to the only bit of kindness she has seen in weeks.

"I shall try. I have not slept in some time," surely he had known that. "But I do not know if I can. I know it takes time. We have established I am the more experienced. Count, and I shall rest. You will have worn me out." She managed another dry, humorless laugh. "And then you will tell them. And I shall rest..." Her words trailed off as she leaned against him, her eyes sliding shut.

[vivelavenir]

"Yes... that is how it was." He agreed, if that could be any comfort to her, and a credit to their story.

Keeping hold of her, he did count. It gave him something solid to put his mind to, and even if he had always found numbers cold, those calculations put upon time like a leash seemed kind now, as they applied to the quality of rest the small bundle of humanity against his arm might be allowed.

Other than his hand against her arm, he tried to hold very still, and silently thanked her for letting him show her a kindness; the proof that he was still able to do so. There was real medicine.

[jondrette]

Eponine muttered some jumble of noncommittal noises, nestling against her cellmate. He was warmer than she was, though they both barely had anything on to keep them that way. No blankets, nothing. There was the bed, which was some small mercy, but both had avoided it, assigning some morbid reality to it.

As he counted, Eponine let herself slip away into rest, and even into sleep, rocked into her dreams by the soft rise and fall of Jehan's breath.