❧ Out ❧ Of ❧ Time

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[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.