❧ Out ❧ Of ❧ Time

[tinkertank]

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➷ THE CATCH!: AU-it! If they're sci-fi? Stick them in BCE. If they're Victorian? Put them in the 1920s. If they're from Candyland? Put them into Steampunk Dystopian Veggieland. WHERE IN TIME IS CARMEN SANDIAGO? them. Let's do this.
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(Also put what time period/theme, if you have something specific in mind and think it's unclear.)
➷ ♥

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[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.