Maria you truly do know me!
Also I’m tagging this for #LesMisRarePairsWeek because I’m just in time before the end of the week 😀
28. Stop pinning this on me! You started it!
It is a peculiar sensation, to wake up in a world you don’t quite recognize. Courfeyrac has only felt it a few times before, mostly in the throes of truly spectacular hangovers.
Actually, the one thing that’s reassuringly familiar, this time around, is the hangover itself.
The unfamiliar things: the hotel room, which isn’t his. Enjolras pacing the length of said room, talking way too loudly for Courfeyrac’s pounding head. The ring on his finger which has already started to turn his skin green.
“I can’t believe,” Enjolras says. “I can’t believe I let you talk me into this.”
Tag: I LOVE THIS SO MUCH
C o s e t t e Aesthetic
How strange, this feeling that my life’s begun at last / This change, can people really fall in love so fast?
If you are having a bad day, please unmute.
(Huskie puppy doesn’t quite get the howling thing. Sounds like a baby babbling.)
“Banana!”
* day is fixed*
ok. i super needed this.
THIS. The whole world should watch this.
I am not saying that the lighting is implying something but the lighting really is implying something.
He knew he was dead the moment he opened his eyes. Had he been asked how he knew he would not have been able to say – he certainly looked the same as he always did, and the street around him seemed like any other street of Paris, albeit much cleaner and devoid of passing strangers. Around him his friends too were looking around, and a little ways a few guardsmen still in uniform watched the revolutionaries with guarded eyes. Combeferre knew with the same calm certainty that they too had died, lives lost in service to their cause and their country.
“Well this is a bit dull, don’t you think?“ Courfeyrac had come up behind Combeferre and clapped him on the back now, eyes bright and face devoid of the exhausted strain that had seemed a near-permanent accessory during those last weeks. “I always thought dying would be something grand, not just the same as living. Perhaps the purpose of Hell is to bore us all into second death?”
“You seem quite certain that we have ended up in Hell,” Combeferre remarked absently, eyes scanning the assembled figures in an effort to see how many of them had survived. Not many, it would seem. The visceral reminder of such a loss of life would have depressed him ordinarily but now he felt only calm acceptance, a serenity that he had never quite achieved in life despite his best efforts. Joly and Bossuet huddled close to each other, checking each other for injuries, while Prouvaire and Feuilly looked around with wide eyes at their new surroundings. One of the guardsmen made his way hesitantly towards them – Combeferre realized somewhat belatedly that there were no weapons in sight anywhere – and Prouvaire drew him into their budding conversation, gestures as grand as ever.
“Where else would a philandering revolutionary like me end up?” Courfeyrac asked, the grin on his face making it clear how much he believed his own words. “Though your presence is surprising, I will admit.”
Combeferre shrugged, clambering to his feet. “Perhaps your hypothesis should be reevaluated,” he said. “Certainly this appears closer to limbo than the inferno. If nothing else our standard conceptions of Hell would most likely not permit socializing among the souls of the damned.” Even as he spoke Prouvaire let out a burst of laughter and clasped the guardsman’s hand in delight while even Feuilly seemed amused.
“They do seem quite lax on that point,” Courfeyrac agreed. “Tell me then, man of science that you are, what has happened to us?”
Combeferre shrugged. “I haven’t nearly enough data to speculate,” he said.
“Use your imagination, then!”
“You asked me my opinion as a man of science. If you want flights of imagination you would be better off joining Prouvaire.”
Courfeyrac laughed. “Perhaps I shall,” he said, words undermined by the fact that he made absolutely no move to leave Combeferre’s side. “Maybe someone will come explain things to us.”
“You expect an orientation into the afterlife?” Combeferre asked, raising his eyebrows at his friend.
“It would be impolite of them to leave us without even a specter of understanding,” Courfeyrac said with a grin. It only broadened as Combeferre rolled his eyes.
“You are truly incorrigible,” he said, shaking his head.
Courfeyrac was about to retaliate, no doubt with another pun, but in that moment a nearly blinding light began filling the street, engulfing the buildings and pavestones as it grew. Combeferre and Courfeyrac looked at each other.
“Is that the understanding you desired?” Combeferre wanted to know.
“It’s a start,” Courfeyrac allowed. “I assume we’re to give ourselves up to it and be transported to the next plane of existence.”
“That would be a logical assumption,” Combeferre agreed. Neither made any move to step closer.
It was not Prouvaire but Bossuet and Joly who passed into the light first, walking hand in hand, radiating joy and confidence. They paused just before stepping into it, Bossuet looking back with a brilliant smile. Then they were gone, bodies engulfed by brilliance.
A few of the guardsmen were quick to follow, passing quickly across and leaving nothing to mark their presence but an intangible feeling of rightness and serenity. Courfeyrac and Combeferre glanced at each other. Slowly the others trickled through, all looking equally contented. Combeferre had never seen Feuilly so wholly relaxed nor Prouvaire so utterly blissful. At last it was only them left. Neither spoke a word, though they both knew why they hesitated.
It seemed to take a long time and yet not long at all before Enjolras appeared. His golden hair glowed more fiercely than ever, and the smile on his lips made it clear that he had accepted his fate with open eyes and eager arms. Grantaire lay next to him, hand pressed against Enjolras’ in a way it never had been when they lived. He too smiled.
The two woke nearly simultaneously, faces smoothing out as they took in what had happened. Combeferre kept Courfeyrac back, though he too wanted nothing so much as to embrace his friend. There would be time.
Enjolras let go of Grantaire’s hand and leaned in, pressing a gentle kiss to his forehead and murmuring something too low for the others to hear. Grantaire laughed, a laugh so devoid of bitterness that it seemed to come from a different man entirely, and clapped Enjolras on the shoulder. With a jaunty wave towards the other two he sauntered into the light, vanishing as the others had. Only then did Enjolras turn to his friends, and his smile lit up his face even more than his glorious hair or the light that beckoned them all onwards. Without a word he draped his arms around Combeferre’s shoulder and Courfeyrac’s waist, pressing their bodies close to him in a silent promise. Combeferre and Courfeyrac found each other’s hands behind his back and together the three friends stepped forward and into the light.
hellooo you’re taking prompts!! that is very good of you!! :D if you’re in the mood, can i request some Joly/Musichetta/Bossuet (platonic or otherwise, R-involving or otherwise) set in spaaace? or with awkward parental meetings? or (somehow, miraculously) both? :)
(I also had a prompt from @mayleavestars for JMBR coffee shop in space, so clearly I had to do space, coffee shop, and meeting the parents all at once!)
Joly looks up in alarm when Bossuet
skids into the shop during an afternoon lull, his momentum finally
stopped by the counter when he runs into it and promptly bangs his
personal communicator down on it. “I am ruining our weekend plans,”
says Bossuet.“Did you forget an appointment
again?” Grantaire calls from the kitchen, where he’s making a batch
of his moon-famous muffins. “I keep telling you, we really need to
start a calendar for all of us so when we get Bahorel and Jehan to
cover for a day or two we can make the most of it.”“I got a message from my parents,”
says Bossuet, eyes wide, and Joly freezes, because Bossuet adores his
parents, so it must be bad news. Musichetta, who has been ignoring
them with enviable serenity from where she’s planning out the week’s
menu, looks up, so it must be serious. “They bought tickets here
without telling me and they’re arriving this afternoon. On the next
shuttle. Mom sent the message from Earthport so I wouldn’t have time
to prepare myself.”That is … not disastrous. But it is
definitely very nerve-wracking. Joly takes a deep breath and can
almost feel Musichetta and Grantaire taking one in tandem. He
recovers from his deep breath first. “Um, can I ask why?”“She said something about bringing
the earth to the moon colony if the moon colony won’t come to earth,
but really it’s to meet you two. Well, three, I keep telling them you
aren’t technically our boyfriend, R, but you’re my roommate, so they
insist.”
so we have a conversational safeword in my group of friends and it’s great, idk why more people don’t do this. whenever someone wants a subject to be dropped immediately no questions asked we just say “spleen” and we stop immediately and it’s a really good way to avoid crossing the line between teasing friends and genuinely upsetting them by accident, or stopping debates from turning into actual arguments
Wait but no this is actually a brilliant idea.
When I was a little baby high school student, I used to do the Living Chessboard at our local Renaissance Faire. We always used “forsooth” to indicate if someone was actually injured and needed to quickly end a choreographed fight. It was also very useful when doing little street improvisations because if someone tried to stop you, you could say “forsooth good sir, I must leave.” and they knew you couldn’t do a scene right then. We all used it in real life too, to say “no really” and it was amazing because there was a word used in a casual setting that meant “I’m not playing, I need you do listen to me.” So if someone tried to pick me up or tickle me, I could say “forsooth stop.” And I was instantly obeyed. I had “forsooth” long before I learned what a safeword was, and having a non-sexual safeword for everyday use amongst a circle of friends was the best thing ever. It made me feel very safe and listened to, even as a tiny 14 year old. Because let’s be honest, 14 year old me was teeny tiny and adorable and it’s easy to coo at kids when they say “no don’t pick me up!” but to have a word that every single person respected to mean “whatever I say after this MUST be listened to” was amazing. It gave me a definitive voice when it would have been easy to dismiss me.
So basically having platonic safewords is awesome and I’m all for it.
A (Printer’s) only son, and wealthy: an alternate Enjolras interpretation
A couple nights ago, @robertawickham and I were complaining that Hugo took so much from Charles Jeanne’s story to make his Ideal Barricade Hero (Enjolras) and then class-bent him to be a bourgeois student, instead of the working-class guy Jeanne actually was.
And then we realized Hugo doesn’t ..actually say… Enjolras is a STUDENT. Just “an only son and wealthy”. And he LOOKS like a student (a ‘college escapee’) but that’s in the same sentence that claims he looks like a pageboy and we’re all pretty sure he’s not that. And hey, workers can BE wealthy! Class often correlated with income (very often) but it wasn’t dependent on that; it was dependent on what sort of work a person did– manual labor was working-class, intellectual labor was bourgeoisie, to oversimplify a ridiculously complicated social strata. So after like five minutes of shouting TO HECK WITH YOUR CLASS ISSUES, HUGO, WE’RE TAKING ENJOLRAS BACK FOR THE WORKERS we realized we…needed a plausible profession?
@amarguerite mentioned that printers could, depending on their job and position, be quite wealthy, and gave us a bunch of wonderful details and info which are included under the cut. And lo, IT IS GOLD. All of it goes together to make Enjolras being the wealthy only son of print-shop owning family work SO WELL?!?
A SMALL AND ONLY PARTIAL list of the ways that Enjolras being the son of a printshop-owner makes Everything Better and Nothing Worse
-As a printer Enjolras is a logical point of connection for many interest groups; people need printing done! I cannot even believe how easy this makes plothooks!
-Also as a printer, Enjolras would be in a position to earn trust very quickly, despite his age and appearance, by printing illicit materials, serving as a message center, and so on.
-Wealthy or not, he likely wouldn’t have the formal education needed to be student; but he would have access to a lot of books and a professional advantage in learning what he could. This explains his occasional slips with Latin and the like, as well as why he’s apparently managed to get an education that so much inspires his Republican convictions–he chose his own reading material, apart from the standardized curriculum.
– He WOULD be in a position to have the kind of knowledge we see him display in Enjolras and His Lieutenants–awareness of who’s ramping up their revolutionary discussions, who’s getting cold feet, what the general mood of the radical groups in the city are. He’d know because THEY WOULD TELL HIM, with the kind of work they give him and how often and what the tone of it is. He’s as close to an internet hub as they’ve got. A GREAT person to help organize your activist group!
– Printers, whatever their more abstract politics, could hardly help knowing and caring about the various censorship and speech laws, which directly affected their business. A printshop owning family wouldn’t have to totally support Enjolras in his more dramatic views to agree with him taking dramatic action, especially in 1830; but they could still like Louis-Philippe, be more conservative– or very radical! So many options! (more on this under the cut)
– Printshop culture generally leaned heavily on the sort of jokes and teasing and goofing around the Amis are seen to love, and narratively applauded for, at least equally an evolution of working-class culture (which it really should be) as of student culture (which it still would be!)
– but as an expected heir and future manager of the shop he’d still be used to interacting with bourgeois clients and businesses! And probably dress quite well when out of the shop, in a subdued, professional way.
-Gavroche is mentioned as doing the occasional odd bit of work in a printshop. If anyone wants, this gives a really easy hook for Gavroche and Enjolras’ interactions at the barricade.
– Wait! (I panic.) Isn’t Feuilly the only workingman in this group of students?? **checks**! Wait, no, Hugo doesn’t actually say that! He only says that Feuilly IS a worker. Enjolras ALSO being a worker takes away nothing from Feuilly; a wealthy shop-owner’s only child and obvious heir will have dramatically more advantages than an orphan. But it does acknowledge that the working class wasn’t a homogenous block or single sort of life experience.
-Enjolras and Feuilly’s relationship is so much more interesting this way?? and it stops Feuilly being the Token Worker in a city full of workers in a worker-led movement. Seriously, Hugo, screw your class issues so much.
-I have an excuse to draw Enjolras in a printer’s apron with his sleeves up. :Like, ALWAYS. That is SO what I’m doing today.
Below the cut: Longer discussion and more explanation, and some Q&A with Amarguerite (shared with permission!) for the use of anyone else who wants to adopt this headcanon/alternate reading! (please consider sharing this headcanon it’s so great I am so happy right now) Warning: VERY LONG.
I’ve joked about “Kenobi Guilt Mode,” Luke isolating himself after his padawan’s destructive descent just like Obi-Wan did, still dressed in the uniform of his failure (don’t even get me started on the very deliberate and Alec Guinness-way Mark Hamill flicked back the hood of his robe) but I don’t want Episode VIII to be Rey pulling Luke back from that. I don’t want Rey to have to convince Luke of anything. Don’t give me a Luke who’s really just Obi-Wan reincarnate, cryptic and weary with guilt and a little bit of a jerk by way of his self-imposed exile.
Give me Luke, the golden boyking Jedi Knight (well, perhaps not a boyking anymore), but older and wiser. Can’t you imagine Luke – with all that bleeding-heart compassion he carried around, the way he saw goodness in everyone – as Jedi Master?
Give me a Luke who, yes, feels remorse and guilt for what happened with Ben but who uses that. Give me a Luke who is still unafraid of his emotions; a Luke who continues to embrace his emotions, even the fear and anger Yoda cautioned against, and find constructive ways to use them. Give me a Luke who saw his padawans and their training as a precious responsibility and still sees them as such, no matter how long they’ve been under the thrall of the Dark Side.
Give me a Luke who left everything and everyone when Kylo Ren was born and went looking for the Jedi Temple because he was seeking something that would help save his nephew. Give me a Luke who has spent the last 15 years trying to get his sister her family back. Give me a Luke who didn’t know where [his daughter/niece/youngest padawan] Rey was taken and has been trying to search for her for years without drawing unwanted attention; who wanted to find her without endangering her so instead of looking outright he Force-pushed images of his home into her dreams so she would come find him instead.
Give me a Luke who looks at this girl, trembling with fear and confusion and resolve and holding his father’s lightsaber, and says yes, yes, of course I will teach you, let’s start right now. Give me a Luke who listens to Rey, to what she’s been through and what she can already do, and doesn’t dismiss any of her experience. Give me a Luke who takes the survival skills that Rey has already learned and helps her adapt them to her Force abilities so they work in tandem. Give me a Luke who tells her that if she ever wants to make her own saber they can modify the hilt so it’s longer and more comfortable for her staff-ready grip. Give me a Luke who remembers what it is to shoulder a destiny you never expected and lends Rey the guidance and support he had only sporadically from Jedi masters so bogged down in their traditions and failures that he had to stand in defiance of them anyway.
Give me a Luke who doesn’t shrug off Rey’s presence or oppose going back to the Resistance because his sister needs him and when has he ever not gone to her aid? Give me a Luke who is gutted by Han’s death, just absolutely devastated by the loss of his friend and whatever part he may have had in it due to Ben’s fall, but is motivated by the loss as well: this has gone on long enough, I cannot sit idly by any longer, I must fix this. Give me a Luke who looks at Rey and sees himself: a girl who longs for family, brimming with power she doesn’t understand, desperate to help those who have befriended her.
Give me a Luke who sees Rey standing on the cliff with a lightsaber in hand and says, “I have waited so long for you; come, we must begin.”
i need fic of luke and leia’s force bond affecting their childhoods like, stat, because listen:
leia loves her parents, but the pressures of court life are enormous. use this fork, not that one. no, honey, you can’t go play in the dirt outside, the congressman is coming over for dinner. please don’t speak unless you’re asked a question. hush! that word isn’t for distinguished young ladies. and sometimes she feels like she’s going to explode. but when she can get a moment to herself, close her eyes, and meditate, she goes to the same place in her mind. she can’t put her finger on where it is, but it’s sandy and warm. she never sees another person there, but she feels a presence that lets her her rant, and sits with her until she’s quieted down, and together they watch the… wait, two suns?
luke loves owen and beru, but they’re so stifling. luke do this, luke do that, luke fix the droids, luke no you can’t go see your friends, you know it’s harvest time and your uncle isn’t getting any younger. this is your birthright, it’ll all be yours someday. he knows that they want to keep him safe and fed, and he’s so so grateful, but he can’t help but feel like he was made for more than moisture farming. sometimes, when he’s in the garage playing with his models, he’ll feel transported away, like he can almost hear the engines of a ship purring in the background and another presence beside him, watching silently with him as stars zoom past the window.
Imagine the cold chill that runs through Bail when he hears Leia talking about her imaginary friend and she says his name is Luke
Oh.
Oh.
Just curious-what do you think would have happened in Star Ears if Padme had survived?
I think Yoda would still want to hide and separate the children. I think Padme would refuse, and I hope Obi Wan would help–
Because wouldn’t that be fun? Padme, who ruled a planet, who challenged a senate, who married a horror, who can pick her own locks while handcuffed in the middle of a gladiatorial arena– now on the run with her two infants and only a heartbroken Obi Wan to back her up.
(And R2D2, of course.)
Padme’s always been the practical sort, even when royal, so she knows how to change a diaper and feed a child. She also knows how to fly the stolen ships Obi Wan and R2D2 hack into, how to bargain in thirteen intergalactic languages, how to spot a bounty hunter in a crowd, and how to shoot a blaster with deadly intent.
Padme was in love with someone who maybe never even existed– maybe once, there had been a boy who wanted to help people, who risked his life and his pod racer for someone else’s story, who made a young girl laugh in a sand-worn mechanic’s shop.
She had been chasing him for years, that once good heart, but now with these bruises purpling and fading around her neck, she stops waiting. She starts running. Every time Obi Wan force-moves something over the next few weeks, she has to bury a flinch.
But Leia is growing in fits and spurts, eating greedily and crying loudly. She stays in a sling on Padme’s chest when they move, Luke held snug in a sling around Obi Wan’s. Luke gets a whole head of thick brown hair while Leia’s is still patchy and bald, but he never matches his sister’s powerful lungs.
When Padme had been sitting in her high senatorial apartment on Corsucant, holding Anakin’s sweaty hand, she had never imagined she’d be murmuring desperately soothing noises to her fussy daughter while she shot around a corner at stormtroopers, while R2D2 meddles with a ship’s blast doors behind her.
Luke starts teething on a hot jungle planet where they hunker down for three weeks, sleeping in an abandoned old temple and catching the local wildlife for dinner. Leia takes her first steps in the belly of a Corellian freighter they’ve stowed away on. She wobbles between Padme’s outstretched hands and Obi Wan’s knees and boxes of smuggled luxuries. When she falls down, Obi Wan surges forward, heart in his throat, but Leia laughs.
Padme lost a husband, but Obi Wan lost a brother and his whole order– his world, his people, his family.
(One day, Leia’s whole home planet will vaporize and die under Vader’s–Anakin’s–command, and Obi Wan will find himself in the wreckage of it, the place Alderaan used to be, and he will recognize the sorrow shrieking into the Force.)
But for now– Padme watches Obi Wan win them funds in gambling halls, grin into the teeth of a good flyer chase, sleep with Leia strewn over his chest, and Padme wonders if he isn’t more heartbroken here over Anakin than she is.
Luke learns to walk a whole few months after Leia, but he falls less. He moves around the rim on mechanic’s shops, freighter cargo holds, makeshift camps on green planets, holding onto stable things and frowning seriously. Leia tries to leap from walking to running with no lead up time at all. She is not without scraped knees and scabby heels of her palms for years.
They manage to spend a whole eight months on a little Outer Rim planet in a sleepy agrarian settlement. Padme and Obi Wan repair farming droids while R2D2 plays nursemaid (both Leia and Luke will be fluent in droid by the time they’re six). Luke and Leia play rough-housing games in the dry dirt– this is the first time they’ve stayed anywhere long enough to learn other children’s names. On day two hundred and thirty six they hear reports of stormtroopers so they pack up and hop on a transport at the nearest spaceport, not even bothering to check where it’s going.
When they fly their own ships, they strap Luke and Leia into the same passenger’s seat and Padme and Obi Wan narrate. “Here you’ve got to always turn off the compressor before you activate the initiator…” “See the flashy blue light? Gotta have all the blue lights flashing…”
They hear reports of the empire growing. They see it– stormtroopers in more and more distant outposts, imperial ships passing them in the skies. Obi Wan lost the Jedi cloak years ago. They plate R2D2 in matte grey paint. Padme cuts her hair short and dresses in many-varied-layers like any refugee– because that’s what she is now, she and her little family.
Obi Wan has two lightsabers. He thinks Padme doesn’t know– he has the one he fights with, holding back stormtroopers and reflecting bounty hunters’ blaster shots, but he also has another one, tucked into the bottom of his pack.
“It’s Anakin’s, isn’t it?” Padme asks one late night, tucked in a stony sheltered hollow on a planet that storms warm rain thirty-eight hours out of the day’s forty-two. Obi Wan gives a soft laugh and puts his hand over his eyes as Padme goes on, “The saber you’re hiding from me.”
He nods, slowly, lets his hand fall. “I took it from him, when I left him for dead.”
“Not dead enough,” says Padme. “You’re keeping it in case yours gets lost?”
“Yes,” he says slowly. “Or in case… we might need another light saber, some day.”
Luke is bouncing a X-wing fighter toy along the wet pebbles. Leia is beeping something at R2D2, giggling over the rainfall.
“Hm,” says Padme. “We might need another two.”
GROSS SOBBING
eirenical17 