hogwarts AU with werewolf Feuilly? yes. okay. it’s very angsty and not very shippy. Sorry.
The morning after a full moon always felt like the continuation of the nightmare of the past day rather than a break from it. As if he wasn’t quite awake yet, not quite human-shaped again. Even if, in the last two years, Feuilly had usually found himself on a plush mattress, his head propped on a pillow, fresh sheet around his body, he was always sore, bruised, an so hurt and detached from his body it was as if he’d woken up in someone else’s bones.
It wasn’t far from the truth. His body had been broken down into pieces and rebuilt into something else’s, and even though, afterwards, when the worst was over, he looked more or less like the boy that he had been before, his body wasn’t the same. It couldn’t be. It could never be again.
Chocking on a sob that bubbled in his (his) throat, Feuilly took a deep breath – or attempted to.
A sharp, stabbing pain to his chest brought tears to his eyes and down his cheeks.
“You have broken ribs,” a deep, soft voice floated through the agony. Enjolras. “Take it easy. We bandaged them but they’re not fixed yet.”
Feuilly became aware of a cold cloth on his forehead; he reached out an arm that didn’t-quite-feel-like-his to touch it, but the pain once again spiked, and he cried out.
“Take it easy,” Enjolras repeated. Feuilly focused on his voice, the perfectly formed vowels of his southern accent. “Valjean had to stay at the school overnight so Cosette has gone to find a healer. I’m – sorry. You were hurt more than usu- than we anticipated.”
“What happened?” He said as the spasms receeded. Even though the day was overcast as it usually was in Scotland this time of the year, Feuilly didn’t have the strength to open his eyes yet, the light in the room too brutal.
He heard Enjolras take a small breath, and Feuilly was thankful – Enjolras valued honesty and truth immensely, and his warmth was almost reassuring. His voice was compassionate, but never pitying.
“We don’t know. We found you a little further than usual this morning. It looked like you had a rough night.”
The euphemism would have made Feuilly laugh, if he could.
“Yeah,” he swallowed. He tasted blood at the back of his throat. “I don’t… I don’t remember any of it.”
The voice that came out between his lips sounded so small, so raspy. It didn’t belong to him, it didn’t.
“I know,” Enjolras said. He took Feuilly’s hand – the one place Feuilly didn’t feel bruised and sore and raw – and squeezed it gently.
Enjolras didn’t care much for empty words, so he said nothing. For five, ten, fifteen minutes – or seconds. Time slowed down when you were in so much pain, but it gave Feuilly enough time to tentatively breathe again. Inhale, exhale. The bandaged around his broken ribs were tight. Inhale, exhale. His head swam. He couldn’t remember anything. Enjolras’ hand was cool around his. Feuilly’s body had never ran hot before; was this new? Or did he have a fever? What else had irreparably changed?
He couldn’t remember anything. Had he hurt someone else? Was this why this morning was so different?
“Would it help,” Enjolras began tentatively, and finally blinking, Feuilly saw him bite his lip, face drawn and pale, as if he hadn’t slept. “If I told you it wasn’t you? Whatever happened, whatever might happen- ” and once again, Feuilly appreciated Enjolras’ honesty, his clear vision, knowing how useless it was to pretend the risk of Feuilly hurting someone wasn’t terrifyingly real. “It’s not you.”
Feuilly swallowed again, the taste of blood making him nauseous and dizzy.
It wasn’t him. He could move his toes, could open his eyes and see his friend sitting beside him, feel the broken ribs and the bruises and the cuts.
But it wasn’t his body anymore.
What did that make him?
“No,” he whispered. “It doesn’t help. I know it sounds good but. Sorry. It doesn’t help.”
Enjolras nodded gravely. Maybe Feuilly would share with him someday, even if he didn’t fully understand – and Feuilly wished Enjolras never understood. Maybe someday, he would find the words to explain, the energy, the strength.
But for now, he focused on Enjolras’ hand around his, and tried to sleep until Cosette arrived with the healer.
Tag: oh feuilly
@mamzellecombeferre i can’t copy past your prompt properly or make this super long because TABLET but as promised. The prompt was : Bossuet, Joly et Feuilly + one frayed unraveling sock, two ribbons and a paintbrush.
To find Bossuet sitting in the middle of Joly’s living-room, two candles lightened in front of him, and one sock laying on the ground next to them, was not as shocking to Feuilly now as it might have been a year back. He had been the witness of many odd things in Joly’s (and Bossuet’s really) rooms, and he generally tried not to ask too many questions. Still – Joly had been whispering since he’d arrived with the pamphlets for tomorrow’s evening, and Bossuet looked so serious, that this time Feuilly’s curiosity got the best of him:
“Is everything alright?” He asked, finding himself whispering too despite not knowing why. “What are you doing?”
“Alas,” said Bossuet gravely. “Here lies my last sock. She was as brave as one could living at my feet, but now i fear her time to keep me warm is over at last. I will mourn her as it is proper, for none was as itchy, full of holes yet faithful to the post as she. She will be missed.”
Feuilly blinked. Joly moved around him, and came to put a hand on Bossuet’s shoulder, his face full of sympathy, despite his lips twitching like they wished to smile. Feuilly hesitated, stared at his friends, then thought about his lonely lodgings, and sat in front of Bossuet.
“Why is there only one?” He asked.
Clearly Bossuet hadn’t expected him to play along, because his serious demeanour threatened to break for a moment, before he coughed and answered with as much feeling as possible:
“The other left a while ago, never to be seen again, during a trip to the washing rooms. And while we must applaud her will for freedom, for it is what we all want and wishes for, i’m afraid this was the last straw for this one. Abandonned by all, she decayed until she came to this state. There is nothing to be done with it now. Even our best, most talented seamstress as declared her done for. As such, we are saying goodbye today before burying it.”
Feuilly looked at the sock. It looked indeed in a very bad state, and it was clear it would never fit anyone’s feet again. Still – to throw things away was against his nature. He thought for a moment, and then he straightened up.
“You sock may very well never be a sock again,” he said. “But i have another future for it if you let me try, Bossuet.”
Bossuet looked surprised but intrigued. He waved at him permission, and both Joly and him leaned closer as Feuilly grbbed the sock, and started to examine it before twisting it experimentally.
“I haven’t done this since i was a little boy,” said Feuilly thoughtfully. “Do you guys have some strings?”
Joly looked around, then he asked: “we have ribbons?” And went to retrieve them when Feuilly nodded decisively.
Once in possession of that, Feuilly went to work, and filled the poor sock with one the ribbons, making sure it didn’t spill out of the sock’s hole. Then, he carefully took the other ribbon and tied it up around the sock, until it looked like the sock had a little round head, and a frayed dress, with some imagination.
“There,” he said, pleased. “Now your sock is a doll, and kids will be happy to play with it. I made my first doll like that. Of course, i got better at carving tree branches after that, but nothing truly remplaces little dolls like that. They’re softer.”
He raised his eyes, satisfied, but then saw the faces of Joly and Bossuet. They had stilled, their eyes sad and a bit shocked, and Feuilly suddenly felt embarassed by his creation. It was as if Feuilly’s poor childhood had suddenly invaded the room with all its pitifulness and ugliness, and awkardness was not long to follow. Feuilly flushed in shame, tried to find something to say, anything, to have them forget what he’d said when Joly suddenly declared thoughfully:
“Do you know, if you squint, the doll looks like Grantaire a bit.”
“It does,” said Bossuet, moving closer. “I don’t know if it is the color or the form, but all it misses is the ugly nose.”
“Feuilly,” said Joly, “you know how to paint, don’t you? R left us one of his paintbrushes yesterday, after giving up again to paint us. We should draw his face, and then offer the doll to him. He is no child, but i can only assume he will be delighted we have thought of him.”
Feuilly breathed out slowly. It was truly Bossuet and Joly’s gift, he thought, that none of their sudden cheerfulness felt forced or full of pity. When he smiled, they beamed, and something uncomfortable disappeared in Feuilly’s stomach.
“Alright,” he said, holding the sock doll carefully in his hand. “Let’s make it for Grantaire.”
do you ever think about how feuilly spent his two hours of rest on the barricade carving “vivent les peuples” on the wall because i do and i start crying.
#FEUILLY #THIS IS ONE OF MY FAVORITE PARTS ABOUT FEUILLY #AND ALSO THE SADDEST#BECAUSE HIS VISION AND THE REACH OF HIS EMBRACE ARE SO BROAD #AND EVEN TRAPPED BETWEEN THESE FOUR WALLS #WAITING TO DIE #HE’S THINKING BEYOND THE BARRICADE BEYOND PARIS BEYOND FRANCE EVEN #AND HE’S GOING TO DIE WITH EVERYONE HE LOVES #LEAVING NO ONE TO REMEMBER HIM #BUT WHAT HE LEAVES BEHIND IS HIS LOVE FOR THE PEOPLE OF THE WORLD (tags by takethewatch)
63. glance
As Feuilly watched them plan their next move in a flurry of sentence fragments and half-gestures, he wondered if they had any idea how lucky they were that they’d found each other. He imagined they must; Enjolras and Courfeyrac had only known each other for three years, and they had both only known Combeferre for two, so a time before they’d struck this almost impossible harmony was certainly not a distant memory. It wasn’t long ago at all that they’d been where Feuilly was now: constantly explaining themselves, never quite connecting, never quite trusting that they had been believed or understood. And now they communicated profundities with glances, they had their own ideas articulated to them when they couldn’t find the words themselves.
It was mesmerizing to watch, and so Feuilly often did. But it was also isolating, so he never stuck around for long.
“Just let me know what you three come up with, then,” he said, trying to laugh as he waved himself out of their airwaves.
They returned his wave in a fuzzy unison that was almost comical, unwilling to pull themselves out of the groove they’d slipped into.
Feuilly didn’t take this personally, because it wasn’t personal, and he knew that. It still twinged, though, to know that such relationships were possible and to know, with the same certainty, that he would never find one of his own.
eirenical17 