backdated to June 5th

[pylades_drunk]

It's almost an obscenely beautiful day, Grantaire thinks, but then it wasn't a particularly miserable June when they'd put up the barricades, either. A little warm, and the middle of a cholera epidemic, but the weather hadn't been ugly.

This, though, is something else. Lilac scents the air; the weather might be described as perfect. Fruit ripens early on the branches of trees he wasn't even aware had ever borne fruit.

In the past, he'd celebrated the anniversary of their deaths with friends who had been there, drinking and vacillating between a hedonistic revelation of the shortness of life and a somber acknowledgement; in the more recent past, since he'd stopped drinking and some of them had disappeared, it'd been a smaller, sort of private reflection.

Today, he wanders in the park with a friend who knows what he's thinking of. They talk about other things, and they talk about their friends, and they let the specter of mortality wander into their conversation as it wants to, for there's no stopping it.

"Do you ever think about what happens if we disappear?" Eponine asks. Grantaire doesn't keep such close tabs on her that she feels smothered by it, but she's grown to enjoy that he texts to check in from time to time. When she was first here, she thought he might be using her as a stand-in for her brother. Now, it's just good to have someone who knows Paris, who has anything in common, on days like today.

"I try not to," Grantaire rejoins, picking a plum off a low branch. "I've only just started thinking in future tense. At any rate, that just calls up questions of the afterlife, and most of those possibilities are ridiculous or awful. Probably, nothing. We just --- stop. It'd be worse for the people here."

They ponder that for a moment. "Let's not do it, then," she says a little over-brightly, and holds up a hand. "Plum?"

"Certainly," he says, and throws her one.

Smirking, she steps back to catch it, right into the middle of the path.

Comments

[runtowardsomething]

"So far it's only trying to study," Beverly says with a laugh. Having a friend with her will probably only make that more difficult instead of less, but it's early yet, and she won't be too fucked if she doesn't get anything done today. It's too hard to have any sort of single-minded focus when it's gorgeous out and the school year is just about done, when there are so many things she could be doing instead of this.

"And it's all my history notes. There's so much to try to remember, it's stupid."She cracks a smile, though, as she looks over at Eponine. "At least exams'll be over soon and then we can all relax for a while."

[ no worries! it happens <3]

[daughterofawolf]

"Well, you've found the best bad influence to come get started on the relaxation," Eponine declares. "I could use a friend to talk to today, anyway," she admits, leaning her head onto Bev's shoulder without asking, because when you have someone you can do that with, you should.

"What sort of history is it?" she asks. "If it's the right year, I might know some of it." Granted, she doubts she's in any sort of history that makes the books, but sometimes in her classes she ends up knowing strangely specific facts. (Or disputing them, which is worse, because she knows she's right and her teachers are sure she's not.)

[runtowardsomething]

"Can I cite you as a source if you do?" Beverly asks, teasing, without missing a beat, smiling at the thought of it. Of all her classes, she thinks the history one might be her least favorite, convoluted and sometimes contradictory and nothing that will serve her remotely well after she graduates. If having a friend from the past will help with even some of it, though, then she's willing to make the most of it, if only because Eponine has offered. "It's mostly the annoying Darrow shit, but I think some of the rest might cover stuff you'd know."

Leaning into Eponine a little in turn when she rests her head on her shoulder, she adds, "What's up? If you want to talk about it." She won't press if Eponine doesn't, but she figures she should put the offer out there. Studying seems far less important than being there for a friend, as far as she's concerned.

[daughterofawolf]

Eponine smiles at the idea too: it distracts her from the strange not-quite-melancholy of the day. "I think the teachers who know me would have a few words for you, but you can try," she snorts. She hates the Darrow parts too: they make no sense. She'd almost rather this place have no history at all or a long, complicated one than this strange bits of both.

"Well, probably a few things if you really wanted," she says, for she's had some, one in particular, things on her mind that she wouldn't mind Bev listening to. "But it's...well, it's the day I die, back home. I mean, the anniversary of it."

[runtowardsomething]

"Oh," Beverly says, her voice softening a little. It's hard to know quite what to say to something like that, mostly because she doesn't want to inadvertently make anything worse by making too much of it or taking it too lightly. What she knows she can do, though, is be here, wrapping an arm around Eponine. Even if she doesn't have the words for something like this, no one should have to deal with that knowledge alone.

"We can talk about any of those few things you want," she adds, one thing she doesn't need to second-guess at all. Whatever she can do, even if it's just providing an ear, she will. "Including that. That's gotta be... Honestly, I can't imagine."