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For Luck
for barricade day, 2022. AO3 version here.
The white-haired fellow looks harmless enough, sitting alone with his rifle at the foot of the barricade. But Bossuet has never seen good luck quite like what the old man has.
And this is an odd place for a lucky man.
“He is a man who saves others,” Combeferre said with a shrug when Bossuet asked. “He’s a man who does good by gunshots.”
It’s not that Bossuet suspects him. Marius vouched for him; moreover, police spies, well, spy. The man only stares at the ground, looking sad.
And maybe there’s nothing to be done. The cure for all the ills of the heart is coming soon enough, if Enjolras is to be believed.
(An image flashes through his mind, of sunlight through the window this morning and two dark heads asleep on the pillows beside him, breathing softly while he drowsed in the warm tangle of their limbs. He sets it carefully aside.)
The fact is, the next piece of bad luck is always coming. There’s almost always time for conversation first.
“Nice shot,” he says, sitting beside the man. The man’s eyes slide off him, hardly registering.
Bossuet fishes in his breast pocket for a flask. Contraband, of course; Enjolras is rationing brandy. But under the Republic, commands are more like guidelines, probably.
“For luck.” He offers it; the man ignores him. “It’s the good stuff, from way back in old man Hucheloup’s time. Been saving it for a rainy day.” He nods at the brilliant blue sky, free of grape since the man placed the mattress to dampen the ricochet. “Would’ve been rainier without you.”
The man nods absently, as if saving their lives was nothing.
Bossuet swallows a slug of brandy. It burns his throat and reminds him of nights when they had something worth celebrating. Last night was not a celebration–but it was joyful all the same. Somewhere on the far side of the barricade enclosure, he hears Joly sneeze. He doesn’t look.
“I don’t suppose your trick for walking between bullets is teachable? I wouldn’t say no to a lesson, if you had time today. I fear I’m busy tomorrow–positively buried, in fact. I’m on something of a deadline.”
The man continues staring at the ground.
“But if you don’t have such a trick… maybe don’t try that more often than you have to, all right?”
“I will not get shot, monsieur.”
His voice is flat, like the matter doesn’t interest him. Bossuet takes a swallow of brandy to hide his shiver.
There are men who come to barricades to die. This fellow may be another one.
He hates it. It feels too much like the slow coalescing of bad luck–not from these men themselves, but the way he can do nothing for them. He wants to argue sense into this fellow and Marius and Grantaire and send them all home.
But nobody is getting out now.
“Speaking of exploits with mattresses,” he says conversationally, “do you have anyone waiting at home for you?”
His audacity kindles for just an instant a frown baleful enough to raise gooseflesh on his arms. Good.
“Forgive a fool his foolish questions,” he says, laughing. “Me, my only regret is my mistress doesn’t have another man in her sights these days. Or rather, the other fellow in her sights is in theirs too, more’s the pity.” He nods towards the barricade and the legions of soldiers massed a gunshot’s length beyond it. If he listens, he can hear sabers rattling and rifles being adjusted. “She’ll land on her feet, though. She always does.”
It seems to shake something loose in the old man. He frowns around at the embattled barricade, the hunkered men, the locked doors. He gives them a long look before returning his gaze to the ground.
“There is someone,” Bossuet guesses.
A long pause.
“A daughter,” the man says.
The commotion beyond the barricade is growing. Enjolras stands erect and alert, though he has not yet signaled.
Bossuet holds out the flask again, and the man actually takes it. He only wets his lips with it, and even that makes him cough.
“Me and mine,” Bossuet says, “we stayed up till dawn last night. One last good night, in case. You know.”
The old man’s eyes, now that he is really looking at Bossuet, have an eerie intensity. “You are younger than I thought.”
“The outside of my skull adopted a mature gravity to prevent the inside from having to.”
“What is your name?”
“Lesgle, L'aigle, or Legle. Bossuet, if you’ve a sense of humor.”
“Lesgle,” the man repeats, which answers that.
Gunfire rings out. Enjolras is shouting orders. Bossuet jumps up. His place beside Courfeyrac is waiting.
“Take it,” he says to the old man, thrusting the flask into his hand. “Wear it in your breast pocket; with luck, it may stop a bullet. Drink my health with your daughter tomorrow.”
“What about you, monsieur?”
“Don’t worry,” Bossuet calls back, laughing, “I’ve never had that kind of luck.”
I tried to make some kind of cover
First Post!
I deleted my old tumblr because... man idk why it was covid-times and the prefrontal cortex was not in the room with us!! Anyways, I was reminded by my lovely friend @repecca that tumblr exists, and that some of my work has been going around on here, so I decided to post some of my work up officially! Starting off with my most notable (?) work to date, here's my LOTR: The Middle Kingdom Project. Now, it's been over a year since I posted this, and at the time I was... really searchingfor myself artistically, and I decided to go all in on something that I'd been ruminating on for a long time.
So, hello, again. I'm Leia. I do visual development/BG design, and I'm also a writer of things. I love fantasy and transformative work. It's nice to meet you.