13th July, evening; A Problem of Picquet

Jérémie was last seen here.

He would never have thought things could get worse, but clearly there was still room for that. The recollection early that morning that he didn't have his musket had begun all of it. An aborted search for it near the river had turned up nothing and thus Jérémie had been obliged to fall in for the routine of morning muster without his firelock. The offence had been instantly spotted and he had been quite firmly reprimanded for his carelessness. A replacement was found for him, taken no doubt from a wounded man who had no need of it, but Jérémie had been assured that he would pay for the lost musket and also stand first sentry-go for the next fortnight as punishment.

The rest of the day had been spent in a disinteresting blur. Marching had that effect. He was not relieved when the column halted for the night, as it meant the first night of his punishment. Mustering up the energy to resent it was impossible, though. He was perfectly aware that he deserved this. After all, he was to blame for basically everything that had gone wrong in the past couple of days. Trouble had certainly followed him around closely enough lately. First Quentin, then Bright, then Proulx... and there were Mathilde and her mother, and Paol too, for whom Jérémie could only feel regret. Who was he to bring such distress to their doorsteps, anyway?

Having to stand picquet might have been nearly a blessing, had he not discovered after reporting for it that he was to be paired with Paol. This was the last thing he wanted, for a number of reasons - most prominent of which was the disaster of the previous evening. It might be best to say nothing, or as little as possible, and thus avoid any further problems, but Jérémie found that he was nearly bursting with words. Explanations, excuses, apologies... none of which could or would do anything to make any of this better. How could it?

Jérémie decided, eventually, that there was nothing for it but to lean slightly on his musket and stare out into the darkness, and wish he was somewhere far away from here. Proulx had been right about that, at least.

Paol shifted uneasily. He'd come to near to speaking half a dozen times already, to blurting out something idiotic, an apology for the night before, but each time he'd bit it back. Afraid to make things worse or, perhaps more selfishly, afraid to confirm his own fears. Still, he felt he had to say something.

Somewhat gingerly he flexed his right hand, feeling the pain sharpen as the broken skin stretched across his knuckles. "You found your musket?" he asked at last.

His fingers tightened unconsciously around the musket's barrel and instinctively he scraped his right thumb over the stock where, on his own weapon, there was a nick in the wood. Such a blemish was not present on this firelock, he knew, yet when his thumb rubbed over smooth wood, he felt only a keen sense of disappointment.

"No," he answered with a shrug. He could not keep the sigh out of his voice but neither did he honestly attempt to. By now, he was starting to accept the reality that any misfortune he encountered became known by the entire regiment within hours.

"Oh." Shit. Back to monosyllabic responses, then. Paol felt a sudden, harsh surge of frustration, directed not at Blanchard, or even particularly at himself, but at the stupidity of the entire situation. He'd been closer to Jérémie than anyone else for almost ten years and even if that was no longer reciprocated, it was pointless to the point of being absurd to keep going like this.

"Look, " he said, speaking quickly, in short, halting bursts, "I'm sorry. About last night. I--I should've just left it alone. Stayed with the wagon. Like you said." None of it would have happened if he'd just done as he'd been told. But that wasn't all of it, and he forced himself to keep going before he lost his nerve. "And--with Quentin. I didn't mean to make everything worse, I just-- I'm sorry."

Each word was like a blow from a Quentin-sized fist. It was a confirmation, if any was necessary, that he had handled this whole affair poorly. But all the 'ifs' that ran like an undercurrent in Paol's apology made something else blindingly obvious to Jérémie. He couldn't ignore this any longer. Or run away from it, he thought with scathing self-disgust.

"If..." How could he even put this into words? "If there's any fault to be claimed, I ought to claim it. It would have been nothing if I had just... been honest."

Honest and absent. It was not the initial dispute with Quentin that bothered him - he didn't care about Quentin or what happened to him in the least - but rather the subsequent incidents that weighed the most on him. Certainly, he couldn't blame Paol for doing what he felt to be best, in the circumstances.

Jérémie's fingers toyed unconsciously with the musket sling as he strove to get his thoughts in order. It was impossible to pick out a single time when either of them had been legitimately, singularly at fault, now that he gave the matter closer thought. Which did not help in the slightest.

He sighed. Stupid and useless just about summed him up. "Anyway, you're not the one that all of this has followed around like a shadow."

"But..." Paol was staring at him, for a moment completely at a loss. "This ain't never your fault," he blurted out at last. "Not any of it. And if it's been following you around-- Christ, half the time it's because I dragged it after you."

He was thinking again of the night before, of the entire idiotic argument. Jérémie had tried to defend him, he realized with a sudden flush of shame. In the fallout from the dispute, he'd forgotten that, the -- arguably -- single thing he ought to have remembered. His capacity for stupidity, it seemed, knew no bounds.

"You didn't bring Bright round, did you?" Or Proulx, for that matter. And both of them saying the same thing. The sequence of events was clear enough to Jérémie. He'd marked himself out for continued negative attention the second he'd swung on Quentin, even if said negative attention didn't come from Quentin himself.

He drew in a breath, on the verge of further speech, but then he let the words go without verbalising them. It could not be worth the effort, since it seemed the damage was already done.

"Well...no, but--" he broke off helplessly. Why was this so damned difficult?

Swallowing a sigh, he set his shoulder against the trunk of a tree, staring into the darkness. "You know they're -- they ain't right, don't you? I mean...about what they said."

That brought him up short and there was a silence as he tried to decide what, precisely, Paol meant. He didn't need to ask who 'they' were, at least, but that wasn't much help. Eventually, he shrugged halfheartedly.

"Maybe they aren't, but I can't see how that could be so." Indeed, what had he done these past two days but run away? Or, when he wished to keep unhappy details secret, be vague and let friends suffer for it anyway.

"I can," Paol said simply.

What was there to say to that? Clearly they had differing views of the same problem but Paol was not the more direct sufferer of it. Perhaps it made sense for him to believe things were not completely as bad as they were.

"I envy your certainty," Jérémie said presently. All was possibly not lost if one of them had a clear sense of judgement. Or so he hoped.

Certainty? It was rare that he could make a claim to that, but this was different. He did not think he could ever believe ill of Jérémie. Though that was precious little help now.

Tugging absently at his musket strap, Paol settled the weapon a bit higher on his shoulder. What else could he say? His gaze buried itself in one of the patches of deeper shadow, as if it might somehow yield an answer, but the darkness simply cast his question back at him like a silent echo.

The accusatory air was back, he thought. Not without reason, of course, but he felt defeated by its return nonetheless. Then again he had in essence called Paol a liar - why should there not be an unfavourable reaction to that?

Jérémie drew in a breath, held it a moment, then let it out again in a long sigh. It was only fair to say he deserved the silent censure. "What," he ventured, willing himself to say the words, "would you have done?"

"What?" The question caught him completely off guard. "What do you mean?"

"When this all started. About Quentin." Say it. Just say it. "Would you've done... different?"

He couldn't be sure why it was important to know, but it was.

Paol stared at him. "Different? I -- Nothing." Hadn't his own fight with Quentin proved at least that? "I don't understand.... You don't think I think--" He cursed mentally as he tripped over his own syntax. "I don't think you did anything wrong. Christ, I sure as hell don't think I could have done any better!"

This was not at all the response he had been expecting. The words that had been forming on his tongue withered away at once, leaving Jérémie feeling clumsy, brutish, and yet, strangely, relieved. Maybe it had not been for nothing after all.

His shoulders sagged and he closed his eyes, trying - and failing - to bring some order back to his freshly-scattered thoughts. "Thanks." It was the only safe thing he felt he could say, lest he embarrass himself further.

Was that what he'd been thinking all this time? Paol couldn't seem to wrap his head around it. The idea that he might have handled any part of the situation better than Jérémie was so utterly at odds with his perception of himself and of Blanchard, and indeed of the entire mess, that he could not fathom how Jérémie could have entertained the possibility.

Still, for what felt like the first time in two days, he had said something right -- or at least not wrong -- and his expression lightened somewhat with hopeful, if hesitant relief. "Nothin' to do with me," he mumbled awkwardly, "It's true, is all."

True. Maybe it was. Hopefully it was something he could learn to accept, not just recognise as a possibility. Or maybe he was just looking at the whole situation wrong. That was equally likely.

"At least... there will be no visitors tonight." Proulx would not come near the general bivouac, owing to his own nature, and Bright was fly enough to recognise when his welcome was worn thin. And Quentin... it was perhaps best to trust in the assurance that he too had been dealt with.

A sound that might almost have been a laugh escaped Paol. "If there are, I'm sayin' they came from the other direction and didn't give the countersign."

"As a good night as any for a little bayonet work," said Jérémie, with feeling. He would not cause an alarm by firing at anyone but he'd happily turn any unwelcome visitor into a pincushion. He'd had his fill of shying away from confrontation, after all.

"Aye, it is, at that," he agreed, tilting his head back to look up at the cloud blanketed sky. "Can't be all that much left of this watch, though. Maybe our luck's changing."

Hopefully that prediction would prove accurate. He'd more than enough of bad doings and trouble lately. "I hope it is." This applied to both of Paol's comments, really. All Jérémie wanted was to retreat somewhere nominally quiet, where there would be no unpleasant interruptions.

Not so very long after there came the tramp of footsteps approaching from the direction of the camp, and Paol turned, but any apprehension he might have felt was quickly dispelled by the two familiar voices which accompanied them.

"Gauvin?"

"Oi, Paulot! Where the devil are you? It's dark as pitch out -- Jesus, watch your step there, mate. Where -- Christ, there you are."

A moment later, Gauvin stepped out of the dark, followed closely by Couture.

The unexpected approach of strangers had Jérémie reaching instinctively for his bayonet but fortunately the voices that reached out of the dark were familiar and therefore welcome. Their relief had arrived. With a sigh, he let his bayonet slide back into its scabbard. Christ but he was all over nerves.

He shouldered his musket and stepped to the side, glad that in only a minute he would be out of here.