On applications

[bonapartist]

This is a journey on which I am not keen to travel. I hardly need to speak of that, and yet I feel I must. I must leave Cosette now, when our lives together are beginning? That is not what I intend. I can never be happy if I am apart from her.

[ He sighs, looking troubled and unsure. ]

Too much has been lost already. I have seen too many empty rooms, and I wish not to leave another one behind me. The friends who are gone cannot be found again, it is impossible.

I have to keep looking forward, it's the only way. The world is not how I dreamed it might be, it is not how any of us imagined.

I do not need another reminder of that fact.

Comments

[bonapartist]

Trust in people is one matter. Trusting to fate, or to Providence perhaps, is another entirely. What is good, and right, will not always prevail, particularly when left to chance.

[kwahmtehredsehnen]

If fighting is what you prefer then.

[bonapartist]

I did not say that.

The truth is, I thought I had left all of that behind me. The thought of doing so again, now…I do not want that.

[ It fills him with grief. He has counted that cost, and found it too high. ]

[kwahmtehredsehnen]

It is a shame that you are being forced into such things again.

[bonapartist]

I do not fully know what lies ahead. That is why I cannot trust in it.

Do you think you would feel differently, in my position?

[kwahmtehredsehnen]

I have both resisted and give in. I have been a warrior in strife and a leader in times of peace.

There is not much I fear now, but that is also why I am not you.

[bonapartist]

You think me afraid. [ He's smiling, but she's not wrong. He's afraid of losing everything again. ]

Perhaps I am. I would call it caution rather than fear. You called yourself a warrior?

[kwahmtehredsehnen]

Is it not the unknown that is what you fear?

The greatest in Atlantis.

[bonapartist]

No. I fear that history may repeat itself, and in any case I have responsibilities at home that I would no longer seek to ignore.

[ Now he looks at her, confused. ] The only place I know by that name is the Atlantis I read about in stories as a child.

[kwahmtehredsehnen]

Then perhaps you will get the chance to return home. If you survive long enough.

[ She gives a nod. ] I have heard that my home has become nothing but stories, but I can promise that I am from that city.

[bonapartist]

That is...forgive me. That is so difficult for me to believe, but I know that you mean what you say, Mademoiselle.

Where is that place? I have never heard of its discovery.

[kwahmtehredsehnen]

You should learn more faith. Pessimism is not fitting one so young.

It is under the sea. You would not have heard of the discovery because we did not want the discovery to be found out. Our friends have kept our secret for us.

[bonapartist]

Do you call me young? [ He stares at her. She is but a girl, younger than he by his estimation. ] I am not so young as that.

[ There is literally no logic in what she's saying at all. Perhaps at the end of it all, he truly is dreaming. ]

The idea that human beings could live beneath the sea is...a fantasy, a child's story. Do you take me for a fool?