[It was a kind reminder, as if there was anything that Jehan truly wished to avoid, it might be putting out his friend. Combeferre was harried enough upon his own arrival here, and Jehan felt the shame of adding to everyone's disquiet with his disappearance heavily; every time he looked on one of the crumpled papers he'd smoothed out to keep a record of Courfeyrac's strange jottings, or remembered with a flourish of new energy that Bahorel was among their ranks, but not quite new.

Still, he paused for a moment, keeping his eyes yet carefully down before admitting under his breath,]

Michel... I do not like it here. I do not like this future, or this stark ship with its artificial days and humorless halls, I do not like that the women here call public education boring, and that the men who came after us invented weapons that kill thousands in a flash. I do not like feeling outdated, for the first time, where I have always found it charming before; for it makes me feel imbecilic in the extreme, when I cannot complete a simple task. I do not like the awful fear of losing any of us any more than I can enjoy that we are not whole here. I-- I do not like feeling as if--

[But. Maybe that he could not say. Not just yet.

And so,]

--...I just do not like any of it, and I feel so, so selfish for thinking it, for feeling it, for saying it. We are given a second chance and we are together. And yet, I am so ungrateful as to feel heartbroken over it all.

[There, then. As soon as he had started, it had all tumbled out in a frenzy, as was the way with him. He gripped his own hands and closed his eyes against a stinging, trying to master himself.

Were it anyone else, he'd feel daft already for having said all of this. But with Combeferre, he felt somehow calmer for his being there.]