Oh, no. Combeferre, no, no. That is not what I question. Please, banish that from your mind.
[He knows he is being sloppy with his wording, which is why he prefers the refuge of writing to the rush of speaking, but. That he could ever convey he regretted being there, or force someone to assume he had felt such a regret while among them... no.
Never.]
I would fight beside you all a thousand times. If the fates wound us in a loop, so that we might with foreknowledge be sent to the same task, I would follow you to it, if you went. There is no question for me there. A thousand times and forever, I would go too, and a thousand times and forever, I would believe we went for the sake of the right thing, to defend it, to hope together at our most visceral levels.
...But I do question our hypocrisy. That we tout the need for education by books, and educate by guns. I question it not because I feel we were wrong; for I have never seen such beautiful bravery defending all that is just; but I question our ability to make amends with it in our own souls, seeing how men still use guns first. Still hold such executions against those who invaded, who were merely hungry and scared. ...Has our lesson gone wrong, because we taught with improper tools?
[Knowing that he was rambling now, and again, as grateful for his listening as he was for the soothing motion of a hand, he got to his point.]
Were we dying just to die, Michel, and forgetting what we left behind? I saw three of you die. [Not one, not just Bahorel; no. Three. He remembers this distinctly, even if Combeferre might be confused by his insistence.] I held the hand of a ghost, when I held yours. And so, I feel ashamed; not because I did not want to be there, but because I did not want to see the final hours where you became ghosts. Because you; who were already pledged to death; fret that you did not save me, when the truth is I chose to die, the same as you.
no subject
[He knows he is being sloppy with his wording, which is why he prefers the refuge of writing to the rush of speaking, but. That he could ever convey he regretted being there, or force someone to assume he had felt such a regret while among them... no.
Never.]
I would fight beside you all a thousand times. If the fates wound us in a loop, so that we might with foreknowledge be sent to the same task, I would follow you to it, if you went. There is no question for me there. A thousand times and forever, I would go too, and a thousand times and forever, I would believe we went for the sake of the right thing, to defend it, to hope together at our most visceral levels.
...But I do question our hypocrisy. That we tout the need for education by books, and educate by guns. I question it not because I feel we were wrong; for I have never seen such beautiful bravery defending all that is just; but I question our ability to make amends with it in our own souls, seeing how men still use guns first. Still hold such executions against those who invaded, who were merely hungry and scared. ...Has our lesson gone wrong, because we taught with improper tools?
[Knowing that he was rambling now, and again, as grateful for his listening as he was for the soothing motion of a hand, he got to his point.]
Were we dying just to die, Michel, and forgetting what we left behind? I saw three of you die. [Not one, not just Bahorel; no. Three. He remembers this distinctly, even if Combeferre might be confused by his insistence.] I held the hand of a ghost, when I held yours. And so, I feel ashamed; not because I did not want to be there, but because I did not want to see the final hours where you became ghosts. Because you; who were already pledged to death; fret that you did not save me, when the truth is I chose to die, the same as you.
[There.]