It was easy enough for her to say. It was her blood on his hands, not the other way around. She hadn't stood there and seen her die in the arms of the man she loved so desperately. She hadn't stood in battle and watched those she cared so greatly for die all around her. He so badly longed to go back, to try again. Their numbers had seemed great when they were cheering and clapping and laughing at his speeches. He'd been a fool all along. Thinking he could change anything.
Well. That was definitely not the mood he'd been in when he'd sat down. He'd been hopeful for an evening of chatting with Eponine, and now he was miserable and, possibly, quite jealous, whatever that was. His face, always expressive, showed the hurt all over it.
But he liked the idea of talking about the future rather than the past. That was much easier to deal with. The future was where his strengths were. When he spoke to his friends, the students who'd stood beside him, he rarely spoke of the past unless it was to point out the injustices, or the way things had fallen. No, he was much better at talking about the future. Putting hope in front of people, giving them reasons to believe things would get better.
"So what's next?" he asked, motioning around them. "You mentioned classes, helping people from outside of this century to get acclimated. How would that work, I wonder? Will you be teaching them, or should we ask someone else to do so?"
We. Because he'd put himself in her life whether she'd wanted him to or not. That couldn't be helped. When they'd arrived, they'd leaned on each other because they were all the other really knew. Now he needed her in his life, whether he understood it or not. She meant the world to him. And helping her in her efforts? It was the only way he knew to show her.
He looked around the room, taking it all in. "You really have done a wonderful job with this place, you know. It's modern enough to be appealing to people from here but...it's comforting. Like home. People from this time could think it is something as simple as a...a tourist thing. Appealing to people who like to study our time."