#he's already been predisposed to dislike Cyrano and I don't think the change in attitude happens overnight.

[theimpossiblescheme]

#i wonder if an in canon explanation was they were separated on purpose as a final twist of the knife in the gut so to speak#by de guiche because he knew they were friends

Okay, I have been thinking about these tags ever since I first read them, and I need to go feral for a few minutes, bear with me...

When de Guiche first pulls Le Bret aside in the guardhouse and says that he's separating them, Le Bret's first instinct is to tell him to piss off and just walk away. But all the fight goes out of him when de Guiche reveals that he knows about Cyrano's exploits in Arras--did you know he was risking his life every morning just to post a letter? Did you encourage him in this? Or did you just sit there and do nothing while the cadets' finest swordsman put himself in needless danger time and time again? Between this and Cyrano jumping in front of a Spaniard's blade for him, de Guiche makes it clear that he will not have his Captain enabling Cyrano's worst impulses--"there are more men besides that one who need you. And if I have misjudged your leadership capabilities, I expect you to start proving them to me." And through all of this Le Bret starts to think... shit, maybe he was just letting Cyrano walk into harm's way. Maybe he hasn't been doing as good a job at protecting him from himself as he thought. After all, what has he ever done to stop Cyrano outside of bitching and moaning about his foolishness? And besides, what kind of Captain would he be if he ended up neglecting the rest of his men and letting them walk into the same danger? So as much as he hates it--and he hates himself for it--he concedes de Guiche's point.

From that point on, de Guiche has him working at his side more and more often, discussing strategy and coordination of other regiments, even taking reports to the Cardinal whenever appropriate. And while Le Bret's learned how to speak the courtiers' tongue in his twenty years of service, it will never come as naturally as his native Gascon. He still hates these pompous idiots on high who hold his and his brothers-in-arms' lives in their hands, and the more he hears de Guiche suppressing his accent to keep up with his uncle's inner circle, the more he feels a grudging sympathy for the man. Working alongside de Guiche eventually becomes less of a chore, much to his own chagrin, and it's a disturbingly mundane moment for them both when Le Bret actually learns his commander's first name. Meanwhile, he sees precious little of Cyrano anymore. It seems like every time they might have a moment alone together, de Guiche is demanding that moment for another of their discussions. Le Bret wonders how he's doing, how he's coping without Roxanne and Christian. How his new method of distracting himself--namely throwing himself into training the new batch of cadets--is working for him. Seeing these bright-eyed and bushy-tailed young men, so eager to rush out and throw their lives away, is a melancholy experience for Le Bret every year, and there's a part of him that always wants to say, I'm sorry some of you will never make it home. From afar, he's starting to see that same look in Cyrano's eyes, and he wonders if letting that Spaniard stab him would've been less painful.

He finally gets to fucking talk to Cyrano one night at Ragueneau's shop, when de Guiche goes alone to Paris and the cadets get to spend it enjoying themselves. After letting Cyrano carry the conversation for most of it, Le Bret alludes to his own work at their commander's side in vague terms, trying not to divulge the more delicate details. At one point, Cyrano gives him a very wry look--"Have the planets finally aligned to seal Earth's doom, then, that Le Bret is keeping secrets from me?" And with that, Le Bret cracks. He admits that de Guiche has been deliberately keeping them separate, that he believes they've been a bad influence on each other. Almost instantly, he can see that goddamn self-loathing streak of Cyrano's take over, and when his best friend tries to apologize for leading him astray, he's not having a word of it.

"If you insist on such an insulting presumption, Cyrano de Bergerac," he says after shocking them both by yanking him into a fierce and all too brief hug, "I will personally drag you out of this place to demand satisfaction."

"And have us both arrested for public dueling when you've so recently found favor with the Cardinal?" Cyrano's laugh is warmer than Le Bret's ever heard it as he pulls away. "I would never dream of it, my friend." Le Bret remembers a certain comparison to a dog making friends and decides not to question this change in attitude. Absence really does make the heart grow fonder, he's found.

He makes Cyrano promise to take care of himself, and thankfully Cyrano seems to hear how loaded the request is, after so long not being able to make it to his face. But even as Cyrano assures him that Ragueneau won't let him do anything stupid and the night ends on a relative high note, there's still that uncertainty in the air of when they'll be able to talk like this again.

Fourteen years pass like this, with both of them running agonizingly parallel to each other, only to intersect on rare, short occasions. One evening, a now silver-haired de Guiche--now the Duc de Gramont, but Le Bret barely bothers with it--excuses himself to go and visit an old friend. It doesn't escape his notice how his companion, usually so proud and upright as he moves through the world, carries so much weight and tension in his shoulders now and how his head seems to sink beneath his new wig... and all of a sudden Le Bret feels very old indeed. Over forty years he's been doing this, all the while outliving most of his friends and barely keeping up with those who remain. He's tired, and every extremity of his body aches with half a dozen old wounds complaining of the oncoming chill, and he just wants to understand how there are still young men out there who are so quick to follow in his footsteps. They could never be expected to understand...

He misses Cyrano. If anybody out there could understand, it would be him.

That's the evening, when Le Bret finally steps out for some fresh air, that a frantic Ragueneau comes running up to him with the worst news possible. That's the evening he regrets listening to de Guiche more than he's regretted anything in his life.

Never off my bullshit about these characters... please know that I am constantly thinking about Le Bret's absence from the last act of the 1950 Cyrano movie. How Carnovsky's Le Bret was such a secure anchor for Ferrer's Cyrano (how Cyrano always managed to find him in a crowd full of strangers and how Le Bret ran to find him even with an army of cutthroats on his heels), how the last time we saw them together Cyrano had saved Le Bret's life at Arras... and how Le Bret only reappears when Cyrano is about to die, with Ragueneau taking over his role as confidante. I am constantly thinking about what could have kept them from each other's side, when they had been so inseparable before. I am thinking about ways the director and actors must have justified it and wondering about how they could have broken my heart more than the original play already did...