"How could you possibly mess this up?" Thérnardier screamed, globs of spit flying in the dusty air. Éponine flinched, waiting for the inevitable blow.
Azelma and Madame were crouched on one of the beds in the room, and Gavroche had long gone since his visit that afternoon. Éponine was supposed to lure a young man into an alleyway for her father to rob him at knife point. Unfortunately, the intended victim happened to be Marius's friend. Éponine had quickly warned him- he was called 'Courfeyrac', she thought- and the lad had run off, leaving Éponine to be dragged back 'home' by her father.
"He jus' didn't want me! Not my fault!" She snapped. Thérnardier managed to find a bottle of wine in the ratty debris that littered their floor, and he took several quick gulps before his hand lashed out.
Éponine was caught off guard by the slap, and had been walking towards a hole in the wall where she stored her few possessions. The momentum of the slap and her movement sent her slamming into the wall head-first. The last thing she saw was a scaly-looking bug before her head collided with the plaster and everything went black.
Enjolras first saw her when she was talking to the child, Gavroche. Although the girl was smiling (the grin lit up her face and made her beauty evident despite her bedraggled appearance), Gavroche looked sad and almost bored. The girl handed the boy a coin and he managed a thin smile. When she finally kissed his dirty cheek goodbye, Enjolras caught Gavroche slipping the coin back in her pocket.
Enjolras didn't realize he was staring until she looked up and caught his gaze with a scowl.
"What are you looking at, monsieur?"
"Nothing. I just find myself amused by Gavroche and must have been lost in my train of thought. Forgive me." He was stiff, as he always was, but he felt his resolve begin to melt when her lips quirked into a slight grin.
"As do I. He's grown to be quite a little young man, hasn't he? I swear that he's grown several centimeters since yesterday." Éponine remarked. Enjolras fell into step beside her and the two began to walk together without planning it.
"How are you acquainted with him?" Enjolras asked.
"I should be the one asking you this, monsieur, being as I am his sister." She scoffed.
"Well, I do suppose that you just answered my question, non?" He felt himself smiling for some odd reason. "If you must know, Gavroche was quite a bit of help during the fight of 1830."
"Why must you say the date like that?" She laughed, bouncing on her heels in a way that drew attention from passerby. Enjolras found it strange that he simply didn't care about what others thought. "It was just last month, was it not?"
He stopped in his tracks and slowly looked at the oblivious girl, who was now peeking over a railing at one of the canals.
"Mademoiselle, I believe that you are mistaken. The fighting happened last year, not last month."
It was her turn to freeze and she shook her head slowly. "Next you will try to tell me that I am not my age!"
"Well, how many years to you have?"
"I am fifteen." She commented, and it was then that Enjolras knew that something was very wrong. The girl before him was most certainly a teenager, there was no mistaking that. However, she had made the shift from fifteen to sixteen in which all young girls begin to shine womanly beauty. Despite her skinny frame, Enjolras could- on an observational note, of course- tell that she was possessing of adult features.
"Enjolras!" Gavroche called from behind him. The eleven-year-old looked slightly strangled. "'Ello again, 'Ponine."
"Enjolras!" She turned to him, once again smiling. "That is a name fit for a storybook prince."
"Enjolras!" Gavroche called again. "A word?" Before he could respond, the boy dragged him far away from Éponine.
"Gavroche, what is wrong with your sister?"
"'Tis a long story. See, she is sixteen as of this April. But she-"
"Thinks she's still of fifteen years." Enjolras finished. Gavroche nodded and looked around as if wary that someone will overhear the two of them. "Why is that?"
"Shortly after the July revolution, our father knocked her around a little too roughly and she hit her head." Gavroche lowered his voice. "She's got some bad memory loss, 'Jolras. She wakes up every morning and thinks that it's still August of 1830, the day she was hit."
"Poor girl." Enjolras remarked, looking over Gavroche's shoulder to where –the admittedly beautiful- Éponine was still looking at the way the sun glinted off the water of the canal.
"And she don't need you goin' around and telling her that she's wrong!" Gavroche prodded his finger into Enjolras's chest. "It's bad enough that I'm growing and eventually she's gonna see me and I'll be grown up, but for now I can make her think everything's fine."
"But that won't help her, will it?" Enjolras said, a little dazedly. "It won't help for her to think that nothing has changed. The world will change around her- she will change- and yet everything will leave her behind."
"A tragedy worth telling." Gavroche snickered. By the time Enjolras turned, he was gone.
Éponine woke up with a content feeling she hadn't felt in a long time. It took a while to realize that she wasn't in her bed back at the Gorbeau tenement. After that, she realized that the strange, soft feeling was that of clean bedclothes caressing her bare skin.
And…. Was that a man's arm slung around her waist?
Her eyes shot open and she pushed herself away from the mysterious lover. As far as she could remember (given those few drunken nights with Azelma and Montparnasse), she was still a virgin. Until last night… Her thoughts and memories were muddled, but she frowned. She did nothing that night. She'd been out with Azelma, delivering letters, and then she went straight home and fell asleep with her mother combing her hair.
Éponine fully intended to make sense of this, but instead she opened her mouth and let out a loud scream. The man on the bed stirred and his sleep-bleary eyes caught hers. He began to panic as well and shot up. The covers fell from his chest, revealing his marble-like body. His blond hair was messy around his face and he stumbled towards her.
He was also naked.
She screamed some more.
"Stop screaming! Éponine!" The man tried to make her quiet, and when she refused to respond, he wrapped the blanket around his waist and knelt at her level. He kissed her mid scream.
That shut her up.
"You bastard." She said once he let her go. "I am a child."
He sighed and gently bulled her arms away from where they were covering her breasts. "No, Éponine, you're not."
She looked down and took in the sight. Yesterday she had nothing. She had been flat as a board, but now... Now she would consider herself well-endowed. Not only that, but she was fleshy in the healthy way that the burgeoise were.
"How do you know my name?" She whimpered. The whole situation –the naked-ness, the developing body, the handsome man- was far too much to handle.
He removed a single sheet from around himself and wrapped it around her instead.
"It is a long story, but to start off with, it is December of 1831…."
She woke up in an unfamiliar, clean bed. Since, to her knowledge, there was no one else there, she could relax and momentarily fool herself into believing that her father hadn't sold her to a burgoise man while she was asleep. However, curiosity set in and she opened her eyes.
From the dim light coming in from the window, she assumed that it was very early in the morning, and quite warm for August. A scent enveloped her as she sat up, the one of a natural man. It was husky and yet crisp at the same time. It smelled like paper and peppermint.
Éponine's well-trained nose caught a whiff of delightfully scented food. It was moments later that she saw a tray of crackers and cheese set out for her as well as a glass of wine. She quite nearly dove for the food, and in doing so noticed her clothing. She was dressed in a fine nightgown that hugged her curves- now where did those come from?- and her hair was clipped back with wooden combs that she never before even dreamed of having. She gulped all the food down and allowed the fine wine to stroke her throat.
Then she saw it. A small letter, miraculously folded and labeled with her name on it in neat handwriting.
Her hands were shaking as she reached for it.
My dear Éponine,
You are most likely lost and wondering where you are and how you got there. And I am telling you now that I have told you why every morning since you first came to my bed in August of 1831. Today you were planning to go visit Gavroche and give him that sous in your pocket, no? And then in the evening you and your father were planning a job to do? You have done all that, in August of 1830. The job failed and your father's hit damaged your brain, you have short term memory loss.
I believe that every day you don't remember me, I fall all the more in love with you. I suppose it is selfish of me, wanting you to remember me for one more day when you do not even know what I look like. The day has come for our revolution- yes, another, as you tell me every morn- and I shan't return.
I suppose that I wanted to say goodbye. I ask you to dispose of this letter, for if you return to your family, you will never remember me and you shall have easier mornings.
I love you with all my once-stony heart,
Luc Enjolras
An image popped into her head of blond hair and blue eyes, a tentative smile, and warm hands that were stained with ink. All throughout the letter, despite not knowing the man, she had been hiccupping and crying. It could be a cruel joke played on her by Montparnasse, or…
"Marius!" There was an angry man banging on the door to the flat next door. Éponine watched silently from the hallway as the man continued banging on the door. "Pontmercy, it is Enjolras, open up! I swear to God, if you make Bossuet get ejected from another class…"
Éponine smirked and ducked inside her flat before sending a cheeky, "He's not home, M'siur."
She took in a gasping breath. That handsome man, that rich student… He loved her? And she was now seventeen?
A sudden 'boom' rattled the glass in the window, tugging Éponine back to reality. He was out there, this student.. Her student. She may not remember him, but she had to stop him before he did something stupid.
She didn't remember loving him before, but she loved him that moment.
She pulled on a miscellaneous jacket that is too big for her. It is maroon and she thinks back to the angry man, it would suit him very well. She ran from the flat and paused for a moment with her now-soft bare feet pressing into the cobblestones so that she knew where she was.
And then she ran. She ran so that her lungs burned and her feet stung. The morning air was smoky and the gunshots were a nice lead, until they stopped with a scary finality. She paused along with the silence, until, from a few streets over, there was a blast of several guns firing at once.
She ended up outside the Corinth, a nice wine shop that she and Montparnasse used to dream about going in. But there.
From the second-story window, there was a form dangling with its foot stuck in the slats of the railing. She ran forwards and felt her heart thud awfully within her chest. Her hands flew to her mouth for Enjolras was the form, his white shirt stuck through with bullet holes that dripped red. The trails went from his chest and down his neck until landing either in his golden mop of hair or in the puddle of blood below.
She suddenly remembers spinning in a new dress of that color for him. She remembers the way they peeled it off of her together, both of them cursing the multitude of buttons, and then collapsed in each other's arms. She remembers falling in love with him every day they 'met again'. She remembers.
But it was too late.
That awkward moment when this is based on an Adam Sandler movie.
Review please! I'm sick, and reviews might cure me.