She always had a certain obsession with the way her hair tore through the wind as her feet pounded the ground. If there was a path she had to walk, she found a way to run. If she couldn't run, she might as well not go at all.
There was inevitable delight in the burning of her already smouldering lungs, the way her simmering insides were set alight. Something that allowed her to feel for once. Difficult breathing, pounding, bleeding heart. Sore feet and bruised toes. Aching muscles. Painful ecstasy.
When she was by herself, the rocks clinging to her beaten, calloused skin, she wasn't simply running, she was flying.
But demons were earthbound, as her mother cooly reminded her. Some called them the children of the devil, of that fallen angel named Lucifer. Éponine knew that Lucifer was gone, eaten by her kind. They were born of the fiery innards of the earth and shaped from the fallen ashes.
There were those who were neither angel nor demon. They hung on the thin air between the heavens and the grasps of hell. They outnumbered the combined populations of the differing places, but they were fickle creatures whose lungs couldn't handle the scorching ashes of Éponine's home and whose weak hearts were too imperfect to carry them to the angels.
The humans who didn't stay behind to haunt their ancestors were sent to the demons. They were the ones who felt too much guilt, whereas some who stayed behind felt too little and lived out their pathetic eternal lives wreaking havoc on the living.
Éponine was far too used to seeing the newcoming humans. She used to enjoy seeing their colors, like a spectrum of difference from the blood and ink and fire she was used to. As time progressed, some of the younger arrivals began to have stranger colors in their hair and drawings on their skin. She wanted to trace her fingers along the ink, but her touch, however light, would scorch them and burn them.
She didn't know how long she'd been living when she saw him.
(but could you really call her reality living when she felt nothing and chose to burn her heart rather than risk feeling?)
He looked like the hottest fires she had ever seen— not deep maroon like the liquid rock that snaked through her world, but like the heart of a pure flame. He was gold and blue, with drooping blue eyes and pale skin framed by curls the color of gold. His lips were lava and his hands were tough.
Éponine had only heard of angels, but she was sure that they looked like this boy.
There were stories of revolting angels thrown to the gates of this damned land to learn their lesson. Usually their delicate wings were torn by evil and their innocent souls were devoured by corrupt demons.
But this was just a human boy, thrown in with many others. None of them were meant to last, and none of them were going to thrive in this horrific land of fire and darkness.
The stone beneath her glowing feet was as black as the essence of darkness, the spirit of which surrounded those who were confined to the fires forever. It taunted demons and the damned both, reminding them that there was no escape.
"Never die," her mother said, lifting her chin roughly. "if demons die they are sent to earth, and will never return. the earth will freeze you, its air will suffocate you,"
Oh, how Éponine dreamed of bursting free. Of soaring over rippling waters and through skies as blue as this new boy's eyes. Of running over soft grass and grainy sand. Of laughing and smiling and not fearing repentance for joy. She pretended that this middle land wouldn't kill her the way her mother promised it would.
Sometimes she even dreamed of what heaven was like, and knew that it was a place that could not be simply seen. It had to be felt. It felt like "love".
Love was whispered about by their human slaves who toiled away in their demonic chambers, working their little souls to an end. Love was what kept some holding on for so long. It motivated their little minds. It made their feeble hearts swell.
Éponine imagined that loving felt the way she did when she ran.
So she began to run more, feeling a false feeling of love and the truth of joy. She felt free, but when she stopped it was like the thick, sulfurous air was suffocating her. Sweat evaporated in the heat and drew her eyes shut, feeling the hotness against her thick eyelids.
"Do you think you can run away?"
The voice caught her by surprise and she turned around, startled. The boy stood there, holding a burning piece of iron in his hands. His eyes burned her like her touch did humans. They were the color of the fabled sky, where there were no limits.
"Sometimes I feel like I'm flying." She confessed.
"Flying isn't all it's shacked up to be," He told her. "Haven't you heard of Icarus?"
She shook her head, and he sat beside her on the obsidian ground and told her the story of the boy with golden wings, the boy who thought he could soar past the sun.
"There is something up there that burns?" Éponine was shocked. She thought that the middle ground was a place of coolness and wetness. Of "rain" and "sky".
"The sun burns sweetly, so long as you don't get too close." He narrowed his eyes in suspicion. "Don't you remember?"
He thinks I'm a human. For a moment she was offended. How could he figure her to be so weak? Then she looked down and saw that her skin was not red like the magma that burned, but it glowed a dim fiery golden. Her hair was the color of the rock they sat upon, and she had no clue of her eyes. She knew that her mother's were red, while her sister's were golden. Her brother was cursed with sky eyes and therefore was cast into the middle land.
She could pass for someone like him.
"No," She found herself saying. "I don't."
Somehow that led to him telling stories of the way the sun felt against skin if you were far enough away. The way crisp air bit into your lungs and the way dew felt condensed against the blades of grass. How the clouds looked like physical laughter in their lumpy paths across the sky.
He talked of human's unfailing ability to feel, their never ending capacity for compassion. His eyes lit up as he spoke for his people, and she pictured them as her own personal sky, with their blue light and their cloudy dreams.
Talking with him, laughing at his words and longing for his stories, she suddenly understood. Humans were stronger than she thought. For they felt this often, this horrible tugging of heartstrings towards something unreachable. He was perfection, and she longed to touch his soft, capable skin. She longed to feel his warm, red lips against her time-ruined, chapped ones. She longed so much that it hurt.
Éponine fell in love.
"Never fall in love with a human or an angel," her mother warned. "humans are weak and morbid. Angels will fly away and leave you behind."
She suddenly understood how love could kill. She had heard horror stories of those who loved too much, who threw themselves to damnation rather than suffer from love unrequited. Seeing him and knowing that soon her home would devour his passion and his life as it did every other forgotten soul… It killed her.
If what her mother told her was right, then a death in hell would turn into eternity on earth. She could live with that, if it was like the way he described. Enjolras twisted the world she lived in fear of into something desirable. And she was going to get it, even if she couldn't get him.
She stood in front of a crater of pain. It was where the misbehaving humans were sent. It was the only thing that could kill a demon, and it was the way that humans gave up on their existence in hell. One full-body dip and you left hell for good.
Pain was white and frothy. She gripped the stone edges roughly until her knuckles turned something close to the color of what waited for her. With shaking limbs, she climbed to the lip of the crater. Her bare feet hovered over the surface. The burning wind blew her tangled hair away from her face, which was soaked with what Enjolras called "tears".
She felt guilty for leaving him behind, but she couldn't stay and love and be eventually left. It was only a matter of time before he would find himself in this place, howling with relieving agony, being released from forever of suffering.
She took a deep breath, her last of this suffocating air, and prepared to push off—
"STOP!" His voice was wrecked with emotion, and she turned to see him disheveled and reaching out for her. "Éponine, please don't—"
"I can't stay here." She was surprised to hear how thick her own voice was. "Not anymore."
"Stay," he begged. "Just a little longer."
"Why do you care?" She asked bitterly. "You'll end up here too… There is nothing after this for humans."
"That's why you can't!" He practically screamed. "Once you go, you'll be unreachable. Don't go where I can't follow…"
"What do you mean?" her throat was dry. If he wouldn't end up with the humans' fate, then he… "Are you a demon?"
"No," He told her. His eyes hit the smoking ground. "Please, don't jump. I can get you- I can get us- out of here. I promise."
"Why should I believe you?" She wanted to trust him, but she couldn't. He was hiding something from her.
Enjolras's secret was revealed within moments, when, with great effort, a pair of shimmering, white wings unfurled from no where. He was beautiful, sprung against the hellish background, he was really and truly—
"An angel," Éponine said dumbly, "You're an angel…"
"I can bring you to salvation," He coaxed, reaching out his pale hand to her. Éponine had never touched an angel. She didn't know what damage she could do. She cringed away.
Her heart broke even further,; even if both of them were immortal, there was no way for a demon and an angel. She told him, "You can't help me, you just can't. Leave it be, pretty boy. Go and fly away like your kind always does. Fly, fly away. And leave me behind."
She ignored his pleas and screams of internal agony as she let go. Her skin touched the liquified torture and she closed her eyes against it. She held back her own screams, even as she saw the last image of her angelic love reaching for her, forever reaching for the dirty demon girl who would never be enough for him.
She woke up in coolness, and when she sat up she saw that her imprint left a steaming mark in the grass. She was still burning, for the fire ran through her veins. But even as she smouldered her eyes were full of tears and rain. Her hands grasped at dewy grass and her cheeks felt the cool sting of an earthly breeze.
But she was alone, and this new world was too quiet.
Even feeling the welcoming arms of freedom, Éponine sobbed. She mourned the loss of her home, however awful it was. She mourned that this new world now had her in its midst. She mourned love lost, love that she should have never let into her heart.
I am weak, she thought.
"You are strong,"
She didn't know how he got there, how he followed her, but when she turned she saw him standing against the green and blue and brown. His wings curled around his shoulders and there were dark scorch marks dusting his skin. And Éponine had been right all along. His eyes were the color of the sky, and his hair was the sun contained in one golden mane.
"I am evil in every sense of the word," She whispered.
"No," He assured her. "You were born in the ashes, but you have risen. I was born in the sky and cast down, but I am returning." He knelt by her side and she wiped her tears. They felt nice against her hot skin.
"Can you fly?" She asked suddenly, pointing at his wings. He smirked, and at that moment she understood. Not all demons were all bad, and not all angels were all good. He was beautiful and charming, but he could be terrible, just as she was dark and corrupt and still could be pure of heart.
Once again, he reached for her.
She took his hand, and their touch burned, but not destructively. It tingled like the sun on a cool day, like emerging from a hot, confined place into the breeze. It burned like a new beginning, like a phoenix rising from the ash.
"Fly away with me." He proposed. She smiled.
"Of course. "