rebirth
From the second she could feel her body, all she was aware of was pain. Blinding, unyielding, crushing pain. Radiating through her lower torso, cutting off all feeling to her legs. Her muscles were twitching, her bones grinding against each other, her blood pumping, pulsating through her veins. Her body was on fire; there was no other option, for she had never felt this kind of agony.
Never, not once in her short, meaningless life. Her father's beatings had never inflicted this kind of suffering; even when he broke her bones, she could still crawl away, desperately clinging to life and consciousness as she tried to find help on the unforgiving streets. Worse than the emotional pain of Marius's rejection, and worse than seeing him fall in love with Cosette, right in front of her eyes. And, though she could not remember it, this pain trumped the pull from her mother's womb into the malicious world; anything more than this, and she would not have survived.
Survival; it was the least of her concerns. She had hoped to find peace in death; that's how it was supposed to be, right? A blinding white light, a floating sensation, and then away you went, off to the afterlife in a tranquil haze. This…this pain; this was hell. Maybe she was in hell; after all, the daughter of the wolf had no place in heaven.
Her surroundings came in short bursts. She could not open her eyes, and thus, the world focused in sharp snippets of sound and smell. Flashes of conversation, and snatches of words that seemed far away, but could have been inches from her head. The smell – the awful coppery stench of blood – invaded her nose. Though she was only taking in short bursts of air, the scent of decay seemed to curdle in her nostrils and turn her brain to ash.
She tried to focus; what was the last thing she remembered? Smoke, the smell of gunpowder, and the stark fear of death. The revolution had come as they had predicted. Maybe they had not understood the risks. Maybe they expected victory. Victory, however, had not come. Instead, the National Guard had begun to pick them off one by one.
Even if she survived the revolution, she knew she had minimal time left on earth. Between starvation, her parents, and the regular dangers of living on the streets, she would be lucky if she lived to twenty. He, however…he had years left. Plenty of time to spend with his new beloved, and for that, she gave him the only thing she could afford; the only thing she owned: her life.
The peaceful, trainquil ascent to the afterlife had not come, however, and Éponine Thenardier was keenly aware that she was very much alive. How, she was not sure. The ripping wound in her abdomen should have killed her, she knew that to be true. If she was alive, then surely, he could be as well. She parted her lips, and sucked in a deep gust of air.
In the moments that followed, everything changed. To start, the undertakers were startled by the fact that Éponine was alive; they had presumed her dead hours earlier when they had picked up her body from the barricade along with the male students.
As an almost afterthought, a man remarked to his colleague that they had better check all the bodies from the barricade; after all, the lone woman was the second of the presumed deceased revolutionaries to seemingly come back from the dead.
On the bed, Éponine stirred. Second one?
life
How he had survived, she never understood.
Bullets had ripped through his torso, he had flown back through the window, and hung, seemingly lifeless, for hours. He had been pulled down roughly by the undertaker; no care had to be taken, after all, seeing as the man was dead.
Auguste Enjolras, however, was not dead.
He had woken in a haze, his chest heavy, his lungs filling with small amounts of air. Each breath felt like fire, and in those first few moments, he begged for death. For release.
Release did not come, and after a couple months of recovery, the great leader, the one who made promises he could not keep, found himself on the streets with the young gamine that had haunted his meetings. They had never been friends, but the circumstances – their mutual rebirth from the brink of death – brought them together.
He did not consider himself to be "alive" in the typical sense of the word. He functioned, day by day, in a robotic, monotonous way. He did not indulge, he merely lived. He ate meager meals daily, wore the same clothes, and walked around the streets. Despite Marius's pleadings, he did not go to live with the Pontemercys.
Éponine, however, visited them often, though it was her sense of loyalty to Marius that drew her there. For several months, everything was fine: Marius and Cosette welcomed her into their home with open arms, even allowing her to stay overnight on the occasion she was too tired to return to her place on the streets. The bliss was short lived, and the announcement of Cosette's pregnancy brought Éponine somewhere she never would have guessed: Enjolras's arms.
It started quickly. One moment she was crying, and the next, Éponine was shaking with pent up lust as Enjolras slammed into her again, and again, and again, until she was left exhausted. They did not speak after, partly from embarrassment, and partly because they did not need to; the expectation was clear.
Every day they met up in an alleyway near the Musain. It was always a quick fuck; not much care was taken on either end. Teeth bit shoulders, elbows scraped brick walls, bruises were formed, but most importantly, feeling was released. The release that Enjolras was denied in death, was given to him in life. For her part, Éponine's continued obsession with Marius Pontmercy was channeled into her interactions with Enjolras. If she closed her eyes tightly enough, she could even pretend it was Marius pushing against her, and not the quiet, broken leader she spent her days with.
She could admit he was attractive. Before the fall of the barricade, though, he was divine; sometimes she even wondered how she had fallen for Marius, when such a fierce man planned a revolt before her very eyes. Now, in the dark haze of the life that should not be, Enjolras's normally bright blue eyes were shrouded in exhaustion and heartbreak. He walked almost bent over; it seemed the weight of the world was still resting on his shoulders. Only this time, it did not invigorate him; it destroyed him. He was a rebel without a cause, as the cause had been taken along with his friends.
They continued in this manner – quiet interactions, followed by rough, emotional sex, complete with more quiet interactions – until Spring 1833 began to turn to Summer.
death
It was a quiet Tuesday in June when Éponine realized that Enjolras was gone.
She had not seen him for nearly a week; they usually met midday and stayed together until nightfall. One day, Enjolras had failed to show up. Éponine was not immediately worried, as he may have been busy somewhere, or gotten lost, or maybe, just maybe, he just was not in the mood to fuck her.
She tried not to let it bother her, and instead, focused her attention on finding him. She looked everywhere; near the Musain, the University, and even the Pontmercy home, where she had the unfortunate experience of interacting with a very pregnant Cosette. Enjolras, however, was nowhere in sight.
She asked around, but news in Paris was slow. When Monday turned into Tuesday, Éponine took a deep breath and came to the conclusion that Enjolras was gone. On Thursday, she began to hear the whispers. Rumors of a presumed dead rebel who was found alone in the ruins of the café he had destroyed. With the pistol in hand, and no sign of a struggle, it seemed he had taken his own life.
She didn't need confirmation, or proof; she already knew. She had been with him for a year; through healing of wounds, to attempted reconstruction of broken hearts, to the eventual realization that neither of them would be whole again. In the back of her mind, she had always known it would end like this.
She could not bring herself to be angry with him. Though she had tried to give him a life after the revolution – a life that he could lead with her – she had always known it would not come to fruition. He was too broken, and too lost to ever lead another revolt, or start anew. In the end, all that was left for Auguste Enjolras was an escape– not the temporary one he sought with Éponine, but the ultimate release: his last breath.