A MEMORY STIRS
Enjolras remembered walking along the cracked, snow-dusted pavement, a red spot of bourgeois in the sea of the poor at the black market. He'd wanted to learn more about them. Maybe catch a glimpse of their lives.
The putrid smell radiating from their huddled bodies made him think of wet dog and rusted metal. Shattered and threatening. They were watching him now, calculating the worth of his clothes or what lay in his pockets, their tongues running along their blackened teeth and cracked lips. He felt their eyes boring into his back and snagging at him. Maybe he should have left his red coat at home.
A small figure bumped into him roughly. Too roughly. The weight in his pocket lifted as he staggered backwards.
He could have stopped them, but he didn't. He could have voiced their crime, but he didn't. He just stood there and let it happen, gazing at his perpetrator, curious.
"I'm so sorry, Monsieur!" the thief gasped, looking up.
A girl.
Her eyes gazed into his. He held on to those eyes for as long as he could. Chestnut. Up close, they were flecked with brilliant shades of gold and shined with intelligence and unyielding defiance.
He didn't want her to look away, and she didn't.
Something flickered in her deep brown eyes that Enjolras had rarely been exposed to seeing.
Pain.
Then she was gone, melting into the shadows from whence she'd come. Something seemed to flutter in Enjolras's marble heart, but disappeared before it could be recognized.
He remembered this: her chestnut eyes.
He thought he'd never see them again.
There was a bourgeois boy at the market that day.
A red coat. The idiot. He stuck out like a sore thumb here, announcing his status to the world like that. Red was a colour no poor man would dare to wear, people took less pity on beggars who wore vibrant colours. Everyone was watching him now.
It had been the coldest winter of Éponine's life. The days trudged by under a pale, worthless sun and a merciless biting wind. And the hunger—a hunger that gnawed and demanded, clawing at her insides, commanding her—was unbearable. The boy was rounding the corner, approaching her spot in the dark. Humiliation and regret bit at her, but were overpowered by hunger. She sighed and rushed forward.
It was too easy.
"I'm so sorry, Monsieur!" she gasped. She was a Thénardier, acting was in her blood. Proud irritation in the eyes of her bourgeois victims was usually enough to ease her conscience; she glanced up at the boy.
Her breath caught. He looked right at her, his eyes holding hers with such terrible, terrible honesty.
Up close, they were every kind of blue you could imagine, all at once. Firm and steady. Kind and gentle. But most of all, warm.
For a moment, Éponine couldn't remember what it felt like to be cold.
Guilt overtook her. His eyes were the colour of the ocean, of the sky, and of that doll in the window shop so many years ago.
It caught her eye immediately. Donned with a gorgeous baby blue dress with intricate detail embedded in the lace and a matching bonnet, Éponine gasped.
"Oh Papa, please let me have her! She is so beautiful!" Little Éponine tugged at her father's coat and pointed to the window of the shop.
"I'm sorry, ma chérie. We simply can't afford it. Now run along and play." Her father replied, his kind eyes imploring and apologetic.
Éponine loved that doll.
The next time she saw it, it was in Cosette's arms as she walked away hand in hand with the angel who had come to take her in his care. It was never hers to have.
Two months later the inn went bankrupt. That's when the kindness left her father's eyes, replaced with a cold, terrifying cruelty.
Her hell had begun.
The sudden reminder jolted her from the bittersweet memory. That life was gone, and it was never coming back. Now, she fought to the teeth every day to meet the quota her father had assigned her to bring home every night. For every missing franc, a beating awaited her. And she would not let a bourgeois boy stand in her way of avoiding that fate.
She slipped back into the shadows, clutching the wallet. She stole one last glance back at the boy in the red coat and ran as fast as her legs could carry her.
She remembered this: his cerulean eyes.
She thought she'd never see them again.
A/N: Thoughts?