When she walks into the lecture hall for her history class, she freezes at the sight of the figure at the front of the room.
Not because he's astoundingly good-looking – even though he is, with a jawline so sharp she could probably shave with it, and golden curls that fall so gracefully onto his forehead she wants to ruffle them out of sheer perverseness – not because he's dressed impeccably either, in a crisp pale blue button-down that brings out the icy azure of his eyes, so pristine it makes her suddenly aware she's wearing the jeans she ripped moving into her new apartment and a ratty gray sweater with a string hanging off her right sleeve.
It has absolutely nothing to do with all that, and has everything to do with the fact she's seen it before. Seen him before, years ago, when she was just a senior in high school. She's getting her major in political science now, because of him.
Eponine finds a seat in the second row, and as she does so, she reflects upon that time.
Not particularly a happy time, which is why it's usually pushed to the back of the mental attic that is her memory. But that doesn't mean anything's gone fuzzy – there are some things you just can't forget.
Like saving someone's life, she thinks, as more students file in and the lecture hall is abuzz with conversation mixed with the hums of laptops being booted up and notebooks being taken out as pens start clicking expectantly.
He coughs, taps the pulpit up at the front of the hall a couple of times. Everything goes immediately silent – just like the room above the bar always did whenever he started speaking.
"Good afternoon," he says, and the memories that come flooding back at the familiar cultured diction makes her shiver in her seat just a little.
"Good afternoon," everyone gamely replies.
"I'm Professor Antoine Enjolras, Professor Enjolras or just Professor to the lot of you," he nods, before moving off the stage with a stack of papers. "Here's the syllabus for this class, if you could just distribute it amongst yourselves…"
When he passes by her seat, she fixes her eyes on him and wills him to notice her. She's not quite sure what she really wants him to do once he does so. Gasp, and turn pale on the spot? Say her name in a reverent whisper before demanding what she's doing in his class? Pass a note along with the syllabus to come see him after class? – okay, that one was going towards the risqué end of things.
He does none of those.
Instead, he turns in that time-and-evolution-preserved instinct to sense the gaze of someone else upon you, serious blue eyes which always, always startled her with their vibrancy locking on her intent brown.
He reaches out.
She waits.
He hands her the stack of papers. "Will you pass these to the people behind you?"
Eponine narrows her eyes, scanning his for a sign of recognition. There is nary a flicker. He is either a way better actor than he was years ago, or he sincerely does not remember – and he certainly does not know that it was she who saved him that day. He does not know that the last time she saw him, he'd looked like a fallen marble statue on the ground, barely breathing, the scarlet of his blood staining his flaxen hair. For a moment the shouts of policemen and frenzied students fill her ears, and her ribs and arms ache with the memory of sharp elbows and shoulders knocking into them as she struggled to safety with her unconscious burden, like the little mermaid in the hurricane, arms full of a prince that never woke in the jostle of the waves.
She shakes her head. "Yeah, sure," she begrudgingly obliges, taking the papers, dumping one on the tiny sliver of desk that is hers for an hour or so, and then sending them along for others to do the same.
"Now, class, the French Revolution was a period of social and radical upheaval in France starting in the events of 1787…" he starts, on the pulpit once more.
She sighs and puts her memories away to take notes. She loves this topic, and he does too, she knows, so she expects a great lecture.
He talks about Louis XVI, about his massive ineptitude and the discontent of the people, of the eventual calling of les états généraux. Of the Tennis Court Oath, and the storming of Bastille, a well-remembered national holiday now. It's a fine and analytical lecture, well-attuned to details, and he manages to surprise her a little on this topic with things she never knew, speaking so matter-of-factly, so carefully, treating the brave men of the past with reverence.
But, she starts. There's always a catch, that is no surprise to her, because she's a Thenardier (Jondrette now, she changed her name when she was 18, but she was first Thenardier and like an old house with a new layer of paint she is always Thenardier underneath, the name will never leave her alone). But it's a significant catch.
Enjolras lacks the brilliancy of his youth, she complains inwardly. He lacks the spark everyone used to be drawn to like helpless moths, made insipid and plain next to his dazzling words, his frenzied, passionate actions. Now, he is but a candle compared to the wildfire that once scorched all who came near.
The florescent lighting of the lecture hall pales his hair into the shade of corn silk, not the brilliant gold she knows it is, the color of a long-dead crown he once ranted about, and itoutrages her beyond belief.
She doesn't know why it upsets her so much, but she is fuming. She wants to kick and scream and cry like she hasn't in years, hasn't since they took her darling brother Gavroche away and put him in foster care, hasn't since she broke up with her abusive ex-boyfriend Montparnasse before fleeing away to college. She wants to punch his pretty little face, wants to fist her little hands in his shirt and shake him, just wants to do something, something to crack that serene marble exterior and show what she really knows is inside.
Who are you? She wails mentally at the figure who's circling the stage, pacing back and forth as he speaks.This isn't him. This isn't Enjolras, not the one I know. What happened to you?