Remember to Live

An Enjolras/Éponine one-shot

A/N: The Latin phrases translate to "In the midst of our lives we die", "Remember you will die," and "Remember to live."

She grows up pretty.

Whimsical and light-hearted, she floats through her early years with her eyes fixed on the stars. How exactly she ends up as a creature of Earth, born anew from the dirt, emerging into shadow, she will never quite know.

Instead of looking out of latticed windows she now balances on bridge railings at nightfall, trying to lose herself in the sound of rushing water too far below her, trying to feel alive.

…

He grows up different.

Simultaneously angry and reserved, he grows up with fury festering beneath his fine features and unblemished skin. He is a creature of fire, born and raised in the golden glow of the Parisian sun, with everything going for him, except for the itch beneath his skin made of censored words and staring eyes.

He studies spontaneity with the reserved gaze of a scientist. He weighs words. He builds friendships the way that blacksmiths forge iron bonds with fire.

…

In the final minutes, he will remember the two times he meets her eyes before the beginning of the end, before the moment he learns the name of the strange warrior-lover as he carries her body into their makeshift morgue.

…

The first time, he takes the long route home because he has been warned one too many times not to. She stands at the entrance to the alleyway he traverses when he's almost lost but not ready to admit it, dressed in a skirt and blouse washed to rags, her knees and elbows exposed through holes in the fabric, the sad faded outfit meticulously clean. Her face is scrubbed free of dirt, the skin stretched over her protruding cheekbones surprisingly pale, protected from the kiss of the sun by its usual smudges. Her sleeve is tied awkwardly to cover the bruises on her forearm.

She stares at him, the tattered remains of a pretty girl with gold-flecked eyes, her waist small enough for him to wrap his hands fully around it.

"Go home, Monsieur," she says calmly, seemingly perfectly composed. Then she smiles widely, maniacally, and the illusion is shattered. The air is heavy with the smell of liquor on her breath. He almost takes a step back. She is frightening, wild. "This is no place for a pretty child like you."

He glares at her and moves on, almost more repulsed by his own hypocrisy that he is by her, her fierce crudeness. The sky presses down on them both, threatening rain.

She watches his retreating back.

…

The second time, she has stopped trying. Her belt is gone, her waistline hidden in the shapeless tatters of her chemise. The bruises are on display. She is filthy. He feels indecent, looking at her, coated in the glory and honor and light of his ideals and his words, always his words, as she wanders drunkenly ahead of him, her bare feet too loud on the cobblestones. She holds an empty flask in her hand and sings softly to herself.

He tries to make out the words, but they're too soft, and slurred besides.

She tucks herself into a corner, carefully avoiding puddles as she sits down in the heaviness of the post-rain air. With her skirt forming a basket between her knees and her eyes half-closed she strikes him as a beggar, but as soon as she sees his hand digging into his own empty pockets—his father cut him off months ago—she melts into the shadows, leaving him with the image of another disconcerting smile.

…

He sees her shot. He sees her body twisted, then sprawling, her head bowed against the sound of retreating soldiers. He sees the redness soaking her shirt and spreading onto the cobblestones. He feels the wound in his own chest, a cleaver tearing into his heart. She is the first person he has ever killed.

So this is love—a girl with gold-flecked eyes and her life's blood soaking into the cracks of his revolution.

So this is love—a girl whose gold-flecked eyes close before he even learns her name.

…

In the final minutes, he realizes that he is finished with rousing speeches. His chosen final words are for himself only. "Media vita in more sumus". Not because he regrets this. But because he regrets her, too beautiful to be ugly and too wild for his world.

She steps out from the shadows of the barricade and responds. "Memento mori…memento vivere."

There are a lot of things he wants to say. Where did a street rat learn Latin, for one, but somehow, he already knows—he can see her curled up in a corner of Paris with a stolen book in her arms, her lips forming the words she reads. More importantly—I saw you shot. I saw you lifeless in someone else's arms. I killed you, not with my gun but with my words. But he does not want to question this miracle of a girl who sings even in the dusk of everything she has ever known, does not want to question that one bullet to the chest was not enough to snuff out her fragile, ghostly, fierce existence.

Instead he bows to her. "Shall we, mademoiselle?" He extends his hand in perfect courtesy, as though they are at a ball, about to dance. She places her fingertips against his palm, delicately, and almost like a lord escorting his lady to the dance floor he leads her up, onto the barricade, towards the white expanse of early-morning sky.

"What was that song you sang? That day I saw you in the streets."

He does not expect her to remember.

But she turns to him, tilts her face to the sun, and he sees her as an avenging angel for a brief, foolish moment. Then she meets his eyes and again she's skinny and scraggly and broken with bandages around her chest and they're both about to die for those that will never love them back.

"It was…something about being happy…to die of love."

She smiles, a soft, gentle smile, strange on her ravaged face.

"Silly, isn't it?"

He tightens his hand around hers in answer, and they turn to face the fire.

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