note: expect blood, guns, cursing, mentions of minor character death, all the goodies you'd find in your regular spy show. also, just to clarify, eponine and gavroche are NOT thenardiers in this fic. okay. enjoy. :)
The new recruit assimilates pretty quickly, all things considered. He learns how to disassemble and put back together a sniper rifle in under ten minutes, which will be good enough for now. He fights rough and dirty, all teeth and nails and sharp angles, just the way Eponine likes to teach it. When his fists are flying at her face and his feet scrabbling for balance, it is easier to forget who he looks so much like.
Of course, it would be impossible to have a perfect recruit, and Courfeyrac grouses to her in the halls that "Blondie wouldn't be able to hack into a GameBoy, let alone the Pentagon", but at least Gavin seems to be spending a lot of his time in the computer room to make up for it. Anyway, a recruit's technological prowess is the least of her concerns, because the man that she can't stop seeing every time Gavin rises from the blue mats with a crooked grin, wiping away sweat and blood, that man, her finest protégé and best partner, who went rogue after his friend Lamarque was killed, his face is now plastered all over the screens of Operations.
"Eponine! Get over here!" Pierce Thenardier bellows over the bustle of activity. "Enjolras interrupted the Black Arrow op."
She halts, immediately transformed with fury. "I told you, Pierce, you can't just let all operations go as usual when our finest assassin –"
He interrupts her with a savage snarl. "He was our finest assassin. Not any more. Now he's a target, and I want you and Montparnasse on it. Right after tonight's gala at the senator's. You're coming, Eponine." Her eyes narrow, but she nods anyway.
She loves galas, but she hates attending them.
They're the perfect opportunities for a quick hit. Every one of the recruits under her training knows that.
That's why when the glow of the lights reflects off a certain ivory-and-gold profile, the only thing surprising is the pang of betrayal. Not that it exists, but that she still feels it after six years.
"Enjolras," Pierce practically spits. He hates when a weapon backfires on him, she knows. And that is all people are to Pierce Thenardier now: expensive and occasionally temperamental weapons. "What is this?"
"War," Enjolras says almost offhandedly, if it weren't for the way his jaw tightens. "Black Arrow was just a taste. I'm going to hit you where it hurts, and I won't stop until I burn Patron-Minette down, Pierce."
Thenardier sneers. "You want to try to take down a group of the world's finest assassins, hand-polished to be indestructible, silent killing machines? You're welcome to try."
If Eponine wasn't mistaken, he looked almost sad. "Remember that you chose this, Pierce." He sets his champagne glass onto the counter Eponine's leaning on, and suddenly the entire building trembles.
She's not too busy shielding her boss and tucking him under the bar to watch Enjolras grab a waiter as a human shield, using the pistol tucked under his immaculate suit jacket and expertly picking off the guards Thenardier had set up as part of the catering service. The room erupts with bullets and commotion, guests screaming and heels clacking across the marble tile floor.
Thenardier doesn't have to tell her twice to follow him out the window.
She kicks her stupid shoes off and lands on the asphalt of the alley outside with practiced ease, bolting after the dark figure ahead. "Enjolras! Stop!"
He's never been good at listening to her, but the warning click of her gun being cocked is enough incentive.
Hands are raised into the air. "Eponine. Like old times." The chaos of the building is probably what is throwing her hearing off – she'd almost swear that his voice had warmed ever so slightly.
"Shut up. Take your gun out slowly and toss it on the ground." He does as she says. "Lie down on the ground, Enjolras."
"It doesn't have to be like this, Eponine." He turns around to face her, and the pleading look in his eyes throws her off slightly. "You know Patron-Minette has become a group of government-paid mercenaries treated like wild animals, and you like it as little as I do. Join me."
She tosses her head in aggravation. "You know I can't. I've got recruits to take care of. They're just kids." Her gaze darkens. "And you know this is the only way I can get my revenge for – them."
"I know." And he does – he's the only one of three people other than herself that does. His eyes soften in the orange glow of streetlights. She's always loved those eyes, how brilliantly blue, how they flash with every emotion, even if she never told him. Their memory haunted her for six years.
She swallows hard. Ah, damn.Eponine lets her gun clatter to the ground. "Run. I can't guarantee what will happen the next time, but I'm going to let you run now."
He dips his head a little before he turns away.
She accepts that as goodbye, until a bullet blazes into her shoulder.
She sinks to the ground, thrown off her feet by the impact even as the sound of footsteps bounce in her ears.
His touch burns, but not as much as his gaze when she struggles to her knees to look up at him. "It's a good wound." She blinks rapidly – five years ago, her fist lashing out, blood everywhere, a broken nose. "It's a good wound", she had said, no apology, no sympathy in her voice. "They'll never know you helped me."
She closes her eyes, and this time the footsteps recede into silence. Bullets for goodbyes, ours is a strange world.
That's the way it always works for them after that.
He shows up at various operations like some sort of avenging, personal phantom, flickering on the edges, and whenever she meets him, they clash with the all the chaos of the elements, roaring like wildfires, savage as hurricanes, as all-consuming as a tsunami.
They know, with a sort of ironic grimness, that they'll never beat each other, but hell, do they try. Struggling and straining against each other, they dispense broken bones and bruises and cuts, wearing them around their respective hideouts like lovebites. In a way, it's almost like their sparring sessions back at Patron-Minette, testing the limits, finding new ways to bend and stretch and crack.
And in the midst of all the chaos they stir up, as sweat drips into their eyes and blood splatters follow the progress of their endless deadly dance across the floor, he always manages to exhale out – not ask, nor beg, although sometimes she likes to try and see if she can get it to that point – "Join me."
"You know I can't," is her constant reply, before she elbows him in the throat or unbalances him with a well-placed kick.
It's become the soundtrack to every single one of their meetings, a whispered growl she tries to wipe from her mind like she wipes his blood off her hands, echoing through her bones. At least, it is, until an encounter in Dubai – her personal mission of vengeance, two weeks of grace Pierce Thenardier saw fit to throw her way along with an address.
"You're here for him, aren't you," he murmurs in the dusk of her hotel room, even as she aims her gun towards his heart and her words towards his intentions. "I'm here to help you. Just this once – you and me, like old times." In the sunshine that falls through the crack between the curtains, his eyes glow like blue embers, melancholy and almost nostalgic.
Her old partner, her best friend, the one person in Patron-Minette she had ever felt was real, staring at her quietly, hopeful yet wary of the disappointment he clearly felt was inevitable, just like her steady refusal of his invitation to join his cause. The look of someone who wanted something with all of his soul, yet would leave and never return if she asked.
She sighed, flipping the safety back on. "Try not to get in the way."
Enjolras was always so bad at listening to her.
He was by her side throughout the entire week as they conned their way in and clawed their way out of what had felt like the pit of hell (otherwise known as the filthy hideout of a Middle Eastern cartel), had seen her through lipsticked and airbrushed outfits in bars and seen her blood-streaked and sand-worn. And yet, after all this time, when opportunity is finally in sight, he refuses her justice.
"Don't make me break your fucking arm," she hisses as his fingers wrap around her wrist, holding her back.
"The place is crawling with security. We can't make it," he pleads, suddenly and strangely the voice of doubt.
She tears her arm away, refusing to stumble from exhaustion and blood loss as she stalks across the parking lot, loading her gun with fingers that shake with fury. "Don't come then."
He follows her anyway. "Eponine," he breathes, "Eponine, you'll be killed."
She whirls on him with a snarl, savage and practically demonic, hair swirling in a wild lion's mane. "Does it look like I care? He killed my family. They're all gone now, my parents, my sister, my baby brother… they were children. They're dead, Enjolras, and he killed them and left me behind. And you want me to let that, that murderer, that, that –" for a moment she is speechless with fury. "Does it really look like I care about living, Enjolras? I have nothing to live for."
"That's not true! That's not fucking true, don't you dare, Eponine –" he immediately snaps, hands clenching and unclenching in the air. "Your brother isn't dead. Okay? I said it. Years ago, I went and looked for him, when you told me about your family. He's alive. I found him."
Eponine leaps forward, her hands fisting in his shirt, practically shrieking in his face. "You knew he was alive and you never told me?! Where is he? Tell me where my brother is, right this instant, or I swear, I'll call Thenardier and a team will have you picked up in five minutes flat."
His eyes are pleading, but she refuses to give in, lifting her chin in response. "He goes by Gavin now."
She lets go of him so suddenly he stumbles, but she doesn't care; for her, everything has ceased to exist for a moment. Her eyes narrow, a growl rising from the depths of her throat. "Youfucker. You sick, twisted, fucker - you found my baby brother and you brought him to Patron-Minette? For what? To be turned into a killer? A thief? A conman?" A psychotic laugh burbles out of her, bordering on the hysterical. "It's not exactly daycare over here, you know. You brought him into a government-funded black operations group, where he'll be turned into a murderer. Where he'll be turned into someone like me."
"No, wait, no, I get it. He's your mole, isn't he? And you told me he's my brother because now I can't turn him in and you knew that, you asshole. You motherfucking asshole, I can't believe I trusted you for a second back there –"
His eyes widen under the tide of accusations. "No, wait, Eponine. I found him for you. See, you don't think you have anything to live for, but you do. You have him. You have me."
She rears back in shock and slams the muzzle of her pistol into his temple before his sad, pitying eyes can scorch her skin. He collapses to the asphalt with a thud that she'd be lying if she said wasn't satisfying.
Twenty minutes later, she is striding up the concrete towards the private jet of the man who murdered her family, the taste of revenge sharp as copper and sweet as oranges and gunpowder lingering already on her tongue, the night air whipping through her hair. The warmth of a streak of blood on her cheekbone feels like war paint as she breaks into a lope, the blade of her knife extended like a claw, ready to strike. The man is turning, his sickening face rising out of her memory and into reality, his eyes barely beginning to flash the light of recognition and the resulting horror, and all of a sudden ten security guards land on her like a pile of bricks.
She rolls on the asphalt, screeching out curses and striking out with every ounce of strength she has, but her knife is clattering somewhere five feet away and her wrists are being twisted harshly behind her back. Sometime before her face is smashed against the floor, she spots gilded curls and melancholy blue eyes that beg her to understand.
Fuck your apologies, she thinks, savoring the way his jaw tightens as someone kicks her in the ribs with a tell-tale crack, and then sweet blackness overtakes her.
Six months later of relatively silent encounters as Enjolras goes on some sort of hell-bent mission to destroy all of the files of Patron-Minette's missions Pierce Thenardier scattered around the road, six months of stepping on eggshells around Gavin as she scrutinizes him for any similarities to herself, six months of night-long internal debates on who to confront and when, she finally acts.
Courfeyrac had brought her the analysis of a phone call from Enjolras to Patron-Minette itself, using the acoustics to map out the plausible blueprint of the room he had been in.
She relishes the look of surprise on his face when he walks into his living room to find her perched on his armchair with a semi-automatic perched on her knee.
"You," she says, pressing the end of her gun to his temple, "you turned me in to security that night, didn't you."
His eyes meet hers, resolute in the way they refuse to show a hint of regret. "I didn't want to see you hurt."
"Spare me," she hisses. "I've received intel that the man who slaughtered my family is now doing cocaine runs in the backwoods of Russia. However, Pierce isn't letting me go due to the fact he's still a bit sore about having to fish me up from the depths of the Arabic jails. So you are going to take a little trip to Russia. Call up your friends and allies there, I don't care who. Just find him and call me once you do – you remember how to use Patron-Minette satellite phones, don't you? If you don't bring him to me," she presses the cool gunmetal closer to his skin, "I will not hesitate to disclose the location of your sweet little loft here to Patron-Minette. And you know what Amelie Thenardier is going to do to you once you're hauled back with a bullet in your shoulder and one in your leg."
"You don't have to do this," he murmurs. "I'd help you anyway."
"Shut up," she groans. "I'm done with your lies, Enjolras. Just do what I say, for once." He refuses to look at her as he nods.
Eponine stalks out of the apartment, and she doesn't glance back.
A month later she gets the call.
A few hours later, she's on her way to a safehouse just outside Budapest.
Enjolras gives her a bloodstained half-smile as she walks in the door. "Remember this? Remember us, here?"
"There is no 'us'. There never was," she retorts coldly. But yes, she does, she remembers a young, fresh-out-of-training Enjolras, all messy curls and smiles, so bright it hurt to look at him, while she waited in the shadows, a whisper in his ear, a sniper on the hill, waiting for the signal. She shakes her head. "Where is he?"
He limps just a little as he leads her to a back room. There is a huge gash above his left eye, and if this was before, she would be fussing about going to see Joly and he would be growling something about being fine (he takes after his mentor, you see).
All of these thoughts fade away as the door opens.
She manages to duck in time as a chair swings towards her head. They both surge ahead, executing a graceless but effective tackle, all three bodies hitting the hardwood floor. A few minutes of blunt fists and sharp knuckles, lashing feet and hard knees, and they've slammed the man into the floor facedown.
"Didn't you cuff him?" She demands in a pant, straddling the man's back and twisting a ziptie around his wrists. If she pulls too tight, well, she can put him out of his misery soon.
"Of course I did," his distracted tone makes her glance up. The blond assassin is picking a familiar bulky black silhouette on the ground. "He used the phone. Only Patron-Minette agents have the code."
Her eyebrows furrow immediately. "How –" She pulls the man's head up by his hair, lifting it out of the dust. "Where did you get the code? Listen here. There is no sympathy for you in this room. The faster you answer, the quicker and less torturous your death. That is all."
Cold, serpentine eyes roll back to meet hers. His voice is even, if a little breathless. "Let me up and I'll tell you."
She rolls off, and Enjolras jerks the man upward so he's kneeling at their feet.
Enjolras' jaw is tight, his shoulders tense as if ready to pounce once more. "Who did you call, first of all?"
"The Russians, of course. Faster than Patron-Minette, and less afraid of causing too much ruckus. They'll be here in fifteen minutes, I should think."
"So you are Patron-Minette," Eponine murmurs.
The way he laughs sends chills down her spine. "I was. Silly Eponine, did you really think that it was a coincidence when Pierce Thenardier found you when he did? So soon after the unfortunate demise of your siblings and their cute babysitters, your friends – Marius and Cosette, was it? Sweet little married couple. Not to mention how it coincided with that car crash down in Paris that took your parents."
She scrabbles for her gun, jumping forward to press the barrel at the patch of skin between his eyes. "Don't you dare lie to me. Don't you dare." The words rise out of her in a low snarl.
"You idiot," he snickers, a wheezing giggle. "You never realized Pierce Thenardier was playing you all this time. He hired me to kill your siblings – your brother escaped, I think. But your sister, she cried when she saw me. Such a pretty girl, your sister. She would have looked so much like you. I don't know about your parents, my team took care of that, but I heard they were found still embracing when the car crashed. Leaders of the most powerful crime syndicate in Europe, and still in love as ever. Yes, I see you're getting angry now. Are you angry at me, or at the fact your boss paid me to kill your family so he could gain your services? Shoot me now or shoot me later, will it change the fact they're dead at my and his hands?"
She trembles. For the first time in a long time, she shakes as she grips the gun, her ears ringing. There's a vibration singing in her spine, and suddenly she cannot bear the sight of him and his terrible sneer. She holsters her gun and marches away.
Eponine's standing in the snow outside when the gunshot reverberates throughout the house. Only seconds later, Enjolras stomps outside, practically electric with rage as he paces.
"You killed him," she says, slowly.
He pauses in his anguished rounds. "Yeah, I did. I'm sorry, I know it was your right but I, I just –" for a moment he looks like he might spontaneously combust. "I knew Pierce Thenardier wasn't a good person, I knew how manipulative he was, but the way he orchestrated everything, I can't believe that. I can't understand how he could do that to anyone. I can't understand how someone could do that to you. This goes beyond anything that Patron-Minette was ever called to do – this is inhumane. This is sheer evil."
She gives him a sidelong glance. "You know, it was my fault. I was in Provence at the time, doing a job for my parents. I hadn't seen them in weeks – I tried to keep them away from me, you know, whenever I was doing work like that. Gavroche – Gavin was ten. So cute, that age where they start trying to figure out things for themselves. I left them with Marius and Cosette, and you know, one day 'Zelma and Gav call me up and they're like, 'Eponine' – well, Gav, little brat, was trying to get away with calling me Pony, but I didn't really mind at that point. 'Eponine, we miss you. Can we come visit?' And I – how could I say no? I missed them so much. So Marius and Cosette, they drove up in this ridiculously parent-y minivan, and I just left them in the house to go down to get lunch, and when I came up, they were gone. Dead. I know Gav's alive, but the rest of them. It was my fault. If I had been there –"
He moves to her side. "No, no it wasn't. It was Pierce's fault. Okay? Pierce Thenardier did this, and not you. You wouldn't hurt them even if it killed you, because you loved them. You would have protected them, like you protect all the recruits, like you protected me. You, you're the strongest person I know."
Her throat tightens as she looks up at him. He just quietly stares back, eyes unreadable as they rest on her face.
After a heartbeat, he says, "We need to leave. The Russians will be here any moment."
Hours later, she paces underneath the steel arches, the concrete ceilings, the huge glass windows of Operations. This bunker, this was her home, albeit a cruel and dangerous one, and she had been okay with that for a long time. She had grown into her adult years here, she had helped and watched and killed and stole but that had been alright as long as Eponine had her recruits to look after, and now, as Pierce Thenardier gave her a slow smile of greeting, it was sickening. She'd always known this place was like a viper, coiled and waiting to strike, but to know that its fangs had sunk into her life long before she was even aware of its existence was a shock, to say the least.
Overwhelmed and disgusted, Eponine runs out, past Courfeyrac at his computer and Joly in the medical bay, past Gavin in the tech lab. She does not realize where she is until she is in front of his door.
Eponine swallows hard before she knocks.
There's a knife blade at her throat, but then he recognizes her.
In a faded t-shirt and jeans, he looks like any other groggy human being. And he is tired, so tired that she can see the shadows under his eyes in the dim lighting, the weary line of his shoulders, the purpling bruises of yesterday stretching over his skin.
"Eponine," he sighs, retracting the pocketknife from her person.
"You were right."
Enjolras shakes his head vehemently. "No."
"Yeah, you were right. If I had just listened to you, everything would have been so much better."
White teeth flash in a sad smile. "It will be better." He turns away, starting to shut the door, starting to leave her like he has so many times.
No, no, I will not let you leave me. Not again. Not any more. The thought rises up in her like a tide, pulling her forward as she surges up, tugging him towards her and slanting her mouth over his. She kisses him demandingly, fiercely, hard enough to leave a bruise. His eyes blaze open in surprise, but she doesn't relent until they darken and his tongue is teasing along her lower lip, his hands threading through her hair and pulling her closer, closer, like he can never get enough of her, like he'll never let her go.
They make love like they're waging war, their bodies battlefields to be explored and systematically conquered, but that's the way they work, and that is the way they always will be, she thinks.
Of course, after that, everything changes.
To all who matter, they still act like mortal enemies, colliding together with roars and the rhythmic beat of gunfire. But if she's a few hours late to say, Argentina, where he's off rescuing some CIA analyst, Combeferre, who got a tad too close to Patron-Minette, or if he just "slips through her fingers" in Vancouver as he gains one more of the precious black boxes that store all of Patron-Minette's files and an ally in an assassin named Grantaire, well, that's just bad luck, isn't it? He refuses to treat her like she's made of porcelain, and she refuses to deaden her blows, and she likes it that way.
"I think you broke one of my ribs earlier," she pouts, sprawled on his bed one day. Though they both know Joly never let her see daylight with a broken rib, let alone go around walking out of the medical bay.
"Really?" He asks, all concern as he slides up her shirt, pressing lingering, open-mouthed kisses to each rib. "Which one? Is it this one? How about this one?" Enjolras gives her a nip, all sharp teeth and gentle tongue afterward.
She bites down hard on her lip to stifle a moan. "Maybe you should try that again, I'm not quite sure." His chuckle vibrates along her skin.
All of this comes to a shuddering stop when she's called to Pierce's office one day.
"After some digging and some relocating of my personal agents," he enunciates matter-of-factly, "we have determined the identity of our little mole. Your recruit, Gavin Thorne." There's a muffled noise of protest as Gavin himself struggles against a gag, bound in a chair.
She blinks in what she hopes passes as shock. "What? You're kidding me. Gavin? He can barely manage a computer. He can't possibly be serving as Enjolras' mole."
"He had us all fooled," Pierce solemnly intones. "Now, I want you to dispose of him. Kill him."
Gavin immediately goes still. She can feel the prickle of his gaze on her, pleading, desperate.
She closes her eyes, steadying herself, and then she acts. "I'm afraid, Pierce," Eponine says, taking out her firearm and aiming it levelly at her boss' head, "I can't do that."
He sighs. "I know. Pity."
Her features scrunch in bewilderment. "What?"
"I was testing you. Your boyfriend? Lover? Any way you put it, it's frankly scandalous. He's been a little careless. You must be quite the distraction. It's a pity – you made a good leader," Pierce Thenardier examines his fingernails. "Montparnasse?"
There's a sharp jab at the back of her neck, and she screams as a jolt of electricity licks like fire down her spine. Eponine collapses to the floor, and as if from underwater, she can hear Gavin's yells of protest. I'm so sorry, she thinks,I'm so sorry I couldn't protect you.
She's placed in a containment cell in the sixth level of Patron-Minette. Alone, locked to the wall like an animal, like a monster. Not surprising, in and out of itself; she's personally heard of many finding their ways down there. None of them ever resurfaced.
Courfeyrac visits her – she's not quite sure what time it is, but it's late.
"Courf. Let me go. Please. Let me go."
He shakes his head. "I can't believe you, Ep. I mean, I knew you hated this place, we all do, but you and Enjolras are the only people who have the sheer idiocy - and now look at you both."
She strains against the humming metal loops binding her wrists. "What do you mean, both?"
He regards her quietly. "He's dead, Eponine." And then he leaves.
No. No. No. She doesn't realize she's screaming it until her throat starts to hurt. She continues anyway, lashing out and kicking at whatever solid thing she can find in the dark, beating her fists against cold, damp concrete, screaming out her rage – well, at the heart it's grief, but it's currently taking its shape as rage, and that is what she calls it. Are her hands slick with her own blood or her tears? She doesn't know, and she doesn't care. "Enjolras. I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry," she chants, like a prayer, or a spell, just a thread of syllables and vowels in the dark. She never begged while he was alive, but she does so now, sobbing until she sags against an unseen wall, sliding down to the floor.
Sometime, hours of agony later, the lights come back on. The electric lock on her wrists retracts, and the door opens.
"Hi, babe." Courfeyrac waves slightly, uncharacteristically awkward. "I swear, if you keep staring at me, I'm going to come to my senses and lock you up again. Or, get killed. Most likely killed."
He pulls her to her feet and they're flying through the now-empty hallways of Patron-Minette, and sometime as they desperately pound the exit code into the elevator buttons, he pants into her ear that Enjolras is alive.
"Oh my God, Eponine, I am going to stop telling you things, you keep staring at me like a goldfish or something, I know I used to complain about you being sarcastic and insulting me all the time, but can I have that Eponine back? You know, it's really unattractive to keep staring at me like that, doll."
She just whacks him on the head and tells him to shut up and show her where Enjolras is or "heaven help me, I will end you right here and now. In the carport."
Of course, her Enjolras did like making things hard on her.
At least, that's the most optimistic thing she can think of at the moment, considering Antoine Enjolras was now apparently in one of the many floors of the CIA headquarters.
Still, when he finally makes it down the steps and towards their waiting car, a wide, knowing grin on his face, she leans over and opens the door for him.
Then, she slaps him.
"I'm getting fucking tired of being told you're dead, okay?" she demands.
He pulls her in close, exhaling shaky laughter into her hair. "I know, I love you too."