A/N: Happy Barricade Day 2017!! Extensive A/N at the bottom if you care to read. Enjoy the story! :D
Disclaimer: Les Mis will never ever ever belong to me... :(
Soulmates. 2 people with unexplainably intertwined fates, sharing one soul. Soulmates shared one experience and could communicate through the method of writing on their skin. They could not, however, communicate until the younger of the two turned 16, when an invisible barrier disappears to allow you to connect with your soulmate for the first time.
In the world, there are 3 types of people. Some people have soulmates which were exclusively theirs; some others have a soulmate who was another person's, and there are also blanks. Blanks had no soulmate, destined to be forever lonely and forgotten. The second group of people either live just like the first group, or suffer from the most terrible heartbreak when they find out that their soulmate was already taken. Éponine loved her soulmate, even from the first things she found written on her arm like a tattoo, but she wasn't so sure about that, now that she had discovered her soulmate.
As little children, Éponine and Azélma often talked about their dream soulmates. A cute guy with deep dimples, perhaps, or maybe the quarterback of the high school varsity team. The girls often wrote little messages on their arms, preparing the note that they would write on their arm on their 16th birthdays. Days spent indoors due to the rain and cold throughout their childhoods were filled with perfecting the little message that they would first pen to their soulmate.
The memory of her sweet sixteen was ingrained into Éponine's mind, the shock she felt when she grabbed her pretty turquoise coloured pen and turned her left arm to write on it, only to find it littered with scratches of swirling red writing? She recalled making them out to be protests plans against the student council belonging to one school or another. At that discovery, she had ditched any attempt of making a first good impression, went out on a limb and wrote: 'Huh, trying to get into trouble Rebel Boy?'
That had been the start of the wonderful friendship she had with her soulmate and at one point, this relationship was the strongest one she had in her life, and she didn't even know the guy. Well, she didn't know the guy, per say, but she knew about the guy. He was funny, intelligent, amazingly stubborn and stupid at times, but such a dork. She knew his personality, likes and dislikes, fears, and even his daily schedule (totally not stalkerish at all…), all of this information gained through nights filled with washable markers and sugar-highs.
Enjolras, as a little boy, hated the idea of a soulmate. He was sure that his was gonna be some dumb blond girl (no offence meant to those of course), craving for attention and liking him for just his appearances and not his personality. Imagine his surprise, then, when he found a quick witty remark on the day which he presumed to be his soulmate's, rather than a beautifully worded speech intended to make him fall in love with her. He remembered the grin that spread across his face as he read the sharp, pointed letters tattooed in turquoise coloured script saying: 'Huh, trying to get into trouble Rebel Boy?'
Over the years, as a result of his parent's disapproval of his rebellious nature and the protests, which he conducted on a regular basis around the school, he would often vent to his soulmate about life, school, and anything in general. It was not uncommon for him to turn up to school one morning with bags under his eyes, but with a smile which made him look a little less serious, and matched the joy so visible in his piercing clear, blue eyes. It was almost like his midnight conversations with her were the antidote for the stress he carried on his shoulders almost every day. Even talking with Combeferre, his childhood best friend, could not give him the relief that talking to his soulmate could, for she understood him. He knew her, not as a name, but as a person. She was the other half of his soul, the one who understood him the best, and he would be kidding himself if he said that he wasn't the slightest bit in love with this mystery girl.
They never talked about the specifics of their lives, unlike many other soulmates, and didn't spend their time trying to find a way to meet in person. It was incredibly fortunate that they could both speak the same language in the first place, and they didn't see the importance of trying to speed up a meeting that was inevitable anyway. So it was with this lack of knowledge that they started freshman year in the same college, totally unaware that they would finally meet their soulmate in person.
Éponine could not stand Enjolras. He was such a stick in the mud and party-pooper, and never let her and Grantaire have any fun. Like honestly, it was almost like his main goal in life was to prevent anyone from having fun. And, he was constantly preparing protest after protest after protest, dragging her friends (Les Amis as they call themselves) into his plans.
Enjolras, on the other hand, was sure that he was allergic to Éponine. She was such an emotional and care-free girl who could probably bring on destruction to anyone at any time of the day, considering the fact that she was the most temperamental and hot-headed person he knew. She also gave her heart out too naïvely and, although she definitely had a well-defined character, she lacked a certain caution when she threw it all into the wind.
They just couldn't get along. From the very first day they met, they had argued like the existence of the world depended on it. They fought constantly. Sometimes it was little petty fights like pouring cereal on the milk or the milk on the cereal, and sometimes it was ridiculously large debates on global warming and the economies of giant global companies. Their friends had learnt from the second week to keep them apart, which was kinda hard to do at times because they roamed around the same social circles.
When the second year of college rolled around, Éponine decided to board in the student campus and share a dorm room with Cosette and Musichetta, for during their freshman year, the two of them had learnt to adapt to Éponine's most annoying habit: writing to her soulmate. There wasn't a day where the two didn't pester her about just meeting him already, or just asking him out. But she was adamant that their privacy should remain the way that it was in their relationship, and if it were to change, she would most definitely not be the one to instigate it.
Enjolras had elected to dorm with Combeferre and Coufeyrac this year, as a result of the many sleepless nights cause by Grantaires incessant drinking and his inability to deal with anymore episodes where he would have to stay awake into the early hours of the morning. Not that it would have mattered anyway, from Combeferre's point of view, for after all, he was often awake anyway, writing to his soulmate.
No one suspected, even the slightest, that fate could have chosen the most contradictory pair of people to be soul mates; especially not Combeferre, Courfeyrac, Cosette or Musichetta, Enjolras' and Éponine's non-soulmate best friends respectively. And it wasn't until Cosette brought it up to the foursome one day, that they ever began suspecting the two to be the most oblivious soulmates to grace the Earth.
On one afternoon, when the four were working together on a poster for a protest during a Les Amis meeting, Cosette had noted to the boys about Éponine's weird habit of talking to her soulmate almost 24/7. She and Musichetta were legitimately at their wits ends, trying to get her to meet her soulmate and best friend so they could actually talk face to face. But Éponine being the stubborn girl she was, wouldn't give into anything they said. It was at that moment that the two boys glanced at each other and exchanged looks of astonishment. A few moments later, the girls learnt the meaning behind those expressions. Apparently, Enjolras was incredibly similar to her in their retaliation of any suggestions of meet-ups or dates.
Together, they concocted a plan to prove their theory, and it wasn't long until they had group texts filled with photographic proof of the identical words on both their arms. Courfeyrac, being the excitable, immature boy he is, began to ship the two of them, dedicating all his free time into photoshopping pictures of them surrounded with a barrage of love hearts. So when Enjolras finally caught scent of the ship, six months from it's first creation, Cosette wasn't too annoyed, just really surprised that it took him that long to catch on...
Enjolras' reaction was definitely mild in comparison to Éponine's when she found out. She was very, very mad, shocked, surprised and disappointed, just to name a few of the emotions in the tornado inside of her heart. She had a panic attack when Cosette and Musichetta broke the news to her the evening that Combeferre alerted them about Enjolras' knowledge regarding the topic, and she broke down crying tears by the bucket load.
To her, her soulmate was to be the person that was her closest friend, the person that held all her secrets and knew the intricacies of her life, so to find out that her sworn enemy was her soulmate was heartbreaking and disappointing at the same time. In her mind, she had pictured some dreamy brown haired guy with freckles lining his cheeks and understanding deep in his eyes that she would meet on a romantic cruise on the way to a tropical island, and that they would fall in love bit by bit. Realizing that this childhood dream of her's would never be, she wallowed in self-pity and shame for letting her imagination get too far ahead of her. The reality was just like a cold bucket of ice during the middle of a fantasy, chilling and unforgiving. Thus, her puddle of self-pity and disappointment was justified, at least for the moment, and even though Cosette and Musichetta comforted her and told her that she could pick up the pieces and start their relationship again, all while passing worried glances over her head at her unexpectedly pained reaction, she didn't know how she would be able to live with Enjolras being her soulmate.
Éponine isolated herself from Les Amis for the next few months, making sure to give none of them anything apart from a brief smile of acknowledgement. She was so adamant on staying clear away from Enjolras' path that she opted to walk an additional kilometer everyday so she never got to see him. But if she hadn't been so clear in her method of avoiding Enjolras, her heart may have softened at the pained hollowness that now took refuge in those piercing blue eyes.
A/N: Hey guys! I'm so sorry that I've been away so long and I promise to update Repair and Rebuild soon, just after exams stop swallowing me whole. I churned out this one-shot in the early hours of the morning even though I have an exam tomorrow, but I wanted to celebrate Barricade Day this year, so here it is. And as a result of the late night writing, I'm sorry for any grammatical errors or formatting errors. Also, I ended things on a bit of a cliffy so if this one-shot was interesting enough, let me know and it may become a two-shot. Until next time :D. ~Phantom of Les Mis