I seriously have no idea what this story even is. Blame Ceara (ConcreteAngelRoxHerHalo) for the AU, as it is based around her original story.
Also she pestered me to write something.
I hope you're happy, you bitch.
They first meet when she is five and he is seven.
Éponine stands on her snowy driveway on Valentine's day, watching as her step-sister is lucky enough to live with her mother instead of her father, who Éponine is stuck with due to her mother's marriage to the terrible man called Thérnardier. Azelma waves at Éponine as the car pulls away, snow chains digging into the icy road.
Once the car is gone, Éponine looks up to meet blue eyes. Across the street is a lonely little boy wrapped tightly in a heavy coat and mittens. His fair face is red from the cold and a destroyed snowman lies in a heap nearby his feet. It appears that he has destroyed it in a fit of anger. If Éponine were to get closer, she would see icy tear stains falling over his cheeks.
She rushes back inside the house after that prolonged moment of prediction.
[he] shifts nervously in the porch chair, feeling the red bricks of his own home behind him like an accusing crowd~ Tangled Strings, chapter one
He climbs to her window that night in a fit of curiosity. There is a tree in her backyard that is nearly as tall as the house itself. As Enjolras's little feet take hold in the icy branches, he fancies himself a knight climbing to find a princess who will willingly battle the dragons of the world by his side.
She sees him climbing and stops her one-girl-rendition of West Side Story. She opens her window as he opens his toothless mouth.
"I'm Enjolras. I live across the street."
"I'm Éponine," she responds. "And I know."
She finally looks up into his eyes, and he realizes that, age put aside, they are the same eyes that looked at him with pity the night he was beaten. They are the same eyes that used to light up with joy when he climbed to her window. The same eyes he made contact with from across the street for the first time. Tangled Strings, chapter two
Time passes slowly for the two of them. The tree in Éponine's backyard grows to frame her quaint little house, and Enjolras's parents become more and more withdrawn from the world. His mother buries herself in her depression and his father in his work. Enjolras, he uses his only friend as an outlet.
Éponine is happy. Her heart is as light and soaring as her skin is dark, as she is so often reminded by her stepfather and society.
It is 1969. They are happy as the world around them changes for the better. They are all the other has, and they are fine with that.
Éponine tells Enjolras that he is the Tony to her Maria, climbing to her window after seeing her once. Enjolras blushes and stutters about how he doesn't want to die the way Tony does. A shy Éponine kisses him to keep him quiet, telling him that kisses can be shared between friends as well.
Tucked into their little pillow fort in Enjolras's attic, they are protected from the world. His lips tingle where hers touched ever so briefly, and her cheeks are flushed with childish embarrassment.
It takes another year before they kiss again, this time Enjolras is the one who swoops to press their lips together, and he is the one who flushes when she kisses his cheek in a friendly manner after he releases her.
Enjolras's parents, to his immense relief, don't seem to mind the color of Éponine's skin the way her own step-father does. And they even help her remember what little Spanish she has retained from her childhood in Mexico.
Oh, happiness. How it never lasts.
~silence, but [it is] the kind that speaks of promises and wind instead of that which speaks of heartbreak and rain.~ Tangled Strings, chapter three
Something changes inside of Éponine. She is still rough-edged in her words and actions, but it appears that she is scared to be so brash. Even though they hardly play outside the way they once did, she is still often bruised and cut. Her eyes gain baggage and her nine-year-old shoulders hunch forward to lend her shadow the age of an old woman.
She withdraws from him slowly. She no longer allows Enjolras to climb to her window, and she spends more time locked up inside of her house than she does with him. However, he fights it.
Enjolras remembers her home phone number by heart, as well as the times that her step-father is farther away from the phone than she is. He calls her frequently, and she humors him. Over the phone, sometimes it seems that nothing has changed.
He can see the hope in their dwindling friendship. It is present in their tangled elbows as they play soccer in his yard, and how their fingers become not-so-accidentally entwined by the time they make it to their make-shift goal. It is in her eyes, when they light up as they watch West Side Story side-by-side and cross out the actors' names on the VHS cover and replace them with their own. It is there.
When a group of boys corner Enjolras outside of the elementary school, he thinks of Éponine as they beat him into a bloody pulp for what his mother suffers. They leave him to waste away in the dark.
Tired and in pain, he pulls himself to the nearest phone booth and hunkers inside of it, trembling as he dials the number he has long-since memorized. She answers in her squeaky voice that deepens with grim realization as Enjolras describes his predicament. She promises to be there soon.
Éponine is there for him when he cannot even call his own parents.
He is not as faithful, as it is shown on a sunny summer day.
Éponine is far enough behind him in the line for the community pool that she does not see him. Enjolras decides to wait inside the pool area for her, but as she goes to get her plastic bracelet, the lifeguard stops her with a sneer.
"I won't let your kind in," he says gruffly. Éponine leaves sadly with the jeers of the suburbanites on her back. At the last moment she turns and meets Enjolras's witnessing eyes.
He does nothing. He says nothing.
Enjolras goes back into the pool area. Suddenly, the cool chlorine does not seem as appetizing.
~He is genuinely surprised when he needs to reach out to her sometimes. He always figured that he would be fine on his own; maybe not socially, but certainly emotionally.~ Tangled Strings, chapter four
It is in middle school when he meets Bahorel, Joly, Combeferre, and Courfeyrac.
The four of them are paired together on a book project. At first, Enjolras hates them all. Especially Courfeyrac and Bahorel, who he eyes with recognition. Two years prior, their faces had been among those who stared down at Enjolras with malice as he was brutally beaten.
However, as their thick book is worked through analysis by analysis, Enjolras finds himself enjoying their company. It is Combeferre he considers to be a friend first, and once their project group breaks apart, Enjolras finds himself in two different cliques. Two different trios that somehow, despite their previous existence, eventually revolve around him.
Enjolras, Courfeyrac, and Combeferre make up one of them, and Bahorel, Joly, and Enjolras make up the other. He is happy in both and can easily divide his time between the two of them. Courfeyrac and Combeferre are twins, which allows hanging out with them to be easier as there are only two houses and once ice-cream shop to choose from. It is with great dismay that a thirteen-year-old Enjolras watches the moving van pack up his best friends' stuff as they move across the city.
He is left with only Bahorel and Joly, which he can most certainly live with. The summer before their freshman year, the three of them work out every morning together. They wake before dawn and run with the sun in their eyes, feeling the summer simmering in their veins and feeling the cool promise of autumn against their boyish cheeks.
Freshman year brings disaster.
At first it proves to be promising; Bahorel joins the football team, Enjolras the swim team, and Joly the cross-country team as well as 'the future doctors of America' club. They have somehow grown into themselves. Joly's scrawniness is now considered 'cute' by the girls, and Bahorel is gruff and tough and rough and admirable. Enjolras is, by his friends' terms, hot.
He has just as much as he can ever ask for, but when he looks at the little ivory house across the street, he imagines the girl that sits alone in her room. He wonders if she still sings by herself.
His trio comes to a standstill with a stunning confession from Bahorel.
"I'm gay," he whispers in the stiff attic air. Joly is furious, and leaps up to yell at their friend. Enjolras, shocked by this, stands up as well.
"WHAT THE HELL IS WRONG WITH YOU?" Joly screams, his pale face red. "I SHARED A BED WITH YOU! YOU'VE SEEN ME NAKED!"
"Joly—" Bahorel looks like a kicked puppy as he reaches for Joly, whose immediate reaction is, for whatever reason, to punch Bahorel.
The tough one of the three of them reels back. Joly throws his can of soda to the ground and leaves without another word. Enjolras tries in vain to comfort a dejected Bahorel, only to be rejected himself.
As the sun sets over the skyline, it does so on Enjolras's third friendship.
He wonders if something is wrong with him.
His heart begins to turn to ice.
~She wonders if it will be enough, now that he has caught a glimpse of what she is hiding. And she knows that he remembers. She just hopes that he can also forget.~ Tangled Strings, chapter five
It is his junior year. The second year of being completely alone. He misses Courfeyrac and Combeferre. He misses Joly and Bahorel. He also misses Éponine, but he has always missed her so this is old news.
When he walks into his first period class on the first day of school, the first thing he notices is the silent classroom and how there is a circle of empty desks around a head-bent dark-haired girl. She raises her head and her eyes meet Enjolras's. Her mouth gapes for several moments before snapping closed.
"Enjolras," she sounds loud against the empty classroom.
"Éponine," he says, just as loudly. Not caring about what anyone thinks, he says, "I'm sorry."
When she smiles, it is sad. The lines that carve into her young face are ridden with tragedy. "I've already forgiven you."
They slide back into their old routine quickly, but this time there is a slight complication.
Enjolras realizes that he is head-over-heels in love with his best friend.
~It still hurts her. She would hope, after everything, that she could catch a break in love. But it does not seem liable to happen.~ Tangled Strings, chapter six
Two months after their renewed friendship, their world changes again.
Between awkward tensions when they share an armchair and awkward tingling when his bare arm brushes the sleeve of her sweater, things have escalated to a heated burning between them that is accompanied by fluttering guts. However, their happy sexual tension takes a negative dip with the arrival of the transfer students.
There was a school nearby that suffered damage and thus had to send half of their students to Musian high and the other half to another high school. When the kids emerged from the buses, much to the curiosity of the Musain students, Enjolras catches sight of two familiar faces.
He nearly jumps with excitement and grabs Éponine's hand so that he can pull her through the crowd. Enjolras jumps in front of Courfeyrac and Combeferre, both of which have grown but have otherwise remained similar to their preteen selves. Combeferre now has a thick pair of glasses balanced on the tip of his nose.
"Enjolras?" They ask. He nods, excitedly. Éponine watches with amusement as he embraces the two boys. Her best friend seems like a child. He pulls away, chatting a mile-a-minute about things that Éponine can hardly keep up with. She just loves the excitement in his eyes.
"And who is this?" The one without glasses, Courfeyrac, asks. He lowers a kiss to the back of her hand.
"I'm Éponine," she says. Courfeyrac winks at her.
"A beautiful name for a beautiful girl,"
Enjolras grumbles. Éponine cannot help but smile at what seems to almost be jealousy.
The four of them turn around, ready to head inside the drab bricks of the high school, when Enjolras slams into someone.
"Sorry, I wasn't—" she apologizes.
"No, it's fine—"
They both stop and look at each other. Éponine watches with her mouth hanging open as Enjolras stares at a beautiful girl in a way she has never seen him look at anyone else ever before. The girl is everything to Éponine's nothing. She is beautiful, gracing the boring white-skinned students around her with a chocolate skin tone that warms the air.
"I'm Musichetta," she says to him. Behind her, a handsome boy stands. He is nearly identical to her, and Éponine assumes him to be Musichetta's little brother.
"I'm Enjolras. Can I take you out to lunch?"
"Sure."
~If she can hold on, maybe something good will come from patience.~ Tangled Strings, chapter seven
Éponine has other friends aside from the golden trio, as she has christened the perfect group of attractive juniors (Courfeyrac is devishly handsome and knows it, while Combeferre is a more subtle kind that warms you from the inside out, and Enjolras is carved from ice and slated with marble and the sun shines out of his skin). She is friends with Cosette, Azelma, and Arianne Montparnasse, who goes by her last name. Yes, Azelma, her step sister, has ended up in high school with her. Thankfully, the other girl does not remember what life was like living with her father.
Musichetta's little brother, Marius, falls madly in love with Cosette, who returns this love without hesitation. Azelma falls in with their cousin, Feuilly, and Montparnasse watches Azelma's relationship with sadness in her green eyes and a frown on her cherry lips.
It is this way that strings are slowly formed. Inner-connecting relationships tie together with Enjolras in the center. Éponine wonders if he even realizes how much control he has. He is just as cool and calculating as ever, even as he has Musichetta's hand warming his.
Éponine's heart breaks, but Musichetta provides her with something that none of the others do.
It is two in the morning when Éponine's shaky fingers dial Musichetta's number. They meet at the front of Éponine and Enjolras's neighborhood. Musichetta takes one look at the freshman's face and drives her to the nearest drugstore. Together, they find the right shade of make-up to cover Éponine's bruises. Musichetta tells Éponine about her abusive ex-boyfriend who is now in jail thanks to Marius.
They bond. And even though a part of Éponine resents Musichetta's relationship with Enjolras, she toughs it out the way she always does. She and Courfeyrac make jokes. She and Enjolras are awkward. She and Combeferre study. She talks about Azelma and Cosette's boyfriends with them. She listens to Marius's complaints about his grandfather.
She pretends to be happy. And she does it well.
One day, Enjolras asks her, "Who do you like?"
"Someone. He has a beautiful girlfriend, though." Éponine says. She thinks of a cold boy with hair like the sun.
"What's his name?"
And, because he was the last person she talked to and she can easily see herself loving him in another universe, she blurts, "Marius."
Enjolras hides his own hurt.
They go on with their lives.
~It is frustrating being so wrapped around someone's finger. Of course she denies it, but she knows that they know.~ Tangled Strings, chapter eight
One night, Thérnardier's business partner dumps him. Éponine comes home to see half of their living room destroyed. Her mother is nowhere to be seen, per usual. She wonders if her little step-brother is still in Seattle. It is where he ran to when things got too hard.
Éponine sees the destruction and smells the vodka on every surface. Gagging, she dumps her backpack in the foyer and leaves quickly, seeking out a place to stay. Of course, the first place she goes is directly across the street.
Enjolras opens the door in sweatpants and a sloppy hoodie. It is reminiscent of his fiery 'don't care' attitude towards their bigoted school. He dresses lazily in a form of protest, not seeming to realize that absolutely nobody cares.
However, as he stands in his doorway, instead of smelling of cinnamon and deodorant, he smells of pizza. His blond curls are a mess atop his head. Éponine's breath catches in her throat.
"What's up?" he asks.
"Nothing much. Are you doing anything tonight?" She asks. Enjolras steps aside.
"No," he answers. "Musichetta is going to a party, and so is just about everyone else. I'm not a big fan of that whole… scene…"
"Loser," Éponine teases. "Where are your parents?"
"Out of town. They're visiting my grandfather down in Los Angeles." Enjolras frowns. "Why do you ask?"
"I need a place to stay." She blurts. Instead of flushing and covering her mouth the way other girls might do when they let something slip, she steadies her shoulders and stares him down. "Thérnardier's business isn't going so good, and I'd rather not deal with his prissiness tonight."
Well, it is not entirely a lie. She just leaves out the brutal beating and the terrible emptiness that rises inside of her chest once he finishes.
"I mean, you can stay here if you really want to. It might be a bit boring." Enjolras turns away from her, and so he misses Éponine's wince.
"Boring is fine," she says aloud. It's better than what I'd be feeling across the street, she thinks.
"I think I know what you want to watch," Enjolras smiles quickly at her, but it is gone soon in favor of that blank expression that so often graces his face. It sometimes scares her.
"What?" Éponine has not seen any movie in a long, long time. When Enjolras plugs in the video, though, and the overture plays, she is suddenly overwhelmed. Her mouth is dry as she says, "You remember?"
"I never forgot."
~His nature seems a lot warmer. Still there appears to be something dark about his expression.~ Tangled Strings, chapter nine
It is through mutual connections that Bahorel and Joly slowly return to their place in Enjolras's life. One day, he introduces Joly to Musichetta. He practically sees the electricity between them, and after he drags her away, he asks her seriously, "Do you like him?"
Musichetta flushes. "I think so. He's really awkward," she looks beyond Enjolras's shoulder to where Joly is standing and staring at them awkwardly. "He's just my type."
"So, do you want to end things?" he asks.
"Have you gotten what you want?"
Enjolras thinks of his initial agreement to this arrangement. She wanted to fit in at the new school. He wanted renown for dating the prettiest new girl. He also wanted to distract himself from his feelings for Éponine.
The last thing did not work so well.
"Not quite," Enjolras shrugs. Musichetta frowns, and looks over at Joly again. "If you want to let him in on it, you guys can be together in private and we can still be a thing in public."
"Sounds like a deal," Musichetta smiles brightly up at Enjolras. She pecks him on the lip in an almost sisterly manner and ruffles his hair before sassily dancing away towards the awkward prince charming of her dreams.
Enjolras looks over to where Éponine's locker is. She stands there, watching them. When she meets Enjolras's eyes, her face hardens and she turns away. Sometimes he wishes she would let her walls break down for him. Just once.
Maybe, in some distant future, he will let himself love her.
~His foot slides in something wet. He looks down to see scarlet coating the ground, seeping between his toes. Understanding dawns slowly and painfully as he follows the trail slicking the tiles of the bathroom floor. It leads to a limp arm, cut through with parallel lines.~ Tangled Strings, chapter ten
They wait at his 18th birthday party for three hours. When he never shows up, people begin to leave. Musichetta, Combeferre, Musichetta, and the Enjolras parents are the ones that stay longer than everyone else.
He never comes.
Three days later, a missing person's report is filed. They sit together, all of the ones with tangled strings leading to Enjolras. He is their center. He is what they revolve around. Éponine lets herself rest against Bahorel's comforting shoulder and tries not to cry.
She can live without him, after all she did it for three years.
That does not mean that she wants to.
She returns home that third night in heavy spirits, only to be confronted by an angry Thérnardier.
"You told," he hisses at her.
Éponine thinks of the only person she said anything to. As she is dragged upstairs and thrown into her bedroom, she thinks, Musichetta, what the hell have you done?
~She can smell the morning on him as if in a cloud. "I don't forget," he tells her. It is a warning. It is a promise.~ Tangled Strings, chapter eleven
It is another two days of Éponine furiously screaming obscenities at her step-father through her locked door and trying to gain the courage to jump the distance from her bedroom window to the branch that Enjolras used to rest upon when he would climb to her window when they were children before he comes for her.
She is half-asleep and the world outside is snowy, dark, and cold. His knock is sharp and loud, rousing her quickly. Éponine stumbles in the dark to the window, where she sees him sitting on the branch, wearing the same red jacket and black shirt that he wore the day he disappeared.
"Enjolras?" she is almost scared that he is a hallucination.
"I'm here," he tells her.
"That's all I need to know," she smiles.
~"That is your name, right?" the voice is vaguely familiar. {she} does not look away from the fixed point in the sky—any movement will break the dams.
"Who's asking?" She asks dully. She smells lighter fluid and suddenly there is smoke flowing through her clouded vision.~ Tangled Strings, chapter twelve
It does not take long for Enjolras to find a way to sneak into her locked bedroom. He confesses to her the secret behind his and Musichetta's relationship. He fills her in on what has happened in the two days since she has been locked away. Apparently, everyone thinks that she is visiting her birth father, even though Éponine is pretty sure that she has mentioned his death in the Vietnam War.
It takes less time for his lips to find hers and for them to end up in a tangled heap on her bed. He kisses her skin and heals her from the inside out. For the first time, she does not feel broken. They are two stupid kids with a world between them that they pretend does not exist.
She loves him.
He loves her.
For a while, they are happy.
~There is a small space between their lips, and he closes it tenderly. Surely this is no such kiss that one would share with a friend. His hand releases hers to grasp the sides of her face and kiss her full on. She can taste rum on his lips, and soon she is drunk on him, on this horribly wonderful kiss.~ Tangled Strings, chapter thirteen
She wakes up in the middle of the night to a knife gleaming in the moonlight.
Éponine screams and throws herself out of its path, struggling to find a way out of her room. When the wielder comes into a shaft of silver moonlight, the breath leaves Éponine.
It is Enjolras, but not.
Her Enjolras would never look at her in that hungry, cold way. He would never hold a knife up to her with murderous intentions in his eyes. He comes as close to her as he dares, and his breath tickles a place where tears have begun to fall down Éponine's cheek.
"Please," he places the knife against her throat. "Give this to me," there are tears in his eyes too. "Give me forever."
She is close to screaming that he is insane and that he needs to leave her life the way he almost has several times. However, his cool hand gently finds hers and places it against his chest. For the first time since he came to her window, Éponine realizes that Enjolras has no heartbeat. Her fingers find the bullet hole in his chest.
A single word rests on his lips, a name that Éponine remembers. It belongs to Musichetta's psychopathic ex-boyfriend. "Gueulemer," Enjolras says.
Éponine understands. She thinks of the fact that she has not had food in too long. She thinks of the death that awaits her here in this room. She thinks of forever with him. She thinks of rushing to it in a less prolonged way.
"Please," he asks her.
"Yes," she responds.
~She leaves the house, feeling tears burning in the back of her eyes. The road before her skitters and jumps in her vision. She has to stop for a moment by one of the cars parked outside to take a breath and calm her spinning head.~Tangled Strings, chapter fourteen
It is in the newspaper the next day.
They are found around the same time, and it makes the story all the more tragic when Musichetta reveals that they were lovers.
Eighteen year old Gabriel Enjolras is found in the trunk of a crashed car with a bullet in his chest. His day of death is given to the day after his birthday.
Sixteen year old Éponine Jondrette is found in her bedroom by the police after Thérnardier is caught pulling a job and they inspect the house. Thérnardier gets the blame and is thrown in jail. Her throat is slit. There are still tears soaking her face.
They are together, though, and slowly they wait for everyone. They watch as Bahorel finds a boy named Jehan. They watch as Musichetta and Joly add a third member, Bossuet, to their relationship. Montparnasse comes to her—or, his—real identity. Marius dies tragically in Cosette's arms after falling under peer pressure and taking a bad dose of heroin at a party. He joins Éponine and Enjolras.
One by one, their old friends come to them. When the last of them dies, Cosette, who ended up marrying Montparnasse several years after Marius's death, they move on together.
Éponine keeps her hand in Enjolras's.
She gave him forever.
Maybe they are more like Romeo and Juliet than Maria and Tony.
Once again, blame Ceara.
0/10 do not recommend her book. I made the ending happier.
Happier.
Please review!
-Kaylee