"I'm his fiancée."
Those three magic words are her ticket in, into the room where Marius lies in a coma, unchanged as of 29 hours ago, when he was in a car accident. It's a pity they're an absolute lie.
That can always change, she thinks, approaching the bed silently. He's so young and fragile-looking under the white glow of the florescent lighting, wires and tubes and machines she knows nothing of hooked up to him. The sheets rise and fall with his shallow breathing, and she's about to reach out and tuck his so-soft brown hair behind one ear when someone coughs.
"Excuse me, who are you?"
She whirls to find a stern young man a little bit older than Marius staring down at her, his mouth curling into a polite smile while his eyebrows furrow under blond curls in confusion. Shit. She had meant to just come in, make sure he was okay, and then get back out.
She swallows hard before stretching out her hand. "I'm Eponine. Marius' fiancée."
It's probably force of habit that makes him accept it, his grip firm. "Enjolras, his brother." Right, she thinks, recalling a slightly inebriated Marius talking about his big brother, the marble Harvard law student with a stick up his ass (at least, according to Marius). "This is going to sound rude, but, ah, he never exactly mentioned you –"
"He proposed recently. We were going to tell the family, but, well –" she gestures helplessly to the bed where Marius lies, still as stone. His eyes narrow suspiciously, but they're suddenly interrupted by Marius' grandfather, Mr. Gillenormand, marching in and roaring something about Marius' liberal views.
"If you hadn't tainted him with your silly ideas," the elderly man pokes Enjolras in the chest, "maybe we wouldn't be in this mess! He was probably driving to one of those stupid meetings that you got him into – who's this?"
Thankfully, Mr. Gillenormand was much more accepting of her than Enjolras was – in fact, he seemed almost appeased now that he had proof Marius had actually had "normal" interests ("See, you rascal, why don't you learn from your younger brother and get a girl like this yourself!" he had proclaimed to Enjolras, who had simply shaken his head).
She came the next day, and the day after that, the picture of the devoted fiancée. For the most part, Mr. Gillenormand ignores her and instead chooses to nag on Enjolras (who himself never reacted to his grandfather's verbal abuse, standing there with his face white and his jaw clenched), while the man in question is courteous but frigid. Relatively unbothered, she sometimes brings flowers (huge red peonies with velvet-soft riots of petals, fresh from her garden) or cards from the other boys, and sometimes she read to him (one of the nurses' suggested it: "He might wake up at the sound of your lovely voice, darling. After all, who would leave a pretty young fiancée like you behind?")
Once, she found someone else there instead, opening the door just a crack. Tall, stoic Enjolras, reading something aloud as he sat in a chair he had pulled up to the edge of the bed, his bangs falling into his eyes as he read. She catches the words "humanity" and "liberty" and turns to leave, except she hears a sound that is altogether different – soft, muffled, and barely audible in the bustle of the hospital.
She opens the door to find that the marble man is crying.
She doesn't realize she's moved to his side until she hears herself murmur, "Hey, hey, it's going to be okay, it'll be alright," rubbing his shoulder tentatively until an arm comes to wrap around her waist. "Shh, it's okay," she whispers, and anything else that's soothing that comes to mind. Suddenly she is with her baby brother Gavroche again, once more at that time when he was plagued by nightmares and not afraid to ask for help, when he would run into her room and curl into her like a frightened kitten in a thunderstorm, seeking refuge in her arms. "I'm here. Everything will be alright."
"I'm sorry, I got your shirt all wet," Enjolras says after the rainstorm has subsided, faintly embarrassed.
He's blushing and there are teardrops clinging to his long golden lashes as he looks up at her bashfully, his book forgotten on the blankets, and she realizes that in this moment he is infinitely more human than anyone could have imagined, and she revels in the fact that she is privileged enough to be able to witness this fact.
"I've ruined a number of people's shirts in my lifetime," she smiles sadly, and his chuckle is hiccupy and strained and tearful and beautiful in a way Marius' loud ringing laughter never was.
The next day she's carrying a jar of red peonies into the room as Mr. Gillenormand was ragging on Enjolras once more, red-faced and obnoxiously loud.
"I pay for your education, and this is what comes of it! All these ridiculous and fancy notions! You'll be the end of me," he rages, shaking his cane at a silent Enjolras, and Eponine moves.
"Hey, hey, stop! Marius is lying in a coma, and all you can do is talk about politics? Shouldn't you be reminded that all you have in this world is each other?" She demands fiercely, glaring up at both men with hands on her hips. "That's how a family works – they don't always agree, but they're together, forever. Or so I've been told."
Mr. Gillenormand opens his mouth, and she steadies herself in preparation for the inevitable roar of fury, but instead, he just laughs. "For once in his life, Marius hasn't screwed something up. I like you. You've got spunk." He shakes her shoulder fondly with an iron grip, and Enjolras smiles at her, like a secret.
In the afternoon he takes her out for coffee – to make up for yesterday, he says, and she just laughs and shakes her head. The café by the hospital is tiny but cozy, and somehow she manages to get him talking – it's not really that hard, actually – and his voice fills up the entire room as he goes on and on about equality and better treatment of workers and the many faults of the healthcare system, and he fairly glows with ideas in the dim light of sunset. She always thought Marius had lofty goals, but they look crude and half-formed in comparison to the purpose of his brother.
The days pass by in a haze. Mr. Gillenormand is strangely affectionate, in his own gruff way, often giving her small presents like books or pretty scarves, whereas Enjolras visits more and more, talking to Marius – or maybe it's her, she's not quite sure at this point, but she doesn't care – about protests and soup kitchens, laws that should be passed, laws that should be discarded.
"Doesn't that sound wonderful?" He says, gesturing wildly in the air with the enthusiasm of a child.
"Like a fairy tale," she snorts, smiling, and it's true. "Like a dream."
But all fairy tales come to end, and we all wake up from dreams sometime.
It is raining, rivulets of water dripping through her hair and onto her shoulders, puddles sloshing around her ankles. Practically sliding on the wet concrete, she reaches one house in particular and pounds on the door with fists clenched so tight that there are crescents in her skin from her fingernails.
His face is pleasantly surprised, which rapidly morphs into concern as he takes in her bedraggled appearance. "Eponine, what –"
"I'm sorry," she gasps out. "I screwed everything up, I should have told you, I'm so, so, sorry."
The rain muffles his little confused chuckle. "What are you talking about?"
She curls her hands into the collar of his shirt and crashes her mouth into his, memorizing the way his hands instinctively drop onto her hips like they've always been there, the way his lips part under hers without a second thought. The way his curls slip through her fingers like silk and the way he smells like instant coffee, ink, and aftershave.
When they separate, Eponine takes a moment to etch the dazed, deliriously happy look on his face into her memory, before she dives back into the sheeting rain, letting the roar of it drown out the sound of him calling her name.
Five minutes later he gets the call from the hospital that Marius Pontmercy has woken up.
He may be paler and thinner, but the look of sheer bewilderment as he queries, "Fiancee? What fiancée?" in response to his grandfather's questions is Marius through and through.
But Enjolras does not care.
Instead, he is staring out of the window, into the driving rain, fingers absentmindedly caressing the petals of a red peony left blooming on the windowsill.