Author Note: Welcome to Alea Iacta Est, an É/E His Dark Materials/Daemon AU. This is dedicated to penciledrevolutions & youaremyrevolution in thanks for a lovely morning, and 4horsesatetheworld & moving-on-and-nowehere-to-go in thanks for making me laugh. :D
Disclaimer: I am not Victor Hugo. I do not own the book, the musical, or the film, and I certainly do not own the characters.
Chapter One: Settling
Enjolras's daemon is one of the first in their age group to settle, right when he's halfway between eleven and twelve.
One of the other boys at their boarding school is bullying Combeferre, his daemon taking the form of a Capuchin monkey and stealing Ferre's books. Enjolras's Hypatia gets so angry at the mistreatment of their friend that she leaps from his shoulder—a sparrow not two seconds before—and hits the ground as a lioness, roaring her anger.
The other boys rear back, shocked at the display, and Enjolras feels both a burning anger and an odd sense of rightness, of surety, settle in his chest.
"Leave my friends alone," he says, and Hypatia growls beside him, the two of them golden, glorious, and utterly unafraid.
He never forgets the feeling.
Éponine cringes as her father screams at her.
"A cat?! Your daemon settles as a godforsaken cat? What use is it going to be now? And a black cat, too—can you imagine the ill omens you've brought down on us," he shouts, tightening his fingers around her forearm.
"I'm sorry, Papa," she cries.
She's fourteen years old and she's been waiting for Sabinus to settle for months now; she thought a cat was perfect, but her father sees only the missed opportunities. The loss of changeability means jobs will be harder to pull off now, and Sabinus's form lacks the brute strength of her father's coyote and the sleek deadliness of her mother's adder to make up for it.
"A cat!" he yells again. "If I'd wanted a pet, I'd have bought one!"
Éponine's mother eventually sighs and says, "Calm down. A cat's inconspicuous enough. We can use it as a lookout, have it sneak in to case a building before we rob it—small things. Not as useful as some other things, but we can make do. We always do."
Her father relaxes, and his coyote stops growling, too. "Fine," he says, letting go of Éponine's arm. "The mangy thing can live."
Éponine scoops Sabinus up and runs out of the room, tears streaming down her face. Azelma and Gavroche try to comfort her when she settles on their little cot, but she just shakes her head and tells them that everything's fine, nothing's wrong.
She's lying, of course, but what else can she say? That she is a failure, that her daemon is pathetic, that she wishes she were somebody, anybody else besides herself?
She curls up into a tiny huddle and lets Sabinus lick her tears away, his pink tongue rough on her skin. "I love you," he whispers, softly, quietly, the words meant only for her. "I'm sorry I couldn't be different. I'm sorry I couldn't be good enough."
She wishes she had the words to tell him that it isn't his fault—it's hers, it's only hers, but she's never been very good at saying the things she means, so instead she runs her hand through his smooth black fur and tells him she's always wanted a cat.
He laughs, and she thinks that maybe this won't be so bad. Maybe it'll be okay.
Enjolras watches her sometimes, out of the corner of his eye. He doesn't think much of her, especially since she's the one always bringing notes to Marius from his sweetheart, but still—there's something about her that captures his attention.
"You like her," Hypatia says, amused.
"What? Don't be silly. I don't even know her," he replies, tearing his gaze away from the girl who clings to the corner and seems made for shadows—made of shadows with her black-as-midnight hair and her dark-as-ashes eyes, and the ebony-colored daemon that rests at her side.
Hypatia flicks her tail at him, a lazy twist of movement that belies the strength contained within her sinuous body. "Admit it, you think she's pretty," she says.
"You've been spending too much time with Courfeyrac," he says huffily.
"And you've been spending too much time with your books," she retorts, baring her teeth playfully. "I think you should talk to her. Make a new friend."
"I have too many already, thank you very much. And why do you even care so much?"
Hypatia twitches an ear. "I like her."
"You've never even spoken to her," he says, incredulous. "How can you like her?"
"I don't know. I just do. Which means you must, too." And with that, she rises to her feet and stalks toward the girl, nonchalantly scattering the rest of the Les Amis before her—they know better than to stand in her way.
"Hypatia!" Enjolras hisses, but she ignores him. (She listens to no one she doesn't want to, and even he's not exempt from this rule.)
His daemon strolls right up to the girl and plops herself down at the latter's feet, casually laying her head on her paws and staring at the black cat, who seems frozen in terror two inches from her nose.
"Uh," Marius says awkwardly. His daemon, a pretty gray wolf named Luna, wags her tail uneasily beside him and looks ready to grab the cat by the scruff of his neck any second now, eyes darting between Hypatia and the smaller feline. "Hello, Hypatia. Um, this is my friend Éponine, and that's Sabinus."
At first, Hypatia gives a regal nod of acknowledgement at his clumsy words, but then shoots him a pointed glance when her side of the introduction doesn't appear to be forthcoming.
"Oh! Oh, sorry! Um, Éponine, this is Hypatia. She's Enjolras's daemon," he finally finishes.
"Pleased to meet you," Éponine says. She gives a little curtsey and manages to sweep her daemon behind her skirts as she does so.
I know her name now, notes a distant corner of Enjolras's mind. It's pretty. It suits her.
The rest of him, however, pointedly ignores the interaction and his friends' intrigued whispering, and he loudly clears his throat. "Combeferre, would you mind passing me that textbook? The point of a study session is to get studying done, and at this rate we'll all fail our exams and get kicked out of the University."
This jolts everyone back into action, and they resume their own conversations and activities, giving the little vignette in the corner of the room some privacy. Marius goes back to finishing his letter, while Éponine waits patiently, and Hypatia waits along with her.
Eventually, the little black cat comes out from behind his human and shyly sits beside her, and she gives a rumble of approval that Enjolras can sense, clear across the room.
Éponine smiles at Hypatia, then looks in Enjolras's direction, just as he glances in hers, and their eyes meet for the first time.
It's only for a second, less than that even, but Enjolras feels a sense of surety, of rightness, that he's felt only once before.
He panics, of course, and immediately drops his eyes to the book in front of him, but his heart is pounding and his face feels flushed, and the feeling doesn't fade until Marius hands over the letter and Éponine leaves, her daemon trailing in her wake like a shadow.
In the weeks ahead, Hypatia will roll her eyes at his stubborn refusal to even talk to the girl, and he will angrily retort than no, nothing is going on, she's imagining everything.
But still, his eyes will follow Éponine like a compass pointing North, drawn inexorably to the light of her smile, and something slowly, quietly starts to change in him.
Endnote: Thank you for reading, and please review. :)