Notes: As always, thanks for the comments and continued support. I'm going out of town with friends for Holy Week vacation, but I'll be bringing my notebook. Let's keep our fingers crossed that I can update as soon as I come back! All your reviews make me smile, although I can neither confirm nor deny your theories at this point in time. Where would the fun be in that, right? :) I am also open to suggestions as to what you guys would like to see from the characters or the story itself, so do keep the lovely feedback coming. And now, without further ado, here's the latest installment!

Chapter Four

Clouds in My Eyes

Éponine waited for the meltdown, which never came. As a matter of fact, Cosette seemed unperturbed that her mother had broken out of prison.

"What if…" Éponine started to say, and then stopped. What if Fantine hadn't managed to escape into the Wilds, what if the guards had gunned her down?

Cosette didn't smile, but she bared her teeth, displaying in that moment a hint of Éponine's propensity for viciousness. "Wherever she is now, it's better than here."

On Wednesday, two days after she went in for evaluation and the day her results were supposed to arrive in the mail, Cosette didn't come to class. Éponine wondered whom her friend had been matched with, if the prospect was so distressing that it had warranted a sick leave, but she also had problems of her own— namely, she had forgotten to pack her lunch.

As soon as the bell rang, Éponine headed straight for the glade at the edge of the schoolyard, thinking that she might as well spend the hour-long break sleeping away the hunger gnawing at her stomach. She sat down by the stream, resting her back against a tree trunk and sullenly watching light play on the water.

A twig snapped, not by accident, but in the careful, calculated manner of someone announcing their presence. Éponine's gaze shifted to Enjolras, all winter white and pale gold amidst the scarlet fumes of autumn. As he was wont to do when the teachers weren't looking, he'd taken off his blazer and rolled up his shirtsleeves.

He indicated the patch of ground in front of her. "May I?"

"If you like," she replied. They had been on civil terms ever since last Sunday's adventure. "But shouldn't you be holding court right about now?"

"Kings hold court. Not me." Brittle leaves crunched beneath his legs as he sat down. He dropped his schoolbag beside him and loosened his black tie, heaving an almost palpable sigh of relief as the knotted fabric unraveled between his slim fingers.

Éponine smirked. It had become a source of endless amusement, bearing witness to Enjolras' petty, compulsive rebellion against the uniform. "Yeah, I don't think kings follow their unsuspecting classmates around, either."

Enjolras responded with a thin smile of his own. "I merely noticed that your partner-in-crime is absent today. I figured you would be lonely."

"Oh, please. What would you know of loneliness?"

"I remember it."

She tensed. "Meaning?"

"Meaning I underwent the procedure only a few days before the government approved my family's petition to move to Paris," he said evenly, "so my time as an uncured individual is still fresh in my mind. Meaning, there is a part of me that understands the turmoil you and the rest of our classmates are going through. And I'd like to help, in any way that I can."

"Because spouting anti-DFF rhetoric and sneaking a classmate into an off-limits section of the Crypts is so helpful," Éponine deadpanned.

Enjolras shot her a chiding look. "I have already explained my reasons for what transpired last Sunday. As for the DFF, well, I can't say that I agree with them. Their fundamentalism and their influence on Louis-Philippe do more harm than good. Emotion is dangerous— that is a fact. However, it is even more dangerous when improperly managed."

"So you believe in the cure," she muttered, "but you don't believe in the way it's being implemented."

He was quiet for a while, and then he asked, softly and searchingly, "Do you believe in the cure, Éponine?"

Of course I do, she wanted to say. I've believed my whole life. She needed to be safe. She needed to—

"Understand," Combeferre had told her before he fled. "When it happens to you, you'll understand."

Éponine thought of Combeferre and Courfeyrac and Feuilly and wherever they were now, of Cosette's name carved into the walls by Fantine's desperate hands, and of how Enjolras' presence could sometimes thrill and terrify her all at once. Were all these things related, was there something that she was missing, was there something that she would never find after the procedure…?

Her stomach growled.

Enjolras' eyes widened in surprise. Éponine forced a laugh. "I guess my lunch didn't agree with me."

"You didn't have lunch," he declared in a tone that left no room for argument. He opened his schoolbag and dug out a plastic-wrapped sandwich that had been squished between his books, egg salad filling oozing from the sides. He handed it to her with the stern air of someone who wasn't going to take no for an answer.

She raised an eyebrow. "And what are you going to eat, pray tell?"

Enjolras reached into his bag once more, and, a few seconds later, waved a granola bar in front of her face. Éponine huffed, but they managed to eat their respective lunches in companionable silence, broken only by the faint rush of the stream and the distant thrills of birdsong. She studied him from the corners of her eyes, noting the flutter of golden lashes against the tops of high cheekbones whenever he blinked and the fastidious, efficient movements of his mouth as he chewed on the granola bar. His hair stuck up in various wayward directions, as if actively defying the constraints of its neat cut. There was, Éponine realized, a streak of defiance in Enjolras that could not be tamed even by the cure. It scared her, but in its own strange way it also gave her hope that some part of her would still remain after the operation.

But which part? What of her was good enough to keep, rude and neurotic and insecure and impulsive girl that she was?

And, because she was looking at him, she also caught the way he looked at her from time to time— detached yet lingering glances, his blue eyes solemn and shaded in this soft place of light and leaves and water. She fought the impulse to pat down her own messy hair, to tug at the pleated black skirt that was too short because her uniform was secondhand. Her pride would not allow her to correct her appearance under his scrutiny, although his nearness made her wish that she had Cosette's quiet prettiness or Musichetta's sophisticated charm.

What do you care? What does he care? she argued with herself. He's past the point of being attracted to anyone. The capacity to appreciate beauty was one of the precursors to the deliria; in the old tales, angels fell because they were so entranced by the splendor of the sun that they tried to come near it, and the heat burned their skin and melted their wings. A host of lovesick angels, crashing into the sea…

Done with his scant meal, Enjolras crumpled the empty wrapper before tucking it into his bag. "Why did Cosette wait so long to visit the Crypts?"

"I've never asked." There were some things you just knew, though. It would have hurt too much. It would have been better to forget— until the past caught up, until the unanswered questions rattled on the locks that had held them all these years. Until a girl in a painting looked like a child from long ago. "There wouldn't have been much point, I guess."

"Then why now? What made her change her mind?"

"Nerves," Éponine was good at lying. She could take skeins of half-truths and spin them into something believable. "Cosette was evaluated by the matching committee this Monday. It's a milestone in everyone's life. Maybe she needed her mother."

Understanding smoothed the wrinkles in Enjolras' pale brow. "I was supposed to take the test in Marseille, but, as you know, we moved. I was evaluated practically the instant we arrived in Paris," he told her. "When is your evaluation?"

"Saturday."

"Excited?"

Éponine shrugged. "I just hope I end up with a good guy."

"But that's the point, isn't it?" He smirked. "After the cure, we are all good guys."

"Some better than others," she quipped dryly, shooting him a pointed look.

"I'll have you know, I'm an excellent guy—"

The bell rang. She found herself wishing that it hadn't. He got to his feet and extended a hand to help her up. She stared at him as he towered over her, with his messy hair and disheveled uniform, silhouetted against autumn leaves and silver-blue sky. The sun hovered above his shoulder and she had to squint, and for a moment it looked as if those elegant outstretched fingers were beckoning her to the light itself.

"Come on," Enjolras murmured.

Éponine took his hand and he pulled her up and, for a fleeting moment, it felt like soaring. Like falling into the sky.

Cosette was in the lecture room when Éponine filed inside. Even a distressing result couldn't make someone so conscientious take the entire day off. Shouldering her classmates out of the way, Éponine hurried over to the blonde, who shot her a wan smile, dark bags under her opalescent eyes.

"Who is it?" Éponine asked without preamble. "Whom did you get matched with?"

"Someone I don't know," Cosette replied in a small voice. "His name is Marius Pontmercy. He goes to Saint Anthelm's, across town."

Éponine squeezed the other girl's shoulder in sympathy. It was a common occurrence, having to marry a stranger, but everyone usually held out for a classmate or a neighbor or a friend— at least, until they were cured. Then it didn't matter anymore. "It's going to be okay."

"Someday, yes," Cosette mumbled. Her hands twisted together, as if to quell some growing panic.

After dismissal, the two girls rushed off to the school's computer room to look up Cosette's match on Facebook. Enjolras, Joly, Bossuet, Jehan, and Grantaire were already there, huddled around one of the desks. They glanced furtively at Éponine and Cosette, although Jehan continued typing.

"Hey, ladies," drawled Grantaire. "What brings you here?"

"Stuff," Éponine nonchalantly replied as she and Cosette sat at the desk farthest from the boys. "You?"

"Stuff," Grantaire echoed, with a mischievous wink.

Cosette logged into Facebook and keyed Marius Pontmercy into the search bar. There was a short pause while the server ran various security checks to ensure that the name wasn't on any of the banned lists, and then…

"Hey," Éponine said brightly as the page loaded, "he's not bad-looking." The boy in the profile picture was grinning shyly at the camera, his carroty hair and green eyes clashing with the dark blue suit and red tie of Saint Anthelm's Institute. She perused the short blurb. "Ooh, he wants to be a lawyer. You could do much worse."

Cosette giggled. "He has freckles."

A chat-box popped up, startling the two girls. An animated cat waved its cartoonish paw at Cosette. It had been sent by Marius.

Quick as a flash, Cosette logged out and exited the browser. Chair legs scraped across the floor as she pushed away from the desk, a hand over her heart.

Éponine started laughing.

"Oh, don't do that," Cosette begged, her pale cheeks flushing scarlet. "I panicked, okay?"

"You're such a wuss," Éponine teased, shoulders shaking. Admittedly, she was more relieved than amused, because this Marius Pontmercy, whoever he was, seemed nice, and that meant Cosette would have a decent life ahead of her.

Overcome by a sudden rush of affection, Éponine threw her arms around her best and only friend, who returned the hug with equal fervor. She remembered the question she had asked herself in the glade, about what part of her was worth keeping after the cure, and the answer shone clearly in her mind's eye.

Everything, Éponine thought distantly, her cheek pressed against Cosette's neck. I want to keep everything.

A loud noise blared from the speakers of the other occupied workstation across the room. It took Éponine a while to register the heavy drumbeats and the thudding bass-line as a piece of illegal music. Joly, Bossuet, Jehan, and Grantaire cheered, trading high-fives with one another, while Enjolras sat back, looking strangely pleased.

Éponine disentangled herself from Cosette. The latter had gone pale; the fact that she had just gotten matched meant that she now had more to lose. And if a teacher were to come in, if they were caught in the same room where illegal music was being played—

Guitars wailed as Éponine stalked towards the boys. Before anyone could stop her, she reached over and jabbed at the power button on the speakers, ushering in an abrupt silence.

"Have you all gone insane?" she railed at her bemused classmates. "What the hell could have possessed you to listen to that in a public place? To listen to that at all?"

"But, Éponine," Joly started to protest, his eyes gleaming with excitement, "it's a new upload from Bahorel. It means that he's not dead, cured, or in the Crypts! He's out there somewhere—"

"I don't give a fuck!" she interrupted him furiously. "Cosette and I have nothing to do with this, but you jeopardized our own safeties!" She was shaking. How could they be so thoughtless about the consequences of their actions? She jabbed an angry finger at Enjolras' chest, because she knew— she just knew— that he had put the other boys up to this. "Whatever game you're playing at, it's got to stop, do you understand? Not all of us can afford to break the rules! You're cured, you should know better!" Her eyes suddenly widened. Her tongue rattled off the words of its own volition. "Unless you're—"

Enjolras leapt to his feet and grabbed Éponine's wrist, dragging her out of the computer room. The hallway was silent and deserted. Her heart hammered violently against her ribcage, but the rest of her body seemed to have been suspended in slow, liquid amber. She tore away from his grasp and widened the distance between them until her back hit the wall.

"You're not cured, are you?" she whispered. "The procedure didn't work on you. You're an…" She trailed off, not wanting to complete the thought, the death sentence.

His lip curled. His sharp face appeared oddly cruel in the lazy afternoon light. "I assure you, I am not an Invalid," he said in a terse, low voice. "I have the registration papers to prove it, as well as the mark of the procedure."

Éponine's brow furrowed. "Then why are you egging R and the others on?"

"Because it's the only way to placate them," Enjolras replied with maddening calm. "You don't talk to them on a regular basis, Éponine. You can't possibly have any idea how restless they are. How discontented. It's been eating them from the inside, ever since those two other boys escaped. I told you I wanted to help, didn't I?"

"You're not helping," she insisted. "You're putting them in danger. You're putting everyone in danger. Stop it, Enjolras. Just— just stop it."

"My methods are unorthodox," he admitted, "but what are a few risks now, compared to the big picture? What do you think is going to happen when their eighteenth birthdays draw nearer? Combeferre and Courfeyrac started something when they left. Would you prefer that our classmates get rebelliousness out of their systems while there's still time, or that the guardians shoot them when they try to climb over the walls?"

She glared at him, mutinous and resentful. He darted a quick glance around the hallway to make sure that they were still alone, and then he continued speaking, much more quietly. "As I said, I still remember what it was like. The cure hasn't taken that from me yet. The orderlies had to drag me to the operating room, did you know that? I managed to get in a few punches before they finally strapped me down." He smiled fleetingly at his smooth knuckles, as if seeing the ghosts of past bruises. "I believe that I would have handled it better, had I been given more time, had I had been allowed a little more freedom in the days leading up to the procedure. It's the same reason I helped you and Cosette last Sunday. I want to give you— all of you— the chances that I never took."

"So give me the chance," said Éponine, "to make it through."

She went back to the room to fetch Cosette, leaving Enjolras alone in the hallway, staring after her.

The meltdown finally occurred on Friday night. Éponine was sleeping over at Cosette's place, because it was closer to the testing facility and she couldn't afford to be late for her evaluation. Curfew found the girls holed up in Cosette's room, with Éponine stretched out on the queen-sized mattress while Cosette sat at her desk, typing away on her laptop.

Squinting at the monitor, Éponine recognized the blue-and-white color scheme of Facebook. "Are you chatting with Marius?"

Cosette ducked her head, but her fingers resolutely continued to fly over the keyboard. "The matching committee has scheduled our preliminary meeting for next week. He's as nervous as I am. It's kind of sweet."

"Preliminary meeting," repeated Éponine. "That sounds so cold."

"Doesn't it?" Cosette murmured. "Afterwards, I won't be seeing him again until we're cured. His procedure's taking place just a few days before mine."

"At least they let us meet our matches before settling on a wedding date," Éponine mused out loud. "Gives us a chance to prepare ourselves for… whatever. Or to put in a plea for reevaluation. So many things can go wrong." She sat up in bed as a thought occurred to her. "What if he's infected?" It wouldn't be the first time the matching process was accelerated at the request of affluent families who had something to hide.

Cosette snorted. "Well, I can hardly ask him that, can I?" The security committee monitored all correspondence— e-mails, chat-logs, letters, phone calls, text messages. An ill-advised turn of phrase, even to someone you trusted, could have the guardians pounding at your door within hours.

"Ask him if he has any tattoos," Éponine suggested.

"Oh, my God."

They continued in this vein for a while, Cosette's mirth increasing as Éponine's ideas for conversational topics got more and more ridiculous. Finally, Éponine crowed, "Ask him how big his—"

Cosette shrieked and launched herself at Éponine, clapping a hand over the other girl's mouth even though she herself was overcome by scandalized laughter. However, the hilarity soon subsided, turned into something more subdued as Cosette gazed down at the floor, biting her lip.

"Hey." Éponine nudged her friend. "What's wrong?"

"Marius is great," said Cosette. "I feel comfortable talking to him, even though we haven't met in person yet. I can't ask for anything more, but…" Her blue-green eyes watered; she hastily blinked, causing a few tears to trickle down her cheek. "I just wish I could tell Maman about him."

Éponine was surprised by how much she understood. Unlike Cosette, she had never experienced a mother's love before it was brutally ripped away, but sometimes she simply just yearned for her own mother's presence, no matter how cold and incapable of comfort— how cured— Madame Thénardier was. When she told Enjolras that girls needed their mothers, he had seemed to empathize, but could he, really? Did boys feel the same way about the women who raised them, all the annoyance, the affection, the grief? Maybe it was different for girls.

There were so many things about the world that Éponine didn't know. And there was no one to ask.

"She left me," Cosette whimpered, pitiful and terrified and seventeen years old. "Why did she go— why didn't she take me with her—?"

"It would have been too dangerous, you know that," Éponine said softly, rubbing Cosette's back in a desperate attempt to soothe. "Wherever Fantine is now, she thought of you until the very end. She wrote your name on the walls. That has to be enough, Cosette. You have to make it be enough."

Even as she spoke, the words sounded hollow to her own ears. Some things were easier said than done, but sometimes there was nothing left to be done but say them.

On the damp, silvery morning of Éponine's evaluation, Monsieur Fauchelevent and Cosette dropped her off at the testing facility in their little yellow car, with the gray-haired man promising that he'd take the girls out for ice cream afterwards.

Ice cream. Hah. Monsieur Fauchelevent's wife passed away before they could have children of their own; he parented like he'd once read a manual on how to raise a seven-year-old and had stuck to it ever since then.

Maybe they do give us a manual for raising kids, Éponine mused to herself as she joined the queue of teenagers outside the building, waiting for their turn to be evaluated. There were rules for everything, after all.

"Not rules," someone had scoffed, long ago. "Call them 'forcefully-applied guidelines.'" Had it been Courfeyrac who said that? Yes, perhaps, with the chestnut-brown curls falling into those bright eyes. Hindsight was a funny thing; looking back, Éponine couldn't figure out why she'd been so surprised when he and Combeferre fled.

She scanned the crowd, spotting familiar faces here and there. Her schoolmates were either too nervous or too excited to pay much attention to her. It was a nice break from the stares and whispers. Some kids were gazing down at their shoes or into space, while others conversed in tones that ranged from forcibly calm to forcibly upbeat. Éponine grimaced; it was difficult to hate people who tormented you on a semi-regular basis when you were reminded that they were, in fact, people. Everyone was going through the same thing right now, whether they liked it or not. There was no more room for childhood grievances. The future was about to start.

When her turn came up, Éponine filed through the glass doors of the testing facility along with nineteen others. They were ushered down the hallway by a silent contingent of stern-faced men in white, and led to a windowless room that was also all-white. Like all other government organizations, the matching committee wasn't big on creative interior design.

Éponine found a seat in the middle row. A few of her classmates shot her tentative smiles, to which she responded with cool, impassive glances. Oh, so we're all in this together now, are we? she thought sourly. Come Monday, you'll all be snickering behind my back again, as if nothing ever happened. As if you were never with me when we took a test that defined the rest of our lives.

Sensible heels clacked against tile. A woman who appeared to be in her late thirties entered the room. Her blonde hair was in a tight, elegant bun, and she wore large cat's-eye glasses and a somber maroon suit that, nevertheless, popped amidst the white walls and white floors like a neatly-tailored puddle of blood. She was carrying a bundle of papers, held firmly to her chest.

"Good morning. I am Madame Baptistine Myriel, your proctor for today," she announced. "First, the rules— you will be given two hours to finish your personality test, and no more. You may raise your hand if you have a question, and I shall come to you. You may not talk to your fellow examinees. You may not eat or bring out your cell-phone. You are each allowed one bathroom break. Are we clear?" At the collective nod from all across the room, Madame Myriel began distributing the papers. "This is a simple personality test that will comprise one half of your evaluation. The other half will be the background files that we already have on each of you. So, to avoid confusion of any sort, write down your complete name, your complete date of birth, your complete home address, the complete name and address of your school, and your complete security number in the personal information section at the top of the page. During the test proper, answer the questions honestly and to the best of your ability. Remember, children— no retakes. This is it."

If Madame Myriel had been expecting hushed awe after her speech, she didn't get it. The air blossomed into a susurrus of rustling paper and uneasy murmurs. It took her a while to glare the entire room into silence.

Éponine filled out her personal data, making a face at the way her large, messy scrawl careened off the provided lines. She'd never learned how to hold a pen properly. It was rumored that your handwriting improved after you were cured, though.

I guess I have that to look forward to.

She moved on to the questions. It was, without a doubt, the strangest test that she had ever taken. She had no idea what kind of screwy algorithm the matching committee used to decide who was compatible with whom, but she did as Madame Myriel instructed and answered them according to what felt true to her. There had to be at least one boy in Paris who would complement her admittedly bizarre way of thinking.

Some questions were multiple-choice.

Select the object most appealing to you:

a) flower

b) apple

c) metal

d) notebook

You're in a cave and you look down. What do you see?

a) necklace

b) key

c) hat

d) river

Others were fill-in-the-blanks.

I want to _.

I need a _.

A fallen angel is _.

Still others were questions that you had to answer in a sentence or two. Éponine had fun with these the most— for a given value of fun, anyway.

What is the first thing you would take out of a burning building?

That was easy. Herself, of course.

Éponine had just gotten to the last question when Madame Myriel declared that time was up. The brunette hurriedly encircled her answer— Select your preferred constellation: a) Order and Virtue; b) The Death Throes of the Invalid; c) The Broken Heart; d) The Guillotine— and passed her paper to the front. The room was eerily quiet as everyone wondered if they had just doomed themselves.

Ten minutes after Éponine shot off a text message to Cosette, the Fauchelevents' little yellow car reappeared on the curb. As promised, Monsieur Fauchelevent took the girls to an ice cream parlor, where he occupied himself with a newspaper while Éponine and Cosette compared their answers over hot fudge sundaes.

Monsieur Fauchelevent looked up from the business section only once, to remark that the test had been much less complicated back in his day.

Cosette wrinkled her nose. "That was a century ago, Papa."

Monsieur Fauchelevent smiled the calm, tight-lipped smile of the cured, before excusing himself to order coffee. Once he was gone, Cosette leaned over the table. "No class on Monday."

"Yeah, I know," said Éponine. "It's a public holiday— the anniversary of the first successful cure."

"Are you doing anything Sunday night?"

There was something about the conspiratorial tone of Cosette's voice that made a chill go down Éponine's spine. "No."

"Then it's settled." Cosette nodded briskly, and Éponine had been a fool to believe that her best friend's meltdown would confine itself to a few plaintive tears. "We're going to a party."

To Be Continued