The Marble Man

Disclaimer: Still don't own a thing but the story.

AN: This one is dedicated to my forum ladies, who've been so supportive and kind and wonderful about absolutely everything. I love them all to death. End of story!

Chapter five:

Her breaths are coming faster and she locks the door behind them.

"I will sleep on the couch," she tells him, dismissing his concern.

She cannot worry about the damn bed or the damn couch when she cannot think. Her arms are once again crossed over her chest to keep from wringing them and to keep from letting him see the shivers wracking her body. Tears are starting to sting her eyes and her breathing is heavy – it feels as if there is something heavy sitting on her chest and it is not coming off. Oh God, what is she going to do?

Within seconds she finds herself pacing and wringing her shaking hands, despite her best intentions. She moves from the bed to the couch and back, and quickly changes directions when she almost careens into the not-statue himself.

"Mademoiselle, are you quite alright?" he asks her, looking and sounding worried.

"Of course not," she hisses at him, too worried that Jehan might hear to let out the scream bubbling up in her throat. "I was working all day and then all of a sudden just when I am ready to leave the entire world just goes nuts because my favorite statue in the museum disappears and then there's this guy who says he is my statue!"

For some reason she cannot stop calling the statue hers, both in her mind and out loud, because that is just what it feels like. All of the people she has met, all of Jehan and R's friends have called the statue hers as a teasing joke, and she guesses it just stuck with her enough to start using it herself. Also, she does not know what else to call it.

"Is there anything I can do to aid you?" he asks, sounding like a real gentleman.

"You can stop forcing me to believe that you are the statue," she says in response. "That is just not how the world works, and this is all much too weird to understand."

The more he insists that he is the statue, the more she is going to attempt to deny the very possibility. She needs time to deal with everything, and to deal with his appearance in her life. She needs to make sense of him and his claims.

"I am he," he vows, and she sighs, "but I will stay silent on this topic until the morning."

"I appreciate that," she can't find the energy to smile at him.

Everything hurts all of a sudden and she just wants to strip off most of her clothes and fall into bed – but that is not happening either. She promised that she would sleep on the couch and she will have to be decently covered in front of him lest she gives him a heart attack on his first day back to the land of the living. There are already too many things she could do that might scare him off, and while she is a little bit tempted to try some of them, she kind of wants to figure out the mystery surrounding him.

"I have no nightclothes for you," she apologizes. "I can try and borrow some from my friends tomorrow, but for tonight this will have to do."

"Thank you mademoiselle Éponine," he almost bows for her.

She is getting more and more convinced that this guy is indeed a relic from a time long past. His manners seem outdated and so does his manner of speaking, but that is still relatively easy to fake. It is the way that he startles at absolutely everything that might be the most convincing to her, because that is not something that one can keep faking without giving themselves away eventually. Somehow she is starting to believe that he is really who he claims to be, no matter how ridiculous that sounds.

"Please just call me Éponine," she pleads with him, not wanting to explain this quirk to Jehan and R. "People here only use first names when addressing people their own age."

And now she is actually considering introducing him to Jehan and R? She really needs to go to sleep before she does something that she will regret. If she can just turn off the lights and forget that he will be sleeping in her bed and that her sheets will soon smell of him. No, these are things she must forget as well. She just needs to sleep.

"I will endeavor to remember that, Éponine," he responds. "I used to be called Enjolras."

He gives her no first name, because she is smart enough to realize that he has only given her a last name; that he only trusts her to know his last name. She has told him everything and here he is keeping secrets from her and looking haunted. There is a darkness in him that should scare her more than it does, but this is not the time to dwell too much on that. This is the time to sleep, so she pulls out the couch and turns off the lights before finally curling up on the couch with a crappy fleece blanket.

"Good night Enjolras," she tells the man in her bed.

"Good night Éponine," he says in return.

It is almost disgustingly domestic.

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She does not know what time it is when she wakes up, and she has barely realized that she is sleeping on the pullout couch before she tumbles off the side and ends up on the floor, breathing heavy and wondering why she is awake in the first place. It is still dark outside, so there is no reason for her to be out of her temporary bed just yet.

Until she hears a sound and her heart starts beating faster. The sounds are coming from her bed, and because she has not left in any other possibly magical beings, she is going to assume that it is Enjolras making these sounds.

There are labored breaths and sounds of his body hitting the sheets or the pillows, and she doubts that he would be giving himself the time of his life, so she is going to go with either a nightmare or a panic attack. Neither of these options would be good news, especially with him being as easily startled as he has been. There is nothing she can do that will not freak him out, and now she can only pick the thing that would scare him least but will still get him back to normal – which is not an easy task.

"Enjolras," she tries first, whispering to him. "Wake up."

Of course that does not work, because he keeps writhing on the bed, stuck in the throes of what appears to be a painful and terrifying nightmare. His body is trying to curl up into a little ball to protect itself, hands balled into fist and nails breaking the skin of his palms. He needs to wake up and he needs to wake up right the fuck now!

"Wake up," she raises her voice this time, almost screaming in his face. "Enjolras!"

Still he does not wake up, and she is getting more and more worried about what is going on in this nightmare and how it can have such a hold on him. Is this the person who cursed him coming for him in his dreams, to try and make him marble again? That is all she can think of at the moment with her limited understanding of how magical curses work – the fact that she is even forming this sentence in her mind is ridiculous to her.

"Please," she whispers in his ear, inches away from touching him.

Touching someone in the middle of a nightmare is a terrifying and disorienting experience, she knows that from experience, so she is loathe to touch him while he is so far away in his mind. Still, she can see no other way to wake him up that will not scare or disorient him, so she knows that she will have to touch him and be gentle about it.

"Enjolras, it's Éponine," she gives speaking to him one last try.

Still, even on this final try she gets no response from him. He continues to sound like he is in great pain and suffering immensely, and she cannot stand to watch it any longer – she has to wake him up! It may scare him and he may lash out her verbally and/or physically, but she cannot stand seeing him in pain like this.

"I am going to try to wake you up," she warns him, even though he will not remember or maybe he won't even hear a single word that she says. "I am going to touch you."

Maybe he will not understand, but she is mostly saying this to make herself more comfortable with this situation and with him. She takes a few deep breaths before slowly moving her hand closer to his arm, deciding that touching his arm might be the most harmless thing that she can do at this point. Touching him any more intimately would be wrong and it would make the both of them extremely uncomfortable.

The spark she feels when her fingers touch his bare arm is ignored because it is just ridiculous and she ignored it before and will again, so it has no bearing here. His skin is way too hot to the touch and she is instantly worried that he might have gotten a fever or any other kind of allergic reaction to this new environment. Maybe he is just not cut out for these times. Oh God, what if he dies here in her bed? How will she explain that?

"Please," he is now talking, pleading in a broken voice. "Please, no!"

"Enjolras, wake up," she sits down on the bed beside him, hoping he will hear her.

It stops the mindless pleading and babbling for a little while, but nothing else changes, he simply does not wake up – and she is starting to think that she is not going to be able to wake him up at all. Maybe she can try to bring him out of the nightmare instead, even if he will not wake up it will still be better for him to have a restful sleep.

"Do not hurt me," now it's just a broken whisper in her direction. "Please."

His pain is written all over his face and she does not know what to do – except her fingers have a life of their own and they begin stroking up and down his arm, just slowly stroking the warm skin in a soothing gesture.

"Save me," his whispers turn less panicked. "Can you save me? They found me!"

She makes soft shushing noises as she continues to stroke his arm gently, her fingers slowly finding her way higher up his body so that she can stroke his hair as if he is a child almost lying in her lap. He needs comfort right now, and she can give it.

"Don't go," he is almost smiling now. "Ma petite soeur."

Oh God – she did not even think to imagine that he might have a family that was left behind without any answers. Nobody would have known what happened to him, and his parents and sister would have had nothing left of him to figure it out. Oh God!

Right now she wishes his family was still around, not only to tell them that their son is still alive, but also so that he has a place to go – she cannot babysit him for the rest of her life. She never planned to stay in this damn town for very long, and now she is stuck with him until he understands enough about this world to be on his own. Well, fuck!

"Hush now and sleep," she tries to make her voice sound soothing.

Her free hand is still running through his curls, and he has clutched her other hand like he never wants to let her go, clearly taking her for his younger sister. She remembers sitting like this with little Gavroche years ago, and even with Azelma once upon a time – and she swallows harshly and removes her hands from Enjolras' hair.

The reminders of before just hurt too much, and she cannot keep doing this anyway.

"Wake the fuck up," she mutters while stepping away from him.

His tossing and turning is once again frantic until he sits up straight, panting as if he'd just run a marathon. Just like that he has woken up, even though she has done everything she could think of to make him stir – cussing at him and leaving him behind seems to have done the trick, which is not something she wants to think of too much.

"Where am I?" he whispers, sounding scared again.

"You're still in my bed," she tells him, rolling her eyes and trying not to be drawn in by him yet again. "You had a nightmare. You weren't waking up before."

When seeing him like this, hair tousled from her fingers and eyes wide open in fear leftover from his dark dreams; she cannot fault him for anything in that moment. He looks almost boyish and so innocent. Why is it so hard to stay mad at him?

"What's wrong?" she asks, hating to see him so pained.

"Nothing that I wish to share," his face turns into a carefully blank mask.

But apparently it is really easy to get mad at him, because holy shit she has been pouring out her life story to him in these last few weeks and he just does not tell her a single thing: he will not even tell her his first name. He obviously does not trust her and yet he knows everything about her. She considered the statue a friend but she is quickly figuring out that this Enjolras guy is nothing like her statue.

"Well that is just neat," the sarcastic words come pouring out without another thought on her end. "I have stood at that statue, which you say was you, and I poured my heart out. You know everything about me and you won't tell me a goddamn thing!"

The foul language she uses only upsets him more, she is sure of that. And her volume is more than loud enough to wake Jehan if he ever came out of the basement – sometimes he spends days and nights in there without coming up for fresh air – and still she cannot seem to find it in herself to care about this. She is filled with rightful anger and she is not going to let that go that easily. He has to understand he is being an asshole.

"I do not know you," he tells her calmly.

"Did you hear what I told you?" she looks at him and catches him nodding at her. "Well then I am sorry but unfortunately enough for you, you do know me. I know I am a huge disappointment, but you're a real ass for denying this stuff."

And with that out of the way she marches back to her spot on the couch, knowing that he won't even understand why she is so upset about this in the first place. He will not understand how much it cost her to admit these secrets even to an inanimate statue, and he definitely will not understand how much it scares her that there is now a physical person who knows all of her secrets. She needs something she can use against him in return, so that when he threatens to reveal something, she can keep him from that.

Everything is better with a little blackmail.

"See you're more quiet next time," she snipes at him before pulling the blanket over her head to block out any noise that he might produce later.

"Éponine," he tries, but she pretends to be asleep.

And she does not feel even a bit guilty about that – no, not at all.

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She wakes up at a decent hour the next morning, thanking whatever Gods anyone might believe in that she has a day off from work – she would not be able to show up and paste on a fake smile for anyone at this point. She is tired from waking up to him having another nightmare, but this time she was stubborn enough to stay on the couch until it was over – no matter how bad she felt about that.

"Are you awake?" she snipes, still so angry with him.

"Indeed I am," the clipped tones tell her he is less than happy as well.

The couch has left her with a bit of a crick in her neck and an ache in the muscles of her back, but otherwise she is left relatively unscathed. These minor pains she can handle, even though they bring back old hurts that return in their usual ways.

This is the worst possible time to think of the past, so she climbs up from the couch and takes a quick peek into the mirror to see what the damage is. She looks presentable enough to go downstairs and if she puts on some decent clothes she can head right to the store to get the necessary groceries for her and her damn statue man.

So she slips on a random sweater and some jeans that look like they aren't dirty – just a bit wrinkled – and she moves to head out of the room, wanting to leave without as much as another word to him. Then, she realizes that she has not laid down the law for him, and it is important that he knows to listen to all of this very closely.

"I am going out to get us something to eat," she tells him, quickly checking for a response to make sure that he is listening to her. "You are not allowed to leave this room – unless you're going to the bathroom. Don't touch things if you don't know how they work and for fuck's sake stay away from my personal stuff. Don't break anything!"

Judging by the frustrated look he is sending her from his awkward position spread out on her bed, he has heard every single word and he is none too pleased.

"Stay here," she reminds him before heading out of the room.

Of course she takes a last look at him over her shoulder, and she sees the worry lining his face and she starts worrying if maybe she has been too harsh with him. He is all alone in a completely different world after all, and she is the only support he has – she cannot blame him for being hesitant and distant, only she does.

He is not the man she thought he would be, and that is what hurts the most.

The stairs creak even under her weight, even though she hardly weighs anything these days. She has been caught, and she knows it. So she might as well stop trying to be quiet about it – Jehan knows there is a guy upstairs and he is probably not going to let that go any time soon. She might as well keep her chin up and act like this is not a problem.

"Looks like I'm not the only one who had a rough night," she hears a familiar voice.

Coming down the stairs she is faced with R, who has apparently finally returned from his brief family trip. He looks a lot worse for the wear, and she can see the track marks that he is not even trying to hide under his short sleeves. She feels like punching him in the face and smiling at him at the same time, because at least he came back and at least Jehan will be a lot happier now. But she is still making him quit.

"Don't go in my room, asshole," she snipes at him without malice.

"I'm sure the unlucky guy has already shimmied down the drainpipe," R grins widely.

With a pointed look to the backyard, R is being every bit his asshole self, so she knows that he and Jehan have not started fighting yet – which is a pleasant surprise. Also, she is pleasantly surprised that Enjolras does not appear to be climbing down the drainpipe.

"I rocked his fucking world," she has to keep up the charade.

"Well then why aren't you walking funny?" R seems skeptical.

There is a part of her that wants to joke about how she never said that this guy rocked her world, but she would not want to do that to Enjolras if he was stupid enough to get caught by R. She would not dare get him mocked by R when he would not even understand half of the terrible jokes R would throw at him.

"I am flexible," she sends him a triumphant grin in return.

"And, I'm done trying to be interested in this," R just rolls his eyes at her.

She rolls her eyes at him as well and heads for the door, already making a shopping list in her head, taking special care of foods that Enjolras might be able to eat without freaking out too much or upsetting his newly reactivated digestive system. Damn, she is now taking care of him like he's a sensitive kid – mostly because she feels guilty for going off on him before, but also because he is basically abandoned in this world he knows nothing about and somehow she still feels like he is her only friend.

"Need me to bring anything for you?" she asks before going outside.

"My only wish is for some excitement," R shouts after her.

"Like I can make that happen here," she mutters, sarcasm dripping from her words.

R will not hear that, but she does not care so much about that. She finds herself on the same street that she dragged Enjolras down only hours ago and she imagines what she would be doing right now if he had not shown up – it probably would have been talking to R about the lack of excitement in this damn town. Sure, there is no excitement in this town, not usually, but there was a statue coming to life just hours ago and she is never going to be able to explain that to anyone. It is something exciting, though.

The people still stare at her as she walks the streets of Musain; they still look at her like she is a curiosity or some kind of circus freak who has only just escaped and is now dirtying their pristine streets with her weirdness. When they look at her like this, she is more than ready to leave this damn town behind – and her intention was to leave after R came back, but that plan went out the window when Enjolras showed up.

Everything went out the fucking window except for him. He'd better not go out the damn window or she will most definitely kill him. Wow, her brain is making quite the leap.

She ignores her surroundings until she gets to the store to get all the damn crap she knows he's going to need – heck, she even throws in a shirt that should be big enough for him to wear without any kind of indecency occurring. She is almost sad about that.

Three full bags of groceries and random crap later, she is almost back at the house when she sees that the front door is open. That definitely makes her walk faster, especially when she thinks of all of the ways that Enjolras could have disobeyed her and made a mess out of everything – and she is up to way number thirty-six when she reaches the front door. Thirty-six is him tripping in the bathroom and drawing R upstairs.

There are voices coming from inside the house, and while she recognizes the kind tones of Jehan's voice and the wry sarcastic tone that R always uses, there are also two voices that she does not recognize – and that means there is something bad going on.

"I'm sure she will be here soon," Jehan says, and her heart starts pounding. "But anyway, R, did I ever make you listen to that one with the dolphin sounds?"

Her slow shuffle into the house is like a walk into the next level of hell: something bad is coming, but she has no idea what bad thing it is exactly.

And then she sees the bad and wishes she had never come to this town.

In the living room are two gendarmes, looking at the door impatiently while Jehan and R chat about the most ridiculous songs that they have ever heard. She is frozen to the spot.

"Oh, there you are," R finally spots her, and her body immediately starts shaking wildly in response. "Éponine, do you know anything about a stolen statue?"

Well fuck!

AN: Well fuck, indeed! Yes, I'm leaving you with that! Let me know what you think of the chapter!