Chapter Three - Enjolras, part deux
Disclaimer: All character and novel rights belong to Victor Hugo. Song lyrics belong to the creators of Les Misérables, the musical. I own nothing except for my own imagination.
After the meeting ended Marius approached Enjolras with a hesitant look on his angular face. The other man was organising his meeting papers and pretended not to see Marius standing there.
"Er," said Marius, after clearing his throat.
Enjolras looked up expectantly, not without a warning glint in his eye. He hadn't forgotten about their argument earlier than evening.
"Could I visit Éponine? You said she was in your room." Marius looked unnaturally timid for someone who was always professing his love for Cosette.
"She's having a much needed rest, having been unconscious since the attack at the Rue Plumet." Enjolras went back to organising his papers, his cold tone a clear sign of dismissal.
Marius winced at the information but soldiered on. "Just to see how she's doing."
"She's doing fine."
"Please?"
Enjolras looked up and leveled him with a glare, accentuated with the raising of a single eyebrow. Marius was a little jealous of this ability.
"No."
Marius hadn't had high hopes in the first place, and with Enjolras' obvious annoyance, he wasn't about to push him further. "Fine. Sorry."
Enjolras just grunted and waved him away.
It was after Marius had left that Combeferre finally pulled up a seat next to Enjolras. "You can stop pretending to be busy now," said the second-in-command of the Amis after a lengthy silence, only breached by the shuffling of papers.
Enjolras looked up, only his eyes visible over the pages. "i wasn't pretending."
"You never have to organise your meeting notes. You've just been rearranging them for the past five minutes to avoid talking to Marius," Combeferre said patiently, sipping calmly at his wine.
If Enjolras was embarrassed at being caught in the act, he didn't show it. Combeferre wasn't exactly surprised. "Fine, then. What is it?"
"I want to know what's been going on between you and Éponine." Combeferre said it like one would ask another how his mother was doing.
Enjolras' gaze shot up to meet his. "What are you talking about?"
Combeferre rolled his eyes. "Enjolras, I've never seen you so concerned or worked up about anything to do with Patria, much less a woman."
"You've not known me for long," countered Enjolras, and Combeferre noticed he hadn't denied it.
"Three years is plenty. Besides, I'm your closest friend." Which was true. Being second-in-command, he and Enjolras had gotten to be very good friends.
"There's nothing between us. I don't know where you got the idea, but if it's from my offering of my room to her, it was the gentlemanly to do."
"Right. Because you're such a gentleman," Combeferre said derisively, because he wasn't. Enjolras was more concerned about what was good for the people of France than he was about being gentlemanly.
"I am," Enjolras said, who never used sarcasm, and therefore didn't usually detect it unless he was paying special attention. "And what would you rather have me do? Leave her to bleed out and die?"
"Of course not," said Combeferre, "but you went to lengths to help Joly and I with her. You're never like that about anybody. I even saw you asleep in the chair angled towards her this morning- were you watching her?"
"I told you, Grantaire was being distracting, and I wouldn't have been able to get work done. Of course I wasn't watching her, I finished the essay early and decided to sleep in the chair instead." Enjolras chose that moment to conveniently forget about the five mintes he spent, in a daze of sleepiness, trying to memorise every contour of Éponine's face.
Combeferre decided he wasn't going to get a confession out of their stubborn leader. "Alright. But eventually you're going to realise Éponine is-"
"Ferre, I barely know her, except that she's in love with Marius." And that she involves herself with a multitude of dangerous, violent men, Enjolras added to himself. "And I've already said many times that I'm dedicated to Patria and the revolution. There's hardly time for a relationship."
"Fine, fine," Combeferre relented, holding up his hands in the universal gesture of surrender. "No need to bite my head off about it." He stood to go. "I'll leave you to your "organising"," he smirked, making quotation marks with his fingers.
"You've been spending too much time with Courf and Bahorel," Enjolras grumbled mutinously. "You haven't got to sound so smug."
Combeferre barked with laughter and left Enjolras alone, profoundly disturbed by his friend's words.
He truly didn't feel anything for Éponine except anger on her behalf towards the men who had attacked her, and Marius, who continually broke her heart without even knowing it. How had Éponine ended up in the place where Marius and Cosette met? With her immaculate sense of knowing where Marius was at all times (she had to have such a sense- otherwise how wold she be able to always find and follow the man?), she had to have known he and Cosette were meeting. She had even been needed there for a short period of time.
Why would she subject herself to the torture of watching her beloved with another? Perhaps Enjolras didn't know much about love, but his fellow Amis droned on about jealousy in it enough that he could imagine what it felt like: not good.
Had Éponine been there to simply see Marius be happy? Had she been the once to introduce them? The idea wasn't foreign to Enjolras. It sounded too much like him and his Patria; he would soon sacrifice all that he had, even his own life, so that the people of France would be free. Except, Marius was nowhere near what France was worth, and it made Enjolras upset that someone would sacrifice so much for one person. He was doing it for millions. He was justified to be a martyr.
Enjolras looked down and realised he'd crumpled up half his notes in frustration. Muttering angrily under his breath, he smoothed the crinkled pages and roughly gathered them up in his arms before carrying them upstairs to his room.
Éponine had not moved from the position Joly had first arranged her in. Enjolras was once again stricken upon seeing her thin arms and the bones that jutted out of them. He made a mental note to tell Joly to give her food once she woke up. He ran his gaze down the outline of her body underneath the sheets, noticing something new every second that ticked by: the ends of her hair that curled where it would normally rest on her skin, the birthmark on the soft flesh of her inner arm, and how her second toe was longer than the first.
Quite suddenly he found himself right next to the bed, staring down at her sleeping form. He shook himself, feeling like a creepy lecher, and turned abruptly away from her to plop a cushion on the chair. He sat himself down and commanded himself to keep his eyes away from her, which of course made him think of her, and he fell asleep with her sleeping face in mind. Again.
AN: I'm so sorry about the shortness. The next one will be MUCH longer. Promise.
