PART 2: ÉPONINE

Chapter Four - Awake

Tinmiss1939: Thanks for an honest reply. Don't worry, I'm not insulted; after all, I asked for it :) In response to the song lyrics, I've actually toned it down as the story goes on, because later on it's more book than musical, though there's still elements of the musical in the writing. I hope that makes it a bit better. Bahorel is definitely fun to write, since he basically just says the first thing on his mind, and it's normally ridiculous.

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.

There was a faint ticking noise next to her ear. She stirred, and blinked awake, brow furrowed at the incessant sound. Since when did she sleep near a clock in the dingy Thenardier residence?

Of course, she wasn't in the Gorbeau tenement. She realised this with a jolt, and her senses tingled with the effort of taking everything in, her head still resting on the pillow beneath it. Pillows? She was definitely not in her parents' bile-smelling apartment. Then, where was she? How did she get here? More importantly, why was she wearing little to no clothes?

Éponine took a couple deep breaths and told herself not to think rashly. She blinked a couple more times before investigating the room more methodically.

She was in somebody's bedroom. A small wooden dresser with three drawers stood against the wall to her right. At the foot of the bed was a trunk, probably belonging to the owner of the room. A cushioned chair was placed in the far corner. Right next to her bed was an end table, on which was placed a lit oil lamp, a cup of water, and the ticking clock, which was rusty and dented in various places. A bookshelf next to the dresser caught her eye; it was stuffed full of books, stacks of papers, pots of ink, and quills. Whoever lived here wrote and read a lot.

So why was she in this room? People that wrote and read a lot and lived in small, incredibly tidy rooms like this didn't usually take girls home and leave them in their beds with just their underclothes on. Éponine struggled to sit up, but a sharp, white-hot pain in her wrist forced her back down with a gasp. She stared at it. It was bound in a cast of sorts, and though she couldn't see very well from her current position she could tell other parts of her body had been similarly wrapped. She felt cleaner than she had in months; there was no more dirt on her body, and it smelled like somebody had actually used soap on her. As soon as she registered this information, she remembered what had happened the last time she'd been awake.

Éponine closed her eyes just from the pain of remembering it all. Thenardier usually stopped after she couldn't stand on her own, but he had been merciless this time. What hurt even more was that she did this out of love for someone who didn't love her back, and certainly didn't know that she took this beating for his safety.

She opened her eyes, took another deep breath, and again regarded her situation with a clearer mind. So she'd been saved from her father by a mysterious man who had carried her here, presumably to where he stayed, though of course that didn't have to be the case. It seemed whoever it was had patched her up and taken off her clothes, obviously for the sake of said patching up. She frowned. It was then that she noticed the bloody rags in the corner: the mangled remains of her dress. Another dress lay next to it, not new but not too worn, neatly folded, along with a pair of sandals. Were those for her? Éponine didn't dare hope but they certainly looked her size, and as far as she knew there was nobody else staying here at the moment.

This thought process was broken when the door creaked open. The figure of a slender, bespectacled man with a cane stepped into view. He was holding a pitcher.

"Monsieur!" Éponine exclaimed, recognising Joly from the Amis meetings. She recalled Gavroche say he was a medical student; it was probably him that had treated her.

"Oh!" You're awake. That's good. How are you feeling?" Joly set the pitcher down on the dresser and bustled over to her, kneeling down to inspect her wrist.

"Beaten," said Éponine honestly, as Joly helped her into a sitting position. "But I'm used to it. Where am I?"

"Don't you recognise the cup?" Joly tapped the cup of water. She looked and read the word MUSAIN in capital letters, with only a little difficulty.

"The Café Musain?" Éponine said in amazement. "Why have you brought me here? I didn't know there were rooms available."

"Well, it wasn't me," replied Joly, who had finished checking her wrist and was now prodding her ankle.

Éponine winced. "Ow. That hurts."

"Sorry. You've sprained it, and your shoulder, too. Your wrist is broken, which is bad, but that's about the worst of it. Of course, there's the possibility of infection, and a variety of other transmittable diseases..." Joly stopped talking when he saw her expression. "Well, I'm sure you don't have those. You do, however, have a concussion, some serious bruising, both of which will go away with time and rest. The cuts will be healed fine, but you'll probably have a visible scar on your cheek."

In her mind's eye she saw her father deal a painful blow to the side of her head. "How long have I been asleep, Monsieur? And who was it that brought me here, if it wasn't you?" The curiosity was practically eating her alive.

"Two days and a half," Joly replied. "The man that saved you was-"

"Joly! I was going to tell you, but I forgot," a voice shouted up the stairs to the bedroom.

"That's him," grinned the medical student, as Éponine's eyes stretched wide.

She'd recognise that voice anywhere.

"You should bring her something to eat once she..." Enjolras trailed off as he came into the room and saw her staring back at him. "Once she awakes," he finished, a little awkwardly.

"Monsieur?" Éponine's voice was an octave higher and her eyes twice as wide.

"Call me Enjolras," the man said a little hoarsely. He wet his lips and cleared his throat.

"Right. Enjolras. Was it you who...?" Éponine still couldn't quite believe it. He had saved her, again. She wasn't sure how to feel about being saved, but for some reason she was glad it was him.

"Yes. Joly, what are you laughing at?" Enjolras turned his attention, narrow-eyed, to the wildly grinning man.

"Nothing. I'll fetch you some soup and bread," Joly said to Éponine. He left the room with a final smirk in Enjolras' direction.

"Thank you!" Éponine called as the door closed behind him.

Enjolras was still watching Éponine with an unreadable look in his eyes. She turned to him warily once they were alone. She twiddled her fingers nervously.

"I don't know how you found me, but thank you for doing it," Éponine said. "I probably would have died otherwise."

"That's why I saved you," Enjolras replied seriously. "Because you would have died." Eponine wondered if he was making a joke, but figured with his straight face it wasn't.

"I see." Éponine paused briefly, considering. "Well, I have a question to ask."

"Go ahead."

"Where are my clothes?"

She didn't expect Enjolras, who usually reacted to everything with a serious expression and severe voice, to blush a bright crimson and start stammering. "Your clothes. Well, uh, Joly took them. Um, medical purposes, you know, because he couldn't have done anything to you with your clothes on. Oh, that wasn't right. I meant operate on you while you were dirty. Not, of course, that you're dirty, at all." He bit his lip and rocked on his heels.

Éponine suppressed a snicker. "I completely understand," she said, but couldn't keep her lip from twitching. "It's not like I've never been naked in front of other people before."

At this, Enjolras' face turned a rather unhealthy-looking shade of dark red, and he quickly changed the subject away from her nudity. "Your clothes are there in the corner, but seeing as they can no longer be used, Musichetta - she works as a waitress here - has graciously given you one of her dresses. She said it would fit." He pointed to the folded dress.

"That's- that's very kind of her." Éponine was little overwhelmed, to say the least. She'd never experienced so much kindness in one day.

"Would you like to change into them?" Enjolras offered, bending and picking up the dress by the collar so that it tumbled into its full size and displayed itself before her.

She gazed at it. It was much better than the one she had previously owned, and actually had more than one colour. "That would be nice," she said finally, smiling up at him tentatively.

He stared back without returning the smile, but with that same unreadable look. She was struck anew by his statuesque beauty. If he hadn't had his head of curly blonde locks or crystal blue eyes, with his pale skin and virtually perfect formation he would have looked like a Greek statue. His solemn expressions and smooth features only made it all the more believable. And then he looked away, clearing his throat again. Éponine also looked down at her hands, face warm.

"I'll stand outside," Enjolras said, and backed away.

She made to say something along the lines of "sure" or "alright", but the words were trapped in her throat. "Aurl", she said instead in a strangled jumble of vowels and consonants.

If Enjolras heard this he pretended not to, because soon the door was shut and Éponine was on her own.

She realised too late she couldn't actually put the dress on, with her injures throbbing in pain. After several tries to put her arms through the sleeves, to no avail, she resigned herself for the ultimate embarrassment.

"Enjolras? Are you still there?" Éponine called from underneath the green cloth, her voice shaking at the end.

For a horrible moment she thought he'd left already, and that she would be stuck with a dress over her head, but then she heard the door slowly swing open.


Enjolras had just been about to go downstairs to the meeting room, steeling himself for endless amounts of teasing from the other students, when he'd heard her call his name.

She'd only said his name once and he'd already decided he wanted to hear her say it again. He didn't know why it sounded so much better when she said it, but the lilt of her street accent and the curl of her lip when she did was almost endearing. And Enjolras didn't use that word much. Or rather, he didn't use that word at all.

When she said it the second time he literally spun one-eighty degrees to answer her. Embarrassed at this response from himself, he ran a hand through his hair. What the hell was happening? Since when had he waited hand and foot on anybody? All he needed right now to clear his head was a new speech to write down or a paper to turn in. He shouldn't even reply to her, and pretend he had already gone downstairs.

But he couldn't resist.

He opened the door and his eyes instantly focused on the swell of her breasts, just covered by a piece of cloth wound several times around her chest. The sheets had fallen to her waist, and from there up it was all she was wearing. He wrenched his gaze to her face before she could notice his blatant staring, however, and realised he couldn't actually see her face. It was covered by the dress Musichetta had given her, which was hanging around her neck in a lump of cloth. He smirked a little to himself.

"Is there a problem?" he asked politely, closing the door before anybody else saw her half-naked and with a dress in her face.

"Obviously," she grumbled. "I've got a broken wrist and two sprained joints. I feel like an invalid."

The smile fell from his face and he felt a little guilty for laughing at her. "Of course. I'm so sorry. D'you... D'you need help?" Enjolras asked uncertainly, not sure if he should call for Musichetta.

"Yes. I was hoping you would." Éponine sounded suddenly timid, and Enjolras could understand why. He felt himself blush again and was glad she couldn't see him. They didn't know each other very well, and it wasn't proper for two single men and women to weren't a couple to see each other bared, much less so such an intimate thing as help the other change their clothes.

He told her what he was thinking. "It's improper," he said after an uncomfortable pause.

She suddenly lost her shyness in a flare of sharp words. "Oh please, you've already taken off my clothes, it can't be any more improper to put them back on," Éponine retorted defensively.

When she put it that way, Enjolras couldn't really see the fault behind it. "Alright then," he hesitantly agreed.

He walked to her side and knelt down, holding the sides of the dress. "I'm going to pull it down," he told her.

"Go ahead."

Enjolras felt her jump when his cold fingers brushed against her warm skin, and he felt his cheeks get hot. How is her skin so soft? He bit his lip and gently lifted her arm, leading it through the sleeves. Was it just him, or did she shiver? "Did I hurt you?" he asked quickly, freezing in place. His fingers tightened ever so slightly on her silky skin and nearly shuddered himself, but managed to restrain it.

"No. No, keep going," Éponine said, her voice several pitches higher.

Enjolras furrowed his brow at the other arm, the one with the sprained shoulder. "This might hurt," he said, and reached for it, clamping his teeth even harder into his bottom lip.


She had to concentrate very hard to keep her breathing even. It really was not fair how just the touch of his cool fingers could increase her heart rate by four times. She could feel the hairs on her skin stand on end, prickling at the painfully pleasing sensation of his hand on her arm. What was going on? The effect Marius had on her paled in comparison to this; she would blush every time he touched her, but that seemed trivial to the near-dizziness that she experienced when in contact with Enjolras of all people.

When he gradually tugged the dress over her head, her face broke out in a smile at the expression on his face. His eyes were narrowed in concentration, and he was biting his lip so hard she was afraid it would start bleeding. (Of course, the way it accentuated the fullness of his bottom lip was highly distracting as well, but she tried her best to ignore that.) He was actually trying very hard not to hurt her.

Which, it turned out, wasn't too difficult because she was so disoriented by the combination of his touch and the look on his face that she didn't feel any pain at all. She was so out of it that she almost missed his next words.

"Do you want me to pull it all the way down?" Enjolras was saying when she snapped back to attention. Éponine was almost disappointed at the steadiness of his tone; was he not affected at all? She was practically faint with the feeling, and he had betrayed no sign of even noticing.

"Yes, thank you," she said anyway. She hadn't realised this required her to elevate herself so that the dress could go past her hips. Or that Enjolras would need to take away the blanket covering her underwear and unclothed legs.

"I have to take the covers away," he said once this came to them at the same time. She noticed a faint redness in his ears and almost smirked to herself.

"Of, that's fine," Éponine said with forced nonchalance. She didn't want him to see her legs and waist. Or rather, the scars on them, but it was too late now.

Enjolras peeled away the blanket and his eyes widened. "Éponine..." he whispered, eyes running along one particularly nasty one near her knee.

"It wasn't the first time I'd been beaten," Éponine said frankly, and was proud of her calm voice (considering that her name from his mouth should be illegal, it sounded so good).

"Who does it?" He was actually reaching out to touch one. She prayed that if he did she wouldn't jerk violently and kick him in the face.

"My father, mostly. My mother never used to, but now if she's feeling especially frustrated one day she'll join in on the fun," she said plaintively with a touch of sarcasm. It went unnoticed.

"Was it your father that I found you with at the Rue Plumet?" Enjolras' ice blue eyes were suddenly staring into her own muddy brown ones and she felt suddenly exposed.

"Uh, yes," she stuttered, looking away, feeling much safer once she wasn't drowning in the cobalt depths.

"I should have killed him that night," Enjolras hissed, clenching the hem of her dress with one fist. Éponine was mildly surprised at the fury in his face, which was suddenly the only emotion on the marble surface. "What kind of father would do this to his own daughter? He's a monster! He doesn't-"

"You shouldn't have killed him," interrupted Éponine matter-of-factly, "because then Mother would do all the beating, and she's much worse."

He stared at her incredulously. "Éponine, you can't stay with them anymore!"

"I have a sister to take care of," she said. "Azelma. We share the beatings. If I leave, not only would she have to do all the work, she would get twice the beatings she already gets. She's smaller than I am. She wouldn't last a week."

Éponine had taken care of Azelma for as long as she could remember. Their mother adored them, but she really had no idea how to take care of children. Once Cosette was bought by M. Fauchelevent, the Thenardieress decided that they had to start working and began pushing them to do so (read: steal) for the family. Azelma had been eight. Gavroche, her other sibling, had always been stronger and more independent than his two older sisters, which was most likely due to the Thenardieress' hatred of male children. Éponine took care of him until he was five, and then he ran off with a group of gamins to pursue his own adventures.

"She can come with you," Enjolras pressed on. "You can both leave."

Épnoine shook her head again. "The reason why she takes our parents' orders is because she's too scared not to, and too weak to survive the punishment if she fights. Our parents are the only people Zelma's afraid of. She would be too afraid to come. Which is a shame because she's better than I am at sneaking around."

"She wouldn't have to be afraid anymore if she left. You could live in the Musain. You could live in my room. I'll pay the rent. I'll find somewhere else." Enjolras spoke so rapidly and earnestly Éponine could scarcely keep up.

Was he offering to give them a place to live? she thought, horrified. "I don't want your money, Monsieur," Éponine rejected, more harshly than she'd intended.

"I'm not giving you money, just a place to stay," Enjolras shot back. "And I've already said, don't call me Monsieur." He looked cross at the title.

"Sorry. Enjolras, then." Éponine rolled her eyes. "I don't want a pre-paid apartment, either. Zelma and I have been taking care of ourselves fine. We don't need help."

"You've been unconscious for more than two days. I'd call that less than fine," he deadpanned, sounding suspiciously close to sarcastic. They glared at each other, Éponine's state of undress forgotten.

"Enjolras," Éponine began, sufficiently annoyed, "We don't need your-"

The door swung wide open. Courfeyrac, Bahorel, and Joly stumbled into the room. Enjolras wrenched the dress down to her knees before practically flying to the wall, looking more than a little flustered.

The newcomers regarded the scene with astonished eyes.

"You've fucked her already?" Bahorel was the first to speak.

Enjolras and Éponine wore identical expressions of horror. "No!" They shouted simultaneously.

"We were..." Éponine looked at Enjolras with wide eyes.

"I was helping with her dress," he said lamely.

"Right," Courfeyrac said, drawing out the word with a never-ending grin on his face. Enjolras scowled at them and opened his mouth to defend himself when Joly knocked Courfeyrac to the side.

"Out of the way!" the medical student commanded, balancing a bowl of soup and a plate of bread and cheese in his arms. Éponine's eyes were glued to it. She'd never eaten more than a couple rinds of moldy bread a day. "Apologies for taking so long with the food. These two" - here he jabbed a finger at Courfeyrac and Bahorel, both of whom tried to look as innocent as possible - "kept asking incessant questions."

Enjolras sighed, and brushed himself off, his face once more the marble mask. "I have work to do. There's an afternoon meeting tomorrow. Someone will have to tell Feuilly about it, so that we know whether he can make it or not. We'll be discussing the recruiting, so everybody must attend." He emphasised the last part with a meaningful look at Courfeyrac, who lived with Marius. "I'll be downstairs." With a nod at Éponine, he made a swift exit and virtually ran down the stairs.

Éponine was a little hurt by this cold transformation. Where was the soft, careful, easily embarrassed boy who had been so intent on giving Éponine and her sister a better life? It seemed he had disappeared behind the composed, constant facade. "Thank you for the food," she said to Joly to hide the hurt.

"You're very welcome. Courfeyrac, Bahorel, if you're just going to disturb her, you might as well leave." The cheerful man gave the two other men an unusually stern look, one that he used while exercising his rights as a "doctor", and they slunk away obediently. "Éponine, I'm putting you on full bed rest for the next two nights, at least," Joly said, setting the tray down. He tapped his cane on his nose, a habit Éponine had noticed in him, and smiled at the waif.

"It's a good thing Enjolras brought you here almost right after the incident," he said. "Most of the bruises, cuts, and even the sprained ankle should be healed by Lamarque's funeral."

Éponine tilted her head, confused. "What happens at Lamarque's funeral?"

"Enjolras is planning the first rebellion there," Joly replied. "Which means people will be hurt, which means I will have to be available, and thus I won't be able to keep you as first priority."

A rebellion. "It's actually starting?" said Éponine in wonder. She never really believed in the revolution, because it probably woudn't make much of a change to her lifestyle except a sudden influx of death. So she hadn't considered the possibility of it happening, and now that it was, she had to face what might happen to her and the people she cared about - that is to say, Azelma, Gavroche, Marius, and now perhaps even the other Amis.

Joly laughed merrily. "I hardly believe it myself. Everybody's excited. Well, maybe except for Grantaire, but he's not normally excited for anything but his favourite wine."

Éponine cracked a smile. This man was so full of happiness for someone heading into probable doom that she felt incredible admiration for him. She'd never met someone so full of the simple joy of existing. He was friendly to others because it made them happy, which in turn made him happy. It was infectious, and her smile grew into a grin.

She thought she could become friends with him, if she spent more time with him. In fact, she thought she could become friends with the entire Amis, the band of loyal, earnest, joyful revolutionaries who saw Éponine not as a common street urchin, but as a woman who had simply lead an unfortunate life.

Éponine could finally be happy.