I own nothing.
She kept her promise, albeit not in the manner he had intended. So he honors her request. He doesn't follow her. It would be useless anyway. Instead, he throws himself into his revolution and forces himself to put France first again.
But he forgets all that when he comes home from the café one night and hears a choked sob while he's unlocking his door. Her clothes are more ragged than he remembers; her cheekbones look like they're about to break through her skin. She's curled up against the wall of the building, soaked by rainwater, with her arms looped around her knees and her head resting against the brickwork.
There's a wet newspaper clutched in her hand.
"Eponine." He kneels down beside her. His hand twitches toward her shoulder, but it's stopped by an irrational fear that touching her will cause her to break apart. "Eponine."
More tears trickle from the corners of her closed eyes. She doesn't answer, so he picks her up and carries her inside. She feels like a skeleton, held together only by the threads of her clothes and the embers of some fading inner fire. Her head droops against his shoulder. He can feel the pounding of her heart, he's so instinctively attuned to it, but her skin's ice.
He strips the wet clothes off her, accidentally tearing through much of the too-thin fabric in his panicked haste. He thinks his face would be crimson if he wasn't cold with fear. She's wrapped in blankets and tucked into his bed by the time her eyes flicker open.
"Julien," she whispers. She's missing another tooth. "You brought me in."
Of course, he wants to say, but he's so lost in relief that she's conscious and lucid that the words don't quite make it out. Of course I will take care of you.
He wants her awake, beside him, but he can't begrudge her some sleep. She doesn't look peaceful, not quite, but she isn't in agony.
Alone at the table, he peels apart the wet pages of the newspaper until he finds what shattered her already-broken heart.
Madamoiselle Euphrasie Fauchelevent to be in joined in matrimony to Monsieur Marius Pontmercy…
Of course. He sets the paper down, slowly. He goes to sit beside the slumbering girl in his bed, strokes her cheek with his thumb, half-forms a few conflicted prayers, and eventually falls asleep beside her, his hand inches from her waist but separated from her by an unfathomable and unbridgeable distance.
…
He wakes up alone.
He forgot to draw his shutters last night, so his room is soaking in sunlight. He almost regrets the absence of the rain that he's coming to associate with Eponine. He knows she's gone. He can't imagine her here, in the light.
But she isn't gone. She's at the table, still nude and wrapped in blankets, with her hands enfolding a mug of coffee.
"I made coffee," she says unnecessarily. "It's still warm. Would you like some?"
"Please."
Her face is beyond calm. The deadness in her eyes has spread through her whole body. Her shoulders curl forward as though they're trying to touch.
The words spill out of his mouth unchecked and unasked for, blunt and honest and completely unadorned by finery or complexity. "Stay with me."
She almost drops his coffee. "What?"
He's on his feet, pacing, before he's fully aware of the motion. "Goddammit Eponine, when are you going to accept it's hopeless? He's getting married, for God's sake. Stop torturing yourself!" His hands clench convulsively.
She does drop his coffee this time.
He's so lost in rage that he doesn't notice how she's cowering from him, doesn't notice the shards all over or the hot liquid seeping towards his feet. "I know I'm not him, but when are you going to see that I could make you happy? If you'd just let go! Why do you do it? You carry his goddamned love letters to that girl—yes-I-know-about-that—and then wander the darkest parts of the streets and night when you could be safe here with me! Why?" The last word is more inhuman roar than anything else.
He looks at her then. At the tears streaming silently down her cheeks and the way her entire body is faintly shaking. He reaches for her, and that seems to shock her into motion.
"Get away from me!" She stumbles back with a snarl. "Where are my clothes?"
"Eponine…"
But she's found them; the rags lie in plain sight on the chair. She throws her chemise over her head and ties on her skirt before running out, the loose laces on her blouse trailing behind her.
He wonders why he let her go for a full five minutes, then he kicks himself mentally and follows.
…
He finds her too late.
He's on one end of the alley; she's at the other, stoically silent, shoved against the wall, with her blouse torn open and her slim throat between the hands of a masked man.
He tries to shout, but his voice chokes off and neither of them hears. He tries to run, but his legs are numb and he stumbles. By the time he finally reaches her, she's started to scream.
His first punch is easily dodged, as are his second and third. Desperate, he throws himself at the man, knocking him to the ground. Eponine sinks to the floor and rolls onto her side, coughing.
His eyes fix onto the distant stars as it becomes clearer and clearer that he's losing this fight. The man is vicious, sleek, and snake-like. Enjolras hasn't physically fought anyone since grade school.
The world contracts to the sound of Eponine's labored breathing, the hard cobblestones against his head and back, the pressure of the man's knee on his chest, and the glint of a knife in the moonlight.
Oh, a cliff-hanger. I promise, it was unintentional. Reviews would be great.