three calls and four rings later Enjolras picks up. "Hello?" His voice is thick with sleep.
"I'm sorry, I didn't know who else to call. I know it's late."
"Eponine? What happened? Is Combeferre okay?" He's fully awake now.
"I got kicked out and I don't know what to do."
"Kicked out of your apartment?"
"I'm at the corner of 76th Avenue and Racine. I don't have my bus pass. I don't know what to do. I know it's late, but-"
"Shit." Enjolras puts his phone on speaker while he pulls on his jeans. "Yeah, I'm coming, sit tight."
The southside of Chicago has been in the news every single day since forever for various rapes and murders. Three in the morning isn't the time to be taking a casual stroll down the worst bit of it.
"I'm sorry I woke you up. I don't know anyone else with a car, and I don't have money for a cab, and-"
"Don't worry about it; it's fine. Stay where you are; I'll be there soon." Enjolras is almost out the door when he remembers his keys. "How's your phone battery? Can you stay on the line?"
"No, I've got 15% left and the cold is killing it. I'm going to keep walking on Racine towards Ogden park. I don't want to stand anywhere for too long."
"I'll be there in 20, if I don't find you on Racine, I'll call 911."
"Thank you." Eponine hangs up without waiting for a reply, putting her phone back in her pants pocket to keep it warm. And then she runs. The cold stings her lungs, but each passing block makes the shake in her hands ease a bit. She's four blocks from Ogden park when a car slows behind her. She runs faster. She's not going to make it to the park. Her heart beats faster with fear and exhaustion. The car rolls down its window and she regrets calling Enjolras. The police will scrape her body off the cement, but first he's going to have to find her riddled with bullet holes. He'll never sleep well again.
"Where's your coat?" The person from the car hollars. Eponine stops running long enough to recognize the blonde puff of Enjolras' hair in the dim car. She stumbles into the gutter and gets into his backseat.
"I forgot it." Enjolras cranks the heat and motions for her to sit in the front. "I'm sorry I woke you up." She's breathing hard, trying to calm down from the fright Enjolras just gave her.
"What's going on?" He shrugs off his coat and tosses it to her, keeping his eyes on the road.
"It's really complicated."
"Who were you running from?" Enjolras persists. Eponine doesn't answer for a long time.
"My family is a little bit crazy."
"Did they hurt you?" Enjolras looks from the road to Eponine a few times searching for any obvious injuries.
"It's fine," she says, wrapping his coat around herself tighter.
"We can go to the police, Eponine. File a report."
"Don't. We can't. Just forget this happened, it's not a big deal."
"You were running around the ghetto at three in the morning scared out of your mind. That's a big deal."
"Seriously, Enjolras, there's a lot more to this than what happened tonight and it's my fault for coming here thinking that this wouldn't be the result. We can't go to the police because I'm involved, and my sister and her fiance are involved, and I can handle it on my own. Okay?"
"What is this about?" Eponine doesn't answer. "You need to tell me what's happening right now or I'm going to the police. Did your sister murder someone? Did you murder someone?"
"What?! No!" Eponine digs her nails into her palms. "Why would you jump to murder right away? What the fuck!?"
"There's blood on your cheek." Enjolras says, looking at Eponine in his peripheral.
"My dad hit me, okay?" Eponine touches her cheek gingerly and looks at the blood that comes away on her fingertips. "And before you bring up the police again, I had it coming. He needed me and my sister for a heist he's trying to pull off, but I didn't want any part in it, so I ruined it for him tonight and he flipped out. I probably lost him like two hundred grand."
"And you don't want to notify the police because...?"
"If I tell you, you can't tell Combeferre, or Courfeyrac or anyone. I don't want them to know."
"Consider my lips sealed."
"Or the police." Enjolras doesn't answer right away. "Or the police," Eponine prompts again.
"Or the police," he agrees, though he isn't entirely sure if he means it.
"There are people who will kill you if you talk about this, and I don't mean that figuratively. They will kill you."
"I'm not going to tell anyone. I just need to know that we're not being followed by murderers"
"When I lived with my parents my sister, brother, and I were involved in other heists and scams and we were good at them. We never got caught. I left when I turned eighteen and haven't looked back except for to check in on my kid sister every now and then. If we went to the police, they'd look in on me and everything that my family's done and we'd all go to jail for a really long time. I know now that what we were doing was wrong, but back then I didn't care. My dad tried to use me for one of his sprees again tonight when I ruined everything he told me he'd cut my face off and make me eat it. So I ran."
"Do they know where you live?"
"Probably. I'm not sure. My sister's fiance does. I don't think they'll come after me though."
"Would you mind just sleeping at my place? I don't know if that's weird. It'd make me feel better. I can sleep on the couch if you want a bed." Eponine is quiet for a long time, unsure how to respond. She chews her lip.
"I...thank you. That'd be nice. I'm sorry I'm so inconvenient."
"You're not. I mean, it's three am, but if we switched places, I'd be a lot more of a mess than you are. I'll just sleep better knowing no one is feeding you your face."
"You're not going to tell anyone, right?"
"I said I wouldn't."
"Not the police either?"
"You're really brave, Eponine. I don't want you to go to jail either. If you don't want me to go to the police, then I'm not going to go to the police. I don't care what you did while you were living with your parents. You're not who you were before and you shouldn't be retroactively punished for crimes you were coerced into as a minor."
"You're um, you're really cool, Enjolras," Eponine says, trying to find the right words to express her gratitude. It doesn't feel like enough. She wants to tell him that she wishes that she could see herself the way he does or that she's glad she met him or that no one's ever been as kind to her as he's been. But she doesn't. Because she can't. Instead she scoots closer to the heating vent and tries to ignore the growing ache in her stomach that Enjolras' created.
"So last night was dumb," Eponine says when Enjolras finally opens his eyes at 9am. She stayed in his loft over night, but didn't sleep at all. "Like, really dumb." Her hands were trembling from exhaustion, but her heart was still racing with the fear of what Enjolras now knew.
"I still want more of an explanation," he said, the sleep from his face, trying to come to terms with the fact that last night wasn't just a strange dream.
"I shouldn't have called you."
"But you did. What were you doing down there? Who's your father? I guess I'm just really confused about why you went back if you didn't want to be involved with a life of crime anymore."
Enjolras is shirtless, his tousled hair a golden lion's mane. He brought her back home with him because he doesn't intend to turn her in, Eponine tries to convince herself. They're friends. Or something. Maybe not friends. Close enough that when Eponine thought she might be murdered she called him to help. She eyes him up for a long moment before deciding she's already dug her hole too deep.
"Ok." She takes off her right sock and walks over to Enjolras. Trying to still her hands, she holds her foot so that he can examine the tattoo on her arch.
"You're a Feline," Enjolras says flatly. Eponine puts her foot down. The insignia is well known across America. "How did you get tangled up with them?" Felines were notorious cat burglars. If caught in the act, they didn't hesitate to kill in order to cover their tracks.
"My father is head of the chapter in Chicago." Enjolras hisses air in between his teeth. This sort of information would help close a lot of unsolved cases if brought to the police.
"And you?" The question is a loaded one. And you helped him? To kill people? To steal fortunes by thieving and hacking your way across all of Chicago and half the major cities in the Midwest? And you want your father's whereabout to remain a secret?
"And I got out. Years ago. Changed my name, covered my tracks. You don't just get to leave them. My father's been fuming ever since."
"What changed last night?"
Eponine smiles ruefully. "My ex proposed to my sister. I went to talk her out of it but it was a set up to
flush me out of hiding."
"What will you do now?"
"Quit my job. I'll probably have to move, but we'll see. I'll wait to see what their first move is. I ruined their plans for last night, so either they'll try to get revenge, or they'll leave me well enough alone so that I can't ruin anything else for them. Maybe both."
Enjolras stares at her. She's looking at her shaking hands, breathing deeply. "Do you want some breakfast, then? I'm afraid I'm all out of eggs, but I've got bran flakes and toast."
"So you're not going to go to the police?"
"About what? I picked up my drunk girlfriend late last night and brought her back home. Nothing illegal about that."
Eponine smiles weakly. "Seriously though, you don't want to go alert the FBI that you know where America's fifth most wanted is hiding out?"
"You can do whatever you think is right," Enjolras tells her, sliding out of bed and pulling on a shirt. Eponine trails him to the kitchen and watches him pour himself a bowl of bran.
"Why are you doing this? We've known each other for a month. Why would you do this for me?"
Enjolras hands her a bowl and leans back on the counter. "It's not your fault. I don't trust our legal system to treat you fairly. Besides," he says, winking at her, "We've all got secrets we don't want authorities looking into."
Eponine starts to stutter something but instead decides to raise her bowl. "To your drunk girlfriend who needs to be picked up at 3am." Enjolras clinks his against hers.
"Fuck to police."