Notes: Thanks to the reviewers for the last chapter: frustratedstudent, Deadtom77, and Musichetta:) I'm glad you liked it. Also, the ballet fic is now up:) I hope you guys like this chapter of Barricade, and please don't forget to review!
BARRICADE
CHAPTER VIII
January 1968.
Nothing. Joly bandages Enjolras's rib, and when he asks how it happened Enjolras doesn't answer.
February 1968.
Éponine shows up to no more meetings at the Café Musain, and Enjolras doesn't see her once. His rib begins to heal.
March 1968.
His rib heals fully, so he decides that maybe he should go find her, so he comes up with a book to ask her for: The Opium of the Intellectuals, by Raymond Aron-the book she had been reading that day when it had just been him and her and Paris and the river. The book that goes against everything he believes in, wherein Aron shoots every ideal that Enjolras ever had—about China and Maoism and how Communism is the next frontier of France-straight to hell.
It doesn't matter, he just needs to talk to Éponine. He doesn't even care if it's arguing about politics and their highly differing views, he just wants to see her and hear her voice. It's been three months, and sure, he only knew her for a week before she disappeared, and of course his life is still plodding along as usual (he is planning a revolution after all) and it's not like she was a supremely large portion of his life. But she was there, and she was important, and Enjolras needs her now.
So he leaves his apartment on the Rue de Rivoli, and crosses the Seine to number 37 Rue de la Bûcherie. The now familiar doorbell rings when he enters, and the shop is empty. Éponine is nowhere to be found, but he expected that, considering how the seemingly small bookshop seems to have hidden recesses that are accessible only to a select few.
Whitman however, does appear, called by the ringing bell, and Enjolras quickly stops him. "Monsieur! Please. I need to speak to Éponine." The old man stops suddenly, turning and staring at Enjolras. His eyebrows (which are bushier than ever) crinkle in confusion, knitting into one mass of white, nearly obscuring his eyes, as he tries to figure out who this disheveled young man in red is.
"Éponine? She left."
Enjolras blinks. "I'm...sorry, what?"
Whitman repeats himself wearily, with a shrug. "She no longer lives here. I don't know why. She just told me that she found lodging elsewhere."
"Can I...can I look at her room? I think...I think she may have left me something." It's a blatant lie-he has no reason to believe anything of the sort, but he's hanging on to the slightly nonexistent chance that she has. Whitman nods, handing him a key.
"In the back."
Enjolras wanders past the open front of the shop, to the back where he has never been before. After rows and rows of bookshelves, he finds a door, crammed like an afterthought between all the books. He twists the doorknob and enters, finding himself in a room that resembles the year one dorms at the University, only even smaller-thirteen beds lined up against either wall, each with a small dresser in the base. Each bed is covered in an impersonal off-white bedspread, except for one.
It's the bed in the corner farthest from the door, covered in a thin blue quilt that is the same color as the dress that she wore once. He goes to it, looking for anything at all to remind him of her, but besides the quilt there's nothing there.
He remembers the dressers then, and mentally slaps himself. Of course. Éponine is as private as a person can get; despite being her friend-if you could call it that-a week he still barely knows anything about her. He pulls the drawer open with some difficulty-it hasn't been opened in a while. There's only one thing inside, and Enjolras immediately recognizes it-the black leather-bound journal Éponine had been writing in the first day he met her
He takes it out, and finds that all the pages have been torn out raggedly, leaving bits and pieces of some pages. He can see some blots of ink, edges of drawings, but not enough to really read anything. He flips frantically, unable to accept the truth that Éponine really hasn't left him anything at all. That she is gone and no one knows where she is.
He wouldn't be surprised if she had just bought a train ticket to the middle of nowhere; he wouldn't be surprised if she doesn't know where she is either.
Just as Enjolras is thinking this, something drops out of the seemingly empty journal—a tiny pair of opera glasses, fashioned delicately out of gold, complete with small panes of glass in the frames. He hunts through the journal again, carefully looking for any clue about the opera glasses. Of course, it could be that the glasses weren't even meant for him to find, but his infernal hope blots that idea out quickly.
He finds his clue quickly. An ink scrawl, across a strip of paper just barely hanging onto the binding of the journal. Ask M. for M. Leroux.
And that is all. Ask Monsieur for Monsieur Leroux.
Enjolras can only assume that Éponine's cryptically worded note (mostly due to the double use of monsieur) is referring to Monsieur Whitman. At least, the first time it mentions monsieur. Jumping up, he grabs the journal and opera glasses and rushes out of the dormitories. "Monsieur Whitman!" he practically shouts. "Monsieur Whitman, I'm looking for a Monsieur Leroux."
Whitman gives him an odd look. "If you're looking for his physical being I hate to disappoint you. He died in 1927. His grave's not in Paris either."
His words leave Enjolras bewildered. Did Éponine really tell him to search for a dead man?
"But," continues Whitman, "his words live on."
Of course. Éponine wasn't telling him to look for Monsieur Leroux, she was telling him to look in his book.
Soon, Whitman deposits a novel entitled Le Fantôme de l'Opéra in Enjolras's hands. "His most famous work. One of Éponine's favorites."
"Thank you, Monsieur," says Enjolras. He buys the book, and takes it with him to the bench where he sat with Éponine.
When he cracks the book open to a random page in the center, he finds a dried rose petal. Thankfully it's lost its choking perfume. He hates roses.
Back at the beginning, the same ink scrawl marks its territory on the inner cover: Éponine Thénardier, 1967. So she had claimed this book for herself just last year. He begins flipping through the book randomly, and finds something odd—in the whole first half of the book, every time the word opera is written, it is underlined. He is certain this is part of Éponine's game—it does, after all, match with the opera glasses she left him. At around one hundred pages, the underlining fades to a trickle and stops altogether, as if she got bored of underlining.
He thinks he's pieced together what she wants him to do—but he's not sure. So he starts from page one and begins to read the first novel he's read in a long time.
About an hour later—he's torn through it just as if it were one of his Maoist books—he can't say that he loves it, but he likes it enough, and he can see why Éponine would love it. This is the girl whose very name comes from a romance novel, after all. And he's gotten his last clues—the two times Garnier is mentioned in the book, his name is underlined as well. And on the final page, in her writing: Meet me any day, 4:00 pm.
He checks his watch. It's three-twenty. It's settled. She wants him to meet her at the Palais Garnier at four, and he's going to do it. It doesn't matter that she was the one who completely abandoned him, who just walked out of his life three months ago. He is going to see her and find out why.
He doesn't think of the technicalities (how would she know what day he was going to find the clues and go meet her?)—he just starts running.
Enjolras gets close to the Palais Garnier at about three-fifty. Even from a distance he can see her—she's wearing a red dress today, making her very noticeable against the gray afternoon. She appears to be filming; her dark hair is pulled in a braid.
He lets out a breath of relief he didn't know he was holding—relief that it wasn't a hoax, that he hadn't misinterpreted the clues. That she really is here.
He walks faster.
Notes: I hope you enjoyed this chapter, which held a nod to Phantom, which is another book/musical that I really love:) Please don't forget to review!