The Decade
Disclaimer: Yup, still own nothing.
Dear Enjolras,
My name is no longer Eponine Thenardier. It is now Eponine Jondrette. Both Gav and Zel have changed their names as well. No one wishes to be defined and judged by their parents' actions.
Dear Enjolras,
I teach preschool now. I both love and hate every moment of it. The children are so sweet yet they are also little monsters. They can change attitudes at the drop of a hat and sometimes I find myself running thin on patience.
But I love my job. It is mine and it makes me happy. To top it all off (the icing on my metaphorical cake), I got this job on my own. Not out of pity or bribery or threats.
No, Enjolras, not even sabotage, for I know you and I know you would suggest that should I have mentioned that I had gotten a job to you instead of writing this letter that will never be postmarked.
I am happier than I have been in a long time.
It is May, the month before school officially ends, the month before Cosette and Marius' wedding, when a new little boy is assigned to her preschool class. Her initial reaction is shock because of how late in the school year it is, but the principal assures her that he is an exceptionally bright transfer student.
"His mother has recently moved into Paris, looking for work," He tells her and she nods and goes to make space for him in the classroom. She suspects nothing out of the ordinary and tells her students, cheerfully, that they will have a new friend to play with when tomorrow comes.
The day dawns like any other but when the boy and his mother walk through the door, she swears her heart stops beating, even if only for a moment. She feels as if she has gotten shot in the chest because standing right there, in front of her, she sees The Girl. The one from the crowd who was with Enjolras last week. The woman she believes he is in love. Now the proof is right there in front of her. Her suspicions were, indeed, correct.
She glances down at the boy and is overwhelmed with blonde hair and blue eyes.
Dear Enjolras,
I wish I was over you.
I wish I didn't think of you every second of everyday.
Sometimes, I even wish I'd never met you.
If I had a genie on one of my "bad" days, these would be my wishes. Actually, it would just be the last one because then the first two wouldn't be necessary.
But it is at that point that I remember something you once told me when I was still getting over Marius, I believe. (It's always you coming to my aid, isn't it? Even when you aren't here to help me, you are still here.)
"It's better to have loved and lost than never to have loved at all."
She steels herself and smiles. Years of controlling her emotions, lying and pure professionalism come to her aid.
Letting her dimples show, she squats down in front of the small child (because she knows that he must be afraid, moving away from all of his friends so late in the school year and at such a tender age, he will be insecure and shy, so she will help him, this is her job) and she offers him her hand first, completely ignoring the mother, save a small smile. This is a tactic she has used effectively many times.
"Hi there! You must be Sebastian. Am I right?" At the little boy's nod, she smiles and continues, taking that as encouragement, "My name is Ms. Jondrette, but that's just too much of a mouthful," She scrunches up her nose to show her distaste and is rewarded with a smile, "So everyone calls me Ms. J. Are you excited?" She allows her voice to be injected with sunshine, happiness and pure excitement that could rival any child.
The little boy nods again and eyes the classroom, a little braver, where can see a playhouse and finds walls filled with bright posters, toys, books, coloring pencils, anything a typical preschooler will need are scattered about, ready to be discovered.
"Well, since you are here early and it's your fist day, why don't you put your things in your cubby," Here she points out which one it is, "And I'll talk to your mommy for a little bit, while you play, sound good?" He nods again and goes to the space that she has pointed out for him. Today is all about comfort. She will get him to open up if it is the death of her. For a moment he's like any other kid to walk through that door, but then she feels a dull stab of pain in her heart. He will never be like just another kid, not to her. Still, she braces herself, trying to become comfortable in her new role as teacher to Enjolras' child.
Her new goal for the day is to hear this little boys voice.
She will try not to associate Enjolras with him, after all, he cannot help it. He's just a kid. It's not like he can control who his mother decides to have him with. She is astonished to see him meticulously examining things, but then she realizes that she shouldn't be. This is typical Enjolras behavior.
He really seems like Enjolras' kid but his last name is not Enjolras, it is Laurent. This baffles her, and her need for knowledge (also known as nosiness) runs away with ideas. Perhaps he took his wife's name to bend the way things usually work? Maybe to show female empowerment? It is something that he would do without thinking twice. Or she and the child kept her last name while his is still Enjolras? She cannot imagine him parting with his beloved last name. However, Eponine doesn't have time to reflect on this. She pushes her confusion and curiosity aside, along with her jealousy and turns to speak with the mother while Sebastian is busy looking around.
"Hello Mrs. Laurent," She finally turns to the mother, with a forced smile on her face and an equally forced cheery voice, "My name is Eponine Jondrette and I will be your son's preschool teacher for the remainder of the year," She extends her hand for the other woman to shake. Her eyes are blue too, Eponine notices, but not as blue as Sebastian's, and definitely not as blue as Enjolras'.
She smiles as well and shakes Eponine's calloused hand with a petite one of her own, "Hello Ms. Jondrette, please, call me by my first name, Amelie."
Eponine nods and The Girl, Amelie, chats with her for a while on the end of the year events, what is currently going on in her classroom. Mundane things. Soon the time comes for her to leave, and she turns to watch her son worriedly, "Do you think he will be okay? Can I leave? I have an interview later and I hope I can get to it, but I'll stay if he doesn't want me to go..." She trails off and bites her lip, looking to Eponine for guidance.
Eponine eyes the boy, herself, before turning and reassuring Amelie, "Trust me, he seems to be adjusting quite well."
The other woman nods and watches as another student enters the classroom. Eponine smiles and waves to her. The girl's name is Sophie and one of Eponine's best.
"Hi," She is all sunshine and bubbles, and Eponine thinks that she will be perfect to help Sebastian, as long as she doesn't scare him away, first, "Are you the new boy," Sophie doesn't even wait for him to respond before continuing, "'Course you are! My name is Sophia," Here she sticks out a hand, which he shakes, glancing at his mother and looking a little frightened. Eponine is sure she looks amused right about now, "Do you want to play hopscotch with me? It's my favorite. C'mon, there's a little thingy on the floor where we can play!" She drags him away from his spot in front of the calendar before he can protest and Eponine watches along with Amelie as Sophie let's him go first.
"Yup, he's going to do just fine here."
Amelie looks relieved to hear this and nods, "One more thing, before I go... It's just," The woman's looking uncomfortable now as she continues on with her question, "I won't be able to pick him up afterschool today. Do you think it would be all right if my boyfriend picked him up?" She has now got that worried look about her once again, hoping Eponine wouldn't say no to her.
Eponine, on the other hand, was reeling from this new information. Enjolras was the boyfriend? Not the husband? Was there still hope for her? Did he love this woman? Was this child even his? The similarities between the two were uncanny but he could just as well have gotten all of his traits from his mother or a man that wasn't Enjolras. But then, just because he was her boyfriend, didn't mean that they hadn't had a child together.
With this last thought, the hope that was escalating within her came to a screeching halt and she crashed back onto planet Earth.
Dumbly, Eponine nods to the blonde woman standing in front of her.
"Great," the relief is back, "His name is Gabriel Enjolras, he's like a larger version of my son," She says gesturing at Sebastian.
Eponine nods again, it seems to be the only thing she's capable of doing at this point.
"Bye sweetheart," Amelie calls out, and with a wave to Eponine, she's gone, out the door, leaving the distinctive smell of vanilla (of course, she would smell like vanilla), like she hasn't impacted Eponine in a huge way.
She sighs and rubs her eyes instead of screaming out in frustration.
She really, really, needs a drink.
Dear Enjolras,
All I want is to be happy.
She introduces the class to Sebastian, whom she still hasn't heard a peep from, but he must have said something to someone, right?
"Alright, Sebastian, you're five, am I correct?" She questions him as they stand in front of the classroom with him, a hand lightly placed on his shoulder, while the other children sit in a half circle, waiting to hear about the new boy. At his nod, she continues, "Then you have to answer five questions for me, okay?" Eponine doesn't wait for a response this time, she just plunges ahead, "What is your favorite color?"
"Red." He answers in an astonishingly clear and loud voice. She's taken aback, not at the color, she had suspected that to be the case, but at how clearly he spoke, how he held his chin up. Just like a certain person she used to know.
"Okay," She makes a quick recovery, "Four more questions, let's see, where did you live before you moved?"
"Montfermeil," He answers and now she's really surprised. She had lived there until preschool herself, how odd, she mused and sought back into her memory for an Amelie but no face connected to the name.
"Does anyone else have a question for Sebastian?" She opens up the questioning to the class, because, frankly, she cannot think anymore.
"Do you have any pets?" Of course, it is Sophie who asks the question, excited for the answer, but Sebastian only shakes his head in the negative fashion and her face droops in disappointment.
"Do you like dinosaurs?" Roland asks, and, when Sebastian nods the affirmative to his question, beams at the other boy's response.
Arthur asks, "Do you live with your mommy and daddy?"
Eponine's heart stops and then it breaks. Arthur's parents have just gone through a divorce and the other children in her small class have both a mother and a father (even if one of them is a step parent), no one else understands his pain.
Yet, she cannot help but lean forward in her seat a bit, selfishly wanting to know Sebastian's answer.
"No," His answer is a whisper, "I live with my mommy but my daddy is in Montfermeil. Sometimes Mommy's boyfriend sleeps over. He's nice. She met him when he came Montfermeil and now we live by him."
Eponine's breath catches in her throat, they haven't moved in together. Sebastian is not theirs. Her head is still spinning when story time comes around.
Dear Enjolras,
If life came with a remote control, I would make full use of the device and rewind time.
She is rescued by the school secretary who pulls her into the hallway to speak with her.
"I'm sorry, Eponine, but there has been an accident. You're listed as your brother's emergency contact, which is why when the hospital couldn't reach you on your cell phone, they called here, at the school. He's in the hospital."
Eponine feels her heart stop. By the end of the day she's going to be checked in there with him, she muses, at the rate her heart is going. She chews on her lip thoughtfully, "Is there a way I can escape and see him?"
The secretary who happens to owe her a favor, grins and says, "I thought you'd never ask."
Forty minutes later, a sub has taken her place, she has texted Azelma and she's now sitting next to Gavroche, who has his hand tightly bandaged, while eyeing her infuriating little brother with disdain, "You did what, exactly?"
He grins impishly, looking as if he is thirteen instead of twenty-three and explains once again that he wasn't paying attention to what he was doing and nailed his hand to the wall.
"Let me repeat what you just said and you stop me when you think I've reached a really important part, you WEREN'T PAYING ATTENTION and then you nailed your hand to a board," She eyes him, "I DID say to stop me when I reached an important part, did I not?"
"'Ponine, calm down, I'm fine, and yes you did tell me to stop you but I didn't see anything particularly important in that sentence."
She would smack him if he didn't have a nail imbedded into his left hand, "Why weren't you paying attention, 'Roche? You have to be careful!"
"Eponine! Stop reading me the riot act! I memorized it when I was seven anyway."
"That's because you're always getting into trouble," She says, fondly and ruffles his hair with a sigh, "You're going to be the death of me," She mutters and he only grins down at her, because somewhere along the way he grew to be four inches taller than her. Still, she lets him rest his head on her shoulder as they wait for his turn to come at the ER, "I hate you, you know that you punk?"
"Love you too, Sis."
Dear Enjolras,
I no longer bake that often, but Gav complains that I smell like baked goods whenever he sees me. He jokes that the smell is forever embedded on me now and no amount of perfume I wear can cover it.
I simply tell him that he expects me to smell liked baked goods and so I do.
Azelma never has the same complaints, which just backs my theory; the boy wants more cake.
Enjolras is cursing himself. Late. He is late, late, late. He was supposed to pick up Sebastian ten minutes ago but no, he had to go and forget to pick up his girlfriend's kid on the one day she was counting on him not to be late.
On little Sebastian's first day.
The kid is probably freaking out.
The guilt was eating Enjolras up inside. How could he forget someone so important?
Finding the right classroom, he enters to see two women conversing while Sebastian plays hopscotch with a little girl who is probably in his class. Enjolras visibly relaxes, but he still feels that insatiable guilt gnawing at him, and on the inside he is still fairly tense.
The boy doesn't notice him enter, so he goes over by the two women. He assumes one is the teacher and the other is the mother of the little girl playing with Sebastian. Now he just has to figure out which one the teacher is.
"Hello," He greets, once he is close enough, they had, of course, noticed him the moment he walked into the classroom, "My name is Gabriel Enjolras, I'm here to pick up Sebastian," He is looking unsure, which of these two women is supposed to be the teacher? Usually he is good at reading people, but right now he is completely clueless.
Finally the brunette woman stands up and calls to the little girl, who waves to Sebastian. The mother smiles at Enjolras on her way out the door and he turns to face the only woman left in the room as Sebastian trudges over to him, a smile on his little face.
"I'm truly sorry about this," Here he pauses because he doesn't know the teacher's name, "I swear it won't happen again."
Surprisingly the woman laughs, "I sure hope not, if the real teacher had been here, she would have read you the riot act. I know Ms. Jondrette, she really cares about these kids, and seeing you leave this poor child here on his first day," She smiles and shakes her head, "she would have murdered you."
Enjolras gulps, but then his mind catches up with his body, "Wait," His brows furrow, "Ms. Jondrette? You aren't the teacher?"
"Oh no, I'm the substitute. Ms. Jondrette was called out earlier, unfortunately. Some sort of family emergency. Her brother is in the hospital I believe."
"I'm sorry to hear that," He murmurs as Sebastian yanks on his pant leg.
"Can we go now? I'm hungry!" The little boy exclaims and this time both Enjolras and the substitute laugh.
"'Course. Your mom isn't going to be home for another half an hour, how about you and me swing past McDonald's?" Enjolras doesn't necessarily like McDonald's, he believes it is unhealthy and would be the death of anyone who ate it. It is also a corporate monopoly, but Sebastian loves it and Sebastian is not his child so he does not have the right to restrict it.
"Yeah!"
So off they went and maybe he was crazy but as he walked out the room, he smelled something familiar. Something that he had not smelled in a while. He frowned and thought for a moment. It was a mixture of smells, not just one particular scent, and he could not pinpoint the last time he smelled that exact combination. Slowly, he'd scanned the room, wondering what it was that had triggered the scent, but finding nothing suspicious, he gathered Sebastian and they went out the door without another look back.
Dear Enjolras,
I needed my knight in shining armor today.
Eponine mutters a curse as she jogs to her car. It is ten o' clock, dark, raining, and she had forgotten her sweater in the classroom in her rush to get to Gavroche, whom she had just dropped off at his own apartment. Eponine jiggles the car door, trying to get it to open so she can get out of this downpour, but it was stuck. Just as she's about to give up and run back inside to crash on Gavroche's couch, a man in a red sweatshirt shows up beside her and yanks the door open.
"Thank you," she calls over the thunder, practically throwing herself into the car, knowing just how stupid she is being. She is in a lonely parking lot. With a random stranger. He could kill her or abduct her or rape her or who knows what and nobody will ever know.
But the stranger merely salutes her and shouts back a, "You're welcome," and turns to run into the apartment just as lightning streaks across the sky and for a moment they are both illuminated, she with one leg still outside of her car and he, half turned, walking towards the apartment complex.
For a moment, just for a moment...
She could have sworn she saw...
But it wasn't possible.
Dear Enjolras,
I love the rain, but then you already know that.
For a second, he could have sworn he saw...
Out of the corner of his eye, perhaps?
No, she is gone.
His heart thumps painfully in his chest as he turns to go.
Dear Enjolras,
I hate the rain. I hate it, I hate it, I hate it.
That night, when Eponine gets home she reflects back on the day. She was so close to seeing Enjolras again. Ironically enough, she thought that if they should ever meet again, they would meet in the summer.
It would have been wonderfully symbolic to meet at Marius' wedding.
A whole decade passing and all of that. Marius getting with Cosette was probably the start of the end for her and Enjolras she realizes, now that she thinks about it.
She doubts that beautiful, symbolic, moment will happen now, although Gavroche did buy her an extra day.
She falls into the best sleep she has had in the longest time. That night, there are no nightmares to chase her into wakefulness and she has peaceful dreams.
She dreams of rain.
Two chapters in two days! Hopefully this makes up for the fact that I probably won't be able to update for the next few days due to AP reviews/tests.
I tried something different with this chapter, mixing the prologue with the first chapter.
Thank you to those who reviewed for the last few chapters/favorited/followed The Decade.
Let me know what your opinions! Any thoughts at all are welcome.