All thoughts she held – 'this is not what I expected in the least' and 'hold on, maybe he didn't want to admonish me' and 'maybe this will not be a disaster after all?' – reciprocation is a foreign concept but even that he is not to scold or reprimand seems out of reach – flee from her head as the ship rocks and she finds herself careening into the man before her.
His hand falls to her arm to help steady her, and when she fully regains her balance and looks up, she sees that same note of urgency mirrored in his expression.
What Éponine knows, now, is that something is going on above deck, something dangerous.
Understanding without speaking, they each allow the other to squeeze past. Up he goes, into the fray, and she makes a sharp right turn into her room. It's not usually the greatest of ideas to leave a sword half-buried in her sheets, even sheathed as it is, but right now she is happy for her previous inattentiveness.
Éponine is still in skirts, still unbound, but even a second wasted cannot be allowed. She will have to sacrifice mobility for time. She wishes her hair was pinned better than her clumsy hands could manage – Jehan is an excellent tutor, but she finds she is not always so skilled a pupil – but she is incredibly grateful that it is pinned at all.
Bahorel looks particularly rumpled, and she takes note of the way the hair on one side of his head seems to stand straight up as he stumbles past her door in the short time it takes her to ready herself.
She ascends the steps quickly, and it's not until she has reached the deck to be greeted with the sight of boarding hooks that it fully sinks in that they are forced into the unfamiliar position of defending, and then her eyes dart to the feared ship.
She is greeted not with the sight of polished terror, but with a small, poorly-maintained sloop. Is this the so-feared Sentinel? But no, this ratty, ragged thing does not fit any of the descriptions.
For a moment, she is struck with an inability to fully reconcile this image, nor the shame of being caught by some nameless, nothing-doing band of ragged sailors.
But – no, no, no, they will not be caught. Not here, not now.
Despite her best efforts, panic begins to clog her mind. She knows that some were below, and some were above, but who, she cannot quite recall, and it is strangely… empty up here. Bahorel and Enjolras are on deck, or on their deck, she knows, but Joly, Bossuet, Jehan, Combeferre – she sees no trace of those. And if they are wounded…
'But there would be some trace; corpses do not disappear into thin air,' she thinks, and then hates herself for it.
Sword securely at her side, she crosses the gap between the ships easily, feet flying over the boards. No, that is ridiculous. They have been taken by surprise, but they are not fools. They would not be wounded now, and they would certainly not be –
And before she can creep below, or even finish this thought, pain sparks and consumes her and all she sees is sparks, quickly overtaking her vision, then dying out to blackness.
Her head is hazy and heavy and her first attempts to raise it lead to her forehead thudding back to the ground, a wave of mixed dizziness and nausea overtaking her with such overwhelming intensity that she cannot decide which is worse.
An unpleasant voice cuts into her newly-awakened consciousness, and for a moment she thinks, 'yes, the nausea,' as she curls into herself.
The speaker, whoever he is, does not appear to notice her awakening. She forces open heavy eyelids to see.
A thin, unpleasant-looking man is striding back and forth in front of the Amis - who are, quite literally, tied up, and looking none too happy about it.
She can't quite focus on the words, only that the general tone is that of poorly sugarcoated malice, until movement draws her eyes.
One of the men to the side of her Amis, ostensibly there to watch over them, licks salt-cracked lips and speaks up quietly. "We don't need all of 'em, do we? Won't just a few of 'em do?" He jerks a thumb at Jehan in a manner that is likely meant to be either falsely discrete or threatening.
Jehan calmly, casually, and effortlessly smashes the man's foot with his boot, and she hears a distinctive crack as the man begins howling and hopping.
It makes such a peculiar picture she cannot suppress a small bout of laughter at this, even as her head swims. This, finally, diverts the apparent ringleader's attention to her, and his unhappiness at plans gone ever so slightly awry quickly shifts to smarmy satisfaction.
"Ah, it seems our ragged little beauty is awake."
His strides are long, and soon he is kneeling in front of her, grasping her chin between his rough fingers.
"Hello, little miss," he greets with false civility, and her lip curls as his warm breath washes over her face. He taps at her chin with the handle of a blade she had not noticed, and the implication in the action is not lost on her. "You know… they gave you up in a heartbeat," he reports, reedy voice crackling with undue cheer.
Her eyes widen a fraction, and it is enough for him to notice. So that's what it is, then. They have passed her off as a hostage, a lie likely easily believed because – well, what place has she among these shining idealists? She seems so very dark and suspicious next to them, who it seems the very sun favors.
And a woman, naturally, she thinks almost as an afterthought – her mind is, in the aftermath of its bludgeoning, working not as quickly as she would like.
She can't be sure whether this would be a deciding factor or not. Among a more respectable crew, yes, but many in Saint Michele found how unwise it was to underestimate someone on such superficial grounds, and he seems to have stumbled from the same sort of seedy background.
"Oh," he says, drawing uncomfortable close, "did you think yourself special to them? Were you drawn in by those pretty faces? Did you go through their initiation? He grins lewdly and her mouth turns down as he continues. "They use you and then – toss you aside."
He ghosts a hand across her bare shoulders and she shudders. Behind the man, she sees them react with varying degrees of anger – spines straightening in response to his words, pursed lips, eyebrows shooting sharply down; a clenched fist from Bahorel, never one for subtlety, a darkening to Enjolras' gaze – and the simple idea that they would fight for her if she needed is enough to cool her burning rage to a simmer.
And yes, she thinks as her head begins to clear, she knows this man's type. He is the sort to the type to believe their pretty, young wife is calling to every man that passes, doubts her without reason, creates a self-fulfilling prophecy. He assumes at her meanings, her desires – he knows her not, yet he would decide her fate.
She has seen many of men like these, and she knows how this ends.
He thinks her weak-willed, weak-minded, and easily and utterly manipulatable. It will be his undoing in the end.
She lifts her chin an inch and does not let her gaze waver. 'I was meant for better things than this, once. I will not be brought down by the likes of you.'
He reminds her of her father.
When he sees his words are not having the reaction he desires, whatever that may be, he straightens to face his captives.
"See," says the man, apparently resuming his monologue to them and waving his knife about as he speaks, "your little policy has some, ah, flaws, y'might say. The king's precious ship? Well, turns out they got desperate real quick, and they were so grateful to have the assistance of a humble ship as ours they had no qualms of telling the tale of just who robbed them blind days earlier. And, well," he chuckles, so smug that Éponine wants to crawl to her feet and battle the ensuing wave of nausea just for the satisfaction of cracking her knuckles against his face, "who would pass up the chance to capture the great Amis? Not I."
She notes the use of 'I' rather than 'we' - frequent applications of that attitudes would be sure to cause some strain on relations with the crew.
And with that, he waves a hand in a manner meant to seem regal. "Send them away."
It will take days to reach the shore and it is maddening, maddening, maddening. This ship – she does not bother to learn its name, in contempt – is neither so strong no so large as the Barricade, and this journey which should be only a moment, should only take the span of two days, if they took their time, will take nearly four.
That their crew is aboard the Barricade, too, and sailing it ineptly beside them, is infuriating.
She will not speak to any of the crew, and snaps at them when they attempt to engage her. She listens to them – inanity, mostly, but she hears of their plans to sail farther than Le Havre, as near Paris as they can get, which is where the dreaded Captain Javert is said to be convening in less than a week's time.
They bring her meals and she sits and waits – but Éponine is no lovely little lark. She transforms her cage into something familiar, and scrounges up bits of charcoal to use on the scrap of paper she'd been given earlier.
(She's never quite gotten over that habit of hiding little useful things in her boots, even when the items themselves do not seem useful at the time – really, what did she think she was going to need crumpled paper so badly for, anyway? – but now she is grateful.)
Angry she may be for their apparent betrayal in form of this dismissal – deemed in her best interest or not – and whether they intended her to or not, she will find some escape, with them, and she will take it up with them when they are once more free.
When.
Not if.
She does not intend to be caged for long.
A/N: Right. So. After spending an unpleasant amount of time working on a stupidly important portfolio, I ended up becoming violently ill, and puking out your guts is really not conducive to writing fics. But hey, I'm not dying anymore, and the next urgent assignment's not for another week!