Even had it not bore its title cleanly lettered upon its side, Éponine thinks she would have recognized it.
It matches every description, every tale, and matches so clearly the picture she had made of it in her mind it is as if she has plucked out a worry-heavied thought and set it to life. If she tries, she can even make out the figure of the man at the helm.
The rest have noticed it, too. It's obvious in the way the boisterous chattering turns to murmurs, almost lost in the wind.
Her thoughts run parallel to theirs, if the slightest bit more panicked. They have open ocean before them – where they go now matters not, so long as it is away from here – it is impossible that they have not been seen, but perhaps the Sentinel does not recognize them? The Barricade is, after all, only an epithet, and there is no name delicately sketched upon her side – but this is unlikely.
Not for the first time, she wonders if her schoolboys couldn't have stolen a less distinctive vessel to begin their pirating careers, but there is less mirth in the thought than usual.
She draws in a deep breath.
Unlikely, but possible. Evasion is not so out of reach, if the Sentinel has not yet recognized them.
Slowly, she draws near to Combeferre, Bossuet, and Joly to listen in – the choice is based less on who she is approaching and more to do with proximity – while keeping her gaze locked on the ship.
"Do you think she's seen us yet?"
This is met by a shake of the head, which she notes from the corner of her eye. "The Sentinel might not recognize us, but she sees us."
As she'd thought, then, as she'd feared.
"Steer away then? Avoid and just hope they don't wonder why?"
"Carefully," is the response, "or it will draw more attention."
Éponine shakes her head and begins to move across the deck. They are as lost as she, and the knowledge brings no comfort.
Her steps are made with a measured slowness; though she knows her own movements will make no difference in the scheme of it, moving quickly feels wrong somehow. Still, it takes her where she wants, and soon she is standing before their fearless captain.
Who may not be so fearless after all; worry, at least, is evident, not readable in his eyes but etched in his stance, in the tense way he is holding himself as she comes to stand beside him.
"The Sentinel–" She begins, but she doesn't know what to say, and then it doesn't appear to matter; he nods, and it is understood.
The ship is drawing closer and closer still, and she watches its path with worried eyes before she speaks up again. "Will we fight?" she asks quietly.
He sends her a sidelong glance, and then his eyes turn back to the ship. "If it comes to that."
"Will it?"
His eyes to her again. She wants to read the depth of his expression, wants to see what he thinks, see if he is worried, as she is; this is where I have been happy, have you known? When we are so close to falling to bits, did you know?
But if she is not careful she will be pulled in, and she cannot imagine she will last long like that.
So she pulls her cap more firmly over her head, squares her shoulders, and fixer her gaze upon him more resolutely, and there is the barest hint of a smile, grim though it is, when he says: "Be ready."
And the Sentinel is so close now and she can hear her Amis beginning to rush down the stairs, preparing for the worst.
"Be careful," she responds. Then Éponine hesitates just a moment, just long enough to, on impulse, tug on one golden curl. "Don't get lost in it, bourgeois boy."
And then she is descending, running with the urgency of anyone in her situation, of a woman who has only just discovered how much she has to lose and clings desperately to it, prepares to fight as she once did, with all the resentment of old burning away and up into clean anger, an unwillingness to lose this.
(She has always fought as if there was nothing, and this was true; all that would be lost was her, and what loss was that, really?
Now she is made to feel as if that it would have the etchings of a tragedy, after all, and she will fight, now that everything is at stake, for the ones who have given her that much.
She has always been selfish.)
Down she goes, and down farther, to the cannons she has never personally seen in action, to stand by Bahorel, and though she tries not to, Éponine cannot quell the sense that it's decided the moment she hears voices, faintly, from above in this strange stillness.
She hears them talk; she hears the snap of indignation and the faint rumble of insistence; hears justice and crimes and surrender; hears her pulse rush like waves through her ears.
She waits –
And a cannonball rips through the ship.
She does not see it – is not even near it – but she hears it, feels the ship rock upon first impact and shudder in the aftershocks.
And there it is.
Dimly, she takes note of a ship in the distance, sails billowing, when she lifts the hatch; but this is deemed unimportant, and subsequently ignored in favor of rolling the cannon forward.
She has never loaded a cannon before, never needed to, and she is clumsy at it, cursing herself for every second lost with a fervency that nears feverish.
Between shots, she must clean it. If she is not thorough, lingering powder will ignite, and then there is danger, but her hands cannot move quickly enough to calm her fears, and her heartbeat takes to thudding against her bones, mimicking the encompassing sound of cannon fire.
It is fired once, twice, and then a third time, and all the while, she is straining to keep it in place.
She keeps on, though, until they switch out and she is running for powder, each step quickened when she catches the flash of Enjolras' red coat in equal parts relief and fear, fear that the Sentinel's next hit will put an end to it.
The Barricade is strongly built, but then, so is the Sentinel. They will fire until there is nothing left to fire.
One or both of them will be sunk. There is no other option; no way to stand down.
They run out of ammunition shortly after Éponine finds her feet have become damp from the back and forth trips, and this is how she knows they are sinking.
They are driven up, carrying each other to stand steady against the violent trembling and rocking of the Barricade beneath them. There is panic soaking into every breath, and blood staining their clothes; though there has been no cannon fire for some minutes, the air she sucks into her lungs tastes of sparks.
She is tired, tired, tired, exhaustion seeping its way to her bones. There are a myriad of little cuts adorning her arms, and she split her lip when she slipped on the stairs, and she tried so hard and now the Sentinel will render that null, and her Amis are not ready for this kind of end, should never be ready.
From her side, from the too-young Atlas with the weight on his shoulders there a squeeze of her hand, and for the briefest moment she laments that she is adding her own burden to his, that she could not lighten it.
And then –
And then –
There is the dull boom of a cannon and the sound of splintering of wood, and Éponine watches in fascination as the Sentinel's mast begins to give way.
Slowly at first, as if she is imagining it, and then all at once – it topples. She traces it back to the source and she has to gape because this doesn't happen.
It comes from the ship she took note of, narrow and almost delicate, and elegant in the way its white sails catch the wind and she remembers – the stories of the ghost ship, the never-been-caught ship, the always-slips-away ship, she remembers Cosette's carefully worded letter and dodging questions she'd been asked, hedging and smoothing over details. At the time, Éponine thought little of it, but maybe, maybe, maybe –
It is a small chance, but it's better than nothing.
(At the very least – if she is wrong – well, they do not directly want to go after them. It's not as though they can expect to collect a reward from the Sentinel.
She tugs on Enjolras' hand, still intertwined, and has to shout her "come on, come on–!" to be heard, though they are all gathered together, and even if they don't know what she might (really, what kind of coincidence is that, that he would be her Lady's father, it is no sense at all) they know this ship is certainly a better bet than their dear, mangled one.
And they run, they run, out of their almost shelter, aiming for this ship, for the Fantine.
Her heart gives a painful little stutter when it is directed closer, and oh, they may just live through this, as their sinking Barricade becomes parallel, and the distance is close enough to cross, with caution, caution which, strangely, must come in the form of leaping the distance.
She is the last – she must be the last, they all must live or she will never again find her redeemed happiness, never – and she wobbles forward as she lands.
A hand grasps her arm and pulls her steady, and she is greeted by a face that is soft in its kindness despite the tenseness of the situation, a face that bears a smile as eyes turn back to the Sentinel which is in no condition to pursue now, all belonging to a person who says to her, "you are just the way Cosette wrote."
She is grinning, grinning, grinning, even as she knows the Barricade is lost, even as she knows the Sentinel is only temporarily disabled, even as her knees are nearly buckling in exhaustion, because they are alive, they have done it, because the relief in her Amis voices could make her week right now, because this ship's crew are already at work and pulling away.
They sail on.
A/N: I took way too long on this because I didn't want to screw up when we're so close to the end and then I had to rush since it's so late and oh gosh, I really hope you're not disappointed and that none of this comes across as the gross misuse of a deus ex machina and you probably are and it probably does I am so sorry. (This is probably going to be one of those stories I completely rewrite, months down the line. It needs it.)
I hadn't remembered, before I started, how bad I was at writing romance. In fact, I should probably be writing something with more of a focus on just Enjolras and Éponine, to practice their interactions. I'm always so, so grateful to hear your lovely reviews. Every chapter has me thinking, 'well, that was okay but it could have been better...' so this has been really unexpected and encouraging and – wonderful, really.