she was a quick study, and an eager one at that. enjolras imagined that with any competent teacher she would fly through even the most abstract of books with ease. (he knew his own limitations.)
they stumbled through a little of the montaigne on the first day. she was perched precariously on a pile of papers while he leaned against the desk by the window so he could read over her shoulder and correct any mistakes and explain anything she didn't understand. and she left just as the sky began to dim, with a little flutter of her fingers and a flick of her wrist, saying that she needed to be open for business by dark, a euphemism he didn't quite understand until later, when he slapped an ink-stained hand to his forehead and said, "oh," very loudly to the air.
he might have expected that the girl would be working as one who "sold her wares," but, to be honest, he'd never really thought much about her beyond her connection to his conception of patria before today. (he wondered if "france whoring herself out to absolutism and monarchy" was a sustainable metaphor.) but she was interesting, and she spoke often and without reservation, and he could see why marius had been so eager to bring her to meet les amis.
because the jondrette girl — eponine — was clever, though not in that grandiose, circuitous way he knew so well. she was blunt, rather like a hammer to the head, and a little grating, but she did not have to dress her ideas up with dense academic language to give them the likeness of truth or the conviction of authority.
no, it was experience that loaned her words gravity and gave them weight; experience that did not need fancy words to elucidate. there was a sweetness and a sorrow to that, that reminded him of a wilting flower, soured by the wind and rain, and he found himself feeling sorry for her, even if she didn't feel sorry for herself.
(revolution was what she needed, though, he thought, and not condolences.)
—-
when she decided that thursday afternoons were when they were to meet regularly for their lessons, he had no idea, but she was sitting on the steps in front of his building the next week reading slowly from the red montaigne when he came home from the university.
"what are you doing?"
"waiting for you." (like it was the most evident thing in the world! and it was, but she knew that's not what he meant.)
"you're not one for convention, are you?" he questioned, when she did not even lift her head to acknowledge him.
"monsieur," she explained patiently, and very, very slowly, as if he were but a child of two, "if i followed every convention your fine parisian society had to offer, i would have long been a pile of bones buried in an unmarked grave some distance from the city proper. if i were buried at all, that is."
enjolras was a little taken aback by the bluntness of the way she talked about her life. he himself always tiptoed around the viler parts of poverty, not because they ought to be hidden or because his friends had weak stomachs, but because he'd always felt so out of his depth talking about something with which he only had a passing acquaintance.
but she was beaming, and her fingernails were a-tapping on the hard cover of the red book, and she was bouncing on the balls of her feet, so he said nothing. (he was wont to say nothing, and he often wanted to clarify that it wasn't because he was wilfully ignoring people, only that for one so eloquent he was also so very often out of words and did not know what to say. but eponine never looked like she needed much of an explanation; she accepted his silence and filled it in herself, and it was good. it was comfortable.)
he followed her upstairs. (idle thoughts: she looked like a selkie, drifting in on the foam of the sea, casting away the animal skin that so confined her in the water.)
patiently she waited atop the stairs for him. he took the stairs two at a time until he reached her.
"shall we?" he asked. she tilted her head to the side. he reminded himself he was doing this for the revolution. he pushed open the door and she walked in.
note: not sure if i made it clear or not so here's me saying explicitly that it is not okay that enjolras is viewing eponine as nothing more than a symbol for his revolution. he is stripping her of her agency (since he never asked for her consent) and of her humanity. because she is one person with her experiences and she should not be abstracted, especially when she belongs to an intersection of abstractions that inherently dehumanise and oppress and disenfranchise, and her experiences should not be projected onto a group of people who all have their individual experiences.
he'll get better though. i hope. :)