AUTHOR'S NOTE: This is based on the 2012 film. Title is from "Radioactive" by Imagine Dragons.
I'm waking up to ash and dust
I wipe my brow and I sweat my rust
I'm breathing in the chemicals
I'm breaking in, shaping up
Then checking out on the prison bus
This is it, the apocalypse
Éponine smashes a baseball bat against the zombie's skull.
The undead had once been called Claquesous. But her father's thug is now a walking corpse turned by the Virus, craving human flesh and the cranium. Always aim for the corpse's brain, as it is the only way to kill a zombie. The undead creature falls, slain, and she flees through No Man's Land.
France was a desolate wasteland, and the village of Montfermeil was no different. Two years before, the Outbreak spread through the world. Infected cities were bombed after evacuating healthy citizens, but it wasn't enough. Zombies were everywhere, and rapidly outnumbered the living. And statistically, there was a sixty-three percent chance of catching the Virus, a grim fact of life.
Surviving the apocalypse is hard, but being an omega is even worse. Éponine ran out of suppressants a long time ago. Survivors fight for mating rights, as savagely as they compete for food or clean water. She's been hunted by undead corpses and living alphas alike in No Man's Land. And she had just escaped the Waterloo Colony, where Gavroche died. Her parents are alive but tyrannical, and didn't try to save their own son. Now they have become as good as dead in their daughter's eyes.
And then she sees a wall.
A beautiful, glorious barricade wall. It is a fortification of furniture, with tables, chairs, rusted cars, even a piano. It defends the Café Musain, a coffee shop once popular for café au lait and scones during peacetime. Now the apocalypse has turned the café in Montfermeil into a colony safe haven.
More undead lurch at her. Éponine sprints for the barricade. "Let me in, please!"
Survivors appear at the top of the wall. They are strangers, except for Grantaire. She hasn't seen the omega artist for a year. "Climb the barricade, 'Ponine, come on!" he shouts.
A zombie nearly bites Éponine's old combat boots as she starts to climb. She claws her way up the barricade, with corpses snapping at her heels. But finally Grantaire takes her arm, and hauls her to safety. She stumbles to the ground inside the colony, hitting the dirt.
And she looks up into the blue eyes of the most handsome alpha she has ever seen.
He almost makes her forget Marius. The man is stunning with golden curls, and a physique sculpted by Michelangelo. Tall and lean, but strong. He is streaked with dirt, sweat, and dust like the rest of them. But underneath it, he still looks like Apollo incarnate. And it is clear the near demigod is an alpha, an unmistakable fact. She's not in heat, but her mating glands ache just looking at him.
"Are you alright?" asks the man with hair like the sun.
"I am now," she replies, and takes the hand he offers.
"I'm Enjolras Chevalier," he tells her as he helps her stand. "President of the Musain Colony."
"My name is–"
"Éponine!" Grantaire embraces her. "You're alive!"
"Barely," she wheezes as her friend gives her a rib-crushing hug. "Do you have food? I'm starved."
"Everyone, this is Éponine Thénardier," Grantaire announces.
"You need to wait in quarantine for two days, in case of infection bites," Enjolras replies. The blond is clearly in charge. She catches Grantaire gazing at Enjolras, but then a lithe male omega with red hair takes the artist's arm. She wonders if Grantaire has found a mate.
"Musain rules," Enjolras goes on.
"But, yes, we have food," a charming, dark-haired alpha says. "I'm Courfeyrac, by the way."
The ginger omega speaks up, standing beside Grantaire. "Not a lot of rations, but we share what we have. Coming, R?"
"Uh, yeah, Jehan," Grantaire replies.
She is given a physical exam by a medic named Combeferre. And then Éponine sits down in quarantine to a feast, grown in Feuilly's colony garden. She passes the two day quarantine with no sign of the Virus.
"I'll stay until I can go to Javert's colony city in Paris," Éponine tells the others. "And then I'll be on my way."
The Musain Colony itself is like paradise.
They have beds, crops, weapon supplies, donated clothes. There is a forge to melt bullets, and a freshwater well. Éponine sleeps soundly for the first time in years.
"I saw you looking at Enjolras yesterday," Grantaire says on the rampart. He and Éponine are supposed to be on watch for danger.
"And so were you," she replies.
Face red, she leaves the rampart. "Changing of the guard," Jehan says as he goes up the stairs to Grantaire above. "R, what do you think about having a child?" the doe-eyed male omega asks the omega artist.
Éponine passes the forge, and sees Enjolras striking a sword into shape on the anvil. There is a cascading spray of sparks as he beats the metal, the fire raging in the kiln behind him. He is covered in a sheen of sweat as he works. The alpha looks up, and Éponine quickly leaves.
Éponine and Enjolras go on a supply patrol. They search an abandoned car for food, and she picks the lock on the driver door.
"We found an empty vehicle, over," Enjolras tells the colony through the handheld radio. He finds flat bottles of Coca Cola.
She gathers bags of Doritos. "You know, since factories were abandoned. We're not going to find processed food forever. Feuilly has the right idea with a garden–"
A zombie stumbles into view. She rolls her eyes. "Ugh, not now!"
More undead appear, and Enjolras opens the door. "Get in!"
They dive into the backseat, and slam the door just in time. The corpses careen to the windows, but they are safe. For the moment. He turns on the radio. "We're trapped in a car, surrounded by undead! We need back up, over!"
There is only static. "Do you read me?"
No reply.
"We must be out of range," Éponine says as the zombies rock the vehicle.
Ages pass in the car. They stretch out food supplies, and fall asleep with space between them. And then in the morning, Éponine feels a familiar fever, need in her gut. Slick starts to dampen her jeans, and her glands throb like hell. Sweat beads at her forehead, and she longs for the alpha beside her.
"So now is the worst possible time to say this," she begins, digging her fingernails into her palm. The zombie bodies shift the car again. "But I'm going into heat."
"I gathered. What are we going to do?" he asks.
"Wait it out, I guess. The only thing zombies want more than human flesh is omega flesh." She massages her gland with her fingers. She's gotten used to going through heats alone.
They wake in the middle of the night at a loud thud. An alpha zombie throws himself at the car window, over and over. Corpses are stupid, but this walking dead is still an alpha. He snarls, desperate to reach the living omega.
"What a sight to wake up to," Éponine says sarcastically. "You know the only way to neutralize my pheromones, right?"
Enjolras turns red in the darkness. "We shouldn't."
"If we want to live, we should."
"I'm not going to take advantage of you," he replies.
More alpha zombies have joined the fray. They shove the car so hard it knocks Éponine against Enjolras. And somehow the omega ends up straddling his leg.
"Please," she whispers.
It proves how far gone he is, when she feels his desire. "Okay."
And then he kisses her for the first time. She sighs against his mouth as his large hands grasp her hips. He turns them both so she is beneath him. And her back arches when his mouth meets the gland on her neck.
The car turns into a haze of pheromones.
Éponine and Enjolras lose track of the days. They hardly notice the undead outside as the alpha and omega move together. The temperature rises in the vehicle, with being unable to open the windows. The zombies start to fade away. They either wander off in search of easier prey, or instead, stay and batter themselves to pieces. One undead woman impales her own head on the door's side mirror. Enjolras and Éponine try to flee, but the aggressive zombie always charges, and they lock the doors again. The insatiable alpha zombie is the most persistent of their hunters.
Once in the sanctuary of the car again, Éponine decides to enjoy life as if there is no tomorrow. During the apocalypse, it very well could be true.
"There's worse places to be trapped by zombies," she says as she straddles him under her.
He cups her breast. "I never thought I'd enjoy No Man's Land." He straightens so they sit facing each other. "Until I met you." Then he kisses her again, pulling her even closer.
A gunshot cracks outside the car. The alpha zombie's head explodes near the window, splattering the glass with blood and brains.
"That would be disgusting. If we weren't possibly being saved," Éponine says as she and Enjolras race to dress.
Enjolras pulls on jeans. She will miss seeing him shirtless. "We're finally getting out of here."
By the time they are decent again, all of the zombies have been picked off. Éponine gasps when she looks through the gore sliding down the window.
"Marius!"
She and Enjolras finally leave the car as Marius approaches. "I was hoping it would be…" Éponine trails off when she sees the blonde omega woman. "Oh, Cosette, I didn't know you two were traveling together."
Cosette is the one who confidently holds a pistol in her hand with lavender nail polish. Nervous as always, the beta Marius pulls his golf club out of a zombie's skull at his feet.
"It's good to see you," Marius says. "Well, Cosette and I are engaged. I wasn't going to leave her behind."
Hearing Marius utter the word engaged sends a pang of hurt in Éponine's chest. But it's not soul crushing like it would have been before. There will always be a part of her that loves the beta Marius. But he takes the hand of Cosette, the girl who is the sweet and gentle omega that the bony, tough Éponine will never be.
But now Éponine still has the echo of Enjolras' mouth of her skin. It's not just biological, not just a chemical reaction as an omega and alpha. Enjolras looked after her in ways Marius never did.
A ring on her hand, Cosette glances at the dark-haired omega. "Your shirt is inside out. What were you two doing in that car?"
"Nothing," Éponine lies.
The group hikes back to the Musain. They descend a steep valley, sliding on loose pebbles in the dust. "The colony is on the other side," Enjolras says.
And then they smell musk of an alpha in rut.
Éponine is keenly aware she is in heat. It's the tail end of her mating cycle, and it helped being with Enjolras for so long. But she is still an omega in a lawless world of chaos. Bands of mercenary alphas roam No Man's Land; it's become common for omegas to be stolen.
"Put my coat on, now," Enjolras says, placing his red jacket on her shoulders. "It will make your scent less noticeable. I'll say you're my mate. We're bonded and married."
"Agreed." Éponine looks at him. "Scent mark me, claim your territory. Get your scent on my glands."
He strokes her neck gland, and she tries not to go limp. Despite her fear at the rival, Enjolras' hand is soothing on her throat.
But Éponine goes rigid when Brujon comes down into the ravine. A friend of her father, the brawny, knothead alpha has a crowbar. "Thought I smelled a sweet little 'mega in heat," he grins wolfishly. He wears a backwards baseball cap, and a dirty, once-white wifebeater tank. "What a surprise, 'Ponine."
"Figures it's you, Brujon," Éponine says curtly. She hasn't forgotten how he looked at her as she grew up in her father's nightmare of a home. How Brujon always eyed his friend's teenage daughter then with too much interest.
Now, Éponine's skin crawls. Enjolras puts a protective arm around her waist, and she steps closer to him. "You know him?" the blond alpha asks.
"My father's friend, but not mine."
Brujon takes out a wad of cash. Éponine hasn't seen that much money in one place, since before the Outbreak. Brujon looks dismissively at Cosette. "You're not my type, sweetheart. But how much for an hour with the 'mega Éponine?" he asks Enjolras, ignoring Éponine all together.
Éponine raises her chin. "I'm not for sale!"
"What did you say?" Cosette says passionately, raising herself to her full five foot height.
Enjolras steps in between Éponine and Brujon. Even though the hulking rival makes Enjolras look thin, the blond's eyes are hard as sapphires. "The answer is no! You can't buy my wife and mate!"
"Leave her alone!" Marius warns.
"Half an hour?" Brujon asks. "I always wanted to know what 'Ponine's slick tastes like."
"Back off!" Éponine hisses.
"Just for five minutes! I don't see a ring or a bond bite on the 'mega!" Brujon retorts.
"Hard to find a legal place to marry during the apocalypse!" Éponine shoots back. "Enjolras is my mate, and I am his!"
"Omega, you're testing my patience! Come here, breeding bitch!" Brujon orders.
The knothead reaches for Éponine's arm. But Enjolras grips the other man's wrist in time. "Touch my omega, and I'll break your damn hand!" Enjolras growls.
Brujon rams his crowbar into Enjolras' chest. The blond doubles over, choking.
"Go, Éponine!" Enjolras wheezes.
Éponine runs, and Marius and Cosette rush forward to stop the other man. There's a reason Brujon was the muscle of Thénardier's gang of thugs. The aggressive alpha gets past the pair, and manages to grab Éponine. Trying to breathe, Enjolras staggers after them.
"Get off me!" she snarls, fighting to get free.
Brujon throws Éponine to the earth, looming over the omega. He unbuckles his belt, and she kicks him straight in the groin.
Then Enjolras hauls him away, slamming the taller Brujon to the dusty ground in a flash. The blond puts the muzzle of his rifle under his opponent's chin.
"I could put a bullet in your skull!" Enjolras tells the other alpha. "But it would be a waste of ammunition!" Enjolras takes a sharp rock from the dirt and slices open Brujon's elbow, right at the vein. It's not a deep wound, and could heal in a few days. But hot blood runs down Brujon's skin.
Enjolras stands. "Let the undead smell your blood. Let them track you down."
"No, please!" Brujon begs, his bravado gone.
Marius and Cosette stare in shock. "We need to go, Enjolras," the beta says.
Cosette nods. "It's not safe this long in No Man's Land."
The four survivors walk away, leaving the valley, while Brujon uses his shirt to try to stop the bleeding. They help Enjolras up the ravine, breath rattling in his lungs. Once on the other side of the hill, the quartet look back at blood-curdling screams and zombie groans.
Glancing at Enjolras, Éponine says what everyone is thinking. "That was cold of you."
"He was about to assault you, he deserved to be torn apart." Enjolras coughs, breathing still strained. But he pulls Éponine into his arms. "I won't let anything happen to you."
They climb the barricade, and Éponine's heart is still pounding. Enjolras loses balance, grimacing, and she catches him. His hands still linger on her waist. He has a possessive look like he did in the car. But she knows he would never hurt her.
"Let's go," Éponine begins. "And Enjolras–"
"You have to be in quarantine," Combeferre interrupts. "Sorry, but it's protocol."
Enjolras has bruised ribs, but none are broken. The colony is small, and there's only two quarantine holding rooms. Cosette and Marius go into one, and Éponine and Enjolras are placed in the other. She traces her fingertips along the dark, purple bruise on Enjolras' chest.
"Thank you," she says softly. "For what you did today."
Now she strokes the mating gland on his neck, to soothe the wounded alpha.
For their next supply patrol, the sore but healed Enjolras scent marks Éponine at the barricade. She ignores her churning stomach as he noses her gland again.
"It's just to ward off other alphas," Éponine explains when Courfeyrac walks by.
Courfeyrac smirks knowingly. "Sure it is."
Once out in No Man's Land, she grins at Enjolras. "Want to properly scent mark me?"
He pins her to a brick wall and presses open-mouthed kisses to her throat. His hand goes lower, and she whines.
"Grantaire said he and Jehan are officially having a kid," Éponine says as she and Enjolras head out again. They do have to look for food, after all. "With Courfeyrac's sperm, and Combeferre will try IVF with the supplies he has. Grantaire's Carrying this one. And Jehan will give birth to the next one."
"Didn't expect Grantaire to Carry it," Enjolras muses.
Éponine swallows the bile that rises in her throat. Any trace she leaves behind in No Man's Land could send a pack of zombies straight for them. "Neither did I. Though I imagine Jehan will be next."
Enjolras sighs. "Might as well get this out there. Yes, I know Grantaire was in love with me."
Still is, Éponine thinks. Halfway. Just like I halfway love Marius still. She hates herself for thinking it.
"But this will be good for Grantaire and Jehan. Bring them closer together. Maybe it will help R get over, well, me," Enjolras says pensively. "I never wanted to hurt him."
"I know."
Éponine can't ignore her nausea any longer, and doubles over to be sick.
Combeferre thinks Éponine has caught a harmless bug. And she will take the flu any day over the undead Virus.
Éponine starts sleeping in Enjolras' bed. She feels safe with him – which is a rare feeling indeed, in a world where society has died. Éponine and Enjolras reach for each other in the darkness.
She wakes at dawn the next morning, watching him sleep. The sunlight only adds to his beauty. And she realizes she doesn't want to leave the colony. She doesn't want to leave him.
"Morning," he rasps.
"Morning," she repeats, and runs her fingers through his curls. "I love you. And I want to stay at the Musain."
His eyes widen. "I thought you were going to the Paris Colony."
"I know. But we have supplies here, everything we need. If you want me to be here."
"Of course I do," he replies.
"I don't want to lie that we're bonded just to fend off other alphas. I want to be mates, I want you to be my alpha."
"I want that with you. Will you let me be your mate? Will you… Will you marry me?"
She nods with a breathless laugh. "Yes, Enjolras, yes."
His eyes turn a darker shade of blue. "Who is your alpha?"
"You, only you," she breathes.
After the baby shower for Grantaire and Jehan, she realizes her heat is late for the second month in a row.
Enjolras is away when Éponine sees Grantaire go into labor. Expecting a child herself, Éponine knows it will be her time next.
She and Enjolras go that evening to meet the newborn Raphael. The exhausted Grantaire notices the golden-haired alpha. But the omega is too focused on his son and Jehan, to pay Enjolras much attention. Finally, Grantaire is moving on.
Marius arrives to congratulate the family, and tells everyone he and Cosette are leaving to find his grandfather. And suddenly Éponine realizes she needs to let her own love go. She is quiet in the corner, watching the new family as Grantaire nurses the infant. And she knows it is time she needs to be done with Marius. They never had a chance, not really. She is with Enjolras, and Carrying her own child with him. And she needs to devote herself wholeheartedly without reservation. It is unfair to Enjolras if she does anything else.
Seeing their friends' son, Enjolras reaches for the curve of Éponine's stomach to feel their own unborn child.
They marry when Myriel, a traveling bishop, passes through the colony. She doesn't even have a white dress. And the wedding bands don't match, scavenged haphazardly from No Man's Land. But all that matters to Éponine are the rings she and Enjolras slip onto each other's hands. The rest of the Musain survivors cheer when the newlyweds kiss.
Éponine isn't allowed to leave the colony in her condition. She hates it when Enjolras goes on patrol. But he makes it home every time. He always comes back to kneel and kiss her bump.
Until one night, Enjolras returns with blood sprayed on his clothes.
"I had to kill a few zombies," he explains. Fear runs ice cold down the pregnant Éponine's spine. "I didn't get bitten. I was careful."
Combeferre crosses his arms, unusually stern. "You know the rules. Quarantine for forty-eight hours. If you don't have the Virus, then you are free to go."
When Éponine goes to the quarantine room, it's like Enjolras is in jail. Before, the isolation had been just protocol, just a safety measure. But now he may have caught the Virus. She looks at him through the window in the door. At a few months along, she still has only a small swell under her shirt.
"Did you get the Virus?"
"You heard what I told Combeferre–"
She reaches for her bump, tone brooking no argument. "Enjolras Alexandre Chevalier, don't lie to protect me! Were you or were you not bitten by a zombie!"
He looks her in the eye. "No, I wasn't turned. I would never lie to you."
She lifts her chin. "I wish I could believe you. And I love you, but if you turn and try to hurt the baby. I'll put a bullet between your eyes." A tear slides down her face. "But I don't want to shoot you."
"I know." He tries to reach through the bars, but she moves away.
"We can't touch. Not until it's safe." She pauses. "I love you. Come back to me."
Éponine wakes with blood between her legs.
Struggling to breathe through her sobs, she tries to force herself to relax in the medic bay. Joly scrubs his hands with precious soap. Stress will only make the bleeding worse. But all she can think about is her child dying by miscarriage, and Enjolras turning into a damn undead. She won't survive both catastrophes. Combeferre is gone assessing Enjolras' condition.
"You need to relax," Joly tells her nervously.
"I'm trying," she whispers brokenly. She is dangerously close to falling apart, shattering into pieces.
"I know. But I'll do everything I can to save both of you."
The doors slam open, and Enjolras bursts into the medic bay. Combeferre is behind him.
"He doesn't have the Virus!" Combeferre announces. "I examined him three times myself!"
Enjolras goes to his pregnant wife, and she fists his shirt. "I'm here," he says.
"I started bleeding, 'Jolras, and… and…!" she chokes through her tears.
Enjolras smooths her hair from her face. "Everything is going to be fine. Look at me, look at me."
He massages her neck gland, and she goes limp, her inner omega soothed. Gasping, she is so utterly terrified, she doesn't care that they have an audience.
"Our child is going to grow up healthy, strong, and brave," Enjolras says. She moans out loud when he traces the edges of her gland with his thumb. "Maybe it will be a boy, and he'll look like you. Be a messenger runner, take letters between colonies. Or it could be a girl, and she'll be a zombie hunter with the best of them. We'll raise them right here, at the Musain Colony."
Combeferre takes out his stethoscope, kept from his med school days. He lifts Éponine's shirt, and brings the device to the curve of her skin. "I can hear the heartbeat," Combeferre says after listening intently. "It's still there."
Combeferre gives the stethoscope to her, and she hears the heart of the child within her. Éponine cries again in relief, and sees Enjolras wipe away his own tears. She's never seen him cry before.
"That's the most beautiful thing I've ever heard," Enjolras says thickly when he listens.
"Our child is still alive," she gasps. "They're alive."
Years later, Éponine waits in quarantine.
Time ticks away as she waits for the holding period to end. There's less zombies now, given how long humanity has been fighting them. There's even rumors of a cure vaccine being developed. She had found food on her supply patrol, and No Man's Land was strangely empty of zombies. She had returned too late the night before to see Enjolras, before she went into the holding room.
"You're clear to go," Combeferre says with a smile when he arrives. He's become a well-respected doctor, leading the colony medical team. He unlocks the door, and Éponine walks out.
"I know why you do this," she says. "Thank you for your excellent care."
A blonde toddler runs to her. Marianne has her father's golden curls and her mother's dark eyes. "Mama!" the two-year-old calls, raising her arms. Marianne is almost three.
"Hello, chérie!" Éponine lifts her daughter to put Marianne on her hip. "I missed you!"
"Welcome home," Enjolras says, and their months-old son François gurgles in his arms. They trade on which parent stays with the children, as the other goes out to defeat the undead.
Éponine still misses peace before the Outbreak, when zombies were nothing more than fiction. But she might never have met Enjolras without the undead. And they wouldn't have a family if No Man's Land didn't exist.
She cups their infant son's head, and leans to kiss her husband. They have a home at the colony, even amidst death and despair of the apocalypse.
I'm waking up, I feel it in my bones
Enough to make my system blow
Welcome to the new age, to the new age
Welcome to the new age, to the new age
Woah, oh, woah, I'm radioactive, radioactive
Woah, oh, woah, I'm radioactive, radioactive
AUTHOR'S NOTE: I don't know why I keep writing Éponine and Enjolras with kids. But apparently, it's a thing now. Maybe it's because they would be devoted parents who love fiercely. (I had the opposite growing up.) Enjonine has been my comfort ship for years.
And yes, I'm aware the Café Musain is located in Paris in canon. But for the fic plot, I put the Musain in Montfermeil.
