Enjolras was good on his word. He brought Joly to the apartment the next day. The medical student wrapped up Éponine's ankle in bandages, gave her a crutch to use, and left instructions to not walk around too much, and to be sure to prop her ankle up higher than her heart when she was at rest so that it could heal more efficiently.
Éponine did rest for a few days, but Enjolras was right. She couldn't bear sitting around in one spot for long. As soon as she could maneuver on her crutch well enough, she went with Enjolras to the square in front of General Lamarque's house, and he started giving speeches again. With what he had learned from his visit to the slums of Saint Michel, he was better able to stir the hearts of the people, drawing on pathos to paint a vivid picture of what he had seen. The crowds were much more responsive this time around, echoing his shouts of "Vive la France!" as enthusiastically as he did. Éponine shouted the loudest.
"Bless my soul, Apollo was on a roll!" Grantaire exclaims.
"No longer were people lining up just to ogle his pretty looks," Azelma says. "But Éponine's troubles were not over yet. She still had a deal with Montparnasse, and Enjolras's rise in popularity was not exactly to her advantage."
"Vive la France!" Éponine shouted with the rest of the crowd, her voice carrying clearly above them all. Then her face fell. She had caught sight of Montparnasse in the crowd. She hoped he hadn't seen her.
Too late. His eyes met hers and he marched over. She wanted to run, but she couldn't move fast on her crutch. Montparnasse grabbed her shoulder and jerked her in front of him. Éponine struggled to not drop her crutch. "Hey, watch it, 'Parnasse! Have a little pity on this poor cripple!"
"This poor cripple hasn't been doing her job!" Montparnasse hissed. "Red Vest over there has people flocking around him! That's exactly the opposite of what I told you to make sure happened!"
Éponine's gaze flicked over to where Enjolras was standing, but there were too many people in between her and him for him to notice the trouble she was in. But then she reminded herself that she didn't need Enjolras to save her. She could get out of this on her own. "What if I don't want to do what you say anymore? I'm my own woman, I don't need you ordering me around!"
Montparnasse snaked his arm around her waist and leaned in close to her face. Éponine shuddered. "Hear that?" He cocked his head. "It's the sound of your freedom fluttering out the window, forever. We still have a deal. Aren't we forgetting one eensy-weensy, teeny-tiny but ever-so-crucial, little, tiny detail? I own you! Let's get one thing straight, princess. As long as you follow my orders, we can stay on good terms with each other. You seem to have trouble doing that lately. Does this have anything to do with you falling in love with the bourgeois boy?"
"No!" Éponine nearly yelled.
"You were a little quick to deny it," Montparnasse commented. "Just be careful how you go, 'Ponine, my sweet." He released her and disappeared into the throng of people.
Éponine tried to steady her breathing. She was in hot water now. Taking Enjolras to the slums had been a mistake. Now he was more influential than ever. His speeches had more depth. But was that a bad thing? Not for the crowds he was trying to reach. But for her personally? She had lost sight of her deal with Montparnasse. Who knew what he would do to her if she didn't get back to derailing Enjolras's revolution progress?
A familiar figure in a bright scarlet jacket came sprinting across the street to where Éponine was standing. She almost dropped her crutch for the second time today in her astonishment. She had never seen Enjolras run before. She was about to ask, "What's wrong?" when he beat her to the punch. "We've just received word! General Lamarque is dead! We will build a barricade upon his tomb and the people will rise up with us! Éponine, you're the friend who has brought me to this point!" He picked her up and swung her around. She squealed in delight, and her crutch dropped with a clatter to the street. "Thanks to you, I am a fearless leader and revolution is near! I will never stop fighting until not just France, but the whole world is free!" Then he noticed her crutch lying on the ground. He picked it up and handed it to her. "Forgive me," he apologized. "I got carried away in my excitement."
Éponine bowed her head. "No, Enjolras, it's you who must forgive me. I've been playing you. I never meant for things to get this far. I'm sorry. I think it's best if we stop seeing each other."
"Éponine, I don't know what you mean," Enjolras laughed. "You've taught me so much. You're my best friend, and—-I can't believe I'm saying this—-I thought that after the revolution we could—-"
Éponine shook her head. "No. I shouldn't have gotten involved with you in the first place. Don't make this any harder for me." She shifted her crutch under her arm and hobbled away.
"Éponine, wait! Just one more thing!" Éponine turned and waited for Enjolras to speak. "You remember me talking about Patria in my speeches?"
"Your 'mistress'?" Éponine teased.
"Yes." Enjolras's face remained serious. "The reason why I fight for a free France. Éponine, you are my Patria."
Éponine didn't know whether she felt more like smiling or crying. If he knew what her true motives were, she wouldn't be the reason he fought at the barricades.
Enjolras took a tricolor cockade out of his breast pocket and stepped forward to pin it on her chemise. Éponine looked down at the red, white, and blue fabric. It looked like it belonged on her. Enjolras cupped her chin in his hand and looked into her eyes. "Perfect," he said. Then he kissed her on the cheek. It was the first kiss he had ever given to a woman. Chaste though it was, Éponine blushed as if he had gone farther. She put her hand up to the spot where his lips had touched her, and smiled. I really must look like a silly, lovestruck schoolgirl, she thought.
She met Enjolras's eyes. "Thank you," she said. This time, as she hobbled off on her crutch, her heart was as light as air.
Éponine sat on the bed in Montparnasse's house, fingering her new cockade. "What's the matter with me?!" She was angry with herself. "I can't fall for him! I'm supposed to distract him! His death is my ticket to freedom! But he's been so good to me. If he dies…" She sighed and finished the thought in her head. I'll miss him.
"You're hopelessly in love!" exclaimed a voice. It was Jehan's voice, but Éponine didn't know that.
She looked around but couldn't see anyone. She shook her head and laughed at herself. "I must be going crazy!" She pinched her arm as if trying to awake from a dream. "I talk to myself out of habit, but I don't normally hear voices so vividly when I do so."
"You all but swoon at the mere thought of Enjolras!" Jehan's voice came again.
Éponine looked dazed. "But my situation is less than ideal for a romance with him," she pointed out.
"You're really at war with yourself over your feelings for him, aren't you?" asked another voice, Feuilly's.
Éponine nodded. Then her eyes went wide. "I'm a real nutcase! I'm not only hearing voices, but I'm responding to them! Does being in love make you go insane?" She groaned and smacked her forehead. "I can't be in love with Enjolras! I've only known him for a few weeks!"
"You've known Montparnasse since childhood, and Enjolras has treated you better in a few weeks than Montparnasse ever has in years!" a child's voice, certainly Gavroche's, chimed in.
"I'm bound to Montparnasse!" Éponine protested.
"But you don't love him," Gavroche countered. "Then who do you love?"
"Enjolras," Éponine said, "I love Enjolras!" Her face fell. "But I can't be in a relationship with him! There's Montparnasse's plan! I just can't…no one has to know," she finally resigned. "I won't say anything out loud. I won't tell him I'm in love with Enjolras."
"I gotta say, 'Ponine, it's been very entertaining to hear you go back and forth with us," Gavroche smirked.
"You're real?" Éponine asked in disbelief. "I'm not hallucinating?"
"We're real, alright," Azelma replied. "We're just not given the freedom to interact with you beyond this point in the story."
The sound of stomping feet made Éponine instantly aware of Montparnasse's arrival back at the house. She looked up when he came into the bedroom. He glared at her. "What. Is. That?" he demanded.
"It's a revolutionary cockade," Éponine said. "The revolutionaries wear them to identify themselves."
Montparnasse's hand flew out. Éponine shielded her face to avoid a slap, but instead Montparnasse ripped the cockade off her chemise. "I thought I told you to not get too personal with Bourgeois Boy. And you are wearing his revolution symbol!"
"I thought it looked kind of dashing," Éponine quipped.
"I'm not in the mood for your sarcasm right now, 'Ponine!" Montparnasse roared. He crumpled the cockade between his fingers. "Remember our deal! Think of your freedom!"
"What's more important, the freedom of one person or the freedom of hundreds of people?" Éponine put her hands on her hips. "The way I see it, I can either sabotage Enjolras's revolution and earn my freedom from your control, or I can follow him to the barricades and we will die together holding fast to freedom in our hearts! I gain my liberty either way, but I'd rather have death with the one I love than a life of freedom without him!"
A storm was brewing behind Montparnasse's gray eyes. "Our deal—-"
"Is off! Read my lips!" Éponine stood up, clenching her fists. "Forget it!"
Montparnasse picked her crutch up off the floor. "Earlier today, I noticed you got injured during the time you spent with Enjolras. You skipped out on me, and look where it got you." He raised the crutch menacingly, and Éponine shrank back. "Let this be a lesson to you! Love may feel good when you start out, but there's a price for poor judgment, and you've earned it, my dear!"
A/N: I couldn't figure out a good way to translate the "I Won't Say I'm in Love" scene from Hercules into this story. It still seems awkward to me, but I just don't know any other way to do it.