Chapter Text
They’re off kilter, Eponine thinks, an orchestra without a drumbeat to keep them on rhythm.
It’s not new, she can acknowledge that much. They’ve been cobbled together piecemeal, smaller subsets of the larger group struggling to fill the gaps left by missing members, for so long now that it surprises her that they still notice. She and Cosette used to pause awkwardly in their speech, every so often, waiting for Marius’ bubbly speech to fill the gap, Bahorel had seemed half-finished without Feuilly at his side. Combferre and Courfeyrac had been perfectly capable of their usual give-and-take, but they stopped sometimes, looking at each other with silent frustration as a thought went unfinished without Enjolras to go tearing off with it in his teeth.
It’s just…different, now, as she looks around Marius’ living room. Marius was still born into money, these days, but his parents haven’t disowned him this time around, and his spacious apartment is their preferred meeting place when the ABC is unavailable. Everyone is here, or almost everyone, the room lit warmly and bodies sprawled comfortably on the floor and couches as they talk. Joly is scribbling notes on the fresh pages of a notebook, laughing at Bousset’s commentary. Musichetta, leaning against Bousset’s legs on the floor, has Jehan’s head in her lap, her strong musician’s fingers twining braids into his hair as his hands flit through the air, gesturing broadly as he talks to Feuilly. Bahorel’s attention is split between their conversation and Courfeyrac, who has successfully dragged Enjolras and Combeferre into an utterly inane debate about…God knows what, really, the two of them are usually better at resisting his attempts. Eponine can’t blame Bahorel for bursting out in the occasional booming laugh—she’s only caught a few words here and there, but she’s on the edge of laughter too. Cosette is talking to Joly and Bousset, they’re making her laugh, and Marius is half-draped over her, eyes closed and a sleepy smile on his face. Eponine is teaching Gavroche to pick handcuff locks (Courfeyrac’s idea, which she intends to murder him for), and wishing that Grantaire was here.
He’s the only one missing, since they found Enjolras three months ago, and his absence is so obvious it hurts. Now they’re all missing beats in unison, and it turns it from small hiccups in individual conversation to the occasional universal hush as they wait for a voice that won’t come. They’re together and they’re laughing, but they’re on a knife edge.
Joly and Bousset’s teasing banter with Cosette is easy, but every so often they start jokes and then there’s silence, waiting for a cutting remark to chime in. Jehan and Feuilly are talking about philosophy and poetry and Feuilly keeps up all right, but then Jehan will pull out something genuinely obscure or incredibly oblique and Feuilly will absently glance around for someone to pick up the conversation. And Enjolras seems oddly unmoored without the brilliant spark of his arguments with Grantaire—perhaps that’s why he let Courfeyrac pull him into such an absurd debate, in the absence of his usual partner.
Enjolras is weird about Grantaire, Eponine thinks to herself as she absently twists a hair clip in the handcuffs and clicks the metal off her wrists. Gav tries to mimic it, face pinched into a thoughtful scowl as she claps the cuffs back onto herself. Their fearless leader—oh, that was Grantaire’s nickname for him, wasn’t it, when it first caught on—doesn’t talk much about their missing friend, but when he comes up, Enjolras gets a strange look in his eye and shuts up pretty fast, which is unnerving beyond words. At first Eponine thought it was anger, over Grantaire’s refusal to fight a losing battle (she doesn’t blame him, given how it turned out). She’s not convinced, though, because it looks almost…sad. No, stronger than that, it looks almost grief-stricken. All the needling in the world won’t make Enjolras tell anyone what happened to Grantaire, even Combeferre’s attempts yielding absolutely nothing.
They don’t even know if Grantaire died on the barricade, she realizes with a start, and snaps the handcuffs off her wrists as she sits upright quickly. Cosette turns to her immediately, sensing something of her sudden urgency, and a ripple effect travels out from her, the room going quiet as faces turn.
“What happened to Grantaire?” she asks, and the good humor of the room tips over the knife edge into something melancholy, like she’s flipped a switch. “Does anyone actually know what happened to him? Did he die on the barricade with us?”
“I don’t know,” Joly says, glancing around. “I think he was still in the Musain when I. Yeah.”
Heads shake, lips curve down.
Musichetta sighs, in and out slowly, hands tangled in Jehan’s hair and keeping him in place as if letting go will let her hands tremble. Her hands always tremble when she talks about this. “He was…tall?”
“A little taller than Enjolras, only a bit,” Courfeyrac says quietly. “He was a boxer and a dancer, he would have been well-muscled. Dark hair. He was wearing a green waistcoat.”
“He died,” she says, looking down at her hands. She glances up and adds, “I saw him laid out at the Musain.” Hesitant, she looks over to Enjolras, who, yes, has that same strange look on his face, blue eyes haunted by something they don’t understand. Whatever else she was going to say dies before it leaves her lips.
“But what happened to him?” Eponine presses. “Come on, are you telling me no one knows? Someone fucking Google it, for Christ’s sake.” She hands off the cuffs to Gavroche and pulls out her smartphone as several others do the same.
It’s Marius who turns something up first, and says, “Known dead: a number of civilians, nine students, one unidentified woman—sorry, ‘Ponine—and one child, in addition to a respectable number of soldiers, by the way. Further notes…let’s see…the unknown man in the painting Righteous is believed to be the leader of the rebels…reported to have been the last to die…body found in Musain with one other. Grantaire?” he asks, looking up.
“Yes,” Enjolras says, short and crisp. Then his brow furrows shallowly and says, “Wait, what do you mean, painting?”
Eponine doesn’t see it, but from the way Marius jumps and squeaks, Cosette pinches him somewhere sensitive. Eponine sighs and reaches out to poke Marius reprovingly with a foot. It might be more of a kick.
“It’s possible,” Eponine says in her most diplomatic voice, “that we discovered the existence of a small handful of paintings of us.” She frowns at Enjolras, who looks blindsided by this revelation. “Haven’t you looked up the June Rebellion or anything? It’s hard to miss them, they’re the only ones in existence.”
“I think I covered it once in a history class,” Enjolras says. “I didn’t see any paintings then.”
“Then you weren’t paying attention,” Joly says, offering his phone to Enjolras. Eponine can see over the top that he has Righteous pulled up on the screen. Enjolras takes it and seems to shut down with shock.
It’s a portrait, sort of. It was clearly painted from memory, or from sketches, not a live model, and instead of the calm expressions typical in paintings from the early 1800’s, its subject is alight with anger. Gold curls spill around a sharp-cut, youthful face, the cheekbones dusted red and the eyes blazing, lips pressed together with one hand up as if mid-gesture. The scarlet jacket is only shown through the shoulders, the face taking up most of the image, but the tricolor cockade is visible at a lapel.
It’s Enjolras, as he was back then, fighting passionately with the painter.
“We have the original painting,” Eponine says, blunt. “Marius found a couple of them up for auction and suddenly developed an interest in classic paintings. His parents were very proud.”
“You have this?” Enjolras asks, looking up.
“Righteous, and another that’s probably about as well known,” she says. She opts not to tell him the name of the other painting they’ve rescued. “And a sketchbook.” She nods to the phone in his hand and says, “They’re not, you know, really popular, but they’re unique and they’re the only record of the June Rebellion, so people are interested. They turn up in textbooks and stuff. I did some research and it sounds like he painted like no one else at the time. Beautiful, isn’t it?” she asks, and it’s probably cruel, definitely calculated. From the way Enjolras looks a little like she’s hit him again, it has the desired outcome.
“Grantaire painted this?”
It’s a stupid question, and Enjolras obviously knows it, his thumb skating just above the capital R in the corner of the image. Eponine nods anyway, and Enjolras holds the phone back out to Joly.
“I don’t know where he could be,” Enjolras says. “He might not have remembered yet.”
“We could start canvassing bars,” Courfeyrac offers. “I doubt things have changed that much.”
Eponine tips a hand back and forth in the air, the universal gesture for ‘maybe.’ “We haven’t had a lot of luck finding people by going out and scouring the streets. If we’re going to find him, we’ll find him. Or he’ll find us.” It’s possible that she’s acquired a degree of serenity in this lifetime. How delightfully novel. Enjolras is beginning to look almost outright pained, his lips thin and his face very pale, hands in tight fists by his sides, so she generously decides she’s wreaked enough damage for one day and says, “So, were we going to watch a movie?”
***
Honestly, at this point, Eponine isn’t even surprised when she’s the one who finds him. One thing that hasn’t changed in two centuries: Eponine knows her way around and exhibits a near-uncanny talent for finding trouble.
It’s been a month almost to the day since she brought it up with the others, and she’s in a nightclub, at the bar, because Courfeyrac was right and things haven’t changed that much. Eponine is still fighting the world, Marius is still almost pathetically doe-eyed over Cosette, Enjolras is still trying to save humanity from itself one cause at a time, and Grantaire still gravitates toward large quantities of alcohol like a moth to flame.
He looks shockingly like he did back then, she thinks numbly, weaving through the crowd toward him. His nose hasn’t been broken this time, a sharp jut, but otherwise…it could be 1832 all over again for all the difference she sees. His curly dark hair is wild, his eyes sharp, his jaw covered with a thin layer of stubble. His face is still a confusion of hard angles and harsh planes, but somewhat fortunately for him that look is considered relatively attractive in this century, particularly in conjunction with the muscled build of a boxer. He looks somewhat better fed than he did back then—most of them do, to be honest, Eponine herself among them—and, to her surprise, sober. He’s behind the bar, rather than waiting in front of it for a drink, dressed in the nightclub’s black uniform.
Eponine slides into a seat and tries to think of a good way to ask ‘so by any chance have you recently remembered dying in 1832.’
She ends up sitting there in silence for a while, watching Grantaire deal with the other customers. He’s still oddly charming, even if his charm is edged with something cynical and self-deprecating, working his way through the line with the ease of long practice. Eponine scrambles to think of an order that isn’t ‘remember us’ as he gets toward her, and then it turns out she doesn’t need one.
Grantaire reaches her—his nametag says ‘R’ and nothing else—and gives her a careful scrutiny, and says, “Hi, Eponine.” Sometimes she forgets how clearly he saw, even through the haze of wine—he had been one of the only ones who knew who she was. Even Marius hadn’t managed.
All the air rushes out of her lungs, leaving her gasping. “Grantaire.”
“Did you want something to drink?” he asks, arching an eyebrow at her.
“No, I—wait, yes,” she decides. “Yeah. Whatever you have that’s got a lot of sugar in it.”
He nods and makes her a drink. She’s not sure what it is, except that there are a few different syrups in it and it’s a fluorescent blue color and it’s so sweet she can’t taste any alcohol at all. Grantaire flags down a coworker while she sips at it and says, “I’m taking my break, I’ll be back in half an hour. Eponine, follow me.”
She does. Of course she does. She’s spent her whole life trying to drag these people back together, hell if she’s letting the last one get away from her. She’s already wondering how she can get Grantaire out of his shift, how she can get everyone up at this hour, whether someone’s going to need to do something about Enjolras. Following Grantaire around the dance floor to the couches and chairs sunk into the floor is easy.
She folds herself up on the seat of a chair, denim-wrapped legs tucked up beneath her, and Grantaire sits down across from her. He even sits the same way he used to, his torso oddly folded in as if determined to take up as little space as possible despite his broad shoulders and his legs stretched out in front of him.
“You remember,” Eponine blurts when it seems like he’s perfectly willing to sit there in silence until he has to go back to work.
“So do you,” he points out. “How long have you known?”
“Years,” she says. “Since I was ten. We’ve been looking for you.”
That makes him straighten up. “Who have you found?”
She laughs, short and high and almost frantic with relief. “Everyone. Everyone but you, and now you’re here, so I’ve found everyone. We all remember.”
“Good,” he murmurs, relaxing back against the chair. “That’s good. They’re together? They’re happy?”
Eponine considers that for a moment and says, “Well. I mean. They’re dead revolutionaries with some weird trauma. We’ve all got our issues. They’re all out for another cause to die for, though, so they’re okay.”
Grantaire shakes his head like he wants to be surprised. She gets it. The two of them didn’t die for the dream of a better France, back then, they died for people. Real people, who they saw every day and cared for. (Eponine doesn’t want to jump to conclusions, but she has some shrewd suspicions that her infatuation with Marius was small potatoes next to Grantaire’s attachment to Enjolras. Because, hey, she would totally have died for the cause if she’d been a little more enlightened, she knew what was up with the monarchy and she loves a good fight. Grantaire wouldn’t have. He wasn’t the sort to die for an ideal. Their fearless leader might have all the perceptive power of a brick wall, but everyone else knew about Grantaire.)
“How’d you find me?” he asks after a moment of quiet.
Something about the phrasing of that question concerns her, and she answers slowly. “I didn’t really do it on purpose. I’ve just been hitting every nightclub and bar in a few mile radius of the college and working my way out. Played the odds that I’d find you eventually if you were in Paris. It’s not just me, either, Courf’s been helping. And Bousset and Bahorel and Jehan.”
Okay, look, everyone’s been out at least once looking for him. Even Enjolras. Even Gavroche, which she’s not sure she approves of, but Grantaire was kind of an adored older brother to him, so she’s picking her battles here. And, as Gav so astutely pointed out, she’s twenty-four and he’s almost eighteen so she’s losing ground on being able to argue that he’s too young. (He also just started that growth spurt she’s been expecting, and is very suddenly a good few centimeters taller than her, so. There’s also that.)
Grantaire snorts, but nods wryly. “I can’t argue your logic. Well,” he says, waving a hand down at himself sarcastically, “here I am. You can report success.”
She parses that sentence carefully and says, “You’re coming with me to see the others, right?” Another long pause and she feels her lips curl, anger flaring. “You’re kidding me.”
“Look,” Grantaire sighs, “I could’ve found you. I knew—Apollo’s hard to miss at a protest. I watch the news.”
“You’re telling me that you’re not lonely as shit?” Eponine knows what she’s talking about, she remembers being one of only a few, remembers an entire lifetime of being all fucking alone, and furthermore something about the look in Grantaire’s eye as he drinks her in is pretty damn telling. “You’re telling me you didn’t want us to find you?”
Grantaire is a lot of things. Bitter, angry, usually ready for a fight, prone to defeatism. But, to his credit, he’s never quite been a liar. So he doesn’t answer. Instead he sighs and asks, “How are the others? Really.”
Eponine sighs too and takes a drink of her something-blue-and-sweet. “They’re all right. It’s hard, sometimes, but we get through it. We call it RTSD, you know, when you end up in the wrong place in town or the wrong weather or whatever and you panic.” Grantaire nods, an inscrutable expression on his face, and she shifts to happier topics. “Gav’s taller than me now, it’s goddamn amazing. Cosette and I grew up together this time, we’re both journalism students. She and Marius are engaged again—they got married after the barricade, lived a whole fucking life,” she says, shaking her head in something like wonder. The barricade is so all-consuming. It’s still baffling to her that they had a life after.
“Are you all right?” Grantaire asks, and that’s right, now she remembers how he knew who she was. He assumed she was a boy at first, just like she had intended, and had seen her watching Marius, and offered her a drink and company on the argument of misery loving company. He’d never outright said that it was two idiots in love with people who had no idea getting drunk together, but she could read between the lines.
“Yeah,” she says sincerely. “I don’t…want that anymore. And Cosette deserves the best and Marius is—well, Marius is a bit of a moron, actually,” she says with a laugh, and Grantaire laughs too. “But she loves him and they’re happy and that’s…yeah, that’s what I want this time. I want them to be happy. Bahorel and I go out and get in fights sometimes, that’s fun, Feuilly wants my head on a stick when he’s not coming with us. Joly’s a medical student again,” she says, “and he and Bousset and Musichetta—she was their mistress last time, do you remember? They’re together again, she somehow ended up owning the coffee shop we usually meet at now.” She chuckles. “The place got renamed the ABC and she swears she had nothing to do with picking the name.”
“Les Amis ride again,” Grantaire says dryly, and Eponine nods, smiling fondly. They sit in companionable silence for a few beats, Eponine sipping at her drink and Grantaire picking quietly at a spot of scarlet paint on the inside of his forearm. He’s still an artist. Eponine didn’t expect to feel relieved by that. “And,” Grantaire says, voice so quiet it almost vanishes into the pulse of the music, “what about Enjolras?”
“He’s still trying to change the world,” Eponine says. “We found him last. Just a few months ago, actually.”
“How is he?”
Eponine rakes a hand back through her hair and considers how much to say. “He’s all right. A little quieter. He gets weird sometimes, but so do the rest of us. He tried to blame himself for the barricade for all of about a minute and a half before I…um, had a word with him.”
Grantaire grins. It looks rickety, but amused. “Did you hit him? You seem like the sort to hit him.”
“I slapped him and yelled for a few minutes,” she concedes. “It did him a world of good.” She pauses for a few more seconds, then throws caution (and tact) to the wind and says, “He misses you.”
The grin evaporates. “No, he doesn’t.”
“Yes he does, he misses you, we all do,” she insists, leaning forward, drink forgotten and something hot flaming up in her chest. It’s not quite anger, it’s something softer and bigger and brighter. “Come back with me.”
“No.”
“Why not,” she says flatly. “Give me one good reason.”
“Because,” he says—half-snarls, the same voice she remembers from a thousand and one fights, “you don’t welcome someone who left their friends to die back into the fold. That’s not how it works.”
“But you did die on the barricade,” she shoots back, sharp as a bayonet and just as ruthless. “You did. We don’t know how because Enjolras won’t tell us, but we know that you died in the Musain.”
“That doesn’t change what I did.” He pauses and adds, “And if he doesn’t want to tell you how I died, I’m sure as hell not going to.” He shakes his head sharply. “Look, ‘Ponine, I’m not going to come with you. They don’t need me. And they shouldn’t want me. They’ll get over it.”
“That’s not how it works, you insufferable bastard,” Eponine snarls back, because she can play fierce and ferocious with the best of them. “You don’t fucking earn a place with us, we’re your friends. We miss you, all of us. You come back with me, Grantaire, or so help me God I’ll make your life hell.”
He shakes his head. He fucking shakes his head. Eponine almost smacks him just for the satisfaction of it. Just to get it off her chest. She definitely needs to hit something, right this second.
“I’m sorry, ‘Ponine,” he says, standing. “It’s just…better this way, that’s all.”
“Better for who?” she asks, voice shaking with something she can’t quite define.
Grantaire shrugs. “Everyone who matters.”
And then he leaves.
Eponine sits there for another minute or two. Then she downs the rest of her sugary-blue-something, puts a swing in her hips and uses it to get three vodka shots from a passing party of young men, drinks them in rapid succession, and heads for the door, buzzed and heading toward drunk as the alcohol hits her bloodstream.
She pulls out her phone once she’s standing on the curb and dials, listening to it ring.
“’Ponine?” Cosette asks, breathless.
“I—fuck, why is it raining—I found him. I think I might hit Enjolras again.”
“’Ponine, are you drunk? Wait, found who—Marius, stop,” she adds in an aside, and her attention is suddenly much more focused. Eponine might be the equivalent of an axe, brutal and effective, but Cosette is much more like a laser-sighted rifle. You can feel her focusing in on you from miles away.
Eponine may be drunker than she thought. She only gets into weird anachronistic metaphors when she’s drunk.
“I may be drunk,” Eponine allows. “But I only got drunk after I lost him.”
“Who, Eponine? And why are you going to hit Enjolras again?”
“Grantaire, I found Grantaire, I’m outside the nightclub he works at.”
“Holy shit, you found Grantaire?” Cosette half-yelps, and there’s a loud thud—she’s pushed Marius off whatever they’re on, and he makes a wounded sound as he hits the floor. “Is he with you? Does he know who you are? Does he remember the others? No, wait, answer the first question.”
“No, he’s not,” Eponine says, scowling. “That’s why I called you rather than sending out a text to get everyone together. He remembers everything, but he wouldn’t come with me. Said it was better this way.”
“Wha—better for who?”
“That’s what I asked,” Eponine says. “He said ‘everyone who matters.’ He thinks we shouldn’t want him around. I’m definitely going to hit something, Enjolras just seemed like a good default. Y’know, ‘cause I can’t go punch the National Guard.”
“Uh,” Cosette says. “Tell you what, ‘Ponine, I’m going to come get you, right now.” The level of concern in her voice is just not fair, because Eponine hardly ever starts fights when she’s drunk. Only like twice. Maybe four times. The others were all someone else picking a fight and Eponine being generous enough to oblige them. “How much have you had to drink?”
“Three vodkas and something with a lot of sugar in it.” Eponine rattles off the location of the nightclub and Cosette sighs.
“I’ll be there in five minutes. Be standing on the curb with no blood on you.”
“I’ll try,” Eponine says with a snicker, and hangs up while Cosette is still muttering darkly on the other end.
Cosette is on the phone when she arrives, talking with someone—Courfeyrac, Eponine decides—at high speed. She gestures Eponine into the car and Eponine bolts from her shelter under the lee of the building. Rain is the worst and Eponine hates being outside in it, she really does, and she thinks this is justified.
“I don’t know why he won’t come back,” Cosette snaps, because Cosette doesn’t need to snarl, she can put on that perfect god-on-high voice that makes anyone questioning her feel like a bug. “How about you collect whoever you can and get over to Marius’ so that we can figure somethi—I know you didn’t just interrupt me, Courfeyrac, because that would have been incredibly stupid. Marius’ apartment. Now. Get Enjolras. Maybe don’t tell him and, uh, keep him away from Eponine.” She jabs the red button on the screen with unnecessary vehemence and eyes Eponine as they careen away from the curb.
“Three vodkas and something sugary, hm?”
Eponine grins, bright and humorless and feral. “I have no regrets.”
“You can’t punch Enjolras.”
“Sure I can,” Eponine says with an expansive sweep of her hand. “Watch me.” She pauses and her smile fades. “Grantaire…you didn’t know him, before. I only knew him a little. But he was kind to Gav and he sat with me sometimes. Said misery loved company, made me laugh.”
“Misery?”
Eponine makes a vague hand motion. “He knew I was infatuated with Marius. He had some experience with unrequited love, and he came and talked to me. Everyone except Enjolras knew how he felt about Enjolras—even me—so we kind of understood each other. We got along. We…” She trails off, a strange wave of nostalgia washing over her. Nostalgia for what might have been and might yet be, if such a thing exists. “I think we could have been great friends.”
“Enjolras is so, so brilliant, and so, so stupid,” Cosette mutters, taking a corner at a slightly-less-reckless-than-normal speed, probably in deference to the thickening rain. “God save us all.”
“Amen,” Eponine says brightly.
When they get to Marius’ apartment, it’s clear that Cosette worked with her usual brisk efficiency, because they’re the last ones there. Someday, Eponine will figure out her brother’s uncanny ability to be wherever he needs to be without any apparent mode of transportation. It’s not going to be today, but she’s going to make it happen. She’ll slap a microchip on the kid or something.
“Cosette,” Marius says, standing up as they come in. “Is everything okay?”
Eponine strides in after Cosette and throws out her arms. She gets like this when drunk—very clear and stable, but prone to dramatics and fond of fighting and laughing. It makes Cosette’s life very difficult. Most of the others think it’s the greatest thing they’ve ever encountered. “I found Grantaire,” she announces with as much fanfare as she can manage.
The room explodes.
Eponine stands back with a slightly smug smile and lets the chaos unfold for a few minutes, then waves her hands and shouts, “Now everyone sit the fuck down!”
They do. Except for Enjolras. To the surprise of absolutely no one, including Eponine herself.
“What happened?” he demands. “Also, are you drunk?”
“I found Grantaire, he works at a nightclub,” she repeats, more serious this time. “And I’m definitely drunk by this point.” He looks like he’s considering a remark on her current state of inebriation, so she bulldozes on ahead before he can get them too far off track. “And I had a chat with R.”
“So where is he?” Joly asks, and he looks so hopeful it kind of kills her. Just a little. She remembers watching the two of them, plus Bousset, spinning a single joke into an hour or two of laughter, telling stories to make the other Amis grin at the worst moments.
“He…” How is she supposed to phrase this, she wonders. It’s not that Grantaire doesn’t want to see them, nor that he doesn’t want to come back. “He doesn’t think he deserves to be part of our group anymore. Because he didn’t fight on the barricade. He thinks it’s better if he doesn’t come back—better for ‘everyone who matters,’ he said.” She narrows her eyes at Enjolras, who looks beyond confused. “Listen, chief,” she says, putting a drawl on the last word. “I think you should tell us how he died. Because we’re working on half the information and clearly if we want to drag his cynical depressive ass back where it belongs, we need all of it. So.” She snaps her fingers, one hand on her hip and an imperious look on her face. “Talk.”
Enjolras looks angry, bright and golden and shining, for a long moment. Eponine sees it, she thinks in the depths of her mind. She sees what caught Grantaire’s attention and held it back then, sees what it is about that rage that made him capture it in paint. For a terrifying second, she sees exactly what it’s like to be in love with Enjolras’ light, and so desperate to stand in the sun that she burns herself up, bit by bit, like Icarus.
She really does get neck-deep in the classical metaphors when she’s drunk.
But Enjolras isn’t the sun and he softens, his face falling into something small and grieving and sad as he rubs one palm with the other thumb, a new nervous tic since they found him in this life. He sits down, finally, folding himself into a chair and leaning forward until his elbows rest on his knees and his hair hands loose around his face.
“We argued, the night before,” Enjolras tells the floor, and the room is silent as the grave, listening. “I was cruel.”
Shocking, Eponine mouths over his head to Cosette, who makes a violent motion involving what must be Eponine’s hypothetical head.
“He—I was the last of us. Or I thought I was,” Enjolras says slowly, as if the words are unwilling to fit together. It’s strange, in their eloquent and charming leader. “The Guardsmen came up to the second floor of the Musain and found me there. I faced them and—and one of them called me Apollo,” he murmurs, looking at his hands. “I was waiting for them to kill me and someone came up the stairs and shouted to wait.”
“R,” Jehan says with total certainty, and Enjolras nods, not looking up.
“He said—he said ‘Long live the Republic, I am one of them.’ And he came and stood beside me and told the Guardsmen to finish us both at once. I took his hand and we died,” he says, and the words are quiet and emotionless, but their total lack of detail is telling. “I don’t know why he did it,” he admits, and it’s raw.
There’s a long beat of silence. She’s pretty sure someone’s crying. Maybe Joly, maybe Marius, maybe even Enjolras, but they’re hiding it well.
“Sounds like he fought on the barricade to me,” Courfeyrac mutters at last, and more than a few voices agree.
Eponine leans back against the closest wall and knocks her head against it a few times. “Idiots,” she sighs, staring up at the ceiling. “All right. We need to fix this.” She blinks a few times. “How do we fix this?”
“Convince him we miss him?” Jehan offers, and she shakes her head.
“He’ll probably bolt if we all start stalking him.” She chews on her lower lip. “Enjolras.”
“Yes?” he says, looking up from the floor.
“You’re a moron,” she announces, straightening. “And I’m going to show you why.”
She sweeps away into the hallway of Marius’ apartment and rummages through a closet, coming out with a large, heavy frame wrapped in brown paper. She wobbles when she lifts it—she wasn’t drunk the last time she carried this thing around, and it’s an awfully inconvenient shape—but hauls it back into the living room without mishap. Tugging the knot loose, she peeled away the paper and laid the painting flat on the coffee table.
“This is the other one,” she says as everyone leans over to peer at it.
“One of his?” Enjolras asks, and she hums in confirmation. “What’s it called?”
“Apollo at Temple,” she says, and his gaze snaps up to hers.
The painting is of a warm room, cluttered with tables and benches and chairs. A figure in red stands in the center, the painting designed so that all the light seems to radiate outward from him, golden and brilliant. The faces are vague, the features only suggested, but every figure is recognizable. Closest to Apollo—Enjolras—are Les Amis, bathed in light and laughing and divine by association. Combeferre and Courfeyrac are on either side of him, Bousset and Joly side-by-side, Bahorel looming benevolently over affairs with Feuilly’s smaller form near his elbow, even little Gavroche, like a child at the foot of a statue. Farther out from the center, the figures are dimmer, until, at the edges of both frame and room, they are shadowed and dark. A man in the corner, dressed in a barely-distinguishable green waistcoat, has a bottle of wine held loose in one hand and a scrap of paper under the other.
“Do you get it now?” she asks, hard and angry and heartless. Grantaire was barely her friend, before, but she got him, and hell, she took a bullet for Marius, she gets why he died the way he did. And she needs to destroy something and, right this second, Enjolras looks like he’d rather she have punched him, and that’s rather what she was hoping for. “I think,” she says, delicate and dangerous, because she’s drunk and hungry for a fight, “that we should give him some time, and that you should sort out how you’re going to welcome him back, before we pull him back into that painting.”
***
The next morning, her hangover is hideous, because, firstly, vodka, and secondly, sugary-blue-something. She’s not surprised, is her point here, so she’s prepared with a large bottle of painkillers and all the ingredients for a cup of coffee powerful enough to raise the dead all laid out. She downs three of the pills, drinks two full cups of water while she waits on the coffee, and makes herself eat some eggs. By the time she leaves the house, she’s coherent, if not comfortable, and a pair of sunglasses are enough to handle the headache.
She goes and sits down on the steps outside the painting studio on campus, and stays there for two hours, until a voice clears its throat and a paint-spotted hand touches her shoulder.
“’Ponine, why are you stalking me?”
She stands up and smiles her most feral smile and says, “Because. I think we could’ve been friends last time. You need friends, you can start with me. I’m going to convince you to change your mind about the others. And there’s nothing you can do about any of it.”
She slides her sunglasses down her nose to look over them at Grantaire, who looks a little shellshocked, and she grins again, wild. “Sound good?”