Author's Notes:

Lines taken from JL Stanley's The Lost Civilization.

A birthday gift for Thea, because she's a wonderful person, and I've learned so much from her. Her words never fail to make me feel and this is cheesy, but maybe that's part the reason why I'm still human. I could only hope not to disappoint her with this. Gold star I tried? Oh, and really sorry for the Briticisms.

...

The first time he sees her, he notices her fascination for pretty things. For style over substance, and the lack of syntax in the poem she's memorizing, because Marius is relatively decent to look at but the girl is poetic in her sweeping stares. He thinks it ironic, because there she stands, being introduced as Marius's girlfriend's best friend, but she looks at him in the darker ways Cosette isn't capable of. Like he said, pretty things. It's unbecoming, he's only met her now, but he wants to tell her, to condole her with, pretty things are usually hollow.

Éponine. They say her name like it's fragile - as if the word would shatter if it falls from their tongue without fanfare, but she introduces herself like her name is a bullet. It's weird how it feels like he's been stabbed. Even weirder still that ever since he's met her, he's been prone to inconsistent imagery. It's curious, how she walks into the room and his mind is instantly a mine field of thought asterisks that only explode into scenes that shouldn't be familiar but are.

It's uncomfortable, to say the least. For all his sweeping statements and glorious prose, Enjolras has never been one to appreciate imagery. And the lines on this girl - they've only just met, but she seems awfully familiar and it's disconcerting how her imagery is one he knows. He thinks it justified, then, that his discomfiture has him treating her like shit. He's civil, yes, but it seems terribly like he doesn't like her.

"Hey, you're from Comparative Lit, right?" Jehan asks, overly excited, perhaps inspired by this honorary addition to their elite circle. She is rather pretty, he'll give her that. And Jean Prouvaire is inspired by everything, anyway. "I think I've seen you around. I'm majoring in poetry."

"Oh, yeah. I think we're in a class together," Éponine says, and Enjolras thinks he's heard the smoke in her voice in some other life. But he shakes his head and tries, instead, to tune in to the conversation.

"I thought you were more of a fine arts person," Enjolras says, and his face darkens because stereotyping is not a posture he wants to fall into, but there he goes.

"Why, did the hair give it away?" Because while Cosette would have been the pristine princess, with blonde hair and porcelain skin and daintiness directing the bones on her back and her footfalls, Éponine is the exact opposite. There is a certain wildness in her, and scars from the struggle to break free from a mold. Her dark hair falls in waves, accentuated by an underside of fading sea-green, and her eyes are darker still. There's half a wing on her left collarbone, and there are watercolor stains on her fingers.

"I'm sorry for assuming," he answers, his voice closed off. It's unlike him. She came around, and ever since, everything he's become is unlike him.

"Nah, it's cool. People think that anyway. After all, what's a girl like me doing, reading Marx and Foucault, right?" She's sharp, he notices - all angular smirks and harsh eyes. "I wonder what I'm doing here, too. You're not the only one, pretty boy."

"I'm sorry," he tries again, but he's all stiff words, because apologies lie foreign on his tongue, they are usually left unswallowed.

"If it makes you feel any better, you remind me of Kant," she says, smirking, and it's as if she's the sun because she's blinding him but he can't look away. If sound is vision, he can see Jehan's amused chuckles from his peripheral. Éponine licks her lips. "You derive pleasure from people, but you're always going to be disinterested in them. You're awed by the beautiful. But you'd never care."

"And this, Chief, is why the lovely Miss Thénardier always gets in trouble with the department," Jehan says. They treat what she says like it's an offhand comment on the weather, but Enjolras thinks she's wrong, because a line in a history book whispers that out of the two of them, he's always been the one who cared more.

...

Months pass, as time has a habit of doing, and everyone else welcomes Éponine in their circle, everyone save for the golden-haired son of the revolution. He is constantly wary of her, he watches her every move, listens for cracks in her voice when she talks to Combeferre and Courfeyrac about how she's doing. He doesn't know why, but he's waiting for a fallout.

"So what do you think, Chief? How's her reading?" Jehan asks. They had been talking about the final paper that's killing Éponine, and he fails to keep his awe in check. Because Enjolras is a monster - he's horrifically brilliant - at his poli sci papers but the brunette can dissect literary pieces without batting an eyelash.

"I think it's a legit perspective. The commodification of marriage was prevalent at the time, with the aristocracy and all. I just think it's- I don't know, aren't you romanticizing Beatrice's refusal of Don Pedro's proposal too much? In effect, you're projecting a romantic characteristic on a guy who blatantly refuses marriage. Something's wrong there."

"They had history, Mr. Big Shot," Éponine bites back.

"History has a way of screwing people over, Ep," he counters, and it doesn't surprise anyone but him when the nickname escapes his lips. He doesn't know where that came from, and he doesn't know why he thinks the statement is more for him than her, but he says it and it is a side he chooses, it is where he stands.

"I don't get it, for someone who believes too much in revolution, you have an uncanny ability to miss the point of one."

"And the comedy is a revolution how?" he deadpans.

"It's a power struggle between a Beatrice who manipulates Benedick into being her savior and a Benedick who is scared of losing Beatrice. The power shifts constantly within a short period, and sure, there's nothing Marxist about it but, put crudly, it's sex as a power relation. But you know what, I actually am not surprised you don't know anything about it."

His eyes narrow and for a moment, Éponine is about to slap a hand to cover her mouth but the moment passes and both of them falls back on their defensive postures. Only Jehan is smiling now, and he looks too much as if he knows something that the other two are consciously trying to ignore.

A memory assaults him, only, it's not his memory, it's an outtake from a dream, and he sees- He sees his shadow. He smells the ocean, feels the salt fall heavy on his skin. He sees her - abandoned, silver dress torn and blood red from the cracks on her palm, the ridges and curves of her body obscured only by thin satin, hears her blood race with his own and his body reacts.

He's been waiting for her to get left behind, because they've told him she'd come. When she does arrive, sleep claims her, and in her slumber, she runs after the prince who sails away. She is still claimed by silvery wisps of her dreams, but she runs. Her dress tears and her body is silvery in the moonlight. He hovers above. Finally, finally, here is the girl.

But he blinks and then it's gone.

"Contrary to popular belief, I'm not a blushing virgin. Also, Thénardier, two things: Benedick wasn't scared of losing Beatrice, regardless of how pretty she might have been. He was scared of losing face. Second, sex as a power relation? Power's in the penetrator. Unless Benedick liked it up the ass, he was the one who held the power."

Enjolras walks away then, but he only begins to feel better when he checks his phone to see Jehan leaving a message saying red is a good color on Éponine, chief. nice one, haha.

...

The dark-haired princess sits, and watches. She always watches. The young prince is august in the moonlight, and Selene is reflected in the angles of his face. He looks to her for validation, because through her, he knows he is adored.

(He will be the lover of just one more, he will desire a prettier princess whose hair glows gold in the sun, but the labyrinth he traverses is one this daughter knows and for tonight, she is his beloved).

The young god sits in forlorn solitude, ten thousand miles away, his music dead amidst now still dryads. He waits for his princess to be abandoned.

we cling to lovers unloved
we grasp and plan for days
unlived

...

Enjolras rents the flat above the fire station and it's the designated go-to place. All of their stories start there. This one starts outside.

Marius gets drunk one night because Cosette walks out on him. And, Enjolras has found, Éponine will do anything - will run, waist-deep in the sea - just so Marius won't feel as sad. She sits with him, stays quiet, grabs the beer away when he makes to drink more. It's like watching a lion get shaved and getting the notion that regardless of the dishonor in it, the lion will give up its mane.

"Marius, please," she coaches. She glances up at Enjolras standing by the entrance but she doesn't ask him to help her. Her messy hair is tied up and her neck is glorious in its exposure and for a second, Enjolras imagines the wing on her collarbone move. In the hazy light of the streetlamp, it's easy to mistake her for- for an angel, and maybe that's how Marius sees his Cosette in her.

Enjolras would easily absolve him but he thinks, somehow, that his anger is righteous - because this was the one thing that was mine (but he remembers the story and he remembers she gets left first) - when Marius grabs the back of Éponine's head and crashes his lips against her own in inebriated grief.

For a minute, she doesn't kiss him back but he watches the resolve dissolve in Marius's force and she gives up, gives in, and she's wanted this for so long she grips his hair and follows him back to his mouth when he retreats. And this is the fallout he's been waiting for.

"Ep?" Cosette walks in on them and watches the car crash with Enjolras. He sees the tears pool on her bottom eyelashes when the couple doesn't stop even at the sound of her name.

Marius breaks away first, pants, drops his forehead on the depression where her neck meets her shoulder. It's supposed to be a whisper but they all hear him when he says, "You're not her."

"Screw you, Éponine," Cosette says, and it's the closest she's ever been to profanity and when she runs, Marius can only stumble after her.

"That went well," Enjolras says when three minutes pass and she doesn't stand. This moment seems awfully familiar, and he feels like they're waiting on the precipice. All their tomorrows would start from here.

"Fuck you, Enj," she says, and she's resigned because she knew it was stupid.

"I don't get it. What is with you and running after boys who would never stop to let you catch your breath?"

"What is with you and hovering?"

Enjolras gets irrationally angry that she's so flippant, he doesn't get it, why this feeling, why the wrath running after the blood in his veins. He's pissed because she's not stupid, she should get it, she should know the story, she's the one who understands the theories, she should know how this would end.

"You know what, Thénardier? Fuck you, I don't need this right now," he says. This isn't how the story is supposed to go but he thinks he might have had enough.

It's the smallness of her voice, the vulnerability, the smoke turning to ash that gets to him, that becomes the puppeteer of his actions, like his resolve is a string she just pulls. It's the way she says, "Fine. Walk away, Enjolras. It's not like I'm not used to memorizing the backs of those who leave me behind."

He growls. He's a boy with the prettiest words but they are turned to dust, rough against his throat, and he growls. Damn it is a whisper but the shove against the red brick wall is a scream that says fine, you win.

Enjolras takes her by the arm roughly, snakes the other around her waist and slams his lips against her own. There is no shock, no jagged transition from surprise to lust, because she kisses him back almost as soon as there's contact.

It's a clumsy journey to his flat but the stumbles are disregarded for the way they tear into each other's skin. One of Éponine's hands are latched on the nape of his neck, the other is under his shirt, leaving fingerprints on his back. His lips trail kisses on the length of her neck, licks, spells promises with his tongue.

He pushes her against the door, and pants, but oxygen is secondary to the taste of her skin. Their chests heave as he lifts her jumper from her frame and it's as if she's a temple, he's in awe, his hands traverse the territory that is her body like he's the pilgrim instead of the god. When he kisses her, harder than he's ever kissed anybody before, it tastes faintly of worship.

Enjolras presses into her ribs, his fingertips trailing, tracing, barely feeling the underside of her breasts when she arches and he cups her fully. He pushes roughly when she nips the vein throbbing beneath his jaw and their moans are predetermined melodies.

His breathing is labored against her skin as he kneels, unbuttons her jeans and kisses the spot where her waist ends and her hips begin. She's looking at him from above and her fingers tug and leave trails on his sideburns, he's in awe and in that moment, he doesn't care that she can see it in the way he treats her body like it's the last good thing about this part of town.

"Enjolras," she whispers.

He kisses her navel and trails down, his fingers trembling as they touch her through her knickers. She whimpers above him and her nails dig into his shoulder blades but she doesn't back away. You're so wet for me, this is for me, finally, finally and when she moans his name, he can't help it, he sucks her clit through her knickers as his fingers pump into her until all he hears is the blood pounding in his ears in time with her unintelligible chants.

She comes with the end of his name on the tip of her tongue.

...

The morning finds Enjolras alone, clinging to wisps of a dream of a life he could have lived. A golden-haired god taking the dark princess for his wife, they've made her unageing, because they could not bear to see him grieve over her death, she's dear to them because she is to him.

This was not how this was supposed to end, he thinks, because she's the one who was supposed to be abandoned, but why is he the one she left behind? For all her literary theories and disbandment of myths, she's the one who disregards this tale to wait on another that won't end. He wants to hate her for not giving him the option to watch her walk away, but Enjolras just feels tired.

...

The dark-haired princess awakens on a wreath of flowers and to the smell of sweet wine in a goblet beside her. She awakens to see a god against the sea-green skyline of an island she was left in, and she thinks, for a moment, that this could be worth it. He is a pretty marble statue against the rocks until he moves, he smiles, he says, "I've been waiting for you."

(The princess decides, right then and there, that she will love this god forever, will worship him, will fight in a thousand battles just so he'd be her immortal king. She doesn't know that he's vowed to do just that a thousand more times than her. A thousand more times, at least).

The young god is quiet because he's known ecstasy before, he's known madness. But never like this. Deeper into the forest, the dryads are dancing.

a tale told by firelight
a melody remembered
a dream
we wake and sing