A Midnight Sun Is Rising

She first sees him on a winter day when she’s fifteen and he, seventeen.

The air is freezing cold, bitterly so, all the misery and the torment of poverty packed into one icy breath. Eponine’s parents may be officials, but the salary they get is spent on shitty alcohol and gambling, all but lost before it even reaches their ripped pockets. She’s roaming the streets in her old territory, familiar grime settling into the creases in her tanned skin in homecoming. She hums, satisfied in this new garment of dirt, tracing the buildings of stone with numb fingertips. Oh loneliness, she thinks, did you miss me?

It isn’t hard to spot him. Even dressed in what are probably his most worn clothes, he stands out like the sun in a gray sky. Shadows don’t dampen his golden curls. Eponine darts into an alley, leaning against the opening just behind him. She’s tired, she’s angry, she’s so damn cold, and this pretty boy doesn’t belong here, is an invader in her eyes with his stiff back and rich follies. Smirking, crouched just out of view, a weeping angel in the soot, she sings to him.

Little rich boy, come and sit with me

He glances up, brow furrowed.

Out in the darkness and the cold of the street

Blue eyes, more brilliant than ice, search for the source of the sound.

Won’t you, won’t you, won’t you have a drink
Take a sip, it’s the bitter taste of poverty
Little bourgeois boy, never had to starve
Ain’t it nice, ain’t it sweet, to live out all your dreams

He turns her way then, face pale and statuesque, lips parted as if to ask a question, and a bruise marring his cheek. She sees the indent, knows the pain, knows he’s been hit by someone with a ring. Breath caught in her throat, she turns and flees back into the gloom.

Eponine dreams of him that night, dreams of fire and blood and smoke and angels with scarlet wings.
*****************************************************
Enjolras is seventeen when his father ships him away.

It’s a winter day, a perfect setting for misery, air fogging the glass and seeping through the cracks of the window, chilling their hearts, before falling into the orange heat of the fire. He’s in the library, fingers curled around a book about the French Revolution. A rare find in a country where everything is censored for violence, but Councilmen get anything they want. It can’t be past ten in the morning, but the sunlight streams into the room with sharp clarity, gilding the gold curls of his that clearly came from his mother. Perhaps it’s this, this token of her, that strikes his father into anger.

“What are you reading?” the older man asks, voice devoid of emotion, walking in abruptly. He doesn’t wait for an answer. “That trash? Your mother’s junk, surely. Always had a horrible taste in books, among other things.”

“It is not trash, it is history. Believe it or not father, there is a large distinction. And her taste was different than yours, which does not make it horrible.” He doesn’t look up from the page, almost bored in countenance. “Quite the opposite in fact.”

His father leans closer, eyes narrowed behind slate gray lenses. “Watch your tongue boy.” The man, so rarely pushed into anger, is unusually irritable. “Just like her, spewing that crap, except you don’t know when to stop.”

“What crap?” Enjolras snaps back. “The truth? Because you seem quite fond of falsehoods, father.”

“What are you talking about?” Eyes flashing dangerously, hands fell on the chair arms on either side of his son, trapping him.

Crystalline blue eyes stare back defiantly, unsaid answers, unsaid questions, floating through the air between them. And then-

“Get out.” His father stands back up, turning his back on his own creation, his flesh and blood.

“You’re a coward.” Enjolras jumps out of the chair, book slipping to the ground. “Can’t stand to be around me, hmm? Is it because I look like her? Her, who you could have saved, but you didn’t because you’re a damn coward, always have been, always will be-”

For the first time in his life, Councilmen Enjolras raises his fist, his anger boiling over, anger and guilt because it’s true, he could have saved her, could have done many things, but that is the past and it’s too late. It’s too late, and the only thing he knows how to do is destroy. His ring, the family crest, leaves an indent upon his son’s cheek.

Those eyes, so similar to the pair that haunts his dreams, glare up at him.

“She was my mother.” The younger Enjolras’ voice is cracking, though whether through rage or grief or hate is unsure. “She was my mother, she was the only thing, the only one, that was ever here for me, and you let her slip away. You claimed to love her, but you didn’t even try. You know I’m right. You let her slip out of your fingers without a single glance.”

“You’ll go to your aunt’s house. You’ll go there and you’ll stay there, you’ll grow up and go to university in a year and become a Councilmember. You do what your family expects of you. Understand?”

His son never replies.

The next morning he leaves, fist clenched around a wrinkled piece of paper covered in spidery handwriting. As soon as the door closes behind him he pockets it, refusing to risk losing this last piece of his old life to the wind. Small but clear words read:

Trusted Members of the Resistance:
(Memorize this, then hide it somewhere safe. Burn it, perhaps. It must never be found.)
Angeline Combeferre, (your aunt, my sister)…
*****************************************************
Enjolras roams the streets of the poor district that day, dressing in old clothes and ducking his fair head as the broken pavement grounds against his feet. For once he is content to watch and not speak, though surely it will not last long. He is conscious of the cold, of the slight pain in his cheek, but mainly he thinks of the future, pretty little dreams of red flags and bold black words like freedom. Words like liberty, like equality, like fraternity, which had so long escaped the government’s extensive vocabulary.

These are the thoughts that consume his mind when he hears the singing. It’s low and rough, a woman’s voice tainted with smoke and poverty- but no, perhaps tainted is not the right word, for it is this quality that lends to its beauty and immediately catches his attention. He catches a glimpse of her, dark hair and amber eyes assessing him as if he is a newfound trinket. And then, in a swirl of ragged cloth, she’s gone.

Enjolras dreams of her that night, dreams of fire and blood and smoke and a girl clothed in night that still manages to shine brighter than the stars.