A Midnight Sun Is Rising

It is a month and eight meetings later that they plan another protest.

Eponine has come to every meeting, often berating their ignorance but helpful nonetheless. With Feuilly’s help she has a map drawn up of the tunnels, government facilities squared off in red. Another girl, Musichetta, a plump red-haired waitress at the café, joins them, as well as Marius’s girlfriend Cosette (Eponine finds to her surprise that this girl strikes her with only a detached sense of loss, and despite her best efforts, she likes her very much). Every plan is outlined, local Officials noted, escape routes highlighted. It is the most important protest of their life, ten times bigger than the first and a test to see how much the Society will do to silence them. They are ready.

The night before the appointed date, Eponine can’t bring herself to come home. She stays out late at first, drinking and playing cards with the boys (she beats out the resident champion, Grantaire, but by that point in the game they are closer than family and he couldn’t have cared less). But eventually two o’clock rolls around, and all the boys proceed home slowly, and even Musichetta finishes her shift and politely asks Eponine to leave. She wanders outside, leaning against the cold bricks and casting her eyes to the sky. Everywhere she can see is dark, stars swallowed by the inevitable machine of human progress, pumping out the thick smog that curls through the horizon like a Van Gogh painting. She’d only seen one, a dusty copy in the back of the library, but the way the glowing of the stars had entwined with the night had fascinated her. A meeting of opposites. A melding into something bigger.

A form trudges out of the café, tiredness revealed in the lines of his shoulders now that everyone is gone. He glances up, seeing in the blackness a girl, and leans wearily against the wall next to her. They stand in silence for a few moments, each caught up in their own little corner of the universe. She finally speaks. “What made you do this?”

He doesn’t need clarification, just shifts in the growing chill. “My mother. She was a member of the Resistance. She died when I was young- killed by the Society when they discovered her identity. My father and I… we disagreed. I was sent to live with my aunt, Combeferre’s mother. She’s Resistance too.”

“So they still exist? The Resistance, I mean.” She asks curiously.

“We haven’t heard from them in years. They went dark right before I was to be initiated.” He shrugs. “But I’d like to believe they still exist.”

She exhales, and her breath dissipates like mist under the dim streetlamps. “Maybe. They’re good at hiding, those people.”

“You’d fit right in.” He says it absentmindedly, but she’s come to realize nothing he says is without meaning.

“Because I can hide?”

“Because you can hide yourself among those with no fight left in them, and because you can just as easily shake the foundations of the world when it’s least expected.”

Eponine laughs, a husky sound deep in her throat. “You say it like you know me.”

He doesn’t even look at her. “Sometimes you don’t have to know people to know who they are.”

She turns to him, indignant. “That doesn’t even make sense.”

Enjolras shrugs. “Maybe. I’m tired.”

“Well, you don’t know me. You haven’t even tried to know me. You never will.”

“Do you have someplace to stay?”

“Why the hell does that matter?”

“Because we are both tired, and you seem rather opposed to leaving, and it would be best to get some sleep before the protest.”

“Are you proposing I come home with you?” Eponine stares at him under the darkness, profile as hard and unyielding as ever. “You are. You’re lonely. You don’t want to be alone tonight, not before the day when your dreams and your nightmares could rise to reality.”

“Does it matter?”

“Monsieur, reality is a nightmare. You just haven’t realized it yet.”

He sighs, his head falling back against the wall, eyelashes fluttering, somehow made young and ancient in the same moment.

“But it just so happens I don’t want to be quite alone either.”

They walk home in silence, his apartment filled with bittersweet warmth. It’s decidedly bare except for the worn and dog-eared books thrown everywhere, the only personal object a wrinkled photograph of a little boy and a smiling, gorgeous, shadowed women. His mother.

“Goodnight.” He murmurs, gesturing towards the bedroom. “You can sleep in there.”

“No.” She crosses her arms, raises her chin, dares him to defy her.

“I’m not letting you sleep on the fifty-year old couch while I sleep on the bed.”
“I guess neither of us will get any sleep then.”

“I suppose so.”

Eponine lays down on the couch, still glaring at him, pulling the neatly pressed blanket over her bony body. He settles down on the armchair, cutting off the lamp with a sigh. They lay there in the darkness, his steady breathing eventually lulling her to sleep.

Her dreams were never exactly pleasant, and tonight is no exception. She’s watching Azelma burn, screaming Eponine’s name as her skin chars and grows black, Eponine herself just feet away but paralyzed. Then Azelma collapses, transforms into her mother, screaming curses and coming at Eponine with hands wreathed in green flames. Eponine’s crying, trying to move but unable, limbs starting to burn, when the fire turns gold and melts down harmlessly.

“Eponine.” Enjolras shakes her awake, eyes bloodshot. “You were having a nightmare.”

“I know.” She snarls, jerking away.

His eyes widen a bit and she bites her tongue. “You haven’t slept.”

“And you haven’t slept well.” He counters.

Eponine rolls her eyes and shoves him away. “Go to bed, rich boy.”

He groans and returns to the armchair, watching her the whole time. They sit there in silence for a few minutes, each unable to fall asleep. And then Eponine does the closest thing she can do to giving up: she speaks. She speaks, and because it is late and she is so very tired and the dream has stirred up memories and hell, she doesn’t know what’s going to happen tomorrow but she knows everything is about to change, she tells her story.

There is a gift and a curse to a story belonging to a life, a story devoid of purpose or happy endings, and this gift and curse are one. It is empathy. It is a strange, broken kind of sharing, of understanding, of love. It is the winter without the spring, stained with memories of warmth lost.

He listens, and when she is finished he tells her his, the moonlight shrouding them in years. It is silent after, worlds bleeding through the emptiness as night meets day. Eponine sings the song of many years ago, the song of a clear day and blue eyes. It is in this way that they finally succumb to sleep.

I do not know, Enjolras thought, eyelids shutting, I do not know what is to come. What a strange thing, to hold the past in your heart and the present in your eyes and not know what the next second will bring. If you will remember all this hours from now, if you will even be breathing.

When they wake in the morning, a pitiful breakfast is scraped together and consumed in comfortable silence. And then they are off, into the chilled morning, into the dawn of the old and the new and the not yet known.
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Feuilly paints her a mask for the protest. It’s black with tinges of dark violet and navy around the eyes, silver outlining her features. She can’t quite fathom her emotions, elation and anxiety and gratitude and anger at herself, the boys, and the government. They are about to bring down hell upon themselves.

There in the café they slip on the masks and hoodies, falling into the delicate security of obscurity. There they bid the weathered walls goodbye, exiting with trembling hearts, some shaking from excitement, some from fear.

Bahorel, a huge man with scarlet briars for a beard, howls as they prepare to turn onto the main road, “Let’s kick some ass!”

And so it begins.

They stream into the street, running, screaming, holding up signs painted with the bold letters of rebellion. People draw back, surprised. Eponine yells at the top of her lungs, falling in step behind Enjolras. They’ve planned everything out and chairs and couches are yanked from side alleys, forming a makeshift stand. Some citizens follow behind them, enthralled with the possibility of violence. Enjolras climbs atop their makeshift stage, arms raised in a call for silence.

“Citizens!” He calls. He spares a glance to Combeferre, mouth tilting upwards in a soft smile. “Brothers, sisters. We stand here today with you, together. We stand here today to defy the dark. We stand here today to welcome the coming light. We stand here today to burn the Society and build the institution of the just, of the equal, of the free.”

The people roar, and the sun reflects off the worn buildings, gleaming, turning the world into a blur of pure white. Hands are thrust into the air, grasping, forming fists, bleeding into one tumult of humanity. Eponine sees the future. She sees hope. And she raises her own fist to the sky.

They have five minutes of victory before the Officials pour in. There are helicopters, guns, flames. The group leaps from the platform and falls into order, feet following the planned routes of evacuation. Enjolras, Eponine, Marius, Cosette, and Feuilly are all in one unit. The crowd pushes and pulls them, a faceless mass, and Enjolras is separated from the rest.

She screams his name, turning, shoving aside all in her path. There are white uniforms ahead and her heart threatens to stop. They’ve started to shoot into the crowd, and she doubts they really care who they hit. It takes another breathless moment for her to spot him. Eponine grabs his hand and runs.

They make it to a relatively empty street a few minutes later, having taken shortcuts through shops and courtyards and alleys. It’s only then that she realizes he’s bleeding. He stumbles, coming to rest against the wall, ripping off his mask and smearing the scarlet on the side of his forehead.

“Enjolras.” She yanks him roughly to the ground. “What the fuck.”

“It’s fine.” He shakes his head, a strange half-smile forming. “A bullet scratched me. It didn’t hit anyone, just a building. They’re horrible shots. If we come out of this with few casualties, I think it’ll be fairly safe to label today as a success-”

“Fuck you!” She screams, unable to contain herself any longer. “You almost got fucking shot! You fucking idiot! Fuck you. Fuck you and fuck your stupid ass and fuck-”

“Eponine.” He stops her, laying his hands on her shoulders. “It’s alright.”

She punches him on the arm. And then she kisses him.

Their lips clash, desperate, wild. Eponine falls into him, too tired to resist the temptation. His passion surprises her, a perfect storm of want and anger and something bordering on affection. They meld, tasting of salt and coffee and metal.

She finally pulls away when he nearly falls to the pavement, inspecting his head with obvious disapproval. “Get up. I’m taking you to Combeferre and Joly.”

Eponine mutters a final “fucking idiot” as they slip into a side street, and he laughs.
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