ADIEU » LES MISÉRABLES | ✓

CHAPTER THIRTEEN

Claudine's heart grew heavier with each passing second. She felt as if she were suspended in some sort of whirlwind, watching everything else fly past her while she stood, immobilized. 

She wasn't brave enough to live knowing that her father had perished in the fire. As much as it disgusted her to admit it, she would rather do nothing and live with the faint hope that somewhere out there, he was waiting for her, alive and well. She didn't want to find him. She didn't want to face the truth.

She was so selfish, it was absolutely sickening. Fresh, unbridled hatred for herself crashed through her heart, and she felt like she was sinking. Drowning, but too exhausted to gasp for air. She grasped at the nearest thing she could reach and held on, tight.

It was steady and firm, like a boulder, but there was a strange warmth to it that no granite could ever exude. It seemed to be tightening around her, ever so slightly, almost as if it were enveloping her in a hug. 

In a fit of quiet desperation, she clutched it closer to her body. 

"Claudine, you are cutting off my air supply."

It was Enjolras. The thing she was clinging to was none other than the stony, formidable man who delivered speeches with steely resolve and armed his glares with daggers of ice. It didn't make sense, how someone with such an unfeeling demeanor could emit such warmth.

They were close, too close. She could smell his scent, a pleasant mix of soap, vellum, and sun-drenched linen, so at odds with his aristocratic features gleaming coldly under the silver moonlight. Alarmed by the sudden heat that rushed into her cheeks, she let go of him - but he held on. 

"You do not have to tell me anything," he said, his breath getting caught in her hair. "But I wish you would. I really do."

It was the way he spoke, cautious, detached, but so heartwarmingly genuine. The boy could move mountains with his voice. 

The words tried to fight their way out of her tightly sealed lips. She felt a strong urge to confide in him, to pour out all her emotions at his feet. But then again, she knew better. The last person she'd trusted - mistakenly - was Éponine, and she intended to keep it that way.

"I'm sorry," Enjolras murmured, having been met with no response. He removed his hands from her body, and she found herself missing his touch almost immediately. The moonlight shifted, and the faint pink that stained his marble cheeks became little more than an illusion.

___

She frowned even in her slumber. Enjolras's stared at the ugly crease just above her eyebrows, his fingers itching with a strange, irrational yearning to smooth it out. She was huddled against his expensive velvet couch, one that he'd never cared to use, and her inky hair splayed out around her wan face like a dark halo. 

He found himself gazing at her for just a little while longer, momentarily transfixed by her small presence in his large room. It had been so long since anyone had set foot in his home, himself included. The luxurious apartment had been grudgingly arranged by his family's secretary after he walked out of their household for good. Everything in it screamed bourgeois, serving as a constant, unwelcome reminder that no matter how much he tried to deny it, he was still very much part of them.

Her, on the other hand... she looked so out of place. He wondered why he hadn't noticed it before. Aside from her pale skin, her every feature was unlike those of the locals'; her eyes were too deep, too dark, her aquiline nose too dainty and narrow, her face too long.