daughterofawolf | Entries tagged with unlinked

Later, what will haunt her is that she can’t swear to the exact moment she last knew Ellie was there. They had gone to bed together; she knows that. She’s even certain — pretty well — no, definitely so — that at some point she’d half-woken and curled closer.

She has dreams she wakes from, though, into other dreams. Vivid ones, ones that loop over and over, waking and speaking to usual people until something goes wrong, dreams that leave her uncertain for sometimes hours later that she’s ever finally awoken. So had El really explained, in the purple of predawn, that she was getting up but that Eponine should sleep? Had Eponine said I love you back, aloud, or was that just an nice thought? Was all of it?

Hey, it’s okay. I’m just going to go take care of some stuff. I love you, go back to sleep.

It’s so eerily apt , that later it will turn over and over in her mind long after she’s decided it’s okay to hold onto it.

Right now, though, none of that occurs to her. She isn’t thinking about when she last saw Ellie or what she said. She’s simply letting the silence of the house settle over her.

She knows before she knows. ( Cut for length; cw for depersonalization / mild dissociation and not-quite being sick related to grief/stress )

Eponine comes back to herself with a start almost as she’s knocking on Bev’s window. This is her own old building and her best friend; she knows the fire escapes well enough for it to be almost as rote as the walk here, so the lack of keen memory of it isn’t important enough to worry about right now.

Still — it might be the best place she could have gotten herself, and she finds herself suddenly overwhelmed with the fervent hope that Bev’s home and awake.

[dated sometime between Valentine's and today, we'll play it by ear!]

It's a Saturday, which generally means work, but she's the close shift today. When Eponine wakes up while it's still morning enough to feel early, it doesn't mean groaning and rushing. She wakes up feeling rested after a dream that she can't remember but that she seems to remember being pleasant, and debates staying in bed just because she can, and then gets herself up and dressed because that rarely works.

Today what it means is that she looks around her apartment, and thinks, I have so much to pack up, and not much at all, too with some bemusement and then, delightedly, Soon I'll be living with Ellie all the time! and subsequently, Dieu au paradis, what if this is a complete disaster.

She sits down on the floor of her living room. Ellie is not the one to talk to about this: for one, she's not an unbiased party, but also Eponine doesn't want to scare her into actually taking the invitation back. For she really is excited about it, so much she could burst, really, or she wouldn't be nervous.

This requires a specific sort of friend. Someone she can trust not to laugh at her for being excited or for being nervous, and someone who knows her and the sorts of reasons she has to doubt herself, and someone who won't find girl talk too frivolous -- which should by rights exclude her from the conversation. She'd never imagined she'd need or have the chance to fret over the landmarks of a relationship, and this one had started so slowly and escalated so obliquely that she'd not had to fret much over it, or rather, the major moments had been figured out on the go.

But this is a proper, silly-but-completely-serious, fret, and there's only one person for it.

Are you doing anything today, and if not, ☕️☕️? she texts Rosie.
I will admit that this is not an ENTIRELY selfish question she adds a few moments later in the interest of honesty, for I need some advice. But I'd like to see you, too. xx

It was the end of the year at school, only four more days to go, which was hardly any time at all really. All the tests were done; all the events over with. Most classes were just showing movies, and although Eponine had rarely seen moving pictures, except for time to time in the Children's Home common rooms -- and even then they had to be deemed appropriate for anyone who might be in the room -- even she was tiring of the ridiculous plots that seemed to play out on the small screens allotted to the classrooms of Darrow High.

It was far too much time that could be spent doing better things. If she slipped school, she could go to the beach, or go shopping, or -- she thought warmly -- spend time with her boyfriend. It was still such a novel idea, being someone's girlfriend; the sort of title to inspire foolish butterflies. In fact, it seemed altogether ridiculous if she stopped and thought about it too hard, and so she didn't. After all, she deserved some good things.

Instead, while the TV plays something about a group of poor children who play some game involving a frozen lake and sticks that she can't quite make heads or tails of, and what seems to be a very wealthy man who drinks too much, she sends a message off to Nicaise.

This movie is terrible. I miss you! Meet me outside after school? xx

After school, she looks around for him in the throng of children streaming out the doors, smiling.

like the forms of the shadows which traverse dreams

[for Bev] what am I supposed to do now, without you?

[for rosie]

[preplay: wish plot]