AN: Happy birthday Inge. I wrote this crackfic satire in one massive sitting for you because you're awesome-sauce. I hope you don't mind that I did a little "borrowing" and that you have a wonderful day.

—

"And by the way, Monsieur Marius, I believe that I was a little bit in love with you."

She tried to smile once more and expired.

-Victor Hugo, Les Miserables, pg 754

—

The world went black with a resounding and angry thud. It was something that Eponine no longer took personally, and over the past 152 years, had learned to take as a compliment. Still, she laid in Marius' arms for another few seconds just to be safe—you never knew when a reader might come back. Sometimes they just popped off for a few seconds to the toilet, other times they left for weeks before returning. The worst were the Double R's—repeat readers—who liked to scour over their favorite bits over and over again with hardly a moment's notice.

Sometimes, they never came back at all but those were usually the overly ambitious students, people who had no idea what they were getting into and ultra pretentious literary types who liked to list all the difficult-to-read books they'd pretended to have read at dinner parties. They usually stopped somewhere around page twenty—a fact that made the Bishop of D— very upset. Often, during the great lulls when nobody was reading, the Bishop drank himself silly at Corinthe, moaning to anyone who'd listen about how young folk today had no appreciation for great literature.

"Great job today," Marius said after a few beats. He helped her sit up, brushing some of the gunpowder off her hand, which magically healed now that the reader had left the book for the night. "It's been a while since we've gotten this far."

"Thanks," Eponine replied. "This one is a close reader too. Makes it harder to fudge."

"Yeah. I noticed," Marius grimaced. "And I don't think she likes me much. She keeps imagining me with this ridiculous hair and freckles."

Eponine rolled her eyes. They'd been through it a million times before. "It's the movie Marius. They watch the movie and then we start looking like movie Marius and movie Eponine."

"I still don't get it. Pictures that move? Are you sure?"

She shrugged. The details of how reading actually worked was fuzzy and after 152 years, they still hadn't figured it out. The creator, a rather grumpy looking bearded man, had written them into being and then suddenly, they were alive. Theoretically, Eponine knew she was little more than a jumble of words describing an idea of a person. For the longest time, she hadn't even been totally sure of her own face. That depended entirely on the reader. Sometimes she was little more than a waif with horrible teeth. But more recently, she had become prettier. Less emaciated, her hair less prone to falling out and sometimes, when she caught a glimpse of herself in the mirror, she reminded herself to thank Samantha. Whoever she was.

Of all of them, she was the best at 'seeing into the other side.' The same metatextual window that let readers bring them to life, she could use to glimpse into the strange world of the people who read them. Albeit, it was only an impression. Stray thoughts in their heads while they read. Things she'd pieced together after countless of readings in dozens of languages. Sometimes she heard snippets of songs—though never quite the same ones as the others. Fantine seemed to hear the same melodies she did, but the rest heard something else. Valjean, for instance, always seemed to be hearing songs about some sort of identity crisis while the barricade boys were perpetually obsessed with red and black. Marius had grown to dislike empty chairs.

In any case, she learned to pick up little tidbits. Images she didn't always quite understand. The others saw them too, though with less frequency and detail. It took a long time, but she had finally figured out the basic gist of a car and a television.

"I see what I see," she said, patting Marius on the shoulder. "How's Cosette?"

Marius sighed.

"Still angry?" she asked.

"Ever since she saw whatever it was in that Double R's head," he whined. "She won't even tell me and it's not my fault! I'm just written this way."

"There, there," she said reassuringly. "I'm sure this will all blow over soon enough."

He blinked at her quizzically. "Pardon? Blow over?"

"Oh," Eponine waved him off, laughing nervously. "Just another phrase I picked up from the readers."

Marius peered at her with a suspicious glint in his eye. "You sure seem to see a lot more than the rest of us."

Eponine swallowed. "Maybe it's because I've got so much downtime compared to the rest of you."

The answer seemed to placate Marius because he nodded thoughtfully and then jerked his finger behind him. The barricades had cleared, but they would reappear at a moment's notice if the reader decided to come back. It was a strange thing, but they didn't question it. "Want to head down to Corinthe?"

"Sure. Where else are we going to go?"

—

The wine shop Corinthe on page 432 was their hangout of choice, precisely because no characters were required on that page and because their Creator, in a fit of uncharacteristic laziness, had decided to describe it at a later time and page. As such, readers usually glossed over the the description without a second thought. Only two particularly observant Double R's had ever caught the lot of them sitting there, whiling the hours away. Both times they had hid under the furniture and held their breaths, relieved when the Double R's convinced themselves it had only been a trick of the eye.

"Hullo!" Marius called out as they walked through the doors. It was a scant crowd today. Most of the Amis were probably off performing another reading or traipsing through Volume IV, Book Seventh. Most readers tended to skip through the Creator's lengthy rant on slang, while others tended to muddle through glassy-eyed and dazed, skipping through with hardly any time to notice the off-work characters biding their time between the prepositions. It was a dangerous hobby though. Gavroche had nearly been caught once and they all had to lay low for a while. But boredom was boredom and Courfeyrac had led the charge back. Eponine had gone to Book Seventh with them a few times over the decades, but it was tough. The barricade boys were usually onstage when she wasn't and vice versa.

Enjolras and Grantaire were there though, as was Inspector Javert, Valjean and Fantine. The five of them were playing some sort of card game, of which Fantine seemed to be the big winner, judging by the gigantic heap of coins in front of her.

"Bonsoir," Fantine said with a sweet smile. Of all of them, she was the one who somehow always seemed to keep the French accent no matter what version they were in. "Where are you coming from?"

"I just died," Eponine said.

Grantaire looked up from his cards, his eyebrow arched. "Oh? Another slamming?"

"Yup," Marius nodded glumly. "The girls always seem to like her more than me."

"Eponine, you're looking…prettier these days," Grantaire noted approvingly, ignoring Marius' whining. It was hard to blame him. Marius had one of the largest parts in the book but towards the end, he had been written as an increasingly dense twat. And as the readers changed over the years, his icy treatment of Valjean in the denouement had left him with fewer and fewer sympathizers.

"Thank you," she replied with a tight smile. "You're looking more handsome these days too."

"I know," Grantaire grinned. "Thank George for the moobies. Or whatever it's called."

Next to him Enjolras rolled his eyes. "Stop preening and play your damn cards."

"You're just jealous," Grantaire said pouting.

No one had been happier than Grantaire when the movie had come out—whenever that was. Gone was the too-big nose and ruddy complexion—now he was by all means beautifully slim, with porcelain skin, strikingly blue eyes and a cloud of ebony curls atop his head. Quite frankly, everyone agreed it had rather gone to his head.

"I've got nothing to be jealous about," Enjolras huffed. "You're just being insufferable. And Eponine," he fixed her with a pointed glare, "don't feed his ego."

"Sorry," she shrugged. Personally, she didn't really see the problem. But then again, like Grantaire, she had benefitted from the movie and it was only a matter of time before readers forgot and they went back to being their less attractive selves. What was the harm in enjoying their newfound beauty while they still had it?

"So do you think the reader will continue?" Valjean asked, sneaking a glance at Fantine as he rearranged his hand. He seemed younger these days with a fuller head of black hair.

"I s-swear to the Cremator," Javert slurred as he took another, "I hope the reader doesn't." His lips twisted into a scowl. "I'd rather not go through the drowning again, if at all possible."

"Oh, like your death iz hard," Fantine snipped. "You try hacking up your lungs and dying of shock! Not your fault, Jean," she laid a comforting hand on Valjean's forearm. "I know eet was written zis way."

"Or getting shot eight times," Enjolras griped, rubbing his chest where most of the bullets would rip through him in another hundred pages or so.

"Now, now," Valjean said, twitching nervously. "Let's all agree we all die in uniquely, ah, unpleasant circumstances."

"Unless you're Pontmercy," Enjolras spat. "Then you don't die at all."

Marius fidgeted under six pairs of eyes and slipped a finger under his collar. It was a sore point among the rest of them that Marius got to live after getting shot. For a period of about 40 years it made him, Cosette, Azelma and Thenardier rather unpopular—though not nearly as unpopular as Tholomeyes. Nobody liked that jerk.

"What's gotten into you?" Eponine asked Enjolras, her tone defensive. She couldn't help but feel protective over Marius. She was, after all, written that way, though time had dulled the intensity of it. There was something about dying over and over again for someone who didn't love you back that was just inherently dissatisfying.

"Don't mind him," Grantaire snorted dismissively. "He's been in a foul mood for the last 12 years. Saw a glimpse of the paradise known as the 21st Century during a read. Apparently," Grantaire said in a loud whisper, "it's not quite the paradise he'd thought."

"Twelve years?" Eponine blanched. "Have I not seen you for twelve years already?"

Enjolras shrugged his shoulders. "We're not really in a lot of scenes together. And you know how it goes."

Come to think of it, he did look different. Enjolras was always handsome—he was written that way—but he seemed a bit more…human somehow. Before he'd always been some sort of cold beauty, angelically severe and glacial. Now he was, well, less so.

"Are we going to play or not?" Javert whined, knocking back another mouthful of wine.

Eponine was about to answer when she felt it. That sickening nausea in the pit of her stomach. She looked down at her hand and saw the bullet wound reappearing, her flesh tearing itself apart as crimson seeped down her arm and when she looked up, she saw the rest of the groups' panicked faces.

"The reader is coming," she muttered, her words blurring together. "Marius, you've got to get us back."

—

It was not without a tremor that he had taken the letter which Eponine had given him. He had immediately felt that it was an event of weight. He was impatient to read it. The heart of man is so constituted that the unhappy child had hardly closed her eyes when Marius began to think of unfolding this paper. He laid her gently on the ground, and went away. Something told him that he could not peruse that letter in the presence of that body.

-Victor Hugo, Les Miserables, pg 754

—

Frozen, Eponine felt the sweat trickle down her forehead as she laid there in the rubble. She wanted to crack open an eye to see if Marius was still there but couldn't. The reader was still there, but paradoxically not moving on. She could feel it. There was music in her ears, something about rain and flowers, and all of the sudden, the heavens had opened up and rain was pouring down from the sky. Nothing heavy—a light sprinkling more like.

These downpours during her death were becoming more and more common, even though there was nothing of the sort in the text.

She could feel the reader's anger humming in her own mind and it left her cold. Had the reader disliked her performance? Fear seized her heart, and she wished she could open her eyes and plead her case. It's not my fault I'm so dislikable! I've had 152 years to think about what I've done. I was written this way! I can't change anything!

The music kept humming louder and louder and then suddenly, her eyes were open and they were at the barricade. Except she was singing now, and Marius was singing with her while Enjolras and the others looked on, their faces downcast in sorrow.

"And you will keep me safe," she rasped, eyes wide with fear. "And you will keep me close."

"I will stay with you, 'til you are sleeping," Marius crooned back in a rich tenor. He didn't seem perturbed by the sudden outburst of song, which only made the entire experience that much more bizarre.

"And rain…"

"And rain…"

"Will make the flowers…"

Her lids were growing sleepier, and though she could feel blood gushing from her chest, there was no pain. This death, however bizarre it was, was preferable. She was reaching up toward Marius, who looked down on her in pity, when the world began to slow even further. In her head, she could hear the angry ranting of a voice—a lady perhaps, it was hard to tell.

This is fucking bullshit! Why does it have to end like that?

And then suddenly the world around her began to warp. The familiar cobblestones of Paris melted away and she was sitting in a strange place wearing strange clothes. Her thoughts were a cloudy haze, full of unfamiliar words like college, and protests and rallies and all of the sudden, a familiar voice pierced through her ears.

Turning, Eponine nearly jumped, her heart leaping into her throat as she saw himstanding there, his face furrowed in concern. What is Enjolras doing here? We don't have any scenes together!

He was dressed strangely, in a type of blue pants she'd never seen before and a shirt that seemed entirely too improper for a student of his stature to wear.

"Nina," he said, uncertainty coloring his voice.

"That's not my name."

He stared at her silently, blinking furiously. And then, as if a light turned on behind his eyes, he opened his mouth and gave a little shrug.

"I just heard Marcus calling you that. Look, I am not here to argue about your name. I just wanted to ask you to come with me…"

Her head spun. Enjolras—or whoever this was—was asking her to go on some sort of 'road trip'—whatever that was—and for some reason, he was looking at her like no one had ever looked at her before. And it was with some small trepidation that she realized, he was looking at her the way Marius looks at Cosette and…

Her heart thumped.

—

She woke up to a man lightly slapping her cheek on the floor of Corinthe.

"Eponine! Eponine!"

"Ungh. Stop," she groaned, batting away his hand. "I'm awake. I'm awake."

Opening her eyes, she was greeted by the same blue gaze. She flinched, scrambling away from Enjolras as quick as she possibly could.

"What's the matter with you?" He asked worriedly. "You appeared out of nowhere, unconscious on the floor. What happened to you?"

Glancing around the room, Eponine shuddered. There was no one else there—a rarity—and she had no idea how far they were in the reading or where that strange world she had visited was.

"Where's everybody else?"

He shrugged, though the grim line of his mouth told her it was something serious. "I don't know. They all just…disappeared in the middle of cards. I've been jumping around the pages for hours but…"

"But?"

"You're the first person I've seen in days."

"What?!"

"Eponine," he said, bracing her shoulders. He was so close and the memory of that strange world was still fresh in her mind. "You have to tell me where you were."

Gulping, she tried to put what she had seen into words but failed miserably. She couldn't even describe the funny blue pants he—or rather, the other him—had been wearing properly. How was she supposed to explain that the world had just…shifted?

"I…I don't know. Something about a road trip."

—

They wandered the empty pages for what seemed like an eternity. The old inn in Montfermeil. The back room at Cafe Musain. Rue Plumet. The barricades. All of it. It was as if the entirety of their world had vanished into thin air. In the end, they always wound up back at Corinthe, sitting and waiting for the readers to return.

But they never did.

Sometimes, according to Enjolras, she disappeared too and he was left alone. Not for too long, but she could never say with any certainty where she had gone. When she did come back, bleary eyed and dazed on Corinthe's floor, he was always there. Holding her. And each time she came back, that strange thumping in her heart only grew stronger.

"Where did you go this time?" he asked, but Eponine only shrugged. Sometimes when she came back, she had a word or two for him. Not that she ever remembered saying them. The only evidence that what he said was true was the small piece of crumpled paper he kept in his pocket with a list of all the words she'd uttered.

It was short. Only twenty words or so. Some made sense, while others… The first time she had come back she had apparently gone to a 'road trip.' Another time she came back and had talked about 'surgeons.' Yet another time, she had talked at length about 'chiaroscuro.' Other nonsensical words included 'zombies,' 'twizzles,' 'high school' and 'changeling.'

Sometimes she came back and he said she wouldn't look at him. Those were the times that worried him the most. Enjolras said she came back, face flushed and eyes glazed. And whenever he tried to touch her, she would squirm away, embarrassed and wouldn't talk to him for hours. She vaguely remembered those times—the intensely confusing heat in her stomach and the ache in her thighs whenever he looked at her. She didn't remember why or how, but she knew the uncomfortable feeling had something to do with him and it frightened her.

"Nothing this time?" he said, his shoulders deflating a bit.

"No," she replied slowly, a bit wary. There was something…different about Enjolras, though she couldn't quite put her finger on it. "I hadn't even realized I'd been gone."

"Oh."

"How long?"

"A few hours."

They sat in awkward silence. Eponine had a strange urge to reach out and grab his hand, though she couldn't really explain why. She had never wanted to hold any man's hand except for Marius' and that was because she'd been written that way. What point was there in questioning what the Creator had written? Their story always played out the same way and while it was painful, there was a certain comfort in that too.

"Do you think this has something to do with the readers?" Eponine whispered. "Do you think that's why everyone's disappeared? Why I disappear?"

"I don't see any other explanation," Enjolras replied grimly as he readjusted his red vest. The gold bands glinted in the dim lighting of Corinthe, accentuating the tri-color flag tied around his waist. "Maybe something's wrong with the…" he gestured helplessly, "You know. That thing that happens between us and readers when we're being read."

"Maybe," she said, her voice skeptical. A memory of something Grantaire said stirred in her mind. "Do you remember that last time, when we were here and you were all playing cards?"

He nodded.

"Grantaire said you saw something during a read that made you upset." Eponine bit her lip. "What was it?"

Enjolras froze, his jaw clenching as he let go of her arm. "Nothing. It wasn't important."

"It might help."

"It won't."

"How do you know?" she countered. "If it does have to do with the readers, maybe it'll be a clue."

He balked and was about to open his mouth to protest, but thought better of it once he saw her pointed glare. With a long, drawn sigh, he said, "I saw myself dying."

"Oh."

It had to be said that Enjolras' death was one of the more brutal ones. After about 50 years, they all—well, the ones who died regularly at least—had a friendly contest to see whose death was the worst. Javert had never gotten over the fact that he ranked only fourth. Eponine herself, had been third and Prouvaire second (much to Grantaire's consternation). Enjolras, had won overall. They had snuck into the edges of the scene, hidden behind the commas and the periods and watched as the eight bullets pierced his chest, blood splattering everywhere. Somehow he'd managed to stay standing. (Falling was what dropped Grantaire down to fifth, though he had brought up a very good point that he only fell because that was how it had been written).

"It wasn't like what you're thinking," he said, his frown deepening. "It wasn't mydeath. I just watched myself die."

Eponine winced. "Well, your death is quite gruesome…"

"No I mean, I didn't die in the same way. I was…up on the barricade. Waving a flag. Dying like Mabeuf. Except there was music blaring everywhere and I was watching from a seat. Like in a theater. I was watching someone who wasn't me dying…like me…dressed…like…" His eyes widened as he looked down at his clothes and for the first time since she got back, Eponine understood what had been off.

"Enjolras…your clothes."

He had never been written in that waistcoat—the crimson and the distinctive gold banding. They stared and then the air changed. Grew heavier somehow, sort of like the way the air was always thicker before a thunderstorm.

And then, without warning, he was gone.

—

They all came back within hours of Enjolras disappearing. First was Cosette, sauntering into Corinthe as if she had never left. Though, Eponine had noticed her hair. The ringlets surrounding her face flickered from chocolate brown to honey blonde and then back.

She had almost asked Cosette about Marius before stopping herself in time. There was no love lost between them—not that Eponine could blame her. After all, her motivations in luring Marius to the barricades had been made explicitly clear by the Creator on pages 754 and 755. And in the process, she had gotten Marius gravely injured. His survival and their 'happy ending' did little to lessen Cosette's understandable dislike.

It got better once the rest of the Amis returned. Though things were a bit…off. Grantaire couldn't hear Enjolras' name without turning beet red, and actually, come to think of it, none of the Amis could bear to really look at each other in the face. There was a certain…distance among them that hadn't been there before, accompanied by bashful stares and a lot of thumb twiddling. Surprisingly, both Prouvaire and Courfeyrac had asked after her sister—and then proceeded to aggressively ignore each other for the rest of the day.

The same went for Valjean and Javert. The latter stayed as far away from the former as possible, the normally stoic inspector flinching every single time Valjean came within arm's reach. For his part, Valjean was only too happy to oblige, and spent most of his time shyly conversing with Fantine, who blushed prettily whenever he managed to look her in the eyes.

Marius was the last—besides Enjolras—to return. Freckle-less. And whatever spat he'd had with Cosette was clearly mended by absence. The petite brunette/blonde launched herself into her husband's arms with a renewed passion and vigor that made everyone else grossly uncomfortable.

She explained the circumstances of Enjolras' disappearance as clearly as she could, but the rest of them only nodded—or in Grantaire's case, ran out the door, his face on fire. To a lesser extent, Combeferre, Courfeyrac and oddly enough, Marius, also turned an unnatural shade of red.

"You should count yourself lucky," Jean Prouvaire told her after she became frustrated one afternoon. "You were able to forget."

—

Five weeks after Enjolras disappeared, the readers returned, which naturally, made them all exceedingly nervous. There was a good 432 pages before Enjolras had to make his first entrance and some had proposed plans for one of the National Guard with particularly blonde hair to stand in if Enjolras hadn't returned by then.

"It's not that hard," Grantaire said one miserable afternoon. "You just say, 'Citizen this!' and 'Citizen that!'"

"Maybe," Bossuet said. "With any luck, the reader will give up by page 50 and we won't have to worry."

"Or maybe Enjolras will return before it gets to that," Joly added, his forehead creased with worry.

"Or maybe," Eponine said, ignoring the way their eyes followed her, "we don't have to stick to what's written. Maybe, just maybe, we deserve to write our own ending."

Silence fell over Corinthe. Everyone—except the Bishop and his sister, who were busy keeping the readers occupied—leaned in closer, an odd curiosity gleaming behind their vaguely described eyes.

"How do you propose we do that?" Cosette asked, her gaze challenging, yet intrigued.

Eponine smirked. "I've got an idea."

—

It took a lot of preparation and a smidgen of luck, but six days later, on page 432, they launched their plan. They had enlisted the help of Montparnasse and the Patron Minette—who on top of being sneaky and crafty, were also quite good at filching things that wouldn't be missed. They pilfered an unnecessary 'give' from page 449, in the midst of Marius' humiliating Napoleon speech, a 'him' from page 445 (which had conveniently been on the way) and a 'back' from page 443 on the way back to page 432. A pair of em dashes, were stolen from the Table of Contents, where they would most likely not be missed.

The result was the following:

The greater part of the Friends of the ABC were students, who were on cordial terms with the working classes. Here are the names of the principal ones. They belong, in a certain measure, to history: Enjolras—give him back—, Combeferre, Jean Prouvaire, Feuilly, Courfeyrac, Bahorel, Lesgle or Laigle, Joly, Grantaire.

All that was left to do was wait. Eponine chewed on her thumbnail as she hid behind the C in ABC for the reader to reach their message. She had a good feeling about this one. A Double R, familiar with the text and less likely to attribute what they'd done to a simple missprint.

A shudder ran down her spine as she felt the reader's eyes skim over the C, where she hid. The reader lingered there for a bit, and Eponine nearly passed out from holding her breath. Super Double R's were a rare breed and for one to evenslightly sense her presence was beyond extraordinary.

And then, she felt it. That strange electric prickle on her skin right before a storm. The reader had seen it. She knew, even if she couldn't see anything. The words jostled on the page, which hummed with an energy she'd never felt before. Suddenly, everything around them seemed…more. The colors were more vibrant—the reds more red, the blues more blue, and so on and so forth. She could finally see the tiny details in the wood grain and feel the rough-spun fabric of her chemise scratch against her skin. Eponine could feel the slickness of her teeth with her tongue and smell the Parisian air wafting in from the Musain's window, sweet with the aroma of spring grass and freshly baked bread.

At the peak of it all, Eponine looked around her and swallowed a big gulp of air. It was the freshest she'd ever tasted and in that moment, she understood what separated her pseudo-life from that of the readers: Detail.

She could feel her heart beating in her chest—continuously and not for dramatic effect. The coolness of the air on her skin. The ache of her feet. And last, but certainly not least, the swell of unscripted emotions swirling in her blood.

He returned, in all his unwritten glory, with a small pop. His hair was a golden crown of curls that framed his face—not movie Enjolras', not other Enjolrases'. Just his. And it was the most beautiful thing she had ever seen. There were no words to describe him, because doing so would have pinned him into something defined by letters and spaces. He just was.

When he saw her, he smiled and took her hands into his, their warmth sparking a fluttering in her heart.

"Thank you for bringing me back."

"I-it was nothing," Eponine replied, not understanding why her cheeks were suddenly so warm.

"You'll never guess where I've been," he said. His voice rang in her ears and Eponine realized that it was the first time she'd ever heard it. All the other times it had merely been described.

"Where?"

"A million universes where you and I conquer the world." His hand brushed her chin, tilting it up toward his. Eponine's stomach flip-flopped and she reveled in the feeling. It was strange, but also wonderful.

"But that's…this…this is not what was written for us," she said breathlessly.

"No," he said calmly. "But that doesn't mean we can't read between the lines."

Her first kiss was more than she could even imagine, given that for most of her 152-year life, she was nothing more than a character in a book. His lips were soft and inviting, and even though the reader had already begun to lose interest and the world was starting to once again dull, Eponine had never been happier because for one small, brief and wonderful moment, she had tasted what it was like to be real.

—

AN: The 'road trip' fic I reference is none other than the first chapter of Inge's brilliant Run Away With Me. It was one of the first Enjonine fics I read and I adore it; and since it's Inge's birthday I wanted to put my homage to it in here (i hope that's okay). Go read it. I threw in a few shoutouts to some oooother fics as well and you should read them too (including one of mine, hehehehe) as well as all the smut in general.

Inspiration for this comes from the Thursday Next series by Jasper Fforde, though I kinda tweaked it a lot.