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Wanda loved the club that had just opened down the street. No alcohol, but great music and really, everyone brought their own alcohol, it was cheaper. She twisted on the dancefloor, arms over her head, hips swaying to the music. Pietro was still standing by the bar, glass of orange juice mostly full in his hand, listening with half an ear to the excitable young man with flowers in his hair.
Wanda danced.
"Eponine," the girl said, teeth bright against smiling, dark-painted lips. "Call me Ep."
"Wanda," she replied, clasping the offered hand. "Want to dance?"
"There's ways of protesting that will get their attention," the guy was saying. "Just standing shouting in the streets only lets them know we're angry, focussed protests-"
"Just how posh are you?" Pietro snaps, setting his empty glass down with a clink. The guy looked surprisingly offended.
"I spent three years on the street," he said. "We both did work for Giorgy at one point."
Pietro frowned, looked closer at the face before him. "Jehan?"
Eponine was a wonderful dancer, Wanda thought. She twisted her hands over her head in a way Wanda no longer could, not without calling her scarlet, and the way she swayed her hips was fucking sinful.
Wanda's attention was torn from the lovely lady by the sight of Pietro stepping onto the dancefloor hand-in-hand with-
"Is that Jehan?" Eponine asked. "I haven't seen him dance since he and-"
Eponine clammed up as soon as Wanda looked at her. Wanda grinned. "Be more surprised," she said. "He's dancing with Pietro, and my brother never usually dances with anyone but me."
"You move well," Jehan said, his breath ghosting over the skin of Pietro's ear.
"Mm?" Pietro looked down at Jehan, standing on his tip-toes to be able to rest his chin on Pietro's shoulder. "You're not bad either."
"You danced," Wanda giggled as they stumbled back to their tiny flat. "With someone other than me." She giggled again, still joy-drunk from all the minds at the club. "I'm impressed, brother-mine."
She slipped on a wet cobblestone and Pietro plucked her up into his arms without a second thought, with the barest blink of blue. "Let's get home," he said. "Then you'll be awake for this meeting they mentioned tomorrow."
In daylight the club was a cafe, MUSAIN screaming across the white front in clear black letters. The neon cyrillic that had overlain it last night was switched off and inside the barstools and tall tables were interspersed with low chairs and coffee tables.
On a small stage at the back, a blond man was speaking fervently.
"You don't like him," Ep said after the meeting was over. "I know Enj... can be kind of abrasive, but-"
"How can you trust him?" Wanda asked, painted nails tapping restlessly on the table's plastic surface. "Are you sure he's being truthful? That he is not a plant? How do you know he is who he says he is, that he is not lying, or that-"
"Wanda." Pietro's hands gently wrapped around his sister's. Too late, she noticed the red wisping from her fingertips.
"We have trusted people before," she said. "People who have made promises, and would enslave us to service, not our own cause." She curled and uncurled her hands, let scarlet wisp out by choice and not by accident. "They kept one promise, but the rest... that was a lie. And your Enjolras' mind is too bright, I cannot see. Tell me, Ep, tell me why you trust him."
It was Jehan who spoke. "Because he's right there with us, every protest. In the cells afterwards. With bruises and broken bones when they're rough."
"And," a new voice cut in - a dark haired man, slipping a small flask into his jacket pocket - "He's got a weird trick of his own."
"You're the other one," Wanda says to Enjolras. "From the castle. The other one who survived. Your break out gave us a chance to-"
"You were in the castle too?" Enjolras, this close up, glowed. Warm like sunlight, his eyes shining like gold coins. "They didn't tell me anyone else survived."
Wanda was quiet. Pietro, beside her, an ominous pillar. "Everyone else," he said. "Everyone else but us is dead."
"You killed them when you left," Enjolras said. "Didn't you? I don't think I killed anyone with my fire, but the news said-"
"They were going to mindwipe us," Wanda said. "They were HYDRA, Nazis, and they wanted pliant weapons, not troublesome people." She spat, perfectly, into Pietro's empty glass.
"Our family," Pietro said, "Our people, have suffered too much at hands like theirs before. We could not let them live."
"We target protests carefully," Courfeyrac said. "These three groups-" he pointed at the pictures arrayed before them "-have proven ties to the cells like the castle."
"I found the data," Combeferre said. "R and Bahorel did some legwork to verify."
"Got arrested, you mean." R's surliness had been going up and down depending on how much he consumed from his little flask. Wanda wasn't sure how many of the immediate group had noticed.
"So," Ep said, arm-in-arm with Wanda. "Your brother is going to go back to Jehan's, it looks like. Want to come to mine? My little brother's out with friends."
"Can't," Wanda said sadly, kicking a pebble. "Have to feed the cat."
Eponine stopped dead with an excited squeak. "You have a cat?" she said. "Can I meet it?"