A/n: Maroon 5! Yay! Anyway please tell me what you think, this was supposed to be a one shot but I thought "eh, I dunno." so it's not a one shot anymore. This is also posted in the category of plays/musicals

When did he first meet her? Oh right, at uni, Marius brought in with him a girl with dark hair, tan skin and a dimpled smile. That was her, she had always been that; Marius's shadow. He never spoke to her, they weren't friends but curiosity would usually overtake him and questions started to fill his mind, he wanted to talk to her but only for the sole purpose of feeding his questioning brain but he never did, until their last day at the university. They were at Courfeyrac and Marius's dorm, there were a lot of booze and a lot of people, not really his scene and he didn't want to come but Grantaire insisted saying "it's your last day, better loosen up and actually have fun." But he didn't have fun, how can people have fun in a place like that? All stuffy and suffocating, the music was pretty bad too and he never really enjoyed alcohol plus there were couples making out and people dancing and rubbing their sweaty bodies on each other and on him. It was like his worst nightmare, tripled. So, he went to the rooftop, thankfully, nobody was there, he inhaled deeply and rubbed his temples, he decided to stay up there until the party cleared out, now he understands Joly's hypochondriac manner. He was all alone up there until she came out.

"...fucking princess," He seem to have heard her say as she swung the metal door open. She looked at him and her brows knit together.

"Oh hey," Those words came out shocked and slurry. "Didn't see you there, do you want me to go or?" He didn't know if he wanted her gone or not so he shrugged. He actually felt quite lonely to be up there, not that he didn't enjoy being alone but there was just something about being alone in a rooftop on your last day while there's a party going on just two floors below that felt a little lonely.

"Smoke?" She opened a pack of cigarettes and stole one, put it up in her mouth and offered him the pack, he refused and in his mind, he was lecturing her about the dangers of smoking but he didn't say anything because she looked like she needed someone to listen to her not someone to lecture her about lung cancer (wow, he was really becoming Joly now). She lit her cigarette and smoke escaped her mouth. He looked at her, not stare but look, really look at her, he realised this was the first time he actually spent more than five minutes alone with her. He looked at her and she looked awfully sad and lonely and broken and fed up. "So, not enjoying the party downstairs?" She broke the invading silence.

"Not really my scene,"

"Well, kind of figured that one out."

"What do you mean?"

"Seriously?" She had a slurry, drunk giggle. "You look like one of those posh pricks that thinks their better than everybody, you think that people who enjoys scenes like these are either complete idiots who are not doing anything with their lives or paper people having their paper fun with paper things in a paper town," She looked back at him and blew a smoke, he can sense her drunkenness and her restlessness. "You think this is all bullshit."

"Well, yeah, I mean, this is all just bullshit,"He looked at her and brushed his blonde hair away from his eyes. She just smiled and shaked her head, she flicked the cigarette and smoked again. "You? Why are you up here?"

"Out of place,"

"Marius and Cosette?" He remembered Marius talking about a blonde girl a couple of months ago and everyday since he met her, it was tiring listening yo a lovestruck idiot but Courfeyrac said he was just 'jealous' because Marius had 'someone special' in his life. Please, he ha someone special in his life, PATRIA. Plus, who has time? They were at the university, love and sex can wait.

She laughed and he became confused, it was a serious question, he didn't care about her love life but still, it was conversation.

"I'm that shallow to you, aren't I?" He must have had a confused look because she answered her own question. "You think I'm so shallow, I don't need a man to make me happy or special or anything. Why would you think my whole world revolves around Marius, I'm not some manic pixie dream girl, here only to teach dear Marius a lesson on how to lose people in less than 10 days." Her voice was rising up, she wasn't angry, she was fed up. "I'm not one-dimensional, I have my own ideals and dreams and a fucking life. And I hate it when all people see when they look at me is 'Marius's shadow', Marius's lovestruck girl, 'Marius's this or Marius's that, I'm not Marius's anything! I'm Èponine Thenardièr with an actual fucking name and an actual life." She paused and then decided she was finished and then realised her cigarette was burning her hand so she threw it away and inhaled as much oxygen as she can intake.

"I'm sorry," He said

"You should be."

"That wasn't what I meant-"

"Just shut up." She cut him off, they stood there in silence for a while until he spoke up.

"So," He started, testing if it was already okay to speak. She looked at him and he knew it was the go signal. "Who's the fucking princess?"

"Oh, that," she giggled and she looked pretty. "There's this girl downstairs and she was talking about her dress and how it's blood orange, I'm like 'no it's not, it's fucking red', she was so fucking pretentious, you should have been there." Her voice hung in the air, and he realised how much he didn't know this girl and how much he wanted to know more. She was like a stranger to her, a stranger but he knew her so well now. He knows that Èponine Thenardièr is not just some girl, he looked back at his memories and started to look at the little things he missed. He realised that she used to hum to herself and sing and he realised how much he actually loved her voice, she owned several tattered copies of classic books and she had books by authors like Jane Austen, Rizal, Fitzgerald, Hemingway, Eliot and many more that he can't remember. He knows that she's a Music major and she's written songs and she wrote their graduation song, he realised how he's the shallow one for thinking that she was just Marius's shadow, of course she was more than that, she was never just that.

They sat down on the cold, dusty floor and waited until the sun rose up from the buildings of Paris, the air was cold but they didn't mind and everyone was going back to their respective dorms but their was just something about that moment that they didn't want to let go yet.

"So, what are you doing when you get outta here?"

"I'm working at a newspaper for a year and then I'm off to law school, you?"

"I'm gonna write songs and live,"

He didn't know what she meant and it didn't made any sense but it didn't matter because she stood up and looked at him, he realised she looked beautiful, her tan skin was beautiful under the rising sun and her hair was flying behind her back. She looked hopeful and beautiful and perfect and at that moment he wanted to kiss her because it felt like the right thing to do but he didn't and he missed the moment and he stood up and she left. That was the last time he saw her until 3 years later.

Thank you do much for reading. Please tell me your thoughts :)