Disclaimer: I don't own Les Mis.
Okay, so this is my first attempt at fanfiction, ever. I know it's not the greatest, but I really wanted to try this.
The night was cold, dark, the way it always seemed to be in Paris. While happy families returned to their homes to laugh and talk, the gamin and gamines of the streets returned to the squalid homes in hope of sleep, a brief but welcome escape from the pangs of hunger that haunted them throughout the day. The even less fortunate took to the streets – honest work was hard to find.
One of these unfortunates was Marie Bennett, a little twig of a young woman. The girl was small with long and unruly dark brown hair that was nearly black and deep eyes to match. Her skin was pale and cheekbones sunken. The faded maroon fabric of the dress she wore clung to her small frame in the rain. She was not a pleasant sight. She was not surprised so much of Paris chose to ignore her existence, and the existence of gamines like herself.
She was not always this way. Oh, no, her life had once been much different. The dress she wore, though faded and torn – was at a time much too fine for the little gamine that wore it. It was once beautiful. She was once beautiful. But that seemed a lifetime ago now. And truly it was. She had not seen her mother or father – those she had so loved but who had rejected her so easily at her refusal to bend to their will – in over a year now. As far as she was concerned this was all the better. She did not wish for anyone to see her, or what had become of her.
After being kicked out of her parents' home, a lovely place with a fireplace, fine silver, lavishly decorated rooms and the like, she had taken to the streets. She tried to find work, but there was nowhere to go. The small amount of money of her own that she could only pay for a room for a few nights.
It had taken her less than a week to find herself freezing in an alley, arms clutched around her stomach in pain, cold, and hunger.
It had taken her less than a week to find herself pressed up against a cold stone wall by a man she had never met, biting back tears as red hot pain tore through her, forcing herself through at the promise of a few measly francs to get her through the next couple of days.
And so it continued, though she did not cry anymore. She no longer felt anything. She did not look at the men – she stared past them, wondering if perhaps it would have been better after all to marry the vile man her parents had intended her to. At least she would have had a comfortable home to dull the pain. But then again, the pain had turned to numbness, and despite all of these hardships at least she was free.
She lived in a small apartment, furnished only with a bed and a small table – it was about all she could afford with the money she earned. But it was better than the streets, and it fed her enough to live.
And so Marie Bennett fell from aristocrat to street rat, wandering through the night, this time in a part of the city that she rarely visited. It was cold, and the wind tore through the thin fabric adorning her body. No one was taking notice of her, which despite the lack of money this would bring was making her quite happy. She felt so empty. She couldn't do it again. Not tonight.
She found herself wandering into a café that she judged was still open by the lights in the windows. The Café Musain.
She had expected to open the door to the quiet type of drunk that usually accompanied this time of night, where friends gathered to speak and smile. Yet, upon opening the door she found something quite different.
"Let us rise to our cause, until the Earth is free!"
Her eyes landed on a young man with blonde curls and a fire in his eyes that seemed to be matched by all of the rest in the room – except one. This young man, with hair dark like her own, sat with a bottle in his hand and a blank expression on his face. Marie always seemed to notice the strange and alienated, she had since she was a young girl. But her sensitivity toward it was even stronger now, knowing how out of place she was herself.
The whole observation took a matter of seconds, and Marie slipped into the café unnoticed as usual – or so she thought. The young man, whose name was Grantaire, noticed the girl slip into the room. She was like a shadow, almost, the way she slipped through the door, surprise showing in her eyes for only a moment before fading into the background.
Clearly, she was poor, a gamine, though she looked cleaner than most. So what was she doing here? She was not the typical type to visit. His eyes glanced toward his leader, who had ended his speech and was talking excitedly with Coufeyrac and Combeferre before they settled back on the girl, who sat near the back, a cup held tightly in her small hands as she tried desperately to warm up in the almost stuffy heat of the café.
He could only think of one word to describe her, and it was a word his leader used quite often.
Patria.
She was clearly downtrodden and oppressed, but she had the potential to be something beautiful and free and wonderful.
He almost laughed at the thoughts running through his head, tipping back the bottle in his hand and emptying it of its contents.