Authors note: Just a bit of what Eponine is up to, more soon.
Odd note: I seem to get all my very good writing ideas while i'm listening to Next To Normal, especially Growing Up Unstable, and Everything!
If i owned Les Miserables, i would not be writing crap like this. I am not VH.
She stood alone, one hand curved around the railing of the bridge, staring into the mass of bruised clouds. Her dark matted hair whips around her emaciated face; her cold dark eyes stare unseeing into the churning river. The hungry wind tears and her ragged skirt, vengeful fingers chilling her to the bone with their freezing touch against her exposed skin. She wishes that it wasn't so cold. Then maybe they wouldn't have to spend all their ill-gotten money on coal. Maybe they could get some food, actually buy it for once, instead of stealing it from the hawk-like vendors with their strong fists and heavy sticks. What with the plans for a revolution, every man was armed, and not unwilling to use their rods on a skinny, starved waif like herself.
She stares, wishfully into the water. How nice it would be to throw herself into the violent tides below her. She longs for death the way she longs for Marius: as an escape from the shithole that is her life. 'What wouldn't i give not to feel?' she thinks to herself. The water would be a good getaway, a way to stop the constant pain and wretchedness that has taken over her life. "I could just jump," she whispers to herself in her rough, guttural voice. "Then I'd be gone… It would be so easy, just to let go, to fly for a minute. Then it would all disappear." She sighs to herself, alone on the bridge. Just her and her thoughts, not the best company in the world right now, morbid and suicidal as they were. She imagines jumping, can almost feel the rush of air against her bruised skin, then…. Nothingness. Eponine wonders what comes after death. Nothing, she supposes. Just nothingness, thoughtless, emotionless. As much as she wishes that she were the type of person to not jump, and go and get a job and improve her life, she knows in her fortified heart that this is not true. She knows that, if not for Azelma, she would jump, then and there, no ifs, ands of feelings involved. But she didn't, for Azelma's sake. Azelma was slightly more delicate then herself, and if she was gone, Azelma would be sent out on all her fathers dirty work. Eponine did not think her sister was cut out for that. There had been a time, thought Eponine, when she had thought the same thing about herself. How wrong she'd been. She laughed, a low, raspy chuck that caught in her throat, and morphed into a dry cough. She leaned against the cold metal of the railing, waiting for the dizziness to pass. She thought back to a time when life had not been this fucked up. It had all been so happy then. They had just scrapped by, but it had been enough. She wished she could go back to then, that wonderful carefree time. With a shudder, she tears herself away from the rapids, knowing what will become of her if she stares into the black water for very much longer. She wishes that she could just lose herself in the comforting oblivion of death. But she does turn away, and it is all for Azelma, her little chestnut haired sister who used to laugh with her by the fireside at the inn.
And Azelma is the only thing that keeps her from turning back as she walks down the Rue Rongerte, her bare feet blue against the icy road, her legs cocooned in frosty snow. She hopes that she will not regret her decision to live another day. 'Still' she thinks, 'there's always tomorrow.'