Any passer-by walking would not have noticed the quiet, shadow of a girl lying on the ground with tears in her eyes. It was a cold day and a day when the cold was unusually bitter and even colder breezes passed every so often. No passer-by noticed her because there were no passers-by. The icy cold cut through the bone of anyone outside. The night was approaching and the cold was slinking in silently, like one who knew exactly how to creep up unnoticed. Despite the freezing temperature, the girl was immobile and seemed not to notice anything about her, not that anything changed; no, the street was the same as it always had been and no movement disturbed the eerie quiet that was settling in with the night. That quiet was broken only slightly by soft whispers coming from a garden. The girl was also making a peculiar sound similar to sobbing, except it was so quiet it could almost be described as soft, and tears were frozen on her face. She had an air of miserableness and sadness combined, and her sadness was so evidently shown in her large, brown eyes that she looked thoroughly pitiable. No one knew how long she had been lying there, no one had cared enough to look for her there, and perhaps she herself had no idea how long she had been there. After a while the girl got up. She seemed a bit shaken and stunned but she started walking. The night was bitterly cold but the tears coming out of her eyes and pouring slowly down her face were warm. The girl wrapped her arms around herself, finally seeming to realize the cold, and shivered once. She was wearing only a ragged, torn skirt and a shirt just as shabby and filthy as her skirt. She wore no shoes. The girl wiped away her tears and looked around once more; she looked at one specific house the longest but then shook her head and started to walk slowly away from the house.
That girl was Eponine Thénardier. For a while she had been lost in thought and lost in her sadness. But now as she left that street behind, she walked aimlessly and freely all the while talking to herself in a low, slightly broken voice. But why had she left? The night did not worry her, she knew it so well it was an old friend to her, and she had not perceived the cold until she woke up from her reverie. The reason she had left that place, was one that almost everyone knows: she felt heartbroken. Laying there on the hard ground hearing the soft words that the boy she loved spoke to another girl, Eponine felt hurt. Every word he said of his love for the other girl, the "Lark", made her feel more broken yet. She did not feel the pain of the cold or the pain of the hard cobblestones she had been lying on because inside she felt like sharp daggers had been plunged into her and were lodging themselves deeply into her heart. Despite that pain she also felt longing. That miserable girl longed for a life where she was loved, she did not care whether she was rich or even poorer than she was now, she just wanted to feel special and valued for once in her life. If I were the "Lark", Eponine thought, a bit grimly perhaps, I'd be the happiest person alive.Eponine kept walking, her heart heavy with thoughts and her mind burdened by one realization: He would never love her. With that thought the whole thing hit her and she let out a sad wail. Just as soon as she let out the sound she covered her mouth and spoke to no one in her half-crazed way, "I'm sorry, Monsieur, don't mind 'Ponine, she tends to overreact when her nightmares seem real", the street was empty of life except for her, but she had been so scared of her father's beatings that she had automatically apologized. After having realized that, she laughed, a sound that coming from her sounded somewhat terrible.
Ordinarily she would take more convincing than saying to herself it was just a nightmare but it was night, after all, and to her the night was magical. It was the only time she could dream without being caught and without feeling silly. While the city slept, she roamed the dark alleyways of Paris, happier in her fantasies than she had ever been while it was day. Because in the dark it was easy to lose herself in her thoughts, it was easy to escape the unhappy, lonely life she led. During the night she could pretend he loved her, that he didn't find her repulsive and didn't see her only as a friend. She could feel his arms around her and she felt safe. During the night she owned the streets and she could roam around all she wanted, never alone because he was always with her. At night he wasn't as indifferent as he was by day and at least in her mind he actually cared. Looking around her, at the darkened windows of the shadowy buildings all around her, she said in what could be taken as a soft tone, to herself, "Paris sleeps in the dark...", and in her mind she added, now I can make-believe he's here…
Eponine spent a few hours like that but soon realized she had to go home. Slowly, almost regretfully, she started to make her way home, back through the dark streets with the houses with white walls that looked like a river, shining through the dark. But the night was cold and Eponine was freezing, her fingers were stiff and freezing from the cold and the chilliness was strategically biting her, making the poor girl shiver every so often. That awful cold made her hurry her pace a little but she could not resist from making one last stop. As she neared the specific street she had been crying in it was almost midnight. The cold had numbed her senses and her fingers but not the heartbreak; she had managed to convince herself it was all a bad dream but right now as she got closer and closer to the street she began to doubt. Eponine could not help herself, though, from turning around the corner of the street. The first thing she saw was movement and a small crowd that was beginning to assemble in front of a house despite the late hour. No, it was not a house but the house. The same house she had looked at the longest, the same house Marius and the "Lark" had been in the garden of. She saw a doctor come out, shaking his head slowly and sadly. A woman who had been in the crowd suddenly came forward and asked the man something inaudible, the doctor murmured a reply and the woman withdrew, gasping slightly but the expression on her face was a mixture of sadness and disbelief. Eponine started to walk towards the house in a quick pace, disregarding propriety, disregarding the fact that she would probably be told that street scum had no business there, but she was stopped by a hand that roughly pulled her back. Eponine turned, getting ready to slap whoever had just so rudely pulled her, when she recognized Montparnasse. "'Parnasse, how goes?" she asked quickly, knowing her father wanted her to keep in good terms with him. That was the only reason she greeted him because what she truly wanted to know was what had happened at that house. Most importantly, she wanted to know if Marius was all right. "Now this 'ere house was… no biscuit…", he was most definitively drunk, she realized, and wouldn't remember anything at all tomorrow. He was just talking nonsense and she made no effort to understand his words, she just dashed into the crowd quickly before Montparnasse even realized she was no longer there.
A few more minutes passed and slowly, Eponine started piecing things together. What Montparnasse had said and his being there in the first place, the expression on the woman's face, and the doctor shaking his head. Eponine felt horror mixed with repulsiveness and both feelings registered on her face plainly but the one that could most easily be read was an expression of shame. The truth is, she knew just barely what had happened, she didn't know it at all actually, she was only just grasping at straws. What had happened in that street, named Rue Plumet, was something truly horrible and something very dark. What had happened in that street, in that specific house, numbered 55, could have been prevented if only one brave person had been there… That brave person could have stopped it all to protect one person that she loved. To save he whom she loved the brave person could've saved another person whose life was now gone. That brave person was supposed to have been Eponine.