Until the Earth is Free

Author's Note: Why, thank you for having a look at this fanfiction of mine! I hope you decide to stick around. This is now my third story for Les Mis and, like the two before it, it's based off of the musical. I feel it's important to point this out. There are so many adaptations it can get confusing! So yes, this one is from the musical universe, but draws several details from the Brick as well. It may also take a few details from Shōjo Cosette, the anime.

A warning: this story will contain mild sexual content, mostly at the hands of Montparnasse. It may grow dark as featuring themes of rape. However, there will be little to no violence or coarse language.

::

June 5, 1831
366 days

Paris at its most beautiful. In the mid-evening, with the sun setting and casting a faint orange glow over the city. The faint glow, seemingly settling itself into every crack in the cobblestones, in the woodwork of every building. Warming the stones. That half-light breathed in the city's very heart. Such a perfect and beautiful sunset not a soul could look into it and find their breath taken away.

The sunset was beauty, it was hope, and it marked one day less to be lived on this earth. Another day gone. But there is a sort of beauty in letting go.

Amongst the filth, in the slums of San-Michel, a boy strode confidently through the streets with his head held high. A skinny urchin of a boy, just ten years old. Overlong blond hair hung in his eyes and his feet were bare and blistered. But he walked with an air of childlike confidence and pride.

The boy arrived in front of a café, one with a weather-worn sign and dirty awning. He opened the door, and casually waltzed through the café, up the stairs, and into the hidden attic room. He looked around as he shut the door behind him. Nobody was here yet. Nobody that was, except for …

The boy walked over to the table and poked the sleeping man. A bottle of wine lay on the table, empty, and a drained, chipped glass sat on the floor. The boy kicked it out of the way and poked the sleeping man again. "R. R, wake up."

Unfortunately, Grantaire had once again drunken himself into a stupor and there was no getting him back now. The boy left him where he was and sat down opposite him, putting his feet up on the table before Enjolras walked in and scolded him. He reached for the empty bottle of wine and shook it, hoping for a few drops of the liquid to fall, but it was dried out. Leave it to Grantaire to drink every last drop, the boy thought to himself, sulking. He'd never had wine – and perhaps for good reason, seeing as he was just ten – but that was one of his life's goals. To try wine.

The door opened, and the boy looked up in alarm. It could only be Enjolras. It wasn't, though. It was a girl. Dressed in a ragged white blouse and a muddy red skirt, a worn green shawl wrapped around her skinny shoulders. Like the boy's, her face was streaked in dirt and there were bruises down her arms. "Gavroche," said Éponine. "What have I said about putting your feet up on the table like that?"

Guiltily, his feet slid away and came to rest on the floor. Crossing his arms, Gavroche studied his sister. "'Ponine, you're comin' to a meeting!"

"Oh," said Éponine with a shake of her head. "Oh, no. I was just wondering if Monsieur Marius had arrived yet. I see he hasn't, though, so I'll be going … I shall wait for him at the door." She turned to go, long black hair swishing out behind her.

"Wait!" Gavroche called, and she stopped. "Wait. Don't go ... you mustn't go. I hardly ever see ya. Stay here for a bit."

Éponine smiled and rested her head against the door frame. "Just for a bit. I'm waiting for Monsieur Marius." But she shut the door and sat down next to the drunken Grantaire. She reached for the bottle of wine and shook it, searching for a few drops. The bottle was empty, of course, and she brushed it aside.

"You shouldn't drink. You're only sixteen, and a girl," Gavroche scolded.

"Neither should you. You're only ten, and a child," she shot back. "And anyhow, I've drunken before and I'm fine." Sitting back, she seemed to consider this the end of the matter. Addressing her younger brother, she added, "How are you then, Gavroche? I've not seen you in a few weeks."

"I'm grand," the ten-year-old boy answered. "Life on the streets have got to be better than having 'Parnasse in it. Speaking of which, is he the cause of those bruises on your arm?" He pointed. "If he is I'll be sure to give that bastard a bruise or two myself."

Éponine shoved her shawl downwards to hide them. "It's nothing," she muttered. "And watch your tongue." Here the door opened and Enjolras stepped in. His eyes fell on Grantaire and he sighed.

"He's a lost cause, isn't he? – oh! Hello." He noticed Éponine sitting there. The girl stood and waved the Gavroche, murmuring, "I should be going." She disappeared down the stairs. Enjolras glanced after her before turning his attention to Gavroche.

"Your sister?"

"Yes. She wanted to see Marius." Gavroche shrugged. He reached over the table and shook Grantaire's shoulder again, more harshly this time. "R! Grantaire!" This time Grantaire mumbled something blearily and raised his head slightly, eyes half-open. Then he fell back onto the table.

"Heavens," Enjolras muttered bitterly. "We cannot have even one meeting without that fool drinking himself into a stupor. I shall have to find him a hansom cab to take home. Again."

The meeting began soon after, as the rest of les amis began to arrive. Gavroche spent most of the time trying to wake Grantaire again. "Give it up, child," Enjolras told him. "He won't wake any time soon. Focus, now."

Gavroche made a face but turned his attention to Enjolras. The "Leader in Red" was drawing out some kind of plan on a large slate. "We will need to make more red flags," he was saying. "As red is the color of our revolution and our cause. This shall be imperative in the future. Who here has red items of clothing in their homes?"

"I've a red tablecloth," Combeferre spoke up.

"Excellent. Take care to bring it in tomorrow … "

::

Marius made his way down the stairs in a hurry. He always took care to be one of the first to escape the meetings. Enjolras would often chide him for seeming to be "in a faraway land" during meetings or lecture him for his constant tardiness. If Marius escaped early he would be able to avoid said lectures if only Grantaire was drunk enough to prove a distraction.

As he pushed the door to the café open, he felt a hand grab his arm. The young man yelped in surprise, but when he spun around he saw it was only Éponine. She was smiling at him, still holding his arm in a tight grasp.

"Boo," she said with a hearty laugh. She always laughed loudly and seemingly without any restraint. Éponine was not the type of girl to giggle lightly. "Did I startle you, M'sieur Marius?"

"A bit, yes," Marius murmured, shaking his arm free of her grasp. "I've not seen you about much these past few days."

Éponine shrugged, sinking down into a sitting position. She sat atop a crate and looked up at him with a half-smile. "You can always find me, if only you look. And anyhow, you've not been about home much either. I came to look for you before the meeting, but I must have just missed you, M'sieur."

Home would be the Gorbeau tenement, of course, that gutter of a flat complex in the outskirts of town. Where Marius rented a room and the Thénardiers – Éponine's family – did not.

"I've been away," Marius murmured absently. He sat down next to Éponine on the crate and she shuffled aside to give him room. A sigh, and he said, "I should be going – before Enjolras comes out." He rose, and Éponine leapt to her feet too.

"Shall you be returning tonight?" she asked quietly. "I've missed you terribly."

"I think so, yes," Marius answered. "Later tonight."

She flashed him a sour look and shrugged. "Very well, then. I shall see you tonight. I look forward to it." She started to go, then paused with a half-smile. "And, M'sieur, perhaps you can show me what's in those silly books of yours!"

"They're law books!" Marius called after her, but she was gone already. With a sigh, he began to walk in the opposite direction. He intended to return "home" that night, but first he would … what would he do? Perhaps he'd take a stroll through the Jardin du Luxembourg …

::

Éponine met her sister under the Pont Neuf. Azelma was seated cross-legged, drawing patterns in the dust with one finger, her auburn hair falling in her eyes. She looked up when she saw Éponine and cocked her head to one side.

"You've come. I'll have you know he came."

Éponine bent down next to her. He was their codename for Montparnasse. She cursed freely. "Blast." Then, with a sigh, "He's at the Gorbeau place now, is he not?"

Azelma turned back to drawing in the dust. "I don't know. I delivered those letters of Papa's. There were quite a lot of them." She did not look up as she said this, her dark eyes following the letters she was drawing. Her name. Azelma. She spelled it out, Aselma.

"Here, you've spelt it wrong," Éponine murmured. She wiped out the s and replaced it with a z. "You see?"

Azelma stared at the word before saying, "I see. It's been such a long time since I've written out my own name." She stood up and pulled her sister up with her. "Come. Let's return home. One of the rich gents I delivered that letter to said he'd come."

"Which one?" asked Éponine.

"I don't know. I've forgotten his name. But the actor."

"A rich actor?" Éponine scoffed.

"Don't ask me. He might be a playwright, really. But Papa told me he was an actor."

Éponine figured the man was a playwright. She didn't know of any rich actors. She and Azelma would, of course, have to tell Thénardier that in fact both sisters were there. They'd both receive a beating if he found out Éponine waited for their neighbor outside of a café while Azelma went about his dirty work. Or if Montparnasse told him she had not been there.

Éponine did not know when she stopped thinking of their father as Papa and referring to him as Thénardier. It was around the time the inn shut down and the family moved to Paris. The sixteen-year-old still remembered that day as thought it were yesterday.

As the sisters began to walk back to the Gorbeau tenement, Azelma said, "'Ponine? Are we going to see Montparnasse again today?"

Éponine gritted her teeth. "Not if I can help it, we shan't."