"Papa, who's 'Ponine?"
An innocent voice startles Marius from his work, causing his hand to jerk across the crisp parchment, a fine long line running the length of it and thoroughly making it unusable. Marius disregards this entirely, too focused on the question that has been asked, and he whips his head around to face his daughter, the owner of the words he knew would someday come.
He knew, he has expected this. He has been lucky to avoid this subject for so long, especially when it would suit him more than well to avoid it altogether, to pretend it was nothing more than a dream procured from a mind weary from too many nights spent translating documents into German or English. In fact, this is what he had been doing that very moment, before his child had drawn him from his imaginary world. A world he has created for himself, where everything is how it should be.
His daughter's dark brown locks and thin face ever so match her namesake, who happens to be the very same person about which she is inquiring. Her namesake...Eponine...
"Where...where did you hear that name?" Marius murmurs, more to himself rather than young Eponine. But of course, she catches his words anyway, for children have a strange ability to be listening at the very moment you wish they weren't.
"Maman said it...she mentioned someone named 'Ponine, and I want to know who that is," Eponine doesn't seem to have realized that "'Ponine" sounds uncannily like her own name, not having yet picked up deductive reasoning skills at a mere five years old.
This coaxes a chuckle to escape from Marius, a sound rarely heard from him these days, and he beckons the girl closer to him, drawing her upon his lap. She's light, but not as the first Eponine had been by the end. The end...what a controversial phrase.
Both light and dark, joy and sorrow. An oxymoron in itself. It has many different meanings, all depending upon the person and their situation. The end could be shunned, resisted, or welcomed with open arms.
Many years ago, Marius himself had been convinced that the end had come for himself as it had sought out his friends. He was fully prepared to accept it, to join the brothers he had found in the members of Les Amis de l'ABC. But in fact, the end had spared him, introducing him instead to a sometimes daunting prospect known as "the future".
His friends had given their talents, planning, and even their very lives to such a prospect, which they had never been given an opportunity to discover. So many empty chairs, pushed hurriedly back from so many tables, which had once all been filled...an image that has haunted Marius for years, and still has not left him.
Cosette knows this, and his dear wife has always been his constant in a world where his very sanity hangs daily in the balance. But this must all be concealed inside, his outward facade must be upheld. For the sake of his children.
Eponine and Gavroche have no knowledge of the day at the barricade. They are ignorant still of the events that have determined their future, perhaps their very lives. Their namesakes are a mystery to them, and Marius assumes that the children of five and eight years old are unaware that they have namesakes at all. Of course, this will change, he knows, for the girl gazing expectantly up at him now will be expecting an answer to her question. But he cannot tell this story twice, he is not sure if he is capable.
"Eponine, will you please go find your brother for me? There are things that...I must tell you," Marius gently instructs his daughter, setting her down on the floor.
"Yes, Papa, of course!" she chirps in reply, dashing from the room and down the hallway past her mother, who soon takes her place in the doorway.
"Such a good child..." Marius lightly comments, hearing Eponine's footsteps echoing through the hall as she searches for Gavroche. Cosette watches him and smiles knowingly at his expression.
"She is. She deserves the truth-they both do," she says, somehow managing to sound firm and soft in unison, something only his beloved wife could do. The light in her eyes fades a bit as she gazes at him. "Are you going to tell them?"
"Yes, yes...I suppose I can't put it off any longer, can I?" Marius sighs, putting a hand to his head in an attempt to fend off the flashbacks. Cosette's face falls slightly, and she enters the room, carefully removing the hand from his forehead and encasing it in her own. To Marius's relief, she says nothing, the gesture alone supplying him with the comfort he needs, just as it always has.
"You wanted to see me, Father?" Gavroche passes through the doorway and into the room, standing a few inches from his parents, Eponine on his heels. The boy has inherited Cosette's blond curls, and indirectly, the original Gavroche's as well. The moment Marius had seen the tuffs of hair on his son's head, the brave little gamin had been the first person to resurface in his mind, and he had known then that he would sorely regret choosing any other name for his first-born child. He figured it would serve as a sort of monument to Gavroche, a way of preserving his memory and perhaps even thanking him for his service to the Amis.
"Yes, I'd like to see both of you, actually," Marius says, gesturing for the two children to come forward, the younger crawling up again onto his lap while the older finds himself a spot on the floor. Marius gazes fondly at the pair of them before encountering a problem. Where does he begin? How could he go about describing such events?
In the only way children know, he thinks. As a story.
"O-Once upon a time..." he begins unsteadily, the words not seeming to do the situation justice. His friends, and their fight-nothing more than a fairytale?
He thinks of Enjolras, with his passion for his homeland, eyes ablaze with nationalism and empathy for the poor. How could such a leader be compared to a prince out of a storybook? And what of the others, just as important to the Amis as Enjolras himself?
Of Combeferre, with his guiding, gentle nature and philosophical ways?
Of Courfeyrac, the center of them all, the cheerful and caring glue that held them all together?
Of Feuilly and Jehan, of Joly and Bousset? All of them the best of friends-you never saw one without the other, and each of them were as kind and worthy as the next.
And Grantaire...the cynic could the life of the party if he chose, but there were some moments where he became almost as serious as Enjolras, a feat not many among them could accomplish.
These men do not deserve to be remembered as though they were fictitious knights in a children's tale. It does not give them the honor they so rightly deserve, and Marius is well aware of that. But he presses on, because he knows that this opportunity would be wasted if he backs out now.
"Once upon a time," he starts again, his voice holding more confidence that he did not necessarily feel. "There was an evil king, who ruled a country very much like France." He pauses, studying their faces; Cosette's filled with an understanding and kindness as always, if a bit mixed with pity. Gavroche, somber, yet interested in his father's story. And little Eponine, her eyes alight with fascination.
"What did he do, Father?" the boy's voice is quiet, as though he knows what pain shall arise because of said king, as though he already knows the ending to Marius's tale. His melancholy expression reminds Marius of Jehan Prouvaire a bit, and he smiles sadly at Gavroche before continuing.
"He oppressed his people. He treated them poorly. He was...mean to them," He directs this last phrase at Eponine, so that the child would better understand what he meant by words such as oppressed. "The people were starving, and had no shelter. They couldn't fend for themselves, and the king did nothing about it. He ruled unfairly, and the people could not stop it on their own."
"On their own? But what if they stopped him together?" Eponine inquires, tilting her head slightly to the side. Marius's smile broadens every so slightly at this comment, sounding so obvious when coming from the mouth of a five-year-old.
"That is precisely what they decided to do," Marius goes on, having exited the 'safety zone', where nothing had gotten too personal yet. He hesitates for a moment, wondering if he really must involve himself personally. It is a story, after all, no matter how much of it is based in truth. He could leave himself out of it entirely, and his children would be none the wiser. Perhaps it would be better this way.
But then...no. This must be done the right way, he must let his children realize that no one in this world is above suffering. No one is exempt from pain, from heartache, from loss. Not even their own father. They must see him in a new light, and it must happen while they are young. This, he knows, his where is own role in the story will have to be introduced, or his daughter will never get an answer to her initial question.
"They decided to come together and fight back at the king. Have you ever heard of a revolution?"