i
Gavroche was hardly more than a toddling babe the day the slavers came. Éponine remembers with horror and the mounting pain of vengeance how they snatched him from those sun-whitened rocks and carried him to the blue sea.
They tried to snatch her too, but she was a shadow and slipped from their fingers like spilt ink creeping over the exposed world. They wouldn't want her, anyway. They were looking for boys….
Gavroche cried her name and she could do nothing. Her fists clenched around the dry, Maltese grass that grew in the cracks between the rocks.
"I'm sorry," she whispered. Her young voice slipped into the breeze. The same breeze that carried the ship that held Gavroche far, far away. "I'm so sorry."
ii
To her dismay, the day comes when Éponine's hair is just too long. Her cheeks are too smooth. Her eyelashes are too long. Her lips too plump. Her body too fleshy.
She fights against her mother, but the day comes where Éponine is forced into a dress. Her old, leather jerkin is thrown to their dirty corner. The dark fabric crumples in a puff of dust. It reminds Éponine of how she felt in her heart the day Gavroche was captured.
A bony hand on her cheek strokes for a moment before seizing her chin and forcing her face to look into the grimy mirror.
"Look at yourself, girl— you're not a child any longer." Her mother's voice was tired and dry. Her hands were more like stone than flesh. Her eyes were voids of nothingness. She has not been the same since the day the slavers came… and she didn't even care for Gavroche that much. No, Éponine's mother hasn't been the same since disease took Azelma years before.
Éponine gives in and gazes at her reflection. Her eyes are the earth. Dull and brown and green and a mush of everything and nothing at the same time. Her hair is a thundercloud around her face. It is dark and tangled and wild and gives her the appearance of a dangerous storm. Her skin is browned by sun and dirt.
She is just as empty as her mother. Éponine is just as much the shadow she was the day they took Gavroche, only she's grown thin. Nothing as transparent as her can hold a heart.
iii
She's too old for stories. Her fifteen years exceed the other children's by a good five or six. But there are other women there— but they are silly little things, their hair wrapped in fabric and their sad faces hidden from the warming sun.
The storyteller brightens her day, if only for the moment when words are twisting from the air to his lips and back again. They float over the breeze and wash her tangled hair away from her cold eyes.
"—and those heroes stormed the dusty city, and for the moment we were kings of Jerusalem!"
This is not her usual story. This tells naught of delicate princesses with crushed-flower veins and love-filed hearts. This is not a fairy tale, set alight by the sunset so it will glow in the dark. This is the gritty truth. It is history.
For a moment, Éponine's eyes drift away from the warm-skinned story teller and meet blue staring back. Those blue eyes belong to a girl whose light hair is just barely covered by cloth. Her face is pale and smooth. Her lips are plump and pretty. She is the princess from the stories. She has escaped her tower to hear of the crusaders. And now, she is smiling at Éponine.
Éponine smiles back.
iii
Years ago the people of Spain were thrown from the land just because the prayers they uttered were different from the Christian majority. No one stopped to think that they worshiped the same God. They wished for the same deliverance.
Those who didn't fall into the grasp of the Catholic church were expelled from the land. Those who agreed to Spain's terms were called conversos. It was a dirty, dirty word.
Cosette's people hide in the cliff's caves. They light menorahs and smile serenely in the darkness. They have built a community, one that Éponine slides into. It's so, so different from the harsh scolding she's used to. There are no high, gothic ceilings and no paintings of biblical tragedies. There is no priest, sour-faced and mean, whose hands wander under the skirts of the altar boys.
They're Cosette's family… the princess has a castle and a kingdom after all. Soon they become Éponine's too. Her parents never realize that she's gone.
iv
Éponine was foolish to think that she could trust anyone outside the hidden family of Jews. She was foolish to think that learning to read and write would come free of cost. Foolish, foolish, foolish.
He promised to teach her… and he did. The priest carefully taught Éponine the ways of the pen and paper. She was so grateful, and wanted to do something for him. When she told him this, he looked at her with glinting, cold eyes.
The priest seized her, threw her to the altar, and ripped her skirt. She screamed and flailed, but it did nothing… nothing at all.
Now she runs blindly, with tears spotting her vision. The terrain beneath her bare feet is rough and painful. As she nears the cliffs, she collapses. A young criminal, a man by the name of Montparnasse, finds her there several minutes later. He picks her up and brings her to the cave. He sets her down and swears vengeance on the man who dared to hurt the Jondrette girl.
v
Montparnasse's opportunity comes with the night of the fair. The knights who take station on Malta have prepared skits to present to the public, and there is the smell of cooked foods seeping across the plaza. Montparnasse sits in the tower, his silk vest nearly enough to match the clothing of the nobles who sit below him.
He takes aim at the priest while the knights from Paris say their lines atop a stage. The audience laughs, and an arrow rips loose.
It sinks into the priest's shoulder, and he looks down at the blood and up at the tower. Before collapsing from the pain, he lifts a weak arm to point. And then his eyes roll to the back of his head.
Éponine sees this happen from very nearby. She clutches to Cosette, terrified. Cosette looks back at her with wide eyes. Cosette's newest beau, a knight named Marius, grasps both girls and tries to pull them away from the chaos.
Running from the tower is a tall, slender shadow. Éponine sees the ruffles and gasps.
"'Parnasse, it was 'Parnasse," she whispers. She keeps her eyes trained on her criminally-inclined friend until the moment he collapses. She tears away from Cosette and Marius, pointing her head in their friend's direction.
"'Ponine, don't. You'll attract attention to him," Cosette murmers, trying to place a smooth, pale hand on Éponine's arm.
"He did it for me, Cosette… I have to go to him."
In the midst of their speaking, neither girl notices the men approaching them. However, Marius does and starts to back away carefully. Éponine realizes the shadows that have entwined with hers and Cosette's and she turns.
"You know the man who shot Dun Salvago?" It is one of the knights who was on the stage. His golden hair is now free from the ridiculous hat he'd borne grumpily. His face is slated in marble. Éponine gulps dryly.
"No, no I don't …" She tries to back away, but he grabs her arm. His friends, both of them knights from the stage, titter slightly and try to calm him.
"Enjolras, don't—" a boy with glasses tries to advise him.
"Why did he shoot him?" Enjolras asks Éponine. She trembles.
"Why do you care?" With sudden strength, she rips away from him.
"Because Dun Salvago has certain habits that he inflicts on the younger knights. He deserves whatever he got," Enjolras says. Éponine allows a smile.
"Then I believe that you and Montparnasse will get along just fine," Éponine says. However, she remembers his falling figure and frowns. "But… I think he's hurt—"
"I trained to be a doctor before I was sent here." The bespectacled one smiles kindly. "Bring me to him."
In the meantime, the third of the trio, a man with wickedly curly hair and skin like bronze smirked at Marius. His name was Courfeyrac, Éponine would soon learn, and he was born of a New World native and a Spanish man.
"Marius, care to introduce me to this lovely lady?"
vi
It's Enjolras who ends up meeting Éponine everyday to tell her of Montparnasse's progress. And everyday he notices something new about her. She's beautiful and warm— she looks much like Courfyerac, although she's Maltese through and through (which pertains to her blood being a strange mix of Arabic, Italian, Spanish, African, French and whatever other bloodlines cared to grace the tiny, rocky island).
It takes only three meetings for him to realize that he thinks she is beautiful, the way Paris is… Beautiful and dirty, tragic and romantic. She is the Seine and the cobblestones. She is the smell of coffee and chocolate. She is Paris until she replaces Paris and soon the only home he cares to know is in her eyes.
vii
"Why did Montparnasse shoot him?" Enjolras asks one day. The two of them sit side-by-side on the same cliff that, years ago, Éponine stood on as she watched her brother carried away. The blue of the Mediterranean sparkles in their eyes.
"He did a terrible thing," Éponine whispers. Enjolras sits beside her, an entity for her to touch and to hold, but she is scared to. What if he leaves her the way Gavroche did? What if battle takes him before she can?
He's stripped down to his tunic and leggings. His boots and jerkin and helmet have been discarded in the dry grass. She wears a tunic tucked into one of Cosette's old skirts. Her bare feet occasionally brush against his.
"What did he do?"
"What did he do to your friends?"
"He comes every Friday for reconciliation. He tells some of the knights— only the prettiest ones— that their penance must be physical. He touches them in the confessional, and he makes them touch him back. Will you tell me now?"
"He raped me." Her voice is nearly lost on the wind. "On the altar one day."
Enjolras lays his hand atop hers. She jolts at the sudden contact, but something warm starts in the pit of her stomach when he entwines their fingers.
"I was one of those boys," he tells her.
viii
It starts innocently. With a kiss to Éponine's brow one day when they part.
The nest day she kisses his cheek.
Shortly after they find themselves tangled in a pile of pale and gold, two lost souls together on the cliffside. He kisses her neck and she strokes his skin. They love in the Maltese sun.
This may have a second part… I don't know yet, it depends if people read.