Hi everyone! So, I don't know a lot about the Les Mis canon, having never read the book or seen the musical (ho ho, so uncultured, I know [although I'm checking the book out from my school's library tomorrow!]) I don't own any characters. Everything belongs to the brilliant Victor Hugo.
Chapter One
Water Under Bridges
Several Months Before the Barricade
She watches him cross the street, footsteps airy. It is spring; a time for young love to flourish, and she sees it in his face.
"What is it now, Monsieur Marius?"
He puts his arm around her shoulder, and his warm touch stirs something cool and hard in her heart.
"'Ponine," he says. "You are looking very lovely today."
"So is she, I would think—who is she, Monsieur"
"No one that you would know."
He does not mean this to bite, but the words sting brightly, like the nettles that grow in sidewalk cracks. Of course she knows about his grandfather—Eponine assumes that everyone does, even his friends, and that they turn a blind eye. Funny, the things that boys do for those that they love.
"A schoolboy crush." She smirks and pretends not to fall a little more in love as Marius takes her hand and leads her into the Musain. There are few crowds today; those who can spare the time have gone to enjoy the good weather while it lasts.
"Is love ever anything else?" Marius smiles sideways as he sidles up to the wooden bar; at once Éponine recognizes his friends, the rag-tag revolutionaries. They seem to talk big, but do little else save for drink and sometimes sing. He greets them loudly, whispers something to Grantaire, the handsome but hard-drinking boy, and they laugh together.
"What's this, then?" Their ringleader casts a sideways glance at Éponine. "More talk of love, Marius?"
"I saw her outside the cathedral today," Marius begins, but quiets. Éponine sits beside him, falling in easily with the group, and although she does not belong she likes to listen to them. Enjolras' words, his fancy speeches written for crowds and given to drunks and tired urchins and whores, make her happy. She doesn't know why. She can't explain it, but she admires his ardent love for something so much bigger than all of them.
"Her hair was like the wing of a raven. And her skin—pale, as if she'd slept beneath the shadow of the moon herself. In her eyes I saw only purity, only true beauty...and as she crossed the street I saw the flash of her ankles, white under her dress, and—"
Courfeyrac and Grantaire elbow at each other, whispering something that makes them both snicker. Éponine is sure that if she were not there they would be trading filthy jokes, and as she thinks this Enjolras says,
"Marius! Such talk! And here, in front of—"
And he looks hard at Éponine.
"She's heard it before, Enjy." Marius slaps his friend's shoulder, hard. The curly-haired boy's eyes darken; he looks away from her, as if determined.
"She should not be here. Someone like—that."
Shame and anger flashes through her chest. Éponine stands, shoving the chair back hard. Wood scrapes against the floorboards.
"I see that I am not needed or wanted."
She looks at Marius before she leaves. Someone calls attendez as she shoulders her way through the door, but she not recognize the voice as Marius'. Maybe she had expected—at least hoped—that he would say something, that he might have stood up for her when the others did not.
They must know her only as the street urchin, the girl who goes with bare shoulders in the summertime. She has certainly done things that she now regrets; in the time after her parents moved to Paris, to Gorbeau House. Nights when she drank with strange men and coarse women. They must know her as the girl from the derelict flat beside Marius'. How could they know her otherwise? As the girl who grew up in a warm inn, given whatever she wished for?
The soles of her boots are wearing thin. Éponine trudges a few streets south, to the fish-market. She considers begging for alms, but sees no point. She feels sad in a hollow way.
Daylight fades. Éponine walks north, back towards the Musain. Lamps are lit in windows. The world takes on a warm glow; an exclusive glow. Her shoulders, left bare in the warm morning, grow cold.
She does not see Marius, nor his friends, and is turning to head home when someone calls her name.
"Éponine!"
He draws to a halt at the side of the street.
"Enjolras." How can she keep the measured bitterness from her voice? "I would expect you to be planning your revolution, or else drinking with your friends."
"It must seem to you that we do little else." He folds his arms, as if he's cold. "Actually, I came here to apologize."
"For throwing me out of your—secret meeting?" This is not her place. Her place is in the streets, barefoot, desperate. She should not be conversing with revolutionaries of any kind, even those who have never held a gun.
"When I scolded them for speaking—when I...what I mean to say is that by someone like that, I meant a woman. That was when I called for you to wait—so that I could have apologized then."
She thinks of this; it makes her strangely happy, but also embittered. "You think me weak? The fragile gender. The fairer sex."
He swallows hard. "If fairer, not more fragile. No more than the rest of us."
Something flashes bright within her chest. "You mean it, then."
"Of course." Swiftly, he takes her hand, kisses it. "One like yourself should not make such poor company as us."
He speaks of the Amis, and at this she laughs. There is a hollowness to her laugh because in her heart of hearts Éponine knows that she chases an empty dream.
She goes home that night with a heart both heavy and weightless, and she dreams of boys in red jackets.
When she wakes she is shivering. She weeps without knowing why.
"And this is why we must rise up! Alone we are singular, easily overwhelmed—but en masse we are unstoppable! It is time to take back our nation! It is time, my friends!"
He raises his fist. Joly cheers.
"Sit down, Enjy." Grantaire gestures broadly with a bottle of wine. Éponine watches, silent, from the corner. Women are not allowed in this room behind the café, with the lights dim and flickering and the planning of overthrowing. Something stirs beneath the drinking and song, and she feels it under her skin. In her unlit flat, she wrapped the binding cloth tight around her breasts, and beneath her ragged jacket she might be one of them. A smooth-faced boy with dreams too big to wrap your hands or heart or head around.
In truth, she has come to watch Marius. The way he is with his friends, when there is no threat of pretty girls outside cathedrals and springtime crushes.
Bahorel passes her, presses wine into her hands. They must assume her to be someone's nephew or brother; a boy of little consequence.
"He talks big," Grantaire says over the rim of his bottle. "But will he really turn the tides of the empire?"
"Enough from you," Enjorlas stares the dark-haired boy down. "You do nothing but drink and seek out fights. I refuse to give in."
"One day you will." Grantaire drinks and grins drunkenly, and the others slap his back in a commiserating way. She watches the firelight slant off of Marius' face, the gleam of his eyes.
The night wears on and she drinks more, wears her cap low over her eyes and dodges glances. The talk turns to women.
Grantaire brags of a recent encounter with a hatshop owner's daughter—her hands were like magic, I swear—and Bossuet sings a raunchy song about sailors and a captain's daughter. How can she look away from Marius now? How can she not drink in his expressions, the look in his eyes...does he think of other girls, now?
He must. He must, and he does, for as Éponine folds her hands over the back of a chair Marius speaks.
"They see me as a choir boy—virginal, I'll reckon. I pretend to be scandalized at the sight of a woman's ankle—but we are men, and we have urges like any other."
A man Éponine does not recognize slurs, "You've been spending too much time with that Jondrette whore, Marius."
The air goes out of Éponine's chest at those words.
"I wouldn't say whore," Grantaire mutters.
"And do you know what she's done? Her father is a con, her mother's no better—selling herself is only logical."
"These are not easy times," Marius says, and stares at the table.
He does not defend her. He does not stand for her, does not challenge this stranger who tarnishes her reputation.
What reputation. Who do I kid?
Heat presses in her throat. The tears come unbidden. She stands. She cannot see properly, fumbles her way out of the room, down narrow stairs. Wood creaks. She catches her reflection in the windowpane: hair tangled under the cap, her eyes hard with things seen and things felt. She is an old woman in the body of a girl.
She tears the cap from her head, wraps her fingers tight around it. Pushes through a door, feels the air splash cool and sudden against her damp cheeks. Collapses against the side of the building and slides down. She cries hard, unforgivingly, into her dirty hands.
A door, opening. Closing again. Footsteps.
"Éponine."
"Go away," she says. "Please."
"Did you think that I wouldn't notice?" He stands over her for a moment, and then kneels. "I did not mean to insult you, Éponine. I'm sorry."
"It isn't you."
They are silent for a long moment; silence stretched taut between hearts, between minds.
"Why do you do it?"
She swipes at her nose and eyes. Already she feels sick with shame—crying over a boy like this. As if she has nothing else to cry about.
"I know that Gavroche hangs around with you. It's for him." A beat of silence, and she sniffs hard, and the tears spill again as she whispers, "Marius."
Her voice is hoarse, ugly.
She expects him to disparage her. Mock her. This love is petty, foolish—Marius might run around with student revolutionaries and drink to honor and equality, but the barren truth is that he will always be the son of wealth, of money, and she will always be a street urchin.
"You'll only tear yourself apart, Éponine." He puts his hand on her shoulder; the warmth surprises her. She looks sideways at him and the urge comes over her, sudden and stark, to close the distance between them.
"You think that I don't do that enough already?" She stands violently. "I want no part of your stupid revolutions. Or your—comrades."
"Sit down, Éponine!" He takes her by the elbow and steers her to the ground beside him, a sure, gentle movement, like touching a crying child. "You can't walk the streets like this."
"You heard what they said!" Her throat feels raw and ragged. "You heard them! Talking about me like I'm a common whore! And did he—did your friend Marius, did he defend my—did he defend me?" She does not allow him to answer. "No. He did not. The only one to speak on my behalf was your drunkard."
Tears threaten again. She swipes at her eyes hard, angrily. "Do you think I'm a whore, Enjolras? Do not lie."
He puts his hand on her shoulder, and then, tentatively, around her. Her breath catches, involuntarily, in her throat.
"No," he says, very quietly. "No, Éponine. I do not."
'Her name was Eponine.
Her life was dark and cold,
yet she was unafraid.'