Disclaimer: I'm not Victor Hugo. This is merely an attempt at writing Brick!Eponine. I like to think some passages are decent. Some are not, I'm well aware.
It was no exceptional feat for a shadow to hide under the dim glow of the stars. Darkness was its own master, one moment graciously welcoming in a hug whenever in need of cover and rejecting the next, a savage creature that lured you back into its arms when you know you have never belonged to the light.
The sky was the color of ink when snowflakes swirled continually through the air, marking patterns in front of Eponine's eyes only to fall into the mud and dissolve, as if they had not been there, thrown into a kettle of acid, destroyed and gone, far beyond reach. A mere illusion. If Paris was ugly in a white shirt, it was transformed as it discarded the winter cloth. Streams of murky water had flooded the streets over the course of the afternoon as the snow melted with the sun's impersonal touch, which in turn did not offer any warmth, rather like the moon. Now Pantin was covered in a cold blanket once again.
Frail branches scratched her arms as she passed a tree, a mere shadow of itself, a withered and bony creature with its hands grabbing whatever blood they could find with insatiable greed for any remembrance of life. She hissed with pain, but more so out of habit at seeing scarlet droplets gather on her skin rather than ache. Already her fingertips were a sickly shade of blue.
The waves of the Seine were lapping at her feet, pulling her towards the deep. First covering her ankles, then her upper thigh. The light material of her skirt became heavier as it soaked in the filthy stream. How queer, she thought, that the silver moonlight on the water's surface could only barely and never quite disguise the black heart of the river as it called. She liked to think she heard songs, like the ones her mother used to sing to her back at the inn, when she still had her penny dreadfuls until they fell apart all on their own. The memory of them faded, page after page, and took any romantic notion with them.
"What are you doing?"
It was a smooth voice, caressing her skin all the way down her spine, not unlike the warm embrace of the Seine. She turned her head and did it slowly. She experienced the sensation of floating that was utterly detached from the water cleansing the dirt from her shoulders and the mud tangled in her hair.
As so often, she appeared to be recounting a fairy tale more than assuming the role of an interlocutor. "Ah, dear Montparnasse! How long it's been since I've seen you last? Though, I s'pose time goes by in a whirl when you're locked up in a dungeon with rats gnawing on your bread as company. But it's not bad, it means dinner and breakfast every day, and the bread I do eat eventually, that is, depending on if papa can swipe some black, stale crumbs, they break my teeth just as well, so it's really no bother. And the rats go away with time – I heard 'Zelma crying in the cell next to mine so they must like to wander around. Imagine, to have food at your disposal for committing a crime! You'd think the cognes would know better. Where were you after they've arrested my family? You were on a job, weren't you? Oh, don't say anything, how silly of me, since my father was thrown into the jug along with the rest of Patron-Minette. I bet you were with a lady, a pretty one that has mirrors and all of her white teeth."
She tilted her head to the right in contemplation and nodded, as if she had heard a decisive argument. "Yes, I think you were with a lady."
While she had talked, he had casually wrapped an arm around her waist, leading her away from the current in a rough manner. She cried out as her drenched rags were exposed to the cool night air, beckoning forth yet another gush of argot. Her flesh, almost numb with cold, experienced the sensation of feeling again as Eponine was aware of every inch of bare skin that his hand traced through the tattered, coarse material of her blouse. She neither recoiled from nor leaned into his touch, merely resuming in her half-drunken gait, swaying from side to side even though he could smell no liquor on her breath.
"Where will you sleep tonight, 'Ponine?"
She turned her large eyes upwards, craning her neck to watch a solitary snowflake fall on the petals of the rose in his coat pocket so it appeared to be weeping. "Ditches aren't hard to find, not at all."
"Don't be a fool. You'll freeze to death, that is, if you're not already done for without the lump crawling with maggots they serve as food." He spit on the ground, his grip on her midsection growing ever stronger on borderline hurt. The growl in the back of his throat reminded her of the baker's hound, the one that would not yield the bread no matter how many fast she ran, the one that bit her hands and calves bloody for her troubles.
Eponine sighed and reached for his free hand, clasping it between her own. The calluses decorating her palms were rough and that of a workingman; his were still caked with half-dried blood. Regarding his fairly new vesture, she believed she knew quite well where it had come from.
"I wasn' doin' anything, m'sieur. Tired, that's all."
Montparnasse freed his hand from her hold, yet held onto her waist as they walked down a narrow alley that led them, slowly, into town as they knew it.
Casually taking his knife out of his pocket and playing with it, he turned to her, a curious glint in his eyes.
"You belong to these streets, no doubt." He whispered, delicately stroking her cheekbone first with his fingertips, then with his knife. A guttural laugh escaped his throat. "'Ponine." He took care to enunciate each syllable properly while he met her gaze. "You'll never be a Baroness and you're not going to be mistress of a large mansion, not ever. You'll always be here."
Eponine could feel his breath on her neck as his hands gently stroked her collarbone, almost like that would make the red mark on her lower belly disappear and dissolve as the snow melted at the sunrays' remote touch.
At the end of the night, she dreamed of flowing water. She floated, with eyes closed, revelling in the summer's warmth.
When she woke, it would be winter.