I only watched the movie version of the musical (there isn't much of a chance of seeing the stage show here in Germany) and just started reading the brick, so this whole story is somehow based on the movie and on what I learned in other fanfics (street names, …). I also have decided to leave out Azelma in this story. Gavroche will be Éponine's only sibling.
This is also my very first fanfic. Ever.
And my first attempt at creative writing in English. So expect mistakes. Tell me if you find some and I'll correct them as soon as possible.
The story starts a few weeks before Lamarque's death and the barricades.
Prologue
Éponine had never been that kind of person who would let someone else define who she is. She stood by her opinions, she knew what she wanted, she knew what she couldn't get and she knew what she had to do in order to survive. All until she met Marius Pontmercy.
She had accepted the way of the world, she knew her bleak prospects. With her parents – people who rarely deserve to be called by that name- always drunk or plotting some plan to get to money and her brother gone to live in the streets, she had lived through a lot for her young age, always on her own. Maybe this is why Marius' kindliness affected her so much. She simply wasn't used to it.
She was used to work as a lookout for her father. She was used to be forced to steal. She was used to being beaten when money was short and her father was in a rage, drunk or both for that matter. She was used to starve. She was used to the ways of the poor – the staring, intrusive way of the drunkards at night; the dangerous friends of her father threatening everyone that crossed their way; the sick and hungry dying on the streets of Paris.
There was no such thing as hope in her. What could someone like her hope for?
But then, she met Marius, a bourgeois boy. The one who was the first to treat her like a human being. The first who showed her what friendliness makes you feel like. The first she thought she fell in love with.
Enjolras was sitting at his usual table in the cafe Musain. Right in front of him were piles of books and papers, there was not an inch of the table not covered with his work. He was so lost in his plans of the upcoming revolution that he barely noticed the world around him. Of course he knew which of his friends were at the cafe because he would eventually ask their opinion on something he wrote or read. But anyone else was invisible. While dreaming of a new world he forgot the world that was around him right now. Even when he delivered one of his famous speeches he never really saw any of his listeners. They were only a faceless mass of people, they were the people of France. It didn't matter if he talked to 10 people or the 100, all of them were France.
He has been planning the revolution for some time now. He read all the great books about all the great leaders. He talked to people who fought in the last revolution. He analyzed every single event. In a few weeks time theory was supposed to become reality. The barricades would rise. They would fight. And France would be reborn. That was his dream. No, it was more than a dream. To Enjolras this was without a doubt his future.
Little they knew...