"If I die young, I want to find true love." These were the words a 6 year old Eponine repeated constantly while she looked outside of the window, dreamily.
Of course, one does not simply knows the meaning of love at such a young age, but Eponine daydreamed about it. It was her dream.
"Of course you will, look at you, you are a beautiful young princess." Her mother used to say.
Even when she grew older and her mother started changing her attitude towards her, she still remembered those words with love, deep inside her.
When she turned 14, she learned love wasn't an easy thing. And I'm not meaning the couple kind of love, I mean love in general.
The love a child has towards her mother, the love friends have, the love of a mother or a father.
She learned this because she found it kind of hard to keep loving her parents. No, she loved them, just couldn't understand them.
They were harsh with her, but "that's what parents do." She used to think.
That only made her wish more about finding true love, so she could feel how being cared about felt.
But the dream little Eponine once had, was buried inside her.
She let the darkness overcome it.
Though, there was still a part of her that still believed it would come true.
But everything changed one afternoon.
She went to her mother to the market, to "be shown how business is done" said her mother.
She didn't really pay attention to what her mother was saying, she was just imagining herself riding a horse, she always wanted to do that.
Then she saw it, it still come to her on nightmares afterward.
There was a young lady, she was trapped on a man's strong arms. Even though Eponine was staring from a few feet away from her, she could still see the tears streaming down her face.
The man started yelling at her, then he hit her.
The poor woman fell to the ground and cried in pain.
Eponine felt the urge to go to help the young lady, but her mother stopped her and whispered into her ear "That's none of your business."
When she got home she didn't dare to ask her parents about it.
She never saw anything like it.
Sure, her dad pushed her sometimes but never that hard.
But curiosity was killing her, so she decided to go with her older sister, Azelma.
When she asked about this she just shrugged and said: "That's how it is."
Eponine didn't understand, she knew love wasn't easy, but that wasn't love that was horrible.
She complained about this with her sister, but she limited to shake her head and say: "No Eponine, it's not like that."
But Eponine wouldn't give up, not that easily, she wanted a full explanation.
Eponine got into Azelma's nerves and she couldn't take Eponine's questions anymore.
"Love is like that, Eponine! Can't you get that? It's pain, and there's nothing we can do about it." She yelled at her, "You think you will get a handsome and caring husband on your door? Well you're wrong, you will get either a drunk man or a street thief. That's what we'll get, we can't get anything better."
You can't blame Azelma for acting like that, she just couldn't handle poor Eponine´s questions anymore, or shall I say, couldn't answer them.
Azelma's life wasn't easy, neither her love life. She didn't get a kiss on the first date, she got a nasty purple bruise on her cheek.
That's why she yelled all those terrible things to Eponine, because that's how she saw love.
Her parents treated her like that, every man she met treated her life that, so you can't expect her to see love as a wonderful adventure.
But she didn't realize how that affected her 14-year-old sister.
At first, Eponine thought she was just exaggerating things, but then she realized the cruel reality. Azelma was right.
She was used to be treated bad by every person she knew, but Azelma made her realize how bad that was.
Little by little, Eponine changed her dream, if we can call it like that.
"If I die young, I want it to be worth it."
She still loved.
She loved her parents, even though they were no the kindest.
She loved her siblings, Azelma and Gavroche.
But she promised herself she would never love anyone else, it was too risky.
But, as many promises, she broke it.
She broke the promise a few years after, when she met Marius Pontmercy.
She wasn't expecting him to come into her life so unexpectedly. She wasn't expecting to fall in love.
In fact, she didn't call it "love" officially at first. She just repeated to herself that she just enjoyed his company. She just enjoyed his laughter.
His touch.
His voice.
She just liked him.
You can't blame her for braking her promise. Marius Pontmercy was the first person to be actually kind to her.
Kindness.
She liked the sound of that.
Marius was her favorite person.
"If I die young, at leat it will be worth it." She hoped.