xxx

i. the war is over.

"This isn't love."

Her fingers cease the endless roaming of his face, pausing to rest on his prominent cheekbones. For a moment, she finds herself both shocked and confused, but forces her body out of those emotions, and back into the lust that clung to their skin. Their kisses were short, sweet, and obviously full of desire and need. They kept the male from responding, if only for a few moments. Why? Because he was dwelling upon his thoughts of the motions, the gesture that they had shared often, and attempting to figure out why he said what he did. Both bodies continue to press close, however, unconcerned. The sensual touch of her hands against his face flicked on a light, and the statement attempted to continue.

"This isn't love, 'Ponine," Marius Pontmercy insisted, though he continued to run his hands through her slightly damp locks, eyes staring deep into her own. Pausing like this, he pressed a soft, dainty kiss to her nose. "You know it is not. You want it even less than I do."

Éponine lifted a brow, and closed the distance between them, nipping at his lower lip in a playful way. Yes, the gentleman had announced his nervousness before they began, but she had doubted he would react like this. She thought he would make it a bit farther… Then again, she was without many clothes, pressed against him. Nerves. That's all this was.

Pauses. Silly, silly pauses. Her fingers twirled around his bare chest, and lips pressed kisses to his neck, his throat, and his ears. Butterfly kisses. "No, Monsieur, I fear you are wrong. I do want this, and so do you."

He looked taken aback by her statement, but held true to his internal pleading, and stopped. Just froze. His body touched the back of the bed, and, half-dressed, he shook his head at the girl. No, he couldn't go through with this. It was too… surreal. Besides, the time had simply been thrown at them. It meant nothing, this sudden attraction. Nothing. "I do not. Now I am sure of it. If you loved me, you would not force me."

At first, there was no response, because the female knew it was true. If she did care, then she would not have dragged him home, almost drunk from the day's activities. But she did, she forced him to trail behind her like a pretty little pup. With her arms crossed about her chest, Éponine sat across from him. Waiting, listening.

"This," he murmured with a gesture, not at all shocked at the gamine's outraged look. "Cannot be considered love. I can give you nothing in return!"

That was exactly what she feared. The continuation of unrequited love, though she had been set upon changing that. Oh, she loved him. Loved him more than life itself, more than anything that could come to mind. She risked beatings for him! Beatings!

It could not be. Her eyes widened a bit, but Marius continued, undeterred.

"You send me notes of love, you help me around. But I do not know… This is more of a platonic feeling, 'Ponine. I am sorry. I cannot go through with this."

The round orbs that plagued her sleep were observing for a response, and careful words touched the air. "But… I love you."

He shifted suddenly, so that the mattress of his bed deflated where she sat. There was a rift, a suspension, proof that she did not belong. Even the bedding was separating her from Monsieur Marius! And this only grew when he spoke, pity suddenly in his tone.

"Ah, that's where you are wrong." The urchin gasped, and curled into a ball. She couldn't believe it. She wouldn't. "You were never in love with me. You might be in love with the idea of me, like my good friend Monsieur de Courfeyrac stated. I have been kind, or I have tried to be, and you mistook that for love."

He knew precisely why. She received such little love at home, from her horrible father and strange mother. And little love could force one to seek out other ways. It wouldn't be surprising if the poor thing sent herself to the docks under the impression that they could give her some form of love. That was why he was so tender, so sweet.

"Marius!"

She cursed this 'Monsieur de Courfeyrac', the bastard that had torn from her the kind night that she had thought she deserved. Had she not done precisely that was wanted of her? Had she not wished for the help and the hope that one deserved? What was the matter with the world, that it stole her heart from her at the exact moment that it was to be returned?

A brow lifted, and it was not the girl's. This time there was shock in the male's face. "There, that is the first time you have used my name without the proper 'Monsieur'! I have brought you to the light, and you have seen the world."

Enraged, Éponine stood, bouncing off the bed quickly. "To the light, indeed!"

Her harsh words followed her to the ground, where she picked up her ragged clothing, and quickly put them on. First, her skirts, which were frail and thin, poorly kept from the cold. Her chemise was then retrieved from beneath the bed, the pale colour blending into her skin as she stole away from the man, wiping the beginning of fallen tears from her lips.

How cruel the world was! She was beginning to bemoan what was occurring, and as she felt around for the thin things that she thought to be footwear (borrowed, of course, from one of the other women she passed), the gamine twisted her lips in frustration.

Her friend watched in slight confusion, and it was with her glare that he remembered their lack of clothing. A blush crawled about his cheeks, and he reached down for his own attire, only to pick up his cravat first. Couldn't start with that, could he? Another round of heat touched his face, but by then, the girl was storming out the room, her lips curled down into a frown.

He had not yet reached his pants when she spoke once more, this time in a hissed tone. "Good day to you, Monsieur Marius."

The man stood in shock at her sudden disappearance, his lips tugging into a light little frown, one that appeared in a sudden fit of amusement- a strange thing. Here he was, about to go farther than he wished, with a girl he had barely known, or even come across! What was she to him but the stranger from across the way, the child that had dropped letters! And underage, indeed! He must have lost his ideals in the river…

Perhaps it was the thought of the stranger which had led him astray. She was so often in his thoughts, and he must have mistaken his desire to meet her with one to kiss his neighbour in such an intimate way. Had he even known her more than her name?

I do not even know her, he reminisced, picking up the pieces of his clothing, shoving them on. He needed some time to think. As it was decided, the young man slipped easily out of his ratted door, twisting past the slime that he noticed in the hallway, nodding politely.

The girl had the same thought.

Her feet were scraping absently against the cobblestones, little breaths passing from her cheeks in puffs of distress and rage. It was frustration that tipped towards her darkened gaze, the little hollows of her features tipped with tragedy.

"I can't understand," she muttered shortly to herself, roughened voice aching.

And she could not. She had done what one would do- she had begged, pleaded, tricked, and cajoled. She had used each and every trick in the book, and he had stood with honour as she was tossed from his rooms without an apology. What was to happen to her, next? Her already sliced heart was torn sharply in two.

But was he wrong?

Had he taught her something new?

She could not respond, and found her short outing to be too much. Barely a foot away from her desolate rooms, sitting outside in the cold, and she threw herself back into the living space, hurtling away from the man that had just wandered outside.

Perhaps an hour later, Azelma held her sister's hand as she sobbed, tears streaking down her face in runny rivers of salt. She had been doing so for about half an hour, and it was with patience that the girl finally asked what was wrong.

"What is wrong?" her elder sibling repeated, and turned her head, so that the drying tears made her hollow face seem ghostly. "What is not wrong? I am not good enough for Monsieur Marius; I am not good enough for anyone."

This, of course, was exactly what the younger Thénardier feared. She knew that her sister's obsession (which was how she had begun to refer to it) would not end well, and tears were the predicted outcome. The desperation in the other gamine's tone, however, was not expected. It caused her comforter to sniff softly, attempting to seem sympathetic.

"It surely is not that bad."

Harshness was held in the girl's eyes as she spoke next, the empty tone taking on a broken quality. "I was rejected from Paradise, and in my rage, burned through the items of devotion."

The love notes. The wretch recalled them with an almost fond look, having memorized poems upon poems to impress him. Though they were known throughout the house, this was the first time that it had actually been mentioned. In a soft tone, they were explained.

Azelma managed to keep her eyes from rolling, which is what they wished to do. Of course, each note was poorly written, and most happened to be Shakespeare, which the girl mistook for being romantic. Now, Azelma was the one who assumed the proper stance. She had not known how to read for very long, but it was something that she had grown to love. And from this, she learned that her sister was not very good at what she tried.

It was an attempt to seem more feminine, done to please her special Monsieur into speaking to her more often. It was a sad attempt, but she had wanted to please him nonetheless. They held daily rituals, a sloppy invitation to continue chatting. For some reason, it received sweet response, and he had invited her out for a walk. The next had been a note of thanks, and the one after asked of his well-being. Each had been written in loopy writing, somehow dainty through her years on the street.

"Down with the rat! Where is my cap? My wine? I must drown. I must-"

This caused her sister to stare in shock, concerned with the words pouring into the air. She knew that the young woman was enthralled, but to that degree? Almost to the point of her destruction? Azelma would have to watch her for a few days, and make sure nothing stupid was done. "Hush!"

"Hush? How can I stop my words when they float freely down my lips; lips he was to kiss, to love. What!- I am a fallen angel, now. I am Lucifer!"

How poetic. Should she write that down? How would that benefit, though? "I am sorry, truly. He is not worth it, though! Think of 'Parnasse! He treats you well, yes?"

Her sister shrugged her shoulders, and her harsh voice took on a softer quality, voicing in a careful statement of her confusion and terror. What was she to do, now that she had declared herself finished with Marius Pontmercy?

"He treats me well enough, for a con and a pimp. But he is not mine! He says he is, of course… I do not doubt that he would try to be mine if he wished."

A pause.

And then, "Azelma, I am scared for what I might do in response."

"And you have every right to be scared," the child whispered, and wrapped her arms about her best friend, her older sister.

All of a sudden, Éponine whipped back, shocked. How could she stay, this sibling, while she was breaking apart? Wildly, she stood, and backed into a corner of the small room, into the very spot that she first found that she could observe Marius from her own living space. "And what right do you have to say that?"

Confusion caused the littlest rat to twitch her nose, a rabbit facing a wolf. Oh, how her sister resembled a wolf at that moment. Rearing up, showing her teeth. Her rags seemed to morph to her, at that moment, pressing against her person as a second skin. Papa would be proud of her then, hands raised to smack her sister. Daring, watching, waiting.

Her lips pursed. "I have the right of a sister. I will try not to unscrew your coco when you badger me so, I will not gift you to the dandy…"

The taller and frailer of the two laughed shortly, plunging herself to the ground with a little smirk. "What right is that?" she asked aloud, as if it was to be explained to her in a sudden moment. "It is nothing to the right of a parent, of a lover… You idiot!"

Coldly, Azelma shifted aside, interrupting with a little hiss to state, "You call me the imbecile, and yet you are the one to 'fall in love', as you so easily put it? We are poor, Éponine! We do not fall in love!"

"Ah, yes. To fall in love, to fall from the heavens… Oh my God! Have you listened to me lately, 'Zelma?!"

Sadly, she had. And the young girl had to come to the conclusion that her sister was going crazy over someone that barely cared. With her round orbs of green, she convinced the girl back over, where she practically collapsed into her sister's lap, shivering. Crazy. Oh, was she going crazy.

"I feel free," Éponine murmured after a moment, her head being stroked lazily by a slightly bored Azelma. "Free. Free? Can you imagine?"

"I suppose your war has ended, then."

1/28/15 - edited to no longer involve song lyrics.