In the musical of Les Mis, we aren't given any sense at all of how Marius and Éponine met each other or developed their friendship. I thought I would try to explore how to people from very different backgrounds could form a close bond. In this story, they've met briefly once or twice before. Marius has been cogitating on the ideas/theories of his friend Enjolras, and he disagrees with him on a few points. To back up his own theories, he wants to better understand the conditions of the poor in Paris so he asks Éponine to show him Saint Michel, but they run into a bit more trouble than he'd bargained for.
In my head, Marius and Eponine are Gareth Gates and Samantha Barks, so...there's that.
Marius watched the people around him as he followed his usual path from the university to his dormitory. As always he hoped to see the signs that his friends had told him would inevitably come, signs of the sleeping giant coming awake.
The more he spoke with Enjolras and the others about their ideas and their plans, their desires to change the world for the betterment of all men, the more he began, not only to believe them, but to believe in them. He had not yet found the fire of passion that drove Enjolras to seek revolution and spread the message at every turn, but in the past weeks he thought he could sense a spark. Marius wanted to see a change. He simply wasn't certain that Enjolras' ideas were entirely correct.
Every day when he walked along the streets, mingling with the working people of the city who Enjolras was so certain would begin the revolution, he looked into the peoples' eyes and saw…contentment. These people had enough to eat. They had work. They had homes, they had families, and they had happiness. Their lives were not without hardship, but the hardship that found them was met with good faith and good cheer. Of course, Enjolras had told him that these distractions were a method used by the wealthy to keep their slaves from rising up in revolution. The problem now seemed to Marius to be that this method was extraordinarily effective. Why would these people risk losing their lives when they had everything they needed to sustain themselves?
Marius entered the square where the Rue Lenois crossed the Rue Violet, still looking into the faces of the people passing by and loitering about near the dry fountain. He made his way around the edge of the square, looking past a baker with flour on his ruddy face, a blacksmith with a leather apron over his dirty smock, a boy in an overcoat with his brimmed cap casting a shadow over his eyes, a woman with a basket full of produce and—back at the boy in the cap.
Who really wasn't a boy at all.
"Éponine?"
Her head snapped around, but she relaxed somewhat when she saw who had said her name.
"Monsieur Marius," she said, but the tone of her voice was ambiguous. "I 'adn't expected I'd be seeing you again."
"No, neither had I," Marius replied. He was puzzled—Éponine's dark chestnut hair was tucked up under her cap and she was wearing a pair of trousers, men's boots, and a long and heavy coat that hid her slender figure—but he chose not to comment on it. "May I ask how you've been?"
She gave a little shrug and then said, "Same as ever. Yourself?"
"I've been quite well, thank you." Marius smiled at her, and she responded by looking around the street, her alert eyes darting from face to face. She turned her head, and Marius felt a faint twinge of concern when he noticed a shadow beneath her cheekbone, but perhaps it was only a bit of dirt.
It suddenly struck Marius how strange it was that, although he walked this route every day and both times he had seen Éponine it had been near this very square, it had been a fortnight—no, perhaps three weeks—since he had seen her last. If she lived in this area as he had assumed, would he not have seen her more often?
"Éponine…I'm sorry, may I call you 'Éponine?'" he said to her as she continued to look about the square.
"Well it's my name, isn' it."
"Very well. I… I have a question to ask you that may seem a little impertinent."
She gave him a wry smile that put a rather pronounced dimple in her left cheek. "You oughtn't worry much about offending me, Monsieur."
Marius didn't quite know what to make of that comment, so he just smiled back and then continued. "I walk this street nearly every day. I met you first just down the road a little way and now here again in this square, but in the weeks between I saw you not one time."
Éponine, her arms behind her back as she leaned against the wall, raised an eyebrow in an inquisitive expression.
"I had just wondered whether you come here often. That is, do you live in one of the adjoining neighborhoods?"
Her eyes widened with a sort of mirthful incredulity and then she laughed as she spoke. "Me? Live here?"
"Forgive me, I…I did not mean to assume anything." Marius backpedaled quickly, unsure of what her reaction meant.
"Forgive you, ha. For 'aving rather too high an opinion of me?"
Marius paused. This was not remotely close to what he had assumed her reaction would be, but he suddenly felt unexpectedly eager.
Enjolras had told him that the glorious revolution would begin when the working class would come to understand their true power and would gain a desire to throw the wealthy from their position of prominence. But everything that Marius could see before him told a different story.
No, Marius had his own theory, but one that Enjolras disagreed with somehow. If the revolution were to occur, Marius believed that it would have to begin among a group of people who were not content with their lot in life, who were plagued by despair and hunger and saw no other escape for themselves than to rise up in rebellion.
Perhaps this bedraggled but dauntless girl was one of them.
"Well then, if you don't mind my asking, where is it that you live?"
Éponine was not looking at him, but he thought he saw a shadow pass over her face for a moment. "A few streets out from 'ere," she said quietly. "You ever 'eard of Saint Michel?"
"Do you mean the slums?"
When Éponine met his gaze and nodded, it was with a despondent smile that didn't touch her dark eyes.
"The very same."
So he was right. Saint Michel was supposedly one of the most poverty-stricken areas in all of Paris. It was one of the first places that Marius had been counseled to keep well clear of—a crime-ridden pit of violence and despair that was teeming with vagrants, tramps, and street gangs.
Marius didn't quite know what to say, and though he felt a sudden sympathy for the girl he thought that an expression of it could be taken as condescension. He remembered how she had reacted the last time he had extended an unwanted courtesy to her.
"I see, that's very interesting," he said, looking at the ground and deliberating for a moment.
Éponine was glancing around the square again, seeming somewhat distant. "I don't see how," she muttered.
"Well, I find it interesting simply because I, and several of my friends at the university, have been recently discussing our concern for the conditions of the working people of Paris—"
"Then you haven't any concern for me."
"—and also for the poor."
She looked at him flatly, almost as a challenge, it seemed.
"I'm sorry," Marius said with a sigh. "I see you are too preoccupied for a discussion like this at the moment. Perhaps I will leave you to yourself."
An odd expression crossed her face, and a faint crease appeared on her brow as she adjusted her cap by the brim. "No…no, I'm listening, Monsieur," she said quietly, brushing a stray bit of hair behind her ear.
"Please, it's Marius," he told her lightly, and then continued. "I am rather new in this city and I have very few connections with the people my friends and I are seeking to help. But I believe, Éponine, that you could be of assistance to me if you wish to be. You seem like an intelligent young woman."
Marius thought he saw the corner of her mouth quirk up at the complement and the dimple reappeared on her cheek, but the real change on her face was in her eyes. There was brightness in them that he couldn't remember seeing before. He was struck by the realization that, despite the dirt and the rags, Éponine was a remarkably pretty girl.
Marius smiled. Yes, he had been fortunate to meet her. "You see, I need to understand the conditions that the common people are living under, here in Paris. If you could tell me what life is like here, or perhaps…." Marius had a sudden idea and he trailed off, holding the girl's curious gaze for a moment. "Could you bring me there, Éponine? To Saint Michel?"
"You…want to go to Saint Michel?" The look in her eyes suggested that she was wondering if Marius had lost it. Marius nodded earnestly, and Éponine, seeming utterly perplexed, looked down at the ground and shoved her hands deep into her pockets. "Well, I don' mean to disappoint you, Monsieur Marius, but there are a lot of people down there who wouldn't be 'appy to see someone like you."
He thought for just a moment before replying, careful of his words. "But if you are there as well, nothing will happen to me, am I right?"
A moment passed in silence as Éponine seemed to struggle with herself. Marius could see a muscle working in her jaw.
"Yes, that's right," she said slowly. "Do you 'ave the time?"
Marius pulled out his pocket watch. "It's nearly seven o'clock."
Éponine sighed, but she looked up again and seemed to search the square one last time. Finally, though she seemed uneasy, she turned to Marius.
"Alright, follow me then."
Éponine started across the square, Marius following close behind. When she reached the mouth of the street opposite of where they had been standing, she paused, looked over her shoulder past Marius for just a moment, and then continued down the street.
"Were you waiting for someone, Éponine?"
"No," she replied simply. Marius thought she was lying.
They walked on quietly for a while. Éponine seemed withdrawn, lost in thought, with her hands still buried in her deep pockets as her feet instinctively carried her down the familiar path through the city. After several minutes and many changes in direction, Marius was beginning to second-guess his decision to follow the girl into an unfamiliar part of the city. She was still a complete stranger, after all. Their surroundings appeared to degenerate in the fading light as they went—streets emptied of people and became narrow alleys, buildings seemed to teeter over his head, homes were boarded up and windows were broken. At any moment he expected her to stop and tell him they had arrived, but the decay worsened with every step and all the while Éponine continued on in silence. He almost began to wonder if she had forgotten about his presence beside her.
Marius cleared his throat, breaking the silence. "Are we nearly there, Éponine?" he asked, making an attempt to keep his voice casual.
"Yes, nearly," she responded.
"Could you tell me what I should be expecting? What is it like there?" His companion's brow furrowed slightly, but she kept quiet. "Does it…get much worse than this?"
Éponine slowed, and then gradually came to a halt in the middle of the street, where Marius stopped beside her. He watched her curiously as pensive frown darkened her face. She opened her mouth as if to speak a few times, shifted her weight back and forth, and then finally she spoke.
"You ever seen the inside of a poor'ouse, Monsieur Marius?" Her voice was little more than a whisper. "I don't suppose you have."
"No, I haven't, but I've heard stories."
She nodded. "Saint Michel…it's the kind of place that might…might possess a person to seek out a poor'ouse as a place where they could…improve their life."
"How do you mean?" asked Marius.
Éponine sighed as she spoke. "You'll see."
Silence fell between them again as they continued on. In the ruddy, failing sunlight, the street was awash with a dusky glow. Marius looked around himself and thought there was something beautiful in the stillness and the lengthening shadows, but it was a lonely, forlorn sort of beauty.
Rather like Éponine herself, he realized, glancing down at the girl walking beside him. It was more than that she seemed at home here. She almost could have been part of the street, with a look about her that spoke at once of neglect and resilience. Marius found himself wondering sort of memories were hiding behind those quiet eyes.
Finally, he began to hear sounds—not loud, but somehow dissonant—suggesting that the city was inhabited somewhere nearby. Éponine turned at a narrow gap between two buildings that Marius would have passed by without even noticing, and when he came to stand behind her, he could see that it was not another alley, but a steep, narrow stairway of worn-out stone.
"Welcome 'ome," she muttered, seemingly to herself, and then started down the stairs.
Marius followed her, his hand on the grimy wall to keep himself steady. They turned a corner as they reached the bottom. Marius was halted in his tracks by his first glimpse of the vast, decaying expanse of Saint Michel that opened up before him. It was an entirely different world here, swathed in despondent darkness, for it seemed the sunlight had long since given up in its attempts to penetrate this pit of human suffering and had simply retired early. Where the streets above had been quiet and nearly empty, down here they were crowded, milling with creatures of lowliness and vulgarity. Ruddy light from the several small fires around the cramped square illuminated faces of whores and drunkards, faces that were ugly and uncouth, and above all were equal in hopelessness.
What struck Marius the most, however, was the smell. Paris was no rose garden, but stench of this place, putrid and pungent like a heap of rotting refuse better left undisturbed, was more than enough to make his eyes water.
"It isn't quite so bad a little further on," she said, "if you care to go."
Marius looked at her, speechless with abject revulsion, and simply nodded.
"Then stay close to me," she cautioned.
He did as he was told. Éponine pulled off her cap as she walked, shaking out her long tangled waves and picking her way around trash piles and sleeping beggars with equal indifference. He followed her into another alley, but was only partway through when he realized that the silhouettes moving in the distance were a small group of women, dressed up in a way that made a mockery of beauty—their ragged gowns slipping off their bony shoulders, and plastered makeup caked on their aging faces.
"Where're ya off ta in such an 'urry, 'Ponine?" one of the crones called out in a grating voice as they approached. "Ooh, and wif such an 'andsome young gen'leman!" She reached out and snatched Marius by the arm. "Why don' ya stay awhile, good Monsieur, we know 'ow to play, we do!"
Marius smiled apprehensively and attempted to gently disengage himself from the withered ghoulish creature, but Éponine interfered.
"Damn you, Hélène, get your bloody claws off 'im," she growled, glaring at the larger woman.
"Aw, you keepin' this one all to yourself, is ya? S'about time, wif a pretty little face like yours." The woman looped her arm through Marius', and he could smell stale alcohol on her breath.
Éponine huffed angrily but otherwise ignored the crude implications, and she grabbed his other arm, pulling him away from the aging whore. Marius felt a little like a slab of meat. It hadn't taken long for this place to rob him of his dignity.
"Sod off you old hag!" Éponine snapped, putting herself between Marius and the woman. "The monsieur asked to see what conditions are like down 'ere in the slums so I'm showing 'im. He doesn't want anything from the likes of you." She pushed Marius ahead of her and muttered, "Come on, let's go."
"By the by, you're daddy was through 'ere not long ago, 'Ponine," one of the other women piped up suddenly. Éponine paused and turned half way around. "Said 'e was lookin' for yeh. Didn't look too 'appy."
Éponine nodded in acknowledgement, and when she continued forward again, Marius caught a subtle hint of trepidation on her face. "Damn, sorry about them," she said quietly, setting her cap back on her head and shoving her hands in the pockets of her overcoat.
Marius, suddenly overwhelmed by the foul reek of the place, coughed a few times, but managed to say, "It isn't your fault."
She glanced up at him, completely unfazed by the odor herself but looking almost amused at his fit. She evidently chose not to mock him for his moment of weakness, however, and soon they had come to the edge of another square that was larger and marginally cleaner than the last. At least the garbage was piled into corners instead of spilling out to the middle of the street. There even appeared to be a run-down shop beside them and a dismal little pub across the way. Despite this, Marius knew that if hadn't just come from what lay behind them, this square would have seemed to him to be the most miserable place on earth. There were still drunks reeling about, still beggars curled up against the walls, too poor even among the poorest to afford a place to live.
Éponine had turned to watch him over her shoulder, her face unreadable, and as Marius looked down at her, he was suddenly struck by the thought that she no longer belonged where she stood. Not here, not in this place that was so utterly devoid of goodness. There was a bare hint of purity, of innocence, lingering in Éponine's youthful face that was nowhere to be found in this hell she called "home."
He turned his focus to the square. "Why don't they light the street lamps?" Marius asked, focusing on perhaps the most trivial of the sights before him.
"It's dreary enough down 'ere as it is. Why would anyone want to see it clearer?" she responded with a dry tone.
Marius nodded absently as he looked around them. The state of things down here was certainly much worse than he had imagined. "Éponine?"
"Yes?"
"Of course I can see quite well what a…an unpleasant place this is, but what is it like to live here?"
He looked down at her. She had the look on her face that he was coming to understand meant she was thinking carefully—lips pursed slightly and a little crease on her forehead. "It's cold," she said at last, "even when the weather's not particularly so. You're always cold, you're always 'ungry."
"Are you hungry now?"
"It's just the way things are," she responded with a nod and a shrug of her shoulders.
That sounded rather fatalistic to Marius. "Would you leave, if you could?"
"Who wouldn't?"
"But you don't think…you can't see a way out…for yourself."
Éponine looked at the ground, and he observed her closely. Thus far, it had been rare for Marius to see any blatant emotion on the girl's face, but as he watched, the indifferent mask seemed to fall away and left in its place an expression of devastation and a flicker of sorrowful yearning in her eyes. He almost thought he saw her lips quivering, though he couldn't be sure in the darkness.
"No," she said simply, and her voice faltered.
Marius suddenly thought his heart might break for this poor girl. She didn't deserve any of this, the helplessness or the despair that he could see in her face. He felt that he should comfort her somehow, but suddenly an angry shout echoed in the square.
"Éponine!"
She started, her head snapping up. If the tall, gaunt-faced man shouting at them from across the square hadn't been enough to concern him, the fear that Marius saw in Éponine's eyes as she whirled to face him certainly was.
"Stay 'ere," she ordered him, and when he opened his mouth to object, she spoke over him. "No! You keep out of this."
"Éponine! I'll tan your sorry 'ide if you don' get over 'ere!" The man started towards them. Could this be Éponine's father?
After one last stern glare, Éponine spun back around. Marius watched apprehensively as she approached the livid man, who he noticed was carrying a glass bottle in one hand. She looked so small, so slight, and this man was most certainly drunk.
"Hey, Daddy," she said with feigned casualness.
"Wha' the hell's the matter with you?" he demanded. Marius felt a jolt in his stomach when the man grabbed Éponine by the front of her coat with his free hand and pushed her backward a few steps. A few of the beggars in the square had lifted their heads at the commotion.
She grabbed onto his arm, trying to pull it off of her, and she sounded angry when she spoke. "I…ow, Dad let go!"
Her father took a long swig out of his bottle and tossed it, shattering, on the ground. "You worthless hussy," he growled. "Where were you, dammit?" He had pushed her nearly back to the wall.
She was waiting for someone today, Marius thought with sudden guilt as he watched this man bear down on his daughter. He wanted to intervene, to end this confrontation, but knew that it was none of his business. He looked to the ground, feeling unexplainable shame.
He heard Éponine's voice. "I waited for you," she insisted. "I was there all day!"
A jolting slap of flesh on flesh echoed throughout the square, trailed by a grunt and a muffled thud. Marius' head snapped up. Éponine was slumped against the dirty wall, her father looming over her with his fist raised. The sight froze him in place.
"Don' lie to me, stupid girl!" Her father grabbed her face with one hand and her shirt with the other and forced her to look at him. "The whole job was ruined 'cause you're too brainless to do somethin' as simple as waitin' in an alley. We did our part an' you weren' there to do yours!"
"I was!" Éponine insisted desperately, holding onto his arm again. One of her eyes was scrunched up in pain. "I waited, I promise I did!"
"I'm warnin' you, my girl, don' you try an' play me for a fool," he snarled, releasing her jaw to jab his finger in her face. His left hand was still on her chest, pinning her against the wall.
"Daddy, I'm tellin' the truth, please—"
Her father struck her hard across the face, pitiless to her cries—once—twice—and...
After the third blow, Marius couldn't watch any more.
"Stop! Stop that this instant!" he shouted, striding across the square.
Éponine's father looked up, furious and bewildered.
"Sir, I must insist that you release her at once."
He stood up straight to face Marius, an astonished near-smile on his ruddy face, but he held onto the front of Éponine's shirt. Marius could hear her crying from behind her arms, which she'd thrown over her head to protect herself. "And 'oo are you to tell a man wha' 'e can or can't do to 'is own daughter?" demanded her father.
"It doesn't matter if she's your daughter," Marius said. He noticed that her cap had been knocked off to the ground, and somehow this made him even angrier. "You have no right to lay a hand on her, sir. Let her go at once."
Suddenly Éponine pulled herself out of her father's slackened grip and dashed at Marius, putting both hands on his chest and shoving him backwards with all her strength.
"I told you to stay out of this!" Her lip was split and there was a bloody welt under her eye. "Go, damn you, get out of 'ere! Go the way you came!" Then she turned back to her father, but Marius didn't move. "Dad, listen to me," she pleaded. "It was 'alf-past nine when I got to the Rue Violet, like you said, and I stayed there 'til nearly seven o'clock. I only just come from there."
Her father frowned, but out of confusion, not anger. "Rue Violet? Wha' the hell were you doin' at the Rue Violet? Didn' Montparnasse tell you we'd changed the route?"
Éponine's shoulders were heaving, and she wiped her mouth on the back of her hand before speaking. "No, he didn't."
"That useless bastard," her father grumbled, rolling his eyes. "A group of useless bastards and an idiot child, tha's wha' I got to work with." Then, to Marius' surprise, he bent down and picked up Éponine's cap, came forward, and dropped it crookedly on her head. "Be back 'ome by midnigh', 'Ponine," he told her in a gruff but tired voice. "We got more to go over and the rest of 'em will be around by then." With that, he turned and headed away down one of the side streets.
As soon as he was out of site, Éponine teetered sideways and caught herself against the wall, where she raised a hand to her face. Marius heard her ragged breathing and her sharp gasp when she touched the cut under her eye.
"Éponine?" he said, swallowing hard. He felt sick after what he had just witnessed. He walked over to her, hesitated, and then laid a hand softly on her shoulder.
She immediately recoiled from his hand. "Don't you touch me!" she cried, spinning to face him and running her back into the wall with a thump. Her hands, down at her sides, were clutching at the brick behind her, and as her chest heaved with the weight of her effort to control her emotion, she stared at the ground and wouldn't meet his eyes. Her face twisted with anger, but in her eyes was nothing but hurt and shame.
He looked at her in astonishment. "I only wanted to make sure that you're alright."
"I'm fine," she insisted, her voice strained. "Just…go, leave me be."
She had started to shiver, and Marius felt his heart constricting inside his chest at the sight. He glanced around the dismal square, now entirely enveloped in darkness with only the light from the pub to illuminate them, and then looked back down at the girl. He wanted so badly to help her, but he didn't know what he could do.
"I…I'm not certain I could find my way back from here. Which way would I go?"
Éponine leaned her head back against the wall and closed her eyes, still breathing heavily. "Up," she whispered. "You go up. If there's a stairway that don't lead to a building, take it. You'll get out."
Marius nodded, watching quietly as Éponine appeared to force herself to ignore her pain, hiding it behind a wall of apathy. She grabbed the cuff of her coat and used it to wipe at a trail of blood on her chin. Marius reached into his pocket.
"Here," he said quietly, holding out his handkerchief.
She opened her eyes and turned her head toward his outstretched hand, but quickly looked away again, shaking her head. "No, I can't take that."
"I have more."
"I'll only ruin it."
With a sigh, he reached down, lifted her arm by the wrist, and pressed the handkerchief in her upturned palm. "I insist."
After a moment, she closed her fingers around the bit of silk and took her hand from his grasp. "Thank you," she murmured. She ran the fluid material through her fingers, hesitant, but then she pressed it to the cut on her cheek, wincing slightly.
Marius laid his hand on her shoulder. She flinched, but didn't throw his hand off this time. "Keep it. It's the least I can do."
Éponine let out a sigh and then pushed herself slowly away from the wall. "Get 'ome, Monsieur Marius. You don't 'ave to stay any longer." With that, she started walking away from him. "You've seen what it's like down 'ere now."
"Wait, Éponine!" he said quickly, so she stopped, and then slowly looked over her shoulder at him. She looked so tired. "I…how will I find you again?"
A little crease appeared on her forehead. It took her a moment to answer him, and when she did, she spoke slowly. "I'm often at the Rue Maufetard," she said. "If you go there an' can't find me, speak with a boy named Gavroche. He'll know where I am."
Marius nodded as he watched her walk away. "I'll remember."
Thanks for reading! Please do a girl a favor and leave a review if you enjoyed it or if you have advice! I'm always looking to improve as a writer. :)