I was supposed to post this chapter much earlier but I had a problem with my laptop and it got erased! I had to rewrite it and all but here it is. Thanks for the lovely reviews. I hope you like it!


"Are you sure she told you everything explicitly?" Combeferre asked her, unsure of what she was saying.

"Listen to me, 'Ferre, I'm not a gossipy person. I wouldn't be inventing this. She told me everything!" Éponine replied.

"And you're going to tell Enjolras," he said as though it was the most natural thing to do.

"Of course not!" she exclaimed, somewhat irritated.

"Why not?"

"I promised to Cosette that I wouldn't say anything to him," she said while bitting her lip and feeling pathetic. Combeferre tapped his chin with his index finger and thought quite hard for a few minutes.

"The thing is that I don't want to be the one that breaks Enjolras' heart and I believe that she's the only one that should tell him about it, she told me she would find the way to do so," Éponine explained.

"In that case...we should wait," Combeferre said.

Éponine stood up and wrapped her arms around him as a way of thanking him. Combeferre, feeling it was his duty, soothed her a little by whispering comforting words in her ear; he knew Éponine wasn't having a good time with all of this. Enjolras opened Combeferre's door just a few seconds before they broke the hug. He had tried to overcome his paranoia of seeing Grantaire lying in Éponine's bed and now he saw her in Combeferre's arms.

"WHAT'S THE MATTER WITH YOU ÉPONINE?" he shouted dramatically.

"IT'S NOT WHAT YOU THINK," she answered.

"OH! SO WHEN I SAW YOU WEARING GRANTAIRE'S SHIRT IT WASN'T WHAT I THOUGHT EITHER? WHO ELSE ÉPONINE? COURFEYRAC? OR HAVE YOU ALREADY BEEN WITH HIM?" This last comment irritated Éponine to a point in which she didn't care anymore what he thought.

"SO WHAT IF I'VE BEEN WITH GRANTAIRE, COMBEFERRE, COURFEYRAC, AND THE REST OF LES AMIS? WHAT? ARE YOU JEALOUS?" Their screams were so loud they even woke up Grantaire, who ran to the room worriedly. Combeferre was seeing both of them reprovingly but didn't dare to intrude.

"WHY ARE YOU DOING THIS? ARE YOU SEEKING FOR ATTENTION?" he asked her quite enraged, offending her deeply.

"IT IS NOT YOUR BUSINESS! GO AND TAKE CARE OF YOUR GIRLFRIEND!" she said, which made Combeferre stress out thinking she might blur out something inconvenient.

"WHAT IF I WANT TO TAKE CARE OF YOU? YOU'RE MY BEST FRIEND! I HAVE THE RIGHT TO BE WORRIED ABOUT YOU!"

"MAYBE YOU WORRY TOO MUCH AND WANT TO CONTROL MY FUCKING LIFE!"

"I DON'T WANT YOU TO BE DOING THIS ANYMORE!" he barked.

"STOP WORRYING ABOUT ME...JUST AS I'VE DONE WITH YOU A LONG TIME AGO!" she, unconsciously and guided by rage, said.

"WHAT?" he exclaimed, "Is that true?"

"Enjolras, Ép is tired and maybe she doesn't..." Combeferre tried to say.

"LET. HER. SAY. THE. DAMNED ANSWER!" he said and that's when Éponine realized what she had said. Being the proud person she was, she couldn't simply "unsay" anything like a coward. She sighed.

"Yes, it's true," she whispered.

"Fine...It's not like I need you that much; I've got Cosette with me," he said coldly before leaving. Soon, the heard his door being strongly thrown and then just silence. Éponine stared helplessly at Grantaire and Combeferre, who offered apologetic smiles to her and said nothing. She left with tears in her eyes; she needed to take a walk.

Too late she realized that it was almost 12:00 am and that it was raining really hard. She didn't have an umbrella but kept walking until she reached Boston's Public Garden and lay down in the wet grass. She was soaking wet, drenched to the bone and trembling but still she didn't move, waiting for Enjolras to come with a blanket and tell her she was going to get sick and it was better if Joly checked her up, just in case. She cursed the world and cried in her loneliness. She wrote a poem in her mind about how happy endings existed just for certain types of people, rich, perfect, beautiful people like Cosette, who could cheat on her loving boyfriend and have nothing in her head but would still be loved and would have a Disney princesses life.

Of course she wasn't in said list of people. Her life hadn't been easy, rather messed up. She was born in New Orleans, where her parents arrived from Bordeaux in search of the American dream. They were honest and educated people but they didn't speak english very well so it was hard for them to adapt. As a consequence, Éponine was born in a gutter; a poor pension for low-middle classed people where her parents could just afford a room. After a while, Monsieur and Madame Thénardier couldn't afford the room anymore, so they had to move.

Her sister, Azelma, was born in a smaller place, located in a drearier neighborhood. Thénardier, her father, became a drunk crook that would hit the three of them every night. When she was seven years old, her mother, tired of the situation they were living in, escaped with them from Thénardier's side. They moved with Montparnasse, the owner of a little store, who her mother married a few months later. The two girls were happy at first because they had a full house for themselves, a mother and a real paternal figure. From that époque, Éponine recalled seeing her mother radiant and joyous, especially when she announced she was having a baby.

Gavroche was born on June of the next year. In that same month, life became hell for the Thénardier sisters. Her mother engaged in helping in the store because she dreamed that it became a family business or something. Montparnasse would take advantage of her being constantly absent to abuse of his two stepdaughters, hitting them, insulting them and making them do all the chores, even the ones that were too much for both of them. Once, he even locked them in a closet for the whole day, starving them and making them cry with threats. Gavroche would never mind seeing his sisters being cruelly treated because Montparnasse told him they had picked them up from the streets and they were not his sisters. They didn't say anything to her mother because she was happy and they didn't want to bother her. But Éponine, living in fear all day and having to appear strong for her younger sister, would cry alone in her room at night, when Azelma was asleep.

It didn't take long for her mother to realize what was happening in her house when she was absent. She soon found a job and took her daughters and son out of Montparnasse's house. They moved, again, to a little room, this time in a more respectable house. Gavroche cried all day because he missed his loving father and didn't like the ugly place they lived in. Then came a legal war for Gavroche's custody, which was won by Montparnasse because Éponine's mother had no money to pay a lawyer. Once again, her mother was destructed. She decided that the best thing to do was to move from the city.

They arrived to Boston when Éponine was 12. Her mother got a job as a secretary in the university of Boston, which paid well enough for them to leave in a small apartment and have some sort of "luxuries" every so often. When Éponine was 16, her mother got married again. This time, with a man called Claquesous, who was a law professor at the university. He was actually very good with them, helping Éponine's mother get a degree and a more respectable job. During that wedding, Éponine stood up besides Enjolras, her best friend, who knew her life story and insisted in supporting her. He was taking her hand and smiling reassuringly at her every so often. To everybody around them, it seemed that they were a couple. Les Amis, who she met in High School, were all there, also supporting Éponine.

The day of Éponine's graduation, both Enjolras and her were chosen to be valedictorians. Everyone's family was present, except hers. She did her best to hide the disappointment in her face and voice as she stood up to give her speech. That same day, she received two news. The first one, she had been accepted in the prestigious and quite expensive Emerson College to study writing and journalism, which made her incredibly blissful and relieved. The second news made all happiness blur for a while. Her house was empty and there was just a suitcase with her clothing and a few of her belongings in it. Her mother also left a note. Claquesous, Azelma and her moved to France, they had been planning everything for months. Claquesous got a job offer in a local university of Pau and the little money they had saved was enough just for the three of them to leave. Her mother explanation for leaving her behind was that she had "half of her life constructed in America" and that she couldn't be selfish because she had sacrificed most of her life for her to be happy.

Éponine cried bitterly. It had been almost two years since her they had abandoned her and the wound was still open. She felt like a disgrace. Éponine spent two weeks living in Enjolras' guests room. His parents loved her company and his mother even helped her get a decent apartment in which she didn't have to pay much. She started studying and working part-time on Le Café Musain, which was a small café ran by Madame Houcheloup, a French woman who accepted her immediately after knowing she spoke french and had clear french roots, but that didn't work very well because her double-degree program was very demanding and she had to maintain her scholarship. Then, Enjolras, as always, came to her rescue and offered her the empty room in the house he shared with Grantaire and Combeferre. That's when she started feeling somebody actually cared for her.

Suddenly, Éponine didn't feel the downpour in her eyes and she looked up. Éponine was surprised to find a guy tilting his umbrella slightly so she the thick raindrops didn't rich her. She smiled at him with curiosity. He brushed his brown hair with his free hand and a smile appeared in his freckled face.

"What are you doing? Don't you think you might get sick?" he asked her while offering his hand and helping her stand up. Once they were in front of each other, her smile faded and it was replaced by a gesture of discomfort and confusion.

"Do you know who am I?" she asked him. The guy pulled her towards a lamppost and studied her features.

"Am I supposed to know you?" he asked curiously.

"We've met before..." she whispered.

"Sorry, I'm very bad with faces and names," he said with an apologetical smile.

"I'm Mar..." he tried to introduced himself but was interrupted by Éponine.

"You're Marius Pontmercy and I'm Éponine Thénardier, Enjolras...friend," she said awkwardly, reminding to herself that Enjolras "didn't need her that much".

"Oh! I remember you now! Nice to see you again!" he exclaimed, "May I accompany you to your house?"

Éponine knew that it was better to refuse but he was already pulling her in direction of her house and she didn't want to be alone anymore or else she might even do something crazy to herself. They walked for a while in silence and then he decided to try and talk to her.

"So, how's Enjolras?" he asked.

"He won't be good when he knows about you and Cosette," she said quite low.

"You know? Who told you?"

"Cosette," she answered.

"Will you tell Enjolras?" he asked cautiously.

"I'm not a gossip," she answered just as they stopped in front of the house.

"Listen...I don't plan on knowing the whole story...but if you ever want to talk to me or hang out or anything, I'm always at the Café Mnemonic on my free afternoons," he said.

"Why would I want to hang out with the lover of my best friend's girlfriend?" she asked crossed.

"I'm just offering you my company, due to the way we encountered today," he said, "besides...you're really pretty and maybe I need to find a pretty girl that helps me stop liking my stepbrother's girlfriend."

Éponine was about to slap him but simply told him to go away and went inside, where Enjolras, Combeferre and Grantaire were sitting down in the couch.

"Look at you!" Grantaire said hugging her and lifting her from the floor.

"We were worried sick! Do you see the weather? Where were you?" Combeferre asked.

"I'm fine," she said with a frown as she looked directly at Enjolras.