This chapter was a difficult one to write. Les Misérables has a lot of Les Coincidénces in its plot, and I think that Eponine and Cosette bumping into each other again years later is one of the more unrealistic coincidences. It was pretty hard trying to write it in a realistic way here.

When Eponine was seventeen, she saw Cosette again.

She didn't realize, right away, who she was. It happened one day when she was in the slums with her parents, acting as the lookout again. Her father had heard talk of an old man who often went into the slums giving alms, and he had devised a new con where her mother played a beggar-woman with a baby. Her mother had always been able to cry on cue, and when her father spotted the old man coming, he convinced him to follow him down an alley. Eponine stayed at the mouth of alley, scanning the streets for any sign of police, but her eyes fell instead on the young girl who had accompanied the old man - his daughter, she supposed.

She looked about the same age as Eponine, and for some strange reason, she seemed rather familiar, as if Eponine had seen her before... but that was impossible. This girl was obviously wealthy, wearing a fine dress and a ridiculous bonnet that practically blocked off Eponine's whole view of the street. Where would Eponine have ever seen someone like her before? Yet she kept on staring at her, trying to place her, and she was so good at it that the other girl never even noticed her gaze. Eponine felt a sudden surge of resentment at her for that. She couldn't imagine being so oblivious, so naive.

It wasn't until she heard, from the alley behind her, her father growl, "You're the bastard who borrowed Colette!" that the pieces finally fell into place... and even then, Eponine couldn't believe it. Cosette. Their old servant girl from Montfermeil. She had never expected to see Cosette again. But before she had any time to think about it, she a policeman coming - Inspector Javert! - and they all had to scatter. The old man hurried away too, which made Eponine curious, but before they rushed off, she saw him put one arm around Cosette's shoulders protectively and draw her in close. The sight of it was like a sharp pain to Eponine's chest. She couldn't imagine having a father like that.

If they all had to run, as they often did, she was supposed to meet up with her parents at the north bank of the river by the Pont d'Austerlitz. But Eponine didn't go there right away. After she'd run far enough, she slowed her steps and wandered the streets, while her mind reached back to a time that felt very far away, to their old inn at Montfermeil. How she'd loved her papa's noisy tavern parties there. How she'd loved her parents for letting her do whatever she pleased and never making her follow any rules. It had never occurred to her, then, that they would've disciplined her a bit if they really loved her.

Her memories of Cosette were vague, for Eponine had never paid much mind to her. Cosette's eyes had been sad and always downcast, but sometimes she would raise her head, her eyes wide and fearful, and Eponine remembered that her eyes were blue, like the girl she'd just seen. Cosette's hair had been stringy and always dirty, but Eponine guessed that if it had been washed and brushed, it would've been the same shade of gold as that young woman's hair.

"Cosette... how can it be?" she whispered to herself as she turned down another street. On the corner, a young whore about her age - thin and clearly desperate to be working during the daytime - was pulling the neckline of her dress down lower, and Eponine felt a shudder of pity.

Then, in her mind's eye, Eponine saw again the scene from the slums - the old man drawing Cosette to him, putting his arm around her shoulders - and her vision suddenly blurred with tears. She tried to brush them away, embarrassed and angry with herself, but the sudden rush of emotions was too strong and too confusing. She felt cold and clammy with that old guilt over how her parents had treated Cosette and how she had never thought to show her the least bit of kindness, either. But this time, it was accompanied by a new, blistering anger that Cosette had obviously fared so much better than she had, in the long years since the old man had taken her away. She wore fine clothes and had enough money to give alms, but what Eponine envied most was that she had a father who loved her. When had her father last been tender to her? Had he ever?

Eponine wiped her nose on the back of her hand. She was vaguely tempted to find out where Cosette and the old man lived, and ask him, "Why couldn't you have taken me away with you, too?" Or why couldn't her father have left her with the nuns at the hospital in Claye-Souilly? They had made her healthy again and mentioned sending her to their convent school. "A little structure," one of them had said, and Eponine scorned the idea at the time - but now, she longed for it. What a life she might have known.

But Eponine wasn't the only one who had noticed Cosette in the slums that day. Marius had seen her too, and he had been struck by her in quite a different way than Eponine. They were both still living at the Gorbeau House - Eponine couldn't be sure, but she thought it was the longest that her family had lived in one place since the inn - and when she returned there afterwards, he was standing outside with a dreamy, far-away look on his face that she had never seen there before. It was a sunny day, but when Eponine saw the look in his eyes, she suddenly felt as if a cloud had moved over the sun, casting her world into gloom.

Marius hadn't had as much time for Eponine lately. He had made friends with a group of students who called themselves the Amis de l'ABC and hung around the Café Musain, reading and talking of revolution. Eponine was too cynical to believe in revolution, and she thought Marius's new friends all fools for believing that they could bring about any change in France, much less the world.

But on Marius, the naïvety was endearing, even as he followed her up the stairs of the Gorbeau House, talking about Cosette all the way.

"Eponine, who was that girl, do you suppose?" he asked. "Could you... find her for me? I'll pay you for it."

"I don't want your money," she answered quickly, looking at him from the corner of her eyes. Her words were sharper than she meant them to be, and she immediately regretted that. She imagined Cosette with a sweet, flutey voice and genteel, soft-spoken words.

"But could you do it? Find out where she lives? I - " But Marius stopped short, and the light in his eyes dimmed. He went on, muttering more to himself than to Eponine, as if he had already forgotten that she was there, "No, I don't suppose you could. Paris is so big, how could anyone expect to find one girl?"

They had reached his floor of the Gorbeau House now, and he turned away from Eponine to go inside his room, without bidding her adieu like he usually did. Eponine's heart seized up with a sudden certainty that if she didn't help him find Cosette, then she would never get his attention ever again, and that if he didn't find Cosette, then he would spend even more time with his revolutionary friends to fill the hole that she left behind. He would bury himself in their plans for uprising until they all did something stupid and got buried for real.

So, scarcely believing what she was saying, she told him slowly, "I might be able to find her for you. I know my way around."

Marius spun around and stared at her with that impressed, wide-eyed look that he had given her when they first met. "Could you really?" he breathed, as if she had just offered him the entire Château de Versailles, and for one fleeting moment, she was happy to have made him so happy.

But the feeling didn't last - happiness never did last long for her, it seemed. Her bare feet angrily pounded the stairs up to her own floor, and she imagined Cosette with clean, soft feet in fine stockings and boots. And now, Cosette was going to have Marius, too.

"That just fucking figures," she said.