A/N: A bit off of my very first work, Fans, which, after reading over, isn't that bad, just mildly terrible. Candle (250 words or less). Why Eponine kept the fan in a pocket for four years… Because Elyse3 expressed doubts and I wished to quell them. Really rather pointless, but I like it. Something a little happy, for once, not just angst. (Yay angst!) But there's a heavy dose of angst in this too, I guess…also a heavy does of the word reality in the last two paragraphs, sorry. Don't own.
Reality
She'd always wanted a real family, with a little home in Paris and a little brother who stayed at home and parents who never hit. Maybe a dog, a big one that gave you kisses when you walked in the door and then let you use him as a pillow. Her family wasn't like that. Not one bit. Instead they hit her and sold her and turned her into something that wasn't Eponine, but rather, something sad and ugly and horrible.
But the fan—it let her dream. Maybe Babet was the father—he had always been kind to her—and the baker's wife the mother—she gave her and Azelma bread. Kindness--that feeling that made her feel loved--that was all she needed.
So she would sit by the river, and hold the fan open in her hands, and smile down at it and pretend she was sitting in front of a warm fire, leaning against the dog. And sometimes, if she dreamed long enough, she could feel the fire heating her face and the warm dog at her back and all was well.
She didn't have her reality in reality. Instead, her reality was the one inside her head, where she was in her perfect little family. Her life—reality—was just a nightmare, just a figment of her imagination.
Reality—her reality, at least—suited her just fine.