A/N: Hello, my lovely readers! Thank you SO MUCH for all of your feedback on the last chapter! I'm so glad you liked it so much :D This chapter switches back and forth between Éponine and Enjolras quite a bit, but I put in lines to try and help you keep the POV switches straight. If you need any clarification on anything that happens, just PM me! Anyway, read, review, and most of all, enjoy! (Especially since I'm not really sure how I feel about this one, reviews would be helpful…)

(P.S. Bonus points to anyone who catches the Doctor Who reference!)

"So let me get this straight," Combeferre said, setting down his cup of coffee. "You, Richard Enjolras, my best friend since childhood, have actually gone out in public with a woman? More than once?"

He sighed irritably. "Yes, John Combeferre." The two attorneys' sons were sitting at the coffee table in Enjolras' apartment the morning after the ballet, discussing the ongoing development of his budding relationship with Éponine. "I just don't know what to think…" he sighed. "I haven't ever really dated, but Éponine is…different. She almost makes me want to give it a go, and I've never been able to say that about anyone else."

"We are talking about an actual woman, correct?" his friend asked, only half-jokingly. During their time in law school, Enjolras had been nicknamed the "Marble Man" for his seeming inability – or even desire – to connect to or understand women. For so long – almost as long as John Combeferre could remember – his best friend had been a man fully devoted to his work and to his mind, but now, after meeting this mysterious speakeasy bartender, he seemed to be opening up at last.

The man in question rolled his eyes. "It's not like I could have cooked one up in a laboratory, or something, 'Ferre. Be logical. I'm not even a scientist."

"Just had to be sure," Combeferre chuckled to himself, checking his pocketwatch. "It's almost 9:00; we should go in to the office soon," he remarked.

Enjolras nodded, finishing his coffee and standing up. "You're right. Let's get going."

Éponine woke up late the next morning, the sun streaming in through her bedroom window. She rubbed her eyes, frowning at the bright light as she slowly staggered out of the warm bed. She was glad that Mac was giving her the day off; she was going to need it.

After a quick bath and breakfast, she slipped on one of her less-fancy skirt and blouse outfits, before heading out to the rough side of town, where the remnants of her family lived. Things at her house had slowly spiraled out of control since her mother had died 10 years ago, and she was finally going to confront her father about the way he was taking care of her four siblings. Azelma was now about 25 – still unmarried, as far as Éponine knew – and Gavroche was about 16. The youngest children, twin boys, were only 13, and still subject to Thénardier's cruelty, especially since they had been unexpected and unwanted in the first place – they'd been dumped on the inn's doorstep as newborns, and the church was too full to take them, leaving Thénardier an angry widower, stuck with two more mouths to feed.

Éponine wound her way effortlessly through the crowded New York streets; she'd been doing it since she was a child. By now, she knew her way around New York like nobody's business. She kept her head down, avoiding eye contact with everyone she passed. Thénardier had raised his children to be chameleons; they could blend in wherever they wanted.

It took a while, but eventually, she made it through all the winding alleys to get to the base for her father's gang, Patron-Minette. Since his tavern had been shut down by Prohibition, he had started an underground crime network. They had started with petty scams and pickpocketing, but now, he was dabbling in bootlegging to pick up some extra money. Even though Éponine worked at a speakeasy, it bothered her that her younger siblings were exposed to that daily.

She turned her head as she went down the alley, and immediately caught sight of a familiar face that nearly made her heart stop. "Hello, sweetie," his familiar velvet voice purred. The mischievous gleam in his eyes was still alive, and his smile was as dangerously charming as it had always been.

"Hello, Montparnasse," she murmured, doing her best to remain immune to him. "Have you seen my father?"

Montparnasse gestured with his head to the large flap of burlap behind him. "He's in there. He lucked out; they're not keeping him in prison while he's just on trial."

"Trial?!" Éponine exclaimed. "What did he get caught for?"

"Just petty theft," Montparnasse shrugged. "Multiple counts, but he managed to score a good lawyer. The prosecution's going to be a tough nut to crack, though. Name's Enjolras; from what my connections have told me, he's never lost a case."

Éponine's heart nearly stopped. There can't be more than one family named Enjolras in town…but he can't mean…

"Is that my girl Éponine?" her father's loud voice shouted through the burlap. She knew he wasn't going to get up to check for himself.

"Yeah, it's me, Father; I need t' talk to ya," she shouted back over Montparnasse's shoulder, gradually slipping into the rough speech she had learned as a child. Montparnasse chuckled at her, and the two exchanged a furtive grin. They had been childhood sweethearts and best friends for years, until Éponine finally managed to get out from under her father, while Montparnasse sank deeper into Thénardier's criminal ways.

"Th' 'ell 're ya doin' 'ere?" he yelled.

"Lemme in an' I'll tell ya!" she yelled back.

Enjolras gingerly sat down in his father's desk chair, surveying the office in an entirely new light. In all the years that he'd visited here – ever since his mother had died – he'd always been on the other side of the desk. Richard Enjolras, Jr. had always been pleading his case in lieu of the ability to take action.

So this is what it's like to sit on the other side of the desk.

As he sat there, alone in the office, he thought about its regular tenant. For the longest time, his father had been his biggest hero, his inspiration for becoming a lawyer. But over the years, Enjolras' opinion of his father had slowly begun to change. The angrier, bitterer side was slowly coming out, especially as Enjolras and Éponine spent more time together. Going to law school and forming his own opinions about the world wasn't exactly helping the situation, either…but none of this tension had existed between them before Éponine.

He thought more about her as he started to organize the scattered papers on his father's desk, with another cup of coffee from 'Ferre. What was it about that sweet, smiling bartender that constantly kept him coming back for more? What was it about her that seemed to intoxicate him whenever they were together? The more he reflected on their two dates, the more he realized that being around her made him…happy. Not just a fleeting happiness that came from a witty quip, or a fun night out. No, he even felt himself light up whenever he saw her, or thought about her. For the first time in a long time, he felt an actual genuine happiness, instead of stress from work and school.

She's definitely different from the rest.

Éponine pulled back the flap and went into her father's base. Even though it was the middle of the day, she could hardly see once the flap fell down behind her; it was pitch black. Somewhere, a match was struck, and she saw the outline of a face. "'Ponine!" her brothers' voices all exclaimed.

"Gav!" she cried. "Miquel! Armande! Oh, I've missed you so much," she said, hugging all three of them as tightly as she could. She thought the boys were going to break her spine with the tightness of their embraces, but she didn't care. "Where's Azelma?"

"She's out gettin' food," Thénardier answered gruffly, striking another match to light a lamp. Éponine and the boys squinted temporarily at the change in lighting, before they adjusted. "Now, whaddya want?"

A knock at the door interrupted his thoughts. "Richard?"

"Yes, Colette?"

"There's a woman here to see you." His heart leapt for a moment. "The wife of one of your father's clients," she said.

He tried to hide his disappointment in his next question. "Surname?"

A pause, and murmuring female voices. "Tholomyés," Colette answered.

He frowned. It wasn't a familiar name to him, and his father didn't often have "clients" in the standard sense of the word. However, he trusted Colette. "Send her in," he said, relaxing in the chair.

"Montparnasse told me you got arrested again," she said irritably. "Who'd you try to rob this time, Papa?"

"For yer information, 'Ponine, it was th' middle o' the city, an' I wasn' lookin' at his face!" Thénardier shouted at her. "Some rich man tryin' ta be a gent. I been workin' me arse off tryin' ta feed yer siblings, and ye ain't even home ta gimme a hand! Ye had to run off an' get a job a' an'ther speakeasy!"

Éponine sighed in irritation. "I have to make a living for myself somehow, Papa, and our tavern was shut down! Do you expect me to be another mouth for you to feed my entire life?"

"Ye can feed yer own damn greedy mouth, but as long as ye ain't married, ye damn well better live under my roof, and ye follow my rules, ya damn girl!" he shouted, slapping her across the face.

Enjolras wasn't quite prepared for the woman that stepped meekly into the office. She was obviously quite poor, and had been for a while, even though she tried to hide it with the shawl around her shoulders. Her dress was in tatters, clinging to her skeleton of a form. Her hair had clearly been cut quite short a while ago, and was still growing back. Her cheeks were sunken in, her eyes hollow. She sat down in the chair across from him without even making eye contact, staring at the floor as if she didn't deserve to look at him. "Mr. Enjolras," she whispered meekly.

"Yes, I'm the younger," he answered gently. Something about this woman's fragility made him a little nervous; he felt like he was going to break her with one wrong word. "My father's in court all day today, so he asked me to hear his clients at the office."

She nodded. "Yes, I know…I actually came to see you."

Enjolras was surprised, but decided to see what happened. "What can I do for you, ma'am?"

Éponine stumbled backwards from the force of the slap; her father still had a wicked hand, even after all these years. "Papa!" she shouted. "I have my own apartment, and my own job; I can live my own life!"

"Ye can live yer own life when I say ye can live yer own life, ye little rat!" Thénardier shouted, slapping her again. "I'm yer father; I'm the only grown man with influence in yer life, an' it's my job to watch out fer ya until yer married! What makes ye think ye can toss me out when ye don' need me an' come back when ye do?"

From the corner, she heard Gav shout her name, but she was still too dizzy to respond. Her father hadn't slapped her in a long time, and she wasn't used to the force of it anymore. "Papa, please!" She shouted. "I want to be free!"

The woman on the other side of the desk could hardly keep from weeping. "Please, Mr. Enjolras…my Felix never meant to cause harm to me, or to my daughter…"

"Ma'am, please show me your face," Enjolras murmured as gently as he could. "I want to help you, but I can't unless I know who you are, apart from Mr. Tholomyés."

She shook a little, pulling her shawl in closer around her dress. Her bony shoulders still poked out above it, like the wings of a flightless bird. Enjolras pitied the woman, who was clearly so terrified to be alone in the presence of a strange man. What happened to this woman to make her so afraid? "Please, trust me. I'm not going to hurt you."

"That's what Felix said, too…before he knew about her."

Montparnasse snorted from the entrance. "Free?" he said derisively. "You can never be free, 'Ponine. You're a Thénardier, no matter how you try to dress yourself up, try to get away, live somewhere else, speak prettier, or date prettier men. You'll always be a Thénardier, and you can never escape that fact."

She wheeled around and slapped him as hard as she could across the face, drawing blood where her nails scraped his cheek. "I don't need any judgment from you of all people, Montparnasse," she spat. "You're a petty thief who tries to dress himself up like a bourgeois, just so you can go nail some pretty girl and leave her the next day."

"Shut your mouth, you stupid bitch!" he barked in a tone that was all too similar to her father's. "We were always first, and we will always be first! I should be first! I was first!"

"And you did exactly what I just said you do, 'Parnasse. You had your way with me and left. What more do I owe to you?" she hissed, turning on her heel and leaving.

Enjolras frowned, trying to make sense of the scattered things she was saying. "Her, ma'am? Who's 'her'?"

"Our daughter…" she said, trying to hold back more tears. "H-he never even knew I was pregnant, until she was born. We always assumed she was his…but…" she broke down in sobs again. "Oh, Mr. Enjolras, I've been such a fool…I don't even know who her real father is…I always assumed it was Felix when she was a little girl, but now…as she's gotten older, I don't know…she looks so much like him…"

He was growing steadily more alarmed by the minute, especially as her story seemed to get more and more jumbled. He wasn't even quite sure why she had come to him, specifically, instead of waiting to see his father. "Ma'am, please…" Enjolras said as gently as he could, still with a hand on her arm. "I need to know who you are."

She looked up at him, their blue eyes met, and he couldn't keep in a gasp of shock.

"Fantine!"

A/N: She's baa-aack! :D Please review!