A/N- Still not finding much on the subject of marriage laws and customs. I read a somewhat dry twelve-page essay on the relevance of the Code Napoleon to modern civilization which was entirely unhelpful, and that was just the start of the research I've been conducting. Unfortunately, while I've turned up plenty of information on modern marriage laws in France, I still can't tell you more than the most basic details of those in 1830. Unless one of my friends has an unknown genius Google skill that I know not of and turns something up soon, it looks like I may just have to wing it on common sense, and a rather basic knowledge of the legal trends of the times, which makes me sad, because I very much like to preserve as much historical accuracy as is reasonable.

Chapter 5
November 21st, 1830

At a quarter to eight in the evening, Enjolras and Combeferre arrived at the Corinth and ascended to the second floor, which was particularly full even for that time of the evening. They took up a table by the window, and a rather heavy set young serving-girl with a bad complexion approached them. Enjolras ordered tersely for them both, and for Éponine who had not yet arrived. The girl gave them a nod in response and bustled away, at which point Combeferre saw fit to ask, "What exactly am I doing here, Antoine?"

"I understand all the legal aspects of this proceeding perfectly well," Enjolras replied, "But you... you know about how to handle women. I have never had any such skill."

"You might do better to ask Courfeyrac, in that case," Combeferre said with a smirk playing across his lips.

Enjolras fought not to roll his eyes. "His brand of advice is likely to be related to an entirely different sort of difficulty with women than the variety I am currently experiencing. I think I trust your judgment better."

Combeferre nodded once, sobering. "So, when you spoke with Éponine last night, what was your impression of her?"

Enjolras thought on it for a moment before saying deliberately, "She is strange. I suppose it's the product of her circumstances, but she's an unnerving creature. She has an odd way of looking at you, she never seems to glance away. It is as though she is trying to stare down an army." Combeferre's lips twitched in what might have been the hint of a smile, but he said nothing, and Enjolras continued, "She seems to flit through aimlessly through ideas, and her manner of speaking is blunt, as if she had never learned any proper feminine delicacy. Overall, she is a very bizarre creature, and not even pretty to make up for it."

When he finished, Combeferre really was grinning. "You already despise her, then? Very good, my friend, you're quite on your way to being a proper married man!" he teased.

"I do not," Enjolras said coolly, "despise Éponine. This is just an honest evaluation. And to it, I perhaps ought to add that she seems bright. I'm glad for your sake that you are managing to find mirth in this situation, but I fail to see any."

At that moment, a voice from their right cried, "But there is a great deal of mirth in it, mon ami!"

Combeferre and Enjolras looked up to see Joly and Laigle, who had been concealed two tables away, revealed by the movement of the party between them. The pair stood up and joined their comrades at the table by the window.

"What are you doing here?" Combeferre asked of them.

Laigle shrugged. "A mind may live on ideals, but a stomach needs something more substantial."

"More to the point, what are you doing here?" Joly asked.

"We are here to meet Éponine and discuss arrangements," Enjolras replied.

Laigle smirked, and said in a sly voice, "Then Pontmercy's harebrained scheme isn't so mad after all?"

"No, apparently not," Enjolras said. "Though I'm beginning to wish it were."

Despite his dour expression, all three of his friends were grinning. Whether their amusement was at his predicament or at the displeased look on his seraphic features it would be difficult to guess. Joly clapped him jovially on the shoulder. "Ah, my good man, you shall be free yet!"

"Yes, he shall," Combeferre said. "But in the meantime, it might be best if the two of you left."

"Why?" Joly asked.

"Because we're expecting the young woman any minute now. No need to frighten her off with the pair of you cracking jokes all evening!"

Laigle snorted. "As if we could! By Marius's account, that girl is impossible to scare."

"Indeed," Joly concurred. "True to her namesake, perhaps?"

Laigle, who was well-read even on the most trivial of subjects, nodded vigorously. "Ironic, that. Perhaps, being revolutionary as you are, we should stop calling you Enjolras and start calling you Sabinus? Yes, you shall be Sabinus and she shall be your-"

"Éponine," Enjolras interrupted, rising to his feet.

The girl herself had just appeared on the stairs.

Éponine, for her part, had spent the whole day in something of an internal uproar. She felt as if her limbs were caught in two great vices, one on each side, slowly pulling her apart in the most painful way. Her heart screamed for Marius, for that handsome young man not so much older than herself who had always been so awfully kind to her. Her head, on the other hand, told her in no uncertain terms that an offer of marriage from Antoine Enjolras was the best opportunity she would ever get.

Beneath the shield composed of scars from every bitter word or harsh blow life (or more frequently, her father) had dealt her, Éponine was a romantic at heart. Perhaps it was the result of being named for such a romantic figure, or perhaps that was just who she was. It hardly mattered, as it was what it was. Even life on the street couldn't beat the dreams out of her. She wanted someone to love her, the way she was sure her parents must have loved each other once, before things went sour. She wanted someone to love her the way the dashing heroes of her mother's romance novels loved their heroines. She wanted that more than anything else, so much that it hurt. It was foolishness. Her father, her sister, the whole hateful world told her it was foolishness, but even as a child, Éponine had never paid much attention to what anyone else told her. She had no intention of starting now, especially not with the only thing that was keeping her going some days.

Marius was her white knight. He was wealthy (well, he wasn't really, but his grandfather was, even if they were on bad terms), he was so handsome, he was nice to her, he didn't seem to see that she was just a dirty gamine, or at the very least he did a good job of ignoring it. He respected her. If anyone would come and sweep her off her feet, it was sure to be him.

Except... he did not seem too inclined to do any such thing.

As she walked down the street, pulling her oversized coat closer about her, Éponine thought back to their conversation the night before.

"But Monsieur Marius, to marry him? A total stranger?" It was a disturbing prospect. Maybe, though, it would make him jealous. In that hope, she continued, choosing her words carefully: "Still, he's very handsome. Do you... do you think I should?"

He smiled widely. "I think it would be a wonderful opportunity for you, 'Ponine. Just think! You would be away from your father..."

He kept talking, but Éponine was not listening, thinking only of the all too obvious meaning behind his words. 'I don't love you, I never will, you're just a friend, please go marry somebody else...' Feeling as if she were standing outside herself, only watching, she felt herself say that she wanted to speak to Enjolras privately.

The pang in her heart was bitter. Why didn't Marius want her? True, she wasn't the prettiest, but they had been friends for ages! Couldn't he see past all that? Hadn't her loyalty over these past two years proved that she deserved him? Hadn't she done everything she was supposed to? And yet he still thought she should marry one of his closest friends. It wasn't fair!

Life isn't fair, the gutter sang to her, life never gives you what you want and rarely what you need!

So, despite her heart wrenching itself to pieces inside her, Éponine had come to realize what she had to do.

Marius could save her, but he didn't seem to want to. If she did as he asked and married Monsieur Enjolras, she could be saved that way, too. It was a different kind of salvation. She wouldn't be united with the one she was sure must be her other half, her soul wouldn't be completed at long last. But she would be off the street. Her father wouldn't be able to slap her, or drag her into his hateful schemes. She wouldn't be reduced to sleeping under bridges or in haylofts, and she wouldn't go hungry. She would be able to be a good girl, more or less, like her mother had raised her to be. Almost respectable, maybe.

Even if the streets couldn't kill her dreams, they had taught her that you never passed up a chance on a meal. Marrying this boy- this admittedly very handsome boy- was a lifetime of meals.

After all, she could still have Marius the way she had always had him- inside her head. There would never be any need for Enjolras to know anything about her secret fantasies.

This conclusion reached, she made her way quickly down to the Rue de Chanvrerie. As she walked, she ran her fingers nervously through her hair, trying to straighten it out as much as possible. Éponine had done her best over the years to keep up her appearance as much as she could, but it hadn't helped much. All she could do was pull some of the snarls free and hope for the best.

In her head, she tried to dredge up the manners her mother had tried to teach her and her sister all those years ago, when they still lived in Montfermeil. Now that she had reached her decision, she suddenly felt apprehensive about it. Antoine Enjolras was wealthy and respectable. To be his wife, she would have to try and be proper. Well, she could manage that, couldn't she? She had been taught well once upon a time, and if nothing else, she was a quick study.

Upon reaching the Corinth, Éponine paused for a moment to gather her nerve, then marched inside as if she belonged there and headed straight upstairs to the main dining room.

"Hello, Antoine," Éponine said, and the faintest flush across her cheeks displayed the shyness she probably thought well-concealed.

"Already she is calling you by your Christian name?" Combeferre asked in an amused whisper behind him.

Enjolras stepped on his foot.

When Éponine approached the table, Enjolras held out a chair for her. She seemed more than a little surprised by this, and once again he felt a stab of pity for this girl who had not known respectable society for God only knew how many years.

"Éponine, I think you have seen my friends before? Alexandre Joly, François Combeferre, and-"

"You're the one they call Bossuet, aren't you?" Éponine interrupted, looking to the bald-headed young man.

Laigle grinned. "Yes, that would be me," he replied. "Laigle de Meaux, shortly known as Bossuet as part of a rather old joke at my expense that one would think my friends had forgotten by now!" He shot an amused look at Joly, who was more or less responsible for the group's long memory.

Éponine laughed, a free and unrestrained sound.

Enjolras was suddenly glad that Laigle was present. His perpetual cheer made it impossible not to feel at ease, something that might not have been possible in this awkward situation without him.

"Well," Enjolras said, eager to get into the meat of the discussion over with. "I suppose we had better get this matter sorted, hadn't we?"

"Yes, I suppose we had," Éponine agreed.

"I have thought about it, and I think I have contrived the best way to go about this," he said.

"Well, don't leave us in suspense!" Joly cried.

"It is fairly straightforward. Éponine and I will be married as quickly as I can have the papers drawn up. I have some connections, and it shouldn't take more than a week or two at most. At that time I will write back to my father explaining that the reason I resisted his attempts to forge a bond between myself and Mlle. Guillory was because I was already wed, in secret. I did not initially wish to tell him this because I feared he would react badly to the news, but eventually found I had no other choice."

Combeferre looked approving, but cautioned, "Knowing your father, that will not be enough to satisfy him. Even when he is pleased with you, he wants to know every detail. He most assuredly will not be pleased with this turn of events. What sort of story will you concoct to explain such an elopement?"

"I thought," Enjolras said, "that Éponine and I would work out something plausible together."

At this point, Éponine interjected, "And what about the papers? Supposing he wants to see the proof? The dates won't match the story."

Enjolras was impressed. He had not even thought of that.

"I know some people... well, my father knows them, but I know where to find them, anyway... who can forge reproductions of that sort of thing," she suggested.

Enjolras shook his head vigorously. He had absolutely no desire to get involved with the kind of people she was implying. He was a friend of the abased, not of the criminal element. "No, I don't think so," he said, thinking desperately of an alternative. Suddenly, something Courfeyrac had mentioned a few days previously recalled itself to his mind. "I have an idea about that. That new man who's been coming to the meetings these past few weeks, that Feuilly... Courfeyrac says he's a fan-painter, yes?"

Joly nodded. "Quite talented, too," he said.

"Do you think he might be able to extend that talent as far as smudging out the ink on legal documents enough to fill in a new date?"

"The only way to find out would be to ask him," Combeferre said.

"And failing that, I still know people," Éponine added.

At this point, the pimply-faced servant at last delivered their food, and all conversation ceased for several minutes as they all tucked into the meal, none with as much vigor as Éponine, who declared that she had not eaten so well in years. Considering the mediocre quality of the offerings at the Corinth, Enjolras once again found himself confronted with the fact of her wretched existence. The abject poverty at the lowest level of society was something he had found facing him at every turn since coming to Paris, and always it had disturbed and moved him, but seeing it from afar and vowing to do something about it and coming face-to-face with it in someone he was about to be so intimately connected to were two entirely different feelings.

When the meal was concluded and the bill paid, Enjolras declared that it was late, and he had studying to do. He said his goodbyes, but before he could leave, Joly exclaimed, "My friend, you cannot really mean to leave your fiancée to fend for herself on the streets!"

To be perfectly honest, it had been bothering at him all evening, but he couldn't find a way to rectify the situation without breaching propriety. Admittedly, considering the absurdity of their situation, it was a little late for such concerns, but he could preserve some semblance of normalcy, couldn't he? Therefore, he had hoped to simply leave it alone for now. But that word- fiancée- put things in a totally different perspective. He hadn't actually thought of her as such until Joly said it, but now that he had, it hit him very hard that this was really happening, and he realized that it was absolutely imperative to do something about her situation immediately.

"It would be inappropriate," he said stiffly, "to bring her home with me."

Éponine shook her head. "There's no need to worry about me! I've lasted just fine on my own this long. I'll certainly last a little longer."

"Nonsense!" said Combeferre. "It wouldn't be right to leave you alone like this! Still, it's a bit of a dilemma. What can we possibly do with you until the wedding?"

It was at this moment that Joly and Laigle glanced at each other, questioning expressions on their faces. When their eyes met, their looks broke into identical grins.

In the same breath, they said, "Musichetta."

A/N- Fun fact about me: I put very little effort into my fanfic. Ever. I see little point in taking it that seriously. Everything I write is pretty much absolute first draft, no editing except to skim for typos. Fact is, I'd rather divert my writing energies into my own creations. So the quality of my fanfic is generally low. But this chapter? It kicked my freaking butt, and I have absolutely no idea why. I had to work so hard to get the words down on "paper!"

Reward my struggle with a review? *Bambi eyes*