A/N- Alright, so, for quite some time now I'm going to be giving our favorite pair a break. That's not to say there won't be some juicy and wonderful tidbits for you (trust me, there will be), but I'm giving them time to get to know each other in order to avoid the all-too-prevalent OOC!Enjolras. So brace yourself... for the attack of the sub-plots (and I have lots of them up my sleeve)!

Chapter 15
January 4th, 1831

Classes at the university resumed on the third of January, after a short recess in honor of the holiday, and Éponine found herself once again left to her own devices. She felt restless, but was not inclined to go out as the temperature outside was plummeting, if the progressive spread of frost across the windowpane was any indication. As usual, she turned to Enjolras's bookshelf for comfort. If her body could not run and be free, then at least her mind could fly away.

She pulled down her immense tome on the history of France and curled up in front of the fire. She opened the book to the page she had marked and resumed where she had left off, somewhere in the middle years of the Hundred Years War.

Once she had well and truly settled into her reading, she became wholly oblivious to everything around her. She did not notice the heavy snowfall that began about mid-morning, and she did not notice the darkening of the sky as still more woolly, snow-laden clouds advanced west over the city. In fact, she only abandoned her book once, and that was only because the fire burned so low that she was obliged to go downstairs to ask the concierge for a further supply of fuel, or risk losing her primary heat source. Other than this, she was wholly absorbed in the rather fascinating tale of France's struggle to throw out her English invaders. Some names and dates were familiar, and others entirely new to her, but she was captivated by the series of dramatic conflicts that had unfolded centuries before her birth.

As she read, she could almost understand her husband's passion for his country. The men and women of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries had so fiercely defended France, again and again when the need arose. How could anyone do less, when the call came? It was inspiring and fascinating at once.

Just after one o'clock, the voices of two young men could be heard in the hall, but Éponine was so intent on the page before her that she did not hear. A moment later, the door to the apartment opened and Enjolras, soaked through, entered the apartment.

She jumped in surprise, and the book fell from her lap to the floor. Quickly she scrambled after it, trying to pick it up and conceal it before he could see what she was doing, but it did her no good.

"What are you doing?" he asked, sounding tired but a little amused, slinging his books onto the table and unwinding his damp scarf from around his neck.

Éponine, who had successfully retrieved the volume, straightened up and squared her shoulders. She met his gaze firmly, just daring him to challenge her. "Reading," she said.

"You can read?" he asked, sounding surprised.

Éponine decided she should very much take offense at this. "Of course I can read!" she said indignantly. "I told you I'm not just gutter trash, didn't I? I told you I was raised to be better... or at least, my maman thought I ought to be! She taught me when I was just a girl."

He raised his hands in a gesture of surrender. "I'm sorry," he said, sounding surprised by her outburst. "I ought not have assumed-"

"No, you shouldn't have," she said.

He hung his coat up and crossed to her side. He attempted to take the book from her hands and she instinctively jerked it back. He stared at her.

"You aren't going to stop me,Antoine, " she said fiercely, for a moment seeing a vision her father where her husband stood. "You can't make me quit reading!"

"Éponine, why would I want to stop you?" he asked, genuinely confused.

She shook her head, clutching the heavy book closer to her chest. "I... I... don't know," she mumbled, already beginning to feel ashamed of her outburst.

"I would have thought you knew me better than that, at least," he continued. "I would never stand in the way of someone attempting to broaden his or her mind."

Éponine felt herself blush. "I'm sorry," she said. "I keep expecting you to be like my papa, even though I know you wouldn't ever... You're so different than the sort of people I'm used to, you see. You're... good."

Enjolras was looking at her with an expression of pity and puzzlement. "Anything you want to read is yours," he said sincerely, gesturing to his bookshelf. "You need not hide it." He took the volume from her, and this time she let him have it. He opened to the page she had marked, frowning at the places where she had dog-eared the pages. His eyebrows went up as he took note of her place in the book, and a sudden thought seemed to occur to him. "How long has this been going on, anyway?"

She shrugged. "Ever since we've been married," she replied. "I moved on to this after I finished with that Meditations Metaphysiques by the Descartes fellow."

"You read Descartes?" Enjolras asked, quite plainly surprised.

"Yes."

"And you understood him?"

"Not all of it, but I think I caught the general idea. It was easier to read than all of Marius's old lawbooks, that's for certain!"

He gave her a look that she could not interpret for the life of her, shaking his head in amazement. "You are a very strange girl, Éponine."

She chuckled. "That makes two of us, then. Why are you home so early, anyway?"

Enjolras sighed, running a hand through his blond locks, which she now noticed were damp. "It's snowing rather heavily outside," he said. "Another few hours of this and the roads are likely to be impassable. Classes were cancelled and the Sorbonne is closed until further notice."

Éponine glanced at the window in amazement. "Well it is snowing, isn't it!" she exclaimed. "I didn't even notice!"

Somehow, Enjolras wasn't surprised by that.

Azelma shivered. She had a shawl that her père had given her, but it was threadbare, and her blouse was ragged, and she was barefoot. Last winter she'd had stockings, Éponine had given her stockings, but now she was barefoot and she couldn't even feel her toes anymore as she pushed her way through the deepening snow.

Twilight was blooming over the city, and Azelma was pretty sure she was lost. Éponine knew her way about, and from what she'd heard little Gavroche spent all his days running about all over the city, but Azelma had always stayed quite close to home unless she was with her sister. She'd never dreamed that it would be so easy to become turned around in the rabbit's warren that was the Quartier Latin. She had been out for most of the day every day since New Year's, wandering the city and trying to track down Éponine. All she'd managed to do was to narrow down her search to this neighborhood, but it was still a big area and she didn't know the place.

"Mon Dieu, why am I doing this?" she whispered to herself. But she knew the answer to that, didn't she? A bitter smile crossed her face at the thought of Montparnasse. She hated him... but only because he wanted only her sister.

When had it first started, Azelma wondered? They had met Montparnasse about a year after coming to Paris. She had been just twelve, and Éponine thirteen. Montparnasse, two years Éponine's senior, had worked with their father and the Patron-Minette, and he'd helped the girls out of a few jams of their own. Azelma had idolized him, always. He was so handsome- handsomer than Éponine's Monsieur Marius, that was for sure!- and smart and sometimes he would bring them a little bread, if he had anything to spare. He paid attention to them when nobody else would. For as long as she'd known him, Azelma had dreamed that one day Montparnasse would look at her and realize he loved her.

It had never happened. It was all Éponine's fault, of course. All their lives, Azelma had been the pretty one. She had the better figure, she had the fine green eyes, she had the finer features, and by rights she deserved Montparnasse. After they left the inn and things got rough, neither of them could conceivably have been called beautiful, but even then Azelma was still considered the pretty one. Except then something had changed. Even living like shit under bridges and in haylofts and wherever else, Éponine had somehow bloomed and grown into a wretched sort of beauty almost overnight. For once, the elder sister was the pretty one, and Montparnasse never looked at Azelma again.

She still had a chance to get part of him, though. If she found Éponine like he asked her (and she wasn't going to think about what he wanted with her sister), he'd promised to give her more than that little almost-kiss from New Year's. It wasn't what she wanted, but it would do, and maybe with time she could make him love her.

Azelma shivered. Across the road, the lights of a tavern gleamed in the gathering darkness. A rowdy tavern, to Azelma, always spoke of home. Maybe someone there could help her.

She ran across to the building and stepped inside, feeling the flush of heat that swept through her as she came in out of the cold. For a few minutes she just stood there just inside the door, leaning against the wall and reveling in the warmth.

She did not go unnoticed for long, however. "What d'you want?" asked a rough-looking woman with an apron tied around her waist.

"I... nothing, I... I just..."

"If you aren't going to buy anything, you'd best be leaving," the woman said.

Azelma stuck out her chin. "I just wanted to warm up for a moment!" she protested.

The woman eyed Azelma's bare feet and her expression softened a little. "Fine then," she said. "But you be keeping out of the way of paying customers! Don't bother nobody." She turned and headed back in the direction of the kitchens.

"Wait!" Azelma cried.

She turned. "What now?"

"I'm looking for someone."

The woman crossed her arms. "And who would that be?"

Azelma hesitated, debating. She was actually looking for her sister, but the odds of anybody seeing and remembering a girl as plain and unremarkable as Éponine seemed slim. Remembering the handsome man who had come to the Gorbeau House and said he was going to marry her, though... that was much more likely.

"His name is Enjolras," she said. "He's tall and-"

"And gorgeous as anything, right?" the woman said with a smirk.

Azelma nodded.

"Yes, I know him. He's a familiar face in these parts."

"Do you know where he lives?"

"Aye, my nephew is acquainted with him, in a roundabout way. He's on the Rue Royer-Collard. It's not far from here."

"Thank you!" Azelma exclaimed, turning and making for the door.

Before she could return to the cold outdoors, however, the woman spoke up. "Wait just a minute, child. I don't know why you're looking for him-" Her tone plainly suggested, however, that she had a few good guesses. "-but you're wasting your time. That boy's been a regular patron here for years and never once has he shown an eye for the ladies." She ran her eyes over Azelma's beleaguered appearance and smirked. "If you think you'll do better, you're deceiving yourself. Monsieur Enjolras is as celibate as a monk."

Azelma blushed at the insinuation and ran out the door.

She let out a little gasp as her tingling feet were buried six inches deep in snow, but ventured forth nonetheless. She repeated the name of the street to herself, over and over so she wouldn't forget it. Once she was sure of remembering, another thought began to intrude on her mind: the memory of the serving-woman's parting words. Monsieur Enjolras is as celibate as a monk.

If that's true, she asked herself, then what is he doing with my sister?

Éponine stared out the window. It was growing dark, not a hint of sun visible behind the heavy clouds that were still dropping snow over the city. It was perhaps five o'clock, and the lamplighters had not been out. She wasn't surprised. Sometimes in the very worst storms of winter, the street lights went unlit for days. She rested her forehead against the cool windowpane.

"It was snowing like this when we first came to Paris," she said.

Behind her, Enjolras looked up from his book, but said nothing.

"I suppose that must have been four or five years ago now. I'm not quite sure anymore. We were on the run, see. Papa had borrowed too much money, and when Little Cosette's mother quit paying us, he couldn't make the payments, and the creditors were after us. They took the inn- did I ever tell you we ran an inn?"

"No."

She smiled bitterly at her reflection in the dark glass in front of her. "Well, we did. The Sergeant of Waterloo. Best inn in Montfermeil they called it, and it was. Maman was never much of a cook, but we did good business. We were well-off. If Papa had kept his nose clean, we would have been petty bourgeois, at least. Azelma and I had lots of pretty dresses. But then somehow it went wrong. I never quite knew how it happened, but it did and we ran in the middle of the night, just packed up a few bags and left. It was Christmastime."

Enjolras wasn't sure what had prompted her to tell him this now. He wondered if she was really telling him because she wanted him to know, or if she simply felt the need to say it out loud. He knew she sometimes talked to herself when she was trying to puzzle something out.

"We lived under the bridges for a long time," she continued. "We changed our name so our creditors wouldn't find us. That was how my father started taking up assumed names. I was so spoiled then, and I hated it so much. Being poor, I mean. I wasn't used to it. It was better in the summer. Maman had work, sometimes, and it's easier to steal fruit from the market in the summertime. Oh, but you wouldn't approve of that, would you?" She glanced briefly over her shoulder at him, apologetic. "It's wrong to steal, I suppose, but sometimes you just have to do things."

"I would not know about that," he said, "But I do know that people do not do immoral things unless they have no other choice."

"Tell that to my father," Éponine muttered.

For awhile they were both silent. Then she started up again. "That first winter was bad," she said. "Sometimes at night it was so cold, Azelma would cry. I tried to help, but I wasn't any warmer so that didn't do much good. I wonder if she's keeping warm now. I hope she is. And Gavroche, too."

"Who is Gavroche?" Enjolras asked.

She turned away from the window at last to look at him properly. "My brother," she said, a warm smile gracing her mouth.

"You have a brother?"

She nodded. "He's ten years old. He doesn't live with us anymore."

"Why not?"

She sat down next to him, looking reflective. "He yelled at our father one too many times. 'Course, I've done that, too. Except Papa was smart enough not to try and throw me out. My mother wouldn't have stood for that, but Gavroche..." She sighed. "There was nobody to speak up for him. When Papa sent him away, I didn't even try to stop it. I should have, shouldn't I?"

Enjolras wondered how best to answer. His instinctive reaction was to shake her and ask what kind of sister would not stand up to defend her brother, but his experience with the Thenardier family, such as it was, had taught him never to assume anything. He struggled to form a calm response that wouldn't hurt her, but Éponine, for her part, seemed to have worked out an answer for herself.

"Yes," she said firmly, mostly to herself. "I should have tried, anyway. But I can't change the past, and really, he's happier now. He's free, and he eats better on his own than he did when he was depending on Papa for meals."

"Éponine?"

"What?"

"Why are you telling me all this?"

She shrugged. "I felt like it. And it's the sort of thing friends ought to know about each other."

He was surprised by her response. Somehow, it was easy to think of Éponine as simply beginning at the moment he had met her, as if her life had just been on standby until he had taken her off the street for somewhat selfish reasons. And yet, she was right. He hardly knew anything about her life prior to becoming engaged to her. He had wondered, sometimes, what it was that had made her the person she had become, but he never thought to just ask. It was easy enough to simply accept that she was who she was and move on, because most of the time her company was quite pleasant and that was good enough for him. Still, there was much to be said for knowing ones friends very well, and it was more important with Éponine than most, as she was a rather permanent fixture in his life.

"I suppose you're right," he said.

A/N- This chapter is pretty meh. I won't say it Totally And Completely Sucks, but it's not fantastic. Sorry. It's really all over the place, where I like my chapters, ordinarily, to be pretty unified. Still, we covered some important ground, so that's all good.