A/N- Allow me to say right now, just in case anyone was worrying, that you need not fear an OOC Enjolras in this story. None of the swoony nonsense that happens in too many E/E fics! I intend to write him as his usual pragmatic self, complete with blind devotion to his cause, and getting this E/E thing underway is going to be a long and annoying ride for everyone. Well, annoying for les Amis. Entertaining for myself, and hopefully for you guys, if I do my job right!

2: The Back Room

The morning dawned bright and chill, and Eponine restrained a groan of displeasure. The Thenardier sisters little flat had a stove, but Eponine hadn't had the money to buy more fuel than the absolute minimum that they needed for cooking in months, and as a result, the place was freezing when the bitter November air seeped in between the shutters. Eponine wanted nothing more than to stay right there in the bed, close to her sister's warmth, but the angle of the frigid sunlight against the floorboards told her plainly that she would be expected at the cafe in just an hour.

She rose from her place, tugging the lapels of the oversized coat closer to her small frame in a vain effort to keep out the chill. She crossed the room to the little hutch where the sisters kept their clothing and pulled out her second work-dress, the one she'd worn yesterday being far too stained to even consider. Roxanne ran a tight establishment, and had told Eponine the day she'd hired her that she expected her help to keep a tidy look about them. Eponine supposed she'd have to do some washing when she returned home that evening.

Once dressed, Eponine bound up her hair and plucked her key from its place on the table. As she did so, she saw the envelope from Adilene still sitting there. Briefly she debated reading it now, but she was short of time and elected to put it off until evening. She chose to forgo any semblance of breakfast; she'd be able to pilfer something from the kitchen later. On her way out the door, she passed Azelma's basket of paper flowers.

It was even colder outside than it had been in the little two-room apartment, and Eponine was grateful for the gray cap she'd pulled down low to cover as much of her ears as she could manage. The Cafe Musain was a good half a mile from her flat on the Rue de la Huchette, and as the weather turned ever colder that half mile began to feel longer and longer each day.

Eponine's nose and the tips of her fingers, poking out of her worn gloves, were numb by the time she stepped into the blessed warmth of the cafe.

Roxanne was elbow-deep in dough when Eponine entered the kitchen. She was a pretty, heavyset woman with a thick rope of dark blonde hair that was going gray around the temples. Her dark eyes, beset at the corners with fine lines, sat close together in her round face, giving her a sharp, focused look. Until her husband's untimely death a few years prior, the pair of them had run the cafe together, and Roxanne had successfully kept up the business on her own. She was a shrewd, calculating woman who reminded Eponine just a bit of her father, though unlike Old Thenardier, Eponine suspected that Roxanne had a good heart underneath her harsh exterior.

"And what time do you call this?" Roxanne barked the moment Eponine entered the room.

"Same time as I get here everyday," Eponine replied in a voice they both knew was too sweet to be sincere. "And earlier than most of the rest of the layabouts you keep hiring. Speaking of, where's Gérard?" she asked, naming the young man who ran the kitchen while Roxanne was occupied elsewhere in the establishment.

"Ill," Roxanne replied sourly. "The little slug sent his sister to tell me he's not likely to be about for a day or two! Ought to just fire him, I should..."

Eponine deftly tied her apron about her waist. "Whatever you say, Roxanne," she responded automatically, knowing full well that the older woman would do no such thing. Gérard was in a situation very similar to Eponine's own, supporting his younger siblings on slim wages. Roxanne also knew this, she was sure.

"I'm expecting we'll have a full house tonight," Roxanne said. "So I want you to tidy up the back room now, 'fore we get too busy."

Eponine nodded and scurried out of the kitchen and down the twisty hallway that led from the commons back to the more secluded room at the rear of the building. According to Roxanne, it had once been the spillover room, for when the cafe had more customers than could fit in the common room alone. Times were hard though, business was down, and it hadn't been put to its allotted function for a long time.

It did, however, have other uses. Over the past year or so, four nights a week, a group of around twenty young men gathered in the little parlor. From what Eponine had seen of them, they were all frequent patrons of the cafe in little groups of two and three on any given day, but every Monday, Wednesday, Friday and Saturday the entire collection found their way to that back room.

Eponine was not a fool, and she could guess who they were: Republicans. Students, in the main, who talked of rebellion behind closed doors. The same thing happened in many little cafes and other establishments all across the city, if talk on the street was to be believed.

The thought gave Eponine a shiver up the back. She didn't know what it was they talked about back here, and she wasn't entirely sure she wanted to. Revolution was a scary word. It meant change and upheaval and a world she didn't understand and couldn't predict. Maybe they meant well, maybe they didn't. Either way, she had made it her habit to let one of Roxanne's other hired hands deal with the men who gathered in the back room. She wanted no association with these young men who carried the threat of revolution in their wake.

"Another bottle!" came the cry from the table beside the fire. Eponine rolled her eyes. The group in question consisted of four soldiers and a pretty young grisette for each. The officers were chatting convivially (and increasingly loudly) with each other, and absentmindedly fondling the women hanging about them. Though it was still early in the evening, she had already pegged the group as likely candidates for unceremonious removal from the cafe once they'd gotten a few more bottles of wine inside them.

She brought them the bottle they were demanding, and was moving to return to the kitchen when she caught sight of an impossibly familiar dark head bobbing through the crowd at waist height not three feet from where she stood.

"'Vroche?" she whispered, rooted momentarily to the floor. "'Vroche!" she repeated, more loudly.

The boy turned at the sound, and sure enough it was Gavroche, dark eyes the mirror of Eponine's own widening in surprise to see her there. "What on earth are you doing in Paris?" she demanded. Before she could move an inch, he turned again and was sprinting away from her.

"Get back here!" Eponine cried, giving chase.

She had longer legs by far, but Gavroche could squeeze through the tiniest gaps in the crowd and he evaded her grasping hand easily. He moved like a bird dog, taking the most direct route to the door at the back of the commons and slipping into the hallway. Eponine almost caught up with him there, but he was once again too quick for her and she tailed him down the narrow hall.

"Come back you little sneak!" she cried. "What the hell d'you think you're doing?"

Gavroche dove through the door at the end of the hall and slammed it to behind him. Eponine crashed into the door. She tried to push it open but it was apparent that someone was holding it closed on the other side.

"Open up, you rascal!" she called, pounding repeatedly on the wood with her fist.

"No!" came her brother's boyish voice from the other side.

She kicked the door in frustration. "What are you playing at? Let me in!"

"I won't!" his yelled back stubbornly.

"I'm warning you, Gavroche, when I get in there-!" She backed up as far as the limited space in the hallway allowed and made a run at the door, hoping to push her way in through brute force.

Abruptly, the door opened, at the exact moment that Eponine came into contact with it. Not meeting with the resistance she had expected, Eponine's momentum carried her right into the room. She tumbled off her feet and landed in a heap on the floor in an inelegant pile of skirts. "Damn it 'Vroche," she groaned. "What kind of cheap trick was that?"

Eponine sat up... and found herself face-to-face with around twenty young men, all of whom were dead silent, staring at her.

A/N- Yeah... that wasn't arbitrary at all... *sarcasm hand raised* To be fair, though, do we ever meet important people in our lives in a non-embarrassing way? The stories I could tell you about how I met all my oldest friends... oh god, the horror! (Newly waxed stairs are a menace, among other things...)

Reviews are always appreciated!