There was a sum of twenty sous singing merrily from her pocket and a smile upon her face. Twenty sous she'd stolen from passing strangers, yes, but it was enough to buy a few meals if she budgeted it well, and there would be perhaps some left over to buy M'sieur Marius some candles or a pen if she cut back on her share. (Food could be filched, but favour needed currying.) She skipped down Rue Dauphine, very conscious of the coins pressed flat against the palm of her hand.
It wasn't often she had this much money, and certainly not often she had enough of it to spend on something other than food, and she wanted to make sure she spent it well.
M'sieur Marius had once told her he had a wealthy grandfather, but that he broke with him because of a 'difference in ideology,' and it had left him without money. Éponine couldn't fathom it. to have money, and to willingly give it up — she didn't believe she could ever. No, coin was far too precious a commodity to waste on squabbles.
If Éponine had a wealthy grandfather, she wouldn't give him up for the world. She'd have dresses the kind she often saw pretty ladies wearing, all pink and purple with the large sleeves that rustled pleasantly like the autumn wind as it brushed past the oak trees. She'd have food that was hot, and rich, and filling. And she could wake up warm, surrounded by silk pillows (she didn't really know what silk felt like, except that rich ladies wore it) instead of cold, hounded by the predawn chill.
And anyway, grandfathers were family. Papa always told her that family looked out for each other; family stuck together. Family never split apart. (Of course, this was after 'Vroche had left, and she was the only child Papa could enlist to go on his trips with the Patron-Minette, but if it meant that Éponine was treasured, that she could be adored, that she had some utility to someone, somewhere, she would never question this line of reasoning.)
Bells jingled when she pushed open the door to the bookstore she knew Marius and his friends often frequented, and she stepped inside, a little wary. Éponine lingered in the doorway, half-expecting someone to come to hurry her out of the respectable establishment, but no one came. So she slipped between two bookshelves and tried to disappear.
Éponine was only here for a pen, but being in the company of so many books made her feel so very small, so stupid. ("I could have read these," Éponine whispered to herself, but her world was populated by shadows and regrets where in every corner lurked the gaunt corpses of could haves and would haves and should haves, which were worn thin with much perusal. She was proud of her half-literacy - it made her special in the midst of her peers, and it had impressed Monsieur Marius the first time they'd met — but it had rusted away, corroded to nothing but an ability to read a smattering of words from children's stories, and no need to write much. And when she stood in the company of learnéd people like Marius, she felt so clumsy and ungraceful, even as he stood and smiled and helped coax the words from her throat and never once made fun of her.)
"You're Marius' friend," someone behind her remarked.
She turned to see first in front of her a heavy, leather-bound book, and then farther upwards the smiling face of Monsieur Enjolras. (Did he remember? But no, he would not. Men never remembered the way their hands grabbed.) Éponine bit back her words and shrunk into the shelf.
"I would never dare to presume," she deferred. (Oh but how she dared, how far she dared to dream beyond mere friendship!)
M'sieur Enjolras laughed — a soft, almost voiceless gasp of air. "You give yourself far too little credit, mademoiselle," he said gently. "If Marius did not consider you a friend of his, he would never have brought you to our meetings, and I should certainly have not allowed you to stay."
"You've seen me at your meetings?" she wanted to say. "I am not invisible, then?" but she was fighting back a smile of delight at the way he called her mademoiselle. It had been a long time since someone had addressed her like that, and it gave her a secret, burning thrill. Even M'sieur Marius had stopped using it, calling her 'Ponine' instead, which was as distancing in its fraternity as it was heartening in its familiarity, and made her feel as if she were all of ten again.
But it was much in the nature of Éponine to shy away from those things that brought her joy, lest they be taken away from her, or used to hurt her, so she looked instead at the book he held between his slender fingers. "Can you understand all that, sir?" she questioned, letting some of her awe bleed into her voice.
He looked down at his book.
"Not all of it," he admitted. "Some of it's quite dense, you see, and i have trouble understanding. but I fancy I can get through most of it without too debilitating a headache."
"Can you?" he asked, after a pause. "read, that is?"
"Yes," she said, with a proud toss of her head. "My papa taught me when I was just five, you know. and I learned to count when I was three."
"How impressive."
Éponine shrugged. "Make fun of you all you want, m'sieur, but it means a great deal to me."
"I assure you, mademoiselle, I wasn't being facetious — I wasn't making fun of you. I never learned my numbers until I was five at least, and I refused to read until my father gave me a sound lashing and told me that I would be the shame of his household."
"Oh." Placated, Éponine turned and smoothed down the front of her coat. She felt the awkward silence pressing on her from all side with the sort of claustrophobia she felt only when she was down in the sewers with her papa until, just as the young man was about to turn away, she cried — "I want you to teach me to read."
"Not—" she was quick to add, "That I can't read, just that it's been a little while since I've last read, and i'm scared that perhaps I don't know as much as I used to, and surely it'd be easier to remember if someone were to help me and —"
"Could you not ask Marius?"
She shook her head with a ferocity that almost took it off. "I couldn't. Not for the world."
(Cognes, c-o-g-n-e-s; look, I'm not like the rest of them, monsieur. (Please, you there with the lovely eyes and the expensive pocketwatch, be my prince and rescue me.))
"So you do not hold me in as high esteem as you do Pontmercy, then?" he asked lightly, a half smile warming the cold features of his face.
Her answer was direct. "No, I do not."
(The smile widens into something rather beautiful.) "Regardless, mademoiselle, a lady of the revolution ought to be able read those words that give her power."
Well-satisfied, Éponine grinned, an impish little quirk of the lips that gave to her, if only for a brief moment, the blush of youth again.
Perhaps she would get M'sieur Marius his pen another time.