Éponine Memshare 2

[jondrette]

Night had fallen over the streets of Paris, lit only by lamplight. There was no sound, save the soft breath of a wind, wafting through flowers and vines. On one side of the the gate, the side closest to the large house on Rue Plummet, was a beautiful garden which contained a small bench. The bench was perfect for sitting on and thinking, or watching the world turn. She’d noticed her sitting there, often, a book in her lap. She was a smart girl, then, Eponine thought of the young woman. Smart, educated. Beautiful. 

 

All things Eponine Thenardier would never be. 

 

The girl was there tonight, but she was not the focus of Eponine’s dark gaze. No, through the leaves, Eponine kept her eyes on the man that sat beside her. He was tall and skinny, handsome with his freckles and beautiful hair she longed to run her hands through. He was smart, too, a student of the law, and his political interests aligned with her own. She had no idea that the young gentleman’s father had been saved by her own, and that irony would never be known to her, even when she bled out in his arms. 

 

But that was some months away. Tonight, Eponine watched. She watched near every night now, putting her own sleep aside for the chance to look at him in his dark green coat. In the darkness, his coat matched the black dress of his beloved. She couldn’t hear what they were saying, but she didn’t care. Certainly they were professing their love for one another, planning on how to start their lives, unaware that the girl who had brought them together still stood sentinel.

 

She should have looked away, gone back home, found a bottle and Montparnasse and drowned her sorrows with drinks and then fucked the pain away as she so often did with her favorite criminal. But she didn’t. She stood there and watched, thinking of how Cosette, the girl who sat beside her Monsieur Marius, had ruined everything. 

 

She remembered her, of course. How could she forget the girl who had been taken away by the man in the yellow coat that Christmas? Eponine had gotten a cat that year, she remembered. A cat her father had since dashed against the wall. It was after Cosette had been taken away, stolen, as her parents said, that the Thenardiers lost their money, their inn, and were forced to find a place to live and work in Paris. It was because of Cosette and her father that she had fallen into poverty, that she had been used and abused for so long. 

 

Eponine places both her hands on the bars of their gate, watching the two lovers. How funny, that her neighbor, the one she had fallen in love with, had run into the very same woman that had destroyed her family as she had known it. She smiles, watching them, her lips curled in a strange sort of look that didn’t reach her eyes. Around her, rain began to fall, painting the cobblestones silver in the lamplight. She pulled her thread-bare shawl about her naked shoulders, never daring move, no matter how much hunger gnawed at her stomach. 

 

The hunger pains were no match for how her heart and stomach twisted as she watched the young lovers bask in each other’s eyes. No one would ever look at her that way, she knew in that instant. Not Marius, not Montparnasse, no one.

 

She would spend however little of her life was left completely and utterly alone.

Comments

[kingnamedstark]

[He's well aware he's followed the footsteps of her neighbor, down to being able to reciprocate her love. This does add to his guilt, making him wish he'd not taken her that night. At least they could have remained friends and she would have been spared the hurt of his inability to return her love.]

I'm sorry.

[jondrette]

No you're not. You have your Queen. Why should you spare a thought my way?

[kingnamedstark]

I am sorry to hurt you. I shouldn't have let things go so far. I was selfish and it wasn't fair to you or our friendship.

[jondrette]

We were never friends. A girl like me, we do not have friends. We are certainly not friends with kings and queens.

[She's beyond hurt. She'd found happiness here, and it was ripped away. Robb's father had only filled that void for that night, and now she was alone again.]

I was your whore. Nothing more. I see that now.

[kingnamedstark]

We were friends, Eponine, as far as I am concerned. You are not a whore. This was my mistake, not yours. I behaved badly and took things to a place it should not have gone. I was wrong and hurt your feelings in the process.

I was selfish in my grief.

[jondrette]

And your nightmares?

I still have them. It's very funny, you see, King Robb. It is not Marius' who's arms I die in anymore. No, it is yours.

[kingnamedstark]

My nightmares will never go away, but I can't hide from them. I've been wallowing too long in my grief. That won't help me and it wastes the life I've been given.

I need to move forward.

I'm sorry the nightmares still plague you. I'm sorry there is nothing I can do.

[jondrette]

Of course. There is nothing for you to grieve here, now you are surrounded by your family. But living as you did before? That is a true waste of your life.

I do not believe you.

[kingnamedstark]

I know it's easy for me to say it with what I have, but it doesn't make it less true. Drowning on a bottle, relying on it to get through my day, that isn't how I should live and I knew it at the time. I was weak and craven.

I mean the words, Eponine.

[jondrette]

Then what does that make me? Already trying to fill the hole in my chest. I thought one bullet through my heart was enough. Now I have two. Next time, use your sword.

You have killed me, King.

[kingnamedstark]

I'm sorry, but this was never fair for you, even if my family didn't arrive. I couldn't give you what you wanted. It was wrong of me and I don't know how to make amends.

[jondrette]

You could have, in time.

I do not want your amends. Not today. Not from you.

[kingnamedstark]

It wouldn't be fair to wait for a day that might never come. You should have someone who cherishes you, not someone whose heart is elsewhere. You have that chance here. This isn't Paris and you are different woman than you were there.

For Ned

[jondrette]

The Tavern has been closed for several days, the sign on the door refusing to say otherwise. For those several days, the young proprietress has been inside. On the first day, she raged. She screamed and threw everything she could, shattering mirrors and bottles. She yelled as loud and as long as she could until her voice was hoarse and then she yelled more. She cursed the Stark name, removing his name from any sort of deeds, the drink named for his wolf no longer available.

As she raged, she cried, and she drank. She drank everything she hadn't smashed, and then smashed what she had drank. She could hardly speak, but it didn't matter. She had no one to speak to. Her voice could resort to its hoarse, brittle tones, cobwebbed from lack of use.

As she cried and drank, she thought. She thought long and hard about everything that had been said to her. The cruel words Robb had angled at her. She was unloveable, disgusting, crazed. It was her fault. All of it. She had used a man that was supposed to be a good man. It hadn't even been her plan when he walked in. She had wanted to pour him a drink and get to know her beloved's father, but opportunity arose and she had taken it. She'd taken it and felt good for one moment, and now it was gone.

She'd ruined everything. Including her tavern.

Alone, she laid in a booth, surrounded by empty bottles, tears drying on her cheeks. Perhaps she will find death again. And if she woke, she would not be here. She would be nowhere. Well and truly dead.

[ulfur]

Barely a week of having his son back, and it was all in shambles. Ned curses his own weakness and, sometimes, the woman who had knowingly lured him there. It was not even for his own sake that he cursed her cunning, but for Robb's. Not hurt, Robb had claimed, yet he had been hurt enough to draw away from his father who had yielded to that same weakness.

After seeing Robb daily this week in this strange world, Ned misses it deeply. He finds himself on the streets of the merchant dome more than ever, taking in the sights there, distracting himself from what the memories in his head and in others' offered.

He did not try to go back to the tavern. Did not seek out Eponine again. He'd promised it wouldn't happen again. And he kept his promises. His son was so much more important than some manipulative woman, however good the sex had been.

But there is a splintered hole in the tinted window in the front of the tavern that is, after all, half Robb's. Ned frowns and pushes open the door.

Disaster. It looks like a keep ransacked in a battle. He sweeps it all in a glance, heart in his throat, still remembering Jeyne's dream. The only living figure he finds amidst all the destruction is...Eponine.

He slams the door behind him. "Where is Robb?" His son was so angry, so hurt, he hadn't tried to see him for several days. He assumes the worst. He's already reaching for the button behind his ear. "I swear, if you hurt him..."

[jondrette]

The door slams and she jumps up, her eyes darting around wildly, blearily. She spots the angry man in her doorway, and she raises her hands already in surrender. He was so angry. She did not know what he was capable of- he was a great warrior she knew, but men were dangerous creatures.

His accusation feels like another bullet sent through her core. Hurt him? Hurt Robb? She holds herself up on a table, struggling to stand.

"No," she whispers, as she looks up at him. "I would not-- not him." She'd hurt him plenty with her words and actions. And her fist- her knuckles bruised. She uses that same hand to grab another bottle and raises it to her lips to drink, but the bottle is empty. "He does not work here anymore. He will not see me. Go, let me be." She turns from him.

[ulfur]

Ned doesn't have to have a weapon to radiate dangerous wrath. He will not hit a woman. Unless she has harmed his son. And then he has no problem taking swift justice. Robb has already died once. No more. Not at another treacherous woman's hands. There were so many Freys there, that night, in Jeyne's dreams. So many daughters who made that night possible. His wife, his son, his grandchild. Gone, because nobody did anything.

"You would and you did," he tells her grimly. "Or tried to. Thank the gods, he did not care. Only wanted rid of you and your treacherous ways."

He turns away from the sight of her reaching fruitlessly for empty bottles. They were everywhere. The destruction complete.

A discreet message sent. Robb? Are you all right?

"How did it get like this?" Ned demands. "What happened?"

[jondrette]

Eponine sets the bottle down and it clatters to the side uselessly. Heavy eyes watch him look at her. She has seen faces like his before so often in her life. Only this time she does not have it in her to fight.

"He is right to be rid of me," she tells him, her voice hardly above a whisper. She's screamed and cried so long and so hard it will take days to get her voice back.

"I did this," she says, looking down now at her bare feet amongst the broken glass. "Hitting him in his pretty face was not enough- the hurt should have been my own." Her shoulders are up near her ears with tension, bracing herself. She knows what men are capable of, and she would not blame him.

[ulfur]

It would be easy to count her as just another whore, ruined in dissolution. But there were really no such women, were there? Just a string of Eponines, drawn into these depths by some means or other. A penniless father, a faithless lover. A lord or king who left her with a bastard. Ned curses under his breath.

"You do him no good."

It is no more than the truth. She has done this. All the destruction. Ned himself complicit in his own weakness, needing some glimpse of joy in this darkness, but she is not innocent either.

Hitting him. A heavy step towards her. His face tells all. How dare she raise her hand to his son. And she already braces for the blow in return.

Ned stays his stride, fists clenched by his sides. "Why did you hit him?" Tell him. Tell him the truth.

[jondrette]

She swallows thickly. "Yes," she agrees. She'd done nothing good for her handsome king. And now she'd hurt him beyond repair, and she cursed his name as much as she wished to cry it with pleasure.

"He said I was unloveable." Not in so many words, but the thought was there. "Crazed and disgusting. He called me evil." She can hear the words so clear, playing over and over again. She longs to block the words out, but so far nothing has helped.

"I hit him for he was not wrong." She had always said she was a devil. That she was destined for hell, an awful person. Now at last someone saw her for who she truly was.

[ulfur]

What was truth, what was lies? Ned can't tell anymore.

"He might tell a different story." And guess whose story Ned would believe? He is disgusted too. With himself, most of all. For falling it. With her, for trying to hurt Robb this way. For using him as the weapon.

He knows, too, Robb is even more black-and-white than he is. The suit of armor that is Stark honor, Robb clads himself in daily. Ned's, occasionally, is left at home. 

A hand rubbed over his face. "Why?" It is the why that matters. "Why did you want to hurt him so?" Why use me to do it? 

[jondrette]

"He might. But I am not lying. I've no reason to do so; what he said was true." Eponine looks back up at him with her dark eyes.

"Because I am hurt. We laid together over six months." Longer than his marriage to Jeyne, certainly. "He... He made me feel beautiful, Ned. He was kind and handsome, not the sort of men I have lain with before. He has a good laugh and kind eyes, beautiful hair I wish I could touch again. He held me tight against nightmares, and listened to my story. He did not judge all I had been through. I thought he loved me..." She sniffles, rubbing her nose with the back of her hand. "He did not tell me otherwise. He left me with nightmares of my death, of my life, and he left me alone." She hangs her head again as she cries softly.

"I thought he would be different..."

[ulfur]

"I did not think you were those things," says Ned, bitterly. "I hope he did not say those things. I hope they are not true."

He sees those dark eyes and looks away quickly. A muscle in his jaw works. It is not comfortable, knowing he was played for a fool. But it is a sharp knife in the ribs to know it was done so that he could hurt his own son.

It is not comfortable, hearing the honesty in her confession to him. He could even hear genuine love in the midst of all that destruction. He knows how Robb could easily inspire such a love. Kind, good, generous with his protection. Unguarded in his heart, and in others'. Truthful, earnest, fiercely devoted. He was not like other men. He was how Ned had shaped him. A woman could easily love such a man.

Jeyne had. And she had captured that 

"Did you know he was married? That he still loved his wife?"

Did it matter? Robb believed they were both married yet. Ned glances at the ruined bar, the counter scattered with broken glass. It had not mattered to him, the night he'd truly felt himself alone here, knowing Catelyn might never come back to him. 

"Did he make you promises?" Ned knows that will be a lie, at least.

[jondrette]

"Yes. His death- I saw it, in his memories. I went to him that night, as every night, and held him tight. I kissed his tears away. I never thought she would come here. Never." She rubs her forehead, still holding on to the table.

"I was married, too. A man so unlike him. Montparnasse. I did not love him, I loved another. I thought it was surely like that for him. That he could love her then and me now." Her shoulders weigh a thousand pounds.

"He called me a lady, promised me a crown." They had discussed his at length and she had wanted her own one, beautiful where his had been utilitarian. "He was so- so good to me..." Her voice breaks and it's a heart-wrenching sound, her voice hardly more than a squeak. Slowly, Eponine folds in on herself, coming to sit below the table, her knees pulled up to her chest, crying silently.

[ulfur]

She'd given Robb comfort, whether out of the goodness of her heart or simply because she wanted him there with her or some combination thereof. She'd eased him in the moment, even if it tormented Robb tenfold now. If only Ned could believe that she'd done that with only the good intentions. He knows now her own form of comfort to him that night at the bar had been a knife she'd put into his very hands. It sickens him, but unlike Robb, he cannot bring himself to heap more upon the pathetic girl who reeks of alcohol and sorrow.

Ned crosses his arms, frowning. "Robb holds his vows differently than other men. He is not like the others, as you know." 

The sight she makes, huddled in a fetal position, looking completely broken, wars in his chest with the betrayal of turning son against father. He looks away, mutters a curse. He thinks of Cersei's bruised face. Of the girl even younger than this one, abandoned in the brothel with the King's babe. Ned rubs his face. 

In spite of everything, he can't keep his heart hardened. He crouches before her, elbows on his knees. "You cannot drown away love. Nor break it. As you have seen." The glass that litters the floor like blood on a battlefield. "But despair will not last forever." 

It had, though, for the woman he'd loved and let go.