thesphererp | Éponine Memshare 2

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Éponine Memshare 2

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.

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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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

You could have, in time.

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

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.

I would have waited. I would have waited until the ends of the earth. I loved you. As much as her, maybe more. I stood by and held you as you cried for her. It hurt then, and it hurts more now.

I want you to hurt like that. Then I will accept your amends.

You loved an idea of me. I'm not that man and I don't want you to wait for that man to appear. You would have resented me in time and spent too much time worrying about my inability to give you what you wanted. You were already worried, we both know it.

You want me to suffer, that is fair. I hurt you. It doesn't change my remorse.

A King cannot love a commoner. It is too much a fairy story. I should have known that.

I do. I want you to hurt like I do. I want you to hurt when someone you care for seeks the bed of another.

Kings can love commoners, but I'm not a king anymore and my heart is elsewhere. It has nothing to do with who or what you are, Eponine.

I have hurt, but not for that reason and I still hurt for the weight of my actions. That will have to be enough.

It is not enough.

How is your father?

He's well.

Why?

He had much to drink the other night. So much so he tasted like whiskey.

[...No...]

Tasted?

Yes. He gives such sweet kisses.

[She's in her dome and he knows it. He doesn't bother knocking, only going in, calm despite this because there is a chance she's lying. He keeps near the door, not preferring to move close to her, his arms crossed against his chest.]

Say it then. What did you do?

Or are you lying to try and hurt me?

[She didn't want him in here anymore. It was a reminder that she needed to change the lock. Or at least the access.]

The same thing you did. My heart was broken, and so I took another into my bed and drowned in kisses and whiskey.

[She crosses her own arms, much smaller than him, but showing no fear.]

[It's a blow, but not in the way she might gain satisfaction from. It didn't hurt him that she took another to her bed. It disgusted him that it was his father. It was the sort of action a Lannister might take, given their penchant for incest.

Looking at her now, he doesn't see the girl he hurt. He sees someone twisted enough to use his father, a good man, and then rub his nose in it.

He shakes his head, letting out a slow breath.]

You used him.

Non. Not anymore than either of you used me.

[She looks at him pointedly. She knew now she had been a tool to him. Someone to pass the time with until his wife arrived.]

He kissed me first.

You knew he was, the sort of man he is. You plied him with drink and then you took advantage of his grief.

[How else is he supposed to take it? He was wrong and had used her, but it seemed now this was intentional. He would take responsibility for his actions, but she was not as innocent as she pretended.

He had to chuckle at the deviousness of it, even as his body recoiled completely from her.]

It's disgusting and crazed. I would accept you hitting me, screaming at me and cursing me. But this? This is a level of insanity I only saw in evil men.

Disgusting and crazed! [He has not seen crazed yet. She laughs.] You are not the first man to call the woman he has hurt crazy. He came into my bar looking for you, and I gave him a drink as he had asked! [he'd had pretzels, too.]

He did the same you did! You Stark men-- no, all men, all alike! Your mother, Robb, is not here. Your mother, Robb, is dead, like you and me and your wife! The vow is till death and you have both died! So now we live! Did you not expect me to find another who could fulfill me?

[He's shaking in his anger, but he won't move and he won't stalk closer. He may be a number of things, but he is not someone who will hit a woman, no matter how she might act.]

It doesn't matter if my mother is here or not! He is my father! [That had to be the most galling. How disgusting it was that she bedded them both, well aware of it.] It may be 'till death' in your world, but in mine, it is until my last day. My days have not ended, not while I'm here. Even if you want to believe I'm not beholden to her, she will always be the woman I love! Nothing changes that, whether she was here or not!

Find who you want, I don't care. The fact you used him...

[He scoffs.]

You killed any remorse I had with this. You wonder why I didn't love you, it's because this was always lurking in you.

[No. No. He says his piece and the world shatters under her, sending her downward into the darkest pits of hell. She can hear her blood in her ears as she looks at this man- this man she loved- and listened to him say such hateful things. If there weren't already tear in her eyes, there are now as she forces air into her lungs.

He didn't love her. Couldn't love her. It didn't matter if Jeyne was there or not. Because his heart had belonged to another and she'd sought to steal it.

She laughs again, her smile not reaching her eyes as she lets it bubble up from her stomach, bursting out through lips she'd had wrapped around both these Stark men.] Oh! [She gasps, shaking her head.] And do you know what made me this way? The actions of men. Men who professed themselves to be good and kind! But those men- men like you- are the worst of all.

[She laughs once more, looking him up and down, then spits at his feet.] In France, we have killed our kings. Westeros would do well to do the same. [She smirks.] The North certainly did.

[He's convinced that she's crazed. It didn't matter whether or not he was responsible for some of this, and he was, he knew that. He had made a mistake taking her to bed and Sansa knew it. She had sensed there was something wrong with Eponine and he hadn't seen it. He had only seen her sweetness, her desire to be loved. But that desire had gone into an obsession and that obsession now had managed to wreck his life.

He frowned at her swipe, laughing harshly in return.]

Aye, I was a shit king and I was killed by men more ruthless than I was. In the end, the ones who deserved the crown earned it. I didn't want to be king and now I'm not. I have what I wanted in my life.

In the end, you are the reason that you are alone and lonely. You act out when you don't get what you want. That's not a woman anyone can love.

Éponine Memshare 2

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