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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"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..."

"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.

"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.

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.

"I know." He was so different from the others, and it was part of what had drawn her to him. "He has not done to me as all others have. He was gentle and kind, with kisses and sweet touches. There was no bad hurt with him. He did not look down upon me. He did not even care that I had been so used." She drops her head against her knees.

"I wish I could," she whispers to him, looking up after a moment. But what good were wishes? He wanted nothing to do with her, he'd made that clear. She should have taken the offer of friendship, but she was too hurt. "I wish I could a lot of things."

She looks slowly around her surroundings, at the broken glass. "Despair has plagued my steps since I can recall. I sought to push it away. You both held it at bay for a time... M'sieur, I did not seek to hurt you." But she had. And they would never believe otherwise.

Ned sighs. "That sounds like my Robb." He would not have wanted Robb to be anything less than that with a woman he took for comfort. He completely believed that his son had been kind to Eponine, enough for her to fall in love with him in spite of any lack of feelings in return.

Grimly, he stares back at Eponine, trying to call back his Lord's face. She should never see him weak again. But she does not look like the evil temptress now. She looks pitiful and miserable. Not at all content with the destruction she has caused.

"You did not seek to hurt us," Ned echoes, shaking his head. "I wonder if even you believe that of yourself." It is hard for him to. He does not know if he ever will believe otherwise, but her regret is earnest enough.

"All of this...is at your hand?" He gestures to their surroundings. "We make poor choices when we give into despair." And Ned's face twists, including himself very much in that we. "Push it away a little longer, Eponine."

Edited 2020-11-12 20:04 (UTC)

Alcohol runs through her veins more than blood now, and Eponine looks at him with a tilted head. "Believe it? No, I do. I wanted to hurt him. Not you. I did not-- M'sieur, I would have flirted with you all the same, that is how I have always done it. I wanted to give a sad man a drink. At home, and we are not in Paris, I know, this is how it would have gone as well. Drink my ale, drink in me." She's not sure how much sense her squeaking is making, but she keeps trying, reaching a hand out to touch his knee.

"I did not want to hurt you, m'sieur." She looks up at him through half-lidded, glazed eyes. "I wanted comfort and I kissed you back because you were so like him and I wanted him. I did not see I could use this to hurt him in the moment. I swear to you, on my life, tough that is not worth much when you speak to a dead girl."

She nods at the destruction. "I cannot. It is here in every shadow."

As she explains, it does not make him feel like any less of a fool and a failure of a father. She is so very earnest in the telling, though, and so artlessly brought down to this pathetic state, he is inclined to think she is telling the truth. "The saying goes, there is truth in wine," Ned says dryly, "but I do not think you care very much whether it is wine or some other spirit." Bottles of every kind lie about, empty or smashed or both. The place smells like a distillery. She looks as though she hasn't bathed in days.

He exhales. "If I were just another man, that story would suffice. We both took comfort and went our ways." Ned's eyes flicker down to where she touches his knee, nothing sensual whatsoever in that touch now. How a few days could change everything. "But I am not just another man. And whether you intended it or not, I have hurt the son that I love so dearly, in a time when he needed healing, not more wounds. You could have prevented that, and you didn't. I would rather you have simply set out to hurt me, than to keep me in the dark and let me hurt my own son that way."

A father's wish: to spare his children pain, to bear it himself instead rather than let them suffer. It is torture of the worst kind to be the one to cause it.

"It was thoughtless at best, cruel at worst, Eponine." He turns over her hand, looks at old scars and new. "Are you trying to punish yourself now for it?"

She was French. She rarely bathed.

She presses her lips together, and nods. She feels like a wounded animal, sad and unsure, not knowing if she should bite the hand offered to her or accept the comfort it provides. She wants the comfort, in the end, and she keeps her head down, subservient to the lord, the father of kings and a queen.

"You love your son," she repeats back to him with a note of wonder in her gravely voice. She smiles for a moment, though it never reaches her eyes; a broken smile. "My father- he did not love us, m'sieur. He was cruel, sold me to men for coin and favors. That is all I knew of fathers. You truly are not another man. For another man..." she looks down, her blouse gaping slightly, her scars both on her neck and chest visible, adding to the pathetic display she made. "You are better than all I have met."

She winces at the truth behind his statement. Thoughtless and cruel both, evil if you asked Robb. Thoughtless and cruel, however, such things sounded like the girl she had once been. The girl she had no longer wanted to be here. "Yes- I asked him to kill me, to use my scars to guide his blade. But he would not. And so I live, for it is what I deserve."

Ned bites his lip. It is an old familiar story. It never gets any easier to hear it. And it never makes that instinct diminish, to protect where he could, to fill the gap left by men who failed not just once but over and over. Part of him doesn't want to feel sorry for her, but that other, stronger part of him wins out.

His eyes trace the path of the scars. He can't keep the concern out of his gaze, much as he'd like to maintain the stony facade. The truth gets to him in a way that flirtation illusions could not. He wonders if this was the Eponine that Robb had seen, and been kind to, enough to win her heart without asking for it. But Robb hasn't seen the lifetime of girls with that same story that Ned has. He hasn't yet been a father to daughters, an experience that makes it impossible for Ned to understand how any father could possibly be desperate enough to sell his own daughter.

"I am glad he did not listen to you," he says, lightly, almost gently. "Living is a good first step."

From his crouch, he finds a careful seat on the floor and brushes away any broken glass between them before drawing Eponine by the hand. "Come, sit by me." She cannot stay hunkered under the table forever. "I think you've punished yourself enough. You say you wish you could do many things. Tell me."

"I wish he had," she says, looking curiously at his hand. She hesitates, but the thought of kindness outweighs the thought that she will be within striking distance of the man. Eventually, she nods and climbs out from under the table, crawling to sit next to him.

She leans when she sits, struggling to keep herself upright. Drinks made her want to lay down, made gravity all that much more heavy upon her frail shoulders. She watches him, and sways slightly.

"No- I have not. I would have others punish me if I could. If you wish you may strike me. I do not care. It is less than I deserve." She hated herself, now more than ever before.

What she wished to do... That was a long list. But she supposes there's a place to start. "I wish I could have the life he told me of. Such beautiful dresses he gifted me, the dancing, the sweet kisses and words. This place was his as much as it was mine." She gestures to the space around them. "It was his idea. Down to the name. I wish he could love me. I wish I could be loveable. I wish I were not cruel and hateful and evil. I wish I could be the wife he wanted. He... He knew I was not her. That I could never be her. I was born to an innkeeper and his wife, took refuge on the streets of our capital. I am not the girl a king like him would love. A pauper, to his prince."

The arm he puts around her shoulders is purely to keep her from swaying, falling, and hitting her head on glass/the floor/a table leg/all of the hazards. He accomplishes this basic goal, at least. She stays upright, and if it is a more careful touch as before, it is at least not the strike she offers him.

"I do not wish," Ned says. She almost seems to welcome the idea. He draws his knees up toward his chest and lets his arm draw her closer, close enough to lean against his side as she tells her story.

He sees it as she's seen it. It is no less true because it is only her perspective, limited as it is. It was true to her. She believed herself wooed, treasured, cared for. Loved. He offered her not only hope but the sort of life any girl would want, and the life a girl like Eponine would only have ever dreamed about. He is quiet while she speaks, staring at the floor, listening to her wishes. To be more than what Robb had called her, what Ned himself had believed her capable of. She is so young, to be so broken and used by the world. He thinks that it is probably the only way she knows. To use, as she has been used.

His heart softens, his face with it. He cannot hold onto the anger, no more than he could hold onto the impenetrable exterior. She wants to be loveable. As she believed she was with Robb.

Deeply, Ned sighs. "Had you been a princess, Eponine, beautiful and rich and kind and clever, Robb still would not have thought to give his heart to you. Once given, it is forever. He told me as much." He shakes his head. "That does not make you unloveable. Those things he said about you...they aren't true. They were said in anger, as you no doubt have said things in anger." He thinks of Jeyne, peacemaker Jeyne to calm the hot-headed Tully temper of Robb's, and does not tell Eponine that she and Robb would have been wrong for each other anyways.

He finds himself stroking the side of her arm with his fingers. "It is not pleasant, letting a dream die." He speaks with the voice of experience. "Mourn what you must. But let yourself have a good life even without him. What is stopping you?"

She tenses when he reaches a hand toward, her, only softening when he wraps it around her. She moves against him automatically, leaning against his side, accepting his warmth once more. She realizes now how big he is, compared to her petite stature. She is still but paper-thin flesh and sharply-angled bones.

She sniffles when he speaks. He seems to understand things that she cannot, able to put those thoughts into words, and she's thankful for it. "They aren't?" She asks, lifting her head. "He- he has only said what others have. That is how I knew he spoke the truth to me." She cries softly, not bothering now to wipe her eyes, her cheeks too raw from the salt.

"I have buried so many dreams, m'sieur. Too many of love. I fear what will happen, should I dare hope again... And I do not fear anything." At least, that was what she had told her father the last time she'd seen him.

She feels even smaller now, after days of drinking and probably not eating and perhaps throwing up whatever she drank or ate. Ned holds her slight frame against him, conscious now of her frailty in a way he hadn't been that night. It feels worlds away now. He's almost grateful he's not tempted to lust after her in this state. It's easier to keep his promise to Robb that way.

He looks at Eponine, at her red-rimmed eyes and streaming cheeks. "No. I do not think so. I think you would not mourn so if it were true. You would be happy you had hurt him; it would be a victory, and you would be celebrating now. Clearly, that is not so."

His hand on her shoulder is gentle, soothing. There is understanding in his voice. "He was not the first dream you have buried. It was brave of you to try again. Even if you loved a man who had no heart left to give you. You will know for next time." How can he blame her for loving Robb, or for being hurt at his dismissal of her, when he knows the kind of man Robb is? They would never have had a chance, but Eponine could not have known that.

Ned hopes very much that she is not deceiving him in this, and that his instincts guide him truly this time. Sober, at least, is a good start. "You will be happy again, Eponine. A heart like yours cannot help but love, somewhere." Without it...she might indeed fall into despair again.

She leans against him further, nearly collapsing against the warm wall that was Ned Stark. She did not feel for him, either, the way she had that night. She did not wish to kiss him or anything. She only wished for his understanding and approval. That he believe her.

"I have loved two men with hearts that belong to others more beautiful than I." Marius and Cosette would live together happily ever after. Robb and Jeyne would here, now, too. "It hurts so much to see them happy with someone who isn't me. Knowing it will never be me. That I was not enough." She'd always been told that in life, so why would death be any different?

"I was not happy when I was alive. I hoped to find it here. But an unhappy death is what I deserve."

"I do not think it was a matter of beauty, Eponine. You have plenty of your own." Ned glances wryly at her where she's tucked against his shoulder. Brittle, reeking of alcohol, and sunken red eyes. He's very sure she would not Robb to see her like this. "At least, under normal conditions." He smooths a lock of her hair back. "You will be enough when it is the right man, and not someone else's."

A long breath, considering all that she's told him thus far. There does not seem to be any easy answer. And her despair was as true as any other part of the tale.

"Even criminals deserve a good death," Ned observes. "I still remember each of them I have given. I have looked men in the eye that deserved death." And he looks down into her eyes, swollen with tears and debauchery, and there is only compassion in his own. "You don't belong with them. There is yet time for you to alter your course and be happy."

"I am a criminal," she tells him, meeting his eyes. Ice grey where his sons had been blue. Gingerly, she touches the tattoo on her ankle, the one forced upon her when she entered the women's prison.

"I have done terrible things to people- as you yourself know." But he seems to mean it, from what she can tell through her alcohol induced haze.

"Do you think there will be a right man here?" It was her last stop, before venturing down further than the bottom of the sea, into the very pits of hell that awaited her.

"That does not surprise me," says Ned gravely, but with the faintest spark in the ice grey to convey his amusement at her confession. The tattoo must be connected to her illicit past.

"It is good that you recognize now that they were terrible," and Ned isn't convinced she wouldn't again, given the right motivation, but after all, she is/i> trying, in her own way and as best she could in her inebriated state. "A criminal who was irredeemable would either not know or not care."

The arm around her shoulder squeezes gently. "Do you need that hope of love so badly? Would comfort not suffice?" Comfort wherever she chose to take it. Other than in his own bed, now.

Very illicit.

She looks back up at him, eyes big and brown, ringed with red and swollen. She nods. "I have not often had either," she admits. "There was no comfort for me in Paris. No warm beds- we burned books for warmth, no shoes upon our feet. Any comfort that befell me was ripped away by the same who would give it."

"You think me redeemable?"

That, too, is an old story, the oldest. It explains the frailness, the hunger for something beautiful and luxurious, the fairytale of a King to love her. "Hm." Ned looks his understanding, the ice of his former anger all melted into forbearance. "You have everything you need here; they do not let us lack for anything. You could live like a princess here, by many standards."

Redeemable. Were not most people? Dryly, Ned chuckles. "I would say so, but I do not know all these terrible things that you have done. Perhaps you have violated all the sacred tenets of my faith, and the gods will be angry with me for fraternizing with you." He says it clearly in jest, not removing himself from such blasphemous company.

A gesture at her ankle, where she'd glanced when he'd said that word, criminal. "You have been punished already?"

She lifts up her skirts just a little bit, so that he can see the odd flower-shaped tattoo. "Yes, m'sieur. I have spent time in prison-- I was arrested for prostitution. The man I was with at the time disappeared leaving me to face the wrath of Javert alone." The name Javert would mean nothing to Ned, but it was well known in San Michel.

"I have killed a man, and nearly another. Another- I bit his cock off. I have stolen a good man things, from bread to books. Lied, certainly." She scratches at the tattoo. "I hurt a boy and his father both. Do these break your tenets?"

Neither tattoo nor name mean anything to Ned, but he can put it together with her story and alleged crime and piece out what it means. He shakes his head. "Of all things to punish a woman for, that must be the worst. You have suffered for things that were no crimes. Slavery - trapped in such work - it is condemned by my gods."

Without comment, he listens to her name her other sins. He had come here today to reproach, not hear confessions, yet he finds himself in the oddest position of playing confidante to his son's bedwarmer. (After fucking her on the counter ten feet away, no less.)

It is the most recent crime that earns a low, short exhale. It is a small thing, amongst that list, but the one that hits closest to home, of course. Ned's hand curls at her shoulder. "No," he says quietly. "All of them redeemable. I forgive what is mine to forgive."

She looks up at him with bright eyes, shiny with new tears. It's a new look on her face, making her look her eighteen years, rather than some ghoul or skeletal creature lurking in the dark. She hadn't considered what she had been forced to do slavery. That was what happened to convicts such as herself. At least, as a woman, she was spared the chain gang as her father had not been.

Somehow he had escaped, but that was another story for another night.

"You do?" She asks, and grabs his hands, holding the together, hers over his, folded as if in prayer. "You forgive me, m'sieur?" She knows Robb will not, and does not fault him. There needs to be no forgiveness on his part. "Oh, thank you! Thank you! It is to you I will pray, not to a god that has never smiled upon me!" She laughs lighter now, the sort of laugh that Robb would have easily drawn from her.

She looks so young, so suddenly hopeful, Ned feels sudden shame that he has ever taken advantage of such a vulnerable shell. Even if she would not have seen it as any advantage taken. She had been a whore, and it had been a form of slavery to her. Those dancing eyes had no doubt captivated dozen of men, but how many had she actually wanted?

Her sudden joy catches him off-guard. He nods confirmation. He forgives her, freely. Her adoration is something he does not expect. He blinks at her. "I need no prayers, Eponine. Just a promise that you will try to seek a better way here."

Her hands are much smaller than his, and her strength no match, and he easily slips her hands free and captures them in return. "But a benevolent god feeds his children, does he not? What is your favorite food here?" Ned eyes her bony shoulders, her jutting collarbones, the outthrust ankle. When was the last time she ate? Surely not soon.

"I will," she promises him with great earnest. "I have started to, with this place. I looked forward to working here, talking with those that came in- you saw!" She was a very good proprietress.

"Oh, I will eat anything, m'sieur. But perhaps bread with cheese- melted between the thin slices? They call it a grilled cheese, and put it all over. Sometimes it comes with a tomato soup. I do like that greatly." She hadn't realized how hungry she was until now, her stomach giving a rumble. "I have coin for you, in the register." She moves to try to get some, but it takes a moment, and she wavers in place before trying again.

"I will get there."

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help there's been a murder. my FEELINGS ARE DEAD.

Rest in pieces, feels

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