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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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."

"I saw," says Ned, wholly ironically, but without casting any damper on her earnest enthusiasm with any mulling over the past. "I think you should continue on just so. Meet a great deal of new people." Heavy eyebrows raise delicately at her. "Kiss some pretty men." Take her own advice. Enjoy herself, and forget Robb.

He hasn't had the food she names. But it sounds good, and he thinks he recognizes it from the menu of the cafe he's frequented with Robb. "Nevermind that," and Eponine isn't going anywhere. Ned's grip is unwavering. "I'll get it. If you insist on being a businesswoman of means, you may treat next time."

And so they sit on the floor amidst the graveyard of broken glass as he orders via text the way that Sansa or Inesa has surely taught him from the restaurants in the merchant dome. Two grilled cheeses with tomato soup. When that is accomplished, Ned unfolds himself up to standing and draws Eponine up with him, at least into the booth that she'd been laying in. "It will help restore your strength, soon enough." She will have much to do, getting the tavern back to working order, but he doesn't mention that. Just tucks her into the leather-like bench and sits next to her so she doesn't fall over. Laying down really never helps anything.

Eponine blushes and laughs, looking down. "Yes. Perhaps I will. But I will choose them better. No one's father, no one's son." It's a bitter sort of remark, but she says it lightly.

"Then the next time you come to find me, I shall treat you. Or to drinks here, I was true in that." She did love treating people when they needed it. And when she were able.

She lets him help her up, shuffles into the booth. With a heavy sigh, she leans against both the wall and the table itself simultaneously. "I have not eaten in days. At home, in Paris, it would be weeks. I have already lost the ability to not eat." But drinking? That was something she needed every day. She had tasted withdrawal earlier, and had no intentions of returning to it.

"Every man is someone's son," Ned points out, able to jest about it now. "And many are current or future fathers. But still, a good policy."

Her offer seems a true one to him. Still, he glances at her, considering. "You are being kind. I am not sure I trust myself with that many whiskey shots again." They can both ruefully laugh, it seems, and he shakes his head. "But I did offer you food. It is a good place to start."

She slumps, still under the effects of whatever bottle she has just drunk from, while he is stone-cold sober. He sighs. She is so very young.
"A good thing we are not in Paris, then. Because you are about to eat in minutes." A cruel life, for one so young. "What was Paris like?"

She waves his details away with a lazy hand.

"No more, I promise you. You come in again, I will pour you French Bullets. You will like that drink, it is sweet with raspberry. I named it for myself, the manner of my death." She says it like it's nothing. She always knew she would die young. It was just a lucky thing she was able to arrange the time and place of it.

"Good- Paris is... it is very dirty and crowded," she explains. "A river runs through it. I live in a neighborhood called San Michel- they were slums, m'sieur, that we had to fight with one another for scraps of food or cloth for warmth. There were once seven of us, myself, my sister, my mother and father, then my brothers. Three of them, though I cannot recall the names of two of them. They died, she said, sick little things. My other brother, Gavroche, the one I have named this place for, he was a brave little boy. He was there the night I died- and I pray he was able to get out of that terrible barricade." She looks up at the painting above her bar, the closest she could find to an image of Gavroche.

"I believe he was ten. He would have given me food, if he had had any."

If they are trading morbid humor..."I will try your French Bullet, if you will make one in my honor. After my sword Ice, my own manner of death. Something cold and not sweet at all." Ned has gone looking, beyond Sansa's warning to tread carefully.

Eponine fairly spills with the story of her beloved and besmirched Paris, her family overcrowded. He hears the affection in her voice for Gavroche, and glances up at the painting as she does. "Ten," Ned murmurs. "The same age as my Bran." The last time he'd seen his middle son, at least. He was older now, he knew, and much changed. But he can still remember the wee babe that looked so much like him, that Catelyn had been so delighted upon holding for the first time. "A brave little boy."

His gaze turns back to the girl slumped beside him. "You named your tavern after him?"

Eponine nods. "I have an idea. Rumplemintz. It is minty and very cold-tasting." She'd happily give him a shot, as she took Robb's off the menu.

"I have heard of Bran. He said he wanted to be a knight. That he liked to climb. I thought he and Gavroche would have made good friends." She smiles at the thought. Most of Gavroche's friends had been older, the boys she died along side.

"I did. It was his idea." Robb's idea. "He would have liked it here, so I named it for him."

"That sounds fitting," Ned says, not yet introduced to the whole world of flavored shots, but if he returned to Eponine's bar, he had a whole education that awaited him.

His smile matches Eponine's. "He loved to climb. It was his favorite thing of all. And training to be a knight. He got along with everyone. I'm sure your brother would have liked him." Ned grins, shaking his head. "If he could keep up with him. Bran could never stay in one place for very long."

His gaze travels around the bar once more. "You began it together? And what now?" He settles once more on the painting of the little boy. His features grow sad. "He is very angry, Eponine. Angry, and raw with me." That little boy he'd seen the first day here, needing his father, perhaps gone forever.

"Oh, Gavroche would keep up with him," Eponine says with a knowing smile. "He left home the moment he could, and has been on his own for some time. It is a small miracle, but he fares better without us." She loved her little brother to bits, but life within the Thénardier household would have killed him.

"It is a silly thing, but there is a statue in our city- a giant elephant. The inside is hollow, and that is where he lives. To get in you must climb to the top- he and Bran would be good friends indeed." She looks up at the painting and smiles sadly.

She nods with a sniffle. "I told him he no longer owns it." That's not how ownership technically works, but she wants him gone. Lifting her head slightly, she looks at Ned's face, studying its features. "He is angry with me, too. In your defense, m'sieur, you did not know who I was, and like him, you were mourning. He is angry with himself now that she is here. That he was lead so easily. But he is a man, as are you. You cannot think with your cock and brain at the same time."

One corner of Ned's mouth rises in a lopsided smile at her brother's hiding place. "It is a Bran sort of place to live," he comments, eyes alighting just imagining Bran's glee at climbing inside such a place and hiding there. "Is it selfish to wish that this place would bring both of them here, so that they might know each other?"

As she studies his features, Ned shrugs, then blushes. He did not wish to defend himself, to Robb least of all. But he had thought with his cock that night, with his heart so bruised and battered by what he'd seen those past two days. And he should have been stronger than Robb, with twenty years of experience on him.

"I am sorry to part him from his business," he says heavily. "And I am sorry that - that he was not more careful with your heart, Eponine. I always told my boys to break no hearts and leave no bastards whenever they should take lovers. We are not always a wise House, Stark, as much as we'd like to be."

He meets Eponine's eyes with a rueful glance. And then there was a knock on the shut door, and he easily slides out to go retrieve the food and pay for it, returning with the bags in hand. Each package unwrapped smells delicious. One of the disposable bowls is set in front of Eponine with her beloved melted-cheese-between bread, and Ned settles next to her with the same fare. "Don't worry about manners today," he tells her, grinning. "We've already broken enough of them this week, hm?"

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

Rest in pieces, feels

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