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

[jondrette]

"If I do not drink, m'sieur, I become sick." It's no big deal, of course. She's not worried about it. She was always a sickly child, why would now be any different?

"I thought I had found what I wanted. Who I wanted. There are people here with swords of lights and strange books and the movies. I had someone to explore it all with. Now... I feel on the fringes again. Looking through dirty glass." She finishes her soup, and leans back in her seat.

"I feel like I did at home."

[ulfur]

He inclines his head, aware that that in itself is a kind of sickness. She will either pull back from it enough to right herself...or like Robert, will fall prey to its dangers sooner or later.

"You thought," Ned agrees. "It is...very hard. Giving up that hope. I have done it. Life goes on. It is terrible for a time, but it goes on." Poor consolation when you are in the throes of it. He feels for Eponine more than he can say. "You loved a dream," he says softly. "That dream is not Robb, it is yours."

And Ned shakes his head, coming back to the present. "You are better off than you are at home. It only seems as bad because you have known such great happiness. Now normal life without that thrill seems hollow by comparison. It will come again. I am sure of it." He smiles at Eponine. "A pretty girl like yourself, charming, funny, and a business woman to boot. You will find someone even better." for you

[jondrette]

"I only love dreams," she tells him after a moment. "Dreams do not hurt until they become nightmares." And then she was stuck.

She ducks her head, blushing as he calls both pretty and charming. "I wish I could bring you with me to France. No one else would believe me, that someone would say such kind things."