Éponine Thénardier (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
filleauloup) wrote2013-06-05 11:50 am
filleauloup) wrote2013-06-05 11:50 am
Entry tags:
Serenity Cove, Wednesday Early Evening
Éponine wasn't one for sentimentality -- or at least, she wasn't likely to admit to it. The way she'd grown up, it was only one more unneeded complication that at best would be an inconvenience and at worst could get you killed. But despite that she'd gone and allowed herself to indulge it, to entertain notions about young Monsieur le Baron Pontmercy who'd once lived next door and even more stupidly let those notions run away with her. And where had that gotten her?
Well, in the end, if she made herself look past all the anger and resentment and desperation even if it was terrifying to do so -- it had gotten her here. Despite the fact that she should have died 181 years ago today she, the last person in the world who ought to deserve a reward like this, was alive.
She didn't feel sorry for the workmen and students who had died on the barricades. (She didn't. They'd brought it on themselves, after all, and surely they ought to have known the risks. She'd known. It was why she'd gone; she'd been more than ready -- eager, even -- to walk straight into death with no regrets. And yet . . .) In fact, she thought she might hate them a little bit for luring her brother in with their grand talk and giving him the kind of false hope that had gotten him killed along with them.
Perhaps she missed Azelma more than she'd let on to Kenzi yesterday, but it was Gavroche, with the irrepressible cheerfulness that she herself had lost long ago, that she mourned. Of all of them, he'd deserved that fate the least, certainly. Him and his scolding, as if he were looking after her because he was older and knew better!
She thought of Marius, as well, and how she'd meant to make sure to die before he did (although part of her had hated the idea of him getting killed, which she didn't understand) just to make sure she'd be there to greet him in the afterlife. (Where they would be, and Cosette would not.) But he wouldn't have been alone, even if she wasn't there with him, and perhaps Gavroche would look after him for her sake? He had his friends there, after all, and --
Éponine realized she didn't miss him that much, after all. In coming here, she'd managed to engineer the escape from her life that she'd hoped she might get with him, and she hadn't needed him for that after all. Perhaps she was a bit sorry, for he'd been a genuinely kind and decent boy despite knowing the same crushing poverty as she did, and -- no, she oughtn't think about that too much.
. . . most disturbingly, following that train of thought, she began to consider Cosette, reaching into her pocket to pull out the five-franc piece and turn it over in her hands, watching how it caught the sunlight. She still thought she hated the girl -- for being everything she wasn't, for reminding her of what she'd become, for escaping what ought to have been their mutual fate. But there was, mixed in with that enmity, some small degree of pity; it kept her from feeling entirely triumphant about taking Marius away from her, and it was odd. She didn't care to contemplate that for too long, either.
No, she wasn't a sentimental person. But surely for a few minutes, today, she could allow herself to be.
She tucked her knees up under her chin and wrapped her arms around her legs, rocking back and forth gently in the sand as she stared out over the water. She sang, as she always did, snatches of song in her rough voice -- bits of the lullabyes she would sing to Gavroche as a baby when he was crying and Maman couldn't be bothered to see to him, tunes she'd overheard while standing outside wine shops on the boulevards and watching to see when Marius would walk past.
It wouldn't hurt anything if she spared a few minutes to think of them, at least, would it?
[OOC: Because it's Barricade Day. Éponine's views on the insurrectionists of the June Rebellion do not correspond with my own. Warning for mentions of attempted suicide behind the cut.
Mostly establishy, but open if you want, with an SP warning for this afternoon/evening.]
Well, in the end, if she made herself look past all the anger and resentment and desperation even if it was terrifying to do so -- it had gotten her here. Despite the fact that she should have died 181 years ago today she, the last person in the world who ought to deserve a reward like this, was alive.
She didn't feel sorry for the workmen and students who had died on the barricades. (She didn't. They'd brought it on themselves, after all, and surely they ought to have known the risks. She'd known. It was why she'd gone; she'd been more than ready -- eager, even -- to walk straight into death with no regrets. And yet . . .) In fact, she thought she might hate them a little bit for luring her brother in with their grand talk and giving him the kind of false hope that had gotten him killed along with them.
Perhaps she missed Azelma more than she'd let on to Kenzi yesterday, but it was Gavroche, with the irrepressible cheerfulness that she herself had lost long ago, that she mourned. Of all of them, he'd deserved that fate the least, certainly. Him and his scolding, as if he were looking after her because he was older and knew better!
She thought of Marius, as well, and how she'd meant to make sure to die before he did (although part of her had hated the idea of him getting killed, which she didn't understand) just to make sure she'd be there to greet him in the afterlife. (Where they would be, and Cosette would not.) But he wouldn't have been alone, even if she wasn't there with him, and perhaps Gavroche would look after him for her sake? He had his friends there, after all, and --
Éponine realized she didn't miss him that much, after all. In coming here, she'd managed to engineer the escape from her life that she'd hoped she might get with him, and she hadn't needed him for that after all. Perhaps she was a bit sorry, for he'd been a genuinely kind and decent boy despite knowing the same crushing poverty as she did, and -- no, she oughtn't think about that too much.
. . . most disturbingly, following that train of thought, she began to consider Cosette, reaching into her pocket to pull out the five-franc piece and turn it over in her hands, watching how it caught the sunlight. She still thought she hated the girl -- for being everything she wasn't, for reminding her of what she'd become, for escaping what ought to have been their mutual fate. But there was, mixed in with that enmity, some small degree of pity; it kept her from feeling entirely triumphant about taking Marius away from her, and it was odd. She didn't care to contemplate that for too long, either.
No, she wasn't a sentimental person. But surely for a few minutes, today, she could allow herself to be.
She tucked her knees up under her chin and wrapped her arms around her legs, rocking back and forth gently in the sand as she stared out over the water. She sang, as she always did, snatches of song in her rough voice -- bits of the lullabyes she would sing to Gavroche as a baby when he was crying and Maman couldn't be bothered to see to him, tunes she'd overheard while standing outside wine shops on the boulevards and watching to see when Marius would walk past.
It wouldn't hurt anything if she spared a few minutes to think of them, at least, would it?
[OOC: Because it's Barricade Day. Éponine's views on the insurrectionists of the June Rebellion do not correspond with my own. Warning for mentions of attempted suicide behind the cut.
Mostly establishy, but open if you want, with an SP warning for this afternoon/evening.]