En Route to the Abandoned Warehouse District, Saturday Evening

[filleauloup]

These dreams the past couple of nights had Éponine feeling -- well, somewhat less stable than usual. The day they had to leave Montfermeil, Montparnasse's vicious smile, Inspector Javert's hand clamping down on her shoulder, the clang of a barred door shutting her into a prison cell, the hail of grapeshot from the National Guard's artillery: a lifetime of too-vivid memories that a drunken stupor had always managed to dispel before, if only temporarily. Not even that was working now, not with other people's emotions trying to insinuate themselves into her head along with everything else.

She was stumbling, dazed and reeling from too many things to process at once, and turned a corner into an alley to find her way blocked off. Or was it? She couldn't tell; it might be real, or it might not, and she couldn't get her bearings enough to sort out which was which. All she knew one way or the other was that the alleyway in front of her was blocked off by a barricade about seven feet high, a surprisingly well-organized construction of paving stones and barrels arranged around a cart and even an overturned omnibus. Twenty or so young men, students and workers for the most part, milled around the base of the barricade talking in low murmurs.

One particularly scrawny figure in corduroy trousers and a cap pulled down low raised its head and looked straight through her; Éponine shuddered. Somehow, from this angle and from several years later, the look of bleak desperation in her own eyes was profoundly unsettling. Safe to say she had never anticipated knowing what that had looked like.

Then -- "Watch out!" That was Gavroche's voice, from atop the barricade; she saw her brother turn to shout the warning just as the glint of bayonets became visible behind him.

She pressed herself against the wall and froze.

[OOC: Open if you like! SP-due-to-vet-appointment in effect in a bit, though.

ETA: Yeah, so content warning in the comments for mentions of attempted suicide.]

Comments

[allie-vamp.livejournal.com]

There had been rabids on the island when Allie had finished her shift last night.

Rabids! After more then three years of waiting for it to happen, the reality of it had shocked Allie more then she'd like to admit and she'd attacked with a vengeance. The rabid had disappeared as soon as she'd taken its head, a fact that made Allie realize that this was more island weirdness then an actual rabid invasion. But it still had claws and teeth and could seriously hurt someone who wasn't prepared. She'd spent the rest of the night killing anything threatening she came across and as soon as the sun set on Saturday evening she was back out there.

The suffocating wave of emotions that washed over her was distracting, but Allie pushed it aside and focused on the hunt.

She turned into the alley following the sound of a heartbeat and paused.

"Eponine?"

[filleauloup]

Éponine didn't seem to hear her right away; she seemed to be staring at the scene in front of her without really watching it. Just as the armed Guardsmen began to swarm the barricade, the insurgents rushed to meet them. One killed a Guard and was immediately skewered on another's bayonet. Another was knocked down and shouting for help. A giant of a Guardsman had his gun leveled at Gavroche, who calmly picked up a musket almost as big as he was and pulled the trigger -- only to realize the gun wasn't loaded.

The Guard, laughing, made a move to run Gavroche through, but the gun fell from his hands as a bullet through his forehead dropped him.

Somewhere in all the confusion a voice shouted, "Wait! Don't fire at random!"

The young man who'd fired the shot was scrambling for another weapon now; he grabbed a powder keg and torch and turned back toward the barricade.

A soldier spotted him and took aim. The other Éponine flung herself forward and put a hand over the muzzle of his gun just as he fired, but it was the one watching the whole scene who cried out when the shot went off.

[allie-vamp.livejournal.com]

More of the traumatic kind of island weirdness then, Allie realized as she took in the scene unfolding before her. She remembered standing with Kaidan in an underground dungeon and watching the scene of her own death unfold. She could only imagine this was something similar for Eponine.

Allie stepped closer to the other girl, trying to offer what comfort she could with her presence.

[filleauloup]

The man whose life Éponine had saved held the torch in the air and yelled, "Get back, or I'll blow up the barricade!"

A soldier in a sergeant's uniform scoffed, "Blow up the barricade! And yourself too?"

"And myself too." His eyes were wild in the flickering light, like he no longer cared what happened to him. He lowered the torch toward the powder keg, the soldiers fled, and the scene faded, at least for the moment.

Éponine inhaled sharply then, and turned, blinking. "Allie? Is that you?"

[allie-vamp.livejournal.com]

"It's me," Allie replied. "For real, and not the island messing with you."

"Are you okay?"

[filleauloup]

"For once his head wasn't in the clouds, how d'you like that? But he was supposed to find me," she muttered to the empty space where the scene had just played out, then looked back toward Allie. She seemed a bit more focused now, if still clearly shaken. "Not -- well, I s'pose it doesn't matter much now, does it? But of course it's you. You weren't there then, and it's a good job you weren't, I tell you."

[allie-vamp.livejournal.com]

Considering how it looked like it was going to play out, Allie had to agree.

"That's what happened? Before we found you?"

[filleauloup]

Éponine nodded. "They all died, you know. I knew they would. I was counting on it, and I still --" She looked at her hand, almost surprised that there wasn't a scorched hole through the palm. "I don't know why I did. So I'd go first, I s'pose."

[allie-vamp.livejournal.com]

"But you wound up here instead. That's not so bad is it?" Allie asked.

[throughaphase]

Kitty probably wasn't having as bad a weekend as most people, aside from having to fight off creatures- pretty standard for Fandom- and feeling weird because of everyone else. But when she was walking around trying to take care of any monsters she could, she spotted Eponine. "You okay?"

[filleauloup]

"I --" Her mouth felt beyond dry, and it took Éponine a while to remember how to use words, especially when she was watching herself crawl down an alley leaving a trail of blood behind her. "I -- yes. I think so."

She shook her head, then burst out into hysterical laughter. "Good god, how silly I looked!"

Silly was not the most accurate word, but she'd rather try to laugh it off than actually think about it.

[throughaphase]

"Is 'silly' really where you want to go with this?" Kitty asked, still watching.

[filleauloup]

Not really, no.

"I don't remember," Éponine said in a low voice instead, which was -- still not really answering the question. "Was it hours, days? I was hiding. I was sure that was it for me, but then I opened my eyes. I got up. But how'd I get from there to here? It's all a blur, it is, after this."

[throughaphase]

"You don't have to watch this," Kitty told her.

[filleauloup]

"Don't I?" Éponine didn't sound like she could be sure. "All day I've been seeing things, and I can't make it stop. It's what I deserve, likely as anything."

[throughaphase]

"You really don't," Kitty told her, but she couldn't really not watch, either. "You deserve better."

[filleauloup]

"Girls like me don't," Éponine insisted, but her voice was flat, like she was echoing someone else's words. "Not after -- no."

The next apparition was an image of her taking off a shawl and hiding it in a corner so that when she came up to a door and knocked on it she was only in her tattered skirt and a too-large shirt that fell open almost to the waist. The image only lasted a few seconds, but that was a few seconds too long, if you asked her.

[throughaphase]

"Yeah," Kitty said, frowning. "You do."

[filleauloup]

"I don't see how you believe that," Éponine said quietly, almost plaintively, then rubbed both hands over her face. "But I'll take your word for it, at least for a while. I'm tired of this."

[throughaphase]

"People do what they need to do to get by," Kitty told her, meaning it. "I know plenty of people who've done worse. This is just whatever's going on screwing with you."

[bitten_notshy]

Jack was in a sour mood as he roamed the island that night, half due to the empathy curse and half because the ghosts had him seeing every dead person he'd ever known around every corner. He'd watched David burn so often he saw it when he closed his eyes, and shot at a variety of what he grimly thought of as things that go bump in the night.

His eyes widened in concern as he spotted Eponine. "Dear god, what's got you here?"

[filleauloup]

"I'm not terribly fond of today," Éponine muttered. "I'd almost rather the great big spiders than this."

The scene shifted to the street outside a locked gate; beyond the walls and the overgrown garden, there was a house with its windows dark. In the street, a young man moved aside a loose bar and slipped into the garden.

"Cosette!" his voice carried over the wall, and then again, more desperately.

Éponine winced. "No. No, not this."

[bitten_notshy]

"Who was he?" Jack asked. He had suddenly gone very still, muscles tense in anticipation. "And I agree about the spiders. This is awful."

[filleauloup]

A figure slipped up to the outside of the gate then, someone thin enough to be drowning in their laborer's garments.

"Monsieur Marius," it called in Éponine's rough voice. "Your friends are expecting you at the barricade on the Rue de la Chanvrerie." The messenger turned and ran then, and the image began to fade.

"She wasn't there," Éponine muttered, and she really would rather have dealt with a dozen of those spiders unarmed than all the unfinished business the island seemed intent on flinging back in her face today. She retrieved a coin from her pocket and turned it over in her fingers as she spoke, her gaze finally focusing on Jack. "I saw to that. It wasn't hard, and then I only had to make sure it was me she saw when she wanted to send him a message. Then the émeute. I knew he'd go, you know, if he found she was gone."

Maybe it was hindsight, or the influence of decent people in the meantime, but that sounded so much worse when she actually said it out loud.

[bitten_notshy]

Jack furrowed his brow, trying to put the story together. A moment later he had it. "And he didn't survive?"

[filleauloup]

"No." Éponine glanced away as she said it. "I don't believe so. Or arrested, if not. It was me that did that, made it all happen, only I survived."

She laughed, a single raucous burst of disbelief and guilt that stopped as abruptly as it had started. When she spoke again her voice was much softer.

"I didn't plan that part, I tell you."

[bitten_notshy]

"I didn't think you had," Jack assured her. "It all sounds quite -- chaotic. What, er,what did you want to happen?"