Not a Dog's Daughter

Dusk was setting in by the time Éponine returned to the Rue de la Chanvrerie. It was done; everything was in place. Yesterday Cosette and the old man she called Father had moved out of the house on the Rue Plumet, but not before Cosette managed to write a letter to inform Marius of her whereabouts. That letter was tucked away in Éponine's pocket; Éponine, in a grey workman's smock and patched trousers that she'd managed to wheedle out of some boy, had wandered back and forth along the Rue Plumet, past the gate of the overgrown garden, until Cosette noticed her and asked her to play errand-boy.

She wouldn't have done it without a disguise either way; she doubted that Cosette would recognize her now, but she didn't care to take the chance. Bad enough Marius had fallen in love with Cosette, and only found her because he'd asked Éponine to find her address for him. (And had he ever mentioned her to Cosette? She doubted it, and resented it as much as she was glad.) Bad enough that Éponine had wanted so much to make him happy that she'd agreed. Bad enough she had to see how happy and healthy Cosette looked, and remember the shivering, underfed waif back in Montfermeil who'd huddled in the empty corner by the hearth and cast longing looks at all of Éponine and Azelma's pretty toys. Bad enough Cosette had given her five francs to carry the letter and she'd accepted; having to endure that while Cosette looked at her with pity, knowing exactly who she was, would be one twist of the knife too many.

Then when an unsuspecting Marius arrived at the now empty house today she'd made sure to be there, hiding just out of sight, to tell him which of the barricades being built around the city was where his friends were waiting for him -- information she'd gotten earlier in the day from his friend Courfeyrac under the pretense of looking for Marius. She'd followed them to the Rue de la Chanvrerie and helped to pile up paving stones for the foundation of the barricade, doing just enough work to insinuate herself into their group. (They were too easy to trust, she thought, so wrapped up in their idealistic fervor that they forgot common sense.) ( Now all that was left was to find out if her gamble had been right, and if Marius would come to join his friends now that Cosette was apparently gone. )

[OOC: NFI/NFB, of course, OOC okay. Oh, god, this is long. The scary part is that I originally wrote it in the style of the book and then revised it because that was too long. Some dialogue taken from the Norman Denny translation of Les Misérables, by Victor Hugo; this whole scene is adapted from that, with a few twists. TBC.

Content warning: This post contains references to physical abuse and attempted suicide, not to mention a whole lot of people dying horribly.]