Neighbors ( Eponine )

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Marius raised his teacup to his lips, flipping to the next page of his book. He had a huge exam tomorrow—Introduction to Law—and he had reason to worry. Thanks to Lesgle he wasn’t going to get expelled from university, but he needed to keep his grades up and keep attending classes so the dean wouldn’t change his mind. Thankfully he had gotten a better job—reading people’s letters to the illiterate—that had more flexible of a schedule, allowing him to actually go to class.

As helpful as he felt he was being with his new job, he couldn’t wait until the day he could actually practice law. He would earn much more money, he was sure, enough to live comfortably instead of this dirty tenement. He would never take money from his grandfather, even though he would be willing to beg him to come back. He had forever betrayed his trust, and because of him he was never able to have a real relationship with his father. He could never forgive him for that.

Besides, he was doing well enough now. He was alive, he had food, he was paying for his own tuition and books—barely. And he was a baron, his father had given him the title. All of his cards read ‘the Baron Pontmercy’. He felt so proud carrying around his father’s title and his name. He had been awarded the title for service to Napoleon, and had passed it on to his son. Gillenormand, his grandfather, was appalled at this, but Marius was far past caring what he thought.

He lifted the teacup again and then realized that he had run out of tea. He walked over to the small stove in the corner of his room and put the water back on, sighing and going back to his desk, studying intently. His green eyes focused on the words on the page unflinchingly, but he couldn’t stop thinking about an incident either yesterday or the day before, he couldn’t remember. He had run into two girls carrying a stack of letters, all addressed to different people but written in the same hand. They were all asking for money. He had no idea what he had stumbled upon, but he planned on giving the letters back but the two had already taken off before he could. They were tucked into the drawer of his desk now—he had kept them on the slight chance that he would see the pair again and return the letters. The girls looked familiar for some reason, but he couldn’t place where he had seen them. They were both filthy and thin—they were gamines, no doubt—and he would have had no reason to speak with them, but he could almost swear he had seen them somewhere. He brushed the thought from his head. It would do him no good trying to remember something so inconsequential when he had an exam tomorrow. He needed to finish this chapter so he could get a good night’s rest.

[EPONINE THENARDIER]

Eponine frowned down at the letter in her hand. Her father had been very clear that she was not to lose this one, that there would be dire consequences if she did. After she and Azelma had lost the bundle of letters the day before when the police had given them chase, their parents had been furious, berating them both and threatening pain and injury if they messed up again. Eponine had taken the brunt of the scolding, assuming the blame for losing the letters in the first place. If she could keep her parents focused on her, Azelma would not have to bear as much of their harsh treatment. Her arms still ached and the she could feel the dull throb of a bruise between her shoulders, but she knew it could have been so much worse.

Hopefully her errand today would make up for it. Her parents had seen a new resident in their building, a fine looking young man who probably had absolutely no idea what kind of a neighborhood he had stumbled into. To hear her parents talk, he might have had a small fortune stored away somewhere in his dingy apartment. Oh well. His fault. As her father always told her, there were two kinds of people in this world. Those who get taken for everything they have, and those who do the taking. And even at just 16, Eponine knew which one she wanted to be.

So with her forged letter in her hand, begging for money for an ailing parent, and her tattered clothes clinging close to her thin figure, Eponine left Azelma in their shared room, and ventured through the building. She knew what was expected of her. All she needed to do was get a glimpse of the inside, a look at where the man might be hiding any valuables, and report back to Patron-Minette. One quick look would be good, an invitation inside would be grand, all that and a bit of coin might just make her parents forget her clumsiness the day before. Of course first, she had to get the man to even open his door in the first place and not slam it the moment he laid eyes on her. Putting on her best sullen dejected look, she knocked on the door, practicing the words in her head over and over.

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Marius turned another page of the book and rubbed his temples, finding it difficult to focus on the page. He enjoyed his course of study, but he was so terribly tired. He had to juggle his letter reading job with very rigorous law classes, and more often than not he stayed up into the early hours of the morning studying. He was lucky to get four or five hours of sleep each night. He saw no end in sight to this exhausting routine.

There was a solution, of course, that would allow him to attend university without having to worry about money, and that was crawling back to his grandfather. He vowed that he would never do that under any circumstances. He would never betray his father’s memory by taking that horrible man’s money. Even if he had to starve to uphold his principles ( thank God he wasn’t at that point yet ), he would never let bygones be bygones. He had lied to him for years, insisting that his father didn’t care about him when he had written to him faithfully. He had kept him from his only real family, for in Marius’s eyes his grandfather had forfeited his privilege to call him kin.

He didn’t really feel that lonely, despite not being able to talk to the only family he had left in the world. He had the most interesting friends—Courfeyrac and Lesgle, as well the others that he met at the café Courfeyrac had taken him to once. They were all very political—more so than he was—and when he offered his own opinions ( which were mainly on the late emperor ), the medical student Combeferre cut him off by saying that freedom was better than empire. He’d never gone back after that, and he was still nursing his wounds, so to speak. He was more embarrassed than hurt.

Maybe the exposure to new ideas would be good for him. It had to be better than sitting up in this horrible excuse for an apartment alone each evening. Of course he should really be studying…but dinner with a few friends every once in a while wouldn’t hurt, surely? He was considering walking over to the café when there was a knock at the door. He checked his watch fob in confusion. Who could it possibly be at this time of night? He stood and grabbed his brown frock coat from the hook it hung on and straightened his cravat, so that he at least appeared presentable, and then opened the door. It was a malnourished girl that appeared to be in her late teens, that appeared oddly familiar. He was shocked by her appearance, but not disgusted—she looked pitiful. “Um…good evening, mademoiselle. Can I help you with—oh! Oh, right, you’re the one that dropped these letters…one moment.” He hurried over to his desk and took the package out and held it out for her. “I’m sorry that they’re opened, I needed to see whose they were. I would have given them to you but you ran off so quickly, I didn’t know where to look…” he explained with an apologetic smile.