Work Text:
For ten years, Éponine has been waiting for some well-dressed (but old) stranger to come and buy her from her parents for the astronomical sum of 1500 francs.
She doesn't know what has happened to the money, how they ended up on the streets of Paris with barely a sou to spare. It's life, she supposes. You do your best, you try to keep your expectations reasonable. You get knocked down into the mud, and at the end of the day, you're another day wiser.
And then you fall stupidly in love with some stupid idiot who stupidly manages to get himself arrested.
Cosette looks well. Pale and shaken, but well.
"They've taken him to be questioned, Mademoiselle," Éponine says and then, because she is, at heart, not a cruel person: "I can get him out."
She does not say, I am sorry you went around dressed in rags while I was given a gorgeous new blue bonnet. Nothing good has ever come of dredging up the past, and few good things come from looking towards the future.
Cosette probably hardly even remembers her. "You will need money."
I will need luck, and courage, and the willingness to shoot a man. "Yes."
She will take Cosette's money and she will rescue the man she loves and she will pretend that is enough, that she can be happy simply by knowing he is happy, too. Somewhere.
Marius is running a fever. He needs food, warmth and shelter.
He does not need Éponine, not anymore. That part is over, and she is well rewarded for it - or so she tells herself. Cosette will take care of him, from now on out.
They are departing for England, if not tonight, then soon.
"Bless you, Mademoiselle," Cosette says, as she has done a dozen times. It wears on Éponine's nerves. "Bless you." The only person she looks at is Marius. The only hand she kisses is his.
"You paid me well." I love him. I did it for him. "There's no debt between us." She wants to leave, to run out of here. To see the streets of Paris, turned to silver by the rain. "I should go."
Cosette turns. "Our ship leaves with the morning tide." There are papers in her hand. "You should come with us. They'll be looking for you."
"No." They will be looking for her.
"Your passage has been bought. A new identity." Cosette holds out the papers. "A new life."
"No."
"Éponine!" Marius, not Cosette. Likely, he doesn't even know where he is, what is going on. If he fever dreams of her, then what of it?
"He needs you still," Cosette says. "I need you still."
A heart full of love.
She takes the papers.