tushanshu | 006 ; [ video, open to action ]

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006 ; [ video, open to action ]

[So, it's April. Eponine has sobered up somewhat, gotten her wits about her, and realized she needed to actually go see Marius Pontmercy. And explain. And apologize for being a fool and asking him to kill her, for begging him to love her. It took what courage the girl had left for her to walk over to his suite, and when she knocked, the door swung inward revealing what she feared most. What he said he would not do.

An empty apartment.

You know how Eponine spent most of March on a bender?

She's... about to start it again.

When she finally appears in front of the camera this time, she has dark circles under her eyes, her skin sallow. She's nearly as skinny as she was when she first arrived, and there's a bottle of whiskey in her fist.

She speaks simply, without light in her eyes.]

Marius Pontmercy has gone home.

He has returned home where none of us shall be living, to perhaps June 7th, 1832. He will return to his beloved Cosette Fauchelevent. They shall be married.

[She takes a pull from the bottle.]

And he shall forget all about us.

About me.

[She closes the network connection.]

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[She looks him over carefully, her eyes narrowed. Then, she sits.]

He is gone.

So you've said.

[And there is a little sigh from Enjolras there.]

I will miss him.

[He does not add that Marius had seemed unhappy when he arrived,that without Cosette, Marius did not seem to have much of a life here truly. He WILL miss the other man, for all that they tangled together on most occasions.]

Marius and I first came to know each other here, I think. I should have liked to have had longer.

I am glad for you, then. He is a good man. Kind.

...Was...

I shall never see him again, Apollon. It is over. I will only be a memory to him.

We all shall. It is... it is like he has died, while we live.

Yet we all know it to be the opposite. We are dead, here.

I wonder, about that. I've not had to use the tenses differently before. I find some comfort in the fact he lives, at least, and that we could have time with him.

It feels...almost right somehow. He belongs yet to that world, after all.

[He is not thinking of Cosette as he says this, only of Marius's place at home, and well...]

He is not the one among us who I would have chosen to have live, whose life I'd thought to arrange spared from our barricade, yet...I am still that there is one who came away from it.

And if we are memories to Marius, particularly you, then you exist still, in his thoughts and mind, yes? That is something, even though we are dead now.

I lead him there in hopes he would die with me.

[She'd told him that before, so it was hardly new information. Just another thing for her to state.

Eponine seems small on the couch, as though the whole thing could swallow her up with ease. She wouldn't fight it. In fact, she would welcome it.]

I will only exist in his memories. His, and Cosette's. One day they will talk of me. Her life shall color his knowledge of me, and they will start to loathe me, if the lark does not already.

You did. So you have said.

[In all this time, though, spent with Marius again, has that not managed to change? There is a part of Enjolras that is surprised, as much as Eponine loves Marius and as much kindness as he knows that Marius, in his awkward way, has attempted to show her.]

I do not know of that, entirely. Not...

Amongst Les Amis, we had Grantaire.

[It is the first he's spoken of him since his realization that night in the cafe, when it seemed that everything has come out all at once.]

He made the choice to die for me, with me, when he had been not much but a thorn in my side and usually a hindrance before. I do not mean he was a bad man, but...we were placed at odds in so many ways during the time I knew him.

He chose to die with me. I've just realized...that was an act of love, like yours for Marius. I can tell you that since I've learned of THAT, my thoughts of him have changed. I will not say that they erase the past, but they go a long way to ease the worst of it.

I should think the fact Marius lived because of you would do far more.

[Because perhaps, if he had died, he would remain here with them. He would never have his Cosette. But... To see him smile... to have him happy...

No, she could not think of it.

She closed her eyes, letting Enjolras' words wash over her. And for once, they were easy to listen to. They hit the right notes, playing some sort of gentle melody in her ear. This Grantaire- she had heard of him- had died with Enjolras. To love him. And yet...]

Not for the horrors my family inflicted on his beloved.

And Eponine? You are so much older than she is? You were so much older at the time?

[There is an eyebrow more like one that Combeferre might give him now, something of his manner creeping over into Enjolras as he asks this question, a little frown crossing his face.]

One cannot blame a child for cruelty, Eponine. If that is all that he or she has known, and grown to know. It is not right that they must live in, and grow up with such, that it becomes a second nature, but it is nothing that is their...your fault.

We were the same age. When her father took her away, she was inches from death. I could see it on her face, even then. And had she died, I would have thought nothing of it. She was a dog to us. Worse, even.

[She laughs, a hollow sound.]

She should blame me. He will blame me.

Indeed. I am sure she was, and that you were hardly better off, even if you were better off than she was at the time. But what I mean is, Eponine...there are things that one learns as a child, before they can know better. What happened to Cosette was something that you learned so young, before you knew that there was another way.

It seems that all that you could do was survive, and that doing so...involved cruelty. I am sorry for all the children who grew up then. I do not pity you, of course, but I am saddened that whatever way you look at it, you, your siblings and Cosette had to come to know that world. It is how things must be, before they're changed, but it is still the only way you knew.

No.

This was when the had the Inn. We were better, then. Money for dresses and presents and hats. When Gavroche was just a baby, and I was no more than seven. Survival had nothing to do with it.

[She takes a glass from her coffee table and begins to pour herself some whiskey. Half-way through she grabs a second glass and begins to fill that, for Enjolras.]

Here. You shall drink with me.

Ah, but well, with parents as yours seem to have become when the money went away...it seems that you still learned, well, that you needed to please them, yes? Learning to please your parents is a way that someone survives is all.

And I will join you.

[Though the idea of the whiskey does not quite appeal, he can manage a shot, at least, for politeness.]

No.

I did not always please them. Often times, I disobeyed. It meant they still remembered I was there.

[She takes a drink.]

[Enjolras still has his doubts, but for now, he's letting that part of it go.]

I suppose that what I meant then is...you still knew no better, truly. A child could not.

[And he's raising his glass, and then coughing a bit. Well. That's...well.]

[Eponine does not cough when she drinks.]

You prefer wine.

Ah, I am more accustomed to it, I suppose is all.

[And there is a small smile that is not quite a smile.]

As am I. But I enjoy good whiskey.

[She holds her glass up to him, and continues to drink.]

And I suppose I've never really paid attention to the heavier sort of thing.

[He, in turn, holds up his glass to clink with hers.]

I have much to learn of that, it seems. It does look to be a comfort for so many, so long as it is not in excess.

[Hes obviously trying to make a subtle point, or maybe feel her out here.]

[She clinks her glass, and finishes it. Yum.]

It burns, and I like it that way. Strong. It's easiest to let the world disappear with.

[She pours herself another.]

I can teach you! You must visit me at the Brazen Turtle.

I admit that at home, before, it never seemed to be so much an option for myself. The loss of control too much brings. I have never been so much for that.

But here, we live in a sort of chaos, do we not? The idea of control is...so far gone already. Perhaps I shall do so sometime.

[There is a little sigh as he glances at Eponine.]

Does the burn take it away...the...pain I mean?

No.

But it numbs it for the time. and that is all that matters. The now. I have nothing else. Nothing else was promised.

Numbing may be useful sometimes. There are things now I would like to forget. I did not understand that before I was here.

[Eponine, obviously, knows this only too well.]

And no, it was not. Nothing that I have now is promised to remain for that matter either. I think that...Courfeyrac showed me that. Losing him.

I...am not certain what to do with that knowledge. You know it all well, I think. What a pair we make just now.

You are learning.

[She leans back.]

I have always known this.

I suppose I am.

I do not mean...Death was the sort of thing I knew, and could accept. Death was something I could work within, even wield to some extent, but here...

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I suppose I am.

I do not mean...Death was the sort of thing I knew, and could accept. Death was something I could work within, even wield to some extent, but here...

<small[It is ALL out of his control now. He is at the mercy of this island, like he was at the mercy of others and he's shaking his head, though he's staying dry eyed now.]</small>

I did not know of the rest of it, I would guess. What it felt like.

But now you do.

Death was always there. I could feel it. An inevitability. The question was when he came for me.

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