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Chapter Text

Éponine was dressed in the same boys' clothes she had worn on the day of the barricade a little more than a year ago, the day she had intended to die. 

Evidently, she had not succeeded in this endeavour. She had not even made it to the barricade at all: she had been picked up by the police on her way there, along with hundreds of other “suspicious persons”. By the time she was set free, it was too late: the barricades had fallen. The streets were awash in blood. 

Gavroche had died. 

Marius had died. 

And Éponine had not died. 

Coup de malchance.

Since she had not died that night, she had had to survive another year. The day of the barricade had taught her one thing, at least: how much easier it was to exist in the world as a boy. How free one could be as a boy! To walk the streets unbothered, unleered at, ignored in the best way.

She was often in the habit, now, of wearing boys’ clothes whenever she wished to go about her business inconspicuously, safe from prying eyes (and worse, prying hands). 

Now was just such a time.

It was growing dark. She and Montparnasse had wandered out into the deserted regions past the Salpêtrière, and were now creeping down a secluded, unpaved lane bordered by hedges. Several metres ahead of them, an elderly man was out walking by himself.

Montparnasse gave Éponine a nudge and jerked his head in the old man’s direction, indicating him as a target.

“Le vieux monsieur?” Éponine gasped, staring at the old man’s back. She had thought they would wait for another, less forlorn target. Why should they rob the old man? His hair was white; his dress was humble; his gait was slow; no doubt due to his advanced age, and he dragged one leg. No, no, it wasn’t right, it simply wouldn't be right. She had envisioned stealing from some foppish prick, or a drunken lecherer—someone who seemed to deserve it. That she would not mind. But the old man?   

She quailed. “No—we cannot. I cannot. Not him.”

“You must,” said Montparnasse coldly. “You are not a little girl anymore. If you desire the protection I offer, you will learn to pull your weight.” 

Still she hesitated. 

Montparnasse fondled the rose in his buttonhole and adjusted his hat, as if preparing for a soirée. His dark eyes glittered with malice and vanity. 

“What will become of you without me?" he murmured. "Nearly four months, now, isn’t it, since your little spat with Papa Thénardier, since you were turned out of house and home. Oh, Maman Thénardier would plead your case, to be sure, but they’ve got her in the lock-up, don’t they? Ah yes, I remember now—she gave up the ghost, didn't she? Perished in prison, before she could even go to trial. Well. More’s the pity.” 

Éponine said nothing.

Montparnasse went on, “I have been very accommodating. I have offered you food and shelter in exchange for the smallest of favours. You would not have stood a chance without me. It is high time, now, that you contributed properly to Patron Minette.” He turned his gaze back to the old man. “You remember what you have to do, I presume?” he said in a half-mocking tone. “It's very simple: I will restrain the old man, and you will empty his pockets.”

Éponine swallowed, nodded miserably, and steeled herself. What choice did she have?

When Montparnasse gave the signal, she surged forward alongside him—but as she saw him lunge at the poor old man, she was struck by a sudden horror. Reacting on instinct, she ended by doing something entirely contrary to what she had meant to do: instead of rushing at the old man to pick his pockets, as was expected of her, she lurched sideways and shoved Montparnasse away from him.

The next thing she knew, she was on the ground, her body ringing with the hard impact, the sound of retreating footsteps echoing in her ears. An iron grip held her in place. So she had ruined everything: the old man had run, Montparnasse had knocked her down in his fury, and he was about to beat her badly for her failure. She squeezed her eyes shut and waited for the first blow. Instead, she felt the hard grip loosen.

“Get up,” said a voice that did not belong to Montparnasse: it was far too weary, and far too gentle.  

She opened her eyes to see the old man before her, getting to his feet. Perhaps it had not been evident from the coat he wore, or from his slow, dragging gait, but now, up close, she saw that he was not as old as she had thought, that his frame was broad and muscular, still powerful despite his years—more powerful, in fact, than many a man twoscore years younger. She could see why Montparnasse had fled: this was a man to be feared. However, she did not fear him. It was a curious thing, but there was something familiar about him, something almost fatherly. Certainly his expression, though grave, was gentle.

Éponine rose slowly.

He caught sight of her face and drew in a surprised breath. “But you are so young,” he said softly, something like pity or regret colouring his voice. “Your vanished accomplice is the elder, then, I presume. The leader. He put you up to this?”

Éponine nodded mutely. She remembered that in her current guise, she appeared not as the young woman she was, but as a youth perhaps thirteen or fourteen years of age: her soft features read as younger when she dressed as a boy. When he looked at her, he must see a gamin much like her little brother, Gavroche—the age he would be now, if he had lived. 

The old man tilted his head, still examining her. “Have I perhaps seen you before?” he asked. “Your face strikes me as somehow familiar.” 

She shook her head. She did not know him.

The old man went on, "Well, perhaps it is not surprising: I have always tried to be a friend to those in less fortunate circumstances, so it is possible we have crossed paths before. It is equally possible that it is simply an old man’s memory playing tricks on him. Never mind—it matters not. How old are you, child?”

“Fourteen,” she tried, hoping to strike the right balance that would account for both her height and her delicate features. In truth, she was seventeen.

The old man sighed. “Fourteen only. My poor child, you are starting down the wrong road. Believe me, the hardest work of all is thieving. It is not comfortable to become a rascal. Down this road awaits only strife: this road leads straight to a prison cell. You will eat black bread, you will sleep on a plank with a fetter whose cold touch you will feel on your flesh all night long, riveted to your limbs. You will break those fetters, you will flee. That is well. You will crawl on your belly through the brushwood, and you will eat grass like the beasts of the forest. And you will be recaptured. And then you will pass years in a dungeon, riveted to a wall, groping for your jug that you may drink, gnawing at a horrible loaf which dogs would not touch, eating beans that the worms have eaten before you. No, do not undertake that painful profession of an idle man. It is far less disagreeable to be honest. Are you able to find work? Can anything be done for you? What would you like to be?”

“I—I do not know, sir,” Éponine admitted, bewildered by this line of inquiry. “I have never thought…”

“I daresay you have never had the chance,” the man sighed. “Have you ever been to school, child?”

“I have received an education, sir,” she replied indignantly. “I have not always been as I am now. I know how to read and write.”

“That is well!” The man was pleased. “A boy who can read and write might do any number of things. Did you enjoy school, when you went? Were you an able student?”

“I learnt what I could, Monsieur. When the teacher put questions to me, I answered rightly more often than not. Some of the children were hit with a ruler, Monsieur, or with a switch, for daydreaming or misbehaving, and I was not.”

“I suppose you do not go to school now?” the man pressed. “If your father were given the money for your education, could you be sent back? If you were, for instance, enrolled in a boarding school, where your room and board would be paid ahead? Or if you prefer—if you have a trade in mind—perhaps you could apprentice somewhere. Would your father allow that?” 

She looked at her shoes. “My father turned me out, Monsieur.”

“I see.” He mulled over this new information. “Where do you sleep, then?”

She shrugged. She had been sleeping at Montparnasse’s quarters, having no better option, and although he did not charge her any money for the privilege, she earned her keep in other ways, which she preferred not to dwell on. 

When she gave no further response to his question, the old man said, “You will come to my home, at least for the night. I will find a way to help you.”

“Oh no, Monsieur, please—” she protested.

He cut her off, dismissing her refusal with a wave of his hand. “Yes, you will, and I will not hear any objections. You are a child," he said sternly, “and will be looked after.”

Éponine thought of her younger sister Azelma, and of her two littlest brothers who had been swallowed up by the streets of Paris, and wished she could send them in her place to sleep this night under a proper roof. But she could not; she did not even know, for certain, where to find them. The two little boys had been lost long ago; Azelma only recently, after Éponine had talked back to their father one time too many, had spat in his face and told him what she really thought of him. He had beaten her, then, and thrown her out into the street, and told her not to come back, not to show her face under his roof ever again.

Gavroche, of course, was dead. Shot dead at the barricade. Twelve years old. It was difficult not to wonder at the senselessness of it all. 

As for Éponine herself, Montparnasse had fled and left her, and after her failure tonight, she doubted she would be welcome in his company again. She had nowhere else to go, and she was so tired, and truth be told, she did want to be looked after. She wanted so badly to be looked after. So she said nothing more, bowed her head, and followed the old man home. 

They walked for the better part of an hour: the man had been a fair ways from home. He led her westwards, back towards the heart of the city, past the Luxembourg and at last into the Rue Plumet. There he stopped in front of a rusty garden gate. 

It was with a violent shock that she recognised it. 

This was the address she had found for Marius the year before. This was the home of his paramour, the house she had protected from harm when her father and Patron Minette had threatened it. This old man, then, if she was not mistaken, must also be the father of Cosette—Marius’s Cosette.

Then everything began to connect in her mind.

First she had recognised the garden gate, and consequently, the house it belonged to; now, she recognised the man. He was a philanthropist; he had once been in the habit of attending mass at the Church of Saint-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas. It had been she who had gone there to hand him one of her father’s scam letters—the sort he wrote out to target generous souls and con them out of their money—full of ridiculous falsehoods and signed in a false name. She had given this old man the letter at her father’s request, and he had asked for her address, and promised to come later with what assistance he could provide. That had been in February of the year before.

Later, he had indeed come to the Gorbeau hovel, just as he had said he would; had come bearing blankets, woollens, and alms for her family. And he had brought his daughter along, his lovely daughter dressed in a fine velvet bonnet and silk mantle. How well Éponine recalled the bitter jealousy with which she had regarded that charming girl her own age who had such fine clothes to wear! Worse still, when Marius had taken such an immediate fancy to her.

In spite of her jealousy, though, Éponine had found the girl’s address for him; she had even stepped in when her father had wanted to rob the place. The house on Rue Plumet. The house that lay hidden behind that vast garden. She had placed herself between that garden gate and six grown men, hardened criminals armed to the teeth. Claquesous, Guelemer, Babet, Brujon, Montparnasse, and her own father. She had not been able to stop thinking of that lovely girl who had come into their dismal attic that day at the Gorbeau house. The girl had been kind to Éponine’s little sister Azelma, who had been wounded and distraught. Éponine had never forgotten that. 

The beautiful girl; the fortunate girl; the girl Marius loved. 

If Éponine herself could not be such a girl, perhaps it was enough to know such a girl existed in the world. That her light still shone. Such a girl was worth saving. Such a girl was worth two of Éponine, at least. And in that moment, Éponine could not have lived with herself if she had not at least tried to save her. It was risky, to be sure—she knew better than to think her own father would step in if Guelemer decided to wring her neck or Claquesous saw fit to dash her head against the cobblestones (in fact, Papa Thénardier may have even opted to do the job himself)—but really, what would it matter if anything happened to her?

So she had stood before those men, girl that she was, and spoken the words that came into her heart: “There are six of you, what matters that to me? You are men. Well, I’m a woman. You don’t frighten me. I tell you that you shan’t enter this house, because it doesn’t suit me. Go where you please, but don’t come here, I forbid it! You can use your knives. I’ll use kicks; it’s all the same to me, come on! I’m not afraid. I shall be hungry this summer, and I shall be cold this winter. What do I care if I’m picked up tomorrow morning on the pavement of the Rue Plumet, killed by the blows of my father’s club, or whether I’m found a year from now in the nets at Saint-Cloud or the Isle of Swans in the midst of rotten old corks and drowned dogs?”

She had persisted, and in the face of her unwavering stubbornness, the men had at last decided to leave. Montparnasse had threatened to cut her throat, of course, but that was nothing out of the ordinary. 

And now she stood again before the gate at the Rue Plumet, in the company of this kind old man, dressed in a boy’s clothes. It struck her that the man had been right to find her familiar—that he had, in fact, seen her before. For a moment, she was struck by the fear that he would recognise her as her father’s daughter. Daughter of a wolf. 

But the voice of reason prevailed, and she was able to lay that worry to rest. When the old man had last seen her, she had been dressed as a girl, for one thing. Nor did she think he had gotten a good look at her in the church, for she had kept her head down out of modesty. And in the attic at Gorbeau house, the lighting had been dismal. No, she was sure of it: he would not remember her, not beyond that passing flicker, now extinguished. 

While Éponine had been thinking hard, she had been standing very still in front of the gate, which she saw that the old man had unlatched during her reverie, and was holding open for her.

“Well? Come along,” he urged. “Don’t be afraid.”

He herded her gently through the gate and then through the overgrown garden, through thick greenery that seemed interminable, and at last to the house, which was built of stone with a Mansard roof, and walled in with a triple hedge of flowers. One of its windows was aglow with warm lamplight. 

Inside, the house was decorated and furnished in an ornamental and dramatic fashion reminiscent of the previous century.  

The old man guided her into the drawing-room, where rich tapestries adorned the walls. A young woman sat in a vast armchair upholstered in fine wool velvet, sewing by the light of an oil lamp. She wore a simple but fashionable day dress. No doubt hearing the old man’s unmistakable tread the moment before he came into the room, she sprang to her feet at once and exclaimed, “Papa! What a pleasant surprise, to have you join us in the main house—” then, seeing Éponine behind him, ”—but who is this?"

“This boy needs a place to stay the night,” her father explained simply. 

Cosette (for this was, of course, Cosette), accepted the explanation without a moment’s hesitation. “Thank goodness you have found him, then!” she exclaimed. “What is his name?”

“Ah! I quite forgot to ask.” The old man looked sheepish.

“Papa!” Cosette chided. “I suppose you have not introduced yourself to him, either? You have let this boy follow a complete stranger into the night? Well!” She laid her hands on her hips, and turned to face Éponine. “I apologise for my father. Please, what shall we call you, petit étranger?” she asked gently.

Oh Cosette, we are not strangers, you and I.

In fact, although Éponine had known Cosette only from a distance in recent years, they had, for a time, dwelt under the same roof. After seeing Cosette at Gorbeau house, Éponine's father had insisted that she was the same girl who had lived with them in Montfermeil years before. Éponine had been little then, and it was hazy in her memory, but from what she could recall, she had ignored her, mostly, and refused to share her dolls with her, as this was what her mother expected of her. She was not to socialise with the “rabble”. 

Éponine's mother may have doted on her daughters, but she had not been an especially kind woman overall, as Éponine had come to recognise in later years. 

But that was neither here nor there. Her mother was dead, Cosette was a fine lady, and Éponine was a homeless boy. It was all very strange, and Éponine was very tired, and only hoped she could continue to say the right thing for long enough that they would permit her to sleep under their roof, and grant her one night of peace from Montparnasse and the streets. 

Cosette had asked for her name, so she gave it. 

“É…Émile,” she invented. “Émile Thibaut.” She had pulled the name from thin air, a skill she had learned from her father and was not unaccustomed to doing.

“Nous sommes enchantés. I am Cosette, and this is my father, Ultime Fauchelevent.”

Fauchelevent gave a little nod in greeting, almost shyly. He looked almost uncomfortable, in the way of a visitor who feels he is intruding, although he was standing in his own home. Éponine noted that he had not even taken off his coat and hat. 

“Will you take care of him from here, ma chère?” Fauchelevent asked his daughter. 

“But of course!” she replied.

Fauchelevent nodded again. “Good night, then, to you both,” he said, and walked out of the room, down the hall, and back outside. Éponine heard the door close behind him. Her confusion must have shown on her face.

“My father sleeps in the porter’s lodge in back of the house,” Cosette explained quickly. “It is pointless to waste time in wondering why. He is rather eccentric, that’s all. Come with me, petit étranger, and I will show you to your room.”

Cosette led Éponine down the hall and into a handsome boudoir that adjoined her bedchamber. She fetched a spare blanket and a pillow, and indicated a divan where Éponine could sleep. 

"The guest room is not set up to receive anyone on short notice, I'm afraid," Cosette said apologetically. "But you'll find the divan comfortable enough for one night, I am sure."

Éponine was in awe. Everything was so clean, and so soft, and so warm. The furniture was all rocaille, adorned with gilt details, or encrusted with mother-of-pearl; the fabrics were all damask and silk. She stood stock-still in the middle of the room, afraid to touch anything, as Cosette flitted around her, then swept out of the room to consult with the maid.

“Toussaint will heat some water for you to wash with,” said Cosette, breezing back in a minute later. “Now, let me see what I can find for you to wear…”

She went to the wardrobe, rummaged, and began pulling things out: nightdresses in various cuts and styles, but all lacy, frilled things. At last, she threw out a plain nightshirt made of a rougher fabric—one that could easily have belonged to a boy.

“There!” she cried triumphantly. “That was mine when I was younger. I grew up in a convent, you know. I dressed much more simply then. It suits a boy, don’t you think?”

Éponine examined the nightshirt. It was not sheer, which was good, but would the fit be loose enough? Her breasts (mercifully on the small side to begin with) were held down presently by a band of fabric wrapped about her chest. She decided she must retain this precaution under the nightshirt, to be safe, but there was no cause for concern beyond that: hunger had left her thin, and her figure was overall more boylike than it might have been.

Next, she was given a cloth, a cake of soap, and a towel. She was shown to a tub filled with a shallow layer of hot water—not enough to submerge herself, for heating and hauling so much water would be a task indeed for an elderly servant at this time of night—but just enough to clean herself with using the cloth. 

When she had been left alone, she undressed at last, leaving only her hat on, for it was holding up her long hair. She worked the rose-scented soap into a lather, and scrubbed at herself with the cloth. When she was satisfied that she was clean, she dried off, and reluctantly took up the band of fabric to bind her breasts once more. It was dirty, and she was so clean! She dearly regretted having to spoil this cleanliness, but she had no choice. Sighing, she wrapped her chest again, then threw the nightshirt on overtop. 

As she expected, Cosette scolded her gently for leaving her hat on, but she refused to budge.

Cosette gave in, sighing. “You are a funny child,” she said, a smile and a frown battling for control over her face, “but I have taken a liking to you all the same.”

Éponine was surprised by how much these words pleased her, although they were not even intended for her, but for a fictional boy whose part she was playing in some absurd vaudeville she had never meant to star in.

“I am not a child,” she answered honestly, “but thank you.”

“No, you are not quite a child,” Cosette acknowledged readily. “That is true enough. Why look, you are taller than I am!” 

She stepped closer, comparing their heights. Then their eyes met, and Cosette grew serious. 

“No, you are not a child,” she said again. “There is something in your face…you have eyes much older than your years. That saddens me, for you have had to grow up much too early.”

With Cosette standing close to her like this, Éponine took the opportunity to examine the girl. She had never gotten such a good look at her before. So this was Marius’s Cosette. Éponine might have expected to dislike her, to feel the ashes of jealousy rekindle, but she did not. Marius was dead: what did it matter? And besides that, what man on earth would not have chosen Cosette over Éponine? There was no denying her beauty or her kindness, and her eyes held a spark of cleverness too. No, one could hardly blame Marius for loving her.

It was, perhaps, also true that Éponine had not quite been in love with Marius after all. She had been infatuated with him, or so she had thought, but in retrospect, she had realised the infatuation had been directed more towards what Marius represented than Marius himself. He had represented freedom, and books, and the world of ideas. He had represented a way out. If she had succeeded in making him love her, he could have lifted her out of the calamity of her life and into a new one. Oh, to be sure, Marius had been poor himself, but never so poor as the Thénardiers. And it was never just her family’s destitution she had wanted to escape—it was the way they were, the people they were, it was living under the black cloud of her father, day in and day out, with no hope of change. It was this that had made her feel as if she were in love with Marius, and it was this, too, that had made her wish to die at the barricade. 

Yet here she was, alive, and here was Cosette, her so-called rival in love. According to what she knew of the cheap romance novels her mother used to read (back in the days when such luxuries were still in scope for the Thénardiers), Éponine ought to despise this girl. Instead, she felt she was beginning already to like her.

“Please, do not be saddened on my account, Mademoiselle,” said Éponine at last. “I will be alright. I always am,” she said, trying to sound cheerful.

“My father will help you,” said Cosette. “I promise he will.” 

Éponine could not hold back a huge yawn. 

“But now you must sleep,” added Cosette. “Poor thing, you are exhausted.” 

She was. She was asleep as soon as she lay down on the sofa.

Chapter Text

The following morning, Éponine shyly trailed Cosette to the dining room, where Toussaint was laying the table for breakfast. Éponine hung back behind the other girl, uncertain, as the old maid finished her preparations.

Cosette did not take her seat immediately but said brightly to the maid, “I will go fetch Papa,” waving off the good woman’s protest. “Please, Toussaint, it is a perfect morning and I should like the fresh air. See that Émile is seated and let him begin to eat; I am sure he is starved. I won’t be a moment.” 

After Cosette swept out of the room, Éponine’s gaze strayed at once to the breakfast table before her.

It was laid with a pristine white tablecloth and set with glistening silverware and fine china. A silver coffee pot steamed from an elegantly curved spout; a silver pitcher of cream stood at its side. Also in the centre of the table lay a butter dish, a small bowl of strawberries, and a larger bowl, covered with a tea towel. 

Three places were set out at the table, each with a gold-trimmed porcelain plate, and a matching coffee cup on a saucer. Two of the plates had been filled with scrambled eggs, bacon and white bread rolls. The third, at the head of the table, held only a single white roll. It was a beautiful roll, steaming hot and perfectly round, and Éponine planned to savour every bite, for that roll could only belong to her. She hastened to sit down. 

“Ah, n-not there, mon petit,” Toussaint said gently, with a slight stammer. “That is my master’s place. You may take either of the other two. Mademoiselle usually prefers to sit on Monsieur’s left, so perhaps you might sit to his right,” she suggested. 

Éponine looked up at her, confused.

“No, surely—” She gestured to the plate with the roll.

“It is my master’s,” Toussaint repeated. “He does not like to break his fast on anything heavier.” Her mouth settled into a disapproving line. “Now it is at least a good white roll that he eats; before he would take only black bread. M-Mad…Mademoiselle put a stop to that, but even she cannot coax him into anything further.” She sighed. “You will find Monsieur Fauchelevent is indulgent only where his daughter is concerned. As for himself, he is rather ascetic.” The old maid gave her head a quick shake, as if putting it out of her mind. “But what matters that to you? Come. Sit.”

She hastened to pull out the chair for Éponine, who then found herself sitting in front of the finest meal she had set eyes on, let alone eaten, in months. 

Next, Toussaint reached across the table to the bowl covered with the tea towel, and flicked back a corner of the cloth to reveal a heap more white rolls underneath. 

“Don’t be shy,” she said. “Have as m-m—as many as you like. Tuck in. You heard Mademoiselle earlier: no need to wait for her and the master.” And with that, she hurried out of the room, smoothing her apron.

Éponine did tuck in. She was so absorbed in her breakfast a couple of minutes later that she hardly noticed when Cosette and Fauchelevent took their seats beside her. 

It was not until Toussaint bustled back into the room and set down upon the table a cut-crystal vase full of flowers from the garden that Éponine looked up at last from her plate. She had been struck by the sweet smell of honeysuckle permeating the air, drifting from the vase and mingling with the deep warm aroma of the coffee. 

Setting down her fork, Éponine inhaled deeply, breathing in the rich blend of aromas, and admired the look of the vase on the table: the glow of morning sunlight on crystal; the violet funnels of the morning glories blending in with the cream-coloured bursts of honeysuckle. She relished, too, the softness of the cushioned chair upon which she sat, and the savoury salt taste of the bacon that lingered in her mouth. She was determined not to forget this flash of luxury, which she was never likely to experience again in her lifetime.

Across from her, Cosette bit into a strawberry and blinked slowly, like a cat. Her eyes looked very blue indeed in the bright morning, with the red of the strawberry against her lips. She was lovely as a painting; the privilege of looking upon her felt akin to the other extravagances lavished upon Éponine this morning. She looked away quickly, before the other girl could sense her gaze, and found herself looking instead at Fauchelevent, who was looking straight back at her. 

“Now then,” the old man said, taking a sip of his black coffee. “What are we to do with you?”

“Do with me?" she replied, puzzled. "But you have done more than enough already. I will finish my roll, then I will be on my way. I thank you for the kindness you have shown me. And you, Mademoiselle,” she added, with a nod in Cosette’s direction. “Truly, I could not say when I last ate or slept so well. Des lustres. Ça fait des lustres."

Cosette passed her the butter, and she set about buttering her roll.

Fauchelevent said, “You will not leave us as hastily as that, I hope. Did you not say you had nowhere to go?”

Éponine shrugged. “I will find someplace. I always do.”

Fauchelevent raised his eyebrows. “Here, for instance,” he suggested, with a sweeping hand gesture.

Éponine nearly dropped the butter knife. She sputtered, “Monsieur, please, I could not—”

He fixed her with a look. “I will not have you stray again down the wrong road, as you will do if you are left at the mercy of the streets. You are a child, and have never been given a chance. That is a travesty. Now that you have found your way to us, by the grace of God, you must remain with us. I will send you to school,” he said, with the air of a man who has just decided something, and is well pleased with the decision he has made. “You ought to go, at least until you are sixteen. With a proper education, you will have a fair chance in life.”

Éponine felt dizzy as the meaning of these words settled upon her. School. An education. It had been four years since she had been to school, and she had longed to go back ever since she had been forced to leave.

When would a chance like this ever present itself again? 

She answered herself at once: never. 

It was unbelievable that it had presented itself in the first place. 

She wanted badly to accept.

But it was absurd: she could not keep pretending to be a boy! Revealing her true identity, of course, was not an option either. Any girl who would disguise herself as a boy must be up to no good, Fauchelevent was sure to think. Even if he remained sympathetic to her plight, surely he would not still offer to send her to school—a girl nearly grown to womanhood? Her place was no longer in the classroom, but in the home. And all of that aside, she could never forget that she was a Thénardier. After what her father had tried to pull at Gorbeau house the previous year, Fauchelevent could have no warm feelings for anyone bearing that name. And if he were to connect her with the little girl who refused his daughter the use of her dolls and toys, who sat idly by while Cosette was mistreated—no, if he learned who Éponine truly was, he would never offer her so much as another kind word. He would throw her out at once.

No, it was clear that if she were to accept Fauchelevent’s offer (Madness! But supposing…), it could only be as a boy. It could only be as Émile Thibaut, never as Éponine Thénardier. 

Fauchelevent continued to speak in his calm voice. Now he was offering her the guest room adjacent to Cosette’s (“We have been underprepared for a visitor, and the room is not ready at present, but that will be easily resolved,” he said). She declined it vehemently. Impossible. The only way she had even a chance of pulling this off would be if she could stay somewhere secluded, like the porter’s lodge out back where Fauchelevent himself slept, for some odd reason Éponine couldn’t even begin to discern.

Fauchelevent pressed her, and she mumbled, “I’m used to sleeping in hovels and cellars and attics and such-like. It wouldn’t be right, Monsieur, to waste all the good things on me. I’d hardly even know what to do with myself, surrounded by all this finery.”

She traced a shy finger over the finely decorated edge of her china plate. 

Hearing this, Cosette glanced sharply at Fauchelevent, who looked away. 

“I have a feeling you will get on well with my father, Émile,” she said drily.

Fauchelevent merely shrugged. “Very well,” he said. “We have in this house an attic. It will be no trouble at all to clear a place for you there. If it is attics you like, I see no reason why you should not stay in ours.”

And nor, for that matter, could Éponine. She had nowhere else in the world to go: if she were to leave this house, she would truly be at the mercy of the streets. Desperate times called for desperate measures, and this was surely a desperate time. 

If it all unravelled in a matter of days, well, so be it—that would still be a few more days of reprieve. A few more days safe. A few more days before she would need to face whatever came next, before she would need to figure out what she could do to survive. 

She hesitated for a long moment, thinking hard, weighing her odds.

If she were careful (and she was always careful); if she were clever (and she was always clever)—could she not fool them a little longer? She was already accustomed to dressing as a boy. The only real problem was her long hair, still tucked away under her cap, but that would be easily resolved. 

A part of her shrank away from the enormity of the task ahead of her, from the performance that must become her life if she were to say yes. 

Perhaps it would be wicked of her to deceive this kind old man and his daughter.

But if she were put back out on the streets, would she not have to turn to wickeder deeds than this? She had done worse things already, to be sure, at her father’s bidding. 

She wavered. As she thought, her gaze had become fixed again on the vase at the centre of the table, but she stared at it without seeing it. 

Then the light shifted; a movement of the clouds; the morning sun blazed through the dining room’s tall window brighter than before, striking the crystal vase and scattering prismic shards of rainbow-edged light across the expanse of white tablecloth. 

For a moment, Éponine thought she could see the silhouette of an angel in that crystal light, an angel with spread wings. She took an unsteady breath. 

She could have this. She could have this every morning. She could have this every moment. She must think of all that she was being offered. 

If she were careful (and she was always careful); if she were clever (and she was always clever)...

“Well…” she said slowly, breaking her silence at last. She swallowed hard against her nerves. There would be no taking it back. "If you are determined to have me, Monsieur."

After she had accepted the offer of the attic, and given her word of honour that she would return later that day, Éponine left the house on Rue Plumet. The first thing she did was to find a secluded alleyway and shear off her hair with a devilishly sharp clasp-knife Montparnasse had once given her.

She felt a pang at cutting off her hair, but for a long time now it had been brittle and dull anyway, a tangled mess. She ate too little and too poorly to keep it healthy, and had never had a mirror, a brush, a comb, or hairpins to dress it properly anyway. What was the point in having it? It hardly made her any prettier. (As if a street wench like her could ever be pretty in the first place.) Still, she did not cut her hair too short, leaving it at a shaggy near-chin length—believable for a street urchin.

The second thing she did was return to the last address where she knew her father and Azelma had resided. She went furtively, looking around for any sign of Papa Thénardier, who would not treat her kindly if he found her skulking about in direct disobedience of his order to keep away. Her father could go straight to the devil, for all she cared, but if she could do anything to help Azelma… It was no good, though. Her father had moved on, and taken Azelma with him, into obscurity, into the great maelstrom that was Paris. So that was it, then: she no longer knew where to find her sister. Her two littlest brothers had vanished years ago, probably never to be seen again. Gavroche was dead. And now Azelma: her last remaining link. Everyone was gone: dead or dead to her. Truly, then, Cosette and Père Fauchelevent were now all she had in the world. 

She may as well be Émile, then. No one knew Éponine any longer.

Chapter Text

After the first days of walking on eggshells, Éponine began to relax.

Cosette and Fauchelevent never showed any interest in ascending to the attic in the first place, and Toussaint caught on quickly that Émile liked to keep to himself, and grew uncomfortable when anyone was in his space. Éponine never said as much, of course, but Toussaint was perceptive, and Éponine's tension must have been easily sensed. Éponine was quick to assert that she would keep the attic room clean herself, that she was used to working hard and really, it was the least she could do to show her appreciation at having been given the room at all, and a roof over her head. So Toussaint ceded the territory to Éponine entirely. It was a significant victory. Perhaps she would not be found out as soon as she had feared. 

Her initial nerves having worn off, she began to venture downstairs more often, into the common areas, still marvelling at the house’s finery. 

Two weeks after she had arrived at the Rue Plumet, she felt comfortable enough to pull a volume off the Fauchelevents’ bookshelf to read. She had not had books at her disposal in years, and was determined to make use of them while they were at hand. She settled quickly on a thin volume by Voltaire. It seemed a good place to start.

Clutching the book, she turned back around and contemplated the various armchairs and divans in the drawing-room; their bright, soft upholstery and burnished wood. She was almost scared to touch them, let alone sit on them. She still had the notion that she was dirty in some way she could not perceive or scrub off, even with the rose-scented soap they used here at the Rue Plumet; that her touch must still leave a black mark on fine things. 

As Éponine stood there in hesitation, hugging the book to her chest, Cosette walked into the room. She wore a dress of such a deep navy blue as to be almost black, simple in fashion but well-made in fabric of the finest quality, and cinched about the waist with a broad ribbon belt.

She glanced at Éponine and sat down on the giltwood divan by the window, saying pleasantly, “Oh good, you have found something to read,” and beginning to sew.

After a moment passed and Éponine had not moved, Cosette looked up. “Aren’t you going to sit down?” 

Still Éponine hovered.

Cosette indicated the other end of the divan upon which she sat. “Here. Sit with me,” she said gently.

Thus encouraged, Éponine finally sat down on the other end of the divan, and opened the book she had selected.

For a time, they kept each other company in silence, each absorbed in her own task.

The expansive window at their backs looked out over the garden, so they could glance up from time to time to watch as little birds swooped and gambolled, white butterflies swarmed, and tree branches swayed in the wind.

When a bird happened to land upon the flowered hedge nearest to the window, Éponine was the first to notice it.

“Oh! A little bird has come to see us,” she remarked.

Cosette glanced up from the muslin pelerine she was embroidering in white thread, to see the bird peering curiously in at them with its bright little bead-like eyes, tilting its head in observation.

This made Cosette giggle. “A lark! Oh, isn’t he sweet?” she murmured. After a beat, she added in a conversational tone, “Do you know, I was called the Lark when I was small. Before Papa took me in. I can scarcely remember a thing about those days, but I am quite sure that the folk in the village called me Alouette."

Éponine swallowed. She had vague memories of the nickname, but she had never known how it had come about. She feared it had not been meant kindly.

Cosette, preoccupied with the bird, had not noticed her discomfort. "Did you hear that?" she said to the lark. "I, too, am Alouette. You and I are like cousins. Is that why you've come calling? A family visit?"

Éponine burst out, “But why should they have called you such a thing? A lark has such a dull colouring, while you are so…” 

Here she stopped, and flushed. Beautiful, she had been about to say. Sometimes when she began to talk, she did not know when to stop, and ended up by blurting out foolish things. From woman to woman, she could have called Cosette a beauty to her face and there would be nothing strange in that, but perhaps as a boy she ought not to comment on a lady’s appearance. She hesitated too long in her uncertainty, and ended by saying nothing further, leaving the sentence unfinished.

Cosette only smiled at her. There was something knowing about the smile, but that did nothing to diminish its gentleness.

“Larks are dear little birds, though, aren’t they?” Cosette said, directing her smile now to the small creature on the other side of the glass, which had begun to chirp. “I do not think I mind a dull colouring in a bird, as long as he sings sweetly, and a skylark’s song is lovely. In fact, there is a poem in English…” She trailed off, screwing up her face in thought. “Yes, I remember: Hail to thee, blithe spirit! Bird thou never wert, that from heaven, or near it, pourest thy full heart in profuse strains of premeditated art ,” she recited, then paused. “From there my memory fails. I cannot recall how the second verse begins,” she muttered, “but I have the last line of it: And singing still dost soar, and soaring ever singest .”

Éponine listened, rapt, to the rhythm of that foreign tongue. She had not, herself, been educated in any languages besides her native French, so the words were without meaning to her, but she found them beautiful in their strangeness. 

When Cosette had finished, she asked, “What does it mean?”

Haltingly, Cosette pieced out a translation, then said apologetically, “It is nicer in English.”

“It is nice, too, the way you have rendered it, Mademoiselle,” said Éponine sincerely. She repeated in a mutter, half to herself, “Et chantant tu planes encore, et planant tu chantes toujour… ”

She looked back out the window, but the bird had flown. Soaring ever singest … the words had stuck in her mind in a pleasant way. 

“You know, you are doing it again,” Cosette said gently. “You mustn’t make me ask another time.” 

It took Éponine a moment to realise what Cosette meant: Éponine had been calling her “Mademoiselle” again, despite Cosette’s repeated insistence that Éponine address her by her name. She had not yet managed to break the habit.

“Perhaps I should start calling you Alouette instead,” she now teased.

Cosette was quick to tease back. “And what shall I call you, then? Chouette? Mouette?”

But at that moment, they were distracted by the sight of someone coming up the walk: an imposing figure of lofty height and impeccable posture. 

As the figure came nearer, Éponine was struck by a sudden terror: she had recognised the man as an Inspector of the police, who had on more than one occasion conducted herself and her sister Azelma to the Madelonettes.

Cosette must have seen the panic in her eyes.

“It’s alright, Émile,” she soothed, looking out the window. “It is only Monsieur Javert. He is a friend of my father’s; he visits from time to time. He will not stay for long—not in the main house. He only takes a quick refreshment, then he and Papa go together to the porter’s lodge. Heaven knows what they do in there. I suppose men must have their gossip too,” Cosette said, “and it is true they have known each other a long time, or so Papa tells me.”

As Javert approached the front door, Éponine, at a loss for what else to do, hurriedly made her excuses and slipped away to the attic, emerging only when she was sure the coast was clear.

***

After Éponine's first few months at the Rue Plumet, a new inconvenience presented itself.

Thankfully, Madame Thénardier had often moaned to her daughters about the curse that was a woman's monthly blood, so when Éponine herself began to bleed, she at least knew what it meant. It would, perhaps, have happened sooner, if she had been in better health as a younger girl.

She had once run into an overly chatty midwife at the well, who had told her, “Sometimes the blood stops, or don’t even start in the first place, when you ain’t eatin’ regular,”—so she had always supposed this to be the reason the “curse” had never struck her before.

Now it had begun at last.

She remembered her mother saying, “You know what that means, that drop of blood? You know what comes of that? It means a child can grow in your womb, if you ain’t careful." Then Mme Thénardier had laughed humourlessly. "Soon’s you see that drop of blood, ma fille, you’re done for. Before you know it, you’ll have a half dozen mouths to feed and another on the way."

Much as it horrified Éponine to think of that, she did not allow herself to panic. She knew the facts of life; she was not innocent: she knew what it took to make a baby. As long as she remained Émile, she was safer than she would ever be from the threat of an illegitimate child. The only thing she needed to worry about with respect to this curse, she told herself, was the cleanup.

After some looking around, she managed to find an old sheet in her attic room, which had been stashed away in a corner and apparently forgotten about. She cut it into rags with her clasp-knife: rags that she would be able to tuck into the crotch of her drawers and use to soak up the blood. She then reserved water to wash the used rags in the same forgotten corner.

Even this became routine after some time. She began to grow comfortable. Somehow, she was pulling it off. Well, being born a Thénardier had meant years of training in deception, disguises, and general shadiness, which (for better or for worse) made her a natural in such schemes as the one she now found herself embroiled in.

In school (she attended an institution in the Rue-Notre-Dame-des-Champs as a day student), she kept to herself, worked diligently, and made decent grades. 

Over time, she even grew accustomed to Javert’s visits, and was less concerned that he might recognise her: after all, her appearance had changed drastically since he had last seen her, and he would hardly be looking out for the face of a girl in what he believed to be the face of a boy.

Still, she kept out of his way. She had had her run-ins with the officer in the past. He had known her face before, and whether he would still know it now, she did not want to find out. She took care not to be seen, retreating to her attic room whenever he was around. In a pinch, she would ensure she was seen in shadow, or from a bad angle, or with her head turned downward. 

Once she had heard him grumble to Fauchelevent, “What is it with that ward of yours? I have only to step over the threshold and he bolts like a spooked deer.”

“Well, Inspector, I believe he is a little afraid of you,” replied Fauchelevent mildly.

“Why should he be afraid of me? And you know I no longer go by that title, Fauchelevent,” Javert retorted, with a strange and rather insolent emphasis on the man’s name.  

“Must I relate once more the story of how I met the boy?” Fauchelevent replied as mildly as ever. “I would not be surprised if he had had unpleasant encounters with police in the past. Perhaps even with you yourself.”

“I suppose that is a possibility,” Javert admitted begrudgingly. “Well—no matter. If he wishes to hide from me, let him. I will not chase him.”

Fauchelevent chuckled. “You, giving up the chase? Now that is a novelty.”

“It is perfectly natural. I have retired from the force. I no longer have any interest in pursuing criminals.”

“Is that so? Not even one criminal?” Was that a touch of mischief in Fauchelevent's tone?

There was a pause, and a muffled laugh. “Perhaps there is one exception. A convict of particular infamy.”

“That sounds intriguing. You will have to tell me more about it in the porter’s lodge, my friend.”

“Lead the way, Monsieur,” Javert said in a low tone. 

At the sounds of chairs scraping back, Éponine had scurried away, feeling a little sorry for whichever unfortunate lawbreaker the formidable Javert had set his sights on.

***

Months passed. “Émile” turned fifteen, and Cosette (as well as Éponine, secretly) turned eighteen. Cosette and Père Fauchelevent remarked on how Émile was growing up. Though Éponine was not, of course, growing up in the same way a real boy does in his mid-teens, she did a convincing imitation. Since she had begun eating proper meals three times a day, sleeping every night in a proper bed, washing regularly, and dressing in proper, clean clothing, she truly had undergone a transformation. Her thin frame had filled out, which was welcome but also very annoying, as it had filled out in ways a woman’s would and a boy’s wouldn’t—but she stayed up in her attic room and let out the seams on her clothes, ensuring they would fall in such a way as to conceal the femininity of her shape. When new clothes were required, she dipped into the supply of pocket money Fauchelevent insisted on giving her and went by herself to a discreet tailor.

Being Émile suited her fine, for the most part. She only missed being Éponine when she saw a certain forlorn look cross Cosette’s lovely face, a vast distance yawning in her blue eyes. Cosette was lonely, that was plain to see; if only her father had not been himself such a strange and solitary man, he would have noticed. To have a girl her own age as a companion would have done her a world of good. How ridiculous, then, that just such a girl should reside right under her nose, without her having the faintest clue. Of course, in all probability, Cosette would not want Éponine as a companion anyway, given their history, but perhaps in the absence of someone more suitable, she might still fill a void.

It was all Éponine could do, when she sensed that chill of loneliness settling around Cosette, or saw her wearing that dreaming, bewildered, lost expression—it was all she could do not to take her hands and whisper, “Come! Confide in me. Don’t you know I understand you?”

They were both young women, the very same age; their hearts were the same, rocked by the same yearnings, swept by the same solitudes—of this, Éponine felt sure. She looked into Cosette's eyes and saw that they were in essence the same creature, but she knew Cosette must look into Émile's and see an alien: an amicable being perhaps, but utterly foreign. The heart of a fifteen-year-old boy could hold nothing in common with the heart of an eighteen-year-old young woman.

Émile and Cosette still became friends, but it was a very different sort of friendship from the one they might have had. They were much less close than she felt sure they could be as girls, but still she clung to what they had. She persisted, rather cheekily, in calling Cosette “Skylark”, because it made her smile.

Éponine had not forgotten that this was Marius's Cosette, the girl who had won his heart in one glance, and she could see how it had been so. Cosette possessed a special kind of sorcery, of which she herself was unaware. It was something in her voice and her laugh, and the way she tilted her head sometimes before she spoke. It was the way the light fell across her face in the morning, as she came to the breakfast table. The way she frowned a little and nodded when she was concentrating hard on what you were saying. The way she folded her hands and hummed quietly to herself when she was waiting for something, or someone. The faint dusting of freckles across her cheeks, scarcely visible unless you stood very close and saw her in bright sunlight; the clear blue of her eyes and the tiny chip in her one front tooth—in short, it was a million things together; it was simply Cosette.

Had Émile been a real boy, poor fool, he would have stood no chance. He would have been every bit as smitten as Marius had been.

Thank god, then, that Éponine was still Éponine, somewhere underneath it all.

Chapter Text

A few months into Émile's fifteenth year, Fauchelevent decided the boy was old enough, and now healthy enough, to assist with the men's work around the property, so Éponine joined him in the garden and the back courtyard, pruning trees, chopping wood, fixing, sawing, building, lifting.

The garden had been left alone for years by this time, and it was overgrown and utterly wild. Fauchelevent had not touched it before, preferring to leave it for Cosette to explore and play in when she was younger, then to dream in as she got older. Perhaps he had decided she had done enough dreaming by now, and he had taken it upon himself to tame the garden. Whatever the reason, this was his project, and Émile his righthand man.

Éponine struggled at first with the work, but Fauchelevent was patient, never criticising, never chiding her for weakness or clumsiness or cluelessness, all of which she displayed on more than one occasion. She followed his gentle instructions, and learned, and improved, and grew strong.

As she spent more time with Fauchelevent, and more time outside the main house, it was perhaps inevitable that she would have to cross paths, at last, with Javert.

He came upon her chopping wood in the back courtyard, the noise of the axe disguising the sound of his approaching footsteps until he was close behind her. She laid down the axe, turned her head—and found herself face to face with the former policeman. She stiffened, but held his gaze. Too late, now, to do otherwise. 

“So this is Émile,” said Javert quietly. “At last, we come face to face.” 

She lifted her chin, steeling herself for a confrontation. 

Javert snorted at her expression. 

“There is no need for such defiance. I mean you no harm. You are only a boy, and what should I care if you were a thieving little scoundrel before Fauchelevent found you? You have been reformed, that is clear. I would trust Fauchelevent to reform even the most hardened of criminals.” He tilted his head. “But your face is familiar, indeed, as I had suspected it might be. The curious thing is that I cannot place it. That is rare for me.” 

He stared a moment longer, then his gaze drifted. He appeared lost in thought. She was sure he was searching his memory for her likeness, and—thank God!—coming up short. 

She held her breath until at last he said curtly, “Well, good day to you”, a hint of frustration in his tone. Then he continued on his way, making for the porter’s lodge.

As he disappeared through the door, Éponine breathed out, waited for her heartbeat to slow, and took up the axe once more. As she split the next log, she realised she had just faced what she had thought to be her greatest threat, and come out unscathed. Although the muscles in her shoulders had begun to ache from swinging the axe, she felt a weight lift from them all the same.

***

By the time Émile had passed his sixteenth birthday, and Éponine her nineteenth, her appearance had transformed again. Working with Fauchelevent had brought definition to her muscles, her arms especially. Never had her disguise been so effective: she had now the build of a strong youth.

She had found, as well, that the somewhat shaggy length of her hair got in the way of her labour, so she had given in and had it cut shorter still. Now it was cropped closer on the sides with some length on the top, which was the fashion for men. She had become used to seeing herself as a boy by now, and she had to admit that the cut suited Émile well, and made him look more grown up.

That her voice had failed to break had not been an issue; her own natural voice had always been deep for a woman, and tended towards huskiness, which she had taken care to accentuate now that Émile was older, pitching herself down a notch. She had a smoke every now and then, as well, to help it along. 

Passing Cosette’s boudoir one day, she glanced at herself in one of the gilt pier-glasses and had a shock.

It seemed to her almost that Émile had grown handsome.

She recoiled, stepping back from the mirror, giving her head a confused little shake. She did not know what to make of it. She had not given a thought to her appearance since the day she had cut her hair in the alley. No, that was not quite true—in fact, she had thought frequently about her appearance, but strictly within the context of how well she passed as a boy. When she examined herself in the small, simple mirror she had in her attic room, it had only ever been to appraise the robustness of her disguise. 

But to be pleasing to the eye? She had abandoned that notion along with her womanhood, had left it behind on the cobblestones along with her shorn-off hair.

And yet here was this great gilded trumeau mirror, clearly the most trustworthy of reflective surfaces in the house—and many times more authoritative than Éponine’s own simple hand mirror—and here was the bright sunlight streaming into the room (while in the attic she only ever saw her face in shadow)—and this mirror and this sunlight seemed to be conspiring to show her something she had never seen in herself before. 

Still she doubted, at first, and went away wondering. In the hours to come, she convinced herself that she had been mistaken. What a folly! What a stupid notion! As if she could ever be attractive, even as a boy. She put it out of her mind.

At last, one day when she was descending the stairs from the attic, she heard Toussaint saying to Fauchelevent: “Do you notice how handsome our young Émile is becoming, Monsieur?” 

Éponine did not hear Fauchelevent’s reply, but Toussaint’s words had made her heart jump in her chest, and she carried them about with her all day. As soon as the chance presented itself, she slipped into Cosette’s boudoir once more and looked into the same pier-glass as before.

A young man looked back at her: a young man with big hazel eyes and high cheekbones and dark, tousled hair. 

She gathered herself, and judged objectively, and found that it was true: Émile had grown handsome. 

She let out a breath, and stepped away from the mirror feeling bewildered and strangely giddy. So she was handsome. She had not grown into the beautiful woman she had once dreamed of being, but she had become Émile instead, and Émile had grown handsome. What a curious thing.

But not everyone at Rue Plumet was glad about it.

At sixteen-and-a-half, Émile was still young, but old enough to cause problems, as Fauchelevent undoubtedly reckoned. 

In the days following Toussaint’s comment about Émile, Éponine had sensed a chill in Fauchelevent’s manner toward her, though he tried to hide it. She knew exactly what he was thinking. The spectre of Marius had not yet left his mind, and his dear daughter was now at risk of falling in thrall to yet another unsuitable young man. Éponine, knowing how impossible this was, found the idea laughable, though it carried a strange thrill all the same.

She began to notice a difference in the way Cosette behaved around her, too. Cosette had lost the easy manner she had had with the young Émile, and grown timid, even a touch deferential, as one would expect a young lady to behave around a young man. Saddened to see the distance between them increase still further, Éponine tried to reassure her with light touches and gentle words, but realised from the colour in Cosette's face that her efforts were being misinterpreted, and that in passing from boy to man in her eyes, she had passed the point of no return.

They could no longer feel easy around each other. They could not meet each other's eyes. Whenever they were in a room together, the room grew airless. Their every interaction was coloured by the fact that one of them was a young lady and one of them was, in every appearance, a young man. An energy crackled between them that had not been there before. It was torturous. It could not last.

***

Éponine could only bear a few more months of her newly tense existence at the Rue Plumet. By the time the winter softened back into spring and she and Cosette had reached twenty years of age, she had come to a decision.  

Gently, she reminded Fauchelevent that Émile had just had his birthday, and being now seventeen years old, was old enough to make his own way in the world. 

It had always been inevitable that she would have to leave. In fact, she was impressed she had managed to remain as long as she had: nearly three years! To stay any longer would be to overstay her welcome, and doubtless, to risk exposure as well. Though she was now very confident in her disguise, she could never afford to ignore the delicacy of her position. One misstep, and she would be found out, and it would all come crashing down.

She did not know what she would do after she left the place that had been her home and safe haven for so long, but as she was now twenty years old, strong and capable, and skilled in male impersonation, she was sure she would figure something out.

When she expressed to Fauchelevent her wish to leave the house on Rue Plumet (not without expressing her heartfelt gratitude for all that he and his daughter had done for her), he accepted the idea without argument, but insisted that he would find her work and a place to live, and give her some money to set herself up comfortably. He would not hear a word against it, and Éponine saw that she would have to agree.

“We will have one of your professors at the collège write you a reference,” Fauchelevent said, “and it will be no trouble at all to secure you a post somewhere respectable.”

He was true to his word: within a few weeks, he announced that he had found lodgings for Émile on the Rue des Blancs Manteaux near the Place des Vosges, and a job doing secretarial work. The apartment, which was on the ground floor of a fine building, had a garden, Fauchelevent related happily, so that Émile could still work outdoors in his spare time, if he wished (and he was always welcome, of course, at the Rue Plumet as well, for use of the garden and otherwise). 

“If I am not mistaken, it is something you enjoy,” Fauchelevent ventured to say, patting Émile tentatively on the hand in a rare gesture of affection. 

***

Thus, by the time Émile was seventeen, he was living on his own and earning his own wages.

He returned regularly, of course, to the house on Rue Plumet, and was welcomed warmly on his visits: the air had cleared between the three of them. Éponine was her own man now, and could settle into her role as friend and visitor. 

Cosette remained polite and decorous, but her smile was easy again, and they were able to sit together, whether in conversation or in companionable silence, without that suffocating feeling that had come over them before. 

***

The longer Éponine lived alone, the more she came back to herself. She remained Émile to all who knew her, but behind closed doors on Rue des Blancs Manteaux, Éponine emerged. She remembered that she was a woman of twenty. She undressed, unbuttoning and slipping off her waistcoat, then her shirt, then unwinding the fabric that flattened her breasts, until she stood naked before the glass, gazing upon herself in amazement. She did not recognise the figure before her. She tilted her chin, turned her head to the side, stroked her cropped hair. Could it be that despite it all, there was a touch of beauty to those features? For a moment, she’d thought she had seen it—the beauty of a woman. It was nothing, of course, compared to Cosette, but still it pleased her to think of it. 

She imagined herself laced up in whalebone, wearing one of Cosette’s fine dresses and bonnets. The idea was thrilling—and now that she was earning a salary (along with the extra “pocket money” Fauchelevent could not seem to help himself from giving her regularly, and which she could not refuse without making him gloomy), she could in theory purchase such garments for herself. 

She scoffed. And do what with them? Parade around in her own bed-chamber? It was not as if she could wear them anywhere else. No, the idea was ridiculous. But, she considered, it did not mean she couldn’t indulge. She would simply indulge Émile instead.

And so, throughout the first year of her independence, Éponine took it upon herself to expand Émile’s wardrobe. Gradually, she exchanged his somewhat plain and functional clothes for finer, well-tailored garments. 

She had been over-cautious before, and had insisted on a loose fit for everything, but now she did away with that rule. 

She had ceased worrying about her breasts: they were small enough to be easily concealed; the fabric she used to gently press them down was more than enough. 

She had ceased worrying about her hips: it was in fashion for men to be small in the waist with a prominent backside. Nature had given her the desired silhouette, without even the need for a male corset such as most gentlemen used to cinch their waists and accentuate their assets. 

With respect to her shoulders, however, some sartorial assistance could be useful, so she bought a padded coat that made them look broader. She also bought a velvet waistcoat with shining buttons, a silk cravat, a pair of kid gloves, a fine hat, Hessian boots. Émile became something of a dandy. 

Éponine admired herself again before the mirror, this time fully dressed in Émile’s clothes. She was beautiful thus, and though it was not, by necessity, a womanly beauty, still there was much in that beardless face and curving figure that hinted at softness. This androgynous beauty was a polarising thing: she had seen how some grisettes giggled and blushed when she passed, while others looked bored. Stranger still, when passing down certain streets in the evening, she sometimes noticed men looking at her too. The glint in their eyes was familiar to her; she knew it from being Éponine, but it was not Éponine they were looking at—it was Émile. It was Émile they wanted. 

And as for Émile himself? What did he want? 

That was the question asked frequently among Émile’s colleagues. On nights of carousing at the Café Musain, they were quick to tease her about her seeming lack of interest in the opposite sex. Many clearly thought her interests lay elsewhere. She took it in good humour, not allowing herself to grow defensive and draw any further attention to herself. 

Once, her colleague Gauthier had had too much to drink and had kissed her in the alley. She had detached him gently but firmly. 

“So…you’re really not…that way?” he had stuttered. “Langlois said you were not, but I was so sure…” 

She did not say anything, and helped Gauthier home. 

***

Émile was sometimes given to be merry and foolish, for Éponine had discovered how easy it was to be merry and foolish as a man. And she had had so little occasion for joy and revelry earlier in her life that surely she deserved a taste of it now? She could not say what the future might have in store for her—it must still contain its fair share of strife, for her disguise could not last forever—so should she not seize this happiness now?

Having thus justified it, she let herself be swept up in the intoxicating chaos of being a young man among other young men. She and her friends could drink and shout and revel all night long, and no one saw anything wrong in it: they were young men, behaving as young men did. 

Meanwhile, among the group, the argument about Émile’s romantic preferences remained ongoing. 

One night, after they had all had too much to drink and grown disorderly, someone shouted that the issue should be resolved, once and for all. 

“Put him to the test!” someone called out. There were shouts and whistles. 

Éponine’s head was buzzing with the wine she had drunk. She laughed along with them, and was about to toast to mirth and friendship, when Langlois pulled her to her feet. 

Someone had produced a pretty grisette, seemingly out of thin air, who stood giggling before Éponine. Her face was wine-flushed, and she was looking at Éponine coquettishly. Her eyes were teasing, daring almost: here was a woman who knew all too well how to charm a man. 

“Kiss her!” shouted Langlois. 

“Kiss her, Thibaut!” shouted Gauthier.

Éponine looked into the girl’s eyes, and the girl’s eyes held both a challenge and an invitation, and the challenge and the invitation were one and the same: Kiss me .  

Éponine’s stomach turned over. Never had she been looked at like that before. She had been kissed by men, but men did not tease like this, did not stare at one with that maddening coquette’s gaze. Men simply took what they wanted. But this—this was something else entirely. Her blood fizzed. 

“Kiss her! Kiss her! Kiss her!” They were all chanting it now, banging on the table. 

It must have been the wine. It must have been the gaiety, and the laughter, and the urging, for certainly it could not have been the woman, but suddenly Éponine was kissing her. She heard the cheers erupt around her as if from a distance. The grisette melted into the kiss, and so did Éponine. Their bodies pressed together, heads tilting, mouths opening, and Éponine’s hands were on the grisette’s hips—the cheers had turned to whistles, but she was hardly conscious of the noise at all, was hardly conscious of anything, until at last they came up for air. The kiss broke, and a commotion broke out. 

“That puts that question to rest,” said Gauthier with raised eyebrows. “A ladies’ man after all.” 

Éponine was slapped on the back, cheered, and toasted. A confused flurry of voices surrounded her.

Meanwhile, a friend had come to fetch the dazed grisette.

“Alright, Blanche,” sighed the other girl, taking her by the arm. “You’ve had your fun.”

Before she could be led away, Blanche caught Éponine’s attention again and blew her a kiss. Éponine shot her a grin—then she caught sight of Blanche’s friend, and she felt the grin slip from her face.

Her mouth dropped open. She had to lay a hand on the table to steady herself.

“Azelma.”

Chapter Text

Frozen in the middle of the crowded bar, Éponine was staring open-mouthed at this apparition, this young woman—(yes, a woman now, a woman grown!)—her sister. Azelma looked back at her in confusion. 

Émile’s friends and colleagues were all riveted, looking back and forth between them with anticipation. As soon as Éponine had blurted out Azelma’s name in that shocked tone, another flurry had erupted at the table behind her. Clearly, her friends had made the assumption that this "Azelma", whose appearance had so thrown Émile, must be his sweetheart, who had just caught him with another woman.

“Ooooooooh,” someone intoned in a low voice, sensing drama about to unfold. 

“Thibaut, you dog!” shouted Langlois. 

“Who’s this, then?” came another cry.

“Didn’t know you had it in you,” Gauthier crowed.

Blanche, too—the girl she had kissed—was looking from Azelma to Éponine and back again. 

Azelma was singularly focused on Éponine. She dropped Blanche’s arm, paying the boys no mind. She tilted her head. She was looking at Éponine in astonishment, but it was not yet the astonishment of recognition. It was the astonishment of someone who has been called by name in a voice that is somehow familiar, yet belongs to the face of a stranger. Azelma had not yet recognised Éponine in Émile, but was on the verge of making the connection.

Recovering her sense of self-preservation, Éponine lunged forward, grabbed Azelma by the arm, and pulled her outside, stammering “I’ll explain, I’ll explain, I’ll explain—”, to great effect among Émile’s friends, who became uproarious.

Éponine and Azelma stumbled out into the dark street, where Éponine gently tugged her sister away from the lighted doorway and to a quieter patch of cobblestone, where they could speak privately without any risk of being overheard from inside.

Azelma shook Éponine’s hand from her arm, then seized her older sister by the collar and dragged her into the light of a streetlamp, scrutinising her hard.

“ Éponine? ” she said at last.

Éponine nodded weakly. Azelma let go of her and stepped back.

“What are you…what are you doing ?” she asked in amazement. “What…” She flapped her hands at Éponine’s clothing. She seemed at a loss for words. “What is this?”

“I go by Émile,” said Éponine sheepishly. “Émile Thibaut.”

Azelma blinked. “You—they think you’re a man?”

“Yes.”

“But…”

“I have been Émile for a…for quite a while now.”

Azelma stared for a moment longer, then let out a hysterical laugh. “Tu es folle. Or should I say, tu es fou?” She shook her head. “What a ruse! Father would be proud.”

“I take that as an insult,” protested Éponine, only half-jokingly.

“I take it back then,” Azelma amended. “In truth, he would not be proud, he would only be irritated that you had pulled off a con ten times better than any he ever thought of, and without giving him a share of the profits.”

“It’s not a con,” Éponine replied defensively.

Azelma scoffed. “Really? Then what is it?” 

“It…” She didn’t finish the sentence. It’s my life . Émile no longer really felt like a performance. She had become Émile, and that had not been so hard to do, because there had been no one to remember Éponine. 

Until now. Now there was Azelma. Azelma, her sister—alive, well, standing before her. Azelma, lost for nearly four years, now found. Against all odds.

Éponine was suddenly overcome. She had a sister again! 

“But…but what about you?” she burst out. “Tell me where you were, where you’ve been, what you’ve—oh, Azelma. I—I can hardly believe—” She seized her sister in a fierce hug. 

Azelma threw her arms around Éponine as well, and for a moment they held each other.

After the hug broke, she kept hold of Azelma’s shoulders, examining her face. Azelma, too, had changed quite a bit in the past four years, even if she couldn't quite match Éponine's bizarre transformation. Nineteen, she must be nineteen now. How grown-up she was! Her face had lost its forlorn little-girl roundness and gained the contours of a woman’s. Better yet, the marks of abject poverty had left her; no more the wet, hollow eyes and scrawny figure, no more the sallow skin or the downturned mouth. Clearly, whatever her situation was now, she was eating better, smiling more, and seeing more of the sun than she had been when they were living with their parents. 

Azelma filled her in quickly and almost breezily on her life. 

“Father has been in prison almost since you left us. They’ve got him for good this time, or so it would seem. I stayed with Magnon and Mamselle Miss at first. Then I found work as a seamstress. Now I rent a room on the Rue Beautreillis, which I share with Blanche. There, that’s all,” she said briskly. “You’re all up-to-date on me . Now,” she raised her eyebrows, “à toi.”

Éponine rubbed the back of her neck. “It is…a rather long story.”

“Tell it,” Azelma commanded.

“Here? Now?”

“Yes! At once.”

“No,” Éponine objected, glancing around. “My place.”

“Alright.”

“Oh, but—”

“What?”

“I forgot,” Éponine said sheepishly. “You cannot come home with me.”

“Why not?” Azelma demanded.

“I am still Émile. What about your reputation?”

Azelma snorted. “ What reputation?” 

She peered at Éponine, seeming to notice for the first time the quality of her clothing. To be fair, its current state was rather dishevelled from the eventful night she’d been having, making it less apparent at first glance that she was quite well-dressed. 

“Truly, you have been living in another world, haven’t you?” Azelma observed. “A world where the women have reputations to uphold.” She grinned, and took Éponine’s arm. “Well, I haven’t. So take me back to your quarters, handsome.”

Éponine winced. “Stop that,” she said, but started walking up the street towards home, still arm in arm with Azelma.

“I can’t believe you kissed Blanche,” Azelma said suddenly as they walked. “Nor can I believe I forgot you kissed Blanche until just now.”

Éponine shrugged, feeling herself blush violently. “I had to.”

“You are an exceptional actress,” said Azelma, “and according to Blanche, an exceptional kisser.”

Éponine waited a long moment before adding, as casually as she could, “Truly? She said that?”

“Oh, yes,” said Azelma. “While all your friends were busy slapping you on the back.”

Éponine tried not to let it go to her head.

***

Éponine and Azelma stayed up late into the night talking. Mostly, Éponine told her the whole tale of how she had come to be Émile, and the years she had lived under his name.

Azelma was gleeful, and scarcely able to believe how long she had managed to keep the disguise intact. 

“Although, from what I have seen so far,” she said, “you make a fairly convincing man. I don’t know what I’ll tell Blanche tomorrow. I suppose I will have to admit I went home with you, and make it out to have been a romantic liaison. She will not be pleased with me.”

“Why not simply tell her the truth?” 

“I imagine that would be to your detriment,” Azelma said drily.

“No, in fact…” Something blindingly obvious had just occurred to Éponine. “We forgot something: men, too, have sisters." She grinned. "There's no reason not to say honestly that you are mine, and that we had not seen each other for years before our chance meeting last night.”

Azelma considered for a moment. “You're right,” she conceded with a smile. “It is much simpler than it seemed at first. And the resemblance between us is enough to extinguish any doubt.”

Éponine suggested, too, that Azelma leave the room she shared with Blanche to come and live with her on the Rue des Blancs Manteaux, but Azelma was decisive in her refusal.

“Do not misunderstand me," her sister said, "I’m astounded that you’ve kept this mad ruse going as long as you have. I am in awe of you, ‘Ponine, but—you know it cannot last forever. And when this whole thing falls apart, I think it’s best we’re not both brought down with it." 

Éponine understood her reasoning, though she could not help but be a little disappointed.

“It's really alright, 'Ponine,” Azelma assured her. “I earn my own living. I pay my own room and board. I am proud of that. I have only just got rid of that—that—" (her jaw worked as she cast about for the right word) "—salaud we called father, and I am not ready to depend upon a man again. Not even you.”

Éponine smiled at that.

***

She bought Azelma a nice new dress (pink crêpe with black detailing and voluminous sleeves), and a white bonnet adorned with pink ribbons, and brought her to meet Cosette and Père Fauchelevent, introducing her as Amélie Thibaut. (Azelma was an uncommon name, and there was always a chance it could trigger a memory.)

Cosette took to Azelma right away, and laughed at the way she and Éponine teased each other.

“It is plain to see how much you care for each other,” Cosette remarked warmly. “And to think, you spent all those years apart! How you must have missed each other. I am so very glad you have your sister again, Émile.” She laid an affectionate hand on Éponine's arm, just for a moment.

“When he did not have me, he had you, Cosette,” said Azelma. “So he was never without a sister.”

Éponine smiled at Azelma's gracious response, though she could not think of Cosette in sisterly terms. Her arm tingled queerly where Cosette had touched it. The way Éponine felt about her was so different from the way she felt about Azelma, in a way she could not quite express or understand.

Fauchelevent, though, appeared moved by the comment. He placed a hand on Éponine’s shoulder and gazed back and forth between her and Cosette with a little smile on his face. He was not a man who spoke openly about his emotions, and nor did he do so now, but the tears that shone in his eyes and the pride that shone in his face spoke for him.

***

From then on, Azelma sometimes joined Éponine on her visits to the Rue Plumet.

Éponine had warned her about Javert. On the one occasion he made an appearance in the main house while Azelma was visiting, she had been careful about keeping her head demurely bowed, as if she were simply shy around this tall, intimidating stranger. It helped that she kept her bonnet on (which was, after all, the polite thing to do when one came to call). Its wide circular brim surrounded her face, so tipping her head down even slightly did wonders to obscure her features. Javert had paid little attention to her in the first place, and not stayed long in the main house, so it had not been difficult to avoid his scrutiny. Of course, it was entirely possible he would not have recognised Azelma any more than he had recognised Éponine, after all these years—but it was best to be cautious.

Inevitably, on their visits, Cosette and Azelma would disappear into Cosette’s chambers and talk for a long while. Occasionally, a burst of feminine laughter could be heard. Éponine tried to be glad that the two women were getting along so well, but she could not suppress a stab of jealousy. This was the closeness she had always longed to have with Cosette.

Still, Azelma’s friendship with Cosette had strengthened Éponine's own bond with her, as well: Azelma’s light-hearted and teasing ways with Éponine seemed to have rubbed off on Cosette, who grew more relaxed around Émile than she had been in a long time.

It had been a long while, for instance, since Éponine had seen fit to call Cosette by that cheeky nickname she had given her back when she was still seen as a child, but now the mood felt right for her to start up again.

It was merely a whim, when she and Azelma were leaving the Rue Plumet one evening, to turn about and say softly "Keep well, Skylark" with a wink, but when Cosette blushed prettily and trapped a laugh behind her hand, Éponine knew she wouldn't be able to stop.

Even so, she spent a good part of these visits sitting out in the parlour with old Père Fauchelevent, playing cards or chess, reading in companionable silence, or simply talking. And though she couldn't help feeling a touch left out of whatever fun Cosette and Azelma were having in Cosette's boudoir, the time with Fauchelevent did her good as well, and she was fairly certain Fauchelevent would say the same.

It was on a night such as this that Fauchelevent asked a favour of her.

“I must go away for a few days to attend to some business,” he explained. “What troubles me is the knowledge that while I am gone, Cosette will be alone in the house. I would rest easy if only I knew there were someone with her. It is not prudent, you know, for a young woman to be left alone at home with only an elderly maid for protection. If there were a man staying with her…”

Fauchelevent had, on occasion, gone away on these little trips before, but not since Émile had left the Rue Plumet. Where he went, or why, he never explained. Cosette never asked him any questions on the matter, so Éponine had followed her lead and kept quiet. 

Cosette was accustomed to her father’s odd behaviour.

“Though it may seem hard to believe,” Cosette had told her once, “he has relaxed considerably in his old age. Before you came, he only allowed us to leave the house by the hidden path to the Rue Babylone. He was also given to disguises and false names. For a time, he even carried a selection of wigs in his pockets.”

“Wigs? You jest.”

“I certainly do not. It was not until he became friends with Monsieur Javert that he grew more reasonable.”

Éponine had laughed at first, but then she had realised what, or rather whom, this description reminded her of: her own father, Thénardier.

Éponine knew all too well the sorts of people who dealt in disguises and false names: criminals. 

She had been certain then: as surprising as it might seem, Fauchelevent was hiding a criminal past. What he had said to her on the night of Montparnasse’s failed robbery made a great deal of sense in this context. He had been so intent on reforming Émile because he had, himself, been reformed.

Éponine had a feeling Cosette must suspect something like this as well, as it seemed an obvious conclusion to come to and Cosette was not a fool. However, it was never spoken of between them.

Coming out of her reverie, Éponine saw that Fauchelevent was waiting for her answer to his question. 

“Of course, Monsieur, I will be glad to remain at Rue Plumet during your absence,” she said.

Chapter Text

"Are you sure you won't come to Mass?" asked Cosette at breakfast, on Éponine’s second morning staying at the Rue Plumet during Fauchelevent’s absence. 

Mass for the Fauchelevents was a somewhat lengthy excursion: they attended the Church of Saint-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas, which was three-quarters of an hour away on foot. Éponine had once asked Cosette why she and her father did not frequent a nearer church, and Cosette had explained that they enjoyed the walk, and as it was a poorer quarter, there was greater need there for the alms they had to give, and which they always gave generously.

"No, I shan’t come to Mass today,” said Éponine, in response to Cosette’s question. “I am expecting a visitor. My sister said she would come by this morning to look at those bonnets and things.”

"Oh, that's right," said Cosette happily. "I will go and lay them out for her." 

Cosette had a few old bonnets, a pair of gloves, and other miscellany that she no longer wore. They were in fine shape, but did not please her any longer, and what did please her was the prospect of giving them away to someone who would appreciate them more than she. Cosette had mentioned the prospect to Azelma in an offhanded way, so that it had not seemed in the least like charity—in fact, she had managed to make it seem as if Azelma would be doing her a great favour in taking the things off her hands. It was rather masterfully done, in fact, Éponine had thought.

Now Cosette made a pretty display of the articles she had chosen, laying them artfully across the divan in her boudoir, then she and Toussaint departed for Mass. 

The knock came a few minutes later. Éponine went to let Azelma in. She opened the door—and started back in surprise. It was not Azelma. 

“Bon matin, Émile,” chirped Blanche. For it was she who stood on the doorstep: Blanche, the pretty grisette who shared lodgings with Azelma—and the woman Éponine had kissed.

“Azelma has a headache," Blanche went on, "so she said I could come look on her behalf. We have the same taste, you know, and very nearly the same size hands.”

“Hands?” asked Éponine stupidly.

"Well, to try on gloves, I mean,” Blanche clarified. “But never mind that. Must I stand on the doorstep all day?”

Éponine stepped aside, and Blanche walked through the door, shutting it behind her. 

The grandfather clock in the drawing-room seemed impossibly loud, its tick-tock rhythm reverberating through the house. 

Blanche looked about. “It is awfully quiet,” she said. “Isn’t there anyone here?”

Éponine shook her head.

Blanche raised her eyebrows, looking intrigued and a touch sly. 

“Interesting,” she said. “Tell me more.”

Éponine frowned at her, uncomprehending. “They have gone to Saint-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas. For Mass.”

“Saint-Jacques-du-Haut-Pas…but that is half a league from here.”

“Yes. They won’t be back until midday.”

"Oh," said Blanche. "Well, in that case…” 

She seized Éponine by the cravat and kissed her. 

Nonplussed and knocked off-balance, Éponine steadied herself by resting her hands on the other woman’s waist. Blanche pressed herself against Éponine, hands moving up her neck, then weaving into her hair. The grisette bit at Éponine's lip provokingly, giggled, then went back in with renewed enthusiasm, backing Éponine into the wall and pinning her there with the soft weight of her body. They were kissing heatedly. Blanche was untying her cravat with worrying efficiency; Éponine registered dimly that an assault on her shirt buttons would be soon to follow. 

Before she could plan her next move, the unthinkable happened: the door opened. She shoved Blanche off—too late; they were caught in flagrante delicto.

With a deep sense of horror, Éponine turned to face the figure frozen in the doorway. It was Cosette. She was staring open-mouthed. She swayed, and laid a steadying hand on the doorframe. 

Cosette was alone: Toussaint had not returned with her. Éponine was grateful at least for that.

“I...forgot the coins for the alms box…” Cosette said faintly. 

Éponine opened her mouth, then shut it. She reached into her pocket and produced a handful of coins. She swallowed, and held them out to Cosette, who could not meet her eyes. Cosette put out a shaky hand to receive them. Éponine, her lips still tingling from being kissed, her hair in disarray, her cravat undone, humiliated almost to the point of tears, tremulously placed the coins in Cosette's gloved palm. The knowledge of what she had been doing—what Cosette had seen her doing—made this small touch seem somehow indecent, charged with a licentiousness it should not have held. 

Cosette pulled her hand back rapidly, as if Éponine's touch had burned her. Then she was gone, fleeing back out the door and shutting it too forcefully behind her.

Éponine and Blanche were left alone again with the ticking clock. 

“Well!” said Blanche, folding her arms.

Éponine put a hand to her forehead. “I think perhaps you ought to leave,” she said at last, in a strained voice.

“It seems a terrible waste of an empty house,” sighed Blanche, “but if you insist.” 

She flounced to the door and disappeared through it, closing it indelicately behind her.

Éponine was left alone with her thoughts. 

The more she dwelled on it, the worse it got. She realised it would seem to Cosette as if she had set the whole thing up. It must look as if she had skipped out on Mass purposefully, and lied about her sister coming, in order to have the house to herself, in order to meet with Blanche and engage in—indecencies.

But that was not the only thing bothering her. Why had she kissed Blanche back? There had been no audience this time. There was nothing to prove. The only answer she could find was the one she knew to be true, but was not ready to admit: she had wanted to. She had wanted to kiss Blanche. She had wanted Blanche, as a man wants a woman. 

Émile had been a disguise, once; now he was her life. She had thought her heart and mind were still Éponine’s, but now she was no longer sure, and that frightened her.

***

It was agony waiting for Cosette to return from Mass, but once she was back, things were no better. She would not look at Éponine, and slipped away silently. 

Éponine did not succeed in confronting her until after supper, when she found her at last in the garden, sitting on the old stone bench. She appeared deep in thought as the dusk gathered around her.

“Cosette.” Éponine murmured her name as she approached, so as not to startle her, but Cosette jumped anyway. 

Her voice was steady, though, when she responded in a cordial tone, “Émile.”

Éponine stopped in front of her. Cosette did not rise, but tilted her chin to look up at the figure standing before her.

“I—” Éponine cast about for a place to start. “Um. About…earlier. That…”

“...was not your sister,” Cosette finished for her, in an even tone.

"What you saw—how I behaved—” Éponine burst out, “It…it was not appropriate. It was indecent, and—and I am ashamed.” She bowed her head, worrying at a pebble with the toe of her shoe. “Je suis désolée, Cosette.”

“I daresay you behaved quite naturally for a young man of eighteen,” Cosette sighed, “it is only that I had never thought of you behaving that way. Now I find I cannot look at you the same.”

Éponine’s expression must have been forlorn, because Cosette hastened to explain. 

“I do not mean that in a negative sense, exactly. Sometimes, in a long acquaintance, one’s perception of a person must change. Perhaps my perception of you has not kept pace with your maturity. It is only that...I had never imagined you…” She flushed. 

“Nor had I,” said Éponine weakly. 

Cosette smiled at that. Her gaze was distant. After a moment’s pause, she confessed: “I had my own romance once. I suppose you did not know that. It is true that I do not like to talk about it. It upsets Papa, you see." She paused. "But it's true, I was in love—or fancied that I was. His name was Marius.”

Éponine swallowed, keeping her face carefully blank, as if that name meant nothing to her. As if she did not now see his face in her mind's eye, as if she did not remember the night he died, as if she had not then intended to die with him. How far away it all felt! A lifetime ago. Almost literally, in her case. She was a different person now, by any stretch of the imagination.

“At the time, I thought it was a great passion,” Cosette went on. “I was young then, younger than you. He swore his soul was on fire.” She paused, and a glint of amusement came into her eyes. “Still, I am sure I was never kissed like that.”

“Like what?” asked Éponine, a touch breathless. 

“Like you kissed her,” said Cosette in a low voice. 

“Oh.” It was Éponine’s turn to blush. 

In fact, she had the impression that she understood what Cosette meant about Marius. Cosette did not know, of course, that Éponine had known her first love, let alone known of his relationship with Cosette. But she had known Marius—perhaps even better, in some ways, than Cosette had. She knew that to Marius, Cosette had been a sort of angel, an icon of chastity and pure, celestial love. Of course he would never have kissed her in the heated manner Éponine had kissed Blanche. He was not that sort of man, and it had not been that sort of affair.

She was embarrassed at first, to think of it, but then she was lost in the memory of Blanche’s hands in her hair and the warmth of Blanche’s body pressing her against the wall. 

"Every woman should be kissed like that, from time to time,” Éponine said, a trifle unsteadily.

Cosette’s blush deepened, and she looked down at her lap. “But what nonsense have I been telling you, Émile? I have been talking to you of past lovers as if you were une amie, une confidante. Forgive me, that was foolish.”

“It was not!” said Éponine hurriedly. At last, she hastened to sit down on the bench beside Cosette. 

She remembered the years of living at Rue Plumet, of seeing Cosette’s loneliness and longing to ease it, to offer her the companionship only another woman could provide. 

“I tell you I have often wished I could be a woman for a day, so that I might speak to you like this, with no walls of propriety between us.” She seized Cosette’s hands, which were bare (a lady needn’t wear gloves in her own garden) and warm and soft. “I have wished to know what is in your heart, Cosette. I—” She looked away, searching for the right words. How to tell Cosette she understood her better than she might imagine, how to tell her in so many words, We are the same, we are of the same kind , without giving the game away? "There is an affinity,” she said quietly. “There is a current that runs between you and I. It may seem strange to you, but—I look into your eyes and I recognise it. It is there, it is—I am explaining this badly.” She laughed at herself, squeezing Cosette's hand. She felt it quiver in hers. “I am of your kind,” she said in a low voice, “and you are of mine.” This was the closest she could come to the truth. Although Cosette did not know it, they were both young women, and they were the very same age (one-and-twenty now): they were possessed of the same heart, in essence. It was this that she was trying to say, and although she could not share the truth of how alike they truly were, still she hoped Cosette might sense something of it.

Their faces were close together. Cosette was staring at her, lips parted. Her eyes lingered on Éponine's mouth. Her chest heaved with an unsteady breath, then she pulled back abruptly and leapt to her feet.

In hurried speech, she burst out with, “I—thank you for—that is, I am sorry for—” She tried again. “I mean, I am glad that—” She shook her head helplessly. “Never mind. Good night, Émile.” And she was gone, hurrying away through the greenery. 

“Good night, Skylark,” Éponine whispered to the darkening branches and vines.

Left alone on the garden bench, Éponine rubbed her fingers together absentmindedly, still feeling the echo of Cosette’s hand in hers. 

I am sure I was never kissed like that , she had said. Éponine thought, with a sort of aggrieved and cringing fondness, of poor insipid Marius, and imagined his chaste kisses and fumbling caresses. No, Marius would not kiss a woman as she and Blanche had kissed—at least, not before the wedding night. He was a fool, though, for not having kissed Cosette like that while he had the chance. If one were to kiss Cosette like that, Éponine felt sure, she would open like a wildflower, she would respond with all the hidden fire in her heart. It was in Cosette’s nature to love fiercely, and it was her due to be loved fiercely in return. If one were to kiss Cosette like that—

Éponine’s breath hitched. Suddenly, she was imagining it. Cosette’s hands, not Blanche’s, in her hair; the heat of Cosette’s mouth, not Blanche’s, under hers; her hands on Cosette’s waist—but no, no, this was too far! How could she think such thoughts? Émile had taken over again. Émile had taken over, and where was Éponine?

***

When Éponine went inside, she found Cosette looking considerably calmer, sewing by candlelight in the drawing-room. It was too dark to do any of the fine embroidery work Cosette often enjoyed, but she was engaged in some basic mending that demanded less of the eyes.

She glanced up and gave Éponine a quick smile. "I am not tired," was all she said.

Éponine paused for a moment, once more standing awkwardly in front of the seated Cosette. There did not seem to be anything left to say. Finally, she just said, "You don't mind if I sit up with you?"

"Not at all."

So Éponine lit a candle of her own and settled into one of the room's enormous armchairs with a book. 

It wasn't long before she started to nod. The words swam together more and more, and her eyes drifted shut at shorter and shorter intervals. The promise of sleep was so enticing, so warm and welcoming...

She must have drifted off at last, for she woke, with a start, to Cosette leaning over her. 

“You were crying out in your sleep,” Cosette murmured. “You were calling out her name…”

Éponine was puzzled. “Whose name?”

“Éponine.”

The shock of hearing Cosette speak her name—her real name!—was acute. She could not hold back a flinch. 

Cosette gave her a strange look. “Is that not her name?” 

“Whose name?” Éponine repeated helplessly.

“For mercy's sake, Émile, the woman I saw you kissing as if your life depended on it.”

Éponine flushed. “Blanche?”

Cosette let out a laugh. “Oh, I see.”

“No, wait—”

“So that was Blanche. Then who is Éponine?”

“She—it doesn't matter.”

“I daresay it would matter to Blanche.” 

“Well—”

“I suppose that answers my other question, anyway.”

“What other question?”

“Whether you are in love with Blanche. I suppose you are not, if you have also an Éponine.”

“I am not in love with Blanche,” Éponine confirmed, “but nor do I have an Éponine.” 

Cosette folded her arms. “Well, who is she then? And why were you calling out her name in your sleep?”

“It...is rather complicated.” This was far too much to navigate immediately upon awakening. 

“I believe you have grown into something of a scoundrel, Émile. I shall have to keep my eye on you.” 

“I would not have you think that of me,” Éponine pleaded. “It is not how it seems. There is only Blanche. No,” she amended quickly, “there is not even Blanche. Blanche is—I did not intend for there to be Blanche. I do not intend for there to be Blanche ever again. I…”

“Perhaps you ought to take up with this Éponine instead, then,” Cosette teased. “You were calling for her quite desperately.” Mimicking, Cosette cried out in a husky voice, “Éponine! Oh, Éponine! Where are you?”

Éponine swallowed. Hearing Cosette call her name that way was having an effect on her. 

“Truly, it is nothing, Cosette,” she tried again. “She is someone I once knew, that is all. The sleeping brain is subject to such strange fancies—oh, please do not think ill of me,” she implored. “I could not bear it, if you thought I was one of those men who…”

It was important that Cosette understood Émile was not the sort of man who collected women like trophies, or who recklessly followed his appetites wherever they led. 

“Oh, alright!” Cosette sighed, “When you look at me like that I can deny you nothing. Such earnestness! I am sorry I teased you. We will speak no more of your romantic entanglements, or lack thereof.” After a pause, she went on in a different, pensive tone. “You know, it is a funny thing…but I fancy I also once knew an Éponine, when I was very small. I can hardly remember her, though I feel sure of her presence, somewhere deep in my memories."

"Oh," said Éponine faintly. "Really." She felt sick. She wanted to beg Cosette to stop talking, stop trying to remember, stop summoning that cruel past into this soft present. But she could tell from the pensive frown on Cosette's face that she wasn't finished.

"To speak the truth, I…I think she was cruel to me,” Cosette mused, a little frown creasing her brow.

Éponine sucked in a breath, fighting to remain calm even as she felt the words like a blow to the stomach. All she could think to say was, “Cruel? How, Cosette?” She could not fully suppress the quiver in her voice. How? How could anyone be cruel to you? How could I have been cruel to you?

“Oh, innocently,” said Cosette, looking surprised at Éponine's reaction and rushing to reassure. “It was the innocent cruelty of a child who can only repeat what it has been taught. She was only a little thing herself; she knew no better. And truth be told, I do not think she ever did anything worse to me than refuse my company and forbid me from playing with her toys.” Cosette blinked, returning from her reminiscence. “Éponine. Yes. It is an unusual name. There can’t be many of them—wouldn't it be something, if your Éponine and my Éponine turned out to be the same?”

Chapter Text

The next day was Éponine’s third and final at the Rue Plumet.

After all the commotion of the day before, this one passed peacefully, and by the end of it, she and Cosette found themselves sitting once more upon the stone bench in the garden, wrapped in the warm tranquility of the summer evening. Cosette had brought her sewing out with her, and Éponine a book, but both items sat untouched beside them on the bench, for they were absorbed instead in conversation and each other.

In spite of the incident with Blanche, these three short days of Éponine’s visit had ended up bringing them closer than she had believed possible. It seemed Cosette had taken to heart what Éponine had said the night before, about wishing they could speak together more freely. It felt as if a wall had come down between them, and Cosette spoke to her now as one soul to another, rather than as a lady maintaining a certain degree of propriety in front of a man. 

“I spoke to you of Marius last night,” Cosette had said suddenly. “He comes to my mind oftener than ever when I sit upon this bench, for it was here that I had my first words from him: a love letter left under a rock.” 

Éponine did not comment; she did not know what response was expected of her, if any was.

Cosette shifted where she sat, restless. “I thought—I supposed you must have been wondering what happened to him. What happened between us, that we never married. You would never ask outright, of course, but you must have wondered. I thought it remiss of me to speak of it without telling the whole of it.”

It had not occurred to Éponine that this would indeed be a natural curiosity. She would never have brought it up, for she knew exactly what had happened to Marius, and why should she wish to raise such a painful subject? But of course, Cosette did not know she knew. 

“If it is your wish to tell me, Cosette, I will listen,” she replied, in as neutral a tone as she could manage. “But you must not do so on my account alone.”

Then Cosette, who had already made up her mind, said simply, and with a great deal more composure than Éponine had anticipated, “In fact, he is dead.” She paused briefly, then elaborated: “He died five years ago, in June of eighteen-hundred and thirty-two.” She folded her hands in her lap. “You will suppose it was cholera; rather, it was a Guardsman’s bullet. He joined the rebellion, you see—” Here she paused, mistaking the flicker on Éponine’s face as one of confusion, and added, “Yes, if you recall, there was a skirmish; some student revolutionaries constructed barricades around Saint-Merry.”

Éponine gave a weak nod. “I recall—something of the sort.” 

“Marius died there.” She scuffed at the ground with the heel of her little white silk shoe, her gaze dropping. “Perhaps he would not have gone, only he had not long before been rebuffed by his grandfather upon asking permission to marry me. He saw no future for us, after that—he would never have allowed us to run away together, nor taken me as a lover. He was not that sort of man. And then my father announced that we would be leaving for England, and we could no longer hope to even lay eyes on each other again.”

Éponine swallowed. “England! Oh—to England.” 

With that, she was suddenly overcome. Prompted by that one short phrase, a recollection sprang upon her from a self so distant and foreign that it did not even feel like it had ever been a part of the person she now was. 

It had been the day before the rebellion—June 4, 1832—and she had been slinking about the Rue Plumet, pacing outside the garden gate in her male attire. She was protecting the house from intrusion, from the dark machinations of her father and his accomplices. This was true, but there had been something else, the seed of an idea, a far less noble motive that had seized hold of her imagination: to separate Marius and Cosette. 

Yes, it was true—it came back to her now, all of a sudden, though she had forgotten it, though it had been lost entirely in the wake of the barricades and all that followed, lost to the great black flood of misery that washed over her with its ink-dark waters and drowned all but the most tenacious of thoughts and memories from those days.

She had descended into such a pit of despair at that time; her family’s circumstances were ever-worsening, her own father had almost had her killed at his feet after she had defied him outside the Rue Plumet, and the one light through it all was Marius, the gentle young man who treated her at least with a measure of sympathy, if not necessarily with kindness. Marius, who was poor but dignified, and intelligent, and well-read—who, if he had cared to—if he had cared for her—could have saved her. 

As she paced up and down the Rue Plumet that June day five years gone, with her workman’s cap pulled low over her face, the beautiful girl, Marius’s paramour, Cosette , had called out from the garden, looking for a boy to deliver a letter. Éponine went to her, and Cosette had given her five francs in exchange for the prompt delivery of the missive to its address. 

Éponine put the letter in her pocket. Its intended recipient was as she had expected: To Monsieur, Monsieur Marius Pontmercy, at M. Courfeyrac’s, Rue de la Verrerie, No. 16.

She spent a fraction of the five francs on a meal at a cheap restaurant, where the cuisinage was artless but the portions generous, then pocketed the rest to treat Gavroche and Azelma as soon as she got the chance.

She did not deliver the letter that day, for there was a bitter jealousy rising within her at the thought of beautiful, wealthy Cosette, the girl who had everything, and Marius besides. 

It was not until the following day that she stopped by Courfeyrac’s quarters at last, feeling guilty, and having the idea in her head that perhaps she would deliver the letter after all, that perhaps, if Monsieur Marius were there, and if he were kind to her, she would return that kindness. But it had been Monsieur Courfeyrac who had received her, and had informed her that he and Marius were going to the barricades. It was in that moment that all had become clear to her: she, too, would go to the barricades, she would fling herself into that death as she would have into any other, and she would die (tragically, fittingly, poetically) at Marius’s side.

She walked away satisfied with her plan. And since she would soon be dead, and so would Marius, and Cosette would soon be in England, there could be no harm, really, in reading the letter, for curiosity had gotten the better of her.

She pulled it out of her pocket and broke the seal. The note was short, and messily written.

My dearest, alas! my father insists on our setting out immediately. We shall be this evening in the Rue de l’Homme Armé, No. 7. In a week we shall be in England. COSETTE. June 4th.

So Cosette would not even be at the Rue Plumet tonight to meet with Marius in the garden, as they usually did—and perhaps without having read the letter, Marius would still be expecting her. If Éponine were to go to the Rue Plumet tonight on her way to the barricades, perhaps she would find Marius there. She could tell him where Cosette had gone. (She thought of how happy Marius had been when she had found Cosette’s address for him in the first place; yes, she was good like that, wasn’t she, for all that he seemed to have forgotten all about her since then!). If she told him where to find his Cosette, he could perhaps have the comfort of one last sight of her before he went to join his friends at the Rue de la Chanvrerie. Yes, that was one thing she could do. Or she could egg him on, tell him his friends were waiting for him and make certain that he would waste no time in getting to the barricades.

When she set out that night, she did not yet know which option she would choose—and she had never had the chance to find out, for before she could reach the Rue Plumet, she had been arrested and thrown into the Prefecture of Police, to pass the night crowded in with hundreds of other ‘suspicious persons’ who had been taken preemptively off the streets during that time of chaos.

So her plan had gone awry: Marius had died, and she had not. It was the last thing she had intended. Her own death was the lynchpin, her own death was what she had hoped for most of all, and it had not come to pass. After she was released from the Préfecture, which wasn’t until the morning of the seventh, when everything was well and truly over, she had wandered the streets in a daze, hardly knowing where she was going. It rained at times, she did not perceive it; for her lunch, she purchased a penny roll at a baker’s, put it in her pocket and forgot it. After a time, she realised she had walked in a confused, zigzagging loop through the heart of Paris, and had found herself back upon the banks of the Seine.

She had thought of drowning herself before, but the last time she had seriously considered it had been during the winter, and the thought of that frigid water had been just enough to dissuade her. 

Now it was summer.

She had come to the Pont de Jéna, had crossed to the centre of it and now peered down into the waters below. The river here was flat and calm, almost inviting in its docility. She leaned her elbows on the rough stone of the parapet and watched the Seine flow beneath her for what felt like an eternity. 

But another silly thought had come to her, another excuse as to why she could not do it: she still had the letter from Mademoiselle Cosette in her pocket, and if she leapt, it would be ruined. She did not know yet, for certain, that Marius had died, and if it were possible that by some miracle he had not, she now wanted nothing more than to deliver him, belatedly and with her tail between her legs, this letter that was his due. She was filled with a horror of self-disgust for not having done so in the first place.

First, she would confirm that Marius was dead, and then she could drown herself.

She returned home, sure that her father would know the outcome of the rebellion, and would know if their former neighbour had been among those killed. Thénardier was good at keeping an ear to the ground. 

But when she came up the stairs and into the garret, she was disappointed (for once) to see that her father was not there. Her mother and her sister were alone, seated on the pallet bed. Her mother was comforting her sister, who was crying.

“My treasure, I entreat you, it is nothing of consequence, don’t cry,” Madame Thénardier tried.

Azelma continued to weep bitterly. 

Madame Thénardier looked up when Éponine came in, and frowned. “Why are you dressed like that?”

Éponine shrugged.

Madame Thénardier accepted this non-answer without comment. “It is good you have come. I cannot calm the child. Perhaps you might have a turn.” 

Éponine went to her sister, sitting down on the other side of her. Azelma had covered her face with her hands, continuing to weep disconsolately. Gently, Éponine prised the girl’s hands away so she could look her in the eyes. She clasped Azelma’s hands in both of hers. They were wet and clammy.

“Azelma,” she said gently. “Azelma, it’s me. ‘Ponine.”

“‘Ponine,” the girl wailed between sobs, and clung to her. The mother sighed, and moved away, muttering.

“What’s happened?” She was beginning to feel frightened. Azelma cried with some regularity, true, but this was something else: she was almost hysterical. “Azelma, what’s happened? What’s wrong?”

“Gavroche,” Azelma sobbed, “It’s Gavroche.” 

Éponine tried to smile, even as she felt her stomach drop. “Gavroche? Well, out with it. What’s he gone and done now, the rascal?”

“No, ‘Ponine,” Azelma gasped out. “He’s gone. He’s gone.”

“Gone where?” Éponine did not know why she continued to play dumb, but it was the only thing she felt capable of doing.

“The barricades!” Azelma half-shrieked. “He went to the barricades, and they sh—they sh—they shot him.”

Éponine went numb. “How do you know this?”

“I was out in the streets looking for you, for both of you, looking everywhere, even for Father, somebody.” Azelma tripped over her words, sniffing and gulping for air. “You were all gone! For days , Éponine. You’ve been gone for days. Oh, I never expect to see Gavroche more than once in a b-blue moon, but you, Ép…And—and there were men out shooting in the streets, and I couldn’t find you! I couldn’t find you!” She choked out another sob. “Gavroche is gone and I didn’t know, didn’t even know if you were—if you might be—”

Éponine covered her mouth with her hand. “I’m sorry. Oh. Oh. Azelma, I’m s—I’m so sorry. I’m here. I’m right here now. I’m so sorry.” 

She threw her arms around her sister and held her tight. She wanted to weep, even more now that she could feel how thin and frail her sister’s little body was, how barely-there Azelma felt in her arms, and how easy it would be to lose her too, for her to slip away one night from hunger, or a chill, or God only knows, and this on top of losing Gavroche she could not think about, could not think about, could not think about.

And how could Gavroche be lost in the first place? It didn't make sense, it couldn't be right, Gavroche was invincible, he was a Parisian gamin, a fairy of the streets, mischievous and wily and eternal. How could he have died? Any other of the Thénardiers she could have believed dead, but Gavroche, she had thought, would live forever. A hundred years would pass and he would still be cavorting in the streets of Paris, barefoot and carefree. And yet.

She wanted to weep, but where the tears should be was nothing, nothing at all, just a great howling emptiness engulfing her insides. So she just screwed her eyes shut and squeezed her sister until she had no strength left, and then she pulled away, dry-eyed. 

“‘Zelma, how do you know this?” she asked again.

She waited while Azelma collected herself, until she was able to tell her story.

“I was out there looking for you and Gavroche and Father, and a m-man came up to me,” she began shakily. “I have seen him before; I recognised his face; he was an inspector of police, although he was not now dressed as one. He came up to me, and he knew me too, for he said, ‘Azelma Thénardier.’ And I said, ‘I haven’t done anything!’ And he said, ‘I know.’ And I said, ‘You’re a cop. I know you’re a cop,’ because I did, and he was, and he couldn’t fool me. And he said that he wasn’t anymore, as he had turned in his resignation to the Prefecture and tried to turn it in to God as well, not that any of that was my concern anyway.” Her face registered a hint of confusion upon relating this part of the man’s dialogue. Éponine could make no sense of it either, and indicated as much through look and gesture, so Azelma went on. “Then he said, with an air of terrible graveness, ‘I have something to tell you, Azelma Thénardier, and you must listen, for it is important.’ And I could tell from his voice that it was, so I started paying close attention, and then he took off his hat and turned it in his hands, and then he said, ‘Your little b-brother has died at the barricade," (she gulped, and tamped down a sob), "in the Rue de la Chanvrerie.’” She made a small distressed noise, something like a hiccup. “He had been there, the man said he had been there, and he saw them carry in the body." She swiped away a lone tear that had run down her cheek. "He said Gavroche was brave. He wanted me to know that: that Gavroche was very brave. He did not say that he was sorry, but he looked as if he was.”

So he was gone. It was true, somehow, that Gavroche had died.

It was then that the great obliterating darkness rose up around Éponine like floodwaters, a mire of grief and numbness that would not be lifted again until she found shelter under Fauchelevent’s roof and Émile’s name. In the months that followed the day she learned of her brother's death, blow after blow would fall upon her, and each time she was sure she had reached the bottom of the pit, another misfortune would manage to surprise her. Éponine’s mother would be arrested, then Éponine would receive word that Madame Thénardier had died in prison awaiting her trial; then her father would throw her out on the streets, separating her from Azelma; then she would be forced to seek Montparnasse’s protection, to accept all the debasements that entailed. 

Consumed by misery, she did not think of Cosette’s undelivered letter again until the next time it occurred to her to put on the pair of workman’s trousers she had worn. It was a few weeks after the rebellion, when she needed a quick disguise to get the cops off her tail. She had rediscovered the letter at that time. When her hand made contact with that folded paper in the trouser pocket, she had remembered what it was, and winced at the recollection, but could not bring herself to destroy it. So she left it where it was. In the trouser pocket it remained, folded up small, so that her fingers became accustomed to feeling its edges and it became an abstract object to her. It may as well have been a pebble she had liked the look of and taken home with her. She had forgotten its meaning. Then one day she could no longer feel it there at all, and she discovered the pocket had developed a hole, and that it was gone, and she never thought of it again.

Certainly she had never recalled it so vividly or so plainly as she did now, seated on the stone bench beside Cosette in the garden, that very garden at the Rue Plumet, after Cosette had mentioned how her father had once intended them to go to England, and Éponine saw clearly in her mind’s eye, all of a sudden, Cosette’s handwriting spelling out the words: In a week we shall be in England. COSETTE. June 4th.

Words intended for Marius, which he had never read. Had never read because of her.

“Yes, England,” Cosette went on, ignorant to the vast expanse of mental terrain Éponine had just traversed in her recollections. “My father declared he had business there that he needed to attend to.”

“I—did not know you and your father had been in England,” said Éponine. “I have never heard either of you speak of it before.”

“That is to be expected, for we did not go, in the end,” said Cosette, her mouth quirking. “After the night of the barricades, we…everything was changed.” She swallowed. “Perhaps I should have told you all this before," she interrupted herself. "You have lived under our roof, you have been like one of our family for a number of years now, and yet we have told you nothing of our history, have we?” She gave a sad smile. “I am afraid we are secretive people.” 

Éponine almost laughed aloud. You, secretive? What does that make me?

The answer came unbidden, from a voice within her. First, it shrieked out: A liar! A scoundrel! A con artist! A villain!

Then it sneered, more cuttingly: Your father’s daughter.

She looked away. The sun had sunk out of sight behind the trees, and the shadows had begun to stretch and deepen around them.

“I am not secretive by nature,” Cosette admitted. “No, I do not believe so. I believe I have learnt it all from my father. He is…oh, you must understand, I hold him in the highest esteem. But…he is like a—a book, like a massive tome with a handsome cover of blind-tooled leather, and heavy with pages upon pages of history and wisdom and stories and secrets, and one longs to read it, but it is sealed shut with metal clasps, and locked, and for all that one tries, it cannot be pried open. He will not speak of the past, not ever. I ask him questions, and he does not answer. He merely looks at me, with this sad smiling expression, and I know he will say nothing more. There is so much I do not know—about myself even, let alone about him! I do not even know where I came from. I know he rescued me when I was small, from someplace dark and frightening, but where was I? How came I to be there? What happened to my mother, for surely I must have had a mother, once? I know nothing, Émile, nothing at all.”

Éponine opened her mouth, then closed it again. She had not been prepared for this sudden outpouring. As gratified as Éponine was to be trusted with so many of Cosette’s innermost thoughts and wishes, she was at a loss for how to respond. 

In fact, she knew significantly more about Cosette’s past than Cosette herself: naturally, she knew from whence Cosette had been rescued by Fauchelevent when she was young. She also knew, from hearing her parents talk, who Cosette’s mother had been. And, although she did not know anything of Fauchelevent’s past, she still held to that inkling she had formed, that suspicion that he had been involved in criminal activity. She had no proof of this, but instinct told her it was so, and she would have staked a considerable amount on it. 

It felt wicked indeed to withhold these things from Cosette, given how desperate she was for answers, but her hands were tied: she could say nothing as Émile.

It was a relief when Cosette continued to talk without waiting for a response.

“But I have gone off the track. What was I saying? Ah, yes. The barricades…” 

Éponine made a fist and dug her fingernails into her palm. She did not want to be brought back again to that day; her own mind had dragged her back for long enough already. Still, she made an effort to listen as Cosette went on.

“I learned only after it was all over that my father had gone there too—selfless, reckless, foolhardy man!—to think I might have lost both of them! It was a terrible risk that he took. Nevertheless, Papa went to look for Marius, to try and save him. He was not able to, and I think he took it almost as hard as I did. He returned on the seventh, just before dawn, filthy and soaked to the skin, with tears in his eyes, and told me Marius was gone. I could not believe what I was hearing. I did not even know my father knew about us. I had thought Marius a well-kept secret. Now I learned that we had been discovered, in the same instant that I learned he had died. And my father—he was distraught. He kept saying, ‘I’ve failed you, I’ve failed you.’ It was awful. He never spoke again of going to England, and unpacked our trunks without a word. I hardly remember a thing about the weeks that followed. I was despondent; I did not think I would ever be happy again. I planned to take the veil. My father humoured me at first, but eventually told me I mustn’t, that he could not see me as a nun, that he had thought hard about it, and did not believe I would be happy to live my whole life in a convent like the one where I grew up. ‘Think of all that you would lose, Cosette,’ he cautioned. ‘Think of being shut away from the world forever. It is a waste. You have your life to live, all those years ahead of you, in freedom and light. It is a gift—I would not have you squander it.’ He spoke passionately, and he convinced me. And so I stayed, so we both stayed. Here, in the little house on Rue Plumet. After a year had passed, I was beginning to feel like myself again.” She smiled. “And that was when you came into our lives, Émile. So I believe I’ve filled in everything you missed. Truth be told, it all seems so far away now, a bygone era.”

After a lull, Éponine finally cleared her throat to speak.

Cosette had shared so much with her, it was only right that she share something too, to the extent that she was able. There was precious little of her true self she could reveal; she did not want to waste this opportunity for some modicum of honesty.

“I remember that night,” she said. “The fifth of June, 1832. I intended to be there.” She ran her finger over a rough edge on the stone seat beside her.

Cosette looked shocked. “What do you mean? At the barricades?”

Éponine nodded. “Yes. I set out that night determined to join the rebels at the Rue de la Chanvrerie. I was ready to die like a man.” She gave a sardonic smile. “But the police were patrolling the streets by then, searching passers-by and arresting suspicious characters. It was decided I fell into the latter category. I was locked away in the Prefecture of Police, crowded in there with hundreds of others. The Conciergerie, too, was full, as was La Force. Two nights we were kept there.” She paused. “We were not let free until the morning of the seventh, when everything was well and truly over.” She felt her throat tighten with tears, and had to focus to keep her voice from pitching up too high. “The barricades had fallen, there was blood in the streets,” she said in so low a tone it was scarcely audible. “And he was gone. And I wasn’t there.”

Cosette laid a hand on her arm, a look of pity and horror on her face. “Who was gone, Émile?”

“My brother. Mon frère cadet.”

The horror on Cosette’s face deepened. “Your younger brother? But…” She swallowed. “But you yourself must have been only…you cannot have been more than…Well, as it was one year before you came to us—you would have been thirteen years old.”

Of course—there was the three-year gap between Éponine’s real age and Émile’s feigned one. 

Cosette went on with a shake of her head. “You were no more than a child. And yet your brother, you say, was younger still?”

“There was only a year’s difference between us,” Éponine lied. “He was twelve.” That part was true.

“Twelve years old. And…”

“He died there, as your Marius did.” 

Cosette covered her mouth. Tears had come to her eyes now. “Oh, the poor thing. Oh, Émile.” She took hold of Éponine’s hand. “It is a dreadful thing to have in common. Yet it is worse for you, to have lost your brother, a mere child. Marius, at least, was a man grown, and went to his fate understanding what it meant.” She looked into Éponine’s face, then laid a hand on her arm. “I can only thank God that you were prevented from going there yourself,” Cosette said fervently. “I thank God for the rough hands of the policeman who pulled you from the streets, child that you were, and thrust you into the safety of the Préfecture.”

“Truth be told, it is my greatest regret,” Éponine whispered. “What if I could have saved him? At the very least, I could have held him as he died.” She did not know anymore whether she spoke of Gavroche or Marius.

“Émile, you cannot think that way.” Cosette was vehement. Her hand tightened on Éponine's arm. “You would as likely have gotten yourself killed as well. My God! You are so like my father sometimes…”

No, Cosette, your father is a selfless, loving man who tried to save a life because he is goodness incarnate. I was just a stupid girl who wanted to die pretending she was loved, and could not even do that.

With a great effort, she shoved the thought down.

Their eyes met for a moment, and they both looked quickly away.

“Do you miss him still?” Éponine asked finally. “Your Marius.”

Another long pause ensued. 

“I am sorry that he is gone,” said Cosette at last. “God rest his poor soul.”

Éponine felt a clench of sadness in her stomach. “Qu’il repose en paix,” she echoed quietly. 

If only she had been there! She would never be able to shake that sense of regret and failure; it went bone-deep. Perhaps, through some fluke, she could have succeeded where Fauchelevent had failed. She might have thought, at the time, that she wanted Marius to die at the barricades beside her, but she had a feeling she could not, in reality, have borne it. No, she could not have seen him shot down. She knew this, suddenly, with an awful certainty. She would have leapt in front of the bullet rather than see it strike him. She would not even have hesitated. It seemed almost comical how Cosette had scolded her just now, saying she would have gotten herself killed if she had gone to the barricades. As if Éponine did not know that! As if she had not set out hoping for it. As if she would not have made a deal with the devil then and there, to exchange her life for Gavroche’s, or indeed, for Marius’s. Then Cosette would not have lost her love, she would have been married, she would have been happy. Instead she was back sitting here on this same stone bench five years later, but keeping far worse company. 

“How different things might have been,” she managed to say. “I am sorry. It is hard, I am sure.”

Cosette again thought for a time before responding.

“Perhaps if he had lived we would have had many happy years together,” she mused. “But truth be told—as hard as I took it at the time, to lose him—the older I grow, the more I look back on that episode of my life as an adolescent folly. That is not to say I did not love him, for I did—oh, I did!—with all the intensity and all the fickleness of the sixteen-year-old heart I then possessed. But I have come to realise that what I miss from those days is not Marius himself—whom, in truth, I had barely begun to know. Rather, it is love itself that I miss. It is the sensation of being in love, and—and knowing that one is loved in return. I believe that when one has known that feeling, one never does forget it.” 

“It is as sublime, then, as the poets say?” said Éponine, half-teasing, and grateful for the chance to say something light-hearted after so much heaviness. 

Cosette smiled a secretive smile, gazing off into the garden’s dense greenery, which was beginning to darken to blue-black as the night took hold. 

After a moment, she changed the subject.

“You know, I was still a child when we first came here, to Rue Plumet,” she said. “In this very garden, I once hunted wild beasts—imaginary ones, of course, though the garden was so overgrown back then I would not have been surprised to encounter a tiger.” She smiled. “And I would chase after the white butterflies," she added, gesturing to a cloud of those very creatures that hovered not far from the bench where they sat.

“It is easy to imagine you doing that. I am more surprised you do not do it still,” teased Éponine.

Cosette laughed, and watched the butterflies swarm. 

“I would catch one in my hands,” she said, “and feel its wings beating against my palms. I would hold it, sometimes, for a long time, until it struggled only feebly, before I would let it fly again.” She was quiet for a moment, then said in a pensive tone, “Do you think that was cruel?”

The white butterflies fluttered around them, moon-bright in the growing dim, and they watched in silence, until one strayed from the swarm and veered close to their bench. 

Cosette reached out and snatched it from the air, trapping it between her palms as she had described. Holding it there, she closed her eyes. She sat still as marble, her face serene, with those wings beating against her unyielding hands. Only her chest moved, expanding as she breathed. Éponine could not help how her eyes followed the movement. Cosette’s dress was cut low, revealing much of her white shoulders and the tops of her breasts, which pressed outwards as she inhaled. Hastily, Éponine refocused her gaze upwards. 

Her thoughts, however, continued down a treacherous path. 

She was thinking how easy it would be to lean in and kiss her. It was exactly the sort of madness to which one might fall victim on a midsummer night like this. 

Éponine’s heart beat a frenetic rhythm inside her chest—in time, she imagined, to the butterfly’s maddened fluttering against the warm prison of Cosette’s palms. 

A second passed. Another. 

Then Cosette opened her eyes and the cage of her hands, and the butterfly flew free. They both watched it careen away through the greenery. 

Cosette turned her head and looked at Éponine for a long moment, then reached out and in a quick, timid movement that was almost a caress, brushed a hand through her cropped hair. “A leaf,” she whispered. “Gone now.”

Then she stood—“Good night, Émile”—and disappeared up the path, swallowed by the branches and vines.

Éponine watched her go as if spellbound. The grace of her figure, the pallor of her dress cutting her outline from the gloom. The cinch of her waist, the swell of her hips, her even stride, Éponine’s desire deepening in time with the night. 

She could no longer pretend these thoughts about Cosette had been only a passing strangeness: if anything, they were getting worse. It was as if her disguise, which she had thought only skin-deep, were seeping into her flesh, into her heart and her mind. Her thoughts were Émile's thoughts, her desires Émile's desires. She could not trust herself. Most of all, she could not trust herself around Cosette. 

Well, the sun had already set on the last day of her visit. She would return to her own home the next morning, and then she would give the house on the Rue Plumet a wide berth. She would ensure she was not left alone with Cosette again.

Chapter Text

Éponine kept her promise to herself, and steered clear of the Rue Plumet. She sent Azelma in her stead from time to time, who passed on Émile’s apologies, explaining that he was simply too occupied of late with his work, but that he sent his regards and best wishes.

For the first few weeks, Azelma returned with reciprocal regards and best wishes from Cosette. After a month had gone by, the returned greetings began to lose their warmth. After two months, they became downright annoyed.

Finally, in the third month of Éponine’s avoidance, Azelma returned from the Rue Plumet with an envelope, upon which was written Émile in a somewhat messy feminine hand. 

“It’s from Cosette,” Azelma explained unnecessarily.

Éponine opened it. The note was very short.

Really, Émile, if you do not come to see us in the next week I shall have to be very cross with you. COSETTE. October 23rd.

Éponine smiled a little in spite of herself, then sighed. She could hardly refuse such a direct entreaty. She would just have to hope the time that had passed would be enough to have knocked some sense into her. 

The following Sunday afternoon, she went to call at the house on Rue Plumet. She was greeted warmly, and ushered into the drawing-room, where she sat in one of the vast cushioned armchairs and talked with Cosette and Père Fauchelevent over coffee and madeleines. As the afternoon slipped into darkness (for it was October, after all), Javert arrived, and they all took supper together by candlelight. Everything was as usual, and Éponine had begun to think that perhaps she had had nothing to worry about after all. It could not be so uncommon for a girl to admire a friend’s beauty and charm. It was not for nothing that women were called the fairer sex, after all. She convinced herself it must happen all the time, and she would simply have to become better at ignoring it. 

When they had finished their meal and Toussaint had cleared away the china and the silverware, Fauchelevent got to his feet, stretched, and gave a nod in Éponine’s direction. 

“I am glad you came back to see us, child,” he said simply. “You know you are always welcome.” 

Then he turned to Javert, who was also getting to his feet. “I do believe it is time we retired to the porter’s lodge for a game of chess and a digestif,” he remarked to his friend, who gave a curt nod of agreement. “À bientôt, j’espère,” Fauchelevent added to Éponine in a final farewell, as he picked up one of the silver candlesticks on the table to light his and Javert's way.

“I will see Émile out,” said Cosette, taking the other candlestick.

Éponine followed Cosette into the hallway, then they heard the door close as Fauchelevent and Javert left the main house.

As soon as the men were gone, Cosette stopped dead and whirled on Éponine, cupping one hand around the candle-flame to keep it from being extinguished at her sudden movement.

“Where have you been ?” she demanded. “We have not seen hide nor hair of you in months. Amélie” (which was the name Azelma went by at the Rue Plumet) “says you are busy at work. That may be true as well, but—I think there is something else.” Her eyes searched Éponine’s face. 

“Now—now this is not quite fair,” Éponine stammered. “You said in your note you would only become cross with me if I did not come to visit this week, and since I am here, you oughn’t—”

“I said if you did not come this week I would have to be very cross with you,” Cosette corrected. “Well, you are here, so I am not very cross, only a little cross.” She brushed a stray curl off her forehead and gazed at Éponine earnestly. “Come! We became such good friends during your stay at the Rue Plumet, or so I had believed. Can we not be frank with one another?”

No. Of course they could not be. 

"I have been—” Éponine fished around, and for once, came up empty. “—Busy at work," she finished, a lame repetition of the lame excuse Cosette had already seen through.

Cosette gave her a look of exasperation. “You are a horrible liar.”

Oh, Cosette! If only you knew! 

It was funny to Éponine to imagine a world where this was true. A world where she simply couldn’t muddle through a lie, because deception was so foreign a concept, rather than a world where she was so exhausted from the sheer weight of the million interwoven lies, the unending intricate tapestry of lies that was her entire life, that she simply had no more to give.

In a rogue burst of honesty, she could not stop herself from blurting out, in a voice full of feeling, “Oh, I have missed you, Cosette!” 

Cosette grew more exasperated. “Why, then, have you not come to see me?”

Éponine hesitated. “I thought that perhaps—we should not spend so much time together.”

Cosette looked a little hurt. “But why not?”

Éponine looked about nervously, conscious that they were standing in the hall, from which sound carried through the house. Fauchelevent and Javert had gone to the porter’s lodge, but Toussaint was still afoot somewhere. 

Cosette read her mind. “Toussaint is in the scullery washing up. But if it eases your mind, come in here.” And she pulled Éponine into her boudoir and shut the door.

Éponine had scarcely set foot in this room since her very first night in the house, when she had been just young enough at her claimed age of fourteen, and with her soft face and voice, to be seen as a child still. Thus, she had been placed in Cosette’s care. 

The room was as she remembered it, the bookcase filled with gilt-edged books, the work-table encrusted with mother-of-pearl, the long damask curtains, the tall pier-glass mirrors.

Cosette set down the candlestick she carried on the work-table, and proceeded to light two more. The light from the three candle-flames was echoed all around the room thanks to the pier-glasses hanging on all the walls, so that the chamber was filled with flickering brightness.

“Well?” Cosette prompted, straightening up and coming back across the room to stand in front of Éponine once more. She folded her arms. “Now we are certainly alone. Go on. You thought we should not spend so much time together. Alors? Why should that be?”

Éponine closed her eyes and swallowed. The room was very quiet, and the quiet seemed somehow very loud. 

“I thought it…I thought it. Improper,” she managed. 

“Improper.” Cosette’s voice had gone quiet. The string of pearls around her neck glowed orange in the candlelight.

Éponine floundered. “For a young lady—for you—to spend so much time in my—in male company.”

“Male company!” Cosette scoffed. “For pity’s sake. We practically grew up together! Why, it’s not as if…” She trailed off.

Éponine opened her mouth, but Cosette blustered on. “Why, it’s almost as if we were…” She hesitated. “As if you were my…brother.” As she pronounced the word, something flickered on her face, a sort of grimace, quickly suppressed. 

“Your brother,” Éponine repeated quietly.

Cosette swallowed. “I have no brother by way of nature,” she said, spreading her hands. “How, then, am I to know what it is like?”

Éponine let out a breath and gave a nod. Then she said, “I have a sister.”

Cosette looked up into Éponine’s face, her chin lifting and her head tilting, and something about this movement and the soft earnestness of her gaze loosed a whirlwind of white butterflies in the depths of Éponine’s stomach.

“I have a sister,” Éponine said again. “And—you are not like her.” 

Cosette was silent. Éponine could not tell what she was thinking, whether she understood at all what Éponine was trying to say. After all, Azelma and Cosette were unalike in myriad ways: Azelma was dark where Cosette was fair, Azelma was street-smart where Cosette was educated. But that was not what Éponine meant. 

“You should be,” she blustered on. “You should be as a sister to me, but I—I had begun to want—something else,” she added with difficulty. “What more can I…?” She ran a hand through her short hair. “I came to care for you too much, Cosette,” she admitted finally. “I did not think it wise to visit again until I could—until it had...passed.”

“And has it?” Cosette whispered. 

Éponine could not look at her. “No,” she said to the Turkish rug beneath her feet.

A pause. 

“Then why do you not do something about it?” A tightness in Cosette’s voice. Annoyance, urgency. 

“I have tried!” cried Éponine, ashamed, a flush warming her cheeks. “I am trying—was trying. Don’t you see? That was the very purpose of my—the very reason I have been keeping away! I was doing it for your own good.”

“Oh, for my own good!” Cosette snapped. “For my protection, is that it? I suppose you want me to thank you? Whatever would I do without you looking out for me!”

Éponine was taken aback, then grew indignant. “Je suis censée faire quoi , Cosette? I didn’t ask for this to happen either. I know it is wrong of me to feel this way. And whether you realise it or not, it is in your best interest that I—”

“Oh, so you would know what is in my best interest better than I?” Cosette retorted. “I know I am only a woman, but you—you men —! You act as if I do not even know my own mind. You are as bad as my father! Isn’t everything always for my own good, for my own best interest, and whether I like it or not! It would be terribly nice if anyone thought to ask me . My best interest! Bon sang!” She gave a mirthless laugh. “The devil take my best interest!”

“You want to be asked—very well then, I’m asking you!” Éponine fired back. “You want me to ‘do something about it’, as if that were so easy , but when I try, it’s not good enough? You want me to do what, then? What do you propose? I’m listening. ” Her hands had balled into fists at her sides without her realising. 

Cosette’s eyes burned back at her in the dark, bright in the passion of their argument, indignant and imperious.

But when she spoke next, it was no longer with her voice raised. “You have to come closer,” Cosette murmured hoarsely, “then I can tell you.” 

Éponine sighed, but humoured her, leaning in so Cosette could whisper the idea in her ear. 

Cosette took hold of her face, turned her around, and kissed her on the mouth.

Éponine forgot, for a moment, how to breathe. Her heart was a firework. Her mind was a blank.

Then Émile took over, and it was just like kissing Blanche, but utterly incomparable, because this was Cosette. Cosette, the beautiful girl from the Gorbeau house, Marius’s paramour, the woman who was everything Éponine was not and would never be. Cosette, who was not only beautiful, but kind, and charming, and clever, and funny, Cosette, who Éponine was sure must be the most captivating woman in all of France. And she had wanted to kiss Émile.

Yes, Émile, you fool, not you ! shouted a voice in Éponine's head. 

I am Émile , retorted another.

When at last they came up for air, Cosette said weakly, “You were quite right. Every woman—” she took a breath, “—ought to be kissed like that—” Another breath. “—from time to time.”

Éponine could only stare at Cosette in amazement: her hair was mussed, her lips wet, her chest heaving. Could it be that Éponine was the cause of all this sweet disarray?

The candles flickered all around her, and she felt dizzy.

Alongside the lightheaded jubilance, a sense of inevitable doom hung over her. What have I done? she asked herself. True, she had not initiated the kiss, but she had certainly not discouraged it. She should never have allowed this.

This could only end badly, very very badly.

She could see no way out. This was something she could not take back, could not talk her way out of, could never, ever fix. The fire of Cosette’s kiss would burn Émile to ash—he could not survive this. This was the beginning of the end of her disguise. Soon it would be time to run again, as she knew all too well. She thought of her father and his endless aliases, all the times they had fled to start again somewhere else as each disguise fell apart. She had excelled with Émile. He had lasted a long, long time, and done her an awful lot of good. 

Now he was unravelling, and she would have no one to blame but herself.

So she had ruined everything.

What could it matter if, in this moment, she gave in entirely?

Cosette kissed her again, and Éponine kissed back hard, recklessness and desire overtaking her. 

Chapter Text

As they kissed desperately, Éponine’s hands found Cosette’s hair. She posed them there lightly at first, not wanting to muss it any further, but then Cosette took hold of Éponine's face and pressed their mouths together with such ferocity that Éponine abandoned this final shred of delicacy and let her fingers sink into those honey-coloured tresses.

They fell onto the divan, with Cosette seated astride Éponine's lap. Cosette pulled back then, catching her breath, her eyes drinking in Éponine's face. Her expression was almost dazed. Éponine shifted beneath her, supposing this was as far as things would go, unsure whether to be relieved or disappointed. Cosette had wanted to know what it was like to be kissed properly, with the fire of a passion Marius had never dared show her. Now she had been. Now she knew. What more could she possibly wish for? She was a respectable young lady, after all.

So when Cosette kissed her once more, then reached for her cravat, Éponine could not have been more shocked. She recalled, dimly, her musing in the garden that summer, when she had thought, If one were to kiss Cosette like that, she would open like a wildflower, she would respond with all the hidden fire in her heart. She had been more correct than she could ever have imagined. 

Cosette had had a taste of love when she had been young, and had hungered for it ever since. Although, indeed, she knew almost nothing of physical intimacies, still instinct drove her to seek them out. She did not know what could result from the union between man and woman, nor even what such a union might entail; no one had ever thought to explain it to her beyond warning her against it, with cautions that were never grounded in anything concrete. She only knew she mustn’t do such things, for her own good and in her own best interest . 

The devil take her own best interest! 

She could not tolerate it any longer. She had always deferred to her father when he invoked those tired phrases. She trusted him, of course, she loved him dearly, of course, but she had come to realise he would always see her as a little girl with a little girl’s mind. Yes, he would always know what was best for her, as far as he was concerned. But she was tired. She had been good all her life. She wanted to have, for once, what she wanted. And what she wanted was this man who wanted her. A flame burned low in her belly, and she did not have to know the mechanics of lovemaking to know what ought to come next.

Knowing only that her skin cried out for skin, that she wanted to touch and be touched, she tugged at the silk cravat with decisive fingers, brushing against the soft skin of Éponine’s neck and sending a shiver through her. 

Éponine was frozen as Cosette undid the cravat, then stroked her exposed neck, and her body thrilled to it; she felt the hunger in Cosette’s touch and, like the flame of a candle used to light a neighbouring wick, it stoked an answering fire in her gut. To be wanted like this by such a woman…! It was unfair that men should be so lucky, Éponine thought bitterly. As if they did not already have everything! That they should get to have this as well—the love, the desire of the Cosettes in the world—seemed outrageous.

When Cosette started on Éponine’s shirt buttons, her hands trembling faintly, Éponine saw that she would have to intervene.

The top two buttons were soon undone. The situation was desperate.

Acting quickly, Éponine seized Cosette’s wrists. Cosette stopped, a question in her eyes.

Éponine did the only thing she could think to do, and used her leverage to swing Cosette down onto her back on the couch, pinning her by the wrists.

Cosette let out a little huff of surprise, but the expression on her face was quick to change from shock to surrender. Her skirts had ridden up, exposing the lacy bottoms of her pantalettes, but she made no move to cover up. She looked up at Éponine, tilting her chin forward, her parted lips begging to be kissed. So Éponine kissed her, first on the mouth, then the jaw, then on the neck, making her gasp. Éponine's heart was beating frantically, and by the way Cosette's chest heaved, Éponine could guess hers was as well. She lingered at Cosette's throat, kissing her there more deeply, while she traced a finger along her collarbone. Cosette let out a sigh, and Éponine felt the longing within her grow. She pulled back and saw an answering need in Cosette's eyes.

Hardly daring to breathe, she found the edge of Cosette's skirts and reached upward through the layers of fabric, her fingers finding the opening in the pantalettes, then brushing bare skin. It was the lightest of touches, but in the most sensitive of places, and it made Cosette gasp.

Éponine did not share Cosette’s innocence. She was well-versed in the intimacies shared between men and women.

Her hand was quick to find that button-like part of the female anatomy that brings a woman pleasure.

Cosette’s mouth fell open as Éponine touched her. Éponine mouthed at her neck again as her hand moved and Cosette made a noise like a whimper. She pressed against Éponine's hand, her eyes fluttering shut.

When Éponine's hand slowed to a stop, Cosette's eyes opened once more. Her breathing had gone ragged.

“Oh, please,” she gasped. “I cannot bear it if you stop.”

Éponine laid a finger across Cosette's lips. “Shh,” she soothed, her other hand trailing lower, fingertips feather-light across all the sensitive, secret places, until they found their next target and circled around its edges. Even so, her fingers were already sodden.

“I—if you…” She did not know what to say, how to ask for what she wanted. “I can…”

“Yes,” Cosette gasped.

Éponine paused, lifting her hand away completely. She wanted to make sure.

“You are certain?” Éponine breathed into her ear. She was not doing it to tease; she did not know what Cosette might have been told with respect to a woman’s maidenhead, whether she would shy away from... "I will not press you. I wish only to—" 

But Cosette stammered, “Émile—p-please—I want—”

She was not made to ask again. Éponine thrust her fingers inside her; a moan resounded in response.

She had never seen Cosette so out of control before. Her head was thrown back, her hair was in disarray, her skirts bunched up, a sheen of sweat on her forehead. And yet she was fully clothed, her skirts still covering the indecency of Éponine's fingers thrusting inside her. This made it somehow all the more titillating. 

Cosette was gasping every breath. 

“Look at me,” Éponine whispered, taking her by the chin with her spare hand. She wanted to see the look on her face when—

“Nom de Dieu,” Cosette gasped.

Then she threw her head back and arched her spine, with a breathy noise somewhere between a moan and a whimper. A long shudder overtook her, her whole body tensing at once, then at last she went limp.

Her eyelashes fluttered and she looked up at Éponine with a languid clarity in her blue eyes, and a sort of awe.

Éponine pulled her hand back. With her other hand, she reached into her pocket for a handkerchief. 

“What…” Cosette caught her breath. “What did you do to me?” She sounded dazed. Her cheeks were flushed a brilliant pink.

Éponine wiped her hand clean, refolded the handkerchief, and put it back in her pocket. It had not occurred to her that Cosette might not have ever felt that very particular sensation before, even at her own hand, that she would not even know what it was. Now she remembered that Cosette had been raised in a convent, Cosette had no mother, Cosette had no sisters. Of course she did not know. Of course she had never…

“It has made me a little afraid of you,” Cosette went on in a whisper. “It is akin to sorcery. I did not know I could feel such—such—”

She sat up slowly, tugging at her skirts, smoothing them back into place. 

Éponine snorted. “It is not sorcery. It is only—pleasure,” she said in a low tone. She swallowed. “It builds and builds, and—when it reaches the height, it feels—like that.”

“You have done this before,” said Cosette. It was something in between a question and a statement.

Éponine did not imagine a young man going on nineteen would be quite so familiar with the female anatomy if he had not, so she went with the safe answer.

“Yes.”

Cosette smiled faintly. “With Blanche?” She touched her hair, fixing it.

“No.”

Éponine watched her smooth down her wayward curls, half-hypnotised by the movement of her hands.

“With Éponine?”

Éponine suppressed a hysterical laugh. “Yes.”

“Aha!” Cosette grinned, adjusting a hair pin. “You see, I knew—”

“Yes—yes, well, that was—that is far and away in the past,” said Éponine hastily. “You know that—please say you know—that you are the only—”

“I know,” Cosette murmured. “You may be a bit of a libertine, Émile, and perhaps that should worry me, yet—yet it does not. For you are sweet. And you are dear, so very dear to me.”

Éponine felt her heart might break. Those tender words were so welcome, and yet, they backed her into a corner she did not see a way out of.

“Cosette,” she said sadly, running a hand through her own short hair hopelessly, “what are we doing?”

“Why, I think we are falling in love,” said Cosette very softly, her eyes finding Éponine’s.

“That is just what I feared.”

Éponine leaned forward dejectedly, lowering her elbows onto her knees and clasping her hands. She stared across to Cosette's mother-of-pearl-encrusted work-table, where the three lit candles flickered. The one in the fine silver candlestick stood tall and proud in the centre.

Cosette leaned forward too, turning her head. Éponine could feel her trying to catch her eye.

“Why should it frighten you so?” Cosette asked in a level tone.

“You—we—I cannot—” Éponine closed her eyes.

“Why not? Why should it not be you and me?”

At last, Éponine turned to look at her again. “What about your father?”

Cosette reflected. “You will have to ask him.”

Éponine let out a panicked breath. “Ask him! For what?" But she knew for what, and that it was impossible, and that she had made a colossal mistake. "For your hand in marriage?" She huffed out a hopeless laugh. "But that is madness!" In more ways than you know. "What will he think? After everything he's done for me... This cannot be how I repay him.”

“He will be—” Cosette hesitated. She bit her lip. “He will come around,” she said at last.

“It would upset him,” said Éponine dully. “He would not show it, but...he would feel as if I were stealing you away. I'm afraid..." She trailed off. "Skylark, it would break his heart,” she said softly.

Cosette swallowed. “He would feel that way regardless, I think," she answered honestly, "and I am sure he would rather it be you than another man.”

“He would rather you had done as you once considered doing and taken the veil," Éponine sighed. "And it is only natural, isn't it? To a father with a beautiful daughter, the men of the world might as well be a pack of wolves circling." She thought of Montparnasse, of her father, of Patron Minette. "Most men are scoundrels. Your father is right to mistrust them.” She was quiet for a moment. “He would be right to mistrust me." She twisted her hands in her lap. "And I am so entirely in your father's debt—how could I do this to him? It feels as if I were doing something...underhanded.”

Éponine winced, seeing the hurt register on Cosette's face.

“I did not mean...”

Cosette sighed, and shook it off. “I know you did not. And if there is one thing I know, it is that love is never easy. All will be well in the end.” She allowed herself a small smile, then rose. “I suppose you ought to be getting home. I will see you to the door.”

She crossed to the work-table, and picked up the silver candlestick to light the way.

***

Éponine did not go home. She went to see Azelma at her quarters in the Rue Beautreillis, which she shared with Blanche. Fortunately, Blanche was out. (According to Azelma, she usually was, in the evenings.) 

Azelma took one look at Éponine's face and hurried her inside. “What is it? What’s happened?”

She set her candle on the table.

“I think it’s all gone wrong,” said Éponine mournfully.

“Tell me,” Azelma prompted, taking both of Éponine’s hands, and looking up into her face. Azelma was a touch closer to her in height than Cosette was, but still Éponine was taller by a healthy margin. She supposed she got it from their mother.

"It's Cosette,” she managed. “Cosette—is—in love with me.”

Azelma winced. “Ah. That makes things difficult.” She thought for a moment. “It will not be easy, 'Ponine, but I think the best thing you can do is to tell her you do not return her feelings. If you do it gently…”

It was Éponine's turn to wince. “It's too late. I...”

Azelma stared at her. “You let her believe you…?” She put a hand on her forehead. "”Ponine, you fool. Why would you do that?"

Éponine could only shake her head, at a loss for how to explain herself.

"Can you...can you say she has confused your meaning?” Azelma tried. “That you were only referring to a more...fraternal affection?"

“I kissed her,” Éponine blurted out.

Azelma put both hands to her temples this time. “What? ”

Éponine licked her lips. “Um. M-more than once,” she admitted. She folded her arms and chose not to elaborate any further.

"Éponine!"

"It's bad. I know.”

“Bad is an understatement,” said Azelma, with a frantic gesture.

“I can't fix it, can I?"

Azelma shook her head in disbelief. “Why did you...why would you...?” She was at a loss for words.

“I—I can't explain it,” said Éponine in a rush. “It is as if—as if in pretending to be a man, I—I—” she closed her eyes, unable to look at her sister. “I want things I should not want,” she managed, her voice a shaky whisper. “It is as if Émile were taking over, and—and I no longer know who I am, Azelma.” She felt the tears gathering in her eyes. “You are the only soul on earth who knows me, who knows Éponine. You cannot know what that feels like. Every day I live a lie, and it is...it is consuming me.”

The tears were coursing down her cheeks now. Wordlessly, Azelma gathered her sister into her arms and held her as she fell apart, sobbing brokenly like a child. When they were young, it had always been Azelma who cried like this, and Éponine who comforted her; now their roles had been reversed.

When Éponine’s sobs began at last to quiet, Azelma took her tearful face in her hands and met her eyes.

“I will never let you forget who you are. You are my big sister and the very best woman I know. And I think it is time you stopped pretending otherwise. Listen. Have you any money saved?”

Éponine nodded.

“Good. I do, too. A little money is all it takes to disappear. We will find lodgings on the other side of Paris, where no one knows the first thing about us. I will arrange your wardrobe—clothes for you, not for Émile. And a hairpiece," she added, "until your own grows long enough." She held out a piece of Éponine's hair, which at this stage was perhaps a touch overgrown for a man, but still far too short for a woman.

“But what will I do? I cannot continue in my work—who ever heard of a woman secretary?”

“By the grace of God, or at least by the grace of Monsieur Fauchelevent, you have been well-educated,” said Azelma. “There is little a woman may do with an education, but still, there is something: you will be a schoolteacher.”

Éponine nodded dumbly.

"It will be easy to forge a reference letter," said Azelma. "As far as anyone will know, teaching schoolchildren is exactly what you’ve been doing these past two years, rather than secretarial work. It will be no trouble at all to find you a position. Remember, you are a Thénardier.” Azelma winked. “I know it is not a source of pride for either of us, but it has its uses. In fact, that reminds me. I have kept some of Father’s letters—here, let me look…” She went to the bureau and began shuffling through its contents.

After a moment of dedicated rummaging, Azelma pulled a packet of letters triumphantly from the drawer and held them out to Éponine, who asked, “What am I to do with these? Why did you keep them?” 

“Pragmatism, ‘Ponine. He was a terrible father and a worse Christian, but at this,” (she tapped the packet of letters), “—the art of the con—our father was a master. Let us see what we can learn from him.” 

Azelma split the stack in half, and the two women sat down at the small table in Azelma’s quarters and began to read through the epistolary evidence of their father’s schemes. From time to time, Azelma scribbled down some notes on a spare envelope, and they began to sketch out a false reference letter for Éponine and some of the other documents they would need.

They had been at it for nearly two hours, and it was quite late in the night, when Éponine discovered in the middle of her stack a single sheet of paper, folded up small. She opened it, and was blindsided by Cosette’s handwriting.

It was the letter to Marius, the one she had never delivered. 

My dearest, alas! my father insists on our setting out immediately. We shall be this evening in the Rue de l’Homme Armé, No. 7. In a week we shall be in England. COSETTE. June 4th. 

She recalled the hole in the pocket of her trousers, how she had given the letter up for lost. Now she understood it must have fallen out somewhere in Gorbeau House, and someone had picked it up and put it with her father’s correspondence, because it wasn’t as if anyone else in the family wrote letters, anyway. It had to be one of his.

Hastily, Éponine folded it up again.

Azelma glanced up at her enquiringly, her attention drawn by Éponine’s rapid movement and the loud crinkling of the paper.

“It is nothing,” Éponine said, putting Cosette’s letter aside and picking up the next one.

Yes, it is for the best, she thought to herself. It is the best thing for Cosette that I am gone from her life. I have wronged her more times than I can count.

***

And so Éponine and Azelma disappeared, because it was easy, because it was natural, because disappearing, and moving on, and leaving everything behind, and changing one’s name, and not looking back—not ever looking back—were all Éponine and Azelma knew. They were Thénardiers, and this was how life went for them. 

They did not understand how Éponine’s vanishing would affect Cosette and her father. Azelma, too, would be missed, for she had herself been a friend to Cosette. But they did not think of themselves as people worth missing, as people whose absence might cause any pain. Perhaps they knew, vaguely, that they would leave behind an emptiness in their place, but if they thought of it at all, they thought of it as akin to a hole dug in the sand along the shoreline, at once filled in and smoothed over by the wash of the waves.