For Marius

[rudderless]

[Sometime after this]

Eponine is fully braced for the eventuality of encountering Marius after her talk with Gavroche. Preparation cannot fully, however, brace her for the reality of it.

It's an ordinary day, and she's just moved back into her Milliways apartment after a holiday in the Below, when it finally does happen. Marius will note that she seems healthier, more robust, though her eyes...

...Well, those will stay the same.

Comments

[heartbeneathastone]

"It seems he has settled himself very well into this place," Marius says. "But yes, of course. I-- I owe a debt to all your family."

[rudderless]

She's immediately grateful that he doesn't (apparently) know about her father's various machinations.

"Thank you, Marius," she says. "I always thought you were the finest of men."

[heartbeneathastone]

This is true: he is not yet aware how little the man called Thenardier deserves the sense of obligation Marius feels towards him, and though Gavroche attempted to warn him, he will not be easily persuaded of it.

At Eponine's words, Marius blushes and lowers his eyes. "I little deserve such esteem. I regret a great deal about-- about that night, not least that I could not do more for you, could not help."

[rudderless]

Eponine will add her voices to the concern, should anyone mention to her what her father had done during her posthumous existence.

She does smile at what he says. "You did what I asked you to do, didn't you?"

She only knows about it because Gavroche told he what happened to the other her - the her that died in his arms.

[heartbeneathastone]

"Yes," he says quietly.

It must be, he supposed, some sign of profound weakness of spirit-- that at so little, at a single question, he finds his mind tumbling back into that haze of fevered grief, gunpowder and blood, Eponine there on the ground where she should not have been at all, and he there, too--

"Forgive me. I should go."

He only knows one solution to the onset of such thoughts, and that is Cosette. To simply be with her, near her, to think of the future instead of the past. But even he knows better than to say that here, now.

[rudderless]

Her smile is thin as she bobs a curtsy. Yes, she does know how to deliver one, and she gets out of his way with a jaunty salute.

It's so very odd to bear witness to him. Once she thought it would tear her apart, but now.

Now she can almost wave him by without the pain consuming her.