Look What's Become of Me [a Les Mis fanfic]

1

She stared out the window panes and watched. The drops of snow fell heavily and calculatedly, without the gentle, graceful ease of autumn leaves, without the merciless rigor of rain. They fell almost like dancers, shooting down in planned diagonal lines across the dark horizon, only twirling slightly before carefully landing on the blanketed ground, the way dancers bow gracefully after their turns.

Eponine Thenardier wrapped her thin shawl around her body and sighed. Her breath made a circle of mist on the glass. She lifted her bare, freezing finger and traced a little heart on the glass, the way Cosette did back when she still lived with the Thenardier family.

Eponine remembered Cosette and smiled sadly. 

Sometimes Cosette would trace the mist on the window panes. Sometimes she would take a ladle or a wooden spoon or a knife, wrap it with a torn piece of cloth, and cradle it like a doll. Sometimes she would cry.

She always sang. Softly at first, becoming more and more audible as her voice took her away to her dreams , until Madame Thenardier would scream from the kitchen and Eponine, snuggled safely in her father’s arms a room away, would know that Cosette had been caught dawdling when she was supposed to be doing chores.

Sometimes Cosette would be sent outside.

Sometimes Cosette would sleep near the wooden fireplace, crying for her mother.

Sometimes Cosette would hide under Eponine’s bed and beg her to stay quiet. But Eponine would always call for her mother.

Sometimes Cosette would be scolded or pinched. If she was unlucky, she would be spanked.

Sometimes Eponine would just stare. Other times she would comfort her.

That was when Cosette was there.

“Eponine! Where are you, you lazy child?”

When Eponine heard her mother scold like that, she would normally hurry and obey. Sometimes she would pause for a moment, in fear, half-expecting a beating. But her mother was not as harsh to her as she had been with Cosette.

At least, Eponine hoped so. As the family grew hungrier and more desperate, her mother became more and more disagreeable. It had been awhile since Eponine saw her mother smile. And her father—her father was always with his friends, doing terrible crimes. Sometimes he would only come home when it was dark.

Sometimes he didn’t come home at all.

“Eponine! Let me count to three, you useless little brat! One…two…”

“I’m coming, Mama,” Eponine called out wearily.

“Three…”

The little girl took one last glance out the window.

Sometimes she wished she would be rescued too.