A few things you should know before reading it: I'm not fluent in english, so this can probably be really bad and have some gigantic grammar mistakes. I tried my best, though.

I don't own Les Misérables. If I did, the ones who died would live, and the ones who lived would die, basically.

There may have some wrong facts in this. That's what happen when you haven't finished reading the book yet, sorry about that.

This can go anywhere. I could turn it into a full history or just a few chapters. Don't know yet. Just saying.

"Éponine, can you discover who is that girl?" Marius pleaded, still mesmerized by the girl that just vanished from the street as soon as the inspector appeared. Éponine looked at him, her eyes a combination of pain and pride.

"I can." She said simply. She almost felt bad for what she was just about to say when she saw Marius's smile at her response. "That doesn't mean I will."

"Please, Éponine! I will give you anything!" Marius begged, taking her hand in his. The touch surprised her. They have been friends for quite a while, but they never touched much. Not like this, at least. Éponine felt her willpower melt at his warm touch.

"Well, isn't Monsieur Marius all thrilled now? I wonder what's gotten into you, it's not the first time you see a bourgeois…" Her speech faded as she realized what Marius was doing. He was fishing coins in his pockets to give to her. He wanted to pay her so she would go looking for said bourgeois. "I don't want your money, Monsieur!" She spat, retracting from his touch and turning her back on him. How dared he!

At her harsh tone, Marius suddenly came back from his cloudy thoughts and realized what he had just done. He knew Éponine well enough to know she didn't like being offered money, and less from people she knew and had contact with – not all of them she could call a "friend", though she considered herself Marius's friends and he reciprocated the feeling. Marius knew he offended her, but he was still too far away in thoughts about blonde hair, blushed cheeks and white smile to think of a decent apology for his offense. He took grab of her arm lightly, stopping her from walking any further, and pleaded once again.

"Please, Éponine, discover who that girl is. I promise I will do anything you want, but find her for me, please."

Éponine felt his fingers around her arm and tried to savor the moment for as long as she could. It had been so long since someone touched her with such care or, at least, not trying to hurt her somehow. She liked to enjoy these moments when they happened, trying to keep them in her memory for as long as she could, until she forgot again how it felt to be touched by gentle hands that meant no harm.

Marius heard her faint sigh of defeat. He didn't like to ask her for things like these. She was a friend, not a pigeon messenger, as he always reminded his own friends when they asked him to use her to do an errand. But he was desperate. Never in his life had he felt what he felt when he locked eyes with the blonde girl in the street a few minutes earlier. Éponine turned to him again, avoiding his gaze – not that he was actually trying to keep eye contact, but he realized she was avoiding looking directly at him.

"When I get back, you better have some apples and bread for me to eat, Monsieur. That's my price."

Éponine might like Marius most from all of her friends. She might even have some confused feelings about him, which could or could not be going beyond friendship. But she wasn't one to be fooled. If he was going to treat her as an ordinary street urchin who gets paid to do chores, she was going to be an ordinary street urchin who sets a price for such thing. And she long ago learned that asking for food was a better way to get her stomach full than asking for money itself to go and buy it. Sometimes the money wasn't enough to buy sufficient food to feed her, and since she was already grown up, the amount of people asking her to do chores was only decreasing day by day: people would usually ask the kids, maybe because they were faster, maybe because they weren't as smart as a grown up and wouldn't trick whoever asked to pay a larger amount, or maybe because they had a more sympathetic face. Éponine wouldn't know. What she did know was that she needed to get advantage of people when they asked her to do something, even if the person in question was her closest friend.

Marius nodded, a wide smile appearing again on his face. He wasn't rich, and both knew that. But he wasn't starving either. He could afford a loaf of bread and some apples if he wanted to.

"I will even get you a cinnamon brioche if you find her address for me."

That he couldn't afford so often, but he would make an exception for the circumstance. Marius knew it was wrong what he was doing. He was pretty much buying Éponine's effort to find the address for him, because he knew she wouldn't do it on her own will. But again, he was desperate, and since she already agreed and set a price, he might as well take advantage of that.

"Do you want anything else, Monsieur?" Éponine looked at him defiantly. She was pushing the situation, treating him as just another costumer who asked for a chore. Marius still had his thoughts on the girl, but he wasn't so senseless not to notice her tone.

"There's no need to talk to me like this, Éponine, I already told you. I'm no grander than you. You know I don't like to ask you these things. I don't see you as another street kid that I would pay to go and do a chore for me. I'm asking you to look for her because I know you are the only one who can do that. You are the only one who saw the girl too."

"Yes, Monsieur, I know." She wasn't convinced and Marius knew it, but if she didn't leave at the moment, maybe she wouldn't find the girl for him. He let her go on her duty and walked to the café slowly, thinking of everything and nothing at the same time.

As soon as Éponine got out of Marius's sight, she started running, trying to catch up with the pair that left so suddenly and was the cause of Marius's request. She tried to ignore the sharp pain on her bare foot as she kicked a small rock on the ground. Éponine knew where to step habitually, avoiding rocks and other things that could hurt her feet, but now she was too busy trying to discover where the blonde girl and the old man went, to focus on the ground.

After running for a few more minutes, she found them. The man was sitting on a bench, looking startled and worried, and the girl was buying something for them to drink. Éponine sat on the sidewalk, keeping an eye on the girl. Her face went pale when she heard the man calling for the bourgeois. Cosette. Éponine thought she misheard it when the man called for her earlier, but now she was sure. How many girls named Cosette could live in that same town? And how many girls named Cosette would have a father sixty years, or even more, older than her? And how many girls named Cosette would be blonde? Éponine was sure that bourgeois was the same girl who lived with her in their young years. Cosette. Éponine let out a cruel laughter. She remembered when Cosette lived with her, back when her parents had the inn in Montfermeil.

Cosette was some sort of servant. She would sweep the floors, wash the plates and fetch water from the well behind the inn. She was dirty; her clothes were too big for her and too old as well. Éponine remembered the old skirt she wore. It was an old skirt of her mother. She gave it to Cosette when the girl grew on her dress. Éponine remembered how she never spoke to Cosette directly. She would ask her mother something, and Mme. Thénardier would send Cosette to do the chore. For almost four years, Cosette lived in the inn. And one day an old man, around his sixties, came and paid for Cosette, taking her away. Éponine remembered how she almost felt bad for the little girl, thinking she was going to be a servant somewhere else.

Two years after Cosette's departure, Éponine's parents ran out of money and had to sell the inn to pay all the debts they had. Éponine was around ten when that happened, and as soon as they sold the inn, they moved to Paris to seek the fortune, as everyone did at the time. But the fortune was nowhere to be found and now they shared a small apartment in the humblest part of the town.

Éponine had two siblings. A young sister called Azelma and a younger brother called Gavroche. Azelma died a year before they moved to Paris. They thought at first she only had a cold, but when she started coughing blood it was already too late to do something, and even if they still had the time, they didn't had the money, so poor Azelma was fated to die nevertheless. Young Gavroche was only a year old when they moved to Paris, and as soon as he learned how to speak and walk, he moved out of the apartment to live on the streets with another kids. He was too free to be restrained by his family, not that they cared much though: Thénardier had his gang and Mme. Thénardier followed her husband everywhere. Their kids were nothing more than lookouts for the law or another member of their gang. Éponine wanted to say that she cared a lot about Gavroche and looked for him even with them not sharing the roof anymore, but she didn't. If she met him at the street, they would talk for a while and then leave just like so. And that was it. She wouldn't worry about him and wouldn't care for his wellbeing, but she wouldn't be happy to know if something really bad happened to him either. After all, she saw him being born and took care of him until he left.

Seeing Cosette made her think about her family and she laughed once more. It was a dry laughter, the kind of laughter that you let out when you have so much inside and don't want to cry, and then you laugh, just so you won't break. It's a cold laughter, an emotionless laughter, coming from someone who had forgotten how to do such thing. The kind of laughter that would make you cry, because you can see how miserable the person actually feels. Éponine thought about how she once had a beautiful dress, white tooth and rosy cheeks like Cosette had now, and how life liked to trick people, switching places after some time. Éponine once knew what was like to have a fine life and not starve. She knew the good things. And at the same time, all Cosette knew was how life could give so much to one, and so little to the other, and she was the other in that history. But a few years later, life played its cards and switched their lives. Now Éponine knew what was like to be dirty and miserable, and Cosette knew what was like to have a fine life. But the tricky thing about the whole situation is that Éponine knew life wasn't going to switch them back and she was stuck with the wretched life, while Cosette, as she saw now, was stuck with the fine life.

"That's what happens when you are mean to other people, I guess…" Éponine muttered, watching the blonde girl hand the old man a cup filled with some sort of cold liquid.

She watched the pair until they got tired of sitting on the bench and speaking, and she followed them when they started to walk towards a calmer part of the town. Éponine tried to remember all the streets they walked, so she could lead Marius there later. After walking for what seemed like twenty minutes, the pair finally stopped in front of a hidden iron gateway. Éponine frowned at the sight. It didn't look like a house at all, at least, not as far as she could see. It looked like a wild, abandoned garden with leaves and branches everywhere. The man took a set of keys and inserted the biggest one in the keyhole of the gateway. It opened with a loud whimper, and Éponine flinched a little at the sound. Everything around was so quiet she was scared they could hear her breathing.

After they passed the gateway and the man locked it again, Éponine waited for a few seconds and walked closer. Between the wild shrubs and branches laid a small house. It looked old and uninhibited, but it must have been looked beautiful and cozy on its glory days. Éponine could see the faded paint on the walls, a sweet shade of salmon, and the brown wood door that looked really old. Éponine saw the man through one of the windows lighting candle lanterns on each side of the room, and she saw Cosette in another room, lighting an oil lamp upon a table. "They must be really rich", Éponine thought, because oil lamps were a very expensive thing, and most people didn't had enough money to buy lanterns, so they would just use bare candles in their homes. After staring at the pair for a couple of minutes, Éponine walked down the street, trying to find its name so she could pass it for Marius. She didn't know how to read properly, but she knew what the letters looked like. She could try and memorize a few of them and let Marius to figure out what was the street's name.

It was already night when Éponine arrived at the café Marius was always at. She climbed the stairs up, distraught by her effort to remember all the letters she saw on the plaque indicating the street name. Marius saw her and smiled, running to meet her before she could even finish the stairs.

"Did you found her?" Éponine raised an eyebrow, not used to seeing her friend so excited.

"I did." She answered simply, sharp and cold. "Did you buy my food?"

"Right this way, mademoiselle." He pointed, waving his arms to show her where to follow. They walked to the back of the café, into a vacant table. Éponine saw two shiny apples, a loaf of bread with butter on it and a cinnamon brioche, all inside a straw basket. Once again she raised her eyebrow. She started to think if he would pay the same price for someone to find her if she got lost someday. He probably wouldn't.

Yup, I did a thing.