Just Like My Daddy Selling His Baby [Closed]

[tributevisitors]

WHO| Thenardier and Eponine
WHAT| The emancipation of Eponine.
WHEN| Before the end of the Thicker Than Blood plot.
WHERE| Eponine's room in D3.
WARNINGS| Death, mentions of forced prostitution, general Thenardier horribleness.

Eponine's room was already not the tidiest, but Thenardier seems to have reduced it to absolute disarray. Though his uprooting everything Eponine owns looking for things to take for himself may not have been malicious, it certainly wasn't considerate, and most of her things are now ripped open, scattered about and trodden on. He's taken her bed, although it's large enough that the whole family is capable of sleeping on it, as they do as if they're still in the days where huddling is a cheap and viable form of warmth.

It's evening now, and Thenardier returns to the room, gussied up in all the fineries the District Stylists were more than happy to supply him with. He's even humming a bit of a song, an offbeat ditty from his 'soldiering' days. He looks rather pleased with himself as he sits down on the bed and starts to take off his shoes.

"That Salazar woman was quite a find, my dear," he says to Eponine, not bothering to look at her. "It was no trouble at all to get a hand into her purse."

Comments

[gardienne]

Eponine's knelt amongst the mess when her father returns. She's trying, for once in her life, to try to tidy her room. Or more, to salvage what is left of her possessions. Little bits seem to have disappeared: the brush that goes with the dear little handheld mirror, smashed now, that Sigma had bought her once and that she had treasured; the little gold-coloured chain that Eva had given her - real gold or not, Eponine loved it. Or, rather, she had loved it. No doubt it had lined her dad's pockets. She sighs as she folds her clothes, and tidies the heap that she and Azelma had been sharing, shaking her head at the creases in the expensive fabrics. She doesn't even look at her father as he comes in, choosing to ignore him in lieu of her bitter feelings towards him. But her head shoots up and she's on her feet immediately when Eva's name is mentioned.

"Salazar? Eva? You've been to see Eva? What did you say to her? What have you done? Have you taken money from her?"

[tributevisitors]

"I didn't have to take it." But he did anyway. He slips Eva's credit card in his pocket. "She's willing to lay quite a lot on the line for you. You did well getting in her graces."

He isn't sure what she sees in Eponine - he certainly doesn't see the sparkling dove Eva does even in his own flesh and blood - but regardless, he'll take advantage.

"Anyway, when I pressed her hard enough she was willing to give up quite a ransom for you."

[gardienne]

"How much?" No, that isn't important. It doesn't matter 'how much'. Eponine stands up slowly, and moves towards her father. She's angry, so angry that she could throttle her father for what he's done. Her hands clench into fists by her sides. She would so dearly like to hit him back.

"You know, I HATE you for this, Pa. I hate you so much - oh God, I didn't know how awful we were - how rotten you've made me - and you think it's good. Well it ain't. No wonder we're scum. No wonder the prisons are crawling with rats and they throw in bits of bread as if we are animals. Do you wonder? We ain't no better. And I HATE you for it." Her chest heaves as she yells. It's the first time she's ever yelled back at her dad, and the rage and resentment for her robbed teenage years, for the thieving and begging and the men getting the letters - it all bubbles into her words and fizzes out.

"I HATE you. I hate that you've taken money from Eva - oh God, Pa, she LOVES me. She loves me more than you ever have. Well, I shan't stand for it. Give it back!"

She actually goes to reach for her father's coat, to wrestle the credit card away.

[tributevisitors]

"You don't talk back to me like that," Thenardier barks, getting up off the bed. Eponine's nearly as big as he is, tall for her age and well-fed in this place, but he still acts as if he can tower over her. The last time she talked back to him was at Rue Plumet, and he is still livid over that. "After all the sacrifices I've made for you and your family, putting food in your mouth-"

He grabs her hand from his coat and shoves her backwards, face transformed from that smarmy, greasy smile to something far more cruel, something that is both brutal and absolutely unlike an animal in its calculated malice.

[gardienne]

"The sacrifices you've made?" Eponine shouts back even as she's forced to stagger backwards from her father's shove. "What have you done for us? You've driven us out onto the streets. You've sent me with letters to men, telling 'em I'd do whatever they wanted. And don't you pretend you don't know what men want, Pa. Don't you pretend nothing."

She finds, somehow that she's not afraid of her father. The rage against him is too great for her to be afraid. It takes over her, consumes her, and she realises that if he hurts her, she will do her utmost to fight back now.

Doesn't mean she's going to stay within hitting range, though. She's not daft.

She backs off, until the back of her head touches her bedroom wall. "Do you know what them men did to me? D'you know what your bloody Montparnasse has done to me? You don't even care, do you?"

[tributevisitors]

"It put food in your belly, didn't it?"

Of course he knows. He just doesn't care. As far as Thenardier's concerned, they've all had to do pathetic, degrading things to scrape by. It's the cost of living in these times, and if Eponine had found it that horrible she could and should have just run and kept running.

But she didn't, which meant things were working out. That all the whining is just that, whining. He reaches forward to smack her head against the back of the bedroom wall.

(An Avox skitters out of the room.)

[gardienne]

"And made me think to kill myself!" She spits, hard, at Thenardier, realising her folly of leaning against the wall. She's trapped herself and there's not much she can do to stop her dad hitting her head backwards. The force of the blow leaves her dizzy, but she tries to kick out anyway, lifting her knee to aim at his privates.

"You know why I stayed? Not for you. For Azelma. She couldn 't have done it, much. She 'd have ended up seeded and dead and you know it. You ain't no Pa."

She's trying to ignore her dizziness, to hit out at him, to kick, bite, spit. All that fury and resentment from the decade past bubbles and froths and rages until it bursts from her.

"Call me the daughter of a wolf? Pah! You're no wolf. You're scum!" Her words are argot now, fast and furious. She doesn 't even notice the Avox running.

[tributevisitors]

"You didn't, did you? But for all the trouble you caused maybe it's best you had," Thenardier snaps. Ungrateful girl. He doesn't have the protective love that her mother had for her, and all he sees is the mouth that's spitting at him, that ate off his table, that sounded the alarm when there was a chance at Rue Plumet.

He hits back and there's a snap as he pulls a pocketknife from his pocket.

[gardienne]

She stops then, at once alert and panting from her exertions.

"Are you going to kill me, Pa? Here?" She laughs bitterly, never taking her eyes off the knife. She's scared, absolutely terrified, and trying desperately not to show it. But slowly, her fists clench. Her lip wobbles, ever so slightly. Her voice is too jovial, too high pitched to be convincing.

"I never thought you'd have the courage. I thought you'd have the rest do it. 'Parnasse and them."

[tributevisitors]

"I never thought you'd be worth more as a corpse, but you've been nothing but a liability lately, 'Ponine. I can't have you dragging my feet when life's hard enough as it is."

He doesn't move to kill. He swings the knife to maim, to teach her a lesson, going for her face.

[gardienne]

She doesn't really know what he means. Would he sell her dead body to the highest bidder? But there is no time to argue, for he's swinging at her, and she covers her face with her arm, screaming out loud as the blade tears into her skin. Blood obviously begins to drip and she screams in agony as she clutches at the wound.

"GOD! PAPA!"

This is it, isn 't it ? He's really going to kill her. He is going to chop her and sell her. She's a commodity. That 's it. She could let him. It'd end it all for good. But Eponine finds that she doesn't want this man to kill her - anyone but him, and she realises that she has to fight back.

With a groan of agony mixed with fury, she once more knees her father in the groin , hoping to take him by surprise. She needs a weapon: there's a little mother of pearl letter opener on her desk, if she can get to it. Oh God, it hurts. She could throw up from the pain. Her right arm is bleeding heavily, useless. Thank God above she's left handed. She staggers for the knife.

[tributevisitors]

He should have taught her a lesson long ago. He should have cowed her into obedience before the idea of standing up to him Patron-Minette ever wormed its way into her mind. She's become nothing but trouble, nothing but a hindrance in a world where he doesn't need the added baggage.

And then she hits him in the groin and he flails again with the knife as he doubles over. Air seems to gush right out of his lungs - the pain is blinding. The little wretch--!

[gardienne]

She reaches for the letter opener, clising her hand about it so it becomes a proper weapon. And then she rounds on her father.

"So it comes to this, does it? You or I? Are we to kill one another, Pa?"

[tributevisitors]

"Are we now?" His eyes go down to the letter opener in her hand, and he lashes again with the knife to try and slice her knuckles, to take the weapon from her. "Drop it!"

[gardienne]

She very nearly does. She's so hardwired to do as she's told that she hesitates. But then her Pa's slashing at her knuckles and she screams once more as the blade catches her . But it makes her grip tighten as survival instincts set in. She lunges wildly, blindly, for her Pa , hoping to stab him or slash him - somewhere.

"Drop yours, Pa! Drop it! I do not joke! Do not make us go further ."

Her heart sinks though. Thisvis it. He 's really going to kill her, isn't he ?

[tributevisitors]

He does drop it, but not from her command. He drops it from shock because the letter opener has plunged, accidentally, into his body. Blood starts to drip and stream down his side, the makeshift weapon lodged several inches deep between his ribs.

He looks at her in abject shock, and then keels over to the floor.

[gardienne]

Eponine's mouth gapes open, and she stares in absolute horror at her father's falling figure.

"Papa?" She sounds like a little girl again, lost and alone. For a full ten seconds, she stares. She sees the blood staining her floor, the patch slowly widening as her dad loses more blood. She sees the skin on the back of his neck start to pale.

And then she moves. She bends down, frantic fingers trying to unlodge the letter opener in his side, trying to press the blood back into his body.

"Papa, don't die. Oh God, I didn't mean it. Don't die. Papa, are you alive? Please? Oh God -"

She yanks the letter opener from his side, but his blood only starts to run faster. How could such a little thing do so much damage? What should she do? She can't even scream for help or she'd be arrested. Oh God. What does she do?

"Papa? Are you still alive?"