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Who: Eponine Thenardier and You
What : Time to meet people before the mines
When : June 12-13
Where : Cell 3 or the Prison yard

Imprisoned

It hadn't been the first time people had scowled at the mere sight of Eponine, and she guesses it wouldn't be the last. Completely bewildered by the turn of events, she'd tried to run, though to no avail. Manacles had been clamped firmly to her wrists and ankles and she'd been dragged through to the dungeons with just a few harsh words to help her understand where she is.

Deposited in a heap on the floor, Eponine picks herself up quickly, turning back to the bars that are clanging shut behind her guards.

"Please. Please, at least tell me my crime."

Cellmates

Once Eponine's actually looked around at her prison, she relaxes. The beds are plain, and hard, but they're beds. And the cells themselves; in Les Madelonnettes, she'd been shoved into a dungeon with a hundred or so women. Even at home, she'd shared a tiny room with her parents and her sister. This, compared to either place is sheer luxury and Eponine revels in it. The silences that stretch through the tedious days are filled with her gruff voice, chattering about whatever comes into her head.

"It isn't so bad, you know? Why do you worry about it? There is nothing to be done to be freed anyway. In Paris, oh how bad, but here? Here there is a bed, can you imagine? A whole bed for a person, just one. I have seen only twelve mattresses for over one hundred before. This, this is not so bad."

Food, glorious food.

She's starving and eats with abandon, no matter what's put in front of her. She's the first one at the cell doors when feeding time comes, and the last one to finish sucking all of her fingers clean with the desperation that comes with being half starved. As she eats, she makes careful observances of her cell mates' habits - who munches, who saves, who shares. Those that share get her fixed, hang-dog stare; she licks her lips as she watches them devour their rations, silently begging their crumbs. Those that save their food, she ignores, or seems to at least. Instead, she scrutinises what they do with their left overs, where they hide it, and when they fall asleep or turn their back, she slips to their hiding place to try to take her fill of it.

Rec Time

Eponine doesn't ever seem to do much in the yard. She just sits, back against a wall, watching the others. It's nice to just see sunlight. Her fingers trace the dusty floor: she practices wring words as she sits and watching the others.

After a couple of days of just watching, though, she calls out to the person closest to her.

"They're so silly, you know, to give us such... toys? Do they not know we could use it to escape?"

Wild card
[I'm happy to go with the flow of ideas!]

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Eponine's cheeks flush, but she glares back at Homelander anyway.
"You think me a thief, Sir? Pah!" She spits hard at him, her expression hard. "There is a word they say, isn't there? Not to judge how you look. I am a rat, Sir, and maybe p'raps, I am or p'raps I am not. But it ain't nice to call me a thief. Here, no. What am I to take?"
But she's looking at his grapes, and her fingers curl round the bars as she presses her face to the dank cage.
"Sir, they are starving us here. See how thin I am? Sir, please share with me?"

The look on Homelander's face when she come close enough to almost brush against the tunic is somewhere between 'just stuck my hand in to literal shit' and 'poor thing'. She's dirty and dressed in rags, her bone hand clutching at the bars.

"How would giving you grapes help? They really don't have much nutrition in them."

Is it true? Hell if he knows, and he eats another one. "Then what did you do? You don't look like a killer to me, but I've been wrong before. Not a lot, but it has happened."

"I ain't killed no one, M'sieur. I swear it. Here, I don't know what I have done. They pulled me from the water and the stupid man screamed and here, I am clamped in chains and locked away. At home, yes. I have... well, it don't matter, does it, Sir? If I am scum there? Here, I am still scum."

Eponine presses her face to the bars, her dull eyes fixed on the grapes Homelander is eating. "A grape? Is that what it's called?"
She licks her lips. She's so close, she fancies she can almost hear it pop in his mouth, and almost, almost feel the juice on her tongue. "Me, I've never had one. Please, Sir. Just one. I shall give you..." She casts round for something that she might barter with. There's only the blanket on her bed.
"I... there's... a blanket? Sir, a blanket for a grape? Or a promise? A promise to do as you wish, when I'm free. Will you?"

Now she has his attention and Homelander crouches down so they're about level - face to face, and a slow smile spreads across his face.

"Did you really just agree to grant me a promise?" and the smile turns wolfish, "Can you do that, buddy? If I feed you grapes, you will--" there's a pause as he rolls a grape between his fingers. "Promise to do what I say, if you ever get out of this shithole?"

Eponine's eyes are still on the grapes - but let him think she doesn't notice his smile change. Not that she cares: it's the same smile that Montparnasse wears - wore - when he thought he had something over on Eponine. So she nods.

"Yes Sir. Whatever you want. Just please - let me have them?" She leans her weight back on one foot, cocking her head in an effort to appear confident. "Will you give me one?"

"And how can I be sure that you'll deliver on your promise once all the grapes are gone, huh?"

Homelander's face twists in to something that could be sympathy, but isn't. He's still crouched next to the cell, the dewy grapes in a bowl in his hand. "I mean, I want to believe you, I really do? Except, you're locked up and I don't think they put innocent people in prison. Do you?"

It's dark down in the dungeons, and Eponine misses the cruelty in his expression. Not that it would have made a bit of difference: she expects nothing for free. His twisting words, his careful smile, the way he shows her the grapes just to taunt her, it all reminds her of Montparnasse. In a weird way, it makes her warm to him a little. Or, not warm to him, but to feel that sense of familiarity with him.

"What do you think me guilty of, Sir? Murder, p'raps? You worry I stabbed my lover while he slept?" She chuckles. "Or perhaps you fear my fingers, that they are so fast and I will rob you blind? Or am I a master spy, Sir?"

She shakes her head. "Don't be so stupid, Sir. I am nothing. Just hungry. Sir, please. Please let me have one. What might I do to show you that you have my word?"

"I don't know-" Homelander stretches out the words, tapping a finger to his lips, "You could start by being honest with me. Can you do that?"

His voice dripping with condescension, sweet and low. She's no one, and she's locked up behind iron bars. It's not that she could possibly be useful, but there's also the niggling feeling that something might be off when the mages talk around his questions or when the local servants just stare at him blankly.

"How did you get here?"

Eponine tips her head back in frustration. She knows he’s toying with her, and she hates it… but she can’t help herself. She craves attention and at least right now she has his.

At least, for now, Eponine can answer his question.

“I were asleep, Sir. It were in a ditch outside of Paris. I couldn’t go home. I… I don’t have no home to go to no more. Not since we were arrested there too. And then, I were in a pool, Sir. I thought to drown, for how am I to swim? But no, I am pulled out by the guards and they scream and shout and take my skirt - and for why? It is more holes than skirt anyway. Then they put me in chains and throw me in here, Sir. But I ain’t a criminal. I’ve not done nothing.”

"No, hold up. You're from Paris?" and there's a long good look at her through the bars, Homelander's eyes tracking over her frame. "Paris, France?"

Which could be true? She looks like a french person, maybe. He hasn't seen one in person, but rumors had it they looked like her. Dirty, scrawny and probably locked up.

"Alright, no one would be stupid enough to claim they're from Paris without actually being from Paris, "cheese-eating surrendering bastards. "You have the grapes."

He holds them out like a king offering up gold.

"Yes?" Eponine is completely confused."But I were born in Montfermiel, should it matter? It is outside Paris, Sir, but not so much."

She gathers that his words are supposed to be an insult, but they make her laugh. "You have a thing against them which consume cheese? It is not so bad a thing, you know? Me, I prefer sausage, but I shall eat anything they are willing to share. Or you."

She reaches out, her skeletal arms passing easily between the bars, to grab at his bowl.

He lets her have it, there's more in the dining room and it's almost time for dinner.

"But you won't forget your promise, right? Because-" he snaps an arm out to grab at her, "I will collect. Who knows, maybe you'll even learn something down here that I'll want to know."

Not likely. Unless the enemies of Thorne might hang out in the dirty dungeon.

She holds the bowl awkwardly, and plucks out a single grape.
As she bites into it, her eyes close in sheer delight at the taste. She eats it slowly, letting the juice run over her tongue, savouring the fruit.
“That is… its’s delicious,” she says sincerely. “Thank you, kind Sir.” All his comments are forgotten.
“Thank you. I’ll remember. I’ll find stuff. I’ll know lots of things, me.” She eats another grape quickly.
“Will you bring me some more, Sir, soon? Don’t forget your Eponine, Sir.”

Homelander sneers down at her, her dirty face and the way her whole face scrunches up with delight when she eats the grapes- gross. The half-lidded eyes and the obvious pleasure on her features.

"Maybe. If you bring me something I can use - like, is there anyone here who might want to hurt someone? Give me names, and I'll give you more-" he swallows, "grapes."

He straightens and throws his shoulder back, "Give me a good one, and I'll find you tea."

Maybe he should have offered raw meat instead? Well, done is done, and he waits for her to nod, to remember that she owes him.

Eponine couldn't care less what expression he's wearing to look at her. She's starving and these grapes are the most glorious thing she's ever eaten.

She laughs though. "Oh I know plenty, Sir. I could tell you of the dangerous people locked in the back, you know? But not today. You bring me this 'tea' and I shall tell you what I know."

She has no concept of 'tea' at all - he could literally show up with dirty water and say it was tea. But, she wants it nevertheless and from the determined look on her face, she's going to get it, even if it means lying about everyone else to get it too!

"No," and that smile comes back. The one that's more of a sneer, his lips peeled back from his teeth. "You give me something, and then I'll see if it's worth my while to find you tea."

Homelander tilts his head, "You know what they say - only the first one is for free, the rest is going to cost you."

She registers his expression properly this time, the way he's sneering, the way he's glancing at her like she's a bit of dirt on his shoe. She's probably made a right show of herself scoffing the grapes like a pig, shovelling them into her mouth one after the other. It makes Eponine want to hang her head in shame, and to drop the bowl of grapes and refuse to be his sick entertainment.

"It's not fair," she mutters when she hears his proposal. "That ain't fair." She looks up at him properly, a glare of hatred in her eyes. "You already had payment from me, M'sieur. I told you how I came to be here, as you asked, and you gave me the grapes. That weren't free."

She scowls, looking down at the bowl of grapes again. Her voice is hard as she continues. "But it don't matter what I think, does it, because I am here and you are free not to come again. I am not so stupid, Sir, as people say. I know what you are about... but maybe I don't care."

Eponine looks once more at the grapes, taking a minute to actually make up her mind once and for all. If she starts, if she backs down, there's no going back.

But she wants tea. And she wants the attention from this handsome man, no matter how cruel he is.

So she closes her eyes. "There's a man, so tall is he, you know? As tall as a giant, Sir. And so strong, Sir. I have seen him crush those ball things in his hands, you know? And -" she drops her voice to a whisper and presses her face right to the bars. "He said he wished it were a guard's neck, Sir." Eponine shakes her head and says earnestly, "M'sieur, I know killers, Sir. I know evil, and this Amos, yes, he is so. And the girl he is with, Sir? He terrorises her always. It ain't so good to see - and she scared of him, for he won't let her from his sight. She's younger than me, Sir, and the gentle of it, but he is wicked to her. Always he is with her, Sir. He is wicked."

Eponine doesn't even know Amos. He's someone she's seen in passing, that Jolie was with, that she's noted for his size. But it doesn't stop her from twisting Amos' friendship with Jolie into something that sounds a lot more sinister.

"I think I have earned a cup of gin for such a tale, Sir." She grins

"You know what I'm about-" he echoes, voice deadpan and all expression drops from his face. A blank canvas as he stares at her with empty eyes. Homelander doesn't bother to drop down to her level this time, he just leans closer to the bars. "I really hope not." A tacked on "For your sake."

Before the rest of her words filters through the red fog in his mind. Oh wow, he almost lost it for a second there, and without his superpowers, there's no way he can reach her.

Not yet.

But her words keep coming. Gossip and information about her fellow inmates and his inhuman, cold smile return, even if his eyes still look dead as he grabs her face when she pushes it to the bars. "I don't really care what he does with that girl. But I do care about wicked men. Large, you said. Well-" with one final squeeze to Eponine's chin he releases her. "-maybe I should pay him a visit. Can't have wicked men in prison, can we?"

"You think you are the first man to try to scare me?" Eponine stares sullenly back. "Or to play a game what I will always lose? Sir, my own Pa has set to murder me if he finds me. My... 'Parnasse, he has held me to with so many knives, Sir. I don't care no more. So say as you will. I don't care."
She adds bitterly, "Maybe you were right? Maybe me, I am wicked enough to be locked in here till I die. But perhaps there are some others what should be here too?"

Eponine flinches as he grabs her chin but she refuses to try to pull away. She keeps her eyes fixed firmly on Homelander, challenging him with her stare.

"No. Don't visit him. Me, Sir. I swear, I am more the interesting than such a man. He is stupid, but me, I am clever at least. Please, Sir. Visit me instead. I'll do what you want if you do."

"Would you now?"

He doesn't really need for anything, except entertainment. With no TVs and no internet, there's only so much reading he can do before he gets bored enough to just... stand outside, looking at goats. That does seem to be a valid way to pass time here. Backwards piece of shit place. But once he is whole again, things will look better and he won't need to visit the prison just to feel a little better about-- everything.

Homelander shakes his head. "Fine, you can do anything for me. Listen to what they're talking about and let me know. If you're a good girl-" he smiles, "I'll bring you tea."

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I am so sorry for taking so long

totally ok!

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