abraxaslogs | Semi-Open Log

Who: Nadine and various prisoners
What: Visiting the dungeons
Where: The dungeons
When: Post-festival

Nadine is no stranger to the dungeons by now. Besides her frequent visits to Flagg, there are other prisoners down here she's befriended. Who are still imprisoned.

Apparently some are more threatening a threat than others.

And of course there are still plenty of others she hasn't met at all. It's important to know the other people brought here, to take their measure and determine who might be useful. It doesn't look like Thorne is about to let her husband out any time soon, and that's a problem that will need to be dealt with. She knows (casually, at least) a number of those considered welcomed guests, but many of the poor souls stuck down here are still a mystery.

So after she's checked in with Flagg, she turns her attention to the other prisoners, offering a smile or casual greeting through the bars. She's armed with cookies and a friendly demeanor, standing out in the gloom of the dungeon with her white hair and silk tunic.

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"Well, I think you look like an angel," Eponine replies firmly. She's not going to be persuaded away from the idea any time soon. "Like a statue, mayhaps, what has had its wings broken and now you are brought to life for us down here."

She grins again. "Maybe it were the nuns what made you so good? I hate church, me. Always when I am made to go, I must wear my Pa's old shoes to be allowed in, and what good are they when they are so big and the laces hold up my skirt, and the toes are gone so my feet squelch and slide in them?"

Eponine at least catches herself before telling Nadine about Cosette. Maybe orphans all turn out to be angels with loving husbands and men to fall in love with them? Maybe she would have been better off without her folk?

She licks her lips nervously. "Will you - and Ma'am, you might say no to me - Ma'am, will you teach me? Proper, I mean? I know numbers and letters and that, but... I showed a man once. A proper student. He didn't laugh but he had such a look in his eyes. I don't know how to call it. Sad, and maybe as you'd tell a stupid child when they try and it is wrong? Just so with Azelma, you know, when I am patient with her? I hate it. Ma'am, will you teach me so they don't again?"

Pity. She means pity. Her stomach curls even at the thought of it, and when Marius had looked at her writing and then back at her - writing she was so proud of - she'd wanted to just die on the spot.

"I never really liked church, either," Nadine admits. "I liked the stories, but...it always seemed like the God priests talked about and the one in the stories were different. But maybe they were right after all."

God, she's certain, is long done with her. She was a fallen woman, and had probably been damned since she was twelve. But God had never helped her, had never been there before, had never spoken to her. Flagg had.

It probably doesn't even matter in the long run anyway.

"...you want me to teach you?" That directs Nadine's attention away from her darker thought. She smiles, leaning into the bars. "Of course I would. We'll have to get a little creative, I don't have much in the way of writing supplies or anything, but...I'll figure it out." She's sure she can get her hands on something, and she's not about to deny someone who wants to learn.

And she likes to teach.

"He wouldn't have me anyway. There's only wickedness in me, Ma'am. God in any stupid story don't like that, and the priests only like money and I don't have that neither." She snorts a laugh. "I only have my devil and he will take me with him when he catches me again."

Eponine's face lights with a smile that reaches even her dull eyes. "Will you really? To read proper and that? You - you don't have to, you know? Oh -" Her expression falls. Payment. All she has is a cookie and... she reaches to her tangled, matted hair, and quickly unwinds the ribbon that had been holding it back. Her hair falls into her face, and Eponine pushes it back impatiently. She holds the ribbon - Nadine's ribbon that she gave to Susan - back out to Nadine.

"It's the only thing I own, Ma'am. It's the nicest thing I've had in forever. But I should rather learn a little. Take it, Nadine, as payment, won't you? I can... there'll be a way to get a better thing soon, I swear."

"No." Nadine immediately holds her hand up in protest. "Where I come from, you don't have to pay to learn to read and write. It's something everyone should have the same opportunity for."

Technically not true, considering Nadine had taught at a very exclusive and expensive private school. But in general a basic education wasn't something to be paid for.

"Besides, I don't need anything anyway. Aside from my husband back, but that's between me and the authorities of Thorne." She'll try again. Or figure something else out. But either way, she's not going to accept any sort of payment from Eponine. The girl wants to learn, that alone warrants being taught.

"Nothing's free, Nadine. There's a man who has had me swear my life away for a grape here, you know?" It was a completely unfair deal, but Eponine shrugs it off as quickly as her discontent appears on her face. She half grins, her smile fading quickly and not quite meeting her dull eyes.
"More fool him, I suppose, for my life isn't worth much. I know men what have paid more for wine than for me."

Still, her fingers close over the ribbon, and she brings the fabric to her nose, rubbing it across her cheek appreciatively. "I'm glad you don't want this, Ma'am. I used to have ribbons all the time, you know? But it's been a long time since I were a child. It's nice to pretend to be beautiful, I think."

"Where I come from...things are different. We help each other." Some people do, anyway. "There are some things that everybody can have, and a basic education is one of them. Besides, I don't teach so I can get paid. It's just something I always wanted to do, it's...meaningful. It's important. Being able to be one of the people that shapes a new generation and help them get all the tools they need to succeed in life...that's important."

Maybe because she'd felt so lacking in those tools herself, forever looking for someone to guide her, to help her, to give her what she needed. There had been no one, aside from Flagg, and he'd only been able to do so much from...wherever he'd been when she was young. Wherever he spoke to her from.

"And everybody's life is worth something, Eponine. Including yours. It's worth a lot more than you think, trust me."

Her heart breaks for the young woman. She knows those feelings, knows how it feels to think yourself worthless and unwanted. Whatever she can do to help....

Eponine just shrugs. She's convinced that her life is worth nothing, or very little at the most. Honestly, she doesn't care any more. It's become so engrained in her, that she's completely and utterly dispensable, that she doesn't even flinch to think about it any more.

She lolls against the bars, smiling shyly at Nadine. "You're a kind lady, you know? No wonder they let you free. You're not like the rest of us down here. There's lots of good in you"

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