Semi-Open Log

[nadine_he_loves]

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.

Comments

[gardienne]

Eponine shrugs awkwardly. "In the winter, it's cold and wet. The ditches fill with rain and everywhere to sleep is puddles and cold. In the summer, you fry with the heat and there is nowhere to cool, only the Seine, and it can suck you in if you go too close."

She looks down, embarrassed. Eponine knows nothing of art or writing or poetry. She doesn't even know what a croissant is, or fancy French food. She scuffs her foot on the dusty floor.
"I think if you have money, Madame, Paris might be as glorious as you make it sound," she eventually says, quietly. "Me, I don't know such a place. I hate Paris. But my brother, he knows some actors. He can sometimes get me a ticket to watch from the floor or the sides."

But what's to be done? Her cookie suddenly tastes bitter, of lost dreams, of what-might-have-beens, of regret. Eponine tucks the remainder into her pocket. She probably won't eat it. It's embarrassing to admit just how needy she is.

"The United States? America? That is a long way from Paris. I've seen the boats, Ma'am, coming in. I always thought of running to there... perhaps if I hadn't come here. Now that my Pa will have me dead, I would've come."

[nadine_he_loves]

"I'm pretty sure everywhere's better if you have money. And I know what it's like to have to fend for yourself - different situation, but...where I come from, there was a disease that wiped out most people. All of a sudden there weren't shops or bakers or anything like that, no one to grow food or butcher it or sell it. Spent plenty of nights cold and hungry and sleeping under a tree."

It sucks.

"America's not as great as people make it out to be. But hey...I don't know how long Thorne's going to be keeping people down here, but I'll bring you some more food next time I come down, too. I know it's not much, but...I remember what a big deal the little stuff meant to me, when I was in a rough place."

The little comforts suddenly became very big comforts. And the gnawing loneliness, the desperation for affection and attention...Nadine understands it. She's felt it herself, plenty of times.

[gardienne]

"You've slept under a tree?" Eponine glances up to meet Nadine's eyes before looking away again, bashful. "It's one of my favourites, you know? There, or in the flowers. I used to walk miles for the priest's garden. He were so stupid he thought me a ghost or an angel, but no. I told him I were the devil's daughter, but still he let me sleep on his grass."

She curls her fingers tight about the bars, her face lighting with a smile as she imagines Nadine on the streets. It's not her laughing at Nadine, but more finding a kinship that she hadn't imagined could exist between them.
"You look too beautiful to have done such though, Nadine. You look as though all your life you have been pampered and preened and never seen such a day in your life. I don't care about food, honest. There is more here than I have had in a long time, and a roof and even a bed all to me. It is nice here, Ma'am..." Eponine hesitates. "But will you visit me?"

She reaches to touch her grimy fingers to Nadine's hair. "You are so lovely, you know? You look like an angel."

[nadine_he_loves]

"I promise, I've never been pampered in my entire life. I was an orphan, I spent most of my childhood bouncing from one family that didn't want me to another, and in and out of church run children's homes. That didn't have much money or time for all the kids there." Nadine shakes her head, hoping to dissuade Eponine of any ideas that she's well off or had grown up easy.

"I was in foster care or church care until I got too old, and then I was out on my own with pretty much nothing. I just got lucky and got into college so I could be a teacher. And I'm really no angel." She gestures to her white hair. "I think this was a trauma reaction to being pulled here or something."

She...doesn't exactly remember. The night before being pulled out of the well here is hazy, like a dream. Half-memories and sensations and vague impressions. But when she was able to take stock of herself here, her hair was white.

[gardienne]

"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.

[nadine_he_loves]

"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.

[gardienne]

"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."

[nadine_he_loves]

"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.

[gardienne]

"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."

[nadine_he_loves]

"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....

[gardienne]

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"