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WHO: Eponine and open
WHAT: Catch all for between events
WHERE: the cells, the yard
WHEN: Between July and August events

NOTES Eponine is a walking trigger warning so just be aware
If you want anything specific, please let me know.

1. The cells

It's dank and depressing in the cells. Eponine's days are filled with boredom now there are less and less prisoners there to talk to. Not that Eponine feels like talking so much these days. Since coming back from the Horizon, she's been unusually quiet. There, for the first time in her life, she had experienced a grandeur that she's always aspired to and knew she'd never achieve. She'd been free to play and wander through forests and lie in sunny fields for hours and hours.
And now she's stuck behind bars. Again.

As the days drag, she becomes more and more listless. She's already weakened from her stay in solitary: her face is pale with dark bags below her eyes and her eyes, oddly green now, are becoming more and more dull.
She sits by the bars of her cell, clutching them and reaching out for anyone who comes past. Hopefully they stop.
Maybe the other prisoners notice her too?
Or maybe not.

The Horizon

Eponine can't sleep, can't concentrate, can't focus on anything. She lies awake in her cell listening to Flagg's breathing for hours on end. After the endless lights of solitary, she finds the darkness unsettling now, like there might be monsters lurking ready to pounce and consume her.
It takes ages for her to be able to return to the Horizon, and when she does, she looks around with curiosity. It's not surprising that she built a house. Nor is it odd, when she wanders through the rooms, that so many are filled with dolls.

If she had been carrying the water, if he had bought her the doll, how different her life would be.

She finds her favourites scattered on the floor: Azelma, brown haired and slightly chipped and worn, and Nina next to her, black hair matted. And Euphraise. Her perfect Euphraise. The doll's hair shines like the sun. It's dress is rich with golden threads and fine materials, finer than what the other two are made of.

For a long time, Eponine just stares at the doll, remembering suddenly who Euphraise is. And then she starts to scream. Her scream is loud and long, echoing through the dusty rooms of the mansion, and out over Eponine's domain.
And suddenly now, Eponine hates her prized doll, hates Euphraise, hates the name, the stupid, beautiful hair, it's pretty face and she hurls it as hard as she can from the window to the hard ground below.
Good luck if you happen to be visiting, for soon the garden is littered with smashed dolls that are routinely launched from the windows, to the vicious cries of the girl inside.

3. Choose your own

None of these tickle your fancy? I'm up for anything so go where you will, or hit me up on plurk

pineapplesoda should you wish to plot anything further!

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Eponine will have seen Coraline come down to the dungeon several times before, even before Jon came down and she made something of a scene at him about it - and even before that, she used to be in the cell directly across from Eponine.

But Coraline never paid her much attention before, even when they were both behind bars. It's only now, when she's done talking to the men in her previous cell and slipping them a now-usual package of extra food that she takes the moment to actually look at the opposite cell, and when she spots Eponine there's a sudden spark of recognition in her eyes (and irritation, that gets quickly smothered behind a look of surprise).

"You're still here?"

The girl's voice registers slowly with Eponine. She blinks as she looks up, taking a minute to focus on Coraline. There's no recognition there. Her gaze is blank, unseeing.

"Am I?" She licks her lips. They're dry, parched. She winds her long, skeletal fingers about the bars. "I suppose I am, Miss, for I can't go nowhere else. No one will let me out."

She hadn't looked this unhealthy in Horizon. And even when she'd still been in jail, Coraline was mostly sure the girl hadn't been this bad, and a muttered, "Jesus Christ..." escapes her.

"Haven't any of the adults come and gotten you? I thought they were getting all the kids out." She's met two other girls now that had been, like her.

"I'm not a child," she says. "I'm... I feel old. As old as the hills. But no. No, perhaps eighteen? Twenty? I don't know, Miss. But I'm not a child."

She leans her head against the bars. "I escaped from the mines and ran away. They lock me in a room with no food for weeks, Miss, when they find me again. Only a little, enough to keep me alive, Miss. And lights. Always lights."

Coraline's anger flares in her guts like nausea. That was completely unfair - why wouldn't any of them try to escape, how dare they try and starve her to death for the crime of being rightly outraged and annoying?

She steps back from the bars and calls down to a guard. "Hey! Get over here, I'm taking this one with me today!" With a gesture at Eponine's exhausted form.

Eponine looks up at that. "Taking me?" She shakes her head. "I won't be your servant."

But Eponine has very little say in the matter. With a grunt of annoyance, the guard turns back to the girls and stomps his way over. He mutters about stuck up little girls who should be locked up in cages and good for nothing thieves that are getting what's due. But he opens the cell door as Eponine heaves herself up to standing. In a trice, there are manacles about her wrists and ankles, but she offers no resistance and instead looks balefully at Coraline.

"Why are you doing this, Miss?"

With a shove, she's sent out of the cell, leaving Flagg all alone. She looks back at him, wondering dimly where she's going. Last time, it was to the Horizon. Before that, to solitary, and before even then to the mines. None of them had been great experiences. She sighs. She just hopes whatever this girl has in mind isn't too arduous.

Coraline keeps her chin up and her haughty airs in place as the guard grumbles; she's not about to let the annoyance of some snivelling guard get to her. (If her Glamour wasn't cut off down here, she'd try and make it worse, in fact.)

But Coraline doesn't answer immediately, just looks at Eponine with a sort of defiant glare, then nods her head towards the exit and starts walking. "Come on."

She'd thought about taking her to the north wing for a shower, but now she's not sure the girl will make the walk. So, instead she'll take her to the dining hall first.

Eponine shuffles miserably after the girl. Where they're going is a complete mystery: Eponine's not seen much beyond the dungeons and the exits when she's been forced to the mines or the Horizon, and even that was under heavy guard. She doesn't ask where they're going because she doesn't expect an answer, and honestly, being ignored or disregarded feels worse than just following.

Eponine keeps her eyes fixed on the floor, at the chain dragging between her ankles, as they make their way to the dining hall. It's only the smell that makes her look up - that delicious, fatty smell of roasting meat, of buttery vegetables, and something sweet mixed in as well. She looks up, and immediately lowers her eyes again. If she's to be a servant for this girl, to fetch and carry and watch her eat - because she knows deep down that she would do it to another - it'll be torture.

"Are you hungry, Miss?" she whispers hoarsely. She crosses her arms over her stomach tight, willing that Coraline not hear the growling in her empty belly. "Shall I - am I to fetch you something to eat?"

Coraline visibly cringes as she turns back towards her. Does she think she's Coraline's serving girl?

...she'd almost be into it, if the girl weren't quite so pathetic. She was nearly cute, behind the malnutrition.

"First of all, don't call me miss," she says with a world-weary sigh. "My name's Coraline. And second..."

Her eyes flick back to the table, laden heavy with all sorts of food.

"...I can't take your cuffs off, but. Make sure you start with something light first, your stomach isn't gonna be able take you inhaling everything all at once." And back at Eponine with a sympathetic smile. "Eat slowly, or we'll both get in trouble if you vomit on the table."

Edited 2021-08-02 15:08 (UTC)

"Coraline?" Eponine smiles. "It sounds like a fairy name. Mine is Eponine, but only if I'm in trouble does anyone use my name. 'Ponine is more what I hear, but you can call me as you will, Mam'zelle."

Her smile becomes apologetic. "I mean, Coraline. It is a habit, you know? Even at home, to call someone a title is polite. Here, no."

She dares to look at the tables again and she licks her lips. "For me? I - I can eat? This?" Eponine glances around, almost intimidated by the grandeur. Her dull eyes light, the odd, new greenish colour they've become almost sparkling with her happiness, and a smile stretches her hollow cheeks.
"D'you know how long it's been to sit on a chair even? To eat at a real table? A real, real table with a real plate and real chairs? And such food?"

She can feel herself beginning to tear up because of how overwhelmed she is, and she rubs a manacled fist over her eyes quickly.
"I never thought I'd see it, you know?"

She still winces, just gently, at the F word, but it's mostly just reactive. None of the intense fear from when she didn't know there weren't actually any Keepers there, except the nightmare of her own. "Like you're one to talk about fancy names."

On the other hand, she feels her face grow warm at the warmth glowing from Eponine's face, and her leafy hair bristles as she folds a branch behind one ear (though to Eponine it's still just a stray curl).

"Seriously, you need to start slowly. Maybe just some fruit or something, or like- some of the pastries. We can come back later to get more, it's pretty much always here."

“My mama we’re a great lover of the romances. We all have such names - my little brother is Gavroche, and my sister is Azelma. Such long names with our surname - our real one. But I have had lots of names since Pa took up thieving and that.”

She chuckles darkly, almost immediately relaxing.

“You mean you can come as you like and eat? You can eat anything? Oh!”
She looks longingly at the soft bread rolls and the butter.

“May I have one? Or an apple? Just an apple?”

She clanks over to the table and slides into a seat. Carefully, she picks an apple and bites into it. That first squirt of juice across her tongue is like ambrosia, and she closes her eyes in bliss.

“Coraline. It is so delicious. The nicest I’ve ever had! Gosh, it’s been so long.”
She hastily crunches the apple, almost afraid it’ll be taken away from her if someone else sees. She slurps the juice, licks her hands and crunches it all, from stem to seed.

Coraline, for her part, just sits next to Eponine. Not next to next to, she's a few feet away, just shy of arm's reach, and pulls a knee up to hug to her chest as she watches Eponine with something like pity in her eyes. It's more than that, really - some deep kinship of pain and sympathy - but she doesn't let herself think more on it.

"I'm not sure I'm good enough to sneak you and Jon and the others food," she says evenly. "The guards get shitty if you're too obvious about bringing shit to prisoners. But I can start bringing you out more, so you have something better to eat. No-one's gonna care what I do with you if I bring you upstairs."

She's aware the words of that sentence themselves could easily be a threat, but she's pretty sure that Eponine wouldn't even consider raising a hand or word against her now. Not when there's a promise of more food, not with how utterly insane her desirous Glamous is right now. If she was Spring she'd absolutely claim this girl for a permanent Glamour spring.

Eponine's smile fades. "You don't have to bring me nothing. I've seen you with 'em. Though why you bother, Miss, for they'll have his head in a basket soon enough."

She shrugs coldly. "Why feed a dead man?"
Why feed a half dead girl? She curls her toes beneath the table, scrunching them up to distract herself from her awkwardness. Coraline's threat hasn't gone unnoticed either, though Eponine's docile and calm right now.
"I don't think they'd care what you did downstairs, either, Coraline. Nobody cares what happens in the cells, do they? Not to prisoners anyway. It should be a different story if I were to hit you, no?"
She shrugs again. "But that is how it is. Me, I were the same for a servant girl I had. I used to smack her and my Mama would laugh, but if she had dared to raise a hand, my Pa'd've leathered her. And he don't go easy. If you can take a beating from my Pa, you are strong indeed. Me, yes, but Cosette and my sister, Azelma? No."

She reaches for a bread roll. "Will you really let me out to feed me here, Coraline? It is better, I think. It is nice to see summat other than them nasty cells."

She narrows her eyes at the cold indifference. "Because he's my friend. And he's not going to die, I'm gonna make sure of it."

She's happy to let the awkwardness simmer, though, to let Eponine fill it with meaningless drivel about her life. She can't say she's particularly impressed by everything she's collected on her so far. For all that she screamed in Coraline's face about how she was a horrible person, Eponine didn't strike her as much better.

The long game was fucking exhausting.

She glances back when she sees Eponine take a roll, and reaches out with her free hand to take a sweetbread, something that smells salty and spicy, she didn't care what. "Yeah, of course I am. If they're not gonna feed you, someone has to, and I like annoying the guards by making them let us walk out on our own." She lifts her arm and rests her elbow on the table as she chews. "Besides, if we die here it's real, not like in Horizon."

"I don't care about that either," Eponine says nonchalantly. "It might be nice, to sleep proper and that. Don't you think?" She thinks so. In fact, she longs for sleep, that deep eternal sleep of nothingness. As luck would have it, though, death has so far eluded Eponine completely.
"But only, I don't want to go as a prisoner. They'll make it hurt. I want it to be just like a dream, you know? But I shan't say no to food."

She licks the bread and nibbles just some crumbs off it.
"It ain't so bad in these cells. They give you a bun and that. But in the one all alone, I screamed and screamed and nobody came, and just a plate you shouldn't give a dog was pushed to me each day."

Eponine pushes the bread into her pocket. "I ought not to complain, really. You know, in prison in Paris, in Les Madelonnettes, where I were, they fed us the flesh of the condemned. Just bread and water and mayhaps gruel if you could get to the bars in time, but the condemned on a Sunday. Here is not so bad as there."

In solitary, one of the things she can remember most vividly was Eponine crying out. With both Himeka and Estinien more prone to hole up and quietly consider their fate, she alone had expressed all the unjust frustration that they all had felt.

Of course...their venture had ended in failure and Himeka would be lying if she said she hadn't been a little upset and disappointed when Eponine had immediately turned and pinned the entire ordeal on Estinien. While Himeka had also tried to accept responsibility for it, it had done little to alleviate the punishment in anyone's regard. Yet from the time they had spent together, she couldn't find it in herself to be angry at the young woman. Not just yet.

Eponine is in a nearby cell, close enough for Himeka to catch sight of her from time to time, such as now. She makes a sorry sight crumpled up against the bars reaching out to any who wander close enough. But Himeka had been lost in her own panic in such a state when she had been returned from solitary and no one else had.

Himeka settles down on the floor, crossing her legs and letting her tail flop next to her.

"It will be just a few bells before we're released to the mess hall..."

“And what good will it do, Miss? They put the chains on anyway in case I try to run.” Eponine croaks a laugh, wincing as her bruised face changes expression. “Don’t they with you?”
Perhaps it’s because she’s been deemed violent now, after her brawl with Julie. Perhaps it’s the flight risk. Perhaps it’s because she was caught with the stolen items in Hayle. Perhaps because she’s rude and rough and ready. Perhaps, perhaps, perhaps.
Eponine shakes her head.

“They’re gonna leave us here forever, you know? Never again will we taste freedom. Never again will we see nowhere else. Just as a servant to someone good if they want us.”

It's true, Himeka has been mostly out of chains since they returned from Horizon and after her release from solitary. That she had been let back to her cell before both Estinien and Eponine did not go without her notice and Himeka has figured that, despite her attempts to deflect some of the blame on herself, she is not seen as great a threat.

Perhaps it is not surprising given her rather passive nature. Look at how the other two still fight back, for example...

Himeka leans against the bars as she regards the girl--the young woman. Already so despondent, and who can blame her?

"We have already seen somewhere else, haven't we? You also made it to the Singularity, didn't you?"

"Yes. But what good is it there? It shows us..."

It shows a house built of Eponine's childhood wishes. A mansion - but it's all wrong. Dusty and dirty, Eponine found it emptied of any life but her own. And then there were the dolls. They'd been another childish desire of Eponine's - a beautiful doll to replace her well-loved one. She'd boasted how she'd have it - and yet, the man gave it to Cosette when he saved her from a life of drudgery. The dolls had been Eponine's condemnation to the underworld.

"It shows us what can never be, Miss. We can't live there, can't change this. We only escape in our heads, and you know? For years, I live in my dreams. Years and years. But there are dreams that cannot be, you know? I don't want to go there because it is too painful to come back to this. Don't you find it just makes your heart hurt the worse?"

It's a fair question, one that Himeka isn't sure she has the answer to. Horizon has brought them solace and promise of...a momentary escape? It may be better than nothing, but what it really means to Ambrose and the ambitions of Thorne is beyond her. What it can do for them as prisoners is, for the time being, minimal.

But it is something. Something that they have that not everyone does. Something considered valuable even if they do not fully understand it yet.

She bows her head slightly in acknowledgment of Epionine's concerns. Going from all the wonders that they can conjure up in the Singularity back to their dreary cells is disheartening at best.

"In some ways...yes, a little." Himeka will admit that. "I would much rather be in green fields or by the shore or looking up at the tall spires of a beloved city, chatting away with dragonets and having tea." The thoughts alone bring the shadows of a smile to her face. "But if our options are to sit here and lament our woes or exist there for a while..."

Well, living in one's head is equally dangerous. Isn't it better to face reality, no matter how harsh.

She shrugs again.

"Mayhaps you're right."

She can't simply ignore the dire straits of their reality.

"I'm not going to pretend I really understand what the point of it all is--why we were shown how to connect with the Singularity and why we can exist in this other plane, or this dream world to create all that we would wish for should we deign it." She shakes her head. "But I do know that it's important to Thorne and to the rest of this world. But it is ours. That has to count for something, doesn't it?"

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The cells

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The Cells

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