Welcome to my new Hobbit story! If you'd like, you can follow my tumblr fleetwoodmcs to learn more about Fool's Gold and the character of Eponine. Hope you guys enjoy!

Eponine hated stories that started with "Once upon a time."

When she was younger and on the rare occasion that Work of Orphans Des Douanes had books for her to read, she loved the stories that started with those four words. It let her know that she was about to be immersed in a world that was unlike her own. As an orphan with no family to speak of, the idea of a world like that was more than appealing. But as time went on and the children around her left, adopted by loving families that would take care of them and hold them close at night, the words lost their meaning. It didn't matter that funding for the orphanage had dwindled, meaning they could no longer afford new books for the children remaining to read. Eponine wouldn't have touched them anyway.

On a cold night in December in the year 1983, a toddler had been deposited at the doorstep of the Paris orphanage. Wrapped in nothing but a blanket patterned with wildflowers, the owner of the orphanage had taken her inside and given her food. The girl did not speak. She clutched the blanket in her hands, even when the owner asked what her name was and offered her clothing. She simply stared ahead, eyes wide and scared, like something was coming to get her. And when she had woken up the next morning after falling asleep in a warm bed the owner had offered her, she remembered nothing of a past life. She didn't even remember her own name.

And so the orphanage gave her a story.

Eponine remembered flashes of that night when she tried to remember. Her brain usually pounded against her skull if she pressed too hard for details, but the gist of the events were prominent. She remembered a pretty woman named Beatrice grabbing her hand and calling the young child her "little wildflower." She remembered clutching the blanket she had arrived in at night whenever she wondered about where her real family was. She remembered when Beatrice had asked if she'd like to be called Eponine, a character in a book that Beatrice loved.

She remembered meeting Darren.

Eighteen years old, with a backpack hanging on her shoulders and a hug from Beatrice that seemed to knock all the air out of her lungs, Eponine made her way into the real world. A world that had been cold and cruel and had spit her out after chewing what was left of childlike innocence. She had been travelling through Paris, making her way south towards Orleans, taking odd jobs here and there to make just enough money to move to the next city.

Darren had come into the coffee shop she was working at, looking nothing short of perfect as he ordered a cup of black coffee. He gave her too much money. When she refused to take it, he simply dropped it in the tip jar and gave her a sneaky smile that had her heart quickening in her chest when he turned to find a table. Living in an orphanage for the entirety of her life had left her clueless as to what the opposite sex was like, but there was something intriguing about the mysterious man who took his coffee with a smile when she dropped it off at his table minutes later.

He returned to the cafe six times before he asked if she'd like to hang out with him when she was off work.

His name was Darren, he said on a warm summer night in June, when Eponine was wrapped in a bright red shawl that kept falling down her shoulder. He had pushed it up twice already, his fingers skimming the skin of her shoulder and making Eponine blush. He was twenty-one. The three years weren't much of an age difference, but to her it felt like an ocean of information and knowledge. How smart he must be, she remembered thinking to herself, when he talked about his travels. He told her about crossing the oceans and laughed when her eyes went wide in pure, unadulterated amazement.

And when he lifted a hand to push a piece of hair behind her ear when he dropped her off at home, Eponine thought, for the first time in her life, she knew what love felt like.

They spent the next three months travelling together. She sent letters to Beatrice, explaining her adventures and how beautiful Spain was. Beatrice had never been to Spain, and Eponine raised up all the money she had to sent her a beautiful embroidered dress a man had been selling in a market. Darren said that Spain was his favorite country when he saw how much Eponine smiled there. Maybe they could stay here, he had told her, when the fall leaves scattered on the streets and Eponine traded in her red shawl for sweaters.

Eponine had never wanted anything more.

Three months turned to six, and six turned to nine. They were somewhere in Germany now, only visiting because Darren wanted her to see the world, but their hearts were in Spain. He told her he loved her there, that he would always be there to protect her. She turned nineteen and he turned twenty-two and though they were young, they were so certain. Beatrice wrote about the smiles Eponine's letters brought to her face and made Eponine promise that one day she would introduce her to Darren, the man who had so wholly stolen her "little wildflower's heart."

He had laughed when he had read it. Fleur sauvage, he whispered to her one night, the French word for wildflower sounding like the most beautiful music to her ears. But flowers were delicate and Eponine was no delicate thing. She was strong and brave and bold. Lesauvage, he had decided. The wild side of her that he had fallen in love with that night in Spain.

And so, Eponine Lesauvage she became. She'd never felt more like herself, more like who she was supposed to be.

One year gave way to two. Eponine was twenty now, but already felt the wisdom of Darren had made her that much older. They were back in Spain, in a little cottage Eponine had cried about when Darren said he had bought it for them. She wore her red shawl in the summer months and wore bright gold jewelry in the winter. He kissed her head when he came home each night, and she held him close in the night.

Eponine started to believe in the words "once upon a time" again. Her story's tides had turned, giving way into something beautiful.

Three years came with a hurricane of emotions. Darren had gripped her tightly enough to bruise her when the news of Beatrice came. The old woman had gone in the night. He whispered in her ear that Beatrice hadn't been in pain, but Eponine still made him hold her tighter as she sunk to the ground and cried. And he held her each night after that, her tears soaking through his shirt but never making him pull away.

She turned twenty-one weeks later. Twenty-one and she already had suffered so much loss. She mourned for the family she'd never met, wondered if they'd gone like Beatrice or abandoned her. But Darren would never abandon her, he promised. He wouldn't go anywhere without her ever again.

Until that cold night in December.

It was like magic, the way in which the whole room seemed to shake. Darren was plucked from reality like a guitar string, there one moment and suddenly gone the next. Eponine screamed into the air, tears running down her cheeks. She called his name, called to whatever god was out there. She'd be a better person, she promised. All the gods had to do was bring Darren back. Bring him back to her.

Everything went black.

Once upon a time, a young woman named Eponine Lesauvage woke up in a world that was not her own.