At this time last year, I was writing Always, a long-ish story about Cosette's childhood and relationship with her father. This story is about the same subject, but for Eponine - so of course, it's darker, grittier, and a lot less fluffy. I haven't written much Eponine-centric work, but the more I think about her, the more interesting she becomes. How did she grow up to be a good person when she was raised by two such horrible parents? That's one of the questions that I'll attempt to answer in this story. As always, I hope you'll enjoy, and any feedback means so much.

The title comes from a song in the musical Side Show, originally performed on Broadway by Norm Lewis, one of my favorite Javerts. :)

For my own reference: 101st fanfiction, 24th story for Les Miserables.

When Eponine was seven, her father made her drink alcohol for the first time.

Even at that young age, she already had a vague understanding that she wasn't like other girls, and that her parents weren't like other parents. She knew, from playing with the other children in Montfermeil, that they weren't allowed to do certain things, that they were punished if they misbehaved, that they were expected to help out around the house. But Eponine was allowed to do practically anything that she liked, from eating sweets for dinner to staying up late. Mama and Papa never disciplined her or made her do any chores. They made Cosette do all the chores at their inn.

Sometimes, Papa and his friends had parties in the little tavern of their inn - loud parties that lasted late into the night, where all the men laughed and banged their beer-mugs on the bar and sang songs off-key. The noise always woke Eponine up, but she never minded this, for she liked to go downstairs and wander around the party. She would watch the men arm-wrestle and listen to them tell jokes or sing songs, and since her father was the owner of the inn, they were all nice to her and gave her bits of whatever food they were eating that night.

Like most little girls, Eponine adored her papa. After all, why shouldn't she? He was always sweet to her, kissing her and tickling her, and Eponine felt certain that he knew everything there was to know in the world, like how to trick people out of their money. He'd recently begun teaching his tricks to Eponine, and she was very good at them. My little girl, Papa called her proudly.

"Eponine! So we woke my little girl up, did we?" Papa always exclaimed when he spotted her wandering through his party. He never made her go back to bed, and he never made his friends quiet down so that she could sleep. He just scooped her up, planted a few slobbery kisses on her lips, and sat her down on his lap or on the bar, where she could see everything.

One of Papa's friends had a tattoo of a lady on his burly arm, and when he wiggled his arm just so, the lady seemed to be dancing. He would always make the lady dance for Eponine. Another one of his friends would act so funny after even one mug of beer, tripping over his own feet and bumping into things, and that made her laugh, too. She tried to stay up and enjoy the loud, exciting atmosphere, but eventually the smell of beer grew so strong that it made her dizzy and tired and she fell asleep, either stretched out on the bar or curled up on the floor at Papa's feet, while the raucous party carried on around her.

After the party was over, if Papa didn't drink too much, he remembered to carry Eponine upstairs and put her back in her bed. But often he forgot, and she woke up the next morning still in the tavern, which was now quiet and empty and littered with dirty beer-mugs. She loved sitting on the bar during parties, but the tricky thing was that if she fell asleep there, she might roll off during the night, falling to the floor with a hard bump that made her cry. If she fell asleep on the floor beneath Papa's bar stool, the men might accidentally spill their beer on her, but she didn't mind that so much.

She always wandered through the party barefoot, wearing nothing but her nightgown, and one particularly chaotic night, one of Papa's friends accidentally pushed a knife off a table. It bounced to the floor and cut Eponine's foot. It hurt and she cried, but somebody bound the cut up tightly in a handkerchief, and Papa just shrugged and said, "Eh, there's no harm done. Accidents'll happen." Even then, he didn't say that a wild tavern party was no place for a little girl, and he continued letting her wander in and out among the tables in her nightgown.

One night, when Papa spotted her, he held his mug aloft and exclaimed, "Gather 'round, my pissed-as-newts! My little girl's about to wet her whistle for the first time!" He sat down on his bar stool and scooped her up into his lap. "Don't worry now, Eponine, you'll do fine," he whispered in her ear, his voice a bit slurred, as all the men cheered and gathered around them to watch. "Remember, you're a Thenardier, so there's beer in your blood. Hell, you were practically baptized in beer."

Eponine liked being the center of attention, so when he held his mug up to her lips, she drank. The taste was bitter, but she liked how it fizzled and tickled her nose, so she drank down a big gulp and smiled.

Papa fist-pumped the air, and all the men clapped their hands as if she'd done something wonderful. "Yes! That's my girl!" Papa yelled, and he covered her lips and face in his wet, beery kisses until she giggled. Then he shifted her from his lap to the bar, told his friends that he had to "break the seal," and he stumbled away towards the back door.

But after Papa's back was turned, one of his friends - Eponine didn't know his name - pulled her roughly into his lap. "Say, Thenardier, can I give her a bit more?" he called to Papa's retreating back, and Papa waved a hand and said, "Yeah, all right, jes' not too much."

The man smiled in the same sly way that Eponine smiled whenever she was up to something naughty. He dipped two fingers into his beer, swirled them around, and then, without warning, he pulled them out and thrust them into Eponine's mouth.

She jerked, startled, and tried to squirm away, but his other arm squeezed tight around her waist, holding her in place. "Come on, now, girly, you liked beer a minute ago," he whispered, wiggling his fingers deeper into Eponine's mouth. "Just suck it off my fingers now, and I'll let you go. I know you want to."

She didn't want to. His fingers were dirty and big, so big that she almost gagged on them, and she hated him for shoving them inside her mouth. But she did want him to release her, and so she closed her eyes and sucked on them. The mixed taste of beer and dirt was disgusting in her mouth.

"That's right," the man said, chuckling low in his throat. "Suck 'em harder, now. You want to get all that beer off, don't you?" But even after she had sucked all of the beer off his fingers and swallowed it down, he still didn't remove them from her mouth. He turned to the man sitting on the bar stool next to him and said, "Looky here, Thenardier's gal can already suck off and swallow. She's going to make some man happy when she's bigger, all right."

They both roared with laughter, and Eponine didn't know what was so funny or why she suddenly felt so dirty. She decided to bite him, to bite down right on his fingers as hard as she could, but before she could do it, he had pulled his fingers out of her mouth. She slid off his lap to the floor and hurried straight to the back door, to find Papa and tell him what his friend had just done. She was certain that her papa would be furious, that he would march right back into the tavern and yell at that man and throw him out, and maybe even punch him, too. Eponine smiled to imagine that. She hoped that Papa would punch him hard.

But when she found Papa, he was bent double in the alley behind their inn, vomiting hard into the rubbish bin. Eponine could tell that he'd just peed against the wall, for his trousers were still undone, and she knew that it would do no good to tell him anything now. He was much too drunk and sick. He didn't even notice her as she stood there watching him, and after a moment, she turned away, angry and disappointed in him, and she crept back upstairs to her bed without saying a word.