mon cher inspecteur .... Javert (casual)

[ÉPONINE THÉNARDIER]

Je suis fatigué ... je suis trés faim ... je suis froid ... je suis malade d'avoir froid!

It was peculiar how most of Éponine's thoughts still came in French, even today. Nearly ten years had she been living in America, but she still thought in French a lot. That was because she really didn't start learning English until she was twelve or thirteen. She learned bits and pieces, but she couldn't speak it at first. She hadn't needed to learn it at first because her whole family spoke French. Besides, most signs in New York City were written in English, Spanish, and French, so she didn't have to worry too much about not being able to figure things out. That was probably why Éponine still spoke with such a thick accent. She'd learned to speak English, and pretty well most of the time, but she hadn't bothered to get the perfect accent down. It hadn't mattered.

Though Éponine spoke English most of the time, whenever she was with her sister or Montparnasse, she spoke French. As a result, she could switch to French at any time. That was why she still thought in French a lot. The words for hungry, cold, sick, and tired all meant more to her in French than they did in English. Sometimes, English didn't do enough to describe what she was feeling. Right now, faim was the word that described what she felt the best. She was very cold, too! Winters in New York were brutal, especially that blizzard that they'd had last month. She'd been forced to do some serious ... er, "negotiating" with Montparnasse in order to be allowed to stay in his apartment during the storm. She was pretty sure that she would have been one of those dead bodies that they'd found when the snow melted if she hadn't. A homeless girl in New York had to do what she had to do.

Right now, she was doing what she had to do. Restaurants were the best place to go when Montparnasse was busy working and had no food left in the house. Sometimes, rich people on diets would order fish fries on an impulse and then feel too guilty to eat them. Full meals would get tossed out as if they were nothing because Americans were too germophobic to recycle food. Éponine would never ever feel guilty for eating food until the day that she died. Hopefully that would not be too near in the future. Presently, she was shifting through trash cans, trying to find discarded food that might still be edible. She wasn't having much luck. She wasn't sure what the difference was tonight that she couldn't find any good food!

The stabbing, gnawing feeling in her stomach was nearly unbearable. She dug through the garbage cans behind the ritzy restaurant frantically. Suddenly, the big back door banged open and Eppie dove behind a trash can, out of sight of the employee. The guy turned to go back inside, and so desperate for food, Éponine crept behind him and slipped inside the kitchen in his shadow. She was immediately overwhelmed by light, noise, and smells that she nearly got sick. Then, she looked around and saw a huge pan of freshly baked rolls sitting unguarded on a counter beside her. She dove for the bread, accidentally knocking a metal tray to the floor with a clatter.

"Hey!"

Éponine looked up in alarm at one of the chefs, who was attempting to dive at her and reclaim his creation. She ducked and slipped back out the door, arms full of warm, buttered, aromatic biscuits. The chef screamed after her to come back, but she didn't. She ran, sprinting for the street at the other end of the alley. She was almost there! Then, she saw him. She screeched to a halt at the sight of the imposing man looming over her at the end of the alleyway. A few biscuits tumbled out of her hands and rolled along the ground. One bumped into his impeccably polished shoe. Éponine's stomach growled. She hastily shoved one of the buns into her mouth and swallowed it down, barely pausing to chew.

As soon as she swallowed and felt the roll travelling down to her stomach, she grinned a toothy, mischievous smile. "Bonsoir, mon cher inspecteur!" Éponine exclaimed, trying not to betray the way her body wanted to tremble at the sight of him. Still, her body did tremble. She was too hungry to resist trembling.

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[NINA TENARDÍZ]

"Éponine," the deep voice greeted her, his accent impeccable, though twinged with the distinct notes of the South. He bent, picking up the bun that had rolled into his shoe, and then straightened again. "Je devine que ce ne sont pas les vôtres..." he said as he examined it.

So Detective Javert had finally found out where the other sister had run to.

He looked back at the trembling girl before him, tossing the bun into her arms and causing her center of gravity to teeter even more. They could talk back and forth in French throughout their whole meeting if they really wanted, though Javert usually found it unnecessary. Now, in the past, there actually had been times when he interrogated her in French- I mean, if Athos was around, it didn't leave him out of the loop, and if he wasn't... well, it wasn't anyone else's business what kind of information he was getting from her.

"J'ai votre en centre-ville sœur...vous savez que, n'est pas?" he commented, an amused smile coming across his face. After all, this wasn't an interrogation, and he was, in all honesty, more comfortable speaking in French. He knew for a fact that she was too, so why complicate the situation? His words would have more of an impact on her in her native language anyway.

((I have a friend who's fluent in French, so I'm having her translate stuff. XD If there's something confusing, just tell me.))

[ÉPONINE THÉNARDIER]

So, there was an ulterior motive behind Éponine's adventure into the trash heap. She had found her sister for the first time in months. It was rather incredible how easy it was for someone to lose somebody else in New York City. After their father had been imprisoned and their mother had died, Azelma and Éponine had agreed that it would be best for them to try and survive separately, rather than together. It was easier to feed one mouth than two (as Gavroche had set out on his own long before the catastrophe with The Lark and her caretaker, they no longer had to worry about him. In fact, very few people were even aware of the sibling relationship between Gavroche and the two Thénardier sisters. Éponine didn't like him much, but she had to admit he was smart). Azelma and Éponine tried to stay in touch and meet up every so often to check on each other, but that didn't always end up happening. They couldn't meet in the same place every time for fear that somebody would catch on and try to stop them. Things often came up that kept them from meeting. Éponine hated being separated from her sister like that, but it was the way things had to be for now.

They had only just found each other again after a winter apart. When that enormous blizzard had hit, Éponine had been worried sick about her sister. She'd stayed with Montparnasse, but she had no idea what had become of her sister. What if she was one of those bodies buried in snow because the people who drove the snow plows were striking? Éponine couldn't pretend to understand any of that. All she knew was what she heard from Montparnasse and his buddies. She had no economic mind outside of her stomach. She could only hope that Zel had been smart enough to figure things out.

She worried about her sister a lot, because she wasn't quite as headstrong as Éponine, or as independent. She had always been the first one to cater to their father's beck and call, going so far as to punch out a window for him in order to elicit pity from philanthropists. She still had the scars from that. Éponine liked to think that she could do well enough on her own, even without Montparnasse. She walked out on him plenty of times whenever he got into trouble. She didn't feel loyal to him. If she were Azelma, she'd stay with Montparnasse no matter what because she had no where else to go. These were the reasons that she worried about her little sister so much. Sometimes loyalty was a very bad thing.

The two girls had met up and decide to "go out to dinner" - which in their world meant rummaging through trash cans to find enough food for the two of them to share. That's what Éponine had been up to. She hadn't taken all those rolls for herself (though she certainly could have eaten them all herself)! She knew such things didn't matter to Javert, though. He tossed the bun back to her and she struggled to hold on to her loot without letting it all drop to the ground. "Non, Monsieur! Ce n'était pas la mienne ... mais ils sont maintenant!" They were not mine ... but they are now! "As zey say ... first come, first serve!" The warmth of the buns seeped through her skin and warmed her chest, leaving only her outermost extremities, such as her fingers and toes, numb.

At the news that he'd caught Azelma, too, Éponine scowled. "Ach! Ma fille stupide!" she exclaimed. Azelma was always the one getting caught. Éponine loved her dearly, but that did not mean she did not get frustrated with her little sister sometimes. "Elle rend facile pour vous, n'est-ce pas?" She makes it easy for you, doesn't she? At least she'd probably get to warm up in the police station. They wouldn't get anything really good out of Zel, anyway. The Petit Minon let her tag along, but they didn't really tell her anything important. Éponine heard more, being Montparnasse's jolie amant ... they didn't know that she knew half of the things that she knew. She could easily give them up to Javert if she wanted. He had to offer the right price, though. So far, no cigar. The Petit Minon was the closest thing to family she had, and even though she detested them, she needed a really tempting offer in order to consider giving the police any information.

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[NINA TENARDÍZ]

Javert watched her, his smile never failing. Of course she wasn't senseless enough to deny that she stole the food- she was a thief, but she wasn't an idiot in any respect. "First come, first serve doesn't apply to this sitch', mon cher Éponine." He crossed his arms and looked down his nose at her.

She was a child. A jaded child, but she was still a kid, her and her sister both. It was too bad that they hadn't made much of themselves, but there was nothing Javert could do but lock them up now. He had a feeling that, unless they died, he'd be locking them up periodically for the rest of their lives. That didn't bother him. He'd just keep doing it until they learned.

"Elle rend facile pour vous, n'est-ce pas?"

He raised an eyebrow, gesturing her forward. She knew the drill. It was time to go down to the station. "Il est toujours facile." It's always easy. He expected her to come with him, if only to see her sister again.

"Vous pouvez prendre les avec vous." You can take those with you. There wasn't much he could do but let 'Ponine and Azelma have them. The cooks certainly wouldn't want them back- they were all dirty now- and he wasn't about to let anyone else eat stolen food. It wasn't the most serious thing she'd ever stolen. So he let her have them. "Come with me."