A/N - all dialogue is taken from Victor Hugo's Les Miserables and is NOT MINE! I DID NOT WRITE THIS DIALOGUE!
If she'd been thinking straight, she wouldn't have stuck her hand out. But she did, more by instinct than because she deliberately thought it through. She guessed that's what her love meant - she tried to protect him, even when it hurt her.
The bullet tore through her palm and into her torso; briefly she thought, 'I'll never write again.' That was the worst part, really, because her literacy had been an achievement, something to hold above her sister, even if all she did was (sometimes unintelligibly) copy down bribes her father dictated to her. The loss of that skill outweighed her physical pain for a brief instant, before she cried out and collapsed on the muddy street. Looking up, she saw him, high above, safe and sound and alive, gloriously alive. She was glad; even when thinking up the plan she'd wanted to be the one to die first.
She scrabbled up to her feet, pressing her palm tightly against her chest. The blood began to soak through, and she knew already that there was no way she'd survive this, that tonight she would definitely die here, in a little street in Paris. She hobbled over, trying to avoid the men around her, until again she fell, and lost the strength to stand back up.
It was good of him to come to her - kindness only, she knew, but still she loved him to near distraction. Distantly she heard her little brother singing in the distance; the one her mother had kept, she thought briefly. Most of her consciousness, however, was caught up with /him/, his arm wound around her, and her still-secret love. Suddenly she remembered what the young woman had given her. The familiar girl, so like . . . the Lark! The child her parents, and thus, their children had hated so, that was who he loved! Still, she resolved to give it to him.
"Listen, I do not wish to play you a trick. I have a letter in my pocket for you. I was told to put it in the post. I kept it. I did not want to have it reach you. But perhaps you will be angry when we meet again presently? Take your letter."
The pain in her chest was such that her wounded hand pressing the blood-soaked letter into his barely stung at all.
"Take it," she whispered. He did, and she felt the glorious press of his fingers on her palm. She smiled.
"Now, for my trouble, promise me -" but then she stopped. She wanted it so, but could she ask him to do it? Would he do it?
"What?"
"Promise me!"
"I promise."
Heart in her mouth, she said the words.
"Promise to give me a kiss on my brow when I am dead. - I shall feel it."
The pain surged again, and she went entirely limp. She was almost perfectly happy. But there was one last thing, one final thing she had to tell him, the most important thing she would ever tell anyone, ever. With a great effort, Éponine opened her eyes once more.
"And by the way, Monsieur Marius, I believe that I was a little bit in love with you."
Her body started a smile that was completed by her spirit. She stayed long enough to know one last thing about Marius Pontmercy.
He keeps his promises.