A Heart Full of Love Beats On
Summary: On a lonely barricade, in the rain, Éponine Thénardier closed her eyes at last. But what if, as the rain dried on the pavement, she had opened them again? Marinine, eventually.
Disclaimer: I don't own anything, except the specific writing.
Chapter One
One day had passed. Twenty four hours, that was all. Twenty four hours that had changed the lives of countless, and ended the lives of dozens.
There they lay side by side, on the floor of what little remained of the Café Musain, pale, still and cold. Row upon row of children, most not old enough to know any better, to truly know the danger they were putting themselves in, to know that glory and death walked hand in hand in this fight. From the eldest of twenty two, named Grantaire, to the youngest of twelve, poor young Gavroche, to Enjolras, the leader of them all, Les Amis De L'ABC, each and every one of them dead. Almost.
By the side of the line sat the only survivor, Marius Pontmercy, keeping an unmoving vigil over the bodies of his friends, the arm bound in a blood spotted sling serving as the only evidence that he had fought alongside them, bar the distant expression of loss and the single tear creeping its way down the side of his face. He sat there in silence, as he had done ever since he had returned from the hospital. He had sat watching over one person in particular since then. The first in line. The first to fall. His poor 'Ponine.
Tears filled the young man's eyes as he remembered the events of the previous night. He had not been paying attention, had been concentrating on a pair of quarrelling lads behind the barricade, and on his own mind, and therefore had not noticed the National Guardsman approaching him, brandishing a loaded rifle in his right hand. He had not noticed until he heard the gunshot, turned his head, and saw his own best friend falling down to the ground.
Glancing down to the shirt beneath her swamping jacket as he sat beside her, the student saw that it was still drenched in the blood from the wound that had long since stopped bleeding. In a way, Marius had expected the shirt to have cleaned itself, as if by magic, that all evidence of Éponine's pain would have disappeared with the ending of her own, but of course it had not. It remained just as real as the hurt Marius felt to see it.
"Oh, 'Ponine. I am so sorry. If there was anything I could do to bring you back, I would do it, without a second thought. I wish this had all never happened." he confessed, taking the young woman's cold, dead hand in his and squeezing it slightly. For just a moment, he thought she would squeeze his hand back, as she had always done before, but of course, she hadn't. She never would again.
That was all his fault. She had died to shield him from a Guardsman's rifle, while his mind had been full of only Cosette. It was the only thought that still remained in his mind, his conscience a burden that he could hardly bear to carry. 'I am nineteen years old.' he thought in utter anguish, his eyes filling with tears all over again. 'I ought to have known better. I ought to have stopped her becoming involved in the revolution at all.' Now, in his quest for change, he had unwittingly led an innocent child to her death. He may not have been a murderer, but in his eyes, he might as well have been.
As sobs began to wrack his body, Marius stood and fled the building, no longer able to stop the flow of pain in the ruins of the place he had always come to in order to escape it.
Behind him in the Musain, the breeze from Marius' speedy departure had barely settled when the air of the room was disturbed once more. Along the line of silent bodies, one pair of eyes fluttered, flinched and opened.
The blurred eyes followed Marius' retreating back, eagerly trying to gauge where he was going to, from the speed and style of his walk, each type of which the person had come to recognise over the years. A weak smile surfaced on their face, twitching at the corners of their mouth, as they remembered the years that had gone by. The years with Marius. The years he had destroyed by what he had done.
With a yelp of pain, the figure sat up upon the floor, grasping at their side and biting their lip with almost enough force to draw blood. They proceeded nonetheless, rising to their knees and slowly staggering to their feet, crying out into the empty room.
After a few agonised steps, they collapsed against the empty doorframe of the Musain, matted brown hair splaying across the splintered wood. Their breath was coming in sharp pants, their head was spinning wildly, and the world around them would not stay still for a single minute.
'Remember the good times. All the years we spent together. I would have thought better of you, my girl. Are you really going to let all that be wasted over a touch of pain?' the figure questioned their own mind, desperately trying to encourage their legs to continue through the blinding pain that had whitened the edge of their vision completely.
The method was effective, as they stayed in that place for a moment, but only a moment. They were looking for someone after all; they could not let him get away when they did not even know if it was too late to find him. So, they did the only thing they knew they could do. They journeyed on.
So, through the slowly darkening air of the Paris sunset, Éponine Thénardier walked out into the shadows.
A/N: Please review this! Pretty please!