While I was watching the movie version (for the second time) last night, this popped into my head. It's been a really long time since I've had inspiration strike me like this, so I just sat down and pounded it out.
Perhaps my favorite character in the stage musical is Eponine (surprise!), but I was a little disappointed at how they cut her part to be smaller in the movie version between the shortened version of "A Little Fall of Rain" and her absence in Valjean's death scene. But when I was watching him see Fantine at his death after so many years, he said "I'm ready, Fantine," (or something very close to that), which presumably Cosette and Marius would have been able to hear, though they themselves could not see Fantine.
That made me wonder who would lead Marius away when his time came, and for me, the obvious answer was Eponine. I've started drawing so many parallels between Eponine and Fantine, both of them redeemed by their unfailing love for another person, especially when they appear to Valjean together as they do in the stage show.
This is me exploring the scene I imagine and what would come before it.
I own nothing of Les Miserables, not the book, not the musical, not the film. All rights go to their respective owners.
Marius still sees ghosts.
He doesn't tell Cosette anymore, not after the first time. Then it was a month into their marriage, as they lay together in their bed, as another figure watched them from the doorway, half hidden behind it as she had always been in life.
"Cosette," he had said in a low voice, sitting up, "Did you see her?"
"Who?" She had asked, looking worried. "Marius? Are you alright?"
"Fine," He said, staring hard at the place where she had been. "Just… just a shadow."
He still doesn't know if she was real, but he thinks she may have been. He never saw Eponine clearly in life, either.
With the others, it's different.
Sometimes, when he rounds a corner or opens a door, he'll catch a flash of red. Enjolras, he'll think, but he knows, somehow, that it's not actually him.
When his brain tells him Eponine, he has to listen.
He can't pretend that he's not racked with guilt, that he hasn't been since that horrible day at the barricade when everyone died. Well, not everyone. He was selfish enough to survive.
But he has Cosette. He's happy. And then they have children, three of them, and he's happier.
Cosette names them all, Jean, for the boy, after her father. Paulette and Marie for his beautiful girls. He wouldn't have it any other way.
Jean and Marie both have their mother's hair and eyes, but Paulette's curls are brown, her dimpled cheeks sprinkled with freckles.
"My mother's hair," Cosette tells her growing up, as he cradles his middle child on his lap while her golden siblings play in the sun.
It's not Fantine's hair he sees. And her eyes full of trust, the way her cheeks dimple when he makes her smile, when he can coax her from half hiding behind a wall or a tree, they remind him of a girl he used to know.
He almost calls her 'Ponine once, instead of Paulette.
He doesn't tell his wife, but she's his favorite child.
He doesn't quite know if it's because he sees her more often when he's with Paulette or in spite of it.
He may never have known Eponine as well as he ought, but he knows that she's not spiteful, not angry. He thinks she's happy for him, for them. Sometimes she looks at Paulette wistfully, as if to see what might have been, was Marius not so blind.
Once upon a time, he might have loved Eponine. Once upon a time was, like everything else before Cosette entered his life, so long ago that it was hard to remember, now, but he remembers her dimple and her mischievous smile. She was his friend, maybe his best friend, and she was a very pretty girl, streetwise and tough, but still so innocent, so trusting.
Cosette has spoken to him of her only once, when she had finally coaxed him into telling her what he had seen in the doorway the first time Marius noticed she was there. And while, in all honesty, Marius would not have blamed his wife if she had held a grudge, she spoke of nothing but respect for the poor, dead street girl.
"We were children then, so young. And she was good to you. She brought us together, in the end. May her soul rest in peace."
He should have expected no less from the daughter of a good Christian, from the daughter of Jean Valjean.
And yet, that night, he had thought about Eponine's last moments yet again, laying in his arms, happy to be finally within his protective embrace. And that night, he realized her death had been not only a blood sacrifice to prove her love for Marius, but a blood sacrifice to pay a debt. She owed Cosette nothing else. In her last moment, she preserved Marius so that her childhood foe could find true happiness at last.
When he sees her seeing Cosette now, she does not glower. All their debts are cleared.
With Cosette on his arm and Eponine hovering in the shadows, he raises his children.
He does not feel haunted. She is not angry, not threatening. She never acts. She never disturbs his family. He is the only one who can see her, anyway.
As in life, she only stands silently by, waiting.
As he grays, it occurs to him to wonder what she is waiting for.
She watches as Jean marries a pretty girl, as Marie walks every day with a gentleman in a blue coat.
She watches Marius watch Paulette have her heart broken by a boy who prefers someone else. Marius' heart breaks once for his beautiful daughter, crying into his chest and once for the look on Eponine's face. For the only time, Eponine reaches out, wanting to wipe away her tears, but she holds herself back.
Marius wants to tell his daughter all he knows that is true: that she is beautiful and worthy, she is every bit as lovely as her blonde, doe-eyed sister, that the boy is blind. He wants to tell her that she will find someone else, someone to make her truly and deeply happy at last.
He doesn't tell her what she doesn't want to hear. He just holds her, still his baby girl, as she cries.
And it takes a full year, but then Paulette's smiling again, smiling at a handsome boy who looks at her as he ought to, looks at her in wide eyed wonder.
And though it hurts to give her to him at the altar, he holds his wife's hand tight and smiles at his daughter, radiant with happiness.
He likes to think that, given time, Eponine would have found someone who made her as happy as she deserved to be. It helps to see her face on Paulette's wedding day, smiling so brightly as the tears course down her face.
And the years pass, and Eponine is there when his grandchildren play on his lap and run through the halls, screaming happily as children do.
Cosette pretends a headache sometimes when they get too rowdy, but Marius knows that neither of them would have it any other way.
When the day comes, as it finally must, Eponine is there to welcome him home.
Cosette's holding one of his hands, Paulette the other. Marie and Jean hover there, too, as he kisses each of his grandchildren on the cheek or forehead for the last time. Even the oldest boy, nearing twelve, takes the kiss admirably, with no squirming. When they are ushered out of the room, he takes his family in, their beautiful faces.
What a life he has had.
Eponine doesn't hide in the shadows anymore. She steps out of the corner, and walks to the foot of his bed, arm outstretched.
All these years, she's been waiting to lead him home, to Jean Valjean, to Enjolras and Gavroche and everyone else that died at the barricade, too long before Marius.
Marius smiles and closes his eyes.
Suddenly, he's walking, floating.
He feels strong and young again, as strong and young as that day when he held the barricade.
He looks at his family one last time. Cosette, wrinkled and grey now, but still so beautiful, Jean, supporting her manfully, weeping unashamedly. Paulette and Marie, heads huddled together, sobbing over the shell that no longer contains Marius. For the first time in 50 years, he takes Eponine's hand.
"Marius," she whispers reaching up to cup his cheek in her palm. He lets her, he leans into her touch.
"Eponine," he breathes back. "'Ponine, I'm so sorry. So sorry for everything."
She looks just as she did that day, but better, stronger. So alive. Her smile is radiant. She does not speak a word, but he feels her forgiveness.
"Lead me to salvation," he says, and she pulls him gently by the hand out into the hallway.
He looks at his daughter as they leave the room.
Paulette looks over Marie's shoulder at him, at them. She smiles through her tears, gives a final nod, not to him, but to the girl by his side.
Eponine smiles back.