without me, his world will go on turning
by: amoenavi
A/N: Written as a character drabble for thebucketwoman over on LJ. I don't own Eponine Thernardier or any of the lyrics herein mentioned from Les Miserables. Eponine doesn't get enough love.
-x-x-
It's strange but…
She never thought she'd die like this. She'd always pictured herself rotting away in a jail cell somewhere after being caught for one of her father – she winces (I'll make you scream, you'll scream all right) – Monsieur Thernardier's illegal schemes. Always a sickly looking child, never beautiful like Cosette (we were children together), she would wither away slowly and painfully. Her hair would lose what little shine it had, her nails growing brittle with malnourishment, and Marius – Marius would never come to visit (Hey Eponine!). Students with lovely girls like Cosette waiting on them do not visit convicts. It's just a fact of the street.
Instead, here she is – dying on a battlefield in a blaze of glory (or something like it.) The barricades have barely risen and already, she is shot. All her street smarts get her nowhere except here, lying in the dirt, bloodstained, dying.
It's morbid, she knows, but she's almost happy that this is how she dies.
Marius was almost killed and yet, she saved him. And now she's finally lying in his arms (pretending he's beside me), and he's saying he loves her (if I could heal your wounds with words of love), and nothing is how she pictured it (if he asked, I'd be his) but somehow it's perfect.
She doesn't see bright lights or angels or heaven in all of its various forms. There's no great peace that overcomes her, takes away her pain (the rain can't hurt me now), a stabbing pain in her chest and the feeling of her lungs collapsing (I don't feel – any pain), nothing but Marius' arms and his words and his tears on her cheeks (I won't desert you now). She loves him, she loves him, she loves him (but only on her own) and she's as close to happy as she's ever been.
"Eponine," he whispers into her grimy neck and she knows he doesn't wish it were pale and clean and hers that he's crying into.
For once, Eponine is glad she's not comparable to Cosette.
(In my life, there's been no one like him anywhere, anywhere, where he is.)
-x-x-