Events in the following fanfic come from my imagination, subtly inspired by movies I've seen and history I've read, including a little bit of the Titanic. I hope you like it.
June 20, 1920
New York City
The beautiful blond man looked at the corpses that were being placed on the port to be identified by the survivors of the biggest ship wreck history had seen in a very long time. Although he didn't want to, he tried to find the corpse of his lover, the beautiful lover he had met onboard and who he had lost in the middle of the atlantic ocean with no chance of ever seeing her again. She had died, he was sure of that; he had made the men in the life boat that saved him from hipotermia search for her until it was too cold for them to keep looking.
"Name?" one of the officers asked him as he wrote in a sheet of paper; since the wreck had been so disastrous and most of the survivors were first class members, they hadn't stopped at Ellis Island but rather left them at the port.
"Enjolras Dawson," he lied; he didn't want to do anything with his mother and the future she had for him anymore.
"Mr. Dawson, in what class did you come in?" the man asked.
"Third," he lied again.
"Did you...loose any family members?" the man continued, his voice growing softer and more hesitant.
"My wife," he said decidedly, he wished they have had enough time to marry and grow old together, but time can be cruel.
"I'm sorry for your loss, the man said, "what was her name?"
"Éponine Dawson," he continued, searching around and trying to see if he found her.
"If she's identified, we'll search for you sir. Have a good day," the man said while looking away.
Enjolras looked far to the other side, where there was a divisor line between the first and the second and third class. He recognized Marius Pontmercy, Éponine's cousin, and also Monsieur Gillenormand, Éponine's grandfather, who were both crying and tried to search desperately for the girl among the living...and the dead. Enjolras found himself crying too, he had realized how precious Éponine was to him now that he had lost her.
He walked for a few minutes, avoiding the people and eyeing the corpses, when he found Grantaire, totally pale and with his eyes creepily opened. He had no shoes on and his clothing was almost glued to his skin. Enjolras wondered who had identified him; he had traveled alone and knew a reduced group of people onboard. He hoped that some of the friends he had made on that cruel ship had survived.
On the other side of the port in which the people of the third class were being almost confined, a brunette was seating down with her back to the corpses. She had already identified four people, four of the friends she had made onboard: Musichetta, who wanted to open a café in America, Grantaire, who was that crazy drunk she had befriended on the first day, Feuilly, the artist that had made a sketch of her face on their first night and Bahorel, who wished to try luck in a different place, all people from the third class, all her friends.
She didn't want to search anymore, if she found her lover, she would kill herself. She had registered herself as Éponine Enjolras, his wife. If he had survived, they would find each other sooner or later. That's what she hoped.
Far behind, checking the corpses, she saw a blonde mane that could've been Enjolras' but she decided not to check for him; she had suffered that disappointment twice and she wouldn't try again. Instead, she looked away to find Enjolras' mother on the first class section, apparently pleading to an officer to search for her son. Behind her, Cosette, his fiancée, was shielding her face on her father's chest.
A few hours later, after the zone was being cleared and people were being sent away, Éponine stood up and checked her surroundings. She sighed, it was almost a miracle that she was alive, that she had been saved by the last lifeboat that came back searching. She was alone, almost falling asleep, getting used to the cold, thinking she was going to die when something in her inner self made her scream as loud as she could. Éponine was rescued, she was a survivor, and she had to live to her name.