A/N - BTW, I changed my mind. Grantaire doesn't drink quite as much as in other universes. He's known for it but when on duty he is all business. He does prefer to hitch rides though so that he can act his part on a moment's notice.

They pulled up in front of the first house Enjolras had given them the address to. As ever, they kept in phone contact in case they needed to investigate the house without permission. It was situations like the first one that got Courfeyrac through the bad ones. The couple were expecting a child from overseas, he was merely doing a walk through to ensure the house was safe and the parents were stable. They showed him pictures and eagerly showed him everything they had for the toddler, including foreign language books and labels. It wasn't an ideal time to get a new puppy too but their intention was good and they weren't breaking any laws. He left his card and said he would come back in a week with an interpreter, bid them good luck and knew that subsequent visits would merely be social calls.

The next was a drop in, not as favourable. Children were watching someone fix a car, dangerously close to the open hood and engine while others were unsupervised around an above ground pool. A knock to the door summoned nobody so he went back around to the guy fixing the car. The cousin of all of the children, he was seventeen and the only semi-adult supervision the kids had. "Have your aunt or uncle call me when they get in." he said, handing him the card. "You can't forget to tell them." he warned and he and Eponine sat in his car awhile, filling out citations and forms. As always happened, the parents showed up shortly. He explained to Eponine that it was a pattern. Once their card was handed out, whoever took the card phoned the parents to come home. " You want to read them the citations?" he asked and she shrugged. "It's just a matter of reading off the list of things we find and you need to know the things to watch for. Let's go." he said and they got back out of his car and followed them to the house. "We noticed a few things going on here..." he said to the father and let Eponine read the citations.

"The kid was fixing the car, he asked no questions when we went around to the back yard..." she said and showed them the pictures of the pool area.

"I told them not to go there." the mother said.

"You need a locking fence around it. Yes it's above ground but kids have drowned in them." she told her.

Courfeyrac measured the middle child against the wall of the pool. "Can you swim, sir?" he asked the little boy who shook his head. "But you were on the ladder to get in." he referred to the small step ladder.

"We'll send someone back tomorrow, you need to have a fence or at least something to show that you plan on putting one up by the weekend. In the meantime, the kids can't be out here without supervision and you..." Eponine told a little girl "...stay away from the water." she looked in the pool

"And you may want to get something to treat that water." Courfeyrac told the mother he could smell it from even a few feet away.

After they got back in the car, he noticed that Eponine was shaking. "You did very well laying down the law." he commended. "You gotta' keep your voice strong...what are you shaking for?" he asked and she shrugged. "You'll stop that soon." he got a text from Enjolras and rather than read it, gave him a phonecall, scribbling down addresses and the like. "Okay..." he said as he pulled away from the curb. "We number the scenarios, the higher the number the worse it gets. The first one we went to doesn't even GET a number." he referred to the anxious parents to be. "The one we just left was maybe a four or five. We're going to a potential seven or eight, maybe higher." he warned her. It was a shitty situation as he explained to her while they drove along. The worst case scenario as this was a government supported foster home. Somehow, the foster parents got through the cracks, managed to get children into their home and didn't stand up to their duties. They were reported by a teacher, the children were filthy and smelly. When the school nurse tried to change their clothes she noticed the bruises and scrapes, rashes and other skin lesions, she called CPS. The two she had in her class were taken immediately. They didn't even go home, they were take to the hospital to be checked out and would be placed in a more reliable foster home but they had said there were more children at the house.

The house was in a depressed area but it didn't look any worse than the ones around it. Good people lived in shabby houses and bad people lived in mansions, in doing this job, they all learned that a shabby house can hold a happy, loving family. However, the reports were in about this one. Courfeyrac and Eponine waited until they saw Enjolras drive up with Grantaire in the passenger's seat. They didn't need him to play the role of the bum, they needed him on the top of his game. None of them looked like CPS officers that was part of it. They didn't want to startle anyone or put them on their guard. Courfeyrac and Eponine approached the door first while Enjolras and Grantaire waited in the car.

"My name is Francis Courfeyrac and I'm with CPS." he said to the young woman who opened the door. "There are some foster children here?" he asked, flipping through pages of a book so she knew that when he asked a question, he was actually just saying that he knew all this.

"They're not home." the woman said. "They went for ice cream with their father...or, the father of this house." she stammered.

"All of them?" Courfeyrac asked. "That's not possible because two of them are in protective custody right now. Where are the others?" he asked then looked over the young woman's shoulder to see someone standing a bit farther back. "Who are you?" he asked the young woman.

"Just the housekeeper." she shrugged.

"How did YOU get kids?" he asked the woman who stood further back. She had been a foster parent before and those ones had been taken away from her and her husband. "Alice Thenardier..." he said. "Is Milton around?" he asked. "Or is he the one who took the kids for ice cream?"

"He's looking for our son." she said. "Gavroche, he didn't come home from school." she began to shed crocodile tears.

"We'll look for him, try to remember what he was wearing the last time you saw him." he gently faked. He knew where Gavroche was. "We're going to talk to the other children you have here."

"There are no others." Alice said.

"If we came in and looked we would find none?" he asked, waving Enjolras from the car. Chances were great that Alice was going to say that they couldn't come in so Enjolras may as well start heading up there now. "No need to call the police." he said when she picked up the phone and threatened to do so "I brought them with me." he said as Enjolras handed over the warrant. They didn't pause at the door or anything, they just walked in. "Something else you're going to get used to." he told Eponine.

"Hi!" Enjolras said when he went into a bedroom and saw a little boy crouched beside the bed. He had been told to hide beside the bed but had chosen the exposed side. Either that or he just wanted to be found, which was entirely possible. "My name is Sylvain, what's yours?" he asked, going in and helping the little boy off the floor. It was to nobody's surprise that he said he was itchy. Children who lived in dirty houses often had skin irritations and rashes. "Let's see." he sat him on the bed and looked at his legs, mottled red and white. "Have you been sick?" he felt his forehead, perhaps he was walking into a room of measles. The little boy shook his head. "Is that your sister?" he asked as he saw Eponine leading a little girl through the hallway. "What's her name?"

"Minette." he said. "I have to take care of her. I can't let her go." he said, getting off of the bed.

"We won't separate you two." Enjolras promised. "We're going to take you away from here though and find someone else to put you with, is that okay?" he asked and the boy nodded. As he headed to the door, he picked up a toy. "You want to take only that one?" Enjolras asked and grabbed a pillow case. "Pick some more." he said as the little boy dumped all of his lego into the pillow case. "What about your sister?" he asked but saw that Courfeyrac had instructed Eponine to do the same as he continued to open doors and closets where they were known to hide children.

Grantaire came up from downstairs with a toddler who was actually having a good time playing with the flashlight until they got upstairs where it was light and the beam of the flashlight disappeared. He sat the toddler (they had no idea if it was a boy or a girl yet) on the couch next to Minette and to where Enjolras was herding the little boy he'd found.

"Who the hell gave them all these children?" Eponine asked Courfeyrac.

"Chances are, some are their own. Gavroche, one of the boys from school and who knows which others. Otherwise, this is known as slipping between the cracks or they belong to friends." he nodded as Alice protested that two of them were just spending the week with them. "Yes, that's why they have their own bedrooms."

"What's behind this door?"Grantaire asked, pointing to a door with a couch pulled in front of it.

"Closet, we don't use it." Alice said but it was useless of her to protest as they were already moving the couch to the side.

"What the..." Grantaire said as he opened the door. It was a walk-in closet, there was a light socket in the ceiling but no light bulb in it. The thing that made it obvious that it was inhabited was the smell. "Eponine!" he waved her over and handed her the flashlight. "Keep this shining on here." he said and bent to pick the child up, assuring it that everything was okay. Eponine watched him change from the gross pseudo-drunk to professional CPS agent. "Oh you ARE a little thing..." he pulled a very filthy little one out of the closet. Her hair was black and curly so it matted and they didn't even know if it was a boy or girl. "Who is this?" he asked the three on the couch and pointed to the child he held.

"Sylvie." Minette said. "She's not supposed to come out of there though, she's kind of strange." she made the 'mental' sign with her finger at her temple. Luckily, nobody was there who was going to challenge a child for saying something like that. It was obviously what they were being taught and whether or not little Sylvie was strange BEFORE she lived in a dark closet would be for Dr. Combeferre to decide. Grantaire felt the little girl's skin. He wasn't a doctor but they all knew what to watch for and he could tell this little one didn't have a lot of time. They had Eponine video tape the recovery of the little girl. Grantaire kept her in his arms and Enjolras went to her, picked her arm up and it fell limp. He tickled the bottom of her feet and got no reaction. Speaking to her was useless and it was time to get those kids rounded up and taken to the hospital.

"Courf!" Enjolras shouted down the stairs for his co-worker to come back upstairs then headed out to his car where he would take the brother and sister set.

"Where the hell did you get THAT?" Enjolras asked as Courfeyrac came outside carrying a 7 month old baby.

"Another bedroom." Courfeyrac sighed, popping open his trunk to get a baby seat as though it were the most normal thing in the world. "You know how to install one of these?" he asked Eponine. "You'll need to learn." he passed the baby to her so he could get the seat installed. "Oh my God." he looked to see the filth encrusted girl from the closet. She looked even worse in daylight. "What did they do to you, sweet thing?" he asked as Grantaire put a blanket on the seat of the car and sat the girl there, clicking the seatbelt and they started towards the hospital.

Grantaire rode in the back passenger's seat, holding up little Sylvie and stroking her sticky hair, trying to get the baby's name or even find out if it was a boy or girl.

"Boy" Eponine said. "I had to put a diaper on him."

"If we don't know his name, we get to name him until we find out. Yvan doesn't like nameless kids." Courfeyrac told her.

"I don't know." Eponine said, almost embarrassed. "What if it becomes the little boy's name for life?"

"Then name him well." Grantaire said but Eponine didn't get a name out before they pulled to the hospital.

"Oh my God." the attending nurse said when she saw the two from Courfeyrac's car. She took the baby boy at once for rehydration and tried to take Sylvie from Grantaire's arms but she fussed.

"This is the first sign of life she has shown." Grantaire said and they went into the case room. She was too weak to even lift her arm earlier."

Courfeyrac introduced the Pontmercys to Eponine, they already had a very scrubbed and cleaned up Gavroche sitting with them. He was wary but content, sipping a meal replacement milkshake. "They're just checking Daphne now."

Enjolras looked into the rear view mirror at the three children clinging together. "We have a great place to take you for awhile." he promised. "They're friends of mine so I know it's nice." he thought about Pontmercys. They never wanted children of their own but gladly accepted overnighters or for a few weeks. It was a safe and loving house and they would meet them at the hospital with a minivan. "They'll meet us at the hospital after you see the doctor. They're waiting for a little boy who loves french fries...you like french fries, don't you?" he asked the boy with blond curly hair. He knew that Marius and Cosette always had a bar be cue when they got new kids. Burgers and fries were always on the menu. "And...a girl who likes root beer floats, right?" he asked and the little girl grinned. "Okay, Minette and I are old friends..." he said as he drove along. "Who else do I have with me? Minette, what's your brother's name?"

"Nicolas." she said. "And this is Keri." she pointed to the other girl.

"Okay, when we get to the hospital, the doctor is going to see all of you, especially your rash Nicolas. He'll give you some cream to put on it so it won't sting so bad." he chatted until they got to the hospital. He picked Keri out of her booster seat while the other two undid their own straps and Enjolras herded the three kids in there to meet with everyone else.

Combeferre took all the kids in the exam room at the same time. It kept them relaxed and they would listen to the chatter between them, often they opened up to each other before the doctor. He whistled when he saw Nico's legs. "Whoah, dude!" he checked the crooks of his elbows and behind his ears, where eczema tended to develop but there was nothing. "This is bad, you don't get it anywhere else?" he asked. "How far up does it go? To your bum?" he asked and Nicolas nodded. "We'll get something to make that feel better but we're going to give you a bath, does it itch or just sting?"

"It stings when I pee my pants." Nicolas said. "And my bed."

"They'll help you with that, too." Combeferre smiled and lifted him down so the nurse could take him to the baths. Minette and Keri were fairly healthy, just dirty and then he went into another room where they had Sylvie and the baby on IVs. "Oh my goodness." he whispered. "You found a new friend?" he grinned at Grantaire.

"Why do they do shit like that?" Eponine asked as they waited in the visitor's lounge. "Why would they take a foster child then..." her voice broke and she buried her face in her hands. She took a deep breath when she felt a hand on her shoulder and smiled at the pretty blond lady beside her.

"I know." Cosette said. "We're going to take the five of them home tonight." she said. "So they'll all sleep well and happy."

"How long do you keep them for?" Eponine asked her. "I'm new to this."

"We've kept them as briefly as overnight and as long as five or six months." she answered.

Eponine wondered how they did that. Have kids for five months then just let them go when they got adopted. She guessed, when you get children and know right off the bat that they're only on loan, it wouldn't be as hard to let them go. She could tell when she looked at the foster parents that the children WOULD be in good hands. They looked responsible and wholesome and while Eponine knew that monsters lived behind faces and personae like that, she had faith on the others who called on them.

The baby and little Sylvie would be kept in the hospital for at least overnight. "Ponine." Courfeyrac said to her. "You still have to name that little one."

Eponine bounced a few names around in her head. "Joseph?" she said. "I just like Joe."

"Joe." Combeferre said and filled in the chart with the name.