DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN ANY OF THE CHARACTERS PORTRAYED IN THIS CHAPTER- THEY ARE ALL THE PROPERTY OF THE AMAZING AUTHOR VICTOR HUGO!

Dusk had just fallen on the Rue de Valette and a stooped figure wrapped in a large yellow overcoat flitted in and out of the shadows- ocassionally ducking into a doorway as the National Guard marched past on their evening patrols through the streets of Paris; after the recent attempt at revolution the king was taking no chances.

At last the figure seemed to find what it was looking for and it bent to retrieve an object from the ground. The object was the body of a young woman- bloody and covered in dirt from its neglect over the previous week. In case you haven't already realised; the body was that of Eponine Thenardier and the figure carrying her Jean Valjean.

Valjean lay Eponine's body over his shoulder and returned back the way he had come until he emerged from the shadows to knock at the door of number 55 Rue Plumet, the door was opened a crack and the concerned face of Marius Pontmercy squinted into the street. On seeing it was Valjean, Marius opened the door wide to allow him in- grimacing at the sight of his friends lifeless body hanging mutilated over one shoulder.

"Why have you bought it back here?" Marius asked, disgusted at the filth which had just entered. Joly's hypochondria had rubbed off slighty on Marius as it had on all his brothers apart from, it had seemed, Grantaire.

"The funeral directors will not be open till morning my boy- it would look suspicious taking a body this badly damaged there at this hour"

"I guess" Marius sighed "but where shall we put her? She can hardly lie on the sofa"

"I will lay her in the back room and I shall sleep on the sofa tonight- Mademoiselle Eponine may be dead but I'm sure she would be most dissatisfied to be left in the garden were she still with us"

After the body was lain in the room Valjean called Cosette in and asked if she could find a dress that Eponine could be fitted in for her funeral. The girl returned with a pretty white frock, embroidered with flowers and rain drops, hung delicately over one porcelain coloured arm.

"I believe this will suit 'Ponine nicely" Cosette said with an air of sadness. "It's a shame we never saw it on her while she was living"

Marius and Valjean nodded their agreement. "Cosette my child, would you be so kind as to clean Mademoiselle Eponine up before we deliver her tomorrow?"

"Of course father" the former Lark chirped.

On entering the room, where Eponine lay cold and still on the floor, Cosette allowed herself to be consumed with memories- memories of her days at the inn in Montfermeil where a much younger Eponine had terrified Cosette. Cosette had once felt jealous of Eponine but now she felt only guilt for ever being jealous of the girl whose family had never loved her and who had left many of the marks which littered Eponine's frail and bloody corpse.

The Thenardiess had abused Cosette often but Cosette was not her child so really she had no obligation to love and care for her. But Eponine, Eponine was the Thenardiess' flesh and blood yet she had clearly undergone much worse treatment than Cosette had in her days as the Lark. The corpse was so thin that an anatomist could easily distinguish all the bones in the body without making one incision and the skin, which Cosette knew to have once been pale and delicate from Eponine's time as a fairly wealthy child, was now a brown russet colour from the blood and dirt which stained it and cracked and marked with cuts, bruises and the bullet holes which had ended the waifs short, miserable life.

Slowly, after much scrubbing, Eponine began to look somewhat beautiful- the mask of death causing her features to appear angelic and peaceful, something the girl had never achieved in life. Once all the traces of blood and dirt had been removed and the dead gamines hair somewhat brushed and neatened, Cosette dressed Eponine in the frock and braided her long, dark tresses before folding her arms across her lifeless chest and placing a bunch of roses there.

Eponine Thenardier could simply have been sleeping.

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