Hey, sorry that I've been a bit lazy with writing lately. I have just been so busy. Here is me trying to redeem myself.

Her screams had stopped, mercifully, soon after they had begun. Joly told Enjolras, after he had emerged from the room in the early hours of the morning, that she had passed out again. Joly told him that he had been able to clean her wound and he had bandaged her chest and she was now asleep and must rest for a while. Enjolras thanked him and told him that he should go home and get some sleep himself and that he would look after her until his next visit.

He couldn't remember how long he had been sitting on the wicker chair beside the bed. It seemed as if he had endless patience as she hadn't moved at all for hours, but he was busy thinking.

Is she in pain? Is she warm enough? Is she too hot? Is she uncomfortable? Who did this to her? Would she remember what happened to her when she woke up? Would she be traumatised? Would she wake up? He thought about the classes he was missing to tend to her, and how many he would have to miss if she didn't recover immediately, which he doubted she would. Unless he found a carer. Who would do it? Most of the people he knew in Paris were students. He could ask the woman who ran the boarding house but he less he was involved with her, the better. She was perfectly trustworthy but she was uncivil and rudely outspoken and her daughter was set in her ways to try and tempt Enjolras into her bed. He avoided the pair with dedication.

As he sat there he examined the unconscious girl before him. She looked peaceful in slumber. He followed a trail of light from the window with his eyes, from her prominent, angled collar bone, up the curve of her neck to her soft jaw line. Her cap had been removed and her messy brown hair was fanned out over his pillow. He noticed that her skin was a few shades darker from any other girl he had ever regarded. But they were always middle class women who looked as if they had never seen the sunlight before and he could tell that the gamine in his bed spent most of her life outside, scurrying around the streets of Paris, alone. He found the latter much more appealing to look at.

He turned his head away, ashamed that he was looking at a female that way, let alone an unconscious one. He didn't even know her could look at a lady and notice her appearance. But, he thought to himself, since when was she a lady anyway? He knew she was young, obviously from the youthful sparkle in her eyes, but it seemed up until she was fifteen she was a child and a as soon as she hit sixteen she had the appearance of a woman, which was mostly the case for the impoverished women, old before their time from harsh conditions and lack of hope and happiness. The childhood innocence had gone and they found the reality in their inescapable, lifelong oppression. At seventeen years, this girl had seen more than any bourgeois princess ever would.

He stood up and left the room. He needed to clear his head and he was sure she wouldn't die in his absence. He left her there in the state she had been in for half a day now and went to do some work for his classes in the front room and tried to convince himself that it was ridiculous to be wary for a woman in the next room.

...

One eye opened then the other and she made an attempt at gathering her thoughts. She remembered the streets, a knife and then...pain. She winced and tried to remember what happened after that. Walking, walking with the pain. The sound of water rushing, then blue eyes and strong arms as everything went black. Enjolras. But that wasn't it! She had woken earlier and he was there again and he told her not worry, that he would help, and then black again, then pain. That was extremely prominent in her chain of memories.

She looked down at her chest and saw it neatly bandaged in white linen but it had a small red stain at the centre, she tried not to gag. She had a surprisingly strong stomach for a girl her age as she had been forced to deal with all the cuts and scrapes that her siblings had produced, but seeing the blood stain in stark contrast against the white made her insides churn. It seemed just too...clinical.

She tried sitting up let out a loud cry from the harsh jolt of pain she felt through her upper body and slumped back down onto the pillows in defeat.

...

Enjolras heard the cry from the front room and burst into the bedroom, almost tripping over the bed post.

"Eponine! Are you alright?!"

"Enjolras!" she cried

"What happened?"

"Stop yelling, my head is killing me, and just calm the hell down! I sat up and the dirty great gash on my chest hurt a bit! Now will you tell me what happened, why I am here and who bandaged up my chest."

"I'm sorry...I just heard you cry...I thought..." He said, trying to calm down his breathing, surprised at his own devotion to his bedside position.

"I know and thanks for the concern but I want to know why I am topless and bandaged in what I'm guessing is your bed."

He blushed and averted his eyes sheepishly. She had quickly taken control of this situation and he had to admire her brave face and calm through her obvious discomfort

"I...um, I was down by the river and you arrived and you were wounded, you fainted and I took you to my apartment and I left to get Joly, I was only was gone for ten minutes at most on my word, and he was the one who dressed your wound" he gestured toward her chest and she raised an eyebrow at him. He continued "-and he said that he thought it was a knife wound."

She nodded and looked down "I Remember that part now."

"Do you have any idea who did this to you, Eponine?" he caught her eyes with his.

"I do" she swore viciously under her breath. His eyes widened at her crude choice of language.

"May I ask why you find this attack so frustrating?"

"Because it's not an attack, it's a warning."

Don't stay silent, Mistress Vantassel.