Ooh, two chapters in one day. What a spectacle. Don't expect this too often, I'm a very busy girl. A very busy girl who doesn't own Les Miserables.

Chapter Twenty: Chaos

Evening found the Amis crouched upon the finished barricades, waiting, with their weapons held close and their hair soaked from the falling rain.

Not one shot had been fired, and Marius was beginning to see every tranquil second as a chance to drop his weapon and take off running back to the Thenardiers. Still, his mind would not let him forget the faces and emotions of his friends when they saw him show up at last…

"Marius?" He looked to his left and saw Jehan stooped there, an innocent look (ironic with the gun held in his hands at the same time) in his green eyes.

"Hey?" said Marius.

"Is… is Eponine safe? Really?" He sounded beyond concerned for the girl, and Marius felt a pang in his gut. He had watched the way Jehan had looked at Eponine in the past months they had been friends, and knew the extent (Jehan was never any good at hiding his emotions, as are many poets). Marius looked at his friend with deepest comfort, knowing that if he died, Eponine would at least have someone to love her and look after her. Then again, Jehan might die too. That was a blunt way to put it, Marius knew, but the reality was becoming more so with every minute that passed.

"Yes," Marius answered uncertainly. "She is safe."

Suddenly, Enjolras barked from his station, "Positions," and Marius's ears fell into another tuning, or so it seemed. He all at once lost the voices of his friends and heard but one thing: footfalls of soldiers on the other side of the barricades. Silence reigned, occasionally broken by the cocking of a gun. Even the breathing of the men seemed to silence itself.

Then, a voice cried out sharply from the shadowing nothingness beyond the barricade, "Who is there?" This voice was followed by the simultaneous rustling of many more muskets. The soldiers greatly outnumbered the insurgents, it was quite clear.

"French Revolution!" Enjolras shouted loftily.

"Fire!" The response was immediate and dreadful, and before the barricade boys had time to think, a sudden explosion rocked the already shaky foundation beneath them. There was a brilliant flash of light and sound, the noises of ricocheting bullets and tumbling pieces of the barricade sounding like thunder.

Every shot and explosion had come from the Guard's side.

"Don't waste the powder!" cried Courfeyrac as soon as the attack was over, before the alarm had even set in. Marius looked around him and caught his breath. Beside him, Jehan was clutching his gun with white knuckles. The dust was so thick that they could hardly see each other.

"Let us wait to reply till they come into the streets," Courfeyrac went on as Marius took deep breath after deep breath, trying to regain his sense of equilibrium.

"Still hanging in there, Pontmercy?" Marius turned around to see Enjolras standing behind him. It was amazing how calm and orderly he looked, even after such a sudden attack. Marius felt like a dirt-covered dog in comparison. He was sure he looked like one after how dusty he had gotten in moving the paving stones.

"Decently," Marius answered before his friend moved on down the line. Behind him, Marius heard Combeferre say, "Joly, if you would grab his leg…" So there were already wounded men on their side.

"How is your first time with a gun going for you?" Jehan asked conversationally from beside Marius. He had a shaky smile on his glistening face. The rain had picked back up, and despite the smoke and gunpowder, Marius was shivering with cold.

"Wonderful," he responded sarcastically, trying to look lighthearted. He sensed a long night ahead of him, and at the end of it… what?

Eponine pulled her brother's hat farther down over her head and moved to stretch out the front of her blouse again. Her hair kept falling in her face, and she wished constantly that she had had enough francs to buy a looser men's blouse as well. Two full meals a day had begun to fill back in the features she had been lacking ever since they were supposed to be there, and while she would normally be delighted, especially living in the company of Marius, it added a slight difficulty to her act as a boy. She was, on top of this, afraid that her out of season coat was looking more and more conspicuous to passersby.

"We're almost there," announced Gavroche excitedly, pointing to a haze of smoke emerging from the end of the street they were now walking down. They could hear the sounds of many manly voices through the haze, and the scent of gunpowder was prominent. Eponine took a deep breath and tried to square her shoulders bravely as they stepped into the intersection of streets serving as the battlegrounds.

The first person to catch sight of them was, regrettably, Courfeyrac, who seemed to be in a sort of frenzy, shouting orders to the men and boys milling around with their guns. Enjolras was in charge, but Courfeyrac was in command. When his eyes fell upon Gavroche, he exclaimed, "Mon Dieu, Gavroche! What in heaven's name are you doing out here?"

"Helping," the small child answered smartly.

"No, you will get killed!" Courfeyrac looked around in a panic, torn between continuing to shout orders, and getting the boy out. Just as this was going on, it would appear that Enjolras caught sight of the scene unfolding as well.

"You have no place here, Gavroche," he said sternly.

"It's funny," Gavroche went on. "You talk of fighting for the 'abased'. Well, here I am: abased, abused, and ready to fight for the Cause! Consider it self-defense." Eponine had to try her hardest to conceal a small laugh at her brother's words. She had turned her back, but could almost sense the smile on Courfeyrac's face, and the un-amused look on Enjolras's face.

Gavroche saw his sister wander away out of the corner of his eye, clearly to run off and look for Marius. He sighed and looked up at his elders. "So," he said, his nose turned up in the air. "Where's my musket?"

Enjolras turned to Courfeyrac and said quietly, "He would be safer to stay at this point, I believe. All of us would be. Just give him a gun from one of the wounded." Courfeyrac nodded, relayed the news to Gavroche, and in minutes the older boys were back to their posts, and Gavroche was armed with a musket larger than his own body, or so it seemed. He was testing it out for size when Eponine came running back up to him, her coat tugged tightly around her body.

"You seen your sweetheart?" Gavroche asked childishly.

"He's fine," Eponine replied, sounding quite relieved.

Her brother laughed to himself. "I still can't believe the landlady thinks you two to be married." (Eponine couldn't help but note his grammar when speaking in these past few days - he was following in her tracks and molding his speech patterns to be more and more proper as the days went on. Living with respectable people had done a number on both of them).

"Neither can I," Eponine admitted.

Just as she was speaking, there was a terrible noise from behind: a canon. Before anyone had a single second to react, another attack had ensued. Gavroche looked up and saw the glinting edges of bayonets leaping over the top of the barricade. Enjolras and Courfeyrac yelled simultaneously, "Fire!"

Gavroche pulled up his giant gun into position, and almost toppled over from its weight. He vaguely heard his sister cry out from somewhere to his left, but all he could focus on was one single glinting edge headed straight in his direction. No, it was not headed for the gamin, he realized at the very second that a large body was shoved to the ground by the end of the gun, right beside Gavroche, and a voice rung out, "Help!"

"Courfeyrac!" Gavroche cried, hating how scrawny and childish his voice sounded in the middle of the fracas. He raised his gun and attempted to pull the trigger, but his finger slipped, just as something hit him from behind. He screamed from pain, realizing that the sharp end of a bayonet had just pierced the skin of his upper arm. His own name was shouted from somewhere behind him, but he could not tell who was who in the hell that surrounded him right now. All he knew after the metal edge dislodged itself from his arm were two loud gunshots, and the thuds of two large bodies falling next to him, one to his left and one to his right. Someone grabbed him from behind and pulled him into a rough embrace, and just as they were doing so, someone in the distance shouted something, and the gunshots stopped abruptly in the time of less than half a minute.

Gavroche was left feeling dizzy and dazed. He looked up and saw Courfeyrac's arms around his bony shoulders. His many pride kicked in, and he pulled himself from the embrace, reaching for the gun he had dropped, useless, on the now unpaved street. "I'm fine," he growled, though his arm was paining him a great deal.

"You could have been killed, Gavroche," Courfeyrac argued, sounding a lot like Eponine. "If you can't leave, at least let Combeferre and Joly find someplace in the tavern for you to hide."

"You sound like my sister," Gavroche retorted, speaking his mind. That was when, with the thought of Eponine on his mind, he noticed that the sister in question was no longer by his side. He looked around in all directions, but all he could see was dust and vague outlines of insurgents scrambling around, helping the wounded or helping their own wounds.

"Where's Eponine?" he asked, looking up at Courfeyrac. The older boy shrugged, but just as he did so Feuilly came hurrying up, a frantic look on his face. He did not even note the presence of Gavroche.

"Have you seen Jehan?" he asked quickly. Courfeyrac shook his head slowly, a dark look in his usually bright gold eyes.

"Is he-"

"Not among the dead, not among the wounded," Feuilly finished. They both looked down across the street and over to the top of the barricade.

Prisoners. Gavroche gulped, thinking of his sister. Suddenly, the rainy evening became even darker.

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