Disclaimer: Same as always, I'm not Victor Hugo

A/N This is my favourite chapter that I've written so far. Hope you like it too!

Chapter Nine

When Marius had said that Eponine wasn't much of a conversationalist, he hadn't been exaggerating at all. So far, the conversation had proceeded as follows:

"Bonjour, I'm Aimee."

"Eponine."

Silence

"Um, Marius didn't say what it is that you do…"

"I'm a seamstress."

"Oh, that's…nice."

Silence

"So, how long have you known the Amis?"

Shrug

Just as Aimee was beginning to regret her decision to attempt a conversation with Eponine, she was saved by Enjolras, who stepped up onto a table and began to speak.

"My friends, my brothers!"

Beside her, Eponine snorted with quiet laughter. "He's always so melodramatic," she muttered.

"Oh, so it's not just me who thinks that?" Aimee teased and was rewarded with a hint of a smile.

Actually, despite her teasing words, Aimee found herself enraptured with Enjolras' speech. The coldness and lack of social ability that he normally showed melted away as he spoke, his words ablaze with passion and belief, and regardless of his comments earlier that day about women not being able to fight, as he spoke Aimee felt that she would battle to the gates of hell and back again for him…

'No, not for him, for his cause,' she silently amended, a little bewildered by the rushing blaze of…something that sang through her veins, colouring her cheeks, sending her heart racing, and sending tears pricking behind her eyes.

"…that is why we must fight! Fight for a system where the police protect the people, not abuse their position of power and fail to protect those who need them most! This is what we must fight for! Vive l'France!" Enjolras stepped down from his table amid enthusiastic clapping and cries of 'Vive l'France!', and just for a moment, Aimee saw the Enjolras that was normally hidden away, trapped behind his mask of marble.

His blue eyes were bright with success and clearer than a summer sky; his pale, normally aloof looking face flushed slightly from the passion of his speech. But best of all was the smile that danced on his lips. In all the time Aimee had been staying with Enjolras, she had never seen him smile like this, not once, and for some inexplicable reason, she felt a yearning to make him smile, or even just see him smile, every day for the rest of her life.

"He has that effect on people," a dry-toned voice said from beside her.

"Hm?" She glanced distractedly at Eponine, not wanting to take her eyes off Enjolras as he laughed and smiled with his lieutenants who gathered around him with the bright glow of rebellion ablaze in their eyes.

"Enjolras has that effect on people. He makes you want to follow him down the throat of hell to fight until the earth is free."

Aimee shrugged, only slightly embarrassed that she regard had been so obvious, "You don't seem to be affected. And I have no issue admitting that he speaks well; he's very eloquent isn't he?"

"But that's all he ever does; he talks!" Eponine's voice was suddenly strong, the deep register suggesting the abuse it had suffered earlier in her life, "You asked me how long I've known the Amis. The answer is over two years." She paused, gritting her teeth in frustration, "That's two years of listening to them talk about saving the people, two years of listening to the plans of bourgeois pretty boys of how they will change the world. They are fools to believe that they will ever change anything if they carry on the way they are!" She slumped back, seemingly exhausted by her outburst.

Aimee was honestly surprised. Up until that moment Eponine had seemed apathetic about the whole revolution situation, so the fact that she had an opinion, and a strong one at that, was somewhat of a shock.

"If you think they are fools, then why do you keep coming back?" Aimee asked softly, trying to understand the defiant yet vulnerable young woman before her.

Eponine remained silent for so long that Aimee wasn't sure she was going to answer. "I come back for Marius," she admitted finally, "If he didn't come here, neither would I."

"So how long have the two of you been together?" Aimee asked tentatively. The tenderness was plain to see on Eponine's face whenever she looked at Marius and Aimee assumed they were a couple. Evidently, she had assumed wrong for Eponine's face shuttered instantly and her eyes filled with an emotion Aimee couldn't fathom. Guilt? Longing?

"We are not 'together'. I am simply his friend," she stated flatly.

"But you wish to be more," Aimee added in a soft voice, her heart going out to her fellow woman who was probably not much younger than herself.

"If wishes were horses, then beggars would ride," Eponine answered with a shrug that seemed designed to hide her true feelings away.

At that moment a muffled knock sounded and a moment later the door crashed open to allow two more people to tumble into the packed room. One was holding a bloodied rag to his nose, and the other, young boy with dirty blond hair that hung in rats tails around face, was supporting him.

Eponine rose and gestured to the pair, "Before you ask, the one with the bloody nose is L'aigle de Meaux, or Bossuet, member of the Les Amis and the unluckiest person I've ever met. The scrawny little tramp with him is Gavroche, my brother, so I'd better go and see what has happened. Excuse me." Without waiting for response she scurried off to investigate, elbowing her way through the Amis who had gathered around the pair with voices raised in question and flamboyant hand movements.

Seeing no way in which she could help, Aimee glanced around the room, her eyes coming to rest on the piano in the corner. Slowly, as if drawn to it, her feet carried her across the stained wooden floor towards the instrument, the twinkling ebony and ivory calling out to her with promises of soaring melody. Her heart in her mouth, she seated herself before it, her fingers resting lightly on the silent keys.

The very air around her seemed to hold still, the candles' flames stretching upwards and freezing there, as tentatively she pressed down on a key with her finger, the ringing note striking a harmonizing chord within her. As if looking from outside herself, she watched as her hands began to move over the keys, slowly at first, but gradually with more confidence. With her eyes closed, coaxing the music out of the previously silent instrument, she let her fingers remember what her mind could not as images once again began to swirl behind her closed lids.

A room filled with bright sunlight that reflects off the polished wood of another piano. Stretching to reach the pedals, her legs too short, another person pressing the pedals as she plays the notes, a sweet, high voice singing something in a foreign language, warm strong arms and the scent of tobacco, now sadness, dust, noise, other arms around her that are too tight and unwelcome, shouting, blood, cold eyes staring at her, rain, running, the flash of a blade, more blood, her blood, pain…

Her shaking fingers faltered on the keys and she stopped playing with a gasp, her hands flying to her temples as if to stop the flow of disjointed memories. For a moment there is nothing but the sound of her own rasping breathing and pounding of her pulse in her eardrums, but then there are warm hands placed tentatively on her quaking shoulders. Holding her; grounding her; anchoring her to the reality of the here and now.

"Aimee?" It was Enjolras, a note of concern obvious in his voice. The soothing warmth of his hands filtered through her dress to touch gently upon her skin; a feeling so pleasant that it took a great effort on her part to retain some decorum and resist the urge to lean back against him.

"Aimee? Are you alright?"

"I…I think so." She turned to face the room and found that only the Amis and Eponine were left, all of whom were staring at her, "What?"

"Well, aside from the fact you looked like you were going to faint on me again…," Courfeyrac began.

"Again?" squeaked Joly, rushing over to take her pulse and check her temperature. Enjolras moved aside to allow him access and Aimee found, strangely, that she missed the feel of his hands on her shoulders.

Courfeyrac ignored the worried mumblings of Joly and finished his original point by saying, "…you also somehow know how to play the piano."

"I…," she batted Joly's fluttering hands away, "I don't know how, but I just can." She made to stand, but as she did so a sudden wave of vertigo hit, bringing black dots before her eyes and causing her to stumble. Involuntarily, her hands reached out to grasp hold of the piano, but instead met with the smooth solidness of Enjolras' forearms.

"I'm taking you back to the apartment right now," he informed her, hastily removing her hands and guiding her to the nearest chair. His tone brooked no argument, and for once, Aimee didn't feel like giving one. She sat silently with the Amis while Enjolras gathered his things and was genuinely touched by how worried they were about her.

"You hardly know me, why are you all so kind?" The question slipped out before she could catch it.

Jehan looked as if he was going to cry as he took a winter violet from the button hole of his garishly coloured coat and tucked it into her hair, "Why shouldn't we?"

The simpleness of the answer stuck with her as she and Enjolras slowly walked back to the apartment. Occasionally, she would flinch at a noise in the night as dark recollections assaulted her mind, moving unconsciously towards him, reassured somewhat by his constant presence beside her. But even then Jehan's words stayed with her, replaying in her mind as she bid Enjolras goodnight, and as she settled herself into bed.

The only thing that drove it from her mind was the nightmare.

A/N Please review, follow and favourite! It makes me happy!