A/N This got very, very long. Just over five thousand words to be exact, written as darkness fell with the frenzy of an author who knows they only have limited time to finish. Ultimately though, I am very pleased with how it turned out. Very exposition heavy I'm afraid, but hopefully some questions will finally be answered. Just as a quick disclaimer: I've been writing this for over two years now and I cannot tell you how much the plot has changed from the idea I had when I sat down to write 'Chapter 1'. So if some of the stuff in this chapter maybe doesn't line up perfectly with information from other chapters, or something comes as a bit of a surprise, I've either lost track of the information or have expressed it poorly previously. I'll try and tighten it up when I sit down to edit this as a whole novel. You guys are getting the rough first copy after all.

So, that's done.

Only one more after this…I hope you're ready. I'm not.

As always, enjoy, and please review.

Chapter Forty-seven

"I've had time to think about this over the last few days," she began, gazing thoughtfully at the gently swaying lavender bush across the garden, "laid in bed or sitting out here. Every movement I made, every breath I took, was a reminder of what had happened to me. It was a reminder of what I've lost…of what I fought for, of what I thought I knew and how frail that really was."

"You don't have to tell me all this," Enjolras broke in, eyes flickering up and then away, the blue glowing with shame. "I don't deserve an explanation or forgiveness of any kind from you…"

"You do deserve an explanation, actually," she cut him off in turn. "Regardless of what has happened between us, regardless of what we both may or may not have done, you deserve to know what I know now. You became involved in the mess that was my life the moment you turned back to help a girl you didn't even know." She dropped her head to gently trace the faint scar across the back of her hand, a scar gained on that night. "And honestly, Enjolras? You never completely knew me, not at all." She raised her head and pulled his gaze with her. "Because if you had truly known me? You would never have thought the things you did about me, never would have even considered that I could have betrayed you in such a way."

"And I will never forgive myself for that," he replied softly, gaze dropping again. "And I know saying sorry cannot even begin to erase what I did –"

"Then don't say it." She shook her head. "This is not an excuse for you to drown yourself in guilt, Enjolras. This is about me right now. This is about me starting again – as myself and with you. This is about me being a whole person again and about you getting to see the person we both didn't know all the time we were together. I am not using this to try and hurt you or emotionally manipulate you. I am simply telling you. So, for once…you will listen."

"My mother, an Italian called Leonora Allegri, met my father when she was working as a singer at the Theatre de la Reine, the very same theatre that I worked at. Although she loved the stage and the city and the life she had built for herself, well, she loved my father more. They married in the city and lived together here for a few months. But one day they just…moved out of their little apartment and left the city, moving away to a small village in the South and buying a house there. A year or so later I was born and that was where I grew up. I was very happy there – we had enough money to be comfortable and I was taught everything I wanted to know, and some things I didn't, by my parents."

"Your father taught you chess," Enjolras murmured, almost subconsciously. He flushed at having interrupted but Aimee only smiled sadly.

"Yes, he did," she replied. "And mathematics, and poetry, and Classics, and science. All out of books his father, an old schoolteacher, gave him before he died and my father ran off to Paris. My mother taught me art, and music, and dancing, and how to speak her mother tongue. She taught me to sew and cook and act like a lady but still carry the caring heart she passed onto me in my blood." A tear broke free that had arisen without her noticing. "She died of cholera when an epidemic swept through the village just over a year ago. She was too young…but then, it is rare when they are not."

Enjolras stiffened in his seat, phantom stains of his friends' blood on his hands.

"Growing up I had very little knowledge of their time living in Paris and I knew nothing about the reason for their sudden departure. I only learnt of it when…The Patron…forced my father to tell me when he had us both captured." She paused over the name and Enjolras knew demons of her own where hovering over her shoulder.

"The Patron was the man that…sent his man after you? The one who attacked you the night I found you?"

She nodded. "He is the man responsible for…well, everything." She huffed a laugh devoid of humour. "It's funny how someone you've never even met can affect your life so much." Finding her original point in the narrative she continued.

"Before my father, Alexander Lyon, met my mother, he worked as an assistant to a jeweler. He learnt to recognise the worth and quality of precious stones, how to cut them, how to fit them, and how to repair damaged pieces. He was incredibly talented at it, but, like Feuilly, he was kept down in a minor position due to the jealousy of his employer." Her mouth quirked briefly. "As you can imagine this fuelled my father's resentment – but by his own admission he was ambitious then, dangerously so. It was probably why he began to aid various individuals in smuggling and disguising pieces of jewelry and loose stones, a job he became well known for in the underworld."

She took a breath as if to steel herself. "And that was how my father ended up crossing paths with The Patron. He was still relatively unknown and unconnected at the time, still brushing the slime of the gutter off his coattails, and was forming a group of skilled, high-class thieves around him. My father was brought in to help with a large jeweler heist – I don't know the details of it; all I know is that if it had worked The Patron would have got rich a lot sooner. My father was in charge of removing the stones from their settings in the jewelry and melting the settings down. Only, just before the job…"

"He met your mother and everything changed for him. His mission didn't matter as much as it had and everything he thought to be set in stone suddenly wasn't." Enjolras gave a momentary smile. He didn't need to explain the point he was making.

She smiled back, their first positive connection. She understood. "Essentially, yes. He was honest with my mother; told her about the things he did and what he was going to do. She asked him to stop, to give it up and start over again with her before he did something that he couldn't walk away from whole. He promised her would…after this one last job. The Patron set up the thefts of several houses, stealing hundreds and hundreds of francs worth of jewelry. He handed it over to my father for him to do his part…and my father took it all and ran away with my mother to start over."

"I never knew any of this, simply taking for granted that I grew up in relative comfort. We never lived ostentatiously; mostly, for the first several years, to avoid The Patron's notice. The jewels had to be sold little by little which took time – not that my father was too worried about that. He had a home, a wife he loved, and a daughter who was happy and healthy. It was perfect."

She let out a deep sigh. "At least until my mother died and then my father couldn't stand to be in the house they had shared together. So, he made plans to move us, to I don't know where. I'm not even sure he knew – it could have been to another area of France, maybe Italy; perhaps even America. But he said he needed to come to Paris first, to do some business and sort some 'money issues'. I know now he came back to try and sell the remainder of the jewels. He was only going to be gone for a few days so I begged to go with him. I wish now I had just stayed home and waited for him. Then I would never have got caught up in this mess, which was what he wanted…to keep me safe. But I wanted to see Paris, to feel what a big city felt like after living a life in the country. However, a few days turned into a week and then into several weeks – he told me it was because the jewels took longer to sell than he had expected. We rented a house; he got a job with a clock repair shop. I discovered I didn't like the city as much as I had expected but I stayed with Papa. We were both still grieving and I couldn't bear the thought of being in our house all alone. Finally, the jewels sold and the money was supposed to come through in several payments over a week. After that we were supposed to leave and never come back."

"What my father had never expected was how dangerous a man The Patron was. Papa had thought that with over twenty years between the theft and his return to Paris that The Patron would have disappeared or forgotten. He never thought that he would discover the jewels were being sold and would track my father to our house…"

"That first night he took us captive was when I met you. My father helped me escape and told to me to run, to leave him. Said he would find me but that I had to get away from him to stay safe. When my father escaped too, he drew The Patron and his men with him for a time, setting a trail, making them think he would lead them to the jewels, cutting away sometimes to check up on me when he found out where I was. When he slipped me the locket at the market to tell me he was alive and watching out for me – he didn't know I had lost my memory. The irony was that when I started to dig around, because of the locket, it drew The Patron's men to me. Just one little slip, like the officer who worked for him overhearing me that day I went alone to the police station, and the game was over. After that he played us both. Men were sent to follow me in case I met with my father. He sent men to destroy Eponine's apartment to steal the locket, broke into my dressing room at the theatre to move things or take things to unnerve me. He paid Cabruc at the theatre to get a copy of the key to my dressing room to let himself in the night of the performance. And…," she paused to make sure he was listening, "he hired Evangeline to convince you of my infidelity. You were the one problem with his plan and he had to remove you."

Enjolras sagged back in his chair as the full weight of what she had told him hit. "He played me," he breathed, hatred for a man he had never even met boiling over in him. "He played me and I just swallowed the whole thing – goddamn it…" He leant forwards over his knees, head in hands, and breathed until he didn't feel so nauseous.

"It wasn't part of his plan," she said softly. "You were meant to have been with the rest of the group when you rode back into the city; he had some kind of ambush waiting for you."

Enjolras raised his head. "The gate where Rene was captured?" he asked disbelievingly. "That was him? How did he know…"

"There was an informer in your ranks, remember?"

The prompt was pointed and, he knew, deserved. "But I arrived early, alone," he said, slowly putting the pieces together. "I was never meant to be at the theatre."

"But you were." She gave a genuine smile. "And, despite everything, you don't know how much that means to me. Actions such as that are at the core of the man you are, Julien, not actions made in hurt and haste."

He snorted. "If I truly was the man you seem to have, for some insane reason, convinced yourself that I am, then I would have gone after you at that theatre, not slinked away like a kicked dog and let my heartbreak blind me."

"You were manipulated by a man that makes his living from it," she said, not judgementally or to give him an excuse. She was merely stating a fact. "Yes, you were a fool, but you were involved in a series of events you had no control over and knew very little of."

At her words Rene's name sprung to Enjolras' mind. "That seems to be my forte," he muttered. "Being manipulated at the whim of men more powerful than I."

"Don't give me that!" she snapped suddenly. "You don't get to shift the blame onto yourself like that. Nobody can control everything or be aware of every possible flaw and barrier. Not you, not Le Faucon; not even The Patron. The man was obsessed with control, with being the cleverest person in the game. And, for a long time, he thought he was. He caught my father, he caught me, and playing the revolution was easy to him. You learnt about the plans to tear down St Michele and rebuilt it? Well, guess who had a vested interest in that deal."

She took a drink and Enjolras couldn't help notice her hand shaking a little. At her next words he knew why.

"Once he had what he wanted, he did as he pleased. When he realised he couldn't get the jewels or the money back he…he killed my father. Stared him in the eye and said that if he couldn't have the jewels, he would take me instead. He…" she choked on a sob and he moved towards her but she held up a hand to stop him. "He said if I tried to leave he wouldn't only kill me, he would kill all of you. And I couldn't have that."

His eyes fell shut in pained realisation. She had been protecting them while he had defiled her character and tried to turn their friends against her. What kind of a man was he?

As is hearing his thoughts she reached out a hand and grasped him firmly by the chin, the first contact between them in…far too long.

"Guilt now is pointless," she said firmly. "Hindsight and regret are a luxury and, as with most luxuries, are a waste of time. You were trapped in the middle of a revolution that you had been working towards far longer than you had known me. That you chose to lose yourself in that is no surprise to me." She released her hold. "And it was a choice that changed everything."

Enjolras felt nothing but confusion at her words, an emotion she obviously read on his face.

"He was a megalomaniac in control of everything…but you. You, the revolutionaries he despised so much, were what foiled him. You appeared at the theatre at the wrong time, forcing him to conjure up a messy secondary plan. His spies in the ranks didn't know about the plan to rescue Rene; that it would start the revolution far sooner than intended. It completely threw off his plans. She fell suddenly silent, her eyes going dark and still. "It gave me courage," she said softly, "hearing that gunfire and those shouts. It reminded me of something that I had forgotten over the last few days." She straightened. "It reminded me that he didn't control everything. Seeing him begin to panic gave me strength and hope. It reminded me that he was not the highest power, that he could be wrong and that he could be beaten. It reminded me of what I loved and what I still had in this world, reminded me that he hadn't taken everything."

"So you risked your life to get back to me and warn me," Enjolras said slowly, "and I didn't believe you because I thought you had betrayed me." He opened his eyes. "I am so sorry."

"I wasn't just fighting for you," she replied, shaking her head. "I was fighting for me. I wasn't going to let my life be taken away by him. And I realised that I wasn't alone in this."

"You knew Grantaire was there?"

"A higher power than Grantaire," she said with a hint of a smile. "It was when I was in a situation that I couldn't overcome alone that I did what I should have done all along – I asked for help. And it was given."

"You…escaped?" He asked the question carefully, watching her closely for her reaction. What he saw convinced him that he would never know the whole truth. There would always be things about which they could never speak, things too dark to be tamed by voicing them, and he knew that whatever had happened in that house that had knocked the king from the chess board had gone to the grave with Grantaire and would be forever locked behind Aimee's lips.

"What happened," she said slowly, "I've got the believe was meant to happen, just as Grantaire was supposed to be there to get me out, and how Bahorel happened to be on the right street at the right time to shoot the last guard who came after us. I have to believe that everything that happened, every death and misfortune and wound and loss, had to be for a reason. That is how I've made my peace." She looked up at him, tears in her eyes but smiled through them, the burden of her story lifted from her shoulders at last. "That is how I will move on."

It was silent between them then, only the wind skittering through the bushes and small trees making a sound in the strangely quiet afternoon.

"I wish I could have that sort of faith," he said finally, knowing that it was time he spoke his piece. "But everything I have done hasn't been for good, like you. I've been stubborn and selfish, blind to the warnings of my friends. I've murdered in cold blood for a cause I'm not even sure was righteous. And people I love are dead because of those actions. You were hurt and afraid and I tossed you aside. I didn't get the miracles you did."

"Didn't you?" she said sharply, leaning towards him across the table, eyes burning. "You're alive aren't you? Combeferre is alive. Jehan is alive. Bahorel and Feuilly are alive. Even Courfeyrac is alive because of what you did. I'm alive – if you care for me then surely that is a miracle to you. I was in a building that was hit with cannon fire. I was seconds away from being strangled to death by the man who killed my father when a falling beam hit him in chest but completely missed me. I got into the cellar while the building was falling down around me and I survived down there long enough for you to find me. The fact that you found me is a miracle in itself. So don't you dare lose yourself to guilt, Julien Enjolras, when you have been given a chance to live and repair the mistakes you have made as best you can. You don't get to do that!"

There was a fury to her words that stung him like sparks, but he welcomed the pain, if not the message.

"People are dead because they trusted me!" he hissed, launching up out of his chair. "Joly and Musichetta will never get married because he was killed in a battle that I dragged him into! Bossuet will never laugh again because of me! Grantaire had to bleed to death in an alley alone because he was saving you, something I should have been doing! Courfeyrac is crippled for life! I did that!"

"You didn't do any of that!" she shouted, rising to her feet, all of her previous reserve gone. "They were aware of the risk, Julien, every last one of them! They were smart, loyal people, passionate about something they believed in. It was something they were willing to die for! Are you truly so arrogant to believe that they followed you blindly and had no original thoughts of their own?"

"Of course not," he snapped. "But I aligned us with Le Faucon. I pulled us into his web!"

"You made a mistake!"

"I should have known better! I should have listened to Combeferre!"

She didn't immediately reply, but gripped the table until her knuckles turned white. "Fine," she said eventually, staring at him with eyes that matched the leaves above them. "So, you think it's all your fault? That you were responsible for everything that has happened? Joly's death – that's your fault? Bossuet – his blood is on your hands? Courfeyrac is going blame you forever because he knows you are the sole reason he will never be the same again? And Grantaire, who died saving me because you didn't care, becomes a martyr whilst you will live as a coward? You honestly think that you were too weak and too arrogant to see you were being manipulated by man with no qualms about murder?"

Her words made him feel sick but he felt he deserved every one of them. It was true, wasn't it? It was his fault.

"Think about it, Julien," Aimee insisted, her words sounding like the possibility of absolution. "Use that lawyer's brain of yours and think. Can you honestly, without a shadow of doubt, place all of the blame for everything that befell our friends, squarely on your shoulders? Can you?"

Words stuck in his throat like brittle bones, sharp and impossible to move without pain. The desperate earnestness on her face cut deeper – her misplaced faith burned the blackening onus weighing him down. But, for her, he did think. He tried to analyse, to consider the truth, to weigh the evidence…but all he could see was crushed bones and blood.

"What you think doesn't matter," he said flatly. "I...can't move past this as you have. I cannot find that peace." Because this weight was all that remained of his 'before', of his life's work, and without it he was like a ship cut free from its anchor and turned loose on unfamiliar seas.

"You can't do that to yourself, Julien," she said, rounding the table towards him. "You're not allowed to do that."

He wanted to step away, sick with the shame, but suddenly she was there, pressed into his space, hands holding his face and looking up at him with such a confounding mixture of fierceness and gentleness that he couldn't fathom it.

"I said I had to believe there was a reason for everything that has happened to me, to us," she whispered. "And the only reason I could think of…was you."

He tried to close his eyes, turn his head away, anything to stop her from saying something she couldn't take back, trying to dissuade her before she shackled herself to a drowning man with declarations of love that he would never be worthy of. But she was firm and held him still, making him listen.

"It was you, out of everyone in the world, that rescued me, that cared for me, that helped me. For some reason I was meant to meet you, Julien Enjolras, and all of the people you drew to you. Maybe it was because you could play a part in my life that no one else could. And maybe it was because, this time, I was supposed to rescue you."

It seemed too good for him, this string of Divine fate that had tangled the two of them together. It was too outlandish, too forgiving of a God he had grown to ignore and disbelieve, to give him this woman when he deserved to be laid in the ground with those he had betrayed.

"We both survived this," she continued, unrelenting. "Us two, out of all those who died, were spared. Why would we be granted such a chance if we were not supposed to do something with it?"

"Because…living when I was the one who wanted to die," he choked out, face pulled as far to the side as her hands would allow, "is a more befitting punishment than any hell can conceive."

She stood, motionless but for her breathing, and he tried to connect with the hope she had found, but there was nothing but swirling questions in his head and a confused rage in his soul.

When she spoke, it was softly, brushing over his ear like thistledown. "But you are here. No matter how hard you tried to die, Julien, you are still here. And all you can do now is run with patience the race set before you. If you allow yourself to just…sink and fade away then the deaths of our friends really were for nothing. Because they would never make you feel that you forced their sacrifice."

"But…I don't know what to do," he stammered out. And he truly didn't. Everything he had pinned his life on, everything he had believed in had crumbled and burned like the Musain. It was this realisation that cut him to the core and before he could stop it he was crying. He cried for the mistakes he had made and the friends he had lost. He cried for the waste his life apparently had been, for the emptiness that filled him. He cried because he was scared and he cried because, right now, there was nothing else he could do.

And Aimee held him through it all, her own tears dropping into his hair. They sank to the ground, not alone in despair this time, but together in a sign of kinship and an understanding that so few could share.

The sobs gradually subsided but still they stayed locked together, neither willing to break out of the safe space they had created around them.

"Everything is gone," he whispered, broken. "Everything I believed in and fought for…it wasn't what I thought. The cause was my life and now I realise…it's meaningless. There will never be a war to end all wars, no final blow against tyranny. I gave everything to it, everything that mattered to me, and it was for nothing more than more bloodshed and allowing more tyrants to make a grab for power."

"Then why don't you find a new cause," she said softly into his ear. "Change doesn't always have to be brought about through war, you know. There are other ways."

He pulled away, knowing he should feel embarrassed but simply feeling too tired. Leaning back against the tree he looked at her heavily. "Like what? With no money, an incomplete education, and all of my family connections burned what can I do?"

"Maybe rebuild some bridges?" she suggested, sitting away opposite him.

"And work for my father?" He shook him head with all the vehemence he could muster. "I will never go back to work under him."

"Not even to change the system from the inside?" she asked. "Not even to educate those who will listen and challenge those who won't? You are stubborn, Julien Enjolras; I have no doubt you could make people think a little differently if you set your mind to teaching them how."

He thought quietly for a moment. "Combeferre always said education was the way to true change," he said, eventually, tucking the thought away for later.

"I would agree with him," Aimee said, rising and he felt a cold touch in his heart at knowing their conversation was over. "Which is why I'm leaving."

He blinked up at her stupidly, the red of the sun through her hair dazzling his eyes. He had thought… "You're leaving Paris?"

She nodded. Seeing his stunned look she shrugged and gazed around the garden as if seeing beyond it to the city. "I don't like Paris, Julien. I knew that within my first week of being here and I've been stuck here for one reason or another for nearly a year. I just need to go home." Crouching down she met his eyes again. "I want to help people in any way I can, where I am happiest. And…I'd like you to join me."

She cut off anything he might say with a hand gesture. "But I only want you to come if you feel you should. I know what I am meant to do and it is my path, my choice. But, it might not be right for you. That's what you have to find out. I've had time to think and pray about where I go next. You need to do the same. I don't want you to just attach yourself to me because you feel there is no other choice."

She straightened again and this time he knew it was final. "I'm nearly a whole person again," she said, "and I want to be with you…but only if you are a whole person too. The people we were before, when we first were together…we were both broken in a way; flawed. You need to find what your purpose is here, as I have found mine, and decide what you want to do with it. And if you decide that you love me as an extension of yourself and not as a saviour or to fill up the gaps in yourself…then come and find me. I'll be waiting."

Dropping her hand gently onto his head she then walked away, leaving Enjolras sat alone beneath the tree.

A/N But how does it end? With only one chapter left let me know in a review.

Until next time, mes amis,

Libz xxx