::Cosette/Eponine::

a/n: This chapter has the combined POV's of both women, changing with every paragraph or so, you'll be able to tell.

Cosette looked at Eponine for a moment before she realized that everything was silent around her. The constant gunfire had ceased, and she knew the fight was over. Marius would be here at any second.

Minutes passed, but Marius didn't show up. Cosette started to fear that he was dead along with many of his friends. Tears leaked from her eyes, and outside it started to rain. Cosette was too miserable to think about anything else.

Eponine opened her eyes. It had been only minutes since she fell asleep, but every time she closed her eyes, images of the students' bodies lying on the ground filled her head.

She lifted her head from the pillow and saw Cosette's shoulders shaking soundlessly as she stared out the window. "Cosette?" Se whispered. Cosette turned to Eponine, tears running down her face at an alarming rate.

"He's dead." She cried. "They're all dead!" Eponine's eyes widened.

"No. No, some of them had to live." She convinced herself, trying to so the same to Cosette.

"Well then where are they if they're not lying on the ground in a big heap?" She wondered hopelessly to Eponine, who was staring wide-eyed at nothing at all. "Eponine?" Eponine snapped into focus. "No, he didn't." Cosette was beginning to panic, and started talking irrationally. "He promised he wouldn't die...he promised me the day we met!"

"Cosette," said Eponine soothingly. "I'm sure he's fine."

"Then why isn't he here?" She wailed.

"I. . .I don't know, Cosette. But trust me...he's fine." Suddenly Cosette's eyes closed slightly into angry slits.

"How do you know, Eponine. How is it that you're so sure about everything? Does it matter to you that Marius and Enjolras might, just might, be dead? Can you accept that fact, or do you just not care? I'm beginning to wonder whether you really love Enjolras, or you're just so in need of attention that you let him think you are."

Cosette breathed heavily when she finished. Eponine was literally speechless. She knew in the back of her mind that her friend was delirious from worry, but those words still hurt.

"Well," She started, her voice shaking obviously. "I'm not...sure...exactly, but it helps to think positively at times like this." Her chin quavered, and finally released all her pent up anger.

"How could you assume things like that!" She raised her voice. "I know I love him because he loves me, he said so himself. And...and no one's ever said that they loved me before...ever." She brushed a tear away from her eye. She was trying extremely hard not to sob uncontrollably.

Suddenly Cosette's face softened drastically and she ran over her last lines in her head. "Oh, Eponine...I'm sorry...I had no idea." Eponine nodded.

"Neither did Enjolras when he said that to me. He doesn't even know that I lived on the streets before the students took my brother and myself in."

"Brother?"

"Gavroche." Eponine explained. "He was born after you left." Suddenly it all flooded back into Cosette's mind. The years she forced herself to forget, but never quite had forgotten. Her lingering past.

"And. . ." Cosette searched for the right words. "And he never said that he loved you either?" Eponine shook her head.

"He was away most of the time stealing for my father, and besides, there wasn't much love in the places he was used to, so I guess it never crossed his mind."

"And what about you're sister?" Cosette wondered. Cosette hardly remembered Azelma, but remembered her just enough to know that she was there in her dreadful stay at the Thenardier's. Eponine hung her head.

"Died some years ago. She didn't like me much because she thought that I was spoiled."

Cosette stared at her friend. She hadn't realized that Eponine had suffered just as much as she. As though Eponine had read Cosette's mind, she started again by saying, "Azelma died from pneumonia. We knew she had it, but couldn't pay for a doctor, so we had to quarantine her in a bedroom and wore cloths on our faces to when we brought her meals or paid a visit. She died after two months of the illness." Eponine sniffed.

Cosette walked over to where Eponine sat and put her arm around her shoulder. Eponine smiled. "I'm sorry." Cosette apologized again.

"Don't be. I should be the one apologizing; my father was terrible to you." She paused. "So was my mother. I'm sorry." They sat in silence. Eponine massaged her head and lay back down, and Cosette got up and moved back to the window seat.

Cosette silently mulled over her past, which she had so long tried to forget. Now that Eponine had brought it up, it felt like an old cut reopened. There was so much they had said, yet so much that hadn't been spoken at all.

a/n: I know there's probably some Les Mis history that I got wrong in this chapter, but it's AU, so I'm making it up, and I say Gavroche was born after Cosette left, and Azelma died from pneumonia. Too bad if its wrong.