A/N: After this final Prologue chapter, they'll get longer. I promise.

I think I must've fallen asleep, because now it's misting a light rain from the sky and it's nearly dark. The silence is unbearable. I pick up my pack and turn to where my brother is standing. And it hits me like a shock all over again: he's dead. But now there's a white sheet over his body, and the body of the man at his feet. I murmur a prayer, and promise to return. Then I walk downstairs. Ma'am Hucheloup is making dinner, and asks me if I want to join her. I tell her no thank you and start to leave, when I hear quiet crying from the lower level.

At first I think it's just Musichetta again, so I head down the steps. But it's a tiny gamine, maybe fourteen or so.  She sobs over the body of a boy even younger than she.

So this is why you fought, 'Tienne? I ask silently. So boys like him would be shot to death?

I know what he'd tell me, though. He gave them a choice, no matter what. He said they wouldn't have to fight if they didn't want to; he told me that much when I visited him last year. That boy chose to fight. But he didn't choose to get shot, did he? And leave a sobbing girl behind?

"Ma'moiselle?" I jump. It's the girl, standing in front of me. "Did you need something?" Her face is stained with tears, her large gray eyes glassy. Her face is dirty, bruised, and hollow, and her body is skinny. Rough auburn hair falls halfway down her back, dirty and pulled back.

"Oh, no…I just—I heard you crying, and I—er—hoped you were all right," I finish lamely, and she gives me a slightly bemused look, as if she would smile if she could.

"Was that—was he your—"

"He was my brother," the girl says. "He was so kind, gettin' me 'n 'Ponine—that's my sister--tickets to the opera or a loaf of bread if 'e could spare it. 'E ignored us half the time, too, but that was all right. What he did was enough. And now 'Ponine's dead too—I saw her out there I did! And so it's just me 'n Papa, and 'e's as evil as the Devil 'imself…I don't know where to go now, and 'e'll hit me when 'e finds out I've been here." She starts to cry again, slowly crumpling to the ground where she remains in a tight ball, burying her face in her dirty, hole-filled skirt.

I take her hand, and pull her from the ground. "Don't worry. I lost my brother, too, and he had a place over by the university, and you and I can stay there." The words come out of my mouth before I realize it, but then I find out the decision had been made a long time ago. I'm not going back home. Not ever.

"What's your name?" she asks me, wiping her eyes. "Mine's Azelma."

"I'm Danielle," I say.  "It's nice to meet you, Azelma."

We take dinner at Corinthe the wine-shop, and then we head to Etienne's flat. Home. We head home.