I'm so sorry for the delay…I promised I would have this up ages ago, I know…but here it is.

I do not own Les Misérables.

Okay, so this is an AU story, meaning that I have tampered with history and kind of redone the timeline for the June Revolution: the first battle was early morning Day 1. Gavroche brought the letter to Valjean, who joined the barricade before dawn and was the first to notice the 1st attack. He warned the others, and Marius saved the barricade while Eponine was still at home and asleep. They hoped to force Lamarque's funeral procession to a stop, except the soldiers simply used a different route. They hold the barricade through the night, and the final battle takes place on Day 2. The upcoming chapter starts late morning Day 1. Sorry for the confusion.

"I'm going to have to go back to my father's house," Eponine murmurs to herself, already neck-deep in plans. "Disguise myself as a boy, or I'll never make it through the streets…"

Cosette blanches. "Isn't it dangerous?"

"So is trying to overthrow the monarchy," she says calmly, almost jumping out of bed. "Help me with my corset?"

With a little shiver, as though she's trying to shake off her fear, Cosette does as she's told. When she's dressed, Eponine opens the window and clambers out as Enjolras climbed in the night before. She's shocked to see that Cosette follows her, struggling not to tear her pretty yellow gown.

"Cosette…you should stay here…"

Cosette's eyes flash. "All the men I care about are at the barricade. And I am not staying behind."

The streets loom ahead of Eponine, treacherous and strangely unfamiliar. She's become spoiled in her time with Cosette and her father. Welcome home, she murmurs to herself drily, and she plunges into an alleyway, Cosette beside her.

…

The boots she took from her father's old garret are several sizes too big, which makes running awkward. She struggles not to trip as she pounds down the cobblestones. Her heart is thumping too loudly in her ears—she wonders that her pursuer can't hear it.

It's just her luck that Montparnasse would be at her father's place. She barely made it through the window in time, but he saw her. Her brain is lost in a mental map of twists and turns. She left Cosette as far away from the garret as possible. Her future is composed of street after endless street.

By the time she reaches Cosette at their agreed rendezvous spot, she's left Montparnasse behind her. But it's a long time before her heart stops pounding.

Wordlessly, she holds out a bundle of boy's clothing to Cosette, who nods, pale but determined.

"Now we need to find the café."

…

Dusk is falling by the time they reach the barricade, which has been turned monstrous and foreign by shadows. Courfeyrac, taking the watch, scrambles to his feet at the sound of their footsteps and levels his gun at them.

"Who goes there?"

"Don't shoot," Eponine cries, effortlessly adopting the deeper tones of a young man. Cosette starts; her friend's fake male voice is convincing. Eponine has had quite a bit of practice. "We're volunteers."

The sleepy-eyed young revolutionary does not look convinced, until something—a gleam in Eponine's eyes, perhaps—alerts him to the fact that he's not speaking with a stranger. He almost drops his gun.

"Eponine?" His tone is comically bewildered. "Cosette?"

He quickly frees a passageway through all the broken furniture and waves them through. With an unceremonious kick to the side, he wakes a sleeping Marius, who blinks groggily and then shouts at the sight of Cosette.

Cosette reaches out and grasps one of his hands in hers. "I…I had to come…" she starts to explain, and then stops suddenly.

All the noise Marius made has woken Enjolras, who strides over from his lonely corner of the barricade, shoving his men out of the way. With hardened movements, he jerks Eponine's body to his own and crashes his lips against hers in a passionate kiss.

Les Amis stare, except for Courfeyrac and Cosette, who look deliberately in the opposite direction.

"What the hell are you doing here?" Enjolras demands, still clutching Eponine to his chest. "What part of stay safe at home is too difficult for you to understand?"

She only shakes her head. "My home is not where I depend on Monsieur Fauchelevent's charity. My home is wherever you are. If you fight, then I will fight with you."

He rests his forehead against the top of her head in mock despair. In truth, her words make him feel invincible. It's not a particularly good way for him to feel when he's about to face an army of thousands with fifty men and a pile of furniture.

"Hey, 'Ponine!" Gavroche's boundless energy destroys the quiet peace of their moment.

"Gavroche?" Eponine narrows her eyes. Enraged, she turns to Enjolras. "You're letting a little boy fight with you?" Her voice has turned to a dangerous hiss.

"He's more useful than the rest of them put together," Enjolras mutters, defensive.

"He's my brother," she counters.

He starts. "You have a brother?"

"Three. My parents sent them all away. I don't know what happened to the other two," she explains under her breath, all in a rush. "And Azelma, my sister, she ran off. I would have gone with her, except my father was with me that night, and after she left he really clamped down on me. 'Zelma's probably at the docks somewhere now. I haven't been able to find her."

He can't quite find the right response. In the end, he settles on a quiet, "I'm sorry."

Just then, there are shouts. A spy is returning. Eponine can sense at once that the man can't be trusted, and wonders that Enjolras doesn't see it. Gavroche's frown confirms her suspicions.

"Julien—don't trust that man—"

But Gavroche beats her to it. "LIAR!"

"You see what I mean, he's useful," Enjolras mutters. "Spying, carrying messages, that sort of thing. I'll keep him out of the actual fighting."

There's real trust hiding behind her casual nod.

…

An hour later, he's nodding off while seated in a little niche in the barricade. Eponine lies beside him, curled into a loose fetal position with her head resting against his chest and his arm slung around her shoulders. He made a valiant effort to coax her into one of the two abandoned beds in the one of the houses, but she refused vehemently, and Cosette followed her lead. The blonde now sits in another crevice, leaning against an overturned cart and holding Marius' hands with one of her own while her vexed father clutches onto the other as one would a lifeline.

Eponine's breathing slows. Even after only an occasional night beside her, he's so attuned to the sound of her breaths that he can tell at once that she's asleep. He watches Cosette, at her father's urging, stumble tiredly into the building on the left, headed for one of the bedrooms in the floor above. He waits a minute before picking up his fiancée and carrying her into the other.

She wakes as he tucks the sheet around her. With her dark eyes wide, she watches him turn towards the door.

"You mean to spend the last night before your war alone?" He starts at the sound of her voice; he hadn't realized that she was awake.

"We're expecting an attack anytime—"

"Fuck that. Better yet, fuck me."

Slowly, she sits up and gives a sleepy smile. "Your fatalistic attitude ended up with me having the best night of my life last night. I thought I'd give it a try."

Frozen in the doorway, he finds himself smiling in spite of herself. "Truly? The best night of your life?"

She seems to find his comment amusing. "Of course. Did you really think any of my clients ever gave me pleasure? Did you really think I ever fell asleep in their arms and felt—"

She chokes off, and before he's fully aware of the motion, he's sitting down beside her on the bed.

Their first night together was soaked in hesitation and an indescribable sweetness that stung in its perfection. Their second night is seeped in an urgency that borders on panic, slick skin dripping sweat, harsh breathing, scrabbling nails, passion heightened by the knowledge that the chances of their little family surviving intact are slim to nonexistent.

Their grasping hands entwine on the mattress beside her thrown-back head.

…

Les Amis think that Grantaire, alone and slumped over a table in the café, is asleep. They're wrong.

The sound of the passion in the bedroom above is agony to him, but he can't turn away.

…

He falls asleep in the murkily warm June air long before she does. With her bare limbs tangled with his, her head tucked under his chin, his hand on her hip, his arm thrown across her narrow torso and her brown hair mingling with his blonde curls, she memorizes the shadowy patterns in the ceiling and tries very hard not to think about tomorrow, while failing to think of anything else.

…

The sun hasn't risen yet when Combeferre knocks on the door. Struck with a strong feeling of déjà vu, he dresses a sleeping Eponine in her too-big shirt, puts on his own clothes, and pads silently out of the room.

…

She wakes to the sound of gunshots and shouts, and the sight of Cosette, wide-eyed, in the doorway.

"Again?" she mutters sleepily. Cosette nods.

"We're locked in. And the windows are all painted shut. What are we going to do, break one?"

"Good idea."

…

Eponine's breath catches in her throat. The world outside is on fire. The screams drifting through the walls can't possibly be human.

Cosette sinks to the floor and sobs silently into her hands. Eponine presses her scarred fingers against her swelling abdomen, torn between maternal instincts and a love so fierce it's tearing her apart inside.

Both women stay frozen as the world outside falls silent.

…

At some point, Eponine loses the power to think rationally. Torn apart by something she can only identify as rage, she uses an abandoned poker to shatter a window and crawls out, broken glass tearing at her skin.

Monsieur Fauchelevent stands gray and silent, seemingly the lone survivor. He turns, and Eponine sways on her feet as a blood-soaked Marius, cradled in his arms, comes into view. A weak moan sounds from behind her, and Eponine starts. She hadn't realized that Cosette has, once again, followed her out through the window.

She thinks she must be hallucinating when she hears shouts and gunshots through the open second-story window of the café. Without ever making a conscious decision to move, she sprints and stumbles towards the broken door, hanging off its hinges.

Cosette stares at her father, unseeing. "Marius?" Her whisper is as broken as her beloved's body.

Her father jerks to life. "The sewers. I can—"

"I'll take him. Go after Eponine. Bring them home."

…

Adrenaline giving strength foreign to her delicate lady's body, Cosette lays Marius' arm across her shoulders and begins, painstakingly, to drag her fiancé away. Her father's instructions ring through her ears.

Keep going left until you find an exit. Then follow the river home.

Marius' head lolls against her neck.

…

As Cosette disappears into the shadows of the sewers, Eponine is taking the stairs up to the second floor of the café two at a time.

The eight soldiers, resplendent in their National Guard uniforms, face away from her. Enjolras' gaze is caught up in the flag he clutches, so it's Grantaire who meets her eyes, and she would have staggered to a stop if her momentum weren't carrying her forward.

So our twisted little love square was a love pentagon all along. And you were the only one to end up alone.

But there's no self-pity in his eyes, only resolve. They both nod once in acknowledgement of their shared purpose.

The world turns to smoke and fire. Eight bullets Grantaire intercepts with his own body, as Eponine throws her body against Enjolras'. The two lovers fall in a tangle of limbs and lives.

…

The awning under the window slows their fall but doesn't stop it, and when they crash to the floor, she takes the brunt of the impact. They both hear the sickening snap. Instinctively, she cradles her broken arm to her chest, but she doesn't feel any pain yet.

For a moment, they both concentrate on the feeling of the cobblestones, warm from the midday sun, pressing against their skin. Then the sound of shouting jerks them unpleasantly to their senses, and they're up and running.

"The sewers," Eponine hisses, and Enjolras only nods tightly.

…

The bullet barely grazes her leg, but Eponine feels an impact more staggering than the one caused by her fall from the window. She hears a distant scream and thinks Cosette! before realizing it's her own.

…

The sewers, in their brooding depths, silently embrace the golden-haired girl and boy, the exhausted former half-dragging her unconscious fiancé while the detached and emotionally dead latter cradles the bleeding form of his beloved against his chest.

The exit all four seek seems a thousand miles away.

Wow, that was a long chapter, and it's a little all over the place, sorry about that. But please leave a review telling me what you think!