So I took a few liberties with Javert's suicide, as well as his character in general. From this point on, the story pretty much loses all semblances to canon. You have been warned.

I got so many reviews last chapter, which was super exciting. Please keep it up!

I do not own Les Misérables.

Had she the energy, Cosette would be sobbing. As it is, only a few tears manage to make their way down her cheeks.

Where are you, Papa? You promised you would come after me! You promised you would be here. Where I go, you will be…

She fears the worst.

…

The answer to her question is: on the staircase, staring at the blood of the man he spent too long hating and fearing, splattered across the walls. The soldiers who rushed downstairs at the sound of the gunshot took the body of Inspector Javert while his prey hid, and now Valjean stands at the foot of the steps, frozen.

…

Why didn't she tell me? I would have married her. I would have stayed with her! But the woman Javert had, in his own way, loved—the woman he had slept with once in a night of drunken fervor—had chosen instead to construct a story about a dead husband and flee deep into Paris once she could no longer deny the existence of the child in her womb.

She—Marie—gave birth to twin boys surrounded by filth and squalor. She went the way nearly all such women do, and gave bore two daughters with nameless, violent fathers, before her body weakened enough to prevent more unwanted pregnancies.

Years after her death, Javert found out about the bourgeois girl died doing her best to help Marie, and the handsome young man who cared for the one surviving son in the name of his sister. The boy died anyway, but Javert was in unresolved debt to the blonde revolutionary facing down eight guns upstairs.

He owed both a convict and a traitor. He could not bear to shoot down either. It seemed simplest, really, to press the gun to his own temple and end his unfulfilled life.

…

It's no longer possible for Cosette to convince herself that she's imagining the footsteps echoing down the sewers behind her. Her breathing is harsh, labored, and she's bordering on tears again. The men who infest this underground world can hear her from a mile away. And it's not as though she would have a prayer of either running or fighting even if she weren't dragging what's most likely a corpse by now.

"Marius," she whispers. "Marius, wake up, please wake up…"

Marius' body crumples further against her.

…

Detached from everything, Jean Valjean stumbles forward through the knee-high sewer water. Cosette, he thinks. Cosette.

…

"Eponine," Enjolras hisses, his voice echoing too loudly through the tunnels of blackened brick. "How many survived?"

She presses her lips together and turns away.

"Eponine!"

A tear trickles down her cheek. "Marius. Cosette. Her father," she murmurs, voice cracking. He staggers, and Eponine almost slips from his arms. It takes him a minute because of the gloom, but when he looks down at her, he realizes that the blood soaking her trousers does not stem only from her leg wound, and he starts forward again, faster than before.

…

"Cosette!" Enjolras shouts. Cosette's scream trails off suddenly as she darts a terrified glance behind her, only to see her friends.

"What happened to her?"

"Bullet to the leg. I'm staunching the bleeding. But…she's miscarrying."

"Hurry."

…

Jean Valjean catches up to the four of them just as they reach the exit. Eponine forces out directions, and they sneak through back streets and alleyways, coated in blood and filth, until they reach Rue Plumet.

…

Enjolras scribbles down the name of a doctor who can be trusted to use discretion when treating criminals, and Jean Valjean goes after the white-haired bespectacled man. Cosette, despite all her good intentions of staying beside Marius, collapses as soon as she's through the door, and Enjolras carries her into her bedroom once Marius is laid out on the kitchen table and Eponine is in her bed.

The doctor is skilled and efficient. By the end of the night, Marius' condition has been stabilized, his wounds and infections all treated. Eponine's arm is in a sling and her leg is tightly wrapped in bandages. Enjolras paces up and down the hallway outside her room as the doctor sees to the baby.

Enjolras buries his face in his hands when the elderly man comes through the door. No words are needed, but the doctor speaks anyway.

"Your wife will recover, Monsieur, but I'm afraid to say the child is dead." The man's hands are red with blood, and the rest of him blurs out of Enjolras' vision, until all he can see is that garish red. Not the child. Not the child. Not the child, too. Not when all my friends are dead. Their faces flash before his eyes. He led those men to their deaths, and Women in agony are mourning those men. "She's suffered significant internal damage. She will not be able to bear you any children."

From very far away, he hears himself carry out a meaningless conversation with the doctor. Once the man has left, he drags himself into the bedroom and takes Eponine's icy hand in his.

Tears trail silently down her cheeks. He takes her into his arms, and they sob into each other's shoulders.

This was a bit depressing, but I have some sunshine and rainbows planned for the next chapter (or at least the one after), so please bear with me.

Reviews are appreciated!