Notes: Thank you so much for all the feedback and support! I recognize some familiar names in the review section, you know who you are, HI GUYS! I forgot to mention that this fic, unlike my previous works, is more heavily based on the movie, although not completely, as you will see. Once again, if you would like to read stories that I haven't published on this site, or see graphics that the flawless Tumblr people have made for my stories, you can check out my blog ( youarethesentinels . tumblr . c*m / tagged / you-are-my-revolution ). Okay, so we've reached the end now. Corrections, suggestions, and constructive criticism are very much welcome, as always. Thanks for being amazing readers. I hope to see you all again soon!

Part Two

V.

That's how you get deathless, volchitsa. Walk the same tale over and over, until you wear a groove in the world, until even if you vanished, the tale would keep turning, keep playing, like a phonograph, and you'd have to get up again, even with a bullet through your eye, to play your part and say your lines.

"How did you survive the war?"

"The National Guard ran out of ammunition."

"Really?"

"No. Not really."

In the pub, some village girls were tittering and whispering excitedly among themselves. A few tables over, Candeveau and his wife followed their collective gaze at something beyond the windows. Across the street, Enjolras was standing outside the bookshop, fiddling impatiently with his gloves as he stared off into space, his profile cutting a fine, sharp line in the dusk.

"The boy is too handsome for his own good," said Madame Candeveau, shaking her head. "But at least he's loyal."

"What makes you say that?" asked Candeveau with interest. As a peaceful man by nature, he was glad that his spouse had revised her initial unflattering opinion of their next-door neighbors.

"I've never met a lad so uninterested in women he isn't married to. He dotes on Éponine."

"He does?" Enjolras didn't really strike Candeveau as the doting type.

Madame Candeveau gave him the look that meant he was being frustratingly obtuse. "As far as I can tell, he's picked her up from work every day for the past month and a half. That's real dedication."

"Perhaps," conceded the old man, although he privately thought that Enjolras didn't act like someone who was in love. His expression was always stern around his young wife, just short of agitated; his speech was curt, and he had a habit of looking at anything but her. For her part, Éponine didn't seem to be particularly fond of her husband, either. She jumped at any excuse to argue and tease and she treated him with a vague exasperation that seemed a little too platonic. They never touched except by accident, and their eyes never softened in each other's presence.

Such an odd pair.

"There she goes, the little dear," cooed Madame Candeveau.

Éponine came flying out of the bookshop, the door swinging shut behind her. She smirked at Enjolras and he nodded. They set off together, to groans of dismay from the table of village girls.

Through the foggy glass, Candeveau watched the young couple walk through the fading, syrupy light of Indian summer. Their shoulders brushed and Enjolras automatically moved to the left, widening the distance between them. Noticing this, Éponine playfully grabbed his arm and snuggled into his side for a few seconds, before waltzing away with a devilish snicker. A muscle ticked along the boy's jaw as he frowned in irritation, but his blue eyes filled with a strange darkness and, whether he was conscious of his actions or not, the next steps he took brought him closer to her orbit until, just before they disappeared from Candeveau's sight, his shoulder was once again just centimeters apart from hers.

The old man was not so old that he had forgotten youth and yearning, and how bitter-sweetly they could collide. Yes, he thought to himself, perhaps they're a little bit in love, after all.

Éponine was sorry to see the last of the lavender go, but not even Indian summer could be eternal. The turn of the seasons set the greens and purples on fire, and the world blazed red and gold. Truffles started popping up in the markets and in the gift baskets from the Candeveaus, and the air began to smell of damp leaves and crushed grapes. It got colder in the evenings, so she stopped complaining whenever Enjolras nestled against her in his sleep; he was surprisingly warm for a marble statue.

Autumn was the season of memory, and with it came dreams. Hers were simple and quiet: the alleys of Paris, her father's hearth songs in Montfermeil, Azelma playing with headless dolls, a child who might have been Gavroche, although his back was always turned. These scenes were mundane, and yet they felt so real that she often woke up disoriented, surprised to find herself in a house where the wind didn't whistle through the cracks, in a comfortable bed with soft pillows, and alone except for the boy beside her.

His dreams were worse. His movements at night grew restless, agitated. He talked in his sleep, in a jumble of French and Latin- it figured that Enjolras would dream in Latin. Éponine had been out cold for most of the rebellion, but she learned bits and pieces of it in the darkness. Sometimes he called his friends' names. Sometimes he begged someone to open the door. Sometimes he murmured, "Wait for me."

And, only half-awake, he would reach for her, all of his walls falling down, burying his face in her hair, his breath skimming over her neck. Sometimes she would feel hot tears on her skin, but they never talked about it in the morning.

Her lack of curiosity surprised her at first, but then she decided it was natural. She was Éponine Thénardier and she'd had enough of the war. The only thing that really intrigued her at this point was how he had made it through, and she wasn't even sure if she wanted to know. She was done carrying the burden of someone else's life.

Her cooking failed to improve, but he was pulling longer and more stressful hours at the vineyard because it was harvest season, so he was usually ravenous enough to choke down the salt and the sog without tasting it, although he would feel something inside him shriveling after every bite. At work, he was polite but aloof; none of the other men had Grantaire's humor or Combeferre's depth. It seemed awkward and strange to seek out camaraderie that wasn't Les Amis. There was an afternoon when one of his fellow clerks complained about a draft, and Enjolras had to fight back a shiver because he remembered Joly.

The end of the year made men review it. One day, his head bent over the ledgers, he overheard a group of coworkers talking about the June rebellion.

"Young boys. University students. Didn't like France the way it was."

"They were bourgeoisie, weren't they? What was so wrong with their France?"

"You know kids. Prank gone wrong, if you ask me."

"All of them died, didn't they?"

"Heard from my cousin in Paris that one of them survived, but I'm not sure…"

"Lucky bastard."

Feuilly wasn't a student, Enjolras wanted to shout at them. And Bossuet never pranked anyone because he was afraid it would backfire on him. It wasn't like that. You don't know how long we planned, how hard we worked. It wasn't like that. You don't know. You weren't there. You don't get to talk about it.

But the time for grand and righteous speech was over. He'd left all that behind, along with the corpses and the ruins of the barricade. He pressed his lips tightly together and continued balancing the ledgers.

Enjolras was in a black mood when he fetched Éponine at the bookshop. He arrived a little late; she was already out the door and untying the bonnet she removed after every shift. His stormy gaze fell on her and she stilled, like a bird poised to take flight.

"What's wrong? I haven't seen that look since-" She stopped, her eyes widening once she realized what she had been about to say. "Never mind."

Since June, his thoughts finished for her. Since the revolution. Say it. Say I killed your brother. Say I failed, say I made a mistake. But the anger that had driven him in another life now only left him feeling exhausted. They walked home in silence. The autumn dusk fell over the road like leaves.

VI.

No one is now what they were before the war. There's just no getting any of it back.

"How did you survive the war?"

"For a while, I was out of my body. I could see all of you standing around me. I saw you crying. Did you, really? Did you cry?"

"Perhaps."

Madame Candeveau took to bringing Éponine with her to the market. The old woman was astonished by how skillfully the girl haggled down the prices of meat and cheese, charming the vendors, cajoling, pretending to walk away.

"You act like you've been conning people all your life," Madame Candeveau remarked after yet another successful shopping spree.

"No," said Éponine. "Not all my life."

It was lunchtime on a Sunday, so the pub was full of villagers enjoying their day off, but Madame Candeveau spotted a distinctive flash of blond hair; the men had made themselves useful, after all. She and Éponine joined their respective husbands at the corner table and Éponine gaily waved her basket under Enjolras' nose.

"I got that sweet chevre you like," she announced.

"No, that's the one you like," he replied, without having to peer into the basket.

Madame Candeveau had to bite back a grin. It reminded her so much of her and her husband during the early days, this settling into a pattern that was so mysterious to everyone else. As they ate lunch, the old woman also couldn't help noticing the bags under Enjolras' eyes and how quiet he was. The boy looked like he already had one foot in the land of the dead. She wondered what exactly happened in Paris. Their neighbors could sometimes have this very distant expression on their faces, like they weren't seeing the thatched houses or the sprawling fields, but, rather, something else.

At the next table, a man stood too quickly and upset the mugs. There was the sound of shattering, of surprised cries.

Enjolras ducked. His forehead slammed into Éponine's. The Candeveaus stared at the young couple as they straightened up and collected themselves. The girl appeared only slightly disgruntled, but the boy looked haunted.

"My apologies," he muttered to her. "Are you all right?"

"Are you?" she shot back.

"I need air." He stood up, nodded at the Candeveaus, and left the pub.

The old woman reached out to pat the girl's hand. "Don't fret, dear. Men can be so very strange sometimes."

"He was always strange." Éponine was usually guarded about her past, but there it was again, that far-off look. "Even in the time before. All those ideas. I couldn't… It surprised me a lot, how strange he could be."

She'd lost her appetite, so she went to join him outside. He was pacing, hands folded behind his back, but he came to a stop in front of her.

"What did you know about them?" he demanded, white-faced and tense-lipped. "My- my friends. Tell me what you know. Tell me who they were to you."

This was the closest he'd come to acknowledging what little past they shared, those nights when she'd snuck into the Musain for warmth and Monsieur Marius' presence and witnessed many a political discussion, witnessed the plans for rebellion starting to unfold. "Bossuet was the bald one. Bahorel was witty," she replied in soft and cautious tones. "Combeferre liked to quote philosophers. Feuilly made beautiful fans." She'd learned it from her parents, how to be good with names and faces, how to remember things about people, and they were all around her now, those young men, laughing in the firelight, coming back to life in the dirt paths and the clear air of southern France. "Grantaire was always drinking. Courfeyrac was the kindest, and he was nice to Gavroche. You all were." Enjolras' eyes flickered shut, as if he were letting her voice wash over him, pulling him out of hell- or dragging him deeper into it. "Jehan wrote poetry. Joly once got a papercut and nearly chopped off his thumb because he was scared of getting gangrene." These were the shallow things, she knew that, but she'd merely been a casual observer, the shadow, the girl dressed in boys' clothes. "One night, Grantaire sobered up enough to ask why you had to die, and it felt like he was talking to you alone, and you told him-"

"Dulce et decorum est pro patria mori," Enjolras murmured, almost feverish. "Yes. I remember that. R never- he never believed as much as I did-"

"But he would have followed you until the end," said Éponine.

"He would have. He did." Enjolras shivered. "And yet, he didn't follow me back out."

You weren't meant to make it, she thought. May God forgive me, but we both know you should have died with them, at the barricade. What happened? Tell me how you broke your arm. Tell me-

It was cold. She wrapped her shawl tighter around herself. "Let's go back inside."

"It's sweeter to live, isn't it?" Grantaire asks.

"Only in freedom," retorts Enjolras.

"Ah, yes." Sobriety doesn't suit Grantaire. He is paler, sadder. "You and your freedom."

VII.

I do not tolerate a world emptied of you. I have tried. For a year I have called every black tree; I have looked for your face in the patterns of the ice. In the dark, I have pored over the loss of you like pale gold.

"How did you survive the war?"

"The people stirred. They joined the fight. They opened their doors and let us in."

"I think you're dreaming."

"That's what I do best."

It snowed that winter; nothing heavy, just a light sheen of ice and whiteness, the lakes and streams barely crystallized, but this was Provence and so everyone thought it was the end of the world.

Enjolras couldn't help a sardonic smirk at these proclamations. They didn't know, of course. The world had ended in summer, in the June heat.

But because they had no fireplace, he and Éponine froze in their house at night. She abandoned all pretenses and practically burrowed into him, her arms around his neck, her chest pressed against his side, her long hair draped over his stomach with its scent of vellum and ink. And it was warm, but also dreadfully inconvenient, because he would wake up with his palm sliding up her nightgown, over her thigh, his nose at her collarbone, his blood rushing and his body screaming for release.

Madness, he would think hazily as he untangled himself from her. Mistress.

The cold leeched into his bones and he got sick. She took time off from work and stayed at his bedside, spooning broth and tea into his mouth. It was the worst thing. He was flushed and he could barely breathe and he was going to die.

"Honestly!" she snapped after he told her this, moaned it through a clogged nose and a parched mouth. "It's not that bad. You'll be fine."

The first time she sneezed, she looked like she was going to rip his throat out.

Madame Candeveau dropped by in the afternoons to nurse them and keep their house, clucking her tongue as they scowled at each other in bed.

"You silly kids," she would say with fondness while they struggled weakly for a bigger share of the covers, coughing and sneezing.

He got better first. It was his turn to tuck the blankets around her, to feed her. This was the time when she started dreaming about Marius, whispering the boy's name in her sleep.

It hurt, and Enjolras had no idea why.

"Did you love him?" he asked one night, after she'd tossed and turned so much that he had no choice but to wake her up.

"I loved the idea of him," she said hoarsely, huddled under the covers, her voice blowing through his veins like smoke. "He was gentle. His was the first gentle face I'd seen in years, and, for a while, that was enough. But…" She coughed, and he automatically held a kerchief to her mouth. "But that bullet nearly killed me," she continued through the silk, her fingers circled around his wrist. "I woke up, and the street was covered in blood and splinters and glass, and I thought you were all dead. I couldn't find his body, and then I decided not to look for it anymore. Does that sound cruel?"

He shrugged. He, too, had done cruel things.

"I survived," she rasped, wrapping her arms around herself, in a world of snow and wood and glass and candlelight. "I thought I loved him, but I survived, and I was done fighting for scraps. I survived." She repeated those words fiercely, like they were all she had. "I survived, and it was time to live."

They ignore each other for most of the carriage ride. She looks out the window and he stares at the tattered hem of her skirt. He wonders if he's sentenced himself to a life of silence, and if perhaps it's for the best, if perhaps the apocalypse had passed him by and now he's blinking in the dawn of a new world where only stillness has lease.

As the carriage sways over the roads, he catches her glancing at him from time to time. He can tell she's bursting with questions: How did you break your arm? How did you survive? Why did you take me with you? Did anyone else make it?

When she finally speaks, the words are not what he's been expecting. "You should probably start calling me Éponine," she says, wriggling her fingers, the cheap wedding ring catching the glow of the sun.

"It would be a pleasant change from calling you the shadow," he replies noncommittally.

She smiles, and it's almost pretty, despite the yellowing bruise on her cheek and the gaps in her teeth. Her eyes are like splotches of ink shot through with golden flecks that almost look like bits of firelight if he squints. Yes. Ink and firelight. Words in old Latin. Wine on his tongue and dreams in his head.

"I," she says, "will no longer be shadow."

We shall see, he thinks. Optimism now feels foreign to him.

She stares out the window once more. This time, he follows her gaze. Patches of blue sky peek through the gaps in the leaves, their starry edges scintillated with rays of summer light, dappling the Earth in green and gold. The wheels tilt and creak, and Enjolras imagines he is falling.

"How's the stew?" Éponine asked him when she'd recuperated enough to start cooking again.

"Good," he lied. He could barely swallow it, as it seemed to consist primarily of salt and water. He'd once gathered the courage to request her not to make bouillabaisse anymore, because it was a dish he'd always detested even before the advent of her subpar culinary skills into his life, and she'd agreed. He'd been bouillabaisse-free for more than a month. Surely she couldn't have forgotten…

But he had a sneaking suspicion she was doing this on purpose. She seemed to be watching him from the corner of her eye, waiting for something.

"I had a nice chat with Monsieur Anouilh the other day," she said in a cheerful tone. "He was discussing how much better things are now with Louis Philippe on the throne-"

A muscle ticked along Enjolras' jaw. Was she really going there?

"He said a republic was a failed system of government, and Lamarque, like all the Napoleonic generals, didn't know what he was-"

"Éponine." His tone was calm, yet implacable. "Have I offended you lately? Why are you trying to pick a fight?"

Something shifted behind her eyes, and her stance changed with it, became coiled, like she was about to strike, or to flee. "Maybe I'm bored."

He sighed. "Perhaps you should be bored somewhere else until you're not."

"Stop talking to me like I'm a child."

"You are a child," he lied again, for the second time that day. "Eat your bouillabaisse."

He did the dishes and she went out to the backyard, snow crunching under her boots with every step. The landscape was a panorama of white frost and gray sky, and part of her wanted to shout into this endlessness, to scream at the universe to return him to her, the furious and passionate schoolboy in Paris, who'd had an opinion about everything, who had burned with belief on a summer's day, who hadn't been a lonesome specter quietly eating awful food and saying nothing when she mended his white shirts with gaudy purple thread for the sole purpose of trying to get a rise out of him.

Provincial life has made you soft, she scolded herself. You don't know how to con people anymore, Jondrette girl.

But maybe Enjolras was smarter than most. Maybe she wouldn't have been able to dupe him even in the time before. She was never going to know.

Éponine had put the revolution behind her, but she suddenly found herself wishing it was May again, May with the crackling hearth in the Musain and the vibrant voices and everyone still alive.

Give it back to me, she would have begged, if she hadn't promised herself that she would never beg for anything again, if she wasn't a girl standing in a land of snow and ice. Give May back to me. Give me back our days.

VIII.

For you alone I will be weak.

"How did you survive the war?"

"I don't know. I think, sometimes, you just have to live."

The snows melted in January, but old man Candeveau came down with hay fever. Éponine spent most of her free time next door helping his wife, not returning home until very late. Enjolras discovered, much to his chagrin and disbelief, that he couldn't sleep well without her by his side. He crept into bed at his usual hour, resolutely telling himself that he did not require her presence, but he couldn't manage anything more than fitful dozes, and he always, always woke when the door creaked open, like his ears had been pricked for the sound. And when she slipped between the covers, his guard would always be down because he was exhausted and she was back, and he would clasp a tentative hand around her waist. Of course, he would have denied doing anything of the sort if she brought it up the next day, which she never did.

One night he might have even mumbled, "Hello" when she tucked herself into his arms.

And then, in the middle of this melting, rain-soaked season, Enjolras dreamed about doors. This time, he was on the other side of them. His friends were pounding on the wood, rattling the knob, begging him to let them in.

"Save us!" someone cried, someone sobbed, and he could no longer tell if it was Combeferre or Courfeyrac, he had forgotten the sound of their voices, the looks on their faces. "You promised glory. You promised a tomb of light. Not like this. Please, Enjolras. Not like this."

And he was screaming, raging at himself, commanding himself to open the door as he had commanded his boys to die, but in this dream he didn't, in this dream he heard the shots and then the silence, and the fading echoes of revolutionary songs.

"Enjolras." Someone was shaking him awake. Morning light was pouring in through the windows. "I had to stay the night at the Candeveaus, but the old man's fever finally broke. He'll be all right," Éponine was telling him, her lips moving, forming bows and arcs that filled his eyes like amber, dragging him out of the Rue de la Chanvevrie, dragging him away from the blood and the barricade. "You're having a bad dream. Wake up."

"The war…" he grated out.

"It's done. It's finished." She leaned in close, her hands on his shoulders, her hair trickling into the cradle of his arms, setting all his nerves on fire, the sun framing her face like a halo, her scent leaving him breathless. "The war is over."

"Then lead me out of it," he said, and reached for her.

Make me forget.

"Here's to pretty girls who went to our heads," murmurs Jehan, clinking his liquor bottle against Bahorel's.

Joly grins. It's the last night of their lives, but Joly is the happiest among them, always will be. "Here's to witty girls who went to our beds!"

"I will miss them," says Jehan, who will be in tears tomorrow as he begs the people to let him in. "All the women I've loved. I am thankful everyday for the remembrance of them."

Enjolras' hands tightened around Éponine's wrists. Make me forget.

IX.

What would I have been if I had never seen the birds? I am no one; I am nothing. I am a blank paper on which you and your magic wrote a girl. Just the kind of girl you wanted, all hungry and hurt and needing. Nothing in me was not made by you.

"How did you survive the war?"

"I wish I hadn't. You don't know how much I wish that."

His mouth slammed over hers, hot and wet and desperate. She stepped back and he followed, standing up and moving with her until he had her pinned to the wall. His lips lowered, planting kisses along her jaw, and her fingers tangled into his golden hair. Welcome back, boy on fire, let's live again, you and me. His lean frame rocked insistently against hers, every movement sending sparks through her clothes, his hands slipping up her skirts, squeezing her thighs, her hips. His teeth dug into her neck and she felt like she was crawling out of her skin, knees buckling until he had to hold her up, hooking her legs around his waist. His lips returned to hers in a rough, feverish rhythm, and she was blindly undoing the buttons on his pants, and he was groaning into her mouth, and everything that had been curling inside her all these months was suddenly tense and still and eager, waiting to be unleashed-

And suddenly he broke away, staring at her with blue eyes darkened by lust and nightmares, his breath emerging in ragged gasps. Pain flickered across his features and she knew that she had lost him again.

He set her down gently and she leaned against the wall for support, her heart a loud hammer within her chest.

"I can't, I shouldn't…" He shook his head like he was shaking away her touch. "Not when they're…"

He trailed off, but he didn't have to say it. Dead, they were all dead.

Éponine slid to the floor, boneless and out of breath. Enjolras didn't look at her as he fixed his clothes.

"I am going for a walk," he announced to the walls.

Her head snapped up so she could glare at him, but he had already left.

X.

You will always go into that tent. You will see her scar and wonder where she got it. You will always be amazed at how one woman can have so much black hair. You will always fall in love, and it will always be like having your throat cut, just that fast. You will always run away with her. You will always lose her. You will always be a fool. You will always be dead, in a city of ice, snow falling into your ear. You have already done all of this and will do it again.

"How did you survive the war?"

"I was walking down an alley. I was following someone. A child. A little boy. But before I could go into the light with him, he turned to face me. It was my brother. I was so startled to see him that I began to wake up. He waved goodbye, and I opened my eyes."

"Oh, no, you don't!"

She was screaming, her voice cracking through the damp spring air as she stomped after him on the dirt path. Trees blurred at the edges of his vision, new green leaves and old black bark, the world made of dew stains and birdsong.

"You've never walked away from anything in your entire life!" Éponine yelled. "You don't get to walk away from this!"

He whirled around. Her hair was in disarray and the ribbons on her sleeves were loose, and their little house with its white picket fence loomed in the distance, surreal in all its ordinariness.

"What is this, exactly?" he retorted in nothing more than a hiss. "This is the life I shouldn't have had. This is the life my friends will never know. I don't deserve any of this." His hands were shaking. "I should never have come here. I shouldn't have brought you with me-"

Her dark eyes blazed. "Then why did you?" she demanded. "Did you need a playmate, a housemaid-"

"Because you were there!" he roared, his temper finally resurfacing after all these months, and, with it, all the grief, all the guilt. "You were there. You knew what it was like. You were part of it. And I-" His voice broke on a strangled sob. "And I wanted- to save some part of it-"

"Well, you have!" she burst out, crossing her arms, almost petulant. "You did! And now it's just us, Enjolras. Just you and me and all our ghosts. So now what are you going to do?"

When he didn't respond, she continued savagely, in harsh tones that brooked no mercy. "Someone saved you, didn't they? Someone protected you from the National Guard. That's the only way you could have lived, because you were all set to die."

"Enough," he said tersely, but she ignored him.

"I saw the look on your face when you marched off to Lamarque's funeral. I knew you knew you were going to die. Who was it, hmm? Who changed your destiny? Who haven't you forgiven for that?"

"Enough, Éponine."

She was no stranger to other people's pity, and, finally, she bestowed it on him. Her face softened. "Someone cared enough to not let you die. It didn't matter to them that you would hate them for it," she rasped. "Someday, you will make your peace with that."

She turned on her heel and went back to the house, disturbing a cluster of finches pecking at the ground. The birds took off, and, for a few moments, Enjolras could see only her retreating form and the flutter of jeweled wings.

"It is not too late," he tells Les Amis at dawn, when it is already all too painfully clear that no one else will arrive to join their cause. "Leave me, and live."

The other boys glance at one another. Bahorel is the first one to break the silence. "Give us some credit, General," he snorts. "This is our fight, too."

Feuilly clasps Enjolras' arm. "I cannot imagine a better way to go," he says earnestly, "than with my brothers. I will stay with you until the end."

It all comes back to Enjolras in a rush, the first time he met each and every one of them, the individual moments he'd looked over at each one and realized this person had traversed the line from acquaintance to friend. All these years, and he isn't sure which one likes the color blue, or which one can't sleep without the light on. He should have known them more, he should have been better.

Too late, too late for any of that.

Time passes, too short a time, not enough time. He approaches Grantaire, who's leaning against the rampart, taking generous swigs of brandy.

"Why are you still here?" Enjolras asks Graintaire softly. "You do not believe in any of this."

The other boy won't quite meet his eyes. "You'll see," he slurs in a hollow tone. "Before this is over, you will see what I believe in. I promise."

Enjolras walked past the village, past the vineyards, his steps aimless. He felt like he was drifting half-asleep under an open sky.

It started to drizzle. He stopped, and a silver sheen veiled the world. It had also rained when she died, or when he thought she died. At the time, he'd considered it fitting that a cold and miserable existence such as hers would end in water.

A carriage came thundering through the mists, its driver frantically trying to rein in a panicked horse. Enjolras could only stare at the spectacle bearing down upon him in mute surprise, or perhaps resignation. Yes, this could be his end, run over by wheels and trampled by hooves along a dirt road in southern France. Ignoble and foolish, but an end, nonetheless.

Combeferre. The name pierced him just as he smelled wet animal hide and worn leather. Combeferre was the one who liked blue.

Enjolras dove out of the runaway carriage's path. He hit the moist soil and rolled onto his back. Rain dripped into his eyes, turning the sky and treetops silver.

"Apollo in the Mud," Feuilly would have remarked. "A fascinating and inventive twist on classical expressionism. Revolutionary, one might say."

Enjolras started to laugh. It was new and strange, this bursting in his lungs, this heaving of his shoulders. He laughed until he wept.

He is alone now, his friends dead at his feet, the soldiers backing him up against the window. Blood and sweat trickle down his face. His fight is almost done.

Grantaire staggers up the stairs, shoving his way through the army, taking his place beside Enjolras. He reeks of liquor and smoke.

"Do you permit it?" he asks, looking into Enjolras' eyes as their would-be executioners take aim. And in that gaze is all of history, all the arguments, all the quiet moments, all the memories of schoolboys growing up to become men. I believe in one thing, that gaze seems to say, and that's you. It's always been you. Do you permit it? Will you let me have this?

Yes, Enjolras thinks, gripping the red flag tightly. Dying with you, I can do that. He takes Grantaire's hand with his free one. He smiles.

Grantaire smiles back. Wide and warm, his ragged features suffused with the sun's glow. "Oh, good," he says in relief. "This makes it so much easier. The awning will break your fall. Run once you hit the ground."

Before Enjolras can process these words, Grantaire grabs him by the shoulders, and, with all his strength, shoves him out the window, just as the world explodes into gunfire.

Out in the backyard, Éponine sat down on the ground. She'd just pulled this skirt from a pile of fresh laundry, but she couldn't bring herself to care. It was Enjolras' turn to do the next wash, anyway.

The drizzle had stopped, leaving the grass wet and the geraniums coated in dew. The air smelled fresh and clean, although shot through with a temperate breeze that carried the tang of salt from the Mediterranean. She decided she would visit the seaside soon.

Her hands dug into the earth as she stared at the indigo mountains in the distance, unconsciously tugging at blades of grass, rubbing roots and soil between her palms, staining her flesh green and brown. She remembered the carriage ride into the village, how the world beyond the windows had all of a sudden opened up into sky and light, how her breath had caught with the promise of new things.

The war wasn't over. She realized that now. She and Enjolras had carried it with them. He flinched at loud noises, and she thought about ghosts.

Soft footsteps came up from behind her. She turned her head, and her eyes almost popped out. "What happened to you?" she asked incredulously, because he was covered in mud.

"You," he muttered without rancor, with something in his tone that made her blink. "You make things happen to me."

It was the closest to an apology he was ever going to give her, but Éponine Thénardier was an expert in the art of taking what she could get. She moved aside to make space for him, and he sat down beside her, joining her in the dirt.

He took a deep breath, but she interrupted him before he could speak.

"Don't say anything for now," she told him. "Don't say anything. Maybe it will be all right."

They fell into a tentative silence, broken only by the sound of the birds. Éponine tilted her face to the heavens and closed her eyes, letting the sun thrum against her shut lids, letting slivers of light trickle into the edges of darkness. She felt Enjolras stirring beside her. His fingers brushed against her knee.

XI.

A war story is a black space. On the one side is before and on the other side is after, and what is inside belongs only to the dead.

"Somebody loved me. That is how I survived the war."

The End