15

"What of the barricade, m'sieur?" asked Éponine. Her words tumbled from her mouth so quickly that Enjolras was unable to distinguish one from the others, but he knew what she had asked him nonetheless. He stopped his pacing, hands clasped behind him with a calm that, still in the borrowed military uniform, was unnerving. There were a few moments where Éponine thought she heard him take in a deep breath, as though preparing to answer her, but it soon became clear that he wasn't going to. Her morbid curiosity trumped what manners and good sense she had, and she whispered hoarsely, "What of Monsieur Marius?"

"Dead," he replied, still looking away. Enjolras' proud shoulders sagged as though defeated and he exhaled unsteadily. He could explain no further, afraid to trust himself with anything but monosyllables. It was as though he had been drained of all feeling but sorrow, of all desires but to crawl into the grave, and it frightened him. He, who had been so proud, so alive, so driven, so gifted with words, couldn't bring himself to string more than one together. The adrenaline that had kept Enjolras moving had vanished the moment he had found Éponine. All that was left was a tiredness that he felt in his very bones, and an aching sadness that gripped his very soul.

"Dead," Éponine echoed. Her voice was hollow and barely above a rattling whisper. Enjolras bowed his head, the raw emotion in her voice a painful reminder of just how many people he had let down. "And everyone else? Courfeyrac, Grantaire…Gavroche?"

"All of them, Éponine," he choked, "All of them, dead."

Turning slowly to face her, Enjolras did his best to keep his face brave and his voice level, but she saw past his ill-executed disguise. Éponine was all too familiar with pain. She sat up in bed slowly, supporting her weight with her good arm and cradling the other to her narrow chest. Her eyes were wide and her mouth hung open in shock and inexpressible anguish. Enjolras kept his gaze level, blue eyes to brown, and she had to suppress a shudder at what she found there. The sorrow in Enjolras' soul was absent from his eyes, eyes that had only a day before seemed to be lit by a passion and fire from within, and there was only cold apathy in their azure depths. His jaw was twitching from the effort of suppressing tears.

"Then how did…," she began. Éponine was unable to finish her question, suddenly overcome by sobs that shook her fragile frame from head to toe. The burning pain in her shoulder only added to her tears, and she clutched at it in an attempt at stopping the throbbing. Enjolras was inexplicably enraged at her show of emotion, a display that he could not partake in and one he felt had nothing to do with his misfortunes.

These tears are only for Marius; not for France, not for my friends, not for me, Enjolras thought violently.

"How did I manage to survive, you mean?" The icy anger and condescension in his voice seemed to freeze Éponine's tears on her cheeks, and she snapped her head up. Enjolras continued, his voice booming, "How am I here, alive, and Maiurs is not? How is it that I live and good men – better men than I – have died in my place? Is that what you are asking me, mademoiselle?"

Éponine violently shook her head, a motion that jarred her shoulder and sent fiery streaks of pain shooting across her body. She whimpered softly but kept from calling out, afraid of Enjolras. Her fear was evident, even beneath her pain, and the doe-eyed look she gave him doused his ire almost instantaneously.

"Éponine, I…," he paused and swallowed hard, silent tears of shame beginning to slip down his cheeks. The tears came the same way the first few drops of a rain shower fall from the sky: slowly, singularly, and then unstoppably.

The girl looked up at the sound of her name, terror becoming sympathy when she saw his tears through the fog of her own. Her heart, what was left of it, ached for the once unshakable marble man, and she let out a soft sigh of pity. Forgetting her own grief, her own pain, and the weariness she felt in her limbs, Éponine got out of bed. Barefoot and shivering from fever, she padded her way slowly towards Enjolras, her only concern: his wellbeing. Éponine knew what it was like to hurt the way he did; she needed to show him that she understood.

"Get back in bed, Éponine," he ordered, averting his eyes chastely. The nurse had apparently been in to change her clothes and the gruff men's shirt and trousers had been replaced by a thin, white cotton shift that fell loosely around Éponine's bony shoulders, but hugged her hips in a way that rekindled Enjolras' anger.

She shook her head in response to his order, though he wasn't looking at her, and continued her steady approach. Enjolras' thoughts flew apart, what was he supposed to do? Éponine was allowing him every opportunity to run, to physically stop her, but he found that he could not will his tired legs to move. It was as though he did not want to. He kept his eyes on the stone floor, but Enjolras didn't need to look up to know that she was still walking towards him; he could feel it.

"Éponine, please," he pleaded, his voice on the verge of breaking and his muscles tensing painfully in anticipation. She shook her head again.

With deliberate slowness, Éponine took two more steps and came to stand before him. Enjolras allowed himself to steal a quick glance at her face, making sure to avoid looking anywhere else. The look of compassion on her tear-stained face alarmed him and he recoiled involuntarily. Éponine smiled sadly, misinterpreting it as Enjolras being repulsed by her, but she made no sign of retreat. She was used to being repulsive, too. This was something that she needed to do; something she needed to prove to Enjolras. Before he had time to understand or explain, and before he had the time to order her back to bed, Éponine closed the gap between them. She flung her shaking arms around his waist, ignoring the screaming pain in her left shoulder, and squeezed as tightly as she could.

"W-what are you doing?" Enjolras cried, sorrow and weariness losing to his surprise. Éponine ignored his question and buried her face in the folds of his blood-stained shirt. Vaguely, Enjolras noticed that she was trembling like a leaf. Was it sweat caused by her fever that was seeping through his clothes to his chest, or was it her tears? After a few moments of tense silence, Éponine mumbled something into Enjolras' shirt.

"What?" he asked. His question came out harsher than he had intended, but as he looked down at Éponine his heart beat less painfully and his tears slowed.

"I said," she replied, leaning back and tilting her flushed face upwards to look at Enjolras, "that I'm glad you're here, m'sieur."

At her words, Enjolras' tears returned full-force, though he knew not why. The statue came to life. He lifted his arms, which had been hanging uselessly at his sides, and wrapped them protectively around Éponine's shivering shoulders. She began to sob again in earnest too; her tears, though silent, came faster, and her shaking grew worse. Enjolras joined her. He cried for his country, for his failure, for the friends he had seen die, for himself. She cried, not only for Marius, but for Gavroche, Grantaire – for the pain in her shoulder – and for Enjolras and his misfortunes.

A good man like him shouldn't have to feel this way, she thought, flinging her thoughts to God in anger and in hurt, pain should only be for the wretched people – for people like me.

They stayed that way, the peasant clinging to the Rock of Gibraltar and the drowning man to his last hope, very briefly. The minutes ticked by at the pace of a lifetime, simultaneously crawling and sprinting. Both Éponine and Enjolras were gradually able to regain control of their emotions. Éponine, who had spent much of her life in misery, simply ran out of tears to shed. Her head was still reeling, her soul was crushed, but her pain was turning inward. Enjolras also cried his eyes dry, not accustomed to such displays of feeling. He was only called back to the present when he felt Éponine lift her head from his chest, and the absence of the feverish heat recaptured his attention.

"Éponine," he murmured, stepping away and holding her at an arm's length, scrutinizing her. She gazed back with clouded eyes, nearly delirious from fever and grief.

"Yes?" Her throat was dry and her words came out like a desert wind across an arid plain, but her forehead was dripping with sweat.

Enjolras neglected to answer, panic rising in his chest the same way as it had at the barricade. Her illness looked serious and if she were to die, he would have no one left. Without preamble, Enjolras lifted Éponine's light body from the floor with newfound strength. Cradling her like a child, ignoring her protests, he carried her back to the sickbed. His panic drowned out the throbbing pain in his leg and he almost forgot to limp, only the blood he felt trickling beneath the fabric of his trousers reminded Enjolras of his wound.

"Put me down, monsieur," she protested weakly. Enjolras shook his head.

"You are getting back to bed this instant, Éponine."

"But why?" Éponine asked as he set her gently on the straw mattress. The fog of confusion and delirium was lifted from her eyes only to be replaced by indignation and something akin to admiration. Enjolras ducked his head and avoided her questioning gaze, turning his back on the bed and the girl. His silence infuriated Éponine and she made ready to stand again.

"Don't," he commanded, still facing the opposite direction. Éponine obeyed. Her will to argue was absent and Enjolras exhaled in relief, "Merci."

She lay back on the lumpy palette – reminiscent of the bed she had slept on at the Gorbeau House, but with less stains – and stared up at the ceiling in stubborn, sad silence. Enjolras set to pacing again. He was afraid that he would be swallowed whole by the yawning pit of despair opening before him if he sat still for too long; if he thought too much.

"How did you do it, monsieur?" Éponine asked after a long stretch of anxious silence. Her softly spoken words jarred Enjolras from his dismal trance.

"How did I do what, mademoiselle?" Enjolras replied, monotone.

"Survive," she whispered, still looking at the ceiling. Enjolras inhaled sharply and balled his fists, trying to block out the images that danced across his eyes. Images of bloodshed and death. Tears lined up in his eyes again, as though on cue.

"Grantaire. It was Grantaire," he croaked. Enjolras turned slowly towards Éponine, taking deep and calming breaths as he did so before continuing his story, "He offered himself to the firing squad as a means of buying me more time to escape. And I… I let him. I let him, Éponine. Does that make me a coward?"

Shaking her head vehemently, the girl looked imploringly across the room to Enjolras. This time he did not look away, but instead stared back with an intensity that would have terrified anyone else but her. Éponine's eyes were misty again to match his, but she smiled.

"He always cared for you, you know."

Enjolras nodded, frowning, "He told me that he was in love with me. Before I let him die for me, Grantaire said that I had to live because it was his dying wish." His words were laced with respect and remorse.

"To die for love," Éponine whispered reverently, her thoughts on Marius, "how beautiful."

"I should have died for the love of my country," he threw back, his self-loathing practically tangible, "dulce et decorum est pro patria mori."

"Listen monsieur Enjolras, there are so many things you haven't done yet – so much you can still change about France," Éponine insisted passionately, ignoring the Latin she couldn't understand. It was a challenge to keep from going to Enjolras again.

"Grantaire said that as well," Enjolras murmured, looking at the floor. He ran his hands through his disheveled hair and cradled his head in his hands. "He also said that I had to protect you, Éponine. That it was my job to help you."

Éponine gasped, unsure of what to say. Her usual response would have been one of, "I don't need your help," but that somehow didn't seem right. Did she actually need him? Would she be able to continue living now that her Marius was dead? A memory surfaced; she was sitting on the bank of the Seine, staring at the water. Éponine knew that she should kill herself, that it would make her parents' lives easier with one less mouth to feed, that she would feel much better when she was dead. She had touched the water; it was freezing. It was too cold to kill herself that day, perhaps when it was warmer. Maybe this time she might really do it, it was June after all…

"Éponine," called Enjolras softly, his voice shaking her free of that morbid memory, "you are all that I have left. My father died in the battle of Waterloo, my mother died only last year, and I cannot return home lest the National Guard is searching for me. Les Amis de l'ABC have all died and I have failed my country – Éponine, I have failed you as well, but you are all that is left."

It isn't I who needs help; it's him.

"Then I will never go away."

A/N: Here it is! Sorry 'bout the delay. I wrote a super long one-shot about E/E baking a cake for Grantaire and that took longer than expected and then I was all confused and couldn't get back into writing for 1832 and, ugh. Anyway! Here's this. It's pretty angsty, pretty pointless, but it's a chapter. Oh, and it's my birthday today, so this is my birthday present to all of you lovely cabbages who read this story. 3 Have a great Pi Day!