AN: Hi again! Sorry it's taken me so long to update. Life and school have been a little crazy at the moment. Thanks for all the reviews (wow, three for the last chapter!) Glad you are enjoying so far. Again, reviews are always welcome. Hope you continue to enjoy :)

Chapter 4:

"Okay, you can look now. I'm decent."

It was about an hour later. Annette, Eponine, and Gavroche were in the small room above the café. Downstairs, it was quiet – most, if not all, of the others had left. At her words, the siblings turned back to face Annette, squinting in the half light cast by the lamp in the street. They looked her over with a critical air, but also with a smile.

There had been several shirts that fit Annette, albeit with room to spare. She had chosen a white one, with a pair of khaki-colored trousers. These were tight in some places and baggy in strange ones, but Annette had expected as much, and with a belt to hold them, they fit securely enough. There was also a brocaded vest, strangely heavy in the summer heat, decorated with florid pink flowers with orange accents. Someone had even found a small pair of boots that fit far better than she'd ever expected; he must have outgrown them himself not very long ago. That thought was unsettling, actually; in a way, it drove Annette's mission home once more.

She tried not to reflect on this now, though. Instead, she placed her new cap upon her head, tucking her hair back behind her ears. "How do I look?" she asked.

From her spot on the floor, cushioned back against a large pillow, Eponine giggled. "Not bad."

"You really do look almost like a boy!" Gavroche exclaimed.

Annette smirked. "Thanks, I think?"

"In a good way, of course," Eponine told her.

"Do you think I need the vest?" Annette asked.

"I think you do. It hides your chest." This was Eponine again.

"But it's so ugly!"

"What's wrong with it?"

"The … pink, the orange, the flowers, the everything! Do men actually wear things like this?"

Eponine shrugged. "Sometimes. Why shouldn't they? Flowers are nice. I like flowers!"

"Someone must have raided his colorblind grandmother's sofa for the fabric," Annette muttered. "All right, all right, they gave me clothes, which they didn't have to do. I won't complain."

"That's a good girl."

"Here, take a look yourself." Gavroche lit a candle – evidently one had been around, lying on top of the small table in the corner, perhaps, and held it up to the window. In the light, Annette saw her own reflection, rather than the street outside. For a second, once she'd found a comfortable distance to do so from, she studied it. Though it was her own face that gazed back at her, in many ways she now looked like any one of the boys who she'd met downstairs. She wouldn't fool anyone who looked at her closely, she supposed, but as people tended to see what they expected to, she was unlikely to stand out on in public now. It was almost strange; was she, in a way, becoming part of the story? Funny, really – in the novel it was supposed to be Eponine who dressed as a boy, only far later. Had she been inspired to do so by Eponine's example, albeit subconsciously? Would that have an impact on the story, in the end? Well, she couldn't go back on it now.

"It'll do," Annette remarked at length. She came to sit by Eponine on the cushions; the other girl gave her another shy smile. After a moment, Gavroche blew out the candle and came to sit beside them.

"It's nice out tonight," Eponine remarked. It was a few minutes later. Gavroche had already jumped up again to open the window, and now all three of them were standing by it once more, enjoying the finally cool breeze.

"Yeah, I like it when the heat breaks," Annette agreed. Calmer than she'd been all day, she was smiling now, too. Gavroche had reached up and taken her hand again, and impulsively she'd wrapped her other arm around Eponine's shoulder. The other girl looked surprised at first, but she didn't shrug off the touch.

For several minutes, they simply watched the street below, which was nearly deserted now. Lights flickered from windows across and diagonal from them. A few people passed by – an old man who looked drunk, a young couple embracing, both gone as soon as they had appeared. Then, the street was empty. One of the lights from one of the windows went out. Just as Annette was reflecting on the quiet serenity of the moment, however, a man stepped into view. He was wearing a dark coat and had a tall hat. When he stepped under the street lamp, Annette could see that his hair was long, in a ponytail. At the sight of him, Eponine let out a gasp, and Gavroche stepped back, drawing the three of them away from the window, back into the dark of the room.

"That's Inspector Javert! He's got it in for us," Gavroche whispered.

Eponine had a finger to her lips to shush him, but the man in the street didn't appear to have heard them. He wasn't looking in their direction, anyway, and a minute later he had already gone away.

Annette abruptly let go of Eponine's shoulder. She was surprised to find herself shaking. It was Eponine now who reached for Annette's shoulder; Annette, suddenly all tense, shrugged off the touch.

"Don't worry, Annette, he'll never catch us," Gavroche then told her.

Annette attempted a smile, trying at the same time to calm her racing heart. Eponine took her hand now and led her back to the blankets and cushions on the floor, where they sat down. After a moment, Eponine asked softly, "But why are you afraid? Surely, you have nothing to fear from the police. You're not even from our time."

Annette bit her lip, then let out a ragged attempt at a deep breath. "No," she replied finally. "It's got nothing to do with your time, or with Inspector Javert or anyone. It's just something from my own past."

"Can you tell us?"

Just as quickly, Annette shook her head. "You won't understand."

"You could try us." Now even Gavroche's tone was hesitant, almost gentle.

Annette took one more deep breath. Could she try and explain? She'd never had words for it before. People thought they knew the story – she'd been only one of thousands of children hidden, after all. It was hard enough to attempt to come to terms with the dead… nobody had come to terms, really, not yet, anyway. And so, it had always been easier not to talk …

"It might help you to talk about it," Eponine suggested at length. "But if you don't want to, you don't have to."

If she did tell them, where would she begin? These people knew nothing about her time, nothing about the war, or the Occupation, … the deportations. Then again, she had cried over Eponine's and Gavroche's misfortunes, though she knew strictly nothing about the time in which they lived, and, for whatever reason, they seemed to have taken a liking to her, too. It didn't feel like she had only met them today. Glancing down, she realized that both Eponine and Gavroche still had their hands locked in hers. It seemed like their closeness, somehow, already went two ways.

Finally, Annette nodded stiffly. "I'll try, anyway. Well, … so, in my time, during a war we had, the police were looking for people … like me. They didn't find me, but they found my parents – and they sent them away to the east, and they died there. I didn't know that they were being sent away to be killed, but I knew that something terrible would happen if the police caught me …"

That hadn't been a very good explanation. Both Eponine and Gavroche were looking at her, struggling to comprehend, though pity was written in both of their faces. Annette took one more deep breath, then endeavored to start again. "All right, sorry, I'll try to explain better. Well, the war, it happened – it began when I was ten. At that time, Germany wanted to take over all of Europe. Their army was very strong. They attacked us in May of 1940, and even though we thought we were prepared, they crushed our defenses and took us over in just about a month."

"What country is Germany?" Gavroche asked.

Annette tried to think. "Prussia," she finally answered. "And some other of those states. They became one country – later in the 19th century. But it wasn't the same Prussia you know. Their government was different."

Gavroche nodded, but Annette wasn't sure he understood. "To the east of here," she added. "Anyway, so nobody in the French government knew what to do, what with being taken over so quickly, and this military hero from a war we had earlier, Maréchal Pétain, he said he knew what to do, so they voted to let him take control of the situation. And he and his friends, they thought that the best thing would be to let Germany do what it wanted. Well, it turns out that Germany didn't just want to take us over – they wanted to fundamentally remake all of Europe, enlisting some people as helpers, enslaving others, and totally eliminating others still. Killing entire populations.

"So, my family was Jewish. I mean, they were and they weren't. Both of my parents were practicing Catholics… I'm not, anymore, but I don't practice anything else, either."

"Jewish is a religion, isn't it?" Eponine asked.

"It is, and some people think it's an ethnicity, too. The Nazis thought it was a race, and they wanted to kill all of us. It's strange, because like I said, we didn't think we were Jewish. Not my family; not anymore. My parents – they were from Hungary – they had converted to Catholicism before I was even born. I was baptized Catholic. I'm not sure when they came to Paris, but I know that I was born here. We were all citizens when the war broke out, but some time later we found out that the laws had been changed, and we weren't citizens anymore. They took this right away from us.

"The Nazis – and their French helpers – didn't care what religion you were, whether you practiced one, if any. To them, it was all about race, what they made up, you know? And they said they were going to send people away to work in the east. First the men. It was a little over a year after the armistice that my father was sent away.

"There were rumors that women and children were going to be sent away, too. My mother thought this was strange, because why would they send children to work? In fact, did you know that it was the French authorities who decided to deport children? The Germans only asked for adult men and women, but the French government had their police round up children, too.

"Anyway, so my mother, she arranged … because it wasn't like nobody was against this… There were networks being organized to save people, to shelter children in people's homes. So, she had me sent out to the countryside, to southwestern France. I stayed with a family, the Duponts. And what no one knew then, was that the people being sent away to the east, they weren't being sent to work. They were sent to be killed. Millions of people – not just Jews, really. Gypsies … and just … people who thought that what the Germans were doing was wrong. Communists. People like your friends downstairs, who believed in liberty and in human rights. Anti-fascists of all sorts. Not just from France, either, but from all the countries the Germans occupied – almost all of Europe."

Eponine and Gavroche were staring at her with their mouths open, now. Belatedly, Annette realized they wouldn't have understood words like 'Nazis' and 'anti-fascists.' Still, they seemed to get the main point. For their shock, they had no words. Well, Annette had found out the whole story four years ago, and she still had no words for it, either.

"And they killed all those people? People just let them get away with it?" Gavroche finally asked.

"Nobody knew all of it until afterwards," Annette told him. "And nobody could believe they would do such a thing. They took people in trainloads, to camps, and they killed people with gas. Then they burned the bodies. I guess enough people escaped that they could tell the story."

"How did anyone escape from that?" Eponine asked.

"Some of the people they actually did make work in factories. In the end – the Americans and the Soviets – that's the Russians – they defeated Nazi Germany and liberated the camps. So, those who survived came home.

"I returned to Paris in September of 1944, right after the Liberation. I was fourteen, then. My mother had been arrested in the street, just like that, some time after I'd gone to the south. One of her old friends told me so, when I got back – when I was looking for people. Anyway, once the deportees started coming back – there were trains every day – I waited at the station every day. I watched for my parents among the people coming back; I consulted all the lists that were published. But months passed and the trains stopped coming, and then I knew that they weren't ever going to come back."

Annette fell silent at that, biting her lip hard to stop the tears that were welling up in her eyes. For another long moment, nobody said anything. Gavroche was looking down, lost in thought. Eponine met Annette's eyes. Several times, she seemed to attempt to speak, to find words; Annette understood if she couldn't. Finally, Eponine reached out and rested a hand on Annette's shoulder once more, and Annette managed to give her a grateful smile.

"How could anyone have let it happen, though?" Gavroche finally asked. "Why did people in France let this happen?"

Annette couldn't help snorting bitterly. "I've been asking myself that for four years now."

"We wouldn't have let it happen if we'd been there," Gavroche insisted.

"I know you would have tried your hardest to stop it. There were people like you who did. Many of them died as well, but many survived, too."

After another moment, Eponine asked her, "Then what did you do?"

Annette shrugged. "I was sent to an orphanage."

"You couldn't go back to the family you stayed with in the south?"

At this, she shook her head. "No. We didn't get along well, really. They were supposed to treat me like their own child, but they didn't. I mean, I was twelve to fourteen years old at the time, not exactly a piece of cake in the best of circumstances, and trying to understand the world as it was falling to pieces around me. But they were resentful and perhaps afraid, and they took it out on me. And I gave as good as I got. 'I don't have to listen to you, you're not my parents,' I'd say, and they told me, they said, 'if you don't listen and do what we say, we'll hand you over to the police, and see how you like it then.'"

Gavroche let out a whistle in shock. "I thought you said they didn't know what was going on!"

"I'm sure they didn't. They wouldn't have said that if they knew. But it scared me enough to shut me up, and I suppose that remembering that, what's why I reacted the way I did when your policeman walked by. But it was wrong of me. The police here have nothing to do with the Vichy police. It was a completely different time, and a completely different context.

But Gavroche shook his head vehemently. "Don't give him too much credit. I know that if Javert were living in your time, he'd just jump to do his part in arresting innocent people."

"He's not a good man," Eponine added.

"Maybe, maybe not. I don't know him. But you can't assume things like that, Gavroche. You can't know what a person will do until he's put in that situation. You can't know in advance."

Eponine nodded soberly. Gavroche frowned, then shrugged. For her part, Annette took some more deep breaths, trying to convince herself that her own words were true.

"There was a girl staying with us once," Eponine murmured. A few minutes had passed in silence – Annette had been attempting to compose herself, the others, perhaps, attempting to take in her story. "My parents didn't treat her very well, either. Nor was I very kind to her, but it was a long time ago, and I didn't know any better."

Annette nodded. It was strange to know of whom Eponine was speaking. She had always wondered what Eponine thought of Cosette – if she'd thought of her at all – before she came into her life again via Marius.

Eponine shrugged slowly. "I feel bad about it sometimes. But, my parents are bad people. They … you know, sometimes my father's men hurt me. I know he knows, but he doesn't do anything about it."

Eponine ducked her face into her sleeve. Gavroche had turned to Annette; he'd begun to explain that their parents were thieves, but when Eponine finished her sentence, they both turned to stare at her, appalled. For her part, Eponine raised her eyes to meet theirs, her expression raw.

"He what?" Gavroche demanded. "I didn't know that! Which of the men? The bastards! I'll kill them!"

"Gavroche!" Eponine exclaimed, then, "You're ten!"

"There's not an age for wanting to defend his sister's honor, I suppose," Annette murmured. To her surprise, Eponine's gaze softened. She even managed a smile, which Annette returned.

"You knew, didn't you?" Eponine asked Annette then.

"What?"

She hadn't, not exactly. She supposed she ought to have guessed that something like this might have happened to Eponine; she had known well enough that Eponine's home situation wasn't a good one, after all. For a moment, Annette struggled with her thoughts, trying to figure out a way to explain how she knew what she did know, when Eponine spoke up again.

"Maybe not the specifics, but you could tell we came from a bad home. That's why you asked Enjolras if we could stay here in the café with you, isn't it? I couldn't understand it then, but now I know, it's because you've had a hard life, too, and you know what it's like, to feel like you've got no real home to go to, … even though nobody … well, I'm sure it wasn't as bad for me as it was for you…"

"Don't compare – that never helps," Annette insisted. "I didn't see the worst of it, either. I didn't see the camps or ... didn't see the people starving to death or anything like that. That's also why I've never been able to talk about it before, because they suffered – my parents must have suffered so much more than I ever did, before they died. In an objective sense, even you've probably suffered more than me. You've known real want … it's not the same. I'm glad you listened to me, though, and glad if I've been able to help you. That's what matters, isn't it?"

At this, the girls shared weak smiles again, then a somewhat-awkward hug.

Annette stretched, then; Eponine yawned. Gavroche, his small frame still tense with anger and indignation, nonetheless stood up to help them spread out the blankets. Hot as it still was, for the breeze had died away, they didn't need anything to sleep under, so they piled the blankets on top of each other to make the floor as soft and comfortable as possible. They then took off their shoes, and Gavroche his hat. Annette changed back into her dress from earlier, thinking it could serve as a nightgown for the time being, and then they all curled up, with just barely enough room on the blankets without touching.

Moonlight shone overhead, casting shadows over the features of the people lying beside her. Eponine's breaths had fast turned deep and regular; Gavroche was still trying to calm his. Annette, slowly regaining the inner peace she had felt when they'd all been standing by the window, tried for a time to hold on to the moment. Exhausted, though, she was quickly drifting off to sleep. Vaguely, she wondered if she would still be here, back in time, in the world of Les Misérables, when she awoke. Despite her earlier fear and panic, it didn't really come as a surprise now that she hoped that she would. Well, there was only one way to find out …