9

Gavroche was gone when Éponine next opened her eyes.

He was no longer curled up by her side when she turned to look. She touched the space where he had been, almost as if she was expecting there to be some residual warmth left behind. But there wasn't. She sat up quickly.

"Gavroche?" she called. There was no response. She got to her feet and crossed the room, trying one of the doors that Inès had said led to their bedrooms. She swung it inwards, showing off a smaller version of the apartment's main room. It was just as empty. The second one was exactly the same. There was nowhere in this apartment to hide, so it confirmed what Éponine had feared – Gavroche had left.

The key to the apartment lay where it had been discarded earlier on the floor. She crossed the room and bent down to pick it up, curling her fingers around it as she straightened up and thought about what to do next.

Gavroche had been roaming the streets of Paris since he was a much, much younger boy. He knew the streets like the back of his hand, and not just in terms of geographical locations. He knew how they worked, he knew where he stood, he knew how to get by. But this was not Paris. This was a wholly unfamiliar place and even though people had reassured her they couldn't be physically harmed it didn't mean she didn't want to find Gavroche just to make sure he was okay…

With that in mind, she strode across the room and left the apartment.

XXX

She stomped around the unfamiliar, narrow streets for nearly three hours. It reminded her of that first day here, when she had got lost and ran into the National Guard on the square.

People gave her funny looks as she walked, particularly those who she walked past more than once. She stopped and asked a few people if they had seen Gavroche, giving them his description; they all claimed not to have seen him, though, and she had no way of knowing if they were telling the truth or not.

Night fell, and this only made the streets harder to navigate. There were certain streets where she could barely see a thing, and she hated the fact the darkness made her heart quicken. There were more than a couple of times when she had thought she was walking alone down a street and suddenly someone appeared out of the darkness right next to her – and just as many times when she could have sworn she was not alone but no one showed themselves.

She was beginning to consider returning to the apartment – if she could find it, that is – when the end of the street she was walking down was suddenly blocked by a broad-shouldered figure.

Éponine paused for the briefest of moments as she walked, hesitant when the figure didn't move an inch. The closer she got to the person, the more detail she could see; it was a man, that was certain, quite a tall one, muscular. Then his facial features all seemed to make sense and she knew exactly who it was.

"Bahorel?" she said, confused.

"Éponine," the man greeted her. "Did I scare you?"

"No," she said, not entirely honest. "What are you doing?"

"Looking for someone," he said. "And I could ask you the same question. Shouldn't you be furnishing your new apartment?"

"I was, but then Gavroche ran off," she said. "Have you seen him?"

"No," Bahorel said, shaking his head. "Sorry. But to be honest, I wasn't looking for him so I might have missed him."

"Who are you looking for?" Éponine asked, fidgeting with the key she had been carrying around with her during her search.

"Enjolras," Bahorel replied, with a heavy sigh. "We've not seen him since you left the Guardian building and he went outside to speak to you. We have no idea where he is."

Maybe her words had hit him harder than she'd thought, Éponine thought to herself. Outwardly, she said, "I haven't seen him, but I'll keep an eye out for him whilst I look for Gavroche, if you do the same for me?"

"Of course," Bahorel said. "If I see Gavroche, I'll tell him to get back to you."

"Thank you," she said. "Same, if I see Enjolras." She wasn't sure he'd actually want to speak to her, but she could only try.

"I'll let you go," Bahorel said. "See you soon, Éponine."

He edged past her and carried on down the street she had just come from. She herself turned left out of the street, which to her looked just like the last one. Now she had to look out for Enjolras too. But it was hard, in the dark. Everything blurred into each other, and nothing looked right.

She wandered aimlessly for another hour or so, still not quite sure where she was or where she was going. Then she looked up and realised she was stood outside the Guardian's building.

She stared at it for a few moments and wondered what she should do. The words from Éléonore echoed in her head, reminding her that they'd offered to help her if she needed. And then she wondered whether Gavroche, who had apparently felt comfortable in this building, might have come back to it.

Biting her lip, she knocked on the door.

XXX

It was not Éléonore who answered the door but a young man named Nicolas. She asked to see Éléonore, and was invited to sit in one of their waiting rooms until the woman could see her.

She was waiting a total of ten minutes; Éponine was bored enough to count. Then Éléonore came in. She was wearing a yellow dress today, and her hair was loose instead of the bun she'd had it styled in the last time Éponine had seen her. "Hello, Éponine," she said, giving her a sunny smile. "Is everything okay? It's quite late…"

"I can't find Gavroche," Éponine blurted with no pleasantries. "I've been looking for him since I woke up –"

"You went to sleep?" Éléonore crossed the room and sat on the sofa beside Éponine.

"We made a sofa," Éponine said. "We were tired."

"Sometimes happens," Éléonore said, nodding. "So you fell asleep…"

"Yes, and I woke up and Gavroche wasn't there." Éponine ran the hand that wasn't clutching her key through her hair. "I'm sorry, but as I said, I've been looking for him all day and I didn't know what else to do, where else I could look. Can you help me?"

"I'm surprised you didn't get yourself completely lost, just wandering," Éléonore murmured. "This isn't really my area –"

Éponine felt herself deflate, but the other woman wasn't finished speaking.

"But," Éléonore said, clearly seeing Éponine's disappointment, "My shift finishes in three minutes, so I can help you then. I can conjure us a lantern and we can carry on looking together. I know these streets better and I can think of a few places he might have gone that you wouldn't know about, being so new."

"Thank you," Éponine said. "I know he can't come to any harm…"

"That doesn't mean you can't worry," Éléonore said. "I don't think you're wrong to look for him, Éponine. As independent as Gavroche likes to be, he's still a child and your little brother. These feelings are only natural."

She patted Éponine's knee, and then smiled. "Come on. I think my shift is over by now…"