Chapter Five

A/N: Thank you to lonewolfblood13, Miri the Wildmage, PhantomFandom, Christine Eponine, NanLikesEmmie-Bear, Jade and Mary-Anne for reviewing the last chapter. You're great!

As her eyes flickered open and the pounding in her head became more evident, Éponine came to realise that she was no longer in the streets where she had fallen.

The room around her was white in colour, with large, oval shaped windows and soft netted curtains. It was quiet and airy, and the young brunette could not help but think that she was in Heaven at last. 'No.' she told herself. 'This cannot be Heaven. If it were, I would feel Marius' love for me beating along with my heart. But I don't.'

But if she was not in Heaven, as she had first thought, then where could she be? Éponine had never once been in such a pure, clean looking place, not even when she had lived in the lap of luxury at her father's inn, during her early childhood. At least, before everything had gone wrong.

Suddenly, her location hit Éponine like a ton of bricks crashing into her gut. She was in a hospital. It seemed that her father had finally done enough to cripple her, the young woman summarised, bringing the stabbing ache in her stomach into the equation.

After a moment, she remembered the true reason for her pain, as memory after memory swamped her puzzled mind. The barricades, the rebellion, the message to Cosette… and the gunshot she had intercepted, saving Marius from death, and almost causing it for herself as she did so. By all rights, she should have died, when the bullet pierced her hand, stomach and back, but she did not. 'Maybe it would have been better for everyone if I had done.'

Suddenly, Éponine heard a faint patter of patent shoes against the cold tile of the ward floor and instinctively closed her eyes, not quite sure why she did so, as her face was turned in the opposite direction to the doorway anyway, although her body was not, due to the doctor's wishes not to aggravate her wounds any further, for fear that it would slow their healing.

The footsteps seemed to pause a fair few feet away from her bedside, as she heard no breathing from above her, nor was she covered by a shadow. Despite the fact that she so wished to do so, the brunette restrained the urge to turn and face the figure, to ascertain their identity and if they were indeed a friend or a foe. She was still a rebel, injured or not, and those that remained in the National Guard were still hunting for any survivors.

Though she could hardly hear anything above the sound of her own thumping heartbeat, the young woman specifically heard the sound of a heavy sigh come from the figure's mouth, a sigh filled with hurt, guilt and regret, though why anyone, other than a select few, would feel those emotions in relation to her, Éponine could only guess about.

Of all the people she had known in her lifetime, only a sparse amount of them could have felt guilt towards her. Her father could have done, had he changed his personality immensely over the couple of days, but he surely would not have let out such an obvious sigh, as he would still wish to keep his emotions to himself, no matter what changes had been made to him. It could also have been her mother, she supposed, but then quickly decided against that also, as the sigh had been far too masculine for that to have been considered an option. But then who else could it have been? Only one other had any cause to feel guilty at the injuries she had sustained, but it was not possible for that man to be the one stood over her at that moment. Was it?

Unable to resist the temptation, Éponine slightly opened one eye, ignoring the fact that she had her back to the one who now cast a distinct male shadow over the very edge of her bedside, and thus that he could not see her face at all. She could not see him either, of course, but could tell a few details from his shadow that she could not have possibly done with her eyes shut, as all her common sense told her absolutely.

He seemed to be quite tall, from what she could tell from the absence of light cast over her supposedly sleeping form, and had tousled hair, strays flying up from his head, giving him the look of a rather mad scientist who had been too long hanging around balloons and the like. It was almost comical to see, even though Éponine had not actually witnessed the style of his hair for herself, only through shadow, but even so.

'It looks as if he hasn't slept for days, judging by his hair.' the young woman mused, tilting her head slightly further into the pillows, though not far enough to have been noticed by the man. 'Or as if he has woken every morning and not even bothered to put a comb through his hair, because he just wanted to get through the day. Like I used to do.'

Suddenly, another thought struck her. The comparison of the man, both in looks, habits and reactions to the man she had used to know had lead the brunette to only one conclusion, the only possible person that it could be standing above her. It was too great a similarity for her to possibly be wrong.

Unable to stand the tension any longer, the girl turned her head, ignoring the thumping pain within her very mind as she did so, along with the aggravating wound searing in her stomach, but still she persevered, her curiosity, her lust for knowledge pushing her forwards through the pain.

When she had fully turned, though she had been wishing to see the face that she did, Éponine could still not believe her eyes. She surely must have been dreaming, this could not possibly have been real. She could hardly summon the strength to whisper his name, but did so the moment she could find her voice.

"Marius."

A/N: And so they finally meet! Please review!