A/N: I watched the 2012 movie, and loved the scene where Gavroche delivers Marius's letter to Jean Valjean. I wrote this to give them more father-son interaction.
I played with the timeline a little bit so I could have Valjean be at the barricade to comfort Gavroche when Éponine died.
Also, writing the way Gavroche speaks (he's French, why does he speak with a Cockney accent?) is hard, so I half-heartedly attempted to recreate it in writing. It's just hard, guys, I'm no good at writing accents phonetically.
I don't know my French currency, so I just had Valjean give Gavroche forty sous for being a messenger boy because that's how much he robbed Petit Gervais.
Gavroche wanted to get back to the barricade as soon as possible. Just deliver Marius's letter, and done.
At last he found the place. At his knock on the door, a man opened it. "You are here with my letter?" he asked.
"Hold on," Gavroche said. "This letter's for a lady named Cosette. You ain't no lady."
"But I am to give it to her," the man said.
"Then you know I am from the barricade?" Gavroche tested the man.
"Yes, of course," he replied.
"Right then." Gavroche held out his hand, then smiled when the man put a forty-sous piece in it. "Something for you, something for me." He handed him the letter and was about to head on his way when the man called out to him to wait.
"You stay away from there, young man," he told Gavroche.
Gavroche just smiled again and ran off. He couldn't abandon his friends at the barricade. They were more like his family! He appreciated the man's concern for him, but he could take care of himself.
The same man showed up at the barricade later that night. He was wearing a national guard uniform, but Gavroche still recognized him. "Don't shoot! I know him!" he shouted to the others. The man, who introduced himself as Fauchelevent, clapped Gavroche on the back in thanks.
Now everything was settled—-except for one important matter. Courfeyrac wouldn't let Gavroche have a gun. "You shouldn't even be here, Gav, it's too dangerous."
"But if I had a gun, I could protect myself! If you won't give me one, I'll just find one myself!" That said, he grabbed Javert's pistol. The spy wouldn't be needing it, anyway. Gavroche glared saucily at Courfeyrac, daring him to take it away from him. Courfeyrac threw up his hands and let the boy be.
A chuckle drew Gavroche's attention to the side. Monsieur Fauchelevent smiled warmly at Gavroche, stepped over, and ruffled his hair. Grantaire did that all the time, and Gavroche hated it. But this time, he only grinned at Fauchelevent.
Gavroche leaned against the wall. A single tear ran down his cheek. Éponine had been here, and he hadn't even known it! Now her body was being carried away. His sister was gone, just like that. The boy felt numb.
Monsieur Fauchelevent came over and placed a hand on Gavroche's shoulder. "I pray that is the only encounter with death you will have for a long time."
Gavroche looked up into Fauchelevent's eyes. "That girl, she's—-she was my sister. She was the only one in my family who ever showed me kindness. She—-" Gavroche found himself unable to form any more words. He was going to cry. He turned away so Fauchelevent couldn't see him.
But Fauchelevent turned him back around, knelt down, and brought him close. "Don't be ashamed to grieve."
Gavroche buried his face in Fauchelevent's jacket and let his tears flow, pretending just for a moment that this man was his father.
"Our ammunition is running low." The whisper came from Combeferre.
Gavroche peeked out through a gap in the barricade. There were plenty of dead bodies and lots of ammunition cartridges. He would fetch them. He could sneak out and be back in no time.
He was about to crawl through the gap when he heard Courfeyrac. "What are you doing?"
"I'm going to fill up a basket with ammunition!" Gavroche called.
"Don't you see the grapeshot?" Courfeyrac cried.
Gavroche did see the grapeshot, and he was nervous, but he tried to keep his voice cheerful. "Well, then it is only raining!" He remembered Éponine's last words. "Rain can't hurt me now!"
He emerged from the gap despite the loud warnings of Courfeyrac, and practically everyone else behind the barricade. His heart was beating wildly in his chest. But he had to stay focused on his mission. To keep his courage up, he began to sing.
Shots flew around him as he made his way from body to body. None ever hit him, though, and he kept singing. He almost felt immune to the gunfire that only hit the corpses on the street. "Ha! They are killing my dead men for me!" Gavroche exclaimed, nearly believing his own charade of bravery.
Then the warning shots ceased to be warning shots. A bullet struck him in the shoulder. Gavroche bit his tongue against the burning pain, pausing in his song. But then he continued again, moving faster now, singing louder and more defiantly. He was more afraid than ever now that he had been hit, but he couldn't give up. They couldn't make him!
The boy's song stopped abruptly at the next gunshot. He tottered, and fell.
Jean Valjean took the young boy's body in his arms. He needed to get away from this nightmarish place of death. If a twelve-year-old boy could die here, nobody else was safe.
The Corinthe seemed to present itself as the place for the dead tonight. Valjean made his way to the building, where the other martyrs had been laid. Gavroche was so light in his arms. He looked like he was sleeping. Valjean thought of when Cosette was just a wee thing. She would often fall asleep when it started to get late, and he would carry her up to bed. If only Gavroche had merely fallen asleep! He would wake in the morning, when this nightmare was over, and be his happy-go-lucky self again.
Valjean stepped through the doors into the main room, full of people who used to go there regularly, yet devoid of life. He said a prayer that those who had died tonight would know peace, and that those who were left would be saved. Having done this, he placed Gavroche beside the body of his sister.