AU where Marius dies and Eponine lives.

Cosette's eyes hurt.

It's really the only thought she's all right with recognizing in her mind. It hurts, to grieve. It hurts to be alone, to have something wonderful stolen from you before anything can come of it. It hurts when things end.

There are all the typical things that happen when someone of means dies. Marius's grandfather speaks kindly enough, but with the same stern disapproval, about his grandson's life, how short, how wasted it was. No one present says the words "fool" or "traitor" out loud. She wishes they would, to keep them from ringing in her ears as they talk around the rumors and disdain.

She wants to imagine she feels dead inside, but that would be too simple. Being dead would be easier. There's a pain in her chest that she hasn't felt since her mother went away and left her at the Thenardiers' inn. It aches, so softly but persistently that she feels it may be killing her silently from the inside.

Her father stands beside her, but he broods as well. She doesn't want to speak to him. Speaking is difficult. There's a carriage outside for them, and she goes ahead of him, wanting out of the church and away from the people.

She feels someone's gaze on her as she leaves the church. She glances around.

Their eyes meet. Eponine is at least one hundred feet away, but the question in her eyes is still unmistakable. Cosette, despite herself, nods, and draws away from her father. "A moment," she half-requests of him as she moves towards Eponine.

"You're alive," Cosette starts, once they're closer, and color rises to her face. "I mean... I had heard – "

"They shot me," Eponine says, and bites her lip. "Didn't kill me though."

"Yes." She looks at the other girl as she stands there, weary, weak, alone. "I'm glad," she says, uncertain.

Eponine scratches at her bandages in an automatic motion, and frowns. "Thank you," she says. "For... he was happy, at the end. Because he was going to be with you."

Cosette stills. "Yes," she says, softly, daring the poor girl to go on. "I suppose. I suppose there was that."

Eponine looks hurt. She deserves it, for that cruelty, unintentional or not, though who knows why she's feeling pain as well now. "Can I," she begins to say, then her cheeks go red, "Cosette, if I could speak to you in private – "

Something sparks in her, an irritation. The world has never been fair, but that shouldn't discount the exacting of fairness when the world chooses to be unbelievably unfair and someone adds salt to the wound. "You'll address me as mademoiselle."

Eponine stares at her feet, then. "Yes, mademoiselle."

Cosette thinks, numbly, that she should have been a bride. That's what should have happened. "Yes," she says, in slow answer to the girl who might have been a sister to her, in another life. "You know my house. Come there, tonight, when you can. I'll be looking out at the garden waiting for you."

Eponine nods. "I'll see you then," she says, decisively, and leaves her there.

Cosette's father is watching her from beside the carriage. She approaches it as though nothing's happened. "Let's go, Papa," she encourages him, and steps into the carriage before him.

Supper is almost entirely silent that night. Cosette can hear her father pacing in the room beside hers as they retire, and she looks out her window, waiting for her guest, and whatever else Eponine might have to say for herself after all that's happened.

"Cosette." Her father is standing in the door, only feet from where she sits, thin and tired and lonely. "There are things I should tell you."

"Yes," she says, faintly. There's movement out beyond the gate, if her eyes aren't fooling her. "Not tonight, Papa. Please."

"Please," he echoes to her, and moves to her side.

Cosette shakes her head, shuts her eyes, blocks him out. "I can't."

"I understand." He rises, and she can feel him reaching to touch her, but he hesitates, and she's somehow grateful. She feels as though she might fall apart if she's touched, if this becomes real, physical, and more than just a terrible dream. "You should sleep, my dear."

He knows she hasn't. She doesn't intend to, not for long. With sleep come the dreams, and with the dreams comes the waking. "Yes, Papa."

He nods to her, and she waits for him to withdraw to his room. It's then that she goes downstairs, to the garden, to the gate. There is a woman there, and it must be Eponine, though her face is shaded and she does her best to be hidden. She wraps her fingers around the metal of the gate and calls, "Eponine!"

Eponine looks up as though there's been a shot. She draws closer to the gate, and nods when Cosette meets her gaze. "I remember you," she says, softly. "I remember what my family... how we treated you." Her breath hitches. "I missed you, I know we treated you terribly, I know you have a good life now, but I wished I could have a sister, Cosette - "

Cosette thought she was all out of tears, but they threaten to spill out again. "We were never sisters," she hisses. "We were never a family."

"I know that," Eponine says hastily, her face dropping, her eyes shining with tears as well. "I would never wish this life on you. I'm glad that you're free of all this."

She frowns at Eponine. "I don't understand," she whispers impatiently. "Why are you..."

"I wanted to say goodbye," Eponine says. She presses her head against the gate, closing her eyes tightly, and Cosette, despite herself, touches the hand she has wrapped around the metal. Her eyes open instantly. "I'm leaving."

Cosette blinks, her fresh tears stilled. "How..."

"I don't know. Whatever I have to do, I have to get out of here. It's poison, Cosette. Just living here, in my world... it's poison. It's killing me. I can't do it much longer."

She thinks of her mother. Of ten francs there and twenty more the next week. Of letters she could never read but spoke of love. This is the poison that killed her mother, a life never good enough to get by. "Give me a moment," she says, barely audibly, then repeats it, as Eponine looks at her with bare confusion. "I'll be right back."

"Don't go," Eponine entreats her.

Cosette's already up the steps. She takes the key, opens the gate, and takes Eponine's hands in hers. "Come with me," she says.

Eponine at first looks at her as though she's speaking another language entirely, but then a corner of her mouth lifts, and she follows Cosette up the stairs.

Like sisters, Cosette thinks, but that's not quite it. Eponine is in as much pain as she is. She may be poor, but they all wear some kind of chain. Cosette is a maiden locked in a tower out of a fairytale; Eponine is the one burdened with fate but survives all obstacles and wins in the end.

Are fairytales true? Marius was her prince, wasn't he? He saw her, he saved her, he was meant to take her away. She may not be a prisoner but traveling here to there, no friends, no family, just Papa, is so stifling that there must be something more free.

As Eponine sleeps beside her in her narrow bed, she thinks of loneliness. A prince isn't necessary. Grand rescues can be left to stories. Real life isn't fair, and doesn't end happily ever after; when you are alone, no one saves you and takes you to their kingdom where you become a queen and mother to heroes who do the same for other young princesses. You just get by.