Notes: I was going to post this as a one-shot, but, merde, it turned out really long, so I've decided to split it. I'm not done writing the second part yet, because I'd like some input on the tone and premise, but rest assured that I'll be updating as soon as possible. The quotes in bold are all from Deathless by Catherynne M. Valente. And as for the main setting, Provence is really near and dear to my heart, but if I've made any mistakes, it's because I'm not a native, and I apologize in advance. I also have some other stories on my Tumblr, which you can read at ( youarethesentinels . tumblr . c*m / tagged / you-are-my-revolution ). Now, on to the fic! Corrections, suggestions, and constructive criticism would be very much appreciated.

Part One

I.

Let the truth be told: There is no virtue anywhere. Life is sly and unscrupulous, a blackguard, wolfish, severe. In service to itself, it will commit any offense. So, too, is Death possessed of infinite strategies and a gaunt nature- but also mercy, also grace and tenderness. In his own country, Death can be kind.

"How did you survive the war?"

"I don't know. I think I ran."

Old man Candeveau thought they were a strange couple, the boy and girl who moved in next door. They were both skinny things, although the girl looked like she'd been starving for much longer. She had thick black hair and a pair of dark eyes too big for her face, and a furtive manner that made it seem like she was ready to disappear at any second.

The boy was tall and handsome, obviously bourgeois, if not outright aristocracy. He moved with a certain careful grace even though his right arm was slung in a cast. He had high cheekbones and an aquiline nose, but these sharp features were softened by the locks of golden hair perpetually falling into his blue eyes.

They arrived by carriage one sun-soaked morning in the last week of June, with only three valises between them. Candeveau was tending to his garden when he saw them coming up the path, beyond the white picket fence that separated his property from theirs.

"Good morning!" he cheerfully called out over the deep purple asters and bright yellow Spanish Brooms.

The girl shrank back. The boy frowned. They didn't spare Candeveau another glance as they continued walking to their front door.

"Let me hold one of those," Candeveau heard the girl say when they passed by him, gesturing to the two valises in the boy's uninjured hand. "You're going to drop one any second." She had a coarse and raspy voice, all rude inflections and snappishness.

"I am not an invalid," the boy tersely replied. In contrast to hers, his drawl was cultured, his pitch smooth.

"Silly me, I didn't realize that sling was only a fashion statement-"

The rest of the argument was lost when the door shut firmly behind them. Candeveau packed up his shears and brought the news of the new arrivals to the rest of his household, which, now that the children had all grown up and left, included only one other person.

"What brings them here?" Candeveau's wife asked him while she was churning the butter. "Did they elope?"

"I don't think so," Candeveau replied. "I saw wedding bands."

His wife sniffed. "They're criminals."

"My dear, let's not jump to conclusions!" cried the old man.

"If it's not a forbidden love affair, then they're hiding from the law," Madame Candeveau retorted. "Why else would they come to Provence? Nothing ever happens here."

The house was small and rather drafty. Its purchase had been arranged by Enjolras' family's secretary as a secret favor for the prodigal son, and there had been no opportunity to ascertain the presence of a fireplace or, for that matter, another bed.

"No wonder the old owner gave this place up so cheap," griped Éponine.

Surprise momentarily flickered across Enjolras' pale face, as if he were perturbed that a street rat could have a roof over her head and still find something to complain about.

I used to be an innkeeper's daughter, she wanted to say. I know about penny shaving, milking the cow for all it's worth, all the little tricks. And she would tell him that, if she thought he cared, but he didn't care about anything these days and she was tired of putting herself out there for people who never gave anything back. Near-death experiences made you not want to waste time.

She busied herself with unpacking the valises and putting their clothes into the wardrobe. He had been considerate enough to buy her a few dresses at their last stop; they were crude and inexpensive garments, but it had been so long since she'd had new clothes, so she ran her hands over the skirts and sleeves, savoring the texture of the clean material and the uneven pattern of the stitches. She folded his shirts and coats with less care, trying to shut out the scent that wafted from them, that combination of linen and soap that she'd come to associate with him these past few weeks.

When she was done, she closed the wardrobe with a flourish and turned back to face him. He was sitting on the edge of the bed, stiffly holding his broken arm close to his body, his glass-blue eyes roaming over the bare walls and the bare floors. He looked so much like a confused little boy in that moment that her heart gave a twinge.

"Welcome to your new world, Enjolras."

He glared at her. She almost apologized, because she hadn't meant to say it out loud, but Éponine Thénardier always finished what she started, and so she glared back.

II.

A marriage is a private thing. It has its own wild laws, and secret histories, and savage acts, and what passes between married people is incomprehensible to outsiders. We look terrible to you, and severe, and you see our blood flying, but what we carry between us is hard-won, and we made it just as we wished it to be, just the color, just the shape.

"How did you survive the war?"

"It's amazing how big the space of a few centimeters can be."

To satisfy her own curiosity, Madame Candeveau brought over a pot of lamb daube and a fresh-baked loaf of fougasse. The girl, who introduced herself as Éponine, received these gifts with enthusiasm, dipping great hunks of bread into the stew and cramming them into her little mouth with such speed that Madame Candeveau had to restrain the motherly instinct to admonish her for not chewing properly. The girl wore a wedding ring on her finger, and you didn't go around telling married women how to eat.

The boy, who called himself Enjolras, was more fastidious, all sparing sips and small bites, his left hand quivering only slightly as it brought spoonfuls of stew and pieces of bread to his lips. He had the table manners of a gentleman, while his wife gobbled food down like a heathen.

They really were a strange couple.

"Whatever happened to your arm, Monsieur?" asked Madame Candeveau, gesturing to the sling.

The boy and the girl exchanged looks across the table.

"Factory accident," he said.

"Riding accident," she said at the same time.

They scowled at each other in annoyance.

Madame Candeveau blinked. She was losing the plot more often in her old age. "Well, which is it, dears?"

Enjolras' brow creased, but Éponine's back relaxed against her chair. "He fell off his horse on the way to the factory," she replied, licking stew from her fingers.

"What a rotten stroke of luck," tutted Madame Candeveau. "And I take it you came here to recuperate?"

"That is correct, Madame," answered the boy.

"We might stay longer, though," Éponine chimed in. "I love it here already. It's so much cleaner than Paris!"

"Oh, are you from Paris?" The old woman shuddered. "Nasty business, that uprising."

Enjolras set his spoon down. "Nasty business," he echoed in a dull monotone. "Yes."

"Those poor, misguided schoolboys," continued Madame Candeveau. "I have sons their age. How could they have thought it was worth it?"

"They died for nothing," Enjolras agreed.

"I wouldn't say nothing." Éponine seemed to be chewing more viciously than before. "They died because they believed, so-"

"So, nothing," the boy finished for her.

Quick as a flash, she changed from irritated to hostile. "How convenient of you to think that now!" she snapped.

Sensing the beginning of an argument, Madame Candeveau excused herself from the table and slipped out the door, leaving them to it. Given their ages, they couldn't have been married for long, and it was natural for a young couple to bicker in the early days. She resolved, with the benevolence of someone who was an old hand at the game, to give Éponine words of consolation and advice the next time they spoke.

After their neighbor left, Enjolras braced himself, expecting Éponine to whirl upon him in righteous indignation. When she didn't immediately speak up, he assumed she was merely summoning all the anger in her sinews.

Instead, she mopped up the last of the daube with the last of the fougasse and raised an eyebrow at him. "A factory accident?" She managed to sound incredulous even through a mouthful of bread and stew. "No one will believe that. I mean, look at you, Enjolras!"

My father owns a factory, he thought. He used to take me with him whenever he visited it. He was grooming me to head the business one day, but I became more interested in the plight of the workers. He could tell her all of that, but the memories would only pull him under. Back then, he had been so confident, so full of hope…

His breath hitched as phantom pain blossomed on his arms and his spine. Blood and bullets, glass and splinters, bolted doors and windows slamming shut-

"I am going for a walk," he announced abruptly.

She burped in response.

The rain is in his eyes, so at first she is silver-stained and wraith-like, and he thinks he's seeing a ghost. She turns to run, but he grabs hold of her arm and pulls her beneath the awning of a nearby tavern. Her skin is cold and wet, solid to the touch. He can only stare at her in disbelief.

"You're alive," he says dumbly.

"Let go of me," she hisses. "Monsieur, please, I can't be seen with you! The gendarmerie is on the hunt, they're out for your blood."

"I saw you die!" He raises his voice, and she glances around the street in panic before she stops struggling, obviously not wanting to call attention to their little scene. "I saw you die," he repeats, more softly this time. "You were the first to fall-"

"I'm good at getting up," she mutters. Half of her face is cast in shadow by the tavern lights; the other half is spiked with the glint of raindrops. She looks at him through hooded eyes. "And, apparently, so are you."

III.

You were so near death that ghosts crowded around you, weeping silver tears, waiting for you with such smiles. You humans, you know, whoever built you sewed irony into your sinews.

"How did you survive the war?"

"They let me live, because that was the worst possible thing they could do to me."

By the time Enjolras returned from his walk, Éponine had already failed at cleaning the floors, dropped a plate, and spent a good five minutes sneezing after she tried to dust under the bed. Leaning against the open doorway, he registered the overturned mop and the shards of porcelain with a nonplussed expression, while she gingerly hid the broken whisk broom behind the folds of her skirt.

"I'm not much for housekeeping," she admitted.

"So I see," he evenly replied. "Unfortunately, Mademoiselle, neither am I."

"Stop calling me that. I'm supposed to be your wife, remember?"

"I apologize." He pushed himself away from the door and walked over to her, grabbing the mop by the handle and returning it to its proper place with his uninjured hand. "Not all of us are well-versed in the art of deceit."

Well-versed in the art of deceit? she silently repeated to herself. Who says things like that?

Well, Enjolras, of course. The marble statue who didn't have time for women but never met a big word he didn't like, the revolutionary who had charged into the jaws of hell but was somehow spat back out, friendless and laden with guilt, formerly the figurehead of the student societies, currently the most wanted man in all of Paris.

Her fake husband.

As he helped her clean up, she couldn't resist glancing from her wedding band to his. Before leaving the city, they'd bought the rings from a seedy shop owner Éponine knew, because an unmarried boy and girl living together would cause uproar in a small rural village. In the time before, Enjolras wouldn't have cared, would have scoffed at these outdated moral codes, but this was the new world, and he was done fighting against the system.

"You have to get out of here," she tells him, her voice spreading through the raindrops like vapor, her hair shrouded in pearly mist. "It won't be long before they catch you. They're angry, Monsieur. They won't show you mercy."

"Perhaps that is for the best," he says. "Perhaps I will find Patria in the gallows."

"You don't understand," she snaps. "The gallows would be the mercy. You're headed for the chain gang."

His hand falls away from her arm and she takes the opportunity to flee, as the girl named Éponine always will, bursting into his life like the crack of thunder and leaving again just as quickly. He watches her slim form disappear into the storm and the night, into the dark streets who embrace her as if she was their child.

He found a job as a clerk for one of the local vineyards. She started working at the village bookshop. The old couple next door habitually sent over vegetables and dairy, and Madame Candeveau took it upon herself to teach Éponine how to cook. Enjolras was the unwilling subject of these experiments, stifling a grimace as he choked down rock-hard socca and overly mushy ratatouille, keeping his opinions to himself under the weight of Éponine's large, hopeful eyes.

"Your family isn't too far from here, right?" she asked him one night as they got ready for bed.

He nodded. He had debated using an alias, but Enjolrases were a dime a dozen in the southern regions, and the bourgeois timbre of his name had all but guaranteed him the position at the vineyard.

"You should visit them sometime," Éponine continued, shrugging off her robe. Her nightgown was modest in cut and length, but the material was sheer enough to hint at the curves underneath.

He looked away. "I closed that door a long time ago." His father had actually been the one to do the closing, with dramatic roars of "I have no son!" that would have been funny if they hadn't been so, so meant.

She slipped into her side of the bed, and something about the way the candlelight caught her face made him wonder out loud, "Do you miss your family?"

"Gavroche was the closest thing I had," she whispered.

He heard the words she didn't say: He died at your barricade.

They didn't speak any more that evening. He eased himself into the bed and she automatically turned to the wall, keeping as wide a space between them as the small mattress would allow. He blew out the candle, and their little house was plunged into darkness and silence.

IV.

No, not like this, when I have not seen you without your skin on, when I know nothing, when I am not safe. Not you, whose name all my nightmares know.

"How did you survive the war?"

"You left me for dead. I still haven't forgiven you for that, by the way."

It was August in Provence. The sky was the clear and brilliant shade of blue that made young men feel immortal, and this filled Enjolras with a vague sense of trepidation. He avoided looking at the horizon over the lush green vineyards, because it was so endless that it made him feel like he was never going to die. Out of this refusal to be distracted, he blazed through his work and would invariably be done before dusk. Meanwhile, Éponine usually closed up the bookshop, and she came home in the evenings smelling of vellum and dried lavender.

It was during this hot, dry season that his body began to develop the annoying tendency to gravitate towards hers in bed. She would poke him awake in the middle of the night, complaining about the warmth of his arm wrapped around her waist, or his leg slung over her thighs. He would grumpily roll away, covered in sweat, and in the mornings he was often in need of an ice-cold bath, his brain fogged with the memory of her skin and her husky voice.

"Apollo lives!" Enjolras would imagine Jehan declaring in satisfaction. "The boy is not a marble statue, after all!"

This line of thought would sober him, and his blood would cool into nothingness. Dead, they were all dead.

"How did you break your arm, anyway?" Éponine asked him as she disposed of the last of the slings once he was fully healed.

"I can't remember," he replied.

Perhaps part of him was sorry to see the slings go, because she'd taken to doing up his buttons or unfastening them, and sometimes her fingers grazed his chest or his sides and touched off hidden chords within him, but, on the whole, he was relieved, because she was younger than he was and it made him feel like a lecher.

But the summer sun tanned her skin and brought out her freckles and the brown in her hair. Three square meals a day softened her sharp angles, added roundness to cheeks that had once been gaunt and hollow. Her back straightened and she carried herself much taller these days. She bloomed with the Provencal wildflowers; she was now more woman than girl.

Enjolras didn't know whether to decry these changes, or to welcome them. She seemed so much happier now, even as he descended further into the chambers of ennui. He supposed it had been a good deed on his part to take her away from the gutters of Paris, but she was a living reminder of the passage of time. She would hum to herself as she haphazardly organized the cupboards; she would forget herself enough to start skipping down the grassy paths, and it would strike him, so sharply that he almost winced, that life was continuing on after his revolution. They were growing older, but his friends and her brother would always stay the same.

"The most important rule of battle," says Courfeyrac, his eyes shining and his smile bright, batting away the tricolor as it grazes his face in a vivid ripple of wind and cloth, "is that no one gets left behind."

"But you did it," Enjolras said out loud. He'd been on his way home when that memory set in. The sun sank over the green and purple vineyards, and the sky deepened into azure. "All of you. You left me."

It was nearly eight in the evening and she still hadn't returned home from work. He took to pacing the floor, straining his ears for the sound of her footsteps, even though he knew it was in vain; Éponine always moved more quietly at night, by habit and instinct.

When did you know that about her? he asked himself, frowning. When did you start to worry? When did you get used to this?

After several more minutes passed, a frustrated breath escaped his lips. He donned his coat and grabbed the oil lamp on his way out the door, and in doing so he almost ran into her as she made to enter the house.

"Hello." She blinked at him. "Where are you going?"

He grasped at the first excuse that came to mind. "Out for a walk."

"At this time of night?"

"Yes. Is there a problem?"

He was a bad liar, and they both knew it. She bit her lip to hide her grin. For a while they just stood there on the front stoop of their house with him holding the lamp above their heads, veiling her face in gold while his remained covered in shadow. The air was full of starlight and the mossy hum of insect wings and the snow-white waves of Candeveau's orchids as they stirred in the balmy Mediterranean breeze.

"We got a new shipment of books today, so I had to sort them," she said at last. "And then Monsieur Anouilh insisted on buying me dinner because I worked overtime."

All Enjolras knew about Éponine's boss was that he was a bachelor in his early thirties, but he found himself unable to think highly of a man who would keep someone else's… non-wife from coming home at a rational hour. "It is dangerous for a girl to travel the roads alone at this time-"

"Oh, Monsieur Anouilh offered to escort me, but I told him I could manage," she blithely interrupted. "It's only a short distance, and I can see very well in the dark, as you know."

"From now on, I will escort you." The words came out stiff and clipped. "I will pick you up after your shift, and we will walk home together."

She tilted her head, regarding him with eyes darker than ink-stains. He tried to keep his features impassive, because he did not want her pity or her condescension, but whatever she saw on his face made her nod thoughtfully, her gaze never dropping from his.

"All right," she said.

The first time Thénardier hits her after the revolution, Éponine hits back. She rounds on him in a whirl of sharp fingernails and knees, and doesn't stop even when he's hunkered down on the floor, shielding his scratched face and crying for mercy. Her mother tries to pry her loose, but Éponine uses her elbows to break the grip, possessed by some unnatural strength, and grabs a chair and slams it down on her father's bent back. Her cheek is still smarting from his punch, which had also knocked out another one of her teeth, and as her tongue pokes the new empty space, she is seized by unbelievable fury because it's yet another thing that has been taken away from her.

"I survived the barricade!" she screams at her cowering parents. "I will survive you!"

She leaves for good, their curses still ringing in her ears. She has no idea where she's going, but her heart and her feet are light with what feels like freedom, and she's walking so fast that, when she turns the corner, she has to bring herself up short to stop from crashing into Monsieur Enjolras.

She takes in his black coat, his boots, the valise in his uninjured hand. "You're leaving?" she asks, stupidly because of course he is- she'd been the one who told him he had to go- but she's also unexpectedly sad, because after his departure she will be the only living soul in Paris who had been at the Rue de la Chanvevrie on that day.

"I am going to Provence," he tells her, and, although she's never been there, the name has a lovely lilt to it. His glance flickers the bruise on her cheek, and in that moment she comes to a decision.

"Need company?" Éponine asks, grinning even though her fingernails are ragged and one side of her face is still sore.

To Be Concluded