I can't say how much I appreciate all the readers who have stuck with this story for so long. I know I've been bad about updating, but writing this final chapter was hard. I really did not want to kill Eponine after spending so much time with her, but I've said from the beginning that this fic would follow the canon plot. There are so many fics out there already where Eponine survives the barricades in some way, and I didn't want to go in that direction - although I can sure understand the temptation to now!

In this chapter, I tried again to not repeat what we see in the musical, but to add something new to Eponine's story. This one draws some inspiration from Life After Life, by Kate Atkinson, a book with a lot of death scenes (although it's not as bleak as that description might make it sound).

When Eponine was eighteen, she died.

She never returned to her old home at the Gorbeau House after the argument with her father. The fear that she felt at first, at being out in the world on her own, vanished quickly, like an alley cat startled away by a noise. So what if she didn't have a home to go to anymore? She had always been better off outside those walls than in them. It was a kind, warm summer's day in June, and Eponine wandered through Paris for most of the day, stopping sometimes to rest beside the Seine and think. So what if she wandered wherever she wanted or lingered for as long as she pleased? Her time was completely her own now. Mine, Eponine thought greedily, a little smile on her lips. Mine, all mine.

The freedom was exhilarating, in a strange way. Never again would she have to see her father's ugly face. Never again would she have to lie awake in dread, listening to him coming home late. Never again would she have to do what he told her to or duck his fists.

Eponine slept that night in a little Catholic church in Chaillot. She had expected its heavy front doors to be locked, but she pulled the handle anyway - what did she have to lose anymore? - and when the door swung open, it gave her another thrilling rush. Perhaps her luck was turning around. She quickly slipped into the very last pew and laid down. It was hard and narrow, but she'd slept on worse, and this church smelled lovely - like incense, far better than her parents' rooms had ever smelled.

Eponine tucked her thin arm under her head and closed her eyes, and she'd nearly fallen asleep when she heard somebody walking down the main aisle of the church, coming closer. For a moment, she felt a rush of cold fear - what if her father had come after her? What if he'd followed her here? But no, it couldn't be him; the footsteps were too light, and she hadn't heard the church door open. Out of habit, though, she laid perfectly still and prayed to whoever might be listening that the person coming wouldn't notice her. But then the footsteps stopped right in front of her pew, and Eponine could feel eyes on her. She waited for them to ask her what she was doing or yell at her to get out.

But neither one happened. Instead, a soft hand gently touched her hair, and a woman's voice murmured, "Poor child."

Eponine was confused for a second, wondering what child the woman could possibly be talking about, and then she realized with a pang that she meant her. She was the child, and that made her feel strange - how long had it been since anyone had thought of her as a child?

The woman's footsteps went away before Eponine could do anything, but they soon returned again, and Eponine felt a soft blanket being spread over her. She opened her eyes and raised her head a bit, and there was an old woman in a nun's habit actually leaning over her, tucking the blanket around her, even though it was a warm night.

She was so taken aback by this kindness that she couldn't speak for a moment, and she wondered again if this all might be a dream. "W-why are you doing this for me?" Her voice sounded small beneath the high, vaulted ceiling of the church.

The old nun smiled and touched Eponine's hair again, and her hands were the perfect opposite of her father's - soft and gentle, where his were always rough and full of hurt. She answered almost reverently, as if she were praying, "We love because he first loved us."

The blanket smelled of incense, like the church, and a peaceful feeling settled over Eponine as she lay on the pew. Her future, which had once seemed so narrow and bleak to her - limited to a life of petty crime like her father's - suddenly felt full of possibilities. Perhaps she could find an order of nuns to take her in. Of course, Eponine didn't think that she believed in God, but she could pretend to pray and nobody would ever know the difference. Their lifestyle had its appeal: they had clean, soft hands, and they probably always smelled nice. Besides, her father would never look for her among them. Or perhaps she could stowaway on a ship in the docks and wake up the next morning in a whole other part of France. She'd probably be no worse off anywhere else than she was here in Paris. Her life, like her time, was her own now.

The next day, on an impulse, Eponine decided to join Marius and his friends at their barricades. She didn't believe in their cause, but her thoughts last night had left her in a generous mood, and she thought she could be of help to them. Marius and the others didn't have the kind of life experience that she did. Most of them, especially that blonde one, Enjolras, their leader, were rich boys who had never known any real hardship, yet who still believed that they could change the world with their revolution. Eponine wondered if it was easy to believe in yourself like that when you'd been raised by a different kind of father.

The gunshot rang out as she was climbing up the front of the barricades. It seemed like a long time to Eponine between hearing the shot, and feeling the sharp, terrible pain in her back, and understanding what it meant. She suspected that her father had somehow fired that shot, even though she knew that he was staying well away from the barricades. But she grit her teeth and didn't cry out, just in case he might be listening. She wouldn't risk giving the old bastard the satisfaction.

Marius caught her in his arms when she collapsed on the other side of the barricade. "Eponine, what's wrong? Eponine... you're hurt! Oh, God..." But she couldn't on his voice - were her ears ringing? - and then she was on her back, looking up at Marius's face and the narrow, overcast strip of sky between two buildings, just as a light rain began to fall.

The rain seemed to wash something out of her eyes, and the make-believe fantasies that she had seen last night melted away. What had she been thinking by coming here? What had she been thinking in the church? Her future wasn't full of possibilities. She wasn't anyone important, anyone with potential. She was a nobody, a gamine from the streets with no family, no home, no education to speak of.

Then, just before her eyes fell closed, Eponine caught a whiff of something sweet over the smells of gunpowder and blood. She thought at first that it might be fresh flowers... but no, there couldn't be any flowers near this barricade. She realized that it was incense, still clinging to her from sleeping in the church last night. It seemed so ridiculous that she looked up into Marius's stricken face and almost smiled. So much of her life had reeked of grime and beer and her father's sour smell, but now at the end of it, here she was smelling as pleasant as a Catholic church. The smell seemed to whisper to her that she was wrong, that she wasn't a nobody or a fool.

Her old Bible had talked of angels and heaven, and if they really were any such place, Eponine hoped that this smell would still be on her when she got there. Then perhaps the angels would mistake her for somebody else's daughter, and they would let her in.