Disclaimer:I do not own Les Miserables.

More angst for the category! MariusCosette and MariusEponine feature heavily. (Even if I'm not particularly fond of the former pairing.) Minor EnjolrasMarius if you squint. Sort of an extended narrative during the "Empty Chairs at Empty Tables" timeframe.

Enjoy!

He's stuck in a love triangle with a dead end.

And no matter how much Marius loves Cosette, he cannot stop seeing Eponine staring back at him whenever he looks at her, begging for him to hold her as she died. He did, hating himself for it, hating that after all this time; he couldn't see what was right in front of him. He feels like a failure, and strangely enough, somehow cheated. Cosette is the only reason he makes any effort to solider on, and yet the shame of his cowardice, his blindness, and eats away at him from the inside.

Unable to stand the silence of his house, Marius heads outside. It's a mistake - The city smells of gunpowder and the despair in the air is so potent he can practically taste it, like ash is coating his tongue. He wonders blindly through the grey blur, not knowing or caring where he might end up. All he wants is to forget it all.

Eventually, he finds what he was looking for.

He picks up a bottle of wine, puts it to his mouth, and drinks the entire thing.

Wine tastes bitter against his lips, but he pours it down his neck anyway, one after the other. He was never much of a drinker before, in fact, the others used to tease him about it, saying that Marius could get tipsy just by being near people who are drunk, nudging him and laughing as they said it...

And now, he sits alone at a bar, the shadows beneath his eyes dark, enough to make his face look hollow and skull-like, nothing like the young man he once was. He picks up another bottle, the same murky green as moss, and tips the entire contents down his throat. He knows he is being selfish, that he should be thinking of the woman home who loves him, but the pain of being left behind in a city of ash and bones is too much for him to bear.

Marius feels the bottle his clutching slip from his grasp and distantly hears it shatter on the hard floor.

He feels his soul do the same.

When he wakes, his mouth is dry and tastes like puke, his throat feels rough and raw from smoke and shouting, and his head is aching so much and he feels like it will split in half at any moment. He vaguely entertains the thought for a moment, imagining red bloom in the endless blur of grey.

"Here." The barman says, showing something at Marius, which he drinks unquestioningly. "If you drink like that, it could kill you."

Marius merely offers him a wan, rueful, almost sarcastic smile before bringing the mixture to his lips.

Not quite.

Eponine's eyes follow him wherever he goes. He thinks of them when it rains, of her lips parted slightly, his name dancing on them as she died, bullets draining the blood from her body and the breath from her lungs. She's under the earth now. They did not time to give her the burial that she deserved. They buried her with a single flower clasped between her cold fingers, the color bright against the almost-grey earth. It was the best they could do. Enjolras' determination after she died surprised him, but he'd always forgotten that the others knew he, too. That was Enjolras, though; Once he decided he was going to do something, not even God himself could stop him.

Marius wonders if there truly is a heaven. He wonders if his friends are nothing but rotting corpses somewhere, or if they truly are somewhere else, waiting.

Sometimes, he wonders if being left behind is a punishment.

"Why?" he croaks to the sky, which as if on cue, begins to rain. The water is so cold it stings him, and he can recall how hot his tears felt as they fell down his cheeks onto Eponine's smiling face. "Why did you spare me?"

He doesn't know if he's actually asking God or if he's just asking anybody who will listen, hoping his mysterious protector that saved him from the barricades will finally reveal themselves, tell him why they saved him and only him. He wonders if, had he been conscious, he could have saved one of them, refused to leave until he was sure his friends were safe. But then, how can he make a difference?

When did he ever make a difference?

Marius closes his eyes as a dry sob escapes his throat, half expecting the muddy earth beneath him to open up and swallow him whole.

The stars stare unblinkingly down at him when he eventually makes the long journey home. He wishes the sky was not so empty, because he feels like he is being closely watched and it makes the hairs stand on the back of his neck.

As Marius walks, he does not see any other people, and feels almost as though he is the last man on earth. His mind is still vague and cloudy from the drink, but the pain has dulled to a quiet ache in the back of his skull that he can ignore.

He wonders if this is the trick to coping with grief; Waiting for the pain to numb enough so that you can live with it without it killing you, too. Perhaps he will stop seeing ghosts if he finally acknowledges that they are there.

A shooting star rushes by, its tail a forget-me-not blue. Same color as Eponine's eyes.

It strikes Marius then that as long as he is alive, his friends are not truly, totally gone. It's of little comfort now, but he can at least hold their hopes and memories in his heart and continue on as best he can with his burden. He owes them that much. He owes Cosette and Jean Val Jean that much.

He thinks of Cosette. Her smile is what gives him the strength to make the last stretch of the journey. In his mind's eye, Eponine smiles too.

When he finally returns, his home is warm and inviting. Cosette throws herself around him, sobbing, paying no mind to the fact he is cold, damp and dirty. She makes no comment about the smell of booze on his breath or his dead-man-walking appearance. All she cares is that he's here.

"You came back." she sobs. "I thought for sure that you had gone, too!"

And as Marius embraces her back, inhaling her scent that is reminiscent of roses, he realizes he is not the only one who has watches everyone vanish. He closes his eyes and reassures Cosette with a murmur.

"Never."