Eponine, her fingers twitching and her hair mussed, was still a little shaken from the being at the barricades. When she had returned to the city centered battlefield to bring word of her delivery to Marius, a bullet from a musket had narrowly missed her chest by a mere inches after she had shoved the gun away from her beloved. And not a minute there had Marius already sent her away, much to her chagrin. He was protecting her, she knew, but he did not see that she was protecting him, that she always protected him. For that, a heavy sigh fell from her lips and into the warm night air.

But that was Marius; he was always blind. Even when all of his friends had noticed and confronted Eponine on her unrequited love for their dear companion, he had remained ever ignorant, once more oblivious to her attentions and intentions. Sometimes she thought he must be daft to not notice her affections, but a young girl in love for the first time is a being too innocent to think cruel thoughts towards anything, no matter how much his ignorance pained her. However much she ached, cried, pined, and protected, Eponine knew that Marius would never love her as anything more then a friend. Not now. Not after he had met his Cosette. He was hers now, she knew, and, in the end, there would be no escaping that thought.

But that could not stop her from pretending.

She walked the streets of night time Paris once more, taking no head to Marius' command to stay indoors during the danger, and instead pretended that her beloved walked beside her, whispering sweet comments in her ear, one arm wrapped around her waist. True, they were poor, but she dreamed herself into an elegant aristocratic woman, and he would be just as finely dressed as she was. Their fine clothes would compliment them jst as much as their souls complimented each other.

In the dimlight of the street lamps, Eponine smiled. When the imagination of Marius stood beside her, the filth of the city transformed. When he was beside her, Eponine once more loved the place she called home. With Marius, the chill of rain became warm, long dead trees bore blossoms, the river was not a place of cold and death, but a place of mist and magic. With Marius, ugliness became beauty. With Marius, Eponine became beautiful. He provided an opiate in her dull, constant pain, and no one could deny that she was addicted to his soft words and his dark curls.

As the large cathedral on the East side of Paris dolled midnight, Eponine walked the bridge above the river Seine pretending that Marius walked beside her. It was a place common with jumpers, she knew, and many times she was gaurdian over the lost souls who found themselves before the door of their own death, just about to turn the knob. She would give them a good reason as to why they should live, and, if it was raining like it was tonight, she would give them a warm place to rest from the night. She saw it simply as her duty as one of God's children to tend to others in their own crises.

Eponine undestood that many of these people would soon find their death in some other way, but she could not stand by idly while such a terrible sin was taking place in her presence. Se loved and feared God too much to let anything of the sort happen. And besides, she liked to think that some of the people she pulled back from the parapet of death still walked the Earth as she did, though she would admit to herself that she rarely saw a face familiar from such an occurrence.

Tired as she was, she would still patrol the bridge tonight with the echoes of gunshot and frantic boy's voices still pounding in her ears. And it was to some use. Even now she saw a darkly dressed man standing atop the stone railing of the bridge. Though his figure was barely discernible in the nearly nonexistent light, she saw at once that his arm was raised, outstretched towards the empty sky. He was speaking to himself.

"I am reaching, but I fall. And the stars are black and cold, as I stare into a void of a world that cannot hold. I'll escape now from that world. From that world of Jean Valjean. There is no where I can turn. There is no way to go-"

As he lifted a foot shakily from the stone mound that railed the bridge to begin his plummet to hell, his eyes closed though flickering images of the dead he had seen still swam past him, Javert felt himself being yanked backwards by the back of his frock coat. He landed against the icy ground of the cement beneath him, and his lithe body shook violently in the humidity before noticing another body splayed against the ground beside him. His eyes found his unwanted savior's, a scrawny boy with a round face, and he scowled darkly at them, making Eponine's heart begin to pound unnaturally fast.

"What is the meaning of this?" His deep voice cut through the dank night air and Eponine shuddered as greatly as any other human with sens would have.

The man she had rescued had brilliant, neatly cut red hair that had begun to prematurely gray at the temples from years of strenuous work, his skin was pale and he was clean shaven: a well groomed man. In the dim light cast by the street lamps, Eponine saw broad shoulders and a strong form. The man had a face that may have been called handsome on better circumstances. His misery and boredom sullied the fine features of his face and made everything stand out wolfishly sharp.

This man was well known to Eponine. This was Inspector Javert, a well feared and respected man of the authority. The plague of the slums. The most hated face in her household, on her street, and in her entire world. If her parents ever got wind that she had saved Inspector Javert from a watery death, it would be likely she would not be able to walk for some time.

"What is the meaning of this, young man?" He repeated with a voice that could have made the strongest man cower in fear.

Eponine had almost forgotten she was still dressed in the clothes she had worn at the barricades. It was safer to walk the streets of Paris as a man and she had kept the clothes to keep herself from harm, but now she regretted it. Perhaps the Inspector would be kinder to her if he knew he was dealing with a woman, and a young, hunger ridden one at that. She scoffed at the thought a moment later, however. She had seen the man practically spit on beggars who were near deaths dreary door. Anyways, she was not well acquainted in the man. In her starved and paranoid mind, it was incredibly likely that he was one of the men who made it safer to walk the streets of Paris as a man rather than as a woman.

The thought made her cringe.

"Your life is a gift from God. It's a sin to take away that gift." She was nearly breathless from fear of this man, and Eponine had to pause between every few words she spoke to inhale a new breath of stale air. Even in her efforts, though, when his eyes began to rake over her body, taking in her full appearance, she felt her lungs begin to ache with a terrible pain again.

"Well, it is my life. And whether or not I want to end it in sin is my choice." This fearful man spoke through gritted teeth and Eponine shuddered for the second time, her bones shaking like hollow twigs within her horribly thin body.

Javert raised a hand to strike her, an occasion quite common to Eponine as her father had believed strongly in physical discipline after times had become hard on them, and Eponine flinched before raising a minute hand to shield her face. From this involuntary movement, Eponine knocked her newsboy cap off, causing her dark tresses to tumble down from the top of her head and down her shoulders in a matted and frayed curtain.

Upon seeing this, Javert let his arm fall to his side and the rage in his face at being cheated out of his own death was replaced again by that deep, mournful sorrow that had posessed him the past few hours like a curse. His anger melted into something that made Eponine stay where she was placed by God against the damp pavement instead of running away as her entire body demanded her to do. His melancholy shocked her into a stand still, and she watched, her chest still rising up and down rapidly, as he raised his hand over his eyes as if to shield them from some dreadful sight.

"Everything is a lie." He groaned. He succeeded in repeating himself several times over and it occurred to Eponine that he must have gone mad. All his years of being fierce must have finally taken a tole on his sanity, she thought to herself. And he did seem fairly mad to her at the moment, his usually neat uniform scuffed and dirtied, his neat hair out of place, his lips still moving in a silent murmur. He was completely off his rocker.

Off his rocker and all the way off the front porch, she mused to herself.

But here was a man of the government. A respected and well dressed man. A man certain to have money. Greed is an undesirable trait in a person, but, after all, Eponine was a Thenardier. She could not help but feel a twitch of interest at the possible profit here. That filthy name plagued her with the affliction common to many people who have been trapped in the world of poverty. Above all things, however, what possessed her to do what she did next was not the sense of greed that would ignite any other, but the deep panging in her empty stomach that made her want to fall each time she stood.

His head lolled onto his shoulder like an exhausted child and Eponine stood, absentmindedly brushing off her worn trousers as her dark eyes observed his alien behaior. With a tomboyish strength, she gripped Javert's forearm and forced him to his feet, admiring the fine glint of his watch chain with a steady watch.

"Come one, Miseour. I'll get you out of this rain."

In great moments of turmoil and sadness, some souls have a tendency to bend at anyone's will. They will obey any command given them, so long as it gives them something to do. These souls often apear to be the strongest of all in day to day activities, but when something drives them to the breaking point, they become timid and weak. Such was Javert after he was granted mercy by the notorious villain Jean Valjean. His world was shaken, and he found himself behaving like those weak men and women he so hated.

This was why this proud man of the public authority followed the little cross dresser to her home: a run down, one room apartment in the slums. The sad place was completely unfurnished besides an iron bordered bed with two surprisingly clean mattresses and an old wooden stool beside a fireplace with uncharred wood already set in its gaping mouth. The place seemed to frown at him, and he found himself frowning back.

Javert suveyed this ugly room with an unjudgeing eye while standing in the corner awkwardly. He was used to seeing the poverty of the lower classes and this place was typical of the poor, but he had never lingered in one of these places for long. He also watched as the thin girl in men's clothes lit a steady fire and warmed her pair of dirt streaked hands for a moment by the hearth. After she had done this she went to the bed and withdrew one of the mattresses from beneath a layer of fabric made up by dozens of threadbare knit blankets and poorly made quilts. She dragged this mattress to the side of the room farthest from the bed and near the warmth of the lit fire.

When she was done with this, she unlaced her boots and set them by the hearth and sat back on the mattress in the corner, crossing her arms over her trousered knees, and surveyed the man.

"You're in some mix, Miseour." She said with a drawl to her enunciation, pronouncing his title as a criminal might. It was a dialect of the rough and poor, one he knew well from his work on the streets. She gestured to the bed with her thin arm, looking at him with slightly narrowed eyes as if daring him to cross to her side of the tiny flat. "You should get some sleep. I'm sure you'll be wanting to be on your way as soon as this storm clears up."

At her words, Javert registered vaguely that his men needed his command and assistance on the battle field. He found with a strange numbness peculiar to these special souls that he did not much care. He, Javert, one of the greatest officers in his time, did not care about the well being of his men. They could die for all he cared. At this realization, he felt an inexplicable sense of fear and fell back onto the bed behind him without so much as a single noise. Though some might find it relaxing, his silence unnerved her.

"Why not let me die?" He murmured, his voice bring her some sort of relief. His voice was scratchy from yelling out orders all day and he watched the shadows from the fire flicker on the ceiling, dancing a ballet of various shades of gray. His eyes ached from the day of bloodshed and horrors, but he found he could not close them and deny himself this strange dance.

"You're ill, that's all, Miseour. In a few days you'll see me in the street while on duty and you'll be thanking me." Eponine said, smiling obsequiously. Hopefully with a few francs, she added silently to herself, still watching him with a wary observation.

Though the girl who had saved his life was kind spoken, Javert did not agree with her words. As soon as he was out of her watch he would kill himself some way or another, probably in the most painful fashion he could formulate. He could not live in a world where escaped convicts spared him. It was simply out of order. He could not live in a world without order. The pain would make his last moments some of the most vivid he would ever experience.

"Come on now, Miseour. Get some sleep. I'll get you something nice to eat in the morning and you can be on your way home to your family."

Javert did not have a family. His mother had no other children that he was aware of and she had died in prison years ago. He had never known his father. His career hadn't given him time for a wife, so he had no children. He told the girl this with a solemn tongue, though Eponine could sense slight irritation behind her words as if it was her obligation to know his entire life's history.

"Well, then you can at least be on your way home." She told him with a tiny scowl.

Eponine was surprised when he nodded as she was not aware of his current, gloomy state of soul. She watched quietly as he doffed his black frock coat and dropped it to the floor, not even glancing to see where it landed. From his belt he removed a club, a dagger, and a small pistol, all of which layed all gently on top of his coat. Finally, he unlaced the shiny black boots that were specially issued to officers, placed them beside his ther items, and laid back on the little bed. It was really too small for Eponine to begin with so for Javert it seemed miniscule compared to the luxury size bed he was used to sleeping in in his fine estate.

He did not mind. He did not even realize the difference.

"Such strange things, people. I wonder, what is it we live for?" He murmured, more to himself than to anyone else.

"That depends on the person." She answered thoughtfully, not recognizing the rhetoricy of his question.

And she could not have been more truthful, but a further explanation was missing from her reply. What did Javert see in his life that was worth living for? Justice, of course, but he had failed justice. What did Eponine see? She saw Marius who would, of course, never return her love.

Neither of them had much to live for, so what made them keep breathing when misery weighed down on them heavier than the Earth itself?.

Eponine watched as the man, Inspector Javert, stared at the ceiling above him. He spoke softly and his voice was different from what she usually heard. When he spoke and gave orders to the public, he had a clear, sharp voice. But when he spoke now something was off. His voice was feeble, gravelly, and exhausted. His voice reflected his current personality and Eponine wondered what had shaken this man, who had always seemed a force so strong and fearful, and had caused him to undergo such a dramatic change in such a short space of time.

It must have been something terrible, she decided. And she was right. To Javert, the doubt that had begun to creep into him when he doubted the wrong in Valjean had been his true downfall. It was not only the doubt in his conquest for the imprisonment of Valjean, but the doubt had crept into all of his other cases. How many innocents had he incarcerated? How many lives had he ruined? Javert had begun to see his wrong and he could not live with that. He who had always been in the right, he who had always thirsted after justice, had been guilty himself all these years. He had drank a wine denied to others when he had been an alcoholic all along.

Javert grunted and a gloved hand groped down to the floor for his dagger. He claimed it in his black cloaked hands and brought it up to his eyes. Unsheathed, he examined it with a slight fascination, his jade eyes observing the way it gleamed darkly in the thin light of the fire.

"What are you doing there?" Eponine asked from her vigil in the corner. She had replaced her cap but her dark hair still graced over her shoulders like a thick and tangled wrap. Javert gave her a glance and then returned his attention to his policeman's knife, running his thumb over the freshly sharpened edge of the tool.

"Nothing." He said quietly. Eponine stood slowly, narrowing her eyes and placing her hands over her boyish hips.

Rolling up his stiffly ironed shirt sleeve so that his pale wrist and the violet veins beneath his skin were exposed, Javert raised the blade of his dagger and pressed it into his flesh, his face stony as drips of blood began to run down his arm.

"Hey!"

With the swiftness of a cat, Eponine had already crossed the room and pried the dagger away from him by grabbing the blade. With this action, she cut her hand open but ignored the oncoming steady flow of blood now emanating from her palm. She picked up the pistol and club and returned to the side of her room that she claimed as 'hers'. Over here, she placed these weapons between her mattress and the wall so that if he tried to retrieve them while she was sleeping he would have to lean over her, inevitably causing her to wake.

Surveying her hand, Eponine cursed this man with a bent brow and wondered if he was too much trouble for a few francs. She decided that he was and was about to tell him to get out when a gentle hand gripped her wrist and began to wipe away the scarlet puddle forming in her hand. Javert took a strip of bandages (something that was necessary to carry with you at all times if you were a policemen, as gendarmes were always hurting themselves in one way or another) and wrapped it around her hand expertly, his face expressionless and his movements stoic.

Blood flow staunched, Eponine looked up at Javert and he formed an impression of her.

She had pale skin, though he could not see this because she was covered in a layer of grime, and, despite obvious emaciation, she had a very round face complimented by a permanent flush of the cheeks. Beneath heavy lashes, Javert saw she had dark brown eyes that seemed to burn in the fire light like twin coals. If one saw her from a distance, they would say "Now, there is an ugly girl." but on closer examination she seemed quite fair underneath her evident filth. If she had a good cleaning, Javert thought to himself, she might even be considered pretty.

Javert had recently found himself surveying many women, so it was not unusual that he had examined this girl so closely. Several weeks ago, he had been attending a meeting with another officer over a lunch. They had been at said officers house when a pretty young women had appeared behind a lace fan. The officer had introduced Javert to his wife. He had just recently been wed and it had got Javert thinking. This officer was younger then he and had been in the same rank but had somehow still obtained a wife despite utter devotion to his career. A thought had been forming in Javert's head that perhaps, if he really put some effort into it, he would be able to maintain a wife as well as his beloved work like this man. He had made several attempts to make good impressions on various young woman of rank but all had ended poorly. They had disliked him for his coldness, and he would not marry a woman unless he was sure they would be at least generally happy as his wife.

Maybe a poor girl would be more suitable for him, he thought to himself, although he wouldn't dream of touching this girl crawled from some ditch in the slums. He knew quite well who she was.

However, he didn't see why any of this mattered much anymore as he would be dead within the week.

"What are you, girl?" He asked, looking into her face and applying pressure to her hand though it had long since stopped bleeding.

"What do you mean, Miseour?" Eponine asked. She had noticed this man examining her closely and it had made her feel uncomfortable.

"You are not a prostitute?" He asked, quietly his voice hushed as if it was a sin to speak of such things and he did not wan the Lord above his head to hear.

"If I was, would you arrest me, Miseour?" Her eyes narrowed again, thinking of how he had yet to let go of her hand.

He shook his head. She smiled bitterly.

"I am not a prostitute. Sorry to disappoint you, if that is what you wished for. I am simply a poor girl who watches after everyone else. " She said, softly, her dusty lips curing into a ghost of a smile.

He shook his head again. "I hate whores." He muttered.

"I know."

Javert's hatred of call girls was well known, especially in the slums of Saint Michel. No whore could walk the street without fear of being arrested as long as the Inspector was around, and the fearsome things she had heard him say to any of the poor woman who found themselves in financial trouble were not sentences she could soon forget. Eponine did not think she had ever heard or seen a man so deeply invested in the hatred of another.

He let go of her hand and she felt a twinge of pain stab through her palm, making her give a small, faint exclamation. Javert walked back to his side of the room and fell back against the little bed, and she no longer cared to watch him. Though she could not be entirely sure, she felt little suspicion that he would attempt to hurt himself or her at the moment. His personal problems seemed to be consuming him too much to even bother with those thoughts at the moment.

Eponine prepared herself for sleep, as well, and she jumped as a roll of thunder pounded against the door of her apartment, her mind quickly wandering back to Marius as it always did when she did not have something else to occupy her thoughts. Perhaps the violent and impounding noise had actually been the boom of a cannon. It would be a fearful night if one was locked outside. She wondered, in the back of her mind, where Garoche was at this hour. Laying back on her mattress by the fire, Eponine dismissed this thought. If he had really needed a place to stay she would have found him here when she got home, probably already snoring away with a fire already lit.

Although she layed back and prayed for sleep and the safety of the boys at the barricade, a little drop of fear pricked her about Marius. He had been at the barricades, fighting. She prayed to God specifically for his safety before imagining that he was laying beside her, keeping her warm and tightly wrapped in his lovely arms. He would be okay, she reassured herself. But that did not stop her from vowing to visit the barricades again as soon as she got the Inspector off her hands in the morning. Perhaps Gavroche would be there, too.

Absorbed in her own thoughts and with the added noise of the storm, Eponine almost did not hear Javert.

"What is your name, girl?" His eyes were closed. He was almost in that wonderful comfort we call sleep, but something kept him still drifting in a seemingly endless awakening.

She smiled, this time without a trace of bitterness. It was a genuine smile and, for a moment, it erased her ugliness.

"Eponine." She said, her voice, for the first time that night, smooth and gentle.

"Eponine." He repeated in a murmur.

Perhaps this girl was a sign that God did not want him to die yet. Perhaps he was not so wrong in his convictions. Perhaps he was not so unjust.

An inexplicable smile lit up the face of a man who could not remember the last time he had smiled. Both human's lips were curved in a rare display of happiness, and neither of them would be able to explain why if confronted. We only know that inexplicable smiles are the most supreme of all facial expressions.

Javert blinked his eyes open and took in the sight of the filthy girl one last time before sleeping. She slept on her stomach, her hands curled by her chin, her lips were slightly parted, and her hair was swept like a rope over her shoulder, like she was some sailor on his way to bind the masts of his home. Her dense lashes cast slight shadows over her round cheeks. She appeared to him, in the dying light, like a mystic, conceived in the stars and born in the rays of the sun that fell to the miserable Earth he wandered on.

Eponine.