1

Eponine woke up.

She didn't know where she was, but she knew what had happened to her. She could still feel the sensation of rain falling softly against her skin. She could feel Marius' arms around her. She could feel the impact of the ball that tore through the bones and tendons in her hand and then through her torso. She could feel the wet stickiness of the blood on her uninjured hand, then the heaviness of her limbs, a general feeling of lethargy sweeping over her body as it struggled to keep on breathing. She could hear the sounds of battle around her, Marius' words, and the urge to close her eyes that she just could not fight. The fear that bubbled in her chest when she saw the gun trained on Marius…

Yes, she could feel all of that, feel it as some mad jumble that made little sense but drew her to one conclusion – she had been gravely injured at the barricades and assumed, because she was lying down, she must be receiving treatment for her wounds in some kind of hospital.

But then she realised, as she lay there on her back, she was staring up at a white sky, and she could hear people moving around her. Maybe she was still at the barricade. Maybe the battle was over, because she could no longer hear gunfire or shouting or people screaming as they died. And there was no pain, most importantly. No pain at all.

She sat up, something she found surprisingly easy to do. She frowned. This…This was not the scene she remembered from before she fell unconscious. There were more people and the barricade before her was huge, towering too high, and they weren't in front of that little café the boys liked to frequent, and there were more flags, and…

"Where am I?" she said, her voice no more than a whisper.

It seemed that most of the people around her was having the same thought, even the ones that were wandering around, staring in amazement. She recognised some of them – they were students, from the barricade.

To her horror, she noticed something terrible about them. They were all covered in blood and had gaping wounds on their bodies. She looked down at herself. The man's outfit she had worn as a disguise on the barricade was sodden with blood and her hand…She retched as she saw the mess that was her hand.

"Don't worry, you get used to it," an amused voice said from somewhere to her left.

She whipped her head around to look. A man stood over her. There was an ugly slash across his throat – it was not bloody, but that was somehow worse, as the skin around it was an odd purple colour and stood out against his pale skin. She did not recognise him, though, unlike some of the others that were milling around her.

"Where am I?" she asked.

The man chuckled. "Poor girl. I forgot how confused the new ones tend to be! I only came to have a look because so many were dying at once. It's quite a novelty…"

"D-d-d-dying?" Eponine whispered.

"Yes, girl," the man said. "I'm happy to inform you that you're dead."

XXX

Eponine wasn't sure how long she sat there, trying to let the man's words sink in. It wasn't going very well. How could she be dead, if she was breathing? How could she be dead if she could still feel, still see things, still remember?

Yes, she wasn't in a place she recognised and a lot of the people around her were terribly injured, but…It was not possible for her to be dead and alive all at the same time, was it?

She finally realised that the man had wandered off, clearly bored by what he had come across. The people around Eponine that had once been scurrying around, examining their surroundings, seemed to have given up, and were sat with each other, talking in low voices, confusion evident on their faces.

Eponine drew her legs up so that her knees were against her chest, and then she wrapped her arms around her leg. She couldn't avoid looking at her mangled hand, and even though it sent a wave of nausea over her it didn't make her actually retch this time.

One of the men glanced over at her. She had seen him around a few times, as she accompanied Marius to the Café Musain; he was fair-haired, brown eyed, and she thought his name might be Guillaume. They had spoken twice – once because he barged into her by accident, and the second because she had wanted to know where Marius was.

He was the only face she could give a name, so when he looked at her, she deliberately caught his eye. She waved, with her good hand, in an attempt not to shock him.

But then his head completely turned to face her and she nearly shrieked. The other side of his head was covered in blood and there was a gaping hole in his temple.

Guillaume got to his feet and made his way over to her. She noticed other wounds on him now; his white shirt was splattered with blood, the cotton torn open and revealing gashes on his chest and abdomen.

"Your name is Eponine, yes?" he said.

She nodded. "Yes, monsieur," she said.

"Do you know what is going on?" he asked her, crouching down.

Feeling self-conscious, Eponine slid her injured hand underneath her thighs. "No, monsieur," she said. "I'm very confused. I spoke to a man earlier but…"

"But?" Guillaume prompted.

"Well, what he said made very little sense," she admitted. "He said I was dead."

Guillaume patted the side of his head that was not torn apart. "Dead," he murmured. "It doesn't make sense, does it?"

She shook her head.

"But I look at that gunshot wound you have, mademoiselle, and I find it hard to believe you could be alive," he continued.

Eponine wondered whether any of his friends had pointed out the ghastly wound on his head, and came to the conclusion that they couldn't have. So instead of commenting on it, she shrugged. "I don't know," she said. "I don't know where I am, and I don't know what's going on. I wish I did…"

Guillaume looked at her for a few long, long moments. Then he sighed. "So do I, mademoiselle," he said. "So do I…"

XXX

Night fell. It was actually rather eerie; the sky went very dark, but it was tinged around the edges with purples, oranges and some yellows, and there were no stars at all.

After her conversation with Guillaume, Eponine had been invited to sit with them. She listened to their chatter – all they talked about was what was going on, so she listened to a variety of different theories. No one seemed very keen on the idea that they were all dead, but Eponine didn't blame them for that; she wasn't fond of the idea herself.

It must have been dark for a couple of hours when a gaggle of people scaled the huge barricade and began to crowd around them. They didn't reveal much. One of them said he'd been there for over twenty years, by his reckoning, and another felt the need to point of Guillaume's wound, which seemed to shock Guillaume into silence.

Then they ambled off, in the opposite direction, wishing them all good luck.

Eponine was secretly grateful for this. She thought they may need all the luck they could get.