Prompt: Kill Bill AU.

He has been out of contact with her for nearly three years when an unfamiliar number appears on his cell phone.

There is a moment before he answer, a moment where he regards it warily - being the leader of an activist group that is quickly becoming tangled up in plans that will, that must, result in violence, does have its dangers - and then the moment passes.

"Hey," she says, and he recognizes her, even clogged with static, even before she says, "it's me."

He doesn't know what to say - can't - and several painful seconds pass by where he fumbles for something to say (the man with the silver tongue brought to silence by the only woman who has ever, ever managed it) and the line is filled up by the sound of only breathing, until at last she continues.

"I need your help."

Before the three years, there was the occasional letter, and the rarer phone call, but they never pretended it was anything more - it couldn't be. It was just - too - dangerous.

This is why it is all the more surreal that Éponine - Éponine who does not need help, Éponine who does not admit it if she does - is here, breaking both those rules.

'I'm out' is the first thing she told him, and the weight of that sentence is staggering. She was looking for a way out since - well, since she was in. The reason, the final reason, is not hard to guess. It's obvious immediately, actually, with the way her loose shirt hangs over her stomach, and the look in her eyes is not even challenging - she will brook no arguments against her situation, will feel no shame.

This, at last, convinces him that it is her, the Éponine he used to know before the distances.

He speaks softly, arms crossed and not quite close, not to an outsider, but closer than she would allow nearly anything else. That may have hand in it as well, when he asks, "what do you need me to do?"

It's a good cover.

Éponine is not in the habit of cradling her pregnant stomach or to cooing over the life growing there, but she does, sometimes, when drawing herself up, rest a hand there, as if to draw strength.

She does it when he asks her why she doesn't just assume another name, and she shakes her head as well. "Not enough," she says, "not enough."

She has changed since he saw her last, and not for the better. She laughs and Courfeyrac's jokes, but as if she has has not done so in far too long; her grin is too-wide and ill-fitting; her eyes dart, at times, as if surveying; and sometimes she gets this look on her face, cast with shadows. She wears it still, now, but…

As she continues, saying, "and, besides," her knuckles press against her mouth in that familiar way of hiding a smile. "Didn't we talk about this, once?"

Once. Once, before her father made it clear that she was to continue with the family business, once, before separating was deemed safer, a necessity, once, when everything was easier.

But this baby, this baby she refuses to call 'he' or 'she' just yet - "I don't have a mother's intuition and I never will" - will absolutely not, will never be called Thénardier, and will never know what that means.

So it's a good cover.

Until the wedding rehearsal.

For a long time, he will not talk about it.

Then, after, all he will be able to say about it is that if there is any 'at least' to it, it is 'at least it was only a rehearsal; at least there were only a handful of people instead of dear friends; at least they got one over on the Patron-Minette and had no casualties; at least they found her breathing, at least there is a chance, a chance.

But not for a while.

She supposes, according to them, she played it wrong.

She should have pretended all was well, let them give their 'blessing' as they watched the rehearsal instead of making an excuse about morning sickness and leading him out by the arm, promising to be back in 'just a minute.'

And Enjolras had known something was wrong because the nausea had stopped a month and a half before and she was left awash in aching because there was no way this could end well, not at all, no matter how much she wanted it to - and oh how she wanted it, wanted a happier end than what would await her the moment she walked back through those doors.

So she lied. Said she'd forgotten something at home, something important. Asked him to get it for her, and made up reasons until he acquiesced.

Éponine stood there until she could no longer see his car, and then she - typed. She typed out her apology, her explanation, grateful that he remembered all the big things of planning his protests, but continually forgot his phone at home.

She typed out all she wanted to say, yes, they were dangerous, no, his suspicions were not misplaced, but if she left with him, they would be found, and that is worse.

And then she went back in there and told them he was gone, he wasn't coming back, and they could not have their revenge exactly as they had wished.

She got a bullet in her skull for her troubles.

He waits.

Can't stay in the same place, though, on the off-chance that they do look for him.

But he stays close. Throughout all the planning, as the protests gain and lose attention, he stays close.

She survives on instinct, and it is exactly what she feared for herself.

It's later, much later, and she can't even find a scrap of joy in being alive because her stomach is stitched over and empty, because he isn't in that house, not anymore, and all she can think is they did it.

They took what she cared about, harmed not only her but her reasons. She could have been better, and she can't now.

Éponine goes on because she has a purpose, and that purpose is to pay them back for every wrong they have ever done, but near the end, she is burning, burning out.

She does it because she has to do it, because there is still someone else to pay back, but what does she have after?

Until she reaches that after and realizes - through Montparnasse's almost-casual words about never having gotten that 'fake fiancee' of hers as she brushes dark locks from her daughter's face - that she realizes that she was wrong, that maybe, maybe, maybe, she has an after.

Years and years and years it takes before he hears from her again.

There's no text, no phone call, no warning. Well… not from her anyway. There is one call from the hospital, but when weeks pass with no sign of her, he begins to think the Patron-Minette is simply… tying up loose ends, no matter how much of an unwelcome thought it is.

So when he hopes as he catches a glimpse of dark curls, as he opens the door, it is with that same, worn-out hope he has held for years, that has surfaced when he sees what could be a familiar feature.

But.

There, now, there are two.

A sleepy child with chocolate stains on her shirt and the corners of her mouth who looks old enough to walk and yet is held protectively in the arms of the woman, of -

"Hey," she says, and even as her voice cracks in the middle, she is smiling, "it's me."