DISCLAIMER: I DO NOT OWN ANY OF THE CHARACTERS PORTRAYED IN THIS CHAPTER- THEY ARE ALL THE PROPERTY OF THE AMAZING AUTHOR VICTOR HUGO!

"Young man"

Marius turned from gazing mournfully out the window to face the sound of his soon to be father-in-law's gruff yet gentle voice.

"Yes Monsieur?"

"I can't help noticing you haven't been yourself of late"

"Monsieur?"

"I hardly think staring out the window with a face that long is natural behaviour for a young man soon to be married. Tell what's bothering you my son, surprising though it may seem I have a lot of experience in this world"

Marius sighed, "It's nothing Monsieur, I miss my brothers that's all… and 'Ponine"

"Who is this 'Ponine?"

"Eponine Thenardier, you have met her before though you probably didn't know her name. She is- I mean was, a sort of friend. She died after jumping in front of a musket aimed at me- I can still remember the moment the light left her eyes as she lay bleeding in my arms, the look on her face and the feel of her last breath on my skin. It haunts me"

After a moment of thought Valjean carefully replied, "She is the one who warned Thenardier when Javert arrived, no?"

"Yes, that's her. She warned me when Patron Minette attacked this house, it was her, not Cosette, you heard scream- her father made her pay dearly for it"

"Ahh I see. I do know the girl you talk of- I saw her death as I arrived on the barricade, I also heard her confess love for you. Might I ask if that is why you are troubled, do you love her and not Cosette? I will not judge you on your answer"

Marius' expression turned to horror at the old man's question of whether he had loved Eponine. He had tolerated her in most of his time knowing her and had only really began to think of the acquaintance as a friendship in the week before he fought, and she died, at the barricade.

"No Monsieur, I did not love her she was simply a friend- a friend from a family who did not love her. Courfeyrac and my other brothers had loving families even if they didn't approve all of their political beliefs. My brothers received honourable, loving and respectful funerals- I love my brothers but Eponine sacrificed the one thing she had left to save me and I can't help but feel that she deserves more than a blood soaked ditch with rats running over her corpse"

At Marius' words Valjean couldn't help but think of his own family- his sister whom he had left to die in the hellhole that is Faverolles, and her sons who had no doubt suffered either the same fate as either their mother or of their uncle; starvation or the galleys. Had he not been as useless a father figure as Thenardier was to his daughter? True Valjean had no choice but to leave and go to Toulon but he had the choice to not steal the loaf of bread which landed him there.

Jean Valjean had never truly known Eponine Thenardier. He had known the criminal side of her, the absence of many a purse followed by a glimpse of the scrawny gamine running away down the street told him that, but never the compassionate and helpful side that his future son-in-law spoke of.

The old man had had many an epiphany in his life and now, it seemed was time for another. He couldn't save his sister, he hadn't seen her in so long that he couldn't even picture her face or remember her name and she had surely died years ago, but he could still save this girl Marius had known- she wasn't beyond hope yet. She was dead like his sister, yes, but Monsieur Bienvenu had taught him that love reaches beyond the constraints of the earth and out into heaven or even hell. Eponine never knew love in this life, it seemed, so Valjean would see to it that she received love in the afterlife.

"Marius my son"

Marius, who unaware of the ex-convicts epiphany had gone back to gazing dolefully at a speck on the Parisian horizon, looked up into Valjean's weary eyes.

"My boy, what would you say to me retrieving Mademoiselle Eponine's body from whichever ditch she currently resides in and giving the young lady a proper funeral?"

Confusion spread across Marius' features then he slowly nodded "I'd say that's a brilliant idea- I can respect 'Ponine yet"

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