It was all wrong. Everything was wrong, everything was falling to pieces. None of this was meant to happen. She wasn’t meant to happen. He slammed his fist against the wall. Once, twice, a third time. Again and again until blood dripped from his knuckles. He could hear the commotion continuing out in front, on the other side of the building, but none of it mattered to him. Without warning, Enjolras let out a choked sob, a horrible strangled sound he hadn’t thought himself capable of making. There was a gasp in the alleyway. He spun around.
The little boy was standing there, bottle in hand. His face was streaked with tears. He had been singing last Enjolras saw him. Enjolras quickly wiped his face and swallowed his sobs.“You shouldn’t drink that.” He snatched the bottle from the boy’s hands. “You shouldn’t even be here.”The boy only glared at him. Enjolras took a swig.“Leave.”“Why?”The boy’s voice was harsh, as if it belonged to a completely different person than the child who had been singing before.“It’s not safe here.” He took another swig.“Don’t you think I know that?”Enjolras shook his head, wondering how to reason with the child. He knew it was no use. He lurched forward and grabbed the boy by his collar. “What do they call you?”The boy didn’t even flinch. “Gavroche.”“Well, Gavroche, when you came through there-” he pointed towards the building’s back door. “Did you see her?” He could only just make out the boy’s nodding. For, though tears flooded his eyes, he refused to let them fall. “She can’t have been much older than you. And now she’s dead.” He shook the child. “Not even that much older than you.”Gavroche grabbed Enjolras’s hand and ripped it from his collar. “Five years, four months, two weeks and a day.”Enjolras froze. “What?”“Éponine -- she has a name if you bothered -- she’s five years, four months, two weeks, and a day older than me.”Enjolras took a deep breath. “Did you know her?”“She is my sister!” the boy roared. He grabbed the bottle back from Enjolras and took a large gulp, immediately choking on the sharp taste. He turned and leaned against the stone wall, sliding down to the grown. “Was. Her name was Éponine. She was my sister.”Enjolras followed suit, sitting down next to the boy and taking the bottle and his own long sip. “I knew she had a brother,” he said slowly. “I didn’t know it was you.”“What’d you care? She wasn’t yours.”Enjolras shook his head. “She’s my everything. She’s my past, my future. My passion.” He sighed. “She’s my France.”There was a loud crash as Gavroche snatched back the bottle and threw it across the alley. “Don’t!” he shouted, jumping to his feet. “Please, don’t!”Enjolras looked up, confused. “Don’t what?”“Don’t do this,” the boy screamed, madly gesticulating as he searched for words. “Don’t turn her into your symbol. My sister wasn’t perfect, but she wasn’t yours to fix! She’s her own. She didn’t need you!”Enjolras shook his head. How could this child possibly understand? “I loved her.”“Like hell you did!” The boy was crying openly but didn’t seem to care. “She wasn’t yours to worship or to fuck or to do whatever you liked with, don’t you get that? She. Was. My. Sister!”For a long while, Enjolras stared at the boy in silence. “I’m sorry,” he said at last. “She was a good woman.”“Good.” The boy took a deep breath and let a short laugh cooler and more unfeeling than anything any child should be capable of. “She was good, you know? Better than she thought she was. But she was also horrible. As long as I can remember, she was nasty. Because she’s my sister and sisters ought to be nasty to their brothers. So, please, please don’t do this. Don’t do that thing where you make her out to be better than she was. My sister was nasty and selfish and wonderful. And she deserved to be loved not because she was perfect, but because she was mean and spiteful and still managed to know how to love people in spite of everything, everything she’d been through.”Enjolras nodded, his unshed tears burning his eyes. “I did. I do.” He shook his head as he stood. “You should leave,” he said again. “You’ve another sister, don’t you? She’ll worry.”Gavroche shook his head. “She doesn’t care about anything. And if you think I’d let my sister die in vain, then you’re stupider than I thought.” With that, the boy marched back inside.Enjolras knew he should go after him, force him to leave. Tie him up if it came to it. He loved the sister, didn’t he? Wasn’t it his duty to protect the brother?But the boy was right. Éponine would not die in vain -- he wouldn’t do that to her. So now, instead of fighting for Patria, for Éponine, as a single concept, he would fight for each. Fight against the tyranny destroying his country, and fight the men who had taken his cruel and selfish love.
