By Ms. Neptune Holmes

a/n: Hello everyone, I'm back with this EDITED Les Miz story. I think you'll like it though. I found this when I was going through my notebooks. I wrote this in 10th grade (which seems like AGES ago!) Ironically, my teacher loved Les Miserables! Umm... I am writing from my original concept and not from what I turned in. I am adding more detail because the one I did didn't have a lot in it. This is in Marius's P.O.V. by the way. Anyway, enough with my babbling; Here we GO!

Disclaimer: Les Mis and its characters do not belong to me. They belong to Victor Hugo. Sorry.

Chapter 1

I can only remember the past few months of my life, as I sit here in my cell of the Paris Hospital of the Criminally Insane. I will myself to reminisce how I ended up here, and let my memory revert back to the past...

*Flashback*

"Monsieur Marius?" I hear a meek voice coming from behind me. I turned to see who addressed me. There was a girl, with ebony colored hair, dressed in a man's coat and a boy's hat. I instantly knew who was lying on the ground before me, deathly pale and gasping for breath, her coat stained red with blood. It was Eponine, the daughter of the scandalous Thenardier.

"'Ponine, what are you doing here? Do you know how dangerous the barricades are?" I scolded harshly

She replied weakly, "Yes, I know M. Marius; that's why I came. I-I wanted to be near you. I was shot as I climbed over the barricade."

"'Ponine!" I whispered.

The street urchin shook her head and sniffled. "Monsieur, it's too late for me." She asked me to kneel beside her. I did, and she continued speaking, in more of a soft tone.

"Let me finish. I will die soon. But before I do-" she reached slowly into her pocket and withdrew a folded letter spotted with her blood, and handed it to me.

"It's a letter from her." she said her in a spiteful tone. "I know you love her. I couldn't forbear myself from keeping it. I was jealous, M. Marius. You only loved that girl, and never thought once about my feelings of you. I knew it would be wrong if I didn't give you the note. Now, since I did something for you, you must promise me something."

"What?" I asked. I would do anything for her, since she had given her life for me.

"Swear to me!" she exclaimed, but then quieted as it seemed that talking above a whisper pained her.

"I swear, 'Ponine." I finally answered.

"Promise that you'll kiss me when I 'm gone. I'll feel it.

I nodded then cradled her in my arms. She began to sing a lullaby which steadily grew fainter and fainter until-

"And you know, Monsieur? I adored you too." Her eyes filled with tears, but the courageous woman smiled sadly. She closed her eyes and expired. I cried over her corpse, but I didn't have much time to mourn her death because from then on, time seemed to be a blur.

The ballistics coming from the other side of the barricade was enough to throw men off the shelter and to the cobble-stone ground below, destroying what chances they had of surviving what chances they had of them living from their lesions. I noticed this only for a moment before the searing agony of a bullet entering my skin reached me and darkness flooded my mind. That was when all the trouble began.

As I floated in darkness, the ghosts of my fellow student coterie came to plague me. The face of Enjolras appeared, his scolding tone ringing in my ears.

"How DARE you live while the rest of us have died! You should be with US!" He hissed.

"No!" I screamed

"YES! And we will haunt you so you can feel OUR pain!"

"NO!" my mind screamed again.

When I finally regained consciousness, I saw the wrinkled, aged face of my grandfather as he stood over me. Looking around, I realized I was back at my grandfather's home.

"Ah, so you're awake now, are you? How are you feeling my boy?" he asked in an almost cheerful tone.

I sat up painfully and asked, "What happened to everyone at the barricade?"

The smile on my grandfather's face disappeared. "I'm sorry son; they're all dead, every last one of them. Good riddance, I say."