Author's Note: Hello, everyone! This is something I started to write back in mid-May for Barricade Day, thinking back then it was going to be much shorter, but instead, it just kept getting longer and longer...and now there's this. I can say this is probably going to be two parts (almost done with the other part). For those of you reading "Living in Memories," I'm still working on it, but it might be a bit, given I had to get this bit out of my system and I just started an online course that goes until mid-July.

A bit of inspiration for this piece came from German musical Elisabeth, a musical portraying the life and Death of Empress Elisabeth of Austria and the fall of the Habsburgs. It is a beautiful yet dark show that has been translated into seven languages (none of them English, but I have been listening to the 2012 German production and have been looking up translations of the songs and slowly picking up on what the words are/mean). I did not follow the show's plot, and remained in the universe of Les Misérables, with some changes here and there. I mainly "borrowed" a character from the show, in a way (did I mention Death is personified in the show?), and have considered putting this in crossovers, but didn't think there were much similarities beyond that one detail. If you think otherwise, let me know and I'll consider it further.

Also kind of tried to create a "colder" Enjolras through the borrowed character while still having him be Enjolras, and though that may have not happened the way I originally intended, I still hope you enjoy this attempt.

With that being said, I own nothing.

Warning(s): There is rape early in section four (IV.), and though I did not go into details with it, I figured it would be best to at least say something about it just in case. (Also, the numerals for section four are underlined in case you would rather skip the section.) Any further mention of it is referred to as "attack," but I believe the only mention of it again is later in section four, near its end.

I.

The first time she meets him, she is not yet eight years old.

It was an accident, her falling from that tree to show her younger sister that climbing to a high branch is not at all scary, nor dangerous. However, being the ignorant child she was, she made no connection that the rain would cause the tree bark to be slippery, causing her to lose her footing and plummet to the ground.

As she falls, she feels nothing but fear. She hears her sister scream out her name in panic, and in the blur of the fall, she sees the servant girl run towards the inn, leaving behind the now-spilled bucket of water she had been carrying. When she lands, all goes black; she feels no pain.

She should be dead, yet somehow, she isn't.

When her consciousness returns, she finds herself in her own bed, in her room, alone in one of the upper floors of her father's inn. Her neck hurts in way as if she had slept wrong, except no matter how she tries to move, the pain remains. She can feel a soreness in her back, and tries to lessen the pain by straightening out her body or curling up into a ball, but to no avail.

"The more you move, mademoiselle, the more it will continue to hurt."

The suddenness of the sincere yet unrecognizable voice is enough for her to sit up straight in her bed, looking amongst the shadows from where it possibly could have come. The darkness could hide many things, but the moonlight catches what otherwise cannot be. Her eyes fall upon a man sitting upon the windowsill, looking out into the calm night.

She eyes him with curiosity, the air of mysteriousness she can sense from him. She has never seen him before, she is certain of that. His dark clothes remind her of a raven's feathers, shimmering hues of purple and blue in the moonlight. His blond hair, appearing almost white against the pale light, call to mind images of snow at twilight in the dead of winter.

Could he be one of her father's customers that wandered into her room, mistaking it for their own? Perhaps he was a doctor who had taken care of her after her fall. Maybe it was someone asked to watch her while her parents sent for one.

She doesn't question his presence otherwise.

She watches the figure move through the shadows, towards her, closer and closer until he is kneeling on the floor beside the bed. She does not shrink back from him, no. To shrink back would be to show fear, and fear is not something she feels towards this stranger. He takes her hand, his skin like ice, but she does not flinch.

This stranger is odd to her, for reasons she does not know. The dark clothes, skin as cold as ice and ghostly pale in the moonlight, she feels almost as if she is in the presence of Death himself. Certainly if he was Death, she would be dead herself. As she takes another breath, feels her heart beat in her chest, she knows she is very much alive.

"Stay out of the trees, mademoiselle." She catches his eyes, a steel blue reminiscent of frozen streams. "They are meant for the birds."

With that, he stands, releases her hand, and starts to walk back towards shadows. Ignoring the pain, disregarding the protests of her limbs, she leans forward and loosely catches his wrist. He pauses for moment, looking down where their hands meet, before his eyes once again meet hers. There is a sudden feeling of warmth in his cold eyes, of contemplation. He slowly, perhaps reluctantly, walks away until only their fingertips touch, their eyes holding their gaze.

The trance lingers maybe just a few seconds too many, and before she realizes it, he vanishes into the shadows.

II.

She does not see him again until she is fifteen.

These past years have been nothing but turmoil for her family. Just a few months after the servant girl was bought by a man who claimed he promised her deceased mother he would raise her like his own, the inn started to lose business. Many left, and fewer people trickled in, until eventually, days would go by before an unsuspecting traveler walked through the inn's doors. Inevitably, the family inn had to close its doors for good, and her parents packed up what they had along with their two daughters before making their way to Paris with the hope of a better life there.

Alas, hope could only do so much. Day after day, they lived in squalor. She and her sister slept on the wooden floor of their run-down apartment, sharing a threadbare blanket, while their parents share a poor excuse for a mattress in the other room. Thievery, instead of being a past time, becomes a way of life for her. It is what her survival depends on, day in and day out. Upon returning each night, she is lucky to have a few coins in her pocket, or food in her stomach, but rarely does she keep that money, rarely does she eat what she finds. Her father usually takes the money from her, and while little food she finds she usually gives to her younger sister.

One day, as she picks a pocket of a young gentleman, she finds herself caught in the act. She tries to escape, only for the young man's hand to catch her wrist. She tries to break free, but his voice calms her down. He does not call for the police, but instead presses a few coins into her hand.

"You need these more than I," he tells her, and only as he walks away, does she notice how worn his clothes are.

She races after him, trying to return the coins, but he does not accept them. She continues to try until what was an argument becomes a pleasant conversation.

"…his name is Marius Pontmercy," she tells her sister as they prepare to retire for the night. "And it just so happens he lives in the apartment next to us."

"Is that so, Eponine?" her sister remarks as she pulls up the blanket. "You think you'll see him again?"

"Most definitely," she replies before blowing out the candle, allowing the darkness to surround her once again.

She manages to befriend the young gentleman, talking to him on his way to and from the small shop where he works as a book translator. This goes on for a few months. He asks about the bruises that mar her skin, and she answers that she accidently hit her arm on a doorframe or she bumped her knee against a table leg. Those are lies, though, and if he knows, he doesn't say anything about it.

She tries to lie her way around when she has a black eye, but Marius clearly catches it. She doesn't have the heart to tell him that her father abuses her and in some cases, her sister, and as he questions her more and more, she eventually shuts up completely.

He places a hand on her shoulder. "I just hope you know that you can tell me anything, 'Ponine, or that you can trust me."

Her eyes are downcast, and she pulls away and goes into the apartment without saying a word.

Her interactions with the young gentleman do not go unnoticed by her father. He asks her how much she is getting paid, and when she asks what for and says that she doesn't get paid, there is a sharp sting on her cheek not long afterwards.

She hears him mutter a few curses under his breath, before throwing the words "whore" and "slut" in her direction. She does not fight back when she is shoved against the wall, his father's grip around her neck keeping her in place as her body is beaten. The pain, she is used to, but when it keeps coming and coming and coming…her vision starts to blur, then slowly, her world goes black.

When she returns to consciousness, she can hear the murmuring from a conversation between her sister and man, the muffled voice of her mother yelling in the other room. Upon opening her eyes, she sees night has fallen, the candle besides her being the only light. She can feel the ache of pain in her chest and stomach, her entire torso wrapped in bandages while bruises cover her stomach.

"A few of her ribs are broken," she hears the man say. "For the next few weeks, it is probably best that she remains as still as possible, to give them enough time to heal properly."

She swears she knows that voice, and it takes a while for her to place it. The conversation between him and her sister carries on for a few more exchanges before the identity races back into her mind.

Eponine sits up slowly, to see if her suspicions hold true. She ignores the pain, while at the same time hoping the movement does not cause any further damage, damage that could be lethal. The conversation goes silent mid-sentence, her sister rushing to her side and telling her to keep still. She acknowledges her sister's plea with a curt nod, but not before making eye contact with the man who was something to her a bit more than a stranger, steel blue eyes meeting amber.

I remember you, she says in her head. You who were there after that fall, you who wore colors of raven's wings, you whose skin was as cold as ice. Yes, I remember you, you who took my hand and told me the trees are for the birds, you who paused for a moment before vanishing into the shadows. I remember you, perhaps too well. Where have you been all these years?

She can tell simply by the expression on his face that he remembers her, too.

From where she lies, it appears time has not changed him at all. His clothing has remained dark, this time pure black reflecting the candlelight, reminiscent of burning embers in coals. His blond hair, almost like fire. His eyes have not changed from their handsome hue, but now in the light, despite the youth his chiseled features hold, she catches a glimpse of the ages his eyes have seen. Ah, yes, he may appear young, perhaps not beyond twenty, but his eyes betray the rest of the facade. They have seen many dawns and many sunsets, days of peace and days of war, times of joy and times of turmoil. No, for a man so young, his eyes have seen too much.

When he leaves, almost without a word, only then does she dare to ask her sister:

"Where did you find him?"

Her sister takes a moment to process the question. "It's quite strange…Mother sent me to find a doctor, and just when I got out into the street, he was outside, as if…as if he was waiting for someone, almost as if he knew someone would be requiring his assistance."

Eponine nods, her, too, trying to figure out if such an event was merely a coincidence.

"And perhaps what I find to be the strangest thing of all, is that he did not ask for anything in return." her sister continues, gently pulling the blanket up to Eponine's shoulder. "Not even a single sous."

"Did you offer him anything?"

"Whatever money I could find in my pockets, but he did not accept any of it. I almost suspected he wanted something of a different nature, but he didn't. Only said to keep an eye on you, and to look for him if trouble arises."

III.

It is not much longer before she sees him again. This time, just months afterwards, shortly after she turned sixteen.

She knows it is not wise for a young gamine such as herself to be wandering the streets deep into the night, where everything is only quiet in appearance. A majority of Paris' population is blissfully sleeping in their beds, roofs sheltering them from above. Now is such the time where the darkest of figures emerge from the shadows, waiting for the chance to pounce on unsuspecting prey.

When she hears the sound of footsteps not too far off, she does not hesitate one bit before ducking into the safety of a pitch-black alley. Certainly there could be more danger there than in the open streets, but if she can easily escape one who might be following her, she'd rather take the chance.

She runs, not looking behind her to see if her pursuer has ceased their search. She hopes she can outrun them enough to keep a distance, or make it home, if she must. Whatever she can do to remain alive.

She does not keep track of time in her getaway, running enough to enter what is uncharted territory for her, and her mother always told her that unfamiliar places are the most dangerous for anyone, for anything unknown could be lurking about. She makes it to a common street, not brightly lit, but lit enough for her to make out whatever suspicious characters could be nearby.

She wanders, hoping to come across something she recognizes, if even faintly. A building, a statue, a streetmarker, something to go by to get home. Fifteen minutes becomes half an hour, which becomes an hour, and after that, she stops keeping track of the time.

A scream suddenly pierces the night air, causing Eponine to jump and turn towards the sound, hoping that its cause is not making their way in her direction. She manages a glimpse of a figure rushing down the street opposite of her, before her eyes fall upon a mass lying on the ground, almost completely still.

Curiosity causes her to move towards the mass, only for her to discover that the mass is a woman. Based upon her style of clothes, a lady of the night. She can hear her faint, ragged breaths as she struggles to hold on, dark crimson liquid spilling from her chest, forming a sticky pool on the ground. Eponine kneels down beside her, not concerned about the blood on her rags, but rather if there is anything she can do for the poor woman.

She does not hear the set of footsteps behind her, and she jumps when she feels a cold hand on her shoulder. She does not freeze out of fright, no, but instead, looks for the person who dared to touch her.

It's him.

"There is not a thing you can do for her." he tells her, and that was a conclusion she had already come to, though she was too stubborn to admit it.

"And you, what can you do?" Eponine counters, fighting the bit of terror she feels from the sight of the poor woman.

He does not answer, not immediately, at least in words.

She watches him walk around to the other side of the befallen woman, kneeling down beside her. His fingers brush away the hair that otherwise obscures the woman's face. She does not flinch from his cold touch, not as his arm slides behind her, helping her to sit up in these final moments. The woman's breaths, though ragged, start to calm, and her eyes remain focused only on him, not outwardly frightened by the strange man holding her. Slowly, he leans in, before his lips fall upon those of the dying woman.

With that, the woman takes her final breath and her body goes limp. He pulls away, gently laying her body down as if she were as delicate as porcelain.

"Free her." he finally answers, his eyes lingering sorrowfully at the woman for a moment, before he stands to his full height. "That is all I can do."

Eponine does not know what to think of what she had just witnessed, her mind still having not fully processed the woman bleeding out before her very eyes. She glances up at him, then down at the still form in front of her, trying to connect the kiss with the woman's body going limp. A mere coincidence, she starts to think, before she goes on to recall her previous encounters with the man. Her fall from the tree, her father's near-lethal beating…

Her plummet to the ground had been many feet, perhaps thirty or so, approximately the height of a three-storied building. Her father's abuse, where the punches kept coming and coming, where the resulting pain had been so severe she lost consciousness, where a few of her ribs had been broken…

…All near-death experiences.

"La Mort…" she whispers, hoping he does not hear her and that her conclusion is wrong. When she was young, she had heard stories of Death in her family's inn, how in a person's final moments, he appears, offering the dying peace with the kiss of Death. She can recall hearing the tales of some who had danced with Death, managing to survive somehow beyond him trying to take them away from Life, but in the end, the same always happens.

When she looks up from the woman's corpse, Eponine finds that his ice-cold eyes are on her. He offers the young gamine his hand in order to help her up, and though hesitant, she takes it, not shivering from the touch of his freezing skin.

"So I am." he answers, just barely audible in the night breeze.

Eponine, for once, thinks this development should frighten her that she should run away and hope to only see him once more. She does not run, she does not pull away. She is not afraid, just as she had been the first time they met all those years ago.

"You should get out of here." he tells her, his eyes observing their surroundings. "Should the police come, it would not be good if they saw you here."

"Won't they see you, too?" she asks, his hand releasing hers.

La Mort shakes his head. "That is something to be explained on a later date, now make haste!"

She takes a look around, only to remember she does not know which way to go, which way will allow her to make it home safely, or at least return her to a place she knows. She does not want to admit this to him, and she remains in place, though her instincts are telling her to obey his command, to run. Perhaps it doesn't matter which way she runs, as long as she gets out of there…

There is a suddenly tug on her wrist that drags her into the dark shadows of the alley, causing her to squeal a bit out of surprise. It's only him, though, and she thinks it is rather naïve of her to trust that he will not hurt her, but it is because of him that she is still alive.

"Why couldn't you have saved her?" she asks as the shock begins to die down. "You let me live twice before in incidents where I should have died, but I'm still alive."

He glances back at her, blue eyes cold against the trace of moonlight that reaches the dark alley. "It was her time, and for you in both cases, it was not."

His eyes then look downward, almost as if there is something troubling him, if not from the question then from the situation. He turns away, continuing his walk down the narrow path.

She is not letting him get away so easily, and just as her seven-year-old self did all those years ago, she catches his wrist. He pauses in his steps, turning to see where his wrist is firmly held in her grasp. Just as he had done before, he walks away slowly, appearing unsure about how to otherwise react. This time, though, he cannot move any further, the young gamine unwilling to let go.

"And who are you to decide that, when a person should live and when they should die?" she inquires, her brown eyes fierce. "If I have any understanding of how this works, Death can take anyone he chooses at any given time."

"Then you have been mislead." he replies, trying to pull away from her grasp, only for it to tighten. "I do not decide when mortals leave this world—that is decided by Fate. She decides when people are born, when they meet others, when they become ill, when they die. It is required of me to merely help them along."

"What happens if you chose not to help them along, if you let them live?" He once again tries to pull his arm free, but once again she won't let him. "Surely in centuries past you have attempted something of the sort?"

He freezes, and his body relaxes with a deep exhale. He turns his head away, as if not wanting her to see the expression his faces bears. "Are such things necessary for you to know, mademoiselle?"

"At this instance, yes, it is." Eponine answers firmly, determination in her voice. "If you let mortals live who are meant to die, what happens?"

"Those are complicated matters."

"Are they really?" she asks, not bothering to disguise the sarcasm in her tone. "Or would you rather not tell me?"

"Does it matter?" he counters. "Either way, in the end, all mortals die. That is inevitable. If the old were permitted to live, they would simply wither away until they became dust, and the young will one day grow old, and they, too, will turn to dust."

Her grip loosens slightly at the harshness, or perhaps it was the truth, behind his words. He does not, however, take the opportunity to get away, as he had done in that trance years ago.

"Could you have taken me instead?" she says after a spell of silence, releasing his wrist and her arm falls back to her side. "Had I said something, given you permission, could I have gone in her place?"

A raven makes its call. A dog faintly barks in the distance. The crickets chirp their eerie song. One day, such creatures will cease to make a sound, just as every night ends to allow the sun to rise.

La Mort takes his time to answer, his eyes casting a gaze upon the dark night sky, the stars, though small, shining radiantly in the distance. He takes one step back before she can feel his eyes on her, watching, waiting. She will not run, not while waiting for a response. If distracting her with the appeal of the stars is his intention, it is not one that will work for long, and she's barely immersed in the beauty of the night sky before his voice calls her back to reality.

"Not even if you permitted it."

IV.

She does not see him again for a few weeks.

She starts to see less and less of Marius. He begins to work odd hours at the shop, and starts to make random trips to the Luxembourg Gardens. Very rarely does she encounter him leaving his apartment, and the same goes for returning. When they do have an encounter, it is usually brief, for he is usually going somewhere, where she has to try and prevent her father from seeing her with this man, lest he beat her again for it.

Eponine has become involved a bit more in her father's schemes, becoming a key part to the Patron Minette's crimes. She is small enough to fit within small crevices that not even the dandy, Montparnasse, can get into, able to reach into places the others cannot. She is not one to kill, however, when possible witnesses are involved—she leaves that to the rest of the gang, not wanting blood on her hands. Sometimes she acts as the distraction, because there are some who will not ignore a poor girl who injured her ankle and cannot walk, or take a chance on a young girl at the street corner. She is always careful not to let things go too far with the latter, her innocence remaining intact.

One night, though, the street corner distraction goes horribly wrong.

The Patron Minette misses their cue to pounce, and someone pulls her backwards into an alley. She screams for help, for her mother, for her father, for Montparnasse, for Marius, and even for la Mort, but not one comes to her rescue.

She has never been so scared in her life.

She asks to be left alone, tells her attacker to stop, begs for any sort of mercy. She uses all the strength she has to fend him off, by kicking, by shoving, by making things difficult as she possibly can, but in the end, it isn't enough.

When it's all over, her attacker scampers off, throwing a few sous in her direction, while she sits there shaking against the alley wall, the rain not enough to wash away the pain, nor hide the saltiness of her tears.

She is still trying to recover from the ordeal, still trying to figure what happened, that she does not hear a man's sudden cry of pain in the near distance, nor does she hear the sound of footsteps coming towards her. She is still crying when she hears his voice, quiet and soothing.

She is too traumatized from the ordeal to hear him, to pick out his words, but when she looks up, she sees those steel-blue eyes soften, his usually blond hair dark and soaked from the rain. She notices spots of red on his face, on his neck, in his hair that the rain has not yet washed away, and she is not taken aback by the sight at all, too shaken up by the ordeal she had just been through.

She does not notice the moment she is lifted from the cobblestone ground, nor does she remember when she nuzzled her head upon his chest. She shivers in his arms, but not from the cold. Her focus on what happened stops her from feeling the pain, but only temporarily.

She ever-so slowly comes back to reality. She takes no notice of being laid down on a couch in front of a fireplace, its flames already burning. She barely recognizes the feel of a dry cloth dabbing the rain and tears from her face. She barely recalls when a few layers of blankets started to cover her shivering, traumatized form.

She does not sleep at all that night, only seeing the face of her attacker every time she closes her eyes. Every so often, throughout the night, la Mort takes a warm cloth and dabs it upon her forehead, soothingly telling her to relax.

Eponine does not ask him why he was not there only two minutes sooner. She does not ask why he allowed that to happen while she screamed for his help, for anyone's help. The thoughts come to mind, but she never voices that. She wants to be mad at him, for not being there in those traumatic moments when she knows he could have intervened in some way to prevent it, but the words from their previous meeting suddenly remind her why he didn't.

"I do not decide when mortals leave this world—that is decided by Fate. She decides when people are born, when they meet others, when they become ill, when they die. It is required of me to merely help them along."

What happened to her was something Fate had woven in her tapestry, something that was beyond the control of Death himself. He could not change it if he tried.

"I am terribly sorry, mademoiselle." he says while dabbing the cloth on her forehead. "You did not deserve that, no mortal deserves that."

She stirs underneath the blankets before doing what she can to sit up while preventing as much pain as she can. "It is not your fault."

"I would have stopped him if—"

"It was within your control, but it was not." Eponine finishes her sentence, her speech still shaking. "And you cannot be blamed for something you have no control over."

He nods curtly, before turning towards the burning fire. He stares at its flames, as if contemplating something, something that was plaguing his mind. She does not press him, though. She is somewhat aware of the burden he carries. Every day, since the beginning, he has taken lives. He is why nobody lives forever, taking them away at Fate's command. He has taken away fathers in battle, has stolen children from their mother's breasts. He ends the suffering of the starving and the ailing. He has done it before she was born, and will be doing it for centuries more after she dies.

"Thank you." she says after a spell, causing him to turn his head. "For doing what you could."

She could have sworn he started to smile, but it disappears too quickly for her to know for certain. "My pleasure."

Within the next few days, she develops a fever. She constantly slips in and out of consciousness, always wondering if she will ever wake up again, la Mort finally taking her away. But each time her eyes close, they later open, and as each day passes, she feels that dying from what ails her is less likely.

La Mort comes and goes, she observes those few days. There were times where she would wake up to an empty room, with the fire barely burning. Other times she would wake up to the feeling of a cold cloth being dabbed on her forehead.

After a week, she finally returns home, her sister and her mother welcoming her with open arms. They ask her what happened to her, where she had been. Eponine asks what did her father say happened, and when her sister replies that he said she ran away in the middle of a robbery attempt, she tells them the truth (of what she can bear to say).

"I followed Father's orders, and when I gave them their cue, they didn't seem to hear me. Not long after that, I was dragged away. " Eponine recalls, trying to push the traumatic details out of her mind. She keeps the details of her attack short, not wanting to relive those horrific moments. "Shortly afterwards, another man came by and took me in. He did not hurt me in any way, only took care of me."

That night, while curled up under her threadbare blanket beside her sister, she can hear a rather loud argument between her father and mother in the other room.

V.

The following afternoon, she happens to bump into a rather-frantic Marius, and never in her time knowing him has she seen him in such a panic.

"Is everything alright, Monsieur Marius?" she barely has a chance to ask before she feels his arms around her.

She revels in moment while it lasts, before he pulls out of the embrace and clasps his hands on her shoulders. "It is good to see you are alright."

"What makes you think anything was wrong?" Eponine counters, raising an eyebrow in confusion.

"Haven't seen you around in about a week or so." Marius replies, his arms dropping to his sides. "And then my friend said there was a terrible accident involving the older Jondrette girl, but I did not hear the details. I have been wandering around the streets of Paris the past few days thinking you were dead! Please do not let that happen again, 'Ponine."

She smiles, slight amusement in her eyes. "I'll try not to, monsieur."

"You will find a way, I am sure." he says with a chuckle, and just like that, the two part ways, Marius leaving Eponine standing there as he dashes off towards the Luxembourg Gardens.

VI.

Eponine sits in the corner of the room with the threadbare blanket, with tears in her eyes when he appears in the window, like a raven perched in a tree on All Hallow's Eve.

"There is another." la Mort informs her, though a part of her swears she already knew.

"What makes you think that?" she retorts, knowing what the response would be. She is not blind nor deaf, not when it comes to Marius. His random outings to the Luxembourg Gardens, the mumbling she has sometimes heard through the walls that almost sound like the practicing of lines. The day before the incident, she could have sworn he muttered something about an Ursula. She had tried to push it out of her mind, but the more she sees, the less she succeeds.

"Does it matter, whether it was Fate or by my own investigation?" he counters, sliding off the edge of the window ledge until his feet touch the floor. "Marius Pontmercy sees you only as a friend, mademoiselle, and nothing more."

She knows the latter statement to be true, but she is not willing to admit it, and to prevent another word on the subject, she says, "At least I am capable of love."

Death looks at her with harsh eyes, not the cold expression that he frequently bears. It is clear she has struck some sort of chord within him, and instead of shutting up, she continues.

"You may be able feel, whether it is sympathy or anger, pity or happiness, but you cannot love. Everything that may have put a warm feeling in your heart has to die one day, monsieur, and you are the one who must take it away from Life." Eponine says in the midst her frustration, her sadness, her confusion. "You may kill out of pity for the weak and ailing, and anger for those who harmed the innocent, but love, you cannot kill someone out of that, not after centuries of taking lives. You have bared this burden for centuries and will for all eternity, but your heart is stone, and even if you did find what mortals call love, there will come a day where you will have to kill them."

She is not wrong, not completely. Just as everything King Midas touched turned to gold, everything Death touched died. Maybe he would not have to take them away immediately, but he would have to, one day, due to forces beyond his control. To take away lives and end their suffering, he did that, but only at Fate's command. Out of anger, it was Fate's way of punishment for those who had wrong paths within their tapestry. For Eponine to say Death could not love, one could not say with great certainty that the statement was false. If one can feel anger, happiness, or pity, surely they can feel love? Yet, if one's occupation was to one day take someone away from Life, day after day, night after night, since the beginning of time, it is possible to say they had started to build up walls long ago to prevent such a feeling, to protect themselves.

"You speak as if I had a say in the matter." la Mort replies tightly. "As if being someone mortals fear was my choice, as if killing them was something I chose to do."

"You haven't told me otherwise." Eponine counters as she stands up. "But then again, there is little you have told me."

"I believe I have told you enough," he says sternly, "perhaps more than one should know about Death."

A pause. The silence allows the songs of crickets and a distant hoot of an owl. La Mort stares out the window, contemplation in his steel-blue eyes. The moonlight reflects raven-like hues in his clothing, his blond hair almost white. He looks so much like the strange man she met all those years ago after falling out of the slippery tree, but since then, there has been change. His expression is still cold, his skin still like ice. His behavior, especially towards her, as far as she can tell, is no different than he treats other mortals, beings whose souls he will one day take from the Earth. The change, if only she could put her finger on it…

"You are right, though, mademoiselle," he continues, his voice much calmer this time. "I bear the burden of immortality, the sole purpose of my existence to take lives away, but it was not my choice. That decision was made by a power much higher-ranked than Fate, and for all eternity, the occupation will not change.

"On the matter of love, that is a debatable subject, for mortals and immortals. Both can choose to love, mademoiselle, those of Olympus being an example of for the immortals." Death tells her, starting to walk slowly across the floor. "There were some who loved those of the opposite gender, those of the same gender, none at all, and some who loved those not of their kind. There were some instances where 'love' was not the god's own choosing. I take it you are familiar with Apollo and Daphne?"

"I am." Eponine nods in response. "Daphne was nymph who scorned Apollo, who with the golden arrow of Eros, had fallen in love with her. Apollo continued to follow her until one day, he almost caught up with her. She asked her father to change her form, and just as Apollo reached her, she transformed into a laurel tree, if my memory serves me right."

"That it does." He turns towards her, but remains in place. "Both Apollo and Daphne were mythical beings, a god and a nymph, but in contrast, it was a punishment of Eros to strike Apollo with a golden arrow and Daphne with one of iron."

"He still found himself fascinated by her," she recalls, leaning against the wall. "Though she became something he could never have, I've heard some stories that claim he took care of her after she turned into the tree."

"As have I, and perhaps he did." la Mort glances out the window. "In this particular circumstance, though, Apollo did not choose to love—another god chose for him."

"Is this your way of saying that you, Life, and Fate could do the same to one another?"

"In a manner of speaking, yes," he replies, taking his place by leaning against the wall beside her. "But not just the three of us. There are others out there, some of equivalent rank, and others much powerful than I."

Eponine nods in understanding, and watches him make his way towards the window. "Then perhaps there is hope for you yet."

"Perhaps."

He then climbs out the window, and disappears into the night.

VII.

The next time she encounters him, almost a year has gone past. She had only recently turned seventeen, and the year is 1831.

She is only running an errand for Marius when she stumbles upon him, this time at the Café Musain, a place Marius had started frequenting around the same time he encountered the girl her started fawning over, and still was.

She climbs up the stairs of the old café, expecting to be there maybe five minutes at the most, delivering two of three letters: one for a M. Courfeyrac and another for a M. Enjolras. The third letter, addressed to Euphrasie Fauchelevent, was her next errand.

She expects there to be a whole group of young men, as Marius had told her there might be. The Friends of the ABC, they were called, a group of young men wanting to create change in the Parisian landscape. They were advocates for a Republic, and like some of the bourgeoisie who otherwise remained silent, did would they could to assist the poor, but that was not enough. When she reaches the top of the stairs, there are only three.

"I will make sure to check on Grantaire at the Barrière du Maine, and let us hope he does not make us look like fools."

Eponine freezes in mid-step at the familiarity of the voice, and she hopes for one of the few times in her life, she is terribly mistaken. But when her eyes catch a glimpse of the blond hair and cold eyes, she knows she is not wrong. Though the raven hues are absent in his attire, his face is not one she would mistake for another.

"Pardon me, mademoiselle, but are you looking for someone?" One of the other men asks as the third closes the book that had been in front of them.

Slowly, she nods, trying to snap out of the shock of seeing la Mort among their ranks. "Yes, actually I am. Letters for M. Courfeyrac and M. Enjolras, from Marius Pontmercy."

"There is no need for formalities. You can simply call me Courfeyrac, and the gentleman with the glasses is Combeferre, and other who you are looking for is standing beside him." The young man greets kindly. "Enjolras, your favorite Bonapartist has a note for you!"

"Buonaparte." la Mort, or in this case, 'Enjolras' corrects, before approaching her and collecting the letter. He reaches into his pocket and pulls out a few coins, placing them into her hands. "For your troubles, mademoiselle."

"Th-thank you." Eponine stutters, her mind still trying to process what the situation is.

She is still there when Courfeyrac and Combeferre leave, having other activities to attend to. La Mort continues to go through the stacks of paper one of the tables until the sun starts to set, before placing them away in the messenger bag that lies at his feet.

"Do you not have other errands to run, mademoiselle?" he says to her finally as he reaches for the black coat hanging on the wooden rack behind him.

"What sort of game are you playing?" Eponine counters fiercely. It is one thing for him to occasionally appear in her life, but for him to be involved in something like this, there is obviously more than meets the eye.

"Revolution is not a game, mademoiselle."

"It is when you are involved, Shadowed One." she retorts, looking him straight in the eye. "And when you get involved with the lives of mortals, little good will come of it."

"I am well aware of that, thank you." la Mort replies as he puts on his coat. "For what my involvement here will bring, I am only doing what must be done. It is not being done on my own accord, either, if you would so wish to know."

"Fate must have told you something, 'Enjolras'." Eponine mocks, not backing away when he takes a few steps of warning told her. "What did she tell you? What do you have planned?"

La Mort stares at her for a few moments, as if the questions were strange to him. "How has Monsieur Marius been?"

"He's fine, but he has no relation to the subject at hand."

"Are you sure about that?"

She's not, and she is hoping her expression does not show it, that Death cannot see the uncertainity in her otherwise defiant eyes. "These young men have done nothing wrong, as far as I can tell, and you are prepared to lead them to slaughter?"

"It is not my choice, mademoiselle." la Mort says through gritted teeth. "If this plan goes through the way Fate has organized it, yes, many innocent men will die, but she has her reasons for it, and I am not going to disobey her."

"Why not?"

"Because certain matters will become complicated." he replies, lifting the bag off the floor. "In ways I cannot explain."

"Thinking makes it so." the gamine blocks his way from going down the stairs.

"I mean it, mademoiselle." he glares at her as she stares him down, not even taking one step back from him as he gets closer and closer to her. "Now, if you can excuse me, there is other business I need to attend to."

He takes one step forward in warning, and she remains still. If she takes two more steps backward, she might fall down the stairs, and a part of her wonders if that is how she is supposed to die, from an accident such as falling down the stairs, but it would not be an accident so much if he pushed her—

"Oh, Enjolras! I am so glad I caught you!" a voice says from behind her, causing her to turn around to see the man known as Courfeyrac climbing up the stairs. Eponine moves out of the way to let him through, and as Death throws a cold look her way, she takes note that the confrontation is over, leaving the two men to their conversation.