Requested by: captain_ouat_swan

Prompt: Self given

Warnings: None

Extra: Short and angsty. Just the way I like it.

~*~

The world was not kind to either of us.

Unlike the upper class, who seemed to think that no one existed but them and their full bellies and large, warm, houses, we were stuck in reality. Our parents died before their time due to illness and the inability to afford medicine. If it wasn't for Gavroche and his brother taking me in, I would have joined them soon after.

The rich didn't like to admit their wealth. There was always someone wealthier than them. Someone with bigger jewels, a bigger house, more food. So in the rich's eyes, they were 'poor'. They weren't poor, and they were all asses for claiming they were. We were poor.

There were fights in the market for a slice of bread. Struggles to afford semi-livable housing that at the very least had a roof with a few holes. We had patches that showed how poor we were, and how we were seen as the scum of France. But more than anything, we craved revolution. And the rich couldn't be more frightened of it.

That's why we were so drawn to the ABC cafe. The first days were tenative, cautious as if any person could be a traitor to France and what it should stand for. After that, the ABC cafe was the best family we'd ever known. And as the youngest at fifteen, we were promptly treated as such.

"Gavroche, you're going to promise to stay alive, right?" I asked nervously, gripping the edges of his shirt collar.

The day of the revolution. What the ABC cafe had been planning and preaching about for as long as we had known the leaders of it. It was our time, to rally the people and call them to arms. The hierarchy was going to fall beneath us and our determination, our power. They pushed us down and ground us beneath their too expensive leather shoes, and we were finally going to fight back.

"Of course (Y/n)," Gavroche assured me with a confident smile, "We can do this. Have faith, and Vive la France."

"Vive la France," I smiled back, kissing his cheek quickly.

The guys around us cheered and clapped, teasing us with broad smiles and pats on the back. Rolling my eyes, I looked away with flushed cheeks. Our relationship was an open secret among our 'elders' and because of that, they had no hesitations with making fun of us and our 'young love'. Thankfully, Marius had fallen in love recently, and that took most of the attention away from us and transferred to him and his lovesick face instead.

"Shut up," I pushed Enjorlas' arm when he sidled up to me and wiggled his eyebrows, "There's a revolution to win here."

"She's right," Gavroche nodded, "Which is why you need to stay away and stay safe."

"Gavroche, you can't expect me to leave when we're so close to what we've been working towards."

The boys hollering around us backed off as they sensed an impending lover's quarrel. I was determined to not have our last conversation before the revolution be a fight, because despite my insistence on staying, I was already forming a plan in my head that would be the best of both worlds.

"(Y/n), please," Gavroche all but begged.

Nodding slowly, I sighed as if defeated, "Okay, I'll stay away and leave you to it. Stay safe, Gavroche. And open up a new day for France."

Leaving him with a lingering gaze, I walked around the ABC Cafe as if I was taking a back way. And I was. If you counted the back entrance of the cafe as a back way. I settled in one of the last chairs inside, out of view of the boys outside but with a view of everything that was going on.

If I couldn't participate in the revolution, I was going to watch it.

I watched as the French Army arrived. As the first shots were fired and the first life was lost. Eponine, a light in all of our lives and the perfect finder of information. If you needed to find someone, or track down the smallest detail about an obscure thing, she was the girl you would go to. Her death was devastating, and all the boys drank, mourned, and sang to it, but I had to chuckle morbidly at the irony. Both of us were women driven by love to stay in the danger.

After Eponine was a man with information, and French Officer pretending to be one of us. The man with information was left to kill him, and instead he let him go. The two had a history, and that intrigued me. If Eponine were still alive, I'd ask her to figure out what the connection was. Instead, I was stuck in my stiff chair, watching our barricades be blown to bits.

I stood for the first time in hours when the canons arrived, and when our side ran out of ammo and gunpowder. We were screwed without it, and I knew that. Gavroche, the love of my young life, snuck through the barricade and to the other side. I sprinted from the ABC Cafe and to the streets as soon as I saw the mop he called hair cross through.

"Woah, (Y/n)," Marius stopped me, "What are you doing here? You shouldn't be here."

Bang.

I flinched at the sound of a gunshot. I understood what the implications behind that were, and ten men wouldn't be able to hold me back from making it across the barricade and seeing Gavroche and what was going on with my own two eyes.

"Let me go, Marius," my voice was low, and deadly, and Marius' grip loosened ever so slightly. It was enough, and I yanked my arm out of his hand and ducked through the small opening in the barricade.

Bang!

There he was, my little soldier, with two bullet wounds on his too small body, but he was still gathering as much gunpowder as he could.

"Gavroche!" I shrieked.

He turned, smiled, and- bang! And fell. Sprinting forward, I fell to my knees next to him, sobbing. The French Soldiers across from me seemed unsure. They had just killed a child. Who would take the responsibility of killing a second? A girl no less?

Brushing Gavroche's hair out of his face, I kissed his forehead, humming, "C'est lui pour moi. Moi pour lui dans la vie. Il me l'a dit, l'a jure pour la vie."

A gun cocked. The soldiers had decided then. Did they draw straws? Did they even care? I didn't. Not anymore. Not when my light in the world that was too cruel was lying beneath me, bloody, pale, and unmoving. Raising my head, I faced the head of the gun, of my doom.

"Vive la France."

Bang!