One Way to Go On- A Les Miserables Story

A Meeting in the Dark

Eponine came to the bridge by chance, or by fate. It was all the same to her.

She listened to the water rushing on, stared at how it took the light and bent it into a serpent that it drowned. She realized rather quickly why she had stopped, but she took her time watching the river. It was almost peaceful. She was almost happy, somehow. Not happy- contented? serene? calm. That's what she felt.

Quiet footsteps announced the arrival of someone else. She turned, and saw Javert, the spy she had heard them condemn to death at the barricade. Rather than look on him with disdain, she smiled softly. Javert, feeling locked into this interaction he had planned no part of, rested his arms on the railing a couple feet to her left. They sat in silence for a few moments, him searching the sky, her searching the river.

What were they looking for?

Neither of them knew.

Finally, after a moment, Eponine looked to Javert and asked,

"So you're the spy from the barricade?"

He looked at her an extra second, pulled from his internal conflict.

"Yes, Mademoiselle," he conceded quietly, looking back out on the horizon.

"You were meant to die, weren't you?" she said, still watching him with the soft, unjudgmental attention that he was unused to, and he stiffened by it.

"Yes," he said, not looking away from the couple of stars piercing the clouds.

"As was I," Eponine said, laughing brightly. It was as though her imminent doom had somehow brought her to a point of sorrow-drunk cheeriness. "I suppose you're here for the same reason as I?"

"Which is?" He looked away from the horizon and into her content-seeming eyes.

"To finish what Fate started. To give yourself up to what Providence has spared you," she said, rubbing her fingertips with her thumb and looking back out where he had just ceased.

"I- I suppose so," he said gruffly, looking down, but not at the water, at the railing.

"What's the reason?" she asked, looking to him, but seeing the pang of complicated emotion hit his face, she shook her head. "I'm sorry, that's personal. I'll tell you mine, though, if you don't mind. We're both going to die anyways, what does it matter?"

She said this, such a hopeless sentiment, with such an indifferent voice it struck Javert. He put aside his mental turmoil, and nodded, to acknowledge that he would listen.

"Oh, thank you. It really doesn't matter, it really won't in an hour or so, but I do appreciate it. Oh, where to begin?" She wrung her hands, then, feeling the frigid spray of the river on her bare arms, folded them again.

"We have time. It must be hours before daybreak," Javert said patiently, but patiently with a touch of kindness. It was something completely unfamiliar to him, trying to comfort, to listen.

"I'll spare you the details anyhow- it's much too long a story to maintain interest. Essentially- oh, how to explain it? I'd fallen in love."

Javert nodded, the strange hope of connection somewhat dashed, seeing as he couldn't say the same about himself- not ever.

"It's silly, I know, but oh, I loved him! He loved another- I didn't blame him for it, I even helped to bring them together, thinking it would make him love me- Oh, it's silly. Even now, as I say it, I can hear how it must sound- But he was my everything. He went to the barricades, I followed. I blocked a bullet for him," she raised her bandaged hand. Javert raised his eyebrows but nodded for her to continue. "but it only went through my hand! I fell, and he held me, and for a moment, I wondered if it could never end, and if that could be my life."