It was true, though it was a side Eponine had seen so rarely. Enjolras could be a very violent man when the cause was at stake. The battle he'd fought so hard for, it mattered more than most anything. His love for France, for its people, it meant more to him than anything at the time. Even his own family couldn't reach him when he got to that point. Looking back on it now, it almost scared him, knowing what he had become, and really, what he could become again. This world had its injustices. Worse, it had evils far greater than the French monarchy. But now he had her to keep him grounded. Friends who were already soldiers, who he didn't have to change into fighters because they already were.
Because she was wrong about one thing. She hadn't expected to die. Perhaps the others hadn't either. But he always had. He'd never truly expected to live through the battle at the barricades. He'd kept to the back long enough to give orders, to fight their way through, but he knew, in the end, his own life meant nothing compared to what he was fighting for. To the lives of people with nothing warm to wear when it grew cold, the ones without enough food or a safe place to sleep. He had readily laid down his life for them and he still had no regrets. His regrets were all the other lives that went with his.
And the fact that it had all been for nothing.
They were barely remembered. Oh, his account was a work of fiction, he knew that. But it was based on a real event, wasn't it? So someone, somewhere, had risen up against the National Guard and for what? Nothing, apparently.
He didn't argue her new beginning comment, though. Instead, he simply placed a kiss on her forehead and sighed. "It's true, those memories haven't faded. I hope they never will. It's the little things I miss the most, I suppose." She did more to calm him than she'd ever know. Than he'd likely ever let him know. Just having the weight of her against him relaxed him. She was something to live for, something to fight for. It helped. Despite everything, it truly did.
"I'd wanted today to be so different. For all of them. They should have come out as heroes. Instead, their families buried them." Because of him. And he'd never be able to forget that.