(Untitled)

[i_spoiled_it]

Steph wanders downstairs, making a bee-line for the bar and for coffee. The new addition to the decor gets a curious glance before she turns back to her caffeine

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[i_spoiled_it]

Bar is great. Steph's smile could almost match his for delight. Although her delight is partly at seeing him smile.

She has a soft spot for kids. ... A soft spot the size of Uluru.

"How long've you lived here?" she asks curiously, once she's slurped enough to satisfy the immediate chocolate-NOW feeling.

[street_sparrow]

Gavroche nods. "Guess it was enough to be... his answer. About what I'd do, if he did it."

[i_spoiled_it]

"I don't want it anyway," Steph says abruptly, staring down at her drink. "I don't - I can't. So it wouldn't matter what it was - it's not -"

She takes a sharp breath.

"What was it - what was it like?"

[street_sparrow]

"It was..." He'll never forget it, but putting it in words? That takes a little doing. "It was like... I was back on the day I died. What I did, why I died, and it was like, it didn't hurt, here and here..." He touches the places where his wounds were again. "...it didn't hurt when he fixed it, but it was like it stopped hurting even if it wasn't before... and then it wasn't just like being alive the way the bar makes you, it was like being really alive, and then it was just... I wanted to sing. My song, from the barricades."

[i_spoiled_it]

Steph squeezes her eyes shut, and drops her head. She knows - she can just - it'd be so - she wants it so much it almost hurts, suddenly. She's worrying unconsciously at the scars on her arms.

She won't.

"What was your song?" she asks, looking back up. "What barricades? Was it some sort of revolution or something?"

[street_sparrow]

"Yeah, it was... the students were rising up. My friends. And the gendarmes were coming, and we were running out of bullets... so I went to get them some more. Song was..."

He trails off and then just starts to sing it.

"Je ne suis pas notaire,
C'est la faute a Voltaire;
Je suis un petit oiseau,
C'est la faute a Rousseau."

[i_spoiled_it]

It's a world away from Gotham and the gang wars Steph died in. She listens quietly, trying to picture it.

"And then you - they shot you."

[street_sparrow]

Gavroche nods, standing proudly straight.

"But I threw my bag over the barricade before I died. So they'd have the bullets."

[i_spoiled_it]

Steph wants to hug him. And cry for him, too; he's too young, damn it. At least ... at least he has another chance now.

He'd have made a good Robin, she thinks.

"Well done." It sounds like the stupidest of all stupid things to say, once she's said it; but she doesn't know what else to say.

[street_sparrow]

In the time he came from, chances are good that he'd have died young anyway, and he knows it. He'd say, if he was asked, that he's glad to have achieved something, however small, even if almost all his friends died anyway.

"Thanks", he says with a slight smile.