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Gavroche has been spending a lot of time in the infirmary in the last few days, sitting with Eponine. While she sleeps, he emerges, pale and tired, to get something to eat - and fresh air, and different company.

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"Is there something in the water that's making people skip meals and sleep lately?" the baker asks the ceiling, mildly exasperated.

"You. Sit. I'll bring you food."

"I've been eating", he says, sitting obediently. "Sleep's not come easy, though."

"If you want, I can help with that, too," Rae says, bringing him a plate of homemade quiche, spinach salad with feta cheese, candied pecans, strawberries and homemade vinaigrette, and a toasted quinoa pilaf with carrots, caramelized onions, sweet peppers and corn, and setting it in front of him with napkin and fork.

A highly flavorful, highly nutritious meal.

"What's been keeping you up?"

"My sister", he says quietly. "She got back a few days ago. Hands covered in her own blood... but she's alive."

Rae stiffens, eyes widening slightly as she searches his face.

"Is she okay?"

"She got shot. But", he adds quickly, "not as badly as the first go round, when she wasn't forewarned."

"That's something," Rae reaches and squeezes Gavroche's hand. "That's not nothing. And she'll get good care here."

"Yeah." He squeezes back. "The best. I'm doing what I can, as well. But when I was ten, I watched her die, so... sleep's been sort of full of that."

"If you wanted me to keep watch for a while, I know how to give someone dreamless sleep," she offers, holding his hand for a moment longer before letting go. "A night without worry would do you good."

It won't solve all the world's problems any more than a square meal, but it's what she can offer.

"It would", he agrees. "It's been a... couple of weeks at least, between 'Ponine and not knowing what happened to Javert and Valjean."

"Then we can give you some time to recuperate," Rae promises, stepping over to the Bar to ask her to take care of her baked goods for now. "Eat, and I'll go ask the infirmary staff to make up a bed for you, so you won't have to worry when you wake up."

Gavroche nods, taking another mouthful of the food.

"Won't be the first time I've slept in there, the beds are pretty comfortable."

"They are," she nods. They're good if you need them - you just don't want to have to need them. "I'll be right back."

Rae steps away towards the infirmary. It won't take her long to ask the infirmary rats to put together a bed so Gavroche can sleep near the injured Eponine.

He focuses on his meal while she's gone, realizing just how hungry he is and getting a long way into eating all of it before she gets back.

"Want a cinnamon roll for dessert?" she offers with a smile as she returns, seeing the healthy progress he's made on the plate. "Or a slice of my new experiment? It doesn't even have a name yet."

"The experiment I tried the other day?" He tries for a grin in return. "How could I turn that down?"

"Glad you liked it - I'm trying to come up with something appropriate to call it, but I have no idea what," she says, stepping over to the Bar to fetch a couple slices of the chocolate cake with ginger fudge, pistachios and sea salt.

"It's a complicated recipe", he agrees. "The four different things and you'd want all of them to come into it."

"And the name has to stick in the mind. Something memorable."

"Inexorable..." Rae murmurs, setting one of the slices on its plate beside Gavroche's meal, before taking a bite of the slice she'd brought back for herself. "Primordial..."

"...hmm."

He sets about finishing the savoury food before the cake gets a look-in, nodding.

"Primordial?"

"Primordial what, though?" she ponders, stuck.

"It should fit with the names of the other things", he says after a moment. "If you've had a theme."

"Generally morbid and creepy works as a theme," she grins. "Lemon Lechery, Meringuamania, Chocoholia, Bitter Chocolate Death, Killer Zebras, Death of Marat, Glutton's Grail, et cetera."

"I was thinking with the gooiness of the fudge, there could be some... I don't know, prehistoric connotations to it. Fossils in a tar pit sort of thing."

"OK, morbid and creepy." Gavroche considers. "Isn't there a famous tar pit somewhere? Do they have that in your world?"

"Way out west there's the Rancho La Brea tar pits, yeah..." Rae considers.

"There might be some way of incorporating that..."

It'll be a subject of discussion. Finding the right name is important!

And it will be given all the serious thought it deserves, until the food is gone and Rae gives Gavroche the promised dreamless night, while she watches over brother and sister's rest.

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