lark_in_flight | Fantine & Cosette

Cosette opens her mouth -- and closes it again, without a word, and covers her face with both her hands.

"Oh," she wails, "I don't know what I want any more!"

...Yeah so something hot to drink, and possibly also some food and quiet, is maybe not a bad plan.

"I'll be right back, darling, I'll get you some chocolate," Fantine says, with a brief kiss to Cosette's forehead. She slips out and down the stairs to Bar, and comes back just as quick with a hot mug.

"Here you are." Fantine draws up the little nightstand and puts the hot chocolate on top of it before Cosette. "Now just drink it, and then you can ask me or tell me anything you like, hmm?"

While her mother is gone, Cosette sits for a moment in the quiet of the room, broken only by the skylark's chirping and fluttering as it hops around the room.

Then her face crumples again, though she's out of tears for the moment, and she slumps over sideways to curl up on her mother's bed like a child, and press her face miserably to her knees.

She doesn't know how many minutes pass. But then there are steps in the hallway, and a hand on the latch; she sits up hastily, and finds a watery attempt at a smile for her mother.

Obediently she takes the hot chocolate, and sips at it. "You're so very good to me, Mother," she murmurs.

The hot chocolate is rich and sweet, and it slides down her throat like ambrosia. She hadn't realized she was thirsty or hungry at all.

A rat raps on the door and comes in with a tray of small sandwiches. Fantine had requested them of Bar when she went down. Now she takes the tray and puts it on the nightstand. The skylark, which had been uninterested in the hot chocolate, swoops down to peck at the sandwiches, but Fantine diverts him: "Not for you, little one."

To Cosette, she says, "That's right, darling. Drink up, and have a sandwich, too."

"You must have some too. You must be good to yourself too, Mother."

Her mother has never shown any particular inclination to deprive herself of small pleasures. But it's habitual, and it would be even if Cosette were calm and thinking clearly.

"Oh!" she cries, impulsively, when she's finished half a sandwich and most of her hot cocoa. "You are so very good. You know that, don't you, Mother? You must know it."

Fantine slips an arm around Cosette's shoulders. "There, there, darling." She hasn't been good, not all the time, but Cosette doesn't need to know all that now. "Finish your sandwich." To please Cosette, she takes a half-sandwich herself, though she's not especially hungry.

But that isn't an answer. That isn't an answer at all; it's exactly the kind of evasion her father always uses, and she can't bear it right now. She knows she's being silly, she knows she's overwrought, but all the same she twists round in her mother's embrace to stare intently at her mother.

"You are -- I don't care about anything else, I don't care! If anyone has ever said a bad thing about you it's only because they didn't know you and how very good you are. You are, you're so kind and warm and loving and good, I know God must be smiling down on you, Mother. I'm very sure of it. You mustn't ever think otherwise. That would be contradicting your little Cosette, so you mustn't."

Fantine is startled into a laugh. "All right, my dear, all right. You may say I'm good, and I won't contradict you! I--I've always tried to be. And I know God forgives us all, and I always tried to keep you safe and happy, and look, here you are, married to a good man, and everything so nice for you! And now you can be even happier, now that M. Madeleine is back with you and will get well soon. And I can see you whenever you come here, and there's nothing to keep us apart. So God has answered my prayers and forgiven all my sins, and he must be smiling down on both of us."

Cosette drops her sandwich heedlessly, more or less on the plate, so that she can fling her arms around her mother's neck and press her cheek to Fantine's.

"Oh, Mother!" She has no more tears, but the word is nearly a sob all the same.

"I love you so. I'm so glad God sent you here to me. I'm so glad. It's a blessing, I thank Him on my knees for you. I do love you."

And now there are tears in Fantine's eyes, as she holds Cosette close to her. "My darling little girl--no, not little anymore. All grown and married now, and taking care of your father, and so good and kind."

And for a few long moments, Cosette only clings to her mother.

Then she pulls back a little, and dashes at her eyes. "Oh -- oh, I'm all a muddle! I haven't even told you the other good news. My darling Marius is here."

"Oh, how lovely!" Fantine smiles. "Then you can both visit M. Madeleine, and me, too! When can I meet him?"

"He's gone back to my rooms -- our rooms, that is -- I..."

She wants, very fiercely, to never at all give any impression of being ashamed of her mother. And yet she can't quite bear to navigate this delicate terrain too, not after everything else that's happened today.

"My poor Marius, I've hardly explained a thing to him. And it was M. le docteur Joly who helped Father -- do you know him? -- he's one of my Marius's friends, I mean he was. He still is! But, well, he's at Milliways after -- and then it's Milliways. And everything with Father was so awful."

"I want you to meet him, I do, as soon as possible. I'd go fetch him right now except for that! You'll see how wonderful he is. But it's only that I want him to have a little time to, to understand how things are here."

Her voice trails off a little uncertainly, and she studies her mother's face anxiously. She doesn't want to give offense. If she has -- if she's made her mother sad, on top of everything else -- then she'll leap up and go fetch Marius right now, no matter how exhausting it feels. She couldn't bear to make her mother sad too.

Fantine sees the unspoken problem: Marius can't yet bear the introduction to a dead mother-in-law, on top of all the surprises of the day. Let alone learning she's not the sort of mother-in-law a baron should have.

And she doesn't want to make any problems for Cosette. "Of course, darling." She smiles. "Whenever you'd like, then."

I promise you, very soon--

You'll love each other, you will, you're both so good--

Can she promise that, truly, after what's just happened with her father?

"I love you, Maman," she cries instead, with a little tremble of emotion in her voice, and flings her arms around her mother's neck again.

That she can say, and mean with all her heart. And if she says it enough, and means it enough, maybe it will make up for the rest, and this sudden quiet twinge of guilt that she and Marius aren't strong enough to be and do everything they ought to.

Fantine & Cosette

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