Chapter Text
Monday 3rd May - 13:56
The day had begun drizzly and unpleasant - a bad omen, Fantine couldn’t help but think as she had opened her curtains that morning. The sky had been so monotonously grey that one couldn’t pinpoint where one cloud ended and another began and rain pattered down in bursts, coinciding beautifully with every time Fantine had to pop out of her flat to run an errand.
It was like the universe had heard her say “Could this day get any worse?” and took it as a challenge.
Despite this conspiracy, Fantine had tried to look toward her meeting with Euphrasie with as much optimism as possible. The rain petered off just before midday and, by the time she had picked up the flowers she had ordered for Euphrasie, the sun had come out. That, accompanied by a gentle breeze that warmed and dried the pavements and roads of the lingering dampness, had made a truly beautiful day.
It was a shame, Fantine thought, that she was spending it so goddamn nervous.
The café that Euphrasie had picked wasn’t five minutes down the road from Fantine’s work and the thought of whether that had been intentional had been plaguing her all day.
If it had been intentional, it could go one of two ways. 1. It was an olive branch; a way for Euphrasie to subtly say ‘Look, I’m meeting you in the middle here.’ 2. She’d picked this lovely, little Italian place familiar to Fantine and her after-work drinks to subliminally prove how much information she had on her.
Admittedly, Fantine doubted that it was either one of those options. It was far more likely that Euphrasie had picked somewhere that would be convenient for her to get to while not being one of her usual haunts just in case everything went wrong.
Or, maybe, Fantine was, as ever, just a chronic over-thinker.
At around three minutes past the hour - Fantine knew because she couldn’t help but check her phone every two minutes for the time - a blonde woman, just slightly shorter than her, approached the table. Her round face was the picture of nervousness but something about the set of her brows said that there was a lot of anger beneath her sundress-ed, cardigan-ed, bright-looking exterior.
Something that struck Fantine immediately, so much so that any words she had thought to say got caught in her throat, was the immediate relief that washed over her. Sure, she was blonde and she was classically beautiful, but she looked nothing like Felix.
For one terrible moment, Fantine worried she might cry.
The woman, unmistakably Euphrasie, shifted her bag on her shoulder uncomfortably under her gaze and Fantine jolted back to herself. “It’s nice to meet you,” she said and then, remembering herself, grabbed the large bouquet of flowers and gestured them towards her. “These are yours,” she went on. Then, when Euphrasie didn’t immediately take them, earnestly added. “I won't hold it against you if you decide to destroy them the moment you get home.”
Fantine waited with bated breath as Euphrasie looked at the bouquet for several long moments.
The flowers had been an idea that had come to her whilst out on a walk that took her past a local florist’s the other day. The person that ran the place - she couldn’t remember their name for the life of her, really she should work on being better at names - had listened to her brief description of the situation with wide, fascinated eyes and non-judgemental sympathy. Very quickly, when she had finished talking, they had assured her that they would put something together and all she had to do was pick it up.
True to their word, when she had walked into the florist’s that morning, they had produced the most beautiful bouquet and handed her a little card full of meanings.
The bouquet was colourful and bright without being over the top or showy. Pinks and purples and blues and yellows surrounded by the deep green of oak foliage and the delicate white flowers of both Lily of the Valley and Queen Anne’s Lace made the thing look almost cloud-like. Amaryllis in pink, carnations in oranges and yellows, and rue, heather, and bluebells in their classical colours provided splashes of colour that looked decadent interspersed with the white and green of the rest of the bouquet.
It was wonderful and, yet, Fantine couldn’t help but hope that Euphrasie would wait to notice the little explanation card until she got home.
It was all laid out there, you see. All of her wishes and regrets in a beautiful presentation. That florist was extremely good at their job.
Eventually, after an eternity, Euphrasie took the bouquet, shifted the weight of the stems around in her hand, and nodded, smiling slightly. It may have been more a grimace than a smile, to be honest, but Fantine was willing to take that. In fact, as more and more seconds ticked by, she only became more willing to take whatever Euphrasie would offer her.
Finally, Euphrasie spoke. “If I was going to destroy them the minute I got home, do you really think your approval would matter in the slightest?” It might have been a jab, it might have been an attempt at establishing some kind of rapport.
“Touché,” Fantine said, hedging her bets slightly. Perhaps Euphrasie just had a particularly blunt sense of humour. “Can I get you a drink?”
“Ginger tea if they have it and English breakfast tea if they don’t, thanks.” Ah. Euphrasie looked away from her the moment she was finished talking - earlier even - as though just looking at her was something to be limited as much as humanly possible. Her tone wasn’t cold, not exactly. Strained, maybe. Unhappy, certainly.
Perhaps Fantine was over-reacting.
She mulled it all over as she waited for the tea, drumming her fingers on the counter as Silvia - the teenage daughter of the owners who was working behind said counter - glared at her as she poured the hot water. She contemplated asking her how school was going, but that scowl was nothing to mess with on a good day and today was shaping up to be a hard day, to say the least.
Silvia placed the mug down in front of her with a blunt “What’s up with you today?”
Just for a moment, Fantine contemplated telling this fifteen-year-old everything, even if only to be vindicated as her face morphed into a sincere expression of ‘Hey, Fantine, what the fuck?’ Eventually, though, she settled on the far more tasteful “I’ve got a lot going on right now.” Followed by a hasty “I hope your art thing goes well on Friday,” as she took the mug - which was a lot hotter than she had anticipated - and headed back to the table.
Euphrasie was staring down at her phone as she approached the table and Fantine watched for a moment as her shoulder shook, jostled by her bouncing knee.
Quite unintentionally, it occurred to Fantine that Enjolras shared that nervous tic.
She waved the thought away and sat down, placing the tea in front of Euphrasie.“So,” she began with a pleasant smile that she hoped didn’t betray how badly she was suddenly convinced this was going to go, “You’re a tea drinker?” Euphrasie just raised her eyebrows at her as if to say ‘So?’ “I only mention because I am, too.”
She looked at her for a moment and Fantine got the distinct impression that Euphrasie was deciding whether or not she was making fun of her. “I’m off coffee at the moment,” she said finally, tone careful and clipped. “So there’s not really too many other alternatives, are there?”
Fantine nodded and tried not to take it personally, although it almost certainly was. “Good point.”
An uncomfortable silence followed as Euphrasie sipped her tea and Fantine stared down at her own empty mug, suddenly regretting not getting herself another.
Despite the fact that Euphrasie had been the one to suggest this meeting - Fantine never would have been the one to take that step; she was determined to work at her pace whatever that was - Fantine couldn’t shake the feeling that Euphrasie seemed like she would rather be anywhere else.
She couldn’t blame her. Literally, she couldn’t. Any apprehension Euphrasie felt was entirely Fantine’s fault and she knew that.
“Is it nice then?” Fantine asked purely to break the silence. “The tea?”
Euphrasie did something that was half nod and half-shrug. “It’s calming and it’s good for nausea so it does what I want it to do.”
“Oh, I’m sorry. Are you alright?”
She shrugged listlessly which didn’t really help the sudden growing anxiety in Fantine’s chest. “Fine. Just a lot going on right now.”
Fantine nodded, thinking of all of the times she’d found herself almost compulsively making a hot, comforting cup of tea when stressed. “I’ve always found chamomile pretty good for that.”
“My papa gave it to me when I was a teenager when I was sick and it never helped much.” Fantine deliberately ignored the way it felt as though Euphrasie were pointing out and emphasising every little thing that exemplified Fantine’s absence in her life and how much she’d missed. She was aware enough without saying it out loud.
“Oh, yes,” she agreed pleasantly, “I find it doesn’t help me with nausea much either, but I was so irritable and so stressed for the first few months of being pregnant - hormones and morning sickness and all - and since I was working retail full-time then I needed to not burst into tears or bite the head off of every single rude customer.” Much to her surprise, Euphrasie actually smiled at that. Okay, maybe it was more of a mouth twitch, but still.
Just for a moment, it was definitely there.
Fantine couldn’t help but let out a small sigh of relief. She even felt bold enough to hazard a more potentially difficult question. “How are you feeling? About all this, I mean.”
Any pleasantry fell from Euphrasie’s face at that. “Look,” she began, coldness evident in every syllable, “Enj might think you’re God’s gift to therapy, but I don’t care. You’re not my therapist and I’m not your client, so stop treating me like one.”
Fantine gaped slightly for a moment - more at her own ability to have somehow screwed up this quickly than at Euphrasie. Hastily she leant forward slightly in her chair and tried to make it right. “I know,” she said carefully. “I didn’t mean—“
“Let me be very clear about what I want from you,” Euphrasie cut her off. Finally, she sounded actually angry. Not frustrated, tired, or sad. Angry. “I want answers. I want to know where I come from, I want to know why you didn’t put me into the foster system, and I want to know my own goddamn medical history!”
The bottom dropped out of Fantine’s stomach, her chest lurching viciously. “You’re— You’re not having medical problems, are you?” She swallowed her anxiety and watched Euphrasie’s face intently for any sign of an explanation.
Euphrasie looked down at the table for several long seconds, shifting the weight of her mug between her hands every other moment. Fantine saw the way her mouth twisted and her eyebrows furrowed, as though even the question caused her pain.
“We—” she began before cutting herself off with a small wince, almost imperceptible if Fantine hadn’t been watching her face so closely. She swallowed. “My husband and I are trying for a baby and we’re struggling to conceive.” The words came out quickly, economically, not quite in a rush but definitely manoeuvred in such a way as to cause minimal pain on the way out.
Around a minute and a half of silence passed. It took around half that time just for Fantine to process the cruel reality of her words. The other half she spent wondering if there was any way she could possibly respond without throwing up out of sheer guilt.
Taking a shaky breath, Fantine swallowed down her own feelings and spoke. “When I was sixteen,” she said, “I was told that I was functionally infertile. Which, ironically, is how I ended up accidentally getting pregnant. Is that… helpful? In any way?”
Euphrasie nodded slightly, a faraway look in her eyes as she stared straight ahead. “Tell me if I’m overstepping,” Fantine added quickly, “But have you been told anything like that before?”
This seemed to jolt Euphrasie back to reality somewhat. Shifting slightly awkwardly in her seat, she cleared her throat and shrugged. “I have a couple of cysts on one of my ovaries but apparently it shouldn’t harm our chances too much. We just need to be patient, according to them.” Those last three words were said more to herself than to Fantine - though she heard them anyway - and the bitterness radiated off her in waves.
“I’m sorry.” It was all Fantine could think to say.
Euphrasie shrugged again. “Nothing to do with you.” Her voice wasn’t accusing, just honestly stating the facts. It wasn’t Euphrasie’s fault that the facts hurt.
Fantine frowned. “Genetically, it might be.”
“Well,” she said with a small huff, “It’s not your fault.”
“I’m still sorry it’s happening at all.”
Euphrasie nodded sedately and seemed to accept that she was getting Fantine’s apologies whether she wanted them or not.
It had been a long, long time since she had felt so selfish, but Euphrasie was right there. She was the living embodiment of Fantine’s ineptitude and neglect and she was suffering through the consequences of Fantine’s actions, consequences that she hadn’t even properly considered. The guilt was unavoidable.
Fantine leant forward towards her, skin crawling with the need to apologise again and again. “Euphrasie—“ she began only to be immediately cut off.
“It’s Cosette.” Her voice was simultaneously cold and tired, as though all of the effort to appear to be pleasant had drained out of her with the use of that name.
Fantine cleared her throat and nodded. “Right, of course. Sorry.”
But it seemed that Cosette wasn’t done. “No one’s ever called me that. Would you like to know why?” she asked, the challenge evident in her voice. Leaving no time for Fantine to answer - even if she hadn’t been too stunned to do so - she forged forward. “I’ll tell you,” she said with a glare. “It’s because we only managed to track down my birth certificate two years ago and my birth mother dropped me off in front of a random church with nothing but the clothes on my back a note that called me Cosette.”
Fantine could feel a few passing pedestrians and other people at the café staring, but Cosette was glaring at her so intently that to look away from her would feel like giving up. “There’s nothing that I can say that will justify that—“ she said carefully only for Cosette to cut her off again, this time with a humourless huff of laughter.
“No!” she exclaimed around that laugh. “There isn’t!”
There was a beat of silence and Cosette’s words rang in her ears. Fantine dropped her gaze finally and out of the corner of her eye, she saw Cosette’s shoulders sag in her chair. After a moment, Fantine eventually spoke, voice quiet. “I’m going to regret it for the rest of my life.”
Cosette sighed tiredly. “Don’t bother,” she said around a grimace that, just for a second, Fantine thought might be halfway to a sardonic smile. “My real parents found me in the end.”
With a small sincere smile, Fantine could only nod for the first couple of seconds, the truth of the statement overwhelming. After a moment or two, she cleared her throat. “I’m glad,” she said. And she was. Still hurt, though.
Cosette nodded, seemingly more to herself than to Fantine and several moments passed in which neither of them said a thing. It wasn’t that there was a shortage of things to talk about.
Far from it.
The longer this woman sat before her, the more certain Fantine became that they could talk about anything at all - from happiness to pain, from nonsense to the weather - and she would still be filled with all of the love that she had stored away for that little girl for so long as her chest ached with guilt.
It was awful and Fantine suspected, if she could, she’d do it forever.
Cosette sipped at her tea - which surely must have been cold at that point - and checked her phone once when it buzzed on the table, mouth quirking up at the corners slightly as she read her notification. Fantine wondered if it was a message from the husband that she’d mentioned before and tried not to dwell on the fact that her daughter was old enough to have a husband.
“My dad arrested you once,” Cosette said, breaking the silence after a while.
Fantine frowned. “I don’t think so? I feel like I would have remembered re-meeting your dad.” Then added with a small huff of laughter, “And if he was suddenly police.”
“I mean my stepfather.” Fantine didn’t miss the undercurrent of a challenge to her statement. For a moment she wondered whether it would be appropriate to mention the relatively long-term - long-term for her - girlfriend she’d had during and just after her Master's year. No, she decided. Or, at least, not yet.
“Oh,” she exclaimed in the end, “Jean got married! Good for him.” She kept to herself any thoughts she had about Jean apparently marrying a policeman - even one that was nice to her - though thought scathingly to herself ‘Really, Jean? Police? You were already on thin ice as a politician!’ “And you?” she asked instead. “Is he good to you, your stepfather?”
Cosette smiled a warm genuine smile and, despite her better judgement, any principled criticisms she might have had about Jean’s choice of partners melted away. “He’s great.”
“Good.” Fantine nodded resolutely. “So, your stepfather must be Inspector Javert” Cosette nodded at that and Fantine sat back in her chair. “Wow. Small world.”
Cosette shrugged. “Not really.”
“How do you mean?”
Cosette looked at her for several moments, eyebrows slightly furrowed as though she were trying to figure something out. “He was looking for me,” she said eventually, almost as though explaining something she was expecting Fantine to have remembered. “You mentioned me to him and he came and found us.”
Huh.
A cruelly truthful voice in the back of Fantine’s head whispered that Cosette had always deserved people who would go looking for her. She’d deserved better than Fantine.
“Good,” she said thickly, pausing for a moment to clear her throat. “I didn’t actually know him but I spent enough time with him to realise that at the very least he was a person with a great deal of integrity. Even if is police.” It didn’t quite occur to Fantine how much of a gamble saying that was until it was already out of her mouth, but Cosette, thank God, huffed a laugh at it, nodding as if to say ‘fair enough’. “I’m happy Jean has someone. Between you and me, I was always worried that he was lonely.”
Hurt flashed across Cosette’s face and Fantine’s stomach dropped at the sight, cursing her tactlessness. “He had me,” she said, tone immediately defensive.
“And I couldn’t be happier about that, believe me…” Fantine couldn’t help the deep sigh that escaped her chest.
“What?” Cosette prompted, leaning forward against the table.
“It’s just— You deserve to be taken care of and to be surrounded by as people that love you as possible. You always have.”
“You don’t know me.” It wasn’t accusatory, defensive, or sad. Her tone was a plain and simple statement of fact, not untinged by emotion but unburdened by it.
Fantine said the only thing she could think to say. “I’d like to.”
She hoped that Cosette could see how sincere she was in that admission. For all that she had told herself that she would do this at Cosette’s pace, even if that meant not doing it at all, there was something powerful in her chest that was determined to reach out to her. It was desperate to understand her, not to make up for lost time but for each of them to come to know the person the other has become in their absence from one another.
As Fantine looked at her, she noticed some extremely faded pink in the ends of Cosette’s hair and a nose piercing with a silver stud in it so small that it was almost unnoticeable.
“Can I ask you something?”
“Anything.”
“How did you meet my papa?”
For a couple of awful moments, she thought she might have meant Felix. If she truly wanted to know about him, Fantine would tell her what she knew without complaint. That, of course, didn’t mean that she wouldn’t go home and sob into Boo’s fur and a bottle of wine interchangeably.
But Felix had never been anyone’s papa, not really. Even Enjolras hadn’t called him papa since he was around eight years old.
Jean had been a single parent - Fantine assumed - until Inspector Javert came into his life and if Fantine was doing the maths correctly that was for around five years. He had sent her one grainy video during that time, right before she asked him to stop sending them. It had been of a small blonde child sleepily pulling her thumb out of her mouth and asking someone behind the camera “Papa, when can we do the fireworks? I’m tired.” The response had been muffled but the child had nodded tiredly and put her thumb back in her mouth, eyes quickly drifting shut.
She thought to the times she had met Jean Fauchelevant - Valjean, rather, she supposed, now. In-person, they had met only once, but he had felt like more of a friend to her in those few hours than anyone had in years. “I knew him very briefly when you were little,” she said eventually. “You were five at the time if I’m not mistaken.”
“I was with the Thénardier’s then.” Cosette’s voice was quiet but the statement was clear and frank.
Fantine could only nod. “I’m sorry.”
She looked up at her sharply at that. “You know?” she asked and Fantine had to swallow down the urge to burst into tears right then and there.
“Finding out how truly bad they were was the reason I asked Jean to stop sending me pictures of you.” When she thought back on finding out about them, Fantine was surprised at the lack of clarity she had. Really, all she remembered was the all-consuming guilt and spending hours hugging her toilet.
“So,” Cosette’s prompting voice mercifully cut through her hazy memory. “How did you meet him?”
“Yes, right. Um, at that point, any money I didn’t spend on the bare essentials and sending to the church to give to your foster parents, I saved so that every month or two I’d be able to buy a bus ticket to go to the church and maybe see you. Your foster parents almost never took you, though. Couldn’t have been more than once a month and I think that was probably so that they could keep getting payments from the church.” On the other side of the table, Cosette gave a resigned sigh and a small shrug as if to say ‘well, what can you do.’
“One time I went,” Fantine continued, ignoring the way her heart had begun to quicken with anxiety, “It’d been almost a year since the last time I’d been able to, I heard that the town had a new mayor that everyone loved called Jean Fauchelevant and that he’d come to the service I was at.
“I have no idea how it happened, but I ended up striking up a conversation with him. I think he could tell I was struggling with something and offered to talk about it.” Cosette smiled at that. Fantine couldn’t help but smile too and some of the anxiety dissipated slightly. “So we did. After the service, we talked for a long time. He’s a good, kind man, your papa, and I’m sure you know that, but not a day goes by that I’m not endlessly grateful to him.” Cosette nodded and blinked more rapidly and Fantine couldn’t help but across the table to pat her hand comfortingly.
Getting slightly emotional herself now, Fantine took a steadying breath. “He asked how often I came to the church and I told him as often as I could, but that it would probably be the last time for a while because I’d been fired from my job and my union refused to help me.” In a second Cosette’s face transformed into a picture of righteous anger and, just for a moment, she looked so very like Enjolras.
Deciding at that moment to abandon that particular branch of the story, Fantine waved it away. “That’s a different story and it is relevant, but I doubt you’d want me to go off on a tangent more than I already have done.” Cosette smiled and seemed to let it go for now. “Basically though,” she continued, “I told him why I was there, he asked who you were with, I told him, and then he informed me that there were… rumours about the Thénardier’s and the way they treated the children under their care. I panicked. He saw me panicking and told me he’d fix it, that he promised he’d get you out of there.” Fantine sighed, the exhaustion and guilt suddenly catching up with her. “I was on the bus out of town before it even hit me what had happened.”
“You left.”
It wasn’t an accusation but Fantine felt that perhaps it should’ve been. “Again,” she confirmed, “Yeah.”
Cosette sat bonelessly back in her chair, body language reflecting the emotional exhaustion Fantine was feeling in waves. What a pair they must have looked. On what had become a fine late-spring afternoon to be so wiped out at a lovely family-run Italian café and bistro and not a glass of wine in sight.
When Cosette spoke again, she didn’t move from her laid back position, she just shifted her hands to rest in her lap. “Why did you leave me in the first place?”
It wasn’t that it was a question she hadn’t been expecting. And, really, it hadn’t even come out of the blue. Yet, it caught her off guard all the same. “You said anything,” Cosette pointed out after a moment too long of silence.
“I did.” Fantine nodded. “I didn’t give you up easily if that’s what you’re asking.”
Now, it seemed, it was Cosette’s turn to be caught off guard. “It— I wasn’t,” she stammered despite it very clearly being what she had been asking - she hadn’t even needed to engage her therapist brain to figure it out.
“I don’t say this to get myself off the hook, I think it’s important that you know that. You… you were just so easy to love… and I thought that, because of that, everything else had to work out okay in the end, no matter what. I was naïve. I ended up keeping you for just over a year before I just couldn’t anymore.”
“Then, what happened?”
“Reality caught up.” Bills caught up. Her own mind had caught up. “We spent your first birthday at Le Musée du Travail. It was so dull, my god,” she said, huffing a laugh as Cosette watched her curiously, “But there was a huge statue of a workhorse and you loved it so much, you’d scream every time I tried to take you to the next bit of the museum and I’m sure you would’ve screamed all the way home if I hadn’t given in and got you a little soft toy horse from the gift shop. It was so expensive that it wiped out a couple of days worth of food money, but you slept soundly all the way home and all through that night with it tucked under your arm. Worth every cent, that thing.”
An unhelpful, invasive voice in her head reminded her that she still had the toy in a box somewhere. She’d found it under the table after she’d given Cosette up and wept with it in her arms for hours only to shove it into a box a day later and ignore it every time she moved house.
“But you still haven’t said why you left me.” Cosette’s voice brought her back down to earth, desperation tinging the edges of her tone.
Fantine clenched her jaw, determined not to cry. “I was seventeen when I got pregnant with you. When you were born, I’d only been a legal adult for a month. I just barely finished school what with childcare and working every hour that I could and moving away so that you were away from my parents. Then, once school was done, I was working full time and it was only barely enough.
“My landlady, Madame Posey, looked after you when she could and she was happy to rent me the flat for a pittance, but I was still barely keeping our heads above water. You didn’t take well to the formula the food bank gave us, so I had to eat so that you could eat for at least six months and then it became a matter of finding a way to afford food for both of us.” Fantine rubbed a hand over her face, she could feel the stress from her memories bleeding into the line of her shoulders. “In terms of food insecurity,” she went on, “The only thing worse than not knowing where your next meal is coming from is not knowing where your child’s next meal is coming from.
“It’s not like I could ask Felix for help,” she couldn’t help but spit his name, the trip down memory lane playing havoc with her ‘accept and move on’ strategy for dealing with her past. “The only time I saw him after he just up and left, it was when I was six months along, very clearly showing, and he was at a bistro sitting across from a woman and bouncing the most cherubim blond toddler you’ve ever seen on his knee. Oh, and he was also wearing a wedding ring.”
Cosette made an ‘ugh’ noise from her chair, her face full of genuine, incredibly vindicating disgust. “And you didn’t go over and confront him about it,” she wasn’t asking a question, she had to know that she hadn’t, but Fantine continued anyway.
She sighed. “Sometimes I look back and wish I had, but I was seventeen. I was seventeen and pregnant and he was in his late twenties and a respected member of the community with a picture-perfect family.” Cosette’s face twisted with disgust once again and, once again, Fantine felt quite grateful for it. “When you turned one,” she continued, “I looked at you and you had started to look so much like that toddler – like Enjolras, God I’m so old now.”
Cosette laughed at that. “You’re what? Late-thirties?”
“I’m forty-one next month.” Cosette just looked at her. “Anyway, at that age, you were both all blonde curls and chubby cheeks. Seriously you were basically identical, it was almost creepy. No offence.”
Cosette waved it away with a laugh. “None taken. I work with kids and they can definitely, 100% be creepy sometimes.”
There was a beat of silence then, the unexpected pleasantness of the conversation caught on something. Itself, perhaps. Fantine was struck by a sudden awareness of her situation, of where she was and who she was with. This was the kid she’d held in her arms for a whole year, the baby with wisps of blonde hair and the brightest gummy smile she’d ever seen.
“You were such a great kid,” she found herself saying more to herself than to Cosette. “God,” she went on without much of a plan of where she was going. “But it had been in the back of my mind since I saw them that day that I would never be able to give you the kind of life that that child would grow up with, but it was only after a year of constant struggle and wondering in my darkest moment whether I could be so selfish as to just give you up that I realised that it was more selfish of me to keep you.”
“It wasn’t,” Cosette cut in, tone adamant. “And it wasn’t selfish to get rid of me either. You just… felt like you couldn’t win.” She was looking at Fantine with such imploring eyes you’d think she was the one begging for forgiveness.
Fantine smiled ruefully. “Being raised by Jean has made you wise. And kind.”
Cosette shrugged. “It’s the truth.”
“The truth for me at the time was that by keeping you I was dooming you to a lifetime of struggle and hardship,” Fantine went on with a tired sigh, “But there was a way out of that for you. I thought you’d have your best chance at a good life if I left you at that church. A life where you didn’t have to go through what I was going through.”
Cosette nodded thoughtfully and Fantine couldn’t decide whether she wanted to know what was going through her head. “Why the church?” she asked suddenly, sitting up slightly more in her chair. “Why not drop me off with social services?”
Ah. And wasn’t that the question Fantine had been asking herself for the last twenty years.
Logically, she knew why. Logistically speaking, giving her to the church had done what she had wanted it to do: it had given Cosette a good home - in the end - and kept her safe from her parents. The lack of a paper trail had been appealing, not to mention that they didn’t share the government’s predisposition to want to reunite biological family as a matter of priority regardless of parental wishes. Despite knowing that it would cause problems for Cosette in the future, she was willing to take that risk.
But, in the end, it hadn’t kept her safe.
That’s always the thing with being a parent, isn’t it? You want your child to be happy and healthy, but you will settle for them to just be safe. Fantine had felt like a failure for the last two decades because of this and now she had to explain her logic to the very child that it had hurt.
“I needed to keep my parents away from you.” Saying it felt insufficient. Pathetic. It was an excuse where Cosette didn’t want one and she knew that. Fantine took a breath and looked down at her wringing hands. “When I got pregnant,” she continued, not even really sure where she was going herself, “They, my parents, that is,” she clarified with a shaky breath, “They gave me an ultimatum. Either I leave their house and don’t come back, or I remain confined in the house for the remainder of my pregnancy and allow them to raise you as theirs.”
She hazarded a looked up at Cosette and was relieved to find a kind of sad curiosity on her face rather than the anger or, perhaps, disgust that she had been expecting. “And then,” she went on, speaking on a shaky exhale, “When I started packing up to leave, they tried to trap me in the house saying that you were rightfully theirs.”
Fantine watched as Cosette swallowed and nodded sedately. Then, in what must have been a stroke of either madness or pity, she placed a hand on top of Fantine’s, patting them slightly awkwardly. Despite the awkwardness, Fantine was grateful for the comfort.
“Why didn’t you just let them raise me? Wouldn’t it have been easier?” There was no blame in her voice anymore and, yet, Fantine couldn’t be relieved; the blame was replaced by a kind of earnest confusion that broke her heart maybe even slightly more than if she was still blaming her.
Ease hadn’t factored into it at all. All that had mattered - all that still mattered - was that Cosette grew up knowing exactly how loved she was. “It took me a long time to realise the extent of their emotional abuse,” she said eventually, memories coming at her from all angles. Her own childhood. The early days of Cosette’s. The exhaustion at having to constantly having to be perfect that had hit her like a tonne of bricks during her mid-teens. “But, even then, it made me physically sick to think of you growing up the way I did. I figured that even if I had no money and no idea what to do, I at least knew better than them what not to do.”
A beat or two of silence passed in which Cosette watched her carefully with sad eyes and slightly furrowed brows and Fantine had to fight to not squirm under the scrutiny. “Thank you for telling me,” she said finally, voice quiet.
“As you said,” Fantine said, shrugging far more casually than she felt, “It’s where you come from. You have a right to know.”
“Still,” Cosette emphasised.
Shooting her a smile, Fantine took a breath a sat more upright in her chair. “Right,” she said with as much finality as she could muster, “Now I’m done talking about myself, tell me about you. Your job, your life, this husband of yours?”
At the mention of her husband a smile blossomed over Cosette’s features and her shoulders noticeably relaxed. “His name is Marius,” she said, warmth, familiarity and love almost palpable in the way she said his name. “He’s a lawyer and we’ve been together for almost four years and married for just over eighteen months now.” Fantine deliberately ignored how old that made her feel. “He’s… he’s just so kind and so, so loyal. He’s funny, too. Even if he doesn’t always mean to be.”
“Is he cute?”
Laughter bubbled out of Cosette’s mouth at that. “Of course. Wait,” she said picking up her phone, “Here.”
On the phone was a picture of a redheaded man, his grinning face covered in freckles. He was handsome, though not ruggedly so. More in a goofy, rakish kind of way. “Oh, he is cute!” Fantine exclaimed, handing the phone back just as a thought occurred to her. “Wait, his name’s Marius?” she asked thinking back to a colleague that Enjolras had mentioned.
“Yeah?” Cosette said somewhat sceptically
“I’ve heard of him,” Fantine said, nodding to herself, “But I thought he was dating… Oh! He works for Jean?”
“Yep,” Cosette confirmed happily. “That’s how we met actually. Bumped into each other in the lobby.”
“And you met Enjolras through him?” Fantine could tell she was on thin ice once again but she was too curious to not ask.
“Yeah. They invited me over for a group meal and I basically never left.” She laughed, probably remembering something about the meal - from what Fantine knew about what went on when Les Amis all gathered together to sit down and have a meal it was probably quite the learning curve for her.
Relieved at Cosette’s lack of negative reaction at her prodding, Fantine smiled contentedly. “That’s wonderful.”
A moment passed and Fantine watched as something flitted across Cosette’s face, a thought, an idea perhaps, and settled in the crease of her brow. “Are you going to keep seeing Enj after all this?” Ah, how the tables had turned. In a way, it was nice to know that she wasn’t the only one feeling as though she had to tread carefully here.
Fantine sat forward properly and crossed one leg over the other. “We had a phone call this morning and he told me to tell you if you asked that he won’t decide anything concrete until you tell him what you’re comfortable with.” Cosette’s face contorted into a picture of surprise at that. “That being said,” she went on, “The tentative plan - which he also told me I could tell you about, by the way - is for him to see someone else primarily, but, if you’re comfortable with it, he would continue to see me on a supplementary basis.”
Nodding slowly, Cosette hummed slightly. “Sounds good,” she said after a moment. Then, slightly quieter, “You’ve really helped him.”
“He helps himself. I just show him how.” It was true, for all that the man was truly abysmal at self-care, he was surprisingly capable when it came to keeping himself on track to reach certain goals they set together. “And,” she allowed, “I help to filter his freaked out brain into common sense.” Cosette laughed a little at that. “Really,” Fantine emphasised, “It’s all him." Cosette nodded, seemingly satisfied with that answer.
Her phone vibrated again and she looked down at it, frowning. "I have to go," she said, concern undeniably tinging the edges of her voice as she stood from her chair.
"Are you alright?" Fantine asked, standing with her.
She nodded entirely unconvincingly. "I've been working on a favour for a friend at work and someone's finally got back to me. Do you mind if I...?" she trailed off, gesturing over her shoulder with her thumb.
Fantine waved her concerns away. "Do what you have to do."
Shouldering her bag, Cosette nodded and moved as if to turn away but stalled halfway through. Turning back to face Fantine, her expression was suddenly nervous once again. “Thank you for answering my questions,” she said. “And for, you know,” she went on, not meeting Fantine's gaze, “Being here.”
Fantine had to huff a sardonic laugh at that. “Better late than never.” Just as Cosette began to turn away again, she added quickly, “And I will be, by the way.”
“What?”
“Here. Whenever you need me. Even if it’s just to email me a list of medical questions, I’m at your disposal.” Cosette watched her for a moment or two, indecision written all over her face. "Cosette?" she prompted after several seconds of silence.
“Would you want to meet my parents?" she burst out suddenly and Fantine's stomach flipped uncomfortably. "Again?" Cosette went on with a nervous chuckle. "Is that something you’d be interested in?”
It very, very much was but the sudden screaming panic in Fantine’s head put her thinking brain offline for a few moments. She snapped back to reality several seconds later when she registered that Cosette was looking at her with an expression that was very clearly half-alarmed-half-regretting-asking. “Yeah, um, I’ve taken this week off work so, really, whenever works for you probably works for me, too.”
The words might have come out in a rush, but Cosette didn't seem to mind; she wasn't exactly stealthy with the way she breathed a sigh of relief. “Cool. I’ll, uh, email you, then.” And with a small wave and a shy smile, she was gone, walking away from the café with her bag slung over her shoulder and her phone in her hand.
After a few moments of watching her retreating figure, Fantine turned away too and started the journey home.
Of all of the things that she had expected to walk away from this meeting with - seriously, a black eye had been considerably higher up in likelihood - she hadn’t even considered the possibility of a second meeting, let alone one with her parents. It was an olive branch that a nasty little voice in her head was convinced she didn’t deserve, but Cosette wouldn’t have offered it if she hadn’t wanted to, if she hadn’t wanted to see Fantine again.
When Fantine had got into university, it hadn’t felt like the universe had given her a second chance. It had felt like what it was: her demanding a second chance and working for it until she got it. Since then, she’d been hesitant to believe that the universe, God, whatever, would give her anything.
But Cosette had.
Cosette had given her a second chance at the worst mistake of her life.
Cosette had given her a way to not regret so much and to heal some of the hurt she had caused.
Cosette had given her everything.