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He’s nearly forgotten how to smile, having fallen out of practice a score of years ago. When he manages it—if you can call the awkward lift of his cheek muscles and the strained curve of his lips, smiling—well, there’s too much reservation in it.
Too much melancholy and regret, hiding in those worrisome lines around his mouth.
His smiles die on his lips too soon, as he immediately thinks better of it and ducks his head, making his hasty excuses and fleeing whatever gathering has attempted to trick him into believing all is well and that the world is a soft and gentle place.
There is no softness in the world. Only crudeness, fear and lies and rage.
There’s no gentility to be found among its throngs and masses. No love. Not for a man who spent nineteen years in chains for stealing a single loaf of bread for the sake of starving children, and then a few more with a convict’s yellow passport in his threadbare pocket, attempting to meander a grim countryside, worn in rough by bloody war and bloodier revolution, with a people who gazed upon outsiders with scorn and suspicion.
Especially those who didn’t remember how to smile.
There’s a sickness in his head, from too many years without a friendly face to turn to or a friendly hand to reach out and stroke his cheek…
And there’s an icy sickness in his heart too, clammy and cold, that says friendly faces don’t exist. And so he’s caged his sick heart with stone and ice and girded his smiles with hesitation and the good sense not to let them spring to life, wildly, unreservedly, of their own damn accord.
That is, until he sees her.
Until she comes into his office, eager and windblown, her long, dark hair carrying the dust of a long journey, her brown eyes carrying the haunt of a longer one still, her request a simple one. She’s just looking for work.
Fantine Thibault. Late of Paris and some unnamed calamity.
Pain, regret, anxiousness…it’s all written too clearly in her comely features. At least to him.
“So what are your family circumstances?” he asks her, plainly.
He’s too curious, her expression marks her a kindred spirit, he knows that well enough. He can’t deny it, even if he wanted too. She’s so young, but her eyes are wide and have seen much sadness. Of this he knows, recognizing a reflection in her dark irises that he’s seen in his own looking glass too many times to count.
“I’m alone in the world, sir,” she answers, after only a moment’s hesitation.
“No husband?” Madame Victurnien, his stalwart supervisor, adds, with a lilt in her coarse, quavering voice that Valjean cringes at. The girl knew what he meant, the older woman didn’t have to belay the point so strongly.
“No,” Fantine is set on that, at least, speaking confidently, her gaze not leaving his at the reply.
He finds himself swimming in those dark eyes. He’ll drown if he’s not careful. His meddlesome supervisor continues, “No lover? No children?”
“As I said, sir…,” Fantine refuses to give the other woman the dignity of a direct address. She’s proud, despite her reduced circumstances. He knows what that feels like. To hold onto pride, even when all else crumbles around you. But the weight of loneliness tempers her tone as she finishes softly, “…I’m alone in the world.”
There’s a part of him that wants to ask more. But Madame Victurnien stands too near and listens with too sharp an ear. It wouldn’t be proper for him to take more notice of this girl than he already has. Besides, she’s…well, she’s too young for one thing.
And far too pretty. And he’s sensible, set in his ways, with a heart made of stone. And ice.
Or so he likes to pretend.
But he notices her. In a way he hasn’t noticed any woman in a long, long time. And he continues to notice her all day. The factory is small and his office desk faces her work station on the benches. He need only look up to glimpse her once more. Stubborn, he refuses and keeps his head down, his attention strongly shackled to his paperwork.
Until the end of the day, when his shackles prove as phantom as his disinterest.
He’s felt her presence all day. He’ll try to deny it, even to himself. He’ll look in the mirror that evening and swear it to himself, under a haggard gaze. Or he’ll try. And use arguments that work too well on a soul that has been battered and bruised and torn beyond mending.
Don’t be a fool. He’ll say to himself. Because there’s nothing in it, whatever “it” might be and he consoles himself with the knowledge that any notice he’s paid her will not be returned. He’s old and worn out and nothing for a young girl to take interest in.
Her arrival had sparked something between them, but it was likely a mistake of the moment. She was happy that he gave her employment, that’s all. The fact that she looked like she might run behind his desk and kiss his cheek impulsively was nonsense, something he made up in his head.
Despite running the moment over in his head all day and coming to the same conclusion each time. But the fixation is temporary, nothing that time won’t take care of. Let it die away, he thinks, and quickly, in the manner of his smiles.
But just before the girls leave, he feels eyes upon him. And this time, he fails to keep his eyes on his work.
Fantine, braiding her black beads with nimble fingers, has turned towards his office. When he looks up, it’s too late to change his mind. He meets her open gaze across the factory floor without thinking. There’s no one between them. Not a single soul.
The space between them contracts, going small as their eyes lock and hold on.
And to make matters worse, she smiles. Fantine’s smile is small and slight, matching her waifish figure. But it’s warm too, and sparks with something strange and unfamiliar. Something from long ago, when he knew what it was like to love and be loved. Something that might be mistaken for affection, if only they knew each other better.
Time will take care of that as well. Don’t be a fool…
Despite sense, he can’t help but return her little smile, knowing nothing of himself in that moment. Not his past, not his future. Just his present, in which Fantine gives him a small smile. Like a fairy creature in an old story granting the monster in the woods a token, a spell, whereby stone is made flesh once again.
And all in the cosmic span of a half minute.
His smile lingers. And when it fades, it does so slowly, like a breath of air on a frosted window pane. She turns away, following the other girls out of the factory, but only after her smile deepens, dimpling one cheek in a way that says that smile was for him. And no one else.
One she hasn’t used before, but one she’ll certainly use again.
Valjean feels an ache as the ice around his heart begins to melt.