Work Text:
"Papa?" Cosette, nearly 16 now, no longer swung off his arm, the way she did when she was little, but her small hands, warm atop his sleeve, were a steady comfort on their walks to the park. "Papa, where did you grow up?"
Valjean started, surprised, and looked down at her. Her lower lip stuck out, the way it did whenever she was thinking hard on something, and she blinked up at him with her pretty blue eyes. He wondered, not for the first time, and certainly not for the last, how he had been so blessed by God to have this darling girl in his life.
"Ah," he said, looking back to the path in front of him, thinking on the man he’d once been, so long ago. He supposed it couldn’t hurt to tell her the truth, this once. "It was a small town, Faverolles. I pruned trees there."
"Faverolles," Cosette repeated, testing the word on her tongue. "And you pruned trees! You should help me in my garden at home. Faverolles! It sounds lovely. I think I would very much like to go visit someday, Papa. I’m sure the trees miss you; you took such good care of the convent gardens when we were there."
He hesitated before saying, “Perhaps we’ll visit one day,” but she noticed and pouted at him.
"Papa," she said, tapping his nose, like he had always done when tucking her in at night. "One day, you will tell me all your secrets, and then I will know you as well as you know me." She paused, a strange look in her eye, one he recognized from the prisoners of Toulon, when they spoke of home and the people they’d come from; then, she added, "And perhaps I will know myself a little more."
Before he could respond, she stopped, and, bending over, plucked a flower from the ground. She stuck it behind his ear, giggling. “To remind you of the trees,” she told him.