Disclaimer: I do NOT own Les Miserables or any of the characters
(1853)
It was early spring, the air just beginning to warm and flower buds just beginning to color. A young woman, about the age of twenty, wandered out onto the porch. She gazed upon the flowers that she had nurtured for months from seed to bloom and a smile of pure pleasure graced her shapely lips. The sweet smell drifted on a lazy path up to her nose; circling her head in the heavenly scent. Her thoughts gradually started to drift off on the wind; escaping from reality to the recesses of her mind were the scents of flowers mingled with the honeyed voice of her husband…
"Good morning, Madame," came a voice. The Voice interrupted her reverie and she jolted to awareness; her eyes focused below the porch on the intruder.
It was a short thin man hardly more than five feet tall. He wore dull browns and grays and his cravat was slightly frayed; obviously worn for one too many years. His face was of close relation to a weasel; the nose elongated and the lips curved into a smile that was attempting to be kind, but failed; similar to a salesman's. His eyes were piercing and beady like those of a rat, and lacked the light of truly seeing what was standing right before him. Greed radiated off his person is waves.
Beside him was a woman with long, greasy hair and a body fattened by years of overindulgence. She was abnormally tall for a woman; about one and a half, maybe two, feet taller than her husband. Her face was pure angles, not a single curve to soften her features, and pock-marked by disease.
Trailing behind them was a young woman. Her clothes were filthy, ratted, and torn from years of over use. Her body was so thin that every rib could be counted and deep hollows dipped under her cheeks. The bruises, in varying stages of healing, on her arms were blatant signs of her abuse; most-likely from the demonic duo standing in front of them. When she stumbled and knocked into the monstrous woman, she turned on the girl. Her face twisted into a fearsome glower, and the girl shrank in on herself in utter terror.
'Madame' knew these people; she knew them quite well indeed. How could she not, she had lived with them as their 'slave' for years.
"Beautiful lady, spare a coin," the weasel-man questioned in a small beggar's voice; which would have tugged at anyone's heartstrings if they didn't know how evil he truly was.
She looked at the family in silent consideration.
"Do you not recognize me," she gave a hardened look.
"My lady, if I had indeed met a woman of such splendor, I would not forget," he began.
"Correction, you would never forget a beautiful woman… if she had a purse filled with coin"
"Lady-," he attempted again.
"Look at me, truly look at me, Thénardier" she commanded, "Then tell me that you do not know me."
"How-," he began.
"Look at me, Thénardier," she demanded lowly.
He looked at her, and saw the same as everyone else. She was dressed in a fitted light blue dress with chiffon sleeves and a beaded white ribbon that accented her curves. Her hair was unbound and floated on the breeze in lustrous golden strands. She was the picture of wealth.
"I see a woman of vast beauty," he paused, "but I do not know her," he continued.
She said not a word for a few moments; she just looked at Thénardier and listened to her father's voice.
"Those Thénardiers were wicked," he said in a soft voice. Cosette looked at her father in amazement; she had never heard him call anyone wicked ever. He continued without explanation, "We must forgive them." That sounded more like father. She stroked his hair, shockingly white with age, and watched as the light died from his eyes. He was dead.
She felt a pair of arms wrap around her, and turned to face her husband.
"Cosette, you love your father," he paused and took a deep breath, "but you do not need to do as he just said, Love, if you cannot tolerate it." Ah, her husband; always attempting to protect her from everything.
"Marius, I will do it because my father asked it of me. Perhaps by the time I see them again, they will have forgotten me and I will have only to give them money when they beg in order to sate them."
A small smile twitched on her lips as she thought over the irony of the situation. He father indeed knew all.
"Lady," Thénardier asked again.
"Here, take you money and be gone from my life once and for all," she said as she tossed a small bag of money toward them; twenty francs for each.
"Lady, could you not give even the slightest bit more; our daughter is dreadfully ill, she needs a doctor," his voice dripped with greed.
"To your hands, not a single cent more, but to Azelma," she motioned the girl forward; she leaned forward off her porch railing, "I give one hundred francs more." She looked the girl dead in the eye as she pressed the money into her palm, "spend it well, and save as much as you can. Don't let anyone." She glanced at the elder Thénardiers, "touch it besides you." The girl nodded her agreement. She paused, "I'm sorry to hear about Éponine," she continued softly.
As she turned to walk away, a hand shot out and grabbed her. She turned to face Thénardier; while her focus had been on Azelma the man had climbed the steps of her porch and now stood directly behind her.
"How did you know our names, girl," he growled.
"How could I not," she looked him in the eye; "I lived with you all for years."
"A girl such as you never lived with us," he hissed.
"Perhaps not looking like this, but you must remember the piteous creature you held as your slave."
"The servant girl abandoned by her whore mother; that girl," he looked her up and down with a nauseating slowness.
"Wife," a voice like an angel from behind them spoke. She turned. Her husband, Marius, praise the lord for this handsome creature's creation. He stood behind her, framed by the doorway, with their daughter, Fantine, in his arms and their son, Jean, clinging to his leg. Their four year old daughter had a head of curly golden hair and dazzling sky-blue eyes, but you couldn't see those beautiful orbs now; her eyes were shut and petal pink lips parted in slumber. Their five year old son had dark brown hair with flecks of gold and deep brown eyes. A smile with the radiance of an angel's lit up her cherubic face.
Before she went back inside to her loving husband, she turned to the piteous creatures standing there; one of which who still held her arm in his grasp.
"Cosette," she said.
"What?" Thénardier asked in bemusement.
"I am Cosette," she said as she shook his hand off with a quick jerk. His hand fell to his side and he looked at her in stunned silence as she walked back into her home with her children clinging to her.
"Husband," Cosette called to him when he didn't follow.
"I will be there momentarily, Darling," he said called back. He waited for a few moments; hear her delicate footsteps fade. He turned his gaze to the small man before him and his gaze turned to an outright glare. Thénardier, shocked as he was, could do nothing but gauge the similarities between the man's glare and the look of a snake's eyes before it strikes. He trembled and quickly took five steps backward to get away from the man with snake's eyes.
"My wife may have forgiven you your sins against her, but I have not," his glower grew more demonic as the stories his wife had told him of her childhood with these people flooded his mind.
"B-b-but-," Thénardier started.
"Silence you insolent creature!" Thénardier's teeth could be heard cracking together as he hurried to silence himself. "Have you not the sense to realize the danger you are in at this very moment? I could very well kill you for all that my wife was put through at your family's hands," he paused in an attempt to calm himself before he truly killed the man. "Be happy that my wife is so merciful; a saint is what she is for sparing your worthless life!"
The louder he spoke the faster Thénardier tried to get away from him. His punishment was not yet over, so Marius refused to let him go so easily. Marius's arm shot out and grabbed Thénardier's arm.
"If ever you should think to come to my wife again, I will skin your worthless hide and throw your remains upon a bed of bones where no stone will mark your place," he told Thénardier in a deathly calm voice that would make the most fearsome creatures cower.
The moment he was released, Thénardier took off running, not bothering to check if his wife and daughter were following. The wife stood stunned and the daughter in no better shape; seeing this, Marius turned on his heel to come face to face with his beautiful wife. He gulped.
"That wasn't very kind, dear husband," she said in a scolding tone that was ruined by the dancing mirth in her eyes.
"I lose my mind when you're involved; had you not noticed before this," he asked laughingly.
"Yes, yes I had," she said softly as she got on her tip toes and leaned forward to give her knight his reward.