Little drabble because my writing juices are flowing. Les Miserables Modern!AU where Fantine and Tholomyes are together, but Fantine re-adopts her abandoned daughter, Cosette. Second-person-present-tense for Maren. She knows why.
Sometimes, when it's late and there's coffee on the table because there's still texts to memorize, you remember her. You remember her skin and her lips and her hair and her eyes. You remember her crooked teeth and the way she always tasted like bubblegum because she didn't like mint. There's a moment, always, when the memorizing and coffee-drinking stops, at least briefly. There's a remembering moment. There's a sorrowful moment, really, and you know this. But then something happens, something sudden, and you are jolted back into reality. Coffee is resumed. Moments pass. But you still remember.
It was winter. The snow on the sidewalks was a gray-brown muddy liquid that could hardly be called snow. The sky was gray. The mood was grayer. The air was crisp and sluggish at the same time in a way that made even the most proud businessman roll over in his high-class bed and moan, "Five more minutes." It was a day for sleeping in. It was a day for nothing much to happen. It was a day for procrastination. For her, it was a day for starting over.
The gray building on the corner of 26th and Main was just the same as every other gray building in the city. It was plain. It looked as though it had been built by Scrooge himself. But it meant more to one young lady than anyone else could imagine.
The creaky wooden sign outside read: "Madame de la Fonte's Orphanage". Below the sign read a handwritten message on a slip of paper: "NO MORE KIDS". She paused at these signs, her expression softening. Finally, she tore her eyes from the sign, pushed on the creaking metal gates, and let herself in.
You know this part well. She goes in and retrieves Cosette. It was easy enough, she's told you, but you still can't understand loving someone enough to go back for them. You suppose it's because you don't have a kid, but still. You can't shake the feeling that she's crazy for wanting someone back that badly, after those long years. Cosette isn't even that great a kid. Her hair's too blonde and all she talks about are cats. You wonder what she even sees in her.
After Cosette manages to worm her way back into their lives, she just keeps growing. It seems another inch every day and the clothes don't fit and the food isn't enough and the expenses are through-the-freaking-roof high. There's also the storm, when that freaking branch falls and suddenly everything's about the freaking roof and you can't stand it anymore. Even the too-short nights with just her, after Cosette has gone to bed, are no solace. She's so beautiful, but you just can't do it. You can't possibly deal with this whiny, stupid, little kid anymore. So, you walk out.
It's not her, you tell yourself. It's not the way she parts her hair too far over or her ugly snorting laugh or the stupid freaking bubblegum smell that won'tgoaway or that dress she wore the day before last that made her look like an exotic fruit. It's Cosette. It was always Cosette.
The coffee gets cold the way it always does: scalding hot for way too long, then a slow cooling until it's perfect, but just when you're happy with it, it's too cold to even enjoy. So you throw it out and think of her, the way she got cold slowly and then Cosette and the sheer chill of it was inescapable. You know you hate yourself for thinking it. She was beautiful. She was everything. Cosette messed you up. You fall asleep thinking it, a small smile on your face. It was only ever Cosette.