Written for the Les Mis Anon Kink Meme.
Polish version by me.
English translation by Elwen_Rhiannon, betareading by AMarguerite.
René
"Have not you an intimate friend?"
"Yes, Courfeyrac."
"What has become of him?"
"He is dead."
"That is good."
(transl. by I. F. Hapgood)
If Cosette is sure of anything, it's that his name was René. Marius says it only once, as if it escaped him against his will, but Cosette feels she knows whom did he mean. Let him be "Courfeyrac" for others, she will remember what is truly important. And never call him by another name.
First the name then, with "r" soft as doves cooing and a clear "e", and nothing more for a long, long time. New information comes slowly, escaping Marius as unconsciously as the first one. But all Cosette gradually learns can be put in a coherent whole. The height doesn't matter, neither do the eyes and none of similar things, but something completely different.
So his name was René, he had wind in his hair and a sword in his hand and never, never grew old.
That's how she saw him at the beginning, no matter the details. She feels that nothing she can learn will ever change what she knows.
(Actually, she never saw him, but it doesn't matter at all, she knows better than them all what did he really look like.)
Cosette knows Marius doesn't want to talk about the barricade. It's not a women's thing, he explains reluctantly and turns around, suddenly unfamiliar as never before. He doesn't talk to her for a long while, looking through the window and she has to start to pout, which finally works.
Marius knows how to talk and Cosette likes listening to him, or maybe she just likes his voice, but it doesn't matter: it's important to have him talking, because René disappears in the daylight then, much less menacing than that strange, unknown René inside her Marius.
Yet when she forces her husband to talk again, his voice is soft as never before and Cosette doesn't know herself what this feeling overtaking her is. She names it when Marius stops talking and she is laughing at herself for being so stupid, oh, so stupid! They're here together - he and she - and they're going to have five children, three sons and two little daughters, as she's always wanted. They'll see them growing up and René will never grow old.
"I saw him dying," says Marius and Cosette is not jealous anymore.
(A woman can't be jealous of a man, she repeats to herself so often that she starts to believe it.)
On the sixth of June everything starts to change. For the first time, Marius doesn't belong to her, so she stops belonging to Marius. The sofa in the sitting-room must be very uncomfortable, thinks Cosette, turning in their marriage bed and finally deciding to get up.
Marius isn't sleeping. He's sitting on a sofa, with a back turned towards the door, hiding face in his hands and crying, and Cosette doesn't know what to do.
She's haunted by the thought that René would know and that's the reason why she goes away quickly, before Marius notices, and tries to warm her cold feet under the duvet. She doesn't fall asleep that night, but lies with her eyes closed, when everything around her is quiet, so quiet that she can hear the same wind that was running through René's hair there, at the barricade.
Shortly after that, Marius stops belonging to her on other days too, and when he returns in the evenings, Cosette can smell cheap, heavy perfumes, and can see powder on his collar. But everything is all right, because when they blow the candles out and lie down in their marriage bed, Marius reaches to her, takes off her nightgown and slowly touches her body, body of the young girl, body of the woman.
(Everything is as it should be, and she swears to herself that she will never ever condemn him neither for this one nor any other lover.)
Marius speaks less and less, more unwillingly each time and Cosette is surprised when she finally learns where the barricade stood. But she knows, at least. When Marius is away, she leaves and when the clatter of horses' hoofs on the paving finally stops, she is almost afraid to leave the carriage.
But all that she's able to see is so normal, much more normal than she expected, unable to see the shadow of the youth with a sword in his hand between the renewed walls of the tavern. There's only wind that tousles her hair and forces its way under her dress, reaching between her thighs. It is then when shaking of coldness and maybe not a coldness at all Cosette understands that he's still there, brave, ungovernable René with sonorous laughter and eyes like a flame.
Give my husband back, give him back now, she wants to scream it but she doesn't dare to because well-behaved women don't scream on the streets. She keeps looking instead, keeps looking for so long that the coachman has to call her back. When she turns away and goes back, trimming her hair and trying not to think about the cold blow of air sliding between her underskirts, she hears only the wind and that laughter.
(There is no need for her to scream anyway, even if she saw him, as everything depends on Marius and nothing on her.)
Their nights together are as hard and as sultry as if they were drowned in melted wax and sweat, or maybe the too sweet wine she can more and more often taste on Marius' lips. All is sticky, leaving fingerprints that cannot be washed out, but Cosette's nightmares are even more sticky, full of bold male hands, sonorous laughter and something she is unable to understand but what she senses in her husband's behaviour anyway. When she wakes, realizing that Marius is lying beside her, nothing changes.
Their marriage bed is much smaller than she thought, as it has to contain Marius, herself and all his memories about René. She's no longer surprised with the sultriness: there is too little space for the three of them.
But sometimes Cosette is as light as the air itself, dreaming about the laughing wind behind the window and the coldness that finds its way under her nightgown, caressing her naked thighs. It doesn't scare her, not at all, because if she met him like that, if she didn't have to blame him for all that happened, everything would be different. Maybe Marius' eyes wouldn't be so empty and the nights wouldn't be so heavy and lonely. And René would never grow old and perhaps never have the time to betray or to leave her, because he would die much, much sooner.
Even if she thinks Marius starts to forget, she still remembers.
(She misses him, misses more and more and she thinks she understands why Marius used to miss him so much.)
René goes away for the second time, taking the flame in Marius' eyes with him.
That's the reason why when Cosette tells her husband that she's with child, she doesn't expect anything between them to change. Yet Marius surprises her more than ever when he lets his drinking glass fall on the floor. The glass hits the ground with a tinkle, but it doesn't matter because for a moment Marius can't think about anything but Cosette. He asks her if she's been thinking about a name, but she purses her lips and shakes her head, afraid of what each of them could say.
Later in the evening Marius carries her to the bed, caring as before. But it's too late now and Cosette doesn't need anymore what he may offer her. She wants to tell him to go away, as the amount of space in their bed scares her. She doesn't say a word.
His hands on her body are as audacious as they used to be and Cosette lets him have his way, though she doesn't really want to. In the night she keeps dreaming about the wind behind the window and when she awakes, she's pale and unable to warm herself up. The coldness crawls on her skin, reaching her thighs and deeper, making her want to scream and Marius is again the only one who doesn't understand what's going on when Cosette suddenly wakes him up and presses his warm hands to her lap.
(Then she asks herself which one of them will be the real father and feels she's beginning to lose her senses.)
Cosette doesn't laugh anymore as often as she used to; she's afraid of many things she's never been afraid of before. She can't stand meat, blood and the colour red, thinking about this thing growing inside her, becoming more and more dangerous every day, like René inside Marius. Above everything else, she's afraid of politics.
She sees people like René, from time to time, ungoverned and sometimes too bold for their own good, who may never have the time to grow old and bored with their girls. They meet in some places on the streets to talk loudly and impetuously, laughing sonorously with flames in their eyes and wind in their hair, watching her watching them as she passes in her carriage. Cosette doesn't understand the dislike in their gazes and doesn't know why she wants to cry. Maybe it's the child.
"Madame baroness," says the servant, and Cosette knows then, hitting the door of her carriage with a powerless fist.
But finally everything gets quiet as the wind beyond securely closed window shutters, leaving only nausea and a bitter taste in her mouth. My love, thinks Cosette, when Marius returns home early and talks about the republicans with aversion, oh, my love, mine and only mine, please, Marius, please.
(She tries not to mention any names, even for herself, but something breaks inside her this time.)
Cosette often wonders why she was never told the truth. About Marius, about her father, about everyone around and all the matters so important for her, always too manly for her to learn about them. As if she's been going with the flow all her life, or rather flying with the wind, the same wind that took Marius' idealism away from her. She sometimes thinks that perhaps it would be better not to grow old at all.
But there's an unexplained boldness in this being growing inside her which makes the flame in her eyes burn again.
She learns to love this being and even when it's still so alien to her, she swears she'll never let it feel this. That she'll be with it no matter what and will never ever let it live without knowing the name of its mother. Fantine, Fantine, Fantine. Cosette and Marius. And René.
The doctor coming to see her from time to time is friendly and kind and above all able to calm her down and that's why Cosette finally stops being so afraid. Three sons and two little daughters, she thinks and presses hands to her growing stomach, knowing it's just a beginning.
(Or maybe everything has finished much sooner, before it has ever had time to begin, and that's even better.)
The labour lasts long, far too long, hurting as nothing else in her life, but it doesn't matter when for one brief moment her newborn son is shown to her. Everything makes sense then and Cosette looks straight into frightened eyes of her husband. She doesn't think bad about him anymore, everything is fine again, as she feels Marius belongs only to her now.
Three sons and two little daughters, it's a boy, my love, says her triumphant gaze, now there'll be a girl, just wait and everything is going to be as in our dreams. Just wait Marius, just wait René, just wait you all.
Yet suddenly her son is taken away from her and Cosette doesn't understand why. She desperately tightens oh, so empty hands on a sheet and doesn't know where does the pain come from, why is it so strong, what is this stickiness and why everything blurs even more than in her dreams.
"It's over," says the doctor, and Cosette has her eyes closed so she can't see his helplessly spread arms. And Marius screams, he screams so loudly that she would like to quiet him, but she's so weak that she has to resign. Even if she wants to say something very, very much, she knows well that he can't hear her and it's better to keep all for herself. And they can never ever take it away from her.
(Because the baby has eyes like René, flame between her thighs, flame on a barricade, it had to be like that, she thinks and falls asleep, smiling as never before.)