When Cosette entered Luxembourg Gardens with her papa, it was the jittery young gamine who wore the years of an old woman that first caught her eye. The manic energy about her was hollowly familiar, and the sight of her black curls bought the taste of burnt honey to her lips, but try as she might, Cosette could not recall where she'd seen the girl before.
It was often like this — the odd scent, the odd sound that reached her sometimes sparking an almost-memory, so close to surfacing that she felt as if she could force herself to remember if only she stretched her fingers a little more, but when she did she disturbed the waters of her remembrance, which would once again settle into a cruel blankness. The patches of her life she could not remember, the urges that had no root. There was an ache and a longing inside of her for knowledge, for fact, for the solidity of a concrete childhood.
Papa said it was better this way, that she didn't want to know about her past, that it was painful and wretched. Papa made the decisions. Papa knew best. (If Papa knew what Cosette did in secret he would be appalled. Cosette was almost tempted to let him find out. to shock him, to make him see, she was seventeen, no longer the girl-child who would sit at his knee, and no longer as innocent as he wanted to believe.)
Still, he had the best of intentions, and Cosette followed along with them, because he couldn't keep her in the dark forever. So she let herself be pulled away from the haunted gaze of the dark-haired girl, who had just raised her eyes to meet Cosette's. (There was a flutter, there was a quake, and somewhere a butterfly was flapping its wings.)
They gave often, and freely, to the poor. Papa spoke very little about his life before Cosette ("What's the point, child? You're the reason i live today; is that not enough to satisfy your curious soul?" he would say, with a wrinkle of his nose and a twinkle in his eye and an affectionate tap on Cosette's nose), but from the hints he dropped and the snooping Cosette had done, she gathered he was very poor before he became very rich. She gathered, too, from the way he spoke of her that she had too been very poor, and very lonely, and so she never begrudged a coin. (They had enough of that to spare, anyway. And what would they spend it on? It was always just the two of them.)
She felt a tug on her skirts and looked down to see a small grubby hand clinging to the silk and big brown eyes swimming in guilt.
Cosette bent down so she could look the little boy in the eye. "Jean-Michel, have you been stealing money from people again?" she whispered.
The little face bobbed up and down and Cosette's heart broke. She could give him money, all the money in the world and wrap him up in a bubble of sunlit radiance and there would still be more children like him and not enough francs in the world to take care of them all. So she merely said, "I know it's very hard, Jean-Michel, but you promised me you'd try to be good."
"I try very hard, mam'selle," Jean-Michel whimpered. "And 'tisn't so hard when I ain't so hungry, but maman's so sick and she can't bring in coin any more, and my sister cries when her stomach is empty, and the cops, they don't like that very much. It's only a few coins, and I don't ever take much."
Cosette smiled gently at the boy and pressed some francs into his hands. "We'll be back in a few days, but try and make this last as long as you can. I want to see such a kind, generous young boy grow up to be something more than a thief locked up in a jail cell somewhere."
And she stood and watched the boy pocket the coins and wondered how long it would last and how soon Jean-Michel would turn back into thieving. She couldn't pretend like she didn't understand his desperation, but she couldn't pretend like she approved of his taking the hard-earned money of others, either.
Papa helped her up, and patted her hand sympathetically. These trips to luxembourg gardens were far from pleasant, but she was grateful to them, grateful not be be caged all day, grateful to be able to make some difference in peoples' lives, no matter how small or transient.
Linking her arm through her papa's, Cosette moved on to the next cluster of people.
They were spectacularly painted, and she suspected they would have been dandies had they the means. Their leader, a not-quite-youthful man with stringy locks and a coat that had perhaps once been blue but was now patched up with bright fabric, sidled up to them with trembling fingers.
"Please, monsieur," he croaked in what was meant to be a pitiable voice. It raised gooseflesh on Cosette's skin, and again stirred the echo of some howling in the past. "I have a child who is starving, and a wife that needs to be fed, and these boys, they need money to buy some bread."
Papa smiled kindly, if a little warily, because it was exceedingly clear this was no honest man, but then Papa had always said that need made people do terrible things, and we cannot judge those who are only trying to get by. He dug a hand into his purse and pulled out a few francs.
"Wait a moment!"
The young men and the not-so-very-young man turned, and from amongst their ranks emerged a woman, her dress torn and her hair wild, waving an accusing finger at Papa.
"I know your face!" she screeched, a little tipsy wobble in her step. She squinted up at him, tossing aside the bundle of rags she'd been cradling. "I've seen you somewhere before. You're the one what came, nine years ago, and —"
She was never given a chance to finish, for at that moment, the girl Cosette had seen from across the way burst in on them. She screamed, "Disappear, disappear; Inspector Javert is coming!" and, quick as a storm of summer rain, the men tried to disperse, but the policeman was quicker. Papa turned pale and turned quickly away at the sight of him.
"When I say run, darling, I want you to run. And stay close behind me." Her papa tightened his grip on her arm. Cosette nodded, and though her mind was ablaze (Who were those people? How did they know her papa? Why was he trembling, and why was he always so afraid?), she found focus in her father's words.
The police inspector passed so close; Cosette could feel the prick of his shrewd gaze, and she fought the urge to hold her breath. (Act natural, be unafraid, and they would never call your bluff, or at the very least they would buy it for time enough to rush home, pack up, and leave again.)
"Cosette, run," Papa hissed, and took off, one hand ushering Cosette before him. She took one last look behind her at the girl who escaped her memory so, and with a whoosh of her silken skirts, she was off.