A/N- Er, this story is basically a product of my love for Cosette/Montparnasse, my inability to write it, and procrastination from homework. I'm such an idiot. And for some reason I can start ficlets, but by the time I'm supposed to finish them they become something completely different from what I had in mind! Somehow this ended up being another stupid Who would win in a fight? fic, which I guess is interesting, but I want to explore some darker stuff... whatever. Whatever whatever. Here it is, anyway.
It was the middle of the night when Cosette awoke.
She had always been a light sleeper; it had taken a long time for her to become accustomed to the shuffling step of dear Toussaint when the old woman's arthritis forced her to exercise her knees in the dark of the night. Usually the sound of Toussaint's feet and mutterings were reassuring, but tonight something was strange.
Cosette listened.
The third floor house on the Rue de l'Ouest was holding its breath, and its little inhabitant found herself doing the same. Papa was on another of his business trips, and it seemed too early for Toussaint's nightly walk. But something must have moved, or Cosette would still be asleep. She strained her ear so mightily against the blanket of night that she was certain she would have heard the very pulse of another being, had one been nearby. The still air in her room seemed to press against her ear, and she hardly breathed at all for fear of impairing her hearing.
The darkness was beginning to swim into familiar shapes as her wide eyes adjusted. Cosette blinked a few times. She was lying on her side, her back to the door of the chamber; her nightstand faded into view, and so did the two little figurines that stood on it.
Her father was droll sometimes, Cosette reflected idly. He had come home one day with these little statuettes, angels playing instruments, and made her a present of them. She had feigned delight—she was far too old for dolls, and even these pretty little things seemed completely useless to a girl who had been raised to understand that material possessions were superfluous and sinful—but her father had been so proud of the figurines, for some reason, so she had clapped her hands kissed them, then kissed her father's cheek and danced them into her bedroom, placing them on the nightstand, and had never touched them again.
The figurines blurred a little as Cosette relaxed. She was being silly, of course. There was nothing in the house but poor old Toussaint, whose snores she could just hear through the wall. The dear old thing would surely be awake if something was truly amiss. Cosette blinked slowly, letting her eyes drift back open. The nightstand and its white inhabitants reappeared—along with an ivory hand poised just above.
Cosette felt her eyes grow round as she stared at the hand. Two of the long, tapered fingers rested lightly on the halo of the nearest angel, the one who was curled languorously around a harp. The girl stared at the hand for a moment longer before sense resurfaced in her fuddled mind, and her gaze traveled up the nearly-invisible black sleeve, finding a thin body, a flash of white collar, and an ashen face.
It was a handsome young man. His black eyes locked with her blue ones, and both of them started, but neither moved from their positions.
Cosette's entire body flushed cold, and she clamped her eyes closed. There was a man—a handsome, young man—in her room—her bedroom—and he was going to play with the figurines.
No, that was silly. He wasn't here to play games. It was midnight, and he was a thief. They were being robbed by a thief.
A handsome, young thief.
She was dreaming.
Such a simple answer to such a strange, confusing turn of events! It was nothing but a dream, and a strange one at that, but a dream nonetheless. Cosette inhaled slowly, hardly daring to let her shoulders rise and fall beneath the comforter. Yes, she was awake now. And for the final touch.
She opened her eyes—and choked on a scream.
The young man was still there, but he had moved. He still stood at her bedside with one arm extended, but now that delicate hand was hovering over Cosette, and he was stooped so that his face was just above hers. She clenched her eyes again. It was a silly thing to do, but all she could think of in her half-delirious state was make the image disappear.
The proof that it was a strange dream was in the young man's demeanor. One of her friends in the convent had kept a particular book under her mattress, and all of the girls had had a chance to read it more than once. In that book a man who found himself unchaperoned in a young girl's room would leer and throw her across the bed. Then the book had mentioned love, "making" love, which had seemed out of place in the context, but Cosette had never been in such a position—perhaps love was a natural reaction under the circumstances?
The corner of her mattress sank under someone's weight. His weight. The thief's weight. Cosette dared to peek out under her eyelashes, and she saw that yes, he was sitting on the edge of her bed. Her thoughts smashed together in her mind like waves in a maelstrom, and she forced herself to extract a nugget of sense from the crush of confusion. Papa sometimes sat there in that manner when he came in to say evening prayers with her. Did a thief want to say prayers? That didn't seem right. Perhaps he was going to repent, then, of his sinful ways!
His hand closed over her arm. His skin was warm. He turned Cosette over so that she was lying on her back, and then he released her. A moment later she felt the weight of the comforter disappear and heard a rustling noise as it fell to the floor.
She realized at once that she was now fully exposed, clad only in her nightgown, and this stranger could certainly see her bare feet and ankles. She shivered.
This was wrong, all wrong! Why wasn't she screaming for help, panicking, pulling the covers back up or getting to her feet and fleeing for safety? She should be shouting and telling this man that he was a terrible, monstrous brute!
But it was a strange, morbid curiosity that kept her pinned to the mattress, immobile, frozen in horrified, delicious anticipation.
The stranger put a hand on her knee, the warmth of it permeating her shift, and he slid it up toward her thigh. Cosette shuddered at the unexpected pleasure the touch gave her, but finally managed to mobilize one arm and catch his thin wrist, pushing it away just before those heavy fingers trailed a little too high. He pulled back, and Cosette felt and heard nothing for a moment that stretched longer than she had expected.
Curious, she opened her eyes.
He was staring at her; his gaze locked onto hers the moment she dared look to him. A strange, chilling smile turned up the corners of his lips, and suddenly his pretty face was flushed with an expression of pure wickedness that terrified Cosette. She gasped slightly—she wanted to cry out—but the stranger removed a lace-trimmed handkerchief from his pocket and, without allowing the grotesque leer to slip from his features, he stuffed the handkerchief into her half-open mouth and leaned back a bit, seizing the hem of her nightgown and slowly lifting it.
Now Cosette began to be afraid. She pushed his hands away again, spitting the handkerchief out of her mouth, but the stranger caught up both of her wrists in one hand and forced them back, pushing her own arm between her teeth so fiercely that she moaned in pain. His eyes flashed blackly at her, teeth clenched, and with his free hand he began touching her body, pawing at her, grabbing her shift in his fist and wrenching it up toward her waist. Now he was leaning closer, his hot breath on her face, then her neck. His free hand had worked its way inside her nightgown, and he was caressing her bare stomach, his lips brushing over her collarbone.
He leaned up again, lifting off of her, that horrible grin still in place, and he climbed further onto the bed, fumbling with the front of his trousers, inadvertently leaning on Cosette's trapped arms, forcing them further into her teeth.
But now the girl saw her chance.
She kicked one foot up in the air, slamming the other into the mattress for added leverage, and swung the leg over her attacker's head. The back of her heel came in contact with his neck, and a moment later he had completely released her arms, tumbling backward onto the bed, thrown off-balance by the surprise attack. Cosette took this brief instant of freedom to leap out of his reach, kneeling near the head of her bed, ready for his next move. She cast about for something to use in self defense, but only the angel statues were within reach.
Nearer to the foot of the bed, her attacker gathered himself and reared back, a look of fury contorting the features she had thought handsome only moments ago. Cosette, trying with all of her strength to keep herself from panicking, reached for the figurine, the only thing nearby, and, seizing the harp-playing angel by her head, brought the other end down on the edge of the nightstand with a tinkling, dainty little crash, and brandished the fragmented porcelain at the thief. He seemed surprised by the move, and Cosette took advantage of this moment to get down from the bed and back toward the window, heaving the sash open and letting the warm air of Paris flutter into the little chamber. She tilted her head and raised her eyebrows at the attacker, her threat clear. One false move, and she would scream.
He snarled again and leapt down from the bed, advancing on her for a few steps, then turning on his heel and snatched the remaining angel figurine from her nightstand, slipping back into the darkness of the hallway. Cosette remained at the window until she saw his tall shadow slide out of a window on the ground floor and slink away into the night.
"I demand, however, that you do something about your grandfather's dreadful penchant for those gaudy old waistcoats!" Cosette declared.
Marius tightened his grip on her arm and petted her fingers with his other hand. "He won't change, darling, and we both know it. It's best we embrace the old fiend as he is."
His wife laughed. "All the same," she said in mock sternness, "if my Papa—" She stopped. Cosette stood, frozen in her tracks, the words dying on her lips.
Marius patted her arm sympathetically in an effort to reassure what could only be explained as a spell of grief over her late father.
He judged wrongly.
The two were in the Luxembourg gardens, for nostalgia's sake, and were approaching the bench where she had been sitting when they had first seen each other. It was a habit of theirs, especially in the warmer days of spring, and they had always found this little corner of the gardens deserted.
But on this day, there was a figure on their bench.
It was a dark, slim shadow of a man who saw them coming and slid to his feet. His black eyes met the baroness's and he touched his hat, nodding respectfully, a tiny smile curling across his lips, and he passed the couple, bumping rather unashamedly and fiercely into poor Marius, who stood in utter bewilderment. Cosette turned to watch this stranger's graceful retreat in silence. She looked back at the bench where he had been sitting and cried out, dropping her husband's arm and running to scoop an abandoned angel figurine into her arms.