A note and a disclaimer: I'm basing this on the movie, but drawing too on the book, and hence none of it is mine, but belongs, rather, to the makers of the musical and the film—and of course Victor Hugo.
Oh, and please review. A little fall of rain makes the flowers grow.
Something in Their Eyes
She notices it from their first days together. She is afraid to look too closely—at the Thénardiers' it was dangerous to catch a grown-up's eye—but she sees it nonetheless: something in his eyes, a gaze turned inward, and upon no pleasant prospect either. He looks lost, and it puzzles her: why would a grown-up look that way, the haunted way she must have looked at the inn from which he rescued her? A ragged mite, she had had no power to stop the blows and near-starvation. But surely a grown man—a man wearing the clothes of a gentleman— could not feel so fearful, so powerless? She knows that there is a mystery, something that has made them flee pursuing police, but there must be some mistake. The man who is so kind to her, who holds her when she has nightmares and replaces her rags with clean soft clothing, cannot have done anything wrong, any more than she did during her grim years with the Thénardiers.
One day he intercepts one of her sidelong glances, and she is afraid: will he snap at her for staring, as Madame Thénardier always did? But there is no anger in his eyes, only blankness—a blankness that melts into a smile as he suddenly seems to realize who is looking at him. He opens his arms, and she climbs into his lap, and buries her face on his shoulder, and feels safe, yet sorry for him too.
He notices it from their first days together. He does not want to stare, but, from time to time, he sees it nonetheless: something in her eyes, a drawing into herself, like someone closing the shutters on a window. He thinks back to those days before Toulon, when he lived with his sister and her family: those children were hungry, but not terrified like this little girl. Even now, properly fed and clothed, clutching her beloved new doll, she seems to pleat her small body into folds to make it take up as little space as possible. One day, stealing a sideways glance at her, he catches her eye, and its fearfulness smites his heart, while also seeming somehow familiar. Does he not look like that himself these days, now that the fortress of a prosperous life and reminted identity has crumbled, now that he is a fugitive fleeing a fate that floods back to him in nightmare memories? The chain he once wore seems again to drag on his neck. But as he shudders he sees in the child's eyes something that is not fear, but pity, and he holds out his arms. She climbs into his lap, pressing her face against his shoulder, and he feels at once comforted and sorry for both of them.
