Over It

Disclaimer: I do not own Les Misérables.

Note: When you think about it, Marius and Cosette got really lucky that when they invested all that time and effort into somebody they barely knew, that person turned out to be something they could really love and be happy with. It could have so easily turned out differently.

"I do hope that you don't think me terribly silly, Papa," Cosette said earnestly. "Changing my mind like this after all this fuss…but at least no announcement had been made or I don't know what I'd do!"

"I could never think you silly, Cosette," Valjean said loyally. And it was true. If he hadn't thought her silly after hours upon hours shopping for more clothes than he had ever owned, he would not do her the disservice of thinking so now.

"Marius is a very sweet man and I hope that we shall always be friends but I simply do not feel that we are well-suited for a life together and he reluctantly admitted the same," Cosette continued, looking dutifully sad at the closing of a chapter in her life but not regretful as she was certain of her choice.

"I'm certain that he will want to remain in your life, Cosette," Valjean told her, entirely unable to conceive of someone who wouldn't want to see Cosette.

"Oh, I do hope so!" Cosette said, wringing her hands. "But Papa, you still haven't told me what you feel about this! I can continue to suggest reactions for you to deny if you would like but I would prefer to know sooner rather than later."

Valjean bowed his head. What was he feeling about Cosette and Marius ending their romantic entanglement? Confusion, mostly. He did not know much of romantic love, having never experienced it for himself, but he had rather thought it would be a little longer-lasting. Marius had gone off to die at the barricade for despair at the impending loss of Cosette and Cosette herself had been heartbroken over leaving Paris and sent him to check on Marius and deliver bandages on a daily basis for half a year.

He adored his daughter as much as ever and could never judge her choice. In fact, an embarrassingly large part of him was relieved beyond measure. He had resigned himself to the marriage, had nearly single-handedly made it possible, and wanted Cosette to be happy above all. That said, he was not happy about the marriage itself and losing Cosette. He did not know if he would feel similarly about any young man that Cosette fancied but he could never completely quell his initial feelings towards the boy who had refused to stop staring at his daughter when all he had wanted to do was take a nice walk with her.

The surprising part was that he was also a little annoyed about the whole thing. He was not annoyed with Cosette, of course, but more the entire situation. It had not been easy for him to come to accept even the idea of Cosette in love, much less the reality of it. All of that anxiety and, yes, agony and now nothing was to even come of it? He could only hope that he would not fool himself again and allow himself to believe that Cosette would not fall in love in the future.

He was unsure how Cosette would even begin to meet young men as he could not expect every young man to persistently stare at her and eventually find a way to come directly to her house and meet in the garden – nor would he want them to, of course. In the past, he would have shied away from thinking of the future, of his inevitable death and what would have become of Cosette. He had contended himself with the knowledge that Cosette would have nearly sixty thousand francs, more than enough to see to her well-being for the rest of her life.

But she would be alone.

He had spent far too much time alone and dreading returning to that state for him to want that for his daughter. Even if she were to marry after his death, she would have to make the arrangements herself and a young girl, alone in the world with naught but a very healthy dowry, would be a tempting target. No, as painful as it would be, he needed to try and see her married while he was still around to make sure that she would be happy. She was happy now but that was not enough. She needed to be happy for the rest of her life.

In the past, when Cosette was younger, it was easier to imagine that their solitary little life together would never end. But then had come the barricades and the knowledge that Cosette was slowly, almost accidentally, stealing away from him. Then had come the barricades and the unexpected meeting with Javert, choosing to let him go and accept his fate of being returned to chains even though everything in him was screaming at him to just run. Then had come the barricades and the bullets and the bayonets and the sewers that he had never truly expected to be able to walk away from.

Now it seemed like he was living on borrowed time, even though he knew that Javert was dead and the knowledge that Valjean yet lived had died with him.

He could only hope that he would be able to maintain his acceptance of Cosette's marriage until the time came for it to actually happen so he would not have to go through all of that again. And who knew? Maybe he would even like Cosette's new love better than her old one. It was certainly a possibility, especially if he did not require Valjean to personally rescue him from his own self-destruction.

And yes, maybe he was a little irritated that he had prevailed against truly daunting odds to bring Marius home for his little girl only to have nothing come of it. He would not, could not, ever regret saving a life but he had rather hoped that things would end differently. And there was always the knowledge that Cosette might be free to move on from her love of Marius since he was still alive but she would have been forever scarred if the boy had died and he simply could not have that.

"Papa?" Cosette asked loudly, placing her hand on his shoulder. "Papa, are you alright?"

Valjean blinked, realizing that he had gotten lost in thought again. It was becoming more and more common as the years passed. He smiled at her. "I apologize, Cosette. You were speaking about the end of your relationship with Marius Pontmercy?"

Cosette nodded. "I was actually asking you how you felt about it."

"I want what is best for you," Valjean said simply.

Cosette rolled her eyes fondly. "You always say that."

"It is always true." It was, in fact, the guiding principle of his life. "If that meant being with Marius then I wanted you to be with Marius. If that is no longer being with him then I want you to be unattached. I am only grateful that you have discovered this incompatibility before you were married and it was too late."

Cosette smiled at him briefly before biting her lip, looking indecisive.

"Speak, child," Valjean said encouragingly.

"Marius would never have done anything of the sort and I pray that I do not fall in love with anyone who would but if I did…" Cosette trailed off again. "What would you do?"

Valjean's first impulse was to say that he would kill him. Violence was not something that he had found himself capable of in quite some time but the thought of anyone hurting Cosette, especially someone that she was supposed to be able to trust…He didn't know and, like Cosette, could only pray that it would not happen.

But there was one thing that he was sure of.

"I would welcome you back in an instant, my child. I will not have you stay somewhere where you are not safe and happy."

Cosette smiled so brightly that it almost hurt his eyes and pulled him into a fierce hug. "I had thought that that would be the case but it's good to hear it all the same."

"Why are you even considering this, Cosette?" Valjean asked once he had pulled back. She had sworn that she didn't believe Marius was capable of it (and neither did he, for that matter. That boy loved to the point of idolization) but where else could this possibly be coming from?

Cosette looked a little uncomfortable. "I had just never thought seriously about marriage until recently so I hadn't thought about things like that before."

"Why did you and Marius decide to become friends and nothing more?" Valjean asked, finding himself quite unable to not at least look into this a little deeper.

"The past few weeks were the first time that we've had to really interact in a normal manner," Cosette said thoughtfully. "And I can't help but think that, had things been more normal, we would never have fallen in love at all."

Valjean nodded encouragingly at her.

"The first time we met…well, that depends on how you define 'met'," Cosette went on. "The first time we saw each other, he said he only noticed me because of how my dress and your hair contrasted. Mademoiselle Lanoir and Monsieur Leblanc, they used to call us." He didn't even want to know who 'they' were. "I didn't really notice him at all. The first time we looked at each other and felt…connected, we were not able to talk to each other like most young people would."

"Because of my presence," Valjean realized.

Cosette hesitated. "Well…I needed to be chaperoned by someone but I had the distinct feeling that if I had tried to make his acquaintance then you would not have supported me in that."

Valjean lowered his eyes, silently conceding that that was true. "You were so young and not all men have honorable intentions. I just worry and did not feel comfortable connecting you to a man whom we knew nothing about."

Cosette nodded. "I knew that he was a good person. Some things you can just tell when you see into someone's soul but I realize that you could not see that the way I could. Fortunately, knowing Marius will allow me to meet other people without having to take a chance on a stranger."

But Cosette couldn't go on her own and so, somehow, Valjean would have to go as well. Was he really about to enter society? What a strange world this was.

"Why did Marius not approach you?" Valjean asked. "He would not know me as well as you do."

Cosette laughed lightly. "He was intimidated by you." She clearly thought the idea that anyone could be intimidated by him preposterous and he was reminded why he had never told her that he had once been branded a dangerous man. "He said that you look like an ex-military man and you are a member of the National Guard. And he knew enough of the world to hesitate before suddenly coming up to the father of a young girl because he had fallen in love with her before even learning her name."

Valjean granted her a smile at that universal truth, likely born of simple survival instincts. So Marius, too, had thought that he had been in the military. So many people did and it was a convenient fiction that explained away any oddities that he could not hide. What a life he might have known if he had joined the military instead of going to Toulon (assuming he hadn't gotten himself killed somewhere along the way but he had quite a bit of faith in his ability to survive by this point).

But there had been Jeanne and the children to consider. She had kept him alive when their parents had died too soon so what choice had he but to try and do the same for her and her family once he was grown and her husband was dead? After nineteen years in Toulon (after a mere five) he would not have been nearly as resentful of his duty. But that was a door closed long ago and all he could do was trust that God had watched out for his sister's family when he was no longer able to.

"And then you noticed Marius' interest in me and we stopped going to the Luxembourg," Cosette continued. "Or at least that was what we worked out."

There was no accusation in her tone but Valjean still felt compelled to defend his actions. "It aws several weeks of several hours a day with him merely staring at you. I happened to encounter him without you on a few occasions and he quickly left. And when I mistakenly left my handkerchief behind and he assumed it was yours, he was very…attached to it."

Cosette giggled girlishly at that and Valjean wondered what she was thinking about. "I know all about that. It was rather sweet, how much he cared."

Valjean had been rather disturbed by the way that Marius kept smelling that handkerchief (about as much as Marius had been once he realized it wasn't Cosette's, he was sure) but he would not dampen his daughter's romanticism. "I was only looking out for you."

"I know," Cosette said agreeably. "And he did find me again. But before that we had entire months where we had no way of finding each other or even knowing if the other was still alive after we were reluctantly parted. While, perhaps, continuing to stare at each other and maybe even meeting would have grown old and the attraction would have faded, our separation forced us to think only of what might have been and build each other up in our heads."

"You were very unhappy," Valjean remembered. He had seen her misery and done what he could to try and fix it, even taking her back to the Luxembourg where she might have found Marius again, but he couldn't understand the problem. Thinking back, he couldn't understand how he could have been so blind. He had even asked Cosette about Marius! But he had no experience with that sort of love himself and he didn't want to believe it so how could he see it?

"I was not too terribly unhappy," Cosette said graciously. " I was sad at first but life does not stand still for anyone or anything and I have such a hard time being unhappy in the spring. I had very nearly forgotten him before he had found me again."

"I am glad to hear that, if only because it was highly unlikely that you would have ever seen him again," Valjean told her.

"But then he found someone who could find me and he wrote me the loveliest little booklet and it all came rushing back," Cosette said, sighing happily. "Even now that I no longer love him, I will always treasure that note. It was honestly the most beautiful thing I have ever read and I have rarely felt so loved."

Valjean felt a powerful desire to know exactly what Marius had written to his daughter that she found so beautiful before they had even met but he held his tongue. It no longer mattered.

"We both knew that you would not approve of a man you had never met sneaking into the garden every night and talking to me for hours," Cosette said matter-of-factly. "But do not worry, Papa. We only kissed the once."

Of course they had. He trusted Cosette, even despite the secret she had kept. She was such a wonderfully sensible girl.

"I am sorry that I deceived you, Papa," Cosette said earnestly.

Valjean placed a hand on hers. "All is forgiven, my child."

"I am so glad to hear that!" she exclaimed. "I promise that I will not do it again."

"And I promise that you will never feel the need," Valjean vowed.

"Secret meetings are exciting, of course, but in time that may have faded, as well," Cosette speculated. "But then we were going to England and Marius nearly died at the barricade so I had six months of doing nothing but worrying about him. Or that's how I remember it, at any rate."

That was largely how Valjean remembered it, too, but logically he knew that she would not have been capable of literally spending every waking moment worrying for that boy. She would have had a break-down if she had.

"How could I even think of falling out of love at that point?" Cosette asked rhetorically. "And then we were just so happy to finally just be together openly and be allowed to be married after more than a year of loving each other. It took us awhile to realize that we simply did not wish to be married. I still like him a great deal and enjoy spending time with him but…I do not see him as a husband."

"But you spent hours talking every night for nearly two months," Valjean objected. "How could you not have realized it then?"

Cosette blushed. "We mostly spoke of how much we loved each other with only a little detail about our past and almost nothing of our beliefs. We spent a lot of time reminiscing about our own love story. I wouldn't say that there was any one thing that made either of us say 'I cannot accept that' or 'I do not love you anymore.' It just happened and, honestly, that scares me."

Valjean frowned at that. "Why? Cosette, my child, what frightens you?" The image of that trembling child out in the snow on Christmas Eve rose up within him. Cosette was quite adamant that she was no longer a child and she had almost been married but he still struggled with the idea sometimes.

Cosette looked down. "What if I fall out of love again and it's too late?"

Valjean put his hand under her chin and she looked back up at him. "You already identified the problem, Cosette. Your relationship with Marius developed too unusually and artificially intensified your feelings. When you find another man, you will have an easier time and will be able to better understand your feelings."

Cosette's smile was a blessed thing to behold. "Oh, I do hope that you're right!"

"What sort of incompatibilities did you two have?" Valjean inquired, not sure if it was his place to know but curious nonetheless.

"Oh, just little things," Cosette said dismissively. "I don't remember my mother, for instance, but I wish I had her still in my life."

Valjean felt vaguely ill as he always did when Cosette brought up the mother he had failed to save but he wasn't sure what Fantine had to do with Marius, particularly as neither party could possibly know about the desperate lengths Fantine had had to go to towards the end of her life for Cosette's sake.

"I do sometimes get a vague warm impression when I think of her, a flash of white, and that tells me that she must have loved me," Cosette said quietly, looking to Valjean for confirmation.

Valjean felt it very difficult to speak. "More than her own life."

Cosette's eyes noticeably brightened at this. "And I know that there is nothing in this world that would make me turn from you."

Valjean wanted to believe that but he was not so selfish that he would test that. Or maybe he was too selfish to try.

"And yet Marius just walked away from his aunt and his grandfather – his only living family – for five years and the only reason he came back to them was because he was desperate and then because someone had taken him there after he was injured and could not protest," Cosette said, shaking her head helplessly. "And I just…I don't understand it."

"Every family is different, Cosette," Valjean said gently.

"Oh, I know that there were problems," Cosette said hurriedly. "I know that Marius' grandfather deprived him of his father for his entire life by threatening his father to disinherit Marius if they had any contact and not telling Marius why his father lived and yet was not a part of his life. Marius' father died without them ever meeting, you know. But I just…With so much pain already caused, why make it worse?"

"Sometimes people are just too angry or heartbroken to think rationally," Valjean told her softly. "Emotion does have a way of blinding us. And I believe that Marius is getting along with his grandfather now."

"Yes," Cosette conceded. "But that was not even the reason for the estrangement! It was politics! Marius' grandfather was a royalist and Marius was a Bonapartist – only lately he's become a republican – and so his grandfather threw him out of the house and Marius refused to come back or accept any sort of aid! Can you imagine? Two people who love each other throwing away that love because of politics?"

She looked so honestly indignant that Valjean contented himself with a shake of the head as she went on.

"It's not like either of them murdered anyone! Family is far too precious to let something so petty rip it apart," she continued, quieter. It wasn't like they stole anything, either. How would she rank that? She sighed. "I'm not judging how he lives his life but I just cannot understand that. Family is everything to me and to see it treated so casually…" She shook her head again.

"I'm sorry that that has upset you," Valjean told her.

She managed a small smile. "Thank you. And then there was what happened after he left."

Recognizing a prompt when he saw one, Valjean dutifully asked, "And what was that?"

"He learned German and English so that he could work as a translator and earned seven hundred francs a year," she replied.

"That is not very much," Valjean said, blinking. "Although for a young man living on his own it might prove sufficient."

"It did," Cosette confirmed. "But that's not all. He barely had to work at all to get that money. One of his employers practically begged him to work more with them. He offered him a better place to live and more than twice his salary! And he refused!"

"Money is not so important to everyone," Valjean said, thinking of all the money he had to his name and what he actually spent.

"Of course it isn't and it's not that he did not spend more on himself that upsets me," Cosette clarified. "It's just…say he could live perfectly happily on seven hundred francs. Think of all the good he could do with eight hundred francs! Think of all the poor he could feed or clothe and maybe even keep alive! He could do so much good with more than what he needed to live on in a year and yet he refused it because he liked to sit around his apartment thinking and thought it was more 'honest' to be poor. I just don't know how he can see those who are truly poor and suffering and belittle them by choosing that lifestyle when he doesn't have to and then refusing to take an opportunity practically handed to him to help them."

Valjean did not know, either. "Not everyone has eyes for those less fortunate than themselves."

"I just…hearing about these sorts of things just made me look at him sometimes and wonder who he even was," Cosette admitted, shaking her head perplexedly. "Because I do not understand. And then, of course, there were the things he didn't see in me."

Valjean instantly felt protective. "What problem could he possibly have with you?"

"Nothing serious, you understand, just a sort of incomprehension of something so fundamental about the other person," Cosette explained. "Like some of the things I mentioned about him."

"What?" he asked again.

Cosette shrugged. "I already mentioned how I could not understand why he would let politics tear his family apart. Well, he could not understand why I was not more interested in politics. I am a woman, yes, but he insists that whether we live under a monarch or a republic or even an emperor impacts me, too. I tried to be interested, I really did, but it's all abstract. None of it is real to me the way it is to him, with his revolutionary society and whatnot, and it's just too much of a part of him now to be able to accept anyone's indifference on the matter."

"Politics have never really touched our lives," Valjean said slowly.

Cosette nodded. "And who has the time to worry about things like that when there's so many people struggling to survive? And then there's the fact that his friends are all dead and he misses them terribly and I never knew any of them so I couldn't mourn with him. I'm still helping him through it the best I can but I think it's too soon for him to be able to be with someone who has no knowledge of those who died."

Guilt for surviving when others did not. He had seen that before.

"Those don't sound like little things," he noted.

"Maybe they are, maybe they aren't," Cosette replied. "All I know is that these just some of the things we found – or failed to find – in each other that made us feel less like two souls becoming one and that we never had a big fight before we mutually decided that it was not going to work out."

"I'm sorry for that, my child," Valjean said, actually managing to mean it.

"I still have him in my life," Cosette told him. "And though it hurts that we were not to be, I know I made the right choice and I believe that things will all work out for the best."

"I believe that, too," Valjean agreed.

"I just hope that you do not mind very much, Papa," Cosette said, suddenly anxious.

"You already said that," Valjean noted. "Why are you so worried that I will be upset about this?"

Cosette hesitated. "Well…It's probably nothing but now that we are no longer planning our wedding, Marius has had a lot more time to think about whoever it was that rescued him and he's decided that…Well, to begin with he said that he saw you at the barricade and how cruel of you to never tell me that you were risking your life that night! Did you know I didn't even notice you were gone? I feel terrible! What if you had died?"

Valjean considered denying it but if Marius was a witness to that then there was little point."Rest easy, Cosette, I did not want you to know."

"But why not?" Cosette pouted.

"Because I knew that you would worry and I would not cause you any undue pain," Valjean replied simply. "If I had died then you would have been well provided for."

"What do I care about that if you were dead?" Cosette demanded.

"I will die someday, my child. We all will," Valjean said calmly.

"And that day is not today or anytime soon!" Cosette insisted. "You have another twenty years left in you, I can tell!"

Valjean was personally not quite so optimistic but it was easy to be so when one was young.

"I did not die," he said instead. "But you were saying?"

Cosette nodded. "Right. Since you and he were at the same barricade and both happened to live when he can find no evidence that anyone else there at the end did and since you weren't injured enough that I noticed, he has decided that you must have been the one who saved him at the barricade."

Valjean looked away. "He is mistaken."

"He will not be dissuaded," Cosette told him. "Do not be alarmed if you receive a lovely booklet of gratitude from him a little later. I saw him trying to write you a letter but he tends to be a little…loquacious. It might very well make you cry."

Valjean resigned himself to just such a thing.

"And since, as far as I know and you keep telling me, you do not particularly care for politics, when we were looking for a motive for you saving him we could not think of anything except you somehow finding out that I loved him and deciding to save him for me. And since he keeps insisting that he sent someone to deliver a letter to me and that person told him he had delivered the letter but I never got it, we think perhaps it was delivered to you," Cosette concluded.

"That's quite a theory," Valjean said shortly.

"Marius spends a great deal of time thinking," Cosette said by way of explanation. "And if that is the case and you saved him because I loved him then, while I am still grateful beyond measure to have him in my life as he is still quite wonderful, I don't want you to feel that you wasted your heroic effort because he was not the man I will marry."

And just like that any lingering annoyance about the subject simply evaporated.

"Of course I don't regret anything," Valjean assured her. "But I must insist that Marius is making a mistake about his mysterious savior."

Cosette nodded dutifully but she had a little knowing gleam in her eye.

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