Written in the Stars for Us
A Fantine x Valjean modern!AU
Goes with post/54285995297/les-miserables-movie-modern-au-je an-valjean-x
The rain, she will later reflect, must have been inevitable.
At the moment, however, all she can do as she stares out the slit of a window at the downpour is sigh. Safe, for now, inside the dingy claustrophobia-inducing walls of her apartment, she tugs at her daughter's freshly laundered collar, straightening it against the faded blue of her one sweater. Despite her best efforts with sewing needles and laundry detergent, both articles of clothing are frayed at the elbows from being worn to school daily.
"Mama, where are we going?" Cosette whispers as she allows her mother to wrap her in her raincoat. She's too busy repressing another hacking cough to answer.
…
They wind their way through the rain-soaked streets, mother and daughter, hand in hand. Fantine composes a silent prayer of thanks to the powers that be for allowing her to overhear the errant remark from a fellow waitress who had previously caused her nothing but trouble and heartache. The careless mention of a doctor with a passion for the downtrodden had given her hope when the symptoms for leukemia starting coming up, one by one, in her exhausted and overworked body. Things are better now than they were when Cosette's father first left her, a high school student with a baby she couldn't support, but she still has no money, no diploma, no family, no marketable skills, nothing to her name except an underpaid job and a single attic room in one of the less savory parts of town. She's barely keeping a roof over her daughter's head. She can't even dream of paying for treatment.
She hesitates at the doorbell, trying to dislodge the lump in her throat that she doesn't want to identify as pride. After an uncertain moment or two, Cosette ends her indecision by pressing the little button herself.
The receptionist's mouth tightens as she peers at the young mother self-consciously adjusting her second-hand sweater and dripping rainwater onto the pristine flooring, but she directs her into the waiting room with no fuss or ceremony. They sit, Fantine trying to unobtrusively finger comb her hair until it dries in messy curls.
She's disarmed by the kindness written clearly in the lines of the surprisingly handsome doctor's face. But his smile is forced, more tired than concerned.
"Come on in, Ms. …" He pauses expectantly.
Her deceased father's name remains stuck in her throat, as do the surnames of the distant mother and disagreeable stepfather who kicked her out when she told them she was pregnant. "Just…call me Fantine."
"Very well," he says, keeping his expression calm and unsurprised. "Follow me."
"Can my daughter…" She trails off, turning towards Cosette to find that the girl has made herself at home on the windowsill. "Cosette, get down from there, there are chairs here for a reason," she hisses, mortified. But in a distant corner of her mind she's impressed with her daughter for her ease in strange environments. She herself was far too shy as a child. Her inability to stand up for herself became her undoing.
But the doctor is smiling for real now, the corners of his eyes crinkling in a way that disarms her all over again. "She can stay there," he assures her quietly. And then, "she's a beautiful young lady."
Cosette gives a small smile that grows exponentially when he addresses her directly. "Your name is Cosette, I take it?"
"Euphrasie," she corrects him proudly. "But you can call me Cosette."
"Well then, Cosette, why don't you wait here while I talk to your mother?"
She waves cheerfully, kicking the skinny legs that dangle from her perch beneath the window.
…
"Cancer, I'm afraid," the man known as Dr. Madeleine tells her when his examination is over.
"I know," she says calmly. Then she bursts into tears. Her next words are choked, but he hears crystal clear all the same when she sobs out "who's going to take care of Cosette?"
"It's too early to worry about that," he reassures her, and it is. She still has a fighting chance, one that she underestimates, one that he overestimates.
…
Later, he will realize that he already knew, in that moment, the answer to her seemingly answerless question.
…
The very next day, she steps out of the kitchen of the diner she words for to find him seated at the corner table where Cosette is allowed to do her homework after school. He bends over the worksheet she's struggling with, extending his finger towards the numbers she has scrawled, to no avail, across the margins, and she listens attentively as he explains.
"Doctor?" she asks, and he rises gracefully.
"I wanted to ask you something," he says, as Cosette watches him with adoring eyes. "I don't want to bother you now, but please take a look when you have time." She narrows her eyes, mistrustful of the man in his too-fancy suit who is so comfortable with her daughter, but takes the unsealed envelope he hands her anyway.
…
After two months working as his private housekeeper and receiving wages so generous that Cosette now wears a heavy winter coat over crisp new blouses, so generous that she now takes night classes for the diploma she'd all but given up hope for, she will have forgotten her doubts.
He takes to asking them to stay for dinner so often that she starts cooking for three every afternoon out of habit. And one evening, when Cosette is spending the afternoon with a friend instead of playing in his living room and it's just the two of them at the dining table, he takes her hand and kisses it with quiet devotion.
…
He takes her for long, leisurely walks, always with either his fingers threaded through hers or with Cosette, laughing, being carried on his shoulders. When Cosette is not with them, they talk late into the night, the most lighthearted of their words binding them together like steel cables. She spins glowing stories about her lost father, and admits she turned to prostitution in her darkest days, before leaving town and hunting down a job. He talks about the deaths of his desperately poor parents, about living in an orphanage, about clawing his way out of the gutter, determined and yet always looking back. She comes into his office monthly, but her symptoms have receded and he begins using the word "miracle", which she finds all too fitting.
He will joke, later, that she seduced him. But surely, they both will think, that first night together was written in the stars for them.
He is inexperienced, and she is hanging on to reality by a thread, fighting the ghosts of blood and sweat and tears and darker days. Her fingers twist into his hair and his hand twines tighter and tighter around hers as he gently, gently guides her into oblivion.
…
After a year, she stops going to her drafty little attic altogether. Her toothbrush takes its place beside his in the cerulean china mug in his—their—bathroom. Cosette's school shoes mar the otherwise tidy expanse of hallway, and the two dolls he gave her clutter his couch.
…
And then, one morning, she tries to get out of bed too quickly and collapses, nearly hitting her head on the bedpost because he takes a moment too long to process what's happening, a moment too long to reach out and catch her. He is consumed by a confused rush of fear, a frightening feeling of inadequacy.
…
Days of hospital gowns and hospital hallways and hospital stenches drag by. Her hair falls out in clumps and her cheeks grow sunken. The hands lying claw-like atop the sheets of the hospital bed are clenched, a testament to the force of will that keeps her alive, for now.
A terrified Cosette refuses to let him out of her sight, and sometimes he feels that her little hand in his is all that keeps him sane.
He swears to her and to Cosette and to himself that she will get better, and when none of them believe it anymore, she does.
…
For months after the cancer is pronounced gone, he forces himself to wake at five o'clock in order to watch her utter peacefulness in sleep and to convince himself that she's solid, and real, and alive, and his.
…
When he finally reveals his criminal record to her, her only response is "that's all?"
He takes a moment. Or two. Finally, he stutters, "yes—I mean, no—I mean, yes, that's all about the record, but I have something else to say..."
Her fingers tightening around his are answer enough, they both know on some level, but she says it out loud all the same, just to dispel any doubt he might still harbor.
"Of course. Of course I'll marry you."