La Vie En Rose
a Fantine x Valjean one-shot
author's note: the song lyrics used are from Edith Piaf's La Vie En Rose, which was not written until the mid 20th century, but we're just going to ignore that, okay?
The factory is a gray smudge on the snowy horizon. The mayor gazes up at it as he adjusts his gloves and gathers his coat around himself, feeling vague satisfaction at the industrial chimney smoke spewing into the sky. He quickens his gait, trying to beat the impending snowstorm home.
It is the first day of December. The street glows in the light of the candles the townspeople set into their windows. Slush coats the sidewalks, and a blustering wind kicks at the fallen leaves on the cobblestones.
It is the first day of December, the day he will forever remember as the day he first heard the whore's song, her hoarse voice and hacking cough, the lyrics dripping with harsh irony.
Quand il me prend dans ses bras, il me parle tout bas, je vois la vie en rose...
The sound chokes off. The woman coughs again.
He has heard it time and time again—you can't help everyone, you can't save everyone. You've done enough. He has even come to believe it.
Il me dit des mots d'amour, des mots de tous les jours, et ça me fait quelque chose.
He still cannot see her, she is hiding in an alleyway somewhere, no doubt having wandered away from the docks in search of shelter from the snow. But he can hear her, faintly, but clearly enough to know that she is crying, at the razor edges of the song from another lifetime, and that her cough heralds an impending end.
Il est entré dans mon coeur, une part de bonheur, dont je connais la cause.
He follows her, ducking into a narrow cobbled alleyway, almost turning sideways as the street narrows, the buildings leaning towards each other like lost lovers. But she sees him, falls silent, and runs.
He catches a glimpse of her, of dark hair and tattered blood-red chiffon, a hunched and bruised and filthy figure.
He gives up as darkness falls and the wind begins to howl.
…
He sees her everywhere. Every passing breeze seems to hum her song, which becomes so familiar to him that it takes him a moment to register that he's not just imagining it when he hears her again.
C'est lui pour moi, moi pour lui dans la vie, Il me l'a dit, l'a juré pour la vie.
This time, she does not run. She cannot. Instead, she hobbles away from him on frozen feet, stumbling and falling after only a few steps. He lunges forward, catches her. She is ice in his arms. And yet, at the sensation of her frigid skin through his fine leather gloves, something icy inside him melts, and he feels warm.
She is still singing, tragically, brokenly.
Et dès que je l'aperçois, alors je sens en moi, mon coeur qui bat.
He takes off his coat, his muscles clenching instantly against the winter wind, and wraps it around her, fragile and childlike in his arms. Her eyes close. She is passive, numbed, deadened. Her voice trails off.
Des nuits d'amour à plus finir, un grand bonheur qui prend sa place, les ennuis, les chagrins s'effacent, heureux, heureux à en mourir.
…
Day by day, in the hours upon hours he spends talking to her with her fragile hand cradled in both of his, he falls in love, in the simplest and purest sense of the phrase.
He walks into her hospital room one day in early spring to find her on her feet for the first time, wrapped in a shawl and standing before the open window, the golden light of the setting sun illuminating her pale skin, which is smooth and nearly healthy after months of care.
Quand il me prend dans ses bras, il me parle tout bas, je vois la vie en rose.
For the first time since he brought her to the hospital, she is singing again. Now that her lungs are stronger, he hears how sweet, how beautiful her voice really is.
She sings without irony, without bitterness, with the delicate half-smile he has come to think of as his playing around her lips.
…
"Cosette! Dinnertime! Come inside!"
The laughing child pushes her chestnut curls away from her beautifully flushed face. Barefoot, she dances her way through the back garden of the mayor's residence, tilting her face towards the sky to catch the day's last rays of summer sun against her skin.
She steps inside the house just as the only father she has ever truly known unlocks the front door.
"Papa!" She sings out, launching herself at him. He catches her in his arms and swings her around, her squeals echoing down the corridor. Fantine smiles widely as she steps out of the kitchen, forgetting to be self-conscious of her missing teeth in the moment of simple, everyday joy at his homecoming.
Tenderly, he sets Cosette onto her feet and wraps his arms around his wife, pressing a kiss to her forehead before she kisses his lips. For a minute, he simply holds her against him, taking in her faint scent—soap and the bread she baked that morning—and the sensation of her hair against his cheek.
She carries a pot of stew to the dining table, humming to herself as she does.
Il est entré dans mon coeur, une part de bonheur, dont je connais la cause. C'est toi pour moi, moi pour lui dans la vie Il me l'a dit, l'a juré pour la vie.
Rough translation of the lyrics:
When he takes me in his arms And speaks softly to me, I see life in rosy hues. He tells me words of love, Words of every day, And in them I become something. He has entered my heart, A part of happiness Whereof I understand the reason. It's he for me and I for him, throughout life, He has told me, he has sworn to me, for life. And from the things that I sense, Now I can feel within me My heart that beats.
In endless nights of love, A great delight that comes about, The pains and bothers are banished, Happy, happy to die of love.