About My Neck Was Hung (2063 words) by Renee-chan
Chapters: 1/1
Fandom: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables (2012), Les Misérables - Schönberg/Boublil
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Relationships: No Romantic Relationship(s)
Characters: Cosette Fauchelevent, Jean Valjean
Additional Tags: Father-Daughter Relationship, Character Study, Growing Up, Secrets, Overprotective, Introspection
Summary:
She watches him constantly. For as far back as she cares to remember, he has been her everything, her entire world. He used to be so large, so much larger than life... like a god. He would lift her up one-handed and place her on his shoulders, his smile, his laugh, as big and bold as Zeus, himself.
He doesn't seem that large, anymore.
The title of this story comes from a poem by Samuel Taylor Coleridge, "The Rhime of the Ancient Mariner."
Ah! well a-day! what evil looks
Had I from old and young!
Instead of the cross, the Albatross
About my neck was hung.
The full text of the poem can be found on Project Gutenberg.
To my recipient: I wanted to take this opportunity to thank you. The relationship between Cosette and Valjean is one of my favorite things about Les Miserables and I'd never had a chance to explore it in fic. I love Eponine, as well, however, and she did her best to find her way into the story by all available nooks and crannies. I hope you enjoy it! ^_^
About My Neck Was Hung
by Renee-chan
She watches him constantly. For as far back as she cares to remember, he has been her everything, her entire world. He used to be so large, so much larger than life... like a god. He would lift her up one-handed and place her on his shoulders, his smile, his laugh, as big and bold as Zeus, himself.
He doesn't seem that large, anymore.
She remembers the day they first met - the bitter cold, the dark and foreboding shadows, and his voice come out of the darkness, rolling and gentle, coaxing when all others had simply demanded. She'd been afraid, at first, hadn't trusted that gentility, that cultured, smooth tone. But something in him had prompted trust... and something in her wanted so badly to believe in something, to believe in someone, that even had she been wrong to trust this stranger in the woods, she might have done so anyway.
Her life had been changed so completely in that instant that those distant woods, grubby hands, tangled, unkempt hair, raggedy clothes, fear, pain, loneliness... all might have belonged to someone else. He'd bought her a doll that day, a doll with golden ringlets and a bonnet, a dress made of rich velvet. She had it still, that doll, a physical manifestation of a promise made that day. To him - to her Papa - she had become that doll, to be loved, to be cherished, to be protected and cared for... even if it meant she was to live her entire life inside a glass box.
To a child who had never been protected from the harshness of the winds of the world, to a child who had suffered and wept alone in corners, dreaming of a better life, such a promise was a godsend. To the woman that child had become... it was a prison - a cage of velvet, golden ringlets for jesses and a bonnet for a hood to shut out sight of everything dark and frightening. For this woman, the one who had grown from a child who wandered the woods alone and cared for herself, the pampering had grown chafing, the gentle denials rang like shouts.
The woman looked on her Papa and no longer saw a god, omniscient and incapable of mistakes. She saw a man. She saw a man as alone, as lost, as frightened as she had been that day in the woods. And she wanted nothing more, and nothing less, than to do for her Papa what he had done for her that day. She wanted to raise him up, to protect him, to shelter him from the wind and the harshness of life. She wished to be the savior.
She could see it in his eyes, more and more, the older she grew - a weight, a responsibility, a growing fear and darkness. She didn't understand at first, didn't want to understand, that all they had could be ripped away from them at a moment's notice. She didn't understand the changing names, the changing addresses, the constant need to have an escape route, a back door, a means to leave a place quickly and quietly and under cover of darkness. It was only as she aged, as she saw more and more of the unsavory sides of humanity that she began to understand.
Her beloved Papa, her golden, larger-than-life savior... had a darker side, a past of which he was ashamed. She wondered, sometimes, in the quiet moments when she should be sleeping, what he had done. Her Papa was strong, far stronger than a man his age should be. Had he hurt someone? Had he killed someone? Had he destroyed something indestructible? But, no. This was her Papa - her gentle, loving Papa, who so delicately picked out the tangles in her hair and tied it up in ribbons and bonnets, her sweet, kind Papa who always had time for her, who always had gifts and smiles and hugs for her, who never let her doubt for one moment that she was loved and cherished. Surely, such a man could not do the things she silently feared he had done.
But, her Papa was not a god - not anymore. He was a man, like any other - like M. Fauchelevent, like M. Thenardier. He was just a man and all men were as capable of great evil as they were of great good. And the longer they lived, and the farther they ran, the less she could deny that her Papa was hiding some great secret... the less she could deny that the weight her Papa could lift with his body was a bare trifle compared to the one he carried daily on his soul.
More and more, she wished for nothing more than the ability to take that weight from him, to lighten his load, to show him that the woman she had become was no albatross about his neck, but was a Hercules - one who could lift the weight of the world from his shoulders, even if it were but for a day. But, to her Papa, she was still but a child, a doll in a glass case, to be shielded and protected from harm. Though she saw the weight grow ever heavier with each day, saw the weariness draw more and more lines about his eyes, saw the grief and sadness dragging him further and further from shore, still he would not give in to her demands to be allowed to help, to be a confidante, to share in his burdens.
She wondered sometimes, if the pain and frustration of that denial, if the constant running and reinvention of herself, were truly any better than the life she had been rescued from. She might have been invisible to many then... but she had been visible to herself. It wasn't often that she thought about that life, the life where she had been so poorly dressed and so often underfed that she would grow ill, the life where she had been so often kicked to the side or denied even the small comfort of a gentle embrace that she would grow sick at heart, as well. She didn't miss it - that life. She didn't miss the mistress who had used her as no better than a servant. She didn't miss the master who never saw her when he looked upon her, but saw instead only her monetary value. She didn't miss the little miss, the pampered daughter who received every luxury she was denied. She didn't miss any of them... not really.
...except for those odd moments when she did.
The mistress had never cared for her, not like she did her own children, but once a year her crusty bread had a little tab of butter on it and once a year there was a small piece of meat in her stew, and once a year there was a new patch covering one of the holes in her threadbare dress. The master had never seen her as a person, but when she was ill, he brought in a doctor, when the weather turned bitter cold, he made sure there were shoes on her feet, when the men eyed her too thin frame with animalistic interest, he frowned and turned them away towards other distractions.
And the little miss... she had been the most confusing of all. The little miss hated her, disdained her, spat upon her, sneered down at her, laughed at her. But once a year, the little miss would creep to her pallet at night and leave one of her cast-off toys beside her pillow. Once a year, the little miss would help smooth the tangles from her hair and tie it up in old, faded ribbons which fluttered about her too grimy face. And from time to time, the little miss would sit with her as she did her chores, talking about endless rounds of nothing, talking about things she couldn't hope to understand or commiserate with... and yet she'd loved it. Those moments, those precious few moments stolen from a life in which they didn't belong... she could pretend, then, that she had a mother... a father... a sister.
She wondered, sometimes, what had happened to them - never enough to seek them out, even she understood the danger in that, but just... to know. She wondered if the mistress had finally delivered upon the promise of a son, an heir, if the master had lost his sparkle and good humor... if the little miss still had that same lost, lonely look in her eyes that they had always shared. She wondered those things. She wondered what it would feel like if their positions had been reversed - the little miss and she. She wondered what it would feel like if the little miss was the one in the tattered, raggedy dress, her hair in unkempt tangles. She wondered what it would feel like to run her ivory comb through those tangles and tie the smoothed strands up with satin ribbons, to let her take that old doll and cradle it close. She did wonder those things. And because she wondered, she insisted on accompanying her Papa on his trips to give charity into the poorer sections of whatever village in which they were staying. She refused to hide from the filth and squalor of poverty because it was from such poverty that she had been raised up... and it was back to such poverty she would go were it not for her dear Papa. She never forgot. She would never wish to.
It was on just such a trip that her life was changed - finally and irrevocably. So much had happened, it was hard to hold on to any one piece of it, but she tried. There had been a boy - a handsome boy, a tenderhearted boy, a sweet and stuttering boy... a boy whose heart cried out for hers, though she knew him not. There had been an encounter with a beggar family - a family this selfsame heart insisted she knew no matter how much she might cry out against that knowledge. And last, but most importantly for all that, there had been a run-in with a police inspector. And she would never forget the look on her Papa's face when he heard the man's name. Just as her heart yearned for that boy, just as her heart knew that family - the mistress, the master, the little miss all grown up in her tattered dress with her tangled hair and too large brown eyes, which had already seen too much, yet somehow remained strong and refused to yield - her Papa's heart knew this man, this inspector. He knew him to the marrow of his bones and he was shaken - so much so that he had grabbed her and run, not daring even to look back.
It was the first time she had seen her Papa as not only not a god... but as just a man. And this man, this frightened man, was just as weak as any other mortal, was not capable of carrying his heavy load alone. So, that night, she tried again, tried desperately to convince him that she was old enough, was strong enough, to carry some of that weight... and yet still she was denied. Her Papa would carry this weight alone until it crushed him, would protect her from the winds of life's cruelty until they had torn the very flesh from his bones if she allowed it. He would be her shield, her protector, her champion... even though all she truly wished was for him to be her Papa.
That night, in her Papa's eyes, as she saw that legendary strength begin to fail, she made a decision. Just as her Papa had taken her from a life of terror and protected her, so too would she protect him. She would take what weight she could from him, protect him from what worries she could... even take from him the burden of her own needs if that was what became necessary. She would do this for him because she loved him, because she was no doll in a glass case... she was a woman, as capable and fierce as any man, and no one would take her Papa away from her. No one... not even her Papa.
Just let them try.
A/N:
July 10, 2013: This story was written for joussaint as part of the Not For PrimeTime Fic Exchange. I actually signed up for this exchange before I started all of my own massive LM stories and I'm glad that writing this brought me back to the source time period. And, I mean… who doesn't love daddy-daughter stories? ^_~