The woods were hazy, soft light pulsing through the verdant boughs of the towering trees around her. That was the first thing Fantine was aware of, the misted sight sinking into her consciousness like honey onto her tongue, slow and thick and heavy. The vision felt strangely sticky on her eyes, and she blinked slowly, her lashes tickling against her heated cheeks. Something felt wrong, but wrong enough that she had no way to sense the actual level of departure from reality, how this was any different from the normal clarity that she couldn't even remember.
Couldn't remember. There were so many things that she couldn't remember, and her chest was tight under an invisible weight, so that for a moment she thought there was actually something there, dark and pressing like iron bonds, circulating around her ribcage and squeezing, crushing... but, no, there was nothing, and she mustn't let herself fade away into nonsense, he was coming... he hadn't left her yet. Him. The only one she could trust. Jean Valjean.
The name was like a balmy tickle to her collarbone, amusing in its smoothness, and she found her lips tracing the contours of its syllables, bringing them into a smile and causing a hollow giggle to rattle her throat. Of course her sole friend would be one with the name of a joker. It was only a wicked reflection of the dark route her fate had taken, her destiny's determination to make the greatest of fools out of her before ripping her apart.
Everything was so pressingly vague, so unclear. Colors and sounds half-formed at the corner of her awareness before whisking themselves away, and she couldn't hold onto them long enough to figure out what they were, rendering each of them like a dream caught in the fragile net of dawn waking. Something was within her, within her mind, but it was so teasing and elusive that she didn't even bother to pursue it, instead letting herself lie back, feel the burn of dry grass against her exposed shoulders and take in the nonsensical whizzing.
Her rough blouse was torn, ripped down the back where a sword stroke nearly incapacitated her at the Cornucopia, and her lank hair lay across her forehead, damp with the clutch of fever sweat. Nausea and hunger simultaneously crawled their way around her stomach, worming in and out, twining together until they were indistinguishable from one another. Her lips were dry to the point where she could barely feel the touch of air against their chapped, raw skin. She was horrifically sick, and perhaps some part of her knew this, the part that remained within her curled, emaciated body, kept her heart pumping against her brittle ribs even as her lungs strived to cease. Her head spun in boundless swoops, however, and to try and string a thought together was a piteous thing even to imagine, too absurd to hope for. She was a wreck. Destroyed, and only waiting for her shattered pieces to be scooped away.
And yet, in that waiting, her disease found a way to bless her.
It was within echoing visions of a thousand other things, family and friends and enemies and animals and strange quivering forms that she could put no name to, that she detected the figure.
A small silhouette, framed in a burnished corona of gold like the celestial glow of a cherub. It was the form of a girl—petite, but not skinny; rather, her limbs were gently plump in a way that was far beyond wishful, ranging instead into the realm of utter impossibility. Pale curls tumbled about the dimpled, pink-cheeked face, and teeth gleamed like inlaid pearls under a delicate nose and wide, distant silver eyes. It was a beautiful creature painted before her with the colors of her innermost desires and memories, the very image of her daughter.
"Cosette," Fantine sighed, the name gracing her lips with warm reverence. "Cosette... my child, you are ever so beautiful."
Cosette smiled hesitantly, and it didn't matter at all that it was absurd for her to be here, that she had no place amidst the sea of merciless killers pitted against one another in this cruel arena. Because, now, there was nothing but her shy grin, awash in the shade of the evening woods, and Fantine felt a lingering warmth begin to breathe through her chest, molten gold taking root in her heart and generating a ripple of comforting numbness along her breastbone. She found her fingers shaking against the dry grass, lifting themselves against the transparent iron that still choked her every movement. She had to reach her, had to reach Cosette—had to feel the softness of her skin, tuck her firm little form under Fantine's own chin, hold her close and be assured that she would never depart again.
"Come along, now, dearest Cosette," she continued. Her own words were barely audible, especially beside the humming buzz that seemed to constantly tremble her eardrums, but that didn't matter, because Cosette clearly heard, locked as her pale eyes were with Fantine's dark ones. "Evening approaches... you mustn't be out in the forest alone, my darling. There are creatures out here, there are..."
Suddenly, forming words was too much, and her throat ached with a swift scorch of dryness, shooting from under her tongue to the base of her lungs. She let out a soft moan, and her hand, extended as it had been towards the silvered apparition, fell gracelessly to the ground once more. She was shivering though she felt no cold, and all of her senses found themselves wreathed in horrible uncertainty, echoing with thick swirls of abstract mist, drawn together only by the sight of Cosette, a shot of starlight in the depths of the dark hurricane that her awareness had become. Fantine's shoulders heaved, and laughter rang out in her head—the laughter, she knew all at once, of the other tributes, the girls, those whose cannons had already fired. Surely they were gone, for she could distinctly remember Jean Valjean's touch on her shoulder and his somber reminder that she was free of their mocking wrath; and yet their voices were here now, haunting her, teasing her.
"No," she mumbled thickly, defying their high-pitched, grotesquely piercing giggles, hating the way that they drowned out the little gusts of Cosette's steady exhalations. "No, leave my daughter alone! Don't hurt her, she has done no wrong!"
"Fantine," a breath sounded at her ear. "Dear Fantine, there are only hours left. Hours left before the Games draw to a close, and you will be able to see her again. You will be able to see your daughter. She waits for you, in District Eight—even now, she watches you. Have faith. The darkness is near a close."
"Cosette," Fantine slurred, but Jean's voice was anchoring, and she soon found the haziness of her thoughts pulled away, Cosette's wavering form with it—she flickered briefly, like a candle flame, before melting into the shapes and shadows of the forest. Fantine stiffened, her voice heightening to a shriek, and then there were arms around her, a shoulder against which she was shaking, lips at her forehead murmuring steady reassurances.
"Soon, soon you will be able to see her. There are so few left... just hold on."
"Cosette... Cosette, please, come back, my daughter..."
"We are close. We are close, and getting closer, and then you'll have her again." His hand moved against her hollowed cheek, thumb brushing away the hot tears that she hadn't even realized to be gathered there, and she found her head tilting back, just far enough to regard his wearied face through the mistiness that still swamped her vision.
"Jean, I pray... you must... help her... help my Cosette, for I shall surely be too frail..."
"Anything," he promised emptily, as though it wasn't an impossible promise, like there was some way that both of them could make it out. The truth, dominating his awareness and teasing at the edges of hers, was the precise opposite, but she had no need to voice such horrific reality, and he was no one to correct her when she was so near the edge, clinging with sickened desperation to those few hopes that still managed to stay alive, distorted and strangled, within her shaking chest. "Cosette will be safe," Jean went on, "no matter what. If there is one thing that emerges from these Games, it will be the happiness of your daughter."
"She will love the victor's manor," Fantine trailed on thoughtlessly, a vacant smile twisting her pale features. "And the luxuries within it... her dresses shall be inlaid with gemstones, every one of them. My Cosette will be raised into luxury. She will know nothing but happiness. Not hunger, or exhaustion, or overwork... they are demons, and they will not lay a hand on my angel."
"Not a hand," Jean repeated. She wondered then, in an immensely delayed surge, where he had come from—why he was here, and why he hadn't been before; her mind didn't stretch far enough back beyond that to bring any more curiosities to the surface. Had she been only the slightest bit more lucid, she would realize, perhaps, that he had been away to scout more, to continue gathering the supplies which they needed so desperately—and that, now, he must have failed to find any sort of medicine, anything to soothe her raging illness. Anything that he had obtained had been abandoned when he saw her shaking so hopelessly, and so he held on now to nothing but her, all else forgotten, cradling her head to the crook of his neck.
"Pearls will look the best on her, for she is like a pearl, herself... born of roughness, carved of perfection. Nothing could stain her grace—no, nothing at all. Pearl necklaces, I do think, just a few of them, and for special occasions... they will be her signature."
She sighed, then, and the release of her lungs was quick to trigger some imperfection in her throat, catching and launching her into a fit of coughs so violent and devastating that the barest hint of a metallic flavor began climbing in her throat, reaching up to clasp at the back of her tongue. She whined softly, and Jean's arms tightened around her, but did nothing to suppress the visions that were suddenly rampant once more—Cosette was gone, replaced by a sea of horrors, the other tributes with their knives lashing and their eyes aglow, hordes of disfigured wild beasts, staggering shapes of monsters that didn't even come near reality, the fodder of children's fables, all the more chilling for their simplicity. She was trembling, and then she was nothing but the trembling as wave after wave of raw terror crashed in and around her, taking over her, erasing the last traces of comfort that her companion's steel grip provided.
"Cosette," she cried out again, and his voice was in her ear, weaving through the hisses and moans of the nightmares surrounding her.
"Hush, now, we mustn't be heard..."
"My Cosette—Jean—Jean, you must find her. You must protect her! You cannot let her be hurt, cannot let her be harmed, she cannot be touched by the havoc of this world..."
"I will find her. I will." She could see nothing now, nothing beyond the diseased armies of her feverish imagination, and so his tears were invisible to her, even as they ran down his chin and found root in her own tangled hair. "I will protect her at all costs, Fantine, I promise. Do not let Cosette be a concern to you. Sleep with the knowledge that she will remain in my care... sleep to that."
And she did. Slowly, then faster and faster, the fear melted away, taking the whole of her with it. The lingering taste of blood was the first to vanish, then the haunting wails, leaving her awash in thundering silence. The gales of her gory vision spun themselves away, then, and she only faintly felt her neck giving in, her head thudding forward completely and slipping down his shoulder as his arms cinched and tightened around her prominent ribs.
Cosette would be safe, she reminded herself thickly.
And so she ceased.