Disclaimer: Ha! I'm not doing this anymore! Thank you for letting me know K.Telfer!

Author's Notes: Uh oh, sorry for the delay again guys! But from now on I will definitely be updating once a week – only five more chapters left! Erin: Wow, thank you! I'm glad you liked the lil Marius and Cosette bit. K.Tefler: Thanks so much! I actually am a Marius fan : ) – thanks for saying you like JVJ. I've never written him before. Black Hawk Down: Thank you…and I will : ). Marzoog: I really enjoyed Phantom (John Owen-Jones was great), and you were right about the costumes in "Think of Me" – they were beautiful. I'm afraid I'm your typical phan, in that I hate Raoul and love Erik. Lemon Drop: THANK YOU!!! That's so nice! As soon as I get time I will read your fics and write as nice a review for you : ). Iliana, Mika (*hugs*), Ponine 1989 and The Lark: Thank you all very VERY much : ). Happy Hobo: Yep, I'm an insane LotR fan *smiles*. I've actually just written Fantine and Bambi's fight – have to see what you think when I post it. Rosie: Thanks! Did you enjoy Les Mis? What cast did you see? Prisnor no.24601: Hey Meg! Sorry you had to wait so long for this chapter. Lady Laura 020: Oooo, did you see Phantom? Let me know what you thought! Eunike: Thank you- I'll check out you stories soon : ).

The Light is fading

My life really was a vicious cycle – being given money then having it taken away. I was poorer now than I had ever been, even more than when I lived under the bridge. Poor as us urchins were, we had each other and that made us rich. I thought of just sending for Cosette, but why should she have to live in poverty because of her mother's selfish needs?

I tried, really I did. I looked for work as a servant. No-one would take me – thanks to Monsieur Enjolras and his unwillingness to write me a reference. I couldn't leave, my landlord could (and probably would) have me arrested if I left without paying my rent. After dividing everything I owed, I was left with just a bed and debts of a hundred francs.

The mayor became my scapegoat, the reason I was living like this. It wasn't fair, not really, how could he know I have a child? But I needed someone to blame, and he was the most obvious choice.

My tiny room was in the middle of a three storey "house". Below me lived five teenagers who referred to themselves as "bohemians". Three Brits, a Parisian and a Venetian – all men and all artists, writers or musicians. They were charming men – even if they were very noisy in the night. The Venetian once composed a sonnet called "La Blonde" which he liked to recite to me whenever I complained about the noise. I don't remember it now, but there was a line something like "her hair is as yellow as spun gold".

I befriended the spinster in the room above me – Marguerite. She was around fifty, and had lived in poverty since she was my age. She had once been very beautiful, but time had turned her golden hair and blue eyes grey. She showed me how to keep my head held high and forget my shame.

Marguerite was an expert at this, walking as proudly as a duchess. She had shame though, lots of it. One day we were walking through town when a carriage passed us – containing a baron and his wife. Marguerite spat at the wheels, causing a few other people to stare at her.

I frowned at her. "What did you do that for?"

"The girl in the carriage is my daughter" scowled Marguerite. "Not that she cares of course. Married a rich man and forgot her roots she did. I tried to introduce myself – but she's ashamed of me".

Marguerite's technique worked, nearly, but no amount of walking tall would make me forget who I was going through this for – my Cosette.

"She keeps me going" I told Marguerite, before dissolving into a coughing fit.

She frowned, and took my hands. "Your hands are hot Fantine. Are you all right?"

I wasn't. I had barely survived the summer, but now the winter came. My forehead and hands were always hot. I wheezed and frequently coughed. And I couldn't earn enough money. I joined Marguerite in her sewing "job" which paid barely enough to buy a piece of bread a month. I received yet another letter from the Thenardiers:

Fantine,

Cosette is freezing and needs a new dress for the winter. Please send ten francs and we will be a suitable one.

M.Thenardier

"Ten francs!" I moaned, wandering up the stairs to my room. "Where am I going to get that kind of money?"

Hearing me pass his room the Venetian began to sing – I suspect he'd been on the absinthe that day. "Her hair is a yellow as sppppuuuunnnn ggggOOOooolllddd!"

I stopped with my fingers on the door handle. My hair! People always complimented me on it's condition and colour. I remembered Marguerite once telling me about a friend of hers:

"Twenty francs she got. Sold her hair to a local barber – they need it to make wigs and the such. She had such beautiful hair, it was a real shame".

I'd voiced my sympathies for the poor girl, but Marguerite had scolded me.

"Hair grows back Fantine. And she got twenty francs"

In somewhat of a daze, I rushed to the local barber and let my hair fall down to my waist.

The barber, whose name I can't recall, looked slightly surprised but sighed "such lovely hair!"

"What will you give me for it?"

He considered this for a moment and said "ten francs".

I smiled. "Then cut it off".

My daze disappeared the moment he cut the first strand. Silly really, it's only hair – but for such a long time that hair had become my identity. La Blonde, the girl with the thick golden curls.

Thick golden curls that now littered the barber's floor. I tried to pick up a little bit without him seeing, but he caught on and had his assistant to sweep the curls into a bag as he was cutting them.

Finally he stepped back, pronouncing that he was "done" and pressing ten francs into my hand. With my other hand I lightly touched my head. I had no hair left – except maybe a few blonde tufts here and there.

The barber's assistant saw the tears in my eyes. "Cheer up love, it's only hair".

But he took pity on me, and gave me a small golden strand, which I put in my pocket. It stayed there until the day I died, a reminder of the beauty I'd once been.

Clutching my poor shorn head, I made my way home ready to shock Marguerite with my new look. On the way I saw a shop with a darling little woollen dress displayed in the window – for ten francs. I grinned (my beautiful teeth sparkling) and bought it. The first dress I'd bought for Cosette in six years. I took it straight to my letter writer and told him to send it off to the "usual place".

On my way back inside the house the Parisian bohemian was coming towards me, clutching his manuscript in his hands. He was obviously on his way to yet another publishing house, but stopped dead when he saw my lack of hair.

"La Blonde!" he choked.

I smiled at him. "My daughter's not cold anymore. I have dressed her in my hair" and then I walked to my room, leaving him staring after me.

Marguerite nearly fainted when she saw me – as did the other bohemians. I began to wear mob caps to hide my now bald head and Marguerite said I still looked pretty. And I must of – because it was during that time that I took a lover.

He was a friend of the bohemians, a travelling musician called Julien. Actually I shouldn't call him a lover, that sounds like there was some love involved. Which there wasn't. To him, I was a woman to be used. To me, he was an acquaintance for whom I cared nothing. Our liaison lasted only a matter of weeks – during which he beat me, and I let him. So small was the respect I had left for myself.

The bohemians eventually realised what my frequent black eyes meant, and threw Julien out. I don't know what happened to him.

One rainy morning I received a letter from the Thernardiers:

Fantine,

Cosette has miliary fever and the only available medicine is forty francs. If you do not send this money straight away, she will die.

M.Thenardier

I laughed hysterically to myself (a habit I did a lot lately). "A mere forty francs! Are they mad?"

I was still laughing hysterically, with the letter in my hands, when I went for a walk. People uneasily walked around me – just in case the crazy laughing bald lady suddenly decided to jump on them. There was a dentist selling false teeth in a stall on the corner, and he glanced up when I came past.

"You've got a fine set of teeth my lass" he said, stopping me. "If you'd sell me your two incisors I'll pay you forty francs."

"Which are my incisors?" I asked cautiously.

"Your top two front teeth"

"How horrible!" I exclaimed. "Hair grows again, but not teeth!"

But I thought about it longer, and asked Marguerite about it as we quietly sewed together side by side.

"It's an illness" she told me.

"How do you get it?"

"It's just an illness that you catch"

"And children catch it?"

"Especially children"

I paused. "Do they die of it?"

"Very often" replied Marguerite.

"Is it….painful?"

"Oh yes" Marguerite said. "Terribly so, I once saw a child who had it. Poor little mite." She stopped sewing. "Why are you so interested?"

"No reason" I said, with a nervous laugh.

That night I went in search of the dentist. He remembered me and (quite strangely) said that he'd been thinking about my incisors all day. Without even letting me sit down, he placed a silver pair of pliers in my mouth, clamped them around my teeth and pulled.

After four tugs, he had both of my incisors in his hand – gleaming like little enamel snowballs. I whimpered, the pain was agonising.

"Drink some strong alcohol" the dentist advised. "It'll numb the pain". And then he handed me forty francs, which I sent straight to the Thenardiers.

Marguerite cried when she saw the gap in the front of my mouth. "Why Fantine?" she kept repeating. "Your beautiful teeth!". She also didn't understand why I didn't seem to have any money in return for my sacrifice.

"He must of given you something!" she exclaimed.

I didn't bother to put her straight – instead I went straight upstairs and smashed my mirror. I couldn't bare to look at myself anymore. I'm not the girl I once was. My hair and teeth – my only remaining vanities are gone. Gold and pearls the urchins used to call them, the gold was on my head and the pearls were in my mouth. Well not anymore. I speak with a lisp, due to my lack of front teeth. My cough gets ever worse. My room is now an attic with low beams, which I constantly bump my head on. I've sold my bed and sleep on the floor. I sew, and earn nine sous for seventeen hours work. Then I received a letter:

Fantine,

I have lost all patience. If you do not send a hundred francs then I will put Cosette on the streets.

M.Thenardier

What job pays a hundred francs that I can get? There's only one. As I told Marguerite "I may as well sell the rest"

And I did what I swore I'd never do. I took the job that used to make my skin crawl. I joined the women I used to look upon with such pity.

I became a prostitute.