Usual warning for sexual content and language. A huge thank you to rebecca-in-blue for leaving such lovely comments and inspiring me to continue with this story. Your reviews mean the world to me (and you're also the queen of Les Mis fanfiction so it's an honour to get noticed by you at all tbh.)

This fic is also starting to get more views which I'm very happy about but if you're reading this, please review.

I'll also try to update weekly.

Enjoy! :)

St Dunstan's Market—London

There was noise, that much she knew: the crashing roar of chiming bells, wagons, dog-carts, carriages, hagglers, street performers and omnibuses. All was drowned out by a light, sick buzzing and the single thought: this can't be happening.

She knew she had to move. Not that she had much choice; the market was a slew of jabbing elbows and traffic. Transactions were brief, mono-syllabic. Stalls ranged from pyramids of fruit to baskets of crabs still struggling for life on their beds of crushed ice, live chickens to human hair. Cosette paused for a moment before the stall. The wart-faced woman, seeing her hesitance, gave a toothless smile. 'Shilling,' she said, thickly by virtue of her lisp. She jostled the ponytails and Cosette flinched as though they were live eels. Her stomach swooped at the thought of all the women they had once belonged to, about where they were now, how they were making a living…

She was shoved out of the way and almost collided with an iron-skeletoned tailor's dummy. 'Oi!' someone called, and she was unsure as to whether it was because of or in defense of her. She was looking at her distorted reflection in a silver dish and gasping, gasping for air.

'You alright, love?' long fingers grasped her shoulders. She instinctively pulled back, and met the pseudo-friendly face of the tailor, all pock-marks and thinning hair. 'Having a gander at the frocks are we? I can tell you're a woman of fine taste.'

Thoughts aligned before her suddenly. 'How much?' she barked. The tailor stopped in his tracks. A smile played on his lips.

'And French to boot. My, I am in luck today—' he brushed a hand over the cheap dresses as though fondling hair. 'A pound and a shilling for you my dear.'

'No, for this,' she seized the powder-blue silk of her own skirts, unaware that her frantic trawl through the city had left it edged with street dust. 'I'll sell it to you.'

The tailor's smile faded immediately, and all of the latent sharpness sprung forth into his expression. 'I don't buy,' he muttered, backing into his rails of dresses. 'I sell.'

'Please,' Cosette managed to keep her voice under control, despite the hammering in her chest. 'I'm desperate.'

'You don't look desperate.'

'I have nothing. I have nothing to eat, nowhere to stay—please Monsieur.' A quickly potent regret flooded in the second after she had divulged her situation; to make herself so vulnerable to this stranger. He scowled at her.

'You're not the only one. If you're not going to buy anything then get out.' He busied himself with his accounts book, pulled out a sugary smile for a passing punter.

'Where can I get work?' Cosette persisted. She was fighting back the sickening waves of realization, the desperate nature of her circumstances. Now irked, the tailor advanced like he made to strike her. He stopped just before her face, yanking her close by the elbow.

'You can start by selling your hair and your cunt. Someone might want your teeth. Then it's the workhouse.' He shoved her, hoping to throw her off-balance. She caught herself and, annoyed, the tailor spat at her feet. 'Welcome to London you fucking froggy.'

For awhile she lost herself in the maze of streets, stumbling across the square of heady-bright flowers which drove her to sickness, through the narrow warren of Medieval lanes in Aldwych, where pipe-smoking men would let their gazes dribble down her neck and breasts. In the streets, navies took mallets and hammers to the roads, roughening it for horses, sweating despite the frigid temperatures. Sticky stones were dragged out of the ground by carriage wheels, crossing-sweepers cleared dung and licky-mac, their bare feet tan with filth and casks were rolled by boys, bumping out a hollow drum-like sound. Cosette felt like a ghost amongst them, directionless, unseen, faint. She wasn't sure what she was looking for, where she was going or what she was going to do—but the darkening sky told her that these were decisions she would have to make soon. Drastic thoughts flashed before her mind, of Rippers and slums, of all the shadowy predators that Papa had obliquely warned her about. She'd never seen them as tangible threats, not with him on her arm.

She got a sudden hollow feeling in the pit of her stomach. Her face twisted and, for the first time since her father had been carried away, she let her feelings seep into her eyes. And all at once she was crying, her shoulders jerking with silent sobs, her body braced against the railings of the river-front. Distant clinks of capstan-palls, chains of cranes and splashing ropes paled into white noise as she let her panic hare through her. Would she ever see Papa again? What did the man want from him? What terrible secret had been eviscerated, and what would his penance be?

The horror rolled over her in great waves, like sickness, and she was so entangled in her fear that she didn't hear the figure creeping up behind her.

'You look like a juicy bit of cunt.'

The air was knocked out of her. She felt her ribs crushed against the railings, her hair tossed over her face. No sooner could she gasp to scream that the weight was pulled back, her body unburdened. With the fresh air came a whiff of whiskey. She was out of breath and blinking up at a young man in a shabby brown jacket, his chin marked with angry zits, his eyes starry with drunkenness and his hand massaging the crotch of his trousers.

'James, you fucking berk,' a hand tugged at the man's arm and a shorter man emerged from his side. 'Sorry love.'

Flummoxed, Cosette's mouth opened and closed. She was trembling and couldn't yet feel the tears rolling down her face.

'He thought you were, y'know…' the shorter man gave a euphemistic nod towards the docks. Cosette felt the back of her neck prickle, her body grow rigid. 'One too many whiskeys,' he gave a humorless laugh and yanked James's arm, who had leered forwards to stroke one of Cosette's curls.

'I want her,' he slurred.

'Well she's not for sale, mate.' His friend steered him to the stairs, but not before giving Cosette a lingering up-and-down look. 'You should probably run along,' he said. 'Now. This is no place for a girl like you.'

They disappeared beneath the docks. Cosette continued to gasp long after the accost—how quickly the danger had pressed in, and she had been powerless to stop it. Another pair of men passed, jostling, cracking ribald jokes. For a second she wondered how she must look to them: weak and bovine and in the wrong part of town. She cast a glance down below the darkening pier and, sure enough, saw James thrusting sloppily into the pallid, dimpled backside of a young prostitute.

She hurried away, stricken, her heart thumping like a hammer. She needed to find some place of sanctuary, and quickly. By the time she had reached the town center, the sky was pitch black and she was beginning to limp from where her ill-suited shoes had cut into her ankles. Tired and spent, she scanned the streets, pondering every lofty limestone building to see if it was a church. The words of the tailor circled in her head: "you can start by selling your hair and your cunt. Someone might want your teeth." Her gums seemed to ache at the thought. "Then it's the workhouse." The workhouse; it had been the epilogue to the dismal list. The worst-case scenario. But could it possibly be worse than what the women beneath the pier endured?

No, Cosette thought, anchoring herself to a fate at last. She would slave at the loom but she would never sell her body. Whatever lay in wait at the workhouse could not be worse than the hollow, lifeless eyes she'd seen peering from painted faces in Paris. She remembered the first time she had seen a face like that. She had been nine years old, and shelling out francs to orphans with her father. He had bought her a new dress and she was twirling in it, liking how the fabric fell heavy on her calves. Jean freed his hand from her arm in order to drop a coin in a beggar's dish and listen to the semi-sane story which was rattling from his lips. Cosette saw a cluster of colorfully dressed women huddled by a street lamp. Peeling away from Jean, their outfits drew her childish fancy. She trotted over to inspect them more closely. The moment that the first woman turned to face her, it was like she'd been hit with a juggernaut: Her eyes were bottomless pools, painful to look at, like two open sores in the middle of her face. Her skin was caked in crude makeup, a mask guising a shattered complexion, dried tears, a mouth that was forced into a rosebud smile. Cosette cringed away and backed blindly into the torso of her father, who had only just noticed she was gone. She glanced up at him, expecting anger at her disappearance, but he wasn't looking at her. He was staring into the eyes of the prostitute, but with a strangely inscrutable expression. Something close to anger. He curled a hand on Cosette's shoulder, held a franc out to the woman and nodded. Cosette knew that she didn't understand what was happening and that she didn't want to. It was intimidating, exclusive to the adult world. She had a sudden urge to fling herself into his thick arms, to hold him tightly, breathe in his familiar smell of soap and the residual frankincense of that Sunday morning and feel safe again, but she merely let herself be led away, leaving the questions surrounding the interaction dangling above them like a taut tightrope.

After an hour of wandering, Cosette limped her way down Kiri's Lane, feeling as though she were walking to the gallows. Her ribs were aching from where she'd been crushed against the railings and her empty stomach was growling. She collapsed on a slatted bench, her head dizzy. She drew her feet up and closed her eyes, ruminating on all the frantic darkness of the day and the residual heartbreak from Paris. She imagined Marius caught in crossfire, his body only suspended by the bullets that assailed him from both sides. She imagined her father's back being lashed, his cries of pain as old scars were torn open. She imagined herself under the pier, being groaned and sweated against, her eyes as empty as the darkness that surrounded her.

'You can't sleep here.' A rat-faced man with greasy strings of hair hung over her. She opened her mouth.

'But—'

'No "but"s,' he snarled. Something hard struck her knuckles.

'Ow!' she cried, snatching her hand away. He raised his eyebrows and brandished the slim walking stick like a scepter.

'I am Beadle Bamford,' he said smugly. 'If you don't do as I say you'll be spending the night in a jail cell.'

Cosette cradled her throbbing knuckles and hesitated for a second. Perhaps a night behind bars would be better. She had a chance of being with her father, and of being indoors at least. But thoughts of over-crowded cells, lashings and prison punishments made her reconsider.

'I'm sorry,' she croaked, casting her weary face up at the man. Then, summoning a deep breath, she asked: 'Where can I find the workhouse?'