The final chapter is up!
I do not own Les Misérables.
They wait until spring for Cosette's wedding, and they fill the church with flowers—lilies and white roses, her favorites. She pins ribbons and rosebuds into Cosette's hair and squeezes her hand as she explains the wedding night. She hugs Marius beforehand, and her smile is real.
How far she's come.
Cosette looks like she's about to burst with happiness. Marius' eyes glisten and his smile is huge. But Cosette's father, Eponine notices, looks more exhausted than happy. Somehow, she isn't surprised when he collapses. She's able to remain calm, to find a carriage to take him to the hospital, even as she feels certainty sink in. It's too late.
He presses and a letter a kiss into Cosette's hand, and dies smiling and crying and reaching out for someone none of them can see.
Fantine twines her fingers around his and kisses his cheek with a smiling mouth, and he sees that she has a full set of pearly white teeth again. The tears on his face might as well be tears of joy. How many years she's been watching him, falling more in love with him and with their daughter each minute. How many years he's waited. How many years they now have in front of them. Uncountable years. Infinite years.
Cosette's keening fills the hospital. Marius holds her shaking body tightly as he sobs. Eponine cries silently. Enjolras reaches for her hand as he mouths a prayer and feels a tear trail down his marble cheek.
Eventually, they will leave, the four of them, bound by something transcending guilt and grief and loss.
…
They should have known, they will say later, that it was all too good to last.
In two years, one month, and three days, Cosette will fly into Eponine's kitchen with her cheeks flushed and her hair in disarray. She will be half-crying and half-laughing as she squeals that she's pregnant. She and Marius will have been trying to conceive for a seemingly endless period of time. She will have an enviably easy pregnancy. She will be healthy, glowing.
In two years, nine months, and eleven days, she will wake up bleeding, and a bone-pale and panicked Marius will mechanically go through the motions of taking her to hospital.
A few hours later, she will lie silent and still as a newborn's cries fill the bustling old building.
Surely, if he had stayed to see his child, to feel her tiny hand grasp his finger or to see her shockingly familiar blue eyes open, things would have been different. But he will not stay. And in two years, nine months, and twelve days, Marius Pontmercy will have thrown himself into the Thames, and Eponine and Enjolras will have the child they have always wanted.
On the day of her christening, they will give the beautiful little Euphrasie Charlotte a locket engraved with the phrase L'Amour Triomphe de Tout.
I KILLED COSETTE…*goes off to cry in the Corner of Shame *…okay, I'm back, time for a little explanation.
I just want to reiterate that I love Cosette—she's my favorite character, in fact—and I totally believe that she deserves her happy ending, but this play is called Les Misérables, after all, not Les Joyeux, and the imagine of the four of them skipping off into the sunset just didn't cut it for me.
Anyway, I hope you enjoyed reading this at least half as much as I enjoyed writing it. So ends my first piece of fanfiction. Please do review!
I now need to finish my Fantine/Valjean fic, Golden, and possibly consider expanding it beyond plotless fluff…or maybe not. Please, please, please: I know Fantine/Valjean isn't a popular pairing, but do go take a quick look, and leave a review for me. It means a lot. And feel welcome to check out my Tumblr blog (thosewhodontweep)
Also, I really wasn't planning on doing this, but if anyone wants an epilogue with some fluff and stuff like that, please do let me know!