Chapter Seven

Disclaimer: I do not own Les Misérables.

It might have been any other day. Valjean had thought it was at first but the moment he took Cosette to see Fantine, she had looked right at him and announced that today was the day. She did not elaborate on what it was the day for but that was rather self-evident and it might be cruel to tell Cosette that her mother was planning (well, not planning, precisely, more like expecting to) die that day before it actually happened. It would not be kind, either, to just let the death take the girl by surprise and yet Valjean could not bring himself to warn her of what was coming any more than Fantine could.

Valjean had asked a doctor if what Fantine was predicting was true and, though the doctor could not be certain on a date, he had been assured that it would not be long now. Perhaps it would be today. He only hoped that Fantine's certainty on the matter would not be what sealed her fate.

Cosette hadn't noticed that anything was going on at first, chattering away as she always did but before long even she could feel the tension in the air.

"Mama," she said, frowning and peering closely at her mother. "Mama, what is wrong?"

"Nothing, Cosette," Fantine had lied. Or was it a lie? She had had many long weeks to make her peace with her fate since she had been delivered from a life on the street. And all she had ever wanted for as long as Valjean had known her (which was not, admittedly, as long as it perhaps should have been) was to be reunited with her darling daughter and they had had several weeks together where they saw each other every day. "I am merely tired."

"I'm tired, too," Cosette agreed, lying down next to her mother and snuggling against her.

"And why is that?" Fantine inquired.

"I had a bad dream last night," Cosette said simply.

"Will you tell me about it?" Fantine requested.

Cosette nodded obligingly. "I dreamed that I was with a lot of people and everyone was smiling and laughing. You were there and Papa and even Inspector Javert!"

Fantine smiled knowingly at Valjean at Cosette's use of the word 'Papa' and patted her child's hair softly.

For his part, Valjean did not regret being proven wrong and felt that same warmth that he always did at that word from her lips.

"That sounds like a nice dream," he offered.

Cosette glanced up at him. "It was at first but then everyone started to go away. First Mama and then when I started crying you put your hand on my shoulder and said it was going to be alright. But then more people started disappearing and I kept calling for them to come back but they didn't. And then it was just you and me. Then this boy came and I was happy because I had a friend but then you went away, too." Her gaze was almost accusatory.

"I would never go away," Valjean promised. Not until he was forced to, through death or through capture. The one was rather unlikely now but the other was inevitable one day but he still had a few good years left in him.

Fantine's eyes were distant but she managed an encouraging smile for Cosette's sake. Cosette's clear fear of abandonment must not be easy to face and Valjean was only grateful that she appeared not to have dreamed of her time with the Thénardiers.

"You promised you wouldn't when Mama went away and I tried to hold onto your hand but you would not let me and then the boy grabbed my hand and you left and I couldn't go after you," Cosette cried out. "I was looking at him and I almost didn't see you go. You said that it was better. I was happy and I didn't need you but I did. I didn't want you to go away!"

He always tried to keep his contributions here, when Cosette was with her mother, to a minimum so as to not intrude on their time together and it was especially important today.

Still, the hour of Fantine's departure drew steadily nearer so he had to say something. "I will not leave you, Cosette. Not as long as I am living."

Cosette blinked her large blue eyes at him. "Will you promise me that you will live forever?"

Valjean smiled sadly at her. "No one can promise that, my child. But I will live as long as I can and you will be a grown-up before you have to worry about that."

Cosette continued to gaze upon him solemnly for a long moment before she nodded. "I believe you."

"I believe you, too," Fantine declared but her voice was getting weaker.

That sort of faith…if he had been at all worthy of it then she would not be here. But there was nothing that could be done to change the past and so he had to just strive to be worthy of her trust going forward. She had already gifted to him the most precious thing she possessed and it was not a gift he took lightly.

Cosette noticed this and scrambled into a sitting position before she turned in terror to face her mother. "Mama?"

"I am fine, Cosette," Fantine told her softly.

Cosette put her hand on her mother's face experimentally. "You don't look fine. You look sick. You look like the Thénardiers' dog did before it died."

Valjean did not know that a dying dog looked much like a dying human but, in a way, death was death.

"I am just going to sleep," Fantine insisted.

Cosette's eyes filled with tears. "Well I don't want you to!"

"I do not want to, either, my love, but it is my time," Fantine said gently. "God is calling me back to his side now and so there's nothing to cry about."

"I'll never see you again," Cosette sobbed.

"Yes, you will," Fantine said, raising a weakened hand to brush Cosette's hair behind her ear. "Just not for a long time yet. In one hundred years I give you permission to see me again."

Cosette started crying even harder. "O-one hundred years? Don't go, Mama! I'll miss you!"

"I will miss you, too, but remember that I will be watching down on you every day," Fantine's voice was a mere whisper now and her breathing was becoming more laborious. "Every time you see a rainbow or a butterfly or feel the wind caress you, that will be me making sure that you know how much I love you."

"I know, Mama." Cosette's words were barely audible through her tears. "I love you."

Despite the clear distress that Cosette was in, Fantine was actually smiling a smile of heartbreaking joy. It was not that she wished to see her beloved daughter in pain or to leave her behind but who would not be gratified to be so loved in their final moments?

"My Cosette," she managed to murmur, her eyes starting to flutter. "Oh, my beautiful Cosette…"

It was perhaps for the best that Cosette's eyes were closed at the exact moment when her mother passed from this world. Even if she was there for the death, it would be easier not to have to have that moment replaying constantly in her mind whenever she closed her eyes. Valjean had not been certain that it was a good idea to have Cosette here at all Fantine's death but Cosette had never been more stubborn and Fantine hadn't the heart to separate from her a moment before she absolutely had to. And perhaps, Valjean reasoned, this added pain that came from being present would not be as haunting as the regret for not being there for her mother at such an important time.

Valjean would have been there regardless but, as he well knew, that simply was not the same.

Cosette was still shaking and still clutching at her mother's hand. By now she had realized that Fantine was dead and let out a heartrending cry.

He did not know what to do. He knew that she would probably not react well to being removed from her mother but he did not want her to still be clinging to the dead woman when her body cooled. That would be difficult for anyone and far too much for a fragile child.

He wished that someone, anyone, were here to help him get through this. Even Javert would be acceptable because he always felt more like he knew what he was doing in the face of Javert's clear uncertainty.

But this wasn't about him, this was about Cosette. Fantine, too, but she was dead now and would have only wished for him to make things easier for Cosette.

He tentatively touched her shoulder and that seemed to be the right thing to do as she practically flew into his arms and held on so tight it seemed like she would never let go.

That night Cosette refused to eat. Well, it wasn't a refusal so much as her sitting at the table for an hour and just staring at her food before Valjean gave up and took her plate away.

Normally, she was such a lively child. Even with her mother gravely ill the entire time Valjean had known her, she had been very happy. Perhaps it was the fact that she had barely remembered her mother before being reunited with her and she had been sick the entire time they had been together again and so it was easy to get used to. It had only taken a few days for her to leave her fears behind her and, while she was still not pretty, she was no longer ugly.

Tonight she sat on the floor, and just stared at the stove. Valjean tried to ask a few tentative questions about how she was feeling and she responded in barely intelligible mumbles.

Valjean tried to think back to the last time he had had somebody he cared for die. For all he knew (though he tried very hard not to think of this), his sister and all of her children were dead by now once he had unwilling been forced to abandon them. His brother…he had had a brother once, but found him even more difficult to recall that those who had died before he left home. Perhaps he was dead. Chances were that at least one of the nine were and maybe more.

His brother was a healthy and hard-working man on his own so there was no particular reason to think that he was not still toiling away at some trade wherever he was. It was hard to concern himself much for him as his brother had never been his responsibility, not like his sister's family.

His sister and her youngest son he was not as concerned with as he was with the other six children because, unlike with poor Fantine, Jeanne was legitimately a widow and society was not unduly harsh towards widows. He tried to think back to what he had once heard, the words he had saved in his heart and then promptly thrust into the very back of it since he had known just how futile worrying for them would be. The boy had been going to school and learning to read in his childhood which would almost guarantee him a brighter future than Valjean had had. His sister had had employment, too, and he knew enough of factory pay to know that one worker's wage was sufficient to support two people.

The other children, though…What had she done with them? Had she found them someplace to go? Had she just snuck away with her youngest son in the middle of the night? How could she have found the words to tell her children that they were alone in the world?

And it was all because of…But no. It was a long time ago and he could not think like that.

For all he knew they were all alive, as well, and so thinking of them would not help him understand.

He had had no time to watch his father die as it had all been so quick. His father had died when he not present. There had been witnesses and they said that it was instantaneous, or near-so. One moment he had been up in a tree trying to make a living pruning and the next he had lost his balance and broken his neck. Valjean had not known of such things at the time but now he was aware that it was very rare but entirely possible for a man to live on after sustaining slightly lesser injuries. He had not wanted his father to die but to live on completely unable to move anything below his neck and knowing what a burden he was to the wife and children he had once supported? That would have been worse, he thought.

His mother, though…His mother had wasted away from milk fever. If they had been able to afford a doctor she might have lived. Was he thinking of her and the death that her poverty had condemned her to when he found he could not stay his hand when his sister's son was dying? It was the youngest son, too, so clearly the boy was able to survive even without what he had done.

But there was no point in thinking about that waste, either.

He could barely call these memories to the surface, much less recall his emotions about them. He must have been sad. He still had his mother and his sister after his father's death, however, and his sister to help him through losing their mother.

Cosette had no one. No one but him.

She continued to be lost in a quiet fog of her own grief until it was time for her to go to bed and then she suddenly became nearly hysterical.

"No!" she shouted. "No, no, no!"

"Cosette, my child, what ails you?" Valjean cried out. It hurt to see her so terrified.

He found her suddenly at his side, clutching at his shirt. "I-I can't go to sleep."

"Why not?" Valjean asked, bewildered.

"B-because Mama said that she was going to sleep but she didn't. She died," Cosette said, tears forming in her eyes again.

This child knew too much at too young of an age and Valjean's heart broke for her.

No one had wanted to say 'death' but it was obvious that their little euphemism was now causing Cosette problems.

"Yes, that is true," Valjean agreed slowly. "But she went to sleep last night and woke up this morning. And I went to sleep and woke up this morning. So did you and everyone else. When you and I go to sleep tonight, we will wake up tomorrow morning."

Still, Cosette hesitated. "Do you promise?"

"I promise."

Some of the fear left Cosette's eyes then and his word had never felt like it was worth more.

Still she did not release his shirt. "Will you stay with me tonight?"

Valjean scooped her up into his arms. "I will stay with you tonight and every night until you are ready to sleep by yourself."

She managed a watery smile then and threw her arms around his neck.

Javert wondered, once again, what it was that he was doing here at the funeral of a prostitute who had died a far better death that she deserved. He certainly did not care about Fantine's passing.

The church had been completely filled during her funeral service and now there were even more people at the graveyard. This was the kind of turnout he would have expected for somebody important like Monsieur Madeleine's funeral, not this near-anonymous harlot that the mayor had, for lack of a better word, adopted.

"What am I doing here?" he murmured.

"Probably the same thing everyone else is doing here," Bamatabois said, casually stepping up beside him.

"And what is that?" Javert asked tiredly.

"Spending just a few hours improving our standing in Monsieur le maire's eyes by making him think that we give a damn that that prostitute is dead," Bamatabois said matter-of-factly.

Javert shook his head. "That's not it."

Bamatabois smirked. "I think it is."

"Maybe that's why you're here," Javert said stiffly. "Although I cannot believe that you actually came to her funeral."

Bamatabois tilted his head. "Me in particular? Why ever not?"

Javert sighed. "You have no idea who Fantine was, do you?"

"Of course I do!" Bamatabois insisted. "She's that prostitute that he's been obsessing over for weeks."

"She's the prostitute that he only met after you complained she attacked you after you threw snow down her dress," Javert said pointedly.

Bamatabois looked confused.

"That…sort of thing happens to you far more often than it does to most people, doesn't it?" Javert realized.

"Well if it happened to me once then it happens far more often to me than it does to most people," Bamatabois said logically. "But it doesn't matter if I remember that. Does Madeleine?"

"He did not arrive to 'save' Fantine from the jaws of justice until you had already…left," Javert replied.

Bamatabois breathed a sigh of relief. "And you will not tell him this, will you? I would hate for him to do something completely unreasonable like blame me for what I'm sure was a very vicious assault."

Javert rolled his eyes. "I have better things to do with my time."

"We should get in line," Bamatabois said suddenly, nodding towards the line of 'mourners' who were assembling to offer condolences to Madeleine and Cosette.

Despite his reluctance to make it seem like he was taking advice from the likes of Bamatabois, he had been intending to do just that and so he followed the other man to the end of the line and waited in pointed silence until he reached the mayor.

"Javert," Madeleine said, sounding a little surprised. "Thank you for coming."

"I am sorry that you are so saddened by this," Javert told him. Too late he realized that that could be taken either to mean that he was not happy that Madeleine was upset at all or that he did not think that Madeleine should be so upset at Fantine's death. Well, he meant both so it was just as well.

Madeleine nodded at him and he turned to Cosette.

"It is a terrible thing to lose a mother at so young an age but you are now in the care of a very fine man."

Cosette reached for Madeleine's hand. "I know."

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