A Night's Interlude

Disclaimer: As if I could ever measure up to the brilliance that is Victor Hugo.

Fantine is very ill, this Jean Valjean knows. She is frail, trembling with fever, and a wraith has more color than she. A cough chokes her, wrings the strength from her body and stalks her every waking hour, well into the night. Sometimes there is blood upon her thin pillow.

He knows that Fantine is ill, and that life has dealt her unending cruelty, and that she is but a child compared to his own years. Likely she was toddling at her mother's skirts while he labored in the quarries.

Jean Valjean knows all of this, and still he thinks that he might love this woman.

He sits beside her bed now, as she dozes, and he watches her gaunt face. She looks very fragile, but by God! This girl is stronger than he, far stronger than he ever was or ever could be. She loved, and was abandoned with a child in her belly. Her girl was born, and Fantine made her the center of her world. For Cosette she forsook her own comfort and worked her fingers raw. She sacrificed everything, gave up every dignity she had clung to; first her material comforts, then her shining hair and fine teeth, until finally she sold her body to support her precious girl.

The burdens of the world lay largely upon women, and Jean Valjean realizes that he could never bear them, not in the way Fantine has. He does not think he has ever loved anyone or anything enough to endure so much, not even his sister and her children. She is greater than he, and the mayor feels as though he is in the presence of one who is holy. A martyr.

How could they think Fantine filthy? How could they see her, know of her tremendous love for her child, and mock her? Everything for her daughter. No price is too high, not in Fantine's eyes. Were she not ill, Valjean knows she would be back on the streets, earning whatever money she could to pay the outrageous debts heaped on her by the villains who kept her daughter.

Fantine stirs and coughs, her thin body arching up from the mattress with the force of it. Blood bubbles at the corner of her mouth, and tenderly Valjean wipes it away. For a moment, he allows his fingertip to trace the bow of her chapped lips, thinking all the while that hers would be a pretty mouth.

It still could be, if she could just grow well again. She could be beautiful. She is beautiful now, he thinks, but in the way a broken thing can be beautiful. One can look at it, and savor the sadness of it, and wistfully wonder what it once was, or perhaps see a shadow of what it could be. Desperately does Valjean wish for her to grow well, for if she does…he does not think either of them would ever be alone again.

He takes her small hand in his. He thinks, he dreams. He can see something, a future, and it blooms within his mind like some impossible flower.

Fantine will grow stronger, day by day, until she will almost be the woman she once was. And Valjean will travel back to the inn where she left Cosette, take the child from the Thenardiers and grow wings so that he might bring her to her mother's side. He will race the angels themselves and reunite mother and daughter, and it will be the sweetest thing, sweeter than redemption, to bear witness to it.

Martyr-mother and angel-child will live in his own house, and the girl shall play in the gardens, which Valjean vows to fill with flowers of all sorts, for her pleasure and Fantine's. He will wait a while, until he is certain, and he will ask Fantine if she would marry him, old and morose as he is. He prays to God and His Son that she will say yes, that she will kiss him with her pretty mouth and smile that glorious smile with its two-spaced gap.

They will marry, and be wondrously happy.

It does not occur to Valjean to think of knowing her body, or of making a child with her. Cosette would be daughter enough for him, and merely holding Fantine would sustain him for the rest of his days. If she could remain at his side, speak and laugh with him (or even at him, as she sometimes does), put her hand in his…

"Of what use would Heaven be to me then?" he asks, speaking softly so she does not wake.

Jean Valjean brushes the tangled remains of her golden hair from her face and mops the sweat from her brow with a cool cloth.

If she would only get well again…

He suspects that she will not, and the irony of it is enough to twist his mouth into a bitter half-smile. It was only fitting that he should find love in one who was fast leaving this mortal world. It fits marvelously well with the rest of his life.

Fantine coughs again, and there is more blood to be cleaned away. Valjean realizes that he must fetch Cosette soon, so that Fantine might see her before she dies. He knows that is all that keeps her alive, that hope of seeing her child. Perhaps that is why he has not brought the girl to her yet.

Valjean caresses her cheek, and she smiles as she sleeps. She regards him as her savior, even when it is his foolishness that put her on the streets in the first place. For that, he does not think he will ever forgive himself.

He does love her, as he has never allowed himself to love anyone before. He thinks it is because of her strength, and her tenderness and soft ways, and because that she is still so innocent deep in her heart of hearts. She knows what it is to suffer and have no one offer their hand in kindness. Like him, she has been broken, and he fancies that shards of her self might match together nicely with the fragments of his.

Fantine is dying, and Valjean loves her, and in the chill of the night he quietly thanks God for letting him have her, even for this little while.

I ship Fantine/Valjean so, so hard. Somehow, they fit together wonderfully. They've both been hurt so badly...I think they would bring each other strength.

This oneshot will probably lead to a 'what-could-have-been' oneshot. It will be glorious fun to write. Also, Fledge...please, please don't hurt me for this!