All Too Well

Note: Based on a kink!meme prompt where M. Gillenormand finds this "Monsieur Jean" business very odd, catches Marius removing the chairs of the room where Valjean and Cosette meet in order to hint to Valjean that he is not welcome (when Valjean sees the missing chairs, he understands and never comes again), and forces him to face some hard truths before it's too late.

It was not that M. Gillenormand was fond of M. Fauchelevent, precisely. At his age, it was inordinately difficult to be fond of anything or anyone new. He was fond of his daughter, naturally, but she had been his constant companion for the past few decades. He was fond of his servants, those interchangeable faces all tied to their personas Basque and Nicolette.

He was fonder still of that little scamp of a grandson of his, Marius. He would have thought that 70 was a bit old to have fallen in love but the moment he saw that child he knew. He did not know that he knew then, of course, he was far too stubborn. Too stubborn and full of fresh grief for his daughter and resentful savagery towards George Pontmercy.

He had taken Marius for his own and done his very best to raise him but even that had not been enough to make him see. If he had understood exactly what Marius meant to him then how could he have thrown him out of the house over something as transient and inconsequential as politics? Strange how things changed. Politics had used to hold a rather lofty position in his mind and heart but Marius had so casually, so unknowingly replaced it and he could scarcely remember why it had ever been different.

He had not intended for Marius to stay away forever. He had not even intended for the fool boy to be gone for five years. He had rather expected that Marius would run out of money and return home, suitably chastened, within a week. Then Gillenormand would graciously forgive the boy his idiocy and things could go on much as they had before. But…he had been wrong. He had been very wrong. He should have known that George Pontmercy would seek his revenge at long last and taken away his grandson. Perhaps it was even fitting but it had not pleased Gillenormand one bit.

It still burned him, the knowledge that Marius was capable of getting by on his own without even accepting his money (why his fool of a daughter hadn't told him was beyond his understanding). He knew that he never would have seen his grandson again had it not been for Cosette. And what had he done with this chance, after waiting for Marius to return until his health started to fail from thwarted hope? He had squandered it, chasing the boy away again with his own misunderstanding of the situation.

There was nothing wrong with having a mistress, no matter what those young fools preached about 'sexual virtue', and it was a very good living for a girl of a certain class. Assuming, of course, that men did their duty and supported their mistress and any child she may bear him. But Marius was a romantic. He would marry his love or he would die. It sounded like a hyperbole of the dullest kind and it was still patently absurd but Marius had always been so passionate. Maybe he should have been exposed to girls earlier in life so that he wouldn't lose his head over the first one who looked his way.

But things had turned out for the best and Cosette was a fine prize indeed so it was really no bother.

Harder to face was that Marius was just like his father but, strangely, those same traits that had rendered George Pontmercy so odious to him made Marius all the more dear.

When he was faced with what he honestly believed was Marius' corpse, saved and reunited with him seemingly by chance, everything was suddenly, startlingly clear. Marius meant more to him than his life and if he wanted to marry some beggar off the street then at least Gillenormand had a house to offer them.

He could not deny that he was relieved that Cosette was such a charming creature with an even more charming dowry. He really had to learn to trust his clever, prevaricating grandson more. No doubt Marius had known the whole time and was just testing him by pretending otherwise. Well, he had finally passed that test.

It was surprisingly easy to grow fond of Cosette. She was a beautiful young lady, though, and he had always had such a wonderfully terrible weakness for them. She had also brought Marius back to him and Gillenormand knew how much Marius' regard for him depended on his own regard for Cosette. It was not fair, perhaps, but what about love ever was?

And that brought him back to Fauchelevent, Cosette's beloved father. It was most irregular for Cosette to come to call on Marius instead of the other way around but by the time that Marius was well enough to do that, they had all fallen into the habit of Cosette and her father coming to the house and no one felt like changing it.

With Marius and Cosette having so much difficulty in paying attention to other people when they were together (something characteristic of all young people in love but which would fade in time as their relationship progressed), he had spent much time talking to the father.

Gillenormand was too old to really grow fond of anyone he did not have to but he had grown used to the younger man. He was a rather pleasant acquaintance, never arguing or losing his patience. He smiled a lot and always seemed interested in whatever Gillenormand had to say. These past few weeks, he could not say that he missed Fauchelevent but he did feel a pang of annoyance at having had to have gotten used to something new and then having that abruptly taken away from him.

It had all started with the wedding, which had been a rather marvelous affair. All of Marius' friends had been dead and Cosette appeared to have not had any friends at all but she was eventually coaxed into inviting some suitable girls from that convent of hers and he had supplied the rest of the guests. Fauchelevent had elected not to move in with them though it was obvious that he wanted to.

With Cosette no longer needing to be escorted to see Marius, Fauchelevent did not need to be at the house as often but it was all very strange. Gillenormand did not pay enough attention to know how often the man visited but he only ever visited Cosette (perfectly natural that his main desire was to see his daughter but how strange, how rude, to never see the rest of them no matter how many times he was asked to dinner) and they met in the worst room in the house. It was a room that Gillenormand would be ashamed to show anybody, let alone his Marius' bride's father. Marius seemed to have taken no issue with it but, curiously, his jaw tightened whenever Fauchelevent's name was mentioned.

And then there was all this 'Monsieur Jean' business. If Ultime Fauchelevent had lived with Cosette and his brother – whose name Gillenormand simply did not recall – together all those years then why had the girl been under the impression that Ultime was her father and the other her uncle if it were really the other way around? The two of them lived together! It was not as if the uncle were raising her while the father was away! And why was Ultime Fauchelevent suddenly insisting on being called 'Jean'? More to the point, why was his own daughter or niece or whatever she was being forced to greet him like a stranger? He had asked her about it and she had looked terribly confused and explained that her father (though she had not called him that) did strange things all her life and there was really no point in trying to get him to explain.

No point, perhaps, but at his age what was better than a harmless little domestic mystery?

That day, he had been looking for Marius for completely unrelated reasons that quickly slipped his mind once he actually found his grandson. Basque had directed him down to that strange cellar room and the sight that met his old eyes was a very strange one. Marius was in the process of removing the chairs from the room. If Marius wanted those chairs gone, then Gillenormand had no issue with that but why did he do it personally when they had perfectly good servants to do it for him?

When Marius saw him, he dropped the chair in his hands with a guilty, furtive look. Curiouser and curiouser.

"Grandfather!" he exclaimed. "What are you doing here?"

He raised an eyebrow. "I was looking for you. Why are you removing all the furniture here? Has M. Fauchelevent finally come to his senses and decided to stop sneaking in to see his daughter like some kind of thief in the night?"

For some reason, Marius flinched at this.

"Can you…" he trailed off, looking lost. "Please don't say that to him or, God forbid, Cosette."

"I can hardly tell M. Fauchelevent anything, having not seen him since your wedding," Gillenormand said pointedly, "and I know how to speak to a lady."

He continued to stare at Marius until the boy realized that he hadn't answered the question and flushed.

"I…not exactly. That is to say, I hope – I don't know. We shall see. It is complicated."

He looked miserable.

Gillenormand wanted nothing more than to erase that misery from his grandson's face and to prevent it from ever returning but something told him that just leaving the matter there was not going to do it.

"What are you doing, Marius?" Gillenormand asked as gently as he was able to. "There are old chairs, chairs we neither need nor want in the rest of the house and we hardly need the pittance we might get from selling them! If Monsieur Fauchelevent were going to come elsewhere in the house or stop coming altogether then there would be no need to remove the furniture."

A tight, pinched look came to Marius' face. "Grandfather-"

"Tell me," he interrupted, his voice firm.

For a moment, it looked like Marius was going to refuse but then he slumped. Perhaps he wanted to confide in somebody after all.

"Monsieur Jean-"

He hated to discourage the boy but he couldn't help himself. "What is this 'Monsieur Jean' business? His name is Ultime Fauchelevent! I know that people are called things that stray greatly from their names, such as your Euphrasie Cosette, but this is ridiculous."

"He told me that he had never really liked his name and now that Cosette is gone from his life he may as well just call himself Jean. He has evidently always been rather eccentric," Marius replied after a moment's hesitation.

"Evidently!"

"And as for why he asked Cosette to call him 'Monsieur Jean', I could not tell you," Marius continued, anticipating the next question. "He is a rather retired man and perhaps if Cosette does not call him 'Monsieur Jean' then nobody would."

Gillenormand had long since retired from society but even he found that degree of isolation to be pathetic.

It was still strange, particularly why Fauchelevent wanted his daughter to call him 'Monsieur' even if he wanted to be called 'Jean', but he would not ask Marius to account for all of the eccentricities of another.

"But what about the chairs?"

"The chairs…" Marius trailed off, uncertainly. "Grandfather, you may have noticed that Monsieur Je-" He trailed off at Gillenormand's pointed look. "Oh, fine, Monsieur Fauchelevent and I were never on particularly good terms."

Gillenormand laughed. "I may have."

"I did not understand it, at first, but now I know that it was my instincts trying to warn me," Marius said solemnly.

Gillenormand laughed again.

Marius looked a little affronted at that.

"I'm sorry, Marius. Sometimes I forget that you're so inexperienced," Gillenormand said fondly.

"You were the one who raised me this way," Marius said a little testily.

"It is endearing," Gillenormand insisted. "It may cause you some problems in life but it is endearing nonetheless."

"What do you mean?" Marius asked.

"There is a long, proud tradition of young men not getting along with the fathers of the women they are courting," he explained. "Particularly if there is no intention of matrimony but, either way, fathers often feel that a suitor is not good enough for their daughter. Or perhaps that he has mischief on his mind or the father does not want to lose his daughter at all. Whatever the reason, the young lover and the old father are natural enemies."

Marius looked puzzled. "Are they really?"

"Trust me," Gillenormand said sagely. "They are. I have experience."

He had been the lover at various ages and the disapproving father. Even now he resented George Pontmercy for all that the man was long dead and had given him Marius.

"I…will take your word for it," Marius said slowly, awkwardly.

"But go on, tell me what you believe your instincts were warning you about," Gillenormand urged.

Marius appeared to be gathering his thoughts. "Monsieur Fauchelevent is…not a good man."

"Really?" Gillenormand asked, frowning. "He seemed perfectly pleasant and good-natured to me, if a bit on the dull side and I'm usually a pretty good judge of such things."

Marius sighed heavily. "I will admit that I was perfectly willing to ignore my instincts and leave the past in the past after my wedding. He came to me and I welcomed him as family, having every intention of moving him in that very day. If he had remained silent, I never would have known."

"But he did not."

Marius shook his head, looking suddenly tired. "He did not. It is to his credit that he told me the truth about him. He was concerned that Cosette not be exposed unnecessarily to one such as he. While she was unmarried it could not be helped but now he was free to withdraw from her life."

"I do not understand," Gillenormand admitted. "What is it that he has done that is so terrible?"

Marius jerked his head cagily. "Oh, it's not any one thing. He tries, I'll give him that, but it's just not enough. There are things about him that, now that I know, I simply cannot approve of. He was a poacher once, you know. Little things. Things that Cosette never saw but things that cast aspersions on his character. He was at the barricade, you know, and shot a man in cold blood!" He was breathing hard by the end of that little speech.

The barricade was always going to be a difficult subject for them. Marius might not say much about his political beliefs (what were they anyway? He had never been able to tell, just that they were no longer royalist and had led him to that damnable barricade) but he must still have them. And Gillenormand had finally come to the conclusion that a difference in political opinion was not enough to make someone dead to him but he could not readily change his long-held beliefs after such a long life, after '93.

Still, Marius appeared to be waiting for a reaction.

Carefully, Gillenormand ventured to ask, "I had been under the impression that the students had taken their fair share of life before the end."

"Oh, it's not that," Marius said impatiently. "I myself killed a few and it was literally kill them or allow them to kill us so I regret nothing about it."

"Then I'm afraid I do not see what the difference is between their actions – your actions – and the single kill that you attribute to Monsieur Fauchelevent," Gillenormand confessed.

"My actions were taken to save others. The actions of my friends were for the same reason and to try and bring about a new republic," Marius replied. "It was a fair fight. All of it was quite fair, if you ignore the fact that their numbers were far greater than we could have ever hoped to match. From what I remember, my friends all died fighting and defiant and so did the members of the National Guard. Javert did not."

"What happened?"

"He was our prisoner, you see," Marius explained. "He was a spy we had caught. We tied him up but we didn't kill him. We were going to trade him for one of our own but by the time we decided to try and send a message asking about a hostage exchange, Jehan Prouvaire was already executed. He had been captured and was murdered by the National Guard when he was helpless and they had no reason to have done that instead of having him arrested. And then Monsieur Fauchelevent does the same thing to Javert."

Gillenormand tried to keep up. "Because of what had been done to this Proverie fellow?"

"I do not know," Marius said, looking away. "But surely, even in a revolution, there must be rules! There must be standards. None of us, no matter how strongly we yearn for a republic, wish to see another Terror spring up. What Monsieur Fauchelevent did wasn't right and he offered no apology."

"I see."

"He asked me if I thought it a good idea for him to stay away from Cosette, he's not even her father, you know, but her uncle and I said that that would be for the best. She knows nothing of this, of course, she always believes the best of everybody and had a hard enough time with the realization that he wasn't her father after all," Marius continued. "But right before he left he stopped and begged me to let her see her sometimes, literally begged me."

"You must have said yes," Gillenormand said.

Marius nodded, miserably. "To my eternal shame, I consented. I told him that he could come every day. I knew that it was a bad idea but he just looked so desperate that I…I do not like to think of myself as a cruel man. An immediate separation would be cruel and hurt Cosette, as well. I expected that he would slowly wean himself off of visiting Cosette but you see that he has not. He literally comes every night and, if anything, the visits keep getting longer. If this goes on, who knows what might happen? He might forget himself entirely and try to remain around Cosette in a greater capacity or I might not be able to keep the truth of Monsieur Fauchelevent from her."

He looked beseechingly at his grandfather but Gillenormand remained silent.

"Don't you understand, sir? I'm acting in her best interests!"

"Oh absolutely, my boy," Gillenormand said quietly. "I don't think anyone else could understand you better - after all, that is exactly how I treated your own father."

That shook him and Marius staggered backwards as if he had been struck. "W-what?"

Marius evidently knew far more about the situation than he did and Gillenormand had sworn off trying to interfere in Marius' life after the disastrous consequences his attempts had brought about over the last few years. Marius would not do anything to hurt Cosette if he could help it and so he would not separate her from one that she loved lightly. He was also, as he had said, not a cruel man if occasionally a thoughtless one but he rather felt that that thoughtlessness was born out of his inexperience and would fix itself in time.

If he said that Fauchelevent was a bad man and needed to be kept from Cosette then he was probably right and Gillenormand would not fight him.

But he remembered all too well the day that he had discovered that his own similar actions with George Pontmercy had led to Marius disappearing from his life so completely that it had taken a miracle in the form of a massacre to rectify things. He had believed that he was acting in Marius' best interest then, keeping him away from such a degenerate as would fight for the pretender Buonoparte. Marius had felt otherwise and now, though he still hated the thought of George Pontmercy, Gillenormand had made peace with the fact that his own grandson held far more radical beliefs than his father ever had.

It was clear what was happening. Marius wished to make it painfully clear to Fauchelevent that he was not wanted and, in doing so, to convince him to start shortening his visits and eventually ceasing them altogether. It was much kinder than the way that Gillenormand had gone about it. There were no threats, no immediate separation, feelings were considered and the impetus to change was on the unsuitable party.

All of this was being done and kindly as such a thing could possibly be done.

He would just not have Marius go into this with his eyes closed. If it was what was best for Cosette then it was what was best for Cosette and must be done, for all that she would never agree if she knew. Cosette was the kind who forgave everything.

Marius just needed to be aware that when she found out (and for all he tried to keep this from her, Gillenormand was well-aware that the truth had a nasty habit of coming out sooner or later) she would be devastated and who knew how she would react? If she did not leave outright, for she was a woman without many options if she tried, then it might very well poison her love for him. Such sacrifices must be bourn for the good of those closest to them but it did no good to be blind about the potential consequences.

Aloud, he said, "If you'll permit me to bring up a painful memory, I once kept your loving father from you because I thought it was for the best."

Marius started pacing, looking quite disconcerted. "I-It's not the same."

"Perhaps not," Gillenormand agreed easily. "I do not pretend to know. But what I do know is that Cosette, having actually known and loved her father for many years, will be no less upset than you were should she find out."

"She won't," Marius said fiercely.

"You were never meant to, either," Gillenormand pointed out. "My mistakes cost me much, boy. When that policeman came to me the night the barricade fell and said that you were dead…he must have meant that he did not think that you would recover, of course, but I was in such a state that I really believed that you were lost to me. I would not wish such a fate on you."

Marius had frozen then. "I…the night of the barricade? A policeman brought me back?"

Gillenormand nodded vaguely. "And some man absolutely covered in filth. It was as if he had crawled through the sewers! I was not paying much attention to them but I doubt I would have been able to tell anything about that second man with all of that grime covering him. There was grime covering you, as well. It's a wonder that you are still here between the bullet and the filth!"

Marius was blinking rapidly, a look of dawning suspicion on his face. "But grandfather, the other man. The policeman. He was not so filthy that you could not describe him?"

Gillenormand shook his head. "He was not, no. I suppose he must have come to your aid after that other man was done dragging you through the sewers or pulling you through a river or something like that."

"What did he look like?" Marius demanded, actually trembling a little.

Gillenormand frowned, uncertain of why it really mattered. Yes, he knew that Marius was trying to find his mysterious savior (he had not come forward with what he remembered because 'he was too filthy to describe' was not going to be at all helpful) but it really seemed that he could simply go to the prefecture and ask there. Still, Marius did look like it was paining him not to know and so he described the officer as best he could.

Marius drew back then, pale as a ghost. "But that's…Javert."

That name sounded familiar. "The man that Monsieur Fauchelevent murdered?" he guessed.

"I had thought so," Marius replied shakily. "But now I don't even…I must speak with him. Tell Cosette that I am out but not where I am."

Gillenormand barely had time to acquiesce before Marius was running out of the room.

He sighed as he slowly made his way back upstairs, hoping that Marius would keep him apprised on the Fauchelevent situation. Young people just had so much energy. It was exhausting to watch them.

Review Please!