(no subject)

[lark_in_flight]

"Papa!" The voice which sounds through the opening front door is a young woman's, light and sweet and eager. The voice's owner follows in a billow of skirts, glancing back over her shoulder into a homey little hallway as she calls to someone unseen. "Papa, are you quite ready?"

She turns her head -- and falters in astonishment as she crosses the threshold, and her boots hit the Milliways floorboards.

"Papa...?" Her hand falls away from the doorknob, and it swings delicately closed behind her.

She's a young woman of perhaps sixteen or seventeen, her rosy face framed by delicate ringlets escaping from a silk-covered bonnet. Her dress is of blue wool, sloping down at the shoulders, puffed out wide at the sleeves and gathering again at the wrists, her skirts a bell over layers of petticoats, a warm shawl wrapped about her shoulders, gloves on her small hands, a basket over one arm, small boots just visible -- in other words, the height of dainty femininity for 1832, and doubtless extremely impractical and peculiar to the eyes of most of Milliways' patrons.

Welcome to Milliways, Cosette.

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[dreamed_a_dream]

Fantine smiles, taking a scrap of material from the table to wipe her eyes with her free hand. The tears are fading now, into a bright smile that has only rarely seen the light of day in many many years.

"Tell me of your life. I have heard some, but I wish to hear it from you." She smiles, clinging to the scrap of fabric to steady herself.

She hardly knows what to say either, but she wants to know her daughter, wants to know absolutely everything there is to know about her darling girl.

[lark_in_flight]

"I grew up in the convent of Petit-Picpus -- do you know it? Papa's brother was a gardener there. He was old, his knees were bad, Papa came to help him. They both kept all the convent's gardens and trees, and I went to school there."

Fauchelevent was not Valjean's brother, of course, but Cosette doesn't know that. All her time there, it was the official story, and her father was named Ultime Fauchelevent.

"When my uncle died, we moved out. Papa has business as well. I don't know what sort, he doesn't say much, but we're comfortable. He gives me anything I want, always."

She ducks her head a little, flushing with what's still a private joy. "I am engaged to be married. His name is Marius -- Marius Pontmercy."