A fanfic I’ve been working on. I’m pretty sure I can call it finished, so it’ll be on AO3 tomorrow. It features Cosette (my first time writing her!) and her father.
…But not that father. The other one.
You know what someone needs to write about? Modern AU Fantine.
If she was abandoned as a child she’d probably have grown up in the care system. She falls into a relationship with Tholomyes before she’s out of her teens, getting pregnant and giving birth.
When Tholomyes leaves her, though, she’s completely out to sea and doesn’t know what to do with herself, let alone a child. She has a small flat somewhere and (even though she doesn’t really know them) she leaves her two-year-old daughter with her next-door neighbours, the Thenardiers, because they have kids too. She finds it very very hard to get a job with no qualifications, and she finds it had making friends because life is so unkind to her and she’d rather spend every spare hour with her daughter. She does things like waitressing but the men hit on her (and worse) so she hates it.
The Thenardiers start charging her more and more money to look after Cosette and tell her they’ll report her to social services if she can’t pay, and so her child will be taken off her. She’s desperate for that not to happen so she pays them even when their demands get ridiculous. She loses her job as a waitress when an obnoxious rebuffed customer grabs her outside and stuffs snow down her top, and she kicks and punches him in retaliation. Really really desperate now, she turns to sex work, not suspecting that the Thenardiers are abusing Cosette on the days and nights they look after her. She manages to pay them, and she’s able to provide for Cosette, but she’s very very miserable.
…I kind of want to write this now.
