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Chapter Text

Cosette frowned at the clothes she had laid out across her chair for tomorrow. No, this didn't quite seem right, but she couldn't put her finger on the problem.

Until recently she had been content to put on the cleanest thing in her wardrobe, but trends worn by the ladies who passed her bench in the Jardin du Luxembourg were finally beginning to sink in. She glanced at her reflection in the looking glass again, suppressing a smile when she found the image pleasing. How had she never noticed this before? She turned her head slightly to either side, reminding herself not to be proud of her own features. How long would she have gone on in the awful old dresses her father bought her had she not overheard that voice in the street the other day?

An uncomfortably cool breeze rustled through the curtains, sending a chill across Cosette's shoulders when it moved through the thin fabric of her nightdress. She turned with the intention of closing the shutters and stifled a scream.

A man was standing in her room, just by the window. In the flickering light of her candle he looked like a death's-head: his skin was pale, his hair was light and stuck up in every direction, and there were impossibly dark shadows around his eyes. He lifted a finger to his lips, holding his other hand out as a gesture of peace.

"Who are you?" Cosette hissed angrily. "I shall scream for my father!"

The stranger shook his head. "I don't mean any harm. I was passing by and caught a glimpse of you through the window, and I just wanted to—"

"Caught a glimpse through the window?" Cosette repeated. "But my room is on the second floor! How did you get in here?"

The man sighed. "I wasn't exactly walking. Listen, dear, I saw you and couldn't help—"

"And what on earth possessed you to go out dressed in this way?" Cosette interrupted. Indeed, the man's suit was threadbare and dirty, torn at the cuffs and severely outdated.

Cosette stepped forward and brought the candle closer to his face. With the help of the light, she understood that his lids were smeared heavily with kohl, creating the skull-like illusion that had initially startled her. Now it was the eyes themselves that gave her pause: one of his irises was completely white and the other a deep brown. "Who are you?"

To her surprise, the stranger dipped into a low, graceful bow. "Sorci, at your service."

"That isn't a real name," she objected. "Who are you really?"

"Who I was before I became Sorci no longer matters," said the stranger. "What does matter is the outfit I saw you setting aside for tomorrow. That dress with your coloring?" he demanded, pointing at the offending garment. He drew back his lips in disdain; Cosette recoiled at the sight of his long, sharp incisors.

"Who are you?" she asked again. "What are you?"

"A concerned citizen," he said dismissively. "Now, haven't you a dress in a pastel? I know pastel is out of fashion at the moment, but it would look excellent with your complexion."

"You broke into my room in the middle of the night to give me fashion advice?"

Sorci shrugged. "Well, suit yourself," he said, turning on his heel. He launched himself out of the window.

Cosette gasped, hurrying after him and peering over the ledge. She hardly dared look, expecting to see his broken body in the Rue de l'Homme Armé, but there was no one in sight. She shuttered and closed the window firmly, even indignantly, then, after a moment of thought, laid out her light pink dress before going to bed.

Chapter Text

Cosette straightened the cuff of one pale pink sleeve, then folded her hands politely in her lap. The wind was pelting her relentlessly with gritty dust clouds today; she rather wished she hadn't come out for a walk at all.

"Father?"

Her voice seemed to shake him from a deep concentration. "Hm?" he asked, turning his head toward her but not his eyes.

"Might I take a turn around this part of the garden? You needn't rise; I'll be back in moments."

He nodded wordlessly, then returned to his contemplation.

Cosette kissed him lightly on the cheek before she stood, straightening her skirts, and turned her back on the wind at last. The Jardin du Luxembourg was lovely in the early summer, she thought, though she did miss the colorful blooms of spring. Her favorite people to watch weren't the well-dressed ladies and lovestruck young couples, but the elderly men and women whose hair and clothes hadn't been updated in several years, and who seemed to drift along familiar old paths like living spirits. She thought of the strange man who had been in her room the night before. How had he seemed so young and so old all at once?

The path ahead of her branched off through an overgrown patch of garden, and on a whim Cosette turned, letting the tall bushes block her from her father's view for only a moment. She paused and, touching a tree for support, lifted up her skirts enough to unlace one boot. Taking care not to let her stocking touch the dirt, she shook the shoe until a tiny pebble fell out at last. Cosette breathed a sigh of relief as she slid her foot back in and refastened the lace. There was no one else on the path who might have seen her moment of indiscretion.

In scanning her surroundings she had not, however, thought to look up. A moment later she heard a sound that could only be described as a long, loud hiss. Cosette was checking the ground for the source of the noise—perhaps a threatened snake?—when a man dropped out of the tree against which she had been leaning a moment before.

Cosette swallowed a little shriek, turning it into a mangled gasp. The man had fallen from a thick branch far above her head, but had landed firmly on his bare feet. He was wearing a pair of long, rugged-looking trousers and an impossibly small waistcoat that hung open, revealing a bare chest. His hair hung loose around his shoulders.

Cosette quickly averted her gaze. "Are- are you going to kill me?" She tried to sound brave despite the stammer.

"Nonssssssense!" he laughed, letting the long "s" sound escape between playfully bared teeth. Cosette was relieved to notice that he had no fangs.

Relieved that a half-naked man in the Jardin du Luxembourg had no fangs? How could her mundane life have become so weird in such a short time?

"Do you- do you live in this garden?" she asked, hoping her tone sounded conversational.

"Do I live in the garden? Ha!" the man barked. "No, I live on the other side!"

"I see," she lied. "And, um, may I pass?"

In a move so sudden that Cosette jumped, the man clapped both hands over her shoulders. He held her out and studied her, his lips pursed.

"Monsieur?" she asked quietly, still keeping her gaze trained on a spot somewhere past his right ear lest she see too much.

"Loosen up, honey!" he said, giving her shoulders a little shake of encouragement. "You're as uptight as a soldier of Eden!"

"Uptight?" Cosette repeated incredulously, looking him in the eye for the first time.

"It's time to see the light, girl," the half-naked stranger said patronizingly, patting her shoulders before he released her. The strange man dropped to a crouch in the middle of the path, then launched himself up with a mighty jump, clinging to that large branch and then smoothly hoisting himself back up into the tree.

Cosette shook her head and hurried back to the bench. Perhaps her father would allow her to start carrying a knife.

Chapter Text

After these bizarre happenings, Cosette was happy to watch her life fall back into its normal routine. The rest of the season was only disturbed twice: the first time was when Toussaint declared that she had been struck down by cholera but turned out to have developed a cold; the second took place when her father came home early from his walk one evening and told the women to pack their things and be ready to move to the house on the Rue Plumet that night.

Cosette was troubled by her father's nervousness but overall very pleased to leave the Rue de l'Homme Armé, primarily because she adored the house with its wild garden and had missed sitting by the open window playing her piano each evening, letting her careless singing float out on the warm breeze to mix with the birdsong. She had never been one to question her father's motives, especially since they switched addresses so frequently, so the move was a happy one. As the weeks went by and the air began to turn cooler, Cosette's strange encounters were forgotten but for the small blade that she habitually concealed in her sleeve each time they left the house.

One evening in early August she was at her piano, as was her custom, while Toussaint banged away at the washing at the back of the house. Her father had already retired for the night, though Cosette suspected that he had left his door open, a habit of his, that the sound of her playing might drift through the warm air and reassure him that they were safe. She rustled through her pile of sheet music, sighing at the hymns she had played often enough to commit to memory. Perhaps toward the bottom she would find something so old and forgotten that it would seem new and challenging.

Cosette extracted an aria from some unpopular opera, wrinkled her nose at it, and tossed it aside. She sat back on her heels and huffed irritably, swatting at a lock of hair that had come loose from her topknot. Perhaps in the morning they could visit the Rue de Rome and find some new music for her. These old pieces were usually enough, but tonight, for no reason at all, she was in the mood for a change. Just as Cosette was preparing to get to her feet and abandon the search altogether, she noticed the corner of a dusty page protruding from the middle of the silly aria. The paper was slightly yellowed and much thinner than the rest of the music. She eagerly seized the corner and slid it free to discover that it was a long-forgotten sonata, a piece that Toussaint had gotten for her because it reminded her of her youth when Mozart's sudden death had made him popular in France. Pleased by her find, Cosette plopped back onto the piano bench and flexed her fingers over the keys as she scanned the first few lines of the music. It fortunately didn't seem too difficult despite a few tricky little phrases here and there. She began to play, slowly at first, but as the melody of the piece became clear she sped up to a much more preferable tempo. The moment she reached a pace she liked a low growl of thunder rippled through the night; her fingers stumbled in surprise but she did not slow down. Cosette had always loved thunderstorms.

When she had finished the entire piece, Cosette sat back in satisfaction. She started to put it away, but just as her hand brushed the page there came a second crack of thunder. She grinned out into the humid night, fancying that the Nature itself demanded she play the piece again. Cosette bowed to her imaginary admirer and turned back to the first page. There were no words to the sonata, but now that she had heard the melody once Cosette found herself humming along, and within a few bars she had invented a little ode to summer storms.

Next Cosette turned toward the window, prepared to play the song for a third time and sing directly into the night: in her little game, her song would coax the reluctant thunderstorm out just in time for bed, and she would be able to lie beneath her blankets and listen to the soothing rustle of rain as she drifted off of to sleep. She was only a few lines in, however, when she heard the gentle tinkling of glassware clinking together; after a moment she realized that the ground itself was shaking ever so subtly. The sonata slipped to the floor, and, shocked that an earthquake was taking place in Paris, Cosette followed suit, crouching just by the bench. She heard Toussaint shriek in alarm and, moments later, her father burst through the door, wild with concern over the ladies he had left unattended in such a dangerous moment. Toussaint was in a panic, stammering that she had upset her bucket of dirty water in a fright and dampened all of the freshly-cleaned linens, effectively undoing an entire afternoon's work. After seeing that Cosette was as unharmed as she was unafraid, her father hurried away to help the good woman put things back in order.

Cosette, meanwhile, had gone to the window and was peering out into the dusky overgrowth: when her father had crashed into the room, she was sure she had heard another sound coming from just outside, as though something enormous had cracked and crumbled not far from the house. Cosette wondered if the earthquake had perhaps broken the high wall that surrounded the property.

After a few moments' staring, she shook her curiosity away and went back to the piano, determined to serenade her father and Toussaint while they sorted through the washing a few rooms away. Though she liked to think of herself as a good helper, Cosette secretly hated folding linens and had long ago learned that she could warm her father's heart with a song just as easily as if she had offered to help Toussaint with her chores. She played the sonata again, though she found she had forgotten a few of her made-up lyrics and could only hum those parts. As she neared the end, Cosette heard a low moan from the garden. She lifted her head, wondering idly if someone had been hurt during the tremor, only to be met with a sight that caused her to leap to her feet.

A man was shuffling toward the house from across the garden, but his presence on their property was the least alarming thing about him. He looked more like a corpse than a human being, with patches of skin that seem to have literally rotted away from his bones and only a few tufts of unevenly-shorn blond hair left on his skull. He was dressed in dirt-covered scraps of purple cloth that seemed to reflect the weak moonlight like rippling water, and something silver glinted from just beneath each shadowed eye socket. He was limping relentlessly toward the door which Cosette's father had forgotten to close, and before she could even remind herself to scream for help, he was in the parlor with her.

The creature's head turned, and Cosette had the distinct impression that his eyeless sockets were looking at the piano, then at her. With a sound like a grumble, his jaw dropped open like a rusty hinge and he began to emit a long, low-pitched moan. He raised one tattered arm and pointed a finger that was all bone at her.

Cosette felt in her sleeve for her knife, only to remember with dismay that she had left it on her bedside table after returning from her walk that afternoon. She cast about for something to use as a weapon when, suddenly, the creature made a noise that could only be a huff of frustration and retracted the accusing finger in order to run its hands over its own face. Cosette was confused by its motives until its long fingers found the two long holes where its nose should have been and the intruder, appearing to have forgotten Cosette already, jerked in apparent surprise and cast about the room until it fell upon the hand mirror Toussaint had twice asked Cosette to put away that morning. Upon seeing its own monstrous reflection, the skeleton-man dropped to his knees dramatically, pawing frantically at what was left of his hair. Cosette felt moved to pity the poor beast. "Monsieur?" she ventured, her fascination overcoming her fear. "Can I help you somehow?"

The poor thing's head snapped up and its jaw began to move again, though now it seemed more conscious of its own limitations. After a moment Cosette realized that he was forcing words into the moaning sound, and by the time he found a way to modulate the noise she understood that he was saying "Yes".

"Are you in pain?" she asked respectfully, her eyes wide.

The creature nodded, then pointed at the piano again.

Cosette looked over her shoulder, but, seeing nothing out of the ordinary, looked back at him. "I don't understand," she said, picking up the first page of the sonata and holding it up. "This?"

"Yes," the half-corpse said again. "Yes!" He wagged that long white finger and then pointed at the piano again.

"Who are you?"

The jaw began to move again, and Cosette leaned forward to make out the individual syllables.

"Wolf- gannng-"

Her eyes darted to the name on the sheet music in her hand.

"Ahhhh- mahhhhh-"

Cosette's eyes grew wider with each syllable.

"De- us- Mo- zart!" he finished at last, and he scrambled to his feet in order to drop into a low, uncoordinated bow, one bony arm flourished in front, rotted palm upwards, and the other folded behind his waist. When he lifted his head, Cosette felt sure that he was gauging her reaction to the name.

"Monsieur Mozart died many years ago," Cosette said, her voice coming out much calmer than she expected. "And in Vienna!"

The skeleton man rose to his feet again, waving a skeletal hand dismissively.

"Very well, let's say I believe that you are a long-dead Austrian composer," she allowed, choosing her words carefully. "What on earth could have inspired you to visit me?"

Again the arm rose, that glittering cloth hanging from it in shreds, and the skeletal finger indicated the sonata in her hand. The creature's jaw began to click open and closed in preparation. "You're...play-ing...that...too...slow-llly," it intoned at last, "annnnnd...those...aren't...the...wwworrrrds."

Cosette heard the whisper of paper slipping across the wooden floor and realized that she had dropped the music in surprise. "What?"

"It's...all...wrong," groaned the dead man.

The preposterous situation did not render Cosette speechless: "You dragged yourself all the way to Paris fifty years after your death to insult my playing?"

The creature was still for a moment, then shrugged its rotten shoulders, causing a scrap of that glittery fabric to come loose and flutter to the ground.

Though months had passed since that strange day in the park, and the even stranger evening before, those encounters rose again in Cosette's mind, and for once she was determined to come through with her wit intact. She studied the bizarre creature for another moment, taking in the twisted brown muscle that still clung to the bleached bone in a few places, the mummified scraps of flesh that hadn't yet flaked away, and the gaudy remnants of his hideous jacket. He had not come very far into the room. To her delight, an idea struck her. "Were I in your place, I would be grateful. A great genius such as yourself must find it terribly dull to do one thing for fifty years in a row."

The patchy skull tipped to one side. The teeth clicked for a moment before it was able to ask, "What...onnne...thinnnng?"

Cosette smirked at the dead man who stood uninvited in her parlor. "Decomposing."

And before undead Mozart had time to understand the pun, she pushed him out into the garden and slammed the door.