Imagine Marius on his wedding day. He’s dressed up in a suit that could rival any of even Courfeyrac’s fanciest outfits. He’s happy, he is getting married to the love of his life, but there is still a bittersweet tinge to the day. He misses his friends. Most of all, he misses Courfeyrac. Sweet, kind Courfeyrac who took him in when he had nowhere else to go. Courfeyrac who would have definitely been his best man today and probably would have made some silly, maudlin speech at dinner that would have had Marius turning as red as the rose on his lapel. Courfeyrac, who went off to fight and never came back...
Marius tries to push those thoughts from his mind. His dear friend would not want to see him so upset, especially not on today of all days. The wedding goes perfectly... until Thenardier arrives. Marius is not prone to fits of anger but seeing the person who had caused his friend Éponine so much pain makes him furious. He restrains himself however, and asks him what he wants through gritted teeth. Thenardier starts spinning his tale about how he saw Valjean with a corpse from the barricades deep in the sewers and produces a watch as proof. Marius’ own watch, he realizes belatedly. As he takes it and hands over the money to pay for Thenardier’s silence, he is so preoccupied he almost doesn’t see the signet ring wrapped far too tightly around Thenardier’s grubby finger. A gold ring. One that Marius recognizes quite intimately from all the times he held its owner’s hand in his own while being dragged through Paris because “Marius, you really ought to get out more often, you can’t spend your whole life holed up in our apartments, you know”. A ring that bears the seal of the De Courfeyrac family. And suddenly it all makes sense, what Thenardier was doing in the sewers that night, why he was near the barricades at all, why they never found Courfeyrac’s body. Marius is not a violent man by any means but he could kill Thenardier for what he’s done...