Chapter Text
He stepped up onto the parapet and leaned over waters as black as the sky above. The rushing of his thoughts and the Seine drowned out the sound of footsteps approaching so when he felt a hand upon him, he startled. That hand became arms that suddenly enveloped his waist to prevent him from falling, despite the fact that falling was his precise purpose. His soul had already fallen from grace after all, it was only natural for his body to follow its fate.
“Javert!” A muffled plea at his back. He would know that voice anywhere, he had always strained to hear it, to identify it, he could never escape it. Confound it!
The arms would not release him. Javert shifted in their hold, cursed by indecision, not seeking to move in either direction. The slight shift of his boot caused him to slip on the wet stone, making his decision for him.
“Javert!”
The grip tightened, Valjean’s body moving forward with his own, and despite Javert’s desire for an End, his body reflexively scrabbled for purchase, for safety. Ludicrous! Even more so how his hands came up to grip those strong forearms which had slid up to his chest.
He was pulled back from the edge, down from the parapet, his back colliding against Valjean's chest, his body limp. The arms left him when he straightened. He had no fight left in him, exhausted and at the mercy of the whims of this cruel new world. He did not turn to see Valjean. He could not bear it. He could not bear any of it.
“... I was expecting you at my address,” Valjean said softly and somehow it was deafening. “You seek to arrest me, do you not?”
Javert barked an ugly laugh that held no mirth.
“This is torture!” He cried, feeling somewhat hysterical, but pride meant little now. “First you turn the world on its end so I can see nothing clearly, understand nothing, then you prevent my escape from it to further my suffering and now! And now you would have me confess my failings to you like a sinner to a priest. A sinner to a saint.” Another joyless laugh forced itself from his throat. Perhaps he was going mad.
He turned and regarded Valjean's mild, pitying expression, his pure white hair clear in the darkness. Yes, a saint indeed as absurd as that may be. Valjean's brow furrowed and he said nothing. He was to force the confession from him then, force him to admit it to himself and this nonsensical world. A saint should not be so cruel!
“I do not seek your arrest!” He cried, throwing his words out in to the quiet night for all to judge him. Valjean's eyes widened in surprise. “There! I said it. I do not.”
Valjean seemed at as much of a loss as himself.
“You… do not?”
“Do not make me repeat it! Although I am not deserving of your mercy I suppose. I no longer wish to place you in irons. It does not make you a free man but it makes you free of me, which is just the same I would think. No one else would search for you so.”
“Perhaps you should rest,” Valjean stumbled, uncertain of the words he spoke. “Your mind is clouded, as you say. You will see clearer in the morning light and you may think on this again.”
They both stood, silent and unmoving.
“Come,” Valjean coaxed as he turned to walk down the street but waited for him to follow.
With a lack of any other direction, and his moment with the black, rushing waters somehow jolted to a halt, Javert shadowed him, as he had done on many previous occasions. Only this time he was not the wolf tracking his prey but an obedient mongrel walking to heel. Javert scowled but did not divert from their route.
He walked the streets, unseeing through his clouded thoughts. Surely he only kept his route because he was so used to tracking Valjean. The slight scrape of an ex-con’s foot as he walked - Javert could still detect it despite all the years that had passed and the careful, measured movements of Madeleine that disguised it.
The clearing of the sky at dawn would not clear his turbulent thoughts, of that he was certain. So why was he following this man? Walking to heel of the master of his fate? He had been certain that there were two paths open to him, one that he could not bring himself to travel, and yet now he was more troubled than before. A dense fog clouded this fork in the road. He was uncertain how many branches it had or where the paths began. It horrified him more than the notion of two paths. A multitude was unbearable and, as such, his mind ceased to be able to function as it had been.
He was a man unused to such introspection and questions of conscience, who had pondered at great lengths already and ended up as if he had been swept up by an avalanche - unseeing, numb and unable to distinguish up from down. Not to mention Javert’s trials at the barricade which had made his body stiff and sore. He was hungry, he was thirsty and above all he was exhausted. All of these factors dulled the sharp mind of a precise inspector and ground it to a halt.
Valjean exclaimed at something and Javert was herded into a fiacre. He thought perhaps they were still travelling with the boy, taking his corpse to his family, and that his letter, his consultation with the Seine, was all an absurd waking dream of an exhausted mind. After all, how likely was it for Valjean to stumble across him again and save his life twice it one night? If he had been scrutinising Valjean, as he normally would have done, he would have seen the shock and worry on his face at Javert's terrible grin.
He must have fallen asleep as he was gently shaken by the shoulder and he realised they were no longer in motion. He stumbled down onto the street after Valjean. He almost walked into the man he was pursuing- no, following. He had not even noticed they were approaching a property. Number 7 of… whichever street Valjean had told him of. Valjean opened the gate for him and Javert, in his state of passive distress, did not perceive the unusual route of entry via Rue de Babylone (and they were not, in fact, anywhere near Rue de l’Homme Armé). He did notice that Valjean led him to a kind of porter’s lodge and not the house, for that he was grateful.
Valjean closed the door behind him.
“I will take your coat. It is dirty.”
Javert barely heard him. He allowed the coat to be pulled from him without protest. The door opened and closed again, and Javert stood there in the gloom until Valjean returned, a shadow bustling around in the darkness.
“Here,” Valjean pressed a glass of water into his hands.
Javert drank greedily, feeling the water run down his chin.
“Help yourself,” Valjean gestured to a small table with a pitcher of water and a loaf of bread which had already been torn into.
Javert's body took over for him in its animal need for sustenance. He filled the glass twice more before seizing the bread and biting into it. He would have been ashamed if his wits were about him - behaving like an uncultured beggar. He drank the last of the water and Valjean spoke again.
“Come, you are exhausted.”
Firm hands guided him to the bed. As soon as Javert saw it, his knees almost gave out. He laid on top of the sheets, without a care for his boots and leather stock, and promptly fell to sleep.
-----
Javert awoke in an unfamiliar room, in a bed more comfortable than his own. He jolted upright. Valjean slept in a chair by his bedside.
“What are you doing you fool?!” Javert barked at himself as much as Valjean.
Valjean lurched into wakefulness, gripping the armrests, knuckles as white as his face, eyes wide with fear. After a moment he breathed deep, closing his eyes. When he regarded Javert once more he had a calm countenance.
“Ah yes, Javert. Forgive me I had not intended to sleep.”
He still looked haggard and exhausted - of course he was - risking life and limb all night at the barricade (the barricade! Yes, that awful night), trudging through the sewer for God knew what reason…
“Why were you at the barricade?” Javert demanded, his desire for information and confession a familiar distraction from his current circumstances.
“To find a boy and get him home safely.”
“The corpse,” Javert recalled.
“No, not yet at least.”
“But not a boy plucked at random. You knew his address.”
“Please, Javert, he is young. Young foolishness that lead to such events. You would not arrest him-”
“Bah! Do not tell me who I can and cannot arrest! The nerve-”
“Forgive me, I know it is not my right-”
Javert was suddenly angered. This man, this formidable man, who had escaped Toulon, cunning as a fox, avoiding capture for all these years, the sure and quiet confidence of Madeleine - all of these things came together for the first time and they did not match the feeble man in front of him.
“Forgive?” He spat and Valjean flinched, not meeting his eyes. “And why would you beg my forgiveness?”
Valjean sighed and Javert saw an old man sitting before him.
“My daughter is in love with him… and he in love with her.”
“Daughter?” Javert said before he could stop himself. He did not care about these things. He snorted, recalling the extravagant address they had taken the boy to. “Ah yes, save a well-to-do bourgeois boy and the rich family would no doubt accept the match and shower you with praise and fortunes.”
Even as he spoke, the words did not sit right with him. Valjean sighed, a weary, forlorn sound.
“They do not know the identity of his rescuers.” He stood. “I will leave you to dress and then you may take me to the station house.”
Javert could not find any words to shoot at him before the door closed. He was left to acknowledge his predicament.
The memories came back to him: his imprisonment, Valjean setting him free, the sewer, the corpse, the Seine… It was less clear after that. He looked down at himself. A sheet had been laid over him. He pulled it back. ‘Dress’ Valjean had said, yet he was already dressed. In yesterday's clothes, of course. He grimaced, conscious of the sweat and the filth, but he had no fresh clothes here. He groaned as he swung his legs over the edge of the bed where his boots stood. He pulled them on with some difficulty, noticing his chafed wrists as he did so.
His leather stock was laid over the arm of the chair, he hesitantly touched his fingertips to his sore throat and decided against it. The stock must have stopped the rope chafing but the skin felt horribly bruised. He remained seated on the edge of the bed.
I had not intended to sleep.
The fool! Valjean should still be in a deep slumber even now. His trials and feats of impossible strength and will were greater than anything Javert had suffered. Javert's hands curled into fists. That absurd man! His bottomless mercy and irritating martyrdom! Giving his bed to his enemy - what nonsense!
He pictured this Saint crawling from the putrid bowels of the earth and barked a rough laugh. Yes, the perfect picture of the impossible convict-saint, brought from the mouth of Hell itself as Javert's divine saviour.
“Javert? Are you well...?”
“I am terrible.”
“Here is some bread and cheese, tea as well. I do not have much stocked here, I have been living elsewhere.” He waited, presumably for Javert to respond but there was only silence. “Well, eat if you wish and then we will go to the station h-”
“Enough!” Javert cried, putting his head in his hands and tugging at his hair. “The station house he says! The station house! It is all you ever say! It's either that or pleading for more time - 3 days, one journey, ‘I just need to go home’-”
“Precisely. You do not need to wait for me any longer. I am here.”
“And I wish you weren't! I am none of your business, why couldn't you just leave me be?”
“Javert… You know I could not. I waited, for a long time I waited for you to return. I thought perhaps you had gone to make yourself presentable and get fresh clothes, so I did the same and washed the muck from myself. But then you still hadn't returned. I have never known you to lie. It did not sit right with me. I went out, I do not know what I was hoping to find but when I saw you there… Javert, you would have condemned yourself!”
“I am already condemned.”
“How so?”
Javert snorted and raised his head. “You of all people should know.”
Valjean shook his head dumbly. “I do not understand.”
“Have we ever understood one another?” He sighed in irritation at Valjean's blank expression. “Here it is then, if I must: if I do not arrest you I am not doing my duty-”
“But I say you can-”
“Hush! Stop with your irritations!” Javert flailed his arm. “If I were to arrest you… I cannot. In the eyes of God I cannot. And do not say it! Do not speak! What did I say? ‘Why’ I know you will ask of me and I would ask of you why you torment me so. Because perhaps, somehow, you are a good man and if that is so I have made a grave error in my pursuit and more than that, there is error in the law. I do not know how to fathom it or what it means.”
“I see.”
“You don't.”
“Not entirely, no. But enough. Come, have some tea.”
Javert got up to sit opposite him at the small table and they ate in silence. Breaking bread together in some ugly mockery of friendship. Absurdity piled on absurdity, as if Javert's life were now one great circus.
“You will go home then?”
It was true, he needed fresh clothes, to wash and shave and neaten his hair. Regain himself physically if nothing else. But people would look for him there, insist he go back to work immediately or- oh God - the letter-
“Javert? What is the matter?”
“I cannot,” he said hoarsely. “I cannot.”
Valjean regarded him steadily. “Of course. You must recover before you return to work. What is your address? I will fetch your clothes.”
Javert found himself giving it, Valjean left immediately and Javert frowned at his untouched tea. What was he to do? His mind shied away from complex introspection, too tired to fathom it, so he rose and tried to move the stiffness from his limbs.
He began to investigate - a natural, comforting instinct to him. He poked around the small, peculiar porter’s lodge, which in the light of day he would probably term a hut as there didn't appear to be a porter, or anyone else other than Valjean and himself. It was fully furnished as a living space, a bed, table and chairs and a fireplace. Why would this be used as living quarters when it was a few paces from what Javert imagined to be a perfectly serviceable house?
He went out, walked the perimeter of the house, which did indeed appear serviceable (and large), then found the overgrown garden and the unused gate. Valjean had been well hidden here. He sat at the base of a tree, out of view of the gate, gazed at the flowers and weeds and thought of nothing at all. He was there for some time before his reverie was broken.
“Javert! Javert!” Valjean rounded the corner of the house in a panic, a peculiar reversal of when Valjean would run from his name.
“I am here,” Javert said as he stood.
“Oh! I have your clothes, at the hut, and I have informed your portress of your absence.” Valjean kept his distance. “Javert? Will you come to the hut?”
It dawned on Javert then, the source of Valjean's panic: that he would finish what Valjean had interrupted and seek to end his life.
“I would not have had the time to reach the Seine from here.” He frowned. “Where are we?”
“Rue Plumet.”
Javert's frown deepened. “So you lied about you address.”
“No! No, no. I do live at Rue de l’Homme-Armé, I have just sent a message to Cosette and my housekeeper to tell them not to worry over my absence. I have a number of properties.”
‘A number of properties’ made sense. Fox-cunning indeed.
“Cosette… The whore’s child?” Javert said matter-of-factly.
“She is no such thing,” Valjean countered, a threat to his voice. “You will not speak it.”
“Ah, and so you hid me here so I would not tell your secrets.”
“Javert. Come to the hut. Please.”
“No. Stop hiding. I will have you speak plain to me, to the eyes of the world.”
“I don't care what you say of me Javert, the truths you know, only- only I cannot have her disgraced. She is innocent. If the boy lives, she will marry. I will go and she will know nothing of me. My stains will be washed from her. And I did not know of your current health-”
“You think me mad.”
“I think you are unwell. A sickness of the soul.”
“Or the mind.”
“Please. Javert, come inside. You do not have your coat.”
Javert strode past him, back to the strange hut, where his clothes were neatly folded on the bed with his labourers coat. He did not know what Valjean had done with the one he arrived in. A basin of water sat on the dresser, with soap, a razor, a small mirror and folded linen beside it - simple objects for a simple task which he had performed hundreds of times in his life. Today would be no different.
“Well? Will you leave me now?”
Valjean hesitated.
“I'm not going to slit my throat. Leave me.” Javert turned his nose up. “You also need to wash. Whatever you managed yesterday has not rid you entirely of sewer-stench.”
“Oh. I fear it has compromised my sense of smell.”
“Hardly surprising.”
“I will be in the house.” Yet Valjean still hesitated by the door.
“I will come to you for assistance if I need it. Which I won't.”
Javert closed the door on him as soon as he stepped outside. He turned back to the room, regarded the basin and squared his shoulders. He set about his familiar routine in an unfamiliar place. He undressed, laid a sheet of linen on the floor to not dampen the floorboards, and made a damage assessment of his body. He noticed all the cuts and bruises, the marks from the the rope and his swollen knee. Satisfied that the damage was superficial, he began to wash, giving more notice to his wounds (however minor) to guard against possible infection.
Then, he upturned his head to dunk his hair in the soapy water and tried to untangle it with his fingers. He dried himself once he was done, and dressed in his fresh clothes. His hair was swept up in a haphazard bun to prevent it dripping everywhere, and then he began to shave, ignoring his haggard face in the mirror.
Throughout this entire process his mind did not wander. He was careful and meticulous. When all his tasks were complete, he sat and gazed at the murky water. He realised distantly that he still held the razor. He blinked, set it down, disposed of the water outside, hung the towels over the back of the chair, looked for a comb, didn't find one, sat down and wondered where Valjean had got to.
Time passed and Javert grew impatient. He went to the house, striding through the rooms until he found him. Why had Valjean made them reside in the hut when the house was vacant?
Javert entered the living room and there was Valjean: slumped in a chair, his hair damp, shirt half buttoned, his chest rising and falling with the deep breaths of a peaceful slumber. His face was lined with age and fatigue and Javert could not imagine sending this man to the galleys. Without the fire of determination in his eyes, Valjean was merely an old man who looked, in that moment, that any further strain upon him would send him to his grave.
Javert bowed his head and returned to the hut, his mind waking from its numbed state - ideas and memories flooding in, making it reel once more.