Chapter Text
“Who says life is fair, where is that written?”
—William Goldman, The Princess Bride
1
“She will starve again unless you learn the meaning of the law.”
Valjean bristles, invisible hackles raising on the back of his neck where his prisoner’s collar used to rest, the anger of a man chained rising like bile within him.
Who is this man, with his starched coat and his steel eyes, his disdainful sneer, to tell him anything? Valjean is done taking orders. Valjean is done listening to men such as this who sneer and rant and rave, preach their moral superiority when they stand dry and safe along the walls of the bagne while the prisoners drown below in the storm and the spray and nineteen years of miscarried justice—
Valjean snarls and takes the yellow papers of parole, snatching them from the gloved hands of his jailer. Looking down, Valjean does not see the man’s expression, but this is no great loss. In his mind’s eye, Javert’s face is a line beneath two holes through which the world was emptied. Valjean has no need for his expressions. So of course, he does not catch the barest, most fleeting of moments when Javert’s face twitched, in irritation, in frustration.
Does not catch the muttered pejorative, “you stupid man.”
Valjean is too busy with freedom, too viciously pleased and stunningly hollow where his prime years should have been to take any stock of Javert, or his face.
2
“Excuse me sir, but have we met?”
Javert asks the question as a neutral thing, wearing the polite, slightly baffled curiosity of a man to whom mysteries are second-nature puzzles. Javert cannot possibly mean anything serious or dangerous by it, but still Valjean’s heart flies to life, nearly beating itself to death against the cage tailor-made for it from the mayor’s rib bones.
“Surely not,” Madeleine replies, forcing a smile around Valjean’s panic. “Your face is not a face I would forget, monsieur l’inspector.”
Javert’s face falls, contorting. The mayor takes it to be the expression of a man who does not know if he has been complimented or insulted and so turns about, trying to still the frantic beating of his convict’s heart.
When Madeleine looks back at Javert, he offers the inspector a smile out of forced habit and is surprised to see Javert tentatively return it. Javert’s face was not meant to wear expressions in Valjean’s mind and the experience unnerves him. A rosary is offered and an exit is proffered with the possibly unsubtle hint that Javert should see himself through it at the soonest polite opportunity.
Already in the mind of the mayor the old panic of Jean Valjean is transforming the undeniable presence of Javert and his inquiries into a titan of danger that threatens to uproot the world. In his mind’s eye, Valjean sees Javert as no more or less than the law made manifest in mortal form. There is no humanity to the man in his worldview. A collection of articles and a steel rod to wear them, Javert is marble as flesh, is steel sheathed in skin, and if he is possessed of a heart at all, it is stone. Valjean does not ascribe him feelings. He barely ascribes Javert humanity.
As such, neither Valjean nor the mayor he pretends to be notice the fleeting look of disappointment as it darts across Javert’s face, just as they had not caught the recognition that preceded it, nor the appraising glance that followed.
3
“Men like you can never change.”
Javert’s figure in the hospital is the punishment that Valjean had been prepared to accept. It was an uncomfortable truth that Valjean would face pursuit and probable arrest for his actions at Arras. Fantine’s death, too was regrettable, and truly unnecessary.
So no, the death of Fantine was not what Valjean had expected, but Javert crashing through the doorway was something he had been prepared for, no matter how he had dreaded it. But Javert’s words, perhaps, are more than Valjean had been willing to take.
“How dare you,” Valjean hisses as he stands from Fantine’s bedside. “You have killed this woman,” he declares lowly, “and yet you stand here speaking to me of men of crime—”
Sword at the ready, Javert lunges like a savaging wolf, the light glinting off the steel of his blade, his eyes, his handcuffs. Everything about the man is made of iron and Valjean hates, in this moment, the iron thing that the officer has become, has always been. Valjean has not hated so for years, and yet here it lies within him as it always has. If Madeleine could feel a convict’s fear than why not a convict’s rage?
Valjean raises a plank of wood to block Javert’s downward swipe and dances backward, his ears filled with blood and a storm that dashes all his thoughts to pieces.
Javert says; “I am from the gutter too,” and Valjean hears nothing, nothing at all but the rage and disgust. It is either his or Javert’s, and it no longer matters where one ends and the other begins. The hospital is too small to well weather the storm of their anger and Valjean fears the walls will not contain it at all. Beneath his skin a tempest bubbles; Valjean knows he will not forestall it long. Either he will kill Javert here, or Javert will kill him; there seems little ground for them to do otherwise— the hospital is shrinking in on them and a wall presses up against Valjean’s back, mere feet from the opened window through which sings the river.
Javert calls, “do not resist arrest,” and Valjean hears nothing of the betrayal; Madeleine is already out the window, falling to his death.
The water in the river is cold; it shocks from Valjean all attempts at recognition, but better still, it jolts all the anger from him, leaving only the clarity of his purpose. There is a child waiting for him. It would not do well to stall much longer. He has already waited many months.
In some ways, he feels as though he has been waiting many years.
Behind him, a face scowls from a window; the expression Valjean cannot see, freed at last from the name Madeleine, is one of a storm cloud, shattering. Even if he were to look it is hooded in shadow and clouded in rage, pain.
But Valjean does not look back. He has very little reason to.
4
“Halt!”
Javert calls out the singular imperative as Valjean scrambles out the window, but only the ex-convict hears him. Inside Valjean, the whispered remnants of 24601 rear at Javert’s order, roar at the very semblance of the command.
There is a part of Valjean that would like to call it audacity that Javert would order him still. They have been inferior and superior to one another in turn by the laws of society, no matter how they were subverted in each case. Valjean would like to think, by now, that they two men would have become equals beneath the watchful eye of their benevolent God. Surely He in all His wisdom would grant Valjean that much, but, alas, it seems that Javert still believes in the ultimate supremacy of his cause. If they are truly equals as Valjean would believe, Javert is of no mind to recognize this.
Yet again, Javert calls for him; “halt, damn you!” but Valjean is out the window once more by the time the second syllable has left the inspector’s mouth. Valjean trips as his feet touch ground, stumbling slightly from the pain of the injuries the Patron-Minette had bestowed upon him, as well as the burn of the brand he had pressed against himself. Behind him the Gorbeau tenement and the dangers inside disappear as Valjean bolts around a corner, and if there was desperation in Javert’s voice on the second call, well, Valjean did not hear it over the pounding of his own heart, the rush of blood quickened in his ears.
‘Let Javert handle the villains,’ Valjean thinks to himself as he dashes through the midnight streets of Paris, ‘surely he has the skill enough for ones such as them.’
And while Valjean is right, he is still too quick to put the encounter from his mind, to shove away and forget the recognition he had caught once more in the eyes of his near-lifelong pursuer. Not long after the Patron-Minette are led away, Javert stands at the sill of the window through which Valjean had escaped, and looks over the city that stretches out below him. The expression on the officer’s face is pensive, nearly wistful and the frown he wears beneath searching steel is a habitual thing, seen most often in the presence of one singular man.
Not, of course, that Valjean has ever noticed it. His preoccupation with Javert is of the man as a hunting hound, and what use would a dog have for such a thing as an expression? What regrets could it have save the failure to seize its prey?
Valjean has long been a man of mercy, but perceptiveness, it is apparent, has never been his forte.
5
“Why?”
The question is one of anguish. Valjean mistakes it in what Javert fails to say, the open participle dangling off the end of his choked-out inquiry prods at something in Valjean. But still, he does not see. He has never seen, this man of mercy, this beggar who gave alms yet joined the national guard to seek his own purpose. For all Valjean has turned his eyes to God he has been a blind man, before, then, and since, and every time missed the thing he most needed to look for.
Valjean looks at Javert and all he can see is the absence of his uniform and the place where his hat should be resting. It is hard to imagine Javert without his effects; his face without them is nothing so much as an afterthought, or the mannequin that wears them. Valjean looks at Javert and sees nothing; blood at the temples and a missing coat, the place at his side where his hands twitch for a sword or a pistol, but nothing human, nothing live.
Javert stares back at him and the steel in his eyes is breaking like a blade too often tested, or a bell too often rung. The lever has pressed too hard against the world. It is not that the force has been insufficient, rather that the weight was too much to lift and as such it is breaking him. If Javert has been the firm place to stand all these years, then now circumstances are that the ground is now moving underneath him; his footing is lost and the look in his eyes screams that it shall never be recovered, and yet.
And, of course, still Valjean does not see. He never has and perhaps he never will. There are a countless many mysteries to a man, and some may stay buried no matter how God may seek to have them uncovered. For all that they wear so much on their sleeves it seems that for these two men such accords may never be witnessed. Valjean and Javert have long been enigmas to one another for all that we the readers may know their minds, perhaps better than they know themselves. But fate has consigned these two to their differences, it seems. For all the things they share a gulf has been made wide between them by years and by ignorance.
To see the standing staring from both ends, it would appear as there was no crossing it all.
“Clear out of here,” Valjean mutters, heedless of the anguish on his once-captive’s face, noting first the blood drying at Javert’s temple, the rawness at his throat for all the rope has been cut away.
It is strange to him, to have Javert in his power once more. This is more visceral than Montreuil-sur-Mer ever was; for Valjean, having the man so at his feet now is a thousand times worse than Javert’s ill-fated confession. Valjean cannot name why, but just as it ached to be looked down upon by Javert when he himself was in chains, reversing their positions is nearly intolerable. Valjean can hardly bear it for all the strength in his shoulders, and the wrongness of their situation is crawling beneath his skin like so many ants. Valjean feels the hand of God in this moment, but he cannot discern its shadow.
“Why?!” Javert asks again, and he is louder this time, but Valjean is too—
“Clear out of here!” He shouts, and the barking gunshot that follows is hardly louder at all, snapping at Javert’s heels to make him falter-pause before he goes dashing away. And still, the silence that follows after the shot is worse, ringing in Valjean’s ears like a tidal wave and the quieting of all the blood in his veins.
This time, finally, Valjean looks. But Javert has turned away. There is nothing to see but a retreating man and his uneven steps upon the pavement. Slick with blood as it is, perhaps the falter can be forgiven.
Later, in the carriage ride, Javert is composed. His uniform has returned, hat and greatcoat replaced with the pistol he is careful not to point at Valjean’s chest. His steps are sure, his pace is even and his spine is stiff once more, for all that it is overly so.
Upon reaching their destination, Valjean deposits Marius inside. Returning to the window Valjean sees the last echoes of a hat, the tattered tails of a singed greatcoat, yet nothing of the iron spine that wore them.
Valjean’s feet cannot carry him down the steps quick enough, and so he jumps them, limbs crashing painfully on the ground of the landing, the full weight of his years juddering through Valjean’s frame to pound down with the force of all every day heaped upon it. The door he throws open, and the sound of it is like a gunshot on the wall behind him yet still Valjean cannot see.
By the time he takes at last to the streets once more, Javert is far beyond him, and Valjean cannot catch so much as a glimpse.