[fic] Toil Until the Old Colours Fade 4a/8 [Les Misérables]
Title: Toil Until the Old Colours Fade
Pairing: (eventually) Javert/Jean Valjean
Content notes: Groundhog Day / Time Loop, Violence, Temporary Character Death, Suicide, Purgatory
Rating: Mature
Acknowledgements: Beta by voksen and morgan, who have both done a massive job on SpaG, plot and history-check levels. My eternal thanks!
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Chapter four: The yoke easy, the burden never light
The sixteenth time
The hour was late. The grand building lay almost deserted when Javert for the first time in over forty years walked up the marble stairs of the Palais de Justice. The echoes of his steps flew like unruly souls through the empty rooms until they were swallowed by the shadows. Only a few oil lamps were kept lit throughout the night; small, flickering lights to guide the guards keeping watch in the heart of Law. As he reached higher and higher levels, the grand décor became stripped down, turned functional and sparse.
He walked through an office, the lock as easy to jiggle loose as he recalled; found the open entrance to the attics. Bending low to get through the doorway, he followed a cramped corridor until his fingers found the rougher texture of a small door that would, if his memory served, give him access to the roof.
Hand still upon the door, Javert paused.
When he'd finished his daily report and, instead of returning home, had sat at a spare desk and waited for silence to fall over the building, it had been the whisper of instinct that had made him remain. It was not an impulse he wished to examine; all he knew was that this had been a pilgrimage he had craved for years.
Now, in the muggy darkness, he could no more hide from the fear which had grown in him with every step upwards he'd taken... When he opened the door, would he see Paris? Would he be able to turn the corner and behold the graceful majesty of the Notre Dame bathed in moonlight... or would his eyes only find the familiar roofs of Montreuil-sur-Mer?
Was he slowly climbing out of purgatory or were all his hopes nothing but a cruel trick of hell?
After his disastrous attempt at manipulation, which had led to nothing but disgrace and prison, it had taken a further four deaths before he had managed to come forward. The accumulated lifetime counted almost twenty years spent struggling with the truth and his regrets. Then, finally, when he was beginning to succumb to despair, events had come together as they should and thrown him into the wild land of a future beyond the town.
In his current life, when Monsieur le Maire was forced to leave Montreuil-sur-Mer, he was not widely renounced. Nor did he leave Cosette to another for raising; they travelled away together. Behind them, they left Javert behind, alive and trembling on the border of the unknown; a state he had been in his entire first lifetime, but which was unfamiliar and disturbing to him now.
The lives before had been a string of painful failures, each undermining his endurance and bleeding vigour from him. Javert's second attempt at intrigue had failed much like the first, with scandal threatening both him and the mayor. He'd not waited for the end to catch them this time, had instead chosen the mercy of the straight-razor when the river began to call in his mind.
The third try had not involved the Thénardiers, but gone instead through the Magistrates at Champmathieu's trial. Javert re-discovered a painful truth here: to cast suspicion was easy, to stem the tide of ill-will far more difficult. One thing led to another, and once the investigation was under way, he began to hear the swell of the water.
The jailers who guarded a prison transport were not the best of shots, but they were well-armed and saw no need to spare their bullets. In the dark, in the confusion, that had been more than enough. Javert had fallen from one more life.
The next life, his actions were less an attempt to manipulate events and far more a desperate struggle to keep innocents from harm and protect Monsieur le Maire's honour. The first months had given him a small attempt at hope, then that too had ended in disaster.
Javert's harsh and pre-emptive measures against Martel had driven the officer to ruin. Whether he would fall to corruption or dishonour women in the future, he had not yet acted when Javert's action forced him from his position.
Vengeful and with nothing to lose, the former policeman retaliated with fire. Arson took Javert's home, and though he was not inside it at the time, Martel still achieved the full measure of his revenge.
That life had ended two days later, when the remains of Monsieur le Maire were finally dug out of the ashes. Mind blank and hand steady, Javert had tasted the barrel of his gun and dove into the dark, eager to escape the clamour of his heart.
Upon waking, he found himself heartsick and worn down. He had appealed to Valjean himself for advice... No, truthfully, he had needed something much more fundamental from him: hope. An abyss of despair was at his feet, and wherever Javert turned, failure seemed to await him.
To his deep regret, his worries caused him to forget how differently time was seen by those who did not remember each day as one already lived, hear each word spoken as an echo, see each pebble overturned in the light of tomorrow and yesterday at once. For Javert, it was too familiar: each sound and sight and scent and storm and dawn and the tolling of every bell, ringing and ringing in his soul until he knew not if he was awake or asleep, mad or damned or blessed, or anything at all. He knew only that he was in Montreuil-sur-Mer and Montreuil-sur-Mer had seeped into the depths of his soul and soon, nothing would be left of Javert.
But what was for him the unchangeable truth, was nothing but madness and conjecture for those living in proper time.
At three months into their acquaintance, he could no longer hide his agony. Monsieur le Maire, for all his polite words and gentle air, did not yet see Javert as anything but the hunting wolf waiting to drag him back to hell. He listened, but he did not hear. Madeleine's smile grew ever more strained until the Inspector broke off and walked flustered into the night, still lacking hope.
When dawn came, Valjean escaped, swift as a shadow and merciless as death.
It took a month to hunt him down, and when he had, Javert could only wish he'd chosen the path of the razor again. In the night, in their struggle, they had tumbled together from a bridge. Before his head smashed upon the rocks, the stone became the Seine and the moment stretched eternal, and he feared that he had inadvertently doomed Valjean to his own cursed fate.
Plagued by guilt, he withdrew from Monsieur le Maire in the next life. He had even considered trying to drown himself in the bottle when his duty was not enough. Laudanum he had already tasted; why not also the gin which kept the whores making merry throughout each bitter night?
What kept him in sobriety, hard to endure as it was, was the thought of one who would suffer while they drowned themselves, the whore and policeman alike; a memory of chilblains on small hands, of gaunt cheeks and listless eyes, looking at the world with jealousy and hunger.
First, he must find the girl, Javert told himself, then he could waste as many lives as he wanted. No, no, first he must save the mother, if it was not already too late. Then the girl, then the bottle, oblivion until the river took him again...
But like the Sisyphus he was, each step he took only made the mountain before him grow. The Thénardiers were not intimidated by a tired policeman and the woman followed when he brought back child. She harassed Fantine, tried to pressure her for more money and attempted to take what little she had left.
Javert's hatred for the Thénardier couple was growing deeper with each passing life. When he saw what was happening, his temper flared to life and he woke enough to drive the pest away. Now, Fantine was twice as grateful, and no more a fool than that she noticed how he suffered from some hidden ill.
She pulled him along when she took walks with Cosette, she complained and gossiped and laughed about the factory, and she never let him forget that only his intervention had saved both her daughter and herself.
"So tell me this then..." Fantine said one afternoon when he could not bother to make the pretence of hope. "Whose daughter are you willing to doom for your indulgences, Inspector?"
"None," he had answered, pride stung even through his armour of fatigue, "for I will continue to do my duty until I am lying in my grave."
Her huff had been astonishingly eloquent, considering the shortness of the sound itself. "Oh? Such words I would expect from the Inspector who rode to Montfermeil for a destitute woman's child, perhaps, but not from the man who doesn't even bother to take up his post when our most esteemed citizen is robbed while sleeping peacefully."
"What are you talking about?" Javert asked, lifting his eyes from the muddy road to look straight at her.
Fantine smirked, her one missing tooth seeming to echo her words in silent accusation. She leaned back on the bench they had silently made their own during these walks, and directed a far gentler smile at Cosette playing at her feet. When she spoke again, she held a most superior tone.
"So our dear Inspector has not heard? Tssk, I fear he will not need the spirits he keeps circling like a young buck with a twitchy doe, for his senses are already dull and drowning."
"State your meaning clearly, woman. I certainly have no need for your mockery today."
"Well, if you are awake again, I suppose I have nothing better to do than tell you; it is not as if anyone else will gossip with an ugly old hen like myself," she said, the gap-toothed grin so much more bitter this time. "Monsieur Madeleine did not come to the factory this morning, and, Inspector, I'm certain even you have noticed that few things keep him away from his duties? Why, he almost reminds me of a man of the law I heard spoken of once..."
Javert growled, and Cosette made her puppet shriek in response to it, before they both hid behind her mother's skirts. Proving herself a stalwart and wise choice of retreat, Fantine continued without noticeable worry.
"When the foreman sent a runner to our dear mayor's house, of course every tongue in the hall started to wag. But when the boy returned and said that the Mayor had fainted dead away and that the doctor was called -"
"What?"
Her hand, with strength belying it's thinness, kept a firm grip on the edge of Javert's coat. "Why, the roof could have fallen, and we would scarce have noticed. It was utter chaos, and the foreman himself rode off on a cart horse, and so he missed it when Monsieur Madeleine appeared in the factory!"
"He was up?" As Fantine nodded, he managed to take his seat again. "Well, what had happened?"
"You must first understand, my good Inspector, how the scene looked! Imagine," she spread her hands wide, "the entire factory at a standstill, with nothing but fears and rumours to hold us in our place! And then Monsieur le Maire storms in, with his coat buttoned wrong and his cravat left at home, and for a moment I thought that the roof was actually falling!"
"But what had happened?" Javert asked, almost reaching out to grab her by the bony shoulders and shake the truth out of her. "Tell me, damn you!"
Fantine clasped her hands together and her voice grew less elated as she finished her tale. "Patience, please, for I am near the end. Come, Cosette, sit with me - quick now, or I fear the Inspector shall have a fit. Monsieur Madeleine, he stumbles in and they flock about him, all the old ladies and young maids, but he pushes them away, climbs the stairs and do you know? For a moment he looked so lost I thought he might weep, and I recalled that I had seen a man with similar eyes only the day before. But, I see you are impatient, so let me continue. This he asks us: He says, nay, he pleads that if anyone has a word or a whisper, the mere hint of an inkling about where his precious silver set has disappeared to, he will press them to his bosom and shower them in gold. But," she lowered her voice to a conspirational whisper, "we must not, for the love of sweet Jesus himself, not speak a word of this silver to the police, for it is his most treasured heirloom. And he fears that the thieves will panic and melt it down if they smell hunters circling. And that, says our dear Monsieur Madeleine, would be an even greater tragedy than never regaining the treasure for himself. So we all swore not to speak to the law of this horrible crime, and to ask around, to speak to our husbands and brothers; well, those that had any would. But for those who didn't, do you know what I thought we should do instead, ma petite?" she said and poked Cosette at the nose.
Her daughter shook her head, captivated by the tale. When Fantine bent down to whisper in her ear, Cosette's grip tightened around her doll, and she let out an excited squeak.
"I thought," Fantine whispered, "that since I had no brother and no husband, but I did have a dear friend who only pretended to be a policeman, when he was in truth a lost knight..."
"Oh! Oh, is it my knight?"
"Indeed, my dearest, and we both see how he flounders since the Thénardragon was vanquished, yes?" Cosette nodded, and Fantine stroked her hair, fond gaze aimed towards Javert's disappearing back, as he hurried to do his duty. "Well, there you have it, my treasure. Our Inspecteur Chevalier brought you back to me, and drove off the dragon, so I knew that he needed to hear about Monsieur Madeleine's lost silver. Now he will not rest until he has found this treasure, too."
If Javert had heard those words, he might have scoffed and sworn, though perhaps he would not have cared to expose himself to Fantine's mocking after all. For he could not deny that he hardly slept nor ate until four days later, when he knocked on Monsieur le Maire's door and handed him a large sack of silver. The two candlesticks he had wrapped separately in his own coat, and he could not say what gave him more pleasure: to watch Monsieur Madeleine unwrap the blue bundle and lift them out with the reverence offered only to holy relics and sheer Venetian glass, or to tell the long tale of how he had learned of their importance, while Jean Valjean sat opposite him and listened to his confession without a hint of fear or censure in his eyes.
Though he did not find the solution to his problem in that life, Javert went easy into the night when Fate judged his attempt and sent him to his death. When he next awoke, he felt barely weighted down by the years and hope had filled him anew.
As if he had before been stumbling blind through a darkened room led only by a torn map and someone had suddenly taken him by the hand and led him out into the sun, events in the life after flowed smoother.
Knowing and approving of Fantine's sharp tongue, he spoke to the mayor the day after she had been fired. With the authority of Monsieur Madeleine backing her and an officer of law at her side, Fantine went to bring her daughter home. It had been an impressive display; Javert needed only to bare his teeth and rest a light hand on his rapier, while her words did a fair job of flaying even the Thénardiers' hardened hides.
Javert's friendship with a fallen factory girl, and his uncovering of a smuggling plot reaching high into the bourgeois layers of the town, did not make him popular among the upper classes. Despite this, Monsieur le Maire seemed to find amusement in his company. After they together brought about both a greatly improved poorhouse and set the foundation for a far-reaching sanitation project, he even declared him a trusted advisor. It earned Javert both scorn and jealousy, but elevated him in the eyes of his superiors in Paris.
It was thus from the high peaks in the hierarchy of Law that Javert received the carefully-worded warning which boiled down to this: Monsieur Madeleine's odd behaviour during the Valjean-Champmathieu affair had caused unfriendly eyes to start looking through his past.
And there, at the peak of success, he'd stumbled again.
They'd had a terrible row. Though the admission burned like acid, Javert knew that his actions had been cause, his own thoughtless words the origin of a great rift between them.
Before the night was ended, both Javert and Valjean spoke words meant to tear and maim. At that point in their friendship, they'd known far too well where to aim to draw blood from each other. If his own daggers were thrown in fear and, perhaps, a lingering hopelessness, he could only assume that Valjean's stemmed from old memories of flight and the sorrow of never seeing his work finished.
But truth was this: Javert had brought the message with more cheer than was warranted, his behaviour easy to interpret as sadistic glee.
When Valjean replied in understandable anger to the messenger asking him to close this chapter of his life, Javert had answered with all the bitterness of purgatory in his words. After that evening, they had not exchanged another word in private again, the polite phrases of society ringing hollow and cold when they could not avoid uttering them.
Monsieur le Maire left, nevertheless. He did not sneak out as a thief in the night but departed as an elderly man seeking a more restful life. He left behind a flourishing town with the dream of a better future planted.
In a well-kept grave, rested the lowly factory worker whom the mayor had befriended. Town gossip knew he had cherished the young woman almost as a daughter, and nobody wondered overlong that the mayor brought Fantine's child with him, even if she was of lowest birth.
With his political influence fading fast, and only Montreuil-sur-Mer remembering and loving him for the lessons of hope he had taught, Monsieur Madeleine's enemies turned their eyes to more threatening prospects. His past remained buried; he was forgotten.
As for Javert, he remained in the town until he received orders to transfer to Paris, a steady if dour presence. To some of the citizens, it seemed as if the Inspector was a monument raised in the mayor's honour, there to remind those grown too fond of gleaming gold that mercy and justice sown together could raise a crop far richer than anything born from greed.
Now, with ten years of this life behind him, Javert stood trembling in the dark, his soul torn between wildest hope and animal fear.
"Lord above," he whispered, eyes staring into the cycles of the past while his hand slowly, slowly pressed down on the creaking handle, "have mercy on this lost soul. Have patience with my mistakes, and grant me a star to follow, for I have long been floundering in the dark. Please, Lord, forgive me my trespasses, and allow me this step towards your light."
The sky that met him was endless and deep, the sentinels of eternity shining down on his face as he walked outside and beheld the majesty of Notre Dame beneath the stars.
Out there, Valjean was waiting, that last quarrel between them as bitter as the river of death. But he had been given a taste of hope, and so Javert stepped up to the edge and looked down without fear.
"Let me find him, my Lord, please let me not fall without making amends..." And then he closed his eyes, a tired smile playing on his lips. "For he swore to free me from my chains, if not in this life, than the next and so I too must swear: to follow without rest, until we might both keep our promises before God."
That Jean Valjean was still in Paris, Javert did not doubt. If he could not abandon the city even when the law had been searching for him with punishment in mind, he'd surely remain in it now. He must have built himself a new alias, since there remained no trace of Monsieur Madeleine beyond fond whispers back in Montreuil-sur-Mer.
During the first months after he had left the town, 'Madeleine' had travelled through southern France with his new ward. He had issued instructions to his man concerning the sale of the remaining factories, and through encouraging letters, kept the civic projects going until the new leaders of the town became secure in their positions.
Even Javert had received one short note, passed on through the mayor's lawyer a few days before the closing sale. It formally asked for his continual support regarding the rebuild of the poorhouse. The carefully impersonal language and elegant, but empty, words of farewell stung worse than no contact at all. Javert, in turn, answered with a one-word missive. Then, in a fit of rue, he had personally gone to each of the magistrates involved and spoken for the matter with as much eloquence as he possessed.
After all his businesses and belongings were sold off, M. Madeleine made his permanent residence in Paris. His steady stream of letters to Montreuil-sur-Mer slowed, became a trickle. The frequent missives with advice turned into rare letters of encouragement. As the years passed, they became season's greetings with no return address.
To the best of Javert's knowledge, the last citizens of Montreuil-sur-Mer had lost contact with their old mayor approximately three years after Valjean moved away, though he had his suspicions regarding the nuns at the hospital, who in turn refused to tell. His inquiries within the force had only confirmed his suspicion: M. Madeleine was gone and Jean Valjean had reinvented himself into another man.
Javert made several visits to the area around the Parisian convent where he had once lost Valjean, in that first, distant life. While he did receive the answer to one old question upon recognizing the convent gardener, he came no closer to finding his quarry.
He kept close watch on the calendar which brought him ever nearer June of 1832. As spring blossomed, Javert had almost resigned himself to not finding Valjean until the night of the barricades, when he would doubtlessly be shot by friendly fire or something equally ignoble. That said, he found it hard to quench all optimism, for had he not survived the first time despite much worse circumstances? Perhaps, somehow, fate would let him go free now that he had brought all the players out of Montreuil-sur-Mer.
Until that night of judgement, he intended to spend every free moment walking through the streets and narrow alleys of Paris, gazing at society in all its filth and beauty. True, he was keeping an eye out for Valjean, but he would not deny the simple joy he felt in drinking in a thousand new sights wherever he turned. The world had changed, was changing each day, and every soul around him carried a new story waiting to be discovered! Javert imagined that he might spend five hundred years exploring Paris before once again finding himself condemned to an eternal déjà vu where every face and every corner was an echo of an echo, the repetition a nightmare in itself.
In Paris, there were so many new tales to hear and he who had never bothered to listen before, now wished to learn of them all.
There was pain and poverty around him; the same old ills that had plagued mankind since the Fall. He'd heard it all before, he saw it every day as a policeman. But there was more, a thousand clever solutions hidden among the alleys, a million little delights that glimmered like a rainbow breaking out from a drop of water pearling on a filthy window. Paris, a world of its own, surely a world grand enough to shelter him from tedium!
It was this thought, of how many lifetimes he might spend in this swarming hive of humanity, learning to read its moods and secrets, that gave him comfort while summer broke around him. Javert tried to resign himself in preparation for a new round coming, though he still fretted at the short time he would have to set things right with this Valjean.
On day in late May, fate proved that lenience could be found for sinners too. He would not be forced to try untangle all the threads of his life in one violent night - not if he could put the clues together in time.
During an investigation concerning a series of burglaries, Javert had reason to visit an address on Rue de Vaugirard. After he was finished questioning the witnesses, he decided to enjoy the sun and take lunch in the nearby Jardin de Luxembourg. Here, among the soothing green gardens, fate handed him his boon. He almost missed it at first, for his eyes slid over the young man walking past his bench until the youth passed him a third time.
The moment of recognition was no flash from above, for his memories of the names and faces of the rebellious youths were hazy; the years had been long and the people of Montreuil-sur-Mer had grown large in his mind. The way the students had scrambled his brains (with his own nightstick!) did nothing to clarify his memories of the night.
So it took until the third pass for his policeman's instincts to wake to life. When Javert took a proper look at the unhappy youth who stared at every bush and shadow as if they hid his life's savings, something rose out of the muddy past. The man was wearing the tricolour cockade, a look currently too common among the student set for Javert's tastes, and was dressed in worn clothes that still betrayed their original fine quality. Beyond that, there was only the vaguest familiarity about the worried tilt of the his mouth and the manner in which he walked, but Javert had learned to be sensitive to the throw of fate's dice. Today, he believed he heard them rattle at the passing of the youth.
Folding away the remains of his lunch, he put on his hat and caught up with the young man. "Pardon, Monsieur! You seem agitated. Might I be of assistance? I am Inspector Javert of the Paris police."
At first, the young man attempted to wave him off, clearly possessing his type's disdain for representatives of the law. But when his hand happened to brush against a white handkerchief sticking out of his pocket, his face took on a soppy look and he began to speak; no longer the rebel, but fully the lovelorn youth. He introduced himself as Marius Pontmercy and admitted that he was looking for a young woman, often seen in the park together with an older man whom he assumed to be her father.
Though his description was flowery, Javert could recognize enough of Cosette in it for his heart to begin to beat at a faster rhythm. Further questions regarding her father only strengthened his suspicions.
Unfortunately, Pontmercy had never learned the name of his target of admiration, nor had he ever managed to follow his intended. From the way he spoke, Javert gained the impression that he had attempted to once or twice, which may have contributed to Valjean no longer bringing Cosette for constitutionals in the park. The realization that Javert might well have run into Valjean himself, if it hadn't been for this foolish amateur, made him bite back several harsh words, but he forced himself to silence.
His reward was a description of how Cosette looked as a grown woman in this life, and a hint of where they were, or had been, living. Since the young man's thin excuse for hunting the girl was to return her lost handkerchief, Javert did promise to mention Pontmercy's name to her if he happened to run into the pair. Taking down Pontmercy's name and address and mentally assigning one of the police spies to keep an eye on him and his associates, he bade him farewell and returned to his duties.
He would return to the precinct, write his report, and update himself on the events in the Guérin case. And then... Inspector Javert's grin was wolfish enough that the two matrons who spotted it took a simultaneous step backwards, their full baskets colliding so that an apple fell into the gutter.
It had been long since he'd had an opportunity to properly hunt Jean Valjean. Though the experience was in no way new, it filled Javert with even more elation than he'd enjoyed at expanding his prison. Because Valjean, no matter how many times nor in what circumstances they collided, was never boring and never quite safe.
What a young man's love-fevered brain could not manage proved an easy task for the police. Yes, the local constable replied when Javert questioned him, there was a man and a girl matching that description living in the area, though he hadn't seen either of them for a while. No, neither was known to the law, but the constable recalled them well, since the man especially was a queer old type. He possessed considerable means but spent most of his time among the lowest of the low, giving alms and speaking of God's mercy. Once it had been established that he wasn't involved in fencing stolen goods, the law had ignored him.
Further investigations led Javert to an old priest at the church of St. Jacques du Haut Pas. Though halfway deaf, the priest was more than happy to ramble on about Monsieur Fabre, a gentleman of means who co-operated with the church to fund free schooling for the poorest children. His daughter added her own services by instructing the girls with their sums, being a surprisingly able and strict taskmaster for her age. She would also sometimes assist in scripture-readings with the children, if Javert understood the priest correctly. The girl was apparently also an angel of patience who could explain the Good Book so the lowest gamin could appreciate its message.
He received an address on Rue Plumet, along with the sad message that Monsieur Fabre had, for reasons of health, given up his engagements at the church for the summer. According to the priest, he had mention going on a journey in the hope that a change of air would revive him.
While Javert couldn't exactly fault a father for wanting to take his child away from the restless, cholera-stricken city, he had no wish to fall down dead because Valjean wasn't where he was supposed to be on the night of the barricades. As soon as he managed to extricate himself from the talkative old man, he set off for Rue Plumet no. 7 at his best speed.
A brisk walk later, the summer evening was falling around him when he knocked on Valjean's gate. The lack of answer didn't deter him. Javert only hammered louder until a sour woman appeared and told him off: Monsieur Fabre and his daughter had left for Provence this morning, and she'd appreciate him not making such a racket by the door!
Feeling as if he had watched his only lifeline come loose and be washed away by the stream, Javert muttered something about a promise from a young man and a handkerchief lost. To his eternal surprise, this mellowed the woman somewhat. Sensing her friendly interest, he hurried to tell her the whole story. Perhaps he made a minor exaggeration about the level of compassion he'd felt for Pontmercy's plight, but he felt it was forgiveable under the circumstances.
"Young love," she sighed, "so foolish, yet so sweet!" She patted her apron pocket until she found a small notebook and peered at it in the dim light of the street lamp. "I suppose an old soul such as myself shouldn't stand in the way, then... Lesse here..."
"Madame, do you have an address for Provence?" Javert asked, trying to stifle his excitement. He could still make it before the sixth of June!
"Provence? Oh, no, begging your pardon Monsieur, that was a little fib. Monsieur Fabre asked me to tell it, if any unsavoury elements came looking for him. Thought he had gone into debt, y'see. The dear man is so generous with his coin, I feared he had been cheated out of every last sou!"
A valid worry, Javert acknowledged while he swore high and low that he meant for no harm to come to the good Monsieur. Though, if his suspicions proved correct, the unsavoury elements Valjean had fled from were neither debtors nor the law, but the same lovesick boy whose story had just bought Javert this address.
Tipping his hat to Fate and the way it could pile a staggering tower of coincidences to build a bridge into the future, Javert left. In his white-knuckled hand, he carried a note containing the scribbled words Passage Saint-Sébastien 9.
With an eye to the darkening sky, he hailed a cab and took his seat, mind swirling with words and apologies that had gone unsaid for too long already.
When finally he arrived at the street, paid the cab, found the house, and threatened the doorkeeper to be let in, the note was crumpled to a sodden ball and all his plans were scattered to the wind. Javert no longer wanted to see this man who so disrupted his fate, but he could no more stop his hand from knocking than he could remain in the peace of death's embrace.
A moment of silence, the turning of a lock, and the door slid open.
"Val-" The word died in his throat and Javert grasped for the door frame before he fell down where he stood.
The young woman staring at him in puzzlement could not possibly be Fantine's daughter.
He had only observed Cosette as a grown woman for a few short moments, but even at the distance of decades he remembered a delicate, rosy-cheeked creature. The blonde girl he'd known in Montreuil-sur-Mer fit perfectly with that memory.
Whatever changes this life had wrought, it was impossible she'd grown into this dark-haired, statuesque woman!
"Who are you?" she asked, eyes narrowing in suspicion at his behaviour. "What do you want here?"
Javert floundered for words, before he managed to croak out the least suspicious question in his mind. "Are you Monsieur," his mind scrabbled for the appropriate pseudonym, "Fabre's daughter?"
She huffed and nodded once, a sharp little movement as if she challenged him to protest. "What business is that of yours?"
Speechless and lost, Javert shook his head and prepared to leave, if he could but make his legs obey him. What could he say, what could he do? Nothing, but begin his search all over with little hope of finding Valjean before the barricades rose in the night. Nothing, except fail and die once more.
Then an angel entered the hallway, a pale wisp of a girl who gazed upon him for a long moment, before her face bloomed in happy recognition. "Inspector Javert! Oh, it's been years!"
The darker girl frowned. "You know this man?"
"Of course I do," Cosette said, for this was her, from the top of her blond head down to the light steps with which she now came up to him, gently pushing the other girl aside. "Éponine, this is Inspector Javert, an old friend of both my mama and papa!"
"Éponine?" Javert took another look at the taller girl, at her carefully curled dark hair and the way her dress was cut to flatter, the deep teal colour embellishing her elegance. And his memory provided him with two images; a small, spoiled child in dark blue ruffles, and another... Not a young lady, that one, but a swarthy, sharp-tongued creature who spied for her father's gang and might well have gone other errands for him in the night. "Éponine Thénardier?"
Both girls blanched, and Éponine stepped back as if he'd slapped them.
"I'm not!" she protested, voice rising into shrillness as she continued, "I am not that man's daughter any more! And you shan't take me back!"
"No!" Cosette cried. "Trust me, Éponine, the Inspector would never do such a thing!"
"I'd rather cut my hand off than let it give anything to that innkeeper," Javert agreed. Belatedly realizing that he was speaking to two young ladies, he took off his hat and made an awkward bow.
"Please forgive me, mademoiselle, for upsetting you so. I merely came here to seek your father." He looked between the two again. "It was the surprise at meeting you, when I had expected only Mlle Cosette, which caused my rudeness. I know of your... former caretakers, and I would never attempt to force your return."
"Oh." Mollified and slightly embarrassed, Éponine stepped aside. "I should ask your pardon too, Monsieur. Papa always chides me for my suspicious ways."
"Please, come in, Inspector," Cosette added. "It is only us here at the moment, but papa is sure to return soon. Perhaps you could join us for dinner when he comes back?"
Alone at night, with two young ladies? Finding himself caught in the dilemma of appropriate behaviour, versus his fervent need to see Valjean as soon as possible, Javert tried to prevaricate.
This did not seem to amuse the ladies, because soon Éponine rolled her eyes, grabbed his arm and pulled him inside. Cosette sneaked behind him and closed the door, then turned to him with a sweet smile.
"I am so happy to see you again, Inspector! I remember when you used to come walking with mama and me. Please, you must tell me everything about Montreuil-sur-Mer, I have missed it so! Is the hospital finished? Does the baker behind the factory still make that wonderful brioche? And..." Her voice fell and the blue eyes seemed to gain a different sheen. "Does someone still care for mama's grave? I asked the Sisters to ensure that she would have pink carnations with her, for she loved them so."
Even if he had not felt the daggers of Éponine's glare, Javert knew how he ought to answer that. "I know the Sisters still speak fondly of you, Mlle Cosette. I have no doubt that they have kept their promise. Your mother is at rest, child, and she surely knows of your affection."
Cosette gave him a shaky smile, then excused herself to prepare some refreshments. Meanwhile, Éponine showed him into the sitting room.
"So, you're the inspector that used to work in the town where papa was mayor before?" she asked, her voice falling towards the familiar cadence of the street. Javert gave her a suspicious look, and she winked back at him, unrepentant. "The place we're not allowed to ask about and where they've never returned for a visit, even when Cosette mopes around the entire month in which her dear mama passed away?"
"I find myself with many questions as well, especially concerning as to how you ended up with this family," Javert retorted.
"Yes, sometimes I wonder that myself..." she said, shaking her head slowly. "I'm willing to trade tales?"
"It would be my pleasure to tell you," much like pulling teeth, but he needed to know. "Please; ladies first."
The look she gave him made it clear that he had fooled no one, but she seemed willing to take his word. Whatever tales Cosette had told of him, they could not have been too bad. "To make a long story short, papa thought he should let Cosette's foster parents know that Fantine had passed away."
"Why in the world would he bother with that?"
She shrugged. "He gets these fancies. I also don't think he understood the depravity of their character until he met them in person."
Recalling that the mayor had not been the one to bring Cosette back from the Thénardiers' this time, he nodded in agreement. For a man such as Valjean, no reports would convince him of another's irredeemable faults. The witness of his own eyes would scarcely be enough for that.
"Well, the inn was failing badly," she continued, "because the council had levied more taxes, and repairs needed to be made. I suspect all kinds of debts were due as well. Things were bad when papa arrived, so of course the old man tried his usual tricks."
"I'm not in the least surprised," Javert groused. "Let me guess, Monsieur Ma - Fabre, meekly paid up and then gave them twice the asked for amount for your sake?"
"No!" Éponine sounded almost as baffled as Javert would've been. "I still don't know how he did it, but I watched papa outwit them both, ignoring every trick and hook, not losing as much as a button. And then, after they had spoken for a while, and after she tried her wiles, and he had grumbled about Fantine's outstanding debts without earning a sou for it, he simply took out a thousand Francs. They froze, just staring at it, and he put a hand on my head and asked if they were willing to speak plain now. And they... She asked," Éponine swallowed thickly, "she asked if he had another one of those, in case they could procure one more girl. But he said that this, that I, was their daughter."
Her cheeks were stained red and her hands clenched tight on nothing; but she did not lie or try to distract him and Javert believed that he might understand her. By refusing to bow to past humiliations, by owning her shameful past, she was freeing herself from it.
She glared at him, daring Javert to condemn her with so much as a look, before she carried on.
"So he told papa, that for this, he'd better be prepared to pay at least the double if he wanted anything at all. And papa did, without speaking another word. Took out another bill and threw both on the table. Then he picked me up and carried me to a closed carriage and opened it and told me that my new sister was waiting inside and that we would go away now and never return."
"And I was, and we did," Cosette said, entering with the tea. She set it down on the table, and caressed Éponine's hair with obvious fondness before she sat down. "And so, we are sisters."
She too seemed prepared to challenge the Inspector if he insulted her sister in any way, but Cosette's eyes were far more expectant of his good behaviour than Éponine's scowl.
It became clear to Javert in that moment how much he'd missed during these five years. He had felt time lose all meaning and turn into a spiral of torment. It hadn't occurred to him that a few years could be enough for a child playing with dolls to grow into a young woman with clear strength of character.
"Then we have all, humble as man should be, one small claim on pride, for our achievements," Javert said and inclined his head towards Éponine. "For we have all distanced ourselves from our poor beginnings and risen to the company of lawful men and women."
"Inspector?" Cosette's eyebrows were almost at her hairline.
Words he had kept hidden for so long; strange, that their weight seemed so inconsequential now. Ah, but had not Valjean been the first person to whom he had admitted the truth of his heritage out of his own free will, and not just following his duty to a superior? Driven by rage he'd been then, but it had proven that revealing himself did not change who or what Javert was. Or what he could be...
Éponine was biting her lip, and he felt a strange kinship for this young girl who dared to defy the man of law by spilling open her old shame. She, too, had grown from the memory he held of her.
Javert spoke: "I will not try and console you, Mademoiselle, for the ones who bore you are crooks of the lowest kind. But my own origins are equally low. I was born inside a jail, my father a convict and my mother..." He shook his head; certain words he would not utter before these children. "I was given a few slim opportunities to rise, and I used them all." Though he had never acknowledged these opportunities in his first life, as if every gutter-rat was given even one chance to better themselves. "But it was my own choices, and my own efforts, that led me to where I am today."
He leaned back in the chair and watched the girls take it in. Cosette seemed surprised but - daughter of a factory worker, sister to a conman's child - she took it in stride. Éponine's reaction was stronger, her fists clenching and opening on air. He wondered why Valjean had not seen it fit to share his own humble beginnings to comfort the girl; had he then never told Cosette the truth in the first life either?
Perhaps sensing that her sister wished for the subject to change, Cosette served them tea. Then, she picked up the previous story. "We travelled on to Paris and began a new life as the Madeleine family. But only a few months later, papa began to look worried every time the post came in. And one day, when we were at school, a strange man came up and began asking me about papa and Éponine. Lucky for us, the Sisters chased him off, but when papa heard about it, he packed away all our things. We moved out after a week."
"To a new name, a new life," Javert guessed. "Fabre?"
"No, Leblanc. The men found us after a short time." Cosette patted Éponine's hand. "We moved once more. Taking the name Fabre, we lived in Lyon for one year, and when we returned to Paris, my sister and I only rarely went outside together."
Javert puzzled together the clues. "And that is why nobody speaks about Monsieur Fabre and his daughters. Although... It was you, Mlle Cosette, who taught the children about scripture? Yes, the Sisters always did praise you for that. Then, Mlle Éponine, it was you who assisted with the mathematics lessons?"
The girls nodded.
"If you found us through old Father Michél, I understand why you were confused," Éponine offered, her voice even and calm again. "He doesn't always make his counting examples much clearer."
Cosette hid a giggle at that.
Javert nodded, thoughtful. It was possible that the woman at Rue Plumet had spoken about daughters, with Javert too distracted to ask about it. That Pontmercy had never even mentioned a second girl... Then he recalled the blissfully stupid expression on the boy's face at the mere thought of Cosette's face. No, Valjean with another girl would be invisible to him.
"Now, Monsieur Inspector, I believe it was time for you to tell us about papa's past?"
"And Montreuil-sur-Mer," Cosette added.
Javert was about to distract them with the information that a student was mooning himself sick over Cosette back in the Jardin du Luxembourg, when sounds indicated that Valjean had returned.
Continue to the next part
Pairing: (eventually) Javert/Jean Valjean
Content notes: Groundhog Day / Time Loop, Violence, Temporary Character Death, Suicide, Purgatory
Rating: Mature
Acknowledgements: Beta by voksen and morgan, who have both done a massive job on SpaG, plot and history-check levels. My eternal thanks!
Start from the beginning (see full header and content notes here)
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Chapter four: The yoke easy, the burden never light
The sixteenth time
The hour was late. The grand building lay almost deserted when Javert for the first time in over forty years walked up the marble stairs of the Palais de Justice. The echoes of his steps flew like unruly souls through the empty rooms until they were swallowed by the shadows. Only a few oil lamps were kept lit throughout the night; small, flickering lights to guide the guards keeping watch in the heart of Law. As he reached higher and higher levels, the grand décor became stripped down, turned functional and sparse.
He walked through an office, the lock as easy to jiggle loose as he recalled; found the open entrance to the attics. Bending low to get through the doorway, he followed a cramped corridor until his fingers found the rougher texture of a small door that would, if his memory served, give him access to the roof.
Hand still upon the door, Javert paused.
When he'd finished his daily report and, instead of returning home, had sat at a spare desk and waited for silence to fall over the building, it had been the whisper of instinct that had made him remain. It was not an impulse he wished to examine; all he knew was that this had been a pilgrimage he had craved for years.
Now, in the muggy darkness, he could no more hide from the fear which had grown in him with every step upwards he'd taken... When he opened the door, would he see Paris? Would he be able to turn the corner and behold the graceful majesty of the Notre Dame bathed in moonlight... or would his eyes only find the familiar roofs of Montreuil-sur-Mer?
Was he slowly climbing out of purgatory or were all his hopes nothing but a cruel trick of hell?
After his disastrous attempt at manipulation, which had led to nothing but disgrace and prison, it had taken a further four deaths before he had managed to come forward. The accumulated lifetime counted almost twenty years spent struggling with the truth and his regrets. Then, finally, when he was beginning to succumb to despair, events had come together as they should and thrown him into the wild land of a future beyond the town.
In his current life, when Monsieur le Maire was forced to leave Montreuil-sur-Mer, he was not widely renounced. Nor did he leave Cosette to another for raising; they travelled away together. Behind them, they left Javert behind, alive and trembling on the border of the unknown; a state he had been in his entire first lifetime, but which was unfamiliar and disturbing to him now.
The lives before had been a string of painful failures, each undermining his endurance and bleeding vigour from him. Javert's second attempt at intrigue had failed much like the first, with scandal threatening both him and the mayor. He'd not waited for the end to catch them this time, had instead chosen the mercy of the straight-razor when the river began to call in his mind.
The third try had not involved the Thénardiers, but gone instead through the Magistrates at Champmathieu's trial. Javert re-discovered a painful truth here: to cast suspicion was easy, to stem the tide of ill-will far more difficult. One thing led to another, and once the investigation was under way, he began to hear the swell of the water.
The jailers who guarded a prison transport were not the best of shots, but they were well-armed and saw no need to spare their bullets. In the dark, in the confusion, that had been more than enough. Javert had fallen from one more life.
The next life, his actions were less an attempt to manipulate events and far more a desperate struggle to keep innocents from harm and protect Monsieur le Maire's honour. The first months had given him a small attempt at hope, then that too had ended in disaster.
Javert's harsh and pre-emptive measures against Martel had driven the officer to ruin. Whether he would fall to corruption or dishonour women in the future, he had not yet acted when Javert's action forced him from his position.
Vengeful and with nothing to lose, the former policeman retaliated with fire. Arson took Javert's home, and though he was not inside it at the time, Martel still achieved the full measure of his revenge.
That life had ended two days later, when the remains of Monsieur le Maire were finally dug out of the ashes. Mind blank and hand steady, Javert had tasted the barrel of his gun and dove into the dark, eager to escape the clamour of his heart.
Upon waking, he found himself heartsick and worn down. He had appealed to Valjean himself for advice... No, truthfully, he had needed something much more fundamental from him: hope. An abyss of despair was at his feet, and wherever Javert turned, failure seemed to await him.
To his deep regret, his worries caused him to forget how differently time was seen by those who did not remember each day as one already lived, hear each word spoken as an echo, see each pebble overturned in the light of tomorrow and yesterday at once. For Javert, it was too familiar: each sound and sight and scent and storm and dawn and the tolling of every bell, ringing and ringing in his soul until he knew not if he was awake or asleep, mad or damned or blessed, or anything at all. He knew only that he was in Montreuil-sur-Mer and Montreuil-sur-Mer had seeped into the depths of his soul and soon, nothing would be left of Javert.
But what was for him the unchangeable truth, was nothing but madness and conjecture for those living in proper time.
At three months into their acquaintance, he could no longer hide his agony. Monsieur le Maire, for all his polite words and gentle air, did not yet see Javert as anything but the hunting wolf waiting to drag him back to hell. He listened, but he did not hear. Madeleine's smile grew ever more strained until the Inspector broke off and walked flustered into the night, still lacking hope.
When dawn came, Valjean escaped, swift as a shadow and merciless as death.
It took a month to hunt him down, and when he had, Javert could only wish he'd chosen the path of the razor again. In the night, in their struggle, they had tumbled together from a bridge. Before his head smashed upon the rocks, the stone became the Seine and the moment stretched eternal, and he feared that he had inadvertently doomed Valjean to his own cursed fate.
Plagued by guilt, he withdrew from Monsieur le Maire in the next life. He had even considered trying to drown himself in the bottle when his duty was not enough. Laudanum he had already tasted; why not also the gin which kept the whores making merry throughout each bitter night?
What kept him in sobriety, hard to endure as it was, was the thought of one who would suffer while they drowned themselves, the whore and policeman alike; a memory of chilblains on small hands, of gaunt cheeks and listless eyes, looking at the world with jealousy and hunger.
First, he must find the girl, Javert told himself, then he could waste as many lives as he wanted. No, no, first he must save the mother, if it was not already too late. Then the girl, then the bottle, oblivion until the river took him again...
But like the Sisyphus he was, each step he took only made the mountain before him grow. The Thénardiers were not intimidated by a tired policeman and the woman followed when he brought back child. She harassed Fantine, tried to pressure her for more money and attempted to take what little she had left.
Javert's hatred for the Thénardier couple was growing deeper with each passing life. When he saw what was happening, his temper flared to life and he woke enough to drive the pest away. Now, Fantine was twice as grateful, and no more a fool than that she noticed how he suffered from some hidden ill.
She pulled him along when she took walks with Cosette, she complained and gossiped and laughed about the factory, and she never let him forget that only his intervention had saved both her daughter and herself.
"So tell me this then..." Fantine said one afternoon when he could not bother to make the pretence of hope. "Whose daughter are you willing to doom for your indulgences, Inspector?"
"None," he had answered, pride stung even through his armour of fatigue, "for I will continue to do my duty until I am lying in my grave."
Her huff had been astonishingly eloquent, considering the shortness of the sound itself. "Oh? Such words I would expect from the Inspector who rode to Montfermeil for a destitute woman's child, perhaps, but not from the man who doesn't even bother to take up his post when our most esteemed citizen is robbed while sleeping peacefully."
"What are you talking about?" Javert asked, lifting his eyes from the muddy road to look straight at her.
Fantine smirked, her one missing tooth seeming to echo her words in silent accusation. She leaned back on the bench they had silently made their own during these walks, and directed a far gentler smile at Cosette playing at her feet. When she spoke again, she held a most superior tone.
"So our dear Inspector has not heard? Tssk, I fear he will not need the spirits he keeps circling like a young buck with a twitchy doe, for his senses are already dull and drowning."
"State your meaning clearly, woman. I certainly have no need for your mockery today."
"Well, if you are awake again, I suppose I have nothing better to do than tell you; it is not as if anyone else will gossip with an ugly old hen like myself," she said, the gap-toothed grin so much more bitter this time. "Monsieur Madeleine did not come to the factory this morning, and, Inspector, I'm certain even you have noticed that few things keep him away from his duties? Why, he almost reminds me of a man of the law I heard spoken of once..."
Javert growled, and Cosette made her puppet shriek in response to it, before they both hid behind her mother's skirts. Proving herself a stalwart and wise choice of retreat, Fantine continued without noticeable worry.
"When the foreman sent a runner to our dear mayor's house, of course every tongue in the hall started to wag. But when the boy returned and said that the Mayor had fainted dead away and that the doctor was called -"
"What?"
Her hand, with strength belying it's thinness, kept a firm grip on the edge of Javert's coat. "Why, the roof could have fallen, and we would scarce have noticed. It was utter chaos, and the foreman himself rode off on a cart horse, and so he missed it when Monsieur Madeleine appeared in the factory!"
"He was up?" As Fantine nodded, he managed to take his seat again. "Well, what had happened?"
"You must first understand, my good Inspector, how the scene looked! Imagine," she spread her hands wide, "the entire factory at a standstill, with nothing but fears and rumours to hold us in our place! And then Monsieur le Maire storms in, with his coat buttoned wrong and his cravat left at home, and for a moment I thought that the roof was actually falling!"
"But what had happened?" Javert asked, almost reaching out to grab her by the bony shoulders and shake the truth out of her. "Tell me, damn you!"
Fantine clasped her hands together and her voice grew less elated as she finished her tale. "Patience, please, for I am near the end. Come, Cosette, sit with me - quick now, or I fear the Inspector shall have a fit. Monsieur Madeleine, he stumbles in and they flock about him, all the old ladies and young maids, but he pushes them away, climbs the stairs and do you know? For a moment he looked so lost I thought he might weep, and I recalled that I had seen a man with similar eyes only the day before. But, I see you are impatient, so let me continue. This he asks us: He says, nay, he pleads that if anyone has a word or a whisper, the mere hint of an inkling about where his precious silver set has disappeared to, he will press them to his bosom and shower them in gold. But," she lowered her voice to a conspirational whisper, "we must not, for the love of sweet Jesus himself, not speak a word of this silver to the police, for it is his most treasured heirloom. And he fears that the thieves will panic and melt it down if they smell hunters circling. And that, says our dear Monsieur Madeleine, would be an even greater tragedy than never regaining the treasure for himself. So we all swore not to speak to the law of this horrible crime, and to ask around, to speak to our husbands and brothers; well, those that had any would. But for those who didn't, do you know what I thought we should do instead, ma petite?" she said and poked Cosette at the nose.
Her daughter shook her head, captivated by the tale. When Fantine bent down to whisper in her ear, Cosette's grip tightened around her doll, and she let out an excited squeak.
"I thought," Fantine whispered, "that since I had no brother and no husband, but I did have a dear friend who only pretended to be a policeman, when he was in truth a lost knight..."
"Oh! Oh, is it my knight?"
"Indeed, my dearest, and we both see how he flounders since the Thénardragon was vanquished, yes?" Cosette nodded, and Fantine stroked her hair, fond gaze aimed towards Javert's disappearing back, as he hurried to do his duty. "Well, there you have it, my treasure. Our Inspecteur Chevalier brought you back to me, and drove off the dragon, so I knew that he needed to hear about Monsieur Madeleine's lost silver. Now he will not rest until he has found this treasure, too."
If Javert had heard those words, he might have scoffed and sworn, though perhaps he would not have cared to expose himself to Fantine's mocking after all. For he could not deny that he hardly slept nor ate until four days later, when he knocked on Monsieur le Maire's door and handed him a large sack of silver. The two candlesticks he had wrapped separately in his own coat, and he could not say what gave him more pleasure: to watch Monsieur Madeleine unwrap the blue bundle and lift them out with the reverence offered only to holy relics and sheer Venetian glass, or to tell the long tale of how he had learned of their importance, while Jean Valjean sat opposite him and listened to his confession without a hint of fear or censure in his eyes.
Though he did not find the solution to his problem in that life, Javert went easy into the night when Fate judged his attempt and sent him to his death. When he next awoke, he felt barely weighted down by the years and hope had filled him anew.
As if he had before been stumbling blind through a darkened room led only by a torn map and someone had suddenly taken him by the hand and led him out into the sun, events in the life after flowed smoother.
Knowing and approving of Fantine's sharp tongue, he spoke to the mayor the day after she had been fired. With the authority of Monsieur Madeleine backing her and an officer of law at her side, Fantine went to bring her daughter home. It had been an impressive display; Javert needed only to bare his teeth and rest a light hand on his rapier, while her words did a fair job of flaying even the Thénardiers' hardened hides.
Javert's friendship with a fallen factory girl, and his uncovering of a smuggling plot reaching high into the bourgeois layers of the town, did not make him popular among the upper classes. Despite this, Monsieur le Maire seemed to find amusement in his company. After they together brought about both a greatly improved poorhouse and set the foundation for a far-reaching sanitation project, he even declared him a trusted advisor. It earned Javert both scorn and jealousy, but elevated him in the eyes of his superiors in Paris.
It was thus from the high peaks in the hierarchy of Law that Javert received the carefully-worded warning which boiled down to this: Monsieur Madeleine's odd behaviour during the Valjean-Champmathieu affair had caused unfriendly eyes to start looking through his past.
And there, at the peak of success, he'd stumbled again.
They'd had a terrible row. Though the admission burned like acid, Javert knew that his actions had been cause, his own thoughtless words the origin of a great rift between them.
Before the night was ended, both Javert and Valjean spoke words meant to tear and maim. At that point in their friendship, they'd known far too well where to aim to draw blood from each other. If his own daggers were thrown in fear and, perhaps, a lingering hopelessness, he could only assume that Valjean's stemmed from old memories of flight and the sorrow of never seeing his work finished.
But truth was this: Javert had brought the message with more cheer than was warranted, his behaviour easy to interpret as sadistic glee.
When Valjean replied in understandable anger to the messenger asking him to close this chapter of his life, Javert had answered with all the bitterness of purgatory in his words. After that evening, they had not exchanged another word in private again, the polite phrases of society ringing hollow and cold when they could not avoid uttering them.
Monsieur le Maire left, nevertheless. He did not sneak out as a thief in the night but departed as an elderly man seeking a more restful life. He left behind a flourishing town with the dream of a better future planted.
In a well-kept grave, rested the lowly factory worker whom the mayor had befriended. Town gossip knew he had cherished the young woman almost as a daughter, and nobody wondered overlong that the mayor brought Fantine's child with him, even if she was of lowest birth.
With his political influence fading fast, and only Montreuil-sur-Mer remembering and loving him for the lessons of hope he had taught, Monsieur Madeleine's enemies turned their eyes to more threatening prospects. His past remained buried; he was forgotten.
As for Javert, he remained in the town until he received orders to transfer to Paris, a steady if dour presence. To some of the citizens, it seemed as if the Inspector was a monument raised in the mayor's honour, there to remind those grown too fond of gleaming gold that mercy and justice sown together could raise a crop far richer than anything born from greed.
Now, with ten years of this life behind him, Javert stood trembling in the dark, his soul torn between wildest hope and animal fear.
"Lord above," he whispered, eyes staring into the cycles of the past while his hand slowly, slowly pressed down on the creaking handle, "have mercy on this lost soul. Have patience with my mistakes, and grant me a star to follow, for I have long been floundering in the dark. Please, Lord, forgive me my trespasses, and allow me this step towards your light."
The sky that met him was endless and deep, the sentinels of eternity shining down on his face as he walked outside and beheld the majesty of Notre Dame beneath the stars.
Out there, Valjean was waiting, that last quarrel between them as bitter as the river of death. But he had been given a taste of hope, and so Javert stepped up to the edge and looked down without fear.
"Let me find him, my Lord, please let me not fall without making amends..." And then he closed his eyes, a tired smile playing on his lips. "For he swore to free me from my chains, if not in this life, than the next and so I too must swear: to follow without rest, until we might both keep our promises before God."
That Jean Valjean was still in Paris, Javert did not doubt. If he could not abandon the city even when the law had been searching for him with punishment in mind, he'd surely remain in it now. He must have built himself a new alias, since there remained no trace of Monsieur Madeleine beyond fond whispers back in Montreuil-sur-Mer.
During the first months after he had left the town, 'Madeleine' had travelled through southern France with his new ward. He had issued instructions to his man concerning the sale of the remaining factories, and through encouraging letters, kept the civic projects going until the new leaders of the town became secure in their positions.
Even Javert had received one short note, passed on through the mayor's lawyer a few days before the closing sale. It formally asked for his continual support regarding the rebuild of the poorhouse. The carefully impersonal language and elegant, but empty, words of farewell stung worse than no contact at all. Javert, in turn, answered with a one-word missive. Then, in a fit of rue, he had personally gone to each of the magistrates involved and spoken for the matter with as much eloquence as he possessed.
After all his businesses and belongings were sold off, M. Madeleine made his permanent residence in Paris. His steady stream of letters to Montreuil-sur-Mer slowed, became a trickle. The frequent missives with advice turned into rare letters of encouragement. As the years passed, they became season's greetings with no return address.
To the best of Javert's knowledge, the last citizens of Montreuil-sur-Mer had lost contact with their old mayor approximately three years after Valjean moved away, though he had his suspicions regarding the nuns at the hospital, who in turn refused to tell. His inquiries within the force had only confirmed his suspicion: M. Madeleine was gone and Jean Valjean had reinvented himself into another man.
Javert made several visits to the area around the Parisian convent where he had once lost Valjean, in that first, distant life. While he did receive the answer to one old question upon recognizing the convent gardener, he came no closer to finding his quarry.
He kept close watch on the calendar which brought him ever nearer June of 1832. As spring blossomed, Javert had almost resigned himself to not finding Valjean until the night of the barricades, when he would doubtlessly be shot by friendly fire or something equally ignoble. That said, he found it hard to quench all optimism, for had he not survived the first time despite much worse circumstances? Perhaps, somehow, fate would let him go free now that he had brought all the players out of Montreuil-sur-Mer.
Until that night of judgement, he intended to spend every free moment walking through the streets and narrow alleys of Paris, gazing at society in all its filth and beauty. True, he was keeping an eye out for Valjean, but he would not deny the simple joy he felt in drinking in a thousand new sights wherever he turned. The world had changed, was changing each day, and every soul around him carried a new story waiting to be discovered! Javert imagined that he might spend five hundred years exploring Paris before once again finding himself condemned to an eternal déjà vu where every face and every corner was an echo of an echo, the repetition a nightmare in itself.
In Paris, there were so many new tales to hear and he who had never bothered to listen before, now wished to learn of them all.
There was pain and poverty around him; the same old ills that had plagued mankind since the Fall. He'd heard it all before, he saw it every day as a policeman. But there was more, a thousand clever solutions hidden among the alleys, a million little delights that glimmered like a rainbow breaking out from a drop of water pearling on a filthy window. Paris, a world of its own, surely a world grand enough to shelter him from tedium!
It was this thought, of how many lifetimes he might spend in this swarming hive of humanity, learning to read its moods and secrets, that gave him comfort while summer broke around him. Javert tried to resign himself in preparation for a new round coming, though he still fretted at the short time he would have to set things right with this Valjean.
On day in late May, fate proved that lenience could be found for sinners too. He would not be forced to try untangle all the threads of his life in one violent night - not if he could put the clues together in time.
During an investigation concerning a series of burglaries, Javert had reason to visit an address on Rue de Vaugirard. After he was finished questioning the witnesses, he decided to enjoy the sun and take lunch in the nearby Jardin de Luxembourg. Here, among the soothing green gardens, fate handed him his boon. He almost missed it at first, for his eyes slid over the young man walking past his bench until the youth passed him a third time.
The moment of recognition was no flash from above, for his memories of the names and faces of the rebellious youths were hazy; the years had been long and the people of Montreuil-sur-Mer had grown large in his mind. The way the students had scrambled his brains (with his own nightstick!) did nothing to clarify his memories of the night.
So it took until the third pass for his policeman's instincts to wake to life. When Javert took a proper look at the unhappy youth who stared at every bush and shadow as if they hid his life's savings, something rose out of the muddy past. The man was wearing the tricolour cockade, a look currently too common among the student set for Javert's tastes, and was dressed in worn clothes that still betrayed their original fine quality. Beyond that, there was only the vaguest familiarity about the worried tilt of the his mouth and the manner in which he walked, but Javert had learned to be sensitive to the throw of fate's dice. Today, he believed he heard them rattle at the passing of the youth.
Folding away the remains of his lunch, he put on his hat and caught up with the young man. "Pardon, Monsieur! You seem agitated. Might I be of assistance? I am Inspector Javert of the Paris police."
At first, the young man attempted to wave him off, clearly possessing his type's disdain for representatives of the law. But when his hand happened to brush against a white handkerchief sticking out of his pocket, his face took on a soppy look and he began to speak; no longer the rebel, but fully the lovelorn youth. He introduced himself as Marius Pontmercy and admitted that he was looking for a young woman, often seen in the park together with an older man whom he assumed to be her father.
Though his description was flowery, Javert could recognize enough of Cosette in it for his heart to begin to beat at a faster rhythm. Further questions regarding her father only strengthened his suspicions.
Unfortunately, Pontmercy had never learned the name of his target of admiration, nor had he ever managed to follow his intended. From the way he spoke, Javert gained the impression that he had attempted to once or twice, which may have contributed to Valjean no longer bringing Cosette for constitutionals in the park. The realization that Javert might well have run into Valjean himself, if it hadn't been for this foolish amateur, made him bite back several harsh words, but he forced himself to silence.
His reward was a description of how Cosette looked as a grown woman in this life, and a hint of where they were, or had been, living. Since the young man's thin excuse for hunting the girl was to return her lost handkerchief, Javert did promise to mention Pontmercy's name to her if he happened to run into the pair. Taking down Pontmercy's name and address and mentally assigning one of the police spies to keep an eye on him and his associates, he bade him farewell and returned to his duties.
He would return to the precinct, write his report, and update himself on the events in the Guérin case. And then... Inspector Javert's grin was wolfish enough that the two matrons who spotted it took a simultaneous step backwards, their full baskets colliding so that an apple fell into the gutter.
It had been long since he'd had an opportunity to properly hunt Jean Valjean. Though the experience was in no way new, it filled Javert with even more elation than he'd enjoyed at expanding his prison. Because Valjean, no matter how many times nor in what circumstances they collided, was never boring and never quite safe.
What a young man's love-fevered brain could not manage proved an easy task for the police. Yes, the local constable replied when Javert questioned him, there was a man and a girl matching that description living in the area, though he hadn't seen either of them for a while. No, neither was known to the law, but the constable recalled them well, since the man especially was a queer old type. He possessed considerable means but spent most of his time among the lowest of the low, giving alms and speaking of God's mercy. Once it had been established that he wasn't involved in fencing stolen goods, the law had ignored him.
Further investigations led Javert to an old priest at the church of St. Jacques du Haut Pas. Though halfway deaf, the priest was more than happy to ramble on about Monsieur Fabre, a gentleman of means who co-operated with the church to fund free schooling for the poorest children. His daughter added her own services by instructing the girls with their sums, being a surprisingly able and strict taskmaster for her age. She would also sometimes assist in scripture-readings with the children, if Javert understood the priest correctly. The girl was apparently also an angel of patience who could explain the Good Book so the lowest gamin could appreciate its message.
He received an address on Rue Plumet, along with the sad message that Monsieur Fabre had, for reasons of health, given up his engagements at the church for the summer. According to the priest, he had mention going on a journey in the hope that a change of air would revive him.
While Javert couldn't exactly fault a father for wanting to take his child away from the restless, cholera-stricken city, he had no wish to fall down dead because Valjean wasn't where he was supposed to be on the night of the barricades. As soon as he managed to extricate himself from the talkative old man, he set off for Rue Plumet no. 7 at his best speed.
A brisk walk later, the summer evening was falling around him when he knocked on Valjean's gate. The lack of answer didn't deter him. Javert only hammered louder until a sour woman appeared and told him off: Monsieur Fabre and his daughter had left for Provence this morning, and she'd appreciate him not making such a racket by the door!
Feeling as if he had watched his only lifeline come loose and be washed away by the stream, Javert muttered something about a promise from a young man and a handkerchief lost. To his eternal surprise, this mellowed the woman somewhat. Sensing her friendly interest, he hurried to tell her the whole story. Perhaps he made a minor exaggeration about the level of compassion he'd felt for Pontmercy's plight, but he felt it was forgiveable under the circumstances.
"Young love," she sighed, "so foolish, yet so sweet!" She patted her apron pocket until she found a small notebook and peered at it in the dim light of the street lamp. "I suppose an old soul such as myself shouldn't stand in the way, then... Lesse here..."
"Madame, do you have an address for Provence?" Javert asked, trying to stifle his excitement. He could still make it before the sixth of June!
"Provence? Oh, no, begging your pardon Monsieur, that was a little fib. Monsieur Fabre asked me to tell it, if any unsavoury elements came looking for him. Thought he had gone into debt, y'see. The dear man is so generous with his coin, I feared he had been cheated out of every last sou!"
A valid worry, Javert acknowledged while he swore high and low that he meant for no harm to come to the good Monsieur. Though, if his suspicions proved correct, the unsavoury elements Valjean had fled from were neither debtors nor the law, but the same lovesick boy whose story had just bought Javert this address.
Tipping his hat to Fate and the way it could pile a staggering tower of coincidences to build a bridge into the future, Javert left. In his white-knuckled hand, he carried a note containing the scribbled words Passage Saint-Sébastien 9.
With an eye to the darkening sky, he hailed a cab and took his seat, mind swirling with words and apologies that had gone unsaid for too long already.
When finally he arrived at the street, paid the cab, found the house, and threatened the doorkeeper to be let in, the note was crumpled to a sodden ball and all his plans were scattered to the wind. Javert no longer wanted to see this man who so disrupted his fate, but he could no more stop his hand from knocking than he could remain in the peace of death's embrace.
A moment of silence, the turning of a lock, and the door slid open.
"Val-" The word died in his throat and Javert grasped for the door frame before he fell down where he stood.
The young woman staring at him in puzzlement could not possibly be Fantine's daughter.
He had only observed Cosette as a grown woman for a few short moments, but even at the distance of decades he remembered a delicate, rosy-cheeked creature. The blonde girl he'd known in Montreuil-sur-Mer fit perfectly with that memory.
Whatever changes this life had wrought, it was impossible she'd grown into this dark-haired, statuesque woman!
"Who are you?" she asked, eyes narrowing in suspicion at his behaviour. "What do you want here?"
Javert floundered for words, before he managed to croak out the least suspicious question in his mind. "Are you Monsieur," his mind scrabbled for the appropriate pseudonym, "Fabre's daughter?"
She huffed and nodded once, a sharp little movement as if she challenged him to protest. "What business is that of yours?"
Speechless and lost, Javert shook his head and prepared to leave, if he could but make his legs obey him. What could he say, what could he do? Nothing, but begin his search all over with little hope of finding Valjean before the barricades rose in the night. Nothing, except fail and die once more.
Then an angel entered the hallway, a pale wisp of a girl who gazed upon him for a long moment, before her face bloomed in happy recognition. "Inspector Javert! Oh, it's been years!"
The darker girl frowned. "You know this man?"
"Of course I do," Cosette said, for this was her, from the top of her blond head down to the light steps with which she now came up to him, gently pushing the other girl aside. "Éponine, this is Inspector Javert, an old friend of both my mama and papa!"
"Éponine?" Javert took another look at the taller girl, at her carefully curled dark hair and the way her dress was cut to flatter, the deep teal colour embellishing her elegance. And his memory provided him with two images; a small, spoiled child in dark blue ruffles, and another... Not a young lady, that one, but a swarthy, sharp-tongued creature who spied for her father's gang and might well have gone other errands for him in the night. "Éponine Thénardier?"
Both girls blanched, and Éponine stepped back as if he'd slapped them.
"I'm not!" she protested, voice rising into shrillness as she continued, "I am not that man's daughter any more! And you shan't take me back!"
"No!" Cosette cried. "Trust me, Éponine, the Inspector would never do such a thing!"
"I'd rather cut my hand off than let it give anything to that innkeeper," Javert agreed. Belatedly realizing that he was speaking to two young ladies, he took off his hat and made an awkward bow.
"Please forgive me, mademoiselle, for upsetting you so. I merely came here to seek your father." He looked between the two again. "It was the surprise at meeting you, when I had expected only Mlle Cosette, which caused my rudeness. I know of your... former caretakers, and I would never attempt to force your return."
"Oh." Mollified and slightly embarrassed, Éponine stepped aside. "I should ask your pardon too, Monsieur. Papa always chides me for my suspicious ways."
"Please, come in, Inspector," Cosette added. "It is only us here at the moment, but papa is sure to return soon. Perhaps you could join us for dinner when he comes back?"
Alone at night, with two young ladies? Finding himself caught in the dilemma of appropriate behaviour, versus his fervent need to see Valjean as soon as possible, Javert tried to prevaricate.
This did not seem to amuse the ladies, because soon Éponine rolled her eyes, grabbed his arm and pulled him inside. Cosette sneaked behind him and closed the door, then turned to him with a sweet smile.
"I am so happy to see you again, Inspector! I remember when you used to come walking with mama and me. Please, you must tell me everything about Montreuil-sur-Mer, I have missed it so! Is the hospital finished? Does the baker behind the factory still make that wonderful brioche? And..." Her voice fell and the blue eyes seemed to gain a different sheen. "Does someone still care for mama's grave? I asked the Sisters to ensure that she would have pink carnations with her, for she loved them so."
Even if he had not felt the daggers of Éponine's glare, Javert knew how he ought to answer that. "I know the Sisters still speak fondly of you, Mlle Cosette. I have no doubt that they have kept their promise. Your mother is at rest, child, and she surely knows of your affection."
Cosette gave him a shaky smile, then excused herself to prepare some refreshments. Meanwhile, Éponine showed him into the sitting room.
"So, you're the inspector that used to work in the town where papa was mayor before?" she asked, her voice falling towards the familiar cadence of the street. Javert gave her a suspicious look, and she winked back at him, unrepentant. "The place we're not allowed to ask about and where they've never returned for a visit, even when Cosette mopes around the entire month in which her dear mama passed away?"
"I find myself with many questions as well, especially concerning as to how you ended up with this family," Javert retorted.
"Yes, sometimes I wonder that myself..." she said, shaking her head slowly. "I'm willing to trade tales?"
"It would be my pleasure to tell you," much like pulling teeth, but he needed to know. "Please; ladies first."
The look she gave him made it clear that he had fooled no one, but she seemed willing to take his word. Whatever tales Cosette had told of him, they could not have been too bad. "To make a long story short, papa thought he should let Cosette's foster parents know that Fantine had passed away."
"Why in the world would he bother with that?"
She shrugged. "He gets these fancies. I also don't think he understood the depravity of their character until he met them in person."
Recalling that the mayor had not been the one to bring Cosette back from the Thénardiers' this time, he nodded in agreement. For a man such as Valjean, no reports would convince him of another's irredeemable faults. The witness of his own eyes would scarcely be enough for that.
"Well, the inn was failing badly," she continued, "because the council had levied more taxes, and repairs needed to be made. I suspect all kinds of debts were due as well. Things were bad when papa arrived, so of course the old man tried his usual tricks."
"I'm not in the least surprised," Javert groused. "Let me guess, Monsieur Ma - Fabre, meekly paid up and then gave them twice the asked for amount for your sake?"
"No!" Éponine sounded almost as baffled as Javert would've been. "I still don't know how he did it, but I watched papa outwit them both, ignoring every trick and hook, not losing as much as a button. And then, after they had spoken for a while, and after she tried her wiles, and he had grumbled about Fantine's outstanding debts without earning a sou for it, he simply took out a thousand Francs. They froze, just staring at it, and he put a hand on my head and asked if they were willing to speak plain now. And they... She asked," Éponine swallowed thickly, "she asked if he had another one of those, in case they could procure one more girl. But he said that this, that I, was their daughter."
Her cheeks were stained red and her hands clenched tight on nothing; but she did not lie or try to distract him and Javert believed that he might understand her. By refusing to bow to past humiliations, by owning her shameful past, she was freeing herself from it.
She glared at him, daring Javert to condemn her with so much as a look, before she carried on.
"So he told papa, that for this, he'd better be prepared to pay at least the double if he wanted anything at all. And papa did, without speaking another word. Took out another bill and threw both on the table. Then he picked me up and carried me to a closed carriage and opened it and told me that my new sister was waiting inside and that we would go away now and never return."
"And I was, and we did," Cosette said, entering with the tea. She set it down on the table, and caressed Éponine's hair with obvious fondness before she sat down. "And so, we are sisters."
She too seemed prepared to challenge the Inspector if he insulted her sister in any way, but Cosette's eyes were far more expectant of his good behaviour than Éponine's scowl.
It became clear to Javert in that moment how much he'd missed during these five years. He had felt time lose all meaning and turn into a spiral of torment. It hadn't occurred to him that a few years could be enough for a child playing with dolls to grow into a young woman with clear strength of character.
"Then we have all, humble as man should be, one small claim on pride, for our achievements," Javert said and inclined his head towards Éponine. "For we have all distanced ourselves from our poor beginnings and risen to the company of lawful men and women."
"Inspector?" Cosette's eyebrows were almost at her hairline.
Words he had kept hidden for so long; strange, that their weight seemed so inconsequential now. Ah, but had not Valjean been the first person to whom he had admitted the truth of his heritage out of his own free will, and not just following his duty to a superior? Driven by rage he'd been then, but it had proven that revealing himself did not change who or what Javert was. Or what he could be...
Éponine was biting her lip, and he felt a strange kinship for this young girl who dared to defy the man of law by spilling open her old shame. She, too, had grown from the memory he held of her.
Javert spoke: "I will not try and console you, Mademoiselle, for the ones who bore you are crooks of the lowest kind. But my own origins are equally low. I was born inside a jail, my father a convict and my mother..." He shook his head; certain words he would not utter before these children. "I was given a few slim opportunities to rise, and I used them all." Though he had never acknowledged these opportunities in his first life, as if every gutter-rat was given even one chance to better themselves. "But it was my own choices, and my own efforts, that led me to where I am today."
He leaned back in the chair and watched the girls take it in. Cosette seemed surprised but - daughter of a factory worker, sister to a conman's child - she took it in stride. Éponine's reaction was stronger, her fists clenching and opening on air. He wondered why Valjean had not seen it fit to share his own humble beginnings to comfort the girl; had he then never told Cosette the truth in the first life either?
Perhaps sensing that her sister wished for the subject to change, Cosette served them tea. Then, she picked up the previous story. "We travelled on to Paris and began a new life as the Madeleine family. But only a few months later, papa began to look worried every time the post came in. And one day, when we were at school, a strange man came up and began asking me about papa and Éponine. Lucky for us, the Sisters chased him off, but when papa heard about it, he packed away all our things. We moved out after a week."
"To a new name, a new life," Javert guessed. "Fabre?"
"No, Leblanc. The men found us after a short time." Cosette patted Éponine's hand. "We moved once more. Taking the name Fabre, we lived in Lyon for one year, and when we returned to Paris, my sister and I only rarely went outside together."
Javert puzzled together the clues. "And that is why nobody speaks about Monsieur Fabre and his daughters. Although... It was you, Mlle Cosette, who taught the children about scripture? Yes, the Sisters always did praise you for that. Then, Mlle Éponine, it was you who assisted with the mathematics lessons?"
The girls nodded.
"If you found us through old Father Michél, I understand why you were confused," Éponine offered, her voice even and calm again. "He doesn't always make his counting examples much clearer."
Cosette hid a giggle at that.
Javert nodded, thoughtful. It was possible that the woman at Rue Plumet had spoken about daughters, with Javert too distracted to ask about it. That Pontmercy had never even mentioned a second girl... Then he recalled the blissfully stupid expression on the boy's face at the mere thought of Cosette's face. No, Valjean with another girl would be invisible to him.
"Now, Monsieur Inspector, I believe it was time for you to tell us about papa's past?"
"And Montreuil-sur-Mer," Cosette added.
Javert was about to distract them with the information that a student was mooning himself sick over Cosette back in the Jardin du Luxembourg, when sounds indicated that Valjean had returned.
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