Chapter Text
The darkness was complete. It was the sepulchral moment which follows midnight. A ceiling of clouds concealed the stars. Not a single light burned in the houses of the city; no one was passing; all of the streets and quays which could be seen were deserted; Notre-Dame and the towers of the Court-House seemed features of the night. A street lantern reddened the margin of the quay. The outlines of the bridges lay shapeless in the mist one behind the other. Recent rains had swollen the river.
~
Javert watched the river flow past. The torrent of doubt that had writhed within him had quieted when he had turned away from the river earlier; when he finally laid down the pen and left the letter in the station-house, it had fallen silent.
He took off his hat and placed it on the edge of the quay. When he gazed again into the darkness of the roaring water beneath, he thought of how the inquiries into the events of the past day would lack his report on the insurgents – although they were now most probably all dead, so he supposed it would not matter – of how Henry would need to take over inquiries into the body that had been found in an alley near the Marché des Innocents, of how his landlord would have to empty his rooms of what little belongings he had amassed.
These were mundane thoughts, and a minute of staring into the black chasm beneath him wiped them from his mind once more. No, there was little use in worrying about such things when now he had cross-questioned himself and come to the conclusion that he, Javert, had been tried and found guilty; that the one Judge in this matter could not be trusted to sentence him to the penalty he so keenly felt he deserved; that in the absence of true judgment, it was up to him to deny the kinder sentence another man might accept: in short, that it was time to hand in his resignation, to deny this superior who in turn had denied him the clear path that he had sought to walk all of his life.
There were still two paths before him that he could see: one that led left to the station-house, one that led right to the Rue de l'Homme-Armé. But now, for the first time in his life, Javert abandoned the paths. Where they refused to go straight, he would have to make his own way forward.
He stepped onto the parapet. Below him hissed and groaned the abyss. He could not help but think of the fall: just one moment of weightlessness, then the impact of the cold water, and the violent current that would tear him away. Darkness rushed past the quays, an endless roar rising from the maelstrom; there waited an infinity that now opened its maw and would swallow him, and then--
“Javert!”
At the sound of the voice that was calling his name, Javert began to laugh; it was a terrible, rusty sound devoid of all humor.
Of course.
“Jean Valjean. What do you want?” He did not turn to face the man who had torn all certainty from him and left nothing but the call of the darkness below. The wind drowned his words; he did not care, he told himself, what did it matter. There was no need for conversation now; the things that needed to be said had been left in the station-house, carefully addressed to Monsieur le Préfet Henri Gisquet.
“Please, Javert, come down!”
Again that damned voice. Javert stood on the parapet, silent and still, and felt within him once more the agony of a living, beating heart that had learned too late the truth that damned him now. Had Valjean come to gloat?
No, he told himself as he listened to the water's roar. No, Valjean had released him; Valjean had not wanted his death. But what else could he want?
There was a hand now. It was gentle, and yet the touch was nearly unbearable as it wrapped around his wrist with the heaviness of iron. Javert felt a tremor run through him at the thought that Valjean might desire to leash him to life as punishment. But that was impossible. There was no way to live with this agony of doubt tearing him apart with every heartbeat, with his mind forced to think, and, in doing so, suffer when for so long it had contended itself with following the straightforward path laid out for him by law and duty.
There were no words that would come to him. In the end, he went with what the man deserved: “You are free,” Javert said, and then, shaking his head at himself, “Go. Please.”
Perhaps it was that last word that sealed his decision. Had he sunk so far that he would plead with this man now? Would Javert, irreproachable servant of the state, now cling to life, and beg a convict for forgiveness, plead for clemency from a criminal? For that was what Valjean still was.
Yet even at that thought, there was a greater pain in his chest, and once more he heard that strange voice shout, “Here is your savior!” He knew the truth of these words. At the same time, he could not live with such a truth; or rather, could not continue to be Javert in a world were such a truth existed, and since he knew nothing else but to be Javert, it seemed only right that Javert should end here, and with him the doubt and the agony of thought that was eating him alive from the inside.
“Javert! Please, step down and let us talk!” Valjean's voice held a hint of surprise, and a great amount of weariness. Again Javert thought of how the man had struggled beneath the weight of the corpse he had dragged from the sewers; how he had looked in the carriage, his face ghostly pale with exhaustion.
No: even Valjean, with his immense strength, would not be able to stop him. Fearing that the man would open his mouth again and speak ridiculous words of kindness or mercy, when the terrible truth Javert had come to understand was that he could not exist in such a world, he took that final step forward. The suddenness of it and the force of his weight was enough that his arm slipped out of Jean Valjean’s grasp, so that Javert’s final expression was a satisfied smile at having eluded this man who had eluded him for so long.
The water was very cold. The current closed its maw around him with a loud roar, and he was swallowed, dragged into the bowels of the river, tossed and turned and buffered about, pulled back and forth while he was blind and deaf and unable to think. He needed to breathe; his lungs screamed for air; there was nothing but dark, rushing water all around him. He did not even know where up and down was; and what did it matter, he thought, a stone in his chest where another had a heart, which now at least served to pull him down to where he belonged, what did it matter when his fate was already decided. He opened his mouth to breathe in the air that did not exist – and that was when he felt it. There was the impossible, strong grip of a hand closing around his wrist, and he struggled sluggishly when it seemed to him that that superior had sent some immense, fearsome angel to drag him upwards to the light, to face that heavenly mercy he had sought to escape.
#
He woke to the roar of the water still in his ears, his lungs aching as though he had breathed in fire instead of water. For a moment, he was too afraid to open his eyes, scared at last of the abyss into which he had so thoughtlessly flung himself. Where could his soul have awoken now but in the fires of Hell?
Then there was a touch at his brow, the gentle press of cool fingers, and he became aware of warmth against him. For long moments, he could do nothing but wheeze for air, and when at last he had managed to expel what water had remained in his burning lungs, his strength left him again, and he felt himself pulled against a warm chest once more.
“Javert,” a voice said, “Javert,” and he knew that voice well and wanted to laugh, for that voice did not belong in Gehenna. Something warm was wrapped around him. Almost, he thought that he felt the swaying of a carriage, and the sound of hoofbeats on the rough plaster of Paris. How strange that death should bring him such visions. Then his head sank forward, rested against a warm, smooth plane beneath which he could hear a familiar drum – or no, the tolling of a bell. Had they the bells of Notre-Dame in Hell? No, he then thought as he was dragged under by the dark waves once more. No, this was no bell. This was the heartbeat of Hell. How strange. It was not so frightening after all...
#
“Javert?”
There was that voice again. Would it never cease to hound him?
Javert groaned before he even opened his eyes; his body ached, and breathing hurt, as though his chest had been bludgeoned with hammers. He took another shallow breath – a band of hot, red iron seemed to constrict around him, and he opened his eyes with great difficulty.
“Are you awake?”
That was Jean Valjean. Javert frowned. Something seemed strange about the thought of looking up at Jean Valjean, but he was too exhausted and in too much pain to be able to follow that idea. And had that man not haunted him for most of his life? Perhaps it was no wonder he would be here – but where was here?
Light fell in through a window. He was in a bed. There was Jean Valjean, pale and weary and exhausted, in a chair next to his bed.
What a strange dream this was, Javert thought, and when Valjean took a small bottle from the bedside table and poured something onto a spoon, he accepted the concoction without protest. He hurt too much to talk, in any case. It was all he could do to breathe, for every breath he took came with red-hot pain, and it was impossible to find a position where he did not ache.
He coughed weakly; some of the liquid dripped down his chin, and he felt Valjean wipe it away.
How strange, he thought again, how very strange were his dreams today, and how strange that no one had ever told him that you would dream so much after death. Then he slipped back into unconsciousness, blessedly free from pain and strange visions of this saint who had followed him into Hell.
#
“Can you sit?”
Javert wanted to make a disgusted noise at the question, but when he tried to use his arms to push himself up, he found that they were too weak to hold him, and that his chest ached at the motion in a way that had become familiar – that band of burning iron constricting around him, stealing his breath. He did not make a sound, but Valjean was by his side anyway, as if that was the reaction he had anticipated, and carefully helped him up until Javert sat propped against the headboard with the help of several pillows.
“It will take time to heal,” Valjean said. “The doctor said you can have more laudanum in a while. Are you hungry?”
Javert did not speak for a moment. Everything hurt; he raised a hand to his forehead, vaguely surprised by how much of an effort this was. His skin was damp with sweat, and his fingers tried to curl into his whiskers with frustration in that old, familiar motion that was as natural as breathing – but breathing hurt now, in a way it had never hurt before, and his arms lacked the strength he had once taken for granted, so that he had to lower his hand with a soft, exhausted groan. His eyes slid towards the bottle on the bedside table. He remembered the taste of the tincture on his tongue, the cloying, blessedly pain-free sleep. He frowned as he tried to make sense of Valjean's words.
He remembered the laudanum. The doctor – did he remember a doctor? He was not certain. He was not certain of anything, he thought, and then looked up at Valjean as a strange helplessness filled him. It was very hard to think, but something was not right.
“Your ribs are hurt. The doctor said you might even have broken one. You cannot move, Javert, not until you have had time to heal. Do you understand?”
Javert blinked tiredly. Yes. That made sense. Injury. It was a common occasion in the life of a policeman, after all, and they had sent him to the barricade; he had expected injury or worse when he had hid among the students--
“The river,” he said suddenly, and then laughed, an ugly, croaking sound that did not last for more than a second before a burning pain in his chest made him stop. He bent over as much as he could, wheezing and coughing until his eyes filled with tears, and strong arms pushed him gently back against the pillows. When he opened his streaming eyes, Valjean was very close, looking at him with a worry that made something within him tighten even more until it seemed that his aching ribs were clenching around the hard and heavy stone that had come to fill his chest. Again he thought of how he had fallen and had been carried away by the current, and how this rock in his chest would have dragged him down – down where he belonged.
“Why.” Javert tried to breathe around this heaviness within him, but he found he could not. If he exhaled, his ribs ached with hot pain; if he tried to inhale, the cold rock in his chest expanded so that he could not fill his lungs with air, and he grabbed helplessly at the sheets and shook his head as his eyes began to fill with new tears. “Why,” he said again, and realized at last what it was he was asking. “Why, why did you do this; why did you save me, why, why--”
If he had been able to breathe, he might have felt shame at the spectacle he was making of himself; now there was only the dizziness of the lack of air, the pain of his broken ribs and the panic at this thing lodged deep inside his chest, this heavy weight he had sought to drown, for it had seemed impossible to live with it. But live he did, although he had not wanted to, and he clawed at his chest, encountered bandages, and wept with an anguish that had come over him with the dark force of the waves that had swallowed him. Only when Valjean's arms took hold of him to press his arms down into the bed instead did he at last cease to struggle. Valjean's face was so close that he could not help but see the man's own anguish through his tears.
“Why,” Javert begged, even when more laudanum coated his tongue with a bitter sweetness. Valjean's hands were heavy and strangely reassuring around his wrists until the dark waves of dreamless sleep pulled him away once more.
#
Breathing was easier today. The bandages around his chest were tight and clean, and he could push himself up to sit without too much trouble. His eyes lingered on the bottle that stood so innocently on the bedside table. It was half empty, and his brows drew together as he tried to make sense of the days that must have passed. Had it been days? He could not remember very much. He thought he remembered a stranger's voice and hands prodding at him. Had that been the doctor?
He breathed in carefully. There was a soreness still lingering, and when he tried to lean forward a little, it turned to discomfort, so that he unhappily relaxed back into the pillows with a frustrated sound.
The window was closed, but the curtain was pulled back, and light fell in. He stared at the sliver of cloudy sky for a long moment, then raised a hand to his aching head. It was still hard to think, but with every passing minute, his thoughts became a little clearer, and he could recall a little more. He still remembered very little of what had happened after the river – but he did remember the river: the coldness of the water, that terrifying, inhuman strength of the rapids that had pulled at him and had tossed him about from here to there like a child's toy, or a small ship lost in a storm.
And was that not what he had been? Was that not what he still was? Far in the distance, he could still hear the roar of his conscience, that voice which was his own, and which had spoken its judgment. He should have died. The rapids at that part of the river, between the Quai de la Mégisserie and the Quai aux Fleurs, were notorious; how many bodies had been fished out of the river a little further down through the last year alone?
In frustration, he pulled on his whiskers, and then frowned when he felt the roughness of his face. How long had he slept? It felt as though he had not shaved in a week.
"Jean Valjean," he said aloud, and felt unsettled by the sound of his own voice: a hoarse, weak croak it was, as though he was little more than a ghost. He coughed once, weakly, before he settled back into the pillows again at the sharp pain this still brought about.
His rib was broken; so that memory was true. "Javert, you fool," he said, frowning still at the way his tongue was strangely heavy in his mouth, and his lips dry. He was thirsty, he realized after another moment of long deliberation, and, blinking tiredly, found that there was a glass on the bedside table, next to the bottle of laudanum, and a carafe of water, as well as a bowl and a cloth.
He rubbed wearily at his forehead again. Had Valjean washed him?
The thought was unsettling, and despite the heavy blanket that covered him, he shivered as he imagined himself at the man's mercy.
Then there was the sound of footsteps, and the door slowly opened to admit Jean Valjean, followed by an elderly woman. Javert silently ground his teeth at the sight of this man. Here is your savior, that damned voice within him proclaimed once more, and viciously he thought back, Here is the savior that was neither wanted nor needed. Here is the martyr who should have drowned himself in those sewers, for all the good he has done me!
But when they looked at each other for the first time with full awareness since Javert had turned from him and let himself fall into the Seine, he said nothing of what was on his mind.
Valjean remained standing at the door, a smile slowly spreading over his face. The sight was so unusual and strangely terrifying for what it wrought within Javert that he remained silent even when Valjean came towards him.
"You are awake," Jean Valjean said, and Javert watched as he reached out to press his hand to his brow. For one long moment, they looked at each other. Javert still felt the dark maw of the irate waters of the Seine snapping at him, but Valjean's fingers were cool against his skin, and something about the touch felt strangely soothing, as though the sensation was a familiar one.
"No fever. Good," Valjean said, and the smile vanished as swiftly as it had come, so that Javert felt as though a cloud had moved in front of the sun, and shivered.
"Do you remember what happened? That you broke a rib?" Valjean pulled a chair close to sit by his side, and the woman who had followed him into the room came to take the basin and the wet cloth away.
"I will bring some soup, sir," she said. She spoke with a stammer, and did not look at him; Javert became aware once more of the cool air against his bare throat and tried to pull the blanket up.
"We will see if you can eat on your own. It would do you good to eat, Javert. You have slept for a long time." Valjean looked at him again. There was a heaviness in his gaze that seemed close to grief. The corpse of the boy he had dragged from the sewers, Javert thought suddenly. Valjean must have known him.
When the woman had left the room, Valjean helped to cover him with the blanket, and then stood to open the window wide and let in fresh air and the sounds of the streets.
"How long?" Javert asked and swallowed again. He tried to reach out for the glass of water, but found his hand trembling when he tried to lift it. Valjean returned to sit by his side and steady his hand, and although the cool water was a relief for his parched throat, Javert could not think of anything but how rough Valjean's hands were against his own, and how warm.
"What am I doing here, Valjean?" he asked more softly between gulps. "I remember... enough. The river."
Valjean remained silent until Javert had drunk his fill, and then helped him to return the glass to the table.
"I pulled you from the water, Javert. You were injured, and I did not know where you lived, so I brought you home."
Valjean closed his eyes for a moment, and a shadow passed over his face. When he looked at Javert again, the grief was more pronounced, and Javert wondered who that boy had been to cause such emotion. Valjean had not spoken of him when he had freed him at the barricade.
"I already gave you this address, so you need not fear that I will run, or that I would do you harm. You do not need to fear anything, do you understand? I am your prisoner still. I will come with you to the station-house when it is time. But first, you need to heal. Please let me know if there are letters you need me to send. It has been five days, Javert – I would have informed your superior, but--"
Now Valjean faltered, and despite his earlier insistence, Javert thought tiredly that there were a lot of things for him to fear. Here fate had granted him the chance to make up for that earlier aberration. Take this man, bring him before a judge; make it so that no one would ever know that moment of darkness that had taken hold of him, the guilt that had nearly swallowed him whole and made him abandon himself to the violence of the river...
Soundlessly, he began to laugh, then stopped when that still hurt. "My superior. Yes, yes, very good, Jean Valjean," he said. "Inform my superior! Ah, he will think me mad, and well he should! Let us not pretend that such a night never happened. I sought death; you took that away from me yet again. But before I returned to the quay, I had written a letter to the Préfet - for the good of the service, if you must know. Inform him, and have no fear; he will be quite convinced that I have gone mad, and would not believe a word I said about who you are even if I showed your scars."
At that moment, the woman returned. Valjean watched silently as she placed a bowl and a spoon on the bedside table, and then went out again. Neither of them spoke while she was in the room; once she was gone, Valjean reached out for the bowl, and then hesitated.
"Do you think you can manage?" he asked.
Javert made an ugly sound. "Will you just ignore what I said?"
"First you need to eat. Then... If you want, we can talk then. But there is not much to talk about. I will write letters, if you desire. Your superior; your landlord; whatever else you might wish."
Javert produced that horrible sound again that was as close to laughter as he could come without further injury to his ribs.
"You tell me I have nothing to fear from you? That is because you have already done the worst, Jean Valjean. You denied me the death that was mine at the barricade. You denied me again at the Seine. Thief! Yes, there; I shall say it again; we both know it is true! Thief! You stole my death when that was never your choice to make!"
There was rage within him all of a sudden; it had grown with his words until it had turned into a terrible ball of heat lodged there in his chest, where before the cold stone had sat. It burned within him now, and it was almost enough to combat the weakness of his limbs; almost, it was enough to make him contemplate the possibility of getting up and dressing and walking back all the way to the river, to drown himself in the very same spot in a fit of childish pique.
Instead, the exertion of those words was enough to make his hands tremble and the vision before him blur; his blood roared in his ears as loud as the river.
When he could see clearly again, he found himself pressed back into the cushions, a damp, cold cloth pressed to his brow, and Valjean so damnably close that he could see the lines around the man's eyes, the growth of white stubble on his chin, the way his lips paled as he pressed them together in worry.
Worry! Javert thought with a tinge of hysteria. This was still all wrong. Of all the men in the world, it was not Jean Valjean who should feel worry for him, and not Jean Valjean who should offer him a guest room and cool his brow, and write letters to his superior!
"Javert, this is where you are wrong. That was never your choice to make. Does not your life belong to God, the same way as mine? You may bring me to the station-house as soon as you can walk, but I tell you, do not think such a thing again. Your life is a gift you cannot reject; and if truly you are weary, then you must wait until such a time comes that God deems it right for it to end. It will come, Javert. I promise it will come, sooner than you have thought - much sooner than you have hoped.”
For a moment, Valjean fell still; Javert felt his hands tremble where they pressed the damp cloth to his brow. But then, after the moment had passed, Valjean continued as if nothing had happened.
"Will you give me your promise? You are a man of honor, I never doubted that."
"My promise? No," Javert said, and felt a petty satisfaction at the way Valjean's face twisted as though he had hurt him. "No, I will do no such thing. You have no right to make demands of me, Jean Valjean!"
Valjean returned the cloth to a wash basin, then dried his hands. For a long moment, he was silent; his gaze went towards the wall opposite of them, where now Javert saw a small copper crucifix hang, and Valjean looked at it for a long moment.
"I have that right, Javert. I purchased your life," he said at last, and when he looked at Javert once more, he had that look of a man who gazed at things beyond what can be seen in the here and now.
"You call me thief because I stole your life, but that is not right. I saved it twice, is that not true? Is not your life mine now? They gave it to me at the barricade; I spared you, but your life had been given into my keeping then. And at the river, you threw it away. Very well then, if you think this is a commodity you can abandon at will, some trinket you can throw into the water, then the fact that I dove into the water after you to pull out that trinket makes it mine. Is that not right?"
Javert found that he had no answer to that speech. He thrust his hand into his hair and pulled at the tangled strands with a sound of frustration, then curled his fingers into his whiskers, before he realized once more with a shudder of horror that he had not shaved for long days, and that to both Valjean as well as that woman servant, he must look monstrous: a beast, not unlike those he had been tasked to guard once.
"You annoy me!" he ground out at last, and Valjean gave him a small, careful smile.
"And so you have said before."
Javert snorted despite himself when the memory resurfaced. "How much you could have spared both of us had you shot me then," he said bitterly, and then, because he was tired and lost, and feeling unfairly abandoned by this world that had ceased to make sense: "Well, keep it then, if it pleases you; it makes no difference to me!"
Valjean gave him another grave look. "You will feel better once you have eaten," he said after a moment, and Javert - who still wanted to rage, or to grab Valjean's coat and pull him close and tell him that none of this, absolutely none of this, would change the fact that Javert had at last, and too late, realized that he had been wrong - could not bring himself to argue again.