Chapter Text
Inspector Javert was a humble, yet passionate man.
His modesty manifested itself in ways of his private life. He lived in a rather small apartment in the Rue de l’Homme armée, a shelter much too small-sized for a man of his position. Even though his salary wasn’t that high, he would still be able to afford a much more spacious flat or even a small town house. But Javert was a man with no need for unnecessary belongings, and so he stayed with the home he had chosen when he had first arrived in the capital of France.
The apartment itself resembled the policeman’s simplicity.
There was a small kitchen, a table for him to eat, a simple sofa and a small TV, a book shelf with a lot of literature concerning the law and justice, and a bedroom with a simple wooden bed and a small cabinet. The whole flat was equipped in colors of white, brown, grey and black. The only area of excess in the Spartan surroundings was the inspector’s bureau. Here the case files piled up on both sides left and right of the chair, books and solved criminal cases spread out in front of a rather old laptop. Sometimes, the only ray of light in the whole apartment came from the desk light resting on the top right corner of the bureau.
As simple as Javert’s flat was, as simple was his private life.
Javert himself hated to call it free time or even spare time, because a man of the law never had even an hour off duty. Crime never slept and rarely did Javert. These believes of his interfered immensely with more private activities of the policeman.
Usually, he left his apartment early for work and returned late at night, only to eat a sparse meal, work a bit on his police reports and then go to bed. In the inspector’s first year in the Rue de l’Homme armée this behavior of his was the topic of the chit-chat of the apartment buildings’ women who stayed at home all day and had nothing else to do as to keep a watchful eye on the occupants of the house. This rather young man surely had a dark secret, the women gossiped. A secret affair, maybe. Surely, the inspector wasn’t the most handsome of men but still he held a certain attraction. This upright posture of his and the always neat and flawless appearance certainly made up for his lacking skills in small-talk. But as no evidence for an affair or any other secret was found, the women stopped gossiping and just thought of Javert’s life as the boring routine of a policeman.
Nevertheless, Javert was a passionate man, as had been noted before.
The one thing he was most passionate about was his job at the police of Paris. To keep the righteous people safe and fight the crime in the streets of the city was Javert’s determination, which he tried to fulfill rigorously and regardless of the consequences – be it on him or somebody else. He held high moral standards and applied these to everybody around him. Naturally, the people capable of committing a crime were, according to Javert, unable to live under these rules and were therefore detested by the stern policeman. Due to this, he didn’t hold any sympathy for them or their behavior and was under the impression that those people would never be able to change.
Said conviction of the inspector was the main reason for Javert’s latest discomfort, yes, one even dare to say anger and repulsion.
About half a year ago, a man and his daughter moved in the apartment opposite of his. Said man was Jean Valjean, an ex-convict, who Javert himself had arrested – his first big case in Paris. Valjean had partaken in a robbery but as his fellow delinquents had left him right at the crime scene, he had surrendered himself to Javert and confessed everything – including some insignificant details of why he had committed such a crime. Javert hadn’t followed the exact happenings of the life of Jean Valjean from them on; he only knew that he had been released from prison earlier than his sentence would have been due to good behavior. It had been quite a shock for Javert to see that exact man move into the apartment his apartment faced, let alone where that child suddenly came from.
This had awoken curiosity in the inspector and he had gotten Valjean’s file. It said that he had only served two and a half of his original five years in prison, then got on parole and soon adopted a girl called Cosette. Frowning over the fact that a freshly released thief was allowed to adopt a child in such a little amount of time, Javert got back to Cosette’s file. It said that her mother had died four years ago and her father disappeared and was nowhere to be found. This had left the girl an orphan at the age of three. As no close relative of her could be found, she went from one terrible foster home to another. Until Valjean appeared with a letter of the girl’s mother which said that it had been Fantine’s wish that Valjean adopted her girl. After a lot of lawsuits regarding child custody, the adoption was granted under strict requirements for Valjean to fulfill.
… And now they lived next door.
Javert thought his fate very cruel to play a joke like that one on him.