Chapter Text
There followed a whole lifetime rich in smiles and sorrows alike. But of this life lived once we shall see only a few glimpses, and they read as such:
It is not easy to have one boy, one elderly housekeeper, two old men, two young ladies (three, counting the one who comes by each day and stays many nights), and three youngsters who were once students but are now patients, all sharing one apartment. Even less so, when the apartment has only six rooms, one of which is the kitchen and one the servant's chamber.
Cosette misses her ivory bed-cover, her solitude and the morning sun on the window. It is not that she minds sharing with her sister, but the room is dark: the woods and fabrics and even the paintings on the wall. The angles all feel too sharp; no wonder their tongues also turn sharp now and then. She hardly ever has the opportunity to play the piano, though she comforts herself that she will be able to play for Marius when he grows better. If he ever does...
Éponine misses her privacy, her late nights with the diary and a single candle for company, and she despairs that she'll again have order on her desk. At least, she comforts herself, she did not have to give up her room to her father and her bed to the sick ones; having Cosette share is familiar from before and not much of a hardship. Most of the time.
Valjean misses his leisurely breakfasts, only he and his daughters to share a peaceful morning. Now, there are too many to care for that his housekeeper could manage all on her own. Especially since two of them cannot yet leave their bed, not even to be carried to their families (and oh, how often he has asked about that; not yet, replies the doctor every time) and his one daughter frets and his other daughter hints that she would not mind moving back to Rue Plumet. But he dares not let either out of sight, not with Thénardier's men still out there. Cosette will not budge from Marius' side. He misses the freedom to sit in the living room and read all night, to take long, leisurely walks and know that he will not be missed until the next morning. His duties at home used to be light. Now there are patients to care for, doctors to placate, quarrels to mediate – and even with the larger bed acquired, Javert complains if he slips into it with too-cold feet.
Gavroche misses his friends; Enjolras and Combeferre and all the others, of course, but they are dead and gone now. He's fairly certain they're barricading the heavens already. No, his main worry is for the ones still here. Marius isn't supposed to throw up so often, nor should his forehead be furnace hot. Joly was dizzy for many days and still cries more than he smiles, which is wrong in so many ways Gavroche can't even count that far. Musichetta says he ought not be left alone for long . And Courfeyrac... for Courfeyrac's sake, he has even let the old man teach him how to properly pray.
Javert supposes he ought to miss his sanity, his privacy and his peace. There is work: He has been promoted, but all in all, it remains much the same. There is this strange new home: he has asked if he should not leave, to ease the overcrowding somewhat, but Valjean's fierce glare had him silenced on that matter (though he found other things fired up, with his friend so riled). There is his ultimate fate: He does not care to think of it, though he has saved a scrap of waxed paper with a broken seal, and handles it sometimes when the worries become difficult to hold at bay.
And there is this fragile joy glowing in his chest, so warm that he cares not a whit for privacy nor peace – and if that is not proof of his madness, what else could be?
At a wedding feast, there stands a bride glowing with youth and joy, and all who toast her fall at least a little in love. At her side stands a young groom, and though his face is fresh and his posture straight, long illness has carved shadows into his face. Sorrow still lingers in his eyes, extinguished only when he meets the gaze of his bride or touches the curve of her arm – then he, too, shines, for he is young and so filled with love that all sadness must retreat.
To watch this joy is a balm for two others, who have shared the same anguish and pain, though one might argue that their allotment was even greater. The first, though he has a lovely girl at his arm and though his fingers often dance over the burgeoning swell of her stomach, often finds himself turning to another, whose absence rends a hole in the air at his side. When he speaks, sometimes, he pauses – waiting for a word, a quip, a dear and familiar laugh – and his face sinks when it fails to come.
The smile of the girl with him fades in such moments too. Sorrow comes, after all, in as many shapes and colours as the grandness of love. They have both known and loved and mourned the same ill-fated man, and as the years will pass, they will remember him fondly together.
The other young man has a hand stained with ink; he has been writing recently. Further stains on the cuff of his sleeve reveal that this is a common occurrence. He seems thoughtful; speaks rarely, though his words are captivating once he does. His is also a face marked by long illness, and of a great loss nigh unbearable, though his rare smile hints that not even this has crushed his dreams. On his shirts, one sleeve remains always stained with ink, for he has begun to write down a great many things. His other sleeve dangles loose and empty unless he keeps it pinned up.
There is a young boy too, though he is not at the wedding feast today; he was washed, had his hair cut and combed, and was then put into new clothes. And he came to the church and he kissed the young bride and he shook the hand of the groom as an equal – for two men who have been through battle ought not be anything else to each other, whatever their ages might suggest.
But now he is running through the alleys, his new trousers getting spattered and torn, and he is happy. For though they will scold, and though they will force him to mend each hole himself, nobody shall ever cast him out, nor shall they make him less than he is meant to be.
He has tried to avoid the spot, but one night, duty leads him to the Pont au Change. There are criminals to apprehend; still Javert finds his steps slowing, while his hands linger on the stonework.
He gazes down into the depths, finally coming to a complete stop at the middle of the bridge. The Seine runs black, its depths as unfathomable as his future.
If he fears in this night, it is not his end – whatever shape that might take. It is not the dark silence of the grave, for though his life is often full of joy and his dreams only rarely full of terror, he still feels the age of decades weigh upon him. Some mornings he wakes with such a weight on his body that he fears he might shatter beneath the pressure before he has made it out of bed.
It is the mornings that he fears most; they have no lavender in the house and, though Valjean once asked if he wished to visit Montreuil again, he wishes never more to sleep near the salt-scented sea.
It will always be the mornings that he fears the most; it is always in the mornings that his losses are made achingly clear.
He looks into the depths of the river. He utters a short prayer, and when he opens his eyes again, he notices that the stars reflect on the dark surface.
It must be enough – there is nothing more to hold on to – and with that thought, he returns to his duty.
(He will still continue to avoid that bridge, that point, for the rest of his days; he will return there many a night.)
There is a man named Thénardier, though one will be forgiven for mistaking him for a devil in the dark. He has a wife carved from the same rock as he. Hard as flint are both their hearts, though not harder than that they can find pleasure in each other and entertainment in the misery of others. In many lifetimes, this pair have caused misfortune and always they escape unscathed from their deeds – though one might argue that possessing a heart so small and closed to all charity and grace is punishment enough, though its owner might well be blind before this truth.
In this life, when this man and his wife attempt to blackmail a young baron at his wedding feast, they are taught a new lesson: That the secrets in the baron's family are few, and the bonds of loyalty strong and tangled around many hearts.
They also learn that there are several policemen – otherwise so rare a sight among the revels of the bourgeois! – invited to the party, and that they were all too well-trained to leave their handcuffs at home.
The girl they once sold away looks at them with sad eyes when they are taken to the jail. But, though she recalls a warm lap and a funny, teasing song; though she has not denied the mother who used to spoil her (before she grew too old to be a puppet, before the money spent on her began to chafe) she also knows that the world can only offer chances and each soul must walk the road towards salvation on its own.
And, though it pains her heart, and she will write to them and keep them in her prayers, she does not speak up, nor does she seek their gaze. For Éponine knows too well that this pair have rejected all gentleness and every aspect of God, slaving only beneath the yoke of their greed.
He follows the suspect down the alleys, boots heavy on the paving stones. When Javert reaches the open square, heart beating wildly and lungs working hard, there is no sight of the man. Next to him Dubois and Lemarche crowd in, gasping for breath.
Their plan had been to surround the suspect and block all the little alleys. The younger men have run a longer stretch than he and they are all winded. Unfortunately, the more Javert searches, the more seems as if all that effort was wasted.
"Where to?" Dubois asks, looking at the alleys winding into the night. "Right, left, around the corner? Just say the word!" He winks at the Inspector, then, despite his winded breath flexes his knees and grins; here stands another who has learned to enjoy the lawful hunt.
"I do not –" Javert coughs, then realizes he is about to laugh and must make himself cough more to hide the queerness of his actions. "I don't know! I have absolutely no idea."
And he laughs anyway, and has never been more happy to be lost.
One daughter married away a year ago, now the other plans to travel. Jean Valjean thinks he ought to feel more sad, but the first daughter lives only a few streets away, visits often, and the second – oh, he has never seen his Éponine more happy! To begrudge her this seems ogre-like and cold, and so he wishes only that her journey is full of joy.
She will travel, as she has always dreamed, and she will learn so much. Towards Genève at first; there she has a friend from the convent waiting. The friend, made so many years ago, was kept through correspondence, with letters penned about books and music and, he suspects, troublesome old fathers. The girls, accompanied by an older brother, then plan to continue on to grand Rome, from there, through Paris, to their final goal of England. For years, Éponine has been interested in England and all the news that come from there. In her coffer she carries fine dresses of silk and lace, in her notebook and her mind she has all he knows about the trade of jet and beading; the money Valjean shared evenly, and the secrets of his trade he gave to the one most interested in numbers and materials. Now he only hopes she finds London as vibrant and welcoming as she has long dreamt it to be.
He suspects that he will worry more when she is underway; sweet Jesus knows that he worries already, whenever the newspaper mentions travellers distraught or robberies committed and dangerous political items which he does not wholly understand, for reading is still a labour and the world is too large for him to know perfectly... Where might a daughter be safe? How many ways are there for danger to swallow her before the father can arrive in time, to spirit a girl away and gift her with a better life?
Perhaps he ought to feel more heavy of heart already... but the apartment at Rue Plumet is sold, for there childhood lived and he knows his tendency to linger in memories. Better, then, to let it go, and leave his sorrows in those old rooms; to try, at least, to let each regret be carried away from him together with the furniture they sold.
Nowadays, it is the apartment on Rue de l'Homme-Armé that is full of life. There is Courfeyrac, their sombre lodger, with whom Valjean has spent many an evening in earnest debate. There is Gavroche; who for months seemed to contain all the joy and spirit of the remaining Friends, who was the source of their only smiles. He acts now as both young brother and son to Courfeyrac, and has taken to calling Valjean grand-père. It is an appellation that strangely makes him feel younger, when it should only remind him of his age.
Often they have visitors: Cosette and her Marius, of course, always welcome, always too soon to leave, even when they come for dinner at least once a week. Almost as common a sight are Joly, Musichetta and their little daughter. He delights in them, though on occasion he is also delighted that his daughters came to him at an older age.
Father Michél stops by now and then, his protégée there to support him. They have an energetic young priest at St. Jacques du Haut Pas now, with many ideas for the school. Only about half of them are possible to adopt, and that only once someone had created a budget and a time-plan, but his enthusiasm is encouraging.
They even have policemen at the door...
The first evening Valjean woke to their boots thumping up the stairs and heavy fists pounding at the door, he thought only of flight. He had roused Éponine and grabbed Gavroche; was halfway out through the kitchen entrance already when the actual quarry opened the front door and angrily demanded an explanation for being disturbed. The young officers fell over themselves to make apologies for spoiling the free evening of the Commandant, before launching into a long and complicated tale of woe – consisting mostly of conflicting jurisdictions and internal competition, if Valjean understood correctly.
These days, he usually rolls over and goes back to sleep. If the night is especially cold and the poor officers sound extra distressed, he might get up and prepare them a cup of tea.
(If the Commandant is particularly tired, he has on occasion shoved them out the door; he is still the first to startle awake at the sound of their steps, but no longer hesitates to reveal his strength.)
There is of course one more sharing his apartment. And, as much as he might love Gavroche, as happy as he is to see Courfeyrac learn to navigate the world in his new circumstances, as delightful as the thought of letters from Éponine are... This apartment would not feel peaceful, would not be right, without him in it. This new life – not father, not mayor, not repentant sinner nor hidden thief – would be so cold and stretch so lonely ahead of him that he barely dares imagine it. Would he cling, like a jealous miser, to his children? Would he let one go, but demand the other remain, and possibly earn the resentment of both? He does not know, he does not wish to imagine; and, if nightmares whisper of Jean Valjean's declining years being too empty and too grey, there is usually one nearby whose arms are protective and whose breath brings peace. If he is he not there at the waking, he will come home soon, and he will see the fear and recognize it well; his nights are not altogether peaceful either. Together, they chase the shadows away.
Together, they have a home.
In 1841, a book is published. It is some three-hundred pages thick and contains a critique of the legal system and execution of justice in France at the time.
Those who read it – and they are few, for it is quite dry, despite the occasional sharp sarcasms sprinkled on the pages – find the critique too harsh and the complaints overly detailed. Who cares that much about convicts' shoes or policemen's uniforms?
"We revised it so many times!" Javert complains after he has struggled through yet another negative review, glasses stuck fast upon his nose. "Make it proper, you said! Let them swallow the lesson with honey and not vinegar!" He sits at the kitchen table, as is their habit on early mornings, and when he thumps the table an empty coffee cup dances precariously near the edge.
"I believe that last piece advice was from Cosette." Valjean saves the cup, then takes the moment to fill it up. He bends over Javert's shoulder on his way back and glances through the review. "Hmm..."
He re-reads the lines praising, if faintly, the 'hints of subtle wit and rare moments of actual passion revealed, often appearing when this otherwise dull and boorish text pricks our conscience with an example hinting at the dark reality surrounding many aspects of our law'. After a moment of consideration, Valjean asks, with feigned nonchalance: "I don't suppose you have kept the original manuscript?"
"Of course I did," Javert says, already working his way down the next page of the newspaper, fingers near stabbing the lines of text. "You have no idea how long it took to write the blasted thing!"
Following his habit, Javert has been keeping up a low commentary while reading the news; most of his words are scathing, but, to Valjean's ears, also frightfully dear. He knows, too, from the reactions of several of their guests that even ears less tenderly tuned can enjoy Javert's uncensored opinion on the politics of the day... once they get over the shock.
He takes his seat again, wincing at the pull in his back, and then allows himself a moment to mull his idea over before he voices the suggestion. The coffee is good, bringing some clarity to his old mind and warming his cold limbs. He recalls again a spirited discussion between himself and Javert. They had forgotten their guests for a moment, and caused one poor woman to blush scarlet, before breaking into helpless laughter at their rather forthright tone; that had been the first and last time Marius invited business associates to dinner at his father-in-law's.
His decision is made and he clears his throat. "Perhaps we should consider an unabridged edition after all," he suggests. "I might even have one or two things to add myself... Though first, I shall have to write and ask Éponine's help."
"Oh?" Javert looks up, pulling up the glasses to his forehead where they perch unsteadily, and Valjean makes ready to save them once again. "In what particular way? She was the only one who did not feel we should edit down the manuscript so heavily before having it printed."
"Exactly," Valjean said, "but I was thinking more of this book she described to me recently. 'A Modest Proposal', I believe it was called. She wrote to me that it caused quite a fracas at its appearance on the British shelves. There were a few stylistic choices there which I believe might appeal to you..."
"Would you help me outside, my boy? The wind sounds pleasant tonight."
Gavroche takes the old man's arm and pulls him carefully from the chair. The wind is nice tonight, mild and carrying the scent of meadows and grass along. It has rained, so the air is fresh, though the summer warmth still lingers. It might rain again, but probably not until the morning.
"There we go," Gavroche says when they have reached the bench outside and a blanket is tucked around frail legs. "Good, yes?"
"Mhm," the old man nods, turning his head upwards. "It is good indeed... I had forgotten how bright the stars were. How beautiful they make the night." The voice, once so stern and decisive, has grown weaker with age; but it was softened by many other things before.
Gavroche glances up too; but no, the sky is still mostly overcast. Only the full moon shines through the veil of clouds. Not, he knows, that this matters. The old eyes gazing up to the stars have a veil drawn against the light and it has grown impenetrable in this last year.
"Are you feeling well, Inspector?" he tries, the title an old joke between them. "There are no stars out tonight."
"No, my boy," the old man says and the stern lines in his face gentle when he smiles. "Don't ever say that! The stars are always there, you see, keeping watch in the night. It is only us foolish mortals, who lose sight of them from time to time, who think ourselves lost in the lightless void..."
He sighs and his head falls back. "You should follow their light," he whispers, "though never make the mistake of trying to follow their path. It is a road too cold and lonely for the likes of us. We burn out too quickly in their night."
While he speaks, his voice is fading and Gavroche reaches slowly for his hand. He thinks that Marius would want to be here, and Cosette too, but he dares not go back to the cottage to wake them up. "I'm not gonna think I'm a star," he promises, "I've got my feet on the earth, I do!"
"I know," breathes the Inspector, and his face looks beyond age when his eyes fall shut. "And that is why you must live, while the dreamers walk ahead." He coughs, squeezes Gavroche's hand, and speaks once more. "May I follow them now, all the dreaming ones?"
"Yes," Gavroche promises, tears rising in his eyes, and he blinks them angrily away. "Absolutely; they're probably all waiting for you."
"I pray they might," the old man sighs, and he sounds so very tired. "I hope..."
"Say hello to Enjolras for me," he manages, but the answer never comes. Now Gavroche does not try stop his tears. It is better to cry them here, alone, before he goes to rouse the others. And he doesn't think the Inspector will tattle any longer, for all that he remained an old copper to the end.
The End