Chapter Text
Javert, as always, is in his room. It had been Cosette’s room once, before her marriage; but in the course of Javert’s occupation over the previous weeks--or has it been months, now?--it has become fully and unquestionably his own. It had become as such in the same way that a room might become a library once it was filled with books. And he never left.
At first it was of necessity, for he scarcely had the strength to leave his bed. Now it is a necessity of a different sort.
The window was shut, the curtains parted. Javert sat just to the side of them, where anyone walking the garden path outside could not have seen him and yet where he himself could still look out. Valjean had been kneeling in the beds of tomatoes for an hour or so before; he had only just finished washing the dirt from his hands. The knowledge that Javert watched him had made him uneasy, at first. He has long since grown used to it. His purpose here is not to scold.
“May I open the window?” Valjean says. Javert does not respond, nor even glance up at him, and so Valjean steps past him to loosen the latch and allow the breeze in. It smells of roses and herbs and dirt warmed from the sun. When he backs away there is a tension to Javert’s spine that had not existed even in his usual rigid posture, though whether it is from the scent of outside air or the closeness of a convict, Valjean does not dare to contemplate.
“It’s lovely out,” he says, pulling up a chair beside Javert’s. The pale indirect light from outside is a stark divide between them, Valjean in the light and Javert over the line of darkness. “Perhaps you would come to the market with me. It would be helpful to have an extra pair of hands.”
Javert does turn to look at him, then. Something plays across his expression that Valjean cannot quite make out in the dark. “You’ve managed before,” he says at last, toneless; and turns his gaze back to the now-empty garden.
“To the Luxemburg, then,” Valjean says, aware that he is reaching now. “You seem to enjoy looking on my garden, but this one puts it to shame. It is not so far that we would even have to hire a fiacre.”
This earns him a scoff. “Your garden is there, and so I look upon it. I do not care for plants one way or the other.”
“Then perhaps we might walk--”
“Valjean.” Javert turns to look at him again, and there is something of his old self in the glance now: a sharpness like a fishing spear, plunging deep and barbed. “I have no interest in any of these diversions. There is nothing you can tempt me with, so you may as well leave me.”
A low dull coal of anger kindles in Valjean’s chest at last. He stands, so quickly that he sees Javert tense, and pushes back both of the curtains to their fullest extent. When he turns back around Javert is blinking in the new light, raising a hand against it with a sour expression.
“For weeks you have haunted this room,” Valjean says, crossing his arms over his chest. “Coaxing you to eat in the kitchen has become a triumph; bringing you to the threshold of my door is unthinkable. Do you expect to live out the rest of your days here, in these four walls, staring out a window onto a view which gives you no pleasure?”
Javert has lowered his hands; he bares his teeth in an animal sneer. “I did not intend to have more days to live out. That was your decision, Jean Valjean.”
“Perhaps it was. And I will not beg your pardon for it.” Valjean returns to his chair. Javert’s eyes follow him now, no longer adrift on the plane of window glass. Perhaps his hunter’s instinct has stirred. “If this decision too must fall to me, then I will make you. You must go out.”
“Very well, then. I shall.”
Valjean blinks. Surely, after all this time, it has not been this easy. “...You shall?”
“Yes.” Javert stands, and without another word heads for the door. Valjean gapes at his retreating back for as long as it takes him to step into the hall before hurrying after him.
“Javert, you cannot go out like that--” The man is only in his shirt sleeves, and yet he spares Valjean only a disdaining glance as he walks down the hallway.
“And why not?” he says. He is almost at the front parlor now. “It is not so far to the riverbank. I imagine I would not be stopped in the time it would take to walk there--”
“ Enough .” They have reached the front door; Javert is reaching for the handle. Valjean seizes his arm before he can complete the motion, turning him forcefully from his present course until they are face to face once more. Javert’s expression is set into a contemptuous grimace which cuts deep lines into his face. His eyes are the sole incongruity; they stare out of his face with a wild sort of terror. Before Valjean can begin to tell him that such a course of action is as unacceptable now as it was on the night after the barricades Javert is already speaking.
“Do you not understand?,” he says, the words low and fast with desperation. “When I leave this house I face the same choice which drove me to that parapet in the first place. Still I must turn you in, or allow you to go free: still neither choice is tolerable. Only within this house, this prison, can I continue to defer that choice. Cast me out, if you will; I go willingly. As I said: the river is not far.”
By the end of this tirade Javert has leaned so close that his breath is hot on Valjean’s face, his hand raising like a taloned claw to grip the arm which grips him; his expression is that of a feral dog but his eyes are those of a wolf in a trap. Valjean does not flinch away. When he tightens his grip on Javert’s arm it is a reassurance, not a shackle.
“There is a middle way,” he says softly. “This need not end in oblivion for either of us.”
Javert remains silent. His eyes are lowered to Valjean’s mouth as if searching it for the truth of his words. “If there is a middle way, I cannot see it,” he says at last. His body sags; he hand on Valjean’s arm drops limply back to his side. “I wish that I could. By God, I wish it. But that is not who I am.”
Men like me can never change . Valjean hears the echo of that sentiment in his words, and could almost shake him for it. But his hand remains gentle; his mouth curls up into a sad smile.
“I am tired,” Javert says, dropping his eyes to the floor at last. “Will you permit me to return to my room?”
Valjean almost says no. He almost reaches for the door handle himself--they are so very close, it would be nothing at all to draw Javert past the threshold. To walk with him in the garden, sit him down on the bench where he and Cosette spent so many an afternoon. Javert is nearly swaying beneath his hand; he would not fight it. If he could only prove to the man that life might go on outside the walls of Rue Plumet, if he might guide his feet down the middle path himself--but God had not made this man so easy to bend.
“Of course,” is what Valjean says, and gently guides Javert away from the door, and the crushing weight it holds at bay.
It is not so long after that when Valjean gets the idea.
“You’ve been away often.”
Valjean pauses in the act of setting the chess pieces upon the battered board. It is night--the curtains of the kitchen are drawn on the black glass, and Javert occupies the corner where their tea is steeping like a dark pillar of ill will, his shoulders hunched and his arms crossed over his chest. Valjean had coaxed him to the kitchen with the promise of a game, and Javert had not even shown his usual reticence. Perhaps now that Valjean knew the reason for his hesitation, he was not so afraid to move about the rest of the house at will.
Valjean had attempted to bring in a doctor, a memory which still makes him cringe. Javert, who had for weeks returned to the reserved nature he had cultivated for a lifetime, had flown into a rage the likes of which Valjean hadn’t seen since the early days after his rebirth from the Seine. The doctor had left in a flustered huff, and Valjean had needed to court him back to a lunch at a cafe far from the house, where he’d managed to get a few answers.
“It’s clear the patient is highly disturbed,” the doctor had said rather primly after listening to Valjean’s explanations. “Whenever there is a sudden upheaval in the mental attitude, such as this fear of leaving the house, there is always some intense
“And how could such a thing be addressed?” Valjean had said, a tad helplessly.
“That depends,” the doctor said. “What is the manner of the trouble?”
But what could Valjean say? He sat there in silence, frowning at his half-drained cup of tea; and when at last he looked up the doctor had fixed him with a pitying smile.
“You are a good friend to such a man, Monsieur,” he said gently; and though the words he is not my friend leapt immediately to his lips, he found he could not speak them into being without the taste of a lie bittering his tongue. “But you cannot help someone who does not wish to be helped.”
Valjean has thought of that conversation often, in the coming weeks. And he has decided, ultimately, that the sentiment is incorrect. He had dragged Javert from the river with the man’s body fighting him with every stroke; he had dredged him out of the mire of a fever which surely would have claimed him otherwise. Cosette was gone; Valjean had no one else, no one to care for, but this strange half-feral man who had rather die than complete the duty he had assigned to himself some twenty years. If this was the final task which God had assigned him, he would undertake it. Javert would live.
“I have been visiting Cosette, and Marius,” Valjean replies as he continues setting up the board.
Javert scoffs. “So I have finally driven you out of your own home.”
“Not everything I do is in direct reaction to you, Javert,” Valjean says mildly. “I merely wanted to visit my daughter. Now bring our tea over--you may have white.”
With another dismissive sound, Javert carries both their cups over with a scowl. “You ought to take white. I’m tired of beating you soundly every time.”
“Hardly every time. I won two games against you just yesterday.”
“Perhaps I was letting you win.”
“You weren’t. You were far too irritable in the aftermath.”
One side of Javert’s mouth tugs itself upward. He tilts his head downward until he can master himself, but by the time he looks up again Valjean is returning the stunted smile.
“Your move,” Valjean says, inhaling the fragrance of the tea and watching Javert scrutinize his options.
It was not a lie, to say that he merely wanted to visit Cosette--neither was it the whole truth. For on those visits to the Pontmercy household he had lingered often in the library, well stocked with books of law; though he had seemed only to leaf through them idly, in truth he had been poring over them with all his attention.
Not once in his life had he devoted so much effort to the study of the laws which had ensnared him so long ago. But now a man’s life hangs in the balance; a life other than his own. For that, he must take action. Even if he cannot shake the persistent feeling of selfishness this line of thinking takes.
Just yesterday, he had stumbled upon something that made his heart leap with hope--and his gut twist in nervous dread. Surely Javert noticed his agitation, for the man noticed all; but he said nothing as Valjean moved his pawn two spaces forward, Javert’s eyes shifting from an intense survey of the board, to him and back again.
Valjean has inadvertently sacrificed both his rooks and one knight when Javert sits back in his chair with a sigh. “If you have something to say you ought to say it, Valjean. Your playing is atrocious when you’re distracted.”
Valjean glances up, expression somewhere between exasperated and fond. He has learned to recognize the signs of Javert’s masked concern. And yet he finds he cannot hold Javert’s gaze for long, not with what he is about to propose. He drops his eyes back to the playing board, toys with one of Javert’s captured pawns.
“I believe I may have found a possible solution to your dilemma,” he says at last.
Javert snorts. “Well! With that many qualifiers this truly must be good.”
Vajean lets out a short huff of his own. “It is--not what you expect, I am certain.”
A quick glance confirms that Javert’s dismissive amusement has faded. “Out with it, then,” he says.
“The problem at hand,” Valjean begins haltingly, “is that you cannot bear to willingly let me go free, while you also cannot bear to return me to prison.”
Javert makes a dubious noise which Valjean decides is assent.
“The answer, then, it would seem, would be to make it so that you would be incapable of turning me in.”
“What precisely are you suggesting, Valjean?”
Valjean sighs, his fingers raising to his brow as if to card through his hair, but merely hesitating at his hairline. “That is to say--if I were no longer an entity you were capable
“Valjean I honestly cannot imagine--”
Valjean raises a hand. “You are familiar with the concept of… coverture?”
From the way Javert stares at him with sudden, dreadful focus, the answer is surely yes. Valjean fiddles with the handle of his tea cup, a sickly smile on his face. “Well. You see, under that law, you would not be able to take legal action against me because, by law, I would no longer exist.”
“If we were to marry,” Javert says, his voice painfully blank.
“Well. Yes. That is a requirement.”
Javert’s expression is incredulous, but it is swiftly moving towards something else: anger? Revulsion?
“I understand that it is far from ideal--that the very concept is ridiculous. I assure you, no depth of feeling need come into it. It would be an arrangement, nothing more, for the sake of saving your life--”
“You would marry me.”
The interruption seems to imply that Javert has not actually heard a word he has been saying. “I would.”
“Why?”
“...It seems a logical solution.”
“Logic.” And there is the sneer, long-awaited and now here in full force. “So you would have us live a different sort of lie--”
“There would be no lie.” Valjean swallows drily. “We would be married, in the eyes of God as well as the law.” A beat of silence. “I would ask nothing of you, beyond that,” Valjean says quietly. “But yes, it would be real.”
Still Javert says nothing. “I am old, Javert,” Valjean says, for perhaps if he could only explain-- “I have long come to understand that all the love in my life must go to Cosette. I have never wanted another, never felt bereft. Not that Cosette is married, now that she is finally safe , there is nothing left for me to do. Allow me to do this, for you.”
At this last, Valjean makes a mistake: he reaches out to gently, hesitantly touch the back of Javert’s hand on the table. Javert jerks away as if scalded, his eyes wild and hurt.
“So this is how you would cast me,” he hisses, gripping his own hand. “I suppose I have tormented you for so long, why should you not assign me as your personal torturer for the rest of your days? Do you truly believe I would be so selfish as to allow you to forsake your very personhood for the benefit of--what? My life?” His teeth flashed, a grimace. “I would sooner have the river than that. I would sooner be sent to the bagne myself.”
“Very well, Javert,” Valjean says, wearily. He had had little hope in the idea to begin with, and yet--there had been some hope. “You are right--it was a foolish suggestion. Let us forget I ever mentioned it.”
“That may be difficult,” Javert grumbles, and yet the edge of bitter vitriol in his voice has dulled ever so slightly. For a while they sit in silence, sipping their tea. Then at long last Javert makes his next move--taking anther of Valjean’s pawns, though in truth Valjean is too relieved at the prospect of leaving the agonizing moment behind them that he barely mourns its loss.
And Valjean does forget. Or at least, he ceases to think of it; life returns to the bizarre equilibrium which has become the norm. A week passes; another. Javert paces the house, restless, when he believes Valjean is asleep. Valjean continues his reading; brings the books back for Javert to peruse as well, though usually the man just flips through them distractedly. Surely there is a part of him which does not actually desire to change; which remains certain that the only proper course of action is to bolt free of this house like an animal escaping its cage, and return only to lead Valjean away in chains.
Somehow Valjean does not find himself afraid of that possibility. He and Javert play chess, and checkers; they debate philosophy with a fierceness as if they stand at the dawn of humanity, deciding its code of morals. Javert is prickly at most times; at others he is strangely quiet, watching Valjean with eyes like still, deep water beneath a moonless sky.
“You really would have done it.”
Valjean looks up from the book he is reading. It is late; he ought to have let the fire burn lower, but not so long ago Valjean put another log on the hearth for its heat and has found himself staying up with it as a result. He had thought Javert had gone to bed long ago; for though some nights the man hardly seems to sleep at all, others he care barely seem to bring himself to remain out of his bed from the moment the sun goes down. Valjean had even looked in on him, earlier; Javert had been lying on his side in his shirtsleeves, facing the wall, revealing nothing but a mute expanse of back and shoulders. Valjean had watched for a moment--long enough to know that Javert was not sleeping--before moving on without a word.
But whatever demons Javert has been wrestling all evening, it seems he has vanquished them now. He stands in the doorway; it is all darkness behind him. The firelight catches on his outline and then falls away into darkness; he stands at the gate of an abyss, limned in gold.
“You would have pledged yourself to me,” Javert continues in a low voice when Valjean does not respond. “After all that I’ve done to you. You would put yourself wholly in my power--why?”
Valjean licks his lips--perhaps they have been steadily drying in the heat of the fire, and he has only noticed it now. Or perhaps it is Javert’s words, and the taboo subject they broach once more. “I wanted to help you.”
“Why?”
“Because you needed it.”
Javert laughs, his head twisting away towards the shadow as if he has tasted something bitter. “I suppose that is reason enough for you. Impossible man.”
This new phase of Javert’s unexpected interrogation does not seem to require Valjean’s response, so he remains silent, patient, staring at Javert from across the room. In truth he is nervous, though he cannot say why. There is nothing he fears from Javert anymore. And yet his stomach is a knot in the very center of him, a tangled snarl.
“Surely you must have considered the option before now.” Even in the semi-darkness Valjean can see the bob of Javert’s throat as he swallows.
Somehow, despite Javert dissembling, Valjean knows exactly of what he speaks. He sits back in his chair, looks at Javert with open frankness. “I have not.”
“In Montreuil you had many suitors.”
Valjean laughs, quick and dry, despite himself. “Javert, you yourself saw how disinterested I was in those men and women.”
Javert makes a dubious sound. Dubious, no doubt, as his own thoughts rather than Valjean’s words. Valjean has learned better by now than to press him. His inner mechanisms must finish turning first.
“I do not understand why you would offer me this,” Javert says at last, and his voice is a pained, guttural whisper now.
Valjean sets his book on the cushions beside himself and rises. He moves slowly, as if approaching a feral child or a flighty horse; Javert does not look at him, and the closer he gets the more Javert’s mouth twists into a hard and unhappy line, but he does not flee into the darkness behind him. Part of him wants to reach out and touch the rough fabric of Javert’s sleeve, to press his arm as if he could impart some measure of warmth and clarity through the solidity of his fingers alone. But he knows better by now; he keeps his hands at his side.
“I am offering it,” Valjean says. “Freely, and willingly. Is that not enough?”
Javert’s face is set in a grimace, his eyes cast to the floor. “It should not be.”
“Well,” Valjean says, and makes a helpless little gesture, as if to say it is as it is.
Javert raises his eyes. They are wary. “I would not deny you any happiness you might find with another person,” he says at last, and Valjean’s heartbeat immediately picks up.
“There is no one else,” Valjean says. “My life is near over, Javert.”
“Stop saying that,” Javert snaps. “Any man your age would have many good years left. And you are wealthy.”
“That is no good reason to marry.”
“Yes, I know,” Javert says irritably. “I was merely trying to say--you have options.”
Valjean smiles. He can do nothing else. For in that moment Javert is so full of awkward and unfamiliar grace, made rigid and haughty by the current of that strange intent which is not kindness and yet perhaps moves to the same end. The time has come where Valjean must act, must do something, for to continue standing here in strangeness and in doubt is too much. He takes a risk. He reaches out and lets his fingers brush the back of Javert’s hand where it hangs limply by his side.
Javert’s breath hisses in his teeth, a sharp inhalation; the tendons beneath Valjean’s hand tense as the fingers clench; but Javert does not pull away.
“All the love in my heart, I gave to Cosette,” he says gently. “There is none left that I would give to any other.” He hesitates; for now they have come to the crux of it, and after walking so slowly and with such great care to the very edge, they may yet tumble backwards. Valjean’s hand moves over the edge of Javert’s knuckles, down his curled fingers; as he gently slips his own against the warm crease where Javert’s fingernails bite into his palm, the grip loosens. Gently, slowly, Valjean teases the fist into a hand once more; a hand which he raises to press between two of his own. “There is nothing I can lose anymore,” Valjean says gently. “Javert--let me help you.”
Javert stares at him, desperate and desolate. He is painted of shadows, the dark swaths of his whiskers and the gleaming shine of his pulled-back hair, the gleaming pits of his eyes.
“You deserve better than this,” Javert says, guttural. “It would be the grossest injustice, for you to be mine. It would be grotesque.”
And then, before Valjean can open his mouth to refute him, at once Javert is sinking to one knee.
Valjean is so shocked he almost takes a step back, but Javert’s other hand has risen to clasp Valjean’s tightly; he bows his head over their tangled fingers, and Valjean can feel the warmth of his harsh breathing, the brush of a loose strand of hair.
“You will not permit me to die; permit me this. I would bind myself to you; I would lose every part of myself within you; I would be yours, by God’s law and man’s, and that, I think, would be right.” His hands are a still, iron grip on Valjean’s. Still he does not look up. “I would offer myself to you, as yours. If you would have me.”
Valjean stares at him in blank astonishment. This, he had never accounted for. Surely Javert had misspoken--he could not think of offering himself up, his whole being, to a man who once he had reviled as less than human. A man he had said, mere months ago, could never change; for even with the transformation Javert had undergone in those long and toilsome months since, part of him must surely remained convinced of Valjean’s wretchedness until the very end.
The silence drags on; Javert looks up. Then there is no doubting his expression. It holds the grim, ecstatic agony of Joan of Arc being licked by the flames. And surely that is what he is--a martyr. For he would rather die than do Valjean any harm; and this will be another kind of death for him, a different oblivion to swallow him up.
Valjean draws in a ragged breath. This is not what he expected, he cannot account for it; his heart beats in his ribs like a jessed hawk straining against its cord.
How could he possibly refuse?
“Very well,” he says, his voice hoarse; and Javert bows back over his hand as if the power of Valjean’s gaze has exceeded his strength at last. Valjean squeeze it once more, a strange thrill passing through him. “Please, Javert--stand up.”
Javert does so, clumsily as a foal. Valjean grips him tight to steady him. Once on his feet, he sways slightly; in any other circumstances Valjean would have steadied his arm, but he is not certain what is permitted to him now, and so instead he holds fast to Javert’s hand.
“As long as you are certain,” he begins, and then cuts himself off at the hot slash of Javert’s glare--the first time Javert has met his eyes since revealing his proposition moments before. No, Valjean corrects himself, that strange swing of giddiness careening through him again--since his proposal .
“I am certain,” Javert says.
Valjean bites back the hive of insecurities and doubts swarming on the tip of his tongue. Instead he manages a smile.
“Then the rest will follow,” he says, and presses Javert’s hand one final time; then lets it slip from his grasp, and watches as Javert bows his dark head, looking at once very pained and very tired, and slips from the room without another word, a shadow moving down the shadowy hall.