Chapter Text
Valjean has grown familiar enough with Inspector Javert’s figure that when he sees it from a distance, on the edge of the bridge over the Seine, he recognizes it as instantly as he might have recognized his own. It’s the long, sleek hair, the crisp coat hanging, the posture as sharp as a knife. He had not come out intending to search for the man, but he finds that the sight of him answers an empty space in the back of his mind—the feeling that he should feel the wolf on his tail again, the dissatisfaction of having finally resigned to surrender under its teeth, only for the teeth never to come.
He watches the wolf pace, now, no more than a man, along the edge of the bridge. Too close. Valjean’s neck prickles. Much too close.
When the figure puts one leg over the rail, Valjean runs.
He reaches Javert just in time to catch Javert’s wrist as Javert’s body begins to tip off the stones.
“Inspector,” he says, and then he isn’t sure what else to say. How do you ask the man who has hunted you all your life why he wants to die?
“You,” Javert snarls, with a kind of furious irony that Valjean does not understand. he jerks his whole body like a fish on a hook, twisting his wrist, but Valjean holds fast. “Unhand me.”
“I should think not,” Valjean says, bracing himself against the railing, allowing his own body to become a counterweight to Javert’s. “It doesn’t appear to be a survivable fall.”
“Valjean,” Javert snaps. He lets himself be hauled in, only to use the railing as his own brace, to finally wrench his wrist free.
But Valjean already has a hand on Javert’s other wrist. “Inspector, please,” Valjean says. “You have a long life ahead of you. Many years.”
Javert snarls again, yanking at the other wrist now. He actually seems to snap his teeth. “What is your plan, then? Will you walk me home, only for me to slash my wrists when I am finally alone? You only shepard me towards a more painful death.”
Valjean now seizes both of Javert’s wrists. He is still a stronger man by far, after so many years. He reels Javert in, squirming, knees banging against the stone. He is faintly regretful to take such liberty with another person’s body against their will, but he sees no other way to save Javert’s life. “I don’t imagine drowning to be painless,” he says, as kindly as he can manage when Javert is trying to get an elbow into Valjean’s ribs. “I will take you to my home, if you are amenable.”
“I am not amenable,” Javert growls, dragging his heels against the cobblestones.
Valjean had only said it to be polite. He cannot afford to care if Javert is amenable. “I would feel more at ease if you came home with me.” He looks now at Javert’s face, twisted with fury and anguish, and wonders who put it there. The reasons people end their own lives before their time rise up to him: heartbreak, lost jobs, lives of miserable conditions, dark secrets, shame. He doesn’t know much about Javert, but he knows at least that Javert is an outstanding policeman and an upright man, and he cannot imagine Javert falling in love, although he supposes everyone is human. “You are a good man, Javert,” he says sincerely, “I should not like to see you die.”
“You cannot be serious,” Javert says in tones of desperation. He grips Vajean’s collar, hard. “Tell me, Valjean, are you ever unkind? Have you ever been a bad man?”
Gently, Valjean unpeels Javert’s fingers from his shirt. “You know well that I have. You know it better than any other man in the world, I should think. I have been false, and I have been wrong, as many other men have been false and wrong. Perhaps you have been false and wrong, though I have never once known you to be. But this does not mean we ought to be robbed of our lives.”
Javert’s struggling dies down, his body going still except for his eyes, which seem to search Valjean’s face for something they cannot find. “You should hate me. You should want to see me dead,” he pleads, weakly, as if already defeated.
“Why should I hate you?” Valjean asks, though he knows why. “It is true, Inspector, that I have sometimes cursed you, in my darkest times. But even then I have known you are only doing your job, and it is not your fault that I am on the wrong end of the law. I don’t resent you for it, and you must know this, since I did not kill you today at the barricades.”
Javert’s expression twists, and he looks down and away. “I don’t know anything anymore.”
Valjean pulls Javert’s narrow body close and wraps an arm around his shoulders, feeling the strength that lies there unemployed. He positions himself between Javert and the edge of the bridge, keeps a good hold of Javert so that he doesn’t start running, and begins the walk back to his house. Javert goes quietly. It is like a reverse arrest, Valjean thinks to himself, though he doesn’t say it. He doesn’t expect Javert would appreciate the joke, what with the state he’s in.
The streets shine dark with rain and grit, scraping under the stiff soles of their boots. The streetlights have been snuffed out for the night, so the moonlight is all that lights their way, catching on the sleek line of Javert’s ponytail and the sheen of sweat on his forehead. They climb the stairs and Valjean pushes open the door, and together they enter Valjean’s home: Valjean and the man who he has fled from again and again.
Valjean expects it to be hard, then—lots of fighting, maybe a the threat of an arrest, at least a furious 24601, but when he shows Javert his room, Javert stands in the doorway pale in the lamplight, his hair pin-straight down his back. His hand goes up to the doorframe, and Valjean can see it’s shaking.
“Does this door lock?” Javert asks.
Valjean is dead tired and wants desperately to rest; he hardly plans on bursting in on Javert while he’s sleeping. “I won’t disturb you,” he promises.
“Does it?” Javert pushes, swinging the door out a little to peer at the knob and finding the keyhole on Valjean’s side of the door. “Ah. Please.” His fingers twitch on the doorframe. “Lock me in.”
Valjean’s mind races down several possibilities. First, that Javert is joking, but Javert’s eyes have no sense of mirth or irony; second, that Javert thinks he ought to be locked up and punished, put in jail the way he has tried to put Valjean in jail, but there’s no request for absolution in Javert’s eyes; and finally, as Valjean spots the fear in the corners of Javert’s tight mouth, he realizes Javert is afraid he will kill himself if left to his own devices, and he does not want to. It’s immensely reassuring that he does not want to.
“Alright,” he agrees, and after Javert has put his things down and had a glass of water and otherwise taken care of himself, Valjean does as Javert has asked and locks him in.
He sleeps soundly, certainly more soundly than he would have if he had left the door unlocked, and more soundly than he ever would have expected to sleep, given that he shares a roof with Inspector Javert tonight. In the morning, he knocks on Javert’s door and, when he hears a rustling, asks, “Should I let you out?”
“Please,” Javert says, muffled through the wood.
Valjean lets him out. The inspector looks much better with a night of sleep on him, his hair drawn neatly back and his clothes straightened and whiskers combed. He offers a kind of grimace as Valjean looks him up and down, and Valjean can’t help but laugh a little at the absurdity of the situation. Javert is here, in his home, neatly put together with his truncheon tucked into his belt, and Valjean is about to offer him breakfast.
“What?” Javert asks gruffly, and that only amuses Valjean more. “I’m afraid I couldn’t find the mirror.”
“I couldn’t tell,” Valjean promises him, smiling slightly. “You look quite alright.”
This seems to irritate Javert. “I fail to see why it’s so amusing to you to see me.”
“It’s strange. You, here, and I, with the breakfast.” Valjean smiles again, because those sharp eyes are on him, and he recognizes that curling lip, the curling lip of a man he has seen do so many things.
Javert purses his lips. “Well, I don’t intend to stay.”
“For breakfast?”
“No, I just mean that I will cease to bother you soon.”
Valjean feels his stomach drop. “Surely you don’t mean because you will be dead.”
Now Javert’s eyes go wide, as if he thought Valjean incapable of being so direct, and had not foreseen this question; he steps back a half-step and turns his face away so that Valjean can see the crest of his nose perfectly against the window, through which the rising sun shines. “No, I do not mean that.” His voice is solemn. “It is a sin to take one’s own life.”
“It is a tragedy,” Valjean adds gently, awash in relief.
Javert does not respond to this. “I will stay for breakfast, if you’re sure of the offer.”
Valjean notices that Javert’s hands are steady as they eat, and that the fear and trembling has gone out of his mouth, replaced by a kind of deep unhappiness. His desire to help Javert, to soothe him and vanquish whatever troubles plague him silently, furrowing that dark brow, surprises him. He has not always wished this for Javert. He had thought sometimes he would do nearly anything to ensure Javert would never find them again and Cosette would be able to live an unbroken, ordinary childhood and adolescence. Now he finds himself hoping that the tea calms Javert’s turmoil, that the food makes him feel solid and anchored, and that Valjean himself is not making the place feel foreign and threatening. He offers more butter, more sliced fruits.
“I have no desire to bankrupt you,” Javert says when Valjean sees that Javert had run out of bacon and rises to fry some more. He doesn’t often get bacon, because it can be expensive, and because often he does not cook his own meals, but pays the landlady to do it for him, but he enjoys the experience of cooking for someone else, and has been deprived of it as Cosette became acquainted with the Pontemercys. Javert seems hungry, particularly for meat, perhaps since the previous day had been so taxing.
“You aren’t,” Valjean says, and fries more bacon.
They talk in a stilted way about how they each slept the past night and the garden outside both of their windows, Valjean in eager pursuit of something to fill the silence and Javert with a series of grunts and answers that do not exceed three words.
“I grew up working with plants, perhaps you know this,” Valjean says.
“Yes,” Javert confirms.
“You know the profiles of your charges very well, if I recall,” Valjean continues, wondering if Javert’s crisis of goodness has largely passed, and it’s safe to compliment Javert’s dedication to his career, which he truly has always admired quietly, from the sidelines. “Did you know mine very well?”
There it is, that grimace again. Javert has intent, dark eyebrows that jut down and make him appear formidable and angry, though right now he doesn’t actually seem to be angry by any other metric. “Very well.”
Valjean wonders if Javert has spent much time imagining what Valjean’s life might have been like, how he must feel, or if the profile is nothing but a list of facts to him, nothing more, nothing personal. “I loved gardening,” he feels the need to tell Javert, for some reason.
Javert’s eyes drop down. “It was not I who wrote the laws, but it is I who followed them unquestioningly, as if someone else’s life could be judged by those laws.” It’s the most he has said all morning. He looks up at Valjean almost pleadingly. “They can’t be good laws.”
Valjean finds many things about Javert’s person admirable, but a flexible mind has never been one of them, so this catches him by surprise. “Perhaps,” he says carefully, “there are no laws adequate for the task. The law tries to approximate the boundaries of good behavior, but it has no space for grace.”
“Grace,” Javert echoes.
“The law cannot forgive.” Valjean finds his own fingers around his scarred wrist and pulls his hands apart, startled by himself. He doesn’t usually do this; he has long learned his tells and how to avoid them. He puts his hands under the table and pretends he doesn’t notice Javert watching him do it. “But you and I, we can forgive.”
“Of course you can forgive,” Javert mutters, not unkindly. “But there is a limit to how much someone can forgive, even you.”
“Maybe,” Valjean allows. “But I will always try.”
“I suppose I am here,” Javert says, and the simple twitch of his lips sends Valjean into a giddy. broad smile. Perhaps, he thinks, Inspector Javert will be alright.