Work Text:
June 7 2017, 1:16 AM
A bar near the Pont-au-Change, Paris
It was a warm night, but the establishment was sparsely populated. The only people inside were the bartender, a few sleepy regulars at their tables, and two men sitting at the bar.
One of those men, the one wearing a black double-breasted greatcoat, was currently in the process of explaining his life story to the other. “And now I don’t even know what’s right. All my life, I thought I was doing something Right and Just, but— but— all that time, I had really been sending people to suffer, people who never deserved this suffering. I wanted to punish murderers— but was I the real murderer?”
The other man sitting at the bar was Miles Edgeworth. “Exactly!” he remarked, slamming his glass on the bar to request a refill. How many had he had already? He wasn’t sure. It had been a long night of unusual indulgence. “Believe me, I’ve— I’ve been there.”
“And it’s all his fault. That man, with his, with his, with his face and his arms and, no, my point is that he… he put all this doubt on me,” the man snarled. “All this doubt, this uncertainty. I never asked for it! I didn’t need it!”
“We have so much in common…” Edgeworth paused. “You know, I never did get your name.”
“Javert. My name is Javert.”
“And I’m Miles Edgeworth.”
“Well, as I was saying. After that man, that man, after he proved to me that it had all been a lie— God, that man, so radiant even as he destroyed everything I knew to be true— after he proved that my service of the law was not justice but blood in the gutter, what was I supposed to do? Was I just supposed to continue on?” Javert grew angrier. “He saved my goddamn fucking life, you know. And he shouldn’t have! After what I had been doing all those years, he should have let me die, he should have saved himself. I hate him! I hate him, and yet, he was right, and I can’t stop thinking about him…”
It was almost unsettling to Edgeworth how much of himself he saw in Javert’s story. Perhaps these kinds of things just happen every now and then. “What’s his name?” Edgeworth ventured. “He— sounds a lot like someone I know.”
“Jean Valjean.” Javert said the name with a strange mixture of venom and reverence.
“So, is he why you’re here?”
“What?” Javert furrowed his brow.
Edgeworth was a little flustered at the clear incorrectness of his extrapolation. “Well, I just— what I was referring to is— when Phoenix Wright, my Valjean of sorts, proved to me that my career had all been a cruel joke, and yet that he was so naively willing to save someone like me… I ran away, and now I’m here. The prosecutor in me was dead, and I wrote as much to explain my absence. I couldn't say goodbye to any of those people to their face, especially not him— they’d all just try to convince me to stay.” Edgeworth took a sip of his drink, and muttered for nobody but himself, “I suppose it was cowardly of me, when I put it like that.”
“Ha!” Javert barked coldly, the loud noise catching Edgeworth off guard. “Well, you aren’t the biggest coward in this room.”
Edgeworth blinked at Javert.
Javert laughed bitterly. “I suppose it’s true in a manner of speaking that Jean Valjean is the reason why I’m still here in this place, right now. After he broke me with his damnable kindness and mercy, and after I let him and his son-in-law go free when by rights they should both have been executed, do you want to know what I did?”
A sense of dread was building in Edgeworth’s gut— was he sure he wanted to open this Pandora’s box? Despite himself, he nodded— compelled, perhaps, by the same psychological force that makes it inevitable for one trapped in a nightmare to fulfil their assigned role.
Javert rubbed his forehead. “I knew at that moment that I could not continue as an officer of the law. I went to the Préfecture and wrote a letter. Suggestions for a less cruel system of justice. I’ve no idea whether anyone ever took me up on them— I suspect not. And then, after that…” Javert bared a sour, ironic grin. “You seem like a smart man, monsieur Edgeworth. Look at me closely. Can you guess what I did next?”
Edgeworth somehow hadn’t noticed this before— he blamed the alcohol, combined with the poor lighting— but he saw now that Javert’s coat was soaked, dripping water onto the bar floor. Edgeworth’s eyes widened. “You… the…”
Javert nodded. “The stinking, freezing water of the Seine. It still clings to me. You’d think it should all have drained away after 185 years.”
Edgeworth looked back at Javert’s face, unable to believe but equally unable to conceive of any other explanation than the one he was faced with. Javert’s hair was just as wet as his clothing, and his brown skin suddenly looked grey and clammy.
“Jean Valjean found out about my death through the newspaper.” Javert was staring straight ahead, refusing to meet Edgeworth’s gaze, as he spoke in a low monotone. “That night, all those years ago, I thought that choosing death was the only thing I could do to atone— knowing what I knew, I could not arrest him, could not continue to ruin the lives of innocent souls— but in truth it was a cruel mistake. He was devastated. The idea that my soul was damned was one he could not bring himself to accept; he tried to convince himself that I had merely gone mad, but I doubt he ever truly believed it. He only outlived me by a year, and it was a year spent in misery, living wretchedly. I died for nothing.” Javert was now gazing up toward the seam where the wall met the ceiling. “Even now, I do not fully understand why he cared about me so much. Nor do I understand why I care so much about him,” he said under his breath.
Then, Javert looked at Edgeworth, cold blue eyes tired and resigned and strangely amused all at once. “I have some questions for you, monsieur Edgeworth. How do you think Phoenix Wright found out about you running away? How do you think he feels about you being gone? Perhaps you have a response in your mind, but if I’ve learned anything from my life and death, it’s that these wide-eyed selfless idiotic bastards rarely react to things the way you’d expect.”
Some seconds of charged silence passed, and Javert looked down at the bar, crossing his arms. “It seems to me like you’re smarter than me— you’re less reckless in a crisis, certainly. So, it’s possible that you do not… care like I do.” (He practically spat the word ‘care’.) “But perhaps you do have these same foolish feelings. And if you do… you still have a chance to make amends.”
Edgeworth floundered, failing to find words.
“I have to go. I can’t stay here much longer.” Javert made eye contact once more and held out his hand.
Beyond all reason, Edgeworth reached to return the handshake. His hand phased right through Javert’s.
“Heh.” Javert smiled a toothy, wolfish grimace of a smile. “Goodbye, monsieur Edgeworth. Stay alive. It’s the only life you have.” Then, when Edgeworth blinked, Javert was gone, and Edgeworth was alone.
(Over time, Edgeworth managed to convince himself that this hadn’t actually happened. He hadn’t met a ghost— that was nonsensical on multiple levels. It was just a trick of his mind, a drunken fugue state, a dream. However, no matter what had really happened that night, he could never forget Javert’s words, nor shake the impression those words had left upon him.)