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Two months after the letter from Grantaire arrived, Javert managed to take a month’s leave from the precinct. Nobody was quite sure how he managed it, least of all Javert himself, but when questioned, his colleagues would probably have cited unwavering loyalty or have you seen that work ethic? . However it was achieved, the time off was acquired, and the first eight days were spent journeying to Paris.
The coach creaked and rocked like a poorly-made ship, and Gavroche found himself dizzy and mildly nauseous for the first day’s travel. By the time the coach pulled up at the inn, he was curled inside his wool greatcoat and tucked into Javert’s side, vision obscured by coat lining and silk waistcoat. Gavroche’s groans of nausea were muffled by the coat over his mouth, but as he scooped the boy into his arms to carry him off the coach, Javert thanked the stars that the boy had not vomited. It seemed a small blessing, though, as he looked down at Gavroche’s pale face.
By the time the sun rose the next morning, the coach had already left, and Gavroche seemed much better, peering from the window as the hillsides that ran past were gradually illuminated and painted in shades of green and gold.
When day five of the journey dawned, Javert was close to wishing illness on Gavroche again. The boy’s dismal silence had faded into bright, incessant chatter - with Javert, with the other passengers, with the coach driver (if the weather were dry, and Gavroche could sit on the box at the front with him, he seemed his happiest, slipping into content and awestruck silence for an hour or more).
Approaching Paris, Gavroche’s excitement ascended into another key, and he could hardly sit still, shifting this way and that on the dark green upholstered seats as he listed the names and traits of the students he had met all those months ago. The only way Javert could placate him, as the fields gave way to stone and brick buildings, was to sketch the young men according to Gavroche’s sparse descriptions. His police sketch skills were finally put to some use, at least.
Tongue peeking from the corner of his mouth as he focused, Gavroche painstakingly copied the pencil portraits into his own ledger, and labelled each in wobbly, unpractised handwriting. Grantaire. Joly. Enjolras. Bahorel. Combeferre.
The coach groaned to a stop in front of a building of towering limestone as the sun was dipping in molten rays behind the jumble of rooftops. As soon as he escaped the coach’s confines, Gavroche was eager to return to where he had first found the students. He tugged at Javert’s hand and at his coattails, imploring him with wide eyes. Javert just shook his head.
‘It’s late, Gavroche. We will find them in the morning.’
‘Why not now! It was the middle of the night when I last saw them, weren’t it? It ain’t like they’ll be asleep or nothin’,’ Gavroche replied. Javert sighed.
‘I will send a message to them now. We will go tomorrow, first thing in the morning. I promise you that.’
---
Javert is, if nothing else, true to his word. As Gavroche slept that night in their rented room, he tore two pages from his notebook and, producing a pencil from his pocket, scrawled two notes. The first, as promised, was to the students at the Cafe Musain. The second was to be sent back to Montrieul-Sur-Mer, and would find the mayor in his garden, trimming the roses in the morning sun.
The mayor would stop as soon as the messenger boy came through the gate, but would wait to open the letter until the boy had been properly paid and thanked. Alone again, the mayor would read how Javert and Gavroche were safely in Paris, and how he was missed, and how Javert thought of him, as he sat and wrote in the dark in a homeless city. The mayor would smile to see the letter call him by something other than Monsieur Madeleine, and would carefully fold the torn page, and tuck it into his breast pocket, over his heart.
Javert knew all of this as he wrote his second letter and, once both letters had been entrusted to the clerk on the ground floor with orders to see them sent that instant, he slept peacefully, dreams full of rose gardens and the gentle smile of Jean Valjean.
---
The Cafe Musain was far busier at nine in the morning than it had been at midnight all those weeks before. Wading through the crowd, Javert’s imposing stature was the only thing that prevented him getting swept into one or other of the groups of young Parisians squished around mismatched tables.
Gavroche, however, had no such issues. He had grown up in inns far busier than this, and slipped around legs and skirts with ease, peering up at each person he passed until he let out a cheer.
Javert looked around to see Gavroche enveloped in the broad arms of a short, dark-haired man with a crooked nose. He bristled instantly, noting scars that would have usually put him on high alert, before thinking back to the sketches they had made in the coach. This was surely Grantaire, Gavroche’s apparent favourite of the unruly students. With some quickly hidden reluctance, he smiled and moved towards the two.
Grantaire looked up at Javert as he approached. ‘Hello! Good to see you again. And this one,’ he said, ruffling Gavroche’s hair.
Javert nodded. ‘Have you found the girl? His sister?’
‘Have I– of course I have! She was never lost in the first place, M’sieur, she’s my best friend. She’ll be here soon. Here - come into the backroom. It’s far quieter.’
They followed Grantaire through a low door into a messier but thankfully emptier room at the back. Faces Javert remembered sketching recently stared back at him, and he tried to link them to names. The tall golden man beside Grantaire was certainly Enjolras. Javert watched as their hands found each other and their fingers tangled. It made him think of himself and Valjean at home, and he had to try to hide a fond smile. Perhaps Gavroche had a habit of finding himself father figures, whether they initially intended to have him or not.
---
‘Look!’ said Gavroche, rummaging in his coat pockets, and pulling out a brown paper bag, a stub of pencil and a sou before finding what he had intended to produce, his notebook. ‘I drew you all on the way ‘ere. Well, M’sieur Javert drew you, an’ I copied ‘is drawings.’
Grantaire took the pad carefully from where Gavroche offered it, and leafed gently through the pages. He lingered on the drawing of Enjolras, running a fingertip reverently across the clumsily pencil-shaded cheekbone.
Turning back to Gavroche, he said, ‘These are very good, Gavroche. I’m also an artist. Would you like to see my sketches of my friends, too?’
Gavroche nodded so fiercely that it seemed his head was attached to his shoulders by a spring. Grantaire only smiled and reached towards a cupboard, from which he produced a sketchbook with a coffee-stained cover and inky fingerprints littering the spine. Opening it to a page near the middle, he showed it to Gavroche.
Bold strokes of ink, black and red, sketched a number of faces, each presented with such energy and affection that anyone could have told that the artist knew and loved the subjects. Holding it up, Grantaire pointed out each portrait’s model in the room.
‘That’s Bahorel there - the bald one, on that table in the corner with Joly and Musichetta. And that sketch below, that’s Combeferre and Courfeyrac.’
Gavroche frowned at the page for a moment. ‘Enjolras isn't there.’
A laugh was surprised out of Grantaire. ‘That’s true. He has his own pages, I draw him so much. Here, look.’
Turning a page, a spread of sketches of Enjolras were revealed. The black ink had been embellished with golden-yellow accents, starbursts and shadows and streaks of hair picked out in gold. Gavroche gasped.
‘They’re beautiful.’
Grantaire smiled. ‘He is, isn’t he.’
After a moment, an idea occurred to Grantaire, and he leafed through his book until he found a pencil portrait, filling a whole page. He held it out in front of Grantaire. The boy looked from the drawing to Grantaire and back questioningly.
‘Does she look familiar? That’s–’
A door slammed open.
‘Is he here? Is Gavroche here?’
---
Eponine saw him almost immediately. He perched on a table beside Grantaire, looking wide-eyed at his sketchbook. His eyes somehow widened even more when he looked up and saw her, standing in the doorway.
His eyes were the same. His hair was less messy, his clothes less tattered, his face fuller and healthier, but his eyes had the same sharp gleam that Eponine remembered from so many years ago, a look that sparked with wit and joy.
‘...Gavroche?’ she asked, voice breaking with the sudden onslaught of emotion. She had hardly been able to believe that she would stand in the same room as her brother ever again.
The boy glanced from the sketchbook which still rested in Grantaire’s hands to her face. He looked up at Grantaire, who nodded softly, and he looked back to Eponine.
The tension broke sharply as he hurled himself towards her and into her arms. The students cheered loudly and Eponine found herself crying silently into her lost brother’s shoulder.
‘Gavroche, Gavroche,’ she murmured, feeling the shape of his name reform on her tongue again after all those years.
When the embrace broke apart, Grantaire said, slowly, ‘Eponine,’ and she smiled down at him.
Javert coughed politely.
‘I am Javert,’ he said, when Eponine turned to him. ‘I am Gavroche’s… guardian, and I–’
He broke off as Eponine hugged him tightly.
‘Thank you,’ she whispered. ‘For getting him out. For keeping him safe. And for bringing him back to me.’