Chapter Text
Javert stands before Valjean, and cannot flee.
It is the night of the barricade, and Javert’s wrists are raw from rope and his teeth ache from how he grits them. He feels the cold edge of the knife against his throat and wants to nod his assent, for this is how it should happen, this is how it was always meant to be. But then Valjean lowers the blade, slices the rope that binds his hands, and what is he to do with these loosed limbs, this crashing heart, this breath of air upon his throat? He is not free, he cannot be free.
He has never been free.
Javert sits beside Valjean, and cannot breathe.
He has caught him. Whom? He does not know which has caught the other. He wants to seize him, wants to shake him, to press him against the carriage wall and demand an answer to the cry that rattles in his bones. What can he do? Valjean is in his power, but no, he cannot wield it, not anymore.
He has never truly possessed power.
Javert kneels before Valjean, and cannot see.
Tears blind him, stream down his face like the river-water that still flows from his dripping coat, like the bedraggled hair that, hatless, hangs before his face. He should not see, for he was a man deceased, he had chosen his own fate. Chosen to escape him, to deny the truths he forced upon him - for he could not continue in such a world, not when he had been so wrong. But no, even at the end, he cannot choose. For Valjean is here before him, and his arms, so warm, are bonds, his hands are tender manacles wrapped around his wrists.
He has never had a choice.
Javert lies beside Valjean, and cannot believe.
He has taken him into his home. Bathed him, fed him, pushed him to survive with gentle force, prodded him with words tinged with an authority that even now Javert could not ignore. He has opened to him his home, his life, his arms, and Javert cannot fathom why. He cannot care for him. There are too many barriers between them, too many years of pain and mistrust, of chasing, running, seizing, and then of letting go. But he cannot let go, not now.
He never could let go.
Javert is wrapped in Valjean’s arms, and he never wants to leave.
It has been a year, so long a year, only a year, and so much has come to pass. He has let Valjean undo him, let him unfold him like a scroll and read the lines of his life, his mind. He has been shattered and been mended, by the same soul that healed his own. Each day, each night, he holds him, and Javert still cannot understand how he can love him, but he understands now that love is the thing that has stretched between them, uncoiled and now unfurled. Valjean has loved him, loves him still.
It always has been love.