Chapter Text
Valjean walked through the mud and dark, the boy upon his back, and felt aflame.
His shoulders burned just below their blades - two points of fire. It was an old pain, and recurring.
It had first ignited beneath Fauchelevent’s cart, when the crowd pulled the old man from the wreck and he had looked at Valjean with disbelieving gratitude - and why had his shoulders hurt more under the man’s gaze than they had under the cart? Valjean had winced, from embarrassment as much as any pain, and brushed off the crowd’s suffocating acclamations. Later, in his rooms, washing the muck from his hair, he felt those eyes on him again, and - far more dangerous - the inspector’s falcon gaze, and he could not wash away the shame and fear that clung to his skin.
He did not deserve Fauchelevent’s awe.
And he could not escape Javert’s merciless eye.
Yet had he had a choice, when it was clear that no one else could bear that load? The urge that made him bend to shoulder the wreck was the same that drove him to the fire when he'd come to Montreuil-sur-mer. If he was heedless of his life, it was because he was not worthy of it - not in the place of another, more innocent, more whole.
In Toulon, a part of him had died. What the bishop had revived was still a broken thing.
The next time he'd felt that curious pain was in the docket in Arras, when the crowd stared and clamored in cacophonic wonder at the man who would denounce himself so freely. He'd spoken, and the pain had flared once more; he'd shown without a doubt that he was Jean Valjean, and his back had felt afire. It was as if his skin already felt the lash, the scratch of raw red wool, the burden of the beam, the collar and the chain. He had bowed beneath its weight, that weight that he had chosen, and almost crumbled, but as the court erupted, he had straightened, and rode its wave of confusion to temporary freedom.
There was still something he must do.
He'd felt it next on the rain-lashed warship hulk, after he’d struck his iron tether and climbed up to save the sailor. When the boy had gaped at him, his young face pale, still not quite realizing his rescue, Valjean’s shoulders had burned again. The awed assemblage had then seen him lose his balance, had let out a collective gasp as he had fallen. Fallen - but was it a fall? Did his feet slip from the beam, or did they turn too willingly toward the crashing sea? Did his arms lose their strength, or did his heart lose its purpose to go on? He almost let the ocean take him, soundless, lightless, cleansing, but then remembered. He must live, for the girl. He must fulfill his promise. When he had surfaced, a quarter mile from where he'd fallen, the breath he gasped was an assurance, was a vow renewed. He'd find her daughter, keep her safe. Then her spirit could find rest.
And he had done it. He'd saved her, he'd raised her in love, and now like a lark she'd fly, and she'd roam far, and perhaps she would forget him like a dream, he who was only a passerby in her becoming, he who was her father, he who was a stranger that she never really knew.
He never let her know.
He wished he could feel bitter, could feel angry or numb - anything but this crushing, unrelenting sorrow, and perhaps the weight of it upon his back was what made his shoulder blades burn fierce like flaring candles, made him feel like his bones were breaking, like something was breaking through.
Compared to that grief, the boy was light.
The sewers, dark, meant safety, meant a passage and a hope. He was accustomed to escapes like this, to winding labyrinth exits, to burial in muck, in earth, in waves until he'd fear he'd not emerge. He was well acquainted with the narrow crack, the loosened board, the slowly whittled chain - he knew how to compress himself to make it through. He'd almost done it, he'd found the light and hauled the youth over the grate - but then, a boot, the tail of a coat, and he looked up to see the narrowed gaze of Javert.
Caught.
He'd almost have accepted it. His days were nearly done - he was not young, and without Cosette to care for? What purpose could be left? But then, then the anger came, a surge, a tide, for why did this always happen, just when he was about to save a life? His eyes that met Javert’s were fearsome things, and Javert actually took a step back.
“He needs a doctor.”
Though his gaze was fierce, his voice was pleading, desperate. He expected Javert to laugh, as he had that day beside her bed, to ask again if Valjean thought him mad.
He did not expect him to give in.
“Take him,” Javert said, and Valjean looked at him, then, craning his neck upwards, the words on his tongue retreating down his throat. The man would not meet his gaze. In the evening chill, he was sweating, and on his collar, a button hung undone. Was he ill?
It did not matter.
He took his chance, and hoisted up the boy once more. When the carriage brought them to that shining palace of a house, a flock of servants fluttered out to gather in the youth. They thanked him without seeing him, and when the flurry departed, Valjean turned to find that the inspector had, as well.
He should have felt relief.
But why had Javert done this? Why, at the very moment of his triumph, when his claws had seized his prey, had he vanished, without a word, without even a warning? Confusion was a fog in Valjean’s vision, something murky yet impenetrable, and he could not leave it be.
He turned towards the river.
Why there? Why not the gendarmes’ station, or his own house, where he'd given his address? He could not justify the reason, but some instinct - perhaps the same that sensed Javert behind the Gorbeau door, the same that knew him at once under the beggar’s ragged cap - that instinct drove him there, and he knew that he would find him.
When Valjean approached, he saw him perched upon the bridge.
He stood upon the edge, so still. For a moment, Valjean could have believed him to be a tree, one of the gnarled chestnuts that lined the river’s gentler waters.
The waters were not gentle, here.
The Pont was a whitewater Charybdis, the place where all currents clashed, churned, and converged. It was not a place for peaceful contemplation - and indeed, though Javert stood in perfect stillness, Valjean could sense a tempest in him, roiling like the waters. He had rarely seen the man so unsettled, and he hesitated. Why should he approach him? He would certainly not welcome his presence. His thoughts were his own, his troubles his own burden, and would Valjean not be intruding to presume to intervene?
He should not have hesitated.
In one suspended moment, before Valjean had drawn his next breath, he saw the man’s foot extend over the edge, saw him take one resolute step and plummet like a stone. Valjean felt the pain again, his back flaring as if every lash he'd borne returned to flay him, as if the cart crashed down to crush him, as if his bones were somehow stretching, pushing, breaking through his skin.
To move was torment, but Valjean waited no more - he leapt, shrugging off his coat in one fluid motion, heaving in a breath that strained his lungs. Diving, he pierced the water like an arrow, and struck the target true - for his hand found Javert’s arm, caught him, and pulled him to his chest. Javert was dead weight, already unconscious, and so at least he did not struggle, but as his body broke the water's surface, Valjean faced another problem.
He had come up in the rapids, and their current pulled him under. He kicked, one powerful motion, and his lungs found air again, but soon he was once more beneath the surface, the surging force drawing them down. Valjean had shed his coat, but the inspector’s was buttoned tight, and the heavy wool added the weight of half a man. Valjean held him tight, and tried to free him, but his fingers fumbled uselessly and he was sinking, sinking, sinking until -
His back erupted.
At first he thought he'd been dashed against the rocks. But the water had not thrown him sideways, nor did it any longer pull him down. Instead, somehow, he rose, faster and faster through the waves, til his face broke through the surface, then his body, then - then, but how, his feet? He coughed, gasped a bewildered breath, looked down, and saw.
No.
No, it could not be. It would be blasphemy. This must be a dream, because how else to explain the luminescent feathers that brushed his fingertips, the gleaming angled plumes extending just above his arms. Outstretched, they spanned twice as long as he was tall, holding them both aloft, Javert dangling in his arms as Valjean clutched him like a lifeline. Valjean stared in disbelieving horror, and shame crashed through him, a frantic, panicked beat inside his chest. He heard a sound, and looked down.
Javert’s eyes were open.