Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Chapter One: Quando judex est venturus

The fetid stink of the sewer rose in wet, coiling waves, thick as wool and twice as noxious. Where the maw of the metal grate yawned upon the Quai d’Orléans, the cobblestones glistened, though no one dared note aloud whether the glint was water or blood. Steam wafted from the stones in faint white ribbons, and the heat of the day had not yet broken. It had merely settled deeper into the city’s exhausted lungs, pressing the filth further into the very air until it clung to every breath like the cholera ripping through Paris.

Both of the bodies had been drawn out just after dusk. One of them had been wrapped carefully, almost reverently, in stained canvas pulled tight over the shoulders but loose at the jaw where the cloth had soaked through. The other had been handled with slightly less precision. It was the form of a collapsed young man, the limbs dangling akimbo, rigid now at unnatural angles, one leg badly broken beneath him as though he had fallen from a great height. The blood at his side, stiffened by a bullet wound, had long earlier hardened his sash to leather.

Javert did not kneel, nor did he crouch beside them. Instead, he stood some six paces away, his boots planted squarely and his hands unmoving at his sides. From where he towered, his shadow spilled long across the stones in the shifting lamplight. The flames danced in the bloody water pooled beneath the corpses, rendering them, in flicker and shadow, faintly animate. It was a grotesque but slightly beautiful illusion, and one he could not look away from.

A very young, green constable nearby bent double and retched neatly into a drainage trench. Another crossed himself, mumbling a wheezy prayer in Occitan. Javert pursed his lips but did not speak. His gaze remained fixed on the careful wrappings.

The man inside them was older, heavier, and broad through the shoulders. He had not resisted his murder, it seemed, or if he had, it had been brief, and only in instinct. There were no defensive wounds on the palms or fingers. The wound at the throat, by contrast, was deep, sharp, and deliberate… cruel. It was certainly not the erratic hacking of panic or accident. No. It was work that had been purposeful, and oddly clean, in its own fashion. There was little fresh blood on the old man’s body; the killer had known what he was doing and he had sought death.

The mouth had been slack, half-parted. The eyes, one still open, had lost their light already when Javert had arrived. There was no accusation in the gaze, but no peace, either. Just the vacancy of something miswritten, mid-sentence.

Of course, Javert had waited for this particular confrontation for years. Or rather, he had prepared for it and envisioned it. Perhaps he had even rehearsed the words he would say, the stance he would assume. He might have, sometimes, imagined Valjean torn between defiance and shame, imagined himself solemn but resolute, bearing the full weight of the hangman’s justice with dignity. Or perhaps even mercy, if the man’s penitent posture warranted it.

But, no, not this. Not the human filth of the Paris sewers. Not the slice of a criminal’s knife.

Not Thénardier.

Javert had found the shameless, gutless looter hunched over the corpses, wrist-deep in their pockets, his fingernails black with filth and the glint of gold catching in his rotten teeth. The monster had made no attempt to flee. He had merely turned toward the torchlight and blinked dumbly, as though it were all rather inconvenient that the police had arrived.

When the cleanly uniformed sergeant had looked to Javert, awaiting orders, he had not raised his voice. He had simply gulped and then commanded, “Take this man into custody at once. Charge him with robbery, murder, and the desecration of corpses.”

And, of course, they had obeyed. Thénardier had not protested his arrest. Not really. He had muttered something as he had been hauled off - perhaps a jest, perhaps a plea - about how he deserved a reward for turning over the corpse of Jean Valjean, but Javert had not heard it. Or perhaps he had heard it and refused to understand the words. There were limits to what the ear would carry when the soul refused to receive, and Javert’s soul had been exhausted. A few minutes later, from behind him, the gendarme with the arrest papers stepped forward. 

“Inspector Javert,” he said carefully, keeping his tone level and respectful. “The suspect, one Thénardier calling himself M. Fabantou, has been detained and transported. We are preparing to convey the remains here to the prefecture for inventory and documentation.”

Javert did not turn his head. He huffed a breath. “Has the ring been recorded?” he asked. His low voice cut through the June air like glass through wet linen.

The gendarme hesitated. “The ring, sir?”

“There is a gold ring, a band, just here, near the gutter’s edge.” Javert pointed a gloved finger. “See to it.”

“Yes, Inspector.” The younger man rushed to obey.

Javert remained still and just watched. The simple ring in question had not rolled far and was visible even now, its presence a small and almost strangely delicate glint among the filth, a bit indecent in its placement. It had either belonged to Valjean or to the boy, but in either case it had outlived its owner, and it looked absurd now, offensively whole and vibrant.

Javert had seen many corpses before, struck down by bullet and blade and rope. Long before he had delivered death notices to the families of murdered women and children as a police officer, he had gazed upon the guillotine as a child, shot enemy soldiers clean through, and stared down at collapsed prisoners’ bodies at Toulon. But never once had he seen this: the unspeakable ruin of a man who had once stood proudly opposite him as an equal… not in the eyes of the law, but in the solemn tension of bizarre necessity. Jean Valjean had been Javert’s adversary not due to childish hatred, but out of stalwart mutually opposed principles. It had been something sacred, their enmity. And now it had been profanely spoiled.

The law had always promised Javert something clean. Even after he had agreed to release Valjean, he had expected a satisfactory reckoning, some mirror in which each man might see the other, and himself more clearly, a good and righteous ending to the chase in the eyes of Valjean’s maker and Javert’s conscience. Instead, the mirror had shattered. The resolution lay defiled in the filth, unrecognizable and unrecoverable.

No. 6, rue des Filles-du-Calvaire. That was the address of the boy’s grandfather. Valjean had said so.

The man’s beard had gone grey, and his face was thinner than Javert remembered from his years of trickery in Montreuil-sur-Mer. But it was unmistakably him. It was the hulking great prisoner from Toulon, the factory-owning mayor, the convict who had evaded him. It was Jean Valjean. That same vast brow, that same square hand still curled faintly at his side were there. There was nothing left to interrogate, and there was nothing left to doubt, for the man was dead. And whatever had been meant to follow or arrest, whatever moral weight might have once hung in the balance to question, had collapsed with him and the boy whose grandfather lived at No. 6, rue des Filles-du-Calvaire.

His boots carried him, for some reason, to the address Valjean had given him on rue Plumet. Why he did not simply go to the station-house and complete all necessary paperwork that he could tonight, for of course it would be abundant, he did not know. He could exhaust himself with police labours, and then go home and strip off his uniform and bathe himself in scalding water and scrub it all away with olive oil soap. 

But he did no such thing. He went, instead, to the house where, surely, the girl waited - the one called Cosette - Fantine’s daughter - the girl he had once tried to stop Valjean from rescuing at the inn in Montfermeil. Why he allowed his feet to compel him thus, Javert did not know. Both life and the law were finished with Jean Valjean, and Javert’s mind felt filled with flies, but something else, something darker and more wretched, stirred beneath the chest of his uniform greatcoat. It was a voice, a memory, a scream, and he could not silence it.

The small wrought-iron gate at No. 55 rue Plumet yielded beneath his leather-gloved hand with a groan that startled even him; its hinges were stiff from either age or disuse, and the noise echoed in the silence of the narrow street, disturbing a pair of birds in the lime trees overhead. Javert gathered himself and stepped through as though entering a secret, forbidden place.

The garden path was swept and orderly enough, though the wind had scattered a few leaves across the stones and several of the bushes were a bit tangled and needed trimming back. Javert’s sharp eyes never missed such detail, even in the darkness, though of course he knew he was a monumental hypocrite to judge such a thing, as he had never tended to a flower in his life. 

He walked slowly, the soles of his boots clicking evenly against the slate, and he listened to the steady beat. His heart did not race, nor did his mind clarify. He had no papers in his hand, no internal directive. He felt only the twist in his abdomen, the murmur in his thoughts, the weight of his greatcoat pressing down as though the velvet sky itself were trying in vain to subdue him.

At the top of the shallow steps, he paused. The unassuming door loomed before him, symmetrical, painted a modest but well-maintained and comely shade of green. Gaslight from a nearby post cast a flickering light that illuminated the brass knocker and shone faintly against the polished wood. Javert reached to remove his top hat with a smooth, deliberate motion. His combed-back hair, damp with earlier rain and the sweat beneath it, pressed flat to his skull. The air smelled faintly of jasmine, some back corner of his mind noted. He inhaled through his nose and exhaled very slowly through parted lips. He raised his gloved hand, and then he hesitated.

He could still turn around and go. The chase had ended. There were no summons to be had, no warrant to be fulfilled. There was no official directive that required this visit. Javert had told no one where he was going, nor why, and no report would record his time here. No superior had ordered that he come here. 

This was not the law. No. It was something else, something murkier and bleaker, something worse, something darker, something that boiled up beneath the wool and brass of his uniform, percolating under his ribs and polluting his veins. He swallowed hard, trying and failing to make his leave.

Then he raised the brass knocker on the door and struck it very firmly three times.The echo rang through the corridor beyond like the tolling of a bell. Javert took a single step back and fixed his eyes on the centre of the house’s door as though waiting for judgement from an unseen archangel. 

The door burst open with startling speed, and the maid who stood before him - a middle-aged, broad-shouldered, and dark-skinned woman - froze the instant she beheld the sight of him. He was, very clearly, not who she had been expecting or hoping to see. Her eyes widened, and one hand flew up and covered her mouth, not with grace, but with the clear instinct to settle and silence herself. For a half moment, she did not speak, and neither did Javert. The expression on the maid’s face was that of a person who knew full well what it might mean when a man of the law arrived unannounced. Mercifully, she did none of those things he feared she did not scream or faint, and she did not slam shut the door… at least not yet.

“Madame,” Javert said stiffly, giving her a single curt nod and gesturing with one hand. “I am an inspector with the Paris Police. May I?”

The maid shut her eyes, dipped into a half-considered curtsey, tossed herself and the door back in tandem, and muttered a bit helplessly, “Yes, Monsieur.”

Cosette burst into the foyer like cannonfire.

“Toussaint! Is it Papa? Is he all right? What news of Marius?” Her trilling voice cracked midway through the final question, but she halted at once when her gaze settled upon Javert.

She froze, fingers curling round the doorframe, the rest of her body strung tight with sudden alarm. Her trembling lips mouthed a half-breathed syllable that never found sound, and the eyes that were far too wide, far too bright, searched his face for answers before she had even managed to blink. Her other hand twitched faintly at her side, then cinched against the embroidered muslin of her wrapper.

Javert saw her then, truly saw her, for the first time in her entire life, and he scowled.

She was a young woman, of small size even for her sex and age, barefoot and pale but having been made elegant by Valjean’s spoiling, it seemed. Her hands were delicate but steady and her hair, blonde and neatly parted, had been gathered into a loose braid that hung over one shoulder, several wisps escaping about her temples, damp with perspiration on the warm night. There was a sheen at her brow and her cheeks, though they were drained of color. Her lips were slightly chapped, her breathing too shallow. That was from anxiety on a night like this, no doubt, not from a working girl’s labours. She had been pacing, Javert thought. Worrying.

Cosette did seem young, and Javert knew her to be so, but he himself was a man of many wounds, and he could see instantly that she was in no way childlike or naïve. No. There was terror in her eyes, but not the flailing sort, the sort that patiently knew how to wait and dread. Well. Of course that must be true of this particular girl, he supposed, after what had passed since her years at Montfermeil.

For a moment, Javert said nothing; he merely shifted upon his feet and allowed his boots to creak upon the floorboards. His jaw ticked and clenched, but then social instinct overtook him.

He bowed, lower than was necessary, lower than custom dictated. The motion was controlled, formal, precise, almost as though he were acknowledging a general during his army days, but when he held it for a moment longer than etiquette required, something about it read not as subservience but as penance, he knew, and he felt just a bit foolish. When at last he rose, his low voice was a murmur, just above a whisper, shaming him a bit. 

“Mademoiselle. I am Inspector Javert of the Paris Police. May we speak?”

Cosette did not answer him. She only looked to Toussaint first, then back to Javert. Her breath caught strangely, and her gaze moved not as if seeking permission, but as if she were dizzy and drunk and orienting herself desperately, as though she were attempting to wake up from an awful dream whose edge she could not locate. Her lips pressed together, and her eyes rimmed red. Heavy tears gathered without falling down her cheeks. Toussaint, the maid, her expression unreadable, moved to shut the door and stepped in gently, her tone a hush. 

“I shall bring tea and coffee to the dining room, Monsieur l’Inspecteur.” She turned slightly. “Mam’selle Cosette! Take the police inspector to the table, my dear.”

Cosette’s throat moved once as she swallowed and straightened her spine, and her fingers found each other, twisting nervously in the folds of her fine wrapper. She nodded and feigned a half smile as if trained to do so.  Then, in silence, she moved to lead him from the foyer.

Javert sat at the dining table, his back gone rigid, his eyes cast downward into the small demitasse cup before him. The black coffee within was utterly still save for the slight ripple made by the shifting of his breath. Its dark, bitter, and clean scent rose faintly with the steam, pricking at his senses and settling in his sinuses with something not entirely unlike accusation. He did not touch it.

The room was quiet, though not silent, for the brass pendulum of the mantel clock issued its slow metallic cadence from somewhere beyond his left shoulder, and the muslin curtains at the tall windows moved now and then with the breath of warm night air. It was dim, though not impossibly dark, as a single oil lamp on the sideboard cast its amber light across the polished surface of the walnut table, which reflected it dimly in the long faint streaks left by Toussaint’s cloth.

The high-backed chair in which Javert sat was less comfortable than it looked like it ought to be, and he did not lean against it. His uniform hat lay before him upon the table with his folded gloves set neatly upon the brim. The black, bitter coffee had not yet cooled, and neither had he.

Across from him, of course, sat Cosette.

She had not spoken, not since she had brought him into the room. She had merely sat down with well-schooled grace, smoothing her wrapper in a small but precise motion and lowering herself wordlessly. Her fingers now went up to her braid now and then, stroking the hair in a mindless rhythm, and her gaze did not rise to meet his.

Javert cleared his throat.

“I am afraid to say,” the soft words striking him as intrusive in the hush of the house, “that I come on business which is not only grave, but unusual in its circumstance. I am correct in presuming that you are Mademoiselle Cosette Fauchelevent?”

Her head lifted at last. “Yes,” she affirmed. Her voice, though high and faint, was far steadier than he expected.

“Right. I had cause,” Javert continued, fixing his eyes on the space just beside her ear to give the illusion of eye contact, “to apprehend one Thénardier — an alias, to be sure — who has used the name M. Fabantou in recent months whilst going about all manner of criminal mischief. You know of him, of this Thénardier, I am certain. In any case. He was found this evening at the mouth of the sewer near the Quai d’Orléans, in possession of two fresh corpses.”

Cosette flinched, and Javert pinched his lips, thinking perhaps he was being just a bit procedural. He sighed.

“One of the deceased men has been confirmed to be little more than a boy. Perhaps twenty years of age, light complexion, dark-haired, badly wounded by a bullet upon the barricade and by a high fall. He succumbed to those injuries despite, it seems, a valiant effort to save him from them by way of a trek through the sewers. The other was a man of late fifties or early sixties. Grey-haired, broad through the chest. His, erm… his throat had been cut with remarkable precision.” Javert exhaled, as though it were smoke he wished to purge and not violence and his own confusion. His brow furrowed. “There was a ring. It has been collected.”

He flicked his eyes over to see that Cosette’s face had gone very white. She gripped the edge of the table now, as though anchoring herself to it like a drowning woman to flotsam.

“The younger man,” Javert clarified, as though she were stupid and had not figured it out herself, “matched the description of Marius Pontmercy.”

He waited for her to react with words or sobs or collapse, but she did not.

“The other,” he said, more slowly now, “was very well-known to me under several names. To some, he was M. Fauchelevent. To others, he was M. Madeleine. At the galleys of Toulon, and to the record of the law… as far as France is concerned, that is, he was Jean Valjean.”

Cosette stared at Javert, face twisting a bit, lips parted, but still she made no sound. She had gone utterly still, her breathing stopping for a moment until Javert fretted just a little that her body had forgotten its functions entirely.

“I regret,” Javert added, quite unconvincingly even to his own ear, “that I must deliver this to you in such a manner, Mademoiselle. The, erm, the remains will be made available for viewing and confirmation tomorrow, should it be required. Of course, M. Gillenormand, the grandfather… he will have been notified as well.”

Still she said nothing; her eyes brimmed, but only a few scent tears spilled, and she made no effort to drag them away. She looked, now, like a tragic figure cast in wax. Javert felt an odd boiling within him, a compulsion to growl at her like a wolf. Say something! Come and strike my cheek, won’t you?

As the silence extended beyond any tolerable measure, Javert began to feel the shift beneath his bones, the sickening sensation of having miscalculated not by inches, but by leagues. He ought not to have delivered such news as he had, for this was not a girl to whom he had merely brought an ordinary police report. This was not an ordinary case for him to process and close as an inspector. 

This was the child of Fantine, the daughter of Jean Valjean.

His mind vibrated. His jaw clenched until his teeth ached, and he swallowed. The coffee, still untouched, had begun to cool. He no longer had any desire at all for it.

Cosette moved at last, not with a cry or a gasp, but with a kind of shuddering, a statue remembering how to breathe. Her fingers left the table’s edge and drifted to her lap, folding with practiced reverence. Her chin bowed low, and for one suspended moment, she sat completely motionless. Then, horrifying Javert, she began to pray.

Her murmured words were almost inaudible at first, rising from her throat like breath warming glass. But Javert, seated across from her in the hush of the dim dining room, could make out the Latin, unmistakable even in its faintness.

“Requiem æternam dona eis, Domine, et lux perpetua luceat eis. Requiescant in pace. Amen.”

Javert stared at her, flinching just a bit at her precise invocation of eternal rest, spoken with terrible gentleness, as though the force of her grief and his lack of belief might desecrate it all and tear it asunder.

He had heard countless prayers before, on scaffolds, in prison cells, in the back rooms of hospitals where last rites were hurriedly whispered over men already dead. But never had he been seated at a bourgeois dining table whilst the daughter of his enemy bowed her head across from him like this in solemn, shattered, calm remembrance. It unmoored him to hear the name of the Lord ringing in his ears like a summons - not to court, but to conscience. She looked holy, he thought, and here he sat feeling more defiled than ever. It was utterly unfair.

He looked away at the clicking pendulum clock. The scent of coffee had faded entirely, for it had gone cold.

After a few more moments, Javert heard Cosette whispering a few Ave Marias in Latin, and his gaze turned and then lingered on the girl across from him. Not a child, of course, but now a young woman of perhaps sixteen, or seventeen, sitting here at a walnut dining table in a silk-trimmed cotton wrapper, with no shoes on, hair loosely braided, no chaperone about, and no remaining family that the law would recognise. She had not sobbed, nor made a spectacle of her raw grief. But mourning clung to her like damp spiderwebs just the same.

The clock ticked, and Javert tapped his fingertip upon the rim of his demitasse cup of coffee.

He had believed, throughout all these many years, that Valjean’s secrecy was the result of greedy selfishness, the lawless paranoia of a man who feared and rejected justice. Javert held to it that all of the false names, the unlisted addresses, the evasion used by Valjean had been the shields and cowardice of a criminal unwilling to pay his due to society. Somehow, the sight of Fantine, toothless and ill and pleading, had faded away in it all. But now, seated here in the hush of this claustrophobic room, Javert saw something he had refused to see, something appalling and unforgivable.

Valjean had not only been hiding himself; he had been hiding her . Those shields and lies had been just as much for the girl - for Cosette - as for himself. The full truth descended on Javert with the awful cold condemnation of a judicial gavel. He had made that hiding necessary, and perhaps had done so unjustly.

The panic rose from his gut, burning his throat and dizzying him, before he could name it. There was no terror so sharp for a man such as Javert as suddenly recognising that the law had not protected the innocent but might have actively endangered them, that the system he had devoted his life to had, by his own hand, rendered this girl utterly alone. He felt, very abruptly, as though he had been tossed overboard into an icy sea with no idea how to swim. 

His fingers curled around the demitasse cup and brought it to his lips. He sipped the cold coffee. It was awful now. He drank it anyway. Cosette’s eyes were still shut in prayers to the Virgin.

She had no brothers, no uncles. Both Jean Valjean and Marius Pontmercy had fallen. Javert was no fool; it was very likely Valjean had been rescuing the girl’s affianced or lover. Now she had no legitimate male relative except that dead boy’s elderly grandfather with monarchist sympathies, some old man who lived across the river and had, until recently, spurned her entirely. Her adopted father was a fugitive of the law, now a quickly bloating corpse. The only servant in the house was yet another woman whose presence would protect little and whose dark skin would likely attract danger in certain quarters of Parisian society. And Cosette herself, young and waifish and fragile, was now in possession of a house deed and, very likely, money Valjean had kept hidden somewhere. All of that, of course, meant that she was a target.

She would not survive.

Javert had worked for many years in his field; he knew very well what happened to girls like her from precinct reports and court testimonies and whispered confessions behind drawn curtains. He had processed the paperwork and had seen the patterns. The law did not protect bourgeois orphan girls like Cosette; it barely recognised them at all. If she were robbed, assaulted, coerced into marriage, trafficked away… there would be brief inquiries for the appearances of bureaucracy, perhaps, but no action, no rescue, no restitution. She would wind up just like Fantine, in a pauper’s grave somewhere, and all of it - the isolation, the vulnerability, the wretched risk - traced straight back to him.

Javert had been the one to drive Jean Valjean underground time and again. Javert had been the one to doom Fantine, to fight Valjean from saving her daughter from the inn at Montfermeil. Javert had forced the two of them to scurry about Paris like caged rats for years, so that even in this fine house they were alone. Javert had been the one to make it so dangerous for Valjean to appear in public that the man had raised his daughter like a ghost, and thus now she was catastrophically alone.

Cosette looked down now, smoothing her embroidered muslin wrapper at the sleeves. Her braid fell softly against her shoulder, a bit mussed from where she had been toying anxiously with it. The candlelight caught on the lace of her clothing and the spools of her hair. Javert tried to breathe and failed. He set down his cold coffee.

In that moment, he no longer saw her as Valjean’s little ward, nor Fantine’s daughter, nor the slavish little girl at Thénardier’s inn. He saw her as she was: a young bourgeois woman in Paris without male protection, without a documented guardian, without any meaningful status. Her address and her coin meant nothing now. Not really. So easily, she could be eaten alive; Paris swallowed girls whole like that, and the law did not mourn them.

Javert’s fists suddenly tightened against the edge of the table until his knuckles went white. The rhythm of the mantel clock grew intolerable. He wanted to smash its face open and rip out the hands. When his panic came, it was almost too quiet and it had no name. It manifested just like his old horrors from war did, this time in a thousand flickering bureaucratic images far too like Fantine’s fate. He saw forged property claims about a house on rue Plumet, a constable turning his eyes away from an unchaperoned girl at dusk, a pretty blonde girl selling all manner of possessions, a clerk filing an inheritance under the name of a male cousin who did not exist and accepting a bribe to do so. He imagined her dragged into a marriage contract with a fat parvenu who would beat her, an act she could not contest, an act of desperation. He imagined the reports Javert would write after she vanished and the sickening pit he would feel seeing her name upon paperwork.

He had never felt powerless before. Not really. And yet now, seated across from a girl who had bowed her head to pray for the dead prey he had chased for years and had felt little satisfaction in finally seizing, he had never felt less like an officer of the law and more like its unwilling weapon.

Javert cleared his throat once more, though there was nothing really caught in it. He shifted to lean slightly forward, his gloved hands resting upon the table as though bracing himself a bit.

“Mademoiselle,” he said, his voice quiet, though not softened in gentleness, but wrapped in deliberate formality, “permit me one question more. I ask it not in my official capacity, but as a man who has come to see some things differently than he once did.”

Cosette looked at him somewhat sceptically through her lashes, her brow going tense.

“You and your… father. M. Fauchelevent. You lived here in this house quietly, without visitors, callers, or salon invitations. Yes?”

She hesitated and blinked. “Yes, Monsieur l’Inspecteur.”

Javert inhaled. “And you do not…” He paused. The word he had begun to say, he decided, was wrong. “You are not engaged in any form of correspondence which might bring you assistance? You have no family to speak of. No friendly neighbours or acquaintances. Men in particular.”

Cosette’s lips pressed into a thinner line, her cheeks pinking in what seemed like an offended haughtiness. “No, Monsieur.”

Javert sniffed. “I see.”

He turned his head just enough to glance out the tall dining room window, where a moth batted aimlessly against the glass, drawn dumbly to the weak flame of the oil lamp. Javert shut his eyes against it all and gathered himself.

“In this arrondissement,” he said then, “more than one girl - erm, one woman - has come to grief for having been left alone in the absence of a patriarch, you see. Some with houses, some with means. Many with none, of course. In any case, their misfortune does go noticed.” He did not clarify by whom.

He turned back to her and met her eyes. “You are known to few, and protected by none, now, save, perhaps, the maidservant. And yet she, Toussaint, cannot be expected to defend you from every potential...difficulty. Respectfully, Mademoiselle, you are unwed, fatherless, friendless, and young, and the law will make no provision to help you now.”

Cosette made no reply to his brusque delivery of that truth. She merely stared at him, but the rise and fall of her chest gave her away far more than her face. She had, after all, learnt too well the art of silent calm, Javert knew, in her years of abuse and hiding. He was no fool about that.

He swallowed, frustrated. “I mean only to ask, Mademoiselle,” and here he raised his hands slightly, as though to display that they held no threat, “whether there someone to whom you might go this night? An uncle or a grandfather. A family friend. Relations of Toussaint herself. Any person of good name, preferably the household of a gentleman, with whom you might stay, just until the... arrangements have been seen to.”

At that, Cosette shook her head.

“No,” she said, her voice barely audible above the whisper of her breath but clearer now. “There is no one. I am entirely alone, Monsieur.”

“Ah.” Javert nodded. “Indeed.”

This time when Javert cleared his throat, it was with a dryness that caught in his chest. His fingers twitched a bit against the table’s edge before he retracted them and folded them tightly in his lap.

“Mademoiselle,” he began, already disliking the sound of his voice, “it is... well, of course, it is not customary, and I do not propose it lightly, but.” Now he could not find his voice without coughing into his fist. He pressed on. “Under the current circumstances, and in consideration of the unprotected state in which you presently find yourself, I believe it may be considered prudent for a representative of the police to remain here on the premises overnight. Temporarily.”

Cosette’s mouth fell open, and she blinked.

“Of course, I would not presume to impose further than necessity demands,” Javert added in a rush, as if the idea itself had begun to recoil in his own mind. “But I am authorised to act as such, in the interest of public safety, and this situation… your situation, Mademoiselle… presents certain extraordinary vulnerabilities to which I am not indifferent. As an officer of the law. I would remain here solely in an official capacity, to assure your security until alternative arrangements may be implemented. That is all.”

His words fell like stones in water between them. Cosette tilted her head, studying him across the table, and her fingers went back up to toy with her braid again. She did not speak at first, and the only change upon her face was the way her white teeth pulled at her lip and her eyes blinked a few more times. The oil lamp hummed faintly beside them, and the pendulum of the clock tapped on determinedly. Javert was suddenly aware of the sound of his own shallow breath. Finally, Cosette she nodded once. 

“Thank you kindly, Monsieur l’Inspecteur,” she said with quiet precision. “Yes, I understand. I am grateful.”

She rose from her chair with smooth, careful grace and brushed her palms against her wrapper as though wiping away the stains of the horrid evening of bloody loss itself. “I shall ask Toussaint to prepare the guest room and a hot bath for you, and you may take your rest there. You must be… very weary.”

Javert rose as well, his aging and fatigued body slower and stiffer, and inclined his head in acknowledgement. “That is most considerate, Mademoiselle.”

She dipped into a distracted little curtsy and turned to leave. The padding of her bare feet against the hardwood floor was soft and vanishing. Left alone, Javert stood still for a moment longer, feeling absurdly out of place in Jean Valjean’s private home, as though the act of merely standing in this room required written permission or a whispered affirmation from a god with whom he never communed. His eyes drifted to the mantelpiece, where the brass pendulum continued its infernal cadence. Click. Click. Click. Each beat was a reprimand now.

You fool , Javert thought, with an internal scowl. You old fool, what have you done now?

And yet… Something else simmered beneath the scorn he directed toward himself. Something strange and new, a sort of uneasy clarity. It was distinctly uncomfortable, and Javert felt no relief in it, but the jarring, unfamiliar sensation of rightness was there just the same. He had acted, for once, not to enforce a statute or interpret a decree, but to protect someone very real - not the abstract purity of the law, but the living, breathing reality of a vulnerable girl whose life had been warped at least in part by his own pursuit.

Perhaps, Javert registered with alarming assurance, perhaps this was not justice according to statute. But it might be something equally as justifiable.

The clock continued to mark the time, and Javert turned slowly toward the hallway, the scent of coffee now gone entirely from the room. He followed the way Cosette had gone, his steps careful and muted on the floorboards.

Chapter Text

Javert did not much care to be seen bathing. In Napoleon’s army, and later at the Bagne of Toulon, of course, one had never been granted the privilege of bathing alone. Nakedness had been routine and without dignity, with bodies washed infrequently in rivers on campaign, or sluiced clean full view of guards and fellow convicts beneath the open sun. And although many years had passed since Javert had scrubbed others and himself beneath a distracted or curious gaze, he had never learned to find comfort in water, nor to truly slacken when another human’s eyes might be upon him. Even now, in a near-silent bourgeois guest room with no one to see, the instinct to brace and remain clothed remained.

The bath had been prepared while he sat motionless upon the edge of the bed with its blue and white indienne blankets, his hat untouched beside him. Toussaint had murmured a low "Monsieur l’Inspecteur" before curtseying and retreating, her firm but careful steps nearly masking the sounds of her sniffling grief. 

Hot water, brought up in copper kettles from the kitchen hearth over the course of nearly an hour, steamed now in the portable tin tub, set just before the hearth’s smoldering remains in the corner of the guest room. The tub had been filled gradually with jugs of boiling water and an occasional cold for tempering, again and again until the level rose high enough to soak a man to the chest. A folded fine linen towel lay draped over the chair beside the tub.

Javert, having now undressed behind the folding screen, stood still for a moment before the tub, his limbs held tightly at his sides as though awaiting orders from an unseen commander. He had folded his uniform with mechanical precision: his jacket smelling of sweat and the night, then the waistcoat, trousers, and shirt, and he had set it all neatly atop the chair. He had already put his shined boots beneath it.

He stepped into the tub with a hiss at the way the water was hotter than necessary, hotter than comfortable. The heat bit at the skin of his calves and his thighs, then his abdomen, until he lowered himself entirely and leaned back with a faint groan that came unbidden from low in his throat, the tin complaining with him. Javert permitted himself one long exhale, tucking his long legs up in the too-short tub, and then reached for the handled ewer to pour water over his chest and shoulders, allowing the heat to pulse through his veins. Then he began to scrub.

He gripped the Savon de Marseille Toussaint had left for him tightly in his hand and scoured himself not like a man returning to rest but like a field officer debriding a wound he feared would fester. The soap bit beneath his nails and rasped over the planes of his thick arms. He washed it all away: the sewers, the rain, the smoke, the stink of gunpowder and of night-damp wool, the memory of that cursed clean cut across Valjean’s throat, the sight of Valjean’s eyes dead at long last. He washed as though it were a penance or a rite and he were a man who cared about such things, as though ritual cleanliness could reorder the world and set his spinning head to rights again. It could do no such thing, he knew, but he washed just the same.

The water cooled quickly, for even in June, Paris did not hold its warmth long, and the night had deepened into a comfortable damp. Toussaint had left the muslin curtain half-parted, allowing the barest flicker of moonlight through the tall window of the guest room. Outside, the wind shifted branches that scratched faintly against the glass. When Javert surrendered to the temperature of the milky water and rose, he toweled himself with brisk efficiency until not a drop of water lingered on his skin. He did not glance in the mirror; he did not pause to regard his own flesh.

The nightshirt Toussaint had left for him was a neatly pressed white linen garment that lay folded upon the indienne bedding. Javert picked it up and dragged its material beneath his fingers as his stomach twisted strangely, but for some reason, the only coherent observation his mind formed about the garment was that it was too short. He was taller than Valjean had been, and just a little broader too, and when he pulled on the nightshirt the hem caught high on his shins. He noticed the faint scent of lavender and starch. Valjean’s clean old shirt was causing him not to smell like himself. 

The robe de chambre, at least, seemed slightly less personal. It was of a fine, lightweight cotton batiste, pale grey-blue in colour with an understated stripe. As Javert tied the sash about his waist, he distantly considered the strange life Valjean had made for himself and his adopted daughter in hiding here. It was all with ill-gotten money, a matter which ought to enrage Javert. Instead, his mind speculated what would have become of Cosette if Valjean had failed to take the girl from Montfermeil as he had promised Fantine, if he had failed to give the girl the years he had done.

It was not quite shame that settled on him then, but something deeper, quieter, and far more terrible. Javert paused beside the bed and allowed his mind to register the feeling, realising that he felt both like a trespasser and infringed upon himself, like he was defiling the nightshirt and wearing the skin of a man already dead, like he was suffering a grave torment for some unseen tyrant’s amusement. 

Outside, the city muttered in its sleep. Somewhere not far off, a bell marked the late hour with a long series of tolls. And then Javert heard it - her voice. He heard the sound of quiet murmuring, interrupted now and then with the distinct choking of sobs. He knew far better than to interrupt or to investigate, for she was obviously grieving and this was her home. He was not on duty. This was not a police matter. Not really. 

Still, he found himself padding over to the door of the guest room and pulling it open slowly. When he did, he was surprised to see that across the corridor and one room over, the door to what was obviously Cosette’s bedchamber had been left ajar. She was in there, Javert could hear, and had not fully shut herself in against the strange policeman in the house in the confusion of her grief. He must turn around at once and put himself to bed. 

But he did not. Instead, he allowed himself to walk down the shadowy corridor, his footsteps feeling monstrous and invasive upon the narrow, muted green runner that covered the slightly creaky floorboards. His eyes settled for a half instant upon the framed sketch upon the wall he passed, an almost garishly amateurish drawing of the Virgin Mary herself that struck Javert an odd thing to be featured so prominently until he realised it had been carefully signed in the bottom right corner in a child’s scrawl - Cosette, October 1827.

He paused for just a moment and fixed his eyes upon it, his lips and throat going dry, unsure of whether his heart had slowed or quickened. He could hear her voice coming from her room still, murmuring, catching. He ought to return at once to the guest space where he had been given quarters to rest. He was staying the night to protect this girl - Fantine’s daughter, Valjean’s ward - because he knew that if he did not, soon enough the city would devour her and the law would not protect her. Why he was encroaching upon her so closely now, he had no idea.

Still, he pressed nearer her door, though whether he was compelled to do so by his conscience, curiosity, or professional duty, he did not know. It didn’t matter, probably. He touched at her doorframe and made no effort to enter the room, but she seemed to sense him there, and when his gaze settled upon her kneeling on a small pillow beside her bed, still in her muslin wrapper with her hair in a braid, her hands clasped before her, her hitching prayer trailed off.

“ Sustinuit anima mea in verbo ejus: speravit anima mea in Domino. A custodia matutina usque ad noctem… ”

She turned just a little from where she knelt, just enough to see him where he stood spying upon her. Her lips remained parted from where her prayer had paused, and her eyes met his for a long moment. She did not insist that he leave, much to Javert’s surprise. She did not demand privacy in the enormity of her anguish. Instead, she swiped her knuckles beneath her eyes, where several tears had gathered, and she turned back round again, taking up her prayer once more.

“ Speret Israel in Domino. Quia apud Dominum misericordia: et copiosa apud eum redemptio. Et ipse redimet Israel ex omnibus iniquitatibus ejus. ”

Javert stood and watched her pray in fresh mourning for too long a while, and then he turned back to the guest room, shutting the door behind him and leaning back against it as a strange, dark churning sensation took him over. He swallowed past an unwelcome knot in his throat and reckoned Toussaint could empty the bath when the sun rose, then climbed into bed, determined to sleep.

The 4th arrondissement commissariat stood squat and narrow upon the Quai d’Orléans, flanked by grey façades still damp with dew not yet dispersed by the morning sun. The Seine moved listlessly below as Javert crossed the stone threshold. He had been here many times, yet he felt not the comfort of familiarity just now, but the unease of inversion. Upon waking with gasps from startling fits of slumber, Javert had discovered that the entirety of his vision had warped. The sounds of birds from outside were too loud, or simply wrong. The velvet of the dawn sky seemed a threatening scarlet.

His long strides to the commissariat had been quick, his breath searing in his lungs. He no longer dwelled in certainty, and that was both deeply uncomfortable and profoundly inappropriate.

Inside the station, the clerk at the front desk nodded to acknowledge him but did not rise. Javert proceeded at once to the second floor, past two unlit sconces and a chipped bust of Louis-Philippe rendered in cheap plaster. The door to the divisionnaire’s office stood half-opened, and as he knocked, a gravelled voice called, “Enter.”

Like the clerk downstairs, Commissaire Henri-Claude Miremont did not rise from behind the desk. His round spectacles glinted slightly above the pale ledger spread before him, and his greying moustache twitched as though already irritated. He did not look up at first, instead asking boredly as he flipped a page,

“Well, Javert?”

Javert chewed the inside of his cheek and straightened his spine, collecting himself. He gave a clipped summary then: the discovery of the bodies, the arrest of “M. Fabantou” - the man correctly identified as Thénardier. Miremont nodded through it all, marking detailed notes with a pencil and asking a few questions now and then. But something in his tone scraped oddly to Javert’s ear. He was too brusque, too cold today, even for him.

“And the girl?” Miremont asked eventually, peering up through his spectacles. “The ward.”

Javert blinked, mildly startled. The term had landed too harshly. “Mademoiselle Fauchelevent,” he corrected, his voice much sharper than intended. “She… was unharmed.”

Miremont straightened his spectacles upon the bridge of his nose, his expression unreadable. “Mmm. Indeed. Make sure the property is secured and that the mairie has the death records by end of day. Let’s keep this tidy, shall we?”

“Tidy,” Javert repeated, almost in a whisper. He gave a minute nod. He took the required forms and made his way down the narrow corridor to the records room. There, beneath a gas lamp hissing faintly against the stone wall, he set about the ritual of recording death he had done so many times. Pen to paper and ink to skin. The procès-verbal required dates, times, identities, and aliases. One line read: Nom du défunt: Jean Valjean, dit M. Fauchelevent.

Javert’s pen paused just slightly at that line, but he resumed writing before the pause could shame him. The bureaucratic motions consumed the entirety of the next hour. He filled out the état des effets, listing the gold ring that had been lying in the gutter, the pocket contents of both men that had been recovered off Thénardier. Each item inscribed felt, for the first time in Javert’s long career, like a desecration disguised as procedure. Still, he signed twice. Another officer, some young and indifferent man whom Javert had never seen before, countersigned without comment. Together they sealed the packet, and Javert handed it off to be logged with the Bureau des Objets Trouvés. 

The smell of fresh sealing-wax and black ink hung in the offices like incense.

Next, as always in such vile cases, was the autopsy request, so Javert entered the office of the médecin-légiste, a lean man with pockmarks and immaculately lacy cuffs, who took the report with a shrug.

“Two bodies, you say? Hmm. Right. Throat’s been opened? Indeed.” the man studied the notes with clinical, distant curiosity.

“Yes,” Javert replied dryly.

The man nodded. “Quite a deep slash, then, eh? Seems the poor bastard bled out like a pig.”

The phrasing caught Javert’s chest, and for some reason an angry flush worked up his cheeks. “That is enough,” he clipped, turning to leave before he could hear the man speak again.

Next he took the reports to the judicial clerk for transmission to the Juge de Paix. He confirmed the identities of the dead and their legal names, as well as their next of kin. Gillénormand, Georges-Lucien , he wrote for Marius Pontmercy, and for Jean Valjean, Cosette Fauchelevant. The phrase “next of kin” struck a nerve with him, not because it wasn’t true, but because, in writing it, he committed a moral truth to paper for which the law made no true space or allowance. It wasn’t the kinship that troubled him anymore. Not really. It was that Cosette had been terribly loved, first by Fantine and then by Valjean, and perhaps even by the boy Marius, and now she was left alone with nothing but some money and a good deal of danger..

Still, Javert handed the documents over without fanfare and turned last to the matter.

Protocol would typically demand an immediate search of no. 55 rue Plumet. Jean Valjean was well-recorded as a former convict. That was reality, and the home of a deceased convict was to be inspected for contraband, for fugitive co-conspirators, for anything untoward. Javert knew very well that officers would inventory the dwelling, fingerprint the desks, rummage through drawers, examine books for ciphered margins. He knew well that they would lift Cosette’s dresses from their pegs and pick up her undergarments with their bare hands. They would paw through her letters, trample the rugs with their dirty boots, peel back the wallpaper and not repair it, confiscate ledgers and diaries. All of this would they do to the house of a fatherless girl and her maid, because of her dead father who had stolen bread and torn up his papers a very long time ago.

Javert imagined it all far too vividly. He could see and hear it now: the dust lifted by boot soles, the voices of officers wondering aloud if this or that meant anything, the sight a young woman twining her fingers anxiously but saying nothing while they opened her father’s desk and examined her hairbrush.

He drew breath hard through his teeth. He set down his pen. He did not authorise the search of the house.

Instead, Javert placed the unsigned authorisation request beneath the other papers and slid the entire folder shut with a quiet click. It was not a denial… not exactly. And he was not breaking any laws, nor disobeying any orders. This was merely a delay, a procedural pause. Javert simply told himself that it was necessary to focus on the more pressing matters first.

But, of course, that was a lie.

Javert knew the truth full well before he’d even reached the stairwell. He had shielded her from police bureaucracy just as fully now as Jean Valjean had ever done. In any case, the house on rue Plumet would stand undisturbed. Just for now.

During the day, it seemed, Toussaint had dressed Cosette in a mourning dress of flat black crêpe, unadorned and matte, the dour fabric falling heavily from her narrow shoulders in the stiff, modest silhouette demanded by early grief. The bodice was fastened with plain black buttons, the sleeves long and unyielding to the heat of summer, relieved only by a spotless white linen collar at the neck and matching cuffs at the wrists, both pressed to knife-sharp precision, as if the stiffness of human mourning itself required starch. Cosette’s delicately fair hair had been drawn back tightly from her young face and pinned into a low, severe coil at the nape, bound with a narrow black ribbon. She wore no jewellery, not even earrings. The overall effect was not coquettish, nor even tragic, but strangely ceremonial, like a tiny, quiet widow left behind by some wretched execution the state would not name aloud.

The meal Toussaint had prepared for the two of them was subdued in tone and portion: twin shallow bowls of potage aux fines herbes accompanied by warm buttered pain de campagne, with thin cucumber slices dressed in vinegar and shallots, and a modest glass of Bourgogne ordinaire each. Javert ate with precise movements, feeling a bit too aware of how the soup slipping between his lips, of how the crust of the bread crackling audibly in the hush of the house. He found himself staring into the verdant broth more than tasting it, noticing the herbs floating there like small, soft lilypads. This was not a prisoner’s meal, nor the fare of the galleys, nor of the prefecture’s break room, nor even of the cheap cafés where a man might sit unbothered and take note of the news in the papers. This was the table of a fatherless, loveless girl suddenly dropped adrift into mourning, and the law had not yet kicked in her door.

“I am grateful for you having managed the gruesome logistics involving my beloved Papa and my dear Marius today, Monsieur l’Inspecteur. I imagine you have done similarly many times in your work and that such paperwork is quite routine to you, but to me, of course, it is not. I am grateful for you swiftly managing it all and for… for the warning you have given me regarding my safety.” Cosette gently set down her spoon beside her soup, and Javert stared at her across the table in the flickering light of the candelabra. He sighed and nodded slowly.

“Of course, Mademoiselle.”

She picked up her short-stemmed glass of wine and sipped, as if gathering a thought, and he took note of the way her eyes were swollen and a bit dull, after what he imagined had been many tears shed between many prayers. She delicately cleared her throat and announced,

“Having considered your caution, Monsieur, I have made my decision. I shall return to the convent.”

Javert’s own spoon stilled mid-air, and his thick brows furrowed deeply. Cosette gave him a clarifying little nod.

“I mean, Monsieur, the convent where I lived as a child, when my Papa first brought me to Paris. The Petit-Picpus. The sisters there were terribly kind and will remember me.” Cosette folded her hands neatly upon the table, the stiff black cuffs making the gesture look reverent. “It is just as you say. I no longer have a father, and I have no husband. There is no longer a man in the house, and I cannot possibly remain here.”

Javert attempted to swallow and failed.

“The law,” Cosette added, with a faintly tragic smile that did not reach her eyes, “does not favour women who live alone, or who live only with their maids, is that not so, Monsieur? In any case, I would very much prefer not to be the subject of another inspection, and my father left quite a detailed letter with Toussaint for me in case he did not return home, explaining a great many personal details of his past and mine. I suspect I need not explain that letter to you, nor why I now fear the intrusion of police here.”

Javert felt his lips part, felt his stomach twist, felt his mind whirl. So Valjean had known to reveal himself, at least in part, to Cosette, in case he and the Pontmercy boy died that night upon the barricades. His breath quivered in his wide nostrils, but he said nothing, and so she continued, her voice soft but clear as she spoke down to her folded hands.

“The sisters will kindly take me, and I will be safe at the convent. I will happily take the veil if they permit me. It is not a whim, I assure you. It is simply the best… the only real option left to me.” Her eyes lifted to meet his as she informed him with strange steadiness, “I shall belong to God, Inspector Javert, since I no longer belong to anyone else.”

Javert could neither breathe nor speak to her. The candles sputtered faintly in the silence in a manner that felt most accusatory, and the grandfather clock in the hall chimed out eight hours as if tolling a sentence. This figure before him… this was not the Cosette he had imagined finding in some safehouse for all of the years his mind had fixated upon Valjean. No, she was a different creature entirely than his mind had ever dared to mold or envision, all at once more frightened and assured, more empyral and thoughtful, more delicate and careful. She confused him. She shamed him.

He shook his head and said to her, just a bit too firmly,

“I beg you, Mademoiselle, not to rush to the convent with haste. It is your decision, of course, but… you ought to know that I had the choice today of approving precisely the search of this house you fear or not approving it, and I did not. No one is coming. Not for now.”

Cosette blinked slowly, picking up her spoon and stirring absently at her potage in its bowl. “Oh. I see.”

Javert’s cheeks felt a bit warm as he touched at the rim of his wine glass. “And whilst I will not overstay beyond, erm, my professional capacity to ensure you are guarded, Mademoiselle… that is, until a better situation is secured for you… I am more than happy to chaperon you here. For now. For your safety.”

He flicked his eyes up, across the table, through the dim light, and saw that Cosette was examining him oddly. She tilted her face just a bit and narrowed her eyes before nodding once. Javert hesitated and then added,

“You say that Val- that your father left you letter explaining a good many things. Perhaps you now understand, Mademoiselle, why it is I might feel some… compunction. Why it is that I might feel a mild sense of obligation to see personally to your safety. Or perhaps he did not mention me by name. I do not know.”

Cosette let out a low sigh and sipped her wine, glancing toward the window. Her blonde hair glistened just a little in the candlelight. Javert had no idea why he noticed such a strange thing just now. He noticed, too, the way her fingers were tightly gripping her glass as though for purchase before she asked in a murmur,

“Did you know me when I was very young, as he did, Inspector Javert?”

His throat had gone intolerably dry all of a sudden, so he picked up his wine as she had done and took an ungraceful gulp of it before immediately setting it down again, nodding, and confirming in a brutish sort of grunt, “Yes.”

Her face turned to him, too calmly, too smoothly, but her eyes were wide and wild, glistening with unshed tears. “Where?”

Javert thought then that he ought to rise and excuse himself, to leave the house at once and send an inspector who had never met Cosette in her life to come and guard her for her safety. Instead, he filled and emptied his lungs and confessed in little more than a whisper, as though to a priest,

“In Montreuil, I was very well-acquainted with… with your father. And I knew of your mother there, I am sorry to say, for her end was an unpleasant one. I did not properly intervene when…”

 Javert pursed his lips and eyed the candelabra upon the table, diverting his gaze from Cosette as he considered that his transgressions against her mother had been far worse than a lack of intervention. Even now, for some reason, he could see the gaping holes in Fantine’s mouth from where her teeth had been ripped out, the scabs upon her scalp from where the hair had been shorn far too meanly, the blood dried upon her lips… all for her daughter, for Cosette.

He glanced up again and shook his head. “You need not return to the convent, Mademoiselle, nor sell the contents of this home, nor fret that it will be plundered. And if you will permit me to do so, I shall see to your safety.”

Cosette just stared again, for so long that Javert worried she would erupt into tears or stand up and flee or both. But she just nodded at last and murmured, “Thank you kindly, Inspector.”

Then she picked up her spoon again and resumed eating her dinner.

Chapter Text

The next day, Javert was sent east on horseback with dust in his eyes and his orders in his uniform coat. Somehow, parts of Paris still stank of blood and ash, and the Prefecture was desperate to stamp out the last glowing embers of rebellion. All the way to Nogent-sur-Marne, Javert followed rumours of fugitives and hidden arms with the silent urgency of a man who did not believe in ghosts but had begun to see them all the same. 

When he returned to rue Plumet, exhausted and hungry, he found that Cosette’s calm was entirely gone.

Toussaint pulled the door open before he even raised his hand to knock, and the look upon her dark, solemn face alone told him something had gone awfully wrong. Her brow was pinched and her mouth was drawn into a line of such taut composure it might have been sewn shut.

“M’sieur l’Inspecteur,” she said quickly, and stepped aside. “Ma’mselle Cosette is unwell.”

Javert stepped into the foyer of Valjean’s house and plucked off his leather gloves with slow, smooth motion, as if doing so might somehow steady the uneasy flicker already beginning in his chest. Toussaint’s voice dropped and was almost conspiratorial. 

“She collapsed into her nerves, M’sieur — around the Angelus, I think. At first, I blamed the heat, or perhaps fatigue. But no.”

Javert pulled off his hat and handed it over, tilting his head slightly, waiting.

“Mam’selle Cosette knelt in prayer just before the Angelus.” Toussaint continued her report in a low rush, moving to attend to Javert’s gloves and hat, then twining her own fingers fretfully. “She had her rosary in hand, M’sieur, very quiet, very still. But then something seemed to… break within her. She went quite silent, not from peace, but from —” she paused, searching for the word, her eyes glistening a bit, “—from a sort of absence, M’sieur. She would not answer me; only stared at the floor. She has taken no broth and no water. No tea. Not even the barley infusion I offered her just now.”

Javert’s jaw tensed. He clicked his teeth and let out a low breath. Toussaint tossed up her hands in frustration before her apron.

“She shakes this evening,” she said. “In her hands, her mouth. No fever, M’sieur. I felt her brow, but she trembles still. She has said no word to me in three hours, save for a prayer mumbled now and then, like she’s talking in her sleep, though she is awake.”

“Thank you, Toussaint.” Javert nodded curtly, then moved toward the stairs. Upon the landing, he paused a moment, his fingers resting lightly on the slightly worn banister, before continuing upward at a deliberate pace.

The claustrophobic, warm air of the upper floor was hushed and thick with the scent of beeswax and lavender. The door of Cosette’s bedchamber had been left ajar, perhaps deliberately so, and he approached it quietly. Through the small opening, he could just glimpse her little figure upon the bed, turned sideways, the line of her crêpe-clad shoulder rising above the clean sheets like a ridge against the faintest golden spill of late-afternoon light. Javert froze in the threshold, feeling just as much a monstrous interloper now as when he had spied upon her earnest prayers the night of Valjean’s death.

Cosette lay motionless on her side with her knees slightly drawn up, but she was not sleeping. Her hands were clasped beneath her chin in too childlike a posture, the knuckles pressed together until they whitened at the joints. She was not clad in a nightgown; her black mourning dress was still fastened at the collar. The black ribbon at the back of her hair had come loose, and her long blonde hair draped almost oddly like a halo around the pillowcase.

Her lips moved faintly. Javert leaned in, straining to hear as the brittle rasp of thirsty breath emerged and she whispered,

“No, Madame, I beg you… I am sorry… Papa, Papa… Papa… away…” 

Her wide eyes were open, fixed not on the door or the window, but on some distant point in the wallpaper’s pattern, as if she were counting the flowers there like rosary beads for penance. Her dilated pupils did not waver. Her already pale complexion was utterly drained of colour except for twin pink flushes on her cheekbones. One slipper had fallen from her foot and lay discarded on the rug beside the bed, toe pointed sideways like the limp paw of an animal, leaving her stockinged foot dangling.

Cosette did not turn her head; she did not seem to register him at all.

He remained there in the doorway for longer than he knew he ought to do, longer than was proper, watching the barely perceptible movement of her chest and the near-inaudible repetition of her prayer. This moment was not holy, he knew. Javert was not at all a holy man, but he could tell well enough that this was mechanical, that the words passed her lips like the whirring teeth of a clock whose hands no longer moved. He drew a breath but did not speak, for it would do no good to say anything to her just now. Anyway, what would he have said? He stepped back soundlessly and pulled the door shut behind him with a little click.

At the bottom of the staircase, Toussaint looked up from where she stood in the shadow of the grandfather clock, her hands clenching furiously in her apron. Javert nodded to her and spoke without raising his voice.

“I can see plainly, Toussaint, that Mademoiselle Cosette is overstimulated in her grief. Exhausted. Do not try to wake her to conversation, nor make her see reason now. Leave her broth, or warm milk, or tea. Put it beside the bed, and speak gently when you must, but do not press her.”

“Of course, Monsieur,” Toussaint murmured formally, dipping into a deep curtsey. “But… shouldn’t she be seen?”

“Yes.” Javert agreed, and he was already reaching for his hat from the hook. “She must be attended at once.”

“Will you send for someone, then, M’sieur?” Toussaint hesitated just a bit. “There is a doctor for ladies in the rue de l’Homme Armé. At Number Eleven there. A messenger…?"

“I will fetch him myself, immediately.”

Toussaint opened her mouth to protest, likely with some sort of polite reminder to the policeman in staying in the house that he had only just returned from work, was clearly fatigued, and hadn’t yet eaten dinner, but she quickly seemed to think the better of it. Javert had already set his hat firmly upon his head and was shrugging into his greatcoat, for a very slight chill was coming with the night. He gave Toussaint a stout nod.

“If she does stir, or asks after me, tell her I have been away at police work and will return before dark with a doctor, and that there is no cause to be afraid.”

Toussaint gave him a bit of a strange look at that, and Javert knew why at once. Why would Cosette ask after him? She scarcely knew him. He was surely no source of comfort for her. But Toussaint nodded quickly, and Javert did not meet her gaze, choosing instead to quickly stride out of Valjean’s house and into the street.

When he did, he found that the air was still heavy with humidity and that the lamps were not yet lit, and that the gutters were still streaked with faint soot from rebellious fires long since extinguished and ordinary muck of the city. His uniform boots struck the cobblestones with brisk determination. He did not yet allow himself to think any semblance of coherent thought just now, for he was set to a task of necessity. A girl was ill, and he would summon care for her.

He passed four houses and the remains of a charred lamppost before the lie began to splinter.

This was not police duty, his thoughts spat at him. Not really, entirely. And what he had seen in that upstairs bedroom was not ordinary grief, nor mere female nervousness, nor even religious melancholy. It was the collapse of something far more profound, something held up by threadbare hope and too many years of denial. He had seen it once in the face of a prisoner the morning before execution, in the face of Fantine herself, and this morning in the mirror.

The sky had dimmed into a bruised cerulean by the time Javert reached the rue de l’Homme Armé. The narrow street, twisted as an old man’s spine, lay tucked between crooked buildings and glowed dimly beneath the flicker of lamps now lit, and a grimy dust clung to the air in slowly unspooling ribbons. 

Javert reached Number Eleven, the address to which Toussaint had sent him. The brass placard beside the turquoise door was polished to a lurid shine and read, in ostentatious lettering: Dr Gustave Chavigny — Médecin des Dames — Maladies Nerveuses & Constitutionnelles. Javert exhaled once through his nose, his brow furrowing. Physician to the Ladies. Nervous and constitutional ailments. The wording was just vague enough to be dignified, and just vulgar enough to be entirely understood. He rapped the brass knocker twice, and the door was opened expeditiously. A bright-faced young maid blinked up at him with confusion that bordered on alarm. His uniform still bore the soot and sweat of the day, and the sun was already down. His presence surely alarmed her, so he said in a gruff and matter of fact tone,

“The doctor is needed. Urgently.”

The maid stepped aside to admit him, taking his hat and coat at once, and he was shown into a too-warm salon with overstuffed armchairs and drapes the color of crushed berries. The aromas assaulted Javert’s nostrils first — too-sweet almond oil from furniture polish and clove from potpourri, undercut faintly by an odour of old medicine and scented pomade. Upon the walls, portraits of pale, scowling men in frock coats looked down, and a yellow canary in a gilded cage let out a trill.

Dr Gustave Chavigny entered as if onto a stage.

“Ah! A policeman in my parlour!” he cried, spreading his arms wide. He was much shorter than Javert, and far rounder. The bottle green of his velvet tailcoat strained across his gut, and his waistcoat of brilliant blue brocade was visibly one button too tight. He smelled overpoweringly of violet water. His beige trousers, quite tight round his fat legs, disappeared into high-polished black shoes that clicked with every self-important step.

“Might I presume, Monsieur l’Inspecteur, this summons is not for a professional infraction - for of course, I am doctor of impeccable distinction - but for a matter of the flesh?” Chavigny gave a pleased laugh and pointed toward the sideboard. “A drink, perhaps? Cognac?”

Javert shook his head once. Chavigny sighed. 

“No? What a pity. I am always in the mood and searching for an excuse.”

“Monsieur le Docteur, there is a young woman in need of medical care,” Javert said flatly.

Chavigny paused in mock astonishment, as though being informed for the first time of his trained purpose, but then raised a brow and clucked his tongue.

“A young woman, you say? Yes, Paris is absolutely riddled with them, Inspector… Javert, isn’t it? Well. Let us away.” He waddled to a cabinet and began gathering instruments into a black bag. “Now. What might be the trouble with this young woman?”

Javert hesitated, and Chavigny peered over his shoulder as he placed a glass vial and a silver spoon into his bag. He flashed Javert a strange smirk. 

“Ah. I presume she has grown pale, delicate, and inclined to religious ecstasy or sudden fits of silence? This is France, after all; the bloody aftermath of a revolution - or an attempted one - does tend to make the dear creatures collapse like broken lace, does it not?”

Javert said nothing at all to that. He straightened his spine and squared his jaw and allowed Chavigny to misread his silence as agreement. He watched as the doctor plucked some smelling salts from a cupboard and dropped them into his bag and blathered on,

“Yes, yes. Poor little lambs, crumbling at the first sign of disobedient men or divine wrath. But we must not blame them, my dear Inspector. No. It is the uterus! That ancient, wandering, cursed little malefactor.”

He chuckled again, this time at his own perceived wit, and cinched his medical bag with a theatrical snap. He whirled on a foot, though he was rotund enough to nearly toppled, and he leaned upon his shelf a bit ungracefully to steady himself before he insisted,

“Come along, then, Monsieur l’Inspecteur. Lead me to your invalid.”

Javert turned and strode out of the man’s office without a word. He did not hold the door. They walked rather than taking a cab or whatever carriage Chavigny might have possessed, for the city was cramped and it was not too far, so Javert working on foot as escort was much quicker. His long strides made the distance between them unnatural, but Chavigny chattered on, undeterred by Javert’s very obvious disinterest.

“Now, Inspector,” he huffed as he waddled along with exertion, “are you quite certain this is not a case of spiritual possession? I have been beaten more than once this week alone by the clergy, you see! Would you believe it… just yesterday, a Carmelite girl began speaking in tongues and wouldn’t stop until the priest threw holy water at her. But then? Silence! Holy silence.”

Javert did not look back, choosing instead to fix his eyes forward in a glare and to rather snarl, “There are no demons, Monsieur le Docteur. This is a medical case. She is the daughter of a man who died two days ago. Her name is Cosette.”

“Hmm. Cosette,” Chavigny repeated, as though mouthing a bonbon. “Pretty name. Pretty girl? So often, Inspector, girls like that often simply require a firm voice and a tonic. Or it can be that they require… a gentler hand… when warranted. You understand what I mean, I’m sure.”

Javert slowed his steps, not enough to make a scene, just enough to rein in the tightening fury clawing its way up his spine and making his cheeks flush hot, his throat tighten.

Chavigny did not notice, it seemed. “The awful trouble with grief, of course, is how indulgent it becomes to the fairer sex, especially to girls and women raised in softness. I treat half the widows of the Marais, you know. It is exhausting! Every week, a new episode of collapsed nerves. A direct but delicate approach is used, very respectable. And afterward, I tell them all: take tea, a warm bath, a touch of valerian, and remember you are blessed to be still alive.”

Javert struggled to keep his steps and breath steady as they turned onto rue Plumet. He said nothing as they reached Valjean’s gate. He did not knock at the door; he used the key he had been given by Toussaint that morning and opened it himself.

Toussaint stood just inside, her dark eyes darting between the two men. Her face stiffened at the sight of Chavigny. He was not, perhaps, the vision of a healer she might have been expecting for her mistress.

“Doctor Chavigny,” Javert introduced plainly. “He will attend Mademoiselle Cosette. Show him up.”

“Yes, Monsieur,” Toussaint murmured, giving an obedient, if slightly hesitant and stiff, curtsey.

Chavigny beamed just a bit too broadly, swept off his beaver skin top hat, and gave a short bow. “Ah, what a charming home. You have the look of order here achieved, Madame. Yes, I quite approve. Well, this certainly is not the cause of the Mademoiselle’s distress. So. Where shall I find the little dove?”

“Upstairs, Monsieur. First door on the left. I shall take you. Come with me, please.” Toussaint glanced back at Javert with a look of horror and muttered under her breath, “ M pa fè konfyans nan zoli a… ”

Javert, for his part, stood stock-still as Chavigny waddled toward the stairs, his polished shoes tapping an irregular beat. 

The dining room was much too quiet, the air much too still, and the small, precise ticking of the damned mantle clock struck Javert’s nerves like a metronome out of rhythm.

He had fetched Dr Gustave Chavigny himself. He had escorted the man back through narrow streets as dusk had cloaked itself upon Paris, had opened the gate and unlocked the door and watched that fat little leech greet Toussaint with the self-satisfaction of a man who fancied himself indispensable. And then Javert had watched him mount the stairs with greedy, lurching steps, all the while breathing through clenched teeth to avoid retching at the lingering cloud of violet perfume the doctor left in his wake.

He ought not to have left him alone with her. He had promised to protect her. Even now, sitting here in the dining room, jacket off, in his own sweat-damp shirt sleeves, with his boots dirty from a day on horseback, collar loosened like some peasant drunkard, he knew it. He had handed Cosette,  who lay upstairs like a broken porcelain doll, trembling with the echo of a grief so profound it had stripped her of appetite, of proper prayer, of focused gaze, into the care of a mean creature who treated female nerves as some excuse for medical debauchery.

Chavigny had confirmed it, Javert growled at himself. Not outright, of course, but Javert was not a fool. He was a grown man. He knew what twisted exploits doctors ennobled themselves to in the name of extracting women from their peculiar dangers.

And on the walk here, he had heard quite enough, between the doctor’s smirking quips and veiled euphemisms, to know exactly what sort of treatment men like Chavigny performed upon girls like Cosette at times such as these. Paroxysms. That was the term used, Javert knew well. A conjured convulsion of the womb to realign the humours, soothe the mind, purge the grief. A cure, Chavigny had implied, for too much softness. A restoration of good sense by way of a skilled doctor’s hands.

Ministrations, doctors carefully called it. With delicate touches smoothed by oils and with pompous invocations of Hippocrates as defence, a man who reeked of violet and clove had taken his bag of instruments and gone upstairs to touch her. To finger her in the name of God and medicine.

Javert swallowed hard. The gleaming amber cognac still filled his glass and reflected the faint flicker of the candelabra, but he could not bring himself to raise it to his lips. He set it aside, leaned forward, and rested his elbows rudely upon the table, feeling the heat of his own breath in his collar and the dull pulse at the base of his skull like a hammer. This room, this space in Valjean’s house, smelled strangely of ash and lavender and a trace of someone else’s tea long gone cold. His jaw tensed until it ached. This was not police work. This was not procedural duty.

Cosette was a girl who had been beaten in an inn until her bone marrow learned to flinch. She was a girl who had learned to hide over and again with the skilful precision of a holy automaton, an angel in constant fitful flight. She had been buried away from Javert himself for years in a convent, kept in this house with its jasmine-filled garden as though she herself were the illegal secret. She had not been prepared at all for the world, and now, she had no father and no map for where to turn her fear, and she was in all manner of danger.

And upstairs, just now, right this very moment, there was a man who called himself a physician and considered it his moral and medical responsibility to violate her living body in the guise of medical treatment. There was a man twining his fingers against her to exorcise her grief.

Javert stood up so quickly that the cognac sloshed, the glass almost toppling over. He righted it upon the table with a little thud. His shoulders, always taut when properly dressed in his uniform, were locked like stone now as he turned toward the stairs. But he did not move as a man returning to check on a patient. He ran, sprinting like a man desperate to salvage life from a fire.

He only hesitated at the door for the briefest of moments, because he heard two voices making equally horrific noises: Chavigny’s was grunting like a beast, and Cosette’s was squealing softly in what could only be described as confused terror. That was enough for Javert to fling himself over the threshold and into Cosette’s bedchamber with no regard whatsoever for propriety, though he did turn away at once to fix his eyes upon the wallpaper and hissed furiously,

“Cease your ministrations at once, Monsieur le Docteur. I assure you, they are not curative in this case. You may go; the maid will remunerate you downstairs.”

“Oh, indeed? How… disappointing. I had just begun to properly attend the Mademoiselle.” Chavigny sounded oddly breathless for a practitioner whose treatments were meant, in Javert’s understanding, to exhaust the patient alone. Javert’s neck tightened strangely and his fingers flexed at his sides; it took every bit of control he had to remain facing Cosette’s wall, knowing well that she was exposed just now. He blinked and mumbled quickly,

“As I said, Dr Chavigny, you are dismissed, if you pleased.”

“M-Monsieur l’Inspecteur?”

Her voice struck him through like an arrow. There was a tremor in it, to be certain, and yet she sounded quite sure in summoning him, and so Javert slowly turned, and when he did, he was utterly horrified to see the Good Doctor hurrying to stuff himself back into his too-tight trousers and button the placket back up whilst Cosette gripped her boutis quilt tightly round herself like a shroud. Her wide eyes found Javert’s and she shook her head just a little, pleading with him silently. She did not scream, though how she managed not to do so, Javert had no idea. 

“Ministrations,” he hissed, the word sour and sharp on his tongue now, and he found himself crossing the bedchamber in three long strides until he had reached Chavigny. His body - aging, perhaps, but still very strong - acted entirely of its own accord then. Before he knew what he was doing, he had seized Chavigny’s silly roundness in his fists and tossed him harshly toward the wall, and the other man crumpled a bit before steadying himself, a look of shock registering upon his face before he insisted,

“Inspector! I assure you, I was only doing my professional -”

“Lies,” Javert snarled, looming over the shorter man and jabbing a finger against his starched collar. “I am an officer of the law. I have known many doctors; I have never known one who has found it necessary to disrobe in order to perform his profession, nor to groan like a bear whilst alleviating a woman’s nerves. You have precisely ten seconds to explain yourself, Monsieur.”

He took a half step back, his heart hammering a tattoo behind his ribs, and for some reason, a back corner of his mind registered how sweaty and tired and hungry he was. It didn’t really matter just now, but he didn’t look or sound professional himself, he knew, standing here hovering over Chavigny. Or perhaps he did. The terror in the man’s eyes told him that perhaps he did. Chavigny touched at his brow and whispered in a desperate rush,

“I did not violate the girl, I swear it! There was no carnal entry. None!”

Javert narrowed his eyes and glanced over his shoulder to where Cosette sat upon the bed, rocking slowly with her eyes squeezed shut and ignoring them entirely.

“Mademoiselle Cosette?” Javert prompted quietly, but she ignored him. He roughly shoved at Chavigny then, so hard that the other man stumbled once more. He crossed the room, much more slowly this time, walking heel to toe so that his boots were quiet on the floorboards, and when he reached the bedside, he realised Cosette was whispering to herself.

“I did not… no… Papa will come and…”

“Mademoiselle Cosette?” he said again, and suddenly her eyes sprang wide open and she gasped a short, sharp breath, turning her face to him as though he had awakened her by dropping her into cold water. 

“Yes, Monsieur?”

He held up his hands carefully and curled up his lips just a little out of instinct before resettling his body and face, then stepped back from the bed and glanced to where Chavigny stood at the wall looking far too indignant. Javert gestured to him and asked Cosette,

“That man. That… erm. That doctor. What did he do to you?”

Cosette just shook her head minutely and murmured, “Please just send him away.”

Javert blinked and shifted where he stood. “I must know, Mademoiselle, whether or not he has simply undertaken unpleasantries permitted by his profession or whether he has committed a crime, you understand.”

“Oh.” She looked, suddenly, as though she had gone somewhere else entirely, and when she spoke, her voice had lowered significantly. “I had never seen one. It is very ugly, as it happens. I had not thought to see one until my wedding day. He put it upon my thigh. He said it would help to steady my nerves, Monsieur l’Inspecteur. I confess I was indeed quite frightened. But then you came into the room. I am not familiar with medicine or the law. I do not know…”

She trailed off then and lowered herself to her bed, curling beneath her blankets, and she mumbled a bit desperately, in a crackling, higher tone,

“I want my Papa, you see, and I only feel it now, but I am very hungry.”

“I shall have Toussaint bring you buttered bread at once, Mademoiselle,” Javert said numbly, and he glared across the room at Chavigny.

Suddenly he could see it all, everything that would transpire if he pursued charges against this man on behalf of Cosette. In so many cases, this would go absolutely nowhere, of course. Countless women had undoubtedly suffered identical indignity under Chavigny himself and men just like him. But Javert could easily bring Chavigny to the attention of the parquet. Despite her age and condition, and despite the witnesses of Toussaint and Javert against Chavigny, Cosette would be expected to give testimony before a juge d’instruction, which seemed a profoundly unfair way to compound the many miseries she had already been made to suffer. Beyond the embarrassment and discomfort of her doing so, it was a socially wretched and potentially damaging thing to do for a young woman. Of course, the punishment to Chavigny for an offense such as this would be grave - years in prison, hard labour, or even exile. And though the thought of that made Javert’s lip curl into a little sneer, he knew very well that he could do nothing now to further punish Cosette.

So he rushed back across the room with Chavigny’s black leather bag in his hand and snatched so hard at the round man’s waistcoat that the doctor yelped in alarm. Javert dragged him angrily toward the doorway of the bedchamber and out through the upstairs corridor, hurrying down the staircase and paying no heed at all to the way Chavigny stumbled more than once upon the steps. In the foyer, he did not allow the man to retrieve his hat. He gripped him close and growled down at him through clenched teeth,

“Leave Paris. Do you understand me, man? There are many cities in France. Many cities outside of France. But you must leave Paris at once, and you ought to become… a cobbler, or a baker, because if I ever lay eyes upon you again, or hear word of you laying hands upon women again…” He shut his eyes and was swamped cruelly, suddenly, by thoughts of Jean Valjean breaking his parole, by thoughts of Fantine, and, bizarrely, by the glint of a ring in the mud. He opened his eyes once more and nodded.

“Leave. Now. And never return.” He wrenched the door open with one hand then and shoved Gustave Chavigny so roughly outside that the man fell down several steps at once, dropping his bag and spilling its contents. Javert did not allow his gaze to linger; he simply shut the door and locked it, and when he turned to see Toussaint standing and holding Chavigny’s beaver-skin top hat, he murmured, “Burn that, Toussaint.”

She gave a stout nod. “Yes, Monsieur.”

Javert climbed the staircase again, this time with steady, controlled steps.

Chapter Text

The door of Cosette’s bedchamber creaked audibly when Javert pushed it open, but she did not turn.

She stood by the open window, framed by milky moonlight, arms wrapped tightly across her chest in a sort of self-embrace. The green shutters had been pushed wide open, and a rather stiff breeze from the garden below stirred the hem of her nightgown and lifted wisps of hair from her temples. The street beyond was entirely quiet but for the steady sound of hoofbeats bearing on a single carriage.

Javert paused on the threshold and surveyed himself. He was simply not fit to be seen. His boots were still caked in dried earth from the ride back into Paris from Nogent. Having left for the station-house early, he had not shaved at all today, nor even properly washed. The reek and salt of the sweaty day had long dried into his shirt, which hung crumpled and open-collared around his neck. He hesitated in stepping forward, feeling quite a brute.

Where Cosette stood, she was motionless save for the slight rhythm of her breathing, which, much to Javert’s surprise, seemed neither frightened, nor tearful, nor as distantly childish as earlier. She seemed a braced statue now, if anything. At last he spoke to her, quietly and carefully.

“You ought to close the window, perhaps, Mademoiselle. The night air —”

“I quite like the chill.” Her voice was thin and tight but composed. Her fingers patted her arm. “It helps me to feel… awake, Monsieur.”

“Ah.” Javert hesitated again. His hands, empty and aching from holding reins all day, shifted uselessly at his sides. Finally, slowly, he stepped into the room.

“Forgive me, Mademoiselle. I have not returned here to disturb you. Only to… make certain you were well, after...”

“Mmm.” Cosette gave no further reply. Her gaze remained fixed downward toward the streetlamp flickering beyond the garden wall. Javert’s heart quickened and something in his gut turned, something sharp and wretched. He thought to retreat, to close the door and descend again in silence. She seemed well enough. He had looked in upon her. Had he not done his duty as her protector, her guard?

But then, softly, almost absently, she spoke. “Did you know, Inspector Javert, that once we moved here, my dear Papa always made me close the shutters before the sun set? He said it was improper otherwise, for a lady’s chamber ought never be visible from the street.”

Javert slowly nodded, unsure why he was doing so, discussing such things. “Yes. He was right, of course.”

“And yet, here I am.” She turned slightly, her profile illuminated by the moon, and her lips twitched oddly as though she were just a bit amused. She shrugged. “They can see me. I am exposed.”

The word settled between them with the weight of a boulder in need of breaking. Javert said nothing, but he did not look away.

She was not wrong, of course. The shutters were wide open, and the lamplight beyond the garden wall flickered in such a way that it cast her in silhouette. The line of her collarbone, the curve of her wrist where it clutched at the opposite elbow, the sheer fall of her nightgown’s fabric as it shifted with the wind… all of it conspired wickedly to form an image which struck him not as indecent but carefully arranged. And that, in itself, was the cruellest bit of it, because of course, it was not arranged. She had precisely no idea.

She was not flirting with him. She was not inviting him. She was simply beautiful. Too beautiful. Unreasonably so. Only now had he noticed.

Javert resented the moment with a blistering fury that had no suitable direction. She was very young, yes, but she was not a child. Her body, though still slight, bore no trace at all now of girlish awkwardness. She had grown, somehow, into womanhood while his back was turned and busy chasing her father. She had flowered into a sort of womanhood that demanded to be noticed and certainly would be, by men far worse than himself. That curling, sour thought alone was enough to sicken him.

He swallowed, or tried to. His throat was dry, his calloused palms still aching from the reins, and his shirt still clung against his back. He was suddenly very aware of his smell, his state of undress, his years. The very idea that Cosette might register him and now as a man , as anything other than the tired but effective police inspector who had slammed Dr Gustave Chavigny against the wall and then tossed him summarily from this house, was abhorrent.

She was the daughter of Jean Valjean. She was not for him to look upon.

Cosette did not speak again for some time. Instead, without any ceremony, she turned to the window and reached for the green shutters. Javert watched her, unsure whether to avert his eyes, to leave, or to remain frozen in place. 

She moved slowly and precisely, not with the practised grace of a grown woman performing feats of elegance, but with the deliberate focus of a person reclaiming an old habit under altered terms. The hinges of the shutters creaked as she gently pulled them inward, and the room dimmed, then the moonlight fractured and vanished. The soft sound of the shutters’ latch catching echoed louder than it ought to have.

In the heavy hush that followed, Cosette remained still, her small hand resting against the green wood. Her eyes flicked about for a moment as she took in one long, steady breath, then another and a third. She wet her lip.

“Perhaps Papa was right after all.”

Her words were quiet, no more than a murmur, really, but they landed as though she’d struck a tuning fork in Javert’s chest, and he felt the sound reverberate down into the pit of his empty stomach, curling somewhere ugly and unreachable. There was no trace of coquettish irony in her voice, nor any bitter resentment. He sensed only gravity, only the strange, weary, confused dignity of a young woman trying very hard not to cry and somehow succeeding.

He said nothing at all in return. He could not. Perhaps he ought to have uttered some word or another, he considered, but he merely shifted in his dirty boots in silence. Then, to his great astonishment, Cosette turned toward him, rotating a few degrees, enough that her face was bathed in the warmth of the shadowed lamplight. And then, shocking him to his core, she took a step forward.

It was a small thing, just a single bare footfall upon the wooden floor, but it landed with the weight of a Compline bell. Javert resisted the instinct to recoil, not because he feared her, but because he feared himself. Some primal thing in him wished to retreat, because he had no idea what she meant by it, by stepping toward him, and because his hands still stank of horse and sweat and the street… and she, Valjean’s young daughter, stood before him in nothing but a nightgown. It was all entirely unseemly.

But then, with her hands still loosely wrapped about her arms, Cosette dipped into a shallow curtsey, a stiff, simple, and almost alarmingly sincere little gesture. Her chin tilted upward just slightly in a posture that was at once proud and defiant, her lips ticking into a pleasant little smile that did not reach her wide eyes. Her voice was thin but firm.

“Thank you very kindly, Monsieur l’Inspecteur.”

Javert descended the stone stairs with the precision of a man who had never once in his life allowed a misstep. The air was dank and pressed close with the swirling stink of limewash, sweat, urine, mildew, and the faint trace of iron and lamp oil. But Javert did not wrinkle his nose; he had long grown immune to such sensory incursions. His boots landed evenly upon the steps, and his leather-gloved hands remained at his sides. His uniform jacket was clean and crisp, his cravat flawlessly knotted. He was cleanly shaven, his hair carefully combed and bound tightly back. He was as immaculate as ever today.

The interrogation chamber beneath the commissariat was not designed for comfort, with whitewashed walls that were low and stained and a thin drain cut through the floor from wall to wall to whisk away piss and blood and worse. The single murky window, high and barred, let in no light. A sputtering lantern on its hook above the table bathed the room in a dim glow.

As Javert stalked into the place, he found that Thénardier was already seated, manacled at the wrists and ankles, slouched atop a three-legged stool that was bolted to the floor. The man’s back curved, one shoulder slightly raised, and he breathed a bit unevenly. One eye, Javert saw, had blackened and puffed mostly shut. His lip was split, and a ragged scab clung to his temple. Javert noted the wounds automatically, with the eye of a man long trained in forensic indifference. 

Thénardier had been beaten, yes, but not by police. By another prisoner in holding, no doubt. Not his concern. Javert shut the weathered wooden door behind him with a click and set a slim folder on the edge of the table.

“Ah. Inspector Javert,” Thénardier rasped, flashing his brown teeth in a grotesque mimicry of a smile. “Come to pay respects to the Emperor’s glorious war wounded?”

Javert did not reply. He skimmed his fingertips along his folder.

“Don’t worry, dear inspector,” Thénardier added, trying to wink his swollen eye. “You should see the other fellow! Well. You can’t, because they took his head. But he looked bad before.”

“You will answer directly or be charged with obstruction,” Javert said flatly.

“Charged?” Thénardier grinned, gasping a little laugh. “Oh, I’m already charged, my good man, aren’t I? Murder, theft, desecration! Might we add Sacrilege while we’re at it?”

Javert huffed. “Name.”

“Thénardier. Sergent of the Line Infantry in Napoleon's own Grande Armée, also known as Jondrette, Fabantou, Durand, bereft widower, beloved Papa, and occasionally ‘Oi, you there.’ ”

“State your movements between the morning of the fifth and the night of the sixth of June.” Javert sucked upon his teeth, standing unmoved, though his stomach was twisting almost painfully.

“Now why would I do that?” Thénardier leaned forward on the stool, sending the chains rattling. His bruised face contorted. “You don’t care one bit about my movements, do you, Inspector? You’ve already decided I killed him. You know what you know, according to you. And maybe I did. Or maybe I didn’t. But you want more than a confession, you do. You want the why.”

“You are accused,” Javert informed him very evenly, without looking up from the folder, “of robbery, desecration of corpses, and of murder. There are two bodies in question. One has been positively identified as Jean Valjean, and the other as Marius Pontmercy.”

At the second name, Thénardier tutted, and Javert glanced to see him tilt his head, just slightly, just enough.

“Pontmercy,” Thénardier repeated, tasting the word. “Now. There’s a name I haven’t heard quite in some time.”

Javert shut the folder.

“Damned shame about the boy,” Thénardier added with mock solemnity, pasting on a large frown. “Was wearing a fine coat, though. Family crest still sew in. Blood-soaked, but nice cloth, and… blood can wash out. Would’ve fetched a decent sum if I’d… well. If one were the sort to take such things.”

“You are exactly that sort,” Javert spat. “Spare me the theatre.”

Thénardier smirked, revealing the blackened spots in his mouth. “Ah, but Inspector Javert, the theatre is all we’ve got down here. No windows. No fresh air. Just me, my good manners, and your ever-growing list of suspicions. Eh?”

Javert said nothing. His eyes remained fixed on the man.

Thénardier shifted on the stool, adjusting the way he slouched, somehow seeming to make himself comfortable. “You know,” he continued with the mock affect of a philosopher, “I met a Pontmercy once, years ago. On the field at Waterloo. He told me his name just before he went under. Had been blown to bits you see. A fine officer, if I recall correctly. Spoke with such dignity, even covered in blood and mud and shit. Very noble. A fine nobleman like that, you do remember.”

Javert’s face and body did not change. He could not allow them to do so. He forced his jaw to stay loose.

“I have always felt,” Thénardier went on, “that a man’s debts ought to be honored. And I saved his life, I did. Or I certainly tried to! Took the name down just in case. Pontmercy! Seems only fair, don’t you think? That the son should pay it forward. That is my belief.”

“You never saved anyone,” Javert said, ensuring that there was not so much as a crackle in his voice. “You did not fight. You are a deluded liar. You looted corpses on the battlefield.”

Thénardier gave a theatrical shrug. “Ah, well, we can quibble over details, but isn’t that what war is for? Details.”

Javert’s gloved fingers twitched once on instinct, then stilled.

“As for the old man in question here, Inspector,” Thénardier said, tone shifting subtly along with his body on the stool, “he and I do indeed go way back. To Montfermeil. He showed up one day, full of coin and purpose with a pretty little porcelain doll tucked under his arm, and he whisked away a certain little girl from under my roof.”

His pale eyes glittered like jewels then, as though he were about to shed tears, though there was a scarlet anger in them that made Javert abruptly wish the manacles binding him were tighter. Thénardier scoffed, his voice quickening along with Javert’s pulse as he registered where this conversation was headed.

“She was a frail creature. Always sickly and never worth the trouble, if you ask me. Still. I gave her food and a roof. My wife damn near killed herself, nursing her through all the fevers. All while my own daughters and the boys, they went hungry.”

Javert’s throat was tight enough then that he barely managed, “You mean Cosette.”

Thénardier smiled too broadly. “Of course I mean Cosette. She was the one he wanted. Would’ve paid anything. But he didn’t. Showed up with a doll, said her whore mother was dead. Gave us fifteen hundred for her, after all we’d done, and the bastard took her away and left me nothing but debts.”

“You sold her,” Javert said, his voice scraping dryly. “Like horse-fodder.”

“She was mine to sell!” Thénardier snapped. “Raised her up for that trollop Fantine, didn’t I? Should’ve charged interest.”

“You will not speak of her again.”

There was no rise at all in Javert’s tone; he’d managed a dark and icy chill, but the air in the interrogation room shifted. A silence stretched between the two men, dense and precise, like a violin string overtuned.

Thénardier leaned forward just a touch and laughed under his breath. “Ah. So that’s it.”

Javert did not blink. He did not move.

“So that’s why you’re the interrogating officer, is? That’s why you’re really here,” Thénardier whispered. “Not for the dead boy. Not even for Valjean. No, no. I see plainly. You’re here because that little Lark, she’s the hinge, isn’t it? Everything turns on her. Still chasing ghosts, Inspector? But that little girl grew up pretty, is it?”

Javert stepped forward once, boots clipping sharply on the stone, and his right hand raised a bit on instinct - whether to strike the man, he did not know. His shadow spilled long across the room, and he slowly lowered his fist, accompanied by the sound of Thénardier’s amused chuckling.

“You will begin,” Javert said again quietly, “by telling me precisely where you entered the Paris sewer system on the night of the sixth of June. Which grate and at what hour.”

Thénardier didn’t answer Javert at first. He just rocked gently on the stool, his grin creeping back into place like noxious mould.

“This going to be all official now?” he asked, spreading his hands wide beneath the weight of the manacles. He sighed impatiently. “Quai de la Rapée. Near nightfall, I reckon. Round the time the lamps would be lit, if it weren’t chaos.”

“Mmm.” Javert nodded. “And for what purpose would a man like you enter the sewers?”

“I enjoy the smell of shit,” Thénardier said instantly, “and the companionship of rats.” He appeared to be studying his fingernails boredly then. “Have we finished, Inspector Javert…?”

“No.” Javert selected a single page from the folder, the handwriting small and slanted. “Sergeant Barrois of the Sixth Patrol reports seeing a man precisely matching your description at the drain near Rue du Regard picking through corpses on the night in question. We have only just begun, Thénardier.”

“Oh,” Thénardier said softly, and he fell silent for the first time.

The drawing room at No. 55 rue Plumet was lit only by a pair of elegantly-shaded lamps and by the fading cerulean light that came in through the black velvet-draped windows. This was a room now cloaked in silence for the dead: its dark wood gleamed softly beneath polish, and Toussaint had whisked away the porcelain figurines on the mantel, leaving only a bronze crucifix and two silver candlesticks.

Cosette sat near the hearth with her embroidery hoop balanced on her knee. She was dressed in black parramatta, the restrained sleeves of her mourning gown gathered neatly at the wrist, her hands moving with mechanical precision. She was carefully working a spray of pale forget-me-nots in fine satin stitch across the corner of a handkerchief, it seemed.

She did not hear him until the door hinge creaked gently, but then she looked up, startled, and Javert froze in the doorway, hat in hand. For a moment, neither moved.

“Mademoiselle,” he said at last, bowing stiffly. His voice was low and formal, almost too quiet to his own ear. “Forgive the hour.”

Cosette had straightened in her chair and neatened her work upon her lap.

“You need not apologize, Inspector,” she replied softly. “You are a guest here. My guardian. Are you not?”

“Of course.” Javert stepped inside only halfway, uncertain whether to remove his greatcoat. Her eyes had already returned down to her needlework, but she had not truly looked away, and she flicked a glance up to him now and then.

He stepped further in, then, and removed his uniform coat, folding it neatly over one arm with a soldier’s precision before placing it on the back of the nearest chair. The room was warmer than he’d expected. It felt too close. Too quiet. He could hear the faint rasp of Cosette’s needle pulling through her cloth.

She did not speak, and neither did he, for a time. She just stitched, and he stood, his gloved hands behind his back, his eyes resting not on her face, but on her embroidery, the rhythm of her work comforting him for some reason.

“Forget-me-nots,” he observed at last.

She nodded without lifting her eyes from her task. “They are the appropriate flower, I am told, for remembrance. I have much to remember.”

Javert’s throat bobbed faintly, and he inclined his head. “It is indeed fitting.”

He was forced to endure a longer silence then. Cosette finished a section of her stitching and adjusted the hoop, brushing a strand of her golden hair that had fallen loose behind her ear with a grace too carefully composed to be unconscious, surely. He had seen such practised poise before in the daughters of high-ranking officers: postures learned for salons and sermons, artful gestures performed to lure good husbands. But something beneath her restraint made him uneasy, as if her innocence were real, as if her control were a veil stretched too tight. She might shatter, he worried. 

“I had thought, Inspector, that you would have long since been back from work and asleep by now,” she said, her voice delicate.

“No. I had matters to attend.” His voice rasped slightly from use today without the relief of water or wine. “I simply came to see that all was well with you, Mademoiselle.”

“How kind of you.” Her needle slowed. She raised her eyes and asked carefully, “Is all well with you, Monsieur l’Inspecteur?”

He shifted, his hands tightening behind his back. He took one step forward, careful not to approach her too quickly. “It is over. He… he will not trouble you again.”

There was a pause. She knew who he meant. She was no fool. Javert had, the day before, gone to see that Dr Gustave Chavigny's office was boarded up and that the beast had fled as ordered. So he could now mean only one other man - Thénardier. The needle rolled in her fingers a few times.

“I was not troubled by him. Not anymore.” She let out a long, slow breath. “Thank you, just the same, Monsieur.”

Her voice was not cold, but it had cooled, and her pretty, full lips had gone into a line. Javert could feel very well the distance between them that she was carefully preserving with each measured syllable, as if propriety alone could contain whatever had begun to crack open in the air. She looked down again and resumed her stitching, but the thread snagged, caught, and snapped.

Cosette hissed and jolted, shoulders drawn tight, eyes blinking rapidly in the low light. The needle tumbled from her hand. She was not injured. Not physically. Still, Javert was beside her at once, crossing the Aubusson rug with silent efficiency and sinking down onto a knee.

“Permit me.”

She did not stop him. Her hands remained curled slightly in her lap as though she had burned herself as he bent beside the chair, plucked off his right glove, and retrieved the fallen needle.

He rethreaded it with expert ease, his bare fingers deft against the fine thread, and set it gently into her palm. Their hands brushed, skin against skin, for one incendiary second. It was enough. Too much, but she did not draw back.

“You have done this before,” she whispered, eyes still down. “A needle, I mean.”

Javert let out the softest exhale and shrugged. “I have stitched torn flesh in the field, Mademoiselle. I have sewn many uniforms. This is finer work… by far.”

He registered at once that their faces were closer than they should have been. The lamplight painted warm gold across her cheek and rendered it too fine, and her hair smelled faintly of lavender water. Too clean. She raised her eyes then, dark and wide, and for a moment, neither of them breathed. Javert supposed he did not possess the capability to do so. The distance between them now was a matter of inches, not civility, which felt both dangerous and profane. Cosette’s mouth parted slightly, uncertain, questioning.

Javert stood abruptly, his aging knee protesting as he did. “I will not disturb you further.”

Cosette blinked, the spell breaking at once. She nodded quickly. “Good night, Monsieur.”

“Good night, Mademoiselle.” Javert bowed once, more quickly this time, and let the door close behind him with soft finality, leaving Cosette sitting with her needle hovering in her hand.

He forgot his coat upon the chair, he realised several hours later.

Chapter Text

Javert did not sleep.

Instead, he lay through the night upon the narrow guest bed, arms crossed over his chest like a pharaoh in his tomb, eyes shut more often than they were open, but always alert. He had not expected sleep, not really, and thus did not resent its absence. The guest room in Valjean’s house was unfamiliar, the summer night air too soft, his mind too quick. When the first whisper of morning touched the green shutters, he rose, his aging body moving with only the slightest protest.

The water in the pitcher at the stand was mercifully cold, and Javert scrubbed at his hands, face, neck, and privates without hesitation. The soap was a plain, effective, and familiar Marseille that did the job well enough. He used the straight razor that had been brought from the modest but well-kept apartment he kept on the upper floor of a quiet building along rue de Babylone. The place was not far at all from here - so close, in fact, that Javert now realised he could have reached out for years now and grasped Valjean, if he had only known…

He nicked his chin, just once, a small red mark, but quickly dabbed the blood away with soap and cold water.

Cosette’s scent had remained on the fabric near the shoulder seam of his uniform jacket the night before when he had stripped it off. She smelled distantly but persistently of lavender water, and the feel of it had not faded overnight from his nostrils. 

He did not dwell on it now. Instead, he dressed for work as he always did: drew on a clean shirt, buttoned his waistcoat, pulled up his trousers, and shrugged on his jacket. His routine was precise as ever, the order unchanging. The uniform was not new, but it was perfectly clean. He kept three sets in rotation and rarely, if ever, deviated.

He tied his black cravat crisply, close against his throat without looking in the mirror, for his hands were well-practised. There was no ornament or flair. All was simple and correct. He then sat upon the edge of the bed, having carefully made it already, to lace his boots. He had brushed the leather to a shine before lying down the night before and checked the soles. Javert always always ensured his footwear was sound. Boots mattered; a man who could not trust his step in risky work could not trust his judgement. He drew the laces taut up his shins and double-knotted them. 

Then came the gloves. Javert eased each one on slowly, almost soothingly. They were of soft black leather that had worn to the shape of his fingers, but well kept. He flexed his hands once, testing, not indulging. Gloves made contact exact; they created distance. They were a necessary filter between flesh and consequence.

Javert brushed his greying hair straight back with a stiff boar-bristle brush, the beech-wood handle worn smooth from use, and bound it tightly at the nape with a narrow strip of leather. A queue for a gentleman was slightly out of fashion these days, perhaps, but Javert found the low, militaristic style suited him fine, and he sighed as he dragged his palm over his scalp.

Only when he was finished at last did he glance at his reflection, not to adjust anything, for he did not believe in vanity and he had gotten everything right the first time, but to fully confirm that the man in the mirror was still intact. Was he still composed? Was he still within the bounds he required?

He did not think about her wide, questioning eyes, nor how she had looked in her black parramatta dress. He did not let the memory of her wispy voice take shape.

The guest room had been silent all night. He had not heard footsteps or prayers from across the corridor, no door creaking, no clock ticking. The silence lingered still, heavy and sure. 

Javert moved to put on his greatcoat, which he ordinarily kept upon a hook inside the door. But it was not there. Frowning, Javert hesitated, and then, his jaw slacked as he remembered striding so hastily from the room where Cosette had been embroidering the night before. 

His chest quivered oddly with a sensation of self-awareness for which he did not care at all as he pulled open the guest room door and padded with the softest steps his boots would allow into the corridor and down the stairs. His steps stuttered a bit in the foyer when his eyes caught sight of it all near the front door.

His greatcoat was hanging quietly upon a brass hook, with his top hat resting crown-down on the small table nearby, its brim catching the edge of the silver early light. His truncheon had been carefully placed parallel to the hat as though by a very deliberate hand. For a moment, Javert only stood there, struck dumb not by the sight itself but by the order of it… an order that was not his own. Nothing had been disturbed, and yet everything had been touched. He stepped forward slowly, heel to toe, collecting each item without sound, the leather of his gloves creaking faintly in the hush as he placed his hat on his head. The brass hook swayed gently as he removed the greatcoat. There was no note, no indication of who had done it, but Javert knew. He adjusted his perfectly-knotted cravat by instinct alone and turned for the door. 

Javert stepped out into the Paris morning, his gloved hand closing the door of No. 55 rue Plumet behind him without haste or sound. The chill of the early June morning lingered in the stone beneath his boots and clung to the fog that curled low over the paving-stones. The shutters above remained closed, the house still at rest. Javert did not look back.

The light above was a pearly grey, the sky unbroken. A blackbird sounded once from the rooftop to his left, and somewhere in the distance a horse’s hooves struck rhythm against the cobbles—four beats only, then silence. The air smelled faintly of bread beginning to bake, for the boulangeries were already at work, though the shopfronts on this stretch remained shuttered. Lauds bells chimed, thin and a bit irresolute, from rue de Bac.

Javert walked northeast with the same determined pace he had used all his life. He did not quicken, nor did he slow. His stride was long and even. At the corner of rue de Babylone, Javert glanced, just once, to the left, his lips tightening for half a moment. His own modest apartment lay only a few doors down. For years it had stood there, no more than a two-minute walk from Jean Valjean’s house… and he had never known. If Javert had looked left on an ordinary morning two years ago —

He cut off the thought at the root, for letting it grow was not an option.

Crossing the Pont Royal, he kept to the western side, his boots striking in careful counterpoint to the heavy hush. There had been little rain, and the Seine was low today, its surface caught in the bleary light. The smoke from extinguished barricades was gone now, but Javert could see a number of burned-out buildings left blackened and skeletal near the quai. Indeed, here and there, signs of the June insurrection remained: soot on the cornices, a shutter cracked down the middle, a musket ball embedded in a stone façade. No one had yet removed the torn poster still hanging limply on a lamppost warning against acts of sedition and bore the seal of the Ministry of the Interior. Someone had written upon it with charcoal in a messy scrawl: " Tout est trahison. "

Outside a chemist’s shop, a boy swept ash from a gutter. He looked up briefly as Javert passed, then bent again to his work without comment. Javert catalogued the boy, the soot, the graffiti, the smell of charred wood, as though checking off a list, but did not speak. Some distant corner of his mind did note that the boy resembled Gavroche a bit, with his shaggy brown hair, freckled button nose, and wide green eyes. 

The city was quiet, and Javert preferred it that way, for Paris after a rebellion was like a wounded and bloodied animal left subdued but still alive. Still, there was a slight, vibratory sense of unease; there was no real sense of conclusion. The quiet did not signify actual peace. It simply marked the pause between fractures. France herself could only ever reach a state of armistice.

At last the façade of the 4th arrondissement commissariat came into view. The building had once been a private residence, an hôtel particulier with iron balconies and carved stone lintels, now overgrown at the base and marked by soot. The sign above the door, weathered and soot-darkened, read: Commissariat de Police – 4e Arrondissement . As Javert approached and crossed the threshold, a municipal guard in a slumped stance nodded once but did not rise from his stool. Javert frowned slightly at the lack of deference to rank but said nothing.

Inside, the smells of oil, vinegar-polished wood, damp paper, and the stale edge of coal dust struck immediately. The corridor stretched forward, with uneven flagstones shifting faintly underfoot. A flickering lamp cast a watery light on the crates stacked along the stairwell, with SÉDITION — JUIN 1832 freshly stenciled in black on the side of one.

Javert turned right into the low-ceilinged administrative wing, almost immediately knocked upon the office door and entered without waiting. Despite the very early hour, Javert was unsurprised to see that Clément Fournier was already at his desk, hunched over a sheaf of red-ribboned papers with a quill stuck behind his right ear. His cravat sat just a bit askew beneath the chin, ink having bled onto its lacy edge. He did not look up.

“Don’t tell me,” Fournier muttered in his nasal monotone, eyes still scanning the document before him, “another corpse from the barricade?”

Javert set the folio down firmly and sucked his teeth. “Two men found at the Quai d’Orléans at the hands of Thénardier. Going by Fabantou this time. Robbery, desecration, and murder.”

Fournier did look up at that, squinting through his smudged wire-rimmed spectacles as if the name itself induced nausea and fatigue. “Of course it’s him,” he said, rubbing a thumb under his eye. He untied the black cord and opened the folder with the flat of his hand.

His quill moved quickly as he flipped through the pages. Javert said nothing as Fournier skimmed the witness statements — The one from the rue de Regard caught his attention, and he paused. “Barrois signed this himself?”

“Yes.”

“Hmm.” Fournier made a marginal note in a tight, spidery script and reached for the intake ledger. He dipped the quill and wrote in: 11 juin 1832 - Instruction ouverte – Thénardier (alias Fabantou) – Affaire n°244

He then reached for a stick of red wax, waited for a moment as a corner of the wax melted over the candle on his desk, then drizzled it upon the paper and pressed a brass seal there. When he was finished, he tore off a receipt slip from the corner, blotted it dry, and slid it across the desk with a sniff.

“This case goes to instruction, obviously. But don’t hold your breath, Inspector Javert. We’re three days behind and thirty deep. Rebellions do cause delays.”

Javert nodded crisply. “I’ll testify when summoned.”

He bent low and signed the slip in his own clean, compact script and returned it. Fournier had already turned back to his other documents. No further acknowledgement needed to pass between them, so Javert stood, adjusted his coat, and left the room, but as he did, a wretched recollection flashed in his mind, and his boots stuttered.

It had been hours, and the candle stubs along the walls had burned low. Javert stood with one hand braced on the table’s edge, the other still gloved and clenched near his side. He was nearly tired and hungry and thirsty now; he needed to relieve himself. He revealed none of it. His voice was hoarse but steady.

“You now admit that you recognised Jean Valjeans when you found him near death at the Quai d’Orléans as the man who paid you exactly one thousand, five hundred francs in exchange for a girl you were using for servant labour at your inn at Montfermeil.”

Thénardier, hunched and sallow in the wooden chair, blinked slowly like a man waking from a beating. He smelled faintly of blood and piss, and his left boot was missing. His voice rasped out low:

“No. I say I knew him as the bastard what cheated me out of that precious little girl. I admit nothing.”

Javert exhaled through his nose. He was nauseated now, though whether from hunger or from this process, he did not know. “That girl —”

“Cosette.” Thénardier coughed, a thin, sick-sounding noise. “Expensive, she was. That desperate harlot mother of hers came begging for help, and we gave it, didn't we? Then we were the ones to suffer.” He squinted up at Javert. “I told you about all the poor boys on the rue Saint-Antoine already, my dear Inspector. What more d’you want of me?”

Javert said nothing. His neck ached from standing and his jaw from speaking. His chest felt sweat-slicked beneath his jacket. His pen had run dry. He had all of the information needed. The procès-verbal was nearly finished.

But then Thénardier gave a thin little laugh, like a crack in rotting wood.

“Oh. Something else. Know what I remember about her?” he said suddenly, and his cracked lips pulled into a horrid grin that did not reach his eyes. “Your little girl. Cosette. I do remember her big, big eyes and her knobby knees. I do remember that she looked like pickled mouse.”

Javert’s eyes flicked up, but he said nothing. His right fingers curled into a fist at his side.

“Oh. Yes. I do remember. She used to sleep in the kitchen ash-bin,” Thénardier said dreamily, as if with paternal fondness. “She’d get soot on her little face and would cry if the dog barked too loud, 'cause he bit her all the time. Always jumpy, she was. Weak little thing, sickly. My good late wife once made her drink mop water 'cause she'd spilt half of it. Hah! You should’ve heard the way the Lark gagged. Like a piglet.”

“Enough.” Javert’s voice was low with warning.

But Thénardier leaned forward, his manacles rattling, as he sensed the crack. “One time,” he said with relish, “Cosette got beat for breaking a plate. Only, you know, it was a drunken man staying at the inn what had broken it. And my girls - Azelma in particular - naughty little dears, they used to trip her on purpose, see, and she’d hit her head on the edge of the stove, bruises bright as —”

“I said enough.” Javert’s hand slammed the table, palm flat. A long pause stretched between the two men. Thénardier’s grin faltered for the first time. His tongue flicked out to wet his lips, but he gave a slow, knowing nod as if he were the judge damning his own interrogator. Javert's jaw tightened until his molars ached, but he kept his face utterly unreadable. At his side, his fingers flexed just once, slowly, then went still.

“You’ll make no mention of Cosette Fauchelvent again, Thénardier,” Javert said. “Not here. Not in prison. Not anywhere. Or so help me, I will see to it personally that you spend your sentence shoveling night soil in Bicêtre with the lunatics.”

Thénardier gave a bitter laugh, but it was a bit weaker now. “Right. Touched a nerve, did I?”

The inspector turned away to collect the documents without responding.

Javert shook his head now to rid himself of the memory, as if clearing an attic of a spiderweb, determining that it did no good at all to linger on the mockery and cruelty of a man whose fate he had just helped seal through procedure and law. In any case, he had committed thoroughly to assisting Cosette as meaningfully as he was able, which, he considered, was what she deserved as the bereft and blameless young woman in all of this.

He smelled lavender suddenly and shut his eyes tightly.

Then he stalked back into the administrative wing and brusquely requested a blank supplemental from the clerk, who handed it over at once without question. Javert leaned down to the desk and filled it in expeditiously, his script compact and angled despite his mind and body feeling heavy fatigue. The language was dry, near clerical: 

Cosette Fauchelevent, age approximately sixteen, residing at No. 55 rue Plumet. Formerly ward of Jean Valjean (deceased). Temporary guardianship assumed by Inspector Javert pending further instruction. He cited her relevance to an open dossier and signed it with neither flourish nor hesitation, then passed it over a bit stiffly. The clerk stamped it once and immediately slid it into the case ledger, where it would rest among dozens of similar addenda, inconspicuous but effective.

It was not true and full guardianship in the full legal sense, nor did Javert want it to be, for that sort of claim would demand emotion, and would require intent. And though many years stretched between him and Cosette, he was certainly nothing of a father figure to anyone, least of all to her . This was merely a formality, an instrument of protection lodged into the potentially very cruel machinery of Paris, exact and bloodless. This was police work. It was procedural.

Javert turned from the desk and he heard his name in a voice that was low, crisp, and unmistakably formal.

“Inspector Javert.”

He looked up to find Commissaire Pascal Bertin striding toward him from the adjoining corridor. Bertin was stocky and middle-aged and carried the aura of a man who had long ago outgrown the need to shout in order to command a room. He was dressed immaculately, as always, his tricolor sash just visible beneath the fold of his open uniform coat, his silver watch chain glinting faintly at his waist.

“Monsieur le Commissaire,” Javert said with a minuscule bow.

Bertin halted a pace before him, his eyes narrowing. He gave an almost frustrated huff.

“You look like hell, Javert,” he noted, not unkindly. “Have you slept?”

Javert hesitated half a second too long. Bertin’s lips curled. “That’s what I thought.”

“I’m perfectly fine,” Javert replied, too quickly.

“You’re not.” The commissaire’s tone was firm but without rebuke. He was a war-hardened veteran, Javert knew, and he eyed his stubborn inspector now with the mild exasperation of an officer in the field addressing a subordinate who was maddeningly reliable to a fault. “How long has it been?”

“Only a few days, Monsieur,” Javert admitted quietly.

“Men are meant to sleep every night, Javert, though you are a notorious and consummate insomniac, I know.”

Javert gave no response to that.

Bertin stepped slightly to the side, lowering his voice. “Listen. I’ve got Fournier up to his eyeballs in barricade filings. Soubiran’s been transferred to cover the 8th, where they’re down several good men. Vallot’s missing and no one can find him again. It is indeed chaos, but you are not doing this district any favors by collapsing at your desk, Javert.”

“I have work, Monsieur, and I am not finished,” Javert said.

“You are for today,” Bertin replied. “That’s an order, Inspector. Go home and rest. I expect you back tomorrow with hands that are not visibly shaking and the ability to follow a conversation without swaying upon your feet.”

Javert opened his mouth to protest, then closed it again. His head was starting to ache in earnest; there was a dull but steady pressure above the temples.

“Very well,” he finally agreed. “Thank you, Monsieur.”

Bertin gave a satisfied nod, then added, almost as an afterthought, “Oh, and Javert… I heard about Thénardier.”

Javert remained still and silent. Bertin studied him for a moment longer, then said, “Well done,” and turned away.

"Inspector Javert," Cosette said as he stepped slowly into the dining room on rue Plumet, her voice lilting with surprise. "I had thought... you would be working this morning."

She wore a grey dimity morning wrapper, bound about her narrow waist with a sash and clinging to her form just so, very evidently worn over a chemise and her stays. Her long, golden waves had been carefully brushed but hung loosely about her shoulders, not yet properly styled for the day, and her feet were bare. It was all perfectly proper for a young woman dining alone in her home, but, of course, Javert had arrived back unexpectedly, unannounced, and he flicked his eyes from her for a moment as shame warmed his cheeks.

Javert gave a shallow bow, his hands still gloved. "Forgive me, Mademoiselle. The Commissaire insisted that I, erm... mind myself with some rest. On the grounds of exhaustion." Almost instantly, he corrected himself with a slight grimace. "That is — I was relieved of duty for the day and will work tomorrow."

"Oh." Cosette nodded. "I see."

Javert’s lips twitched with subtle embarrassment, and he nodded stiffly, determined to close the subject. Toussaint appeared in the archway from the kitchen and stopped short, blinking at the sight of him. She righted herself quickly, adjusting the black crepe mourning armband on her sleeve, and hurried forward, already half-scolding.

"Inspector Javert! Sit, sit, and I shall fetch you coffee at once, Monsieur, and food as well."

"Thank you," he murmured, pulling his leather gloves off by the fingertips and moving hesitantly to the opposite end of the table to pull out a chair.

Cosette, ever courteous and clearly well-trained by the sisters if not by Valjean, had placed her fork down upon her plate and folded her hands in her lap. Her cheeks had gone slightly pink. Whether from the warmth of the room or the surprise of his arrival, Javert could not say.

He sat in the stiff high-backed chair only once Toussaint had placed a setting before him and vanished again into the kitchen. The scent of freshly brewed coffee drifted into the room, mingling with that of buttered bread and faint lavender. Javert found himself rather absently and a bit rudely dragging a fingertip round the edge of his dish and flicking his eyes back and forth from the china before him to the young woman opposite him.

Cosette’s breakfast appeared to consist of a small bowl of café au lait, a crusty white roll with a bit of fresh butter, and a thin slice of Saint-Nectaire on a separate plate. A few cherries, their stems still attached, sat in a small porcelain dish beside her spoon. She seemed slightly flustered as she picked one of the cherries up, idly turning it by its stem and then setting it back down.

“I do beg your pardon, Monsieur, if my attire is improper,” Cosette said softly, with a polite tilt of the head. “I had not expected… company.”

“No apology is necessary,” Javert replied at once, returning his eyes to the edge of his plate. “The fault is mine. I ought to have sent word before returning, or I ought to have gone to rest at my own home instead for the day.”

There was a strange little pause then before Cosette asked, “Do you live very close by, Monsieur l’Inspecteur?”

“I do,” he said, more carefully now. “Quite close.”

When he looked up again, Cosette was staring straight at him almost determinedly. “I am grateful that you chose to come here instead, Monsieur, for it is as you have said. I am in a precarious situation now.”

Toussaint reappeared with a small tray bearing coffee, a heel of the same roll Cosette had, a few slices of cheese, and a soft-boiled egg in a tiny silver stand. She poured the coffee with a steady hand, then patted Javert’s shoulder once without comment and withdrew again.

He cleared his throat. “Thank you,” he said, though Toussaint had already left the room.

Javert lifted the cup of coffee to his lips, but the scalding heat made him hesitate, and he set it down again without drinking, his gaze fixed briefly on the rising steam. His lips parted and then shut again before he said quietly, “I filed a supplemental at the commissariat this morning.”

Cosette looked up, her brow knitting ever so slightly. “A supplemental?”

Javert nodded once. “A procedural note…. administrative. It adds to the file already in progress.”

She waited with wide, polite, expectant eyes. When he didn’t continue at once, she tilted her head just slightly and prompted, “and this supplemental concerns me?”

“It does,” Javert admitted. He adjusted his jacket cuffs with an unnecessary precision, as though smoothing the moment out of his uniform. “It states, formally, that in light of your father’s passing, and given the recent events, I have assumed temporary guardianship over you. Pending further instruction, of course.”

Cosette sat very still then. Her fingers, which had been toying delicately with the stem of a cherry, stilled. “Oh. So then… I am to be your ward, Inspector Javert?” she asked softly, as if testing each of the words aloud individually in her mouth.

Javert inhaled sharply through his teeth, his stomach catching. He shook his head once. “Only for purposes of legal clarity. This ensures that I may act to safeguard your person and your interests without… procedural obstruction, you understand. Since you are unwed, have no living male relatives or family friends, and have not reached the age of majority.”

Cosette blinked once, and then, after a beat, looked at him directly, openly, and earnestly. “So I will not be left unprotected, Inspector.”

“No,” Javert said, far more firmly than he intended, almost in a snap. “You will not.”

A full and weighty sort of silence followed. Cosette lowered her gaze for a moment, her voice quiet. 

“I… I do understand that it’s only formal, and yet, I confess…” She faltered, a scarlet flush creeping into her cheeks. “There is a reason, Monsieur l’Inspecteur, that I so seriously considered fleeing back to the convent. I was, and perhaps still am, deeply afraid of what might happen once the paperwork was… once he was no longer listed anywhere.”

She raised her large eyes to him and knit her hands together tightly, anxiously, and said in a voice only slightly above a whisper,

“I have long been lonely, Inspector, and I have perceived great danger in my life. But rarely have I felt that being alone would present such a true and urgent threat to me, and with my dear Papa gone, unable to protect me. So you see…” She trailed off then, her gaze moving to stare out the window as if remembering something, seeming entranced by the way the shutters had been cracked open to let in a breath of early June breeze. 

Javert’s breath hitched in his chest. The light touched the curve of her wrist where it rested near the porcelain plate, the golden ends of her hair catching it just so.

“Forgive me, Mademoiselle. It was not my intention to startle you,” he said. “Nor to presume.”

“You didn’t,” she said at once.

He closed his mouth and stiffened.

“You did not presume,” Cosette repeated, more carefully now, turning his face toward him. “You did your duty, Inspector Javert. I thank you for it.”

He gave a small nod, restrained, but certainly not cold. He was more tired now than he could recall being in some time, he thought, but he wanted little more, for some reason that felt distantly troubling, than to sit here and look upon her across the table.

Instead, he pushed his chair back and rose slowly, his fingers briefly resting upon the carved wooden edge as though he were drunk and steadying himself. He had not touched his food, and the coffee had gone tepid in its porcelain cup.

“With your leave, Mademoiselle, I believe I shall obey orders for once,” he said, with the faintest hint of dryness in his voice, “and rest.”

Cosette folded her hands delicately and looked up, clearly startled not by his departure but by something else. Perhaps the weariness in his face, or perhaps the way his ragged voice caught slightly, low in his chest.

“You’re quite right to, Inspector. You do look very tired.”

She politely stood when he did, rising with quiet grace and surprising him by stepping around the table — no more than three or four steps, but it felt to him as though she crossed some great distance. She stopped not an arm’s length away, standing almost silhouetted by the full hush of morning light. Her grey wrapper shifted slightly as she moved, the thin dimity catching on her hip before falling back into place. She stood with her hands loosely clasped in front of her and her long fair hair half-tamed, unpinned, glinting in the sunlight.

Javert’s breath stilled in his chest at once.

It was not altogether improper, he reminded himself, for her attire, though informal, remained modest by any reasonable standard, and she had been eating breakfast alone in her own home when he had returned without the warning she had been due. But something in the softness of the fabric, the bare feet on the floorboards, the unstyled hair… something in the sheer feminine beauty and closeness of it… arrested him as surely as he arrested any criminal.

He had not meant to linger here looking upon her. He had meant to quickly take his leave, to climb the stairs, to close the door of the guest room and collapse into the bed with its indienne blankets and crisp white sheets and descend into much-needed sleep. But now she was here before him, so close, and there was a powerful, foreign sort of warmth rising within him that was not confusion or exhaustion.

She was young, he reminded himself. She was much too young for him. She was the daughter of Jean Valjean of all people, and she had just lost the man, and the young one, too, the Pontmercy boy of whom she had been so terribly fond. Before Javert stood a fragile little bird in fresh mourning, he knew, a creature he was bound to protect because he knew the law and her fate well, and, perhaps, because he could now see her past more clearly and his role in it. She was not an eligible woman to gawk at.

And yet…

Her wide, pale, searching gaze lifted to his, and she said in a quiet voice,

“Thank you again, Inspector Javert, very kindly indeed. For filing the… supplemental. To ensure I am not alone.”

Her words struck something too deep in his chest, and he bowed, not as stiffly as before, but with something like chivalric courtesy. When he rose, she had not stepped back. Her eyes remained fixed on his, unwavering, more sure now.

He could have gone then. He ought to have gone.

Instead, something in her face… the openness of it, the unflinching calm, the soft breath rising in her throat and her pulse there… reached past his discipline, past his sense of order, and touched something else. He leaned forward, just slightly, instinctively, and she tilted her chin in response, not in surprise, but almost as if she knew. Their bodies did not touch. He did not lift a hand to her face. His gloves remained tucked under one arm. But his mouth brushed the side of hers, not quite her cheek, not quite the corner of her lips. It was hardly anything at all, just a soft, uncertain pressure, no more than the weight of a breath.

But it was still a kiss.

It was a mistake, of course. Javert knew it the moment it happened. He drew back at once, his eyes wide with the horror of it, but Cosette did not retreat. She looked at him fully and calmly and for a single suspended second, he thought she might speak, but she did not. The silence could have collapsed his lungs.

Javert swallowed, with a great deal of difficulty. “Forgive me,” he said, the words a dry rasp. “That was…” He could not finish the sentence.

Cosette smiled gently, and her voice was soft and neat, like a ribbon tied in place. “There is nothing to forgive.”

He stared at her for a moment longer, his mouth open dumbly. She was pretty, he thought, his mind suddenly feeling very foolish, too. But there was nothing to be done for it; he could not help but notice the way the light caught in the soft hair at her temples, the way her wrapper fell in a perfect line from shoulder to sash, the way her eyes did not flinch from his. 

Javert bowed once more with military sharpness, and turned left the room without another word. He did not look back.

Chapter Text

The filtered light of mid-morning, now feeling much too bright and oppressive, crept between the slats of the closed shutters, casting narrow bars across the floor of the guest room. Javert lay on his back in the bed, rigid as a board, the blue-and-white indienne blankets drawn just a bit too tightly up and over his chest. His boots, meticulously polished to standard, sat square beneath the nearby chair, and his uniform had been folded with near ceremonial precision and placed atop its seat.

He flexed one foot once beneath the covers, his simple, unbleached linen nightshirt clinging to his shin as he stilled it again. He inhaled shallowly through his nose and clenched his jaw, trying and failing to will himself into stillness.

The guest room felt just now far less like a place for sleep than a cell awaiting punishment. The walls were bare, the crucifix above the door crooked, there was neither comfort nor peace to be had. Javert, desperately in need of sleep, had not slept since coming upstairs.

Cosette’s voice, light with surprise, returned to him again like a torturous shot. “Inspector Javert.”

Her lips had parted. Her wide had lifted to meet his. Lavender… the faint, delicate scent lingered on her skin. He had perceived it when he had helped her re-thread her needle after coming back from interrogating Thénardier, and once again when he had made the grave error of touching his lips to her.

He had meant only to take his leave, but she had risen with such grace to see him off, and the gesture had felt domestic and instinctive. Then her cheek had tipped up so naturally toward him, just a turn of the head, a feminine flutter of lashes, and before he could stop himself, his lips had found her skin.

She had been soft and warm, and despite the fact that he scarcely knew her, she had felt frighteningly familiar.

He had not meant to kiss her. Not really. And yet… her expression afterwards had not been one of alarm. Her face had been painted with… he could not name it. Not joy, certainly not pride, but something gentler still. She had almost looked reassuring, or perhaps grateful, as though she had received a kindness long denied and wished him no anxiety over it.

Javert clenched his fists and shifted again beneath the blankets. The arousal he felt now had started subtly, just a tension in the gut, but it had now gathered fully and insistently. It appalled him. He had not asked for this feeling. He had not even entertained it.

At first, he had thought it was hunger or exhaustion that stirred him, for it was as Commissaire Bertin had said; Javert was a habitual insomniac, and so often when sleep-deprived, he found himself agitated. But it was not his stomach that growled now. It was something else, something much lower and much more persistent. He shifted again and exhaled through his nostrils, and the linen clung to his chest with sweat despite the room lacking much heat.

This is foolishness, Javert scolded himself. thought. This is utter madness. It is only some trick of fatigue, or perhaps of anger over Thénardier, confusion about Valjean. It will pass.

But it did not pass. It worsened.

He swallowed and studied the ceiling, as though the crude beams might offer penitence or commandment, explanation or respite. What came instead was the memory of her eyes, open and searching, grieving but unafraid.

Javert had never, not in all his years, desired any of those painted girls at the cafés, with their rouged cheeks and perfumed corsets. Countless times, he had walked past them on patrol, watching them swan out of gilded salons or lean against doorways whilst batting their eyes and twisting their forms. He found them entirely unconvincing and unalluring. Their voices were too loud and their touch, he suspected, was too easily purchased to be of any value. They likewise, he knew very well, viewed their customers with nothing but judgement and revulsion themselves. He had long believed, perhaps arrogantly, perhaps not, that he had been born immune to such temptations.

Cosette was so very different from such women. She was worse. She was terrible, because she was not tempting him; seducing men for pay was hardly her profession, and Javert had just today filed papers to ensure that would never be the case for her. She had not painted her face, or sought his notice. She was not a coquette, or a whore trained in flirtation. She was a young woman carefully trained in etiquette. 

And still he burned for her.

The unmistakable brightness of her purity was part and parcel of what unmoored him. She was graceful and lovely, yes, and well-spoken, and young and pleasant. But more than that, she was clean. And yet he, as a man of law and order and restraint, found himself aroused by it, by her. And thus, he was sickened by himself.

She was the child of Fantine. She was Valjean’s daughter. She had loved some wretched boy of the barricade who had been found dead in a sewer, ankle broken, shot through. She had been beaten at Thénardier’s inn and then hidden away at a convent and here in this house. She was not naïve, but she was innocent.

Those thoughts thudded in him like a hammer striking bone. He turned his head and closed his eyes, trying to blot it all out with something darker, like ink on parchment. Valjean, whom he had pursued across years and provinces. Valjean, who had once snarled and thrown Javert to the ground like a sack of coal during a skirmish between the two of them at Toulon and had brandished an iron bar at him as Fantine had lay dying. Valjean, whose steady, maddening decency had condemned Javert far more thoroughly than anything else could ever do.

And now he lay in that man’s house, in his guest bed, his body coiled like a spring, aching over the daughter of his greatest failure, having kissed her.

He wanted to be dead, very suddenly. His mind flashed with that wild thought, that perhaps Valjean ought not to have let him go from his captivity at the barricade.

His cock ached relentlessly, as though he had been manacled too tightly and the bind were chafing.

His body was betraying him now. It had not always been like this.

Javert had served in Napoleon’s wars. He had been twenty-seven years of age at Austerlitz, and afterward, his unit had been stationed at Augsburg. Several other non-commissioned officers had laughed too loudly when Javert admitted not to know the feel or touch of a woman. They had jeered and had called him the Virgin Sergeant-Major. One of the men had pulled a vivandière to his side, plump and busty. She had smelled of garlic and sweat. Javert had done what was expected, quickly and with no joy, beneath a scratchy wool blanket. No one had cheered when he returned, but no one mocked either. He had earned himself a few smirks, low laughs, and raised cups, and that had been enough.

Years later, newly arrived in Paris from Montreuil, he had allowed himself one visit to a registered brothel near the Palais-Royal, in large part to ingratiate himself to his new compatriots in the Paris police force who had invited him as a perverse sort of welcome. It had been pouring rain that day. Javert had worn his brand-new uniform coat. The girl had been quiet and demure with dark curls. He had paid double in advance to avoid any conversation whatsoever, and when he finished, he’d left without fastening his collar properly. He had walked the whole way back to his new quarters on the rue de Babylone with the cold of shame rising beneath his collarbone like a tide.

Neither time had left him stirred or permanently affected. His heart had not quickened. His breath had not caught for a woman. Not once.

But this, now, in this bed on rue Plumet, this morning… his body was thrumming like a plucked cello string. His chest was so tight he fretted over himself a bit; he was not a young man. The ache between his legs had grown into a hot, merciless, unbearable betrayal now. He turned onto his side, fists knotted in the indienne blanket and snarled lowly through his teeth.

He had resisted for more than half an hour. He had invoked Article 330 of the Penal Code of 1810 in his mind, though he knew very well it only applied to public acts of indecency and could not punish him here. He had recalled the vivid image of heads tumbling from the guillotine to try and cool his blood. Nothing had helped.

He would not permit himself to act, for he was not that sort of man. He was not. Was he?

Javert remained still for another long minute, then turned onto his back again, flopping ungracefully now like a fish. The mattress creaked faintly beneath him. His eyes found the ceiling once more, a bit glazed now, and for a moment, the sharp angles of its beams seemed almost to leer at him.

He flexed and relaxed his legs beneath the blanket, one heel dragging along the sheet, his calves bristling with sweat. His breath had become shallow, not with exertion but with an urgency that terrified him. The ache had grown unbearable. It was no longer a flicker of sensation, but something pressing, blooming, thickening, pulsing. His nightshirt had bunched up slightly at the hip as he’d turned, and he did not pull it down.

He swallowed again, finding his throat had gone dry. There was a carafe of diluted wine on the washbasin across the room, just visible in the faint light, but the idea of rising felt almost laughably impossible, as though standing might shatter what small discipline he still possessed.

His mind crashed against a thought of Cosette’s voice once more, against the way she had not recoiled after he had kissed her, against the way his lips had burned for minutes afterward.

He could still feel it.

He hissed softly and his thighs clenched in reaction to the mounting pressure. The ache had lodged itself not only in his loins now but in the pit of his stomach, his lower back, his chest. This was not simple lust. Not precisely. This was awe that had curdled into longing without outlet. This was a bodily mutiny.

His jaw tightened, his molars grinding together. His left hand remained fisted near his sternum, twisted in the folds of the blanket. His right lay flat on the mattress beside him, motionless, but twitching faintly now, as though its restraint could not hold. He heard himself choke out a quiet little noise. The more he resisted, the more the pressure built. The less he moved, the more vivid the sensation became. His blood felt thick in his limbs and, far more urgently, between his legs. He pressed his knees together, as though that could somehow still the pulse throbbing between them. It did not.

His right hand lifted, then hesitated midair, the fingers flexed into an uncertain claw. It hovered over his abdomen, over the bunched linen and the stifling blankets, as though disembodied. Then, almost mechanically, his hand dropped and slid beneath the blanket. The other moved from his chest to his  side, clenched so tightly into the bedding that his knuckles had turned white. He squeezed his eyes shut, blotting out the room, and his head turned sharply against the pillow, jaw locked. Every line of his face was drawn in resistance. He put up one final push of resistance.

His hand moved. Beneath the folds of the nightshirt, it found what it sought, his palm resting against the velveteen stone of his shaft as his fingers toyed with his tip. His head drove back against the pillow at once at the shock of it.

There was no thrill in the contact and no relief. It was as if his body, overwhelmed by sensation, had seized control entirely. Javert felt suddenly as though he was observing himself, as though standing in a distant corner of the room, revolted and stunned at the way his hand were using his own manhood like a plaything. Even now, even in the unbearable swell of need, he tried to keep the movements minimal and deliberate, as though restraint could purify the act, as though control could sanctify defilement.

It could not.

His breath came faster. He tried to regulate it, to fix his thought on the distant hum of Paris outside the shuttered window, on the faint birdcall that had begun to stir somewhere in the courtyard, but it was useless.

The heat pulsed in his belly like a sickness and his temples throbbed. Shame pooled behind his sternum, thick and sour. It was not the act itself that undid him but the knowledge of what it meant. The weakness of such a thing, the failure of surrender. He was violating himself, he knew, and perhaps her, too.

Despite it all, the rhythm built. His lips parted, silent. His whole frame went rigid. Not one part of this was indulgent, and, yet, it quickened. His hand glided as though practised, as though taking the place of something more natural. After a few moments, Javert’s many thoughts of protest began to liquefy into a discordant and distant sense of intoxication. 

He had not begun this process with any intention of enjoying it or deriving satisfaction. He had only acquiesced out of complete desperation. He lacked experience and was aging. But he found himself now as oddly virile and red-blooded as when he had succumbed to this very indulgence on rare occasions as a young man. His shoulders and neck, his stomach and thighs, all had gone taught as ship’s ropes. His heart beat a tattoo behind his ribs and his pulse thrummed within his veins. His stones felt heavy and close; his member was thick and leaking.

He smelled lavender. He tasted her.

He hesitated for just a breath, wrenching his eyes more tightly shut, desperate to wash her from his mind in this state, but it was too late. His fingers cinched around himself as the entire room seemed to vanish from existence, as the bird outside went silent. Javert was aware, very distantly, of the too-fine sensation of eruption, of spilling himself, of making a terrible mess.

It was over very quickly. His eyes cracked open. He lay still. The nightshirt clung to him now, clammy and twisted. The scent of lavender was gone, replaced by the stink of sweat and seed.

His stomach turned with the knowledge of what he had done, with the idea that perhaps he had desecrated something delicate and pretty — not Cosette, never Cosette — but the fragile dignity of what he had begun to feel for her. He had sullied it and bent it toward male flesh.

The quiet in the room returned, unbearable. He heaved himself from the bed and stripped off his nightshirt, heading toward the washbasin to scrub himself, knowing very well he would not feel clean after doing so.

The salon was silent.

It was still June, after all, and Paris had not yet given up the day by seven. Evening light slanted low and gold across the floorboards, making a luminous path between the open casement and the opposite wall. Dust motes caught in its path like suspended ash. The curtains had not been drawn, no candles had been lit, and there was no fire in the hearth. The faint summer warmth alone was sufficient, and the hush of the house was heavy.

Javert had only come here because Toussaint had passed the guest room as he was readying himself and had noted, gently and without being asked, “She is in the salon, Monsieur. Reading.” Javert had nodded as though he had requested the information, as though he had any right to it. Now he stood at the threshold.

Cosette sat curled upon the chaise by the window, her slippered feet tucked politely beneath her, her posture relaxed but not collapsed, a girl clearly taught decorum but no longer boxed in by it. Her mourning gown was one he had seen her wear before, but in the light it looked less like a funeral shroud and more like velvet ink. The folds of it spilled around her like water. Her golden hair fell in neat long curls and glinted faintly at the edges where the sun had found it.

She was, as reported, reading.

A thin, pale volume lay in her lap, its vellum pages yellowed at the corners. Her lips were moving faintly as her eyes traced the words. Javert, not a terribly learned man and not a reader of verse, still recognized the cadence. It was not modern French, not even Church Latin. He could tell that much. It was older, devotional. Cordis , lux , ardens . He squinted at her, made mildly uneasy by the presence of the sacred in such a mundane bourgeois space where he stood clad in slightly scuffed shoes and an outdated waistcoat. 

He realised, belatedly, that he had been standing in the threshold for too long in silence. It was impolite. So he cleared his throat, and her head lifted.

It was a slow, fluid motion, and the way she looked at him made his spine stiffen reflexively like a soldier going to attention, being called to account. Cosette’s mouth parted faintly, but she said nothing. Her gaze, however, did not falter, and her eyes somehow grew wider than usual. The book in her lap was closed very gently with one hand. She blinked, just once. Javert bowed awkwardly.

“Mademoiselle.”

There was the faintest pull at the corners of her lips. It was not a smile, not quite. “Inspector. I do hope you slept.”

He straightened further, unable not to meet her gaze. “Many hours. Much more than I ever do. Thank you.”

A strangely unformed silence passed between them whose length Javert could not have measured. Cosette rather brazenly allowed her eyes to run up and down Javert’s form as though she were a student.

“It is interesting to see you out of uniform, Inspector.”

He shifted where he stood.

“I am not working, Mademoiselle.”

That ought to have been sufficient, but her smile widened, her white teeth gleaming, unselfconsciously perfect. 

“But surely you are guarding me bravely, are you not?”

Something behind his ribs tightened, and he wordlessly nodded. She did not mock him. She only looked pleased.

The smells of parsley, onion, and browned butter drifted from the kitchen, accompanied by the distant clatter of a spoon against ceramic: Toussaint preparing dinner. Javert realised then, with an almost animal pang, that he could not remember the last time he had eaten. Cosette seemed to remember for him.

“You left your breakfast untouched, Monsieur,” she scolded very gently, as though she had been considering the matter. “You have not eaten since yesterday.”

“No,” he acknowledged, far too quickly. “No. It was — I was tired. That is all.”

Her brow lifted and her mouth curved into a small, sly smile that bloomed on her face, innocent in intent but wicked in effect.

“Well. Then I shall hear no argument, Inspector. You shall have your fill of dinner. I shall personally see to it.”

Javert’s brows knitted at that and he shifted again, not from discomfort — not exactly — but from the sensation that something had landed on him that he could not shake off. Her strange, gentle order struck him not like a slap but like a warm hand to the chest. He ought to have been offended by her gall. He was not.

She did not realise what she was doing, he thought suddenly, making such commentary. She had spent her childhood in a circle of Hell, and then had been quietly constructed by nuns in a convent during her most formative years before being hidden away here by Valjean. She knew virtually nothing, surely, of what society expected - demanded - of young women in so many ways, least of all their behaviour around grown men. His mind was struck through then with vivid certainty that he had done right in filing the supplemental for temporary guardianship over her in light of Valjean’s death. Were she left alone, just a bit too confident, very exposed, entirely alone… it would be a disaster for her.

He watched as she reached out to set her book on the side table, and he tried desperately not to notice the neatness of the gesture, the grace of her wrist. He flicked his eyes from her, the pulsing shame from what he had done upstairs still rattling through him. Cosette gestured toward the nearby armchair, which was upholstered in something dark and floral. Her voice was soft and pleasant.

“Please.”

Javert hesitated, but then stepped forward. The floorboards creaked softly under his shoe. He sat on the edge chair, and his posture was too upright at first, spine locked in its usual sentry’s brace, but slowly, reluctantly, he allowed himself to settle back.

She did not speak again right away, instead glancing back toward the window. The warm glint of the late sun caught on the line of her cheek and the ridge of her jaw. Her lashes lowered. Her lips moved faintly. Another line of Latin, perhaps, or something she had noticed outside in a distantly murmured thought. Javert gulped.

Finally, she looked at him again and said, “I was reading the Cathemerinon . It was given to me when I made my First Holy Communion.”

“Ah.” He nodded once, soberly. “I do not know the verses. I have heard of it. It is a sacred text?”

Her smile gentled at the recognition. “Yes.”

A longer silence stretched, and then she informed him, “I was thinking about my dear Papa, and whether he is warm. Whether he knows peace.”

Javert’s lips stuttered before he managed, “If anyone deserves it, Mademoiselle… it is very likely he.”

She nodded, once, firmly. “I agree.”

The faint sounds of Toussaint laying out the table reached them, silver against porcelain, the hush before the meal. Cosette turned slightly, the movement shifting the fall of her gown.

“You will dine with me, then, Inspector?” she asked.

Javert nodded once, filling his lungs with breath, and affirmed, “I will.”

Chapter Text

The windows of the dining room trembled faintly in their casements as the storm pressed against Paris. The morning had arrived not with warmth or light, but with a dim, pewter heaviness that rolled low over the rooftops and guttered the lamps along rue Plumet. The sky was ashen and slick, roiling with gathering clouds, and it offered little promise of easing any time soon. The rain lashed steadily down the panes, and the whole house smelled of damp stone, moss, the mess of the city, and coffee. Compounding it all, it was extraordinarily and uncomfortably warm.

Javert sat at the breakfast table in a clean shirt and a simple if slightly outdated black waistcoat, a linen napkin laid sharp across his knee. Before him lay a simple plate of warm bread, two boiled eggs, and an apricot. Cosette sat across from him, poised as ever but quiet and hesitant today, her pale hands moving with the grace of habit rather than attention. She had fully dressed already in black lawn that was gathered neatly at the collar and wrists, the jet buttons small and orderly, with her lovely hair bound back simply at the nape of her neck. She was very pretty, Javert had thought when she entered the room, dressed as though for quiet dignity.

He had spoken little to her since that night in the salon four days prior and the dinner they had shared afterward. Since the moment when, half-dazed by her smile and her unintentional, gentle flirtation, by the lingering intoxication from what he had done to himself upstairs, he had allowed something almost wretched and irreplaceable to drift near the surface. Since then, he had made a point of absolute, gentlemanly comportment. He kept his voice level; he never let their eyes lock for more than a few moments. Yet this morning, as they sat, her own wide eyes kept flicking toward him over the rim of her coffee cup, curious and, as ever, seemingly unwittingly brazen in their softness. She did not seem to know she was doing it.

A burst of lightning cracked purple-white against the windowglass, and a half moment later, a thunderclap struck like cannonfire. Cosette startled violently. Her fork clattered to the porcelain with a harsh note, sending apricot splattering. One small hand flew instinctively to cup her throat, the other gripped the table’s edge. Javert snapped to attention at once. Cosette shook her head and stammered,

“I — I’m so sorry — I have always been badly startled by storms, Monsieur, and —”

Her voice was suddenly frail and high, the sentence overlapping itself in distress. Her fingers, normally so steady, were visibly shaking.

Javert scowled, his jaw tightening with an abrupt onset of ungovernable rage, though not at her, of course. The image that whirled behind his eyes was not of rain, but of the interrogation room, of Thénardier , his teeth yellowed and his eyes glinting with cruelty, laughing as he recalled Cosette’s terror with glee. She’d get soot on her little face and would cry if the dog barked too loud, 'cause he bit her all the time. Always jumpy, she was. Weak little thing, sickly. My good late wife once made her drink mop water 'cause she'd spilt half of it. Hah! You should’ve heard the way the Lark gagged. Like a piglet.

Javert opened his mouth. He was not certain what he intended on saying to her - an apology, perhaps, or some sort of reassurance - but before he could speak, a loud, insistent banging erupted at the front door of the house.

His brows only furrowed deeper. This was not the knock of a guest, nor a tradesman, nor a neighbour. It was official and purposeful, with the weight of someone uniformed behind it. Police instinct overtook thought immediately, and Javert’s spine straightened with a visible jolt. His chair scraped sharply as he rose, his napkin falling to the floor without notice. 

Emerging from the kitchen, Toussaint was drying her hands against her apron and making for the door, but Javert held up a hand sharply and silently and shook his head. The insistent knocking came again. He had not worn his uniform today, but no garment could remove the sentinel’s reflex from his frame, and he moved with swift, long strides, his steps solid against the floorboards, and he pulled the door open himself.

A wet gust of warm hit him immediately, along with the reek horse-damp, muddy smell of the street outside. A young agent de police stood on the threshold in his dark blue regulation coat of the force with a leather satchel slung across his chest, soaked by the rain. His boots were streaked with filth, his youthful cheeks flushed with haste.

“Monsieur le Commissaire,” the man said with a brief, perfunctory bow, and Javert’s spine stiffened.

“That is not my rank,” he noted flatly, but the agent said nothing, merely reaching into the satchel and producing a crisply folded, sealed letter that bore the stamp of the Prefecture on its outer flap, and was addressed in formal hand. Javert took it slowly, his stomach twisting with an itch of foreboding as the rain began to cruelly angle itself against the house’s windowpanes.

He swallowed and wondered how the young agent had found him here. He had filed the supplemental, yes, but he had not openly spoken of rue Plumet to any man in uniform. Then he tipped his head and remembered. His landlady on the rue de Babylone. Of course. Javert had informed her he would be staying here temporarily, in case of anything truly urgent. 

He had not expected anything urgent . Evidently this young man had gone to Javert’s home first and had been sent here… or else whatever this letter concerned was so significant that Javert’s supplemental about Cosette, stuffed into a drawer, was now deemed relevant. In any case, he found himself standing in threshold feeling mildly dizzy as the young agent tipped his cap and said,

“Monsieur, may I kindly relay that you have received the communiqué?”

Javert gave a slow, measured nod, not looking up. “You may. Dismissed.”

The man stepped back into the rain without another word, turned on his heel, and walked briskly toward the street, his shoulders hunched against the furious weather. Javert shut the door. The rain lashed more fiercely than ever at the glass, but from the dining room, Javert no clatter of silver against porcelain. It was as though Cosette, too, sensed that the contents of the letter had already altered the shape of the day. He flicked his eyes up and through the open doorway into the room to see her peering out of it curiously, and he took a step aside, away toward the stairs, breaking the wax seal of the letter beneath his thumb.

Javert moved up one stair as the storm and stared down at the thick, finely textured paper as he unfolded it with a weight that made his pulse slow. The house seemed too quiet suddenly; he could no longer hear the rain as it scudded across the glass like hissing sand. His eyes dropped to the opening lines and read.

Prefecture of Police of the Seine
Office of the Prefect
Île de la Cité
Paris, 14 June, 1832

Monsieur le Commissaire Javert,

I regret to inform you of the death of Monsieur le Commissaire Henri-Claude Miremont, which occurred on the 13th of this month, following a sudden and violent attack of the cholera.

In accordance with the Ministerial Decree dated 14 June instant, and in consideration of your seniority, your exemplary service record, as well as your irreproachable conduct during the recent disturbances, you are hereby appointed Commissaire of Police for the 4th Arrondissement, with immediate effect.

Your assumption of duties is to take place upon receipt of this notice. You are required to report to the Office of the Prefect tomorrow, 15 June, at eight o'clock in the morning, for the signing of the official decree and the reception of your insignia of office.

Please accept, Monsieur, the expression of my highest consideration.

Henri Gisquet
Councillor of State, Prefect of Police

Javert read the letter in full twice, once for content and again for comprehension… and then skimmed it again, not because he had misunderstood, but because his mind felt oddly weightless. Miremont, dead. His first thought, absurdly, was that he had only just spoken to the man. But that was not true. He had last seen the stern and bespectacled Miremont just a scant few days after the rebellion, during the final stages of the barricade inquiries. He had looked tired then, drawn about the mouth, but Miremont always looked tired, and everyone had been severely overworked by the time Javert had last seen him. He could recall no cough, no pallor - none of the telltale signs of the hideous disease ripping through Paris. Yet now the man was dead of it, buried, or soon to be.

Cholera…. the word scraped cold down Javert’s spine. He could see it now, Miremont in the same fever that had taken Pyt, Perier, and, of course, Lamarque. He would have died groaning, vomiting black bile, dead within a few days. It was a cruel death. Undignified for a stiff bureaucrat like Miremont.

The letter trembled faintly in Javert’s grip. Commissaire. He had not asked for this. He did not seek promotion in his career; he sought honourable labour. He had never courted favour or reward, nor had he ever lobbied for advancement, much preferring the silence of dutiful service and the clarity of law to the gnarl of competition or ambition’s mire. And yet… this was the logical outcome of competent duty, was it not? He was the most senior and, likely, most able, among those remaining in the arrondissement’s corps. His record was spotless. His loyalty, particularly during the recent rebellion, had been beyond question.

Still… Commissaire. In the Paris Police.

Javert had not expected to hear that word applied to himself, not until he was on the verge of retirement, if ever. A faint flicker in the back of his mind reminded him that he was fifty-four years of age, an experienced superior had died, that there had been a recent rebellion, and that disease was flaring through the city. Accepting this promotion was, probably, its own form of duty. 

He glanced up at a rustling sound to his left and stiffened when he saw Cosette, her fingers curled delicately around the doorframe of the dining room as though she feared she might overstep the threshold of his silence and solitude. Her soft shoes were quiet on the floorboards, her movements graceful. She looked at him carefully, studying him as she so often did, as though he were a book in a language she did not fluently understand. Her voice was very gentle when it came.

“Pardon me, Monsieur l’Inspecteur,” she said, her tone formally careful, as though she feared intruding, and he flinched at the title now that he had a new one. “But… was that someone from the police? I saw a - is all well?”

Her eyes, even now, retained that strange, wide guileless, luminously perceptive, though she tried to disguise her worry for the both of them beneath the practised decorum of good breeding and convent training. She had not seen his letter, but she had felt the shift in the air. Perhaps, Javert thought, she worried that something awful was going to happen to her, that someone was going to come and take her away and put her in some sort of institution. Perhaps she worried that her house and belongings might be seized. Perhaps she worried that Javert’s supplemental had been denied. Those would be perfectly reasonable fears.

He looked at her for a moment before answering, his mouth parted but no words rising. He felt abruptly undone by the sight of her in the doorway, and he wondered whether he ought to simply reassure her that she had nothing to worry about, that the young agent had come on an official matter. After all, the intricacies of his career were scarcely of interest to her.

But he found himself folding the letter slowly, and he inclined his head once.

“I have been… promoted,” he said, and the words sat dryly, like cotton wool, in his mouth. Cosette’s breath caught softly, and her fingers tightened on the wood of the frame. She blinked. Javert quickly added by way of explanation, “Commissaire Miremont is dead. From the cholera.”

“Oh. I am sorry,” Cosette said quietly, sincerely, and stepped out from the threshold, taking a few steps toward the stairs. Javert watched in mild confusion then as she paused, bowed her head, and crossed herself, shutting her eyes and stilling herself. Praying. She was praying for Miremont, he realised. She was internally blessing the soul of a dead man he had known and she had not.

He slowly descended the stair as she opened her eyes and then allowed her gaze to flick to the paper in her hands before rising back to his face. “So you are… Monsieur le Commissaire now? Commissaire Javert?”

“Erm… well. The promotion is effective immediately, but I receive the appointment and insignia officially tomorrow,” Javert informed her, shifting upon her feet. She curled her lips just a little and tipped her chin, seeming almost proud of him in a way that struck him through strangely, and she nodded.

“Please accept my congratulations on your promotion, despite the circumstances, Commissaire Javert.”

He blinked rapidly a few times, his mouth opening and closing helplessly in silence as though he were a stranded fish, until he managed to say, “Thank you, Cosette.”

It was not until he was on patrol at midnight on the rue de Rosiers that his boots stuttered to a stop and he realised with a shock of horror that he had called her by her given name.

The latch gave slightly under Javert’s hand as he pushed the door inward and stepped into the entryway of No. 55 rue Plumet with a weary gravity, like a soldier returning from campaign. The house was quiet and dim, the lamps long since extinguished, but the heavy warmth within was palpable, a comforting contrast to the miserable night outside. Behind him, the tempest had not lessened. If anything, it had gathered fresh rage. The gutters were swollen and gurgling. More than once tonight, Javert’s boot soles had nearly betrayed him upon the slick cobblestones. Thunder had cracked over the rooftops of the Marais like distant artillery.

He removed his top hat with a smooth, habitual gesture, his gloved fingers flicking a few droplets aside as he shut the door behind him. The uncomfortable weight of his greatcoat hung upon his shoulders like sodden canvas, and he shrugged out of it with immediate relief. The coat, though old and dark with rain, was impeccably tailored and was not his ; it was government-issued, the sort of article a man in his position was expected to maintain with care, so Javert lifted it from his back and hung it upon the iron hook just beside the stairwell. It immediately began to weep quietly onto the wood beneath, and Javert reached at once for his stiff brush, sweeping at the coat and feeling just a bit guilty about the small puddle left on the floor underneath it. Toussaint would rise soon enough, he knew, and see to that.

Javert had patrolled for six hours tonight — a shortened shift, mercifully — but the final two had been undertaken in a renewed and unrelenting downpour that had soaked through his gloves, his boots, even his waistcoat and shirt. He had circled the rue des Rosiers, the rue des Ecouffes, and peripheral streets with the trained scrutiny of a bloodhound, noting the familiar doorways and new absences, the shuttered businesses still dark after the barricades, the transient figures huddled beneath eaves like ghosts of the recent dead. He had not spoken to anyone; he rarely did on patrol unless strictly necessary.

Tomorrow, or rather, this morning, for the clock in the corridor struck one as he ascended the stairs, he would report to the Prefecture on the Île de la Cité, freshly uniformed and perfectly groomed, to be formally appointed to his new rank as Commissaire in the Fourth Arrondissement. The decree was already signed, and he would be presented his insignia. There would be a very brief, very solemn little ceremony without any grandiose speech or award - just the formal reading of the Ministerial notice. Javert would nod, say very little, and sign where indicated. But before that could happen, he must see to it that he had trimmed his hair and side whispers, re-blacked his boots, polished his badge and belt buckle... this was not a night for sleeping, and, in any case, his mind was too quick for it just now.

He reached the top step, careful not to let the force of his bootsteps creak the wood too much, and turned toward the guest chamber he had occupied since Valjean’s death. Just as he reached for the doorknob, a soft voice called to him from just down the corridor.

“Monsieur le Commissaire?”

He startled, froze, finally righted himself, and turned. Cosette stood in the doorway of her own bedchamber, visible only by the faint light of a candle sitting on a table beside her bed and illuminating her from behind. She wore a modest grey flannel peignoir, belted about her waist; beneath it, the hem of a white nightdress just brushed her ankles. Her hair, usually pinned with such precision, was now loose around her shoulders, the soft gold catching the candlelight from behind her. The sight of her, half in shadow, was not improper by any legal measure, but it made Javert’s breath halt all the same, and his fingers curled tightly at his side, making his leather glove creak.

She seemed uncertain then, her hands clasped together before her, as though unsure whether to step forward or retreat and disappear back again into the safety of her room. Yet her posture bore the unmistakable marks of her convent education. Javert saw politeness without presumption and deference without weakness. When she spoke to him again, it was with the gentleness she so often did that betrayed a hint of her innocence, of her beautiful lack of exposure and sophistication. She simply did not know , Javert could tell, that young women such as her were not meant to be so very bare and pure in their kindness. Not toward men like him.

“I know your promotion ceremony is early in the morning, Monsieur,” she said to him very softly. “I had thought you would be back earlier, so that you might rest properly.”

His mouth twitched. She worried over him? Was that it? He shook his head, standing still as a few raindrops fell from his sleeves.

“No, Mademoiselle,” he said finally, his voice a low, rough growl, thirsty from work and worn from the night air. “I — I have preparations. And… all is well. I am accustomed to such nights. Thank you.”

There was a pause, and then her wide, luminous, unsettlingly direct eyes moved slowly downward over the length of him until a strange heat pooled somewhere too low in his abdomen. Her brow creased ever so slightly.

“You are soaked through, Monsieur.”

The words seemed more concern, more observation than reprimand, but the heat within him coiled hard nonetheless. She took a single step forward, her voice now quieter, and now she was almost chastising.

“You are shivering, Monsieur le Commissaire. You should quickly change into something dry. You will catch ill.”

He swallowed and found he could not answer. Cosette’s eyes moved around his jacket, and as she did, Javert shifted where he stood and felt his breath quicken. Her next words came with a tentative sort of urgency.

“I know how to launder. I learnt as a child, and if you wish… I will attend to your uniform as best I can whilst you…”

She trailed off and looked down, clearly embarrassed by her own forwardness. But Javert understood. She did not mean to flirt and it was not an offer made out of servitude. It was an act of womanly care disguised as practicality, borne from old habits of obedience, yes, but laced with something else, too. 

He regarded her quietly. His own voice, when it came, sounded a bit hollow to his own ear. 

“Thank you. But uniforms are strange things. I must… brush the pieces dry, and build up the fire, and hang them there, and… scrub the boots just so, and…”

His cheeks were feverishly warm and he thought that if the corridor had any light, he would have been visibly scarlet. He realised it and was ashamed of the fact. He shut his eyes. 

“Thank you, just the same.”

She did not step away. Not yet. For a moment, Javert could not breathe at all. But then, almost imperceptibly, he shifted backward, straightening with careful stiffness, dismissing several thoughts he had no business thinking. His hand found the edge of his chamber door, and he inclined his head with precise formality.

“Goodnight, Mademoiselle,” he said in a tight voice, thought not unkindly. “I… I am most obliged for your concern.”

And with that, he turned from her and stepped into the guest room. He did not shut the door entirely, for to slam her out seemed rude. He edged it closed only enough to spare them both the awkwardness of standing there any longer.

Darkness pressed gently around the furniture around the modest writing desk, the basin and pitcher, the iron-framed bed, neatly made and undisturbed. Javert did not light the lamp, moving by quickly-learned memory. His hands moved with steady economy. He plucked at his gloves first and set them out. Then he unbuttoned his jacket and his waistcoat with fingers that were stiff from hours in the chilled rain. The fire must be built again; the room was too cold for drying anything, let alone for enduring the next five hours of ceremony preparation.

Javert moved swiftly to the hearth and arranged kindling as he always did: pine shavings at the bottom, then twigs, then split wood stacked precisely like a military tent. Every movement was practiced, mechanical, and practised. But his mind was chaos, and he despised chaos.

That soft voice in the corridor, her voice, still echoed in his skull like the heavy toll of cathedral bells. “Monsieur le Commisaire… If you wish…” She had meant nothing, of course, and yet — and yet —

He gritted his teeth hard and struck the flint. There was a spark, then smoke, then flame. His hands made quick work of it, and he crouched closer, coaxing it with breath. His hair began to drip again, plastering itself to his neck and forehead, strands clinging to his cheek like ivy to stone. The fire caught at last, licking up greedily, and Javert sat back on his heels to watch it, the sudden warmth striking his face, his knees aching faintly through his soaked trousers. He exhaled sharply through his nostrils and rolled his neck, water flicking off the ends of his hair. His queue now clung wetly to the nape of his neck. Annoyed, Javert reached up to push away the stray strands that clung like wet ivy to his forehead.

His fire was failing a bit, so he reached for the poker and arranged himself to attend to the hearth when the sound of a gentle knock - no, not even a knock, but the faintest series of polite taps - reached him. He turned his head slightly.

“Monsieur?” came Cosette’s voice, soft now and almost uncertain. She hovered just outside the door, peering into the room. Javert’s stomach twisted as he stood slowly, knees protesting, and said nothing, silenced by his own shame. After a long moment, the door opened further, and there she was with a bundle of neatly folded, unbleached linen towels held carefully in her arms as though they were very precious.

“Forgive me,” she said meekly, as though intruding upon the sanctuary of a priest. “Toussaint washed and dried the towels just yesterday, and I thought you might…”

She did not finish, instead, stepping inside with quiet resolution and crossing the room toward the hearth. She placed the towels with deliberate care on the arm of the small chair near the fire, but did not retreat. She lingered in silence, hands fussing with the belt at her waist, as though unsure whether she was welcome or banished.

Javert’s chest ached at the sight of her. The glow from the hearth caught her at an angle now and painted her profile in soft bronze, tracing the shadows of her cheek and jaw. Her nightdress beneath her grey peignoir was plain. She was almost doll-like in her modesty, but the way the light moved across her as she turned slightly to look at him seemed, suddenly, very dangerous.

Javert forced his gaze away and bent again to prod at the fire, more roughly this time. He scowled and said stiffly, “Thank you, Mademoiselle.”

There was a long silence. Too long, perhaps, before he felt her presence move closer, just a shift in air pressure, a gentler warmth, the scent of lavender soap clinging to her sleeves. She had stepped toward the hearth behind him in relative silence, but he had felt it. He had been a soldier and a policeman for far too long not to sense silent footsteps behind him. 

He brushed a hand again at his hair, irritated by the wet mess of it, and muttered a few choice near-silent words not fit for Cosette’s ears, things he was not wont to frequently say aloud, under his breath.

“Here you are, Monsieur,” came her voice very unexpectedly, and when he turned his head, she was beside him, close enough to touch, and holding out one of the clean linen towels like a temple offering.

Javert hesitated before he reached for it with slow, stiff fingers, and before his hand could close around the cloth, Cosette’s eyes drifted downward again. A rivulet of water had slid from his temple, curved along his jawline and down his neck, and disappeared beneath the collar of his shirt.

Her gaze followed its path like a ribbon unwinding. She tipped her head at the sight of it, apparently fascinated.

“May I?” Cosette asked softly. She did not wait for his permission.

Her hand lifted, and the towel came with it, not with boldness, he knew, but with the sort of instinctive healing grace she had learnt from the sisters. She reached up with both hands and gently, reverently, pressed the cloth to his cheek, then to his hairline to daub away the cold rainwater in careful passes. She worked in meticulous silence, her breath quick and shallow, her eyes half-lowered.

Cosette Fauchelevant was no whore. Javert knew that with absolute clarity. And yet, right this moment, she was igniting him more skilfully than any painted girl calling out from the rue de la Vieille-Lanterne could ever do to any man, and she was doing so with nothing more than a towel and good intentions.

The kindling in the hearth snapped behind Javert, startling him. Somewhere deep in his chest, something tore, and the coiling heat from the corridor returned with its full, pulsing fury. He had not moved a muscle. He was still, a man struck senseless, arms loose at his sides, eyes fixed not on her face but on the wall behind her.

Then he shut his eyes and whispered, not to halt her, not to reprimand her, but because he felt on the very precipice of condemnation and madness, 

“Cosette… please.”

The towel in her hands stilled and her touch went limp.

“Oh. I’m so very sorry,” she said softly. Javert forced his eyes open. Cosette looked terrified, as though she feared she’d overstepped something sacred. “Forgive me, Monsieur, I only meant —”

But Javert shook his head. He was no longer capable of understanding words. Her apology floated past him like incense - faint, warm, and irrelevant. Her face was flushed pink; her breath was uneven. The moment she had touched him, something had unraveled in him forcefully. And so he did not think. Not really. His body simply moved.

One hand - rough and far too large - reached out and found the side of her face. She gasped softly at the touch, but did not shrink away, instead lifting her eyes to his, wide and searching, startled but unafraid. She seemed, if anything, amazed. His other hand brushed the towel from her grip until it dropped soundlessly to the floor.

“Cosette,” he whispered again, his voice breaking in half like a twig. She nodded a little. He bent low, closing the vast gap between them and then… 

He kissed her.

This time, unlike that morning in the dining room, it was not a chaste press of his lips against her skin. It was not a restrained gesture of courtship like she might have received once or twice from the boy Marius, nor a loving blessing like she had doubtlessly gotten on her forehead from Valjean. 

No. It was so much worse. It was instinctual, wild, and fumbling at first, for Javert had never kissed a woman before in his entire life, not open-mouthedly, not for real. His lips met hers awkwardly at first, and for one staggering moment he faltered, but then she rose slightly onto the balls of her feet, tilted her face upward with the same artlessness that he always saw in her, and her mouth parted just enough to pull him in.

And with that, he was gone .

The heat of her breath, the impossible softness of her lips, the way her fingers hovered at her sides… unsure where to go and what to do, he flattened one palm against her lower back and drew her close, too close, bending low, his breath caught in his throat as he kissed her more deeply than he thought himself capable. The kiss grew more certain with every moment, and he drank from her mouth like a man dying of thirst. A low, broken groan escaped him, humiliating him at once, and though she startled beneath it, she did not retreat.

They were moving toward the wall beside the hearth, suddenly, though Javert was uncertain of how that wound up happening. She was staggering backward, and he feared she would fall, so he yanked her against him, nearly sweeping her up into his grasp as he careened forward. She hissed softly, not with fear, but with shock, when she reached the wall and stared up at him, her pupils dilated, her cheeks mottled and rosy. Javert pulled back, panting, chest heaving, and slammed his fist hard into the plaster beside her head with a sound like thunder. His trousers were far too tight with the need aching inside of them, and he dragged his hips back, horrified, feeling like a monster. His voice came hoarse, thick with something that almost sounded like pain .

“I must not,” he growled. “I… I must not —”

He turned his face away from her, jaw and neck clenching painfully, body shaking with restraint that had already cracked like shattered glass. He wanted to run. For the first time in his life wanted to kneel in prayer, or at least, to be given due punishment.

But then —

Her fingers moved. He felt her touch before he saw it. He felt a small hand curling slowly at the front of his shirt. He looked down. Cosette’s face was tipped up toward him again, her eyes half-hooded and dazed, her lips looking a little bruised from their kiss. Her fingers convulsed with hesitation and then grasped at his shirt - not yanking, not pleading, but holding him there, holding onto something unspeakable as though for purchase, for comfort. 

It destroyed him, the realisation… she wanted this. She wanted him. A half-second later, he moved.

His hand braced above her head against the wall, and the other wrapped her waist, keeping her body firm against his, anchoring her there like something vital. He bent low again, his mouth grazing her jaw, her cheek, the underside of her ear. His mind ought to have been chastising him in a low and vicious scream, he knew. No such thing was happening just now, for some reason.

Cosette tilted her head back without a word, and he groaned again, more deeply this time. The sound echoed in the small room softly, a forbidden noise, and Javert stifled his voice with some effort. Their considerable size difference made every movement challenging; his pelvis pressed not against hers but against her stomach, and even that was almost too much to bear… the friction, the heat, the want. It was only after he had spent a long moment of granting himself the indulgence of moving against her in such a way that he realised he was doing so, realised how profane it was to do so, and he tried to stop his hips from cycling against her, only to find he could not.

Cosette’s hands had risen, one light against his chest, the other palm flat against his neck. She didn’t push him away. She didn’t speak. She only stared up at him, wide-eyed in wonder, as if he were something impossible and holy and terrifying, all at once.

“Cosette,” he rasped down at her, shaking his head almost apologetically. He pressed forward, not harshly, but helplessly, as his hips ground against her abdomen very deeply a few more times, slow and hard, relishing the friction and the knowledge that she was right there, only a few layers of fabric away, and his entire body shuddered. The sensation was too sharp, too searing, and he needed to stop. If he did not, he would spill himself in his uniform standing here against her - an utter abomination of a notion, a sort of onanism he had never contemplated.

Cosette made a quiet, involuntary sound, a sharp breath taken inward, her brows drawn. It was not a moan, nor was it whorish seduction. But she was feeling far too much, Javert could tell. Her head tipped back, hitting the wall lightly behind her, and she blinked a few times very slowly, lips falling open again. Javert groaned at the sight, paying no heed at all now to maintaining quiet.

He bent low to kiss her again, devouring her, the hand at her waist splaying upward slightly along the ribs at her side. She was so small, he registered. So warm beneath him, and she arched just enough to meet him, her body stiff with unfamiliar sensation.

His precious, lifelong restraint died in the space of a heartbeat, like a guillotine victim so unceremoniously executed.

His forehead dropped against the plaster wall as he ground against her again. Once and then again. His breath began to come in sharp, broken gasps. He needed to stop. He could not stop. Her fingers clutched more rightly at his shirt. The other hand soothed at his neck. And that was it. His knees buckled slightly, and he surged forward again, this time gasping aloud as the friction between his trousers and her soft peignoir, the sheer unbearable pressure of it all hurtled him cruelly over a cliff and into an icy river.

He buried his face in her shoulder, unable to look at her, unable to speak, as he endured the shock of it, of his body betraying him and pumping a mess of seed into his uniform trousers. He loathed how good it felt, the ringing rush in his ears, the warmth that spread from his chest through his veins, the quick tightening in his groin, the satisfying void in his mind. But when it all cleared, he reminded himself that he was looming over Valjean’s daughter against a wall like a horrid hulking, old beast, and he lurched back a step. His voice was nothing but a strangled whisper now.

“I… I apologise,” he murmured.

Cosette said nothing at first. Her hand slid from his chest to his collar and clung there. She shook her head. Her eyes were glistening as though she might cry, and for a moment, Javert feared she might. But then she asked very quietly,

“Monsieur, I know very little of things such as these. I am… please, forgive me if I was too forward.”

His chest crumpled then, and he felt sick, standing there with sullied trousers before her. A whisper of a notion floated through his mind, fretting for some reason that she had clearly been aroused but knew nothing of any of this and now worried that she had been uncouth. He squared his jaw and assured her stoutly,

“You were not forward, Mademoiselle. You were charming. Quite charming.”

“Oh.” Cosette let her fingers fall from him then and nodded, her eyelashes fluttering a little, and she looked toward the door before she whispered carefully, “Congratulations again, Monsieur le Commissaire. I am sorry the promotion comes under such terrible circumstances, but still… I am certain it is well-earned. Goodnight.”

He pulled himself back two steps from the wall and bowed just a little as she made her way past him. “Goodnight.”

Chapter Text

The stones upon the roads and paths on the Île de la Cité still bore the gloss of the previous night’s rain, their faces glistening unevenly beneath a low, milky sky that hung unmoved over Paris. The air smelled faintly of mildew and river rot, stirred only by the occasional low and heavy breath coming off the Seine, which bore the coppery tang of rotting coins and algae-covered chains. Near the buildings that carried official weight, the sharp report of boots against stone sounded with the unrelenting certainty of a military cadence, but Javert walked alone.

The façade of the Préfecture de Police rose with brutish and angular denial of human softness: stone-faced, soot-streaked, its shuttered windows and heavy lintels devoid of ornament. Despite the movement within, its silence was near ecclesiastical, a mausoleum of order rather than of faith. This was not a building that housed men, but a building that absorbed them like black velvet absorbing sunlight.

Javert climbed the steps beneath the gazes of two young, uniformed guards standing crisply at attention who, rightfully, made no movement to greet him. They registered him, their eyes flicking to the impeccable shine of his boots, the severe precision of his freshly-trimmed whiskers, the regulation drape of his coat - granting him the barest flicker of respect and mutual recognition, but they immediately stiffened back to their posts.

Javert, for his part, did not pause. His coat had been meticulously brushed and dried. It was buttoned to the throat and bore no trace of the storm or the long night it had followed. Beneath one glove, the skin across two knuckles pulsed with a faint ache, raw and pink from where he had struck the wall beside Cosette’s shoulder in a rare lapse of discipline. He had not tended to the scuffs; they would heal.

Inside the main corridor of the Préfecture, the atmosphere was cool and dry, still freshly awakened to the day. The morning candles had been lit in the brass sconces that were affixed to the stone walls, their light wavering faintly against the pale gloss of moisture that still clung to the windows. Two clerks passed Javert, murmuring something to another, both men too engrossed in ledgers and orders to note his presence. A nearby wooden filing cabinet groaned open and closed. Somewhere, the hushed scratch of a pen marked words furtively upon a page.

Javert’s boots rang upon the stone floors with a clean, deliberate rhythm as he passed through. He walked as if the corridor itself might judge him. One junior officer glanced up from a desk with a look of recognition, lips parting briefly as if to speak but, meeting Javert’s harsh gaze, quickly thought better of it.

At precisely five minutes to eight, Javert arrived at the antechamber.

The room was narrow and spare, paneled in heavy wood darkened by the years, smoke, and varnish. There was a simple brass crucifix on the wall and an unoccupied bench along the far side with one folded ledger resting on it. 

Javert did not sit. He arranged himself at attention, hands at his sides and his shoulders straight, facing the heavy door that led into the office of the Prefect. The faint ticking of a mounted wall clock counted down the minutes with the solemn finality, like a metronome at requiem tempo.

Javert’s thoughts lingered on little just now - not on Valjean, not on Cosette, not on his captivity at the barricades. There was no room now for any of such sentimental nonsense. His mind had emptied itself of everything but this: the necessary promotion, the oath, the insignia. His spine might have been carved from a ship’s mast, drawn taut enough to bear him against a violent sea. He remained as he was - still, composed, waiting for his name to be called and entered into the record of the dead. Just after the clock marked eight o’clock, the door before him creaked open, just an inch.

“Monsieur le Commissaire,” came the clipped voice of a man within, which Javert recognised as the Chief of Cabinet. “The Prefect will see you now.”

Javert stepped forward, and the door opened and then shut behind him with a mechanical click. Inside, the Cabinet du Préfet was dim and understated. The windows had been shuttered against the natural morning light, replaced instead by the glow of two gas lamps, which lent the walnut furnishings a burnished sheen. There were no carpets upon the parquet floors, which bore the shine of recent polishing. The air smelled faintly of oil, starch, and ink.

At the centre of the room sat the Prefect of Police, Henri Gisquet, a narrow-faced man significantly younger than Javer, stern-faced with ink-stained fingers. He did not rise upon Javert’s entry. The tricolour cockade of the Préfecture rested beneath glass at the corner of his desk.

To Gisquet’s left stood a tall, freckled, plain-faced man in administrative dress, a sheaf of papers held at a ritual angle against his chest. His blank gaze did not meet Javert’s. To the right, standing silently, hands clasped behind his back, was none other than Commissaire Pascal Bertin. His tricolour sash, as ever, peeked out from beneath his coat with quiet authority. Javert gave a brief bow of the head and remained standing at rigid attention.

Gisquet spoke without preamble, for this was not a celebratory event. It was pure bureaucracy.

“Monsieur le Commissaire Javert, we meet under sombre circumstances following the lamentable passing of Monsieur le Commissaire Miremont. His Majesty’s government, through my office, has determined it necessary to immediately ensure the continued order of the 4th Arrondissement.”

Javert said nothing. He did not blink. His head bobbed again, just once, and his chest pulled oddly.

The Prefect continued, his voice quick and efficient where he sat. “In consideration of your exemplary service, your unwavering loyalty during the recent disturbances, and your proven dedication to the law, you have been formally appointed Commissaire of Police for the 4th Arrondissement, with immediate effect from the 14th of June.”

He looked up and met Javert’s eyes. The words struck not as accolade, but as administrative finality. Javert’s hands did not move save for the faint tightening of his jaw. The plain-faced, freckled secretary to Gisquet’s left stepped forward and placed a thick sheet of cream vellum on the blotter before the Prefect. A tricolour ribbon was affixed at the corner. Gisquet lifted a fine brass-nib pen from a case upon his desk and dipped it into ink, signed the decree with one clean motion, and placed it back down.

He gestured to Javert and held out the pen.

“Commissaire Javert, kindly affix your signature to formally acknowledge your acceptance of this commission.”

Javert took two clean, neat steps forward and bowed down to the desk. A faint scent of metal and varnish clung to the pen in his gloved hand. He did not hesitate, and with the ease of long habituation filling out reams of bureaucratic paperwork, he lowered his wrist over the vellum and signed his name with a precise, angular hand without flourish, pause, or visible emotion. Each letter of his single name rendered itself in precise, right-angled strokes: Javert.

The moment was neither applauded nor commemorated, and no one spoke. The secretary moved forward once more, briskly and noiselessly, to blot the ink with the edge of a stiff linen square. He pressed a seal into a red wax oval that gleamed as it cooled and then transferred the arrêté to a large leather-bound ledger already opened to the correct page. The man’s hand, ink-stained and freckled, moved with ritualized fluency; he had clearly gone through this procedure many times before and would do so again. Javert watched as he wrote 15 juin 1832 on the left column and then moved to the right side: Nomination confirmée – Javert, C., Commissaire, 4e Arrondissement .

Then he neatly shut the register, its hinge creaking just a little, and he stepped back to his place. 

Where he stood to the side, Commissaire Pascal Bertin gave no nod, no smile, no signal of recognition, yet there was something in the way his gaze tracked the movement of the seal, as if all these dour proceedings relating to the uprising and the cholera took him back to his days as an officer working over maps and documents to the sound of cannon fire.

Gisquet, meanwhile, had turned slightly and gestured now without ceremony to the Chief of Cabinet. The man came forward obediently, bearing a rectangular velvet-lined case in both hands. It was black and unadorned, save for the brass clasp at its center, and the Chief of Cabinet opened its lid. Inside, resting against wine-colored velvet, lay the articles of office comprising Javert’s new insignia: two gold-threaded epaulets edged in bullion fringe, each affixed with two five-pointed stars marking him as a Commissaire de Police. Beside them, gleaming faintly in the low gaslight, lay the oval medallion of weighty brass, the official badge of the Préfecture de Police , which was engraved with the seal of the Kingdom of France.

Javert bowed his head slightly and took the box, but he did not thank them. Instead, with the careful economy of one accustomed to the necessary theatre of uniform, he moved to remove his coat, folding it briefly over one arm, and attached his new insignia. The epaulets fastened at the shoulders with simple, small interior brass hooks, but Javert’s fingers, large as they were, moved with surety. The golden fringe fell evenly. He affixed the gleaming new badge directly above his heart, aligning its base precisely with the seam of the breast. He would not wear it most days; it was intended for formal events. Receiving it today was a formal event. He kept his face inscrutable as he pulled his jacket back on and tugged at the hem to right himself, feeling a new weight resting upon him, as though the uniform had become some sort of vestment.

For just a beat, there was nothing but the hum of the gas lamps and the distant echo of bells from the river’s edge. Javert drew a breath through his teeth, a controlled one, and spoke at last with an even, cold, measured voice.

“Monsieur le Préfet, with great honour, I accept this appointment. I pledge my eternal and unwavering service to the law and to the King, and to the maintenance of order in the 4th Arrondissement of Paris.”

The words, of course, were ritual, but there was nothing hollow in their delivery. Javert’s tone had the weight of granite deciding not to fall. Gisquet, still seated, merely inclined his head with satisfied acceptance of Javert’s vow.

“Very good. The 4th Arrondissement requires your firm hand. I expect your reports shortly. Dismissed, Commissaire Javert.”

The room was quiet. Miremont was dead, and Javert was elevated. It was done.

Javert bowed slightly, executed a sharp half-turn upon his boot, and strode from the room, his heels clicking upon the floors. He did not pause at the threshold. The Chief of Cabinet had already turned away rather boredly, and the secretary was returning to his desk. Only Commissaire Bertin watched him go, his eyes flickering with some distant expression that did not rise to pity, or envy, or pride. Merely recognition. Javert, for his part, crossed the threshold without looking back and closed the door behind him. He made his way down the hall with the same impassive, metered stride with which he had entered. When he reached the main steps of the Préfecture, the guards at the door gave him a slightly sharper glance than before. One of them seemed, briefly, about to raise a hand in salute, but something in Javert’s expression dissuaded it, so they both stiffened again into their state of attention in silence.

The flagstones outside were drying, for the morning had brightened faintly and there was a brighter cast to the grey, as though the sun were attempting a breach behind its veil. Javert descended the steps and paused at the bottom as a pair of pigeons scattered from the base of the building. A coach passed nearby, wheels splashing through puddled remnants of the night’s rainfall.

Javert would be granted the remainder of the day for his leisure. He thus turned not toward the 4th Arrondissement, but westward, toward the quay. He thought very briefly and absently of going to his rented quarters on the rue de Babylone. There he would find old, dry tea in a tin, a few spare changes of civilian clothes and the company of no one. So something turned his feet instead toward the southwest.

The bells of Notre-Dame chimed almost ominously nearby, bellowing the hour from the Île de la Cité and out across the city’s ribs.

Cosette.

Her name did not form inside Javert’s mind as a word or a fully formed notion… not consciously. But the thought of her, those eyes too blue to be easily dismissed, that voice too calm to belong in this city, rose briefly and unbidden, a wispy pull. His stomach was empty. He had not slept. He wanted breakfast and bed, but it was neither hunger nor fatigue that compelled his footsteps across the Pont Saint-Michel.

The dining room in the house on rue Plumet was bathed in light, filtered through the high lace curtains that Toussaint had drawn just wide enough to let in the blush of the sun. The air smelled faintly of coffee and butter and brie, and beneath that, the cut flowers from the garden that had been brought in and put into water in a vase. The linen tablecloth, crisp and edged with lace and embroidery, was finer than any Javert had yet seen in this house, and it lay smoothed without wrinkle upon the table. Upon it gleamed the silver cutlery, very evidently freshly polished by Toussaint’s hand. Two porcelain egg cups stood sentinel at either place, each with a soft-boiled egg precisely cracked within, and beside them, in a basket lined with muslin was a small pile of stylish Viennese-style croissants from the baker’s, their edges glistening with glaze. A cafetière, its brass warmed and its aroma rich, stood proudly.

Javert sat straight-backed at his place with his hands politely folded just at the edge of the table. His coat was now newly adorned with the insignia of his newly-acquired rank, and the brass medallion above his heart caught the light rather brightly. Other than greeting the two women of the house neatly and thanking Toussaint for the suspiciously celebratory breakfast, he had scarcely spoken since he entered the room.

Across from him, of course, sat Cosette. Her mourning gown today was not one of the plain dresses or wrappers of previous mornings, but something much richer, almost fit for an outing or receiving a fine guest. It was an expertly tailored work of black silk that caught the light like water, edged down the front with jet beads so fine they looked almost like droplets of ink. Her sleeves ballooned fashionably and were primly tight at the wrist, and her pale hands moved with unconscious grace as she reached for her spoon. Toussaint had already styled her golden hair into soft curls, arranged just so about her face without gimmick or show, but with deliberate grace. Her wide eyes, when they lifted, were as searching as ever, but something behind them this morning made Javert feel as if he had been struck lightly in the chest. Perhaps, he considered, he had been.

It seemed she had indeed dressed for someone, but not for church, not for a walk in the gardens, nor to receive a caller. Not even really for mourning, though all of it was black. Javert blinked, picking up his fork and stabbing at his plate. He swallowed a mouthful of sausage and did not taste it. The brie, he determined after only one bite, was flavourful but too rich, and the croissant was almost monstrously cloying.

The cutlery up on his plate made a small, clean sound as he set it down. His hands moved automatically to unfold his napkin again, dabbing once at the corner of his mouth. His eyes drifted, only partially against his will, across the table, to the place between Cosette’s shoulder and ear, just barely concealed by her curls now. He sniffed. There was no visible bruise on her throat, no red or snarling injury, nothing to betray the night before. But it was there, true and heavy, hanging between them like a scent no one had named. He knew very well what he had done to her.

Cosette, for her part, was eating hardly anything, Javert noticed. A bite of egg, stray bits of croissant torn off by her delicate fingers. She toyed with the edge of her spoon as though unsure whether to lift it again. Toussaint had smiled a bit crookedly after serving the food and then retreated, leaving them alone in the room, a kindness so sharp that Javert had felt his chest constrict. The air in the dining room now was quiet, but not still; it shimmered faintly, like a lake’s surface disturbed by something deep beneath.

At last, Cosette lifted her gaze, and Javert met it squarely. She did not look away. Her lips parted just a little, and she said gently,

“I hope you will not mind me saying so, Monsieur le Commissaire, but… your new insignia suits you very well.”

Javert’s breath caught just slightly, as if someone had jarred one of his ribs loose. His eyes dropped immediately, not in shame, but in astonishment, and he reached again for his napkin to dab at his lips again somewhat pointlessly. He nodded.

“Thank you, Mademoiselle,” he said. His voice, though steady, had an edge of heat to it, as if pulled from beneath the surface of the skin. He forced himself to look at her again. Cosette’s smile was small but not shy, guileless and still not knowledgeable of the world beyond convents and gardened houses. Beautiful, Javert thought with an ache.

He reached again for his fork, but the egg in the cup had gone cold.

Suddenly Cosette glanced around a bit anxiously toward the kitchen and then over her shoulder - once, twice - her eyes flicking about as if Toussaint might be lingering just out of sight. When she saw no shadow or rustle of skirts and perceived no footsteps or sounds of dishes, she exhaled too quickly and took a small, anxious sip of her coffee, the cup clattering as she set it down. One hand darted to smooth her skirts in a crisp motion, then hovered uncertainly over her spoon before withdrawing again.

Javert watched her with a faint sense of dread rising. He cleared his throat and shifted.

“Commissaire Javert,” she said quietly. Then, more firmly, “Monsieur.”

He straightened. “Yes, Mademoiselle?”

“I… may I speak plainly? It is not at all proper. I know it is not. But… may I?”

Her tone was formal, almost penitential, as if she were kneeling before a priest in a confessional. Javert gave a slight nod, raising his brows curiously, though every instinct in him urged caution. Cosette inhaled with a shallow, trembling breath, and then said, “I know what I have done.”

His breath caught. “M-Mademoiselle -”

“I have thought about it since before the sun rose, Commissaire. I did not sleep. I have been thinking and thinking, and I know it was my fault.”

“No,” Javert said immediately, his voice too sharp, but she shook her head before he could go on, holding up a hand rather brashly.

“It was. I must say this… if you please.” Her hands had clasped tightly in her lap now, knotted together as if she were working a rosary there. “It was not you who sinned, Monsieur. It was I, for I… I tempted you most unfairly.”

Javert’s jaw fell. His neck went hot and he shook his head vigorously. She had precisely no idea what she was doing, professing blame to him like this. When his voice came, it was a low crack. “Mademoiselle, it was I who —”

“I brought towels to you,” she continued in a rush. “I lingered in your doorway. I came into your room. I smiled at you. I… I looked at you.”

Javert scowled. He impulsively picked up his coffee and took too big a sip, his hand betraying him with a quiver as he set the cup down. He opened his mouth again, but she spoke more urgently, as though afraid that if she paused, the words would seize up in her throat forever.

“I knew it was wrong. I knew even then that I ought to retreat, to keep to my own chamber, but I did not. I didn’t want to. I was… I was foolish, Monsieur; I thought if I were kind, or warm, or near you, that perhaps you might… That you might…”

She flushed, then pale cheekbones going scarlet. Her eyes watered. She was too practised, Javert thought suddenly, with confessing all sins, even ones she had not committed. She adjusted her posture where she sat until she looked dignified, at least, and she spoke more quietly.

“I thought I could make myself pleasing to you, like the women in books. I am ashamed to admit it. I thought perhaps you might think me pretty. And for a moment I thought perhaps you did. But now I feel —” she choked slightly. “I feel like a Delilah. Like a Jezebel. The very worst sort of little woman, to behave in such a wretched manner, and toward a distinguished man such as you.”

Javert could hardly breathe. His stomach twisted violently. “Mademoiselle Cosette. You mustn’t think —”

“But I do think it,” she said, not cruelly, but with trembling conviction. “At the convent, the sisters taught us that a woman’s soul is like a lily, Monsieur, and once bruised, the petals cannot be made whole or lovely ever again. I have allowed my petals to become bruised, and so I suppose I am very ugly now, in the sight of heaven and Men alike. I have let it happen. I —” Her voice faltered, but she pushed on, eyes wide and shining. “I read in La Civilité Chrétienne that even idle flirtation leads to Hell, and I— I kissed your mouth like it was nothing. I do apologise. Very truly, I do. I hope you will not turn me out or take me to a boarding house now, or...”

She trailed off helplessly. Javert’s hand twitched on the edge of the table, as if he meant to rise, or to stop her, or to flee and hide. Still she pressed on, turning her face away toward the window. 

She pressed on, like a penitent to a silent priest. “The very worst part of all, Monsieur le Commissaire, is that I do not even really know what I have done. Not exactly, only that it must have been terrible, because I have never felt such things as I did last night and this morning I could not bear to look at myself. I tried to pray until I felt forgiven, to no avail.”

There was silence then in the room that could have devoured the both of them whole. She had not wept, not yet, but her voice had gone thin and fragile, pulled loose by guilt and dread. Javert himself was far too familiar with it, with the overwhelming sense that the world had tilted in the night and would never tilt back.

He stared at her… at Fantine’s child, at Valjean’s ward, at this girl who had not even the language to describe desire, who mistook curiosity for corruption, who believed herself marked for Hell for offering him comfort and allowing him to swallow her up with his own all-consuming want. Her shoulders were square but trembling. Her eyes shone not with seduction but with terror.

And he… he had put that terror there himself. He sighed and sucked his teeth hard for a moment before he finally informed her,

“Cosette. To be certain, what transpired last night… erm. It was not anything of which society or the nuns would approve. And for that, I do sincerely apologise. And if I cause you any discomfort, or hurt your form in any way -”

“No.” Cosette turned her face back to him, looking almost shocked. Her eyes were round. “No. It’s not that.”

Javert could not help but curl his lips up a bit at her insistence. He nodded. “Right. For my part, I am not a particularly church-going man, and, well, I admit I am not as convinced of eternal damnation from such acts as many may be. My concern regarding my actions lies only in what harm may have come from them.”

He studied her face then, examining the way she blinked quickly, the way her throat tightened, the way her cheekbones began to flush. She shook her head minutely and said in a soft tone,

“You did not hurt me, Commissaire Javert.”

He gave her a very crisp nod of acknowledgement, as crisply as he’d done to Henri Gisquet at the Préfecture. “Good. I am glad to hear that.”

He picked up the Viennese croissant on his plate and considered taking a bite but reconsidered it and set it back down. He let out another weighty breath and tapped the edge of his plate, and then he heard her voice from across the table.

“Your new uniform… I mean to say, you look very handsome with your new insignia and badge, Monsieur le Commissaire.”

He flicked his eyes up to her, seeing the tip of her head as she spoke to him, and he allowed himself just a little smirk, a small half curl of his lips, and he said quietly, “Thank you, Mademoiselle Cosette.”

Chapter Text

Toussaint’s knock was discreet and quick but quite firm, three taps placed precisely at the seam of the guest-room door as if she feared to wake Javert and yet had orders from God Himself to do so at once. His eyes sprang open at the sound of her knuckles on the wood. 

“Monsieur le Commissaire,” she called softly through the door, her breath a little quick, “you must rise at once. Please. There are gentlemen below, waiting.”

Javert sat up, all trace of his midday rest gone from him at once. He had allowed himself to stretch out atop the narrow bed, boots off, shirt undone at the throat, eyes shut against the heaviness behind them after depriving himself of sleep, and had hovered there in an uneasy slumber until this summons. But he was upright in an instant. 

“What gentlemen?” he demanded.

“Police Commissaires, Monsieur, like you.”

Javert was moving before Toussaint had spoken her last word, his old soldier’s reflex colliding with the air in the civilian room. He had received his new uniform earlier this morning but was not on duty and did not want to presume, so he hurried to take civilian garments from the small wardrobe against the wall with speed that never sacrificed neatness. He drew his crisp white shirt smooth and straightened  its tucking into the trousers he already wore without consulting the glass. His trusty burgundy waistcoat followed, snug to the ribs, each button checked by touch. He pulled on and knotted a black cravat high and close, his fingers sure, and then shrugged into his simple black civilian coat, rolling a shoulder to settle the seams. He pulled out the leather tie from his hair, which had mussed itself a bit in sleep, and dragged it straight back again with his boar-bristle brush before binding it back up tightly; the queue sat low and severe at the nape of his neck. He thrust his feet back into his shined boots and drew the laces taut, double-knotting as if preparing for a march, knowing he was wearing an odd mixture of pieces. Only then did he permit himself one breath, long and thin, before taking up his gloves.

He crossed the room and opened the door to find Toussaint hovering on the landing, arms folded hard across herself with her fingers curled around the black crepe band at her sleeve. 

“I let them in, Monsieur,” she whispered with a little shrug of apologetic explanation. “They showed their insignia. I could not possibly keep such men on the step. Mwen te fè sa ki te fòk, Misyé. ”

“Quite right,” Javert said, though his pulse thudded once, unpleasantly. He passed Toussaint and descended. The light in the corridor had taken on the flat, yellowing cast of late afternoon. A distant chiming from the Hôtel des Invalides told Javert of the hour - five - with each note landing like a drip of wax, sealing the day that had started for him with the formality of his promotion.

He halted one pace short of the foyer at the bottom of the steps and took the room in at a glance. Three men stood bare-headed on the tiles, their fine hats in hand, their uniform greatcoats freshly and carefully brushed against the dust of the streets. The silver salver on the little table by the door had already collected their calling cards, three neat rectangles, edges square as warrants. Between the cluster of the men and the stair upon which Javert stood was Cosette.

She had stepped into the foyer only just beyond the threshold of the drawing room, as if the little invasion of her house had drawn her out a necessary, curious inch and no more. Her mourning dress was the same unadorned black crêpe she had worn several times since the deaths of Marius Pontmercy and of Jean Valjean — matte, flat, honest in its refusal of light — fixed with plain black buttons with white lace collar at her throat. Her golden hair had been drawn back into a quietly precise style, and she was composed. But, Javert thought, with a sudden spiking memory of kissing and touching her, she was entirely too young, and as he glanced at the policemen in the house, he registered that she was horrifically present.

The youngest of the visitors was a lean man with watchful eyes whom Javert knew as Gaspard Bellamy of the 3rd Arrondissement. Javert watched from the step as Bellamy inclined his head to Cosette with a gentleness that did not soften his gaze. To Bellamy’s right stood Valory of the 1st Arrondissement, heavier in the face and careful in his posture, the sort of man who made space for procedure even while breathing. The third Javert recognised at once as Auguste Maes of the 7th. He was a Lillois near Javert’s own age and had served in many of the same battles in his youth, though he was thinner and a good deal more handsome. Maes held a folded paper in his left hand, and it was he who spoke first as Javert lurked in the shadows upon the stairs, his voice smooth as a knife blade.

“Mademoiselle Cosette Fauchelevent?” he asked courteously. “Ah, yes. I have had occasion to read the Supplemental.” His eyes flicked to the paper, then back up to her. “You are under the guardianship of Commissaire Javert, correct? Please do accept my condolences for your recent loss.”

Cosette startled, her fingers curling almost imperceptibly, but answered with her convent-bred poise, 

“Thank you, Monsieur.”

She offered no history and asked no question. Still, the word Maes had spoken hung there between the coats and the staircase: guardianship . The simple scratches Javert had put in a ledger had now been spoken aloud into the foyer of Valjean’s house and made social fact. Javert felt the muscle in his jaw take hold at once as though he were biting down through an amputation.

He stepped forward, off the step and past Cosette a little, and he bowed a fraction, just enough to mark respect without surrender. 

“Messieurs,” he said evenly, “forgive my delay. I was not apprised of your arrival until just now.” 

He glanced once to Cosette, brief and directive, giving her the look a stern priest might offer an acolyte who strays too near the sanctuary rail, and then fixed upon the visitors. “Welcome. You honour this house.”

“On the contrary,” Bellamy replied, and to Javert’s surprise, there was warmth in it, measured and real. “We come to honour Miremont, Javert, and to welcome you as one of us.” He lifted his card slightly from the salver, then let it fall again with a soft click. “You will join us this evening, Commissaire. Won’t you?”

Javert’s lips parted, but before he could speak, Valory nodded, solemnly and noted, “A private room at Les Frères Provençaux has been kept at our disposal for a déjeuner à la fourchette. Informal, of course, but correct for the occasion. We know you’ll agree. We shall take a glass in Miremont’s memory, and another to your commission, Commissaire Javert.”

Maes did not smile. “We insist,” he said, not rudely, but an observation, simply as a man might insist upon rain being wet. “One might misunderstand if you were to decline, and the dead are owed fraternity.”

Javert’s breath came nearly as a narrow whistle through his nose. He nodded just a little. He was not at all a social being, but of course the place and the form for this occasion were proper. The hour and the reason — Cholera’s ledger opening and swallowing another man, the city still rattled by insurrection — were indecent, but of course to refuse would be worse than pride; it would be read as isolation and a nasty insult to the corps. It would be an invitation to gossip that would stick like soot in this wretched summer of fever and revolt. 

He glanced, against his will, to Cosette again. She held her ground with that oddly calm, bright-eyed sort of luminous stare that never reached forward and never looked away. Guardianship had been said in front of her; the steel fact could not be re-sheathed. Before all else, Javert must see her out of this foyer and out of these other policemen’s regard at once.

He flexed his hands, the soft leather creaking faintly where it met his knuckles. 

“Les Frères Provençaux,” he repeated, as if noting an address for a warrant instead of speaking the name of a respected restaurant in the Palais-Royal. “Very well.” He inclined his head to each man in turn. “Yes. Of course, I shall accompany you.”

Bellamy’s shoulders eased a fraction within his coat. “Excellent.” He glanced absently at his pocket-watch without consulting its hands. “The private room is actually reserved under my name. Shall we?”

“Two minutes,” Javert insisted. He turned to Cosette. “Mademoiselle, if you please.” 

It was not a request. She dipped her head and withdrew immediately, the black crêpe vanishing into the dim of the passage beyond. Toussaint materialised there like an ominous sort of bird, spiriting her away to the salon and shutting the door with a soft click.

Javert faced the other men again. His sharp eyes flicked to the calling cards that lay squared upon the salver, glancing at the names upon them. Bellamy, Valory, Maes. They had been printed upon the cards like three neat summonses awaiting service. Javert sighed and took up his hat from the hook, settled it upon his head, and felt, with something like resignation and something like relief, the old, clean weight of necessity touch his shoulders.

“Messieurs,” he said, and gestured toward the door. “After you.”

Out in the June evening, the three men moved ahead with the assured compactness of colleagues if not friends, Javert a half pace behind as if escorting a file of prisoners through a crowd which, in truth, was merely Paris being her old self. The tired golden light on the stones had gone flat as clouds crowded the sky; the air carried the taint of the churning river and of the city’s stomach, with the stink of grease from cookshops, damp stone, the coppery reek of wet coins from the quais thick in Javert’s nostrils. Carriage wheels whirred past, skittering over the cobbles, and a hand-organ somewhere on the rue Saint-Honoré ground out a march with a bizarre sort of cheerfulness that sounded like insolence just now.

 Javert kept his eyes upon the men before him only enough to follow and otherwise instinctively worked his gaze around each doorway and alley-mouth with the old habit of a police inspector on patrol, a tic that could not be set aside because a hat had been promoted this morning. Bellamy’s boots cut a brisk line along the pavement, and Valory walked with a magistrate’s careful tread, and Maes, his back perfectly straight, seemed to observe and dominate without looking or watching at all. Javert frowned a little.

The Palais-Royal lifted before them all like a stage set erected to convince the fragile, trembling city of its own everlasting prosperity. Its arcades swallowed the group in a corridor of shadow and echo. Under the vaulting, the galleries presented their clean glass and gold-leaf letters like bright, almost menacing teeth. The almost-unpleasant mixed smells of perfumes spilled out of one door, plumes of cigar smoke out of another, and peals of laughter from a third. 

There were the well-dressed loungers about who had no work because they were the work itself. There were quiet women in mourning, moving in pairs with veils. There were bespectacled young clerks playing at being fine gentlemen. There were three men at a table, all clad in shabby black, who were neither clerks nor gentlemen but scanned all about them much too closely. Javert marked the watchers with the same small inward pinprick he had used since Toulon to fix a face upon a wall in his mind. He likewise took in the exits. He counted the mirrors. His eyes flicked up to the windows. He noted the names of the shops.

Javert did not much enjoy society, but he knew how to search it and heed it in order to protect it. Eventually, the group reached the elegant stone entry to Les Frères Provençaux and went inside to the main salon.

“Monsieur Bellamy,” said the maître d’ with the bow of a man who had mastered the mathematics of deference. “Yes. Of course. Your room is ready, Monsieur.” 

Bellamy made the smallest gesture with his card-case, one that might almost have been a salute in another scene. The men were led through the dining salon, and Javert glanced about at the finery on display. The walls were a veritable theatre of glass; candelabra multiplied themselves in the mirrors and gilding ran along mouldings like a thread of fat in a piece of expensive meat. The tables had been lovingly swathed in clean linen and then laid out meticulously with porcelain and silver for men who could afford both. 

Javert flinched a bit with his hat in his hands. He had brought coin enough, of course, but he had not come up in the world to dine in a place such as this. He had been born at the Brest Prison to a Gypsy Fortune-Teller and had been torn from her only when she had succumbed to a fever; he had never known his galley-slave of a father and had never been given the man’s name. Javert bore his mother’s dark skin as he wandered the world and he worked honest labour. He was no fine gentleman like primly educated laughing bankers and bookkeepers he saw now. 

The mirrors in this room, Javert considered, lacked all manner of privacy.

Fortunately, after they went inside, the door to the cabinet particulier closed upon the small group, and the noise of the house dropped as a tide recedes. This private room was far more to Javert’s liking; it was smaller and simpler, with carpet underfoot and dark panelling, the thick breath of wax and wine, and a small fire set more for ceremony than need on a June evening. Though Javert was the live man being toasted today, Bellamy took the head of the table without vainglory; Valory and Maes sat to his right and left by instinct more than arrangement. Javert stood in somewhat awkward silence for one beat longer than the rest but then pulled off his gloves and sat.

The waiters moved with a military precision that was familiar to Javert, almost comforting. Bellamy and Maes, it seemed, had been here several times before and ordered wine and food with quick confidence. One waiter brought two bottles of the Volnay, dark and fragrant, and another followed with the requested Breton oysters upon shaved ice, each shining grey muscle neatly nested in its shell with halves of lemon and a little plate of coarse rye set out. 

Bellamy’s steady, young hand flattened once against the cloth and then he rose. He did not look at Javert first or last; he looked at all three of the others as one looks at other men collectively immediately before charging into battle. “To Miremont,” he said simply. “Taken fast. Robbed of us by the cruel thief, The Cholera. May the man’s ledger be short and his long sleep be without disturbance.”

The others stood because the dead required such solemn grace and dignity. Valory’s mouth tightened as if to keep something in, as if he were unduly emotional. Maes raised his glass of wine economically, as if ordered by a superior officer to do so. He had a small scar at the corner of his jaw. Javert had never been close enough to the man to notice it before, nor had he noticed it in the foyer on rue Plumet, because he had been watching Cosette. Now it showed white for an instant under the candle. Javert took up his own glass. The heady smell of the wine came to him at once, a cherry stone and the ghost of iron. He drank without flourish, draining his glass to the half mark the others chose, then a fraction more because he had not eaten since breakfast with Cosette and because discipline sometimes required an additional inch past exactitude. The wine warmed him at once, its pleasantness striking him through above the sternum and moving with a deliberateness almost moral. On an empty stomach and overlaying his continued tiredness, it felt like a reprimand disguised as relief.

“To Miremont,” Valory said, and set his glass down with the soft finality of a seal pressed onto warm wax.

“To all of our dead,” Maes added in a tone that made every word a bayonet. “And to those of us who remain in their place.”

The men sat then. Plates shifted and oyster shells rasped faintly as the first shellfish were pried free and devoured. Javert, who preferred not to be seen blatantly and messily eating his food, chose one, watched the brine settle in its hollow, and then carefully pulled it back and swallowed it cleanly. Sea and stone, he tasted at once, unable to help the way he enjoyed the taste. A second oyster followed the first, with Javert justifying his avarice by reminding himself that one must do what is set before one at a proper table. The Volnay, for its part, went down without a fight. Somehow Javert’s glass wound up empty, refilled, and drained again.

Bellamy, Javert noticed, possessed the nearly-noble habit of speaking only when the sentence was ready, said quietly, “He died so very quickly, Miremont, as did so many other victims of The Cholera. It was such a tragedy; I heard that the physician treating him at the end said there was nothing to be done.” He looked not at Javert but at the spoon at his own place, as if reciting a docket. “But the world keeps on turning. Paris continues to exist. The Prefect wanted the commission filled before the ink dried on the death report. And so here we are. Rebellion and disease. This is an accursed summer, I say. Still. Congratulations to you, Commissaire Javert. You are the right man for the job.”

“Thank you, Monsieur.” Javert nodded once, for there was nothing to add. The oyster knife in his right hand felt the wrong thing to be holding just now, so he set it down and wiped his fingers upon his delicate napkin as carefully as if they had been stained with ink. The waiter refilled his glass of Burgundy; it was a decision someone else had made for him. Still, he did not protest. By now, the wine had laid a sort of low fire along his ribs. As he sipped at it now, he could feel his mind being coaxed open wider, a dangerous sort of feeling. Usually, he disliked being warmed by anything other than bathwater or a good hearth fire, but the ritual here made him bend before he had noticed.

The waiters returned in an orderly procession to lift away the trays of emptied oyster shells, replacing them with a broad tureen that steamed in the light. The room filled at once with a pungent and almost unruly perfume of saffron, fennel, garlic, and the dark salt of the sea. Bouillabaisse Marseillaise, its broth golden and oily, rich with chunks of fish and sharp with shell, gleamed as the waiter’s ladle poured it into each porcelain bowl. A white wine had been chosen to accompany the Bouillabaisse, a Marsanne from the Rhône, and it was uncorked and poured with some ceremony.

Javert sat stiffly as he waited for the bowls and wine to settle into place. His fingers curled around the fresh glass set before him. The smell of the broth was too thick, he thought. Hunger was in his bones after so little food since morning, yet something in him rebelled at the oily, fishy decadence before him. His stomach turned faintly, not entirely from distaste, but mostly from the tautness of his nerves. Perhaps unwisely he lifted the glass of white wine instead. For its part, the Marsanne gave off the scent of pears, of wet stone, of something both light and ancient. Entranced by it, Javert drank it too quickly, and his chest warmed with the sting of alcohol already layered through his blood.

Commissaire Valory lifted his own glass only just a moment after the waiter’s ladle had been laid aside. He did not rise dramatically as had been done to honour Miremont’s death; his toast came simple and plain, the words as firm as a verdict: 

“To the return of law and order to Paris.”

The others raised their glasses as one in affirmation and concord. 

“Law and order,” Bellamy echoed quietly, and Maes inclined his head and drank. Javert tipped back half his glass at once, the cool of the wine striking through the heat of the broth and his own restless body. He replaced the nearly-empty glass carefully but could not keep himself from nodding with a gesture much sharper than intended, as though to anchor himself in agreement with Valory’s toast.

The others mercifully bent their attention to their bowls of bouillabaisse. Valory ate methodically, his spoon scraping softly to draw up broth. Bellamy worked with efficient grace, and Maes leaned slightly over his bowl, breaking the surface of the oily broth without hurry and lifting a piece of fish to his lips. Javert turned away from the sight of the others eating, keeping his spoon idle. alone kept his spoon idle. Still, he was keenly conscious of the sound of their eating and of the oily smell hanging over them. His hands, empty, itched for work, and he let his fingers twine at the napkin upon his lap. The wine felt louder now in his body than the food could ever have been. 

So he drank again. 

The Marsanne was softer and gentler, perhaps, than the Burgundy had been, but its weight lingered no less. Already his head swam faintly, as though someone had placed a warm hand behind his skull and was shushing him as the floor began to tilt. 

The silence in the dining room was punctuated only by silver upon porcelain and lasted too long. At last, Maes broke it.

“Commissaire Javert, I believe I had the honour earlier,” he said smoothly, “of seeing your ward. Mademoiselle Fauchelevent, is that correct? A lovely young woman. Quite poised, despite her mourning. You are a fortunate guardian.”

Javert’s spine stiffened as though he had been struck. His lips pressed thin in alarm, but he inclined his head with deliberate measure. “Yes, Monsieur. She is… composed.”

The pause was brief. Maes smiled politely and pressed on, not as an interrogator, it seemed, but as a man offering simple, detached, polite conversation. 

“It is unusual,” he mused, “for one in our line of particular service to keep such guardianship. How did it come about? Were you well acquainted with her late father?”

Javert gripped the stem of his wine glass, spinning it unevenly upon the table, and forced his voice into neutrality. He struggled not to speak through his teeth. “It is a situation required by circumstance for her safety. Her father had been under my supervision. At his death, there was no other fit arrangement.”

Bellamy glanced sideways at Javert over his spoonful of bouillabaisse but said nothing. Valory absorbed the answer like an entry in a ledger, neither approving nor disapproving and not granting any eye contact at all. Maes, unperturbed, sipped his white wine, nodded, and asked, “So is not betrothed?”

“No.” Javert’s reply was too quick and too sharp, he knew. He cleared his throat, shaking his head once. “No. She is in mourning.”

“Yes, of course.” Maes’s tone remained smooth, even mildly complimentary. He dragged his spoon around the broth in his bowl. “Still. A shame, for such grace to be hidden under black crêpe. Still, mourning passes, and one must look to the future. I have a son, myself, you know. Twenty-four years of age, already a fine notary. A bit plain of face, one might say, but intelligent, steady, and respectable with a good income. Still unwed. And a young woman such as your ward —”

“Mademoiselle Fauchelevent is in mourning.” Javert cut him off. His voice cracked out harsher than he intended, his head buzzing with wine, his face hot all of a sudden. “Any matters of betrothal are not up for discussion.”

The air in the private cabinet seemed to jar as though a knife had been struck against the table. Bellamy’s brow lifted a fraction and he very gently set down his spoon, but Valory went on silently and slowly eating broth as though the interruption were merely wind against a window. Maes, to his credit as a practised policeman, did not bristle. He just inclined his head slightly, as though simply acknowledging the correction. 

“But of course,” he said. His voice remained courteous and almost bland. “Forgive me, Commissaire Javert. I meant no imposition.”

Javert’s pulse hammered unpleasantly. He could feel it in his wrists, at his neck, behind his ribs. He gripped his napkin and brought it up to dab his mouth, though there was nothing there. His glass was empty again. Without thinking, he reached for the refill that was offered by the waiter, cursing himself inwardly for the foolish indulgence. He had let his voice loose, speaking of Cosette in a possessive sort of snarl, he knew. He had behaved like an enraged lion. He had revealed too much heat. He pressed his lips together, biting down against the taste of wine and the brine of oyster that remained in his throat.

Across from him, Maes was already speaking of other matters, of patrols near the river and the shortages of healthy men due to the way cholera had ravaged the city. But Javert barely heard him. His ears were hot. Words , Javert thought to himself. Maes had spoken too many wretched words. 

Guardianship. Ward. Lovely.

“Messieurs,” Javert said a bit hoarsely, and the others turned to look at him with varying expressions. Javert cleared his throat gently. “Forgive me. I confess I did not sleep at all last night, owing to my promotion this morning at the Préfecture. I am more than a bit weary, and I must work early tomorrow morning. I am grateful for the fellowship and beg you to allow me to pay the bill before I retire.”

Bellamy and Maes exchanged a look, weighty and silent and just a moment too lengthy, but then Bellamy gave Javert an almost gentle sort of expression and shrugged, saying,

“It would be entirely ungracious of us to invite you and allow you to leave a single sous upon the table. By all means, Commissaire Javert, go and get the rest you’re due. Goodnight.”

Javert pulled himself to his feet, unable to stop the sway as he did, bowing just a little. “Thank you all. Goodnight.”

The door at No. 55 rue Plumet gave under his key with much more noise than it should have done. Javert pressed the latch too sharply, and the hinges whispered back a complaint. His boots struck the floor in the foyer more heavily than he intended, the rhythm uncharacteristically bumpy. Wine still ran along his ribs, ill-tuned and going sour. He told himself it was nothing, that it was just the fatigue and the long days, that he had had no dinner, but he could hear the alcohol and feel the frustration in his own gait.

Toussaint appeared almost instantly from the shadows of the corridor, her candle lifted against the fading twilight, her dark eyes narrowing in quick measure of him and warming at once. Javert took off his hat, managing his stiff precision as if that simple removal might prove sobriety. Still, the faintest cluck of Toussaint’s tongue betrayed that she had noticed.

“Hello, Monsieur le Commissaire,” she said. Her Creole accent softened the edges of her words. “You have returned.”

“Indeed,” Javert answered, his voice gravelled lower than usual. “It is quite late.”

“Not so very late,” Toussaint murmured, but she stepped aside, letting him pass toward the salon. Her candle flame flickered across the black crêpe at her sleeve. Wisely, she did not pry further about anything. Javert stepped into the salon and halted.

Cosette sat carefully arranged in a chair by the hearth, wrapped in her dark gray wrapper over a white nightgown, her embroidery frame in her lap, her head bent to the fine work in the circle of firelight. Her metal needle gleamed as it passed through the cloth with neat precision. The sight of her, graceful and utterly domestic, went through him like a freshly honed blade. He had thought, or perhaps hoped, for the sake of his self-control, that she would be in bed by now. But here she was.

She looked up at once when he stepped through the doorway. Her wide eyes caught the firelight, sparkling a little. She noticed his sway immediately; he saw it in her startled gaze.

“Monsieur,” she whispered, her voice low and troubled as her fingers twitch on her needle. “You are not well.”

Javert forced his back stiff. He moved to the nearest chair and curled his fingers around the back of it, though his hand shook slightly. “No, I… I am quite well. Merely —” He stopped, his thoughts tangling. He finally burst out with the words as if he had no reins left upon them: “One of my colleagues, Maes. He has a son. A notary. Maes, you see… he proposed… he thought… that you might…”

The words tumbled out of Javert’s mouth, ugly and humourless, without any grace at all. He pressed air through clenched teeth in irritation.

Cosette had gone white in the firelight. Her fingers rolled the needle back and forth and she blinked a few times. 

“Monsieur le Commissaire.” Her breath seemed to catch thickly in her throat. “Please, I beg you, Monsieur. Do not match me up like this due to circumstance. Do not marry me off to some boy I have never seen on account of my father’s death and because Marius is gone. I will much sooner return to the convent.”

Her voice was desperate but hushed, as though afraid of breaking the air around them. Javert sat heavily opposite her, the chair creaking beneath its cushions. He dragged a wrist across his face, willing the wine away. 

“No, Mademoiselle,” he said slowly and quietly. “No. I only… he mentioned it. I ought not to have repeated it to you. It was improper in both cases. It does not matter; apparently the boy is plain of face but respectable, steady, with a good income. Still, I told him, matters of betrothal for you are… out of the… not to be discussed.”

Cosette stared wide-eyed at him then as her head shook again, her golden hair trembling loose against her temples. Javert struggled mightily to gather the harness of his own tongue. His pulse still clattered with wine. He needed to close his mouth and rise, to go upstairs, but his gaze fell instead upon her lap, to the square of white linen upon her frame. 

“What is that?” he asked hoarsely, pointing before he could stop himself. “What are you working on there?”

Her hand shifted quickly, almost defensively and defiantly covering the cloth. “Oh. It is nothing. I did not expect you home so soon, Monsieur.” After a half-second, her eyes softened, reluctant but earnest. “It is just a silly little gift, Monsieur.”

Javert blinked at her, his eyelids gone slow and a bit drowy. “A gift? For me?”

Cosette finally smiled just a little, shyly, and inclined her head into a hesitant nod. “Yes. It is only an embroidered handkerchief. Nothing more.”

Javert could not breathe then. The breath went out of his lungs entirely. He gripped the arm of the chair to keep from falling from the sideways room. A handkerchief… embroidered, he could see now, with delicate vines around the edges, and at the centre, the beginning of a single letter, a looping stem that already promised a well-executed, single “J.” 

For him. For him.

No one gave him gifts. Not ever. Not in the whole of his life. Not the army barracks, or the prison-yard, or at the Préfecture. Duty gave wages and promotions and occasionally acknowledge service. It did not give personal gifts.

Javert’s eyes wrenched shut against the sudden unbearable weight in his chest. The fire cracked in the silence. He heard his own voice emerge then, low and ragged, unplanned, pulled out of him as if by violent force:

“You render me far more dizzy than any wine, Cosette.”

Cosette’s breath caught audibly. Javert forced his eyes open, though to do so was painful. He looked at her, really looked, unable to look away from her for all her loveliness. His chest lifted and fell as if he had just chased down a thief in a busy market.

He watched as Cosette slowly stood from her chair, clutching the embroidered handkerchief in its hoop, her lips parted as though she might speak. No sound came. A dark flush had risen high into her cheeks, delicate but unmistakable in the firelight.

“Come. Come here. Please,” Javert said hoarsely. The words were low, uneven, neither command nor plea, but a jagged cut in between.

Still, Cosette hesitated for only a fraction of a heartbeat before obeying, laying her work aside with trembling hands. The frame clattered softly against the little table beside the chair as she rose and stepped forward. The long shadows from the hearth bent around her as she came to stand before him, arranging herself between his knees, near enough that he could feel the warmth of her body radiating through the wrapper and nightgown she wore.

Javert’s hand lifted slowly, as if weighed down by iron. He reached for Cosette’s little wrist and curled his fingers around it, carefully but firmly adjusting his grip until the tender inside lay bare. Her pulse fluttered beneath his Javert’s thick, calloused fingers. He struggled to stay composed as he brought the wrist up to his lips, bending slightly, breath rough, as he pressed his lips to the pale skin.

His kiss was slight and restrained, and yet it seemed to thunder in the silence, inky and intoxicating in his veins. Cosette gasped softly and swayed the moment he touched his mouth to her, her free hand bracing upon the shoulder of his coat for purchase. Javert lingered a moment longer, the warm, heady taste of her skin mingling with the lingering wine and salt on his breath, before lifting his head again.

Her wide and uncertain eyes shone down at him, but she did not withdraw. He still held her hand, thumb stroking once across her knuckles, his movements reverent and almost desperate. His eyes flicked to where she had abandoned the handkerchief she was working on. In the golden glow of the firelight, he could see it - the half-finished J she was putting upon the piece for him, the J for Javert . For him.

The salon felt very warm suddenly as the shadows seemed to gather closer around them, sealing them in. Javert sat up more rigidly, his boots firm on the carpet, his shoulders drawn tight as though bracing him against an oncoming blow. And yet, when she leaned the smallest inch nearer, he did not pull away. He leaned in toward her and tipped his head a little. 

Her face hovered just above his, the faint scent of lavender soap from her bath and candle wax clinging to her hair. Javert’s breath struck her cheek and settled there, deep and heavy and uneven. His free hand rose, halting, to hover just shy of her waist, but he did not touch. He could not dare, but the intention burned between them like the fire itself.

Something inside of him screamed to pull her down atop him.

“Cosette,” he said, her Christian name torn from his lips as his eyes searched hers, dark and raw. “If you knew… how perilous this is… how much I…”

Her answer was not in words but in the way her fingers tightened against the shoulder of his coat, anchoring herself firmly as if she feared she might fall without him. Javert drew in another long, shuddering breath. Then, entirely unable to stop himself, he lifted her hand once more and pushed back the sleeve of her wrapper a bit before he pressed his lips not just to her wrist but higher, to the soft hollow above it, reverent and trembling.

“You told me, Monsieur, that you did not see sin in matters such as these, but only wished not to hurt me,” Cosette murmured, and Javert huffed a breath of resignation against her skin before lowering her arm and staring up at her helplessly.

“I beg you not to tempt and taunt me with my own words now. Perhaps it is best if I retire. I overindulged in wine, to be certain.”

She was quiet in response. He did not release her wrist.

Javert’s mouth had already formed the dismissal, the bidding of a goodnight to her, but his words died on his tongue and he remained utterly silent. He could feel her pulse beneath his fingers and her bones seemed as fragile as a bird’s. His chest rose hard with one last breath of resistance and then promptly collapsed again with surrender.

He looked up at her, and the quiet readiness he saw in her wide gaze shattered the final bulwark of his will. Whatever defence remained inside him had already withered; she had unmoored him entirely and had made him far more helpless than the wine.

Her lips parted as if to ask him for some form of permission, but still they were both quiet the salon swayed with fire and shadow. Javert just stood, more unsteady on his feet now than when he had come back here as he guided her slowly toward the stairs.

At the landing, he paused, as if one last instant of logical and mature hesitation might redeem him, but from beside him, Cosette looked up at him with that anxious brightness that was already half-joy and half-terror, and he knew he was undone. He did not bid her adieu and send her to her own bed. Instead, he opened the door to the chamber where he had been staying since first coming here, and he stepped aside for her, still clasping her hand, still breathless with disbelief.

She crossed the threshold first and he followed, and the whole of the house fell entirely silent behind them.

Chapter Text

The door of the guest room shut with a soft click, the sound swallowed at once by the sudden and profound hush of the house. Javert stood with his back to the threshold, his fingers still curled around the cold brass of the knob as he swayed a bit like a sailor soaked through with swill, holding onto the door like an anchor. 

The darkness that enveloped the room felt thick and tangible. It was a warm beast, breathing in its own right and was pressing in on him from all sides. He had sealed them in together, himself and Cosette, by shutting the door, he realised. He had severed the last thread of connection to the world outside, to the law, to the man he had been not long at all before at the Palais-Royal with his comrades. Now, here, in the utter blackness, every line blurred. There was no longer a Commissaire de Police and his orphaned ward. There was only a man and a young woman, suspended in a moment that had no precedent and, Javert felt with a dizzying certainty, no possibility at all of retreat.

He was a man who lived well by sight, by the sharp and unerring assessment of a face, by the incriminating detail of a frayed cuff or a man’s stained shirt, the geometry of a crime scene. Now, blind in the guest room with its unlit hearth, he was forced to try and navigate by the senses he had long disciplined into submission. The air was close and heavy. The clean scent of Marseille soap from the washbasin lingered with a maddening hint of perfume of lavender beneath, a scent that clung to the linens and to her. In this moment of absolute transgression, that distinct aroma, her aroma, was a cruelty Javert’s wine-addled mind could not fully abide.

His own breath felt harsh and ragged in his nostrils, as though he had to labour to breathe. Hers was soft, if unsteady. Javert could feel her beside him. Cosette.

He could feel the warmth radiating up to him from her small form even through the thin fabrics of their clothes, a warmth that had nothing at all to do with the humid summer evening. He had gently taken hold of her fingers when he had followed her into the guest room and held fast still, with his large, coarse palm engulfing her own. The fragility of her bones and the frantic, bird-like flutter of her pulse beneath his thumb seemed to be the only true things in the disorienting dark of the space; it seemed that all else had dissolved into a churning black pit of want and shame. It seemed that all else had given way to a terrifying, unfamiliar tenderness and a self-loathing so profound it threatened to buckle Javert’s knees. He was a monster, he knew, holding the hand of a delicate little angel.

He might break her if he was not cautious.

His mouth had gone almost painfully dry and his thoughts had knotted up into a tangled skein of grim disbelief and nauseated resignation. This was madness. This was not any real crime or sin not found in any legal code of import he had ever studied, strictly speaking yet he would pay for it, he knew. The scandal, to be certain, if it were known, would be ruinous beyond belief.

He thought of Valjean lying dead at the Quai d’Orléans, carved up, murdered. He thought of Fantine, toothless and shorn and ill, pleading desperately with him. He thought of Thénardier, manacled and laughing about Cosette’s childhood suffering. He thought of signing the Supplemental to ensure Cosette’s protection, and of Maes’ suggesting his steady notary son as a husband for Javert’s ward. 

All of it had turned to ash in the space of a single second until Javert let out a little choking noise where he stood. Very slowly, as if swimming underwater, he pushed himself away from the door. His sharp eyes had begun to adjust, discerning the darker shape of the bed against the shadows, its indienne blankets ghostly in the moonlight from the window, still rumpled from Javert’s rest before the other Commissaires had come. 

He took a single, halting step toward the bed, and at once, the floorboards gave a low groan of protest beneath his boot. The creak was the only sound in the world, it seemed, beside the frantic beating of his own heart. Undeterred, Javert guided Cosette with him, her hand still drowned by his, and he felt her stumble slightly in the darkness, her body brushing against his side for an instant. The fleeting contact was a searing brand, a charge that shot through the wool of his coat and struck him to the marrow of his bones. When they reached the edge of the bed, he did not release her, but sank down onto the mattress as he felt the wine in his mind more acutely than ever. He brought Cosette with him, their knees nearly touching in the dark. The narrow bed cried out with a weak complaint before a velvet cloak of silence took the guest room over again. Javert sat there, rigid as a man drawn up before a firing squad, staring at a dark wall that offered no reply. It was Cosette who at last broke the spell, her voice small and threaded with apparent anxious fear. 

“Monsieur,” she began as her breath caught a bit. “Those men… the other Commissaires who came. Did they come here because of me?” Javert scowled as he felt her fingers twitch inside his palm, and he turned his head toward the sound of her voice. She rushed on as words tumbled out of her in a terrified whisper.

“Did they come because Papa and Marius died? Or because of the paper you signed? The Supplemental that the one policeman mentioned when he was here? You said… you told me precisely what happens to girls like me, girls who are left alone. So I ask you,Monsieur, is that why they came? To… to take me away?”

Her fear was a splash of icy water that shocked him momentarily. His grip on her hand tightened with an instinct so fierce it startled even him. The image of Maes, smooth and calculating, acknowledging her in the foyer of Valjean’s house as being under Javert’s guardianship, only to propose his own son for her later, flashed in his mind, and a low growl rumbled in his chest. He found himself leaning closer to her, and his voice came out lower, perhaps, and more gravelled than he intended.

“They came to take me out for socially obligatory toasts and to dine on bouillabaisse.” His brows furrowed as he realised that sounded slightly odd, and he dragged his tongue over his dry bottom lip before he added, even more roughly, “Listen to me, Cosette. No one will take you from this house, or arrange your life as if you were to be traded for some vineyard rows and a few goats. Seeing to your safety is my duty now, and you are under my protection. Do you understand? You will remain here in your home… with me.”

The final two words hung in the air, sparkling like Champagne yet heavy as lead. Cosette let out a soft, shuddering breath, a small sound of shock and something else. Javert could hardly see her, and when she did speak, he could hardly hear her, for her voice was very quiet and still clung desperately to the old world of propriety that no longer existed between them. “Oh… Monsieur le Commissaire…”

The title was a sharp leather lash just then, cruel stone and ice against him when he had already crumbled for her. He cleared his throat, too desperately, and murmured,

“Javert, if you please. For tonight, at least.” 

He felt her complete stillness then. The slight tremor that ran through her hand into his seemed to stop. For a long moment, she said nothing, and he thought perhaps he had either frightened or enraged her, that he had overstepped some unseen, final, sacred boundary. But then, he heard a tentative, almost otherworldly whisper. 

“Javert.” She spoke his name again, more quietly, then a third time, as though it were foreign, as though it were an exotic flavour on her tongue, as though it were a new and important prayer, as though it was sweet upon her lips.

The name on her lips ignited him like kindling to wood, and whatever discipline remained in him was incinerated in the space of that quiet utterance. He released her hand as though it had wounded him, and his own palm rose, the movement stiff and a bit mechanical as he cupped her jaw. 

His thumb brushed beneath her eye and down around beneath her ear, registering the warmth and impossible softness of her as a forensic detail, a piece of evidence for a crime he himself was in the midst of committing. He bent his head with a slow, deliberate motion, his throat bobbing to bely the chaos in his gut, and his lips met hers gracelessly, with the unpractised force of a bachelor acting on an impulse. The contact was awkward, a clumsy and absolute collision.

Javert felt Cosette stiffen for a flickering instant of obvious panic he had doubtlessly caused, but she did not retreat. On the contrary, she seemed to slightly soften against him, and her own little hands, which had been fretting a bit in her lap, came up to grip the front of his burgundy waistcoat. It was not a gesture of lust or passion. No. She was anchoring herself to him as though the world were tilting perilously and he were the only fixed point of refuge. Her fingers curled and cinched with just a little pressure through the wool, Javert could feel. She was holding fast to him as he touched her. That thought struck him as a stark, tactical assessment of the situation as surely as would any revelation he had conducting a key interrogation or finding the evidence to solve a case. But no… this was a harsher shot by far. The feel of her fingers at his buttons and her presence beside him nearly stopped his heart, fool that he was.

He pulled back and broke the contact, his mind reeling from the assessment he had just made. He had frightened her, had he not? And yet she had held on. Javert stared down at the indistinct shape of her face, pale in the faint moonlight. He stared at the place where he knew her wide, uncertain eyes were fixed upon him. Cosette’s next words were soft but heavy, her voice deeper than usual.

“So you won’t marry me off to a silly boy?” she demanded in a strangely steady murmur. “A bank clerk with ink on his fingers, or a commis in a ministry? A young physician somewhere?”

That last question was a dagger’s blade sliding between Javert’s ribs. He understood the reference to Chavigny at once, of course, and a cold, clarifying rage surged through him, directed at Maes, at the doctor, at Thénardier, at himself, at the whole awful world of men from which Cosette had required protection and still did. His expression, he knew, must have twisted even in the pale silver light. He gave a single, slow, final shake of his head.

“No,” he said, his voice low and certain. “Of course not. I mean to keep you perfectly safe, Cosette.”

He felt the immediate change in her then. He felt a tangible release of tension. The tightly panicked grip on his waistcoat slackened. Her flat palms slid up from his chest to rest upon his shoulders, her fingers moving with confidence and trust. Against the hand still cupping her jaw, he felt her give a small, decisive nod. It seemed that she had tested him, and he had not failed. That knowledge was an intoxicant, and it emboldened him far more surely than had any wine tonight. He leaned in again.

This time, there was no awkward collision because this time, his kiss was a conscious act, a deliberate and unpracticed claim. To be certain, it was still clumsy. He was a man with no experience in affection or tenderness. At least he could testify, though, that he was moving with purpose, and he felt Cosette respond in kind, her lips parting slightly in a silent offering. A low sound escaped Javert’s throat, the guttural plea of a man whose stitches of control had been picked apart. 

His hand slid from her jaw to the back of her neck, his calloused fingers sinking into her soft hair. But he huffed in frustration; the angle was unsustainable. He was much taller than her and loomed over her even with them sitting on the edge of the bed. Javert shifted his weight, a slow lurch that was much less a seduction and more a surrender to gravity, guiding Cosette backward. The old mattress groaned in protest as the floor had done as they settled upon it as one, and then - to Javert’s wonder or horror or both - they were lying side-by-side atop the rumpled indienne blankets, the world outside faded away, leaving only the searingly beautiful and slightly terrifying reality of her.

For a long moment, they lay with the only sounds the rustle of their clothes and their own unsteady, slightly ragged breathing. Javert was acutely aware of the warm line of Cosette’s small body pressed against his overlarge one, of the fine bones of her shoulder beneath his rough hand. An instinct, old and starved, urged him to draw her even closer, to learn the shape and texture of her with a possessive thoroughness. His palm, which had been resting upon her waist, began to move, a slow, hesitant exploration that slid downwards to trace the curve of her hip. He drew back her grey wrapper and heard her huff a small sound of contentment before he pulled his knuckles over the thin cotton of her nightgown. It was a simple, questing touch, an act of discovery. 

But then his fingertips ventured between them, curious, wondering, wandering, a little hungry, and he felt her go rigid at once. It was not a subtle stiffening, but a sudden, violent tension that seized up her whole frame as though she had been struck as punishment. She pulled back slightly, her breath catching in a genuinely panicked gasp. Her fingers, which had been resting on his forearm, suddenly clutched at him like an animal claw with a desperate strength.

“I beg you, Monsieur… Javert,” she whispered, her voice a knotted up and frantic plea. “I do long for you. Terribly. But I do not wish to find myself in that condition. I do not want such a misfortune, you understand, nor the stain on my soul.”

The words shocked Javert back to a state of cold sobriety, and he pulled his hand away from her as though it were on fire. Conception. The thought of having a child put upon her had, in all the logistics of her guardianship, been a distant abstraction, a theoretical harm from which he must shield her. He had not considered that she, in her profound and perfect innocence, would believe it to be an immediate and terrifying possibility. 

His mind flashed very suddenly to the image of Dr Gustave Chavigny, whom Javert himself had fetched to the house under the auspices of soothing Cosette’s grief. He thought of barging in to find her exposed and terrified, of Chavigny smirking with his cock out, of wanting to arrest the man or kill him or both. 

A fresh wave of self-loathing washed over him now. Cosette feared what Javert himself might do to her. His first response was a wordless sound from deep in his chest, a low and tuneless hum, an almost animal noise of comfort he had not known he was capable of making. His pulled his fingers from her shoulder up to smooth the hair back from her temple. After a moment, he spoke, his voice a low and firm. 

“Be at ease, Cosette. I will never put you in such a condition. With me, you are safe. You are mine to protect; I…” 

He trailed off, the words catching in his throat as he heard the sheer, brutal sort of possessiveness rumbling through his own voice. He had not meant to sound like a man laying claim to her, yet the words had come out that way, as nothing less than a declaration of ownership. Javert blinked a few times and glanced over. He expected Cosette to flinch from it, to shrink away from his raw commanding tone.

But she did not. As he fell silent, faltering and a bit ashamed, he felt a strange and startling shift in the very young woman beside him. The panicked tremor from earlier had entirely ceased. Her shallow and frightened gasps had deepened into something far more ragged and unsteady, something entirely unafraid.

Slowly, gracefully, stunning Javert as she did, Cosette pushed herself up onto one elbow. In the faint moonlight, he could just make out her silhouette moving to lean over him, her head tilted curiously, her wide gaze fixed upon his face.

“Oh,” she whispered.

Javert did not move, even as he felt blood flush hot and insistent between his legs. He lay on his back, pinned down by the weight of her gaze, and watched her the very best he could. The faint moonlight filtering through the window was just enough to render her marble in shades of silver and deep shadows. The panicked, hunted look in her eyes from moments before had vanished entirely, replaced by the same sort of unsettingly detached calm he had seen from her in the immediate wake of awful events now. Resolve, Javert realised. She had an iron resolve. And he, the Commissaire, the man who had laid down the law of her safety with a growl, was now the subject of her quiet, unblinking scrutiny. He was now the one being interrogated by the gaze of this pretty girl. He had no answers to give her, no excuses, only a riot of shame and want churning in his gut.

Slowly, Cosette’s hand lifted. He saw the movement as a pale shape pulling forth from darkness, and he braced himself for her retreat, for a gesture or a sound of fear. But her hand moved with a newfound confidence, no longer trembling, and came to rest against the side of his face, and now it was his turn to be surprised. Her fingers were cool against the feverish heat of his skin, and medicinal and easy against the rough texture of his whiskers. He felt her narrow thumb trace the hard line of his jaw in a gesture of quiet curiosity. He felt her stroke beneath his chin and pull a fingertip over his lower lip. It was a clear, silent invitation, and it sent a jolt through him so profound it was nearly pain.

Javert registered the touch with a policeman’s stark attention to detail. He took note of the steady, even pressure in her fingers, the lack of shake. This was no quivering and frightened girl with him, but a woman making a choice. He had been a bear tonight, perhaps, with Maes at the restaurant about his son and here with Cosette, telling her she was his to protect. But Cosette had not cowered. 

In fact, Javert’s tactical assessment of her earlier reaction — that she found refuge in his dominance — was no longer a theory, it seemed. It was a proven fact now that she was fond of his possessiveness, and the knowledge of it burned away the last vestiges of his shame. He was a monster, yes, but he was her monster, and he only became a bit feral, protective, and perhaps a bit envious over her . His own realisation of that, and of her liking for it, created a sudden, physical imperative.

That imperative was not helped at all by the way Cosette leaned closer, her breath a soft warmth against his lips and whispered warmly,

“Javert.”

He tried to answer her, but his throat was snarled up and thick. He nodded and dragged his lips against hers until at last a low sound rumbled in his chest, a guttural noise that was both an answer and a surrender, and finally he said,

“Yes.”

He sat up, the movement slowly, shocked by how dizzy he was and uncertain whether it was the wine from earlier or Cosette that had set his head to spinning with such force.

He was intensely aware of her gaze upon him, and he found himself a bit grateful for the darkness of the bedchamber. The act of undressing, Javert knew, was not a seduction, particularly when carried out by an old man like him. Whether stripping off a neat police uniform or slightly shabby civilian clothes, this was an act of disarmament, not of preening. He moved as efficiently as he could without showmanship and shrugged out of his simple black civilian coat first, the wool heavy and coarse. Then, with the ingrained neatness and speed of a soldier, he folded it and placed it on the nearby chair. 

He kicked off his boots and set them aside; he would polish them in the morning. His large but careful hands then moved to the front of his burgundy waistcoat, his fingers aching and aged but quick as they worked at the small buttons. Each one gave way softly and easily, and he pulled the well-made but slightly worn garment off, laying it atop the coat. He was left in his trousers and his now very rumpled white shirt, a state of undress he had never been in before a woman for whom he felt anything. The final barrier was the black cravat, still knotted high and close at his throat. He reached up, his fingers fumbling for a moment with the tight silk in the darkness without a glass and in his nervous and intoxicated state. After a minute, though, he had pulled it free.

The release of pressure was both a relief and a final, terrifying act of surrender. He let the strip of soft black fabric fall from his hand and let out a long, heavy breath. He was exposed now, or would have been in full if the lamps or hearth had been lit. Still, somehow, he felt vulnerable in a way no enemy’s bullet or violent criminal or loveless vivandière had ever made him. 

He watched as Cosette silently lay back upon the bed, her pale form an elegant shape against the indienne blankets. She was waiting for him, Javert realised. He had taken off his clothes and she had put herself back upon the bed and was waiting for him. He had reassured her that he would not put a child on her, and she trusted him, wanted him as her protector, and she…

“Cosette.” Her name crackled out from between his lips as he crawled back up beside her.

He lay beside her and was acutely aware of his own nakedness, of the hair all over his hands and arms and chest, of his half-hard cock where it pressed against her thigh. He felt more than stripped against the rough weave of the blankets, and the impossible, radiating warmth of her body through the thin cotton of her nightgown. He felt flayed. He was an open nerve, a debrided wound. 

He knew, with a certainty that had nothing to do with logic and everything to do with the grim theatricality of the world, that he was meant to be the one in control just now. Javert knew who he was. He was the elder, the Commissaire. The man. He was meant to be experienced. He was not. The sour thought of it was so absurd it was nearly a profanity.

Javert brought up his hand in an act of will meant to project a confidence he did not possess and placed his palm flat against Cosette’s stomach, over the fabric of her nightgown, and felt the unsteady flutter of her breath beneath it. He held it there as if he were at a crime scene gathering evidence, his mind quickly becoming a chaotic ledger of new sensations. He took it all in: the soft yielding of her form, the heat of her flesh, the maddeningly clean scent of lavender and soap she carried.

“You are not afraid now,” he stated, his voice low and thirsty. It was not a question, but  confirmation of his calculations.

He felt her shake her head upon the pillow. “No, Javert. I am not afraid now.”

The sound of his name spoken with such quiet trust in her little voice was his undoing and his command alike. It was also all the permission he required. 

His hands moved then with a reverent, clumsy stiffness that felt like a palsy. He found the knotted sash at her waist and fumbled with it for a long, humiliating moment before at last it gave way and came undone. He pushed the heavy grey wrapper from her shoulders with slow precision, letting the fabric pool back around her. She was left then in only the thin, almost translucent white of her nightgown. She made a ghostly shape in the moonlight.

Javert shamelessly stared at her for a moment, his breath catching in his throat and his manhood flushing firmer until it began to ache. Almost on instinct, his hands moved to the hem of the simple garment she wore now. He gathered the soft material, his knuckles brushing against the skin of her calves, and the contact there seared his skin. He drew the nightgown up and over her head in a single, unpractised motion, afraid he would hesitate if he slowed down. He placed the folded garment aside with the same absurdly ingrained neatness he had used for his own discarded pieces.

And then… there was nothing. There were no barriers of wool or linen or cotton. There was only the luminous reality of her beside him. Javert lowered himself beside her again, and the first touch of his bare skin against the length of hers was a shock so profound it nearly stopped his heart. This was no whore to whom Javert paid double for silence, nor a busty vivandière smelling of garlic and sweat, rutted for social necessity.  

No. This was Cosette, his Cosette, somehow, beside him, all impossible softness and heat, a creature of steel and stone and lace and lilies. The contrast was a form of annihilation, irresistible and lethal.

“The period of deepest mourning has its forms,” he found himself reminding her in a murmur, as if reciting rules from a book. “When it has passed, and when you are ready, I will take you there myself… to the Luxembourg Gardens. Not for an idle promenade, but to take the air properly. And at my side, you will be beyond reach of all harm.”

Javert had expected, perhaps, a simple nod of quiet acceptance. He was not prepared at all for the sound that escaped her, a choked and disbelieving gasp of wonder, as if he had just offered her the entire world to dine upon. 

“You will?”

Her astonishment pierced him, and in the same breath he saw how she thrilled to it, to the certainty in his tone, the quiet force of possession woven through the promise. He understood then, with the cold lucidity of solving a case, what his words had unfurled in her: she had not seen a walk but a vision of a life secured by Javert alone. And it was her sudden, helpless attraction to the authority he laid upon her that set his own blood alight. The fire that caught in him was not only desire for her beauty and grace but desire sharpened by the knowledge that she wanted him and his keeping over her. It burned away the pretense of hesitation entirely, leaving only the poison sweetness of her need that he could answer in a rough sound of assent.

Cosette pulled herself up a bit beside him, her breath a fragile rhythm at his ear. Javert scarcely dared to breathe himself then, for the feel of her ribs and her soft, small breast rising against his arm was a revelation too vast. He feared touching her. He might break her. He might break himself.

His great hand was awkward and uncertain as it hovered above her as though the air itself might wound her if disturbed. He let it descend at last, placing his rough palm flat against her shoulder. The heat of her skin shocked him, and he distantly worried she had a fever. She drew in a sharp breath, and Javert muttered a hoarse apology as though he had already transgressed. Yet Cosette did not shrink. She only turned her face toward him, wide eyes steady, and he saw that she had been truthful with him. She was not afraid.

So he tried again, with all the hesitancy of a novice, as his other thumb traced the line of her collarbone, first like an army officer inspecting a map, then, more slowly, like a penitent tracing a relic. Unable to ignore the throb between his legs or the heat in his head, he bent and pressed his mouth where his thumb was. He was clumsy but reverent. Still, he drew back at once, appalled at his own gall.

Cosette’s hand came to rest upon his arm, light but deliberate, reassuring him. His trained inspector’s mind was tallying even now. 

Evidence: her pulse was steady; it was not frantic. Evidence: her breath caught only when he kissed her. Evidence: her hand was small and firm and holding fast. These were incontrovertible facts. They pointed not to fear but to something else entirely. Desire. Directed at him, at Javert. Impossible.

“Cosette,” he rasped, as though speaking her name might stave off his madness. He shut his eyes and felt lips near hers, felt the heat of her breath as she whispered,

“Javert.”

The syllables of his undid him. He kissed her lips graceless, too harshly at first, then stilling when she did not pull away. Her sigh cracked against his mouth, and her fingers reached and tightened faintly in his long hair. The sensation burned through him like a wildfire. He tore back again with a strangled breath, his forehead pressed to hers. His voice came blunt and hoarse but steady. “If I err, you must tell me. I would not harm you. Not you.”

The silence weighed heavy, until she whispered his name once more. Just that. “Javert. “Do as you will without compromising me, I beg you… but do not cease this.”

“No, I will not compromise you.” It was a vow, not a courtesy.

“Very well” she said back quietly in response.

He shuddered at that, and his hand, clumsy still, descended to her waist. He traced the curve of her hip and up over her ribs again before going back down with a roughness he could not help, then stopped, arrested by the feel of her trembling beneath his palm.

He cursed softly under his breath, a rare slip in dignity, trying to draw back. But her hand caught his broad wrist, guiding it forward, holding him there with a steadiness that mocked his own lack of composure. He might pretend, but in truth Javert had little experience with matters such as these. The vivandière at Augsburg and with the girl in the brothel near the Palais-Royal had taught him nothing of properly kissing or touching a woman with care or affection. Javert thought with a bitter spike in the back of his mind that Maes’ plain-faced but young notary son would have very likely made a better bed-made for Cosette.

He banished the thought and bent again, pressing his lips to her shoulder, then her throat, awkward benedictions offered like a man who had never truly prayed but now did so with all his being.

His cock hurt, Javert thought. It was flushed through and so hard with want that it hurt, aching and pulsing where it was folded up against Cosette’s stomach, leaking a little. He wrenched his eyes shut for a moment and was hit, powerfully, with a savage instinct to push her leg aside and enter her, to thrash into her body. But he had made a promise that he knew well needed keeping.

So instead, he clutched the blanket between them as though it were the last rope holding him from drowning. A rough handful of cotton, dragged up between their hips, was all that stood between oath and betrayal. He wedged it there firmly, an inelegant barrier, gripping it so tightly that the knuckles of his great hand whitened.

Cosette stirred faintly and pulled back a bit at the sudden intrusion of cloth, but she did not resist. Her eyes were wide and curious but her breath was still steady, her body still warm against his own. If she wondered at the strange measure Javert had suddenly taken, she gave no voice to it. Instead, she pressed close again, her bare thigh sliding up along his flank, her arm boldly hooking about his shoulder as though the barrier he held so desperately were invisible to her.

She was not helping him, he thought.

Javert exhaled through clenched teeth, as every muscle went tight. The delicious warmth, slightly damp, of her body seeped through the blanket he held, maddening in its nearness. He shifted against her entirely without thinking, a halting grind of his hips into the cotton, and the shock of sensation forced a hoarse sound up from his throat. The fabric rasped cruelly against his sensitive arousal, and he seethed at the feeling.

He pressed forward again, feeling uncertain as he tested and rolled his hips with the ungainly rhythm of a man who had never really practised such intimacy. The movement was clumsy; it was too forceful one moment and too hesitant the next. Yet Cosette seemed to enjoy it. Her fingers curled more tightly into his now-mussed hair, her body shifting beneath his so that her belly met the line of him, cotton and cock both pressed between them.

Her eyes found the glint of his in the dim moonlight. No words passed, but she held him steady with that wide gaze, and Javert moved again, dragging himself forward along the wrinkled blanket, the friction rough and unbearable against his manhood now and yet more real than anything he had ever endured. The narrow bed creaked beneath their awkward movements; the smell of lavender and soap and her skin was faint on the air and yet utterly overwhelming.

Javert leaned forward and kissed her throat with graceless fervor, his mouth hot and desperate, and his hands moved at last to search her. He had no idea, really, what to do. One palm flattened against the small of her back, pressing her nearer despite the barrier he clung to with the other. After a moment he began tracing the line of her ribs, the soft weight of her breast, before retreating in shame and then returning again with trembling insistence. He could tell that fingers were too rough and his touch unpractised, yet Cosette yielded to it with a quiet steadiness, her own body arching slightly beneath his palm and her lips parting as she let out little sounds.

He rolled his hips against her in a crude and desperate parody of consummation, moving forcefully against the cotton blanket bunched hard between them. She moved now, too; she arched and met each awkward thrust. Her small hands clutching his shoulders, and her breath was warm and unsteady in his ear. The blanket pulled and twisted with their movements, the barrier growing slick with sweat and friction.

Javert buried his face against Cosette’s shoulder, overcome by the lightly floral of her hair and softness of her skin. He tried to pace himself, to slow the frantic rhythm of his hips, but each attempt converted into another harsh roll forward. Soon enough his hips were jerking a bit erratically. He had no craft in this, no patience; he had only need. And she was very beautiful, and he did care deeply for her.

Cosette’s breath quickened against him, her thighs pressing closer around his hips, and suddenly she let out a shocked, whining sort of sound that drove through Javert like a blade. The sound was not fear or pain. He could tell that much. It was a quiet surrender, a fragile answer to his clumsy passion. She was enjoying herself, somehow.

Javert’s jaw locked hard until his teeth hurt. He clung to the cotton blanket with one desperate fist as if strangling it might preserve his control, but the pressure building in him was merciless. His stones felt heavy as they drew up tightly, and he was so dizzy now he was a bit faint. The rhythm of his hips grew uneven and desperate, his sweat-slicked chest heaving against hers. He muttered a half-formed apology into her hair just before his body betrayed him; he could feel himself pass a point of inevitability.

Then it was upon him - sudden, fierce, and ungovernable. A low and guttural noise broke from his throat as Javert’s body stiffened, his hips thrusting once, twice against the twisted linen before he shuddered violently and spilled into the fabric he had meant as safeguard.

His vision pricked at the edges until his ears rang and his skin burned with heat. His hips lurched wretchedly as the sharp convulsion of satisfaction, ungovernable and a bit violent, took hold of him. He felt the release rip him through like wet paper, leaving his limbs leaden, his chest heaving, his temples pounding. He felt his seed spilling forth urgently until the blanket bore his shame and was left sodden and ruined in his grasp.

He pressed his face against Cosette's shoulder and neck for another moment, his breath ragged, his body disbelieving and abruptly very exhausted. Yet Cosette’s arms still circled him in an oddly unflinching embrace, as though what had passed were not his failure but proof that she alone could undo him.

When his mind at last began to clear, it was not of shame or duty that he first thought, but of a simple, brutish, and entirely new desire. 

He did not want her to leave. 

Javert shifted, reaching for the nightgown he had pulled off of her and tossed aside, pulling it somewhat securely over her as though the gesture alone could keep her there, his voice a rough, uncertain murmur against her hair. 

“Stay.”

Cosette did not answer at once. Instead, she pulled back slowly and seemed to be studying him. He could just make out her face in the moonlight, but her expression was unreadable except for the slight furrow of her brow. 

“Commissaire Javert,” she whispered, her voice carrying a note of gentle, unassailable logic that cut through the haze in his mind. “I cannot stay. Toussaint… she rises before the sun, and she will come to build the fire. Then she will know.”

Toussaint. Of course. The name, the simple fact of the servant in the house, was a bucket of ice water. What a fool Javert was. He had just spent the evening making grand, possessive promises. He had vowed that he would ward off suitors, that he would escort her in public, that he would keep her safe from the entire world. And yet he was instantly defeated by the presence of Jean Valjean’s maid, a reality he could not command or control. He could not very well arrest gossip. He could not interrogate a servant’s all-knowing glance. The humiliating reality was that his protection of Cosette had sharp limits. And Javert was not stupid; he knew very well that the shrewd and observant Toussaint likely already knew something was very much amok between the policeman and the mademoiselle.

He gave Cosette a single, curt nod now, releasing her completely. As she moved to rise from the bed, drawing on her nightgown as she did, he reached out, a final, instinctual gesture. He did not pull her back, but simply danced his knuckles near her hip.

“Goodnight, Cosette,” he said, his voice hollow.

“Goodnight, Monsieur,” she said rather happily, giving him a very happy look in the moonlight as she reached for her wrapper.

Javert did not watch her go. He simply closed his eyes, a hot flush of confusion creeping up his neck as the door quietly open and shut. He lay rigid and still, the blanket he’d put before him a damp, heavy weight of shame in the dark room.

Chapter Text

Snow tumbled heavy and thick upon Montreuil-sur-Mer as though the heavens had lost their way, the flakes falling upon the stones of the square until the ground was muffled white. Soldiers stood around the periphery like statues, their muskets glinting faintly in the frost. The old tannery loomed in the distance, its chimneys smoking black against the whiteness, the air gone rank with sickness. Javert knew this place very well indeed, and yet, somehow, he did not, for the whole town seemed dream-struck, blurred about the edges, muffled quiet by the snow.

And Fantine was there.

She was not the Fantine he remembered pulling, shrieking, from Bamatabois’ grasp, nor the woman he had deposited away in her disgrace. No. This woman before him now was little more than a skeleton draped in rags, toothless, her lips cracked and raw, her hair hacked away so that bits of her scabbed her skull gleamed in the lamplight. 

She lurched across the frozen stones with feet bare except for burlap wrap, coughing and choking, her breath a mist of bloodied spray. Her arms flailed, her clawed fingers curled, and her large and bright eyes fixed on him with fevered desperation.

“Monsieur Javert, Monsieur l’Inspecteur!” she called out, her voice breaking with phlegm and madness. “You see, my child, my daughter… my Cosette! She is in grave danger. Beyond the inn, beyond the convent, beyond her pretty little garden… Go to her, will you please, Monsieur Javert… to my girl when she’s grown? You promised, didn’t you?”

Her words echoed. Fantine stumbled and fell to her knees in the snow, clutching at his greatcoat with a terrible strength she ought not to possess, reaching up and digging into the cloth at his chest as though to tear through to the heart beneath. 

“You promised,” she hissed wildly, and the chant grew louder, reverberating suddenly from the stones, from the soldiers, from the snowy sky itself. “You promised, didn’t you? You promised…”

Javert’s lips parted in shock. The soldiers shifted uneasily. And Valjean — Jean Valjean himself was there, as M. Madeleine in his mayor’s coat, kneeling beside her. His face was wretched in its calm as he tried to lift Fantine from the ground, to pull her away, but he did not look at her. He looked straight at Javert. He gave the police inspector a long, steady look, as though binding him to her words forever, as though handing him charge of Cosette.

Javert’s throat sealed up tightly. He tried to protest, to insist that, no, he had made no such promise, that the law demanded nothing of him here but to enforce it against Fantine herself. But no sound came. He heard only the chant. He felt only the burning clutch of Fantine’s skeletal hands. He saw only Valjean’s eyes holding him fast.

Javert jolted awake with a desperate gasp, his nightshirt damp, the sheets tangled around his naked legs, the darkness of the guest bedchamber pressing down too closely in what felt like a courtroom judgment.

He swung his legs from the bedclothes and set his bare feet hard to the floorboards. There was no use lying in the sweat and discomfort of the chamber. He briefly washed at the basin and then dressed at once, each motion drilled and exact, tugging on the crisply clean linen shirt, brushed waistcoat, and the frock coat with the insignia of his new office before drawing his hair back. The tricolor sash was knotted firmly at his side, and his sword hung straight at his hip. He polished his boots until they shone like mirrors; he never presented himself with dulled leather, but he was a Commissaire of the 4th arrondissement now, and perfection was not optional.

By first light he was in the kitchen and Toussaint was already about her morning work, laying out dough for bread and setting the fire. He gave her a grunt that was, perhaps, a bit curt, and he took the steaming cup of bitter coffee she set down without request, draining it quickly at the table. The house was hushed but not entirely silent, and for a flicker Javert’s mind veered toward Cosette in his room the night before, toward the warmth of her skin, the whispered syllables of his name in the darkness. But he shut it all down at once. Such memories of her, like the strangeness of his dream, could not be carried with him today. He had work to do.

He rose sharply, taking his hat from its peg, and strode from the house without another word. The dawn was unseasonably chill and grey, and the few passers-by were wrapped close in their coats. Javert walked with long, confident steps, his pace devouring the cobbles. He knew every crooked lane of the Marais and the bridges across the Seine, every alley where a cutpurse might vanish, every market square where a thief might hide.

By the hour of seven, tolled from the nearby parish bells, he had reached the commissariat. It was a squat, narrow building of stone, its barred windows catching traces of the faint dawn. The air in the vestibule was cooler than the outside streets, somewhat sour with wool and ink and tack leather. A young clerk at the desk sprang upright with an awkward bow. Javert returned only the smallest nod, pulling off his uniform hat with a brusque motion before mounting the stair to the upper office.

The room that awaited him was strictly bureaucratic: neither lavish nor mean. Javert was met by a sturdy table with blotter and pens, a wooden organiser already stacked with reports, a high window looking down at the busy street below. He set his hat on the stand, drew the chair back, and sat heavily in the simple chair. Order, he considered. No matter his place or rank, the first act was always to make order. 

He began by sorting the incoming reports into neat piles: petty thefts of bread and produce and small goods, tavern disturbances, lost children, assaults with blades, questions of vagrancy. Montreuil had taught him well the value of beginning with clarity. Paris, to be certain, required nothing less.

By half past seven, the sergeants under Javert’s command came to make their reports, and he listened without indulgence. There had been a knife-fight in a narrow street and a burglary of linens from a bourgeois courtyard. A man had been found drunk and disorderly outside a parish gate. Each instance of criminality lodged in Javert’s mind like a stone falling through water. He issued orders. The drunkard to the cells overnight, the fighting men were to be summoned for questioning, the fine linens were to be traced through the pawnshops. His instructions were short, clipped, and sufficient, and the sergeants saluted with relief before departing.

At eight, Javert examined the patrol ledgers from the previous week only to discover that the late Miremont had permitted slackness. One entry claimed that three streets Javert knew required two hours to cover had been completed in one. Another patrol somehow omitted tavern inspection from The Place de Grève entirely. Javert underlined each egregious lapse with thick black strokes of his pen. That ended now. Yet even as the ink spread and dried, his eyes snagged on the phrase “ward of the deceased” in a margin. That word, ward , made his throat tighten. He did not read the details involved. He shut the ledger more sharply than necessary, as if to silence Commissaire Maes and Fantine alike.

By nine, the waiting room in the commissariat had filled. Petitioners shifted anxiously upon the benches. Wives of detained husbands clutched shawls, merchants with grievances held bills of sale, apprentices with cut hands from disputes at workshops held fast to their wrapped injuries. Javert descended himself to hear them all and extract their testimony rather than sending a clerk. He gave them no softness, but neither did he dismiss. 

A wrinkled old washerwoman reported to Javert that her meagre wages had been stolen from her pocket. He pulled out a form to note the details and asked the alley, the hour, the men she had passed. The washerwoman, when she departed, curtseyed and thanked the Commissaire. A bookseller complained of seditious pamphlets; Javert sharply demanded copies be brought to the station-house nearest the bookseller and promised an inquiry. A small and ragged boy came on behalf of a baker, claiming a neighbour’s goats had ruined the herb patch. Javert interrupted the boy and passed him along curtly to the magistrates’ court. He kept no time for goats.

Only once did his steadiness falter. Near ten o’clock, a grisette of perhaps sixteen appeared in the waiting room, accompanied by her master, a ribbon merchant from the rue du Temple. She was narrow-shouldered and pale, her coarse wool dress hanging loose upon her frame, and she clutched a darned shawl close as though it might shield her. The master, florid and impatient, explained to Javert that she accused an apprentice - his own nephew, a lad of eighteen - of striking her in the face during a quarrel. The master doubted the grisette’s tale, adding stiffly that “the boy may have a quick temper about him, Monsieur, but he is no brut e,” and that the girl perhaps sought reprieve from her duties or undeserved sympathy.

At this, the girl lowered the shawl from her cheek, and Javert saw that a livid reddish-purple mark blazed across the bone, unmistakable in the cold light that streamed through the barred window. Her lips trembled, but her voice did not break as she insisted, “It was him, Monsieur. If you please, I wish to have it written down.”

“Insolent girl,” snarled the master. “You’ll be put out.”

Javert’s eyes fixed squarely on the bruise, upon the brutal simplicity of it, and then, entirely against his will, for the briefest instant, he saw her wearing black mourning silk with white lace as Cosette had done for some time now. But in truth, she was far more like Fantine, he knew, that trembling other woman who had once begged to be heard and had been dismissed to ruin. The terrible doubling of memory struck him like a lash.

He squared his jaw, blinked hard, and rasped his questions in a low, growling monotone. The hour of the quarrel? The words exchanged and the names of any who had seen it? The girl answered with halting but exact precision. Javert wrote down every word, signed his name crisply, and slid the page across the desk with a clipped order.

“To the juge de paix.”

He did not look at the girl again.

At the sound of the midday bells, Javert permitted himself a single crust of bread and more black coffee, taken alone in his office while the street below roared with fishwives and cart-drivers and bellowed up all of their smells. He read through the broader reports of the Prefecture: rampant rumors of Bonapartist tracts, discontent among guilds, suspicious gatherings even in the wake of the quashed uprising. Javert summarily noted, weighed, and stacked each item with precision. His mind worked like a perfectly wound clock. If anything out of order festered here, patrols must be shifted there. If the print-shops whispered sedition by day, then they must be watched by night. 

Still, for a treacherous instant, the chaotic sounds below his office tangled with the memory of Cosette’s voice, low and almost tremulous at the breakfast just after he’d come home from his promotion, when she had said to him, saying “I hope you will not mind me saying so, Monsieur le Commissaire, but… your new insignia suits you very well.” Javert’s fist clenched around the bread’s crust until it broke, sending crumbs scattering on the blotter. He swept them aside and bent back to the Prefecture’s reports, firming his lips into a line.

Sometime halfway through the afternoon, a thief was brought in by an eager young inspector. She was a girl of perhaps twelve who had been caught with apples under her shawl. The shopkeeper trailed after and shouted for punishment. Javert stared long at the wide-eyed child, at the dirt that splotched her face, at her raw and chapped fingers. He asked her where she lived, and she replied that she lived nowhere. He asked what kin she had, and she said none. 

Javert’s jaw tightened and ached. The law was rigid. The girl before him was human. He picked up his pen and dipped it into ink and worked through the slight hesitation in his throat. He ordered the shopkeeper reimbursed and the girl held until evening. There might be room for her at the Salpêtrière. His voice was flat, rough, low, and unsparing. 

Yet the clerk noted later that Commissaire Javert had written the charge as “vagrancy,” not “theft.” Javert’s pen had almost written the word Cosette instead with a measure of shame, as if the name had been hiding in his wrist.

By four, his eyes ached from studying so much ink in close quarters, for he was a man accustomed to patrol work, but he pressed on. Reports from the arrondissement arrived steadily. A tavern had been raided for gambling, a drunkard had been hauled out half-drowned from the quay, a cart overturned in a crowded street and spilled its wares. Each event was entered, cross-checked, and dispatched. Javert was sure and reliable even as a new Commissaire and never raised his voice. He had no need. Yet now and again he felt the phantom pressure of a hand clutching at the hem of his coat, of Fantine’s skeletal fingers from the dream. 

You promised, didn’t you?

Several times throughout the day, Javert pressed his fingers briefly to his new insignia as if to settle the new rank there, then force himself back into the rhythm of bureaucracy.

As dusk gathered and the nearby church bells tolled vespers, he rose at last. The many piles of paper had been reduced, the cells occupied with those who needed to fill them, the ledgers aligned. His body was weary, for this was a differently exhausting labour, but the day had held. Tomorrow would hold as well, he knew. He replaced his hat and buckled the sword again at his side, and he descended the stone staircase.

The commissariat lamps glowed faintly in the humid hint of mist as he stepped outside. Paris was settling into its evening tumult. Javert strode into it with the same steady pace as ever as he considered he ought to send a letter to his landlady on the rue de Babylone, warning her that it might be a very long time before he left No 55 rue Plumet.

Javert let himself in slowly and heavily, a bit nervous that he still carried the dust and ink of his day at the commissariat on his very skin. The latch closed behind him with a low click, and for a moment he stood in the cool foyer of the rue Plumet house simply inhaling. The air here was dense with fragrance - not perfume, but dinner. A lemon-sharp broth of sorrel and herbs and vegetables simmered somewhere in the kitchen, faintly cutting through the dusk. Buttery roasted chicken gave off its savoury promise. Something else was cooking over a crackling fire. To Javert, who had spent the day breathing in sourness and wool-stink at work, the domestic air struck him with an almost painful relief.

He removed his hat, sword, and belt with the same care and deliberate neatness that marked every act of his life. These motions were not mere habit. They were his way of respecting the household. He had seen more than enough, as a young soldier quartered in private houses, of men blundering mud into parlours and of officers clattering muskets across tables, of inspectors sitting down unwashed and uncombed, to understand that order was not only for the office but for the home. He therefore took the time to wipe his boots clean on the mat before stepping farther inside.

Toussaint, it seemed, noted his entry, for she left the kitchen to greet him. Her sleeves were rolled neatly, her apron unspotted, her dark face shining with the heat of the firelight behind her. She carried herself, as ever, with brisk dignity, chin high, voice level.

“Dinner is nearly ready, Monsieur le Commissaire; you’ll not have long to wait.” she said, with a nod that was respectful but not truly subservient.

Javert inclined his head once slightly in return and answered her a bit more carefully than he had all day with his sergeants and inspectors.  “My thanks, Madame.”

They were neither of them fool enough to deny the other dignity. Both had lived long enough in Paris to know what it was to be regarded as an outside or other, to endure whispers or glances that measured name, skin, and blood. Both had seen doors closed too quickly, heard laughter bite a little too sharply. But here, in this house, they shared one plain and weighty understanding: Cosette was their charge, and respect for her began with respect for one other. 

“M’sieur.” Toussaint dipped a bit and returned to the kitchen.

Javert walked through the foyer to the dining room, where the table had been laid with care but no extravagance, as was fitting the mourning of Valjean. The linens, china, silver, and glasses were all clean and in their places. The pitcher gleamed with cold and merciful condensation. Toussaint knew well how much he drank after a long day of work. Burgundy waited at the sideboard; freshly baked bread, wrapped in a linen cloth, lay in its basket. A small vase with a single sprig of newly plucked rosemary had been set discreetly near the candles.

Javert sighed and drew back the chair at his accustomed place but did not sit, drumming his fingertips upon the chair as remained standing, tall and rigid. It was instinct to stand at near-attention like this, perhaps, drawn up from his military years and ages in the police force, for no man of his sort would have thought it necessary to wait upon a young woman before sitting down to supper. But in truth,  Javert was not “a man of his sort” any longer. He had been elevated; he was a Commissaire now, and in this house, Cosette was not simply an orphaned bourgeois ward on paper, not just a burden of duty… but the one point of brightness for which Valjean had lived and for whom Fantine had died. And Javert did care enormously for her, if he was truthful with himself.

A gentle shadow came over the doorway as she silently entered the dining room. She wore a gown in which he had seen her several times now, lovely black lawn with the light fabric gathered modestly at collar and wrist, its line broken only by a row of tiny jet buttons that gleamed faintly in the candlelight. Her golden hair caught the last light of dusk and had been smoothed back and bound at the nape in a simple coil. She looked every inch the steadfast and elegant young lady in mourning - not theatrical, not ostentatious, but dignified in her restraint.

Javert pulled his hands from the chair and straightened to his full height as she came into view. His eyes lowered a fraction. With a stiff, slightly awkward motion, he bowed his head to her. Cosette paused just inside the doorway, almost as though startled, then gave him a small, solemn little dip of her own.

Only then did Javert take his seat. He reached first for the water, poured it steadily, and drank deeply, as though the clean chill might scour out his ribs and rid him of the fatigue of the day. Cosette, for her part, folded her hands neatly upon the table before her place. Toussaint entered at once, bearing the tureen of broth, and once she had poured Cosette a glass of Burgundy and Javert had sat through a prayer of thanksgiving from across the table, the evening meal began.

Toussaint ladled the broth into their bowls, steaming with sorrel, spinach, and herbs. Javert bent to it with precision and lifted his spoon steadily, his motions economical. Cosette, however, lingered over her first mouthful as if she were uncertain, her wide eyes lifting across the table to study him. The line of his black frock coat still bore the crispness of duty, he knew, and his golden insignia caught a faint glimmer from the candlelight. His hair had been very carefully combed back with military severity this morning to frame the stark angles of his face. Cosette appeared to take all of this in, and Javert shirked back a bit beneath the weight of her gaze. But she smiled faintly, trembling a little as if not wholly permitted by her mourning. She complimented him then in a way she had done before, softly.

“You do look very fine in your uniform, Monsieur le Commissaire.”

Javert’s spoon paused half-way to his mouth to hear her say it. He set his spoon down deliberately and shook his head.

“I wear what I am required to wear and I am what I am required to be, Mademoiselle,” he replied, his voice low and rough. “Nothing more.”

“Required,” Cosette repeated, as if testing the word. Her chin tilted just slightly and her eyes narrowed with a strange hint of scepticism. “But surely one may still admire what is required.”

Toussaint, who was carrying in the dish of roast chicken, made the smallest noise in her throat, something between a cough and a chuckle. She set the platter of chicken down upon the sideboard and straightened, her dark eyes glinting with a kind of shameless mirth.

Javert rose when Toussaint departed and moved, as was proper, to the sideboard where the roasted chicken had been set. He drew up the carving knife with deliberate gravity, holding it and studying it for a moment as if it were part of his uniform before he began to carve. The chicken’s skin crackled faintly as the blade broke through; each slice was clean, each joint severed with the certainty of long-trained strength. He placed a portion first upon Cosette’s plate, then a heartier one upon his own, watching the steam rise in warm curls.

He felt Cosette’s eyes upon him in a steady and unblinking gaze, as though she followed not merely the line of the knife but the tension in his arm and the measured force in his hand. The faint scrape of steel against bone, the slow yielding of flesh seemed suddenly much too loud in the stillness of the dining room. By the time he set the knife aside, his collar of his uniform coat felt close about his throat.

Cosette’s voice broke the silence, soft but quick, her breath catching just slightly on her words. “You are most precise with the carving knife, Monsieur le Commissaire. Even the poor bird cannot resist your hand, and yields to you.”

The handle of the fork bit against Javert’s palm as his grip tightened. That simple remark had been spoken, he was sure, with no more than girlish playfulness, but it landed in him like a spark to tinder. His pulse jolted hard and sped up in his veins. His eyes settled upon her for a moment longer than was proper, taking in her bright, guileless face. Her delicate chin lifted as though testing him without knowing how far she reached.

Heat prickled beneath his collar and leached up around his jaw. He inclined his head, his voice a lower, rougher sound than he intended. “I assure you, Mademoiselle, it is only professional practise that guides me.”

Her mouth curved, not so innocent now, as though she had cornered him into the admission. Her eyes flicked, perhaps unconsciously, to the hand where he still held the fork, to the faint whiteness at his knuckles. “Professional practise, then, has made you quite formidable indeed, Monsieur. Surely Paris has never been safer than it is now, beneath your steady command.”

That phrase - beneath your steady command - thudded through Javert with a sudden heat, leaving his jaw set hard. His pulse hammered slowly in his throat and the room went close. The scent of roasted meat seemed sharper in his nostrils than it ought to be.

Javert exhaled once through his nose, very sharply, as though it might steady the unsteady thing flailing inside him. He strode over to set the plate of chicken he had carved for Cosette before her. Their eyes touched in the instant between the transfer, for just a flicker too long, but her gaze did not waver. It lingered, bright and wide and searching.

Javert cleared his throat and took his plate back around the table. He adjusted his chair and passed the dish of split and salted green beans toward her. She accepted it with murmured thanks, though her lips trembled with the faintest suggestion of a smile. She helped herself to a humble little portion before returning the dish to him. Then they both began to eat, the fine silver knives and forks gliding in polite rhythm, but the air between them had thickened almost dangerously. Javert’s shoulders were set stiff and every bite was measured, while Cosette seemed to dawdle almost absent-mindedly, her eyes drawn up and across the table again and again.

She was the first to speak, her tone light and politely conversational, though her words pressed close to the forbidden, almost conspiratorial in volume and tone. 

“And how was your first full day, Monsieur le Commissaire?” she asked him. “I picture you behind a great desk, all your papers in perfect order, with the whole of the city tidy and compliant.”

Javert’s fork paused midway to his mouth. He raised his gaze slowly to hers, his look as steady even as his lips quirked a bit. “Alas. Paris will not be organised or directed by paperwork alone, Mademoiselle. She also requires the firm hand of the law action.”

Cosette tilted her head, seeming quite amused by the conversation, her lovely curls brushing her shoulder. 

“But of course, Monsieur le Commissaire, you are well-matched to both. And the clerks and sergeants at your hand now? They must have given you respect enough today, quite unlike the Commissaires who came last night to compel you to dine?”

The muscles in Javert’s jaw clenched as he worked with the fork in his hand and said in a flinty tone, “Those men share my rank, Mademoiselle; I can scarcely command them. I am charged with order in the Fourth, and that is recognised in full.”

Her laugh then was a disarmingly pleasant trill, the sound at odds with her black gown and solemn collar. She made a dismissive waving motion with her hand and gave a little nod. “Oh. Thank goodness. It would be so terribly selfish of me to hoard you as my own champion when Paris needs your devotion, as well.”

Javert’s knife pressed much harder than necessary into the potato beneath it, splitting it sharply until it became mash on the plate. For a long moment, he said nothing, his throat gone dry. My own champion. The phrase seared through him too hotly, not playful at all to his ears, too close, more delicious than any food that could be served here. 

Of course he had said it easily and innocently. It did not matter, in truth. He took up his water, drank deeply until the glass was empty, and set it down with controlled force, lest his hand betray the tremor there.

Across the table Cosette watched him, still smiling faintly, as though she had said nothing out of turn at all. Javert knew well that she was too innocent to have toyed with him, that she was not being coquettish, that she had no ill intent. He cleared his throat, grateful somehow for the woman’s presence as Toussaint came blustering into the dining room. 

She began clearing the remnants of Cosette’s chicken, potatoes, and green beans with efficient dignity, her movements brisk but never careless. Javert’s plate was still laden with food, really hardly touched, and Toussaint glanced at him once, questioning. He set down his knife and fork side by side upon the porcelain and said in a clipped, low voice with a nod, 

“That will suffice, Madame.” 

He could not have forced down one more mouthful if he had tried. Toussaint inclined her head obediently and swept away his dishes without any comment. When she returned again just a moment later, it was with a finely glazed compote bowl filled to the brim with cherries that gleamed in the candlelight, dark as wine. She set it between the two at the table with its proper spoon, and beside it she put a small silver dish that Javert knew was meant for pits. He might not have come up with money, spoilt with desserts, but he at least knew the trappings of it all. Toussaint gave a final satisfied nod and retreated once more, leaving them alone.

Cosette, very well practised in all this, lifted the small serving spoon delicately and doled herself a half dozen cherries, her movements as correct as any convent-trained young lady might use. The dark red cherries tumbled into her shallow bowl with a muted clatter, their stems intertwining. Javert did not move to follow suit; he had no appetite. His hands rested flat upon the tablecloth as though anchoring him to the earth.

Cosette, untroubled, plucked one cherry from the bowl by its stem almost as though she were bored. She raised it lightly, twisting it in her fingers before lifting it to her lips. She moved unselfconsciously, just as it seemed she had been unaware of her slightly coy speech earlier.  Javert’s throat tightened as her mouth closed upon the fruit, her teeth breaking through its flesh. The cherry yielded and sent bright juice welling. Cosette expertly withdrew the pit and placed it in the silver dish, but a shining bead of juice had slipped against her lip and lingered there, glimmering, catching the candlelight.

She dabbed at it just a moment too late with her napkin and then was obliged to touch at her chin, laughing softly at her clumsiness. The sound was bright and girlish against the solemn hush of the dining room. 

“Oh,” Cosette mumbled lightly, as though confiding a secret, “these cherries are very sweet indeed, Monsieur, and fresh.”

Javert could not breathe; his lungs burned and ached. His fists curled slowly against the linen tablecloth and his knuckles strained white. The muscles in his jaw strained tight and his teeth ground together. Cosette dropped a cherry pit into the silver dish, and its faint click was suddenly a sound sharp as a hammer-blow in his ears. He could not wrench his eyes from her reddened lips, which were faintly stained now by the fruit and trembling still just a little from her good-natured laugh. His blood thundered in his veins, hot and insistent. The candlelight etched along the line of her throat where she swallowed delicately, and her long lashes lowered and lifted again as her attention shifted.

He did not move. He could not for all the world. He just sat, transfixed, rigid in his chair, flushed with want between his legs, every tendon in his arms taut, his face burning feverishly beneath the severe collar of his uniform. His gaze was locked helplessly upon her, and he knew full well it gave him away.

“I want to kiss you, Cosette,” he heard himself blurt very suddenly, and she appeared to nearly drop the cherry pinched between her fingers. But she held fast to it, her cheekbones darkening, and she rolled the fruit about for a moment as she considered his words and then nodded and hummed softly,

“I embroidered today, Monsieur le Commissaire. I have finished your handkerchief. After dinner, I might like to give it to you, if you please.”

“Yes. Thank you.” His voice was hoarse as his head bobbed in assent. The room felt too small and close. His body felt too large and warm. He watched as Cosette set the cherry she was holding down and sighed,

“Well, I have quite had my fill.”

Chapter Text

The noontime sun was intolerably hot and bright, the kind beneath which the very stones of Paris seemed to give off a punishing glare. Dust clung in sickly motes to the air, stirred by the constant hammer of hooves and the wheels of carriages grinding along the cobblestones. Javert rode upright in the saddle of his black warmblood gelding at the head of the escort, his uniform immaculate despite the heat pressing against him from all sides. His collar gripped his throat like a vice, and though the brim of his hat shaded his eyes, it could not keep the sting of sweat from gathering beneath it. He made no move to wipe it away. Around him, a handful of armed gendarmes rode in a neat, tight column with their sabres glinting and their carbines slung across their backs. The horses, anxious and overheated, stamped and tossed their heads, but the men held firm. 

Between them rode the prisoner, the reins before him held in the hand of a guard.

Capitaine Nicolas de Vieuxpont did not slouch or bow his head. He sat with stiff pride in his saddle and was a tall, handsome man in his early thirties with a clean-shaven jaw and a soldier’s shoulders. Even now, even under these circumstances, de Vieuxpont looked every bit the respectable officer he had once been. The son of a bourgeois family in Normandy, he came from a line of avocats and clerks and was himself properly educated. But his dust-stained coat and dulled boots betrayed him now, after days of confinement, despite the lack of apology in his face. Javert noted with a great deal of irritation that de Vieuxpont seemed to think it was the guards and the police themselves who ought to be ashamed.

Javert ground his teeth and fixed his eyes ahead. That insolent composure was wretched, and he despised it. A cutpurse, a drunkard, a bread thief, even a rebel with a paving stone in his hand ready to be thrown… those men were plainly criminals and the lines were clear. This one, Capitaine Nicolas de Vieuxpont, had been an officer of the National Guard. He had known his duty and, he had chosen to neglect it. On the fifth of June, at rue du Cloître Saint-Merry, he had failed to mobilise his men with any speed, had left a flank dangerously exposed, had not answered when order was most required. Rumours fluttered now of the captain’s republican sympathies. To Javert’s mind, there was no doubt at all. It was treachery, pure and simple.

But the crowds of Paris never missed the chance to gape and speculate, and now men were on doorsteps and women were leaning from windows, watching as the cavalcade passed. Filthy, yelling children darted between carriages to stare at the prisoner, mouths agape with curiosity, whilst tradesmen and grisettes set down their armloads to whisper together. Some laughed, but too many of them were quiet, murmuring, their eyes lingering too long on de Vieuxpont’s straight-backed figure. Sympathy . Javert saw it in too many faces, and he hated it.

The scorching sun beat down upon his hat and burned across his shoulders through his coat. His horse’s breath huffed in short bursts, his reins slick beneath the leather of his gloves. He rode on in rigid and slightly angry silence.

It was far better, Javert thought grimly, to face a riotous barricade head-on than this polished disdain and hints of compassion from the masses for him. Better a gutter-thief face the guillotine than an educated soldier who had betrayed his post be paraded.

But the column pressed westward toward the Seventh. Soon enough, they would reach the barracks where the man would be locked and kept under guard, and soon enough, Javert would need to once again meet Commissaire Maes, the one charged with the administration of that arrondissement. It was not at all lost on Javert, today of all days, that Maes was a confident but polished Lillois with a slightly thinner but more sinewy frame than he, a man whose public civility and little smile never failed to rankle. And he had spoken far too freely about Javert’s guardianship over Cosette and had, it seemed, read the filed Supplemental. Thus,  Javert anticipated the meeting with no pleasure at all.

The heat of the ride somehow only seemed to swell as the column turned into the shadow of the Caserne du Gros-Caillou. The barracks loomed like a great stone rectangle across the street with heavy and pale walls and high barred windows and a tiled roof that shimmered in the sun. The wide parade-ground before it was empty save for a few scattered conscripts running drills, moving like slugs in the noon blaze. There was a faint haze of dust that got into Javert’s eyes and the scent of stables that got into his nostrils, and beyond, the Seine tossed back a blinding reflection of the sunlight.

The main gate was tall and studded with iron, flanked by two young sentries in clean white breeches and new-looking blue coats. Their muskets were held upright and glinted in the punishing daylight. As Javert approached at the head of the escort, one of them barked out, sharp and automatic in a boy’s voice that tried to sound frightening, 

“Halte-là! Qui vive?”

“Police, Fourth Arrondissement,” Javert answered quite abruptly, with precisely the same gravel of command he used for every street patrol. He held out the folded order in his gloved hand and informed the two young sentries, “Transfer of a prisoner, by command of the Préfet.”

The guards looked him over with slight scepticism, their eyes slipping to the refined-looking man on horseback behind. De Vieuxpont, still proud, still shameless, did not flinch. Javert sucked upon the insides of his cheeks as his black gelding stepped about impatiently.

One of the sentries called a word or two over his shoulder and the wicket opened in the gate. Another skinny, green soldier hurried out, sweat streaking his flushed face, to collect the order. Javert dismounted heavily, his polished boots hitting the dusty cobbles with a deliberate thud. He stalked over to the younger men and handed over the folded paper with stiff precision, hiding his displeasure and performing his duty as assigned.

“Capitaine Nicolas de Vieuxpont of the National Guard.” Javert stated the facts simply. “Prisoner is accused of treasonous dereliction of duty, fifth of June, rue du Cloître Saint-Merry. To be held here under guard until further proceedings.”

The soldier before him blinked at the words but then bowed nearly to the waist, too low for simple hierarchy, and carried the sealed order within. Javert turned at once, giving the column a peremptory command to hat and watched as the horses stamped restlessly. The gendarmes shifted with unease and waited. The too-quiet crowd that had trailed them lingered at a safe distance, still murmuring, still craning necks to glimpse the well-bred officer prisoner as though the barracks itself were a theatre curtain about to rise.

Several minutes yawned as Javert stood beside the thirsty and impatient gelding he had dismounted with the reins in his hands, his irritation prickling with his sweat around his collar and temples. He glanced over to see that Capitaine Nicolas de Vieuxpont still sat tall in the saddle, silent and disdainful, as if this procession were some formal review in his honour rather than the march of disgrace it was meant to be. 

Javert recalled, suddenly, finding Valjean and the boy Marius carved open at the mouth of a sewer after the uprising. He recalled being held prisoner himself at the barricade. He recalled the little boy Gavroche being shot through. And he recalled signing a Supplemental form to ensure Cosette’s safety because the foolish uprising had left her orphaned and without the boy who might have been her husband.

“All for nothing,” he whispered furiously between his teeth.

The gate creaked open at last, and the soldier reappeared with another man who was cleaner, neater, and more polished. This was Commissaire Auguste Maes, of course. His uniform coat was immaculate despite the heat, and he carried his hat tucked beneath his arm. His expression, maddeningly striking despite his age, was set in the same civility Javert had seen from him on several occasions now.

“Commissaire Javert,” Maes said smoothly, inclining his head fractionally and speaking with practised, mild politeness. “I had word you were coming, though, mon Dieu, how you must have suffered under this blazing sun.”

Javert gave no commentary to the pleasantry and instead noted simply, “The prisoner is here, under escort, Commissaire Maes. By order of the Préfecture, he is to be received and secured here.” His voice was level and harsh and bore no real courtesy.

Maes received Javert’s report with a small inclination of his head, then turned half aside and summoned a lieutenant with a flick of his gloved fingers. The younger officer came quickly, his boots scuffing in the dust, and Maes handed over the folded order Javert had with a short, murmured instruction. The young lieutenant eagerly barked for two men, and in a moment de Vieuxpont was required to dismount.

The captain swung down lightly from the warmblood he’d been given, his spurs clinking against the cobbles, and stood almost at dignified attention, as though he had come for inspection rather than confinement. One of the guards took his horse’s bridle and led him within the barracks, and the crowd outside, which had been kept at bay by the wall and gate, gossiped in a low swell that rose and fell like surf against stone. Javert’s mouth set harder than ever.

“See the escort and their mounts to water,” Maes ordered a nearby sergeant crisply, and he hastened to obey. The gendarmes who had come with Javert looked relieved as they surrendered their reins and followed toward the stables at the far end of the parade-ground. They seemed as grateful as the horses for the promise of shade and a bit of water as they were led away. In their absence, the air grew strangely still, and was broken only by the hum of flies and the distant creak of leather.

Maes turned again then and curled up his lips. “You will forgive me if I insist we take our business indoors, Commissaire Javert. There is a chamber within that serves me well enough when I must be at the Caserne, and we shall be much cooler there. Come.” His tone was even, almost urbane. Yet beneath it was that infuriating suggestion of refined civility that grated.

Javert looked at him a moment, his cheeks hollowing faintly as he drew upon the inside of his mouth again. He knew well that any refusal of professional hospitality now would only appear peevish, so he gave a short nod, brusque enough to close the matter, and he said, voice low and unyielding, “As you wish, Monsieur.”

He looped his gelding’s reins into the hand of a waiting stable boy and fell into step beside Maes. His boots struck hard against the stones. Behind them, the gate clanged shut, the city fading away in mute dimness. The broad façade of the barracks swallowed both Commissaires, and they passed beneath its archway into a passage cool with shadow, the air sharp with lime and faint with straw and then through a doorway.

The chamber Maes made use of at the barracks was neither grand nor squalid, but it did carry the air of temporary authority. This was an office made to serve, not to impress. The thick lime-washed walls were bare but for a wooden crucifix hung near a framed order of the day from the Minister of War. The shutters at the windows were open; they were tall casements turned out upon the sun-baked parade-ground. It did little good to let the air in, for the breeze that entered was heavy with dust and the sour tang of stables. In the centre of the office, a battered oak desk bore several neat ledgers, their corners stacked with a precision that spoke of Maes’s fastidiousness. At the far wall, a sideboard had been set with a pewter pitcher that was already sweating with condensation and a few glasses.

Javert followed Maes inside, his boots sharp upon the flagged floors and the weight of the sun still upon him. Maes indicated a pair of plain but sturdy chairs, and both men removed their hats. Javert set his own very carefully upon the oak desk’s edge before lowering himself into the nearest seat. His spine remained rigid and knees squared, with his broad hands resting against his thighs as though braced for some sort of inquisition. Maes sat opposite him with an easy composure, leaning back just enough to suggest that here, at least, he was master of the room.

Wordlessly, after just a moment, Maes rose and took the pitcher in hand from the sideboard and poured two glasses full of water, then placed one before Javert with smooth economy, keeping the other for himself. Javert nodded head just a bit to acknowledge the drink and lifted the glass. He drank more deeply than was perhaps graceful, though with the same precision that governed all his motions, his throat working hard as he swallowed through his monstrous thirst. He set the empty glass down again with quiet, controlled finality.

Only then did he reach two fingers into the breast pocket of his uniform coat to draw a square of linen. It unfolded carefully in his hand, the white handkerchief that he had folded carefully this morning and tucked there, its edges worked over with the fine embroidery of a young woman’s diligence. Around the outside wound an elegant vine and at its centre was the looping flourish of a single initial: J . 

Javert pressed it briefly to his brow to daub carefully at the sweat. He touched once to the line beside his eye, then lowered it to his temple. The handkerchief absorbed the dampness from his skin, yet his fingers lingered for a half moment. He smoothed the fabric once, his thumb drifting over the smooth raised threads of that solitary letter. J.

It came upon him without permission. In his mind, he saw Cosette in the candlelit glow of the salon, pushing her work shyly into his hand, her eyes half lowered as though uncertain, and his own breath caught sharp in his throat before he bent, unbidden, to bring her wrist up to his lips to kiss with great affection. The recollection throbbed through him as real as the press of the linen upon his brow now. She had made this. For him. It was, perhaps, the only true gift he had ever been given.

He set his lips into a harsh line and folded the cloth with the same rigid care with which he had unfolded it, tucking it back against his palm, though it suddenly seemed quite heavy. When he glanced up again, he saw that Maes’s pale eyes had flicked once, briefly, toward the handkerchief, and then delicately away. Javert’s breath huffed.

Outside the open window, a poorly-trained horse stamped and whinnied in the yard and there was the faint clink of harness followed by the yell of a young officer. Maes swirled his water glass lightly, watching the play of condensation against its side. His wretchedly civil little smile returned, too courteous, too composed.

“Intolerable weather,” he noted at last, as though to bridge the gulf that had opened. His voice bore the lazy ease of a northern bourgeois accustomed to polite banalities. “Paris is a furnace at noon in the summer. One must pity those forced to toil and march beneath it.”

Javert’s brow went up for just a moment, but his reply came curt and flat. “The city will endure, and she does.”

Maes chuckled softly, unoffended, before he sipped some water. “She does. So she always has.” He set his water glass aside with precise care. His gaze remained level then as he blinked twice at Javert. His tone was amiable, but there was something studied and circling in his words.

“You know, Monsieur le Commissaire,” he continued after a pause, “I really must beg your pardon for a remark I made some nights ago, at Les Frères Provençaux, in company with our colleagues. I fear I gave offence.”

Javert stiffened visibly at the mention, though he did not speak. His fingers flexed once against the rim of his empty glass, then flattened again against the desk. His shoulder raised once in an awkward shrug until his epaulet brushed roughly against his jaw.

Maes, watching with the keen observation and the dispassion of an interrogator, allowed the pause to stretch before he went on with pointed polish.

“I spoke then,” he reminded Javert, “of my son. You will forgive me, I hope, for what must have seemed presumption. I had not realised, at the time, how delicate the subject of marriage regarding your ward Mademoiselle Fauchelevant, might be. It was only paternal thought that outran propriety. My son is a respectable notary, as I mentioned. He is steady, gainfully employed, calm, and unencumbered, if, as I said, a bit plain of face. But in suggesting him, I meant no insult at all.”

Javert’s eyes narrowed and his lips pressed thin. He could neither confess the outrage he had felt that night with bouillabaisse and wine before him, nor could he fully dismiss Maes without seeming derelict as Cosette’s caretaker. Now, his blank quiet was answer enough, though at last he ground out, in a voice flat and curt, 

“The subject requires no further discussion.”

For an instant, the makeshift office was utterly still save for the distant thud of boots from the yard. But Maes’s expression did not falter. He inclined his head very slightly, and when he spoke again, his tone had somehow gone smoother, tinged with that insufferable patience that only sharpened the blade against Javert’s ribs.

“Forgive me again, Commissaire,” Maes hummed, “but surely you know it cannot be avoided forever. The Mademoiselle is possessed of grace, of charm… and forgive my being blunt… of beauty. You know well, Monsieur, that Paris is not a city to turn a blind eye to such qualities, nor to the fortune that comes with a young woman such as her. You are her guardian, and no doubt you wish to shield her. That is proper. But it will fall to you, sooner or later, to see her future well secured.”

Javert’s back shoulders had drawn up into a rigid line, hard as iron. His nostrils flared with quick, forceful breaths. Still, he did not interrupt.

Maes pressed on with an even, persuasive, almost indulgent voice. “Indeed, a young woman of her station, newly bereft, must be considered all the more carefully. Mourning does not erase the necessity. If anything, it increases it. To delay in making such arrangements is to leave her exposed. Men will call upon her, Commissaire. They will call all the more because she is young and fair and unwed. You cannot possibly think otherwise.”

Javert’s restraint cracked at last, and he said through his teeth in something too much resembling a growl, 

“She is safe. She is… ensconced at home. That is where she shall remain, for now. My duty is to ensure that no harm befalls her.”

The words struck the air hard and carried too much weight, too much possessiveness. Javert felt it the moment they left his lips, but of course he could not draw them back.

Across the desk, Maes’s pale eyes glimmered faintly, and the corner of his mouth quirked a few times. Javert felt no mocker, but he sensed the sort of amusement born of recognition, as though some private suspicion had been confirmed. He shifted slightly in his chair, one finger tapping against the wooden arm there with mild anxiety as Maes spoke again.

“With respect, Commissaire, you cannot lock away such beauty forever. You will take her on promenades eventually, no? And Paris watches. Men will call. Do you suppose your ward’s fortune and appearance will not draw them? She will be pursued.” 

He let the words hang, then leaned forward a fraction, voice lowering as he pushed his water glass forward a bit and flicked his eyes up to Javert.

“Perhaps she already is, by more than just a plain-faced notary. Was there not a boy, a Monsieur Pontmercy…?”

Javert’s lips parted as his stomach sank, cold and heavy. His voice, when at last it emerged, was clipped and cold, like a deposition recited before a tribunal.

“Pontmercy. A student,” he said. “The son of a colonel under the usurper Bonaparte, the grandson of one Monsieur Gillenormand, a wealthy monarchist. The boy impoverished himself, frequented cafés, and kept poor company. He fought foolishly at the barricades in June.” Javert’s jaw worked once before he added, “He was found dead early the next morning.”

Maes’s pale eyes did not move from him. “By you?”

Javert’s gaze flicked up, hard and brief. His shoulder shifted, rolling a bit, and his answer came in a low rasp. “By me. Yes.”

A liquid silence pooled between them. The dust-laden air seemed stale and sour, unbearable, until, with the composure of a man producing a docket of evidence, Maes slipped one hand into his coat and drew out a folded sheet.

The paper was worn at the creases and was blotched faintly at one corner with a brown smear of dried blood. It was cheap paper that appeared to have been ripped hastily from a notebook and scrawled upon with a pencil. Maes laid it flat upon the oak desk and then slid it precisely with a smooth motion.

Javert’s heart struck against his ribs like a hammer, metal on metal. His broad hand reached, but with some reluctance. He took the sheet between thumb and forefinger and unfolded it with  procedural care. The words leapt up at him at once, jagged and fevered.

My beloved Cosette, our marriage was impossible. I asked my grandfather, and he refused. I have no fortune, and neither have you. I ran to your house in rue Plumet, but you were no longer there. You know the promise I gave you, and I shall keep it. I die loving you. When you read this, my soul will be near you, and you will smile and remember me. Your Marius.

Javert’s throat closed. He swallowed hard, his Adam’s apple jerking once, then again, as he attempted breath or speech and failed both. He shut the letter, pinching it closed and holding it up and away as though it were some contagion that might spread if left open. At last he shrugged heavily.

“The boy came from wealth and thought her poor; he did not know fully of her inheritance,” Javert mumbled distantly. Then he glanced up to Maes and said with the same blunt cadence he used for executions and arrests, “It is as I say. The boy, Pontmercy, was a traitor to France. He fought at the barricades and died at the mouth of a sewer, gutted like a pig. That is all.”

His words were like cotton in his mouth, for some reason, and rang with an ugly coarseness, as though savagery alone might shield him from what he had just read.

Maes, however, remained imperturbable. He watched Javert for a moment longer, his calm entirely unshakeable and nearly preternaturally genteel, and he said, “Gutted like a pig, yes, alongside Mademoiselle Fauchelevent’s previous guardian. At the hand of one… Monsieur Thénardier.”

He let the name settle in the close air like a drop of black ink in clear water. His tone softened only to sharpen the edge. 

“Monsieur Thénardier, with whom all of you were acquainted. Yes?”

The words struck like silken strikes to the cheekbone. Javert’s stomach sank, heavy and cold, even as his face remained set.

“Quite so,” he whispered, the words rasping from between his lips.

The folded letter still lay upon the desk between them, its bloodstained corner stark against the battered oak. Javert stared at it for a moment longer, then flattened his palm atop it as though to smother whatever poison it might yet exhale.

The awful silence was broken when, from outside, a distant shout rang across the parade ground, followed by the clatter of hooves and a whip-crack of leather. Inside the chamber, the air seemed close and oppressive. Javert forced himself upright against the rigid back of his chair and inhaled through his nose, sharp and quick, and narrowed his eyes across at Maes. He was just as skilled at police work as the other man, he knew, and would not be backed into any corners just now.

“You speak of prudence and steadiness, Monsieur,” Javert said in a low and measured voice. “Such qualities are… not without merit. Perhaps it is not unfitting to consider a match with one so placed.”

Maes’s pale brows lifted by a fraction into an arch, his expression betraying the smallest flicker of surprise or amusement. It did not matter which in truth. In any case, he did not interrupt. Javert pressed on deliberately in the same sort of recital he used interrogating overconfident prisoners.

“A notary, steady, employed, son of a commissaire… yes, such a situation might be judged not unsuitable for a young woman such as my ward.”

He let his words settle, though the taste of them was bitter on his tongue. His hand still rested upon Marius’ letter to Cosette, and he pressed it into the wood of the desk until his knuckles blanched. Then, after a pause calculated to sting, he added, 

“And yet, I cannot help but wonder, Commissaire Maes… if such qualities are so manifest, why is your son still unwed at four-and-twenty?”

The blow landed as intended, at least for a moment, but they were parried back almost at once. Maes’s lips curved into an expression that was neither smile nor frown, but something tautly held between. His gaze did not waver. Instead, he sat back a little, folding his gloved hands loosely atop one knee, as if to give Javert space to hang himself with his own words.

“You never took a wife yourself, I am made to understand,” Maes returned smoothly, the feint immediate and precise.

Javert’s body went still. He did not answer. The silence lasted a beat too long. Maes’s voice slipped into it slickly. 

“Marriage is not always delayed by defect, Commissaire. In my son’s case, it is a case of prudence. In yours, perhaps… devotion to duty? Or…?”

He let the ambiguity train and hang deliberately. The unfinished thought seemed to thrum in the air: or an aversion to women, scandal, an unsavoury origin, or some deeper personal failing unspoken. The insinuation was as soft as silk and as cutting as a knife.

Javert’s nostrils flared. He drew in a breath and let his broad shoulder rise once and then fall heavily. His gaze fixed upon the crucifix on the lime-washed wall beyond Maes’s shoulder, as though for once in his life the bare wooden figure upon it might hold him steady. At last, with brusque finality, he ground out the words:

“My life has been given to the service of the law. That is all.”

The sound of his pledge felt hollow against the lime-washed walls, like the clink of manacles on stone.

“Quite so,” Maes affirmed, echoing Javert’s earlier words, sounding satisfied. He tipped his head to the side a bit and noted, “I presume you have a good deal of work back in the Fourth to consume you, Monsieur.”

“I do,” Javert said, “If you’ll have my horse summoned.”

“At once.” Maes nodded, heaving himself to his feet and reaching for his hat. Javert did the same, his fingers creeping on instinct inside his uniform coat and touching at the edge of his linen handkerchief as he pulled his hat onto his head.

The water in the tin tub was almost too hot to bear, yet Javert sat with rigid determination in it, his knees drawn up awkwardly about him as the heat of it gnawed at his skin, as though he had accepted some slow punishment. 

He held the soap in his palm and scoured it again and again across his chest and his shoulders and over the cords of his arms. The sound of it rasping against his body hair was rough, almost violent, and the water slopped at the sides of the tub with every sweep of his hand. He was not bathing so much as stripping his flesh, as if dirt and sweat and memory were welded into his being and could only be purged by cruel force.

But it was not the day’s ride that clung to him, nor the dust of the barracks at the Caserne. It was the letter. My beloved Cosette… I die loving you. Your Marius.

The words burned against the inside of his skull as though they had been written there in caustic lime instead of pencil on paper. He clenched his jaw until his teeth ached, then scrubbed harder, so hard the soap bit into the lines of his knuckles and the water went milky from the lather. Marius Pontmercy, Javert reminded himself, had been a foolish boy, a workshy student, a café-idler who had died in the gutter as a traitorous rebel. That was all. That should have been all. Yet the fevered confession of love and devotion in a desperate scrawl rang louder than his own condemnation.

Javert poured blisteringly water over his chest from the ewer, sluicing it down, but it did not wash away the words from the letter. Where had Maes obtained the letter, Javert wondered? From Marius’ body, or Valjean’s, or perhaps even from Marius’ grandfather, if he had been questioned. Javert could not say. 

His hand drifted against the embroidered linen folded and hidden with his uniform on the chair, the handkerchief Cosette had made and had shyly given him after dinner the night before. He had pressed it to his brow in Maes’ chamber and had thought of her, of how her hand had worked on it, of how her needle had traced the vine. She had been anxious when first Javert had discovered her with it, but when she had offered it to him at last, her young lips had parted to receive his kiss. 

But now? Against the bright white sheen of the embroidered J now, Javert was keenly aware of Marius Pontmercy’s bloodied adoration and faithfulness signed, Your Marius.

Javert pulled his fingers away and plunged them beneath the bath water. She was a girl, nothing but a girl, with all her years before her. And he… what was he? Javert was a creaking bachelor with no kin, no fortune, no softness to offer. He, who had spent a half century of life in service of France and the law, who had known neither hearth nor tenderness. A snarling watchdog grown grey, tethered always to duty, sitting in a bath feeling burned by the ghost of a dead boy’s love-letter. 

Fool. Old fool.

The soap slipped from his hand. He caught it again and savagely dragged it across the hollow of his throat. Auguste Maes’s voice threaded back to him with its own silken insinuation after Javert had inquired about Maes’ unmarried son.

You never took a wife yourself, I am made to understand.

Javert’s lips curled back from his teeth in silent retort as he made his thigh cleaner than it had ever been. Perhaps Maes’s son was consumptive and would die soon enough. Perhaps he had a mistress, or he gambled a bit too much. Yet none of that mattered, because the boy was young, legitimate, the son of a Lillois bourgeois commissaire, with a notary’s income and his father’s purse besides. By mere accident of birth, he had all that Javert never had or would.

Javert’s angry scrub slowed and went still as his mind’s eye turned, against his will, to Brest. He had never seen a Romani fire, nor had he heard a proper lullaby in that tongue. He had entered the world behind stone walls, beneath the damp vault of the arsenal prison. His mother had been locked away there for fortune telling and as a vagabond, her skirts fouled with straw and lice. She had laboured in filth, and Javert’s very earliest days had been spent surrounded by beggars and whores and thieves. Beyond the wall the chained men of the galleys groaned at their irons. His father, he knew, had been one of them, but he had never known the man’s face; he was a number in the registers. 

That was Javert’s purse and inheritance: not land, not name, but wretchedness and chains and his mother’s skin.

What right, then, had he, to so much as think of pretty Cosette from the convent, left a fortune by Jean Valjean, who prayed like a saint and embroidered linen with neat, girlish diligence? He was a brutish old bastard. Better, far better, that she should wed the plain-faced notary son of a commissaire than touch the hand of a man born manacled.

Javert tossed the soap so that the water splashed a bit and muttered aloud, the sound rasping from deep in his throat: 

“Fool.” 

The word startled him as it broke the quiet. He sat for some time as the milky grey water cooled, ignoring the way he had reddened his skin raw by his own unforgiving hand. Javert stared at the soap floating about, lifeless, on the surface of the water, and finally dragged himself up from the bath with a violence of motion that set the tin to groaning.

He toweled himself dry briskly, refusing to linger even for a moment upon the reflection in the mirror. When he pulled it over his head, he found that his nightshirt clung too short against his shins and his dressing-gown seemed too perfumed. As he tied the sash, his jaw ground tight once more and the words of the letter returned, soft and damp insistent.

My beloved Cosette.

I die loving you.

Your Marius.

Javert stood very still, his large hands curling slowly into fists. He could not tell whether it was rage or despair or something more foreign and poisonous that pressed hardest on his chest. And he was not at all certain what compelled his feet out of the guest room and across the corridor to Cosette’s bedchamber, but he would not have been able for all the world to keep himself from knocking gently upon her door.

The sound of the rapping seemed to echo with violence in the sleeping house, and Javert worried that Toussaint would hear. For a moment, he thought - hoped - that Cosette would not stir and that he might flee unseen back into his solitude. But almost at once, there came the whisper of bare feet across floorboards from within her chamber, and the door drew inward and opened.

Cosette stood there in her nightgown, pale linen falling about her in simple lines to her ankles. A robe had been hastily half-tied about her waist, and in her hand she held a candlestick. The flame’s small circle of light gilded her braided hair and set her wide eyes to a dark glow. Surprise flickered across her face, yes, but it was brief and tempered almost at once, softening as though she had known on some unspoken level that this moment must one night come. Her lips parted faintly, and she spoke no question, only his name, breathed like one of her many prayers. “Javert.”

The sound of it in lieu of the titles she so often granted him staggered him. His throat closed and opened again before the words he had planned for her surged out, all of them heavy and irrevocable.

“This is folly,” he rasped. “You will despise me for it. Still, I cannot hide it. I love you, Cosette.”

The silence that fell between them then was almost unbearable. Javert stood in the doorway, looming, his body gone rigid, his chest heaving. Cosette did not answer. The flame of her candle trembled faintly, casting shifting shadows across the wall. Shame lanced him at once between his ribs. His cheeks went hot and his head bowed, his shoulder turning as if to retreat. He stumbled for speech as he began to leave, clawing for some scrap of dignity.

“I am no suitor,” he pressed on, his voice low, hurried, as though each syllable must be uttered before he fled. “Nor could I be. I am old, and coarse, and I am of nothing. And you… you are young, and beautiful. And there is, of course, the matter of the - of the guardianship, and I -” 

He licked his bottom lip as he faltered, helpless, his hand rising half an inch then falling limp at his side. “It would, of course, be far better for you to hear these words from -”

He could not finish. But then she moved. Cosette set her candlestick gently upon a table beside the door, and with her other hand she reached up, slowly and deliberately, and laid her palm against his chest. She had done this before; she had steadied herself by touching him here. Now it seemed, she was steadying him. Her fingers spread lightly across the fabric of his nightshirt, pressing against the rapid thrum of his heart.

Javert’s breath caught. The whole of him, from the marrow of his bones to his skin, went still beneath her touch, as if she had struck him into reverence.

Cosette lifted her wide eyes to his and her lips parted, and she let out a low, contented sigh. She drew a breath, soft but certain, and her words were a balm.

“How very safe you make me feel,” she murmured. “Will you come in?”

“Yes.” He nodded, and he shut the door behind him as he did.