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English
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Part 1 of People in Masks
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Les Misérables Kink Meme, This Fic is a Thesis Paper
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Published:
2013-05-09
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2013-05-10
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2/2
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Six-Fingered Man

Summary:

Five times Jean Valjean misunderstood what Javert was trying to say, and one time he understood all too clearly what Javert was trying to avoid saying.

Notes:

This was originally posted here on the kinkmeme, but it has since been cleaned and heavily revised.

Chapter 1: But You Never Heard, And You Never Heard

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

“Who says life is fair, where is that written?”
—William Goldman, The Princess Bride

1

“She will starve again unless you learn the meaning of the law.”

Valjean bristles, invisible hackles raising on the back of his neck where his prisoner’s collar used to rest, the anger of a man chained rising like bile within him.

Who is this man, with his starched coat and his steel eyes, his disdainful sneer, to tell him anything? Valjean is done taking orders. Valjean is done listening to men such as this who sneer and rant and rave, preach their moral superiority when they stand dry and safe along the walls of the bagne while the prisoners drown below in the storm and the spray and nineteen years of miscarried justice—

Valjean snarls and takes the yellow papers of parole, snatching them from the gloved hands of his jailer. Looking down, Valjean does not see the man’s expression, but this is no great loss. In his mind’s eye, Javert’s face is a line beneath two holes through which the world was emptied. Valjean has no need for his expressions. So of course, he does not catch the barest, most fleeting of moments when Javert’s face twitched, in irritation, in frustration.

Does not catch the muttered pejorative, “you stupid man.”

Valjean is too busy with freedom, too viciously pleased and stunningly hollow where his prime years should have been to take any stock of Javert, or his face.

2

“Excuse me sir, but have we met?”

Javert asks the question as a neutral thing, wearing the polite, slightly baffled curiosity of a man to whom mysteries are second-nature puzzles. Javert cannot possibly mean anything serious or dangerous by it, but still Valjean’s heart flies to life, nearly beating itself to death against the cage tailor-made for it from the mayor’s rib bones.

“Surely not,” Madeleine replies, forcing a smile around Valjean’s panic. “Your face is not a face I would forget, monsieur l’inspector.”

Javert’s face falls, contorting. The mayor takes it to be the expression of a man who does not know if he has been complimented or insulted and so turns about, trying to still the frantic beating of his convict’s heart.

When Madeleine looks back at Javert, he offers the inspector a smile out of forced habit and is surprised to see Javert tentatively return it. Javert’s face was not meant to wear expressions in Valjean’s mind and the experience unnerves him. A rosary is offered and an exit is proffered with the possibly unsubtle hint that Javert should see himself through it at the soonest polite opportunity.

Already in the mind of the mayor the old panic of Jean Valjean is transforming the undeniable presence of Javert and his inquiries into a titan of danger that threatens to uproot the world. In his mind’s eye, Valjean sees Javert as no more or less than the law made manifest in mortal form. There is no humanity to the man in his worldview. A collection of articles and a steel rod to wear them, Javert is marble as flesh, is steel sheathed in skin, and if he is possessed of a heart at all, it is stone. Valjean does not ascribe him feelings. He barely ascribes Javert humanity.

As such, neither Valjean nor the mayor he pretends to be notice the fleeting look of disappointment as it darts across Javert’s face, just as they had not caught the recognition that preceded it, nor the appraising glance that followed.

3

“Men like you can never change.”

Javert’s figure in the hospital is the punishment that Valjean had been prepared to accept. It was an uncomfortable truth that Valjean would face pursuit and probable arrest for his actions at Arras. Fantine’s death, too was regrettable, and truly unnecessary.

So no, the death of Fantine was not what Valjean had expected, but Javert crashing through the doorway was something he had been prepared for, no matter how he had dreaded it. But Javert’s words, perhaps, are more than Valjean had been willing to take.

“How dare you,” Valjean hisses as he stands from Fantine’s bedside. “You have killed this woman,” he declares lowly, “and yet you stand here speaking to me of men of crime—”

Sword at the ready, Javert lunges like a savaging wolf, the light glinting off the steel of his blade, his eyes, his handcuffs. Everything about the man is made of iron and Valjean hates, in this moment, the iron thing that the officer has become, has always been. Valjean has not hated so for years, and yet here it lies within him as it always has. If Madeleine could feel a convict’s fear than why not a convict’s rage?

Valjean raises a plank of wood to block Javert’s downward swipe and dances backward, his ears filled with blood and a storm that dashes all his thoughts to pieces.

Javert says; “I am from the gutter too,” and Valjean hears nothing, nothing at all but the rage and disgust. It is either his or Javert’s, and it no longer matters where one ends and the other begins. The hospital is too small to well weather the storm of their anger and Valjean fears the walls will not contain it at all. Beneath his skin a tempest bubbles; Valjean knows he will not forestall it long. Either he will kill Javert here, or Javert will kill him; there seems little ground for them to do otherwise— the hospital is shrinking in on them and a wall presses up against Valjean’s back, mere feet from the opened window through which sings the river.

Javert calls, “do not resist arrest,” and Valjean hears nothing of the betrayal; Madeleine is already out the window, falling to his death.

The water in the river is cold; it shocks from Valjean all attempts at recognition, but better still, it jolts all the anger from him, leaving only the clarity of his purpose. There is a child waiting for him. It would not do well to stall much longer. He has already waited many months.

In some ways, he feels as though he has been waiting many years.

Behind him, a face scowls from a window; the expression Valjean cannot see, freed at last from the name Madeleine, is one of a storm cloud, shattering. Even if he were to look it is hooded in shadow and clouded in rage, pain.

But Valjean does not look back. He has very little reason to.

4

“Halt!”

Javert calls out the singular imperative as Valjean scrambles out the window, but only the ex-convict hears him. Inside Valjean, the whispered remnants of 24601 rear at Javert’s order, roar at the very semblance of the command.

There is a part of Valjean that would like to call it audacity that Javert would order him still. They have been inferior and superior to one another in turn by the laws of society, no matter how they were subverted in each case. Valjean would like to think, by now, that they two men would have become equals beneath the watchful eye of their benevolent God. Surely He in all His wisdom would grant Valjean that much, but, alas, it seems that Javert still believes in the ultimate supremacy of his cause. If they are truly equals as Valjean would believe, Javert is of no mind to recognize this.

Yet again, Javert calls for him; “halt, damn you!” but Valjean is out the window once more by the time the second syllable has left the inspector’s mouth. Valjean trips as his feet touch ground, stumbling slightly from the pain of the injuries the Patron-Minette had bestowed upon him, as well as the burn of the brand he had pressed against himself. Behind him the Gorbeau tenement and the dangers inside disappear as Valjean bolts around a corner, and if there was desperation in Javert’s voice on the second call, well, Valjean did not hear it over the pounding of his own heart, the rush of blood quickened in his ears.

‘Let Javert handle the villains,’ Valjean thinks to himself as he dashes through the midnight streets of Paris, ‘surely he has the skill enough for ones such as them.’

And while Valjean is right, he is still too quick to put the encounter from his mind, to shove away and forget the recognition he had caught once more in the eyes of his near-lifelong pursuer. Not long after the Patron-Minette are led away, Javert stands at the sill of the window through which Valjean had escaped, and looks over the city that stretches out below him. The expression on the officer’s face is pensive, nearly wistful and the frown he wears beneath searching steel is a habitual thing, seen most often in the presence of one singular man.

Not, of course, that Valjean has ever noticed it. His preoccupation with Javert is of the man as a hunting hound, and what use would a dog have for such a thing as an expression? What regrets could it have save the failure to seize its prey?

Valjean has long been a man of mercy, but perceptiveness, it is apparent, has never been his forte.

5

“Why?”

The question is one of anguish. Valjean mistakes it in what Javert fails to say, the open participle dangling off the end of his choked-out inquiry prods at something in Valjean. But still, he does not see. He has never seen, this man of mercy, this beggar who gave alms yet joined the national guard to seek his own purpose. For all Valjean has turned his eyes to God he has been a blind man, before, then, and since, and every time missed the thing he most needed to look for.

Valjean looks at Javert and all he can see is the absence of his uniform and the place where his hat should be resting. It is hard to imagine Javert without his effects; his face without them is nothing so much as an afterthought, or the mannequin that wears them. Valjean looks at Javert and sees nothing; blood at the temples and a missing coat, the place at his side where his hands twitch for a sword or a pistol, but nothing human, nothing live.

Javert stares back at him and the steel in his eyes is breaking like a blade too often tested, or a bell too often rung. The lever has pressed too hard against the world. It is not that the force has been insufficient, rather that the weight was too much to lift and as such it is breaking him. If Javert has been the firm place to stand all these years, then now circumstances are that the ground is now moving underneath him; his footing is lost and the look in his eyes screams that it shall never be recovered, and yet.

And, of course, still Valjean does not see. He never has and perhaps he never will. There are a countless many mysteries to a man, and some may stay buried no matter how God may seek to have them uncovered. For all that they wear so much on their sleeves it seems that for these two men such accords may never be witnessed. Valjean and Javert have long been enigmas to one another for all that we the readers may know their minds, perhaps better than they know themselves. But fate has consigned these two to their differences, it seems. For all the things they share a gulf has been made wide between them by years and by ignorance.

To see the standing staring from both ends, it would appear as there was no crossing it all.

“Clear out of here,” Valjean mutters, heedless of the anguish on his once-captive’s face, noting first the blood drying at Javert’s temple, the rawness at his throat for all the rope has been cut away.

It is strange to him, to have Javert in his power once more. This is more visceral than Montreuil-sur-Mer ever was; for Valjean, having the man so at his feet now is a thousand times worse than Javert’s ill-fated confession. Valjean cannot name why, but just as it ached to be looked down upon by Javert when he himself was in chains, reversing their positions is nearly intolerable. Valjean can hardly bear it for all the strength in his shoulders, and the wrongness of their situation is crawling beneath his skin like so many ants. Valjean feels the hand of God in this moment, but he cannot discern its shadow.

“Why?!” Javert asks again, and he is louder this time, but Valjean is too—

“Clear out of here!” He shouts, and the barking gunshot that follows is hardly louder at all, snapping at Javert’s heels to make him falter-pause before he goes dashing away. And still, the silence that follows after the shot is worse, ringing in Valjean’s ears like a tidal wave and the quieting of all the blood in his veins.

This time, finally, Valjean looks. But Javert has turned away. There is nothing to see but a retreating man and his uneven steps upon the pavement. Slick with blood as it is, perhaps the falter can be forgiven.

Later, in the carriage ride, Javert is composed. His uniform has returned, hat and greatcoat replaced with the pistol he is careful not to point at Valjean’s chest. His steps are sure, his pace is even and his spine is stiff once more, for all that it is overly so.

Upon reaching their destination, Valjean deposits Marius inside. Returning to the window Valjean sees the last echoes of a hat, the tattered tails of a singed greatcoat, yet nothing of the iron spine that wore them.

Valjean’s feet cannot carry him down the steps quick enough, and so he jumps them, limbs crashing painfully on the ground of the landing, the full weight of his years juddering through Valjean’s frame to pound down with the force of all every day heaped upon it. The door he throws open, and the sound of it is like a gunshot on the wall behind him yet still Valjean cannot see.

By the time he takes at last to the streets once more, Javert is far beyond him, and Valjean cannot catch so much as a glimpse.

Notes:

The title, the chapter titles, and the opening lines to each chapter are all truncated quotes off of William Goldman's The Princess Bride, which really is fantastic and if you haven't read the book or watched the movie, you should go do that now. I'll wait.

Chapter 2: Hear This Now:

Notes:

(See the end of the chapter for notes.)

Chapter Text

“Please consider me an alternative to suicide.”
— William Golding, The Princess Bride

+ 1

At first, there is silence. The river roars, the blood in Valjean’s ears roars, and echoing off the city walls he can still hear shouts and gunshots, the dying cries of the failed revolution. But between them, Valjean to Javert who in his greatcoat stands as a single line perpendicular to the bridge, there is silence, all-encompassing and deep, thick with time and violence.

There is an air of the ritual, here, and Valjean’s first foot upon the bridge makes it the air of a ritual breaking, some sacred, personal thing trespassed. He remembers, suddenly, having been Madeleine, the day a thermometer fell in his office, knocked from the desk by a careless hand. The ornament had rung, bell-like, a fall of noise like rain. Every sound of glass had been an individual blade, but rolling in between them were a thousand beads of silver mercury, which was solid until it was not, liquid until it decided to be otherwise. The glass had pricked Madeleine’s finger when he reached to lift it off the ground, but it had been the mercury that was hardest to retrieve, thin streams and single spheres rolling away to pool in the floorboards just where his hands could not find them. Javert looks at him and Valjean thinks perhaps that he was wrong, that Javert’s eyes were never steel, never iron, only quicksilver and now that his shape has broken he is ready to fly apart, fluid back into the Seine.

“Ah,”

The sound slips rounded and smooth from Javert’s mouth like a stone into a stream, barely rippling the night that reaches out to swallow them both. The word itself is nearly lost in the rush of the Seine below them, and yet Valjean feels it weighing down atop his breast all the same. Even from the end of the bridge the implications are deafening; Valjean cannot hear his heart at all. Perhaps it has stopped completely.

Weighed against the rest of his past, Valjean’s heart is quick to return the verdict: Javert on the parapet is the most singularly frightening thing to ever happen to him.

The chase is not meant to stop. The hound cannot simply give up. There is no backing down from this, there is not bowing out. In the sewers Valjean gave his address with a purpose. He is done making bargains that Javert will never take; he is tired of asking for time, and asking for time, and getting nothing, nothing in return, only a frown and a severe expression, a rejection of his mercies. There in the sewers Valjean was prepared to lose, to give Javert this final long-sought victory. Valjean at last was tired of running, and yet Javert’s retreating figure spurred him more, sent him flying from the house and now to here, where for the first time Javert is still, and his spine suggests a curve, the iron rod broken and bent.

‘A life for a life,’ Valjean had thought in the sewers, and he was not sure, now or then if he had meant himself for the boy, or some other bargain that he had no name for.

Javert fingers his hat where it sits on the barrier railing, and the motion gives Valjean pause in his advance down the Pont au Change. Javert removes his handcuffs from his pockets with a sense of purpose that transmits clearly across the bridge and Valjean’s blood turns to ice, the first inklings of knowledge trickling in where before there was only suspicion and ignorance. Javert puts his handcuffs on the railing and recognition at last sends a bolt of chill running through Valjean’s veins faster than he can bolt down the bridge length, exhaustion forgotten in the wake of that look he himself once turned upon his irons, the remembered face of a man who puts aside a sword only to mishandle a knife.

Valjean knows, he knows, at last where he was always ignorant he has seen truth now, and his failure to see nearly blinds him, catching the man all up in his failures, real and perceived as so often they do. But the fact remains that Valjean has seen such a look on broken men before, in the glass windows of the bishop’s home and in the eyes of the men in his chain-gang before an execution was called.

Javert, it seems, is human after all. If the man was ever marble, ever stone, he has shattered with the quaking of the earth beneath his chiseled feet, which perhaps were not carved already in well-worn boots as Valjean had always supposed. The look Javert wears in wind-stung gray eyes is one of abject helplessness, and in Valjean’s recognition of it a thousand other memories are sparked, the recollection of other faces Javert has worn in his presence springing to mind, this time for the first time.

If Javert can wear this expression, surely he has worn others. If Javert can be human, what else did Valjean fail to see—

Javert falls and the only reason that Valjean does not scream is because the air has been driven from his lungs as if by an unseen fist, his convict's heart shattered, anger shredded on the wind.

Javert hits the water with stiff slap of noise, a sharp crack of bones on stone audible even from the bridge. The sound is a death-knell; it is the bell rung at the end of an age. In the face of that terrible sound, the dive after Javert is nothing. The ache in Valjean’s bones, the near-failure of his body after the Barricades are mere annoyances in the rush of adrenaline that floods his tired system— none of that matters, or even so much as registers. Adrenaline floods his system and drives him to a dead run, reaching speeds that Valjean has not had cause to reach in years. Valjean vaults the parapet the way he once scaled a church wall, how he twice exited two separate windows, once before into a different river, and in every case doing so to avoid the man he seeks out now.

Jean Valjean has been running from Javert his life entire; how fitting that he should run towards him in the end.

Valjean hits the water like a canon shot or the crackling of ice over a dark lake. Perhaps this second comparison is the most apt save in its suggestion of stillness, or of stillness broken. The Seine is alive and the chill of river is a thing with teeth; it sinks fangs into Valjean’s bones, gnaws at the strings of muscle around his heart.

Blinking the water from his eyes as his head breaches the surface, Valjean seeks one figure alone, always alone, but the night is dark and pressing. Come to sleep, it whispers, singing in the river cold, aren’t you tired, sir? How easy it would be to rest here, to give up as Valjean not hours ago had wanted to. He may no longer smell of shit, but this river is the Seine; there is no baptism here, no absolution.

Drop your head here and surely you will drown, or so says the common wisdom of Parisians. The Seine is no more or less than the final resting place of so much of France’s refuse; all the wastes of Paris eventually make their way downstream. The sewers, naturally, empty here. For Valjean to go missing here in pursuit of Javert would be fitting, so often has he disappeared trying to flee him. Besides, should they not go down together? For all that it is spring the cold of the water addles his mind, and Valjean finds it hard to fight, the stars above strange and ponderous, moonlight casting wrongful shapes upon the banks that seem a world away at the edges of his vision.

And yet— and yet.

At last Valjean catches sight of him; a silver-black head matted down by water and the imprint of a hat. Javert bobs above the water once, twice, then he is gone. Valjean’s thoughts restart in his head as the cold is chased out by a determination born of fear and time. Fighting the current, he chases after Javert, but the man sinks like a stone.

Diving, Valjean nearly loses Javert in the dark multiple times but nonetheless he perseveres, pushing forward through the ripping current, navigating as best he can by the light of the fell moon above them. But the rays are ephemeral and do not pierce the water well for all they may ensnare men in the world above.

Javert falls through the Seine in a dance that is only half-lit and poorly choreographed. His arms turn about him as his hair makes a parody of a halo, strands fanning out in the dim light to be pierced by moonbeams as arrows. His coat is gone; his shirt untucked from his trousers. This is Javert undone, and every loose end the water pulls at, grasping hands that tug in every direction, seeking to own, and to drown.

And still, he sinks.

Valjean does not know how far down they have fallen when he catches the man at last, only that the light is nearly gone when Valjean at last finds himself at Javert’s level.

He had thought that Javert had passed unconscious, but no, Valjean reaches out for him and finds steel eyes still open. Javert appears to see nothing, eyes half-lidded as he surveys the dark, but when Javert at last looks at him, Valjean sees a flash of recognition and the ghost of a smile once seen in a factory, some shadow of a satisfaction so grim as to be morbid. Javert’s eyes slip closed after that, and now at last the indomitable line presented in his spine has been broken; Javert hangs in the water as if now suspended from the noose he wore about his neck.

Valjean grabs him about the waist and kicks upwards powerfully, streaming towards the air as best he can despite the awkward burden Javert’s towering frame represents and the tangling difficulty of his loosened greatcoat. He is strong, yes, but Valjean’s strength means nothing in the water now. The Seine takes what she is given, and is jealous to let her treasures go. Weakened by the night and everything it has contained, Valjean falters, falling in the light that sinks through the water, changing on the broken patterns of the surface. Wide and hanging, the moon is visible from here but the stars are not. Faintly, Valjean hears the Notre Dame call midnight, her bells tolling dull and expansive through the water that fills his ears.

Against his arms, Valjean feels the thudding beat of Javert’s human heart; he has one after all, and the realization is stunning. But the doubletime tempo is for all its violence grinding to a halt as it throws itself against the inspector’s ribcage; he is a clock winding down, an hourglass running out. Javert is not bleeding, but he is, he is— there is no blood in the water but there is iron all around, leaking from every inch of the inspector’s frame. The water is thick with it and though the Seine is clear enough for light to fall, at the corner of his mouth Valjean tastes blood nonetheless.

Pushed on by newfound desperation, Valjean’s white head breaks the surface fleetingly; cresting up on a kick he gulps a breath of life giving air, his lungs burning from the smell of the Seine as it falls somewhat into his lungs. Then he is down again, Javert’s weight and his own pulling Valjean under once more. But eventually Valjean gains a tenuous equilibrium and begins to kick towards the river’s bank. Javert’s form is limp and unresponsive in his arms as Valjean does his best to turn the man’s face from the water, hoping his body’s stubborn instinct will drive him to breathe. But hope aside, Valjean cannot deny that Javert feels like a corpse. But Valjean had seen the way Javert’s spine curved when he jumped— there is more broken here than bones alone.

Standing at the edge of the bridge, Javert was archangel cut from the stars themselves. Javert had made some choice, and with it fallen, hell obligingly opened up to catch him in the form of the river below the parapet. Arms stretched out wide, the trail of his greatcoat had been the outline of his wings before the water tore them off, casting the coat out into the water to dangle from his arms, barely held by hands that had always clutched. Valjean fears that if he lives, he will be seeing that silhouette for the rest of his life.

Faintly, the thought strikes Valjean as if heard shouted from far away; the trick of Javert is not the inspector’s redemption alone.

Depositing the both of them on the bank at last, Valjean claws up through the silt as he shakes the river off, his whole frame shaking from cold and exhaustion as he turns back for Javert , gasping lungfulls of fetid air as it wafts off the Seine. Though Valjean drags him up the bank, the greatcoat at last slipping into the water, ruined with mud and Seine, still Javert does not move. For a moment Valjean suspects he is a corpse after all, the inspector just dead as he accused Marius of being, and the notion that he has failed both the lives he set out to save tonight is intolerable to Valjean, swamping him with guilt.

But, no, a pulse— Valjean reaches for Javert and grabs for the man’s jaw, locating the weak beat of the heart Valjean had never before suspected until this night.

Abandoning that proof of life (and loathe is he to do so), Valjean frantically presses at Javert’s shirted chest, trying to recall what he knew, years ago from necessity in Toulon when a man’s life or death depended on his fellows’ ability to save him from drowning. Once, twice, fall the hammer blows of folded hands as Valjean seeks to drive the poisoned water from Javert’s lungs. Javert fails to wake still, and his lips now turn blue in the light of the moon, either from cold or anoxia.

In Amsterdam there exists a reputable practice of blowing tobacco smoke into the nose to revive a drowning man, but Valjean has no tobacco, or even a match with which to light some should it be magically procured. Instead he is left with his own hands and the air he presses into Javert’s water-filled lungs.

Prying apart Javert’s blue-toned lips, Valjean finds them cold and stiff, thin bloodless things that yield when Valjean breathes out into him, pinching the Javert’s nose shut to aid the process of the transfer of air. Valjean breathes, once, twice, then relents, sucking in a breath of his own before returning his attention to a chest that did not rise. With hands overlaid Valjean thrusts in a careful rhythm, trying to keep from panic, counting the blows as best he can before once more blowing air into Javert’s lungs. This time Javert’s chest rises from the borrowed air, yet there is still a persistent wetness to him that Valjean wishes he could not taste.

When Valjean's hands brush accidentally against Javert’s ribs, he feels the break at last, the crack waiting in his bones. Valjean must press too hard in his investigations, for suddenly Javert bolts up, vomiting only to cry out in pain, spasming as he falls back to the ground. Something, it seems, is wrong with his spine as well as with his ribs.

‘The pain must be immense,’ Valjean realizes, a sound that is impossibly like a whimper escaping Javert as he tries to curl inwards on himself. To spare him as best he can, Valjean moves quickly to immobilize Javert, pressing the man down by the shoulder before carefully turning him to face the riverside silt. Javert breathes in harshly through is nose for two breaths before he vomits what seems like half the Seine back to its home. Bile streams from his mouth, tears springing to his eyes at the bite of acid, or else from the agony that radiates up his spine.

Javert weak is and has always been an ugly thing, and this is no exception. The smell of bile quickly rises to overwhelm the stench of the Seine, mingling with the refuse of the city as the night folds in around them, the spring moon shining full and odd over Paris. For several minutes Javert coughs, retching until he is empty. And truly, empty is the right word; when Javert ceases he ceases entire, his whole body coming to rest, his spine still curved from the pain of trying to hold itself still despite its injury. If it were not for the rattle of his breath and the fain movement of his chest, Valjean would think Javert had slipped back into unconsciousness.

Except— Valjean reaches out to touch Javert again, to assure himself once more of the impossible reality of the man’s pulse, only to be stopped by Javert’s voice, horrifically tired and strangely exasperated, the man sounds as though he has swallowed gravel;

“Valjean, I presume.”

Valjean startles, flinching violently in his own skin, pulling his hand back in haste as if burned. Never has Javert called him by his own name before this night. Not once, in all these many years. The sound of two syllables should not be enough to rock Valjean off his axis completely, but yet, here they are. Valjean has always been ‘the prisoner,’ or ‘the mayor,’ never simply a man, never his true name. To be fair, Valjean has not heard his own name spoken aloud for decades. There is no one to call him by it. So to hear his name fall from Javert’s lips is strange, shocking, the fact that Javert says it at all almost moreso than the way that he says it; weary and resigned, matter-of-fact as though Valjean has never been called anything else.

Eyes still closed, Javert forces the words from Seine-purged lungs; “Merde, you bastard, could you possibly be so kind as to let me die in peace—” Javert chokes out the words with a bite of desperation, coughing hard before letting loose a snarl of impotent rage behind which terror and despondency lurk. In the moonlight such things are shadows on the cracked glass behind which it appears that Javert has always kept his humanity. It is a barrier Valjean has only now noticed the existence of, and beneath his hands that are fisted in Javert’s ruined shirt, Valjean can feel the fever of it, the violence of the thing that has been brought to the surface of Javert, the thrumming heart of the man. For Javert is a man now; Valjean has watched the air rise from his lungs, has seen him bleed, has felt the living heart of him.

Javert is not stone, and to see him now, curled in against himself on the bank of the Seine, Valjean wonders how he ever could have mistaken him so.

“I will call a fiacre,” Valjean says shakily, because he can do no else. The words Javert says to him are alien; he understands— he understands and desperately he wishes that he did not, but Valjean can no longer consign himself to ignorance, no matter how he tries. As it is he can barely stand; where would he find the energy to lie to himself once more?

Once his feet are under him, Valjean sucks in a greedy lungful of air, not minding the stink; how had he not noticed the heaviness of his own breath before now? His legs seek to fail him as he climbs the embankment, but a fiacre is hailed, the last of his money spent to ensure that the driver will wait for Valjean to return with “a friend.”

The appellation is strange in his mouth; only hours ago (a lifetime ago) he had claimed Javert as an enemy. Now Valjean is not sure what they are to each other. Twice now he has saved Javert; and twice Javert has let him go. The world stands on her head tonight, all her maps and borders redrawn where once they were so well known. The ground beneath his feet is unstable, and Valjean stumbles as he reaches the river once more, almost toppling over onto Javert in his exhaustion.

Lifting Javert from the bank, Valjean fears he has killed him. The sound he lets loose upon the jostling of his bones is a groan, deep and terrible, dragged from the pit of this man. Valjean would lift Javert as he carried Marius, but the man is too tall, and his injuries too severe. Valjean fears he would only damage him further to bend his spine so, and must instead make do carrying Javert up the embankment as if he were a wounded comrade, dragging him alongside, one arm thrown over Valjean’s shoulder. Never before has Valjean felt the full weight of a man, not even in the life or death of Marius; Javert is a weight all his own, and through both their soaked shirts Valjean can feel his heartbeat, slow and faltering in the night.

In the fiacre, Valjean lays Javert out along his lap, doing his best to keep his ribs and spine level, though at every hole in the road or jolt of the carriage Javert’s face contorts, his permanent frown deepening with pain. Javert’s eyes are shut. His spine is broken. The fight is out of him like a lantern blown out, and to see someone like Javert, a fighter to the core without his iron backbone is to have put out the sun.

Valjean finds he cannot remove his gaze from Javert’s face, now that at least he has chance to look without fear of pursuit. He is afraid, still, yes, but this fear is different, save for how it isn’t. Javert’s existence has always been to take things from Jean Valjean. Only now, it is not his freedom, his safety, his daughter, his life. By attempting to secure him the rest Javert has nearly robbed Valjean of a thing he did not know he cared about. To lose Javert now is intolerable, and the fear is a living thing in the carriage with them, curled up on the seat across from where they sit.

“Kill me,” Javert says to him, perhaps feeling Valjean’s eyes on his face. He does not even muster the energy to demand, any longer. It is not a plea, not quite. It is barely a request. Just a hope, just an absence of a question for a man who has tired of mysteries. Javert simply lays the words out as they are, sounds and nothing more save for the meaning implicit in the tones they lack.

“Do not ask this of me,” Valjean replies. His own voice shakes with all the fury of a tempest, and all the fear of the newly damned, or the recently saved. “Anything, but do not ask this of me.”

Javert cracks an eye and Valjean startles once more. The shutters on the windows to Javert’s soul have been blown straight off, and the pieces that remain of his defenses are crumbling on the wind, visibly falling in the end of the gale. Valjean could not abandon Javert now if he tried.

“You will have to fight death for my soul, then,” Javert says, a great resignation etched in his very soul, his words a rumble in his chest, “I would wish you luck, but you have never needed it.”

After that, Javert slips into unconsciousness once more, and does not wake for days.

Notes:

Oops the plus one was more than the length of the rest of the fic combined. I totally didn’t mean to do that, but there was just a lot more to it that needed to happen. Also, I got caught up in the rescue having just finished my lifeguard recertification tests, which was definitely a huge inspiration for this. Also the part where I told myself that if I ever wrote a Seine fic, I’d be as accurate about it as I could get, so there’s that.

And on that note, everything from the Seine rescue sequence comes straight out of lifeguard training I have taken, rescues I have performed, and actual resuscitation practices that existed at the time of cannon. All the first aid came out of training I have taken, and anything I haven’t done myself I googled. If you spot something wrong, TELL ME. I will not be upset if you tell me. I WILL THANK YOU PROFUSELY, THEN FIX IT.

On that note, Valjean has no tobacco on him or even a way to light it; otherwise, I totally would have found a way to write in the practice where they used to use a bellows to blow tobacco smoke up a dude’s rectum to write the world’s weirdest rimming fic. For you see, Valjean also has no bellows. What else but his lips? And yes, this is in fact a thing that existed. You can even wiki it. In Amsterdam they would do it to force a dude to either wake and/or vomit up the water he swallowed because it was such a powerful irritant to the bowels that it would cause violent reactions like that. God I love enlightenment Europe. Crazy bitches all around, and they made no apologies. The other way to save a dude according to them was bloodletting, but everything was bloodletting, so perhaps this is unsurprising. But they did understand the necessity of breathing barriers though! So good on you 18th century Amsterdam. Good on you.

On a related note, CPR is neither Clean, Pretty or Reliable no matter what Hollywood says, so I tried to make the descriptions of it as realistically disgusting as I could get it without having to be gratuitous, or having Valjean break Javert's ribs as opposed to the fall doing it for him. Enjoy the vomiting.

As for how quickly Javert slips unconscious, it only takes 60 seconds for someone to drown.

As for why someone as strong as Valjean falters on the rescue, I can attest to say that dragging a man larger than you is always difficult, especially in situations where a large current exists. When you have no flotation device and are trying to reach the surface this way, it gets a lot harder. Put all this together with the search and the dive, which was done head down, not as a feet-first-surface that would have saved energy, Valjean would be understandably tired and out of breath by the time he reached the surface. No matter how strong he is, rescues have just as much to do with endurance, which is also harder in cold water. Plus, when you have to actively search for someone in dark water with shit visibility, quite literally in the case of the Seine, you tend to run out of air even faster, so there’s that too.

And all of the above taken into account, Valjean still did the rescue wrong. Javert’s got a head-neck-or-back injury, as evidenced by his loss of consciousness and the sound he made falling off the bridge. In situations like that, the rescue procedure is way more involved, and needs equipment he simply wouldn’t have had access to in this time period or scenario, being both alone and in 19th century France. Simply put, if this weren’t a fic, Valjean could have seriously fucked Javert over worse fishing him out of the river that way after the man already broke his spine.

Did I think too hard about this rescue? Yes. Yes I did. Do I care? No. No I don’t. I totally didn’t mean to turn these notes into an abridged copy of the Red Cross lifeguarding manual, but there we go. I can now file lifeguarding under the list of things what I thought I’d never use for slash fic.

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