Chapter Text
“Life is pain, Highness. Anyone who says differently is selling something.”
William Goldman, The Princess Bride
On the first night, Valjean thinks that he is going to die. The feeling that plagues him is more than exhaustion; Valjean does not know if there exists a word for the way that his body seeks rest. Every fiber of his being wants nothing more than to stop , and still there is work to be done.
The fiacre deposits them at Rue de l'Homme-Armé No. 7, Valjean’s promise fulfilled in circumstances far worse than what he had originally imagined when he first offered the Javert his address. Valjean takes Javert here because he cannot think of anywhere else for to go; introducing Javert to Cosette would create more problems than it would solve, and the mere thought of leaving Javert to the anonymous care of a hospital was at once horrifying and viscerally intolerable. Further, Valjean is certain that the hospitals are full, stuffed beyond bursting with the revolution's martyrs and victims alike.
Needing to assess Javert’s injuries, Valjean fumbles at the buttons of his sodden shirt before he gives up and resorts to simply cutting it away. The knife in his hand flickers as he drags it too close to Javert’s chest; it cannot have been so few hours ago that he cut Javert free with this knife the last time. Javert is asleep and still Valjean can hear the reproach in a voice that is not there:
How right, how right—
Valjean banishes the thought with a practiced mental hand. It does not go so quietly as he is used to, lingering in the corners of the suddenly too-small room, waiting patient with the shadows.
Javert’s ruined shirt falls to the ground with a wet slap. With it goes an unexpected clacking peal of beads; something in his breast pocket dropped by a careless hand to ring upon the floor. Valjean leans awkwardly to investigate the sound, his back and knees protesting his own weight. Reaching to the floor, hands questing blindly in the shadow of his own frame, Valjean finds an old jet rosary, the beads worn by time and use.
Valjean’s heart thuds a painful, extra beat, stumbling in his chest. Javert kept the rosary. Why in God’s name did Javert keep the rosary? Obviously it means something for Javert to have kept it so long, so close, tucked neatly into the pocket above his heart. Strange that something so small could signify so much. Was it penance? A reminder of his failures? This last comes closest to his picture of the man, but Valjean is done making assumptions and so pockets the rosary before adding it to the growing list of questions that he will ask Javert when he wakes.
Because Javert will wake; Valjean has very little doubt that Javert is stubborn enough to live.
If anything his body is a testament to this; Javert’s chest is a mess of old scars and more recent bruises, the damage the Seine has wreaked already beginning to bloom livid along his torso, though Valjean suspects they will be more brilliant come morning. Probing carefully at his patient Valjean finds a veritable trove of old injuries; a few bullet wounds, puckered and raised, a few cuts, some long, some shallow. The story of Javert’s life and work is written in his skin. The canvas he presents paints a picture of recklessness tempered by just enough luck and caution to keep him alive. The number of infections Javert must have fought before surely are numbered as many as half his bullet wounds; Valjean is faintly surprised that Javert has lived to see this point despite his lifestyle.
Questing carefully, Valjean eventually finds the break, a nasty fracture he is quick to leave alone as Javert cries out in his sleep. Valjean removes his hands from Javert’s skin as if burned and prays that a doctor can be summoned soon. This is an injury Valjean does not know how to treat.
Wrestling Javert as carefully as he can into one of his own shirts, Valjean leaves it unbuttoned, his fingers quaking too much from exhaustion for him to manage.
After that, sleep claims him, slinking through the window, roiling soft as fabric as it covers his eyes. His own clothes are slick and wet on his skin, but Valjean’s bones are as led and he knows he is unable to handle the buttons, much less the knife he would need to cut himself free. Collapsing in the armchair he drags bodily to Javert’s bedside, Valjean finds unconsciousness to be like sinking, like being crushed by a cart, slowly, only the ending comes as a relief.
The last thought he has before he sleeps is that this is what Valjean imagines drowning to be like.
On the second night, Valjean dreams of the abyss, the picture dark and troubled, void of color and of light, shot through only by a vicious clarity.
Impaled by a swath of white that only serves to highlight the black, Javert hangs suspended before him once more, now resplendent in his working finery, all his artifice replaced, though around his neck, a noose. Javert’s hair is queued neatly, his hat set above it. At his side: his silver sword and his iron cane, on his hands stiff leather gloves. Javert’s whole greatcoat suggests wings but the noose around his neck is instead an anchor, is instead a pair of silver cuffs, is instead Valjean's own convict's hands, the irons welded into his wrists thick and heavy, trailing away to drag them both down into a greater darkness that waits empty with too many teeth.
Both their hands are tied with Javert’s beads, stretched out to mingle with Valjean’s chains, the cross hanging between them as a waysign for the damned.
Under Valjean's hands Javert's spine snaps, his bones breaking the skin in a way they logically shouldn't, the wound opening like a knife slice. Blood pours out with every human pulse, black and oily on Valjean's skin as his fingers press deeper, wrap tighter; he is, it seems, still possessed of the convict's need to break. Valjean grinds his bones to dust and Javert only smiles at him through colorless eyes, thin lips curved up and dripping with blood. Javert moves to say something, or else Valjean leans in; Javert's lips brush his but his breath is rancid with iron, and Valjean's muted senses bloom rotten with the taste of someone else's unwelcome mercy.
He startles awake at that, panting, frightening, gasping for all the air he can take into his lungs. For all that Javert’s labored breathing is still the loudest sound in the room Valjean still feels blood beneath his fingertips, his palms itching with the way a man’s bones could snap like twigs in his hands. His ears are ringing with that sound, and he knows he did not imagine it, his mind handily supplying the noise form Javert’s fall from the bridge, simply shifting the location of the broken bones. Wrapped around his fingers is Javert’s old jet rosary; Valjean turns it over in his hands but the repetitive motion brings anything but peace.
He swallows once in pain as he tries to control his heartbeat, pressing a hand to a jaw clenched tight, aching and strangely painful. Probing at it his discomfort with a finger, Valjean finds that he had bitten a hole in his tongue, his mouth full of blood. Returning his hand to the rosary in his lap, Valjean curls and uncurls his fists, testing the motion almost unconsciously as he turns the beads. He can still feel Javert’s bones snapping, and though he knows his hands are dry of any blood but his own, Valjean can still feel the wet grit of Javert’s life beneath his fingernails, lingering and in the creases of his palms.
Valjean had so much wanted to break him, once. Now the thought of Javert broken makes Valjean physically ill. Valjean looks to Javert shattered in the bed and wants again to check his pulse, but at the same time Valjean desperately fears to touch him, his hands still wet with blood.
Sitting on the armchair Valjean watches Javert's uneasy slumber, counting each rise and fall of his chest, waiting for his heartbeat to slow. It is dark still but the night is drawing at last to a close, and Valjean knows that there is little hope of falling asleep again for all that his bones still ache with exhaustion. Dozing, Valjean waits the night while Javert breathes an uneven, choking rhythm, his lungs still sounding thick with fluid. Valjean should attend, but Javert still breathes and he is altogether too tired to move. Further, there is something about the man when he sleeps that Valjean is unwilling to disturb or think about at much length given the state of his own dreams.
It takes the sun breaking on the long overdue morning to bring Valjean from his fugue, the light and the appearance of Javert’s beastly cough startling him to action. For a moment, Valjean is afraid to touch him. Then he finds that Javert’s coughs are bringing more than air; they are dredging up foul phlegm tinged red with blood, and his irrational panic is sequestered beneath a far more immediate one. The Seine still has her frozen claws in Javert and Valjean cannot seem to keep him warm. The fire blazes in the hearth and still Javert's face is wet with sweat and tears from the fevered nightmares that plague him.
That whole day he spends frantic, praying once more for a doctor, this time sending the housekeeper out to fetch one; she returns empty-handed but agrees to help draw a bath.
Valjean goes to clean Javert and finds that he is afraid to touch him, hands shaking on the warmed cloth. He does his best but Valjean is sure he botches it; this is the second shirt he has ruined with water, and the Seine does not wash away easy.
Valjean’s hands itch where they touch skin, burning from the contact he irrationally feels that he has stolen.
Valjean bathes himself after that, drawing the water himself so as not to bother the housekeeper any longer. Sitting naked in the moonlight through the window, Valjean lingers until the water is cold; he shakes and shakes and still smells blood. No, the Seine does not wash away easy.
Valjean is beginning to suspect it will not wash away at all.
On the third night, the doctor arrives at last, drawn away from the crowded hospitals by a promise of pay and a man with desperate injuries.
Valjean would feel bad of the lie, but it is a small one. When the doctor comes Valjean pays him what he asks for and half as much again; he realizes somewhere in the back of his mind that there is no amount he would not pay to see Javert healthy. The thought does not disquiet Valjean as much as it should.
With Javert still unconscious, Valjean must lift him as the doctor assesses his injuries, the injured man disturbingly limp in Valjean’s hold, his skin hot enough with fever to be felt through the ill-fitting shirt that Valjean had put him in.
The doctor is efficient, distant; he treats Javert with the practice of a battlefield surgeon, economic in his movements as he divines in bone and muscle. Quickly it is determined that Javert’s ribs truly are broken, though this is no surprise to anyone with a pair of eyes in their head. What does come as a surprise to the doctor, at least, is that the broken ribs have not pierced the skin; Javert’s injuries on that count are quite dire. Three of his ribs are fractured, one is broken outright though the break is clean. As for the spine, it too has broken, though not nearly so dire as the fractures in Javert’s ribs. There Javert is merely cracked, the bones bruised in the fall, not truly sheared, a small mercy that Valjean is desperately grateful for.
As for Javert’s cough, the Seine is to blame, Javert’s lungs fighting an infection. It is, in fact water he coughs, or something close to it. Even though Javert had seemingly vomited all the Seine Valjean dreged up with him back into the river, an infection of some sort has settled into Javert’s lungs. The doctor informs Valjean that the fever Javert is burning with is meant to drive out the infection; at first Valjean bristles at the doctor’s condescending tone, then he is reminded of Fantine, one cough conjuring another as his past stares him in the face.
Panic, it seems, is to be his state of being for the next several days. This, too, is fitting and Valjean resolves himself to it, squaring his wide shoulders under the weight. He has panicked on Javert’s account before. He is familiar with this emotion and all it brings, knows how to best harness it. True, Valjean has never been afraid for him before, but that does not need to take his knees out from under him unless he allows it to.
Or so he thinks. Doubt creeps in like water, and is just as hard to banish.
Valjean used to be good with his hands, had a fair understanding of how broken things could be repaired, but Javert is human, not some object that can be fixed. The reality is, quite simply, that Valjean is afraid to touch him. He is afraid that should he try, Javert will slip through his fingers like so much mercury, or else he will crack in Valjean's hands, spine breaking under skin the way it did in his dreams. Shuddering Valjean clenches his fists and tries to ignore the phantom devastation crawling across his palms, the tang of iron in his mouth.
Valjean no longer trusts his senses. The truth of Javert is more than can be explained by simple sight, simple reasoning. Valjean looks at him and sees a shattered statute and knows that he is wrong, that he has always been wrong. There is and always has been more to Javert than the things he is made of. Yet Valjean cannot stop thinking of him in relation to the physical, the inanimate. Every way he would describe the man ultimately resorts to the material; Javert had always been a collection of articles and effects, the lines of his clothes as immaculate as the straight bearing of his spine, all of it suggesting duty, suggesting justice, suggesting pride. But now Javert has none of these, and that description paints a better picture of an armoire than a man in any case.
When Javert's eyes are closed, the mistake is harder to make. In Valjean’s arms Javert’s chest rises and falls like any other man’s, though it rattles terribly as the doctor quietly secures it with gauze. More than once Valjean has found himself simply watching Javert sleep, baffled by the person that sits in his bed, the impossible contradictions that Javert holds within his body. Valjean is making a study of Javert, trying in his own way to recover time lost, to make up for sins past.
Seeing him, truly seeing him without his effects is strange. Javert’s face is not— it is not soft, exactly; the lines on his face are too worn-in for that, not even sleep succeeds in smoothing them out. But there is a conspicuous loss of purpose when it comes to Javert at rest. Limp in Valjean’s arms as the doctor fusses over him, it is clear that this motionlessness is no natural thing, Javert hiding perfectly in the shadows, or Javert conspicuous at parade rest. This is simply Javert, halted, and Valjean finds that Javert wears stillness poorly. It pulls at something in Valjean, a hook behind his breastbone tugging sharply as if to turn him inside out.
The doctor finishing his task, Javert wheezes in his sleep and Valjean startles to motion; he feels like he is always startled by Javert. He is always the same and never what Valjean expects.
The doctor leaves quickly once his work is done, accepting his pay and then the extra sous that Valjean thrusts upon him. Before he leaves he admonishes Valjean to take more rest for himself, not to waste away over his invalid friend.
He advises that Valjean say a prayer on his rosary. Valjean stares at the doctor in confusion before he realizes that Javert’s rosary is still in his hand; he has been carrying it for two nights. The few grooves left in the worn beads are starting to wear patterns into his skin.
On the fifth night, Valjean wakes from exhausted, omen-filled dreams of his own to find Javert calling out, aborted curses and commands struggling from his mouth. Valjean's heart twists and he staggers from his station in the armchair at Javert's bedside to grab at Javert's hand. Even in his sleep Javert clutches back and though his grip is weak, it is undeniably there, the instinct to grab ingrained even in Javert’s unconscious mind. That should not reassure Valjean so much as it does, his heartbeat slowing fractionally, the startled panic of his sudden awakening beginning to wear off in the face of the realization that Javert is safe.
That thought in particular hits Valjean between the eyes; Javert, safe. There is nothing about the man that has ever suggested safety. For others, perhaps, but not to Valjean. Javert has only ever been danger to him, and now Valjean finds him guarding his enemy in his own home.
But no, this is not true either. Javert is many things but he is not Valjean’s enemy. Or at least, Valjean is not his. The rosary he now wears on his neck and the night on the bridge have proved that; Valjean cannot believe for even a second that Javert’s fall into the Seine was anything other than a purposeful jump. Again the horror raises itself in Valjean’s throat; if he had not followed him from the doorway— Valjean shudders, feeling sick.
Affection had not propelled him to the Pont-au-Change, and he still cannot identify his feelings for Javert. Valjean pities him, feels responsible for him , fears him, fears for him; Valjean is cognizant, also, of the danger that Javert could be, though Valjean had resigned himself to judgment the night of the Barricades. The rest of his emotions concerning Javert are an undefinable maelstrom. They shift too quickly, rage too quietly for Valjean to extract and identify any singular one from the rest.
As he watches his charge sleep, Valjean cannot help but watch his face in particular. He has spent the entirety of their (admittedly turbulent) acquaintance ignoring Javert’s expressions. In Valjean’s grip Javert’s hand is rough, the hand of a laborer, a man used to work. Of course, Valjean knew this already, that Javert was not a man who shied from work. But it is one thing to know that fact in the sense superficial and another thing entirely to know the memory of the senses; here is the crease where Javert’s hands bent around his cudgel, there are the callused lines worn smooth against by a pen held long fingers that were always, always grasping. Javert’s hands, much like his scars, tell a story of work and duty, written in skin.
In his sleep Javert makes a sound that is nothing like terror, though it provokes that response in Valjean, memories stirring. No, this noise from Javert is more like triumph; his hand spasms once where Valjean has threaded their fingers and the grip is nearly painful. Eyes shut Javert’s terrible smile reappears for the first time in years; it is not quite so horrible as it had been, though perhaps that is merely unconsciousness that mellows him. The expression remains decidedly ferocious, but Valjean cannot but smile back, entirely helplessly, squeezing Javert’s fingers once by reflex.
Perhaps the mellowing lies with him. Valjean is not so afraid of Javert any longer; more the shift has been towards a fear for him.
At that thought, it strikes Valjean quite suddenly that it has only been five days, six at the most since the Barricades, since the Seine.
‘So much has changed,’ Valjean remarks to himself, but this is not quite correct. The facts have not altered. It is merely his perspective that has shifted so radically.
Five days can be an eternity in the hands of God, and it is on this thought that Valjean realizes he has yet to inform Cosette that he still lives.
On the fifth night Valjean shamefully writes his daughter a small letter, and on the sixth he receives a full missive on her condition, Marius’s condition as he heals fast with love, and the state of the house on Rue Plumet. Enclosed with that is a carefully worded expounding upon Valjean’s failures to notify his daughter that he had not died in the riots after the Barricades fall. Cosette, it seems, quite distressed by her father’s disappearance, expects regular letters.
Valjean finds he cannot deny them to her, and on the seventh night he mails his first letter after writing several drafts; he cannot find a good way to account for the time he has lost that does not include naming Javert.
Eventually he settles for the appellation of “dear friend, injured in battle,” and makes it clear that Cosette need not visit while her hands are full with a friend of her own.
That word again; every time Valjean says it, the phrase tastes less and less like a lie.
On the tenth night, Javert’s fever brings him near to waking.
Valjean startles to hear Javert shouting; for a moment, Valjean thinks that he is no longer asleep. In a sense, this is correct. Javert’s eyes have snapped open, steel returned. For a moment the change is so breathtaking Valjean stops, frightened; Javert’s scrutiny is a dangerous thing, almost worse than his unfounded regard, both things that Valjean has never quite been able to tolerate. Even in Montreuil he fidgeted, even in Toulon he snarled under its weight. Javert’s attention has a terrible property to it; every time that Javert examines him Valjean feels as a specimen under glass, a struggling insect pinned to the wall, and for all Javert’s apparent delirium, now is no different.
Unable to do otherwise, Valjean holds Javert’s gaze, spine snapping to a ready position on instinct as he dangles between the impulses to fight or flee.
His eyes are steel, but do not see, looking at Valjean, but also through him. There is a deference waiting in his expression, sickening.
“M. Madeleine,” Javert greets him stiffly.
Valjean reels as if struck. The name may as well have been a blow; Valjean lost it in another river a lifetime ago and is not glad to have it returned to him. For a moment, he cannot respond at all, jaws locked tight around his history.
Valjean’s past has always had a name, had a face. It cannot be buried, it has hounded him all his life and dogged his every step from the prison galleys to the Paris streets. Valjean looks down and sees in his power a terrible shade. There is something in Javert’s eyes that knows, something in his eyes that only half knows.
“Though I suspect you were called something else, once—“ Javert starts lowly, coughing and retching slightly as his fever makes itself known once more. Valjean by practiced instinct places a basin beneath his mouth to catch his sick and is glad that he had the foresight to move the rosary to his chest days ago; it he had still had it on his palm, it would certainly be rattling hard against the bowl to be heard even through Javert’s fog of illness.
“I am on to you, I have seen your face in my dreams, imposed on another’s,” Javert grinds out, vindictive and wondering. “What sort of trick is it that you would be so many men at once—“
“Hush, inspector,” Valjean commands him, but the words are the barest of whispers. He cannot find the air in his lungs to make them heard.
As if responding to his orders, Javert falls, tension leaving his body as his spine goes limp, fever releasing him back into slumber. The hearth fire, put out in the infernal heat of Paris in mid-June, is naught but embers, the ashes lingering in Valjean’s mouth, struck dry in the late Spring heat.
Javert sleeps, and the silence that radiates out from his every unsteady, choking breath is a deadly-soft thing, reaching out to smother. The dark in the apartment is thin and impenetrable; Javert dreams and shakes with fever, leaving Valjean alone with his thoughts, and the ghosts of the men he has been. On his neck the rosary is an anchor, dragging him down into the darkness of his past.
On the twelth night Javert’s fever breaks. Valjean would weep with relief, not only to have escape the painful horrors of sleeping in the armchair at his bedside, but also because it should mean that the worst is over. Beneath his bandages, the swelling and bruising along Javert’s torso is beginning to subside, though Valjean knows it will be several weeks yet until Javert is truly healed.
Javert wakes slowly, groaning back into true consciousness. Valjean brings water to him carefully, hating how fragile Javert feels in his hands as he lifts the man from the bed to the cup, one hand on his back to lever him upwards, gentle as he dares around Javert’s broken spine.
Javert drinks like a man at the end of a drought for all that he had drowned. Water spills down his chin in small rivulets that Valjean must wipe away.
Immediately, Javert’s hands go to his breast, fingers searching with blind purpose for a pocket that is not there. He frowns when he does not find it, disappointment keeping the expression from a true scowl. His eyes are still closed; if Javert knows who he is with he says nothing, and is soon asleep once more.