One more for the legacy account! My eternal thanks to the sewerchat members who beta'd for me (and kept me from making a number of embarrassing typos).


All That is Good and Green

by Sylla


A man stood upon the parapet of the Pont au Change.

He gazed pensively down at the river beneath him. On a dark, moonless night such as this, the foam turned an unpleasant, dirty grey; the water was as black as the sky above. The river was so wild here, dashing and frothing against the piles, that it almost looked like it was boiling. The man stared, quite motionless, for some time, the slow flex of one fist the only indication that he was flesh and blood and not a statue. At length, he exhaled a great sigh, and the straight line of his shoulders dropped by degrees.

This man was, of course, Inspector Javert.

He'd been perfectly decided as to his course of action on the journey here, but now that he stood on the precipice – both metaphorical and real – he found that something halted his steps. He didn't know what it was.

Suddenly, a gust of wind rushed by, tugging at the edges of his greatcoat, picking up his hat and sending it sailing into the water. Javert swayed, arm twitching as though to lunge after it, and for a moment, he seemed destined to fall. His shoes slid on the parapet; a small stone kicked loose. The splash was inaudible, swallowed entirely by the roaring of the river. Then he regained his balance, shoulders tense and fists clenched. The wind died down once more, leaving only the stifling heat of a summer night in Paris, and the world seemed to hold its breath in anticipation.

Javert stepped back down, onto the safety of the bridge.

Slowly, he turned his back to the river, leaning against the balustrade and hunching in on himself.

He was not a man given to expressing his thoughts in words; he read newspapers only to keep abreast of current events and, with the possible exception of tonight, had never written anything not directly related to his work. In fifty-odd years of life, the term eloquent had never once been applied to him. And so, he found himself completely at a loss to explain the sudden instinct that had risen inside him, saying: stay. One gloved hand dragged across his bottom lip as he tried to wrestle the maelstrom of his thoughts into some semblance of coherence.

Despite setting his affairs in order, he realized, there were things yet left unfinished. Questions left unanswered; one question in particular. Yes, that was the thing – exactly how could he have made such a great error? Either Valjean had had some reason to let him live, or he'd spent decades chasing a good man; the uncertainty ate away at him, like an itch between his shoulder blades where he could not scratch.

Almost without realizing it, he began to walk, feet carrying him away from the bridge, and the river, and the twenty feet of void between the two that whispered: jump.

He was, in a sense, lucky that the revolution was so near; one could still hear the occasional retort of a rifle, and every last house was tightly shuttered, inhabitants waiting for the storm to pass. There was nobody on the streets to be tempted to take advantage of a policeman wandering, alone and distracted, his hands clasped behind his back. He walked an aimless, meandering path as he sank deeper and deeper into the mire of his thoughts. Why would – what would impel Valjean to stay his hand? To set him free? Perhaps he'd considered his death at the barricade all but certain, in which case it didn't matter whether or not Javert was left alive to pursue him – but in that case, that would simply be all the more reason to take his revenge while he still could, would it not?

He'd accused the man of wanting to make a deal, tried to goad him into shooting – but Valjean had rejected him, flat-out, and the idea of a deal as well. Had he perhaps expected Javert to be swayed if he pretended not to want any recompense? And yet, in that moment, his denial had seemed… genuine.

Perhaps the reason was as simple as not wanting to soil his uniform with Javert's blood – but no, the surin had only come out later; Valjean had had a gun on him, he would have been able to do the deed cleanly. He'd heard the gunshot when he was halfway down Rue des Prêcheurs.

The knife had come out only to cut the ropes fettering him.

That thought, that memory, stopped his line of reasoning dead in its tracks, scattering his thoughts and ruining what little order he'd managed to impose on them. They were once more a storm, falling over themselves like a crowd clamoring to be heard; Javert attempted to chase one down only to be interrupted by another, each one bursting to the forefront of his mind until he'd arrived, without realizing it, back at the first, and the cycle began once more. A whirlpool of half-formed ideas that dragged him down as inescapably as the Seine would have done.

Perhaps Valjean had simply let him live on a whim, and nothing more. Could that be?

Unbidden, the image of Valjean's grave face rose to the surface of his thoughts. His eyes, sombre but steady; the moonlight turning his uniform grey and his hair silver-white.

"I do not expect to leave this place alive; still, if I do—"

Javert shuddered. No, it could not be that simple. Valjean was a clever man, and calculating; it was how he'd escaped the law all these years, after all. There must have been some ulterior motive at play, some reason why it was better for him to release Javert than kill him. There had to be something. He ran a hand through his whiskers in exasperation.

He could only guess at Valjean's motives at the moment – but he could find out.

Yes, he could find out, for if Valjean was no more than a malefactor with a motive, surely Javert could unearth it. Then the two roads he saw stretching terribly before him would collapse into a single path once more.

He would return to ask him directly, then; after all, the man could fool others, but never Javert – in Montreuil-sur-Mer, he'd had fooled the entire town into thinking him respectable – but not him. Not Javert. If Valjean attempted to lie to him, he would know it. If he attempted to conceal, Javert would uncover. He would find the truth of the matter. Of that much, at least, he was certain.

And if it turned out he had been wrong, that he'd been chasing a good man all this time… well. Well. If that was the case, he told himself, the Seine would still be there tomorrow.

.


.

It was still dark when he arrived once more at Number Seven, Rue de l'Homme Armé, but it was that soft, faded dark that immediately precedes the dawn. It was perhaps just past five o'clock in the morning, though Javert had been entirely deaf to the church bells pealing the hour. He curled one hand into a fist and pounded on the door. To be perfectly frank, he half expected the house to be empty and cold by now – surely Valjean would have taken this… this dereliction of duty on his part – surely he would have taken the opportunity to flee, even if he had told Javert the truth of his address.

And yet, to Javert's surprise, after a few minutes of (mostly uninterrupted) knocking, the door opened. Valjean stood inside, dressed in his shirtsleeves and a waistcoat, and wearing a look of grim resignation. His gaze took Javert in before sliding over his shoulder, and he blinked in obvious confusion. Evidently he'd expected Javert back with a contingent of gendarmes, or similar; a bark of laughter threatened to burst out of Javert at the thought. To expect him back with help, and still not run – it was inexplicable. Unacceptable.

Instead, he pushed past Valjean, through the entrance hall and into the first door he found, which proved – as expected – to lead to a small sitting room. A large fireplace dominated the room, with a sofa and a pair of comfortable-looking bergères upholstered in a flower-print fabric that seemed incongruously feminine for someone like Valjean arranged around it. On an end table near one of the chairs there was a haphazard stack of books, and an empty teacup on a saucer. The hearth was still lit, despite the hour – had Valjean been up all night? Javert's eye took in every detail, and he paced the length of the room (one, two, three, four strides) before turning back to Valjean. The man was hovering near the doorway, eyes tracking his every move. Javert could see the tension in the lines of his body from across the room; it looked like he was keeping himself still through sheer force of will alone.

Why did he refuse so steadfastly to flee? What was keeping him here?

His voice came out gravelly as he said, "Explain."

Valjean jumped minutely; his brows drew up and together in obvious confusion. At last he echoed, "... Explain?"

Javert found the decisiveness that had fled from him at the Pont au Change suddenly restored, and he threw himself at the point unflinchingly. "At the barricade, you let me live. Explain, Valjean."

The man took a few tentative steps into the room; the confusion on his face had not lessened one iota. "I fear I don't understand the purpose of your inquiry…" He trailed off for a moment before asking quietly, "You do mean to arrest me, do you not?" The last time Javert had heard him sound so meek had been that night at the hospital, over a decade ago.

"Indeed, I should." He paused. "I shall."

If Valjean had noticed his correction, he gave no indication of it; his expression was clouded, turned half away from Javert. For a long moment, he said nothing; one hand twitched towards his wrist, as though he was resisting the urge to fix the cuffs of his sleeves.

"I never had the least intention of killing you," he said, turning to look at Javert once more.

"So you have said, but why? If not a deal, then what was your motive in letting me go?" he demanded.

"I..." Valjean was shaking his head. "No, there was – there was no motive, Javert."

"Then you spared me on a whim?"

"No—"

"Then I do not understand. " His voice had raised almost to a shout by the end of the sentence; Valjean's eyes darted to the ceiling, suddenly tense, and he raised one hand in an abortive gesture as though to shush Javert. Odd – did he live with someone? A wife, maybe? Or perhaps just a housekeeper. There was no shortage of people a convict might want to keep from learning the truth.

"Won't… won't you sit, Inspector?" Valjean gestured at one of the bergères. "I believe I can answer to your satisfaction, but – it may take some time."

Javert considered him; normally he wouldn't even think to accept hospitality from a con, but… he had to know. And Valjean seemed, for the moment at least, to be sincere. He took a seat in the bergère closest to the door. Valjean walked past him, giving him the widest berth possible given the size of the room, and perched on the far end of the couch.

"How much do you know about what happened between my release from the bagne and when I arrived in Montreuil-sur-Mer?" he asked, not meeting Javert's eyes. He stared fixedly into the fire as though seeking guidance from it.

"You followed your itinerary until Digne, whereupon you were accused of stealing silver from a bishop's household, and a forty-sous piece from a young Savoyard," Javert rattled off. He knew the details of Valjean's file by heart. "Thereafter you broke parole and disappeared. Until Montreuil-sur-Mer."

The man's broad shoulders curved in on themselves. "I suppose that is accurate, yes," he sighed. Then his gaze found Javert's. "I doubt anybody would remember, but I did try to keep my parole, at first. Only – nobody would let me in. Nobody would hire me, or if they did, they stole from me. 'Half wages are good enough for yellow papers like yours,' I remember them saying at the end of the day.

"At every inn in Digne they turned me out; every household barred its doors to me. In desperation I begged at the local jail for a bed, and they said: 'Break the law. Then you may sleep here.' The living did not want me, but death would not take me. At last, I resigned myself to a cold night on a stone bench."

Javert's eyebrows raised; he opened his mouth – was he supposed to be impressed by a few short weeks of attempting to keep to the law in the face of adversity? But Valjean was quicker on the draw.

"I do not tell you this to justify myself; nothing can justify what I did. But you must understand the state of my – my soul, Javert," he said quietly. He dragged the back of one hand across his mouth.

"You said I stole silver from a bishop's household; it is true. As I lay down to sleep, an old woman – I never learned her name – woke me, and told me… 'Knock on that door,' she told me. 'They will answer.' And they did. The bishop of Digne took me in, fed me from his own table, treated me like an honored guest. And in repayment, I took his silver – the only thing of value in the house! And I fled into the night."

Valjean smiled then, though it was not a happy one. "I suppose I felt that I was somehow owed this. 'After nineteen years in the bagne for stealing a single loaf of bread,' I thought, 'why not even the scales?' Something like that. It was wrong – of course it was wrong! But in that moment I thought it just."

Javert said nothing, intrigued despite himself. He knew some of the details, but hearing the whole story contextualized them, like a familiar bit of scenery that has had a new light thrown suddenly across it.

"I was caught before I went very far; they dragged me back to the bishop's door; called him monseigneur. Monseigneur! Until that moment, I had believed him to be the curé. And do you know what he did, Javert?" Valjean glanced his way; Javert had a sinking feeling he knew exactly what he was going to tell him next. His hands clenched reflexively over the arms of the bergère. Still, he said nothing.

"He bade the gendarmes release me; told them he had given me the silver, as a gift. Me, the wretch who had repaid his kindness with thievery. And then he said—" Valjean broke off, voice suddenly thick, one hand on his chest. He took a ragged breath before continuing. "He said that I had forgotten the candlesticks, which were the best of the lot, and should fetch two hundred francs." As he spoke he gestured up at the mantlepiece where, indeed, two candlesticks – silver, but otherwise plain – sat in pride of place.

"And he told me that the next time I visited, I need not knock, as the door was only ever shut with a latch. Then he said…" Valjean shuddered, his gaze distant, fully in the past. "He said to me: 'Do not forget: you have promised to use this silver to become an honest man. Jean Valjean, my brother, you no longer belong to evil, but to good. It is your soul I am buying for you.'" A tear slid down the curve of his cheek into his snow-white beard, and he brushed the track away with one thumb.

"So you see, Javert – you were right, in a way; I would have become exactly what you thought I was, had it not been for Monseigneur Myriel." He exhaled shakily; his elbows rested on his knees, hands clasped between them. "It was his kindness, and his kindness alone, that saved me from perdition."

For some time, the only sound in the room was the crackling of the fire. Javert was silent, unable to formulate a response. The enormity of what Valjean was telling him was too great for his head to contain. Filled with a sudden, restless energy, he rose and began to pace the length of the room again. He reached the far wall and turned sharply on his heel, striding the other way until he arrived at the front window, then repeating the process. He ran one hand through his hair, though he knew in the back of his mind that he must look absolutely dishevelled by now. A few strands slipped his queue, falling over his face, partially obscuring it.

"Ridiculous," he muttered. "Why would he give you the silver – he had no way of knowing…" His muttering diminished in volume until it was all but inaudible. Though he did not see it, Valjean observed him steadily from the sofa; the man was utterly at a loss in the face of his odd behaviour.

What Valjean was claiming – to be so profoundly touched by a single act of kindness as to completely change the course of one's life? It was absurd on all counts; never, in all his years with the police, had he heard of such a thing occurring.

Was it even possible?

Could it be true?

He did not notice as the pacing of his feet carried him out the door of the sitting room, and then out the door of Valjean's home, so profoundly lost in thought was he. He was almost to the corner of the street when the dawning sun pierced the fog of his mind; he looked up, startled.

When had he come outside?

He looked around, astounded; the street was deserted. Valjean had not followed him.

Embarrassment crept up his spine and under his collar, heating his cheeks. Had he really left the house without even realizing it? In over thirty years of police work, he had never been as out of sorts as this night. He should return immediately and demand that Valjean finish his explanation; a single act of kindness from a bishop could hardly explain why he'd stayed his hand. Even a normal man would have been tempted after—

After…

… he was so tired.

Javert exhaled in a great gust, hand running through his whiskers once more. He needed to rest; even if Valjean were to finish his explanation, he hardly had the faculties to know what to make of it at present.

He had no idea why, but Valjean had not run when he'd had the chance. He felt fairly certain he would not run if he left him now. Tomorrow, then. Thus decided, he turned on his heel and walked away.

Tomorrow.

.


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Inspired by that one tumblr post that's like 'AU where instead of making a snap decision and leaving for the Seine, Javert just. keeps returning to Valjean's house to examine for himself how Valjean can simultaneously be a good person and a criminal. eventually Valjean heads downstairs each morning to find Javert already at the kitchen table, casually reading the newspaper. Javert always greets him with "good morning, I'll most likely arrest you today". he never does'

I laughed real hard and when I was done laughing I realized I had a new plot bunny I felt compelled to write, oh no