Disclaimer: Do not own Les Miserables.
Kind of a character exploration piece. Although Javert is usually considered the bad guy, he's a whole lot more complicated then that, and I like to think that Jean Val Jean wasn't the only one who affected him throughout the story/musical.
Enjoy!
It was strange how rain seemed to have the ability to either highlight colour, or to drain it completely.
That evening, it opted for the latter and the entire world seemed to turn grey, or so it seemed to Javert.
How fitting, when he always saw the world in black and white.
They carried her body with the care and affection you would carry a priceless painting or ornament. The girl's arms hung down by her sides like she was pretending they were wings. Blood slithered down one of them, dripping off her index finger. A liquid, scarlet trail followed her as they carried away her body.
He watched them as they carried this girl, this foolish little slip of a girl, away to bury her. Bury her in the cold, unremarkable ground. The boy who had held her as she died sobbed openly as though he too was close to death, tears mingling with the continuous rain as it splashed onto the grey, sludgy mud.
And Javert found himself bowing his head as they passed him, an unexpected surge of sorrow taking over him in the same way a wave from the ocean does- it simply overtakes you, knocking you down and dragging you with it in the undercurrent, whether you were expecting it to or not. Even though this girl was just another life, another member of the starving beggars that littered the street like last year's autumn leaves- discarded and crushed beneath the passage of time.
But still, her blood soaked the ground, and all he could think about was how quickly it all seemed to have happened. Her life had been snuffed out as easily as you would pick a flower or snuff out a candle, just with the bite of a few lead bullets.
It seemed...such a waste.
She died smiling, her arm falling back to the ground after her fingers ghosted over the cheek of the boy. The light slowly left her eyes, her large, shining eyes, as the last little glimmer of life departed from her body, leaving behind a blood-stained shell.
The others watched the boy and girl with sorrow in their eyes, the silence unnerving. It was like time had briefly paused to watch, watch the small moments of a dying girl before grimly marching on, the smell of gunpowder and rain enough to remind everyone where they were, what they had to do. A boy who couldn't have been older than ten, if that, slowly removed his hat as the body of the girl was carried away. A name is carried through the crowd, Eponine.
A grim determination lingers in their leader's eyes as they rise and turn towards the barricade. They hold tightly onto their guns and surge forwards, awash with guilt, anger and despair.
As the smell of gunpowder filled the air, the rain continued to thrum mercilessly down, like the very sky was weeping.
And when Jean Val Jean appears, a phantom rising from the wreckage, Javert feels fear in his stone heart, which strangely seems to be breaking under the weight of the war around him, the threat of death hanging suspended above their heads.
When the ropes around his wrists are cut and he is free to go, he feels small and cowardly and cheated.
He thinks of the girl's eyes before they shut for good, watching him, acknowledging him. And without meaning to, her life becomes another weight around his shoulders.
Javert wishes he had been shot.