Introductory Notes: Well, I mentioned this story as being a possible project for me on my profile page, and I recently got to thinking about it again. When reviewing my old documents, I realized how much I love this fanfic, since it's simple and straightforward and won't be hard to write, and I thought it had a good plot. So, I'm reviving it.
In a nutshell, this is the story of a modern-day teenaged girl who wakes up from her sleep to find herself in the middle of Paris, France in the dead of winter, seemingly for no reason at all. She is found and cared for by a very reluctant Inspector Javert, who says that her staying with him is only temporary, but the arrangement soon becomes permanent. This is the story of how they affected each other throughout their few short years together, and what happens to the girl after Javert's suicide.
Needless to say, this prologue begins immediately after the suicide, and the next chapter will start at the beginning, and so on; eventually, the story's events will catch up to and extend beyond this chapter. (I have a fondness for these types of openings, dont'cha know.)
Prologue:
I read the number on the door carefully, scanning it several times and running my finger along the number sign and the two fives of which it consisted, even though I was sure it was the right one. In a similar manner, I had read the name of the place over and over again: Rue Plumet, it was called. Number fifty-five Rue Plumet. One last time, I checked Javert's note to me: "Go and speak to Jean Valjean for me. You are likely to find him at #55 Rue Plumet." The paper was black and the writing was silver, except for that one white splotch that spelled out the address—he had made a point of clarifying the place where he wanted me to go.
Some part of me still hoped that I would look down at the letter and find that I had the wrong address, and I could postpone this task for another hour or so. But with Javert, I knew that there was no such thing as a writing error—even when he was in such a state of turmoil as he was when he wrote the letter.
When I thought about that, really thought about it, I realized that it was the definitely the first and only time I had ever seen him like that, and just the idea of that made my hackles rise, the way they always did when everything wasn't as it should be. The order of my life, which had been ingrained so deeply in me over the years, had been disturbed once more. I knew what it felt like; it had happened before on various minor levels, and it always perturbed me somewhat, but things always went back to normal, and I picked myself up and moved on and tried to forget it.
And that was the problem, because this time, it would never go back to normal. This was no mere inconvenience. This was injustice! It was madness! A lifetime of preserving the order, abiding by all rules with no room for exceptions, and what had fate done to repay me?
It hadn't just taken the order from my life. It had taken away my most trusted friend.
Hot tears started to form a glaze over my eyes, but I was determined not to cry. I hadn't cried a drop, at least not in front of Javert, since my fourteenth birthday, at which point I resolved never to do so, and I had only just broken the three-year streak that morning—just to add to the chaos in my head, of course. It seemed that today, everything was against me, trying to shake the very foundations upon which I had built my life to their core. The mere thought was starting to make me feel physically ill.
I grabbed the knocker on the door and clenched it in my fist so hard that my knuckles turned white, pressing my cheek to the smooth wood of the door until I felt that I could be absorbed into it if I pressed any harder. I felt the patterns in the wood and the smoothness of the metal; I thought of the stars that Javert had admired so much. Think of the stars, Mallory, I told myself, willing everything else out of my mind except the door, the knocker, and the stars. Remember the stars. The constellations. Order from chaos. Order. Order…
No turning back now.
I cast off my reservations then, and I stood up straight and slammed the knocker into the door with a sharp bang! that left a hollow ringing noise in the air.
That was it. I couldn't leave now; Jean Valjean, the ex-con whom I had specifically come to speak to, would be at the door soon. I was never one to lose my nerve and abandon my appointments, even if they did deal with criminals. Big, strong, possibly hostile criminals. A seventeen-year-old girl like me, however rawboned and seasoned as a fighter, would hardly stand a chance against a man like Valjean.
The beating in my chest grew light, rapid, almost imperceptible in its speed; the film of sweat on my skin seemed to dry, and for a moment, everything inside and outside of me was still. Silent. All my troubles melted away then. My mind was blank. I took everything in and perceived nothing. The doorframe was slightly crooked. There was a crack in the wall. A wooden floorboard creaked under my weight. There was a slight but noticeable dent in the door, most likely caused by my knocking. A voice somewhere inside warned me that Javert would be furious and expect me to pay the damage myself, but this time, the warning was hollow and dull, because I truly could no longer bring myself to care.
At that moment, the door swung open, and reality flooded back to me in a sickening torrent as I looked up. When my eyes cleared, I was startled to not see Jean Valjean standing in the doorway, but a girl no older than me with long, flowing hair, large blue eyes, and a rather graceful yet innocent mien, halfway between a beautiful songbird and a little baby mouse. I recognized her as Valjean's daughter Cosette almost immediately, and from the expression on her face, she recognized me as well.
She was clothed in a simple black gown with white frills, and I could see that she was waiflike and very small, possibly even smaller than me. It looked like I weighed about the same as her, but I was probably far, far stronger. She looked to be skin and bones with nary a scrap in between. I was trimmed and lean with near no excess fat anywhere, but by no means was I skinny—I certainly had enough muscle on me to be proportionately very strong when it was cultivated and conditioned.
Cosette could clearly see this, and I know that she remembered it very well from past meetings. She looked terrified, and took a few wary steps back with the kind of air that a person might have if faced with a vicious animal that could strike at any moment.
"Papa?" she called, never taking her eyes off me and obviously trying not to be too loud as if anything above a certain volume would send me flying off the handle. But with a desperate cry of, "Papa, come quickly," she failed, and her voice became higher in volume and squeakiness.
I almost laughed, but thankfully managed to maintain a straight face. "Stop that. I'm not going to bite you," I said, with no unnecessary words. That was my usual manner in talking to people I wasn't exactly on affable terms with. Not that I hated or distrusted Cosette like I did her father—they were not the same person. With her, I would keep my tones cold and formal, but not filled with spite—I think "civil" was the word for it.
A man with bright blue eyes and bristling hair the color of virgin snow, of medium height and build, appeared and walked over to the door. Cosette stepped to the side and he took her place.
The man was very quick to recognize me, and he began spewing off words, trying only his best to remain calm and clear. "Come inside; follow me to the kitchen table. I have some questions for you regarding this morning's events. I'm sure you can shed some light on things. I'll put some tea on the kettle, and—"
"No need for such things," I cut him off curtly.
"Please, step inside. I'll show you to the table and we can discuss…whatever it is you've come to discuss."
"You'll find out soon enough."
I stepped over the doorway threshold and allowed Cosette to shut it behind me as I followed the man to the kitchen table, where I took a seat opposite him. Cosette sat in the chair right next to him and latched onto his arm as if seeking shelter, never taking her eyes off me. I noticed for the first time then that she had tears in her eyes, and her face was red and raw. That was understandable. If my memory served me, then the young man whom Valjean had brought back from the barricades was her fiancé, and he could die at any moment in his present critical state. Certainly she would have found out about that by now, and I wondered for a brief second why she wasn't at his side in the infirmary.
Feelings of empathy were beginning to creep into my heart; I had a sudden desire to go over and tell her that it would all be okay, and that even if her fiancé were to perish, then she would be able to find a way through it. I knew what that was like now, to lose somebody you loved, and I wanted so badly for those sentiments about time healing all wounds to be true.
"What is your name again, mademoiselle?" Valjean's words yanked me out of my thoughts, and I brushed my sympathies aside. I mused grimly that I had gotten quite good at it.
"Mallory. Mallory Schultz. I, uh, the surname…it's obviously not French. I think it's German, Monsieur." Monsieur? I asked myself, swearing inwardly. Those good manners, the ones I had been taught since birth, were coming back to me. "And you," I continued, "are the not-so-infamous Jean Valjean I heard about most recently from Javert." This time, I picked up a sarcastic sneer in my tone, and chills ran up and down my spine from its utter, pure, undiluted sincerity. Much better.
"The very same."
"And I suppose you want to know what I'm here for?"
This elicited a nod from Valjean.
I broke out in a grin. "I'm certain you know very well what I'm here for," I sneered again.
He shook his head, and I don't know how he wasn't losing his patience altogether. "No. No, I don't," he said calmly.
My voice fell hushed and didn't even so much as quiver as I spoke: "Fine, then. I shall tell you."
I cast a glance over at Cosette, who would have looked decidedly less terrified if I had simply yelled at Valjean, and underneath my rage, I felt some sympathy for her—I knew that feeling, the feeling of calm before a storm, and oh, what a storm it would be…
I gripped the edge of the table until my fingers went white and clenched my teeth together, taking a deep breath through my nose. Rage and hatred churned inside my belly. Now was the time for the settling of many scores, old and new.
I opened my mouth to speak, but as suddenly as a turn on a dime, all the air rushed out of my lungs and the adrenaline was replaced by all my suppressed tears and sobs. I still managed to say what I had planned to, but it was halfhearted and the words had lost all of their power. They sounded more pitiful than angry.
"You killed my father, Jean Valjean. You…you killed him. It was all your fault. He said that you were a good man after all for saving his life and he jumped into the river. You killed him; by saving him, you caused his death!"
Having released the last of my anger, I sniffled and mumbled an apology. Tears made everything look glassy and magnified the sunlight that was reflected off the metal pots and pans resting on the countertop behind Valjean and Cosette. It hurt to look up.
"Javert is dead, Valjean. Javert is dead," I said weakly, even though by both of their stunned expressions, I knew they had gotten the message already.
"I know," Valjean whispered. "I know now. I'm so, so sorry for you."
Suddenly, knowing that I had no reason to be angry anymore, I let my grief and weariness overcome me, and I let my head fall onto the table as tears streamed from the corners of my eyes. "I feel faint. My head hurts," I said, squeezing my eyes shut. "I'm tired. I can barely move, I'm so sore. Every muscle in my body is screaming. I've been awake for almost two days straight with all this barricade nonsense; I must have sprinted well over ten miles in the past few hours alone…and now Javert is dead. When is it going to end?"
Valjean reached across the table and put his hand on my shoulder gently, and I looked back up at him from the partial cover of my arms. "I haven't forgotten about my current task at hand. I owe you and your daughter—and everyone else—an apology; the apology of my life," I said. "It wasn't what I came for, but there's never been a better time to change gears. I've never like saying this to anyone, but I'm sorry." I sighed. "Better start now. I've got a lot of amends to make to a lot of people. I'm going to have to get used to swallowing my pride and apologizing."
"How…what brought you to…how did Javert die?"
I swallowed and shuddered, and then raised my head (with some effort, might I add) to look at them more clearly. "He ran away from the scene when he was going to arrest you."
"Shh!" Valjean hissed. "Perhaps I should speak to you about this in private."
"What?" I put my head to one side, now slightly perturbed at being interrupted. "Speak aloud. I can barely hear you. There's no real reason to talk about this in private. I don't have anything really bad to say."
He threw a glance at his daughter, who had detached herself from his arm and scooted her chair away. "Cosette…" he began hesitantly, "Cosette doesn't know about all of this yet."
Momentarily, I forgot my tale and my exhaustion and sat bolt upright. I told him, straight-faced for the first time in what was, for me, quite a while, "I don't know whether to snap at you or to laugh. You're trying to tell me that you kept this whole thing secret from your daughter for all these long years?"
"Please, try to understand, she's had enough suffering—"
"Are you joking?" I carried on, ignoring his explanation. "I'd be absolutely livid if Javert kept that kind of a secret from me, and I've gone through some serious trouble in these past years. I'm no stranger to these kinds of things. You have to tell her this—if you don't, someone else will eventually. There aren't too many safe routes out now that I've started. Keep her around. I'm speaking aloud, with her in the room, and that's final. Do you understand?"
There was an interval of utter silence as I sat, admittedly rather proud of myself, and Valjean contemplated this. However, Cosette made the decision for him: "I want to know the truth, Papa. It's time. Let her speak."
"You want to know, eh? Oh, I'll tell you what you want to know, all right." I stood up from the table, fighting a smile and losing, and began to pace back and forth in front of her, all the while listing Valjean's various achievements with great deliberateness.
"Your father is guilty of a number of crimes." I began to count them all on my fingers as I listed them: "Thievery, breaking-and-entering, violent robbery of a small child, multiple accounts of fraud and impersonation, several escapes from prison, kidnapping of an even smaller child—you!—and, worst of all, associating with those rebels on the barricades! In addition, he has shown himself to be one of the worst when it comes to showing completely unwarranted and superfluous mercy, compassion, and generosity to people who he has every reason and right to absolutely hate because they have been out for his very blood for several years."
Satisfied, I sat back down in my chair and leaned back, arms folded across my chair and a smirk crossing my face. "And now you know. Now you know of all the misdeeds that your father has to his name. That I know of—who knows what he could have done that's gone thus far unnoticed?"
Cosette and Valjean sat there, both wide-eyed. In the headlights of their shocked stares, I chewed over what I'd just said. Was it really the right thing to do? After all, Cosette had wanted to know; she said so herself. But I felt bad about it even still. A small, nervous feeling began to stir in my stomach, until it grew and grew until I couldn't ignore it any longer. I whipped up a follow-up to my statements, and quickly—when you slip up as easily as I do, you learn how to do so.
"That…that doesn't mean that he's not a good person," I began. "I know that now…I didn't before. In fact, I wouldn't even listen to Javert when he told me that he had misguided me and that criminals didn't have to be bad people."
"Isn't that what he's always thought—"
"No!" I cried, but then I stopped myself. "Well, yes, and that's what he taught me to believe. Up 'till the end. Valjean, I hate to tell you this, but…" I gulped. "…the fact that you were the one, of all people, to save his life changed his view of the world. He thought that you and all other criminals couldn't be anything else but bad people, and everyone else was good. Black and white; little to no gray areas—that was his perception. You setting him free at the barricades turned that idea on its head, and he couldn't take it. He was so upset that he'd chased not only you, but probably countless other innocent people, that he jumped into the Seine."
Valjean reached across the table and plucked a good-sized piece of a mud-covered river plant from my soaking hair, then said, "And you went in after him." It was a lot less like a question than I expected. With my appearance, though, it shouldn't have been a question anyway.
"Got him out, too. Dragged him with every ounce of my strength. And he died at the riverbank anyway, but not because of the physical effects of the time in the river. He just wanted to leave this world. Seems so like Javert, you know, to just die on his own terms like that, instead of at the mercy of some rough waters."
Valjean slumped over and released a mournful sigh. "I thought I was doing him a favor."
"That is an understatement of the highest order," I interrupted.
"I didn't mean for him to jump into the Seine," he finished.
"I..."—I took a deep breath and got ready to suck it up and eat my words.—"I do not think that you spared Javert's life just for this. Not anymore. I just needed someone to blame this on, and I guess I thought it fitting to blame you—I never even considered blaming him for his own suicide."
"I take it you thought a lot of him," Valjean concluded, keeping his voice as soft as feather down.
Throwing aside the fact that I didn't like to be pitied in such a manner, I nodded. "Yes, I did. He…he wasn't really my father; you know that, but he still was a part of me. I adored him, and thought he was an excellent role model. That should explain a lot."
"Knowing that, I don't blame you for any of this, Mallory," Valjean said.
At this, I shook my head violently. "No!" I cried. "No! Don't you dare pity me as a victim of environment. I certainly wasn't. I pin this solely on myself. I deserve all the blame. I wasn't that young when he took me in; I was thirteen. Old enough to think for myself. But I didn't. Instead, I just followed him, blindly and without a care for anything else."
Once more, I shook my head, but this time in bitter memory, truly seeing for the first time what a fool I had been, and why. "It's so simple, really," I mused mostly to myself. "That's the way it's always been with me and Javert—straightforward. There's always an explanation, and this time, it's that…" I looked up. "Well, you see, ever since I was very young, before Paris, before Javert, I've always had a respect—more of a fear, really—for authority figures. Teachers, relatives, friends' parents, random strangers; it didn't matter. I just wanted so badly to please all of them, and I broke down whenever I couldn't, even if it was just a little mistake. Javert was just the one authority figure I couldn't please no matter what I did, and I couldn't take it."
"You pleased him eventually, didn't you?"
"I…I don't know if I can say 'yes' and still have it be true. There was always a sort of coldness there, even at the end. His note…oh, hold on a moment." I pulled out the folded suicide note from my coat pocket and pointed to the closing. It didn't say "With love" or "Take care" or "Your friend" or "Good luck." No, it just said, "Sincerely, Javert."
"See that? Not one personal touch to that letter. None."
"I'm certain there's something there," Valjean countered. His determined optimism was beginning to get under my skin. I hadn't encountered someone so…so cheerful, and so patient, in years; I wasn't used to that kind of happiness.
Dutifully, I traced my finger along the edges of the note, not expecting to find anything, but once more, I discovered that I was quite wrong. The note was written in my favorite silvery-bluish ink, and on my homemade stationery (another product of my frequent boredom). I remembered that Javert had always approved of me working with my hands like that, whether it was with hammer and nails or pen and paper, and I suppose it was only fitting that he would choose to honor that with his final written words to me.
"Yeah…yeah, you're right. Again. And now I have to eat my words. Again. And I know that I'm just getting started." I stood up from my chair and turned to exit the house. "Humility. That's something I haven't practiced in a while. Well, I must be going now. The day is starting, and I have to see to Javert's affairs, and to my own. I've got things to do, places to go, and people to see. Jean Valjean, Cosette, farewell to both of you, and I wish you only the best of luck."
I strode toward the door without the intention of saying one more word to either of them, and I ignored Valjean's footsteps behind me. However, he was too quick for me, and he caught me by the shoulder just as I put my hand on the doorknob. I froze at once and remained so for a moment, hand still grasping the knob and eyes staring fixedly ahead, but then released the knob and pivoted to see the big man behind me. Cosette poked her head around the corner, then crept forward on her little mouse-quiet feet until she was just behind her father.
Her father. Her Papa. I had never imagined myself envying a sheltered little waif like her—after all, there was a time before my mysterious arrival in Paris, over a century and a half before my birth, when we weren't all that different. I couldn't imagine how weak and spineless I would have turned out if my own adopted guardian had loved me no matter what…and still, I envied her just for that reason.
The tears started to push their way up into the corners of my eyes again. I couldn't be here anymore. I was already downtrodden, and this wouldn't help me at all.
"I just can't stay, Monsieur. I have to leave. Now." I tried to keep my voice firm and smooth as stone, but I couldn't stop it from cracking with a sob.
Valjean shook his head, his eyes lucid and his face gentle. "All right, as you wish. But before you leave, I must ask a favor of you."
"Anything for you. I'm in no position to refuse."
His face cracked into a grin. "I want you to sit down and tell me anything and everything you can remember about Javert."
It took a while for this to register, and when I did, the astonishment knocked me back a step. Anything for you, my own voice echoed. I supposed that I had gotten myself into this, but everything was just a little too much, and I knew that even if I thought about it for hours, Valjean would be left disappointed.
"Since you have seen much more of him than I have," he continued, "especially while he was off duty—"
"If you could ever truly call it that."
"—then you could probably tell me about who he was as a person, not just as a policeman. What he thought about, what he felt…"
"I can't do that!" I told him, folding my arms across my chest and grinning in spite of myself. "I couldn't even get the man to tell me his real name, let alone all his thoughts and feelings! You don't understand. He was his career; he was a lawman, and that was how he wanted it."
"Let's not concern ourselves with labels. What else did Javert do?"
"I just can't get through to you here, can I?" And I was right. It dawned on me slowly that I was in the presence of someone who was much more patient and much more stubborn than myself, though I did not think that was possible. If I was going to make amends, then I could start by obeying Valjean's request.
Sensing my resignation, Valjean continued: "You look like you've been through a lot these past years." He extended his hand to brush the faint scar over my right eye. "I'm sure you have much to tell."
"All right…" I put my hands in my pockets and rocked from heel to toe—fidgeting again, as Javert had always told me never to do. "But I'm warning you now, it is going to be a long story."
There was a moment of silence as Valjean put his arm around my shoulders and swept me away from the door and back toward the table.
"Come, child. Sit down at the table, and we will discuss this over tea," he told me. "I have all the time in the world."
And there you have it. Please, do tell me what you think - long reviews and constructive criticism are always welcome. And by the way, I really do want to continue with this, but I have a problem: I need to do some research on this, but I don't know where to start! I have no idea how the 1800's Parisian police system worked, or how 1800's Paris worked in general; I need some good French names for characters that are appropriate for the time period, and I'm warning you now that the dates, times, etc. may not be completely accurate. I could just be vague about it and gloss over these issues, but "vague" is not really my style; I love to drop little details to prove that I did my homework on things like this, but so far, my attempts at searching for this information have come up fruitless. If anyone knows of any good resources, or can provide me with this information themselves, then by all means inform me.