A/N: This will end up being a chaptered fanfiction.
Disclaimer: I do not and never will own Les Miserables or any of its characters in any of their forms.
It had been a rather busy day.
For whatever reason, criminals and crooks of all kinds had decided that November 6th was a good day to disrupt the natural order of Paris. Several arrests had been made, and several lawbreakers had escaped the silver handcuffs of an officer.
In other words, it had been quite an eventful day without a moment of rest or silence in the station. The work had never stopped, policemen rushing out and felons being dragged in.
Inspector Javert glanced up from his desk as yet another soon-to-be prisoner was brought into the station. He sighed, dipping his pen into the little inkstand once more. Writing up reports was definitely not one of his preferred duties in the course of police work, but every one of the officers had to do some desk work in his time. Of course, some of officers of weaker mind and body probably enjoyed it. It, after all, saved them from the constant risk of injury or even death.
Javert was certainly not of the weaker brand of officer.
He quite liked the challenges and travails that being an officer brought. He reveled in the idea that every moment he was on patrol, he was in unceasing, perpetual danger. It brought him, even in its overwhelming sense of hazard, a sort of calmness. In a sense, it was one of the few constants in his life.
Being a patrolling officer also prevented him from thinking too much. When on patrol, there were very, very few things on his mind. First, how to go about catching and effectively arresting the perpetrator of the crime. Second, how to do so without sustaining life-threatening injuries or getting killed. Third and final, how to prevent any of the idiotic, ill-learned, younger officers from getting fatally injured or killed, which is surprisingly much, much harder than it may seem.
These invariable concerns kept him on his toes and his mind set on the case at hand. These nagging worries prevented his thoughts from drifting to the less pleasant facets of his life.
Such as his ever-dwindling salary.
Javert was never one to fret about money. However, there comes a point when even being as frugal as can be is not enough. He was not an avid spender; he never bought unnecessary frivolities. Still, nevertheless, the salary of a policeman will only get one so far.
His flat was not in the best area, per say, of town. It had not seemed to cost much when he first started paying the monthly rent, at least in proportion to his salary. He had also been younger, for he had moved to Paris in 1824, almost seven years ago. The move had been due to supposedly better prospects working for the Prefect of Police at the Palais de Justice. Indeed, the possibilities had been great. He was offered a good job as an officer, and he did indeed love the excitement and adrenaline that had run through his veins as he stalked throughout the streets at night. Then, he was promoted to Inspector. He quite enjoyed this new set of duties, for now he had greater control of the dark streets and the even darker inhabitants of said cobblestone-paved roads.
However, being Inspector also meant that he had to do even more paperwork than he had had to do as an officer.
That was not a benefit of the job, at least in Javert's opinion. Paperwork meant sitting at a desk for hours on end, his only company being the endless stack of forms, a pen, and a solitary inkstand. Deskwork meant trading in the exhilarating night rounds and adrenaline-filled daytime patrols for a too-small wooden desk and hard maple chair.
To Inspector Javert, that somehow did not seem like much of a fair trade.
For this very reason alone, he had resisted the possibility of becoming a secretary to the Prefect of Police. As much as working directly under the orders of such a prestigious and honored man, he did not anticipate the large amounts of paperwork he would have to complete. He would much rather go home with a twisted wrist or a sprained ankle than ink stains all over his fingers.
He was not some weakling. He would not rejoice in the face of despair, of course, but at least he would die at the climax of the great battle between the law and the unlawful rather than at the hands of boredom.
He sighed again, setting his pen down. He cast his gaze around the office, examining the faces of the criminals being brought in for interrogation, and almost certainly later, imprisonment.
Inspector Javert had discovered at a certain point in his career as a policeman that there was a way to organize criminals into distinct classes.
There were, firstly, the hardened repeat offenders. They almost had a surly attitude about them, even as they were faced with a heavy sentence or an intense interrogation. This special type of criminal was of the belief that one more day, one more year, or ten more years in prison made little difference. They knew that they broke the law, yet they did nothing to attempt to stop their own selfish impulses.
Javert despised this brand of criminal more than he despised any other.
The second type was weak. They cried upon the single click of a locking door or the single breath of their interrogator. They were feeble, delicate of nature, of mind, and usually of body. This type was typically the first-time offenders. They barely ever tried to defend themselves, usually cracking after no more than five minutes of interrogation.
He could not bring himself to hate this type of criminal, but yet he could not pity them either. A criminal, no matter how vulnerable or powerless, was still a criminal.
The third type was easiest to define upon first glance at their physicality, yet hardest to define at first glance at their mentality. This third type was simply…the children. They were tiny of body, their bones not yet fully grown and sometimes, their adult teeth not all yet grown in. Their clothes were often far too large for them, having usually been lifted off an older man or woman.
This did not faze, nor surprise, Javert. He was used to seeing youngsters roam the streets of Paris.
However, their mentality, in a sense, frightened him to the very core of his being.
They could sometimes care less that they were captured, cornered, forced to be older than they really were. They loved being treated like the adults they always seemed to try to be.
But sometimes, they took on a totally different, totally opposite form of being. They were frightened, weak, depressed. They cried, with downcast eyes.
In a sense, children were the sum of the other two classes of criminals.
This puzzled Javert at first, and then he realized the truth. For after all, he had seen it in himself.
Children are the root of our own selves.
Our selves as children paint our selves as adults.