The head of the Paris police department sat back in his chair, his hand, clutching a fine looking pen, mindlessly scratching away at an official and important looking document splayed over the hard wood surface of his desk. Pausing in his work, the aged man yawned, his sore and stiff jaw cracking, and rolled his neck to relieve it from the persistent aching there that would not seem to leave him be. Searching for a way to eliminate his time quickly, he glanced up at the large clock in the corner, noting the agonizing information that he had several hours more to go until he was legally given reprieve to leave the praised precinct and return to his own home. Seeing this, the gruff man groaned quietly to himself before moving his fine pen over the surface of his documents again, his cramped and arthritic fingers moving even more slowly than before.
Though he heard some raised voices in the hallways, the aged man did not look up to further distract himself from his tedious and boring job of filling out paperwork. Commotions such as the ones he was hearing faintly now were not uncommon to him, and the man was no longer interested by the caterwauls and shouts of the condemned criminals that so often walked the halls of his house of laws. He would leave the other men to deal with whatever whore or cutthroat was disrupting the peace of their head quarters, he was so disinterested. When the noise persisted, however, the superior officer felt his irritation grow and he noticed that there seemed to be multiple voices raised in his hallways, one of them so familiar that he suspected it to be one of his finest men in duty. With a heavy sigh, the aged policeman sat back in his chair, stretching his legs and folding his hands, his wise eyes staring at the door of his office expectantly. A moment later, two men burst through the doors of his office, one with starkly bright red hair and a tall, menacing build, his temper as easily provoked as a stallion's. The other was a small young man with a dark face and intelligent brown eyes that glittered with a stubborn pride, and, by the way Javert was grasping the young man's arm in a vice grip, the two appeared to be in some disagreement.
"Yes, Javert?" The aging man asked the larger officer, taking note of the way his pale green eyes flared with a sharp and dangerous anger that was not rare to his unique breed. Sighing heavily and abandoning his work, he rolled his neck again before refolding his aching hands and preparing himself for a long, seemingly pointless argument, such as the ones he usually suffered when his leading officer became disgruntled at anything that so much as brushed against the law. Glancing at the clock and then back at his work again, he hoped to himself that the situation with Javert and his new subordinate would take at least a good amount of time to be resolved.
"This," Javert spat, obviously more than just disgruntled, yanking on the small man's arm roughly so that his thin eyebrows arched into a scowl above his warm brown eyes. "This cannot possibly be taken seriously. This must be some imbecile's idea of a joke." He continued, shaking the young man again to ease his rage, ignoring the deepening glower that he received from his captive as he did so. "He is far too small to ever be fit for duty. He's no larger than a child." He growled, gritting his eerily sharp white teeth, his next words coming out as an odd mixture of both bark and a hiss. "I can't even comprehend how he could possibly be considered as a subordinate. Especially in Paris!" He huffed, sending a burning glare at his subordinate who, with a great deal of bravery, returned the look.
"I thought the same," The superior said, observing the overly large policeman's uniform which hung over the scrawny man's body heavily, giving the impression that he was much thinner than first appeared. Noticing his observation, the young man exhaled heatedly before looking at him, his eyes silently asking him to console the heated man who was, by now, becoming nothing more than a nuisance to them both. "But Monsieur Pont-Thenard proved himself to be quite worthy of his uniform."
Javert was silent. Though his jade eyes were still narrowed in a severe glare, the spark of anger within him seemed to dampen slightly, and he let go of his newly appointed subordinate somewhat grudgingly. Giving a small, smug smile, Officer Pont-Thenard crossed his arms over his chest and tilted his head upwards slightly, watching the arrogant man with amusement. "How so?" He asked, quietly, crossing his own arms over his broad chest, his breath calming in an instance at his own internal command. There was more than a hint of curiosity and intrigue in his voice, and the aged man watched with his own amusement as the young officer's lips twitched upwards in a broader, faintly conceited smirk.
"He showed evident proof as the brightest of the new recruits, overly capable of tackling and detaining men at least three times his size, and he works incredibly well with victims, something which you, Javert, happen to lack."
The head of police's words dealt a serious blow to Javert's pride, and the man's arrogant green eyes dropped to the floor, ashamed. "I apologize for acting so informally when I did not know full circumstances." He murmured, his posture straightening into an even more rigid position as he did so. His eyes still downcast in embarrassment at his own outburst, he said in a voice dripping with a clear aggravation to his subordinate, "I apologize, as well, for doubting your abilities. Our superior seems to genuinely believe that you do ascertain some potential."
At this, he sighed heavily and Eponine sensed that her new adviser's rage was over. Rocking back on her heels and still grinning, she could not believe her luck at obtaining not only a fine distinguishment from the head of police, but also secured obtaining the one man she was planning to murder as her main adviser in the beginnings of her so called career as an officer of the law. She could only imagine the praise she would receive from her father and the rest of the Patron-Minette when they learned how close she would be to the most hated man in Paris in the next few months. Thinking of this, she grinned broadly, likewise crossing her arms over her chest before extending her hand to the Inspector's. Silently and with a grave expression, Javert shook it, observing the thin boy's surprisingly firm grip with mild surprise as he did so.
"I apologize again for my out of turn behavior." He repeated, dutifully, returning his attention to their superior and nodding his head in a small, polite bow. "I assure you that it will not happen again."
"You say that each time an incident occurs, Javert." The man said, picking up his pen again to resume his boring work, trying in vain to ignore the cramp beginning to rise in his thick and tanned hand. The next time he glanced up, both Javert and his subordinate had vanished through the oaken doors of his office.
Though the head of police had seemed to soothe his anger, as soon as Javert dragged his subordinate back out of the finely adorned office, he shoved the young man up against the wall again, his broad hands pressing against her arms so that it was impossible for her to move and evade him. Though she did not show it, Eponine's heart began to race erratically as a drip of terror sunk into her like a col, devastating knife. She had been so proud of herself for not having been discovered so far, it had even seemed easy, but, as his glacial green eyes slipped over her face and then her body, she felt that he had unraveled her rope of secrets so that she was nothing more than a few ragged, twisted strands, easily torn apart in his hands. Feeling his emotionless eyes bore into hers, her lids dropped heavily so that she would not have to see him, he horrified her so.
"Just because you have earned the approval of others does not mean you have the right to act like a narcissistic fool." Javert told her, darkly, his strangely canine teeth bared in a violent snarl. "You, you little rat, are up to something, and I'll have none of it. Not in my city."
"Not at all, Monsieur Inspector." She said, quickly, her voice formal and dutiful in his presence, though her heart still beat like a miniature hammer in her chest as his eyes continued to waver over her face, seeming to search for something that he was yet unable to find. "I would not dare to disobey the lawmakers of my country. I simply wish to serve the law, just like any other good citizen." She murmured, her rough voice scratchy and quiet in her best imitation of a man's.
Still scowling at her, Javert withdrew his hands from her skinny body in a flash, freeing her from his hold. "There is something not right about you." He declared as she adjusted her uniform, trying to control the alarmingly rapid rise and fall f her chest as she did so, her eyes focused on her hands instead of him.
"Perhaps there is, Monsieur, but I don't know what that thing is no more than you." She replied defensively, a surge of relief igniting her bones as she realized he had, in fact, not discovered her yet. As he turned down the hallway, waving one gloved hand in a cue for her to follow him, she smiled smugly to herself again, amazed at how easy it had been to fool some of the smartest individuals she had ever encountered into believing she was a man. It had been weeks now since her father had first cut her hair and denounced her as a woman, and no one had suspected a thing so far except Javert, and he could not even put two and two together, despite his obviously infiltrated knowledge. Still smiling, Eponine thought to herself that perhaps she wasn't as stupid as everyone made her out to be.
"This is the main precinct in Paris." Javert told her as he escorted her through the dimly lit hallways of the massive building, his arms folded behind his back mechanically, almost as if he was an automaton. "This is where criminals are initially brought before sentencing and transport to a different holding unit." She nodded in understanding as they stepped into a circular hall with stone flooring and walls, creating a ring that branched of into several other winding hallways such as the one they had just come from. "Prisoners are held in cells in the east corridor, offices of jurisdiction are in the west. The north has rooms which house mainly paperwork and artillery, but has several rooms to provide living quarters for officers in training if they are unable to find any other suitable place in the city."
Eponine nodded again, observing her adviser and copying his stance by folding her arms behind her back. Noticing that she did so, Javert felt a twitch of interest in his new subordinate that extended beyond his abnormally small body. If everything their superior officer had said was true, and if the young man was as eager to apply himself to a life aiding the law as he let on, he did have potential to be a fairly decent officer. Noting the concentrated way the young man's eyebrows bent his eyes into a concentrated stare as he looked around at each hallway, his lips moving silently as he repeated what Javert had just told him. She turned to face the south end f the circular room, noting that it was the grandly adorned entrance to the building, its wooden doors carved with a massive Fleur-de-lis and a number of old sayings she could not focus on enough to read.
"What is your name, boy?" He asked, suddenly, calculating the startled way the small man looked at him, similar to that of a man who had just been awaken from a long sleep by a jolting shake to the arm.
"Pont-Thenard," Eponine replied, quickly, suddenly immersing herself again in the fake identity she had created for the credit of others' curiosity. If she had not been in such a pressing situation, she may have smiled at her use of Marius' own name in the false one she had threaded for herself, but, by the way Javert was glaring at her, she rather felt that she should, if anything, be ill.
"And your Christian name?" He asked, quietly, his jade eyes darkening again with suspicion at his subordinate's strange reaction and hasty answer.
"My Christian name?" She asked, slowly, looking away from his highly unnerving gaze and instead staring with a pseudo sense of calm at the opening of one of the long corridors. "Uh, Louis." Eponine said, her head tipping into a small, short nod as she did so. "Named after me father, I was." She continued, resisting the urge to smile again as she realized that her words at least held some truth in them. Her father's most popular alias was Louis Jondrette, after all.
"Such a common name for such an aberrant person." Javert said, coldly. "You do have living quarters, don't you?"
" 'M afraid not." She said, absentmindedly, her already clouded thoughts drifting off as she sensed that any possible interrogation that may have arisen deteriorating as quickly as it had been jumped on her. Her arms growing sore from holding them behind her back so uniformly, Eponine let them fall other sides before shoving her small, scarred into the deep pockets of her trousers. Seeing this, Javert huffed a heaving sigh and stepped down the north wing of the building, beckoning again for her to follow his even stride.
Doing as he silently commanded, Eponine took a few wide steps so that she walked beside him instead of behind, silently observing the way his face looked in the dim light of the hallway. Though she did not know why, she found herself comparing his appearance to Marius', as she did with nearly all men. She found, however, that it was much too hard to compare them, their features were so different. Where Marius' hair was dark and curly, Javert's was red and neatly cut. Where Marius' figure was boyish and ideal for someone of his age, Javert's daunting height and broad shoulders made her feel, in comparison, uncomfortably small. The only thing similar between the two men was the color of their eyes, but where Marius' own green eyes were fresh and warm like the color of a spring leaf, Javert's were pale and sharp, a worrisome cause of nerves for many criminals she knew, including herself. Eponine silently decided, however, that she could consider Javert neither terribly handsome nor exceedingly ugly. He was simply something in between, a norm if there could be a norm on the prettiness of men. But he was nothing more than common dirt compared to Marius, and she disregarded even the slightest distinguishment he may pertain at the thought of the handsome and whimsical young man.
Though she knew his image well and his name was passed about the streets of the slums almost daily, Eponine realized that she did not know much about the man she had been assigned to murder. He was fearsome she knew, but where his fearsomeness sprang from she did not know. The few scraps of information she retained about him floated towards her mind suddenly, such as the fact that he had come to the city nearly a decade ago on the pretense of tracking down a long wanted criminal. She did not know whether or not he had been successful in his pursuit, but she assumed, since she had never seen him fail once in a hunt, he had won his game and stayed in the city merely out of convenience. Besides this information, the only other things she had heard of him was the fact that the man had neither wife nor family to call his own. Her eyes fixated first on his hand, where she noticed the absence of a marriage ring, affirming the rumor that had been the source of her knowledge, and then returned back to his face, observing again the strange fairness of his skin and the rare shade of his eyes. It was strange, she thought to herself, that it had been universally agreed before that he was an ugly man. Perhaps, Eponine mused, the blatant hatred of the man that had grown in her heart throughout the years had warped his appearance in her mind. Again, he was nothing in comparison to Marius, but, re-observing him, she decided that he, in his own way, could be considered something of himself. The pink slip of her tongue darting out of her mouth to slip across her bottom lip, she condemned the reason for his marital isolation not to be his physical features, but rather his hideous temper and evident arrogance before all men that were not the head of a respectable establishment.
Finding that her advising officer stopped at the entrance of one plain, oaken door, Eponine paused in her own step and found him observing her just as closely as she had been doing to him. Suddenly, she wondered what she looked like in the uniform she had been given, as well as if he could perceive the thin strip of fabric she had tied around herself to press her small breasts against her chest. Though she was much shorter than him, she had not felt her size very much while standing by other men, as she was unusually tall for a woman, but he made her feel no larger than an insect. Feeling his eyes wander over her head, she wondered if he thought the fashionable haircut Montparnasse had given her was decidedly too youthful to be practical for an officer, and she immediately vowed to go to a professional man as soon as she was able. Nervously, she looked down and wiped her sweating palms against the fronts of her trousers, and, with a hand like a striking snake, he grabbed hold of her chin, tilting her face upwards so that he could examine it more intensely. Knowing that it would be of no use to resist him, Eponine did not bother tearing her face away from his grasp, only making her expression as composed and manly as she could make it.
"That uniform is too large for you." Javert said, eventually, his nostrils flaring as he tilted her head backwards so that her neck strained uncomfortably. His hand heavy against her chin, he moved it from left to right, his unfeeling eyes giving her no window to his thoughts as he seemed to stare at the smooth, feminine skin of her cheeks before roughly releasing her.
"It was the smallest one available." She replied, simply, her shoulders bouncing upwards in a small shrug. After pawing at her jaw with one hand, easing it from the pain his hold on her had caused, she gave a small, mockingly polite smile. "I've always been on the smaller side of men." She added in an attempt to appease him, twitching her head slightly like a pigeon's, her eyes looking just as ignorantly stupid as she looked at him pointedly, though the entire look was a ruse.
Javert said nothing more before shoving open the door, which, Eponine found, was similar to something she might expect the militia to be housed in. The room seemed to be like a plain barracks, a number of bunks, the majority of them dusty and abandoned looking, pressed against the wall and cramped into the room. A small desk was laid out before a large window set into the wall opposite of the doorway they were standing in, flooding the room with a misty and damp light, but its companion chair was the only other hint of furniture in the room. Already, someone's things had been tossed lazily over one of the bunks and a young man scarcely older than herself was laying back on his own bed, his black eyes focused on the canvas bottom of the cot directly atop from his. On seeing them enter, he sat up, his hand quickly smoothing his jet black hair into a state of conformity, though it sprang back to its previous messiness almost immediately.
"You have the rest of the day to collect your things and settle in. If you do not return by night fall each night, you may consider yourself on probation." Javert said, coldly, watching as his subordinate stepped into the room and hoisted herself onto one of the upper bunks, crossing her legs and sitting comfortably while looking at him.
"You needn't worry none about that." Eponine said, resting her chin on her hand and making him frown at her poor quality of speech, her phrases seeming to be ones he would easily find born from the gutter. "Don't have no things to collect."
Ignoring her answer, Javert looked at the other man and, with a wave of his hand, said, "I need a private audience with you for a moment, boy."
Without so much as a hint of resistance, the boy sprang up from his cot with a great energy and padded out to the hallway, like a faithful dog called by its master. Javert pulled him into the hallway, leaving Eponine to her own devices in the room. The last he saw of her was a steady and contemptuous glare pointed directly at him as he closed the door, not even so much as a single attempt to cover it up, and he returned the look with equal fervor. As soon as the door shut with a slight snap, he turned and looked at the other boy, wishing he had been assigned this one instead of his current, inevitably troublesome subordinate. He was infinitely more respectful and more physically fit for duty than the tiny and conceited Louis Pont-Thenard.
"Listen to me closely, young man," Javert said to him in the softest murmur he was capable of, placing one powerful and trusting hand over the young man's shoulder. Pausing, he looked suspiciously at the door as if he expected Eponine to be standing there and listening to their every word, the only evidence of his internal aggravation the growing detestment in his jade eyes. "I want you to watch my subordinate and, if he does anything even remotely abnormal, I want you to report it to me immediately. Do you understand?"
"Of course, Monsieur Inspector." The young officer said, nodding politely at him. "Anything to please the most honored officer in Paris."
From within the room, Eponine listened to their conversation, careful to jump away from the door as soon as she heard the two men's breathtakingly predictable conversation end. As quickly as she could, she hoisted herself atop her bunk again and laid back just in time to see the other subordinate enter the room with a calm step. Looking up at her, he smiled obsequiously, no doubt trying to gain her fickle trust, before laying back on his own bed, resting his head of thick black hair over his navy clothed arms, his pale blue eyes glimmering in the cloudy light from the window with something she supposed was contentment. Whatever man felt pride in oppressing those who needed help most was a man who she could never allow herself to trust, Eponine thought to herself bitterly, sneering at the man in such an angle that he would not be able to see the rude expression on her face. No matter who they were, she knew, she would always be filth to them and they would always be filth to her. It was a never ending circle of hatred, lies, and loathing, one she was so accustomed to that she could not dare to ever interrupt it. But why on Earth would she want to ruin such a good thing in the first place?
"Pff," Eponine snorted to herself minutely, scoffing at the men who thought themselves so clever to be tip toeing in secret around her life, her dark eyes staring at the ceiling with a heavy glower. "What neanderthals."
