CHAPTER 3

"You called, sir?" Javert stayed respectfully by the doorframe, giving a slight bow to his superior.

The man rubbed his bridge of his nose, letting his free hand wave to the seat in front of him.

"Sit down."

Javert sat. He really wished Wellington had not asked. The chairs were always too small.

"All right." Wellington folded his thin hands together, the fatherly smile so usually lingering around his lips now a stern, set line. It was a departure from his gentle, push-over attitude. Javert rather liked it. "I'm not going to skirt the issue, so here it is, laid out right in front of you." He took a deep breath, as if something extremely momentous was occurring. "You, Javert, are probably the best man on this force at Montreuil-sur-Mer at the moment, and you have been the minute you joined our ranks."

The creases around the inspector's mouth deepened.

"No, no, I take that back." Wellington waved his hand again, an effusive gesture that made the pragmatist in Javert squirm. "No 'probably's, you are the best here, no doubt about it. Absolutely no doubt in my mind… or in anyone else's for that matter…"

Rambling again. Javert let himself lean back a little in his seat to ease the discomfort.

"…always has been one of the most practical-minded… Well, anyway," Wellington continued, chuckling at his own digression, "you're probably wondering why you haven't gotten a promotion yet."

"I beg your pardon?" he asked quietly. A careful observer would have noted that his hand had started to clench onto his overcoat, but Wellington was definitely not in that category.

Wellington rolled his eyes with a smile, as if a charming child had just asked why people couldn't fly, and he had to explain. "And why shouldn't you wonder? Just look at Etienne. Just not quite as much up there—" He tapped a spindly, short finger to his thinning head. "But he's already climbed further up the ranks. Certainly your curiosity must be piqued."

Javert's jaw jutted out. Did this man purposely want him to question his authority? He was testing him. He must be.

"Hello? Javert?"

All right. Not a test.

"Are you listening to me?"

"Yes." The word hardly let itself out of his mouth.

"It's because you've got no humanity, my good fellow!" declared Wellington, hitting his desk with a startling emphasis. "No humanity at all! Not one shred of it in those bones of yours, Javert!"

There was a dead silence.

The man's face glistened with sweat as he sat back down, raggedly running his handkerchief about his forehead. "I'm so sorry," he muttered. One drip of sweat still lay shakily on his cheek, but Wellington didn't notice as he swabbed again at his head. "Just gets me so overworked, you know… I'm dreadfully sorry."

Javert stayed still.

Cocking his head, Wellington looked over at Javert, and apparently decided the risk was worth it, for he set off on a second rant.

"Look, you are amazing, there's no doubt about that… none at all, but one of the traits I value most highly on my police team is the ability to differentiate the spirit of the law from the letter."

Bloody half-Englishman.

"Do you know what I'm getting at, Javert? You can't go throwing people in jail left and right! You just can't! Our jails are overflowing!"

Javert found his mouth getting awfully dry. "You mean to say," he said slowly, "that you don't want criminals to be punished."

The desperate click-clacking of Wellington's fingers across the desk stopped. "No," he repeated back just as carefully, "I just feel that you should… You should understand their predicament first. There are those that do these things once, out of destitution or confusion, and there are those who were born to do them again and again. You must pick them out."

Before he could stop himself, the inspector felt a flush of heat rise to his cheeks. "Excuse me if I do not understand," he attempted to say coolly, but his voice had dropped dangerously low. He cleared his throat and tried again. "If I do not understand— but I'm not serving the police force to the best of my capabilities because I don't let a street musician abuse his girlfriend who works in a factory.'"

"Something along those lines," said Wellington uneasily. He had never seen his star protégé quite so red. "Well, I mean, no. Not at all. I was referring to the woman. She's sitting in there, dying…"

"I'm not arresting her," struck in Javert suddenly. "It's the man. She slipped in."

"Oh." Well, now probably wasn't a good time to tell him that her landlord had just spoken with him in regards to the poor woman's inability to pay her rent.

"Why? What did she do?"

Dammit.

"Well…" Wellington started hesitatingly, "there was a slight issue with her rent a few days back… the landlord doesn't think she can even pay for it, although she works almost non-stop…"

"What a disappointment."

"And she absolutely refuses to go out onto the streets—"

"I'm sure we could offer her a nice, covered shelter right here."

Javert nearly jumped as Wellington's long hand smacked the desk right in front of him. "No, no, no, no, no!" shouted Wellington, nearly knocking the papers off his desk. "This is exactly what I was telling you NOT to do! Do you not understand?"

"I understand that you are telling me to purposely and knowingly break the law--"

"All right, just… just listen." Wellington stuck his face as close to Javert's as he could. The man didn't budge an inch. "I am sending you back to the quarries of Toulon."

The inspector's face blanched.

"If you do not help this woman over here pay her rent."

If Javert could have exploded silently, quietly and without a spectacular show of blood and guts, his face at this very moment is exactly what it would have looked like.

"I… I… I can't… this… No. I am not going to pay for this woman out of my own pocket—"

"Then give her your own place."

Compared to the previous suggestion of paying the woman's rent, this revelation was the diagnosis of cancer to a cold.

"Yes, I think I like that better anyhow. More personal. Javert, this is a woman who has worked and worked but still can't even fight for her life. I need you to understand that."

"I understand it, but that doesn't mean I'm going to invite a twenty-some year old woman to live with me!"

"Dear God." Wellington rubbed the bridge of his nose. "All right. Take her in until she dies. Make her last days comfortable. That's all I'm asking. It will only take a month— not even. Please. No one will know. And if you do, I think I can see to it that you get the spot in Paris instead of Etienne. I… I demand you to."

The look on Javert's face was startling in its complete and utter dullness. The expression did not change as he uttered a crisp, "Yessir," and promptly stood up, gave a low bow, and left.

Fantine quietly rocked her feet back and forth, back and forth when the door burst open, slamming into the wall behind it, and Javert stepped out, looking more tightly-wound than he had appeared before. Was that possible? Suddenly she realized he was gesturing to her.

"You're coming with me," he said, looking halfway across the room.

"What…?"

"Just..." He sighed, as if he could hardly even deign to believe he was saying this-- "come with me."