So I guess it's been a while since I've updated... Sorry guys, I'm really sorry! Here's kind of a short, adorable one. Stella and Javert celebrate Javert's fifty-second birthday. Yay :)
Stella does not really speak Italian. Why not? I don't speak Italian. Most of what she says is actually Latin, so don't quote me if you're trying to speak Italian.
Javert's first name: I swear, that was not an intentional reference to the book. Although, both work as a mindless vessel and symbol of the law, try to capture Valjean, and traditionally drown in the process. (That explanation literally just occurred to me while I was writing it.)
Guest reviewer who has given me my only reviews so far: Please get a profile here so I can thank you properly!
August fifth started as any normal Sunday. Javert took Stella out of the apartment before she could eat anything and led her to church. She was usually quite well-behaved and, to Javert's wonder, actually had quite a lovely voice. This was possibly the only aspect of her that still had any innocence about it – her behavior at mass. However, on this particular day, there was something different about her behavior. She still sang and participated in the Lord's Supper, but something still did not seem right. The sermon text was announced: Galatians chapter five. The priest began to ramble on in Latin as he usually did. While Javert never understood the words, he felt it was his duty to try to listen.
"Utinam et abscidantur qui vos conturbant." The priest moved on without stopping, but Javert heard something beside the priest's voice. Stella was laughing quietly. Angered slightly, he smacked her on the shoulder to get her to pay attention. Still, he was curious. The thought of whatever could have distracted her from mass haunted him the whole way home.
For the past few months, Stella had felt guilty for only pretending to pay attention during mass. She wanted to do what was right, but sometimes it was hard. On August first, she swore to herself that she would actually start paying attention. It was definitely strange. All the people were French, and spoke French to each other, but here they all spoke that same muddied Italian. They spoke it so calmly it seemed they did not know what they were saying! What was it the priest had said – Utinam et abscidantur qui vos conturbant? How did he not find that funny? How did Javert not realize it either?
Javert and Stella's combined silence at dinner was not unusual in the least. However, this time it was just… awkward. Javert was honestly trying to remain stern, but her smirk was just too powerful for him to resist. Just as he was about to speak, she broke the silence for him.
"So when do you celebrate another year farther away from your birth?"
He coughed loudly at the abruptness of her question. "Saturday."
She laughed outright. "Fifty-two? You're downright ancient."
As much as he still wanted to be angry with her, he laughed along with her. Then he suddenly remembered what he was supposed to say. "Stella, why were you laughing at mass?"
Stella looked back at him blankly. She knew what she would have to say, but he wouldn't like it for the moment. "I'll tell you on Saturday," she said with her customary smirk.
As expected, he frowned. "I don't think you'll remember," he said, rising from the table.
"Sure I will." Stella almost shouted at him to be sure he would hear her. He seemed to hear her just fine, though.
"I highly doubt it. Hold out your arm." He was holding a fountain pen. With an expression of mock sternness, he scrawled onto her arm as softly as possible "Why were you laughing". "Goodnight Stella." As he got back to his bedroom door, he turned around to see Stella laughing at him. For the first time since they met, he was able to successfully replicate her sarcastic smile. She laughed at his attempt.
"I love you." She said it in the most mocking tone he had ever heard from her. And yet, he still knew it to be genuine.
Javert dreaded waking up on August eleventh. Stella was devious at the best of times, so he hardly wanted to know how she would behave on his birthday. What was she going to tell him about mass on Sunday? And why did it have to wait until today? "I died on the bridge. I must have," he thought. "This is nothing but a special purgatory made just for me." Reluctantly, he crawled out of bed, got dressed, and slipped out his door, awaiting whatever the angelic demon may have planned for him.
He did not have long to speculate. Stella was sitting at the dining room table with a covered plate sitting before her. "…What?" Stella silently beckoned him to sit down at the head of the table. "Stella? What is this?"
Stella pulled the cover off the plate, on which rested a batch of biscuits. Staring him in the eye, she said in an unwavering tone, "Laetum dies natalis tibi volo, Pater."
Stella always confused Javert – it was when she made sense that frightened him. However, this neither made sense to him nor confused him in the way she always did. His feeling at that moment was beyond confusion. "What could you possibly mean by that?" Obviously it was directed at him, reinforced by the fact that the last word almost sounded like Father.
"Didn't I tell you I would say why I laughed at mass on Sunday?"
"What."
"I wished you a happy birthday in the language of my people."
Javert looked closely at her face and was somewhat disgusted at what he saw. Her eyes, of which he had come to think as exclusively her own, now reminded him of another person he almost knew long ago. Bamatabois. Javert was sickened and enraged to remember that Stella, his Stella, was the daughter of that good-for-nothing bourgeois rat. That's why she called Italian the language of her people – no girl in her right mind would in any way connect herself to Bamatabois. There was still a question to be answered, though. "How does that in any way connect to why you were laughing at mass?"
"Utinam et abscidantur qui vos conturbant."
"Galatians 5:12. Your point is?"
"Don't you know what it means?" Stella's laughter was swelling.
"No. Only the priest does. It's not my job to know what it means, Stella."
"Don't you want to?"
The question lingered in the air. Javert wished he could freeze time and allow himself to think it over. He wasn't supposed to know what it meant, just that it was there. But what good was that? Then again, what good was Michael Javert if he was not following and enforcing the law? "But I am not Michael Javert. I am Gavroche Madeleine. Better yet, I am Orion Valjean." He took in a deep, quavering breath. "Alright, what does it mean?"
"As… as for… as… as for those…"
"Stella. Breathe."
She was laughing too hard to get any words out. She calmed down for a second, but only long enough to ask for something with which to write. After disappearing for a brief moment, he returned with a fountain pen and a piece of paper. Stella was not very good at writing, but her penmanship became clearer the longer he stared and the harder she laughed. Suddenly he saw what he could not see.
Galatians 5:12.
The first Bible passage he ever read or heard in his own language.
"As for those agitators, I wish they would go the whole way and emasculate themselves!"
At the bottom of the sheet were three words he had never read, but could guess their meaning easily.
"Te amo, Pater."
