When the three people walked or staggered into the hospital there was an immediate flurry of activity. The nuns flocked around Javert, though not in a disorganised fashion, but more in the way of purposed hurry. Eponine stepped backwards, away from the press of people, but a familiar face caught her eye. As though she felt Eponine's gaze, Sister Marie-Camille turned towards the girl, and immediately left the group of nuns who were leading Javert towards a separate room. He was still walking erect, but there were deeper lines of pain and weariness on his face than had been there an hour earlier. The nun saw where Eponine was staring, and hurried to reassure the girl. "That is the surgery room, mademoiselle. From what I could see, the knife was not lodged anywhere fatal. I am sure Monsieur L'inspecteur will be fine. Now, I shall see to you." She looked over Eponine with an experienced medical gaze, taking in the bleeding on her forearm and the back of her head. The nun almost tutted. It was the second time in as many weeks that this girl came here with a head injury.

The Sister led Eponine over to a bed and examined her head injury more closely. It was a few centimetres higher than the one from the week before, and looked more serious, though the dried blood around it suggested it was several hours old at least. She turned her attention to the cut on the girl's arm, which was not too deep. She bandaged both injuries, but all the while Eponine was staring in the direction of the door Javert had vanished through, as though hoping to see him emerge from it any second. No such thing happened.

"Stop your worrying. As I said, he will be fine." The nun's voice intruded on Eponine's thoughts. "If you want, I will try and find out how he is doing, though of course I cannot interrupt if they are in the middle of surgery."

Eponine nodded her thanks, wondering when she had begun to care so deeply about what happened to Javert. She could not come up with a satisfactory answer; maybe it was because she suddenly cared about what happened to everyone. Spending time with idealistic students will do that to you. Funnily enough she could now think of Marius without the pang in her stomach that she usually felt.

As the nun walked away, Eponine curled up on the bed she had been led to. In the week since she had last been here the good work of the nuns had mostly been erased: Eponine was dirty again, her hair not quite as unkempt as before, but slowly getting there, and any weight she had put on was lost. Of course, she could not see this herself, having not seen a mirror for much of her life, but she could feel it. She once again looked like the ragged street gamine she was. As strange an experience as it had been, she had enjoyed being clean; it gave one more self-respect, something Eponine desperately needed.

As Eponine drifted into sleep, she could see Sister Marie-Camille coming back towards her bed, smiling and nodding her head.

Javert, as he was led into the surgery room, was starting to feel the effect of his wound. Up until now he had been somewhat in a state of shock, and his professional pride had been what was holding him upright. The dregs of that still remained, but his energy was wearing down fast. He was leaning more and more heavily on the police officer beside him, and when he finally was directed to bed he knew he could not have remained upright for much longer. Nuns were still hurrying around and preparing for the procedure which he knew must follow. Extracting the knife, and, if it had hit a vital blood vessel, cauterising the wound. This was what Javert feared the most: he remembered, as young officer, being caught on the wrong side of the blade of an escaping prisoner at Toulon. The knife had nicked his femoral artery, and emergency cauterisation had had to be performed by the none-too competent prison doctor. He still carried the scar, and the memories.

Javert was not an easy man to scare, but this scared him. He was led to a bed and his clothes were cut away from the wound site. Every small movement jostled the knife, and Javert's olive skin went progressively paler. Finally, the nuns/nurses were ready to begin the process of removing the knife. By this point Javert had, thankfully, lost consciousness from blood loss.

Leveque, the officer who had half-led, half-carried Javert to the hospital, was worried about his superior officer. He had always been eccentric, and seemed to possess a sixth sense for locating trouble, but he had become even stranger in the last few weeks. First he had abruptly moved house, then spent less time in the station and more time patrolling the streets. It was almost as if he was trying to throw off a pursuer. His orders too had become stranger, up until the one he had given last night: to surround his house and await the arrival of Patron-Minette.

Leveque could see now that this had been leading up to the confrontation with this gang, but he what he could not tell was how the girl asleep on the bed in the corner was involved, or how Javert had known the precise time when Patron-Minette would be coming for him. Javert was not normally a man whom his subordinates were allowed to question, but now, if ever, Leveque felt, circumstances warranted it. Not immediately however; it was hard, after all, to question an unconscious man.

When Javert awoke, he sensed someone sitting beside him. He tried to struggle into an upright position, and though it hurt his shoulder abominably he managed it, though this immediately attracted the attention of one of the nuns. She hurried over and tried to persuade him to lie back down, which was obviously a battle already lost. Javert turned to his left, though he had a good enough idea of who it was sitting next to him. Sure enough, Eponine came into his field of vision, sitting on a hard chair, her head resting on her hand, staring into the middle distance. She did not even seem aware that he was awake, and not even the nun's bustling around had shaken her from her reverie. This surely was unusual: a gamine would have their senses alert at all times.

She had been cleaned up again, he noticed, and bandages applied to her head and arm. She looked tired; her cheeks were gaunt and there were deep bags under her eyes, but her expression suggested that some deep thinking was going on. He was loath to interrupt her thoughts, but he wanted to know, without having to deal with the hovering of a nun, how long he had been unconscious, and more importantly, if he could have some water.

Thankfully, he did not have to disrupt her thoughts: she did so herself. She suddenly came back to herself, shaking into full consciousness again. She looked at where he was propped up and a look of surprise spread over her face. She opened her mouth to say something, closed it, then sat still as he asked "What time is it?" His voice was hoarse, and his olive colour still had not come back fully.

Eponine stood up, walked away, and came back moments later with water. She handed it to him, and replied: "It's evenin'. I don't know when, exactly. They were expectin' you to be asleep for hours yet. Guess they underestimated you."

"Hmm." He nodded, and then asked, "And what about yourself? Should you not be resting also?" He looked disapproving and slightly angry that she is seemingly allowed to wander round, while he has to fight with the nuns just to sit up right.

"Should be, but I'm not the one who had a knife in my chest, am I." She almost smiled, but then remembered the message she was to give. "The other officer, Leveque or summat, told me to let you know that… they have been safely taken to prison. No problems or anythin'. He had to go, there's a riot someplace in the city."

Immediately, she knew she should not have revealed that particular piece of information, as Javert was suddenly not content with sitting up right, but actually tried to move off the bed and stand. Eponine could see that this was excruciatingly painful, as the little colour Javert had regained was swiftly lost again. He succeeded in getting his legs off the bed and onto the ground before Eponine could stop him. He was only half dressed; his shirt and coat had been taken away by the nuns, condemned as 'unrepairable'. It was only this that prevented him making a swift exit; as he stared down at himself in surprise Eponine was able to gently push him back down onto the bed, avoiding his injured shoulder and the other bruises on his chest that he had received from Thenardier's blows. Normally it would have been impossible for the slight gamine to move the tall man, but knife wounds tend to make one weaker. Not that Eponine was not strong, but her strength was of a more flexible kind. She was a willow to Javert's oak.

As soon as Javert was sitting down, Eponine removed her hand quickly. She felt that she had no right to touch this man, as up-right and moral as he was. After all, the last touch from a member of her family had been a knife blow. She felt sullied, tainted by association.

The sudden movement had caught the attention of a nun, who hurried over. "Monsieur, you should not even be awake, let alone attempting to leave. I must insist that you lie back down. Your wound may become inflamed if you over-exert yourself."

Javert lay back down, but immediately turned to Eponine, his eyes demanding that she explained her last sentence.

"He didn't say much, just that there was trouble across the city and summat about General Lemarque. He was in a hurry."

Javert groaned, because of the pain and because of the lack of information. He should be out there, preventing whatever trouble was happening, not caged in this hospital. Yet his rational mind knew he was not strong enough to play an active part in the events which were taken place. But who said that Javert was always a rational man? His almost personal vendetta against Valjean was not rational, yet he had pursued it, and was still. There were worse criminals out there than Valjean, and Javert knew that, yet his mind was fixated on this one wrong-doer.

He turned back to the nun. "When will I be able to leave?"

"A week, probably longer, Monsieur."

Javert nodded, and looked away. The gesture was obviously one of dismissal so the nun turned on her heel and walked away, towards more cooperative patients.

Once she was gone, Javert turned back to Eponine, who noticed a gleam in his eyes, almost as if he was an excited child. He seemed to harbour no grudge against her for her father's actions or for her own in being unable to warn him earlier.