XXXVII: Teetering Along the Edge

Aimée felt dampness in her feet. She looked down and cried out, recoiling in disgust as she realized the puddle she was standing in was a sickly shade of crimson. Bodies littered the square, soldiers and revolutionaries alike. The smell of blood hung stickily in the air and she felt herself gag, bringing a hand up to her face.

Aimée Lamenté was numb. She didn't cry as she approached the barricade, looking down to try and avoid the bloody puddles and smears. The wood was a splintered mess, shattered and broke through. The French cannons had made short work of it. Stepping through the gaping hole, Aimée looked up at the café. The face of Enjolras stared unseeingly down at her, upside down as he hung from the open window. He looked so very young now. His skin smooth and flawless in death. His flag was wrapped around him, tangling him in a web of crimson fabric. The late afternoon sun made the colors around her glow brightly, giving vibrancy to the blood on the streets and the flags flickering faintly in the slight breeze.

Guilt began to flicker in the back of her head. She remembered slipping away about a half hour after Javert had been turned loose, ducking down the same ally in the back. Once she was out in the street, Aimée looked for him, but the man was nowhere to be found. Aimée had about expected as much…no doubt Valjean told Javert why he was being let go. Javert, being a smart man, would surely figure that Aimée was involved with the rebels. Realize that she had lied to him.

Dejected, she had hurried back to the house…maybe he had stopped there. But when Aimée arrived, the halls were empty, and so were all the rooms. There was no sign of Javert anywhere. She felt herself collapse on her bed, alone in the dark. She wept, cried for her dead Éponine and the heart she feared she had shattered. At first, the woman was sorry for herself, lamenting about how cruel the world was around her. Then, deciding she was going to do something, she forced herself to stand. Reaching into the dirty pocket of her trousers, Aimée pulled out her ring and slipped it on her finger. It gave her strength to leave her room and go back downstairs to the shop. Tucking a stray strand of hair behind her ear, she knelt behind the counter and grabbed the satchel of francs she had hidden. Slinging the bag over her shoulder, she quickly ducked out of the shop, locking it behind her.

The thunder of cannon fire shook the ground beneath her feet. Aimée panicked and pressed herself close to the wall of a building across the street, the hard plaster pressing against her palms and back. The popping of rifles followed suit and she knew that battle had broken out at the café once again. Deciding that it would be certain death to return, she quickly ran in the opposite direction, towards the Seine. It may have seemed cowardly, but Aimée was well aware that there was a very thin line between stupidity and courage. For the rest of the night, and most of the morning, Aimée wove her way around the inner city, desperately trying to find any sign of Javert.

Hours later, when the sky was painted with the blue and yellow of day, Aimée stood in front of the seized café, blood spattering the cobblestones like splotches of paint beneath her feet. The weight of her satchel dug into her shoulder, but she ignored it, bracing herself as she stepped through the threshold. Death was not a subtle smell. It hung in the air and staled it, tainting the oxygen like poison. Aimée held a hand to her face and looked around. Bodies were lined up, but she made no point to look at them right away. Bullet holes riddled the walls, splinters bursting forth like needles. Tables were overturned and chairs tossed into the corners. Above her, the ceiling was punched with holes from the soldiers' rifles. She closed her eyes and sighed sadly. These boys…all of them…dead for some foolishly noble cause. Martyrs drowning in their own blood.

It was time for her to look at the bodies. The women had all come out, trying to scrub the streets clean. They had lined up the dead inside, save for Enjolras who they couldn't reach. Aimée knelt and grabbed the long linen that covered the first few people. Grantaire's face stared back, blank and empty. Aimée sighed sadly, remembering his playful smile. Reaching out, she pushed his unruly hair from his face, watching his unfocused eyes stare vacantly ahead. His skin was cold on her fingertips and she shuddered. She felt as her numbness started to melt away.

Her hand shook as she removed the second sheet. More men…more boys. Some staring like Grantaire had, others looking as if they were sleeping, save for the stains of their blood that had blossomed from their wounds. Éponine was among them, her eyes closed and she looked peaceful. Aimée cupped her cheek and said a blessing as she moved on to the third, and final, linen. Closing her eyes and exhaling, Aimée drew it away.

She stood up and stumbled backwards, hunched over and clutching her hand to her mouth, stifling a pained scream. There, nestled between two full grown men, was little Gavroche.

Javert felt as if he was suffocating. The collar of his military jacket dug into his neck, cutting of his air, and the afternoon reeked of death. Beads of sweat trickled their way down his skin, but he ignored them. The women in the street did not look up at him when he passed by, instead they kept their heads down, intent on their scrubbing. The bodies of his men were sprawled out in the square, their uniforms soaking as they lay in puddles. Javert's downturned eyes stared disbelievingly at the destruction that had come from this short uprising, a battle that hadn't even lived to see the light of the morning.

He heard a scream, a muffled wail, come from the café. He felt nothing as he approached. The first thing he saw was the bodies of the young men, lined shoulder to shoulder on the dusty wood of the ruined ABC Café. He recognized some of the faces from his short time in the barricade, and others he did not know. Jean Valjean was not among them...

So he has escaped once again, Javert thought, scanning over the line again. At the end, he froze when he saw her.

Aimée was kneeling on the floor, cradling a boy in her lap, the same boy that had called out Javert's disguise in front of the revolutionaries. Javert couldn't move past the doorway as he saw her, her angelic face contorted by pain and grief. She looked like a child herself, wailing and sobbing, clutching onto the boy as if her own life depended on it. Javert spotted the glint of the sapphire at her finger. He actually felt as if a hand reached inside his chest and grabbed his heart in a painful vice grip.

Javert froze as he felt so much love and anger.

Aimée looked up and spotted him. The two stared at each other for a long while, no sound between them except for Aimée's hiccupping sobs. She smoothed the boy's hair and sniffed, trying to regain her composure some. Gently, she laid him back down and stood, wiping her eyes and trying to meet Javert's own gaze. She couldn't.

"I'm…I'm sorry, Javert."

"Sorry?"

Aimée sniffed and cast her eyes upwards, towards the heavens. She begged for God to provide her with the words she needed. "I never told you the truth."

"The truth."

"Before you arrived, before I knew you were here, I was a smuggler. I helped get weapons into the city. I wasn't supporting their cause, I was just in it for the money. I see now that I was greedy and fool-"

"Look out there," Javert replied, his voice neither raised nor harsh, yet it was as hard as marble. "Look at my men. Killed by the weapons you supplied."

Aimée bit her lip. "I know."

"When were you planning on telling me? Were you even going to tell me?" Javert asked.

"Yes…I was…eventually."

Javert scoffed and Aimée felt another wave of tears threaten her. "Javert, I swear…I was just trying to make money. The second I found you again, I stopped."

"You gave them weapons."

"I know…."

Javert didn't know what to think. He found himself very overwhelmed, his breath hitching in his lungs. The threshold felt as if it was shrinking around him, almost pressing against his shoulders, so he stepped all the way inside, looking at the child instead of Aimée.

"He's the one that told the others who I was," Javert said quietly, noticing that he wasn't speaking to Aimée, or anyone in particular. "Bold little pup."

"His name was Gavroche," Aimée whispered. "I helped take care of him…."

The quietness of her voice made Javert turn his gaze back on her. Her arms were wrapped around herself and he watched as a shudder shook through her body. Stepping closer, Javert bit the inside of his lip. He was not blind to the pain that swam through her eyes, the fear and the desperation. Part of him wanted desperately to forgive her…take her confession and just throw it in the river, disregard it and pretend that nothing was wrong. But the other, harsher side of him grew cold, distant. How could she have absorbed herself in this? For two years he had hunted smugglers and she had hidden behind the Parisian walls like a quiet little mouse, bringing in the guns that killed his men.

But his own men had killed a child, a bold, loudmouthed little boy that only pretended to be a man for a few precious moments.

Javert wanted to do something for him. Looking down, he saw the heavy iron of his medal shining in the early morning rays that had strayed into the café. It had been given to him when he had stumbled his way back into the Palais¸ bleeding and exhausted. Hoight had pinned it on his jacket once the Inspector had a chance to change and clean himself up.

Reaching up and undoing the pin, Javert realized that he didn't deserve it. He had been discovered by a child, a smart, bright little child that had an entire life stretched ahead of him. The boy had thrown it away with a loyalty beyond his years. It felt heavy in Javert's hand when he stepped over and knelt next to the boy. Aimée was quiet as she watched him.

He laid the medal on the boy's chest and pressed his hand over it, bowing his head and muttering a small prayer for the child's soul.

"He looked like I would've pictured Pascal," he heard behind him. Javert's eyes snapped open and he continued to kneel, not being able to face the woman behind him. His jaw set. Glowering, he turned and stood to his full height, his back still to Aimée. He tried to ignore her words, because if he took time to listen to them he would see Aimée dressed in her mourning black, standing over the two graves back in Toulon.

"For two years I hunted smugglers," Javert said, looking along the line of bodies. He turned, looking at Aimée in a way that she didn't like. It wasn't distaste, but it wasn't forgiveness. "For two years, I tried to keep weapons out of Paris. Patrolled the streets for days, slept in a saddle, went without meals to keep this city safe, keep the people inside the walls safe. And here, after all that time, it was you. Bringing rifles to these boys, giving them ways to kill while I fought to keep war out of the city."

His words punched her with a ferocity that made her hunch forward. They were so painful because they screamed the truth, wailed the reality that Aimée had tried so hard to ignore or forget about. Once Éponine had died, the guilt had set in, running like ice through her veins. She had thought about what part she had played in this war, but Javert had driven the nail home. There was a long moment of silence. Aimée tried to face him. She held up her hands, palms up as she begged, her eyes shining with emotional toil.

"So…what now, Javert? Are you going to leave me because I made mistakes? Gérard ruined my life when he took me away…I grew cold, distant," she sniffed, begging with him. "And now look at this, two children I help raise are dead. Gavroche and Éponine."

Her eyes flitted to the young woman towards the beginning of the row. Javert drew himself up and pressed his eyes shut.

"I don't know what to do, mademoiselle…" Javert murmured, for a moment letting his

stone crack. He was afraid of what might happen. If he forgave her…she might lie to him again. What else could she have been hiding? Or…if he forgave her they could live happily together, her past merely an obstacle that they climbed together. He was torn in two.

Opening his pale green eyes, Javert watched as the tears started to brim in her ocean. He looked over her hair, the dusty gold tangled behind her head, tied with a ribbon. Her clothes were filthy, streaks of dirt muddying the stains of red. And yet his body still stirred with her beauty. Javert suddenly felt vulnerable. He became aware that he had handed his heart over to her, let Aimée Lamenté become his world, his life. Javert had absorbed himself in a woman that he had known, back in Montreuil. The Aimée that had run a flower shop and kissed him in secret in the back of the stables. The Aimée that had shared bread with him in the night. The Aimée that had fallen asleep in his arms when they sat in the library. This woman, the one that stood in the wake of death, he hardly knew anything about, and in the last nine years he saw that she was scarcely the same woman he had loved before. Javert had convinced himself that he saw a stranger standing in front of him. He grew afraid.

Javert looked around, desperately searching for something he was comfortable with. Everything was different to him. The air reeked with death and he felt the heart in his chest start to hammer against his ribs.

"…Javert?"

He shook his head, backing towards the door.

"Javert…please….Don't go, Mattieu," Aimée pleaded, "Look at me. Please. I'm sorry…forgive me. I did everything to save you."

She went after him the moment he turned away. Her fist closed around the thick fabric of his jacket and Aimée tried to turn him, tried to make him face her. She clenched her jaw when she felt him stiffen uncomfortably at her touch. His eyes remained away from her.

"Javert…don't. What can I say, what can I do to make you stay, to make you understand? I'm not going to lose you again…."

With the slightest pull of his arm, Javert slipped free from her grip.

"I need to think," was all he said as he walked away, his shoes splashing in the red puddles that littered the cobblestones.

Aimée's feet were frozen to the spot. Her heart had dropped and she hated herself. Javert had walked away from her, without looking her in the eye. Her anxiety began to grow…where was he going? Would he come back? Looking over her shoulder, she saw the bodies of her friends lined up, united in death. Aimée went inside and stood back over them. The bitter realization that she didn't belong here settled over her, making her feel like an unwelcome ghost. These weren't her comrades, she had treated them like business. Aimée hadn't fought with them, hadn't laughed with them, and hadn't died with them. Disgust filled her when she thought about her long dead father, of Gérard Lamenté. For years, the woman had tried to convince herself that she was nothing like him. Yet, as she looked at the satchel of money that sat on the floor, she realized she had strayed too close to him. She had allowed her judgment to be clouded by the enticement of business.

Looking up, Aimée glanced out over the street, Javert was now gone, swallowed up by the city. Aimée realized then too that she didn't belong out there either. She had broken the law, smuggled weapons, fraternized with revolutionaries. Standing in the middle of the threshold, Aimée tore herself into pieces, alone, save for the maids scrubbing in the streets, their heads bowed towards each other as they whispered about the battle that had raged just outside their windows. None of the other women looked at her, even noticed she was there. The three people Aimée actually had in her life were gone, two were claimed by death and the other she had betrayed, maybe even broken.

Walking to the bag that sat on the floor, Aimée felt a bitter taste bloom in her mouth. Her money was hidden away underneath the leather flap. Her original plan was to find Javert and, picturing it like some foolish child, they would run away together. She realized now that the money she had was dirty, gained by enticing the young revolutionaries with weapons they did not need. Without her, there may not have even been a war. Éponine, Gavroche…maybe they would still have been alive if she had just sat quietly in her flower shop, arranging tulips or roses.

Aimée started to convince herself that the look of shock and disgust that Javert had in his eyes when he looked at her was deserved. He was a man of the law, dedicated his life to order and justice and she spat on it, chose to live like a criminal just for greed, the avarice that enticed her with a little extra cash. She felt weak. She couldn't even protect the people she loved from harm.

The thing that gave her strength was Javert, the love he had shared with her and the sapphire that clung to her finger. She lifted her hand to her face and gazed into the dark blue stone. Inside she saw Toulon, saw the way Javert had first looked at her the day she had thrust flowers in his face. She saw her mother, clouded by time, but still beautiful. She saw her baby brother Pascal, bundled and smiling like a baby should. She saw her father, a different man changed by her mother's love. In the ring, Aimée Lamenté saw the happiness in her life. Saw the mercy she craved. .

And she decided she needed to fight for it. Aimée was going to find Javert and fight tooth and nail for his forgiveness, forgiveness to wipe the crushing guilt away.

The maid looked startled when Aimée dropped the satchel in front of her. The other women looked up, wiping their foreheads and the water a cloudy-red as it sopped in their buckets.

"Take this. For all of your losses," Aimée said, walking away before the maid had time to open the flap. She heard surprised cries at her back as she made her way past the bodies and death and disappeared into Paris's winding center.

Javert was passing a sewer when he heard a loud grunt coming from beyond the wrought iron grate, followed by muffled words. The Inspector neared the grate and leaned toward it, the rank smell of the Parisian underground reeking from the tunnel. There, the mutterings again, he was sure of it. Javert couldn't understand what was exactly being said, but it sounded like frustrated whispers. A man of memory, Javert quickly recognized the voice.

Valjean.

Why was he in the sewers?

He looked farther up the street, knowing that about a half a mile down the sewers opened up to an open channel that led to the river. A reeking, stinking place, but no doubt Valjean's only exit. Javert stood and watched the grate, wondering what he would do. The sting of Aimée was still fresh and he needed something to strengthen him. The thought of Valjean releasing him made him feel helpless, weak, as if the convict had a power over the Inspector's life. He hated it, hated the emotions that swirled in his head. The thought of being in this man's debt, the man he had hunted, the man that had slipped from his grasp more than once, angered Javert. He fed off of it, strengthened his walls and reminded himself that the law was his life. Convicts threatened it.

Stepping away from the grate, Javert walked towards the opening of the sewers. He knew that he would reach his destination before Valjean, who was no doubt wading through muck and waste for some unknown reason. Was it a desperate way of escape? Valjean was more desperate than Javert had previously thought. As he walked, he felt the heaviness of a pistol tucked into his waistband and he found a sort of comfort in it, something that did its job, something that didn't surprise him with lies or mercy.

The heels of his boots tapped wetly on the damp stones. He was frowning and the streets were empty, people shut up in their homes even as evening started to fall and the revolution staled behind the day. The sun weakened, the late afternoon giving way to dusk and the temperature start to drop with the cool of night just a whisper at the back of Javert's neck.

When Javert reached the opening of the channel, he held a hand up to his nose to try and block out the stench. His eyes watered as he stood at the top of the filthy stairs that led down to the sludge. There he would wait, as patient as a statue.

Time passed in silence, the only noise was Javert's muffled breathing as he tried his best to cover his nose. A fleeting memory of lilac and vanilla filled him and he shook his head free of it, casting it out as if it were undesirable. Javert tried his best not to think about the young woman he had left behind in the café…left to grieve her lost revolutionaries. He doubted she would grieve the men, the young soldiers he had lost.

Nearly an hour had passed and Javert's legs began to ache from standing, but he ignored the discomfort. The light was weak with dusk and Javert could barely see a slight ripple that snaked its way through the sludged water from the opening of the sewer. Letting his hand away from his face, Javert stepped down a few stairs and watched the opening intently. He heard grunt and soon he saw the shadow of a man collapse out of the tunnel, another man slung limply over his shoulder. They were filthy, caked in waste and scum. Still, through the filth, Javert recognized Valjean.

Grunting, Valjean hefted the man on his shoulder and did his best to wade to the foot of the stairs. Javert cleared his throat and the convict's head snapped up to face him, his eyes white against the muck on his face. Javert felt the smooth handle of the pistol in his hand and his fingertip lightly hovered over the trigger.

Neither spoke. Clenching his jaw, Jean Valjean stepped up the first stair.

"I must save this man, Javert," was the first thing out his mouth. Javert glanced at the form slung over Valjean's shoulder. He saw that he was younger, no doubt a rebel from the café. "I dragged him through that to save him, to escape and get him to safety," Valjean said, tossing his head towards the mouth of the sewer. "If you want to shoot me for that, then go ahead. Just keep in mind you will be killing two people."

Javert blinked and he became aware that his hand was shaking slightly on the pistol.

"Show me mercy now, Javert." Valjean started to climb, his eyes boring into Javert's.

He felt frozen, shocked like an animal in the face of death. Javert had planned to arrest him after all this time, finally lock Valjean back behind bars where he belonged. But…he couldn't bring himself to do it, couldn't even bring himself to speak. The law fought with his humanity. Valjean was a criminal that had escaped the law for nearly twenty years.

So why did Javert stand aside when Valjean passed by him in the stairwell, climbing his way to the road and to permanent freedom?

Javert stared at the pistol in his hand, now lowered in defeat once Valjean passed by him without so much as a word. He felt the stars watching him, blinking as they saw his conflicted weakness. He bowed his head, clenching his eyes shut as he tried to steady the world that lurched underneath his feet. In the course of a day, Javert's life had completely shattered. The happiness he had thought he found with Aimée was thrown away, shattered by the secret life she had lived. And now, standing above the filthy sewers of Paris, his once harsh convictions of justice were violated. Clenching his jaw so tightly his teeth began to ache, Javert brought his hand up to his face, hiding away from the overwhelming stench of the gutters and the suffocation of his life.

Feeling a burning sensation in his hand, Javert looked down at the pistol in his hand, scarred by the fires from his past. Disgusted with himself, he felt it slip from his fingers and tumble downwards, disappearing into the sludge below. With a feeling of floating, Javert turned and climbed the stairs back into the street.

Valjean was nowhere to be found.

Javert wandered. He felt as if he was watching himself move through Paris. The man's face was drawn, haggard as he wallowed in his own despair. Aimée filled his head, crushed him under the weight of seeing her mourn over revolutionaries.

"Don't go, Mathieu. I did everything to save you…"

Her words burned him, seared their way into his head.
Looking around, Javert found himself in the center of the bridge that arched over the Seine, the waters churning below. Javert gazed at the looming form of the Palais de Justice and it gazed back at him. He had invested so much of his life to the building and the cruel, uncaring men like Chief Justice Legrande inside. He looked at the stone beneath his feet and realized he was alone…very alone. Aimée was not there by him. His soldiers were not there. Hoight, his partner…not there. The law was not there for him, neither was the love that he thought he had. Javert felt truly alone.

The wide railing of the bridge stretched out in front of him.

Javert stepped forward and pressed his palms on the stone, feeling it cool and secure beneath his hands. Looking upwards at the stars that began to shine in the darkening night, he pulled himself upwards. He felt the breeze from the river blow in his face and the water churned below him, drawing him to watch the waters. Javert noticed how near his feet were to the edge.

Before he could stop himself, Javert reached inside his pocket. He handkerchief made tears spring into his eyes. Standing up on the balustrade, Javert ran his fingers over the streaks of kohl and red. For years he had never washed them out, kept them as a memory of the young woman he had met in Toulon. The young woman that had crashed so violently in his life...changed everything he thought he had known about life. A woman who, at the time, was half his age, but wiser than he had ever been.

Now she was a stranger to him.

He thought of Valjean. Javert was in the debt of a convict. He was a man of the law, unforgiving and stern, yet he had shown how truly weak he really was. Valjean was more powerful than Javert could ever hope to be. The criminal had controlled his life, held it in his hand and decided to spare it in the back of the revolutionaries' café.

Wrapping the handkerchief around his hand, he brought it to his face and felt the smoothness of the satin against his temple. His downturned eyes gazed at his feet, mere inches from the edge. The world became nearly unbearable as it pressed around him.

The waters churned below and the stars watched in silence.