A/N: Do not hesitate to correct any errors concerning historical accuracy!

1810.

He'd never even gotten to eat it.

That was the worst part.

He'd stolen to put something good and nourishing and warm with calories into his pained, spasming stomach, he'd thieved for his seven little nieces and nephews, between whose lips food had not passed for several days, he had lacerated his arm and bruised his fist––and he had not even gotten to eat it, nor his family to taste it. They did not even know that he was going to steal; they did not know about the existence of the loaf; they would never truly know of it, not in the way Valjean had in the moment between his breaking of the glass, and his seizure by the hand of fate––made flesh in the sturdy appendage of Maubert Isabeau.

The definition of theft is taking that which belongs to someone else. It is true that Isabeau was a baker by profession, with a right to sell his bread for a profit. But did not Jean Valjean, too, have a right to eat? He and his sister worked; they toiled. It was not their fault that their labor was fruitless. Had he not earned the right to the loaf, for the sake of whose market value he was now a drudge of the law?

Jean Valjean was now past these thoughts. A dull anger had succeeded them, an anger that melded itself with his natural strength, coiling in with his muscles in an unconscious bond: hate, work, and muscle memory. Valjean's brain was distributed in his biceps, his pectorals, his mighty legs, not to the diminishment of his true cerebral worth, but in auxiliary capacity; a dormant rage that substituted for thought.

Jean Valjean didn't have a name––not really. His surname was a mockery of a patronymic, further mutilated by the contraction and the idiom. His father was a ghost of a ghost, a shadow left behind by a common name that belonged to scores of unremarkable, indistinguishable people. His father was nothing; so he, Jean, was thus the issue of nothing. Valjean, for all its phonetic hints of valeur, was merely a false coin, a cheap homespun facsimile: voilà Jean. Who would care enough about his father's entrance to proclaim it? There's Jean––what rot!

A man with a punny surname had recently been coupled to the man with none. Chenildieu was a short, agitated man, willowy but weak in frame, with a crop of chestnut hair that, when closely shaven, looked red. He was squatting on the dusty ground, with fluttering hands, while his partner, the man to whom he had been "married," was leaning pensively against a rock wall in the quarry. Jean Valjean had once, long ago, been the younger of a pair; now he was an inveterate convict. If Chenildieu was febrile, Valjean was phlegmatic, his skin beaten by the sun, his shoulders broad, his shorn hair dark, his gaze darker. At the moment his wearied lids were closed, peaceful under the rough arches of his eyebrows and sheltered beneath the umbra of his red bonnet. He was trying to rest.

Chenildieu made his way over to his companion and joined him at the wall, panting. He pulled off his green cap and stared at it. Raking his fingers through the sweaty bed of his scalp, he scowled and said petulantly, "I don't see why they've got to be wool. Wool! This is the bloody Côte d'Azur, for God's sake, not the Alps." He stood and paced, fanning himself vigorously, before adding, "I'm from the Loire, and it was cooler there, by God; we didn't have to deal with this nonsense."

Valjean tugged his own itchy, woollen hat down over his eyes and yanked hard on his half of their chain. He already had a headache from the August humidity, and Chenildieu's grating plaints were only making it worse. He heard Chenildieu fall with a thud and lifted a corner of the cap to see his colleague on his knees nearby, nursing a skinned hand.

"That wasn't nice, Jean," Chenildieu said in a voice as thin and taut as wire, his lip curling. His hands shook, but there was no way he was going to hit Jean-the-Jack, the strongest man out of four thousand.

"Then stop complaining, J'ni'Dieu," replied the larger convict, rubbing his knuckes into his eyes and seeking refuge once more in his makeshift hood.

"Complaining! You––that's rich! Your hat's red and mine's green––I've earned the right!"

A fist slammed into the ground, leaving a deep imprint in the dirt. "I'm a lifer too! You shut your face, lightweight!"

Chenildieu trembled, but gritted his teeth and pressed on, "No, you're not! If you'd just cool your heels, they'd let you go eventu––"

"Eventually!" Valjean bellowed, losing what little patience he had left, which wasn't much. "I've been here since I was twenty-five! They might as well make me a greencap and be done with it!"

"No, you look here!" said Je-nie-Dieu, trying to match Valjean's lung power and failing. "You think I give a rat's ass how many years you've racked up for escape attempts? It's there in your sentence, your freedom, it's waiting! Mine, it's gone completely! This––" he gestured at the manille riveted to his ankle––"this, it's never coming off! Not until I'm in the ground! So don't you dare bully me, you lucky goddamn oaf! Or I'll––"

Valjean would have bloodied Chenildieu's face to make him shut up and surely received a flogging had the latter not given a look of such sincere, abject terror, in the moment that Valjean drew back his fist, that he relented. He could not strike a man who looked afraid. As if to illustrate that no good deed goes unpunished, it was at that moment that Valjean's headache kicked in like a mule hoof to the temple.

"Son of a bitch," cursed Valjean. He groaned. He looked over at the cowering Chenildieu and his mien softened a bit. There was a grain of truth in what the bony, restless little convict was saying. No need to thump him. He'd always sworn to be kind to the newer convicts assigned to him, and this was the first time he had broken his oath. He remembered how terrified he'd been when he'd first arrived and been given over to an ancien. He had to put the younger convict at his ease. He could not have been more than a couple of years Valjean's junior, but in bagne years, he was a newborn.

"You said you were from the Loire Valley?" Valjean asked.

Chenildieu goggled at him, but accepted this change of events. "Yes. Well, that's where I hail from, anyway. Born and raised there. I haven't been there since I was seventeen, though, tell you the truth. Been living in Lyon. And you?"

"Brie. Faverolles."

"Honed your trade there, did you?" Chenildieu said, in what he thought was an ingratiating manner.

"Excuse me?"

Chenildieu froze. "Never mind. Nothing."

"There was no 'trade,' Lyonnais. I pruned trees. I shot game that wasn't mine sometimes. That was all. No bands of city footpads in Faverolles. I don't know from Lyon."

"Well, I was really in Caluire, outside of the city proper," Chenildieu said confessionally, "and me and my mates were no big-time crooks or any of that. My main man Edouard was the only competent housebreaker between us, knew how to pick a lock real good. Me and Charlot, we'd just smash in the windows." He chuckled, then grew grave. "Never got very handy with tools. I wouldn't even be able to jimmy a door if you gave me a crowbar. I realize now that that puts me right up shit creek as far as ever getting out of here is concerned."

"You said yesterday that you were here for murder."

"Yeah, and you for theft. I remember, Jeannot. I'm getting there. So this little snot, Richard, he tried to blackmail us for a bigger cut––one of our gang was wanted by the cops, see, and Richard was threatening to put them on his trail. Lord, but he was stupid. Too dumb to live. Me and Edouard both took him out together, but it was just me that took the ra––"

Valjean sprang up suddenly, and Chenildieu followed suit without knowing why. The reason became evident to him at once: a garde-chiourme had rounded the blind corner that was formed by a stony outcropping to their right and was nearly upon them. The storm hit, and a baton descended on Valjean's shoulder.

"Break ended seven minutes ago!" the guard barked.

Valjean expired air with a deep grunt and pleaded remonstratively to his overseer, "We didn't hear the bell! Pardon us!" He spoke the truth, as it happens. He had lost track of time during their fight, and even now could not hear the sound of work, exactly, only chattering. He watched hopelessly as the guard proceeded to deal Chenildieu a blow on the elbow. The newer convict howled in spite of himself.

"Put on your cap, 38576!" the guard ordered. It took Chenildieu, still unused to his new numerical name, a moment to understand that the guard was addressing him; once this was grasped, he looked wildly around; then, at last, he realized that he was still clutching it. He scrambled to replace it on his head, while favoring his elbow, which, incidentally, was on the same arm as the hand he had skinned.

Valjean lowered his head. He knew that they would be harsher on Chenildieu, to break him in; but he was just so sickly looking––mightn't they lay off the poor unlucky bastard?

"I can't believe we forgot," Valjean hissed to his partner between clenched teeth, after the guard had departed. "I can't believe we just wandered off like that and let the shepherds come after us with their crooks. You don't ever give them a reason to do that to you. Come on." And, towing Chenildieu after him, he went back to join the prisoners assigned to the main work site in the quarry.

Heaving blocks of stone, Chenildieu complained about his elbow, his hand, his back. Valjean smiled indulgently at his greenness and asked him about Lyon when they had a moment to catch their breath. His headache had melted somewhat with the dropping pressure of the air, and in tandem, the sun had mercifully begun to hide behind some anvil clouds.

"Lyon, it's...have you ever been to Paris?"

Valjean bit his lip. "My sister and her...her son lived there...as of ten years ago." He turned away. "That's all. No."

"I did, once. It just goes on forever. Lyon's like Paris, except there's hills, and two rivers instead of one. If I could get sprung, that's where I'd go. Not Caluire-et-Cuire, but the city. How about you?" he asked tentatively. "Where would you go?"

"I don't know," said Valjean tersely. "I don't have a fucking clue." He clenched his hands. "There's nothing there. There's nothing." He shifted heavily onto his feet.

Chenildieu laughed bad-humoredly. "No one wants nothing."

"Look, I'm not saying I want this!" Valjean cried. "But it's all fucked. What do you mean, where would I go?" He paused, then said harshly, "Look, when I escaped those four times, I wasn't going anywhere. I was running from the––this––this place isn't a town. It's a––I don't have the words. It's misery. That's what I was running from. But it follows you. It's the same everywhere. You can't escape from it."

Chenildieu shook his head. But he thought.

They returned to their work. Hefting big damn stones, it sure seemed like a bloody metaphor for something; maybe Jean was right. Chenildieu had only been here a week, and every breath seemed like a draught from a bitter cup. Valjean was what happened when you became saturated with Toulon's cordial. The red of his garments seemed primed for a conflagration, and Chenildieu clenched his jaw. Someday, he thought, before it poisons me, I will set myelf on fire.