A/N Apologies to AmZ for the Small Voice. The idea came to me on a re-reading of 'Very Bad Day' but I have trweated the whole concept a little playfully here! Soon she will be re-christened the 'Dead Bint' and things will become a little clearer.
Marius Pontmercy walked away from the Rue Plumet with slow steps, walking, for nearly the first time in his life, with his hands behind his back. Something else he was doing for the first time in his life was thinking. "Silly, silly Marius!" he thought to himself. "Silly, silly Marius!"
He kept up this train of thought for a good fifteen minutes before managing to progress onto: "A plonker. That's what you are Marius Pontmercy – a real plonker."
This profound thought occupied him for another quarter of an hour. He ran his hands through his thick hair in exasperation. Finally a question popped into his head: "Well, what am I going to do?" Here all balance left him. Our little Marius had never been terribly good at making decisions or taking positive, constructive action. Constructive action, outside the narrow remit of fulfilling his daily wants, had always seemed to him a useless and wearisome procedure. Now it was torture.
Young M Pontmercy had not always had this problem. Up until the age of eight he had been an almost normal child and he laid the blame for his 'little problem' firmly at the door of his cousin Theodule. The incident that had finally served to remove the young Marius' vestigial backbone was this:
In the summer of Marius' eighth year his blue-eyed, blond country cousin Theodule had come to stay, bringing with him his flute, which Aunt Gillenormand had told him he could play whenever he felt like it. This meant that Theodule played for what felt like twenty-five hours a day, nine days a week. Now, Marius did not like that flute one little bit. No Sirree Bob he did not! In the third week of cousin Theodule's visit he had snapped. "Something," he decided," has to be done!" So Marius had grabbed cousin Theodule's flute, snapped it in half and then beaten his cousin with the pieces. After five minutes of screams far more melodious than anything he had ever managed to produce on the flute, Theodule was rescued by Grandfather Gillenormand. The old man hit Marius several times with his walking stick and then chased him up a tree, where the terrified boy remained for two days. Upon his descent he was caught by Aunt Gillenormand and confined to his room for another forty-eight hours, during which time he suffered a pintsized nervous breakdown and came to his final decision. He decided that he would never make a decision again – a resolution to which he had made very few exceptions.
But now he had reached a crisis point. The departure of Cosette challenged his entire worldview and rule of life. At this juncture a more resolute man might have gone and pitched himself into the Seine, but Marius was preserved by his overwhelming resemblance to a jellyfish. He instead went home, where he found Courfeyrac and Grantaire engaged in an essay writing drinking game.
The rules of this game, should any of my gentle readers wish to attempt it, run thus
1) Two or more people sit down to write an essay. The last person to write a complete sentence drinks.
2) Ditto with paragraphs.
3) Each mistake of spelling, gender, punctuation or grammar is punishable by drink.
Unsurprisingly, after a few losses, it is nearly impossible to make a sustained recovery at this game.
Grantaire was very drunk.
Marius sat down and began to explain his predicament to his friends.
Courfeyrac, who was more than acquainted with the details of Marius' predicament, buried himself in his treatise on conveyancing law with renewed vigour.
Grantaire seemed to listen attentively for about five minutes before attempting to sing the queen of the night's aria from The Magic Flute. Understandably, Marius shuddered and left. There were only two options open to him. Return determinedly to the Rue Plumet or . . . He chose the one he had done before
"Silly Javert" came a small voice in the Inspector's head, "Silly, silly Javert!"
That the thought processes of Marius Pontmercy and First-Name-Unrecorded Javert should coincide in this way is both unremarkable and extraordinary. Extraordinary in that Marius did not usually have much of a thought process for Javert's thought to coincide with. Unremarkable in that the gallant Inspector often found himself thinking "Silly, silly Javert"
Or rather, Inspector Javert did not think it. The Small Voice inside his head thought it, and Javert was firmly persuaded that there was a difference. He did have to admit that, on this occasion, the Small Voice had a point. He had really made a mess of things today; he had been so stupid that he deserved to be beaten with chains or something
"But you'd enjoy that, wouldn't you?" Remarked the Small Voice.
"What?"
"You heard me, masochist!"
"I beg your pardon – "
"Pervert!" She hissed maliciously inside Javert's head
"Am not," he retorted
"Fruit!" came the Small Voice again
"Now hang on!"
"Fruit! Fruit! Fruit!" Continued the Small Voice in a childish singsong, "Face it, Inspector – you're as queer as Dick's hatband that went around twice and wouldn't tie!"
"How so?" said Javert in his most calmly official of tones, hoping to beat the Small Voice at her own game.
"Well, it's a question of where to begin . . . What are those sidewhiskers about, for starters? And you're such a Norman –No -Mates! And a workaholic. And your so called 'Petit Defaut'?! That's weird enough in itself, but you can't even get that right – "
"To what are you referring?"
"Well, in order to have a 'Petit Defaut', to be what one might call 'HO – MO – SEX – U – AL" Here the voice dissolved into fits of giggles, "You see, there are two part to 'Homosexual' – the 'Homo' and the 'sexual' and you have problems with both – "
"Oh just shut up and go away!" Javert cried in exasperation as he entered his office
"Oh, I'm sorry! Am I interrupting something? I'll go," said the black haired youth who was standing by the office window, looking rather as if he wanted to climb out of it.
Javert sighed, "What do you want?"
