So you don't hang from that cliff for ever...
"Here now, fuck off. This one's way out'a your price range," the sudden crassness to Javert's voice surprised Cécelie. With his arm, he pushed Cécelie behind his back, advancing a single step towards the bald, teetering stranger.
"Aw, c'mon 'Sieur. I can pay ye in advance. Had a lucky night at the tables, why stop celebratin' now that it's day." He stood steady though his head wobbled back and forth, his eyes unfocused and rheumy. A large, calloused and scarred hand fished out a handful of gold francs. "Tiens, enough for your princess," he slurred, a few of his coins spilling to the ground unnoticed.
Javert gave a boisterous laugh. "Not even close, mon ami. Like I said, fuck off."
"That's just wha' I'm tryin' t'do," he guffawed. The stranger grinned crookedly, lunging forward and trying to grab the girl by her tattered skirt. Abruptly, he withdrew his hand with a cry, cradling it in the other, a stream of crimson blood dripping from them both.
Cécelie peered around Javert's shoulder, a small sharp blade clutched threateningly in his right hand. Where he concealed it, she had no clue, but she felt a shudder of a chuckle pass through her frame.
With a kerchief, he wiped the short blade clean, his eyes continuing to stare down the trembling stranger. He cleared his voice, "I said... fuck off, Monsieur. Or would you rather I call the police... I'm sure THE Inspector would love to intervene here..." the intimidating sneer to his voice sent another irreverent laugh to Cécelie's lips.
She watched as a look of horror crossed the bald man's face, his drunken confidence erased at the mere mention of the police. He stuttered and sputtered, "N-n-no need, Monsieur. The Inspector is a busy man." His scarred face contorted even more grotesquely. "Best leave Javert outta this 'un."
"I'm glad we agree," and with that, the blade disappeared as quickly and mysteriously as it had appeared. The stranger nodded nervously and bolted in the opposite direction, back around the corner, and out of sight.
Javert turned slowly, eyeing the corner just in case the stranger regained his drunken confidence. A melodic laugh greeted him, and Cécelie stood on her toes to reach his ear with her mouth. "Can't resist using the power of your own name even in disguise, Inspector?"
He grasped her waist again, pulling along the street. "Why wouldn't I when that is the guaranteed affect I have on the scum of society?" The ring of confidence reverberated in his voice. Their pace was quick as they continued, brushing heedlessly past urchins and whores alike.
Cécelie laughed, readjusting the shawl over her shoulders, fixing the swell of her breasts over the top of her corset. "And yet, the Inspector whose mere name strikes holy fear into the criminal heart knows how to play the role of the pimp to perfection. Curious for a dog of the law to know so much about how its fugitives act."
A glint of emerald flashed from the corner of his eye as he peered down at her. "A predator must think like its prey, Cécelie. That is why I hardly ever fail. I have spent years cataloguing crime, sorting it, studying it and stopping it. Paris has been by far the greatest sampling of criminals."
"Out of all its allures, the bounty of crime brought you to Paris?" Cécelie teased, needling with her skeptical glace.
Javert stiffened, inhaling loudly with a sneer. "You could say that," he spat out. His arm contracted around her hips, and his neck craned and arched, his suppressed anger tangible through his touch.
His pace slowed as they turned down a final corner, and to Cécelie's curiosity, he released her hip, linking her arm in his instead. "Welcome to St. Michel," he gave a sniff of superiority, "the slums of Paris, where three breeds of crime exists here, the prostitute, the thief and the student."
She scanned the streets around her, the deep blue of her eyes trying to capture every detail, every begging street rat, every broken house. "Surely more than three," she scoffed.
"See for yourself." He drew her to a stop, discreetly gesturing to their right. A mass of women idled around a door stoop, flashing their breasts, raising their skirts, and batting their eyes to anyone who so much as glanced their direction. "Example one, the prostitute," the vibrations of his whisper tickled her ear almost as much his whiskers pressed against her cheek.
Rapidly, he pointed her down the other direction of the street, just in time to observe a young girl, her chemise no longer white, her skirt no longer ankle length, her chestnut hair no longer combed. She padded up silently to a drunk man, undoubtedly passed out for hours and sleeping off his drink in the muck-filled gutter. Only then did Cécelie realize the girl had no shoes, not even wooden clogs between her feet and the cold Parisian pavement. With a steady hand and a smile on her face, the child's fingers slipped into his pocket, noiselessly sliding out his billfold, leaving the drunk unaware and un-moneyed.
Unable to control himself, Javert stalked over to the scene, dragging Cécelie alongside him. Even disguised, he could no longer bear to be a mere witness to boldface and blatant crime. His eyes narrowed and his lip sneered, clearing his throat loudly to bid the girl a gruff, "Bonjour."
The pitiful wretch startled, backing shakily away from the man at her bare feet. Her eyes were dark and damp with recently shed tears, the innocence of a child shone through the streaks of filth that covered her face. "I'm sorry, Monsieur," her hand clutched tightly to the leather pouch. Her voice rasped in her throat, little more than a guttural croak, a strange sound to be emitted from such a youthful countenance.
Javert's silent stare spoke volumes of condemnation with an official air, despite his lack of uniform and the apparent whore on his arm. The girl's eyes flashed quickly and shamefully away from his gaze, pondering the wallet in her hands for but a second. "It's not for me, honest, I swear. I just wanted to help my... friend buy some of his law books," the croak of her voice lifted sweetly on the word, "friend." Ami.
Nothing more answered her but Javert's hardened gaze. The girl sniffled back her tears newly-forming. Just as her hands began reaching back down to the man at her feet, another stranger bounded up from an ally. With a flurry of insults and choice curses, he grabbed the girl's wrists. He snatched the billfold, bursting out in a high-pitched gurgle of a laugh and straightening the battered red cap on his head. "Well done, my girl," he pulled her after him without so much a glance at the couple standing nearby. "We might just let you eat tonight, 'Ponine, after this haul y've brought in." His gurgling laugh seemed to sound long after he disappeared with the girl down the ally.
The slightest pangs of pity threatened to wring Cécelie's heart, and so she started walking, dragging the Inspector behind her for once. Javert soon fell in stride, straightening tall with authority as they passed the dark ally. "Example two of St. Michel. The thief and the thief's progeny. They seem to reproduce faster than the law can throw them behind bars."
His twisted smile gave the faintest inkling of his irritation, she knew well enough to read that in his face. She smirked up at him. "It must be frustrating for you, Monsieur, to be presented so many opportunities for arrests and to let them go unpunished. Painful, isn't it?"
His smile twitched as he met her straightforward gaze. "All the more reason to make sure tonight's arrest doesn't fail. Tournot is a much more auspicious catch than any petty, daytime-walking thief." He scanned the street once more over the top of her head. "I regret I find no third examples for you to observe."
"Ah yes, the infamous, roguish student," Cécelie's cynicism bit her every word, "the greatest blight on Paris' moral and societal structure. Damn those children and their educations." She sent him a teasing, provoking grin.
But Javert did not share her shadowed humor, apparently. His face was flint as he drew to a stop. "They will be damned the moment they breathe a word of revolution, insurrection, or revolt." A glint shone from his eye as he turned to face the house they paused before. "But students are not today's prey. My trap lies in the bedroom, not the classroom."
He turned back to her, releasing his arm from her completely. "Wait here and talk to no one. Those are my orders." And with that, he stepped to the house's front door, opening its latch, and vanishing into its darkness.
Cécelie spun about slowly, leaning her back against the bricks of the building. The constant parade of lowlifes along the street provided diversion at the very least. But, she could help but feel cold reclaiming the crook of her arm, the crest of her hip. Now that she was alone for the moment again.