So so sorry for the late update, I'm terribly busy with school and work, so I never really get the chance to sit down and edit out some of the chapters I've prewritten. As you know, the last chapter starts from the middle of the story, so you get to see the glimpse of who Eponine became and not who Eponine was before Javert came along.

Alright, let's roll into my next chapter. x

Disclaimer: I own nothing

CHAPTER 2
In Which We Start From the Beginning

"and if you fall as Lucifer fell..."

"D' not hold your sh'lders tha' way, Astre, you'll be seen'!" The hiss from the alleys traveled strongly, but the young gamin's ears strain from the ringing that slightly deafened him. His stomach has missed the foreign feel of fullness, and with a hand full of black and slightly green bread, his mind has all but forgotten about the presence of the gendarmes, galloping around on their large, brute horses. The small focus he forced to push from his starving brain had divided itself into two: Astre wondered whether or not the shadows of the alley actually hid he and his oldest sister; the other other wondered why the gendarmes had chosen to ride through the slums.

Despite the orders of his sister to stay mute, he whispers, "Touiselle? Why are they ere'? They never come 'ere - "

"Astre! Shh!" Immediately, the young boy snaps his mouth shut which had the back of his teeth rattling on his mouth, briefly reminding him that two of them may fall even before he turns seven in the next winter. Although it be foolish, he finds himself feeling sadness over this future loss.

Contrary to any presumptions about gamins, Astre was never as quick on his feet unlike his older sister, Touiselle. She is but the woman who he saw as his maman, for theirs have been in prison for so long that Touiselle assumes that she had died there when the town had been plagued by the Alague. While Astre remained quiet, he took the time to lay his eyes on his sister. Touiselle was caked in dirt, so much that Astre often forgets that her sister's hair did not match the charcoal gray of the nights in the alleys, but a slight auburn that showed only briefly when rain falls and the snoot recedes unto the dirt ridden pavements. Her face was gaunt, a crooked nose to match thin lips and eyes so wide and blue that it seemed far too big for her sunken cheeks. She looked aghast most of the time, and although she could not write, she could read. Through Touiselle, Astre found himself knowing how to speak the small syllables that he often saw in the shoppes at town.

Astre glances down to her left hand where her remaining fingers gripped protectively to his rags, pushing his skinny frame farther back into the grime of the alley. Touiselle could not write for three of her fingers had been lost long ago, she tells him that they were never there to begin with, but Astre knew that Touiselle suffered from frost bite when she had held Astre's sleeping form in the dreary winter when he had turned six.

"Merde"

Astre's focus falters slightly and instinctively, he bares his arm around the bread that he had looted from the bakery a good nine buildings away from where they hid now. But in a single blink, he understands that he and Touiselle's food is not in danger of being stolen, but instead, he watches as Touiselle clambers closer to the light where the gendarmes had taken hold of their Papa.

Astre's empty stomach drops quickly and he grips at his tangled curls at the excruciating pain the hollowness of his stomach brought along with the dread. He yelps softly when Touiselle clambers off, eyes bright and skinny bones flying across the streets and unto their Papa.

"Messeiur! Messiur, what ar' ya doin? This is my papa!"

The pleading of Touiselle seems to have brought on a deeper hollow in the starving stomach of Astre, for he did not understand his papa well, he spoke of nothing and looked at nothing, Astre thought that he could not see, but Touiselle told him that the only thing he saw was what was in his head. Astre did not understand, so he did not approach his papa at all, leaving Touiselle to awkwardly check on the empty bones and skins of their papa.

It pained Astre to stay in the shadows, but his tiny body had found itself lacking energy and his vision continued to spin as the men in the clean coats and clean skin multiplied into two, into four. It was through this same vision that he almost finds himself running into the ground had it not been for the resounding whinny and a guttural scream that had his young head spinning even more.

Astre sees a small heap of brown near the foot of the men in the coats, he attempts to squint through his dizzying vision to see who it was, but instead he stumbles backwards into the shadow even more. When he forces himself to shake off the stupor that he had fallen into, he realizes that the heap was gone and instead it crossed the alley with stumbled steps and a face, familiar yet more discombobulated than what Astre was accustomed to.

"Touiselle? soeur - " With shaky limbs, Astre softly touches the right hand of his sister, one where all her fingers were present. However, instead of a strong grip, Touiselle squeezes lightly in return and falls sideways over the alley way where Astre found himself leaning on earlier.

"Soeur, wha' has happen'?"

"I d' not like horses 'ery much Astre" Touiselle whispers silently and Astre finds himself realizing that an angry color now decorated the rags his sister had amongst her bony chest.

"Soeur? Selle', please wake, d' not sleep, y' re hurt? Selle?" Astre finds himself ambling the black bread to the fallen hands of his young sister, hoping that the thought of food will rise her from the state that she is in.

"Tis' fine Astre, le' me breathe fer a sec'nd." Astre finds his small fingers gripping the sunken cheeks of Touiselle and he imagines that she is not hurting, that she has not been kicked by the gendarmes horses after trying to take hold of their papa, that the cheeks that were colored with soothe were instead flushed with a healthy rose like Mademoiselle Aldreen's dress shoppe sign that he and Touiselle pass on their many walks.

And for the first time of the seven miserable winters Astre had lived through, he finds himself laying the head of his young sister on his small thighs, offering comfort for her weary soul.

When Astre had turned nine, he had lost many things in life. Many summers ago, Astre entertained the idea of having two more of his teeth falling off. Astre would have preferred that over the loss of the centre in his life.

It was one of the many nights where brother and sister had found themselves slumbering near the shallow rivers of the small town, the night was harsher than it had been in many days and he finds himself gripping the rags closer to his mangled body in an attempt to free himself from the rough cold. He imagined himself cocooning into the small warmth Touiselle offered, pretending that he and his sister were not turned away from hiding aside a warm pub, and instead they were escorted inside with a hot supper in hand.

All the whilst, Astre stared at the river that shone below him. It eased his spirits greatly, it reminded him of his sister, Touiselle, who seem to freely move like the water; moving and forever flowing, despite the roughened masses of rocks that bent it to its will. The last Astre saw that very night as he slumbered off is the serene face of Touiselle as his mind rests for the night.

It was with great confusion that when Astre awoke, the morning had not arrived with an onslaught of white, instead the green had startled him so greatly that he did not believe that it was so bright and warm after the storm of snow hours before that.

"Touiselle! Touiselle! Tis' warm now 'erything will be alright Selle. Selle?"

The silence that followed will always plague the nights of Astre for time to come.

Like Astre dreaded when he had been seven so many years ago, the loss of his two teeth never came to burden his miserable life - but instead God had taken something else he had.

"Touiselle? Soeur?"

Through shaky limbs, young Astre desperately grips unto the hollowed, cold cheeks of his soeur, and despite the many seconds he spent desperately trying to shake off the frozen dew of snow from the long lashes of Touiselle, his sister, his maman - she did not stir.

Astre Javert was nine when he lost his sister.

Javert was ten when he had ambled his way into a convent. It was there that the meager food and warmth that he had been accustomed to as a young street rat changed for given time. His youthful eyes turned bleary by age and he poured himself greatly into working for the church and educating himself through the many bibles that laid in the convent. He did not garden for he was not good at it, but he helped water them for he knew Touiselle loved flowers greatly and only through this could Astre reminisce without shaking in grief.

Winters turn and the street stride that Astre had grown to know melts into the stride of a young gentleman. A boy he was, full of dreams, turned into sharpness and intelligence that made the twenty year old man. He does not cry to the news of the death of Priest Loussent who allowed his entry when he was only nine, but instead he returns home from university and instead, attempts to plant new flowers aside the one who dedicated to Touiselle.

Life goes on.

When Javert grows older, when the winter passes and he is twenty five and alone, he does not know why he falls in line to an eager set of men wanting to serve the king. But he does.

Astre is no longer Astre, but Javert as the years turn the handsome, destitute young man into one who only believed in law and nothing else. The years he had spent working among the men that lead France's destruction had further spun the hollow emptiness where Javert's stomach laid. Although starvation was a past memory of cold winters and desperate youthful pleas, ("Please Touiselle, 'wake up! Selle, ma soeur, 'ya cannot leave m' be") Javert cannot detect the hollowness that resides in him and instead, he ignores it.

The angry wind serves as a rightful distraction from his meandering gaze into the fallen ship.

When the prisoners were hoarded into their cells once more, a young man in coats meander towards him and the youthful gleam in his green eyes startles Javert into anger when memories of past coats and kicking horses fight its way into his system.

"Inspector, letter, it is - "

"Yes leave."

Inspector Javert knew who the letter was assigned to, Prisoner 24601. A criminal, sent to parole. A criminal - being sent off to destroy more lives. A criminal being grant an escape. A criminal.

He ignores the pleas of Jean Valjean when Javert's gaze lingers on the murky ones of 24601 -

"...it was but a loaf of bread...sister's son was dying..."

Loavesof bread, sisters, and death belong in the past and Javert will hear none of it.

There were many stories that surrounded Javert's history, it dances around him in whispers when he leads his bande from alley to alley. Often, Javert would find himself scowling at the men and women who litter the depths of France as if they were rats with their slimy hands and scabby thoughts, but it was through his stoic and unjust cruelty that strengthen the fire of the whispers.

"Who is Javert?" they say.

"He is a general..." some whisper.

"He will arrest you quicker than you can nick that man's pocket - do it wisely or he will catch you."

"Javert is scum."

Javert hears them all and yet, he turns a blind ear. For only he knew the truth and that same truth will not change the present, where he rides away with prisoners under his belt.

Years have passed since his troupe had graced the outskirts of Paris, and yet he finds himself living astride Montreuil sur Mer, where he and his men, assigned to the highest degree, will protect the town from crime.

It was a winter's day, with Joyeux Noel creeping in the corners, the day the parchment from Paris had arrived in the hands of Javert. The monsieur he worked for - a terrible conundrum of foreign compassion and mystery that Javert finds abnormal - had closely strung memories of the young Javert. This monsieur's features, although resembling a man of true age, were familiar, as if Javert has personally witnessed the days of his vicious years. When he was new to the gendermarie he had been on the front line of many men like his father - all criminals, all stories packed with vicious lies that from years ago, he believed whole-heartedly. Then when he served his time watching over men with various identities, 2310, 8933, 9110, 3929... he had yielded from believing the stories that he had heard flowing rapidly in the prisoner's mouths.

This is what brought him to question the truth that lies behind Monsieur "Le mayor", it was as if the strings of his mind rapidly shook whenever he laid his eyes on the man and this was the sole reason why his cold hands shook as he read the parchment to himself.

Javert had been wrong. Monsieur Le "Mayor" was not Prisoner 24601.

Javert rides across a river near the outskirts of another nearby town, just outside Montreuil sur Mer. He found himself struggling to breathe, as if his lungs were drowning in water, yet it grips him tightly like an unrelenting storm of ice. With a graceful mount, he leaves his horse nearby and he in turn, strides towards the edge of the river where it lapped on the soil below.

Javert found himself where his life had seemed to pause so many years ago. It was not the same river that he and Touiselle frequented, for he could not find himself longing to remember the demise of the the one whom he loved the most. The river stood stock still that even the gentle swaying of the trees that curved into the soil near the river bank did not accost the water's seemingly solid state.

But the longer Javert stared at the black depths of the water, the stronger the influx of memories tried to burst free from his clouded memories.

So instead, Javert fixes his gaze upon the stars, allowing his depleting age to drag him down to a kind of sorrow he has never truly allowed himself to feel since he was but a young boy. Although his hands were tainted with the memories of his past, he remembered how the many men that had hurt he and Touiselle in the past years were criminals, the very men who had fiercely robbed him of what little food he had left as a rat without Touiselle. So many of them - they were all just like Jean Valjean.

They must be.

"And men like him can never change." Javert concludes - but even in his own ears, he finds himself doubting the very words he spoke.

But Javert was not one for lingering, and he accepts his duty then.

Javert's gaze never wavers from the stars above and he finds himself making an oath; that he will find Prisoner 24601.

Wowza that was blah. I hope you guys liked this chapter, although it is very Javert-centric. But do know that this story does have Javert frequently featured in it, I want you all to see the amount of character parallels I do in this story - because to be honest, Hugo did that himself in the brick.

Ya know what I mean right?

Anyhoo, hopefully I get to update more often...leave reviews and what not!

Next chapter...sorta back to present. Not really. But the ball should be rolling on the Valjean/Javert chronicles plus how Eponine winds up in the care of Javert.