XX: Forgiveness is a Slow March

The next morning, Gérard Lamenté filed a report with one of Javert's clerks, he couldn't bring himself to face Aimée's father after what he had done the night before. The Inspector hadn't returned home for sleep, didn't sleep at all. He had stayed in his office until morning, pacing, reading through papers, and just blankly staring at the door in front of his desk. Sometimes, he would expect it to bang open and see Aimée's tear-stained face in front of him, her mouth about to open and scream at him once more.

Winter had struggled to control the thaw, not willing to let go. When Javert finally emerged from his office, he was disappointed to see snowflakes fluttering to the ground. He grabbed his leather overcoat and made his way to the gallows outside. Two men sat kneeled and shivering, tied to the thick posts. Javert stood above hem, looking at the tops of their heads as they trembled and coughed from the returning chill.

"Message for you, Inspector," a clerk said, climbing the stairs and making his way to Javert as he stood on his platform.

"Ready my horse," Javert told the clerk. He looked down at the envelope.

The Parisian seal glared back at him. Correspondence from his letter claiming the discovery of Jean Valjean. Javert quickly tore the letter open and began to read. The crease between his brow deepened and he angrily crumpled the letter in his fists. He had been wrong. Valjean had been captured and was facing the courts of Paris the next day. Which meant Javert was guilty of defamation.

Javert quickly ducked back inside, grabbed a hold of his sabre and tucked the letter back into his pocket. Removing his overcoat, he left the jail, swung himself into Ombre's saddle, and trotted though the road. His face was drawn, serious and full of self-disgust. The hands that held the reigns were clenched in their leather gloves.

This was it. He was done. He had betrayed his life of the law, stepped out of his boundaries and slandered a mayor. What now? Would he return to Toulon? Beg for a job as a guard to make ends meet? Javert felt ashamed for a moment as he thought of Aimée. He had thrown her away in order to pursue this career, tossed her to the side, and now he was finished. She was cast away, sacrificed in order for him to succeed, and now he squandered her pain.

He would find her today, after his job was taken from him. Find her, apologize, kneel, do whatever he could to make her understand that he had made a mistake.

Another mistake , Javert reflected as he rode. You left her without sending word, burned her letters, and slandered Madeleine…too many mistakes for a true man of justice.

Ombre's footsteps were loud on the cobblestones and soon Javert found himself standing in front of Madeleine's factory. The tongue stuck in his mouth felt as if it had been fashioned of wool. He was stiff as he dismounted, adjusting the sword that he had buckled to his belt and he strode in. The workers were there, stringing away in synchronization.

Javert ignored the foreman and climbed the stairs. His fist pounded on the door and made the windowpanes rattle.

Standing in front of Madeleine, Javert avoided his eyes. He unbuckled his rapier, stared at the wall, and held it out.

"I have slandered you," Javert admitted, "I mistook you for a convict and reported my findings to the Parisian courts. However, it was my mistake. The convict, Jean Valjean, has been captured and is facing the court."

Javert caught the look of shock that swept across his face. He avoided his eyes. "Press charges against me, sir. Take my job away. I am undeserving."

His words were quiet, ashamed as a child's he looked down to his shoes, his eyes nearly closed as he spoke the words. They hurt his mouth, stung as he realized that his career would end today. All he had worked for, gone.

Monsieur le Maire stood and brought a hand to his face, wiping it along his jaw and chin as he thought.

"You say that this convict, Valjean you said, has been captured?"

"Yes. He denies all charges, but that would be expected."

"What courts, Paris?"

"Yes."

The mayor paced, his footsteps heavy against the wood floor. "He denies it?"

"Of course."

Madeleine paused again, his fingers pressed against his mouth as he watched his workers below. Javert didn't like the silence, felt uncomfortable in it. He shifted his weight from one foot to the next, permitting himself to study the mayor. The brown eyes were glazed, as if the man's mind was somewhere else. Javert cocked his head to the side confusedly. The mayor turned, and Javert's eyes quickly returned to the floor. The man approached, a little taller than Javert, and extended a hand, gently moving Javert's sabre back to his body.

"You were only doing your duty, Inspector Javert, and that's what I hired you to do. There will be no punishment," Madeleine said, giving the man of the law a cool smile.

"Sir, I slandered you," Javert said, his brow furrowing in confusion.

"You told the courts of your suspicion, nothing more, nothing less. Go, I expect you to be at your patrol tonight." Madeleine dismissed him with a wave of his hand as he turned and walked back behind his desk.

Momentarily shocked, Javert paused for a moment before he clicked his heels, offered a curt bow, and turned to leave. As he was descending the steps, Javert buckled the belt back around his waist. Outside, the snow had stopped, yet the chill still bit. Turns out that the March spring had been squashed by the harsh, unrelenting grip of winter. Ombre snorted, his long tail dusting the snow below him as Javert pulled himself back into the saddle.

He was still Inspector. Madeleine pardoned him of his crime. Javert struggled to understand as he kicked the horse into a walk around the city. If a man had slandered him to a commanding officer, he would've shown no mercy, stripped the liar of rank and authority, thrust him back in the prisons.

Javert didn't understand Monsieur le Maire, and he realized he didn't like that. Javert

made his living understanding and reading people. Looking at a liar and seeing past his ruse or reading a victim and discovering if their grief was genuine or faked. He sniffed and frowned, his brow creasing as he rode though on patrol.

Ombre reared and whinnied as a little girl scampered in front of him, nearly colliding with the horse's neck. The girl slipped and skidded to the side of the rode, a flash of red hair and a green dress. Javert, lost in his bewildered thought, was nearly thrown from his saddle. He yanked hard on the horse's reins, muttering darkly to the animal and shouting to try and get it under control.

Angrily, Javert dismounted and stormed over to the child, who had stumbled and almost careened into the gutter. He grabbed the little girl by the arm and hoisted her up, ignoring how her face twisted in pain and fear.

"What do you think you're doing?" he bellowed, tossing the girl to the side. She stepped away from him, frightened and wide-eyed.

"I'm s-sorry," she hiccupped, looking dangerously close to tears.

Javert's temper flared behind his eyes.

"Bellarae, are you alright?" shrieked a voice from the other side of the road. Javert was brushed past by an older woman, her red-hair once fiery, but now laced with smoke. Javert straightened himself and clenched his jaws in annoyance as he looked at the girl, her dress dirty from the filthy snow.

"Is this your child?" he demanded, pointing to the girl that snuggled into her mother's arms.

"Yes," the woman said, her French lilted with an Irish step.

"Keep her out of the street, she was nearly crushed and I was practically thrown from my saddle!" Javert said, his anger not subsiding.

"I'm sorry, sir, she just slipped away from me for a moment, we were grocery shopping," the woman said, standing. Her daughter cowered behind her. As the mother stared, her eyes narrowed as she studied Javert's face. He stood still as stone, Ombre coming up behind him and huffing down on his shoulder.

"Inspector, have we met before?" the woman asked, craning her neck to try and get a closer look.

"No. We have not," Javert stated, grabbing onto Ombre's reigns. People were starting look, glancing at them from their windows and their stands. Javert felt their eyes on the back of his neck and he felt his palms start to itch unpleasantly. "Keep a better hold on your children," he ordered before he backed away and pulled himself back into his saddle. His eyes met with the little girl's once more and he found himself blinking away from them as he spurred Ombre past them.

When he was a few paces past them, the woman's face registered from his memories. Aimée's maid…Anna. That must be her name. Javert turned in his saddle and tried to see the woman again, but she was gone. So the maid had married and had a child. Javert sat taller in his saddle, momentarily relieved. No doubt Aimée had found a husband as well. He had never gotten to look at her finger when she was at the jailhouse. There was no way she would still be unwed after eight years. She was beautiful and her father wouldn't resist a marriage opportunity.

He looked at the buildings as he passed. A café, a barber shop, a bookstore…quaint little shops that bored him with their plain doors and windows. Farther up ahead, he spotted another store, the front painted a pale blue color, like the sky on a clear spring day. As he neared it, he read the ink letters on the window: Lamenté's Bouquets.

Javert's fists tightened around the reins.

There were several people inside and they were speaking with a blonde woman, her hair loosely tied back in a fraying braid. Aimée had not spotted him through the window. Quickly, he turned Ombre around and hurried off the way he had come, hoping to the Lord above that she had not seen him.

So much for apologizing to her, Javert muttered to himself in his thoughts, reaching up and pinching the bridge of his nose between two fingers, ashamed of his own cowardice. You are hopeless.

Javert decided he would go back at sundown, when the shop would be closed and no one around. Then, without an audience, maybe he would be able to muster up enough courage to meet her eyes and confess his wrongdoings. He just hoped that she would have the patience to hear his words. He was no fool, he could see now how much pain he had caused her. She was wearing her mourning dress in his mind's eye, her kohl smeared against her puffy lids. Javert reached up and stuck his hand in his pocket without thinking. When he felt nothing but the spun fabric of his trousers, he quickly pulled it out, feeling silly. He had taken the handkerchief out long ago. For a terrifying moment, he had forgotten where he had put it. As he suddenly remembered, he quickly returned back to the inn where he was staying.

The rooms of the inn were small, damp and smelling of musty wood rot. At the foot of the straw mattress, his large chest sat, closed and latched. Quickly opening the lid, he saw it there, white as a ghost and folded, patiently waiting to be picked up again. Javert knelt next to the chest and reached out to the cloth, cautiously, as if he was afraid the satin would burn his fingers. Two fingertips ghosted over it, the smooth fabric almost as cool as water as it slid over his skin. Carefully, he cradled it in his hand and brought the handkerchief closer to his face. He unfolded it and two stains stared back at him. A red slash of strawberry crème and a black smudge of eye makeup.

Not really aware of what he was doing, Javert brought the handkerchief close to his face and inhaled, expecting to smell lilac and vanilla. The dusty smell of old papers and cedar wood filled his nostrils and he lowered the fabric, feeling like a fool. He thought he heard Aimée's snorting laughter as he folded it and tucked the small item in his pocket. However, the room was empty as he closed the lid and looked around.

"Bye now, hope you enjoy your flowers," Aimée said, waving to a young suitor as he walked away from her shop with a bundle of roses. She sighed happily for him, he was a foolish boy, maybe a day shy of sixteen, yet he held all the love and determination that he could muster. She removed the rag that was slung over her shoulder and set to work wiping off her counter, wiping the stray leaves and twigs onto the floor so she could sweep them up later. She hummed to herself, a happy drunken jig that her father sang when he would sometimes stumble home at night.

The tough bristles of the broom scrapped against the wood floor as she began to sweep. She was closed for the evening, the daylight starting to grow thick and lazy with the threat of dusk. Outside, she heard the clopping of hooves. She ignored them, facing the ground as she swept and they grew louder. When the tapping of hooves stopped outside her door, she turned and looked out her window. Aimée's heart shot into her throat when she watched Inspector Javert swing himself off his saddle and look around.

Quickly, not knowing what else to do, the woman ducked behind her counter, her broom clacking to the floor.

The bell on her door chimed happily as it obliviously let in the man of Aimée's heartache.

"Mademoiselle Lamenté, I wish to speak with you," Javert's voice was not unkind, yet it was unyielding. He heard the rustle of the broom as he picked it up. She bit her lip as she tried her best to avoid him, her back pressed against the under shelves of her countertop.

"Mademoiselle, I saw you go behind your counter. Please, speak with me."

Aimée looked around, surprised for a moment the soft pleading tone of his voice. She felt something flutter in her stomach as she slowly began to rise, peeking out at him from behind the edge of the counter, only her eyes and the top of her head visible. She clutched at the side of her countertop with her fingers.

Javert watched her, standing near the door. The wide hat he wore was under his arm and the buttons shone on his high-waisted blue uniform jacket. Tan trousers disappeared under shiny black riding boots. He cocked his head to the side and his brows furrowed as he looked at the top of her head slowly emerge from her hiding place. He could only see her eyes and the bridge of her nose. She looked like a child, hiding from her mother.

"What do you want?" she asked, her voice muffled from behind the wood.

Javert felt one of his eyebrows quirk upwards and he heard an exasperated sigh puff from behind the counter She stood fully then, a dirty cloth slung over one shoulder. Tucking a strand of hair behind her ear with a delicate hand, Aimée met his gaze. She shivered a little, but then remembering his words, she turned to stone.

"I burned your letters."

"What do you want?" she repeated, her voice now cold.

Javert quickly diverted his eyes, glancing them quickly around the shop. "I…I-" Javert stood shock still as his words cemented his mouth, making it impossible for him to speak. The air hung quietly and he could see the little sparkles of dust floating though the sunlight. Aimée heaved an exasperated sigh and crossed her arms expectantly. Javert forced himself to look at her, to look at her blonde hair and strong jaw. He forced himself to look into her ocean.

"I wanted to say I'm sorry," he murmured, his eyes staying locked to hers. He felt so much emotion as he looked at her…eight years' worth of ignored emotions. Memories that he had pushed down and locked away in his head, desperate to become a man of the law, so desperate he had crushed the one person he had cared about.

Aimée stared at him, her mouth slightly open and his words hung in the air around. Blinking, she shook her head slightly, as if snapping herself out of some trance. She walked past him and turned the lock in the door. His body stiffened when she was near, frozen like ice flowed through his veins. His skin crackled underneath the sleeves of his jacket as she walked by him again.

"Sorry for what?" Aimée said, pulling herself up and sitting on her countertop. Her eyes were wary and disbelieving.

Javert drummed his fingers against his hat as he stood. "Please, I-,"

"What are you sorry for?" Aimée said again, her eyes narrowing as she cut him short.

He shut his mouth and looked at her again. He felt the words in his chest, felt them there, waiting to be spoken, yet he struggled to put them together, make them form sentences that would make her understand. Finding that he could think easier when he didn't have to meet her gaze, he looked at his shoes. He watched a small ant scuttle its way across the floor.

"I'm sorry I didn't return your letters. I'm sorry I left you," his eyes closed as guilt made his brows knit together, "I'm sorry I never told you where I was, for not contacting you, for burning your words."

Javert's tone was hushed but intense, forcing himself to look at her once again, he took a step towards her. He felt his voice grow stronger with his words as the stone world he knew and cherished fell away, pushed down by the roiling of the ocean that crashed in her eyes.

"I'm sorry that, for eight years, I allowed myself to forget about you." Her eyes were still dark and Javert felt the last of his control start to wilt away replaced by desperation. How could he make her see?

"I was afraid," Javert admitted.

"It's been eight years," Aimée reminded him, standing but not going near him. "I've been alone for eight years. When I realized that I was wasting my time writing, I cried for an entire night. You crushed me so badly that I struggled to trust the people around me. I wore your key for years," she told him. "And when I found out you burned my letters, I felt so much hate inside of me that it burned my skin."

Javert winced from her words. "Hate?" he whispered, frightened shock plastered against his features.

Aimée's jaws clenched, "Yes, hate. And now that I see you again, those eight years of desertion makes me hate you even more! Did I do something wrong? Did I write something you didn't like?"

Javert quickly backpedaled. "No…no."

"Then why would you cast my letters into the flames? All I did was care about you, Javert."

Javert's knees nearly buckled when his name left her mouth.

Aimée's nose crinkled in distaste and she huffed angrily, "Get out of my shop," she ordered, waving her hand as she turned and began to disappear.

Her words stung like venom to his eyes. No, no this couldn't be happening. He had expected her to be angry with him, but this apology was supposed to change that. She really did hate him…and that hate was enough to suck all hope from his body.

Not knowing what else to do, Javert neared the counter. He reached out and placed a folded piece of fabric on the wood. "Your mother was Melanie Lamenté…" Aimée heard his ragged whisper mutter, "she had brown hair…freckles…and a gap in her teeth."

She looked up and watched him from her spot in the back room. He looked so desperate there, and for the first time she noticed how much older the man looked. His hair and beard were peppered with gray and creases ran through his forehead and between his eyebrows. Light little wrinkles reached out from the corners of his eyes, downturned from his desperation. Javert's mouth hung open after the words left his mouth, almost as if he had surprised himself.

Aimée watched the muscles in his jaw clench as he closed his mouth to speak again. "Aimée…please. Please forgive me." Her name sounded like a sigh as it left him. One last plea.

For a moment, she wanted to forgive him. Run to him and embrace him, feel the stubble of his beard against her temple and inhale the smell of his uniform. But, she felt the memories of her tears again, remembered the way she had felt when she realized he would never write again. The key had felt so comforting against her throat for those eight years, a small hope reminding her that Javert had existed, cared about her, kept her safe during that year of hell.

She neared him, gazing at the man she had cared about so long ago, her childhood fancy and protector. Glancing at the piece of fabric that sat on her counter, Aimée cautiously reached for it. Javert couldn't help but notice her hand was devoid of any wedding bands. He swallowed back his surprise.

Aimée looked down, suddenly unable to look at him. "I want to forgive you, Javert. I want things to go back to how they were, but I'm older now and I know that life doesn't work like that. You hurt me so much…and you admitted that you had tried to forget about me when I would cling to your letters with childish hope."

Javert closed his eyes and felt his mouth turn harshly downwards as her pain raked his ears.

"But I can't. Not now. I've been alone for so long," she walked around the counter and brushed past him, unlocking the door and holding it open. "I think you should leave."

The flower shop crumbled around him as he looked at her, the walls fell to ash and the floor left his feet, making him feel as if he was floating in nothingness. He gave her a slight bow, and left her shop, throwing himself into Ombre's saddle. Snapping the reins harder than he should've, he kicked his horse and shot off at a gallop down her street, the hooves pounding against her temples as she clenched her eyes shut.

The handkerchief watched her as it sat quietly on the worn wood of her counter. Aimée walked slowly over to it and reached out, feeling the cool fabric ghost over her fingers. She scooped it up and saw the two stains, one from her happiness, the other from her pain. He had kept this. Burned her words but kept this trinket. Why?

Clutching the handkerchief to her chest, Aimée felt herself sink to the floor, her back pressed against the wood of her counter. She brought a hand to her face and cried quietly, the tears slowly dripping down her face. Doubt began to fill her. Why didn't she just forgive him? Seeing him again had caused so many memories, happy memories. Holding his hand as they watched the fireworks and feeling his arms tightly curl around her as they said their goodbyes. Aimée even acknowledged that he was better-looking than she had remembered, his age adding a formal handsomeness to his features.

As her world spun around her, Aimée listened to his desperate pleas in the lonely quiet of her closed shop.

"I'm sorry…."