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Title: "Rescue," Chapter Ten
Author: Darkover
Rating: T
Disclaimer: Please see Chapter One.
Summary: Javert is saved from suicide from Valjean, but it becomes more complicated than that, especially as it is not always clear who is saving whom.
~ooo0ooo~
Chapter Ten: "Have You Seen What's Happened Since?"
"Tell me," Valjean said to the woman seated at the slightly-battered table across from him. He was sitting in an interview room in a police station and talking to someone he had believed was gone from his life forever.
The woman who sat at the table across from him was barely recognizable as the assertive, perpetually-angry Madame Thenardier. Certainly she was no longer recognizable as one of the daughters of Jean Valjean's sister, although if what she had said to him before was to be believed, that was indeed the case.
"What's there to tell?" the woman said. Her gaze was lowered but she did not seem to be looking directly at the table in the interrogation room, or at anything else. "We were poor. Never enough to eat or drink, never enough clothing, or wood for the fire, or beds to sleep on. Never enough of anything. Our father died of some illness. Our mother worked all the time caring for us, or giving birth to us, and never had enough time to really *see* any of us. And her brother went to work when our father died. Their own idiot of a father was a pruner who died falling out of a tree. When trimming trees is his trade to begin with, how stupid and incompetent does a man have to be to fall out of a tree?"
"Do you recall your uncle?"
"Yes—my mother's brother," she said with a touch of impatience. "Son of the pruner who was stupid enough to fall out of a tree. Our uncle wasn't much smarter. We were starving—or starving more than usual—and our uncle stole a loaf of bread. As if that would be enough to feed us all! He was caught, of course, couldn't even do that right, and then shipped off to the galleys. We never saw him again."
Valjean swallowed hard. "What happened to you?"
"What do you think? We begged for awhile, but what use was that? Either our neighbors were as poor as we, or those who had money wouldn't give it. I told you, dog eats dog. So Mother said we were going to Paris, things would be better there. I don't see how she came to that conclusion, but we were children, and she was our mother, so we believed her. Besides, we had no one else. So we walked to Paris. All the way. Barefoot. Didn't even have wooden clogs."
"Were things different for you once you reached Paris?"
Madame sneered. "Oh, yes. There were cobble stones instead of earth, and we got to fight the dogs in the streets for the scraps! After a few days, Mother took the baby, said to wait for her, she would come back soon. We never saw her again. I don't know what happened to her. Maybe nothing happened to her. She may have just deliberately abandoned the rest of us. Or maybe she died. I don't suppose it matters. Gone is gone, and everyone looks out for themselves."
Valjean closed his eyes briefly, as if in pain. "And then?"
"One of the boys didn't get out of the way of a rich man's carriage in time, and was run over. That brought us to the attention of someone in authority. The very youngest were taken off to an orphanage; we older ones were sent off to a workhouse. Know what that is? A prison for those whose crimes are being poor and unwanted." Valjean winced, but Madame only shrugged. "My brothers and sisters died," she said in a disinterested tone. "I was stronger than some of the others who were there, and so took their food as well as my own. When I got a bit of food in me, I wasn't so bad looking. I was actually rather pretty for a brief period in my youth." She gave a barking laugh. "Don't believe it, do you? But it's true. I might have been somebody, if things had been different. But it wasn't different, and it looked as if my future was going to consist of either being worked to death or of selling myself on the street, when I met Thenardier. When I was a very little girl, I used to dream I would marry a prince. My husband isn't much, but he was willing to marry me, and that made him a prince in my eyes. Do you understand what that meant to a young girl under those circumstances? He didn't just want to ruin me, or make me his mistress. He was willing to marry me, to give a name to any children I might have. He made me respectable, and he put food on the table! Why should I care how he did it? When *he* broke the law, he was smart enough not to get caught—at least not too often."
"But I don't understand. You had such an unhappy childhood yourself—why could you not be kinder to a poor child such as Cosette, when she was in your care? Why were you so cruel to her? And why do you wish to see her dead now?"
"Haven't you been listening?" the woman cried. "If one person is to be fed, another must do without! That is the way of the world! And I wanted the best for my poor Eponine. Then she died on the street, at the barricades, or so I was told. Another reason to hate those in authority, and those stupid rebels, too. Did those fools truly think they were going to change anything? One boss is the same as another. My husband promised me I would have revenge for the loss of Eponine, that I would take your daughter—that spoiled Cosette—from you, as mine was taken from me. Evening the score would have given me at least a little consolation. But he lied to me, refused to avenge our own daughter. Now, I have nothing." She lapsed into silence and resumed staring at the table between them.
Valjean found himself remembering his own emotional state when he was released from prison: the anger, resentment, and baffled hatred he felt toward almost everyone in the world, until he met Bishop Myriel. "Madame…what if I were to help you?"
The woman looked up from the scarred table to shoot him a look of utter disbelief, with a display of the old long-simmering anger. "Help me? Are you mad? How exactly can you help me? Can you bring Eponine back? Can you make my husband love me again? Can you keep me out of prison, or right any of the wrongs I've suffered in this filthy world? Then get out of here! I don't want to have to look on your bourgeois face ever again!"
The door opened just then to admit Javert, so quickly that it was clear he had been just outside the door and overheard her last comments. "That's enough," the Inspector said shortly. "M. Fauchelevent, come with me."
Valjean rose and followed the other man out. Madame Thenardier resumed staring at the table.
Javert closed the door behind them and took Valjean down the corridor and to one side, carefully out of range of anyone who might have overheard. "All right, I let you talk to her. Did it do any good? Did she confess to anything else?"
Valjean winced. "Inspector, that was not why I spoke to her. She is my niece, the daughter of my sister—"
"She *was* your niece, years ago. Perhaps," he qualified. "Whoever she may have been, now she is the wife of a criminal, and a criminal herself." Javert looked at the older man steadily, but unlike the Inspector of the past, this time his gaze was not without a trace of pity. "She is not your responsibility. At least now her husband and his gang will pay for their crimes at last," the Inspector added, more to himself than to the man before him.
"Is it really necessary that Thernardier's wife should go to prison as well?" Valjean begged.
The Inspector shot him a look of utter disbelief, on a par with the one given to Valjean by Madame. "Have you forgotten that she tried to burn you and Mademoiselle Cosette alive? Not to mention also attempting to burn her own husband and his criminal associates—although were I not a policeman I might consider the latter to be a point in her favor."
"But I owe it to her—"
"You owe her nothing. Think of your daughter! How safe will she be, with that woman at liberty? You must let the law take its course." Javert saw the other man's downcast expression and sighed. "Go home, Jean. Mademoiselle Cosette is going to want to visit the young baron."
Valjean's head came up, startled. In his concern and guilt over the woman who had been his niece, he had all but forgotten the Pontmercy boy, and Cosette's feelings about him. All that came crashing back with a vengeance.
"Javert, when your work is done here, you will return to my home?" he all but begged. "I…I do not wish to handle this alone."
The Inspector hesitated. Part of him felt that this was not at all within his purview or even his capacity, but he recalled his promises both to the man before him and to this man's daughter. "Very well. If you will go on home now."
Valjean nodded, put on his hat and walked away without another word. For a moment longer, Javert remained standing where he was. Then he turned and went back to the interrogation room. He stood outside it for a brief moment, his hand on the knob of the door, before taking a deep breath and continuing inside.
Madame looked up as the Inspector entered. "Is *he* gone?"
"Your husband and his associates are sharing a cell now."
Madame waved a hand impatiently. "I don't mean my husband. I meant that old fool who was talking to me, the one who came and took Cosette from us years ago."
"M. Fauchelevent has departed, yes."
"Good," Madame said shortly. "Why did you even let him in here to talk to me, anyway? He's no policeman."
"M. Fauchelevent wished to understand your situation, so that he could help you if possible." Javert seated himself at the table across from her, where Valjean had been sitting earlier.
The woman spat on the floor, causing Javert to grimace. "Help me? Who does the old fool think he is, a priest?" She glanced suddenly at the Inspector with a trace of rat-like cunning in her eyes that reminded him of her husband. "You understand," she said in a low voice. It was a statement, not a question. "You've always hated do-gooders, too."
Javert said nothing.
"They poke their noses where it doesn't belong, into things they know nothing about, with the idea that they are going to save your soul. Well, I don't want his help. What I want is revenge, and if I can't get it against him and that little bitch he took from us years ago, then I'll get revenge against my husband. Thenardier broke faith with me, so I'm breaking faith with him. I'll tell you everything I know, and my husband and his gang will be locked up for good." There was a rancid self-satisfaction in her tone. "You understand how this works, don't you, Inspector. *You* understand that no one gets something for nothing, like no one is fed unless another goes hungry. And that idiot who was just in here talking to me, he doesn't understand that. I lost my daughter, he should lose his. If I have no one left who loves me, why should he? *You* understand that, Inspector," she repeated again.
"Madame," Javert said steadily, "What I am beginning to understand, I think, is that whatever love is, it is not like a loaf of bread—that in order to partake of it, someone else is left with less. Perhaps the more it is shared, the more there is for all."
"How would you know?" Madame sneered. "No one loves you. Probably no one ever has."
Javert was silent.
"And there is something even sweeter than love—revenge. It never disappoints. If I can't avenge my poor Eponine any other way, I'll avenge her against the father who no longer cares about her, or about me. I'll tell you everything about him and his gang, so long as I never have to see him again."
"Agreed," Javert said. He spent some hours listening to and writing down her confession and her account of the criminal transgressions of Thenardier and his gang. She willingly placed her mark upon the papers when he was done.
~ooo0ooo~
Hours later, feeling a weariness that was nevertheless seasoned with satisfaction, he left the police station. It was not until he turned automatically in the direction of Valjean's house instead of his own residence that he realized he had begun to think of the former as "home." He immediately rebuked himself for the thought, which continued to nag at him all the rest of the way. Valjean's house is not your home. You have indulged yourself enough without adding delusions to the list. You have let that woman's remarks get to you. What do you care if she believes no one has ever loved you? What do you care…
(Even if it is true)
At the instant he arrived at Valjean's residence, the door was opened by the master of the house himself. "Javert, do come in! I thought you would never get home." Preoccupied with his own thoughts, Valjean did not see the startled look his words brought to the Inspector's face—he merely turned and headed toward the kitchen, assuming the other man would follow.
The kitchen was lit by candles which were partly burned down. There was an open bottle of wine, and two glasses, only one of which had been used. "You have been waiting," Javert observed.
Valjean nodded, and then made a gesture in the direction of the pantry. "Toussaint and Cosette have both gone to bed. We had dinner, I'm afraid, but there is still bread and cheese—"
"No thank you. I need nothing." Javert did not wish to trouble his host. Moreover, in view of how he had self-indulgently allowed himself to think of this place as "home," he felt like sacrificing a meal as a penance. Valjean looked at him for a moment, and the Inspector had a strange feeling that the older man knew exactly what he, the Inspector, was thinking and feeling.
"At least sit down and join me in a glass of wine." Valjean sat at the table, picked up the bottle, and filled both glasses. He pushed the unused one toward the Inspector, who sat down and accepted it. They both sipped and then set the glasses down.
"Madame confessed everything," Javert said without preamble. "I have her husband and his gang under arrest and heavily guarded. They will not escape this time."
"Is there nothing I can do to help her?" Valjean's expression was bleak.
"You cannot save everyone, Jean," Javert said, with a rare gentleness in his tone.
"Can you at least…watch over her? I know what she must be thinking and feeling. I recognize the signs."
"As do I," Javert said. Neither man used the word "suicide," yet it hung unspoken between them. "I have her under watch."
Valjean nodded and refilled their glasses. For a moment, the two men drank in silence before Javert spoke again.
"Have you been sitting here waiting all this time?" And drinking, Javert thought but did not say.
"No. Cosette and I went to visit Marius Pontmercy."
"Ah, the young baron." Javert drank his wine and then put down the glass. "I assume he was pleased to see her."
"That does not begin to describe it," Valjean said gloomily. "Each was delighted to see the other. For each of them, it was as if there was no other human being on earth. I might as well not have been in the room." He took a swallow of wine. "But that is selfish of me."
"It appears you will soon have a wedding to plan," Javert said. He meant the remark to be at least somewhat jocular, but it hung in the air for a moment like a prophecy. He set down his glass quickly when he saw how the other man's complexion turned pale.
"This worries you? Jean, you have been a father to this girl. She will not love you any less just because she loves the boy."
"I'm not so sure," the older man said heavily. "What use will she have for me, once she has a husband?"
"Jean." Something in the Inspector's tone made Valjean turn his full attention to him. "I know what it is like to make oneself needed, when one cannot be loved. But I believe I have learned something since then. Earlier this evening, I told Madame Thenardier that love is not like a loaf of bread—that there is less for others if one person has some of it. I have learned that from observing you and your daughter, so can it be that you do not understand this? Do not underestimate the goodness of Mademoiselle Cosette's heart."
Valjean nodded, but thoughts still nagged at him that he did not dare to voice aloud. I wish I could be sure. Even if Cosette continues to love her old father, she will never love me as she loves the Pontmercy boy. And that is not the only consideration. If she is to marry, and especially if she marries a baron, she must have a spotless past. Marius' grandfather will insist upon that, even if the boy himself does not. What am I to do?
The look of unhappiness, so close to despair, that remained on his face smote at Javert's heart, the heart that the Inspector had once prided himself was made of wood, the heart that once had beat only for duty. Javert did not know how to deal with this; the world of emotion was still largely unmapped territory to him. But at his core, the Inspector was an immensely practical man. "Jean, there is no point in sitting in a cold kitchen, spending half the night worrying about the future. Drink up and go to bed."
"Very well," the older man sighed, and then looked at his guest with a strange—to the Inspector—look of hopefulness in his eyes. "You plan to remain here tonight, I trust?"
Javert gave him a slight smile. "As it is late and I am too tired to walk back to my own residence, I shall continue to impose upon your hospitality for awhile longer."
Together, the two men drained the last of the wine from their glasses. Valjean put out the candles, and they set off for bed.
TBC….