Javert stared at himself in the mirror above the wash basin. He had just finished scrubbing his face quite roughly with soap and a sponge and then had shaved, but he had nicked himself a little, for his fingers were trembling. He gulped and daubed at the little bleeding spot with a wad of cotton wool until it stopped, and then he huffed and tossed the cotton down. He examined his own reflection and noted that his own bruising had mostly subsided. His badly swollen jaw, which had been punched many times, no longer ached. He'd lost a few molars in the street fight, but no matter. He did not need those back ones. Not really. Thinking of lost teeth made him think of Fantine. At least he'd managed to keep his good front ones. She had not. Javert had received not one but two black eyes that fateful night outside The Falcon's Roost, but the only remnants now were little hints of green mottling beneath under his tired old eyes. It was all hardly noticeable.

Javert had taken Cosette that night to St George's Hospital, where she had been rushed away from him almost before he could promise her that she would be fine, almost before he could kiss her goodbye. She had barely been conscious; she had been moaning softly in agony. Javert had waited, bedraggled and bloodied without a coat or hat, upon a bench in the atrium of the hospital, until a doctor had come to speak with him. Javert had used what English he had to explain what had happened, and the doctor had used sketches and words and gestures to inform Javert that preliminary examinations showed Cosette had a fractured skull, bruising on her brain, several broken ribs, bleeding in her abdomen, all manner of scrapes and abrasions, and several broken fingers. She was lucky to be alive, the doctor had said, but she still had a battle fight. Javert had shoved coins at the doctor to try and pay for Cosette's care, but the doctor had resisted. Later, he had said gently. Go to the police. Go rest. Visit later.

So Javert had found the nearest station-house of the recently-founded Metropolitan Police, and he had explained in as authoritative of a voice as he could muster that he was an Inspector with the Paris Police, that he had come with his wife to London on holiday, that the two of them had been attacked by a gang from a tavern and that Javert had fought them off and had needed to use lethal force. He had explained everything, but, of course, there had been hours of interrogation and paperwork. Javert had not been surprised by that, nor angered. He would have done precisely the same thing himself, as an Inspector in Paris, if an Englishman speaking broken French had come barging into the station-house spattered in blood rambling about having killed four Frenchmen and having just taken his nearly-dead wife to hospital. So Javert had patiently and honestly answered all of their questions, over and over, for repetition was how police caught people in lies.

Javert did not complain when they made him remove his clothing and hand it all over to them for inspection and put on a cheap linen tunic and ill-fitting trousers at the station before they let him wash and go back to the Lamb and Flag. And when a Metropolitan Police officer arrived at the Lamb and Flag the next morning wanting to speak to Javert further, he was neither surprised nor irritated. The bodies had been found, the officer had informed Javert. The publican had, it seemed, fled The Falcon's Roost when things had gone wrong for his cronies. But the publican's wife had confessed that her husband, who had fought for Wellington against Napoleon, had a visceral hatred for the French. Early that morning, a police officer had gone to check in on Cosette at St George's Hospital. Javert's story seemed solid to the police, apparently. And there was no real justice to be served, not until the publican reappeared. Javert had summarily executed all four of the brutes who had attacked himself and Cosette in the street.

She had been at the hospital now for well over a week. He had written to his Commissaire in Paris explaining the situation and had just heard back the night before. Commissaire Caron had replied with utter shock and horror to hear about the attack on Cosette and had instructed Javert not to so much as think about his employment until Cosette's health was assured. Every single day, during the strictly limited visiting hours, Javert had gone from the Lamb and Flag to St George's Hospital and had sat beside Cosette's bed in the ward where they were keeping her, fretting rather neurotically over her and feeling as though she were sand slipping through his fingers, as though he were breaking every promise he had made to her, and to Jean Valjean, and, obliquely, to Fantine.

The worst of Cosette's injuries had actually proven to be her broken ribs, which she had suffered as a result of being repeatedly kicked hard in the chest. In the first few days after the attack, Cosette had experienced severe pain everywhere - her aching head, her splinted broken fingers, her abdomen that was recovering from its internal bleed, and, of course, her ribs. But the rib pain only got worse. Even where she lay carefully arranged upon pillows in a loose nightgown, every breath Cosette took seemed increasingly like torture. The doctors ordered the attendants to bind Cosette's chest with bandages and to apply poultices, but that did not help at all. They sometimes gave her Laudanum, which helped a little, but the doctors worried about giving her too much since she so often seemed to have trouble waking from even the slightest bit of it, and they thought perhaps that was related to how hard her skull had been slammed onto the cobblestones. It seemed that Cosette was doomed to suffer. Perhaps, Javert found himself thinking sometimes, she had been born with a curse upon her, doomed always to suffer.

It troubled him very deeply, the notion that he had not protected her the way he had promised Valjean he would do. He had tried. Truly, he had tried. Every night since she had gone into the hospital, Javert had struggled to sleep, lying on his back in the rented bed and staring at the ceiling with his trembling fingers crossed over his chest, hearing Cosette shrieking helplessly from the alley as Javert pummelled his way through the two adversaries in the street until he could reach her. He saw her lying splayed and dirty, her skirts pulled up, and he felt fresh panic that she'd been violated in the most cruel way imaginable. Javert had, during his career as an Inspector, been obliged to investigate rape. Seeing Cosette in the alley with her dress up around her waist, unmoving, his mind had whirled that she was dead or had been horrifically infringed or both.

He had not hesitated one bit in slitting one of the bastard's throats and killing the other one straight through his guts. He'd seen scarlet in his rage before rushing over to soothe Cosette. She had fought them off, she'd bravely murmured to him, and then he'd felt a strange swell of pride. Every day since she had been in the hospital, Javert had comforted himself just a little with that thought, with the idea of her kicking hard at the chest of one of the beasts, at the notion of her spitting upon the face of the young one. Brave, brave Songbird, Javert sometimes whispered to himself, shutting his eyes and trying to sleep. He whispered it to her at St George's Hospital, too. Brave little Songbird.

Now he pulled himself away from the dressing table and glanced up and down his form to ensure he hadn't forgotten anything in dressing himself. He was wont to be absent-minded these days. He dragged his fingertips over his hair and thought perhaps he'd not brushed his grey hair quite as neatly as he usually did into its queue, but no matter; it would do. His cravat was stuffed almost haphazardly into his shirt, so he tried for a brief moment to adjust it as he glanced back at his reflection. He yanked at the hem of his tailcoat to neaten himself and then nodded firmly. He strode without another word out of the bedchamber and down the corridor of the Lamb and Flag's first floor, heading down the elegant staircase and pausing in the foyer when he saw that Mrs Burton was seated on a divan in the salon, embroidering. It was nearly noon, and most of the inn's residents had gone for the day, it seemed. Javert fingered the brim of his hat and cleared his throat.

"I am off to go and see to my wife, Mrs Burton."

Mrs Burton looked up and gave Javert a very mournful look. She set down her embroidery and rose slowly, walking toward Javert and knitting her hands together a bit anxiously as she nodded.

"What news from the doctors?" she asked, and Javert sighed, feeling his heart pick up as he admitted,

"All of the shallow breathing she's had to do from the broken ribs… it has been no good at all for her. There is congestion in her lungs now, the doctor says. She coughs a little, and that induces even more pain. But she is strong. Very strong."

Mrs Burton scowled deeply. "And what of that brute from The Falcon's Nest? What is he called? Gregory Porter, wasn't it? The police found him by now, surely?"

"No. They have not." Javert shifted on his feet and felt angry. He gnawed the inside of his mouth. "His wife confessed that they have friends and family in Liverpool. I am promised that an effort will be made to search for him there, but… well. I have decades of experience in police work in France, Mrs Burton, and… If I were in the shoes of the Metropolitan Police, I'm not certain how much money and manpower I would devote to an incident like this. Cosette is alive and so am I. We are foreigners. The men who physically attacked us are dead. Whilst, ideally, Gregory Porter would be brought to justice, he has fled, and police resources are limited. I would not be at all surprised if the British police decided not to prioritse this case."

Mrs Burton huffed and hugged her cream knit shawl tightly about her shoulders, flashing Javert an indignant look. "How preposterous that they should not be considering this a matter of utmost importance! You are are a policeman yourself, Monsieur, and your wife… your good young wife…"

She stopped then, her voice sounding choked. She drew her fingers to her lips, and her eyes welled heavily with sudden tears. She looked away and sniffed a little as she seemed to try and gather herself, and then she whispered,

"Please, Monsieur, pass along my best wishes to her today, if you will be so kind."

"Of course." Javert urged away his own emotions then, for the air in the space felt thick in an unpleasant way. He reached into the pocket of his greatcoat and pulled out his drawstring bag, and as he started to open it and reach inside, he mumbled, "You are due another week's pay for the room, Mrs Burton."

"Nonsense. I'll not take another shilling from you," Mrs Burton said defiantly, pushing Javert's hand away. He looked up and met her eyes, opening his mouth to protest, but she pinched her lips and shook her head. "The two of you had meant to be safely at home by now. I'm ashamed that my countrymen have made you both suffer so. You'll be guests at the Lamb and Flag until the Madame is well enough to travel home to Paris, and I'll not have see another coin about it. Now. Off to the hospital with you, Monsieur."

Javert hesitated, but then he nodded and bowed his head respectfully as he tucked his small purse away. Rather abruptly, in his mind, for some reason, he thought of Jean Valjean. What Mrs Burton was doing now, this act of charity and hospitality, reminded Javert of Valjean, and that only put a larger knot in Javert's throat. His breath shook in his nostrils as he made his way out into the cold street and set off on his way toward the hospital, whispering to himself with his breath fogging before him,

"I will keep my promises."

"How is she today?" Javert asked the attendant who had been here most days that he had come. Agnes, her name was. She was, it seemed, in her late thirties or early forties, robust in build and no-nonsense in attitude. She moved swiftly and spoke in a husky voice that betrayed how quickly and efficiently she worked, with little room for emotion or distraction. Today, she had come to meet Javert at reception, where he had hung his coat and hat, and she was now escorting him up the staircase to the long ward where Cosette's bed was. Her plain slate grey wool skirts swished around her worn black boots as she climbed before him, and she glanced over her shoulder as she said to him in slow, deliberate English,

"She ails still. Her chest is badly congested. Her coughing causes her some awful pains. She has a bit of a fever today."

"A fever?" Javert repeated fretfully as they reached the top of the staircase, and as Agnes marched them down the long corridor, she wiped her fingers and palms on her crisp apron and then reached up to adjust her cap upon her neat hair as she nodded and told him,

"She has been given willow bark and elderflower for the fever and just a little Laudanum for the pain of the coughing. It was too much to bear otherwise. So she is very tired. She took some broth and tea earlier; she will not eat much food. She grows thin."

Javert scowled and felt a surge of anger. He stopped walking, his boots scuffing on the shiny ground, and Agnes whirled around to glare at him as if he were annoying her by delaying them. Javert balled his fists at his sides and shrugged.

"Her head improves, you say." He heard his own thick French accent and cringed at the sound. Agnes nodded, and Javert continued, "The bleeding in her abdomen… better, you say. Her fingers… the swelling is down. The breaks are better. So she should be feeling better! Not worse."

An odd look crossed Agnes' stout face then, and her stern features softened a little. She glanced around; the hospital was a bit chaotic as doctors, ambulatory patients, visitors, and attendants moved from wards through the corridors and took supplies where they needed to go. Agnes took two steps toward Javert and lowered her voice. She continued speaking in English, but she seemed to ensure her speech was simple and clear so that Javert would fully understand.

"Monsieur. The men who attacked your wife did very great damage. Her ribs broke very, very badly, and those breaks damaged her lungs. There may be fluid in her lungs, or a lung fever of some sort. She is in pain. Breathing is very difficult for her. She may recover from it, or perhaps not. You are a man of the law, and I understand you have served in war. I do not doubt you have seen awful things. Please understand. We are doing our very best for the Madame, but her condition is very grave."

Javert felt cold then. He felt as though he were at Austerlitz again, where it had been so icy, so frigid, that he had not been able to feel his fingertips or his toes. He felt like his blood had frozen solid inside his veins. But somehow he gathered up the courage to nod and to mutter to Agnes,

"I understand. Please. Let us go to her bed now."

Agnes nodded and took Javert through the wide, tall oak doors that led into the ward where Cosette was being treated, a ward for married women who were unaccompanied by children and, to the best knowledge of the medical staff, not horribly contagious. The ward was a spacious room with high ceilings and many windows on one side, which allowed in a good deal of light. The curtains on the windows were deliberately pale and gauzy to maximise that light, and the walls had been painted a very pale blue, almost the colour of the sky. The air smelt vaguely of antiseptic solutions and herbal poultices, of the alcohol and Laudanum used on patients in here. The ward was mostly quiet except for a few conversations between administrators and doctors and some whispers and murmurs between patients and their visitors who were seated in wooden chairs at their bedsides. A modest privacy curtain of simple linen separated each bed, hanging on rings on a basic metal rack extending between bays. Each bed also had a rather spartan wooden bedside table, and the beds were white iron with simple white sheets and blankets on thin mattresses and pillows. Javert hated the look and feel of the place, because it reminded him so very profoundly of where he had seen Fantine perish.

Cosette's bed was near the middle of the ward, and as Javert approached with Agnes, he had mixed emotions to see that she was fast asleep. On the one hand, he considered that he ought not disturb her. He was certain that her rest was critical right now, and they had told him that she was in a great deal of pain. Her chest had been wrapped with bandages beneath her nightgown to try and help ease the pain of breathing from her healing broken ribs, but they had also carefully packed pillows about her to force her to lie in a specific position. Her lovely face had fallen to the side where she was propped, and she looked angelic as always, but also gaunt and weary. She had already lost weight, Javert thought, consuming little more than broth and tea the way she was doing. Her cheeks looked a little sunken and her skin seemed sallow. He frowned at that; he was used to seeing her with a pink glow and a full, round flush in her youthful face. Javert slowly sank into the wood and wicker chair beside her bed and murmured to Agnes,

"Perhaps I will just sit here. She should sleep, I think."

Agnes tipped her head and shrugged. "She has been asleep on and off, only waking for a little while, since last night. I do not think she will mind at all. I will wake her for you."

"Be careful," Javert commanded sharply, and Agnes just bowed her head before reaching to touch at Cosette's cheek and then pinching her shoulder just a little. Cosette startled where she lay, and Javert flinched and winced, but he knew that shaking Cosette awake or yelling at her were not options right now. Cosette blinked slowly, and the effects of the Laudanum they had given her were obvious in her bleary pale gaze as she tried to focus on Javert. Her lips curled up a little when she saw him, and Agnes warmly reassured her,

"See who has come for you, Madame?"

Cosette wouldn't understand much English, not in this state, Javert knew, so he quickly reached to brush his knuckles over her cheekbone and said softly to her in French,

"Your old, ugly husband has come to pester you again. You can't rid yourself of me, I'm afraid."

Cosette's smile grew then, and Agnes seemed pleased. "I shall leave you two to it."

She hurried off, drawing the curtain shut, but as soon as she'd gone, Cosette coughed in a way that instantly concerned Javert. He had known, of course, that her chest was congested. It had been for a while now. But this coughing today sounded oddly gravelly, almost grumbling, and he scowled as she curled a little where she lay and as her face contorted in obvious misery. Once the coughing had passed, Cosette whispered,

"What torture it is."

Javert's eyes burned badly then, and he found himself reaching for her right hand, the one that hadn't had its fingers snapped like twigs. He carefully dragged his thumb around her knuckles and lamented, "I very much wish that I could simply command your ribs and lungs to heal, Cosette. I made promises to protect you, to keep you safe, to guard you and guide you and shelter you, and I am failing you in all of that. I am so sorry. Your father would be furious with me."

He shook his head, but Cosette gave him an odd look, and then, in a voice bleary from the Laudanum, she scolded him,

"You are being very silly, Monsieur l'Inspecteur."

"Silly?" He almost snapped the word at her, and she nodded a little.

"You saved my life. You killed four men all on your own."

Javert gulped. "If you were not my wife, and if I had not brought you to England, you would not have been attacked in the first place."

A very peaceful expression crossed Cosette's face then, and he felt her rub his hand back as she reminded him quietly, "If I were not your wife, and you had not brought me to England, I would not have seen Westminster Abbey, as I told my dear Papa I so desperately wanted to do. You told me that one day you would take me. And you did."

Javert scoffed bitterly. "Mmm. And was it worth it, Madame? Hmm? A creaky old church that you admitted was glum and dour, in a city where they do not even like us because we are French, so much so that we wound up under near-fatal attack. You wanted to see London, and so I brought you. What a foolish bastard I was for obliging that whim."

Cosette sighed and just kept rubbing his hand. She coughed again, harder this time, so hard that when she buckled over, she whined and then actually began to cry, and Javert seethed through his clenched teeth to see her struggling in pain. He panicked a little when he heard her inhale, because the wheeze in her breath was very obvious. Her lungs were not working correctly at all, he realised. Perhaps part of a broken rib was sticking into one of her lungs, or perhaps it was as Agnes and the doctor had theorised and fluid had gotten into a lung. She had some fever, they'd said, and she did feel very warm as Javert leaned over her a little and kissed her forehead. Her skin felt scorchingly hot under his lips. He pulled back and looked at her, and then he saw it… he saw how grey her skin appeared, how sunken her cheeks had become, how dull her lovely eyes were, and a horrid flush took him over from head to toe as an awful thunking thought reverberated in his skull.

She is never going home to France.

Javert's hands shook wildly then as he tried desperately to comport himself, as his mind spun like a wagon wheel out of control and his heart started to beat irregularly. He reached to stroke at Cosette's face and saw resignation there, saw her mother there, and he finally mumbled to her,

"I ought to have jumped off of that damned bridge and saved you the trouble of meeting me, Cosette."

Her eyes rimmed red at once, and her chapped lips parted, and she said quietly, in a hoarse voice, "Now you are not just being silly. You are being hurtful. Do you not realize, my dear Inspector, that until I met you, I was just a silly little girl who was all alone and had absolutely no idea what love actually meant?"

Javert coughed out a bitter little laugh and shrugged. "And until I met you, Songbird, I was just an old man who was all alone and, likewise, had absolutely no idea what love actually meant."

Cosette managed to reach up then, but her hand was weak, and he reached to take hold of it. He realised then that she was trying to grasp at his hair, and he leaned closer to her. He put his face near hers, not minding suddenly the way his tears started to fall in earnest. He put his lips beside her ear and kissed the skin there, not caring at all that she coughed roughly into the crook of his neck. He felt her weak fingers pulling at the tie binding his grey hair into its low queue, felt his hair cascading down, felt her hand lace through his locks like she had so often done. She hummed a happy little sound at the feel of that, and Javert could not stand it then. He had a vision, suddenly, of jumping again - this time not from the Pont au Change but from the deck of the paddle steamer into the English Channel. He would not be able to go on without her, he knew. But it was as if she had read his thoughts, because Cosette whispered then,

"My Papa tore you off that parapet for a reason, Javert, and it was not to marry me. He did not want you dead. You must promise me… promise me… that you will find a way to go to sleep and rise again with the dawn."

Javert said nothing at all to that. He just kissed her cheek again as she stroked his scalp, his other hand carefully caressing her left arm through her nightgown. She coughed again, but this time the cough was weak and shallow, little more than a clearing of her throat. She sounded almost desperate then as her fingers cinched in his hair as she pleaded,

"Swear to me that you will wake with the sunrise every day and that you will never jump without me, dear Inspector."

He nodded against her then, burrowing his face at last into her neck and breathing her in. Rose. Somehow he smelled rose on her, just a little hint. Perhaps it was his imagination. It didn't matter.

"I swear it," he whispered. "I promise you, Songbird."

"How I love you," he heard her voice say softly, but then he felt her cinching grasp on his hair go completely slack, and her hand slowly slipped from his head and fell between his shoulder blades. For a long moment, Javert did not move. He hardly breathed. He could not will himself off of her, though the back of his mind knew what had happened. He stayed where he was, seated in the chair at her bedside, holding onto her left arm with his right hand, his face shamelessly buried in the crook of her neck with his hair fallen loose, and he let his tears flow whilst his back heaved with childlike sobs.

Finally, at some point, he slowly sat up, knowing what he would see. It did not make seeing it any easier. She did not yet look like she was sleeping; her pale eyes were still open. Javert yanked his own gaze away and carefully used hsi fingertips to shut her eyes. He adjusted her thin arms and crossed her hands over her stomach. Then he bent and touched his lips to hers for a moment, and he stroked her blonde hair, and he let his knuckles soak in a final feel of her cheekbones and her neck. He let out a shaking sigh and shut his eyes as he stood, and it all flashed before him in a whirring magical spell.

He could see her the first time he'd been introduced to her at the house on rue Plumet, surprisingly lovely. Far too young for him, he'd scolded himself; he ought not think about her that way. But he had thought about her that way. She was beautiful and charming. And after the Pontmercy boy had died, the two of them had flirted and more. He saw their first kisses, their first touches, the way she'd been so curious and eager. She had driven Javert mad with her fiery and greedy interest. And when Javert and Valjean had discussed the admittedly insane idea of Javert marrying Jean Valjean's adopted daughter, Cosette had accepted Javert's ring with elation that had made Javert's heart sing. She had been a vision on their wedding day, even with all of its complications. He had gone to the home of her good-for-nothing 'real father' just to see what sort of a sorry excuse for a man he was, and he had felt protective of her, possessive of her. Javert had stared at Cosette at the opera; he had stared at her in London. He had become sweaty with passion with her and moaned his way to bliss with her over and over again. He had loved her to the marrow of his bones with what time they had had together.

And it was as they had admitted to one another, before she had departed him. Neither of them had known, before they had had one another, what love had actually meant. They had taught that concept to each other, in its true form. She had been so young that she had naively thought she'd had it with Marius Pontmercy, but she had asserted many times to Javert that what she had with him was entirely different. And Javert knew very well that he had never known real love at all until Cosette. She had softened his heart and his soul.

He had made promises to Jean Valjean that he had tried very hard to keep. He had not meant for the attack in the street to happen. He had killed four men attempting to save Cosette, and he had carried her to the hospital. He had gone to the police station at once. He had so desperately tried to save her. The doctors had, as well. He had also promised Valjean that Cosette would be the most important thing to him until the day he died. That could still be very true indeed, Javert thought. And now, he had promised Cosette that he would wake up with the dawn each day, that he would not jump. He must not break the final promise he had made to her, he thought.

"May I have some… help over here?" Javert heard his own French-accented voice say, but it was too quiet. He reached up and swiped his sleeve over his tear-streaked face, unwilling to shout for Agnes or the other attendants. He shook his head a little and went to sit back down at Cosette's bedside, putting his hands over hers and just staring at her unmoving face, thinking that he would just sit here with her, that eventually someone would come.

September 1840

Paris

"Commissaire Javert. I can't believe you are finally retiring. What will you do with your time?" Martin, who was attending Javert's little retirement celebration and had left the police force several years earlier himself after his rheumatism had forced him out, sipped from his wine. Javert tapped the rim of his own glass and shrugged.

"Other than my lack of work shifts, Martin, I do not suspect my days will look much different. I suspect I will be monumentally bored. A good deal of reading, I think. And many walks."

"Walks," repeated Chief Inspector Dufresne, looking sceptical where he sat at the table. He popped a grape into his mouth and tipped his head. "Where will you walk? Ambling the streets resisting the urge to arrest ruffians?"

Javert smirked just a little and shook his head. "No. I… I quite like the Luxembourg Gardens. My dear wife Cosette was very fond of them. They make me think of her, so I go there often. There and to Cimitière de Montparnasse, where she and her father are at rest."

He sipped his own wine slowly, and the others went quiet as a heaviness came over the table. They gave one another weighty looks. Javert knew why. They thought it odd that Javert still spoke so often of Cosette. After all, he had been married to her for so short a time, and they had not had children together, and she had been gone from him for nearly seven years now. But they did not understand. They could never understand, and he was perfectly all right with that.

Javert went to the cemetery three times per week. He touched to top of Valjean's headstone each time he went and nodded his respectful thanks, and then he moved onto Cosette's grave, where her marker stated that she was "Euphrasie, Called Cosette: The Most Loved Creature in All Creation." And it was true, too. No man or woman or child had ever been upon the Earth and had been subject to so much sacrifice, devotion, and sheer adoration as had Cosette in her short life.

"Will you travel?" Javert heard Martin ask, and Javert sighed. He nodded thoughtfully. Cosette had wanted to see the world, not just London. He had been putting off his travels until his time with the Paris Police was through.

"Perhaps," he said. "I thought I might go to Rome. Or Venice, or… I don't know. The tropics. I might just… get on a ship and… sail somewhere. See the world. I won't jump overboard or anything."

He gave an odd little chuckle, sipping his wine. Martin frowned, seeming confused, and Javert realised it had not been a good joke. He was not very funny anymore, he knew. He set down his wine and dragged his fingers through his hair. He had cut it short about four years earlier, for Cosette was not here to run her hands through it and long hair was in no way fashionable anymore. In any case, his hairline was badly receding now. He had buried Cosette with her locket with his braided lock of long hair inside. Perhaps she was somewhere where she was treasuring that, he considered. Perhaps not. Javert huffed a breath and pulled out a few coins, plunking them down on the table. He pulled himself to his feet.

"Thank you all for the company. And for the wine. I am… going for a walk."

The others just glanced at each other, and then Dufresne nodded. "Be well, Commissaire Javert," he said thoughtfully, and Javert just nodded crisply before he turned and strode from the tavern, out into the crisp autumn air.

THE END