Chapter 36 - The End of My Story
Something in the air changed after Eponine died.
Where there had once been hope and optimism, there was now fear and apprehension. People stuck to themselves, sitting contemplatively or mindlessly fiddling away at their rifles and pistols, or the loose bits of thread on their sleeves. Even Enjolras seemed pensive and shaken.
Grace went to be with Eponine. She had to sit in vigil for her. The only mourning Eponine would ever have from anyone.
Marius eventually came and sat beside Grace in the tavern. Eponine had been laid out on the floor, a half-torn flag covering her body. The two of them stared into space side by side, endless tears running silently down both of their faces. And when he bent his head and placed it into Grace's lap, she didn't push him away. She let him rest his head there. And she stroked his shoulder as they both cried.
A few crack shots tried their luck at firing at the other men on the barricade's ramparts, but another attack didn't come all day. And now, each time they heard the pop of a gun, everyone flinched.
None of them felt invincible anymore.
The sound of metal scraping against the floor suddenly made Marius sit up. Grace snapped herself out of her grief too and peered outside.
"Anybody hungry?!" A small voice called out to them all.
"Gavroche?! Where did you come from?" She heard Courfeyrac reply.
"Oh no…" Grace muttered, quickly standing to her feet and rushing outside.
She emerged from the inside of the tavern to find the young boy crawling out of a sewer hole in the ground, three baguettes strapped to his back and another in his spare hand.
Once the boy stood to his feet, more men of the barricade had approached, eager to get themselves a chunk of bread before it all disappeared. Since the morning, the National Guard had done a good job of cutting off their supply lines. They were utterly surrounded, and no one had so much as had a sip of beer since midday.
The boys were like a pack of hungry, scrabbling wolves as the baguettes were handed out between them. But as Grace cut her way through the crowd, she felt her blood singing.
"Oh no. No, no, no, no, no! Get him out of here now! This is not a place for children!"
Bahorel turned towards her with a frown and a mouth full of bread. "We're all starving, Deg-uhh, Grace. Whatever your name is now."
"I don't care!" Grace shouted. "Enjolras, for pete's sake! Surely you can't agree with this?"
She turned around, looking for the golden-haired youth, to find him watching the scene pensively.
"Combeferre, I'm assuming our bullets situation remains unchanged since this morning?" He asked, his voice low and speculative.
"It is."
"Enjolras!" Grace exclaimed, her mouth agape. "You can't seriously be considering what I think you're considering?! His sister is-"
She swallowed down her words, glancing quickly back towards the boy. He was still busy chatting and handing out chunks of bread. The gap-toothed smile on his face wide and bright. Grace took a few long strides towards Enjolras and proceeded in a whisper.
"His sister is dead inside that tavern!" She hissed, pointing to the building behind them. That awful black hole of grief rose up inside her throat, but she swallowed it down just enough to continue. "What the fuck is wrong with you?! Thinking of having a child smuggle supplies in for us?!"
"This is the conjuncture of all we have worked towards." He replied quietly. "The eleventh hour! I really don't think we can afford to think moralistically now."
She stared at him in silence for a beat. Anger pumped in her ears.
"What?" She asked coldly.
"He is small. Quick. Light footed… The boy could slip past the enemy's defences easier than most of us. And you heard Combeferre. If we are to have more musket-shots, then we need someone to-"
Before Grace knew what she'd done, she'd swung at him.
Her fist connected with his proud chin, and when he stumbled back, she leapt on him.
"Send him away now!" She screamed into his face, hands around his lapels. "Send him away!"
She felt hands upon her shoulders and her arms, pulling her back, off Enjolras.
"Woah, woah!" Grantaire cried out, the man holding her back on her right side.
"You couldn't be proud of Julius and Jocelyn?!" She cried bitterly. "You are a disgrace to them!"
"Calm yourself, Grace!" Feuilly said, holding her left arm in his firm grip.
"Your mother would be ashamed of you!" Grace screamed at Enjolras. She fought with all her might to break out of their grasp. Enjolras shrank back from her as if she were a hellcat. "If you allow this, then you're just as bad as the monsters on the other side of this barricade!"
"Grace, stop!" Grantaire tried to say firmly.
"The girl is right." A calm, steady voice said somewhere behind her.
Grace managed to shrug off Feuilly and Grantaire enough to turn and face that voice. It sent a strange, unsettling shiver through her, despite the warm and soothing tone to it. It was the rumble of the storm. The thunder of the finale, chasing her at her back now.
Jean Valjean stared back at her, his face calm but firm. He was dressed in an old army jacket, his breast shining with golden buttons. He held his chest out confidently, as if he'd always been there, but he placed his hands modestly at his front, trying to appear humble before the crowd of young boys.
"This is no place for a child. Although, I'm ashamed to admit he is here because I asked him to bring me to you." Valjean continued, gesturing back to the sewer grate Gavroche had appeared from out of. "But this is not the time for you all to be fighting amongst yourselves."
"So we will settle our disputes amongst ourselves, Monsieur. Your interjection is not required." Enjolras replied pointedly.
Grace abruptly closed her open mouth before anyone could clock her surprise. She wanted to ask why he was here. She had expected him and Cosette to be long gone from Paris, as per his threats. But why had he come to the Barricades? Why had he volunteered himself for this madness when the last time they'd spoken, he'd seemingly wanted to put as much distance between them and the revolution as possible?
"Now, now, Enjolras. There's no need to get catty." Grantaire said, trying to inject some much needed humour into the situation. "Not when one of us has already got their claws out."
Grace caught the sidelong glance he gave her, and she felt the bristle of anger along her arms again. If they'd have let her go, she would have taken a swing at him too.
"Oh Enjolras, take this." Marius said, striding out of the crowd to offer him a handkerchief.
Grace tried not to feel too pleased when she glanced over at Enjolras's face to find a little trickle of blood coming out of his nose.
He dabbed demurely at his nostril and cast a bitter scowl at Grace.
"Marius, is my face still marked?" He asked, turning towards him so he could inspect it for red smears..
"Marius?" Valjean asked, taking a hesitant step in the young man's direction. "You are Marius?"
There was silence whilst a series of confused and curious eyes stared at the strange new gentleman. Marius merely nodded, looking him up and down.
"And who are you, sir?" Enjolras asked pointedly, rubbing at his chin.
Valjean swallowed thickly. He blinked a few times before clearing his throat to reply. "A volunteer."
"But you wear an army uniform." Enjolras said suspiciously.
"I thought it best to wear something of this nature. Just in case the National Guard discovered us whilst we were trying to sneak our way to your lines."
"And… is it just you?" Asked Joly, glancing back to the sewage hole. "No offence, Monsieur, but we were expecting a great many more… perhaps younger volunteers to flock to our side."
"I am old. But I can shoot." Valjean replied steadfastly. "And I am stronger than I look."
Grace thought for a moment of those stories she had been told. Of the man who had bashed a bolted door down. The man who had single-handedly lifted a carriage off of someone in need. The man who had broken bones in the blink of an eye. She would never have believed that 'Gardener Fauchelevent' had that strength if she hadn't been told by…
"Grace…?!" A concerned voice called out to her.
The crowd of men parted and Javert, having heard her shouts and the commotion, came rushing up to her. He gave Feuilly and Grantaire a withering look and they both immediately unhanded her.
But the world seemed to halt in its turning when Javert's eyes settled on Jean Valjean.
That terrible, thunderous feeling boomed all around them. Like two warring titans had finally met.
Those great, crashing chords that she had heard in her mind the first time she had met Javert roared in her ears. A pounding, brutal surge of music that made the air she breathed constrict straight out of her lungs.
And Grace suddenly realised that the thunder that she had sensed coming for her had been this. The awesome collision of warm and cold air. Jean Valjean and Javert. Always destined to crash into one another with a beautiful, but destructive violence.
And now she was at the centre of their hurricane. Unable to run from the inevitable, but still terrible, force of nature that raged all around her.
Javert's expression was one of shocked disbelief. Valjean, meanwhile, did not show even the slightest hint of unease. And Grace thought it rather ironic that the policeman was the one to look almost frightened of the two of them, whilst the secret convict, who'd spent the best part of twenty years on the run, was the man holding his emotions in check.
"Well…" Gavroche suddenly piped up, his little face appearing from behind Valjean's back. "I certainly didn't expect t'see you 'ere… Inspector Javert."
Javert's face went slack as his gaze slipped to the boy.
A coldness ran over Grace's skin as the ground dropped out from under her.
The truth, as it slowly swept over the gathered crowd standing around them all, was as bracing as settling snow. Slowly at first. But then the sharpness of the truth began to ache along their bones.
And when Javert's aghast and horrified eyes snagged on hers, Grace only had the time to think one terrible, damning thought before the world shattered around them: Fuck…!
"Seize him…" Enjolras growled, his voice as cold as a rumbling ice-storm.
"No…No!" Grace cried.
But before she could will her feet to move, the boys of the cafe had swarmed around Javert.
He was a stag, and they were a pack of dogs who had launched themselves at his body. Each pair of hands on him was another set of jaws clamping into his flesh. And soon, every inch of his arms and shoulders were covered. Holding him still in their white-knuckled grips.
"The police, are you?!" Bahorel grumbled, approaching Javert's front.
"He ain't just any old police either." Gavroche added. "He's the Prèfecture for Montmartre."
Bahorel growled like an enraged animal. He slammed his fist hard into his stomach. Javert cried out and doubled over.
"Bahorel! Stop it!" Grace screamed. She reached out to pull him away, but she was sent staggering backwards as Bahorel swung his whole arm back and pounded it into his face.
Javert's head snapped violently to the side, and then quickly slackened as his chin sagged to the floor. He spat blood up onto the pavement, his hair now hanging limp and loose about his face.
"Monsieur Bleuthielle, are you?" Combeferre asked derisively. "You two-faced liar!"
"What shall we do with the bastard?" Courfeyrac growled.
Bahorel grabbed a fistful of Javert's hair. His face was a red mask of blood. Mouth panting. Eyes glazed. He raised his fist and struck him about the head again.
"Stop it! Please!" Grace sobbed. She managed to catch Bahorel's fist in her palms. Javert's blood was slick on his knuckles.
"We should shoot him." Feuilly said, not even glancing at Grace as she wept. His eyes swept straight over her as he looked to Enjolras. "He's clearly been feeding information back to the enemy. Think of the attack this morning, Enjolras. He deliberately led us astray."
Bahorel muttered an expletive and kicked Javert in the stomach again. This time, he vomited. The contents of his stomach tainted pink with blood.
"Stop it! Stop it! Stop it!" Grace cried manically. She beat at Bahorel's back, tried clawing at the hands of the others that held on to him.
"Take this traitorous dog into the tavern." Enjolras said levelly.
He strode forwards and seized Grace by the wrist. Enjolras hauled her up until she was stretched out, balancing on her tiptoes and staring him straight in the eyes. She let out a whimper of pain when his grip tightened around her. The look of fiery hatred in his eyes made her wither away from him. She'd never seen such burning wrath there before. And if her heart wasn't already pounding with fear, it certainly was now.
"This one too." Enjolras growled into Grace's face.
"Enjolras?" Joly asked unsurely.
"This is the man that sent you that love-note. Isn't it. The one you liaised with at the Opera House." He said to Grace coolly.
When she could not muster a reply, she merely sobbed and tried to pull free of his grasps.
"Answer me!" Enjolras roared.
"Yes! Yes…" she cried pitifully, too frightened to try and lie to this vengeful archangel.
"And he is your lover, isn't he!"
"Yes..!"
"And you have been spying on us, for him, all along, haven't you!"
"No! Marcelin, no!" Grace sobbed.
He flung Grace's wrist out of his hand. She stumbled and went tumbling to the floor, crashing to the pavement just in front of Javert.
"Tie them both up." Enjolras commanded.
Grace wept bitterly into the cobblestones. Barely able to raise her forehead from off the ground.
"I believed your excuse before, Cousin, when you told me that the Inspector who had written to you was nothing more than a coincidental acquaintance you made at my mother's soirée. You even tried calling my bluff! 'If you truly think I'm a spy, Marcelin, then you can put me out right now!'" He sneered, his voice derisive and mocking. "But now I see the truth. You always meant to betray us to him. You even had him lie himself into our midst so you could both be here for the final demise!"
"That's not true!" Grace wailed, her arms shaking as she tried to hold her trembling body up off the ground.
"Then why all this need for secrecy? Why has it taken a child to out him for what he truly is?!"
"A pig!" Courfeyrac spat.
"A lying swine!" Joly cried.
The others erupted into shouts of anger, hurling insults down at Javert as if they were hailstones. But Javert did not heed them. His back was bent, his heaving frame panting heavily as his face continued to drip blood onto the floor.
"I woulda recognised 'im in an 'eartbeat." Gavroche said proudly. "Me and the boys 'ave run from 'im often enough! Not so tough now you ain't sat on top of your big horse, are you, Inspector!"
Her eyes searched through Javert's limp, hanging hair. She desperately wanted to see his face. His October-sky eyes. But he didn't look at her. Didn't lift his head.
"Javert…" she whispered to him. He didn't stir. "Javert!"
The panic in her voice made him try and lift his chin from off his chest. But the world rang. Punch-drunk and nauseous, he couldn't stop the world from spinning. There was blood in his mouth. Drip, drip, dripping onto the floor beneath him. And all he could do was stare at the drops of blood in a stupefied daze.
"Both of them. In there." Enjolras commanded again, pointing at the tavern.
Grace was hauled to her feet. She screamed out a cry of protest, right at the top of her lungs, hoping that someone might hear it. But the boys of the cafe held her firm. Dragging her back to Eponine. Back to the inside of the tavern.
She was flung hard up against a wooden post. Her arms were wrenched behind her and she felt the bite of rope against her skin as her hands were tied. They bought Javert in next. His heavy worker's boots dragged limply over the floor behind him. Mercifully, they sat him down opposite her, his back resting up against a second wooden post no more than four feet away from her.
His head lolled back as they bound his arms behind him. Grace went pale when she saw what they'd done to his face. His lip was split, and his eye too. Blood gathered at the corners of his mouth and Grace could tell that he was struggling with everything he had in him to stay conscious. It was worse than the beating she'd had from Thénardier and his gang. That one had been heated and messy. But this… this was cold blooded and brutal. Bahorel could kick like a mule, and the strength of his arm was legendary amongst the bar brawlers in Montmartre. Frankly, she was surprised he still had all his teeth.
"Javert..?" She called out to him again, her voice raw and thick.
His eyes blinked open and he stared at Grace with a heavy groan. A gurgling sound started deep within his throat and he leaned over to spit blood onto the floor.
"Jesus suffering fuck…that Bahorel has a punch like a sledgehammer..."
"Are you alright?" Grace wept pitifully.
"I've been better…" he responded dryly.
He heaved a few more heavy breaths. His head was pounding and his vision was blurry as he tried to find Grace's face through the fog.
Grace couldn't help but smile amidst her tears. At least he was speaking. At least Bahorel hadn't punched him so hard that he was brain damaged. But the smile soon slid from her face and she was staring at the floor of the tavern, salty drops running down her nose.
"Don't cry…Please…" Javert said quietly.
He wished he could reach out to her. Comfort her. But his bindings bit into his wrists. His body was weak and heavy.
"Oh God, I want to go home…." Grace wept.
"You will… You will…"
"My mum… When I never come back, it'll kill her…"
"Grace, listen to me. You will see her again." Javert tried to say firmly.
But Grace merely shook her head. She was too lost in her own fear and grief to reply.
Javert's heart broke each time he heard her sob. Even he had to concede that the situation they both now found themselves in wasn't good. He was an outed traitor, and she was his accomplice. If Javert found himself in Enjolras's shoes, he wouldn't have let them live to see the morning.
"Tell me…" he said quietly. "If she was here, what would you say to her?"
Grace looked up from the ground, her eyes shining as she stared into his pummelled face. She swallowed down a few deep, long breaths.
"I'd… I'd tell her about you." She said, mustering a small, sweet smile for him. "I'd tell her that I found someone who made me feel safe. Someone who felt like my protector…my guardian angel…my light in the darkness of night."
He smiled back at her, even though the small movement made his sore face ache.
"I'd tell her that she didn't need to worry about me anymore, because now there was you." Her voice faltered as her bottom lip began to quiver. "I'd tell her that I loved you more than I've ever loved anyone else in my life. So much that it made whatever I'd known before seem small…Like a flitting firefly standing beside a raging supernova. I'd tell her that we fight…"
Javert scoffed out a laugh.
"…But that fighting always brought us closer. And even when I thought I hated you, I still loved you. And even though I'll probably die here, I still can't bring myself to regret being sent here by the Story Teller. I wanted to go somewhere where I could be the centre of my own story. But I want to be part of yours. And I want you to be part of mine. Even if it ends badly. Because every good story has hundreds of characters, some footnotes, some more. And I don't mind being a footnote…just as long as someone, somewhere reads it one day and sees that there was love there."
They both stared at one another for a long moment. Javert tried to smile bravely at her, but his eyes were misty with tears. Her brown eyes shimmered like two wet stones of tiger's eye. Javert ached to kiss her. He wished more than anything that he could take her in his arms and wipe away the tears of fear on her face. Such tender words should never be exchanged when fear sat so heavy in the space between them. But if this was it, if this was the last chance the two of them had to say what needed to be said, then so be it.
"If this is the end of my story…" Javert began hoarsely. "… then I'm glad, beyond the bounds of human articulation, that you were a part of it."
"Me too." Grace nodded.
A trumpeting bugle sounded off in the space just beyond the barricade.
Grace and Javert both tried to peer out beyond the tavern, but there was little either of them could see from where they'd been tied up. But from the commotion that broke out amongst the men of the cafe and the other volunteers in the camp, they both knew that it could mean only one thing: another attack was coming.
Grace could just about see the tops of their heads running about. Rifles in their hands. Alarm in their voices.
Barely a moment had passed before she heard the crack of gunfire pierce the air once more.
"To arms! To arms!" She heard Enjolras cry, glimpsing the back of his golden head as he ran for the barricade.
Adrenaline lanced through her body once more, even though she was tied up and away from the action. Her mouth went dry. Her heartbeat quickened.
Even though she had screamed at and cursed the boys of the ABC a few moments ago for what they'd done to Javert, Grace still found herself searching for each one of them as the prattle of gunfire grew louder and more frenzied. They climbed up the barricade in answer to Enjolras's call and she watched them assume their positions with a sinking feeling of dread in her stomach. Grace checked them off one by one - Enjolras, Marius, Grantaire, Combeferre, Courfeyrac, Feuilly, Joly, Bahorel- to make sure they were all still alive, and starting all over again when she reached the end of the list.
They started to return fire. Smoke obscured some of them from her vision as their rifles cracked off.
Enjolras, Marius, Grantaire, Combeferre, Courfeyrac, Feuilly, Joly, Bahorel…
Somehow it felt worse, watching the battle happen from her place of helplessness, than it had been to be in the midst of it. Grace tugged fruitlessly at her bonds, wishing she could go to help them. And her searching eyes never ceased in counting them off. Checking on each one of them to make sure they were all still alive and fighting from one moment to the next.
Enjolras, Marius, Grantaire, Combeferre, Courfeyrac, Feuilly, Joly, Bahorel…
"They're getting closer!" Someone hollered amidst the noise and the smoke.
"I'm out of rounds!" Another man cried.
Enjolras, Marius, Grantaire, Combeferre, Courfeyrac, Feuilly, Joly, Bahorel…
Wooden splinters from the barricade tumbled to the ground.
"Sharpshooters! Get down!" Enjolras roared.
Enjolras, Marius, Grantaire, Combeferre-
She glimpsed the moment as it happened. A lucky shot embedded itself into the young doctor's face. Grace heard the smash of his glasses. Saw the wink of the gold frames as they dropped from his nose. And Combeferre fell backwards. Limp and unmoving.
He was dead by the time he hit the ground.
Grace stared at his unmoving body in abject shock and horror.
"Combeferre! NO!" Joly screamed from his position up on the barricade. "You bastards!"
In his rage, the young man stood up straight and began tearing chunks of timber from out of the ramparts. He threw them down at the advancing soldiers in a frenzy.
"Joly! Get down!" Enjolras cried out to him.
Another dull thud embedded itself into Joly's skull. And he too sagged and slackened.
He fell forwards, his body disappearing over the barricade and out of sight.
Grace choked out a gasp of pain.
"Up there!" Another volunteer cried. "The sharpshooter's in a window up there!"
He pointed out to a place Grace could not see. Somewhere out to the right of them. Had she been out there, up on the ramparts beside them, then maybe she might have glimpsed the barrel of the rifle that had killed two of her friends.
"Shoot him!" Enjolras cried. "Someone shoot him!"
Grace's heart leapt into her mouth when a few musket shots exploded into the wood around Enjolras.
"Up there!" He cried again, extending his arm out beyond the safety of the parapet. "There!"
Grace saw Jean Valjean respond to the command. He raised his rifle and aimed it towards the spot behind the barricade where the sharpshooter clearly was. He sent off a round and began to reload again.
"Shoot him!" Enjolras cried again.
Clearly the sharpshooter had Enjolras down his sights. More musket balls whizzed through the air around him. Shards of timber exploded in the places close to where he stood.
Jean Valjean cracked off another round. She heard him swear loudly in frustration as he began reloading again.
Enjolras's pained cry echoed out through the air.
"Marcelin!" Grace roared.
He clutched his right arm close to his body, blood now leaking onto his white shirt.
Valjean took a steadying breath as he aimed his rifle for the third time. A stillness came over him. Despite all of the screaming and noise around the barricade at that moment. And when his rifle discharged, Grace finally heard a stifled and distant cry in the place beyond the barricade.
"Yes!" Valjean grunted.
Grace heard the cry of retreat from the attacking Guardsmen. The pop of gunfire petered out, but this time, there were no jubilant shouts of victory from the men on the barricade.
They descended the wooden mountain mournfully. Courfeyrac and Bahorel were the first to approach Combeferre's body. Kneeling beside him, they laid out their hands onto his body and bent their heads low to weep. The other boys soon joined them, Marius, Grantaire and Feuilly also approaching to kneel beside their fallen comrade.
"And Joly?" Feuilly asked them thickly.
Marius nodded mournfully.
Feuilly crossed himself as his shoulders shook with sobs. He muttered a prayer for the departed and reached out to shut Combeferre's still wide and open eyes.
Enjolras finally descended the last of the crates and timber. He hung off Jean Valjean's shoulder, cradling his bleeding arm to his stomach. His face went grey as his eyes found the body of his comrade on the floor.
He shook his head sadly. His golden curls fell over his face.
"Rest easy, brother." Enjolras said, bending low to touch his good hand to Combeferre's forehead. "Both of you." He added, casting his eyes out to the place on the barricade where Joly had fallen.
The air around them was black and thick with grief.
Nobody moved for a long while. The death of Eponine had been a sobering experience for them, but Combeferre and Joly… they were both one of them. Their brothers in arms. The first of the gang to fall.
Combeferre, who had tended to their ills and nursed their ailments. And Joly, the merry face who had been quick with a joke and a welcoming smile. Both of them now gone.
The barricade's long shadow of death cast them all in darkness. It had claimed two more glowing, young lives. Two more people whose futures were as bright as the glowing sun. And the others who were left in its shadow all, to Grace's eyes in that moment, looked like frightened little boys. Because they were. They were all just frightened little boys.
The idea of dying for their revolution had seemed so easy before. They had all, at one point or another, claimed that they did not fear death if it helped the sun of the new world rise. But here they were. Two of their friends now dead and bleeding in the ground. And where was that new world? Was it any closer?
They muttered their prayers and goodbyes to their fallen friends so quietly that Grace couldn't hear them. She too whispered an apology to the air.
"I'm sorry… Combeferre, Joly, I'm so sorry…"
That black hole of nothingness grew a little wider inside her. She wondered who else she'd have to watch die, how many more friends and loved ones, until that blackness consumed her entirely. How long would it be before all of them had wasted their beautiful, promising, young lives.
"That sharpshooter would have had you too, by the looks of it, Enjolras." Marius said, nodding at his bleeding arm.
"Hmm."
Enjolras tore a strip of linen from his shirt and wound it around his arm.
"Just a graze, brothers." He said reassuringly. He flexed his fingers at them, almost to prove his health to them, but Grace saw the wince pass over his face. "Had it not been for the Monsieur here, the next crack shot might have felled me too."
Enjolras gave Valjean a warm pat on the back and smiled his thanks at him. Valjean nodded his head humbly, but the other boys of the cafe approached him to offer their gratitude to him also.
"It took me long enough…" Valjean grumbled self-deprecatingly.
"You must not be so harsh on yourself, Monsieur." Courfeyrac said. "In that environment, and at that range, I think even Grantaire would have struggled to find his mark."
"Mmm." Grantaire nodded, although his face was ghost-white and his jaw clamped shut. He looked like he was going to be sick at any moment…
"I am glad indeed that we had a man like you, with the calm and clear presence of mind to see us through." Enjolras continued to Valjean. "We will thank you properly Monsieur when this battle is won."
A gasp of shock rippled through Grace when Valjean's eyes smacked into hers. She didn't know why he had chosen to look her way. What did he want? What was he thinking? Whatever the reason, it made her guts constrict with discomfort.
"Thanks I do not need Monsieur, but there is something else you might do for me to show your gratitude…" Valjean spoke steadily.
"Anything, Monsieur." Enjolras replied.
"May I be left to deal with the spy, Javert?"
Grace choked on her surprise. Her wide eyes went to Javert, who was still resting his head back against the post he was tied to, and then back to Valjean.
She hated seeing the intense loathing in their faces as she looked amongst the boys. She hated the writhing looks of murderous revulsion each one of them gave Javert just then. But two of them were now dead. Thanks, in part, to what they thought Javert had done.
And her stomach dropped even more when she saw Enjolras nod his head in agreement and shake Valjean's hand.
"Do what you have to do. The man belongs to you." He said in a low voice.
Valjean nodded his understanding and turned back to the tavern.
"Put a knife in his belly, Monsieur." Courfeyrac growled viciously, calling out to Valjean as he walked towards the tavern. "It'll be a kindness compared to what I'd do to him."
Grace tugged again at her bonds, ready to throw herself over Javert to keep him from harm, but she could not move an inch.
Her heartbeat quickened to a thundering pound as Valjean began walking towards them. His face was as firm and unmoving as granite. Grace felt like she was watching the approach of the angel of Death.
"Javert… Javert!" She panted, reaching out a leg to try and kick him back into consciousness.
Javert blinked his weary eyes open just as Jean Valjean stepped inside the cafe.
A beat of silence passed between them as the two powers of the storm squared up to one another again. Grace could feel fate in the air. Spiced and potent. It had come to this, and it always would have come to this. Javert and Valjean. The Policeman and the Criminal.
"We meet again, Inspector Javert." Valjean said levelly.
"Prisoner 24601." He snarled back.
Another tense moment of silence rang out. Like they'd just called their names across the battlefield at one another. A challenge laid out between them. A summon to duel.
"Why have you come here?" Grace blurted at Valjean. "What do you want with him?"
"It's clear, isn't it." Javert responded before Valjean could open his mouth. "He's hungered for this all of his life. To finally have the upper hand over me."
"I… I don't understand." Grace said weakly.
"Because you are not a criminal. Your mind does not work like a criminal's, Grace. But if I were him…" Javert said, nodding his head at Valjean. "…I wouldn't pass up the golden opportunity that had been handed to me."
"The golden opportunity for what?" Grace asked.
Valjean reached inside his pocket and slipped out something long and thin and metallic. Grace's eyes popped when she realised it was a knife blade.
Valjean looked squarely into Grace's eyes, that hard and unmoving expression not changing at all.
"He thinks I'm going to kill him."
