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“Perhaps, after tonight, the law no longer drives me as it has all my life. And if the law does not drive me, I do not know what will.”
Valjean sighs, stepping closer so they face each other on opposite sides of the doorway.
“I know you, Javert. You may not like it, but I know you. I know the sense of purpose you speak of. That kind of drive doesn’t just go away. I believe that kind of passion conveys more about the person who feels it, rather than the cause of the passion. Even if it wanes with time, even if it is a source other than the law that moves you, you will find that drive again. You will find something to direct it to.”
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Months after Valjean pulls Javert from the Pont au Change, they both find themselves without purpose. Valjean becomes hopeless without Cosette to care for. Meanwhile, Javert's growing doubt about his place in the police force leaves him aimless. But Javert and Valjean's lives have always been irreversibly intertwined. As they learn what it means to change and be changed, they may find that their lives are meant to intertwine in a way neither of them ever expected.
In case anyone needed another post-Seine Valvert slow burn ;)
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Bookmark Notes:
Oh my gosh I think this is my favorite Valvert fic ever
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Bookmark Notes:
VALVERT AAAH AAAAAAH! THE CUTIES!
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Bookmark Notes:
“I suppose I should dispose of this. I don’t think I will get another use out of it.” He removes the rag from over his shoulder and wipes his neck one last time before tossing it into the wheelbarrow with the plant debris. “Even in the winter, I do always break a sweat while working in the garden.”
“Understandable,” Javert says nonchalantly, but his curiosity is piqued.
A strange urge tugs at him.
“Now, I will be right back.”
When Valjean is out of sight, Javert’s eyes dart back and forth between the door and the wheelbarrow.
He shouldn’t. He could, but he shouldn’t. For a moment, he lets himself think of his dreams. His heart thuds in his chest.
In a flash, he gets up and grabs the rag from atop the pile of plant debris in the wheelbarrow. It is cold and threadbare in his hand, caked in soil and chlorophyll stains, but still damp from where Valjean used it to clean his neck. His sweat. His skin. His scent.
With trembling hands, Javert brings the rag to his face and inhales deeply. The thin cloth smells faintly of dirt and strongly of Valjean — masculine and herbal and musky with a note of honey soap. He exhales a breath so shaky it is nearly a whimper.
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It was maybe two years after he took her in, when they were still living in the convent. He was sentimental that day — it was his sister’s name day, though he would never have told Cosette that.“I did not realize you remembered that.”
“Of course, I do,” Cosette says. “So whatever your connection is to this Jean Valjean, know that I will not judge him harshly, nor will I judge you, even though you may wish me to. So what happened to him?”
“He … he tried to find a place to stay in a village called Digne. Everyone refused him. All but one. A bishop — he fed him and gave him a bed and treated him kindly, and then …”
It is easier to speak of himself in the third person. As if it were not his own life he was recounting. He can recount this tale as an outsider, just as he observes this scene from outside his body. He has kept such a distance from his true self for so many years that to even utter his own name is far closer than he has ventured since the very time he is speaking of. Only Javert has called him by his real name since.
“And then he ran off in the night with the bishop’s silver. He was caught and brought back to the parsonage by the police. And the bishop … the bishop told the police that he had been the one to give Jean Valjean the silver. He even gave Valjean his finest silver that had been left behind.” This is it. “It was two … two …” There is no turning back from this. “Two silver …”
“Candlesticks.” Cosette finishes the sentence, her voice hushed, measured. “It was two silver candlesticks, was it not?”
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<3