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Chapter Text

The garden would summon Javert during those sleepless nights when he was racked by guilt for all he had done.

For the ever-lengthening hours of late summertime darkness, he would sit and keep watch over the neat rows of greens and vines. Over the past eighteen months, Javert and Valjean had learned to work together in that plot of soil, learned to till the earth and harvest its rewards. After the unsettling realizations of mercy and morality which he suffered in the wake of his rescue from the Seine, Javert had needed the calm stability which routine provided. Working in the garden outside Valjean's home was ideal.

Like everything with Valjean, though, even this land was intended for the greater good of mankind. Aside from the odd vegetable that was too misshapen to distribute, everything the garden produced would go to the poor and downtrodden, to the churches and charities. Though it was tended by the hands of Javert and Valjean almost exclusively, the garden's produce was for the community at large. Their sweat and effort went to feeding the poor. Javert could find redemption in that.

The meticulous nature of gardening appealed to him. Every seedling was labeled, planted exactly the ideal distance apart. No different than when he’d once walked his nightly patrol along the Paris streets, he would now conduct daily inspection of the raised lines of carrots and radishes, potatoes and melons. Instead of thieves and thugs, he newly did battle with mice and slugs.

Valjean reassured him that it would get easier as the years progressed, that he would sleep better once he had learned to forgive himself for all his misguided years spent in iron-fisted justice. Perhaps that was true.

But for that night, there was no sleep. He sat watching the garden, finding solace in the quiet chirping of crickets.

It was a thief's moon—that is to say, bright and full enough to see easily. Javert needed no lantern as he sat at the edge of the exterior wall, for he could watch the full garden just by the light which nature offered him. There was an early September chill in the air, but it was a pleasant enough temperature that he wore no cloak.

He wasn’t happy, but he was at peace.

There had been a rabbit nibbling at carrot leaves when Javert had come into the garden, but otherwise the night had been quiet. When he was a policeman, he knew others of his colleagues who grew drowsy the second that they began a nightwatch. Those were negligent fools who could hardly keep their eyes open even for the most serious of moments. But Javert remained as intently awake in his third hour as he had been at his first; he had always been diligent at his duties.

As it was, he immediately noticed the shadow lingering at the edge of the garden. It was a long, thin form—a gangly figure with small limbs who moved with lithe stealth from one concealed spot to another. Javert had known criminals and vagrants for long enough to recognize the start of some mischief. There was no good reason for any person to be lurking about Valjean’s home at such an hour.

Javert stood, his face contorting in the annoyed determination to meet a challenge. Creeping along the wall, he and the intruder moved in an almost parallel tandem just on opposite sides of the wide garden. He, too, could be stealthy, and the shadowy figure still had not realized that his presence was noticed.

The intruder made a sudden rush for the most exterior of the melons. Grubs had taken the vines earlier in the summer, leaving brown frass scattered throughout the tangles of green. Javert had beaten the pests back, though, and now the melons grew thick and full. He had nurtured the melons with intent that they would provide a nutritious treat for a hungry family—not for somebody creeping about and trying to wrestle the literal fruits of his labor free from their vines.

The lifetime acumen of a policeman carried Javert’s sprinting legs across the garden, where the sudden embrace of his tackle startled the intruder.

Though Javert had been trying not to wake Valjean, the thief—the boy— had no such niceties. Sprawled atop the ground with Javert’s elbow subduing him, melon dropped at his side, the urchin started howling the foulest curses imaginable. In the late darkness, it was jarring to hear the sound of a young boy’s voice shouting with the ugly speech of a hardened man.

“I recognize you!” the boy shouted, turning his head to get a better look at his subduer. “You’re that policeman from the barricades.”

Studying the long, lank hair and dirty face of the child, Javert too recognized him. Though he was a couple years older, he had been one of the rabblerousing idealists from the night of the rebellion. Unlike Marius, though, he had not learned to keep himself away from trouble. He seemed to be just as much a nuisance as years prior.

“I’m not a policeman any longer,” Javert corrected.

His admission wasn’t for guilt or expiation; it just seemed critical to him that he avoid being mistaken for any rank which he no longer held.

“Let me have the melon,” the boy said. “I’m hungry.”

He tried to fumble for the fruit, but Javert grabbed him to hold him back. The boy was scrappy, and he kicked and scratched. When that failed to extract him from Javert’s grip, though, he swore at him again, flailing and fighting. Then, he delivered vulgar curses directed at Javert’s mother and father, insulting their virtue and honor. Before he could go farther down his family lineage, though, Valjean had emerged from inside. The boy quieted and looked over at the new arrival.

Valjean was squinting sleep from his eyes, wrapping a cloak around his knee-length nightshirt.

“Gavroche,” Valjean said. “Good evening. I thought you perished at the barricades, but I’m pleased to be mistaken.”

His voice was light, conversational, as though it was perfectly normal for him to enter his garden when it was past midnight and find a youth screaming curses about Javert’s mother.

Javert stood, pulling up the boy by the collar of his threadbare shirt. As Gavroche was dragged to his feet, it was impossible to overlook how light he was. All his coarse skin and bones was no heavier than a large sack of potatoes.

“He was trying to steal our melons,” Javert announced.

It was only through tremendous willpower that he avoided adding sir onto the end of the sentence, so similar was it to the sort of proud statement he once would’ve made in the course of his work. Rigor, discipline, and protocol had been his life for so long a duration that he sometimes forgot that Valjean was his companion and not his superior.

“Gavroche, do you deny it?” Valjean asked the boy, gesturing for Javert to release his hold on him.

Letting go of the boy’s collar, Javert expected to hear a lie or a poor excuse. Gavroche was a grubby urchin, and honesty was hardly a trait that he would be expected to possess.

But, to his surprise, the boy nodded to Valjean. “I was hungry. I heard you grow food here.”

“Well, you’re welcome to a melon, then. Take two if you like,” Valjean said, pointing towards the center of the plot. “Those will be the ripest ones. They get the most sun.”

He turned to go back inside.

Javert was indignant. “This food is meant to feed the hungry.”

There was a twinkle in Valjean’s eyes when he turned back around to nod at Javert. “And what is this boy if not the hungry?”

Since starting this garden, Javert had understood the true cost of poverty. He’d seen the faces of those who benefited from their labors. The toothless old widows who survived the long winters on thin soups made with their cabbages and potatoes. The gaunt children carried on the hips of their destitute mothers, living on charity after abandonment by their drunkard menfolk.

They were pitiable wretches, the poor and downtrodden, but they were the exact sort of indigents that moved Javert’s heart. His new ideas of justice comfortably accepted the idea of compassion towards dire circumstances.

Yet he struggled to look at the unkempt and vulgar boy and see the righteous beneficiary of his summertime work in the garden. He had half a mind to summon his old contacts from the police precinct, for this boy had been a yearslong menace to the city. Vagrancy, petty thievery, general mischief.

But as the boy was digging among the vines and tapping the melons with his knuckles to find the plumpest one, Valjean was just looking at Javert with amused curiosity.

“Go back inside,” Javert muttered, looking down from the probing eyes of his companion. “You’ll catch a chill.”

“Gavroche?” Valjean asked, turning to the almost-thief.

The boy gave a grunt of acknowledgment, not even looking up from his task. From the melons, he’d moved on to uprooting carrots.

Growing irate at the boy’s disrespect for the garden and exploitation of Valjean’s generosity, Javert took a furious step forward.

“He said nothing about taking any carrots—” Javert began.

Valjean held out a hand to stop him.

“Gavroche, do you have a warm place to sleep? It’s starting to grow cold tonight.”

At that, the boy did look up at the older man. He nodded slowly, thoughts puzzling over the question. “There’s an alley near San Michel. Nice and covered, so it’s not too damp. But you can’t come with me; it’s not big enough for two of us.”

Valjean laughed. “Thank you. I wasn’t asking for myself. Only, those melons are easier to eat at a table. Would you like to come inside?”

Gavroche shrugged. “Alright.”

He had uprooted one of the carrots, and he took a bite without even wiping away the soil which clung to it.

Javert’s eyes bulged. The convict from the galleys had proven to be a saint. People could change; he knew that now, even if such a thought rallied against everything he’d thereto known.

But a boy actively stealing produce was surely not in the midst of his redemption. Valjean afforded far too much mercy to this little urchin thief.

 “You know which family he’s from?” Javert said through clenched teeth, inching over to where Valjean stood watching the boy. “He’s a Thénardier. I don’t need to tell you all that they’ve done.”

Too late, he realized he’d said the wrong thing, for there was the mischievous twinkle of correction in the other man’s eyes. “Well, you of all people should know that we can’t help the family to which we’re born, can we?”

Javert thought of the crimes of his convict father, the unvirtuous lifestyle of his Bohemian mother—he could forgive Valjean a thousand times over, but he still struggled to forgive his own parents for their disappointing stain upon his bloodline.

“Come, let’s eat at the table,” Valjean said, patting his leg to summon the boy to his side.

His voice adopted the softly singular authority which he must’ve honed after years of parental discipline. To Javert’s surprise, though, Gavroche obeyed. He stood from where he knelt in the garden soil, trailing poorly torn melon vines and carrot stalks which he holds tightly in his arms.

Suspicious that the boy would try to wander off and pilfer the household coffers, Javert stalked behind him with a foul expression.

The three of them made a strange banquet. No sooner had he been shown into the dining room than Gavroche began inhaling the food. He wouldn’t part with his dirty produce, not even to allow his carrots to be washed, and Valjean was only able to cut open the melons once he’d reassured the boy that he didn’t intend to steal them. Too small to have his feet reach the ground, Gavroche kicked absentmindedly against the table legs as he sat and ate. In the space across from him, Javert frowned.

Still in his nightshirt, Valjean bustled around the kitchen, as though serving a welcome guest. He set out three cups and poured wine for them. He set down a loaf of bread before the boy. When he said a blessing of the meal, Gavroche didn’t even acknowledge it nor stop his loud chewing.

“Disrespectful,” Javert muttered.

Valjean grinned at him, took a sip of his drink. “Yes.”

He sounded almost tranquil in his agreement.

Javert grumbled.

“Gavroche, you prefer to sleep in an alley over your own home?” Valjean asked.

“Don’t have a home,” Gavroche said, looking up.

His voice was matter-of-fact. While he obviously neither liked nor trusted Javert, the boy responded easily to Valjean. Javert’s eyes narrowed. Valjean was softening, but Javert wasn’t so easily turned. Probably the boy had made the old man as an easy mark and was playing upon his compassion. Javert made a mental note to count all the cutlery after the meal had finished.

 The boy continued talking as he ate, and flecks of orange carrot and brown bread crumbed across the table. “My da left Paris after the rebellion. Left me behind.”

Valjean nodded. For the first time that night, Javert did feel a prickle of sympathy towards the boy. He knew better than anybody the strangeness of childhood abandonment in a man’s world. It was an undutiful parent who left their child for the streets.

When the boy let out a loud belch without excusing himself, though, Javert’s sympathy quickly evaporated. The boy was as wild and uncouth as a stray dog, vastly contrasted to the self-possessed decorum which Javert had maintained even from a young age.

With messy hands that tore open the melons’ insides and left sticky pulp fragmented across the table, Gavroche ate his fill. For one so small, he had a strong appetite. Valjean was looking at him with something akin to pride. Javert was scowling.

When he’d finished eating, Gavroche wiped his hands on his trousers.

He didn’t wait for permission to stand from the table (which irritated Javert) and he started to the door without so much as a thank you to Valjean (which irritated him even more).

Even so, Javert was prepared to accept the offense to his sensibilities as the cost of knowing a man as kind-hearted as Valjean. Not letting the boy out of sight, he followed him out the dining room and towards the front door.

But then, still sitting in the kitchen, the other man spoke loud enough for them to hear his gentle tone.

“It’s far too late to go to San Michel, Gavroche,” Valjean said. “Perhaps you’ll stay the night? I have extra space now that my daughter is grown and married.”

Too much.

Javert spun around to issue a rebuke of the idea, but then he stopped himself. Who was he to argue with mercy? He had been proven wrong again and again. He’d tried to end himself for it, and even then he’d been proven wrong once more. The world was better to have him in it. The world was better to have Valjean in it.

Perhaps, in some fantastically perverse twist of cosmic fate, the world was better for having the dirty urchin now picking melon seeds from his teeth.

“You think it’s wise to keep him here?” Javert finally asked. The question mumbled with a low dubiousness was the only lecture he could bring himself to issue the man who had pulled him from the Seine.

His conflict must have been obvious enough that Valjean laughed and nodded. “I do think so.”

Javert mumbled something akin to acceptance.

“Gavroche, let’s show you to your room,” Valjean said. “Come.”

The boy scampered to his side. Once more, the trio of men moved like a procession of coaches, one after another. Javert following behind, watching for any sign of misconduct from the guest.

Cosette rarely stayed the night when she visited, for she had her own household with Marius now. But her husband had found work that occasionally brought him away from Paris for a night (though he made no secret of how devastating he found even a momentary absence from his beloved). During those infrequencies, she would sleep the night at the home of her father. Valjean was always giddy to have his daughter back. Until dark, father and daughter would laugh and talk and read aloud, the fire roaring merrily in the grate.

Valjean treasured those moments, talked about them for weeks afterwards. He cherished his daughter with more affection than any man, and he valued such a momentary return to the simpler times of her childhood. From hopefulness or maybe just pragmatism, he kept her bed always ready.

Far from Valjean’s humble dwelling, hers was a dainty and feminine room. In it, the thin, lousy boy seemed wholly misplaced. But Gavroche curled up on the bed without any complaint or indeed without any acknowledgment of gratitude. With all the ease of a child’s unburdened conscience, he promptly fell asleep.

As soon as the bedroom door closed, Javert opened his mouth with the start of the most deferential lecture he could manage.  But Valjean put a hand to his chest, right at his heartbeat. It was a gentle gesture, pleading and entreatment.

“Give him a day. For me.”

Words too heavy to speak, Javert nodded. Far from the selfishness that he once would have expected of a convict, Valjean so rarely demanded anything for himself. He wanted his daughter’s happiness and the gentle betterment of his fellow man. Anything more he left in the hands of Providence.

“For you,” Javert agreed.

Valjean moved the hand from Javert’s chest to his shoulder and squeezed it affectionately.

“I suppose you’ll keep guard over the door all night,” Valjean teased as he turned back down the hallway to return to bed.

“Yes.” Javert was already moving to pull a stool from the sitting room to the hallway, close enough that he could keep constant watch on the doorway. “I shall.”

The boy slept for the whole night. Once there was the sound of footsteps creaking on the floorboards, and Javert practically leapt up in expectation that the boy would make an attempt to creep out of the room and pilfer the household.

But the door didn’t open and the home stayed otherwise quiet until morning.

There came the sound of movement in the morning as Valjean awoke. He rose early, as he often did. Both he and Javert were creatures of the sunrise. They’d usually take their breakfast together, eating with the quick efficiency of men who had lived years of their lives in strict schedules.

When Valjean came down the hallway that morning, Javert was still sitting on the stool in front of the door.

“He must be tired,” Valjean remarked. He had dressed already, and he paused to tuck in his waistcoat.

Javert shook his head. “He’s been asleep far too long.”

Valjean shrugged. “It’s barely dawn.”

“I left the door unattended once last night. I needed to relieve myself,” Javert mumbled. His voice was low with shame. “I worry now that he snuck out. Have you checked the cutlery yet? And the silver snuffbox? Are they all accounted for?”

“I’m sure they are.” Valjean didn’t even sound nervous at the possibility.

Impatient, Javert tried to look at his watch, but it had stopped in the night. How late was it? 8 o’clock? 9? Surely nobody would still be asleep at this hour.

Standing, he marched to the door and tore it open. He half-expected to find the room empty, the boy having absconded in the night. But, instead, Gavroche had moved the blankets and bedsheets down to the hard wood paneling. He slept sprawled on the floor.

“The bed must be too soft,” Valjean whispered, looking over Javert’s shoulder.

It wasn’t a problem unique to the boy.

A convict spent nights on earthy ground and concrete floor, and Javert had witnessed Valjean’s struggle to sleep on even the firmest and flattest of mattresses. How many nights had he seen Monsieur Le Maier creep down the hall to the sitting room, blankets in hand, making for himself a spot atop the hardest floorboards? The sight of such long-lasting impact was always a torment for Javert to witness, and it pained him to know that some of the consequences of unjust imprisonment were inescapable. The body couldn’t escape any more than the mind could.

In his exhaustion, the boy lay sprawled and uncovered. With the early dawn streaming through the cloudy window-glass, Gavroche looked even more unsightly. His holey trousers barely extended to his knees. His unshodden feet were dirty.

When asleep (and not cursing or behavior impolitely,) Gavroche might’ve looked like any poor whelp. Stiffly, uncomfortable with the gesture but strangely compelled towards it, Javert went to the makeshift bed and rearranged the blanket to once more cover the sleeping boy.

Harrumphing with awkwardness, he turned and left. Valjean, watching, said nothing.

Chapter Text

Valjean’s give him a day turned into a week, a month, and then a season. By then, it was early November, and the temperature had turned unpleasant enough that it would have been sheer cruelty to force the boy back outdoors.  Instead, Gavroche slept in Cosette’s old room and ate meals with the men. Javert still kept his vigilance, but other obligations made it impossible to follow him around the house indefinitely. Still, there was a wary periphery glance always reserved for the boy, and Javert kept his attentions heightened perpetually for the sound of small feet scampering into places they ought not to have been.

But, even so, there were some advancements.

Protesting all the while, the little urchin had finally taken a bath, and it made him somewhat less of a pitiable sight. His tangled hair was combed, and his threadbare garments were exchanged for a winter-padded coat and trousers. Until he spoke, one might’ve even mistaken him for a schoolboy.

But he was still the foul-mouthed child of the streets, and his newly well-kept exterior was an obvious façade. No schoolmaster would have allowed him within fifty paces of his classroom. His tutelage was to be less formal; he’d learn at the side of his elders.

There were no more arguments over mealtime prayers, for Gavroche had proven a quick study on certain social niceties, but little confrontations would arise constantly throughout the day. Such squabbles were almost always with Javert, who was quick to reprimand and slow to praise.

Between the two older men, it was clear who the boy preferred.

So Gavroche lingered by Valjean. With the loyalty of a child, he adored the older man, and he followed him around the house, to the charities and churches. Perhaps another gentleman would have been embarrassed to have an uncouth child always in tow, but Valjean never even mentioned the strange public pairing that they made.

On that day in early November, though, Valjean left before dawn to visit his daughter.

 It was Javert’s turn to play parent.

“Get up and dress, boy,” he called, knocking on the door to Cosette’s old room. “It’s already seven in the morning. Don’t be a layabout.” 

Gavroche emerged after a few minutes. In the kitchen, Javert assembled breakfast. Growing somewhat softer with a child in the house, Valjean had begun to make meals that were more indulgent than the two men enjoyed while just by themselves. Valjean liked the ritual of parenthood, and Javert trusted his instincts, for he had seen what a well-mannered woman Cosette had grown to be.

But, even so, Javert wasn’t prone to spoiling children. He expected them to rise as early as him and eat the same as him. He asked of them nothing that he wouldn’t have also done himself, but he was not a man of whimsy.

Both man and boy were still wary of one another, and Gavroche took his place at the dining table with a subdued demeanor.

From the kitchen, Javert brought their breakfast. A boiled egg apiece (unsalted, of course.) And a loaf of bread which he tore for them.

“He’s gone today?” Gavroche asked. He sounded genuinely disappointed.

“He’ll be back,” Javert muttered, putting the food before the boy and taking his seat.

“What will we do, then?”

It was the we which gave Javert a moment of consideration. He paused in pouring his singular cup of morning coffee (black, of course.)

“I’ll be clearing out the garden,” he said.

“Alright.”

Cracking the egg with his spoon, Javert began to peel away the shell. The boy still sat with his hands in his lap, not touching his food.

“What is it? You don’t like eggs?” he asked, annoyed.

Of course. The boy had grown pampered over the past month. Probably he was expecting nuts and honey on his plate. In his generosity, Valjean the Saint had spoiled him. Next the boy would probably be demanding meat for every supper and complaining that his bedsheets weren’t silken enough.

“Are you going to say the blessing?” Gavroche asked. “I’m not supposed to eat before.”

His voice was earnest, obedient, just wanting to follow the rules.

Javert set down his spoon, feeling immediately guilty for his derogatory assumptions.

The ephemera of prayer and blessing was something that Javert reserved for Valjean. Javert could give orders or shout down criminals, but soft implorations of the divine were not something he could fully grasp.

All the same, the boy was waiting. Folding his hands in imitation of Valjean, Javert muttered his gruff prayer.

“We’re thankful for our food.”

It was simple, nonreligious, but it was enough to satisfy Gavroche. No sooner had Javert unclasped his hands than the boy began devouring his meal. His table manners were slightly improved from that first day, but only slightly.

After clearing the dishes and returning the table to its normally spotless appearance, Javert pulled on his warmest coat. To his surprise, the boy joined him, and the two of them crunched over the frost-brittle grass and mud towards the garden center. They spent the rest of the morning clearing out the plant matter and brush which had grown dry and brown with the end of the growing season.

Too soon, though, the work was finished. With double the hands, the entire task had finished in half the time. By then, the sun had moved to midday.

Brushing mud from where he’d been squatting, Javert stood. Gavroche imitated.

Hands folded across his chest, Javert studied the now-barren garden plot. All old plant matter was cleared and pulled, and only empty plots of cold, clotted soil now remained. It was a solemn sight which would last until the beginning of springtime.

Though he never would have admitted it, the prior year’s winter had been an unhappy time for Javert. Without the sense of duty provided by the garden, he had spiraled into listlessness once more. At least until December, he’d been distracted by his efforts to plan an adequate Christmas gift for Valjean. But the months of late winter were difficult, and he’d been agitated and adrift with only his companion as anchor. 

The garden gave him purpose. He needed purpose.

Chilled from the icy weather, Javert turned to go back inside. The boy, once more, scampered behind him.

“You’re hungry?” Javert asked, removing his boots in the doorway.

Lingering beside him, the boy looked thoughtful. “Yes. But mostly cold.”

On that point, Javert could agree. He went to draw up a fire in the sitting room grate, while Gavroche sat on the brick before the fireplace. With his little hands outstretched, he seemed intent to absorb every degree of warmth from the slow-catching embers.

Eventually, a full fire blazed, and Javert sat up from his haunches with a sense of satisfaction. From the room’s small bookshelf, he took a book in hand. Dragging one of the room’s chairs close to the heat, he sat and began reading. Gavroche was watching.

“What are you reading?” the boy asked.

“A book on planting crops,” he muttered, not looking up from the page. “For next season.”

“Can I read something?”

Javert pointed him over to the shelf.

The boy stood, studied the shelf’s contents for a moment and then returned to the fireplace. He was shuffling through pages for a moment. Javert looked up at him and made a sound of reproach.

“You think that’s funny?”

Gavroche had the book upside down and was squinting at the upturned words.

“No,” he said quickly, shaking his head and looking sheepishly up at Javert. His voice sounded suddenly embarrassed.

“If you’re going to read, then do it properly,” he admonished, looking back down to his own book.

There was a taut pause and then a mumbled admission. “Don’t know how to read.”

Javert closed his book and put it down on his knee. He eyed the boy, checking for some sort of joke or lie. But Gavroche was guileless and open, simply stating a fact.

“Your father never hired a tutor for you?”

A shake of the head. 

“You never went to a school?”

Another shake of the head.

For all the sins of his parents and unpredictability of his upbringing, even Javert had received a basic education by Gavroche’s age—certainly enough to have read a book. Looking the boy over, he exhaled.

“Come here.” He beckoned to his side. “Stand by me a moment.”

The boy obeyed and came over. Holding aloft the book, Javert showed the boy the first pages.

Soil temperatures and growing techniques, amateur botany and plant life-cycle hardly made for a subject that would have endeared itself to children. Even the few pictures scattered throughout the book were only black-inked depictions of root structures or seed depths. 

But Gavroche seemed curious enough that he kept quiet and studied the letters with fascination.

“You know your alphabet?” Javert asked.

“No.”

“The letter A has this shape.” Javert pointed a finger to the page. His voice was hard with a directive instruction. “Find it for me elsewhere on the page.”

With a purposeful deliberation, Gavroche studied the paragraphs. He pointed out any other uppercase A which he saw on the page, but then Javert realized that the boy would have no way of knowing the lowercase forms.

He stood and waved the boy to follow. “Come to the dining room table.”

Lacking the kind of slate tablet that he would have used as a young student, Javert found a spare sheet of paper which he’d use for making notes about the garden. Pulling a chair beside the boy, he tapped the cover of the closed book.

“You need to know the alphabet,” Javert muttered with a gruff lecture. “Your father was negligent to never send you to school. I won’t teach you if there will be mischief—"

He gave a wary look from his periphery. “—but if you promise to behave, then you can learn how to read.”

For once, the boy sat calmly at the table—no feet kicking against the chair—and nodded. He seemed eager, and his eyes were bright.

“No mischief,” he promised.

The two sat side-by-side at the table until the afternoon light began to wane. Javert allowed them to stop only once for a hasty lunch, and he otherwise instructed Gavroche with the sort of rigor which he once would have forced upon trainees needing to memorize new penal codes or provincial law.

When the exterior door opened, it was early evening. A chilly blast coming down the hallway signaled the arrival of Valjean.

Gavroche was midway through a word, tongue stumbling over letters which he’d just learned within the past afternoon. Though normally he would have risen to greet his host with an almost military discipline, Javert remained at the table and allowed the boy to plod his way through the lesson.

With a few seconds of pause as he removed his boots, Valjean came down the hallway momentarily. He found the two of them still sitting at the dining room table.

“What’s going on here?” He was smiling. Whatever he’d been anticipating upon his return home, it wasn’t a peaceable scene of learning.

“I know how to read,” Gavroche declared, proud.

“He’s learning to read,” Javert corrected, voice quick to humble. To be fair to the boy’s efforts, though, he added, “But he’s been focused in his study.”

They ended lessons for that day once the light was too dim to see the page. Valjean had brought fresh bread from the store, and the three sat around the table and ate a small dinner. Always in high spirits after seeing his daughter, Valjean talked eagerly of his time spent with her. She was happy with Marius, and she relished her role as a wife.

Javert smiled to see him. The two men would sometimes sit side-by-side in the garden during the pleasant summer evenings. To look upward at the night sky, though, even the most twinkling of stars must have seemed dull and uninspiring to Valjean. His daughter was easily the brightest light in his sky.

“Can you help me read more tomorrow?” Gavroche asked as the men stood to clear the table.

Far from the usual tension of his relationship with Javert, the boy was now looking at the stoic man with eagerness. Though he said nothing as he scrubbed dishes, a crinkle had appeared to the corner of Valjean’s eyes.

“No mischief?” Javert muttered, replacing his chair perfectly at the table and wiping any crumbs left from the meal.

“No.”

“Then yes.”

From the old church clock, the chiming sounded eight times.

“To bed with you, boy,” Javert muttered. “It’s late.”

Uncomplaining for the first time since he’d come to live with them, Gavroche scurried down the hallway.

“You’re good with him,” Valjean said over his shoulder once the boy had gone.

“I’m not,” Javert dismissed. “I have no talent for teaching children.”

His smile didn’t waver. “And, yet, he learned something today.”

Javert grumbled, uncomfortable at the commendation. Teaching the boy was the obvious step towards correcting him, and he couldn’t understand why Valjean behaved as if it was such a novelty. Civilizing a wayward child was a civic duty, no different than reporting a crime or serving on a jury. It surely wasn’t worth so much generosity in praise. It wasn’t so saintly as Valjean, who gave to street-beggars and fed the hungry.

But saintly or no, Javert soon became the new celebrity of the household.

While once it had been Javert who shadowed the boy, always suspicious of his motivations, it was now the opposite. With the uncomplicated loyalties of a child, Gavroche began trailing behind him.

During the mornings, they would sit at the dining table and read through the book. In the afternoons, the boy would be at his side when Javert patrolled the garden. Even in the absence of any plants, he would check for cracks in the fenceline or burrowing rodents in the ice-hardened soil.

Before supper, he would shop at the market and, even then, the boy would be at his side. Carrying parcels and skipping behind, Gavroche made an even stranger accompanist to the former policeman than he had to the former convict.

If Valjean treated children with honey and sweetness, then Javert was salt and scorch. But something in his demeanor was evidently appealing enough to attract the attention of a young boy.

During one session at the start of December, Gavroche read his sentences well and earned a grudging nod of praising approval from his tutor.

 “I’m not so stupid as they think,” he said, grinning wickedly. “Don’t need all that fancy schoolboy polish to know my letters, do I papa?”

Javert froze, but the boy was too excited to notice what he’d said. He had pushed out his chair and run to the sitting room to tell Valjean of his accomplishments.

Regathering the materials to store them until the following day, Javert decided to dismiss the moment. A slip of the boy’s tongue. He meant nothing by it. If nothing else, it was just a sign of how pitiably he’d been raised, for Javert was certainly nobody’s idea of a father. Indeed, if Gavroche regarded any man as his papa, then it was surely Valjean.

The following morning, Javert rose at his usual early hour. He crept down the hallway quietly, careful not to disturb Valjean, who was praying his morning rosary. Far from his prior vigilance, he no longer kept close watch over the room where Gavroche slept, but he was nonetheless surprised to see the door to the boy’s room wide open.

He poked his head inside to find the bed empty.

“Boy?” he called.

The house was still, and there was no sound except for the gentle mumblings of Valjean’s prayers.

Javert searched the kitchen, the sitting room, the garden and the street beyond, but the little urchin was nowhere to be found. All the household valuables were undisturbed, and nothing was even slightly out of place. He hadn’t absconded into the night for any crime. He had simply vanished.

By seven, Valjean came into the sitting area. In the absence of the usual morning fire, it was cold and uninviting. Javert stood when his companion entered.

“The boy is gone, and I’m certain it is my fault,” he spoke his confession with the same self-hating but factual delivery as when he’d once implored Monsieur Madeline to have him punished.

Valjean’s eye furrowed and he looked around the room quickly, as though expecting a child to materialize. “Why is it your fault?”

“I was a poor tutor.”

 Despite the gravity of the situation, Valjean gave him a confused look of amusement. He took a step forward and put a hand on Javert’s shoulder. “Just yesterday he was so proud of his accomplishments.”

Not wanting any sympathy, he shook his head. “I’m certain it’s my fault; I’ve spent the morning cataloging my shortcomings, and they are numerous. I understand if you’re angry with me.”

A look of pity rose in the older man’s face. He must’ve seen clear through to the disappointment which pierced at Javert’s heart. Far from solely his usual harshness towards himself, Javert was grieving the growing sense of purpose he’d felt. Without the boy or the garden, he felt he had reached the end of himself yet again.

Just then, there was a tentative creaking of the exterior door, the sound of some laughter and a little voice ringing out, “Messieurs, can I bring some friends to learn their letters?”

Both men stepped into the entranceway to see Gavroche accompanied by two scrubby children—a boy and a girl—not much older than him. They were in clothing which was several times patched, but they were mostly clean.

“Are they orphans?” Valjean stepped forward, his parental urges obvious.

“Not orphans,” the girl said. “But our mama hasn’t got money to send us to school.”

“Known them for years, I have,” Gavroche said. “They play on the streets with me.”

Javert looked them over with an apprising stoicism, then he gave a nod.

“No mischief?” he asked.

All three children shook their heads in as binding a promise as they could make.

Over the next weeks, as Christmas approached, more children came, gradually swelling the ranks of the home until there was no longer any room at the dining table. Instead, these smelly, dirty, and threadbare children of the street sat cross-legged in the sitting room and learned how to read and write. Some were motivated by the possibility of a free education and some were just motivated by the warm fire that Valjean kept blazing during their lessons, but all were nonetheless quiet and focused.

In the classroom of Javert, there was no idle chitchat. He taught from morning until early afternoon, allowing only a short break for lunch, which he ensured never ran even a minute too long—there would have been less time for learning if he was lackadaisical in maintaining a strict schedule.

Some of the most headstrong children were unaccustomed to any sort of adult authority, but he would silence any insolence with a single withering glance. He was a stern teacher, but fair. He had no favorites, nor was he susceptible to any sort of flatteries. The meanest and crudest of the children received the same treatment as the softest and warmest.

If he expected much of his students, it was only because he was willing to give them equally much of himself. Late nights and early mornings, Valjean would rise early to find Javert squinting by candlelight and refining his lessons for the day.  

Abundant in nurturing tendencies, Valjean made lunch for any hungry among the students and sent some home with extra food for their younger siblings. Independently generous even without the tutelage of his elders, Gavroche offered space in his bed some nights to those tired-eyed children needing respite from screaming, drunkard fathers or overcrowded slums. The house was often loud, but it was a pleasant din.

But on Christmas Eve, Javert dismissed the students after lunch, and the small family was once more just three of them. No children were staying the night, and no students were crowding the halls. Just a boy and two men around the fire in the sitting room.

Legs curled up underneath him, Gavroche was sprawled before the fireplace, sounding out sentences in Javert’s book of botany. Scribbling notes to himself, Javert was revising lessons for the following week.

In the seasons before, the garden had given him purpose, a return to duty. But now in the wintertime depths, he hadn’t felt the same despair as he’d had during the prior year. Far from it, he felt energized and alive. It was the same sensation he’d had at the highest moments of his police career. The sensation of a job well done, a fulfilled responsibility.

As for Valjean, he was looking between the other two, a contented twinkle in his eye.

“You have over a dozen students now,” he remarked.

“Yes. And they’ve all been confusing their lowercases,” Javert said, not looking up from his notes. “We’ll need another lesson to focus on that.”

“You’re a good teacher, Javert,” Valjean said admiringly.

That time Javert did look up, almost indignant. “I’m not.”

“Course you are, papa” Gavroche pipped, turning a page.

Javert’s lips parted in a new emotion, and he was awash with a disquiet. Surely it was still a slip of the boy’s tongue; Javert was nobody’s idea of a father.

But he saw how Valjean smiled at him. A knowing smile. 

“You’re a good father, too,” the other man whispered. His voice had a low tenderness of camaraderie and the pleasured joy of one watching somebody finally finish a long race.

Though his first inclination was to deny and self-efface the compliment, Javert looked over at the boy, who was focused on the book and not even paying attention.

"You meant it?" he said to Gavroche. "When you called me papa?"

Titles were something that he took seriously, that he wanted to understand in their exactness. 

The boy nodded, flipping through pages as he grew bored with his reading. "I'm lucky, aren't I? I was born to a rough papa, but now I have two good ones."

Javert felt his chest constrict. It took him a long time to reply.

“As both teacher and father, I have much to learn,” he concluded with a pinched voice, emotional. “But, perhaps, I have indeed found another purpose.”

“Schoolmaster Javert,” Valjean said teasingly. “Papa Javert. Who would have guessed it?”

He gave a grumble of embarrassment, cheeks reddening, and looked back down at his page.

Warm in their respective contentments, the Student, the Schoolmaster, and the Saint sat the rest of the day before the fireplace.