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For nearly a week, Valjean's conscience had caught him in the same spot just at the end of the Rue de l'Homme Armé. When he set out again, despite the ominously thick, low clouds, he had fully intended to go further, perhaps even again to the corner of the Rue des Filles-du-Calvaire, that he might at least see the house again and assure himself it still stood unchanged. But, as he approached the corner that evening, his feet slowed against his will, the weight of his selfishness bearing down on his shoulders until each step was a struggle that finally grew insurmountable.
He stopped some paces short of the corner, his head bowed, his back bent, and reached out a trembling hand to brace himself against the dirty brick. Though his heart thudded slowly in his ears, an even, steady beat, he felt almost faint; the air seemed suddenly chokingly thick in his mouth, as if it had become as leaden as his body.
Closing his eyes, he found he could still imagine her smile, the touch of her small hand like a lark on his shoulder, the sweet chatter of her voice, and so ease the tight ache in his chest and the scratch of his dry eyes. That much he could still grant himself, surely: a simple memory, kept as safely away from the world as he had so long kept the past safely hidden in its black box tucked beneath his bed.
But in no time at all the Cosette in his mind twirled about and laughed, calling him Father just as she had that last night, and with a shudder Valjean opened his eyes to the silent, empty street, the light of her smile fading quickly into the heavy gray dullness of the midsummer evening. He shook his head slowly, pushing the last of it away, and let his hand fall away from the wall, permitting himself one last glance as the rain began to fall in slow, fat drops.
He had taken up his umbrella as he left the apartment, noting the weather, and tucked it beneath his arm; as he turned back towards no. 7, the tip of the umbrella caught against the wall, twisting out of his grasp and rolling with a clatter into the middle of the street. For a long while he stood looking down at it with a distant surprise; the rain quickened, slicking the paving-stones and soaking his jacket, and at last he stepped out and bent to pick it up.
As he straightened, he noticed for the first time a low dark heap some distance away, propped against the uneven jag of buildings where the rue de l'Homme Armé met the rue de Blancs Manteaux. Something about the shape gave him uneasy pause, even in his distraction; he hesitated slightly, then crossed the street towards it and from that closer distance recognized the shape of a body draped in wet cloth.
Stepping across onto Blancs Manteaux sent a heavy shudder of guilt through him -- those few steps closer to Cosette, that he had just minutes ago resolved not to take -- but nonetheless he found them possible now, so long as he kept his eyes fixed on the still, unmoving form; he did not dare to look further.
It was a tall man, gray-haired and lean, though that was all Valjean could make of him; he lay crumpled on his stomach, hatless, his face hidden in the folded crook of his arm, body concealed by a strange leather greatcoat, apparently insensible to the rain beating down on him and the sound of approaching footsteps alike. If there had been blood, the rainwater had hidden it already; with the twisted position of the body, it was impossible to tell whether he was breathing.
"Monsieur," Valjean said. There was no response; Valjean pulled off one glove, knelt beside him, and set his hand on his shoulder. He was warm, at least; when Valjean shook him gently, he moved freely; there was no smell of alcohol or sickness, and when Valjean shifted his hand to the bare skin of his neck, his pulse was strong and regular. "Monsieur," he said again.
At the sound of his voice, or perhaps the touch of their skin, the man groaned softly and stirred beneath his fingers, though it felt more like a shudder than any purposeful movement. When he lay quiet again, Valjean looked up. The rue de Blancs Manteaux was a busier one than the rue de l'Homme Armé, but the rain was falling heavily enough now to drive people inside, though it was early in the evening yet, and there was no one in sight. Still, he might find someone to summon a doctor, if he should ask, and if the man did not drown in a puddle before one arrived.
That seemed likely to be a real danger, should the storm keep up. Valjean took hold of his shoulders more firmly, first pulling him further beneath the short overhanging eaves of the building at their back, then turning him onto his side to raise his face from the pooling water, and froze, hands clenching tight in fistfuls of slick wet leather. The hair was all wrong and the beard was as unfamiliar as the clothing he wore, but the profile was equally unmistakable and impossible -- he had watched for it too long to fail to recognize it from so close, and yet he knew it could not be -- it was Javert.
For a long moment he could think of nothing, his mind wiped clear with shock. Javert was heavy and unmoving in his arms, unconscious but undeniably alive. A trail of water dripped slowly from a strand of his short-cropped hair and fell onto Valjean's wrist, a tiny, insignificant touch that he shuddered beneath as if from a blow, his thoughts leaping forth again, wild and unchained.
He ought to set Javert down, to stand and walk away; to remove himself from the Rue de l'Homme Armé and take the danger of scandal and shame with him. He had thought himself reprieved of that, when he had heard of Javert's death; he had believed at last in some brief freedom, seeing Cosette so happy each day, but each breath had been an illusion no different than the choked, salty gasps stolen beneath the shell of a rotten boat in the dockyards of Toulon.
He ought to fetch the doctor, and then go; make a truth of what he had said to Cosette and go to England, or somewhere still further -- somewhere too far away for the news to ruin them. The news, the news -- he could not make sense of it. He could remember with utter clarity the small article he had found in the Moniteur to assure himself of the truth of the rumor, hidden away on a back page but each word perfectly on its place in neat black lines on white paper; he had considered himself paroled by them. He had considered Javert as self-evidently mad as he had considered him dead, and yet here he was.
Clearly both the rumor and the article had been false; after a moment to recover from the initial shock of it he could accept that well enough -- he knew himself that it could be done. And if Valjean had no idea why Javert should have wanted to turn aside at the end of his chase and instead give himself out as dead, much less as an insane suicide, did it matter? It could not: it remained only that he was alive. The workings of the police were not his business, nor did it fall to him to keep up whatever ruse Javert had embarked on a year before that had led him at last to Valjean's doorstep once more. The doctor, his valise, a ship. That was the end of it.
Valjean shifted his grip on Javert's body and stood, lifting him in his arms. He was heavy, but not unbearably so; his head rested against Valjean's shoulder with an unsettling closeness and his legs were awkwardly long where they dangled across Valjean's arm, but nevertheless Valjean's stride as he returned around the corner of Blancs Manteaux was firmer and surer than it had been crossing onto it. The rain did not slacken; Valjean's umbrella lay forgotten against the side of the building where he had found Javert, and by the time his steps led him again to the doorway of no 7., they were both as soaked through as if they had climbed out of the Seine in truth.
He had been gone only a handful of minutes; the portress had not yet emerged from her apartment to re-lock the door and it opened at a touch. Valjean entered, rather more awkwardly than he had left, and closed it behind him with his foot. A low bench stood beside the door; it would do to set Javert on when he asked after the doctor--
"Fauchelevent?"
It was only the portress's familiar voice, from behind her still-closed door, but still Valjean started violently, ripped from his consuming thoughts and flung back into the world. His heart raced furiously, his mouth was too dry to speak; he choked terribly on the words a doctor, please, and said nothing at all. In his arms, Javert shuddered again, the unconscious tremor of a man lost in nightmare.
"Is that you back again, Fauchelevent?" she called again.
Valjean stared at the door as another man might have stared at an unexpected spider. "Yes," he said, "it is me."
"Well, close the door behind you, if you please! I'll bring your supper up to you in a moment."
"All right," he said, though he was not particularly hungry and the door was already closed. Instead he turned away and began to climb the staircase. The steps seemed taller for some reason that evening, the climb harder and longer, and he had to stop to rest a moment at the landing, wondering vaguely at the ache that had settled in his back and at the strain of his legs.
It was not until he reached his own door and could not reach into his pocket that he came back to himself and realized with a strange dread that he had neither laid Javert out on the bench in the hallway, nor asked the portress to see to him or send for a doctor; that he had been carrying him all that time. He told himself to go down again at once; his feet refused to move, and he found himself against his will shifting Javert to his shoulder so that he could hold him up with one arm and unlock his door with the other.
The door swung open; they went inside.
Some months ago, he had moved his bed into the front room of the apartment; he had no need for more than one room, and the empty spaces where Cosette had once been were better off closed. The arrangement had served him well enough. Now he carried Javert to it, and with some slight difficulty, peeled the sodden leather greatcoat away from his arms and shoulders, then -- at last -- set him down on the bed. The coat fell onto the floor with a heavy clunking thud; Valjean ignored it in favor of removing his own, and then, in shirtsleeves, going to fetch a pile of towels and light the few lamps he still kept.
He dried himself as best he could -- really, he was wet enough that he might have changed his clothes for dry ones, but he could not bring himself to -- and then slowly approached the bed. Javert lay where Valjean had left him, the rain dripping slowly from his body to dampen the quilt and pillow, though his coat had taken the worst of it. His eyes were closed, his lips slack, but his chest rose and fell evenly; still, Valjean gingerly reached for his half-tied cravat to loosen it, that he might breathe easier. With that done, he could not help but notice the strangeness of Javert's clothes, no matter how hard he tried to fix it in his mind that it was nothing to do with him. The cravat had been clipped to his shirt; the shirt itself was buttoned from throat to waist, and he had been wearing no waistcoat at all. There was, at least, no blood.
Shaking his head slowly, as if that might help him to dislodge the thoughts, Valjean laid the last dry towels around Javert's body and straightened. There was a knock at the door; he tensed, startled, then remembered -- the portress. "I'm coming," he called quietly, rather than his usual come in, and crossed quickly to the door, blocking the room with his body as he opened it.
It was indeed his portress on the other side, his night's bowl in her hands. She looked at him rather critically, head to toe, and did not immediately relinquish the meal. "You have been out in the rain again."
It seemed to Valjean that he was standing between two worlds; behind him, the strange mystery of Javert's reappearance; ahead, only normality; that all that separated the two was a simple, unadorned doorway. "Yes," he said.
"You will catch cold," she said, "or a fever; or worse. You might at least carry an umbrella! There." She pressed the dish into his hands; he took it, blinking as if to clear his eyes. "At least it is a warm night; that may save you, poor man. But I have a kettle on in any case; will you take tea tonight?"
"Yes," Valjean echoed. He had left his umbrella against the side of the building where he had found Javert and forgotten it entirely.
"Yes!" she said with open surprise. Since Cosette had gone he had become so accustomed to saying no that some months ago she had stopped asking; Valjean had not expected the question, and had answered it without really understanding what had happened. "Well! Good. I will bring you some."
"Thank you," said Valjean, and watched with distant, confused relief as she nodded, turned, and bustled back down the stairs. He shut the door carefully again.
The bowl was warm in his hands; he glanced down into it for the first time. A few young potatoes and a bit of salt pork in broth: a meal she cooked often and well. He had not eaten since that morning, but he could not tell if he was hungry any more than he could have said why he had brought Javert to his room, why he should care to protect police secrets, or indeed why he had agreed to the offer of tea.
Valjean set the bowl on the small table that stood beside the bed and picked up Javert's coat from the floor instead, meaning to put it somewhere where it might drip dry without utterly ruining the leather. Something clattered to the ground from within it as he lifted it, nearly tripping him, and after he had hung the coat from a door he returned to pick it up.
It was a black glass box, close to the size of a deck of cards and backed with what felt and looked almost like his own imitation jet. There were no clasps that he could see, nor any other way to open it; the front of it had been cracked, though not so badly that the glass had fallen from its frame. Shaking his head once again, he placed it on the bed and returned to the door to wait for his tea in safety.
He did not have to wait long before she tapped at his door again and presented him with not only the cup he had expected, but a full pot on a tray, which he bemusedly accepted. "There," she said when he had. "Now then, get yourself dry, have a hot drink, and it will do you some good! I'll come for them in the morning, no need to worry about that. Good night!"
"Good night," he said to her back. The cup was full enough that it threatened to spill, as if the milk had been splashed into an already-full cup as a second thought; he took a sip, so as not to waste any, and found it hot and rich and good enough to leave him still thirsty. He sipped again, very slowly, and then locked the door.
With some rearranging, he fit the tea tray and his dinner on the bedside table and sat beside them in silence. He remembered clearly the last time he had been locked in a small space with Javert, though by several scales a pot of tea, even if he ought not to have asked for it, made for better company than a bloody, dying boy.
There had been silence between them, too, in that carriage, but he had been sure how it would end. Sure -- but wrong. Now he had no ideas; he could not begin to think of why Javert might have returned after a year's time, nor what he ought to do should Javert want to arrest him straight away -- nor what he should do if Javert did not wake up on his own. He might go for a doctor after all, but that would expose whatever secret it was Javert had given himself out as dead to prevent -- not that it mattered, he reminded himself firmly.
It would have been easier if Javert had been obviously injured or sick; anything that demanded immediate treatment, anything but this mysterious, inexplicable appearance that had made a sudden sharp cliff of the empty plain of his future. With a sigh, he lowered his head into his hands, rubbing at the ache that was developing between his eyes. But if he sent to a police station instead, and left Javert in their care -- yes, he would do that, and then he would go to Calais and secure passage immediately; it would be for the best.
He had only just decided this when the glass box clattered to the floor again, followed by a harsh, rattling gasp; he looked up, a tense knot forming in the pit of his stomach, and met Javert's wild-eyed stare.
"What--" Javert rasped, staring at Valjean much as Valjean had looked at him an hour before as he lay in the street, as if he could not believe what he saw, as if Valjean were an unwanted ghost sprung back to life, "what--"
At first Valjean thought he must be imagining it, his mind caught up in and confused with the idea of escape to London -- for he could have sworn Javert had spoken in English. He blinked to clear his vision, but Javert was still lying there, staring at him with apparent shock. "Javert?" he said cautiously.
For a moment Javert said nothing, his fingers digging deep into the quilt; when he spoke again, his voice was half-choked with disbelief. "Valjean?"
"Yes," Valjean said. Of all the reactions he had considered -- of all the half-formed plans he had made for each -- this had not been one of them. For Javert to find himself just outside the Rue de l'Homme Armé unintentionally -- when by rights he ought to have returned there a year before... Coincidences nearly as [[word]] had brought them together more than once before, but what troubled Valjean most, making his knotted nerves tighten still further, was that never once had Javert looked surprised to find him there. "Are you -- well?" he asked, half-thinking again of the Moniteur article's intimated fits of madness.
"What?" said Javert again.
That had definitely been English. Was it more strange than Javert appearing at all? He had heard stories of men losing their minds -- or their memories -- after a blow to the head strong enough to leave them senseless. But Javert had known him; whether someone could forget a language and retain the rest of their faculties, he could not guess. "Are you well?" he repeated, in the same language.
"Your hair," Javert said, and receded into silence again.
The sun had set; in the flickering lamplight, Javert's eyes were wide and too-dark with shock. When Valjean warily raised a hand to touch his own hair, there was nothing wrong with it at all beyond some lingering dampness from the rain. Yes -- a blow to the head would explain several things, though not Javert's initial disappearance. And, while Valjean knew he was no doctor, over the years he had learned through one method or another some few things about injury. "Can you sit?" he asked.
Javert blinked owlishly at him, his eyes flitting from Valjean's face down to his chest and back up, but did not speak. After a moment, and not without some struggle, he managed to raise himself to a half-seated position, propped against the headboard and the thin pillow.
Valjean lifted the mostly-full teacup --still warm, if not quite hot anymore -- from the table and offered it to him. Javert took it with surprisingly steady hands and, when Valjean said, "Drink," did so, a small sip at first, followed by a spluttered cough, then a long, gulping swallow that drained the cup but left his breathing at least a little less shallow and gasping.
"I have no more milk," Valjean said, "but there is still tea left. And there is food, if you are hungry." He could not have said what had made him offer, unless it was the look of horrified, bewildered confusion that lingered in Javert's eyes, casting his features in a different light than Valjean had ever seen them; he had seen Javert predatory, triumphant, offended, stoic -- but never before defeated; never before with his watchdog's collar loosened and broken: for the first time Valjean could remember, there was no sign in his face, nor in the loose slump of his shoulders, that he intended to spring up and arrest Valjean when given the chance. It seemed obvious that something terrible had happened to him in the year he had been missing, something shattering; and, seeing the signs of it, Valjean found he could not help feeling a certain wary pity -- even for Javert.
Javert swallowed again and cleared his throat. "Valjean," he said. His lips twitched, as if he could not think of what more to say; he wordlessly offered the empty teacup back. Valjean took it and poured it full; as he did, Javert found his voice again; still hoarse, but now less painful. "What happened? How did you -- why are you..." He trailed off, making a short, aborted gesture that could have included the bed, the tea, Valjean himself, or anything at all.
Valjean set the cup down and clasped his hands to steady them; he could not push down a terrible feeling welling up from beneath the pity, but neither could he bring himself to acknowledge it. He turned to explanation instead. "I found you in the street," he said, "around the corner. I thought you might have wanted to keep your cover, and you did not seem badly injured, so I brought you here." And then, because he could hold himself back no longer, "But why did you not come back that night? Why did you wait -- why now?"
"I don't understand," Javert said. For the first time, he glanced away from Valjean, looking around the room; what he saw seemed only to increase his confusion. At last he looked down at himself, then back up at Valjean. "Why -- " He paused, regrouped himself with a visible effort that still left him looking far from collected, and continued: "...my cover?"
It had seemed so much the only logical solution to Javert's reappearance that Valjean had not thought at all further on his assumption until that moment; then it was his turn to hesitate, doubts suddenly seeping in. "Yes," he said slowly. "The article announcing your death was published in le Moniteur almost a year ago. When I saw you alive tonight, I thought you must have taken up another post as a spy at once, that that was why you had not come back for me..."
As he spoke, Javert had paled further and further, until as Valjean faltered to a stop it seemed a wonder that he could keep himself upright. "A year ago," he echoed, and, with another convulsive swallow, "Then what year is this?"
"It is 1833." If it were not that Javert did not seem mad -- if it were not that surely a madman could not have arranged so thorough a falsification of his own death -- And Javert had never been so thorough an actor; he had kept his mind, his heart, his allegiances always on his sleeve, with only the barest of covering for all the years Valjean had known him.
"And where," Javert said, "where are we?"
"In my apartment: no. 7, rue de l'Homme Armé. I have not moved."
"Rue de l'Homme Armé," Javert repeated -- but the words sounded as awkward in his mouth as if he had never heard them, as if he had never spoken them. "In -- France?"
What was there to say to that? Valjean nodded.
Javert closed his eyes for a long moment, then reached into his pocket; apparently found nothing, checked the other; and, finding nothing again, opened his eyes again and glanced around, a slow tension growing in him to replace his earlier uncertainty. At last he looked down and saw the box he had knocked from the bed upon waking; with a glance at Valjean, he slowly reached to pick it up, cradling it carefully by the sides. "Damn," he said, when he saw the cracked face of it. "Of course." His voice was tight and strained, enough to put Valjean on edge with apprehension.
He stared at it a moment longer in silence, then laughed, a sudden, harsh bark with more despair in it than humor. Valjean half-rose from his seat, but Javert was not watching him; he dropped the box to the bed beside him and fell back against the headboard, eyes closed, what composure he had managed to summon visibly crumbling again, leaving him once more limp and dejected.
After a moment, Valjean sat down again, picked up the tea, and took a steadying drink, then a deep breath as he set it down. "Javert," he said, reaching for a long-doffed sense of authority in order to keep his own nerves from echoing Javert's, "What happened to you?"
"I jumped," Javert said, his eyes still closed. "I let you go and I jumped."
"Into the Seine?"
Another short, terrible laugh. "If this is a joke, Valjean -- if this is, if this is a trick, if it's some kind of..." He opened his eyes and stared at Valjean, his gaze empty and lost in a way that Valjean could no longer deny he recognized -- could no longer deny he knew. "Did I misjudge you or not? What did you do?"
"Just what I told you," Valjean said quietly. "I was in the street; I saw you collapsed on the corner of Blancs Manteaux; I tried to wake you, but could not. I thought to call for a doctor, but I could think of no other explanation than that you had been pretending to be dead for police purposes. I brought you here so you would not drown in the rain or be seen by anyone you ought not to be. It has been a year since you gave me leave to go for a moment to get my affairs in order."
"And it's 1833. In France." There was a strange note of desperation in Javert's voice, almost a plea, as if he wanted to hear anything but the truth.
"Yes," Valjean said.
Javert shuddered. "Everything is always impossible with you," he muttered, almost under his breath. "Everything upside down and inside out and twisted until I can't understand a damn thing. Why should Hell be any different?" With a pained wince, he dragged himself to a straighter angle, then braced his arms on the bed. "Show me," he said. "I want to see."
"To see what?"
"Outside." Javert jerked his head briefly at the window that opened over the rue du Platre. "...Please. Valjean."
Javert's words made little sense to him, and his actions hardly more, but Valjean felt almost resigned to it, a shadow of that numb acceptance he had felt a year before, when he had left Javert at the lamppost and walked upstairs to say farewell to Cosette. "Can you stand?" he asked.
"I can try," Javert said between his teeth, slowly swinging his legs off of the edge of the bed, his hands white-knuckled in the quilt from the effort of it.
Standing, Valjean took a step forward and silently reached out to offer Javert his hand. Javert scowled at it, a flash of his old ferocity shining through, then dying away. At last he put his hand in Valjean's; Valjean felt it tremble slightly against his palm, and then he was helping Javert to his feet and keeping him upright as he faltered.
The window was only a few paces away, but that was far enough; Javert's arm fit around his shoulders with a strange, uncanny closeness, and the weight of his body far heavier now that he was awake than it had been when Valjean had borne it all himself. They crossed slowly to the window; when they stood in front of it, Valjean pushed aside the curtain, and Javert half-collapsed against the frame, staring out.
Night had fallen; the streetlamps were lit, but there was little to see other than the empty street and the silent buildings. Still Javert stared as if he had never seen either building or street before; he raised a trembling hand and set it on the windowsill, leaning forward still further until his forehead touched the glass pane. "You aren't lying," he said, after long minutes of silence, his eyes fixed on the outside world with a strange glassy focus, as if for him the mystery lay beyond the window and the certainty within.
"No," said Valjean.
"I didn't think you would," Javert said. "You waited, didn't you? You said you did. You saved that boy's life, you came -- here -- and you waited to be arrested. You waited for me to come arrest you."
"Yes."
"And then you found out I... had died."
"About a week later, yes," Valjean said, wondering at Javert's need to confirm events that were still so clear to him, but thankful that he seemed at least somewhat more lucid. "But, Javert, what--"
"No," Javert said, "I can't explain it. I can't understand it. I look at it, and I can hardly believe it, even with all the evidence right there in front of my face. It doesn't make any sense. It should be impossible, it should all be impossible, Valjean--" He scowled again, his teeth bared in a vicious snarl that was at strange odds to the quiet helplessness of his voice, but did not lift his head away from the window. "Don't ask me what happened, don't ask me to say it. Don't. Please."
Valjean watched him a moment longer. The loose shock had gone completely from Javert's body; the line of his arm, where it still rested across Valjean's back for balance, was stiff as and unyielding as the rest of him, like an overstrung wire on the verge of snapping, and exhaustion was beginning to show beneath the -- worry? fear? -- that creased his face. "All right," he said carefully. It seemed obvious he could not turn Javert out; even if he managed the single flight of stairs, he would more than likely collapse before he regained the corner where Valjean had found him, much less stand any chance of finding his way to a police station -- if he would be let in, even if he were to get there, for he had still spoken nothing but English. But the mystery of that lay with whatever had happened; he pushed it to the back of his mind. "Are you hungry?"
"Am I--" Javert turned away from the window at last, looking at him with open astonishment, and Valjean let the curtain fall back. "Am I hungry? I -- " He flinched, so slightly Valjean would not have noticed if they had not been touching, as if considering it was somehow painful. "I don't know why you would offer."
Valjean was not entirely certain how to answer that; he was not entirely sure why he had, only that it had seemed like something he ought to say. "Come," he said instead, and began the slow journey back across the room, Javert stumbling along beside him.
When he had gotten Javert seated on the bed again and removed the damp towels, he stepped back, trying not to show the relief of being out from under his weight. Moving the table closer to the bed, so that Javert could reach it easily without leaning over, he said, "It is cold, but it will still be good; the portress is a fine cook and a good woman."
Slowly, Javert shook his head; exhaustion was beginning to overcome everything else on his face. He looked into the bowl, touched the pewter spoon that stood out of it with a forefinger, then glanced up to Valjean again, silently asking, instead of grace, something else -- perhaps permission.
"Eat," Valjean said quietly. It reminded him only faintly of Montreuil-sur-Mer, and that only in Javert's odd respectfulness that verged on deference; but Javert had been almost confident in his self-castigation then, determined and stoic; whatever had brought Javert to him now had left him changed.
Javert ate: half the potatoes, a bite of meat, a spoonful or two of broth. When he set the spoon back down, leaving the rest, it chimed against the bowl with a slight rattle that seemed somehow to free his tongue. "Thank you," he muttered, wiping at his mouth with the back of his hand. "Valjean, I don't understand any of this, but…"
"No," Valjean said, "you do not have to thank me. Anyone would have helped you; it was only chance that I happened by first."
"Not anyone," Javert said, but there was a thread of doubt in his voice; more than Valjean had ever expected to hear. When he tried to say more, he yawned instead, then managed a, "Sorry," only to yawn again.
Valjean drank the last of the cold tea left in the cup and moved the table back into its place. "You should sleep," he said. "Tomorrow there will be time to..." To do what? He had intended to leave that very night; now it seemed somehow unnecessary, as if he would be fleeing a tamed tiger -- no, not tamed, he thought, remembering the snarling fury that had shown briefly under the surface -- not tamed, but at least leashed, even if he did not understand the mechanism that held Javert back. And though it was true that Cosette might have been a thousand miles from him, he could not find it within his weak heart to make that distance physical when her happiness did not depend on it. "To try to better understand what has happened," he finished at last; when Javert did not answer, he looked over again at last to find that he was already asleep.
After an uneasy night passed in the old armchair by the door, Valjean woke feeling no more tired than usual; though he had been uncomfortable, what snatches of sleep he had gotten had been utterly dreamless. He rubbed the stiffness from his legs and, stretching, stood.
It was just past dawn; the rain had stopped sometime past midnight, but the light that filtered around the edges of the curtains was gray and watery, and when Valjean went to look out of the window, he saw that the clouds were as low and gloomy as the day before, and the very few people who were in the Rue de l'Homme Armé at that hour had their umbrellas with them as they left.
That reminded him of his own umbrella, left on the corner; and that, inevitably, drew his thoughts to the point he had been trying to avoid: his unexpected guest. When he woke, Javert had been still asleep, his breathing regular and even; Valjean had been almost preturnaturally aware of his presence the whole night through, though he had done his best to avoid direct thought or sight of him. Now he looked over his shoulder at the bed. Javert lay on his back, one arm at his side, the other lying across his stomach, his head tilted slightly on the pillow. He had moved hardly at all since the night before, and Valjean felt a bright, shocking flash of annoyance that Javert's sleep should apparently be so peaceful. He passed a hand over his face and rubbed at his mouth with a slight shudder; the feeling itself passed quickly enough, but left a ghost of itself behind.
Valjean forced himself to turn away, giving his back to the bed and its occupant, and glanced at Javert's coat where it hung on the door beside him. It had mostly dried; in the daylight it looked stranger than ever, unlike anything he had ever seen in cut and material alike, and curiosity began to stir interest inside him again, where for weeks there had been only the dark fog of Cosette's absence. He thought of touching it, of looking into the pockets and checking the seams; his hand twitched towards it; he turned again instead, crossing to the bureau and leaving it behind.
He washed his face quickly, though the morning was hot and humid enough already that the water felt unusually refreshing, then changed his clothes, doing his best to think of nothing at all and to forget Javert's presence in the room behind him. He was not entirely successful; by the time he had straightened his hair and tied his cravat, his hands trembled slightly on the cloth, his nerves on edge despite the fact that Javert still slept on.
The room, always small, began to feel stiflingly close; Valjean forced himself to breathe slowly, deeply, but there was a hurry in his quiet steps as he collected the night's bowl, jug, and tea tray, then let himself out onto the landing. With the door shut behind him -- between himself and Javert -- he ought to have felt safer, easier, but he did not.
Just as he reached the bottom of the stairs, the portress opened her door, and, seeing him carrying the tray and jug, smiled with satisfaction, as if he might have been in danger of dying overnight without her. "Good morning," she said cheerfully.
"Good morning," he echoed, offering the tray to her.
She took it, smile flagging a bit as she registered the weight, and looked down. "Why, you only ate half your dinner, and you can't have drunk even half the tea. Is something wrong?" Valjean found himself subject to a strangely concerned inspection. "You don't look sick, poor man," she said, tsking to herself as she carried the tray back into her quarters while continuing to talk, "though heavens knows a soaking can be deadly; you should take care of yourself!"
She returned and took the water jug from him; he smiled faintly in lieu of responding, taking a half-step backwards towards the front door of no. 7 and the freedom that lay beyond.
"And now you will go out without an umbrella? Again? And in the morning too, before breakfast!"
"I lost mine," he said gently, his hand finding the doorknob behind his back. "I must go and buy another; I will not be out long."
Her disappointed frown lingered only a moment once he had stepped out into the street; it was replaced not with the normality he had hoped for, but the memory of his interrupted walk the night before; the feeling of Javert's limp, wet, heavy body in his arms, so similar to the way he had once carried Marius. Javert himself had been waiting at the end of that road; Valjean could not help but wonder what would come of this strange reversal.
He walked to the low stone post some ways up the street and stood there for a moment, running his fingertips absently over the rough stone. He had not really given thought to what he would do outside, only that he had had to get free; now, standing alone outside in the early morning, without any possibility of even considering the journey to rue Filles-du-Calvaire, he found himself more or less at loose ends.
The walk up the to the corner was easier by far without the weight of his conscience bearing him down, and in less than a minute Valjean found himself again at the spot where he had first seen Javert lying huddled on the ground. There was little sign now that he had been there, no convenient dropped cards nor clues; only Valjean's own umbrella which had rolled halfway beneath a small flowering bush and lay mostly hidden. He retrieved it, brushing a bit of mud away, and paused -- then bent again to smell the flowers before continuing steadily down the street.
When he returned a few hours later it had not yet begun to rain and he had had no cause to use his recovered umbrella; he carried it instead on top of several paper parcels, the contents and existence of which were of apparently great interest to several small children who followed him all the way to the mouth of the Rue de l'Homme Armé, laughing and shouting after him. He paid them no mind; they could have no affect on him, surrounded as he was by a sense of mild astonishment at himself.
Certainly his actions were stranger by far to him than they could be to anyone else: he had left his street; he had turned aside before he was accustomed to, and gone, quite as any normal man might have done, to the market. There he had bought half a dozen rolls of bread, one of which he had eaten; he had looked at vegetables and the early strawberries but said nothing about them; he had walked through to the end, and purchased from the rags and used-clothes women a waistcoat and jacket that were clearly too small for him and a shirt and frock-coat which were clearly too large. This had greatly intrigued his small followers to the point that he had noticed them and handed them each a few sous -- which, in turn, made them all the more fascinated.
Valjean entered no. 7 feeling much calmer than when he had left it; after some shuffling of packages, accepted his new jug of water and plate of potatoes and cabbages from the disinterested hands of the porter with a faint sense of relief; and went upstairs. In front of his door, however, he halted, Javert's presence returning at last to his conscious mind. Ought he to knock? He did not even know if Javert was awake. Leaning against the closed door, he listened carefully, but heard nothing save the tumble of his own memories. He opened the door and went in.
Javert was awake, and upright, and standing at the window, staring out. He did not turn when Valjean entered, nor when he shut the door behind himself. Valjean set his burdens down and glanced about the room: the bed was neatly made, the wrinkles smoothed away from the tightly-drawn sheets; Javert's coat hung where nearly he had left it, though the door stood to perhaps a fraction of an inch more. Javert himself had both hands on the windowsill, as if for support, and yet he seemed much steadier than the day before; enough that Valjean could not tell his mood by the set of his shoulders, nor judge his health by the straightness of his posture. He found that he did not know what to say, and that he was reluctant to guess; instead he sat at his desk chair and simply waited.
It was several minutes before Javert spoke. "There was a horse," he said to the window, "a horse and carriage. It drove past. There were people, walking past."
"It is not a busy street," Valjean said, "but there is some traffic."
At the sound of his voice, Javert turned; he looked over Valjean, quickly at first, then again, slower. "Right," he said. His voice was steady enough, his expression controlled -- but still there was something off, something subtle that Valjean could not quite pinpoint. "You went out." He glanced at last at the things Valjean had set on the table, but only briefly; his gaze returned to Valjean like a magnet to a lodestone. "I didn't think you'd be coming back."