Chapter Text
i. Broken (52)
Over the past generations, something has changed in society, and no one knows why. The “why” is not important. Maybe it came from the Revolution, or maybe it simply happened concurrently, further sign that things in France are wrong.
A strange mutation occurs in perhaps two of every hundred. One of these will be cursed with an uncontrollable need that explodes twice a year; the other, gifted with the power to sate this need, but with the likelihood of promoting the greatest gift, the most horrible curse, regardless of any factors that once were insurmountable: the creation of new life.
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ii. Wrecked (7)
On one hand, the poor young bohème knows that her stars could have been worse. Two times a year, cursed women suffer twice a month instead of once, and, if mated during their time, are certain to be left with child. But she is still mostly within the realm of normal, unlike the like-gendered parents that mystify and disgust society.
On the other, when her husband realizes the child they conceived would be the first of many if they stayed together, he commits a crime to keep himself away; his gift to her, he says. Hopelessly, she does the same.
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iii. Disgust (70)
Javert cannot pinpoint when he realizes he is unloved, but because he has always known it, it never has the chance to break his heart. His mother looks over his head when she speaks to him, calls him “boy,” tells him it kills her everytime she sees how little he resembles his father.
He does not think he looks like her either, from the few times he has caught his reflection, and he is glad. Even as a child, he doesn’t want to be anything like a woman who would sink so low as to give birth in a prison.
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iv. Pessimistic (39)
Children born in jail do not achieve greatness. Even if they get out -- absorbed into an orphanage, enlisted into the military -- most find themselves back within stone walls, now bearing brands of their own.
The prison staff have seen this time and again, but something about the boy Javert is different. He is a sour child, but his eyes burn determinedly under the chaplains’ tutelage, and, unlike other ruffians’ brats, he follows rules like he’d written them himself.
At fourteen, he goes into heat, and his advocates sigh. As if things weren’t bad enough for the youth already.
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v. Thankful (76)
The head doctor of Toulon is like him, and that makes all the difference in Javert’s life.
Javert’s own parents never understood themselves; prison was the only way they knew to keep safe. But the doctor knows how to teach a confused adolescent how to handle the changes in his body and brain, the bitter herbal tinctures that will keep him stable and offer him a future.
“None of my children turned out like me -- like us,” he says one day. “You’re like the son I might have known.” And Javert has never been so proud to be cursed.
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To be continued.