Chapter Text
Because he is a son of reprobates, he will be beyond reproach, and thus stake out his place in the world. It is simple science.
Someone with the right breeding could have weaknesses aplenty and still maintain face in society, but Javert likes to think that even if he had been the son of fine gentlepersons, he would nevertheless possess the same backbone, the same resolve, the same fortitude. And if these theoretical progenitors of repute lacked a moral code befitting their standing, he likes to think that he would deny them as well, and make his way on his own regardless.
He adjusts his stock and wishes that the Toulon barracks had a mirror in the dormitories. Usually all he needs is touch to ensure that his physical appearance is spot-on enough to intimidate the prisoners and other guards alike, but today is special. Today is his last day in a prison. He was born in a jail, but now he knows that he will not die in one, and he will look his best for the occasion. It is perhaps the first moment of vanity in his life.
Even though the ride to Montreuil-sur-Mer will be hours upon hours, well over a day’s time, his boots are polished, his belt oiled, his shirt and jacket pressed to precision. Everything is new but his drawers, and even those he nearly considered replacing. He cannot check his look, but he smiles to himself anyway, briefly; it is unfamiliar, uncomfortable, and turns into a grimace automatically within a few seconds, but anyone who saw Javert in this moment would be absolutely terrified to see this man in a cheerful mood.
There is a knock at the door, and he schools his face into neutrality just in time to not scare off the adjutant who will be replacing him.
“Yes?”
“Monsieur. They want to see you in the head office.”
Javert has scraped and clawed for every small promotion in his life, but he also knows he was born under a phenomenally unlucky star, and so for a moment a chill washes through his guts, so cold that he feels his balls retract. He is confident, though, that none of this shows on his face. “Thank you, Bissette. Do you happen to know why?”
The young man looks evasive, then raises his gaze to meet Javert’s. “Something about your mother, Monsieur.”
--
As it turns out, she is dying. She is in prison again, perhaps because she cannot give up the cards, and perhaps because she wanted to die with a roof over her head. Of course, the reason she speaks aloud is different.
“I knew they would finally bring you to me,” she says, brushing white, stringy hair out of her eyes. “I knew I could always find you here, boy.”
He doesn’t want to speak to her, but it is difficult not to respond to the woman who raised him before she left him behind at the orphanage. “This is the last time,” he says, and pauses, considering his words so he will not be overly descriptive. “I am leaving here.”
Madame Javert cackles. She was not always such a crone. “I know you are. And so am I, child. That’s why I’ve come to you. Maman is not such a fool that she would ask an officer if he would like his future read without expecting to end up here.”
Then why did you wind up here so many times before? He does not voice his thoughts aloud; he has asked her too many times before, and never received an answer that he liked.
But today, of all days, for her to catch him right before he is due to leave forever, and claim she knew it to be so -- perhaps every fortune-teller, like a broken clock, occasionally strikes true. “Make it fast, then. My coach departs in three hours.”
“Time enough, before you’re off to change the world,” says the hag who was near-beautiful the first time she entered prison walls, lifetimes ago. “I know you don’t think much of your mother, but I believe I did not raise you so poorly-”
“-you scarcely raised me at all-”
“-that you would deny any dying woman her last request, let alone the one who gave you life.”
Damn her, it is true; he feels his face twist in resignation. “Name your blood-price, woman.”
Her eyes light up, and she raises a clawed hand to her white mane once more, this time stroking it like a pet. “Do you remember when this was dark? Oh, I was beautiful once, with raven locks that captured the eye of a dashing blond pirate lord. He was no mere thief, your father, and I no mere damsel; he had virgins throwing themselves at his feet, but the dread captain Javert chose me, Sabine of the dark tresses and the pink scarves. I was his rose, before you and this damned place came along. I was the rose of the sea.”
It is not the first time hearing such ramblings, and by now he knows how little of the story is true. It is on the tip of his tongue to demand that if telling him fairy tales is her last request, it is time to hurry up and die already. She seems to read this upon his face, though, for she lies back on the prison infirmary bunk and regards her son deliberately. “I have called for you because I wish to die the rose.”
If he were the laughing sort, he would have burst out here, but his time as a Toulon guard has whittled the instinct from him. Still. “I am a lawman, not a hairdresser, and even the finest artists of Paris could not paint it black for you. You desire a wig? Get one yourself.”
She closes her eyes, her twisted features in soft repose, and for a moment one might almost believe that she was a princess of the high seas, and not the vagabond that she has always been. “Of course not. I haven’t the time left to have it fit my head, and although I am sure you have more gold than I, I have heard that you jailer pigs do not make enough to buy me one of the quality I would require. No, son. Just a scarf. Just a pink scarf, so that I might wrap this horrid spider’s nest in-” A hacking, spastic cough cuts off her words, but she has made her point.
Eventually, she opens her eyes, only to find that her son has closed his, and is rubbing the bridge of his nose. “A scarf. Pink.” He is thinking of the linen shops in town, thinking of where he recently bought a cravat in honor of his new post. He hates himself for thinking that a simple scarf probably wouldn’t cost so much, and would ease his newly-heavy heart for his upcoming trip.
“Pink like the dawn over the sea,” she adds; her voice is suddenly strong again, as though she knows that there is no choice in this matter. He sighs.
“I shall see what I can do... Mother,” he says, and she shows her broken-fencepost teeth in a sick, yellow joy.
--
Due to what the superiors term ‘family circumstances,’ Javert’s carriage is rescheduled for the next day at dawn, so he changes into older garb before going into town, glaring at the formerly-new outfit that now has some hours’ breaking in. Perhaps he might pick up another new -- ah, but he cannot afford it, especially since he has no idea how much his mother’s request may cost him. No, he will make do with slightly-used clothing and better-used underclothes tomorrow, and knows perfectly well that after the long ride to Montreuil-sur-Mer, it will not make much difference anyway; it was merely the thought that counted.
Once his mother is gone, he will have no family, and he thinks that no man before might ever have considered such a proposition a happy one. He bares his teeth in an expression that he considers gleeful. It resembles the woman’s from yesterday.
But he wipes the smile off his face with a large, impatient hand, rides into town, and accosts the first clothier’s with the sort of forthrightness that suits a future Inspector.
The tailor recognizes him. “Monsieur, I hope the articles that you purchased the other day suited your needs. If there is any problem, I would happy to fix them for you.”
Javert waves dismissively. “They are acceptable. If you should be so kind as to show me to your scarves -- no -- your women’s scarves.”
He does not care for the man’s ahh of understanding and knowing smile, but it is not worth correcting him; the misapprehensions of some clerk are not worth his breath. He allows himself to be led to the drawer of women’s scarves near the front of the store, fanned out in a rainbow of a peacock’s tail. He reaches out a single fingerprint and touches one with disdain, as though it were something rotting that might fall to pieces upon contact. It is soft, pleasant, and he feels his breath leave his body in a quiet rush. It reminds him just how coarse his own clothes are, including the new ones, and for a moment he is almost envious of the lamentable race that is womankind.
At first, he expects to choose the first one of any pink on the spectrum, but he finds himself flipping through the hues with a discerning eye, holding them against one another to find the most pleasing shade against his inner arm; he knows too well that he shares his mother’s skin tone. Eventually, he comes upon one that is a glowing, pale rose, patterned with a delicate floral pattern, lacy in places and silky in others. When he runs it along his skin, he hears himself breathe heavier.
“This will do,” he says. He is not sure what else to say.
“Very good. And for you, Monsieur?” says the clerk, thoughts of coin clearly flashing in his eyes, though the subject of compensation has yet to be broached. “For you, Monsieur, I will make a sale.” And it still costs more than anything he has ever purchased for himself. It will be his first and only gift to the woman who gave him the misery of life.
She will not receive it.
--
Javert sleeps in his old quarters in the guards’ barracks with the scarf curled in his hands. The town and the prison are not far apart, so he has not been gone long, but that damnable, belligerent woman had to go and pass on shortly after he left.
“We are so sorry to tell you, Monsieur...”
He wordlessly and deftly shifts away from the reassuring hand from the warden when he is told the news; there have never been tears within him, and he does not regret their absence now. His mother’s death is purely relief. One last charitable impulse crosses his mind, and he asks to tie the scarf to the corpse -- it is her property, after all -- but the body is already gone; the lower staff in the women’s prison, not knowing of her connection to one of their fellows, did not let the old vagabond hag’s remains cool before returning the self-styled rose back to the sea.
His first thought is to wrap the cloth around a stone and pitch it over the oceanside cliff as well, but that would be a waste of his hard-earned funds. He likewise considers returning it to the shop, but that would require having to explain himself, and besides, it was an honest purchase. It is not the storekeeper’s fault that Madame Javert made a fool of her son up until the very end. But he will not offer it to anyone else, either, as an act of generosity toward a higher-up’s wife or a colleague’s young daughter. He bought it; it is his.
Instead, he keeps it in his pocket until he sleeps, and when he does, he curls it between his fists as though it has angered him and needs punished. He is not sure why he does not keep it tucked in his belongings, but it felt right not letting it go.
That night, he dreams of the sea, his sleep as restless as the waves.
Fortunately, the fiacre is nearly as comfortable as his bed -- that is to say, not conducive to rest whatsoever, but he is used to it, and he spends much of the long, long trip in a doze. Somehow, the scarf escapes his pocket and wraps around his fists once more, but he does not think of why he possesses this item.
--
“Monsieur. Monsieur l’inspecteur. We are here, Monsieur.”
Javert blinks sleepily at the coachman and the unfamiliar term of address, rubs blearily at his eyes and down his whiskers. There is no way he can be there already, but apparently he is; he has crossed France from south to north in the shortest two days he has ever experienced. Perhaps it is the dearth of sleep, even though his time at Toulon was hardly restful.
“Thank you for your service,” he says absently to the man holding the door open; he is unused to being waited upon, to long-term travel in general. The air of this town is still salted with an ocean breeze, but it is a different sea, and a different smell.
He steps down from the carriage, trying not to stare at the hired man holding the door for him, while simultaneously trying to adapt his nostrils to the scent of Montreuil-sur-Mer. Though he served his time for his country before the prison he was born into welcomed him home, this was the most exotic place he’d ever been -- perhaps because it was his new home.
Lost in these thoughts, he misses the last step down.
The next thing he knows, the good inspector is sitting on his arse in the puddle of mud in which the fiacre has parked. In his still-drowsy state, for a moment he cannot parse what has happened, and is only aware of a sudden blunt pain and coldness in his rear end. Then the wetness seeps through his clothes, and he comes to his senses.
“Monsieur l’inspecteur, are you all right?”
He shoots a glare upward, but is not foolish enough to sink his hands into the mud to push himself up; he takes the proffered hand and allows the coachman to pull him to his feet. Fortunately, it is late at night, no one is on the street outside the police station, and, in the most blessed of circumstances, his jacket has flown upward, and will cover the stain long enough for him to make his introductions to any members of the police force who happen to be around. Thank God for small blessings.
Though he is not pleased to have lost face in front of the coachman, he will be on the move soon enough. Once he is back to his feet, the servant seems to know better than to ask again if Javert is all right, and wisely averts his gaze and bows.
He makes it into the station without further incident, is greeted warmly, given his new uniform, and shown to his rooms in a nearby apartment building. He makes sure he graciously allows the station secretary to lead the way, and never turns his back to the man, although he is fairly sure that no one will look at the muck that is now leaking down the backs of his boots.
Even though he has slept an indeterminable number of hours on the journey, he is too tired to tend to his clothing more than to pour a pitcher of water and dunk the trousers and drawers till the mud swirls away, then hang them outside on the balcony to dry. He sets out the uniform, then falls asleep the moment he reaches the simple bed that is essentially the only piece of furniture in the room.
In the morning he will be introduced to the mayor.
--
Javert awakens at dawn, well before the scheduled meeting time, and eyes his clothes with a mixture of trepidation and pride. It is the first time in years that he will be going to work in something besides an oversized and heavy blue overcoat, and he is impatient to put on the new uniform. But first -- he goes to the balcony window to retrieve the clothes he hung out the night before, as he very well cannot wear his officer’s garb without undergarments.
“...” He opens the curtains and stares outside, where the trousers wave gently in the breeze, politely waiting for him. It is a pity he does not need them.
What he does need, on the other hand, are far less well-behaved. Flapping fabric is wrapped around the flagpole attached below his window, but the flag has been taken down for the night: in its place, Javert's underclothes are threaded through and around the pointed rod, and he must lean out awkwardly to pull them off. Again, he must be thankful for his timing, as it would be entirely inappropriate and undignified for the new police inspector to be seen leaning out and grabbing his drawers off a building.
And he almost, almost has enough time to retrieve them safely, reaching through the iron bars of the balcony to gently pull them free, until he hears the first cries of the vendors of Montreuil-sur-Mer beginning to sell their wares. Usually, his nerves are as steady as the earth itself, but the strain of recent events and indignity heaped upon indignity have left him more fragile than usual, and with the first cry of a fishmonger, he jerks backward as though burned, and, with an audible rip, his drawers come with him.
He does not assess the damage until he goes inside and closes the windows behind him. Then, he pokes his fingers forlornly through the gaping hole that, were he to put the underclothes on, would create a fine frame for his genitals.
It is not even something that could be fixed with a needle and thread; there is definitely a good amount of cloth missing. It requires patchwork, just like the place in the back where he had a run-in with a heating stove some months back. He selected this pair for his trip because they were his newest and least-damaged, with the thought that he would stop by a clothier’s for a new set once he saw what was given to him as part of the police uniform, but now he can only regret that he took with him as little extra as possible.
He does not know the location of a clothing shop -- would not have time to wait for it to open if he did -- and he does not have the material for patchwork. And it would be altogether inappropriate to meet the mayor of the town without proper garments. He should have expected a mess like this; it is always the way for him.
His eyes dart around the room, and he considers briefly using a piece of the curtains or sheets as a patch, but the expense to replace them afterward is not worth contemplating. Perhaps a bit from what he was wearing en route? Again, those clothes are something he will need replaced if he uses them, and he cannot afford to do so. Surely, there must be something...
His eyes settle on his mother’s scarf, hanging on the hat rack.
It is beautiful; cutting it into patches would be a true tragedy, but it is the only expendable source of cloth in the room, and his drawers need closed.
Javert sighs, and goes into the other room to hunt for scissors, needle, and thread. At the very least, he thinks, he can replace the old patch as well, so that the colors are consistent. And the waistband is a bit frayed, and could use some further fortification too. Well. In for a sou, in for a franc. It is not as though anyone will see this shame.
He does his best not to think of his mother as he begins to slice the delicate cloth, but only mostly succeeds.