Title: by candlelight
Fandom: Les Miserables
Rating: G
Length: 670
Content notes: AU of canonical suicide
Summary: Valjean worries for three.


It is a strange vigil he keeps, Valjean thinks as he sits by his own bedside. The room is dim; he has not yet risen to draw the curtains nor light the candles, though the sun had set some hours past. The night is cloudy and the faint moonlight that filters in is barely enough to see by. It reduces the apartment to a world of large shadows and pale streaks.

Valjean does not need much light to trace the features of the man in his bed. The doctor - for he has engaged the same one to look after both sick men - is as close-mouthed and grim about Javert's pneumonia-clogged lungs as he is about Pontmercy's raging fevers and Valjean worries about them both. He worries also for Cosette. He tries not to worry for himself; truthfully he has very little time left for that.

In this night Inspector Javert is gray-faced, his features blank and lax with drugged dreaming. If he does not look soft, neither is he the wolf Valjean has feared for so many years. Still, Valjean reminds himself strictly, he is not (was never, truthfully) Madeleine's tamed dog of years ago.

He must remember that. Standing, Valjean crosses to the mantel and lights the row of candles there. He lifts down one of the candlesticks and returns to the bed, setting it on the side table. Javert's eyelids are weighed down by the opium the doctor had provided against the pain; he does not wake. Valjean is thankful for that.

The candlelight chases the shadows away but Javert is still too gray for his liking. He cannot forget the sight of him poised on the Pont-au-Change, bareheaded under the cloudy sky. The rest of the night is a blur of sewage and blood, of death after death and Marius's heavy body and his own heavy duty.

But Valjean has never forgotten Javert, just as Javert has never failed in the hunt -

If he does not wake up, as the doctor occasionally implies without ever quite saying, he may never know what drove Javert from his doorstep to that bridge. In some way it might be a relief; Valjean is growing too old and too tired to run - Cosette is growing too old to drag along - and Javert may well be the last lawful man in France who remembers the jack of Toulon.

Valjean takes up the candlestick again, holding the heavy silver in his palms. Light and shadow flicker, chasing each other across Javert's face. He cannot bring himself to hope that Javert dies any more than he could have stood on the bank of the Seine and left him to the river's mercy. He is no Bishop, he, but after all these years there is that much of good in him, at least.

Wax pools slowly in the top of the candle; as he turns the candlestick between his fingers, lost in memories of the past, of dead men, it breaks its confines and drips free, rolling down the smooth side of the candle and then over the silver itself until it meets his fingertip. There is just enough heat left in the droplet to startle him out of nostalgia.

He cleans the wax off the silver gently and sets the broken bits atop the table. "This was the price of Valjean's soul," he tells Javert's sleeping form. He wonders if Javert knows; if the police in Digne had reported their actions on that long-ago night, if Javert had ever guessed at the truth. It is another thing he may never know.

When the wax threatens to spill again he sets the candle back on the sidetable and rests his elbows on his knees, clasping his hands together for lack of anything else to do with them. It feels like praying; it feels as if he should be praying. He is not sure of the words.

He hopes the cost of Javert's soul is something he is able to pay.