Chapter Text
It’s two days before Valjean hears what the marshall has done, and a day more before he finds him.
It happens not long after the shootout in the ABC saloon: a two-day standoff that ends in blood, as things out here are wont to do. According to the single witness, who by chance had been conducting a business transaction with a lady of easy virtue by the empty cattle pens on the edge of town that night, the marshall had simply left his hat on the nearest fence post and set out from town in a straight line, dead west, into nothing.
That in itself might not be a fact worth noting, except for the fact that Marshall Javert has never once been seen without his hat. What with things in town having turned out as they did, and all those dead boys in the streets, it doesn’t take much scholarly thinking to puzzle out the marshall's destination. Valjean is in the saddle and riding west before he can even stop to ask himself why he’d want to go do a damn fool thing like saving the man who had promised to have him thrown back on the chain gang. He has a long day’s ride under a forge-fire sun during which to contemplate it, and he doesn’t have an answer, and he doesn't turn back.
A man can disappear into the cracked skin of the desert while making a concentrated effort not to. But Valjean is as skilled a tracker as any could have hoped to find, and his quarry had made no provisions for pursuit. It’s slow work, requiring him to constantly dismount to check the tracks, double back, find the trail again; he stumbles across the marshall’s duster, tossed over a scrub brush already bleaching in the sun. Valjean leaves it where it lies, like an empty skin, scraped clean.
By the time Valjean finds the man himself, Javert is scarcely recognizable. He's stripped to his shirtsleeves and trousers, his hair unbound and matted with dirt, his lips as cracked as the earth under his back, skin blistering under the constant force of the sun. Valjean slaps him around the face in an attempt to rouse him, to no avail; he lies like a man who’s quite made up his mind on the matter. But when Valjean pulls Javert's head into his lap and presses his waterskin to the man's parched lips, allowing a miniscule trickle to slip down his throat—then by reflex alone Javert swallows, and groans, and drinks like a man who has forgotten he wants to die.
For weeks after Valjean bears him back to the lonely homestead far from the town itself, Javert is gripped in the teeth of a fever so hot it feels like the desert itself has baked into his skin. Javert thrashes against the sheets like a man possessed, in rage and agony in equal parts; cursing life, cursing Valjean, cursing the God who had seen fit to create him.
During the worst of it Valjean holds him down, for Javert is no match of his superior strength; during the quieter moments Valjean sits by his bed and prays, or reads aloud from the weathered Bible he has carried with him on the long journey south from St. Louis, the cover as black and cracked as tar. For all Javert's fury against their Lord and Creator, the readings seem to calm him. Valjean coaxes broth and water down his throat, cleans him, cares for him in every way without shame or self-consciousness; and after two weeks the fever breaks, and Javert comes back to himself like a weary pilgrim, staggering home.
On the first day of Javert’s true lucidity, Valjean pads up to his bedside to retrieve the day’s used dishes to find the man’s eyes open and fixed on him, filled with the glint of a terrible light. It held a kind of madness, that look—for Javert had always been the sanest of men, and only a sane man could truly go mad.
"You should have let me die," Javert croaks. Valjean pauses only momentarily, a dirtied plate in hand. He does not raise his head.
"Didn't much see the use in that," he says at last, and Javert's laugh is a snarl.
"Use," he repeats, spitting the word out like it's poison. "There’s no use left in me."
Valjean stands, the tin cups and plates loaded back onto his tray. "We'll see."
The man who returns to the flesh, however, is not the same that left it. At times he snarls at Valjean like a wounded animal the moment the bedroom door opens, refuses all food and drink for days, throws his tin cup of water against the opposite wall and then lies sobbing in his sweat-stained sheets. Not one thing within that creature resembles the iron force of will and control that Javert had only ever embodied before.
Other times he disappears from himself entirely. He might lie still and motionless all day, provide no resistance when Valjean offers him food or water, his eyes dull and empty as a dead man's. Some days Javert reaches an equilibrium between these aspects of passion and dejection, too blunted to refuse the food and water Valjean presses on him but animated enough to feed himself. During those spells Valjean sits quietly at his bedside, and waits for him to eat his fill. He doesn’t read the Bible anymore—Javert will no longer abide it.
Valjean is not patient so much as he is resolute. He made his decision the moment he set off into the desert on the trail of a man who had wished no one to follow. It certainly would have been easier for them both had Valjean simply turned away and allowed him to destroy himself. But that had never truly been an option. Valjean has made his choice, though he does not fully understand it himself. Javert will live; Valjean will see to it.
There comes the day when, in the midst of his morning routine of sitting on his porch and watching the sun make its ponderous way past the horizon, Valjean looks up to see Javert standing silently in the open doorway, a blanket wrapped around his shoulders and his cheeks gaunt beneath his whiskers long in need of a trim. It is the first time Valjean has seen him out of bed in the weeks since he dragged him from the desert. Javert squints not at him but at the rising sun, looking for all the world as if he disapproves of its brightness. Only when the last fiery edge fully clears the edge of the land does Javert turn that scowl on Valjean.
“Is there water?” he says, his voice as dry and cracked as a bone, yet somehow managing petulance.
Valjean watches him for a moment, waiting for the wariness of prey before the predator to recall itself to him; and yet there is nothing left of the hunter in the man leaning haggardly in the doorframe now, and Valjean is not afraid; is not even nervous.
“Inside,” he says, not unkindly; and rises to follow Javert back into the house, and see the man back into bed.
Time passes. Javert's strength returns to him slowly, bolstered by regular meals and Valjean's insistence that he rest. Neither of them stop to question the unlikely roles they’ve fallen into. In truth it’s not so difficult; stripped of his duties, Javert has little choice but to fall into the routines of homestead life which already consume Valjean’s days.
At first he remains in the house while Valjean works the fields and cares for the livestock; then he begins to sit on the porch to watch, the heavy gaze on Valjean's bowed back soon forgotten beneath the relentless hammer of the sun and the necessity of the work before him. Then one day, a shadow falls over him as he kneels among the beds of hard bean plants, and he looks up to see Javert towering over him, an ugly scowl on his face and a spare hoe in his hand.
"I am not familiar with the proper use of this tool," he says; it's not a question, and certainly not an apology.
Valjean does not ask what interest Javert could possibly have in working the earth, for life has become so strange of late that to question it might bring the tenuous new shape of the world crashing down around his ears. So instead Valjean dusts his hands off on his pants, and rises to show Javert how to turn the soil.
Javert tires quickly; working only a quarter of the day before retreating, shamefaced and snapping, to the house; then a quarter of a day becomes a half, and as those days march on Valjean passes much of the day's chores with Javert at his side.
Though the man spends much more time in his company, he does not trouble himself to speak. He has never much been the loquacious type, even in that other life when Valjean was mayor and Javert his deputy; this is different. Javert has retreated within himself, not unlike the desert around them; hiding all its life far beneath the hard and inhospitable surface. Valjean has no intent to dig down beneath it.
*
It is some two months before Javert accompanies him into town. The first time Valjean feels a flicker of apprehension, leaving the man alone in the house; as a precaution, he hides his knives in the gap beneath the porch steps and takes all the ammunition of his hunting rifle with him, jingling in his knapsack like a false laugh. But there’s only so much he can do, if Javert is determined. Part of him still half-expects to return in the evening to find the bed empty, the door swinging open, and the winds already scattering the errant footprints in the dust. If Javert walked out to seek his death a second time, Valjean knows he would not follow.
But they need bread and cheese and meat, more frequently with two appetites to feed; and so Valjean goes, and when he returns he finds Javert sitting at the kitchen table, glaring at him like a surly child grown pettish after being left too long alone. He is utterly insufferable at dinner that night, finding fault with everything from the food to the hiss of the lamps; and yet he remains at the table even after they both finish their food, and it strikes Valjean that perhaps, after all these years, Javert has discovered the capacity for loneliness.
Yet it is some time after that when Javert first asks to accompany him on his forays into town; and he does it so churlishly that Valjean almost refuses. In the end, when the morning of their planned departure arrives, he ends up saying a few short words to Javert over breakfast about setting out within the hour; and Javert is ready, precisely on time, so they go.
"I can walk," Javert says when Valjean motions for him to climb into the saddle. They only have the one horse, a swayback mare who would travel no faster than a lazy trot even with a rabid lion on her heels.
"No, you cannot," Valjean responds placidly. "Certainly not the distance we need to travel; and before you decide to be stubborn, think of whether you want to ride into town in the saddle, or slung over it after you've collapsed halfway down the road."
Javert's face contorts, a lightning-flash of the old wolf-dog leaping onto his features; but then the expression curdles, and turns inward; he turns away.
"Very well," he said, and there was no more arguing the matter. They set off shortly afterward, Javert bobbing in the saddle and Valjean walking with his hand on the bridle, his hat pulled low over his eyes against the mid-morning sun.
"Why did you bring me back?"
Javert's voice is hoarse from disuse, as it often is these days; without stopping, Valjean cranes his head to squint up at Javert against the sun. He cannot make out the man's expression through the glare, but his question bears the tone of an accusation.
Valjean turns back to the road ahead. "Seemed a shame for a man like you to die a death like that.”
“A man like me.” Javert snorts. The sound is closer to a snarl. "It was the death I chose. You had no right to deny me of it.”
"If that’s how you’re decided to see it," Valjean says, already too wearied by Javert's caustic company to argue. "I’m not of a mind to start offering apologies. You can take up your grievances with God, when you meet Him in your own time.”
"You missed your calling as a preacher."
"Might be I would have followed that path, had I been spared the chain gang," Valjean says, his voice a sharp rebuke. The words seem to crystallize in the air before him like his breath on a Colorado winter; the skin of his hands frozen to the railroad ties, tearing free and leaving his palms bloodied; the bitter cold turning to boiling heat, and his body too hale to do him the courtesy of failing like so many others. It was not Javert that put him there, but there was a time when Javert would have gladly put him back.
It is under the weight of that memory that they walk in silence for the rest of their journey, and sure enough by the time they pass the town boundary Javert sways in the saddle, his neck hanging low with exhaustion from the mere burden of staying upright.
Valjean completes his business quickly, purchasing enough supplies to last them another month. Javert remains outside, his face disappearing into his collar, without even a hat to hide beneath; though somehow Valjean suspects there are none here who would recognize him without his distinctive coat, his sheriff's star gleaming on his lapel and his prodigious whiskers trimmed. Idly, Valjean wonders where the badge might have got to. Flung away in disgust into a scrap of sagebrush on Javert's long walk towards self-annihilation, no doubt. Left to rust, swallowed by the sands.
His final stop is at the post office. This task he reserves for last; and it is certainly true that the gnawing sense of unease which as the hour approached became the bite of true anxiety was assuaged the moment the clerk handed over a neat parcel of letters from Cosette. At once, the thought returned to him—of how simple it would be to buy a ticket, board a train, make the half-day's journey to to call upon his daughter and her new husband.
The impulse is swiftly quashed. In a way, it is a sort of selfishness—he has built this safety for his daughter with the same methodical attitude that he had used to lay railroad track. Cosette's happiness is a thing he has built, and he will not risk its destruction now that the final spike has been hammered into place.
He tucks the letters into his coat. He will make himself wait until reaching the homestead and read them at the kitchen table, where temptation and the train station are at least a few hour's ride away.
Javert is barely on his feet by the time they reach the homestead, but he refuses to be led back to his cot to rest.
"I'll not be put to bed like an ailing child," he snaps, all wounded pride and self-disgust where he leans on the doorframe for support; Valjean relents, but herds Javert away from the cooking hearth and ensures he's fully stationed in a chair at the table before turning back to prepare their meal. He can feel Javert's eyes on him as he sets the beans to cooking with their ration of salted pork and pale onions, a loaf of fresh bread left on the stones near the fire to warm. Valjean does not turn around to meet his gaze, for he knows by now that Javert will speak when he's good and ready, no sooner.
"Why are you here?"
Valjean looks up. Javert is where he left him, slumped low in his chair, his eyes hazy; if he is not sitting ramrod straight then he must truly feel unwell. Valjean stays silent, wiping his hands on a rag, and waits for Javert to elaborate.
"Your daughter is married," Javert says at last. His lip curls. "To that brainless nitwit of a lawyer, but God knows he has enough money to make up for his lack of sense. Enough money to keep you comfortably and near at hand. Hell, you’ve got money of your own—you could build a mansion next door. You can't tell me you don't want that."
"I don't.”
Javert's frown darkens. "Everything you could have ever hoped to achieve from raising that girl is within your grasp. Why turn away from it now?"
Anger flares in the pit of Valjean's stomach. He turns away to stir their meal, and reminds himself that the man before him is broken. "If you truly believe that my reasons for adopting Cosette were self-serving, I am not certain what else I can tell you."
Javert snorts; but not in derision. When Valjean glances back over his shoulder the man is glaring at the rough wood of the table top as if its whorls contain the answer to a puzzle he cannot solve. "For years I assumed that your blathering about debts and suffering children were a poor excuse. I suppose I've learned better now."
"Have you?" Valjean asks it from genuine curiosity, though there's a sharp note in his voice he knows Javert will not fail to notice. He doles out a portion for both of them and turns around to set the table. It is not until he has seated himself that he meets Javert's gaze once more.
"I have," Javert says, ignoring the bowl set before him. His eyes are fixed on Valjean with the furious intensity of the old marshall, and yet here in the darkness of Valjean's hovel with none but the low light of fire, there's something far wilder about him. Wilder, and far more brittle. "You are a good man. God damn you for it."
This last is spoken with a grief and a bitterness Valjean does not know how to assuage. So instead he lifts his spoon and nods towards Javert's plate, and says, "You should eat. It will get cold." For a while Javert sits quietly, his eyes lowered, nothing but the crackle of the hearth and the clink of Valjean's silverware in the air between them. After a time, Javert shakes his head and begins to eat.