The prompter requested a story that was more of a fix-it and less of a realistic portrayal of PTSD. I think I wound up somewhere in the middle.

I spent a lot of time reading about suicide, moral injury and acute stress reaction when developing this story. I also listened to the Rush song "The Pass" and inordinate number of times while writing (and, of course, Javert at the Barricade and Javert's Suicide, in as many different recordings as I could find.)

"Honestly! This is ridiculous!" Javert crumpled the sheet of paper in his fist and flung himself back in the desk chair.

Valjean, who was sitting in a worn armchair across the room from the equally worn desk, looked up at Javert. They were in the comfortable, if somewhat shabby, sitting room of Rue de l'Homme-Armé. Two large east-facing windows stood open and allowed a bit of a breeze to stir the curtains. Despite the breeze, it was hot.

Javert glared at Valjean as Valjean just looked quietly back, saying nothing. Damn the man! How could he be so calm all the time? So distant. No, not distant, Javert corrected himself. If anything, that was the worst part. Valjean was so present. There was no escape.

With a wry smile, Valjean folded the newspaper and leaned forward. "It is highly unlikely to be ridiculous, Javert." Valjean's eyes took on a distant cast for a moment before he focused back on the other man. "Just try it," he said encouragingly. "Please."

Javert looked at, really looked at, Valjean: the crown of white hair, the trimmed beard, the deep lines around his eyes. Over the decades he had known Jean Valjean, Valjean's hair had changed from brown to grey to white and the lines on his face had deepened. If he looked hard enough, he could still see the shape of the shorn, long bearded brute whom he had first met in Toulon and the gentleman who had become mayor. The lines of anger had softened, overwritten by laughter. The fear was still there, though when it flashed at Javert, the shame he felt now made him turn away instead of filling him with the fierce joy of conquest he would have once felt. There was worry there, too, when Valjean looked at Cosette. Other times, Valjean would close his eyes, perhaps in prayer, and the quiet peace that Javert saw there filled him with envy. That face tormented him with its contradictions.

Like Javert, Valjean had shed his waistcoat and cravat as concessions to the heat. Valjean's shirt was unbuttoned from the neck and his shirt sleeves were folded up. In an hour, when Cossette and Toussaint would be back from the market, it occurred to him that Valjean would unroll his sleeves down over his wrists and button his collar, covering the scars that his past had left. Javert shook his head, recalling two or three occasions when he had watched him adjusting his shirt when Cosette arrived. He wondered why he had not made that connection before.

Valjean's face had grown familiar to him over the years, but over the last week that familiarity had taken on a new texture, a texture Javert could not yet describe. At night, he woke to that face when the nightmares became overwhelming. Valjean, would be sitting on the edge of his bed, gently shaking his shoulder. The serious, concerned face would drag him back from the tortured dreams that had haunted him since the barricade. At meal times, he would sit in his place, across from that face, silently toying with his food while Valjean and Cosette conversed. In the midst of the conversation, Valjean's eyes would lock on his with reproach. Pinned by the gaze, Javert would tear his eyes away and take a reluctant bite of the meal.

Suddenly defeated as he remembered Valjean's look of reproach, he pulled himself from his musing and turned back to the desk, breaking eye contact with Valjean. "This helped you?" he asked.

Out of the corner of his eye, he saw Valjean nod, patiently answering the question that Javert had asked him at least four times already. "It still does," he replied softly.

Javert looked sharply back at Valjean, a knot of horror forming in his stomach. Still! Dear God. Would this be the shape of the rest of his life? Resolutely, he took another blank sheet of paper from the stack. "Fine," he said. "I will try again."

Javert had almost no idea how he came to be sitting here, under Jean Valjean's roof, sharing his table like he was a member of his family. A week and a half ago he had gone to the barricade. He remembered being recognized and bound, challenging the insurgents to just shoot him and be done with it. He remembered seeing Valjean at the barricade, but not how he came to leave. He remembered Valjean emerging from the sewer and the carriage ride with the injured boy. After that, there was nothing until he woke here, two days after the barricades fell, in Jean Valjean's guest room.

Valjean had told him his part in the story – freeing Javert at the barricade, Javert disappearing from outside his house and in the grip of exhaustion Valjean not thinking when he went out to search for Javert, arriving at Pont au Change in time to see Javert falling into the water, pulling him out and bringing him to his home. Yes, Javert had heard the story a couple of times now, but except for flashes, disconnected images, and the nightly demons that chased him through his sleep, the story Valjean told might have been of someone else. Not him. Not Javert.

He remembered that first morning when he woke in the guest room to see Valjean reading a newspaper in a chair across the room. He tried to leap to his feet, to shout, "You!" but his legs refused to support him and he had toppled back into the bed, blanketed by pain. Every part of him screamed as he looked at Valjean, his vision wavering and distorted. Where am I?, he asked himself as he blacked out.

The next two days he spent in bed, wracked by fits of coughing and a fever that came and went. Valjean and Cosette wandered into and out of his vision. He closed his eyes and tried not to think, but thoughts drifted to his mind, encapsulated in bubbles where he could not touch them. This man was a convict. Yes, that was true. Convicts can not change. Yes. It was his duty to arrest this man. Yes.

No.

He did not know where this thought came from, but he knew it to be true.

Once he was strong enough to be up out of bed, he had moved about in a daze, speaking little, eating only when pressed. He felt he was a ghost, a specter in Valjean's house. Though hardly prone to such flights of fancy, more than once Javert considered the possibility that he might really be dead. Activity whirled around him. The girl Cosette was all a-flutter about a boy, Marius. The boy had been injured at the barricades. "Marius," Javert mused. "I once knew a boy named Marius." It was easy for Javert to fade into the background amidst the comings and goings, to sit on the bed for hours, looking at nothing, feeling nothing, thinking nothing.

Leaving this place had not actually occurred to him until yesterday, when it came to him that he wanted a drink. Not the customary wine with dinner, or the gentlemanly nightcap he accepted when Valjean offered it to him each night. No, he wanted to really drink until he had had so much there would be no dreams in his sleep, until he remembered nothing of barricades and convicts and duty. He got dressed to go and then realized he had no money. Frustrated, he had collapsed in that chair, that chair that Valjean was now sitting in, and his eyes had alighted on the nearly full bottle of cognac on the sideboard.

He had woken with a blinding headache, feeling utterly exhausted. His boots had been pulled off but he was otherwise dressed, lying on top of the covers of the bed. With a groan, he sat up and put his head in his hands. His stomach gurgled menacingly. God, he had not felt this awful since…since...since…well, since that night back in Toulon when he had gotten promoted and some of the other young guards had taken him out to celebrate. He had wound up matching drinks with an arms-man from one of the ships in port. Young and stupid, it was weeks before he lived that night down. He had not been drunk since. Snuff, in tiny quantities, only sometimes, was what he allowed himself. Snuff, he told himself, does not let you forget. Rubbing his temples with his fingertips, it occurred to him, he did not consort with criminals either. What was wrong with him? What was he doing here?

By lunch-time the headache had faded and his stomach had settled down. They sat together. This time, Javert remembered to wait while Valjean said a quiet blessing. They shared a platter of sliced meats and cheese, which is to say Javert had a single slice of each on his place that he was poking at and worrying with his fork, while Valjean steadily worked his way through a respectable serving. While eating, Valjean suggested he try writing about the barricade. Javert scoffed at the idea. However, his ability to resist had worn thin. He did not recognize himself, anymore. He was beginning to wonder if the man distantly remembered had just been a dream. When Valjean suggested it a second time an hour later, he agreed to try.

Javert set the pen down and sat back in the chair. He clenched and unclenched his ink-stained hand, working the kinks out. As he did so, he watched his hand trembling slightly in exhaustion. The illness of the last week had taken its toll on his stamina. Judging from the shadows and the creak of his joints, he had been writing for a long time.

Reports, duty logs, he usually hated writing. He struggled for words to precisely explain the circumstances. This had been different. Once he had started, the words had come pouring out of him. He stared blankly at the pages he had filled with his cramped, precise writing, wondering what they contained.

There was a noise and he looked over to see Valjean set a book down. "Are you done?"

Javert looked back at the pages, feeling curiously empty and relaxed. It was a pleasant feeling after the days where his insides had been twisted in knots. Not looking at Valjean, he nodded.

"There is a flint and steel in the drawer, and a dish to catch the ashes."

Javert lit the candle and took the dish out. It was a chipped bowl of the same pattern as the dinner-ware. Valjean walked over and put a hand lightly on Javert's shoulder. Javert looked up. Valjean spoke softly. "I usually say a bit of a prayer as I watch the papers burn. It can be…hard. Do you want me to leave?"

Curiously, Javert found he did not. He shook his head as he touched the first page to the flames. He watched in fascination as the flames took hold and engulfed the paper, holding onto it until the flames licked at his fingers. It was strangely mesmerizing as the paper changed from substantial and white to having great black blotches consume it, the writing disappearing as the ink faded into the black. Finally then, words consumed, the black turned to back white, now an insubstantial feathery ash. When he could hold it no longer, he dropped the flaming remnant into the bowl as the fire consumed the last traces.

When all of the pages were gone, he sat, staring at the bowl of soot for a long moment. His stomach growled. It came to him, that for the first time since he had come here, he was hungry. With an emotion very like wonder, he looked up at Valjean and said, "Thank you."

Valjean put his hand on Javert's shoulder again and met his gaze. For a moment, they shared that connection. Then, Valjean smiled. "Let's see if Toussaint has dinner ready, shall we?"