Author's Note: This chapter has a few dedications. One is to my friends Yamx and Michelle for promising me cookies. The other is to Bramblefox for delighting me with no less than ten reviews today.

You know - I thought this would actually work as a oneshot! Um - I had intended to have this chapter cover a bit more of the story, but it extended itself and reached a natural cut-off point. 'shrugs'

Disclaimer: I do not own Les Miserables. Victor Hugo is the genius behind the work.

xxx

Valjean tried to keep a straight face. It would never do to let his jaw sag in complete and utter astonishment. Come on, keep that firm jawline – you can do it. This of all the practice you had while you were a mayor. Somehow, he managed to look directly into Fantine's eyes and not once glance towards the spot where Javert had been.

Once more he was struck by the change in her. He had seen her several times since his death, and the shock grew no less. In fact, the first time he had seen her she had been forced to tug his sleeve and say 'M'sieur Madeliene! Do you remember me?' before he had finally realized who she was.

In life – though Valjean did not like to admit it even in the very private recesses of his head – Fantine had been anything but attractive. When she had smiled at him from her sickbed, gaping holes had blinked where her front incisors should have been, gums swollen and streaming with sores. Her face had been thin and slack and puffy from too much cold, too little food, and too much bad liquor – and her hair was a short-cropped mass of straw. Not even Sister Semplice had been able to make it look nice. And she had tried. Valjean had wondered at the Sister's interest in such vanities until one day he had happened to hear Fantine murmuring in an unguarded moment of fever, 'And my hair – will it be pretty, Madame?'

The Fantine who had met him in the streets of Paris, the Fantine standing on Cosette's doorstep was a different creature altogether. She was dressed in an oddly modest white gown – and her hair was silken long, and very gold. When she smiled she showed all her teeth – a perfect row of ivory white that practically stunned upon first sight.

She smiled now, and Valjean blinked. "M'sieur Madeleine!"

He had tried to get her to call him Valjean. Javert always made his life hell when she didn't. It would be 'M'sieur Le Mayor' this and 'M'siuer Madeleine' that for the next few hours. Of course now it was a little easier to understand how Javert had known in the first place. "Good morning, Madame." They both knew she was not a Madame, but he would be damned to the depths of pernicious hell itself before he would call his daughter's mother 'Ma'mselle'.

"Where did he go?" she asked innocently.

"Who?" Brilliant answer, Valjean. Fantastic. A pretty face and your mendacious talents go out the metaphorical window. He twitched slightly. The uncomfortable sensation that someone was standing very close to him – someone with a long reach and a cold, hard grasp – washed over him and he shuddered. The stuff of old, old nightmares.

"M'sieur Inspector, of course." She seemed positive that he was nearby, and was actually peering around intently, as though convinced that he would pop out of the woodwork like some ghoulish sort of genie.

Where had he gone? Come to think of it, Valjean had never actually seen them together. What – was Javert avoiding the woman he had hounded just before her death? Conscience pointed out mildly that it wasn't quite proper to feel quite so smug about all this – but only very quietly. With Javert – it was best to take your smugness where you could.

Just as Valjean was tossing up whether to tell the technical truth and claim that he had no idea where the Inspector was – or tell the practical truth, which was that he was pretty damn sure that Javert was just behind him – there was a weird kind of flickering. It was as though the gas lamps had guttered on a dark street – except the whole world quavered with the reaction. Valjean felt oddly like a wick, and thought it an exceedingly silly sensation. He was not a picky man, but at the age he was – and dead to boot – one did have some standards.

When he had stopped seeing grey lights smudging over his vision, Javert was standing on the ceiling and looking very severe. His arms were folded tightly across his chest, and his lips were set into something that looked like a grimace. From this angle Valjean couldn't be sure of anything. Javert bowed with admirably grace to Fantine. "Madame. If you wouldn't mind putting me down?"

Perhaps it was the fuzzy lights still playing in his head, but Valjean felt it was the height of idiocy for Javert to blame this whole thing on Fantine. He was about to say so, when the lady in question giggled. There was hardly a better word to describe it. After living with Cosette for many years, Valjean was an expert on feminine laughs. He had heard them all, from the snigger to the chuckle.

"Of course, M. Javert. All you had to do was ask," she said, smiling prettily. Then – to Valjean's secret horror – she snapped her fingers at him. And Javert was no longer upside down.

He waited until he was back on the ground before repeating his bow. "Deeply obliged. Valjean – we must be going."

"Going?" The losing battle with his jawline was lost, Valjean was aware that his jaw was sagging with all the grace of Fauchelevant's old suspenders.

"We are in a hurry."

"We are?"

"We are."

"Are we?" Valjean became conscious of two things. One, he no longer seemed capable of conversation on any level beyond blind repetition. Two, Javert was glaring at him in what appeared to be a mix of desperation and exasperation.

Fantine bustled over to where Javert was standing, and Valjean winced. He half expected her to start a fight of some messy, unpleasant, and horribly humiliating kind. After all – before death her and the inspector's parting had not exactly been on the best of terms. There had been hard words on both sides. All right, mostly on one side. All right, only on one side.

Seeing as he was likely to be needed as a mediator, Valjean got to work on trying to make his jaw begin to work again. The pity of the matter was that he had made significant progress when Fantine pouted prettily and shot all his hard work to pieces.

She pouted, in fact, with the ease of someone who has had rather a lot of practice, and then began plucking at Javert's coat rather like a small bantam cleaning up the feathers of the rooster. "You men. Always busy and running about and where does it get you? It'll get you into a second grave is what it'll get you to."

"Madame…"

Javert, Valjean noticed dazedly, looked uncomfortable. No. No, that was not true. Compared to how Javert looked right now, Prometheus would have been completely at his ease with his eagle.

"Now, now." Fantine patted him in a decidedly motherly way. "I know how you are, M. Javert. You don't eat enough to feed a cat. And you don't sleep well either. Haven't I just seen you standing around on the street corners in the rain and cold? As though I don't know what bad that does to a person!" She straightened the collar of Javert's shirt, and he flinched. "Stop fussing."

"Madame." Javert's voice would have frozen the sun itself. Fantine just shrugged it off and turned her attention on Valjean.

"You will make sure he eats something, won't you, M. Madeliene?"

Valjean nodded.

"And keeps out of the chills?"

Valjean nodded. Javert groaned.

"And…"

Finally his voice returned to him. It had been out wandering hand in hand with his sanity. One day, Valjean thought hopefully, he would track them both down at one and the same time. "Madame, we really must be going. I believe Cosette is talking about baby names upstairs…"

Fantine's eyes lit up, and she smiled the dazzling smile again. "Of course. Au'voir!" One last little tweak at Javert's shirt – and Valjean thought he heard her mutter something about… 'layers' before Javert pulled away with the barest modicum of politeness, grabbed hold of his arm, and all but dragged him away. Valjean glanced back over his shoulder. Fantine was still standing outside the house and watching them go. Her hair was fluttering in the breeze, and she was smiling.

As he met her eyes – if he hadn't known better – he would have sworn that she winked.

CHAPTER FOUR

The Revolutionaries