#jacau

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Happy Birthday Jacques Vallée, 80 Years Young Today - The Daily Grail

The wonderful Jacques Vallée celebrates his 80th birthday today! Jacques has been, and remains, one of the great thinkers on topics that inh

[editoress]

Jarvet adopts Cosette AU

My favorite---

When Cosette is about eight and first adopted, she’s afraid of everything. She ducks her head whenever she’s addressed and is constantly either apologizing or trying to be invisible.  By the time she’s ten, she’s the only person in France who is 100% unafraid of Javert.

Having a daughter really changed Javert’s absolutely black-and-white view of everything.  Not entirely, of course.  But children take to too-literal interpretations, and somehow after the hundredth time of explaining you can’t just say that or that’s not true in this circumstance, something has to give.

Javert saves up for months and months to get her a piano.  Cosette is overjoyed.  Her playing is more enthusiastic than technical, but it makes her happy.  She keeps asking for requests, which has forced Javert to know more songs since he didn’t previously do music like that.

Ledoux, one of the inspectors at the police station, has the bad luck of having two daughters a little older than Cosette.  This means that he’s the one Javert shows up to ask awkward questions of.

Cosette loves taking long walks around the city.  Javert’s job includes mostly walking around, but he still goes with her on his off time.  (Various people are immensely more helpful in his investigations now because they know he comes around with the lovely generous girl who tends to share whatever pastry she just bought.)

[editoress]

Adoption AU. Javert investigates Fantine's story, makes a satisfying arrest, and finds himself the guardian of a bright, spirited little girl. A series of drabbles of varying lengths.

@pugsarelub I finally put your favorite AU up on AO3~.

[editoress]

cosette beats up a boy for bein a jerk to her and javert should probably be mad but it's pretty hard to be mad at a proud grinning eight-year-old girl with scraped knuckles who stood up to a bully

She was entirely too proud of herself, this tiny girl who had so far been nothing but the most cooperative and obedient of children.  Cosette was so naturally reserved, too, that Javert had never thought to find her fighting.  He frowned tightly at her until her enthusiasm faded a bit, then turned to the boy in question.  “Can you walk?”

The boy sucked at his split lip and stood with a bounce that said he could.  “I didn’t do anything!” he began protesting immediately.  “I was just telling her the truth.”

Cosette’s hurt expression was telling.  “No doubt,” Javert noted in a dangerously even tone.  “Can you walk?”

The boy hesitated.  “Yes, monsieur.”

“Do so."  The inspector nodded toward the foyer of the station.

"Did he strike you first?” Javert asked.

“No, he didn’t.  But he was saying that—”

“Did he,” the inspector enunciated, “strike you first?”

Cosette’s shoulders fell a bit.  “No, Papa.”  She looked up at him with wide eyes.  “But he was being cruel.  I got the bad guy!”

The ‘just like you’ was unspoken but no less prominent for that.  Javert rubbed one brow wearily.  “Being cruel is not illegal, Cosette.”

The girl bowed her head.  “He said my mother was a… a whore.  And…”  But she trailed off.

Javert paused.  Then he crouched to reach her eye level.  “Your mother did work as a prostitute, Cosette.  You know that.  That is still not a reason.”  He leveled a gentle look at her.  “Hmm?  ‘And’?”

“And,” she continued quietly, “and he said I am no good either, and that you wouldn’t want to keep me.”

“You know that is not true.”

She blinked, and began to smile.  “Yes, Papa.”

The fact that his assurance made a difference, that she might have doubted at all, darkened his mood more than anything.  He would have to speak to that boy again—Chauvelin’s nephew, as he recalled.  Javert stood and guided Cosette forward with one hand on the back of her head.  His shift had ended, anyway.  “Let’s go home.”

“He should not have said those things,” Cosette declared, her confidence returned.  “Right?”

“He should not have,” the inspector agreed firmly.

“So it wasn’t that wrong to hit him?”

“Hmm,” said Javert, who found himself suspiciously biased on the matter.  This was precisely the sort of behavior that had gotten Fantine arrested—but then, Fantine had been a prostitute in Montreuil-sur-mer’s slums, not an obedient, pleasant girl with a surprising right hook.

He would figure it out.  For the moment, it was good enough that when they passed through the foyer, the boy leaned away from Cosette and did not say a single malicious word to her.

[editoress]

cosette scraped her knee and it weally hurt and now she's crying about it

“Will that be all, sir?” Ledoux asked dutifully.

Inspector Javert was in a curt mood today, and Ledoux had been careful not to ask too many questions.  This would be his last for the evening; the inspector was returning home with Cosette shortly, and would be back for an early shift tomorrow morning.  Javert shook his head.  “Just make sure that the patrol schedule is followed to the letter.  We don’t need any more—”

From across the station came the sound of a child wailing, high and miserable. 

The policeman followed cautiously at a walking pace.  The thundering footfalls of the inspector came to a halt, and the wailing softened to whimpers.  When Ledoux turned the corner, Javert had his daughter in both arms.  She was clutching the edge of her skirt to hold is just above a bloody knee.  Poor girl.  What Ledoux could see of her face was red and tear-streaked, but most of it was pressed into Javert’s coat.

“Medical supplies are in the same place, sir,” Ledoux offered quietly.  Then he went back to his desk, because it wasn’t really smart to be in the inspector’s way when his brows were quite that low.

He saw them on their way out, though he was unobtrusive about it.  Javert was still carrying Cosette, and she was still sniffling and wiping away tears.  “This is why I told you not to run through the station.”

“I’m sorry, Papa.”

“You won’t do it again, will you?”

“Not ever.”

“Does it feel any better, petite?”

“A little.”

“Let’s get you home.  It will heal soon.”

Ledoux returned to the patrol schedule and added this to the list of things he wouldn’t have believed two years ago.

[editoress]

JAVERT'S BIRTHDAY AND HE FORGOT BUT COSETTE DIDN'T

“No, Papa, don’t come in yet!”

Javert stood, ragged and sleep deprived, on his own chilly, rain-soaked front step, being refused entrance by a very earnest teenage girl.  “Cosette.  Now is not the time.”

“What’s not ready?” he thundered.

She was about to reply when an odd look crossed her face, and she started.  “Oh!”  She dashed away from the door.  “Oh, no!”

Javert took advantage of the distraction to stomp into the front hall.  Now that he was inside, he could smell something burning—and hear Cosette fretting over it.  Concern overrode the need to sit down, and he half-jogged to the kitchen.  “Cosette?”

Nothing was on fire, exactly.  Whatever Cosette was placing on the table certainly hadn’t fared well, though, and the entire room reeked of smoke.  “Sorry, Papa!” she exclaimed as she tried to put everything in order.  “I got one batch, but this one is…”  She wrinkled her nose at it.

Now that she said so, Javert noticed a plate of cookies on the table.  “What on earth is this?  Where is Madame Blanchet?”  He had hired a woman to take care of this sort of thing—well, specifically to take care of Cosette while he was away, though that was less necessary now that she was older.

Cosette offered up the plate of cookies that had survived.  “I wanted to bake them,” she informed him, “since they are for your birthday.”

Javert narrowed his eyes at the pastries.  “What?”

The girl sighed, fixing him with a patient expression that he had probably used on her more than once.  “Papa.  You didn’t forget?”

Damn.  It was his birthday.  The inspector rubbed wearily at his forehead.  “I—”

“Don’t worry,” Cosette assured him.  “You go sit down.  I have everything ready."  She followed him out of the kitchen with the cookies balanced on one hand and a tea tray on the other hip.

Javert had missed, forgotten, and worked through many birthdays in his time.  In fact, he could not be entirely sure that the day he used to mark his age actually was his birthday, as it had been a very long time since he had spoken to anyone who knew for certain.  And now, he thought as his daughter determinedly set up for a small celebration, he was never going to be allowed to miss one again.

[editoress]

CHRISTMASTIME WITH JAVERT AND COSETTE I DON'T THINK YOU'VE DONE THAT YET RIGHT

Cosette had been still for several minutes now, ever since the inspector had pulled the blasted thing from his coat pocket.  She was wide-eyed, and he could not tell whether it was from fear or awe.

“Open it,” he told her, sitting in his armchair.

“It’s yours,” he confirmed.  “It’s a present.”

She scooped it up and cradled it, looking it over with a new wonder.  “You wind it by turning the knob,” Javert explained.  He watched her turn it over.  The box looked large and heavy in her hands.  She ate as much as one could wish any nine-year-old girl to, and yet she was still so very small.

Cosette gasped when a light, clinking melody came out of the music box, cheeks warmed by childish joy.  Javert’s mouth tightened at the corners.  “Do you—”

Suddenly the girl’s arms were wrapped around his neck.  “Thank you, it’s beautiful, Papa, thank you.”

The inspector could not but smile as he put his hand on her back and said, “Merry Christmas, Cosette.”

[editoress]

I'm entirely addicted to the Javert-adopts-Cosette AU again.  And for some reason she's developed the habit of taking his things.

            “Cosette?” Javert called.  She was not one to make off with things, but he could think of nothing else that could have happened to his wool greatcoat.  He had gotten off his shift much later than expected, and his coat was not where he had left it.  “Cosette—”

            And there was his coat, on the chair.  Furthermore, there was a suspiciously Cosette-like shape within, and a few wisps of blonde hair stuck out the collar.  Javert could not bring himself to object.  It was the first time she had ever managed to fall asleep before making sure he got home.

[Several years later:]

            Eventually, even Javert was forced to admit that the wool greatcoat was beyond saving.  It had been worn to uselessness by his winters upon winters of work.  He had already purchased a new coat and set aside the old one to be disposed of.  However, now the coat rack held only the new purchase.  Javert silently considered the sight.  A soft scraping noise sounded behind him.  He waited for it to stop before saying, “Cosette, it has to go.”

            Sure enough, when he turned around, Cosette stood in the middle of the hall, standing as tall as her petite thirteen-year-old frame would allow.  She was almost entirely swallowed by his ragged old greatcoat, which dragged the floor.  “There’s no reason to get rid of it, Papa,” she said sagely.

[Eventually:]

            “My hat, please.”

            Cosette took the hat from the rack and promptly placed it on her own head, holding up the front of the brim to keep it from falling over her eyes.

            “My hat, petite.”

            She smiled winningly at him and allowed him to take it from her.  Javert frowned theatrically.  “What a disgrace for an inspector to have a thief for a daughter!”

            She only laughed.  “Goodbye, Papa!”