melannen: Commander Valentine of Alpha Squad Seven, a red-haired female Nick Fury in space, smoking contemplatively (Default)
melannen ([personal profile] melannen) wrote2013-02-27 04:04 pm

Five Les Mis Fusions I don't Know Canon Well Enough To Write More Of (Thankfully) (1/5)

Things wrangling Les Mis fandom makes you do: start wondering really desperately which other fandom you've been in in which bread!sex was a thing. (I know there must have been one! I wouldn't have images this vivid in my head if there wasn't! Possibly it was actually in canon, in fact! But where??)

Anyway, I just saw Javert/Valjean Sentinel/Guide tags come through! So YAY I am not the only one wanting this! I haven't looked at the tags yet, but por encourager les otres (to quote Sergeant Colon) I thought I'd post Part One of this series that I am almost finished playing with. :p (And then go see what's in the one on the AO3).



Every morning before dawn, Inspector Javert woke in his room in the town of Montreuil-sur-mer. It was a plain room, severely so, beyond what his poverty might excuse - all of the few furnishings simple in shape and texture, the colors limited to dull greys and browns; the only concession to comfort was the smooth linen of his bedding.

He lit a single candle, by the dim light of which he washed carefully in lukewarm water, dressed in his aged clothes and boots, tidy but worn now to a delicate softness, and shaped by time to the exact contours of his body, breakfasted on a tasteless, textureless, room-temperature porridge; and stepped out onto the streets of the town to begin a day's work enforcing the peace.

Javert kept every day to this strict routine, so that one could predict, at any moment, where he might be and what he would be doing. One might think that such clockwork regularity would be difficult for a man with such a fundamentally chaotic profession, but Javert had an uncanny manner of simply arranging matters so that he would appear where he was needed, and for events to work out around him with such precision that he might have foretold them.

It was not foretelling, no more that his mother's had been; merely observation, well-used. From the street he could hear the unwonted silence in a third-floor room, and know that in the evening the man of the household would be drunk and angry. He could smell the slurry in an alley and know that the baby in the garret was ill again, and its mother would be walking the streets to earn money for medicines. He could see a young pick-pocket plying his trade six blocks down the street, and track his twisting escape through the town merely by the sound of his foot-falls, to suddenly appear before him, just when he thought himself free. He could tell from the smell of the powder and the sound of the hammer that a gun would misfire on the next shot. He could feel the temper of the town through the thin soles of his boots.

Every morning at the same time, he would pass by the mayor on his way to his business; they would offer polite greetings to one another as they passed, and Javert would hear Monsieur le maire's heartbeat speed suddenly, though he remained outwardly serene. Perhaps Javert's heartbeat sped as well, but he could not hear it over the sound of the other's. This sound stayed with him throughout the day: whenever he began to lose himself, in the smells of the rookeries, the noise of the factories, the tumultuous motion and riotous color of a town, he had only to listen to that heartbeat, as steady and calm and ever-present as the stars in the darkness, and be brought back to himself and his purpose.

He did not think, 'No normal man could discern one heartbeat alone among those of all the people in this town, no matter the distance, no matter the distractions.' He did not think, 'Were it not for Monsieur Madeleine, and the focus he gives me, I could not fulfill my duties here: I would be ill and dreaming in my rooms, as I was before I was posted here to Montreiul-sur-mer for the quiet and the sea air.' He did not think these things, for of course, none of them were true.

Instead, he thought, 'I have heard that same heartbeat before, the strength and power of it churning through those veins; I heard it in Toulon, running through my sleep and my waking; for years in my youth I thought it was the sound of the sea, until a certain convict was paroled, and he took my peace with him as he took his undeserved freedom when he ran. There cannot be two men with that heartbeat. But M. Madeleine cannot cannot be that brutish man, for there is nothing else they share; and yet he must be. I have no proof; no court will take the sound of a heartbeat as proof. And so I must remain vigilant; I must stay near him, in the service of justice; whenever I feel myself wavering, I must turn all of my senses to him, and be steadfast again.'

M. Madeleine did not think any of these things, for he was in some ways a much simpler soul. He thought only that each morning, as he greeted the Inspector, the one man who might denounce him and be believed, that despite the rush of old fear he felt at his presence, he felt also that he was safe with this man: that so long as Inspector Javert kept watch upon his town, so long as each morning they passed each other in the street and spoke their polite hellos, so long as there was one man who knew his soul in all its parts and that man was Javert, then all would be well with them.

(Some decades in the future, in distant Paris, a young man by the name of Combeferre would begin studying under the eminent natural historian Maturin, compiling newly-rediscovered myths of the savages of Asia and America and the dark continent, finding to match it half-forgotten folklore of his own people, and begin to understand, and experiment with, certain paths of knowledge that had been long forgotten in the civilized West, and down them guide a dear friend of his to a greater destiny: but for Javert and Valjean, such knowledge was too late and too little. They had only a greeting in the street, and a heartbeat in the night, to go on with.)



This wins the award for One I Most Wish There Was a Bunch More Of! C'mon, Javert's a Sentinel, Silent and Sure! And somebody really really needs to write the one where Combeferre's the Guide of the Amis! It's practically canon.
ellen_fremedon: overlapping pages from Beowulf manuscript, one with a large rubric, on a maroon ground (Default)

[personal profile] ellen_fremedon 2013-02-27 09:33 pm (UTC)(link)
*frantic keymashing*

I have never wanted a Sentinel AU like I have wanted this one.

(Actually, I'm not sure I've ever really wanted a Sentinel AU, period, though sometimes I have been pleasantly surprised to by them. But this one, HOLY CRAP YES.)
lannamichaels: "Be serious." "I am wild." (be serious)

[personal profile] lannamichaels 2013-02-28 12:24 am (UTC)(link)
*steals your shame*
*walks away, whistling innocently*
*munches on it like breadporn*

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sylleptic: From Les Mis, describing Enjolras:  "capable of being terrible", Gothic font on crumpled-paper background (fandom; Les Mis; Enjolras capable)

[personal profile] sylleptic 2013-02-27 11:05 pm (UTC)(link)
WANT. The pistol misfiring! Valjean/Madeleine's heartbeat! Combeferre. It is entirely canon. (But which dear friend does he guide?)

I, too, am usually lukewarm about Sentinel AUs, but this one (these two?) are so perfect. Someone Must Write This.
sylleptic: From Les Mis, describing Enjolras:  "capable of being terrible", Gothic font on crumpled-paper background (fandom; Les Mis; Enjolras capable)

[personal profile] sylleptic 2013-02-28 03:12 am (UTC)(link)
Yes! Wow, I never thought about it that way, but that's completely right.

ALL OF THEM is a good answer! I just worry poor Combeferre would be exhausted trying to Guide all his friends by himself. On the other hand, I suppose he manages it in canon....

Musichetta! ♥ Of course it is!
sophia_sol: photo of a 19th century ivory carving of a fat bird (Default)

[personal profile] sophia_sol 2013-02-27 11:36 pm (UTC)(link)
OH NO HOW IS THIS SO AMAZING
marginaliana: Barry Shitpeas being interviewed - caption: "Barry Shitpeas, thing discusser" (Barry Shitpeas - thing discusser)

[personal profile] marginaliana 2013-02-27 11:57 pm (UTC)(link)
Re: bread!sex - you were in Charlie Brooker fandom, that's where you got that. Remember when he had sex with a loaf of bread on Screenwipe that one time?
carmarthen: a baaaaaby plesiosaur (Default)

[personal profile] carmarthen 2013-02-28 01:31 am (UTC)(link)
(The bread stories are not platonic. At ALL. EVER. Well, except that one where Cosette feeds Valjean's beloved bread to the ducks. They also require a certain amount of suspension of disbelief as to the structural integrity and textural properties of baguettes.)

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marginaliana: Barry Shitpeas being interviewed - caption: "Barry Shitpeas, thing discusser" (Barry Shitpeas - thing discusser)

[personal profile] marginaliana 2013-02-28 01:02 pm (UTC)(link)
The next time someone talks about giving up bread for carb reasons, I'm going to be thinking of this conversation. Don't say bread never did any good in the world!

(The new 'wipe series is pretty good, IMHO. I like that it's not limited to just TV.)
lannamichaels: "Combeferre affirmed nothing, not even miracles; denied nothing, not even ghosts (combeferre)

[personal profile] lannamichaels 2013-02-28 12:22 am (UTC)(link)
This wins the award for One I Most Wish There Was a Bunch More Of! C'mon, Javert's a Sentinel, Silent and Sure! And somebody really really needs to write the one where Combeferre's the Guide of the Amis! It's practically canon.

The only things I know about Sentinel are through fannish osmosis, but I could not want this fic harder than I do right now. HE IS THE GUIDE.
carmarthen: a baaaaaby plesiosaur (Default)

[personal profile] carmarthen 2013-02-28 01:30 am (UTC)(link)
*whimpers* OH GOD I DON'T EVEN KNOW SENTINEL BUT I WANT MORE.
carmarthen: a baaaaaby plesiosaur (Default)

[personal profile] carmarthen 2013-02-28 05:11 am (UTC)(link)
I WOULD READ EITHER, although because I am a sap I would probably prefer B. But A would be easier to write. And SAD.

(Also, this totally stands alone and you could post it to AO3, cough cough.)

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petra: Barbara Gordon smiling knowingly (Les Miserables - Enjolras)

[personal profile] petra 2013-02-28 02:11 am (UTC)(link)
This warms the very cockles of my heart.
sineala: Detail of The Unicorn in Captivity, from The Hunt of the Unicorn Tapestry (Default)

[personal profile] sineala 2013-03-01 05:45 pm (UTC)(link)
Just letting you know I would totally read more of this, and I didn't even know I cared about TS AUs! :)

(Anonymous) 2013-03-05 02:50 pm (UTC)(link)
I love the Sentinel/GUide dynamic for those two. I wish more people wrote it!!!