"Hi there. Sorry to keep you." The young lady in black appeared as suddenly as a shadow when a light is clicked on in a room. Both Javert and Valjean felt, in her presence, the sensation of being in the company of an old,long-missed friend. The manner of her dress was almost identical to Javert's own uniform, save an umbrella tucked beneath her arm in place of a cudgel. A silver ankh hung from the velvet bow at her neck; the waistcoat and trousers did not conceal the girl's femininity, and furthermore were very becoming on her. Beneath her gaze, Javert's shock subsided into sighing resignation-- perhaps the presence of the convict that had tormented his final hours was more than appropriate-- fitting, quite. Valjean sat up, staring at her.
His presence seemed to take the girl by surprise.
"Oh, there are two of you?" She blinked and wrinkled her nose. "You're dreaming aren't you?"
"Cosette?" asked Valjean dubiously hopeful. The girl smiled beatifically, which put both men in mind of Michaelangelo's Pieta sculpture-- had the Virgin black spiky hair-- surely she would have looked thus!
"No, not Cossette. You know me, Monsieur Le Maire."
"Is he..." Valjean's question had brought Javert's attention back to him, "are you also, dead?" He addressed Valjean in the formal, without knowing it.
"Of course." Said la mamselle dans-noire. Valjean gave no sign that he had even heard Javert-- but seemed to shrink with weary relief.
"Then finally..."
"Of course." repeated mamselle. "Umm... If you'll excuse me for just a minute..." She broke off, smiling all the wider at Javert. "I really like your hat." She said, reaching up gently to touch the brim of the late inspector's topper. She then retreated a pace or two away, to consult, it seemed, with the talisman around her neck. So Javert and Jean Valjean had a moment to themselves.
"So..." This time it was Valjean who broke the silence, staring up at the shade of his former shadow.
"So..." Replied Javert, at as much of a loss.
There was far too much to say, and there was nothing to say at all. From a far-off distance, someone was singing in a merry and lilting voice, "Je tombe au terre; c'est le faute au Voltaire... Little People are tough, and they're tougher to scare..."
Someone else was singing farther off in a voice bursting with seraphic, righteous fury-- it was the owner of the hateful glare that had accosted Javert earlier.
It struck him who the owner of that wrathful voice was-- that Student with the face of an angel-- the revolutionary Enjolras, who had taken him prisoner and given him water. Jean Valjean regarded Javert's contemplation with an interest suspiciously like concern.
"He reminded me a bit of you, under different..."
"...Circumstances." Javert finished Valjean's thought, which had not been too far from his own. He had been considering that he might have had a son like that Spartan prince; that bold Lucifer blazing in the dawn or sunset of Jovian France. Had it not required women to make sons, that is.
"For some, no respite, even here." He thought out loud. Another voice, sweet and sad, floated to them across the other voices, singing,
"I dreamed a dream in time gone by...." Valjean struggled to stand at the sound. This time, knowing full well what he was doing, Javert offered Valjean a hand, which the latter took to pull himself to his feet. the black-clad mamselle, (whom Javert, too, had recognized as Death- and we shall call Mlle. La Morte) having finished her conversation with the talisman, rejoined them.
"It seems," she said pleasantly, with an air of mischief, "that the two of you've got a choice."
"Choice?" Echoed Valjean.
"Yup." She wrinkled her nose and leaned on her umbrella, "You were dreaming when you died. So it's my brother, or me. He'll be here soon."
"Your brother?" Wondered Javert aloud. "What is your brother, Madmoiselle?"
"The King of Dreams, Monsieur L'inspector." replied Mlle. La Morte cutely. Valjean was put in mind once again of his Cossette as a little girl, and trembled a little. Javert was reminded more of the voice had heard earlier; he placed it now as belonging to the little wretched girl-- her father had been the repulsive Thenardier/Jondrette/So-and-so le Crook. She too, then. Ah yes, he had seen her corpse at the barricades... the little beast. He looked guiltily at the mamselle La Morte, afraid that she could detect his thought. Her serene face seemed simply all the more tranquil and kind. If anything, she made him think of the Thenardier brat as, perhaps, lovely... Any continuance of that vein was interrupted by the sudden arrival of a rather tall man, clad in white, bearing on his shoulder a white raven. Stars danced in his head from eye-pits as black as one had thought that the living inspector's soul might be. Death embraced the newcomer warmly, and, one arm around his neck, indicated the two little ghosts with the other hand.
"Monsieur Javert, Monsieur Valjean, meet my brother. Dream, voici les bonhommes mortes, Monsieurs Valjean et Javert." the alabaster apparition bowed deeply, and, in a voice that seemed carved of the very fog itself, said to them,
"I am... pleased to make your acquaintance. I was wondering if you might not wish to come and work for me."