Superstitions by AmZ. Bigrenaille fidgeted on his chair. His handcuffed hands were growing numb, and he had a terrible itch right under his nose. It was still covered in soot and dirt, and it itched something dreadful. Unfortunately, he was strictly forbidden to move during his brief visitation to the Inspector's office. Any motion whatsoever, they said, would be considered an attempt to escape. Moreover, he couldn't even rub his face on his shirt without being noticed, because he was sitting right in front of the sharpest pair of eyes in Paris. And if that weren't enough, there was also a pimply sergeant at the door... Bigrenaille let out a slight groan; the itching was getting to be unbearable. Inspector Javert, who was sitting across from his prisoner and filling out paperwork, heard the groan and sighed in exasperation. "Yes," he said, and lowered his eyes to the papers again. Bigrenaille stuck his head out forward a bit: "Pardon, monsieur?" Javert aimed a cold, vacant gaze at Bigrenaille, opened his thin-lipped mouth, and enunciated, as if addressing an imbecile or a tot: "Yes, you may scratch your nose." Bigrenaille's heart palpitated with terror, but he promptly took advantage of his captor's consideration, and rubbed his face in his shirt collar, hard. It felt heavenly. After he was done, Bigrenaille relaxed in the chair, as far as his handcuffs would allow, and gazed at Javert with a mix of admiration and terror. He always felt strange around the Inspector, as if the man was no mere mortal, but only assumed the shape temporarily. And it was also entirely unclear whether Javert was a messenger from the Holy One or the Prince of Lies. For all his goody-goody conduct, there was something sinister about him. Javert felt Bigrenaille's stare, and looked up from the papers once again. The prisoner tried to hold his own against Javert's notorious icy glare, but failed, and bashfully directed his gaze downward. Javert sighed. "The Emperor of fiends, indeed," he thought bitterly, remembering what Bigrenaille called him only an hour ago. "Well, at least he is afraid of me. Better a frightened prisoner than an insolent one." Bigrenaille, who was contemplating something ever since the arrest, finally resolved to venture a question. "After all," he rationalized to himself, "he can't bloody well give me additional time in the coup because I asked him a simple question, can he? And besides, all the boys will be awfully curious to know if it's true." To make himself bolder, Bigrenaille coughed a little. "Ugh, Monsieur Javert? Could I possibly ask you something... sir?" Javert was getting positively irritated at his restless captive. He threw down his inked up pen and assumed a mockingly attentive pose, folding his arms neatly on the desk. "Well, Bigrenaille, what do you wish to know? Hum? I'm feeling generous: ask what you will before I throw you out." Now somewhat more confident, Bigrenaille turned his head to glimpse at the sergeant, then took a deep breath and whispered, leaning with an eager air forwards towards the seated man: "Monsieur Javert, is it true that you can... you know...s-s... " Bigrenaille began to stammer from excitement and fear. "That you can s- see..." Javert's right eyebrow floated lazily upwards. "Is it true that I can see? Why, yes, I can confess to that ability. Is that all?" Bigrenaille shook his head vigorously and licked his cracked lips. This was far more difficult than he imagined. "Is it true that you can see... into the future?" finally squeezed out Bigrenaille and held his breath, trembling slightly. Javert's gaze instantly darkened from amused to sullen. Bigrenaille's query felt like a vicious slap. Javert rose from his desk, strode up to Bigrenaille's chair until he stood just behind his back, and bent down low, so that his mouth was right against the prisoner's ear: "I do not tolerate insults well, Bigrenaille," murmured Javert in a voice so low and menacing that it sent waves of nausea through Bigrenaille's stomach. "I would ask you not to forget yourself. My complexion may be darker than yours, but it does not diminish my authority. I could, if I wanted, give you such a thrashing, that your puny brain would lose all of its preconceived notions about the abilities of my race." Bigrenaille was panicking. "Oh Monsieur, I m-meant no insult, please believe me, I was just... I just t-thought... back there, with the g-gun, you know, misfiring... and the masks...I swear to Madonna, I didn't mean nothing by it..." Perspiration drenched Bigrenaille's shirt, and his teeth were clattering. He could almost feel the whip tearing at his back: according to all the boys in the know, Inspector Javert did not tolerate insolence well. Javert straightened out and rubbed his right hand distractedly. It didn't seem to him that Bigrenaille intended the question to be offensive. And in that case it would be better to soothe his fears now, before incarceration: along with being a notorious bandit, Bigrenaille was also a notorious gossip. "No, Bigrenaille, I can't see the future," Javert explained, sitting himself back at his desk and stretching out his long legs. "The future, indeed! What a ridiculous idea! We do not live in the Dark Ages, you know. Now, concerning that incident with the gun. I've spent enough of my life around firearms to know which ones are serious weapons and which are children's toys. And that gun you lent Thenadier is a cheap percussion-lock from Milan, and those guns misfire 2 times out of 3. Thence I drew the logical conclusion that the gun will probably misfire. As for your identities, your masks didn't fool me, because I knew beforehand who was going to execute the robbery. It was only a matter of matching up the names to the figures, and that is never too difficult. You fellows all have very distinct builds and postures. Did that satisfy your curiosity?" he finished, signing the paper, and offering the pen to Bigrenaille. Bigrenaille nodded vigorously, and put an awkward squiggle next to his name holding the feathered end of the pen in his mouth. Watched him do this, Javert lectured on, tapping his fingers lightly on the desk: "You are frightened of all the wrong things, Bigrenaille. Good police work ought to scare you much more than silly fairy tales. When are you slobs going to learn that a well-trained policeman is far more dangerous than any ghoul or goblin?" Sighing, he collected all the papers into one folder and motioned for the sergeant to come over. The pimply youth sauntered up to Bigrenaille, grabbed the papers with one hand, the hangdog prisoner with another, and yanked him upwards. "Let's go, buddy," he exclaimed merrily and dragged unresisting Bigrenaille off towards the exit. Javert's pointed gaze followed them for a while, and then the inspector shook his head dolefully, picked up some more paperwork, and went back to writing. Then just as Bigrenaille was about to disappear from his office for good, Javert raised his voice without lifting his eyes off the paper: "Oh, and mind the brick." "What brick, monsieur?" asked Bigrenaille bemusedly, but heard no clarification. He and sergeant glanced nervously at each other, and both shrugged. "Don't mind Javert," whispered the sergeant glibly. "He's a bit funny in the head." Bigrenaille answered with a knowing nod, and both men proceeded out of Javert's office. But just as they were about to exist the station, an enormous piece of plaster broke off from the damp ceiling, and crashed with a bloodcurdling thwack right into Bigrenaille's newly shaved skull. "That brick," murmured Javert in his office, still writing. Back