Leon walked the slummy streets of Paris with caution. He surveyed the vendors, looking for his next his next scam.
Leon had a particularily rough life. His father had been in the Galley's since before Leon was born. He had never met him. His mother had never expressed any care for Leon, always telling him that he was never suppose to be born, a bastard child. Leon was the child of a prostitute and her customer. The farthest thing from being born in wedlock, not a child his mother and father had wanted. Simply, a mistake. It killed Leon to know this.
After careful examining, Leon placed his plan into action. "Msr Bernard," Leon shouted at the fruit vendor. "Msr, look behind you!"As the man spun around, Leon grinned and shoved all kinds of goods into his coat pockets.
"Hey! Get back here!" the vendor shouted. Leon heard, and dashed as fast as he could. Alas, the weight of the stolen fruit slowed him. Msr Bernard caught him by his coat and hauled him to the police station.
A tall, gruff and respectable looking Inspector escorted Leon home. "You're lucky we have bigger crimes to handle than stolen fruit." The officer told Leon. Leon remained silent. The man made peircing eye contact with the boy. "I've seen many like you," The Inspector began, "It starts out with petty theft, and years later, ends with me hauling them to the Galley, for a real crime." Leon still refused to break his silence with the man.
The officer scoffed at Leon's silence. "I can already see I'm going to be taking you to the Galley in three or four years." As the man knocked on Leon's slummy tenement building door, he added: "Don't let that happen to you, son."
The officer explained to Leon's mother why he was here. She put on a fake facade of care and compassion towards Leon. "I'm afraid his next violation will result in Juvenile Detention Placement." His mother nodded her head and slammed the door, violently pullng Leon inside.
"God, boy! Can you do anything right?" His mother barked at him. He remained expressionless, with a heated fire burning in his heart. "You'll never amount to anything, just like your good-for-nothing Papa!"
As his mother said those last words, something almost indescribable changed in Leon. His soft, youthful and once kind grey eyes had became hard, mature and unforgiving. He felt a shift in his inner self. A transformation. These words pained Leon because he had despised his "Papa" for beings able to leave him and his mother and not care a bit.
Leon stepped into the bathroom. He brushed his long, brown hair into a low hanging ponytail, making his masculine sideburns prominent. He stood up straight and tucked his shirt into his shorts. Now, this was the look of a man with authority.
"Leon!" His mother yelled in that dreadful voice of hers. "Get back here! I'm not through with your punishment!" She must have yowled his name a thousand times. Leon still paid no attention, her unkind and nonunderstanding words ringing in his ears.
"Now, Leon!" she shouted for the final time. Leon stepped out in the hallway, before where his mother stood. She allowed a look of surprise to cross her face. "Leon...?" she asked, in a timid voice.
"I am Javert." He stated, in a deep and strong voice, enunciating every syllable so prominently that you could not mistake what he was saying. His eyes met hers, grey and powerful. There no longer was Leon. Only Javert.
