The story begins with Javert’s suicide attempt quite literally falling through when he falls through an opening in the space time continuum and ends up in the fourth dimension. Javert is understandably annoyed by this and tries to get home so he can properly “resign” from life, before being trapped in the fourth dimension too long causes him to lose too many memories…While Javert tries to keep his life’s details straight and converses with an extradimensional being, the story intermittantly cuts to seemingly unrelated snippets of Jean Valjean’s life, who, coincidentally, has memory issues of a different sort...
Tropes in Round and Round:
- Genius Bonus: It’s mentioned early on that as a child, Jean Valjean had a notoriously weak stomach, and got quite a bit sick often. Watching the nuns care for Fantine brought back memories of his own mother tending to him, which just seems like some sweet fluffy side stuff, Until you realize that it doubles as foreshadowing, since traveling back into the past meant that he was exposed to some diseases and germs in the food that he wouldn’t have been exposed to.
- Because Destiny Says So: The reason that the 4-dimensional being lists for J falling through a hole in the time space continuum. Time needed Javert to be at a certain place and a certain time, and thus did so. He’s right, too. Javert not falling through the space-time continuum would destroy the stable timeloop.
- Fish out of Temporal Water: Downplayed. Since Jv J has no memories and isn’t even aware he’s from the future, this is mostly a non-issue, except one single incident where he guesses the date to be 1832, instigating ridicule from an upperclass visitor.
- Foreshadowing: After Javert forgets his name from spending too much time in the fourth dimension, he asks “Who am I?” several times. “Who am I” is a line sung many times in the musical of Les Miserables… And it’s Jean Valjean’s signature line.
- Future Foil: Big time.
- Future Me Scares Me: Javert In regards to Jean Valjean.
- Futureshadowing: The whole point of the Jv J segments.
- Happily Failed Suicide: Zigzagged-J isn’t any less inclined to give up on his “Final resignation” when his attempt to drown himself fails-but after he forgets more of his moral dilemma, then his motive fades.
- Help Yourself in the Future: A strange case, Jv J is helping his past self, but his past self is from the future.
- I Hate Past Me: Jean Valjean Doesn’t hate Javert, per se, but does canonically get annoyed with him by and by and extremely pissed off at him at least once, with good reason.
- Like a Duck Takes to Water: Javert adjusts pretty well to being left nearly 60 years in the past, but most of it is simply due to not remembering anything of the future.
- Meanwhile, in the Future…: The story alternates between Javert in the fourth dimension (outside the time stream) and Jean Valjean living through the late 1700’s and early 1800’s. The ends with Javert 59 years in the past, with Valjean’s segments now in the future.
- Red Herring: It’s mentioned in Jv J’s sections that the man in his memory was wearing a blue uniform of some sort, implying that the man was Javert. It isn’t Javert, but it is Javert’s uniform. After Javert went back in time and was de-aged into a four year old, all his clothes became too big for him. 4D, who went along with him to help him got turned into a human man, took Javert’s now-too big clothes (Save for the dress shirt, which he gave Javert to use as a gown) to wear, since the inter-dimensional travel didn’t give him any clothes.
- Stable Time Loop: Jean Valjean saves Javert’s life, causing him to try and drown himself by jumping into the Seine. In this version he is stopped by a sudden opening in the fourth dimension, which leads to his memory loss and de-aging. The next opening between dimensions leads to them Faverolles, with Javert now four years old. Javert is left in the care of the Valjeans, and is rechristened Jean. Jean Valjean lives his life until the point where he saves Javert’s life, causing Javert to attempt to drown himself...
- The Slow Path: There is no way to reverse Javert de-aging, or any sure way of getting back to the future. He does get to the same place he was after the beginning, he just has to live another 60 years.
- You Will Beethoven: When J and 4D arrive in the past, there’s no sign of V-even though 4D knows that should be about four years old at this point. Then he sees his 4-year old amnesiac companion…
