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[junosteel]

WELCOME TO YOUR PRIVATE CHANNEL, JUNO STEEL. FOR SECURE COMMUNICATION, USE 010.21.140.15 *** juno has joined 010.21.140.15 <juno> this is juno steel. leave a message if you want to talk. <juno> for business inquiries, please schedule an appointment to meet at my office in downtown bavan. <juno> don't contact me if it's not important.

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December 25th, Midnight

[inseine]

[On the night of the 25th, a six-foot-three dark, damp shadow coalesces from the mists in the Graveyard. Tendrils curl around his slicked boots, thickening into a frail web of voile tailing the tattered hems of his coat. His pockets are full, his buttons are fastened all the way to the tip of his chin, his frown is set, and his hat is drawn low over his stony eyes.

It is Javert, and he's there to pay his respects, as he does every week, in the only Graveyard that matters to one so steeped in the Fog as himself.

His first visitation takes little thought, and he winds mechanically through the stone-carved path on autopilot. He's made this pilgrimmage fifty-six times, like clockwork, once per week. Since late July, the name's become quite fresh and unweathered. He slows to a stop, the reverie lifting from his solemn, wan face, and he rocks back on his heels as if awakening to the punch of a fatal blow. The corner of his mouth twitches, and he draws a pair of small items out of his coat, one entwined with the other; his fingers make short, artful work of it, wrapping vine between clasps. When he's finished, he bends down and lays a rosary of black beads and silver upon the headstone with gloved hands, a single bloom of iris flower wrapped and threaded along with the cord.

The vampire bows his head for a long moment, lost to his dark and turgid thoughts. And when he rises to smooth out his lapel, another stone catches his eye, this one much more worn than the last. A crack runs the length of it from top to bottom, hewing the name in half:

JUN | O STEEL

He stiffens. He thinks. He steps awkwardly to one side, like he were acknowledging his lack of invitation to set foot upon such a grave.

He doesn't have any extra flowers to give. No beads that remind him of a time before, no human connections with a werebear that believed in his worth as an investigator before anyone else --mbefore he himself believed in it -- and gave him a taste of satisfying work in Bavan City. A vampire has no blood of his own to spare, either, as a pardon for the religious devotion and crimes he condoned as a part of his fanatical pursuit of the Fog, the very same pursuit that saw him cast out of Juno Steel's offices in disgrace. Besides, that would be a dishonest offer. He won't apologize for their difference. He won't apologize for examining his principles and applying them appropriately, to the fullest they can, as a man-eating monster.

Yet it seems ill-fitting to him, somehow, that he failed to properly respect the death of a creature whom he so deeply respected, despite their differences.

Javert kneels, and he prays silently, as he did for Valjean... until inspiration strikes with a decorative wheeze through too-broad nostrils.

He digs a small nest upon the grave. He wrenches out a special Visitor's Key to La Forteresse, still shiny, untouched, and new.

And he drops the key in the hole, burying it up again, tamping down the dirt and rearranging the grass to make it mimic the look of undisturbed earth.

It isn't much of a tribute, but it's something useful.

He bows in silence, rises to his feet like the swell of an oil slick, opens his coat and dissolves into a puff of mist.

A Blessed Nattensfest to all, indeed.]