"I know Micah; he and Iris helped me after," she said, making the word after sound like it was enough to cover everything that could have occurred after that horrible evening. "And Marius was impossible," she admitted with a smile. "The novel truly belongs to him and Valjean, I realize, but he only served as a catalyst for Valjean's emotional growth," she explained. "As Valjean served as one for Javert. The women in the novel were unimportant," she said. Musicals always turned everything into a romance, but the best literature was seldom that simple. "Relationships of the heart are not always as strong as friendships, Ahab. Valjean and Javert were very much friends by the end, even with Javert's hatred. It was the realization of that which caused Javert's ending. You can prevent that, my friend," she said kindly, rising to her feet.
She glanced out at the balcony once before moving to the center of the room. Daniel's back was to her, and she was (she realized) grateful. "He came up behind me," she said, hesitating. "I don't recall everything from the... from the time in the catacombs," she explained, though she did walk toward him, and she tentatively walked up behind him and slipped her arm around his waist, pinning his arms, and she brought the other around, her hand over his mouth.
And then she quickly moved back, trying to calm her frantically racing pulse.