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When they ride through the city gates and back into Paris, Aramis sees the two men who have accompanied him on the journey shoot each other a look. They think themselves inconspicuous. Aramis rolls his eyes, and they don’t see it, because he actually knows how to be subtle.
Even though these two men enlisted a little while before a large part of the garrison left for Savoy, and even though they have been Aramis’ companions on the road for two weeks now, he cannot for the life of him remember their names. Their pauldrons are stiff and shiny with newness and Aramis takes an irrational hatred of the things on sight, though he is not so ungenerous as to hate the wearers.
These men received their commission sometime after Aramis left for Savoy. Perhaps they were hurried into the ranks as soon as Treville heard of the loss of so many of his men. Replacements. Aramis feels his lips twist into something sharp whenever he thinks of the word.
None of this is their fault, but their innocence feels scalding to Aramis. When he looks at them all he sees is so much unknowing meat.
He told them that he lost his own pauldron in the madness of the attack. In truth he had buried it in the snow some time after Marsac left. Let it rot, with its florid lilies and Fleur-de-lis. He feels nauseous just thinking of it.
They spoke little on the road home, which was a relief to Aramis but only seemed to deepen this suspicion that these men were only biding their time before they became bodies. Anyway, it’s not as though there was much for the three of them to talk about on the journey, and the mood was a somber one. The dark-skinned giant handled Aramis as though he were made of spun-sugar and the sad-eyed, stiff-backed one seemed barely able to look at Aramis, and hardly broke his silence for his friend either.
The first three or four days after they found him in that forest were branded with fever and a shuddering that ran through Aramis like it wanted him to dance. Perhaps they told him their names then, when he was barely alive.
They ride to the Garrison, and everything is the same and nothing is remotely the same, and Aramis just has to live with it, doesn’t he?
Because he is alive.
*
Treville is a week or two behind them, the long way back to Paris made longer still by the carts and carts of bodies and how slow they must go not to break their axles and spill their cargo on the frozen road. No one is expecting Aramis to come into the Garrison in the meantime, but he’s not sure anyone knows quite what they do expect of him. The Giant’s face is broad with surprise as Aramis walks through the portico and into the courtyard the day after they arrive back, and the Sad-Eyed One frowns tightly under his brows, curls a lip and says “Go home, Monsieur,” in a voice that is terse and clipped like ice.
The men in the garrison are mostly those who have only just received their commission, a handful of recruits - children - the old men like Serge, and a senior Musketeer named Prévot who has been left in charge of the Garrison in Treville’s absence. The place rings with emptiness, and yet Aramis cannot help but feel as though there is barely room to breathe.
Prévot finds Aramis in the stables a half hour or so after he arrives at the Garrison.
“Aramis,” he says.
Prévot spends a long time just standing there in the doorway, looking at him. Then he takes two startling steps forward and wraps his arms around Aramis’ shoulders.
Aramis holds himself very still. It will end soon, he thinks to himself, distantly, everything ends, if you can only wait long enough, and when Prévot steps away blinking harshly Aramis feels himself settle back into his body in relief like silt kicked up on the floor of some dark and forgotten riverbed. He makes himself smile. “It’s good to be back, Prévot,” he says, and hopes it doesn't sound like the lie it tastes of as he speaks it.
“You’ll need a new pauldron,” Prévot says, before he turns to leave. Aramis looks stupidly at his right shoulder, rolls it a little.
“Yes, of course.”
Once Prévot is gone, Aramis buries his head into his horse’s mane and tries to even out his breathing into something less frantic, but the hairs on the back of his neck keep prickling as though he is being watched, and the fear squats grinning at the edges of his mind.
*
That night it begins. Aramis takes off his hat and places it on the dresser against the wall in his apartments, as he does most nights, but this time he cannot help but frown at it. That’s not right, is it?
Something about it feels unnervingly wrong.
The thought settles over Aramis achingly slowly, innocent as falling snow: he did not die today.
Serge did not die, nor Prévot or the Giant or the Sad-Eyed One.
He stares at his hat on the dresser until his eyes prickle.
No one, that Aramis knows of, died today. No knives in the dark, no foes in the shadows, no gurgled last breaths around the gaped-wide slash of empty throats. No blood at all.
And though he has no evidence to the contrary, he knows deep in the marrow of his bones that Marsac did not die today, that Marsac is still alive out there.
A lucky day.
And so, it follows - perfectly sensibly in this strange, crooked place here in his loneliness some time before midnight - that if Aramis can only replicate every last thing that he did last night, tomorrow will be a lucky day too.
No one will die. Marsac, wherever he is, will sleep through the night and wake once more with his heart still beating. And all Aramis has to do is be very, very careful. As precise as any shot he has ever taken because the stakes are just as high. He must do everything right, things must be put in their correct places, things must be done in the correct order or it will all fall down.
It will all be his fault.
He reaches for the hat and turns it a little. Is that better? How exactly did he place it last night? His eyes skitter over towards the shuttered window. He cannot say exactly why, but he feels very sure that there is someone watching him right now.
Aramis tugs in a huge lungful of air and picks up the hat. He puts it back on his head and then removes it again immediately, placing it back on the dresser. Is that right?
He picks it up, puts it back on his head, twists his wrist just slightly as he places it down. Is that right?
He picks it up, puts it back on his head, takes it off with his left hand instead. He picks it up, puts it back on his head, tries to recall the exact thought in his mind as he placed it last night. Not right. He picks it up, puts it back on his head.
No. He cannot say quite what is different but it is and it feels so terribly wrong, like the floor opening out beneath his feet.
“Come on, you fool,” he hisses to himself, even as the shame settles through him. He finds it is perfectly weighted to match the dread that is already there: the only difference is that the shame - for all its hot and slipping awfulness - is so much easier to carry than the fear. There was a time he would have disagreed, would have taken anything over this kind of unmanly weakness, but what Aramis has seen in Savoy has made it clear to him that he would rather be pathetic than dead, and he would rather be wrong than responsible for the deaths of the few remaining Musketeers in the garrison. Of Marsac.
So he will do whatever it takes, no matter how mad.
The exhaustion is something burning inside him, under his skin, in the hollow of his throat. He feels itching and tight with it as he takes off his hat, places it on the table, picks it up, puts it back on his head, tries again.
Again.
Again.
He’ll get it right or he will damn well die trying.
*
Aramis is only human.
His legs give out some time before the Lauds bells settle over the dawn-dark city, and he sinks into a heavy sleep, busy with dreams.
He doesn’t wake until long after the bells have rung for Terce, and shifts on the unyielding coldness of the floor of his rooms with his face pressed to the wooden boards. He feels as though he has been run down by a horse, and eases himself hissing to a sit. There is a little wine in a bottle on the dresser. He heaves himself to stand, and drinks it.
He is grateful for it as it wets his parched throat, but finds he cannot enjoy it. Everything feels wrong, like a doublet buttoned incorrectly, ill-fitting, too tight. A dog barks loudly on the street outside and Aramis startles so sharply he drops the bottle to a shattering smash on the floorboards.
Without even realising it he loses maybe ten minutes staring at the constellation of broken glass and spilt wine at his feet. He cannot say quite why, but for a while he feels certain there might be some message written there. Some answer.
*
It all happens so suddenly. But then, sometimes things do happen that way. Sometimes you blink and you have gone mad. Sometimes you turn away for a moment and all your friends are dead.
Many times Aramis will get all the way to the Garrison before he has to turn around and go back to his apartments because he is sure that he has left his door unlocked, wide-open, and something will get in.
Because something has been following him the long road back from Savoy. It is a thing that does not tire or stray, sicken or age - and it wants him, it wants them all, with a hunger that is no less desperate for its patience.
Aramis has seen enough death in his life: men blown apart by canon-fire and women gasping in bloodied childbeds. He has seen the slow rotting of a body and mind to the Neapolitan disease and those fat old men whose bodies they carried out of the brothel Aramis grew up in, their hearts given out in ecstasy. He has never been afraid of death, and he believes in God. He should have no reason for this fear now, should he?
He should have no reason to want desperately to push death away for himself or for those around him. Isn’t it a sin? Isn’t it a sin to think that where he puts his God-damned hat, or any other strange repetition of ritual would have any consequence whatsoever?!
But still the panic is a living, breathing thing. The panic is another man inside him, wearing his skin like a new suit of clothing, walking him around, picking up his hat and placing it down again again again, touch the doorframe one two three, Father Son and Holy Spirit, touch the door frame four five six seven, the completion of God’s work, the number of perfection.
Every day he goes to the Garrison, until he cannot bear it any longer and heads to Saint Sulpice to pray. At first Aramis had believed that his mind would feel soothed in this holy place, a little less as if it is on fire, but it seems that Aramis is Aramis wherever he goes, and the thing that is watching him does not care where he is.
Still he prays. He prays for the deliverance of those dead men, he prays for the protection of the Giant and the Sad-Eyed One, for the soul of Marsac.
Every day he feels stretched, a little less like a person.
One morning he is sitting on the benches in the Garrison. There is nothing much to do but wait for Treville, who has sent word from Pamfou to expect his return within the next three days. The courtyard is held with a trembling sort of anticipation, as if before battle, except everyone is only very sad. Twenty graves are being dug in the little cemetery behind the Garrison, and the air is heavy with the smell of turned earth.
Aramis sits, examining his hand, quite sure that if he looks hard enough he will see the light through his own flesh and bones as he thins and disappears.
“You alright?” A voice calls, very near.
Aramis has gotten very good at hiding the way his body wants to startle and flee at any sudden noise or movement. He even manages a smile as the Giant sits down beside him, looking rather sheepish. “Ah, of course you’re not alright,” the man mutters to himself, “Sorry.” His gloomy shadow loiters nearby, seemingly unwilling to sit and join them but also disinclined to go elsewhere.
”It’s alright,” Aramis says, and makes his voice gentle, because people want to hear that kind of thing from him. “I’m well.” They want to hear that too. They don’t say it, but he can see it in their eyes.
“Some of the men are wondering if you’d like to say something. When the…when Treville gets back, you know. When the funerals begin.”
“Say something?” Aramis frowns.
“Yeah, you know. Because you’re…” the big man scratches awkwardly at the back of his head, “Well, you’re the only one left who really knew all them men. Except Treville of course.”
“You do not have to,” the Sad-Eyed One intones.
“Well, no, of course ‘e doesn’t have to,” the Giant says, brows lowering tightly, “But, having someone speak to remember you when you’re dead, having a funeral at all...” He shakes his head, “That’s a privilege, that is. Not everyone gets it that way. And I think those men would’ve wanted that.”
“Yes,” Aramis says. The horror courses through him. He smiles. “Yes of course.”
*
“He does not want to.” The Sad-Eyed One’s voice is urgent, low and as impassioned as Aramis has ever heard it. “You cannot press him to do this, Porthos.”
“I didn’t press him, I just said,” answers the Giant, defensively.
So he must be Porthos.
Aramis can hear the Sad-Eyed One pacing fretfully around the armoury where the two men hold their hushed conversation. “We must go carefully-“
“He’s alright, Athos. He said it himself, he’s alright.”
“That man is about as far from alright as it is possible to be,” the Sad-Eyed One - Athos - shoots back.
“How do you know that?”
“Have you forgotten the bodies?!” Athos hisses angrily, “Have you forgotten how we found him like some animal in their midst, almost mindless with the terror? Three weeks ago, Porthos! That is not so very long.”
“Course I didn’t bloody forget,” Porthos mutters, “‘S’not a sight you forget easily, that.”
“My point exactly,” Athos says, and Aramis finds that he is quite able to turn noiselessly on his heel and walk out of the Garrison despite the fact that his blood seems to have been replaced with ice. His body feels jerking and odd and cold, but he gets himself home none the less.
Touch the doorframe three times - Father, Son, Holy Spirit - touch it four more times - Seven for God’s perfection. Put the hat on the dresser. Do it right or the world will end.
Do it right, Aramis.
*
In an attempt to tether himself to life, Aramis goes to a whorehouse: after all, what is more antithetical to death itself than sex? There are a number of paramours he could visit that would not require payment, but the thought of being weighed and measured by someone who knows who he is and what has happened to him is intolerable. He wants to fuck someone who has never even heard the word Savoy in their life, and who does not look on him with pity. He chooses a brothel he has never been to before, the first prostitute to cross his path.
She is perhaps a few years younger than him, her face still round and pink with youth. She is pretty enough, her eyes a wide and limpid green as she sits on the bed with her legs spread louchely, and watches him cross over to the little chaise longue in the corner. He takes off his hat, his hand faltering.
It’s alright, he thinks, because I am not at home, because things are already different, so I do not need to try to make them the same.
But his hand still shakes, his fingers cramped so tight around the crown of his hat that it folds and distorts beneath them. His eyes flick to the window, to the invisible thing that is watching him even now. He clears his throat, smiles at the woman. Picks up the hat and puts it back on his head, then off again. On the chaise longue.
It’s not right. None of it is right.
He picks his hat up again and puts it on his head. He takes it off. It’s just not right. He is beginning to feel the sweat break out on the nape of his neck. He shifts. Swears. Picks up the hat, does it again, again, lost in the paralysis of the motions until he cannot really tell if he has been here three minutes or three months.
The woman begins to laugh at him, a stifled giggle at first but it grows until she is clutching at her stomach with it. And there is a moment - the barest, fleeting moment - where Aramis’ mind is full of nothing but huffs of breath and bodies and sweeping blades in the firelight, in blood curdling black in the snow, in a violence so abject it seems to flood every part of his body, tingling into his fingertips. How can she laugh? He wants to hurt this woman for a flittering second, wants to teach her that there is nothing to laugh about anymore. He wants to show her the kind of blood that he knows.
The horror at this desire is immediate and jagged and sharp in his throat so that he cannot breathe around it. He staggers backwards, eyes cracked wide.
And then he runs.
Aramis doesn’t know where he is running, he only runs, as if he is being chased. He crashes down the stairs and almost makes it out onto the street before the whore is hanging over the upstairs balustrade screaming that he has not paid. He slips fishlike between the arms of one of the men at the door, but they are fast: halfway down the street they catch up with him, and bring their boots to his stomach and his head again and again, and do not stop until he is gasping and prone and spitting blood onto the dirt of the street.
They take every single sous from his purse and leave him there in the road, dazed and bleeding amongst the trash and the horse shit.
*
Without his pauldron or blue cloak no one knows Aramis for a Musketeer. He stumbles through the streets, his vision blurred and his stomach turning with the feel of blood slipping from the wound on his forehead that his attackers re-opened. In the corners of his vision there is the periodic brush of black feathered wings - he swats blindly at them, muttering thread-thin curses - and the thing that watches him is behind him even now. His feet carry him on, he doesn’t have the wherewithal to wonder where.
“Monsieur?” A voice calls hesitantly. It is a woman’s voice. Aramis is leaning heavily against a wall with his head pulsing sickly. He raises his gaze and a woman heaves in and out of focus. She is young, red-brown hair, pretty eyes, stands shifting her weight warily from one foot to the other.
She looks each way, up and down the street, but no one pays them any heed. “Do you need help?” she asks.
Aramis smiles, and feels his split lips crack with the motion. The woman pulls back a little at the sight of his bloodied teeth. “Madamoiselle…” he breathes.
“Madame,” she corrects, pulling her chin up defiantly. She looks up and down the street again. “My husband will be along soon.” The defiance with which she says the words suggest they are not entirely true, but he allows her the lie. Aramis knows what he must look like now, and knows that most of the passersby on the street are either ignoring him completely or tutting at him and the little pattering trail of blood he has left along the street.
“I…” Aramis says, trying to stand up straight, “I do…” he says, “Need help.” His knees waver and she darts forward quick as a cat, leaning her shoulder up to brace underneath his own, her hands bracketing his ribcage front and back.
“I am a Musketeer,” he says, “I just need to…”
“The Garrison is nearby,” the woman says, brusquely, “Look at the state of you,” she tsks, though not unkindly, as she begins to steer him along the street.
“Where are we…?”
“The Rue de Fossoyeurs,” she says, “My husband’s house is here. He’s a draper,” she adds.
“Well, Madame Draper, I…I thank you for your assistance,” Aramis coughs.
It takes longer than it should to make their way along the Rue de Fossoyeurs, past Saint-Sulpice church and left along the Rue de Vieux Colombier, and Aramis finds himself gasping to stop and rest two or three times on the short walk. As they near the Garrison he veers sideways to lean against some high steps outside a warehouse and the flittering of wings comes so close to obscuring his vision that he stutters a breath, and reaches for the pistol that still hangs from his belt. A small hand closes over his own.
“No, Monsieur,” the woman says, a shake to her voice, something like fear grasped tightly.
“The crows will have my eyes,” he mumbles, “And I’m not dead yet.”
“Nothing will have your eyes,” she replies, quietly, “We are nearly at the Garrison. We are nearly to your friends.”
Aramis searches her gaze, a pretty stormy blue, clouded with worry and fear. He frowns, confused. “But my friends are all dead.”
He brings a hand to his horribly aching head, feels the tackiness of blood still there and the strange dislocation of time: if he blinks he could really be back there, in the snow, and nothing feels real but the terror. The thing that has been following him seems closer, he can almost feel its bone-cold breath on his neck.
His hat has gone but he cannot remember where. He touches his head, tapping it rhythmically.
“One…two, three…” he whispers, but it doesn’t feel right. “Father, Son, Holy Ghost…” He grits his eyes shut for a moment. It’s not right. “One, two, three,” he says again, “One..two.. Father, Son, Holy…One, two, three…fucking…one, two, three…”
The woman’s hand takes his as it moves once more to his head, and her grip is stronger than he would have imagined. “Stop,” she says quietly, “Stop now, Monsieur.”
He must get her to understand, even though he cannot understand it himself.
“I can’t make it right,” he says, plaintively, “No matter how I try. And it’s been following me since Savoy, you see? And it will have me, it will have us all, and I’m not ready. One, two, Holy…Holy Ghost…”
“Well,” the woman says, firmly, interrupting his tumbling stream of words. He can feel the way she draws the breath steadily into her lungs where she is pressed against the line of his body, holding him up from falling on his face in the street. “Well, I am perfectly capable of keeping you safe the last little bit to the Garrison.” Her voice is brusque, businesslike. “I won’t let anything have you, nor your eyes.”
“Alright?” She presses, after a moment.
She is just a woman. A little thing. His friends were strong men, trained and armed, and they were no match for the thing that he has brought back with him from Savoy. What could she possibly do?
And yet. He wants to believe her. He wants to just stop for a moment, to let someone else carry this dreadful weight.
He finds himself nodding, though her face tips and spins before him with the motion. “Alright,” he whispers back, “We can try.”
By the time they are tripping through the Garrison portico the woman is breathing hard little exhalations of effort through her gritted teeth.
There is a bitten-off curse, and then two arms clutch at his shoulders. “What has happened?” a voice demands.
Aramis looks up through his rapidly swelling eye. It is the Sad-Eyed One. Aramis has entirely forgotten his name again.
“Why do you always sound so disappointed?” Aramis manages, before his legs give out with a breath.
The other man grunts at the sudden effort of holding Aramis up. “Porthos!” he bellows, and then there is a clattering from the armoury and the Giant appears, wide-eyed and fearful in his surprise.
“Bloody ‘ell,” he swears, darting forwards to help the Sad-Eyed One hold Aramis up.
The little draper’s wife has slipped aside and stands uncertainly nearby. “I found him in the street. He’s…he keeps counting, and speaking of crows. I don’t know…” she trails off, uncertain, her eyes very wide, her hands smoothly compulsively at her skirts.
“Madame,” Aramis says, as his neck wilts and his heavy head swings downwards, “I do apologise for the blood on your dress.”
And then there is the rapping of hooves on compacted mud and a horse makes its way through the portico.
“Aramis?!”
Treville is very angry. That is one of the last coherent thoughts that Aramis has, before his vision fades achingly slowly into blackness.
*
“I leave him in your care and come back to find him in a worse state than before!”
Treville’s voice thunders all the way across the courtyard from his office and into the infirmary. Aramis winces. He cannot hear the response from the Sad-Eyed One or the Giant, but he knows there’s not much they could say against the Captain’s rage, which in itself is about so much more than them, or Aramis.
It’s much easier to just close his eyes and concentrate on breathing around his cracked ribs. His head still pounds horribly. It’s as though he can feel the edges of his skull where his brain presses up against it, too hot and tight and awful.
The Captain’s physician, an ancient , mouse-like man, wipes his hands on a clean cloth and smiles at Aramis. “I’ve known Jean-Armand since he was a boy,” he says, easily, “It’ll bluster out of him soon enough.”
Aramis clutches at the basin the physician has given him to vomit in - which he has already used to this effect a handful of times since waking from his swoon in the courtyard - and tries to nod. His throat feels scratched and raw with bile.
“You’ll soon be well enough,” the physician says, “But do please try to avoid knocking that head of yours into anything again for at least a while. It is far more fragile than I think you believe it to be.”
Aramis splutters a laugh, sick and reeded with pain. “It is cracked like an egg,” he rasps, “I’ve gone quite mad.”
The old man narrows his eyes at him. “You have been through hell and out the other side, by all accounts,” the man says, slowly, “Our heads are indeed fragile, but our souls are more fragile still. But, they are also resilient, given time.”
“Except for when they are not.”
The physician shrugs. “Indeed.” He packs away his little bag and reaches for his hat. “But, it is my professional opinion that we are not quite there yet.”
He smiles, and it is such a kind, easy thing that Aramis finds the breath in his throat surprised into a startled unsteadiness, and has to screw shut his eyes until the doctor has left with a gentle click of the door latch behind him.
*
Treville comes to see him some time later, when the light outside is beginning to dim into late afternoon and a young cadet has scurried in to light lamps around the infirmary for Aramis to see by.
The Captain sits beside the bed for some time, just looking out of the window. Aramis takes a long time deciding whether he should tell that he is surely staring straight at the thing that is watching them, which cannot be wise. But the words don’t come.
And then Treville sighs, long and hard.
“I’m sorry,” he says, very quietly.
Aramis tries to shake his head but can’t quite manage it. He is so tired that he feels like an echo instead of a man. “It’s alright,” he says, but regrets the words immediately. It is not alright. Nothing is alright.
Though Aramis can only see the side of Treville’s face, he notices the tight, humourless quirk to the Captain’s lips.
“You have always been an appalling liar, Aramis,” he says, after a moment. He stands up, and he still cannot seem to look at Aramis when he says, “Never let that change, boy.” There’s something shattered, something horribly, irreparably broken in Treville’s voice, something Aramis does not understand. “For the love of God.”
The Captain nods once into the darkening room, and then leaves, and Aramis cannot make sense of any of it.
*
Aramis dozes for a while, and wakes perhaps some time after Compline to find the Sad-Eyed One sitting beside his bed now, toying with the neck of an open bottle of wine. He raises an eyebrow at Aramis in greeting.
“There is straw in your hair,” Aramis says, after a while.
The man only tips his head to the side as if to say, well yes, of course there is-. He sighs deeply. “Porthos and I have been sent to muck out the stables as punishment for our poor caretaking,” he says. His voice is strange, the accent sharp and precise as a nobleman. “And,” he continues, “Once we are done with the Garrison the Captain has threatened us with the Louvre stables also.”
“He would never,” Aramis says, and cannot quite help the smile that is twitching at the corner of his lips.
The man raises an eyebrow once more. Aramis is beginning to understand that this is a silent form of communication from this man, and finds himself curious to learn this particular language.
“I have something for you,” the Sad-Eyed One says, quite suddenly. The words come out as though he is embarrassed, or wishes to breeze past the thing as quickly as possible. He hesitates only slightly before reaching down to pick up a linen-wrapped bundle on the floor beside the bed.
“What is it?” Aramis frowns.
“Porthos and I thought it might…” the other man trails off. “Please take the damned thing.”
Aramis takes the bundle in his hands. It is heavy, and moves in his grasp as if made from many pieces, though whatever it is is hard and smooth beneath his fingertips. He unwraps the thing, utterly confused.
It is a pauldron. Oak-brown leather, oiled and warm in the candlelight. A large fleur-de-lis is engraved on the central piece, all of it surrounded by sweeping arcs of vines and leaves, the odd graceful shape of a bud etched here and there.
“I can’t,” Aramis says. He shakes his head and swallows against the dryness of his throat. “It’s too beautiful.”
“It is not as beautiful as your last one,” the other man points out. “I remember it. It had…” he waves his hand, unsure, “Roses.”
“Lilies,” Aramis says, quietly. He blinks down at the pauldron in his lap. His fingers cramp around the edges. “They were stupid fucking lilies.”
The infirmary window is shuttered against the night, the door closed. But outside the shadows are full and hungry, and scratching to come in.
“Lilies on a pauldron,” Aramis manages, quietly, “Pathetic.”
“It is not pathetic,” the Sad-Eyed One says, and his voice is as flat and calmly expressionless as a still lake. “And it would hardly have mattered if your pauldron had lilies or lions on it. There was no help for any of it. It could not have protected you.”
“That’s it,” Aramis smiles, and it comes out crooked, half-mad. “Nothing can protect me. Nothing can protect us. We will all be cut down like lilies in the field. It will happen soon, I’m sure of it.”
“Why?” The man asks, after a moment.
Aramis blinks. “Because everything is wrong and I cannot make it right. I cannot…I cannot do anything to make it right.”
“Even if it were possible, it would not be your responsibility to make it right,” the Sad-Eyed One points out, his voice terribly calm, as if they were speaking of something as inconsequential as the weather.
“But it is, don’t you see?” Aramis insists. Why does this man not understand?
“Why?”
“Because I’m alive!” It comes out like a violence, like an explosion. “None of you have any fucking idea what is coming for you, the sheer…the fucking…the blood, I have seen my share of battlefields but the blood…my God!”
And here he is at last, unraveling like a dropped spool of ribbon, limp and useless. His breathing comes shorter. “The blood…and I can’t…I can’t…” He feels his eyes zipping compulsively back and forth across the floor, if he looks hard enough he can see it stained crimson, he can see what’s really there though no one else can. “It has to be me, don’t you see? There’s no one else, there’s only me, I’m the only one left-”
The other man’s hand shoots out to grasp at his wrist.
“No,” he says, steadily. “No, you are not the only one left anymore.”
Aramis searches the man’s face, but can find there only a steely certainty.
“You were alone,” he continues, “And it was terrible. But you are not in Savoy any longer, Aramis. Your friends are at peace. It’s time for you to seek a little of your own.”
“If I look away…” Aramis manages, and it’s an effort to dredge the words up around the terror. “If I let down my guard…”
“Then I will keep watch for you. Porthos, too.”
“Why would you do that?”
The man - absurdly- only shrugs. “Because no man is an island.”
“…What?”
The Sad-Eyed One shifts in his seat and looks out towards the shuttered window. He waves the bottle of wine in his hand dismissively. “An English poet said as much.”
“And how well does that work for you?” Aramis asks, after a moment, “Not being an island?”
The man curls his lip a little. “It is…challenging.” He looks at the bottle of wine and brings it up towards his mouth, swigs a little. “And I do believe it will remain so for the rest of my days, but…perhaps there is something in it.”
Aramis laughs, humourlessly. “How can you think to save me when you cannot even save yourself?”
“I do not need saving,” the other man says, firmly. “I need only this -“ his hand touches on the pommel of his sword at his hip, “And this.” He sweeps his arm to indicate the Garrison buildings around them. “A place to be. Work to be done. Honourable work, amongst good men.” He shrugs again. “It keeps the demons at bay, if only for a while.”
He takes Aramis in then, his gaze very still. “A while might be the best that men like us can hope for.”
“A while,” Aramis says, thinking hard. Can that really be the answer that he is searching for? To work, to go about the business of living, and hope that the horror will stay one step ahead. “I don’t know that it’s enough.”
The Sad-Eyed Man’s hand floats idly above the curled vines etched into the leather of the pauldron that lies on the bed beside Aramis. “Sometimes I am surprised that there is still so much beauty in the world. I know that you have been a man who appreciates beautiful things,” he says.
“But I will only make them dirty now,” Aramis says, hoarsely.
“Perhaps,” the other man says, quite serene, “Perhaps you will only be able to look at them from a distance, and not touch them for a while. But men like us know that a while is not so very long, for better or for worse.”
“I don’t know how I can go back out there,” Aramis says, after a moment of heavy silence. He stares intently at the pauldron, the sweeping arc of vines. It is beautiful, the design never diminishing the strength and purpose of the thing.
And yet, he cannot fathom the action of buckling it to his shoulder. He shakes his head. “I’m not sure I can be a soldier now...”
“A while, Aramis,” the man repeats, “You will find your purpose once more.”
He offers the bottle, but Aramis waves a hand. “Wine and concussion are not happy bedfellows.”
The Sad-Eyed One smiles, slow and stretched as though it is not a natural thing for him, and brings the wine to his mouth. “Well,” he says into the lip of the bottle, “Perhaps we will make a field-physician of you.”
*
He recites a prayer as the earth is shovelled onto twenty wooden boxes in the dirt. At least, he thinks it is a prayer: later he will not be able to remember exactly what it was that he said. There are widows there, mothers, fathers, the odd child. He hopes at least that what he said made some sense to them, brought them a little of the comfort he cannot quite reach for himself.
And then Treville stands and speaks some words about the men, and Aramis eases himself backwards through the crowd of mourners until he is standing on the very edges.
For a moment he thinks he sees Death watching. For a moment he thinks he sees Marsac. He won’t look away. He breathes as deeply as possible, and twists his hat rhythmically in his hands, one two three.
“Aramis,” the Giant says, as quietly as this large man is able to, which in actuality is not very quiet at all. He lays a hand on Aramis’ shoulder though, and he is gentle with that.
“That was well said,” the Sad-Eyed one says, joining them. “And it is done, now.”
*
Ten Years After
Athos’ mouth quirks sideways, an almost-smile. He lifts an eyebrow in silent question.
“It occurred to me that you could use a new one,” Aramis smiles. “You have changed,” he says abruptly, surveying Athos, “While I was away.”
“Absence will do that to a memory,” Athos says wryly, looking down at the pauldron in his hands, “And war will do that to a man.”
But Aramis only shakes his head. “No, it’s not that. There’s something…lighter about you.”
“Roses?” Athos asks, his hand tracing the curled vines, smoothing the pads of his fingers across the etched leaves and large wild roses like the heraldic ones of old.
“Roses,” Aramis grins back.
He looks at his own pauldron - a new one too, since he has returned from the monastery - its clean lines picked out in blue and gold but still with panels of etched blooms. Still beautiful.
He thinks about a time where he could not fathom allowing himself to be in love with the business of living, as he once had. So many years have passed since then, life inexplicably going on despite his fears. Aramis still catches himself in the rhythm of things - counting, acting out some ritual in the hopes of pushing back a vague sense of encroaching doom - but it happens less frequently, and the need can often be soothed or hushed back into the depths of his mind easily enough these days.
Aramis thinks about how it was Athos of all people who stayed beside him as he began to walk himself back from death ten years ago, obliterated in the aftermath of Savoy.
And now here is Athos truly changed as if on the cusp of something new and wonderful, as if trusting at last that he will not tarnish the good and fragile things in life with his touch.
“Something beautiful,” Aramis says, “Because it has been a while, Athos.”
“And we are no longer islands?” Athos replies, and his smile is something slow, and precious for its scarcity.
“Mostly, we are no longer islands.” Aramis grins back, and slings his arm around the other man’s shoulders.
Aramis cannot hold back whatever is coming for him. He cannot protect himself, really, nor Athos. Instead he closes his eyes to the early morning sun that scrapes along the rooftops and finds its way - against all odds - down to the muddied courtyard of the Garrison. He closes his eyes, and feels the sun on his face.
“Good things are coming for us, Athos. Beautiful things.”
END