with symphonies and thoughts like sharpened darts | The Musketeers | Athos/Milady
t: with symphonies and thoughts like sharpened darts
f: The Musketeers
p: Athos/Milady, pre-Porthos/Aramis
ch: trope_bingo - black market
r/wc: PG-13/9000
w: Implied offscreen non/dubcon; Aramis has Alisha’s power from Misfits combined with Spiderwoman’s pheromone powers and that’s bad both for him and those around him. Nothing too dark, but, I’m warning.
s: Superpowers AU. Athos can’t remember a time when he didn’t know what was going to happen before it did.
n: [Title from Trains (Rose, Mary & Time) by Johnny Flynn] Well, I’ve been wanting to write ace!Athos for a while, and this seemed like a good time. With endless love and time for tgrrrmilk, who helped me plot this out, listened to me whinging, and read it through for me. Hopefully, this will become a series, so, look out for more parts in the future!
I’m full of you although we’re far apart.
- Johnny Flynn
The woman has dark eyes that glitter in the low lighting of the hotel bar, ringed with secrets and carefully applied mascara. She takes a sip from her martini, and it doesn’t hide the smirk slipping across her mouth at all.
Aramis has an untouched drink in front of him, condensation rolling down the glass. The ice cubes have just begun to melt.
“What I’d like,” he says, leaning intimately close and smiling something sly and wolfish, “is to have a look at that flash drive you’re carrying.”
The woman flutters her eyelashes - she honestly does this - and says: “that’s not all I could show you.”
“I know,” Aramis agrees, and stretches the smile until there’s a hint of teeth in it. “For now, though, I’d just like to see the drive.”
She doesn’t even pretend to think about it, just slides a hand into the little clutch purse she’s carrying and pulls it out. It’s small and black, and she holds it out in her palm. Aramis takes it from her quickly, his fingertips managing not to brush her skin, and pulls his hand back before she can reach for it.
“Thank you,” he says, as a clock chimes somewhere behind them and a bartender drops a glass. Aramis’ shoulders tense just slightly at the sound, but the woman doesn’t even seem to notice it. “You’ve been very helpful.”
“I can be a lot more,” she says, one hand trailing a suggestive fingertip down her chest toward her cleavage, the other reaching for Aramis. He slides back in his chair.
“What I’d actually like you to do for me is sit here and wait for me and finish that drink,” he tells her. “I’d really love that.”
Her grin spreads, dark lipstick and white teeth, but Athos doesn’t hear what she says because behind him a voice says: “mother-henning, as usual?”
He turns, but there’s nobody there, and he drops straight out of the bar, the hotel, the street, to flick his eyes open at his desk, asleep on his keyboard again.
Athos sits up and pushes it away as he scrubs a hand over his face. He has the feeling of not being alone in his own mind; whether it’s paranoia or reality he’s not sure, the time when he knew has long passed. Instead, there’s just a lingering something: a colour, a scent, the edge of an emotion that he could be imagining anyway.
“You can go back to sleep.” Porthos’ voice is a low rumble to the side. When Athos looks up, he sees him, slumped on their battered sofa with his headphones around his neck. He’s learning German this week, or Swahili, or Russian, no, wait, that’s next month. “Aramis isn’t due to check in yet.”
“He closed the exchange at ten,” Athos says.
“It’s quarter past nine,” Porthos tells him, “there’s time if you want a nap.”
“I don’t,” Athos replies, abrupt. He’s not sleeping very much these days; it seems safer that way.
Porthos narrows his eyes, but all he says is: “d’you want a coffee, then?”
What Athos would like is a bottle of vodka and to be left alone to drink it, but he pulls himself together enough to nod.
“Oy,” Porthos calls, voice too loud in the cramped room that is their base of operations, for want of a less ostentatious term, “d’Artagnan, coffee!”
“I am not your tea boy!” d’Artagnan’s shout comes back.
“No,” Porthos agrees, “you’re our coffee boy. C’mon.”
A few minutes later, d’Artagnan sulks his way over to them, carefully floating a tray with mugs on it in front of him. Athos leans over to grab his, wrapping his hands around the solid warmth.
“Ah,” Porthos says, making a show of sipping his and looking delighted, “just what I needed.”
Everything on their pitiful excuse for a coffee table shudders and rattles, and a few pens roll off the side onto the floor.
“Hey,” Porthos says, reaching behind him, “pay up, Fuck Up Jar time.”
D’Artagnan scowls. “Treville’s not even here!”
“We’re going out drinking for your birthday with this,” Porthos says, shaking the jar full of coins and notes at him, “give generously.”
By April, d’Artagnan will have mastered his telekinesis so well he’ll only make mistakes in times of heightened stress - as they all do - but for now, he’s uncertain of himself, not completely in control. He huffs, and stuffs a handful of change into the jar.
Athos can’t even bring himself to pull together a smile for his teammates as they bicker. Aramis will close the deal, come back early, and then he’ll have something to concentrate on. For now, there’s only the disquiet of his mind; a tuning fork rung in his consciousness, bright and sharp and saying I’m still here, I’m still here, I’m still here.
-
Scientists estimate that perhaps around a third of the world’s population now possess abilities considered “superhuman” or perhaps just “abnormal”, though tests haven’t been done widely enough to confirm this one way or another. For every person who can fly or control the weather or channel electricity through their skeleton, there will be dozens more with something they don’t even realise is an ability: perhaps they just think they have a quick metabolism or a good memory or have never broken a bone.
It’s different for every person, even for people with the same ability: there’s no universal experience, no rite of passage that links them all.
Athos can’t remember a time when he didn’t know what was going to happen before it did: as a very small child he’d answer questions before they were asked, discuss his memories of events that hadn’t happened yet. He was young enough when he first began to see the future that it felt completely ordinary; he didn’t have to adjust to living a non-linear lifestyle, because he knew of no other way to exist. As he grew older, he learned to control it more, taught himself to keep one foot in the present instead of both feet in the future, but he can’t unknow what he knows. Sometimes he can alter the things he sees, and sometimes he can’t.
He was an optimist, once, about the flexibility of the future, about its possibilities, but he isn’t anymore.
Not everybody’s life has been like that, though. d’Artagnan is twenty, and his telekinesis has only now made itself known. Constance made it most of the way through medical school before she realised that her patients were getting better no matter what she did: even those with terminal illnesses were recovering. Porthos was a teenager when he abruptly realised that not only was he no longer virtually illiterate - his childhood on the streets not allowing much time for a formal education - but that he was retaining information at an alarming rate.
Athos isn’t sure when Aramis discovered his own abilities because he won’t talk about it, but it’s very clear that there was a before, and now he lives in the after.
-
Aramis walks in about quarter past ten, ruffling his hair from where his motorcycle helmet flattened it, looking both triumphant and tired. He tosses a USB stick to Porthos, who catches it and then frowns down at the little flash drive, dwarfed even more in one of his huge hands.
“We’ve got to talk about the quality of your presents,” he says.
“It’s not the size, it’s what you do with it,” Aramis responds with a smirk, weaving his way through the desks so he can put the kettle on.
“No problems?” Athos asks; he’s sure there weren’t any, but though he’s loath to admit it, even he can have blindspots.
“None,” Aramis replies, tucking his hands into his pockets and leaning back against the counter while he waits for the water to boil. He looks more relaxed now he’s on the other side of the room, but Athos is the only one who’s noticed. “Gave her a few smiles and she handed it right over; and she let me leave, which is always a plus.”
d’Artagnan laughs, ducking his head into it, because d’Artagnan is still rather new, and anyway he doesn’t know what Aramis and Athos and Treville know. It’s better that way, Aramis insists.
“She’ll kick up a fuss when she realises you’re not coming back,” Porthos remarks.
“By then, her actual contact will have shown up,” Aramis reminds him. “I imagine no one there is having fun right now.”
His smile is tired, but he seems in cheerful enough spirits as he makes himself a coffee.
“Should I get started on this?” Porthos asks, holding the drive up to the light as though that will immediately make it reveal the secrets hopefully loaded onto it. He’s quite the hacker: it’s how Treville found him in the first place.
“You might as well leave it until morning,” Athos replies. “There’ll be nothing we can follow up on tonight, and we should all lie low until we’re sure Aramis got away clean.”
Aramis salutes them with his mug. “I’ll grab a shower and get home, then,” he says.
Aramis’ showers are lengthy and thorough and use up most of the hot water in the building, but no one begrudges him. If it’s what keeps him sane, it’s a small price to pay.
d’Artagnan sweeps his fingers; his keys and phone and wallet all leap out of various places in the room, gliding their way over to him. For all the broken furniture and awkward explanations he has to make to his neighbours, d’Artagnan’s power does seem practical and far less stressful than most of the other options Athos has seen.
“Right then,” Porthos says, carrying this week’s Rosetta Stone language stuff over to his desk, “you want a lift, Athos?”
“I’ve got to stay here for Treville’s check-in,” Athos replies smoothly; the call will last all of about five minutes, and he already knows when Treville is coming back - though Treville himself doesn’t yet - and he doesn’t technically need to be here to take it, but the others can’t prove anything.
Porthos frowns a little, but all he says is: “you really should get some sleep, you look knackered.”
Athos feels knackered, but all he does is smile blandly as the others leave, and reach for the whisky in the bottom drawer of his desk once he knows he’s alone.
Or as alone as he ever is, these days.
-
Constance is in at seven-thirty in the morning, fresh and bright and carrying Starbucks for Athos even though her expression is a little disapproving. Athos showered twenty minutes before she arrived and changed his shirt from yesterday; it’s not enough to avoid her thoughtful gaze, or to put off the conversation they’re due to have in a few moments.
“You really need to get some sleep,” Constance tells him.
“I’m fine,” Athos says.
“You don’t look it,” she replies bluntly, and Athos knows she means more than just externally. Constance doesn’t have x-ray vision, nothing so neat as that; she struggles to describe it, but she can see people’s maladies glittering through their skin, plain and bright and obvious.
“I’m fine,” he repeats, “you’ve told me before: my liver is exemplary.”
Constance looks cross about this fact, and Athos long ago gave up trying to hide his drinking, which was casual once upon a time but really bloody isn’t now.
“There’s more to worry about than just your liver here,” she presses, and Athos wants her to stop and knows that she won’t.
Constance doesn’t want to get involved in all the areas of their frankly often dangerous enterprise, but she helps where she can, and it’s certainly helpful to have someone with medical knowledge for their team. In any case, she can’t go back into a hospital until she’s learned to control her healing abilities: it turns out that subconscious healing is different to deliberate attempts at it, and she’s also diligently studying ethics. Once she knows what she’s doing, Constance will be able to make lame people walk and blind people see; regrow missing limbs and banish diseases with no known cure. But she’ll never be able to do it for everyone, and she’s trying to prepare herself for her forthcoming choices. Athos can see her in a ward, bloodied hands and sobbing and tired enough to drop, but that’s years away and he’ll never tell her.
“I am fine, Constance,” he insists, voice flattening on every syllable.
“You’re basically wearing a halo made of sleep deprivation,” she insists. “And don’t think I haven’t noticed you don’t go home anymore, even the others haven’t. You need to rest.”
“Leave it,” Athos tells her.
“When was the last time you slept?” Constance demands.
Athos can’t remember the last time he got what could be referred to as a good night’s sleep; perhaps that’s something he imagined, part of another life that he doesn’t think about, one that doesn’t exist anymore, anyway. He doesn’t - can’t - sleep these days, and he doesn’t miss it.
“Constance,” he says, low and hard, “do not make me have to ruin both of our mornings by shouting at you. Leave this alone.”
She opens her mouth and closes it again; leaves the cardboard cup of coffee on the edge of his desk and walks out, slamming the door behind her.
Athos slept an hour last night, he thinks; he dreamed of blonde hair in a dark room, and newspaper print under his feet, and skeins of music that he tried to catch in his hands. It’s still there now, burning beneath his skin; a tune he’s never heard, that doesn’t belong to him, plying its melody up and down his spine.
-
Aramis is the last of them to arrive, as per usual, shrugging out of the leather jacket he wears on his bike and adding it to the overcrowded coat hooks on the wall. Athos is idly clicking through the details they already have on the people they’re hunting, the words blurring in front of his aching eyes, and he doesn’t watch Porthos watching Aramis.
Some days, Athos finds himself feeling like the keeper of all the secrets in this building.
Porthos is working on unlocking the USB drive so they can find out exactly what is on it; even Athos isn’t sure what to expect, so tired that the past and the present and the future feel jumbled, his hands crowded and full. They’re hoping for details on a human trafficking ring specialising exclusively in superhumans: they’re crawling closer, but they’re still a couple of crucial steps behind. Aramis intercepting a meeting and retrieving the information that was supposed to be shared might be just what they need; Athos can’t get a clear picture of what it is they’re supposed to have.
“If I were you,” d’Artagnan remarks easily, as Aramis comes over to make coffee, “I’d just get free coffee every morning. You know, flirt with the barista?”
Athos feels himself tense; Porthos’ fingers have stopped clicking on his keyboard.
Aramis laughs, the sound tight but wanting to be relaxed. “That’s because you have no idea what you’re talking about,” he says. “And anyway, they deduct that stuff out of their pay, you know.”
“Maybe they wouldn’t mind,” d’Artagnan suggests, and Athos can’t blame him; he’s curious, of course he is. “I mean, they enjoyed flirting with you, right?”
Aramis shrugs one shoulder. Athos isn’t even pretending not to watch, and Porthos is sitting very, very still. “It wears off,” he says. “I don’t think they like it as much later.”
“Have you ever gone back and checked?” d’Artagnan presses, and Athos is poised to move, to walk over and say that’s enough, because the innocent questions are the worst kind.
Porthos has his eyes shut, laptop whirring untouched in front of him.
“…no,” Aramis says at last, face unreadable. “No, I’ve never gone back and checked.”
He leans around d’Artagnan, careful to leave space between them, and gets the milk out of the fridge. His hands shake a little as he pours it, but only a little.
Porthos’ laptop beeps, and he leans over the screen. “I’m in,” he says, and then a frown creases his face. “Hang on, there’s… this is tiny, there’s less than a gig on here.”
“There must be something on there,” Aramis says, picking up his coffee and walking over.
“There’s a file,” Porthos says, and there’s the sound of him clicking on it.
Screaming pours out of his speakers, and Athos watches Porthos’ face shut down. “Fuck,” he says, slamming a fist into his desk hard enough to make everything on it jump, “fucking fuck.”
-
Aramis, when he has to, describes it as: I’m like Cupid, but only for me. Treville and Constance’s explanations involve the word pheromones a lot more. Whichever way you want to put it, Aramis’ ability enables him to make anyone he chooses attracted to him. This can range from a light, flirtatious attraction that keeps someone distracted at just the right moment, to a violent, frantic, all-consuming passion that cannot be stopped. Aramis usually whips up something in the middle: just enough to manipulate anyone into doing whatever he wants, they’re so desperate to please him.
The first year that they worked together, Athos had just finished with a divorce that felt more like an amputation, caught up entirely in himself and his own crushing misery to pay much attention to the brittle-bright new guy, a thin veneer of charm sliding awkwardly over his expression whenever he moved. All he knew was that Aramis was reckless but trustworthy, and knew how to respect personal boundaries: it felt like enough.
It was an accident, when Aramis tried to rush off after a briefing and Athos reached out and caught his wrist to hold him back; Aramis pulled immediately away like Athos’ touch had burned, but what was startling was the absolute abject terror in his expression.
“I’m sorry,” Athos said, holding up his hands because Aramis no longer looked like his cocky self, but a frightened child, one afraid of being hit at any moment.
Aramis looked at him, at his spread hands, and frowned. “Athos,” he said carefully.
“Yes?” Athos slowly lowered his hands, because the confusion was better than the fear, in any case.
“You don’t want to…” Aramis’ lips curled, not quite a smile, not quite a grimace, “…to fuck me?” he finished.
Athos would have scoffed at this point, turned and left, but Aramis’ horror had been real, real enough for him to say: “…no.”
Aramis swallowed, looking down at his wrist, then back up to Athos. “But you touched me,” he said softly, voice cracking in the middle.
Athos caught on to what was happening. “Treville assured me that you could control it,” he said sharply.
“I can,” Aramis insisted, though his expression crumpled under Athos’ glare, and he added: “unless someone touches me.”
Athos had spent the previous few months barely sober and brutally angry and hadn’t been paying much attention to Aramis, but he found himself recalling the way Aramis kept himself to himself, didn’t so much as shake hands, maintained a careful distance from everyone at all times.
“We should’ve been warned,” Athos told him.
Aramis gave him a weak smile. “Nobody likes being told that if they touch me they’ll turn into a rapist,” he replied.
Athos tried to process that, couldn’t, and instead said: “I didn’t.”
“No.” Aramis frowned. “That’s… new. You really didn’t feel anything?”
“I didn’t,” Athos said. “But then, sex has never been particularly interesting to me.”
“But-” Aramis frowned, and then understood. “Oh.” He stood and looked at Athos for a long moment, and then tried: “is it okay if I- can I-”
Athos nodded, and Aramis all but flung himself into him, wrapping his arms around him and pressing his face into Athos’ neck, taking deep, shuddering breaths.
“I have you,” he said softly, while Aramis trembled and clung to him and they both knew they’d never mention it again after this moment, “I have you.”
-
The file on the flash drive is a twenty second video. It shows a young woman with a lot of blonde hair chained heavily to the floor of a small concrete room. She’s thrashing and screaming, trying to pull herself free but unable to. On the floor beside her is a copy of the previous day’s newspaper.
They haven’t found the details on the trafficking ring that they were hoping for: they’ve stumbled right into the middle of a sale.
They’ve turned the sound off, but Athos can still feel the woman’s scream reverberating through the room, high and sharp and grating. They can’t see her face clearly, can’t make out any identifying features; perhaps the intended recipient of the drive knew what they were looking at, just needed proof that she was being held in custody.
“I don’t think she’s seriously hurt,” Constance says, bent over the laptop and squinting. “I mean, she’s glowing all over, but I’m pretty sure it’s just bruising, nothing life-threatening.” She clicks play again, leans in even closer. “I haven’t had much practice diagnosing without the person right in front of me.”
“You’ve done your best,” Porthos says quietly, squeezing her shoulder and pulling her away from the screen, from the video that’s harrowing even without the sound on. “Thanks, it’s good to know.”
He’s been staring at the video for over two hours now, trying to pick out minute details that might help them work out who this woman is, where she is, how they can free her. There’s nothing, though; no windows, no distinguishing features, just the dark concrete and the terrified, trapped woman.
Aramis has been pacing the kitchen area, mouth a grim line, and they had to send d’Artagnan out because he was so upset that everything in the room kept rattling. Athos keeps combing his mind, looking for memories of the future that just don’t seem to be there, and why aren’t they there? Why can’t he fix this?
“We ain’t got much time,” Porthos mutters, “these sales are always quick so they stay under the radar.”
Constance has her arms wrapped defensively around herself, worry written all over her face, and Athos knows what he has to do; he thinks he has always known.
“Call Treville,” he tells Porthos, “I’ll be back soon.”
Porthos nods, too frustrated and numb to ask questions, and while Constance gives him a concerned look, she doesn’t say anything.
Their operations room takes up the entire ground floor of this quiet house in the suburbs that looks innocent from the outside but isn’t; upstairs are research rooms, storage rooms, and a couple of bedrooms in case they can’t go home but need to rest. Athos picks the one on the left, lying down on the neatly made bed, and closes his eyes.
-
The room is small and dark, with one bare bulb hanging from the ceiling and heavy iron chains set into the walls and floor. It’s almost Medieval, old-fashioned, except that the chains are new and shining. Athos takes a step forward, and something crinkles under his foot; it’s yesterday’s newspaper, he realises.
He’s being watched, he thinks, and instead of pressing onward, he turns around.
Every time he sees her, it’s like seeing her for the first time. Of course it is. He knew her so well by the time he actually met her, and yet she still stole all the breath from his lungs. She always does, even now.
“I thought I’d find you here,” he says.
Milady tosses her head, physically dismissing his words, and when she takes a step closer her shoes click on the bare concrete.
“You keep coming back here,” she remarks. “Blonde, concrete, newspaper, screaming. Why don’t you have it figured out?”
“This isn’t clear yet,” Athos tells her, “I don’t know everything.”
Milady considers him for a long moment, her face unreadable, and he knows what she’s going to say before she even says it, of course he does.
“You knew,” she says. “You knew and because you knew I knew.”
He’ll always remember that; walking down the aisle in a dress he’d seen for a decade before they ever met, she faltered, looking at him with eyes that pierced through the veil, bright with betrayal and realisation. He knew they would fail, and he watched her coming toward him and he couldn’t pretend that he didn’t know. Her fingers flexed around her bouquet, and then she kept walking.
Athos says nothing, and Milady walks around him, crouches down beside the blonde on the floor. There’s no movement, no sound; the two of them might as well be standing in a photograph. Milady reaches for the woman’s hair.
“I need your help,” Athos says.
Milady laughs, looking up at him with her glittering eyes. “Do you now.”
“We need to find her,” Athos tells her. “We don’t have much time.”
Milady straightens up, leaving the blonde on the floor, still hidden behind the curtain of her loose hair.
“The sensible thing to do would be to leave her and use this opportunity to find out how the sales operate,” she says. “You have a piece of the puzzle, you can find others with it.” She tilts her head, her mouth curling. “But you won’t do that, will you?”
She wants to taunt him, but Athos is used to that. “I won’t,” he agrees. “Help us find her.”
Milady arches an eyebrow. “And what will you give me if I do?”
Athos shakes his head. “I’ve already been bled dry by you once before.”
She laughs, swift and harsh, a gunshot. “I didn’t touch a penny of your fucking fortune.”
“You know what you took,” Athos replies, waking up on the words, speaking them aloud to the empty room.
He looks at his watch; he’s been asleep for two minutes, fifteen seconds.
Porthos is hanging up on Treville when Athos comes back downstairs.
“Milady will be here within the hour,” Athos says, staggering to his desk, clawing out a bottle of scotch in the second drawer that Porthos’ latest ransack didn’t uncover.
“Who’s Milady?” d’Artagnan asks; he looks very young, all of a sudden.
“You don’t know about his telepathic ex-wife?” Aramis asks. “God, you really are the work experience boy.”
Athos takes a swig of the scotch, considers it, and takes another. It’s cheap and it burns and he likes it that way.
“Is this a good idea?” Constance asks softly.
“It never is,” Athos replies. “But we need her.”
-
“She’s telepathic?” d’Artagnan is still saying, forty-five minutes later. Athos is heading toward drunk, which is partially how Milady makes him feel, and is partially a self-preservation tactic. His mind is more open when he’s drunk, but the information is more jumbled, making it more difficult to sift through. Milady, curled in his lap, once told him his drunken mind was like a painting with water thrown over it, the colours blending into each other, vicious and bright and impossible to untangle, random thoughts dripping off the bottom. He doesn’t know why he bothers; she’s been in and out of his mind like it was her own for more years than he cares to count.
“Yeah, so, if you have any embarrassing bed-wetting or virginity-losing or whatever stories, you should probably start putting them behind an imaginary brick wall,” Aramis tells him cheerfully.
“Will it work?” d’Artagnan asks.
Porthos shrugs. “It’s always made me feel better, anyway.”
Athos has no barriers; the man who met Milady, who isn’t the man he is now, stood back and welcomed her in, made her a part of himself. He regrets it now, of course. He’s either lonely in his suddenly-empty head, or paranoid that he isn’t alone in there any longer.
“That means ‘no’,” Aramis clarifies.
Constance is sitting on the sofa, saying nothing. She and Milady have history, but Athos doesn’t care; no one has history with Milady like he does, after all.
Athos pinches the bridge of his nose, takes a breath or two. He hates this, every time, and maybe prays for it a little as well.
“What kind of name is ‘Milady’ anyway?” d’Artagnan asks.
“It’s her supervillain name,” Porthos says on a smirk, and Athos doesn’t bother to correct him.
He has vague memories of telling his younger brother about his future wife; Athos was eight and no one believed him, but Thomas was willing to listen, and so Athos told him the stories of the beautiful woman with dark hair. He thinks he called her Anne then, though he’s never called her that in the following years.
“I’ve always known her as Milady,” Athos says wearily.
“But you married her,” d’Artagnan says.
New people are exhausting, Athos reflects. “I married her as Milady Clarick de Winter,” he says, “and yes, that was rather a mouthful.”
“Oh.” d’Artagnan looks thoughtful for a long moment.
Athos sighs. “Asexual isn’t the same as aromantic,” he says, “and also shut up.”
The front doorbell rings a few minutes later; the others exchange glances and it’s Porthos who goes.
Constance’s fingers knot in her lap; Aramis is pretending to be casual, but his arms are folded across his chest, and d’Artagnan’s face shows nothing but naked interest. Athos was that young once, he thinks; he’ll never be that young again.
Milady precedes Porthos into their operations room, carrying a garment bag over one arm, dark hair coiled up behind her head.
“It’s so nice to walk into a room and be greeted by the worst things you’ve ever done,” she says brightly, casting her eyes over all of them. Constance bites into her lip but refuses to look away. “You have hidden depths, young man,” Milady adds, looking to d’Artagnan, who awkwardly ducks his head.
“Leave him alone,” Athos says.
Milady turns her gaze to him; her expression doesn’t flicker, and he thinks about the next time they’ll meet, and the time after that, and every time after that. She says nothing, her lips curling, but she does turn away first.
“Well, luckily for all of you, there’s a party we can attend and ask some awkward questions at,” she announces. “That should do it, shouldn’t it?”
Athos tips his head to one side. “Her name is Anne du Reine,” he says. “She’s been missing for three months.”
Porthos nods, fingers already flying over his computer keyboard.
d’Artagnan’s eyes go wide. “What-”
“Athos is remembering information he hasn’t been given yet,” Milady says. “This one is new, isn’t he?”
“Keep your claws to yourself,” Athos tells her, “you have a party to crash.”
Milady smirks, shifting the garment bag in her arms. “I do,” she says. “And I’ll need back-up… Walking Rohypnol, go and put a suit on.”
Aramis swallows too hard, but he nods, tight, and Athos feels the flush of guilt he always feels when he brings Milady anywhere near his friends.
“They expect it of you, dear,” Milady remarks. “I’ll be upstairs.”
She swishes out, crooking a finger at Aramis as she goes.
“You don’t have to go anywhere with her,” Porthos says immediately.
“Of course I do,” Aramis replies, but he scrapes together a plausible smile. “Besides, Athos would know if this all ends in tears, right?”
“Everything involving Milady ends in tears,” Constance mutters, saving Athos the bother of saying the same thing, but she gets up and crosses over to lean over Porthos’ shoulder as Aramis heads out to change.
Athos listens to the click of Porthos typing until he hears Milady’s footsteps on the stairs, gets up and goes because he always does. He thinks he hears Constance sigh behind him, but maybe he doesn’t.
Milady has changed into an evening gown, her hair frothing around her shoulders, her mouth bright with a slash of red lipstick.
“How do I look?” she asks.
“You told me long ago to stop telling you things that you already know,” Athos responds.
She smiles, and he wants to touch her, to curl his fingers into her hair, to press fingertips to her cheeks and her collarbones and the curves of her mouth that all belonged to him, once upon a time. Her breath catches, just a little, and he looks away.
“We’ll be gone for a few hours,” Milady says, “and I assume you’d know by now if we’re both about to get shot and thrown out on the street.” She hooks a knuckle under his chin, forces him to lift it. “Get some fucking sleep.”
Athos is barely aware of stumbling back into their operations room, folding into the sofa, closing his eyes.
He dreams of nothing, and it’s bliss.
-
Athos wakes, disoriented, when Milady and Aramis return, bearing late night chips for everyone. He stays lying on the sofa for long minutes, watching Milady sitting at his desk, kicking off her shoes, making herself at home. The way she made a home within his skin, once.
She flicks her eyes to him, briefly, and he wonders momentarily what she sees. Wonders, but doesn’t want to know.
“Anne du Reine,” he says, pushing himself upright. “Missing three months. Her sale will go through tomorrow night. The presumed buyer is a man named Rochefort. Ms du Reine has superstrength, which manifested some six months ago, is still uncontrolled.” He scrubs a hand across his face, feeling where his beard is becoming unruly, in desperate need of a trim he won’t give it. “We don’t know where she’s being held, or who is behind this operation.”
Porthos shakes his head; he’s eating his chips and working at the same time, tension rippling across his shoulders.
“Bonnaire’s come up,” he says, voice a low growl; he’s had dealings with Bonnaire before. “But he’s small-time, doesn’t have the manpower or the brain to set this operation up.”
“You can say that again,” Aramis mutters, slumped at his own desk, feet propped up. His hair is messy and there’s a smudge of lipstick on his jaw.
“…if Athos can just… know all this stuff,” d’Artagnan begins, “why did they have to go and get it in the first place?”
“I can’t know information that’s gathered in the future if the information is never gathered,” Athos explains wearily; his life is made of paradoxes, and of avoiding them. “But this is really all you came back with?”
He’s looking at Milady as he says it, but it’s Aramis who responds. “We ransacked that party,” he says, “that’s all any of them had.”
He looks worn and pale, eyes sunken and bruised-looking.
“You did well,” Athos tells him, because Treville isn’t there to say it himself. Aramis gives him a wan smile, but doesn’t look convinced.
Constance pointedly pushes a paper packet of chips toward Athos, holding his gaze until he reluctantly leans forward to take it. He probably needs the food; scotch and sleep deprivation cluttering his thoughts, his body. Constance gives him a half-smile, returns to her desk, where she’s clearly helping Porthos track down Bonnaire: they can lean on him, it’s worked in the past.
“You don’t understand,” Milady says; Athos’ head snaps up, but Milady is looking at d’Artagnan. “You aren’t thinking big enough, child. People who don’t have abilities of their own still want to use them; even your own Treville does it, or did you not wonder why he gathered you all together to use for his own ends?”
“Treville has an ability,” d’Artagnan protests.
Milady’s mouth curls. “Well, if you want to call that an ability. But surely you must realise what can be done with a woman who has superstrength, if you can make her obey you? Or a telepath? Or a precognitive?” Her gaze falls to Athos again; he doesn’t want to look away, but he does. “But you’ll never bend at the knee, will you, Athos.”
He wouldn’t then; he won’t now. They both know it, and it strings between them even now all the other strings have been cut.
“Treville’s on his way back,” Porthos says, voice smashing easily through the tension. “We’ve got until tomorrow night. Constance and I will track down Bonnaire, Aramis can get some rest until we need to put the screws on him. Athos, sort out what we’re paying Milady and then you can update Treville with what we have.”
“What about me?” d’Artagnan asks.
“You’re going to make a lot of coffee and not accidentally smash anything,” Porthos says. “Everyone happy?”
“Did Treville make you leader in his absence?” Athos asks dryly.
Porthos arches his eyebrow. “Well, he didn’t make you,” he responds.
Aramis shoves his chip wrappers into the bin, gets up and stretches. Porthos watches, and Athos watches his eyes widen and his lips tighten. Milady is watching too; her mouth opens, and Athos thinks don’t, sharp and hard and desperate. She tosses a disdainful look at him, but stays silent.
There’s a purpling bruise around Aramis’ wrist, visible as his shirtsleeve rides up; Porthos is on his feet in moments, reaching for him, and Aramis flinches away, not managing to hide the movement as anything other than what it is.
Athos has always maintained that Aramis should tell everyone the truth, that he is incapable of turning off his ability and the closer the proximity, the worse it is. But he can understand Aramis’ reluctance to admit it, to pretend that things aren’t as bad as they really are. He and Porthos maintain an awkward dance around each other; one that it’s nearly painful to watch some days.
“It’s fine,” Aramis says quickly, “I just… hit someone a bit too strong. Constance can sort it out for me later.” He scrapes up a smile that convinces no one. “I need a shower, I’ll be back.”
Athos can’t look at Porthos; he turns his attention to his ex-wife instead, to the strangled relationship he already knows.
“I’ll walk you out,” he says.
They stand in the street in silence, lamplight catching on her eyelashes; in her heels, Milady is nearly on eye level with him.
“You didn’t mention the Cardinal,” Athos says.
Milady tilts her head. “Nor did you.” He waits and she rolls her eyes, looks away. “It’s just a name I think I caught once or twice. There’s no guarantee he’s even involved.”
“If people are trying not to think about him-”
“You and I both know that the things people don’t want to think about are the things I hear the loudest,” Milady replies.
It’s Athos’ turn to look away; he can’t help himself.
“You helped us,” he says, abrupt, “tell me what you want.”
Milady leans close enough that her breath brushes his ear; for a moment all Athos wants is to open up and let her back in, have her behind his eyes where his loneliness prowls and calls for her. It won’t be still, and perhaps he haunts her dreams as well; it would be nice not to be the only one.
“I don’t tell you things you already know either,” she responds, and walks away, leaving his fingers digging into his palm not to reach for something already long gone.
-
“Porthos, I’m fine.” Aramis adjusts the neck of his top in the mirror, letting it fall open more to reveal a bared collarbone. The sight does little for Athos, though he does know how it feels to press his hands into someone’s bones, feel them shift beneath the skin for him, every inch of them his. Porthos, perhaps a foot to the side of Aramis, swallows too hard, gaze dropping to the floor.
“You didn’t look fine last night,” Porthos says, soft but firm.
“I was trying to interrogate too many people,” Aramis says with a shrug, his shirt slipping a little more. There’s no denying that Aramis is an attractive man; he says that he likes to let his body lay the groundwork for his powers, and Athos can only assume that it works. “I didn’t get my control completely right, but, no harm done.” He shows Porthos his wrist, where Constance stared at the bruise until it vanished, the skin untouched.
There’s a little more to it than that, which Athos found out last night, catching Aramis before he went to sleep to check that everything was as fine as he was claiming.
“I lost count after about fifteen,” Aramis told him, mouth twisting with annoyance. “I just miscalculated the pheromone strength, that’s all.”
“You don’t normally allow people to touch you,” Athos responded, indicating the marks on Aramis’ arm. “Not unless-”
Aramis shook his head. “No. I was scared, I’ll admit it: the man was drunker than I thought and I wasn’t quick enough, but…” And Athos knew, like he had always known, even before Aramis gave him a smile that verged on the sheepish. “But then Milady was there, and she told him to stop and he did. I don’t think I knew she could do that.”
“She couldn’t always,” Athos replied, because it was the easiest thing to say, and didn’t think about how he learned that she could. “If you’re sure you’re alright.”
“Just tired,” Aramis assured him, and Athos let him leave it at that because there was nothing else either of them wanted out of the conversation.
“Last night just had too many people in it,” Aramis tells Porthos now, running his fingers through his hair. “It won’t be like that now, it’s Bonnaire. He’s nothing I haven’t, you know,” he smirks, “done before.”
Porthos doesn’t smile. “Just watch yourself around him.”
“I always do,” Aramis assures him, turning away from the mirror so he can look at Porthos as he says it. Reassuring him with his expression, because he can’t step closer, can’t give Porthos’ arm a comforting squeeze. “You don’t have to worry about me.”
“It’s Bonnaire I’m worried about,” Porthos tells him, mustering up a rueful twist of his mouth. “I guess I’d better get researching that information you’re going to bring back.”
“You do,” Athos says, deeming this the moment to cut in.
Porthos nods, returning to his desk, where he’s already called up a map of the area Bonnaire will tell Aramis about in around half an hour. Not an exact address, but a better start than they had. They’ll find Anne du Reine, Athos knows this; can already hear her grateful tears. But things must play out, and, much as Athos hates to admit it, he isn’t always right. The future isn’t always set in stone.
Aramis heads out, saluting as he goes, and Athos watches the tension rising in Porthos’ shoulders until he can’t stand it any longer, turns his attention back to the computer in front of him.
He hasn’t mentioned the Cardinal to the others yet; it’s possible he’s the person that they’ve been looking for, high up enough for them to make a difference if they find him and stop him, but he could yet be a ploy on Milady’s part. He’ll mention the name to Treville when Anne du Reine is safe, but there’s no sense in being publicly manipulated by Milady again.
As though I could ever make you do anything you didn’t want to, she scoffed once, her hair tangled around his fingers, and he thought how wrong she was, because divorcing her was the hardest decision he would ever make. In that halcyon day toward the end of their honeymoon period, Milady looked at him with her brilliant eyes, and he wondered if every day toward their fall killed her as much as it killed him.
When all this is over, he might sleep for a week. Perhaps she’ll leave him in peace, just this once.
-
By early afternoon, Aramis is back from seeing Bonnaire, Treville has arrived, and Porthos has an address where Ms du Reine is being held.
“It’s his wife I feel sorry for,” Aramis is telling d’Artagnan. “I hardly have to hit him with anything and he’s fawning like a teenager.”
d’Artagnan laughs. “I still don’t understand why you guys haven’t handed him over to the police.”
“It’s much easier for us to leave him to get tangled up with more important people and then get the information out of him,” Aramis says. He looks a little tired, though not as tired as last night, and his smile is rakish rather than uncomfortable. “I think he thinks we’re having an affair, actually, it’s nearly sweet.”
“Are we going to save Anne or not?” Porthos demands; he hasn’t been laughing, and he hasn’t looked at Aramis once since he got back.
Athos would say something, but none of the conversations he’s seen himself having have ever ended well; this is one of those things that needs to be left to its own devices. There are happy endings and sad endings; Athos hasn’t found a definitive one yet.
“We are indeed,” Treville announces, walking into the room with Constance behind him. “Athos?”
Sometimes, Athos feels that Treville is simply skipping out on strategy planning; he asks Athos, and Athos will tell him the plan that, as far as his memories are concerned, they have already used. It’s quick and almost always efficient, leaving little space for things to go wrong, but even so, there’s something almost cheating about it.
“She’s not that heavily guarded, because theoretically nobody knows she’s there,” Athos explains, “so Porthos and d’Artagnan can get her out.”
Porthos’ power is very much a mental and passive one, but his years on the streets have given him quick fists, and his hours spent at the gym while listening to audiobooks in languages Athos will never speak have given him the muscle to back them up. With none of them having abilities that exactly count as combative, Porthos being able to punch people in the face is something that none of them have ever been above abusing.
“Me?” d’Artagnan asks, looking startled. He’s raw enough that they don’t usually allow him out on what Athos will generously call missions; until he’s got better control over his telekinesis he’s too much of a risk. “But what-”
“Anne is covered in chains designed to restrain a woman with superhuman strength,” Athos says, “Porthos won’t be able to break them, but you can.”
d’Artagnan looks doubtful. “Can I?”
Porthos knocks a knuckle against his temple. “If Athos has seen you do it, it means you can.”
d’Artagnan doesn’t look completely reassured, but he’ll be fine. He’ll need a little time, but he’ll have that, and this will be a turning point. Athos doesn’t add that part aloud; the boy doesn’t look like he needs the pressure.
“You should take Constance,” Athos adds, “I know she’s there with you, but I don’t know if she’s needed, and we don’t know if Anne is hurt or how badly. She can wait in the car.”
Constance grimaces, but doesn’t protest; she’s been watching the grainy video of Anne repeatedly, looking for something it isn’t going to show her.
“I can help; if there’s security then I can distract them,” Aramis says, sitting up.
“You’ve done enough for today,” Athos tells him, not without kindness, and Aramis gives in gracefully, eyes still a little shadowed from the previous night’s work. It drains him, although he says it doesn’t.
“Good,” Treville says. “I’ll be here to organise communications, Athos will let us know if anything changes.”
By then, Athos muses, it will probably already be too late, but he keeps that to himself as well; d’Artagnan looks worried enough as it is.
-
Things unfold as Athos knew that they would: Porthos takes care of anyone who tries to stop them quickly enough, and there’s no doors d’Artagnan can’t open with a few deep breaths and some concentration. It takes a while to get Anne free, but she’s patient, and helps with the smaller chains when d’Artagnan has dealt with the bigger ones. Whoever tied her up - because it certainly wasn’t Bonnaire - knew what they were doing, prepared accordingly. She’s shaken, dehydrated and hungry and tired and dirty, with a headwound that makes her stagger unsteadily against Porthos and leave fingertip bruises in his forearm before she drags herself back, horrified. She thanks them repeatedly in a cracking voice, throat dry, until Porthos tells her to save her strength, and d’Artagnan shrugs his jacket around her shoulders. Anne knots her fingers in it, careful, and follows them out to where Constance is waiting to check her over in the car.
There’s an interesting outcome to this, but it’ll be a few months before it comes to fruition, and Athos will keep it to himself for now.
And as for now, well, it’s evening and Anne is dressed in a borrowed shirt and jeans, hands wrapped gingerly around a mug of tea while they all try not to stare at her. She’s a piece of a much larger puzzle, something that needs unravelling, but today is a victory and nobody’s going to crush it with what still needs to be achieved. They need more days like this, Athos thinks; or perhaps it’s only he that does.
“We can get you home,” Treville offered earlier, and Anne gave him a small, flat smile.
“I don’t have one of those anymore,” she said, simply.
“We have rooms upstairs for as long as you want one,” Treville replied, and Anne thanked him and swallowed and for the first time that day looked like she might spill into tears.
d’Artagnan is demonstrating to Constance and Treville how he managed to dismantle a chain weighing far more than he does, and Porthos is describing knocking out a cheap hired security guard in a way that’s making Aramis laugh delightedly; Anne sits in the middle of this, a little overwhelmed, but pleased by it nonetheless. Athos shifts and she turns to look at him; he offers her the kindest smile he still has left, and none of the others notice when he leaves.
-
Milady is waiting for him at the end of the street; Athos hands her the bag containing the clothes she left behind yesterday.
“You’re late,” she says, “which, considering you knew we were going to have this meeting long before I did, feels deliberate.”
“I’m not going to give you what you want,” Athos tells her. “I wouldn’t then, and I won’t now.”
Her lips twist, her smile familiar and bitter. “Not even once.”
“There’s no such thing as ‘once’ between us,” Athos reminds her.
“So, I helped you-”
“Knowing that I’d refuse,” Athos interrupts. “There’s never been a part of me that you haven’t had free run of.”
Milady sighs, her gaze dropping.
“If you want money, you can have it,” Athos says. “If you want to hold a favour over my head for as long as you want, then do that. But I’ll never help you commit the kind of crimes that you dream of.”
“A precognitive and a telepath,” Milady murmurs. “We could’ve had everything, Athos.”
Even now, his name in her mouth feels like something sacred being burned.
“We already did,” he replies.
Something stutters in her shuttered eyes, and he had to learn a long time ago that nothing hurts like the truth does.
“So you’ll owe me, then,” she says, visibly pulling herself back together, stepping in close with something dangerous that used to be seductive in her eyes.
“If that’s what you choose,” he responds; she’ll call in the favour one day, but it won’t be for a long time, and he won’t like it when she does.
She sighs; what he knows, she knows. That’s how it’s always been.
He leans a little forward, unable to stop himself, even with the certain knowledge in his hands; Milady sighs, and knots her fingers into his hair when his forehead presses against hers. Tilt his head a little, and she’d be close enough to kiss; a press of lips to the corner of his mouth that he can feel as though it’s already happened, because it will.
“I need you to leave,” he says.
Milady breathes in, and he thinks about the days when they were more like one person, built of the present and the past and thoughts that coiled together until he realised they hadn’t spoken aloud for days, his throat rusty from disuse. When they knew how each day would end before it began, and then would proceed to live through it anyway, when she didn’t need to take her clothes off to come from his mind curled against hers, easy as a thought, as a breath, as a smile.
Maybe none of it ever mattered.
“You still think that, even now?” Milady’s voice is harsh, a knife wound to the memories, and she rips away from him fast enough to make him stagger. “You’re right,” she says, “I do need to get away from here.”
It won’t be over, because it will never be over; even as a child, when he didn’t have the emotional maturity to understand, he knew he would only ever have one love of his life, and it wouldn’t be easy, and there would be a scarce handful of perfect years that would be tainted forever afterwards. He grew up with the weight of the inevitability of them both across his shoulders; has carried it for so long he hardly ever notices that it’s weight at all, now.
For now, there’s a scared young woman they need to help, and a web of machinations to unravel, and perhaps when Milady walks away he might find himself able to sleep again, just for a little while.
“You’ll miss me when I’m gone,” Milady warns him, vicious, part warning and part curse, flung at his feet to linger.
Athos misses her when she isn’t; he doesn’t need to say it aloud to know that she knows anyway.
-
f: The Musketeers
p: Athos/Milady, pre-Porthos/Aramis
ch: trope_bingo - black market
r/wc: PG-13/9000
w: Implied offscreen non/dubcon; Aramis has Alisha’s power from Misfits combined with Spiderwoman’s pheromone powers and that’s bad both for him and those around him. Nothing too dark, but, I’m warning.
s: Superpowers AU. Athos can’t remember a time when he didn’t know what was going to happen before it did.
n: [Title from Trains (Rose, Mary & Time) by Johnny Flynn] Well, I’ve been wanting to write ace!Athos for a while, and this seemed like a good time. With endless love and time for tgrrrmilk, who helped me plot this out, listened to me whinging, and read it through for me. Hopefully, this will become a series, so, look out for more parts in the future!
I’m full of you although we’re far apart.
- Johnny Flynn
The woman has dark eyes that glitter in the low lighting of the hotel bar, ringed with secrets and carefully applied mascara. She takes a sip from her martini, and it doesn’t hide the smirk slipping across her mouth at all.
Aramis has an untouched drink in front of him, condensation rolling down the glass. The ice cubes have just begun to melt.
“What I’d like,” he says, leaning intimately close and smiling something sly and wolfish, “is to have a look at that flash drive you’re carrying.”
The woman flutters her eyelashes - she honestly does this - and says: “that’s not all I could show you.”
“I know,” Aramis agrees, and stretches the smile until there’s a hint of teeth in it. “For now, though, I’d just like to see the drive.”
She doesn’t even pretend to think about it, just slides a hand into the little clutch purse she’s carrying and pulls it out. It’s small and black, and she holds it out in her palm. Aramis takes it from her quickly, his fingertips managing not to brush her skin, and pulls his hand back before she can reach for it.
“Thank you,” he says, as a clock chimes somewhere behind them and a bartender drops a glass. Aramis’ shoulders tense just slightly at the sound, but the woman doesn’t even seem to notice it. “You’ve been very helpful.”
“I can be a lot more,” she says, one hand trailing a suggestive fingertip down her chest toward her cleavage, the other reaching for Aramis. He slides back in his chair.
“What I’d actually like you to do for me is sit here and wait for me and finish that drink,” he tells her. “I’d really love that.”
Her grin spreads, dark lipstick and white teeth, but Athos doesn’t hear what she says because behind him a voice says: “mother-henning, as usual?”
He turns, but there’s nobody there, and he drops straight out of the bar, the hotel, the street, to flick his eyes open at his desk, asleep on his keyboard again.
Athos sits up and pushes it away as he scrubs a hand over his face. He has the feeling of not being alone in his own mind; whether it’s paranoia or reality he’s not sure, the time when he knew has long passed. Instead, there’s just a lingering something: a colour, a scent, the edge of an emotion that he could be imagining anyway.
“You can go back to sleep.” Porthos’ voice is a low rumble to the side. When Athos looks up, he sees him, slumped on their battered sofa with his headphones around his neck. He’s learning German this week, or Swahili, or Russian, no, wait, that’s next month. “Aramis isn’t due to check in yet.”
“He closed the exchange at ten,” Athos says.
“It’s quarter past nine,” Porthos tells him, “there’s time if you want a nap.”
“I don’t,” Athos replies, abrupt. He’s not sleeping very much these days; it seems safer that way.
Porthos narrows his eyes, but all he says is: “d’you want a coffee, then?”
What Athos would like is a bottle of vodka and to be left alone to drink it, but he pulls himself together enough to nod.
“Oy,” Porthos calls, voice too loud in the cramped room that is their base of operations, for want of a less ostentatious term, “d’Artagnan, coffee!”
“I am not your tea boy!” d’Artagnan’s shout comes back.
“No,” Porthos agrees, “you’re our coffee boy. C’mon.”
A few minutes later, d’Artagnan sulks his way over to them, carefully floating a tray with mugs on it in front of him. Athos leans over to grab his, wrapping his hands around the solid warmth.
“Ah,” Porthos says, making a show of sipping his and looking delighted, “just what I needed.”
Everything on their pitiful excuse for a coffee table shudders and rattles, and a few pens roll off the side onto the floor.
“Hey,” Porthos says, reaching behind him, “pay up, Fuck Up Jar time.”
D’Artagnan scowls. “Treville’s not even here!”
“We’re going out drinking for your birthday with this,” Porthos says, shaking the jar full of coins and notes at him, “give generously.”
By April, d’Artagnan will have mastered his telekinesis so well he’ll only make mistakes in times of heightened stress - as they all do - but for now, he’s uncertain of himself, not completely in control. He huffs, and stuffs a handful of change into the jar.
Athos can’t even bring himself to pull together a smile for his teammates as they bicker. Aramis will close the deal, come back early, and then he’ll have something to concentrate on. For now, there’s only the disquiet of his mind; a tuning fork rung in his consciousness, bright and sharp and saying I’m still here, I’m still here, I’m still here.
-
Scientists estimate that perhaps around a third of the world’s population now possess abilities considered “superhuman” or perhaps just “abnormal”, though tests haven’t been done widely enough to confirm this one way or another. For every person who can fly or control the weather or channel electricity through their skeleton, there will be dozens more with something they don’t even realise is an ability: perhaps they just think they have a quick metabolism or a good memory or have never broken a bone.
It’s different for every person, even for people with the same ability: there’s no universal experience, no rite of passage that links them all.
Athos can’t remember a time when he didn’t know what was going to happen before it did: as a very small child he’d answer questions before they were asked, discuss his memories of events that hadn’t happened yet. He was young enough when he first began to see the future that it felt completely ordinary; he didn’t have to adjust to living a non-linear lifestyle, because he knew of no other way to exist. As he grew older, he learned to control it more, taught himself to keep one foot in the present instead of both feet in the future, but he can’t unknow what he knows. Sometimes he can alter the things he sees, and sometimes he can’t.
He was an optimist, once, about the flexibility of the future, about its possibilities, but he isn’t anymore.
Not everybody’s life has been like that, though. d’Artagnan is twenty, and his telekinesis has only now made itself known. Constance made it most of the way through medical school before she realised that her patients were getting better no matter what she did: even those with terminal illnesses were recovering. Porthos was a teenager when he abruptly realised that not only was he no longer virtually illiterate - his childhood on the streets not allowing much time for a formal education - but that he was retaining information at an alarming rate.
Athos isn’t sure when Aramis discovered his own abilities because he won’t talk about it, but it’s very clear that there was a before, and now he lives in the after.
-
Aramis walks in about quarter past ten, ruffling his hair from where his motorcycle helmet flattened it, looking both triumphant and tired. He tosses a USB stick to Porthos, who catches it and then frowns down at the little flash drive, dwarfed even more in one of his huge hands.
“We’ve got to talk about the quality of your presents,” he says.
“It’s not the size, it’s what you do with it,” Aramis responds with a smirk, weaving his way through the desks so he can put the kettle on.
“No problems?” Athos asks; he’s sure there weren’t any, but though he’s loath to admit it, even he can have blindspots.
“None,” Aramis replies, tucking his hands into his pockets and leaning back against the counter while he waits for the water to boil. He looks more relaxed now he’s on the other side of the room, but Athos is the only one who’s noticed. “Gave her a few smiles and she handed it right over; and she let me leave, which is always a plus.”
d’Artagnan laughs, ducking his head into it, because d’Artagnan is still rather new, and anyway he doesn’t know what Aramis and Athos and Treville know. It’s better that way, Aramis insists.
“She’ll kick up a fuss when she realises you’re not coming back,” Porthos remarks.
“By then, her actual contact will have shown up,” Aramis reminds him. “I imagine no one there is having fun right now.”
His smile is tired, but he seems in cheerful enough spirits as he makes himself a coffee.
“Should I get started on this?” Porthos asks, holding the drive up to the light as though that will immediately make it reveal the secrets hopefully loaded onto it. He’s quite the hacker: it’s how Treville found him in the first place.
“You might as well leave it until morning,” Athos replies. “There’ll be nothing we can follow up on tonight, and we should all lie low until we’re sure Aramis got away clean.”
Aramis salutes them with his mug. “I’ll grab a shower and get home, then,” he says.
Aramis’ showers are lengthy and thorough and use up most of the hot water in the building, but no one begrudges him. If it’s what keeps him sane, it’s a small price to pay.
d’Artagnan sweeps his fingers; his keys and phone and wallet all leap out of various places in the room, gliding their way over to him. For all the broken furniture and awkward explanations he has to make to his neighbours, d’Artagnan’s power does seem practical and far less stressful than most of the other options Athos has seen.
“Right then,” Porthos says, carrying this week’s Rosetta Stone language stuff over to his desk, “you want a lift, Athos?”
“I’ve got to stay here for Treville’s check-in,” Athos replies smoothly; the call will last all of about five minutes, and he already knows when Treville is coming back - though Treville himself doesn’t yet - and he doesn’t technically need to be here to take it, but the others can’t prove anything.
Porthos frowns a little, but all he says is: “you really should get some sleep, you look knackered.”
Athos feels knackered, but all he does is smile blandly as the others leave, and reach for the whisky in the bottom drawer of his desk once he knows he’s alone.
Or as alone as he ever is, these days.
-
Constance is in at seven-thirty in the morning, fresh and bright and carrying Starbucks for Athos even though her expression is a little disapproving. Athos showered twenty minutes before she arrived and changed his shirt from yesterday; it’s not enough to avoid her thoughtful gaze, or to put off the conversation they’re due to have in a few moments.
“You really need to get some sleep,” Constance tells him.
“I’m fine,” Athos says.
“You don’t look it,” she replies bluntly, and Athos knows she means more than just externally. Constance doesn’t have x-ray vision, nothing so neat as that; she struggles to describe it, but she can see people’s maladies glittering through their skin, plain and bright and obvious.
“I’m fine,” he repeats, “you’ve told me before: my liver is exemplary.”
Constance looks cross about this fact, and Athos long ago gave up trying to hide his drinking, which was casual once upon a time but really bloody isn’t now.
“There’s more to worry about than just your liver here,” she presses, and Athos wants her to stop and knows that she won’t.
Constance doesn’t want to get involved in all the areas of their frankly often dangerous enterprise, but she helps where she can, and it’s certainly helpful to have someone with medical knowledge for their team. In any case, she can’t go back into a hospital until she’s learned to control her healing abilities: it turns out that subconscious healing is different to deliberate attempts at it, and she’s also diligently studying ethics. Once she knows what she’s doing, Constance will be able to make lame people walk and blind people see; regrow missing limbs and banish diseases with no known cure. But she’ll never be able to do it for everyone, and she’s trying to prepare herself for her forthcoming choices. Athos can see her in a ward, bloodied hands and sobbing and tired enough to drop, but that’s years away and he’ll never tell her.
“I am fine, Constance,” he insists, voice flattening on every syllable.
“You’re basically wearing a halo made of sleep deprivation,” she insists. “And don’t think I haven’t noticed you don’t go home anymore, even the others haven’t. You need to rest.”
“Leave it,” Athos tells her.
“When was the last time you slept?” Constance demands.
Athos can’t remember the last time he got what could be referred to as a good night’s sleep; perhaps that’s something he imagined, part of another life that he doesn’t think about, one that doesn’t exist anymore, anyway. He doesn’t - can’t - sleep these days, and he doesn’t miss it.
“Constance,” he says, low and hard, “do not make me have to ruin both of our mornings by shouting at you. Leave this alone.”
She opens her mouth and closes it again; leaves the cardboard cup of coffee on the edge of his desk and walks out, slamming the door behind her.
Athos slept an hour last night, he thinks; he dreamed of blonde hair in a dark room, and newspaper print under his feet, and skeins of music that he tried to catch in his hands. It’s still there now, burning beneath his skin; a tune he’s never heard, that doesn’t belong to him, plying its melody up and down his spine.
-
Aramis is the last of them to arrive, as per usual, shrugging out of the leather jacket he wears on his bike and adding it to the overcrowded coat hooks on the wall. Athos is idly clicking through the details they already have on the people they’re hunting, the words blurring in front of his aching eyes, and he doesn’t watch Porthos watching Aramis.
Some days, Athos finds himself feeling like the keeper of all the secrets in this building.
Porthos is working on unlocking the USB drive so they can find out exactly what is on it; even Athos isn’t sure what to expect, so tired that the past and the present and the future feel jumbled, his hands crowded and full. They’re hoping for details on a human trafficking ring specialising exclusively in superhumans: they’re crawling closer, but they’re still a couple of crucial steps behind. Aramis intercepting a meeting and retrieving the information that was supposed to be shared might be just what they need; Athos can’t get a clear picture of what it is they’re supposed to have.
“If I were you,” d’Artagnan remarks easily, as Aramis comes over to make coffee, “I’d just get free coffee every morning. You know, flirt with the barista?”
Athos feels himself tense; Porthos’ fingers have stopped clicking on his keyboard.
Aramis laughs, the sound tight but wanting to be relaxed. “That’s because you have no idea what you’re talking about,” he says. “And anyway, they deduct that stuff out of their pay, you know.”
“Maybe they wouldn’t mind,” d’Artagnan suggests, and Athos can’t blame him; he’s curious, of course he is. “I mean, they enjoyed flirting with you, right?”
Aramis shrugs one shoulder. Athos isn’t even pretending not to watch, and Porthos is sitting very, very still. “It wears off,” he says. “I don’t think they like it as much later.”
“Have you ever gone back and checked?” d’Artagnan presses, and Athos is poised to move, to walk over and say that’s enough, because the innocent questions are the worst kind.
Porthos has his eyes shut, laptop whirring untouched in front of him.
“…no,” Aramis says at last, face unreadable. “No, I’ve never gone back and checked.”
He leans around d’Artagnan, careful to leave space between them, and gets the milk out of the fridge. His hands shake a little as he pours it, but only a little.
Porthos’ laptop beeps, and he leans over the screen. “I’m in,” he says, and then a frown creases his face. “Hang on, there’s… this is tiny, there’s less than a gig on here.”
“There must be something on there,” Aramis says, picking up his coffee and walking over.
“There’s a file,” Porthos says, and there’s the sound of him clicking on it.
Screaming pours out of his speakers, and Athos watches Porthos’ face shut down. “Fuck,” he says, slamming a fist into his desk hard enough to make everything on it jump, “fucking fuck.”
-
Aramis, when he has to, describes it as: I’m like Cupid, but only for me. Treville and Constance’s explanations involve the word pheromones a lot more. Whichever way you want to put it, Aramis’ ability enables him to make anyone he chooses attracted to him. This can range from a light, flirtatious attraction that keeps someone distracted at just the right moment, to a violent, frantic, all-consuming passion that cannot be stopped. Aramis usually whips up something in the middle: just enough to manipulate anyone into doing whatever he wants, they’re so desperate to please him.
The first year that they worked together, Athos had just finished with a divorce that felt more like an amputation, caught up entirely in himself and his own crushing misery to pay much attention to the brittle-bright new guy, a thin veneer of charm sliding awkwardly over his expression whenever he moved. All he knew was that Aramis was reckless but trustworthy, and knew how to respect personal boundaries: it felt like enough.
It was an accident, when Aramis tried to rush off after a briefing and Athos reached out and caught his wrist to hold him back; Aramis pulled immediately away like Athos’ touch had burned, but what was startling was the absolute abject terror in his expression.
“I’m sorry,” Athos said, holding up his hands because Aramis no longer looked like his cocky self, but a frightened child, one afraid of being hit at any moment.
Aramis looked at him, at his spread hands, and frowned. “Athos,” he said carefully.
“Yes?” Athos slowly lowered his hands, because the confusion was better than the fear, in any case.
“You don’t want to…” Aramis’ lips curled, not quite a smile, not quite a grimace, “…to fuck me?” he finished.
Athos would have scoffed at this point, turned and left, but Aramis’ horror had been real, real enough for him to say: “…no.”
Aramis swallowed, looking down at his wrist, then back up to Athos. “But you touched me,” he said softly, voice cracking in the middle.
Athos caught on to what was happening. “Treville assured me that you could control it,” he said sharply.
“I can,” Aramis insisted, though his expression crumpled under Athos’ glare, and he added: “unless someone touches me.”
Athos had spent the previous few months barely sober and brutally angry and hadn’t been paying much attention to Aramis, but he found himself recalling the way Aramis kept himself to himself, didn’t so much as shake hands, maintained a careful distance from everyone at all times.
“We should’ve been warned,” Athos told him.
Aramis gave him a weak smile. “Nobody likes being told that if they touch me they’ll turn into a rapist,” he replied.
Athos tried to process that, couldn’t, and instead said: “I didn’t.”
“No.” Aramis frowned. “That’s… new. You really didn’t feel anything?”
“I didn’t,” Athos said. “But then, sex has never been particularly interesting to me.”
“But-” Aramis frowned, and then understood. “Oh.” He stood and looked at Athos for a long moment, and then tried: “is it okay if I- can I-”
Athos nodded, and Aramis all but flung himself into him, wrapping his arms around him and pressing his face into Athos’ neck, taking deep, shuddering breaths.
“I have you,” he said softly, while Aramis trembled and clung to him and they both knew they’d never mention it again after this moment, “I have you.”
-
The file on the flash drive is a twenty second video. It shows a young woman with a lot of blonde hair chained heavily to the floor of a small concrete room. She’s thrashing and screaming, trying to pull herself free but unable to. On the floor beside her is a copy of the previous day’s newspaper.
They haven’t found the details on the trafficking ring that they were hoping for: they’ve stumbled right into the middle of a sale.
They’ve turned the sound off, but Athos can still feel the woman’s scream reverberating through the room, high and sharp and grating. They can’t see her face clearly, can’t make out any identifying features; perhaps the intended recipient of the drive knew what they were looking at, just needed proof that she was being held in custody.
“I don’t think she’s seriously hurt,” Constance says, bent over the laptop and squinting. “I mean, she’s glowing all over, but I’m pretty sure it’s just bruising, nothing life-threatening.” She clicks play again, leans in even closer. “I haven’t had much practice diagnosing without the person right in front of me.”
“You’ve done your best,” Porthos says quietly, squeezing her shoulder and pulling her away from the screen, from the video that’s harrowing even without the sound on. “Thanks, it’s good to know.”
He’s been staring at the video for over two hours now, trying to pick out minute details that might help them work out who this woman is, where she is, how they can free her. There’s nothing, though; no windows, no distinguishing features, just the dark concrete and the terrified, trapped woman.
Aramis has been pacing the kitchen area, mouth a grim line, and they had to send d’Artagnan out because he was so upset that everything in the room kept rattling. Athos keeps combing his mind, looking for memories of the future that just don’t seem to be there, and why aren’t they there? Why can’t he fix this?
“We ain’t got much time,” Porthos mutters, “these sales are always quick so they stay under the radar.”
Constance has her arms wrapped defensively around herself, worry written all over her face, and Athos knows what he has to do; he thinks he has always known.
“Call Treville,” he tells Porthos, “I’ll be back soon.”
Porthos nods, too frustrated and numb to ask questions, and while Constance gives him a concerned look, she doesn’t say anything.
Their operations room takes up the entire ground floor of this quiet house in the suburbs that looks innocent from the outside but isn’t; upstairs are research rooms, storage rooms, and a couple of bedrooms in case they can’t go home but need to rest. Athos picks the one on the left, lying down on the neatly made bed, and closes his eyes.
-
The room is small and dark, with one bare bulb hanging from the ceiling and heavy iron chains set into the walls and floor. It’s almost Medieval, old-fashioned, except that the chains are new and shining. Athos takes a step forward, and something crinkles under his foot; it’s yesterday’s newspaper, he realises.
He’s being watched, he thinks, and instead of pressing onward, he turns around.
Every time he sees her, it’s like seeing her for the first time. Of course it is. He knew her so well by the time he actually met her, and yet she still stole all the breath from his lungs. She always does, even now.
“I thought I’d find you here,” he says.
Milady tosses her head, physically dismissing his words, and when she takes a step closer her shoes click on the bare concrete.
“You keep coming back here,” she remarks. “Blonde, concrete, newspaper, screaming. Why don’t you have it figured out?”
“This isn’t clear yet,” Athos tells her, “I don’t know everything.”
Milady considers him for a long moment, her face unreadable, and he knows what she’s going to say before she even says it, of course he does.
“You knew,” she says. “You knew and because you knew I knew.”
He’ll always remember that; walking down the aisle in a dress he’d seen for a decade before they ever met, she faltered, looking at him with eyes that pierced through the veil, bright with betrayal and realisation. He knew they would fail, and he watched her coming toward him and he couldn’t pretend that he didn’t know. Her fingers flexed around her bouquet, and then she kept walking.
Athos says nothing, and Milady walks around him, crouches down beside the blonde on the floor. There’s no movement, no sound; the two of them might as well be standing in a photograph. Milady reaches for the woman’s hair.
“I need your help,” Athos says.
Milady laughs, looking up at him with her glittering eyes. “Do you now.”
“We need to find her,” Athos tells her. “We don’t have much time.”
Milady straightens up, leaving the blonde on the floor, still hidden behind the curtain of her loose hair.
“The sensible thing to do would be to leave her and use this opportunity to find out how the sales operate,” she says. “You have a piece of the puzzle, you can find others with it.” She tilts her head, her mouth curling. “But you won’t do that, will you?”
She wants to taunt him, but Athos is used to that. “I won’t,” he agrees. “Help us find her.”
Milady arches an eyebrow. “And what will you give me if I do?”
Athos shakes his head. “I’ve already been bled dry by you once before.”
She laughs, swift and harsh, a gunshot. “I didn’t touch a penny of your fucking fortune.”
“You know what you took,” Athos replies, waking up on the words, speaking them aloud to the empty room.
He looks at his watch; he’s been asleep for two minutes, fifteen seconds.
Porthos is hanging up on Treville when Athos comes back downstairs.
“Milady will be here within the hour,” Athos says, staggering to his desk, clawing out a bottle of scotch in the second drawer that Porthos’ latest ransack didn’t uncover.
“Who’s Milady?” d’Artagnan asks; he looks very young, all of a sudden.
“You don’t know about his telepathic ex-wife?” Aramis asks. “God, you really are the work experience boy.”
Athos takes a swig of the scotch, considers it, and takes another. It’s cheap and it burns and he likes it that way.
“Is this a good idea?” Constance asks softly.
“It never is,” Athos replies. “But we need her.”
-
“She’s telepathic?” d’Artagnan is still saying, forty-five minutes later. Athos is heading toward drunk, which is partially how Milady makes him feel, and is partially a self-preservation tactic. His mind is more open when he’s drunk, but the information is more jumbled, making it more difficult to sift through. Milady, curled in his lap, once told him his drunken mind was like a painting with water thrown over it, the colours blending into each other, vicious and bright and impossible to untangle, random thoughts dripping off the bottom. He doesn’t know why he bothers; she’s been in and out of his mind like it was her own for more years than he cares to count.
“Yeah, so, if you have any embarrassing bed-wetting or virginity-losing or whatever stories, you should probably start putting them behind an imaginary brick wall,” Aramis tells him cheerfully.
“Will it work?” d’Artagnan asks.
Porthos shrugs. “It’s always made me feel better, anyway.”
Athos has no barriers; the man who met Milady, who isn’t the man he is now, stood back and welcomed her in, made her a part of himself. He regrets it now, of course. He’s either lonely in his suddenly-empty head, or paranoid that he isn’t alone in there any longer.
“That means ‘no’,” Aramis clarifies.
Constance is sitting on the sofa, saying nothing. She and Milady have history, but Athos doesn’t care; no one has history with Milady like he does, after all.
Athos pinches the bridge of his nose, takes a breath or two. He hates this, every time, and maybe prays for it a little as well.
“What kind of name is ‘Milady’ anyway?” d’Artagnan asks.
“It’s her supervillain name,” Porthos says on a smirk, and Athos doesn’t bother to correct him.
He has vague memories of telling his younger brother about his future wife; Athos was eight and no one believed him, but Thomas was willing to listen, and so Athos told him the stories of the beautiful woman with dark hair. He thinks he called her Anne then, though he’s never called her that in the following years.
“I’ve always known her as Milady,” Athos says wearily.
“But you married her,” d’Artagnan says.
New people are exhausting, Athos reflects. “I married her as Milady Clarick de Winter,” he says, “and yes, that was rather a mouthful.”
“Oh.” d’Artagnan looks thoughtful for a long moment.
Athos sighs. “Asexual isn’t the same as aromantic,” he says, “and also shut up.”
The front doorbell rings a few minutes later; the others exchange glances and it’s Porthos who goes.
Constance’s fingers knot in her lap; Aramis is pretending to be casual, but his arms are folded across his chest, and d’Artagnan’s face shows nothing but naked interest. Athos was that young once, he thinks; he’ll never be that young again.
Milady precedes Porthos into their operations room, carrying a garment bag over one arm, dark hair coiled up behind her head.
“It’s so nice to walk into a room and be greeted by the worst things you’ve ever done,” she says brightly, casting her eyes over all of them. Constance bites into her lip but refuses to look away. “You have hidden depths, young man,” Milady adds, looking to d’Artagnan, who awkwardly ducks his head.
“Leave him alone,” Athos says.
Milady turns her gaze to him; her expression doesn’t flicker, and he thinks about the next time they’ll meet, and the time after that, and every time after that. She says nothing, her lips curling, but she does turn away first.
“Well, luckily for all of you, there’s a party we can attend and ask some awkward questions at,” she announces. “That should do it, shouldn’t it?”
Athos tips his head to one side. “Her name is Anne du Reine,” he says. “She’s been missing for three months.”
Porthos nods, fingers already flying over his computer keyboard.
d’Artagnan’s eyes go wide. “What-”
“Athos is remembering information he hasn’t been given yet,” Milady says. “This one is new, isn’t he?”
“Keep your claws to yourself,” Athos tells her, “you have a party to crash.”
Milady smirks, shifting the garment bag in her arms. “I do,” she says. “And I’ll need back-up… Walking Rohypnol, go and put a suit on.”
Aramis swallows too hard, but he nods, tight, and Athos feels the flush of guilt he always feels when he brings Milady anywhere near his friends.
“They expect it of you, dear,” Milady remarks. “I’ll be upstairs.”
She swishes out, crooking a finger at Aramis as she goes.
“You don’t have to go anywhere with her,” Porthos says immediately.
“Of course I do,” Aramis replies, but he scrapes together a plausible smile. “Besides, Athos would know if this all ends in tears, right?”
“Everything involving Milady ends in tears,” Constance mutters, saving Athos the bother of saying the same thing, but she gets up and crosses over to lean over Porthos’ shoulder as Aramis heads out to change.
Athos listens to the click of Porthos typing until he hears Milady’s footsteps on the stairs, gets up and goes because he always does. He thinks he hears Constance sigh behind him, but maybe he doesn’t.
Milady has changed into an evening gown, her hair frothing around her shoulders, her mouth bright with a slash of red lipstick.
“How do I look?” she asks.
“You told me long ago to stop telling you things that you already know,” Athos responds.
She smiles, and he wants to touch her, to curl his fingers into her hair, to press fingertips to her cheeks and her collarbones and the curves of her mouth that all belonged to him, once upon a time. Her breath catches, just a little, and he looks away.
“We’ll be gone for a few hours,” Milady says, “and I assume you’d know by now if we’re both about to get shot and thrown out on the street.” She hooks a knuckle under his chin, forces him to lift it. “Get some fucking sleep.”
Athos is barely aware of stumbling back into their operations room, folding into the sofa, closing his eyes.
He dreams of nothing, and it’s bliss.
-
Athos wakes, disoriented, when Milady and Aramis return, bearing late night chips for everyone. He stays lying on the sofa for long minutes, watching Milady sitting at his desk, kicking off her shoes, making herself at home. The way she made a home within his skin, once.
She flicks her eyes to him, briefly, and he wonders momentarily what she sees. Wonders, but doesn’t want to know.
“Anne du Reine,” he says, pushing himself upright. “Missing three months. Her sale will go through tomorrow night. The presumed buyer is a man named Rochefort. Ms du Reine has superstrength, which manifested some six months ago, is still uncontrolled.” He scrubs a hand across his face, feeling where his beard is becoming unruly, in desperate need of a trim he won’t give it. “We don’t know where she’s being held, or who is behind this operation.”
Porthos shakes his head; he’s eating his chips and working at the same time, tension rippling across his shoulders.
“Bonnaire’s come up,” he says, voice a low growl; he’s had dealings with Bonnaire before. “But he’s small-time, doesn’t have the manpower or the brain to set this operation up.”
“You can say that again,” Aramis mutters, slumped at his own desk, feet propped up. His hair is messy and there’s a smudge of lipstick on his jaw.
“…if Athos can just… know all this stuff,” d’Artagnan begins, “why did they have to go and get it in the first place?”
“I can’t know information that’s gathered in the future if the information is never gathered,” Athos explains wearily; his life is made of paradoxes, and of avoiding them. “But this is really all you came back with?”
He’s looking at Milady as he says it, but it’s Aramis who responds. “We ransacked that party,” he says, “that’s all any of them had.”
He looks worn and pale, eyes sunken and bruised-looking.
“You did well,” Athos tells him, because Treville isn’t there to say it himself. Aramis gives him a wan smile, but doesn’t look convinced.
Constance pointedly pushes a paper packet of chips toward Athos, holding his gaze until he reluctantly leans forward to take it. He probably needs the food; scotch and sleep deprivation cluttering his thoughts, his body. Constance gives him a half-smile, returns to her desk, where she’s clearly helping Porthos track down Bonnaire: they can lean on him, it’s worked in the past.
“You don’t understand,” Milady says; Athos’ head snaps up, but Milady is looking at d’Artagnan. “You aren’t thinking big enough, child. People who don’t have abilities of their own still want to use them; even your own Treville does it, or did you not wonder why he gathered you all together to use for his own ends?”
“Treville has an ability,” d’Artagnan protests.
Milady’s mouth curls. “Well, if you want to call that an ability. But surely you must realise what can be done with a woman who has superstrength, if you can make her obey you? Or a telepath? Or a precognitive?” Her gaze falls to Athos again; he doesn’t want to look away, but he does. “But you’ll never bend at the knee, will you, Athos.”
He wouldn’t then; he won’t now. They both know it, and it strings between them even now all the other strings have been cut.
“Treville’s on his way back,” Porthos says, voice smashing easily through the tension. “We’ve got until tomorrow night. Constance and I will track down Bonnaire, Aramis can get some rest until we need to put the screws on him. Athos, sort out what we’re paying Milady and then you can update Treville with what we have.”
“What about me?” d’Artagnan asks.
“You’re going to make a lot of coffee and not accidentally smash anything,” Porthos says. “Everyone happy?”
“Did Treville make you leader in his absence?” Athos asks dryly.
Porthos arches his eyebrow. “Well, he didn’t make you,” he responds.
Aramis shoves his chip wrappers into the bin, gets up and stretches. Porthos watches, and Athos watches his eyes widen and his lips tighten. Milady is watching too; her mouth opens, and Athos thinks don’t, sharp and hard and desperate. She tosses a disdainful look at him, but stays silent.
There’s a purpling bruise around Aramis’ wrist, visible as his shirtsleeve rides up; Porthos is on his feet in moments, reaching for him, and Aramis flinches away, not managing to hide the movement as anything other than what it is.
Athos has always maintained that Aramis should tell everyone the truth, that he is incapable of turning off his ability and the closer the proximity, the worse it is. But he can understand Aramis’ reluctance to admit it, to pretend that things aren’t as bad as they really are. He and Porthos maintain an awkward dance around each other; one that it’s nearly painful to watch some days.
“It’s fine,” Aramis says quickly, “I just… hit someone a bit too strong. Constance can sort it out for me later.” He scrapes up a smile that convinces no one. “I need a shower, I’ll be back.”
Athos can’t look at Porthos; he turns his attention to his ex-wife instead, to the strangled relationship he already knows.
“I’ll walk you out,” he says.
They stand in the street in silence, lamplight catching on her eyelashes; in her heels, Milady is nearly on eye level with him.
“You didn’t mention the Cardinal,” Athos says.
Milady tilts her head. “Nor did you.” He waits and she rolls her eyes, looks away. “It’s just a name I think I caught once or twice. There’s no guarantee he’s even involved.”
“If people are trying not to think about him-”
“You and I both know that the things people don’t want to think about are the things I hear the loudest,” Milady replies.
It’s Athos’ turn to look away; he can’t help himself.
“You helped us,” he says, abrupt, “tell me what you want.”
Milady leans close enough that her breath brushes his ear; for a moment all Athos wants is to open up and let her back in, have her behind his eyes where his loneliness prowls and calls for her. It won’t be still, and perhaps he haunts her dreams as well; it would be nice not to be the only one.
“I don’t tell you things you already know either,” she responds, and walks away, leaving his fingers digging into his palm not to reach for something already long gone.
-
“Porthos, I’m fine.” Aramis adjusts the neck of his top in the mirror, letting it fall open more to reveal a bared collarbone. The sight does little for Athos, though he does know how it feels to press his hands into someone’s bones, feel them shift beneath the skin for him, every inch of them his. Porthos, perhaps a foot to the side of Aramis, swallows too hard, gaze dropping to the floor.
“You didn’t look fine last night,” Porthos says, soft but firm.
“I was trying to interrogate too many people,” Aramis says with a shrug, his shirt slipping a little more. There’s no denying that Aramis is an attractive man; he says that he likes to let his body lay the groundwork for his powers, and Athos can only assume that it works. “I didn’t get my control completely right, but, no harm done.” He shows Porthos his wrist, where Constance stared at the bruise until it vanished, the skin untouched.
There’s a little more to it than that, which Athos found out last night, catching Aramis before he went to sleep to check that everything was as fine as he was claiming.
“I lost count after about fifteen,” Aramis told him, mouth twisting with annoyance. “I just miscalculated the pheromone strength, that’s all.”
“You don’t normally allow people to touch you,” Athos responded, indicating the marks on Aramis’ arm. “Not unless-”
Aramis shook his head. “No. I was scared, I’ll admit it: the man was drunker than I thought and I wasn’t quick enough, but…” And Athos knew, like he had always known, even before Aramis gave him a smile that verged on the sheepish. “But then Milady was there, and she told him to stop and he did. I don’t think I knew she could do that.”
“She couldn’t always,” Athos replied, because it was the easiest thing to say, and didn’t think about how he learned that she could. “If you’re sure you’re alright.”
“Just tired,” Aramis assured him, and Athos let him leave it at that because there was nothing else either of them wanted out of the conversation.
“Last night just had too many people in it,” Aramis tells Porthos now, running his fingers through his hair. “It won’t be like that now, it’s Bonnaire. He’s nothing I haven’t, you know,” he smirks, “done before.”
Porthos doesn’t smile. “Just watch yourself around him.”
“I always do,” Aramis assures him, turning away from the mirror so he can look at Porthos as he says it. Reassuring him with his expression, because he can’t step closer, can’t give Porthos’ arm a comforting squeeze. “You don’t have to worry about me.”
“It’s Bonnaire I’m worried about,” Porthos tells him, mustering up a rueful twist of his mouth. “I guess I’d better get researching that information you’re going to bring back.”
“You do,” Athos says, deeming this the moment to cut in.
Porthos nods, returning to his desk, where he’s already called up a map of the area Bonnaire will tell Aramis about in around half an hour. Not an exact address, but a better start than they had. They’ll find Anne du Reine, Athos knows this; can already hear her grateful tears. But things must play out, and, much as Athos hates to admit it, he isn’t always right. The future isn’t always set in stone.
Aramis heads out, saluting as he goes, and Athos watches the tension rising in Porthos’ shoulders until he can’t stand it any longer, turns his attention back to the computer in front of him.
He hasn’t mentioned the Cardinal to the others yet; it’s possible he’s the person that they’ve been looking for, high up enough for them to make a difference if they find him and stop him, but he could yet be a ploy on Milady’s part. He’ll mention the name to Treville when Anne du Reine is safe, but there’s no sense in being publicly manipulated by Milady again.
As though I could ever make you do anything you didn’t want to, she scoffed once, her hair tangled around his fingers, and he thought how wrong she was, because divorcing her was the hardest decision he would ever make. In that halcyon day toward the end of their honeymoon period, Milady looked at him with her brilliant eyes, and he wondered if every day toward their fall killed her as much as it killed him.
When all this is over, he might sleep for a week. Perhaps she’ll leave him in peace, just this once.
-
By early afternoon, Aramis is back from seeing Bonnaire, Treville has arrived, and Porthos has an address where Ms du Reine is being held.
“It’s his wife I feel sorry for,” Aramis is telling d’Artagnan. “I hardly have to hit him with anything and he’s fawning like a teenager.”
d’Artagnan laughs. “I still don’t understand why you guys haven’t handed him over to the police.”
“It’s much easier for us to leave him to get tangled up with more important people and then get the information out of him,” Aramis says. He looks a little tired, though not as tired as last night, and his smile is rakish rather than uncomfortable. “I think he thinks we’re having an affair, actually, it’s nearly sweet.”
“Are we going to save Anne or not?” Porthos demands; he hasn’t been laughing, and he hasn’t looked at Aramis once since he got back.
Athos would say something, but none of the conversations he’s seen himself having have ever ended well; this is one of those things that needs to be left to its own devices. There are happy endings and sad endings; Athos hasn’t found a definitive one yet.
“We are indeed,” Treville announces, walking into the room with Constance behind him. “Athos?”
Sometimes, Athos feels that Treville is simply skipping out on strategy planning; he asks Athos, and Athos will tell him the plan that, as far as his memories are concerned, they have already used. It’s quick and almost always efficient, leaving little space for things to go wrong, but even so, there’s something almost cheating about it.
“She’s not that heavily guarded, because theoretically nobody knows she’s there,” Athos explains, “so Porthos and d’Artagnan can get her out.”
Porthos’ power is very much a mental and passive one, but his years on the streets have given him quick fists, and his hours spent at the gym while listening to audiobooks in languages Athos will never speak have given him the muscle to back them up. With none of them having abilities that exactly count as combative, Porthos being able to punch people in the face is something that none of them have ever been above abusing.
“Me?” d’Artagnan asks, looking startled. He’s raw enough that they don’t usually allow him out on what Athos will generously call missions; until he’s got better control over his telekinesis he’s too much of a risk. “But what-”
“Anne is covered in chains designed to restrain a woman with superhuman strength,” Athos says, “Porthos won’t be able to break them, but you can.”
d’Artagnan looks doubtful. “Can I?”
Porthos knocks a knuckle against his temple. “If Athos has seen you do it, it means you can.”
d’Artagnan doesn’t look completely reassured, but he’ll be fine. He’ll need a little time, but he’ll have that, and this will be a turning point. Athos doesn’t add that part aloud; the boy doesn’t look like he needs the pressure.
“You should take Constance,” Athos adds, “I know she’s there with you, but I don’t know if she’s needed, and we don’t know if Anne is hurt or how badly. She can wait in the car.”
Constance grimaces, but doesn’t protest; she’s been watching the grainy video of Anne repeatedly, looking for something it isn’t going to show her.
“I can help; if there’s security then I can distract them,” Aramis says, sitting up.
“You’ve done enough for today,” Athos tells him, not without kindness, and Aramis gives in gracefully, eyes still a little shadowed from the previous night’s work. It drains him, although he says it doesn’t.
“Good,” Treville says. “I’ll be here to organise communications, Athos will let us know if anything changes.”
By then, Athos muses, it will probably already be too late, but he keeps that to himself as well; d’Artagnan looks worried enough as it is.
-
Things unfold as Athos knew that they would: Porthos takes care of anyone who tries to stop them quickly enough, and there’s no doors d’Artagnan can’t open with a few deep breaths and some concentration. It takes a while to get Anne free, but she’s patient, and helps with the smaller chains when d’Artagnan has dealt with the bigger ones. Whoever tied her up - because it certainly wasn’t Bonnaire - knew what they were doing, prepared accordingly. She’s shaken, dehydrated and hungry and tired and dirty, with a headwound that makes her stagger unsteadily against Porthos and leave fingertip bruises in his forearm before she drags herself back, horrified. She thanks them repeatedly in a cracking voice, throat dry, until Porthos tells her to save her strength, and d’Artagnan shrugs his jacket around her shoulders. Anne knots her fingers in it, careful, and follows them out to where Constance is waiting to check her over in the car.
There’s an interesting outcome to this, but it’ll be a few months before it comes to fruition, and Athos will keep it to himself for now.
And as for now, well, it’s evening and Anne is dressed in a borrowed shirt and jeans, hands wrapped gingerly around a mug of tea while they all try not to stare at her. She’s a piece of a much larger puzzle, something that needs unravelling, but today is a victory and nobody’s going to crush it with what still needs to be achieved. They need more days like this, Athos thinks; or perhaps it’s only he that does.
“We can get you home,” Treville offered earlier, and Anne gave him a small, flat smile.
“I don’t have one of those anymore,” she said, simply.
“We have rooms upstairs for as long as you want one,” Treville replied, and Anne thanked him and swallowed and for the first time that day looked like she might spill into tears.
d’Artagnan is demonstrating to Constance and Treville how he managed to dismantle a chain weighing far more than he does, and Porthos is describing knocking out a cheap hired security guard in a way that’s making Aramis laugh delightedly; Anne sits in the middle of this, a little overwhelmed, but pleased by it nonetheless. Athos shifts and she turns to look at him; he offers her the kindest smile he still has left, and none of the others notice when he leaves.
-
Milady is waiting for him at the end of the street; Athos hands her the bag containing the clothes she left behind yesterday.
“You’re late,” she says, “which, considering you knew we were going to have this meeting long before I did, feels deliberate.”
“I’m not going to give you what you want,” Athos tells her. “I wouldn’t then, and I won’t now.”
Her lips twist, her smile familiar and bitter. “Not even once.”
“There’s no such thing as ‘once’ between us,” Athos reminds her.
“So, I helped you-”
“Knowing that I’d refuse,” Athos interrupts. “There’s never been a part of me that you haven’t had free run of.”
Milady sighs, her gaze dropping.
“If you want money, you can have it,” Athos says. “If you want to hold a favour over my head for as long as you want, then do that. But I’ll never help you commit the kind of crimes that you dream of.”
“A precognitive and a telepath,” Milady murmurs. “We could’ve had everything, Athos.”
Even now, his name in her mouth feels like something sacred being burned.
“We already did,” he replies.
Something stutters in her shuttered eyes, and he had to learn a long time ago that nothing hurts like the truth does.
“So you’ll owe me, then,” she says, visibly pulling herself back together, stepping in close with something dangerous that used to be seductive in her eyes.
“If that’s what you choose,” he responds; she’ll call in the favour one day, but it won’t be for a long time, and he won’t like it when she does.
She sighs; what he knows, she knows. That’s how it’s always been.
He leans a little forward, unable to stop himself, even with the certain knowledge in his hands; Milady sighs, and knots her fingers into his hair when his forehead presses against hers. Tilt his head a little, and she’d be close enough to kiss; a press of lips to the corner of his mouth that he can feel as though it’s already happened, because it will.
“I need you to leave,” he says.
Milady breathes in, and he thinks about the days when they were more like one person, built of the present and the past and thoughts that coiled together until he realised they hadn’t spoken aloud for days, his throat rusty from disuse. When they knew how each day would end before it began, and then would proceed to live through it anyway, when she didn’t need to take her clothes off to come from his mind curled against hers, easy as a thought, as a breath, as a smile.
Maybe none of it ever mattered.
“You still think that, even now?” Milady’s voice is harsh, a knife wound to the memories, and she rips away from him fast enough to make him stagger. “You’re right,” she says, “I do need to get away from here.”
It won’t be over, because it will never be over; even as a child, when he didn’t have the emotional maturity to understand, he knew he would only ever have one love of his life, and it wouldn’t be easy, and there would be a scarce handful of perfect years that would be tainted forever afterwards. He grew up with the weight of the inevitability of them both across his shoulders; has carried it for so long he hardly ever notices that it’s weight at all, now.
For now, there’s a scared young woman they need to help, and a web of machinations to unravel, and perhaps when Milady walks away he might find himself able to sleep again, just for a little while.
“You’ll miss me when I’m gone,” Milady warns him, vicious, part warning and part curse, flung at his feet to linger.
Athos misses her when she isn’t; he doesn’t need to say it aloud to know that she knows anyway.
-