Musketeer fic: Affinityverse
Jasmine, Musketeers fic, affinityverse (best catalogued in my memories) <3 What the fuck Rainjoy. Hiding from the real world, obviously.
Disclaimer: I no longer own a passport that will allow me passage around the EU, and I've never owned these characters.
Rating: R
Warnings and spoilers: The main list's on part one, read sensibly. Discussion of past sexual assault in this one, and some of the horrible and confusing ways people respond to survivors.
Summary: "It's not personal."
Note: Seriously, I am burying myself in fantasy until I can deal with what we *did*.
Admittedly, he's a little confused. And he doesn't like to admit how confused he is quite often now, it upsets his circle so Aramis plays it cool and pretends that he knows what's happening until he can work it out from context, but there are times when he can't pretend it away. Here and now he is aware that his confusion is more than a bit of a problem, because, here and now, he has no fucking clue where his circle is.
He doesn't reach for his gun, but the eeriness of his solitude touches the back of his neck, prickles it there with cold under the midday sun. He is never left alone, and solitude has no peace for him, it only ever means something has gone wrong. And the sky is so utterly blue, the colour of exuberance, the walls surrounding this little square fed into through narrow winding streets are whitewashed, the plants cascading over the walls of one of the red-roofed houses to his right are utterly spilling with flowers, great big purple-pink things vivid as laughter, so many they emit colour like the sun emits light, the colour bathes him. And there he stands, alone, nudging the hat back nervously on his head and looking around, uneasy. Where's his circle? Where is he?
He breathes regularly, and holds his nerve. Things will settle out soon. He's frequently confused and it always comes to make sense again, so all he has to do is be patient. His circle always find him, sense always returns to him. The important thing is not to fuss about it, because it won't solve anything, all that does is make it worse. He upsets his circle with it, so he doesn't indulge in it. Instead he breathes in the sun-warmed air, between these white walls and terracotta roofs, elegant-looping black bars over the windows, and he can smell those flowers . . . no . . .
Under the shout of nectar-sweet scent pouring from all those vibrant flowers hung like dancers' skirts out to dry, he smells a whisper of something else, softer, paler, something a little more mature and more complex. Underneath the honey-thick scent of all those blooming flowers he smells another flower, and it's a scent he knows, warm as the earth baked by the sun. Underneath the scent of all those flowers, he can smell a lone breath of jasmine, against that mellow pool of scent it stands out rare and isolated and white as a star.
He turns, and the woman in the red skirt and wide hat watches him through white-rimmed sunglasses, poised and distant from him - not so foolish as to step close - and smiles, a dangerous smile underneath her hidden eyes. Her lips are painted very red, and she is quite startlingly beautiful, and very, very dangerous. Aramis would like this to be a dream, now, the sweat's caught cold on the back of his neck, he is very suddenly aware that this is a very big moment of confusion to be having, alone of his circle and her here, but he doesn't know how he's here and -
He blinks. Andalucía. Fire rift. Yes, he remembers why he's here now, the episodes he had that led them here, but he doesn't remember how he got here, where his circle are, and now she's here and he feels cold with emotions he couldn't even name. This is the woman who killed Athos' brother and destroyed his life. This is the woman who shot Porthos. This is the woman - what the hell will Athos think when he knows that Aramis and this woman even made eye contact - ?
"Milady," he offers, as cautiously as if to a leopard, and his bow is only very slight, his eyes never leaving her face. "It's been some time."
Her smile twitches at him amused, and he knows she's armed, and doesn't know which of them would be quicker in reaching for their weapon. He's not going to test it. He owes her heart a bullet but he's not going to underestimate the survival mechanism of a woman who's needed it, not when he knows he's already compromised by episodes. Porthos will be really pissed off if Aramis falters his revenge for a dart shot very long ago and gets himself shot for it instead.
"I saw a little lost kitten," she says, sitting on a low wall and smoothing her skirts down; even in sitting she angles her body to its most flattering lines, and he understands that she knows how to do that from the education need gives as well. "And I wondered what it's doing out on its own, given that the world is a dangerous place and it isn't supposed to die yet."
Aramis scratches the hollow of his throat, thinking that through. "If the date of my death has been designated already, it's the Lord's business and I shan't object. But I'm curious about your objections to it." This woman kills rifts. He's very aware of the gun he's wearing, looking into her eyes, he feels that gun the way a mouse faced with a cat must feel its own teeth: it's the only thing he has. "You're not supposed to kill me, and now you want to shepherd me back to the safety of my circle? I assume there's some profit to be had from it. Tenderness does not become you."
"No. You three play the weepy maiden much better than I." He can tell how closely she's looking at him through those sunglasses, even if he can't see her eyes. He already knows them; cat-green, and calculating. "I've been paid to follow out particular instructions. Oddly enough I wasn't paid to divulge those instructions to you."
"You take payment for this," Aramis says, and feels a flutter in the back of his attention - Porthos and Athos calling for him from some distance, they must be worried, how long ago did he leave them? He has no idea, and has a sudden horror of them finding him with her, Athos will lose his mind, and he cuts his attention away from them immediately, snapping himself back to what's in front of him. "People die because you interrupt us. Rifts die. And when you get to them first, what do you do to them, they're innocent people, it's not their fault they have a rift in them -"
"I have instructions to follow. It's not personal." Her fingertips drum the wall. "You really are meant for my fiancé. He must find that whiny self-righteousness so alluring."
He's smiling just because it's a good way to keep a situation stable. "I wasn't aware that an aversion to cold-blooded murder counted as a character defect."
"One the three of you can afford to have." She folds her elegant arms, pale with the flash of the sunlight off her skin, and shakes her dark hair back over her shoulders. "I've seen the way he looks at you, when you have one of your little seizures." she says. "What are you, to my fiancé?"
"With respect, given the circumstances, your engagement is probably broken, milady."
"I have seen," she says in a subtly less patient voice, "the way Olivier looks at you. What are you to him?"
He doesn't respond to the thought of this woman's ability to watch them. It's not something he comfortably can respond to. And if she's seen the way Athos looks at him in an episode, hell, he has them all the time where she could have seen them, that doesn't mean she's seen the way all three of them touch each other in their home. And he's not giving Athos' privacy away, not the way Athos guards it, not what it means to him, not to her. "His name is Athos."
"Does he say he loves you?"
"We're a circle."
"Are you too ashamed of fucking him to admit to it?"
"His engagement to you is broken. You don't have the right to know anything of what his life is now."
"I'm asking for your sake, little lost kitten," she says, as if weary of his stupidity already. "You do know what he did to the last person he professed to love?"
He stares at her across the square and she looks evenly, precisely back, all the air heavy with heat between them, the whole world a drowsy siesta but for the thread of wire tugged taut between the two of them. She holds her neck steady, and he can't see a thing of her eyes but he doesn't need to, and she looks at him arms folded and mouth unimpressed, and he can see by the tightness of the muscles in her jaw, angry.
He says, but the scent of jasmine makes him uneasy of the words to use, "That was different."
"How? Because you haven't displeased him yet?"
"That was different. I - we would never do to him what you did. He-"
She laughs, a hard bark of contempt, not humour, and kicks an ankle under the scarlet falls of her skirt. "All I did," she says, head still high and unafraid against him, "was try to protect him from the truth of what his dearest little brother really was."
"You were protecting yourself."
"Yes. That as well." Head high, breathing a little harder now, he can feel the fury coming off her in waves, like the psychic building of a tsunami, and her chest moves quick and tight. "As if that is something I should be punished for."
There's bile creeping up under his tongue, thick and sour and filling his mouth, he's beginning to feel himself shake, something is wrong wrong wrong wrong and he doesn't know how to get out of its way before it hits him - "You killed his brother."
"It was that," she says, breathing fast and hard with what can only be rage, "or let him do what he wanted to me."
Aramis turns away. It's like a physical shock, he has to lean against the nearest wall, his own breath is getting shallow in sympathy, and his - his hands are shaking. He presses them hard to the wall and they're shaking. And he knows why. He's spent years ignoring why. He's spent years pretending he doesn't know, holding his tongue and his nerve on every incredibly rare occasion when Athos has ever said the word 'Thomas' in front of him. He knows why he's so shaken. He's just never been ready, he is still not ready, to face it.
She says, conversational but voice roughened by her laboured breathing, "How psychic are you?"
He leans against the wall, trying to fight down the trembling, and his need to throw up. She says, determined and he's no strength to fight her, "Do you know what he did?"
He squeezes his eyes closed, breathes raggedly, does not throw up, does not throw up. "His rift broke."
Her breath snorts out of her, but with less force than it should; she's breathing too shallow as well as too fast. "It did, indeed. It broke after - he tried to kiss me, and - I shoved him back, and - then he tried as - as spoiled little boys do to take what he - felt he was owed."
Her breath is getting beyond her, so short it sounds like it hurts, and he forces his heavy head to turn back to her, blinking the fog out of his eyes, as she fumbles in her heavy skirts and pulls out an inhaler, and takes one quick hit, and holds it, and another, and holds it. And Aramis leans there against the wall, spiteful little shivers of his rift running across the vulnerable skin of his shoulders, and whispers, "Your rift."
She lets her breath out again in a heavy burst and ignores him. "His rift breaking," she says, voice roughened like scoured metal on its underside, "stopped him trying to shove me down to do what he wanted to me. He lost consciousness and fell back off me but his mind came out -"
He puts a hand over his eyes, whispers, "I know what his mind did."
"He wouldn't stop, I couldn't fight his mind, I used a cushion but I knew they'd question - while he was still trying to get into my head, while he was forcing himself into my head, I had to drag him to the pond and hold him into it until he stopped, he wouldn't stop, I did what I had to."
Aramis just stands there with a hand over his eyes. The thought of Athos is making his heart panic. But he can't not say it, it strains in his throat like there's blood trying to come up, and he opens his mouth and croaks, "I know what he did."
She's still breathing shakily, too quick and dangerous, but her back's held straight, her face expressionless turned to his, blank behind the sunglasses. He's suddenly once again, at the sight of her posture, aware that she's armed. "Olivier told you I lied, didn't he? That his precious little brother would never do such a thing, that I am a lying scheming murderous bitch and his little brother the lamb I slaughtered?"
"He said you lied, he didn't say what about. He never - he doesn't speak of it."
"Then how do you know what he did? How psychic are you?"
"Not from you. I don't know from you. I don't - do that. In people's heads, I don't do that." He swallows, leans his shoulder to the wall, he feels too unsteady with sickness to stand unsupported. "When we went to that house to find Athos - he was still there. Thomas." He doesn't know if he's ever said that name out loud before, and it opens a silent dark hole in his stomach. His guts grind against each other, the white light of the sun falls dumb on his arms cold as frost, and shaking. "Or his soul or his rift was, or - or that is exactly how psychic I am. But he got into my head and he held me in the pond face-first to make me understand how he'd died. I don't know how long I wasn't breathing for. But I could understand that. He didn't have much choice in how he could communicate with me, that I could understand, that was no - imposition."
She sits there holding her inhaler, breath sharp in her lungs as if full of glass flecks. "But," she says, watching his face.
He closes his eyes. "But. He wouldn't let me go. All night - whenever I tried to rest he was trying to get in again. He would have killed me in my own mind to take my body to have it. And - it was the first time anyone forced themselves into my mind." Revulsion takes his stomach and squeezes it hard and he has to put both hands to the wall again, sucking breath down to stop the hot sour bile from coming up, and his voice comes hoarse. "No-one should have to face that. So I know what he did." He leans his forehead to his arm, pressed to the wall, wishes he had more strength than this but his knees tremble with wanting to fall. "I know what he did. I'm sorry. I know what he did. I'm sorry."
At his back Athos' wife is silent, but for the struggle of her sharp in-breaths, then says, "Your 'Athos' tried to kill me for defending myself."
His knees want to go, he wants to be sick. "He didn't know."
"I told him what he did, he didn't care. And you think he won't do the same to you? This is for your sake, here's your tenderness, this advice is for your own good, run. Because if you displease him, he will kill you, and he'll tell himself and everyone else that he's right to do it. And you've already displeased him, haven't you? Here you are talking to me."
Aramis is panting into his arm and doesn't know if he's going to faint, and he can't. He can't be unconscious in front of this woman. She takes rifts when they can't fight back, he's been locked away from his circle before because they got hold of him. And as fragile as his grip on the world is getting, he can't face it again, not being near them, he won't survive it. "Your rift," he says, trying to breathe longer, deeper. "Your rift has - it's in your lungs." He swallows, breathes, breathes. "You don't have a sealed circle."
She snorts again, and looks away, and massages at her chest with one hand as if it hurts. "Save that My Little Pony nonsense for the other children. I don't need a circle."
"You're dying. It's in your lungs, how bad does it get? You're dying. You must have been holding it - as long as me, longer? And you don't have a circle, do you have anyone?"
"I don't need anyone."
He staggers his shoulder to the wall so he can face her properly. "Is your pride worth dying for? We need circles, we don't last without them -"
"You need them. I don't need anything." She stands up, skirts swinging down, back straight and lethal as a blade. "I hope Olivier does attack you. Of course I'm not going to kill you, little lost kitten, my darling fiancé will take care of that for me, and then he can suffocate under all your blood, then he can drown under what he's done. Maybe your air affinity will kill him afterwards, maybe that will be the end of my dear sweet-"
"He's not going to hurt me, he didn't know, he didn't know you were telling the truth about-"
"Why would I lie?"
"He just thought - you did lie to him, you lied about-"
"How does that make what he did to me right, how does that mean I had no right to defend myself?"
"He just - he-"
He wants to defend Athos and can't find what there is to defend, defending Athos means defending Thomas as well, and - he's had that monster in his head, he knows his greed and how entirely self-serving he was, Aramis fighting and panicked and shattered by episodes just didn't matter to him, and trying to defend Athos in defending him puts Aramis into a place he can't be but he can't not defend Athos, Athos is -
When he thinks about what she must have told him, and how Athos reacted to it, his stomach rebels like it's been kicked at the thought of defending him.
She's walking to him. He shakes against the wall, this is bad, he needs to turn and rally his strength and keep her off him, he can't be taken again, can't be separated from his circle, but he's so cold it's like he's iced over, he can't -
"Alright, little kitten," Athos' wife sings to him under her breath, voice still a little popped and crackling like one of Porthos' records from her brittle breath, and he knows that this is what rifts do, this is what makes them all the same, they're both broken. Her hand hovers just above his shaking back, not touching him, not touching him yet. "I have my instructions, and you're not allowed to die. So you calm yourself down and keep yourself safe. That means you breathe - just breathe, little kitten - and don't let my fiancé kill you yet just because no-one ever could be perfect enough for him."
Her hand falls between his shoulder blades, a gentle stroking. He gasps, mouth full of the scent of jasmine, body frozen rigid, but she just strokes his back, then takes his shoulders and turns him - she's surprisingly strong, but then she sounds like she's trying to breathe petrol so maybe he is just so very weak right now - but he's wearing a gun and he's a water affinity and she knows what water affinities can do in self-defence -
His teeth chatter on, "You're not taking me."
"Don't flatter yourself that I want you. You're of use where you are, for now. Just try not to let Olivier murder you yet, do remember that you're in bed with a monster. You can put a collar on it. You can stroke it and feed it and tickle its belly. But however long you hold its leash for, remember that it is always, always a monster." She straightens his hoodie - his arms are too heavy and weak to stop her - jerks his t-shirt straight of its creases, and still he can hear the unhealthy edge on her breath, like her lungs are petrifying inside her. "You stay out of trouble," she says to him, and smiles like a cat's tail swinging, "it's not time for you to die yet."
She turns, and walks for the wall of exuberant pouring flowers, clanging with colour. "Wait -" Aramis calls after her, and his body sways where it stands, his shoulders hurt from his not hunching up in a ball on the floor. "Why am I useful -"
She leans to pluck a flower, twirls it in her fingers, says, "You know why."
"But why are you killing affinities, why -"
"Au revoir, mon petit chaton."
"Wait -"
The flower twirls hanging from her hand, and she takes the steps up one of those narrow streets between whitewashed walls, and she's gone. And Aramis' body sways, holds, he can't move, he can't - cope -
She wasn't lying. They thought they knew why she killed Athos' brother. They thought they knew because Athos thought that she was lying, but -
Oh God, oh, God, please, please . . .
He blinks, and blinks, and the life begins to return to his body, the sun begins to bleed into his skin. He shivers his breath in, shakes it out again - it comes white, and startles him, but he trusts that that will fade - and his hands press at his sides, the fists are getting some strength back. He closes his eyes, and holds his face up to the sun, and tries to think of something soothing, something that will guide him away from an episode. The heat of the sun lays like metal on his face, and he thinks, I lived somewhere hot like this, once, and was safe. I lived somewhere where this is what life was like.
Didn't I?
He searches inside himself for nostalgia but all he really finds is confusion, he doesn't know what he means by the memory. He remembers that he once had a memory of such a thing, but he doesn't remember the memory itself. And he's starting to feel cold again.
He sits on one of the low walls, wraps his arms around himself, and waits for his flesh to feel at least a little like living flesh, for his breathing to come simply, as just breathing. Then, head low and eyes closed, he allows his clamped-in mind to sigh out, water let loose to flow, and feels the psychic screeching of his circle both looking for him. He returns his own soothing presence, it's alright, it's alright, he's alright, he's here . . .
They walk to him a few minutes later. He's composed, he thinks he's composed, until he sees them, sees Athos walking so fast it's almost a jog into the little square and the conversation he has just had with that woman here takes his throat from him. He stares at their approach and sees their expressions change from hurried relief to confusion, and then he sees the understanding of anger rising, and his stomach goes tight on the thought that he looks guilty, that they can see it on his face -
Athos stops a little way back, and Porthos walks to him, and his jaw is like granite. "Was that an episode?" he says. "Was that an episode walkin' you off or did you just - did you just wander off - ?"
Porthos is very tall, standing over him. Aramis looks up at him and opens his mouth and - can't think how to say a word about what has just happened, knows no way to put into words what just happened here, not to Athos, he doesn't know what he'll do. And there's a fire rift to face still, he can't do that to Athos, their lives are all about to be risked, he can't leave him distracted and so angry he'll -
Porthos yells, "For fuck's sake Aramis!"
Aramis looks away, to the cobblestones, and his back is starting to shake, and he still can't find a word to put onto his frail tongue. He doesn't know where to begin. He can't lie, and he can't tell the truth, and trapped between them he's dumb.
"- have any idea how fucking terrified we were- " Porthos is snarling at him, and Aramis is still trapped alone in his bubble where he's holding the gun of the truth to Athos' throat, and he can't let himself fire it.
Athos says, sounding only tired, "Porthos."
"- never learns, he never learns, he never cares what we-"
"We don't have the time for this. He said the rift would be on the seafront, we need to get back out there and see if it jogs anything else out of him."
Aramis look at Athos and immediately wishes that he hadn't. His face is closed, flat, businesslike; he's angry with Aramis, and punishing him by being practical. Aramis swallows, and pushes himself up from the wall to stand, and then his hands move awkwardly at his sides for a moment, he's too aware of their visibility, of whether they ought to be fists or not.
He says, looking between their angry faces and still trapped in a conversation with a woman who would see them dead for revenge's cold furious sake and God in heaven he can't judge her in doing it and God in heaven he cannot let her, "I'm sorry."
"You're always sorry." Porthos mutters, taking his arm and pushing him forward, clearly determined that Aramis will walk ahead where they can see him.
He doesn't say anything else. His tongue has died in his mouth. Any word he gives now is a betrayal of someone, his tongue is a serpent, he won't open his mouth to allow it to bite. There is a time to keep silent and a time to speak (Ecclesiastes 3:7) and he isn't wise enough to know the difference between them, he's only little wise enough to know that he ought to know it, and so he keeps his mouth shut and the snake bleeds venom that numbs his mouth.
Intuition pushes a sharp thumb into his brain stem: they are going to lose the rift.
*
They lose the rift.
In the hotel room they wash the stink of charring and defeat from themselves, rinse the grey streaks from the bath, run water and water and water until it runs clear again and nobody smells of smoke anymore. Aramis isn't speaking, and hardly looks at them either, not avoiding their gazes but so embroiled in something inside himself that he's not very aware of the two of them right now, and Porthos mutters and stamps around the hotel room, throwing things into bags so they can leave early in the morning, and Athos isn't angry.
He wouldn't really call it forgiveness, he knows he isn't good at forgiveness, he's just too tired to be angry. He is tired, exhausted of the stress of the day, and he's beginning to worry in Aramis' distance from them that Aramis doesn't actually know whether he walked off of his own accord or if his rift dragged him away. Aramis and his rift are so tangled together, so bled together like rivers meeting with a raging churn, he doesn't think that Aramis can tell the difference between their motivations anymore. Did he, irresponsible as he is, without thinking of the worry it would cost them, walk off after something that looked interesting and get lost because of it? Or did his rift pull the silken thread, and pull him towards something he never could be as interested in as he is in his circle, and he's so sunk in his rift now that he can't even tell that?
Once they've all showered and the bath has been cleaned Aramis fills it again, deep, and sinks himself under the water to the crown of his head. Athos watches the way his hair waves, a dark anemone, and doesn't count the seconds. He'll come up when he's ready. There is a clarity to water, for Aramis, that his own mind can never give him. His mind is so turbulent all the silt gets dredged up, he swims through it blind. The water must seem so much clearer and cleaner and easier for him to navigate.
He goes into the bedroom for the bottle of brandy he brought, ignores Porthos angrily trying to stuff a hoodie that won't fit and Aramis will inevitably require anyway into a backpack, and takes a bottle of beer as well, cracking the top on the bottle-opener affixed to the hotel room's wall. He hands it to Porthos, who can only emerge from his muttering enough to nod his thanks, and then takes and opens another, and walks back through to Aramis. Some bubbles make their curious way to the surface of the water. Aramis doesn't.
Athos sits on the edge of the bath, and loses thought for a moment just staring at how beautiful the bend of his back is, water run over it like light. In that moment he wishes he had a camera, and the talent to hold this moment, to make other people see it the right way, feel what he does. The awe runs down with the single queasy realisation, too troubling in his guts, that he can see Aramis' spine too prominently. He's losing weight again.
They could all have died tonight. They might have saved the rift until bastards with guns arrived and everything went to hell in the hell of dark and flame chaotic over the water. Porthos was determined, so certain of d'Artagnan that every fire rift is a fact to him now, they are going to save this one, until Aramis' knees just folded him like a broken puppet sideways into the shallow surf. Athos had to scramble forward to grab his body, to drag him out of the saltwater and into the sand, towards the burning beach umbrellas in front of the burning restaurant, away from the safety of the water because in the middle of an episode that water was no safety to Aramis at all. He was difficult to pull, jerking and unhelpful as he was, and Porthos had to turn his attention away from the fire rift to try to take down whoever the hell was shooting at them in the dark, and then -
Boom.
Silence under the water, and Athos watches Aramis not breathe.
Recently Aramis has seen more fire rifts than ever before. Athos doesn't understand Aramis' powers - no-one understands his powers - but while Athos has always had a suspicion that Aramis has felt the most pull towards other water affinities, the bellow of that power on their shared psychic wavelength screaming like static into his ears, recently Aramis sees more and more fire affinities. It seems unlikely that his rift intends to help them. More likely, his rift already knows that every one will die whatever they do, and it amuses it to dangle their sealed circle at them and watch them sink on another hope lost every time. Every one could be 'd'Artagnan'. Or, Athos thinks, none of them. Aramis knows nothing about the name apart from that the two of them tell him that he keeps using it; he hasn't yet even remembered saying the word himself.
Athos' legs hurt, his back hurts, and he's just too tired to be angry, and too aware of whatever turmoil in Aramis has made him seek the refuge of the water. Maybe he wandered off out of sheer irresponsibility; maybe he was taken from them and now they're blaming him for it, and that is wrong on every level, and Athos won't allow it. Because, maybe, his mind is just so damaged by everything his rift has done to it that he can't even be held responsible for irresponsibility anymore. Once Athos might have been distrustful and angry; now he sees how confused and struggling Aramis is, how much he suffers and probably can't even think about it that way himself, and he sees how slim the time they have left together may run. He can't be angry. He's given up on anger. He may never have truly understood this if his life hadn't been everything it is, but now he's lived everything he's lived he's finally learned enough to know that love will always matter more.
The muscles in Aramis' back shift like wings coming down as he lifts his head running with water, brushes a hand down his face, brushes his dripping hair back, takes a quick breath in and lets it sigh out, and looks across squinting to see Athos still there. Athos holds across the bottle of beer and Aramis takes it, slowly, lips pressed too tight as he looks at Athos' face. Athos pushes some more of Aramis' wet hair back from where it was stuck above his eyebrow, brushing it neat behind his ear, and murmurs, "Are you alright?"
Aramis swallows, watching his face like he feels sick, and Athos doesn't understand his nervousness, he knows it must be obvious he's not angry anymore. Then they hear Porthos throwing a bag on a bed more aggressively than is required in the next room and both look across, before Aramis' shoulders sag, and he takes a drink, and folds an arm on the edge of the bath to prop his head up. "Fine," he says, looking at the floor tiles, and Athos pours some brandy into the bottom of a glass and, since one of his hands is already wet, once he's put the bottle back on the floor and the glass balanced at the edge of the bath, he runs his palm over the river-stone smoothness of Aramis' shoulder, and says, "Is there something you need to say?"
The things that happen in Aramis' eyes are strange and hard to interpret, and eventually he says very quietly, eyes turned to Athos and obviously nervous, "Not here."
Athos looks at him, then picks up his glass and says, "Alright." and takes a drink. He can grant that; a hotel room isn't where he'd want to have any serious sort of discussion either, their home territory always feels safer. He has an admission that something is wrong which he did feel the need for when something so clearly is wrong, Aramis spends far too much time acting like there's no problem when he's so weak he can hardly hold a glass, so shaken he can't keep still, or else actively bleeding through his clothing. Shot through the lung his last blood-edged words would probably be that it's fine, he's fine, like they're worrying over nothing. He's an idiot. He's their idiot. And knowing how multiply-punctured his mind is by his rift by now, Athos can't blame him for a moment's irresponsibility if that's even what it was; how the hell is he to think clearly with a brain run through with dry rot?
"Porthos," Athos calls, and Aramis' expression freezes but the thumping around in the next room does stop, and then Porthos walks in to look at them - well, at Athos. "We should probably contact Treville to find out when he's free from clearing up after the rift," Athos says, lifting his glass casually. "We could get dinner, since we're all here."
Aramis twitches a nervy edge to his smile, eyes uneasily on Porthos. "That would be nice."
Porthos looks at him for a long time, then looks at Athos - he's frowning - and Athos takes a drink and looks coolly back and, slowly, sighs. He realises the difference in their thinking. Athos' mind is on the danger they're in and how easy losing Aramis now would be, and so he's willing to make concessions, he's trying to ensure that his priorities are always in order. Porthos is certain that d'Artagnan will turn up any day to save them, and so his mind is still on the long term and trying to train Aramis out of - well, in many ways out of being Aramis. His habit of wandering off wouldn't be any problem if it weren't for his episodes, he's a grown man, he can take a walk if he wants to. And as long as he has the episodes, they really need to remember that it only ever takes one of them gone wrong for Aramis wandering off to never be a problem again.
So he looks at Porthos and what he channels is the authority he's aware that he has over the two of them: they both tend to acquiesce when it comes to it. Porthos glares back, and Aramis folds his arms on the edge of the bath around his beer bottle, and just looks gloomy to be the source of so much tension. All Athos is aware of is that he didn't used to be so aware of Aramis' bones under his skin, and the shadows under his eyes.
"If you feel up to it," he says, pointedly turning his attention to Aramis. "After the episode."
Aramis looks up to him, and that smile finally looks comfortable on him. "It would be good to see the captain," he says, sounding very honestly like he means that, and Porthos looks at Aramis now Aramis isn't looking at him, and something in his shoulders draws less tight, falls down, just slightly but it means enough.
"Yeah," he says, low and gruff. "It would."
Aramis looks up to him, still wary of the kick coming, and Porthos takes a swig from his bottle and nods at Aramis in the bath. "Don't hurry about callin' him, you know how long he takes."
"Personal hygiene is very important." Aramis says, and scratches his fingers down his throat. "Do I need to shave?"
Athos says, "You look fine."
"I'm just never really sure that 'fine' is adequate."
Athos lifts his glass again, says, "You're the most handsome man in Spain, if it makes you happy. Now get washed and dressed, Aramis."
Aramis touches his own chest, expression fluttering touched - and amused - and still a little strained in the eyes. Athos just touches Aramis' shoulder and stands with a grunt, all his bones feel like they stretch too much, then takes his glass out of the room to find his phone, and see when Treville might be free from the mess they left behind them.
He hears Porthos' low voice from the bathroom, and it doesn't sound angry, and Aramis' reply is openly straining on his need for them to be okay. Athos knows they will be. Porthos' temper will run itself out and Aramis should hopefully start actually talking to them about the stress he's under soon, if he would only say to them how confused and struggling he must be, Athos knows how disinclined Aramis is to ask for pity but it's hard to know how to sympathise with him when he won't even admit to requiring it. His rift is picking his brain to pieces and he just can't understand half of his own life right now, who the hell else would he turn to but the two of them? How could it be anything but a good thing if he did turn to the two of them? They know he needs them. His letting them know exactly how much that is true, the exact ways he needs them, that could only help all of them.
He doesn't want to talk about it in a strange hotel room while still so vulnerable from the aftereffects of an episode and facing their frustration; fine. Athos can accept that. He's still never been brave enough himself to tell them that he knows how wrong he was, that he has been living a mistake for years and of course he's never leaving them, so he won't judge Aramis needing some time to get the words together. Until then he'll keep an eye on him, protect him as he's always done, it's what he's there for, for both of his circle. They're young, and in a desperate situation, and both coping in whatever ways they can find. Athos' duty is to buffer them from the worst of it, guide them through the sharp edges of it, and always be patient because life has never loved the two of them enough so Athos has a lot to make up for.
At least he's not the only person who can make them feel safe, when they might need more reassurance after a very bad day. He takes his phone from his coat pocket, scrolls quickly through it, listens through the rings and then says, when he hears the click of him on the line, "Captain."
Disclaimer: I no longer own a passport that will allow me passage around the EU, and I've never owned these characters.
Rating: R
Warnings and spoilers: The main list's on part one, read sensibly. Discussion of past sexual assault in this one, and some of the horrible and confusing ways people respond to survivors.
Summary: "It's not personal."
Note: Seriously, I am burying myself in fantasy until I can deal with what we *did*.
Admittedly, he's a little confused. And he doesn't like to admit how confused he is quite often now, it upsets his circle so Aramis plays it cool and pretends that he knows what's happening until he can work it out from context, but there are times when he can't pretend it away. Here and now he is aware that his confusion is more than a bit of a problem, because, here and now, he has no fucking clue where his circle is.
He doesn't reach for his gun, but the eeriness of his solitude touches the back of his neck, prickles it there with cold under the midday sun. He is never left alone, and solitude has no peace for him, it only ever means something has gone wrong. And the sky is so utterly blue, the colour of exuberance, the walls surrounding this little square fed into through narrow winding streets are whitewashed, the plants cascading over the walls of one of the red-roofed houses to his right are utterly spilling with flowers, great big purple-pink things vivid as laughter, so many they emit colour like the sun emits light, the colour bathes him. And there he stands, alone, nudging the hat back nervously on his head and looking around, uneasy. Where's his circle? Where is he?
He breathes regularly, and holds his nerve. Things will settle out soon. He's frequently confused and it always comes to make sense again, so all he has to do is be patient. His circle always find him, sense always returns to him. The important thing is not to fuss about it, because it won't solve anything, all that does is make it worse. He upsets his circle with it, so he doesn't indulge in it. Instead he breathes in the sun-warmed air, between these white walls and terracotta roofs, elegant-looping black bars over the windows, and he can smell those flowers . . . no . . .
Under the shout of nectar-sweet scent pouring from all those vibrant flowers hung like dancers' skirts out to dry, he smells a whisper of something else, softer, paler, something a little more mature and more complex. Underneath the honey-thick scent of all those blooming flowers he smells another flower, and it's a scent he knows, warm as the earth baked by the sun. Underneath the scent of all those flowers, he can smell a lone breath of jasmine, against that mellow pool of scent it stands out rare and isolated and white as a star.
He turns, and the woman in the red skirt and wide hat watches him through white-rimmed sunglasses, poised and distant from him - not so foolish as to step close - and smiles, a dangerous smile underneath her hidden eyes. Her lips are painted very red, and she is quite startlingly beautiful, and very, very dangerous. Aramis would like this to be a dream, now, the sweat's caught cold on the back of his neck, he is very suddenly aware that this is a very big moment of confusion to be having, alone of his circle and her here, but he doesn't know how he's here and -
He blinks. Andalucía. Fire rift. Yes, he remembers why he's here now, the episodes he had that led them here, but he doesn't remember how he got here, where his circle are, and now she's here and he feels cold with emotions he couldn't even name. This is the woman who killed Athos' brother and destroyed his life. This is the woman who shot Porthos. This is the woman - what the hell will Athos think when he knows that Aramis and this woman even made eye contact - ?
"Milady," he offers, as cautiously as if to a leopard, and his bow is only very slight, his eyes never leaving her face. "It's been some time."
Her smile twitches at him amused, and he knows she's armed, and doesn't know which of them would be quicker in reaching for their weapon. He's not going to test it. He owes her heart a bullet but he's not going to underestimate the survival mechanism of a woman who's needed it, not when he knows he's already compromised by episodes. Porthos will be really pissed off if Aramis falters his revenge for a dart shot very long ago and gets himself shot for it instead.
"I saw a little lost kitten," she says, sitting on a low wall and smoothing her skirts down; even in sitting she angles her body to its most flattering lines, and he understands that she knows how to do that from the education need gives as well. "And I wondered what it's doing out on its own, given that the world is a dangerous place and it isn't supposed to die yet."
Aramis scratches the hollow of his throat, thinking that through. "If the date of my death has been designated already, it's the Lord's business and I shan't object. But I'm curious about your objections to it." This woman kills rifts. He's very aware of the gun he's wearing, looking into her eyes, he feels that gun the way a mouse faced with a cat must feel its own teeth: it's the only thing he has. "You're not supposed to kill me, and now you want to shepherd me back to the safety of my circle? I assume there's some profit to be had from it. Tenderness does not become you."
"No. You three play the weepy maiden much better than I." He can tell how closely she's looking at him through those sunglasses, even if he can't see her eyes. He already knows them; cat-green, and calculating. "I've been paid to follow out particular instructions. Oddly enough I wasn't paid to divulge those instructions to you."
"You take payment for this," Aramis says, and feels a flutter in the back of his attention - Porthos and Athos calling for him from some distance, they must be worried, how long ago did he leave them? He has no idea, and has a sudden horror of them finding him with her, Athos will lose his mind, and he cuts his attention away from them immediately, snapping himself back to what's in front of him. "People die because you interrupt us. Rifts die. And when you get to them first, what do you do to them, they're innocent people, it's not their fault they have a rift in them -"
"I have instructions to follow. It's not personal." Her fingertips drum the wall. "You really are meant for my fiancé. He must find that whiny self-righteousness so alluring."
He's smiling just because it's a good way to keep a situation stable. "I wasn't aware that an aversion to cold-blooded murder counted as a character defect."
"One the three of you can afford to have." She folds her elegant arms, pale with the flash of the sunlight off her skin, and shakes her dark hair back over her shoulders. "I've seen the way he looks at you, when you have one of your little seizures." she says. "What are you, to my fiancé?"
"With respect, given the circumstances, your engagement is probably broken, milady."
"I have seen," she says in a subtly less patient voice, "the way Olivier looks at you. What are you to him?"
He doesn't respond to the thought of this woman's ability to watch them. It's not something he comfortably can respond to. And if she's seen the way Athos looks at him in an episode, hell, he has them all the time where she could have seen them, that doesn't mean she's seen the way all three of them touch each other in their home. And he's not giving Athos' privacy away, not the way Athos guards it, not what it means to him, not to her. "His name is Athos."
"Does he say he loves you?"
"We're a circle."
"Are you too ashamed of fucking him to admit to it?"
"His engagement to you is broken. You don't have the right to know anything of what his life is now."
"I'm asking for your sake, little lost kitten," she says, as if weary of his stupidity already. "You do know what he did to the last person he professed to love?"
He stares at her across the square and she looks evenly, precisely back, all the air heavy with heat between them, the whole world a drowsy siesta but for the thread of wire tugged taut between the two of them. She holds her neck steady, and he can't see a thing of her eyes but he doesn't need to, and she looks at him arms folded and mouth unimpressed, and he can see by the tightness of the muscles in her jaw, angry.
He says, but the scent of jasmine makes him uneasy of the words to use, "That was different."
"How? Because you haven't displeased him yet?"
"That was different. I - we would never do to him what you did. He-"
She laughs, a hard bark of contempt, not humour, and kicks an ankle under the scarlet falls of her skirt. "All I did," she says, head still high and unafraid against him, "was try to protect him from the truth of what his dearest little brother really was."
"You were protecting yourself."
"Yes. That as well." Head high, breathing a little harder now, he can feel the fury coming off her in waves, like the psychic building of a tsunami, and her chest moves quick and tight. "As if that is something I should be punished for."
There's bile creeping up under his tongue, thick and sour and filling his mouth, he's beginning to feel himself shake, something is wrong wrong wrong wrong and he doesn't know how to get out of its way before it hits him - "You killed his brother."
"It was that," she says, breathing fast and hard with what can only be rage, "or let him do what he wanted to me."
Aramis turns away. It's like a physical shock, he has to lean against the nearest wall, his own breath is getting shallow in sympathy, and his - his hands are shaking. He presses them hard to the wall and they're shaking. And he knows why. He's spent years ignoring why. He's spent years pretending he doesn't know, holding his tongue and his nerve on every incredibly rare occasion when Athos has ever said the word 'Thomas' in front of him. He knows why he's so shaken. He's just never been ready, he is still not ready, to face it.
She says, conversational but voice roughened by her laboured breathing, "How psychic are you?"
He leans against the wall, trying to fight down the trembling, and his need to throw up. She says, determined and he's no strength to fight her, "Do you know what he did?"
He squeezes his eyes closed, breathes raggedly, does not throw up, does not throw up. "His rift broke."
Her breath snorts out of her, but with less force than it should; she's breathing too shallow as well as too fast. "It did, indeed. It broke after - he tried to kiss me, and - I shoved him back, and - then he tried as - as spoiled little boys do to take what he - felt he was owed."
Her breath is getting beyond her, so short it sounds like it hurts, and he forces his heavy head to turn back to her, blinking the fog out of his eyes, as she fumbles in her heavy skirts and pulls out an inhaler, and takes one quick hit, and holds it, and another, and holds it. And Aramis leans there against the wall, spiteful little shivers of his rift running across the vulnerable skin of his shoulders, and whispers, "Your rift."
She lets her breath out again in a heavy burst and ignores him. "His rift breaking," she says, voice roughened like scoured metal on its underside, "stopped him trying to shove me down to do what he wanted to me. He lost consciousness and fell back off me but his mind came out -"
He puts a hand over his eyes, whispers, "I know what his mind did."
"He wouldn't stop, I couldn't fight his mind, I used a cushion but I knew they'd question - while he was still trying to get into my head, while he was forcing himself into my head, I had to drag him to the pond and hold him into it until he stopped, he wouldn't stop, I did what I had to."
Aramis just stands there with a hand over his eyes. The thought of Athos is making his heart panic. But he can't not say it, it strains in his throat like there's blood trying to come up, and he opens his mouth and croaks, "I know what he did."
She's still breathing shakily, too quick and dangerous, but her back's held straight, her face expressionless turned to his, blank behind the sunglasses. He's suddenly once again, at the sight of her posture, aware that she's armed. "Olivier told you I lied, didn't he? That his precious little brother would never do such a thing, that I am a lying scheming murderous bitch and his little brother the lamb I slaughtered?"
"He said you lied, he didn't say what about. He never - he doesn't speak of it."
"Then how do you know what he did? How psychic are you?"
"Not from you. I don't know from you. I don't - do that. In people's heads, I don't do that." He swallows, leans his shoulder to the wall, he feels too unsteady with sickness to stand unsupported. "When we went to that house to find Athos - he was still there. Thomas." He doesn't know if he's ever said that name out loud before, and it opens a silent dark hole in his stomach. His guts grind against each other, the white light of the sun falls dumb on his arms cold as frost, and shaking. "Or his soul or his rift was, or - or that is exactly how psychic I am. But he got into my head and he held me in the pond face-first to make me understand how he'd died. I don't know how long I wasn't breathing for. But I could understand that. He didn't have much choice in how he could communicate with me, that I could understand, that was no - imposition."
She sits there holding her inhaler, breath sharp in her lungs as if full of glass flecks. "But," she says, watching his face.
He closes his eyes. "But. He wouldn't let me go. All night - whenever I tried to rest he was trying to get in again. He would have killed me in my own mind to take my body to have it. And - it was the first time anyone forced themselves into my mind." Revulsion takes his stomach and squeezes it hard and he has to put both hands to the wall again, sucking breath down to stop the hot sour bile from coming up, and his voice comes hoarse. "No-one should have to face that. So I know what he did." He leans his forehead to his arm, pressed to the wall, wishes he had more strength than this but his knees tremble with wanting to fall. "I know what he did. I'm sorry. I know what he did. I'm sorry."
At his back Athos' wife is silent, but for the struggle of her sharp in-breaths, then says, "Your 'Athos' tried to kill me for defending myself."
His knees want to go, he wants to be sick. "He didn't know."
"I told him what he did, he didn't care. And you think he won't do the same to you? This is for your sake, here's your tenderness, this advice is for your own good, run. Because if you displease him, he will kill you, and he'll tell himself and everyone else that he's right to do it. And you've already displeased him, haven't you? Here you are talking to me."
Aramis is panting into his arm and doesn't know if he's going to faint, and he can't. He can't be unconscious in front of this woman. She takes rifts when they can't fight back, he's been locked away from his circle before because they got hold of him. And as fragile as his grip on the world is getting, he can't face it again, not being near them, he won't survive it. "Your rift," he says, trying to breathe longer, deeper. "Your rift has - it's in your lungs." He swallows, breathes, breathes. "You don't have a sealed circle."
She snorts again, and looks away, and massages at her chest with one hand as if it hurts. "Save that My Little Pony nonsense for the other children. I don't need a circle."
"You're dying. It's in your lungs, how bad does it get? You're dying. You must have been holding it - as long as me, longer? And you don't have a circle, do you have anyone?"
"I don't need anyone."
He staggers his shoulder to the wall so he can face her properly. "Is your pride worth dying for? We need circles, we don't last without them -"
"You need them. I don't need anything." She stands up, skirts swinging down, back straight and lethal as a blade. "I hope Olivier does attack you. Of course I'm not going to kill you, little lost kitten, my darling fiancé will take care of that for me, and then he can suffocate under all your blood, then he can drown under what he's done. Maybe your air affinity will kill him afterwards, maybe that will be the end of my dear sweet-"
"He's not going to hurt me, he didn't know, he didn't know you were telling the truth about-"
"Why would I lie?"
"He just thought - you did lie to him, you lied about-"
"How does that make what he did to me right, how does that mean I had no right to defend myself?"
"He just - he-"
He wants to defend Athos and can't find what there is to defend, defending Athos means defending Thomas as well, and - he's had that monster in his head, he knows his greed and how entirely self-serving he was, Aramis fighting and panicked and shattered by episodes just didn't matter to him, and trying to defend Athos in defending him puts Aramis into a place he can't be but he can't not defend Athos, Athos is -
When he thinks about what she must have told him, and how Athos reacted to it, his stomach rebels like it's been kicked at the thought of defending him.
She's walking to him. He shakes against the wall, this is bad, he needs to turn and rally his strength and keep her off him, he can't be taken again, can't be separated from his circle, but he's so cold it's like he's iced over, he can't -
"Alright, little kitten," Athos' wife sings to him under her breath, voice still a little popped and crackling like one of Porthos' records from her brittle breath, and he knows that this is what rifts do, this is what makes them all the same, they're both broken. Her hand hovers just above his shaking back, not touching him, not touching him yet. "I have my instructions, and you're not allowed to die. So you calm yourself down and keep yourself safe. That means you breathe - just breathe, little kitten - and don't let my fiancé kill you yet just because no-one ever could be perfect enough for him."
Her hand falls between his shoulder blades, a gentle stroking. He gasps, mouth full of the scent of jasmine, body frozen rigid, but she just strokes his back, then takes his shoulders and turns him - she's surprisingly strong, but then she sounds like she's trying to breathe petrol so maybe he is just so very weak right now - but he's wearing a gun and he's a water affinity and she knows what water affinities can do in self-defence -
His teeth chatter on, "You're not taking me."
"Don't flatter yourself that I want you. You're of use where you are, for now. Just try not to let Olivier murder you yet, do remember that you're in bed with a monster. You can put a collar on it. You can stroke it and feed it and tickle its belly. But however long you hold its leash for, remember that it is always, always a monster." She straightens his hoodie - his arms are too heavy and weak to stop her - jerks his t-shirt straight of its creases, and still he can hear the unhealthy edge on her breath, like her lungs are petrifying inside her. "You stay out of trouble," she says to him, and smiles like a cat's tail swinging, "it's not time for you to die yet."
She turns, and walks for the wall of exuberant pouring flowers, clanging with colour. "Wait -" Aramis calls after her, and his body sways where it stands, his shoulders hurt from his not hunching up in a ball on the floor. "Why am I useful -"
She leans to pluck a flower, twirls it in her fingers, says, "You know why."
"But why are you killing affinities, why -"
"Au revoir, mon petit chaton."
"Wait -"
The flower twirls hanging from her hand, and she takes the steps up one of those narrow streets between whitewashed walls, and she's gone. And Aramis' body sways, holds, he can't move, he can't - cope -
She wasn't lying. They thought they knew why she killed Athos' brother. They thought they knew because Athos thought that she was lying, but -
Oh God, oh, God, please, please . . .
He blinks, and blinks, and the life begins to return to his body, the sun begins to bleed into his skin. He shivers his breath in, shakes it out again - it comes white, and startles him, but he trusts that that will fade - and his hands press at his sides, the fists are getting some strength back. He closes his eyes, and holds his face up to the sun, and tries to think of something soothing, something that will guide him away from an episode. The heat of the sun lays like metal on his face, and he thinks, I lived somewhere hot like this, once, and was safe. I lived somewhere where this is what life was like.
Didn't I?
He searches inside himself for nostalgia but all he really finds is confusion, he doesn't know what he means by the memory. He remembers that he once had a memory of such a thing, but he doesn't remember the memory itself. And he's starting to feel cold again.
He sits on one of the low walls, wraps his arms around himself, and waits for his flesh to feel at least a little like living flesh, for his breathing to come simply, as just breathing. Then, head low and eyes closed, he allows his clamped-in mind to sigh out, water let loose to flow, and feels the psychic screeching of his circle both looking for him. He returns his own soothing presence, it's alright, it's alright, he's alright, he's here . . .
They walk to him a few minutes later. He's composed, he thinks he's composed, until he sees them, sees Athos walking so fast it's almost a jog into the little square and the conversation he has just had with that woman here takes his throat from him. He stares at their approach and sees their expressions change from hurried relief to confusion, and then he sees the understanding of anger rising, and his stomach goes tight on the thought that he looks guilty, that they can see it on his face -
Athos stops a little way back, and Porthos walks to him, and his jaw is like granite. "Was that an episode?" he says. "Was that an episode walkin' you off or did you just - did you just wander off - ?"
Porthos is very tall, standing over him. Aramis looks up at him and opens his mouth and - can't think how to say a word about what has just happened, knows no way to put into words what just happened here, not to Athos, he doesn't know what he'll do. And there's a fire rift to face still, he can't do that to Athos, their lives are all about to be risked, he can't leave him distracted and so angry he'll -
Porthos yells, "For fuck's sake Aramis!"
Aramis looks away, to the cobblestones, and his back is starting to shake, and he still can't find a word to put onto his frail tongue. He doesn't know where to begin. He can't lie, and he can't tell the truth, and trapped between them he's dumb.
"- have any idea how fucking terrified we were- " Porthos is snarling at him, and Aramis is still trapped alone in his bubble where he's holding the gun of the truth to Athos' throat, and he can't let himself fire it.
Athos says, sounding only tired, "Porthos."
"- never learns, he never learns, he never cares what we-"
"We don't have the time for this. He said the rift would be on the seafront, we need to get back out there and see if it jogs anything else out of him."
Aramis look at Athos and immediately wishes that he hadn't. His face is closed, flat, businesslike; he's angry with Aramis, and punishing him by being practical. Aramis swallows, and pushes himself up from the wall to stand, and then his hands move awkwardly at his sides for a moment, he's too aware of their visibility, of whether they ought to be fists or not.
He says, looking between their angry faces and still trapped in a conversation with a woman who would see them dead for revenge's cold furious sake and God in heaven he can't judge her in doing it and God in heaven he cannot let her, "I'm sorry."
"You're always sorry." Porthos mutters, taking his arm and pushing him forward, clearly determined that Aramis will walk ahead where they can see him.
He doesn't say anything else. His tongue has died in his mouth. Any word he gives now is a betrayal of someone, his tongue is a serpent, he won't open his mouth to allow it to bite. There is a time to keep silent and a time to speak (Ecclesiastes 3:7) and he isn't wise enough to know the difference between them, he's only little wise enough to know that he ought to know it, and so he keeps his mouth shut and the snake bleeds venom that numbs his mouth.
Intuition pushes a sharp thumb into his brain stem: they are going to lose the rift.
*
They lose the rift.
In the hotel room they wash the stink of charring and defeat from themselves, rinse the grey streaks from the bath, run water and water and water until it runs clear again and nobody smells of smoke anymore. Aramis isn't speaking, and hardly looks at them either, not avoiding their gazes but so embroiled in something inside himself that he's not very aware of the two of them right now, and Porthos mutters and stamps around the hotel room, throwing things into bags so they can leave early in the morning, and Athos isn't angry.
He wouldn't really call it forgiveness, he knows he isn't good at forgiveness, he's just too tired to be angry. He is tired, exhausted of the stress of the day, and he's beginning to worry in Aramis' distance from them that Aramis doesn't actually know whether he walked off of his own accord or if his rift dragged him away. Aramis and his rift are so tangled together, so bled together like rivers meeting with a raging churn, he doesn't think that Aramis can tell the difference between their motivations anymore. Did he, irresponsible as he is, without thinking of the worry it would cost them, walk off after something that looked interesting and get lost because of it? Or did his rift pull the silken thread, and pull him towards something he never could be as interested in as he is in his circle, and he's so sunk in his rift now that he can't even tell that?
Once they've all showered and the bath has been cleaned Aramis fills it again, deep, and sinks himself under the water to the crown of his head. Athos watches the way his hair waves, a dark anemone, and doesn't count the seconds. He'll come up when he's ready. There is a clarity to water, for Aramis, that his own mind can never give him. His mind is so turbulent all the silt gets dredged up, he swims through it blind. The water must seem so much clearer and cleaner and easier for him to navigate.
He goes into the bedroom for the bottle of brandy he brought, ignores Porthos angrily trying to stuff a hoodie that won't fit and Aramis will inevitably require anyway into a backpack, and takes a bottle of beer as well, cracking the top on the bottle-opener affixed to the hotel room's wall. He hands it to Porthos, who can only emerge from his muttering enough to nod his thanks, and then takes and opens another, and walks back through to Aramis. Some bubbles make their curious way to the surface of the water. Aramis doesn't.
Athos sits on the edge of the bath, and loses thought for a moment just staring at how beautiful the bend of his back is, water run over it like light. In that moment he wishes he had a camera, and the talent to hold this moment, to make other people see it the right way, feel what he does. The awe runs down with the single queasy realisation, too troubling in his guts, that he can see Aramis' spine too prominently. He's losing weight again.
They could all have died tonight. They might have saved the rift until bastards with guns arrived and everything went to hell in the hell of dark and flame chaotic over the water. Porthos was determined, so certain of d'Artagnan that every fire rift is a fact to him now, they are going to save this one, until Aramis' knees just folded him like a broken puppet sideways into the shallow surf. Athos had to scramble forward to grab his body, to drag him out of the saltwater and into the sand, towards the burning beach umbrellas in front of the burning restaurant, away from the safety of the water because in the middle of an episode that water was no safety to Aramis at all. He was difficult to pull, jerking and unhelpful as he was, and Porthos had to turn his attention away from the fire rift to try to take down whoever the hell was shooting at them in the dark, and then -
Boom.
Silence under the water, and Athos watches Aramis not breathe.
Recently Aramis has seen more fire rifts than ever before. Athos doesn't understand Aramis' powers - no-one understands his powers - but while Athos has always had a suspicion that Aramis has felt the most pull towards other water affinities, the bellow of that power on their shared psychic wavelength screaming like static into his ears, recently Aramis sees more and more fire affinities. It seems unlikely that his rift intends to help them. More likely, his rift already knows that every one will die whatever they do, and it amuses it to dangle their sealed circle at them and watch them sink on another hope lost every time. Every one could be 'd'Artagnan'. Or, Athos thinks, none of them. Aramis knows nothing about the name apart from that the two of them tell him that he keeps using it; he hasn't yet even remembered saying the word himself.
Athos' legs hurt, his back hurts, and he's just too tired to be angry, and too aware of whatever turmoil in Aramis has made him seek the refuge of the water. Maybe he wandered off out of sheer irresponsibility; maybe he was taken from them and now they're blaming him for it, and that is wrong on every level, and Athos won't allow it. Because, maybe, his mind is just so damaged by everything his rift has done to it that he can't even be held responsible for irresponsibility anymore. Once Athos might have been distrustful and angry; now he sees how confused and struggling Aramis is, how much he suffers and probably can't even think about it that way himself, and he sees how slim the time they have left together may run. He can't be angry. He's given up on anger. He may never have truly understood this if his life hadn't been everything it is, but now he's lived everything he's lived he's finally learned enough to know that love will always matter more.
The muscles in Aramis' back shift like wings coming down as he lifts his head running with water, brushes a hand down his face, brushes his dripping hair back, takes a quick breath in and lets it sigh out, and looks across squinting to see Athos still there. Athos holds across the bottle of beer and Aramis takes it, slowly, lips pressed too tight as he looks at Athos' face. Athos pushes some more of Aramis' wet hair back from where it was stuck above his eyebrow, brushing it neat behind his ear, and murmurs, "Are you alright?"
Aramis swallows, watching his face like he feels sick, and Athos doesn't understand his nervousness, he knows it must be obvious he's not angry anymore. Then they hear Porthos throwing a bag on a bed more aggressively than is required in the next room and both look across, before Aramis' shoulders sag, and he takes a drink, and folds an arm on the edge of the bath to prop his head up. "Fine," he says, looking at the floor tiles, and Athos pours some brandy into the bottom of a glass and, since one of his hands is already wet, once he's put the bottle back on the floor and the glass balanced at the edge of the bath, he runs his palm over the river-stone smoothness of Aramis' shoulder, and says, "Is there something you need to say?"
The things that happen in Aramis' eyes are strange and hard to interpret, and eventually he says very quietly, eyes turned to Athos and obviously nervous, "Not here."
Athos looks at him, then picks up his glass and says, "Alright." and takes a drink. He can grant that; a hotel room isn't where he'd want to have any serious sort of discussion either, their home territory always feels safer. He has an admission that something is wrong which he did feel the need for when something so clearly is wrong, Aramis spends far too much time acting like there's no problem when he's so weak he can hardly hold a glass, so shaken he can't keep still, or else actively bleeding through his clothing. Shot through the lung his last blood-edged words would probably be that it's fine, he's fine, like they're worrying over nothing. He's an idiot. He's their idiot. And knowing how multiply-punctured his mind is by his rift by now, Athos can't blame him for a moment's irresponsibility if that's even what it was; how the hell is he to think clearly with a brain run through with dry rot?
"Porthos," Athos calls, and Aramis' expression freezes but the thumping around in the next room does stop, and then Porthos walks in to look at them - well, at Athos. "We should probably contact Treville to find out when he's free from clearing up after the rift," Athos says, lifting his glass casually. "We could get dinner, since we're all here."
Aramis twitches a nervy edge to his smile, eyes uneasily on Porthos. "That would be nice."
Porthos looks at him for a long time, then looks at Athos - he's frowning - and Athos takes a drink and looks coolly back and, slowly, sighs. He realises the difference in their thinking. Athos' mind is on the danger they're in and how easy losing Aramis now would be, and so he's willing to make concessions, he's trying to ensure that his priorities are always in order. Porthos is certain that d'Artagnan will turn up any day to save them, and so his mind is still on the long term and trying to train Aramis out of - well, in many ways out of being Aramis. His habit of wandering off wouldn't be any problem if it weren't for his episodes, he's a grown man, he can take a walk if he wants to. And as long as he has the episodes, they really need to remember that it only ever takes one of them gone wrong for Aramis wandering off to never be a problem again.
So he looks at Porthos and what he channels is the authority he's aware that he has over the two of them: they both tend to acquiesce when it comes to it. Porthos glares back, and Aramis folds his arms on the edge of the bath around his beer bottle, and just looks gloomy to be the source of so much tension. All Athos is aware of is that he didn't used to be so aware of Aramis' bones under his skin, and the shadows under his eyes.
"If you feel up to it," he says, pointedly turning his attention to Aramis. "After the episode."
Aramis looks up to him, and that smile finally looks comfortable on him. "It would be good to see the captain," he says, sounding very honestly like he means that, and Porthos looks at Aramis now Aramis isn't looking at him, and something in his shoulders draws less tight, falls down, just slightly but it means enough.
"Yeah," he says, low and gruff. "It would."
Aramis looks up to him, still wary of the kick coming, and Porthos takes a swig from his bottle and nods at Aramis in the bath. "Don't hurry about callin' him, you know how long he takes."
"Personal hygiene is very important." Aramis says, and scratches his fingers down his throat. "Do I need to shave?"
Athos says, "You look fine."
"I'm just never really sure that 'fine' is adequate."
Athos lifts his glass again, says, "You're the most handsome man in Spain, if it makes you happy. Now get washed and dressed, Aramis."
Aramis touches his own chest, expression fluttering touched - and amused - and still a little strained in the eyes. Athos just touches Aramis' shoulder and stands with a grunt, all his bones feel like they stretch too much, then takes his glass out of the room to find his phone, and see when Treville might be free from the mess they left behind them.
He hears Porthos' low voice from the bathroom, and it doesn't sound angry, and Aramis' reply is openly straining on his need for them to be okay. Athos knows they will be. Porthos' temper will run itself out and Aramis should hopefully start actually talking to them about the stress he's under soon, if he would only say to them how confused and struggling he must be, Athos knows how disinclined Aramis is to ask for pity but it's hard to know how to sympathise with him when he won't even admit to requiring it. His rift is picking his brain to pieces and he just can't understand half of his own life right now, who the hell else would he turn to but the two of them? How could it be anything but a good thing if he did turn to the two of them? They know he needs them. His letting them know exactly how much that is true, the exact ways he needs them, that could only help all of them.
He doesn't want to talk about it in a strange hotel room while still so vulnerable from the aftereffects of an episode and facing their frustration; fine. Athos can accept that. He's still never been brave enough himself to tell them that he knows how wrong he was, that he has been living a mistake for years and of course he's never leaving them, so he won't judge Aramis needing some time to get the words together. Until then he'll keep an eye on him, protect him as he's always done, it's what he's there for, for both of his circle. They're young, and in a desperate situation, and both coping in whatever ways they can find. Athos' duty is to buffer them from the worst of it, guide them through the sharp edges of it, and always be patient because life has never loved the two of them enough so Athos has a lot to make up for.
At least he's not the only person who can make them feel safe, when they might need more reassurance after a very bad day. He takes his phone from his coat pocket, scrolls quickly through it, listens through the rings and then says, when he hears the click of him on the line, "Captain."