Woman King
Title: Woman King
Series: (BBC) The Musketeers
Characters: Queen Anne, Aramis, mentions of others
Pairing: Anne/Aramis
Rating: R
Warning: Implied, non-explicit sex
Summary: She is not a woman but a queen. But he looks at her as if she is merely a woman.
Notes: An attempt to flesh out Anne's character, as I've seen a lot of criticism that she's just a generic nice-gal kind of character, without a lot of depth. I wanted to specifically write her with flaws and yet still sympathetic. It was an interesting exercise, as it was less of a response to the 'she's generic' mentality and more of 'well, why DO I like her so much?', as I really quite enjoy Anne as a character.
I.
They are both merely children, when they meet: she and her husband. They are mere children - at least, in hindsight, she knows they were only children. Young and naïve, unable to understand much of anything (and so many days, her husband still does not understand and still refuses to believe that she understands). That first night, after the ceremony of their marriage, he comes to her, and she is waiting, and the attendants are waiting and stand around and wait for the moment that he penetrates her, to seal the contract of their marriage - wait for the sharp, pained intake of her breath when he presses above her. She feels as if she is suffocating, the air stolen from her lungs, her body tensing up and resisting this invasion. And it is painful, and he does not look her in the eye, and she feels less a woman and more a lost girl, or worse: merely the extent of property. She knows better than to cry, so she stares up at her husband, grim-faced, even as he looks at the spot above her shoulder. She stays still but refuses to close her eyes - mostly from fear, mostly from a silent kind of rebellion that can never manifest itself.
She does not sleep that night and the ache is deep down into her bones, not from the pain of his presence - for he is haphazard and a child, as she is (or was; she wonders now if she must use the past tense, if the past imperfect reflects the imperfection of what lies ahead), but it is rather the pain of knowing that she no longer exists as she once did. She does not fall asleep. She does not fall asleep the same.
She does not wake up the same, either. The court is foreign to her, and her French is passable but heavily accented. She feels alone and distant, missing her mother terribly, missing her own servants even more so - the ones that knew her looks without having to ask, the ones who seemed to care for her (or at least were better at pretending - at least card for her in the way they were able). The chambermaids here and the ladies-in-waiting are distant and cool, haughty and pretentious, they bat their eyelashes and exchange looks beneath heavy lids as they fold the sheets and dress her, curling her hair tight to her scalp, her dress tight and constricting. They dislike the slick of her accent, dislike the arch of her brow, dislike the curve of her smile, and see her merely a means to an end - the pursuit of an heir. Each day her belly remains flat and the start of each month when her blood flows, is another moment when the distance seems to grow. They believe her a simple fool. It’s just as well.
She spends the first months crying, her letters to home tearful and repentant, her presence a means to end a long feud between countries. She is the ambassador of that peace. She is the carrier of the next heir, the wealth and safety of a nation, resting in her womb - just waiting to be born. A son. The child does not come. The tensions between countries remains. She is a nuisance.
Her French becomes more than passable. After a year, her accent is gone enough, or at least well enough that she can conceal it. She keeps her chin tilted higher, regal and confident. In secret, her hands clench at her stomach and she begs herself for that relief, for that assurance, for that reassurance that she is needed and wanted. She is scolded - too flighty, too unsavory, too stressed, too loose, too redundant. That a child king does not grow inside her means that she is in the wrong. They believe her incompetent. It’s just as well.
When the child grows inside her, finally, she nearly weeps for the joy of it. Her hands shake, pressing to her belly, hardly believing that there is a life fluttering inside of her, just beneath her palms. She closes her eyes and envisions that son - envisions that, perhaps, she will not have to be alone. She feels him kicking. She feels him starting to grow, starting to live.
And then she loses him.
She is at fault - for naturally it is her doing. She does not leave her bed for many weeks and she knows her husband worries, but his mourning is more for the lost life, lost to a flow of blood rushing out from between her legs, startling her and collapsing her until she is stretched out and collapsing inward instead, trying to fill the void a son should have been. She is empty. She is barren. It is just as well.
She sheds her skin and adapts, her back straightening, her shadow stretching far behind her as she walks in her King’s shadow, her husband’s. She stays the image of a Frenchwoman, because that is what is required, and she leaves behind the scared little princess, uncertain of her place, and steps into what she must be: the diligent, merciful Queen of France.
She is not a woman. She is a queen.
II.
She does not remember when she first became aware of Aramis. The moment when she is throw to her back with him over her is not the first she’s known of him, but it is the first moment she realizes how warm and kind a soldier’s eyes can be, after seeing so many from afar, or speaking with her king. She thinks to herself that there is a strange kind of gentleness that she sees there, and it fascinates her, to think that a man whose job it is to kill those who threaten the crown should still seem warmer than those meant to save men, the doctors and the priests of the world.
But it is not the first she’s heard of Aramis. She remembers whispers of him in the court, mostly because one of her maids knew him, despite being of the royal household. The poor girl had ultimately needed to be dismissed for her indiscretion, her family disgraced, but she’d interfered with her husband, asking that he show her pity - and she still receives a small stipend, somewhere out there probably working a farm. Better that then working the night, she thinks.
Aramis’ reputation precedes him. It fascinates her, that a man, a soldier, could live so freely, living in this open secret of love and libertine, and yet still find favor amongst the court and amongst the garrison where he works and lives. Perhaps there is a string of jealousy, there, that such a man can do as he likes and whom he likes, without fear of recompense, so long as he is not caught by an angry husband. A woman could never even be handed that much courtesy, and for all his liberation and indiscretion, she never hears of Aramis’ women. Undoubtedly the married and unavailable, open and wanting only for him.
Still, it isn’t until she looks up at him and he speaks to her, voice gentle and reassuring even though she is terrified, fear gripping her tight and fearing for her life despite her best efforts. Still, it isn’t until she looks up at him that she understands why it is that he should capture so many hearts - he’s handsome, but that warmth is what draws her in, comforting and strangely intimate, as if she is the only one that has ever been looked at like.
As if she is merely a woman, and not a queen.
He is injured, and the scratch is light - she’s seen more blood in her own household, but it is a scratch that he received in service to her, all the same, and that he should so easily spill blood for her leaves her feeling both warmed and chilled at once, unable to process whether it is terror at being held so important and joy at having caught his eyes, to linger on her if only for a moment.
He bows to her, and yet does not lower his head and there’s such sweet freedom in the movement, and another bitter reminder of just how wild this man is, just how different from her that he is. Free and resounding, full and warm, his eyes bright and clear as he looks at her - again, as if she is a woman and not a queen. This does not escape her notice and she thrills in.
There are ways in which he does not seem real. She aches to touch him, and uses the scratch as an excuse to do so. Her touch is gentle and his smile is gentler still when her fingertips linger on the warmth of his skin.
She feels foolish, that her heart should skip at such an innocent thing. As if she has not known a man’s flesh (her husband, although childish and never looking fully at her, never quite seeing her as the person she is, tries his best and she cannot fault him for that). He is freedom and warmth, strangely mesmerizing in his intimate looks and his soldier’s stance - at once foreign to her and achingly familiar.
She knows she shouldn’t, but she looks at Aramis and meets his eyes and she wants. So much that it shocks her.
III.
She feels foolish, nothing more than a child, at the flush of jealousy that tears through her when she sees her gift to Aramis around the Comtesse’s neck. She would never presume to think that she should capture his sole interest - and she has never made illusions to herself about what kind of man he is, one who loves abundantly and freely. Still, to see it is like a slap in her face - and she feels like a child, a young girl foolishly misinformed about what it is her heart desires.
She does not presume to believe herself special, to take a piece of his heart and own it. But still, too, the jealousy is there and it rips through her. She feels that she is no more than that same child again, who came to France all those years ago, who did not understand the difference between a princess of her home court and the queen of her foreign court, her new home. She feels that she is bow-legged and goose-stepping across ice, slipping and making only a fool of herself, pointing to all her faults and flaws.
He is everything that she wants, and sometimes she catches herself thinking if only her husband was more like the musketeer Aramis. It is a dangerous thought, but one she entertains, and in the weeks leading up to her return to the waters for her fertility treatments (that she knows does no good - for it is not her doing that a child does not conceive; she still feels the hollow ache of her lost child’s kicks, a ghost that haunts inside of her) she imagines it is Aramis above her when her husband comes to their marital bed - and it is perhaps the first time in her entire marriage that she feels that she is close to completion when her husband spends himself above her, that same guttural grunt escaping his throat before he collapses atop her, and she closes her eyes and imagines the weight is someone else.
It is a dangerous thought, but one that she betrays to no one. It is hers and hers alone - one that she does not share with anyone. The true Aramis may share himself freely, but this Aramis is hers alone. And she cannot help but wonder how he would compare to the real thing. (This, too, is enough to make her feel a simple child.)
Still, it is the way he looks at her that she desires - the way he always seems to catch her eye, and the way he smiles at her even as he bows, at once informal and perfectly respectful. But he looks at her like she is a treasure. She knows this is a look that many a woman must know, and the jealousy is hot and fresh - and she hates herself for it. Hates that she should feel it, even when she has no claim. Even when he has no claim on her, as well.
She knows it is dangerous. Not to want, not to desire - but to have, to consider. Whenever she sees her cross hanging around his neck, she imagines reaching out, grasping it, and pulling him to her, never to let go. She will be killed and he will be killed soon behind her, hanged a seductress, hanged a traitor. Even so, she thinks there is no harm in desire. If only it could only be that - a passing fancy, a loyal servant to his queen. Instead, she is plagued with jealousy - jealousy of his freedom, jealousy of the women he holds, jealousy of her cross that presses close to his heart every day, a place that she can never be, never truly.
Still, she desires.
And he is kind - it is not a possessiveness in which he lays her cross upon the Comtesse, but rather his pursuits for sympathy and comfort. She is shamed in the face of his kindness. That such a soldier can find compassion and mercy in his heart, when she is burned alive by her envy and resentment. She is shamed and the brief hatred she feels for herself is burning and consuming, taking her by as much surprise as her initial desire for Aramis did.
She wonders, sometimes, if her kindness is just a farce. She worked hard to sway her king to allow her the royal pardons for prisoners, worked even harder for the modest purses of coin she gives to them. But she wonders - if it is truly the kindness of her heart, or the expectation of kindness that fuels her. In these moments, when she looks to Aramis and only wants to dig her fingers deep into his heart and possess it, for her alone, she wonders with a shock if she is simply a greedy person.
She hates to think what he sees, when he looks at her - does he see a queen, or a woman? Or, worse, does he see a simple, foolish little girl playing at queen, who believes herself worthy when she is nothing but the center of dark inside her heart - greedy and envious and jealous, kind simply for appearances rather than a desire for kindness.
She thinks to herself that there is nothing that a man such as Aramis could desire that could be so ugly.
Burying these thoughts, however, proves impossible.
IV.
Her thoughts, as it turns out, proves unfounded - at least somewhat. She gazes at him from across the modest hallway connecting their two rooms. The nunnery is quiet, if only for a moment, and he is in mourning. There is a tickle of jealousy deep inside her heart, that he should have promised himself to a woman so long ago and still hold her so close inside his heart.
But those thoughts drift away as quickly as the smoke from the candles. He is in pain, and she feels ill-prepared to handle it. So used is she to his confidence, to his easy smile, and warm eyes that it never quite occurred to her that he could fracture and break. That he could have such unease and unhappiness as she does - that he could have moments of believing himself a despicable person, when before all she saw was perfection in every inch of him.
He looks at her as if she is air and water and merciful release - hangs on her words as she speaks, leaning heavily against the wall of the convent, seeking some kind of strength, seeking some kind of answer. She knows she should resist, knows she should restrain herself - but all she wants is to get him back, to find again that confident man who smiled easily in a way that reaches his eyes.
She wonders if, all this time, she fundamentally misunderstood who he was. And now all she wants is to know who she is. She lays her hands on him and he aches into her touch, seeking out that comfort. She sees him resist, far stronger than she is, before he gives in, too.
And she kisses him and it is exactly as she imagined it would be - the drag of his lips, the scrape of his beard, the hush of his breath. She shivers not from the cold, but from that want.
There’s some sort of relief in being needed and wanted, in the way he looks at her as if she is a woman - not a means to an end. There is a quiet sort of relief at the way he looks at her. He is gentle with her, but there is a neediness that underlies all his actions, and she knows that he is not at his best - that he reaches for her for comfort, and she is there to give it to him. That he seeks release and distraction, rather than just her - that it is not for her he reaches, but rather the desire of her.
This is just as well - as she desires him, desires that freedom and that grace, desires to touch upon what she once thought was perfection and now sees only as a flawed man - and all the more beautiful for it.
They fall together upon her bed and she arches above him. His fingers are nimble and although his eyes are haunted, lingering on the ghost of a woman, a would-be wife, and she tries to kiss him back into himself, hands shaking as she touches at his hair, at his cheeks, tracing down his neck and over his chest.
She feels the press of her cross upon her own chest as he leans over her, hanging heavy between them as it drags between the valley of her breasts when he pulls the silk of her dress away. She breathes out, suddenly exposed and bare and seen in a way that not even her husband knows - for he has never let his gaze linger and drag in the way Aramis’ does now.
She breathes out his name and he looks to her, and there’s that glimmer of a smile, a shadow of all the smiles he’s ever given her and she knows that she has been wanted as badly as she has wanted him.
They fall together, she thinks, as if they were made to fall together. And she holds to him as he moves above her, knowing exactly what to do to make her body sing with her desires - and it has never felt this way. She didn’t even know it could feel this way. And she wants, more than anything, for it to never end. He pulls her open in a way she never thought possible, and she arches to meet him, eager for his touch, eager for all of him.
He shifts above her, his hips moving in a kind of haphazard stutter, and she feels that he’s pulling away.
“Wait,” she says, and at first can only mouth the word, and then she whispers it out, breathless, lifting herself up and curling her arms around his neck, kissing him, whispering, “Wait - wait.”
“But,” he says, quietly, and says nothing more - expecting her to cut him off.
She shakes her head and holds to him, her legs curling around his waist and anchoring him to her, her heels pressing hard into the small of his back until he makes a soft, strangled sound, his eyes darkened with desire.
She knows - knows she is lying, knows that she will risk something not worth risking, knows that she will take something from him, something, if she is successful, that will rob him yet again of what he wants, of what he regrets. She knows that she is capable, she knows, by the flow of blood with each month, that she is simply waiting to be filled.
And so it is with a liar’s breath that she whispers, “I am barren. It’s alright.”
And he is so lost in his pleasure and desire that he does not question it, and rocks into her, holding her like she is fragile, but holding her like she is a woman and she thrives on it, thrives on that little piece of him, thrives on that reminder, that she is a woman.
And she takes what she wants, filling herself up with him and his freedom, his warmth, his faltering flaws and flawlessness.
She takes.
V.
She knows it is cruelty, that she should have a child that will bear his blood - and yet it cannot be his. She regrets it, almost. But it is a piece of him, something that she can look upon and remember - that she is wanted, that she is needed, that she is more than just a means to an end.
But she regrets what it will do to him - that he should watch her from afar, blaming himself, coveting. She knows what it feels to want and never have - but even she has had, something that, for the son she will have cannot be for him.
She thinks that Aramis would be a worthy father. She remembers their conversation, remembers the haunting pain in his eyes as he said goodbye to a lost love, who said goodbye to a lost child. And she knows that her kindness is a cruelty.
And yet she cannot regret. She looks to him and desires him still, imagines haphazard, secret plans that she can summon him to her side, that she can think of him and he would appear before her - as if he is only a stone’s throw from her.
She looks to him and despairs for her cruelty and rejoices for the moment of freedom that now grows inside of her.
She cannot cry, for she has no right to. She wonders if she should cry for him, for he looks at her as if she is the light and the darkness at once - looks at her as if she holds from him something he has always desperately wanted. He looks at her still as if she is a woman and not a queen. He looks at her as if she is the mother of his child, a child that can never be his. He looks at her as if she has done no wrong, when she has wronged him in a way that can never be repaired.
And still she smiles at him and desires.
Series: (BBC) The Musketeers
Characters: Queen Anne, Aramis, mentions of others
Pairing: Anne/Aramis
Rating: R
Warning: Implied, non-explicit sex
Summary: She is not a woman but a queen. But he looks at her as if she is merely a woman.
Notes: An attempt to flesh out Anne's character, as I've seen a lot of criticism that she's just a generic nice-gal kind of character, without a lot of depth. I wanted to specifically write her with flaws and yet still sympathetic. It was an interesting exercise, as it was less of a response to the 'she's generic' mentality and more of 'well, why DO I like her so much?', as I really quite enjoy Anne as a character.
I.
They are both merely children, when they meet: she and her husband. They are mere children - at least, in hindsight, she knows they were only children. Young and naïve, unable to understand much of anything (and so many days, her husband still does not understand and still refuses to believe that she understands). That first night, after the ceremony of their marriage, he comes to her, and she is waiting, and the attendants are waiting and stand around and wait for the moment that he penetrates her, to seal the contract of their marriage - wait for the sharp, pained intake of her breath when he presses above her. She feels as if she is suffocating, the air stolen from her lungs, her body tensing up and resisting this invasion. And it is painful, and he does not look her in the eye, and she feels less a woman and more a lost girl, or worse: merely the extent of property. She knows better than to cry, so she stares up at her husband, grim-faced, even as he looks at the spot above her shoulder. She stays still but refuses to close her eyes - mostly from fear, mostly from a silent kind of rebellion that can never manifest itself.
She does not sleep that night and the ache is deep down into her bones, not from the pain of his presence - for he is haphazard and a child, as she is (or was; she wonders now if she must use the past tense, if the past imperfect reflects the imperfection of what lies ahead), but it is rather the pain of knowing that she no longer exists as she once did. She does not fall asleep. She does not fall asleep the same.
She does not wake up the same, either. The court is foreign to her, and her French is passable but heavily accented. She feels alone and distant, missing her mother terribly, missing her own servants even more so - the ones that knew her looks without having to ask, the ones who seemed to care for her (or at least were better at pretending - at least card for her in the way they were able). The chambermaids here and the ladies-in-waiting are distant and cool, haughty and pretentious, they bat their eyelashes and exchange looks beneath heavy lids as they fold the sheets and dress her, curling her hair tight to her scalp, her dress tight and constricting. They dislike the slick of her accent, dislike the arch of her brow, dislike the curve of her smile, and see her merely a means to an end - the pursuit of an heir. Each day her belly remains flat and the start of each month when her blood flows, is another moment when the distance seems to grow. They believe her a simple fool. It’s just as well.
She spends the first months crying, her letters to home tearful and repentant, her presence a means to end a long feud between countries. She is the ambassador of that peace. She is the carrier of the next heir, the wealth and safety of a nation, resting in her womb - just waiting to be born. A son. The child does not come. The tensions between countries remains. She is a nuisance.
Her French becomes more than passable. After a year, her accent is gone enough, or at least well enough that she can conceal it. She keeps her chin tilted higher, regal and confident. In secret, her hands clench at her stomach and she begs herself for that relief, for that assurance, for that reassurance that she is needed and wanted. She is scolded - too flighty, too unsavory, too stressed, too loose, too redundant. That a child king does not grow inside her means that she is in the wrong. They believe her incompetent. It’s just as well.
When the child grows inside her, finally, she nearly weeps for the joy of it. Her hands shake, pressing to her belly, hardly believing that there is a life fluttering inside of her, just beneath her palms. She closes her eyes and envisions that son - envisions that, perhaps, she will not have to be alone. She feels him kicking. She feels him starting to grow, starting to live.
And then she loses him.
She is at fault - for naturally it is her doing. She does not leave her bed for many weeks and she knows her husband worries, but his mourning is more for the lost life, lost to a flow of blood rushing out from between her legs, startling her and collapsing her until she is stretched out and collapsing inward instead, trying to fill the void a son should have been. She is empty. She is barren. It is just as well.
She sheds her skin and adapts, her back straightening, her shadow stretching far behind her as she walks in her King’s shadow, her husband’s. She stays the image of a Frenchwoman, because that is what is required, and she leaves behind the scared little princess, uncertain of her place, and steps into what she must be: the diligent, merciful Queen of France.
She is not a woman. She is a queen.
II.
She does not remember when she first became aware of Aramis. The moment when she is throw to her back with him over her is not the first she’s known of him, but it is the first moment she realizes how warm and kind a soldier’s eyes can be, after seeing so many from afar, or speaking with her king. She thinks to herself that there is a strange kind of gentleness that she sees there, and it fascinates her, to think that a man whose job it is to kill those who threaten the crown should still seem warmer than those meant to save men, the doctors and the priests of the world.
But it is not the first she’s heard of Aramis. She remembers whispers of him in the court, mostly because one of her maids knew him, despite being of the royal household. The poor girl had ultimately needed to be dismissed for her indiscretion, her family disgraced, but she’d interfered with her husband, asking that he show her pity - and she still receives a small stipend, somewhere out there probably working a farm. Better that then working the night, she thinks.
Aramis’ reputation precedes him. It fascinates her, that a man, a soldier, could live so freely, living in this open secret of love and libertine, and yet still find favor amongst the court and amongst the garrison where he works and lives. Perhaps there is a string of jealousy, there, that such a man can do as he likes and whom he likes, without fear of recompense, so long as he is not caught by an angry husband. A woman could never even be handed that much courtesy, and for all his liberation and indiscretion, she never hears of Aramis’ women. Undoubtedly the married and unavailable, open and wanting only for him.
Still, it isn’t until she looks up at him and he speaks to her, voice gentle and reassuring even though she is terrified, fear gripping her tight and fearing for her life despite her best efforts. Still, it isn’t until she looks up at him that she understands why it is that he should capture so many hearts - he’s handsome, but that warmth is what draws her in, comforting and strangely intimate, as if she is the only one that has ever been looked at like.
As if she is merely a woman, and not a queen.
He is injured, and the scratch is light - she’s seen more blood in her own household, but it is a scratch that he received in service to her, all the same, and that he should so easily spill blood for her leaves her feeling both warmed and chilled at once, unable to process whether it is terror at being held so important and joy at having caught his eyes, to linger on her if only for a moment.
He bows to her, and yet does not lower his head and there’s such sweet freedom in the movement, and another bitter reminder of just how wild this man is, just how different from her that he is. Free and resounding, full and warm, his eyes bright and clear as he looks at her - again, as if she is a woman and not a queen. This does not escape her notice and she thrills in.
There are ways in which he does not seem real. She aches to touch him, and uses the scratch as an excuse to do so. Her touch is gentle and his smile is gentler still when her fingertips linger on the warmth of his skin.
She feels foolish, that her heart should skip at such an innocent thing. As if she has not known a man’s flesh (her husband, although childish and never looking fully at her, never quite seeing her as the person she is, tries his best and she cannot fault him for that). He is freedom and warmth, strangely mesmerizing in his intimate looks and his soldier’s stance - at once foreign to her and achingly familiar.
She knows she shouldn’t, but she looks at Aramis and meets his eyes and she wants. So much that it shocks her.
III.
She feels foolish, nothing more than a child, at the flush of jealousy that tears through her when she sees her gift to Aramis around the Comtesse’s neck. She would never presume to think that she should capture his sole interest - and she has never made illusions to herself about what kind of man he is, one who loves abundantly and freely. Still, to see it is like a slap in her face - and she feels like a child, a young girl foolishly misinformed about what it is her heart desires.
She does not presume to believe herself special, to take a piece of his heart and own it. But still, too, the jealousy is there and it rips through her. She feels that she is no more than that same child again, who came to France all those years ago, who did not understand the difference between a princess of her home court and the queen of her foreign court, her new home. She feels that she is bow-legged and goose-stepping across ice, slipping and making only a fool of herself, pointing to all her faults and flaws.
He is everything that she wants, and sometimes she catches herself thinking if only her husband was more like the musketeer Aramis. It is a dangerous thought, but one she entertains, and in the weeks leading up to her return to the waters for her fertility treatments (that she knows does no good - for it is not her doing that a child does not conceive; she still feels the hollow ache of her lost child’s kicks, a ghost that haunts inside of her) she imagines it is Aramis above her when her husband comes to their marital bed - and it is perhaps the first time in her entire marriage that she feels that she is close to completion when her husband spends himself above her, that same guttural grunt escaping his throat before he collapses atop her, and she closes her eyes and imagines the weight is someone else.
It is a dangerous thought, but one that she betrays to no one. It is hers and hers alone - one that she does not share with anyone. The true Aramis may share himself freely, but this Aramis is hers alone. And she cannot help but wonder how he would compare to the real thing. (This, too, is enough to make her feel a simple child.)
Still, it is the way he looks at her that she desires - the way he always seems to catch her eye, and the way he smiles at her even as he bows, at once informal and perfectly respectful. But he looks at her like she is a treasure. She knows this is a look that many a woman must know, and the jealousy is hot and fresh - and she hates herself for it. Hates that she should feel it, even when she has no claim. Even when he has no claim on her, as well.
She knows it is dangerous. Not to want, not to desire - but to have, to consider. Whenever she sees her cross hanging around his neck, she imagines reaching out, grasping it, and pulling him to her, never to let go. She will be killed and he will be killed soon behind her, hanged a seductress, hanged a traitor. Even so, she thinks there is no harm in desire. If only it could only be that - a passing fancy, a loyal servant to his queen. Instead, she is plagued with jealousy - jealousy of his freedom, jealousy of the women he holds, jealousy of her cross that presses close to his heart every day, a place that she can never be, never truly.
Still, she desires.
And he is kind - it is not a possessiveness in which he lays her cross upon the Comtesse, but rather his pursuits for sympathy and comfort. She is shamed in the face of his kindness. That such a soldier can find compassion and mercy in his heart, when she is burned alive by her envy and resentment. She is shamed and the brief hatred she feels for herself is burning and consuming, taking her by as much surprise as her initial desire for Aramis did.
She wonders, sometimes, if her kindness is just a farce. She worked hard to sway her king to allow her the royal pardons for prisoners, worked even harder for the modest purses of coin she gives to them. But she wonders - if it is truly the kindness of her heart, or the expectation of kindness that fuels her. In these moments, when she looks to Aramis and only wants to dig her fingers deep into his heart and possess it, for her alone, she wonders with a shock if she is simply a greedy person.
She hates to think what he sees, when he looks at her - does he see a queen, or a woman? Or, worse, does he see a simple, foolish little girl playing at queen, who believes herself worthy when she is nothing but the center of dark inside her heart - greedy and envious and jealous, kind simply for appearances rather than a desire for kindness.
She thinks to herself that there is nothing that a man such as Aramis could desire that could be so ugly.
Burying these thoughts, however, proves impossible.
IV.
Her thoughts, as it turns out, proves unfounded - at least somewhat. She gazes at him from across the modest hallway connecting their two rooms. The nunnery is quiet, if only for a moment, and he is in mourning. There is a tickle of jealousy deep inside her heart, that he should have promised himself to a woman so long ago and still hold her so close inside his heart.
But those thoughts drift away as quickly as the smoke from the candles. He is in pain, and she feels ill-prepared to handle it. So used is she to his confidence, to his easy smile, and warm eyes that it never quite occurred to her that he could fracture and break. That he could have such unease and unhappiness as she does - that he could have moments of believing himself a despicable person, when before all she saw was perfection in every inch of him.
He looks at her as if she is air and water and merciful release - hangs on her words as she speaks, leaning heavily against the wall of the convent, seeking some kind of strength, seeking some kind of answer. She knows she should resist, knows she should restrain herself - but all she wants is to get him back, to find again that confident man who smiled easily in a way that reaches his eyes.
She wonders if, all this time, she fundamentally misunderstood who he was. And now all she wants is to know who she is. She lays her hands on him and he aches into her touch, seeking out that comfort. She sees him resist, far stronger than she is, before he gives in, too.
And she kisses him and it is exactly as she imagined it would be - the drag of his lips, the scrape of his beard, the hush of his breath. She shivers not from the cold, but from that want.
There’s some sort of relief in being needed and wanted, in the way he looks at her as if she is a woman - not a means to an end. There is a quiet sort of relief at the way he looks at her. He is gentle with her, but there is a neediness that underlies all his actions, and she knows that he is not at his best - that he reaches for her for comfort, and she is there to give it to him. That he seeks release and distraction, rather than just her - that it is not for her he reaches, but rather the desire of her.
This is just as well - as she desires him, desires that freedom and that grace, desires to touch upon what she once thought was perfection and now sees only as a flawed man - and all the more beautiful for it.
They fall together upon her bed and she arches above him. His fingers are nimble and although his eyes are haunted, lingering on the ghost of a woman, a would-be wife, and she tries to kiss him back into himself, hands shaking as she touches at his hair, at his cheeks, tracing down his neck and over his chest.
She feels the press of her cross upon her own chest as he leans over her, hanging heavy between them as it drags between the valley of her breasts when he pulls the silk of her dress away. She breathes out, suddenly exposed and bare and seen in a way that not even her husband knows - for he has never let his gaze linger and drag in the way Aramis’ does now.
She breathes out his name and he looks to her, and there’s that glimmer of a smile, a shadow of all the smiles he’s ever given her and she knows that she has been wanted as badly as she has wanted him.
They fall together, she thinks, as if they were made to fall together. And she holds to him as he moves above her, knowing exactly what to do to make her body sing with her desires - and it has never felt this way. She didn’t even know it could feel this way. And she wants, more than anything, for it to never end. He pulls her open in a way she never thought possible, and she arches to meet him, eager for his touch, eager for all of him.
He shifts above her, his hips moving in a kind of haphazard stutter, and she feels that he’s pulling away.
“Wait,” she says, and at first can only mouth the word, and then she whispers it out, breathless, lifting herself up and curling her arms around his neck, kissing him, whispering, “Wait - wait.”
“But,” he says, quietly, and says nothing more - expecting her to cut him off.
She shakes her head and holds to him, her legs curling around his waist and anchoring him to her, her heels pressing hard into the small of his back until he makes a soft, strangled sound, his eyes darkened with desire.
She knows - knows she is lying, knows that she will risk something not worth risking, knows that she will take something from him, something, if she is successful, that will rob him yet again of what he wants, of what he regrets. She knows that she is capable, she knows, by the flow of blood with each month, that she is simply waiting to be filled.
And so it is with a liar’s breath that she whispers, “I am barren. It’s alright.”
And he is so lost in his pleasure and desire that he does not question it, and rocks into her, holding her like she is fragile, but holding her like she is a woman and she thrives on it, thrives on that little piece of him, thrives on that reminder, that she is a woman.
And she takes what she wants, filling herself up with him and his freedom, his warmth, his faltering flaws and flawlessness.
She takes.
V.
She knows it is cruelty, that she should have a child that will bear his blood - and yet it cannot be his. She regrets it, almost. But it is a piece of him, something that she can look upon and remember - that she is wanted, that she is needed, that she is more than just a means to an end.
But she regrets what it will do to him - that he should watch her from afar, blaming himself, coveting. She knows what it feels to want and never have - but even she has had, something that, for the son she will have cannot be for him.
She thinks that Aramis would be a worthy father. She remembers their conversation, remembers the haunting pain in his eyes as he said goodbye to a lost love, who said goodbye to a lost child. And she knows that her kindness is a cruelty.
And yet she cannot regret. She looks to him and desires him still, imagines haphazard, secret plans that she can summon him to her side, that she can think of him and he would appear before her - as if he is only a stone’s throw from her.
She looks to him and despairs for her cruelty and rejoices for the moment of freedom that now grows inside of her.
She cannot cry, for she has no right to. She wonders if she should cry for him, for he looks at her as if she is the light and the darkness at once - looks at her as if she holds from him something he has always desperately wanted. He looks at her still as if she is a woman and not a queen. He looks at her as if she is the mother of his child, a child that can never be his. He looks at her as if she has done no wrong, when she has wronged him in a way that can never be repaired.
And still she smiles at him and desires.