Chapter Text
Oops.
Constance grits her teeth as the musketeer goes limp in her arms, handsome face relaxing from a pained grimace to something almost peaceful as his hat tumbles off from its sharp angle against her arm. At least she’s ascertained that the lead ball went straight through, so there will be no poking around in the man’s gut tonight, thank God.
Which isn’t to say he’s at all in the clear, as she’s well aware that shots to the abdomen tend to lead to long, slow deaths unless one is very, very lucky.
Well, she’s never been one to believe that fate comes from luck alone. One can always weight the odds in one’s favor. With a quick breath and muttered prayer to fortify herself against the general unpleasantness that’s making her legs weaken, she gets her arms under his and starts to drag him out of the way. It’s only a dozen meters to her husband’s home from which she’d watched this whole mess unfold. The musketeer’s hat will just have to stay in the street until she remembers to collect it, and hopefully it won’t get trampled in the meantime.
“Hey, you! Halt! That man has obstructed the execution of justice!”
Oops oops oops oops—
The guard shouting at her in a rough, booming voice is unable to reach her through the crush of people, but he’s cutting a path in her direction and brandishing his pistol indiscriminately just like that first nasty piece of work who called himself a Red Guard. Constance ducks down below his sightline, which has the added benefit of offering her more traction to pull Aramis across the dusty Paris street, though knees keep knocking into her arms and back and there’ll certainly be bruises later. Fast as she can she gets him up her step and the door shut behind her, hoping the guard has lost the trail.
Fortunately, Monsieur Bonacieux himself isn’t in town at the moment, having gone to purchase some fancy-sounding sample bolts in Lorraine. Which is why Constance is even back in the house at all, because she has no intentions of returning to the place when the only soul in it is her husband’s. d’Artagnan lives at the garrison now, and while she misses the early morning glimpses of him before he’d had time to fully wake up and slip on his dutiful musketeer persona, the quiet and unsupervised moments they can sneak when he’s at the palace or she can get away to the garrison all but make up for it.
Which is all to say, Aramis is quite lucky in both the location and timing of his little stand for justice, she thinks as she leaves him slumped and bleeding at the top of the cellar stairs and hurries down to clear off one of the spare bedframes that have been gathering dust there since her brothers’ last visit. d’Artagnan had told her of the king’s hunting trip with an almost-teasing and mostly-sincere warning to keep an extra close eye on the queen, as much of the regiment would be attending His Majesty or on another mission Rochefort had ordered. The queen, of course, had little interest in being fussed over, and had readily agreed with Constance’s plan to return home briefly.
And if Constance had to make a guess, she’s pretty sure Anne would much rather she be tending to Aramis than to Her Majesty right now. Not that she’s in the business of gossip or anything of the sort. Certainly it’s a purely professional royal interest in the wellbeing of her musketeer. Her musketeers. Whatever.
There’s a spot for Aramis in the basement now, but getting him down to it will be a trick. After a moment of biting her lip and considering, Constance tugs off his pauldron, his doublet, and his weapons belts, carrying them down to dump in a pile at the foot of the cellar stairs. She finds a sheet of canvas and wraps him in it before hoisting him up again and backing down the steps with his dead weight pulling at her arms, wincing every time his feet fall from one stair to the next with a jarring thunk. The heels of his boots leave twin trails across the dusty floor as she drags him to the bed and awkwardly arranges his limbs on it before removing them. As she does, Aramis finally starts to come around with a low groan, face contorting and eyes flicking under their lids.
“Monsieur? Monsieur, I need you to hold still, you’re still very injured. You’re safe, though, you’re in the home of M. Bonacieux and I’ll tend to your wound in a moment.”
His eyes open a crack, revealing irises so dark they briefly make her feel like she’s falling into them. Ah. Well, she understands why that gaze has entranced so many women, then. But right now he’s too confused and hurt to back up his fine looks with witty banter or attractive smoulders, so the effect is rather wasted as he tries to focus on her face without much success. “Const’nce…”
“Yep, it’s me,” she says brightly. Just at that moment someone falls on the outward-facing cellar doors and they both flinch, causing Aramis to whine softly with discomfort. Much quieter, she finishes, “Alright, alright, let’s see what I’ve got—”
“Not safe. Need to… home…”
His mumbling is barely audible over the building discord outside, but she’s glad she wrapped him up fairly tightly as he struggles weakly to get up. “Now don’t go causing yourself more problems over there,” she says sternly as she finds the cabinet that holds the few herbs she’d kept around for various pains too small for a doctor. “You’re testing my abilities as it is. Unless you can wake yourself up enough to help me out…?”
No reply. Probably not, then.
“In that case, the least you can do is hold still while I go see what alcohol my husband’s got lying around. Understood?”
Another moment of silence, and then a soft chuckle. She looks over her shoulder to glare at him, but he’s stopped wriggling and seems to be concentrating on breathing with his brow furrowed, so she supposes she can take a little insubordination. “Right. I’ll be back, then.”
By the time she finds a bottle of wine and another of brandy, some fabric shears, and a needle and thread and has returned to his side, Aramis’ eyes have fallen shut, but he’s still awake if his tight expression is any indication. Constance tuts sympathetically as she unwraps him so he’s laying on the sheet before cutting his shirt open to reveal his bare chest. “Bet it hurts, doesn’t it. Think you can hold a drink down? Got something strong for you.”
His face is drawn and damp, but after a second’s consideration he nods jerkily. She smiles though he can’t see it and holds the bottle to his lips, which he drinks from obligingly before letting his head fall back with a wheezing exhale. “Good job. I’ll… start cleaning this out, I guess. Thank God Lemay had me stay to watch the operation on Treville or you’d be straight out of luck, yeah?”
Which, she can’t help a nervous giggle at the apprehensive face he pulls as he braces himself. He squints one eye open to glare at her, mumbling, “ ’s unladylike to mock an injured man.”
“It’s also unladylike for a married woman to secret a known libertine into her husband’s basement and divest him of his shirt, but here we are,” she says primly, dousing a rag in wine. “Now hold very, very still.”
Before she’s done with the sentence, she’s started cleaning the area around the entry wound, wincing at the way he hisses and his spine curves but not allowing herself to hesitate. It’s only a moment’s work before the dried blood is gone, and she gives him a second to breathe before saying quietly, “Now your back.”
The look he gives her is verging on that of a cornered, hurt animal, but he squeezes his eyes shut and takes a few shaky breaths before inhaling and pushing himself up onto his side with a long, low groan. Quickly, she catches his shoulder to support him and cleans away the blood and bits of trapped canvas fibers. Under him, the fabric is stained dark brown, and glossy red reflects the dim light where it’s trapped in the folds. Swallowing hard, she looks away, trying to escape back into the professional dissociation she’d managed to find before while her fingers fumble for the needle she’d prepared.
This is more than she’d ever imagined having to deal with when she listened to the old wives in her town recommending their herbs and steam and all their more gruesome remedies with morbid interest.
“I’ll stitch the back one first, and then you can just relax while I finish the other.”
“Relax, will I?” His voice is choked and tight with pain, shudders running through his exhausted body. She pauses to smooth some of the sweaty, dirt-caked hair out of his face, but he recoils, one hand coming up to swat clumsily at her. “Just do it, then, don’t drag it out—”
The edge to his tone barely hides the panic and strain. She hastily pushes her own fringe out of her eyes with the back of her wrist, murmuring, “Alright, alright, I’m sorry. Here we go.”
She’s never been the most creative seamstress, but she’s fast and neat even on an… unfamiliar medium, and before he could even get the breath to start complaining she has the hole closed and the thread tied off and is lowering him onto his back again. There are still tremors wracking his entire form, his eyes screwed tight shut, but as she rinses the needle and replaces the thread he slowly blinks them open, gradually focusing on her again. It seems like he might be gathering himself to speak, but when she holds up the needle in warning of starting the second set of stitches he just nods and closes his eyes again.
When she’s finished those as well, she drops the needle aside and finds the roll of bandages that had been tucked into the back of the cabinet after d’Artagnan’s first dramatic arrival into her home. “Sorry, but it’s time to sit up again. And then I’ll finally stop bothering you, alright?”
He’s brought a shaking hand up to cover his face. “Can’t. Gonna be sick.”
And now she can see it, the tension in his bared stomach and the convulsive bobbing of his Adam’s apple as he swallows over and over. “ Don’t, ” she commands, gripping his wrist and leaning over to cup his cheek. “Don’t, Aramis, you know it will only cause more problems. You’ll rip your stitches or give yourself an infection, or at worst, get your sick all over me. I forbid it.”
“Well, if you forbid it,” he mutters.
But after a second he grabs onto her wrist in turn and hauls himself upright, breathing fast and harsh through his nose like an overworked horse. Quick as she can, Constance places a pad of bandages on each side and winds the length around his stomach, around and around before finally snipping it off and tucking the ends in. She finds another stretch of canvas and places it under him, keeping him from having to lay in his own blood. Then, as gently as possible, she lowers him back down with twin, soft oof s from each of them.
There’s a moment of relative quiet as he keeps doing whatever he’s doing to keep the bile down and she clears away her supplies, setting aside the needle and shears to be thoroughly cleaned later. She rinses her hands in the bowl of water she’d brought down and then drops them all in, watching the water swirl dark and eerie.
His voice, rough with dust and shouting and pain but steadier, drifts across to her, almost drowned out by the cacophony outside. “Constance? I didn’t mean to be rude. You’ve done me a service I can never repay, and I am forever in your debt.”
Face softening, she comes to crouch by his side, taking his hand in hers and pressing a kiss to his knuckles. “You were in pain. It’s only reasonable to be a little short. I only hope I did a good enough job, but…” A deep breath and she locks him into her gaze, his glassy, dark eyes struggling to focus but holding fast to her light ones. “You can repay me by surviving and doing an even better job next time d’Artagnan gets himself into a situation like this, do you understand me?”
He nods, a fleeting look of sadness crossing his face at the mention of his peer. Constance doesn’t have time to consider what that might mean before he’s suddenly near-dry heaving, curled on his side with his head over the edge of the bed, spasms rippling through his overtaxed muscles. Alarmed, she clings to his hand to support him and runs her free hand over his sweat-sticky back. “Shh, sh, that’s alright, you’re alright, breathe through it, come on…”
Eventually the fit passes without any real vomiting and she helps him to recline again, smoothing his hair and wiping at the saliva that had gathered at the corners of his mouth with a cloth. When she goes to try to peek under the bandages, he shakes his head— the stitches hadn’t ripped out. She supposes he must know what that feels like to be so confident, though the thought makes her sad and a little nauseous herself. Their previous conversation is clearly over, as he can barely keep his eyes open and his grip on hers is lax.
“Rest,” she murmurs, wiping away the single tear that finally trails unbidden down into his hair. “I’ll be here. You rest, Aramis. You’ve done so well today. Our boys would be proud.”