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Chapter Text

Aramis notices first, with the strange sort of sixth sense that he seems to have when it comes to the whereabouts of Porthos. He whistles sharply between his teeth, not wanting to cause a panic in the crowd, but Athos is stood next to the King some distance away and doesn’t hear over the hubbub of the parade.

Flicking a glance upwards once more he can just make out the dark shape of Porthos blotted out against the glare of the sun, creeping towards a hunched figure. Aramis decides there’s nothing for it. “Athos!” he calls, sharply, and the other Musketeer looks up just as Porthos, on the rooftop above them, launches himself at the man with the gun.

The shot is fired, wildly mis-aimed as the assassin is wrestled to the ground but still towards the knot of people surrounding the King. Arquebus, Aramis thinks absurdly as the noise cracks across the square, I’d have used a musket from that distance.

Then the screaming starts, the crowd pushing and heaving to get away, blue-cloaked Musketeers and Red Guards here and there attempting to push them back. The King is being hustled away into a coach. And then there is Treville, hunched over Athos.

The cobbled street lurches beneath Aramis’s feet.

“The King…” Athos is saying, struggling against Treville’s iron grip.

“Gone. Safe,” their captain replies, “Now stay still, Athos, before I have to knock you out. Aramis is coming.”

“Here,” Aramis says breathlessly, dropping to his knees. There is blood everywhere, so much that he can’t tell where the wound is. “Left thigh,” Treville says, pushing back down at Athos once more. “Stay still, dammit!”

“Anne,” Athos gasps, his gaze unfocused, lips beginning to turn blue. “My God...Anne…”

Treville frowns, untying his blue cloak and settling it around the wounded man. “It’s alright Athos, Aramis is here, you’re safe, the King and Queen are safe.”

There’s a strained note to the captain’s voice that is oddly comforting to Aramis, anchoring him. He reaches for the main gauche on his back and unceremoniously cuts into Athos’s breeches, the leather already sodden and clinging with blood.

The wound is clean and fairly small, but Athos’s leg is quivering and jerking beneath Aramis’s hands, and the blood is incessant. He pushes down hard on the wound, his hands slick and sliding over the skin within seconds. “Here,” Treville says, pushing Aramis aside and applying pressure himself, so that the other man might have his hands free for better purpose. Unbuckling his belt with fumbling fingers, Aramis unwinds the blue sash around his waist and reaches under Athos’s leg to tie it tight about his thigh, above the wound.

Sitting back on his haunches, Aramis scrubs a shaking hand through his hair, unaware of the trail of red it leaves across his temple. “The artery. I think” he mumbles. Treville shoots him a questioning glance. “Can it be sewn?”

“Possibly,” Aramis says. Athos’s face has gone slack and white now, though he’s still conscious. “I’ve read of it.”

“Can you do it, Aramis?” Treville asks, again.

There’s a sudden movement beside him and Porthos hunkers down breathlessly, his hand heavy on Aramis’s shoulder. “Of course he can.”

It’s only a few minutes in the back of a commandeered coach, but by the time they reach the garrison the seats are already stained dark and Athos is no longer answering when Porthos calls his name.

*

Aramis won’t remember the next few hours, it’s only in the depth of his sleep that he’ll recall flashes: the slip and slide of blood and flesh, the noise the bullet had made rolling to the floor after Aramis had pulled it out with the tips of his fingernails, the litany of desperate prayers he’d repeated only in his head for fear of what would come out if he opened his mouth. It’s just another thing to wake screaming from in the dark hours of the night.

*

The sunrise is just starting to haze the sky the faintest pink, and the garrison courtyard is deserted. Aramis spares a moment to give thanks for that as he empties the contents of his stomach onto the dirt. His legs are trembling painfully, so he gets down on his knees, trying and failing to breathe deeply against the threatening rise of bile in his throat.

It’s a while before he notices the press of a hand on his shoulder. Porthos doesn’t say anything, but he obviously knows his friend well enough to realise that for all his flowery words it’s only ever been touch that means anything to the ever tactile Aramis. Besides, what would he say right now to make it all better?

Aramis can hear the blood singing in his ears, every push of his heart. Everything in him is trembling, adrenaline and nausea and fear combined to buzz through his veins like fire. His eyes are so wide open he feels them prickle and sting, and there’s a coiled, manic sort of tightness to him.

“God….” he says after a while, wiping his mouth with trembling hands, “What must you think of me, Porthos?”

Porthos is silent at his side, and Aramis almost cringes until he looks up at the other man and sees his disbelieving frown.

“I think you saved our brother’s life tonight, you idiot.”

Aramis twitches, feeling his stomach clench again. He wants to say he’s not saved yet, but Porthos is looking at him with such certainty and God, it’s what he needs right now.

The air is warm and stifling. Porthos helps heave Aramis to his feet and props him up on a bench at the side of the courtyard, where he sits with knees jittering. The other man investigates the bottles discarded on the table, and grunts as they yield only a few drops of stale wine. “I’ll get you some water,” he says, moving to rise, but Aramis flings out a hand and fists it in his shirt, “No.” He shakes his head against the roiling heat in his stomach, and breathes deeply. “Please. In a moment.”

They sit together for a while, Aramis concentrating on breathing, until he feels a little more sure of himself and allows Porthos to go and get a pitcher of water.

“Do you hate it?” Porthos asks quietly, handing a cup to Aramis with a quirk of his chin as instruction to drink. “You know. Doctorin’?”

“No. Yes. I don’t know,” he sighs, spreading his fingers wide and looking at his hands, ingrained with dark lines of Athos’s blood. “I like helping.”

“We’d all be in the grave a few times over without you.”

Aramis huffs out a laugh, though there’s nothing remotely funny. “Tell that to the dead of Savoy.”

“Aramis,” Porthos say, low and tight. “Don’t.”

That’s what Aramis had become, after Savoy, his world spiralling down into books and papers and squinting at diagrams every night because sleeping wasn’t a good idea anymore. His sleep was full of blood and corpses, but strangely the act of filling his waking hours with them too was a comfort. Paris being fairly forward-thinking when it came to the study of medicine (and a city with a plentiful supply of bodies) meant it was fairly easy for Aramis to find the places to go and the people to speak to about such things.

He wondered sometimes, if it was a punishment he was inflicting on himself, forcing himself to look at what he could not bear to see in that forest, two years ago: his friends, broken down into their component parts, organs and arteries, muscle and bone. And though it turned his stomach so often he began to grow pale and wan, it was a compulsion he could not bear to end.

The others had borne it long enough, until one day Porthos had snapped and broken Aramis’s nose in fury, and later, made him promise that it would stop now. Though he’d sworn that he wouldn’t go to any more dissections (and hadn’t Porthos turned pale and furious at that revelation?) Aramis couldn’t keep himself away from the books and the studying.

He has to be better, from now on. That’s what Aramis had told himself each time he’d emptied the contents of his stomach, because though it was getting easier, for almost a year afterwards the sight of blood had brought him back to that night in Savoy. He had to be better. Next time, if God forbid there ever was one, would be different. Aramis would save some, at least.

Being the men that they are, there have been many times since Savoy where a blade or a musket ball has brought them down. Each time, Aramis has pushed down the panic until his mind has gone blank enough for him to extract the bullets or sew up the wounds with detachment, until it is almost muscle memory.

“Did you ever think about calling a surgeon? Did Treville?” he asks.

Porthos shakes his head dismissively. “Enough blood in there without fetching a butcher,” he states fervently.

It’s odd. Aramis chose this. He does like that he can help, that he can patch them back together and, for the most part, his hands can stay dispassionate and steady enough to do what needs to be done. He likes that he can make such a difference, now, because he’d sworn he would never be so helpless again. And he knows the way people see him, because he takes care to present himself that way: foppish and louche and carefree. Yet he is the one who might save them, when the bullets and the blades strike home.

But another part of him is filled with such furious anger, that this should be put on him and him alone. And suddenly he is the lone survivor again and he’s just Aramis and Jesus God, how could he possibly hold that responsibility? Why does it have to be him that sees them breaking and broken and tasked with the impossibility of putting them back together again?

He wants to shout, or cry, or break something, but he’s suddenly overcome with tiredness so intense that all he can do is fold in on himself with a sigh.

*

Chapter Text

Aramis sleeps all day, and it’s dark once more when he wakes. The ringing in his ears is suspiciously similar to that which comes after a blow to the head. Swinging his legs off the bed, he sits up cautiously, letting the room still around him.

His mouth tastes odd, of bile and a strange tartness.

“Bastard,” he mutters, remembering the cup of water that Porthos had given him. When accepting a drink from Porthos it was always best to remember that the man’s dubious past in the Cour de Miracles had endowed him with a suspiciously broad knowledge of methods to render a person unconscious.

“You drugged me,” Aramis says, finding Porthos sitting at the table in the courtyard where he last remembered him. “You drugged me?”

“Not drugged, exactly,” Porthos grins, “Just, you know, a helpin’ hand.”

Aramis is too furious to move. “He could have needed me, Porthos, you bastard!” Aramis’s face pales, “Oh God, did he need me? Is he…”

“He’s fine,” Porthos soothes, rising to his feet. “I knew you’d be angry, but Treville agreed, you wouldn’t have rested otherwise.”

“Athos-”

“Alive. He’s even awake. It’s a bloody miracle,” Porthos says, and he pulls Aramis in tight at the shocked blank look on his face.

“Can I see him?” Aramis asks.

*

Athos is indeed awake, but there’s a delay in him: he blinks, slow and sluggish at Aramis and it takes a moment for his eyes to focus and show any sign of recognition. His skin is pale and clammy, lips brushed purple and dark rings around his eyes. Aramis takes his limp hand in his own and squeezes, gently.

“There you are,” Aramis says, because he can’t think of anything else to say.

Athos smiles faintly, and the hand in Aramis’s twitches ever so slightly.

“May I…” Athos tries, but breathlessly gives up on politeness and simple says “Water?”

Porthos hooks a hand under Athos’s arms and pulls him gently into a half-sitting position, and Aramis tries not to think about how weightless and broken he looks, barely able to hold his own head up. He’s still alive, he thinks, he’s still alive.

Porthos brings a cup of water to Athos’s lips as Aramis pulls back the blankets. The leg is dark and bruised around the wound, but doesn’t look too bad considering. Aramis wiggles Athos’s toes, pushes firmly and sees the blood flow back under the skin when he lets it go. The relief floods through him, and he smiles, weakly.

“Thankyou,” Athos breathes. “Aramis.”

*

Porthos makes Aramis eat, and though at first he’s sure his stomach will rebel he manages to keep it all down, even if only by sheer weight of his friend’s heavy gaze on him. When Porthos looks satisfied Aramis dares to prod the bowl of stew away, unable to eat any more. The other man pushes a cup of wine across the table towards him. “Now drink,” he says with a nod of his head.

Aramis narrows his eyes.

“Just wine. Promise,” Porthos smiles, holding up his hands.

They walk to each of their lodgings to collect some things, both knowing that they’ll be staying in the garrison for the forseeable future. The small dorm lined with spartan cots is just beneath the room Athos is sleeping in, and is blessedly free of Musketeers at the moment. Aramis sits up reading and reading his papers, focusing on the accounts of arterial injuries. He read until the words begin to blur, and Porthos huffs over, plucks the paper from his hand, blows out the candle and shoves him backwards onto the bed.

“Less readin’, more sleepin’,” he warns, “Or so help me God I’ll make you.”

“With your fists, or are you going to give me more water?”

“Not going to let that go, are you?” comes Porthos’s voice from the dark. Aramis can hear him shifting around, settling into the hard creaking cot across from his.

“No,” Aramis says, a little petulantly.

It doesn’t take long for Porthos’s breaths to even out into sleep, but Aramis is wide awake. He wants to keep reading, but can’t risk waking Porthos. He knows from experience that the other man can fall asleep anywhere, within minutes - on horseback or parade, propped in the lee of a doorway in the pouring rain, Aramis has even seen him sleep whilst marching. But with this uncanny skill comes the ability to go from sleep to wide-awake in the blink of an eye, at the slightest noise or movement.

Aramis sighs, quietly, and shifts in bed.

*

The next day Treville sends them to the trial of the would-be-assassin, insisting that they represent him in this matter. Aramis is sure that Porthos and the captain have been plotting again, and it is all some ploy to get him out and away from the garrison, but Porthos only shrugs when he asks him.

When they return later that evening Aramis feels stretched thin and frayed at the edges.

“I spoke to the King today,” Treville says, stopping them outside the door to Athos’s room. “He was very grateful for Athos’s selfless actions. He’s sent his own physician to see to him.”

“He doesn’t need a physician,” Porthos answers automatically. “He’s got Aramis.”

“The King was most insistent. He’s in there now.”

“It’s good, Porthos,” Aramis says, “It’s fine. Is he awake, Captain?”

“Yes, go on in” he says, nodding his dismissal.

Inside Athos’s room is dark, the windows shuttered against the setting sun. It takes a while for his eyes to adjust to the light of the few candles, and while Athos is hidden by the physician leaning over the bed Aramis can see a pale arm flung out, the basin on the floor.

The room is heavy with the coppery smell of blood.

He doesn’t recall the next bit, only the feel of the physician’s throat beneath his hands for a moment, and the sudden iron bars of Porthos’s forearms about him, dragging him away. He’s pinned absurdly to Porthos’s chest, struggling and kicking and shouting, and then Treville is there.

“Get him out, Porthos!”

“He’s lost blood, you bastard!” Aramis screams as he’s dragged away by the bigger man, “Barbarian!”

“Aramis!” Treville’s shout snaps out like a whip.

“Don’t let him bleed him, Treville,” Aramis pleads, trying to calm himself because he knows the captain won’t listen to him otherwise and it’s important. “Please, Treville, it’s folly, surely you can see!”

Treville crosses the room till he is right in Aramis’s face. “He is the King’s personal physician. What do you think he’ll say when he hears of this?”

“I don’t care,” Aramis says, “Please, I’m sorry, but it’s insanity. Don’t let him bleed Athos. Please.”

The words are breathless, but Aramis is not ashamed that he sounds so desperate, and weak.

Treville looks at him fiercely, and then nods once, a quick tight snap of his head. He goes to soothe the physician, and Aramis snatches a quick glimpse of Athos, blinking sluggishly from the bed as Porthos pushes him out the door.

“I’ll see to him. Go and calm down, Aramis.”

*

“I’m not sorry, Porthos,” Aramis insists later, after the physician has scurried by him in the courtyard, shooting a wary glance as he passes. “A physician,” he says, spitting out the word with a laugh. “A butcher!” he calls at the retreating man, “A barbarian!”

“Lots of doctors let blood,” Porthos says.

“None of the ones that know anything. And not for a patient who’s just lost half their blood, Porthos.”

“Treville won’t let him come back, don’t worry,” Porthos says after a while. “And Athos is alright.”

“I’m not sorry,” Aramis says again, “Why are you angry with me?”

“Because that was the King’s physician! And you would’ve killed him!”

“Yes,” Aramis replies, simply, and the other man looks up at the heavens and lets out an aggravated growl. “I’m no good at this,” Porthos says, shaking his head angrily as he paces back and forth, “I’m sorry Aramis, I’m no good at this.”

The man strides over and is up in Aramis’s face before he can move. He leans back, but Porthos just moves with him. “Tell me how to help you,” Porthos orders.

Aramis doesn’t need to ask what he’s talking about. Because it’s not about Athos anymore, or the King’s physician.

“What if you can’t?” he says.“What if no one can?”

“Aramis,” Porthos says, pointing up at the balcony and the door to Athos’s room, “What you did in there the other night…” He breaks off, and steps back. “A man who can do that can do anything.”

“You think it’s that simple?” Aramis asks, the anger starting to unfurl in his belly now.

“No, but you do,” says Porthos simply, and it floors Aramis utterly. “You think savin’ other people will save you. So do it. Save yourself. God knows I can’t do it for you.”

“Athos is alive,” he says after a while, “ I’m alive. Treville and a load of other Musketeers are alive, because of you.”

“I’m trying,” Aramis says, looking at his boots. “I am. I promise, Porthos.”

“I know, Aramis,” the other man replies, sitting down and running a hand through his hair. “Just…keep trying. And let me be angry when you go too far.”

Aramis sits down beside him with a sigh, feeling the anger seep out of him with it. “Yes.”

“But that physician was a fool,” he can’t help adding.

Porthos rolls his eyes, “I know. And if he ever sets foot near Athos again I’ll break his neck myself.”

“And if you don’t ever want to do it again,” Porthos continues, after a while, “The doctorin’. Don’t. You don’t owe it to us, Aramis.”

“So you expect me to leave you to physicians like that?” Aramis asks. “Not likely. But...thankyou. For what it’s worth.”

The other man seems to be surveying Aramis, but nods after a while, apparently satisfied with what he sees.

“No readin’ horrible medical texts tonight,” he says, in a tone that brooks no argument. “And no lying awake, either.”

Aramis thinks about what lies waiting for him when he closes his eyes, when the rush of his own blood in the silent stretches of night is enough to make him want to claw at his ears.

“Porthos,” he says, and tries as hard as he can to conceal the note of desperation. “Can you get me some water?” He swallows, and tries to make his voice sound light, “And when I say water, I mean water.”

Porthos’s eyebrows raise, but he doesn’t say anything, just purses his lips and nods. He’s back a few moments later with a cup. Reaching inside his jacket he withdraws a small crumpled paper packet, and shakes a little stream of powder in, swirling the cup for a moment.

“Do I want to know what’s in that stuff? Or where you got it?”

“Nope,” Porthos says, handing over the cup. “Just this once,” he says, after a while. “Just this once, Aramis.”

“Yes,” Aramis answers, nodding firmly. “I swear it.” He wonders if he means it.

He can taste the note of tartness in the liquid now, without the bile to burn his tastebuds numb. They walk into the dormitory and sit opposite each other on their little creaking bunks. Within minutes Aramis’s limbs are heavy and buzzing, and he lowers himself to lie down as he feels the sagging weight set in, his mind fogging pleasantly.

“I’ll stay,” Porthos says, before Aramis has to ask.

*
END