Disclaimer: Not mine, though a girl can dream.
A/N: This is a sort of follow up to Two Sides of the Same Coin, though it's not necessary to read that to understand this. That piece looked at my take on Athos' feelings for Milady - this looks at how Milady views things. Naturally, it's a bit of a skewed perspective. Again, this is set between 1.8 The Challenge and 1.9 Knight Takes Queen, so just before all Milady's plans begin to unravel.
She watched from the shadows. It was, after all, both her profession and her favourite pastime. The Cardinal wanted information, always more information, and it was her job to provide it. Along with certain other little tasks that came up. Whatever the Cardinal needed doing, she would find a way to see it done. He hadn't rescued her, not precisely, not in the way he imagined he had, but she found she was oddly fond of him.
Not least because they shared a common enemy.
The Cardinal disliked the Musketeers because they were out of his control, something that he had no power over and that offended his sensibilities. He thought he should control the world and anyone who got in his way became an enemy, pure and simple.
Her feelings for the Musketeers were anything but simple, and they were most certainly not pure.
And so she watched. Watched and waited, planning her next move, the next attempt to hurt them. To hurt him.
That was what it all came down to, really. He had to pay for what he had done to her, and she intended to see him suffer.
It had never been easy, living as a thief on the streets of Paris, under Sarazin's less than devoted care. She had had to watch her back every second of every day and that made it impossible for her to ever trust anyone. She had come as near as she thought it was possible for her once, and it had ended badly.
Automatically, she checked the silk choker she wore to disguise the scar.
The sensation of dangling at the end of that rope, the choking as she fought to take another breath, the fear that Remy would renege on their deal, would fall victim to some ridiculous sense of 'honour'… Sometimes she woke up at night, gasping for breath, still feeling that noose around her neck.
Honour. A stupid custom. As though it mattered if some false value system was maintained. All that mattered was survival, survival and profit, if it could possibly be arranged.
And revenge. That mattered most of all.
She had been young and naïve once, naïve enough to believe all the pretty words he said. Naïve, but not stupid. She had wanted to believe him when he said he loved her, would always love her, that nothing could ever come between them. She had wanted to believe it, but there had still been that spark of self-preservation that had made her hide the truth and then do whatever was necessary to protect her lies.
Thomas had been a simpleton, nothing compared to his elder brother, yet the family had doted on him. But when he discovered the truth, that she was nothing but a low-born thief with no idea who her parents were, she had known that her supposedly loving husband would take his brother's side. He always did.
So she had done what was necessary; after all, it was hardly the first man she had killed. Growing up on the streets of Paris, a young girl without protection learned fast or died young. But it was the first time she had killed in cold blood. To her surprise, the rush of it had taken her breath away. To have such power, to watch a man's life drain away before her eyes, yes, she had enjoyed that.
And so now she watched and waited and plotted, all to get revenge on the man who had betrayed that fragile trust she had placed in him. She couldn't deny the rush of pleasure that came from the success of a well thought out scheme, the knowledge that she was cleverer than all the men around her, but that was nothing compared to the pleasure she would have when she finally succeeded in ruining Athos forever.
She had been wrong when she had set fire to the house she had been happiest in, saying that it was right that it should end there. Why should he get the peace of death? And so quickly, so painlessly. No, he should suffer, as she had. He should know the pain of everyone he loved turning on him, of knowing that they held him in contempt, despising his petty honour.
Only then would she allow him to die.
She still didn't understand how he could have inspired such loyalty, when he seemed to do little but drink himself into a stupor every chance he got. What did they see in him? At first, she had assumed they knew about his noble birth, but that hadn't been the case. Then she had assumed that it was just Aramis and Porthos, with d'Artagnan as a later addition, that perhaps the rest of the Musketeers could see past his pretence at honour and see the truth, but to her disgusted surprise, the entire regiment seemed to dance attendance on the man.
She had tried, once only once, in a tavern to speak ill of him to a group of Musketeers, and had been forced to leave quickly before they realised who she was. She had never seen such loyalty from a group of men before - Sarazin had ruled his crew with fear, and any of them would have taken the opportunity to usurp his position if they could. But to a man, the Musketeers seemed to love Athos.
She couldn't understand it.
A small, quiet voice that she had learned to ignore said that she understood all too well, that they loved him for the same reasons she had loved him: his goodness, his honesty, his courage in his convictions. His sharp intellect and innate kindness, however much he usually tried to hide that latter quality. That quiet, wry wit that had so matched her own.
She told herself she didn't understand it, knowing that a lie repeated enough times eventually becomes close enough to the truth to fool all but the most determined.
She stood in the shadows and watched Athos and d'Artagnan sparring, watched the patience with which he taught the younger man, the skill he had always had with a blade, ignoring the sudden flush of desire that always seemed to assail her when she was near him.
She had learned not to think about a good many things when it came to Athos: she didn't think about the heat in his blue eyes when he kissed her, she didn't think about the way her body melted against his however much she willed herself to stay strong, she didn't think about the way the hatred in his voice cut deeper than any knife.
It was no good, she knew. She couldn't stand and watch and wait forever. He needed to suffer and die before she could know peace and she was running out of patience.
That small, quiet voice that she had learned never to listen to wondered what she would do when she won. When Athos was no longer alive for her to hate, what would be the point of her existence?