A/N: 2.14.15 You may believe it or not, but this story was written over the last week before I saw The Return this evening on live television as my very own Valentine gift to myself. While it is finished, it will only be posted in parts, since I do not currently have a beta and do my own editing in this fandom. Largely, this story grew out of a line in Emilie – when Aramis tells her Athos will watch over her because he's had some experience with this kind of thing.

Worth Saving

The knock on the door was neither tentative nor expectant, rather, it was imperative.

"Come." Tréville did not look up from the letter he was finishing, but the door opened and closed with authority. The boot falls did not falter in the slightest, nor did they wander. They stopped in front of his desk and did not fidget.

They were not the footsteps of one of his men.

Knowing this, the Captain of the Musketeers signed and sanded the letter and put on his game face before lifting his head. Though even these preparations could not stop his eyes widening in surprise.

The man watching him said nothing.

Tréville, purposefully resisting the urge to rise, leaned back in his chair, propping an elbow on the arm and his chin in his hand. "How can I help you?"

"I am—"

"I know who you are. What do you want?"

There was an infinitesimal pause as the frosty blue eyes narrowed slightly. "I am Athos." The flick of the wrist that landed the money bag on the desk was so economical as to be nearly unnoticeable. "I wish to purchase a commission in the King's Musketeers."

Tréville's blue eyes met the nobleman's gaze directly. "Why?" he asked without inflection. Despite his reserve, he was curious why the finest swordsman in France - perhaps the entire Continent - had come to him instead of going directly to the king.

"My reasons are my own."

Tréville studied the Comte de la Fère a moment longer before rising slowly. "If you're here to find an honorable death, sir, I don't want you."

Not by blink, blanche or flinch did the comte react. "There are any number of galleries in my home I could have hanged myself from, and trice that number of pistols lying around the house. If I wanted to be dead, I would be."

"Drivel." Tréville planted his fists on the desk and leaned forward. "I've seconded two good men you killed in the process of trying to kill yourself."

A sharp knock sounded before the door burst inward. "Captain—"

Tréville threw up a hand, his attention never wavering from the man before him. "For the last two years you've been drinking and whoring your way across the Continent, looking for someone to kill you so you don't have to do it yourself. I have no use for your kind in the Musketeers. You don't even know the meaning of the word loyalty, much less what it means to serve king and country."

Across the desk, the comte met the captain's stare steadily. "You are correct in your judgment, I am beneath contempt. But I think I have it in me to be loyal to a cause I can support. And I would like to learn what it means to serve my country."

No bravado, no posturing, only the gloved hands clenched tight at his sides gave any indication that this young man had just laid all his cards on the table.

"No," Tréville said, after a considering moment. "I think not." He picked up the money bag and tossed it back; it was caught with as sparse a motion as it had been tossed. "Though I'm well aware you could go directly to the king. Likely he would commission you instantly."

The comte removed his hat, bowed gracefully over it, and without a word, exited the office exactly as he'd entered it, with a steady, measured pace that spoke of a man who got what he wanted.

Tréville sank back down in the desk chair. "What is it, Aramis?"

Aramis had paced to the window and was watching the dignified retreat with interest. "Is that who I think it is?"

"If you think it's the Comte de la Fère, then yes."

"The finest swordsman on the Continent and you turned him down?" Aramis glanced over his shoulder at the captain, curiosity warring with surprise.

"He's a hazard waiting to happen, with a death wish he's been unable to find someone skilled enough to grant. He's broken, Aramis; I don't need that kind of chaos in the garrison."

"Broken?" The healer was intrigued. "How?"

"Perhaps it is only his heart, I've heard rumors. But it has turned him into …" Tréville had been about to say a monster, but he had caught a glimpse of a soul in torment behind those glacial eyes and could not bring himself to voice the words.

"Into what?" Aramis prompted, turning back to the room as the hat with its jaunty feather disappeared from view. The comte had strolled through the arch with more savoir-faire then anyone Aramis had ever met.

Tréville sighed, slumping in his chair again. "A man without a soul."

"Somehow I had acquired the idea that that was God's provenance." Aramis strolled to the desk and set a hip against the edge.

"When he has finally made his wish come true he will be God's to do with as He wishes. While he is yet among the living, the Comte de la Fère is an undisciplined liability."

"You do not think he is worth saving?"

Tréville put his head back. "Aramis, you cannot take every broken thing under your wing and fix it. Some things cannot be fixed."

"I respectfully disagree, sir, as does God."

"Then let God deal with him." Tréville was not in the mood to be cajoled, though if any could do so, it would be Aramis.

"Do you think he will go to the king?"

The captain barked a laugh and straightened. "Do you know, I don't believe he will." He rose slightly, pulled the chair back under the desk and reached for his letter. "Was there actually something you needed to tell me or did your curiosity get the best of you again?" He folded it, wrote out the address, sanded it again, and rose to put it in the box for the messengers.

Aramis tucked his thumbs sheepishly into his sword belt. "Curiosity," he admitted. "It's not every day one is allowed to stand in the presence of brilliance."

Tréville's lips twitched. "Thank you so much."

Aramis, with a grin, doffed his hat. "Well, of course, sir, we do stand in the presence of brilliance every day. This is just a … different kind of brilliance." He rose too, shoving a hand through his hair before replacing his hat and donning his best air of innocence. "If there's nothing else you need me for, I just remembered I have an errand to run." All the while knowing Tréville would see right through it. It was what he liked most about the man; the captain was as honest as the day was long, with a large dose of human decency making up the core of him, and the capacity to find it in others as well, even when it might not be prominently on display.

"Do not provoke him, Aramis. I have no desire to identify your body when he's done with you."

"I'll keep that in mind, sir. And make certain Porthos knows it's his duty to identify my remains if necessary."

"Take him with you."

"I think … perhaps this initial contact might be better received if the comte does not feel like he's being ambushed."

Tréville sighed again. "You're probably right, though for the record, I'm ordering you not to follow him."

"He's long gone. How could I follow him?"

Smiling brown eyes met doubtful blue, but no further orders were forthcoming and Aramis, who had learned long ago it was easier to ask for forgiveness than permission, slipped quietly out the door.

Following through on his promise, he had a word with Porthos in the stable, though not about his remains, merely his whereabouts should he not turn up again that evening, and set off in the direction that dashing black feather had disappeared.

Aramis decided, after some consideration and without any basis for making the decision, that feather was a measure of the comte's willingness to be saved. Surely no man who had sold his soul to the devil wore a feather that curled so perfectly around the hat brim like that. The Comte de la Fère could not be totally soulless.

Though on further consideration, Aramis recalled that it had been black as ink. As had been the entire clothing choices, except for the hat and boots. He refused to let that stop him, however, and ducked to enter the drinking establishment closest to the garrison.

Sure enough, as expected, his quarry had not gone far. The hat brim shielded the neck of a half-empty bottle, there were no cups on the table and it did not rise, even after Aramis plunked two drinking vessels down on the table and himself on the bench opposite the nobleman.

"Men have been killed for less impertinence than you have just offered me," the hat said, the voice emerging as a soft, menacing growl.

"When my time comes, there will be nothing I can do to stop it," Aramis said, presuming even further as he slid the bottle from a black-gauntleted hand.

The hat came up slowly, so slowly another man might have rabbited from the tavern sporting wet britches.

Aramis only waited until the blue eyes found his, then offered the second cup he had filled. "I know it takes longer, but it's a bit more civilized."

"I don't think you're stupid enough to think I care about being civilized. So what is it you want?"

Aramis glanced around surreptitiously. "It's true then. No one knows who you are?"

For just an instant the eyelids drooped slightly. "Don't make a mistake you won't live to regret."

"Wouldn't dream of it." Aramis lifted his own glass, as though to toast and when there was no response, drank it down in one swallow before refilling it. "Barkeep, another bottle over here! Make it two," he hollered. "Why the Musketeers? Why not the Cardinal's Red Guard? He would have taken you as his protégé in an instant."

The comte just looked at him.

"Not drunk enough to discuss it?"

"Leave now, before I run you through right here."

"Fascinating sound a rapier makes as it leaves the scabbard," Aramis remarked as metal rasped against metal. "Have you ever paid attention to it? It sounds like an old man's dying breath."

"It appears you will not be dying in your bed, an old man." de la Fère rose as slowly as his hat had only moments ago. "I made a polite suggestion you totally ignored." The point of the sword touched Aramis' chest, denting leather. "I wasn't in the mood to kill anyone today, but that's changing rapidly. Go, boy, before I turn you into strips of leather."

"What about a polite fencing match?" Aramis did not flinch though he could feel the hair rising on the back of his neck. His own personal warning sign that the situation was about to deteriorate rapidly.

"Since you appear to know who I am, I imagine you already know I don't fence politely. Do you have a death wish?" he asked pointedly.

"No. And I think Tréville is wrong; neither do you."

"You know nothing about me." The sword tip jabbed a little harder emphasizing the point.

Aramis crawled a little further out on the very thin limb he occupied. "I know you weren't lying, in Treville's office, when you said you thought you could be loyal to a cause you could support. That you would appreciate the opportunity to serve king and country."

The bearded chin was down, the hat brim shadowing the expression in the intense eyes, though Aramis did not look away. A long minute passed before he reached up, pinched the blade between his own gauntleted fingers and moved it to the tabletop.

It hovered there for another long minute, as if still indecisive as to whether or not it was worth the effort to gut him and then rasped home again.

"You are either a fool or God is fond of you."

"The two are rarely mutually exclusive," Aramis commented drily, heaving an internal sigh of relief.

de la Fère sat back down. "Give me that bottle."

Aramis passed it over willingly.

"Do you gamble like this often?"

"Gamble?" That was more Porthos' thing than his. "Oh," Aramis said, understanding. "No."

But then he reconsidered. "Wait, no, that's not right. I suppose I do gamble like this every day, though rarely face to face. Ours is the meaner hazard, the sneaking and skulking that goes on in the back alleys and stews where men plot treason. Or, occasionally, in the front halls of the palace."

"Why do you do it?"

"Because it's what I'm good at."

"Sneaking and skulking?"

Aramis grinned ruefully. "Well, yes, I've become proficient at that too, but I'm better at soldiering than at being a priest."

"Provocative, but I will not rise to the bait. I have no interest in what you are, or were, or intend to be. I let you live. Now leave me in peace."

"Everyone has a story. If you do not wish to hear mine, tell me yours." Aramis opened the second bottle, pulling the cork with his teeth and poured another cup for both of them, though de la Fère was still ignoring the cup.

"I did not come here to pour my heart out—"

"No," Aramis dared to interrupt, "you came here to find a purpose."

The eyes beneath the brim of the hat were haunted, though amusement danced through them briefly before the hat brim lowered again. "You tramp where angels fear to tread … friend."

There was a tentativeness to the informal address that went straight to the compassionate heart Aramis hid away from most of the world. "Why not Richelieu?" he asked again, quietly. "Why the Musketeers?"

"His politics would not suit me."

The bottle turned a full revolution upon the table top, then another, and another. Aramis waited, an empty vessel holding in place for the vintner's first spill.

The bottle was drained and returned, with a thud, to the table top. "Not even a glimmer of redemption lies in that quarter. I would only dig the hole deeper."

Aramis let the confession lie between them without judgment for a long time before he spoke again. "I have never met a truthful man who did not admit to dark places in his soul. We live in perilous times … friend." And now there was an offer on the table. "But we are not required to make the journey in solitude."

They might have been alone on a mountain top so little did the noise of the tavern penetrate the island that was their table. Aramis found the silence that met his assertion deafening, but he had learned to listen to things other than words long ago. He heard the cadences of the heart and knew the one across the table beat faster just at the thought of someone reaching out to touch it with consideration. And so he waited some more.

The hat landed on the table. The revealed eyes were wary, the hope buried so deep as to be almost invisible. "You heard Tréville."

Aramis heard the implied question and responded accordingly. "He is not a man who considers his judgments infallible."

This, thought Aramis, as the silence stretched thinly again, was a conversation destined to be carried out between long, uncomfortable silences. He was stirring in a man's soul, he should expect nothing else.

"I did not speak facetiously back there. I am beneath contempt, a man without honor … or even dignity."

"Sometimes I think that to be a man is to be without honor." The words came slowly, but Aramis lifted his head and met the enigmatic gaze squarely. "We play at politics and war without regard to those upon whom the burden of the results will fall. A king raises taxes to pay for a war that decimates vast stretches of countryside on both sides of borders, revenue is lost in proportion to the lives and livings destroyed, and yet not one of us rises up to say stop this madness."

"You flirt with treason."

"And you do not?"

"It is only unlawful to duel, not treasonous." The lift at the corner of the mouth indicating amusement did not look like it was familiar with the lips it twitched. "Though either could get your neck stretched."

"Every choice has a consequence."

The bottle was empty. de la Fère picked up the cup and drained it as well. "If you don't like the consequences, make different choices." He shoved the cup across the table and Aramis refilled it.

"In a nutshell. Would you consider a training arrangement for the Musketeers in the interim?"

"Interim?"

"Just until Tréville sees you're making different choices."

"As in – training Musketeers to … sword fight?"

"There is not one among us who would not benefit from instruction from you. I would venture to add, not one among us who would turn down an opportunity to learn from you."

"No."

Aramis' face fell. It had been brilliant plan!

"Not as the Comte de la Fère. My name is Athos."

"Aramis." His grin, as he extended a hand across the table, conveyed his pleasure in this new acquaintance. "You know you won't be able to keep a secret like that for long."

de la Fère shrugged. "I can. I'm certain Captain Tréville can. So the only question is – can you?"

tbc