Author's Note: This is just a little one-shot filling in a gap in the timeline towards the end of the season two finale Trial and Punishment, and making a link to the events of the episode Emilie. Thanks for reading and I'd love to know what you think!
Foretold
Anger, cold as ice, may have kept the young queen strangely calm as she looked upon the dead staring eyes of the man she had once trusted, but it could not last. The weight of all she had endured, and the terror of what might have been, finally threatened to overwhelm her even as they turned their backs on the treacherous Rochefort. She might have swooned, had a strong arm not encircled her slender waist.
"Your Majesty ... Ana ... Look at me. I've got you," Aramis said, warm brown eyes catching her gaze and keeping it from drifting back to that still, bloodied face. "You are safe now. You and the Dauphin, both safe."
Fresh tears fell from beneath long lashes, spilling down her pale cheeks and prompting him to once more, despite all that had passed, defy propriety and draw her trembling into the protection of his embrace. He could not bear to see her so distraught and stand by without making any move to comfort her. Not when he had come so close to losing her once and for all.
"Oh, Aramis," she wept, slim fingers clutching the leather of his jacket as he cradled her against his chest. "I ... I was so foolish to ever trust that ... that madman."
Hushing her gently, his own fingers soothing over her silken hair, the musketeer held her close and pressed a tender kiss to her temple, trusting that his brothers-in-arms would understand. And indeed, it seemed that not even cool-headed Athos could harden his heart enough to make them part in that moment.
In the end, it was the queen who drew back, but only as she remembered all at once the blow that had struck home and reached for his wounded arm. "You are hurt," she said, distress etched once more across her brow.
"A scratch," he said, forcing a shaky smile for her. In truth, it was more than that, much more, but the deep gash was not enough to trouble him when his thoughts were only for the woman he loved and their infant son.
"My bravest of soldiers. He ... He told me how he would break you. On the wheel," she whispered, the horror of those words echoing in her mind even now that the cruel man who had spoken them lay dead on the floor.
Aramis could imagine only too well the hellish visions Rochefort had conjured up from the dark, twisted depths of his depraved mind and he cupped the queen's small face in his gloved hands, brushing tears from her cheeks with his thumbs. "He will never touch either of us again," he told her, his heart soaring when she rose up on tiptoe for a desperate kiss full of everything he himself had longed to tell her.
And, as his closest of brothers turned their backs to afford them what little privacy they could in that stolen moment, he closed his eyes against the world and kissed her back.
With Rochefort's body dragged from the palace to be buried in the unmarked grave of a traitor, and the king being treated for the terrible shock of having condemned his wife to death on the word of such a madman, the queen and her trusted companions were left to recover themselves in peace. On that, she had insisted.
And so it was that the tiny, contented baby lay cradled in his doting father's arms, blissfully oblivious that there had ever been a threat casting a dark shadow over them all in the first place.
"He may never know me, but it is enough now to know that he lives and thrives," Aramis whispered. "Compared with what could have been, it is enough."
"He will know you," Anne said, resting her head against his arm. "Your loyalty, your protection, your ... love."
They both knew it would not be the same - that his love could only ever be that of a soldier for the heir to the throne and not of a father for his son. And yet, tinged with sadness though it was, they shared a soft smile.
"If it were not for you, he might never have had a chance to live at all. Or if he had, it would almost certainly have been without his mother," Anne added, a hand going to her throat.
The memory of how he had found her, on the verge of succumbing to that treacherous snake with a garrotte of chain around her delicate neck, still chilled Aramis to the very bone. If he had kicked in the door of her private quarters, with Constance in his wake, one moment later ...
"You had been praying," Constance spoke up suddenly from her place by D'Artagnan's side, the words not a question but a strange realisation. "You ... You were holding your rosary."
"Constance?" D'Artagnan said, at once alarmed by how pale she had now turned when she had shown such bravery in helping them to face their foe. Aramis had already told him how she too had struck a blow against Rochefort in the deadly battle in which they had all played a part; how loathe he had been to see her place herself in the path of danger, but how thankful he had been for her assistance. "Constance, what is it?"
Wide-eyed, she fixed her gaze on the queen and Aramis, seeming to struggle to find the words to explain. "Emilie," she managed. "When I ... When I had one of her visions. I saw all of this."
"When you woke screaming," the queen said, worry clear in her blue eyes as she remembered that night.
"That was no prophecy," Athos interjected. "You know it wasn't. Drugs, hallucinations, it meant nothing."
"I saw the queen, kneeling to pray, blood dripping from the chain of her rosary," Constance insisted. "I saw the king, a cup by his feet, choking on blood. I saw ... I saw an executioner with a blood-covered blade ..."
"I shot your would-be executioner," D'Artagnan said, gripping her hands tightly in both of his at the memory.
"I know. And yet Lemay was not so fortunate."
The musketeers exchanged glances, doubt creeping across more than one face until it fell to Aramis to act. And rising, he placed his baby son carefully into his mother's waiting arms before crossing to kneel by Constance's chair and look up at her as he spoke earnestly. "You are here, Constance – a fact for which we are all most grateful. The king lives. The queen lives. Choose to believe it was God's message if you will, but perhaps a warning rather than prophesy. You are alive, my dear friend. Now live and be happy."
For a moment, the redhead gazed back at him and then a small smile tugged at her mouth. "For a man who so often finds himself in danger of his own making, you can be an awfully wise man, Aramis," she said, reaching out to wrap her arms around his neck and hug him fiercely.
"Don't encourage him," Porthos warned, grinning as he crouched by the queen's side to look upon his best friend's son and was rewarded with a tiny hand clutching at his finger. "Cute little rascal, ain't he?"
The look on Athos's face was one of disapproval, but only just. He knew Porthos had almost been sterner than even him in impressing on Aramis the harsh reality of his circumstances and the distance he must put between himself and the Dauphin. "That is the future king of France," he firmly reminded his comrade, as if any of them were truly likely to forget the pretence they must all now keep.
"You ... You just let me be Uncle Porthos, just this once," the big man said, his voice rough and sounding as if he was fighting to keep back emotion as he glared at their leader over his shoulder. "All right? Uncle Athos ..."
Even the sternest of faces couldn't have hidden that glimmer of a smile.