A/N: Warning for alcoholism, boys being enmeshed and a bit codependent, and a heavy dose of sap. Also, there are spoilers for the series in general, and the whole bit will be way better understood if you've actually seen at least the first three episodes, specifically "Commodities."
This story is set sometime between "Commodities" and "The Good Soldier," though I don't intend this to be in any way canonical. Still, I do hope some of you out there get a good read out of it. :)
Athos in Absence
-o-
It took two weeks to find him.
Two weeks of shoving through sundry, out-of-the-way taverns. Two weeks of not eating. Not sleeping. Two weeks of doggedly following a shrewdly hidden trail only visible to them because of their long familiarity with their quarry.
Their quarry—who might think there were parts of himself that kept him a stranger to them—but he was wrong.
Everything they needed to know about Athos, they already knew.
-o-
On day thirteen, Porthos reined up next to Aramis and pulled in his mount.
Aramis sniffed as though coming back to himself after chasing a stray thought. His eyes focused, traveling slowly from Porthos's restraining hand on his horse up to his face.
"We need to sleep now," Porthos whispered softly. "We've gone far enough for one night."
"Do you think he might have eventually told us about La Fère, even if you hadn't been injured?"
Porthos felt his lungs constrict. "I think we all have pasts we were trying to shed when we joined The Musketeers, from one side or the other."
Aramis lifted his chin, eyes searching the darkness and voice hollow. "Was it us, do you think? Would he believe us to hold his status against him?"
"This isn't the first time his demons have taken him where he thinks we won't follow," Porthos said quietly. "And I don't think it will be the last." He put a steadying hand to Aramis's shoulder. "And, I think... someday when he's ready, he'll tell us the rest. He has to face it himself first."
"D'Artagnan knows something. When we reconvened in Paris, I could see it in his eyes."
"D'Artagnan is not us," said Porthos.
-o-
When they found him, they were about as far away from the estate and county of the Comte de la Fère as one could imagine. An alehouse, scarred and dilapidated, but crowded nonetheless.
In the darkest corner, recognized only by the light the flickering fire occasionally cast against his features, Athos tilted precariously against a table, leather jerkin gone and no sword at his hip.
"Are you trying to get yourself killed?" Porthos demanded, hating the defenselessness in the drunken sprawl of his brother. Hating the location. The isolation. The abandonment of a soldier's common sense.
In response, Athos wilted, nearly toppling to the side before Aramis caught him, balancing him by fisting his hands into the material of Athos's shirtfront. "Athos?" he said in a voice that said much more - a voice relieved and broken and worried. "Athos?"
Swinging a hazy gaze between them, Athos ultimately fixed his sight on the scar across Aramis's forehead. From there, he dragged his eyes slowly downward, across his face, as though trying to recognize him. "You cannot be here," he whispered wearily. "You must not."
"We are, Athos," said Aramis, tightening his fists into Athos's shirt with a little shake in his grip. "We always are. We swore to it. Swore to each other, long ago."
"You are a ghost," slurred Athos, glancing up as if to include Porthos in the statement. "Come to make me account for my sins."
"No," said Porthos forcefully, lowering himself to meet Athos's eyes. "Only come to remind you of your brothers."
In response, Athos scrubbed a clumsy palm over his face, reached out tiltingly for the bottle on the table, and then went limp, passing out of consciousness completely in Aramis's grip.
-o-
The meager coin they carried between them secured a semi-decent room in one of the town's inns. A room with one flat bed and a lumpy paillasse that could be dragged out onto the floor.
Aramis slumped himself into a chair near the mattress and stayed, keeping Athos rolled up onto his side while Porthos went off in search of Athos's belongings. By providence he located Athos's sword and dagger in the care of a stable boy, and paid him extra to return them polished, feeling weak with the relief that Athos had at least given some thought to the care and location of his weapons, if not the rest of his effects.
In a separate search, in an abandoned barn near the tavern, Aramis found Athos's pauldron hidden away in the bottom of his saddle pack. Holding it and fighting the sudden and weary fear that rose up in his throat, he pressed it against his forehead, clutching it with his fingers until they turned white.
-o-
Athos woke with his heartbeat thudding sharply into his eyeballs and a dull and persistent ache curling around the rest of his body. A feeling both familiar and not - as though his spirit had been floating and only now had found itself grounded back into his corpse.
He moaned, rolling softly, only to find his forehead pushing against Aramis's familiar shoulder. Lifting his head slowly, he stared at the sallow face, sunken in heavy sleep. As though by instinct, he curled his fingers into the lose folds of the shirt below Aramis's ribs and held them there, trying to decide if he was real. Trying to decide if this was real.
"Don't wake him up yet," spoke a soft voice behind him. "He hasn't been sleeping much of late."
Athos rolled, finding Porthos, closer than he expected - in a chair near the bed, looking tired and weary himself. Eyes dark, and face shadowed. The whole of him just a touch too thin.
Athos's chest issued a panicked flutter. Swiftly, he dragged himself upwards and back, thunking his pounding head against the headboard and closing his eyes.
Porthos. Aramis.
They were here, and they were real.
He sniffed, and pressed fingers to his eyelids to keep them shut. They were here and they were real - that did not mean he had to look at them. "You shouldn't have come," he said, in a voice pretending calm.
Less than a second later, he felt a hand in his hair, his eyes springing open in response. He was, somehow, expecting to see anger but there was none.
Porthos only looked worried.
"Of course we should have, Athos," he insisted with his low gravelly voice. "Of course we should have." He let go then and stood, crossing the space to pluck a bucket of water off the windowsill and plant it in the center of the room. He jerked his chin at Athos, and waved at the tin. "When you're ready to come back to yourself."
-o-
Head dripping wet from water that, while not iced over, maintained the cold shock he was looking for, Athos paced the room.
Porthos watched him with a pang in his chest, watching the struggle to drag all the pieces back together again. The coherency was there now, in Athos's eyes. Sparking clearer little by little. Step by step. "Did you really intend to leave us for good?" he asked, flicking his gaze to Aramis who was awake and watching, but hadn't moved from the bed yet.
Athos stopped, scrubbing a damp hand down his face with raw purpose. He looked away, out the window. "I felt it was... necessary."
"Why?"
Athos tensed, the darkness of his demons alighting visibly on his shoulders in a way that Porthos had always wished he could stop. The invisible monsters of the past he could do nothing for, not with all the strength in his body. Sometimes hated that powerlessness more than anything, for both his brothers - d'Artagnan, too, to come right down to it.
"Athos," said Aramis, sitting up straighter and tugging a hand through his hair. "We are not asking for your past. We never have. Only what you wish to tell us. When you wish to tell it. We are, however, asking you to come back with us. To not abandon yourself to this… thing. This… demon."
Athos froze, then stared at the floor. "This thing. My past is a demon that nearly swallowed all of us, Aramis. You saw it."
"You were not yourself."
"Myself being the Comte de la Fère?" he mumbled, then tilted his chin away. "Yes I was."
-o-
It was late in the day when Aramis let himself back into the room with bread and a bottle of weak wine, vowing the first would make it into Athos's stomach before the other.
Porthos nodded at him, and took the bread to the table.
Athos was slumped in the chair near the bed, looking more coherent and less hunted, but the conflict in his eyes remained, burning like directionless fire. He lifted his face to Aramis after a moment, and answered a question that had not been referred to since that morning. "I cannot go back."
"You can," growled Porthos, dropping the knife he'd been using to cut the bread so that he clattered against the dull wood table. He dragged another chair over, and pointedly took a seat. "This," he said, gesturing his hand into the space between them. "This… whatever it was that sent you running here, away from us? Rubbish. It is not you, Athos. And we can't… Do you really expect us to be content with abandoning you?"
"I..." Athos stumbled, dropping his head in his hands. "I left without word. The captain - "
Aramis nodded, drawing close and seating himself on the bed, angled so their knees brushed against each other. "You are no deserter, and the captain knows it. His tolerance of us may wane one day, but it is not yet."
Athos bent himself forward even further, running his hands into his hair - the least stoic that Aramis had seen him in years. "My demons, as you call them, Aramis… they affected my judgment. My leadership. At… la Fère. They were louder than Porthos's need in my mind, and I could not… I could not see what I should have. My orders were - "
"Athos," growled Porthos. "As Aramis said, you were not yourself. It's rubbish, and you know it. Do not persist in this ridiculous folly."
Athos looked up again, suddenly returned in appearance to the consummate leader, mask calm as a stone. "And if one day that gets you killed?" he pressed steadily.
"We all carry demons," Aramis said distantly, then swallowed, feeling the abrupt pull of his own ghosts taunting him. Blurring grave memories with the vision of Athos - absent and drinking himself to death in a tavern corner. Blurring too with the image of Porthos on the ground, bleeding from a hack to his shoulder, and the haunted, dead look in Athos's eyes. An expression that was far too much like the last look Marsac had given him before walking into the mist, and Aramis would not let another brother vanish with a weight of blame that was not his to carry.
What were they if they could not do this for each other?
He cleared his throat. "We are not so weak that we cannot carry our demons for each other when required. The weight of them sits is on all of us. And we promised, Athos. We promised each other we would protect each other. And we do not abandon our promises."
"I was trying to protect you," Athos said softly.
"Not like this, Athos, please."
"We've all made... mistakes," added Porthos.
Suddenly, Aramis shuddered, body caught in a shiver he could not control. Athos's hand descended on his knee.
Aramis nodded in gratitude. Filling his lungs with air, he looked at Porthos and smiled slightly. "Mistakes, yes. And we all have things we're touchy about," he tried to say lightly. "Places one might be from that might rather be forgotten."
Porthos shook his head with a good-natured scowl, but took no offense. "It's the living that balances it," he continued seriously. He took a deep breath and stared between them, as though preparing to voice something he wasn't sure he should. "We never say it, but it's the living - it's us - that matters, and we three know it. Without it, there's not a one of us that wouldn't risk being swallowed whole." He turned pointedly to Athos. "And because of that, and so much more, we'll come for you, every damn time. On our honor. Don't ever doubt it."
Athos released a shaky breath and Aramis himself felt his lungs clench in response to the words, waiting.
Slowly, very slowly, Athos nodded. He swallowed, and nodded, and after a silent and solemn beat where it seemed that Athos's agreement on the topic was solid, Aramis breathed in relief and handed him the wine.
-o-
End
-o-
No beta, so if you spotted a typo while reading feel free to point it out. Additional feedback is, of course, welcome. :)