A/N - Welcome to the third book or arc of the Capitain Scaramouche series! You may notice that unlike the previous two arcs, this arc is tagged as Joly/L'aigle. We try to select which characters we feel really stand out as the main characters in each Arc. Despite Grantaire being the title character in his role of Capitain Scaramouche - L'aigle and Joly shine as the central figures this time around. We recommend that new readers first read Arc One - Into the Fire we Fly and Arc Two - To Right This Wrong before reading on. It really will make much more sense if you have the background.

Please do review if you like our story or if you don't. We adore getting reviews, and if we're in a slow update phase there's no better way to glavanise us into updating more often. This is set in the early 1830's (we are aware of the dates spanned by each arc in case you're curious, and make an effort to keep all historical and political references accurate to that time.) and therefore some of the canon characters are still a little different to their canon selves which will appear in two year's time.

Good reading and we hope you enjoy! We try to update twice a week, Tuesday and Saturdays roughly, though this is subject to change depending on how well everything else in our lives is going. In this Arc we have taken the chapter titles from Dumas' Three Musketeers. We don't own either The Three Musketeers or Les Miserables.

Joly's sleep was heavy and dreamless, as it ought to be, the painless product of deep exhaustion. He'd paced and worried and fretted until he'd driven Daniel up the wall and he was just too tired to worry any more. But he had nothing really to do tomorrow morning – nothing he could do about this whole mess – and he was going to sleep late for once this week, just pull up the covers and not come out until the sun was going down again.

Then someone knocked at the door. No, hammered on the door, frantically, in a way that made him think perhaps there was a fire next door.

Is it Grantaire? If it's Grantaire I suppose I can understand but dieu I don't want this to become a habit. Hnnnnnn… Joly tried to untangle himself from his sheets and ended up on the floor before forcing himself toward the door instead. It was times like these that he wished Daniel were the lighter sleeper between them. Even if there were a fire he wasn't sure he could bring himself to care at the moment.

It was not a fire. It was one of the clown triplets, looking painfully out of place and with a look that just as painfully meant trouble. "Harlequin!" he gasped. "Scaramouche! You have to come!"

Maurice stood blinking stupidly, trying to make his mouth and brain work. "…wha'?" Scaramouche. What? Scaramouche was Grantaire. He knew this much. The boy before him was associated with Scaramouche. The theater. What was he doing here?

"Scaramouche…they've got him!"

"What?" Something still wasn't clicking. Scaramouche was Grantaire and they had Scaramouche so whoever they was had Grantaire and…

The boy collapsed against the doorframe before Joly could even move to catch him. "…arrested…"

It clicked. "Oh dieu."

"Grantaire, if that's you again…" Daniel had been woken as well and was trying to make his way through the darkened room.

"Grantaire's been arrested," Maurice told him numbly, turning.

"…he's…what?"

"I don't know," he said. His brain still wasn't working. "I don't know. Can you put some coffee on or something? I'll get…" He couldn't remember the triplets' names even if he could have told them apart. "I'll get him to explain when he's caught his breath…" Daniel, faster on the uptake than he, hustled them both out of the doorway and onto the couch before going to make the coffee. Dieu. Grantaire arrested. Joly couldn't even begin to think about what was going on.

"Some strange homme, seemed to know each other," the boy was saying. His eyes darted around the room as if he could feel it caging him in. "Didn't make a fight at all, seemed to walk straight into it and have the cuffs put on him."

Then the coffee was being put into his hands and he drank most of it, too quickly. His tongue was burnt probably irreparably but he still couldn't bring himself to care…Joly could hear the blood whizzing through his head and suddenly things were making sense again. "Dieu. I bet it was Pilon, or whatever his real name is. He just let him do it?"

The pierrot shuddered a little. "Oui…just stood there. Homme punched him a couple times, too." Daniel winced and Maurice gave a groan. He'd already been injured before. Badly. Dieu knew what could be wrong now.

Their friend was looking very uncomfortable, expectable given his unfamiliarity with normal housing. "I have to get back. Papa Punchinello's expecting me back," he said edgily.

"Thank you for telling us," Joly nodded. He thought he could feel his blood slosh from chin to crown and back again and felt another dizzy rush.

"Thought I should..." the pierrot said, edging toward the door. "If anyone can help him, it's you I guess." And then he was gone. Thank you for the vote of confidence. Joly was already feeling very very confident…but it never hurt to have someone else be confident in him too.

Daniel groaned. "Dear dieu, what was he thinking?"

Nobody could answer that question. Except Grantaire. And they couldn't exactly ask him – well not at the moment they couldn't… "You realize what we're going to have to do, right?" he sighed.

Daniel poured himself more coffee and sighed as well. "….yeah."

Maurice waited until he was done and then took another cup of coffee (he saw no reason not to). "So do we wait til the morning to get Feuilly?"

"Hell no," Daniel said, "why should he sleep when we aren't going to?"

He laughed. "Good point. Very good point."

Daniel took a drink of his coffee, which seemed to do him good. Maurice knew it was doing him good. "…so shall we visit or send for him?"

Hm. Given the late hour and the possibility of disturbing neighbors and that he just felt awkward just popping in on someone he knew as little as Feuilly… "Send for him, I suppose." There went Daniel off to send for Feuilly and here he was sitting alone drinking coffee. And planning. Grantaire must be in custody somewhere. They would certainly keep him in La Force as he must be an important prisoner. Well of course he was important – but – not really in ways the police would find important.

"If he accepts he should be here soon," Daniel said, breaking into the draining of the dregs of the who-knew-how-many-th cup of coffee. He could feel his friend's look burning a hole in the bottom of the cup.

"…I am leaving some for you and him," Joly pointed out. As he poured himself another, because he really did need it, think of what time it was and all he had to get done and it was all very important.

"Glad to hear it," Daniel said without sounding as if he were really very convinced, and sat down next to him. "You all right?"

He nodded. "Just fine. Really."

"Sure?" Daniel got his own coffee from the table and looked at him worriedly over its rim. "Know you must be a bit worried."

"…I am. A bit," he confessed, realizing on slight reflection that maybe a little bit, somewhere, he was. He just couldn't think about that. At all. No worrying. Just focus. Another half cup of coffee just in case.

"…yeah…" Daniel frowned. "Wonder what made him go do something that damn stupid."

"Mad at the world?" Second half cup gone. Refill. More worried hole-burning looks from Daniel's direction.

"Grantaire? Huh. Never took him for the type," Daniel said.

"He was certainly mad at Lucien and Dominic," Maurice said in what he felt was a very sensible manner.

"Well, yeah…but that mad?"

"I don't know." Quarter of the cup in one swallow, and his eyes possibly weren't tracking correctly but he didn't quite mind because the world was slowing down and anything was possible now. "Ask him yourself when you find him."

And there was a knock at the door. Unless it was the police…it must be Feuilly.