Disclaimer: The Musketeers are not mine. I'm just borrowing the concepts and characters for a little while.
Spoilers: Minor references to the previous Immortals stories. The books and the television series are also fair game.
A/N: This is part of my Immortals AU series. To read this entry, there are really only a few things you need to know:
-(1) Athos, d'Artagnan, Aramis, and Porthos are immortal. I've not yet written the story of how they came to be like that.
-(2) The first two stories, Broken Promise and Comfort of a Friend, take place in 1844, and are a mix of the novels, television series, and real history with some notes to expand on some details.
-(3) WARNING: This story deals with some things that might be triggering. Please see the very end to find out why, though the title* is a huge clue.
I hope you'll give this story a chance despite it being AU.
History Notes: These are denoted by an * and explained at the end. At times I did change historical facts to fit my story, but for these notes, I have made every attempt to get my details correct. If I have incorrectly noted something, please let me know and I will make changes.
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"The boundaries which divide Life from Death are at best shadowy and vague. Who shall say where the one ends, and where the other begins?"
~~~~~~~Edgar Allan Poe, The Premature Burial
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Prologue
Being immortal didn't mean that they escaped death.
On the contrary, Death came to claim them what seemed to be all too frequently at times. After so many years, it wasn't the living or the dying that was difficult, it was what came in between. Not what happened to their souls while they were temporarily dead, but what happened to their bodies. Being dead meant that they no longer had control over what happened to them once their hearts stopped beating.
They couldn't afford to be careless about their immortal states in front of what may turn out to be the wrong people, so the four of them made sure they never told anyone of their condition. They were extremely diligent in keeping their secret, and tried to be on hand for each other when one of them died for real – temporary though it was – or "died" for the purposes of changing identities.
However, there were those times when circumstances dictated that they spent time apart from each other, scattered to the four winds, which meant that there was no one to watch your back when you died.
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Chapter One: May 1873, Part I
Darkness.
He blinked. His eyes were definitely open but inky blackness stared back at him and surrounded him.
It was all encompassing, and yet he did not fear it.
The last time he remembered, it was still daylight. It must be night now, for darkness was part of its domain after all.
He must've been tired and fallen asleep, though something about that thought felt very wrong to him. That thought was not the only one bothering him.
What was more disturbing was the fact that he was having trouble remembering much of anything at the moment. Odd sensations wove their way up and down his limbs, and in and around his entire body. His mind was a jumble of hundreds of years of memories trying and failing to present themselves in their proper order.
He didn't understand what was going on, and his instincts were saying that he needed to leave wherever he was, but he couldn't seem to get any of his muscles to cooperate with what he wanted them to do. He wanted to speak, but couldn't push the words past his tongue and through his lips.
Closing his eyes, he hoped that when he opened them again, things would make more sense.
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When he next opened his eyes, his mind was somewhat clearer, though he was still confused about his surroundings. Even now it was completely dark, and the air felt thick and heavy.
Was it the same night? Or, had he slept an entire day away?
It was impossible for him to determine at this point. What he could ascertain was that his memories were in better shape than the last time, seeming to be in the proper order again.
He now believed he understood the cause of his previous symptoms, though it seemed like his lungs were still not quite working properly.
The only thing that explained the odd sensations of before was that he must have died and had come back to life – again. How many times did this make? He'd lost track a long time ago.
Coming back was almost worse than dying in the first place. Dying meant the loss of friendships and anyone he had been close to. It meant having to start all over with a new identity, and having to get used to being called by a name that was not originally his own.
Because of his previous life, the friendships between him and his brothers had been strained for many years, though for the last decade or so, things had been more or less back to normal between them. None of his friends had been thrilled that their original lives had been put on display for the masses, but Athos and d'Artagnan had especially not taken well to being so openly reminded of the devastating losses of those lives.
He had been forgiven his first transgression, but he could not much help the two subsequent ones, which truly tested the bonds of their brotherhood. Being a doppelganger to someone who had died outside of France, had given him the opportunity to explore a side of himself that he'd not been able to indulge in the past.
Despite not being on the best of terms with his best friends during that lifetime, he had enjoyed that life's vocation. And he had continued to live that life for another 20 years before having to pretend to be an almost seventy-year-old man* and mounting debts had prompted him to give it up.
Because he had been so well known in France, he had decided to go across the ocean and start over in the Americas. Since soldering was what he knew best, he had joined the United States army, calling himself Edgar Stapleton*.
The final pieces of his jumbled memories were finally falling back into their proper place. His squad had been ordered out on patrol, and he had been assigned an ornery horse to ride. Not long after they'd left camp, the blasted horse had suddenly decided it no longer wanted a rider. Despite his best efforts to control the beast, the horse had managed to throw him off.
After that things were a little hazy. He clearly remembered the pain, especially in his head. He also vaguely recalled hearing the phrases "severe contusion" and "skull fracture." His last true memories, before waking in the absolute darkness, were of the doctor telling him that they were going to operate, mentioning something about trepanning*.
Maybe he was wrong and those sensations he had thought were signaling his latest resurrection, were just feelings associated with waking up from a deep, deep stupor due to his head injury.
Without thought, he reached up to itch his nose, but his still-uncoordinated hand hits something solid and wooden just above him. As fast as lightning, a terrifying thought entered his mind.
He stretched his hand upward once more, and again, it hit solid wood. He knocked on the wood and heard a dull echo. His terrifying thought suddenly became a horrific reality.
He had been buried. Whether they buried him alive or had thought he had truly been dead didn't matter.
It would explain a lot of things, like the complete blackness surrounding him. It would explain the sense of feeling confined since he had awakened the first time.
Being used to rough sleeping arrangements throughout all his years in the military, he had not given his "bed" a second thought, but now… Now, he knew it was his coffin.
No, no, no, no….
Panic set in. Pounding on the coffin lid above him, he screamed and yelled for help, hoping against hope that someone would hear him and free him from his final resting place – a place that would be an eternal prison for his immortal body.
Trying to pry a board from the lid of what he supposed was a coffin that was little more than a simple, wooden box, the only thing he accomplished was to allow some of the dirt above to rain down upon him. His coffin was now full of that particular odor of moist, moldering earth. His panicked thoughts then wondered what ground dwellers, insects and the like, had been allowed entry because of his actions. Immediately, he forced his mind away from that line of thinking.
His breathing was still panicked, but he was beginning to notice how much of a struggle it was becoming to draw in a breath of air.
Air!*
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To be continued.
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History Notes:
Title: The Premature Burial: The title and some of the story was inspired by the short story of the same name written by Edgar Allan Poe; it was first published in 1844 in The Philadelphia Dollar Newspaper.
"[A]lmost seventy-year-old man…": This paragraph and the two ones preceding it reference things mentioned in the first story in the Immortals AU – Broken Promise.
Edgar Stapleton: One of the few proper names mentioned in Edgar Allan Poe's story, The Premature Burial.
Trepanning: (Warning: Potential Trigger!) According to the BBC History Magazine, trepanning is one of the oldest surgical procedures in existence, with evidence of the procedure dating back to Neolithic times. It is a process whereby a hole is drilled in the skull. One of the purposes for the surgery was to relieve pressure on the skull after an injury. Another purpose may have been to give a trapped demon a hole to escape.
Air!: (Warning: Potential Trigger!) According to the Popular Science website, the length of time someone could survive buried alive varies on several factors: health of the individual, their size, the amount of air available in the coffin, etc. I am going with the conceit that the buried person was dead when he was buried, prolonging the length of time he could survive. And I am also ignoring the fact that an inexpensive coffin would have likely collapsed under the weight of the dirt above it, crushing the buried person and immediately eliminating what remained of their air supply.
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Many thanks to Celticgal1041 for her help with proofing and coming up with an idea for the summary. Remaining mistakes are my fault.
Thanks for reading!
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Trigger Warning: (Spoilers) This story deals with someone essentially being buried alive. The character was dead when buried, but because they are immortal, they revive, suffocate, and die more than once. Some details about trepanning, burials, and suffocations are described further in the History Notes. You might want to skip this one if you think this might be a trigger.