Notes:

There were actually three prompts requesting this theme, so it turns out I'm not alone in my depravity. First fic I've written, except for a couple of one-shots ten years ago. As a general warning, if you are not ok with torture in your fic content, go back now. This is unashamed Aramis pain. Very little plot. Enjoy!

Chapter 1: Silence

He couldn't stay away, it seemed, like nails lifting the scab time and again from a bothersome wound. He was at the door to the prison cell before the man had been returned from the trial.

"Lying under oath, Musketeer? You have damned your immortal soul."

The condemned man straightened further, wrapped in defiance like a cape, eyes bright with mocking laughter. As if he wasn't being led in chains to his final stay before execution. As if he wasn't surrounded by hostile guards. As if he were somehow greater than the First Minister of France that had just signed his death warrant. Rochefort bristled at the mans lack of humility, the courage of a simple soldier, perhaps too stupid to be afraid. He held his ire, savoured it, pushed it down and added it to the fuel he was yet to use. Rochefort was a patient man.

"You have condemned your lover the queen. I offered you the chance to save her. Now she will pay for your stupidity too. Was she just another conquest for you?" That got a reaction. Aramis stepped forward, shackles clinking as he balled his fists.

"You snake. How long have you been a Spanish agent? You will not succeed. France will know you for the traitor you are!"

Rochefort surged forward at the words, gripped the other man by the lapels of his doublet, allowing a long moment to pass before lifting his hand to cup his captives cheek. He relished the surprise he saw there, the flicker of uncertainty.

"You just can't help yourself, can you? You lie and you lie. With death so near for you, I would have thought it prudent not to stain your soul further. I will help you."

Suddenly, savagely, he struck his captive in the stomach and in the same move, dealt his face a vicious backhand. At a signal, a guard held him fast from behind, the chain between his hands drawn tight across his flat belly as he reeled.

"Silence him." A guard stepped forward, iron gag held before him. There was recognition in Aramis' eyes but nowhere to retreat to as his head was held fast, recoiling, still fighting for air, the barbed plate cracked against his teeth and made him retch where it hit the back of his throat. He surged backward, twisting his head against the invasion but chained and held fast was helpless to stop the device being locked tight around the back of his neck. Jaw stretched uncomfortably around the metal box, the barbs piercing his tongue and holding it down, more scraped painfully against his palette, breath coming short and fast through the tiny breathing hole, Rochefort saw what he had been looking for.

Fear, at last, unsuppressed in those dark eyes, and something inside him clenched in satisfaction.

At a signal the guards stepped back, released the mans arms. Predictably he raised them, fingers scrabbling and tearing at the lock, pulling at the curve of metal that trapped and obscured his jaw. The musketeer tried to speak, tried to spit curses at his tormentor, and Rochefort smiled openly at his flinch when the barbed contraption mangled both his words and his tongue in the attempt. He retched again as the metal pushed into the back of his throat, and a heat ignited in Rochefort's belly at the moment true horror entered the other mans eyes.

Whatever power he'd had in sweet words that had seduced the queen, Rochefort had taken from him. Whatever comfort in prayer for the condemned man, he'd stolen from him. Whatever shields of wit or defiance he'd hoped to guard himself with in his last days had been stripped.

"Not enjoying that? I'm doing this to help you, to preserve your ungrateful soul against your foul lies, Musketeer." He savoured the last word, twisting it as though it were some provoking insult, and paused, as if a thought had just occurred to him, as if he hadn't been looking forward to this moment.

"Although, you're disgraced, a traitor to your king and to France." A huff of protest escaped the muzzled man in front of him, the words landing where he wanted. He stood, still gripping the device that muted him, fingers trying to slip under the rim of the face plate, trying to drag forward the metal in his mouth to ease the pressure against the back of his throat, breath quick and eyes wild.

"No longer a musketeer. Unfit for the uniform of the King. Remove it."

He fought. Of course he fought, too proud to submit to this new humiliation. But there were four guards and he was chained. Flung to the ground and a kick to the face, the iron bridle that wrapped around and inside him twisting, the sound of teeth splitting against the metal, barbed ridges slicing the inside of his mouth and blood pooling in the back of his throat and dribbling to the stone flags below him, brutal kicks to his ribs and belly, crushing the air from his lungs and the chain between his hands grabbed, stretched forward and stepped on, unable to curl in on himself to defend against the violence, the fingers of his right hand caught under a heavy boot and ground against the stone.

Knives slipped under his doublet, sliced through it and was pulled away in ribbons, boots yanked from his feet and leather trews pulled off as well, pauldron slashed away and spat upon. Even so, when the guards pulled away, it didn't take him long before he was trying to rise to his feet.

Awkwardly, injured hand folded to his chest, shirt torn and in disarray and alternating between clawing at the wall of his prison to drag himself up and cradling his damaged face. Rocheforts henchmen were not unscathed. Four against one and still their injuries included a smashed nose, a split lip, a sprained arm.

For a moment Rochefort felt a grudging respect, at his courage, his inability to submit. Before he crushed that feeling. Rochefort was a patient man.

"I will break you," he promised.

A glint of gold in the torchlight, Anne's crucifix still resting against her lovers heart. Cold fury threatened to overwhelm him, at the sight of his gift to HIS Anne when she was still a princess, his pledge of affection, his secret claim on her heart. Squandered, given to this mere soldier, whilst he languished in a Spanish jail. He stepped forward and twisted his hand into the mans dark hair, dragging him upright to hiss in his ear "You dare to flaunt your treasonous affair still?"

Chained hands clutched at his sleeve but a dark gaze met his cold one unflinchingly. His hand slipped down the warm chain to the golden crucifix, fingers caressing the gilt edges.

Rochefort felt his blood stirring at the memory of gifting the fourteen year old bride-to-be with the cross, her guileless eyes wide, rosebud lips and the soft swell of young breasts. The feeling twisted, soured by her recent rejection. A tear slipped his remaining eye and he raised the cross to his lips and kissed it, warm from Aramis' skin.

Those chained hands were trying to push him away now, he realised, disgust rolling off the man before him. He loosed the grip in his hair, only to twist the gold links together around his throat, dragging the chain through the thin rivulets of blood there.

"This should never have been yours. She should have been mine. She should have chosen me," he hissed to the cross in his hand. He reached up to remove the chain from the queens lover, and if the man had fought for his uniform, fought against the humiliation of being muzzled and stripped, it was nothing compared to how he fought for that necklace.

Rochefort was reeling from a fist that thundered across his face and sent to the ground from a savage headbutt that cracked his nose. The guards rushed in and beat Aramis to the flagstone floor, unchecked violence until he was yelping in pain.

"Enough."

Rochefort found himself laughing. The guards dragged their prisoner to his knees, swaying in their grip, one eye swelling, breath hitching. Rochefort reached down and rubbed his thumb through the blood from a split in the other mans temple. Aramis pulled away and his hand tightened cruelly in his hair.

"You are brave, I'll concede that. But it will not avail you."

He was still fighting the bridle, Rochefort noticed, with his left hand. Long fingers curling around the device, questing at the lock, fine tremors running through them as he sought to dislodge it. The fingers of his other hand coiled slack against his chest, misshapen and a livid purple. For the bridle to be taking precedence over his broken hand in this way, the agony it was causing must be exquisite.

He couldn't help the way his breath caught in pleasure at that knowledge. He swiped at the thin trickle of blood from his own nose.

"That was bracing. But for striking the First Minister of France? Bow before me. Bow down." He laughed at the venomous glare the disgraced musketeer shot him.

"I know. Still too proud. Don't worry. I will help you learn your place," he promised him fervently.

"Put this man in strappado," he commanded the guards.