The heavy scent of poppies hangs in the air and Aramis looks up at a flame-blue sky, and blinks. The sunlight jellifies the stillness of the field of flowers into fragrant, syrupy gold. Scarlet, waving petals and the burnished-bronze of wheat stretch in rippling waves to the horizon. He thinks he's melting into the ground, liquefied by the heat and the blazing color of the day. It's so still he imagines he can feel his blood pulsing through his entire body, bringing hot life to his extremities.
Something cold touches his cheek and he opens his eyes, touches his face. His hand comes away damp and cool. Looking up, he sees the blue buried under hoary, billowing clouds. The telltale mist of snow swarms down towards him. He tries to stand but he's frozen to the ground, ice cracking off his limbs at the attempted movement.
Snow clumps on his eyelashes. He closes his eyes. The flakes burn his cheeks as it tumbles off.
(He's trapped, Aramis realizes, and feels the hot rush of adrenaline begin trickle into his hands.)
All of a sudden, the field of poppies begins to burst through the blanket of snow accumulated around his probe figure, flaring bloody scarlet against the white. He relaxes, assuming the snow is melting away to once again reveal the lazy hum of the field he'd enjoyed.
The scent of wet copper tints the air and he cries out.
With a burst of frigid fear, he understands that the scarlet isn't the petals of poppies, that the frosty clouds are the ragged dark canopies of Savoy's forests. But instead of the corpses of his brother musketeers shattered in the snow, it's Anne of Austria's broken body that awaits his horrified gaze.
He tries to stand, to run to her and gather her in his arms, but the ice has grown thicker around his limbs and creaks ominously when he moves. He shouts her name, "Ana! Ana!" and there is no answer.
Her crimson spreads over the snow and he screams for her as she sobs, terrified, "Help me, Aramis! Ara—"
"—mis! Wake up!"
Aramis blinks, disoriented. He dimly notes the cold of the stone seeping into his bare back, realizes sluggishly he's on the floor of his bedroom, naked except for his crucifix. Anne kneels in front of him on the carpet, arms locked in an outstretched position as if she went to embrace him and froze halfway through the action. She stares, wide-eyed, at him, holding herself rigidly, unnaturally still, as he blinks again and looks down.
He has his pistol pressed directly over her heart and his finger on the trigger. His hand isn't shaking. Once a musketeer, always a musketeer.
(He can't tell if he's asleep or awake anymore, if this is a waking nightmare suffocating him again.)
"Ana?" he chokes out as if in a trance. "I don't understand— how—" His lungs don't seem to be working.
Her posture doesn't relax, but she reaches up slowly— exaggeratedly cautious, as if soothing a skittish fawn— to delicately push the tip of his weapon aside from her breast with one finger. "Aramis. It's all right. Estás seguro, estás conmigo."
There's no snow here. There are no poppies here. Only Ana and her sad, sad eyes.
He shudders violently, clarity returning in an abrupt rush of adrenaline, hurling the pistol to the floor and throwing himself to the headboard away from his lover. "Ana, get back!"
"Aramis—" she's reaching towards him, "please, let me—"
"I'm not safe," he spits at her, "I'll hurt you! Stay back."
Anne sounds on the verge of tears. "Beloved, you would never hurt me—"
"I almost shot you!" he gasps out through the swelling tightness in his throat.
"But you didn't," she pleads, "por favor, Aramis—"
"Ana—" and Aramis breaks, crumpling into her arms. She pulls him tight to her chest, rocks him like a child, whispers soft reassurances and I love yous again and again until his shaking melts away into languid exhaustion. He lies against her in a dazed heap and she brushes kisses over his face.
"Shh, beloved," she whispers to him, "let me take care of you. Nothing will hurt you here."
"I love you," he says, and, when he closes his eyes and buries his head into her sweet-smelling hair until her nearness fills all his senses, his mind finally drifts away from the memory of poppies and blood on Savoy snow.
"I love you too," she murmurs, and presses her mouth to his.