Author's Note: Hello, all! Thank you for reading this story. Although I live in the USA, I was lucky enough to have found the first seven episodes of the third season of The Musketeers. (I have since been scouring the internet for the last three episodes, but unable to find them anywhere.) While the show's return is exciting, I've been disappointed by the inconsistencies and changes featured in the show. When I watched "Fool's Gold," however, I simply could not let that version of Athos's poison-induced hallucination be the only one that exists. I am still hopeful that the three remaining, elusive episodes will right all of the wrongs I have seen thus far. Until then, this is my contribution to the cause.

Chained

A chain forced around his neck.

"No! No!"

Pulling, squeezing, tightening, choking out his last gasp of air.

Athos thrashed back and forth on the bed. He clawed at his throat, struggling to make the chain loosen in the slightest, but it would not give. He grunted from effort, tossing and twisting against the bedsheets like an animal ensnared in a hunter's forgotten trap. The chain shrank another inch as the corners of his sight turned blurry. The captain squinted, trembling at the exhaustion that overcame him from the small movement.

Suddenly, the pressure against his windpipe ceased and Athos gulped in large, loud gasps. As his vision cleared, Athos found himself to be in a clearing. A sweet floral scent filled his nostrils and Athos fell to his knees. He let himself flop backwards onto the soft grass, surprising when instead of landing on the ground, he smacked onto a hard, wooden floor.

Unsure of where he was, Athos tried to curl in on himself, but the pain in his gut pulled at his stomach muscles. He gave up that endeavor and was content to shut his eyes, hoping to will himself into an agony-free oblivion. Athos shuddered, overcome with a chill that wiggled its way into his bones, shooting up and down his spine. Confused and convulsing, his eyelids snapped open on their own accord. A blurred figure formed before his eyes and Athos squinted so he could focus, despite the sensation of a branding iron pulsating through his gut.

"Sylvie," he said, thinking he identified the person. Her back was to him, thick hair swishing down her shoulder blades. She walked towards a doorway, refusing even to slow her pace. "Sylvie. Sylvie? Sylvie!" Athos repeated, each time with more desperation. His muddled brain could not process her actions, but had lacked the strength to force himself into a sitting position, much less chase after her.

He needed her to be with him, to help him fight through the pain. Why would she leave him when he needed her most?

"Please, Sylvie." Athos summoned all of his strength to stretch his arm out and do whatever he could do for her to return to him. His begging finally had an effect on her, and she paused in a doorway. A sob of relief tore at Athos's throat. "Sylvie." Now that he had her attention, he dedicated all of his energy towards communicating with her.

The figure stood completely still for a moment, looking like a statue carved of granite that had not yet been smoothed into perfection. The edges of her silhouette were illuminated from a light that was bright, but farther down the hall.

"How quickly you have forgotten your beloved wife," the woman said slowly as she faced Athos. She raised a dark eye brow and snorted. "You've killed me twice, Oliver."

"Anne?" The use of his first name was a foreign word to the ill man, but it was so comforting, drawing him into his happy past that would later be twisted into an uglier present. Athos gazed at the woman, his jaw opening and closing as he struggled to finish a thought, but conflicting emotions kept a tight rein on his mouth. "Anne, I'm sorry."

"Sorry?" She recoiled though her neutral facial expression did not waver. "And you show it by sharing your bed with an anarchist whore? She is a child, Oliver, using you for her own politics. She cares nothing of the man I know you to be."

"Anne, help me," Athos called to her. He felt a gust of wind whip through his hair and shivered. "Please, I need you."

Milady swallowed before walking towards Athos. She knelt down at his side and could not resist smoothing back the hair that had become plastered to his forehead from sweat. He leaned into her touch, and grasped her thin wrist with his hand. She made no move to withdraw it anyway.

"And I wanted you for the last four years," she said. Athos could have wept at the blunt declaration. Her eyes, usually vibrantly green like a field in springtime, avoided his gaze. In the dark, they looked greyer than Athos could ever remember. "But instead you throw yourself at a girl who would slit your throat to further her cause." She slid her other hand down his cheek. "I thought nothing would ever come between us, but I was wrong. I waited hours in that carriage for you."

"I tried," he coughed. "I tried to come, I swear."

Milady leaned over Athos, dragging her hand from his cheek down his neck and lightly rubbed his chest. Instantly, he felt he could breathe again. "How can I believe you?" she asked. "Did you ever love me? Or did you love the idea of me, hmm?" She scoffed. Athos cringed at the wisp of air that hit his face and he blinked back tears. "Was I just a fulfillment of duty to you? As soon as you reform one urchin, you move on to the next. You acted like my being from the street was a sin, but perhaps that's what drew you to me, hmm? Do you find it exciting in your new lover, as well?"

Athos shook his head at Milady's accusations. "No, that's not... She's only… Anne, I loved you." He made an attempt to force himself up to look her in the eyes and square himself off with her, but when he used his hands to support himself, his arms wobbled under his weight. "You were gone. You said you weren't coming back."

"I certainly can't return now. Not if your recent nights of 'passion,'" she spat the word out like a seed that had been lodged between her teeth. "Are going to continue." If Milady had not moved closer so he fell onto her chest, the suffering musketeer surely would have hit the floor and cracked his skull open. "She is dangerous, Athos. Sylvie stands against everything you have spent your life fighting for."

"I don't want to fight anymore," Athos cried. The little strength he had drained out of him when his wife referred to him by his last name. Too exhausted to do anything else, he let his wife embrace him. It had been so long since their bodies had touched and now that he felt her beneath him, he would do anything he could to avoid breaking contact. "Stay with me, please, Anne. It hurts so much and I−" He let his head rest in the crook of her neck.

She tightened her hold on him and tensed when Athos's cheek brushed against the textured choker around her neck. "Oh, Oliver," she sighed.

The disappointment and heartbreak in her voice strangled Athos more than a noose when he realized he was the cause. He could barely manage more than a whisper, but he simply had to make his wife understand. "I need you, please. I can't live without you."

"I love you," she said, a distinctive crack in her voice. "But I don't need you. I can't anymore. You've left me no choice but to survive without you."

Her admission was so frank, and it nearly broke Athos to hear her close herself off to him. He could not blame Anne for refusing him. Not one to be discouraged easily, Athos turned his head to kiss her lightly, as he had done so often during their marriage.

But Anne was gone.

"Anne?" Athos groped air like a madman. "Anne! Come back, Anne! Wait! I love you, too!" he screamed, finally finding his voice again. "I do, I do!"

A calloused hand caught his own and tucked it under a blanket. Athos blinked a few times, and he found himself in a different room and a softer bed. "Shh, my friend. Save your strength," a male voice gently implored him. "Rest, Athos."

"No, she's my wife. I need her!" Athos thrashed back and forth, tossing his head to scan the room, looking for any sign of Anne. "Where is she?"

Athos continued for only another moment before resting. He guzzled air like wine, and reached up to feel his neck.

He could not feel a chain, but that was not what he sought. He knew he had tossed it away six years ago, but he ached to feel the thin chain off of which the fleur-de-lis Anne had pressed for him all those years ago hung.

His neck was bare.

As Athos succumbed to unconsciousness once again, he had one thought.

I can't breathe.

END