Paris
Treville told him once how war wasn't just about the soldiers who died on a battlefield. Nor was it about the heroes who came home battered and broken. War, he'd said, was about the people who were left behind to tend to the fields and maintain the homes. It was about the wives who mourned their dead husbands, the children who would have to grow up without their fathers, the parents who lost their precious sons to sword or musket ball. War, as he had come to learn while he fought at the frontlines, was about the innocent. The people who found themselves unwittingly caught between two opposing forces and made to pay for their acrimonious hostility towards one another.
War, he thought as he took aim with his pistol, is about death.
The denizens currently caught between his Musketeers and the Red Guard were going to be subjected to death simply because they were in the wrong place at the wrong time. He reminded himself about how this wasn't what was supposed to have come to pass. This was not what Treville intended when he sent them to help keep the peace. He had sent them here with the express purpose of ensuring no violence would occur.
They had not counted upon the Red Guard arriving with orders from the disreputable Governor Feron to arrest refugees erroneously accused of treason. This should have been a simple enough situation to diffuse. They should have been able to prevent violence from erupting in the square. Somehow though things had gone awry. Horribly awry. And the life of a young woman stood to be cut short because of it. Not, he decided as he sheathed his sword, if he could do something to stop it.
"Hold your fire!" He shouted as he scrambled from behind the wall where he had taken cover when the first shots were fired. "Musketeers, hold your fire!"
Through the plumes of smoke filling the square he saw a cold, calculating smile curve Marcheaux's lips. The gleam in the Captain's eyes told him he was quite aware that he had them at his mercy. And was quite relishing his control over them. Athos held his breath, silently hoping that this would be the end of the conflict. His hopes were to be short-lived as a second later Marcheaux nodded to his men, silently giving them leave to resume shooting. He saw one of the men take aim at the petite woman standing beside her food cart with a small boy the same age as the Dauphin clutching at her skirts with grimy hands.
"She's not part of this, Marcheaux!" He took aim with his own pistol. "Order your men to stand down!"
"You made her part of this," Marcheaux sneered. "You and the rest of your Musketeers. Had you not interfered in my orders," he paused; shrugged. "Well, then none of this would have happened."
The air became littered then with the crack and smell of musket fire, the soft schooms muted only by the screams and shouts of the fleeing crowd.
"Musketeers, swords only!" The thick plumes of dust and dirt reduced his voice to a mere croak. He coughed to clear his throat before ordering again, "Swords only!"
He heard a shriek and turned to see that a musket ball had splintered the wood beam right above the boy's head, covering his tawny hair in dust and slivers of wood. His mother, finally aware of the danger she and her son were in, bustled him beneath the wagon. It was flimsy protection but the best available at that time. The woman said something to the terrified boy, but he couldn't hear her words over the sound of clashing swords, pistol fire and panicked cries. He assumed, and rightly so, that she told the child to remain beneath the wagon until it was safe. The boy clutched at her hands, his tiny face scrunched up with fear, wet pleas for her to stay with him falling from his lips. She took a moment she didn't have to reassure him before she rose to face the men who threatened him and everything else she held dear.
He knew it would be the last time the boy ever saw his mother alive.
"Get the refugees to safety!" He barked as he leaped over bits of debris and other items scattered about the streets in a vain attempt to reach the woman before the man fired his pistol. "Get them out of the square!"
The first shot went through the tarp covering the small food cart. The woman tried to make for the safety of the small storehouse directly behind her, but a barrel exploded next to her, covering her in fragments of wood and grain. She barely got her arms up in front of her face when additional shots echoed throughout the square.
Time slowed to a crawl as Athos was forced to watch as her body was invaded by a well-aimed musket ball. The force of the impact spun her around so that she faced him. Pewter, he thought as he watched her eyes widen in a mixture of horrified disbelief and agony. Her eyes are like pewter. There was another shot and then she was falling, collapsing backward upon the crates she had used to lay out her few meager wares. Flowers rained down upon her in a cascade of red, violet, orange, pink, and bluish hues.
His horrified, "No!" mixed with the boy's bloodcurdling scream.
Athos sunk to his knees beside the woman's broken, battered figure, uncaring of the musket fire still going on around him, his only thought to offer what protection and comfort he could. His hands slid over her abraded flesh, barely a flutter of gently probing fingers that glided over her fractured skin, searching and seeking out the worst of the damage. Not that he needed to see the wound in order to know it to be fatal. The woman tried to move, fingers clawing at the dirt and bed of flowers as she attempted to pull her ravaged body towards the wagon under which her son watched and hid. He pushed her back down, murmuring soothing, nonsensical words to her as he tried to figure out what, if anything, they could do to ease her suffering.
"Aramis!" He called over his shoulder. "Aramis, I need your help!"
She fisted one hand in the buttery folds of his sleeve, tugging with what strength she had remaining. He leaned down in time to hear her breathe out one word: "Lucien..."
Then she slid beneath the comforting, dark blanket of unconsciousness. He gently cradled her head in his lap, in hopes, it would bring her some small amount of comfort and solace. He angled his head to look at the boy watching from beneath the cart that once served as their only source of income. His eyes - a lighter shade than his mothers - were wide with shock, his face devoid of all color, and his tiny mouth twisted into a perfect circle.
"Are you Lucien?" He softened his tone so as to not startle the already traumatized boy. The boy gave a quick, jerky nod. "It's going to be all right, Lucien. Do you trust me?"
He gave another nod. Then his gaze shifted to his mother.
"Maman?"
"We will do what we can to help your mother, Lucien." The words tasted foul. "I promise you we will do all we can for her."
He swallowed back his bitterness before looking over to where Porthos stood in the middle of the square. D'Artagnan stood on his left side, his sword drawn and body in battle-ready position.
"Porthos! Get this boy inside the storehouse!"
"Right, yeah." Porthos kept his eyes trained upon the Red Guards as he held out a hand to the shivering boy. "Come on now, boy. Let's get you out of here."
The boy slowly crawled out from beneath the wagon. Porthos, with D'Artagnan flanking him, got the boy inside before more shots were fired. Athos heard a rattling cough and glanced down at the woman.
"Lucien..." she mumbled over and over. "Lucien."
"Your son is safe," he assured her. "He is safe."
"Thank..." she wheezed. "God."
He knew he would live, all the rest of his life he would live with the image of this woman - bleeding amidst a sea of tenderly fragrant blossoms - at the forefront of his mind. He circled her wrist with his hand, feeling for a pulse. It was weak, thready. She was breathing, but it was a raspy gurgle at best.
"Hold on, Madame." He spoke close to her ear so she could hear him above the cacophony of sound going on around them. "Help will be here soon."
Her eyes fluttered open, and he saw they were glassy with pain and the sort of acceptance that only one about to meet death could have.
"Monsieur..." her voice was barely more than a thick whisper. "Is… too late." She gasped and clutched at his arm. "Is… too late."
"No. No, it's not. It's not too late. Just hold on."
"Tell-" She coughed up blood. "Tell me your name?"
"Athos," he told her as Aramis dropped to one knee beside him. "And this is Aramis."
"Musketeers." She did not smile but they saw her face softened. "God bless you."
Desperation surged inside Athos. He prayed as he'd never prayed before, pleading with God to spare this woman from her intended fate. She can't die. Please, she cannot die. You cannot allow her to become another causality of this senseless war. It was too late. He had seen death up close and personal more times than he could count. As a soldier, a Musketeer, it was inevitable that he would not deal with its cold cruelty. He knew death was imminent by the hoarse clatter of her breath, by the way, her pupils slowly fixed and dilated, by the way, she went limp in his arms. She thought she heard the breathing of one last, solitary word: "Lucien…"
And then she was gone. Athos stared at the lifeless body he held in his arms, willing her to breathe, to move, to do anything that showed she still clung to life.
"No," he whispered. Then, louder, "No!"
Too late. He had been too late. He laid her amidst the petals destroyed by violence, unable to look at her face, not willing to believe, to accept she was really gone. She was gone and there was nothing left of her but her still warm, lifeless body. Mind spinning, heart aching, stomach heaving, he sat back on the balls of his feet and ran a hand over his face. He had never wanted a drink more than at that moment.
"Athos," he heard Aramis say. "Athos, there was nothing you could do. The shot was fatal. You know that as well as I."
"It should never have come to this," he murmured. "She should never have been caught in the middle of our war with Marcheaux." He glanced at his longtime friend. "Her death is on us, Aramis."
"No, she shouldn't have been caught in the middle of this," Aramis agreed. "And her death is tragic. But all death is-"
"War isn't about the soldiers who end up dying out on a battlefield, Aramis. It isn't about the heroes who come home broken or about the people left behind to mourn, to remember, to pick up the pieces and carry on as if nothing happened."
"Then what is war about?" Aramis reached out and closed her eyes. "If it is not about any of those things, what is it about?"
"Look around you and you will see war is about the families who get torn apart by the hatred and greed and self-righteousness of men who believe their intentions to be noble and good." He glanced down at the woman sprawled out in what could almost pass for a quiet repose. "It is about breaking the living."
"Athos-"
"This is the price of war, Aramis," Athos said as he pushed to his feet. "And we are not the ones paying it."
And with that, he turned and made his way towards the storehouse.
A/N: Hello all, and welcome! The idea for this piece came from the Writers Anonymous 2016 Broken Object Challenge. I own nothing here save for my idea.
The timeframe for this piece is after episodes 3x05 but before the events of 3x06.
Please, if you like this piece, favorite it!