AN: This is going to be a series of drabbles surrounding the relationship between these two. This story is written for the 1drabble community on LJ and was in response to the prompt: Weakness.
Whenever d'Artagnan and Milady truly summed up their relationship and actually thought it out, they both came to the same realisation: They fed off of each other's weaknesses and mistook it for love. However, they never told anybody this, though whenever they did speak of each other; Milady to her maid and d'Artagnan to Athos, both third parties came to the same conclusion but never voiced just what that was.
To Milady, d'Artagnan was nothing more than a stupid man who could easily become a useful tool to smite her enemies and the moment that she was finished with him, she would discard of him the same way she did a piece of old clothing. It had been easy to sort out just what this man's weakness was; like many men, d'Artagnan fell easy for the beauty of a woman and she used that to her advantage.
Sure, the man loved Constance but she found that with each trip made to her residence that the memory of that woman was slowly being diminished. Soon, d'Artagnan's heart would solely belong to her and the moment that it did, she would have him ruined like so many men before him.
What is one more lover? She mused one day as she prepared herself for a night she was to spend with the young man. She wouldn't think twice once the man was wrapped around her finger and jumping at the chance to do her bidding, just like she wouldn't think twice if she heard he had been captured and was sentenced to death. Men were in great abundance and soon she would find another one that would fall easy victim to her charms and beauty.
For d'Artagnan, he knew that the weakness of Milady was love. He could see right through her and found that in her eagerness to fall in love with a man and to have him love her in return, she became an easy target for many with wrong intentions.
He knew that the only way to find out where Constance was being held was by playing a dirty game with this dangerous beauty and he would not stop until he found out what he needed in order to make a rescue. Let Milady gain her revenge on him but if she so much as harmed the woman he truly loved, he would have her destroyed.
"Do you actually love him?" Kitty asked her mistress one afternoon.
"Do you actually love her?" Athos asked d'Artagnan a morning after a tryst.
The answer from both was the same, even if it was asked by two different people and never once spoken to each other.
They didn't love each other the way that actual lovers loved. As a matter of fact they hated each other more than words could say.