Disclaimer – 3 Musketeers and the characters belong to Alexander Dumas.
This is a darkfic with major and graphic torture and character death. It was written when I was in a very, very dark place. Don't like, don't read. Everyone dies except the bad guys. Has torture and rape. 2011 movie-verse.
I have toned it down for . Full version will be on AO3 once tidied up with all the explicit violence and rape.
If
If they had spotted that damn church spire in time… If they had not crashed that airship in London… If Porthos had not shattered his leg in the crash… If Aramis' pistol had not misfired… If that boy had listened to him and fled for the coast… If. One word for futility. Athos closed his eyes. It ends here, waiting to lay their heads on the block before the headsman's axe before a hostile London crowd. He was their leader and it was his fault that they were in this mess. Their captain could not help them. The queen who had sent them on this ill-fated mission could not help them. The king of France himself could not help them. France and England were now at war. France herself was probably in an uproar after the queen's infidelity was exposed by the cardinal.
Buckingham was furious after they had stolen his airship and blasted the Tower to a smoking ruin and he had made sure they paid for it once they fell into his clutches. The whip, rack and heated irons – they had become well-acquainted with the instruments of torture during their captivity, which was soon to be at an end.
Porthos' left leg was shattered in the crash, left hanging by a thin shred of skin at the knee. They knew he would lose the limb. At first Fortune seemed to smile on them. They found a sympathetic merchant who would spare them a room where Aramis could doctor Porthos the best he could. Perhaps the man mistook them for innocent pedestrians wounded when the airship wiped out a market square and a row of houses. They had to take the mangled bone and flesh off just below the knee, tying off the stump with Aramis' belt and cauterising the raw wound with a red-hot poker. Athos had ordered D'Artagnan to leave but the boy was adamant not to abandon them. Planchet? That servant could have fled back across the Channel by now, if Milady had not caught onto their desperate ploy and made short work of the hapless man.
Then Dame Fortune turned her back on them like the harlot she is. The merchant betrayed them to the duke's men.
When the door was kicked in, they could not flee, not with Porthos still groggy from his crude surgery and the brandy he had been plied with beforehand. Aramis pulled out his pistol but something went wrong when he pulled the trigger. An explosion of flame and smoke billowed back into the shooter's face and Aramis was on the floor screaming with agony. D'Artagnan put up a fierce resistance but he was swiftly knocked out cold by a soldier who had sneaked up behind him. Still, Porthos managed to rip a piece of clean linen from the sheets on his bed and bandage up Aramis' eyes the best he could amidst the confusion. Athos tossed away his rapier when the guards pointed their swords at his the throats of his wounded friends. Unarmed, they were swiftly manacled.
He studied the faces of his comrades in arms as they trundled on to their execution site amidst flying clods of mud and jeers from the London crowd. The clothes they had worn to London were now rags hanging off their emaciated frames. Hung, drawn and quartered – Buckingham had grinned when he pronounced their death sentence. However, His Majesty had chosen to be merciful and have them beheaded before their bodies were dismembered, parboiled and displayed for all to gawk at. Their heads would end up on the Bridge.
Perhaps they were already dead men. Athos' body protested from the many wounds he had collected in Buckingham's dungeons. His right arm was dislocated or broken at the very least. It hurt his feet when he stood. His torturers had whipped his soles until they were bloody.
Porthos was delirious from wound-fever. They had flogged him until almost all the skin was gone from his back and chest. The guards took a sick delight to kicking and beating his stump until it started to bleed anew. They would hang him from the ceiling by his wrists while he hopped on his remaining foot to avoid the hot coals they scattered at his feet. Finally, they broke his remaining leg. Now Porthos was sprawled in the bottom of the cart moaning weakly as the infection raged through his battered body. Porthos was always the one to cheer them up whenever the going got tough. Hardly anything seemed to keep him down for long. Athos' heart ached to see his long-time friend reduced to such a sorry state. Even without the headsman, Porthos would be dead from blood-poisoning by nightfall.
Aramis' bandage was stained and grimy now with both grime and blood. His sight was lost for good. His jaw had been broken as were his fingers. Buckingham had personally crushed them one by one as Athos watched. Aramis leaned against Athos, desperate for some form of reassurance of his friend's presence. The guards had taken away that silver cross Aramis so treasured. The former seminarian had cried out when they tore it off his neck as they stretched him on the rack and burned him with hot irons. Then they had torn out his tongue with red-hot pincers.
"I'm sorry…" Athos croaked. His throat was dry. He never thought he would miss hearing Aramis' praying and that annoying Latin. Aramis seemed to have heard his words. He leaned his head against Athos' shoulder, earning a wince from him.
The sight of their young companion hurt Athos the most. D'Artagnan was young and pretty enough to pass for a girl. Athos had been a soldier long enough to recognize the leers the breadless youth earned from their jailors, or how their hands would linger on his body when they manhandled him. He had been held separately from them for several days. It was hard to tell the passing of time in the dungeons. When they finally did return him to their cell, all the spirit had been flayed from him. They had broken him so utterly that he would not speak or even look Athos in the eye. When Athos touched him, the youth would flinch and scamper over to the furthest, darkest corner of the cell and cower there whimpering like a scared child. He hardly ate, drank or slept. When D'Artagnan did sleep, he would awake screaming.
Buckingham was a part of it alright. He allowed his men to violate the boy, no, gave him over to them. He had taunted Athos with how fast a learner the boy was or how skilled he was at pleasuring the men. Anger flared up and quickly died in Athos. Perhaps in the end, it was his fault. The duke must have noticed how it pained him when he watched his friends suffering on the rack or under the whip. Athos had been tortured too, but nowhere as badly as Aramis or Porthos.
D'Artagnan refused to allow him to tend to his wounds so Athos did not know the full extent of his injuries. He did notice how it pained the youth to walk or even move. The seat of the boy's breeches was constantly bloody. He did catch a glimpse of a series of angry bruises about his neck as if he had been choked. A tear in his breeches revealed a dark bruise on his hip the size of a large palm and Athos guessed there was a matching bruise on his other hip. D'Artagnan watched their approaching demise with disinterest. His mind had retreated to some distant corner and he no longer cared what happened to his person.
The headsman beckoned them from the scaffold. D'Artagnan was the first. Pale-faced and hollowed-eyed, he mounted the scaffold with the calmness of a martyr. Athos thought he saw those bruised lips smile slightly as D'Artagnan obediently knelt and laid his head on the block. He turned away when the axe was raised. A dull meaty thud was soon drowned out by the cheering crowd. Athos choked back a sob when the executioner held the head aloft by that mop of tousled curls before tossing it carelessly into a basket. The still-bleeding body was unceremoniously kicked off the scaffold to where the executioner's assistants waited to strip and dismember it. Aramis mumbled what might be a prayer. Athos could not be sure since Aramis could no longer speak with his jaw smashed and his tongue gone.
Next was Porthos. The guards had to drag him up by his shoulders as he was unable to walk. Once he was in position, the axe was swung. The blade fell short and hacked into his shoulder. Porthos let loose a moan of pain. Athos closed his eyes. It took two more whacks before the moaning ceased. Like D'Artagnan, Porthos' head and corpse were swiftly dealt with. The scaffold was slick with blood now and Athos could smell the coppery sweetness of it.
The soldiers forced Aramis out of the cart. Blind Aramis tried to walk with as much dignity as he could muster but his bare feet slipped on the blood and he fell heavily against the block. He cracked his head hard enough on the corner to stun him momentarily. Growling with impatience, a soldier seized him by the hair and positioned him in place for the blade. It was over quickly and Athos wept openly as a third head was tossed into the basket.
Athos limped up the scaffold. Aramis' headless corpse was still lying on the edge of the scaffold. The assistants were still busy with the earlier corpses. It was lying on its front. The sight of Aramis' mangled hands still tied behind his back cut to Athos' soul. Soon it will all be over. "Monsieur, I forgive you…" he forced the customary words out through chapped lips. The executioner nodded slightly, either acknowledging his words or beckoning him to the block. Resigned, he stretched his neck out on the block and closed his eyes.
They would be waiting for him there, wouldn't they? Aramis with the annoying Latin phrases on the tip of his tongue, arguing theology and philosophy with him just to irk him. Porthos dancing with some smiling wench and stealing his wine bottles, and Athos would probably find both Porthos and his wench in his bed going like a pair of spring bunnies. And young D'Artagnan with a huge honest smile on his face and all the eager promise of youth, trotting like a wide-eyed puppy at his heels and getting underfoot. What could have been and should have… If…
The last thing he heard was the whistle of the axe blade through the air…
Author's Notes:
Yes. I am one sick puppy dog. I feel so much better after choking this miserable story out of my system, even in the condensed form.