A/N: ...The demons in my head made me write this, and I have no excuse.
Anyway: Not beta read, because this is garbage and my poor beta doesn't deserve to have this inflicted on them.
Disclaimer: I don't own BBC's "The Musketeers" in any shape or form.
One morning, d'Artagnan wakes up, and he's lost everything.
He fell asleep next to his lovely wife. He wakes up in Hell. There is pain, terrible, blinding pain in his head and arm and side, and he's terrified.
There are people around him, people he doesn't recognize, with soothing voices and hands that try to calm him, to stop his senseless panic. They tell him that he's safe, that he will be alright, that everything is fine.
It isn't.
It isn't, because he hurts, hurts far too much than a musketeer with years worth of pain tolerance should. It isn't, because he doesn't have the markings from years of wounds, doesn't have the bracelet of scars around each wrist from all-too-frequent rope burn, doesn't have the scar on his side where Athos' pistol shot had hit him, doesn't have the dozens upon dozens of marks from swords and knives and pistols and daggers and explosions and fire and so many things he can't even remember. It isn't, because they aren't here, because Athos isn't here with his steadying words and Porthos isn't here with his joking laughter and Aramis isn't here with his obsessive need to care for his injured teammates. It isn't, because she isn't here, because Constance isn't around with her voice laced with equal parts kindness and fire.
It isn't, because years of his life have just vanished in the blink of an eye, and no amount of kind words can fix that.
At first, he panics, screaming for his friends and wife and yelling threats and insults to those around him in both French and Italian. He calls them bastards and liars and figlio di puttana and bugiardo. He alternately spews insults and invective, or begs them to give him his wife, his friends, his life back.
They are deaf to his threats and insults, comforting him when he curses them to hell and back, holding him close when he tries to punch and claw at him.
Slowly, he regains his composure, behaves more like a reasonable person than the devil incarnate. Slowly, he comes back to his senses. Slowly, he calms.
He apologizes (it's brushed off as if it were nothing). He apologizes again (he is told it doesn't matter). He hesitates, and then asks what happened.
The story comes out, gradually, carefully, the storyteller watching for any signs that he is about to panic again. They tell him that he and his father were travelling to Paris. They tell him that they were attacked in an inn on the way. They tell him that his father was killed, and that he himself was inflicted with life-threatening injuries that left him unconscious for weeks, only to wake up this morning.
He stares blankly, his mind processing this information, before he suddenly crumbles.
Because that could only mean that all those years at the sides of his friends, all that time as a musketeer, all those days, weeks, months of fighting and loving and laughter and sadness and blood and tears... it wasn't real.
It was only a dream.
His friends, his commision, oh God, his wife...it wasn't real. Just a fever dream.
And Charles d'Artagnan breaks.
It's been almost a week, and he can't get over it.
They try to help him, try to distract him from his grief. It doesn't work.
Nothing can fix the lack of scars, the absence of his friends and wife, the loss of the garrison he was in command of. Nothing can replace the delusion he crafted while unconscious, the fever dream he called into existence.
And isn't that pathetic? He's crying over people and events that don't exist. He's sobbing over a life that was no more than fantasy. He's grieving the loss of a friendship that never was.
It's stupid, and foolish, and unreasonable, and he doesn't care, because he lost them. He lost them all, and nobody understands. Nobody can understand.
Even he doesn't understand.
It's been over two weeks and he misses them.
It hits him in the face every time he turns to talk with Athos, joke with Porthos, exchange flippant comments with Aramis, only to find that they aren't there anymore. It assaults him every time he tries to ask Constance something, only to belatedly realize that he's speaking to empty space. It breaks him every time he expects to hear the clashing of swords and thuds and pants of the men in his regiment training, and is instead faced with silence.
It hurts. It hurts so, so badly. It hurts until he thinks he'll die from the pain.
But he doesn't die, and the pain goes on and on and on, forever and ever and ever, until he chokes and drowns in it.
One morning, three weeks after the Awakening, he tries to hold a sword.
It doesn't work. The blade feels clumsy and awkward in his hand, like it felt before Athos had trained him. When he tries a little swordplay, it's heavy and cumbersome and no longer seamlessly a part of him the way it was before.
He racks his brain, trying to remember something, anything from the advice Atho had given him in his fever dream...only to find that he can't.
He can't remember a single word Athos had ever told him. He can remember his level, calming voice, can remember his steadfastness, but he can't remember one single scrap of his mentor's words, no matter how hard he tries.
He's lost it all. His skill with a sword, his years of learning under Athos' wing, his balance and coordination and agility. He's lost it all, because he's never had them in the first place.
He throws the sword violently aside. It ends up lodged in the wall.
D'Artagnan can't bring himself to care, and leaves it there.
A month or so after the Awakening, he tries to handle a pistol.
It ends as badly as the attempt with the sword. The weapon simply doesn't fit in his hand, and he can't seem to get a proper grip on it. It's ungainly and blunderous and he can't remember how to handle it with his previous fluid grace.
Worst of all, he can't remember any of Aramis' advice and teachings on the subject. He's lost that as well.
Because he's a masochist, he tries his hand at shooting. It goes abysmally, with him missing simple shots he could have performed easily in his fever dream.
He throws the pistol aside as well, and leaves it where it lies.
There's something made of glass in his hand. It's shattered, the shards embedded in his palm and fingers, so mangled and crushed and dripping with blood that he can't tell what it's supposed to be anymore.
He stares blankly at it, mind racing.
He killed people, in his fever dream. He stabbed and hurt and maimed and killed. He slept with one, no, two married women. He beat someone to death with a chain, for heaven's sake.
Even the knowledge that he hadn't actually performed these deeds doesn't change the fact that he feels disgusted, horrified with himself for even being able to harbor such hideous thoughts. He can still remember the feel of warm blood on his hands, the sensations of taking another human life.
He finds it both ridiculous and sad that he can't remember anything his dream-friends and dream-wife have ever told him, but that he still remembers the horrors of his dream-self's actions as clear as day.
There is a day, a horrible, horrible day, three months after the Awakening, when he realizes he's forgetting them.
It starts out as small things, little details. The color of Athos' eyes. The hue of Constance's hair. Small things which are so terribly important in their insignificance.
Slowly, the small holes in his memory spread like a cancer, and he is powerless to stop it.
He's forgotten what they looked like.
His friends and wife are more like shapeless blurs in his memory, now. He can't remember their faces or hair color or build. He can't remember any of it.
He doesn't know whether to be relieved or disappointed.
He's forgotten what they sounded like.
Their voices linger at the edge of his memory, present but too far away for him to hear them properly.
He grieves.
He's forgotten their names.
He's forgotten what they mean to him.
Little by little...he forgets their existence.
…
He moves on.
He marries a woman named Victoire, with a proud, haughty bearing and a sharp voice. He manages his father's farm, supporting his family. He won't leave Gascony for the rest of his life.
(A part of him remembers a man, and the farm being consumed by flames. He ignores it)
He doesn't try to hold a sword or a pistol again.
He names his daughter Constance, and his son Olivier.
He can't remember why.
A/N: Look at all those line-breaks oh my god.
Anyway...this is garbage. But I had to get it out of my system, because writing ANW is fun, but sometimes I just itch to write something that had angst flowing from every pore.
So. Yeah. Please don't kill me.
Au revoir.