Title: Blood of the Living Dead
Show: The Musketeers / Merlin
Characters: Lancelot, Aramis, Captain Treville, Athos, Porthos, D'Artagnan, Merlin, Queen Anne, Constance Bonacieux, mentions of various others
Rating: PG
Summary: When Sir Lancelot is restored to life in 17th century France for reasons he cannot fathom, he builds a new life as the Musketeer Aramis, bit by painstaking bit – but who could have brought him here, and why? More importantly, what might happen if and when they catch up with him? And can he rely on the support of his comrades when the truth comes out?
Disclaimer: Both Merlin and The Musketeers belong to the BBC, and also to legend and Alexandre Dumas respectively. I have borrowed them for this story and am making no profit from this.
Author's Note: Inspired by the Watcher of the Eternal Flame series by Queen_of_Moons67, with many thanks both for the idea and the permission to use it. This story is set post-series for Merlin and weaves through pre-series and season one continuity for The Musketeers. I've taken a few liberties, but would class this as Universe Alteration, rather than Alternate Universe. And yes, for simplicity's sake, I have chosen to overlook the complexity of linguistic (and other) development over the space of a millennium.
Life – and consciousness – returned in a rush of sensation: blood pounding through veins, blinding light. Wet. Cold.
So very cold.
Sir Lancelot, Knight of Camelot, regained his senses to find himself lying spread-eagled in the snow, shirt and britches soaked through. No armour. No weapons. No cloak. No boots.
Alive.
But he was dead. He should be dead. He remembered dying, and the memory of it ached somewhere deep within his soul.
Then he remembered that he'd been brought back once before, and that memory jolted him to his feet, shivering from more than just the cold.
He was alone. Exposed. Vulnerable.
He'd died once before, and he'd been resurrected once before as no more than a half-man, a mere shade of his former self. The witch Morgana had used him for evil, used him to hurt the people he loved best in the world – a puppet on a string, aware all the while and yet helpless to act, powerless to prevent the witch using him as she would, violating every principle for which he'd ever stood, then discarded once his usefulness was at an end, left to die a second death.
The thought of being used for such evil purpose again filled him with horror…yet the difference between this resurrection and that was a tangible sensation, a thing he could feel pulsing through his veins. His thoughts were his own, and so was his body. Unlike the last, this resurrection was real, true, and complete. But who could have done it – and for what purpose?
Where was he?
Body wracked with shivers, he slowly turned this way and that, looking all around at a snow-draped landscape that was utterly unfamiliar to him. This was not Camelot. It was nowhere he knew.
There wasn't a soul anywhere in sight.
The cold was seeping into his bones, weighing him down like a blanket of lead, muffling all thought – and, worse, all motivation. This resurrection would, he dimly realised, prove even more short-lived than the last if he failed to find shelter soon.
Where such shelter might be found, he had no way of knowing.
Forcing his cold-numbed limbs to move, Lancelot picked a direction and started to walk.
Sheer chance and the kindness of strangers saved him, his stumbling feet bringing him at last to an isolated farm, where he collapsed senseless and half-frozen at the feet of the elderly farmer and his wife.
It was much later, swathed in blankets before a roaring fire, that he began to look around and took note of the difference between this place and all that he had known – the architecture, the furnishings, the clothes…everything. At first, he thought it merely foreign – the farmers spoke French, a tongue he knew only a little; it was clear he was no longer in Albion – but over the course of a faltering conversation an impossible truth was impressed upon him, overwhelming in its magnitude.
Lancelot had died in the 6th century A.D. He had returned to life in the 17th century.
How was it possible? Over a thousand years, a full millennium, in the space between one heartbeat and the next. It could not be – and yet it was, and the weight of it robbed him of all breath, all sense, and sent him reeling.
The combination of cold, damp and shock led, perhaps inevitably, to fever. Recovering only slowly, Lancelot remained on the farm all winter, perfecting his French, repaying the old couple for their care and concern with hard labour, as soon as he was able, and learning from them as much as he could about the strange new world of the 17th century into which he had been reborn.
The old people had never heard of Camelot, or even of Albion – the land of Lancelot's birth had, it seemed, passed beyond the memory of man, altered beyond all recognition. Even the name was no longer the same.
Everything he knew was gone. Everyone he'd ever known and loved was gone.
He was alone, the last living relic of a bygone age, and the knowledge of it weighed heavy on his heart, a terrible, crushing grief, while the question of who could have restored him to life – and why – nagged at him, insoluble.
Why had his mysterious benefactor not shown his or her self, whether for good or for ill? Why restore his life only to abandon him to the snow?
The farmer's wife believed that God had brought him to them, in place of the son they'd lost, many years earlier. It was, Lancelot decided, as good an explanation as any – and a great deal more comforting than his own dark fears.
He could not, however, remain on the farm all his days, grateful though he was for the kindness of the old couple. No, if his restored life was his own, then he intended to make the most of it – and if it were not his own, if some sinister price was still to fall due…well, then again, he intended to make the most of the opportunity he'd been given and fight with all his might to prevent ever again being used for evil ends.
The coming of spring brought Lancelot to Paris, the vast and vibrant capital city of the land in which he'd been reborn. He was learning fast, transforming himself into a native of France, having determined that, if his mysterious benefactor should have any ill intent, the simplest means of avoiding it was to not be found.
It was with this thought in mind that he took a new name – or borrowed one, rather – since his own was too distinctive to retain if he wished to remain hidden, redolent of a long-gone place and time that could never be again. Wishing to remember and honour the kindly old couple who'd taken him in and nursed him back to health, as well as hoping to gain some semblance of legitimacy, he borrowed the name of their dead son, René d'Aramitz, and from there it was but a small step to a new identity with which to embrace his new life.
And so it was that Lancelot became Aramis.
Aramis became a soldier. Inevitable, perhaps: perfecting his sword craft had been a primary focus of Lancelot's life, and becoming a knight his lifelong dream, the desire to serve and protect far too deeply ingrained to give up now, while the sense of belonging offered by the regiment was especially alluring in his present situation, cast adrift in a strange new world. His skills were centuries old, yet not as outdated as he'd first feared, and stood him in good stead as he built his new life, one small piece at a time.
Love of sword craft was soon overtaken, however, by a new love: the musket. The long-range weaponry of this new age was a revelation to him, and he threw himself into the mastery of it wholeheartedly, fast earning himself a name as the keenest shot in the army.
It was this reputation that brought Captain Treville to his door.