and where shall I run?

This came about thanks to a discussion on Tumblr about what might have happened if Athos hadn't ridden off before Milady's hanging; apparently I like ficcing out my meta? But thanks to the lovely Milathos ladies over there for enabling me until this spiralled out of control and I could no longer pretend I wasn't going to write it. You are darlings and I love you all, no matter how much I shake my fist and swear.

(For anyone wondering "what the heck is Charis doing writing this and not Between Midnight and Dawn?!" - I'm definitely haven't abandoned it! I just got the first half of the second chapter finished the other day, finally, but I still have the back half to do and it's been tough going. So please bear with me and enjoy the rest of what I post in the meantime.)

Title by way of Oysterband's "Molly Bond": and I shot my own darling, and where shall I run?

Trigger warnings: alcohol abuse and near-death by strangulation.

It is his duty to see her hanged. He tells himself this, all through the long night, as he tries to steel himself against the coming morn. He must see justice rendered for Thomas' murder, and if the anger subsides then the sting of betrayal only sharpens to firm his resolve. It will not be the woman he had loved and married who dies in the morning, not when all that she had ever been was a lie.

Sleep will not come, and it seems right that he should not rest easy in the face of what he must do. And so he lies awake, staring into the darkness and trying clear his mind of those moments (of blood and sharp voices and the red rage that had blotted out all sense) without success, and all through the night he tells himself this, but when he rises, gritty-eyed with lack of sleep, he still feels no better about the choice. (It is no choice. What he must do, he must do.)

He is still telling himself this on the hilltop several hours after sunrise, as he sits astride his horse and watches the priest give Anne her last rites. Her face is pale and set, all but expressionless as she presses her lips together in response to being asked if she has anything to confess. The only sounds are the murmur of the priest's Latin prayers and the wind rattling the leaves overhead. It feels far too peaceful for what is set to happen, far too calm for the turmoil in his heart; he clenches the fingers around the locket, grounds himself in the bite of metal into his skin, reminds himself of Thomas' body crumpled to the floor, of Catherine's fury, of Anne, bloodied and wild-eyed, looking at him with her heart dying in her eyes –

Remi, standing there with the cart, gives him an indecipherable look, something a little like reproach and a little like perplexity, but all Olivier gives him back is the faintest of nods. This has only one possible conclusion.

(Anne does not look at him now.)

In the quiet, the creak of the cart is shockingly loud. He masters himself, does not flinch, forces himself not to turn away – not then, nor as the rope tautens over the tree (another rasp of sound, hemp rasping against bark), nor as Anne's inhalation cuts off short with the pressure. Not as her body thrashes, dangling there, starving for breath. Not as she stills, goes limp. Not as the silence falls around them and the thud of his own heart pounds thunder in his ears.

A cry shatters the silence – a cry he realises is his own as he slides out of the saddle, moving almost before he is aware of it. All he knows is that suddenly this is impossible, duty be damned, and it's not even a matter of whether he believes her or not anymore, only that he cannot. He hears, as if from a great distance away, Remi's grunt of surprise and the priest's startled exclamation, but they scarcely register; the world has narrowed to Anne dangling there, falling free moments later as his sword flashes out and severs the rope, and he casts the blade away to catch her. Her weight bears him down to the grass and he goes without care, heedless of anything but the rope still tight about her throat, digging into pale skin gone flushed – skin his nails catch against as he struggles to work it free, made more clumsy by the sudden tangle of emotion bearing down on him. Impossible to believe he'd been so empty moments before.

She is limp against him, though, even freed of the rope, and he wonders if he'd regretted too late – if he's already lost her. But the beat of her pulse is still visible there beneath flesh already livid, and he stares at it as Remi sinks down beside him, watches it grow steady as the smith does something he misses, too intent on that one visible sign that she has not gone, that perhaps he can still –

The first whisper of her breath is as loud as a thunderclap; his own rattles out of his chest (when had he begun holding it?), tension leaving his frame. Not too far gone, then. He doesn't know how things have turned, only that the idea of a world without her is unthinkable, impossible, and if she's still here, still breathing (deeper now, with each shaky rise and fall of her chest), then there is a chance. He can ask what he couldn't yesterday, find the truth, deal with this as a comte should rather than as a man betrayed and furious, as he ought have done when he'd found them. He can …

He is dimly aware that Remi has moved away again but his focus is entirely on Anne, whose colour is returning to normal and whose eyelashes are trembling as she stirs. There's a curl falling across one cheek and he reaches out, tucks it back as he watches her eyes crack open, her gaze dart around for an instant in bafflement before it settles on him. For a moment, it feels as if they are the only two people in the world, suspended in time as her gaze clears. For a moment, he believes everything will be alright – and then her hand is against his chest, and though there's no strength in her the shove catches him so off-guard that he falls back, sprawling onto the grass. Her name dies on his lips as he pushes himself upright in time to see her face contort with anguish.

"Don't touch me!" she rasps, her voice nowhere near the ruin she must be within, and it hits him like a blow. This, here, has changed nothing; he has still damned them both.

- x -

The Château de la Fère is large, and no matter how much he's hated how they had rattled around in there when it had been just him and Thomas and Anne it's a mercy right now, when it means he can avoid looking into her eyes.

It's been three days since he cut her down, three days since she pushed him away (but he'd pushed first, hadn't he, when he'd seen her clad in blood and bewilderment), three days since he'd retreated – to this wing of the house and then into himself with the aid of more than a small amount of wine. Three days, and he hasn't dared come back, and if he does not know whether it's the truth he might learn or what either of them might do that keeps him away then it is of no matter. He stays apart, and if she voices any protest he does not hear it.

Catherine arrives on the fourth day.

Time has blurred together by then; he'd chased the servants off on the second, and now they only venture close enough to leave food and fresh wine outside the door. The shutters have been tightly closed but she strides in, snaps them open, and he winces and flings one hand up to shield his gaze from the weak morning sunlight. Hovering between drunk and hung over, it pierces into his skull, ignites a pain that throbs there even as his eyes adjust. "What in god's name do you want?"

She stands in front of him, hands planted on her hips, and all he can see is the girl he and Thomas had grown up with and it rips a wound that's not even begun to heal even deeper. "Pull yourself together," she demands; the sharp words make him flinch, too loud after the silence he's been wallowing in.

He could answer, but what would he say? He reaches for the bottle instead, pours another glass, downs half of it pointedly. She does not move.

"They're saying she's still alive. Down in the village." There's something dangerous in her eyes, an anger he's not used to – and it's justified, but the Catherine he's known for years has always been proper and reserved and the woman in front of him is all too plainly done with that. "Tell me it's a lie." When he does not speak, she slams her hands down onto the table, and the fury is all too plain now no matter how controlled her voice still is. "Answer me, Olivier!"

"She's alive." The words come out dull, hollow. Alive, but he might as well have killed her – might as well have killed himself there on the tree, for all the good that staying the execution has done. And he hasn't even had the courage to face her and find out the truth to learn whether he must kill her after all, and whether it is kindness or cowardice that keeps him away he does not know.

If he were sober, perhaps the outraged breath she sucks in through her teeth would have been enough of a warning. But he's nowhere near sober, and so it's as if her hand comes out of nowhere, striking his cheek hard enough to snap his head to the side. When he looks at her again the anger has blazed into naked fury, her face twisting into something almost unrecognisable. "How dare you?" she hisses. "After what she did to Thomas – to you –"

He catches her trembling hand before she can hit him again. "What happened in that room, Catherine?"

"You know what happened." She doesn't try to pull away. "Thomas found out what she was – a liar and a thief and a whore – and she killed him to silence him. You know."

I don't, he thinks, because all he does know is that Thomas is dead at Anne's hand and that tells him nothing. He has heard Catherine's story, knows what Thomas had discovered but not how much of it is true, does not know why Anne killed him, if it was for her lies or if he had tried to force himself on her. Why, he wonders, a sudden moment of painful clarity despite all the wine, did Thomas go to Anne rather than bringing the accusation to him? Why, if not for some other motive, and it doesn't change the fact that she lied but it changes everything, and he lets go of Catherine abruptly to fumble for the wine again. He can't think about this now. He can't.

"Olivier."

The last thing he needs right now is to face reality, and at this moment reality is pale hands clenching into dark skirts, shaking with a rage he's all too familiar with and wants to forget, because what he did in his blindness and his anger – "Get out, Catherine."

"But –"

"Get out." He forces himself to look up, no matter how much he wants to pretend she's not there, to sink back into oblivion, but he needs to do this. He's already made enough of a hash of things. "And don't you dare touch Anne, or I'll –"

She tosses her head, indignant as much as angry. "What, kill me? We both know you don't have that in you, Olivier – not if you let her live."

It takes all of his self-control (already shattered by the events on the hilltop, simultaneously bolstered and further destroyed by the wine) not to reach out and do something, anything, that will prove her wrong. Instead he just looks at her coldly as he rises, planting his hands on the table to steady himself. "Do you really want to test that?"

He's not sure what she'll do as they stand there, glaring at each other; he's even less sure what he'd do if she were to act, for all that he means every word. Whatever the truth he is still unprepared to face is, Anne is his wife, and he has a duty to her as well as to justice. That Catherine may be grieving for Thomas gives her no right to take matters into her own hands (no more than it did him, no matter his words, no matter his rage).

She must see something of this in his eyes, because although her jaw tightens she just spins on her heel and strides out in a swirl of black skirts. Only when the sound of her footsteps fades away to nothing does he relax again, slumping back into the chair. Their confrontation has taken all of his energy, but his anger at her threat has also burned off most of the wine in his system, and with the fog receding the memories come back with crystalline clarity.

I can't. Not yet. God forgive me.

His hand shakes, but he doesn't spill a drop.

- x -

The answer he finds at the bottom of the bottle is this: he cannot stay here.

In this house, he will never be anything other than Olivier, the Comte de la Fère, the man who would have murdered (for he can no longer pretend it would have been anything else, no matter the lies he'd told himself, that day and since) his wife. And he can no longer be that man, dares not, will only break more than he has already broken if he persists in trying. He had thought he might make this house a home with her but that dream is gone, drowned in blood and lies and a brother he thought he'd known, a brother dead and buried, and a wife that he cannot (dares not) face.

He's tried. He's walked through the corridors more than once, often in the deep of the night, but he can never make himself venture into the part of the château he now thinks of as hers. And what would he say, even if he could bring himself to cross the threshold? I'm sorry would solve nothing, and anything else dries up on his tongue. And he has questions too, needs explanations, but he cannot find the words for those that would not cut and just make everything worse.

(He's tried, but every time he gets close, the memory of her hand pushing against his chest and her eyes full of hurt and hate stops him.)

If he stays here he will drown, and perhaps it will still happen if he runs but at least the certitude is not there – somewhere else he may be able to forget, not entirely but enough. Somewhere else, without the reminders that crowd in around him, press down on him, hold him open and weak and vulnerable, he may be able to figure out who he can be instead of Olivier. (Somewhere else, and he will miss her deeply, down to the marrow, but he knows he has already lost her, and with that truth what can distance do but ease the pain?)

The bottle cannot erase her, but it helps. He knows he drinks too much, knows he shouldn't but needs that numbness, needs the wine to soften the edges of the ache and blur the memories, needs (he hopes) distance to weaken the hold they have over him, and so he packs, in fits and starts, puts together clothes and money and (for reasons he is never entirely sure about) the rapier and main gauche he hasn't used in months. He delays, reconsiders, walks those corridors again and again, but when one particularly bad night ends with her portrait destroyed and his own wine-soaked (and oh, how fitting that is for them both) and broken glass littering the floor, he realises it is time. Any longer, and whatever he becomes after Olivier will be someone he cannot bear.

He saddles his horse in the early hours of the morning, ignoring the headache that pounds in his temples. The misery is no less than he deserves. He had hoped that leaving early would mean doing so unnoticed and unremarked-upon, slipping into the mist that still clings to Pinon's hills and from there into some sort of obscurity, where the village folk speak of a time of their comte that had been but think little of him in the years after, but it seems at least one person won't let him do so. He reaches out to take the saddlebags Grimaud holds out to him, but the other man doesn't let go just yet, gives him a look of undisguised reproach.

"I can't stay," he explains; the words sound woefully inadequate to his ears, for all that they are unvarnished truth.

I know, says the answering nod. He relinquishes the bags but doesn't move away, standing there watching while Olivier ties them on securely. It's clear he's waiting; when he turns back, the other man's hands lift, move in the voiceless communication he uses more than speech these days. It takes Olivier's still-hazy mind a minute to follow, another to process what he's saying, a third to figure out how to respond, swallowing past the lump in his throat. It's not an offer he can accept, and the loyalty is more than he deserves.

"No," he manages, when he can find his own voice, "stay here. She's going to need help." Please chokes him, though, goes unvoiced, but Grimaud knows him well and can surely read it – knows him well enough to realise this is the only way Olivier knows to ask. And he knows the estate well enough, knows the village, knows Anne (though how well any of them did truly he can only guess at now, and that thought still cuts, makes his fingers itch towards the wineskin he doesn't dare broach yet); if anyone here can take care of all of them, it will be Grimaud.

Another nod, this one solemn agreement. 'Where will you go?' his hands ask.

"Paris." He hadn't decided until that moment, but in the city he'll be able to lose himself, become one more anonymous face within its throngs. It is too soon to hope for a purpose, though he may be able to find one in time; right now, he just needs to forget enough that he can find a new start.

'Go safely.' Nothing of returning; it is plain he understands how much is yet unsettled, how much cannot be settled until things change. Nothing of following, either, and Olivier does not mention it, when he knows Grimaud understands that in the request to stay is an unspoken one for space sorely needed. (Grimaud, he thinks, has always understood; it is one of the things Olivier appreciates about him best. He wonders suddenly, though he does not give the question voice, what he thinks of the events of the past fortnight. He is not sure he wants the answers.)

To speak suddenly feels impossibly difficult. 'Thank you,' he returns, in the same language of signs and gestures, before turning – swiftly, before can reconsider – and mounting. It is better that he leaves now, before he weakens and lingers and breaks.

(He rides out into the misty morning, and does not dare look back.)

Grimaud is based (loosely!) on the book version rather than the TV; his presence is entirely Swellie's fault.

This is intended to be part of a larger framework of one-shot stories within this AU that will definitely extend into (and echo) canon events. The larger AU descriptor: "One changed action alters everything and nothing. The young comte stays to watch his wife hang and cuts her down, but Athos of the Musketeers still comes to be; Anne de Breuil still dies on the tree, but it is Anne de la Fère who survives." As of right now, I'm planning to post them in pieces on Tumblr as they happen before cleaning up and archiving them here. (You can find the first part of Milady's side already posted on my Tumblr, in fact, if you're interested.)