Suffering makes us strong part I -prologue-

Cold and light snowflakes fell all over her body and concealed her with a thin layer of ice. Her skin had turned white and her lips blue. Her hair was the only thing of her body that kept the original colour. Even though her body was frozen and pale she was still the most beautiful creature on earth. And once he owned her.
Her eyes were still open. She was staring at the sky when she died. He moved toward her, kneeled down next to her. He placed his fingers on her eyelids, gently, and closed her eyes forever. He stayed there for a while, watching that beautiful figure becoming one with the snowy ground, while the cold air seeped through his bones and numbed his muscles. All he wanted was to touch her and to feel her touch one more time, but her body was getting colder and colder and her warmness was just a memory.
He got up, the snow on his cloak and hood fell on the snowy ground. The red spot on her chest had been covered completely by the snow. In the morning her figure would be hidden. The snow would become her tomb. He had never imagined that the dress she was wearing, the dress he gave her weeks before, would become her coffin.
He turned and walked toward his horse. A horse as black as his soul. He waited a minute or more before mounting the stallion.
He rode. He rode as fast as he could. He ran away from her. He was sad, embittered, desperate, confused, but he was also furious and blinded by rage. And when he stopped the horse he realised that his face was wet for the first time in his life.

Suffering makes us strong part II -how it began-

He found himself in the cellar of a cloister he had seen before with unclear memories of how he had got there. His temple was pulsating and blood was trickling down his face, making it difficult for him to keep his left eye open. He tried to walk slowly since the light was weak and his sight was becoming blurred. He stumbled upon something he had not seen and fell clumsily on a shelf full of empty bottles that fell with him on the floor. His fall amidst the shattered glass made a noise that could have woken the dead from their peaceful rest.
He collapsed on the floor, with no strength, his wound burning more and more. He tried to get up but a splinter of glass stuck into the palm of his hand. He growled and fell again. Over a span of few seconds old memories came back to his mind. He was a young boy, yet he was already a man. He could hunt, he could skin his prey, he could shoot the swindlers that attacked his village. He shot one of them. It was an autumn night. His arm was trembling, adrenaline came over his whole body, he had no regrets at all. He liked it. And he liked it so much that he wished there was another swindler hidden somewhere so he could find him and kill him. The scene faded away. Everything was black and all he could hear were distant voices. The loudest one was that of the woman who brought him up like a mother. Theresa. She was tired of him always asking the same question, so she finally told him, she revealed the truth behind his origin: his father was a musketeer who took advantage of a vulnerable girl. That was the day he discovered he was nothing but the son born out of weakness and cowardice.
Anger came over him. He swore at that fate that was mocking him with those memories about his origin while he was dying. He closed his eyes hoping that those memories would leave him once and for all. He waited for Death to lower his scythe down on him, freeing him from all that loneliness that had made him suffer more than a knife in his hip.

He was alive. He wanted to laugh. He was such a contradiction to himself. He longed so much for death to free him from that miserable life, yet when he woke up he was almost happy he hadn't died. He heard a noise, a creak. He opened his eyes but the light of the sun made him blind for a moment. He shifted and looked for the knife he used to keep under his pillow but he couldn't find it. His head emptied and strength left him. He was there, weak and vulnerable in front of his murderer. He wouldn't have been able to defend himself in any way.
The person entered the room and walked towards him. The rustle of a dress. Warm fingers touched his temple and got dirty with fresh blood.
"You shouldn't move so fast."
The tone was sweet and higher than he had expected. A girl. He opened his eyes, slowly, giving them time to get accustomed to the light. The light was coming from a high window and hit him in the face. In the air there was a smell of wine and humidity. He was in the same cellar as before.
The girl removed the bandages covered in blood and put them in a bowl full of water on the floor near his bed, a chest with a bed sheet and an old dusty pillow. The transparent liquid became pink. She took a cloth and wet it with water. She was about to put it on his temple in an attempt to clean his wounds when he stopped her. He grabbed her wrist and the cloth fell on his chest.
"Who are you?"
"Your wound opened, Monsieur, you should treat it or it could get infected. Let me clean it for you."
She avoided answering his question, and that made him nervous and angry.
"I asked: who are you?"
"Let go of my wrist, you are hurting me, Monsieur."
He would have let go of her wrist just to slap her on her cheek, but he hold back. He didn't have the strength and his head was aching. He let her go and she cleaned his wound.
"As soon as you get better you will disappear and will forget everything. What is the point of me telling you my name, Monsieur? And I don't want to know yours either. A wounded man in the cellar of a cloister: I suppose you are running away from those who attacked you. The less I know about you, the better. Don't you think, Monsieur?"
Lucien remained quiet while those hands were taking care of him. The only result he got from that answer was the awareness that, perhaps, his life was not in danger in that moment.
"And why are you taking care of a wounded man in the cellar of a cloister? You don't know and you don't want to know anything about me. Why are you so sure I won't take advantage of your distraction, cut your throat and run away?"
She got up, brought with her the blood-stained cloth and wet it with the wine kept in a bottle on a table near the wall. She came back and with less consideration she disinfected his wound. It burned like fire, but he bore the pain.
"Suffering will make you stronger."
"Do I have to ask you everything twice before getting an answer? Have you the slightest idea of how annoying it is?"
"I am not surprised someone tried to kill you. You are unbelievably rude. I am taking care of you, I told no-one about your presence here and I would get the blame for all those bottles you broke in an attempt to do who knows what. Yet you threaten me. And you say I am annoying."
She got up and left him there thinking. He was really incapable of having good relations with people. He was like a hedgehog, ready to hurt others with his spines.
"I fell over them. I fell over those bottles. It wasn't on purpose."
She came back with clean bandages and put them on his head with care.
"Now stay here, Monsieur, and try not to move. I'll come back in the evening to change the bandages again."

And she came back. He was resting in weak moonlight surrounded by silence when she slowly opened the door and came in. She checked nobody had followed her and closed the door. She brought bread and a bowl with cold soup.
"I bet you're starving. It wasn't easy for me to take these without being noticed."
She put his dinner on a chair she then moved near the chest.
"I can get up and eat at the table"
"No, stay there. Is your head still aching?"
Lucien did not answer. He lifted a bit and lay with his back against the wall. His head was still throbbing and being in that position made him feel numb. He tried to eat something but he was not really hungry, he was thirsty. He looked around and his gaze fell upon the bottle she had used to disinfect his wound.
"Are you thirsty, Monsieur? There's only wine."
"I won't complain."
When the bottle came into his hands, he quickly drank the liquid that was in it. It was warm, but it satisfied his thirst. He stayed there with the bottle in his hands, watching that mysterious creature opening another bottle of wine and wetting a clean cloth with that liquid, as to clean his wound once again.
"You have a point when you say that if you don't know who I am, the better. Anyway, you know I'm not a good guy, yet you're here taking care of me when you could have let me bleed to death. Why are you helping me?"
"Why should I have let you die, Monsieur? Just because you're not a good guy? I found you lying on the floor in a pool of blood. In that moment I saw neither good nor evil, just a suffering person. I didn't spend time thinking who you were and why you were in that situation. I thought about it later. And even now I'm not interested in knowing it."
"You're helping a murderer, a thief, a mercenary. I survive by stealing and killing men for money. When I was a child I used to flee from a part of France to another to avoid war and starvation, now I follow war and give my service to those who need a man doing their dirty jobs. I take advantage of horrible things such as war to make my fortune and I don't have regrets when my knife slides into the stomach or the throat of innocent people. But then one of my men betrayed me, offered my head to French soldiers so that they could arrest me and take me to Paris where I would have paid for all my sins, maybe by hanging. He stabbed the other two of my group when I wasn't there, then when I came back he attacked me from behind. That bastard hit my head with a rock, the same I used to pay him back with interest. His corpse now rots somewhere in a wood with a black-and-blue face and broken teeth. When I finished with him I heard the sound of hooves, I thought that could be the French soldiers that were looking for me and so I ran away and I got here. I don't remember exactly how. You don't know my name, but at least now you know what I am. So, tell me, do you still want to take care of my wound or would you like me to die of some infection?"
She stood there, motionless, on her feet. The moonlight prevented him from studying her face to understand if she was disgusted, indignant, sad or indifferent to this. Everything turned quiet but for a noise of distant voices reciting Our Father. He thus recalled he was in a cloister and that, somewhere over there, nuns were praying.
"You are cruel to others but you are, above all, cruel to yourself. I bet there's something good in you too."
"There's nothing inside of me."
Again the silence, again the distant voices.
"I should be praying. I'll pray for you too, Monsieur. Your wound can wait until tomorrow morning."
She left everything on the table: the open bottle, the wet cloth, the bandages she had hidden among the sleeves of her dress. She left the room without looking back, and when she closed the door the silence loomed before him. The nuns kept praying for ten minutes or so, then the cloister fell into deathly silence. If he hadn't been among bottles and demijohns he would have thought to be in a crypt.

She came in, upset and nervous. The noise of the door opening woke him up. He did not even have the time to protect his eyes from the morning sun with his hands before she was beside him, removing the bandages from his head.
"I've never fled from a part of France to another nor have I witnessed the horrors of war with my own eyes. My father is the count of this land and since I was a child I've lived in luxury. My misfortune is to be born as a woman in a world for men, where they decide for me. I fled home when I found out my father had got me engaged with a widower who is about three times older than me. My escape lasted one day. When he found me he brought me here, where nuns keep an eye on me so that I won't run away again. I will get out the day my father comes and takes me to my soon-to-be husband. I know my father won't change his mind because this wedding will be very convenient for my family. All I have is praying. Praying for that old man to kick the bucket. I don't mind how. He's old, he could die in many ways: falling from the stairs, off his horse, or choking with a chunk of bread. I don't mind. It's enough he dies and lets me go home. Do you think those are the kind of requests one should ask of God, Monsieur?"
She kept taking care of him while telling her story. Lucien did not even feel the burning when the alcohol touched his temple.

The next morning she came to say goodbye. When she got in she was not wearing her usual beige tunic, but a pink silk dress that made her raven-black locks stand out.
"Now you're better, you should leave the cloister today before a nun finds you here. There's a door in this cellar that is closed on the inside and leads to the courtyard. I suggest you leave at night, when nobody will be there. You'll find the main door closed but don't worry, the lock is broken, I saw them opening it without keys, you just have to pull strongly."
He asked himself why, if she knew all these things, she hadn't tried once to flee. He looked at her and he understood why. A silk dress. A noble girl. She could nurse, perhaps even do the laundry, mend dresses, sew and do other useless activities. She wouldn't survive a day out there alone. She fled home once but her father found her and locked her in a cloister. If her father had not found her, someone else would have, and perhaps she would not have been so lucky.
"Will you come with me?"
"What?"
"If you want to stay here, go ahead."
Lucien walked to the door and messed about with the lock. It was so old and rusty that he had to put a lot of effort to make the key turn and open it. Before leaving the cellar he turned. She was still there, motionless.
"So?"
"I can't. My father is waiting for me."
"Your last call."
"What will I get by following you? You are a mercenary, a murderer, a thief, the evil, you are empty inside, that's what you said. Will I have a better future by following you?"
"Perhaps not a better future. But at least different."

Suffering makes us strong part III -how it shouldn't have ended-

They escaped that cloister together. They stole one of the horses in the courtyard and ignored her father yelling to stop and come back. Lucien did not know that area. He let the horse guide him away from the cloister, away from those people. He just paid attention not to be found by French soldiers. He did not care where he was heading. One of his men betrayed him and the others were dead. He was at the starting point. But that time it was different. During the escape he smelt the perfume coming from her dark locks. "Love has made me weak", he kept repeating to himself like a mantra.

She kept talking to him in a very formal way even weeks after their escape. It bothered him. The formality increased the distance between the two, a distance he wanted to remove. Then she stopped being so formal and entrusted herself in him, completely. His claws did not wound her. Not in that moment, at least.

One afternoon she disappeared. She had walked away in the woods alone and she never came back. It was freezing and it had started snowing again. He went out to look for her but he could not find her. Only traces of horses on the snow. He came back to take his black stallion and followed the traces. They took him to the mansion of a nobleman. He did not care to enter without being noticed, on the contrary, he entered with his sword unsheathed, so that the servants would have disappeared when they saw him. He walked the hallway and entered a large room with a fireplace and paintings over the walls. A man in his seventies was on his feet, gazing at the plains outside the window.
"You really have guts to burst into the house of a nobleman like this."
"And you have guts to take away what's mine."
"Yours? She's never been yours. She's mine, there are documents validating our union."
"Eat those sheets and choke. She chose to run away rather than marry you. She chose a man like me and a life of misery rather than this."
"She chose the bastard son of a bitch and a French soldier. I know your story, Grimaud. Don't look at me with that face, you're famous, after all. You carry out all your work flawlessly, it's obvious you're known, and feared. To know your story one just need to ask rats like you living in the cesspool. It's a small world, Grimaud."
"You know who I am, yet you challenge me."
"I challenge you because those like you should keep slithering in the cesspool and not going out in open air and doing whatever they want. This is a lesson. Next time stay hidden in your darkness and nobody will get hurt."
"I'm the only one at fault here, not her."
"Really? Is she not?"
"Let her go."
"I already did. Why don't you go and see for yourself? Some miles north there's a small clearing. A nice place in summer with all those flowers. In winter it's just a snowy expanse. You'll find her there."

Lucien rode fast, so fast that snowflakes scratched his face. He feared what he would find in that clearing. The fear grew in his heart, dominated him, filled his veins, left him breathless, closed his throat. He arrived at the clearing. He saw her from a distance among the snow, in that green dress that matched her eyes he had given her weeks before. She was not moving. She was supine, watching the sky. He called her. No answer. He got off his horse and came closer to her. The snow beneath her was red. Her blood was cold and could not melt those icy crystals anymore.

While he was going back to that house, his heart was growing with anger, it dominated him, filled his veins, made him clench his teeth, preventing him from thinking and from processing the grief. He entered that room again. The man had been waiting for him. He had lit some candles and had been sitting near the fireplace.
"I was waiting for you."
"Do you long for death so much?"
"I know I would pay with my death. At least I'll die with the certainty you won't have her either. Her and that obscenity that would have been born."
"Why? Why her? Why me?"
"You because it's you. A rat. A bastard. A walking scum. Those like you don't deserve happiness and love. She because she had to do with someone like you. Tell me, Grimaud, would you eat a gone bad piece of meat with worms inside? Or would you throw it away?"
Lucien put into the sheath his sword and removed carefully all the weapons he got along with his belt. He untied his hood and left it on the armchair near the window. He moved closer to that man with steady and firm steps. The air was getting warmer and warmer little by little he got near the fireplace. He saw fear in his eyes. And saw it for a very long time, because he made sure he died in a very slow way.

Suffering makes us strong part IV -how it never ends-

The wide plain was covered in golden ears of wheat. The wind blew and moved them gently. The sun shone over them and cicadas were chirping, hidden among the stalks. The calm after the tempest. Among the plain, the bodies of Spanish soldiers were watering the ground with their blood. The battle was over, French soldiers won and all they left behind were stinking corpses deprived of their armours and weapons. A crow landed over the head of one of the dead bodies, cawed and then pecked the eye of the soldier. Soon another one joined the feast, then another. In a few minute crows were everywhere, eating what they could eat, fighting for the flesh.
Lucien followed the crows and walked among the corpses. He looked around, turning around the men on their back with the help of his foot. French soldiers took everything from them, but they forgot to take a gold ring on the finger of a man pierced by a spear. He took it and studied the red gem on it. It was shining as if it were hot liquid blood. He wore it on his ring finger, beside the other one that he had recovered from a previous battle. Three more battles and he would have his fingers filled with rings.
He left the battlefield and reached his black horse. The crows were still feasting and more were coming from the sky. He could still hear them in his mind when he reached La Rochelle, the nearest town.
The city was frantic, people were running with their belongings, ready to leave as soon as possible. The war had come to the doors of La Rochelle and they were worried they could be the next target of that senseless war.
A woman saw Lucien on his horse. She picked up her baby boy and ran away from him. Lucien followed with his eyes the figure of the woman running away. The boy looked at him from her mother's shoulder. He was not scared at all. He was too young to understand what was going on. He was like him. All he could remember was being dragged from place to place without knowing the reason. Another child who would live the horrors of war, who would suffer, who would become like him. "Suffering will make you stronger", she told him once. But it makes you lonelier too. All things considered he was happy his son had not been born.

Notes

I hope you enjoyed this fan fiction as much as I did in writing it.
English is not my mother tongue thus there could be some mistakes. I would like to thank Melodia (CaliviaMelodia on twitter) for corrections and review.
The fanfiction is a translation from Italian, the original version is published under the name theda on a website for Italian fan fictions and on the Italian forum of The Musketeers.