Okay. Wow. That's all I have to say. The reaction to this simple little story was bigger and kinder and awesomer than what I was hoping for. Thank you to MusketeerAdventure, GoGirl212, Tidia, Rita Marx, FierGascon, watlocked, IWillNeverStopFangirling and Katie for the awesome, great, great, great reviews! Thanks to everyone for reading! I mean it. This is amazing. (I know I'm blabbering, but it's just so exciting!)

For everyone who was worried or wondering: I'm planning on posting one chapter per day, since I already have a great deal of the story finished.

Oh, one more thing. In the following two chapters, torture is mentioned – it's nothing explicit, but it's obvious enough. I don't want anyone to feel bad about it, so if you're not necessarily a fan of torture, it's maybe better to skip the next two chapters.

(Maybe wow wasn't all I had to say.) Anyway, here we go! I hope you enjoy.


D'Artagnan blinked his eyes open to a depressing gloom. He tried to look around the room, but the pain in his head spiked and he stilled his movements. As far as he could tell, there was nothing much to see anyway.

"You back?" someone asked from his right. D'Artagnan, leaning halfway against a wall, struggled to keep the ache in his skull and the nausea at bay, as he slowly rolled his head around and to the face the voice belonged to.

He couldn't make out much in the darkness other than a human-sized blob next to him. Probably René, though. D'Artagnan could hardly tell if the shadow looked anything like him, but the deep voice fit, and so did the snippets of memory d'Artagnan's brain was slowly conjuring up. They had reached a village and René had galloped up behind him. They had been in a fight, René by his side. They had been restrained, René and him both, and then …

Nothing. So it wasn't too far-fetched to believe that the prisoner sharing a cell with him was also René.

"Where are we?" d'Artagnan asked groggily. His eyes ached at the frantic gesture the figure threw his way.

"No idea," René said. "Woke up only a little while ago myself. Nothing interesting's happened since then."

D'Artagnan decided not to aggravate his burning throat any further and simply let his head fall limp against his shoulders, leaving the silence to stretch and twist and deafen.

They didn't have to wait long before a door in the wall opened and candlelight shone into the room. Both of them blinked owlishly, but the door was shut almost instantly and they were once more dipped into almost-darkness.

"Hello," a manly voice carried to the two prisoners. D'Artagnan could tell that whoever was talking wasn't the only newcomer. More than one pair of feet were uncomfortably shuffling around.

"Hi," René answered casually and d'Artagnan smirked.

"You two are great," the man mused. "Well, you're mine now. From now on, you work for me. You do anything I say."

A moment of silence ensued, then René laughed a booming laugh and d'Artagnan forced his unwilling throat to giggle along. He didn't notice when a third voice joined in.

"That is funny," the captor agreed mockingly. "Look at them," he said, clearly addressing someone else. "Laughing like that about something so serious. Laughing in the face of truth."

A few grunts and chuckles were heard through the cell. It sounded like a choir of people, deep as the voices were, but d'Artagnan suspected that the sound was merely echoing off the stone walls and making one sound seem like a hundred different ones. Straining his eyes, he could only just make out three dark silhouettes standing side by side – which didn't mean that there weren't more men hiding somewhere in the darkness.

"Now that we've got that out of the way," the voice continued, "let's begin, shall we? Who of you two wants to go first?"

D'Artagnan knew a dire situation when he got into one and he could tell how serious things had turned, so he shrunk back against the wall and tried to be as quiet and small as possible. René, on the other hand, chose that exact moment to gather up his spit and send it all the way through the room. D'Artagnan hoped against hope that their captor wouldn't notice, but of course he did. He grunted, then said, "As you wish. Take that one."

They carried the boy out of the room under protests, yells and yelps. Then, for a while, everything was still. Then, something clunked and then the screams started, loud and piercing, and alone.

René was thrown back into the cell about an hour later – it was hard to tell without the constant movement of the sun – and he didn't move; not when he landed on the cold, bitter floor, not when they shackled him to the wall and not when one of the guards kicked him in the ribs. He looked dead.

It was d'Artagnan's turn next.


It was sheer impossible to keep track of time.

The men came every once in a while and took one of the prisoners with them. They never took both, and they never left them both behind. They seemed intent on breaking them apart, but somehow, in the end, they both landed back in the same cell again, and everything started anew.

Whenever they came, they brought food with them, but those were always meagre meals; mostly dry bread and water. They promised them better food, better beds, better light and better friends, if …

The ifs were endless and constant. D'Artagnan, for his part, didn't quite know anymore what exactly he was refusing. But in the end, it all always seemed to amount to the same thing: the man who had captured them wanted them to join him. And this was all part of the training.

They spent their minutes mostly in silence. They were unconscious or sleeping a great deal of the time, one or both of them dead to the world. D'Artagnan sometimes found that the only thing able to calm him down was listening to the steady rhythm of René's breaths – proof that he wasn't totally alone in this whole thing. Even if no one ever answered. Even if his endless screams were always met only with hallow walls and bitter silence. There was someone there.

The Room of Doom, as d'Artagnan had decided to refer to it, was unimpressive at best and could only be described as an oversized cupboard with a chair in the middle and just enough room for one person to move all the way around. Whatever instruments their captor ever used on them, he kept them well hidden to inspire even greater fear. Sometimes, though, when the man would rage around or make a frantic move with his hands, d'Artagnan could detect a glint at the edge of his vision. He was pretty sure that one of the instruments included some kind of blade, or something metallic, at least.

Ever since he had woken up in the cell for the first time, d'Artagnan's whole body hurt; he could hardly remember a time it didn't. He gradually stopped trying to move, stopped fighting against the chains. More and less ceased to exist; there was only pain and pain and pain. It blurred together into a never-ending cycle. D'Artagnan tried to at least keep track of how many times he was hoisted out of the cell and into the Room of Doom, but with the unrelenting unconsciousness that kept lingering at the edges of his existence, he quickly lost track.

Words were rare and gruff, and grew even scarcer over time. Every once in a while, d'Artagnan would force a few syllables through his burning throat and over his parched lips, saying into the quiet that they were coming, that they would be out of this soon enough, that they could count on their friends, their captain, their garrison, just so no one would lose hope. But he couldn't tell if the message ever came across, because René never said anything in return.

Until he did.

It was another endless minute of another endless hour. It all seemed endless down here, in the dark, because everything was always waiting for the next round and then waiting for it to be over and then waiting for it to start again. The captors were good at what they were doing; they knew exactly how to plan it. They put precisely enough time between two ordeals to let the prisoners start hoping that it was over, only to rip the hope away again. And that was a dangerous game, d'Artagnan knew. What could a man rely on if not his hope?

So he said into the darkness, just to assure himself, since he thought that René was sleeping, "They're coming, you know." His voice was broken and raw and he himself couldn't understand the words. But someone else obviously did, because a voice sounded through the dense shadows.

"How can you be so sure?"

D'Artagnan flinched and the chains around his wrist clanked as they dug into his burning flesh. He held his breath and released it through clenched teeth, riding out the pain.

"René?"

"Who else?"

D'Artagnan let out another deep breath. "How are you?"

René disregarded his question completely, instead only repeating his own. "How can you be so sure?"

I'm not, d'Artagnan thought. Frankly, he didn't even know if the last hope he was clinging to so desperately was at all rational anymore. Reality and subconscious had started drifting together at some point, and it was hard to tell what he could still believe in, so he had decided to believe in whatever made him feel better, they are coming being the thing that had the biggest impact on his ever waning courage.

How to justify that, though?

"I just know they are," he whispered, stopping himself from shrugging. He listened and heard René grunt, obviously not at all satisfied.

"Right," he breathed. "Who are they, anyway?"

"You know, Treville, The Musketeers," d'Artagnan said. Athos, Porthos, Aramis, he added silently.

"The Inseparables?" René taunted as if reading his mind. "And just why would they come, d'Artagnan? Huh? Because we're missing? Because you're missing?" He made a sound that was probably supposed to be a chuckle. "You overestimate yourself. You overestimate your own value. A lone soldier's life is worth a hundred, a thousand times less than the lives of the whole garrison. The captain would never let anyone go after us."

That was the most d'Artagnan had heard René speak in a long while, and to his horror, he found himself starting to believe the words. They sounded reasonable. They sounded true. They were coming out of the mouth of a man who believed them; a man who had turned to the only one able to restore his faith, and had been disappointed.

"I'm thinking about giving up," René said, and went quiet.

D'Artagnan was quiet, too. He wanted to scream no. No, no, no, because they were coming! But were they?

"I've seen him do it," he said finally, the ringing in his ears drowning out the whispered words. And he waited. And he heard,

"Who?" Quiet and small and lost.

"Treville."

"Do what?"

D'Artagnan inhaled deeply and let the air rush out. It burned. It was so hard to breathe, so how was he supposed to do it a whole lifetime long?

"I've seen him send men after only one soldier. I've seen him move mountains. I've seen him persuade the king, René, and I've seen him go against him if he saw fit."

Nothing. Silence. D'Artagnan decided to continue, because he had to make his point clear. He had to make him see. "I saw the Musketeers fight for one another, die for one another. They would die for us, too. I know it. And they are coming."

Nothing moved. Nothing happened. Maybe René was unconscious. Maybe he didn't want to listen anymore. D'Artagnan felt something hot and wet spill down his cheeks, and he didn't hold it back – he let it run and drip, drip, drip down his chin and onto his wet clothes.

It was silent.

They came again and they took d'Artagnan and then there was nothing and he woke up and there were no breaths and no heartbeat and he thought that René was dead and he cried and wailed, but then the door was opened and the man was thrown in and d'Artagnan saw him move and all he could do was ask, "What did you do?", making it sound a lot more accusing than he wanted to, and he squinted into the light until the door closed them off from the world.

And the blob that was René moved and said, "Nothing."

And d'Artagnan didn't want to let himself believe anything that wasn't true, so he asked, "Did you give in?"

And the simple word "No" floated over to him, dark and sad and blissful.