A/N: Wow, what a fantastic response to the first chapter! Thank you so much to everyone.

Particular thanks to Aednat the Fourteenth, Tidia, pallysdeeks, Jmp, Debbie, arduna, Cynthia, Aingealsuh, GingietheSnap, chantelscribbler and Blades of Ice1 for taking the time to leave a review. They mean the world to me, and every single on is very much appreciated.

Shall we?

ON BROTHERHOOD

2

FALLING LIKE ASHES

Pain explodes across his body.

It begins at the wound in his side - he no longer thinks it just a scratch - and radiates up his torso, down his arms, and twists and spirals down his thighs. It hurts to breathe, hurts not to breathe, every movement a pounding wave of agony. His heart threatens to pound out of his chest. All he can do is take in short, shallow gasps of oxygen, practically inhaling the rain as it falls into his mouth, and squeeze his eyes tightly shut against the fire.

He has never felt pain like this. Not when a horse kicked him in the chest when he was a teenager, breaking four ribs, nor when he was seven and stepped on a pitchfork, almost losing his foot. Not when, at five years old, he was so delirious with fever that he wondered from his bed and climbed a tree which could not hold him and sent him plummeting ten feet to lie for four hours with a broken leg while his entire village searched for him. It is so intense that he half wishes for death, but a strange sense of loyalty keeps him seated until they reach the village. He knows that his friends would never forgive themselves if he were to die fighting with them.

None of his friends, he thinks, have noticed anything wrong - at least as far as he can tell. Porthos asked if he needed wine, because he looked cold, but once he said he was fine they left him alone. He is glad. He does not want to be a liability. He does not want to look vulnerable.

D'Artagnan is so lost in thought that he does not notice the others dismount. You can do this, he tells himself shakily, standing up in his saddle. His legs can barely take his weight. You can do this. He swings his right leg over but before he can step down his left leg buckles. You can do this flashes through his mind a split second too late, and suddenly everything flips. His head slams into the ground. One foot still hangs, caught in its stirrup. He watches it distractedly, wondering why there is so much water dripping into his face. "Rain," he mumbles. Why does the water fall to the ground but not his foot? He tries to shake it loose but there is not enough energy in him to move. Instead he stares as his horse starts to move of its own accord, dragging him along the ground with it. Why use a wagon, he wonders. This is so much easier...

D'Artagnan. D'Artagnan. Someone is saying his name. For one single, blessed moment, a dark shape obstructs his vision and the water stops hitting his face, before it moves away again and his foot is released. The rest of his body hits the ground with a thump. Still slightly dazed, d'Artagnan blinks hazily as the figure crouches over him - d'Artagnan, d'Artagnan - and shakes him on the shoulder. He smiles at them to let them know he is alright. He can't quite talk just yet.

And then, quite suddenly, the pain he hadn't even noticed was gone comes back in full force, knocking the breath out of his lungs. His back arches against the ground. A sob forces its way out of his throat.

He vaguely registers that someone big and strong is sliding their arms underneath him and lifting him up, and then running into a blissful, warm existence, where the rain stops but the pain carries on and his ears are ringing so loudly that the only thing he can hear is the sound of his own racing heartbeat.

He blacks out.

When he blinks himself back into awareness, he is on a bed, drenched in his own sweat. Aramis is standing over him. "The blade was poisoned," he tells Athos and Porthos, who notices that d'Artagnan is awake. "I don't know what to do without an antidote."

"How's the pain?" Porthos asks.

D'Artagnan winces. "Been better," he rasps. His throat is dry. Athos hands him a cup filled with water but his hands are shaking too violently to take it from him so the older man puts a hand behind his head, lifts it gently and places the cup on d'Artagnan's lips. Shame and humiliation redden his already burning cheeks. "I'm sorry," he gasps out, and the effort it requires just pours more fire into the raging storm that is his blood.

It hurts. More than anything he's ever known. It hurts.

It hurts.

"Give him something for the pain!" Porthos barks, and Athos is looking into his eyes and asking what he's sorry for - he's done nothing wrong - and Aramis is telling them that he can't give him anything because it might react with the poison and the only thing they can do is give him water and hope to flush it out of his system and then a whole new wave of pain comes.

A scream rings through the air so loudly that d'Artagnan closes his eyes. He can't breathe. He is past the stage of shaking now, convulsing and dizzy and nauseous and writhing and twisting on the bed. His friends are trying to hold him down but every touch is fire and he realises that the scream is his own. He stops screaming but does not stop fighting. Every breath is like a musketball burrowing into his chest, but he can't stop breathing. He needs it, he needs the air.

And then peace. A woman's voice singing - the doctor's wife from Lupiac. A child's crying. Not any child. Him. He is sick again, and she nurses him while the doctor and Charles' father discuss the best options for his treatment. It is a slow, lilting melody. He looks up into her face with tired, feverish eyes, and she looks down on him and whispers, Sleep. You'll feel much better. And he whimpers softly and she says, It's going to be fine, Charles, and then turns into a duck and flies around the room and he spins round as well and then he is running in his fields again, with his cousins, and they're all laughing and then he falls and rolls and rolls and rolls until he is lying on a bed with Milady de Winter, and she kisses him and stabs a dagger through his heart, but he doesn't die, not yet. He wonders out onto the street and someone screams and everyone is backing away from him and then he sees Constance, beautiful Constance, but she is screaming too and his head feels as though it is underwater and then he realises that he is holding it in his hands. And someone says softly, "Will he make it through the night?"

And Aramis replies, "I don't know. I don't think so."

D'Artagnan draws in a deep breath and opens his eyes. "Where am I?" he asks. He does not mean to say it aloud but he does anyway. Aramis is poking at the wound in his side.

"You're safe," he answers quietly. After a while, he adds, "Why didn't you tell me?"

"Tell you what?"

Before they can stop him he forces himself up to look at the scratch and gags. It is red and inflamed, with blood and pus and some other black liquid he cannot identify leaking out of it. "Oh." He falls back. "I'm sorry."

It isn't just this he is apologising for. D'Artagnan has become a weakness in the group now, a vulnerability, and exposed flank. He should not have slowed them down but beyond that he should not have been wounded in the first place. He should not have exposed himself to an enemy sword, should have listened and tried to follow Athos's instructions like a true musketeer. Head over heart, every time. If only he were less stubborn. Maybe he could have listened.

"It's okay." Porthos's hand lands on his shoulder. He realises that he has been stammering out his apologies, again and again.

The pain has subsided somewhat, but it isn't gone. Now, he is too weak do anything at all. Athos approaches again with another cup of water and makes him drink it before he can protest. Black spots gather at the edges of his vision. "Am I going to die?" d'Artagnan can't help but ask.

They all look at him for a second and Aramis smiles weakly and says, "Not if I can help it."

It is the first time, to d'Artagnan's knowledge, that his friend has lied to him.


This, Aramis thinks, will surely be the death of him. Not a battle wound, in a blaze of glory alongside his greatest friends, but alone, of a broken heart, having failed to save all of them. It is his greatest fear, and, seemingly, his destiny, to watch as men and brothers die slowly around him, unable to do anything but watch. Thoughts of Savoy shove to the front of his mind and he forces them back, busying himself with trying to make d'Artagnan drink water. He stubbornly refuses, twisting his face away whenever the cup touches his lips.

The boy twists and turns on the narrow bed, trembling and murmuring to himself. Occasionally he will moan from the pain or call out names: Madame Celice, Espoir, Milady. Constance. And, heartbreakingly, their own. Athos. Porthos. Aramis. He is delirious for the most part, but in rare moments or near lucidity, he always asks where he is and tells them that he is sorry. Again and again until he falls asleep again. Sometimes he cries out, jerks madly on the bed. Aramis has no idea what this poison is doing to him but it can't be anything good.

"Please, Aramis," Athos says slowly, watching as d'Artagnan asks repeatedly for his father. "Just tell us if he is going to live or die so that we may prepare ourselves for what is to come."

Aramis understands. Of course he does. The man is losing hope, losing it so rapidly that he needs whatever reassurance he can get. Even the knowledge that the boy will die would be better than the constant vigil at his bedside, uncertain, unknowing. "I'm sorry," he whispers, "I'm so sorry. I don't know. If he survives the night there is every chance that he will; if not ... it - it doesn't seem likely."

Porthos slams his hand into the wall and storms out of the room.

By Aramis's estimations, it is about midnight. He is so tired that he wants to fall asleep there and then, but d'Artagnan needs him. He lifts the boy's shirt again, gingerly. He has cleaned it as best he can but it still oozes blood, pus and black fluid. Perhaps -

Porthos comes back in. "I'm sorry." The feeling is not uncommon. Aramis knows all too well what it is like when the walls begin to suffocate you, stop you from looking anywhere but the dark places in your mind.

"I'm going to try and squeeze out the poison," he announces, his mind made up. He cannot watch another second of this.

Porthos ceases his relentless pacing and stares. "You what?"

"From what I can tell, the most painful part is his side where he was cut, and it's so red and inflamed that I need you to hold him down." He directs Athos to put an arm across the boy's chest and Porthos to hold his legs. "D'Artagnan." He puts his mouth down close to his ear. "We're going to try something." D'Artagnan blinks sleepily. "I won't lie to you. This is going to hurt like hell." There it is: the weak grin he knows so well.

"Can't be worse than your speech to the King after our last mission," the Gascon grins, and Aramis does not reply. It will be far, far worse.

He keeps strips of leather in his medical bag for situations like this, and places one between d'Artagnan's teeth. Then he reaches for the wound, places one hand on either side of it and presses inwards as hard as he can.

A feral, inhuman scream rips its way from d'Artagnan's throat. He bucks so violently that Athos, unprepared for the sheer amount of desperate force, is half thrown back - "Pin him back down!" Aramis yells - and more of the black fluid pours out onto the bedclothes. They're all sweating and swearing and exhausted and he doesn't know how much longer they can hold on. Thankfully, his silent prayers for help are soon answered and the boy slips back into half-consciousness. Athos stumbles away from his limp body, sickened, a hand over his mouth. Porthos's mouth is set in a grim line. He is pale and unsteady on his feet.

Aramis continues until the blood runs clean. Then he splashes a little brandy onto the cut and neatly covers it with a clean dressing. It is not deep enough to warrant stitches, let alone be the cause of this.

"Did it help?" Porthos hisses, desperation creeping into his tone. "Did it do anything?"

"I don't know, yet, Porthos," Aramis repeats for what feels like the hundredth time. "I'm sorry."

As one they drag chairs around the bed. Aramis notes that Athos has grasped one of the younger man's hands between both of his own.

They wait.

Several hours later, the now quietened boy's eyes flutter open again.

"I'm going to die, aren't I?"

This time there is no Where am I, no apologies. His voice is so soft and hoarse that Aramis barely hears. Porthos is asleep. Athos is stirring.

"We don't - "

"But I am."

"D'Artagnan - " Athos tries.

"The farm - the farm goes to my cousin Espoir," he rasps. Porthos, now, awakens too. "I have ... savings. From my father and the farm. And my wages. They - they go to the - the three of you."

"No," Porthos says, shaking his head, unshed tears glistening in his eyes. He stands up.

"Please ... I want you to have them."

"Let us not get ahead of ourselves," Aramis says softly, a tremor in his tone. "There is life in you yet."

"Pray for me," d'Artagnan says, so quiet now that Aramis has to put his ear near the boy's mouth to understand him.

There is a slight burning behind his eyes, a choke ready in his throat, but he refuses to cry. D'Artagnan does not deserve displays of weakness. "We will."

"I'm ready. I just - I - I don't ... want to ... be alone."

Porthos puts a steadying hand on his leg. "We're here. We're not goin' anywhere."

Was it just hours ago that they were laughing together?

"Stay strong, d'Artagnan," say Athos.

And Aramis says, "He will. He's the strongest of us all."

"That he is." Athos nods, and d'Artagnan smiles, a genuine smile that for a moment make Aramis forget everything that is happening and smile too.

And then a gunshot rings outside, and someone shouts, "Come out, musketeers, or we kill everyone in the village!"