Summary: "I failed in my duty as a Musketeer. But worse, I failed in my duty as your friend."
Events after Season 2 and beyond.
Author's Notes: This takes place after Season 2. So, so many spoilers.
It took Aramis only a few hours to reach where the scouts had been found. There were still deep brown patches on the earth and stone where the bodies had lain.
Three.
Was Porthos in a fourth somewhere nearby, waiting to be discovered?
Aramis shook the thought away and forced himself to examine the scene. He looked at the area from the back of his horse, trying to see how it had played out.
Aramis understood what Athos meant about the lay of the land. Rock formations rose and fell as far as he could see. Ravines and hollows were everywhere. Countless places to hide.
With the bluffs overhead, it was an excellent place for an ambush. The Musketeers would have had very little cover and no outlet other than straight back or straight ahead.
Porthos would have been in the lead. His mission, his scouts.
Aramis eyed the path to the east. It seemed like the mostly likely route, if someone were to try to escape this bottleneck. And if they'd still been heading into the mountains, Porthos would have been closest to it.
Aramis dismounted and led his horse, searching the ground.
The terrain evened out eventually, still craggy and uneven, but without the higher rock walls.
More open, easier to be seen. But easier to run.
Not too far out of the shelter of the gully, he found a blood trail.
It was scattered and sporadic, but not so much he couldn't follow it.
He tracked it, heading steadily northwest, doubling back and finding it again when it disappeared. Around mid-day, it grew heavier, easier to spot. Aramis crouched down in the shade of a sheltering rock where the trail led and became a larger stain. This he could read easy enough.
Whoever it was had stopped to treat their wound. He reached out and picked up the remains of a musket ball. It had deformed, as they often did, either on impact or with removal. He turned the flattened ball over in his fingers and tried not to picture Porthos digging it from his flesh.
Aramis stood up quickly and looked around. There was evidence of horses, definitely more than one. Whoever it was either had not been alone or had been pursued.
The blood trail took up again, though far weaker, and headed back to the south.
Toward the French encampment.
Aramis estimated he was an hour or two from camp when the trail disappeared. He went back to where it ended and tried another direction.
He rode in circles, wider and wider, attempting to find where the spatters picked up again, but there was nothing.
Rock and wind and no sign of anyone.
Aramis blew out a frustrated breath. Athos and Porthos were good at this. Tracking, reading the signs, seeing the hints in the broken leaves and disturbed rocks.
This was not his strength.
He didn't know what to do.
He'd been on Porthos' trail.
He knew it.
It fit with everything he'd seen and everything he knew of Porthos.
He would have led the Spanish away and tried to double back.
Porthos was close. Or had been.
He dismounted, searching the ground.
The trail was gone.
He didn't know what to do.
His eyes burned and his head ached.
No one just disappears.
Perhaps he'd been captured after all.
But it felt wrong.
Aramis kept looking, pacing.
He couldn't stay out here indefinitely.
But why keep searching if there was nothing to find?
Why come back if he hadn't changed.
All of it was supposed to make sense now.
What was he doing here?
He'd been so convinced, so sure that this was where he should be.
Where God wanted him to be.
On the front, fighting.
With the Musketeers.
What was the point?
Fear and guilt and uncertainty clawed at him.
What was the point if he couldn't find Porthos?
The moment he thought it, the reasons came to him.
The worn sadness weighing down Athos.
The utter relief on d'Artagnan's face when he'd seen him.
They wanted him. Welcomed him.
Aramis looked out over the afternoon sun-drenched land, beautiful and wild.
He straightened his shoulders.
He couldn't look for Porthos forever.
Even if part of him would always be looking.
There was still work for him, still purpose.
He'd promised Athos.
Aramis stood there a moment longer and a gust of air pushed at him.
Pushing him back toward the camp.
And he knew he had his answer.
Perhaps it was Porthos himself, telling Aramis to stop wasting time.
He shut his eyes against burning tears.
"I'm sorry, Porthos," he whispered into the wind.
And he turned away and toward the direction of the brothers he could still help.