A/N: Apologies for the absence!
Scratched into the wall was a series of short lines. 215 verticals, 52 horizontals, 267 ticks total. 73 tallies from the end there is an intentional gap that marks the day they were separated, the day the Spanish guards dragged Aramis from their cell and never brought him back.
Porthos leaned against that wall and ran a softened, grimy hand over those scratches, those numbered days of captivity. Strange, he thought, how different a wall can feel when fingers are no longer calloused. And yet that was far from the only change he'd undergone. His hair was longer, his facial hair grown out of control, his clothes in a poor state, his once well-used muscles wasting away for lack of use. 73 days ago Aramis had been in much the same state, and they'd even made jokes at one another's expense to keep the mood light, or as light as they could keep it while locked away in a Spanish prison.
Porthos exhaled heavily and settled back into the corner of his cell, eyes drifting closed as memory overcame him. They'd seen Ramona and rode like mad men to greet her, but she was a prisoner in her own home. Apparently the soldiers had come and claimed the estate as a Spanish outpost, and when Ramona's husband resisted, he was killed at her feet. The arrival of two Frenchmen at her door did nothing to help her. Declared a traitor, she was to be executed for crimes against Spain, but in the frenzy of Aramis' and Porthos' arrest, she vanished. Porthos was confused when he and Aramis were imprisoned rather than executed, yet prison meant a chance to carry out the mission- or escape at the earliest opportunity.
Carrying out the mission was easier said than done with Aramis elsewhere. To ensure their personal use to the Spanish and avoid their current situation and that which Ramona was sentenced to, they had split the information between them and memorized it before burning the physical evidence. Even after nearly a year of idleness Porthos recalled every detail inked on those papers as though he had them in his hands. 73 days ago he knew Aramis still remembered his half, but 73 days in the hands of cruel jailors could be enough to make a man forget his own name much less sensitive information to be passed to the Spanish.
Sighing, Porthos rubbed his forehead against the wall. Uncertainty stretched far beyond Aramis and himself. Somewhere to the north the rest of his brothers fought on.
Nine months had never felt so much like ninety years to Athos. War being what it was, there was a continuous stream of fresh supplies and fresher faces coming in and a somber train of condolence letters leaving along with those too wounded to remain at the front. The dead were given burials as proper as situations dictated. After all, retreats left little time to care for lost comrades as faith and decency demanded.
War was a weary business, and Athos despised how his position dictated he remain as distanced from combat as possible. He watched as d'Artagnan ran into battle time and time again, often returning with some evidence of the fight etched into his flesh while Athos stood back, unmarred, physically untouched by the gruesome clashes.
Several months into the war the ache of memory stirred a recklessness in his soul; recollections of campaigns alongside Porthos and Aramis awoke that primal urge to once more act and defend his home and his brotherhood. He suppressed it to the best of his ability, but every day the silence between himself and his friends in Spain stretched on, his need to do something grew. Yet his responsibility to the men under his command weighed just as heavily upon his shoulders as the absence of his brothers upon his heart.
One year, he told himself. I'll let them have one year of silence before I tear the continent apart.
The brisk air invaded the cell and made him shiver in its wake. Aramis longed to sit, to rest, to curl up and nestle away from the biting chill, but forced to stand as he is, he hoped to endure it by sheer force of will. His arms were chained to walls on either side of him. Like Samson, he thought from time to time when he wasn't so focused on remaining upright that he could spare thoughts for other matters. Bound as he was, sitting and even kneeling were out of the question. Stand or strain his shoulders to the point of dislocation: these were the only options he could see, and he despised them both.
He'd lost track of time not long after they moved him there, away from Porthos and their small window and crude calendar. By their estimation it was late October when they were separated. There in Aramis' windowless room it could be May outside and he'd be none the wiser. The guards kept no schedule that he could tell, simply wandering in from time to time. On occasion he felt he must have been left alone for well over a day before he was given any sign of life beyond his personal purgatory. Being in the midst of such a period his head bobbed as exhaustion took its toll.
When the door was thrown open, the orange light from the hall throwing his rather pitiful shadow across the wall before him, his eyelids fluttered as he worked to gain some shred of awareness. The chains hit the ground with such a clatter that Aramis flinched, his nerves nothing like what they had been before that mess of a mission. Stumbling the entire way, he was pulled down several corridors and into a room he had no time to observe before being forced to his knees beside Porthos. Porthos? Please don't be a dream.
He was dimly aware of a well-dressed man speaking and standing in front of them. "…can't bring them to the king in such a state…"
The king? Aramis ceased paying attention after that. Surely he'd missed some vital piece of information that they were now to be brought before the king, but he was beyond tired and in no frame of mind to attempt piecing anything together as he slowly tipped toward Porthos.