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Missing scene for season 1, episode 1, 'Friends and Enemies'
By Deana
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She left me hanging.
Aramis gave an inward hysterical laugh at that. Adele literally had left him hanging out her window...her second story window. What was he supposed to do now? How on earth would he get down without breaking something? If he was lucky, it would be just one leg. If he was unlucky, it would be both of them. If he were really unlucky, it would be his neck.
A flash of panic filled Aramis. He was hanging by his hands from a second story window with no way to get down!
Sudden laughter filled the air, and for a second, he thought that Cardinal Richelieu had spotted him and he was doomed. When he realized that it was actually Porthos, relief filled him enough to make him laugh too. His friends had come to the rescue!
"How do you expect to get down from there?" Athos suddenly shouted.
Aramis risked looking down, and saw how small they looked from his vantage point. He was wrong; his friends couldn't help him get down. "You tell ME!" he exclaimed.
Athos and Porthos heard the fear in his voice, and they quickly looked around for anything they could use.
"Just hang on, Aramis!" Porthos called out, standing beneath him in case he fell.
"Easy for you to say!" Aramis shot back.
Athos spotted a cart full of hay down the road and quickly ran over to it, grabbing it and pushing it towards his friends.
"Hey!" its owner shouted.
"I'll bring it right back!" Athos exclaimed.
Pain was spreading through Aramis' shoulders and arms from dangling for so long. "I can't hold on anymore!" he called down.
"Let go!" Porthos said, bracing the cart so it wouldn't roll away on the sloped road.
"What?!" Aramis looked down, but moving proved to be his undoing when his hands slipped off the windowsill and he fell with a shocked cry.
Porthos and Athos gasped despite themselves, even though their friend landed safely in the hay.
Aramis just laid there for a few seconds, catching his breath as relief overcame him. "Ow," he said.
"Are you all right?" Porthos nervously asked, still holding the cart steady.
"I…think I found the needle in the haystack," Aramis answered.
Athos rolled his eyes. "Come down from there."
Aramis slowly sat up, not realizing that hay was sticking out of his hair. Rolling slightly onto one side, he saw that the hay pile he was laying on was too tall for him to jump off.
Athos moved closer to the cart to offer assistance.
Aramis carefully tried to stand up in the hay which kept shifting under his boots. There was nothing really for him to hold onto unless he got himself in between the hay and the wood of the cart, and it was a dangerous trip down.
"Easy does it!" Porthos warned, as the cart shifted a little because of Aramis' movement.
Aramis somehow succeeded and started to climb over the side with arms that felt as heavy as a horse after holding all of his weight on that windowsill.
Athos reached up a hand once Aramis was close enough, and didn't expect Aramis to step down onto his shoulder. Taken by surprise, he pulled his hand back to grip his friend's leg so he wouldn't fall, not realizing that Aramis had reached down to take his hand.
Unbalanced, Aramis fell to the ground and landed flat on his back.
Porthos let go of the cart, not caring if it rolled away now. He dashed to his friend's side and knelt. "Aramis!"
Aramis' eyes were squeezed shut and he was gasping, the breath having been painfully knocked out of his lungs by the impact. "Ow," he said again.
Athos was mortified. "Are you all right?" he asked, even though it was a ridiculous question.
Aramis opened his eyes and blinked up at the window that he'd just been hanging from before looking at his friends. "Well…" He coughed. "At least…I'm down."
"In more ways than one," said Porthos. "But now, are you able to get up?" he asked, picking hay out of Aramis' hair.
Aramis took a few more breaths before holding out his slightly-shaking hands so his two friends could pull him to his feet. Once upright, Aramis winced and stepped back on wobbly legs to lean on the hay cart, but was surprised to find that it was no longer there.
Someone's shouting suddenly filled their ears, and all three of them turned to see the cart rolling down the street, with its owner chasing after it.
"Right; time to go!" said Porthos, grabbing Aramis' weapons from the ground.
"Time to stop seeing Adele," Athos told Aramis. "The cardinal's mistress. How many times do we have to tell you?! What if we hadn't come along just now?"
Aramis sighed as his two friends grabbed his arms and marched him towards the garrison. He had a feeling this was going to be an unpleasant conversation.
THE END
