A/N: Apologies for this chapter seeming to be so late. I did post on time, but the site glitched and the chapter retained last week's update date, which meant the story didn't go to the top of the list. It's fixed now. Thanks to Helensg for the heads up over on AO3.

Warning: One of the characters in this chapter has suicidal thoughts – only thoughts.

Little bit of a change in this chapter…

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Chapter Twenty: The Boy

As he rode at the head of their group towards Foulebec, Athos lowered the brim of his hat to better shield his eyes from the bright sun, hoping to prevent his slight headache from becoming something much worse. He was not up to dealing with yet another migraine so soon after the last.

As much as he might want otherwise, his thoughts kept straying towards the Boy. When he'd scolded the Boy for not paying attention in that tavern in Ponteau de Mer, he'd felt guilt afterwards for how he'd treated the younger man. It was a more recent trend that challenged his stubborn refusal to get to know the other Musketeer.

It hadn't been the first time he'd felt something close to remorse for his actions against the young man since he'd awakened to discover a world where too many months had gone by without him being able to remember a single minute of it. The first instance had been the day that he and the Boy had sparred for the first and last time. When Captain Tréville had assigned him, Porthos, and Aramis to training with swords alongside the Boy, Athos had mentally cursed a blue streak, but he had known there was nothing to be done about the assignment.

Waiting to take their turns out on the practice field, Porthos and Aramis had tried to convince him that he'd been the Boy's mentor in the art of swordplay, and that the younger man was now one of the best in the regiment. He'd scoffed at the idea, but had been curious enough to watch the Boy while he sparred with Bujold. What he'd seen had not done much to convince him of his friends' assertions, but he'd recognized something in the Boy's style which had prompted him to challenge the Gascon.

Admittedly, when the accident had happened, he had not been following his own advice about not letting emotion rule over his actions. He had been so satisfied with defeating the Boy, using a move that any protégé of his should have been capable of defending, that he'd not immediately recognized he had hurt his opponent. When he had realized, he had instantly regretted his aggression during the fight and doing the other man harm, actually apologizing to the Boy. Athos had never intended to hurt the younger man regardless of his dislike of him.

To say that Porthos and Aramis had been angry with him for what he'd done was an understatement, though these days irritated seemed to be their default with him. It was a rare occurrence when they weren't giving him grief for something he had said or done recently. Most of the time, he tuned them out when they brought up anything to do with the Boy and had become exceptionally talented at ignoring them as of late.

Other than the fact that he was a Musketeer and therefore a brother-in-arms, Athos couldn't understand why his closest friends cared so much about the Boy. He couldn't understand why Aramis and Porthos seemed so intent on getting him to accept the Boy as part of their team.

The first face he'd seen when he had awakened to a strange new world with a headache of epic proportions had been that of the Boy's. While his vision had been clearing, he'd momentarily thought the younger man sitting by his bedside had been his brother, Thomas.

For that all too-brief amount of time, he had forgotten his younger brother had been murdered. He had forgotten about the blood dripping from Anne's hands. He'd forgotten about Catherine's scream as well as his wife begging for mercy. He had forgotten he'd executed his wife. For those few moments, he had felt contentment.

But then the face in front of him had snapped into focus, and he'd realized the dark hair and dark eyes had not belonged to his brother. The fact that the brother he'd failed to protect had been murdered had come back to him like a crashing wave, bringing with it a surge of pain in his head. Nearly unbearable pain, along with guilt-and-shame inducing memories he wished he could erase from his mind, and the extreme disappointment it had not actually been his brother at his bedside, combined to create an instant dislike and distrust of a stranger that had been so delighted and relieved to see him awake.

Since that day, he had done everything in his power to keep the Boy at arms' length. He had done everything he could to disentangle his friends from the young man who had dared to attempt to ingratiate himself to the Inseparables, but they refused to give in, remaining steadfast in their support of the Boy. While he admired Aramis and Porthos for that, he was perfectly happy to be one of three and had no interest in admitting a fourth to their squad.

He knew he wasn't giving the young man a fair chance, and that he was essentially punishing the Boy for not being his brother while blaming him for his current situation. Porthos and Aramis had tried to get him to listen to them regarding the Boy, but he had refused. They had told him that he was not acting like the man they had become friends with, but he couldn't seem to care that his behavior had changed. Because of those first waking moments, he simply couldn't bear to be in the Gascon's presence without being reminded of how much of a failure he had been as brother, husband, and comte. If, according to Aramis, that made him mumpsimus* then so be it.

When he had first joined the Musketeers, he had eschewed all of his fellow brothers-in-arms, keeping alcohol as his closest, dearest companion. He had yet to fail his supply of wine, nor it, him.

He had definitely not wanted to make any friends and risk failing them too. Instead, he had been perfectly happy to do his duty before attempting to make a dent in the city's wine supply when off duty. The only variety in his schedule was the location where he drank – either in a dark corner of a tavern or in the privacy of his own barren room. He hadn't wanted either Porthos or Aramis in his life aside from being their fellow Musketeer, but they had managed to slowly tear his walls down enough to become his friends. Despite not being the ideal friend to them, he couldn't seem to shake to the two men.

Joining the Musketeers had been equal parts penance for his numerous failures and a desire to see an end to his miserable life through more honorable means. Nightly over-indulgence in alcohol had helped keep his nightmares at bay while he waited for the inevitable. He'd been a failure at everything else; didn't it follow that he would fail at being a soldier?

Instead, he had become a failure at meeting a much-desired and much-deserved end to his life. Aramis and Porthos had been rather persistent in wanting to get to know him at a time when he had neither needed nor wanted friends. Aside from his two friends and Tréville, he didn't think he needed any others in his life. They had made him promise to never actively seek death after a particularly bad mission that had left him half dead protecting his friends without regard to his own life. Promise or not, it didn't mean he wouldn't gladly accept death for the sins he had committed in his former life. It may have been his duty, and it may have been according to the law, but that didn't mean it hadn't left a stain on his soul that was in any way easy to live with.

Tréville, Porthos, and Aramis… They were more than he'd ever thought he would have again in his life. They are his brothers-in-arms, friends and brothers of the heart. No one else need apply.

Yet, those three men had said that the Boy was also a cherished friend, that he'd allowed someone else passed his walls. According to them, the Gascon considered him his best friend and mentor. He simply couldn't picture it, and received a severe migraine when he had tried to do so.

In fact, the Boy was the cause of most of his headaches – both literally and figuratively – since he had awakened without his memories of the past. He took it as a sign that he wasn't meant to let the Boy in a second time – if indeed there had been a first time.

He hadn't admitted this to his two friends, but they had probably guessed it anyway. The abyss that had been created in his memories was something he despised and feared in equal measure. Nothing more than feelings of familiarity had come back to him in the weeks since his injury. Things had changed at the garrison: people he had served with had died; new recruits had come along and had gained their commissions; and he had been promoted. For the most part, the men were patient with his condition, but at the same time, it grated on his nerves to be an object of pity.

What frightened him most was that he had no idea what more of his life had been revealed to his friends. He had inquired about the missing time, but was certain they were skipping details they felt he wouldn't be able to cope with. At times, from the way they acted, he was certain Porthos and Aramis knew things they shouldn't, but he couldn't be sure what exactly they knew. He was reluctant to ask for more detail for fear of giving something away he didn't want anyone else to know about. However, if they wouldn't tell him the whole truth about the past couple of years, then anything they said about his supposed friend, this Boy from Gascony, was circumspect. Athos didn't believe they were lying, but instead thought they were definitely exaggerating the truth.

Aramis and Porthos had explained that they thought it best he remembered on his own about the missing time. Yet, he felt there was something more to it than that, something that sent a chill down his spine at odd times whenever he considered his past. Every second of every day he was aware that something was missing and sometimes dreaded the unknown. He hated it more than he thought he would considering his failed former life as a comte, especially after spending years wishing he could forget those years.

He was apprehensive about what his friends might have learned of his past life, and wondered if as his supposed friend, the Boy knew any of it. That Porthos and Aramis knew something was one thing, but it vexed him to no end that the Boy, a stranger to him, had knowledge of him that he did not currently have due to his memory loss.

The whole situation frustrated him beyond his endurance at times, and more often than not, he took to drink or took it out on the Boy – or both. At first, he enjoyed it, and then it simply became a habit to treat the younger man so poorly. He knew it was wrong of him to do thusly, but he couldn't seem to help himself. His mind rebelled, sometimes even causing him severe pain, against any attempts to accept the Boy as anything more than a source of annoyance. Normally, he had no difficulty in accepting other Musketeers as brothers-in-arms, even if they did not become more than acquaintances to him, but something within him would not allow that smallest of steps in regards to the Gascon.

After a spike of pain briefly seared through his right eye, warning him that his slight headache might turn into a migraine, Athos attempted to turn his mind away from the Boy and towards the mission Tréville had sent them on. He was not blind to his Captain's efforts to get him to give the Boy another chance. The Captain, along with Aramis and Porthos, had been extolling the younger man's virtues for weeks, and he couldn't help but wonder how exaggerated they were, especially after the short missions they'd been assigned together.

Tréville even quoted something to him that he had supposedly once said about the Gascon: D'Artagnan has it in him to be a fine Musketeer, perhaps the greatest of us all.* He couldn't comprehend giving such praise to someone, and could not fathom that the description of "greatest" ever fitting anyone but Tréville.

The older man had quite literally picked him up from the gutter, and had dared him to do something better with his life besides getting blindingly drunk every day. He'd only considered the idea because the thought had entered into his mind that, through the Musketeers, he could find a more honorable death than one from choking on his own vomit. Over time, he'd come to respect his Captain, but in this case, he still couldn't seem to accept anything the man had been saying about the Boy.

The young man obviously had some amount of talent as a soldier if he'd not served in the guards or regular army first before becoming a Musketeer. However, aside from some skill with a blade, he couldn't see there was anything special about the Gascon.

Thus far on their mission, he had suffered two severe migraines, alerting the Boy to the fact that he was still being plagued by the aftereffects of his head injury. Athos had not wanted the Boy to know something so personal or to show any weakness, but he'd not been able to hide his pain from the younger man for very long out on the road. Thankfully, the Boy had kept his distance and had not pretended to care or tried to help attend him.

Both migraines had left him lethargic and exhausted from being in such pain for seemingly hours on end. They had also left his thoughts muddled due to the random pieces of memory which had flashed through his mind yet refused to coalesce into something recognizable. Most likely the confusing flashes were his lost memories. They taunted him, hinting of their continued existence before they faded away into the deepest recesses of his mind and once again taking away his hope he would ever get them back.

In many of the confusing images, he thought he had caught glimpses of the Boy, but he could not be certain. When he tried to concentrate on any of the images trying to break free, his head only ached all the more, which prompted him to stop trying all together.

Aside from the rare bout of dizziness, the migraines and his recovery from them had made it more difficult than usual for him to get a good grasp on the mission that they had been sent on. They had gained enough details for him to come to the conclusion in that tavern that there was at least one, maybe more, collaborators or informants aiding the raiders. From the Boy's expression when he'd announced his theory, he was certain the younger man must also have come to the same conclusion. Athos did not understand why the information had not been shared with them, but as he had no proof, could not reprimand the Boy for the breach.

In his mind, it had been just another reason why the Gascon should be assigned elsewhere. Regardless of the unrest between the four of them, Athos expected them to work as a unified group. However, it was now obvious that the young man was unwilling to put his head over his heart in this matter. He was now more determined than ever that, when this mission was over, the Boy would no longer be part of their squad.

Yet, why wasn't he happier about his decision?

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To be continued

Next time: Chapter Twenty-one: Attacked Redux

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Story/History Notes:

Mumpsimus: Adherence to, or persistence in, an erroneous use of language, practice, belief, etc., out of habit or obstinacy. A person who persists in a mistaken expression or practice. Originally, it was a noun denoting an incorrigible, dogmatic old pendant. I came across this word in a book called "Forgotten English" by Jeffrey Kacirk (1997; pgs. 86-87). I immediately thought of Athos when I read it, so I was happy I could incorporate the word into this story.

"D'Artagnan has it in him to be a fine Musketeer….": Quoted from episode 1.08, The Challenge, written by Susie Conklin.

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A/N: Considering how I left the last chapter, I thought a change in point of view might be needed… Apologies for not resolving the cliffhanger.

Many thanks to Celiticgal1041 and Tidia for proofing this chapter for me. Remaining mistakes are my fault.

Thanks for reading!