120. The Promise
Sometimes, Athos drank too much.
When it all got too much.
When duty and brotherhood were not sufficient.
When the moon was too bright. When the stars were so plentiful he wanted to share it with her. To gaze up at the wonder and beauty together. But she wasn't here.
When his mind was lost in turmoil because he had loved her. And one day, she was gone. Torn from him completely. So irrevocably, that he had to go too. Anywhere but there. Pinon was tainted. All that he knew, gone in an instant.
The moon still appeared every night. Hanging majestically over the earth, where people continued to live their lives. But his life had ended that day. All gone. All for nothing. Why couldn't they see it? He was a ghost. An empty shell.
His heart stuttered. His breath caught. His head ached. And all he saw, was her.
Once willingly held captive in a golden cage, the key was a turn of her head, a look from those green eyes. Her hair was the black-blue of a raven's wing. The sway of her hips, exaggerated just for him. Her lips, pressed together to tantalise, to draw his attention from her eyes and then, released into that knowing smile, drawing him in completely. How was he to live without her? And then, treacherously, he did.
So, sometimes, he drank too much.
He welcomed that moment when he tipped over. Oblivion was now the draw, though her face was never far away. He wanted to push her away, but took perverse comfort in her ethereal presence, clinging to the hard reality of the token he wore, his fingers reaching for it before his mind requested it. His body betraying him still on matters of her.
Not caring what became of him during those times. How he got home. Sometimes, of course, he didn't.
Occasionally, he woke in the Infirmary.
"Just a precaution," Aramis would say lightly the following day, though his eyes betrayed his true manner.
He knew it scared Aramis.
Sometimes he didn't care.
And that made Aramis angry.
But he had enough anger in him for the both of them.
Aramis knew that. He walked a fine line with Athos.
How had she the power to raise so many emotions in him and those around him? The storm that swirled around them overwhelming everything else, furious and bleak.
He knew the answer, of course.
Because he allowed it. He permitted it. He set her free the moment he sat alone in a dark corner and raised the first cup to his lips. After that, dead as she was, she had control, and he lost his own in the miasma of memories. She was beside him then once more, until he drowned her out with cup after cup, bottle after bottle of cheap wine. She did not go quietly.
But they were beside him too now.
"Just a precaution," Aramis smiled tightly, as he woke to the white-walled room, dim now as one of them had kindly closed the shutters in anticipation of his rude awakening. A bad night, then.
He had started off alone, he remembered, and was probably too far gone by the time they found him.
They had actually found him behind the tavern, staring up at the night sky. It did not look as if he had drunk too much, though of course, he had, evidenced when he turned his eyes on them. They had walked him back, until he had stopped abruptly. He had seemed obsessed with the moon, not caring where his feet took him. Then, his knees had finally buckled and Porthos had folded him over his broad shoulder and they had detoured to the Infirmary as his behaviour had unnerved Aramis.
He had been a dead weight then as he slipped deeper, their only problem keeping him alive.
It had been a long night, but they had pulled him back.
His eyes now slid painfully around the room to alight on the bottles and bowls arrayed untidily on the table top, evidence of a flurry of activity.
Her pull had been strong then. But, theirs was stronger, it seemed.
Porthos was standing by the window, his arms crossed over his chest, hands holding his biceps tightly. A deep frown creased his brow in a face that couldn't be read at the moment. Aramis sat to his left, swimming into view on a painful wave that made him squeeze his eyes shut.
Had he pushed them away finally?
Ironic that he could not do that to his ghost of a wife, but may have finally succeeded with these men who had shown him more tolerance and care than she ever had.
He felt the moisture that gathered behind his eyelids escape and run down his face.
The anger he usually hurled at them at such times caught in his throat in a long, hopeless groan of shame and regret. The resultant sob half-choked him, but he didn't care.
He'd drunk himself into the Infirmary; a place he normally had to be pushed or carried into. His shame was complete.
His wish to be alone though, was strangely absent.
That was his heartbreak now. These men were his brothers. His family. He could not lose them by his own hand. Could he?
"She was particularly fierce last night," Aramis said, gently, leaning forward to place a cool cloth gently on his forehead.
"Persistent," Porthos agreed, his voice pitched low, as he wrapped a large warm hand around his own.
They would do that for him still? Speak softly. With no recrimination? Had he scared them so that they dare not scold him for his self-destructing ways?
Aramis surreptitiously wiped his face, the evidence of his tears quickly swept away.
The silence was overwhelming.
"Brother ..." Aramis said then, his tone cautious.
Athos waited for whatever was forthcoming, for he surely deserved it. He gave Aramis his full attention, eyes wide and blinking against a threatening flood.
"Promise us," Aramis continued, "You will not drink like that on your own again. We barely got to you in time."
Athos felt Porthos squeeze his hand.
One day, her ghost may leave him and the sentence she had cast on him would be over, though he doubted he deserved that release. Until then, his penance would continue, no doubt. But he could promise them this, until such time as she left him, or he gained the strength to banish her. For he did not want to banish them. That, truly would be too much to bear.
"I promise," he heard himself say. And, for good measure, he said it again. His word to both of them.
"It is all we ask," Aramis said, smiling at him so sincerely he felt his tired heart lurch.
It is all I can offer.
He nodded though, a tilt of his head to both and utter sincerity in his eyes.
He would fight beside them. He would safeguard them with sound strategy. He would love them and lay down his life for these men. One day, one day, he would hope to do more. He would promise to safeguard himself. Until she left him, until he let her go, he would keep his promise to them.
The promise was a haunting in itself but one he gladly welcomed if it kept these men in his life. She made him weak but they gave him strength.
He would take that care they now requested of him.
That was the promise he made to himself this day.
oOo
Thanks for reading! More soon.