Her voice drifts down the hall, makes Tréville smile in recognition of the tune. She's not singing loud enough for the lyrics to survive their journey from her bedroom, down the hall, and into the living room, but Tréville's heard her sing this song many times over the past few months. He can't help but sing along; whether it's out of shared feelings or simple amusement that his four-year-old granddaughter knows most of the words to Three Dog Night's "One", he can't say for sure. He stands with a groan and stretches before dragging his feet all the way to Mercedes's room.
"Poppy!" She beams at him the instant he slows at her door. Only her head is visible beyond her prized Star Wars bedding, and in the deep shadows of her room, it looks as though that's all there is of her.
"I thought you'd fallen asleep over an hour ago," he sighs while sinking down beside her.
"Daddy's coming home!" Mercedes wiggles out of her cocoon just to settle into the comfort of her granddad's arms.
"Is he?" Tréville pushes the dark bush of curls away from her face and cocks his head in curiosity.
"He told me," she informs her poppy in a tone suggesting this is common information, "in my dream."
Any other day he would persuade her otherwise, settle her back into bed, and distract her with stories until she fell asleep once more. Tonight, though, feels different. Whether it was intuition or something completely different, he'd spent the day waiting for Aramis to call or come strolling in. Even while he sat reading on the couch before coming to check on Mercedes, that premonition returned and grew to the point that his leg bounced restlessly and he reread the same paragraph several times over with no more focus than the time before.
"Read me a story? Please?"
Resistance is futile when Mercedes is involved.
"Which one?"
She slips from his grasp and totters over to her bookcase where she plucks a well-worn paperback from the highest shelf. Mercedes delivers her prize after snuggling back against Tréville.
"The Mole had been working very hard…" Hardly seven pages later, while Ratty discussed the danger of the Wild Wood, Tréville's phone rings and vibrates from the depths of his pants pocket. Mercedes rolls off his lap and watches him with the same cautious hope that sets his heart pounding while he pulls his phone out to answer.
x
Athos sits in the waiting room in silence. His mind, however, is loud. Over and over, he replays the phone call from Aramis in his mind, wondering if anything could have been done differently, if this was the only possible outcome. He's so deep in thought that he nearly misses Tréville entering the waiting room, but his attention is captured by the familiar voice of Mercedes rambling endlessly about her father to the Commissioner.
"Can I pick the color of his cast?"
"What if he doesn't need a cast?" Tréville asks after he spies Athos a short distance across the room.
"It should be blue, Poppy," continues Mercedes, ignoring her grandfather's question in favor of trusting her own intuition. "But he might not pick blue if he's too tired to fink straight. He might pick pink, so we have to pick for him." The one-sided conversation ends abruptly once her eyes settle on the rising form of Athos, at which point she breaks free of Tréville's hold to hug her godfather. "Uncle Afos!"
Athos silently thanks Heaven for Constance, who, only minutes ago, handed Athos clean, dry clothes and shooed him to the bathroom to change. Babbling about what color cast her father should choose is one thing. Seeing her godfather wearing her father's blood is an entirely different issue and one Athos doubts the four-year-old is prepared to handle.
As it is, Athos returns the embrace, the hint of a smile tugging at the corner of his mouth. "Isn't it past your bedtime?" he whispers in her ear.
Dodging the issue of missed sleep, she turns her attention to the small play corner not far from the chair Athos vacated. "Can I go play?" The moment she is told yes, she rushes away to entertain herself, leaving the adults to themselves.
Athos pulls the older man into an embrace that is quick yet overflowing with support.
"Have they told you anything?" Tréville asks in a hushed voice once he settles into a well-cushioned chair. Athos shakes his head, unconsciously throws a glance in the direction of the OR Aramis was whisked into. "How did he look?"
"Tired," Athos remembers. "He sounded it on the phone, and he looked it when I got to him though he had just been shot and strangled."
Tréville takes a moment to digest this before inquiring, "Is his cover blown?". He's answered with a clipped nod. The events of this evening certainly suggested Aramis's inability to continue this case undercover, but the possibilities were nigh on endless when dealing with the Court of Miracles.
"Do we know if he found anything?"
Athos shakes his head and rubs a hand across his face while Tréville takes a deep breath and considers the little information he has.
"Have we established a protective detail yet?" The Commissioner asks because, as members of law enforcement, one of their top priorities is now ensuring the safety of a key witness, although he cannot deny the father in him just wants his son to be safe and protected from further harm, and this is his first chance to do so in months.
"Yes, sir. Uniforms as well as plain clothes. Cornet's scheduled rotations. I'm sure Anne has the details for you."
They lapse into silence once more, their minds drifting off in the hospital's ambience and the rain pattering against the building. Not fifteen minutes later, the somber mood and her own fatigue draw Mercedes back to Athos and Tréville. Using her Poppy's coat as a blanket and Athos's lap for a pillow, she soon drifts to sleep.
"You look like you could use this."
Athos nearly jumps out of his skin. Half asleep and leaning his head against his now numb hand, he completely failed to see anyone approach.
Constance hands a cup of coffee to Tréville and then one to Athos, making sure the younger man's hold on the cup is secure before withdrawing her hands. Athos fails suppress a yawn and lifts his head up to flex his tingling hand and wrist. Tilting his head from side to side, his neck cracks several times, and Athos groans as the sore muscles of his neck and back protest the stretching.
"Here," she offers and scoops Mercedes off his lap so he can stand and stretch properly. She wanders a little way away from then before settling into a chair of her own with Aramis's child tucked safely against her chest.
After several sips of coffee and a moment more to gather enough energy, Athos pushes himself off of his seat, stands, and shakes his legs out to reestablish proper blood flow.
"Where's the man who helped him?" Tréville asks, weary beyond reason.
"He's downstairs being treated for minor injuries. I can take you to him. Constance will let us know if anything changes up here."
Tréville looks to his sleeping granddaughter for a moment before rising and gesturing for Athos to lead the way.
They walk to the elevator and proceed to the appropriate curtained space in the ER. Tréville barely makes eye contact with the man being treated within when Athos shows him a message from Constance.
He's out of surgery. Doc to call with update.
The Commissioner briefly looks back at the man Athos says helped Aramis; then he stalks away as quickly as he'd arrived.
In the privacy of the elevator, Tréville murmurs, "I need to meet with Porthos privately. Keep it between us."
Athos nods, but his silence speaks for itself even if he refuses to prompt Tréville for an explanation.
"Something about all of this is... Until I hear from Aramis, this case is sealed, need to know only. Call Pietro. If anyone tries to access the files or find Aramis's orders, I want to know about it."
The doors slide open, making way for Tréville to stride down the hall to speak with the doctor. Athos remains in the cab. The doors slide shut before he makes a move to head back down. He calls Pietro, conveys Tréville's order, and pockets his phone by the time the cab enters the disorienting slow of its descent.
After disembarking, he seeks out Porthos, and the man follows Athos to a secluded area of the hospital with very little effort on Athos's part.
"Tell me everything."
"Are you always this blunt?" Porthos asks with a hint of a smile. "How do you know Tréville?" he asks instead when Athos is silent.
"I've served under him for years, but he's recently been named Commissioner."
Porthos raises his eyebrows at that. "Had he told me when I saw him last week, I could have congratulated him properly."
"How do you know him?" Athos counters.
"Old family friend. Been out of touch until recently. I just finished my last tour in The Sandbox, honorable discharge and all that. He wanted to meet for coffee last week, told me I should consider joining the force."
"What were you doing on the east side?" It's snapped but not quite sharp. Porthos reminds himself that this grump interrogating him is the partner of an injured officer being treated elsewhere in the hospital. The waspishness isn't necessarily personal.
"You know people live over there, right?" He can't resist the jab. The neighborhoods aren't as pristine as those on the west side, and the businesses may not be as absurdly elegant as the north side's, but they are just as much part of the city as the other districts.
Athos's face doesn't even twitch.
"I grew up on the East Side. Had a friend keeping an eye on my car while I was deployed. Didn't have anywhere else to go, so I've been sleeping in it. Your partner knocked on the window. I let him in, got him out of there, and the rest you know."
"Did he say anything?"
"Anything specific? Told me his name, age, admitted to being a cop, but I didn't press him for details. We were a bit more focused on the lovely gents chasing us across town. Well, I was anyway. He looked like he was trying not to pass out."
Athos listens, soaks in every word, but writes none of it down.
"Why did you let him in?" Something in Athos's tone tells Porthos this has been bugging the other man, although he can't pinpoint exactly what tells him so.
"Kindness costs me nothing," he informs him after studying him for several seconds.
Athos huffs and shifts his weight for the first time since they stopped to talk. "A rather naive sentiment for a serviceman, wouldn't you say?"
"The kindness costs me nothing. I can't control anyone's response to it. Better to suffer injustice than to be unjust."
"A philosopher, then. I did not expect to discuss Gorgias this evening."
Porthos smiles before considering the events of the evening again. "Any word on how he's doing?"
He watches Athos go absolutely still, considering whether to trust Porthos or not.
"No," he finally relents though Porthos suspects it's a carefully controlled truth. "The Commissioner wishes to speak with you at your earliest convenience."
"The Commissioner or Tréville?" There is a distinction between the office and the man, so Porthos would like to know what state of mind he should enter their meeting with.
Athos looks the slightest bit uncertain before locking his emotions away again. "I confess I'm not sure, but knowing him as you do, you know he will make it immediately clear."
A low chuckle bubbles up from Porthos's chest because Athos is absolutely not wrong.
"He seems to think I should trust you."
"Tréville?" Porthos stands his ground while Athos's eyes search his countenance as though the explanation for such trust could be so easily discovered.
"Aramis."
"Is he normally a good judge of character?" He lets Athos hear his genuine curiosity even though he suspects Athos will keep him at a distance and only reveal what he absolutely must to fulfill his duty.
Meanwhile, Athos dips his head slightly to one side, and a muscle on one side of his mouth twitches upward so quickly before settling again that Porthos suspects it was a hint of a smile.
"He is, though his reckless foolishness often suggests otherwise." Athos pauses again and seems to decide something. "Do you have a place to stay? I expect it will be several days before your car is released to you."
"Huh." He hadn't remotely considered what would happen next, and he admits as much to Athos.
"I keep a spare apartment not far from here that you may use if you wish. It's-". Athos is interrupted by the ringing of his phone. "I need to take this," he sighs after glancing at the caller ID. Before accepting the call, he fishes a card from his phone case. "The offer stands. Call if you need anything."
Watching Athos stalk away at a brisk pace, Porthos drags a hand down his face, the stress and exhaustion of the evening suddenly weighing heavily upon him.
x
"You have to give them something."
Tréville sets his jaw in that way Anne knows means he's about to argue against her.
"You know how they operate. If you don't give them something, they will speculate, and they will tear your office apart for withholding information, for failing to contain the situa-"
"I will not," Tréville interjects, "release information about an ongoing investigation until I have spoken to the only man who knows what the hell happened tonight, and he has been in OR since-"
"I understand." Anne lays her hand on his forearm to ground him. "But you-"
"Press be damned, Anne. This is where I should be." He folds forward, rubs his face after his elbows come to rest on his knees. The doctor was called to a different patient by the time Tréville made it back upstairs, and then he'd had to deal with Mercedes's maternal grandparents who had, somehow, found out that she was with him at the hospital. Bless Constance for volunteering to drive Mercedes to their house despite Mercedes sobbing protests. A bone-weary sigh escapes him, and he thinks now would be a good time to discover an ability to melt into the floor. "Forgive me, Anne. I shouldn't have snapped at you."
"I know how much you love him."
"He makes it damn difficult to be Commissioner and his father."
Anne settles her hands in her lap, glances around the waiting room, readjusts how her ankles are crossed beneath her seat. She sympathizes with him. After all, the circumstances which made him Commissioner also took her fiancé's father before his time; she's more familiar with this waiting room than she cares to be. Wordlessly she stands and leaves to bring the press up to speed: We know little for certain. This remains an ongoing investigation. You will be briefed as we learn more.
x
After Anne departs to do what she does so incredibly well, Tréville takes a moment to gather himself before tentatively making his way to Aramis's room. He's seen his adopted son injured many times before; it came with the parental territory. He's even sat by him laid up in hospital beds more times than he cares to count. It never gets easier, and he hates that after months of Aramis being undercover, this is how they reunite, one sleep-deprived and the other heavily sedated, both utterly exhausted.
Firmly settling into his role as Commissioner, he pushes the door open without hesitation. As long as he's in professional mode, he can do this. He can cross to the bed, see the injured officer, take in the details, seek any indication why the op was so suddenly abandoned. Anything – everything – Aramis had on his person when he arrived at the hospital was already bagged, tagged, entered the chain of custody as possible evidence, so Tréville looks for what couldn't be removed. Aramis's hair is longer than when he'd left, longer than he usually lets it grow. His nails are chewed painfully short in stark contrast to his usually well-manicured hands. Studying his son's face, Tréville agrees with Athos: Aramis looks his trademark level of tired, that specific look of exhaustion that haunts him when he's particularly gripped by a case that won't give him a moment's rest until he has it solved. It feels like looking at a zoomed in portion of a photograph wherein a few details are clear, but he has no grasp of the image at large. As much as Tréville hates it, this is part of why Aramis has been successful undercover in the past. He's not sloppy; he doesn't leave clues out in the open. The only way they're going to understand what happened across town tonight is if the man himself gives them something to work with or, better yet, wakes up to tell the whole story himself.
Coming to this conclusion, Tréville allows his professional mask to fall away as he pulls the chair by the wall over to the bed, and he sinks onto it to wait as he has been since Athos's earlier call.
"Do you know what your daughter told me before Athos called?" he asks his slumbering son, not expecting an answer, only disrupting the unnerving stillness of the room. "She dreamed you told her you were coming back."
Tréville exhales slowly and drinks in the sight of Aramis. Later, he'll consider the reports of the officers on the scene and any witness statements they gathered, and he'll ask himself how many ways this outcome could have been avoided. Now, though, he chooses to sit with the knowledge that Aramis is back and alive even if he isn't whole.
The annoying ring of his work cell startles him, but the man in the bed remains exactly as he was. The Commissioner digs into his pocket for the damn phone and glares at the caller ID.
"Richelieu-"
"Commissioner," Richelieu interrupts in a clipped greeting.
Tréville clenches the hand not holding his phone into a fist before relaxing his hand and rubbing his face. "Mr. Mayor. What can I do for you at-," he glances at his watch, "2:36 I in the morning?"
"You can be in my office within the next 20 minutes, so you can explain what happened earlier."
"Mayor Richelieu, even I don't-"
"No excuses, Commissioner. My office now, or I'll be looking for your resignation in the morning."
The call ends without even a goodbye, leaving Tréville tempted to throw his phone across the room. Instead, he finds his recent call list and taps Athos's contact info followed by the call button.
"Athos, I need you up here," he sighs and hangs up once he knows Athos is on his way up.
He stands, stretches, closes the small gap between the chair and the bed. He can't resist the urge to brush his son's hair away from his face the same way he did so often when Aramis was a child. Christ, his boy looks so small like this. And so damn young. Tréville leans in and presses a gentle kiss above his son's brow. I'll be back, the gesture promises, and it takes every ounce of the Commissioner's rapidly dwindling patience to keep his frustration out of this interaction with his child. Not quite ready to walk away, he lets his forehead rest against Aramis's. Leaving him is the last thing Tréville wants to do, but the sooner he meets with Richelieu, the sooner he can get back to this room. Fuming over the Mayor's demand for a meeting, Tréville trudges out of his son's room to meet Athos.
"Mayor Richelieu wants an update on what's going on." He glances back to the door he'd closed only a moment ago. "Stay with him, please. You know the memories he'll be lost in."
"Of course," Athos responds immediately. Worry over those memories were already heavy on Athos's mind, and he's never willingly abandoned Aramis to the pain of his past. He watches the Commissioner walk away for a moment before entering the hospital room and settling in the still-warm chair beside his friend's bed.
Athos listens to Aramis breathe while the rain continues to batter the windows. The droplets run down the glass, distorting the city lights in mesmerizing splashes of color that hold his attention until his phone vibrates with two quick pulses in his pocket. It's a message from Constance. She's dropped off Mercedes, tells him to let her know if he needs anything before she gets back. He shoots off a quick acknowledgement and returns the device to his pocket.
Looking at his friend, he takes some small comfort in the fact that Aramis looks better than he did following the injury that prompted his medical discharge from Uncle Sam. At least this time his lips aren't purple verging on blue; his skin isn't the terrifying pale that proceeds the sickly yellow and grey of death. A glance at the monitors standing near the head of the bed testifies to the general stability of Aramis's condition, but Athos still can't dispel the knot in his stomach.
Athos sits back and sighs. "You have to give me a clue or something."
Unsurprisingly, Aramis remains unresponsive beside him, so Athos does his best to fill the silence. Humming, recalling the most ridiculous events of Aramis's absence, and reciting whatever bits of literature came to mind, he lets his friend now he's not alone every time the stillness of the room starts to suffocate Athos's carefully maintained air of control.
He's standing at the window when Aramis's breath hitches.
x
Aramis feels trapped in a familiar fog that triggers memories of hands around his throat, the malice in the eyes of his biological father, the screams of his mother no longer intertwining with the sirens drawing closer. His body aches like it did then; the impact with the wall, the dresser, his father's fists fresh in the throbbing agony demanding his attention even through the sluggishness of his mind. His lungs seize in panic. He can't be there, can't witness that night again, can't bear to see her crumpled in the corner-
"You're not there anymore," a voice, one achingly familiar, whispers somewhere off his shoulder.
But if he isn't there, why can he still here the sirens? The wounds feel as fresh as the night his world finally shattered. His throat burns, is swollen from the strangulation. His head pounds, and pain haunts every nerve right down to his bones. He's still in that room, and he's going to die there if he doesn't get out.
"You made it out of that hell hole. You're not there anymore."
Without conscious thought, his arm twitches in search of that familiar voice, the one who wasn't there, never saw how that bastard broke him and stole his mother from him. If he's with Athos, he can't be back in that rathole of an apartment, isn't at the mercy of that man anymore. Warm hands enclose his freezing one. The grip is firm, and he clings to it as he would to a life line.
"Ollie," Aramis manages to rasp.
Athos gives his friend's hand a squeeze. He can measure in years the length of time that's passed since he'd last been called Ollie. Truth be told it was Aramis's fault he'd been called Ollie at all. Before that day, he was only ever Oliver, but Thomas heard Aramis say it which meant there was no escaping the nickname so long as Aramis or Thomas were around. It wasn't long after that day when Aramis confided that although he was named Rene at his father's insistence (though he never called the boy by any of his given names), his mother had always called him Henry when his father couldn't hear them. She had fallen in love with the name when she was young, and Aramis fell in love with it because his father despised it. Thus, in the spirit of brotherhood, Athos abandons Rene in favor of calling his friend Henry, much as he does when the injured Aramis before him calls him Ollie.
"I'm here, Henry."
" 's in...the wi...wild wood." By the end of his hard-fought sentence, Aramis lets loose a terrible hacking cough which saps the last of his energy. Collapsing back into unconsciousness, Aramis leaves his friend pondering what he meant by "the wild wood".