Firstly, thank you to the Guest reviewer whom I can't reply in person - I'm very pleased to hear you enjoyed the first one, and hope the rest meets the expectation. :)
This is several scraps left over from another story of mine, Thirty Minutes Out, stitched together like a patchwork. If you've read it, some passages here will be familiar. Do not expect much coherence. This, too, is very much Athos, and quite heavily angsty, but the others will be making an appearance soon - specifically, d'Artagnan. Thanks for reading.
I.
It's not been a good day.
It's not been a good day and it's not over yet. Athos ignores the woman who walks in unceremoniously to shut the window close, prattling on about the storm that's coming, and raises the cup to his mouth, frowning at how badly his hand seems to be shaking. Tries not to glance at how much of the drink spills on the desk, which is a useless attempt at best, and ends up staring as the red blotches grow before his eyes and his mind goes blank. It's too familiar a view - what is happening?
His frown deepens. It's not been a good day.
After a week of fighting, the city's been breached soon after sunrise. Now, by nightfall, the situation's mostly under control. He's commandeered a room in a wealthy merchant's house as a temporary command centre, and has done the man a favour by doing so because the Musketeers' presence is keeping the looters at bay. The merchant's wife is infinitely grateful. Athos orders a lad to stand by the door and not let the woman come anywhere near him again. He can't – doesn't want any women near him tonight. Any woman, womenfolk – not now – not after what he's seen (what he's remembered). There's still too much going on – Porthos has been gone for hours; D'Artagnan, since yesterday.Does he live? - his heart palpitates and he grunts – what is happening?
Has he forgotten to eat? (Has he remembered to eat?)
He puts the cup down, makes his hand unclench from it and raises it to press still trembling fingers on his eyes, hard until the dark turns to red. Where there's usually ordered silence in his mind, he feels the distinctly growing sounds of an approaching crowd; he casts about for calm like an unsettled parent calling his child home, because whatever this is, it feels ominous, even dangerous. This feeling of - unravelling – this silent flying apart - it has to stop. There's too much he needs to—but his heart thuds and he stops.
He will not do this. He will not - he won't dwell.
He will weather it instead.
He shuts the door and sits.
II.
Solitude, these days, is at the top of things that Athos seeks. It's become the rarest of luxuries, up there with a bathtub and clean water, along with white bread and common sense. Now that he has it, in a room between ceaseless footfalls outside the door and the mayhem of a town under invasion outside the window, his gratitude knows no bounds. He needs no witness. He's never needed them.
He knows what's coming.
It was bound to happen.
In retrospect, when he emerges from the other side of it, he might even be thankful for the timing.
III.
The wind howls through a crack in the window frame.
Athos's head snaps towards the voice. He's almost expecting to see a woman - that woman, the one he saw today – slumped down there, unable to rise, unable to die, crying out through her unending pain. But there is, of course, no one before the window, inside or out, and the wind doesn't howl again, as if that one single wail was a precisely thrown dagger, aimed to pierce and penetrate through time, cutting through memories still too fresh, and too tender to touch.
Athos glares at the window. If he could fight the wind, he would strangle it with bare hands.
Once, years ago, he'd been returning to the garrison in Paris after a rare night of unmoderated indulgence when he'd heard a scream that had nailed his feet to the ground. A single, sharp scream of torment; a woman's voice, without a doubt, and his body had suddenly stopped responding to his commands. Next thing he knew, he was not where he had just been, and his sword was in his hand. He'd blinked, looking around to get his bearings, but recognized nothing. Another scream had followed, turning into a babbling cry before getting dragged into the silence, swallowed by the night.
He had woken up in the street, unable to recall anything, with the bitterest of aftertastes in his mouth.
He'd resolved never to let himself sink to that level again. Never whilst he wore the uniform.
But from there on, it had been a landslide.
IV.
It is most likely because he's not even blinked in the last three days. Ate; he knows only because he wouldn't still be on his feet if he hadn't, and the weight of three years of fighting that has been accumulating insidiously would have come crashing down on his head at the first sign of weakness anyhow; Athos might not have noticed it but his defences have been steadily worn down.
So lost he is now, so adrift that he doesn't hear the voices outside the door before it's flung open without a knock, and Porthos barges in with his no-nonsense "Athos, we need to—", stops short and changes track to "What the..." before hurrying inside and crouching in front of him. Confusion creases his face; he barks to the lad at the door without turning from Athos, to go find a physician. The urgency in the request takes its own time reaching through the heavy fog smothering Athos's senses; Porthos reaches unsurely to rest a hand on Athos's neck, and Athos can finally react, reach up a hand to clutch at his friend's wrist, trying to tell him not to worry, that it's nothing; but all he can do is to gasp and it's ridiculous and only serves to make Porthos's frown deepen.
Athos needs no physician. He needs news – he needs good news of d'Artagnan. He needs news of Aramis, too- isn't it ridiculous how even his wants and needs have shrunk to accommodate to the limits of possibility, because he needs, needs, needs Aramis but news of him Athos can have; Aramis himself, he can't. The friend who left is never too far from his thoughts – and it's another something he deals with by ignoring it. Athos needs peace, a moment of peace, a moment of silence within this unending chaos that has become his life; just a bit of solitude to gather himself, to put back his walls and feel sure-footed again-
Somewhere along the line, without his noticing, everything melts into a pot, and he falls into it and silence engulfs the world.
V.
When he comes to his senses, after who knows how much time -for all he can tell is that the night has deepened-, Porthos is with him. He watches Athos carefully for long moments, and when he finally speaks, it is to report that he's found d'Artagnan, safe, but wounded (wounded, but safe). He's in a brickmaker's house across the other side of the town and Vidal is with him.
Athos sits up, grabs the cup he'd left on the desk, empties it, and goes back to work.