No.18 Panic! At The Disco

Prompt: #18 panic attacks

Aramis awoke to the smell of blood and snow.

What in God's name…?

The panic was almost instant. He lurched to his knees, shivering. His heart jolted in his chest. The world around him - trees, a leaden sky and snowy ground - was rippling in and out of focus. His head hurt. When he brought his hand up, he found his hair and the side of his face sticky. His glove came away red.

Oh, please, no.

Struggling to his feet, pulse racing, he saw movement between the trees.

Marsac? Had he come back to-

Aramis clutched his head and took a deep breath. No. This wasn't Savoy. Savoy happened years ago. Time did not repeat itself. It didn't, it-

The shadows seemed to come alive as he looked around him, clueless as to where he was or how he'd got here, but when he squinted at the tree line, he didn't see anyone. All he heard was his own breath and the crunch of his boots sinking deep into the snow as he staggered across the small clearing. His clothes were frozen stiff on one side, his hat was missing. Looking down, he saw his rapier swinging from his belt, but no musket. Hoofprints had kicked up the snow where he stood, leading away in a trail - a single animal had fled this place.

Had he been on horseback and fallen?

Aramis waited for memories to flood back in, but he drew a complete blank. There was nothing. The last thing he remembered was kneeling down for his evening prayers beside his bunk.

Head wound. He had a head wound.

With shaking fingers, he probed his skull again. His hands were so cold inside the gloves, he could barely feel anything, but he thought there was a lump above his temple, and touching it stung. Dried blood was caking the collar of his shirt and had soaked into his leather doublet. He must have bled quite a lot.

Memory loss. A concussion?

It was at least that, judging by the nausea building in his stomach, the dizziness and his compromised vision. He could see a little better now, but when he moved his head, the blurriness returned. Not much he could do about that now. But he had to do something about the cold. He had to find shelter.

The snap of a twig made him turn around. The shadows between the trees had darkened - it had to be afternoon. Again, Aramis didn't see anything. It must have been an animal. Another worry to add to his list.

Where was his pistol?

He stumbled back to the spot where he'd woken up, brightly marked with his own blood and the shape of his body pressed into the snow. His spine tingled and his head throbbed as he searched the ground. Behind a tree trunk, badly visible in a bed of rotting leaves, he found what he'd been looking for: he picked his pistol up and brushed the snow off before tucking it back into his belt.

Better.

His hat, however, was nowhere to be found, and he eventually gave up on it. The sky was beginning to darken. Nightfall couldn't be far away, and the temperature was dropping even further. His headache had been a distraction from the cold, but Aramis was shivering so wildly now that he could barely control his hands anymore. He tucked them under his armpits and decided to move.

The snow was deep, and walking was hard work. Soon, his breath was coming in quick gasps, and his head was throbbing ever more painfully from the exertion. At least moving warmed him up a little. He was still shivering, but not as badly as before. Or, possibly, his hypothermia had moved past the point of freezing. In that case…

Aramis didn't finish the thought. He ploughed on, wondering where his comrades were. Had he been on a solo mission? A private affair? A memory tickled his brain but refused to surface.

Night fell as suddenly as Aramis had feared. What little light there had been, vanished with barely a warning, and Aramis found himself trudging through a landscape lit obscurely by moonlight on snow. Wind rustled the dry leaves. Shadows sidled between the trees.

That was when the ghosts came.

He'd held them bravely at bay. But exhaustion mixed with the effects of his head injury now, and reality - as hard as he'd clung to it - was receding. The snow glittered. Mist collected in the shadows and reshaped into faces. White faces. Dead faces.

Marcel. Christian. Bruno. Severin.

Aramis shook his head to clear it. It was no use. His heart beat in throat.

Jurek. Davide. Sebastien. Denis.

Milky-eyed and with open mouths, his fallen brothers gathered around him. He stopped. Fear reached deep into his chest and clamped around his heart. In spite of the cold, he broke into a sweat.

Mario. Bernard. Timoté. Martin.

They stood to muster, with a caved-in skull, a shredded shoulder, a gaping stomach wound and a slashed throat.

Aramis tried to chase the images away like the crows he'd once chased away from their dead bodies. He stopped walking and stood swaying in the snow, staring wild-eyed into the darkness.

It's not real. You're not real. You're not-

Something brushed past his cheek. It could have been anything - a gust of wind, a bat, a figment of his imagination. But it sent him over the edge.

Panting, he sank down on his knees. His heart hammered in his ears. He couldn't breathe. Panicked, he wanted to move, to run. But he couldn't. He was frozen in place, frozen in the snow, frozen to the ground that was cold and wet and soaking into his knees like blood.

Alain. Fabien. Christophe. Pablo.

Their fingers, white and spidery and dead reached for him, their faces tableaus of rotting horror.

Aramis screamed, but no sound came. He screamed inside, and his head wanted to split, and even if it did, he wasn't sure he cared. A keening sound made it past his lips as he cradled his head and curled in on himself.

Alone. He was alone, being torn to shreds by the ghosts of Savoy, and no one was going to save him this time. No one was-

"Aramis!"

Instinctively, he fought against the voice and the hands touching him. Eyes closed, he clawed at the creature about to pull him into Hell.

"Aramis, stop it! Look at me!"

With a gasp, Aramis tore his eyes open. And looked into Porthos' worried face.

He was too real to be a ghost. He hadn't been at Savoy. He smelled of horse and leather and gun oil. He smelled real.

"Aramis?" Brown eyes, so familiar, so safe, bore into his.

"Porthos?" Aramis could only whisper. But he could also breathe.

"Yeah. I'm here." His big hands remaining on Aramis, the musketeer shouted over his shoulder: "HE'S HERE! I found him!"

Muffled Hoofbeats on snow. The snapping of twigs. Blue coated riders. They, too, were too real to be ghosts.

When Athos and d'Artagnan reached them and slid off their horses, Aramis found himself cradled in Porthos arms, sobbing with relief.