Tréville had set them separate schedules to accommodate one of them being with their newest musketeer at all times. Aramis, returning much later in the evening, found his patient tossing and turning, the sheets soaked and bloody. The tossing and turning had reopened both wounds.
Athos woke in a panic, struggling out of the clutching grasp of a nightmarish Anne bending over him as he laid upon the great tester bed at home, a victim of the ague sweeping the estate, the talons of the dead impaling him as she sobbed against his shoulder. He wept vile curses even as his useless hands attempted to hold her to him as the phantasm faded.
Corporeal hands lifted him from a viper's pit of heat up into coolness, one hand pressing his head to a hard shoulder while another swept soothingly up and down his back. And everything - everything – hurt. Each individual hair on his head felt like it was throbbing independently. There was a cold cloth at the back of his neck and the hand pressing his head to that shoulder swept through his sweat-soaked hair.
"...just a nightmare, phantasms in the dark, they're not real. Easy now, easy."
Heart galloping, Athos' feeble effort to push off met resistance. It took a further moment of struggle before he surrendered, but the opposition was implacable. Shaking uncontrollably, he sank into the loose embrace with more gratitude than he knew himself capable of, aware on some deep, intrinsic level that this human contact was the only thing grounding him to his own plane of existence.
"She's dead," he kept repeating, "she's dead."
Aramis, holding the wrecked bundle of humanity, knew not how to counter the desperation in the mournful cry. All he could do was continue to encompass unyieldingly. Athos was coated in a cold sweat, his skin clammy and afflicted by involuntarily twitching muscles. Aramis could feel his heart racing as if it would desert the mortal body housing it.
When Athos did finally pull back again, Aramis let him, stripping away blanket and sheet as he eased him back down. He still said nothing, allowing the comte a bit of internal privacy at least while he changed the weeping bandages.
He unbound the right arm, relieved to find the violet salve was doing its job. The arm was less swollen then it had been a couple of days ago, the angry redness streaking toward elbow and wrist, finally beginning to recede. Both excellent signs the infection was losing its hold. He rewrapped the neatly stitched wound in clean bandages with much relief. It seemed the comte was not quite so dissolute as he wished to appear, else his body would not be able to heal itself as rapidly as it was doing.
Aramis checked the shoulder, too, pleased to find the clean slice already knit together, and no sign of infection at all. He resalved it as well, and bound it a bit more tightly than before, knowing what they were in for.
"Don't go."
The nearly inaudible request was made as Aramis started to rise. He sat back down on the side of the bed slowly, but made no attempt to initiate conversation.
When he spoke again, Athos' voice was stripped to its rawest element of need. "I have been in the dark a long time. The light is … sometimes hard to adjust to."
Aramis, when he responded, was contemplatively quiet. "I understand. I was not fit to move out of Savoy for nearly a month after the ambush. The head wound I took was not severe; I just could not face the trauma of it. I could not rid myself of the images of my dead companions. They were there whether my eyes were open or closed.
"It's been more than two years and I still see them sometimes, faces blue by the time I woke to them, frost creeping over their cold bodies. I still occasionally wake screaming in the night. Nothing I can do about it; it lives outside of my control." Aramis clasped his hands around a knee and set his boot heel on the edge of the bed. "The mind is a capricious place at best, sometimes our own worst enemy. But as much pain as letting the light in brings, light also heals. Madame von Bingen says a stubborn infection may sometimes be healed by consistent exposure to sunlight. It is the same with the mind."
"Why? Why are you doing this? I would have walked out of that tavern without a backwards glance."
"I don't believe that and I don't think you do either, it's your fallback position when you're feeling vulnerable." Aramis did not want to trivialize the question, but neither did he completely understand his own motivation. "Honestly, I can't tell you why. Maybe Savoy changed me. Maybe this was my birthright from the very beginning and I've been growing into it since a bit of maturity set in. Whatever the case, I'm incapable of walking away from someone in such pain as you carry. Your indifference sends most people running, but it is not so deeply entrenched that a long hard look can't see right through it. You need us. We like you. Does it have to be more complicated than that?"
"Ergo, I am still worth saving." Athos did not pose it as question because Aramis had put his finger directly on the problem yet again – he was feeling extremely vulnerable. And neither the comte nor Athos had much appreciation for feelings of vulnerability.
"Ha!" Aramis snorted. "We've put far too much work into you to let you wriggle off the hook now. Besides, you were a real coup for Tréville. He says the cardinal is still stewing over how to match the acquisition of you. He may try to recruit you, you know, when we've finally got you patched together and in working order again. He won't want the work of saving you, but he would delight in the glory of your reputation."
"Not a snowball's chance in hell."
"I don't know, he can be very persuasive."
"He has nothing I want." For Athos it was a statement of fact. His wants were very simple – honor and a chance to redeem himself, neither of which would be on offer from Richelieu. "If I do not remember to say it when this is over, I am grateful … for your … death grip … on my soul." The candle on the windowsill had been joined by two more, and another burned on the square top of the table snugged against the bed. The corners of the room were draped in shadows still, but the space around the bed was brightly illuminated. Athos met the steady gaze directed at him with all the openness he could muster. "I do not know how I will ever be able to repay the debt I owe you and Porthos."
"There is no debt," Aramis said quietly. "Friends don't keep ledgers." And in the next instant, all traces of solemnity were erased from his voice and demeanor. "Besides, we're only doing this so we can bask in your reflected glory when your true identity gets out."
"Right." Athos trimmed his sails and matched the healer's impertinence. "I'll be sure to ask God if he'll seat the two of you at his right and left. Though I doubt He will bend an ear to any—" Between one word and the next the nausea hit. He grabbed the edge of the bed and rolled over on his protesting shoulder gasping a choked, "Chamber –"
Aramis, moving in a blur of speed, almost had the chamber pot under Athos before he vomited everything he'd eaten – which had not been much to begin with.
Two hours later, Aramis wiped his own sweaty face with the wet cloth before dunking it back in the pitcher and bathing the sweat from the comte again.
"Athos." He applied the cold cloth to his forehead, and laid a hand along a pale, clammy cheek. The blue eyes did not open. "I can't let this go on indefinitely. I need you to take a little of the poppy before you wrack that shoulder and cause permanent damage." And to leaven the mood a little as he poured out a dose, "Else we may never be able to bask in your reflected glory."
"Did I swear? Can't remember now."
"Yes, you did. On whatever I hold sacred." Aramis knew himself inordinately pleased by that bit of playfulness in the middle of what - for the comte - must be a horrifying ordeal. It could not be particularly pleasant for the still reserved Athos either, but he, at least, was making progress towards recalling what it was like to interact with other humans.
"I want it noted … that I am doing this … 'ginst my will."
"Duly noted," Aramis replied, propping Athos so he could drink the noxious brew.
Aramis knew from experience how bad it tasted and nothing could camouflage it. The healer had expended a great deal of time and energy attempting to find anything that might ease the opiate down a palate – to no avail.
Porthos, who was immune to the juice of the poppy unless consumed in vast quantities, had been his taste tester. But nothing Aramis had been able to concoct had fooled even Porthos' rather unrefined criteria for what he swallowed.
The medicine took its own sweet time reducing the wracking dry heaves. So long in fact, Aramis began to worry Athos was as immune to its effect as Porthos. The candles had burnt down another two marks before release finally manifested itself. Athos was still sucking air as if there was not enough in the room, but the trembling in the limbs began to ease and the clenched, quivering muscles slowly relaxed.
"Do you think you have enough strength to sit in the chair while I change the bed linens?"
"No. But what use … anyway, if this is just going to …. repeat itself endlessly once the … poppy wears off?"
"Because for awhile at least, you will be more comfortable. Come." Aramis knelt by the bed and slipped an arm under Athos' right shoulder, drew him up and rotated both of them until Athos was sitting on the edge of the bed, then dragged him to his feet long enough to prop him in the corner of the room.
Athos sat unmoving, only the traction of his damp, bare feet against the wood floor holding his knees upright, arms folded across his middle, head hanging nearly to his chest.
Aramis quickly stripped the bed and replaced the soaked sheets and blanket with fresh linens. He moved the candles off the sill and opened the window to empty the chamber pot, but also to air out the room a little. He was careful to restore the pauldron to the place it occupied an arm's length down the bed on the right side.
It was a matter of five minutes, but Athos was shivering all over again by the time Aramis had him tucked back between clean sheets and pulled the blanket back up. "Have you any experience with poppy? Do you know how long we might expect the effects to last?"
"Long ago," Athos said after a bit, as if it had taken some time to retrieve the memory. "I remember falling from my pony and breaking an ankle. I believe I was given the juice of the poppy both as a pain reliever and an attempt to keep me quiet. I have no recall of how long it lasted. Only that I was frequently dosed."
"Children require less in amount, but absorb it faster than adults. So you were a rambunctious boy?" Aramis asked interestedly.
"No, only determined to learn to ride. One must … you know … if one wishes to be … a musketeer."
"You wanted to be a musketeer?"
"I did not tell you that … before?"
"No!" The exclamation startled his patient and Aramis instantly lowered his voice. "Why did you not join long ago? There are far more nobleman's sons enlisted than commoners or gentry like Porthos and I."
"Oldest. M'father forbade it. Thomas … could have done. No desire."
"Thomas?" Aramis squashed the creeping guilt. This was likely as wrong as letting Athos talk while under the influence of alcohol, though the terseness that usually met probing questions was gone. Poppy, however, might relax those boundaries even more than alcohol. So he didn't push, just waited.
"Younger brother."
"You have a brother?" Aramis exclaimed. "I have two," he offered quickly in an attempt to disguise his surprise. "They're both very poor correspondents though."
"No … correspondence. Thomas … Thomas is dead." Perhaps the noxious poppy had reduced him to this, or perhaps because his defenses had taken such a beating over the last few days Athos found himself incapable of shoving that overwhelming grief back into its proper place, locked away behind the vaulted doors of his tattered soul. He made no attempt to distance himself from the emotion, just let it flow through and out of him until the tightness in his chest began to diminish and the military tattoo drumming inside his head flourished its final beats.
Aramis sat in the chair, witness to the silent grief, praying the opening of this particular flood gate might ease some of the tightly clenched internal pain he had sensed. "He was your only other family then? Besides your wife?" he asked softly, an invitation.
Athos only nodded. He might have spilled all the sordid details, but the myriad thoughts forming in his head appeared too quickly to catch and then dispersed in the next instant like the phantasms of his dead wife. His fingers plucked restlessly at the edge of the blanket.
A tell Aramis decided it was best to leave unrevealed. His very active brain, though, was busily sorting through scenarios that might engender the kind of guilt the nobleman seemed unable to escape. Truly there was very little a land owner of the Comte de le Fère's heritage wasn't shielded from, the notable exception being treason. His word would have been law on his own lands; he could have murdered his brother and his wife, buried them openly in the church graveyard and still been pardoned for his misdeeds so long as he continued to support the king's treasury or supply militia when required.
His patient was at last beginning to breathe easier. Aramis rose to retrieve a handkerchief from his coat, handed it over and it took it back after it had been used. He offered the wet cloth again.
Athos plucked it up and buried his face in it.
"This level of intensity shouldn't last a lot longer," Aramis said matter-of-factly, imparting the knowledge as if that would make it absolute truth in this situation. "And then you should start to feel better. Your arm is less inflamed than it was this morning. The fever will abate – somewhat – as the infection dissipates."
Athos closed his eyes on a tired sigh. "May I beg another act of kindess?"
"Of course," Aramis agreed without the slightest hesitation.
"Swear on whatever you hold sacred that you will shoot me between the eyes if I ever let myself sink to this level again."
"I can do that, since I have complete faith in your choices going forward."
"You should not gamble so recklessly, especially on one such as I."
"Porthos is the gambler, money and possessions have no hold over him, he'll bet everything on the toss of the die. I only bet on sure things. Are you warm enough now? Or do you want another blanket? The poppy will suppress the fever for awhile too."
"No, I am … comfortable I think."
The declarative was offered with a bit of surprise, making Aramis smile. "Good, I pray it lasts awhile. Shall I close the window?"
"Noooo… breeze feels …" The poppy pulled him under before Athos could collect the rest of the thought.
Aramis scooted the chair back, careful not to let it scrape too loudly over the floor, deposited his booted feet on the side of the bed and leaned back, crossing his arms over his chest. On a tired sigh, he let Morpheus take him too.