A/N: Recently I ran across a new word I'd never heard before - it was the title of a fic at AO3 by Persis - Reviviscence. I was delighted to make it's acquaintance, though I did have to look it up. Today, I had lunch with it and got to know it personally. The computer crashed last night - sudden black screen, dead as a door nail, all resuscitation attempts failed. A month to replace it if I wanted something similar to the one lying on the table doing the dead cockroach. I was in a panic; three chapters left to post and no way to retrieve them from the cold, dead, no longer beating heart of my best friend.
And then after a long sleepless nail biting night - miraculously - the man I was smart enough to marry so many many years ago said - why don't you try a different power cord? Then produced one for me. And voila' - reviviscence! Like Lazarus, though, there is still a finite end somewhere down the road. I hope it's not tomorrow, but just in case it is... the remaining two chapters of the fic are in the process of being posted. Any remaining errors are all mine.
Porthos took it in stride. The bottle Aramis had been about to drink from slipped from his fingers as though greased, shattering as it hit the floor.
"What happen'd to 'er?" Porthos inquired.
"Wha—"
"What happen'd to 'er," Porthos repeated patiently. "You said you had a wife."
"She died."
"Sorry to 'ear that. What'd she die from?"
Aramis hopped up quickly, skirting the mess he'd created. He was a curious as Porthos, but this was not the way to get answers. "How about if I help you to bed?" It was more of a command than a question, and Porthos shot him a quizzal look, but subsided at the guilty, burning look Aramis shot back.
Athos was frowning as though attempting to puzzle out why it was suddenly time to go to bed, or perhaps why he was suddenly spilling secrets he'd had no intention of sharing. "No," he said clearly, when Aramis tried to pull him to his feet. "Tosleepperchance…to dream," he slurred, then repeated with deliberate articulation, "No. I do not want to dream."
"So you are acquainted with the inestimable Bard; I'm not fond of him myself. If we must have English poets, I prefer John Donne. No man is an island?"
"Not true," Athos said, though he allowed Aramis to get his feet under him and pull him up. "We are all islands of insanity swimming in a sea of malice. Be careful lest the devil steal your soul, Aramis. He can transform himself you know, take any guise, even the form of a woman."
Damn, damn and double damn. It had not been the disclosure of a wife that had stunned Aramis; rather, it had been the recognition of his own culpability in not considering that the combination of drugs and alcohol might unstop that determinedly silent tongue.
"I've met Old Scratch in that guise myself as few times. Only a few more steps. And here we are. Stop," Aramis instructed, as he leaned down to throw back the blanket. "Turn." Giving this new friend no chance to continue his learned discourse on the evils of the devil. "Sit. Now can you lie down? Easy, easy, don't rip out my handiwork." He slipped an arm beneath the tense shoulders, easing Athos down, then bent to very gently lift his feet to the bed as well, and pull off the boots.
He drew the blanket over Athos and touched his forehead lightly, murmuring a request that God ease the restless, broken spirit housed in this mortal flesh. He had pinched out the still-burning candles and turned to go when fingers crept around his wrist. The grip was neither encompassing nor restraining, but the unexpected touch alone would have held him in place.
"I … do not … want to dream."
Aramis slipped slowly to his knees. "I am sorry. I should have thought this through better, put the sleeping potion in something other than wine and not let you drink. The combination has loosed your tongue in a manner you will despise me for, if you remember this in the morning. I pray you will not, because I think you were beginning to trust us, just a little, and this will set you back beyond where we started. Though if it lingers in your subconscious without recognition, that may do even more damage. God in heaven, what have I done?" He slid a hand into his hair, dislodging the kerchief Porthos had loaned him. "I swear to you, Athos, I did not do this on purpose." The kerchief proved a useful item for wringing between his hands.
"I … do not want to dream." The despair in the low voiced repetition was so weighty it was a physical presence stalking the room. "She walks in dreams."
"Move over," Porthos said from the doorway. He set the chair he'd brought from the table next to the bed. "Move over," he repeated softly, soothingly. The apartment was only the two rooms, not large enough for even whispers to go unheard. "Aramis is going to lie down with you, I'm going to sit here, and we're not going to let you dream." His articulation was as clear and precise as Athos' had been in that lucid instant when reality had poured itself into the moment with the clarity of a particularly fine wine. "Aramis knows a thing or two about dreams. Someday he'll tell you about Savoy." Porthos sat himself down in the chair, kicked back against the wall and crossed his arms over his broad chest. "At the very least," he asserted, "you will not be alone with any dreams tonight."
Porthos' earthy sort of wisdom was often right on the money. Savoy was the perfect penance. Aramis, still on his knees, moved around to the foot of the bed. "Move this way." The bed was shoved up against the wall so he pushed a bare foot toward the front edge. "I don't want you lying on your side and pulling at the stitches."
It was perhaps a measure of the inhibitions the combination of alcohol and medicinal herbs had lowered that Athos moved without objection or even hesitation. Aramis, as he slid up the bed, his back against the wall, considered every possible negative consequence of this night's unconsidered actions.
He had found no greater satisfaction than in watching living things find freedom again after imprisonment, whether of body or soul, though he would deny with his dying breath that he had found his true calling in coaxing life back into the seriously wounded. He was a sharp shooter, employed to serve at the pleasure of the king, but he had often wondered if God had enhanced his skills as a healer to balance the dark side of taking lives without compunction.
He had been taught from a very young age, to preach the gospel of salvation, and been privileged to live among holy men who had lived what they preached. Though he had chosen to be the king's soldier rather than God's, there was ingrained at the very core of him, a sensitivity to suffering that informed who he was in a way he felt, but not even he, with his poet's heart and minstrel's voice, could articulate.
It was a gift – one that left him wretched sometimes – but a gift he could not ignore, for in ignoring it he only tortured himself with what if's or what might have been's. And so he had learned to employee that sensitivity, along with his skills at healing, in the most improbable situations.
Serving as a Musketeer, he was never bored, for he was not limited to just a sharp shooter, or swordsman, or even healer. But tonight, it worried him that the healer might have done more harm than good.
tbc