I know I've been gone forever, but—yay! Part two!
Recognizable phrases are credited to Lewis Carroll, with a shout out to Shakespeare's Hamlet (Act 1, scene 1). The stylistic device used in the mischmacsh of this fic I will credit to Carroll also. Though this nonsense style was not his invention, the nonsense in this story is emulative of his approach.
Defeat of the Bandersnatch
Into the midst of the moon-brightened birch trees, Athos stepped quietly. Silently. Vigilant in the disturbance of the brittle sticks and leaves laid out before his toes.
Nearer the source of battle, the whisper of Aramis's swordplay took upon itself a new shape, becoming somehow less defined. A myopic consequence complicated further by the way the tangled branches above them swayed. Bending the shadows. Playing tricks with the diluted light as it glanced off old, white tree bark to slither across Aramis's sword and then banish it again to darkness.
Back by the oak, d'Artagnan's voice grumbled indecipherably while Porthos murmured a worried hiss. Their discontent nudging contrarily against his shoulder blades.
Athos ignored them both and blinked, tracking the rhythm as Aramis worked to and fro between the trunks—disappearing by haves and then appearing again—a desperate shuffling cadence marking the forest through his bare feet. Of comfort, it was a cadence Athos knew by heart. Long years of familiarity speaking reflexively to his bones, even while the darkness gaped and whatever enemy Aramis was fighting remained invisible.
It was calming, the way the fluency oiled his joints. So calming, Athos felt nearly—nearly—as if he were engaging a friendly spar in the garrison when he finally rounded a trunk and slid his sword up with Aramis's—letting the blades skim together.
Confronted with contact, Aramis paused. His dark eyes appearing distant and confused as a glint of moonlight lingered on their surface.
Breathing carefully into the stillness, Athos waited to see what would happen, but the quiet didn't last. Forehead creasing, Aramis circled his blade tightly, bringing Athos's closer to his body and then sliding it away. Athos bent with the maneuver easily. Stepping into the parry so that their sleeves touched, easing back with the release, and then sidestepping smoothly to re-catch Aramis's blade. "Are we fighting, Aramis?" he asked softly.
Another pause. A head tilt. The pose gave Aramis an ethereal quality, as though part of him truly stood in another word.
Cautious, Athos held his breath against the tension between their swords while Aramis's frown deepened. "Athos?" he whispered.
"Yes."
"Athos?" Aramis sounded afraid, but the confusion lingered only a moment before his shoulder twitched and their blades darted against each other again. Quick, muted, steel on steel. Fast and in tandem. Clashing and matching until they ran into another pause.
Opaque and frowning, Aramis stared, chest heaving as though to catch his breath.
"I'm here, Aramis," Athos spoke gently. "I asked—are we fighting?"
Aramis's gaze drifted worryingly, scanning into trees. "Yes," he answered tensely.
"Each other?"
Flinching quietly, the corners of Aramis's eyes crumpled even while the pressure between their blades grew taut. Suddenly, Aramis pressed, rounding up with his parrying dagger to separate his sword from Athos's and shove away, spinning his whole body in another direction as though to do battle on another front. Stabbing at ghosts in the shadows.
Quickly, Athos followed, pacing Aramis across the clearing, then pivoting to catch up their swords again. "Aramis?"
"Athos," Aramis repeated desolately, the jump of his working throat visible in the moonlight.
"What is it?"
"Athos!"
"I'm here."
Forgoing the search for phantoms and obscurities, Aramis finally looked up. For a moment their gazes locked together so intensely, so vibrantly, it was as if Aramis were awake. But all too soon, he grimaced, head jolting as the rustling trees caught his attention, eyebrows wrinkling pointedly, and it was plain again that he was someplace else.
"Aramis—"
"You shouldn't, Athos," Aramis cut in, rocking his wrist and leaning to the balls of his feet in wary observance of Athos's blade. "Crafe, but not here." His voice lowered seriously. "Dathos—Pathos," he said, and his chin gave a worried jerk. "Bewatch. The krieve."
Latently, Athos felt his muscles settle, even as a tingling rose in his spine.
It was always this—the strange language of Aramis's sleep—that did something to him in ways nothing else associated with Aramis's night wanderings ever quite managed. Enflaming the worry while breathing life into the cold part Athos's chest he hadn't realized could still relish the warmth.
It was the sincerity, perhaps. The open, unguarded confusion.
It ached.
"Bewatch?" Athos prompted thickly.
"Bewatch," Aramis agreed, his expression resolving into something fierce and wary—the look he often took upon himself when sensing imminent attack. "The Bandersnatch will circle from the front. Catch and shun and sought."
He moved suddenly and Athos followed, catching Aramis's sword in a low thrust, then squaring his stance to keep them facing each other. "The front?" he pushed.
"Always." Aramis nodded edgily. "Tridous, from the front." Without seeming to notice, Aramis shivered and his blade staggered. His eyes strayed, narrowing with confusion into the trees. "Tridous, and we fremble. Quilent in fuego, we go. Quilent. Quilent. But I hear it now."
Athos cleared his throat. "What will circle from the front?"
"The dast, Athos!" Aramis insisted, voice suddenly full volume. "The demast! The demast nalled Bandersnatch."
Athos swallowed, rolling the nonsense over his tongue. Quilent in fuego. Dast and demast and Bandersnatch…
Fuego. Fire.
Bander. Leader?
Aramis made a noise. Frustrated. Apprenxious.
Athos's fingers thrummed unsteadily.
"The oscur… the oscur… the warther. The warther!" Sinking into a halting voice, Aramis cocked his head and squinted, the exaggerated way he did when trying to force up a memory while drunk. "Bandersnatch. Bander… claps and gapers." After a moment he huffed as though defeated. With a heavy sigh, he clanged his blade artlessly against Athos's then stepped back in a soft retreat. "Vorpal. Uffish. Don't you hear it?"
Lowering his sword just slightly, Athos watched him and waited, feeling his ears prick despite himself. Tensing and listening as a stray draft soughed through the trees. Wind warbling the innocuous sound into the low and far away holler of some unknown beast…
"I don't hear it," he lied, focusing on the exhaustion in Aramis's muscles and the loose way he held his sword.
"I hear it," Aramis whispered.
Sheathing his parrying dagger slowly, Athos spread his empty fingers and took a cautious forward step. "The warther, you said? What is it? Aramis, I can help if you tell me what it is."
Abruptly Aramis scowled, anger alighting on his features as his blade came up.
Athos stopped, palm out.
"The warther reeds for the Bandersnatch," Aramis said angrily. "For the Bandersnatch, the wath is rended." Snappishly, he lunged, tangling their blades with a force he hadn't previously utilized. "Pathos!" he growled. "For Pathos. Dathos. Athos!" Then, just as suddenly as he'd attacked, he slunk back, dropping his guard and showing his side to Athos's blade. "For deos. But I…" his voice dipped as it trailed, becoming calm and subdued while Athos's heart still thundered.
"We're soldiers. We're soldiers, Athos—" Aramis shook his head and gestured round about. "In the toves, were we. In the toves we are again." His sword faltered, the hand with his parrying dagger hanging limply at his side, fingers loose. "Sheeted dead. They squeak and gibber. Cloaked—" he blinked, and his face creased, something like grief rising to join the moonlit paleness, "—but I can see them. No lines. No veil. Not for me." He waved his dagger towards the trees. "Not for me."
Athos felt a lump rising in his throat. "Ara—"
"Cruold and gwallow." Aramis took a deep breath, dark and shuddery. Then suddenly, clear as day and staring Athos in the eye— "I did not abandon my post."
"No," agreed Athos, with a sincerity so strong and quick it locked up his lungs. "Of course not. You never would." He took a deep breath to break the cage of his ribs and stepped forward, nodding towards the trees. "The Bandersnatch lies dead, Aramis. Your sword was true. You struck it and it died. Rest now and lower your guard. It is defeated."
Aramis turned wearily, scanning the ground. "Defeated. Dead. Why then does it thriver?"
Athos stared at the ground, the blanket of leaves rustling in a sudden, gentle breeze. A swirl of sound and shape accompanied it, like the death rattle from a company of corpses on a battlefield. His throat closed. "It doesn't… thriver," he assured, swallowing in the bale of moonlight and staring as the leaves became dormant and flat. "It doesn't thriver."
"The dast thrivers, Athos," Aramis contradicted tiredly, sounding defeated, sounding like he wanted Athos to stop humoring him. "The demast always thrivers." But his sword lowered, and though his eyes were anguished, he suddenly looked hopeful, like a child. "Is it truly dead? Will it return?"
Abandoning his own sword entirely to the dirt, Athos stepped into his space and clutched him—too tightly probably—hands to his shoulders.
Aramis stared at their boots, then blinked. Releasing his dagger to the same fate as Athos's sword, he cupped his hand to the side of Athos's face, looking him in the eye. "I wish it would stay dead. For you, my brother, I wish it would. You deserve such mercy, above all. I wish I… " Looking down, he breathed, choked. "I wish."
Athos dug his fingers in, wishing that pressure alone would be enough to wake him, to keep him from the demons in his mind, but it never was, not when he was like this.
Abruptly, Aramis drooped. Athos caught him under his arms just in time to keep the descent to their knees gentle. Aramis's forehead slumping shakily onto his shoulder while his lungs shuddered unevenly.
Seized by some absurd and desperate fondness, Athos dug a hand into his hair. Twisting his fingers into the strands while trying to bring his own breathing under control. It hurt, the sudden, sharp ache to his heart. "It's dead," he whispered into Aramis's ear, not sure anymore that he could even be heard. "It's dead."
Closing his eyes, he exhaled slowly, shaking the tremble from his lungs.
When he looked up, Porthos was there. And d'Artagnan. No humor on their faces.
"Aramis," mumbled Athos, keeping his eyes locked with Porthos's as he jostled him. "Aramis?"
Aramis remained limp against him, the smooth flutter of his lungs easing into something disconcertingly even and unaware. Athos cleared his throat. "Let's get him back," he ordered.
"Yeah." Porthos knelt, splaying a hand over the base of Aramis's spine. "Yeah, let's get him back."
Looking artlessly unsettled, d'Artagnan followed.
tbc