I don't know that it matters but in relation to the themes in this fic, maybe keep in mind that most of it was written with the first series as the backdrop before the second series aired. Also, it was never intended for this to turn out quite as angsty as it did. The angst just keeps happening. Something's wrong with me.

Defeat of the Bandersnatch

Bracing his knees roughly, Athos balanced his stance with Porthos's as they lowered Aramis's slack weight to the bedroll. His muscles burned emptily once they had him down and he lingered, leaving his hand trapped beneath the weight of Aramis's head as they crouched over him.

The heavy lack of awareness lulling Aramis's features felt offensively foreign. The disquiet it carried coiled uffishly around Athos's chest, whispering discontent into his ear, like a ghost. Like an old nightmare awoken into life—or a demon from the past.

The dast, Athos mouthed, staring down at Aramis's face. "The demast." The words snuck tremulously past his vocal chords. He swallowed thickly before they could breach his lips, and the dark edges of his mind gimbled, letting him taste the bite of evening wine.

I wish it would stay dead. For you, my brother, I wish it would, he heard Aramis say. Time thinned, making him feel strangely porous as he flexed his palm, curling his fingers into Aramis's hair.

"He's… worried about you," mumbled Porthos, near to his ear.

Though the movement remained contained below his skin, Athos jolted and glanced over, surprised and not surprised to find Porthos's gaze in such close proximity.

Porthos watched him, then peered downward to where his hand rested on Aramis's shoulder. "He sounded like… I think he's worried about you," he repeated. "That much, I think I could tell."

For Pathos, Dathos—Athos, Aramis had said.

Don't you hear it?

Athos gave in to a tiny shiver, glancing away into the dark trees and the nimble thriver of Aramis's beast. The leaves banked across the forest floor turned loosely and lay dead.

"I think all of us, perhaps," Athos said when he looked back, peeling his gaze from the grove of trees. Bracing Aramis's jaw with his other hand, he eased his trapped palm from beneath Aramis's skull, squeezing the base of Aramis's neck gently before loosening contact and sitting back on his heels.

Watching him with eyes moored in caution, Porthos took a soft breath.

The sound drew him. Without conscious thought, Athos reached across the narrow space and tapped his hand to Porthos's shoulder, connecting—for a few long seconds—his own worn mind to the warm concern of Porthos's muscle. "All of us, I think," he said again, infusing the words with greater solidity. Conversely, he felt a sudden weariness settle through his spine. Closing his eyes, he rubbed his thumb down the bridge of his own nose. "We should have been watching out for this. Too much has occurred these past months, for all of us. We know how he gets. We should have been prepared."

"He hasn't been sleeping well," Porthos conceded, though he continued to look at Athos with wary honesty, alert to the possibility of some deeper worry. A darker meaning. Some missing piece.

Cruold and gwallow, Athos thought. Sheeted dead. Glancing briefly at the sky, he took in their secluded camp, listening to the timorous quiet despite himself.

There was no attack. No ill-formed enemy. No demons. Don't you hear it?

Tridous, from the front.

Tridous, and we fremble.

Athos swallowed, feeling the emotion in his throat like something gone. Like something dead and wanting to be forgotten.

"Is that what brought this on?" D'Artagnan's voice moved into the space guardedly. A grounding bulwark less tainted by demons and darkness, though the worry was there, thick as any. "Restless sleep?"

Athos blinked at him, then back at Porthos, stretching his neck to unsettle the bleak absurdities haunting the air. Feeling for the low hem of Aramis's britches, he kept strangely and conversationally to the truth as he responded. "I always believed it came during those times he'd expended too much energy pretending to be happy through a day."

Porthos grunted. "Or obsessed with some task."

Athos nodded. "After days too long in the saddle—times when some of the more minor necessities amongst us would become abandoned for the hour, only to take up residence in Aramis's mind once he'd fallen asleep." He bunched the material of Aramis's clothed leg up past his ankle and accepted the waterskin d'Artagnan held out to him.

"Never were able to define a particular beginning," Porthos concluded, matching Athos's actions in examining Aramis's other foot. "Though I'd thought if we were to see this again, it would have been when Marsac came back. And the duke."

"Is he always so… like this, when it's over?" pressed d'Artagnan, folding to his knees near Aramis's feet with the wrappings from Aramis's kit in his hand. "I don't recall ever seeing him so… unaware, before."

"Sometimes," admitted Athos, tracing damp cloth along a long scrape before attending a glance at Aramis's lax face—his even breathing and closed eyes. "Don't worry. If he follows pattern, he'll be himself by morning. The warther and the Bandersnatch will barely find his memory."

"I don't like it," d'Artagnan muttered, with such betrayed sincerity Athos nearly laughed.

Porthos did laugh, cracking a genuine smile that eased something in Athos's chest. "I look forward to you telling him so," Porthos said, patting d'Artagnan's knee. "Aramis—he needs reminding sometimes."

"That he does," Athos agreed.

tbc

The epilog ended up a little longer than planned and I'm too bleary right now to manage a workable final review of it, so it'll go up as a separate chapter tomorrow, I think. In my effort to get things finished, I fear I'm rolling through my edits faster than I ought to anyway, so I apologize if I've missed some typos or if the narrative flow feels more awkward in some places than others.

As before, any mischmacsh recognizable from "The Jabberwocky" is credited to Lewis Carroll.