Chapter 15: Spectacle
Antoinette: Aramis?
Aramis: Yes, love?
Antoinette: Why is it that everytime we have alone time, we end up in odd positions?
Aramis: ... Because you love me undoubtly?
Antoinette: Well... that too.
Me: I know! Because you are crime fighting, sword wielding lovers that really act like horny teenagers.
Aramis: -contemplating- I never really had a normal childhood.
Antoinette: And I never had a normal anything.
Me: Hehehehehehe.
Antoinette: o.O What's wrong?
Me: Oh nothing. :) Just that I know some things you don't.
Aramis: Well, she is the author.
Me: Yep! And unfortunately for my beloved readers, I have nothing left to say but disclaim this franchise. Aramis!
Ar: o.O Radiolover1029 doesn't own Three Musketeers.
Antoinette: So subtle.
There was nothing but anxiety bundled up in her nerves. She had to keep herself busy. Every so often she swore her fingers were twitching for something to do. The only things in plain sight were the messy belongings Planchet had lugged around prior to the mission. Her hands curled within a woolen knitting she had attempted. It was worn through by the looks of it and unsuitable to wear for mittens.
Her fingernails dug into the holes, inspecting the damage before tossing it aside to fold already neatly pressed laundry. Something didn't settle well. And Antoinette had the gut wrenching feeling it had something to do with Milady's... timely death.
No doubt she had hated the woman for all the treachery but did that call for the pained expressions for Athos? It was almost too much to bear for him. The first time they see each other is at the opposite end of a gun.
Her hands roamed at her neck, groping for her pulse. She thanked God and her lucky heavens they had spared her and Aramis that punishment. Life without the other would be unimaginable. She kept muttering to herself they'll arrive back in Paris without further delay and things would be back to where they were suppose to be- miles away from each other.
Her teeth bit into her bottom lip. A few manicured nails curled around her chin wondering what else could possible separate them. True, they would spend whatever precious time... But sooner or later they would be called back into their societal rankings.
As apprehension etched her features, her voice squeaked, "Planchet?"
Planchet stumbled over a box with his hat threatening to fall off. "Yes Madame?"
Feeling the return of her voice, she cooly ordered, "Could you fetch something to eat for Aramis? I'm sure he's absolutely starving,"
He nodded. He cheerfully responded, "And that nice brandy in the cupboard for his parched throat?" He wigged his fingers in delight, probably hoping to sneak a drink before delivering it.
Seeing right through his antics, Antoinette wagged her finger pointedly. "You know too well Aramis prefers a nice bottle of chardonnay,"
Disappointed but nonetheless, he went his way. "On it!"
Antoinette continued her work deligently. Her hands folded the linens making every crease curt and noticeable. A lady's work is simply never done. She thanked the heavens out of the men, she had chosen a respectable and clean one. As she was storing the last linen to the luggage, she went rigid.
There was a small noise. One that required acute sense in order to hear. She felt it shake from her ears down to her stiff shoulders. Her nerves tried to remain calm, which was evident on her face. Ordinarily she turned her head slightly to the left, keening into the sound coming from behind.
An adjustment against the threshold caught her senses to overreact.
"Brandy is starting to develop a taste on my tongue," a husky voice calmed her racing heart.
Her body returned to its natural position and continued her work on the foot of the bed. "After six years, you would think I would be used to your shades?" She straightened the down could almost feel his smirk pierce through her. She giggled amusedly.
Then another noise came. This time it was rogue. Aramis stood out of the way as a huffing and puffing Planchet slammed the brakes to his feet.
Antoinette put a hand to her hip with a brow quirked. "That was quick?"
He saluted her once he somewhat regained breathing levels. "At your service, mistress!"
He handed the bottle and two turned down glasses to Aramis. She drilled, "As you were,"
Aramis inspected the bottle. It was a more recent date than his preferred old tastes. "Should I be concerned?" He asked grabbing the neck of the bottle and pulled with effort the cork.
Antoinette held her glass to the foaming mouth. "It's Planchet," she said nonchalantly.
He reminded, "It's you," While he poured for her his eyes drunk in her body. Embarassed from the attention, she stopped the bottle from giving too much and graciously took a sip from the near full glass.
Already feeling the warmth from behind the nape of her neck, she humored, "Non-fat me, I hope,"
Aramis cocked his head back to divulge his senses to the alcohol. The reserved bottle sat on the armored chest. "Oh give it a rest, Netta. You act as if it would be the worst outcome," He paced to her side, lessening the distance between them. He whispered to her,"We've already divulged into ourselves long ago. Why the sudden change?"
Her eyes sobered to match the grin she wore. She circled the neck of her glass selfishly. She didn't want to start another rouse. Why was he suddenly sensitive for her. "Because. At this point of my life I thought by now we weren't constantly separated. For once I just want that stability I had with you over a year ago!" Her words spilt.
He furrowed his brow in confusion. "Antoinette," he said laced with sadness.
"No! No more," She sat herself at the desk leaving some spills of her glass on her hand. Her frustration grew inside her hands. She let go of the glass, fearing she would break it. "I don't want my father to stare down at me like I'm the ant to his boot! I don't want to live here and you there! And for damn sure I don't want the Cardianl dictating the people I love most!" Hysterics allowed her eyes to wallow up in self pity. She shamed her eyes away with a hand, not wanting him to see her in this way.
He had felt as helpful as a hunter to a deer. He didn't care that half of his glass spilled to the floor along with the glass. He could always clean it up later. Right now, he needed to console the thing he loved most. "Antoinette," he choked out. His arms wrapped around her as he kneeled on one knee. Hands careessed her puffy cheeks from the lone tears enveloping her skin. "Why are you self inflicting yourselves from what could happen in the future? This is now. I'm right here. With you. On a blasted airship," His voice cracked as he noticed her eyes showed little sleep. She had been bordering living on automatic for the past week. He rubbed at them self consciously. The tender muscles moved under his touch.
She sniffled. "But for how long will it last this time? A day? A week or two? You can't expect us together forever," She tried to laugh but it came out as wet cries.
"I can," His eyes widened in shock. "You're stressing yourself out too much. What's really the problem? Marriage? A life in Paris?" With each sentence his buried anger slowly unearthed. "Please, clue me in so I can help you and not watch from the damn stands!" He tried matching his voice down for the sake of her cries.
"What?" Her fingers fixed the underneath of her eyes.
"Start with the truth. The real truth. Not some excuse. Ask yourself, why are you afraid of your future. Is it your father? The king? The Cardinal? Us?" He whispered the latter.
Her figure un-paralyzed. With movement, she shook her head. Antoinette grasped his hands, afraid he would back away from her. In her moment she needed him with her. "No. Never us. If the circumstances were different I would marry you right this instance," Before she could stop herself, she came to revelation.
She would. That wasn't an empty promise. She tucked that underneath her brain for later.
"Such as?"
She hollowed. "My irrational fear of my parents. Their behavior. I don't want us to end up like them. That's why I was so afraid of commitment years ago. Everyone I surrounded myself ended up hurting me or I to them. It isn't fair to them if I meddle in their lives," she gestured frantically.
"Look at me," His hand curled around her chin. Instead of the expressionless eyes he normally had, they were much lighter. Not totally black but not totally wood brown. He leaned forward to kiss each of her cheeks but longingly kissed her lips. "Six years ago, you didn't give a damn what anyone thought of you, that includes your father. You were independent. You took risks, eventually met me, and in those six years you've done remarkable things people dared to dream of. So we are in a mess of things. Did that stop us before?"
In the tender time, she felt warm again. Not from the alcohol. She swallowed, cutting the thick tension in her throat. "No..."
He smiled, which quivered. A hand wrapped around her neck and dipped her forehead to meet his. He gazed at her. "I know your pain. The dark place again. You push them away but you bring them back. As admirable your courage is, sometimes it is okay to throw them away. Face them another day when you are ready. Together," Antoinette smiled for the longest of times, happily. Two more tears dribbled down without remorse. As they pooled off her cheek she nuzzled his nose.
"Why do you know exactly what to say, even at this altitude?" she whispered.
A curl of a smile. "Some benefits learning from bishops," He laughed as he held her close to him, even when he lowered her to his arched knee. Two more passionate kisses later, he retracted. "No, I'd say I'm prepared for whatever we dish out of life. Now, no more tears," He dabbed at her eyes as she blushed. "Shall we go about a nightly stroll on deck? Perfect conditions underneath the stars," His eyes wandered out to the secured windows. Night had certainetly fallen. The stars where beginning to come out.
She ran a hand through his hair. He exasperated at her touch. She kissed his forehead. He took very good care of her. When she needed it. How could she ask for anything more perfect?
"Alright, alright. Don't take the bottle though," Her eyes humorously gestured the broken glass five feet away from them.
He hugged her. "Of course not. Wouldn't want either of us to fall off," He smiled toothly.
Aramis tucked Netta underneath his wing. "Be back," he said kissing just below her ear sensually. In his absence she basked in the glory of a starlit full moon that seemed bigger than life. A portrait of a smile hung low and down below at the landscape were the runes and hills in the French reverie. Her eyelashes batted lowly.
Her ears prickled at the creak of another man's boots. They strode toward and then to the right of her. Athos was a man of many things to Antoinette, but a sneaky thief is none of them. She inquired her head to bow in recognition.
"He's up to something," he brooded.
Antoinette's eyes avoided Athos' moonlit empty eyes. "Finally over your grimace?" she whispered as the night breeze chilled her eyes.
"Enough brooding for tonight. I'll deal later," His stoic face stiffened. One after another he wrapped his hands behind his back to study his surroundings. His gaze matched that of Milady's. He had no concern of the skies above of below them. Instead he glowered at the moon, searching for something.
It was one of those times where silence wasn't golden or even remotely silver. She felt the impulse to speed along their pace. She steadied herself against the deck. "Did you... I mean, do you still hold a grudge for what happened?"
He blinked once before finding some solace to closing his eyes. "There are some things we hold dear to our souls to closely. We know that better than anyone," The quirk of a smile was reflected. "That night, I remember so clearly," His hands smoothed over the railing. She landed on her elbows, hunched over in curiosity. Like a child waiting for the nightly saga of a bedtime story, she tapped a finger gently against the hollow piece. However the only hollow sound echoed through Athos' souless eyes.
As much as it would bring peace to him knowing once and for all the bearer of his mind had vanished, it also left him unable to do anything. Drinking did not help. Nor did sleep. Thinking of battles or the second nature of wits didn't encourage new strength in him. With resignation he finally said, "I was going to propose to her,"
Antoinette's eyes misted over. "I didn't, to answer your unasked question,"
She twitched her nose and patted it as if it were a bit cold. "Why not?" her crackly voice made out. "Although what happened is a clear reason why not to... It was clear you two loved each other indefinitely,"
He told, "Nerves. Hestiant to ask," And then what built up for so long in a bottle of high concentration of basic needs overflowed and frothed like an uncorked and shaken liquor. "It all lined up: the mission, the rewards, the atmosphere. Yet... I couldn't,"
A lone nearly crystalized tear escaped at the crevice of her eyelids. She massaged that side of her temple only to unwind more empathy. Flashes of her dark side came back. Her mind boiled hot with confusion. A shiver ran through her arms and chest.
Old memories. Like the day she found her mother on the floor, stone cold and face planted next to a broken vase and spilt roses. The moment the doctors diagnosed her with a sleeping disorder. It forced her to move away from her martial bed and next to the comfort of her only caring child.
New ones sprouted up. Ones she had dared not think of in years. Like the first time she had met Lord Buckingham at one of the hunting balls. How one of his cocky bastard friends talked her up until he secluded her away from her family to attempt rape. The next day when her father, for the one decent moment, sought revenge and ordered an execution on the heretic. She could still see Buckingham provide testimony for it all and managed to get him off the chopping block.
The papers. The armory. The blood dripping knife. The screams of innocent people.
Then a vortex swiped them all away. Instead of the broken mess Aramis had usually found whimpering like a beaten dog, she snapped out of her trance and the only panic she had to calm down was her horse racing heart. To think... Athos had suffered much worse then any of them combined. She looked at his face and could only piece in her mind the same heart broken features Aramis had worn in the garden when she first felt rushed into the notion of marriage. It left him wounded but nothing compared to Athos.
Unarmed and unknowing, he had been left cold and unwanted by someone he had loved for a long time. Only to be stabbed in the back through the valves of his heart, he let her twist the knife. It wasn't the fact of the betrayal that twisted the knife deeper each time. His regrets remorsed him into thinking she would have stopped everything for him as he had done for her many a time.
Athos looked to Antoinette willingly. His eyes held back the tears his friend had already shed. He continued with off set tones, "Antoinette, I've learned enough over the last year about myself better than I should. If in time I would return to that point of our lives, I would have asked her," He kept nodding, convincing himself he would have. "I wouldn't change the course of events, not for the world. Not to convince her otherwise. To prove my devotion to her. Let nature take it's course from there,"
"Wouldn't that make you more bitter?" she whispered softly.
He shook his head. The few strands hid a part of his right eye. He fidgeted the piece around. It wasn't like him to be out of place. "A resignation," He tasted the words with certainty. "I would have no regrets left in live. Which is why I came up here to tell you this,"
Taken back, she turned about. Her eyes darted from left to right with a gaping mouth. "I have no regrets... that I know of," She twitched.
Athos turned her back around like a lifeless figurine doll. She was forced to face him again. A black shadow shrouded his left side. His hands cupped her shoulder blades. "You say that now. Days ago you were appalled at the notion of marriage. Yesterday you thought holding a child scandalous," he reminded her gently. Not to stir any wrong reactions.
The feelings of the dark cloud above her figuratively, particle by particle moved elsewhere. It was the first time she felt happiness course through her. She felt understandment. She hugged to those new lighter feelings. Her ribs ached with a sudden emptiness. An emptiness of that dark matter that once rented out a cap of her brain and heart. The final straws of that darkness flouded her with one last stance.
"But those aren't regrets I hold now. Last time I checked there wasn't a ring on my finger or something kicking from the inside," she felt her mouth and mind work involuntarily. The back of her mind coursed.
"Scared?" it rang through her. "Of that possibility? What if he proposed to you here? Life's too short. Live your life together. Don't be hesitant. We both know your answer. Don't make the same mistakes I've done," His advice rang bells in her ears.
All reservations went the other direction. Off to feed on another passing distressed soul. Antoinette's breathing normalled out. She curled a genuine smile towards the help of her gloomy friend. Little did he know he had helped more than he had attended to.
So what if Aramis were to marry me? My dream isn't to fly off to the faces of unparalled realms. My home is with him. Just as his is with me. She hoped for. And then the small excitements doused in. Hope. Small and perfect. Only delivered by the sun. The sun's twin whitened Antoinette's porcelain skin and illuminated her with light. The corrosive inky black haunts she had stored where eliminated.
Permenantly.
"And by the way, I've forgiven you years ago..." Athos walked away leaving his companion in her own revelations. This is what he must have thought when he realized his true path she thought of Aramis at the church six years ago.
Speaking of which...
"Sorry 'bout that. I know you said no wine, but I have a feeling you'll need it later on. You okay?" He held a fresh bottle of that brandy Planchet hoarded and two new glasses. He saw within her frame, excitement and peculiarly joy.
Antoinette responded with an overwhelming kiss. It was by chance Aramis was used to such rampant responses otherwise his reflexes wouldn't be quick enough to catch the bottle or glasses. He curled the arm that held the bottle around her. Her lips nibbled at him in pure delight. Just when he was debating to whether to drop the bottle now to proceed back to their room- she drew back.
With slightly bruised lips from his passion, she smiled. "Actually, better than I've felt in a long time. Like the weight of the world is off my shoulders,"
He could detect something changed her. Like a 180 twist she seemed much loose and less brooding. Like there drunk friend. She wasn't the type to forgive and forget. Even with herself. He rubbed the back of her neck slowly. "Really? No worries?" he asked.
Her hands caressed the sides of his face. Her hands felt the scratchy signs of another shave in his future. She kissed the edge of his mouth. "Nope. Life's too short to worry about the future. I have my present. Here with me," She coiled arms around him.
Aramis took his opportunity to massage her sides down to her narrowed hips. "So... no wine?" he moaned into the kiss.
She laughed. "I didn't say that!" Antoinette reached for the bottle Aramis refused to hand over. He drew her in closer as her attempts to fight for the bottle were futile and left her drunken from his lips.
So happy I got this one down and over with! :) Just a joy to wake up and write sometimes. Still want to promote that whole talk-show idea. Good idea or not? Message me questions through private or reviews.
Also, if you like this, you'll LOVE my 10th Kingdom story. It's a lot of writing and probably an estimated 40 chapters and expected over 150K words since it's so long. Your choice but I feel once this story is nearing towards its end, I would provide something else from my readers.
Finally, question of the day: I know there's the hopes of adding a sequel to this movie franchise, so... if there is one... do you all want me to write a sequel to this?