A/N—Disclaimer: I don't own this. The Three Musketeers belongs to Alexandre Dumas.
Thanks so much to lilgenious for reviewing the first chapter, AND for pointing out my horrible mistake of spelling Porthos' name wrong. I've fixed that, I assure you. Thanks, lilgenious! This chapter's for you!
Note: There's a lot of Italian in this piece. I haven't included translations because I think it adds to the story. Porthos doesn't understand it, so why should we? But...for those of you who are curious, I have used Google Translate to actually form real sentences, so you can always use that if you really want to know what's being said.
"Chi sei? Sei conloro?W-che cosa vuoi? Io nonho nienteda dare,signore! Niente!"
Porthos had never felt more like a criminal. Innocent though he was, the young man's voice was clearly distraught, even though Porthos still couldn't understand anything, not even enough to guess what language it might be. As he stood there in the candlelit street, he looked closer at the lad, trying to see if he could figure out his nationality by his appearance.
The young man's skin was a porcelain color, without tan or burn. The streaks of mud from being beaten in a muddy side alley only accentuated how pale he was. His hair, which Porthos had already figured out to be a midnight black, was worn long (at least he was in touch with the fashion), and he had a very thin mustache, though in the dark one had to be quite close to notice that . And he was slim—not unhealithily so, but incredibly so. Standing in the street, weeping and rattling on in a language that Porthos did not understand, he was causing Porthos a large amount of worry. The young man was effeminate enough to be mistaken for a young woman at even a relatively close distance, and he didn't want to be charged with abduction or worse.
Porthos' mind refused to work. He wanted to take the young man into the tavern and let the innkeeper deal with him. It wasn't a half-want. He wanted it more than his pride would admit. But he wanted to help the young man personally, and that want was just as strong as the previous one. He was also afraid to take the young man into the tavern. It looked bad at this point—the young man was in hysterics, was covered with filth, had obviously been attacked, and was unable to communicate in French. No…the tavern sounded to Porthos like a surefire way to get himself kicked out of the Musketeers for citizen abuse.
"Non ho dettoniente a loro-che cosa volevano?"
"I don't understand!" Porthos snapped irately as he bit his mustache. If he wasn't taking the lad to the taverns, he only had one other choice: Athos.
But what if Athos was drunk?
"What on—?"
"You're sober." Which was a dangerous thing to say with Athos being in that state of sobriety, but Porthos was just relieved that he hadn't brought a hysteric foriegner face to face with Athos after he'd gotten drunk.
"Porthos, you have patrol! What do you think you're doing leaving early?"
"I got someone else to fill my spot!"
"Rapito! Battuto!" Behind Porthos, the young man sank to the cobblestones and buried his face in his hands. From behind hands that were too delicate to have ever held a sword or anything other than a pen or a book he whispered "Auito..."
"Who've you brought?"
"I don't know. Apparently he made the mistake of reading while walking in the poorer part of town, and a couple peasants thought he was wealthy. Maybe he is, but he doesn't have any money on him. And I can't understand a word he's saying! It's some sort of cursed language—"
"Porthos..."
"—that isn't French!"
Athos shook his head. "It sounds like Italian, but I can't speak the language. We'll have to get M. de Treville."
Porthos clenched his fists until his fingers cracked. "Athos, that's a way to get kicked out. I'd have dropped the kid off at a bar and gotten myself charged with attack and abduction if I'd known you were going to get me kicked off the roll anyway. Knocking at a supervisor's personal abode in the middle of the night?"
Athos went and pulled the sobbing young man to his feet.
"We haven't much other choice, Porthos. Neither of us can speak Italian, and you've bypassed pawning him off on somebody else. We'll have to handle it. Maybe M. de Treville can speak more Italian than we can, and we can at least figure out if this lad's got a name."