A thread of progress.

Porthos

There are shapes in the gloom. They tower and waver, howling in whispers of dark white.

Porthos is small in comparison.

He wonders abstractedly at the way he trudges yet can't think to move his feet. Disturbed.

There is something about the distended, spindly arms swaying so far above his head that he should know. Something.

There is something...

"That's it. That's it. You're doing fine. Fine and frozen, of course, but not for long. Not for long. That's it."

This is a warmer tone. A voice worn, like rough bark. It picks and prods.

It is a precarious thing, and stiff, but Porthos turns his head to see.

"Charon?"

A long swallow moves under the throat before him. He stares, over-focused on the strained flex of skin.

"No." The warm tone wavers. "No. I killed him." The last is quiet and distant, converse to the contracting pressure Porthos feels beneath his shoulder blades.

There is something…

A pain he must have forgotten awakes in body and he tracks his gaze higher, finding eyes like black fire, taut with urgency. "Aramis?"

"Yes."

It is a brief moment of clarity before Porthos is beset by a violent and painful shiver, and like that, the rest tumbles back. Stumbling from ice and water. Bare trees looming. Frost dusting into powder beneath their slogging gait before a variant and violent wind whips it into nothing. He growls on reflex.

Aramis looks at him then, yet keeps them moving at a grumbling pace. The strain is evident in his determined jaw as he turns his face into the distance, flexing back a blank worry.

Porthos sees it and tries to find his feet, remembering with troubled chatter of teeth the parts of Aramis that seem to shutdown whenever there's a task to be won. "Aramis." The word barely emerges.

"It's all right. D'Artagnan runs like a falcon flies. Athos will be for us soon. It's fine. It'll be fine." Aramis's response is a calm force, the warmth of which Porthos sometimes hates. He always hears the worry in it where others don't.

Bending to respond, he feels his chest flutter dangerously and decides to shut up. Concentrating his mind on keeping to the present and working his limbs because Aramis is right. They'll be for us soon.

Leaning on Aramis as they proceed, he finds himself switching back and forth between outright shivering and a calm, numb cold. His joints ache and he can't seem to control his movements—legs and feet defying his commands.

He's wearing Aramis's dry gloves on his fingers, Aramis's dry shirt, and has d'Artagnan's dry cloak buttoned around him—as well as one more and a scarf confiscated from one of the downed ambushers. Nevertheless, his skin remains frozen and tight. His toes feel like someone has stuck them with a million needles and, more often than not, his thoughts refuse him, revealing gaps as he drags images forth from a dark cognizance.

He doesn't know what happened to Aramis's cloak—thinks it might have galloped off on a horse somewhere early in the battle. The only other found amongst their enemies was a thin piece Aramis rolled into a bundle to wear across his back—Porthos's leathers and everything else of value or use to them wrapped inside.

"That's it. Keep going," mumbles Aramis, pushing them both forward with single-minded determination.

Through a contradictory shiver, Porthos imagines that he has stopped breathing as heavily as he was before, and that Aramis has taken it over—poorly hidden and strained grunts slip between his teeth as he moves them. Faster than he should. Porthos is struggling with the clenched pull his rippling arm is causing on Aramis's neck but his muscles refuse the cooperation required to loosen and for the moment he can hold these observances, his brain panics. Stumbling, he coughs through another shiver and Aramis lists, readjusting his hold.

Dizziness makes the world wobble for a moment, but somehow, Porthos gets his juddering jaw calmed enough to speak, discovering they're already back to pace, the urgency in Aramis's demeanor less and less disguised.

"Slow-er. Slow down, Ar-mis. You can't… can't… help… help me… if… if y… if you… kill yourself." Porthos jerks into another shiver and staggers.

Aramis's grips tighten. He rocks sideways to even their balance and keeps them onward, but for the first time since the lakeshore, when he speaks, the rough warmth of his voice vacillates. "Maybe we should stop," he supplies uncertainly. "I can use the pistol powder to start a fire, and perhaps we can use the cloaks to–"

"No," chatters Porthos. The wind would never allow it. And though Aramis is trying to control it, he's shivering now too, in fits and bursts he's been hiding below the cover of Porthos's own spasms. Porthos's mind is pressing through a fog, holding onto thoughts as well as one might hold a spooked bird, but he recognizes the state they're in. If they stop now, they won't start again. "No," he repeats, surprising himself with how distinct the word sounds. "It won't… be -nough. Just… slow down… for… for your own... sake. 'm… not… dying. Athos and d'Artagnan… Athos and d'Artagnan…"

"Will come for us soon," Aramis finishes, adjusting his grip and moving them onward.

The movement helps in its own way. Porthos fights to keep his muscles to it. He still stumbles, missing three steps out of every five, but Aramis seems encouraged. "Just keep shivering," he whispers, the tone not lost on Porthos's scattered thoughts.

"I know the cold," he declares absently, and for a moment Aramis is Charon again. They are in the descending dark of the city with no fingers to their gloves, no hats to their heads, and Flea not come upon them yet.

"I know you do," Aramis responds honestly, voice reflective and pained enough to pull Porthos to the present. The light through the bare trees is fading fast. Troublingly, Aramis dips his head to the side, pressing his forehead to the skin of Porthos's temple. "I know you do," he repeats.

"You too," Porthos mumbles, then stumbles over a stone his leg can't feel before Aramis rights them.

"Me too," Aramis agrees. After that, Aramis returns his gaze to the vague direction of the cabin and shuts up, but he doesn't break pace. Not even for a second.

tbc