Wish
I hope you get everything I ever wanted to give you...love, and a life without fear.
Those are things the man who fell in love with you wanted to share more than the world, things the man I am now could never give you; we've changed, you and I, in anger and in grief and in this bitter truth I should have heard then, and with how much has altered your happiness must surely lie somewhere else –
The pen catches on a lump in the paper, spits ink across the surface, and with an irritated sound Athos shoves it back into the inkwell. It doesn't matter that he's marred the paper, not when this is a letter he'll never send, a letter he started as a way to try to sort out the tangle of his thoughts after the events of the last few days (Anne's ultimatum, d'Artagnan's wedding, Tréville's orders, his own unsought promotion, a pale glove in the dirt and the ruts of carriage wheels leading where he cannot follow) – not when he doesn't know what he'd say, if she were standing before him now.
She deserves more than a husband who didn't trust her, who'd abandoned and hanged her, more than a drunkard wedded more to his sword and her ghost than the flesh and blood creature who'd stood before him, and he – he has the Musketeers, and for the years since they have been enough.
(He is no longer sure what he deserves.)
Porting over the last of these to date from Tumblr. It was a fun meme and I'd love to revisit it in the future, but it's probably worth calling it done (and thus this complete) unless I end up with new prompts. XD
(As ever, you can find me as myalchod over on Tumblr. :3 )