When Sam proposed an undercover plan, Tommy was the first to volunteer.

He'd been with the musketeers for half a month now, officially signing up as part of the regiment barely a week ago. His induction to the group went very quickly, much quicker than usual. All thanks to Phil vouching for him. Most men would endure a long period of training and scrutiny before they were ever approved, if they were at all. Since musketeers worked so closely with the royals, a potential recruit had to be trustworthy, loyal, willing to die for the crown.

Tommy wasn't entirely sure about that last one, honestly. But he was willing to give the whole musketeering thing a shot. After his father's death, there was not much waiting for him back home anyway. And the glamor of Paris was a much more tempting song than the mundane days of labor on the farm.

But specifically because he knew Phil had gone out of his way to get him the placement without all the hassle, Tommy felt he needed to make up for it somehow.

Even if that somehow was getting thrown into prison for a ruse.

"Your execution will be the day after tomorrow, so don't get too comfy."

A harsh push sent Tommy onto the ground, chained together hands barely catching the fall. The warden laughed as he closed the iron gate. Tommy was pretty certain the guy hadn't been informed of the plan, but that only meant that his weird sadistic glee at locking up a musketeer was genuine. Some people just liked to see the mighty fall. What a jerk!

He scrambled upright again, kicking the bars for good measure. It was satisfying, though he kinda forgot they'd taken all his gear so he was wearing boring old prison boots rather than the leather-enforced tips of the musketeer getup. And so his toe ended up throbbing with pain.

"Jesus fuck-"

"Would you quiet it down?" a gruff voice from the other corner asked. "They don't like it when you make a ruckus."

Tommy froze, half-turning slowly. Sitting against the wall was the man whom he was seeking, the terrorist the musketeers wanted to stop. Vadim. All that gunpowder, and no amount of interrogation had loosened Vadim's lips about where it went.

Slipping back into the role he had to play for this mission to not end in disaster, Tommy huffed and rolled his eyes. "Whatever," he said. Then he went to sit down in the opposite corner of the room, drawing his knees up to his chest. He scowled at the ground for a moment, messing with the shackles around his wrists.

What he had to do now was delicate. Gaining the trust of a seasoned criminal would not be an easy thing. But Tommy being on death row would help. He could pretend to be cut from the same cloth as this man.

He watched as Vadim let a coin run through his fingers, motion as smooth as water. He closed his hand around it, letting it slide into the gaps. When he turned his palm, the coin was gone. It was the sort of idle thing one did in boredom. A magic trick, or a tactic used to pickpocket on the busy streets of Paris. Tommy licked his lips, deciding on a course of action.

"How did you do that?" he asked.

This could go either way. Either Vadim would take offense to his nosiness and Tommy would have even less of a chance of winning his trust. Or, he'd take the bait.

And sure enough, a small grin graced the man's features. "The secret to any good trick…" He revealed the inside of his other hand, where the coin sat. Tommy genuinely had no idea how it got there. "Make people look the wrong way."

He nodded, breaking eye contact again. But he noticed Vadim continued to smile slightly. They sat in silence for a while until the warden came back with their evening meals.

The man was heavy-set and tall, with an impressive amount of facial hair. He lumbered into the room slowly, as if the prisoners would be stupid enough to attack him. He was armed, they weren't. And their ankles were similarly chained as their hands. It would be a really bad fucking idea. Since there were only two men on death row too, it's not like he needed to be worried about being overpowered.

A bowl of stew was set on the floor next to Vadim first, then to the side close to Tommy's feet. He frowned at it, picking it up with one hand. The liquid was dark and cloudy. Something pink and dangly hung over the rim of the bowl and when Tommy pulled on it, the rest of the dead mouse followed, rising out of the broth.

"What's this?" he asked with some disgust. He was already missing Niki's cooking.

"Lamb stew," the warden sighed as if he was an idiot for asking. Tommy frowned harder.

"No, lamb is the one with wool that goes 'bah' and shit."

The warden kicked the bowl out of his hands, spilling the foul-smelling stew all over Tommy's lap and making him curse loudly. Not that he had much time to dwell on that, as the warden then raised his fist and brought it down on the side of his face. Tommy curled into himself, biting his lip. The urge to strike back was strong, but it wouldn't help and only would serve to make his situation worse. Hell, he could get thrown into a solitary cell for misbehavior and then the entire plan would fall apart. So he had no choice but to sit there and take the beating.

When the warden was finally done, he spit in Tommy's face for good measure. "You can starve for all I care, musketeer." His heavy footsteps lumbered away from the cell, throwing the iron gate closed more harshly than before.

Tommy wiped the spit off his face in disgust. He noticed Vadim was watching him. "I'm no fucking musketeer," he said. "Not anymore. They betrayed me and I hate them for it."

Vadim's unreadable gray eyes narrowed at him for a second more. Then the man rolled over onto his other side to catch some sleep.

Tommy could only hope it would have been enough.

Maybe messing with the coin was less a measure against boredom and more of a nervous habit. Tommy watched Vadim flip it from hand to hand, letting it soar through the air before catching it. Tommy tracked it with his eyes. The night had passed slowly, and the sun was already falling through the small grate set near the ceiling - actually at ground level outside, but the cell was below the earth. Some small talk was exchanged here and there. Tommy had a feeling Vadim was warming up to him, but it was a far cry for him to tell if it was enough. Time was in short supply though.

When the silence was more comfortable than tense, he cleared his throat a little, pushing another bowl of disgusting prison food further away with his heel.

"So, how did they get you?" he asked. Man, it was hard to pose any question without sounding suspicious. He hoped he'd made himself come across as pathetic enough for it to go by as plain curiosity instead.

"They caught me as I was with my mistress, actually." Vadim caught the coin once more, rubbing his thumb over the gleaming metal. "You could say I was found in a rather… unfortunate position."

"Did she rat you out?"

Vadim had managed to stay out of the hands of the musketeers for so long, he could move across Paris almost completely unnoticed. They only knew where to find him because-

"Somebody did betray me, yes." There was a wry smile on the man's face. "Not her, though. One of my men. He fell asleep while he should be keeping a lookout."

A rather loose definition of the word betrayal. Tommy tried not to scowl, nor think of what had become of that guy. Vadim would kill people for less than making a mistake and dozing off at a bad moment.

"You and I have two things in common," he said with a small chuckle, bitter and downtrodden. As if he was really in a terrible situation. "We both were let down, and we both are going to hang tomorrow."

Tommy hoped that if everything did go to shit, Sam and Phil would bail him out. They hadn't really discussed that far ahead and Tommy wasn't one to dwell on the possibility of failure either. But it would be a little ironic, considering all the trouble he went through to keep Phil from swinging from a noose so recently.

Vadim's coin slipped from his hand and fell to the floor, landing amidst the dirtied hay of a hundred men that came before them.

"Not me," the criminal said with an air of confidence that Tommy absolutely disliked. "I'm going to walk out of here in broad daylight, and not a single soul will lift a finger to stop me."

He kneeled to pick up his coin. But as his fingers curled around it, his throat let out a horrible, strangled noise. Tommy sat up in alarm, watching as Vadim started to seize in his crouched position, the veins on his neck bulging obscenely. His big, blank eyes seemed to almost pop from the sockets, though it did nothing to help him draw in choked breaths. Tommy started to bang on the bars. "Jailor?!"

What the fuck, what the fuck, what the fuck-

After what felt like an eternity, the warden finally made his way over. He didn't bother looking at Vadim, who had at this point curled up into an almost fetal position while continuing to convulse.

"What's wrong?" the warden asked Tommy, with the sort of annoyance of a man interrupted in his afternoon stroll.

"What's wrong?!" Tommy couldn't help the true fear in his voice. This was bad, very bad. "What the fuck do you think is wrong, can't you see he's having a fit?"

"He's faking," the warden accused. All the same, he retrieved his key to open the cell. Probably he couldn't risk having somebody die on his watch. Criminals or not, he'd have to answer for the reason of a sudden demise.

He used one hand to push Tommy back, glaring at him as if Tommy were a feral animal meaning to jump him. Tommy raised his hands a bit, pushing himself into a corner. The warden checked on Vadim by rolling him over with a swift kick to the chest. It made Vadim gurgle more, the sound close to that of a dying animal.

It was convincing enough to even have Tommy completely fooled.

When the warden picked up Vadim's coin and turned to Tommy with a sickening grin, as if to celebrate him thieving from a dying man, a clear voice rang out behind him, no longer choking.

"Of course I was faking."

One swift punch sent the warden sprawling onto the ground, the crack his nose made indicating it might be broken. Vadim slammed the man's head into the iron bars to make sure he wouldn't regain his senses too soon, before quickly taking the keys from him to undo his shackles. Before Tommy could blink, Vadim was on the other side of the bars and pulling the doors shut again.

"Wait!" He urgently grabbed onto the iron, keeping Vadim from locking him up. "You still need to get through the other guards." Vadim frowned at him, but Tommy pushed on. "Take me with you, I can help."

This was where it would truly show if his deceit had been enough.

And sure enough, Vadim sighed before entering the cell once more to unlock Tommy too. They pulled the door closed together.

Tommy's heart must have been going a million miles a minute. This was not part of the plan, though this was a sure way to find out where the explosives were. He was effectively a wanted criminal on the run now, conspiring with a known terrorist. This could get pretty fucking gnarly.

The thought had barely popped up into his head or Vadim was throwing the keys at him. Tommy caught them against his chest. "Release the other prisons. We'll need a decoy."

Oh… Well, Tommy was hoping Phil could put in a really good word for him after this…

"Prisoners escaping!"

Ah, Wilbur did get the distinct sense that everything was going a little too easily today. Very out of character for God to let them have this.

"Protect the queen!" Sam bellowed next to him. Wilbur kind of winced. No need for the captain to yell like that, it's not like any of them would forget what their main purpose was.

A moment later Wilbur saw it, an outpour of men in rags and disheveled states that came out of the jail quarters. Despite being an excellent musketeer, he saw Phil get overwhelmed in seconds, barely having the time to grab at his weapons before three prisoners were on him. Several of the guards who rushed forward were also easily fought back. This amount of people was mayhem, and they were vastly outnumbered. Wilbur ran ahead, until he was level with one of the guards. The man was loading his musket, aiming it in the general direction Phil was also in.

"Don't! There's a musketeer in there," Wilbur said. He grabbed the rifle from them. He didn't trust anybody else but himself to be a good enough shot not to injure Phil.

That's why he pulled the gun out of the surprised guard's grip to aim it himself. Techno was also down there at this point, fighting off two men with one blade.

Wilbur laid his arm against the stone wall to guide him, elbowing roughly at one of the prisoners trying to attack him. Not the best conditions to shoot in, but he'd dealt with worse. And his aim was excellent. He pulled the trigger and one of the three men struggling to overpower Phil crumpled to the cobblestone. That should make the odds more equal.

"We need to get the queen out of here!" This time Wilbur was actually grateful that Sam's voice rose over the ruckus. He fell back a bit, sticking close to his side. The chaos was absolute, it was hard to see who was friend or foe. But Sam could be relied on and the queen Sally's safety had to be guaranteed. They only had to make it to the gate and open it.

He caught a flicker of movement from the corner of his eye.

"On our right!" Wilbur turned, slamming the back of his gun into an approaching assailant. How could there be that many of them? Another grabbed his wrist, pulling on it and tearing a grunt of pain out of his throat when the limb felt tugged out of the socket. Sam shot his own gun and the man fell back, a short cry came from the queen in response. A woman of her standing would have never seen a man die, not up close like this.

There was a first for everything.

There was even a first for Sam not covering his blind spots.

Another shout - this one filled with pure fear. Wilbur felt it move through the crowd like a wave, grasping every man in turn. He spun but it was already too late. From some unseen corner, Vadim had managed to sneak up on them. And he had thrown his arm around the queen's neck, pushing the barrel of an arquebus against her temple. The queen stumbled back, yet would not be able to struggle in his hold. And despite the dozens of muskets pointed at them, Vadim showed no fright.

Because he had taken the perfect hostage.

"Stop! Stop or your queen dies!" Vadim pulled her back against him. The queen wrapped her hands around his wrist but didn't dare try to pry him off.

"Hold your fire," Sam commanded. Unnecessarily so, nobody was stupid enough to fire at Vadim with the queen in the crossfire. Wilbur felt Techno scoot up on his left side, then Phil on his right.

The three of them had their attention pulled over Vadim's shoulder.

Because there, in rags and dirt, stood Tommy. Looking as pale and shaky as one possibly could. Wilbur made eye contact with him, watched as the boy froze.

"Open the gate," Vadim demanded. Nobody moved at first, but then he shook the woman in his arms, pushing the metal against her and the queen gasped. "Open the gate!"

Sam nodded at the jailor. "Do as he says."

Safekeeping the queen meant everything.

After a small moment of hesitation, the jailer relented. "Do it. Open the gates." One guard moved slowly forward, dropping his weapons so Vadim wouldn't be tempted to do anything stupid. Wilbur's eyes flitted from Tommy to the Queen's - over and over again.

When the gate opened, there were men waiting. Vadim had planned this exceedingly well.

"You see," Vadim said, seemingly speaking to Tommy. "I told you I would walk out of here untouched."

"Hurt the queen and we're all dead," Tommy hissed back at him, loud enough for the musketeers to overhear. "We don't need her anymore. Let's just go."

Phil was right, he was a clever kid.

Vadim chuckled. "Fair enough. My apologies for this, Your Majesty." He pulled the queen closer to him, and when he pressed a kiss to her cheek she flinched. "I hope that apart from this, you had a pleasant visit."

He shoved her to the ground, starting to run through the gate where his men were waiting with the horses. Wilbur saw Tommy start to follow.

The ruse would need to be held up a little longer.

Chaos broke out again, with guards rushing forward to try and stop the criminals in their retreat and more prisoners behind them still trying to escape. The regiment was caught in between. Wilbur saw the queen fall, dainty fabrics in a heap. Muskets were being loaded.

He did the first thing he could think of and fell to the ground next to her so he could cover her body with his own. His arms braced on either side of her, foreheads close enough to touch and allow breathes to mingle. It was not a gesture of intimacy. If anything, it was the sort of thing Wilbur would have done for a wounded soldier on the battlefield. Shield them, make himself a target.

Yet when the mayhem had passed, he could feel her shake beneath him. And he couldn't help himself from brushing the hair out of her face.

"Hey, it's alright. It's over, I got you," he heard himself say. God, it was a foolish thing.

The queen blinked up at him with bright blue eyes, their opulence perhaps unshed tears yet they could draw Wilbur in like sapphires. "So you have," she breathed.

He quickly came to himself, helping her up. "My apologies, Your Majesty."

"You're hurt," she said softly. She touched the side of his neck, fingers coming away bloodied.

"Merely a scratch," Wilbur answered. And her small smile was a reward in itself.

She was swept away by Sam again, quickly bundled back into the carriage so she could be returned to the safety of the palace - and her husband's arms. Though Wilbur could swear her eyes lingered on him for most of the ride to Paris.

The inside of the palace was always a sight to behold.

Wilbur had been there many times, though he was usually confined to the part accessible to the public during those times. Standing guard in the sprawling gardens, leaning against one of his comrades trying not to fall asleep on his feet while sitting through hours of boring audiences with stuffy nobles held in the throne room.

But this was different.

This was Wilbur being called upon personally, led into the private quarters of the royals, where he stood waiting with held breath.

"You saved her life, didn't you?" Techno asked, standing behind him all stiff-shouldered. "She's probably grateful, wants to thank you." Wilbur always found it quite amusing how easily Techno donned the more fancy garb of their official uniform, yet also looked so unbearably uncomfortable in it. When they wore decorative armor rather than functional, with the thick turquoise fabric hanging over his shoulder, Techno looked like he'd rather die.

He hated when Phil said it suited him.

"Maybe. We also did put her in danger in the first place so perhaps she'd rather see us whipped," Wilbur mused out loud.

"Hm. Hadn't thought of that," Techno admitted, contemplating. "That's an upsetting thought."

Before they could decide on it, their questions were soon to be answered. Queen Sally looked better than she did before, the rich flowing dress and intricately pinned-up hair betraying nothing of the ordeal she endured the day before. As beautiful as ever, if Wilbur did say so himself.

"Sir Wilbur, the bravest of the king's musketeers," she greeted instantly, offering both of them a small courtesy. They bowed in return.

"Only among the bravest," Wilbur answered.

"Perhaps your friend would give us a moment of privacy," she said. Coming from the queen, it was less a request and more of an order delivered in a polite manner. Techno glanced at Wilbur shortly, but then nodded and stepped to the other side of the room near the door. He couldn't leave completely - musketeers traveled in pairs for a reason. And the queen's own retainers were there too, two young girls whispering among themselves.

But it allowed the queen to step forward and touch her hand to Wilbur's cheek in the same way she did yesterday.

"Does it hurt?" she asked, thumb brushing slightly against the mark left by the ricochet wound.

"Not at all," he assured.

"I'd like to give you something. As a token of my gratitude." The queen removed a necklace from her neck, a thin chord of cloth with pearls woven through it, and a small golden cross hanging from the end. She had to stand on her tiptoes to place it around his throat instead.

As she did, their eyes met. The moment seemed to stretch on for several long hours, though it probably was only a handful of seconds before one of the queen's retainers cleared her throat.

"May it keep you safe wherever you go," she said hastily, turning around. Not before Wilbur noticed a slight flush to her cheeks.

Techno stepped back up next to him when they had left the room. "You were giving her the look," he said with clear disapproval.

"What look?" Wilbur asked. To which Techno only raised an eyebrow, the scar there standing out more thanks to the sarcastic expression. "She's a very attractive woman," Wilbur defended himself.

"She's not a woman," Techno said. "She is the queen."

Wilbur frowned at him, aware there was a point there.

"Besides, didn't you have that other one? Adelle?" Techno added.

At having that sour memory brought back up, Wilbur started to walk. "She has chosen the Cardinal over me and left Paris. We are through."

"Sure. But you should still set your sights a little lower. For all our sakes." Techno clapped him on the shoulder goodnaturedly, though Wilbur received the meaning loud and clear.