Chapter Text
Paris in winter, despite the greater amounts of snow could never match the beauty of the small farming community that the newest Musketeer recruit came from. The dark clouds sailing overhead were depressing, rather than uplifting. Rain in Gascony at this time of year made people hopeful for a good harvest. In Paris, it simply got everyone, and everything, muddy, thus leaving said recruit, stuck indoors cleaning his weaponry for the forth time that week, and it was only Tuesday.
The dismal clouds and the never ending work were only adding to the depressive mood that had every person in the Musketeer garrison avoiding the Gascon born lad. It had been merely three weeks since the death of his father, three weeks in which the young man tried to ignore the fact that he was now more or less alone in the world. There was a second cousin on his mother's side of the family that he had met occasionally. It was to him that he had written and asked for his Father's farm to be taken care of.
Constance had thrown him out of the house, claiming that she was going to spend the day cleaning, and that he would only get underfoot. d'Artagnan offered to help, only to be scoffed at and asked what he knew of cleaning when it didn't involve weapons, blood, or horses. He left then, not even trying to explain that it had only been himself and his father since he was four years old, when his mother had died. His father had taught him to clean the house, as well as work the fields out of necessity.
When arriving at the garrison, he found that his three friends, or at least that is what he supposed they were, he had never had time to form more than passing acquaintances with anyone, the farm took all of their time, had been sent away on a mission for the King. He was to stay behind, Treville had organised for different musketeers to train him while the others were away.
The training session was brutal, d'Artagnan sure that the other man was doing the best he could to disgrace him in front of strangers. After he ended up in the mud for the the eighth time, the other man, ridiculously clean considering the conditions, called a stop to the training session, telling him to come see him again when d'Artagnan had learnt how to stand up. He rolled his eyes, and muttering implication against the man's mother under his breath, stormed off to the armoury.
*****
The next week continued in a similar vein. d'Artagnan's feeling of isolation were only increasing with every remark made by the Musketeers when he made a mistake in training. The only saving grace was that none of them spoke a word of his native language, as that was his language of choice for the curses that he aimed at the others, although he did make an effort to make sure he was out of earshot first, as his tone of voice would at least have told those around him the general meaning of his language.
It was at the end of his week that he made the first mistake. After a particularly gruelling training session, his sparing partner sneered at him, saying that whoever taught him how to fight must have been almost useless with a sword, because his student was hopeless. d'Artagnan's already frayed nerves snapped, responding with a rather foul statement about the man's ancestry. Braced for a fight, d'Artagnan was rather surprised when he was simply sent to go clean his gear, and himself.
The next day was also an exact copy, except this time, d'Artagnan started a small rebellion against his unfair treatment. A small slip in his speech here, a mild hesitation before carrying out an order there, and yet still no one pulled him up on his behaviour.
He spent the next few days expanding on this slowly, also starting to disobey minor orders from senior officers, pretending he hadn't heard, or hadn't heard correctly. By the end of the second week, d'Artagnan was fairly pleased with himself, and Treville had heard that something wasn't quite right with his regiment.