Chapter Text
Dappled is the Moon: The Starting Point
It had started after Savoy. All the Musketeers—all his brothers—asleep in the same camp, yet somehow too far away from each other to hear the first throats being slit.
And it was possible Porthos’ and Athos’ actions after-the-fact hadn’t helped as much as they’d believed. Worried about his injuries, they’d taken turns staying close to watch over him. All three of them cloistered up tight in that tiny room within the château-fort in Joinville. So keen for his recovery they’d fallen into habits. Twining fingers though his hair to settle him. Taking turns sleeping with him on his cot, hands pressed to his chest to track the rise and fall of his ribs. Sensitive in their nearness to his nightmares and mood swings.
It’d worked for a while. He’d started sleeping through the night and little by little they’d made their way back to Paris, so that by the time they’d returned to the garrison it was easy enough to believe that everything that ailed him was on the mend.
He’d begun to believe it too.
Blessing the fact of being home, he’d spent the first night back tucked up in his waged quarters, convinced of the likelihood of rest, fitting himself to the mattress and tracing fingers over the healing scar along his hairline. The repetitive action feeling oddly soothing and alive. He’d fallen asleep that way, only to wake in a cold sweat not long after, visions of slaughter and ruin lighting up his mind. Feeling empty and cold and terribly alone.
Again and again and again.
He began staying up, roaming the streets, or finding and sitting close to Athos on those nights that the man drank himself to destruction in the tavern, just to be near someone and not have to sleep. They rarely spoke on those occasions, and Athos, solitary drinker that he was, didn’t actually seem to mind.
And if Aramis looked more haggard and bleary for a while, none of his brothers complained. It was expected, after all. No one returned from a massacre such as he’d endured and simply brushed it off. It took time.
There was one conversation that emerged from it. Outside a pitiable tavern late one night, Athos pressed a hand to his chest and regarded him silently. Aramis held the gaze as long as he could before dropping his face away.
“Aramis,” Athos began, a brush of hesitation in his voice that Aramis had never truly heard before. “I know what was said of me when I first joined the regiment—what’s said of me still. But if you are worried that my plan is to die on you, I promise that it is not.”
Aramis swallowed. “Athos,” he forestalled.
Athos’ hand moved to grip his shoulder and give it a shake. “I promise.”
Aramis slumped back to the dusty brick, feeling disconnected and grateful all at once. Eventually he nodded and felt his face run with shivers when Athos finally let go of him.
Inside the building, he swayed on motionless and indecisive feet before letting Athos procure his own bottle and corner without following him, believing it to be the sign of trust Athos had been hoping for. He sat with Porthos at the gambling table instead, feeling the sluggish way his blood was trying to feed his tired brain.
Porthos tried to send him off to bed, twice, frown deepening each time. And finally Aramis went, thinking that with the looks he was getting, and the somewhat welcome but strange promise from Athos, maybe it was time to try again. It turned out to be futile. Nothing helped. All he could feel when he lay down was the cold empty space around him, devoid of life. A gap of darkness hiding the stillness of death.
The vision of Athos and Porthos and Treville and every damn solider in the regiment having their throats slit flooded in behind his eyelids before they were even completely closed.
In the ensuing week, Treville removed him from duty as a palace guard and, most gallingly to Aramis, tried to be gentle about it.
Dismissed for the day, Aramis stumbled angrily towards the square and ran directly into Robine, widowed after only four months of marriage three years ago and one of the most entitled women in Paris. “Aramis,” she said, letting his name roll off her tongue. “Aramis.” Then she pressed near to him, alive and warm against his side.
He went with her, silent and just this side of uncoordinated as she drew him onto her bed, delighted and laughing at his fumbling attempts to unlace her. But it was her skin, her breathing weight against his side after they were finished, that flooded him with contentment. Satiated, she’d nipped at his shoulder then set her chin on it, wrapping her arm tightly over his chest. Breathing. Breathing. Alive and there. And he slept. Not a single vision in his head. Not a nightmare. Not even for a heartbeat.
He slept.
Two winkless and sleepless nights later, he tried it again. Leaving the tavern early and showing up at the garrison the next day rested and smelling of lavender.
Porthos took one look at him and let his shoulders relax. Grinning at him for the first time in what felt like decades, he added a wink when their eyes caught.
Smiling, Aramis shuddered out a relieved breath and winked back.
tbc