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There's a chapel in the Hotel de Treville, a small, sombre room lit only by candles and the prayers of the faithful. It's quiet and discreet, and one might be forgiven for reflecting how well suited it was for trysts and stolen kisses. Not by Treville, however. The first and only musketeer brash enough to borrow the room to entertain his mistress stood guard at the Luxembourg for two days straight, and was happy enough to do so. Treville had thrashed the unlucky Bassile himself, in front of the horrified company, as though the hard bitten musketeer was nothing more than an errant schoolboy.
It's common knowledge now that the chapel in the Hotel de Treville is only for the devout, and if it is seldom used, it is at least no longer used for trysts.
But it surprises no one that Aramis is a faithful visitor to the chapel. He professes often enough that he is only temporarily a musketeer, that the church calls to him and that he will answer soon enough. Occasionally, a musketeer will pass by to see Aramis on his knees, head bowed and rosary pressed to lips white and tense. He may have heard Aramis reciting under his breath broken snatches of prayers, the words desperate and unintelligible, but prayer is a private thing, and who amongst them doesn't harbour their own secret fears of damnation?
It is like this that Athos finds him now, appearing penitent and strained, his breath coming fast and shallow in his throat.
Aramis has his eyes squeezed shut. His knuckles are white around the cross that he holds.
'Go away,' he rasps. He doesn't open his eyes. He doesn't need to. He can't.
Athos steps quietly to the candles, snuffs them all out but one.
'Please,' manages Aramis. Athos isn't sure whether Aramis is speaking to him. He suspects not.
Porthos silhouettes the doorway for a moment, and then, in defiance of the explicit orders of Treville himself, steps into the chapel and draws closed the heavy oaken door behind him. He exchanges a glance with Athos, and looks sympathetically at the kneeling figure of Aramis (only daring the latter because he is all too aware that Aramis is beyond noticing insults like sympathy for the present).
Athos reaches out to the rosary that Aramis is gripping with all his might, and gently replaces the the cross with his own hand. Aramis' fingers are cold and crushing. Unconsciously, he brings their joined hands to his temple and presses hard against it, as though the pressure without might relieve the pressure within.
'Is it bad, Aramis?' Porthos asks softly.
Aramis' reply is somewhere between a laugh and a sob. 'There are times,' he gasps, 'when I truly begin to entertain the idea that there is, in fact, a hell.'
Porthos makes a quiet sound of sympathy that is only forgiven because Aramis is in too much pain to care.
'I would take it as a kindness,' Aramis adds breathlessly, 'if one of you gentlemen would oblige me with a musket ball just here.' He brings two trembling fingers to his temple, mimicking the firing of a pistol.
Athos doesn't reply. Instead, he presses a dripping handkerchief to the back of Aramis' neck and feels him shudder. Porthos coaxes Aramis to uncurl from his knees and to lay still, head pillowed on Athos' thigh. Aramis never relaxes his bruising grip of Athos' hand. Athos never relinquishes his answering squeeze. They've done this before.
An hour earlier, standing stiffly to attention at the in the courtyard of the Hotel de Treville as the King takes boyish pleasure in showing off his musketeers to a Spanish duke, Athos' and Porthos' eyes meet at the same time, glancing over the top of Aramis' head. Aramis had started the morning pale and subdued; by ten, pain was etched plainly on his brow; and by noon, it was clear to Athos and Porthos, if to no one else, that only sheer stubbornness held Aramis straight backed and on his feet.
The bravado is gone now. The need for it has gone. Aramis is sprawled ungracefully on the worn rug of the chapel, his face pressed against Athos' hip. He utters no words of complaint, because it would take a lot more than mere physical hurt to rob him of this last shred of pride, but occasionally, against even Aramis' iron control, a small sound of distress crosses his unwilling lips. Athos allows him to grip his hand so hard that pain turns to numbness. Porthos kneads strong fingers across the plane of Aramis' forehead, into his scalp, damp with sweat, against his temples, tight with tension.
'I wish we could do more,' Porthos growls softly. The sight of Aramis' mute distress is almost more than he can bear.
Aramis' free hand - the one not crushing Athos' fingers to his head - reaches out to squeeze Porthos on the shoulder. He knows there's nothing more to be done.
They had tried giving him the milk of poppy once, early in their acquaintance. It had dulled the agony but left in its place such terrors - of paralysis and evil, looming figures - that Aramis had not slept for days and had begged them, if they bore any friendship at all towards him, to never dose him with it again.
All that they can offer, then, is the assurance that they will help him find somewhere dark, and somewhere quiet, and that no word of his weakness will ever pass their lips to the ears of their fellow musketeers or, heaven forbid, the illustrious Captain Treville himself. It's more than Aramis has ever been offered before.
Aramis moves restlessly as the pain in his skull escalates.
'Can't you hit me like I'm Porthos?' he pleads hoarsely.
Porthos frowns in the dark. 'I don't think much of that remedy even when the problem isn't a blinding headache,' he says dryly.
'If I wasn't conscious,' Aramis says through clenched teeth, 'this headache wouldn't be a problem.'
'Not gonna hit you,' Porthos says stubbornly, but he almost relents when Aramis cries out softly at a new wave of pain.
'I think,' Aramis begins, but is forced to stop so that he can breathe, desperate, gulping breaths. 'At Savoy. I think something broke. In my head. It hurts. I think that's why.'
'Not as often as before,' argues Porthos softly. 'You'll mend yet.'
Aramis squeezes his eyes shut, his vision choked with cloudy black and sickening star bursts of white. 'Not fast enough,' he gasps. He can feel the world sliding away from him.
There's nothing to be said to that. Athos and Porthos are nothing but relieved when finally, finally, Aramis body goes limp and he eludes the pain through unconsciousness.
Athos will draw his sword left handed for a week, grateful that he is ambidextrous and as skilled with either hand. Porthos will never admit that these episodes scare years off his life. And yet it would not have occurred to either one of them that they could have been anywhere but here. The ties of friendship that bind them are certain and absolute, as inexorable as the dawn, and as natural.
When he wakes, Aramis wakes slowly. He rather feels like he's been disassembled and put back together wrong. He lifts his head experimentally, and judges that the severity of the pain has diminished from demonic to merely excruciating and allows himself a sigh of relief. He isn't sure how much time has passed, but evidently it's been long enough that Porthos, too, has dosed off against a wooden pew. Athos' firm hand stops him from struggling to sit up.
'Slowly, my friend,' cautions Athos.
Aramis tries to shrug off the restraining arm, but his limbs are numb and uncooperative.
'This -' He stops to swallow. His words are thick and clumsy. 'This is a rather compromising position.' He can feel Athos' leg beneath his cheek. Their hands are still tightly, desperately wound together. There's no feeling in his fingers; he can only imagine how Athos' ache. He pulls away and is grateful when Athos permits it.
He is even more grateful that Athos does not ask how he is, does not coddle him like the invalid that he loathes being. Instead, Athos passes him a flagon of sour wine that he drinks greedily from.
'You awaken!' exclaims Porthos, having done precisely that only moments ago.
'Not by choice,' Aramis assures him. 'I feel like I could sleep for... for a hundred years.' Thoughts slip from his mind like frog spawn through the hands of a child.
He despises this - the helplessness, the humiliation - more than even the pain.
Dimly, in the distance, the clocks of the Luxembourg strike five.
Aramis wobbles to his feet despite all common sense and the advice of his body. He looks around the little chapel, with its candles extinguished and the door firmly shut, and arches an eyebrow at the other two musketeers.
'If the Captain finds out about this,' he says, the faintest glimmer of amusement beneath his words, 'the scandal will be even greater than when Bassile was discovered in here with just one mistress.'
Porthos gives a surprised burst of laughter. Athos shakes his head.
'And is that where you go now?' Porthos asks.
Aramis, with deliberate care, refrains from shaking his head. 'The clocks strike five,' he says. 'The King's parade begins at half past. We must hurry, or we will be late.'
Athos does not comment on his wisdom, or lack of it.
Porthos does not suggest that he mind his health.
Aramis does not need to protest that he is neither delicate nor weak-willed. They know this. They've done this before. They are soldiers, brothers, Musketeers.
Three musketeers march proudly at the head of the King's parade. Their dress is immaculate and their step is firm. If one is drawing strength and comfort from his two companions beside him, nothing could be more natural. They are soldiers, brothers, Musketeers.