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with a whimper
The light flickers, dies.
-
d’Artagnan remembers that there was a mission. The details seem irrelevant now; the only thing he remembers with any clarity is the snap of bone that rang like a musket shot in the still air. Then the frightening feeling of weightlessness in the pit of his stomach, and falling, rolling, the universe a brief, intense cycle of ground-sky-pain before it all came to a violent end, with a sharp pain in his head and starbursts behind his eyes. Then darkness.
It’s still dark.
d'Artagnan blinks. There’s something hot and wet trickling into one eye and grit under his eyelids. His cheek is pressed to the icy ground and his mouth is painfully dry; he licks his lips and ignores how it feels like he’s shorn them off. He tries moving and freezes as pain explodes in his head and crackles down his spine. His stomach lurches uneasily, and he barely turns before he retches.
Once he’s done, the pain is so terrible that he can barely think; colours flash behind his eyelids in time to the throbbing in his head and his ears ring like he’s caught in the inside of a church bell. He grinds his forehead against the floor, rasps, “Athos,” more out of helplessness than anything. “Athos!”
There’s no answer.
A different kind of panic seizes d’Artagnan’s heart: if nothing else, he’s sure that Athos, Aramis, and Porthos were with him when he fell. It’s deeply unnerving that none of them have found him yet. He isn’t sure what’s worse: that they are trapped here with him, so injured that they can’t answer, or that he is lost to them, buried out of sight. His heart flutters against his ribs and his mouth tastes of metal.
“Athos!” he tries again, crawling forward on his belly, his fingers slipping against the slick, cold floor. “Porthos! Aramis!”
At first, there is silence, then a faint skittering noise, of something small and sharp against the stone. Then: “d’Artagnan?”
The relief that floods through d’Artagnan almost pulls him back into unconsciousness. “Athos,” he says again, then, “Athos,” again, like the name alone means everything from are you all right to it really fucking hurts to move to how do we get out of here. He knows they’ll understand; he’s counted on that understanding to save his life more than once now.
“d’Artagnan?” comes Athos’ voice again, but it’s more distant this time. There’s no answering relief in the tone, just confusion, as though he hasn’t heard d’Artagnan’s call.
d'Artagnan grits his teeth and crawls further—trying to push himself to his hands and knees only caused the world to tilt alarmingly and his stomach to cramp—and tries again. “Athos!” he calls. “Athos, can you hear me? Athos!” There’s gravel in his throat and he coughs; it grates inside of his dry throat. “Athos, please—”
The skittering sounds closer; in the darkness around him, d’Artagnan thinks he sees a shadow darker than the rest approach him. “Athos,” he whispers again. “’that you?”
Something cool and smooth touches d’Artagnan’s outstretched hand. “d’Artagnan?” says Athos, sounding curious. “d’Artagnan…”
d’Artagnan tries to lift his hand, to reach out and grip Athos’, but the last of his strength has left him; he has fallen to darkness even before his head hits the ground.
-
When he wakes up, there’s something crawling over the back of his neck. With a shudder, d’Artagnan instinctively reaches for it, and his hand closes around something large and warm. There’s a sudden sharp pain as the thing pierces his hand with teeth, and he tosses it aside with a cry. Breathing hard, he struggles to a sitting position against a wall, the world unsteady, as though he were in a boat on choppy waters.
He’s barely settled when there’s something else crawling on him now, down the small of his back, more, on his shoulders, skittering round his ribs, fluttering over the planes of his stomach, dozens, dozens of them—
He shrieks (and the sound echoes in the darkness), grinds his back against the wall in the vain hope of killing those things and scrabbles away, on his behind. He stops when his back hits something large and soft, his breath seizing in his lungs.
“d’Artagnan.” Aramis’ voice. Something cool and wet touches his left earlobe, and he leans in to the sensation. “d’Artagnan…”
“Aramis, please,” d’Artagnan says, his voice cracking and flaking around the words, “please help. There’s something… please, please.”
“Oh, d’Artagnan,” Aramis says on a sigh. His warm breath ruffles the hair at the nape of his neck.
d’Artagnan sobs.
-
d’Artagnan’s sure that he’s dying.
He lies curled on his side, shuddering as his muscles cramp intermittently. His breath burns like fire in his lungs, scorching him from the inside. He imagines himself a hollowed-out husk, air whistling in and out of him, creating a strange music. A song of the dead. The thought amuses and distracts him when his thigh muscles cramp so viciously that he thinks the bone may crack with the force of it.
He forms words when he can find the breath for it, when he can force his desiccated tongue and cracked lips to co-operate. “Porthos,” he says. “Porthos, water. Water, please.”
Porthos only strokes his hair—in long, languid movements, tangling his fingers in the dirty strands. “Not yet, d’Artagnan,” he says. “Not yet.”
d’Artagnan’s eyes are closed—they are so dry that it hurts to blink—but he reaches up with one hand anyway, desperate for touch. His fingers close around something wet and hot, jumping in his hand, then stilling. A human heart.
Porthos.
d’Artagnan screams with a voice he does not have, and keeps screaming till he passes out again.
-
There’s blood under his fingernails. He fiddles with the loose nails on his left hand until he peels them off; at the hot wet gush of blood, he brings those fingers to his lips. The blood is hot and coppery and smears in webs across his teeth—and there’s never enough of it—but it’s better than nothing.
He remembers to offer to Athos and the others. He doesn’t get an answer.
-
He can hear nothing but the skittering sounds now. It’s all around him, and it sounds like an army of spiders, their chitinous legs clacking against the stone, sinking into his flesh. He closes his eyes. He opens his eyes. He tries to remember there’s a difference.
-
d’Artagnan’s hand is hot where he’d been bitten. (By Aramis? He’s not sure. Maybe it doesn’t matter.)
Even as the rest of him shivers continuously, his right hand burns—hot, tight, and swollen. There’s something oozing from the bite wound, slick and syrupy, and it smells horrible. d’Artagnan’s stomach rebels weakly; he twitches, hot, sour bile leaking from the corner of his mouth.
Please, he thinks he says. He’s not sure. Anyway, Aramis will know what to do. Please…
He hears Athos’ voice again, after what seems like a century: “Sssh, d’Artagnan,” he says. “Just be. Just be.”
d’Artagnan wants to cry.
-
Porthos kisses him with sharp teeth and a wet tongue, his fingers poking holes in between d’Artagnan’s ribs, like his skin is nothing more than paper stretched over brittle bone. He imagines his essence leaking through those holes, dribbling from his lips, his nose, his ears.
He can’t feel or move the fingers of his right hand anymore. He thinks it might already be dead. He thinks it might already be eaten.
The day he became a Musketeer was the day he was promised a swift, dignified death. Death must devour, not gnaw; but little d’Artagnan must grow and learn, and it turns out that little d’Artagnan had held even death in much too high esteem.
He laughs, a little. Aramis laughs with him.
-
The skittering is replaced by louder sounds, those of rocks shifting, falling, and people shouting. Suddenly, there’s light, and it pierces through d’Artagnan’s eyelids like heated knives. He turns his head slightly.
“d’Artagnan?” Porthos’ voice. For the first time, he sounds worried. Afraid, even. “Oh lord, d’Artagnan! Oh god, I’m so sorry it took us so long to find you, oh god—”
That may be the problem, d’Artagnan thinks. He never considered praying, all this while. His mother would be so disappointed.
“Aramis! Athos!” Porthos bellows. A trembling hand cups his cheek. “Stay awake, d’Artagnan, you hear? Stay awake, we’re here now, we’re here…” d’Artagnan smiles blindly.
The light flickers, dies.
Finis