Work Text:
in death’s other kingdom
This is how Aramis remembers it—
For the first few weeks after they find d’Artagnan, there is nothing but cloying, choking desperation. d’Artagnan appears half a corpse already when Aramis first sees him—covered in dirt, body contorted unnaturally, his hand half-rotten. It is one thing to stand, mournful and dignified, over a freshly turned grave and pray for a soul; quite another to look into one and see and smell the earth reclaiming the flesh, consuming it. The stench is overpowering; while Aramis stands frozen at the lip of the opening they’ve created, Athos stumbles away to retch.
Porthos remains bent by d’Artagnan’s side, and when he looks up at Aramis, his eyes are glistening. “Aramis,” he says, as though he’s forcing the word through a lump in his throat, “he’s breathin’. Aramis, he’s alive.”
For a moment, Aramis stands blinking, uncomprehending: a large part of him had already buried d’Artagnan and composed his eulogy; the notion that his spirit is still tethered to this pitiful mortal wreckage is too horrific to swallow. Even as he gapes, Athos appears by his side, pale but determined. “Then we’d best get him out before that changes,” he says.
Athos wraps his scarf around his nose and mouth and reaches into the hole. Porthos scoops d’Artagnan into his arms like he weighs nothing at all (Porthos has always been strong and d’Artagnan always slender, Aramis tries to remind himself, dizzily), and hands him over to Athos, who drags d’Artagnan out into the sunshine.
“Aramis,” Athos says, “Aramis, please.”
That’s when Aramis realises he’s swaying; there’s a terrible pressure in his chest and a full breath is becoming increasingly difficult to take. Such faith his brothers have in him! Truth be told, after ten days of fruitlessly searching for d’Artagnan, Aramis woke up that morning prepared to dispense duties as a priest, not as a battlefield surgeon. Certainly not as somebody who could preserve whatever tenuous hold d’Artagnan still has on the mortal world.
(we have no time for weakness, none, none)
Aramis swallows and reaches for d’Artagnan, pulling him closer with shaking hands. Athos helps Porthos out of the hole; Porthos exhales loudly, as though he has just released an entire universe he’d held captive in his chest, and says, “I didn’t get a very good look at him down there, but it—it seems bad.”
Aramis’ hands flutter over d’Artagnan’s body, scarcely knowing where to begin. He runs the fingers of one hand through d’Artagnan’s hair, matted with blood and grime, while the other settles at his neck, searching for a pulse. The first finds a deep gash stretching from one temple to the back, while the second feels the slightest thrum of blood under d’Artagnan’s skin. Aramis supposes he should feel relieved, but he is only sickened.
Athos hands him a water-skin. “Perhaps this will revive him,” he says. His face is still covered by his scarf, and Aramis wonders if that makes it easier to peddle false hope. He accepts the skin anyway.
He leans in close, taps d’Artagnan’s cheek, and says, “d’Artagnan? d’Artagnan, can you hear me?” He is unsurprised when the lad fails to respond; he tugs at his lower jaw to try and force some water into him. There are bodies of dead insects inside the corners of d’Artagnan’s mouth—poor gormless things that’ve made a living tomb out of his dying friend, and Aramis wants to vomit. He bends further over d’Artagnan instead, as though to protect him from at least this indignity, and uses a glove to remove the insects. There’s blood and sand crusted over d’Artagnan’s teeth, and his lips are cracked to the point of bleeding—Aramis flinches in sympathy. He flicks some of the water over d’Artagnan’s face and pours a little into his mouth, raising his head—d’Artagnan swallows reflexively, but does not wake.
“Aramis, his hand—”
I’m getting there, Aramis thinks. Of course Athos would be concerned about the state of d’Artagnan’s sword hand—it is grotesque, swollen to nearly twice its size, the fingers pitch black and two ragged holes oozing yellow-white pus. Aramis has already decided to sever that hand to stop the infection from invading the rest of d’Artagnan’s already-ravaged body—but he cannot do so in the middle of the forest, hundreds of leagues away from anywhere they could call home. “We need to move him somewhere I can better tend to him. Porthos, is the cart—”
“It’s ready,” Porthos says quickly. “Will he—”
Open his eyes? Survive the journey? Survive at all? “If the Lord is merciful,” Aramis offers, then stops.
Porthos nods; he understands.
-
Aramis saws off d’Artagnan’s right hand in a dusty room in an old inn about a third of their way back to Paris. It isn’t until he applies a heated blade to the stump that d’Artagnan opens his eyes and screams. Aramis freezes at the thin, tortured sound, like air whistling through d’Artagnan’s hollow skeleton—it is Porthos who holds d’Artagnan down and turns his head when he vomits stringy bile, and Athos who grabs the blade and sears shut the last of the bleeding vessels.
Aramis watches the blood dripping to the floor; it looks black in the flickering candlelight. d’Artagnan’s fallen back onto the bed, unconscious once again, but Aramis still hears him screaming.
-
A fever grips d’Artagnan the day they arrive in Paris, and his body burns and trembles at its mercy despite their best efforts. They are able to keep him in the garrison infirmary for about a week before they are forced to move him to his room, his condition still dire. At first, there is a lot of help—there is no dearth of fellow Musketeers offering to watch d’Artagnan in shifts, tend to the fever, try and feed him, but none of them return a second time. Boucher tells Aramis that it’s because they can barely look at the lad, or listen to his breaths grating in and out of his hollow chest: death as a spectacle is horrific enough; to see it take somebody piece by resistant piece is more than most can bear.
Only Athos, Porthos, and Aramis are left to volunteer—and Athos spends more and more time staring into the bottom of a wine bottle these days than caring for the dying man. Porthos, bless him, diligently bathes d’Artagnan every morning that he is at the garrison, and seems to be the only one who can coax food and water into a mostly senseless d’Artagnan’s mouth.
When Aramis watches, it is only to rub medicines into d’Artagnan’s papery, ravaged skin, and wonder how easy it still would be to break this futile hold d’Artagnan has to the mortal world; to end this pointless suffering once and for all. The day he holds a pillow lightly over d’Artagnan’s face and wonders—just wonders—is the day he finally goes to Confession in over ten years, and begs off watch duty.
-
When Constance arrives and sits down next to him, d’Artagnan opens his eyes.
Constance gasps, tearfully runs a hand across a cheek and into the hair that Aramis had been forced to mostly shave off, but d’Artagnan only draws in a ragged breath and screams again. This time the entire garrison hears the horrible, inarticulate sounds, whistling and scraping along d’Artagnan’s throat, and by the time Aramis and Porthos burst into the room, d’Artagnan’s thrown himself to the floor, trying to crawl weakly away from Constance. His stump is bleeding through the bandages, and Constance is staring at the blood trail in speechless horror.
“Leave,” Aramis tells her breathlessly; he barely notices the door closing behind her as he and Porthos grab d’Artagnan and heft him back onto the bed. His eyes are roaming, shiny with tears, his entire body shaking with fear and fever. Aramis sets to changing d’Artagnan’s bandages while Porthos tries to soothe him, taking him in his arms like a child, shushing him, stroking his hair.
“He’s in so much pain,” Porthos says, once d’Artagnan’s closed his eyes. “And he doesn’t understand what’s going on or why.” He looks tired, Aramis thinks. He wonders if Porthos knows that he’s the only soldier fighting for d’Artagnan anymore; he wonders if that’s what’s weighing on his shoulders and has stolen his smile and every waking moment of peace. He wonders if there is a part in each of them that belongs to the other, and if losing one means they all die.
(if it means they find peace.)
It’s the last thought that galvanises Aramis. He stands up, tosses the linen aside, and walks out of the room without saying another word.
-
That night, Aramis sneaks into d’Artagnan’s room, a tiny bloodstained bundle in one hand and a knife in the other. He guts d’Artagnan from collar to navel in one smooth deliberate stroke, then painstakingly stitches the skin back together even as d’Artagnan gurgles on his own blood.
Daybreak finds Aramis washing his hands at the well, a trail of rusting blood leading from him to d’Artagnan’s door.
-
The garrison goes eerily quiet as d’Artagnan walks into the practice yard that morning.
He holds his stump tightly against his chest, stumbles a little, and refuses to meet any of their eyes, but he hardly resembles the man they’d all seen on his deathbed just the previous day. He sits at the mess table, and Aramis silently pushes a plate of bread towards him. After a moment’s hesitation, d’Artagnan begins picking at it with his left hand.
Porthos suddenly clamps a hand over Aramis’ arm, growls at him, “Aramis, what did you do?” He shakes him. “What did you do?”
“Only what had to be done, my friend.” Aramis smiles beatifically. “Only what had to be done.”
Finis