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burn down this river every time
1. There is a boy who grows up in the slave markets on Tattooine, who absorbs all the trader’s stories of fantastical places and heroes larger than life, who has an instinctive knack for technology and practices his swordsmanship cloaked in the secrecy of night. A boy who so easily could’ve been overlooked, could’ve been left to grow up in the stifling air of a desert planet on the edge of the universe, but is instead taken into the fold.
“Hello,” Captain Treville—respected knight of the Musketeer Order, achieved his captaincy at a young age and went on to train more recruits than any captain before him, offered and turned down a place on the Council several times—says to the boy that saves him from a ridiculous fight with a Dug. “And what might your name be?”
The boy gives him a gap-toothed grin. “I’m d’Artagnan. Pleased to meet you.”
“And you, d’Artagnan. It seems I owe you a debt of gratitude. How’d you like to see my spaceship?”
2. Athos disapproves, because of course he does. “I just don’t understand what he’s doing here,” he says frustratedly, pacing the confines of their ship’s underbelly. They’ve left the boy—d’Artagnan, Treville corrects himself, he’s not just a boy anymore but the latest in a long line of charges with staggering amounts of potential—upstairs with the Queen of Naboo and her entourage. That’ll keep him suitably entertained while Treville sorts out what’s bothering his padawan.
“He has the highest midichlorian count of anyone I’ve ever encountered, aside from General de Foix,” Treville says calmly. He’s leaning against the wall, watching Athos pace. This is how a lot of their conversations go, Athos voicing his (sometimes very reasonable) concerns and Treville defusing them without breaking a sweat. “I couldn’t just leave him there.”
Athos rounds on him, frustration and worry and something undefinable fighting for space in his expression. “No, but you could’ve come back for him. When we aren’t on a mission of galactic importance or transporting high profile dignitaries to the capitol. Waited a couple years for him to hit the proper age—it’s not like he would’ve gone anywhere in the interim.”
“You’re being unreasonable,” Treville tries. Out of all his padawans, Athos has been the most difficult to train. Maybe it’s the young man’s stubborn resilience, or maybe it’s the dark past he refuses to talk about. All Treville knows about him is that he’s a disgraced son of the nobility, drinks entirely too much to be healthy, and he covers up his marriage tattoo with a custom-fitted leather gauntlet.
Despite all the difficulties, Athos is still the best recruit he’s ever taken on. Treville has no doubt he’ll be taking his trials soon, trying to earn his commission from the Musketeer Council. And once Athos is made a knight, that’ll free up a spot for d’Artagnan as Treville’s newest padawan. Young, sure—Athos is right about that, at least, usually Musketeer recruits have at least hit puberty and had a chance to develop some maturity—but Treville promises himself that d’Artagnan won’t end up like the last padawan he took on early.
3. It’s not that Porthos turned out bad, exactly. It’s that Porthos is the son of one of the highest-ranking Generals on the Musketeer Council. Procreation is usually frowned upon for Musketeers—how do you explain to a child that their parents aren’t going to be home very often, if at all?—but General Belgard has always been and will probably always be the exception to the rules.
Belgard is notoriously terrible with kids.
Thus, in essence, Porthos is raised by the entire Order. de Foix teaches him to read and write and access the Force, Treville himself shows the boy the beginning stances of swordsmanship. Serge, Cornet, Fournier and many others are all integral in keeping the mischievous youth out of trouble. And when Porthos begs to be taken on as an apprentice on his thirteenth birthday—young, the average age of recruits usually fifteen or sixteen, but not so young as to be unreasonable—Belgard insists on one of his oldest friends as Captain.
Treville accepts it as easily as he does anything, which is with the grudging sort of acceptance that he usually reserves for senate duty and long missions on the Outer Rim. As the years pass, he admits that his reluctance is for naught—Porthos is a fast learner and an excellent student, dedicated and hard working. All they could hope for from a Musketeer. He passes the trials at eighteen, the youngest knight to ever earn his commission, and completes his first few solo missions with flying colors.
And then he meets Flea and Charon.
Charon, the son of a bounty hunter, and Flea, the lone survivor of a natural disaster on her home planet Felucia. Lawless and carefree, Porthos is hopelessly entranced by the possibilities they offer to him, and starts spending less and less time in the garrison. He disappears one night and isn’t seen on Coruscant again for seven years, becomes known as the biggest waste of potential the Musketeers have seen in five centuries. He also ends up the most wanted smuggler on fifteen planets across the Republic. Together with Flea and Charon, he organizes the largest smuggling ring the Republic has ever seen.
But it doesn’t last.
4. These days, Porthos is a smuggler without an empire behind him. The fight with Flea and Charon almost destroys his hopes for the future entirely, except. Except Porthos stumbles across the decimated remains of a Musketeer camp, down in the extensive network of caves on Utapau, in time to help the one knight left alive by a savage attack.
The man is just barely conscious enough to recognize the fleur de lis tattooed on the inside of Porthos’ wrist, the lightsaber clipped at his waist, to acknowledge the other man as a fellow Musketeer. He grasps dazedly at Porthos’ shoulder, breathes out a relieved “brother,” and falls unconscious.
“What the hell am I supposed to do with you?” Porthos grumbles to that, but he hauls the injured knight back to his ship with a minimum of complaining. His medbot is one of the best on the market, a custom GH-7, and it squawks agitatedly as Porthos deposits his charge on the gurney. “Help him,” Porthos urges the meddroid, and goes back outside.
The camp is trashed—it looks like a herd of dragonmounts tore through the chasm, and then somebody had the terrible idea to set it on fire. Most of the knights’ bodies are charred lumps surrounded by the scraps of their tents and belongings, but there are a few still identifiable. Swallowing heavily, Porthos sets about the gruesome task of giving their dead a respectful funeral pyre.
Smuggler or not, he was raised a Musketeer, and a Musketeer never leaves their brothers behind.
When he’s done, he goes to check on his passenger. The man is weak and pale against the crisp white sheets, but he’s conscious again and looks relieved to see a vaguely familiar face. “Hey,” he says.
Porthos grins. “Hey. Good to see you awake. You want me to drop you off at the garrison?”
The man looks briefly confused by Porthos’ choice of words. “You…you wouldn’t be staying?”
“Nope!” Porthos declares cheerfully, then has to throw his head back and laugh at the scandalized look on his passenger’s face. “P’haps I should introduce myself. Porthos du Vallon, at your service.” He gives a dramatic little bow.
“Oh fuck,” the man says faintly.
Porthos cackles.
5. In the end, they do go back to the garrison. Briefly. Aramis—when the man finally reveals to Porthos his name, it’s been a week of travel and Porthos has taken to calling him Abbé. The nickname sticks, much to Aramis’ chagrin—needs more intensive medical treatment than a smuggling ship can provide, no matter how well equipped his medbay.
Porthos deposits him in the middle of the garrison in the dead of night with nothing but a wink and a comlink frequency. “For if you ever need to get out of here and see the universe,” he explains, and then he’s gone.
No one believes Aramis when he tries to explain how he got from the outer rim all the way back to Coruscant without making a blip on the scanners, especially when they hear his account of the midnight raid on Utapau. They fuss around him, asking him the same questions over and over again, trying to get him to contradict himself.
There’s no way, the Council says, Porthos is their long lost black sheep. How would he have known about the training camp, let alone stumble across them just in time to carry a lone survivor out of the wreckage, unless he had been part of the plot all along? A traitor, through and through. Trying to destroy the garrison that had raised him.
And that, that’s the final straw for Aramis. He sneaks out of the infirmary as soon as he’s stable enough, finds an empty terminal and inputs the comlink code Porthos had put on a datapad for him. The frequency bleeps twice, and then Porthos’ voice drawls a greeting. “Darlin’, did ya miss me?”
Aramis sputters.
“I’ll take that as a yes. Was starting to wonder if I gave you that frequency for nothing. You lose it for a bit there?” Porthos’ chuckle is as warm as the rich timbre of his voice.
He scowls at the microphone, imagining a roguish grin and a pair of dark twinkling eyes. “No,” he says mulishly, refusing to admit that he hadn’t thought he’d need to talk to the dreaded Porthos the Pirate ever again. “Where are you now?” he asks instead, wondering if he’ll get an honest answer.
“Still on Coruscant, unfortunately,” Porthos sighs. “There’s some dignitary or another coming in, they’ve blocked all off-planet traffic until their ship arrives. Which means I’m stuck for the time being.”
“What, the greatest smuggler in seven systems can’t smuggle his own ship off planet?” The words are out before Aramis can help himself. They sound like a challenge.
“Not this planet. Not right now.”
Definitely a challenge, then. Aramis bites his lip. “What if you had a reason to leave? Say, a passenger that needed to get off Coruscant as soon as possible?”
There’s a long pause. When Porthos responds, his voice is carefully even. “What are you saying, Abbé? You ditching the blue cloak club?”
“I’m saying I need some time to think. And I can’t do that here,” Aramis answers cautiously. There’s something exhilarating about doing all this, about breaking the rules and going behind his Order’s backs. At the same time, the Musketeers have been good to him. He’d like to not burn all his bridges on his way out the door.
There’s a rush of static over the com connection. “The landing pad directly east of the garrison. Two blocks down. Ask for Hangar 13.”
“You won’t regret this, Porthos,” Aramis promises gratefully, and cuts the connection.
6. Because some things cannot be changed, a Nubian starship lands on the pad directly below the hangar Aramis needs to get to. The royal delegation from Naboo disembarks first, and Aramis’ attention is drawn by the blasterfire. It’s instinct for him to run to help, hands steady on his blaster even as his mind wonders ‘what are you doing, you absolute idiot, the last thing you need right now is to take part in a firefight.’ He tackles somebody in the defensive formation blindly, doesn’t stop moving until they’re on the ground and mostly shielded by the ramp.
Around them, the blaster fire slowly dies down. The world is still.
Aramis takes a deep breath, then another, just to remind himself that he can. When he looks up, the brightest pair of blue eyes is staring back at him, alarmed and slightly defensive.
“Hey, you! Get off the Queen!” A man shouts; arms reach down to haul Aramis to his feet.
He blinks, staggers just a little bit when left to stand on his own. “The Queen?” he manages weakly.
The lady he’d tackled off the ramp is also helped to her feet, though much more gently than Aramis was. She’s absolutely gorgeous, even covered in dust and slightly ruffled from all the excitement. Aramis feels his jaw drop slightly.
“Yes, the Queen of Naboo,” a familiar voice says from directly behind him; it sounds amused. Aramis whips around and immediately cringes. “It’s good to see you up and about, Aramis. We heard what happened on Utapau.”
“Athos,” Aramis manages. “Captain Treville.”
Treville nods at him, but it’s clear his attention is split more between ensuring the Queen’s continued safety and making sure they don’t lose the dark-haired little tagalong that clings to one of the Queen’s colorful handmaidens.
“I didn’t think they’d let you out of the infirmary so soon,” Athos says, in a voice as dry as the desert that still coats his blue cloak. “Maybe I underestimated your powers of persuasion.”
“Oh, no,” Aramis says instinctively, then flushes.
Athos gives him a look that manages to be both knowing and disapproving at the same time.
“I’m actually supposed to be meeting someone, so if you’ll just excuse me—sorry to barge in like that,” he mumbles, suddenly in a rush to be away from this place, these people, who will say two words to the Council and then his secret will be out. He’ll be disgraced, relegated to a formidable legend like the one about Porthos the Pirate that they tell to scare the new recruits.
The Queen of Naboo glances over at him one last time and smiles. “Such bravery should be rewarded,” she says solemnly. “Here, take this token as a sign of our good will, and may it bring you luck in all your future endeavors.” She holds out a jewel-encrusted crucifix, taken from around her own neck, and Aramis accepts it with trembling fingers.
When he manages to make it up to Porthos’ ragged little ship and retell the story, the pirate laughs so hard he falls out of his chair.
“You ready to travel the stars, Abbé?” he asks, when he can look at Aramis without immediately breaking out in another round of snickers.
Aramis looks out at the deck of the hangar, the bustling city-planet beyond. He’s never thought of Coruscant as confining before. But now, with opportunity at his fingertips and the memories of Utapau burning behind his eyelids, he can’t think of anything more appealing than wandering across the galaxies with a stranger.
They’ll come back, eventually. Drop in unannounced at the garrison, maybe pick up an unofficial mission or two. Congratulate Athos on his commission, when it finally happens. Briefly, he considers landing on Naboo for a while, visiting the palace.
Aramis grins at the pirate behind the controls. “What’re you waiting for? We’re burning starlight.”