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It had likely been around a month since he had been given clearance to rise from his bed and start taking little walks around the garrison, but in all honesty Aramis did not hold much to the passage of time anymore. He had been too half-dead for Easter Mass, and he had not been to a Mass since. He knew it was sometime in summer, likely late summer by the heat of the air and the slant of the sunlight, but he feared to see how deep in the liturgical year his waking nightmare had carried him, and so he abstained, sometimes praying privately in his room as the church bells echoed their melody outside. But just as often he did nothing.
What had begun to take the place of prayer, though, in regularity and vigor, was Aramis’s study of medicine. In his days at the seminary, the treatises of anatomy and the humors in the library would occasionally catch his eye when the day’s work of translations and dialectics were finished, but now, Aramis hunted for them with the voracity of a predator. Upon taking his morning turn around the garrison gardens, he would hail a boy from the streets, press a few coins into his palm, and tell him to scour the apothecaries for the thickest tome he could manage. At first, he would accept whatever the day’s messenger could find, but soon he entreated the boy to press for recommendations, to seek out the apothecaries with the latest knowledge from Florence, from Geneva.
Within a month, Aramis had spent his meager savings on books and supplies to practice his poultices and stitchings. The pittance he received as sick pay barely paid for the ink with which he scribbled his notes in the margins, and so it was a gratitude when he was finally cleared to return to light duty and could resume receiving his normal pay. Even with this increase in income, though, in order to keep buying the newest knowledge the physical sciences had to offer, he knew he would need to choose between the books and the laudanum the physician had prescribed for the headaches his injury had caused. Aramis chose the books, as he would every time, because they would help him be prepared. If, God forbid, there was ever another Savoy, he would be prepared. He would be able to heal them better, heal himself better, do anything better, so that twenty of his brothers would not die again in the snow.
For the past week or so, Aramis had been cleared for light duty, and so the rhythm of his days consisted of whatever chores Treville set him, his walk and rendezvous with his bookboy, and then all the study and practice he could muster. Yesterday, he had managed to steal a bit of pig skin from the kitchens, and so he had practiced his sutures over and over into the wee hours of morning until he was sure he could do them blindfolded.
Tonight, Aramis tested himself, seeing if he could recreate a drawing of the muscles and bones and where they attached before he continued his reading. He was a bit cold and then a bit warm, and so he alternated tugging a blanket on and off his shoulders, and rubbing at his aching head and turning pages with the other. He was awake until the sky turned misty pink with dawn and the birds began to twitter, at which point he must have dozed off a bit at his desk. But he must not have dozed for long, for he woke feeling wholly unrested and the quality of the sunlight not much changed besides.
He turned sluggishly, barely in time to catch his sneeze in the blanket at his shoulder, and blinked away sleepless tears.
The sneeze and the scratchy soreness it left behind in his throat did little to convince him he wasn’t catching cold on top of it all. But if it meant that his brothers would be safe and sound, that never again would Aramis find himself too helpless amongst the wounded to save even one life, he would take a lifetime of colds and sleepless nights.
It would soon be time for morning muster, and indeed, he expected today Treville would release him to the practice grounds on account of needing all hands to train the new recruits. The thought gratified him; that way he could show Treville there was a point to having him around still, a reason he alone had been saved in the forest. But in the meantime, he could manage another chapter of E xercitatio Anatomica de Motu Cordis before he had to dress for the day.
**********
Porthos caught Aramis by the arm as the man trudged miserably toward the armory after muster. He had been a bit surprised at first to see Aramis heading that way, having heard Treville say that, barring a relapse, he would begin easing Aramis back into a full duty rotation after a week of light tasks, and it had been a week and a day. But Aramis was wheezing and listing to the side, and Porthos hated even to think it for all the man had been through, but he had seen dead men who looked more alive than Aramis did at the moment.
“Captain Treville seems to think I am little more than a maid,” Aramis said, and surely his voice had to hurt him as much as it hurt Porthos to listen to.
Porthos stayed his grip on Aramis’s arm, afraid of what might happen if he let go. “Give it a few more days, and I’m sure he’ll give you the all-clear.”
“It’s been long enough, Porthos. I can stand a bit of target practice.”
“Aramis,” Porthos said quietly, heaving a sigh, not wanting a row but also loathe to listen to the man he considered a friend wallow in such self-contempt. “You’ve been through–”
“I’m not made of glass!” Aramis snapped hoarsely, descending into a fit of coughs. He tugged himself free of Porthos, folding into his sleeve with two painful-sounding sneezes.
“You do sound a bit sick though.” Porthos frowned, changing tactics to chance the bit of sympathy Aramis might give himself into. He reached to give Aramis a brotherly pat on the shoulder, but the man ducked away. “Maybe it’s for the best. At the very least, there’s no one you can infect in the armory.”
Porthos had meant to get him joking, but Aramis merely stared at him blankly with those watery, sunken eyes, before shaking his head and taking off in the other direction. He had been doing that a lot of late. Porthos got the feeling that he had made some grave mistake, but he worried it would be even more grave if he chased Aramis down, so he just stood there, helplessness lapping at his ankles like a hungry dog. He’d been doing that a lot of late, as well.
*********
As he passed, Athos heard a noise from inside the armory, and paused to poke his head through the door. Aramis sat at a stool in the corner, leaning sideways against the wall as if it were the only thing in the world keeping him from landing in a heap on the floor. His hands moved so lethargically along the barrel of a musket as he swiped a cloth back and forth to clean it that Athos watched, certain that the next time he would fall asleep mid wipe, no the next. But he continued doggedly, foolishly, his eyelids, blackened and puffed with sleeplessness, drooping but never shutting.
There was the sound again, and Athos saw now that it had come from Aramis; a wet, soupy sniffle that advertised thick congestion. Sure enough, Aramis folded forward with an explosive sneeze, and it was the most vitality Athos had seen from the man in ages. Aramis rubbed his nose on his sleeve and caught a few terrible, barking coughs against it before returning to cleaning the musket.
Athos weighed his options. He could continue on with his day, buy a few bottles now while he had a spare moment to ensure he was well stocked tonight; after all, he was there when Treville had assigned Aramis to this very duty. But the man was very clearly not up for it now, and much as it was against Athos’s sworn code of conduct after all that had happened, he was beginning to worry about the Musketeer called Aramis. In the long term. His headcold, bah, a few days of rest and the man would be fine. But Savoy… Athos had joined the regiment scarcely a week before the deployment, had gone to Palm Sunday Mass with a hangover at Aramis’s behest. The man had a charm, Athos remembered thinking, the sort of charm that could get him killed if he wasn’t careful, but then he’d come back alive and silent and no one else had, and Athos wasn’t quite sure if he’d been right or wrong in his thinking.
Aramis coughed again, and murmured something that sounded like ow , and that pulled Athos back to the present and made up his mind. He went to the mess hall and grabbed Porthos, knowing that the two of them were closest, and marched the large man to the armory without saying a word. Athos nudged his shoulder, and they both peered inside. Aramis hadn’t shifted position, still slumped, still wheezing, and by the looks of it, still cleaning the same musket.
“Look at him,” Porthos grumbled.” Looks like the walking…” Porthos trailed off, swallowing uncomfortably, but Athos knew both what he had almost said and why he hadn’t wanted to say it about Aramis. “It’s bad,” Porthos said instead. “Like permanent charcoal beneath his eyes.”
Aramis sneezed loudly, fumbling the musket and blinking dazedly.
“He’s sick, too.”
Athos snorted drily. “What gave you that impression?”
Porthos shook his head, and the sorrow in his eyes was so heavy, so genuine, that Athos felt guilty for his previous quip. “He’s been through so much. Treville keeps saying we need to give him space…”
“Yes, well I’m starting to think space is the last thing he needs right now.”
Porthos looked him in the eye, and something warm pulled at Athos’s stomach, the likes of which he had not felt in a long, long while. It was warmer than the burn of any wine, and infinitely more pleasant. “Me, too,” Porthos said, and clapped Athos on the shoulder. “Let’s go.”