Chapter Text
He would never be able to explain later why he did it, except that he needed to know. Needed to be certain, needed finally, for good or ill, to know the truth. And there was but one man who could provide the answer he sought. The man for whom she worked.
Of course, to seek that answer would also be to risk bringing that man’s displeasure down upon him. He would have to reveal his suspicions and thus make himself dangerous, a threat, to a man who did not take threats lightly and who wielded almost unlimited power to deal with them.
But he had to know.
The dried flower stitched into the lining of the box they’d taken from Gallagher’s saddlebags haunted him. He’d known what it was immediately, had seen it too many times before. Christ, he carried one with him every day, wore it next to his heart in the locket she’d given him! And God knew they’d crushed enough of the damned things beneath their bodies as they’d made love in the meadows of la Fère.
They’re like a carpet on the grass outside. Forget-me-nots. I’ll press one for you, as a memento of a perfect day.
She’d worn them in her hair …
Part of him – the part that still loved her, the part that would always love her – told him he was wrong, told him it wasn’t her, couldn’t be her. Forget-me-nots were hardly uncommon. And she’d been a street thief, not an assassin–
But she’d been at Ninon’s trial. She had told foul lies and helped convict Ninon. She’d forced Ninon to confess to a crime, a sin, that had almost gotten her burned at the stake and that had seen her stripped of her title and wealth. All on Richelieu’s orders.
Be careful, Athos. She has the cardinal’s protection. A blow against her is a blow against him. And he won’t take it lightly.
She had admitted it herself, hadn’t she? The night she’d confronted him after he’d saved d’Artagnan from getting his neck broken by Labarge?
I’m a soldier, just like you. Well, perhaps not quite the same. But we all do have to exploit our natural talents.
He knew. He’d known then. But … he had to know. And from the only man who could give him the truth he needed.
And so, after the king and queen left to continue their reunion in private and the courtiers swept after them like leaves borne on a wind, even after Tréville ushered the Musketeers, who’d saved the queen but would never be acknowledged for it, out of the hall, he clung fast to his resolve, or to his madness, and intercepted the cardinal before he, too, could make his escape. It was foolish. Worse, it was dangerous. But he needed to look into the man’s eyes and see his answer in them.
“Your Eminence,” he called, his tone more comte than Musketeer, “may I congratulate you on capturing the culprit?”
Flattery, Olivier, his mother had counseled him with a sly smile. Flattery will get you everywhere at court. Aim for a man’s vanity, and you will never miss.
Of course, his mother had never encountered Richelieu. He had a certain vanity, yes, but so much more. And, as the man stopped and fixed piercing eyes upon him, he saw it all before him now – the fierce intelligence, the cold cunning, the ambition that was never just for himself but for France. And, God help him, Athos could understand that. If the two of them had anything in common, it was devotion to France.
He also saw irritation in those eyes, and recognition. Not just of Athos of the King’s Musketeers and the familiar shadow at Captain Tréville’s back, but of … what? The clever one, as Tréville so often and with such relish told him Richelieu considered him? The stern, quiet soldier who risked his life almost daily, and had more than once nearly lost it, in service to the king?
Or as the Comte de la Fère?
Richelieu knew him in all those guises. He saw that, too, in those sharp, cold eyes.
But still he would see more, needed to see more, and so he pressed on, like a man playing with an adder.
“I don’t believe Mellendorf acted alone,” he said, his eyes never leaving Richelieu’s. He kept his tone smooth, allowed a small smile to play about his lips. He had always hated coming to court when he’d been a comte, had hated this world of glib lies and shifting loyalties, and the ease with which everyone around him employed them. But generations of breeding and thorough training had insured that he possessed that same facility when he needed it, and he employed it now. “The assassins were hired by a woman. Perhaps the woman who killed the money-lender.”
D’Artagnan had said he’d smelled jasmine. He’d smelled jasmine that night outside the Bastille, that night he’d … they’d …
You still wear my locket. Why?
Sometimes … sometimes I ask myself that same question.
Shall I show you why?
“Be assured,” he told Richelieu, watching every flicker of the man’s eyes, every minute twitch of muscle in his face, “I will not rest until she is brought to justice.”
And he saw it then, though he would never be able to explain exactly what sign the cardinal, a man so skilled in giving nothing away, had let slip. Perhaps it was something only the two of them, who knew her, could recognize between them. Because he was fairly certain that Richelieu saw her shadow in his eyes as well.
Had she ever brought him forget-me-nots?
But the man recovered quickly, schooling his face into a mask of cool disinterest and smiling faintly. “Excellent. Forgive me,” he said, dipping his head in a shallow bow and gathering his piety about him like a cloak, “I am late for Mass.” And he strode past Athos like a man truly late for an appointment with God.
Athos turned and watched him go, wondering if Richelieu’s talks with God were as tortured as his own. How would God deal with a priest who had ordered the death of a queen, whose assassins had attacked a convent and murdered a nun?
“Her,” he called, letting his voice fall like the hammer of a primed and loaded pistol, “and whoever she works for.”
The shot landed. Richelieu stopped abruptly and turned sharply to stare at him, his face, for once, losing its carefully crafted mask of disinterest. Those cold eyes fixed upon him, and, in that moment, every single one of his suspicions, his fears, was confirmed.
The bastard was guilty. She was guilty. All the air went out of Athos’ lungs. Out of his world.
He’d known. He’d known. And yet he’d dared hope.
Because he was still, always, her fool.
Unable to remain in this room a moment longer for fear of what he might do, and for once never bothering, unable, to bow to France’s First Minister, he left the man gawping behind him and walked out of the audience hall, what little remained of his soul dying within him.
Anne.
The ruin of his world was complete.
*****
As they left the peace of the palace behind and entered the busy streets, he purposely set himself apart, putting up and hardening every barrier, every defense, he’d perfected over the past five years, knowing that the softest touch just now, the smallest sign of care, of concern, would shatter him completely. Not yet. Not here. He would break, he knew that. The shadow he’d seen in Richelieu’s eyes confirming Anne’s guilt had made that inevitable. He could feel the cracks already opening within him, spreading through him, could feel himself teetering on the brink of the chasm yawning inside him. He would fall, he knew it; the darkness that had threatened for five years would finally claim him. All he could do now, all he could hope to do, was choose the time and place himself.
Surely even he deserved so small a mercy.
So he desperately kept himself apart from anyone. Aramis, Porthos, and d’Artagnan were behind him, Tréville and the men the captain had pressed into service to save the queen ahead of him, and he carefully kept his eyes straight ahead, fixed on the distance, refusing to see, and thereby encourage, any of them. He held himself rigid, head high, back and shoulders straight, left hand clamped firmly about his sword hilt, wrapping himself in generations of aristocratic hauteur and walling himself behind the façade that had become his surest protection from the world – cold, forbidding, distant.
Not for nothing did his family share a name with a mountain.
And it almost worked. Would have worked with any other men but those behind him. These men cared nothing for the mountain, were not at all intimidated by its jagged crags or imposing peaks. They had chipped steadily, stubbornly, at its stone heart, had scaled its heights with smiling ease, had surmounted and then brought down every defense it had thrown against them. They had found paths through stone walls or, where none existed, simply made their own, filling every cold crevice and dark cavern with their warmth and light.
Separately, each possessed the unique and maddening power to wear the mountain down. Together, they simply stormed and toppled the damn thing.
“All right, I’ve had enough,” Porthos rumbled behind him, and he closed his eyes briefly as the fractures deepened within him.
No, God, no. Not yet. Not here.
But God had been ignoring his pleas since the day he’d had his wife dragged away and had fallen to his knees beside his brother’s dead body. Why should the bastard take any notice of him now?
Before he knew what was happening, Porthos moved around him and turned to face him, stopping in his path. A mountain himself. Then d’Artagnan surged into place at his right, Aramis to his left, two pairs of dark eyes fixed upon him, piercing through him. Their warmth filtering dangerously into him.
Ahead of them, Tréville spoke quietly to the other men, sending them on their way, then came back to join them, his fierce blue eyes fixing hawk-like upon him. Athos gasped softly and only barely kept himself from shuddering as the fractures deepened and threatened to split him open.
Still, desperate, he tried to get away, lifted his chin and attempted to step around Porthos. But the big man shifted with him, light on his feet as a cat, and moved closer still, stopping him with a hand to his chest.
“You know somethin’,” he growled, lowering his head and peering at Athos from beneath drawn brows.
Athos went cold and still inside, drawing himself up to his full height and lifting his chin, calling upon every single generation of arrogance, of haughtiness, of cold and ruthless superiority that had been bred into him, and returned that stare with a frozen one of his own. “I know a great many things,” he said in clipped, precise tones, his voice the quiet hiss of a drawn blade. He dipped his stare to the big hand splayed against his chest, then dragged it slowly back up to Porthos’ face and arched one elegant, contemptuous brow. “Please remove that,” he ordered in a frigid tone.
Silence crashed upon them all. He had never, in five years, spoken to Porthos so, had never once so starkly drawn the lines of blood and breeding and class between them, had never once seemed to recognize that such lines existed. It had always been one of the reasons Porthos loved him as he did.
And, for the sake of his own sanity, he was about to destroy that.
But why not? He’d ruined everything else that had ever mattered to him. Why alter the pattern of his life now?
“Athos,” d’Artagnan’s voice broke into the silence, soft and gentle and worried, “what’s wrong? What did the cardinal say to you? You can tell us, you know that. You can tell us anything.”
Athos ignored him, knew he’d be lost if he permitted himself so much as a glance into d’Artagnan’s eyes. The power to break him open that had taken Aramis and Porthos so long to develop had taken this boy only weeks, and Athos wasn’t fool enough to believe it wouldn’t shatter him utterly now.
So he continued to stare at Porthos as if Porthos were an erring lackey. “I will not be manhandled,” he declared coldly.
“Athos, don’t do this,” Tréville said softly, regarding him now with the same mixture of understanding, compassion, and sorrow he had been showing him for five years. The man had given him a chance when no other sane person would have, had given him a life, a purpose, a way back to honor. Tréville had always looked at him with perfect clarity, seeing not only whatever strengths he possessed that made him a good soldier, but also the glaring, crippling weaknesses that made him a wreck of a man.
Tréville had once wrung from him the promise that he would never purposely seek his death while a Musketeer. Unfortunately, the man hadn’t thought to include engineering his own destruction in that promise.
Though, to be fair, the seeds of Athos’ destruction had been sown before he’d ever met Tréville.
“Athos.” Aramis moved closer to him, his dark eyes, which had ever been able to see straight through him, peering into his with a terrible intimacy. A terrible love. “Tell us,” he implored softly. Then, being Aramis, he reached out and laid a hand on Athos’ chest, next to Porthos’, but infinitely more gentle. Aramis was as deadly a man as Athos had ever known, yet now there was nothing of the soldier in him, only the healer. The brother. “You know you can tell us anything, and it will never change how we feel about you.”
Athos’ chest burned beneath Aramis’ fingers, and his heart hurt. He knew Aramis believed that, truly believed that the wound which had so poisoned Athos’ soul could never touch their brotherhood–
And suddenly he couldn’t do this. He had grown too used to leaning on them, too used to trusting himself into their hands, too used to drawing on them for strength and courage when his failed. He had ever been too weak to stand on his own, had proven that by falling in love with her, by being unable to live without her, by falling into a drunken ruin without her and then lifting himself out only because of them.
He would never know why he mattered so to them, would never understand how they could consider him worthy of their concern. Their love. He had tried, goddamn it, he had tried to hold himself apart, had told himself he simply wasn’t capable of caring about anyone else any more and certainly didn’t deserve anyone else’s care … and they had made the worst liar out of him.
Though certainly, after all this, they would understand, finally, just how wrong about him they had been …
But he did owe them. He had brought this threat into their lives, had brought this poison into their lives. She was his fault, his creation, and her sins were upon his head. The very least he could was to confess those sins to them in the hope that they, at least, might be spared from having to suffer for them.
He exhaled heavily and bowed his head, closing his eyes. Weakness and weariness swept through him and, for a moment, he feared he might actually fall. But the two hands on his chest remained there, d’Artagnan’s hand slipped around his right arm, and Tréville’s circled firmly around his left. For five years they had been doing this, pouring their strength into him, had been holding him up when he could no longer do it himself.
And somewhere in those five years, the greatest fear of his life had become losing the feel of these hands upon him.
“All right,” he breathed, lifting his head slowly and opening his eyes, forcing himself to look upon them. God, the light shining from them was painful to behold. “You deserve to know.” He swallowed hard, knowing of only one way he would ever be able to do this. It was more evidence of his weakness, his utter unworthiness, but it hardly mattered now. He was what he was. What she had made of him. “Meet me in Tréville’s office in two hours, all of you, and you will have your explanation.”
“Two–” D’Artagnan frowned, ready, as ever, to face the world head-on now. “Why two hours?”
He shot a hard stare at the boy, angered by the sheer faith in him that shone in those eyes. “Because I need a drink!”
And he did. Christ, the thirst was rising in him again, clawing at him again, making his every bone and muscle ache. All around them were taverns, and he could almost smell the wine in them, could certainly hear it calling to him, feel its promise whispering through his blood. That promise was a lie, he knew, but he no longer cared. And he could, already, feel his hands beginning to shake.
“Then we’ll come with you,” d’Artagnan said with a gentle smile, “and you can tell us now.”
“No!” he spat, the thirst starting to crawl its way up his throat. He needed time, time to numb himself, to distance himself, to drink himself into that place where the pain and the shame no longer sliced at his soul. “Tréville’s office, two hours. The four of you.”
Tréville sighed. “Athos–”
He fixed a burning stare upon his captain, praying that they would all simply do as he asked and go. “Listen to me!” he snarled desperately, knotting his shaking hands into white-knuckled fists. “I will tell you everything, I swear it, but I can only do this once, and I cannot do it sober!”
Porthos winced and shook his head, all the former anger in him now given way to concern. “Then at least let us–”
“Goddamn it, no!” he cried hoarsely, barely resisting the urge just to tear himself out of their hands and run as far from them as he could. “If I am going to slice open my veins and bleed for you, then at least allow me to do it on my own terms!”
That startled them, shocked them. Porthos rocked backward as if from a blow and dropped his hand, Aramis’ eyes widened and his face paled, and d’Artagnan and Tréville stiffened and held more tightly to him. Long, long moments passed, during which he tried to get his nerves under control, tried not to appear quite so much the madman.
That, he had no doubt, would come later.
Porthos swallowed hard and nodded slowly, then returned that big hand to his chest, though this time only love and care flowed from his touch. His eyes, so deep and dark and kind, sought and held Athos’ once more, and for a moment all Athos wanted to do was to throw himself at the man, into arms he knew would catch and close protectively about him, and seek refuge, shelter, in that strong and boundless heart.
Christ, he was pathetic.
“All right,” Porthos said in a quiet, gentle voice, lifting his other hand to silence the protest d’Artagnan started to make, his eyes never leaving Athos’. “Two hours, Tréville’s office. We’ll wait. But at least tell us where you’ll be drinkin’.”
He huffed a sharp, impatient breath. Damnation, how was he supposed to know? The first tavern he stumbled into, most likely.
“Pick a place,” Porthos went on, his voice still low, still soft, but utterly compelling. “You know every tavern in the area. So pick one, tell us which, an’ go there.”
“Why?”
“Because,” Aramis said with a small, sad smile, lifting a hand to brush against Athos’ cheek, “if you don’t return to us in two hours, we need to know where to start looking for you.”
He blinked, and stupidly wondered why he’d asked. They would come. Of course they would. They’d been doing it for five years. Why should he expect them to stop now?
He drew a deep, steadying breath and looked around, getting his bearings. He knew where they were, could name five taverns within a comfortable walk. He was intimately familiar with all of them.
“The Black Gate,” he sighed tiredly, simply choosing one at random.
What did it matter? What, now, could any of this possibly matter?