Musketeers fic: Affinityverse

[rainjoyswriting]

Conversations With the Dying and the Dead, Musketeers fic, affinityverse (best catalogued in my memories) <3

Disclaimer: I just finished the Twin Peaks finale, I don't even own a functioning brain right now. Talk to me about theories though y/y??

Rating: R-ish I don't even know I don't know anything anymore

Warnings and spoilers: The main list's on part one, read sensibly. More sensibly than any of us who watch anything by David Lynch before bed.

Summary: "Did you see a man pass here?"/"There's no-one here but you."


Note: While it may be apparent in this part that I love the shit out of Twin Peaks, I am not David Lynch and in terms of the sense this might make you should be very grateful for that.








Athos follows the flashing of Aramis' alarm on his phone, sprinting down staircases, stamping up corridors; there's a great shattering burst of rain against the windows, it hammers for a few seconds as if in shock and then trails off, as Athos skids in taking a corner too fast and grabs the wall to not go down, heads off in a furious run for Treville's office, Aramis seems to be outside that -

He is. He's on the floor, legs spilt and arms limp, half-dragged onto Porthos' lap, Porthos hunched over him in the gloom of the corridor with the cloud as thick as an ocean's floor darkening the day outside. Athos stares for one sickening second with all the blood draining from his face, he feels it prickle out through the tiny fine veins until his skin feels like dead meat, and then a noise comes out of him on his breath like he's been punched, he scrambles into an ungainly run, staggering and dropping in front of them, saying - his voice does not sound like his voice - "Is he -"

"Breathin'," Porthos whispers, holding Aramis' limp head to himself, slumped to the side, eyes closed and mouth slack. Porthos sits and holds him dead-eyed, like he's in shock, like he can't yet summon himself to do with Aramis' body found on the floor what he knows he should.

Dry lightning sputters the corridor stark. Athos stares.

Porthos sucks a staggered breath in, says, "We should-"

"- his ears."

Porthos blinks, lifts his head. "What?"

Athos can't stop staring, at the shiny dark in Aramis' dark hair. "There is blood coming out of his ears."

*

Aramis is as still as the bed he's laying on, though the machine pinching his finger measures the low beat, beat, beat of his heart through its own high beeps. He's so pale the bruising from the other night stands out stark as paint on his forehead, like it's doing the opposite of fading. Porthos just sits beside him, holding his hand because that's what you do, staring into space.

Athos, who clearly can't sit - Porthos can read the panicked need to do something punching at the inside of Athos' chest on his stiff face - is standing at the foot of the bed, like he's scared to come closer. D'Artagnan, standing a little further back with his arms folded awkwardly, looks over Aramis in a deeply uneasy way, looks at Athos only when he's certain he's not looking back at him, and Porthos just looks at Aramis' hand, the long fingers, those odd calluses he knows from where the gun fits palm and fingers, not wanting to have to meet the boy's eyes if he looks at him too. D'Artagnan says, "I'll - leave you to -"

He backs off a little, and no-one says anything, so he turns and walks out. He feels like he's encroaching on a deathbed, Porthos knows, and doesn't blame him. He knows he wouldn't want to be in d'Artagnan's position because he doesn't want to be in the position of anyone in this room.

Athos' face is stone; Treville's face is slack, like the shock hasn't worn off, and every line around his eyes shows like it's scraped in the skin. Right outside his office. Right outside his office, and he didn't even hear; those solid old doors in the villa, he didn't hear a thing. Aramis went down almost at his door, Aramis went down while coming for Treville, and Treville didn't even know.

Porthos knows there wasn't an episode. He doesn't have the confused bruising of one, he hasn't bit his tongue, and when he lifted Aramis' head into his lap with his fingers sinking in his hair, knees on the cold wood floor, he didn't feel the heat of one. But there didn't need to be an episode. Porthos remembers Alexandria, and it's never been episodes alone for them to fear. But Aramis never feared it. If he was ever afraid of anything - and the only fucking thing he's ever shown any fear towards is Richelieu, alone in all of this world - the thought of collapsing alone outside the captain's office never troubled him in the slightest. Aramis never wasted a minute of his life fearing how it might end. Alexandria never haunted him. Of course it fucking didn't. He never had to think about the afterwards like this.

Porthos should want to comfort Treville. He feels nothing. He feels like air on the inside, empty. He doesn't feel a single thing. The sky outside is obliterated with cloud, and still as the air in a bell jar; he doesn't feel a fucking thing.

Ferrand says, "I know a specialist, in Paris. I'll call them."

Athos says, "Can they reverse a rift?" and then immediately, obviously knows that he shouldn't have said that out loud, his face folds and rallies itself back into fury, and Treville just stands there with his hands behind his back stiff as a tin soldier, and Porthos sits there, holding Aramis' cool hand, because that's what you do.

Ferrand ignores them all anyway, strides out past the desk at the entrance quick with practicality for his office and the phone. That just leaves the three of them, and Aramis in the bed.

"It looked worse than it was." Athos says. "It's only a variation on the nosebleeds, pressure and a vein bursts to let it out. It just looked more distressing, that's all."

Porthos doesn't say anything. Treville breathes, slowly.

Athos says, "He's perfectly stable. He doesn't even seem to be on the verge of an episode."

Nobody says anything. Porthos just keeps looking at Aramis' hand. He always keeps his nails nice. Trimmed, he has a little file he uses sometimes. It's a nice hand. It's always felt good, the way it touches so sure of the want to touch Porthos.

Athos says, "God damn it. I'm going to find the boy."

Treville lifts his head a little from his own bleak stupor, as Athos is already striding away, says, "What are you going to . . ." but Athos is already gone, and he only sighs his breath out, slow through his nose, and goes back to staring at Aramis.

Ten years Aramis has belonged to Treville for. Porthos understands that precedence, doesn't question it; he might be Aramis' lover, eight years' Aramis' lover, and that makes him his family, but Treville's had him for ten years. Porthos has picked Aramis up off a lot of floors, limp and lost, but Treville picked him up that first time, Treville was the first one to carry him to safety, and that does mean something. Porthos and Aramis have always been everything for each other. But Treville has been for Aramis, it's an entirely different relationship, not his lover but Aramis has never had closer to a parent in his life. And Treville always knew he might lose him, and now, right outside his own fucking office, Aramis fell, and Treville failed to catch him. Whatever confused thought process Aramis was having, all they know is that he was going to his captain, for what they'll never know, because he never made it. He went to Treville, and irrational as it is Treville must feel like barbs in the throat that he failed to meet Aramis when Aramis needed him.

So Porthos ought to comfort Treville, ought to at least say something to him. He just keeps staring at Aramis' hand. The light's bad - they're stuck on the vicious overheads, there's no daylight to speak of, the cloud is so thick it could be night outside - but Porthos doesn't think it's bad light that's giving Aramis' skin, his lovely living skin, that grey-toned shadow, like his flesh is readying to give up its colour for pall instead.

Porthos stares at his hand. Treville breathes, nothing more, slow and not entirely steady, for some time.

He says in English, for Porthos presumably, "I must inform some people of the situation." Porthos wonders how long he's been working out what words to use for 'the situation'. "You still have his alarm, pull it if - for anything. Call me, if there's a change. If you need something. Just for yourself. Call me and I'll come." Treville is silent for a moment longer, maybe waiting for Porthos' reply, but he just stares at Aramis' hand. Treville walks closer, and puts a hand on Porthos' shoulder, and squeezes. He says, low and gruff, "If you need something, Porthos, anything. Just contact me, however you need to."

Porthos says nothing, and the cloud outside the window does not move, the wind has died, nothing out there moves. All the world holds its breath, because of this bed, and Porthos can't lift his head.

"I'll be in my office," Treville says, and squeezes his shoulder again, then walks away, not entirely steadily. Porthos listens to the footsteps, and stares at Aramis' hand, until the silence has gone on for some time, and he is alone in here, with him.

Then he puts his hands over his face, and cries like a baby.

*

For a moment he's confused - he is weary of his own damned confusion - some old room, wooden floor, wooden ceiling, wooden desk, where a man sitting back in the seat has his boots (Aramis' heart gives a little bump, and he immediately covets those boots in a way he knows to be sinful) cast up on the desk like it belongs to him and a hat tipped over his face as if affecting sleep; then in the same moment Aramis knows that this is somehow the captain's office, as the man shifts a little back in his seat, says under his hat, "I was wondering, what-" unfolding his arms, and with a knuckle knocking his hat back to look across at Aramis.

In the moment their eyes meet, his tongue falls silent, and Aramis' tongue has nothing to offer anyway.

Dark eyes; dark hair. Long straight nose. Neat-trimmed beard, pointed, fetching; neat small scar clean as glass in one cheek. It's a very familiar face. Aramis sees it in the mirror every day.

The man pushes himself up a little in the chair, boots off the desk, uneasily troubled. "What - exact sort of dream -"

Aramis knows who he is. Aramis knows exactly who he is. He says, "You're the man who lives in my head."

"I'm -" The man looks so surprised, eyes wide on Aramis, before the frown is uneasy on him as he says, "I believe you've got that the wrong way around. This is a dream brought on by bad tavern wine, you will find that you -"

"No." Aramis says. "Don't you even fucking dare, you're the one up in my head bothering me all the time like some squatter in my brain, do you have any idea -"

Suddenly facing him, ten fucking years and suddenly facing him, suddenly facing himself in the eye, the man who haunted him all these years wearing his own face, he's angrier than he's ever known himself, the anger comes as if from somewhere outside him, it takes him. "- the years I've endured waking up in strange places and never knowing why, being overcome with emotion I don't even recognise and I have no idea why, never able to trust my own senses, I upset my lovers -"

He is angrier than he's ever known anger could feel, his throat feels like an open wound as the words spit salt out of it, he doesn't know how his gun got into his hands and in that moment does not care, "All those years of you and my rift taking up so much space there is never any room left for me and I have suffocated down to less than the size of a breath to give the past and future enough room to save us and all it has ever given me is miserable cold and a fucking headache and so many seizures the headboard would reduce to matchsticks -"

Aramis' gun is up in both hands and aimed on that other man, the man in his head, who has shouted so loud that Aramis has not only been deafened but drowned out, he has disappeared underneath him, and he is so angry that his aim quivers. But the other man has a gun aimed right back at him, in two steady hands, and his gaze is cool and steady as he says, "Your situation sounds deserving of sympathy, but I fail to see how I am in any way responsible for it, monsieur."

For a moment, gun to gun and Aramis could weep with his fury, it could go the bad way. Then they both realise that they are both staring at the other's gun, and when they do meet the other's eye again, embarrassed curiosity battles with the urges of attack and defence, and as it probably always will with Aramis and he does not deny the matter, curiosity wins out.

They lower their guns to the side, watching each other's eyes. There's a moment of not knowing how to do this, still wary of each other, before they both aim theirs guns carefully to the walls, away from the other's head, and offer them uneasily across the desk. Guns swapped, the man in Aramis' head sits up in the chair running his fingers over Aramis' gun, while Aramis sits on the edge of the desk and holds the gun of the other man in both hands across his lap, marvelling at it, the weight of it, the beauty of it; did they really ever make guns like this?

Aramis says, only honest, "It's beautiful."

The other man says, "It cost a small fortune. It took a friend of mine a year to stop rolling his eyes on sight of it."

"Athos," Aramis says, he knows it immediately, lifting the gun, closing one eye to sight along its barrel. "How many rounds does it fire?"

The other man lowers Aramis' own sleek, small gun - he's never thought of it as such - and says, eyebrows low, "How many?"

Aramis lowers the gun and looks at him, looks down at the gun in his hand again, that lovely thing, wood sitting so warmly natural to the palm, etching on the metal as if it shouldn't be ugly, and he can't even see how it would be reloaded. He looks at the man's confused, frankly alarmed eyes, and nods at the gun he's now holding. "That's my favourite, it holds twelve rounds. My rifle holds thirty. How many does this take? I can't even see where . . ."

The man looks down at Fidget, Aramis' very favourite gun, and holds his head back a little as if in his horror he needs some distance from it. "Twelve . . ." he says, softly, and something behind his eyes is troubled, and then tragic. "Thirty. But you'd never even need any skill. Any fool with a weapon could kill as many people as he liked, how could he be stopped? And battlefields . . . thirty?"

Aramis reads his horror, slowly, weighing the shape and density of it in his hands (it is large, and very dense); he knows himself to be a very fine shot, but he's never lived in a world where that truly did mean something, because if the other person misses, Aramis has always known very well that they could always shoot again. He's never seen anything particularly noble about guns. And now he looks at the one in his hands, such a profoundly beautiful object, and unease prickles in the back of his own mind; should these objects ever be made to be beautiful . . . ?

The other man's gaze flicks up dark and sharp from the gun. "Who are you, and what world do you come from?"

". . . your own." Aramis says, and offers the gun back. "I come from your world, just some time ahead of you. What year are you living in?"

The other man gives him a look of almost affronted confusion, taking his own gun back and slotting it away on his belt, as Aramis does with his own, sitting there on the edge of the desk since the man gives no indication of being willing to share the chair. The other man says, "It is the year of Our Lord sixteen hundred and twenty-six. That is the year we are all living in."

Aramis rubs his face with a hand, and gives a little burst of shocked laughter, and then lets it out again, longer, shaking his head. "I'm from the future," he says. "Is this a dream of yours? This happens sometimes, I can't help it, I'm sorry. But I come from your future. Your very far future."

The other man folds his arms, gives Aramis a very long look, then says, "Alright, monsieur l'avenir. What year are you living in?"

Aramis tells him. The man stares at him. Aramis shrugs.

"Two thousand and . . ."

"Mm. It does sound a bit sci-fi, doesn't it?"

"Sci . . ."

"- sorry. I don't suppose that's been invented yet." Aramis looks curiously in at the other man's face. "But then you're my future as well. You must have a good ten years on me."

"Less of the cheek," he says perfectly calmly, as if he doesn't care at all. "And who the hell are you?"

"My name is Aramis." he says, and takes his hat off, doesn't stand but bobs a half-bow on the edge of the desk. "Years, I've wanted to ask this; who the hell are you?"

The other man looks back at him, gaze even as a diamond's edge, and says, "My name is Aramis. And you . . ." He shakes his head slowly, looking at Aramis' face, and he's beginning to grin. "They talk about putting down a likeness, I - never thought . . ."

"This is genetically unlikely," Aramis says, gesturing between their two faces. "Athos always says my knowledge of science is pretty seventeenth century, but I am fairly certain that DNA doesn't just spit the same face out repeatedly."

Sweetly, "And does everyone speak nonsense, in the future?"

"Pff, I forgot you don't . . ." Aramis rubs the back of his hair, then hooks a knee up onto the desk so he can scoot himself to sitting sideways, for a better face-to-face with the man. "Genetics is - it's like the study of blood, through the family. And we're quite good at it by my time. And it's just very genetically unlikely that any descendent of yours this distant in time would look identical to you down to the scars."

He has a think about that, then takes his hat off again, and looks at the other man. After a pause, he takes his hat off as well, and they both contemplate that long thin line on the forehead.

The other man says, "Caught the end of a rapier in a skirmish."

Aramis says, "Smashed my own head open during a seizure."

"Well." The other man puts his hat back on. "Some things do change, then. You said you know an Athos. Have you a Porthos as well?"

Aramis stares at him, then begins to smile, truly and joyously. "I always knew there was destiny in it," he says. "The three of us, we were intended to be together."

"Forever, it would seem," the other man says, and stares back. "The ancients spoke of reincarnation. Our souls coming back in another body."

"That is against scripture."

The other man shrugs. "Then you explain it, you and your gén-é-tique."

"Lord," Aramis says, looking over his face. "I can't. This is so strange. Maybe this is my dream."

"It's mine." the other man says firmly. "A few nights ago d'Artagnan - have you a d'Artagnan?"

"Only recently. Contrary little figure."

"Mm, that's him. A few nights ago d'Artagnan said he had a very strange dream about a younger version of me dressed as if for a circus act. And that jogged Athos into remembering that he had once had a similar dream, and passed it off as influenced by wine, and then Porthos had the vague memory of something similar . . . and all of them sat there looking at me, as if I had the explanation for any of it. And now," eyebrow raising at him, "I suppose I do."

"I'm sort of - loose in time," Aramis says, apologetically. "I get shaken to the wrong place sometimes. Have you four our powers as well?"

"Powers?"

"What affinity are you?"

"Affinity, he says. Because further nonsense clarifies previous nonsense."

"We have rifts in us, and terrible power because of it." Aramis says. "Haven't you?"

The man's eyes narrow, his mouth tilts to a sceptical position, still willing to be amused. "Is this a metaphor?"

"You haven't," Aramis says, feeling oddly deflated by it; the man would know immediately what Aramis was talking about, whether he used the same words for it or not, if he did. "So that is different."

"Much is different." the other man says diplomatically, eyes now very willing to be amused.

"We have powers," Aramis says. "My affinity is for water, I can control it like - well, like a witch is I suppose the best way to explain it. And I don't pretend it's holy, but it brought the four of us together so I assume grace is involved in there -" He waves a hand in a general sort of way - "somewhere."

"Alright," the other man says, not as if he believes it, just as if he's willing to go along with it for now, and he folds his arms.

"It makes me psychic." Aramis says. "But I can't control it. So I see the future sometimes, and sometimes I'm catapulted into the past. And I suppose that's what's happened now."

"You have been catapulted into my dream."

"It looks like it."

"What happens when I wake up?"

"I don't know. We part ways, I suppose. We both wake up." Aramis wrinkles his forehead, he doesn't remember going to sleep. "We wake up . . ."

The other man blinks at him only drowsily, as if relaxed enough to sleep, whatever waking might require. "Well," he says. "I certainly believe the part of your story where you say it isn't holy."

"I don't remember falling asleep."

"To be fair, monsieur, neither do I. It's not usually something one remembers."

"But I would have had an episode," Aramis says. "To end up here, like this, with you. I always - I remember them now - I remember your Athos and Porthos, and your d'Artagnan. I saw them in episodes. And I don't . . . I don't remember having one that led to this."

"Episodes."

"Si, po. They're seizures. I see the future - and the past - in seizures." He rolls his eyes to the side, shrugs an awkward shrug, half apologetic. "You see why I was rather out of sorts to find myself in this situation, it's not especially pleasant."

"Po," the man says, amused. Aramis stares at him blankly, then grins - he hadn't noticed it tripping off his tongue. He hasn't felt it there, natural as a raindrop, in a very long time.

"Si," he says. "Po." His grin broadens. "¿Cachai?"

*

Athos walks through the villa and his breath is a small, shallow thing inside him, he can hear in both eardrums how hushed it is, how small the very life inside him feels right now. At his back, the thing he's walking away from, is Aramis unresponsive and they all know, without a miracle, too weak already to recover from this - and Porthos alone beside him, unable to leave, unable to help. Ahead of him - the thing he's walking towards -

He has to find the words to make d'Artagnan understand and join them, now. He has to. If that boy doesn't join them then it's all over, for all of them, the boy included, and Aramis fading in that bed is only a quieter version of what he has to face himself. The hope is like a pin stuck in his chest, tiny but he feels the stiff ache with every movement of his breath; without a miracle, Aramis is going to die, and the closest thing to a miracle that Athos has ever known is the forming of this circle.

He has to find the words to make this happen. Somehow he has to speak for Aramis' life, for his and Porthos' lives, for d'Artagnan to turn to them and not away. Him, of all people, him, it's been left to Athos to speak for them, he could laugh, he knows it's hysteria but it's also true, Athos has to speak for them. Athos who is stiff and private and not given to easy friendship, Athos who quite often leaves the room rather than talk about his feelings, Athos has to speak for their circle, Athos has to dredge the words up from the depths of the mile-thick mud at the bottom of his heart, Athos has to make d'Artagnan understand -

I love them. I love them. And if you can't at least like them, I will lose them. I will lose everything.

His throat feels like a poker. He knows he's too weak, he can't face that loss. Not again.

He knocks on d'Artagnan's bedroom door, and opens it. He fully expected the boy to go to the only room he really knows in this villa, and d'Artagnan looks back startled from the little bathroom, the door left open; he's rubbing his hands underneath the tap, not washing them, Athos realises immediately. He's trying to cool them. He's trying to keep the heat from building.

Athos closes the door onto the corridor behind himself (Aramis' bedroom is just there, and Athos doesn't know if any of them will ever pass through that door again). "He always said you were opposites," he says. "Aramis. And he's cold enough for frostbite and you're liable to set a door on fire by touching it. But then when you live with a psychic you get used to him being right."

D'Artagnan watches him with his hawk's-sharp eyes, and turns the tap off, shaking his wet hands into the sink. "Has he woken up?"

"No. As far as we can tell he's had the psychic equivalent of a stroke. The only thing that could wake him now is if he were stronger than the rift inside him, and that's not going to happen without a sealed circle."

D'Artagnan looks at the towel and then at his own hands, and clearly suspects the fabric stands no chance, and just shakes his hands out a little more. "I can't just - the way you talk about it, I can't just flick a switch and join your circle. It means a lot more than that."

"It does." Athos says. "I've come here to give you the more that you need. If I can - find the fucking words."

He walks over and sits in the desk chair, heavily because everything hurts, so grindingly constant he is tired of it all. He takes the hipflask from his pocket, and d'Artagnan walks in, leans a shoulder on the doorframe and folds his arms uneasily. "Is this really a good time for that?"

"Can you name a better time for this?" Athos says, screwing the lid back on. "One of the men I'm in love with is dying right now underneath us in this villa and I have to leave his side to come here and talk to you about feelings. Anyone would need a drink." He doesn't put the hipflask away, just holds it, looking at it; it's a brushed steel one Aramis and Porthos got him for Christmas a couple of years ago, with a fleur-de-lys inscribed on it for reasons Aramis has never been able to properly articulate. He says, "The only thing that dulls the pain from my rift is being drunk enough to notice it less. I know exactly what that looks like, believe me, you're not thinking anything I haven't thought myself over the years. They've endured it for years. They've put up with it for years, and actually loved me enough to not even mind it."

He doesn't look at d'Artagnan, who's silent for a long moment, then says, "I had noticed. But if it helps, you're pretty high-functioning."

"For an alcoholic," Athos says wearily. "How sweet a sentiment. We always hoped, when the circle sealed, the pain would stop. I'd be able to wean myself down off it. Aramis would help. He's 'practically a nurse'." He rubs his eyes. "You've never known him like that. He once took a bullet out of Porthos' shoulder and sewed the wound closed, he's tended to us both more times than I can count. He looks after us. He's wanted to look after you, though he's so confused he hasn't known how to. But you do understand this." He looks up, at the boy, looks him searchingly in the eye, he knows this to be true. "You know that Aramis is psychic, you understand that, you believe it. And he believes that he already knows you and likes you a great deal, because he's not very clear on where in time he currently is, and as far as he's aware he already does know and like you. He assumes it reciprocated. And he's psychic."

D'Artagnan glares back, but uneasily. He says, "I don't have to do anything just because it's supposed to happen."

"You are actually trying to out-stubborn the future itself."

"Well." He shrugs his folded arms. "I don't."

"Alright," Athos says, slow, trying not to get angry, "but we've always been aware that if something Aramis has seen will happen doesn't come to happen, it could kill him. For all we know, he's laying in that medical bay bed right now entirely because you refuse to simply submit to fate. It never did the Greeks any good, by the way, refusing their set destinies. It usually worked out worse for them than acquiescence."

"Thanks for the lesson in the classics," d'Artagnan says. "Is that really what you came up here to say?"

Athos looks at him and it's like something is holding and pressing that blade in his chest, love like a weapon, his breath comes through his teeth. He says, "Why will you not join our circle? Talk to me. Believe me, I would rather it was someone else, we all know that either of them would be better at this than me but you are stuck with me so talk to me. Why are you holding back? You understand that you will die, just as surely as Aramis is right now. It benefits you nothing to withhold like this. So why the hell are we even in this situation, why can't you just give in?"

D'Artagnan looks in a long steely way at the wall, and Athos grinds his breath out hard, remembers that he is dealing with someone wearyingly Gascon and using the language of 'giving in' was probably an error. Athos says, "Is it Aramis' dying that's upsetting you? Is it that you don't know how to respond to your own mortality demanding to be attended to?"

"I'm not a child, and I do understand that people die." d'Artagnan says in a dangerous voice. "I just watched it happen to my father."

"It happened to my own and I still didn't understand then that I could die," Athos says. "The young rarely do, or at least not for very long."

He's nettled, which is why he's lashing out; Athos is learning the boy after going through this cycle a few times. "How can you talk about it so easily if you say you do love him? How can you just sit there and drink and talk about him dying like that if you really get that?"

"Because he has been dying since he was fourteen years old," Athos says. "We've all been dying, you included, from the moment our rifts broke. Hell, everyone is dying, it's the human condition." He unscrews the lid of his hipflask, concentrates on the little movement of his fingers, concentrates on that. "He has been noticeably deteriorating, obviously dying, for at least the past two years. I have had a very long time to make myself able to state the fact of his dying. And it doesn't make me a monster." He lifts the flask, says and his throat is molten lava, the words burn, "It hurts."

He swallows whisky, which hurts in itself, it goes down no more easily than a stone. He clears his throat, cracking the stone, says and it comes husky, "I don't have the words for how it hurts. I buried my brother. I thought I literally buried my fiancée, the woman who killed him. And then I had to face the fact that he really did attack her and she killed him in self-defence, and that makes what I did to her in response monstrous. Those three things, I thought, hurt worse than anything could. I thought they hurt worse than losing my parents. I had my brother to think of then, you see. I could subsume the pain, I had someone else to care about more than my own pain. With those three things, I thought I was enduring the worst pain of my life, and it was - it was serious pain," he takes another quick nip of whisky before busying his hands with putting the lid back on, to hide his need to swallow the pain in his throat down. "And coming through them, I thought that was behind me. And now I have to face this. This."

Does d'Artagnan truly understand the 'this'? He loves Aramis. Aramis taught him how to love, after her. He knows he can never make d'Artagnan understand that, not having known the shell of a human being she left behind, the broken thing Aramis found some way to love and bring back to love; there is no point in trying, because either he can look at them and see how they love each other or he can't, and it's too late. "And I do have to face it, do you think I can sit on the medical bay floor and rock back and forth and howl, do you think I want to put Porthos through it when he is facing the worst moments of his life? We all have to do things we don't want to do. We all have to do things that hurt. That is what life is. Because we are all dying, and so we do the best we can, we do the things we don't want to do but we have to because we are dying and so is everyone we love, and you do not treat the dying like their life does not matter to you. Not if you love them. Never if you love them. But you do it for everyone else as well, for their sake and your own. What the hell else is decency. When you are dealing with the dying, you offer them respect, and you treat your own life like it mattered. And every last one of us is dying."

D'Artagnan is only staring at him, as if this has turned into something he honestly didn't expect. Eventually he says, "This isn't a very traditional pep talk."

Athos shrugs. "Aramis would have been better at this but he is indisposed through no fault of his own and so you are stuck with me, and all I can offer on that matter are my commiserations. Why not join our circle? Your rift must feel - I barely remember my own, before I joined them. But I do remember the restlessness to it, the way it felt like it prowled inside me, looking for ways to get out of me and cause chaos. Do you really want that to be what you have to feel for the rest of your life, which will not be long without a circle? With them -"

He stops, rubs an eyebrow with his eyes squeezed shut, kicks his legs out to cross his ankles, growling his breath loose. "The circle came before we were in any kind of romantic relationship, we weren't even friends when the circle started, that takes time. It does for me, anyway. Aramis and Porthos formed the first link in the circle, and later became lovers as well. When I joined, none of us expected me to enter into any sort of romantic relationship with either of them. Eventually Aramis and I just found ourselves unable to deny what was growing between us, and Porthos and I came a little later. But the circle is separate from our romantic relationship. I'm not their circle because I love them. The sealed circle don't have anything like our relationship. I want you to understand this partly because I'm concerned that it's making you hold yourself back from us, and partly because I want it stated very clearly that you are not entering into that kind of relationship with any of us. Our relationship is closed. I am not putting up with one more person in that bed, it is frankly overcapacity as it is. You will remain forever on the outside of our romantic relationship even if you are part of our circle. Does that put your mind at rest?"

"I don't care about that."

"You're allowed to be rattled by it. I was rattled by it, at first. Three men, there are no casual cultural precedents for us. It took us time to work out what our relationship means, and you're allowed to need the time yourself given that we are demanding a lot from you right now."

D'Artagnan looks out of the window for some time - the sky is low in an unnatural way, like twilight begins at the branches of the trees; Athos has a sense that the wind is writhing to be able to howl as it wants to, and instead there is only this eerie, skin-crawling stillness. D'Artagnan says, "I don't care about it."

It's not really a statement, it's a decision; he won't care about it. Athos can easily settle for that. "It would be nice," Athos says, "if we could give you your time, let you settle in, make your own decisions about joining us. But any time we had for that ran out when Aramis' rift overtook him. If we lose Aramis we're just left looking for a water affinity to save all our lives, and I must warn you, it won't happen. We'll never find another. Porthos will not be willing to look for one - I strongly suspect Porthos' rift will break in the loss of Aramis, all I can advise you of in that instance is getting out of the villa as fast as you can - and if I'm honest, I have no heart for trying again. I simply don't care about surviving all that much, without them. So these few moments are our last chance."

He unscrews the lid of his hipflask again, thinking. "If you think that the three of us might be doomed but that says nothing about your chances -"

"That's not what I'm thinking."

"Regardless, you wouldn't stand a chance. Without Aramis' ability to locate breaking rifts you'd never find another three to seal a circle in time. The last circle only got lucky because two of the quarters were siblings."

"He's not the only psychic around, is he? I thought this Richelieu you all hate so much . . ."

"He's not psychic in anything like the same way as Aramis." Athos says. "He can ride off other people's minds, he doesn't just see things. It was only ever luck the last circle sealed itself, and it's not a good idea to rely on luck." He leans back a little in the chair, all his bones pull apart and he has to draw his breath in slow, and says, "You understand that he's psychic. You understand that for ten years his psychic powers have been grinding away at him the way your hands are only now bothering you. Can you even conceive of . . . this has been his life for ten years. He's not mad, he's not mad, he is lost in time and we are trying to get him back."

"I know," d'Artagnan says quietly, and Athos doesn't know if he does but feels a great exhaustion weigh down his dumbbell bones, and he rubs his eyes, and what the hell is he supposed to say? He needs to go back to the medical bay to make his fractured apologies to a man who can't even hear him, because it's fallen on Athos to save their circle, it's fallen on Athos to save Aramis from this chasm's-brink of death, and what the hell is Athos of all people supposed to say . . .

D'Artagnan says, not looking at him, with all the attendant awkwardness of a teenager saying something very honest, "I don't mean for you three to . . . I never meant to make you suffer. That's not why I . . . none of this is easy."

Athos looks down at the hipflask in his aching, leaden hand, and elsewhere in the villa Aramis could already be brain-dead for all they know, and Porthos isn't even speaking. "No," he says, softly. "No, it is not."

*

Having swapped hats, and settled into a blend of odd French - Aramis remembers the other man's dialect, curiously, though it no longer comes automatically to his tongue - and odd Spanish, Aramis sits cross-legged on top of the desk, facing the other man, who lounges in the chair with one boot-heel hooked on the desk, playing with his moustache a little, looking very intently at Aramis. "The future," he says. "How is it?"

Aramis takes a breath in, and says, "I wonder if I could make you understand it." He looks around the low wooden room they're in. It doesn't seem to have a door or window - Aramis can't work out how there's light to see, though probably it's not worth interrogating a dream too much - which means they're stuck here, until they wake. "It's very different."

"Elaborate."

"I'm worried this is like stepping on a butterfly."

Mouth twitching amused, "I've been called many things, but not yet a butterfly."

"I fail to believe that. But it's what they worry about in books," Aramis says. "People who travel back into the past. If you step on a butterfly . . . oh, I've never understood it, I've just always thought it a pity for the butterfly. But - if I do tell you what the future is like - what if that changes the past, and then the future is different too?"

"That all seems an awful lot to worry about," the other man says, lolling lazily in his chair.

Aramis scratches his throat and shrugs; probably it is. "We have flying machines," he says.

The other man gives him a long look - Aramis is struggling not to grin - and says, "You do not. You're just toying with me."

"We really do. Big metal tubes with wings, you sit in them and you can fly all over the world. Which is round, I'm not sure if you know about that yet."

"The controversy of Signor Galilei."

Aramis shrugs, Athos always tells him that whatever he tells him goes in one ear and out the other and the history of this whole matter is beyond him. "It's true. Round as an orange. Is this going to get you burned at the stake?"

The other man gives him a quiet, dark look, and says - if any emotion could be attributed to it, it would only be sadness - "I know how to keep my mouth shut."

". . . okay. Round." He shapes it with his hands. "The aeroplanes take off from France and they can put you down anywhere. Well, not anywhere-anywhere, they can run out of fuel, sometimes you have to set down somewhere and get on a new one. We have machines that run on the earth as well. Cars. You sit in them and press the pedals and zoom about."

"Under what power?"

"I have absolutely no idea. I never pay attention when Athos talks," said ruefully, tugging at his own beard in his shame. Some memory clicks into place. "The internal combustion engine."

"Internal combustions? This sounds entirely infernal."

"The Church has no problem with cars and planes. They're even softening on - well, the three of us."

The other man raises his eyebrows at him, says, "I don't believe the three of us to be so infernal we need the Church to hold a specific position on us. A few indiscretions may damn a man, they don't require the Holy Father to get involved."

"They're softening, though," Aramis says, more involved, this has been something he's watched on the news with his heart caught on a nail, tugging to get loose and fly free, he wants it with a greed he tries to mind and not turn to sin through sheer want. "The new Pope, Pope Francis - he's a Jesuit, you can imagine the surprise there, and he's from the Americas -" That's always sat with a little warm glow as well, even if Aramis has a complicated relationship with Argentina. "It's complicated, of course, there are very specific teachings on the family, but he has said with the Lord's very wisdom that anyone who seeks the comfort of God, even those of us who love the same sex, no-one is to be rejected. It's the teaching I try to hold to myself, when the world makes it difficult for me. We are all God's children, all of us, all of us. But after being told how wrong you are for your entire life, to hear from the Pope . . . why are you looking at me like that?"

The man is looking at him, very long and hard and, more than anything, defensive, behind his folded arms. He says, "I don't know what you're talking about."

Aramis only looks back, confused. "Love," he says. "Loving them. It's alright, in the future, it's getting to be alright. We can even get married now, I mean, not the three of us, but any two of us, in France we can-"

The man holds up a hand, says, "Wait. No. I don't know what you're talking about."

". . . of course you do." Aramis frowns at him, reading his face very closely, he looks on the verge of the sort of anger that fear brings out of you. "Because there could be no version of me that knows some version of them and doesn't love them."

"Of course I love them," said slowly, "they are my greatest friends. But that is - an entirely different matter to - to marriage, and sin -"

"No," Aramis says, because he can read his face, of course he can read his face. "You love them. With all of your heart you do. Do you think you can lie to me about it? I've loved them for years, they love me back, have you never even - have you never shared it?" Aramis has barely slept alone of at least one of them for one night in a decade, and he looks at this man in alarm at the thought of his life being different. "Have you never consummated it?"

That jerks the man's foot off the desk, so he sits upright. "You do not - do not speak of this."

"But you love them." Aramis says, and it's such a simple matter, he doesn't understand. "You love them, and God didn't make us to suffer alone. If you told them then they'd return it. They did for me, they took a little time-"

"Whatever your future is it is mad-"

"No. It's the past that was mad. Mad and evil and - awful, to make so many people so alone and frightened, to make them suffer, only for wanting what everyone wants. Love is not sin."

"Stop talking about this."

"Love is not sin." Aramis knows it like he knows the act of walking. "Love is not sin."

"Shut up. Speak of something else or get out of my head, but not this."

Aramis is silent, for a moment, looking at him. He knows the past was different, he knows he might once have had to love in secret, clandestine, hushed and kept in the dark. But the thought now arises that he may never have come that far, even, never even had those table scraps; perhaps the world loomed so large with hatred of his love that he would have denied it even existed, and starved himself, regardless of how the world wanted him to hunger.

He takes the hat off, it is a very nice hat, and runs the back of a finger over one of the feathers. "It's true, regardless." he says, to the hat. "We can marry now, in France. In many countries. There are still those that would go as far as putting us to death but they're the pariahs, now. We've put people on the moon. Do you understand this? We have had people flying up into space, we have learned some things, and it is now okay to realise that the person you're in love with isn't of the opposite sex to your own. Actually that's all got a bit more fluid as well but I doubt you're ready for that yet."

Coolly, "I am not some provincial idiot, and I'll thank you not to treat me like it."

"No. I only . . . I wish you could see. I wish you could see what the world becomes. You would love it."

The man only sits there, arms folded, mouth flat, eyes dark and dangerous but Aramis wants to touch his hand, he wants to comfort. He says, "You would love it. That love is so much easier, and it's alright. It's alright, to feel that for them, for both of them. It's alright, and you can be safe in it. It's been the greatest safety I've ever known. I've never slept a night without them, except under the gravest circumstances, since we first kissed."

"Stop." the man says, hard, flat, "Talking about this."

Aramis twirls the hat in his hands, feeling so complicatedly, twistedly sad, for this man so like him, so like him, who he knows is in love like his heart doesn't know what to do with itself and this man never even lets it onto his tongue.

He says to the hat, "I don't even know how to explain the internet to you."

The other man says nothing. Aramis plays with the hat.

He says, "It's mostly cat videos anyway." and the other man raises an eyebrow.

*

Charles sits on the side of the bed, flexing his hands, stretch and squeeze; the fretful fire within feels like coals trying to press out through his skin, and he has to think about them, concentrate on them, so he doesn't put the bedclothes on fire.

In the desk chair Athos sits in a visibly exhausted slump, hipflask in one hand, eyes distant and unmistakeably, horribly sad. Charles tries not to look at him too much - doesn't like to let on how interested in him he is, though he is - but right now it's very uncomfortable to look at him, rather than to be seen to be looking at him. He looks -

There isn't another word for it. He looks defeated.

Charles thinks of the man downstairs, Aramis, who he arrived in time to see Porthos putting onto the medical bay bed, Charles doesn't know where he carried him from. Aramis has always been a creature of unpredictable consciousness - Charles has seen him collapse more than once, seen him passed out clearly beyond waking more than once, but never for more than a few hours. There seems to be something very permanent about his new state. Or, no, worse; the impermanence of it moves in the wrong direction.

And, yes, he does feel bad, and feels angry about feeling bad, because it isn't his fault. But he swallows, and keeps his head high, and presents to himself, loudly, the thought that he is not to blame for any of this. He never made Aramis so ill for so many years that this is the end of it. He never asked to have a rift in him, or for it to break. He didn't ask for his father to be killed, for himself to be so important to these three men, none of this is something he chose, and, fuck, he hates not getting to choose.

Athos blinks, slowly, lifts his head, but he doesn't take another drink. He looks at Charles, eyes darkened with sadness focusing on him, and he says, no accusation in his voice, "Why won't you join our circle?"

Charles feels the accusation even with it unstated, and says, "You know why."

". . . yes." Athos says, as if only tired, and sad. He opens his hipflask again. "Your father."

Charles lets it rest at that, though it's more complicated than that. That woman. Finding her, making her pay. The fact that the three of them wouldn't let him. The fact that they could find her, Aramis could find her, but won't.

. . . how the hell will Aramis find her now? If he dies . . .

Charles says, "I didn't ask for any of this."

"I will make you a special badge," Athos says. "To mark you out from those of us who clearly went and sought out a breaking rift to utterly change our lives forever."

"I'm genuinely curious," Charles says, "how you think being a dick is going to make me want to join your circle more."

"I'm being honest with you. This is what we will be like, this is who we are, if you choose to stay with us." Athos takes a drink, and then sighs, and screws the lid back on the flask. "There's no point pretending we are anything but what we are. Rifts broke in us, and shattered the lives under us, and we have been coping as best we can ever since. Porthos was right, you know, about our names. They called me 'Athos' from the start, and I held onto 'Olivier' for, hm, perhaps a day, before it simply made more sense to adopt 'Athos' as well. They were the only people I was interacting with on any regular basis and they preferred 'Athos', and everyone I'd ever known previously, for one reason or another," said with slow, deliberate delicacy, "was never going to regularly call me anything again. And it divides your life. The rift. Once it's broken, you can never go back. The new name helps, in its way."

Not being able to go back is what Charles hates so much, and he tightens his folded arms, and Athos just looks at him, then wearily away again.

"I was a different person before my rift broke. There was so much about the world I did not know, and was not able to conceive of or cope with. After the break, I had no choice about what I had to understand and cope with. And given that Olivier couldn't, I accepted the label of 'Athos' instead. He's a better person, for what it's worth. Bitter and drunk and given to brooding, I grant you, but wiser, and less self-involved. I actually understand the nature of trust, now, and Olivier never did. I used to think he was an ignorant fool." He turns the flask in his hand, looks at it, all of his movements are slow as if grief has already deadened him. "Now they're as old as he was when he was such a fucking idiot, and I can think of him with at least some pity. He should have known some things, but as he didn't, he was stupid more than malicious. Innocent in all the wrong ways. They taught me that. The ability to be kind. To try to find the humanity where all humanity seems broken. We have to care about the person even when the rift in them is taking their life from them, and trying to take ours. Aramis has done that for every rift since he was fourteen years old and now as his reward he's dying for it. Olivier would have thrown a very aggressive sulk in his attempt to find someone to blame. At least all I do now is drink."

"You blame me." Charles says, cheeks almost as hot as his hands.

"No." Athos says. "I don't understand you. I suspect that 'd'Artagnan' may one day look back on you in this moment with no understanding of it either, but you . . . in a very literal sense you're not who we've been looking for. Aramis said 'd'Artagnan' so it's d'Artagnan we need, and I really don't know how to even . . . what to say to you. What do you need me to say to you? Why won't you join our circle?"

"You know why, you're the one-"

"That woman's death will not make you feel even one breath better, believe me, I already killed her once myself and all it did was drive me to drink until I lost all track of time. Justice is not oiled by blood. They wanted me for years to let her go, and I resented them for it just as much as you resent me now, but, hell," he rubs his forehead, eyes tight as if he has a headache, "they were right. It says nothing about her guilt that you kill her. It says everything that anyone needs to know about you, though."

There's no anger in Athos, all negative emotion seems swamped under the great earthen weight of his grief, the landslide that's disrupted his ability to even get angry. It makes it harder for Charles to shout back, and he's angry at himself for how uncertainly he says again, "She killed my father."

"I never met him," Athos says. "I wonder if that would have helped, if we understood the man who raised you, we may have known better what to expect from you. All we know of who he was is who you are, given his influence." Athos looks at him, almost as if curious, in such a very tired way. "What a bitter, vicious little man he must have been, to wish his son's life destroyed only to get vengeance for himself."

Charles is on his feet and the heat in his hands flares, he knows not to touch anything, he knows what the explosions look like. "Fuck you, what the fuck would you know about -"

"So this isn't what he wanted from you, then?" Athos says. "Your father wouldn't want you to become a murderer after his death? He was a grown man, he must have known what murder does to a person. It's a broken rift in itself, you become a different person, you can never go back. To take a life - even as we do, when we have to - it stays with you. It changes you. And I'm confused about your father's position on it. Is that what he wanted for his son, a life broken in two by murder? Or is it that you don't care what he wanted for you, now he's no longer around to force you into decency?"

Charles stares at him, his mouth a little open, everything he could say bubbling underneath his tongue with his not knowing what to say.

Athos just opens his hipflask again. "If you want the man to be remembered admiringly," he says, "act accordingly." and takes a drink.

Charles has felt embarrassed a lot since he found himself dragged into the life of these three men. He's been embarrassed at even the suggestion that he's uncomfortable with their relationship - been embarrassed about their relationship - been embarrassed at things Aramis has come out with and how familiar he's acted with him - been embarrassed at the way the other two respond to his response to Aramis -

Never in facing them, before this moment, has he felt the cold of the flush of an emotion that can only be interpreted as shame.

He says again - what the hell else can he say? - "She killed my father."

"Yes," Athos says. "So be a better person than her, and don't kill her back." He looks at him sadly, and then shrugs. "I wasn't. I wasn't a better person than her, Olivier tried to murder her in cold blood. It really was with some relief that I let go of that name."

Charles sits down again, slowly, and looks at his open palms on his knees, turned up to the ceiling; he can see the flickering glow of too much heat inside. He says, "You're going after her, still."

"She kills rifts." Athos says. "And she's a rift herself, she's not safe out in the world without a sealed circle. And, do remember, always remember, the organisation we work for is not keeping an eye on us like this out of kindness to us; no government would allow people with the sort of power we have to walk free and anonymous."

Charles stares at his hands, the hot dancing of the light, like light off water but it's fire. "If I were in your circle . . ." he says.

"We're very difficult men, I won't pretend otherwise. Porthos has his moods, Aramis takes nothing seriously, I am . . . what I am. We are almost perpetually up to our necks in chaos because of their irritating tendency to run into situations half-cocked. All three of us are stubborn, though without hypocrisy you would never be able to censure us for that. The life we have is nothing like 'normal', though with a rift in you you never could have quite a normal life anyway. Treville's plan for us after our rift sealed was to have us work for a much more secretive version of Europol, to help with other rift incidents, and anything else our powers would be useful for. It seems like work that would suit us, so we're likely to take him up on it. You wouldn't be forced to join us. You could retire from active duty, though you could never live any life without surveillance from the affinities programme. But I like to think we could be useful. I know they find it hard to make sense of their rifts if they can't put them to some use larger than themselves."

Charles is quiet, and looks at his palms, and thinks of his father. He does still have a choice, he thinks, despite all of it. And now more than ever, now that no-one will ever know what kind of man his father is -

Was.

No-one will ever know what kind of man his father was without Charles living up to who he wanted him to be. Now, more than it has ever mattered before, now he has to get his choice right.

They'll bring her in to justice. And there could be any number of other people who need bringing in to justice. It's a concept his father believed in, and one that now falls down to him.

Life will never be normal. He thinks of university and shakes the thought back in his head, it's been weighing on him for some time, his want to clench his teeth over the constraints of expectation; university was only the most exciting next step he seemed to be allowed and even that felt like only lethargy to him, only allowing life to move him along. He's never wanted normal. He's wanted to live up to something he didn't even understand, and now with his hands full of fire, he has a bar to measure up to, he has something he has to do.

Yes. It feels right. Finally he feels something like sure, certainty something he thought had shattered in the crash with his father's death but now he finally knows something again, and that's that his life broke in two with that car crash, it cracked clean apart and he has to be someone else now, he has to cope, and he has to cope well. He's the one who has to make his father's choices mean something. It's not enough to merely survive, whatever that means. He has a choice. He can be anyone in the world now he's no longer who he was, and now making the choice he's not trying to stare down the future and failing with a blink; he's striding right at the future, and that bastard better be ready for him.

D'Artagnan closes his fists. "Alright," he says, lifting his head. "What now?"

*

The other man lounges in his chair, legs crossed on the desk; Aramis lays on it on his back with his own legs hanging off, his body aimed mostly towards the man so he's looking up into his face, though he's drowsy enough to close his eyes and sleep, it feels like. What happens if he falls asleep inside a dream?

They've been talking for what feels like a long time - time in dreams is always strange, he tells himself uneasily, he can't really have been stuck like this for hours and hours. Delicately, they've circled the subject of sex; of the sex Aramis will not lie about having with Athos and Porthos, and the sex the other man is certainly not having with his Athos and Porthos, though Aramis, who is very good at reading desire, doesn't doubt that the man would not be averse to. The other man has mentioned, carefully casually, other men he has known of a certain, shall it be said, persuasion. He has never held them in any contempt for it, he makes clear in his manner. Only, Aramis knows, he's never even allowed himself to think about himself . . .

Not in any wider sense, because his references to other men are cosmopolitan enough, the very fact of sex amongst men doesn't trouble him. Aramis does understand what troubles him. His Athos and Porthos are the most important people in his world, and his world is one that includes stigma and hangings and, worse, if they say no and despise him for even asking, what he's lost just seems too huge to contemplate. Any other man he fell for, Aramis suspects, he might; but those two? Risk the loss of everything, risk their esteem, their respect, their friendship, for something that they may very well view as unnatural and vile and shameful? How can he risk everything that matters in his life just on the hope that they might return it or at least not despise him for it?

"Rejection is hard," Aramis had murmured, somewhere along the way to lounging as if at home right across the desk. "But love finds its way, given even half the chance. You should tell them." He knows it, like he knows his own desperate heart, he knows what that man needs. "You should tell them. They don't deserve to suffer alone either and if they truly are like my Athos and Porthos, they feel it too, in their own confused ways. You don't know how it might give them peace and joy to hear it."

"Perhaps," the other man said, and nothing more but even that was enough, and so Aramis said nothing more on it either. They steer the conversation to safer waters, speak of other things, including - it jolted Aramis to remember it - that he forgot, in his confession to Père Donaldson, to mention shooting that crow.

"Crow?" the other man said. "That is not a sin."

"It felt like one," Aramis said miserably. "The poor bird, minding its own business in our back garden, and it upset me - I don't even know why its presence upset me so much - and then it was dead and I was holding my gun and Porthos was using his calming-Aramis-and-mad-dogs voice. I have no idea why I did that."

"I might," the other man said, and scratched the side of his nose, looking guilty. "You say my feelings live on in your head? I've long had . . . an aversion, I suppose you'd say."

"To crows."

"Amongst other things."

"Well." Aramis contemplated the ceiling, tiredly. "We all have our demons."

Now they've fallen into an easier sort of silence, the other man arms folded and looking down at Aramis from under the shadow of Aramis' own hat, Aramis gazing dreamily back with the other man's hat set on the desk beside him rather than risk it falling off his head to the floor. Their gazes on each other are always of interest - there is such little difference between them, some time, no more, though Aramis sees expressions on his face that he can't imagine feeling on his own, sometimes, little things, little ways of seeing what a different life will do to the same face. But they are interested in each other, as anyone would be, face to face with themselves. There is interest there.

And, gradually, it comes to the point where they are rather bored, where this dream has been going on for altogether too long, where it seems that they might be stuck here, and how on earth can they can pass the time? They've discussed the matter of Limbo, and how long Aramis' previous dreams of this far in the past have lasted (a matter of seconds). They have, slowly, not easily, grown to some sort of acceptance of how long they may remain stuck here for.

And Aramis, Aramis is very, very good at reading desire . . .

It's the fact of nothing else to do that causes it. That and curiosity. That is the problem with curiosity, Aramis has never known himself not give in to it. They are bored, and gazing at each other, and the discussion of sexuality has been subtle enough to be rather arousing in itself - sensuality, Aramis knows, is not about what is revealed but what is suggested - and there is a certain curiosity in everything about it, from what that touch would feel like to what the other's body might look like, quite how identical every inch of the skin . . .

Aramis says, "Would it count as the sin of Onan?"

"For all we know it's incest."

"After four hundred years, everything's incest, ¿cachai?"

"It certainly smacks of vanity beyond forgiveness, and I don't know how I'll meet their eyes again if they ever knew."

"They will know," Aramis says, gloomy on the thought, just to be known so well that every character flaw is so very obvious to his lovers. "I can't bear the thought of their faces."

"And I don't know how we should ever settle for another body again," the other man says lightly, and there is some smile in his eyes, a true one, as if something in him has lost its weight; even to be able to joke about certain things is more than he's ever allowed himself to do. "Tell me of your future, then. You have an Athos, a Porthos, a d'Artagnan."

"Sort of a d'Artagnan. He's being stubborn about it."

"Alright. Whatever that means. Is everyone the same in the future? Are we all returned?"

"I don't know who else you might know, I haven't seen anyone else in the past," Aramis says thoughtfully, slow-kicking his heels off the edge of the desk. "Have you a captain? Treville?"

The man laughs out loud, and looks delighted. "That poor man. We're turning him grey across the centuries."

Aramis feels a gladness, a whole swimming pool's worth of warmth, glowing through his guts; he is so glad that he has always, always had his captain. "Perhaps that's why we came back," he says, thoughtfully. "To do things differently this time, to get things right. So that we can be together, and the captain . . . I have some - some strange feelings about the captain, sometimes, as if someone else remembers his betrayal. But he's never done anything but care for me. I owe him more than ever could be repaid."

". . . you keep saying that I 'live in your head'."

Aramis cocks his head to angle his gaze at him, patient. The other man shrugs his folded hands. "There were - incidents. Which Treville was involved in. But he never did betray me, if that's what you're feeling. There was some doubt, but in the end we were all used, it was never his machinations that harmed me."

". . . that field of bodies," Aramis says, quietly. "In the snow."

The man's posture is stiller. "You've - what happened?"

"Nothing. I haven't endured it. I just see it, sometimes. I get so cold it hurts to breathe, and sometimes my head opens a wound where nothing has struck me . . ." He touches his fingers to his forehead, frowning, and the other man closes his eyes, then opens them again.

"I understand your hostility at the beginning, now. That was my . . . 'incident'. I can only apologise that you had to endure it too."

". . . I'm only sorry myself that you did have to live through it." Aramis looks at him, this older version of him, and says, "You are often, in my head, so - guilty. Even more than a good Catholic ought to be."

The other man breathes slowly, and says, "I am not without sin."

"You've suffered for it enough," Aramis says. "Believe me, I've felt it, believe me, you have suffered for it enough."

"You don't know what I've done."

"You don't know what I've done but you're sorry I get your battlefields in my head. It can be very hard to forgive oneself." His smile comes crooked in one corner, but he means it. "Does it help if it comes from me, at least?"

The other man watches his upside-down face, then sighs, eyes raised to the ceiling as if he really does see something up there. Aramis grins, and slowly drums his feet off the desk, and says, "You said it wasn't Treville, you said both of you were used. By who?"

The man takes a very long breath in, and lets it out hard.

*

In the medical bay Porthos hasn't moved, though his eyes look raw. Athos walks to stand by him, and puts a hand on his shoulder, says quietly, "How is he?"

Porthos sits there holding Aramis' still hand and says, voice too flat, "Fine. Milkin' it. He likes the attention."

D'Artagnan steps a little closer, standing near the foot of the bed, keeping his hot hands carefully to himself. He says, trying not to feel like he's intruding, "What now?"

"We wait." Athos says, holding Porthos' shoulder. "We see if it's enough, or if nothing would have been by now. Stay with us." He looks across at d'Artagnan, a quietly assessing look, but one assessing in trust; he knows what he'll find when he looks at d'Artagnan. "He needs us."

D'Artagnan looks at Aramis, who doesn't move, who they know is alive because the machine keeps beeping but they found him somewhere on the floor, and the two of them both know that it wasn't one of his ordinary episodes. D'Artagnan wets his lips, and these three will be the rest of his life, however short life may make that life, and he means to get it right. So he steps closer, and sits on the edge of the bed, near Aramis' feet, and nods at his hand in both of Porthos'. "Is he still cold?"

Porthos looks at him from his grim, darkened eyes, a searching sort of look, then jerks his head to nod to d'Artagnan closer. "He's always cold. Come an' warm his hands then, all that fire might as well be useful for somethin'."

He goes to the opposite side of the bed to the two of them, looks at Aramis' hand limp on the bed, looks at his own hand with some unease; he doesn't mean to burn through Aramis' hand. But then that strange unearthly cold he carries around with himself, the way he breathes white like it's always winter to him - maybe d'Artagnan has too much heat for his own hands for a reason. Maybe some of it is for sharing with him.

Hesitant but unwilling to show it and determined to try, he touches his fingers to Aramis', and nothing happens. The sheets he brushes don't catch fire, Aramis doesn't move. He settles his hand over Aramis' a little more, and presses, and nothing happens. His hand is cold - d'Artagnan can feel the bones in it - long, still but not stiff. D'Artagnan lifts it, gently, and folds both of his hands around it, rubbing a little to help the heat penetrate.

Athos says, "Do you remember the time Richelieu had him locked in that attic room?"

"Always gets up again," Porthos says, without any obvious emotion. "Nothin' keeps Aramis down."

D'Artagnan closes his hands tighter around Aramis', and says quietly, "Tell me about it."

He doesn't know this man. He wants to.

Athos says, "Treville thinks Richelieu was trying to protect him. It's a long story. I only thought . . . we've seen him ill before, and live through it."

Porthos mutters, "Richelieu's never done a thing to help Aramis. You just don't wanna tell this story 'cause it's the one where he shot you."

"He shot you?"

"It's very complicated."

"He shot you in a complicated way."

"Another rift was doing it, it had got into his head. He's always been porous. He can't keep the future out, can't keep other rifts out . . ."

"Water affinities can absorb other rifts?"

Athos takes a breath, and stills, and then says, "It wasn't quite that."

Porthos lifts Aramis' hand, and kisses the back of it firmly. "Wake up an' explain it all," he says. "There's my boy . . ."

Aramis is as still as a corpse. D'Artagnan holds his hand, his own still feel so warm but pressed to Aramis' cold, the temperature feels like it's beginning to settle into something more bearable, like he's not about to set fire to anything he's in contact with for too long. Like, between them, they might balance.

If what Aramis can't keep out is the future, and he already knew d'Artagnan . . .

Wake up, he thinks, urgently, he's psychic so he ought to be able to hear it. Wake up, wake up, I'm here now, I want to be your circle now. It's not too late. Fuck too late. We make our own time.

Wake up.

*

"Richelieu?" Aramis says, sitting up too fast and putting a hand to his head as the blood rushes there. "The cardinal? You know-"

The other man is sitting straighter, looking alarmed at Aramis. "Hell, he's back?" His expression changes, angers and darkens, he puts a hand on Aramis' arm and says urgently, fiercely, "You can't trust him. You must never trust him -"

"I know," Aramis says, staring bewildered into his eyes, why would Richelieu of all people be chosen to exist again after so many years? "I know that, I've always known -"

"You can't trust him -"

His head is still reeling, this can't be from sitting up too quickly, he keeps both hands to it, he feels like there's so much sudden knowing up there he's listing ever-sideways with it. "I know . . . I've always known . . ."

The other man is more hesitant, and holds both his shoulders now. "You look ill."

"Yes," Aramis says, because the scene in front of him is already coming apart into colour and nonsense, breaking up like a video blurring, "I know."

*

He takes a deep breath in, and his eyes don't want to open.

What his eyes want is irrelevant, because suddenly Aramis is exactly where he's supposed to be and remembers everything, everything, knows exactly what he's always needed to know and hell, oh hell, oh hell. He tries to lift a hand and it just sort of flops in an ungainly way in someone else's grip - they grip tighter, pull at it, and Porthos gasps, "Aramis -"

Another breath sucks in, he feels flattened, there's some annoying beeping sound that won't stop, he half-blinks and half-blinks until he can turn them into full blinks, coughs, says in a mangled voice, "Dn't-"

No good. Porthos is holding his hand tight, Athos is staring dumb down at him, at his other side the boy looks very uneasy and Aramis would like to smile for him but doesn't have the time to try given the state of his muscles right now, oh God knowledge is hell. "Don't get Ferrand," he manages to gasp out like a landed fish, struggling on language, on sitting up, his entire body feels reborn as if it has to relearn how to do everything again. "Don't get Ferrand, don't tell Treville, not yet -"

"We thought you were dead." Athos says, staring at him, his face is white. "You son of a bitch."

He swallows, gasps, gets out, "I missed you too, my darling Athos. And Porthos - oh Porthos, no," and he kisses him to stop him looking like he's going to burst into tears, brushing his knuckles over his damp eyelids, closing his eyes to nuzzle at his face. "It's alright. I'm alright. The infernal bastard gave me a stroke but I'm alright. D'Artagnan . . ." He catches the boy's eye, and the smile finally feels natural on him, as he says to the boy's curious eyes, "I'm alright now. I apologise for the lack of any proper introduction, you will forgive my misplaced manners, my rift had made things difficult. But now -"

His heart beats. His lungs work. His mind has a clarity that shocks him, like he's been seeing blurred for years and they finally put the glasses on his nose; it's jarring, alarming, the ability to think like this. But it's what he's wanted, he thinks. It's all he's wanted, for years, this. "Come here," he says to the boy, he wants almost to laugh, as d'Artagnan indulges him in leaning down for a hug. Aramis does laugh over his shoulder, and pats his back. "I hope you finally understand it, how I have missed you."

"I suppose I will," the boy says. "When I've caught up with your present."

"It's here." Aramis says firmly. "It's right here and right now and oh, hell, I can hardly sit, this is - this is extremely inconvenient."

"You said," Athos says, because Athos can always put the pin in the most important point, "an 'infernal bastard' gave you a stroke."

Aramis rubs his eyes, nods. His head feels bizarre beyond his ability to describe, he thinks sharp as black on white but there's a bruised heaviness up there as well, the remnants of what was done to him. "Close enough. He couldn't quite bear to kill me. Not as long as my brain might be useful to him, though he couldn't risk me awake to give him away either. He thought a coma was a handy compromise but now I have a sealed circle and his own greed is the only thing he can blame for this. And - fuck," said soft and meant, and he holds his head in his hands. "I - it's - gentlemen - I'm sorry - I know who the mole is."

The uneasy silence gathers up taut overhead, and Athos says, "Aramis?"

"I'm sorry," Aramis says. "I'm so, so sorry." He's too fucking porous, he's never had any control over it until now and now is far too late. "It's me. I'm sorry. It's me."

Comments

[(Anonymous)]

Not gonna lie, I actually teared up a little when Aramis said cachai again. Oddly enough, I missed him over the course of the story. I can only imagine how Porthos and Athos felt.

Well. I can kind of imagine. My grandpa had an accident twenty years ago that left him paralyzed from the neck down. So I do have some experience missing someone who is still there. But I didn't really expect to feel that from a story. I don't know why that surprises me. I've read your Fix verse so many times I can recite sections of it from memory and it still gets an emotional reaction.

My point is. I know that my grandpa loves me, but that he can never hug me again. He's forever changed, mentally as well as physically. But having Aramis say si, po again? It's the same feeling as remembering grandpa picking me up and spinning me around until I was dizzy. Your writing is that good.

On a separate note, my best friend and I have been yelling at each other about this update and screaming theories for an hour. It's fantastic.

My laptop died and I haven't been able to update the PDF of this fic for awhile, but you're more than welcome to advertise the links I sent you. I'll get them up to date as soon as my replacement parts come in and I can use my laptop.

PenguinLoki

[rainjoyswriting]

omg PDFs I need to take care of that! Sorry, it would probably have happened this weekend except I didn't have a weekend because I spent Saturday on an anti-EDL march (fuck Nazis) and *utterly* destroyed my legs and then needed to sleep for eleven hours and basically do nothing at all on Sunday and I'm still feeling very delicate but *fuck* Nazis I regret nothing \o/

*cough* Anyway so YES as soon as I have a non-knackered moment, I really will put up a very grateful link to your hard work because honestly it's not something I'd have the wherewithal to ever put together on my own and I really do appreciate it, thank you =)

So the *actual fic*, yeah, it's - I wonder if this is where some of this came from, now you mention it; a member of my family is on antidepressants for some really serious depression, and while I am very very glad that they seem so much more content and they're still *with* me, they're also an utterly different person now, I don't see the person they were before in there at all, and it - I don't know. It's a very complicated thing to live with, and I know we don't get to whine about life being complicated, but it had never occurred to me before that writing the loss of someone who's still right there is really a very, *very* everyday thing. So I hope you and your grandad still get to share a lot of special stuff, honey, and the memories of all the other special stuff remain <3

(On you and your friend, post the Twin Peaks finale the only other person I know watching it and I communicated in monosyllables for about a day as we just tried to internally parse our own responses to something that cannot be responded to. I need to watch more stuff I get to flail to, dammit, I'm jealous ;) )

Thank you for reading (I feel like I need to send everyone a special thank you for reading a REALLY FUCKING RIDICULOUSLY LONG FIC I MEAN THIS IS JUST STUPID) honey, as always, and I'm really glad you're still enjoying the (REALLY STUPIDLY LONG) fic - thank you, very much =)

[cat_i_th_adage]

... Richelieu was reading Aramis' mind for details?

Whups.


"Si," he says. "Po." His grin broadens. "¿Cachai?"

Does this mean that Rene gets to come back a bit? It was a lovely conversation with old Aramis, though I'm very glad they only *talked* about banging each other, they didn't actually *do* it.

And it was a good convo between Athos and d'Artagnan, too, with Athos being incredibly terrible with feelings. He's got a line of 'You will behave better, you *will* be a better man' that I think d'Artagnan responds well to. (As Treville is to this Aramis, so Athos is to d'Artagnan, I guess.)

[rainjoyswriting]

So, Richelieu lies. *shrugs*

Fic!Aramis becoming a bit more like fic!Aramis again was - it's an odd thing to write because it's not like I don't like series!Aramis, obviously, and they speak in such distinct ways, and I'd forgotten exactly how much fun fic!Aramis' voice was; but if you put Aramis in front of himself and then had an extended conversation about sexuality with him, there is one thing he would always, always come to consider, and only the thought of his friends' responses to it could ever force good behaviour out of him.

Athos is utterly *horrible* with feelings. Athos is the one I wearily sympathise with the most.

Thank you for reading, honey =)

I KNEW IT

[foreverbuildingcastles]

I KNEW IT!!!!

Now I just need to know *how.* Damn Richelieu, he is such a massive dick, I know he's behind it but now I'm worried about how much of Aramis and his rift are as well.

Holy crap girl, I can't even fathom how much time I've spent enjoying this series and you just keep delivering gold with each installment. I'm a little in love with the last section of Athos and 'Charles' talking because I love how you wrote that realization in Charles as he slowly transitions to D'artagnan and then you show us that realization with his name at the end! *heart-eyes*

And of-freaking-course Aramis thought about sleeping with himself. I felt like I'm sure Athos and Porthos would have felt when I realized it because I rolled my eyes so hard but I just felt so amused because *of course,* it is Aramis after all. XD I feel like I know him and love him all the more for it.

I have to say, when Aramis woke up and started speaking and all four of them were together *finally* after *years* ...the first thought going through my mind was, 'Get fucked Richelieu, my boys together and nothing will stand in their way.'

Thank you, m'dear, for such a glorious chapter. I'm ready for my boys to kick some ass!
<3 <3 <3

Re: I KNEW IT

[rainjoyswriting]

Richelieu *really is a massive dick*, I read the 'Richelieu's not a bad guy really!!' fic descriptions and I'm just like, What series were *you* watching, Adelle?? That time he was really sickeningly gleeful about getting to watch Treville get murdered?? Yeah, fuck Richelieu, I grant the man is fascinating but that's because devils are . . . (Also Peter Capaldi, damn.)

And now we have a d'Artagnan~~ Took him a little a while but hell some things are meant to be ^^ Just like Aramis considering fucking himself. And only deciding not to because he knows *exactly* how Athos and Porthos will look at him if he does.

And, yeah, it really is nice to write without the sadness-shackles on now =) So hey-ho for the downhill, and thank you for reading such a really stupidly long fic, honey - thank you! <3

[lissysadmin]

Aramis considering whether sex with his doppelganger would be like incest - hysterical. :) Also - great doppelganger.
D'Artagnan deciding to change his destiny;
Porthos almost numbed to the fear of losing Aramis - "milkin' it," Athos at his wits' end, almost too exhausted from the strain to continue to exhort Charles to make the decision to try to save all of their lives. I loved this chapter, although Richelieu and his motives still have me hopelessly confused. Is he so intimidated by Aramis' psychic abilities? Is Richelieu connected to M'lady? Who was killing affinities? Rainjoy, you could write this for another three years and I would keep right on waiting with bated breath for each and every new installment. Thank you.