Musketeers fic: Affinityverse

[rainjoyswriting]

Full Circle, Musketeers fic, affinityverse (best catalogued in my memories) <3 Penultimate part; epilogue thing to come.

Disclaimer: Woman cannot live off fanfic alone; we need other people to actually own the characters so we as ficcers can even operate.

Rating: Probably R \o/

Warnings and spoilers: The main list's on part one, read sensibly.

Summary: "Unlike you, I have always been thinking of my circle."


Note: Thank you everyone for reading this far, because oh my god there is *so much* of this fic it's kind of unbelievable we ever did reach the (almost) end of it. I'd like to feel more triumph about getting to this point but I am just so fucking tired, and this isn't a fic that lends itself to triumph very easily (again, think yourselves lucky that I am at least not David Lynch ^^;) . . .








There is a knock at the door - all three have distinct knocks, and Treville stills his pen, looks up as Athos opens the door, and says, "Captain. Please come quickly and very quietly."

The pen feels too solid in Treville's not-solid-enough fingers, too hard, like marble. He can hear his own breath. "Is he," he says, and then has to clear his throat.

Athos' eyes are so very conflicted and sorry on his. "Please just come, sir."

He pushes up from the desk and falls back down a little, catches himself and stands firm before Athos can hurry forward to help. He is not an old man and does not need another's arm to raise himself. But his legs feels like folding pastry as he follows Athos into the corridor, and his throat is dry, and it wants to come out in a whine and build with awful power into a howl -

He was fragile when you found him, he whispers to his own frantic mind, the horrible rapid hush of it. He has been ill every day of his life since, ten years of no end to it, it may be some kind of peace, it may - he feels like he's been punched in the stomach, walking upright is difficult, he believes none of this even as he's thinking it - it may be better than the suffering, it may, it may -

. . . why hasn't Porthos' rift blown? It's not even raining . . .

"Athos -"

"Quickly, captain." is all Athos says, hurrying them through the villa. Maybe he's not dead. Maybe he's just noticeably dying, and they think Treville should be there for it. How can he be there for it? Alone he could manage it but in front of them - he can't break down in front of them, they are every moment of every day to each other, the loss is so much worse for them and he cannot break down . . .

"Quickly," Athos says, looking up and down the corridor outside the medical bay before he opens the door and hurries Treville in. Treville can see the screen around the bed, meant to give privacy to Porthos primarily as he sat there watching the life in Aramis run as thin as droughtwater, and he can hear Ferrand's voice saying, "I approve of none of this and I want that stated and known."

Athos pushes Treville ahead to the curtain, where Aramis' voice says lightly, "Be fair, Ferrand, you approve of nothing of my life so this could hardly be new information to us."

- Treville jerks the curtain back, and stares.

Aramis is sitting on the side of the bed, dressed, just pulling his boots on. "Captain," he says, so rich with warmth, standing with one boot half-on to clump to him for a hug - he's real; he's warm - making an attempt his skinny arms can't manage at lifting him from his feet as he used to, when he was younger, and stronger. "Lord, I'm a mess," he mutters, but pats Treville's back, and kisses his cheek. "I'm sorry for all the bother over the years, captain." he says. "Just a little more madness and then I promise to be as well-behaved as an angel, you'll hardly know I'm around I'll be so good."

"How," Treville begins, and that hardly seems enough, and as Aramis sits with a thump back on the bed to force his boot on properly. "You're not dead."

"Don't sound too excited," Aramis says, and at the other side of the bed d'Artagnan says, "Did anyone see you?"

"No. And he looked grim enough for it to look like the worst anyway." Athos says. "I'm sorry, captain. Really, I'm sorry. But we can't let Richelieu know he's awake."

"He's not psychic enough to know it if he's not in the room," Aramis says, tying his laces, "and any fool could know it once they were in the room."

Treville is very suddenly very angry at this entire farce of his feelings, and says low and only slightly growled, "While I know you have never liked Richelieu, why drag me into some idiotic pantomime of not letting him know that you haven't died?"

Aramis rubs his hair, shrugs, says, "Athos explains things best."

"Richelieu is the mole." Athos says, and to Aramis, "It's not you, whatever you think, none of it has been your fault."

"It's been my stupid rift," Aramis mutters, sitting back on the bed, propped on his hands; Porthos sits beside him, putting a hand over his on the mattress.

"Athos is right, it's him. He's the one been lying an' readin' your episodes without askin' -"

"Stop." Treville says, and takes the moment of their immediate obedience - always odd when it comes and yet every time it does come - to close his eyes and squeeze the bridge of his nose, hard. "Let us begin in the correct order. Your circle has sealed?"

Everyone looks at d'Artagnan, who shrugs. "This guy sounds like a total dick so in the end it made choosing sides easy."

"And Richelieu - Richelieu - you believe is the mole."

"Know." Aramis says firmly. "Seen, know. Captain, you know I'm ten times more psychic than that bastard, you know I know this."

"Richelieu hasn't even been present to hear some - most of the leaked information."

Aramis squeezes his head in his hands, says, "This is where I come in, salta pa’l lado . . ."

"It's not your fault." Athos says, hard with anger. "Richelieu has been riding off Aramis' episodes. He can see what Aramis sees in them."

"Not the ones going back in time," Aramis says. "I don't think he sees them. Defence mechanism, Athos said it once. The episodes going back in time gave me some safety for actually finding my circle, I can explain all of that at some other time. But the present and future . . ."

Treville lines his denial up in his head, and cannot bring himself to articulate it. Instead he says, slowly, "He gets 'headaches'."

"Yes." Aramis says, and looks up at him with bleak eyes. "He gets them when I'm getting worse. He sees what I'm seeing, it just doesn't cost him as much because he's using my powers to do it."

"It's not your fault." Porthos says, squeezing his hand. "Aramis, it's not."

"It was how we first found you," Treville says, slowly, standing there with his hands in fists. "He felt your rift break, he heard you praying. But he told me - he said it had stopped, the overlap between your powers."

Aramis lifts his open hands a helpless shrug. "Probably every water affinity in the world heard my rift first breaking, if there were any alive apart from Richelieu then. But since then - he's always been close enough to hear them. We've always been in the same country, he's always been able to catch their echoes."

"He couldn't have always been in the same country, not unless he - followed you to -"

Aramis just looks Treville in the eye, and says, "Captain, I would stake my life on it."

Treville is silent, then says, "He travels a lot. For his work."

Athos says, "He can't know Aramis is awake. This time he really might kill him."

"He will face the competition of my killing him first," Aramis says, darkly. "And this time I'm sane and stable and very willing. But we need a plan, obviously, the man has a track record for killing rifts."

"You think Richelieu is the man killing rifts."

"Oh, Lord, no, he's not a man for getting his hands dirty." Aramis says. "Athos' ex-fiancée kills them, obviously."

Treville looks at Athos, who takes a long breath in through his nose, and lets it out slow and angry, and neither tenses nor relaxes, just stands. "Just wait," he says, cutting a sideways look at Treville. "It gets even better."

"She's coming here," Aramis says. "Richelieu wants d'Artagnan, and he thinks I'm unconscious and can't tell you this and so she can quietly drag him off to be murdered. But our circle sealed." He looks at d'Artagnan, a wondering sort of smile building on his full face, deep through the eyes and glowing the cheeks. "We have a full circle, and they're outnumbered."

"Richelieu is -" Treville feels a little unmoored still, like he's balanced on an ice floe, this - goes to the heart of the organisation, this - "I have to -"

"Listen, captain -"

"We need you to summon him to your office," Athos says. "We need to know where he is, we need him distracted, we certainly do not need him coming here to see Aramis awake. We need the element of surprise."

"The element of surprise to achieve what." Treville says, because damn it all he is still the one responsible for the four of them and whatever half-baked plan they have this time -

"He would never submit to arrest without a fight," Athos says. "And no-one apart from other affinities would have a chance against him, he's an extremely dangerous man. Look what he did to Aramis."

"Twice," Aramis says, in a far too calm tone of voice, in a tone of voice Treville doesn't trust in the slightest. "It was him in Alexandria as well, keeping us away from the rift so he could kill him."

Porthos says, low and grim, "So we'll get him subdued."

"Summon him to your office, don't say why," Athos says. "He'll think it's something to do with our circle and Aramis' condition, he mustn't know he's awake. Aramis and Porthos will ambush him and subdue him on the way."

Coolly, "And you and d'Artagnan?"

Athos looks at d'Artagnan. "Anne is coming, and she needs bringing in as well."

Treville looks at d'Artagnan, who shrugs one of his angular, still-adolescent shoulders. "She'll need 'subduing' too, unless she comes quietly."

"Which is profoundly not her style," Athos says wearily. "It's alright, captain. We're a circle now, even if we split up we still outnumber them four to one."

"I don't like the idea of any of you facing Richelieu with this."

"He'll never come quietly." Aramis says. "Captain, you know that. He never will say -" He holds his hands up as if for cuffs - "'Well it's a fair cop, I had a good run with the serial killing -'"

"Why, though? Why would he do any of this? He's an affinity, why murder rifts?"

Aramis tilts his mouth, shrugs. "No sé. I'm sorry. I don't want to go poking around in his mind to find out, he'd feel me doing it and anyway, I - really would rather not go in there, thank you."

"He selectively murders rifts," Athos says. "He's only ever interrupted us when we were facing a fire rift for a long time now, he's left us in peace otherwise."

Porthos says, low and angry, "You'd almost think he didn't want our circle sealin' or something."

Treville rubs his hair with a hand, stares at them all, at Aramis back from the dead, made thin and gangly by too many years ill but the expressions on his face are really him again, and the amused warmth there doesn't know what to do other than hug Treville again. Treville doesn't know what to do in response, apart from hesitantly pat his back. "You don't want any of your agents facing a man as dangerous as that, captain." Aramis says. "We're your sealed circle and we're reporting for duty. Only someone with our powers could face him and hope for safety. Our rifts have been dragging us around like dogs on leads for years, give us this chance now to do something with them."

Treville is silent, for a long time, not liking any of this at all and he knows it shows on his face but his mind his is moving a thousand miles an hour, Richelieu. The worst part is how much it all makes sense, the more he thinks of it, no-one but a psychic ever could have beaten them to some rift sites and while Richelieu may not have lied about the strength of his powers, the one little lie that his powers couldn't use Aramis' as a wave to launch themselves from is all he's ever needed.

He closes his arms around Aramis' skinny back, and huffs his breath out angrily. They never were going to seal their circle then rest and recuperate. The best he can do is order it out of them after this last bit of chaos, and the next, and the next.

"Be careful," he warns, and it comes out mostly angrily, though that's not how he means it.

"Captain," Aramis says, holding him back by the shoulders, giving him one of those close, smiling looks the wrong side of flirting and so amused by that fact alone. "That is exactly what we were all about to say to you."

*

Treville, reluctantly, returns to his office. Athos knows part of the reluctance is simply in leaving them, none of them are very used to this phenomenon, Aramis standing there frail but very alert, delighting in his own alertness, and it occurs to Athos that since his rift broke Aramis may have never known himself as entirely himself as he is right now, and Athos' throat doesn't quite know what's happening to him.

Porthos touches Aramis' arm. "You okay?"

"I am exquisite. And I notice, huevón - I can't hear the wind."

Porthos looks at him, then at the window, where that horrible low cloud is dispersing and the July-blue sky is creeping through. "Yeah," Porthos says. "Hell." He stretches his shoulders back, begins to grin in open disbelief. "Feel like I got a weight off me like . . . Athos?"

Athos, looking at them looking urgently back at him, joyous in their expectancy, understands the meaning of it, and breathes, slowly. And then he does something he never does, because he never dares to; he allows his body to stand tall.

He's aware that he's long been in the habit of the slouch, the slump, allowing his bones to fold themselves into a smaller shape than they might because while that hurts - the great metal weight of his bones sitting together like scaffolding collapsed on itself - it hurts less than the opening of his bones for space, stretching any part of his body to its full length must be paid for in the snapping of metal wires, the cracking of stone. Now, drawing his breath in slow, he puts his head up, pulls his shoulders back, sets his posture upright; and muscles long out of the habit complain, and it feels unnatural now to stand this way, but his bones -

They settle themselves with a little murmur into their new positions, and then they keep their peace.

Even a little relief from pain is as good as pleasure in itself, after so many years. And Aramis laughs, can't contain it, walks to him to throw his arms around him and pat exuberantly at his back. "There, I haven't had my welcome back from you yet; there, Athos, love, isn't that better?"

Athos wraps his arms around his sides, feels the press of his breathing ribs, and breathes in hard at the side of his hair where still and always he smells like him, soap and his skin, the suggestion of incense; they held his life by the strength of a hair and somehow the weight held. And this is how Athos gets to face Anne. Not a drunken, agonised wreck of a man who betrayed his lovers and left them, in shame, very probably to die along with his death in facing her; instead he's free of pain, free of guilt, beloved and with a circle to return to - and, yes, a little drunken, he hit the whisky fairly hard when he thought that Aramis was going to die and he probably wouldn't even be there for him or Porthos but he manages drunkenness quite well, he's had the practice. And it needn't be for much longer. He doesn't remember what sobriety without a hangover feels like. That will be interesting.

He says, "We don't have long for the plan."

"No," Aramis says, pulling back a little, kissing him once - his lips aren't as cold as they have been - turning to d'Artagnan. "How are your hands, huevón, still burning?"

". . . no, I . . ." D'Artagnan looks down at his hands, then at the bedside table, and picks up a glass of water; he holds it for a moment, frowning at it, and then the water starts to bubble up and steam, and he puts it down again. "Only when I want them to. And what the hell is a we-on?"

"Means 'big egg'," Porthos says, putting a hand on the back of Aramis' neck. "Thought that was just for me."

"It means 'big balls'," Aramis says. "I'm sorry, Porthos, I wanted to keep you in your innocence. But it mostly means someone foolhardy, who may be a very good friend." His smile twinkles, it's been a long time since Athos saw him this amused. "As such it might be applied to any man here. Now, do we all know our roles?"

"You've been calling me big balls. F'r years."

With a smoky flit of very dark eyes, "Will you say it's inaccurate?"

"I wanted the boy to have a gun for this really," Athos cuts in with before they can really start. It comes out doubtfully, but d'Artagnan just shrugs.

"I explode things with my hands, I think a gun is kind of overkill."

"We'll get around to the gun." Aramis says, as one who has never understood the meaning of 'overkill'. "For now - Porthos, I swore to you I'd kill her, once. A bullet in every chamber of her heart. Do you release me from the vow?"

"You idiot." Porthos shakes him about a little by the back of his neck. "Yeah, yeah. You mind I don't kill her after she kicked you in the head in Australia?"

"Twice."

"Twice."

"Yes, you may consider yourself a free man. Athos?"

They both look at him. Athos sighs the smile free.

"We need to have a conversation, she and I."

Aramis laughs, delighted just to hear it; Porthos grins, shaking his head, and looks at the boy. "An' you?"

D'Artagnan looks at the three of them like he's still baffled by the three of them but also, amused on his mouth and in the eyes, like he likes the three of them. "Yeah," he says. "Prison sounds like hell to me so it should be about right for her."

Athos puts a hand on the boy's arm, briefly, and squeezes; it took him years, and he feels a yearning sort of pride that he managed it within days. "And Richelieu?" he says, aimed at Aramis; he knows how unpredictable he is, especially when emotion is running high. Aramis just shrugs.

"I've no intention of killing him if I needn't do it. It's still a sin, you know."

"Porthos?" Athos says, cocking an eyebrow at him, and Aramis looks in surprise at Porthos then, as if the thought had never occurred to him that his lover might have reason to be angry with the man who very recently made Aramis comatose.

Porthos drops his hand from Aramis' neck, and his fists squeeze. He says, "Shit happens in a fight."

"Porthos, no," Aramis says. "We'll never know why if he's dead, don't you want to know why?"

"You get it, don't you?" Porthos snaps back. "That time he locked you in the attic here - that time you was kidnapped in South America, it'll've been him too, keepin' you there to use your powers without riskin' you gettin' yourself killed finding a fire rift, you get how many years that fucker's been dicking you about an' in your brain without -" His shoulders wriggle, Athos feels the revulsion of it running down his own spine - "without you even knowin' it -"

"Yes," Aramis says, taking his gun from his holster, checking the clip almost absently. "I understand all of that. And I very much want to know why. And the punishment I leave up to the Lord." He shrugs, putting the gun away again. "We can't kill him. There has to be confession, proper sentencing, it has to be proven, can you imagine the mess for Treville if we just kill a man as important as him . . . ?"

"So we let it go," Porthos says. "He put you in a fucking coma. He used you. An' we just let it go."

"I didn't say I wasn't angry," Aramis says. "Bastard gave me a stroke. But I will find creative outlets for my anger. I will vent it in reasonable increments. I will not break the other sealed circle, knowing what it would wreak on the survivors as we all do. And I will not make a mess on the captain's nice floors, ¿cachai?"

"Porthos," Athos says. "Believe me, as one who knows, it isn't worth it."

Porthos looks angrily past the two of them, and Aramis looks uneasily at him, already wanting to touch him and Athos knows Porthos isn't yet ready to be touched. But one thing Athos does know, like his own skeleton he knows it, is that murder for revenge's sake is still nothing more than murder, and makes you nothing more than the murder. "He summoned us back here, didn't he?" he says, to distract them both. "That was his pull you felt, bringing us back."

". . . I don't doubt it." Aramis says. "It was vague but bothersome, I imagine that's the limits of his powers over any distance. It probably wasn't only me who would have felt it, if any other psychics were close enough, I doubt he's accurate enough to plant it in my head in particular at that distance."

"But why call us back here? If he wanted d'Artagnan, we're much more isolated in the house by the sea."

"Thanks for that thought," d'Artagnan says. "It isn't at all creepy."

"He doesn't know where it is." Aramis says simply, with an amused, apologetic glance to the boy. "I've never seen it in an episode, not in any way that could help him, not the address. When I see rifts breaking I have a very strong sense of where they are, I assume he gets that too, if I've ever seen the house by the sea it's never come with that feeling because it's never needed to, I know where that is. He doesn't have access to my mind, only the things I see, and, Porthos, please, I don't think he chose that, I think he just decided that if it were happening anyway he might as well use it. I had no control over my rift before, you know that. For all we know I've been forcing him to see the things I do just by being too close to him, it might have happened to any nearby water affinity. My rift is just too damned noisy, and his sin was never being forced to hear it, his sin was the lying, and what he chose to do with what he heard."

Mulishly, "An' lockin' you in an attic. And kidnapping you."

"And giving me a stroke."

"Twice."

They seem agreed on this matter, now on some sort of electric equilibrium, poised thrumming on their will to act as one. So now they look at the two of them, Athos and d'Artagnan, both Porthos and Aramis looking very satisfied with themselves, and d'Artagnan scratches a hand back through his hair, says, "It's weird seeing you like this."

Aramis laughs, and bats his eyes back. "But you never will get used to how pretty I am, you know."

"Is that a fact?" d'Artagnan says blandly. "I meant -" He gestures with a hand at Aramis upright, standing there. "Awake. Aware."

Aramis tilts his smile sadder, says, "I know, and I'm sorry for it. I almost feel like we need fresh introductions after all that nonsense. But I will be better now, I won't be quite so confusing to you all. Thanks to you, mostly." The smile turns deeper, brighter. "And the two of you - I almost never thought, I tried to hope but then all I ever put it down to was foolish optimism -"

"That sounds about right," Athos murmurs, and lifts a hand, holds his knuckles gentle to the side of Aramis' face just to feel the warm of his cheek; Porthos' hand is on Aramis' lower back, presumably for much the same reason. "Be careful. We've just - we've just sealed one circle." Still he feels those words too deep in the chest, hardly dares to believe in their truth. "No-one present is allowed to give us reason to need to seal it again."

"Fancy way of sayin' 'don't die'," Porthos says, batting Athos in the back with one hand and a grin, while Ferrand pushes the medical bay doors open and walks in, and scowls his perpetual scowl at them, a level six, Athos thinks, angrier than usual but not so catastrophic as some they've seen. "No dizziness, nausea, lack of motor control?" he says irritably, as if patients really should be more considerate to their doctors in the messy business of their getting ill.

"No," Aramis says, "I feel -" He looks out of the window, gaze lost on the thought, looks at them. "I feel - for the first time in - forgive me, gentlemen - for the first time in years. I feel good."

. . . they have always known that what Aramis' rift does to him - hell. Did to him. They've always known the price Aramis paid for it. Porthos felt harassed by every raindrop, Athos could never forget his bones, and for years - for years - Aramis has been battered by seizures almost every day of his life, and kept his mouth shut on how horrible he felt every fucking day because he didn't want to see them suffering for his suffering. And they knew; of course they knew; but to ever have heard him say it while they saw no end to that suffering in sight, they couldn't have recovered from it, couldn't have borne it, and so he never, never breathed a word.

"We're good now." Porthos says, looking at Aramis with a blaze of triumph behind his eyes. "We're good."

Athos' phone rings, and everyone stills. Athos lifts it, says, "Treville."

Treville informs him, brief and blunt and military, that everything is in place; his agents are standing down and getting themselves as much as possible - multiple affinities are about to face off against each other, and this is the only wise action for anyone else to take - out of the way, they won't interfere in the matter of Richelieu or Anne. Richelieu himself has been summoned to his office. He informs Athos through tone of voice alone that he dislikes their plan immensely and there will be Words after it is over. When Athos hangs up he nods once to them all, and says, "He doesn't like that we're doing this, and so it is absolutely imperative that nobody here fucks up."

Aramis cuts a grin to Porthos, then checks on the boy. "You be careful," he chides.

"I just got you out of a coma," d'Artagnan says. "You be careful."

"But I'm like a cat, if you haven't noticed," Aramis says, and gestures at the empty bed. "I always seem to fall on my feet. ¿Cachai?"

There isn't the time for any more of their blessed nonsense. Athos says, "Gentlemen -"

Aramis slips his gun loose, nods to Athos. "Take care."

Athos just nods back, and looks at Porthos, and reads the hungry keenness of both their gazes. They know their own power and their own weakness, and they also know what they're facing, and neither Anne nor Richelieu is an inconsiderable force and they feel like they've only just found each other, to risk the loss of each other now -

"Mind each other," Porthos says.

Athos says, "Mind yourselves."

"It all amounts to much the same," Aramis says, shrugging, and then he and Porthos are walking fast for the medical bay doors, past Ferrand. Ferrand mutters, "I approve of none of this."

Aramis dips an apologetic bow for Ferrand as he passes him, and then the doors swing, and they're gone. Athos looks at d'Artagnan. "Are you ready for this?"

D'Artagnan says, "This is way more interesting than university."

Teenagers, again, Athos has done his time . . . he only rolls his eyes with a sigh and starts walking for the doors, d'Artagnan at his side, and that is the thing about circles, and life; you don't get to choose who life gives you to love, you don't get to handpick them because you wouldn't have the sense to pick the right people left to your own devices. Better to simply have people happen to you, and come to the respect, the friendship, the love.

He says, "Let me do the talking."

"But you hate talking about your feelings."

"You'll find that adults often have to do things they don't like doing."

"'Adults', what exactly are you implying about me?"

Gascons, Athos thinks gloomily. Teenage gascons. He could almost believe in karma.

*

Having his mind back - Aramis is a bit afraid that he might walk himself into a wall, so distracted by all the thoughts he has room for now.

"When this is over," he says, as they move quickly through the villa, their pace matched, each holding a gun. "We are going to have the most amazing sex."

"Fuckin' hell, Aramis, now."

"If you'd been thinking through a pillow for years you'd be excited with what you'd get to experience when you had a little clarity again too."

"You think sex is a thinkin' experience?"

"About ninety percent of it," Aramis says, then his smile flickers the corner of his mouth. "Well. Eighty percent."

Porthos cuts him a sideways look, and says, "You know where Richelieu is, if we'll beat 'im there?"

"Hold on -" Aramis really doubts he can run and use his powers at once, even with them feeling fixed in him in a way they never have, they've always been water getting loose but now they are there, a settled lake, his own. It is the strangest, most precious feeling, he's still almost nervous of it. He stops, takes a breath in, puts his hand into the reservoir -

- there is no sense of something evil lurking at the back of his mind, of the subtly-mocking sadism of his rift anticipating how he will pay. There is only the watery touch of his powers, as he dips a hand -

- and his breathing jolts, held upright by Porthos' hands at his shoulders, knees half-buckled, thunder bellowing its shock at the very roots of the earth. "Aramis, Aramis -" Porthos is saying, and Aramis lifts an unco-ordinated hand, bats it against Porthos', huffs, "M'alright."

And they look at each other, right in the eye and reading each other, as Aramis pants and the rain shatters the sky against the windows, and then begins to ease.

Aramis learned what he needed to know, but too hard; the intuition struck his brain and struck him down, not an episode as they were, not a full episode, but not not an episode either. Too close from the coma, he thinks, too weak for it yet; but still he can't deny that something they thought should never happen again just happened. And Porthos, in his shock and horror, broke the sky open and he should be safe from writing his feelings on the weather as well. They have d'Artagnan. They have d'Artagnan, their circle is sealed, and all this can mean - all it could possibly mean -

Aramis smiles at Porthos, and means it. He's okay. He's okay with this.

It never was a cure, the rifts inside them are part of them, they can't be cured. And, absurdly powerful as they are - all of them much more so than the previous sealed circle - their rifts will never be silenced in them, never be entirely theirs to control any more than their bodies or minds or hearts ever have been. Their conditions are not cured, and the only way they could be 'cured' is if the rifts could be surgically removed, which is impossible. What they have instead is mitigation; alleviation of symptoms, nothing more because there could be nothing more: the condition remains. And that's okay, he thinks, looking into Porthos' eyes. It's okay. They have each other, powers they can use to help each other and others, they have lives that can be bearable for them now, even if not identical to 'normal' lives. And that's okay. Aramis is not greedy. That is okay. Something like episodes when he chooses to have them, rather than them slamming through him without care to anything he wants; it is not to be regretted. It's okay.

Porthos breathes, slowly, and squeezes his arm, and looking into his eyes Aramis knows that he accepts the grand compromise that life is and has to be as well. His very strongest emotions will still take the weather, but for the most part the sky will carry on its own business regardless of him, and it's better than the alternative, it's something he can bear.

It's okay. They're not 'fixed' because how could they be? What would a life be, were the body as immune to imperfection as an angel's, were the mind infallible, the heart predictable; what the hell is life, without the occasional rift?

Everything is okay.

"Hurry," Aramis says. "He'll beat us to the corridor, but we can stop him getting to the door."

He urgently doesn't want Richelieu in the same room as Treville, hates enough that they've had to use the captain as 'bait'. He doesn't think that Treville could keep his composure against Richelieu now, knowing what the man's done, and he doesn't want him confronting him with it, Richelieu in knowing that Aramis is awake and everyone knows has nothing left to lose and might do anything. But in saying 'we can stop him' he's only masking in ordinary human terms a very unordinary thing to know; clarity of mind restored, it seems to strange to him to know what will happen with the same certainty he has of knowing what has happened.

They will stop him getting to the captain's door. But what happens after that he didn't see, and he knows he won't risk it right now, right now they just have to act and hope like everyone does . . .

When Porthos is more certain he's got Aramis' legs settled steady again, they run on, past the pool, down the old known corridors of Aramis' youth, his memories of them are clear as a perfect sea - and rounding the corner, there is Richelieu's back, and Aramis' gun arm is already up.

Porthos snarls, his own gun aimed on the man, "Guess who's not dead, motherfucker."

Aramis would flash him a grin but doesn't dare to take his eyes off the man ahead, who turns to them with a jolt and is frozen for a second, then takes a slow breath, and settles his shoulders, returns to that imperious hold of his head. "Indeed," he says, giving Aramis an acidic look. "That one never has known when to die."

Aramis, who had felt that his episodes showing the past were safer than the normal kind, hesitates, then says, testing, "Savoy?"

Richelieu just gives him a confused look, then narrows his eyes the way he always does at Aramis' 'nonsense'; no, he doesn't know what happened between them before, in whatever previous lives they've lived. He's just a dick. "Come quietly," Aramis says. "We know everything, there can be no running. And keep your mind in your own head, we're evenly matched now, do not make this a battle over who can fuck the other water affinity's brain up the most, that doesn't have any winners."

"You 'know everything'," Richelieu says, voice cool with disdain, "do you?"

"You've been usin' Aramis' rift." Porthos says. "Gettin' to affinities first, murdering 'em. So stand down, you bastard."

"It's always the saddest part of being ignorant," Richelieu says, but Aramis can see the calculation behind his eyes, knows he's looking for a way out of this. "Not even knowing how little you know."

"Stand down," Aramis says softly, and doesn't move his gun an eyelash. "I do not want to have to kill you. Think of your circle. I'm very fond of Anne, I would really rather not murder her water affinity, I know how she'd suffer and you must too. Just surrender, and this will be-"

"I am thinking of my circle you stupid ignorant boy. Unlike you, I have always been thinking of my circle."

Porthos says, "What, you murder rifts an' that's for them, is it?"

Richelieu rolls his shoulders back almost as if he can be thinking of starting a fight, against the two of them? He says coolly, "Who else would it be for?"

Aramis is getting a very bad feeling about this, and after the previous incident is nervy of chasing the thread of the intuition while facing Richelieu. He knows he could and it would speak to him in simple terms, but then Porthos might be picking him off the floor while Aramis tries to wake up, and he can't leave Porthos undefended against this man. Porthos says, "Stand down, you crazy fuck. Our circle's sealed, our powers are fixed an' you're outnumbered."

"No," Richelieu says, raising his arm. "You are outnumbered."

Aramis (intuition) grabs Porthos' arm, and yanks him hard towards himself, banging them both into the wall. And in the same second the floorboards underneath them - feel unsteady, buckle, raise and jolt and the wall that had been at Porthos' side cracks and jars inwards on the earthquake, the window at the end of the corridor fractures, a light fitting from overhead judders and drops with a shatter and bang to where Porthos was just standing.

Now, standing unsteady over Aramis and pinning him to the wall with his weight, breathing hard, Porthos says, "What the fuck."

"Earth," Aramis says, not wanting to understand it.

"You are outnumbered three to two," Richelieu says, and Aramis' intuition jolts, he throws Porthos forwards - Porthos yelps - falling more than diving onto his chest after him as the wall behind them buckles with the next seismic grinding of the earth, and the ceiling collapses. Aramis hunches over Porthos, covering his own head with both arms; shielded, Porthos fires a good half dozen shots in Richelieu's vague direction, blind through the dust and falling scree, out of sheer shock and fury more than any true belief that he'll hit him in this madness.

The building won't take much of it, Aramis thinks wildly as the last pieces of falling wood and plaster bounce past them and off his back, filthy with dust and a bit banged by fallen debris but hurt no worse than a skinned elbow. The building won't take much of it and he surely won't bring it down on himself - ?

"Earth," he says again, helplessly, "and water -"

"How's he got earth? How the fuck's he got two rifts -?"

"- Russia," Aramis says, intuition says it for him, and then he can fill in the gaps. "The earth rift we couldn't get to in Russia, they got there first, and -"

His tongue stills, on the horror of it.

"I can kill you with his rift if you like," Richelieu says through the fog of dust, and the air in the corridor makes some strange noise, Aramis' ears almost pop with the pressure of it all sucking towards Richelieu, the air coming almost clear with the force of wind. "If you have that sort of sense of drama."

"Alexandria," he says, and can only hunch himself to protect Porthos' head, and close his eyes against the flying dust. But Porthos isn't afraid of air; heaves himself up, grabbing Aramis around the back in an arm to secure him, throwing a hand up - gun abandoned - and when the air gathering debris in its shocking wake hits his hand, it booms clean back, Richelieu has to duck and stagger, throwing a hand up to raise more wind to shield himself.

"He's been killing rifts to absorb them," Aramis says, unable to do anything but stare. "You - how could you -"

"Rifts enter water affinities easily," Richelieu says, dusting off his jacket, teeth clenched. "You know that and never thought it through. Do you think it's hard to drag them inside in the second of their host body dying? And do you think they're hard to subdue when I already have a sealed circle?"

"But -" Held tight in Porthos' arm, holding his arm with one unsteady hand - he won't let go of Fidget with the other - there aren't the words, he hasn't got the words, he can't understand it. "But - you have a sealed circle - you don't even need - why - ?"

"Because unlike you," Richelieu says, and Aramis knows with a slow cold dread that he's planning something and knows that this time he can't save them from it, "I am thinking of my circle. What do you think happens, when one of us dies? It's murder for the last three of us, if one of us dies the others are killed -"

Desperately, "You can find another quarter, you proved it just finding those affinities you killed -"

"And then find another! And another, and another! Fool -"

There can be no bracing; the floor underneath them yawns and then horribly, impossibly, rises, Aramis holds tight to Porthos' arm and Porthos drags him close but - they're slung backwards and crashed down a steep fall of splintered floorboards and ceiling debris, Aramis hits something so hard in the shoulder his body arches inwards and he barks the pain out and somehow Porthos' grip has gone as well, he's sliding away from him -

"Porthos!" Aramis yelps, finally hitting a wall and losing half his breath with it, dazed and bruised and trying to pick himself up on a floor made of chaos to get to Porthos, further down the corridor -

"Richelieu," Treville's voice says, almost steady, so almost almost steady, but for that little furious shake in it. "Stand down."

Standing, just, Aramis puts an arm, stark white with dust but for a bloody smear on it, on the buckled wall for balance. This, he knows. This. It breathes on his neck like a whisper of death.

This is the terrible thing that Richelieu was always going to do to him.

He turns his head, though every inch of his intestinal tract screams that he should not, and looks. Outside his office door - he must have had some trouble opening it, the walls and floors so warped with destruction, that window at the end of the corridor is now a wall torn open on the shocked blue sky - Treville is standing, arms straight and gun aimed true, no distance at all from Richelieu, who's still looking up the corridor at Aramis.

No, Aramis thinks, legs too leaden to move, this savaged remnant of a so-familiar corridor and the captain facing a man with three affinities with only a gun, this, this is where it happens, this is when it happens -

Richelieu says, still looking at Aramis, "If your circle is sealed, you don't need to be near them anymore, as such. Your rift is stable. You could be much more useful now."

"No," Aramis says, feels it in his throat, lurches forward in the wood and plaster carnage the floor has become. "No, no -"

"Aramis -" Porthos says, picking himself up from the rubble, Aramis can hear the pain of something being forced down in his voice.

"I don't even need to take your fire affinity at all." Richelieu says. "It makes much more sense to leave him alive, to keep you alive, and then you can find me another fire affinity and my circle is safe whatever happens."

Aramis has a gun in his hands and a mouth full of dust and fear. "Not if you die. They're not safe if you die."

Richelieu looks at him as if not understanding the thought, as if he's never considered it - what happens to his circle after his own death - and he just says, "That can be easily arranged around. What could kill me now?"

"Richelieu," Treville says, hard through his teeth. "Stand down, now."

Richelieu says, "Oh shut up, Treville." and the captain -

And Aramis had always thought the terrible thing would be done to himself.

Aramis' roar and his gun rise at the same time but Richelieu lifts a hand, shocking him into freezing, as the captain's legs go from staggering to folding, and he's sideways on the ruin of the floor, lifting a hand to his head before it fails. It's so fast - so swallowed-breath fast - it doesn't even sink in properly, the sight of him prone, he just fell, like his strings cut, he just fell. "You can always shoot me," Richelieu says. "But not before I do something permanent to him. This he can recover from. Do you want me to make it something he can't?"

Aramis stares at him, breathing hard, gun in both hands, dry with dust. The captain is down, it's Richelieu's doing, he isn't moving. He knows Richelieu's powers, the horrible intricate things he can do with the fluid inside the brain, he's been at the mercy of it himself more than once and now the captain. He swallows. He knows he's breathing too hard. He doesn't know what to do.

(Captain, tell me what to do -)

Porthos has reached his side, steps stiff and holding his arm to himself but seeing Treville drop he roars and staggers forwards - he's got at least one broken bone, Aramis knows, and shouts, "Porthos Porthos no - don't -"

"Good," Richelieu says. "Good boy. You understand the situation, don't you? One wrong move and Treville is dead. And if that one approaches me one more step, he's a vegetable. Do you doubt that I can do it?"

Aramis stares at him, the terrible power of the man, and he knows it's true because he knows he can do it, he's had it done to himself, and the brain so delicate, so precious, they each only have the one and for it to face Richelieu going at it like a guillotine -

"No," he whispers, and can't move, can't even lower the gun. His entire body quivers, just slightly, a boat's rope with the wind just rising. No. He doesn't doubt him. He knows him.

"Call off your bulldog," Richelieu says patiently, and Aramis breathes, and Porthos growls, low, "C'n you get a bullet in him before -"

"No." Aramis whispers.

"C'n you - you know, in his head, that thing -"

". . . no," Aramis whispers, because - because in that fight they'll both die, and if Aramis fucks it up, two circles break, two circles, his own shattered on their rifts as he's killed and - and Anne, her circle -

And Treville, he can't risk this, he can't, Porthos, he can't.

He clicks the safety on and tosses his gun to the side. "Alright," he says, feeling lighter in a horrible way without Fidget in his hand. His voice is dry, his throat's full of dust, it tastes disgusting. "You have me. So what now, cardinal?"

Porthos doesn't move, and says, "Aramis?"

"Go to the captain," Aramis says. "I'll never be lost from you, I'm psychic, go to the captain -"

"You come with me." Richelieu says, striding through the clearest bit of flooring he can find. He eyes Porthos warily on his approach. "I want him out of the way."

"Porthos, please," Aramis feels frantic but deadened as well, he's lived with the dread of this since the day he met that evil man and now he's actually living through it and the captain's just lying there and it's even worse than he knew in his horror that it could be - "please, he needs help, please just go to the captain -"

Porthos stares at him, wide eyes through the grey dust, bewildered. "But - what're you - ?"

This is so much worse than anything he knew to dread. He has to swallow again, hard through the taste of dirt in his mouth. "I have to go with him. Please don't - don't," touching his arm, trying to soothe that risen fury out of him. "It'll be okay. Trust me, I'm psychic, it'll be okay. Please go the captain, Porthos, please -"

Porthos looks around at Treville lying on the floor, as the man makes a soft noise, as if trapped in some deep distress, Aramis' guts twist to the sound of it like underwater weeds. He sees the same feeling in Porthos' eyes, and he looks at Aramis again, says, "We can't-"

"We have to. It'll be okay. I swear it'll be okay." Aramis really needs to find a way to make this situation okay. "Please just do what he says and go to the captain, we can't fight him, Porthos, I can't fight him, do you understand - he can kill you in a blink, I can't fight him -"

Porthos doesn't move, frozen staring at him, and at a little distance Richelieu stops and says, "I want a wide berth of that one, I don't trust him not to do something stupid."

Aramis closes his eyes, breathes deep, holds Porthos by both shoulders. "Please," he says. "It's this or die, we'll work it out as we go along, we always do. But please, Porthos, the captain."

Porthos stares at him still, and then finally there's some movement on his face, some grappling with the situation there in his eyes, and he nods, just a little, and breathes out slowly through his nose. "Alright," he says, low and very rough. "You - you'll be alright."

He's close to panic, the way the captain's still lying there - "I'll be fine I'll be fine it'll be fine Porthos the captain -"

Porthos squeezes his shoulder, says, "You'll be fine."

"Yes. You'll rescue me, it'll all be fine. I love you. Tell Athos I love him too."

Porthos stares at him, holding his shoulder, and something in his eyes quivers. His mouth moves without the sounds actually getting loose; Love you too.

Richelieu says, voice aggravated on impatience, "Get him out of the way."

Porthos presses Aramis' shoulder once more, and nods, just slightly, eyes not leaving his. Then he steps back, wobbles on some loose plaster and finally breaks eye contact, looking down to make his way to the sagged-out side of the wall. Aramis just stands there, breathing. For all the assurances, he doesn't know what happens next, but he's little space inside him to care about that; the captain is still just laying there like his brain switched off, and Aramis wants nothing in this moment but for Porthos to go to Treville and for Richelieu to leave him.

Richelieu picks his way down the corridor as far from Porthos as he can really get - the corridors in the villa are commodious, but still only corridors - watching him suspiciously. Porthos glares back, glares with a sullenness like hellfire itself, and Aramis stands between them, feeling thin as a sapling in the wind, stripped: no gun, and he doesn't dare to lift a hand or his powers against Richelieu, not with Treville so vulnerable, and not with the threat against Porthos still in his throat like a stone has plugged it.

And if that one approaches me one more step, he's a vegetable. Do you doubt I can do it?

Aramis, for his sins, is psychic, and he doesn't doubt anything of the man glaring greedily at him as he passes, and snatches in one bony hand Aramis' arm. Aramis' arm, after so many months of his being too queasy, too forgetful, too unconscious or too upset to eat is rather bony in itself, but still the hand feels skeletal on him and it takes all his strength not to flinch. Porthos gives a low, furious snarl, and Aramis says, "The captain, Porthos," and loves him like a ship going down and can only pray that that's enough, that that and Athos and the boy are enough. Richelieu jerks his arm as he strides on, and Aramis sets his jaw, and follows him.

He doesn't look back, for his own sake; he knows what he's walking away from.

He says, tight through his teeth as Richelieu pulls him by the arm like a recalcitrant child, "Where are we going?"

"Away. Don't try anything, boy, everyone you love is as good as my hostage, but you understand that, don't you?"

They walk past the last of the corridor's true ruin, onto leveller flooring, but the ceiling above shows cracks, Richelieu has broken the villa to its bones. "If you don't hurt them," Aramis says, and his voice is an unsteady thing in his throat, half-stifled in the narrow space it's allowed, "I will come quietly to the gates of hell."

He knows this is nonsense. He knows what he said to Porthos was half a lie, that Aramis is psychic and could never be held apart from his circle, could call for them from any distance but he knows Richelieu has no need of letting him conscious to do it. Aramis suspects himself too in control, now, to have the kinds of episodes that Richelieu can hear, sheer psychic power screaming for anyone with an open ear. Probably only in dreams will his powers be beyond his control enough for Richelieu to listen in, and it always has been what Aramis feared the most, not his episodes but not waking from the episodes, no way of knowing what sanity might mean, just vision and vision and vision and vision and never any 'I' having the visions.

Richelieu pulls him by the arm. His hand is as bony as a raven's claw.

*

Athos walks tall, head drawn up, shoulders back, the stance that a man of his breeding is taught from toddling. His bones do not hurt. There is an ache but he understands it to be muscles unused to this sort of use, and Athos can ignore that sort of thing; it will do them good in the long term to become used to it, so they should only shut up and get used to it as soon as possible.

He's a little concerned by a shattering crash of thunder they just heard, but assumes a lot of atmospheric pressure has been built by all of Porthos' recent emotions, presumably it had to be discharged somehow . . . ?

At his side d'Artagnan walks steady, but Athos can sense the fire inside him. "It's one of those concepts," Athos says to distract the both of them, as they walk through the villa's corridors for the front entrance, where Aramis told them that Anne would arrive. "Justice. You assume it's just a part of life until you're asked to define it, and then it shies right out of your hands."

"This is the perfect time for a philosophy lesson," d'Artagnan says. "Just let me fetch a pen so I can write some of this down."

"Everyone should carry a pen, I despair of people never having pens because they have phones instead." Athos says. "And it's the oldest philosophy lesson, justice and how to serve it." He adds thoughtfully, "The Republic."

"Were you there for its composition?" d'Artagnan says. "With a pen?"

"I didn't actually study philosophy," Athos says mildly. "I studied law."

D'Artagnan thinks for a second, then his smile comes crooked, wicked. "Justice," he says.

"I've had some time to think on it. I'll admit I learned more with the two of them than all my books, though. You can't care about justice if you don't care about love. And love does place certain demands on us, but we like to pretend it places many more demands on us when really it's just what we want to do. I speak with the general 'we', of course."

"Of course," d'Artagnan says, and the two men who swore they'd kill her open the heavy front doors, and step outside into the sunlight to bring Athos' ex-fiancée to justice.

There are no guards, and the villa's main gates are open. D'Artagnan looks around at the summer gardens, the wide lawns, says, "He wasn't very specific about where she'd be."

"He didn't really need to be," Athos says. "Anne was always the sort of person to think that if one were going to sneak into a place, one might as well sneak right through the front door." He looks to the side where the ivy growing over the front entrance is thickest. "Hello, Anne."

Silence, and then she steps out from behind the pillar half-sunk in leaves, head high, white throat bare, gun in her hand aimed at them. She's wearing flattering black jeans and a loose red top, the hang of the material suggests expense, hair tied up and lipstick scarlet. She's beautiful, he thinks, in an abstract way, he simply hasn't seen her face in a very long time; she's beautiful, but lacks a little something. Some animation borne of interest in the person she's standing across from. Some warmth.

She looks at him with eyes green as malice and says, "Hello, Olivier."

Athos only nods at the gun. "Against two affinities, it seems a faintly absurd gesture."

"Against two affinities it means I only have to fight one affinity." she says. "You have a boy, now, then. Where are the other two, the peacock and the pitbull?"

"Bringing your employer to justice. There'll be no pay for this, so the whole thing seems a faintly absurd gesture, now."

She's still holding that gun. "But it brings such opportunities," she says, and looks at d'Artagnan. "If you have a full circle, I suppose your psychic worked it all out."

"What Richelieu did to him was monstrous." Athos says, and keeps the shaking low in his chest, does not allow it out where it could be seen in all the ugliness of its sheer fury. "It may be one thing to not be able to help overhearing Aramis' episodes, but to lie about it and use him like that -"

"Everyone gets used one way or another. At least his didn't cost him anything."

D'Artagnan interrupts them, his hands are fists and Athos knows not to touch him in that second, "You killed my father."

Anne only looks at him, breathing a little heavy but showing no other sign of any trouble at the accusation. "My employer wanted you isolated," she says. "It's not my fault that his directions were so vague that I barely had the time to stop your car before the three of them arrived. It wasn't my intention to kill him. I had no intentions towards him at all."

Athos says, "You knew exactly what you were doing when you chose to stop that car like that. It's been added to the list of your crimes regardless of how you want to justify it."

"And what, love," she says, and the gun is aimed at d'Artagnan though her eyes are acid on Athos, "of your crimes?"

Her eyes pin him, she knows that the best way to hurt Athos is not to hurt him. The breath catches in his chest with an exquisite sharpness, the memory like a blade, nothing of her eyes have changed except the expression, the sheer power of the hatred. But his breath shivers out of him, through his teeth, and the old way she stopped him dead with a look, that has changed, withered like a flower in winter, that has gone forever. He knows warmer eyes now, a warmth that doesn't change with the season, and smiles that mean nothing but smiles. And he says, voice coming gentler than he would have guessed it would, "I am aware of them. And I know how this will sound in the teeth of all this," the villa, the confrontation, d'Artagnan's father, Athos' brother, his attempt on her life, all those affinities she's killed, the demonstrable harm she's enacted on his own circle, "but deserving of it or not, I hoped to ask for your forgiveness, for my wrongs. I have long simply given up any caring about yours, for what they were."

She stares at him. D'Artagnan is silent, a little tense but not that much for someone with a gun aimed at him, at his side.

Then Anne starts to laugh, a breathless surprised choke of it, but before the laughter can properly catch it is a breathless choking, her whole body spasms on not breathing, and she lowers the gun only because she has to, clattering it to her side to dig in her pocket underneath that draping blouse and pull out an inhaler which she draws on with what little strength her lungs have, and holds; and draws on it, and holds.

Athos understands, and says, "You have no sealed circle." The memory of the ache of his bones hits him hard, he thinks of Aramis, the state he was in before d'Artagnan, her rift could hardly have broken much time after his - "Christ, Anne, it must be nearly ten years."

She rasps, "Go to hell, Olivier." and takes another hit, and holds it with her lungs punching at their confines of ribs, and gasps again. "Save your hippie bullshit for your new little friend, we only need circles if we're weak."

"Yes," Athos says, watching her hand tremble as she puts her inhaler away. "'Strong' was exactly the adjective that came to mind, just watching you drown on dry land."

She looks at him with a derisively curled lip, and he finds with an odd distant fondness that for all the hell of it, he has missed her, and he knows how far from where he once was that he now is because that thought doesn't trouble him in the slightest: he's free. It's a delirious thought, he has to force himself to stay grounded, he never truly believed he could face her and just face her without falling again one way or another, and yet here he stands, steady as the earth.

He will make clear to his lovers his gratitude for their part in this when this all of this is safely finished, and he will ensure it gets safely finished, for his part, as quickly as he can . . .

She says, "I assume you're fucking this one as well, you seem to like them young and pretty. Does he know, about us? About how you swore to me you'd love me until you died, and then you tried to kill me?"

"I never did swear it to you," Athos says. "Whoever the hell you were when you were with me, it's not the person standing in front of me right now. I know I should have listened to you, I know what it says about me that I refused to hear you but-"

"Do you want me to shoot him?"

"- but when you came to me you lied to me, to the extent that I don't know if 'Anne' is even your real name. You know that mine is no longer 'Olivier', it's been years since I answered to that." He looks at her, and she might shoot d'Artagnan just to spite him, but Athos is holding the metal of that gun into one solid lump and it can no more fire a bullet right now than a bucket could; the control over his rift he feels now is exquisite, but -

But, troublingly, he feels a grinding, inside, like his bones have come unsettled again, now he's using his powers. He hasn't the time to think of it; and anyway, it may just be the aftereffects of years, rather than anything begun anew. He says, "You wanted to shed your past when you met me, and I won't ask why. So we can grant each other this, at least. Let me shed mine. There's justice in that. I know that you lied to me, and I don't care. And you know that I should have believed you, and I ask in return that you let it go. It's no more than justice. I'm not asking for a favour. I'm asking for a fair space between us now."

She's still not breathing right, Athos can hear the ill suck of her breath, as she looks at him angry and disdainful and looking for the trick, the trap. "What exactly do you think 'fairness' would mean, between us?"

"Well," Athos says, "mostly that if you intend to attempt to kill me and my circle, it's for reasons unconnected to back then. I'm not going to add anything from then to the list of your crimes, so I ask that if you hate us, it's because we want to bring you into custody, not because of me."

"You always were such a fucking lawyer," she says with that worldly weariness of hers, everything so tedious to her. "Finding your little angles on things, your stupid little subtleties. Dead is dead, to hell with motive."

"Take the gun off the boy," Athos says, gently. "At least don't aim it at him on my account."

"I'll give her reason," d'Artagnan growls. "She killed my father -"

Anne says, "You can't expect me to apologise when the pawns on the board get knocked over."

D'Artagnan's breath sucks in sharp with rage, but before it can explode out - possibly very literally, given his powers - the ground underneath -

Athos looks down, stares down, dumb; Anne rides the tremors, gentle as summer seaside breakers, unconcerned. D'Artagnan staggers a little sideways, says, "What the f-"

Athos says to Anne, "That wasn't you."

She says dismissively, "We're not the only earth affinities here."

"Yes." Athos says. "We are. What the hell -"

"Oh," she says, and lowers the gun as if they're not even worth it. "You don't know, do you?"

"Know what?" Athos grinds out, his patience for her more toying moods running very thin.

She's pretending not to smile, in a specific way that makes sure that other people are aware of the fact. "I just thought you wouldn't have sent your circle up against something so dangerous without knowing about it, that's all," she says airily, examining the ivy at her side as if its form is of sudden aesthetic interest. And what Athos feels is the cold sinking dread, he sent Aramis barely on his feet and Porthos alone with him up against -

"Anne," he says, low, dark.

"Olivier," she teases back, almost-serious. "Athos, if you prefer."

D'Artagnan holds a hand out and his palm fills with fire, burning tall and true towards the sky. "Alright," he says, a look of triumph behind the fury of his eyes. "Now let's talk about pawns, shall we?"

"D'Artagnan," Athos says, in a warning voice.

"She killed-"

"Yes," Anne says wearily, already deeply bored by this chorus, "we know."

"That is what she does." Athos says, voice very steady, looking him in the eye and forcing him to listen, to hear. "It is not what we do, not with any way around it. You're one of us, you're not her. I know you're one of us. It's not just that our circle sealed, Aramis knows it, and that psychic pain in the neck is always right. And if you're one of us, you need justice but you don't need to kill her."

- again -

The earth groans underfoot, and Athos stares back at the villa, something sinking inside him. He looks at Anne, her lazily piqued interest, the grin half-rising, to see him so rattled. It's not her. And he knows it's not him. So who -

Anne says, openly smirking now, "You've had years to work this out, dearest . . ."

Athos looks back at the villa, and now the sinkhole inside him yawns sickeningly wide: They've only followed them for fire affinities for years. They killed an earth and an air affinity before Aramis and Porthos could get to them, long ago; they've never been at the site of a water rift breaking; and for years, years, they've only chased them when it's been a fire rift breaking, like they were collecting a full circle, but why . . .

He can't do anything. That's all it comes down to, in the end: facing her, he can't go face him as well, he has to trust Aramis and Porthos to do their part. And he does trust them, to do the best that any human alive could do, no-one could manage better when it's each other they're defending. So he sets himself sturdy as stone, and d'Artagnan hasn't put away that dancing, flickering bonfire on his palm but nor has he gone at Anne with it like a flamethrower so Athos thinks he's holding his priorities and his temper in check for at least the time being. He says to Anne, coolly, "If our particular business is concluded, we're now bringing you into custody, for suspected kidnapping, grievous bodily harm, multiple suspected murders including but not limited to -"

"You really are a lawyer," d'Artagnan says, conversationally, simply acknowledging the matter.

"- d'Artagnan's father, and you're certainly culpable for the manslaughter of multiple affinities we could have saved if you hadn't gone out of your way to make sure that we wouldn't."

"What a wicked woman I am," Anne says, not as if she cares.

"Come quietly," Athos says. "You know what happens if we have to take you by force, when affinities fight we could destroy this building, and half the countryside."

"I only have to fight one of you," she says, raising her gun again; she's not standing steady, one fist digging into her chest as if that will teach her lungs to behave themselves even as her entire body moves with them. "Pick which."

Athos is tired of the gun, and dissolves it into its constituent parts with only a thought; the pain in his joints lances, catches in his teeth - shocks him, in that second, its resurgence - but shards of metal hit the ground and Anne stares at them, then up at him, face blank before the fury builds.

"Sealed circles," Athos says, and shrugs, and ignores the aftershocks of pain in his skeleton, already fading. "I hardly believe the control I have now myself. Don't make this a fight, Anne, you're wearing jewellery."

He means it as the gentlest warning, he really does, because he does not want to hurt her the ways he knows he could with the studs in her ears and the rings on her fingers. She just hisses back through her teeth, "So are you."

Athos stares at her, incomprehending before he does understand; she can feel the metal that he's forgotten even to notice, after so many years obsessed over and now - god, for a long time now - merely ignored. He fishes in his shirt collar, takes out the chain, the locket of pretty painted forget-me-nots; he slips it over his head and drops it to the side, doesn't even look where it falls, it means nothing to him. And she sees what it is, and sees his casual discarding of it . . .

D'Artagnan says, "You know it's not just one on one, you have me to deal with as well and people burn."

She's looking at Athos. "Then burn me," she says. "I killed your father."

There's nowhere to run, Athos realises that she realises. Her 'employer' will be dealt with one way or another, she won't be paid for this work, and against the two of them she can't escape and would rather not face the indignity of fighting to lose. But she won't come quietly either, she has no intention of ever sitting in a cell, and if her only way out . . .

There's a silence, then, a long silence, while d'Artagnan must be drawing himself up to the reality of burning a human being to death; the smell of cooking meat, charring marrow, the horrible bitter scent of the hair catching. The silence draws out.

Nothing happens.

Athos lifts his head, having bowed it in respect of d'Artagnan's decision, though he'd hoped to stop him if he had to as well; he bears his own responsibility for even thinking he might have had to. "Repentance is hard." Athos says, and he really feels the sympathy of what they once were, though he'll never trust her, and couldn't even he say he likes her; just that he understands what she's feeling right now, and that's enough for empathy. "But it's worth it. Anne, I was tormented for years by what happened between us-"

"Good," she spits, like a snake.

"But understanding my part in it, wanting to be better than that, it saved me. The work was worth it. All that stupid misery, there is a way out of it, and it's better, on the other side."

"There is nowhere I can go," she says, angrily but rasping on her cracked breath, folding her arms and looking to the side, "to escape the inane prattling of children."

"Not when you insist on carrying that attitude around with you, no, there isn't," Athos says easily. She looks back at him like poison but he knows why she looked to the side now, he hears it as well, the approaching engine.

Anne takes the opportunity of another hit on her inhaler, and another, every rasp of her breath like metal filings have got in there. And a car comes through the gates of the villa, left open to ease Anne's own arrival, approaching at speed, d'Artagnan takes one step back to be clear of the drive as the car skids the gravel in its slammed halt, the doors already opening, and out pour -

Women. Four of them. Athos knows none of them, but at least recognises the face, rather alarmed and frightened right now, of the woman climbing out of the driver's door - the previous sealed circle's earth affinity, the one Aramis sighs over in her absence. There are now two Annes in front of him.

His Anne - hell, what a way to have to word it; his Anne puts her inhaler away with a stab of her arm, fury on her face, and mutters, "You three again, you have the staying power of gonorrhoea -"

"You were supposed to wait for us," the youngest of the women in front of them chokes, a pretty redhead with a Parisian accent, hands in fists and clearly furious. "You said you would -"

"People say things all the time," Anne says, her old barbed disdain, looking around at the women in front of her, Athos and d'Artagnan at her side, clearly weighing her options as very, very slight in her hands. "You should all introduce yourselves to each other," she says. "And presumably claim on the betting pool, since they never will seal their circle if they think I am the one to plug the gap."

Athos can feel that the wind has risen, and it's so strange, feeling the blustery press of it and knowing it's not Porthos, because he knows it isn't; it's that regal blonde woman, back straight as a statue, hair stirred even tucked up in a pleat as it is by the miniature whirlwind she is the eye of. "But you would fit in so well with their irrationality," the blonde air affinity says mildly, and two of the women - the fiery redhead (Athos suspects that adjective is literal) and the scruffy, pale blonde who looks like she hasn't slept in a month - look at each other across her, eyes narrowed. "You're dying, you idiot." the air affinity says. "Come with us or die, those are the only options you have left."

"Hey, she's not going with you, she's going to prison," d'Artagnan says. "She's a murderer."

The scruffy blonde rubs her raw eyes hard, says through her hands, "No point in high standards if you'll die otherwise, we need this circle done."

"She's coming with us," the redhead says. "Flea saw it in her dreams, she's coming with us."

"I didn't exactly see . . ."

D'Artagnan takes a step forwards, hands clenching tighter at his sides. "She's coming with us."

"It's so tedious to be fought over," Anne says, looking only bored, but she has to put a hand on the pillar to hold herself steady; her breath, Athos knows with a tightening inside, is killing her.

He says, "Anne . . ."

The redhead snaps at d'Artagnan, "Do you actually want to turn this into 'we saw her first'? Who the hell even are you?"

"We're Treville's sealed circle," Athos says. "Our water and air affinities are otherwise engaged at this moment. D'Artagnan, stand down, we're not fighting them."

"Sealed -" the other Anne says, and almost looks like she might sway, but catches herself, and closes her eyes for one second, breath a whisper of what Athos recognises as relief. "It can be done." she says. "Two sealed circles. This will be the third."

Anne is struggling with her pocket, snatching and fumbling, to get at her inhaler again, and Athos can hear her breathing. "Anne," he says, stepping forwards, but she jolts back like a cat and almost spits at him, "Don't -"

Don't touch me. Don't coddle me.

Don't confirm my condition by pitying me in it.

"Hey," the scruffy blonde says, eyes red in their purple pits, skin ill with lack of colour, looking at Anne. "Look, I get it, we get it, fuck will you look at me? I'm dyin' too, let's just dump the bullshit when we are actually dying, we don't have the time for these fuckin' games anymore -"

Anne hisses back through her heaving breath, "Life is nothing else."

"You don't even believe that." the scruffy, dying blonde says, her whole body a faint quiver but her gaze even as a blade's edge on Anne. "'cause you're dyin' an' you feel it a whole lot worse than just losin' some game, you hate it. You think we don't know you? Fuckin' years we've had chasin' you -"

Athos can only stare at her, unable to grasp - they spent all their years chasing d'Artagnan but never catching a glimpse of him, and the other circle, he never spared enough thought to the other circle when he was watching his own suffer and struggle every day - they were chasing Anne? And, at least sometimes, catching up with her?

"You don't know anything." Anne mutters, and the redhead snaps immediately back, "Then what the hell do you know, letting yourself die just because you're too stubborn to come with us?"

"Clearly we are meant for each other," the blonde air affinity says, hair and clothes never quite settling, she blinks like it catches in her eyelashes. "Ignorant as we apparently all consider each other."

"But it's ridiculous," the redhead says. "It solves everything. Then why won't she?"

Anne is breathing too sharply to reply, but Athos knows the true reply, the real reply, anyway. "Because she can't allow herself to trust people, in case they fail in her trust as badly as I did." he says, and her eyes are fury on his but all he does is search them for some hope to live. "But no-one could fail as badly as I did. I thought I could never trust again but when I did it saved four lives. Trust them. They may surprise you."

"It's only the pragmatic thing to do," the air affinity says, catching some loose hair and tucking it behind her ear, where it blows free again. "Why all this fuss over what reason clearly dictates?"

D'Artagnan snarls, "She's not going with them, she's going into a cell." and Athos puts a hand on his arm - at least he doesn't need to fear it being accidentally charred to barbecue by contact anymore - and says, "A sealed circle doesn't require immediate physical proximity. They can work their circle out as they need to, even with Anne in custody."

"So she gets a sealed circle, she gets -"

"It saves the lives of those three as well. You can't want the death toll to cover almost every person here just to keep her from any comfort."

"Will everyone stop talking," Anne huffs, shoulders rocking with the effort of breathing, "about me like I'm not - here? I don't - need you."

"Please," the other Anne says, and looks so helpless with want to do something to help.

"I don't need you."

"You don't have to like us," the scruffy blonde says. "Just - look in on us sometimes, trust us -"

"I don't need -"

"We need you," the blonde air affinity says. "It's not a hard thing to admit to. Human beings are not sealed circles, we all need others sometimes. You don't always have to use a person to get what you require of them, sometimes it truly is as simple as asking for it."

Anne shakes her head, pants without the words coming out, I don't need -

"You'd be our circle." the redhead says. "We'd be on your side. Even if -" She's looking at d'Artagnan and he's looking back, a long and eerily searching, heated look between them. Athos is a little concerned about their affinities; the straight-backed blonde is clearly air and the scruffy blonde sees things in dreams, and so must be water, and Anne is earth, which means that d'Artagnan and that redhead are both fire affinities, and if they start fighting . . . "We'd find a way. It's what circles do."

"You think we even could clip your wings?" the scruffy blonde says. "It's your choice steppin' into it an' we couldn't make a housecat out of you if we wanted, an' we don't. All of us got our shit, we deal with it. The circle's more'n that. We're here because - we're here because - because in all the world my rift keeps searchin' out yours like it wants it, like they can settle together, balance each other - like it's right -"

Anne gathers her breath, storing sharper inhales, readying herself for the effort of it, and pants out, "Fuck fate."

"Then fuck fate." the blonde air affinity says calmly, as if unmoved by her circle's desperation. "Choose."

Anne stares at her, and breathes, and stares at her, and breathes, like the oxygen is running out, and she doesn't know what to do.

And there is some further commotion, some uneven fast stride, approaching the open doors at their backs. Athos turns and in one immediate second, his entire body freezes.

Richelieu walks out into the sunlight. And he's dragging Aramis by the arm.

Aramis doesn't look badly injured - very dusty and scuffed about, bloodied from scrapes but nothing more - and doesn't look paralysed with terror the way he long has when Richelieu has been close, let alone touching him. His expression is that of a tightened, extreme - distaste almost, his whole body leaned away from Richelieu, convex with dislike of his proximity, even with him holding his arm tight. Richelieu is brought up short by the crowd in front of him - whatever he expected out here, it wasn't all this - catches sight of Athos' Anne but then, stopping him dead, catches sight of his own Anne, the earth affinity of his own circle, who steps forward looking only incredibly confused, and says, "Armand? What -"

"Don't," Aramis says quickly. "Don't, Anne please, any of you, please don't, don't try to stop him, it's alright -"

"But what's happening?" she says, bewildered. "Aramis - Armand? Armand, where are you-"

"He hurt Treville," Aramis says urgently to Athos and d'Artagnan. "You can't, don't try to stop him, he can kill you before you move, don't. Just let him - it'll be alright, just let him - oh, hello Flea, I hope you've been well."

"Armand, what are you doing with him?"

Richelieu is still staring at Anne, frozen on something akin to horror staring at her, like it's not possible that he should face her in this situation. Then he snaps himself out of it, says, "It will be explained. I'm taking that car."

"Armand - let that boy go." Anne doesn't move from between Richelieu and the car, blocking the driver's door, something in her back firming steady. "Tell me what is happening, where are you trying to take him?"

"It will be explained." Richelieu snarls, impatient more than anything, he doesn't have the time for them. "It's for the circle, it's for all our sakes, but you need to step aside -"

"He was the mole." Aramis says. "He's been reading my episodes to find affinities to murder so he can eat the rift inside them, don't try to stop him, he has three rifts he can hurt you with. It's alright, it doesn't matter if he takes me, just let him-"

(Three rifts, Athos thinks, Christ; no wonder we were never interrupted for water rifts, no wonder they stopped interrupting us for air and earth rifts . . .)

"Armand," Anne says, and stares at him, and clearly has no idea what to say next.

Athos says, "Aramis, are you - where's Porthos?"

"With the captain. He's - I don't know how badly he's hurt, you can't try to stop him, he can stop the brain in your head before you blink, fucking water affinities, just let him-"

"It's for the circle," Richelieu is saying, urgent with needing her to understand, to Anne. "It makes us all safe. We don't have to fear losing anyone and losing everything if I can hold our circle whole -"

"Did you really kill them?" Anne says, staring at him bewildered, but with a little shake behind her voice that catches Athos' ear, the sound of her feeling something else as well. "You're the one who - who sabotaged our work in this villa, you found rifts breaking and you killed them?"

"It was for the circle, it was for all of us!"

"We didn't ask you to!" she barks back, Athos raising his eyebrows in surprise at the solidity of feeling such an insubstantial-looking woman can muster, tiny and delicate as a pattern drawn in frost; but then she's earth affinity, isn't she? She has the same wall of rock inside her as Athos has . . .

That's when he looks to his Anne again, to see the same knowledge in her eyes, backed by her inevitable disdain for this entire overemotional exchange. He looks; and then he looks away, and draws his breath in slow, eyes closed, and then opens his eyes again and lets his breath go. He really should have expected nothing less.

"We didn't ask you to," Anne says back, her voice the sharp edge of a cut stone. "You know we would never have asked you to kill for us, we all know what the moment of your rift breaking inside you is, we would never have told you to go to someone in such desperate need and murder them for us!"

Richelieu doesn't know what to say for a moment, just stands there holding Aramis' arm - Athos can see how his fingers bite the flesh, but Aramis is silent, just keeps himself leaned as far away as he can manage - and then he says, again, "I did it for the circle."

"No." she says, and it's like the wall of a canyon, the size, the solidity of the no. "No. You did not. If it were for us then you would have spoken to us, you kept it from us because you knew we would be ashamed, you did this for yourself, Armand, how could you - let him go. Let him go now."

Aramis looks at her with wondering, lit-up eyes as if he's never seen a woman before, and Athos thinks, That bed is overcapacity already and no, Aramis, no, it is not an unreasonable request to say no to this. Richelieu looks at her as if struck dumb, for a long second; then his own breath draws in and his brow lowers, and he sets himself steady, and his voice comes certain as the ocean floor is black.

"Move out of the way. You'll understand, eventually, but don't force me to make you move, Anne."

Aramis jolts his head up. "No - please, Anne, just do what-"

"Don't you dare touch her," the scruffy blonde says, her eyes narrowed, fists tight.

"Flea, none of you are to interfere." she says, eyes never leaving Richelieu, her small hands in fists and her jaw raised and tight. "And you, you would never. You would never harm me. It would be too close to risking harm to yourself."

"Everything I have done I have done for my circle. And I don't have to harm you, when I can harm any other person here." Richelieu says. "Until you move I can harm them one by one. So move, Anne, and you will come to understand this one day -"

She hesitates - the other circle, Athos knows she's thinking of, those young women she's responsible for the way Treville has always been responsible for them, and he would never risk them against Richelieu on the rampage, not knowing what he's truly capable of; and she must know, more than almost anyone, that she can't risk her charges against his threats. She says, more uncertainly, "Armand -"

"Move." Richelieu says, charging at the car with Aramis lurched after him, and Athos starts to move -

- and catches Aramis' eye, and in the same second, catches d'Artagnan's shoulder to stop his step forwards too.

D'Artagnan says, "We can't let him -"

"We can't risk it." Athos says, and the half-glance Aramis is able to give him is of desperate, clinging gratitude as he's dragged down the steps after Richelieu towards the car, Anne stepping back from it as if in a daze, Richelieu saying, "Any of you tries anything, any of you move, and it's a haemorrhage in your brain so that for the rest of your life someone else is holding the spoon for you to eat -"

All Athos can do is stand there, while the lover he just barely caught back from the edge of death's drop is being taken away from him by the last person on the planet he would ever want to be forced to follow, and Athos can do nothing, nothing, nothing that doesn't risk the life of god knows who standing here, his entire circle if he gets himself killed - and that look in Aramis' eyes, the hopeless gladness that Athos won't risk his own life to get Aramis free and the confused tangle of his grief at being taken from them, his desire to comfort them in the moment of it - Athos can't get that look out of his eyes -

"It's alright," Aramis says, voice very steady as Richelieu drags him towards the car, aiming for the back, and snaps, "Shut up." Aramis ignores him, looks at Athos and d'Artagnan and there's a plastic, desperate sort of smile on his face. He says, "It's alright. It will be alright."

It won't, Athos thinks, remembering nights of just him and Porthos, unable to comfort each other when the sheer scale of the loss they faced was ocean's-floor deep and dark between them. It will not be alright. Once Richelieu has him away from here, what the hell will he do to him?

"Shut up and get in." Richelieu snaps, and Aramis - starts, as if to some sound no-one else can hear, and says to Richelieu reaching for the door handle, "Wait -"

Richelieu, startled himself, stops just to stare at him, then his body slams into the side of the car, the sound of the shot echoes off the villa's walls, and Aramis skips back sucking his breath in as if he'd needed to hold it, in that second.

Richelieu crumples to the gravel with a punctured sound, and Anne stumble-shrieks, "Armand!" Aramis drops to his knees beside him, and Athos with his heart pounding his ribs looks across to the doorway to the villa, where Porthos is supporting Treville with one arm pulled around his shoulders - the other in a makeshift sling, close to his chest - and Ferrand is lowering a gun, muttering almost to himself, "Get your hands off my patient."

"It's alright," Aramis is saying, as Anne stumbles down beside him and Richelieu makes a quietly desperate sound, wordless and pained. "I'll keep pressure on it. You go to sleep." There's something about his voice as he says it. "You just go to sleep."

. . . the things water affinities can do. Every terrifyingly powerful affinity here had to stand and do nothing, when Richelieu could snap an artery in their brain with only a thought. But now the coin has flipped, because if Aramis needs a difficult patient to sleep, what difficulty is it for him, to see them sleep . . . ?

D'Artagnan says, voice a little strangled, "-isn't he a doctor?"

"I'm a soldier." Ferrand says, snapping the safety on the gun and passing it to Porthos, and Athos realises - he thinks he knows which gun that is, he knows Richelieu wouldn't have allowed Aramis to walk after him wearing one. Which seems in its own way fitting, that even out of Aramis' hand, Fidget never would be still. "And that idiot ought to still be in bed, he's certainly not getting in a car to get even deeper into some foolhardy-"

"Thank you Ferrand!" Aramis sings, waving, from his position on his knees next to Richelieu's limp body with a hand clamped over his bloody shoulder, Anne with her hands at her mouth at his side. "Will you help me stem the bleeding now please?"

Ferrand gives a great snarling sigh, and strides off towards him. Athos watches him go, feeling a small thrill at the back of his neck. All this power their rifts have given them, and if they turn their backs on a man with a gun, they're still dead if he shoots. His mouth twitches the wry smile; they will just have to watch each other's backs, then.

Then he puts a hand on d'Artagnan's shoulder because he knows this may be difficult for him, and says, "D'Artagnan."

Porthos is helping the captain, who looks very shaky on his feet, to sit on the steps down to the driveway. It's the redhead who slaps a hand over her mouth and points at where she was; "Where did she - shit, again, where did she go?"

Athos squeezes d'Artagnan's shoulder. "It's alright. Aramis will find her for us, when the time is right."

D'Artagnan follows the redhead's point, and then in a startled way looks all around the driveway in front of them, and then just stares, hopeless, at nothing in particular. Athos pats his shoulder, a little sadly. "Sometimes justice takes time," he says, and d'Artagnan looks down at the paving underneath their feet, for a long time. Then he nods, saying quietly, "He's the one who ordered it, and we have him, at least."

Athos squeezes his shoulder, proud. Anne took her moment to escape, of course she did, but at the same time, with two psychics on her trail, how far could she believe she'd get? She's never been a stupid woman, so why . . .

It's the blonde air affinity who touches her forehead, runs a hand back over her hair, then looks up at the sky as if confused. She reaches up for the pins, works them loose one by one, and when her hair falls heavily down, it just falls down. No wind moves it. No breezes worry it.

The scruffy blonde (Athos refuses to believe in 'Flea' as a woman's name) rubs her eyes again wearily, and looks at her, and it takes her a few dopey seconds before she blinks, says, "Ninon -"

"How strange," the air affinity, Ninon, says.

The redhead looks back, curious, then stares, then says, "- no," and looks down at her hands, clicks her fingers and looks at the flame there - it burns eerie blue - shakes her hand and it's gone. And she turns her hands, examines the palms, looks up again at them and looks still only so confused. "But she's not here. I thought -"

"She needn't be here in body," Ninon says. "Not when she left something much more important with us."

"But she didn't - what did she give us, she left again, she doesn't trust us -"

"Think she trusts us a little bit," the scruffy blonde says, rubbing her eyes. "An' I think maybe with her a little bit is enough to mean everything. A little bit of trust's the whole world, if you don't trust any other person any at all."

"So that's that," the redhead says, eyes wide in her disbelief. "That's that. After years - that's our circle sealed, like that?"

"Things often don't happen how you think they will," Athos says, and pats d'Artagnan's shoulder, and lets it go.

"You're so full of wisdom," d'Artagnan says, watching as Aramis pulls a roll of bandages from his holster, and helps Ferrand begin a quick tamping of the wound in Richelieu's shoulder.

Athos can hear Porthos' low murmur, as he crouches by the captain and supports his back with a hand; and Aramis, as if he can feel his gaze, glances up, straight to Athos' eyes, and the smile flickers very true on his mouth, like light off water (Athos' heart skips it like a stone) before he's back to helping Ferrand, who's on his phone calling for help from more medical bay staff.

"I have my moments," Athos concedes, and the redhead has her arms around both blondes, weeping in her happiness, while 'Flea' (honestly?) pats her back and rests her cheek on her shoulder and smiles and looks exhausted, and Ninon strokes her back and kisses the top of her head fondly, and then regains her dignity, and just stands there like a statue allowing herself to be cried on.

Athos knows what wisdom is, now. Surrounded by his circle, feeling his own bones sitting steady inside him, he allows himself the bliss of that for the moment, knowing what is worth knowing. Then he walks to Porthos' side to check on Treville, because wisdom understands priorities, and after this there's Richelieu to see in some sort of custody, how can you hold a water affinity?

"I'm alright," Treville says, some grit in his voice and greyness in his face, Porthos hovering nervous as if of a baby perched on the edge of the step at his shoulder. "Honestly, I don't need this level of fuss."

"You should enjoy this level of fuss while you can," Athos says. "Aramis is currently too preoccupied to raise it to his level of fuss."

At his back he can hear d'Artagnan's mutter to the redheaded fire affinity, "Next time we find your earth affinity we are putting her away." and she snaps back, "Just because she's ours doesn't mean we like her, and anyway why should we trust you to do it properly?"

A couple of agents hurry out of the doors with a stretcher, for the side of the car. Porthos, looking guilty, says, "Think part of the buildin' - think 'structurally unsound' might be a good way of puttin' it."

"I felt the earth move."

"Did you, darling." a voice says, a hand squeezes Athos' shoulder. "Always good to know. Ferrand doesn't need me, they'll get his shoulder closed. Captain, how are you feeling?"

Treville growls out, "I have a headache very specifically aggravated by people asking that question."

Athos looks up at Aramis squinting at the captain's face, says, "How long can you keep him asleep?"

Aramis shrugs. "Long enough. Long enough for the rest of his circle to gather, I think they're the best people to make him understand what has to happen now. He really does care for them, in his way. And they're probably the only people in the world who actually like him so he'd probably rather do what they want in the way of amends and keep them liking him, if he can."

Athos broods on that, the likelihood of a man like Richelieu submitting to incarceration, given that they all know it has to happen. "If not?"

Aramis considers it, head cocked like a bird, eyes on the sky overhead blue like a flag of pure joy. "I don't think my circle would like me much, if I were the kind of man who made someone comatose to make matters easier for the rest of us." He tilts his mouth an undecided eh. "We'll see. What we have to do, we'll do. On that note - well, earth puts out fire, ¿cachai?" with a glance to the side, where Athos looks, and sighs.

"D'Artagnan!" he calls. "Enough, this is not the time for that!"

Ninon says, "Constance, put that away, there's no need for it."

Both fire affinities stand there with flames lapping milky around their wrists above their clenched fists - fluttering amber at the tips for d'Artagnan, an almost cool blue for the redhead - and d'Artagnan mutters, "She started it."

"I started it, did I," Constance says darkly back.

"Should've brought popcorn," Porthos says.

"And cushions," Aramis says, dropping himself to sit on the step beside Treville, glancing fondly across at him. "So, captain," he says. "I apologise on behalf of everyone concerned for breaking your villa. But how do you like your sealed circles now?"

Treville draws his breath in slow through his nose, and sighs it out. Athos can guess at how 'structurally unsound' part of the villa may be if an earth rift went at it with any energy, an extremely important man is being stretchered into the building with a bullet wound to the shoulder and a list of crimes mercifully longer than their own, they failed to bring in the woman responsible for multiple attacks and deaths (including, though not limited to, d'Artagnan's father, two affinities in the moment of their rifts' breaking, and Aramis' former air affinity in these very grounds) though at least they know with a psychic there'll always be another chance for that, there are two sealed circles out here to be housed and minded and their fire affinities are still glaring sparks at each other like a bonfire of one description or another is waiting to happen -

"I like them very well," Treville says, and Aramis' grin cracks true and deep, and he pats his back, but gently, wary of causing hurt.

Yes, Athos thinks, trying to work out quite how violent the explosion d'Artagnan and Constance combined might make. He likes them very well too.

*

On the sofa in the common room on their corridor, the room they never use, Flea is asleep. Surrounded by two circles and Porthos in charge of the music, his iPod hooked up to a couple of speakers dragged in from somewhere, everyone talking and the music chiming sweet-sharp horns and yet Flea sleeps, curled on her side with a blanket Ninon draped over her, as if nothing could wake her; at least, not yet.

So Porthos sits on the floor, iPod in his good hand, watching the room over. Aramis is acting as smiling referee between Constance and d'Artagnan, who just somehow ignite whenever they catch the other's eye and everyone's leery of the furniture (the curtains, the walls, the villa) around the two of them. In the far corner Athos and Ninon are wedged, talking quietly like adults. Everyone's drinking, Athos rattled around in his room and brought out the 'good wine', which means he's been letting them drink piss for years but honestly Porthos can't taste the difference so can't say that he cares. It means he's in a good mood, anyway. Everyone's in a good mood.

A good, odd mood.

Their circle is sealed. Richelieu is far away, in some secure facility with his circle there to talk him into remaining there - he's not much choice until that shoulder heals, though Aramis has allowed him to wake for it. The girls' circle has sealed as well, though their earth affinity is elsewhere, waiting for them, Aramis said as if it wasn't very important, she knowing one circle or another would come for her eventually. They will. Because the girls need her, there's that, but d'Artagnan has unfinished business there and that matters most. He's their circle.

Porthos watches the boy, guileless because he doesn't know how to be worldly yet, looking right into Constance's eyes as he speaks and she looking coolly back, neck straight as a swan, girl wouldn't blink in front of the gates of hell, there's a woman to appreciate. Aramis has left them; trails his fingertips over Porthos' shoulder, across the high bridge of his back until he sits with a graceless grace at his other shoulder, where his fingertips are gentle as the touch of moth's wings above that sling, and he cuts one of his grins across at Porthos, clean and sharp and bright. Porthos nods at the two fire affinities. "So," he says.

"And you were worried I would seduce him," Aramis scolds, smiling. "Some things are meant to be." He nods across at Athos and Ninon. "They're going to sleep together."

Porthos doesn't take it in for a moment, then looks aghast at Aramis, then doesn't see any trouble at all on Aramis' amused face, and the fear falters. He clears his throat, says, "Yeah?"

Aramis nods. "I haven't seen it, only - I got the strongest intuition, like a memory; he'll come to us one day soon all sad and scared for wanting it. But it's fine. Why should we mind? He'll always come back to us."

Porthos has never before truly understood what Aramis makes of the way they love each other, which is honestly that they love each other, and want each other to be happy, and so they will always, always be together, but that has just never meant the same thing as ownership. He wonders if he minds, and finds that he doesn't; a night or a few nights of Athos not in the bed, they've done that before, and knowing Athos he knows that he always will come back to them. Maybe Porthos and Aramis will slip out of the bed for someone else now and then, and come back. But there'll always be more than one in that bed, and so long as no-one gets left alone, what's the problem?

Porthos says, slowly, "You seen anything else?"

Aramis raises his wineglass, shakes his head over it before he drinks. "I'd rather not. I actually have the choice about it now, at least most of the time it seems, and, well, I like surprises."

"I used to freak out about it so much," Porthos says, eyes on the iPod and selecting with his thumb the next track; Curtis, how could it be anything else? "Never bein' able to surprise you with one damn thing in case you'd seen it all before."

Aramis says, "There was a time when that was getting frighteningly true. But there's an off switch, now." His knee is pressed to Porthos' as they sit, and his knuckles stroke at his side, not touching his bad arm in its sling. "We got that circuit sealed."

They didn't exactly debrief with Treville, given that he was in a medical bay bed and Aramis, not yet showered and covered in dust and smeared blood, finally had some time and space to worry at him. Treville looked too strained by whatever Richelieu had done to him but was mostly a weird combination of irritated and glad and proud, for them. Ferrand snarled at them that he needed to rest, though Treville promised Aramis, with a squeeze of his hand, that he was fine before they were ushered beyond the curtain for Porthos' arm to be properly set and the worst of Aramis' scrapes cleaned. Porthos had noted the weird symmetry of it during Aramis' fretful sulk through it all; all those years of Treville worrying at the state of Aramis' brain . . .

So they've only talked amongst themselves yet, though an agent did come for each of their stories, given that a very important man did get a bullet put into him on their account. They've talked to each other. They told Athos that Aramis is never going to be free of episodes, though they seem controlled for now, and had to watch the, for one moment, almost overwhelming grief in him to know it; but Aramis touched his hand, no fear at all in his eyes, and Athos accepted it, breath drawing in shaky and letting loose steady. D'Artagnan confessed that in his worst rage he still felt the fire in his hands, and while he's mostly got it under control, he doesn't think he'll ever be entirely clear of blowing shit up when he's in the mood for it. Porthos admitted that in his strongest feelings, he's still going to be moving the sky, though he thinks a casual weather forecast can ignore his mood for the most part. And Athos told them, fitting it together as he spoke in front of them, that his bones had twisted like metal inside him when he actually used his powers . . .

It takes no shine off the miracle of it, to have a sealed circle, to know that time bomb ticking away inside them all has gone quiet. It just makes it real; they're not fixed, they're people, not machines, their bodies are blood and bone and affinities, what the hell would 'fixed' mean? He looks at Aramis, who sips his wine and watches the room with his dark, interested, ever-amused eyes, and Aramis has never been a thing to be fixed, Aramis has never been broken. Aramis has needed some help, and now he's got it, he's got all three of them. But he is who he is, his body is what it is; he can manage what episodes come, now they're no longer killing him. Athos doesn't fear pain when he has to face it, d'Artagnan can keep from exploding for the most part, and Porthos isn't afraid of writing some things on the sky. Some things should get shouted as loud as you can.

"Here," he says, putting the iPod down to reach across his own body, to cup Aramis' cheek and run his thumb through the scratch of the beard around his jaw, watching Aramis' eyes shift to him alert and then darkening, the lids loosening, his lips parting on a smile for the kiss.

They never wanted a fantasy, 'happily ever after', not really, they knew they couldn't have that - not with each other, hell. And all they wanted was each other, as safe as anyone could hope to be. And the time bomb inside them all now is only the same as the one every person carries, the truth Richelieu couldn't bring himself to face: it never could be forever, no-one gets forever. And fucking hell, that thought makes every moment crisp as the first apple of autumn, the air of a perfect winter dawn. They don't have forever, which is somehow easier to understand now the permanent fear of the end isn't on them. No-one has forever. They have to make what time they do have count.

The kiss breaks only slowly, with a couple of parting kisses as Aramis likes, as if preparing his lips for their loneliness again. They make what they have count, Porthos thinks. It never was fair that they had such little time together, fearing their circle unsealed as it was. But now they have what everyone has, the same uncertainty everyone has, and they can't say fairer than that.

Aramis nudges his nose to the side of Porthos' and presses his forehead to his, eyes closed, silent for a moment, the two of them swaying very slightly, not in time with the music. They breathe, and balance on each other, like they make the most perfect circle.

Then the song runs out, and Porthos has to pick up his iPod, and Aramis lifts his head. By the time Porthos has hit the next song to play Aramis has picked up Porthos' wine glass, and says, "Here," lifting it to his mouth to drink, which Porthos does and grins as he swallows. Aramis takes a cheeky sip himself and puts it down smiling right to the eyebrows, nudges his knee off Porthos' like they're teenagers again and says, "Once we manage our business with that woman - Treville has a file, for me."

Breathlessness catches Porthos by the back of the neck, and lets go again.

The file from the orphanage. The file of Aramis' unknown family. Their family, if there is anyone to claim them. Any family to any of them is family to all of them.

"We'll come with you," Porthos says. "Chile was fun."

"Then London," Aramis says. "Eventually. When we can."

"Yeah," Porthos says, and he's fine with the 'eventually', he knows they've got shit to do. And anyway, he knows what home means, beside Aramis. It strikes him then, tight in the throat, he's missed him, it's been years he's been fragmenting for, he's only just got him back whole, the last few months he's barely even known his best friend -

He rows it back. He swallows it down. He doesn't make rain scatter off the windows, driven by his pain.

Aramis kisses the side of his neck, just below his jaw, slow and reverent.

They sit back again, casual side by side. Athos and Ninon are standing close, Athos head lowered a little as if thinking hard as Ninon speaks, she straight-backed and relaxed with a glass of wine in her hand, leaning on the wall. Constance laughs and shoves at d'Artagnan's shoulder at something he says, and he grins in a teenaged, self-satisfied way back. Flea, on the sofa, sleeps sound and just beginning, quiet and high-toned, to snore.

Aramis takes a drink, tugs at the neck of his t-shirt, says, "It's warm in here, don't you think?"

Yeah. Whoever wants 'perfect' is welcome to it. They're good right now.

Comments

Stunned, staggering

[lissysadmin]

OMG, Rainjoy. I would not have guessed this explanation given forever to consider it, but it all makes perfect sense. I am also a little devastated to know that the affinity fic is complete. Thank you so much for 3 years of breathless anticipation, and 3 years of cheeky, long-suffering, sexy and loving Aramis. I have loved reading this fic. I have adored Porthos, Athos, and Treville, and been amused by the irritable Ferrand. Thank you so much.

Re: Stunned, staggering

[rainjoyswriting]

I am really so fucking bad at replying to comments in a timely manner and I'm sorry =( But! I'm glad you enjoyed the fic, honey - there is actually an epilogue piece if I *ever* get around to finishing it. But it is a hell of a long fic even without it, yeah ^^; Thank you for reading the whole long length of it honey - thank you, so much <3

[(Anonymous)]

Well, that's what I'd call fall back on one's feet. :D I feel like I can breathe for the first time in a looong time - that goes on to show how well you built the tension over time. There we so many things I liked, I feel like I need to make a list:

- it was so great seeing Aramis being Aramis again (Everyone Is A Huevon! \o/ Oh, my heart), and d'Artagnan's first reaction to it;

- although I'm kinda angry at you for giving Treville such a scare;

- I went als "YES!!! \o/" when Flea's circle arrived, then proceeded to cackle madly when Richelieu stepped out and ran straight into Anne because BOY, are you in trouble. The small glimpse we had into what they've been doing these past few years, their undoubtedly frustrating, absurd but also funny (... for us...?) chase after Milady was great. I've suspected that Anne was to be their earth affinity for a while, and I'm glad they finally managed to convince her to join them, if only in spirit. Even though she is not a good person I couldn't help but feel sympathy towards her, seeing her brought to bay and struggling to grant anyone the trust that'd save her life. It does make you wonder what happened for her to be that way - although I suspect having a rift break inside you and then being caught & hired by freaking Richelieu definitely wouldn't help her faith in humanity;

- speaking of Richelieu, I didn't think it was possible for him to become worse but his choice to absord affinities makes him downright monstruous. I do believe he indeed acted out of fear for his circle and for himself, but still. It is also interesting that that decision came from the one person in that circle who never actually had to live with it unsealed; maybe it made him incapable of imagining surviving it / living with it;

- well, that'd explain his anger at Aramis for doing just that - plus, seeing Aramis' decline ought to have been terrifying as a preview of what Richelieu migh have to go through were something to ever happen to a member of his circle;

- STILL NO EXCUSE THOUGH OH MY GOD;

- still glad that Aramis is back \o/ But also a bit sad that they're not entirely rid of the ailments linked to their powers. But at the same time it'll ensure they think twice before using them, so given how much of a bunch of hotheads they are, it might not be *that* bad;

- I'm also glad they finally get to know the girls better. I feel that Constance and d'Artagnan will make a lot of things go boom in the near future *cackles*;

- I like to think of how glad Père Donaldson will be when Aramis makes his triumphant way back to mass :D As a whole I'm curious abut what will be in the "epilogue thing". I still wonder about the whole reincarnation-but-maybe-not thing, too;

- but before that I already want to thank you for this amazing fic and for sticking with it despite the length (I am in awe of your productivity) and other outwards difficulties (I hope you're doing okay these days and that the start of the year is going well!);

- also, I'm looking forward to re-reading all of it and going ooh and aah at all the foreshadowing I have no doubt you interspersed it all with. So yeah, thanks again ^^

Niitza

[rainjoyswriting]

Even anon I can spot your comments from the first line somehow ;) (This does not excuse me from replying to them the following *month*, sorry -_-)

Everyone Is A Huevón! And everything is back to ending in either 'po' or 'cachai' again, I'd missed writing those little quirks, they are crazy fun ^^

Oh my god yes I have been looking forward to Richelieu in his ultimate triumph striding from the villa and walking right into Anne's bitch face for a *very long time*. Bizarrely, two of my very favourite things to write in this ENTIRE STUPIDLY LONG FIC have been that and the moment in the +1 piece where Aramis and Richelieu both realise that the other knows everything - and then they just stand there for a long second because neither knows wtf to do. I am easily amused ;)

Given that I always did write this as a response to disability and chronic illness, I never intended to make them all 'better' at the end, because what that means is quite complicated. I wanted them to be well enough to enjoy their lives, bless them, without negating the reality of living with a long-term health condition. Right now that's about the only thing I hope for myself ^^; Also they do need *something* to make them not break the planet through sheer irresponsibility with their powers omg yes.

But I was also *so* glad to get the girls back! \o/ And now Constance and d'Artagnan get to embark on a fiery, explosion-inducing love affair \o/ oh god what have i done \o/

I hope you've been well too honey, I owe you an email again, but thank you for all my most recent creepy bits of folklore <3 Note how I David Lynch'd past the reincarnation-but-maybe-not thing, ahem. *gazes enigmatically into the distance* Take care of yourself honey, and hopefully I'll have the chance to reply soon, my arms are in short supply these days ^^; But thank you for reading a really very very stupidly very long fic, thank you! <3

[neyronrose]

I liked how the boys still had some side-effects from their powers, but the symptoms were greatly ameliorated.

Well, we knew Richelieu was evil. Like Aramis, I didn't figure out what he'd done. Loved the disapproval from Anne (the queen). Oh, those were some scary scenes, though, and I couldn't figure out how the sympathetic characters could get out of his control over them. I liked the message that even those who had great power, like Richelieu, could still be held accountable by the others in his circle.

The boys suffered a lot through this, but they had some good times, too. I imagine them being able to save other rifts, and enjoy life.

[rainjoyswriting]

(Ridiculously late reply, I'm sorry -_-; )

All I hope for myself at this point is the symptoms being lessened; it can mean so much, and you can totally live an entirely full life as a disabled person as long as your health can be managed *enough*. And so the boys will almost certainly go on to save other rifts and enjoy life a lot because Aramis is now reliable enough to be allowed to try out bungee jumping and skydiving as he clearly needs to, to work down his impulsiveness the way you give cats scratching posts ^^;

Thank you for reading a really very long fic, honey - than you!

[(Anonymous)]

So I know I'm in for it when just the title makes me tear up a little bit. Honestly this entire chapter is just so incredibly joy filled that it almost makes up for the actual terror that is the Cardinal. Aramis willing to go with him to save Treville and Porthos had me in tears, you can't DO THAT, Porthos JUST got him back! And then the other circle was there and fjeiowajfeo FLEA, you poor thing.

Honestly, Anne standing up to Richelieu was heartbreaking too. My uncle called me a fag once and I think it felt a little like that. Having someone you trusted so much just... betray you so badly you have to rethink your whole life.

" and Ferrand is lowering a gun, muttering almost to himself, "Get your hands off my patient."" I screamed. Quietly, because I was working a graveyard shift and couldn't wake people up, but know that there was screaming. I've been reading your work for six years now (wow, I feel old?) and that may be my favorite line ever. Tied with d'Art's "Isn't he a doctor?" I feel you, child. Ferrand is the hero we all deserve. "No one should be alone when the worst things happen" indeed.

And the girls' circle was also sealed and I may have cried some more? Can they get a spin off at some point because I love them all so much. Flea deserves that nap, and Porthos deserves to have his friend back, and d'Art deserves to have Constance smack some sense into him. I'd say Athos deserves a drink, but I think it's a lot happier to know that Athos deserves not to NEED a drink anymore, and I'm getting emotional again.

Really, Aramis deserves to be himself again, because I really, really missed that little shit. Probably not as much as Porthos and Athos, but wow. He's himself again and it's fantastic.

This review is getting long and tangent-y. I just love this chapter? And this story? I'm sad that we're reaching the end.

The PDF for this is updated to include this chapter. The links should all be the same though. And I don't have a dreamwidth (maybe I should get one?) but I'm on Tumblr  (penguinloki.tumblr.com) if you need it for linking purposes?

-penguinloki

[rainjoyswriting]

I am really late replying to this and I'm really sorry (I'm also sorry that I'm as tired as I am while doing it, you really do deserve more energy than I've got to give right now, sorry <3 ). But I am really glad you enjoyed it!

Aramis' instinct to save people without consideration for consequences manifests itself slightly differently in this verse as he has managed not to jump on any bombs, but he is willing to walk off with Richelieu and just deal with what happens next when it happens, yeah -_-; And poor Anne, and all that circle; they do all care about each other, and now they have to deal with this. And it is a betrayal, and I'm sorry your own was such an incredibly dickhead sort of betrayal, honey. I know the feeling of realising that you trusted the wrong person, and the long after-process of convincing yourself that you're not the person who did the wrong thing in trusting them, *they* are the person who did the wrong thing because they did the wrong thing. I literally do not just know why people can't just be nice to each other, I honestly don't -_-

And lol to the entire verse getting wrapped up with a happy ending due to a character who appeared in ONE episode of the series but I really did just love ^^; Ferrand is not willing to put up with any of Aramis' bullshit and they come at the world from very different places, but they get each other, they respect each other, and in this verse Ferrand also has a doctor-patient bond of care that he takes very seriously. That little shit has been driving him crazy since forever, but the relevant thing is he's *Ferrand's* little shit, and Ferrand used to be a soldier too ;)

Thank you for the linking and for updating the PDFs! I still need to sort out some system for keeping those filed where people can find them (I need a sticky at the top of this journal but I just haven't enough energy to float an acorn cup right now). Thank you, honey =) And thank you for reading a really very very stupidly very long fic, which we are approaching the end of - thank you very much! ^^

[grey_bard]

Oh, this is glorious! What a payoff!

[rainjoyswriting]

This is a really late reply, but thank you for reading it! I'm glad you liked it =)

So Many Feelings

[foreverbuildingcastles]

OMG at last! :D I have been anticipating this for years and it has finally arrived and it did not disappoint.

It was so satisfying to have *Aramis* back. His mind was fading so slowly, I didn't realize at first how much of him we were missing. In one of the chapters, either Athos or Porthos comments that they can't remember when he last said 'Cachai' and when he first said it here I teared up a little. Okay, to be honest, I was tearful from the first sentence lol. Having all the boys together and WHOLE and headed off to 'battle' was just the best visual.

I was actively freaking out when Richelieu started to take Aramis away. For a moment I couldn't think of any way they could avoid that. Then, like beautiful and terrifying Valkyries, there comes the other circle and *Anne* :D I am a little more in love with all of them.

Rainjoy, it's not enough to say thank you. I remember finding your FMA stories waaaay back in 2008/2009 after I had just finished marathoning the series and couldn't accept that it was over. Following you through Glee, oh jeez lol, I still remember realizing you were getting as obsessed with the show as I was and how happy I was to share that with you via your stories. Then you started on The Musketeers and I admit I was skeptical. It took me a little while to sit down and watch Season 1 but then I did and I'm so happy I did, just so I could experience more of your wonderful writing.

The Affinity!verse has been in my life since it's first post and it has been one of the most impactful stories I've ever read. The depth of feeling you bring to each character--with their strengths and weaknesses, wants and needs, fears and delights--everything builds up until I feel like these people are my friends (Friends I know waaaaay too much about lol). I learn something about myself with each and every single chapter you post. That's on a personal level as well as a technical level. I consider myself a writer but my muses have been quiet since I finished college. I get flashes of inspiration nowadays and I want to try writing again soon and I just know for a fact that the quality of your writing will be something I aspire to. You actually fanned my flames again with your newest Exorcist series--modern fantasy is my favorite sandbox in which to play. ;)

So again, although it doesn't even come close to expressing my appreciation and admiration...thank you.

<3 Bobbie - (gypsy_foot_luvr from Livejournal)

[alumiere]

thank you. i'm really struggling with winter and not enough daylight and everything hurts right now, and the hope for a life at the end really helped.

[alumiere]

not that i haven't enjoyed the whole thing, but today i needed hope.

[lmx_v3point3]

It's hard to think of a time when this story wasn't my go to happy/sad/emotional place. It's been a massive part of my interaction with this fandom, not only in literal size (you are a God, seriously, I don't know how you've done it) but in emotional connection and reading of the characters. I see your characters in every modern AU I read, and feel this history between them. And you've shown us it all. It's amazing to remember where you started with this, and even dropping into the master list and picking a chapter at random (which I love to do) only serves to remind us quite how much you've covered.
Basically I'm blathering to hide the blubbing over this coming to an end. <3 You're a legend