all_inclusive | Probably should have left the alcohol to Athos, really.

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Probably should have left the alcohol to Athos, really.

Intoxicated. Yes, that was- that was the word she was looking for. Intoxicated was just the very thing she could use to describe herself...or her state...the state of herself?

While the details of it had become increasingly fuzzy with each of the delightful, oh so colorful cocktails the bartender sat in front of her (how many had she had again?), Constance was fairly certain the day had begun well enough. There had been a bath, a bath! One with an endless supply of hot water piped right into her room so she might lie in her tub with the dawn light filtering in through the glass of her colored windows and wiggle her toes in easy contentedness.

But then there- ah! There had been the issue of dressing. Or, rather, not of dressing but of what to dress herself in when her only...dress, yes, had been worn already for the day before. She could have made do with it if she had had to, had even pulled it on while not pulling too much of a face, but had been all too grateful upon meeting the lovely Ruby in the hallway not far from her door.

Never had she seen a woman who wore so little out in public. It had left her gaping in the second before she had recovered herself, to see so much skin on display with not so much a flicker of concern in the other woman's expression as she had smiled and introduced herself. Somehow - now here the details were particularly fuzzy at that moment - they had gotten onto the subject of Constance's singular dress and somehow further the conversation had become one of the other woman, still a stranger, but so earnestly friendly, had volunteered her help.

All of which led to her sitting there at the bar of the Smoking Room, wearing pants of all things while Ruby slid a drink in front of her. She was certain there had been sense behind the action, and no, she did not feel the least bit overexposed with the buttoned shirt she wore beneath her corset or the coat she wore that hung down to her knees (she tried not to giggle at the thought of needing to cover her bum, but was only partially successful). What was even more certain was that these - those little cocktails, they were delicious.

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By no stretch of the imagination would it have been thought proper for a woman, married to a cloth merchant in a relatively comfortable section of Paris, to have had a Musketeer as a friend. Still, where the awareness of the rules of propriety has assured that there were formalities of title between them, Constance was certain that she would have been honored to call him exactly that. She had been grateful for his sensibility and understanding, as well as she had for the evenness of his gaze and the fact that he truly seemed to believe her opinion had merit. Such a thing had been more precious than all the gold and jewels in the world.

"It is quite lovely," she agreed. "Very sweet and sharp, and unlike anything I have had before." She, along with every other person of sense who wishes to avoid the illnesses that often came with water, drunk wine more than any other beverage and a honeyed brandy at her birthday, but there was nothing like Ruby's cocktails in their Paris.

Her smile tipped as she considered her answer. "I suppose," she began. "That that would depend on what day you've last seen in Paris."

"That would be arriving back to Paris with Rochefort riding at our side, rescued from Spain," he replies, though he is already aware that there is a dark cloud looming in his future because of that man. He has been waiting and biding his time at the Nexus as he debates what he will do about such things, unsure that he is ready yet to cope with such a villain so soon after Richelieu's death.

"Is there something you wish to tell me?"

The laugh that bubbled out of her then was as much incredulous as it was helpless. It did not last long, soon bitten back with the press of her lips firmly together as she looked back at him.

Where along the way she had assumed that Athos would be more in the know than any of them, that something of the steady unsteadiness of him would do more than rein in the other Musketeers (unneeded as it was at that moment) where the rest of the world had gone mad. Gone mad and driven her right to drink, she supposed. "I'm sorry," she said after a moment, "Only I had thought it would be difficult enough to keep from telling d'Artagnan everything of the last weeks and here-" She picked up her drink as if to punctuate her point but in reality for the sudden dryness of her mouth when left to consider that the Musketeer she had known the longest could not be her well-informed voice of reason. The mouthful she took of it was near disastrous, as cold as it was, but she soldiered on and managed to swallow without thoroughly freezing either tongue or brain. "I could tell you that the man is a monster, and that he shouldn't be trusted- but I don't think you would have in any case, would you?"

"He is not a man I grew up trusting, no," Athos says carefully, for while they did not know each other personally, they are both Comtes and reputation travels far. He knows of Rochefort as the man who taught the Queen, but he also knows him as someone who is quick to leap at whatever opportunity he might grasp. "It seems everyone who arrives has news with which to bombard me," he notes calmly, sipping at his brandy and not mentioning that some news is far more distressing than others -- his wife, for instance, being a prime example of that.

"Careful," he warns gently. "Those colourful drinks may be your downfall if you choose to drink them with such quickness."

Rochefort had worn his too sharp eyes from the start of her memory. Whether born of the Spanish prison he had languished in for so long or rooted in nothing so much as the rotting of his own soul, there had always been something in his eyes she had not been able to trust. It had not been the coldness of poison and blades Milady de Winter had worn in watching her, asking after d'Artagnan in one breath and offering her husband a worthy contract in the other, but where she could not have known to what extremes his madness would reach, she had known from the moment he had curved his fingers brutally into the soft flesh of her arm and warned her of her place that he was too dangerous.

"I wish I could give you only good news," she told him, certain of at least that as she gave him a smile that was somewhere between sad and accepting. "Only that the Musketeers remain together and that I will protect the Queen however I can." There's a fierceness to the last of her words, for all that they were then rum-soaked.

Her smile was bright and a bit hazy as she replied, "And here I thought my downfall was a Gascon and a love for the company of Musketeers." It was a truth that could have stood alone or been taken in bitterness, but for all that it had cost her, she regretted nothing of the choices she had made in wandering ever back to d'Artagnan and the three Musketeers who had accepted him into their number.

Edited 2015-04-18 02:05 (UTC)

He is grateful to hear of her protection. There are few who number as brave and strong as Constance, in Athos' opinion. She is a fine woman with a husband who does not understand the gift he had been given. To Athos, whose heart was ruled by reckless, powerful, dangerous women, he thinks he understands that in another way, they could have been good together. But he is spoken for, even now. "I assure you, I would never have caused your downfall," he promises. "But I cannot speak to Aramis and Porthos. They are beyond my control," he jests with a shadow of a smile.

"I wish that I could vow to you that I will stop it when I return, but knowing the future seems to only allow me to recognize it after it passes."

When the Queen had offered her the position as her companion, Constance had never imagined she would grow to care for the other woman as she had. She had thought at first only of escaping her husband's house where the walls had seemed to close in on her every moment she was left rattling around that empty place, of leaving her husband and his biting tongue behind if only for a little while. Where she had not been able to keep the Queen entirely from harm, she was determined that she would sooner kill Rochefort herself rather than allow him to lay a finger on her again. The thought that she would have done so already had she had a weapon when she'd found them played on repeat in her mind.

Athos' smile was kind and too rare, and saw that she smiled back at him with an ease that was oftentimes difficult to find. It was conspiratorial, as if the two of them could sit back and sigh together over the actions of the other Musketeers, love overarching every bit of frustration and resignation over their worser inclinations.

When her smile faded, it was left to a nod of understanding. "I had feared as much," she confided, her thoughts through the night and much of the day having been devoted to wondering whether anything she might say to the Musketeers whose memories fell short of her own could change what had already happened in her past. "Would it better not to know?"

The question was one integral. Would it be worse to tell d'Artagnan of her husband's death and him be unable to change it, or to keep the information from him to not burden his conscience with what she already struggled with.

"I believe it might be," he agrees, for knowing has always been his downfall. And yet, how can he say such a thing when the opposite is also true. Not knowing that Anne had been alive had been a torture in itself. Knowing she yet lived has not been kinder. And now, knowing what he does about his supposed future, it is even worse still to imagine such confusion and knowledge in equal parts.

He lifts a hand to signal the waiter. "I believe your pink drink is low," he observes. "We should order you another before we grow too serious in our discussion."

With her brows drawn together under the weight of thought the topic demanded, she needed little more prompting to decide that Athos' opinion was likely the closest she could come on the question of what needed to be said. Or, in this case, what needed to be left unsaid. Athos had answered the question of whether foreknowledge could change events had they had fallen, removing any debate of whether she could or even should attempt to prevent Bonacieux's death (a question she had struggled over until it had led her directly to a series of cocktails) and made certain that to tell d'Artagnan of it could only do harm.

Her smile was grateful as she let her question and all its implications fall to the side for the sake of the comfort of his company and the understanding that he expected nothing of her but what she was. "Yes," she agreed, "That would be awful."

He takes the opportunity of refilling her drink to provide himself a proper top-up, hoping to do it slyly so as not to cause her concern, though he fears such a thing is impossible when Constance is on the case. His eyes turn to the number of glasses before her and knows that something must be troubling her greatly. He, however, cannot throw stones at glass houses when it comes to drowning one's sorrows in alcohol.

And so, he merely lifts his glass to salute to her. "If you do wish to talk about it, you know I've a good ear for these things. And that I hardly gossip half as much as the rest of the regiment."

Fate had become too much a bitter word in the wake of Marmion, but Constance had to wonder if it or God or simply a twist of chance had brought them all to the Nexus. It felt a small and petty thing to be concerned with the feeling of dread that accompanied the thought of what might still lie ahead of them in Paris, or the thoughts that had plagued her in the days since her husband's murder. Not even a week ago and yet a lifetime before, it felt like. There were other worries that had hung longer around the edges of her world, but those had been left not unexamined but unspoken of with no real outlet to voice them without fear of either judgment or contempt.

Even drunk, she noticed Athos' refilling of his cup. Her lips pressed together in a faint frown for it, but she had awareness enough then to leave the matter of his drinking be for the evening. Between the quiet sincerity of his voice and the kindness of his eyes, she let the first instinct to wave off his concern slip her by and made up her mind instead to take the chance he offered.

"I am no longer sure I am a good person, Athos," she confessed, in a tone that made it plain that she was not fishing for compliments. The topic was one she could not discuss with d'Artagnan, too aware of his habit of placing her firmly on a pedestal and the betrayed, disappointed look he wore whenever she failed to meet his impossible ideals.
It was an easy enough thing to distract herself with taking a drink from her newly full glass to buy herself time enough to put her thoughts into the words that hung on the tip of her tongue. "How can I sleep easy knowing that I have lied and killed, that I would have killed Rochefort already had I had a gun or a sword when I had found him with the Queen." Her fingers slid along the rim of her glass in contemplation as she reminded him, "We both know what sort of wife I turned out to be, Athos. How can I love d'Artagnan and keep secrets from him, even to protect him?"

"I am afraid you are still the best person I know," he informs her, though he does not think there is an equivalence in goodness and kindness, when he truly seeks the depths of his heart. "I have lied, I have killed, and I have done so with people I love," he says, thinking instantly of that insistent line around Milady's throat that he had put there. And yet, through all of it, he still held hope that he could be a redeemed person and a good man, somehow, even though he does not h old much hope for such a thing.

"Perhaps honesty is the best thing for it," he suggests, knowing all too well what secrets in a marriage can do. "He's strong, Constance," Athos promises. "He can handle it."

When she had gone in search of the ease that came with alcohol, in finding the perfect balance of sobriety to drunkenness that allowed her to forget her worries without seeing that she was foolish enough to be sick (or, as her thoughts supplied for her, falling asleep on a pile of hay with no thought of evening frost), she had remembered how it brought her emotions so close to the surface. There was no real stability to them in listening to the sound of Athos' voice and allowing herself to be soothed by its vowels and consonants.

His opinion of her was not one she took lightly, and while her worries over the state of her own soul were not entirely dissipated to hear it, she could not argue against something so wholly felt. She held him in too high an esteem for it.

Where she could not dredge up the worst of her worries, of how she held back from d'Artagnan the news of her widowhood in the uncertainty of whether she even wanted him to change (what was to her) the past before Athos had explained the impossibility of it, she sighed softly over her drink. "My husband was murdered, Athos," she told him, "He was murdered and it was my fault."

Calmly, Athos regards her over the rim of his glass. While he has had enough to put down someone of a lesser constitution, Athos has long perfected the art of becoming soused and retaining his judgment and ability to speak and think clearly. So it is in this state of mind that he properly studies Constance with an expectant look that indicates he will be asking her pointed questions on that matter.

"And did you wield the murder weapon by your own hands?" he asks. "I cannot see you as so vengeful a spirit, despite the occasions he has tried the patience of all."

A handful of days and she had spent most every one of them wondering what she might have done differently. How she might have kept Bonacieux from crossing paths from the assassin who had murdered him. Guilt stabbed too sharply for her to lay the blame entirely on that woman who had played at being the Princess Louise, the mess she had made of her marriage too great to forget that he had been at the Louvre for her. No matter how she had tried so hard to keep from hurting him and managed only to hurt both d'Artagnan and herself, or however shocked she had been when he had struck her, she had never expected the outcome of that day they had come to.

"No," she replied, almost reluctant to give up an ounce of her guilt for all that it slipped like poison in her veins. Constance did not know why it seemed to be so integral that she carry that guilt, but she was found herself clinging to it all the same. "I wished to be free," it was a confession in echo of the words she had given d'Artagnan, that day Marmion had threatened them all, "I told him I was leaving. That I loved d'Artagnan and wanted to have a life with him, and he would not hear of it."

It seemed as if once she had gotten started, it all poured out of her. "He came for me, thinking I was still at the Palace, but I had gone to the Garrison." There were details she had to carefully skirt, concluding, "He would not have been there if not for me."

"A wish is not a covenant with anyone," Athos says, knowing all too well that fact himself. After all, does he not know this from experience? Has he not wished for another life more than once? He gives Constance a sympathetic look and knows that even despite the alcohol in her system, she does actually understand him when he speaks of this. "He was often not a kind man to you. I cannot say I approved of him," he says, carefully, as he was Constance's husband.

"You cannot change his mind or his fate," Athos says. "No more than I could change my own past. And I have lived with my own fault in that. I have learned it is too much to bear. Please, learn from my lesson so that it is of use to someone," he entreats.

Not even a new mouthful of her drink could erase the bitter taste of her own words from her tongue. She remembered too well how she had wished for freedom, for a life that had not felt as if it had been cut off with the marriage contract her father had signed for her. The world had felt too dark then, the bite of rope into the tender skin at her wrists too fitting for the weight she carried within her chest whenever she had looked at d'Artagnan and known that if she had any sense at all, she would give him up.

The scene was not the same, no rope scored her wrists, no man paced before them calling out sentences of life and death, and still, yet again Constance found herself sitting beside a Musketeer and wishing. Not for freedom or for an escape to a marriage that death had already ended, but for something she did not know how to put into words.

Alcohol stripped away the urge to defend the man she had betrayed, and who had betrayed her in return. She was quiet as he spoke, but where she nearly dropped her eyes from his because it might have been safer to hold her guilt, her fears close, his were words she needed to hear. Her heart felt as if it lodged a moment in her throat before she swallowed and, after another moment, reached out to lay a hand lightly over his. Where she could not find the words to properly encapsulate all she felt, she could speak the truth and tell him in a quiet voice, "You are a good friend, Athos."

"You have not allowed me to be anything but," he feels compelled to point out, given that Constance could easily do away with him with the flick of her fingers, but chooses to keep him in her life despite his list of many flaws. He knows that Bonacieux had never truly liked him, though he does feel sorry for the man. Dislike is no reason to wish harm on anyone and the loss of one's life is a difficult thing.

He reaches over to rest his other hand on hers, simply to hold there. "And you, you are a kind and gentle woman of great intelligence who deserves every ounce of happiness she can find, even if it is with someone who is not the man you married."

For all the potential hazards of keeping a connection to a man who was not her husband, who was one of the blue-cloaked King's Musketeers who carried as much scandal as the demand for respect with their pauldrons and swords, she had never regretted having found him that night in the courtyard. The rules of propriety had demanded much distance between them, but she had found that she relied in those quiet moments on the respect he had always shown her. Moreso on the way he had always seemed to view her first and foremost as herself, rather than an extension of her husband or a property of her marriage.

No matter how many times she had wanted to bar him from taverns or pull a bottle of wine out of his hand for a loaf of bread. She could only offer small comforts and no little fussing in an attempt to mitigate something of his self-destruction.

Emotion overwhelming her at his words, Constance's lips pressed together in an attempt to stem some more ridiculous display as she looked back at him with eyes more than a touch watery. It would have been the same without the amount of alcohol she'd already had, but the sincerity of his speech was felt more with more raw intensity in that moment. She could not find the words to reply, but smiled her tight-lipped smile back at him.

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Probably should have left the alcohol to Athos, really.

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