all_inclusive | Grief is the price we pay for love

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Grief is the price we pay for love

Athos doesn't even realize what's happened, at first.

Ever since Milady had arrived insisting that Athos had been on his way to meet her, ever since he had returned back to Paris and discovered Aramis' treason with the Queen and the result of such a coupling, ever since Rochefort's rearrival on the scene caused him to slouch back to the Nexus, he has been drinking like he hasn't since right after his wife's supposed death. It is in this state that he'd fumbled through a well-known door that he'd thought harmless to him.

Intoxicated with the red wine, he does not notice the shift of gravity in his body, nor the length of his hair different, swept up by the hat. All Athos knows is that he has drank two bottles and is eager for a third, lest he fall into the eager pit of grief and the other complicated affections that lie in wait for him, all coaxed on by the woman whose locket he no longer wears.

When he arrives at the bar for his usual, he's met with confusion. The bartender states that she hasn't been around enough to have a usual. Athos smacks his palm against the counter, his rage brought forward with the incense of it all. "Wine," he snaps, calming himself before his demands grow angrier and more frustrated. "Just bring me wine," he mutters, voice hoarse from the drink.

He slumps into his seat and peers down for the first time, unsteadily taking account of how his clothes now seem to sag and slump on him. Sighing with the inevitable realisation, he lifts an elegant long-fingered hand to the bartender. "Make that two," he adds, before allowing his forehead to collapse against that waiting hand.

How could he have thought this would pass him by forever?

He grasps both bottles of wine greedily when they arrive, eager to trudge back to his room and escape the prying eyes of the public.

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"You're done," she says, not giving in to the urge to touch his face as she steps back, just a step. She could go now; she should, she supposes, but she stays for the moment, unable or unwilling the break the spell of whatever it is at the moment that's occurring.

Athos reaches out slowly and clasps those thin, long fingers around Anne's wrist, feeling dainty (yet not delicate) as he marvels at the difference between them. "Thank you," he musters out the words, breathing in deeply to think of this mad situation between them. "You didn't have to," he notes, which makes it all the more meaningful that she had.

No, she didn't. Milady looks down at the hand gripping hers, so feminine and yet calloused from swordplay and pistols.

"Do you think - "

Does she dare finish her thought? Can she bear to be rejected again?

"We are both here. It can be a new beginning."

If Athos lets it.

Athos does not reject it outright. He believes that says a great deal about where his mind lies on the subject. "I don't know that I can answer that yet," he admits. "Not until we are of equal standing and memory. There is still a gap between us and I cannot give you a response until I know what it is that you have lived and I have not," he says considerately.

"Allow me to return to Paris and live my life through before I give you an answer?"

It is an entirely reasonable request, said in a way not meant to offend. Yet, for a moment, Milady de Winter feels a surge of displeasure at being denied - however mildly and perhaps temporarily - as she is.

To her credit, though, she bites it back, nodding. It is, after all, only fair.

"Yes, all right," she murmurs, lifting her gaze to Athos's eyes, which, even in this form, call to her.

Athos reaches out for her hand, clasping at it like it's still the anchor that grounds him to reality, no matter how much has happened between them. He squeezes firmly and knows that unless she pulls away, he will not be able to do it first. "Good," he murmurs thickly. "Let us be fair and thorough. And then I will do my best to decide with the facts at hand."

The touch contradicts the words. She is being tried? The 'facts' are often up to interpretation and there have been facts that Athos has ignored before.

The damned place, taking people from different times and trapping them here. To say that she hates it would be an understatement.

"You should lie down," she says, standing as straight as she always does. "Before you fall down."

His strange new body weight and balance unnerve and frustrate him in turns, blinking as he tries to reconcile what he must do. Cautiously, carefully, he inches towards the bed and settles before sinking down, the room spinning and Anne with it. "You look a touch as though you are glowing, but I fear it must be the alcohol."

"It must be, yes," Milady says with a rolling of her eyes (she is not Anne, really, not yet. Not until she can have a chance to be the woman that she was with Athos). "Shall I bring you a bin if you think you'll be sick?"

This, she thinks, should be a fact he considers. That she is tending to him when he is so very drunk. And a woman.

"Please," Athos agrees, his voice muddled with affection and confusion and regret. There are so many things in his voice that he does not think he can name them all, but they are lingering there. "I fear that may be an issue before the evening is out, if I cannot find a way back to myself."

Hands on her hips, she looks around, finding a small bin and bringing it to the bed, setting it on the floor near where Athos's head lays.

It occurs to her that perhaps she should stay. Almost despite herself, she runs her fingers through his hair. "Don't die," she tells him. "That would be very inconsiderate."

Athos curls into the touch helplessly and with all the need of a man who's been starved of it for too long. "I'll try my utmost best not to disappoint you," he murmurs, his words so very soft as he reaches his hand to cup her palm.

This scene is ridiculous; if she had any self-respect, she would leave him to his drunkenness. Milady knows that. And yet, she moves forward, letting his forehead rest against her hip again, let her fingers slip back to cup his head, her other hand on his cheek.

Athos breathes in the familiarity and takes solace in the closeness this position gives them. He wraps his arm loosely around her waist and holds on, breathing in before he can find the courage to ease back and stare up. "Will you stay the night with me? To ensure I survive?"

"Do you really feel that your very survival hangs in the balance?" Milady asks, her tone arch, but quiet, sincerity clear through the facade for those who know to look. "If you think it is ... then ...."

She shouldn't, she knows, make herself so vulnerable. Only pain can come from this. And yet she so hopes. "I will stay."

"I believe it may be touch and go," Athos says, though he is absolutely sure that is not the case. He closes his eyes, seeing none of the vulnerability or any other emotions cross Anne's face, because he does not have his eyes open and watching for them. Moving over slowly, Athos makes room in the bed for her to join.

Of course it is. Milady smiles just a little.

She sits, none the less, skirts smoothed out behind her, facing Athos as he lies back, fussing a bit with the bedcovers. "This ... condition you're in. How long might you stay this way? Do you know?"

"It goes away when you find the correct door," Athos murmurs, on his back with his eyes closed yet. He breathes in and out and tries to imagine finding a way out of this, but the world is still spinning. "Perhaps if it's permanent, you will no longer want me."

"Then we would be equals," she says, almost as if expected. "I will help you find the door," she adds.

It isn't, she would argue really, that she wants him (though she does). It is that they are bound together. As if they are not quite the people they are capable of being when apart. After all, look what she became.

He isn't sure whether to be relieved or wary at Anne's decision to help him. He also wonders when he'd begun to think of her as Anne in his mind and not Milady, wondering if that will have any bearing on his decision to try again with her.

"We are already equals," he says, feeling compelled to remind her of that.

In some ways and not in others. But that isn't a debate to have right now. "You should sleep," she tells him, watching her fingers slip through his hair.

Athos gives a hum softly, relaxing a little deeper into the touch as he closes his eyes. "Don't leave," is all he feels able to say, despite the fact that his conscious mind might not have uttered those words, but as he is, it is an honest plea.

"I told you I wouldn't."

Her world has been so strange and this is no exception. And yet somewhere, deep in the part of her she thought was dead, she feels something that at least resembles hope.

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Grief is the price we pay for love

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