Grief is the price we pay for love

[armedagainstlove]

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.

Comments

[armedagainstlove]

"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.

[aspecialkindofwoman]

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?"

[armedagainstlove]

"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."

[aspecialkindofwoman]

"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.

[armedagainstlove]

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.

[aspecialkindofwoman]

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.

[armedagainstlove]

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.

[aspecialkindofwoman]

"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.