Pack Mentality pt 1.2
Naturally it's too long.
He wakes because he's profoundly attuned to the sound of it: the pad of a child's bare feet on the floorboards, and the click-click-click of following claws. Aramis lays on his side in the dark, eyes wide open, alert. Athos is asleep almost face-down so his snoring is muffled, with an arm cast over Aramis' back; Porthos is nuzzled into his chest with his arms around his waist. Knowing that this is Aramis' territory, neither of them wake for it the way they would wake immediately to any unfamiliar tread out there, not even when there's a wobbly little tap at the door, which creaks open to allow in the whimper of, "Papa?"
Always papa. Jean-Armand loves all his fathers, but if he needs comfort in the middle of the night, not one of them doesn't know who he comes for. "Little wolf," he murmurs, sliding himself up between his lovers to sit; overused to Aramis shifting and turning and getting up for the chamber pot in the night, neither of them do more than change their breath a little, and resettle. "What's wrong?"
"Had - I had a bad dream."
Oh, little wolf cub; Aramis knows how deeply those can distress.
He picks himself out from between Porthos and Athos, shifting their arms after himself as their bodies roll into his unoccupied space so they touch each other and may miss him less. His nightshirt is hanging from a post of the bed and he pulls it over his head, a little drunk on fatigue, this sheer skull-deep exhaustion was one of the first things that made him wonder at what might be happening in his belly. Once decent he can take his son's small hand and whisper, "Let's not wake your fathers." and walk him into the hallway again where he can hear Lupin's regular panting, and close the door behind them. On one knee on the hard wooden floor he thumbs the hot damp skin under Jean-Armand's eyes, and whispers, "There, little wolf, what happened? No-one's going to harm you. You know your fathers will never let anything hurt you."
"Papa," Jean-Armand says, taking two fistfuls of Aramis' nightshirt to keep him close.
Gently, stroking his hair, "What's wrong?"
"They wouldn't hang Lupin, would they?"
It takes him a moment blinking in the black of the night, not knowing where this came from, before he does. After Aramis threw himself at the man Jean-Armand had quite rightly called out for kicking at a dog, the man who had then aimed a kick - a mortal mistake - at Aramis' son, Athos had said that Aramis shouldn't have done anything and Aramis had returned, calmly enough, that if he hadn't done something then nothing would have stopped Lupin from doing it such that the man lost at least one limb. D'Artagnan was the one who'd told Aramis he still couldn't cut the man's head off in broad daylight because at least Lupin wouldn't be hang- put in prison, with a look of alarm at Jean-Armand.
At the time Aramis had thought that Jean-Armand in his fury for justice hadn't noticed, let alone understood, what d'Artagnan had almost said. Now he understands that Jean-Armand's confused and sleeping mind told him that had Lupin tried to protect him, his dearest nurse would have been taken away for a common criminal, given her last rites and hanged, and it's no end at all for such a noble dog.
"Of course not." he promises, stroking Jean-Armand's hair. "Of course not, we would never allow it, would we? And anyway, Lupin is an honorary musketeer, she performs her duty for France, and has the King's own blessing to distribute justice where needed."
Jean-Armand shifts bare feet on the floorboards and says, voice coming a little more hopeful, "The King wouldn't let them hang her."
"Of course he wouldn't. Come and let's find you a handkerchief." It's still easy to pick the boy up even if he isn't a baby anymore, and Athos says they'll spoil him but Aramis ignores him. The world is a terrible place, soldiers know that, and he wants his son to have somewhere safe in it, somewhere he knows himself loved utterly; and besides, Aramis was much more petted and indulged by all of his sisters when he was small, and he emerged with his character perfectly intact.
Lupin waits for them to pass and then stands again and follows with her patient padding walk as Aramis nudges the nursery door, and puts Jean-Armand down. In what little light there is from the window he finds a clean handkerchief in the children's dresser. He wipes his son's eyes, holds it to his nose, and commands softly - aware of the sleeping girls in the bed underneath the window, and the baby in the cot - "Blow."
"They wouldn't hang Lupin," Jean-Armand whispers afterwards, sounding more sure of it, only requiring a little reassurance.
"Of course they wouldn't. They would never get the chance, would they? If they tried she would be rescued by the very bravest of the King's musketeers." Aramis finds Jean-Armand's bed by long practice in the dark, pulls the blankets back, smoothes down the sheets. "In, little wolf."
Jean-Armand climbs back onto his mattress and before Aramis can even get the blankets over him again he says in Spanish, "Tell me a story, Papa."
Aramis is very weak for his son, and never can walk away from anything he requests. He sighs if he's doing this, and murmurs, "Move over." climbing onto the mattress as his son's body shuffles to make room, and Lupin lays down again with a grunt beside the bed.
Aramis stretches out in the narrower bed, doesn't even fight the yawn down, lets it happen slow and massive over Jean-Armand's head as he cuddles his body once more closer to Aramis' chest, and Aramis tucks his arm around his hot-breathing sides. "A story," he mumbles, very tired, very tired, but he won't leave his son. "Shall I tell you a story about Jean-Armand of the King's musketeers rescuing the heroic Lupin from one of the Red Guards' dastardly plots?"
"Yes please," in a whisper, and Aramis closes his weary eyes, and grins to the top of Jean-Armand's head.
He had hoped that the story would settle the boy to sleep, but he knows he's still awake when the last battle has been fought and Jean-Armand and Lupin have vanquished the evildoers and gone on to fight again for France and for justice. He's still a little awake, Aramis' little wolf, perhaps as drowsy in the dark as Aramis is but awake, still. Aramis settles his nose into his hair, and closes his eyes, and lets the darkness float them.
Do his lovers think he doesn't understand the risk? His son is his only warm living child he's ever held in his arms, he knows what the danger is, he knows exactly what he has already lost, what the loss is. He tells himself now that there's simply no helping it, no point in doing anything but trusting the Lord because He can't make Aramis face that twice, he can't do it again, he can't feel the blood run and feel so helpless and broken, can't know what is happening and have to let it play out over a course of hours, can't live while his child dies, he can't -
Aramis is a soldier, and he could face torture defiant to the end because he knows that no torturer could ever do anything to him worse than what his own body has proved capable of putting him and his own baby through. He remembers too much of it, stupid too much things, the stone under his shoulder he didn't try to move because the pain of that gave him some discomfort to focus on that wasn't his body losing his baby. How the heat of the haemorrhaging turned so quickly to cold on his skin, and from slick to sticky. How Athos tried so hard to look after him and Aramis had felt like a newborn deer, spindly legs, wordless, trembling, stunned and the tears came as if he'd never get control over them again.
He remembers Madame Blanchot, the woman who brought his little wolf into the world, chasing Porthos and Athos from the room when they returned to Paris and asking Aramis in a gentle voice to lay back on the bed. She'd said, "You couldn't have been far if you didn't even know. It happens a lot, so early, some of them know they're not right for this world." Cold of the salve on her fingers, and he stared at the ceiling and couldn't speak and couldn't move and couldn't breathe. "There's not much tearing, just put some of this on twice a day, and again if you need to use the chamber pot between times. You're to keep yourself clean and not have your husband bother you until you feel ready again, it may be some weeks. There, now," as he had to turn his face into the pillow to muffle it because he couldn't let his friends hear but the sobs threatened to suffocate him, "there, lovey, it takes the best of us, all we can ever do is trust in the Lord. There now lovey, just let it out. Better when it's out. Alright. Alright."
He hugs his little wolf closer, and loves him with a fervour like madness, anything for him, anything to keep him safe, anything, because he is the only child Aramis has to keep safe.
For now, at least. He closes his eyes, and every breath is the same prayer to him now.
Jean-Armand nudges his cheek to a comfortable place on Aramis' chest, and Aramis strokes his shoulder with a thumb. Then he murmurs, "Would you like a little brother or sister, little wolf?"
Silence, but he can feel the sudden alertness of the muscles of the child in his arms. Then Jean-Armand whispers, "Can I have one?"
"That is up to the Lord. But would you like one, if He saw fit?"
"Just one?"
The laughter ripples soft in his chest. "Would you or not, little wolf?"
"Yes please," in a conspiratorial whisper. "Can I have a sister please?"
The grin presses his cheeks in the dark. "We don't get to choose, the Lord decides that. Would you like a little sister?"
"Yes. I like the girls. Geneviève helps me with my writing and numbers and Maria brings me gingerbread from the girls who want me to marry them."
That is a hard laugh to keep down. "Are there many who want to marry you?"
"Not enough," Jean-Armand says. "There are some who've never given me even one piece of gingerbread, and some of the pieces have been very small. Sometimes I think," he whispers, "Maria nibbles them as she brings them."
"Messengers usually take a fee, you know."
Jean-Armand mulls that over for a moment, then says, "Do they?"
"It's only proper. Payment for services rendered. I hope you offer a tip sometimes," he says, teasing now, and Jean-Armand can tell and pulls at his nightshirt, says through a yawn, "Silly Papa."
"Silly Papa." Aramis confirms quietly, squeezing Jean-Armand momentarily closer. "Silly silly Papa." He's quiet for a moment, then says, "You know, little wolf, if you had a brother or sister, I would still love you just as much. You will always be my boy. Nothing ever could change that."
"Yes Papa," Jean-Armand says, yawning again, with the ease of a boy who has never once in his life thought that love might run dry.
Jean-Armand's breath has become very even, not yet asleep but not far from it, and it still baffles Aramis, the way he loves his son. He loves his friends, his husbands, of course, thinks of his friendship with them as the founding principle of his life, but the way he loves Jean-Armand is a surprise almost every day, he hardly believes in Jean-Armand, is perpetually fascinated by him, this little miracle in his arms. Even now he resists the urge to light a candle just to see his perfect eyelashes, to run a finger around the small pretty shape of his ear. Aramis will never understand him. He feels like he may one day be an old man still dazzled when his son walks into the room, just because his son is.
And, he thinks, attention shifting to his own belly, he's to go through it all again, if God will show him any mercy. Another little one to shake him with what love means. He might have thought he had no strength to face it again but somehow the strength just comes when he needs it, when the reason is right. Amazing what can be put aside when required, how strain and weariness can be ignored. Children are quite the wisest tutors, he thinks, feeling Jean-Armand's quiet breaths against him. I am better for him. I am grateful for it, daily.
He knows there will be hard lessons to come. He does remember at least some of Jean-Armand's birth.
He will never forget the roadside in the frost.
"You will always be loved," he whispers in the dark, to his small sleeping son. "Nothing ever could change that. You will always be loved, little wolf, I will love you whether I am present on this Earth for it or not."
The dog is snoring beside the bed. All the rest, Aramis leaves to the Lord.
*
D'Artagnan wakes drowsily slow, and realises with the searching of a foot that it's because Constance isn't in the bed to wake him, she must have risen some time ago. He sits up, grimaces at the morning, scratches his hair back from his face and yawns, loudly since she isn't beside him to tut in amused disapproval. Then he pulls a shirt on and looks in on the children but the nursery only contains little Charles, standing up in his cot and chewing the railing. Those who can tend to follow each other like a gaggle of goslings wherever one goes - strict blood relations are a little nebulous under this roof, the children act as a single pack regardless of parents - and as Charles makes a cross noise, annoyed to be left behind, d'Artagnan walks over and lifts his boy out of the cot, settling him to his side.
"Oof." he says to him. "You'll weigh as much as Porthos soon."
Charles chews his finger and looks at him with round dark eyes, and d'Artagnan smiles for him only a little tightly and turns from the room before the sight of it empty reminds him of his first boy, when this room truly did seem empty, and the children he has need him not to submit to those memories.
Downstairs he can hear thumps and giggles in the parlour and the sound of Porthos roaring - being a dragon, by the sounds of it - and he carries Charles for the kitchen, where he catches Aramis' voice saying, "It's hard for me to be so accurate, you know I- d'Artagnan, and young master Charles, the honour is all ours," offering a short bow without even standing from his seat at the kitchen table. Constance, sitting beside him, wipes a serious look from her face and smiles at d'Artagnan, and Athos is leaning against the wall, arms folded as Ester rolls pastry on the worktop beside him.
D'Artagnan says, "What are you talking about?"
"Nothing." Athos says, which means, Don't ask questions.
"Give him here," Constance says, standing and scooping Charles into her arms. "Do you want cleaning and dressing for the day now, little sausage dog?"
"He's not a sausage dog. What were you talking about?"
"He's a dear little sausage dog, he's got those big brown eyes." Constance croons to the baby's face, carrying him for the stairs again. D'Artagnan calls aggrieved after her, "Those are my eyes!"
Aramis pats the chair beside himself. "Come get some breakfast, dear little sausage dog."
Athos' mouth creases with trying not to smile, and d'Artagnan sits with a huff. "What were you talking about?"
"Oh, nothing." Aramis smiles and pushes back from the table to stand, and d'Artagnan wonders if it's the light or if he's known him too long, he looks older in a morning recently, strained in the face. "We need to head in early if we can, I'll try to extricate Porthos from the children."
"Not getting roped into their games is the opposite of your forte." Athos says, heading after him, and d'Artagnan calls after them, "What were you - God." He picks up some bread abandoned on Aramis' plate, says to Ester, "What were they talking about?"
She says something in Spanish to the pastry, and d'Artagnan slumps back, chewing and rolling his eyes.
("Monsieur Aramis is pregnant again and all of my good sheets and towels will be ruined, he is worse than your wife." )
He doesn't like being left out of their intrigues - for one thing any secrets any of them try to keep tend to end badly - but in the fuss of children underfoot and tugging at him in the parlour (Aramis has not helped to end the game, and is in fact now leading the charge against the Great Dragon Porthos and enjoying himself far too much) it all just somehow gets forgotten by the time they're straightening their clothes and putting their hats on in the hallway, the children carrying their slates and their dinners wrapped in cloth, ready to be escorted to school. Maria holds Constance's skirts while d'Artagnan kisses his wife goodbye, and then leans down to brush his daughter's hair back and smile for her because she always gets tearful - angry more than upset - when they leave in a morning. "You'll be going to school with your sister in no time, won't you?"
"In the autumn." Constance promises. "Stay home and help Mama just a little longer, chick."
D'Artagnan keeps the smile on his face but it feels tight. He feels sometimes in these morning goodbyes the child who isn't here, someone else to keep Maria company through the day. He tries not to bring him up more than he can help. It devastates Constance, he can't stand it himself, and he feels like an aura in the room Aramis' guilt whenever the child is remembered. Aramis knows what it is to lose a child, d'Artagnan tells himself, remembering the roadside and all the blood and Athos not knowing what to do. He knows that they share that. So if they share so much, what the hell are they keeping from him now . . . ?
The two older children, Jean-Armand balancing his slate on his head and Geneviève telling him he ought not to, are escorted to the schoolhouse at the foot of their street. Outside the door Geneviève, terrifyingly solemn creature d'Artagnan and Constance somehow managed to bring into the world, says, "Goodbye, Papa. Be good."
"That's what parents say to their children, not the other way around," he says, but she just looks at him evenly, as if that is something she is too polite to state that she will judge for herself.
Aramis comes with a groan down to one knee - God, he must be getting old - to say to Jean-Armand, "We'll see you soon, little wolf." and kiss him on each cheek. "Try not to accept any proposals of marriage before you speak to your parents first."
"Bye bye Papa."
Aramis stands, Porthos ruffles Jean-Armand's hair, and Athos pats Lupin's head, says quietly, "Stay." and the dog yawns, and settles herself calmly beside the doorway to the schoolroom. They wait and watch until the children are inside - Geneviève enjoys her lessons but Jean-Armand always might sneak off to see if anything interesting is happening in the marketplace without close attention - and then make their way on towards the garrison again, Porthos patting Aramis' back as if commiserating at another day he has to spend not looming over Jean-Armand's shoulder at every moment.
They are getting older, d'Artagnan thinks. Jean-Armand turns seven later this summer, and d'Artagnan had known these men for almost two years before he was even born. He doesn't think of any of them as out of their prime - not even Athos, given that Athos can still disarm him in a moment once he tires of checking d'Artagnan's form when they spar - but his friends are older than he is, and one of these days it won't be them looking out for him but the other way around. D'Artagnan is not as raw as he once was but the three of them have collective decades of soldiering experience and no circumstance seems beyond their skills. Yet still, one of these days, d'Artagnan's going to have to look into adopting some of the younger recruits the way they once did for him, if he can ever talk the three of them into retirement . . .
In the garrison Aramis says, "Well," and gives Porthos and Athos a quick smile, and heads off for the stairs to Treville's office. Porthos follows; Athos puts a hand on d'Artagnan's chest before he can start after him, and says, "This won't take long."
"What are you talking to the captain about?"
"We'll try to keep it brief." Athos says, walking after the other two.
"What is going on?" d'Artagnan says, frustrated now, and Aramis calls cheerfully over his shoulder as he takes the steps, "Take the opportunity to clean that cesspit you call a pistol!"
D'Artagnan sits with a huff at the side of the yard, folding his arms, watching musketeers arriving for the morning muster, everyone waking for the day. He doesn't know why his friends are being so secretive today, doesn't know what is wrong with any of them, and doesn't know what Aramis' problem is, his pistol is fine. Just because he doesn't keep it clean enough to shine like certain magpies he knows doesn't mean that it's dirty.
Just to prove that to Aramis, he sits and cleans it furiously while he waits.
The three of them emerge a little later, Athos putting his hat back on again, Porthos murmuring to Aramis who shrugs, smiling, then looks down at d'Artagnan in the act of putting his weapons hurriedly away again and grins. At the bottom of the stairs Athos says to d'Artagnan, "Saddle up. We're requested at the palace."
"I'll see you tonight," Aramis says, patting Porthos' shoulder.
D'Artagnan says, "You're not coming?"
"Aramis is taking an inventory of the garrison's weaponry today." Athos says, already walking for the stables.
D'Artagnan turns to Aramis, who's wearing one of his innocent faces, the ones that mean he definitely isn't innocent, and says, "What did you do?"
Aramis lays a hand over his heart and says, "To the very quick, d'Artagnan."
"What did he do?" d'Artagnan persists, but Porthos just laughs.
"C'mon, kid. Nice quiet day for once."
Aramis calls after them, "It reflects very badly on you, Porthos." and Porthos throws his head back and laughs.
Apparently they've all gone mad.
It's a dull day's guarding on horseback while the King hunts with some diplomats, and d'Artagnan brews it all over in his mind. Aramis has done something, whatever they say, so that Treville is punishing him with garrison-bound duties - but Aramis doesn't seem to care, and neither do Athos or Porthos. D'Artagnan thinks that Constance knows something he doesn't. Why would Constance -
His hand goes tight around his horse's reins, stomach dropping to the forest floor, and he thinks, Oh, God, he's pregnant.
The captain's giving him light duties. Every morning he looks ill. They - his eyes flick between Porthos and Athos, both apparently only attentive to duty right now - they know, and they told Treville this morning to keep Aramis - 'light duties'. D'Artagnan swallows, and resists the urge to rub his forehead. Aramis is pregnant, and probably very nervous of long days on horseback after - after, and -
But why don't they want him to know? Why don't they tell him? It's not that he feels left out, it's that he's genuinely confused, Aramis needs minding in any fights that break out now, Aramis cannot be allowed to be put in danger, not the way he reacts to danger, it makes no sense not to tell d'Artagnan. He lives with them, he's at their sides in everything, why don't they want him to know? He knew the last time as much as any of them did. They needed him then. Why . . .
He broods on it, doesn't ask them, keeps his face calm and calls back just as lightly to Porthos as he does to him, doesn't let them see that he knows. It involves avoiding Athos' gaze almost entirely, because Athos can read the thoughts off the back of a man's mind, and acting like nothing is wrong until they head back to the garrison that evening, and he thinks he'll have a good long squint at Aramis' face, read it off him, he'll know then.
One of the stable hands says that Aramis was sent home an hour ago, since he had no further duties here.
When they get home Constance is sewing in the parlour, needle quick as her eyes keep flitting up to check on her daughters, the girls fluttering some scraps of brightly coloured cloth at Charles to amuse him (he's laughing, and clapping his hands). Aramis is sitting on the floor with Jean-Armand sitting between his legs, holding a book.
"C - C -"
"C-H," Aramis says, fingertip tracing two letters. "It makes a sh, little wolf."
"Then why isn't it a ss instead of a ck?"
"The H softens it. Ch."
"Chevalier."
"Oh you guessed that, you never read it." Aramis blows to the back of Jean-Armand's ear and the boy shrieks and laughs and squirms. "You little cheat."
"I know where he gets that from," Athos murmurs, and Porthos rumbles discontent but he's smiling too much.
D'Artagnan narrows his eyes at his wife, who looks confused, needle hesitating, then narrows her eyes right back and d'Artagnan remembers that fights with Constance never seem to work out how he'd thought they would, and maybe a direct accusation - why are you colluding in their secrets - is a very bad idea.
He waits. He watches them over dinner, and when he asks why Aramis isn't eating much he says easily that he ate with the children earlier, which, if true, means that actually he has eaten quite a lot, combined. He watches the three of them make their way upstairs together, Porthos' hand on the back of Aramis' neck, Aramis taking Athos' hand as they go, and Constance, God bless the woman, has never batted an eyelid at the three of them since she first moved under this roof. They look mostly like they always look. Maybe a little clingier? Maybe, a little more than normal, rotating around Aramis like he exerts even more pull than he ordinarily does . . . ?
In their bedroom, where Constance puts the candle down and begins unlacing her corset at a speed d'Artagnan never can match - however keen he can be to get inside it doesn't come close to how much she wants out of it at the end of a long day - and he pulls his own boots off, and says as casually as he can, "Is something up with Aramis?"
"Aramis?" she says, pulling her corset over her head. "Why would something be up with Aramis?"
"Because he's the only one acting normal. And Aramis acting normal is never - normal."
"They're your friends," she says, stepping out of one layer of skirts. "It says quite a lot about you, d'Artagnan."
D'Artagnan is older than he once was, and now he has children to be responsible for, but nothing ever has quite convinced him that anything but running straight at the enemy is best. "Is he pregnant?"
"What?" she says, and her eyes look trapped. "Why would you think that? How would I know?"
"Because you know everything. He is, isn't he?"
She stares at him for a long moment before something in her just sags, tired, and she sits on the edge of the bed in her chemise. "They're trying to be careful," she says, bowing her head, folding her hands together awkwardly in her lap.
"Why haven't they told me?"
"It's still early, it's - early on it's the most dangerous. If something . . . if something goes wrong, it's most often when it's early."
"I'm hardly not going to notice if something goes wrong, why wouldn't they-"
"We've been lucky," she says to her hands, eyes very fixed. "Four healthy births. I can't imagine - having to look in the eye of all those people who congratulated me when I first told them - and face them knowing -"
D'Artagnan stands there, hands fisted, swallowing, thinking - thinking of that night in the frost, trying not to hear the sound of Aramis begging God when the night was only silent around them. Thinking of the fear all three of them must feel now, the child an unknown quality, now truly understanding the worst to fear. Thinking, Don't you fucking dare tell me that we have been lucky -
Shame flushes cold through him almost instantly with the thought, because he has three healthy children, because he has more family than many could wish for, and because his lost baby boy can't ever be replaced by letting his helpless fury out in this house. 'Unlucky' hardly seems a big enough concept to cover his true feelings over it. He grieved so hard he almost forgot he had two living daughters, a grieving wife, friends so desperate to help him. Grieved so hard he almost broke Aramis, who felt as responsible as if he'd brought the curse upon their house to begin with. Grieved until he remembered his own adulthood, that he was not the child and it wasn't all about him, and his frightened children, his wife choking on it all, they needed him.
Three years ago, before that night in the frost, a sickness came to Paris like the worst whisper down every street. They have no real idea how it got into the house. Probably poor little François Bois down the street, and it's hard to feel any blame towards a child taken like that, because Maria and Geneviève were both sore in the throat and feverish the day after playing with her, and both of the boys were by that evening, and François was dead two days later. Their own children Aramis set to caring for in the nursery, locked in there so the infection couldn't get through the house, grown men and women were dying too and the fewer of them exposed to it the better. Aramis has more skill with medicine than any of them but despite how well-placed for it he was Constance couldn't settle with her children out of sight, couldn't bear that they suffered and she couldn't help, though she brought everything Aramis asked for, and burned everything he said they must.
Every person in the house spent some time with their ear pressed to the wood of the door, listening to the creak of Aramis' footsteps, the coughs of the children, his soft humming to soothe them through the fever-dreams and aches and misery.
Maria was passed out from his arms to Constance's first, with instructions to burn all the clothes on her, bathe her thoroughly, and feed her up. Constance hugged her in like her heart returned to her, d'Artagnan put a hand into the curly hair of his bonny girl and his throat just crumpled, he didn't even pretend not to cry. She's always been sturdy, Maria, since she was a toddler walking as early as she could just to keep up with Geneviève, she has always been strong. And now, returned to them, she was a miracle they both hugged and coddled, and she had every treat they'd always known she loved, and she slept in their bed between them, and their gratefulness for her hurt them.
Geneviève was the next to be passed out, the following day. Aramis' face was stark by then, any hour of the day or night they heard him moving in the nursery, d'Artagnan knew he was exhausted. Not sick, he promised. He'd always been lucky with fevers, he had a remarkable constitution. And he smiled, and closed the nursery door, and d'Artagnan hugged his tired girl to his side and two children returned to him he could only hope.
Jean-Armand was put out into Porthos' arms the following morning, Aramis pale, leaning to kiss his son's forehead and whisper something there they didn't hear before, again, the child was to be bathed, his clothes burned, oh Porthos, get him fed and keep him comfortable and tell him his papa loves him, oh, Lord, Porthos.
Athos put a hand on Porthos' back, pressing for comfort, his own face over-wooden with not letting it show. Porthos put his face into Jean-Armand's hair and wept.
Another long day of Aramis in the closed nursery, Ester setting trays outside the door and backing away in case the air was bad - she had her own daughter to not want to carry this home for - another day of praying, now, only Alexandre and it didn't seem that the danger was two-thirds past, you can't face three children ill and tell yourself that one child ill is somehow better, it doesn't work like that. One child ill is your child ill. One child ill and d'Artagnan chewed a thumbnail off leaning against the wall and staring at that nursery door.
In the middle of the following night there was a tapping at the wall to Constance and d'Artagnan's room, next door to the nursery. D'Artagnan sat up in bed, Constance waking and Geneviève squirming between them though Maria slept stolidly on, and d'Artagnan padded through the dark to the cracked-open nursery door, and Aramis holding a candle, his mouth a pressed flat line.
He said, very low, "I think Constance should be here."
D'Artagnan stared at him. "Is he - mending?"
Aramis stared at him and there was something in his eyes d'Artagnan has never found a word for, though the sight of it has lingered with him too much, too often, ever since. "Someone must care for the girls," Aramis told him, voice steady in a way d'Artagnan doesn't think he'll ever be able to steady his own in a moment like that. "But I think that Constance should be here, d'Artagnan."
In the end Porthos and Athos cared for the girls, while Constance held Alexandre and cried silently, cheeks raw-wet and not making a sound. D'Artagnan rubbed her back, and stared down at his son's straining, failing breaths, and Aramis sat on the edge of Jean-Armand's bed in the nursery, head bowed, hands a loose clasp of prayer.
They have not been lucky. They have not been lucky to lose a helpless child, they have not been lucky, d'Artagnan's fury of grief was only barely contained, even Athos couldn't make him rein it in and he's the only person who ever has been able to make him stop. But Athos' expression of sympathy like it froze him combined with that subtle edge of warning - your wife, d'Artagnan, your daughters, your friends - d'Artagnan didn't care. His son was dead. He had to bury his son. And Aramis met his eye and looked so guilty and in the worse depths of the rage d'Artagnan glared back that he was right to do so, his son was still there, wasn't he, his son lived -
There was never a revelation, no big moment of epiphany when he realised that what luck he had was contained in the family he still had, that his two daughters had not died, that his wife was still there, that his friends did everything for him for those weeks when d'Artagnan neither noticed nor cared. Gradually he and Constance found each other again, found comfort in each other again. Gradually the girls stopped going quiet when he came into a room, because he couldn't bear the realisation that they were now afraid of him. Gradually he became natural with Aramis again, and knew that Aramis had worked himself ill to nurse d'Artagnan's children and he would have done it even if his own son weren't in that nursery too. Porthos and Athos more or less took turns to pin Aramis to their bed for two days afterwards just to make him rest, near-feverish with sheer overwork, refusing to even let them bring his son to him when he didn't know if he was beyond still needing quarantine himself, raving a little, too worn down with too much worry. D'Artagnan gradually found the balance between knowing that there is more to life than his loss and knowing that his loss was forever, now. He found ways to live with it. He found ways to live, again.
Since the roadside and the frost he knows that Aramis knows what it feels like, and he feels guilty that he ever made Aramis feel guilt about him. And now he looks at Constance sitting on the bed with her mouth all lopsided with knowing, and he wants to protect the people he loves, he doesn't want any of them to suffer if he can stop it. That is the only thing that truly matters. So he sits beside her, and takes her hand, and squeezes it as she looks at him.
"They'll need our help." he says. She draws her breath in through her nose, long, and then nods tightly.
"He says the sickness seems worse than last time, it has him nervous. I know he's - difficult, you know what it's like, you know what he's like, it's our job to . . ." She stops, and stares at the floorboards, her hand warm in d'Artagnan's. "Every last one of them is terrified. They can't do it again. I know he can't."
"We'll help them," d'Artagnan promises, and means it, swears it like his oath to the King. "It's not like the last time. We know. We can help."
His mind is already working fast, now he's let the confusion and resentment go. Aramis is pregnant again and d'Artagnan, who knows Aramis, knows that Aramis won't regret it in the slightest - is probably thrilled in a way d'Artagnan suspects Athos and Porthos are finding it harder to feel without qualification - but it's as deadly as it's ever been, they know what it's like. Most men don't survive it once and yet they've always known that Aramis would cheerfully attempt for a hoard of children. D'Artagnan has never said to any of them, given that it's hardly his place and far too awkward to bring up anyway, that it might be best to make efforts not to get Aramis pregnant again, but he doesn't know that it would have made any difference if he had. The three of them are careful out in the world, where judging by their behaviour Aramis and Porthos are good friends and Aramis since his marriage seems to have delighted in being publicly physically affectionate with Athos to the point where Athos can hardly keep a straight face, but in this house d'Artagnan and Constance can't be unaware that the three of them hardly put off their bedtime, as it were. D'Artagnan and Constance have struggled to keep from producing a child a year as Constance wishes they could, constant pregnancy only interferes with her work, and d'Artagnan's only one man. It would take a man much more sensible than Aramis to keep himself from pregnancy between two lovers like that.
The world outside this door, he thinks. He says, "What if it's Porthos' again?"
Constance is still staring at the floorboards, and d'Artagnan knows that she knows what he means. She says, "I don't know."
Athos married Aramis when he was already pregnant, and Jean-Armand so closely resembles Aramis anyway that they've largely escaped censure for the fact that Athos is not by blood the boy's father. But another child perhaps more obviously taking after Porthos - that could be trouble. There would be no explaining it away. Athos could keep Aramis from most punishment by 'forgiving' him, but musketeers must to at least a vague extent be morally upstanding, and Aramis would almost certainly be forced from the regiment for it. Admittedly it's the last thing to worry about - this could kill Aramis before it could have him discharged in shame - but still, still . . .
Constance says, very quietly, "They're going to need us."
D'Artagnan squeezes her hand. Yes. They would do as much for the two of them. In all things, whatever the price, they are all of them always committed to each other. Family, under this roof, is a matter much too important to leave to blood.
Constance draws her breath in, and smiles in a slightly tight way. "All this bother," she says. "Do you think all children are like this or just all of ours?"
D'Artagnan is quiet for a second, then says, "They're not all children, Athos manages to be quiet mature sometimes."
She laughs. She has the loveliest laugh, Madame d'Artagnan, and he hates to kiss her to cut it off but he just can't help himself.
*
"Come on, little sausage dog," she whispers, as Charles holds his chubby arms up determinedly for Mama, and with the sun not yet risen every other child in the room still sleeps. Charles makes another impatient noise and she hushes him, lifting him from the cradle to her hip, glancing across at Geneviève, always the slightest sleeper, but she gives no sign of waking in the bed beside her sister; only the dog has her head up to watch Constance's movements. She is a strange girl, Geneviève, the sober way she watches with her husband's dark eyes, and how the two of them hardly more than children themselves produced so serious a creature Constance never has known. Geneviève shares the bed with Maria, sleeping with her thumb in her mouth. When Charles is big enough he'll go into the bed beside Jean-Armand, and Aramis' new baby can go in the cradle.
Constance makes this plan with a certain degree of determination: it is what will happen, only a few months from now. For now, though, she creeps her quietly creaky way from the room, and softly closes the door behind herself.
She pads her way downstairs, wrapping her shawl closer around herself - chilly with the sun not up - and rubbing Charles' back as he begins his grumping for his milk again. She wants him properly onto solids soon, she just finds the feedings too tying, she can never leave him for too long for fittings and visits to cloth merchants, she has to be constantly with a child at her hip. Men don't have to hurry home to get the baby fed. Men don't have a clue.
Well, one of them has half of a clue, the one she finds sitting at the kitchen table in front of a candle, hands gripping tight to the wood, giving her a tight sort of smile without turning his head. "Madame d'Artagnan," he greets her, and she says, "Monsieur de la Fère. Can you take him while I get the fire lit?"
He's silent for a second, mouth still a little open, and she doesn't understand why he's sitting here silent with only a candle for company. Then he says, "Forgive me, Constance, I don't dare move."
He'd said the nausea was worse this time, and she knows how awful it can be. She says, "It doesn't matter." and hikes Charles higher on her hip, pulling open the door on the oven to check it's clean for the day's fire - Porthos normally has the sense to scrape it out when it goes out the night before, and all she has to do is slot in some logs from the basket by the door. "Is it bad?"
"No, it's fine." Aramis says, and smiles. "So long as I don't move or breathe too quickly. Or too slowly, for that matter."
"Have you drunk something?"
"Constance, you're a good woman, you wouldn't make me."
"You're drinking some water. I'll fetch it from the well after this one's stopped fussing." She lights a twist of straw from the candle and leaves the door of the range open for it to catch, then sits at the other side of the kitchen table and lets her shawl fall open. "Eyes," she says, and Aramis obediently closes them, but doesn't otherwise move a muscle, doesn't even relax his hold of the table, if anything he tightens it. She opens her blouse, says, "Are you dizzy?"
"It reminds me," Aramis murmurs, and he is keeping his breath very carefully steady, "of being hit in the head."
"It's a child, not a concussion."
"It seems undecided as yet." He's quiet for a moment, as Charles sets to his hungry morning feeding. "It wasn't like this with him," Aramis says, eyes closed. "Jean-Armand. I never knew how untroublesome a guest he was."
Constance wipes at Charles' chin with a crooked finger, he's always a sloppy eater. "He's always been an eerily well-behaved child for one of yours."
"I know. It baffles me too." Aramis grins but then stifles it, mouth flattening, fingers flexing on the table. Constance says, "Are you alright?" but he doesn't reply, clearly doesn't dare to risk it. She sighs, and holds her own baby close.
"We know it's worth it," she says, watching Charles' big brown eyes, their long dark lashes as he blinks sleepily. She brushes his cheek. "They're such angels when they're little."
Aramis breathes slowly, eyes closed, and murmurs, "Some of them never cease to be so."
Aramis loves that boy of his in ways Constance didn't know that fathers did love their children, not until them, and not until she saw d'Artagnan stand there crying when Geneviève was first handed to him either. It's seemed to Constance unfair that Aramis couldn't have more, as desperately attached to his child as he is, and he's always been delighted for each of her births - he keeps his eyes closed now because she asks him to, he's been there to help with each of her births and there's little he's left to see of her, he's the only man in the house the midwife will have in the room when it's time - and though she never sees a drop of jealousy in him, only sometimes wistfulness, she wouldn't resent him a pang now and then. She knows how much he loves children. He adores hers as well as his own, her own daughters are devoted to him, and she thinks that he would resent less than she would being trapped in this house with the children all day long. She wants to get out there and get on with her life, as much as she loves her children and does love to be part of their lives. For all the idiocy she's seen him partake in, if Aramis were allowed none of it, if he had been locked into this house as any truly respectable husband would have demanded of him, he would probably have put up very little fight. His own pregnancies are deadly enough to get some of his desire for danger out of him, and the sheer terror of your child in the world - a world where splinters can turn to infection, banged heads to concussion, sneezes to desperate sickness (a cough, just a cough) - exhausts him of the rest. He gets quite enough excitement when the children announce that they're bored.
She remembers Jean-Armand's birth. Her stomach is already stocking up its dread, now that he's determined to do it again.
She says, watching the blink of Charles' long dark lashes as he feeds, "Would you stay in with them all day, if you could?"
Aramis is quiet a moment, clearly considering it, then says, "No. Well, I'd embarrass him when he got bigger." His grin twitches broader again, then sobers a little. "And they need me out there with them, anyway. My husbands and yours."
"You only have the one, Aramis."
"Technicalities. I wish I had the time for all of it, really. All of Jean-Armand's life and all of theirs. But then I always do want too many things."
"Like husbands," she mutters, and he laughs, then his fingers go to claws on the table and his whole body goes rigid in his regret of it.
Once she might have been scandalised beyond the ability to speak by those three musketeers. That was a long time ago now. There is much worse in the world than their approach to love, and she doesn't know how anyone could look in disgust on the tendernesses she's seen them share, their fond teasing, their small affectionate touches. She is aware that there are larger affectionate touches between them, Aramis' present nausea speaks of that, but she tries not to think of that. It would be impolite, even if it does permit of a certain warming curiosity.
There is also that strange level on which they are rather innocent and she is someone they are a little awed of the secret knowledge of, Aramis particularly, because she is the house's only woman and men really don't have a clue. Aramis has learned some, out of necessity. He's had a very different response to his body bleeding, when it chooses to as rarely and erratically as it does, since the lost child, since the bleeding must mean memories to him that she can't bring herself to imagine. But before, the first time he bled under this roof, he ran in a panic to her.
Quick boot-heels on the floorboards outside, a rapid thudding of the flat of a fist on the bedroom door, and his urgent, "Constance Constance Constance Constance -" which d'Artagnan, pulling his shirt on over his head first thing in a morning, went to answer. Aramis met him with a smile, took his shoulders and quickly rotated him out of the room and himself inside it, saying, "Forgive me, d'Artagnan, I need to borrow your wife."
D'Artagnan said, "Wh-" and Aramis slammed the door on him.
Constance had quickly pulled her shawl around herself, almost entirely dressed but she knew her hair was a mess, and said as he turned to face her, "What the hell are y-"
"I'm -" He made desperate, unhelpful gestures with his hands. "Bleeding. I'm bleeding. What do you do? What do you do when you - I've had to stuff - I don't know how you - what do you do?"
He looked so helpless, so lost, and she hardly knew what to say, she'd imagined having this talk with her daughter one day but this . . . she said, "What have you used?"
"Some cloth." She knows, and he knows that she knows, that he sleeps with two men under this roof, sometimes rather overenthusiastically audibly, and for God's sake she's had her hand inside him, but in that moment he just looked so embarrassed, at his own cluelessness as much as everything else. "I've - in my - underclothes. But I don't know what to - what do women do?"
Constance had found herself embarrassed to say that some, the country girls especially, simply wore a dark chemise so it wouldn't show. "We can make you some padding," she'd said, he looked so frantic, she'd taken his arms and kept her voice soothing. "Sew it to a belt. It - shouldn't show." Suddenly trousers, an item of clothing she'd always held in some envy for how practical they looked, particularly in bad weather, struck her as nonsensical items of clothing compared to skirts; what if the added bulk did show?
"But," he said, and he looked at her almost like a child. "What if it shows through? What if it," His face had, if anything, drained of its colour even more, "gets through? What if I have to fight or ride or -"
"Alright, it's alright, we'll think this through, don't panic." She'd rubbed at his arms a little and understood that look in his eyes then. He smiles his way through a lot of comments that set her blood to boil, she's heard them second-hand from her husband, she once saw dots of blood on d'Artagnan's hand he hadn't noticed had flecked him and he'd had to confess came from a fight with a Red Guard who'd had something to say when Aramis walked past. Aramis has endured a lot of mockery without so much as flickering his smile, but to be seen in public to bleed like this really might crumple him. She lives with him, counts him as a friend - a good friend, despite himself - and she knows him, knows his fastidiousness, his manners - his vanity, really. This, the mess and smell of this, this he never has found any peace with, even before it meant to him what it now does.
She'd said, "Don't go in today. Tell them you're sick."
"That would be a lie," Aramis said. "I have my duty."
"I bet you have cramps as well," she said. "Heat in your back? Headache? Fatigue?" He opened his mouth and then closed it again, and his eyes on hers were a little afraid of the magic trick she'd just managed, knowing symptoms he hadn't named. "Sounds like sickness to me," she'd said briskly. "You're not going in. I'll find some clean cloths, you need a bath, that usually makes me feel better. That and a cry, anyway."
His eyes searched hers, still too close to frantic, and then he covered them with a hand and kneaded at his temples. He said, low and hoarse with embarrassment, "I need your help to clean the sheets."
"Of course." she pressed his hand. "Come on. I'll tell my husband you're not well, we can warm a brick to help with the cramps."
"I had to hide them," he said, and his mouth cracked a lopsided smile. "The sheets. I had to hide them from them, I didn't want them to realise - of course they're going to realise - I'm sorry, I am - not dealing with this very well."
"It's alright." She took his hand, opened it to close it with both of hers. "Don't worry. I've had enough practice for the both of us."
Now she looks across at him, pale but for the shadows under his eyes, even his lips pale he's pressed them so hard, eyes closed through the nausea. There are things she has had more practice in, and can comfort and guide him through; and there are things they are both better able to deal with, and protect their lovers from. She reaches across the table to touch his fingers, rigid on the edge of the wood, and he doesn't look at her, just breathes, carefully.
She closes her fingers over his. She knows the fear of it. She knows the loss of it, thick in her throat as pain already. She holds his hand, and her own warm heavy feeding baby, and she scrapes up the courage from the depths of her guts to whisper to him, alone together, "Are you afraid?"
They both know that he is. What she's offering him is a space to be allowed to be afraid in. He breathes, slowly. His fingers squeeze the table, then relax a little under the stroking of her thumb. His mouth stretches not really a smile, and he says, softly rasped, "The most important thing is to protect them." He keeps his neck steady, though she sees the pulse of fear there in his throat. "I can't bear their helplessness," he says very quietly. "I can't put them through that. There are . . . there are things we protect them from."
"Of course." she says, and her chin is jumping, but she squeezes his fingers and doesn't cry. He loosens his hand from the table, takes hers, presses it and she presses back. He says, head a little low and taking a careful breath in, "I am more grateful than I have the words for to have you as a friend, madame."
"You idiot. So are all of us, for you."
She knows he kept the flame of her children's fragile lives burning in them once before. She knows what it's like to watch it go out; she knows what binds them, awkwardly lifts the arm she has around Charles to get at the tears underneath her eyelashes with a knuckle. Aramis says, automatic on sensing a woman might require it - whether he thinks she's moving for her tears or the child's dribbling is all the same to him - "I have a handkerchief."
"You can't move to pass me it."
"- Lord, I can't." His neck tightens on not laughing, she sees it in his shoulders. "I don't know if I forgot what it was like or if this is so much worse th-"
He stops, and she holds his hand tight. "They're all different," she says. "I don't know why but they are, you can't judge each one against another. And your body's older now -"
"Oh, low blows from everyone I trust recently," he says, but looks too tired to be offended.
"We'll send for the midwife today," she says. "To ease your mind. I'm sure it's alright. Aramis, I'm sure it's alright."
". . . tonight, for the midwife." he allows. "I'll be in the garrison today."
"Honestly . . ."
"No riding, no fighting, I'm not even allowed to carry anything. Captain's orders." Aramis says easily. "Constance, give me this. As soon as I am confined they'll fuss like I'm cracked china, this is the last fresh air and freedom I'll have for months."
"Alright." She honestly thinks that worry is worse for him than garrison-bound duties possibly could be, so any distraction should help.
Aramis swallows, still too grey in the face, and Charles has let go of her breast so she lets go of Aramis' hand to reach for the cloth hanging from the range, to mop at him and herself and start tying her corset again, child hugged clumsily to her hip as she works. Gripping the table again without her hand to hold, Aramis says as if he's been mulling it over, "If we send for the midwife, d'Artagnan will know."
"He already knows. He worked it out yesterday, and asked me last night." She tugs her blouse up properly, shucks Charles comfortably closer, and begins trying to massage the burp from him. "You can open your eyes now."
He doesn't, at first. He just sits there, eyes closed, gripping the table, pale with nausea. Then he blinks his eyes open, lifts his head a little, and looks at her, eyes so dark in this little light she can hardly read them. She says, "I know you wanted to keep it quiet but -"
"Not from him. I really didn't, we only . . . I only . . . God." He lifts a hand and rubs one eye. "It - I'm sorry. It's complicated."
"I understand. Aramis, he understands."
"I've already put him through it the once." He closes his eyes again, tight, then takes a sharp breath in. "All of them. I can't put them all through it again. And it - it is the hardest thing because I would protect all of them, your husband included, all of them from any of it, and yet I can't because I know I need them now -"
"They will never know how much you protect them," Constance says, her own voice shaking. "Isn't that exactly what you're trying to protect them from?"
He opens his eyes again, looks at her very sad but more composed, now. "Yes." he says, as simple as that, and neither of them question why he doesn't try to shield her from it as well. The two of them, they understand it. They've both done the endurance and the moaning and the blood. More than that, they've both done the tears and the tearing and the eventual slither of the afterbirth, the menstrual cramps and migraines and misery, the grieving over tiny graves, flesh of their flesh, body they let loose into the world and it makes no sense at all that it should be buried anywhere but in their arms.
She wipes her eyes again. He reaches across the table, taking his breath in slow through his nose, and she takes his hand before he can overlean his nausea and make himself worse.
They protect their husbands, the two of them. Those men need to think that they can cope, that they have it all under control, that they understand and can take care of things. But they don't understand and it's left instead to the two of them and they're both terrified, always, for the children, for the others, and she knows exactly what he means because it just has to be borne. The helplessness on d'Artagnan's face, and she remembers how fucking young he sounded when he told her, whispered in the parlour doorway as she came out from adjusting a dress for a client, what had happened to delay their ride home, what had happened, what . . .
They are honest with each other, and she can see how numb with fear Aramis really is; he knows too much what this going wrong is like to live through. And so she squeezes his hand, offers him what strength she has, because they have to be strong for the others. And then they hear the creak of a floorboard overhead, the thump of feet, part their hands and Constance goes back to tending to Charles, Aramis flexes his fingers on the edge of the table and schools his breathing.
Constance says, "I'll send word to the midwife this morning for you."
Aramis says, quietly, "Thank you, Constance."
More shifting overhead, and low male voices. Aramis closes his eyes for a second, as if containing the rawness of the fear; then he opens them, already smiling, already settled again into the shape of someone who knows what he's doing and knows that it'll all work out fine. He says, "You needn't trouble yourself for the water. Those two are responsible for this entire situation anyway, they can fetch it for me."
She says, "This is what you get for getting greedy about husbands," and his mouth twitches hard with wanting to laugh, wicked-bright joy in his eyes. And it rushes in her chest, a certainty then, they're not losing him and he's not losing another desperately longed-for child, God could never be so cruel and God knows Aramis could never allow it. She was so certain that no-one could survive that last hellish birth she helped him through, the whole thing so brutal she couldn't imagine it possible to live through and recover from it. And there he sits, smirking away, fiercely alive and utterly terrified and strong enough to set that terror back to protect his lovers, first.
So she takes a breath, and considers it, then advises very seriously right to his eyes, "Milk it." And then he does laugh, and suck his breath in on his regret, but he doesn't stop grinning and when Charles makes a curious noise Aramis looks down at him on Constance's lap, and says to him, "You must never tell them, child, of the wiles we do use."
Charles chews his fingers, and looks at him with open, puzzled brown eyes. Constance runs her hand over the boy's head and kisses him there, and when she looks up again Aramis is watching the baby with something on his face so quietly . . .
Never jealous. Not, in this moment, wistful.
She runs the backs of her fingers over her sweet boy's head, and reads from Aramis' face, hope . . . ?
He wakes because he's profoundly attuned to the sound of it: the pad of a child's bare feet on the floorboards, and the click-click-click of following claws. Aramis lays on his side in the dark, eyes wide open, alert. Athos is asleep almost face-down so his snoring is muffled, with an arm cast over Aramis' back; Porthos is nuzzled into his chest with his arms around his waist. Knowing that this is Aramis' territory, neither of them wake for it the way they would wake immediately to any unfamiliar tread out there, not even when there's a wobbly little tap at the door, which creaks open to allow in the whimper of, "Papa?"
Always papa. Jean-Armand loves all his fathers, but if he needs comfort in the middle of the night, not one of them doesn't know who he comes for. "Little wolf," he murmurs, sliding himself up between his lovers to sit; overused to Aramis shifting and turning and getting up for the chamber pot in the night, neither of them do more than change their breath a little, and resettle. "What's wrong?"
"Had - I had a bad dream."
Oh, little wolf cub; Aramis knows how deeply those can distress.
He picks himself out from between Porthos and Athos, shifting their arms after himself as their bodies roll into his unoccupied space so they touch each other and may miss him less. His nightshirt is hanging from a post of the bed and he pulls it over his head, a little drunk on fatigue, this sheer skull-deep exhaustion was one of the first things that made him wonder at what might be happening in his belly. Once decent he can take his son's small hand and whisper, "Let's not wake your fathers." and walk him into the hallway again where he can hear Lupin's regular panting, and close the door behind them. On one knee on the hard wooden floor he thumbs the hot damp skin under Jean-Armand's eyes, and whispers, "There, little wolf, what happened? No-one's going to harm you. You know your fathers will never let anything hurt you."
"Papa," Jean-Armand says, taking two fistfuls of Aramis' nightshirt to keep him close.
Gently, stroking his hair, "What's wrong?"
"They wouldn't hang Lupin, would they?"
It takes him a moment blinking in the black of the night, not knowing where this came from, before he does. After Aramis threw himself at the man Jean-Armand had quite rightly called out for kicking at a dog, the man who had then aimed a kick - a mortal mistake - at Aramis' son, Athos had said that Aramis shouldn't have done anything and Aramis had returned, calmly enough, that if he hadn't done something then nothing would have stopped Lupin from doing it such that the man lost at least one limb. D'Artagnan was the one who'd told Aramis he still couldn't cut the man's head off in broad daylight because at least Lupin wouldn't be hang- put in prison, with a look of alarm at Jean-Armand.
At the time Aramis had thought that Jean-Armand in his fury for justice hadn't noticed, let alone understood, what d'Artagnan had almost said. Now he understands that Jean-Armand's confused and sleeping mind told him that had Lupin tried to protect him, his dearest nurse would have been taken away for a common criminal, given her last rites and hanged, and it's no end at all for such a noble dog.
"Of course not." he promises, stroking Jean-Armand's hair. "Of course not, we would never allow it, would we? And anyway, Lupin is an honorary musketeer, she performs her duty for France, and has the King's own blessing to distribute justice where needed."
Jean-Armand shifts bare feet on the floorboards and says, voice coming a little more hopeful, "The King wouldn't let them hang her."
"Of course he wouldn't. Come and let's find you a handkerchief." It's still easy to pick the boy up even if he isn't a baby anymore, and Athos says they'll spoil him but Aramis ignores him. The world is a terrible place, soldiers know that, and he wants his son to have somewhere safe in it, somewhere he knows himself loved utterly; and besides, Aramis was much more petted and indulged by all of his sisters when he was small, and he emerged with his character perfectly intact.
Lupin waits for them to pass and then stands again and follows with her patient padding walk as Aramis nudges the nursery door, and puts Jean-Armand down. In what little light there is from the window he finds a clean handkerchief in the children's dresser. He wipes his son's eyes, holds it to his nose, and commands softly - aware of the sleeping girls in the bed underneath the window, and the baby in the cot - "Blow."
"They wouldn't hang Lupin," Jean-Armand whispers afterwards, sounding more sure of it, only requiring a little reassurance.
"Of course they wouldn't. They would never get the chance, would they? If they tried she would be rescued by the very bravest of the King's musketeers." Aramis finds Jean-Armand's bed by long practice in the dark, pulls the blankets back, smoothes down the sheets. "In, little wolf."
Jean-Armand climbs back onto his mattress and before Aramis can even get the blankets over him again he says in Spanish, "Tell me a story, Papa."
Aramis is very weak for his son, and never can walk away from anything he requests. He sighs if he's doing this, and murmurs, "Move over." climbing onto the mattress as his son's body shuffles to make room, and Lupin lays down again with a grunt beside the bed.
Aramis stretches out in the narrower bed, doesn't even fight the yawn down, lets it happen slow and massive over Jean-Armand's head as he cuddles his body once more closer to Aramis' chest, and Aramis tucks his arm around his hot-breathing sides. "A story," he mumbles, very tired, very tired, but he won't leave his son. "Shall I tell you a story about Jean-Armand of the King's musketeers rescuing the heroic Lupin from one of the Red Guards' dastardly plots?"
"Yes please," in a whisper, and Aramis closes his weary eyes, and grins to the top of Jean-Armand's head.
He had hoped that the story would settle the boy to sleep, but he knows he's still awake when the last battle has been fought and Jean-Armand and Lupin have vanquished the evildoers and gone on to fight again for France and for justice. He's still a little awake, Aramis' little wolf, perhaps as drowsy in the dark as Aramis is but awake, still. Aramis settles his nose into his hair, and closes his eyes, and lets the darkness float them.
Do his lovers think he doesn't understand the risk? His son is his only warm living child he's ever held in his arms, he knows what the danger is, he knows exactly what he has already lost, what the loss is. He tells himself now that there's simply no helping it, no point in doing anything but trusting the Lord because He can't make Aramis face that twice, he can't do it again, he can't feel the blood run and feel so helpless and broken, can't know what is happening and have to let it play out over a course of hours, can't live while his child dies, he can't -
Aramis is a soldier, and he could face torture defiant to the end because he knows that no torturer could ever do anything to him worse than what his own body has proved capable of putting him and his own baby through. He remembers too much of it, stupid too much things, the stone under his shoulder he didn't try to move because the pain of that gave him some discomfort to focus on that wasn't his body losing his baby. How the heat of the haemorrhaging turned so quickly to cold on his skin, and from slick to sticky. How Athos tried so hard to look after him and Aramis had felt like a newborn deer, spindly legs, wordless, trembling, stunned and the tears came as if he'd never get control over them again.
He remembers Madame Blanchot, the woman who brought his little wolf into the world, chasing Porthos and Athos from the room when they returned to Paris and asking Aramis in a gentle voice to lay back on the bed. She'd said, "You couldn't have been far if you didn't even know. It happens a lot, so early, some of them know they're not right for this world." Cold of the salve on her fingers, and he stared at the ceiling and couldn't speak and couldn't move and couldn't breathe. "There's not much tearing, just put some of this on twice a day, and again if you need to use the chamber pot between times. You're to keep yourself clean and not have your husband bother you until you feel ready again, it may be some weeks. There, now," as he had to turn his face into the pillow to muffle it because he couldn't let his friends hear but the sobs threatened to suffocate him, "there, lovey, it takes the best of us, all we can ever do is trust in the Lord. There now lovey, just let it out. Better when it's out. Alright. Alright."
He hugs his little wolf closer, and loves him with a fervour like madness, anything for him, anything to keep him safe, anything, because he is the only child Aramis has to keep safe.
For now, at least. He closes his eyes, and every breath is the same prayer to him now.
Jean-Armand nudges his cheek to a comfortable place on Aramis' chest, and Aramis strokes his shoulder with a thumb. Then he murmurs, "Would you like a little brother or sister, little wolf?"
Silence, but he can feel the sudden alertness of the muscles of the child in his arms. Then Jean-Armand whispers, "Can I have one?"
"That is up to the Lord. But would you like one, if He saw fit?"
"Just one?"
The laughter ripples soft in his chest. "Would you or not, little wolf?"
"Yes please," in a conspiratorial whisper. "Can I have a sister please?"
The grin presses his cheeks in the dark. "We don't get to choose, the Lord decides that. Would you like a little sister?"
"Yes. I like the girls. Geneviève helps me with my writing and numbers and Maria brings me gingerbread from the girls who want me to marry them."
That is a hard laugh to keep down. "Are there many who want to marry you?"
"Not enough," Jean-Armand says. "There are some who've never given me even one piece of gingerbread, and some of the pieces have been very small. Sometimes I think," he whispers, "Maria nibbles them as she brings them."
"Messengers usually take a fee, you know."
Jean-Armand mulls that over for a moment, then says, "Do they?"
"It's only proper. Payment for services rendered. I hope you offer a tip sometimes," he says, teasing now, and Jean-Armand can tell and pulls at his nightshirt, says through a yawn, "Silly Papa."
"Silly Papa." Aramis confirms quietly, squeezing Jean-Armand momentarily closer. "Silly silly Papa." He's quiet for a moment, then says, "You know, little wolf, if you had a brother or sister, I would still love you just as much. You will always be my boy. Nothing ever could change that."
"Yes Papa," Jean-Armand says, yawning again, with the ease of a boy who has never once in his life thought that love might run dry.
Jean-Armand's breath has become very even, not yet asleep but not far from it, and it still baffles Aramis, the way he loves his son. He loves his friends, his husbands, of course, thinks of his friendship with them as the founding principle of his life, but the way he loves Jean-Armand is a surprise almost every day, he hardly believes in Jean-Armand, is perpetually fascinated by him, this little miracle in his arms. Even now he resists the urge to light a candle just to see his perfect eyelashes, to run a finger around the small pretty shape of his ear. Aramis will never understand him. He feels like he may one day be an old man still dazzled when his son walks into the room, just because his son is.
And, he thinks, attention shifting to his own belly, he's to go through it all again, if God will show him any mercy. Another little one to shake him with what love means. He might have thought he had no strength to face it again but somehow the strength just comes when he needs it, when the reason is right. Amazing what can be put aside when required, how strain and weariness can be ignored. Children are quite the wisest tutors, he thinks, feeling Jean-Armand's quiet breaths against him. I am better for him. I am grateful for it, daily.
He knows there will be hard lessons to come. He does remember at least some of Jean-Armand's birth.
He will never forget the roadside in the frost.
"You will always be loved," he whispers in the dark, to his small sleeping son. "Nothing ever could change that. You will always be loved, little wolf, I will love you whether I am present on this Earth for it or not."
The dog is snoring beside the bed. All the rest, Aramis leaves to the Lord.
*
D'Artagnan wakes drowsily slow, and realises with the searching of a foot that it's because Constance isn't in the bed to wake him, she must have risen some time ago. He sits up, grimaces at the morning, scratches his hair back from his face and yawns, loudly since she isn't beside him to tut in amused disapproval. Then he pulls a shirt on and looks in on the children but the nursery only contains little Charles, standing up in his cot and chewing the railing. Those who can tend to follow each other like a gaggle of goslings wherever one goes - strict blood relations are a little nebulous under this roof, the children act as a single pack regardless of parents - and as Charles makes a cross noise, annoyed to be left behind, d'Artagnan walks over and lifts his boy out of the cot, settling him to his side.
"Oof." he says to him. "You'll weigh as much as Porthos soon."
Charles chews his finger and looks at him with round dark eyes, and d'Artagnan smiles for him only a little tightly and turns from the room before the sight of it empty reminds him of his first boy, when this room truly did seem empty, and the children he has need him not to submit to those memories.
Downstairs he can hear thumps and giggles in the parlour and the sound of Porthos roaring - being a dragon, by the sounds of it - and he carries Charles for the kitchen, where he catches Aramis' voice saying, "It's hard for me to be so accurate, you know I- d'Artagnan, and young master Charles, the honour is all ours," offering a short bow without even standing from his seat at the kitchen table. Constance, sitting beside him, wipes a serious look from her face and smiles at d'Artagnan, and Athos is leaning against the wall, arms folded as Ester rolls pastry on the worktop beside him.
D'Artagnan says, "What are you talking about?"
"Nothing." Athos says, which means, Don't ask questions.
"Give him here," Constance says, standing and scooping Charles into her arms. "Do you want cleaning and dressing for the day now, little sausage dog?"
"He's not a sausage dog. What were you talking about?"
"He's a dear little sausage dog, he's got those big brown eyes." Constance croons to the baby's face, carrying him for the stairs again. D'Artagnan calls aggrieved after her, "Those are my eyes!"
Aramis pats the chair beside himself. "Come get some breakfast, dear little sausage dog."
Athos' mouth creases with trying not to smile, and d'Artagnan sits with a huff. "What were you talking about?"
"Oh, nothing." Aramis smiles and pushes back from the table to stand, and d'Artagnan wonders if it's the light or if he's known him too long, he looks older in a morning recently, strained in the face. "We need to head in early if we can, I'll try to extricate Porthos from the children."
"Not getting roped into their games is the opposite of your forte." Athos says, heading after him, and d'Artagnan calls after them, "What were you - God." He picks up some bread abandoned on Aramis' plate, says to Ester, "What were they talking about?"
She says something in Spanish to the pastry, and d'Artagnan slumps back, chewing and rolling his eyes.
("Monsieur Aramis is pregnant again and all of my good sheets and towels will be ruined, he is worse than your wife." )
He doesn't like being left out of their intrigues - for one thing any secrets any of them try to keep tend to end badly - but in the fuss of children underfoot and tugging at him in the parlour (Aramis has not helped to end the game, and is in fact now leading the charge against the Great Dragon Porthos and enjoying himself far too much) it all just somehow gets forgotten by the time they're straightening their clothes and putting their hats on in the hallway, the children carrying their slates and their dinners wrapped in cloth, ready to be escorted to school. Maria holds Constance's skirts while d'Artagnan kisses his wife goodbye, and then leans down to brush his daughter's hair back and smile for her because she always gets tearful - angry more than upset - when they leave in a morning. "You'll be going to school with your sister in no time, won't you?"
"In the autumn." Constance promises. "Stay home and help Mama just a little longer, chick."
D'Artagnan keeps the smile on his face but it feels tight. He feels sometimes in these morning goodbyes the child who isn't here, someone else to keep Maria company through the day. He tries not to bring him up more than he can help. It devastates Constance, he can't stand it himself, and he feels like an aura in the room Aramis' guilt whenever the child is remembered. Aramis knows what it is to lose a child, d'Artagnan tells himself, remembering the roadside and all the blood and Athos not knowing what to do. He knows that they share that. So if they share so much, what the hell are they keeping from him now . . . ?
The two older children, Jean-Armand balancing his slate on his head and Geneviève telling him he ought not to, are escorted to the schoolhouse at the foot of their street. Outside the door Geneviève, terrifyingly solemn creature d'Artagnan and Constance somehow managed to bring into the world, says, "Goodbye, Papa. Be good."
"That's what parents say to their children, not the other way around," he says, but she just looks at him evenly, as if that is something she is too polite to state that she will judge for herself.
Aramis comes with a groan down to one knee - God, he must be getting old - to say to Jean-Armand, "We'll see you soon, little wolf." and kiss him on each cheek. "Try not to accept any proposals of marriage before you speak to your parents first."
"Bye bye Papa."
Aramis stands, Porthos ruffles Jean-Armand's hair, and Athos pats Lupin's head, says quietly, "Stay." and the dog yawns, and settles herself calmly beside the doorway to the schoolroom. They wait and watch until the children are inside - Geneviève enjoys her lessons but Jean-Armand always might sneak off to see if anything interesting is happening in the marketplace without close attention - and then make their way on towards the garrison again, Porthos patting Aramis' back as if commiserating at another day he has to spend not looming over Jean-Armand's shoulder at every moment.
They are getting older, d'Artagnan thinks. Jean-Armand turns seven later this summer, and d'Artagnan had known these men for almost two years before he was even born. He doesn't think of any of them as out of their prime - not even Athos, given that Athos can still disarm him in a moment once he tires of checking d'Artagnan's form when they spar - but his friends are older than he is, and one of these days it won't be them looking out for him but the other way around. D'Artagnan is not as raw as he once was but the three of them have collective decades of soldiering experience and no circumstance seems beyond their skills. Yet still, one of these days, d'Artagnan's going to have to look into adopting some of the younger recruits the way they once did for him, if he can ever talk the three of them into retirement . . .
In the garrison Aramis says, "Well," and gives Porthos and Athos a quick smile, and heads off for the stairs to Treville's office. Porthos follows; Athos puts a hand on d'Artagnan's chest before he can start after him, and says, "This won't take long."
"What are you talking to the captain about?"
"We'll try to keep it brief." Athos says, walking after the other two.
"What is going on?" d'Artagnan says, frustrated now, and Aramis calls cheerfully over his shoulder as he takes the steps, "Take the opportunity to clean that cesspit you call a pistol!"
D'Artagnan sits with a huff at the side of the yard, folding his arms, watching musketeers arriving for the morning muster, everyone waking for the day. He doesn't know why his friends are being so secretive today, doesn't know what is wrong with any of them, and doesn't know what Aramis' problem is, his pistol is fine. Just because he doesn't keep it clean enough to shine like certain magpies he knows doesn't mean that it's dirty.
Just to prove that to Aramis, he sits and cleans it furiously while he waits.
The three of them emerge a little later, Athos putting his hat back on again, Porthos murmuring to Aramis who shrugs, smiling, then looks down at d'Artagnan in the act of putting his weapons hurriedly away again and grins. At the bottom of the stairs Athos says to d'Artagnan, "Saddle up. We're requested at the palace."
"I'll see you tonight," Aramis says, patting Porthos' shoulder.
D'Artagnan says, "You're not coming?"
"Aramis is taking an inventory of the garrison's weaponry today." Athos says, already walking for the stables.
D'Artagnan turns to Aramis, who's wearing one of his innocent faces, the ones that mean he definitely isn't innocent, and says, "What did you do?"
Aramis lays a hand over his heart and says, "To the very quick, d'Artagnan."
"What did he do?" d'Artagnan persists, but Porthos just laughs.
"C'mon, kid. Nice quiet day for once."
Aramis calls after them, "It reflects very badly on you, Porthos." and Porthos throws his head back and laughs.
Apparently they've all gone mad.
It's a dull day's guarding on horseback while the King hunts with some diplomats, and d'Artagnan brews it all over in his mind. Aramis has done something, whatever they say, so that Treville is punishing him with garrison-bound duties - but Aramis doesn't seem to care, and neither do Athos or Porthos. D'Artagnan thinks that Constance knows something he doesn't. Why would Constance -
His hand goes tight around his horse's reins, stomach dropping to the forest floor, and he thinks, Oh, God, he's pregnant.
The captain's giving him light duties. Every morning he looks ill. They - his eyes flick between Porthos and Athos, both apparently only attentive to duty right now - they know, and they told Treville this morning to keep Aramis - 'light duties'. D'Artagnan swallows, and resists the urge to rub his forehead. Aramis is pregnant, and probably very nervous of long days on horseback after - after, and -
But why don't they want him to know? Why don't they tell him? It's not that he feels left out, it's that he's genuinely confused, Aramis needs minding in any fights that break out now, Aramis cannot be allowed to be put in danger, not the way he reacts to danger, it makes no sense not to tell d'Artagnan. He lives with them, he's at their sides in everything, why don't they want him to know? He knew the last time as much as any of them did. They needed him then. Why . . .
He broods on it, doesn't ask them, keeps his face calm and calls back just as lightly to Porthos as he does to him, doesn't let them see that he knows. It involves avoiding Athos' gaze almost entirely, because Athos can read the thoughts off the back of a man's mind, and acting like nothing is wrong until they head back to the garrison that evening, and he thinks he'll have a good long squint at Aramis' face, read it off him, he'll know then.
One of the stable hands says that Aramis was sent home an hour ago, since he had no further duties here.
When they get home Constance is sewing in the parlour, needle quick as her eyes keep flitting up to check on her daughters, the girls fluttering some scraps of brightly coloured cloth at Charles to amuse him (he's laughing, and clapping his hands). Aramis is sitting on the floor with Jean-Armand sitting between his legs, holding a book.
"C - C -"
"C-H," Aramis says, fingertip tracing two letters. "It makes a sh, little wolf."
"Then why isn't it a ss instead of a ck?"
"The H softens it. Ch."
"Chevalier."
"Oh you guessed that, you never read it." Aramis blows to the back of Jean-Armand's ear and the boy shrieks and laughs and squirms. "You little cheat."
"I know where he gets that from," Athos murmurs, and Porthos rumbles discontent but he's smiling too much.
D'Artagnan narrows his eyes at his wife, who looks confused, needle hesitating, then narrows her eyes right back and d'Artagnan remembers that fights with Constance never seem to work out how he'd thought they would, and maybe a direct accusation - why are you colluding in their secrets - is a very bad idea.
He waits. He watches them over dinner, and when he asks why Aramis isn't eating much he says easily that he ate with the children earlier, which, if true, means that actually he has eaten quite a lot, combined. He watches the three of them make their way upstairs together, Porthos' hand on the back of Aramis' neck, Aramis taking Athos' hand as they go, and Constance, God bless the woman, has never batted an eyelid at the three of them since she first moved under this roof. They look mostly like they always look. Maybe a little clingier? Maybe, a little more than normal, rotating around Aramis like he exerts even more pull than he ordinarily does . . . ?
In their bedroom, where Constance puts the candle down and begins unlacing her corset at a speed d'Artagnan never can match - however keen he can be to get inside it doesn't come close to how much she wants out of it at the end of a long day - and he pulls his own boots off, and says as casually as he can, "Is something up with Aramis?"
"Aramis?" she says, pulling her corset over her head. "Why would something be up with Aramis?"
"Because he's the only one acting normal. And Aramis acting normal is never - normal."
"They're your friends," she says, stepping out of one layer of skirts. "It says quite a lot about you, d'Artagnan."
D'Artagnan is older than he once was, and now he has children to be responsible for, but nothing ever has quite convinced him that anything but running straight at the enemy is best. "Is he pregnant?"
"What?" she says, and her eyes look trapped. "Why would you think that? How would I know?"
"Because you know everything. He is, isn't he?"
She stares at him for a long moment before something in her just sags, tired, and she sits on the edge of the bed in her chemise. "They're trying to be careful," she says, bowing her head, folding her hands together awkwardly in her lap.
"Why haven't they told me?"
"It's still early, it's - early on it's the most dangerous. If something . . . if something goes wrong, it's most often when it's early."
"I'm hardly not going to notice if something goes wrong, why wouldn't they-"
"We've been lucky," she says to her hands, eyes very fixed. "Four healthy births. I can't imagine - having to look in the eye of all those people who congratulated me when I first told them - and face them knowing -"
D'Artagnan stands there, hands fisted, swallowing, thinking - thinking of that night in the frost, trying not to hear the sound of Aramis begging God when the night was only silent around them. Thinking of the fear all three of them must feel now, the child an unknown quality, now truly understanding the worst to fear. Thinking, Don't you fucking dare tell me that we have been lucky -
Shame flushes cold through him almost instantly with the thought, because he has three healthy children, because he has more family than many could wish for, and because his lost baby boy can't ever be replaced by letting his helpless fury out in this house. 'Unlucky' hardly seems a big enough concept to cover his true feelings over it. He grieved so hard he almost forgot he had two living daughters, a grieving wife, friends so desperate to help him. Grieved so hard he almost broke Aramis, who felt as responsible as if he'd brought the curse upon their house to begin with. Grieved until he remembered his own adulthood, that he was not the child and it wasn't all about him, and his frightened children, his wife choking on it all, they needed him.
Three years ago, before that night in the frost, a sickness came to Paris like the worst whisper down every street. They have no real idea how it got into the house. Probably poor little François Bois down the street, and it's hard to feel any blame towards a child taken like that, because Maria and Geneviève were both sore in the throat and feverish the day after playing with her, and both of the boys were by that evening, and François was dead two days later. Their own children Aramis set to caring for in the nursery, locked in there so the infection couldn't get through the house, grown men and women were dying too and the fewer of them exposed to it the better. Aramis has more skill with medicine than any of them but despite how well-placed for it he was Constance couldn't settle with her children out of sight, couldn't bear that they suffered and she couldn't help, though she brought everything Aramis asked for, and burned everything he said they must.
Every person in the house spent some time with their ear pressed to the wood of the door, listening to the creak of Aramis' footsteps, the coughs of the children, his soft humming to soothe them through the fever-dreams and aches and misery.
Maria was passed out from his arms to Constance's first, with instructions to burn all the clothes on her, bathe her thoroughly, and feed her up. Constance hugged her in like her heart returned to her, d'Artagnan put a hand into the curly hair of his bonny girl and his throat just crumpled, he didn't even pretend not to cry. She's always been sturdy, Maria, since she was a toddler walking as early as she could just to keep up with Geneviève, she has always been strong. And now, returned to them, she was a miracle they both hugged and coddled, and she had every treat they'd always known she loved, and she slept in their bed between them, and their gratefulness for her hurt them.
Geneviève was the next to be passed out, the following day. Aramis' face was stark by then, any hour of the day or night they heard him moving in the nursery, d'Artagnan knew he was exhausted. Not sick, he promised. He'd always been lucky with fevers, he had a remarkable constitution. And he smiled, and closed the nursery door, and d'Artagnan hugged his tired girl to his side and two children returned to him he could only hope.
Jean-Armand was put out into Porthos' arms the following morning, Aramis pale, leaning to kiss his son's forehead and whisper something there they didn't hear before, again, the child was to be bathed, his clothes burned, oh Porthos, get him fed and keep him comfortable and tell him his papa loves him, oh, Lord, Porthos.
Athos put a hand on Porthos' back, pressing for comfort, his own face over-wooden with not letting it show. Porthos put his face into Jean-Armand's hair and wept.
Another long day of Aramis in the closed nursery, Ester setting trays outside the door and backing away in case the air was bad - she had her own daughter to not want to carry this home for - another day of praying, now, only Alexandre and it didn't seem that the danger was two-thirds past, you can't face three children ill and tell yourself that one child ill is somehow better, it doesn't work like that. One child ill is your child ill. One child ill and d'Artagnan chewed a thumbnail off leaning against the wall and staring at that nursery door.
In the middle of the following night there was a tapping at the wall to Constance and d'Artagnan's room, next door to the nursery. D'Artagnan sat up in bed, Constance waking and Geneviève squirming between them though Maria slept stolidly on, and d'Artagnan padded through the dark to the cracked-open nursery door, and Aramis holding a candle, his mouth a pressed flat line.
He said, very low, "I think Constance should be here."
D'Artagnan stared at him. "Is he - mending?"
Aramis stared at him and there was something in his eyes d'Artagnan has never found a word for, though the sight of it has lingered with him too much, too often, ever since. "Someone must care for the girls," Aramis told him, voice steady in a way d'Artagnan doesn't think he'll ever be able to steady his own in a moment like that. "But I think that Constance should be here, d'Artagnan."
In the end Porthos and Athos cared for the girls, while Constance held Alexandre and cried silently, cheeks raw-wet and not making a sound. D'Artagnan rubbed her back, and stared down at his son's straining, failing breaths, and Aramis sat on the edge of Jean-Armand's bed in the nursery, head bowed, hands a loose clasp of prayer.
They have not been lucky. They have not been lucky to lose a helpless child, they have not been lucky, d'Artagnan's fury of grief was only barely contained, even Athos couldn't make him rein it in and he's the only person who ever has been able to make him stop. But Athos' expression of sympathy like it froze him combined with that subtle edge of warning - your wife, d'Artagnan, your daughters, your friends - d'Artagnan didn't care. His son was dead. He had to bury his son. And Aramis met his eye and looked so guilty and in the worse depths of the rage d'Artagnan glared back that he was right to do so, his son was still there, wasn't he, his son lived -
There was never a revelation, no big moment of epiphany when he realised that what luck he had was contained in the family he still had, that his two daughters had not died, that his wife was still there, that his friends did everything for him for those weeks when d'Artagnan neither noticed nor cared. Gradually he and Constance found each other again, found comfort in each other again. Gradually the girls stopped going quiet when he came into a room, because he couldn't bear the realisation that they were now afraid of him. Gradually he became natural with Aramis again, and knew that Aramis had worked himself ill to nurse d'Artagnan's children and he would have done it even if his own son weren't in that nursery too. Porthos and Athos more or less took turns to pin Aramis to their bed for two days afterwards just to make him rest, near-feverish with sheer overwork, refusing to even let them bring his son to him when he didn't know if he was beyond still needing quarantine himself, raving a little, too worn down with too much worry. D'Artagnan gradually found the balance between knowing that there is more to life than his loss and knowing that his loss was forever, now. He found ways to live with it. He found ways to live, again.
Since the roadside and the frost he knows that Aramis knows what it feels like, and he feels guilty that he ever made Aramis feel guilt about him. And now he looks at Constance sitting on the bed with her mouth all lopsided with knowing, and he wants to protect the people he loves, he doesn't want any of them to suffer if he can stop it. That is the only thing that truly matters. So he sits beside her, and takes her hand, and squeezes it as she looks at him.
"They'll need our help." he says. She draws her breath in through her nose, long, and then nods tightly.
"He says the sickness seems worse than last time, it has him nervous. I know he's - difficult, you know what it's like, you know what he's like, it's our job to . . ." She stops, and stares at the floorboards, her hand warm in d'Artagnan's. "Every last one of them is terrified. They can't do it again. I know he can't."
"We'll help them," d'Artagnan promises, and means it, swears it like his oath to the King. "It's not like the last time. We know. We can help."
His mind is already working fast, now he's let the confusion and resentment go. Aramis is pregnant again and d'Artagnan, who knows Aramis, knows that Aramis won't regret it in the slightest - is probably thrilled in a way d'Artagnan suspects Athos and Porthos are finding it harder to feel without qualification - but it's as deadly as it's ever been, they know what it's like. Most men don't survive it once and yet they've always known that Aramis would cheerfully attempt for a hoard of children. D'Artagnan has never said to any of them, given that it's hardly his place and far too awkward to bring up anyway, that it might be best to make efforts not to get Aramis pregnant again, but he doesn't know that it would have made any difference if he had. The three of them are careful out in the world, where judging by their behaviour Aramis and Porthos are good friends and Aramis since his marriage seems to have delighted in being publicly physically affectionate with Athos to the point where Athos can hardly keep a straight face, but in this house d'Artagnan and Constance can't be unaware that the three of them hardly put off their bedtime, as it were. D'Artagnan and Constance have struggled to keep from producing a child a year as Constance wishes they could, constant pregnancy only interferes with her work, and d'Artagnan's only one man. It would take a man much more sensible than Aramis to keep himself from pregnancy between two lovers like that.
The world outside this door, he thinks. He says, "What if it's Porthos' again?"
Constance is still staring at the floorboards, and d'Artagnan knows that she knows what he means. She says, "I don't know."
Athos married Aramis when he was already pregnant, and Jean-Armand so closely resembles Aramis anyway that they've largely escaped censure for the fact that Athos is not by blood the boy's father. But another child perhaps more obviously taking after Porthos - that could be trouble. There would be no explaining it away. Athos could keep Aramis from most punishment by 'forgiving' him, but musketeers must to at least a vague extent be morally upstanding, and Aramis would almost certainly be forced from the regiment for it. Admittedly it's the last thing to worry about - this could kill Aramis before it could have him discharged in shame - but still, still . . .
Constance says, very quietly, "They're going to need us."
D'Artagnan squeezes her hand. Yes. They would do as much for the two of them. In all things, whatever the price, they are all of them always committed to each other. Family, under this roof, is a matter much too important to leave to blood.
Constance draws her breath in, and smiles in a slightly tight way. "All this bother," she says. "Do you think all children are like this or just all of ours?"
D'Artagnan is quiet for a second, then says, "They're not all children, Athos manages to be quiet mature sometimes."
She laughs. She has the loveliest laugh, Madame d'Artagnan, and he hates to kiss her to cut it off but he just can't help himself.
*
"Come on, little sausage dog," she whispers, as Charles holds his chubby arms up determinedly for Mama, and with the sun not yet risen every other child in the room still sleeps. Charles makes another impatient noise and she hushes him, lifting him from the cradle to her hip, glancing across at Geneviève, always the slightest sleeper, but she gives no sign of waking in the bed beside her sister; only the dog has her head up to watch Constance's movements. She is a strange girl, Geneviève, the sober way she watches with her husband's dark eyes, and how the two of them hardly more than children themselves produced so serious a creature Constance never has known. Geneviève shares the bed with Maria, sleeping with her thumb in her mouth. When Charles is big enough he'll go into the bed beside Jean-Armand, and Aramis' new baby can go in the cradle.
Constance makes this plan with a certain degree of determination: it is what will happen, only a few months from now. For now, though, she creeps her quietly creaky way from the room, and softly closes the door behind herself.
She pads her way downstairs, wrapping her shawl closer around herself - chilly with the sun not up - and rubbing Charles' back as he begins his grumping for his milk again. She wants him properly onto solids soon, she just finds the feedings too tying, she can never leave him for too long for fittings and visits to cloth merchants, she has to be constantly with a child at her hip. Men don't have to hurry home to get the baby fed. Men don't have a clue.
Well, one of them has half of a clue, the one she finds sitting at the kitchen table in front of a candle, hands gripping tight to the wood, giving her a tight sort of smile without turning his head. "Madame d'Artagnan," he greets her, and she says, "Monsieur de la Fère. Can you take him while I get the fire lit?"
He's silent for a second, mouth still a little open, and she doesn't understand why he's sitting here silent with only a candle for company. Then he says, "Forgive me, Constance, I don't dare move."
He'd said the nausea was worse this time, and she knows how awful it can be. She says, "It doesn't matter." and hikes Charles higher on her hip, pulling open the door on the oven to check it's clean for the day's fire - Porthos normally has the sense to scrape it out when it goes out the night before, and all she has to do is slot in some logs from the basket by the door. "Is it bad?"
"No, it's fine." Aramis says, and smiles. "So long as I don't move or breathe too quickly. Or too slowly, for that matter."
"Have you drunk something?"
"Constance, you're a good woman, you wouldn't make me."
"You're drinking some water. I'll fetch it from the well after this one's stopped fussing." She lights a twist of straw from the candle and leaves the door of the range open for it to catch, then sits at the other side of the kitchen table and lets her shawl fall open. "Eyes," she says, and Aramis obediently closes them, but doesn't otherwise move a muscle, doesn't even relax his hold of the table, if anything he tightens it. She opens her blouse, says, "Are you dizzy?"
"It reminds me," Aramis murmurs, and he is keeping his breath very carefully steady, "of being hit in the head."
"It's a child, not a concussion."
"It seems undecided as yet." He's quiet for a moment, as Charles sets to his hungry morning feeding. "It wasn't like this with him," Aramis says, eyes closed. "Jean-Armand. I never knew how untroublesome a guest he was."
Constance wipes at Charles' chin with a crooked finger, he's always a sloppy eater. "He's always been an eerily well-behaved child for one of yours."
"I know. It baffles me too." Aramis grins but then stifles it, mouth flattening, fingers flexing on the table. Constance says, "Are you alright?" but he doesn't reply, clearly doesn't dare to risk it. She sighs, and holds her own baby close.
"We know it's worth it," she says, watching Charles' big brown eyes, their long dark lashes as he blinks sleepily. She brushes his cheek. "They're such angels when they're little."
Aramis breathes slowly, eyes closed, and murmurs, "Some of them never cease to be so."
Aramis loves that boy of his in ways Constance didn't know that fathers did love their children, not until them, and not until she saw d'Artagnan stand there crying when Geneviève was first handed to him either. It's seemed to Constance unfair that Aramis couldn't have more, as desperately attached to his child as he is, and he's always been delighted for each of her births - he keeps his eyes closed now because she asks him to, he's been there to help with each of her births and there's little he's left to see of her, he's the only man in the house the midwife will have in the room when it's time - and though she never sees a drop of jealousy in him, only sometimes wistfulness, she wouldn't resent him a pang now and then. She knows how much he loves children. He adores hers as well as his own, her own daughters are devoted to him, and she thinks that he would resent less than she would being trapped in this house with the children all day long. She wants to get out there and get on with her life, as much as she loves her children and does love to be part of their lives. For all the idiocy she's seen him partake in, if Aramis were allowed none of it, if he had been locked into this house as any truly respectable husband would have demanded of him, he would probably have put up very little fight. His own pregnancies are deadly enough to get some of his desire for danger out of him, and the sheer terror of your child in the world - a world where splinters can turn to infection, banged heads to concussion, sneezes to desperate sickness (a cough, just a cough) - exhausts him of the rest. He gets quite enough excitement when the children announce that they're bored.
She remembers Jean-Armand's birth. Her stomach is already stocking up its dread, now that he's determined to do it again.
She says, watching the blink of Charles' long dark lashes as he feeds, "Would you stay in with them all day, if you could?"
Aramis is quiet a moment, clearly considering it, then says, "No. Well, I'd embarrass him when he got bigger." His grin twitches broader again, then sobers a little. "And they need me out there with them, anyway. My husbands and yours."
"You only have the one, Aramis."
"Technicalities. I wish I had the time for all of it, really. All of Jean-Armand's life and all of theirs. But then I always do want too many things."
"Like husbands," she mutters, and he laughs, then his fingers go to claws on the table and his whole body goes rigid in his regret of it.
Once she might have been scandalised beyond the ability to speak by those three musketeers. That was a long time ago now. There is much worse in the world than their approach to love, and she doesn't know how anyone could look in disgust on the tendernesses she's seen them share, their fond teasing, their small affectionate touches. She is aware that there are larger affectionate touches between them, Aramis' present nausea speaks of that, but she tries not to think of that. It would be impolite, even if it does permit of a certain warming curiosity.
There is also that strange level on which they are rather innocent and she is someone they are a little awed of the secret knowledge of, Aramis particularly, because she is the house's only woman and men really don't have a clue. Aramis has learned some, out of necessity. He's had a very different response to his body bleeding, when it chooses to as rarely and erratically as it does, since the lost child, since the bleeding must mean memories to him that she can't bring herself to imagine. But before, the first time he bled under this roof, he ran in a panic to her.
Quick boot-heels on the floorboards outside, a rapid thudding of the flat of a fist on the bedroom door, and his urgent, "Constance Constance Constance Constance -" which d'Artagnan, pulling his shirt on over his head first thing in a morning, went to answer. Aramis met him with a smile, took his shoulders and quickly rotated him out of the room and himself inside it, saying, "Forgive me, d'Artagnan, I need to borrow your wife."
D'Artagnan said, "Wh-" and Aramis slammed the door on him.
Constance had quickly pulled her shawl around herself, almost entirely dressed but she knew her hair was a mess, and said as he turned to face her, "What the hell are y-"
"I'm -" He made desperate, unhelpful gestures with his hands. "Bleeding. I'm bleeding. What do you do? What do you do when you - I've had to stuff - I don't know how you - what do you do?"
He looked so helpless, so lost, and she hardly knew what to say, she'd imagined having this talk with her daughter one day but this . . . she said, "What have you used?"
"Some cloth." She knows, and he knows that she knows, that he sleeps with two men under this roof, sometimes rather overenthusiastically audibly, and for God's sake she's had her hand inside him, but in that moment he just looked so embarrassed, at his own cluelessness as much as everything else. "I've - in my - underclothes. But I don't know what to - what do women do?"
Constance had found herself embarrassed to say that some, the country girls especially, simply wore a dark chemise so it wouldn't show. "We can make you some padding," she'd said, he looked so frantic, she'd taken his arms and kept her voice soothing. "Sew it to a belt. It - shouldn't show." Suddenly trousers, an item of clothing she'd always held in some envy for how practical they looked, particularly in bad weather, struck her as nonsensical items of clothing compared to skirts; what if the added bulk did show?
"But," he said, and he looked at her almost like a child. "What if it shows through? What if it," His face had, if anything, drained of its colour even more, "gets through? What if I have to fight or ride or -"
"Alright, it's alright, we'll think this through, don't panic." She'd rubbed at his arms a little and understood that look in his eyes then. He smiles his way through a lot of comments that set her blood to boil, she's heard them second-hand from her husband, she once saw dots of blood on d'Artagnan's hand he hadn't noticed had flecked him and he'd had to confess came from a fight with a Red Guard who'd had something to say when Aramis walked past. Aramis has endured a lot of mockery without so much as flickering his smile, but to be seen in public to bleed like this really might crumple him. She lives with him, counts him as a friend - a good friend, despite himself - and she knows him, knows his fastidiousness, his manners - his vanity, really. This, the mess and smell of this, this he never has found any peace with, even before it meant to him what it now does.
She'd said, "Don't go in today. Tell them you're sick."
"That would be a lie," Aramis said. "I have my duty."
"I bet you have cramps as well," she said. "Heat in your back? Headache? Fatigue?" He opened his mouth and then closed it again, and his eyes on hers were a little afraid of the magic trick she'd just managed, knowing symptoms he hadn't named. "Sounds like sickness to me," she'd said briskly. "You're not going in. I'll find some clean cloths, you need a bath, that usually makes me feel better. That and a cry, anyway."
His eyes searched hers, still too close to frantic, and then he covered them with a hand and kneaded at his temples. He said, low and hoarse with embarrassment, "I need your help to clean the sheets."
"Of course." she pressed his hand. "Come on. I'll tell my husband you're not well, we can warm a brick to help with the cramps."
"I had to hide them," he said, and his mouth cracked a lopsided smile. "The sheets. I had to hide them from them, I didn't want them to realise - of course they're going to realise - I'm sorry, I am - not dealing with this very well."
"It's alright." She took his hand, opened it to close it with both of hers. "Don't worry. I've had enough practice for the both of us."
Now she looks across at him, pale but for the shadows under his eyes, even his lips pale he's pressed them so hard, eyes closed through the nausea. There are things she has had more practice in, and can comfort and guide him through; and there are things they are both better able to deal with, and protect their lovers from. She reaches across the table to touch his fingers, rigid on the edge of the wood, and he doesn't look at her, just breathes, carefully.
She closes her fingers over his. She knows the fear of it. She knows the loss of it, thick in her throat as pain already. She holds his hand, and her own warm heavy feeding baby, and she scrapes up the courage from the depths of her guts to whisper to him, alone together, "Are you afraid?"
They both know that he is. What she's offering him is a space to be allowed to be afraid in. He breathes, slowly. His fingers squeeze the table, then relax a little under the stroking of her thumb. His mouth stretches not really a smile, and he says, softly rasped, "The most important thing is to protect them." He keeps his neck steady, though she sees the pulse of fear there in his throat. "I can't bear their helplessness," he says very quietly. "I can't put them through that. There are . . . there are things we protect them from."
"Of course." she says, and her chin is jumping, but she squeezes his fingers and doesn't cry. He loosens his hand from the table, takes hers, presses it and she presses back. He says, head a little low and taking a careful breath in, "I am more grateful than I have the words for to have you as a friend, madame."
"You idiot. So are all of us, for you."
She knows he kept the flame of her children's fragile lives burning in them once before. She knows what it's like to watch it go out; she knows what binds them, awkwardly lifts the arm she has around Charles to get at the tears underneath her eyelashes with a knuckle. Aramis says, automatic on sensing a woman might require it - whether he thinks she's moving for her tears or the child's dribbling is all the same to him - "I have a handkerchief."
"You can't move to pass me it."
"- Lord, I can't." His neck tightens on not laughing, she sees it in his shoulders. "I don't know if I forgot what it was like or if this is so much worse th-"
He stops, and she holds his hand tight. "They're all different," she says. "I don't know why but they are, you can't judge each one against another. And your body's older now -"
"Oh, low blows from everyone I trust recently," he says, but looks too tired to be offended.
"We'll send for the midwife today," she says. "To ease your mind. I'm sure it's alright. Aramis, I'm sure it's alright."
". . . tonight, for the midwife." he allows. "I'll be in the garrison today."
"Honestly . . ."
"No riding, no fighting, I'm not even allowed to carry anything. Captain's orders." Aramis says easily. "Constance, give me this. As soon as I am confined they'll fuss like I'm cracked china, this is the last fresh air and freedom I'll have for months."
"Alright." She honestly thinks that worry is worse for him than garrison-bound duties possibly could be, so any distraction should help.
Aramis swallows, still too grey in the face, and Charles has let go of her breast so she lets go of Aramis' hand to reach for the cloth hanging from the range, to mop at him and herself and start tying her corset again, child hugged clumsily to her hip as she works. Gripping the table again without her hand to hold, Aramis says as if he's been mulling it over, "If we send for the midwife, d'Artagnan will know."
"He already knows. He worked it out yesterday, and asked me last night." She tugs her blouse up properly, shucks Charles comfortably closer, and begins trying to massage the burp from him. "You can open your eyes now."
He doesn't, at first. He just sits there, eyes closed, gripping the table, pale with nausea. Then he blinks his eyes open, lifts his head a little, and looks at her, eyes so dark in this little light she can hardly read them. She says, "I know you wanted to keep it quiet but -"
"Not from him. I really didn't, we only . . . I only . . . God." He lifts a hand and rubs one eye. "It - I'm sorry. It's complicated."
"I understand. Aramis, he understands."
"I've already put him through it the once." He closes his eyes again, tight, then takes a sharp breath in. "All of them. I can't put them all through it again. And it - it is the hardest thing because I would protect all of them, your husband included, all of them from any of it, and yet I can't because I know I need them now -"
"They will never know how much you protect them," Constance says, her own voice shaking. "Isn't that exactly what you're trying to protect them from?"
He opens his eyes again, looks at her very sad but more composed, now. "Yes." he says, as simple as that, and neither of them question why he doesn't try to shield her from it as well. The two of them, they understand it. They've both done the endurance and the moaning and the blood. More than that, they've both done the tears and the tearing and the eventual slither of the afterbirth, the menstrual cramps and migraines and misery, the grieving over tiny graves, flesh of their flesh, body they let loose into the world and it makes no sense at all that it should be buried anywhere but in their arms.
She wipes her eyes again. He reaches across the table, taking his breath in slow through his nose, and she takes his hand before he can overlean his nausea and make himself worse.
They protect their husbands, the two of them. Those men need to think that they can cope, that they have it all under control, that they understand and can take care of things. But they don't understand and it's left instead to the two of them and they're both terrified, always, for the children, for the others, and she knows exactly what he means because it just has to be borne. The helplessness on d'Artagnan's face, and she remembers how fucking young he sounded when he told her, whispered in the parlour doorway as she came out from adjusting a dress for a client, what had happened to delay their ride home, what had happened, what . . .
They are honest with each other, and she can see how numb with fear Aramis really is; he knows too much what this going wrong is like to live through. And so she squeezes his hand, offers him what strength she has, because they have to be strong for the others. And then they hear the creak of a floorboard overhead, the thump of feet, part their hands and Constance goes back to tending to Charles, Aramis flexes his fingers on the edge of the table and schools his breathing.
Constance says, "I'll send word to the midwife this morning for you."
Aramis says, quietly, "Thank you, Constance."
More shifting overhead, and low male voices. Aramis closes his eyes for a second, as if containing the rawness of the fear; then he opens them, already smiling, already settled again into the shape of someone who knows what he's doing and knows that it'll all work out fine. He says, "You needn't trouble yourself for the water. Those two are responsible for this entire situation anyway, they can fetch it for me."
She says, "This is what you get for getting greedy about husbands," and his mouth twitches hard with wanting to laugh, wicked-bright joy in his eyes. And it rushes in her chest, a certainty then, they're not losing him and he's not losing another desperately longed-for child, God could never be so cruel and God knows Aramis could never allow it. She was so certain that no-one could survive that last hellish birth she helped him through, the whole thing so brutal she couldn't imagine it possible to live through and recover from it. And there he sits, smirking away, fiercely alive and utterly terrified and strong enough to set that terror back to protect his lovers, first.
So she takes a breath, and considers it, then advises very seriously right to his eyes, "Milk it." And then he does laugh, and suck his breath in on his regret, but he doesn't stop grinning and when Charles makes a curious noise Aramis looks down at him on Constance's lap, and says to him, "You must never tell them, child, of the wiles we do use."
Charles chews his fingers, and looks at him with open, puzzled brown eyes. Constance runs her hand over the boy's head and kisses him there, and when she looks up again Aramis is watching the baby with something on his face so quietly . . .
Never jealous. Not, in this moment, wistful.
She runs the backs of her fingers over her sweet boy's head, and reads from Aramis' face, hope . . . ?