Pack Mentality pt 4.5
. . . long . . .
Note: In which Aramis hits on kangaroo parenting because that's just how his brain is *wired*.
Aramis sings, to quiet her. She looks at him as if mostly confused by what he's doing, but she does stop crying; well, it's a gift.
Constance's children have already taught him that not every baby is Jean-Armand, but Aramis is still surprised that all of his babies aren't Jean-Armand. Because his little wolf, when just a cub, was never much given to crying, and Aramis took it very much for granted. Everything was interesting to Jean-Armand, everything was to grab at or gum at or laugh at, he was such a sunny, merry little thing, so disinclined to fuss. And Aramis remembers Geneviève's solemnity, which paired with d'Artagnan's expression of awe and terror whenever he held her made Aramis have to leave the room now and then to stifle his fits of giggles, he's never known a child so entirely sober as Geneviève. Maria was independent and cross, little Alexandre - God rest his innocent soul - impatient, already showing the beginnings of both his parents' hot tempers, before the Lord took him to keep, and - he draws a breath in, knowing this like the stone cross above that poor baby's head - there is nothing anyone can do about that. Charles is an easily amused baby, though grumpy when defied. And Belle -
Never, Aramis thinks as he watches her frowning eyes, could a child be so much Athos' child as Belle is. Jean-Armand as a young baby they couldn't even ascertain as anyone's but Aramis', and yet Belle already knows her own mind so entirely and will not be subject to anyone else's will, and certainly has no intention of being impressed by him unless he warrants it. She won't be swaddled, complains and cries, and so small as she is her cries are high little mewls, they hit Aramis in the chest on a level he can't understand the horror of, bleating almost like a lost lamb; he pulls the swaddling from her before the wet nurse has left the room and won't have them put it back on. He remembers how she squirmed in fury inside him for space; now she's granted all the world to walk in, and he won't be the one to see her limbs bound again. Between his fear for her getting cold, his fear for her being overheated, he allows instinct to override every other exhausted part of his mind: skin to skin is the only way to be certain of her temperature, tucked inside his own shirt at his chest where he can warm her with his own body. Wet nurses tut and bundle her in blankets again, which Aramis endures - for visitors she has to be properly presented - but he knows she's at her safest with her cheek tucked right to his throat. She even cries less, then. Settles as if finally, grumpily content, and sleeps.
Really she does very little, but then new babies don't. She tests her arms and legs; she looks at him as if confused by him; she cries when the world proves disappointing, which it frequently does; she sleeps. But she is so small, and Aramis does feel a terror in him only sopped, and then only slightly, when she's either sleeping on his chest or drinking at a midwife's. Either of those states feels wholesome and good, will help her grow, will make her strong. On one level fear has become so omnipresent he hardly feels it, a nausea that's replaced any ordinary sense of his own guts inside him. On another level, Lord, she is so beautiful, and so perfect for her smallness, tiny seashell fingernails, feet hardly the size of his thumbs. His prayers he's certain are nonsensical they're such a jumble of everything and yet he knows they're understood all the same, the tumble of awe and gratitude and fear fear fear.
He sings for her. She deigns to sleep on his chest, arms cradled around her, she settling for this for now if nothing better is available after all. He remembers his wooing of Athos, years ago - he honestly had, at first, only wanted the man's friendship, and only that because it seemed so improbable that he would ever get it, but the strange joy of trying to reach him, even now they're married and share a bed, that he's never lost - and kisses her cheek though she complains of his beard, makes an angry noise, and he spends some time then arranging her blankets to how she seems to accept them best as an apology.
"Born on silk sheets," Aramis murmurs. "I think you have some ideas, my girl."
He wonders what his own beloved departed Mama would have made of this . . .
She's fresh from a wet nurse and in her blankets when the door opens - no knock - and in his first immediate tensing of his arms around her, the only thought is shielding her; the second thought is his pistol on the bedside table, to kill the bastard first. But if Richelieu has sent an assassin he's made a particularly improbable choice of one because it's the King walking in as the musketeer outside holds the door open for him, Louis looking really so very pleased and amused, and Aramis tries to shift himself to sit and his body -
It punches the breath out of him, the pain, he feels the glut of blood soak into the bandages between his legs, swallows and tries not to shiver his breath, says weakly, "You'll have to forgive me, your Majesty, I can't . . ."
Louis waves a vague hand - Aramis has never felt comfortable around the King, not for years, and hopes that being barged in upon in the bed he recently gave birth in will disguise the worst of that now - and approaches eager to squint down on the child in the blanket. "What luck you were here when it happened. Is it a boy?"
"A daughter, your Majesty."
Louis tsks. "Hard luck. You can always try again, though. Was the last one a boy?"
Aramis performs the task he knows his lovers think him incapable of, and, in that moment, he does not strike the King's jugular out with a single righteous blow. "Yes, your Majesty."
"Well, then. Pretty little thing, isn't she?" Louis sits on the edge of the bed and grins away at Belle, who makes a cross noise but doesn't open her eyes. Aramis knows that he has no choice in acting as Louis' pet breeding musketeer, his role in the King's life is to offer amusement, and so of course Louis is glad the birth was here, because he's no intention of riding out himself to their peasant's hovel to chortle over Aramis so fresh from childbearing. "Is she meant to be that small?"
Easier to push, his little wolf near killed him; but harder to bear, feeling the threat of her smallness, feeling to blame for her smallness. "She'll grow," Aramis says, only quietly, and the King looks at the baby a little longer until his interest seems to dry up, and he says, "Well, I'm sure we can find her someone worth marrying when she's of age, in honour of her birth."
Aramis only smiles, trapped on the precipice of refusal, because his daughter is being married to no-one she doesn't handpick herself, his daughter is not becoming chattel for some tedious upper-class twit or brute, Aramis knows the caprice of Louis' attention and his daughter is not falling trapped under it for one moment.
But Louis doesn't notice, or care, already standing up and brushing his clothing off. "Well, congratulations and all, you'll stay a few days. I've a minor Prussian visiting tomorrow."
He says it like it's a fact, not exactly an order, request or offer, and all Aramis feels is of course. Because Aramis is a unicorn, and Aramis must be shown off to the other royals, because they don't have a breeding programme for their soldiers, do they? But it's be polite or else everyone Aramis loves faces the consequences, so he only says and keeps his voice entirely steady, "I can't thank you enough for your generosity, your Majesty."
Louis waves a hand as he walks away, looking pleased, dismissing the gratitude as a way of revelling in it; and the musketeer at the door, Bernier, looks at him from behind the King's back and Aramis gives him a single raised eyebrow back, before Bernier grins and closes the door on him again. And that leaves them alone once more, Aramis and his daughter, alone but for the ever present hum of abuse he feels in his body because the pain may peak when he moves but it never truly troughs into something ignorable.
Still, he's a soldier, and not unused to pain. He settles Belle comfortable to sleep, and closes his eyes himself, until she wails again for the wet nurse's return, and he's lurched awake and called upon to sing once more.
"I amuse the King," Aramis whispers to her as the wet nurse closes the door, and Aramis unfolds her fresh dry blankets around her from being too tight, "and I amuse you, and I do believe that you think that's what I'm here for just as much as he does." He strokes her back with his thumb, gentle and repetitive, trying to ease her back to sleep now she's full and dry once more. "In honesty, it's probably true."
Outside, it snows, he sees the flakes smack dazed off the window as they fall like moths drunk on light. He worries she's cold; then he worries she'll be overheated, and tries to bow his head and be sensible. He's so tired he feels ill with it, dizzy, he's little enough sense for his own sake right now, he hardly trusts himself with her.
He thinks he drops to sleep half-sitting with his head lolling low; he certainly comes up with a surprised jolt when the door opens and a light skipping step scurries in, followed by more sedate footsteps. His first thoughts (shield her; kill them -) dissipate with his bleary awareness that a small child has run up to the side of the bed, and is leaning up on the mattress to get a proper look at Belle in her blankets, and behind him the Queen is approaching. Her smile is currently that slightly pinched, nervous smile she wears when she's not yet ascertained which expression is proper for the occasion.
"Your Majesty," he says, his voice still too embarrassingly frail, and then to the Dauphin leaning with his mouth open to stare at the baby, "your Highness, you must excuse me, I would bow but-"
"Don't move." the Queen says, and puts her hand on the Dauphin's head, before lifting him so he can see the baby better. "Louis, don't jolt her, babies are delicate."
"She's tiny," the boy says, and looks up at his mother. "I wasn't that tiny."
The Queen meets Aramis' eye for a second, not quite apology but acknowledgment between them that children speak as they please, particularly princes, and she leans to look over Belle's face. "She is very small," she says, quietly, putting the Dauphin down again. "And very pretty."
It is some minor salve to the sting; he wishes, wishes people would stop feeling the need to note her smallness, it rends at his heart in a way that makes him feel gut-deep queasy. He knows she's small. He knows that. He knows his fault in that. But he will do anything, anything to keep her with them -
"Can I play with her?" the Dauphin says, as if already intending to, and before Aramis can panic the Queen says, "No, not when she's so small. Say goodbye now and go to your nurse, Louis. Look, she's tired."
Belle is indeed yawning, eyes still closed, though Aramis - already attuned to the storminess of her moods - anticipates a wail at any moment. The Dauphin contemplates her for a moment, then decides her not worth further attention and turns and wanders off towards the door, where a woman waits. She closes the door on them, and then they're alone.
The Queen stands beside him, and Aramis feels some blood run and blot into the cloth between his legs, and this is an acutely strange situation to be in. He says, "I would bring a chair, I can only-"
"I am not so entirely fragile," she says, and draws one over herself, to sit beside him so at least she doesn't loom so much over him. "How are you recovering, do you need anything?"
"You've been too kind already, your Majesty. And it was a very quick birth, by my standards, I can't complain." And I have my daughter, he thinks, glancing to her rather grumpy decision to return to sleep. So long as she breathes, what can I complain about? "I can only apologise for the absolute impropriety-"
"There is nothing to be apologised for. When it comes, it comes." She looks at him carefully, her face slightly less shielded now; it's always pained him, how entirely she has to mask herself, the exhaustion and isolation it must be, he's only ever been granted rare glimpses of honest expression on her face. Though, given their history, that is true of both of them in this court. She says, "I've spoken to Richelieu, both last night and this morning. He is organising with his priests to preach the sanctity of life, and to make any other amends he must for this. It has been made very clear to him that should anything befall your family, the blame for it will fall in a very particular direction, and it is in his interest to work for your protection."
Aramis is silent, then says, "Thank you, your Majesty."
The question is whether he trusts Richelieu enough to know that the man won't gamble his own neck on this. Yes, the Cardinal may find himself exposed to ruin and death for treason - they hold that old ammunition against him, and the King is unlikely to hear his side of the story now that Aramis' indiscretion must look absurd to him (How could the Queen want Aramis? Aramis is as good as a woman.) - but the man has plans coiled in plans coiled in plans, does Aramis know there's not some patient trap awaiting him and his family some way in the future, does he truly trust that Richelieu will back down from this . . . ?
Belle shifts, then, coughs and looks up at him as if angry about something and working out whether she'll attribute it to him. "Hush, hush." he sings to her. "We mustn't tantrum in front of the Queen, where did we leave our manners?"
He worries that the blankets bother her; he worries she'll be too cold, it's still snowing. He worries. He's already exhausted of it. One child out there in a dangerous world is enough, a child born early and vulnerable in the winter . . .
The Queen smiles, in a slightly stunted way, and looks at the baby as she squints her angry little eyes open. "They are a blessing," she says quietly, and Aramis looks at his daughter, and they both know what is meant and neither says anything more. It's not just worry. There are a lot of emotions Aramis has felt until they're simply what the world feels like, and grief is one of the oldest he knows. Why does anyone wonder why he acted so crazed in his youth, when every breath on his tongue had the acid tang of loss in it?
"I will take care of the Cardinal." the Queen says, voice even with resolve. "I am close enough to watch him, and the King cares more for our son than Richelieu now, the Cardinal knows to be afraid of the power I can wield if I wish to." Aramis thinks, polite and yet very honest, Your Majesty, we all fear that. "I don't want you to worry. I am - aware -"
He looks at her patiently, rocking the baby slightly in his arms, hoping for her to stay settled and not set up her screaming. The Queen takes a breath in, pulled tight to the chest, and holds her head very high. "I am aware that I may be part of the reason why Richelieu would have chosen you to target, and - and put this danger upon - upon your children -"
"None of this is your doing, your Majesty." Aramis says, and wishes he had a hand free to touch hers, and then remembers that he ought not to be touching royal hands anyway; always something he remembers too late. "The Cardinal and I - our enmity goes back to long before any reason you might think yourself involved in. And I have it on good authority that it was only the Cardinal's luck that I proved the most obvious target anyway. His real hatred is our regiment, and always has been."
The Queen is silent for some time, thinking - Aramis knows she understands what he's just told her, and is fitting the plot together for herself - and then says, "I tell my son great tales of the bravery of your regiment." Her small mouth twitches one of her truer smiles. "He will never allow his dear father to disband all his heroes."
The grin simply takes him, from the warmth in his chest out until his mouth strains with it all. "I tell my own son the very same," he says, and looks down at Belle, who squints back at him. Aramis promises her, "I'm sure that he'll tell you too, when he comes home."
The Queen tilts her head to look down at the baby, who tries to focus up at her, clearly finds it too much work, and so turns her attention back to giving Aramis a sceptical look straight from the Athos playbook, that is exactly the expression he used to wear when Aramis approached him in the garrison grinning broadly and all Athos wanted was to be left to his wine. The Queen says, "What did you name her?"
"- Isabelle." She is one of the only people left living who knows why. "'Belle' seems to have stuck."
The Queen is silent for a moment, then says, "That fits well." She touches the blankets at Belle's head, pressing them back to give herself a clearer view. "She will be a beauty. The King is already discussing the generals' sons she might be married to." Aramis' head lurches up, but her mouth is puckered with amusement, and she says, "He'll have forgotten in a week. He certainly won't remember long enough for her to come of age."
Belle gives an angry hiccup, because he's holding the blankets too tightly. He forces his arms to relax as much as he can. "It changes matters," he says quietly, looking down at her. "A daughter. How . . . how in this world a woman can be safe, and yet still free enough to be all she can be." He knows that the Queen understands that. They both understand that.
He looks up at her, smiles. "Would you like to hold her?"
When they are left alone again, Aramis and his daughter, he sits up as much as he can - it hurts so constantly that so long as he can manage the big hurt of the shifting, it hardly seems to matter if he's entirely horizontal or not, it hurts either way - to look down at her, singing for her to keep her quiet, to keep her deep blue eyes on his. A daughter. It does change matters. It changes everything.
He's always wanted Jean-Armand safe, always, bitter between his teeth it's all he's wanted. But that's been something he's understood, Jean-Armand's safety. They can do the responsible thing, they can teach him his sword and pistol, teach him his resourcefulness, and quietly shepherd him away from soldiering - Aramis is determined on this, certain of it, swears it to every saint, his son is never setting foot on a battlefield. There are dangers Jean-Armand is liable to face, but they can prepare him for those, minimise them, and he can wear a sword and pistol, as much as possible he can protect himself.
Belle . . .
She can't wear a sword. Aramis will certainly look into a little pistol for her - they make quite pretty ones for ladies, mother-of-pearl inlaid in the handles, and she can have pockets sewn in her skirts for them. But the dangers she'll face in life are so different, are so - Aramis closes his eyes briefly, and breathes the fear out cold. He knows what those dangers are and they aren't truly his to face, he does wear a sword and pistol, he is safe. For the most part.
Because they've looked, and asked how much, and looked, and tried to force the matter when they could, and looked. All his life people have looked at Aramis - he doesn't place blame for that, he's aware that his face is worth more than a glance - but those who know who he is, what he is, they've looked in a way that shocked, at first, he didn't understand his own instinctive response of fear revulsion dread. The belligerence and aggression in those looks - or the simple assessing of what they consider his flesh worth - they were stunning, before he learned to not notice them. Briefly, he thought they were for him. He thought these looks were unique to his status, not quite man, not quite woman, and men in inns giving him an obvious sizing up, curious or aggressive, Would I fuck that? What would fucking that be like? I'd show that what it is to be fucked.
Very quickly he did remember that he is not special, that they don't look at him like that because he's a unicorn. That's how they look at women. That's how they look at all women. That is what women face: men's contemplation of whether they would and what it would be like and how they would enjoy it, without contemplation for the lady herself at all. And now he has a daughter. He has a daughter, and he's had to teach himself not to mind the looks coming from men because if they tried anything Aramis could make the bastards wish they never had because they're never threateningly bigger than Aramis, they're never more armed than he is, never too dangerous for him to feel he can deal with if he had to, but if he were - smaller, if he wasn't allowed a sword, if he was . . .
How, how, do women bear it?
The wet nurse must be due soon. He strokes his daughter's pink cheek with the back of a finger, and watches her eyes puzzled and narrow on his, and whispers in Spanish, just for them, just for the two of them.
"They will say you are beautiful and delicate and you were born on silk sheets," he says so quietly for her, and she holds his gaze, apparently thinking very hard. "And they will think of you as a little princess, such a pretty sparkly prize for them, such an ornament to them. They will for your entire life long look at you as less, as easily dealt with, as a pawn on a chessboard of bishops and knights and kings. They will talk over your sensible conversation, patronise your earned knowledge, and assume that you exist to make them feel better about themselves. And I cannot change that, little one."
He runs his thumb over her brow, and watches her eyes, as she watches him so sceptically back.
"They will underestimate you every day of your life. All you can do is ignore their petty idiocy and sail over them like the wrath of the storm, wings cast of lightning, thunder shaking in your breast. I cannot make the world respect you. But I can give you the prettiest dagger, my darling little child, and I will teach you how to gut three men without soiling your skirts, I will teach you how to reload in the dark by the feel of your fingertips, I will teach you how to use your teeth."
He strokes over the shape of her tiny nose, and she makes a small questioning noise, somehow more satisfied with him now, as if finally he's speaking sense to her. "They will think you are so pretty and fragile and ownable," he whispers to her. "But I know your fathers and your brother, little one, and we know each other, you and I, I've already felt your claws. They'll call you a princess and never know that you are a wolf princess, those who look down on you. It will be your mightiest weapon, that they don't see. They will look down upon you, and never understand your teeth until you already know the taste of the inside of their jugulars." Belle looks up at him, and Aramis looks back, calm with his certainty of this. "They will always underestimate you. Your life's work will be practising the mercy they don't deserve, and not destroying them."
Aramis has never met anyone with the capacity for shaking the world that Athos possesses, more power than it would be safe for any other man to possess, because unthinkingly his friends would follow him to Hell, they would follow him into anything, terrifying as Athos is in his own strength the sheer respect he commands without even trying for it could raise an army and bring down a country. And now his daughter gazes up at Aramis as regal as an empress, and Aramis understands everything this girl can be, everything she can achieve, every way the world will try to obstruct her and she will give it that look, and the world may, for once, quail.
Aramis whispers, awed under that gaze, "Lord in heaven, I'm not worthy of you."
Jean-Armand has always been so easy to please, Aramis has rarely felt inadequate to the boy he's been so accommodating to his papa, so generous in loving him back. Now Aramis needs to work. Now he needs to be a better father, not the sort of man who runs out pregnant into a deadly city with the intent of murdering the Cardinal. Now he'll have two of them looking at him like that, father and daughter, and he needs to be on his very best behaviour.
"I will try not to give you too much to forgive," he promises his little wolf princess, as she manages to escape an arm from her blankets, and flail it for something to grab; he offers a finger, which she latches onto in triumph, and squeezes in a way that belies all smallness, all vulnerability of her early birth. "And I will love you more than my breath, for the eternity of my soul."
When she sleeps, he sleeps. He'd rather be awake - rather watch her breathe, the midwife told him to mind that she's breathing at first - but his body still feels spent by the birth, the pain exhausts him as much as everything else and he fears weakening himself, fears the fever he knows he could bring on, his duty is to live for her. He wakes when she does, when she wails for the wet nurse or clean blankets or just because she's still stuck here and it's not even trying to be adequate for her - and he wakes to see Athos hesitate, then reach down to brush his hair back, and hush him to go back to sleep; wakes and sees Porthos looking in from the open door, his single smiling nod, before he closes it again with a quiet click.
He's woken on the second day (his daughter is two days old, his son seven years and four months; this is how the calendar moves, for Aramis) by the King walking cheerfully and noisily in with two Prussians (oh good) and waking Belle, who lets her wrath be known. The Prussians are polite and as interested as anyone would be with the freak show Louis is offering them, Aramis and his screeching baby. All Aramis can do, feeling very threatened and vulnerable and struggling to calm his furious daughter, is try to smile, and feel how heavy with blood the bandages between his legs are before he's had any chance to change them.
Treville visits, late in the morning. Aramis is still feeling rattled, still feeling beleaguered and defensive, but he relaxes a little to see the captain, more to realise it's Porthos holding the door open for him; he knows he's safe in the palace, it's just the indignity to be borne. When the door is closed Treville says, "I'm not imposing, if it's not a good time -"
"You're always welcome, captain." he says, and can't sit, but lifts her a little for him to see. "Come tell her how pretty she is, I believe she already assumes that's the proper protocol."
She is of course not merely very pretty but very small, and that remains a concern. But the captain walks over holding his hat under his arm, looks down at her and as she blinks and squints back up at him, judging this new face looming over her, he smiles, such a tired, relieved smile - because, of course, Aramis has managed not to give birth to a child so obviously not-Athos' that the regiment implodes, as much as anything else - and he confirms, quietly, "She is indeed a beauty."
Belle gives him a suspicious look, and that makes the captain's smile come more true, and he sits in the chair beside the bed. "You're recovering?"
If Aramis manages to avoid a fever - and still he feels the clot of blood between his legs, even with fresh bandages there, women face the fear of infection as soldiers fresh from battle do - all he's waiting for are the wounds to heal. "I can't complain. I - did not mean for this to happen in the palace, captain, I'm - sorry I -"
Treville massages his forehead and waves a hand. "Louis is pleased, as I'm sure you're already aware. And it's safer than many places you could have chosen."
Aramis brushes the blankets back so Belle has a better view of the room, which she complains for frequently, and concentrates on her. "How is the garrison?"
". . . relieved. The atmosphere is better. I believe most men are glad the worst is over and they're waiting for you to come back as normal."
Aramis closes his eyes, then opens them again, and nods. His daughter needs him, and it may be some months before he trusts her held with a nurse while he's away, even before he could trust her in the basket beside Constance if her family can safely return to Paris yet. But he's obliged to remain a soldier, he can't stay away too long. Hesitating means failing, in too many eyes. Of course he's fearful for his daughter. He already knows how constrained his own choices are, and hers can only ever be narrower still.
"In some ways it helps," Treville says. "That this happened in the palace, under the King's blessing. It's made some men think twice."
And she is so harmlessly pink, Aramis thinks, and she has such blue eyes, and that makes them think again, doesn't it? And he looks at Treville, and almost wants to say it - it comes to the tip of his tongue like the trip of sugar, until he stifles it - you know, don't you? You know what we three are. You know that this is Porthos' daughter just as much as Jean-Armand is Athos' son. You know what our family is, you know we've always been entirely inseparable. You know that none of us knew how she would look until she was born, and that how she looks changes nothing about her parentage to us. You know.
But the rest of the world cannot, because there's simply no knowing what it could unleash. Aramis has children he can't court scandal for, lovers he has to keep safe, a regiment he's now responsible for not destroying through his own lack of respectability. He cannot make mistakes, every one will be amplified as if through a polished lens, he has to be patient and charming and pretty-mannered and polite, he has to be exceptionally good at everything he does. They always used to laugh that he could both sew and shoot so finely, though the laughter sounded less friendly after his son was born. Now he's never allowed a crooked stitch or shot, ever, because they will always watch, always be waiting to confirm to themselves what they already believe to be true, and Aramis has children to protect. Their futures, their education, their careers, their marriages, their children; everything could be tainted if their papa courts too much contempt.
Already he's tired, the thought of it exhausts him. But he has a daughter, and he made his promises to the Virgin over a course of months, and he'll keep them. He won't mind anything, so long as he has his children. He could bear worse than this. Endurance will feel like a blessing, compared to what he could have faced.
"I don't know when I can return to the garrison," he says. "I need to heal. And I still don't trust the streets, not for her."
"You certainly can't move yet. How long do - ladies lie it out?"
"I think it depends on the lady," Aramis says, and cannot in delicacy explain to the captain that his anatomy rather differs from a lady's, in a way that makes every movement a gamble on how much he'll bleed right now. "But I hope to come back soon. I certainly can't overstay my welcome here."
"There's a guard room we can move you into if necessary. We're not parading you through Paris if it's still dangerous."
Aramis takes a breath in, and that is more of a relief than he can really face right now; being forced to take Belle, so small and vulnerable, into a world which hates him is a particularly numbing sort of fear to him. In fact, a guard room sounds like heaven. Luxury he likes but this room makes him feel small, over-aware of his debts, desperately over-aware that someone of his own birth should certainly not be giving birth here. A guard room would mean soldiers in and out for safety and a functional set up, a brazier, a cot he and the child could occupy. He's been a soldier for his entire adult life, and he needs very little besides that.
His son, of course. He needs his son. He aches for Jean-Armand to meet his sister. He wanted a sister, he wanted one so much. And Aramis is simply unused to feeling like he has done something as entirely and innocently right as giving that boy exactly what he really, really wanted.
He looks at Belle, who coughs, which tightens his heart before she simply squints angrily at him and doesn't repeat the cough (Probably not pneumonia, he tells himself as his heart bangs his ribcage, probably not, not yet, probably not? He mustn't panic until Athos or Porthos can tell him whether he's reason to. He knows himself irrational around his children, but they will know, they will know . . .). "D'Artagnan isn't here," he says, shifting her closer to his chest, stroking around her cheek with a gently crooked knuckle. "And I want her baptised as soon as possible, it's already late, as far as I can see. So I wondered - captain -" She makes a cross noise, a get on with it noise; she will have none of his talking around a subject, he already knows, she'll have none of his pretty manners, she wants action, or nothing at all. "Would you mind being her godfather? Porthos will be, but she'll need another."
Treville is silent, then says, "It would please and honour me more than I can express."
Aramis looks up at him, and smiles, and there's a lot of history between the two of them - Aramis has been a soldier for a long time and Treville his commanding officer almost as long, Treville has owned his allegiance for far longer than his own father ever did - and he says, because he trusts very few men with so precious a load but this man, his captain he does, "Would you like to hold her?"
In the end, he's in the palace for a little under three weeks. It's long enough for the King's visits, bringing visiting nobility and diplomats to gawp at his pet hermaphrodite, to trail off, and long enough for Aramis to start testing the act of heaving himself to his own two feet, without Porthos and Athos there to do the heavy lifting. It's Porthos who helps the first time he grits his teeth in a refusal to whimper as his body is moved to sit, and lifted bodily upright so his feet are on the floor, baby in his arms. But Aramis knows he can't leave until he can, in his shuffling, shambling way, bear his own weight at least to the window to let Belle look out. It's a dangerous world they look out on, and Aramis needs to at least be strong enough to stand to be strong enough to protect her, while she's in need of it.
The world doesn't look so dangerous, done up in all its lacy white finery for his daughter to look upon. She does look, with that fixed, imperious gaze of hers, faintly suspicious as always. He thinks of his boy out there somewhere, his guileless, unsuspicious boy, wonders if there's snow in the south, thinks of him playing and laughing with the other children in it. He wonders if their first letters have even reached him yet, if he yet knows of his little sister, that Aramis has done for him exactly what he wanted and is grateful until his throat chokes with it just to be able to give him this.
"He'll adore you," Aramis murmurs, and then looks down at his dark-lashed little girl's accusing blue eyes, and solemnly shakes her hand by the finger it's squeezing. "Everyone will adore you."
There's a knock at the door and Aramis glances across, shifts Belle up to his chest and leans his lower back to the windowsill, to trust he's supported, so one hand can fall to the pistol in the belt slung over his nightshirt. Royalty does not knock, which limits the number of suspects it might be. But the door opens onto Athos, walking in and frowning at him standing by the window, and he says, "Should you be doing that?"
Porthos' head immediately looks around the door as well, and Aramis rolls his eyes, and limps his minute steps - he does not dare a long stride - back towards the bed. "I would forget how to use my legs if you had your way."
Athos looks back at Porthos, then waves a hand as if something has been given up on, and in the end both of them enter the room, Porthos closing the door behind them. Athos walks up as Aramis sits, with a hiss of breath between his teeth - the pain is an enormous deal less, but he's still more than tender - on the edge of the bed, and he reaches to take the child from Aramis. She transfers her regal gaze onto Athos as he holds her up and returns it with a differently suspicious expression, ascertaining all her limbs on her and blood in her as he always seems to need to, before he turns and hands her on to Porthos, who simply rocks her in her arms a little and watches Aramis.
"It may be better if you can walk," Athos says. "Though please don't attempt it again without one of us here yet."
"But you can't always be here, and I don't know if you've noticed, I'm a little starved for entertainment. I've even run out of people to apologise to at this point."
The King and Queen for his extremely unseemly use of one of their beds; the maidservants his labour disturbed in the middle of the night; the physician he almost shattered the skull of, who he has at least trusted enough to visit Belle and ascertain her health a few times. Her smallness worries. But she eats well, sleeps well, cries with an honest lustiness, no frailty in her, and given that Aramis has little entertainment in this room but praying he's almost worn out the pads of his fingers on his rosary for her.
Athos rubs an eyebrow with the pad of a thumb, giving Aramis a long look as if trying to ascertain how he'll respond before the words are said, and Porthos just hush-hush-hushes the baby, rocking her in his arms like the even trot of a horse. Athos says, "We think it may soon be time for you to return to the garrison."
Aramis looks immediately to the window, where the world outside is innocent with snow as if the sin underneath no longer exists, but Aramis knows better. "The atmosphere has calmed," Athos says. "And we've sat in more churches these last two weeks than - than I don't even know."
"Enough f'r you to approve of," Porthos says, and Aramis gives him a wry sort of grin.
"Enough to ascertain that Richelieu has done as he promised," Athos says. "Priests are very certain right now about the miracle and sanctity of life. 'Thou shalt not kill' comes up repeatedly, and the admonition that mortals are not permitted judgement as the Lord is."
Aramis' eyes are on the window, and his arms grind empty as he folds them where his daughter isn't. "Still . . ."
"We c'n borrow a carriage. Just in case, but it means no-one'll even see you."
"And we'd feel better about it," Athos says. "You in the garrison, so we know exactly how guarded you are. And -"
Aramis stares at the white world outside of the window, then blinks and looks across to Athos, and tilts his head. "And'"
Athos looks at Porthos, then down at the child in his arms, face softening, then back at Aramis gentler again. "And then we can share a bed again," he says. "We miss you."
"Athos," Aramis says, honestly touched; he's missed them, though distracted enough by the baby beside him every night.
Athos says, "I find my feet get cold."
Aramis rolls his eyes, and looks to Porthos as Belle kicks in her blankets and begins to squall, deciding she's dissatisfied; he raises his arms and Porthos hastily hands her over, both he and Athos are utterly hopeless with crying children. "Well, well," Aramis sings to her, bouncing her closer in his arm and delicately, with a finger, shifting the neck of her little shift from where she clearly feels it too close on her throat, how she hates to be restricted. "Back to the garrison. There are an awful lot of men yet to tell you how pretty you are, little one."
"Perhaps," Athos says, "if things remain calm, if people seem to have moved on . . . perhaps, soon, we could write to d'Artagnan, and go to air out the house for their return."
- in that second -
Immediately, piercingly, Aramis smells the particular air inside their own front door, in the plain dark wooden hallway with the parlour to the left, the kitchen at the end, the staircase leading up to their bedrooms, the sound of muffled children's laughter and scuffling somewhere in the house and the trotting pad of a dog's paws keeping up and his son . . .
"Perhaps," he whispers, and there is nothing, nothing he could love more than the life he's had all these years in that house with his husbands and son and friends and their children, nothing could be more of a blessing to him than simply that simple life - nothing apart from that life again, with his daughter as well.
"Perhaps," he says again, and then is called upon to sing, as his young mistress wolf cub informs him loudly and angrily that the world is simply not adequate.
So they are packed into a carriage, once Aramis can almost-normally walk to one, curious child in his arms in a trailing white blanket, the gifted finery of the palace. At home she may look forward to the handed-down baby clothes up to five children have worn before her, some gowns and blankets as old as Aramis' little wolf himself, much mended and cleaned and with the ribbons swapped out over time. Not so silken or so delicate, but worn soft and stitched with love, every one, and perhaps more comfortable to a child so disinclined to be confined.
She does rather like the little silver rattle the Queen gave to her though, which is good, because Aramis would rather she didn't spend the entire carriage journey venting her fury at something or other in the world not being quite sensibly arranged. Her big blue eyes watch in wonder as he waves it in front of her face, holding her propped over his lap in an arm, while the other hand is on his holster and if the carriage so much as jolts his hand tightens on it.
It's cold in the carriage, with the snow still laying outside. But she no longer complains about the scratch of his beard when he cuddles her up to warm her, tucking her inside his cloak, nose pressed to the top of her head, eyes closed and blessed beyond bearing, he still hardly believes in her. His baby. He begged and promised and prayed, and still he knew he didn't deserve it, and yet here she is, his second miracle, how the hell could he refuse to believe in any hope now?
The blinds remain drawn throughout the journey but Aramis is familiar with the route from the palace to the garrison and counts the turnings, notes the cobbles and dirt roads under the wheels. When he feels the carriage turn and the wheels run onto the garrison yard's packed dirt and scattered straw he finally begins to relax, and Belle mumbles a question, tired now but very interested in everything that's going on. "Home," Aramis tells her in a whisper. "We're home, little one. Nearly home, anyway."
The carriage stops, he can hear murmured voices, and someone taps at the door before they open it - he guesses Athos even before the door's open, Athos both knowing Aramis well enough and sensible enough in himself to give a man with a hair trigger and a baby a warning before he simply flings the door open on him. Aramis squints in the crisp winter sunshine, smiles for his husband, and hands the child out carefully - "Carefully," he does say out loud, at the almost-trail of her blanket in the slush underfoot - and then Athos steps back, eyes very cautious on the child as they always are, and Porthos offers Aramis a hand up to help him down.
He barely needs it but he does need it, keeping from his face what the long step down feels like. But then he's safe on the garrison ground and a couple of men have already hurried up, pat his shoulder and squeeze his arm and offer such genuine congratulations, "Prettiest thing," Arnauld says, so entirely honestly, and Lord in that moment Aramis loves that man.
Belle begins to make her frustration known in Athos' arms - she's tired, and here are a bunch of big uncouth men keeping her awake; imbeciles - and Athos looks with the beginnings of panic to Aramis. "Here, love." Aramis says, too fond to be frustrated, accepting her back into his arms and tucking the blanket up around her. "She's tired. Has someone sent for the wet nurse?"
He looks up, automatic as clockwork to any man in the garrison, to check if Treville is visible and if so what his mood is, the captain's frustrations as foundational to the lives of his soldiers as they are. Treville is visible, standing outside his office and leaning on the railing, and he nods down to Aramis as Aramis smiles back, and lifts the child a little for his gaze, meaning by it more respect than a mere salute. Then he looks to the dormitories, to take her inside to sleep before her grumbling becomes a howl, and there -
There are his recruits, the boys he yet hopes will all gain their commissions, and will all do them proud when Aramis and his husbands are forced out of this job by age, when their children are grown and their lives can be peaceful. They hastily rearrange themselves, the recruits, into two facing lines, and Aramis quirks his head - it is, he supposes, an efficient way to all get their first gaze upon the young princess of wolves grouching in his arms. But as Athos puts a hand on his back and Aramis steps forwards, the recruits all put their hands to their swords, draw and raise them overhead, an arch of glinting metal, and Aramis looks over them with his smile trying to turn itself more towards pride than smugness but now he has come home, now he feels good.
He lifts Belle, and murmurs by her ear, "This is for you." and walks underneath the arch of blades for the door. Belle herself only grumbles, looking up at those young men saluting her arrival in the garrison, and clearly thinks that they could be doing something much more practical with their time.
A cradle is hung so it will rock in their room - the room he shares with Athos, but from the first night they bar the door with Porthos inside it as well and no-one questions a thing, presumably assuming them right in their paranoia now to want all the guards they can get around that little child. Wet nurses come and go, some of them women who tended Jean-Armand seven years ago, they with rather more children than Aramis has to show for the years between but it feels good to see them again. And Aramis minds his daughter, and does not mind the days. He dresses her in the clothes Porthos brings from their home, roomier, looser garments than the finely-stitched palace clothes she was gifted all scratching with their pretty lace, and she seems more willing to at least put up with them (how she loathes to be constrained). He holds her so she can see him or the garrison in front of them when there's activity to see, as he gets back into the habit of minding his recruits; they've clearly worked to improve while he's been away, as well they might, now that they have a very hard to impress infant to gain the respect of as well.
He writes letters. He writes to d'Artagnan, and the girls, and Constance - he owes Constance more than he knows he can ever repay, that she shrugged and went so willingly from her own life to protect his son - and his little wolf, his dearest, happiest, most precious boy; he writes to him, Her eyes are blue, and she will adore her big brother. I can't wait for you to meet her, little wolf, so you can be together. I miss you by the hour, I think of you always. I hope you keep warm; wrap up your scarf well and don't let your feet get wet, you'll take a chill.
Truly, Aramis knows why no-one questions any longer why Porthos is in the room with them as well, because Aramis has done what was required of him: here is his blue-eyed child, evidence that he does submit to his husband, and she born in the palace itself under the King's own blessing. Now everyone can settle back into the safe old lie, whether they think of it as a lie or not, that Aramis is not, in their eyes, an adulterer and a harlot. He has done his duty by his husband, visibly evidenced, and so they can ignore the rest.
Ridiculous concern, Aramis thinks, watching Porthos very gently bounce his arms with the child in them, making nonsense crooning noises for her to try to appease her to sleep. She would be Athos' daughter however she looked at her birth. Isn't she Porthos' daughter just as entirely as she actually is?
She requires near-constant amusement to distract her from the fundamental flaws in the world she is very impatiently aware of. He sings for her, mostly, and rocks her, and displays for her the different noises things make when knocked against other things, when even the rattle will not entertain. It's one day when singing is working at least for now, in their bedroom in the garrison where she's been bathed and changed and is looking entirely pristine in her white gown - at least, for now - perhaps to be tempted towards sleep, when he hears the knock at the open door behind him.
Behind him; the fingers of his spare hand close around the gun in his belt, and he turns his head slowly, and then relaxes but more confused than relieved. "Alexandre," he says, voice kept carefully neutral, he has no idea where he stands with the man anymore. He's mostly aware that he can't attack anyone while Belle is in the room and needs him more, though. "Can I help you?"
Alexandre gives him a long, difficult look, holding his hat in his hands. Then he gestures with the hat at the child, who makes a confused noise - her song has stopped, and she's prompting her jester to resume, now, please - and Aramis is still for only a second, before he tilts her in his arm to give Alexandre a better look, an invitation.
Alexandre walks in, holding his hat awkwardly, and looks over the little wolf princess who squints up at him, and Aramis knows that tiredness only makes her more likely to squall but Alexandre is unaware of the powder keg he's dangling over. "She is a very pretty thing," Alexandre says, in the tone of a nervous peace offering, and Aramis -
In a way, the ground underneath the two of them is entirely steady. He knows exactly where he stands with Alexandre: had Belle been born with darker skin, he would not be standing here seeking reconciliation, he would not think her pretty, and Belle's birth is irrelevant to the fact that Alexandre thinks of Porthos the way Aramis knows him to. But it's better to know these things. He knows exactly how far he can trust Alexandre. He can fight beside him, but he will never be a friend. And for the captain's sake at least - for the regiment's sake - he can survive that much with grace. He knows Porthos isn't willing to push the matter and it's Porthos' choice in which battles Aramis will fight for him. It's the only way it ever can be.
So he says, the man redeemed in Alexandre's eyes by giving birth to a blue-eyed daughter, "She is. We have been very blessed."
He shifts the child in his grip so she lays more easily for sleeping. He keeps his temper. He thinks of grace.
Alexandre just stands there, silent for a moment too long, and then says, "I wanted to - apologise. For some of my behaviour, earlier."
"It is forgotten." Aramis says, which is one of the lies politeness tells, and means to him only it is not forgiven. "It was a highly-strung time for everyone."
Alexandre presses his mouth underneath his moustache, and his hand touches his pocket, then slips in and he removes a little folding of cloth, tied with a ribbon. "For the girl," he says. "When she's a little older."
"You didn't have to."
"I want her to have it." Alexandre looks at her, and breathes slowly. "My priest has been speaking about . . . about humility."
Aramis looks at his face - he's still not quite looking at Aramis, but at Belle - and thinks of the promises the Queen extracted from the Cardinal. He doesn't doubt that now the priests are talking of humility and the log in one's own eye and the sacredness of life, the sacredness of all life to God. But since Belle's birth whenever he's brooded on the Cardinal's promise it's all added up to horseshit to him, he still doesn't trust his fragile children out in the stewing cauldron of poison Richelieu has turned Paris into. Only now, looking at Alexandre drawing his courage in and meeting Aramis' eye, does some hope gather, small, hard, bright inside his chest, and he carefully draws a cover over it before the brightness can get out of hand, he does know what he gets like.
Alexandre leaves them shortly afterwards, with a bow and Aramis clapping his arm in a simulacrum of friendliness, for now. Aramis sits on the bed with his baby, she finally too tired even to tantrum, sleeping in his arms like a little cherub while he holds her gift in one hand, unthinkingly shifting glass beads with his thumb, the rhythm of prayer at the back of his mind. Alexandre has brought her a rosary of white beads, with a small silver medal of the Virgin. Perfect for a girl, of course. But Aramis already knows his daughter, as small as she is she's still as formidable as steel, and suspects that white will be an entirely inappropriate colour for the girl as soon as she's old enough to walk. White is for girls willing to sit pretty and do nothing more untidy than sew, and how Belle hates to be constrained . . .
She sleeps. He holds her close, because the world is cold, and even soundless he feels the song in his throat, constant for her if she desires it.
He does not trust his children, his children, out in Paris as he's known Paris these last few months. Nothing matters more than them, and he could live in dreary exile in a distant kitchen in the countryside for the rest of his life only to know that they were safe. But Alexandre has changed his tone, and perhaps other may as well; perhaps the mood of the streets will lift, and as it no longer feels so natural and permitted to spit at his feet as he passes, perhaps even those who feel like doing it will feel shamed by others' eyes into hesitating. Perhaps his own neck is no longer considered an open target. Perhaps his life is no longer accounted so cheap.
Perhaps. But his children . . .
His daughter.
He thinks he will never become used to the fact of his daughter. He lay in that palace bed strangling himself to silence, bit clean through both leather gloves Athos offered him, eyes dry with staring through the ceiling, he hurt his hands gripping the mattress so hard in an attempt not to break Athos' hand because he couldn't put Athos through it again, couldn't force him through it all again, and at no point during the birth did survival, his or the child's, seem a relevant option. The pain was only to be endured, ridden through until it was done, until it killed him or just stopped but somewhere in the grey landscape of not screaming the difference between the two blurred clean out. And then -
Miracle -
He felt her slip loose, almost shrieked just at the pressure splitting him actually ceasing, as a new sort of agony of how open and torn he was could finally make itself known. And she cried. Immediately, small as a kitten but entirely furious, she cried, she actually cried as the midwife said, "A girl. A daughter. There, now." and who she was soothing, which of them it was, he has no idea; suddenly his eyes stung with how long they'd been wet and he hadn't even noticed. He didn't see Athos' face for some time then, fumbling his heavy, numbed hands greedily for the child, urgent to have her clasped close, head over-light, not trusting in her life or safety at all unless he held her in so close but hell his hands hardly worked and the towels underneath him were not merely stained but they ran with blood, squelching underneath him, he does know why he was so pathetically weak for so long afterwards.
But the child, angry and scalded-looking and as small as a baby rabbit it seemed in his ungainly big arms, she was real, and warm, and wriggling to be free. Her eyes looked too large in her head and struggled to open but she was perfect, perfect, breathing, perfect. And he looked up, blinking dizzy and dumb for Athos' eyes, because perhaps Aramis was dead, perhaps this was heaven, handed his child to keep safe there forever, perhaps he had left his husbands and their world behind, until the Lord saw fit to bring them to him.
But there he was, Athos, wide-eyed and either he was shaking or Aramis was, Athos looking down at him as if numb and clasping his shoulder, breathing a little too tight through the nose as if he was half as much in shock as Aramis himself was. And between them the baby squirmed, and hiccupped angrily, and was theirs forever, now they'd seen her face.
No. They are hers, forever.
He looks down at her and can't speak, awe has his voice, the great humbling fear-filled awe he's long known from his knees. He doubts she will ever understand the way he loves her, unless she's one day blessed with children herself - he knows his tumbledown little wolf is perfectly casual about Aramis' love, blessed himself with no idea of how visceral it is to Aramis - and that is fine and good. It will not change it. Aramis is the undeserving father of a strong-willed baby who will be a fierce young girl and an indomitable woman, and he is more than content with that, he is grateful for that. She will be magnificent. He is unworthy to have brought her into the world, and can only thank God, and give her everything.
She need never truly understand, sleeping like an angel as she is under his eyes, that all of the rest of her life is a clean sheet, forever, sinless to him, because she has already made him happier than can ever be dented by any transgression, any ill choice of hers. Any choice of hers must be correct, because it is her choice. He casts half a thought to his own father and immediately casts it clean aside as irrelevant, because once he entirely understood his father's weariness of him but now he looks at his daughter and thinks, You were wrong. Children are not for judging or for choosing for. But it's alright. It doesn't matter, now.
All his life he's been looking for something, something that felt strong enough to make him feel truly alive. The life was chilled out of his bones at sixteen, he's been pressing himself too close to every fire since, trying to feel something warm enough once more. Danger helped; lovers helped. Athos and Porthos fenced some of his wilder instincts in. Jean-Armand, the sun in his universe, he gave him something so warm to stay close to, so precious, he no longer needed the casual madness of his youth. It is a gift to be given this again. It is grace, to be allowed to feel this, for a girl he will never be worthy of, a princess among wolves, to be granted the honour of serving her for all of his life.
He looks to the window. He thinks about all of Paris, out there.
He strokes her shoulder with a thumb. He thinks, carefully, because she requires his taking the time to think of things carefully, now. Love may not be enough. His protection is a feeble thing in the face of the world, he may not be enough. He is not enough. But he's not alone. Wolves move in packs.
He says, to the silence of the room, "It will be spring, soon."
His daughter sleeps. The world is good.
Continued
Note: In which Aramis hits on kangaroo parenting because that's just how his brain is *wired*.
Aramis sings, to quiet her. She looks at him as if mostly confused by what he's doing, but she does stop crying; well, it's a gift.
Constance's children have already taught him that not every baby is Jean-Armand, but Aramis is still surprised that all of his babies aren't Jean-Armand. Because his little wolf, when just a cub, was never much given to crying, and Aramis took it very much for granted. Everything was interesting to Jean-Armand, everything was to grab at or gum at or laugh at, he was such a sunny, merry little thing, so disinclined to fuss. And Aramis remembers Geneviève's solemnity, which paired with d'Artagnan's expression of awe and terror whenever he held her made Aramis have to leave the room now and then to stifle his fits of giggles, he's never known a child so entirely sober as Geneviève. Maria was independent and cross, little Alexandre - God rest his innocent soul - impatient, already showing the beginnings of both his parents' hot tempers, before the Lord took him to keep, and - he draws a breath in, knowing this like the stone cross above that poor baby's head - there is nothing anyone can do about that. Charles is an easily amused baby, though grumpy when defied. And Belle -
Never, Aramis thinks as he watches her frowning eyes, could a child be so much Athos' child as Belle is. Jean-Armand as a young baby they couldn't even ascertain as anyone's but Aramis', and yet Belle already knows her own mind so entirely and will not be subject to anyone else's will, and certainly has no intention of being impressed by him unless he warrants it. She won't be swaddled, complains and cries, and so small as she is her cries are high little mewls, they hit Aramis in the chest on a level he can't understand the horror of, bleating almost like a lost lamb; he pulls the swaddling from her before the wet nurse has left the room and won't have them put it back on. He remembers how she squirmed in fury inside him for space; now she's granted all the world to walk in, and he won't be the one to see her limbs bound again. Between his fear for her getting cold, his fear for her being overheated, he allows instinct to override every other exhausted part of his mind: skin to skin is the only way to be certain of her temperature, tucked inside his own shirt at his chest where he can warm her with his own body. Wet nurses tut and bundle her in blankets again, which Aramis endures - for visitors she has to be properly presented - but he knows she's at her safest with her cheek tucked right to his throat. She even cries less, then. Settles as if finally, grumpily content, and sleeps.
Really she does very little, but then new babies don't. She tests her arms and legs; she looks at him as if confused by him; she cries when the world proves disappointing, which it frequently does; she sleeps. But she is so small, and Aramis does feel a terror in him only sopped, and then only slightly, when she's either sleeping on his chest or drinking at a midwife's. Either of those states feels wholesome and good, will help her grow, will make her strong. On one level fear has become so omnipresent he hardly feels it, a nausea that's replaced any ordinary sense of his own guts inside him. On another level, Lord, she is so beautiful, and so perfect for her smallness, tiny seashell fingernails, feet hardly the size of his thumbs. His prayers he's certain are nonsensical they're such a jumble of everything and yet he knows they're understood all the same, the tumble of awe and gratitude and fear fear fear.
He sings for her. She deigns to sleep on his chest, arms cradled around her, she settling for this for now if nothing better is available after all. He remembers his wooing of Athos, years ago - he honestly had, at first, only wanted the man's friendship, and only that because it seemed so improbable that he would ever get it, but the strange joy of trying to reach him, even now they're married and share a bed, that he's never lost - and kisses her cheek though she complains of his beard, makes an angry noise, and he spends some time then arranging her blankets to how she seems to accept them best as an apology.
"Born on silk sheets," Aramis murmurs. "I think you have some ideas, my girl."
He wonders what his own beloved departed Mama would have made of this . . .
She's fresh from a wet nurse and in her blankets when the door opens - no knock - and in his first immediate tensing of his arms around her, the only thought is shielding her; the second thought is his pistol on the bedside table, to kill the bastard first. But if Richelieu has sent an assassin he's made a particularly improbable choice of one because it's the King walking in as the musketeer outside holds the door open for him, Louis looking really so very pleased and amused, and Aramis tries to shift himself to sit and his body -
It punches the breath out of him, the pain, he feels the glut of blood soak into the bandages between his legs, swallows and tries not to shiver his breath, says weakly, "You'll have to forgive me, your Majesty, I can't . . ."
Louis waves a vague hand - Aramis has never felt comfortable around the King, not for years, and hopes that being barged in upon in the bed he recently gave birth in will disguise the worst of that now - and approaches eager to squint down on the child in the blanket. "What luck you were here when it happened. Is it a boy?"
"A daughter, your Majesty."
Louis tsks. "Hard luck. You can always try again, though. Was the last one a boy?"
Aramis performs the task he knows his lovers think him incapable of, and, in that moment, he does not strike the King's jugular out with a single righteous blow. "Yes, your Majesty."
"Well, then. Pretty little thing, isn't she?" Louis sits on the edge of the bed and grins away at Belle, who makes a cross noise but doesn't open her eyes. Aramis knows that he has no choice in acting as Louis' pet breeding musketeer, his role in the King's life is to offer amusement, and so of course Louis is glad the birth was here, because he's no intention of riding out himself to their peasant's hovel to chortle over Aramis so fresh from childbearing. "Is she meant to be that small?"
Easier to push, his little wolf near killed him; but harder to bear, feeling the threat of her smallness, feeling to blame for her smallness. "She'll grow," Aramis says, only quietly, and the King looks at the baby a little longer until his interest seems to dry up, and he says, "Well, I'm sure we can find her someone worth marrying when she's of age, in honour of her birth."
Aramis only smiles, trapped on the precipice of refusal, because his daughter is being married to no-one she doesn't handpick herself, his daughter is not becoming chattel for some tedious upper-class twit or brute, Aramis knows the caprice of Louis' attention and his daughter is not falling trapped under it for one moment.
But Louis doesn't notice, or care, already standing up and brushing his clothing off. "Well, congratulations and all, you'll stay a few days. I've a minor Prussian visiting tomorrow."
He says it like it's a fact, not exactly an order, request or offer, and all Aramis feels is of course. Because Aramis is a unicorn, and Aramis must be shown off to the other royals, because they don't have a breeding programme for their soldiers, do they? But it's be polite or else everyone Aramis loves faces the consequences, so he only says and keeps his voice entirely steady, "I can't thank you enough for your generosity, your Majesty."
Louis waves a hand as he walks away, looking pleased, dismissing the gratitude as a way of revelling in it; and the musketeer at the door, Bernier, looks at him from behind the King's back and Aramis gives him a single raised eyebrow back, before Bernier grins and closes the door on him again. And that leaves them alone once more, Aramis and his daughter, alone but for the ever present hum of abuse he feels in his body because the pain may peak when he moves but it never truly troughs into something ignorable.
Still, he's a soldier, and not unused to pain. He settles Belle comfortable to sleep, and closes his eyes himself, until she wails again for the wet nurse's return, and he's lurched awake and called upon to sing once more.
"I amuse the King," Aramis whispers to her as the wet nurse closes the door, and Aramis unfolds her fresh dry blankets around her from being too tight, "and I amuse you, and I do believe that you think that's what I'm here for just as much as he does." He strokes her back with his thumb, gentle and repetitive, trying to ease her back to sleep now she's full and dry once more. "In honesty, it's probably true."
Outside, it snows, he sees the flakes smack dazed off the window as they fall like moths drunk on light. He worries she's cold; then he worries she'll be overheated, and tries to bow his head and be sensible. He's so tired he feels ill with it, dizzy, he's little enough sense for his own sake right now, he hardly trusts himself with her.
He thinks he drops to sleep half-sitting with his head lolling low; he certainly comes up with a surprised jolt when the door opens and a light skipping step scurries in, followed by more sedate footsteps. His first thoughts (shield her; kill them -) dissipate with his bleary awareness that a small child has run up to the side of the bed, and is leaning up on the mattress to get a proper look at Belle in her blankets, and behind him the Queen is approaching. Her smile is currently that slightly pinched, nervous smile she wears when she's not yet ascertained which expression is proper for the occasion.
"Your Majesty," he says, his voice still too embarrassingly frail, and then to the Dauphin leaning with his mouth open to stare at the baby, "your Highness, you must excuse me, I would bow but-"
"Don't move." the Queen says, and puts her hand on the Dauphin's head, before lifting him so he can see the baby better. "Louis, don't jolt her, babies are delicate."
"She's tiny," the boy says, and looks up at his mother. "I wasn't that tiny."
The Queen meets Aramis' eye for a second, not quite apology but acknowledgment between them that children speak as they please, particularly princes, and she leans to look over Belle's face. "She is very small," she says, quietly, putting the Dauphin down again. "And very pretty."
It is some minor salve to the sting; he wishes, wishes people would stop feeling the need to note her smallness, it rends at his heart in a way that makes him feel gut-deep queasy. He knows she's small. He knows that. He knows his fault in that. But he will do anything, anything to keep her with them -
"Can I play with her?" the Dauphin says, as if already intending to, and before Aramis can panic the Queen says, "No, not when she's so small. Say goodbye now and go to your nurse, Louis. Look, she's tired."
Belle is indeed yawning, eyes still closed, though Aramis - already attuned to the storminess of her moods - anticipates a wail at any moment. The Dauphin contemplates her for a moment, then decides her not worth further attention and turns and wanders off towards the door, where a woman waits. She closes the door on them, and then they're alone.
The Queen stands beside him, and Aramis feels some blood run and blot into the cloth between his legs, and this is an acutely strange situation to be in. He says, "I would bring a chair, I can only-"
"I am not so entirely fragile," she says, and draws one over herself, to sit beside him so at least she doesn't loom so much over him. "How are you recovering, do you need anything?"
"You've been too kind already, your Majesty. And it was a very quick birth, by my standards, I can't complain." And I have my daughter, he thinks, glancing to her rather grumpy decision to return to sleep. So long as she breathes, what can I complain about? "I can only apologise for the absolute impropriety-"
"There is nothing to be apologised for. When it comes, it comes." She looks at him carefully, her face slightly less shielded now; it's always pained him, how entirely she has to mask herself, the exhaustion and isolation it must be, he's only ever been granted rare glimpses of honest expression on her face. Though, given their history, that is true of both of them in this court. She says, "I've spoken to Richelieu, both last night and this morning. He is organising with his priests to preach the sanctity of life, and to make any other amends he must for this. It has been made very clear to him that should anything befall your family, the blame for it will fall in a very particular direction, and it is in his interest to work for your protection."
Aramis is silent, then says, "Thank you, your Majesty."
The question is whether he trusts Richelieu enough to know that the man won't gamble his own neck on this. Yes, the Cardinal may find himself exposed to ruin and death for treason - they hold that old ammunition against him, and the King is unlikely to hear his side of the story now that Aramis' indiscretion must look absurd to him (How could the Queen want Aramis? Aramis is as good as a woman.) - but the man has plans coiled in plans coiled in plans, does Aramis know there's not some patient trap awaiting him and his family some way in the future, does he truly trust that Richelieu will back down from this . . . ?
Belle shifts, then, coughs and looks up at him as if angry about something and working out whether she'll attribute it to him. "Hush, hush." he sings to her. "We mustn't tantrum in front of the Queen, where did we leave our manners?"
He worries that the blankets bother her; he worries she'll be too cold, it's still snowing. He worries. He's already exhausted of it. One child out there in a dangerous world is enough, a child born early and vulnerable in the winter . . .
The Queen smiles, in a slightly stunted way, and looks at the baby as she squints her angry little eyes open. "They are a blessing," she says quietly, and Aramis looks at his daughter, and they both know what is meant and neither says anything more. It's not just worry. There are a lot of emotions Aramis has felt until they're simply what the world feels like, and grief is one of the oldest he knows. Why does anyone wonder why he acted so crazed in his youth, when every breath on his tongue had the acid tang of loss in it?
"I will take care of the Cardinal." the Queen says, voice even with resolve. "I am close enough to watch him, and the King cares more for our son than Richelieu now, the Cardinal knows to be afraid of the power I can wield if I wish to." Aramis thinks, polite and yet very honest, Your Majesty, we all fear that. "I don't want you to worry. I am - aware -"
He looks at her patiently, rocking the baby slightly in his arms, hoping for her to stay settled and not set up her screaming. The Queen takes a breath in, pulled tight to the chest, and holds her head very high. "I am aware that I may be part of the reason why Richelieu would have chosen you to target, and - and put this danger upon - upon your children -"
"None of this is your doing, your Majesty." Aramis says, and wishes he had a hand free to touch hers, and then remembers that he ought not to be touching royal hands anyway; always something he remembers too late. "The Cardinal and I - our enmity goes back to long before any reason you might think yourself involved in. And I have it on good authority that it was only the Cardinal's luck that I proved the most obvious target anyway. His real hatred is our regiment, and always has been."
The Queen is silent for some time, thinking - Aramis knows she understands what he's just told her, and is fitting the plot together for herself - and then says, "I tell my son great tales of the bravery of your regiment." Her small mouth twitches one of her truer smiles. "He will never allow his dear father to disband all his heroes."
The grin simply takes him, from the warmth in his chest out until his mouth strains with it all. "I tell my own son the very same," he says, and looks down at Belle, who squints back at him. Aramis promises her, "I'm sure that he'll tell you too, when he comes home."
The Queen tilts her head to look down at the baby, who tries to focus up at her, clearly finds it too much work, and so turns her attention back to giving Aramis a sceptical look straight from the Athos playbook, that is exactly the expression he used to wear when Aramis approached him in the garrison grinning broadly and all Athos wanted was to be left to his wine. The Queen says, "What did you name her?"
"- Isabelle." She is one of the only people left living who knows why. "'Belle' seems to have stuck."
The Queen is silent for a moment, then says, "That fits well." She touches the blankets at Belle's head, pressing them back to give herself a clearer view. "She will be a beauty. The King is already discussing the generals' sons she might be married to." Aramis' head lurches up, but her mouth is puckered with amusement, and she says, "He'll have forgotten in a week. He certainly won't remember long enough for her to come of age."
Belle gives an angry hiccup, because he's holding the blankets too tightly. He forces his arms to relax as much as he can. "It changes matters," he says quietly, looking down at her. "A daughter. How . . . how in this world a woman can be safe, and yet still free enough to be all she can be." He knows that the Queen understands that. They both understand that.
He looks up at her, smiles. "Would you like to hold her?"
When they are left alone again, Aramis and his daughter, he sits up as much as he can - it hurts so constantly that so long as he can manage the big hurt of the shifting, it hardly seems to matter if he's entirely horizontal or not, it hurts either way - to look down at her, singing for her to keep her quiet, to keep her deep blue eyes on his. A daughter. It does change matters. It changes everything.
He's always wanted Jean-Armand safe, always, bitter between his teeth it's all he's wanted. But that's been something he's understood, Jean-Armand's safety. They can do the responsible thing, they can teach him his sword and pistol, teach him his resourcefulness, and quietly shepherd him away from soldiering - Aramis is determined on this, certain of it, swears it to every saint, his son is never setting foot on a battlefield. There are dangers Jean-Armand is liable to face, but they can prepare him for those, minimise them, and he can wear a sword and pistol, as much as possible he can protect himself.
Belle . . .
She can't wear a sword. Aramis will certainly look into a little pistol for her - they make quite pretty ones for ladies, mother-of-pearl inlaid in the handles, and she can have pockets sewn in her skirts for them. But the dangers she'll face in life are so different, are so - Aramis closes his eyes briefly, and breathes the fear out cold. He knows what those dangers are and they aren't truly his to face, he does wear a sword and pistol, he is safe. For the most part.
Because they've looked, and asked how much, and looked, and tried to force the matter when they could, and looked. All his life people have looked at Aramis - he doesn't place blame for that, he's aware that his face is worth more than a glance - but those who know who he is, what he is, they've looked in a way that shocked, at first, he didn't understand his own instinctive response of fear revulsion dread. The belligerence and aggression in those looks - or the simple assessing of what they consider his flesh worth - they were stunning, before he learned to not notice them. Briefly, he thought they were for him. He thought these looks were unique to his status, not quite man, not quite woman, and men in inns giving him an obvious sizing up, curious or aggressive, Would I fuck that? What would fucking that be like? I'd show that what it is to be fucked.
Very quickly he did remember that he is not special, that they don't look at him like that because he's a unicorn. That's how they look at women. That's how they look at all women. That is what women face: men's contemplation of whether they would and what it would be like and how they would enjoy it, without contemplation for the lady herself at all. And now he has a daughter. He has a daughter, and he's had to teach himself not to mind the looks coming from men because if they tried anything Aramis could make the bastards wish they never had because they're never threateningly bigger than Aramis, they're never more armed than he is, never too dangerous for him to feel he can deal with if he had to, but if he were - smaller, if he wasn't allowed a sword, if he was . . .
How, how, do women bear it?
The wet nurse must be due soon. He strokes his daughter's pink cheek with the back of a finger, and watches her eyes puzzled and narrow on his, and whispers in Spanish, just for them, just for the two of them.
"They will say you are beautiful and delicate and you were born on silk sheets," he says so quietly for her, and she holds his gaze, apparently thinking very hard. "And they will think of you as a little princess, such a pretty sparkly prize for them, such an ornament to them. They will for your entire life long look at you as less, as easily dealt with, as a pawn on a chessboard of bishops and knights and kings. They will talk over your sensible conversation, patronise your earned knowledge, and assume that you exist to make them feel better about themselves. And I cannot change that, little one."
He runs his thumb over her brow, and watches her eyes, as she watches him so sceptically back.
"They will underestimate you every day of your life. All you can do is ignore their petty idiocy and sail over them like the wrath of the storm, wings cast of lightning, thunder shaking in your breast. I cannot make the world respect you. But I can give you the prettiest dagger, my darling little child, and I will teach you how to gut three men without soiling your skirts, I will teach you how to reload in the dark by the feel of your fingertips, I will teach you how to use your teeth."
He strokes over the shape of her tiny nose, and she makes a small questioning noise, somehow more satisfied with him now, as if finally he's speaking sense to her. "They will think you are so pretty and fragile and ownable," he whispers to her. "But I know your fathers and your brother, little one, and we know each other, you and I, I've already felt your claws. They'll call you a princess and never know that you are a wolf princess, those who look down on you. It will be your mightiest weapon, that they don't see. They will look down upon you, and never understand your teeth until you already know the taste of the inside of their jugulars." Belle looks up at him, and Aramis looks back, calm with his certainty of this. "They will always underestimate you. Your life's work will be practising the mercy they don't deserve, and not destroying them."
Aramis has never met anyone with the capacity for shaking the world that Athos possesses, more power than it would be safe for any other man to possess, because unthinkingly his friends would follow him to Hell, they would follow him into anything, terrifying as Athos is in his own strength the sheer respect he commands without even trying for it could raise an army and bring down a country. And now his daughter gazes up at Aramis as regal as an empress, and Aramis understands everything this girl can be, everything she can achieve, every way the world will try to obstruct her and she will give it that look, and the world may, for once, quail.
Aramis whispers, awed under that gaze, "Lord in heaven, I'm not worthy of you."
Jean-Armand has always been so easy to please, Aramis has rarely felt inadequate to the boy he's been so accommodating to his papa, so generous in loving him back. Now Aramis needs to work. Now he needs to be a better father, not the sort of man who runs out pregnant into a deadly city with the intent of murdering the Cardinal. Now he'll have two of them looking at him like that, father and daughter, and he needs to be on his very best behaviour.
"I will try not to give you too much to forgive," he promises his little wolf princess, as she manages to escape an arm from her blankets, and flail it for something to grab; he offers a finger, which she latches onto in triumph, and squeezes in a way that belies all smallness, all vulnerability of her early birth. "And I will love you more than my breath, for the eternity of my soul."
When she sleeps, he sleeps. He'd rather be awake - rather watch her breathe, the midwife told him to mind that she's breathing at first - but his body still feels spent by the birth, the pain exhausts him as much as everything else and he fears weakening himself, fears the fever he knows he could bring on, his duty is to live for her. He wakes when she does, when she wails for the wet nurse or clean blankets or just because she's still stuck here and it's not even trying to be adequate for her - and he wakes to see Athos hesitate, then reach down to brush his hair back, and hush him to go back to sleep; wakes and sees Porthos looking in from the open door, his single smiling nod, before he closes it again with a quiet click.
He's woken on the second day (his daughter is two days old, his son seven years and four months; this is how the calendar moves, for Aramis) by the King walking cheerfully and noisily in with two Prussians (oh good) and waking Belle, who lets her wrath be known. The Prussians are polite and as interested as anyone would be with the freak show Louis is offering them, Aramis and his screeching baby. All Aramis can do, feeling very threatened and vulnerable and struggling to calm his furious daughter, is try to smile, and feel how heavy with blood the bandages between his legs are before he's had any chance to change them.
Treville visits, late in the morning. Aramis is still feeling rattled, still feeling beleaguered and defensive, but he relaxes a little to see the captain, more to realise it's Porthos holding the door open for him; he knows he's safe in the palace, it's just the indignity to be borne. When the door is closed Treville says, "I'm not imposing, if it's not a good time -"
"You're always welcome, captain." he says, and can't sit, but lifts her a little for him to see. "Come tell her how pretty she is, I believe she already assumes that's the proper protocol."
She is of course not merely very pretty but very small, and that remains a concern. But the captain walks over holding his hat under his arm, looks down at her and as she blinks and squints back up at him, judging this new face looming over her, he smiles, such a tired, relieved smile - because, of course, Aramis has managed not to give birth to a child so obviously not-Athos' that the regiment implodes, as much as anything else - and he confirms, quietly, "She is indeed a beauty."
Belle gives him a suspicious look, and that makes the captain's smile come more true, and he sits in the chair beside the bed. "You're recovering?"
If Aramis manages to avoid a fever - and still he feels the clot of blood between his legs, even with fresh bandages there, women face the fear of infection as soldiers fresh from battle do - all he's waiting for are the wounds to heal. "I can't complain. I - did not mean for this to happen in the palace, captain, I'm - sorry I -"
Treville massages his forehead and waves a hand. "Louis is pleased, as I'm sure you're already aware. And it's safer than many places you could have chosen."
Aramis brushes the blankets back so Belle has a better view of the room, which she complains for frequently, and concentrates on her. "How is the garrison?"
". . . relieved. The atmosphere is better. I believe most men are glad the worst is over and they're waiting for you to come back as normal."
Aramis closes his eyes, then opens them again, and nods. His daughter needs him, and it may be some months before he trusts her held with a nurse while he's away, even before he could trust her in the basket beside Constance if her family can safely return to Paris yet. But he's obliged to remain a soldier, he can't stay away too long. Hesitating means failing, in too many eyes. Of course he's fearful for his daughter. He already knows how constrained his own choices are, and hers can only ever be narrower still.
"In some ways it helps," Treville says. "That this happened in the palace, under the King's blessing. It's made some men think twice."
And she is so harmlessly pink, Aramis thinks, and she has such blue eyes, and that makes them think again, doesn't it? And he looks at Treville, and almost wants to say it - it comes to the tip of his tongue like the trip of sugar, until he stifles it - you know, don't you? You know what we three are. You know that this is Porthos' daughter just as much as Jean-Armand is Athos' son. You know what our family is, you know we've always been entirely inseparable. You know that none of us knew how she would look until she was born, and that how she looks changes nothing about her parentage to us. You know.
But the rest of the world cannot, because there's simply no knowing what it could unleash. Aramis has children he can't court scandal for, lovers he has to keep safe, a regiment he's now responsible for not destroying through his own lack of respectability. He cannot make mistakes, every one will be amplified as if through a polished lens, he has to be patient and charming and pretty-mannered and polite, he has to be exceptionally good at everything he does. They always used to laugh that he could both sew and shoot so finely, though the laughter sounded less friendly after his son was born. Now he's never allowed a crooked stitch or shot, ever, because they will always watch, always be waiting to confirm to themselves what they already believe to be true, and Aramis has children to protect. Their futures, their education, their careers, their marriages, their children; everything could be tainted if their papa courts too much contempt.
Already he's tired, the thought of it exhausts him. But he has a daughter, and he made his promises to the Virgin over a course of months, and he'll keep them. He won't mind anything, so long as he has his children. He could bear worse than this. Endurance will feel like a blessing, compared to what he could have faced.
"I don't know when I can return to the garrison," he says. "I need to heal. And I still don't trust the streets, not for her."
"You certainly can't move yet. How long do - ladies lie it out?"
"I think it depends on the lady," Aramis says, and cannot in delicacy explain to the captain that his anatomy rather differs from a lady's, in a way that makes every movement a gamble on how much he'll bleed right now. "But I hope to come back soon. I certainly can't overstay my welcome here."
"There's a guard room we can move you into if necessary. We're not parading you through Paris if it's still dangerous."
Aramis takes a breath in, and that is more of a relief than he can really face right now; being forced to take Belle, so small and vulnerable, into a world which hates him is a particularly numbing sort of fear to him. In fact, a guard room sounds like heaven. Luxury he likes but this room makes him feel small, over-aware of his debts, desperately over-aware that someone of his own birth should certainly not be giving birth here. A guard room would mean soldiers in and out for safety and a functional set up, a brazier, a cot he and the child could occupy. He's been a soldier for his entire adult life, and he needs very little besides that.
His son, of course. He needs his son. He aches for Jean-Armand to meet his sister. He wanted a sister, he wanted one so much. And Aramis is simply unused to feeling like he has done something as entirely and innocently right as giving that boy exactly what he really, really wanted.
He looks at Belle, who coughs, which tightens his heart before she simply squints angrily at him and doesn't repeat the cough (Probably not pneumonia, he tells himself as his heart bangs his ribcage, probably not, not yet, probably not? He mustn't panic until Athos or Porthos can tell him whether he's reason to. He knows himself irrational around his children, but they will know, they will know . . .). "D'Artagnan isn't here," he says, shifting her closer to his chest, stroking around her cheek with a gently crooked knuckle. "And I want her baptised as soon as possible, it's already late, as far as I can see. So I wondered - captain -" She makes a cross noise, a get on with it noise; she will have none of his talking around a subject, he already knows, she'll have none of his pretty manners, she wants action, or nothing at all. "Would you mind being her godfather? Porthos will be, but she'll need another."
Treville is silent, then says, "It would please and honour me more than I can express."
Aramis looks up at him, and smiles, and there's a lot of history between the two of them - Aramis has been a soldier for a long time and Treville his commanding officer almost as long, Treville has owned his allegiance for far longer than his own father ever did - and he says, because he trusts very few men with so precious a load but this man, his captain he does, "Would you like to hold her?"
In the end, he's in the palace for a little under three weeks. It's long enough for the King's visits, bringing visiting nobility and diplomats to gawp at his pet hermaphrodite, to trail off, and long enough for Aramis to start testing the act of heaving himself to his own two feet, without Porthos and Athos there to do the heavy lifting. It's Porthos who helps the first time he grits his teeth in a refusal to whimper as his body is moved to sit, and lifted bodily upright so his feet are on the floor, baby in his arms. But Aramis knows he can't leave until he can, in his shuffling, shambling way, bear his own weight at least to the window to let Belle look out. It's a dangerous world they look out on, and Aramis needs to at least be strong enough to stand to be strong enough to protect her, while she's in need of it.
The world doesn't look so dangerous, done up in all its lacy white finery for his daughter to look upon. She does look, with that fixed, imperious gaze of hers, faintly suspicious as always. He thinks of his boy out there somewhere, his guileless, unsuspicious boy, wonders if there's snow in the south, thinks of him playing and laughing with the other children in it. He wonders if their first letters have even reached him yet, if he yet knows of his little sister, that Aramis has done for him exactly what he wanted and is grateful until his throat chokes with it just to be able to give him this.
"He'll adore you," Aramis murmurs, and then looks down at his dark-lashed little girl's accusing blue eyes, and solemnly shakes her hand by the finger it's squeezing. "Everyone will adore you."
There's a knock at the door and Aramis glances across, shifts Belle up to his chest and leans his lower back to the windowsill, to trust he's supported, so one hand can fall to the pistol in the belt slung over his nightshirt. Royalty does not knock, which limits the number of suspects it might be. But the door opens onto Athos, walking in and frowning at him standing by the window, and he says, "Should you be doing that?"
Porthos' head immediately looks around the door as well, and Aramis rolls his eyes, and limps his minute steps - he does not dare a long stride - back towards the bed. "I would forget how to use my legs if you had your way."
Athos looks back at Porthos, then waves a hand as if something has been given up on, and in the end both of them enter the room, Porthos closing the door behind them. Athos walks up as Aramis sits, with a hiss of breath between his teeth - the pain is an enormous deal less, but he's still more than tender - on the edge of the bed, and he reaches to take the child from Aramis. She transfers her regal gaze onto Athos as he holds her up and returns it with a differently suspicious expression, ascertaining all her limbs on her and blood in her as he always seems to need to, before he turns and hands her on to Porthos, who simply rocks her in her arms a little and watches Aramis.
"It may be better if you can walk," Athos says. "Though please don't attempt it again without one of us here yet."
"But you can't always be here, and I don't know if you've noticed, I'm a little starved for entertainment. I've even run out of people to apologise to at this point."
The King and Queen for his extremely unseemly use of one of their beds; the maidservants his labour disturbed in the middle of the night; the physician he almost shattered the skull of, who he has at least trusted enough to visit Belle and ascertain her health a few times. Her smallness worries. But she eats well, sleeps well, cries with an honest lustiness, no frailty in her, and given that Aramis has little entertainment in this room but praying he's almost worn out the pads of his fingers on his rosary for her.
Athos rubs an eyebrow with the pad of a thumb, giving Aramis a long look as if trying to ascertain how he'll respond before the words are said, and Porthos just hush-hush-hushes the baby, rocking her in his arms like the even trot of a horse. Athos says, "We think it may soon be time for you to return to the garrison."
Aramis looks immediately to the window, where the world outside is innocent with snow as if the sin underneath no longer exists, but Aramis knows better. "The atmosphere has calmed," Athos says. "And we've sat in more churches these last two weeks than - than I don't even know."
"Enough f'r you to approve of," Porthos says, and Aramis gives him a wry sort of grin.
"Enough to ascertain that Richelieu has done as he promised," Athos says. "Priests are very certain right now about the miracle and sanctity of life. 'Thou shalt not kill' comes up repeatedly, and the admonition that mortals are not permitted judgement as the Lord is."
Aramis' eyes are on the window, and his arms grind empty as he folds them where his daughter isn't. "Still . . ."
"We c'n borrow a carriage. Just in case, but it means no-one'll even see you."
"And we'd feel better about it," Athos says. "You in the garrison, so we know exactly how guarded you are. And -"
Aramis stares at the white world outside of the window, then blinks and looks across to Athos, and tilts his head. "And'"
Athos looks at Porthos, then down at the child in his arms, face softening, then back at Aramis gentler again. "And then we can share a bed again," he says. "We miss you."
"Athos," Aramis says, honestly touched; he's missed them, though distracted enough by the baby beside him every night.
Athos says, "I find my feet get cold."
Aramis rolls his eyes, and looks to Porthos as Belle kicks in her blankets and begins to squall, deciding she's dissatisfied; he raises his arms and Porthos hastily hands her over, both he and Athos are utterly hopeless with crying children. "Well, well," Aramis sings to her, bouncing her closer in his arm and delicately, with a finger, shifting the neck of her little shift from where she clearly feels it too close on her throat, how she hates to be restricted. "Back to the garrison. There are an awful lot of men yet to tell you how pretty you are, little one."
"Perhaps," Athos says, "if things remain calm, if people seem to have moved on . . . perhaps, soon, we could write to d'Artagnan, and go to air out the house for their return."
- in that second -
Immediately, piercingly, Aramis smells the particular air inside their own front door, in the plain dark wooden hallway with the parlour to the left, the kitchen at the end, the staircase leading up to their bedrooms, the sound of muffled children's laughter and scuffling somewhere in the house and the trotting pad of a dog's paws keeping up and his son . . .
"Perhaps," he whispers, and there is nothing, nothing he could love more than the life he's had all these years in that house with his husbands and son and friends and their children, nothing could be more of a blessing to him than simply that simple life - nothing apart from that life again, with his daughter as well.
"Perhaps," he says again, and then is called upon to sing, as his young mistress wolf cub informs him loudly and angrily that the world is simply not adequate.
So they are packed into a carriage, once Aramis can almost-normally walk to one, curious child in his arms in a trailing white blanket, the gifted finery of the palace. At home she may look forward to the handed-down baby clothes up to five children have worn before her, some gowns and blankets as old as Aramis' little wolf himself, much mended and cleaned and with the ribbons swapped out over time. Not so silken or so delicate, but worn soft and stitched with love, every one, and perhaps more comfortable to a child so disinclined to be confined.
She does rather like the little silver rattle the Queen gave to her though, which is good, because Aramis would rather she didn't spend the entire carriage journey venting her fury at something or other in the world not being quite sensibly arranged. Her big blue eyes watch in wonder as he waves it in front of her face, holding her propped over his lap in an arm, while the other hand is on his holster and if the carriage so much as jolts his hand tightens on it.
It's cold in the carriage, with the snow still laying outside. But she no longer complains about the scratch of his beard when he cuddles her up to warm her, tucking her inside his cloak, nose pressed to the top of her head, eyes closed and blessed beyond bearing, he still hardly believes in her. His baby. He begged and promised and prayed, and still he knew he didn't deserve it, and yet here she is, his second miracle, how the hell could he refuse to believe in any hope now?
The blinds remain drawn throughout the journey but Aramis is familiar with the route from the palace to the garrison and counts the turnings, notes the cobbles and dirt roads under the wheels. When he feels the carriage turn and the wheels run onto the garrison yard's packed dirt and scattered straw he finally begins to relax, and Belle mumbles a question, tired now but very interested in everything that's going on. "Home," Aramis tells her in a whisper. "We're home, little one. Nearly home, anyway."
The carriage stops, he can hear murmured voices, and someone taps at the door before they open it - he guesses Athos even before the door's open, Athos both knowing Aramis well enough and sensible enough in himself to give a man with a hair trigger and a baby a warning before he simply flings the door open on him. Aramis squints in the crisp winter sunshine, smiles for his husband, and hands the child out carefully - "Carefully," he does say out loud, at the almost-trail of her blanket in the slush underfoot - and then Athos steps back, eyes very cautious on the child as they always are, and Porthos offers Aramis a hand up to help him down.
He barely needs it but he does need it, keeping from his face what the long step down feels like. But then he's safe on the garrison ground and a couple of men have already hurried up, pat his shoulder and squeeze his arm and offer such genuine congratulations, "Prettiest thing," Arnauld says, so entirely honestly, and Lord in that moment Aramis loves that man.
Belle begins to make her frustration known in Athos' arms - she's tired, and here are a bunch of big uncouth men keeping her awake; imbeciles - and Athos looks with the beginnings of panic to Aramis. "Here, love." Aramis says, too fond to be frustrated, accepting her back into his arms and tucking the blanket up around her. "She's tired. Has someone sent for the wet nurse?"
He looks up, automatic as clockwork to any man in the garrison, to check if Treville is visible and if so what his mood is, the captain's frustrations as foundational to the lives of his soldiers as they are. Treville is visible, standing outside his office and leaning on the railing, and he nods down to Aramis as Aramis smiles back, and lifts the child a little for his gaze, meaning by it more respect than a mere salute. Then he looks to the dormitories, to take her inside to sleep before her grumbling becomes a howl, and there -
There are his recruits, the boys he yet hopes will all gain their commissions, and will all do them proud when Aramis and his husbands are forced out of this job by age, when their children are grown and their lives can be peaceful. They hastily rearrange themselves, the recruits, into two facing lines, and Aramis quirks his head - it is, he supposes, an efficient way to all get their first gaze upon the young princess of wolves grouching in his arms. But as Athos puts a hand on his back and Aramis steps forwards, the recruits all put their hands to their swords, draw and raise them overhead, an arch of glinting metal, and Aramis looks over them with his smile trying to turn itself more towards pride than smugness but now he has come home, now he feels good.
He lifts Belle, and murmurs by her ear, "This is for you." and walks underneath the arch of blades for the door. Belle herself only grumbles, looking up at those young men saluting her arrival in the garrison, and clearly thinks that they could be doing something much more practical with their time.
A cradle is hung so it will rock in their room - the room he shares with Athos, but from the first night they bar the door with Porthos inside it as well and no-one questions a thing, presumably assuming them right in their paranoia now to want all the guards they can get around that little child. Wet nurses come and go, some of them women who tended Jean-Armand seven years ago, they with rather more children than Aramis has to show for the years between but it feels good to see them again. And Aramis minds his daughter, and does not mind the days. He dresses her in the clothes Porthos brings from their home, roomier, looser garments than the finely-stitched palace clothes she was gifted all scratching with their pretty lace, and she seems more willing to at least put up with them (how she loathes to be constrained). He holds her so she can see him or the garrison in front of them when there's activity to see, as he gets back into the habit of minding his recruits; they've clearly worked to improve while he's been away, as well they might, now that they have a very hard to impress infant to gain the respect of as well.
He writes letters. He writes to d'Artagnan, and the girls, and Constance - he owes Constance more than he knows he can ever repay, that she shrugged and went so willingly from her own life to protect his son - and his little wolf, his dearest, happiest, most precious boy; he writes to him, Her eyes are blue, and she will adore her big brother. I can't wait for you to meet her, little wolf, so you can be together. I miss you by the hour, I think of you always. I hope you keep warm; wrap up your scarf well and don't let your feet get wet, you'll take a chill.
Truly, Aramis knows why no-one questions any longer why Porthos is in the room with them as well, because Aramis has done what was required of him: here is his blue-eyed child, evidence that he does submit to his husband, and she born in the palace itself under the King's own blessing. Now everyone can settle back into the safe old lie, whether they think of it as a lie or not, that Aramis is not, in their eyes, an adulterer and a harlot. He has done his duty by his husband, visibly evidenced, and so they can ignore the rest.
Ridiculous concern, Aramis thinks, watching Porthos very gently bounce his arms with the child in them, making nonsense crooning noises for her to try to appease her to sleep. She would be Athos' daughter however she looked at her birth. Isn't she Porthos' daughter just as entirely as she actually is?
She requires near-constant amusement to distract her from the fundamental flaws in the world she is very impatiently aware of. He sings for her, mostly, and rocks her, and displays for her the different noises things make when knocked against other things, when even the rattle will not entertain. It's one day when singing is working at least for now, in their bedroom in the garrison where she's been bathed and changed and is looking entirely pristine in her white gown - at least, for now - perhaps to be tempted towards sleep, when he hears the knock at the open door behind him.
Behind him; the fingers of his spare hand close around the gun in his belt, and he turns his head slowly, and then relaxes but more confused than relieved. "Alexandre," he says, voice kept carefully neutral, he has no idea where he stands with the man anymore. He's mostly aware that he can't attack anyone while Belle is in the room and needs him more, though. "Can I help you?"
Alexandre gives him a long, difficult look, holding his hat in his hands. Then he gestures with the hat at the child, who makes a confused noise - her song has stopped, and she's prompting her jester to resume, now, please - and Aramis is still for only a second, before he tilts her in his arm to give Alexandre a better look, an invitation.
Alexandre walks in, holding his hat awkwardly, and looks over the little wolf princess who squints up at him, and Aramis knows that tiredness only makes her more likely to squall but Alexandre is unaware of the powder keg he's dangling over. "She is a very pretty thing," Alexandre says, in the tone of a nervous peace offering, and Aramis -
In a way, the ground underneath the two of them is entirely steady. He knows exactly where he stands with Alexandre: had Belle been born with darker skin, he would not be standing here seeking reconciliation, he would not think her pretty, and Belle's birth is irrelevant to the fact that Alexandre thinks of Porthos the way Aramis knows him to. But it's better to know these things. He knows exactly how far he can trust Alexandre. He can fight beside him, but he will never be a friend. And for the captain's sake at least - for the regiment's sake - he can survive that much with grace. He knows Porthos isn't willing to push the matter and it's Porthos' choice in which battles Aramis will fight for him. It's the only way it ever can be.
So he says, the man redeemed in Alexandre's eyes by giving birth to a blue-eyed daughter, "She is. We have been very blessed."
He shifts the child in his grip so she lays more easily for sleeping. He keeps his temper. He thinks of grace.
Alexandre just stands there, silent for a moment too long, and then says, "I wanted to - apologise. For some of my behaviour, earlier."
"It is forgotten." Aramis says, which is one of the lies politeness tells, and means to him only it is not forgiven. "It was a highly-strung time for everyone."
Alexandre presses his mouth underneath his moustache, and his hand touches his pocket, then slips in and he removes a little folding of cloth, tied with a ribbon. "For the girl," he says. "When she's a little older."
"You didn't have to."
"I want her to have it." Alexandre looks at her, and breathes slowly. "My priest has been speaking about . . . about humility."
Aramis looks at his face - he's still not quite looking at Aramis, but at Belle - and thinks of the promises the Queen extracted from the Cardinal. He doesn't doubt that now the priests are talking of humility and the log in one's own eye and the sacredness of life, the sacredness of all life to God. But since Belle's birth whenever he's brooded on the Cardinal's promise it's all added up to horseshit to him, he still doesn't trust his fragile children out in the stewing cauldron of poison Richelieu has turned Paris into. Only now, looking at Alexandre drawing his courage in and meeting Aramis' eye, does some hope gather, small, hard, bright inside his chest, and he carefully draws a cover over it before the brightness can get out of hand, he does know what he gets like.
Alexandre leaves them shortly afterwards, with a bow and Aramis clapping his arm in a simulacrum of friendliness, for now. Aramis sits on the bed with his baby, she finally too tired even to tantrum, sleeping in his arms like a little cherub while he holds her gift in one hand, unthinkingly shifting glass beads with his thumb, the rhythm of prayer at the back of his mind. Alexandre has brought her a rosary of white beads, with a small silver medal of the Virgin. Perfect for a girl, of course. But Aramis already knows his daughter, as small as she is she's still as formidable as steel, and suspects that white will be an entirely inappropriate colour for the girl as soon as she's old enough to walk. White is for girls willing to sit pretty and do nothing more untidy than sew, and how Belle hates to be constrained . . .
She sleeps. He holds her close, because the world is cold, and even soundless he feels the song in his throat, constant for her if she desires it.
He does not trust his children, his children, out in Paris as he's known Paris these last few months. Nothing matters more than them, and he could live in dreary exile in a distant kitchen in the countryside for the rest of his life only to know that they were safe. But Alexandre has changed his tone, and perhaps other may as well; perhaps the mood of the streets will lift, and as it no longer feels so natural and permitted to spit at his feet as he passes, perhaps even those who feel like doing it will feel shamed by others' eyes into hesitating. Perhaps his own neck is no longer considered an open target. Perhaps his life is no longer accounted so cheap.
Perhaps. But his children . . .
His daughter.
He thinks he will never become used to the fact of his daughter. He lay in that palace bed strangling himself to silence, bit clean through both leather gloves Athos offered him, eyes dry with staring through the ceiling, he hurt his hands gripping the mattress so hard in an attempt not to break Athos' hand because he couldn't put Athos through it again, couldn't force him through it all again, and at no point during the birth did survival, his or the child's, seem a relevant option. The pain was only to be endured, ridden through until it was done, until it killed him or just stopped but somewhere in the grey landscape of not screaming the difference between the two blurred clean out. And then -
Miracle -
He felt her slip loose, almost shrieked just at the pressure splitting him actually ceasing, as a new sort of agony of how open and torn he was could finally make itself known. And she cried. Immediately, small as a kitten but entirely furious, she cried, she actually cried as the midwife said, "A girl. A daughter. There, now." and who she was soothing, which of them it was, he has no idea; suddenly his eyes stung with how long they'd been wet and he hadn't even noticed. He didn't see Athos' face for some time then, fumbling his heavy, numbed hands greedily for the child, urgent to have her clasped close, head over-light, not trusting in her life or safety at all unless he held her in so close but hell his hands hardly worked and the towels underneath him were not merely stained but they ran with blood, squelching underneath him, he does know why he was so pathetically weak for so long afterwards.
But the child, angry and scalded-looking and as small as a baby rabbit it seemed in his ungainly big arms, she was real, and warm, and wriggling to be free. Her eyes looked too large in her head and struggled to open but she was perfect, perfect, breathing, perfect. And he looked up, blinking dizzy and dumb for Athos' eyes, because perhaps Aramis was dead, perhaps this was heaven, handed his child to keep safe there forever, perhaps he had left his husbands and their world behind, until the Lord saw fit to bring them to him.
But there he was, Athos, wide-eyed and either he was shaking or Aramis was, Athos looking down at him as if numb and clasping his shoulder, breathing a little too tight through the nose as if he was half as much in shock as Aramis himself was. And between them the baby squirmed, and hiccupped angrily, and was theirs forever, now they'd seen her face.
No. They are hers, forever.
He looks down at her and can't speak, awe has his voice, the great humbling fear-filled awe he's long known from his knees. He doubts she will ever understand the way he loves her, unless she's one day blessed with children herself - he knows his tumbledown little wolf is perfectly casual about Aramis' love, blessed himself with no idea of how visceral it is to Aramis - and that is fine and good. It will not change it. Aramis is the undeserving father of a strong-willed baby who will be a fierce young girl and an indomitable woman, and he is more than content with that, he is grateful for that. She will be magnificent. He is unworthy to have brought her into the world, and can only thank God, and give her everything.
She need never truly understand, sleeping like an angel as she is under his eyes, that all of the rest of her life is a clean sheet, forever, sinless to him, because she has already made him happier than can ever be dented by any transgression, any ill choice of hers. Any choice of hers must be correct, because it is her choice. He casts half a thought to his own father and immediately casts it clean aside as irrelevant, because once he entirely understood his father's weariness of him but now he looks at his daughter and thinks, You were wrong. Children are not for judging or for choosing for. But it's alright. It doesn't matter, now.
All his life he's been looking for something, something that felt strong enough to make him feel truly alive. The life was chilled out of his bones at sixteen, he's been pressing himself too close to every fire since, trying to feel something warm enough once more. Danger helped; lovers helped. Athos and Porthos fenced some of his wilder instincts in. Jean-Armand, the sun in his universe, he gave him something so warm to stay close to, so precious, he no longer needed the casual madness of his youth. It is a gift to be given this again. It is grace, to be allowed to feel this, for a girl he will never be worthy of, a princess among wolves, to be granted the honour of serving her for all of his life.
He looks to the window. He thinks about all of Paris, out there.
He strokes her shoulder with a thumb. He thinks, carefully, because she requires his taking the time to think of things carefully, now. Love may not be enough. His protection is a feeble thing in the face of the world, he may not be enough. He is not enough. But he's not alone. Wolves move in packs.
He says, to the silence of the room, "It will be spring, soon."
His daughter sleeps. The world is good.
Continued