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bbcmusketeerskinkWelcome to the BBC The Musketeers kink meme
The lowdown: You post your prompt, anon or not. Someone else will hopefully fill it (also anon or not). Not for profit, just for fun. And in this case, for king and country.
Anon is on, IP logging is off.
Rules:
No wank
No kink-shaming
Be respectful to everyone
The mod is not your babysitter
Use the warnings
No prompts with characters under the age of 16 in sexual situations, please.
Please keep the discussions in the prompt post to a minimum. We have a discussion post
Mandatory trigger warnings/warnings for both prompts and fills:
non-con/dub-con
abuse (physical and mental)
issues such as racism, sexism, homo-/trans-/-bi-/ace-phobia etc
character death
suicide
self-harm
eating disorders
extreme physical or mental illness
substance abuse (alcohol, drugs, medication)
bullying
gore and horror
If this list misses anything, do let me know, though please understand that if absolutely everything is added this list will never end.
You are encouraged and advised to add additional warnings at your own discretion.
Please make use of the subject line.
If your prompt alludes to the book or any of the other adaptations, please let us know which one.
Lastly, prompt freezes (which I have to say I’m really not fond of) etc will be at the mod’s discretion. I will decide on a prompt cut-off point for prompt posts once I know how fast the meme moves.
Announcement: A blanket spoiler warning is necessary for prompts pertaining to season 2. Just season 2 Spoilers in the subject line will do.
Archive:
https://delicious.com/bbcmusketeers
Discussion post:
http://bbcmusketeerskink.dreamwidth.org/557.html
Official fill post (I strongly suggest you use it for better visibility of your fills):
http://bbcmusketeerskink.dreamwidth.org/418.html
Mod contact post
http://bbcmusketeerskink.dreamwidth.org/1356.html
Free For All Round 1
http://bbcmusketeerskink.dreamwidth.org/1823.html
The lowdown: You post your prompt, anon or not. Someone else will hopefully fill it (also anon or not). Not for profit, just for fun. And in this case, for king and country.
Anon is on, IP logging is off.
Rules:
No wank
No kink-shaming
Be respectful to everyone
The mod is not your babysitter
Use the warnings
No prompts with characters under the age of 16 in sexual situations, please.
Please keep the discussions in the prompt post to a minimum. We have a discussion post
Mandatory trigger warnings/warnings for both prompts and fills:
non-con/dub-con
abuse (physical and mental)
issues such as racism, sexism, homo-/trans-/-bi-/ace-phobia etc
character death
suicide
self-harm
eating disorders
extreme physical or mental illness
substance abuse (alcohol, drugs, medication)
bullying
gore and horror
If this list misses anything, do let me know, though please understand that if absolutely everything is added this list will never end.
You are encouraged and advised to add additional warnings at your own discretion.
Please make use of the subject line.
If your prompt alludes to the book or any of the other adaptations, please let us know which one.
Lastly, prompt freezes (which I have to say I’m really not fond of) etc will be at the mod’s discretion. I will decide on a prompt cut-off point for prompt posts once I know how fast the meme moves.
Announcement: A blanket spoiler warning is necessary for prompts pertaining to season 2. Just season 2 Spoilers in the subject line will do.
Archive:
https://delicious.com/bbcmusketeers
Discussion post:
http://bbcmusketeerskink.dreamwidth.org/557.html
Official fill post (I strongly suggest you use it for better visibility of your fills):
http://bbcmusketeerskink.dreamwidth.org/418.html
Mod contact post
http://bbcmusketeerskink.dreamwidth.org/1356.html
Free For All Round 1
http://bbcmusketeerskink.dreamwidth.org/1823.html
S2 Spoilers, The Secret Smooching Cabinet, Trevilieu
Date: 2015-03-20 10:59 pm (UTC)Re: The Quarter Quell - AU Hunger Games
Date: 2015-03-20 11:26 pm (UTC)Re: Fill: Flea/Ninon 2/2 Re: Two women interacting (TW: Canon era homophobia)
Date: 2015-03-20 11:49 pm (UTC)Re: Tortured Aramis
Date: 2015-03-21 12:15 am (UTC)Re: S2 Spoilers, The Secret Smooching Cabinet, Trevilieu
Date: 2015-03-21 08:27 am (UTC)Victorian era Omegaverse
Date: 2015-03-21 08:34 am (UTC)Maybe Treville is putting together a special team or something, the Inseparables all coming from different backgrounds, Athos and Porthos are two strong Alphas from complete opposite spectrums of both class and society, while Aramis and d'Art as not your average omegas of the time. D'Art the young rebel who's trying to pass for a beta, wearing 'boy clothes' and hating corsets and 'proper' Omega clothes, while Aramis fully embraces his omega-self and seems to effortlessly glide amongst and hold his own against any Alpha, and still look fabulous.
Re: Punching Porthos Mini!FILL
Date: 2015-03-21 11:01 am (UTC)‘Damn – hold him!’
Aramis drops the needle he is threading to grab at Porthos’ flailing arm. Athos struggles to hold the other and gets a knee in the stomach for his trouble. He grunts, but holds on grimly.
‘Keep still, Porthos – I can’t stitch it if you keep moving –‘ Aramis pleads, pinning his friend with an elbow as he stoops to retrieve the needle. Half-conscious, Porthos pays him no attention, but wriggles out of his grasp enough to clock Aramis on the jaw as he straightens. Aramis staggers back with a shout of surprise.
‘Aramis?’ Athos looks up. The other musketeer prods his jaw experimentally and winces.
‘He’s losing too much blood,’ he says, eyes on the bloody mess that is Porthos’ left thigh. ‘We need to do this now.’
Athos nods and turns back to the unruly patient. ‘Porthos. Look at me.’ Porthos fixes a bleary gaze on him, apparently responding to Athos’ best commanding-officer tone. ‘You need to calm down. We’re going to get you sorted out, but you have to stay still.’
His flailing lessens slightly, though he gives no other sign of having understood. Aramis finally threads the needle and takes a steadying breath before bending his head to the wound. Not for the first time, Athos is impressed by the way his fingers become steady and methodical despite the gory scene and their tenuous safety in the abandoned inn. As soon as Aramis presses his fingers to the sides of the wound, however, Porthos’ leg convulses violently, kicking at the coarse wood of the table. Athos meets Aramis’ eyes across the table, seeing the panic seething behind the exasperation. In seconds, they have come to a silent agreement.
‘Porthos,’ says Athos again, without inflection.
When Porthos blindly turns his head towards the voice he meets Athos’ fist coming the other way. He slumps heavily back onto the table. The other two look at one another, startled in the sudden stillness. Aramis blinks and reaches cautiously to peel back one of Porthos’ eyelids, then looks up and nods.
Athos exhales heavily.
‘Next time we’ll do that first,’ Aramis mutters feelingly.
-/-
When Porthos stirs some hours later, he raises an indignant hand to his jaw almost immediately.
‘’Ve I been punched?’ he growls, squinting accusingly at his two friends, sprawled wearily in a chair and leaning against the wall, respectively.
‘No,’ Athos says, without missing a beat. Porthos continues to scowl, and Aramis is the first to look away guiltily.
‘If it’s any consolation,’ he says, putting a hand to his own jaw, ‘you weren’t the only one.’
Fierce Musketeers
Date: 2015-03-21 12:33 pm (UTC)Five times the Musketeers really were protective like wolves?
Re: S2 Spoilers, The Secret Smooching Cabinet, Trevilieu
Date: 2015-03-21 02:48 pm (UTC)Re: Victorian era Omegaverse
Date: 2015-03-21 02:48 pm (UTC)Hnnnng yes.
Re: Victorian era Omegaverse
Date: 2015-03-21 03:06 pm (UTC)Fill: Ye Heirs of Glory 31a/? [Athos/d'Art, Porthos/Aramis Dystopian A/B/O, full warnings in part 1]
Date: 2015-03-21 06:22 pm (UTC)After Richelieu and Treville disappear, there’s a surreal moment when everyone else simply stands around and stares at each other, waiting for someone to speak or act.
Then the pheromones in the air spike abruptly. They’re overwhelming even though the door. If they were just the Captain’s there would be no problem, but somehow, in all their planning, they’d forgotten to account for the fact that the Captain’s mate is a stranger to them all. Athos and Porthos gag simultaneously.
Adele leaps into action. “Right, okay. Porthos, if you go around the side of the house there’s a pile of lumber. Can you chop us some firewood?”
“Absolutely,” Porthos says fervently, and bolts, having apparently decided dignity is the lesser part of being away from that heat scent right now. Athos agrees with the sentiment. He has no urge to touch the Captain, but a different set of instincts are still spoiling for a fight. And then there’s the cognitive dissonance of knowing that the Alpha Athos can smell – strange, not pack – is Cardinal Richelieu. No wonder Porthos wants to be elsewhere. Athos wants to be elsewhere, too, and he fixes Adele with a pleading look.
She hesitates. Then, oddly serious, she says, “Athos, you’d better go around to the stables. Milady will be seeing to the horses – you can lend her a hand.”
Athos has taken three steps towards the door before he recognizes how odd this is.
“Did someone else come with them?” d’Artagnan asks in puzzlement, obviously having realized the same thing.
“No, just the Cardinal and Milady,” Adele says. “Here, I’ll show you to some spare bedrooms. You can have these alone the far wall – ” she starts to point.
“Why does Milady need help stabling two horses?” d’Artagnan interrupts.
Aramis shakes his head and pushes one of the doors Adele had indicated open. It reveals a moderately sized bedchamber, decently appointed, obviously intended for guests. “Because Athos needs to be out of the cottage.”
“Why doesn’t Adele need to be out of the cottage?” d’Artagnan asks, putting his finger right on the crux of the matter in that way he has.
“Pack,” Aramis says, as if that explains it all.
Actually, it does. Heat scents carry all sorts of markers. Athos and Porthos aren’t affected by Treville’s – clan dynamics take care of that – though the drugs and the distress are making Athos uncomfortable. But Alphas have a heat scent of their own, a scent-based keep away signal, a warning that the vulnerable Omega is protected. And Richelieu is most definitely not clan. It makes being in the same lodge as the Cardinal very difficult. That should ease off after the first peak – thank goodness, or Athos and Porthos would be camping outside tonight – but for the moment it makes it hard for Athos not to flee.
Adele, by contrast, is standing calmly in the middle of the common area, breathing easily, and directing d’Artagnan towards another door. Because she’s a member of Richelieu’spack. And Treville’s.
The Captain, the Cardinal, and Aramis’ long-dead aleph. And, Athos would bet anything, the mysterious Milady. What a combination.
Adele glances back over her shoulder. “You’d better go,” she advises Athos. “I’ll come and catch up with you in a few minutes.”
“Now it takes three people to stable two horses?” d’Artagnan demands, still mystified.
“They’ll need me,” Adele says cryptically. “In the meanwhile, I need to talk to you both.” She shepherds Aramis and d’Artagnan both into the room she’d designated as Aramis and Porthos’. Then Adele reaches for the doorknob, giving Athos a significant look.
“She’s waiting for you,” Adele says.
Athos wants to demand an explanation. But then the pheromones spike again. Athos nearly chokes, and sprints for the door.
Outside, Athos takes deep, gulping breaths of clean air. He looks up automatically. Storm clouds are still massed overhead, but by the taste of the air rain is at least an hour away. Porthos has obviously located the woodpile. The rhythmical thunk of axe meeting wood echoes in the clearing.
The stables are visible from the front door, a sturdy looking structure nestled next to the lodge. Athos follows the dirt path around. As he does, a thousand questions run through his mind, each jockeying to be asked of Milady first. Why did you send brigands after Aramis and I outside of Évry? Were you the woman in the blue cloak Aramis didn’t recognize, who burned down the warehouses in Le Havre? Were you the woman he saw recovering in the Palais-Cardinal all those years ago? What happened to you? How did you come to be there? What’s your story?
Athos pushes the stable door open. The horses, unsurprisingly, are already in their stalls. Rubbed down and combed, blanketed, troughs full. Adele hadn’t sent Athos here to help. She hadn’t sent him here just to get him out of the house, either. There are a dozen other chores that always need doing around a place like this. She could have sent him to draw water from the well or spread manure in the small garden on the other side of the house or check the snares he’d seen spread as they approached. As Adele had said, a place like this, in order to remain secret, will have to be largely self-sufficient. That means no shortage of work.
So why had Adele sent him here?
On the far wall of the stables, the horses’ tack hangs, gleaming and well-oiled. From the shadows beneath it, a slim figure emerges, stepping deliberately into the shaft of light let in by the door Athos still holds open.
“Hello, Olivier,” Charlotte says gently.
Athos freezes. Every muscle in his body locks tight, from his knees keeping him upright to the fingers still gripping the stable door. Even his eyes freeze. He wants to tear them away. But they stay where he’d pointed them, pointed directly at the ghost from his past.
“Charlotte,” he gasps.
“I know,” she says, still gentle. Charlotte had been like that. Gentle and kind. And dead. “I was surprised, too. When the Cardinal first told me you were alive I called him a liar.” She laughs a little, though she doesn’t sound amused. “Can you believe that? It’s true! I called him a liar right to his face. After everything he’d done for me. But you see, I couldn’t believe it…”
“Charlotte,” he repeats. He can’t think. How can it be? It’s impossible. He’d felt it. He’d felt their bond tear, standing over Thomas’ body while the château burned in the background and lit up the night sky.
His vision darkens abruptly. He can’t breathe.
“Olivier?” he hears Charlotte call, worried. Small hands seize him and tug on him. He goes with them, barely knowing what he does.
“Sit down,” the voice says. Familiar voice. Trusted voice. Olivier obeys. “Breathe. Come on, Olivier. Breathe in… out… good.”
His vision starts to clear. Dimly he registers that he’s no longer in the stable. A few steps away from it had been a fallen log, mossy with time. He’s sitting on it now, head between his knees. Charlotte’s hand is on his back, rubbing soothing circles.
Abruptly everything in his body revolts. Athos explodes to his feet, shooing her away from him. “You’re dead!” he shouts.
“No,” she says quietly. “I’m not.”
“How did you survive?” Athos demands. He stares at her – alive, how can she be alive? His ears are still ringing with the shouts of the villagers who had burned down his ancestral home. The scent of blood is in the air – Thomas’ blood – wet and sticky on his hands where he’d clutched his baby odem’s body, trying to find some sign of life and hope. And in the space below his heart he can feel again the terrible rending sensation that had been his bond with Charlotte.
Something new seizes him. Horror. Because if Charlotte isn’t dead –
“Did you do it?” he whispers. “Did you sell us out?”
“No!” she cries, shocked. “No, of course not! Olivier, how can you – ”
“Shut up,” he grinds out. “I don’t want to hear it. After everything you’ve done – ”
“Everything I’ve – ”
“The bandits at Évry, the bane at Le Havre – ”
“Don’t tell me you’ve become such an idiot that you can’t tell I was helping you!”
“Don’t tell me you’ve become such an idiot that you think I’ll believe that!” he shouts back. He seizes her by the arms, tight, even when she cries out in pain.
“You’re alive,” he says. “And Thomas is dead. Tell me how to reconcile those two facts.”
Quick as a snake, Milady brings her arms up and breaks his hold, retreating several steps. “I didn’t betray you,” she says, voice tight with agony. “I died that night, too. Maybe we all did. Maybe there are no more la Fères.”
“Why should I believe that?”
“Because it’s the truth.”
“Look at you,” he says scornfully. “When did you learn how to fight? To hire brigands and smuggle goods and pick pockets? After you left la Fère? Or before? Was any of it true? Or were you just playing me all along?”
“It was all true!” she cries. “Olivier – ”
“Tell me what happened!” he shouts, demanding. “Tell me how you’re still alive when Thomas is dead!”
“You want to know?” she shouts back. “I’ll tell you!”
Her hands are at the collar of her gown before Athos can register the movement. For a wild moment he thinks she’s choking herself. Then she grips the fabric and tears it wide, buttons flying everywhere.
Athos stares. He can’t help it. Somewhere, distantly, he’s aware that he’s begun to weep. The old part of his heart that had never quite healed from his bond with Charlotte is alive with agony.
“They had me for three days,” Milady says. Quietly now. She’s staring down at her own body, fingers tracing the long-healed scars. The gesture is almost compulsive. The scarring is thickest on her abdomen, of course, where her womb would have been ripped out. But it spirals out in all directions from there. Up to her chest, where the teats that would have nursed pups have been cut away, leaving mounds of flesh topped by a dense mass of scarring that grotesquely impersonates what’s missing. And down, too, to the space between her legs. The muscles that would enable her to take an Alpha’s knot, to contract around it and milk it to heighten the chances of pups, are gone. Those same muscles would also help her whelp – pups are larger at birth, on average, than children, and Omegas need the extra boost. All gone. It leaves the space oddly bare, concave in a way that must be pleasing to Betas but will feature in Athos’ nightmares for the rest of his life.
He understands now why she had said Charlotte de la Fère was dead.
Athos has to take several minutes to pull himself together. Then he walks the few steps back to the mossy log, and sits down.
“Tell me what happened,” he says. This time there’s no judgment in his tone.
After a moment Milady tugs the halves of her ruined dress back up to cover herself and joins him.
“It was Thomas,” she says without preamble.
Athos flinches.
“He didn’t mean to,” Milady adds, as if that makes any difference. “He’d been going off on his own occasionally when we went into town. It made me nervous, but if he were really going to be able to pass, he needed to be able to do it without one of us nearby. One day he was going to find himself alone no matter what we did, and what then? If he’d never practiced it before he’d be sure to make a mistake.”
“You don’t have to justify yourself to me,” Athos says wearily.
“I think we both know that’s a lie,” Milady answers, and clutches her dress more tightly at her neck.
He doesn’t reply.
“Thomas was seeing someone,” she goes on eventually. “The blacksmith’s son. I don’t know what made Thomas think that this boy would be sympathetic… maybe he was just in love. Everyone does stupid things when they’re in love. It’s the one thing we all have in common, throwbacks and Betas alike.”
“Thomas told the boy,” Athos says. It isn’t a question.
“The first indication I had that anything was wrong was when three of the town’s strongest men grabbed me and dragged me to the church,” Milady says. She’s not looking at Athos, staring fixedly down at the intricate stitching on her dress. “But later I heard them talking. The blacksmith’s son had told Thomas that he didn’t care Thomas was an Omega, but that he had to get his father’s blessing. Thomas – it sounded like he tried to persuade the boy otherwise, but the boy insisted. When the boy left, Thomas ran.”
Athos catches himself wondering if the long-ago boy really had loved Thomas regardless of his sex, or if he’d just made up the excuse about the father to get help capturing the Omega. It doesn’t matter, not really. But Athos finds himself hoping the villain was the blacksmith and not the boy. He hopes Thomas really had been loved, even if it had just been puppy love, before his death.
“They chased Thomas down in the woods of la Fère. Butchered him where he lay and left his body there, then continued on to the château to get you. They told me they burned the château down and you with it. I thought you were dead.”
“I was worried about you,” Athos says lowly. “I was already heading towards the village to find out what had become of you. But I felt – through our bond – ”
“They killed Thomas so quickly it was like they felt cheated,” Charlotte goes on as if she hadn’t heard him. “They decided to take their time with me. When I passed out, they gave me drugs to wake me back up again, keep me awake. That first night when I woke up our bond was already gone. I didn’t find out why until later. That night I thought it was because Olivier was dead, as they’d told me.”
“I wasn’t.”
“Olivier must have been,” Charlotte says simply. “My mate would never have deserted me.”
Athos flinches again, feeling the sting of her words like a physical blow.
“They spent two days doing this to me,” she goes on, still staring down at the scars – hidden by her gown, but her fingers are tracing over them anyway, like she knows their location by heart. She probably does. How many nights has she spent mapping out her ruined body? How many weeks, months, years had it taken for her to heal from what the Inquisition had done to her?
“They were going to crucify me on dawn at the third day, according to their scriptures,” Charlotte finishes. “But one of the lay priests had connections to the Underground. He said I must be sent to a convent. The villagers didn’t want to let me go. But he said that, if they killed me themselves, they’d stain their souls. So they let him take me. He brought me south, pretending to be my brother. I was passed between several contacts on my way to Paris… I don’t remember much of it. All I remember is the pain.”
Athos is weeping again. He wishes futilely that he were drunk.
“The Underground brought me to a healer in Paris, but she said there was nothing she could do for me except make me comfortable while I finished dying. At that point, as long as she gave me drugs for the pain, I didn’t care. Thomas was dead, you were dead – I’d ruined you both – I begged God to kill me quickly. I wished I’d killed myself along with the rest of my family, instead of coming to la Fère and bringing all this misery on you.”
“Charlotte – ” Olivier is on his feet before he knows he’s moved, reaching for his mate to comfort her.
“Milady!” she screams back at him. “Charlotte is dead! She died that night.” She heaves breaths. “Along with the rest of her family.”
“I’m right here,” Olivier says helplessly.
“Liar,” she hisses viciously. “Tell me, did you think twice before you abandoned me and fled to Paris? How long did you mourn my name before you took up with that young Omega who came here with you? If he took off his shirt, what would I see? Your teeth marks on his neck? How round is his belly, Olivier?”
Fill: Ye Heirs of Glory 31b/? [Athos/d'Art, Porthos/Aramis Dystopian A/B/O, full warnings in part 1]
Date: 2015-03-21 06:23 pm (UTC)“I thought so,” she says, voice dropping. “I thought so.”
Athos sits down again, moving like an old, old man.
“Adele found me,” Milady says. It’s like she’s telling a story about a complete stranger. “She said she knew a doctor who would be willing to try to save me, but it would be agony. The doctor would have to cut me back open and fix what the Inquisition had done, at least as much as they could. She said that anything I was given to numb the pain would probably kill me. That even if I lived, I’d never be able to carry, I might never even go into heat again, and if anyone saw me unclothed they’d probably scream.”
“Why did you say yes?” Athos whispers.
“Revenge. I told Adele that if her doctor gave me back the use of my limbs, I wouldn’t rest until I’d destroyed the Inquisition root and branch. And she took me to the Cardinal.”
“The Cardinal saved your life.”
“The Cardinal created me. And he gave me the tools to pursue the only purpose I had left. I’ve been his agent ever since.”
“How long?” Athos asks.
“I just told you – ”
“Not that. Not how long since you entered into his employ.”
“Then what?”
“How long since you knew it was me?”
Milady seems to search his face. Athos can still read her, a little: she’s looking to see if he really wants to know.
“Since that Gascon of yours came to Paris,” she says finally. “Ella asked me to keep an eye on him after he joined your squad. I saw you with him. And I knew.”
“Why didn’t you – ”
“I think you’ll understand,” she says coldly, “if I tell you I wasn’t quite right for a few months after I realized you’d survived, and abandoned me.”
“I thought you were dead,” Athos repeats.
“Is that supposed to be enough?” Milady asks.
“Charlotte?” a new voice calls.
Athos starts badly. He spins, nearly falling over in his confusion, turning to face the approaching figure.
It’s Adele. Athos had been so distracted he hadn’t heard her coming or caught her scent.
“Adele,” Milady says. “It’s all right. Everything’s fine.”
“Everything doesn’t sound fine,” Adele disagrees. She’s looking suspiciously at Athos, like all of this is his fault.
He catches that thought and looks at it again. It is all his fault.
Then another thought strikes him. Adele had known. This is why she’d sent him to the stables instead of one of the dozens of other tasks that probably needed doing: not to work at all, but to talk to Milady.
Why would Milady have told her? Athos hasn’t told anyone about his past, not really, not beyond the bare facts. He’d always kept it impersonal. No names. Just nouns. My mate. My odem. My château. Only to d’Artagnan had he ever said Charlotte, Thomas, la Fère.
Adele had called Milady Charlotte. Like the revenge-driven agent wasn’t what she saw when she looked at Athos’ former mate.
He doesn’t want to ask. There’s no way to do it without sounding accusing in his turn. But he has to know.
“If I looked at your shoulder right now,” Athos says quietly, “What would I see?”
She’d only exposed her torso to him before, when she’d shown him her scars. Not her arms. Was his old mating bite still there? Or would he see someone else’s teeth marks in her skin?
Adele snarls, taking a step towards him aggressively. Athos settles his stance automatically, preparing to defend himself, knowing in the back of his mind that this is as definite an answer as actually seeing the marks.
But Milady shoots to her feet and catches Adele around the waist, holding her back. “No, Ella, don’t,” she says. “Don’t, please.”
“I see,” Athos says quietly.
“No you don’t,” Adele says savagely. “You want to know what you’d see on her shoulder? Nothing, that’s what. They cut out your bite. That’s what broke your mating. Those bastards cut out her entire bonding gland. The hormone storm alone – ”
“Ella, please, please,” Milady pleads. She’s weeping now, the icy façade gone.
“You’re mad at her because you think she’s mine,” Adele snarls. “But she isn’t. She never can be, no matter how much she wants to be, no matter how much I want her. She’ll never mate with anyone again. It wasn’t enough for them to destroy her fertility. They had to take away her ability to mate, too.”
“That’s not part of sterilization,” Athos says blankly. It’s almost certainly the wrong response, too clinical, but it’s the only thing he can think of to say. In the wake of Charlotte’s and Thomas’ deaths, he’d spent a lot of time imagining the many things the Inquisition would have done to them. But this is a level of cruelty beyond anything his fevered mind had invented.
“She told you.” Adele’s voice cuts like a whip. “They took their time with her.”
“Ella, stop,” Milady commands. All three of them have tears running down their faces, but Milady’s voice is steady. “Love, please. It’s over. It’s in the past. We can’t change it.”
“He doesn’t get to stand there and accuse you of being unfaithful,” Adele cries. “Not after what they did to you, not after what he left you to.”
“I accused him of the same thing,” Milady admits. “I shouldn’t have. He thought I was dead. What was he supposed to do? Bury himself along with me?”
“Maybe,” Adele whispers.
“I’m sorry,” Athos says, finally finding his voice in the face of all this horror. “Charlotte, Milady, I didn’t know. I felt our bond break and I thought – I’m sorry. God, I’m so sorry.”
Milady takes a deep breath. “I forgive you,” she says. The words sound like they’re torn from her.
“I don’t,” Adele mutters rebelliously.
“Shush, Ella,” Milady says. She wraps her arms around Adele more firmly. Clinging, some part of Adele says. Drawing strength from her new Alpha.
It’s bittersweet, seeing her like this. There’s part of him that screams at the sight, saying that Charlotte is his. That he should lunge across the intervening space and savage the Alpha who presumes to touch his mate. That Charlotte would love him more for it, for protecting her –
The thought is as effective as a bucket of cold water dumped over his head. Olivier hadn’t protected Charlotte. He’d failed her. And he has no right to say a word against her having built a new life, with a new purpose, and with whatever happiness she might still be able to find.
After all, hadn’t he done the same? Unconsciously he touches his chest, feeling the warm place within where his bond with d’Artagnan nestles. Next to his love for d’Artagnan he can see his bond with Charlotte for what it had been. Young. Puppyish. They’d been the only other throwbacks each other had ever known, discounting family. They’d met and mated in the throes of heat. And it would have been enough, if the Inquisition hadn’t come for them. It would have been enough for Olivier and Charlotte.
But it isn’t enough now. Not for Milady and Athos. Athos needs something more. Someone more.
Someone whole, a dark, shameful part of him whispers. Intact. Pupped.
“I am so sorry,” Athos says again wretchedly.
“I think you should go back inside now,” Adele says. She presses her lips together. “I came out here to tell you – your Omega is asking for you.”
Milady flinches. Athos falters.
Adele glares.
“All right,” Athos whispers. “Yes, all right.”
He flees, trying not to hear Charlotte weeping as he goes.
D’Artagnan’s waiting for Athos inside, as promised. Thankfully the air is breathable; Treville must be past the first peak. He doesn’t think d’Artagnan would react well to Athos running straight out of the cottage again. One look at d’Artagnan’s face tells Athos what conversation Adele had been having with he and Aramis, while Athos confronted the ghosts of his family.
“That Omega used to be your mate,” d’Artagnan says without preamble.
“Yes,” Athos admits, seeing no point in trying to hide it.
D’Artagnan nods. Leaning against the doorjamb, it should be a position of ease, except for the crossed arms and defensive stance. Usually aggression is an Alphaic trait, but under certain circumstances an Omega can be even more vicious. This is most certainly one of them. D’Artagnan feels threatened. His pair-bond is under attack, his pups are in danger of finding themselves without a provider, and he lacks safe territory. Hence the defensive stance in front of the bedroom assigned as theirs. Here in this strange place, d’Artagnan only has the territory he can take and defend. He’s instinctively preparing to defend this room. Against his own mate, if necessary.
The large communal space is empty. The doors that lead to other rooms are all closed. Charlotte and Adele are by the stables. Richelieu and Treville are cloistered. Aramis must have gone to join Porthos at the woodpile. No one else would have wanted to be around for this.
Athos structures his own body language carefully. Loose, open stance, palms showing, inclined subtly towards his mate. “Charlotte and Olivier de la Fère died a long time ago,” he says.
“Then who are you?”
“Athos.” He stops and thinks about it further. Says, “Your Athos.”
“You used to be her Olivier.”
“Her Olivier is dead.”
“What would she say if I asked her?” d’Artagnan demands.
Athos tries very hard to control his flinch. He doesn’t succeed. “She’d say that her Olivier betrayed her and left her in the hands of their enemies,” he says heavily. “She’d say that Charlotte is dead, too.”
D’Artagnan sighs. “Oh, Athos,” he says sorrowfully. He uncrosses his arms and reaches for his mate, drawing him into their bedroom and closing the door behind him. “Here I am being worried that you’re going to replace me, when I should be comforting you.”
“You’re not replaceable,” Athos says. He doesn’t know much, but he knows that.
“Neither is she,” d’Artagnan says, correctly.
“I don’t know what to do about that,” Athos admits.
“Do? I don’t know what you could do.” D’Artagnan tugs Athos over to the bed and gets them both down on it.
“You’re not replaceable,” Athos repeats.
D’Artagnan doesn’t answer at once. He’s looking down at the places their bodies meet. When they lie together like this, the gentle swell of d’Artagnan’s belly is more obvious. It’s one of the primary points of contact between them physically.
It doesn’t take a seer to know that d’Artagnan is wondering if it’s also the thing that connects them emotionally.
“Adele told me what the Inquisition did to Milady,” d’Artagnan says, confirming Athos’ suspicions. “She can’t carry, can she.”
“No,” Athos says. The shudder is entirely involuntary, strong enough to shake them both.
“And I can.”
“I thought she was dead,” Athos says. A quiet desperation is starting to bubble up in him. “D’Artagnan, I didn’t take up with you because I wanted pups.”
“You never considered me more than a bothersome puppy until suddenly I was pupped myself.”
“D’Artagnan!”
“I spent months trying to get you to look at me. Just once to look at me as something besides a novice and a farmboy,” d’Artagnan whispers. “I thought – when we shared that heat together – I thought you were finally seeing me as someone worthy. But now I wonder if all you were seeing was my fertility.”
“Everything about you is to be cherished,” Athos interrupts. “Everything. Yes, including your fertility, because it’s part of you. But I would cherish you without it too.”
“You wouldn’t put your teeth in my neck until you’d gotten your pups in my belly. Have I ever been a person to you? Or just an incubator?”
“Don’t you dare!” Athos shouts. He pushes away, suddenly furious. Furious and desperate. “Don’t cheapen yourself, or what you mean to me!”
D’Artagnan doesn’t reach out to pull Athos back in. He just watches Athos sadly. Lying here, despairing and afraid, belly gently rounded, d’Artagnan suddenly looks ten years older.
Athos can’t stand it. D’Artagnan is young. Too young, he’s often thought. But what throwback can afford to be young? D’Artagnan had thought he’d found a safe harbor, but now he thinks he’s falling into the same trap that has caught so many of their people. Forced to grow up too quickly, forced to take on impossible burdens alone – one parent raising two pups, because the other is dead, or distant, or lost –
Repentant and ashamed, Athos returns to the bed, clutching d’Artagnan’s hands between his own. “D’Artagnan, I’m so sorry I spent all that time pushing you away. I’m sorry that I hurt you. I’m sorry that you had to go to such extremes to snap me out of it. And I’m sorry that I’ve ever given you any excuse to think that my love for you isn’t real.”
“Lot of hormones swirling around that day,” d’Artagnan says quietly. “And instincts. I was in heat. You’d just fought off three attackers to protect me. I know my scent is strong. And we’re compatible.” So compatible, he doesn’t say, that they’d conceived in their first heat together, their mating heat.
Athos reaches down and tips d’Artagnan’s chin up, urging him to meet his eyes. “When Charlotte died Olivier died with her,” he says. “I thought – I became Athos, but Athos was just a cover. A front. He wasn’t real. The real parts of me I thought were all buried in the soil of la Fère, with my parents and odem and mate. Athos was just someone I could be while I waited to die.”
D’Artagnan makes a low, protesting noise. “What about us? All of us?”
“Aramis and Porthos changed that somewhat,” Athos admits. “Having a pack again, even a small one, that helped. But they had each other. It wasn’t – ” he breaks off, trying to figure out how to speak what’s in his heart. “I – ”
“You need someone to protect,” d’Artagnan says. “Your sire raised you to be traditional. You didn’t know how to define yourself except as part of someone else.”
“That’s not – ”
“It’s all you ever talk about,” d’Artagnan interrupts. “Your line, your pack, your odem, your mate, your duties, your responsibilities. You’re never your own proper noun. You’re always in the possessive. When I came along, you could define yourself in terms of me. Us. Your Omega. Your pups. So you became real.”
“That’s not what it is,” Athos says.
“When you looked at me I felt like I was something more than the sum of my history. More than just a farmer, a Gascon, an orphan. More than my labels. I wanted you to keep looking at me forever. But you didn’t think of me that way. You made me feel that way, but you didn’t see it yourself. I asked you on that heat – and you came – and I thought I’d changed your mind. I thought I’d made you see in me the same things you made me feel. But now I think that maybe all you saw in me was a second chance.”
“That’s exactly it,” Athos says, trying to make him understand. “We are all each others’ second chances. Throwbacks don’t often get them. We make one mistake, and we’re dead. Or worse. But we found each other. The four of us as a pack, and the two of us as mates. We are each others’ chance to make something out of the ruins the Inquisition has left us with.”
“And that’s love?” d’Artagnan says dubiously. “A second chance?”
“Forgiveness, grace, mercy, redemption. That’s love.”
D’Artagnan looks thoughtful. “Love bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things.”
Athos blinks. “That sounds familiar,” he says, chasing the memory.
“It’s from the Bible. Aramis used to read it to me while I was so sick the first trimester I couldn’t get out of bed.” D’Artagnan laughs a little at the memory. “He was shocked that I’d only ever had the Beta catechism. Honestly, I didn’t even know anything was different.”
“We’re different,” Athos says, reverting to the core problem. “Olivier loved Charlotte. Olivier loves her still. But Athos loves you. And Ella loves Milady.”
“I did see that.” D’Artagnan sighs. “I half thought you were going to come back in here bloody from fighting with her.”
“You’re the one that I want.”
D’Artagnan smiles a little, though it’s still sad. “I suppose I’ve lived with her ghost this whole time already.”
Fill: Ye Heirs of Glory 31c/? [Athos/d'Art, Porthos/Aramis Dystopian A/B/O, full warnings in part 1]
Date: 2015-03-21 06:23 pm (UTC)“Just – ” d’Artagnan lays a finger over Athos’ lips. “Just let me get used to it. All right? We’re stuck here for a few days anyway while the Captain goes through heat. We’ll all need to figure out who we are in relation to each other.”
“A few days?” Athos doesn’t want to be distracted, but – “Surely his heat will end now that he’s with the Cardinal?”
“Not as long as those drugs are in his system. He’ll stay in heat until they’re purged. Aramis says a few days at least.”
“Oh,” Athos says dumbly. He’d thought, naively, that once Treville had been properly knotted that his heat would end and they could all go home. He hadn’t considered that the drugs might prolong heat even in distress.
“Yeah,” d’Artagnan says ruefully. “It’ll be tense, I guess. Adele and Aramis – you didn’t see them. Aramis doesn’t even want to talk to her. She tried to hug him and he shoved her away. Then Porthos had her up against a wall before I could blink, and Adele didn’t even fight him.”
“Oh no,” Athos says. His worry splits and grows again: worry for d’Artagnan, for Treville, for Charlotte, and now for Aramis and Porthos. He feels pressed down with all his cares.
“Adele said, you wanted me to tell you what happened. But Aramis said not now, I can’t listen to it now, just go away. Adele didn’t want to go, but Porthos practically shoved her out the door. And I said– I didn’t think it would be a good idea for the two of them to become enraged – so I asked Adele if she could get you for me, and she went.”
“That was good thinking,” Athos manages to say. D’Artagnan has a knack for diplomacy, it seems.
“It was all I could think of,” d’Artagnan says self-deprecatingly. “And – I did want you. Adele had told us about Milady. I needed to know…”
“You are my mate,” Athos repeats. He lets himself reach out to touch, to cup d’Artagnan’s cheek, and d’Artagnan lets himself be caressed with a soft longing sigh. “I won’t lie to you and say that seeing Charlotte again hasn’t made all my grief new. But there’s nothing left between us but grief. You are my mate, my partner, my hope of heaven.”
D’Artagnan has to close his eyes and swallows hard. “Oh, Athos,” he whispers.
Emboldened, Athos draws d’Artagnan into his embrace. “If you need time, I’ll give it to you,” he promises. Athos lays one palm gently over d’Artagnan’s shoulder, tracing the gentle raised scars of his mating bite, D’Artagnan’s pulse pounding under Athos’ fingertips. “But whatever you do with me, know that I am yours.”
“I will try to remember it,” d’Artagnan promises. He relaxes a little in Athos’ arms, though, which Athos has to take as a good sign. He yawns, too.
“Tired?” Athos asks. They’ve had a tumultuous several days, and a long hard ride at the end of them.
“Yes. But I don’t know if I can sleep.”
“Can I do something?”
D’Artagnan yawns again. “Talk to me?” he asks.
“About what?”
“I don’t know. Anything. I just want to hear your voice.” D’Artagnan wiggles a little, getting comfortable. After a moment, he says, “Your past. Your childhood. La Fère. Charlotte.”
Athos licks his lips. “Are you sure?”
D’Artagnan nods. “When it was just us – when all of that was in your past – I didn’t mind not knowing, so much. If you weren’t ready to tell me I had no reason to push. But if it’s going to be part of our present – ”
“You deserve to know,” Athos agrees. It’s a hard request, but a fair one. And d’Artagnan deserves this and so much more.
So he takes a deep breath. For the first time in over a decade, he consciously dredges up memories he’d tried to bury forever.
“I was whelped in the spring,” he begins quietly. “Cara was sick for a long time after I was whelped – the midwife said she shouldn’t carry again too soon, that’s why Thomas and I were so far apart – but she was well enough by the time I remember. She used to take me out into the meadows, when the sun was bright, and she’d sit under the tree while I ran and played…”
At some point d’Artagnan falls asleep. It doesn’t matter. Athos goes on talking until sunrise, painting bright pictures of a world he’d used to know.
Fill: Ye Heirs of Glory 32a/? [Athos/d'Art, Porthos/Aramis Dystopian A/B/O, full warnings in part 1]
Date: 2015-03-21 06:29 pm (UTC)The smell of frying bacon wakes d’Artagnan from a surprisingly peaceful sleep. He’d have bet that he’d spend the night tossing and turning. The hunting-lodge may be snug, but it’s still strange. The scents are different. Some of them lack the comforting tang of pack. And d’Artagnan’s worried for just about everyone sleeping under this roof.
Despite that, he seems to have slept well enough. He turns his head and smiles fondly at the sight of Athos, snoring slightly next to him, dead to the world. Athos’ quiet murmur and the stories he’d told had been a constant presence throughout d’Artagnan’s dreams.
D’Artagnan had woken briefly at one point, long past midnight, and realized that the quiet thread underpinning his dreams had been Athos. Still awake, d’Artagnan’s mate had been deep into a story of a time Thomas had been learning to ride, though by Athos’ account it’s hard to say who had been more wobbly-legged between the Omega and the yearling. Athos had been staring out the window, a soft smile on his face, as if for once the memories didn’t bring him pain. D’Artagnan had laid still and listened, giving no sign that he’d been awake. Eventually he’d drifted back off to sleep as Thomas had mastered the canter.
Such a contradiction. Who is the Alpha in bed with d’Artagnan? The gruff Musketeer who neither has nor needs companionship? The grieving widower who’d buried his heart with his mate and his odem? The passionate lover who’d taken d’Artagnan through his heat, killed to protect him, sworn to share his life with him? The tender companion who’d stayed up past midnight to whisper stories to d’Artagnan, because d’Artagnan had asked?
All of them, of course. Though how Athos can manage being so many people is difficult for d’Artagnan to understand. But no, d’Artagnan is wrong, isn’t he? Athos isn’t all of those people. Athos is only some of those people. Olivier de la Fère is the others.
The Alpha in bed with d’Artagnan right now is Athos. The Alpha who’d whispered to him all night, who’d fought for him and protected him and mated with him, is Athos. Athos is d’Artagnan’s. And as long as Olivier had been dead, that had been enough.
Now Olivier might be coming back to life again. Coming back to life for Charlotte. And what happens to Athos then?
Carefully, not wanting to disturb Athos, d’Artagnan slips out of bed. He uses the pot and dresses, then goes out into the main room.
“Good morning,” a gentle voice calls across the room. D’Artagnan follows it into the kitchen. Charlotte is standing in front of the stove, wearing an embroidered dress barely visible beneath a giant apron. She’s frying the bacon. Other platters sit, covered, presumably full of food.
“Can I help?” d’Artagnan offers almost without thinking. He’s not quite awake yet: maybe that’s why. And he’d grown up in a farmhouse much like this one, so he knows exactly how much work there still is to be done, though he supposes that Richelieu doesn’t have livestock that need tending or crops that need planting.
“Can you help?” Charlotte parrots, turning slices quickly.
D’Artagnan stiffens a little. “I know my way around a kitchen,” he says, annoyed.
Charlotte turns in surprise. “I didn’t mean that. I just thought – aren’t you nauseated? Jean says your morning sickness – ”
“Oh.” D’Artagnan blushes a little, embarrassed. “No, thank you, I’m fine. It’s gotten a lot better lately. I mean, some mornings, yes – I still feel it – but today I’m fine. And that bacon smells very good,” he adds.
“Thank you,” Charlotte says, seeming pleased. “Well, if you’re up for it, I haven’t started on the toast yet.”
She gestures to a sideboard, where two fresh baked loaves are cooling. D’Artagnan locates a knife in the second drawer he tries – the layout of a farmhouse doesn’t change much, no matter who lives in it – and starts cutting slides.
“You’re due in the fall?” Charlotte asks after a moment. Her voice is tentative, like she’s not sure whether d’Artagnan will respond civilly or rip her throat out. D’Artagnan turns his head and sees Charlotte glancing over, too, but she’s not looking at d’Artagnan’s face. She’s looking lower, and her expression is sad and wistful and excited all at once.
D’Artagnan abruptly feels like a heel. He’s behaving irrationally – instinctively – and he’s more than that. If he starts clawing at Charlotte’s face over Athos then he isn’t any better than the Inquisition makes him out to be.
“Just after Michaelmas,” d’Artagnan says. He offers her a smile. Tentatively Charlotte returns it. “Twins.”
“Yes, I – have you thought of names yet?”
“Not really.” D’Artagnan finishes the first batch of slices and transfers them to the toasting-rack. A thought occurs to him. Somewhat suspiciously he says, “You seem to know a lot about my pupping already?”
Charlotte looks away. “Treville talks about you all sometimes. We don’t discourage him. Maybe we should. But Adele always wants to know about René, and – ”
“And you wanted to know about Athos?”
“Not at first,” Charlotte admits. “At first I couldn’t bear to hear about him.”
“You must have been furious,” d’Artagnan breathes. It hits him suddenly, the flip side of all of this. If d’Artagnan has been angry, how much Charlotte feel, knowing that her mate had abandoned her and taken up with a much younger Omega? Mated with him – sired pups on him, for God’s sake –
“At first I was.” Charlotte starts piling bacon up on a platter. “I was angry for a long time.”
“You’re not still angry?” D’Artagnan tries to keep the doubt from his voice, but it leaks through anyway.
Charlotte shrugs one shoulder, ruefully. “Part of me is. I try not to let it out too much. I don’t like the person I am when I’m angry.” She covers the bacon platter with another. Still not looking at d’Artagnan, she adds, “I get angry when I’m working for the Resistance. It’s an outlet.”
D’Artagnan nods. Now that he can understand.
“Here’s the toast,” he says.
“Take it out to the table,” Charlotte directs. “Adele will be back from feeding the horses soon.”
There’s an inescapable note of fondness in her voice that makes d’Artagnan’s ears prick up. “You and Adele…?” he asks carefully.
Charlotte pulls out silverware, setting the table. “As much as we can be,” she says. Now she sounds bitter. “What the Inquisition left to me.”
“More than enough for me,” Adele says. She’s come in, the sound of the door opening swallowed up by the chink of silverware. “Your Olivier’s a fool.”
“My Olivier is dead.”
“Well, don’t throw yourself in a grave with him,” Adele says fiercely.
D’Artagnan hangs back as Adele shucks her boots and goes to fetch plates. She and Charlotte move around each other with the ease of long practice, setting the table and bringing in platters of food from the kitchen as if they’ve done this a thousand times before.
There’s a fondness and comfort to their airs together, too. A relaxation as they go through what must be a familiar routine. And yet it has an edge to it. Adele keeps walking that little bit too close to Charlotte, finding excuses to touch her. And Charlotte darts worried glances when she thinks Adele isn’t looking.
They’re afraid, too, d’Artagnan realizes. Adele is carrying the same fear d’Artagnan is: that Charlotte will leave her and try to go back to Olivier. But what’s Charlotte afraid of?
Charlotte tugs on a drawer and swears a little under her breath, shimmying it sideways to get it open. She starts pulling out simple cotton napkins. “It’s still sticking,” she says to Adele in annoyance.
“I’ll fix it when I can get grease from the manor,” Adele says. “If it matters?”
“Why wouldn’t it matter?” Charlotte frowns. “We use it every day, Ella.”
Adele shrugs stiffly. “Only when we’re here.”
“We live here!”
“At least we do now.”
Charlotte’s jaw drops a little. She takes a step towards Adele – it looks almost involuntary – and her eyes widen.
Adele doesn’t see this. She’s turned her back and is busily laying out plates.
“Ella?” Charlotte whispers. “Love, where else would we go?”
Adele either doesn’t hear or chooses not to answer.
In that moment, Charlotte’s heart appears in her face for the world – or d’Artagnan – to read. His breaks for her all of a sudden. She looks lost and frightened.
D’Artagnan sees it all in a rush. Adele is afraid Charlotte will leave her, and she’s already bracing for the blow. But in doing so she’s pushing Charlotte away, and Charlotte doesn’t want to go. Charlotte’s so terrified of losing the only home and family she has left that if Olivier threw himself down at Charlotte’s feet and begged her to go home to la Fère she’d spurn him and run straight to Adele’s arms.
Whether Olivier has any intentions of doing so is a different problem. D’Artagnan’s problem. But Charlotte isn’t competition. Charlotte, ironically, is in the same position d’Artagnan is in, minus the pups. They’d both been thrown out into the world lost and alone, no friends, no family, no path to follow. Then they’d found a new life. Had seized it with all their might, forcing their way into an established situation to make a place for themselves.
But they’re aware, so eternally aware, of how tenuous it is. The newest Musketeer, the newest Resistance agent, barely into the circle. Vulnerable. Least. Always afraid of losing their position. Always alert to the slightest change in pack dynamics. Always watching for the signs that say it will be time to pick up again and run.
D’Artagnan had thought his mating and his pups might have put him beyond those fears. Charlotte rakes them all up again for him. And Charlotte – what does she have to hold her position? She can’t mate again, Adele had said. She can’t carry. She has knowledge of the Resistance, true. But that’s cold comfort in a world with the Inquisition.
Charlotte isn’t going to fight for Olivier. She’s too busy fighting for Adele.
“So you live here,” d’Artagnan says. His voice is too loud in the sudden silence. Both Adele and Charlotte turn to him, surprised. “I should have guessed! It’s so well kept up. It must be wonderful for the two of you to have a place like this to retreat to.” He lets a wistfulness creep into his voice. “Here you can be safe together.”
Adele blinks. “Well.” She glances at Charlotte. “I suppose, yes.”
Charlotte offers Adele her most earnest smile. D’Artagnan can see where it trembles around the edges, but perhaps Adele, blinded by fear, cannot.
“It’s wonderful to be here with Ella,” she says to d’Artagnan, never looking away from her mate. “I always feel so protected when we’re together.”
D’Artagnan doesn’t quite bite his tongue. From anyone else Charlotte’s statement would be the outside of too much. Somehow Charlotte sells it. Or maybe she just knows by now what Adele loves best to hear. Regardless, Adele softens.
“Someone has to care for the house.” Adele sets down the last cup with a soft clank. “And neither of us had any other homes left.”
“It’s a new start,” Charlotte says softly. “Out here it’s peaceful. There are no bad memories.”
There are bad memories now, d’Artagnan doesn’t say. He doesn’t have to say it. At that moment one of the bedroom doors opens. Aramis appears in the doorway. Adele’s gaze flies to him as if magnetized. Charlotte looks down, sad.
“Is there food?” Aramis asks after a moment. He doesn’t meet Adele’s gaze.
“Come sit down,” Charlotte answers for Adele. “It’s just ready.”
Aramis obeys. Porthos follows a few moments later, sitting down next to Aramis. Aramis has put himself at one end of the table. Adele starts towards the seat opposite Aramis. Porthos sees this and raises his eyebrows.
D’Artagnan looks at Aramis. He’s staring fixedly at the table, ignoring his aleph. D’Artagnan rapidly weighs what little he knows of Aramis and Adele, then claims the seat across from Aramis. Adele slides in next to d’Artagnan, managing to make it look as if she’d planned it the entire time.
Charlotte brings in the last plate and sits next to Adele. That leaves Athos sitting across from her when he appears a moment later, and about as far from d’Artagnan as the table will allow. Athos doesn’t look terribly pleased about this. Neither is d’Artagnan, come to think of it. But Charlotte does her part by resolutely refusing to look at her former mate.
Everyone stares across the table at each other in silence. The food sits in the center, untouched.
D’Artagnan sighs to himself. Then he claps his hands loudly, attracting everyone’s attention.
“Lord, bless this food to our use and us to your service, in Jesus’ name, amen,” d’Artagnan says, just as he had used to do as a pup in Gascony. Then he smiles and reaches for the first platter. “Bacon! Delicious. Thank you for cooking, Charlotte.”
“You’re welcome,” Charlotte falters.
D’Artagnan gives her a significant look.
She straightens her shoulders. “Yes, it was my pleasure,” she says more strongly. She reaches for some toast.
Everyone else seems to come out of their fugue. Hands reach for platters, agreeing by mutual accord to pretend the moment of silence had been piety instead of discomfort. No one starts talking, though.
“Do you cook for large groups often?” d’Artagnan tries. He maintains eye contact with Charlotte, making it clear that this is directed at her, and trying to encourage her with his eyes to keep the conversation rolling.
“Oh, well, sometimes,” Charlotte answers. She attempts a smile that wobbles but holds. “We have Resistance squads stay sometimes, on their way to other objectives. And then sometimes we have guests who are on their way out of the country.”
“Surely they help out,” d’Artagnan suggests.
“They do. But it’s easier to ask them to draw water or feed horses. Besides, I like doing it.” Charlotte’s voice lightens, becoming a little more relaxed as she talks. “This is my household. I like making it a home. I like being of use.”
“You’re of use in many ways,” Adele protests, shocked out of her silence. She swivels her head to stare at Charlotte.
“Oh, I don’t mean like that,” Charlotte says. Now she sounds fond. This must be an old argument: good. “I just mean – we can’t burn down a prison every day. And you know how I get when I feel like I’m not doing anything.”
“Someone’s got to cook every day,” d’Artagnan agrees.
Charlotte smiles at him in agreement. “Exactly! And it’s the sort of thing I never used to do.” She falters a little. “Before.”
Involuntarily, she glances at Athos. He’s watching her, too. He doesn’t look away.
“Not exactly the life of a Comtesse,” Athos says after a moment. His voice is a little gravelly, but d’Artagnan can tell he’s trying.
Charlotte can tell it, too. “No servants,” she agrees.
“And yet,” Athos says. “I think your bacon is better than we used to eat at la Fère.”
Charlotte’s smile reappears, dimmer than before, but present. Hopeful. “Well, I’m not a Comtesse anymore.”
“Technically – ” Aramis starts truculently.
D’Artagnan talks right over him. “I meant to ask about that,” he says. “What happens to the title now?”
“Whoever wants it may have it,” Athos says. “It burned with the château.”
“Olivier!” Charlotte cries. “How can you say that? It’s still yours, of course. And it’s yours too,” she adds to d’Artagnan. “Goodness knows, I don’t want it. It would do me as much harm as good now anyway. A Resistance member needs to keep a low profile – as low as possible.”
Fill: Ye Heirs of Glory 32b/? [Athos/d'Art, Porthos/Aramis Dystopian A/B/O, full warnings in part 1]
Date: 2015-03-21 06:31 pm (UTC)“And our loved ones.” Charlotte glances sideways towards Adele. “The Inquisition doesn’t care who it hurts. They’ve caught some of us before. Our families pay.”
“So you pretend you’re dead?” Aramis demands. “To protect your families? Is that what you tell yourself?”
“It’s the truth,” Charlotte says. “Most of us don’t have families anymore by the time we come to the Resistance, but if we do…”
“They’re in danger,” d’Artagnan completes.
“Maybe that’s a danger they can choose to accept,” Porthos says. His voice is quiet, but no one mistakes him for calm.
“There is no choice,” Adele says. “You either know about the Resistance or you don’t. If you don’t know, you’re safe – at least as safe as any of us are. If you do know, you’re in danger. There’s no such thing as making a choice.”
“It sounds to me as if there is,” Porthos growls. “It just sounds like it’s a choice you made for him.”
“There was no other way to do it!” Adele cries. “If I’d told him, he’d be in danger. There’s no choice after that! He can’t say, oh, thanks for telling me, aleph, but I’d rather not run the risk, so can we just pretend you’d never said anything? He’d know! That would be enough for the Inquisition! The only way for him to not know is for him to not know!”
“He would have gone with you!” Porthos cries.
“I was the Cardinal’s mistress for six months before I ‘died’,” Adele says. “It never occurred to you to wonder what those six months were for?”
“What are you talking about?”
“Richelieu tried to get me out of France as soon as he realized my sex. I fought him on that. I wanted to stay. I needed to stay. I needed to find out if René would ever come with me. For six months I tried everything I could think of short of asking him outright. And every time he told me no.”
“He wouldn’t!” Porthos shouts. Both the Alphas are on their feet now. D’Artagnan’s attention is on Aramis, though. Aramis, who is still sitting, shrinking in on himself, shame written on his face.
“‘No, Adele, I won’t help smuggle weapons into Paris.’ ‘No, Adele, I won’t investigate a report of a lynching in the slums.’ ‘No, Adele, I won’t carry a message to Tours’ – ”
“Just because he didn’t want to do any of those things himself – ”
“Don’t even try to tell me he was okay with me doing them either. All René ever talked about was the risks I was taking, and was it worth it, and why couldn’t I just settle down – ”
Aramis jerks to his feet as if pulled. “I didn’t want you to die!” he cries suddenly. “And you died anyway!”
“Yes!” Adele cries. “Yes, that’s exactly it! I was dead anyway! Either way, as far as you were concerned, if I didn’t live my life exactly the way you wanted me to I was dead to you regardless!”
Aramis dashes tears away from his eyes impatiently. “I just wanted what was best for you.”
“Listen to yourself. God, you’re such a hypocrite,” Adele snarls. “You’re mad at me because I didn’t tell you about the Resistance. I let you think I was dead. You said I took away your choices, but that’s all you ever wanted to do to me. There was exactly one right mode of living as far as you were concerned.”
“Everyone can make different choices,” Porthos says.
“I tried to find a way for my choices and yours to coexist,” Adele says, ignoring Porthos and speaking to Aramis directly. “I couldn’t. You rejected every attempt I made. When I realized that our lives were incompatible, when I realized that I had to hurt you anyway, I let Richelieu fake my death. I thought that you might as well be hurt and safe as opposed to hurt and endangered.”
Porthos puts a protective hand on Aramis’ shoulder. “You’re making him out to sound like the Inquisition.”
“From where I was standing there wasn’t any difference,” Adele says coldly.
Aramis chokes. Porthos looks moments away from leaping across the table at Adele. Athos is on his feet now, too.
“If you’d told him the Resistance is real – ” Athos begins.
“He was telling me he didn’t want to know! I asked René for help and he told me to stop asking! I tried to bring him in and he pushed me farther away! René, nothing you’d ever said or done to me indicated you’d accept the danger. You just wanted to hide, to live under a rock for the rest of your life!”
“And you wanted that for me too!” Aramis shouts. “You wanted to put me under that rock in the name of safety!”
“My first partner, Mireille, she had a family,” Adele hisses. “The Inquisitor of Tours had her mate Nadia gangraped in the public square – ”
“Adele!” Charlotte and d’Artagnan cry simultaneously. Now everyone is standing.
“They gave Nadia drugs to make her receptive – the same drugs they gave your Captain,” Adele goes on, ignoring them both. “Then when Mireille had been broken, the Inquisitor killed Nadia in front of her, and threw their two pups alive into the bonfire. Mireille tried to go in after them and they shot her – in the gut, not the head or the heart – and she burned to death there bleeding while her pups screamed – ”
Aramis turns and runs from the house. Porthos follows, face like a thundercloud.
“So you’ll have to forgive me if I did not want that for you!” Adele screams after him.
Charlotte moves, too. Adele doesn’t look like she’s planning to run after Aramis but Charlotte wraps her arms around Adele seemingly just in case. Then d’Artagnan catches a glimpse of Adele’s face and wishes he hadn’t.
He looks away. He catches Athos’ gaze as he does it. Athos is just looking at him, stoic, like he’s heard stories like this too many times to horrify him.
The smell of bacon abruptly makes d’Artagnan feel sick.
“Let’s clean up,” d’Artagnan says. His voice shakes a little. He doesn’t think he can be blamed.
The compost heap is too far away. Aramis vomits into a convenient pile of ferns instead, and ends up lying on his back underneath the trees, trying to breathe. The sky spins in his vision.
It’s cloudy still. There will be more rain today.
Porthos catches up to Aramis a moment later. He sinks to his knees next to Aramis and pulls Aramis into a loose embrace, stroking Aramis’ hair back from his face and offering his handkerchief for Aramis to wipe his mouth with.
“She shouldn’t have said that to you,” Porthos growls. “It’s past time she and I had a conversation.”
“Don’t,” Aramis says. He feels wrung out and limp. “I don’t want you two to fight.”
“If she keeps acting like this it’s going to be inevitable.”
“Like what?” Aramis watches Porthos’ face, so expressive, close off. “How is she acting, Porthos?”
“Like you owe her an apology.”
“Maybe I do.”
“No, you – ”
“She’s right.” A familiar burning sensation sets in behind Aramis’ eyes; after all these years, he’s far too aware of what it feels like when he’s about to cry.
Porthos frowns. “About what?” he asks carefully.
“I’m a coward,” Aramis admits. “I did want to hide under a rock. When we got to Paris I just wanted to keep as low a profile as possible. She didn’t. We fought about it so many times.”
“But you helped her. You told me you did.”
“Yes. A few times. Under protest. I know I made it sound like I helped her willingly. I wanted you to think the best of me. But it wasn’t like that.”
Porthos nods slowly. “How was it, then?”
Aramis rolls his head away, staring past Porthos up into the sky. He’s spent twenty years not thinking of the brief time he and Adele had shared in Paris. Partly because memories of Adele had been too painful. But partly also, too, because of how ashamed he’s been of them.
“I was scared,” Aramis says after a moment. “We’d just left our home, and I – I was such an Alameda then. Obsessed with secrecy and staying hidden. Adele was always different. Even back in Spain. She’d never use Betan terms for anything, she insisted on calling me little odem, no matter how many times Papa beat her for it… listen to me! Twenty years later and I still say Papa! That’s what it was like. Hiding was everything. It was all we knew. Or at least it was all I knew.”
“Adele wasn’t content to hide,” Porthos prompts. “You’ve told me that before.”
“No, never,” Aramis whispers. “She said there had to be something better, that we couldn’t settle. She started trying to find ways to make a difference. And I fought her on it. I fought her every step of the way. She tried to keep me with her and I resisted. Sometimes I’d do what she asked. Because she’d asked it, or because I felt brave that day, or because I was too scared of the consequences of not doing it. But I made her feel bad about it every single time. I made her feel guilty for trying to do something to help instead of just bowing our heads and not breathing every time the Inquisition looked our way.”
“You were scared. That’s okay. You think the rest of us have never been scared?”
“You do something in spite of your fear. I didn’t. When Adele became Richelieu’s mistress she said Help me. She said I’m doing this for you. And I told her I would help her.”
“See? You overcame your fear.”
Aramis shakes his head. “No, I didn’t. I said I’d help, but I never did. I suppose by then she already knew about Richelieu… and she was trying to figure out if she should bring me in on it, too. Well, I made it very clear that she shouldn’t. And six months later when she was dead it was my fault.”
“She isn’t dead. And she made her own choices.”
“She wouldn’t have had any choices left if it were up to me. Don’t you get it? I tried to force her into living the life I wanted her to live – and so she had to leave me behind – and I spent all those years thinking she was dead – ” He’s crying in earnest now, sobbing really, and Porthos is rubbing soothing circles into his lower back but it’s not enough. “I did it to myself!”
“But what about the last ten years?” Porthos asks, sounding bewildered. “After le Havre, you were the one who said we should take a more active role with the Underground. You said – ”
“I said I was a coward,” Aramis reminds his mate. The shame of it swamps him again. He’s managed to dim that shame somewhat over the last ten years. The penance he’d set himself, of fuller involvement in the Underground, had soothed his conscience. Aramis had even thought, foolishly, that Adele might have approved. He’d salved his wounded pride with the thought that he was honoring her memory somehow.
“You also said that you had been dealing with Adele’s death,” Porthos says comfortingly. “It’s no shame to have needed a break.”
“Needing a break would have been one thing. But I had never started anything. At first I told myself it was because I needed to hide. And then I was using Adele’s death as an excuse. It took me ten years – it took me you before I realized just what a coward I was being.”
“Back then I told you that doing what was right for you was all right. I still mean that. Aramis, it’s okay if you take a different path than your aleph.”
“Not if it’s a coward’s path.” Aramis shakes his head.
“It’s not a coward’s path,” Adele says from the treeline. Aramis looks up to see her standing there, uncertain if she’s allowed any closer.
Porthos growls. “Go away. He’s not ready to deal with you.”
“If René tells me to go I’ll go,” she says. “René, I’m so sorry. I should never have said those things to you.”
“Yes you should have,” Aramis whispers.
“No, I was wrong. I was scared and I let my fear speak for me.” She starts towards him. Porthos growls again, and Adele rounds on him. “What have you been saying to him?”
“Nothing,” Aramis gasps. “Oh, knock it off, both of you, please, I can’t take it!”
Porthos looks down at Aramis and visibly lets the tension in his muscles go. “We can fight later,” he says to Adele, though still with a warning edge in his voice.
“I look forward to it,” she retorts. But her hands are gentle as she comes close and takes Aramis’ hands in hers.
“I’m sorry,” René says to her. “I look back and I don’t even recognize the person I was when we first came to Paris. I was frightened of my own shadow. I just wanted to crawl into a hole and pull the ground in after me. It wasn’t just you. For years after you died I refused to have anything to do with the Underground.”
“I’m sorry too,” Adele says. “I knew my death would hurt you and I did it anyway.”
“At least you had a good reason,” René says.
“I was motivated by fear too,” Adele admits. “I – the story I told you, about Mireille – ”
Porthos growls warningly.
Adele nods at him. “I know.” She considers her words carefully before she goes on. “Mireille… she was my, well, chaperone in the Resistance, for lack of a better term. Showing me the ropes, and making sure I wasn’t really a blood traitor underneath it all. And she died about four months after I started working for Richelieu. Her death – and Nadia’s, and their pups’ – that’s what really made me decide to leave you behind. Because all I could think about was that if I didn’t, the same thing would happen to you one day.”
René shivers.
“I won’t let it,” Porthos promises Aramis, tightening his grip.
“Mireille would have said the same thing,” Adele says quietly.
“Twenty years ago if you’d asked me if I were willing to run that risk I would have said no,” René says. “You were right, aleph. I wasn’t even willing to run the smaller risks for working with the Underground. I would have told you no and I would have been furious with you for even asking.”
“You’re braver than you think,” Porthos insists.
“No, Porthos, I wasn’t,” Aramis says, trying to make Porthos understand. “Maybe I am now – and if that’s so I have you to thank for you – but back then I wasn’t. Back then I was René d’Herblay de Alameda, and all René knew how to do was be afraid.”
Aramis looks up at Adele. “How did you do it, aleph? You were never afraid.”
“I was afraid all the time,” Adele says. “I just – I don’t know. Being afraid didn’t make me want to hide. You were all afraid, you and Sirrah and Cara and our other siblings, and it governed everything you did. And you all kept trying to make it govern me, and I don’t know why, but it just didn’t take. Even as a pup I remember thinking but why should that stop us? I don’t know why I was made differently than you all. But when I realized I was I knew I had to get away from you before I hurt you any farther.”
“I was furious with you,” René – Aramis – says lowly. “And yet, the person I am now, if I’d been in your shoes, I don’t think I can say I’d’ve made a different choice.”
Adele squeezes his hands. “Thank you,” she falters. “I don’t think I can tell you what that means to me.”
Porthos sighs.
Aramis lets himself lean back against Porthos’ strength. After a moment he asks, “Aleph?”
“Yes?”
“Why didn’t you come back for me?”
“What?”
“I know, at first, I pushed you away. I don’t think I’ll ever stop being ashamed of that. But later, when I did start working for the Underground, you must have learned about it. Treville’s training Athos to be his replacement one day, so you must have known, you must have realized that I’d had a change of heart.” Aramis’ eyes drift away. “Why didn’t you come back for me then?”
“Oh, René,” Adele says softly. “I’m afraid you’re not the only d’Herblay who’s been a coward at one point or another.”
Fill: Ye Heirs of Glory 32c/? [Athos/d'Art, Porthos/Aramis Dystopian A/B/O, full warnings in part 1]
Date: 2015-03-21 06:31 pm (UTC)“I knew you’d be furious with me. I knew you’d have every right to be furious with me. I just couldn’t bear it,” she admits. “And I had such good excuses. That was when things began to get more dangerous, when more people started dying… I’ve nearly been captured half a dozen times since le Havre. When I saved that d’Artagnan of yours in Wissous, if the Inquisition patrol had stuck to their usual schedule, they’d’ve had me… they were late that day. A horse had thrown a shoe. That’s all there was, one horse throwing a shoe, between life and death. Six months before that? That was when we’d found the Dutch spy in the Underground. He was trying to cross from Treville’s camp to Richelieu’s. He had figured out that the Resistance was real, he had the name of one of our youngest recruits – he was this close to getting in. It’s the worse breach we’ve had in twenty years. And it was just so easy to tell myself that I was staying hideen for your safety, even after you’d proved that you were willing to take the risk, rather than to admit I was terrified.”
Aramis closes his mouth. He doesn’t know what to say to that. And maybe he’s learned something over the last twenty years after all, because he just nods, slowly, instead of trying to speak.
A raindrop lands on a fern nearby. He glances up automatically. The sky is darker now.
“I’m sorry,” Adele says again. “I should have trusted you. But the last time I’d seen you you’d been so afraid, and – ” She trails off, looking ashamed.
“And you had trouble believing anything had changed,” Porthos finishes for her. Adele glances over to him; their gazes meet, and for the first time Aramis seems something like understanding in Porthos’ face. “I know. When you’re apart from someone, they stay in your mind just as they were the last time you were together. Time may pass, but the image you have of them, that stays the same.”
Adele’s gaze softens. “Your family?”
Porthos nods. “They’re dead now,” he says quietly. “At least I assume they are. I don’t know for sure. But everything I know about what their lives must have been like says they must be dead. My alephs for certain; laborers don’t live much past their prime. My carrier. One or two of my odems might still be alive, if they were lucky whelping. I know that they've lived lives away from me, that they'll have grown up - grown old - and probably died. But when I’m not careful, when I’m not paying attention, I still think of them all as they were the day we were all taken away.”
“I’m sorry for your loss,” Adele says. Aramis leans closer into Porthos, lending his mate strength with his presence.
Porthos shakes his head. “I don’t understand voluntarily leaving your family behind,” he admits. “It’s the last thing I can imagine doing under any circumstance. But I understand not realizing he’d changed. And I understand wanting to keep someone safe. Me, I protect Aramis by staying close to him. I’d never let anything happen to him that hasn’t happened to me first.”
“And I protected him by leaving,” Adele says. “When it came to the Resistance, there was no other way.”
Aramis nods. “I promise to work on forgiving you for that,” he says.
“That’s all I can ask.”
“It won’t happen right away.”
“I know,” Adele whispers.
Another group of raindrops sprinkles down through the trees. The wind is kicking up.
“Let’s go back inside,” Porthos says sensibly. He reaches out to Aramis in the same moment Adele does.
The two Alphas freeze for a moment, looking at each other. Sizing each other up.
Aramis solves the problem by taking both of their hands. With Porthos on his left and Adele on his right, he barely has to exert any effort to get up; they haul him to his feet between them as if he weighs no more than a pup. Nor do either of them seem to be in a particular hurry to let go.
The sky chooses that moment to open up on them. It’s not a gentle rain, but a hard, driving one. Aramis yelps.
Porthos tugs on Aramis’ hand, breaking into a jog. Aramis pulls on Adele. They tumble through the door of the hunting-lodge in an uncoordinated mass of limbs and nearly end up sprawled in a puppy pile in front of the main fireplace.
The other three members of their group are standing and sitting around the fire. They look as if they’ve been frozen. Charlotte has a teacup halfway to her lips. D’Artagnan is in the act of sitting down. Athos is halfway to him with a pillow for his back.
“Hey now,” Aramis protests, feeling his involuntary grin fade slightly. “Surely you’ve had to run in out of the rain before.”
Charlotte shakes her head. “Breathe,” she says.
“I am breathing!”
“Scent,” Athos corrects.
Aramis blinks. He, Adele and Porthos all obey.
The rain muddles things slightly, as does the mud they’ve all three tracked in. The woodsmoke from the fire is easier to discard. At least, it is until Aramis realizes that not all the scent in the air is generated by nature.
Smoke. Grass. Mud. Treville.
“The Captain?” Porthos whispers.
“It started a few minutes ago,” d’Artagnan says. He seems to break out of his stupor and finishes sitting down. Athos springs back into action with the pillow, then claims the seat next to d’Artagnan.
“This is good, right?” Charlotte asks. “This means he’ll be okay?”
Charlotte’s looking at Adele. Aramis’ aleph would have been the one Charlotte’s pack had relied upon for their medical knowledge. They’d read the same books as pups, learned about their people’s physiology under their carrier’s careful tutelage. But their parents had expected that the two of them, René and Adele, would stay together in their new lives. They’d trained each of them to specialize in their own sex.
Adele has probably expanded her knowledge in the intervening time. Aramis himself has picked up as much has he could about their people, Alpha and Omega both. Adele will have done the same. But Adele still doesn’t answer Charlotte directly. She looks at Aramis instead, letting him be the one to deliver the good news.
Treville’s scent is rising. He’s alive. Still in heat, as expected – the drug will take days to process out of his system – but climbing the next peak. Which means that he’s fighting the drug. They got him to Richelieu soon enough. Treville’s going to beat this thing.
Aramis’ smile returns. “Yes,” he says to Charlotte. To all of them. “This means he’ll be okay.”
Charlotte’s grin splits her face. She jumps up and hugs him, bright and quick. Then she hugs Adele. Then, somewhat to Aramis’ surprise, she hugs d’Artagnan. And d’Artagnan hugs her joyfully back.
Athos’ eyebrows climb. So do Adele’s.
“He’ll be okay,” Charlotte says to d’Artagnan, tucking a stray lock of hair behind d’Artagnan’s ear.
“Yeah,” d’Artagnan says back, hugging her around the middle. They smile at each other, sharing their joy.
Aramis leans back into Porthos. He doesn’t let go of Adele’s hand, tugging her back into the embrace, too. Surrounded by his family, warmed by the heat of the fire and breathing the proof that his surrogate carrier will survive, Aramis feels himself relax a little.
Maybe, just maybe, everything will be well.
Re: Crack? Living with polyglots by Athos and Porthos
Date: 2015-03-21 06:33 pm (UTC)Re: FILL: Five times the Musketeers found usages for Athos' Scarf
Date: 2015-03-21 06:45 pm (UTC)Re: Milady/Anne/Constance lady awesomeness
Date: 2015-03-21 11:27 pm (UTC)I've also never tried to write for this series from anyone but Milady or Athos' POV so Constance is a challenge.
“Do you promise not to be angry with me?” Anne had asked, and though Constance had seen the iron that could be her Queen’s spine, she still trusted her friend, and so she’d said yes.
But she’d never imagined this.
Across the queen’s apartments, leaning back against one of the shuttered, the dark-haired woman gives a too-familiar insouciant smile. “So. We meet again, Madame Bonacieux. What a pleasant surprise.”
Anne cuts in before Constance can say anything, laying a hand on her arm. “Milady de Winter,” she says, and her voice is firm, one that makes it clear she will brook no arguments, “understand this: Madame Bonacieux is my dearest friend, and should anything happen to her, I would look most askance on it.” When the other woman inclines her head just the slightest bit, with what Constance thinks might be grudging respect, she continues, “I trust her more than I trust any other; there will be times the two of you will need to work together. I cannot have my good and and my eyes and ears fighting each other.”
And oh, suddenly it all makes sense, and Constance sits down. Hard. She shouldn’t, with the Queen still standing, but they’re in Anne’s private apartment with the door closed and in here they are friends, and Anne has never stood on ceremony when the door is closed. “You think you can trust her?”
Milady’s smile turns bitter. “Her Majesty has given me reason enough not to betray her, Madame,” she says. Something in the words makes Constance wonder what Anne has offered her to ensure that -- what she knows that Constance doesn’t.
“So,” Anne says, sinking into the chair next to Constance, reaching out to take her hand and give it a reassuring squeeze. “Shall we begin, then?”
Omegaverse Mpreg Richelieu/Treville Athos/d`Artagnan Aramis/Porthos TW Attemtped non con
Date: 2015-03-21 11:39 pm (UTC)Fudging historical dates and moving the Black Death back to the early seventeenth century instead of the late seventeenth century.
Following the decimation of half of Europe through the Black Death, the need for re-population becomes extreme.
The Vatican, along with the nations goverments and courts order a breeding program that strips the Clergy of the Celibacy order, and orders all un-mated fertile Alphas, Betas, and Omegas, to mate and breed.
France is no exception, and while some may dislike the order, others are very very happy about it.
Richelieu and Treville have been secretly mated for decades, but now with the repeal of celibacy for the Clergy they can be together openly and have Pups while they are still young enough to raise them.
Not only that, the fraternization law forbidding relations between Musketeers has also been repealed, allowing Porthos and Aramis to come clean about their feelings for each other.
Also after some prompting from their friends, and the unwanted attentions of a pushy Alpha, Athos admits his feelings for d`Artagnan and mates with him.
Alpha Richelieu/Omega Treville
Alpha Athos/Omega d`Artagnan
Alpha Porthos/Omega Aramis
Big bonus if pushy Alpha is Rochefort, and if all three couples have multipul births of Pups ie twins/triplets etc
Re: Milady/Anne/Constance lady awesomeness
Date: 2015-03-22 01:52 am (UTC)Constance/Anne - bodyguard AU
Date: 2015-03-22 02:10 am (UTC)I don't mind how it happens, maybe officially she's Anne's confidant, but she has knives hidden under her clothes and trains (with the musketeers? or someone else) in secret. Maybe she was hired as a bodyguard and wears leather (more protective than brocade) and carries multiple swords and pistols. Maybe it's the 21st century and Anne's the president of France.
Femslash is very welcome but friendship is fine too, just give me bamf!Constance kicking ass and taking names while Anne laughs at the would-be assassins who thought two women were an easy target.
Re: I now pronounce you Athos and Aramis ...
Date: 2015-03-22 02:15 am (UTC)Finale: Rochefort gets his revenge (partly) on Aramis!
Date: 2015-03-22 02:42 am (UTC)