Chapter Text
“Due to the way contusions cause compression, these symptoms may not develop right away after suffering spinal trauma. These symptoms can develop hours or even days after the initial injury, so don't assume that you are in the clear if you don't experience any serious symptoms right away.” (Dr. David Chang: Signs of a Spinal Contusion)
The bruising was frightful in the mirror; a double stripe of purple and green hues sweeping across the middle of Aramis’s back and flicking his upper arm where the chain links had struck. The force of the swing demonstrated it was no mere party of dawdling merchants that had waylaid them in the forest. They were sturdy brutes with a keenness for blood, every one of them, and if Aramis could relive the day he would have torn out the throat of the axeman who had nearly killed Porthos.
If he could relive the day, Aramis acknowledged, lowering his bruised arm with a hiss and turning away from the mirror, he would have convinced D’Artagnan to initiate the mock fight with Porthos. He was already stiff that morning when the swelling set in, and the twisting tussle when he’d shoved Porthos at the dock had turned a mild sprain into a pulsing ache that wrapped around his chest and stabbed deep into his spine. Aramis had spent the better part of the evening slouched at an angle, sparing his back the chair’s ridged frame. The ample wine brought to their table muddled his thoughts but did little to ease the piercing throb that soured his stomach.
He should have rested after they sent Emile on his merry way to a Spanish prison. Ice or hot stones would have tamed the swelling, comfrey soothed the pain, and a night of undisturbed rest returned the spring to his stride. But it was a day of contorted victory, the tang from a slaver’s deception a bitter aftertaste for them all, and Aramis could not leave Porthos to ruminate alone. The four musketeers forced laughter over brackish jests and drained their cups, and while Aramis shuffled for the least miserable position he watched the tension drain from Porthos’s stance and thanked God that his brother was still alive.
If his eyes seemed vaguely strained throughout the evening, if there were any tells that warranted Athos’s sidelong looks, then Aramis could make excuses for the last few nights of scant sleep — a matter he was currently rectifying by turning in early. The bed awaiting him in the tavern was thinly padded and devoid of company, but it promised the relief of unconsciousness and he leaned into it gladly, gingerly turning onto his left side where the chain had merely glanced. A few hours of rest and he would jaunt back into his routine as though nothing was ever amiss. It had never failed before.
Time passed in a wine-induced haze. The seconds kept pace with the throbbing pulses against Aramis’s ribcage, and unknown hours wafted by untraced. At length he realized he was neither asleep nor capable of escaping the spreading agony that now gripped his entire torso and left him contorting in bed, mindlessly seeking a position that would offer comfort. Dazedly he swung his legs over the side of the bed, bracing himself before sitting up in one agonized vault. The room took longer than he liked to right itself, and sparks flashed before his eyes for several unnerving blinks.
He should have known the body couldn’t rest untreated. He would’ve cuffed Athos for trying to brush off a likewise injury, yet here he was, hunched over in agony and trying to muster the strength to cross the small room for his satchel. Physician heal thyself, indeed.
Shoving against the cloud of exhaustion and lingering alcohol that begged him to lie down and try to rest one more time, Aramis reached for the table by his bedside, hissing as the movement ricocheted down his right shoulder. His hand fell like a dead weight on the rough wood, and for an instant he felt nothing. Dragging the offending limb to his chest, he rubbed his fingers and grimaced. He lacked Lemay’s expertise, but he knew that the sparking sensation dancing across his fingers was a troubling sign.
Perhaps he had underestimated his condition. It wouldn’t be the first time. Under the usual circumstances he wouldn’t have been left alone long enough for it to become a problem. He and Porthos normally shared a room, and it wasn’t uncommon for all four of them to group together. D’Artagnan was new to the game, but soon enough he would pick up on the odd stutter when Athos woke in a cold sweat, or the hitching snuffle when Porthos was getting a chill. Porthos always knew the moment Aramis’s dreams shifted into nightmares, and if Aramis had so much as winced when he settled down the obnoxious coddler would’ve ratted him out to Athos without mercy.
But Porthos wasn’t here tonight. He was still obstinately drinking his weight when Aramis begged his leave, teeth flashing in a smile that was nearly a snarl, fingers taut with lingering pain he wouldn’t admit. It was poor companionship for Aramis to slip away like a ruffled cat, but D’Artagnan had given him a nod, clapping Porthos’s good shoulder with the promise to see him upstairs without trouble, and the pain was too thick to imagine keeping up the act for one more hour.
He ought to feel relieved that D’Artagnan would watch Porthos tonight, giving him the chance to catch up on all the sleep a physician sacrificed for his patients. It was one more reminder to Aramis that he would fight this battle alone. Athos, if they had indeed swapped rooms, if Aramis hadn’t lost all track of time and exchanged hours for minutes, was more than likely asleep at the table — unless by some miracle D’Artagnan had managed to haul him out of his melancholic grouch and dropped him into a proper bed.
That should’ve been Aramis’s responsibility, yet here he was, pondering the merits of falling back and letting the rest of the night slip away in a semiconscious haze. Surely dawn was not far off. He’d taken to the road countless days with shadowed eyes and a maniacal grin. Morning would strengthen his resolve and then he could burrow around in his satchel for willow and comfrey and lavender and anything that could allow him five minutes without pain.
Brackish laughter sounded from downstairs, and Aramis acknowledged that he was still hunched on the edge of the bed, hands crawling with phantom insects. His lower back felt oddly weightless, the sensation creeping into his feet like the cold pattering of raindrops. Perhaps he should have mentioned something to Athos before turning in. Then again, there were a great many things Aramis should have done to circumvent disaster on this mission. He ought to be grateful that it ended as well as it did, but there was still a dead woman buried in the forest, stitches in Porthos’s shoulder, and the man responsible walking away with his head intact, capable of conspiring mischief even on foreign soil.
Some days Aramis wondered what good was justice, when it never stopped evil for long. There would be another Emile bartering with human lives, another bandit stealing the life blood of the innocent, another night where men drowned their failures in one vice or another. There was no peace to be found in justice.
Nor was there peace to be found for Athos, apparently. Aramis recognized that off-stilt shuffle pausing outside his door, and he groaned softly when knuckles rapped softly before light spilled in. Ratted out again.
“You’re still awake,” Athos said, hardly a slur curling his syllables. Either the night had passed faster than Aramis expected, or Athos had judged that two of his men might need minding tonight and he’d abstained from his usual quota. There was no masking the concerned undertone, or the care with which he set down the oil lamp and turned down the flame, no doubt associating Aramis’s state with one of his infrequent headaches.
“Bad?” Athos asked softly, moving forward with whispering steps.
Shaking his head and regretting the motion immediately, Aramis swallowed back nausea and admitted with a rueful huff, “I can’t stand up.”
Athos was crouched before him in an instant of lost time, one hand curling around Aramis’s cold fingers, the other tilting his head back to scrutinize his pupils. “Where?”
“Back,” Aramis mumbled. “It’s just a bruise. I was going to get my bag.”
A pensive sigh told him what Athos thought about his self-assessment. Leaning back, he hitched Aramis’s shirt above his shoulders, cursing softly at what was likely a spectacular array of colors. “When?”
Aramis hissed when gentle fingers brushed the center of the knotted mass. “In the forest, one of them had a chain — Stop!”
Athos snatched his hand away, his expression thunderous. “Why didn’t you say something?”
“It was a bruise, nothing more,” Aramis insisted. He didn’t need to remind Athos that Porthos had been dying at the moment. No, Athos wasn’t asking about the first encounter. The question was directed towards the morning after, when lesser hurts were usually addressed and neglected wounds brought to light. Yesterday evening, this morning, tonight — there were ample opportunities to see to a distraction before it became a hindrance. Aramis should have taken more care.
“It was fine,” Aramis insisted. “A little sore, nothing worse than taking a punch at the training grounds.”
The raised eyebrow inquired how acquainted he was with unwarranted back injuries in a training exercise. Aramis widened his eyes innocently. What Athos didn’t know about hazing in the early days of the Musketeers’ formation wouldn’t follow him like a dark cloud all the way back to the garrison.
“Was it this bad when you left us?” Athos asked, crossing the room to retrieve Aramis’s satchel.
“No… not really… perhaps a little,” Aramis settled for, pawing through the bag tossed into his lap and feeling like a child fumbling to grasp his first wooden toy. “It was manageable.”
“You should have told one of us,” Athos scolded. A needless reminder — when one had two brothers prodding from either side, the repetitive lecture was committed to memory with remarkable clarity.
“It didn’t warrant attention,” Aramis said. He cringed and Athos scowled. Admittedly that was a poor choice of words when his voice shook with strain and his stomach felt like his ribs had snapped inward, but it wasn’t like he was trying to hide a knife wound. It could’ve been a strained muscle, an irritating spasm, something that could be soothed with a few hours of uninterrupted sleep.
Athos’s terse exhale indicated that the excuse was flimsier than Aramis’s usual repertoire. “What do you need?” he asked, halting Aramis’s clumsy search and rummaging himself for the sachets that had been called for on too many similar occasions. “Willow? Yarrow?”
“Comfrey poultice,” Aramis groaned, arching forward as knives turned to broadswords and his stomach threatened to turn inside out. “It’s the one with the —”
“I know,” Athos said briskly, snatching up the notched bag and setting it in growing pile. “Yarrow for blood and calendula for swelling?”
Aramis gave a raw chuckle. “We’ll make a physician of you yet.”
“You need Lemay,” Athos corrected him sternly. He cupped Aramis’s arm in one hand, resettling the bed’s lumpy pillow in the other. “Lay back. These are supposed to be boiled?”
“Steeped,” Aramis grunted, batting Athos away with a hiss. “Don’t! I can’t. Hot water, not boiling, no more than ten minutes. Save the water as a tea. Would be better —”
“Concentrated in a salve, I know,” Athos said briskly, gathering the herbs and leaving Aramis to his mournful hunch. They both knew why the supplies were depleted. Aramis would do it again, a thousand times over, if it spared Porthos the anguish of lying awake with a shoulder cleaved nearly to the bone.
“Chamomile,” Aramis recalled suddenly, threads of knowledge flitting away even as he stared at the herb sachets. “Chamomile for soothing, and yarrow, and… and what was the one… the purple flower….”
The clattering at the hearth stopped and suddenly he found himself lolling against the lumpy pillow, Athos gripping his shoulders. “Aramis, look at me! Tell me what I need to do! Aramis….”
His vision spotted, strained sounds whistling in the darkness like broken reeds. Athos cursed. A blink of time and Aramis was braced against the man’s chest, cruel fingers dragging down the taut muscles in his upper back. He heaved a gasp, air rushing sweet and cold down his dry throat, and released it in a sharp wail. The trap around his stomach pierced and twisted and he bent over, vomit rising hot in his throat. Athos made a vexed sound, cool hands sweeping Aramis’s hair out of his face. He lost time again and found himself curled onto his left side, his pants wet and his torso screaming as though his back and stomach were trying to part ways.
Shapes hovered around him, dark hair and worried eyes and hushed voices demanding his focus. He heard the rough grumble of the innkeeper’s baritone, a younger voice calling for his horse to be saddled, a gentle rumble of words that held no meaning yet evoked his implicit trust. He felt a hand touch his shoulder with the tentativeness of a leaf touching down on a still pond. D’Artagnan leaned in with a watery smile, his mouth moving without sound. The next moment he was gone and a new chaos felled Aramis’s senses as he was turned onto his swollen stomach, warm, wet clumps clapped onto his back. The room turned upside down and piteous sounds of torment pierced his skull.
“That’s it,” he heard Porthos distinctly in the grey wash of anguish. “I’m putting him out.”
A fist loomed in Aramis’s vision and a flash of new pain swept him into darkness.