d'Artagnan is a patchwork of people and he knows it. He has his father's eyes, his mother's cheekbones, his uncle's laugh. More recently, he has Porthos' quick hands, Aramis' sharp smile and at least a shadow of Athos' greatness with a sword. Any and every aspect of himself is nothing but a mirror or a memory and each one lays on his soul like a great weight he cannot shift.

He is a Musketeer now and it keeps him busy enough that he does not have the luxury of time to spend wallowing about the big space in his chest where d'Artagnan is supposed to be, but sometimes there are moments between moments and he catches a glimpse of himself. He never likes what he sees. The ache does not come from knowing that he has taken others into himself – there is no one there he recognises who he does not love and admire – but instead is born of a sense of knowing that he can never be as great as the shadows he stands in.

He never mentions any of this to his friends. Outside of the three Musketeers who are his family, he has no friends to mention it to, and he would never presume to burden the King's men with a matter as trivial as this.

When he has some time and he's feeling particularly self-destructive, he considers his reflection and wonders what the people there would think about him now. It's easier for some than others.

It's been so many years since his mother died, he can barely remember her voice, let alone what she might think of the man her son has become. He likes to pretend that she would be proud, though he knows that it cannot be the truth – no mother wants a soldier for a son.

Athos has told him in the past – after far too many bottles of wine – that his father would be proud to have a man like him as a son. d'Artagnan had smiled and not refuted the claim though he didn't for one second believe it. Alexandre d'Artagnan had ridden to Paris to petition a king he hated for relief from the taxes that had been killing their people for years – through his son's folly he had been murdered and avenged, and then his only surviving son had sworn his life to the detested monarch's service, as well as having intimate relations with a married woman. Two married women, in fact. Alexandre d'Artagnan would have hated him.

That thought is enough to give him nightmares for months.

When his late brother's birthday rolls around, he's so busy that he almost forgets. Night is already falling by the time he's running to the nearest church to light a candle, almost able to feel his mother's disapproving glare on his back. Aramis is there to pray, and he shoots d'Artagnan a curious look but does not approach him, seemingly aware that this is a moment not intended for him. The young Musketeer is almost painfully grateful for that.

Even the next morning, the marksman doesn't say anything, though d'Artagnan is wound tightly all day in expectation of an interrogation. He has tried very hard not to tell anyone about his family. He's not sure why he keeps it a secret – he is not ashamed of his humble roots and he knows that the others would never make him feel such. Nor does he think that the others would judge him for having a foreign mother, especially as he knows for certain that Aramis comes from Spanish lineage on his mother's side. Any yet, every time he opens his mouth to tell them about the men and women he knew and loved in Lupiac, his throat seems to close and swallow any words he might have allowed to slip forth.

The others do not press him for answers, even when the conversation swings in that direction. Through some miracle, they seem to accept his reluctance, even though they probably do not understand why.

He is very drunk when the first words escape him. Athos has dragged him into a tavern somewhere in the ass end of Paris and d'Artagnan is in no way certain that he knows the way home again, but with warm wine in his belly, it is hard to muster up the strength to care.

"Who am I, Athos?" The words are so badly slurred that he thinks – hopes – for a moment that the Musketeer won't hear him, but fate is, as ever, awful.

"A very drunk Musketeer, by the sounds of it," comes the reply, the voice much too steady for a man well into his second bottle. d'Artagnan tries not to resent that.

There is no further conversation on the topic, so d'Artagnan figures that Athos thought him too drunk to be serious. Sober once more, he lacks the courage to correct his assumption.

Two months later, he takes a musket ball high in the chest and breaks his arm when he tumbles from his horse. It's not as traumatic as everyone seems to believe it must be, and at no point does d'Artagnan worry that this might be the end for him – he never works out whether that is because he doesn't think he will die, or simply that he doesn't care if he does. Aramis does a fine job of stitching him up and when a surgeon eventually arrives, his arm is set and bound without issue. Blinding pain, of course, but nothing unexpected.

Several hours later his is propped up in his sickbed, with Aramis slumbering on a neighbouring cot just out of arm's reach and Athos sitting beside him. Porthos has taken himself off to win them some wine funds – d'Artagnan's sure he just wanted distance between himself and the surgeon and he does not begrudge him that. Healers always put the able-bodied ill at ease.

"Do you know who you are yet?" Athos isn't looking at him, instead searching for the answer in the goblet in his hand.

d'Artagnan starts slightly and his wound flares agonisingly in protest. The low hiss of pain is followed by a self-deprecating, "I'd thought you'd forgotten about that."

"Did you want me to?"

"Yes." There's no hesitation in his words. He hadn't meant to say anything about any of it, willing to bear his cross in silence – it would not do to drive away the only friends he had left by revealing how hollow he was inside, how unnatural.

"You haven't answered my question."

And he had absolutely no intention of doing so, but saying that aloud would just be inviting Athos to pick at the topic, trying to work the information out of him. "I'm tired," he says instead, and squirms where he lays. "Perhaps this is something that can wait until morning?"

"Of course." Athos doesn't say another word, but he doesn't make any move to leave either. It makes d'Artagnan uncomfortable to be watched like this, as though he is a criminal in need of guard. That is not why he's doing it, of course, and d'Artagnan knows that but the uneasy feeling in his gut doesn't subside with the knowledge. Dreams, when they come, are fleeting and dark, and when he wakes it is to find himself trembling though he could not have said why.

For once, luck seems to be on his side, and d'Artagnan is able to avoid any questions Athos might direct towards him without appearing the coward he was. But even that couldn't last forever and the night comes in the form of his mentor at his bedside once again, armed with a bottle of wine and a dark, far-away look in his eyes.

"You are a good man, d'Artagnan. That is who you are."

Of course I am, d'Artagnan wants to tell him, I am made of good men. He has taken the best of those around him and fashioned them into himself, tainting them beyond repair but even tarnished silver can gleam in the sun. It is the right phrase to apply to himself, he decides: tarnished silver. The pieces of his soul had been bright and new once upon a time, but they have been weathered too long without care to ever be as they once were – the world should mourn the lack but the world has never mourned anything that deserved it.

There is no reply he can give that will be both true and desirable, and many things he is but not a liar. Not to Athos. Instead he stays silent, drinking his fill of wine until sleep drags him under once more.

Time passes much as it always does, pulling d'Artagnan closer and closer to full health. Athos hasn't said another word about what he thinks of the young man which is something of a relief, even while he wonders what they all really think of him. Kind words to a man lying in a sickbed are oft made more of comfort than truth.

By now though, there is no hiding the shattered, pathetic thing that is d'Artagnan. Aramis and Porthos are observant people and good friends, and they would have to be fools not to see the way his brittle smile snaps in two without warning, or the way he will only meet their eyes when left no other choice.

They give him some time to come to them of his own volition, and then when that fails them, they grab him by the collar and haul him to Aramis' private rooms so that they might talk about this like the gentlemen they aren't.

It is Athos who does him in, in the end. There is a sadness in his eyes that d'Artagnan cannot bear to look at, and even though he knows he must be imagining it, the expression reminds him of his brother. d'Artagnan had been the younger of two boys but the elder, Michael, had died many years ago from a fever – the boy who became a Musketeer couldn't picture his face. It takes him almost a whole bottle of wine to explain it all to his friends, and all the while he is steeling his heart for the moment when they laugh in his face and he loses the last thing of value to him.

They do not laugh in his face.

Aramis' expression is a mix of disbelieving and heart-broken. Porthos looks like someone has just torn out his heart and stamped on it. d'Artagnan couldn't have said what Athos' face looked like because the man had turned away, his grip on his glass becoming so tight that his knuckles had gone white.

d'Artagnan waits, heart heavy in his chest. This is the moment; the last time he will sit with them as an equal and a friend.

"Whatever it was that we said or did that made you think, for one moment, that we would turn away from you, I am truly sorry," Aramis said, honestly bleeding from his very fingertips. His whole body twitched, as though wanting to approach but unsure of what d'Artagnan's response would be.

"There is no one in you except yourself, d'Artagnan," Athos tells him. "We are all reflections of our lives, of course we are, but that does not diminish our existence. I, for one, am glad that I know a man as fine as you."

"As am I," Porthos put in, still looking much too shocked to offer up any further reassurance.

d'Artagnan looks around at them, sees them as though they are a mirror and for the first time understands. They cannot abandon him any more than he could abandon them – they are in him and he is in them and no one can tear their soul in two willingly. He came to them as his mother, his father, his brother. He sits there now as more than that, more than them. A Musketeer. He will always be Alexandre and Michael and Lynette, just as he will always be Athos and Porthos and Aramis but that does not mean he is not d'Artagnan too.

For the first time, d'Artagnan understands.

Okay. My angst has apparently decided that I needed to give d'Artagnan a midlife crisis. I'm not even going to try and understand why.