With this I went on a slight detour and took up another prompt fill. I wrote it a while ago to help myself get back into writing for these boys. It's minutely experimental in regard to writing style (in a few places) and as such may not work for everyone. But each section is different and most are written using traditional syntax, so I don't think it will fuss readers overly-much.

Tell If You Know (1/6)

"Even to death"

Break. Later he would break. Crumble into ashes and dust (blood and snow).

Later.

But not now (not now).

Ahora no.

Pas maintenant.

Two words, concise in grouping and densely-edged. Malleable enough to shove into hidden corners and scared spaces.

He took them up. Smoothed them over his tongue and swallowed them back. Made them replicate and spin. Fill his mind to overflowing. (Overflowing, spilling, seeping darkly through cracks.)

Not now.

Not now.

Cracking bloody lips open in a brilliant smile, his teeth flashed and his eyes blinked brightly, even as his heart remonstrated. (Remonstrated. Broke. Was smashed and torn asunder.)

Not now!

His grin widened.

A hand, cold and sadistic, gnarled itself into his sweaty hair, yanking it back. Stretching his neck to create ample space for the knife point that pressed against it. The chair-back he was bound to jabbed a line into his shoulder blades. The rope enfolding his wrists coiled tautly into his skin.

His arms went numb.

(Numb and dying.)

(Numb and dead.)

He laughed, blinking away the afterimage of the pendent of St. Jude.

The pendent of St. Jude and the too-familiar neck scarf, and the way they'd been dangled before him (stained with red).

(Flecked with blood.)

Not now. Not now.

Above him, a rugged face tsked and growled, cruel lips hazy and out of focus in the half-light. "Didn't you hear what I said?" it shouted, punctuating the sentence with a stinging yank that burned into his scalp. "Your brothers are dead!"

(Dead.)

He laughed again. (Not now.)

"You are fool. A simpleton," the shouter continued. "You're protecting no one. Don't you understand? Your silence serves you no more! Your silence serves you nothing."

The grip in his hair shook. A cold blazing sensation spread smoothly down his neck.

Through the protest of his skin and bones, he welcomed it.

The stretch of his teeth widened.

His eyes sparkled as he attempted to swallow, savoring the exposure of his throat and the way the blade sent a thin stripe of liquid over his skin as he shivered (bleeding into the calm and cold). Licking his lips, he loosened his jaw with relief. "Will it get me killed?" he rasped, tongue tasting the rust and dust (death wine and bone ash) of disuse.

The fist binding his hair released him, letting go just long enough to knock ringingly into his temple, then grip him anew. "Fool! If you continue to persist in this silence then yes, your death is a certainty."

With a sigh from deep within his chest, he closed his eyes (quiet and still). "Then it serves me fine," he said, and swallowed. The words tasted like water.

The resultant roar flashed up like lighting.

Abruptly released from the strained angle, his head snapped forward violently (so violently, such welcome violence). Knuckles crashed into his cheekbone, sending him sideways in his chair. A ripple of pain undulated upward from the jarring impact between his shoulder and the floor, inciting a swirl of stars to spin dizzily into the world behind his eyelids.

Stars that coalesced and scattered brightly with the crack of pistol fire. The clank and bang of rusty doors. And the echo of familiar voices (already dead).

(Already dead.)

"Aramis."

The voice was close. Near his ear and steady. Like Athos.

(Like a dream.)

"Aramis."

A thumb. A finger. The pad of something gentle - stroked across his eyebrow.

"Damn the lot of them. What the hell'd they do to him?"

"Will he not wake up?"

"Aramis." The first voice again. Patient. Steady. The stoking pressure shifted to his cheekbone, long fingers bracing the loose curve of his skull. "Aramis. Open your eyes now. Open your eyes."

As if in a haze, he did. Finding a world awash in dull greys and soft shadows. He was on his back. The sensation of pins and needles spreading like fire down his arms, jabbing into his fingertips and up through his neck. Vibrant and severe (like life).

Athos knelt over him, looking blue and translucent.

(A phantom.)

(A demon.)

Blue and translucent. Framed by a stone ceiling Aramis knew too well.

Near his shoulder, Porthos swam murkily into view, frowning gravely, earring glinting and wavering like a mirage. "Doesn't look like he quite sees us yet," he rumbled. A distant-sounding rumble, like a murmur buried under water (under earth).

Then a third voice. "Porthos. Athos." D'Artagnan knelt, sounding serious, appearing serious. The shine of fettered light off his pale leather blended strangely with the specks of dust floating out of the shadows. Making him look solid (real).

(Real?)

In d'Artagnan's hand dangled the pendant of St. Jude. Pendant of desperate and lost causes. Porthos's pendent. Slung with Athos's scarf.

(Flecked with blood).

D'Artagnan's voice lowered, words whispered into swirling dust, echoing loudly despite the attempted softness. "I think he thought..."

The thumb on his cheek tightened over the sore skin.

(I think he thought...)

Aramis blinked and shuddered. A sudden tremble moved into his chest, filling the hollow spaces.

Not now.

(Now.)

He shuddered and he didn't stop.

"Aramis." Athos touched his shirt, palm hovering delicately above his breastbone as it fluttered. Then, not delicately. Palm and fingers flattening firmly over the juncture of his rib bones.

(Living flesh to living flesh.)

Athos's other hand curled behind his neck cautiously, joining with Porthos's to ease him upright. The world tilted and spun, steadying abruptly as he was brought against Athos's chest. The sensation dizzying, like finally stepping off a boat he'd been riding through a storm, legs unprepared for solid ground.

He felt leather under his chin. Smelled wine and dust (and worry). Felt Athos's hand brace the crown of his pulsing head. Porthos' gentle palm smoothing up and down his spine.

The thunder of his own heart and the echoing thump of Athos's. (Athos's.)

Inhaling into straining lungs, a sound broke out of him. Like the awakening of everything. He caught his breath and clenched his eyes as the sound came again, then again, and tried to bury it in Athos's shoulder.

"Easy," mumbled Porthos. "Easy, Aramis. Easy now."

(Your silence serves you nothing.)

Athos's fingers moved, scratching gently over his scalp. Warmly and gently. (Without shiver. Without violence. But fiercely. Fiercely, like Musketeers.) Consistently and repetitively threading through his hair as the shuddering slowed and the world gained solid form.

Aramis breathed into Athos's shoulder (steadily, steadily) and stitch by stitch gathered the drifting pieces of his voice up together in his chest.

"Aramis?" prompted Athos.

"It's all right," Aramis answered, closing his eyes, then screwing them up tight as his spine bowed forward, Athos's leather flush to his forehead as he gasped. To his own ears his voice sounded like it belonged to someone else. "I'm... It's..."

Porthos's hand paused on his back. "No," he refuted softly, timbre tempered and full of promise. "You're not, and it isn't."

Aramis's breath hitched, the sound breaking anew. Porthos's hand resumed its motion.

"But it will be."

x