I wrote this what feels like an eternity ago and, having read over it recently, decided it was decent enough to post. It is nine short chapters long. Time permitting, I'll post each as quickly as I'm able to dust it off. The epilog requires the most editing, but even it shouldn't take too much to get into readable order.

Though not necessarily a fill, this fic was inspired by a meme prompt for cold boys, on the verge of hypothermia, ultimately having to huddle for warmth in a cabin somewhere, and by its subsequent fill "Cold Like Wonder" which made me want to try my hand at this trope also.

Porthos

The brutal shove to his sternum is swift and unexpected. The ambush of pain encapsulates his senses and the world narrows. Porthos has just enough time to register the visible puff of his own breath fleeing into the frozen air and that's that—he's tumbling backwards off solid ground, smacking down and skidding across the lake of ice behind him like a slipped musket ball over polished wood.

When he lifts his head at the end of his journey, he's nearly ten feet from the lake-line. His opponent is standing in the wind at the shore's edge, watching him with a vindictive grin, sword dangling from a loose grip.

Then comes the cracking.

Tensing, Porthos spreads his hands, shifting warily up onto an elbow as white lines begin spreading out from beneath his body, patterning across the ice like spider webs.

There's just enough time for one guarded breath and he plunges through, ice and water rushing into his ears and mouth, folding over him like a blanket.

For three seconds, he panics, thrashing wildly as all understanding of up and down loses meaning and the cold punches at the burn in his lungs. He thrashes until the weight of his accouterments dragging him downward manages to restore his sense of gravity. Even then, the sensation is slow to settle and he finds the murky bottom of the lake under his boot-heel by absolute accident.

The mud sucks at his foot, mawing over the leather covering. In desperation, he kicks off, legs burning with everything he can give them in his clumsy break for the surface.

Sloshing up through the broken ice, he gasps into the air with more violence than he'd left it. The harsh wind that strikes back at him like an additional slap in the face.

"Porthos!" he hears distantly, but can't tell if the screaming voice belongs to Aramis or d'Artagnan.

"Porthos!" The second shout is punctuated by the sound of clanging swords and—just as he blinks enough water out of his eyes to scrabble his arms in the direction of solid ice he doesn't think he can climb back onto—a musket shot.

"Aramis!" he gasps, trying to see farther than his furiously blinking eyes will permit. Bracing his gloved palms on the icy surface before him, he prays for stability and sloshes upward, but catches his belt on the edge as he tries to rise. The surface breaks and he plunges downward again. As the lake swallows him, he grits his frustration into the water flooding through his nose and teeth and holds his breath, this time letting himself sink.

Finding the muddy lake bed, he digs his heels in, bending his knees, then pushes upward to start everything all over again.

He changes tactics as soon as his mouth breathes air again. Instead of trusting the ice as a surface he can climb back onto, he battles it, beating down on it with his arms and elbows so that it splinters into the water, clearing his way closer to the shoreline. Within a few feet his boots are able to touch bottom while his head stays above surface.

A few feet after that, the ice is thick and collected enough for him to kneel up on and drag himself shivering to solid ground.

Swiping at his eyes and breathing heavily, when he can focus, he finds himself kneeling next to the man who'd shoved him—now sprawled dead and supine on the earth. A musket wound above his enemy's ear is slugging out a line of quickly freezing blood. Steam rises off it as it congeals against the bluish-white skin.

Porthos stares, and blinks, and stares again.

He stares and keeps breathing, but it isn't enough. His chest is locking up, his vision hazing out, like the icy water in his ears is trickling into his brain. The wind is cutting straight through his doublet, slapping his own wet clothes into the surface of his skin and he can't think. He can't speak. He feels like if he tries, his teeth will break.

Closing his eyes against his own will, he clicks his jaw shut as the world tilts.

Collapsing forward, he rolls to his back in an unwanted parody of the corpse next to him, and feels himself gasping at the sky with a desperation he's never wanted anyone to see from him.

"Porthos!" he hears again. "Porthos!"—a too-distant voice, accompanied by the dream-like clanging of embattled swords. "Porthos!"

It's like a shout from a memory. From a place or time he should know. A person he should remember.

Despite the strain of effort, his lungs seem only to sputter in response.

tbc

Title is taken from an obscure poem by Nansen, which to my recollection is itself untitled, but if I discover otherwise, I'll come back and correct this.