A/N-Last part! Thank you to all those who reviewed, followed and favorited, especially laced-with-fire who beta-ed this chapter for me.

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Aramis makes them all buy hats. He lost his at Savoy, and though Athos understands that it's part of the healing process, that it has taken him months to even think about replacing it, he still doesn't see why he and Porthos need one. But they humour him, letting him drag them round trying on hat after hat. He tries to convince Athos to buy a ridiculous thing, blue with peacock feathers, but instead a simpler hat is purchased, much to Aramis' disappointment. Porthos does buy the hat Aramis picks though, which that cheers him up no end. It would have looked ridiculous on a lesser man, but everything about Porthos is larger than life so it seems just right. Aramis himself takes a good two hours choosing, saying that it had to be just right, and earning him many rolled eyes from the other two. He finally picks a pale grey-blue one, which Porthos laughs at, saying it will be black with dirt by the end of the week. Aramis, in his new found love for his head wear, takes it as a threat rather than a passing comment and spends the rest of the trip back to the garrison 'protecting' it, while Porthos attempts to get mud on it. Athos wanders behind them, smile on his face, wondering what he ever did to deserve them.

It's well into the afternoon by the time they get back and Athos decides to depart from the others and use the rest of his day to visit Madame Bonacieux, who he hasn't seen in weeks. His good mood vanishes however when Constance hands him a letter and package addressed to Raoul de la Fère as soon as he is through her door. He cuts short his visit, barely staying ten minutes, and takes both back to his room to open them up.

They are from his housekeeper, who informs him that a bad storm had caused some of the roof to cave in. There had been little damage considering, it had only been a storage area in the loft and almost everything was fixed by now. The only thing that still remained to be put right was a family heirloom that had been hit by a falling tile and would require specialist work. They had thought it best to send it on to him to get mended in Paris.

The family heirloom was a sword from the time of King Francis I, passed down over the generations. The hilt, that was embossed and set with jewels, now had a sizeable dint in it. When they were little he and Thomas used to stare at it and discuss how one day they would be brilliant fighters and use a sword as fine as that one. It had hung on the wall in one of the upstairs rooms of the house for over a hundred years, but she had decided the room would be better serviced with the family portraits on the wall, so it had gone into storage. Thomas had been furious, and they had argued about it at length, but he had, as always, come down on the side of his wife. Looking at it now, damaged and scratched, he feels guilt stab at his heart.

He spends the rest of the day thinking about Thomas and his dead family and her. And once he's in the pit of despair other thoughts come as well, how he should have been at Savoy, how he should have died or at the very least the nightmares that still plague Aramis should be his. His friend should never have been there, it should have been him. He deserves it. And he definitely doesn't deserve the loyalty and friendship he has been given in the past six months. It was all wrong. Even after all that had changed, becoming a musketeer, meeting Porthos and Aramis and Constance, he is still the same broken fool, beyond repair and letting those around him become damaged.

By the time is friends come to check on him that night he is drunker than he has been in weeks. His eyes are red from weeping, locket in one hand, loaded pistol in the other; ready to depart this world for the next. It takes Aramis twenty minutes to talk Athos into lowering it from his temple and in the end Porthos knocks him out cold to stop him from hurting himself.

When he wakes in the morning, Aramis politely informs him that he is on leave for the next week. They are rationing his alcohol supply, his weapons have been relocated and he is being watched by one or the other of them at all-times until he manages get his head sorted out, lest he do anything stupid. And this routine is followed for the next three days by an overly chipper Aramis and a silent Porthos whose behaviour he can only describe as sulking. Athos himself is grumpy and ungrateful through the lot of it, until Porthos finally snaps and gives him a good telling off.

"Do you have any idea what you put us through? Got a nice long list of reasons you hate yourself, do you? Why don't you add selfish to the list, it defiantly belongs on there after this!" It takes Athos almost a full minute to get over the shock of been yelled at and start processing what was said, by which time Porthos rant is in full swing. "And don't look so bloody shocked, there is nothing about what you were doing that wasn't entirely selfish, getting rid of your own misery only to add to someone else's. Aramis has been practically pulling his hair out and you know how fond he is of his hair. He's just lost twenty-one friends, just stopped having nightmares of them dying and you want to put him through it again? You're either mental or cruel, I haven't decided which yet. He's been bloody praying for you and you've been acting like a spoilt child because we wouldn't let you blow your brains all over the wall.'

"Let me tell you something about taking your own life; and it's not the bullshit they try to sell you at church about eternal damnation. I've seen people, in the court, who decide they've had enough, and when it's all said and done with they're dead, whatever it was doesn't matter to them anymore. It's the people they leave behind that suffer, more than you can imagine, their friends and their family and how dare you almost do that to us!" By the end of it he has Athos by the shirt, shaking him bodily and lifting him of the bed, before dropping him and storming out the door. He slams it so hard Athos is surprised it doesn't fall off the hinges.

When an angry looking Aramis brings Porthos back an hour later he's got out of bed for the first time in days. He has washed, changed and is sat at the table eating the meal he refused earlier. It is the closest thing to an apology he ever manages as they never talk about it again, but Aramis is overjoyed and even Porthos looks a bit less like he's about to punch something.

The rest of his leave is taken with grace, as are the restrictions his friends have placed on him. He also takes the time to get the sword he received fixed, and hangs it on the wall of his room to remind himself of the incident, and the family and friends he would be letting down if it happened again. Like it or not he has people who care about him and he will not hurt them again if he can help it.

It's another half a year before he realises what he put them through. Aramis goes missing for twenty minutes in the middle of a fight and Porthos is injured, leaning on him heavily and there is so much blood. For one very real moment he thinks he's lost them both and it scares him more than almost anything he's ever experienced. So later, when Aramis has found them again and they have gotten Porthos to safety so he can be stitched up, he makes himself a promise. He will not fail another brother, so he will protect them both in any way he can till the end of his days. They are his family after all.