A/N: Warnings for TV POV, slightly Bent History (in later chapters), and yet another *d'Artagnan is taken in by the Musketeers* story.

The Good Son

The countryside was slipping away, as was the daylight, and still Athos rode ahead into the teeth of the wind, ever at the front, as alone as he could be with three companions trailing behind. It was only a matter of time before Aramis took up the cudgel of guilt again, not that it would do any good. Guilt and Athos were old friends, they rode and fenced and exercised and guarded the king and his entourage together every day. In fact, guilt and Athos were inseparable.

Not that he had the least intention of allowing guilt of any kind to bother his conscience in regards to the ill-mannered, hot-headed fourth riding with the Inseparables. He had no idea why the youth who had tried to kill him, then – according to his friends – helped them resolve the accusations against him, was along in the first place. It did not require a fourth to pick up the package they were to escort from Calais back to Paris. It did not require three of them, but Tréville had wanted them all out of Paris, at least until Richelieu stopped seething about the gross miscarriage of justice that had literally been Athos' last minute reprieve.

The musketeer could not decide if he was relieved or annoyed that he yet lived; nor had two days on horseback reliving the experience done anything to resolve the quandary.

The horse behind him was urged into a trot and, as expected, Aramis drew alongside.

"We need to find a place to stay tonight," the healer said pleasantly, so the wind would carry back none of his seething annoyance. "We passed an agreeable looking inn not a league back."

"There's an hour yet of daylight."

Aramis had had enough. "Find a place to stop, or I will. We don't have to be in Calais for another two days."

The hat did not turn, nor did the pace falter. "If he rides with us, at the least I want to know I will not be constantly distracted having to save him from his own reckless folly."

Aramis was regretting having shared the details of the altercation at Gaudet's camp where they'd discovered absolute proof of the treachery perpetrated in Athos' name. "That is a spurious argument." And one that had been on-going since their brief stop at sun high to rest the horses and eat. "A moot one, too, if he dies of lung fever because you drove us like cattle before your ill temper."

" We have a job to do, Aramis, if d'Artagnan cannot keep up, then he needs to tell us and we will find somewhere to leave him and get on with it."

"What do you want from him?"

"I want nothing from him." Nor anything to do with the youth. "I do not even know why he is yet with us. Does he not have dearly departed to bury? Mourning to undertake?" d'Artagnan reminded him too much of his younger brother, dead at the hand of the whore.

"He is avoiding the finality of that job," Aramis said. "Athos, to a point, I understand your argument, but have you considered he doesn't even know to ask for aid?"

For the first time, the hat turned, and the stoic face measured Aramis' words with consideration. "No," Athos said simply. "I have not." The hat turned forwards again, as if dismissing the subject.

"Then consider it now. What he knows of us could fit into Monsieur Bonacieux's thimble – if he uses one. Furthermore, he does not want to appear needy to us, or be an encumbrance."

"Monsieur Bonaxieux is a cloth merchant, not a seamstress. And yet the boy is an encumbrance if he slows us down."

"We're not in a hurry," Aramis snapped. Then in a more placatory tone a moment later, "Can you not see he has the makings of an excellent musketeer?"

"You would recommend him as a musketeer on the basis that he can stay in the saddle on pride alone?" It was not quite a sneer, for Athos did not sneer, but it was certainly as close as he ever came.

"Have you seen the bruise he carries?"

"Apropos of what?" Athos was in no mood to hear any of this. He could, he knew, cut off the flow with a single command, but he would not. He had not risen through the ranks to become Tréville's second-in-command by flinging orders around, nor the leader of the Inseparable's by shutting down Aramis' sometimes challenging ability to wield words. Especially when he was championing a cause, and apparently sometime over the last four days, the youth from Gascony had become a cause.

"Did you know he was hurt already when he challenged you? Oh wait, that's right." Aramis was not above a little irony either. "While he was racing around the countryside with us, attempting to find proof you're not a murderer and a thief, you were languishing in prison. You could not have seen the bruise that blackens his side from armpit to hip. And he held his own against you. Admit it - he made you sweat a little."

"That is irrelevant. We have an assignment, he chose to join us; he's welcome to complete it with us or go home. I do not care which." Which was a flat out lie, since Athos would be quite pleased if the youth disappeared for good.

"The two of you are much alike, you know, he is as stubborn as you," Aramis growled. "If we do not find another place to stop soon, I'm going back to the inn we passed." He reined his horse to the side of the road and drew to a halt, waiting for d'Artagnan, and Porthos behind him, to catch up.

Over the course of the afternoon, d'Artagnan, who rode like centaur, had been slouching lower and lower in the saddle. Aramis suspected he was favoring that left side, though he could not be sure huddled as the youth was, inside the voluminous cloak he wore. They knew as little about the Gascon as he knew about them, but it seemed apparent to Aramis that d'Artagnan had appropriated his dead father's cloak. It was sized to a man broader of shoulder and of more girth than their slender companion.

"Why are we stopping?" d'Artagnan drew alongside Aramis, who clicked his mount into motion again, so they rode side by side. "Oh. We're not."

"We will be shortly. If we don't find a place to stay soon, we'll turn back to that last inn we passed."

Porthos drew alongside on the left. "Stinkin' weather to be ridin' all day, if ya ask me," he contributed as the wind caught his cloak and tried to rip it from around his neck. "I'm ready to be off m'horse." He trapped the flying blue wool and shoved it back under a leg with a scowl.

"Am I imagining things, or are the two of you conspiring?" d'Artagnan glanced first to Aramis, then Porthos.

"An observant pup," Porthos said approvingly.

"Then you have been arguing about me."

Aramis squared his shoulders. "Who said we were arguing?"

d'Artagnan lifted an eyebrow.

Observant indeed, Aramis thought. "Alright, yes, we have been discussing you. Athos," he sighed, "wants you to ask for help. I want you to know that help is available. My mother was an herbalist, and I learned much of the healing arts in my time at the abbey, before choosing the life of a soldier instead of a priest."

"Priest?" d'Artagnan echoed, completely ignoring the intimation that he might not be as fit as he wished to appear. "You trained to be a priest?"

"Hasn't lost the way of it either," Porthos proffered. "A bundle of contradictions is our Aramis; a sharp-shootin' cleric who shoots first and asks questions after he's physicked his victim."

"For most of my adolescence I was schooled to shepherd a flock," Aramis replied, insouciance shading to boredom informing his tone. Despite the humor lacing this disclosure, one hand brushed over the cross d'Artagnan knew the musketeer wore beneath his shirt.

"But you miss it?" d'Artagnan cocked his head curiously. "Really?"

"I do, sometimes. There is a complacency in routine and ritual that can be comforting."

Porthos snorted. "And boring. He didn' so much leave as get himself excommunicated."

"I was not excommunicated." Aramis was very much on his dignity, though laughter lurked in his eyes. "Father Jerome might have suggested that I was more suited to a different calling; when he caught me setting up bottles on the headstones for target practice."

The youth's eyes widened in disbelief. "You did not."

"That ain't even what got 'im kicked out." Porthos chuckled.

"Oh, it is true."

"You were target shooting in the graveyard and you're alive to tell of it? My father would have skinned me alive if I'd done such a thing." The smile dropped away before it was fully born as memory overshadowed the joie de vivre of the moment.

Aramis gifted the momentary silence with respect, allowing d'Artagnan to draw a deep calming breath before glancing across at Porthos. "Shall I tell him?"

"If you don' I will."

"Alright, I'll bite – how did you get kicked out?" The youthful voice was subdued but curious.

"Shooting apples off the head of the other novices. If Robin Hood could do it..."

d'Artagnan literally turned in the saddle, though his hand clamped instinctively to his side as he did. "You're not serious!"

Aramis shrugged modestly. "I only missed once."

And d'Artagnan, unable to help himself, bit again. "Only once?"

"I hit the tree over Fremon's head the first time I tried. They did not catch us at it until I had perfected my aim and could do it over my shoulder, without looking, though I did not try that with a real person until I knew I could hit the target a hundred percent of the time. When Father Jerome roused from his faint, he escorted me home and told my father that no matter what my mother said, I did not have a calling for the church."

Porthos threw back his head and laughed heartily, despite having heard the story more times than he could count. It never failed to amuse. "He learnt me how to do it too!"

"Yes, but he can only do it when he's drunk. And I was not excommunicated. I am even allowed over the threshold of the village church when I am home."

d'Artagnan didn't bother to respond to the drunk remark, they had to be pulling his leg on that one. So he asked instead, "Where is home?"

"Brittany. But enough of me. How is it a farm boy from Gascony fell under the spell of the sword?"

d'Artagnan's shrug, Aramis noted, was a thing precisely calculated and silence enveloped them again, as much as the wind and the sound of trotting hooves would allow.

"I don't remember a time I did not want to touch the beautiful thing my father kept on the mantel over the fireplace," the Gascon said finally. The fingers trying to curb the ache in his side moved to curl around the inlaid swirls and curlicues of the basket handle on the sword beneath his cloak. "My father said it belonged to my grandfather, though he was gone before I was born. I remember lean times when my parents would speak of selling it and I would beg them not to."

And now his father was dead, too, because he had insisted on stopping short of the safety and anonymity of Paris, though that was a secret that might well go to the grave with d'Artagnan, as there was no one left to confess to.

"I suppose I wore him down eventually. An uncle who had been in the army lived nearby. My father prevailed upon him to teach me the rudiments of sword craft …" he trailed off, the memories surging like a moon tide, followed by a long, slow swell of yearning for home despite the fact that less than a fortnight ago he had longed to leave it with equal fervor. The ache of it rivaled the ache in his side.

"So you learned sword fighting from an uncle. You were on your way to Paris when you were attacked, but you never said why?"

Aaramis' quiet catechism drew d'Artagnan back from the edge. He shook his head. "Father wished to…" the curl of grief caught him again like a lance to the chest from some knight of old. He pushed it away and adjusted his internal amour. "He wished to petition the king in person. The taxes in Gascony are so high it becomes difficult to keep food on the table."

"Then you did not come with the purpose of joining the musketeers?" Porthos inquired in surprise.

d'Artagnan's laugh was hollow and rattled around in his chest with a sound like beads from a broken rosary. "We are not of the nobility, merely gentry farmers with a little land. I was told the musketeers are chosen from among the young men of the aristocracy." He was too young to realize the yearning in his soul had found an outlet in his wistful tone. "My father used to tell me I was a farmer with grandiose dreams."

"You are young and entitled to dreams," Aramis declared adamantly, "if we do not dream, what legacy will we leave for those who follow?"

"A philosopher?" d'Artagnan shuddered, though it was not entirely feigned. A cold chill was creeping up his spine.

"No." The handsome musketeer lifted his hat, holding it to his heart as he bowed across his horse's neck. "Not a philosopher, but there is poetry in my soul that must occasionally find its way out."

"Beware his company when he gets in one'a them moods," Porthos advised, "unless you like listenin' to paeans of praise to an eyelash or the curve of an ear. Look, Athos is turning off. He must have found a place to stay."

Aramis glanced up, but kept his horse at a walk. "If you do not wish to be a musketeer, who awaits your return in Gascony?"

Athos had slowed his horse to walk as well when Aramis had fallen back to ride with d'Artagnan and Porthos, though now he was disappearing into the grove of trees lining the right side of the road at a trot.

No matter, they would catch up eventually. Aramis returned his attention to the silent Gascon.

d'Artagnan, who had accompanied his father to Paris with the sole purpose of wearing him down enough to be allowed to at least interview for a place with the musketeers, was silent. He did not dare give voice to the longing. To express those wishes under the circumstances seemed somehow irreverent, if not downright blasphemous, and in the end, he said only, "There is no one to return to in Gascony."

"No one? No sweetheart? No mother, sister, brother? What about the uncle?"

"I am ….was … an only child. My mother died so long ago I hardly remember her. The uncle was her brother. He died in a hunting accident sixteen months ago." And with his demise, d'Artagnan's sparring days had ended. The center post in the barn bore infinite scars from his solitary practice.

"Not even friends?" Porthos sounded affronted at the very thought.

This was met with a rueful smile. "We are, normally, a legion of tillers of the earth in Gascony. To be otherwise is to invite ridicule and harassment. Few beyond my father understood my yearnings. I must go back to bury him, but I will not stay. Perhaps I will sell the farm and travel to the Colonies."

"If you wish to be a musketeer then you must return to Paris. The garrison is not at capacity, there are ways a resourceful youngster could earn a place among us. And only one of us," Aramis' encompassing gesture indicated their inseparable trio, "is of noble birth."

"I wouldn't mention it though, he's very touchy about it," Porthos put in, glancing ahead again.

"Why?"

"Dunno, he's never said. Closest thing we can figure is it must have som'in to do with the woman he keeps tryin' to drink himself to death over. An all he says about her is that she's dead. Tied together somehow." Porthos shook his head. "An enigma that one."

"He doesn't react well when you dig, so don't."

"Right," d'Artagnan agreed without missing a beat. "Don't dig. Not that he's ever likely to get near enough to me to even try."

"Don't take it personal-like, he's that way with everybody, even us a lot of the time."

"Porthos is right, it has nothing to do with you personally, and even less to do with your inimitable style of introducing yourself at the point of a sword. He does not hold that against you."

"And you know this how?"

"Because he is the most fair-minded individual I have ever known."

"I think 'm hurt." Though Porthos' grin belied the grumble.

"Well," Aramis laughed again, "after Porthos that is, whose fairness extends to beating the pulp out of anyone who calls him out for cheating at cards. Which he does all the time, by the way; never play him unless you're planning to cheat yourself."

"It's true," Porthos admitted cheerfully. "It's 'ow I put food on the table growin' up. Hav'nt been able to kick the habit. Athos keeps kicking my ass for it – well, he gives me that look he's so good at, up from under the brim of his hat, the disappointed one that always makes me feel about a foot tall." The big man laughed too. "Never does any good though. Always up to m' old tricks soon as his back is turned."

"Yes, always fair and open-minded, that's our Porthos," Aramis repeated genially.

The track they turned onto, just past a carved sign post indicating an inn, was wide enough for a cart to pass and deeply rutted. They rode single file again and the conversation, of necessity, ended, though Aramis and Porthos continued to call good-natured insults to each other over d'Artagnan's head.

d'Artagnan had rarely been around anyone this close to his own age. He had never experienced anything like the easy, affectionate nature of the camaraderie between this pair. He'd seen clearly, the night before, the older, undesignated leader of the group was included in it too, though with an elegant subtlety that defied clarification. Despite the fact Athos had made it patently clear he did not want company in his drinking, Porthos had readily remained behind to ensure safe passage home.

d'Artagnan understood his loss amplified the churning sensation of envy, of being on the outside looking in, but understanding did not dull the knife blade's edge slicing tiny burning cuts just under the skin of desire. Experience had taught him to be wary of casual offers such as Aramis had thrown out; they were easily made but rarely followed through on.

And while he was young, he was well enough acquainted with himself to know that he was in no state to make choices of any kind. Like a wounded animal, he would be easy to bait and trap. He envied this pair though, the easy surety in the manner they carried themselves, their obvious satisfaction with their lot in life. He was a farm boy from Gascony with a good grasp of sword fighting. He could plow a straight furrow if required, but his father had recognized early, the land did not call to his son as it did to him.

Though it called to d'Artagnan, now, with the voice of his dead father. He should go home and mourn as a good son would. And stop pretending childish dreams might yet come true.

"You planning to sleep up there tonight?"

d'Artagnan blinked down at Porthos, standing at his knee, holding his horse's head.

Porthos raised both eyebrows questioningly.

"Oh. Sorry." Saddle leather creaked as d'Artagnan drew his right leg up over his mount and slid down rather than put his weight on the stirrup to swing down. The ground, though, jarred as much the stirrup would have and for a moment he swayed.

Big hands closed around his shoulders, holding him upright. "Easy there," Porthos said steadyingly.

d'Artagan exhaled and slumped sideways against his horse.

"You alright?" Porthos asked, not letting go.

"Yeah, okay, just …" The Gascon took several shallow breaths before straightening.

Porthos let go, but kept his hands out just in case. "Aramis'll have something to put on that to ease the stitch in your side."

"It's just a bruise."

"Mmm hmmm." Porthos took d'Artagnan's reins. "I'll see to the horse for ya," he said, taking Aramis' reins as well.

"I do," Aramis agreed, "I have a horse liniment that does wonders for human aches and pains too." He didn't ask, just turned the youth toward the inn with a friendly arm around his shoulders and began again with the questions, so d'Artagnan had no time to think or react.

"Ya want I should take yours too," Porthos asked Athos, over the back of d'Artagnan's horse.

"No. Give me one of those, I'll help with them." Athos collected Aramis' horse and followed Porthos around the back.

Chapter 1/11 - TBC