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[afineseamstress]

He loses track of time again.

The room is well lit, loud beyond the door and bustling with activity when doctors or nurses enter, but Aramis drifts. In that damnable basement, his only knowledge of passing minutes was the degree of his own thirst, and here in his bed, he can only count the continued ease of his breaths, and the pass of familiar calloused fingers over his own knuckles where his hands lie in the sheets.

There is some sort of brace on one of his wrists. Aramis has not yet recovered the nerve to ask if his hand can still pull a trigger, even if he could speak without effort. His head is too heavy to turn away from the sight, and Aramis shifts his eyes, fighting sleep to discern the new shape in the door.

He hopes it belongs to someone without a clipboard.

[open post if the spirit moves you]

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[du_vallon]

Porthos blinks back the hot tears of dismay in his eyes that this is a continued event from the ones before. He knows this is a bad idea, they all know that Aramis' liaison had been a bad idea, but to have Aramis punished here because of it seems beyond the pale. "They told us that if we hadn't reached you within the next few hours, you would have been too far gone," Porthos says, unable to stop these tears, which cloud his vision and blur Aramis before him. "I almost lost you. We were nearly planning a funeral, not a rescue."

[afineseamstress]

Aramis feels his own eyes grow hot for Porthos' tears, and he reaches for him as best he can with clumsy fingers. The look of them almost stops him short - in the dim basement, the damage he'd done scrabbling at his chains had been obscured, but in the harsh light of the hospital his split nails are grim looking indeed. Still, he finds Porthos' hand.

"You found me," Aramis reminds him. "I knew you would. It was all I held onto when my strength began to fail."

[du_vallon]

"Jim put together a tracker of all the houses we'd been in," he says roughly, wiping away at his cheeks roughly to get the tears from off his face. He knows he has to be stronger right now and he pushes everything down so that it's buried. He gently eases Aramis' hand to his side, wanting it to remain protected. "We should have found you sooner," he insists gravely. "We should put a tracker right in you. That way this'll never happen again," he says, and isn't sure he's joking.

[afineseamstress]

"Put anything in me you like," says Aramis, and it's a measure of how low he still feels that it does not even occur to him to smirk. He closes his eyes, regretting their distance the instant Porthos moves his hand. "There was no reason to expect me there," he tells Porthos to soothe his guilt. "Why search for a dungeon like place?"

[du_vallon]

"Because I searched everywhere else," Porthos insists lowly, still shouldering the blame readily given how he had nearly lost Aramis and still has no idea what he would've done if he'd genuinely lost the man. He swallows, hard, and stares at him, searching for a nurse before he resumes his position lying down at Aramis' side. "And I shouldn't have even slept. I should have kept searching."

[afineseamstress]

For that, Aramis does smile faintly, though it pulls at his lips. "I would have wanted you to rest," he says. "Not make yourself ill on my account." Aramis curls his body towards Porthos'. "You found me, that is all that matters now."

For Porthos, he hopes. There is still a great deal that troubles Aramis, but he will face those things when Porthos' sorrow has eased.

[du_vallon]

Porthos protectively draws Aramis in closer to him, holding on tightly as if he's scared that if he lets go, then Aramis will vanish right out of his reach. He swallows, hard, and isn't sure that's all that matters. "I would have rather found you. Everyone kept saying it was more likely you'd just gone," he says, heart aching to even think of that. "But you wouldn't. Not without me."

[afineseamstress]

"I promised you," Aramis agrees, and his heart aches, too, but with love for his husband who would not give up on him. "I won't leave you, no matter what, and you believed me." Aramis turns his face to press against Porthos' throat. "Thank you for your faith, Porthos. It saved me."

[du_vallon]

"I would never have been able to live with myself if I'd given up, only for them to have found your body," he admits, his eyes a touch wild because that very well could have been what happened. He tries to steady his breathing, easing back to study Aramis. "How are you feeling?" he asks. "They're pumping you full of food and fluids."

[afineseamstress]

Aramis kisses his skin before he shifts away, not needing to make an assessment of himself before he answers. "Like I've been run over by a loaded cart," he admits, the words stuck and tickling at his throat. "In the heart of the desert."

Aramis draws another breath. "And guilty, Porthos."

[du_vallon]

Porthos frowns, drawing away slightly from that much-needed kiss in order to properly look Aramis in the eye, unsure what he has to be guilty about now, on top of all the other things. "Aramis, what are you guilty for? We've already talked about how this isn't you," he points out, holding him tight. "How can this be your fault?"

[afineseamstress]

"I know," says Aramis, squeezing his eyes closed, for the guilt that gnaws at him is another man's, but he feels it keenly. "I know, but I know what that man did, and I am sorry for it. I could have been him, could have been the cause of so much suffering, but for the simple miracle that I am here instead."

Through his lids, the first tears he's been able to shed in days begin to eke. "I am not certain I deserve that respite, Porthos."

[du_vallon]

Bells begin to ring in Porthos' mind, as loud and brassy as Notre Dame and suddenly, Porthos' fears begin to build again as he wonders what's living inside of Aramis to make him feel this way. "How can you say that?" he asks quietly, not meaning to upset Aramis any more, but genuinely pained that he thinks that of himself. "How can you say you don't deserve to be here?"

"Do you think I don't deserve it either?" he wonders.

[afineseamstress]

"Of course you do," says Aramis at once, turning his head with some effort to look up at him. "You have done no wrong, here nor there, you are blameless." His breath shakes in his throat, for now that he does not have the singular task of staying alive before him, dark thoughts roll in. "I did not sleep with the Queen, but I flirted with her, I gave her the Stare. Why should I be saved and brought here? At home I have hurt so many. Here my life is very nearly paradise."

And how can that be right?

[du_vallon]

"If you don't deserve happiness here, if you say that you're not allowed to be happy here, then neither am I," Porthos feels inclined to point out the gap in his logic. "Because if you don't get this and you don't have this, then I don't get it either and I've come to love you more than anyone except Athos," Porthos continues, his words getting more heated by the second.

"So you were a dumbass at home," he growls. "I should've done something about it. We let you, didn't we? So it's on us, too."

[afineseamstress]

"Not on you," Aramis whispers, for not even a man as mighty as Porthos should have to shoulder this sort of guilt, and Porthos has done nothing. No one could stop Aramis leaping into the worst sort of madness at home, not even stern Athos or Treville. Porthos can take no blame for this.

"You deserve to be happy, Porthos. It is my honor to make you so, I only wish - " The words stick in Aramis' throat, his monitors beeping as if in concern, but he carries on. "I wish I had been a better man at home."

[du_vallon]

Porthos sighs and hears the monitors beeping a touch faster than before. It makes him unsure how much he wants to push this subject right now, but it isn't going to go away. "We couldn't have had this at home. You know that as much as I do," he says, which is something he hates to think about. "Aramis, I'm going to beg now. Please, please, don't think that you don't deserve this."

[afineseamstress]

Aramis feels truly pitiful as he feels his face screw up like a child's, his heart aching for the pain he can hear beneath the anger in Porthos' voice. "There is just so much," he says in a broken voice. "So much at home. Constance was nearly killed, others were, and I know that is Rochefort's doing but I gave him what he needed to ruin us all. How will I live with that?"

Aramis opens his eyes. "I want to deserve you, but I don't know how to live with that."

[du_vallon]

Porthos sets his jaw tightly and eases closer to Aramis and maybe he feels it, maybe he can feel Porthos start to get desperate as his eyes go hot with tears. "So, what, you're going to leave us because you don't think you deserve the love and affection that we choose whether you deserve?"

[afineseamstress]

"Not leave," Aramis chokes out, trying very hard to get himself under control, but it seems he's used up all his nerve in that wretched basement. "If I were going to leave you I'd have let myself die in that dungeon. I'm only telling you it hurts."

His soul feels tarnished with it, and Aramis doesn't know what to do, whole body trembling with an ache that goes deeper than bone. "It simply hurts."

[du_vallon]

Calming somewhat, Porthos lets the tension bleed out of his body. This isn't Aramis trying to get away from them, but Porthos still thinks that there are better ways to cope with this than by telling Porthos he doesn't deserve to be loved. "Did you ever go see the priest?" he asks quietly.

[afineseamstress]

"Yes," Aramis whispers. "Several times after you took me." Confessing to another man's sins had felt strange, not nearly as liberating as Aramis would have liked, but perhaps that is because he had not yet understood the depth of them.

Now that he has the full weight of those sins on his shoulders, Aramis must go again. Perhaps, then, they will finally be exorcised from his heart. Or perhaps seeing a priest will only feel odd now that Aramis knows his fate. "I must tell you something more," he says, barely audible.

[du_vallon]

Porthos doesn't like hearing that there's more, but he nods wordlessly, swallowing and trying to push the fear down into his gut where he can ignore it completely rather than let it completely consume him. "What is it?" he prompts quietly.

[afineseamstress]

"At home," says Aramis, hardly daring to go on, but he must, for left alone with this he surely will despair, "I do leave. I leave all of you for the monastery in Douai." Aramis closes his eyes, for if he watches Porthos take this in his heart will break anew. "My last memory is leaving Athos my blue scarf, and placing my hat on your bed."

[du_vallon]

Aramis is right to look away because Porthos reacts with an instant flinch of pain, the fear compounding into something even worse than before as he listens to the news of what happens at home. He sits up in the hospital bed, needing to move, and he gets up to pace the length of the bed in front of Aramis, closing his eyes tightly to think that any version of him is losing Aramis.

"You can't," is all he gets out, choked. "Why?"