Upon the realization of loss

[averygoodshot]

There is little that will keep Aramis away from his son. Even trips to exotic beach locales only serve as temporary diversions from what he considers his family. He has not gone back to Paris to appease the Queen, he has been diligent and loyal and good (love, he tells himself, is a powerful force).

Then comes the day when he knocks on the right door and no one answers. When he's told that Anne, Queen of France, no longer resides in the Nexus at all. How, he wonders, his heart clattering in his chest, can he keep the Queen safe now? How can he protect his son?

After a thorough and emotional search, resulting in nothing, not even a door back to Paris, Aramis does the only thing he can think to do. He drinks (and yes, he does let the others know of his findings, or lack thereof) and he wallows. This is how he finds himself in the tavern, a wine bottle and goblet in front of him, and his head in his hands.

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[averygoodshot]

Lifting his head to see the face which matches the voice he knows, Aramis does his very best to muster a smile which resides nowhere near his eyes. "Constance." He gestures to the seat across from himself. "You are looking well."

It's expected that he says that, is it not? That he be the epitome of chivalry, even if Constance has long been able to see through his words.

[at_your_side]

Sympathy had undone her too many times to count and still she could not help but be softened by it when he lifted his face from his hands and he looked back at her. She could offer little comfort with all that was uncertain in that moment, on that day, for the forseeable future. No matter how her heart ached at the thought of it, the uncertainty and the worry that gnawed at her were too real to dismiss and her affection and respect for the man before her equally so to flinch away from what needed to be said.

"You are not," she told him, her voice gentle where her words were not. "You know then, that the Queen's left?"

[averygoodshot]

Aramis nods, pouring himself a healthy draught of wine. "She didn't -"

He looks up at her with angst clearly showing. "... did you know, Constance? Did she tell you?"

[at_your_side]

The Nexus had offered much by way of freedoms and mysteries and wonders, but as she took a seat across from him and watched the emotion overtake his expression, Constance knew with a resigned certainty that it could not be a place they could escape in forever. She nodded, reaching across to lay a hand gently over one of his as she hoped he would understand in part in the Queen's disappearance. "She asked me not to say until she had gone," there in her words last there unspoken fact that the Queen could have ordered her to do so if she had wished, buy sure had asked as one friend to another. "Much as she wished otherwise, as I do, her duty to France must come before any personal desire."

She understood too well being torn by duty and want, but too remembered the Queen's imploring her to seize her happiness where she herself could never be free to have what she desired. "I will follow her, Aramis, and will do all I can to keep her safe."

Of all she could not do, she knew she would defend her friend, her Queen, with her life if necessary.

[averygoodshot]

"Let me go too," he whispers, voice low and tight, covering her hand on his arm with his. "Take me through the door you go into, Constance. I will go." And he will keep her safe. He will kill Rochefort and be done with it once and for all.

"Do not deny me this," he asks, voice still low, but the imploring nature clear. "Constance, please."

[at_your_side]

Emotion threatened to choke her where it rose in her throat. She had known he would likely ask such a thing of her, just as she knew that it had been the majority of the reason the Queen had asked her to relay the news rather than risk having to argue with or order Aramis to give up the fight and remind them both for thousandth time of all that held them apart from truly being together.

Constance felt unbearably cruel as she shook her head. Necessary as it was, he had been too good a friend to her for her not to understand what she was refusing him, even as it had to be done. She could not guess what might happen if a second Aramis walked into her moment in time as she had left it, and it was that uncertainty along with words Athos had told her of being unable to change the future for all his knowledge that she did not flinch from holding his gaze. "Aramis, I cannot." She could not bring herself to resent the position she hhadas agreed to place herself in for both her friends' sake, for the sake of the dauphin as well as them all, but she still wished it was unnecessary.

"You are there already," she reminded him, "I saw you with the others not an hour before I came here. I will send for you the moment I return, Aramis, I swear it." Her voice held all the conviction that burned in her breast as a part of her begged him to understand and not to hate her for what she had to do. The thought of losing the respect he held for her, that was so important to her, was an agony she could not bear. "I will send someone to fetch you all, and I will remain by her side every moment until I am sure she is safe."

[averygoodshot]

Aramis's jaw worked as he looks back at her.

Yes, he abstractly understands that he is back there, that he is doing what he can. However, he is here and here is not where he can help the Queen and his son. Here is where he seems imprisoned and trapped by the order of a woman who no longer chose to stay here.

Not that life is unfair; Aramis knows that it is not, but he feels resentful regardless. "Did she ask you to ensure that I stay here?" he asks quietly. "Is that why you say this, Constance?"

[at_your_side]

"What I say, I say because I am your friend, Aramis, as well as hers." In the earnestness of her speech, she was very much aware of how much she was asking him in asking him to fight his heart for reason. Of how impossible such a thing could be, and how grief and heartache took no note of what had to be done.

"You cannot help her by charging in there blind. No more than you keep her and the dauphin safe if you are seen coming from her apartments, particularly if no one had seen you enter the Louvre. The Queen must be able to handle this her way," her lips pressed together as she gave a sigh, "Don't you think I've tried to think of another way?" What it might have said about either herself or of the Musketeers' influence on her that she had wished too often that she had had a weapon in her hand when she had interrupted him in his attack, so that she could've ended him then and there. Or of how she was too certain that she would sleep more easily if she had.

"She needs to be seen as faultless when she confronts him, Aramis. You must trust that her priority is the dauphin, and in yourself that the you I saw in the Garrison's yard will do what must."

[averygoodshot]

There is nothing in Constance's words that Aramis can argue. She is right and oh, how that idea hurts his very heart.

"You promise when you return that you will tell me all that happens?" he asks, voice low and earnest.

[at_your_side]

Had the Musketeers not been on the other side of that door as well as within the Nexus, Constance was sure she would not have believed that they could undo Rochefort and protect the Queen and the dauphin from the poison he spat. Just as there was relief in knowing that she had allies in Doctor LeMay and Marguerite in defending the Queen in a Court hostile toward their Spanish Queen and flanked on all sides by Rochefort's men.

"Everything I am able," she promised, although she remembered how Athos had spoken of being unable to change the events he had known were coming.

There was a moment she sat silent, turning over the question that had occurred to her more than once before she decided to speak it aloud. "How did it happen? I've known of the affair since Emilie's tent, but she told me of... The son you have together, only shortly before I arrived here."

[averygoodshot]

Ah.

With all that Constance has had to do, with all she's promising, it isn't as if Aramis can defer or lie to her, can he?

He looks down at his hands cupping the the goblet. "This was some time ago," he says, "when the Queen was being hunted by an assassin and his men. I had learned that one of the nuns was a former lover of mine when we were young. She ... died." Still, that pains Aramis, that Isabelle died because of him. "Already, the Queen and I had ... " How to put it?

"We had shared some moments. She has such ... strength. Such poise. But in the convent, when we were not sure if we would survive, when she was feeling so very much pressure to have a son, when I was mourning Isabelle, we ... came together." It was only one night, but one he would never forget."

[at_your_side]

The world had been anything but kind of late. The world, at least, as they had lived it on the other side of the door to Paris.

The fact that the Queen had returned and that she herself would soon return to face the monstrosity of Rochefort and the dangers that accompanied the things he knew of the Queen, and of Aramis, weighed too heavily on Constance's mind to allow rest. It was because of this that she reached for a spot of goodness among the bad, remembering the Queen's soft, sad smile as she had spoken of what had been between them as being a window into a life she might've lived.

Once, she might have questioned Aramis' motive in having done something so mad and foolhardy as to sleep with the Queen of France, of all the women in the world. Had she not heard her friend speak of her time with Aramis as having been so precious to her, she surely would have. All that had been left was of the question of what motivation Aramis had had beyond the fact that the Queen was as lovely as she was. After all, she could understand all too well why Anne had stolen a night with a man who was not her husband when she was so trapped by who and what she was.

She did not break contact with him while he spoke, but listened and watched the emotion he held for the woman who had become her friend. Sympathy as much as understanding lived within her as she nodded, telling him after a moment, "I'm glad." With all the consequences that might come of it, she felt she needed to say, "It cannot go on, you know that, but I am glad you both were allowed that memory."

[averygoodshot]

Rationally, Aramis knows it cannot go on. But his heart tells a different story. That and knowing that his son is there - just out of reach.

Perhaps in some way, he had given up hope at having a family and now he has one - a woman he loves and admires and a son - and he cannot be near them?

It is an agony that eats at his very heart.

"That does not mean that I do not wish to keep them both safe, and to do all I can to protect the Queen and the Dauphin," he tells Constance.

[at_your_side]

The look she gave him then was of a mixture of equal parts fondness and exasperation as was so often inspired in her by the Musketeers in her life. One that spoke of a familiarity with romantic fools and the seeming inability not to be charmed by them out the things they did out of love or the sense of right and wrong so ingrained in them and so absent from so many she had met. d'Artagnan, she was certain, had played much a part in her growing understanding of such things, and saw that she gave Aramis a fond smile.

"I know that, I do." Where she worried was not of motive, but of the lack of understanding men seemed to share of what limits the world had put on the women who lived in it. How many times had she argued with d'Artagnan on that very score? "I only ask that you trust me, and that you be careful. You cannot be ruled by your heart here, Aramis. You must use your head, for their sakes, and keep your distance."

Her fingers squeezed at his arm again as she spoke, "Please, help me keep them safe and keep your distance in Paris. I would do all I can to protect them both, but promise me you'll be careful."

[averygoodshot]

Were she anyone else and Aramis would reply to the contrary; he would note that surely, there was something he could do.

Constance, however, had proved herself time and again to be wise and more than capable. He has no choice but to sigh, lowering his chin to his chest. He nods, then. It seems not much has changed since the Queen exacted the very vow from him. "You must promise to do the same, Constance. Rochefort is a dangerous man; I have no doubt he would do what he needs to to get what he wants."

[at_your_side]

The memory of the man's fingers biting cruelly into her arm as he hissed a veiled that, that of the back of his hand striking her hard enough to send pain radiating across her cheekbone and up to her eye, were still too vivid for her to misunderstand how dangerous Rochefort was. Neither could she forget the more intimate and unthinkable cruelty of his attack on the Queen. A man who believed he had such license was not just unpredictable, he believes himself untouchable.

"I will," she swore, knowing as he must that her loyalty to the Queen would trump her personal safety if she were put to the test. That there was not a thing on heaven or earth she wouldn't do to try and save the Queen and the sweet babe who would one day, by the grace of God, be the next King of France.

After a moment she gave him a slight smile and added, "If you could do one more thing for me?"

[averygoodshot]

"As if," he says, rallying himself as best he can to muster his usual charm. "I could deny you anything, Constance."

This goes against his very nature and pains him to take from his duty, from his very promise.

[at_your_side]

The curve of her smile cut deeper into one cheek at his answer, the words all the more important where she knew how difficult a thing it would be for him to hold back from chasing what was and could not be his family. "I have yet to tell d'Artagnan that I am leaving for Paris, but when I have could you," she paused a second as she searched for the right phrasing for what she needed to ask him.

Duty and loyalty pulled her away from the place that had offered the first taste of true freedom she had ever known. It would take her from d'Artagnan's arms and the sentiment openly meant in her fondness for each of the Musketeers in their own way. What needed to be done had to be done, but she knew too well that she could not be certain of when she would be allowed to return to the Nexus, if ever. "Could you try and keep him from earning himself more of your stitches, Aramis? I would prefer him in one piece next time I see him." Her voice carried a touch of lightness she did not wholly feel, but she could not indulge in her worry any more than she could in her habit of motherhenning each of the Musketeers in turn. She needed to trust that they could care for each other in her absence and not be entirely rules by what she deemed to be Musketeer Logic.

[averygoodshot]

"Please tell me that you won't leave without telling him." Aramis's brows draw together in consternation. "Constance."

He sees what she wants of him: to keep d'Artagnan from doing something stupid, just as Porthos as been tasked for him. "Your beloved is hard-headed," he reminds her. "I will do my best, but when he wishes to do something .... "

It is a reasoning that actually might serve both Aramis and d'Artagnan in this situation. Not that they would go against Constance directly ....

[at_your_side]

"I won't," she rushed to assure him, "I wouldn't." Where she could not be unaware of the contradiction in having agreed to tell Aramis of the Queen's departure and her having blundered for the duty so that she could make certain that he understood without putting the Queen into a position where she need order the man who had been her lover to stay back, Constance was equally aware that her relationship with d'Artagnan was of a different footing. "Besides, I think we've too often already been taken away from each other without a word."

She spoke in reference to being snatched from her daily life by someone or another to be used as leverage, but lost the sour memory to a snort at Aramis' all too accurate assessment of the man she loved so well. Even when she was not sure whether she wanted to strangle him or kiss him senseless for that very reason. "Nothin' and nobody can stop him. Believe me, I am quite aware." Hers was a fond exasperation as she added, "Fool that I am for loving such a man."

[averygoodshot]

"You two are well-matched," Aramis says, his hand atop hers giving her a squeeze. And he can only hope, he supposes, that he finds someone to love in such a way (and so freely).

"I will," he promises, since it isn't technically a lie, "keep my eye on him. You have my word, Constance."