If I Should Die

The one-shot that was inspired by a slight mis-remembering of the farewells beneath the scaffold, and by a line that is for some reason omitted from the translation I had from Project Gutenberg... I have worked grit-covered ropes in bitterly cold weather; my pen-calluses weren't of much help. Athos probably has sword-calluses, but it's canon that those didn't help much either ;-)

(Aramis does in fact embrace both Porthos and d'Artagnan immediately afterwards on his own account before going off on what he has every reason to believe may be a suicide mission, another line which was left out of the English translation, which simply reads "Aramis again presented himself at the bishop’s" in lieu of "Aramis les quitta comme il avait quitté Athos, c’est-à-dire en les embrassant; puis il se rendit chez l’évêque Juxon".)

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If I Should Die

At dawn on the day of the English king’s execution, Athos takes precautions for the future and contemplates those to whom his life is bound — both by love and hate.

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“Donc Athos déchirait ses belles mains si blanches et si fines à lever les pierres arrachées de leur base par Porthos...” Vingt ans après, Chapitre LXX, “Les ouvriers”

The January wind stole across the stones of Whitehall, and fluttered the sombre drapes beneath the gaunt new structure that stood there. It had been a bitterly cold night, and Athos had worked without respite, under cover of the labour going on all around them to complete the King’s scaffold— a thing horrible and unheard of, not that a King should be murdered but that the deed should be carried out with this travesty of the forms of justice. But they had given their word, he and Aramis, to Madame Henriette of England. Given their word to guard her husband the King and to bring him safely back to her, even if it should cost both their lives.

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