temperamentalsteel | [Voice Tester]

Athos has been watchful of d'Artagnan ever since he joined the regiment, seeing a great deal of himself in the boy. Now, though, he watches his dismay with letters, gesturing to the torn one as he raises his eyebrow calm and slowly. "You seem displeased with your mail. Is it that bad?"

"Honorless scavengers," he says, wishing he had more paper to rip and crumple. "Asking what my price is for the land."

His father's land. His farm. Burnt down by Labarge.

Athos raises his brow and does not make mention that he would be so grateful if someone were to make an offer for his home and lands, if only so that he wouldn't have to return. Then again, he doubts anyone would wish for ash and char to put their name to. "You wish to go back to your farm? Rebuild?"

"Yes! ...I don't know." He was born a farmer's son, but he doesn't think he could go back to that life, not with the pauldron he wears. "But it's my land! And it was my father's land before that. He wouldn't want it sold and not for such a paltry offer."

Athos knows precisely what he would do, but must remind himself that simply because he has a stubborn sense of himself does not mean everyone else does and it would do him well to keep that in mind. "Then tell them no," Athos reasons, thinking it shouldn't be too terrible of a decision, then. "Or you can take my burnt lands and own property in multiple places across France."

"I've got one parcel of burned land already, thanks." He leans back against the tree, closing his eyes again, this time against the burn of guilt.

"You know I've not gone there yet? Not since..."

"I can understand why it would cause you strife to return," Athos allows, given that he had run away for five years before going back and only by the force of Porthos' life on the line. "D'Artagnan, there are two options for you. You must choose one. You can keep it or you can sell it. Beyond that, there are other decisions, but at this moment, only those matter."

If only it were so cut and dry for him as well. "I haven't have the leave to go see it. The last place I have to my name and I've ignored it for months."

"Surely Treville would allow you the time to depart for your land if you were to ask," Athos supplies with a curious look. Even though their work is important, Treville has always seen fit to offer a day or two of leave, provided it is paid back later with equal work. "If you wish, I could go with you."

He can't imagine there's much to draw Athos to Lupiac, aside from standing by a friend, and d'Artagnan understands the offer for what it is.

"He knows about what happened to the farm. Do you think he'll allow it?"

"I cannot see why he would not," Athos says. "Perhaps you should wait until Aramis or Porthos do something unwise to attract Treville's attention so that whatever new task that may arise goes immediately to them," he says, thinking this the best course of action.

The leave is secured faster and with more ease than d'Artagnan would have expected. With little to his name in the garrison, d'Artagnan is saddled and ready to make the day long ride. The closer they get to leaving, the more nerves he feels.

Athos finds himself riding with no great eagerness to see d'Artagnan's lands burnt down. It will only remind him of his own home, the Fère household no longer the gleaming jewel it had once been in earlier days. Still, he knows that it takes company and that d'Artagnan should not be alone in this. "Which way, from here?" he asks, when the horses reach a fork in the road.

The longer they travel, the quieter d'Artagnan becomes. His hands are tight on the reigns, nearly pulling too hard on his gelding's mouth a few times.

When asked, he doesn't bother with words, simply taking the correct fork and carrying on.

When Athos finally arrives at the beginnings of what look to be actual farms, he drops behind d'Artagnan, intending for him to give him the signal as to which way they ought to go in order to find the correct farm. He knows how difficult this can be from experience and d'Artagnan doesn't even have the benefit of drinking to escape as Athos does.

He rides without signal, surrendering to old memory. Green fields and flapping laundry give way abruptly to burned trees and wild grass, the buildings charred and skeletal. Looking into the razed distance, it's clear that the d'Artagnan farm is far from the only victim.

The most neglected lot is where d'Artagnan stops. The hands, he knew, had been forced away in pursuit of other work and though d'Artagnan wants to rail against them turning away when his family's need is so great, he cannot begrudge men with children to feed. The abandonment is a painful sight. Wooden outbuildings are ashen logs and the house in which d'Artagnan became a man is a sorry sight. Beams have given way so that the stones they supported are sinking, collapsing on themselves.

Gripping the reigns of his horse, d'Artagnan stares at the empty hull.

Athos takes his time pulling up to d'Artagnan's side, thinking that he might want a moment to absorb the situation for himself and take it all in. Fire, it seems, is quick in clearing people of their pasts and though it had been somewhat liberating for Athos, he cannot imagine the same is true for d'Artagnan.

"Do you want to go and see if there's anything worth salvaging?"

"If I could kill Labarge again..." Energy surges through him until he feels like his skin is too small to hold in all the scream anger that threatens to explode from him.

He dismounts jerkily and ties his horse to the low-hanging branch of a tree. Turning, d'Artagnan stares at the ruined property and forces himself to take a step forward.

Athos is far slower, in this case, not eager to rush into a situation where d'Artagnan is emotional and the whole thing is quite charged. He does not know what d'Artagnan might seek to find in a place like this, but he thinks it better to provide answers than to linger in Paris and always wonder. "Perhaps we can find some possessions still leftover," he offers, for while fire can be thorough, at times it is not all-consuming.

"My grandfather laid down this house..." His fury goes beyond screaming; it folds in on itself like steel with every step.

"My grandmother made the blankets, tended the fires. Raised my father!" d'Artagnan hefts up a loose stone and hurls it away.

"That tree there!" he points to a ruined wreck of trunk and scorched branches. "When I was five, I climbed twelve feet up and carved my name into the trunk!" That section is gone now. So many memories are ash on the ground.

Athos stands quiet, for he is neither Aramis with his words or Porthos with his comforting touch. He does not know how to give comfort because he has been without it himself for so very long. Instead, he remains a lurking shadow, as if he can simply lend support by being there.

"Perhaps this is opportunity?" he suggests calmly. "Perhaps it is your turn to build."

When? He is a musketeer now. The time required to rebuild a farm, to re-sow the fields...He would have to ask for months of leave, if not years.

Saying as much would likely provoke Athos' reminder that there would be buyers if he were to sell.

Walking stiffly, angrily, d'Artagnan starts toward the house. Using more force than necessary, he jerks the door open, hunting through the ruined house. He almost doesn't care if it were to collapse on him.

Athos follows slightly closer as his worry for d'Artagnan's personal safety grows, the quality of the house weighing in his mind as potentially dangerous. He keeps close, a wary eye on him and the house, eyeing the creaking beams with distaste and a healthy sense of worry. "D'Artagnan," he calls out, calm and even. "Perhaps it would be better if we investigated the damage from outside."

He would hate to lose his life in such a manner. Especially given that he had only barely survived his own house crumbling around him.

"I'm not forcing you to follow me!" It comes out more harshly than he means, voice tight with emotion.

The inside of the house is gutted raided before it was burned from the looks of it. All of his father's mementos are gone or coated in a ruin of smoke. The tin toys he'd played with, melted. It's a ruin.

And yet, here is Athos, following quietly and dutifully. D'Artagnan needs the aid, though Athos would never be so ridiculously quick to admit as much aloud, given how proud the young man is. It is as if Labarge is happening all over and Athos must watch over him. "You're more like me than you think," he reminds him patiently. "That is still true, d'Artagnan."

An insult, born of hurt and wrought emotion, rises up in d'Artagnan. Is he really? Would Athos have ever come back to la Fère if not for Porthos' injury?

But even in the heat of it, the words don't quite make it out.

D'Artagnan bends under the sagging ceiling, dropping against the dirtied flagstones that had surrounded their hearth.

"If I'm so like you, then why are you so calm when all I want is to run Labarge through all over again."

"Because I have drank away every ounce of fear and anger and pain until every single one of those emotions is buried underneath the weight of so many drinks and outpourings of grief. You still feel, d'Artagnan, and I have not allowed myself such a thing for five years because I know too well what grief does to a man."

D'Artagnan stares sidelong into where the fireplace had been, where he and his family had gathered gathered on cold nights to pass the darkness in warmth and comfort.

Now he has neither drink nor kin.

"What do I do now."

Athos' snort is derisive, but is not meant to be cruel. It is only that he, himself, had asked such a similar question not long ago and thus has no answer for d'Artagnan that he feels able to give. "You have already found a home with the Musketeers. You are leaps and bounds ahead of where I was, when my life was ripped away from me."

"That's hardly helpful." It holds neither bite nor temper, said almost as dryly as Athos himself might.

Athos is right though. He does have friends, family, and a home among the Musketeers. Some days it seems almost like they've filled the void, but on days like today he knows the wound is still deep.

"You mean, when I came to kill you."

"No," Athos replies patiently, for his life had been taken from him long, long before he had ever met d'Artagnan. "By the time you met me, Aramis and Porthos had managed to iron out the worst of the tragedies that had befallen me. What happened to me was five years past, as you well know, when Anne was forced out of my life by her actions."

"I don't know if five years will be enough to recover from this loss." When his father had died, it had been a deep wound. When he'd lost the farm, it had been a hot poker in something barely healed, a reminder o all of it.

No, five years is hardly enough. Athos knows that as well as anyone, given that although five years have passed, he still feels as though he is only now learning how to nurse this wound. "If you are to avoid ending up like me, then you must take action. It is inaction and a lack of any forward movement that has led me to such dependence on wine," Athos says, flinching as he thinks of admitting such a weakness aloud.

"It would take years of complete devotion to return this farm to what it was," d'Artagnan admits regretfully. Years he doesn't have if he's to commit to a career in the Musketeers.

"If I sell it, I'll have no home."

"You are young, d'Artagnan, and can use some of your commission to slowly build." Athos has money, but he does not think to share it or flaunt it. He would not wish for debt to be created from the passing of money between hands. "If you sell it, you will have Paris. If you do not, you will have a project."

After Constance's rejection and Labarge's attack, all he has now is the regiment and this parcel of land.

"You and the Musketeers are the only family I've got left."

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