It was odd, Athos thought, how birthdays seemed to be more troublesome since the boy had arrived, and he thought back to several months before when his own birthday plans had been interrupted.

"I believe that our best chance of success is to introduce someone familiar to them. Someone who has been away and has lost everything during that time – his family, his farm. A man such as this might be believed to possess the character of a bandit, regardless of who he might have been in the past. Are you that man d'Artagnan?" Spoilers for ep. 1.10, regular updates.

d'Artagnan was infuriating, brash and self-sacrificing, but he was also innocent, impetuous and loyal. Are all younger brothers this much trouble?

He pulled himself onto the mount and wheeled it around, the three men moving away to give him room. Without a backward glance, he kicked the horse into motion, making his way out of the woods and on his way to being a fugitive.

As he rode out of Paris, tears once more clouding his vision and despair pooling in his belly, he couldn't help but wonder at how easily he seemed to have been cast aside.

Athos was lost for words. "I don't know," he finally confessed in a small voice. "What I do know is that you've triumphed before and will do so again. It will just take time." "I don't know if I can," d'Artagnan admitted, head dropping back to lay on his mentor's shoulder. "Sometimes what's broken can never be fixed," he mumbled.

February in France was far more than simply uncomfortable, it was bitterly cold; unfortunately, the King's business didn't stop during the winter months. They had been riding for two days, searching for four men who had escaped the local Comte's custody and were now hiding somewhere in the French countryside.

He was more terrified than he'd let on, but knew that d'Artagnan needed him to stay steady. Now that he was alone, his mind conjured unbidden the many stories he'd heard from those who'd survived the fevers in the past – if this was the start of another epidemic, no one was safe.