Athos shakes his head, holding just as tightly to Aramis in return. He cannot accept the thanks, not when he had no right to beg for their silence in the first place. Oh how he has missed them, for even though he did not consciously remember them while he was trapped in the mind and body of his youth, he had felt the hole where they belonged, a rawness in his heart that he had not understood, at the time. He swallows back a lump in his throat. “I would not have you suffer because I am a bashful idiot."