A/N: This is dedicated to the lovely Livvi (a half finished love affair) for the Gift-Giving Extravaganza - I hope you enjoy it, darling. :)
This is my first foray into the Merlin fandom, so I hope it's alright! A million thanks to Sam (MissingMommy) for betaing, and for being so speedy!
Being a knight, you've been in severe pain many times before, but the torture from Morgana is like nothing you've experienced. The snake tears at your skin, and it isn't an ordinary snake because you can feel the venom burning worse and worse as it spreads through your veins. You cry out, hearing your voice echo around the forest, and yet it brings you no relief. You're in agony, and although the conscious part of your brain is telling you no, instinct is telling you to do anything you can to make it stop.
Morgana repeats the question yet again, and before you can stop yourself, you answer. "He's riding for Avalon," you gasp, pain searing throughout your body. "With Merlin."
Fear flashes across her face at your words, and you can't understand why, but you'll never find out; she turns around, her dark cloak swooping behind her, and leaves you to die without a second look.
You should have known better. You let pain, anger and hatred cloud your judgement, and look where you are now: dying on a forest floor with no hope of survival. There's nothing you can do except lie there, feeling your strength gradually draining from you, and know that you're a failure.
You're a knight of Camelot. You made a pledge to protect your king, no matter what the cost. And he's not just your king - he's your friend, too. How, when Arthur's life depended on it, could you be so weak?
It was easy enough to say that you'd rather die than tell Morgana of Arthur's whereabouts. It was the truth, too - it was clear that she would have killed you anyway, and the pain you're experiencing now would be so much more bearable if you knew that it was saving the king. But you weren't strong enough, and Morgana got the better of you. The king is going to die, and it's your fault.
Maybe you shouldn't be so defeatist. Maybe Arthur will pull through. He's been close to death so many times since becoming king, and even before, but it's like there's something watching over him. Fate seems to be on his side; he's built a great kingdom, and nothing has defeated him yet.
But, realistically, you can't see how he'll find a way out of this one. Merlin would do anything for Arthur - that much is clear to anyone who looks - and he may have had an unreasonable number of good hunches over the years, but he's not a whole army. Against Morgana, the High Priestess, he doesn't stand a chance.
And the worst thing is that you're dying, too; whatever happens, you'll never find out. You can't stop yourself from lying there, wondering what if? and blaming yourself for what might have happened.
You think back despairingly over the past few days and you can't believe that you were so stupid.
Eira. She seemed so broken, so desperate, and you were stupid enough to fall for her façade. You remembered what it was like to lose your father, and all your friends that have died over the years, and you couldn't even imagine the pain that she must have been going through having lost her entire village.
Please, Gwaine. Stay with me, she requested softly that night, and you couldn't refuse her. She seemed so fragile... and it was so long since you'd been with a woman... she was so beautiful...
And you ended up telling her everything. Stupid; after all these years, you still haven't learnt that you can't trust anyone.
It broke your heart when Gaius told you.
There's no easy way to say this, Gwaine, he said, and immediately your brain jumped to the worst case scenario - was Arthur dead? Percival? Merlin? (Of course, all three of them are probably dead now, or close to it.) But it was something you hadn't even considered. Eira is a traitor.
No! you cried out immediately, because you trusted her. She can't be! But you couldn't deny that it made sense; somebody must have betrayed Arthur's plan to Morgana, and you'd known Eira for all of one evening and told her everything.
You couldn't quite watch as Eira met her fate at the gallows. You thought you were a good judge of character, but you got her so completely wrong - and what a fatal mistake that was. You couldn't help wondering... did Eira help Morgana of her own free will? Was she really evil? Or did Morgana use magic to force Eira to do her bidding?
You'll never know now, but for some reason you find the second option more likely. Maybe you're just trying to make yourself feel better about your misjudgement.
How did you seriously believe that you and Percival could defeat Morgana, the powerful sorceress, when no other knight has succeeded? You were angry for Eira, for Elyan, for Arthur and for every other person who has suffered or died by her hand. But all you've succeeded in doing is adding yourself, and probably Percival too, to that list.
"Gwaine?"
It's coming from a distance, but there's no mistaking the voice: it's Percival, and you're elated to find that he's alive, but you're ashamed. You're ashamed, because you know that if it was Percival that Morgana had tortured, he would never have told her the truth.
Reaching you, he lifts up your head so that you can look at him; you don't have the strength to do so yourself. He looks like he's struggling to believe what's in front of his eyes.
"She's riding... for Avalon," you manage to choke out, and it's painful, so painful.
"Gwaine," he says again, softly this time, and it's with the greatest sympathy - sympathy that you don't deserve.
You'd shake your head, but you've lost all control of your body. "I've failed," you say instead, because you have. You failed to see Eira for who she really was. You failed to get your revenge on Morgana. And, perhaps most importantly, you've failed as a knight. You've failed to protect your king - Morgana is after him right now, and you seriously doubt that he'll live for much longer than you do.
"No, you haven't," he argues, but you know he's only saying that because you definitely are dying now.
You're glad that Percival has made it, but you've failed in so many other respects. You can feel your grip on life slackening, and you slip away thinking of what might have been.