"Where have you been?" his mother snapped as she wrapped her arms around him and pulled him into a hug.

The blond child pulled back, not wanting to be mothered… or smothered. After all, he was a person of great importance, a big man just stuck in a little boy's body until he grew up. A future king. Someone with pride. Strong from the moment he was born, a warrior.

How did it look to have someone like that babied by his mother?

"I'm fine, Mother," he assured her. "I just went for a walk."

They were in his mother's bedchambers, and she sat on her bed with an angry, worried look on her dark face while he stood in front of her. His father stood a bit to the side, aloof and apart but concerned and caring, as was usual for him.

She glared at him through dark eyes. "And you didn't tell me? Or your father? The Court Physician? Anyone?"

"I didn't want to have guards tagging along."

She stared at him with frustration for a second, and then turned to her husband. "Arthur, do something with your child."

The blond man, looking very much like his son – but with blue eyes, not brown – patted Guinevere vaguely on the back. "My son?" he asked, with a flash of humor. "Guinevere, I'm not the one who hates being guarded." Then King Arthur turned to the little boy, his face much more serious.

"You scared your mother half to death, running off like that. Do you want to get yourself killed?"

The small child bowed his head, submissive to his father as always. "I'm sorry, Father. I was talking to someone… He had interesting stories."

An image of his son sitting wide-eyed at the foot of a storyteller on the corner of the street came to Arthur's mind, and he smiled slightly. "Though it's fine for you to sit and listen to a few fairy tales, you really need to have someone with you at all times. What would we do if something happened to you?"

They would worry, of course. Possibly send the whole blasted army after him.

"They weren't fairy tales, Father. They were real stories. About you."

A bard, then, perhaps not a storyteller.

"I'm sure they were interesting," he said, having heard them all before. The bards liked to make songs and stories about his adventures. Even if they got a bit skewed in the process.

"He said he had stories no one else did," the child babbled on even after his father turned away to return to his work. Guinevere sighed because her warnings would be ignored, and Arthur nodded to show he was listening. "And he sure had a lot… Stories about Sir Gwaine and Lancelot and the others, too."

"Like what?" asked Arthur as he settled down to his desk, looking over some papers... Taxes there, and that piece of mail didn't look like business, so he put it aside…

"Like evil enchantments and swordfights and stuff. Like a witch that was disguised as a singer. Did a servant really save you, Father?"

An unusual story indeed. Arthur froze for a second, memories washing over him. Memories of a goofy smile that hid a dark secret, a secret Arthur hadn't taken so well, though Arthur's father had taken it worse. Memories of good times and bad times, ending with an arrest and Arthur being part of a desperate escape. How long ago? A decade? Arthur sighed and put on another smile, while Gwen twitched uncomfortably.

"Many times."

"What happened to him?"

"He had to leave Camelot, just a little while before you were born." They'd had word from him a few times, letters or notes, sometimes even a traveler with a wild story to tell, all sent by him. But not for a year or two, and Arthur was beginning to worry that he was dead.

"That's too bad," the little boy said. "He sounded interesting… The man who told the stories had him in most of them."

The little prince didn't notice that his father's hand stopped writing, his head still bowed over his papers.

"There was one he wouldn't tell me though, said he promised. Something perry-lous, or… I don't know…"

"Perilous?"

"That was it!" The boy beamed at his father. "I wanted to know, but he said that I should 'ask the prat.' Do you know who—?"

Arthur wasn't listening any more. The queen gasped and sat up straight, her gaze meeting her husband's. He stood up, his chair falling over behind him.

"Arthur, you don't think that…"

Arthur looked his son in the eye. "Did the man telling the stories tell you his name? Answer, quickly!"

"No," stammered the boy, confused and a little scared at the sudden change in attitude. What had he said?

"Do you know where he is?" asked Gwen. "Did he mention where he would be or where he was staying?"

"He was just around the castle…" The little prince went to the window and looked out, pointing. "I can see him… There, in the crowd. He's the tall one with the dark hair. I think he's a sorcerer… He acts all magicky like they do."

Arthur brushed past his son, careful not to knock into him, and looked out the window. It was a good distance to the ground and even farther to the spot of the crowd where he was looking, but within a second or so he had spotted the man his son had indicated. His face broke into a wide smile, and his eyes glowed as he turned back to Guinevere.

She looked breathless. "Is it…?"

He nodded. And then, before the young prince could blink, the king was running from the room, a laugh on his lips.

"Mother, what is it? Who is he?"

Guinevere made her way to the window. "A friend. A very old friend. I knew he'd come back," she told her son, hugging him tightly to herself. "I knew it!" She laughed and looked around. "You don't leave… I still want to talk to you for running off… But just wait here, okay?"

She left the room in a hurry, but with much more decorum than her obviously overcome husband.

The prince turned his dark-eyed gaze back to the window, the bright sunlight lighting up his soft blond hair. Out in the sunlight, he saw his father burst from the castle, shouting a name so loudly that half the crowd turned to look. The king rushed over to the pale sorcerer, beaming, and clapped the man on the back. He only said a few words before he gave up and actually pulled this stranger into a hug.

The prince was shocked. The only people his father ever hugged were himself and his mother, and even then, not generally in public.

Then the queen came out, and she didn't even try to be calm. She just threw herself into the waiting arms of the man as though he were some long-lost relative, so eagerly in fact that the crowd rocked back, shocked.

The prince, watching all from a young boy's eyes in a window up in the castle of Camelot, came to the conclusion that grown-ups did the strangest things.

END

R&R?