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For A.
Gaheris died from the wasting sickness, and that was, to put it bluntly, mightily rude of him.
It was Arthurs sister who diagnosed it, and the sick told them in the evening, in the mess. He had been sick for some time, even so much so that Arthur had had to relieve him of duty, and they had been worried, but still, it came as a shock, especially to his brothers, and to Galahad, who was almost adopted into their litter.
"She has estimated," Gaheris said, almost amused, "that within six months I'll be a goner."
Silence fell, like a blanket, over the assembly.
"But Gaheris," Galahad stumbled, appalled, "you are not sitting there implying that you are going to snuff it?"
Gaheris regarded him. "I am sick, Galahad, I'll sleep with the worms," he clarified tersely.
"So... you are not going to be here anymore?" It dropped out of Galahad before he could stop it. He heard himself say it out loud and felt ridiculous, which was not altogether fair, since he merely voiced the consequence implied by this statement, which all minds present at that moment grappled with, in silent panic.
"No," Gaheris granted with a sigh, "that would probably be a bit hard."
Gawain didn't say anything. He was furious. This was not fair play. Gaheris had teased him and Uwain as long as he could remember. He had been the most annoying know-it-all of an elder brother any boy in the whole empire had ever had.
If Gaheris had to die, Gawain felt, it could at least have been the blueskins. An arrow in the neck or a well-aimed cut with one of their mean axes, then and there, so one could have the shock and the pain and be done with it. Also, it was sort of more in the style of Gaheris, Gawain thought, to go down in as abrupt and noisy a manner as possible.
But that didn't come to pass.
In stead, Gaheris disappeared bit by bit, and that was why Gawain got so immensely cross at him.
First, the patient just coughed and coughed and smiled vaguely at his two brothers. Then, he got the lumps, strange eggs to be spied under his skin. They flowered under his arms and at the groin and at his neck. and when they had done that for a couple of weeks, it was like they took over, like a bush of misteltoe squeezing the life out of the oak which it envelops. That was when he started to disappear in earnest. He sat in his bed at the infirmery, which he now rarely left, and coughed up blood and phlegm, and grinned sadly at them all.
"There is nothing for it," he shrugged, "there is mildew in the old carcass. Shame really. Most of all I'm tired of not being able to get a good draught of the koumiss. It burns and stings in the innards so it is right a bother."
They could see his point. To be without the fermented mare's milk which was the speciality and pride of their family was almost a fate worse than death. Muirgeirn, of course, had said there was no cure except the very very few cases where people somehow got well by themselves, and she had furthermore said no drinking. None of the Sarmatians, (save possibly Tristran, scraggy weakling) were completely in agreement – everyone knew that a good mug of koumiss is a remedy that helps defeat most illnesses. But the fact that the brew actually stung the poor sod's innards of course put that option somewhat in the background.
So Gawain and Uwain started taking turns thinking out ideas for alternative treatment. And when those ideas didn't work, to feed Gaheris chickensoup. And when he stopped being able to hold it in him, and started bleeding from every orifice in his body, to clean up the mess.
Gaheris was rotting from within, and whenever he was conscious he just laughed, a wheezing elder-brotherly laugh, and mumbled, delirious and smug, about shit-shovelling being another one of those things no Sarmatian boy ever thought his service in Britain would be comprised of.
Both Gawain and Uwain felt it was a rather boorish joke, seeing as he wasn't the one who had to be conscious and sick to the heart with the sight of the pale grey shell of a man who was once your huge fop of a brother. Gaheris, who had pretty much been the only man at Camlann who matched Dagonet's bulk was, by now, a long bag of bones, and he was rarely clear in the head long enough to fulfill a sentence.
When he did, there was always some rude or lewd point. That much hadn't changed, that at least everyone could agree on. But you couldn't live on dirty jokes, and that seemed to be Gaheris' problem. He was too strong. He couldn't live, and he couldn't die.
"Why," Bors asked Gawain, when at one point they had duty together, "do you not just do him in? You can strangle him with a blanket, while he sleeps."
"Let him drink himself to death," Parsifal suggested. "If the brew is strong enough he will quickly get so numb that he won't notice the stinging-innards bit. And you must admit, it would be a way to kick the bucket very befitting him."
Tristran – the thin weakling – just shook his head. "Put him outside in the snow and let nature fix him, the way she always does the old folks back home," he offered. "She does that best anyway. No one ever heard that she messed up. Also," he added thoughtfully, "when the first discomfort is overwith, I should think that one finds bliss fast."
"In a jiffy," Bors agreed. " Or that's what I think anyway. Those I have seen frozen to death always sat with a smirk on their face like they knew a good deal more than the rest of us."
Gawain, at this point, tended to agree with all of his comrades. The thing just was, he knew, that Uwain did not.
Uwain was the youngest of their litter, and he was also, by far, the most stubborn.
Uwain's mind knew, at this point, that there was no way that he would ever keep his oldest brother. In fact, the withered thing that lay now in the bed at the infirmery could hardly be said to be Gaheris anymore. And there was no way that they would ever get him back.
All this Uwains mind knew in full. The heart, however, was a bit more thick. As it turned out, when mind met heart, the former started doing all sorts of capering, like a contrary horse resisting to be broken in.
Uwain simply couldn't handle it. He kept talking of Gaheris' condition like it was only a passing problem, to brush it all off in a way which made Gawain want to strangle him. It wasn't that it was not in some way correct, because this would, indeed, pass. Only when it passed, Gaheris would pass along with it. But that, apparently, was impossible to get beaten into the skull of Uwain.
He also balked at the persistently more and more unpleasant tasks involved with caring for Gaheris. He couldn't, wouldn't, face the horror of the suffering there in the bed, and so, finally, Gawain roared at him to piss off and get drunk at Vanora's, and stay out of the way.
Uwain grumbled and bickered and scowled petulantly, but in the end, he wasted no time in making himself scarce.
Gawain stayed, because someone bloody had to stay. It didn't matter that there were healers there in the infirmery, skilled men and women with soft hands who would have cared for his brother. Gawain somehow didn't have it in his heart to leave Gaheris, so undignified.
Gaheris had had his hand up most of the skirts that walked the infirmery. The same women would not be allowed to nurse him like a child without him being capable of as much as a well-aimed clasp at a backside or some other way of defending his dignity.
So Gawain kept at it, and in time it was like he himself turned into a ghost, a pale translucent thing hovering at the edge of that accursed bed, alternately gnashing his teeth to keep back the tears and inwardly screaming for the stupid sod in the bed to just die already and let him off the hook, let him rest...
And around them, Camlann fort was already moving on. Gawain felt it, in a very real way. Arthur couldn't take him off duty, not even at this point, so he walked from the infirmery to wall-duty and back to the infirmery again like a sleepwalker. Luckily it was winter, and the snow was deep, so there were no trips for the cavalry to make into the country neither north or south of the huge construction. Gawain stood in the yellow, smoky light of the torches and stared dully out into the darkness, wondering if he himself was not now rotting as well, and trying to remember a time when it hadn't been like this, an ongoing nightmare of hurt and blood and bodily fluids and stench. And finding that he couldn't remember. He tried to recall Gaheris to his inner eye, the old Gaheris, the man who was the reason why his whole being and spirit screamed in protest at all this, and he found he couldn't remember him. That, in a way, was worse than all the rest of it.
He mumbled something and then started, discovering that he had been asleep against the wall. Next to him Tristran stood, gazing across the wall and into eternity as always, pretending he hadn't seen it.
"Why didn't you wake me up, you git," he grumbled, trying to shake the horribly warm and inviting fuzzyness out of his head.
Tristran turned his head towards him, in that weird too-slow manner he always did.
"Because you need to sleep."
"I can't sleep and you know it. I haven't been able to sleep the last three bloody days and it would be nice if you pretended to be a comrade and bloody wake me up if I am dozing on duty. You know there will be devil to pay if Polonius spots a sleeper."
"He won't."
Suddenly, Gawain was furious. Furious with the devil-may-care attitude of Tristran and furious with Polonius for being such a tin god, and furious with Arthur who wouldn't bloody understand that he had more important places to be, and with Uwain for being such a childish coward.
And, most of all, completely and utterly enraged with the abomination of a living corpse which lay down in the infirmery and just wouldn't die!
"Fuck you, Tristran," he said, and stomped off down the stone stairs. Behind him, he thought he saw Tristran shrugging, but frankly he didn't care.
In stead, he found himself plodding the inevitable cursed path back to the infirmery.
When he came back he sat down, but in stead of surveying the situation to find out what needed doing, as he would usually have done, he found himself glaring at the form there in the bed. He could see that Gaheris was still breathing. Shallow breaths, indeed, but they had been shallow for a month now. It hadn't meant anything. He was still hanging in there.
"Hey. Brother...?"
No answer.
"Hey..." and he leaned out and poked, carefully, at the pathetic remains of an upper arm, still attached to a skeletal shoulder.
"It's not over is it? It's never over! You're never going to let me go are you, you self-satisfied sick bastard. Are you going to wake up or what?"
Gaheris would have to get back to him on that one, it seemed. And suddenly, at this point, Gawain started talking - quite a lot.
"You just lie there, all smug about having me sit here and waste away, being your bloody servant boy, shovelling the dirt away from under your bum because you can't even be bothered to go yourself anymore. Being all unconscious and shrivelling up like some dried piece of ham, and of course with a good stink just to make sure I'm having as hellish a time as possible."
He was talking himself warm now. He felt weird inside. Lightheaded and furious and slightly insane, but he couldn't stop himself. Gaheris just lay there, gaping. He looked extremely stupid, Gawain found himself thinking. He focused, venomously, on the bed.
"Like you want something from me. What do you want? I am not a God... I don't... decide..." here he gestured vaguely to illustrate some point he was not sure himself what was anymore. Then he looked at the gaunt, grey face of his brother and his eyes flared... "Don't you give me that bullshit about me being responsible for anything. I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE!" He bent over the bed and shouted the last bit in the face of the unconscious man. Just for good measure.
"It's easy enough dying," he huffed. "Try being me!"
He squinted at the form in the bed. Was it just him, or was it shaking?
Like Gaheris was laughing at him.
The bastard is laughing at me! Gawain was aghast with the nerve so shown by his brother. He was enraged beyond description. He would, even with the condition Gaheris was in, have reached out and clamped him one on the head, if it wasn't that someone, in that instant, decided to turn out the light.
He keeled over, his face landing in the sheets at the side of his brothers bed. Finally, Gawain slept.
"He is gone."
He was still in the process of gradually coming to, but he heard the words clearly.
He lifted his face from the stinking sheets and managed to pull himself upright enough to face the utterer, though he already knew, from the familiar, gritty sound of the man's voice, who it was.
Tristran stood on the other side of Gaheris' bed.
Gawain gawked at him, trying to process the information. He shook his head testingly.
"Gone?"
"Gone."
Pause.
Gawain looked at the shell in the bed between them. Sure enough, that thing had nothing to do with his brother. Wherever Gaheris was now, it wasn't here, he thought. The corpse of the man in the bed was staring, with broken eyes, into nothing.
"Um. Did you do him in?" he asked, befuddled.
Tristran arched an eyebrow. "Me? No. " He made a small, laconic gesture, encompassing the scenery. "I came in here only a couple of minutes ago. You were asleep. He was gone."
Gawain mulled it over for some time. He had a strange empty feeling inside. He was Sarmatian, and not really much for nautical terms, but it felt like a mooring line which had been cut inside of him. Later, he knew, there would be tears, and lots of them. He felt exhausted just at the thought, but also, somehow, relieved beyond words.
He sighed heavily. "I should have been awake. I should have been there."
Tristran seemed to ponder that thought for a moment before answering.
"You needed to sleep."
Gawain shrugged helplessly. He still didn't feel sure about that himself. But then Tristran looked at him a bit harder. "You needed to fall asleep. To let the rein go. Understand?" He looked his comrade over once more, and added, "by the sight of it, you seem to be able to use some more sleep even now. And some food." And he put an apple, which apparently he had been toying with during the whole conversation, in the deep, chalked windowsill next to the bed of the deceased.
"I'll tell Uwain to get over here when I see him," and Tristran walked out.
Gawain sat for a long time, his whole body feeling light and his mind and heart utterly empty. The mooring line which reached out into nothing was aching. He looked at the apple in the windowsill. It was from the winter storage, but looked surprisingly fresh, as it stood there, waiting for him to devour it, and the low winter sun streamed in through the opening, settling on the floor, being only broken when it played in the folds of the skirts of the female healers when they walked past.
The skirts most of which Gaheris had hitched at least once, Gawain thought.
And he smiled.