Author's Note: Written for Goldenlake SMACKDOWN 2011, these are four companion drabbles, which can be read as a series, but which were also designed to stand alone as independent pieces.

The boys watched as the city fell around them. They had imagined their way of life as infallible and infinite, stretching to the horizon in all directions. Inherent in life and time. Now, they remembered the Old Ones, and wondered, as the bodies were piled by the roadsides, whether their own time was dying. Whether they would be left standing alone in this city, amidst towers of stone and putrefying, vacant flesh, with no one living to guide them. They were nobles and pages: they'd have to take up the mantle. If they survived. The queen had the sickness. Gary was scared for his Aunt, but so was the rest of Tortall. When his father got sick, Gary forgot about the city, and everything else. His father couldn't die, he just couldn't. Gary's world came to a halt as his father could no longer maintain their training, leaving the pages' days empty. While the other pages did the work of dying servants, and Jon feared for his mother, Gary visited his father's sickbed. He watched as a parade of healers came and left, drained and useless. He watched as his mother began to wither, whether from worry or impending sickness he had yet to discover. He could nothing but watch as rivulets of sweat trickled down the landscape of his father's face. Would they become rivers, drowning him in his own fluids, even as he scorched on the inside?
Gary had forgotten about his friends, until one of them checked on him. It was Raoul who drew him from his father's sickbed, into the fresh air. Gary gasped it down; he'd had no idea he had been suffocating in that closed room. He drank in Raoul's presence, unaware also that he had been starving for comfort until Raoul came to give it. Disease had not touched them, yet they ailed under the weight of fear and worry. The plague sapped them of hope, just as it drained the healers of magic, but out in the sun, Gary and Raoul became healers for each other. They weren't drained but strengthened, and the more they gave, the stronger they became. Though Gary tried hard not to cry, the tears leaked out, as the sweat seeped from the dying. Raoul was never embarrassed by it. He was Giftless, but as he sat with Gary, they were both filled with healing magic.

The pages were the last to fall. By then, the city had dropped to its knees and there was little help left for them. Three died, and then Raoul succumbed to the fever. When Gary heard, he went so white that a healer was called for him. When his mother was satisfied that he was still healthy, she forbade him from visiting his sick friend. It was too dangerous. Roanna of Naxen was not a woman to be trifled with, by her son or anyone else, but their discussion turned into a shouting match as Gary openly made to disobey her orders. Silenced only when his father was woken, Gary snuck out that night, when his mother was sleeping. He stole into Raoul's room and felt around for a chair he knew should be there. Reluctant to wake Raoul, he decided not a light a candle, and sat in the dark, listening to the laboured inhalations and rattling exhalations. Raoul was fitful, but it was almost dawn before he fully emerged from sleep. He groaned and began to ease himself slowly off the bed.

"What are you doing?"

Raoul's yelp of fright turned into a coughing fit, through which he tried to locate his visitor. The dark, and streaming eyes made it impossible to see, and he was barely lucid enough to recognise Gary's voice. "Are you all right? It's Gary."

"I – I'm fine – " Raoul choked out between coughs.

"I'll get you some water." Gary fumbled to light a candle. Even that tiny light seemed to hurt Raoul's eyes. He covered the flame with his hand, more for Raoul's benefit than to keep it lit, and poured him a cup of water. "You're sick," he said.

"So they tell me."

"How do you feel?"

"Not the best, but I'll be alright. I'm better off than a lot of the others I've seen. I can still remember who I am, and who you are." Gary stared in horror, his face gaunt in the flickering light. He didn't know what he would have done if Raoul had forgotten him. "Hey, don't look like that. I said I can remember you," Raoul said, alarmed. Gary smiled, though it took some effort for him to do so. "Well, that's a littlebetter. How long have you been here?"

"I'm not really sure. A few hours, I think. Sorry I didn't visit earlier. My mother -" Raoul wasn't up to laughing, but his eyes twinkled. He had met Roanna. "- She doesn't want me catching it."

Suddenly, Raoul seemed to turn serious. "No, you shouldn't be here at all. I might infect you."

"What? Don't say that."

"But it's the truth! You'd better get out of here."

"No! I want to stay. You don't know what it feels like, your friend being sick."

"But I might if you stay, with me coughing all over you like that. How do you think I would feel knowing I was the one that gave it to you?"

Banished from Raoul's presence, Gary crept back to his own bed and fell asleep as the sun rose. He'd stay with his parents that afternoon, but he was undecided about that night. He wondered what time Raoul usually fell asleep, and thought he could probably go unnoticed if he was careful.

After Raoul, Gary was the next to get the fever. Raoul was supposed to be on bed rest but the night Gary fell ill, he copied Gary and slunk into his friend's room, when the healers weren't there to stop him. Gary looked happy to see him. He was burning up, and, unable to sleep, was awake when Raoul entered. Raoul had tiptoed down the corridor barefoot, to avoid the thunderous echoes of the bare stone. He had eased Gary's door open only as far as necessary, slipped in carefully, and closed it with barely a click, only to turn around and find his friend grinning at him in the moonlight. Raoul had brought his blankets, so he sat on the end of Gary's bed and wrapped himself up, leaning against the wall in a good position to observe Gary's condition.
They talked and dozed, and Raoul got up a few times to push Gary's wet hair from his eyes and mop his face. Now they both had the disease, they stayed together. There was some fuss when a healer went to check on Raoul in the morning to find him gone, leading to the assumption that he had died and been removed during the night. When discovered, he apologised, but refused to go back, and so a makeshift bed was set up for him next to Gary's. Raoul was almost certain that this was the start of their recovery. Though Gary had caught the disease later than Raoul, they began to heal at the same rate, in each other's company. The next morning, Alan came and told them that Alex and Francis were sick. Gary and Raoul stared at Alan, then glanced at each other.

Gary and Raoul walked down to bury Francis together. It had been over so fast for him. He had fallen ill later and yielded to death sooner than either of them. They had visited him at his sickbed. The healer had said that he wasn't fit to have visitors, and though they didn't want to make him worse, they insisted on seeing him. They felt so much better when they were allowed to stay together, rather than in separate rooms, maybe Francis could sleep with them in Gary's room, if he wanted to. But Francis didn't recognise either of them. He was like a miniature sun, with his usually neat yellow curls wild around his face, his burning heat and his shiny eyes. He babbled in his delirium, but Gary and Raoul couldn't understand what he said. He was speaking in tongues, conversing with the Black God, and Gary knew death would claim him soon. He didn't mention the certainty to Raoul, who would clutch hope to his chest until the last. Let him have a few more days of hope, Gary thought.

They spent their time in Gary's room, recovering at last, without Francis. Much of their time was passed in silence, but they maintained near constant physical contact. They squeezed each other's hands, patted each other's hair, and crawled under the other's blankets. A closeness arose to combat their fear and horror, and that which would normally be a transgression was needed now for survival. It wouldn't last after the plague, for convention would win out in times of safety, but they'd both remember. They'd internalise the comfort they derived from each other, and it would tie them together through every horror they faced.

Francis was buried under a tree. He was their first loss. How many more would they have?