Arthur pushed Merlin back to his room in stony silence. Merlin could practically feel the anger seeping out of the him, and he was glad that the Prince couldn't see the idiotic grin which was plastered on his face as he was wheeled along the corridor.

Gaius was the first to rush towards them, forcing them to an abrupt half. "Your majesty—please forgive me, but what on Earth happened? We've just had a call from your security team!"

Merlin had the decency to look sheepish as the doctor bent down and quickly assessed him, but Arthur huffed in response and manoeuvred the wheelchair around Gaius and pushed Merlin into the room, leaving the doctor stunned.

"Your majesty?"

"Don't worry, Doc," Merlin told him loudly as Arthur begun to walk away. He hadn't even had the decency to bring the chair to a complete stop, or put the break on, and Merlin was still rolling towards the bed as he said, "He's royally pissed off."

"I'll have you know, Merlin, that is undoubtedly the last time I ever try to do something nice in a moment of guilt."

"See what I mean, Doc?"

"I'm not sure I do," said Gaius as he side-stepped out of the doorway and allowed Arthur to stalk past him. He turned back and watched the Prince continue down the corridor for a moment before he swivelled to Merlin, a frown crossing his old features. "What did you do to him? He shouldn't be—oh, dear, that Leon fellow told me to keep him here. I'll have to go after him."

"He asked me if there was anything he could do for me, so I asked him if he could take me outside for a cigarette," Merlin said airily as he eyed the bed before him, wondering how the hell he was meant to get into it without any help.

"I wasn't aware that you were a smoker," said the doctor cautiously from the door.

"I'm not," Merlin said. He twisted around in the wheelchair to face the doctor and waved a hand in the bed's direction. "Does he really expect me to get into this by myself?"

"Merlin, you—I can't believe you did that to the Prince of Wales!"

"He asked for it."

"God, boy. Hang on—no, no, don't try and get up," he said hurriedly as Merlin began awkwardly heaving himself forwards onto the sheets. "Oh, God, wait there."

Merlin fell face-first into the sheets. "Where do you expect me to go?" Merlin yelled into the linen, his arse off the wheelchair's seat and hanging in the air as Gaius left the room.

If that was the last that Merlin ever saw of Prince Arthur, he decided that it was okay and he didn't give a shit.

After Elena (who turned out to be surprisingly strong, or maybe Arthur was right and he really weighed nothing at all) had helped him back into the bed and pulled the sheets over him, Merlin watched through the screen of his room that looked out onto the corridor as Leon and the other unnamed bull of a bodyguard ran up and down the halls for five minutes, before they disappeared altogether. The hospital ward was left in a state of panic as word got around that Prince Arthur had been at the hospital, and that he had somehow managed to escape from their clutches unnoticed, and nurses began frantically running up and down the corridors in the same fashion Arthur's chaperones had.

Nobody had come to remove the wheelchair—Elena had shoved it into a corner of the room as she'd given Merlin a stern telling off for getting out of bed—and occasionally Merlin would stare at it, and the happy smile would return to his face as he remembered.

Yes, it'd be okay if he never saw Arthur again, because he had made a fool out of the Prince and that just pretty much completed Merlin's life. The rest of his dreams no longer seemed to matter, because he'd had his chance and he'd used it well.

Merlin had missed lunch due to his morphine-induced sleep before Arthur had visited, but food was given to him by a saviour in the form of Guinevere, who burst into Merlin's room. She looked very much like his mother had earlier that morning, with frantic eyes rimmed red and with heavy bags around them that indicated a huge lack of sleep.

"Merlin! I've been so worried!"

Merlin barely managed a smile. Consoling his mother had been one thing, but consoling Gwen was something else entirely. She had a bunch of flowers in one hand and a plastic carrier bag in the other, and she dropped both on one of the many chairs as she rushed over to the bed and gathered her best friend in her arms.

"Sorry for ruining your Christmas, Gwen," he said after she allowed him to breathe again.

She sniffed and furiously blinked back her tears that threatened to fall. "Oh, it's okay!"

"It's not."

"No, it is! I mean, not okay that you were put in the hospital—"

"And I nearly died," Merlin pointed out helpfully as he tried not to cry himself.

"And you nearly died," she added quickly, nodding her head, "but, Merlin, seriously. You didn't ruin anything! Prince Arthur's Christmas, maybe!"

Merlin grinned. And Prince Arthur's day, too. "Yeah. What a poor, unfortunate prat he is. But it's pretty good, huh?"

"It's brilliant!" Gwen cried before she realised what she had said, and her hands clapped to her face. "I mean, it's not brilliant that you—"

Merlin grinned. "I know what you mean."

Gwen pulled her hands from her mouth and made a face. "Sorry."

"It's okay," he said, still grinning. He patted a space beside him and began budging to the side of the bed. They'd topped up his drugs, but hadn't given him so much that he would sleep so easily again. "Come sit."

"I can't. You hurt too much."

"It's fine," he said through tight lips. He'd thought that he had been covering up the amount of pain he was in quite well. "Just come and sit, Gwen. You still don't look like you really believe I'm alive."

Gwen hesitated for a moment, and then tentatively climbed onto the bed to sit beside him. When Merlin clasped her hand in both of his awkwardly, she held onto him tightly in return and smoothed his hair off his forehead gently with her free fingers. "I can't believe you."

"Yeah. You look shattered."

"Thanks," she said, rolling her eyes as he ruined the moment. "I took over the shifts when your mum had to leave you sometimes, but mainly we sat together and... you know, waited."

"As you cried over my bedside, I suppose."

"Yeah, actually."

Merlin's face fell. "Oh, Gwen."

"It's okay. I'm just sorry I wasn't here when you woke up. I can't believe that the one time Hunith and I aren't here, you wake up!"

"You know me," Merlin said in an attempt to be cheerful. He settled his head onto her shoulder and found himself feeling oddly relaxed as she ran her fingers through the back of his raven hair. The simple gesture was better than the morphine, and he felt a surge of affection for his best friend.

"Have you had any other visitors?" she asked curiously after a while.

"No, why do you ask?"

"Why is there a wheelchair? And whose leather jacket is that? Oh, Merlin... Did Will come?"

Merlin's lifted his head from her, as seeing how Gwen's face had fallen in her sadness his eyes flickered to the other side of the room. He swallowed thickly. "Oh."

"Merlin?"

"Uh, Gwen... don't panic, okay?"

"What?"

"The, um—er, the—y'know the Prince? Of Wales. He was here."

"Merlin!" Gwen squealed. Faster than he had ever seen her move, Gwen had jumped off the bed and scurried to the chair, leaving Merlin to fall back onto the pillows and groan in her excitement. "You have Prince Arthur's jacket! How in the hell haven't you smothered yourself with it already?"

"I only just realised he'd left it! I didn't know!"

"Liar!" Gwen hissed, but the words came out as more of a gentle, soft whisper while she cradled the jacket as if it were something sacred. Merlin was half-expecting her to begin crooning down at it like she might a baby.

"Gwen, put it back. Put it down. No, Gwen, don't sniff it!"

"Do you want to smell instead?"

"Oh, Jesus. Gwen, please, put it down," Merlin urged as if she were the baby. "Leave it alone."

"Merlin. Why exactly do you have his jacket?"

Merlin frowned, then, and it took him a few seconds to remember. "He took it off," he concluded lamely, embarrassed all of a sudden.

"Why did he take it off?" she asked, her eyes dancing brightly with accusation.

"I don't actually know, I think he was just showing off so he could roll up his sleeves and look manly."

The look in Gwen's eyes became dangerous. "Merlin! Why did he roll up his sleeves?"

"He picked me up, alright, to put me in the wheelchair!"

"Merlin Emrys," Gwen started slowly, "are you telling me that the Prince of Wales picked you up and put you in a wheelchair? In that flimsy hospital gown?"

"Yes."

"Omigod!" she cried loudly as she bounced back over to Merlin, her fists tight around the jacket. She jumped onto the end of the bed and jostled his busted leg. "Tell me everything!"

During Merlin's tale, a grumpy nurse that wasn't Elena came into the room three times to ask whether Gwen could possibly find it in her to keep her voice down because, apparently, she was distressing the other patients, but every time she left the room with a resounding bang of the door behind her, Merlin and Gwen would only dissolve into fits of giggles, and Gwen would resume her squealing and endless questions.

They tucked into the carrier bag of food she'd bought: grapes (because "that's what you're meant to do when people are sick, Merlin!"), a really large tin of Cadbury Roses, Lucozade, water, and yet more chocolate. They ate happily as Gwen nattered about Arthur and whether he would come back for his jacket or if he would visit Merlin again or if he would come in and sweep him off his feet, and please could she be bridesmaid at their wedding? because apparently being in a car collision with the Prince of Wales made you future husbands.

The fourth time the nurse entered the room, Gwen snapped, "Oh, give it a rest you old bat, I'm leaving anyway!" and sidled off Merlin's bed. She pressed a million kisses into his hair and his face and she very nearly took Arthur's jacket with her when she went, but Merlin called her back and she reluctantly left it behind with a pout of her lips.

"I'll be back tomorrow."

"I might be out tomorrow," Merlin said hopefully.

She rolled her eyes high. "I don't think so, Merlin."

"Ah, well, here's hoping. I'll see you tomorrow."

"Yeah. Love you, you absolute tart," she said, her eyes flashing to the jacket.

"Oh, just go!" Merlin laughed. "Before you get me into more trouble!"

Gwen fled from the room with pink cheeks, and Merlin began finishing off the chocolates they had left, because anything would be better than the monstrosity he expected to be given for dinner.