A/N: I hate this episode. Really. Why? Everyone is so grumpy the entire time! Morgana is angry at Uther. He's mad at her. Arthur's mad at Merlin. Multiple times. Mordred's mad at Merlin. (Everyone's mad at the poor boy!) Oh, and Alvarr's a womanizer. And he's grumpy too. But at least we get Morgana's line: "And you, Uther; you will go to hell." It makes me laugh. Is that mean? I wanted to do the episode Lancelot and Guinevere, but that didn't come late enough in the season/series. So this is what you get. Also, we get a piece from a character we haven't seen in a while, but she isn't forgotten, I promise. No, almost every time I write a crowd scene, I imagine her in it, picking someone's pocket… She'll be back in s3e13, too.

Review? After this will be a "What happened to them" chapter, and then s3 will begin!

Charlotte

Keep going, keep… The north door (north door)… Straight ahead; keep going… Hurry…

I woke with a start, the voice echoing around my head, jerking and hitting my head against the wall behind me.

For a moment, I had no idea what was going on, but gradually the mist around my mind cleared, and I rather wished it hadn't. Because I was tired and hungry and sore, and I was hearing voices again.

Actually, not voices… Just one voice. Not that it mattered; one or one hundred, it was scary. It had been about a year since this last happened, but I remembered the voice perfectly, and it was the same one, positively.

I shivered a little in the cold of night, noticing that it was raining, though the lip of the roof above me kept the rain off. I was sleeping in a small alley between houses, curled up comfortably in the same spot as always. There had been a time when I moved around, a different place every night, but sleeping outside was dangerous (especially in this part of town) for an almost-sixteen-year-old girl. I was relatively certain that no one around here had an interest in molesting me, like that guard who had tried to grab me a while back. No, it was just me in the alley, the young couple in the house behind me, the old woman who sometimes showed up, and that crazy old man who thought he was talking to his son across the street.

All of them would be sleeping now, so why wasn't I? I wondered sleepily.

It's not much farther now.

Oh, right. Voice of mysterious young person in cape. In my head. Disturbing my sleep. "Stupid haunt," I grumbled to myself. I considered getting up and seeing what was up with the caped person (was he still wearing a cape?) like I had last time. Perhaps the prince's manservant and the Lady Morgana were up to something again. I never did figure that out entirely…

But I was cold, hungry, and most of all tired.

I really couldn't make myself care enough to stand up and venture out into the streets of Camelot.

Be careful… Morgana's chamber is next.

Oh, so that cloaked being had people with him. And they were going to see Morgana. Couldn't be Merlin; he knew where Morgana's chamber was.

Hopefully I wasn't missing anything too exciting.

I went back to sleep.

Lewis

That day

"Well, aren't you going to beg for your life?"

I flipped over a dead guard, checking to see if he was really dead, but I watched Alvarr and his prisoner out of the corner of my eye. Just like the blond man; he was dragging it out, standing in front of the kneeling knight.

The knight, another blond, stared up at Alvarr. I was too far away to see clearly, but I suspected his eyes were large and frightened. "A knight of Camelot does not beg," he snarled, putting a lot of disgust in those words.

Apparently they didn't learn how to avoid being attacked either. This knight hadn't watched his back when his men were being attacked; he didn't even know better than to be wary of a supposedly injured man lying on the road. And that was the oldest trick in the book—the book, which, incidentally, I couldn't read.

The guard I was looking at was dead. I glanced at Alvarr's girlfriend to see if her man was dead too, and she nodded briefly at me, then went back to watching Alvarr, who was speaking again.

"Indulge me." He lifted his sword at the ready.

"I'd rather die."

Well, that was convenient.

I could only see Alvarr's back, but I knew he was smiling. "Who am I to deny a man his last request?"

He brought the sword down, stabbing the man. There was a choking sound, and then he was dead. Alvarr stepped out of the way of the blood, a little late… He would have to wash that chain mail off if he wanted to wear it when we snuck into Camelot.

I looked at my brother, who would be taking the armor of the other guard. He nodded at me in acknowledgement from the other side of the wagon that we had just jumped.

Alvarr turned to the boy who had appeared next to him. "We must go if we're to make Camelot by nightfall."

The boy lowered his hood, showing Mordred's waxy features. He smiled. (But he didn't talk. He never talked.) Apparently he wanted to reach Camelot by nighttime. That was okay by me. I was just here to stab whoever Alvarr told me too so that magic can come back to Camelot… or something like that.

We changed quickly, Alvarr donning the knight's clothes while my brother and I disguised ourselves as guards. I helped Mordred into a barrel, because the Druid boy would need to stay out of sight. Esmeralda, the sassy wench, wasn't coming this time, which I thought was kind of a shame. I liked looking at her.

We climbed onto the ownerless horses and wagon, and started our trip to Camelot.

Somewhere along the way, it started raining, which made my brother cranky, though I didn't mind. We made our way to Camelot, and had the wagon inspected by some rather useless guards. I made a mental note to come back and pillage, steal, or whatever else came to mind someday. This place was just waiting to be robbed… For heaven's sake, we were smuggling a Druid boy into Camelot. Sure, it was dark, but that was no excuse to be blind.

There was a point when I actually thought they were about to find Mordred, and I saw Alvarr put his hand on his sword. I did the same, tensing for some action, but I was disappointed.

Maybe, I decided, I wouldn't come back and rob Camelot. There was no sport in it. It would be almost an insult to my pillaging skills.

The guards let us past.

Alvarr relaxed up in the driver's seat, and pulled the wagon forward. After a while, he stopped and climbed down, brushing his wet hair from his face. He gestured to my brother and I, not speaking a word, telling us to lift the barrel that held Mordred and walk behind him.

It was a silent trek through Camelot. I wasn't sure how Alvarr knew what he was doing, but he never faltered in his determined gait, so I figured he knew. There were weirder things about Alvarr. The only sound was of rain drops pattering down on the metal we were wearing. I glanced around, taking in the position of everything out of habit. There was a blacksmith shop along the way, but they rarely had anything worth taking. A girl with reddish blond, almost orange-ish, hair slept in an alley. I took note of that, though I didn't know if I'd have a chance to come back.

We made our way to a door that I wouldn't have spotted if not for Alvarr, especially not in the dark, and slipped inside. There was a small room out of sight that we came into, and my brother and I put Mordred down, both letting out identical sighs of relief. He was getting to be heavy, that pre-teen boy.

Alvarr looked around nervously as Mordred popped up out of the barrel.

"You ready?" he asked the dark-haired boy.

Mordred nodded.

They left us with the order to stay put, which disappointed me a little, but I decided to just go with it.

"So, Daniel," I said to my brother, removing my helmet. I turned and looked at him, watching as he removed his own headgear. His dark hair was plastered to his face with rainwater, and he looked a little like he'd been dragged through mud, his big red nose the only clean part of his face. I knew I didn't look much better. Not that it mattered.

He sighed and leaned back against the wall of the secret room. "Lewis, looks like we're gonna be here a while. They still have to find the Lady Morgana and convince her to help us get that Crystal."

"Yeah," I agreed, chewing my lip as I thought. "They'll be gone a while… You know, on the way here, I spotted this girl in an alley…"

"Alvarr told us to stay put," he reminded me. "Stay put and out of sight."

I sighed and leaned against the wall next to my older brother. "Oh, well." Small loss. Stay put… That's what I was being paid for, anyway.

I waited for our leader to make it back.

A few days later

I watched from the trees as the knights and guards – and one scrawny serving boy – of Camelot came into our "abandoned" camp, thankful that Morgana – another looker, by the way – had warned us of this in time. If we didn't catch them by surprise, there was no way we could beat them.

We were going to ambush them. We were going to win, I thought, smiling in anticipation of finally getting some action. I kept my bow at the ready as my brother shifted next to me.

The blond knight – Prince Arthur, unless I was mistaken – squatted down and felt our cool, dead fire.

"Well, whoever was here, they're not here anymore," he commented to the scrawny servant.

But the servant had a funny look on his face, and I could've sworn he was staring right me. "Yes, they are," he mumbled, and I panicked.

He knew we were here. We were about to lose our element of surprise, and I couldn't let that happen. I pulled back my string to my cheek and released. That's what I was paid for. The arrow streaked through the air, right at the prince, and it would've hit him, too, if he hadn't been moving so he could look at the servant and ask what he meant. As it was, it embedded itself in the knight behind him, who screamed in pain and fell to the floor, dead.

Before they could react, my brother's bolt found another man, right behind the servant. He died, too.

"Good job, Dan," I congratulated him, and then we were attacking.

I could see Esmeralda using some of her mouth-watering agility to kill a few men with ease, and Alvarr fighting with fierce determination. He wanted to protect his crystal, I think, and the Druid boy too.

"Run, Mordred!" screamed the blond man, and I think the boy did, but I didn't care to notice at the time.

I killed a guard and saw my brother fall behind me, and I thought distantly that I wasn't happy with that. I kept fighting, not really paying attention to what I was doing. I just knew that I was supposed to go for the men in the red capes. Easy enough to spot.

I don't know when exactly I fell. I just know that suddenly a fire erupted in my stomach, and my back hit the ground. I lay there for a while, too, watching the fighting around me, a little disgruntled when someone stepped on me. I was slowly fading, I know, like a campfire that everyone forgot to get wood for.

Slowly fading.

Looked like Camelot was taking back the crystal. That would make Alvarr angry.

I kept watching Prince Arthur stab and parry, Alvarr try to fight off the men converging on him, and I think I saw Esmeralda fall at one point. Like me, she didn't get back up.

Meanwhile, even the ashes of me were starting to fizzle out.

Dying.

I wasn't paid for that.