Benjamin didn't quite have the same opinion, as they returned after a highly stressful meal. The youth trailed behind Gwaine and as they returned to Gwaine's rooms, which was one of the few safe places they had, Gwaine locked the door behind him. Then he turned to Benjamin who had started to light the rest of the candles, which caused the tears streaming from his eyes to glitter. Gwaine winced as he saw them.
"Oh, Benjamin." Gwaine's voice was soft. The youth's hands trembled as he hesitated in lighting the candles. Gwaine crossed the room and took the taper from him blowing it out as he did so, before discarding it and reaching out to take Benjamin in his arms. He felt the tension as he pulled the smaller body closer but he hugged him tightly, feeling Benjamin's breath hitch as he pressed his face into Gwaine's chest, and either shocked, comforted, or both, by the sudden show of affection he started to sob. Gwaine ran a hand through Benjamin's hair, holding onto him, murmuring reassurances gently into his hair.
It took a little while for Benjamin to calm down, by which point Gwaine settled him in a chair, and as he felt the youth trembling he turned to light the fire.
"I can do that My Lord," Benjamin said, although he hadn't moved.
"Yes, you can, you have done often enough, but stay there. I know how to light a fire, and pour wine."
Benjamin sniffed, wiping his nose and eyes with his sleeve. "Yes."
Gwaine winced at the hint in that word, that he truly didn't need Benjamin. It had started to cause Gwaine to wish that the youth had not been in his tent on that first night. Life would have been far simpler with someone who held him in contempt, one of the older servants who had been warped over time, learning to survive in the harsh environment of the castle. Instead, he had a naive, vulnerable charge, who needed care and protection. Gwaine wondered if the move had been deliberate, even though it had looked thoughtless on his father's part. Despite years of trying to hide it, he had given the game away before that, and his father knew it. He father had seen it.
Still, the situation was as it was. There was nothing Gwaine could do but live with it.
"That's not what I meant and you know it. I have to say those things, because it is the only way to keep you safe. As long as my father thinks that the threat of removing you means he loses his hold on me then he will leave you where you are, where I can look after you."
Benjamin had been wiping his eyes and nose with the sleeve of his tunic. His eyes stared up at Gwaine, and he sniffed, before saying, with a tone muffled by the material.
"You wouldn't leave me?"
"Not for anything, but we can't let my father know that. Do you understand?"
Benjamin nodded hastily, but clearly he did not. Gwaine poured out some wine, and put one of the goblets in front of his little servant. He had been around long enough to know life in the castle was hard, but Benjamin had been insignificant until the moment he had prepared Gwaine's tent, by a random act of fate. Despite Gwaine's musings to the contrary, his father wouldn't be astute enough to do it on purpose, he would just use it once he knew the exploitation was there. But Gwaine had learnt to hide his feelings. And he had learnt that the hard way, he told Benjamin, who started to regard him with wide eyes as Gwaine started to tell the story...
At twelve Gwaine wasn't overly strong, but he knew how to work hard. His mother hadn't been well, and it was hard to see the town's physician, he didn't come around the villages very often. The local wise woman did her best but she had her limits. Gwaine worked hard, from one day to the next, offering his services in the village, trading for food, or coin, or anything that came his way. He and his mother grew vegetables in a small plot and he cut firewood down in the forest. Those things came easily. He could forage things, and they managed.
But his mother was getting worse, and she knew it. Gwaine breezed past it, if he had the coin he could get the physician from the town. He walked there and back one day, giving the man his coins and extorting a promise to visit the following day.
Gwaine had gone home happy with that, oblivious to what had been going on around him.
When he returned that day, to the little cottage on the edge of the village his run had slowed as he looked at the men surrounding the area; all of them armed and eyeing him carefully, before allowing him to run to his mother's cottage. He burst in, gripping the firewood in his arms, and the bag of food he had foraged bouncing on his shoulder.
"Mother!"
He hesitated as he looked at the man sat on the edge of his mother's bed, holding her hand in what should have been a soothing gesture. However, her hand encased in both of his, her skinny arm sticking out beyond that, it looked threatening. Gwaine dropped the wood and shrugged off the pack, reaching to pull the axe he carried.
"Get off my mother," Gwaine had snapped, although Lot, at the sight of Gwaine, released her hand and stood up. Gwaine stared up at the man, a vague stirring at the back of his mind telling him he knew this man, but had no comprehension of why.
"You've become quite a man, Gwal," Lot had growled at him. Gwaine's eyes narrowed as the man said what he seemed to think was Gwaine's name. It stirred something in his memory, but it flitted away from him as quickly as it came.
"Don't hurt him," his mother had said weakly. Gwaine's eyes had gone to her, his arm lowering and he tried to dart around the large man to get to her. However, Lot put his arm out and pushed Gwaine back, into two soldiers. They grabbed him and one of them swiftly relieved him of his weapon. Gwaine lurched between them.
"Mother!"
"Don't hurt him!" his mother gasped. Lot turned and stared down at her.
"I would never hurt my son!"
"Mother!" Gwaine yelled loudly, then drew back a foot and pounded it into one of the men holding him. The man gave a yelp and loosened his grip on Gwaine, who had already driven his elbow into the ribs of the second man, following up with a punch on the nose. There was force to the attack, but it was more the surprise that gave Gwaine the upper hand. He only stopped when Lot stepped forward and backhanded him hard across the face. Gwaine heard his mother scream as he went whirling across the cottage, landing in a tangled heap. He lay still for a moment, gasping for breath, and his mother struggled to sit up. She went still as Lot turned to stare down at her again.
"He has spirit at least," he mused to her. Then he turned to look down at Gwaine, who scrabbled to get up, wiping his mouth, as blood trickled down from a split lip. Gwaine looked at his mother again, she glanced at him and then looked up at Lot.
"Let me speak to him first. He doesn't understand."
"You have told him nothing," Lot said, turning to glare down at her. She blinked, looking up with wide, pleading eyes.
"It served no purpose."
"Nor did taking him from the castle."
Gwaine's eyes narrowed, another memory stirring in his mind. It stirred even more notably as he paused in the story.
Benjamin stared at him with wide eyes, waiting silently as Gwaine paused, his thoughts now adding to his memory. Of when he had been taken out of somewhere, and his feet had got wet, and someone had carried him. Someone, he now connected with someone in the present. His mother had received help from someone to escape, and Gwaine he met them again recently. Why he suddenly connected it in his mind he didn't know, but it stirred in him now.
"Sire," Benjamin asked tentatively. Gwaine snapped back to his young servant, who waited for the rest of the story, not doubting that he would hear it.
"My mother had sent a message to him, knowing he would come for me, knowing that she was dying and wouldn't be able to take care of me, but she thought... I don't know if she thought..."
"Mother!" Gwaine had yelled as the soldier dragged him from the tent, between that man and another impassive guard Gwaine was thrown across a horse, and tethered to the saddle. He had continued to scream and yell until one of the men had cuffed him hard around the ear, silencing him for a moment as his head rang.
"Try not to damage my son," Gwaine heard Lot say. He shook his head, looking up, squirming as he tried to get free from the ropes, glaring at the man who had said that Gwaine was his son.
"What about my mother?"
"I have someone who will take care of her," Lot said. Gwaine strained to peer past him as the horse turned, moving with the group as they started to ride away, looking at the man who entered the hut, followed by two soldiers. It was a scenario that Gwaine, even as young as he was, understood immediately. His struggles intensified, getting some leverage on the ropes around his wrists, easing one free, and struggling to unfasten the knots to free himself, jerking himself free so violently that he slipped forwards, pitching head first down onto the floor, grunting as his arms absorbed the shock of the fall and he rolled, up and running back towards his home, where his mother was. He didn't get far before he crashed to the ground again something tangling around his legs. He kicked frantically, trying to free himself, but the soldiers were on him and he felt a sharp rap on the back of his head and then the world went dark.
"We've travelled quite a way by the time I woke up, and I was tied to the horse again, with no chance of getting free. My father had come to claim me, and killed my mother in the process. He lied of course," Gwaine said bitterly, "Saying he had left a healer with her, to look after her in her last few days. I learnt later that he gave her something, rather than letting the soldiers do anything to her. She probably knew what was going to happen the moment she told my father where I was. He wouldn't be one to let an insult go, even if it had happened over ten years ago."
Benjamin had drawn his knees up to his chest, resting his heels on the edge of the chair, his arms were tightly wrapped around his shins, both hands clinging so hard that his knuckles had turned white.
"For years my father used my rage against me, somehow, always... manipulating me into fighting with my brothers. The queen hated me, hated my mother, for what she did with my father and to my father. It took me a long while to hide everything from him, to fight him back. That's probably why he gave you to me because he knows he can use it against me."
"I'm sorry," Benjamin whispered. Gwaine got up and crouched down in front of him.
"It's not your fault," Gwaine said.
"The king killed my family," Benjamin whispered. Gwaine sighed quietly. It didn't surprise him.
"When?"
"Three years ago. The village didn't give enough to the troops when they came. We hid some, otherwise we wouldn't have got through the winter."
Gwaine clenched his jaw. If you didn't feed the people working the fields then there would soon be no one to do it, which kind of negated the point of asking for a tribute, if you couldn't get the same next year.
"And they found out?"
Benjamin shook his head. "No, but they came back and said it wasn't enough. They didn't even ask for any more they just..." the boy's voice had dropped to a whisper, and his breath hitched as he pushed his grief down, getting himself under control. It did not take as long as Gwaine though, which wasn't, he decided, a bad thing. Benjamin needed to learn to be clever with his emotions, but maybe he also needed to know that he could safely express them with him. Gwaine brushed Benjamin's hair off his forehead, and the boy looked up at him.
"They said we would have to work, they brought us to the castle and..."
"And so you became a servant here, probably hardly noticed until you ended up in my tent."
Benjamin gave a smile at that, lightening the sadness in his eyes. "You were different," Benjamin blinked. "You are different."
"That's not always a good thing," Gwaine said. "You need to be a bit bland. I don't think you would get away with being tough now."
"I'm not tough," Benjamin said.
Gwaine gave a slight smile, pulling Benjamin close, feeling the boy snuggle against him for comfort.
"Don't worry, I think I'm tough enough for both of us."
XxxxxxxxxxxxxX
Gwaine sat up late into the night, nursing a goblet of wine, rather than drinking it heavily. If he had been in Camelot he probably would be on the second jug by now, he could safely get drunk there, and if he was far from his bed one of his fellow knights would carry him home.
Here was different. Much different. He had no one who would carry him. Maybe Meliodas but that would be more what his bodyguard considered a duty; not out of exasperated friendship.
Benjamin had now curled up on his little cot bed in the small ante chamber, happier in his world. Gwaine hadn't really meant to tell him all of the story, but he could trust his little servant with the information. Most of the castle knew it anyway. He had bided his time when he had been forced to spend his teenage years in the castle, and picked the right moment to get away. He had kept travelling, careful to stay out of his father's way. It had been easy enough, his father was focussed on staying in sight of the throne, waiting for Cenred to overreach himself.
When that had happened, Gwaine had been neatly ensconced in Camelot, using the name his mother had given him, rather than the one his father had preferred. In his youth there was very little he could do to stop people using the name his father insisted on doing, but now it was different, he was his own man. One with his own opinions, and no fear when it came to inflicting them on people. And his behaviour held a glimmer of a plan.
He couldn't get away, and he couldn't do much without upsetting the apple cart and putting Benjamin in danger. However, he could do the one thing that would annoy everyone, most especially his family.
Smirking to himself he finished his drink.