"Gurgi."

Taran crouched, and shook the creature gently by the shoulder to wake him. Gurgi's amber eyes opened; he blinked, and looked blearily up, sleepy confusion turning instantly to adoration when he saw the face above, an expression that could not but bring a wan smile to it. "It's your turn for watch," Taran whispered, "if you can manage it. Careful!" he added hastily, as he saw the familiar crouch and tension that meant the creature was about to spring up; the figure that lay still next to him was not one Taran wanted to disturb.

Gurgi caught his meaning and froze. He glanced around toward his own back, then crept cautiously from beneath the cloak he shared with his bedfellow. "Weary princess will be cold without Gurgi," he whispered. "She sleeps badly, with many tossings and turnings."

Taran looked anxiously at the wool-wrapped shape that was Eilonwy, curled up on the ground, her back to both of them. He unpinned his own cloak and spread it over her. It was common practice in the camp for the warriors to sleep back-to-back, doubling the warmth of their cloaks, sharing heat against the bite of the winter air. But no one dared to presume upon such proximity to the princess, except Gurgi, whose unspecific status allowed him a certain amount of liberty. At any rate Eilonwy had not objected to sharing her sleeping space with the creature for the sake of warmth, though it came with disadvantages; Taran had noticed her picking clumps of mouse-colored fur from her tousled braids in the mornings, and ruefully wrinkling her nose at the smell of wet wolfhound that now permeated her clothes.

Gurgi scampered away into the darkness to take his turn at post. Taran made to stand up, and stopped suddenly, arrested by a tug at his ankle. He looked down in surprise at the hand that had closed around it, the pale face that was turned toward him, and crouched next to her again with a sigh. "I'm sorry. I hoped not to wake you."

"I wasn't asleep," she said, in a cracked, dry whisper. "I haven't slept since…" She trailed off, left the words hanging in the air. He knew; it was why he had not asked her to take a turn at watch, a concession which she had, for once, not argued against - evidence of such total exhaustion that it worried him.

She let go of his boot to take hold of his wrist. "Taran. Don't go."

Her hand trembled. He took it in both of his, lowering to his knees beside her, the weight of his inner battle crushing him down. She should not be here; she should have stayed behind at Caer Dallben in safety and then she wouldn't be in this camp, lying alone on the cold ground, shivering, sleepless, shadow-eyed. Yet had she stayed they would not be here; without her warning his entire band would have fallen to the cauldron-born in darkness, their mission a failure, their deaths almost certain. He bent his head over their clasped hands in silent grief.

She pulled at him again, whispered, "Stay with me." He hesitated, stared at her, wanting nothing more than to acquiesce to her and yet stumbling, in his mind, over words like honor and propriety which seemed, somehow, very vague and useless under the circumstances. He glanced around them at the dark shapes of the sleeping company, scattered upon the ground throughout the camp. She looked as though she read his thoughts, and shook her head almost imperceptibly. "I don't care how it looks. No one cares out here. Please."

The unshed tears he heard behind her voice undid him. With a sigh he lifted the cloaks and laid himself next to her, burrowing under the layers of wool, ignoring the pungent reminder of Gurgi's recent presence. He curled around her back and she pulled his right arm tightly over her ribs, interlacing her fingers with his and clutching his hand beneath her chin.

She was shivering, the entire length of her, and he pulled her protectively against his chest, concerned, murmured in her ear, "You should move closer to the fire."

He felt her throat move as she swallowed. "I'm not cold."

"You're shaking like a leaf."

"It's not the cold. I can't stop thinking…" she made a sound like a strangled sob, quickly cut off, and he pressed his brow to the back of her head, mute and miserable, his arm held hard against the quaking of her ribs.

Thinking of what, he thought silently, afraid to ask it out loud - a fear that had coiled like a serpent of ice at his gut the moment she had, with a casualness he knew was forced, mentioned the name Dorath. She had not spoken it again, except to assure him, in a voice oddly void of emotion, that its owner was dead, which should have been comforting, but wasn't.

She had told him she wasn't hurt, and he had never known her to lie - why, then, the shadow he caught on her face in unguarded moments, the stubborn avoidance of any discussion of her experience outside the camp? He was afraid to press her, afraid not so much of her answer as of the blind, all-consuming rage that lurked like a madness behind the questions, of his own uncontrollable impulse to maim and torture anyone who would even think of...

But he would not articulate, even to himself, his deepest fears. So he was quiet, waiting, holding her until she had stilled again, and only then did he ask her, "What is it?"

She was silent for a time. He felt her press his knuckles to her lips. "Nothing."

"It's not nothing."

"Nothing I want to talk about right now," she amended, and paused, before adding, "Taran? When we get back home, let's… do you think Dallben would mind…let's have a pet wolf."

Pleasantly distracted by her matter-of-fact referral to Caer Dallben as home, he hesitated before stammering, "A…what?"

"A wolf. Like Medwyn's wolves. You remember them?"

"I don't think they were his pets," he said slowly, baffled. "Wolves seem a bit too dignified to be that."

"I suppose," she sighed, "but…well, maybe just a wolfhound, then."

"We've already got Gurgi."

"Not quite the same." Her shivering was subsiding, she shifted to settle into him more securely, pushing one leg backwards to hook her ankle around his calf. "You're much more comfortable than Gurgi," she murmured, in a tone that yanked his mind instantly out of the dark paths it was wandering. He turned it away, with some difficulty, from several alternative avenues.

"And I smell better," he offered.

"Only a little."

He tucked his nose into her hair and inhaled. "You're not exactly roses and lavender yourself, you know."

"It hasn't been bathing weather," she protested drowsily. "When we get back, if I can't have a wolf, I'll settle for a giant cauldron of hot water. And even wash my hair." She yawned. "Oddly enough, I'm looking forward to that."

He traced the smooth line of her throat with one fingertip, until the hard ridge of the leather armor she wore intervened. "When we get back," he whispered, "there is much that I look forward to."

The gentle rise of her ribs halted for just a moment and then continued on, slightly deeper than before; he heard the tremulous escape of her breath, felt it warm against his knuckles. Her fingers tightened their grip on his hand, squeezed it in a gesture of agreement. "So do I," she whispered, "but I suppose we should concentrate on just getting back, for now."

He sighed, and thought carefully and exclusively about battle strategies and wall construction and tending turnip fields, and which one of the sleeping warriors was doing that infernal snoring, until the deep, slow cadence of her breath told him that, at last, she slept. Content, he drifted away on its rhythm, like a gull, dreaming peace, upon the swells of the sea.

Interrupting Daughter of the Sea to remind myself that these two were my first OTP, no matter how fond I become of her parents.

In my head, a few minutes later Fflewddur sits down next to them with basically a "wake them up over my dead body" sort of attitude because they're his OTP too.