A/N: Thank you GuestM Live for reviewing! I know, poor Lancelot this month. (Although tbh, he suffers year-round with me lol.)

No. 24 FIGHT, FLIGHT OR FREEZE

The peal of steel resounded across the mountainside as the knights of Camelot skirmished with a raiding party. The rogue group had been ravaging villages all winter, and after multiple pleas for help, Arthur had finally decided to lead a troop out to deal with the threat.

Their numbers were well-matched initially, though the knights were more skilled. But in the middle of the battle, the mountain began to rumble, low and deep. Everyone slowly paused in confusion as the reverberations through the ground grew louder. Up in the pass, a whole shelf of snow suddenly broke free and came cascading down directly at them.

"Avalanche!" Arthur bellowed.

Battle forgotten, everyone tried to flee, but there was no way to outrun a mountain.

Percival and Gwaine yelled for the other knights—they'd taken cover behind a large boulder. Merlin and Arthur reached it safely, followed by Leon and Elyan. But Lancelot was too far away. Merlin locked eyes with him for a brief moment before the tide of snow crashed into him and swept him away.

"No!" Merlin screamed.

Snow burst over the top of the boulder, and Arthur yanked Merlin in and against the rock. They were surrounded by white, and Merlin couldn't see anyone. The raiders had all been caught in the avalanche, as far as he could tell. Along with Lancelot…

It felt like a terrifyingly long time before the snow finally settled and the ground stopped rumbling. Merlin wrenched away from Arthur and went wading out into the sea of snow, frantically scanning for his friend.

"Lancelot! Lancelot!"

There was no response. The mountainside was eerily quiet now.

"Find something long to poke through the snow!" Leon yelled.

They all hurried to do that, some finding branches and others using their scabbards.

"Space out," Arthur commanded, and they set off in search of their friend.

Lancelot woke in an uncomfortable position of being crumpled and twisted. He tried to straighten out his limbs, only to bump against something solid, and he found himself surrounded on all sides by hard-packed snow that had somehow formed over him in a small pocket.

He kicked at the snow, but it held firm. He tried digging with his fingers, but his gloves were too thick and blunted at the tips. Grabbing one glove with his teeth, he yanked it off and tried to claw at the snow with his fingers. But his nails merely grated against solid ice and quickly began to burn from the cold. He hastily put his glove back on, though his hand was now thoroughly chilled. He reached for his sword, only to find it gone. It had been wrenched away from him in the avalanche.

Lancelot continued to pound and kick at the snow, the cold seeping in no matter how hard he strained. Dizziness swept over him and he stopped to catch his breath, then realized he needed to stop or he'd use up all his air before he managed to fight his way out of this.

"Help!" he shouted. "Is anyone out there! I'm over here!"

No one responded and the snow didn't shift with the urgent movements of someone coming to his aid. So he resigned himself to not waste his air and curled in on himself as he waited, praying he wasn't going to die in here like this.

"Over here!" Elyan called.

Merlin turned and sprinted over to where he was standing. There was a limp hand sticking up out of the snow. Gwaine reached it first, and he and Elyan pulled with all their might. But the man they hauled out of the snow wasn't Lancelot. It was one of the raiders, dead.

Merlin spun and scanned the vast mountainside, wracking his mind for anything his magic could do to find his friend, consequences be damned.

"Merlin," Arthur said regretfully. "There's just too much snow. Lancelot could be buried anywhere, and by now he'd be just like this man."

"We can't leave without him!" Merlin protested. He wouldn't.

"Arthur's right," Leon said somberly.

"No," Gwaine argued. "He could have gotten trapped in an air pocket and is still alive. We can't give up yet."

So they kept searching, kept stabbing haphazardly through the snow. Then Merlin punched his branch down and felt it push through a chunk of ice before breaking through the resistance. A pocket.

"Lancelot?" he yelled as he dropped to his knees and started digging at the snow. "Lancelot, are you there?"

There was no answer, but he could have been unconscious. Merlin stabbed his branch into the snow and scraped small chunks away in a frantic effort to dig a hole. He froze when he thought he heard a muffled voice calling back.

"Lancelot?"

"Here!"

Merlin twisted around to shout for the others. "He's over here!"

The knights rushed over and began helping Merlin dig away the snow. They finally broke through to the pocket below, snow sprinkling down on a very much alive Lancelot, who blinked blearily up at them.

"Come on!" Merlin shouted, leaning in to reach down.

But Lancelot couldn't seem to move enough to reach Merlin's hand. Percival gestured for them to back up and dug away the snow closer to the side of the pocket Lancelot was on, then reached down to bodily heave him up. Lancelot was sluggish and nearly frozen through, which sent new alarm bells ringing in Merlin's head.

"We need to get him warm, now!"

"Building a fire out here will be difficult," Elyan pointed out.

Merlin shook his head and started shucking off his clothes. "Body heat is the quickest way."

Percival began to wrestle Lancelot's armor off, and Lancelot wasn't lucid enough to even try to help.

Merlin yelped at the bite of cold that nipped his chest when he got his shirt off. He awkwardly sat down and wrapped himself around Lancelot. "Cover us with the cloaks," he instructed, his teeth already beginning to chatter.

"Merlin, are you sure about this?" Arthur asked skeptically.

"Gaius t-taught m-me this," he stuttered. "So- yes."

"I'll find a place to set a campfire," Leon volunteered.

Gwaine and Elyan went off with him, leaving the rest of them on the mountainside, shivering. Lancelot was frigid against Merlin's body, but at least his jerking shivers meant he was still alive.

Elyan came back not much later. "We found a cave and got a fire going."

"Then let's move," Arthur said. He and Percival picked Lancelot up, Merlin still pressed close and wedged between them, and they half carried, half dragged Lancelot as Elyan led the way.

When they reached the cave, Gwaine took off the top layers of cloaks Merlin and Lancelot were bundled in and draped them over some rocks close to the fire to warm. Arthur and Percival eased Lancelot down on the other side. Merlin rubbed at Lancelot's arms, desperate to keep his own circulation going as much as his friend's.

Lancelot tilted his head back and furrowed his brow at Merlin. "What's going on?"

"You're hypothermic, and we need to warm you up, so we're sharing body heat."

Lancelot frowned at him for a prolonged moment, then said, "You don't feel warm at all."

Merlin huffed. "Not yet, but I will."

The warmed cloaks were exchanged with the cold ones, and the knights kept up the rotation until Lancelot finally started to thaw. He was still shivering minutely, but he was lucid, which would make it easier getting him back to Camelot.

"At least the raiding party is taken care of," Gwaine commented.

"Next time we should just trigger an avalanche and stand out of the way," Merlin rejoined.

The knights got Lancelot and Merlin back in their clothes, which had been warming by the fire. Then they set off for home and hearth.