Disclaimer: I do not own any of the character names, save my own original creations. I do not wish to be compensated for this work, nor do I wish to infringe on any copyrights held by any stakeholders of the movie King Arthur. This work is an original creation, based on the legend of King Arthur and his knights.


Chapter 47: Gathering

The door creaked.

Cerys opened one eye and looked out towards it. She shifted away from Lancelot's grasp.

The door creaked again.

"Hello?" She whispered. "Is someone there?"

She felt movement beside her in the bed. Before she could react, Lancelot had leapt out of bed and was standing, a dagger somehow in his hand, behind the door. How had he gotten a dagger so quickly? She watched him put a finger to his lips.

She wondered if he realized how... naked he was. Her fierce protector, in all his naked glory. Despite the fact that there could be a wild animal or an unwelcome guest in their rooms, she bit back a giggle.

"Cerys? It's Brinn."

She glanced to Lancelot. He relaxed and turned the dagger down in his hand. She threw him his leather trews, they landed with a flop at his feet. He grinned at her. Modesty was not one of his strong suits.

"Brinn? It is quite late. Are you alright?"

Brinn opened the door. He was in his clothing, but looked as if he had been woken. His hair was rumpled, his eyes still showing sleep wrinkles.

"It's Gawain. He barged into my room, and he's in the corner, won't come out."

Cerys shared a glance with Lancelot, who had moved towards the bed to find the rest of his clothing. Cerys reached under the bed and handed Lancelot his undertunic, and found her own dress flung above the headboard.

He was making her messy with his habits. She smiled a bit remembering how her dress had made it to the headboard. She blinked and refocused on the men and what Brinn had just report­ed.

"Is he awake?" Lancelot asked, putting the dagger back underneath his side of the bed.

Brinn shook his head. "I'm not sure. He's just kind of staring into nothing, keeps mumbling."

Cerys stepped out of the bed, wincing. She would have bruises on her inner thighs come morn­ing. He had needed her so badly when they got back to the room. These bruises, however, she rather enjoyed receiving.

"Alright. We will go." She said quietly, grabbing her dress and slipping it on. She put a hand to her hair, smoothing it out. "He was upset earlier this evening. This is not surprising."

She was worried that this was going to upset Brinn. He nodded, his face serious.

"He is asking for someone named Gareth."

Cerys saw no need to lie to the boy, and she nodded. Lancelot was pulling on a light tunic and he answered before Cerys could.

"Gareth was my cousin and his closest friend. He was a knight, and he died fighting the Sax­ons."

"Oh."

Cerys put an arm around Brinn as they walked towards his room. Lancelot had strode ahead, and was at the door, poking his head in.

"Gawain?" He said quietly as he pushed it open and stepped in.

Cerys hurried her step and she and Brinn reached the door. She stepped in as well, and watched as Lancelot squatted down beside the blonde man and put a hand out to him.

Brinn had lit a lantern, and the glow across to the corner where he was sitting was enough to see the pain across his face, the torment that had obviously bubbled to the surface after so many years of pushing it back. He was holding a length of what looked to be scales from armour. He was fingering them.

It reminded Cerys of the ropes of beads the religious men used to run through their fingers, when she was in Powys. They would chant as they methodically went from one bead to the next, the long rope of them attached to their waists. Her memory found the scent of the incense, if only briefly.

The difference here was that Gawain was not praying. Gawain did not believe in a God that way.

He was glassy-eyed, and looked to have been sobbing. Her heart went out to him yet again. She turned to Brinn.

"Brinn, I need to you bring Galahad here."

Brinn nodded and trotted back out the door. Cerys turned her attention back to the two men in the corner.

"Gawain, come back to us here. Come on man..." He shook the mans arm slightly. Gawain looked at him blankly, blinked, then turned his head back to stare away.

Cerys knew that Lancelot was at a loss for what to do.

"I've sent Brinn for his brother." She said quietly.

Lancelot nodded and stood, crossing over to her and they both sat on the edge of Brinns bed and waited.

"Tell me why he screams every night Lancelot. Do you know?"

Lancelot sighed. She sensed that he was reluctant to share it with her. He looked at her, his face serious; his lips pressed together, and hung his arms between his legs, his elbows resting on thighs. He turned his head to look at her.

"He never speaks of what happened from the time when they were attacked to when we found him."

She looked to the ground. She ran a toe over the edge of what looked to be a rug. Brinn had been busy decorating. She noticed that the rooms were, for the first time in years, tidy.

"But when we found him, he had injuries, you remember?"

She nodded, her thoughts turned back to Gawain again. She had helped to treat them. She never asked what they were from; they were strange, compared to normal battle wounds. But, she as­sumed it was some sort of weapon that she had never seen before, or he had fallen. She never questioned it.

"We think he may have been brought into the Saxon encampment and beaten, perhaps even forced to watch Gareth being tortured."

Lancelot took her hands in his and looked over at Gawain, oblivious to them on the other side of the room.

"He couldn't remember what happened, or refused to tell us. When we... found Gareth the next spring, Gawain was violently ill the minute we saw him."

"How would his body have survived the winter?" She asked, not comprehending.

Lancelot drew a breath. "It didn't. All that was left was some bone and... and..." He faltered.

"I can handle it Lancelot, please. I want to know so I can help him."

"Well it was obvious he was tortured and then left for dead. The only way we identified him was that his green armour was still on the carcass."

Cerys felt Lancelot's grief then. Gareth had been his cousin, his only link to home. It must have been so hard for him then too. She rubbed her thumbs across his hands clasping hers, and they looked to each other. She tilted her head and watched the pain swirling in his eyes as he too re­membered. Then, they cleared and he turned them to Gawain.

"I really hope that now he has erupted, the nightmares will stop." He whispered, bowing his head.

"I'm sorry that you all had to see that." She whispered back. "I'm sorry I can't say the magic word and have it all go away."

He put a hand up to her head and smoothed her hair.

"You have already."

They turned at footsteps. Rumpled and half-dressed Galahad, along with Bors, filed into the tiny room. Arthur was right behind them. The door creaked open a bit further, and a groggy Tristan, pulled by Perceval, entered.

Gawain looked up at that moment. Cerys watched him look to each of the men. They were all here now. Perhaps this was what he needed.

She looked at each of the knights faces. Each was battling their own demons now, including her Lancelot. She then understood yet another reason why they fought and trained so hard. They sometimes needed to. What their jobs did to them made them afraid. Afraid they would become as Gawain was now. She understood then why Lancelot had felt so deeply that he was not a good person, that he was simply a killer. She felt an ache for them, she wished she could ease all their pain the way she could with Lancelot.

Well, perhaps not in the exact way. For some strange reason, she blushed then, thinking about earlier that evening. Not the best time, she chastised herself.

She slipped quietly out of the room to listen at the door with Brinn in her arms.

"You don't stay?" He whispered to her as she rocked him back and forth, more for her own com­fort than his.

"They must face this together." She said. She didn't know why, but she had just felt that way.


Dear Reader:

And thus we now have the gathering of men to help their companion. Kind of like an intervention, medieval style.

Cerys thinks talking may help him, Lancelot thinks he may just need to fight and get it out of his system. There may be a happy medium, I'm not sure yet.

The one thing that is obvious to me as I wrote this is that he could not go through it alone. I wouldn't have let him, neither will they.

My pen is calling to me to continue, so I leave you with your thoughts on our Gawain and his healing.

Cardeia