A/N: I could really probably sit here quietly, not say anything, and look like I meant to do it this way like a badass…but this section was totally supposed to be appended to the last chapter at the end. Major oops. And since it doesn't "go" with the next chapter, here it is. Thanks to EffervescentAardvark for pointing this out! And you can also thank/blame her that the next chapter will take me some time to fix (i.e., vastly improve) and upload! Hoping it'll be worth the wait: in the meantime here's Chapter 12.5.
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Gwaine seemed to be the only one not put out by the situation.
He didn't really understand what was going on around him. He heard snatches of voices he might have recognized, and felt the occasional touch or cool cloth—which was nice, except for the odd drop of water that trickled annoyingly down his neck and he couldn't scratch or wipe away. He didn't even understand what was going on in him for that matter—whatever was wrong with his stupid, useless body.
But he also didn't care.
If he had to go—well, there were worse ways.
He'd almost been there enough times to recognize it: the fever-dreams were memories—ordinary nightmares couldn't come up with this stuff—and the memories flirted often with death until he felt he knew it well. But at least now, at least here, he wasn't alone. There were friends here, people he trusted, even if he didn't like them seeing him weak. He wasn't outside, in the cold. Sure, he was probably going to boil instead, but that was maybe even a little bit awesome, with the emphasis on going out in a "blaze of glory." As a nice touch, he wasn't actually in much pain—he'd definitely had worse as far as pain went. Though this probably had more to do with Gaius' apothecary and how high he was flying now than anything else.
And, most importantly, Gwaine was almost, maybe, just a little bit…proud of himself. At least not mortally ashamed, in the brief respites between remember-dreaming, anyway (at which points he was very, very mortally ashamed). This was a noble death, right?. This was far more than he could ask for, really. He wasn't going to die in a drunken brawl after some guy caught him tumbling his woman, or on a battlefield in the service of whoever paid good coin being hacked to death by another man who was only there because he was paid better coin. Gwaine had generally assumed that ignominy and ignobility would be his lot in death as it was in life.
Because however much Gwaine valued and respected "nobility," he knew he was not it.
So the fact that he'd actually been doing quite well these past few years was a shocker, especially to him. He was a knight, for Christ's sake! And that no one had caught on was good. He'd hidden his sordid past well enough, his despicable soul, his tainted whatever, and had been accepted, had even been loved, here, by these innocent, wonderful people who probably couldn't fathom the things he'd seen and done—though they all had their dark sides, sure, Gwaine wasn't naïve, but they, he had to believe, had made their desperate choices in desperate circumstances, not out of an innate depravity like him—and now, at any rate, thank the maker, he was going to die before anyone found out. He had actually meant to move on earlier, pick up the vagabond lifestyle again, before anyone had a chance to discover the truth, but as usual he had been too selfish, having enjoyed this foreign experience of friendship too much to do what he should have.
This was more than he deserved: to die surrounded by friends who didn't know him enough to hate him yet, and to be missed. Gwaine was pretty sure he had never been missed before, by anyone, and it was kind of nice. It was selfish, of course—there wasn't a selfless bone in his body if Gwaine was honest with himself—but he supposed it wouldn't matter if they found out later, after he was gone, about all the horrible misery he left in his wake. That would be okay. They wouldn't miss him as much, then, and he certainly didn't want these precious people in any pain on his account.
He only wished, now that everything was in perspective and, ironically, now that it was too late, that he had somehow met Merlin and the others earlier in his life, before he had gone and done too many things he could never forgive himself for and for which they would never forgive him if they found out. Still, it had been better than nothing. Funny how it took a chance meeting with a scrawny servant and his arrogant yet good-hearted prince to show Gwaine that he did have the capacity to fight on the side of right and maybe even could become a better man.
Gwaine's final problem was that he had been wasting all his breath and time (not just since the boar incident, but his whole life, really) making stupid jokes when he could have been telling them the things he would never be caught dead saying but were important nevertheless—
You're the only nobleman I've ever met worth dying for, Arthur.
I don't know what I would have done without your friendship, Merlin.
Ah, well. He'd died for them. They had to know that.
So this seemed as good a time as any to stop fighting.