Merlin pulled out his heavy spell book and thumped it brazenly on the table in the main room with everyone there. He just didn't care at this point, and anyway was banking on Arthur and Gwen, sitting quietly at Gwaine's bedside as they were, being pretty well distracted.

Gaius raised an eyebrow at Merlin, but Merlin couldn't read what the old man was thinking.

But that was definitely his thinking-face.

Merlin had set his jaw, and was flipping through pages angrily, tearing a few slightly, but he didn't stop or slow. He was simply not going to let Gwaine die!

Gaius watched him, sadly, for a few minutes, before laying a hand over Merlin's hand. Merlin stilled, almost broke into a sob, but clenched his fist and went for the next page.

Gaius' eyes flicked to the royal couple absorbed in their patient, and, so as to remain quiet, found a scrap of paper and a stylus on which he jotted a note, sliding it over to Merlin.

What do you know of Gwaine's dreams? it said.

Merlin picked up the stylus to reply in writing. They made him violent before. I hoped they would stop. But Gaius waited. Communicating with their eyes, Merlin questioned, prompted, but Gaius only nodded at the paper again, and Merlin, frustrated, seized the writing implement again, scribbling furiously.

I think he was dreaming about his mother or something. Got angry, cut Percival, said "you leave my mother alone" and Merlin paused, stopped writing, remembering with a shudder before he continued, I had to bring him back. He was hallucinating, dreaming in the fever. He was pretty out of it. It was like he wasn't there, couldn't see us, like his mind was somewhere else. Was okay after I talked to him, shook him, made him come back.

This seemed to be enough for the old physician. He nodded, and Merlin dropped the stylus, pushed it toward Gaius, begging for a reply.

Gaius' handwriting was slow and neat: I think these dreams are breaking him. He is fighting against something in his past. Trapped between dreams and fever—he does not have the strength to fight them both. He must be drawn safely out of his dreams, or he will not recover.

Merlin figured where this was going:

Okay. What do I need to do?

Gaius produced a small, tattered notebook, one Merlin had never seen before. Merlin looked at him, sharply, questioning, wanting to blurt out a hundred questions, but, cursing Arthur's presence, he resigned himself to scribbling a hasty addition: Can you save him?

Gaius frowned as he penned his reply: I cannot, he wrote, encircling the letter "I" for emphasis before continuing But I know a spell which might.

Gaius opened the notebook. The words could hardly be read anymore, for the ink was faded and the pages yellowed, and anyway were scribbled in a mysterious shorthand in among what looked like genuinely non-magic healing recipes. He skimmed it for a few minutes before replying.

Get them out of here. The arrows Gaius drew made it clear to whom he was referring.

After Merlin read the note and nodded, Gaius gathered up the paper, closed the two spellbooks, and tossed the incriminating note in the fire. Gwen and Arthur did not even look up.

Merlin crept up behind them. "Why don't you two get some rest?" he suggested, in a whisper that he tried to make sound nonchalant. "I'll stay with him."

"No." Arthur sounded firm. "I will stay with him." The unsaid 'until' hung in the air.

"I…should stay with Arthur," Gwen added, with more trepidation, as she saw the look of intensity on Merlin's face.

Merlin immediately went for the throat.

It wasn't much of an effort to burst into a heart-wrenching sob. Gwen stood up, open-mouthed, and Arthur looked at him, surprised.

"I, just—I'm sorry, I just—been on my feet for two d-days and I just—need some time al-l-lone with him," Merlin whined, only half-feigning his distress and putting his head in his hands. Perhaps he was taking it a bit too far, because he was feeling light-headed, and at this moment of giddy hope, he decided to remember that he actually had been on his feet for two days and hadn't eaten a thing in that time. "Please, Arthur, I'm so tired…"

Arthur opened his mouth to speak, but Gwen beat him to it.

"Of course, Merlin, how selfish of us. We'll just go now. Send for us if there's any change."

Arthur quirked his eyebrow at her, but let her lead him out of the apothecary, anyway. Gwen truly was his better half.

Merlin bolted the door after them and wheeled around.

"So what is it? Is it a healing spell?" Merlin demanded immediately. He took a half-step forward and nearly toppled on his wobbling legs, but Gaius caught him.

"Careful, Merlin!" he admonished, leading him to sit at the table. "You'll need your strength if you're going to be any help to Gwaine," he said, putting a loaf of bread and a small pot of honey in front of Merlin, who began eating like he had never tasted food in his life. "It is not quite a healing spell. It is really more of a—well—it's a sort of a—"

"Gaius!" Merlin exclaimed, banging on the table with equal parts exasperation and urgency.

"It's a dream-walking spell." Gaius frowned.

Merlin laughed. "But, Gaius, there's no such—" he began, until he saw the serious look on the physician's face, and he swallowed the mouthful of bread and the 'thing' he was going to add.

"I'm afraid there is, Merlin, and it is a very dangerous spell. I nearly lost my life once in an attempt. You are much more powerful than I ever was, though, so I hope it will be less troublesome for you, but…still, it will not be easy. It is more or less up to his dreams."

"What does that even mean?" Merlin said, gulping at the glass of milk Gaius handed him. "This isn't even a magical fever, I don't understand why—"

"I know it sounds like nothing you have ever done before, Merlin, but you must trust me," Gaius explained. "Sometimes, when an illness is this strong, fevered dreams can consume the patient, and they die from massive trauma brought on as much by the heat of the fever as by their own imagination, and even if they survive, they will often never recover. The strength of his dreams will determine whether you can draw him out of them or not,"

"So…wait, what? I'm going to go…inside Gwaine's head?"

"In a way, yes. Your mind will. You will be dream-walking inside his mind." He went on as Merlin tried to follow this. "You will need to take something with you: a token of some kind to ground Gwaine and help bring him back. If he does not come with you of his own free will, he will not come back at all."

"Look, Gaius—magic is one thing: but this? This is all…allegorical and…weird…"

"And it's our only chance," Gaius concluded.

Merlin nodded, slowly, considering his options—which were really only one option—and, draining the last of his milk, he stood up.

"Okay." Merlin cast about the room, in thought. "I'll take his pendant," he said, snatching it from the bedside table. "He always wears it, so, I don't know if—it might be enough." There was also a withered apple sitting forgotten in a wooden bowl. It didn't look exactly appetizing to Merlin, but Gwaine loved apples, and was known to eat even worm-bitten ones without a thought. "And I'll take this," he said with a chuckle. "If nothing else will lure Gwaine out, I'm sure food will do the trick," he tried, with a poor attempt at a laugh.

Gaius was mixing a potion and didn't seem to be paying Merlin any attention.

Merlin went to sit beside his friend. He was suddenly struck with a wave of intense guilt. He had told Gwaine—promised him, even—that he wouldn't dream. Gwaine actually shouldn't have dreamed (but then, neither should Morgana have dreamed with all the potions Gaius gave her, yet always did anyway) but it was clear, even worn down as he was, practically catatonic, that Gwaine was still dreaming.

And these dreams did not seem pleasant. Gwaine's eyelids fluttered faintly, his fingers twitched, and his breath hitched in gasps or muffled cries. He was physically too weak to wake, too exhausted to hold the dreams back. It was painful to watch, not least because Merlin felt so awfully guilty.

Gaius handed him a potion. It looked worse than it smelled, but that wasn't saying much. "This is it?" Merlin asked.

"Yes. And I will guide you in. You need to quell the fever, and don't let Gwaine focus on the dreams. You must get him to follow you. Beyond this I cannot help you."

Merlin absorbed the instructions, then nodded.

"Gaius, when—when you did this, before—how did it end?"

Gaius' face flashed pain. "I failed. But you will not, I hope. Now drink up, we haven't much time," he said, and as Merlin downed the foul-tasting potion, began to chant:

"Swefnu gefremminge habbaþ…"

Merlin was spinning, falling, spiraling downwards, lost, until—

BAM!

He hit the ground hard, as though he had fallen off a wall flat onto his back. It was dark, here, wherever he was. And very warm. Way too uncomfortably warm.

Merlin was in Gwaine's mind. He tried to ignore how weird that was, and focused on the quest at hand.

It really was sweltering. If this was how bad Gwaine's fever felt to him, Merlin didn't really blame Gwaine for giving up the fight.

"Colian," he said, and sent a magic breeze that wasn't very effective through the—room? Could Gwaine's mind be called a room? There was a dim light from somewhere, but it wasn't enough, so Merlin added, "Leoht." A blue orb of light appeared in his hand, and at his bidding floated above his head, but it was dim and flickering, much weaker than it should have been. Exerting his magic, he tried to extend the reach of illumination, and again to cool the room, but it was like trying to move the ocean with a spoon: he was quickly exhausted and it had done very little good.

Still, with the bit of added light, Merlin discovered that it was a room, or at least appeared that way. In fact, completely unsurprisingly, it looked like the inside of a tavern. Merlin might have laughed, if he had been here under very different circumstances. It wasn't quite recognizable as the Rising Sun, but seemed more to be an amalgamation of taverns, perhaps, even, from all over the world or wherever Gwaine had actually been. There was a blazing fire at the opposite end of the room, from whence all the heat came. The whole room was full of vague, shadowy figures drinking and carousing, but who clearly weren't quite all the way there: and while, now Merlin listened, he could barely make out the background drone of a busy pub, the figures had no faces and themselves made no noise. They were tempting company, perhaps, but not real—Merlin wondered briefly, painfully, if Gwaine went through much of his life like this, surrounded by people but always alone—just shadows. It was still uncomfortably warm and damp despite Merlin's best efforts, but other than this it appeared to be just a normal tavern.

Then Merlin saw the dreams.

They featured, here, as woven tapestries hanging on the walls. Merlin wouldn't have looked twice at them except he caught movement out of the corner of his eye

—An old man gripping a woman by the hair, shouting, her crying, while a small, dark-haired, suspiciously familiar-looking boy shoved him, and, "You leave my mother alone, you son of a bitch!" he shouted until the man backhanded him, sending the child sprawling to the ground, weeping—

Once Merlin had peered closely at one of the tapestries, it was too late, it had drawn him in, and then he had to look at them all, each more horrific than the last:

—The same little boy, again, taking up his father's dagger and, defending his mother, stabbing the man who dared to replace his father and hurt his mother. The boy's hands were bloody and the woman held her to him, sobbing. "You have to run, Gwaine. They'll come for you." She put something silver into his hand, embraced him and kissed him. "You have to run, my boy, and don't look back." Not for the last time, Gwaine ran—

—"Shame about the Lady Anna," a bartender was telling the same boy, who was definitely too small to be drinking that enormous pint in front of him, though whoever ran this establishment didn't seem to care, "executed for murdering her husband, she was, just last week."—

—The same boy, a little older, cutting a nobleman's purse-strings: being caught, and thrown into a black, dank dungeon—

—"My husband is too old to produce an heir," a baroness telling an older (but still young, still so young-looking) Gwaine. "But you are young, and strong," and the way she was touching him was uncomfortable to watch, "and if you can help me, I might see a way to your release from prison." As soon as they got to the bed Merlin looked away—

—"Ten gold florins to the last man standing!" a man shouts in a boxing ring at a fair, as Gwaine sizes up against a towering mountain of muscle—

—"You look like you'd be good in a fight. We're raiding the next village over, and there's good money in it. Can I buy you a drink?"—

—Gwaine coughing up blood in a forest somewhere, huddled against a tree in the dark until he woke, seeming disappointed he wasn't dead, and with shaking hands built a fire and bound up his chest wound himself—

—"I swear, mate, I didn't know she was your sister," Gwaine was telling an irate man, dodging his sloppy punches as they danced around a tavern, "there's hardly a family resemblance!" The crowd laughed as the man connected with a lucky hit, and Gwaine's eyes grew suddenly cold. "Not that I'd care if I did know!" he said, and broke a chair across the man's teeth to the roar of the crowd—

—Gwaine watching Merlin and Arthur riding into Camelot, the only place in the whole wide world he was not permitted to go, insisting to himself and his horse and the sky that he did not even care to go there, and was not alone, and going to the tavern to prove it, where, "No, I can't pay for the bloody drinks, leave me the hell alone," were Gwaine's famous last drunken words before he was beaten to a pulp and tossed out into the mud and the rain—

—"I'll love you until I die," Gwaine, with that characteristic snake-charming smile of his, was promising girl after girl after girl after girl, different every time, every single time a different girl, "or until the next one comes along," adding under his breath—

—Gwaine beating the holy hell out of Leon, and trying to do the same to Merlin and Gwen, while under the enchantment of the Lamia, over and over the scene played out—

—"You shall have your supper," Morgana was sneering, "if you're prepared to sing for it." The rest was a blur of violence and motion, as if time had sped up, and sound was magnified, so that Merlin heard every skull shatter and every spine snap until oceans could not wash away the blood on Gwaine's hands and you could see it in his eyes when no one was looking—

With a huge gasp like he had been trapped underwater, Merlin wrenched himself away, tears rimming his eyes. He felt ill. Dreams weren't plaguing Gwaine's rest: memories were! They were too clear and too horrible not to be. While some of them—many of them—he didn't want to know about, many others he only wished he had known of sooner. He was mad at Gwaine, though only for a moment, for keeping all of this hidden and pretending to be so blasted cheerful all the time. It made him ache.

There were, conspicuously, no happy images here. Presumably they existed—some had to exist—but there were none here. Merlin could easily believe that Gwaine had experienced, and apparently caused, his fair share of misery, but Merlin could not believe that Gwaine had no pleasant memories at all. This wasn't right.

He had to get Gwaine out of here now.

"Gwaine?" Merlin whispered, quietly searching the room full of faceless people. Was he in here somewhere? "Gwaine!" he tried a little louder, wiping the sweat out of his eyes as he moved through the crowd of ghosts.

Merlin listened, quiet. At first, nothing. Nothing over the screaming tapestries, the faraway background pub sounds and the roar of the too-warm fire in the corner.

"Isgebind," Merlin waved his hand over the fire, and the flames were soon locked in ice, fire frozen into a wild shape. The room began to cool immediately. But the ice cracked in places, just as immediately, the fire too strong to be held back for long. So it was with a renewed sense of urgency that Merlin sought Gwaine.

And Merlin found him. The knight was sitting in a corner table, clearly trying to hide from the crowd—something Gwaine never did in a tavern—and his posture was resigned and wilted—something Gwaine never was, ever. He was playing listlessly with the tankard on the table before him, staring at it, feeling the handle, not drinking, but other than this, he didn't move, except occasionally when his eyes were drawn, against his will, to the not-real-people or the tapestry-memories. He was clad in only thin breeches, though whether this was symbolic of the current vulnerable state of his mind, or he had simply taken his clothes off because of the heat in the room, Merlin couldn't tell. He was slouching, hunched-over, and looked so defeated and unlike his normal self that it made the hairs on the back of Merlin's neck stand up.

"G-Gwaine?" Merlin tried.

Gwaine didn't look at him—did not even seem to have heard him. Merlin was just about to try again when Gwaine's voice—raw-sounding, like it had either been worn out screaming or else was scratchy from disuse—answered him, "I don't care anymore," without even looking up.

"Wh-what?" Merlin's mouth flapped for a few seconds. "Gwaine! Yes you do, you have to!"

"No. I actually don't." Merlin was getting goose-bumps all over: this simply didn't sound like Gwaine! He sounded ghostly, two-dimensional, as if all the life had been sucked out of him. Gwaine laughed dryly, his tone sarcastic: "I'm going to die in a tavern drinking water," for emphasis he splashed a bit out of his tankard onto the table, which practically boiled away in the heat of the room. "I'm beyond caring."

"Gwaine, you have to snap out of it!" Merlin insisted, putting his hand on the table. "We've got to get you out of here!"

Gwaine shook his head. "I'm cashing in while I've still got something to play with: I've got a home, I've got friends—and that's a huge deal, so excuse me for quitting while I'm ahead." He stared at the tankard and shrugged. "Look, whatever: I'm sorry, okay? What more do you want? I can't make it better, it's too late. That stuff doesn't matter, now." The trying-not-to-cry-grimace on his face told Merlin that Gwaine clearly didn't believe a word he was saying—or perhaps Merlin just hoped that was what it meant. "If you just let me die, I'll take it with me to my grave."

"No, Gwaine," Merlin warned, trying to sound authoritative. "Gwaine, I'm here to help you."

Gwaine scoffed at that. A horrible thought struck Merlin—

"Gwaine, don't you recognize me?"

Gwaine looked up and fixed him with a hollow, withering stare that almost had Merlin jumping out of his skin. Merlin noticed for the first time that tears were standing out on Gwaine's cheeks, blending with the rivers of sweat that ran down his body. "You're my conscience, aren't you?" he squinted, and then shrugged, defaulting again to to not-caring. "Or something. Except I don't have one. Or didn't, have one, until—not until I met—well, for a long time, anyway. It doesn't take a genius to tell wrong from more wrong around here, though," he gestured vaguely from one tapestry to another, "so I don't even need you. Leave me." The 'leave me' rang more as a battlefield I'm-done-for than as a mere dismissal, and it made Merlin shudder.

"Gwaine—" There were so many questions Merlin wanted to ask, but there wasn't time, nor was this the place, and the questions didn't matter, anyway. He shook himself. "No, Gwaine, listen: it's me, it's Merlin. It's actually me, and I'm here to help you."

The ice holding the fireplace shattered, and the flames roared back to life.

Gwaine's transformation was total. Still broken, still lost, still fatalistic, knowing there was no hope—but now also terrified, pained, haunted. His face paled, then flashed through the hot blush of embarrassment and then settled on a green-gray anguish. His eyes grew wide, betrayed, and somehow wildly hurt. He scrambled back, knocked his tankard over, falling off the bench to the floor, before wrenching himself into a crouch that looked like he was either going to fight or flee.

"No!" he wailed, pressing himself against the wall as if hoping he could become part of it. "No, no, no, no, you can't be!" He dove under the table to get away, drawing the overturned bench up to protect him. "Oh, God, please, not you—you weren't supposed to know! You weren't supposed to see!" The walls cracked in places and the ground shook: the fire flared up, devouring more of the tavern, advancing on them. The heat was growing unbearable, was licking at the nearby tables, beginning to consume the room.

Merlin leaped back at this outburst, but now returned, shouting back, "Gwaine, it's all right! What's wrong?"

Gwaine looked around feverishly, perhaps assessing his chances of escape, and finding them slim to none, simply collapsed back against the wall, in his fortress of mead benches, breathing as heavily as a frightened rabbit. "Merlin, please, you can't be here," Gwaine pleaded, desperate, panicked, and broken all at once.

"Why, Gwaine? Why can't I be here?"

Shuddering, Gwaine turned himself toward the wall, toward the fire, panting in fear, almost begging it to consume him. "You'll hate me," he whispered. "And I don't want to die alone."

That stopped Merlin dead. In the near-silence that followed, he tried to figure out how to answer that. It took Merlin an even longer while to reconcile the new sound emanating from Gwaine with what he knew to be true of his friend, because Merlin had literally never heard such a noise before. It sounded—and looked—impossible. Sure, Gwaine was emotional—he would get all misty-eyed whenever Merlin or anyone showed him any kind of affection, it was just his way, and most people thought it was kind of endearing, actually—but this was something Merlin had assumed Gwaine was physically incapable of doing: crying openly. Bawling, really, like he would never stop, sobbing so hard Merlin wasn't sure he was breathing anymore.

Merlin was at a loss for some time as to what to do, or even what to think of this scene, which was somehow worse than all of the tapestries combined. He just stood there, unmoving, watching, not believing, letting Gwaine cry, until he shook himself sternly. "Gwaine?" he said, quietly, as tenderly as he could.

No reaction. Gwaine just went on sobbing, trying to curl in on himself.

"Gwaine…" Merlin felt tears running down his own cheeks, and without another moment's hesitation he plunged under the table after Gwaine.

Gingerly, he touched Gwaine's shuddering shoulder, and though Gwaine flinched, like a dog expecting to be beaten, he did not otherwise move. Now that Merlin was close, he could feel Gwaine's heart pounding furiously in his chest, and heard Gwaine's whispered litany: I'm sorry, don't hate me, I'm sorry, please don't leave me, I'm sorry between the sobs.

"Gwaine, I'm so sorry, I didn't mean to—" Merlin tried, but that must not have been what he wanted to hear, because Gwaine only wailed louder and wept harder.

Then, "I forgive you," Merlin said. It sounded stupid, though he meant it, but it was all he could think to say. Maybe it was the only right thing to say:

The crying stopped, replaced by a gasp for air.

"You c-can't," Gwaine moaned, still begging. "Not worth it. Don't deserve it."

Merlin was getting frustrated again. "You don't deserve it? Gwaine, what do you think I'm doing here? Forgiveness isn't something you can deserve, that's not the point: it's something other people give you because you're their friend."

Gwaine looked up, met Merlin's eyes for the first time. The knight's eyes were bloodshot and puffy, though some hope had returned to them, making them shine.

"Do you think I would be here if I didn't forgive you?" Merlin added, softer, gentler. "If you weren't my friend?"

Gwaine shrugged, sniffled, wiped at his eyes and nose furiously with his arm, looking for all the world like a small boy trying to insist he wasn't crying. He seemed speechless, so Merlin spoke again, trying to make light of the situation, anything to get Gwaine to snap out of it: "Do you want to come out from underneath this table, now?"

Gwaine sniffed again, choked out a laugh as if he felt suddenly silly, and nodded. Merlin offered him a hand, and, after a painful pause, Gwaine took it. Merlin led his friend out from under the table and benches until they sat, worn out and tear-stained, on the floor in the middle of the room.

The tapestries were plain, blank, empty. The shadows had disappeared.

"Am I dreaming this?" Gwaine asked, unsteadily. His shoulders were hunched over, and he looked very tired, though not as lifeless as before.

But before Merlin could answer, the fire roared, back with a vengeance, seizing its final chance to destroy them. Gwaine cried out, whether in fear, in pain, or simply because he was startled by the sudden immediacy of their danger. It evoked a fiercely protective instinct Merlin had never really felt before toward Gwaine, and his eyes flashed gold. He formed a wall of ice before them, but it was neither as tall nor as thick as he had instructed it to be, and he found himself struggling to hold it up.

Gwaine's response surprised Merlin: "Cool!"

Merlin looked at him, in confusion and alarm, and no little stress. "That's all you can say? You find out I have magic and all you say is 'cool'?" he demanded, a little manically.

Gwaine looked offended. "Oh, I'm sorry. Were we still pretending I don't know you have magic?"

Merlin bridled. The wall of ice cracked under the pressure. "You…what?"

"I won't tell your secret if you don't tell mine," Gwaine was now grinning impishly, seemingly unaware of the danger.

"That's not funny!" Merlin cried, his magic wavering. "Wait—Gwaine, where are you going? What are you—doing?"

Merlin ducked as one of the ale barrels was launched over his head.

"No, wait, don't!" Merlin cried, bracing for a flare-up as alcohol connected with flame—

Which never came. The liquid splashed out, dousing a section of the flames and soaking the wood in…

"What a dive," Gwaine admonished, as he went down the line of ale, wine, and whiskey barrels, knocking the tops off one by one, shaking his head though he was still grinning widely. "Not a drop of alcohol in the whole damn place. Nothing to drink here but barrels and barrels of water…"

Merlin let out a huge breath of relief, returning the grin sheepishly. Of course. In Gwaine's head it would be that simple, wouldn't it?

"Ironies abound," Merlin said.

Between the two of them working, the fire was quickly reduced to smoldering ashes.

Gwaine took a deep, trembling breath as he surveyed what was left of his mind, and his grin faded, and he stumbled. Merlin gripped his arm, steadying him, as he turned to Merlin a bit sadly. "Merlin, I don't know what's going on out there, but I don't think I'll…make it," Gwaine seemed strangely calm and unafraid. "Thank you for what you've done, but…you should probably go."

"I will," Merlin said firmly. "And you're coming with me."

"But, Merlin—" Gwaine began, but Merlin cut him off.

"But nothing, Gwaine!" Merlin bellowed. "Percival's heartbroken, Arthur blames himself, Leon can't sleep, Gaius won't look me in the eye, and Gwen…" Merlin trailed off. "If you leave them like that, Gwaine, that's something I could never forgive you for!"

Gwaine set his jaw and struggled with that a moment, his signature my-paradigm-is-shifting-confused-pout (usually reserved for when people like Arthur changed what he believed about nobility) on his face, then nodded.

"But how, Merlin? I don't know how to get out of here. There's no door."

Merlin turned out his pockets.

Gwaine stared at the objects Merlin presented to him. "How's a wrinkly old apple and my necklace going to help us get out of here?" he scoffed.

Merlin wavered for the first time. "Er. Gaius said we needed them to help, er, ground you? That they might make it easier to find your way back?" Feeling a little silly, Merlin hastily placed the tokens in Gwaine's hands. "Something worth living for?"

Gwaine stared at the objects in his hands for a few more seconds before throwing them to the ground and practically falling forward to envelope Merlin in a desperate, clinging hug.

"Not those things," Gwaine said simply, the strength in his grip speaking volumes about what was worth living for.

Slowly, shocked, and starting to cry again, Merlin returned the hug.

Merlin was the first to speak. "Okay. Let's go."

Gwaine hissed, suddenly, recoiling back from his friend in favor of wrapping his arms around his middle. "Agh, damn it!" he cursed, adding a few more colorful phrases as Merlin bent over him, alarmed:

"Gwaine! Gwaine, what's—"

Gwaine pulled his hand back from his middle, revealing it soaked in blood.

"Gwaine!" Merlin squeaked.

"No, no, it's okay," Gwaine said, grasping Merlin's sleeve with one hand while the other stayed around his middle. "I think this is okay."

"How is this okay, Gwaine?"

Gwaine shrugged, though he doubled over and groaned again. "It's an improvement from not feeling anything."

Realization struck Merlin, along with a bit of panic. "This is it, then? You think we're going back?"

Gwaine nodded, in too much pain to speak.

Merlin felt himself growing dizzy. The room was spinning, he was falling, leaving as he had come. "Gwaine!" Merlin grabbed Gwaine by the face, forced him to look at him. "Gwaine, no matter what happens, don't you dare give up, you understand? I don't want to have gone to all this trouble for nothing," he added, trying to laugh, but tears sprang to his eyes instead. "Please, Gwaine, don't leave me."

Gwaine clasped Merlin's shoulder and managed a wry grin: "I wouldn't dream of it," he said, winked, and Merlin was gone.

…

A/N: Wow, monster chapter! Thanks again to EffervescentAardvark for her consultation on this chapter. We'll see how the boys get on and wrap things up here soon in the next chapter. Thanks, as always, to those who reviewed, alerted, or favorited, and also thanks to those who read!