Once more I find myself apologising for a unforgivably long delay. That's what happens when you start an epic in the middle of writing your thesis...Sincerest apologies once more, but I hope you enjoy the penultimate chapter all the same, and love to everyone who reviewed, you've really kept me going!

A/N I was too lazy to try and translate all the Latin in this chapter, so it appears in italics. Hope it's clear enough.

Some language and description of injuries in this chapter, as usual. Oh, and the fact that bits of this chapter are so fluffy that reading it might be like someone trying to choke you to death on a pink kitten wrapped in candyfloss. Consider yourselves warned...

Chapter Thirteen – All We Need Now Is Time

For a long time there was nothingness, interspaced with fragmented patches of light and colour, and usually sensations of heat or pain. Gawain heard voices, snatches of conversation real and remembered and half made up; Latin, English, Pictish, even Saxon. Occasionally he heard his own name, but he couldn't respond. It was so hot, even breathing was hard, and there was the smell of something rotten in the air.

"Gawain, can you hear..."

"...badly infected..."

"Dear God, a wolf bite?"

"...had help. He couldn't have stitched this himself..."

"…he going to make it?"

"…I'm sorry…"

"Easy, Gawain," came Kai's quiet voice, and he rolled his head, fitfully trying to turn towards the sound. Something blissfully cool was wiped over his forehead and pulled him back down into darkness.

He fought wolves. Thousands and thousands of them on the edge of a deep river filled with staring dead-eyed woads. Galahad stood by his side.

"Fight it, Gawain. I know you can. We're all here. Don't let go now. Not after everything."

"Hold his arms!" Someone was saying. It was a good voice, familiar. One that meant safety.

"I've got him! Lancelot, can you..."

"Gawain, be still, it's alright-"

"Can he even hear you?"

"It's the fever..."

"Please, Gawain!"

The forest went on forever. He'd never escape, wandering on and on until he wore through and crumbled into dust. But then the Woads caught him and tied him up and shouted at with words he didn't understand. Something was being pushed against his mouth. The Woads were going to kill him... poison...He turned his head away, painfully,

"Knight! Will you just drink it! This is ridiculous."

Not a good voice. Latin. Arthur spoke Latin, but not angrily like this, and never to them. An enemy, then. Gawain kept his mouth closed.

"'e's more likely to listen if you don't tie him down an' yell at him!"

"What? What are you jabbering on about now? Go away! Stop coming to this room, he doesn't need lots of people confusing him when he's delirious like this."

Another voice. Sarmatian again, another brother. "No, Roman. What he needs is care and patience and his friends. That will heal him much faster than your Roman potions. Give me the cup."

Perceval, ever the philosopher.

"I have no idea what you're saying, barbarian, but if you want to waste your time here, be my guest. I have other patients to attend to."

He heard footsteps and movement, and then someone was beside him, tugging at his sore wrists. Gawain opening his eyes to see nothing but blurry shadows. He tried to move but it was too hard now. Bors's comforting rumble and a steadying hand on his chest calmed him.

"Hold still, Gawain, I'm just takin' these restraints off. Bloody Romans."

"Here," said Perceval quietly, tilting the cup to his mouth. "You've made your point, Gawain, so stop being stubborn. We'll sit here all day if we have to. Not going anywhere."

If he thought he could manage it, Gawain would have smiled. He drank all the water instead, because Perceval asked him to.

He vomited it straight back up all over Bors shortly after, but that wasn't the point.

Time passed and now there were arguing voices, loud and painful, too many and too close.

Crash.

"What! What the hell?"

"Arthur!"

"Don't you even think about it, you little shit!"

"Arthur, if he even tries it, I swear..."

"Knights, I know how you feel, but - "

Someone cut over Arthur, in Latin. "What's wrong with them? Don't they understand, if I don't do this, the Knight will die! I'm trying to help him!"

"No! I'm with Bors. If you even touch Gawain again, medicus, I'll kill you myself..."

"Galahad! Calm down, you're not helping."

"Don't tell me to calm down, Ector! I can't believe you're even considering this...Kai, let me go!"

"No-one likes this anymore that you, Galahad, so stop taking your anger out on everyone else. This is hard enough as it is."

"Arthur!"

"Everyone, stop, right now. Lancelot, Galahad...I would rather almost anything else than this. But one of the only things I would not rather is for Gawain to die. We've only just got him back! We... I can'tlose him again. I won't. I'm no healer, but even I can see the infection is spreading. If amputating his arm saves his life, then I will order it done. I'd do anything to save him."

"That won't save him, Arthur! You'll kill him, as surely as if you'd shot him yourself."

"Watch your tongue, Pup..."

"He won't die from losing an arm, Galahad. If this last week proves anything, it's that Gawain's a survivor."

"No. No, this...this procedure would kill him. He couldn't live like that. I know it."

"At least have Dagonet look at him! A second opinion, Arthur..."

"I was going to suggest that, Lancelot, before you all started threatening to kill everyone! Just calm down. Tristan, go find him."

Gawain drifted off to sleep again as the voices quietened, but woke as irate Latin flowed over him. It really was a horrible language.

"You can't be serious, Artorius! What is that barbarian going to know that -"

"Cipio, you call one of my Knights a barbarian again and there's going to be trouble. Dagonet?"

"Arthur." There was a creak of leather, and someone sat down by his side. Gawain felt a large, gentle hand on his sweat-dampened forehead for a moment, before it moved to his shoulder and arm, cool against his burning skin. He couldn't help issuing a soft noise of pain as Dagonet inspected the festering wound.

"It's alright, Gawain." Dagonet murmured automatically, and squeezed his wrist gently, before standing and turning away. There was silence in the room, though Gawain could muzzily hear the Knights' breathing. Waiting.

"It won't help."

There was s scrape as several people stood up.

"What? What did he say, Artorius?"

"What do you mean? Is he going to be alright?"

"I didn't say that, Galahad. He's very weak. A procedure like amputation would do as much harm as good."

"Artorius, don't listen to this! We need to amputate, or the infection will spread and your man will die! He is weak and getting worse, too weak to fight this!"

"It's not going to happen, Arthur, so forget it! I won't let him..."

"Dag, are you saying he has as much chance either way?"

"Yes, Kai, far as I can tell. Arthur. Your call."

At this point, Gawain decided things had gone on long enough. He gave a faint cough and turned his head, blinking bleary eyes open. The world swam dizzily but he could just make out Galahad and the Knights at the end of the bed, and Arthur and Cipio the Roman medicus to one side.

"He's awake?"

"Shit, we shouldn't have been having this conversation in here..."

"Gawain?"

Dagonet ignored the others and crouched back down beside him, squeezing his hand as Galahad bounded up on his other side.

"Gawain?"

Gawain coughed again, and mumbled something at his friends. Galahad leaned in.

"Say again, Gawain?"

Gawain repeated himself, and then closed his eyes tiredly as Galahad patted his good shoulder.

"It's alright Gawain. Don't worry about it."

He heard Dagonet stand and turn back to the others.

"What did he say?" demanded Kai.

"Message for Cipio..." Gawain could almost hear Galahad smiling.

And then Dagonet repeated his message for the Roman, but in perfect Latin.

"Gawain said; 'Too weak to fight? Fuck you, Cipio. I like my arm.'"

Gawain fell asleep to the sound of the medicus's splutterings of anger and Bors's guffawing laughter.

His fever broke a day later. It was a turning point, but there was still a long way to go. He might be out of the physical woods, but the metaphorical ones loomed yet.

Despite Gawain's inability to stay awake for more than about an hour at a time, the Knights seemed to have made the Valetudinarium their new gathering place. He didn't know if it was chance or design, but there was always someone there when he woke up, and he was absurdly grateful for it.

When they were around the sick room, the other Knights did a lot of talking. Gawain had been treated to the full story of Arthur's injury, Lancelot's incarceration, Tristan's death threats to Arpagius and how Arthur finally threw the General out of the fort; though he wasn't sure how much was embellishment and how much had been left out. Arthur himself had told him about the Knights confinement to the fort and their desperate search for Gawain, though none of the Knights would speak of that part of the tale.

"It was...not good," was the only description Ector offered, with a quick glance at Galahad. Gawain decided he really didn't want to know anymore.

Gawain was, of course, pressed for details of his own 'adventure'. He told them of the forest journey and the battle with the wolves, Excalibur, and a little of his capture in the Woads' camp. He felt oddly reluctant to talk about how Fiachra and Rian had saved his life, and finally settled for saying he escaped. At first he wondered if he was ashamed, and then he realised. One day, one of the Knights, Gawain himself even, might kill one of them, the Woads that had rescued him from death. Or one day they might kill a Knight. He didn't know how he felt about that, so he kept quiet and said nothing.

Five days after dragging himself from the forest, the infection was still refusing to abate, and Gawain hovered on the edge of fever once more. The medicus and Dagonet finally agreed the wound in his shoulder had to be cauterized, a procedure that left him weaker than a new born foal and sick to his stomach. Arthur and Dagonet stayed by his side the whole time, but finally it was over.

He woke on the evening of the sixth day to quiet conversation and to Dagonet binding his shoulder. The big Knight smiled slightly.

"The infection is purged, Gawain. All we need now is time." Gawain nodded, in relief. He mostly been unaware as the fever ran its course, but knowing he'd been close to losing his arm was horrifying. Galahad had been right about that. He couldn't have lived that way for long. After all what use was a one armed soldier, and he was nothing else.

He looked past Dagonet to see his other brothers-at-arms gathered about the room. The empty beer flagons by Galahad, Lancelot, Ector and Bors and dice game in full swing between them were evidence that they'd been there for a while. Kai seemed to be in the midst of whittling something and Perceval, the learned one, was writing something in the corner.

"Don't you lot have some Woads to be killing?" he grumbled, but not ungratefully. He shifted uncomfortably, his shoulder hurt as badly now as when the wound was new.

Lancelot snorted. "We're not the ones lying around in bed all day," he said, but Gawain knew what he meant. The others made no move to leave either, just grinning at him. He let out a sigh, and resigned himself to a lot of enforced company over the next few weeks. He didn't really mind, after all.

"Actually," said Tristan, who had somehow appeared in the doorway, "Some of us do know how to do real work. I'm off, scouting for Arthur."

"Where?"

"I think...I'll go south. Stay well, Gawain. You-" Tristan pointed his knife at Galahad and Dagonet. "Look after him. Or else." The Knight turned to go.

"Tris..." Gawain called, croakily. The Scout stopped.

"You know any Pictish?"

Galahad looked surprised. Tristan was inscrutable as usual.

"Some. Why?"

Gawain cleared his throat. "What does 'Boothe carden' mean?"

Tristan tilted his head slightly, in a way that reminded Gawain very much of Yseult.

"Why?" He asked, again.

Gawain twisted awkwardly in something that might have been a shrug if he had two functioning shoulders. "It's what the Woads called me. Just wondered what it meant, that's all."

Tristan eyed him impassively for a moment, and then said;

"Buidhecarden. More a description than a name, Gawain. It means 'Yellow Hedge'."

Tristan strode out of the room, leaving Lancelot and Bors nearly choking with laughter behind him. Gawain snorted in mock annoyance and closed his eyes with a smile. He'd never get tired of that sound.

The Knights stayed for the rest of the evening, and it was only when Arthur appeared and insisted they all leave him alone to get some sleep, and didn't they have a mission tomorrow? that they finally stood up to go.

"Gawain," Kai said, and Gawain started, opening his eyes. He'd almost drifted off.

"Yes?" The Knights were still there, watching the conversation.

"Listen, before we go, we just wanted to say..."

"We're sorry!" Galahad blurted out.

"For what?" Gawain croaked, looking about, confused. The Knights shuffled, most refusing to meet his gaze.

"We left you," said Lancelot, finally.

Gawain thought back to that journey from hell, the cold and the pain. He thought of how tired and afraid he was, and at first, how angry at being abandoned. Then he thought of those presences in the forest, the memories that had become real. The voices of his brothers; the wheedling and insulting voices, the encouraging and the determined. The figures that had pushed and supported him and dragged his sorry arse all the miles back to the wall. Gawain knew it might only have been fever that conjured them up, but that didn't make them less real.

"No you didn't," he said with a smile. "You didn't leave me. You were all right there, all along."

TBC.

Thanks my lovelies. One more to go, and I'll see you all at the end x