So, here's the second chapter!

I have good news for you; I have the whole plot ready and the chapters planned! Yay!

So it's just a matter of time before this story is finished.

Oh, I added the spell Merlin used on Gwen in the last chapter. It's the same used in the show: "Yfel gæst ga þu fram þisse lichaman. Biþ hire mod eft freo. Ar ond heofontungol sceal þurhswiþan" that means "You, evil spirit, go away from this body. Her mind is free again. Glory and the heavenly luminary shall prevail". I took it from Merlin Wikia.

I'm warning you: my medical experience is comparable to that of a donkey. So if you notice something impossible happening here, tell me and I'll try to change something.

Oh, there's a description of a wound here, but it's nothing too gory, believe me.

I hope you'll like this chapter, even if there's an awful lack of Merlin... Well, it's centered around the other people.

There will probably be some mistakes, since this story is not beta'd and I'm not a native English speaker. I hope you'll like it anyway.

If someone asked him, Arthur Pendragon would have said that he was having a good day.

For once, there had been no attack from Morgana or from other sorcerers, no declares of war or any kind of threat to Camelot in general. The morning had passed almost placidly, between a long and boring meeting and the training with the knights. Before he could think about it, the moon was rising and the sky was darkening.

He was walking through the corridors, directed to his chambers and ready for a relaxing sleep, when the calmness he had felt throughout the day abruptly slipped from his hands. The silence of the castle, interrupted only by the occasional clang of his armor, was shattered by the sound of a bloodcurdling scream.

He stopped in his tracks, hoping against hope that his mind was playing tricks on him, when he heard another yell, and he began to run towards the voice. He had recognized his wife's voice - her screams were loud and desperate, and he was sure he had never been so scared in his life. He reached their chambers - recognizing it as the place from where Guinevere's voice came from - quickly and ready for the worse, but nothing could have prepared him for the sight that awaited him.

The queen was lying in a pool of blood, crying and sobbing and screaming her throat sore, and was bent over someone who laid still and pale on the once unmarked marble floor. Someone who had a mop of black hair and a brown jacked and a red neckerchief around his neck. Someone who looked like his idiot manservant, like Merlin, and who looked close to death.

The sword he had unsheathed, ready to defend his queen from an eventual attacker, slipped from his shaking hands and clattered noisily on the floor, hitting the ground at the same time his knees did. He reached Guinevere and Merlin, crawling over to them in the span of a heartbeat.

The woman was whispering something between her sobs, and he couldn't understand what she was saying, but her tone reminded him of the one normally used to apologize, even if it was highly improbable - what would she be sorry for?

He quickly discarded those useless thoughts and directed his attention to the other occupant of the room, who was shuddering on the floor, his brow scrunched up in agony. He would open his eyes from time to time - but those bright blue orbs were unfocused, unseeing, already glassy with fever.

After taking a moment to compose himself, he gently removed Guinevere's bloodstained hands from Merlin's chest and put his own shaking ones on it, pressing firmly on the deep cut, trying to stop his servant's lifeblood from pouring out of him. He swallowed the lump of fear that had formed in his throat and looked at the queen, who had ceased sobbing but was staring into nothing, lost in her own mind, while silent tears continued to mark her flushed cheeks like scars.

Her screams had probably alerted the guards - who were near the chambers, but not enough to violate their rulers' privacy - and they burst through the doors with their swords raised. They stopped when they found the two royals covered in blood - but seemingly otherwise unarmed - and looked at each other, unsure of what to do next. Arthur almost threw a fit in witnessing their awfully slow and completely inadequate behavior - he began shouting for them to call the physician, cursing colorfully during all the time they spent out of the room, obeying to his orders.

Gaius arrived after a few minutes - they had seemed centuries to him - running towards them as fast as he could. He crouched beside the servant, his old joints cracking in such a way Arthur couldn't help but flinch at the sound, while the old man could only hear the sound of the rasping breaths of the young man who was like a son to him.

The physician quickly examined his vitals before taking a look at the injury. While he seemed calm on the outside, the shaking of his hands demonstrated that he, too, was scared. He declared that he had to stitch the wound and clean it, but he couldn't do it on the floor, so Arthur readily offered his own bed to him.

While Gaius worked, the room filled with confused guards and concerned knights, whom the blonde threw out with a couple of words and a long list of threats.

Once it was just them - him, his wife, the physician and the unconscious servant - he kept himself busy first taking care of Guinevere, who was still in shock, leading her to sit on a chair before the fire, and then beginning to pace incessantly and in a slightly irritant way.

Gaius finished quickly and turned around - not before laying a tender hand on Merlin's head and running it through the raven locks in a comforting and affectionate gesture. He sighed and took a wooden chair, placing it near the bed and collapsing onto it, exhausted. Arthur sat down on the floor next to him, his back resting on the bedside table.

"Gaius?" he called, uncertain and hating with all himself the slight shake of his voice - he wasn't weak, he wasn't scared and he was definitely not going to cry over a servant. "How is he?"

The old man sighed again and to Arthur he seemed a thousand years older than a few hours prior. "It's difficult to say," he began, "his condition is extremely severe. The dagger has grazed his left lung, creating a tiny hole in it, and causing an abnormality in his respiration. If the air escapes from the lung and into the chest around the lung, the lung can collapse inside the chest. Then, there is the blood loss, quite severe on its own. A small quantity of blood might have entered through the hole, and it may cause an infection," he explained, placing a wet rag on Merlin's forehead to lower his temperature.

"But he'll be alright," Arthur said, and his words were more of a question than an affirmation - he had wanted to sound sure and strong but he hadn't quite managed it.

Gaius lowered his head, making the blonde's heart skip a beat in fear. "As I told you, it's difficult to say. We have to wait until he wakes up," he replied, and the unspoken "if he wakes up" went unnoticed by neither.

But they had to hope Merlin did - for his own sake, because he just deserved it - for Guinevere's, who was almost unrecognizable in her grief and fear - and for their own, because they would probably never recover from his death.

So there they stayed - the old man slumped on a wooden chair, the queen staring at the fire in shock and the king sitting on the cold floor - waiting for a lowly servant and a loyal friend to wake up.

What Gaius explains about lungs is actually true. If you think that it's strange that a medieval physician knows so many things, Gaius is omniscient in my head-canon. Oh, and there are potatoes in Camelot, so screw historical accuracy.

(07/26/2013)