Oh gosh. I know I have no excuse for posting this late... Um, enjoy? I'm so, so, so sorry for not updating sooner, but I promise I will work on that. Anyway, this chapter has taken too long to get up so... disclaimer!

Disclaimer: I claim ownership to nothing you recognize as cannon.

Onto the story my lovelies!

Previously:

Back at the camp, Merlin was drying off near the newly built fire. Turns out the article of clothing near the pool was Gwaine's shirt. Great. Speaking of shirts, his was soaking wet. Peeling off the offending article along with his trademark neckerchief, he hung them to dry near the fire as well. Turning to add more wood to stoke up the fire, he heard Gwaine waking up behind him

"Oi Merlin, I just wanted to say-" Gwaine cut himself off when he saw Merlin's back.

Merlin stiffened when he heard Gwaine come up behind him. Since his shirt wasn't on his upper half was exposed, as well as the scars that covered him from before and after he came to Camelot. All in all he knew for a fact that his back was a mess, with the various whippings he had endured throughout the years along with the serkhet sting he had acquired a few years ago in the middle of his lower back.

"What happened to you!?" Came Gwaine's strained and horrified cry.

Merlin sighed and reached for his still damp shirt and put it on as to not expose any more scars than the ones his friend had seen.

"I'm not going to get out of this one, am I?" Merlin asked, already knowing the answer.

"You're bloody right you're not. Now spill."

Merlin just turned around his shirt fully on, concealing the scars.

"Most of them are from before I came to Camelot. I wasn't the most... liked person in Ealdor. Some of the people who disliked me took it a little far sometimes." Merlin said. He may not be the best liar, but technically those weren't lies; he wasn't the most liked person in Ealdor, tending to want to stay by himself. He also didn't have a father, something that was very frowned upon especially in a small town like the one he grew up in. Some of the scars he had were from when people in Ealdor took it a little too far. He winced a little at the memories.

"And the Serket's sting? Don't try to lie to me, I know what they look like. I've had friends who were stung before. None of them made it." Gwaine said sadly. Merlin winced. He knew he would have to be careful with this part.

"That's a little more complicated. See, when Morgause tried to take over Camelot the first time she had Morgana help her. I couldn't tell anyone because nobody would have believed me, so I kept it to myself. I then followed Morgana one night and Morgause caught me. She then chained me up and left me to die. I don't remember much that happened after the Serkets surrounded me, but I woke up in a Druid camp a little while later. I was still weak, but I had enough strength to make the trek back to Camelot. Arthur doesn't know that part of the story so please don't tell him." Merlin added that last part quickly, knowing that Gwaine would probably go to Arthur with this story.

He could see the calculating look on Gwaine's face and was sure he was going through scenarios in his head about what would happen if he told Arthur. Then after a moment, Gwaine moved to stand beside Merlin and lifted the hair from the nape of his neck. Without the hair there, you could see what looked like… a brand?

"I-I don't understand. What happened to you?" Merlin asked, a little afraid of the answer he would get.

"Back when I was still wandering around I was caught by slave traders. Now normally slaves would be branded on their chests or something, but these traders were special." Merlin stiffened at the tone of his voice. He could tell where this conversation was headed.

"You don't have to tell me Gwaine; really it's fine." He said uncomfortably.

"No," Gwaine said, grimacing a little, "I shouldn't have forced you to tell me; besides, it might be good to get this off my chest. I've never told anyone about what happened to me. If I can't tell my best friend, who can I tell?" He took a bit of a breath before speaking, "These slavers were prostitutes. They'd catch pretty looking people and sell them out to men and women for a 'fun night.' Those nights weren't very fun for me though. Because of my constant exercise and travel, I was one of the better looking ones, so I was constantly in demand to 'customers.' Most of those customers were nobles too. Just made me hate them all the more. I was with them for about six months before someone betrayed the ring from the inside and let all the slaves loose. I've never been more grateful to someone in my whole life for getting me out of that hell. I still visit her sometimes, if my traveling routes take me close to her village." Gwaine seemed a little tired after he finished the story, and that's when he realized that the fire was dying down a little and he could hear Arthur and the rest of the knights coming back. They had been talking for at least a half an hour now. He handed Gwaine his now dry shirt, tied on his neckerchief, and walked away without another word.

Falcon arrived in the Grove just before nightfall. He had been pacing himself and made better time than he thought he would. The first thing he did when he got there was scout out the most probable places for the king and his knight's campsite, then he made his own in a place where nobody would think to even go. That was how these kinds of missions always went; a one man ambush was more effective than you might think. Falcon always put his bed up in a tree. It originally started as a joke; on the first mission they went on together Wolf had put his sleeping mat in a tree and Falcon had camped in trees ever since, to keep the joke going of course, not like he liked sleeping in the trees or anything. He started thinking about his friend again. When Wolf had told him his real name, he had started separating the two.

Wolf was the cold-hearted assassin who stopped at nothing to get the job done, while Merlin was the goofy clumsy boy who was kind to anyone and anything that crossed his path. The differences he found between the two were so dynamic, if he had known only one side of his friend he would have never guessed that the other half of his personality existed. His friend sure was a puzzle. He remembered when he had first figured out Merlin had magic.

It had started out on a regular training day. Since Falcon was still a new recruit, he had a hard time trusting anyone he saw, yet he felt a strange bond with the strange raven haired boy that slept next to him in the barracks. When he had first been assigned that spot, he had just been 'broken in' as Jackal seemed to love calling it, and the boy next to him gave him the first kind smile he had seen since he got to this place. After having spent a few weeks next to this odd little boy, Wolf he remembered, they seemed to bond. Now while Falcon had been raised in the Assassin's Lands, he hadn't had very much exposure or training for being a criminal of any kind. When his parents had died, he was sent to the orphanage to be trained. He had refused to answer to any name other than the one his mother had given to him. That was a big mistake. Now that he had learned how things worked in the orphanage, he quickly mastered his training, moving up in skill until he was sparring with Wolf. Wolf was always a match for him, they both seemed to have natural talent for the skills they were learning. The masters quickly learned that the boys were a match made in heaven, when paired together in training exercises they always set new records, doing things in ways that would seem unconventional but worked. Wolf, as clumsy as he was, always seemed to have extremely good luck. It was that day he would learn it wasn't luck. They were playing a game like hide and seek, with Falcon and Wolf as the seekers. The other trainees in their age group would go hide in the woods and the two seekers would have to find and immobilize everyone else, while avoiding the traps that the Masters had set up in the woods. They had to find one more person when Wolf tripped on some sort of wire that made the ground crumble from beneath them.

"How did the Masters manage this!?"

So... Hehehe. Please R&R, leave comments about what you think will happen next, see you soon (hopefully)!

And as always, thanks to my lovely beta, Ladyliz2! Goodbye.

-Shadowranger