#iktpiml

Lancelot lifted his hand to cup Elyan’s cheek, leaving his fingerprints etched in blood along Elyan’s bone structure like blots on parchment. Elyan was about to ask why nobody had cleaned the blood from his partner’s hands before realising that Merlin and Gwaine had slipped away, Percival was standing guard over Lancelot at a respectful distance and Leon and Arthur were in a fraught discussion on the other side of the clearing. And Elyan had been preoccupied with trying to work out how to ensure Lancelot escaped the flames that had haunted his own nightmares as a child in Camelot.

‘I’m in no fit state to run, love. And we’ve both been running for long enough.’

‘You can’t leave me.’ Lancelot closed his eyes and Elyan’s grip on his body tightened. He knew there was the possibility that all he would soon have left of Lancelot would be the blood smeared across his cheek, but he wasn’t ready for it to be just yet. ‘Lance.’

‘You deserve a good life,’ Lancelot murmured, opening his eyes.

‘I have one. With you.’

‘You deserve to be free from fear, love.’ Lancelot was roaming Elyan’s face with his gaze, as if he was trying to commit it to memory like a gravestone. ‘You deserve that, at least.’

‘And you think sacrificing yourself for me is going to make my life free from fear?’ Elyan whispered sharply. ‘You think that I won’t be in a constant state of panic because I can’t see you and haven’t remembered that you’re not, that you’re not—’ He broke off, swallowing. ‘We could run,’ he said again. ‘Percival is easily persuaded, especially when it comes to you—’

‘Where would we go, Elyan? There’s no place for two disgraced knights of Camelot.’

‘Nemeth. You know Princess Mithian, we could go there.’

‘I wouldn’t want to drag her into this.’ Lancelot draped his arm around Elyan’s back. ‘Please, love, stop. It’ll be okay.’

Elyan closed his eyes. ‘Easy for you to say. You won’t be the one left behind. Please, love. Tell them the truth. It’s not your burden to bear.’

Lancelot’s fingertips were rubbing the bone behind Elyan’s ear. ‘You gave your heart to me, a little while back, and I wanted to give you something in return.’

‘Your life isn’t worth my heart, Lance.’

Even in his weakened state, with the blood matted in the roots of his hair and dusting his forehead, with a scarlet hand still pressed to the bandage around his midriff, Lancelot’s voice was commanding. It had been his voice that Elyan had fallen in love with first, with the way it had reminded him so much of the summer breeze, but all thoughts of love were now overcome with a growing sense of dread.

Arthur’s voice was not commanding. It was disbelieving and verging on desperate. ‘What?’

‘It was me. I used magic to defeat the attackers.’ Lancelot pushed himself further up against the log, face convulsing in pain. ‘I’m dying anyway.’

Beside Lancelot, Merlin flinched violently.

‘You’re not dying,’ Elyan sharply said. ‘And it wasn’t him.’

Gwaine was looking at Lancelot with deep lines running across his forehead. ‘You’re a sorcerer?’ His eyes slid momentarily towards Merlin, who was keeping his gaze deliberately averted. ‘But—’

‘You’re a knight of Camelot,’ Leon broke in. ‘You can’t...’

‘Just because we’re knights of Camelot doesn’t mean we can easily strip away every part of who we are to sacrifice our souls for the crown, for the idea of being worth something,’ Lancelot lowly said. ‘I thought that for a long time. I lost myself to the dream...’ He looked towards Elyan with exhausted eyes. ‘But I can’t lose some parts of me.’

It was rattling the windowpanes, now, and Elyan looked towards the empty bed. He had lost count of the number of bitter nights he and Lancelot had fallen asleep entwined in one another on top of the sheets, shielding each other from the ferocious howling outside. Lancelot, tired but not wanting to force Elyan to get into bed too, would usually curl up on his side, limbs drawn close to his body, and allow his breaths to even out. Elyan, usually absorbed in a book, would absent-mindedly reach out and bury his fingers in Lancelot’s hair, stroking it back from his forehead, and would gradually inch further towards him as the wind threatened to slink in through the subtle cracks in the wall. The repetitive movement would lull Elyan towards unconsciousness and he would abandon his book to turn the pages of Lancelot’s pulse with his fingers and then, together, they would drift off into sleep with their dreams scattered by the candlelight.

A letter had arrived from Princess Mithian one morning, informing Arthur that his representatives of Gwaine and Lancelot still hadn’t arrived in Nemeth. They’d been dispatched four days before to negotiate Gedref on Arthur’s behalf – well, also to give Gwaine the opportunity to see his partner. Not that Arthur was aware of the relationship between Merlin, Gwaine and Mithian after the former two had accidentally committed arson abroad. Had he been, he probably would have been more inclined to allow Merlin to accompany the knights. Instead, it had been Lancelot who had volunteered to join Gwaine and, consequently, it had been Lancelot who had gone missing with him.

Both Merlin and Elyan had immediately taken off for the stables and, staring at his partner, Elyan wished he had done so sooner. It was difficult to find a part of Lancelot’s body that wasn’t covered in blood. Had he said that aloud, Lancelot probably would have made some flirtatious murmur about being sure that Elyan’s hands would know where to find a spot, but Elyan also knew that the blood would be easily transferred across his partner’s form by his frantic touch.

It had taken them two days to track them down in the bandit dwelling they’d been kept in, two days of Elyan darting away from the camp to retch into bushes, two days of Leon or Percival finding him and trying to soothe him, and one day of Merlin joining him with shaking limbs. Things had been calm for weeks, with Uther Pendragon even emerging briefly from his chambers to visit the throne room, but one look at the arms that Morgana’s hands had only recently rested on had been all it had taken for him to retreat, trembling, to his window. It had been all it had taken for those seeking to exploit Camelot’s apparent weakness to strike.

And they had struck Lancelot.