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“Lancelot, what do we do?” Gwen asked. Well, demanded might have been a better word to describe her tone of voice. She wasn’t trying to be rude, but the burden of knowing she would need to take control in a moment was weighing on her as heavily as the man himself leaning against her shoulder. The wound on his leg was bleeding fairly badly despite the hasty bandage she had tied around it, and she could tell that he wasn’t going to be able to stay upright much longer. He’d killed or seriously wounded all of her kidnappers, but there were any number of people who would take advantage of an injured man and woman if they stayed out here in the open. They needed to get to shelter, fast.
“Inn,” he mumbled. “I’ve got money in my purse.”
“Okay.” Okay, that sounded manageable. She could rent them a room, get him lying down, stitch– stitch up his wound, although the thought of it made her gag. Sewing skin couldn’t be too different than sewing fabric, right? “Okay, just stay with me until I can get you upstairs there, okay?” she ordered. Lancelot nodded and they started making their way to the town.
Somehow, they made to the inn and tavern building without him passing out, and Gwen propped him up against the bar inside while she rented them a room. She resolutely ignored the stares and the obvious impropriety of an unmarried couple sharing a room without a chaperone, focusing on the more important task at hand. It wasn’t helped, though, that Lancelot looked drunk instead of injured, since he’d hidden his leg wound under his cloak. She secured one night in a private room, but that was all they had the money for, plus a few pennies left over to buy a little supper. Lancelot leaned on her all the way up the stairs and then passed out before reaching the bed.
Gwaine had been haggling with the bartender about the price of ale when the couple came in, which was why he didn’t take much notice of them at first. When he did look up, however, he was shocked to realize he recognized both of them. Gwen, the beautiful maid from Camelot whom Arthur had taken a liking to, and Lancelot, another fighting man like himself that he’d traveled with for a few weeks about a year previously. Lance hadn’t been much of a drinker in the time they’d spent together, so he was confused by how he leaned against the bar, until Gwen came to help him walk. As they started towards the stairs, he realized that the man wasn’t drunk. He was limping.
Gwaine waited for a minute before sureptitiously following them up the stairs. He knew which room was theirs by the thunk that emanated from it. He knocked and didn’t wait for an answer before opening the door, which might have been a mistake. Gwen slashed at him with a firepoker.
“Gwen, easy, it’s me, it’s Gwaine,” he shouted, jumping backwards. At the name, she let go of the iron rod, which clattered to the floor.
“Gwaine? What are you doing here?”
“I could ask you the same thing,” he countered, before adding. “I saw you and Lancelot, and it looked like you needed help.” Speaking of which, he scanned around for his old traveling companion. The man was laid out on the floor, and his cloak had fallen to the side to reveal a badly bleeding wound on his thigh. “Shit. Seems like I wasn’t wrong. C’mon, let’s get him onto the bed.” Together they were able to lift him and get him onto the mattress. He was unconscious, but moaned as his leg was jostled. After they settled him on his left side, though, Gwaine had no idea what to do. He wasn't a physician! If only Merlin were here instead of them.
"I bandaged it as best I could, but it’s still bleeding," Gwen said, sounding terrified. Gwaine gulped.
"I think we'll have to stitch it closed then," he said. That's what Merlin and Gaius had done with his own thigh wound, received in a bar so similar to this one.
“That’s what I was afraid of,” Gwen said, worrying her bottom lip between her teeth. “I do have a needle with me, from my sewing kit, but I don’t know how to-”
“Hey, we’ll figure it out together, huh?” Gwaine encouraged her. “You get that threaded and everything, and I’ll go back downstairs to buy us some wine to clean the wound.” She nodded decisively, a determined fire blooming in her dark eyes, and by the time he returned with a wine bottle, she was knelt on the bed beside Lancelot’s wounded leg, her tiny sewing scissors in hand as she cut the bandages away and widened the hole in his pants to have better access to the injury. With just a glance, Gwaine could tell it was from either a broadsword or battle-ax, something with some helf behind it, since the skin around the wound was already turning dark with bruising. That was going to make the process of tending it even more painful, and he prayed that Lancelot would stay asleep throughout the ordeal. The blade also must’ve not been very sharp, as instead of being a clean slice, the wound was somewhat ragged.
“Hand me- hand me the wine?” Gwen asked, extending a hand even as her voice shook. Gwaine did as she asked and stepped close to carefully slip a towel he’d nicked from a closet on his way back up to the room below Lancelot’s legs. He wanted to keep his money to spend on the room, or a physician if one could be found, and not on replacing the bedsheets if they were ruined with blood or spilled wine.
As Gwen poured first water and then wine over the wound to clean it, Lancelot woke up with a moan. Gwaine instantly moved to comfort him, and, if necessary, hold him still or gag him to keep him quiet. They didn’t want to be alerting the whole inn to the fact that he was wounded, as any number of people might try to take advantage if they knew, including the innkeeper. From the way he’d been haggling with Gwaine earlier about the price of the ale, he had a feeling the man would willingly jack up the price of their room if he knew they had nowhere else to go.
“Easy, Lance, it’s okay,” he shushed him, holding onto his shoulder. “Lay still, and try to stay quiet if you can.”
“G-gwaine?” Lancelot asked, his face pinched in confusion as well as pain. His body trembled as he seemed to be using every ounce of his willpower to hold still and not scream as Gwen cleaned the wound. His voice also shook as he asked, “What are- you doing here?”
“I saw a damsel in distress, how could I resist helping?” he teased.
“Who are you calling a damsel?” Gwen asked, voice taut even as she tried to loosen the tension in the room. Glancing down the bed at her, Gwaine agreed that although she did perhaps look distressed, she also seemed very in control. Blood was streaked over her cheek but she’d rolled up her sleeves to keep them clean and in doing so revealed very muscular arms. She was using one to hold Lancelot’s leg still with a firm grip on his knee, but then realized she needed both hands free to thread the needle and moved to straddle his calves instead to hold him while she began the stitching.
“I meant Lancelot,” Gwaine explained. “You seem to know what you’re doing.”
“I guess I remember more from helping Merlin and Gaius out than I thought,” she admitted. “Although I don’t know anything about the herbs they use, even if we had any.”
“Alcohol will have to do,” Gwaine sighed, referring to both cleaning the wound and as pain relief. For Lancelot clearly needed that as well. He was doing remarkably well with staying quiet, allowing only small whimpers to escape him every once in awhile, but seeing him in so much pain wasn’t pleasant for any of them. “Just hang on, Lance, it’ll be over soon,” he soothed him, all he could do for now. “Take nice deep breaths if you can.”
“So how do you two know each other?” Gwen asked as she sewed, clearly trying to distract herself, and all of them, from the fact that she was pulling her needle through skin instead of fabric.
“We traveled together for a bit,” Gwaine explained.
“It was- it was after- the last time you got- kidnapped,” Lancelot added, gasping for breath.
“Ah, I was wondering what brought you away from Camelot, Guinevere,” Gwaine said. “Sorry to hear it was brigands.”
“Well, I’m not hurt, so I can’t complain,” she said. “And it brought me to the both of you again, so that’s a plus.”
“Wait- how do- you two- know each other?” Lancelot asked, trying desperately to keep up despite the fogginess brought on by the pain. He suspected that it was important, and would probably scare his companions less, if he stayed awake, so he endeavored to do so despite the pull and appeal of oblivion.
“Ah, you know, the usual,” Gwen replied. “Gwaine got hurt protecting Merlin, so they brought him to Camelot for Gaius to heal, he pissed off Uther enough to be banished, but stuck around and saved Arthur’s life anyway. Sound familiar?”
Lancelot huffed a laugh, but managed no more than that as Gwen finished tying off the stitches and cleaned the wound once more with wine and he had to spend all his attention just trying not to scream. When Gwaine lifted his head with one hand and took the wine bottle from Gwen with the other, he didn’t hesitate to drink deeply when the rim of the bottle was lifted to his lips. The bottle had been almost empty already, and he drained the rest of it, spluttering at the end when he accidentally swallowed air. Gwaine wiped what was left on his lips away while Gwen continued bandaging his leg.
“Hard part’s over now,” the other man reassured him, stroking his hair back from his face with more tenderness than he imagined him capable of. “You should try to sleep if you can, while you can.”
Lancelot nodded shallowly, his strength already leaving him and the wine warm and heavy in his empty stomach, and closed his eyes. Gwaine and Gwen spoke softly to one another once they thought he was asleep, but he could just barely make out what they were saying.
“Are you alright, Gwen?” Gwaine asked gently, followed quickly by “Not that I think of you as a delicate maid or anything, but it sounds like you were just kidnapped, and then you had the far harder job here of stitching him up. I mean, I got off easy, all I had to do was comfort him and he made that so easy.”
“Of course he did,” Gwen replied, sounding a little choked up. “He never wants to admit when he’s in pain or needs help or anything, but he does, you know? And I just want him to be okay-” she broke off with a sob and Lancelot tried to open his eyes or sit up to comfort her, tell her he would be okay and that she didn’t have to worry, but his limbs and even his eyelids felt far too heavy, weighed down by wine and loss of blood.
“Hey, shh, it’s okay, I’m sure Lancelot will be alright,” Gwaine reassured her, and soon the sound of her crying was muffled, so Lancelot assumed he was hugging her. It only lasted a minute before Gwen was softly apologizing for her breakdown. “It’s alright; you and Lance both seem like you’ve had an awful day. We should keep him warm too, I think, so if you wanted to rest you could lie down with him, and I’ll keep watch.”
“Yeah. Yeah, okay, thank you.” There was a shuffle as Gwen pulled back the blankets and then the bed dipped as she climbed into it. Lancelot finally drifted the rest of the way to sleep with her by his side.