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Lancelot was utterly still and silent as he lay on his side in Merlin's bed, facing away from his friend. He didn't even flinch as the physician's apprentice sutured closed the wound in his back. Earlier they’d needed Percival to help hold him still to stop him thrashing as Gaius cut out the crossbow bolt, but now he’d gone quiet despite the fact that the willow bark tonic they’d given him shouldn’t have been enough to dull that much pain.
"Talk to me, Lance, I need you to talk to me so I know you're not going into shock," Merlin rambled anxiously.
"I'm fine," the knight replied, sounding exactly the opposite. There was no emotion besides exhaustion in his soft voice. At least he was still conscious.
"You're lying," Merlin countered gently. "What's wrong? Beyond the wound, I mean."
"I hurt Gwen," Lancelot said, and now his voice was choked with emotion instead of devoid of it. “And the baby, I-”
"No, you saved her life," Merlin countered before his friend could fall too far down the rabbit hole of blaming himself. Not that he couldn’t see where he was coming from. It had technically been Lancelot that hurt the queen when he tackled her to the ground, but he’d only done so to save her from an assassin’s arrow, so it couldn’t be said to be his fault.
It had been a close call this time. Too close. Merlin and Lancelot had discovered that there was an assassin in the castle only after a guard was found murdered, and at first they’d assumed that he was gunning for the king. They then lost precious time explaining themselves after bursting into the council chambers only to find Arthur unharmed. Lancelot eventually realized that if someone wanted to get revenge on the royal family or even destabilize the kingdom, the pregnant queen would be just as good a target as the king, and a much more vulnerable one. He arrived to the royal bedchambers just in time to jump between her and the crossbow bolt, tackling her to the ground to get her out of harms way while Merlin dealt with the assassin.
He had scrambled off her as soon as he was able, which was slower than it would have been without the arrow protruding from his shoulder, but the damage had already been done. The thick rug hadn’t done enough to cushion the collision with the stone floor, and it didn’t take long to realize that Gwen was hurt when she groaned. Her arm was broken, she’d hit her head hard, and worst of all, her stomach cramped as she began to bleed. They still didn’t know yet whether she would lose the baby, which was why Gaius was with her now instead of tending to Lancelot’s back.
“Will you tell her I’m sorry?” Lancelot pleaded.
“You can tell her yourself, if you’re still convinced that’s necessary when you’re able to go. I know what she’s going to say, though, and that’s just that you were protecting her.”
"But I hurt her ," Lancelot said. Obviously his friend's logic wasn't getting through to him. "She is… Merlin, she is everything I stand and fight for, as well as my friend. And the baby- they’re Camelot’s future. I- I shouldn't even call myself a knight now that I've hurt them."
"You think that people don't accidentally hurt the things they fight for all the time?" Merlin asked. His voice had suddenly taken on a bitter tone and his fingers lost their gentleness as he stitched the wound. Lancelot stiffened this time as he pulled the string tight. "Do you know how many sorcerers I have killed in the name of protecting Arthur, in the hope that someday magic will be legal in Camelot? If you're going to be a knight here, you're going to need tougher skin when it comes to hurting people you care about in the name of something greater."
That caused a harder flinch than the pain had, and Merlin finally realized that he had pushed too far and that this wasn't the time to go into this with Lancelot. He finished the stitches carefully before smearing honey over them to help prevent infection.
"Here, you need to sit up so I can bandage this," he said more gently. Lance took a minute to stir, slowly pushing himself up onto his left elbow with a wince. Merlin took him by the shoulders to help him sit up all the way, shifting his legs to hang off the opposite side of the thin bed from where the young physician stood. He gave himself a second to lean his forehead against the back of Lancelot's head. A small comfort for both of them, hopefully. The knight was still too stiff, too still, but he winced as he reached back behind him to grab a handful of fabric on Merlin's too-skinny hip and clutched it tight.
"I don't want to hurt you, Merlin," he whispered. "You've been through enough."
"So have you," the warlock replied, deflecting the conversation back to the knight. He wasn't ready to consider his own trauma right now. Actually listening to Lancelot's acknowledgement would have to wait until they were both a little more stable, and the knight hadn’t just had an arrow cut out of him. He lifted his head from where it pressed against the back of his friend's head, the curls of his hair tickling his forehead, and gently dislodged his hand from his shirt. "Alright, lift your arms up so I can bandage this."
Lancelot sucked in a deep and somewhat shaky breath before letting go of Merlin's hip and raising his arms slightly. He only managed to lift them a few inches away from his sides, but it was just enough for Merlin to wind the bandage around his body. He used up two whole rolls in the process, as he wrapped Lancelot's entire torso.
"Let me get you something more for the pain," he said. Just because the stoic knight didn't show that he was in pain didn't mean that he wasn't.
"I don't deserve it," Lancelot complained miserably. Evidently, he wasn't quite over his absurd sense of guilt.
"No one deserves to be in pain," Merlin countered. "Least of all you. And if that isn't enough for you, your body won't heal while you're in pain since your muscles will be too tight to relax and recover. So please, let me go get you a poppy tonic."
Lancelot finally nodded and after helping him drink the tincture in question, Merlin assisted him to lay down again on his side on the narrow cot. As he propped pillows up around the injured knight so he couldn’t roll over onto his back in the night, they both thought about Guinevere lying not far from there, likely in the same position and no better off than Lancelot. Merlin wasn’t the praying type, but he heard Lancelot murmuring a soft one along with his repentance.