Work Text:
They travelled for what remained of the night and the entire day that followed. Lancelot had no idea what state the Paladin camp would have found itself in by morning but he wasn’t taking any chances. The Trinity Guard had left his body bruised and broken and he didn’t have much left in him to defend the boy if it came to that. The more distance he could put between them and any potential tailing Red Paladins, the better. Even if each step Goliath took jostled another one of his many injuries.
Eventually darkness fell again and Lancelot could tell that Squirrel was tired from the way he kept drifting off and catching himself before his head could hit his chest. They’d reached a denser forest and it was as safe a place to camp as any so as soon as Lancelot found a viable clearing he was pulling Goliath to a halt and bracing himself for the painful climb down. He was only mildly surprised when Squirrel scrambled down first and helped steady him from collapsing to the floor completely.
“Thank you,” he said, his hand on the boy’s shoulder. “Now, how are you at hunting? What you can catch, I’ll cook.”
Percival raised an eyebrow.
“You can cook?” he asked sceptically.
“More than I can hunt right now,” Lancelot sighed, because he couldn’t walk more than a few staggered steps without his knees buckling or his ankle rolling.
Seeming willing to accept his answer, Percival drew a dagger from his belt and turned for the treeline.
“Don’t go far,” Lancelot called after him, not quite sure what possessed him. But if the boy got into trouble, he wasn’t going to be much help in running to his rescue while he could barely move.
They’d stopped briefly when they’d passed a stream several hours earlier and Squirrel had jumped down from the horse to fill every available container in Goliath’s saddle bags with water. Lancelot grabbed a half-full waterskin and slumped down to rest his back against a tree as he took a drink. He let himself take half a minute to recover from the effort of getting down from the saddle before he set to work building a small fire that would hopefully go unnoticed but would keep them warm and cook them food.
As it turned out, Percival could hunt. It didn’t take him long to come back with two rabbits and a grin on his face and they made for the best meal Lancelot had tasted in ages, only slightly charred and heaven on an empty stomach. He made sure to give the bigger one to the boy.
Once they’d eaten, they settled in to sleep and it occurred to Lancelot just how similar this felt to the night after the attack on Dewdenn, when he’d kept Squirrel as bait. He felt a hot mix of shame and guilt in his stomach when he looked over at the boy now, curled up a few metres away. He was hugging his limbs close to stave off the effects of the breeze rolling through their little clearing and Lancelot summoned all his remaining strength to get up, unfasten his cloak, and drape it over Percival. It could cover the child’s body at least twice over and it would go a long way to keep him warm. It was the least Lancelot could do.
He returned to his tree, no stranger to sleeping out in the elements with leaves for a bed and bark for a pillow. The sounds of the forest were almost comforting- he’d always preferred it to the clamour of the Red Paladin camp. Only usually those sounds weren’t accompanied by the endless chatter of a small Fey child.
“Where do you think everyone is? All the Fey?” he asked.
“I don’t know,” Lancelot sighed. “But we’ll find them.”
“What if we don’t?”
“We will.”
“But what if-”
They could get stuck in an infinite loop all night and Lancelot was already fighting a deep and exhausted slumber.
“Get some sleep, or you’re going to fall off the horse tomorrow,” he said, shifting to try and find the most comfortable position to lie in.
“No I won’t!” Squirrel protested, sitting up and letting the cloak fall into his lap.
“Then let me get some sleep or I’m going to fall off the horse tomorrow,” Lancelot tried instead, his eyes already closed.
“You sleep, I’ll keep watch.”
“Percival, if there’s a reason to be awake, I will be,” Lancelot promised him, and he meant it.
Squirrel seemed to remember the way the Weeping Monk had gone from sleeping to fighting off several people with his hands bound and no weapon of his own and he was either reminded that the man he was in the presence of was an unwise one to argue with, or he realised that he was not one to get ambushed. Had Lancelot been more awake he would have hoped it was the latter, but with the little consciousness he had left he was just glad to hear Squirrel lying back down and tugging the cloak back over himself.
Lancelot was aware of the movement the moment Percival went to get up the next morning, but there didn’t seem to be any immediate danger and as long as he didn’t hear the boy wander far, he was content to allow himself an extra five minutes of rest. His entire body still ached from his fight with the Trinity Guard and he wanted nothing more than to never have to move it again.
Percival didn’t seem to be likely to cause trouble. He’d been relatively subdued for their journey so far and Lancelot assumed he had a lot on his mind. Too much, especially for a child. So when he heard the sound of quick-moving feet and crunching leaves, Lancelot’s eyes snapped open. He was ready to launch up, despite the pain he was in, and defend the child but no one else was in the small clearing. Instead Percival had put on Lancelot’s cloak, the hood pulled up and barely avoiding entirely obscuring his vision, and had drawn his dagger. Rather than facing up against an opponent, he was squaring up against a tree and seemingly threatening it.
“Die, paladin scum,” Squirrel breathed, apparently seeing an opening in the defence of his imagined foe and driving his dagger into the bark of the tree.
That had Lancelot flinching. Seeing the child in his cloak, imagining to fight the people who had raised him, brought up too many emotions he hadn’t had the chance to work through. The words the Green Knight had said to him were still on repeat in his mind, gentle and reassuring in ways the harsh treatment of the Paladins had never been. He was finding himself wanting to stand with his people for the first time since he’d been converted to see the light of an almighty god, but he didn’t think his people would have him anymore.
Squirrel had moved on to the next tree, imagining it was Brother Salt and swinging his dagger wildly and sounding battle cries. He wanted to hurt him, wanted to make him feel the pain he had made the Green Knight feel, make him face the same fate. It wasn’t fair.
“Percival,” Lancelot called, wincing in pain as he pushed himself to sit up. He couldn’t let the boy keep making so much noise, it wasn’t safe.
Dropping his arms down to his side, Squirrel turned sheepishly, the cloak obscuring most of his face.
“They tortured my friend,” he explained quietly, as if to attempt to excuse his playfighting.
“I’m sorry,” Lancelot said sincerely, but knowing the words did little to make up for his own involvement. “The Green Knight?”
Squirrel nodded, tears springing up in the corner of his eyes to hear the name. He bit down hard on the inside of his cheek to stop himself from crying. Lancelot cursed himself – he had always tried to spare the children, but that didn’t mean he knew how to talk to them. There was every chance he was just going to make things worse if he tried anything else.
Getting to his feet was an extraordinary challenge and he worked to hide most of the agony from his face so Percival didn’t have any more to worry about. When he was finally steady, he crossed the clearing and reached down to wipe away the few stray tears that had escaped down Squirrel’s face with the edge of the cloak’s hood.
“He would be proud of you,” Lancelot promised.
He barely knew the boy and he certainly didn’t know much about the Green Knight, but he saw parallels in them. The lack of fear in the face of death, the foolhardy courage, the willingness to sacrifice themselves. Two brave soldiers, and two good men. If the Green Knight wasn’t here to see that in the boy, then Lancelot was determined to get the kid back to his people so someone else could.
“How about breakfast, and then we get moving again?” he suggested.
Always happier with a job to do, Squirrel perked up and was off foraging berries before Lancelot had to ask twice. He kept the cloak on, hood falling back as the extra length of it trailed behind him through the trees. He looked for all the world like a child playing dress up and Lancelot couldn’t help but smile. Maybe there was still time for him to get to be a child every now and then, rather than a warrior.