Gunther is throwing up.

Again.

And rather spectacularly, at that.

He is so glad he decided to run this little scouting expedition alone. No one should have to see this.

Gasping for breath, he straightens up – he'd been bent double, with his hands braced on his knees. Stumbling back one step and then another, he fetches up against the wall. It's a relief to have something immovable against which to steady himself. Grimacing, he swipes an arm hard across his mouth.

All right… all right. The worst is over. He just needs to… to get back outside. He needs fresh air, and… and…

Nope.

Not over.

A second later, he is heaving again.

The castle had been quiet this morning, almost preternaturally so. Nearly everyone was off on the overnight excursion to the woods. Even the two kings had gone, belatedly, to join the rest of the party. He'd wanted to speak with Jane, to smooth things over concerning yesterday's… excitement, but he'd only caught sight of her from a distance, leaving the grounds late-morning with Lavinia, flanked by the princess's guards.

Clearly Jane had not been ready for further… discourse.

That had stung, a little bit.

Feeling sulky, he'd kicked aimlessly around the castle for a while and eaten a solitary lunch, wondering how to occupy himself.

He'd seen Jester leaving in the early afternoon, had spoken to him briefly and discovered that he was off to meet Jane and Lavinia by the lakeshore. Gunther had considered going along, but had decided against it, not entirely over his sulk. If Jane had wanted him along, Jane would have invited him, right? So, fine. He'd stay here, thank you ever so much.

He'd moped about some more.

And then, as he'd been distracting himself by going over recent events in his mind for probably the millionth time, he'd had this realization, this epiphany... that had first brought him up short, then sent him down the road toward the castle-town at a fast jog.

Why hadn't he thought of it before!?

The apothecary's shop.

If Algernon had put something in Jane's drink on the night of the ball (and he HAD) then one of two scenarios had to be true. Either he had brought whatever substance he had used with him, from home, or he had procured it from a nearby source.

While it wasn't impossible that he'd brought something with him, Gunther thought that the less likely of the two theories.

Right up until the end, until Gunther had exposed him for alleged murder, Algernon had been so utterly, infuriatingly cocksure. In planning his conquest of Jane, he would have been counting on his charm, his breeding, his title and assets to win the day. After all, that was always what had happened in the past. He wouldn't have foreseen that he would need the assistance of a foreign substance. Not that far in advance, anyway – not when he'd still been at home and packing.

Which suggested that he'd acquired something far more recently, and far more locally.

It was so obvious. He could have kicked himself. So he'd headed over here to ask a few questions…

But he'd gotten his answer the second he'd walked in the door.

Oh, Algernon had been here, all right. He'd come here, and when this man's wares hadn't achieved the result he'd wanted, he'd come back.

That the proprietor has been dead for a few days already is indisputable. Gunther wonders, between heaves, how it is that he's the first to make this discovery. The apothecary must not have been a very popular man, and his business must have been slow, for him to have lain here undisturbed for so long.

He'd thought he'd smelled something… off… as he'd approached the dingy little shop, but had put it down to the fact that it was, after all, an apothecary's shop; a place where all manner of odd ingredients were combined in all manner of unusual ways. There was bound to be some sort of odor lingering about such an establishment. But dear God, when he'd stepped inside…

The stench had set him reeling, but he still might have recovered if he'd made it back outside quickly enough – but then he'd seen the body and it had been over, over.

The body is… putrefying. Bloated, purple, leaking fluid on the warped and dusty floor. The hilt of a small dagger protruding from the socket of one eye. That's what had sent Gunther over the edge and started him retching.

He's still retching.

Dimly he thinks that unless he can get himself out of here, he may never stop.

Fortunately the shop is small. He manages to stagger the few steps back to the door, and practically falls through it into the incongruously bright sunshine of what should have been a lovely, cheerful summer afternoon. To other people, in other places, it probably is a lovely, cheerful summer afternoon.

Not to him.

Fleetingly, distractedly, he hopes that Jane's day is going better than his – any faint resentment he'd felt earlier has completely vanished in the face of this. Although very soon he's going to be responsible for putting a sizable damper on her afternoon. Because she has to know about this. Has to. Just as soon as he can reach her.

Gulping in a great frantic, shuddering lungful of relatively fresh air, he collapses against the side of the building to attempt to gather himself; regroup. He swipes his arm brusquely, almost violently across his face again; spits, grimly, into the dirt. He wishes he had water with him; his throat feels raw and his mouth tastes awful. But he'll just have to wait until he gets home.

Home.

He shoves away from the wall, first stumbling, then walking, then running back toward the castle. There's no time to lose. Algernon is still skulking about, God knows where, doing God knows what, right at this very moment!

He has to track Jane down and they have to take some sort of decisive action now, right now, and to hell with waiting until the others come back.

Someone needs to take this situation in hand before it spins completely out of control.

Ironically, the thought about asserting control is practically the last actual, coherent, rational thought that Gunther has. Because just as he's approaching the castle gates, he catches sight of the bloodied figure at the edge of the road – and is plunged into the most breath-takingly, soul-shatteringly horrific waking nightmare of his entire life.

He stops where he is, frozen by shock, for just the barest moment of time – then he's closing the remaining distance at a full sprint, skidding to a stop just in time to catch his sandy-haired friend as his legs start to buckle, spilling him toward the ground.

"Jester!" He's breathless with panic, mind whirling, heart trip-hammering. Oh, no. Oh, no. No no no no. And that's all even before he hears the dull clang of something heavy and metallic hitting the ground, and glances down to see that Jester has just dropped –

The Dragon Sword.

Jane's Dragon sword.

NO. No and no and no. Just no.

No, this isn't happening. No, it can't be. Because Jester was with Jane, and if he's here now, a bloody mess, with the sword and without HER –

No.

Jane would never give up that sword.

No.

Not while she had one ounce of strength in her body, not while she had one shred of free will left to her.

No.

He's right back to that place, that God-awful place he was in yesterday, that place where he literally can't breathe. The terror is too great. Jane –

No.

He's lowering Jester to the ground, sinking to his knees with the other boy clasped in his arms.

"Jester. Jester!" With one arm wrapped around Jester's chest, he slips the other beneath his friend's head; eases it down to the grass at the roadside. Feels the warm wetness in Jester's fair hair, stares in abject horror at his own hand when he brings it away, smeared with blood. He knows on some distant level that he should be gentle with Jester, but the panic that is crashing over him like waves breaking on the shore will not allow it. He takes his friend by the shoulders, shakes him.

"JESTER! Where is she!? Where IS she!? WHERE – IS – JANE!?"

He stumbles, goes to one knee; forces himself back to his feet, propels himself on.

"Jane!"

Crashing through underbrush, no longer even certain of whether he's actually covering new ground, or going in circles.

"Jane!"

Smithy is out here too, somewhere, and Rake... Dragon is searching from above. Where is she!? The more time passes, the more he has to consider that Jester might be right; that Algernon might have taken both Lavinia and Jane. Absconded with the two of them to some point unknown. Jester hadn't been very coherent, but he'd been clear on that much; that he believed Algernon, with the help of his household men, had managed to subdue Jane and take her prisoner, along with the princess.

The fact that Jane had clearly lost her sword would appear to corroborate this theory.

But Gunther can't accept that. He CAN'T. His heart won't let him. No. No, NO. It is too horrifying, because it means that Algernon... the threat he made to Gunther... that soul-shredding promise – if he really has Jane under his power, conquered, helpless, and with Lavinia as leverage to ensure her capitulation...

He could be making good on it RIGHT NOW...

NO. No, that cannot be happening. That isn't allowed. She has to be here somewhere. She has to. HAS to.

He'd carried Jester inside to be tended by Pepper, then summoned Dragon with Jane's sword, brought him up to speed, and insisted that they search. They cannot give her up for lost until they've searched.

"Jane answer me!"

He's been looking for so long. For so LONG. He can't even really quantify how long, it's just been a frantic, surreal haze; but the daylight has faded almost entirely away which means it has to be over an hour, probably closer to two. Oh God, two hours! And for her not to have made her presence known in all this time, she must be gone (no) or so, so hurt (no) or even... even... could she be (no no no no NONONO!)

"Jane God DAMN it ANSWER ME! JANE!" His voice cracks on her name.

He pauses for a second, panting, and shoves a hank of sweat-soaked hair back, out of his face. Stares about himself with the wild, glazed, unseeing eyes of a panicked animal. He has a stitch in his side, and his throat is so raw from shouting her name that every breath he takes burns him on the inhale and wheezes on the exhale. He never did get that water that he'd wanted after throwing up earlier today. He's probably dehydrated by now.

None of that matters. None of it. Only one thing matters.

He has to find Jane.

"Please," he whispers hoarsely. "Jane. Please." He presses his eyes briefly shut, is faintly surprised to feel a streak of warmth cut down his cheek, then another. Raises a shaking hand to his face and then stares uncomprehendingly at his fingers when they come away wet.

It takes him probably thirty seconds – slow, agonizing, grinding seconds – to realize that he's looking at tears. He's crying.

An actual sob takes him then, and it almost drives him to his knees. He staggers and throws out one hand to catch himself against a nearby tree trunk, raising the other to clench, hard, in the damp hair at his temple, a desperate attempt to ground himself. He can't. He can't fall to pieces, he can't.

HE HAS TO FIND JANE.

He rasps in a hitching, shuddering breath, his chest heaving with it. Shakes his head in a largely futile attempt to clear it, and stumbles on.

Of course, of course, it is her hair he sees first.

Dusk has fallen in earnest now, the color leaching out of his surroundings, the despair crashing into his heart. He'll never find her in the dark. But he can't stop looking. He won't stop looking. Dragon will have to stop. Rake and Smithy probably will too. But not him. Not ever. Not ever.

This is his fault, after all.

He should have gone with Jester. Why hadn't he gone with Jester!? He'd had the opportunity and he'd passed it up, why? Because he'd been in a snit that she hadn't invited him herself! If he'd been there – as he should have been there –

But he hadn't. He'd failed her. And now he is failing her again.

"JANE!" He screams her name so loudly that his voice shatters, breaks into shards and dissolves into a jagged coughing fit.

"Jane." This time it's no more than a raw whisper.

Hopelessness is swamping him, drowning him. He can't think anymore, can barely breathe.

That's all right. He has only a single task, and that is to keep putting one foot in front of the other. So he does it. And then he does it again.

And then he stops short because he sees her.

He sees her. Or more precisely, he sees her hair. The last of the day's dying light catching it, lingering in it, where it lies dirty and draggled but still unmistakable, fanned out on the forest floor.

"No." It's wrenched out of him. A sick, strangled sound. "Jane, no."

A bare heartbeat later he's right there, hunkered down beside her. He has no conscious awareness, neither in this moment nor later, not ever, of crossing that last bit of distance that separated them.

He's simply there.

She is lying exactly as she must have fallen when they – Algernon? His men? He doesn't know, doesn't care – threw her down. Twisted between her back and her side, bright hair splashed across her face.

One of her arms is at an impossible angle, an angle that hurts his mind, his heart, his soul.

She looks like nothing so much as a doll that has been tossed aside by a careless child. A doll that has been played with too hard, and then discarded.

She looks… broken.

"Jane?" His voice is shaking. His hands are shaking. He reaches for her, but stops short. She's so badly hurt. Oh God, she's… just wrecked. What if he makes it worse, somehow? He's suddenly terrified of touching her, of inadvertently causing her some additional harm.

And yet… he can't not touch her. He has to do something. He has to assess the damage. He has to alleviate the damage. He has to… has to…

His mind is completely scattered, thoughts flying away. Retaining a coherent train of thought at this point is beyond him.

"Home," he mutters, almost feverishly; barely coherent. "I have to get you home."

And then people are going to die for this. Oh hell yes, people are going to die. Gunther has heard of killing frenzies. He honestly never really knew what to make of the tales; were they real, or just talk? Old knights years past their prime, greatly embellishing their glory days?

He knows now. Knows without a shred of doubt that they are real, that the potential lives in the heart of every man who has to look at what he loves most in the world, lying crumpled and still and oh God so damaged, on the cold hard ground.

He knows now that others have experienced them and what's more, he knows that he will too. In the very near future, he will too.

He takes an unsteady breath and tries to regain some modicum of control. He can't allow himself to go down that avenue right now, because he's not sure he'd be able to reel himself back in, and all of that has to wait.

Vengeance has to wait. Even going after Lavinia has to wait. First he needs to see to Jane.

But God help him, he's just so scared.

Then she starts to cough, and his paralysis is broken.

"Jane." He brushes the spill of hair out of her face, his fingers coming away gritty.

Sand. From the lake shore.

It dusts her cheeks, the bridge of her nose. It's caught in her eyebrows, her lashes.

It dusts her lips, too, he sees, and when she coughs again, weakly, he realizes that she's actually coughing sand up. Not just sand, either.

Water, too.

He held her head under water.

The realization hits him like a crossbow bolt to the gut. The impact is visceral; it literally knocks the wind out of him.

He held her HEAD under WATER.

The world tries to tilt away from him for a moment, but he fights it.

The red haze tries to descend, and he fights it too. He can't, he can't give in to it, not right now. Jane needs him to be present for her.

Jane needs him.

"Hey." He's raking her with his eyes, cataloging her injuries, trying to calculate the best way to lift her, move her, in light of her damaged arm. Is it dislocated, or actually broken?

Please do not let it be broken. Please do not let her be broken. Because if she is, then so am I. So am I.

"Jane? Can you hear me? I need you to wake up."

He finds his eyes suddenly riveted to her lips. His hand trembles as he skates his thumb across them, wiping the sand away. They're blue. Oh, God. She's been out here so long.

Exposure.

SHOCK.

The words are ricocheting around in his brain. But the awful, unnatural tinge is not what's captured his attention so fully.

Her lips are bruised. Swollen and bruised. What... what could have done...

But he knows. Of course he does. Down deep, he knows what could have done that. What Algernon must have done to cause that.

What ELSE did he do!?

The earth pitches beneath him again.

Her clothing is rumpled, dirty, ripped in places, damp - but it doesn't appear to have been tampered with in any major way, or removed and then replaced. Doesn't appear, but what if, what if –

His whole body is shaking now, so hard, so hard.

Kill him. I am going to kill him. I am going to KILL HIM.

He's going to rip that bastard apart with his bare hands.

"Jane." His voice is so choked, it's really nothing more than a raspy croak. "Jane, please open your eyes, I..." that unfamiliar wetness on his cheeks again. "I need you. I nuh... need you. Here, with me." He glances up at the sky, fighting with the tears, struggling for composure. Control. It's going to be a moonless night.

"Please," he whispers. "I need your light. It is dark here without you. Please."

Her brows knit together, just the tiniest bit. It's an expression he's familiar with, an expression he loves. Usually it means she's focusing intently on something. Her footwork or a new defensive strategy, or her god-awful archery. It's so bad. A sound that is half-laugh, half-sob tries to bubble up in him, but he clamps down on it.

Her lips move. No sound escapes them, not even a whisper, but they form the syllables of his name; once, and then again. Gunther. Gunther.

"Here." He presses a hand to her cheek, dislodging some of the sand that still clings to her skin. "I am right here." He hopes she can recognize his voice; he barely can, himself.

And then her eyes blink slowly open, and he almost breaks down sobbing from relief. But he can't do that, so he falls back on what he knows; the familiar pattern of their relationship, of their discourse. He insults her.

"Who looks terrible now?" he says, around the boulder-sized obstruction in his throat.

And watches as her poor, bruised lips form the word, RUDE.

An errant sob does escape him then; he can't help it. That tiny crease appears in her forehead again, and she tries to reach for him.

That, of course, is a serious mistake. Her face spasms with pain, and a weak cry is jerked out of her.

"Jane!" He wants to take her in his arms so badly, but he has to be careful. He needs to gauge the extent of the... the trauma she's suffered, if he can. He needs her to help him, if she can. "Be very still, all right? Your arm is... it... needs attention. Can you tell me what else hurts?"

She stares up at him for a moment, her eyes glassy with shock. Then she swallows and whispers hoarsely, "Algernon. He took... took Lavinia."

"I know. I know, but right now I have to figure out what is hurting you."

She drags in a harsh, scraping breath. "That... IS... what is hurting... me." Another coughing fit takes her. When it's over, her lips form two more soundless words; my fault.

Oh, God. It's like some crazed animal has burrowed into his chest cavity and is clawing his heart into pieces.

Her eyes begin to drift shut.

"JANE!"

All right, to hell with this. He needs to get her out of here, now. Further assessment will simply have to wait until they're home.

He is as gentle as he can be, as careful as he can be, as he gathers her up, settling her against him. Even so, he can't entirely avoid jostling her injured arm. She gives a breathless little scream as he stands, cradling her to his chest. He feels that scream like a physical pain right in the core of him.

"Sorry," he murmurs. "I am so sorry Jane. Just hold on, all right?" But a glance down at her face shows that she's lost consciousness again. She hangs in his arms utterly limp, ghost-pale, skin cool to the touch.

He swallows convulsively.

She shouldn't be this white. She shouldn't be this still. She definitely shouldn't be this cool. Jane is the sun. The sun is meant to blaze. Jane is meant to BLAZE.

"Come back. Jane, come back."

Nothing.

The panic is trying to crash in on him again. He cannot let it. He shoves it away from him, hard, focusing instead on what he is going to do to Algernon when he catches up with him.

Algernon is going to pay for Jane's single scream with a hundred, a thousand, ten thousand of his own. He will scream until he no longer has a voice to scream with. Gunther is going to tear him limb from bloody, flailing limb.

He starts to pick his way through the undergrowth with agonizing slowness, hoping desperately that nightfall or no nightfall, someone else will still be searching too, will see him once he breaks from this tree-cover. He wants to run but he can't, because the footing is treacherous here and the light is well and truly gone now. He gives a shuddery gasp of dismay at the thought.

With Jane unresponsive again, all of the light in his WORLD is gone.