Title: Small Favors

Author: The Forgotten Scribe

Summary: After the events of 4x08 "Lamia," the knights feel guilty about their mistreatment of Merlin while in the lamia's thrall. They decide to make it up to him. Unfortunately, their efforts tend to backfire, and nobody explained the plan to Merlin.

Rating: K+

Warnings: None

Pairings: None

Characters: Merlin, Elyan, Leon, Percival, Gwaine, Arthur

It starts out with little things.

Merlin is making his slow, painful way through the bustling palace corridors, struggling with a huge armful of Arthur's freshly polished ceremonial armor, which is about five times as heavy as his regular armor and twice as unwieldy, when he passes Sir Elyan going in the opposite direction. Merlin gives him a quick, harried little nod of greeting and walks past. Out of the corner of his eye, he thinks he sees Elyan stop in his tracks, a strange expression coming over his face. But he thinks nothing of it, at least until about two seconds later when Arthur's armor is suddenly being pried from his arms.

"Here, Merlin, let me carry that. It's too heavy for you."

"Uh… I…" Merlin flounders, caught between gratitude, offense at being indirectly called weak, and complete and utter confusion. Because Sir Elyan is a knight, and knights don't take things from servants just because they're too heavy. He really should be putting up some kind of protest, but it's all over far too quickly for him to say anything. Now he has an armful of air and Elyan is balancing all of the shiny metal greaves and pauldrons and bracers in his arms with far more grace than Merlin had done, as well as a decidedly shifty expression.

"These are going to Arthur's chambers, right?"

"Uh… Right."

"Wonderful. I'll see you later, Merlin."

"… Thanks," Merlin manages to get out as Elyan sweeps off down the corridor, leaving him alone and utterly confused.

Twenty minutes later, Merlin's in the armory, trying to figure out what's become of Arthur's ceremonial longsword that he sent to have the leather grip refitted. He finally manages to track down the damn thing and carries it very carefully through the haphazard rows of equipment racks and laughing, jostling knights, none of whom take any notice of his presence… until he gets to the door.

Sir Leon is sitting on a bench near the armory door, wiping some kind of grime off his shield; Merlin doesn't want to know whether it's mud or the remains of some unfortunate squire used for target practice. With Arthur in charge of drills, it could be either. He glances over the top edge of his shield as Merlin approaches the door, and Merlin gives him the same friendly nod he gave Elyan. Something changes in Leon's eyes, and he jumps up from the bench, the shield falling to the side with an enormous clanging clatter.

"Sorry," Merlin says automatically, without knowing what he's supposed to be apologizing for, at the same moment as Leon says, "Merlin. Allow me to get the door."

Merlin gapes in astonishment as Leon opens the door and holds it open, standing off to the side with his hand extended graciously, bent slightly at the waist as if Merlin is some kind of high-born lady or a… a princess. "Thank you," he mumbles, still staring wide-eyed at the tall ginger-haired knight. As he makes his way past, he turns his face away from Leon to hide the glow in his eyes as he casts out with his magic, searching for signs of enchantment. He finds nothing; the air is clean. Leon is… apparently doing this of his own free will.

"Good to see you, Merlin," Leon says, and the door swings shut behind him.

And Merlin is left, for the second time that day, more baffled than he's felt in weeks.

"It's not my birthday, is it?" he asks Gaius later that day, when he has a free moment away from Arthur's side and time to return home for a hasty lunch.

"I don't believe so, Merlin," Gaius replies, giving him that doubtful, concerned look that he reserves for occasions when Merlin is being particularly mysterious. "Why do you ask?"

"No reason," Merlin mutters around a mouthful of bread. He chews, swallows, and asks, "If the knights were enchanted, I would be able to tell, wouldn't I? With my magic?"

"It's served you well in the past." Gaius sits down opposite him and stares at him intently. "If you have reason to believe Arthur's knights have fallen under some sort of enchantment, perhaps it would be best to tell him."

"Absolutely not," Merlin says, horrified at the thought of Arthur knowing about what Elyan and Leon did for him. Arthur would probably give them both a thorough lecture on the proper stations of knights and servants, and put Merlin in the stocks. He'd been in a black sort of mood for the past few days. "I don't think they're enchanted. They're just… acting strangely."

"Your encounter with the lamia occurred just two days ago, Merlin. Perhaps they are still shaken by the experience."

"Elyan and Leon? Shaken?" Merlin laughs. "I could understand if Gwaine were acting strangely. That's rather ordinary for him. But the rest of Arthur's knights… It's just odd, Gaius. There's probably nothing to it."

"If you say so, Merlin."

It's all very idiotic, the sort of thing that Arthur would never stop ribbing him for, but a few hours later while Merlin is in the marketplace buying herbs for Gaius, he trips over a stray cat and falls flat on his face in the mud. The cat scrambles away with a piercing yowl, and Merlin groans unhappily as he props himself up on his elbows and tries to arise. He soon discovers a sharp, throbbing sensation in the vicinity of his ankle, and even without Gaius's medical expertise, he can tell it's sprained.

"This day just keeps getting better and better," he grumbles to himself, wincing and screwing up his eyes against the pain as he claws his way awkwardly into a sitting position. The thought of using magic to fix his ankle is very, very tempting, but he's in the middle of a crowded marketplace and someone would certainly see.

"Merlin!" someone calls from across the square, and Merlin groans in dismay at the thought of anyone he knows seeing him like this. It'll get back to Arthur somehow, and Arthur will take it as further proof that Merlin is the clumsiest oaf of a servant who ever lived.

"Merlin," says the voice again, closer now, and Merlin looks up, shading his eyes against the sunlight, to see Sir Percival bending over him. Wonderful. Not only is it a knight, but it's one of Arthur's inner circle.

"Are you all right?"

"I'm fine," Merlin says through gritted teeth, forcing a smile at Percival. He's rather fond of the enormous fellow, after all. "Just a sprain. I'll be on my feet in a moment."

"We must get you to Gaius," Percival says in a distracted sort of way, and Merlin yelps as he's suddenly drawn up six feet off the ground and into Percival's arms.

"I—Percival—really, it's all right, I can walk—"

"Nonsense," Percival says firmly, striding across the square as if Merlin weighs nothing at all, and Merlin feels his cheeks heat up like a forge fire—he's being carried like a girl, like a swooning noblewoman or a bride, all this for a sprained ankle and what will Arthur say…

As if on cue, he looks up as Percival ascends the palace steps and sees, in one of the windows, the unmistakable sight of Arthur's shocked face staring down at him. Merlin can't look. It's too humiliating. He buries his face in Percival's chest and wishes to God he could just disappear.

"What's happened to him?" Merlin hears Arthur demand imperiously several minutes later, in the hallway on the way to Gaius's chambers. "Was he in the forest alone? Bandits? Wolves?"

"Wolves," Merlin gasps out, curling himself up small in Percival's strong-armed grip in an effort to appear as wounded as possible. "Enormous ones. A dozen at least. I killed two with my bare hands and barely got out alive."

"He tripped in the marketplace and sprained his ankle," Percival explains in a very earnest-sounding voice, and Merlin closes his eyes and thinks, Just let me die.

"Merlin," Arthur scolds, as if Merlin's let his washing get wrinkled or something equally inexcusable. "Could you be any more of a girl? Honestly. Percival, put him down, you're going to spoil him. I need him in my chambers in ten minutes."

"He's injured, my liege," Percival says as Merlin lies completely still and pretends not to exist. "Allow me to take him to Gaius to be treated."

"Nonsense. He'll live. Merlin's been through worse, haven't you, Merlin?" Arthur swats at Merlin's sprained ankle and Merlin lets out an involuntary yelp of pain. Tears are beading at the corners of his eyes, partly because of the pain but mostly because of the unbearable humiliation, and out of all the strange, confusing things that have happened today, this is undoubtedly the worst.

"If you insist, my liege," Percival says deferentially, gently lowering Merlin to the ground and bracing his shoulder to keep the weight off his ankle. Merlin swipes a quick hand across his eyes and looks from side to side for some escape route, but Percival's holding him up and Arthur is standing there with his arms crossed and there's nowhere he can go.

"My chambers, Merlin," says Arthur, giving him a weary look. "Ten minutes."

It's considerably more than ten minutes, since Merlin has to limp all the way to Arthur's chambers as he will not allow Percival to pick him up and carry him there. He has a fiendishly tricky time even convincing the knight to leave his side. Part of him is convinced that this is all a very strange dream. There's no other explanation for how nice the knights are being. At least, Merlin thinks miserably, Arthur's still an insufferable prat, even when I'm dreaming.

The pain in his ankle fades after a couple of hours; it wasn't even a very bad sprain to begin with. Somehow that just makes everything worse.

Merlin has a late night scrubbing Arthur's brass bathtub and repairing a tear in his favorite belt buckle after the king goes to sleep, and by the time he limps his way back home to Gaius's the sky outside the palace windows is very dark and most of the castle is asleep. Even Gaius is asleep when he gets there, snoring away in his cot, and Merlin has to fix himself a meal from the cold remains of supper and eat it very quietly, so as not to wake him up. It's a suitably depressing end to what has been a very trying day.

Then there's a knock on the door. Soft, but insistent, which tells Merlin that it's not some injured person requiring Gaius's attention, but a mysterious late-night visitor. He rises from his chair, pushing back his plate, and glances at Gaius asleep across the room before going to open the door.

Standing on the threshold is a tall, broad-shouldered figure dressed in chain mail, and even in the darkness of the corridor Merlin can tell from the rakish, untidy hair who it is. "Gwaine? What are you doing—"

"Merlin," Gwaine says, cutting him off, and shoves a wrapped bundle at him. "This is for you."

He looks decidedly uncomfortable. Merlin takes the bundle, surprised at its warmth, and gives him a baffled look.

"It's the middle of the night."

Gwaine shrugs as if to say, So what?

Tearing his eyes away, Merlin lifts the cloth covering the bundle and peers beneath it. His eyes widen in astonishment. "It's… it's a pie."

"Indeed," says Gwaine with a jerky nod.

"And… where did you get this… pie?"

"Palace kitchens," Gwaine says promptly. "Glad you like it. I'll see you around, Merlin."

"Wait," Merlin says, putting a hand on his shoulder before he can wheel around and take off down the hall. "You stole a pie from the palace kitchens?"

Gwaine's eyes dart from side to side, and Merlin recognizes the look from his old tavern-hopping days. If it weren't for the fact that he can't smell any liquor on Gwaine now, he might suspect that those days weren't so old after all, Knight of Camelot or no knight. "Yes. I did. Good night, Merlin."

"Hold on," Merlin says in exasperation, tightening his grip on Gwaine's shoulder. He knows he hasn't a hope in heaven of keeping the knight there if he sincerely wants to get away, but fortunately Gwaine isn't fleeing in earnest. Yet. "Do you want to tell me why you decided to steal a pie for me?"

Gwaine hesitates and dips his chin to his chest, like he's about to reveal some dark, terrible secret. "It's really not important," he says in a rush, and Merlin removes his hand from his shoulder and crosses his arms.

"It's not my birthday. You're not enchanted. Neither are the other knights. What's going on, Gwaine? I think I deserve an explanation."

"The other knights?" Gwaine blinks. "What are you talking about?"

Merlin stares at him. "You mean… you didn't plan this together? You, and Elyan, and Sir Leon, and Percival?"

"Oh." Gwaine sucks in a breath. "Well. It's… not like that, exactly."

"Right," Merlin says. "Come in."

It's five minutes later, while they're both sitting hunched over on Merlin's bed eating slices of warm apple pie—stolen pie, Merlin reminds himself—that he finally gets the truth from Gwaine.

"The four of us acted abominably under the lamia's thrall, particularly in our treatment of you, Merlin. So…" Gwaine pauses long enough to inhale a mouthful of pie. "We decided to make it up to you, in whatever small ways we could. It was Sir Leon's idea. I had nothing to do with it."

"Of course not," Merlin says, struggling to contain his laughter. "So that's what all this has been. I thought I was going mad, or that the knights had been enchanted."

"No enchantment," Gwaine says with a sheepish expression. "Only guilt."

Merlin smiles at his friend, more touched than he cares to admit. It's easy to forget how miserable he was earlier in the day, now that he knows the true meaning behind all of the knights' gestures. "Sir Percival went a bit too far."

Gwaine snorts unchivalrously into his pie. "I heard." He darts a sidelong glance at Merlin, his eyes clouded with uncertainty, and lowers his head as he says, "Lancelot would have thought of the grandest gesture, you know. He probably would have fought a tournament in your honor."

A tight fist of pain clenches in Merlin's chest, but he still smiles. "It's not hard to imagine." He tilts his head toward Gwaine, noting the quirk of the knight's lip and the sadness in his eyes. They all miss Lancelot… but none more than Merlin, he is certain of it. "Are you going to fight any tournaments in my honor, Gwaine?"

Gwaine chuckles and pushes a fist into his shoulder, much more gently than Arthur would have done, which Merlin appreciates. He doesn't need any new bruises. "Your wit knows no bounds, my friend."

"Indeed," Merlin says in a voice tight with laughter, and raises his forkful of pie. "To Lancelot. Sir Lancelot."

"To Sir Lancelot," Gwaine agrees, and they set about finishing the pie.

FIN