#andrew burnap's wet kitten eyes gave me an ideas for a sickfic waaaaayy back when.

[silverysongs]

Arthur is late one morning to breakfast. Guenevere doesn’t think too much about it; he’s cheerful as usual, apologizes even though she tells him he doesn’t have to. (She doesn’t have to say You’re the king. She doesn’t say I don’t mind waiting for you.) Breakfast proceeds as usual, and it’s not until it’s over that she notices something is wrong.

He stands—practically bounces out of his chair—and then sways, very slightly. He catches himself on the table. Guenevere doesn’t miss the way he swallows and stares at the plate he’s left behind.

“Your majesty,” she says, watching his face, “are you well?”

Now his head snaps up. “Perfectly,” he says, smiling, and his eyes are bright—too bright, she thinks. She opens her mouth to protest, but he announces, “My good queen, today we are going to change the world, just wait and see.”

“I’ll be waiting and watching,” she says wryly as they start down the hall. He takes her hand as they walk along, which sends a flash of surprise through her—but she doesn’t say anything more. Sometimes he is impulsive in his affections, her king, like when he leaves flowers on her vanity, or when he asks her favorites in the middle of a conversation. It’s endearing, the way he flits from thing to thing, and always with that boyish grin when she surprises him—

Suddenly he presses her hand very hard. When she looks up at him, his face is pale. “Your majesty, what is it?” she asks.

He smiles, but it’s clearly painful. “Genny,” he whispers, and then he’s falling against her, almost collapsing but his boots are scuffing the floor, trying to find his footing. She struggles to hold his weight up, wraps her arms around him like a desperate lover’s embrace.

“Your majesty? Your majesty,” she says urgently. “Arthur, what’s wrong? Are you going to faint?”

He huffs a laugh against her hair, reaching outwards—for the wall, she realizes, and tries to guide him so he can lean against the stone instead of her poor support. “I must confess,” he says, voice weak, “I do feel a little lightheaded.”

“Well, sit down,” she demands, masking imperiousness over her panic. “I’ve—I’ve heard it’s good to put your head between your legs. It’ll get the blood flowing to your head.”

He slides down the wall, still grasping her hand tightly, and she does her best to help him settle, sitting down beside him. After a moment he takes a deep breath and raises his head to look at her. “Well,” he says, “I don’t suppose I’m going to the Table this morning.”

She wants to scoff at him, but he looks so miserable, even smiling. “You’re quite flushed,” she notes, reaching for his face; and then, feeling it, “Oh, Arthur, you’re burning up.”

“Not literally, I hope,” he says, “because I feel quite cold.”

“Arthur,” she says. “Stop making jokes.”

“Do you know, this is the most you’ve called me by my name instead of your majesty?”—and there is a tease in his voice but his eyes, though fever-touched, are soft.

Footsteps round the hall, and Guenevere turns away. “Oh, Sir Kay,” she says with some relief, as the knight stops and looks at his sovereigns sitting against the wall. “The king is ill. Would you please help him back to his rooms?”

“Certainly, your majesty,” Kay intones. Arthur groans as the knight hauls him off the floor. “Not sure I was up for standing yet, Kay,” he manages, and Kay slings an arm around his shoulders.

“Please rest, your majesty,” Guenevere says.

He smiles; he’s always smiling. “Go to the meeting, Genny,” he says. “You know all the policy. Go change the world—since I’m not fit to do it today.”

“Make sure he actually lies down,” she tells Kay. Kay, already looking beleaguered—perhaps familiar with the king’s flightiness—nods.

She watches them for a moment, then shakes herself. Nothing to do but go to the meeting alone.

--

It’s a few hours into the meeting and she’s half-heartedly listening to Lionel and Sagramore argue for the twentieth time that morning when Sir Kay slips into the room. She meets his eyes with a smile, expecting him to take his seat at the Table, but instead he makes his way behind her to speak in her ear.

“Your majesty,” he says quietly.

“Sir Kay,” she murmurs, trying to keep her eye on Lionel as he gesticulates wildly. “How is the king?”

“He’s asked for you,” Kay says. “Repeatedly.”

She looks at him, astonished, but keeps her voice low. “For me? Whatever for?”

Kay looks uncomfortable. “He’s very insistent, milady. He sounded…”

Now the panic is beginning to creep up her chest again. “He sounded what?”

“Very desperate,” he says. “Ma’am.”

For a moment she’s frozen, hearing Sagramore’s reply but not comprehending any of the words. She has to make a choice.

“Excuse me,” she interrupts. Twelve heads swivel in her direction, and she clasps her hands in her lap as a way to keep hold of her composure. “Thank you, gentlemen. Something urgent has come up that I must attend to.”

“Is everything all right, your majesty?” Dinadan pipes up.

Her first instinct is to lie, but she knows that if the king’s illness is actually serious, she’ll have to tell them eventually. “I hope so, Dinadan,” she says carefully. She sweeps her gaze around the Table. “We’ll reconvene tomorrow at the same time.”

If the king is better, she doesn’t say. She can see curiosity, doubt, maybe even hostility on some of the knights’ faces—Lionel looks particularly suspicious—but she turns her back on them and leaves the room.

Kay catches up with her in the hall. “Ma’am.”

Annoyance rears its head; she had been relieved to be able to show her true feelings on her face walking alone. “Yes, Kay, what is it?”

“I was just going to escort you, your majesty,” he says, undeterred by the irritation in her voice. He pauses. “And to tell you—you did well in there.”

She glances up at him. He sounds genuine. And, now that his small kindness is extinguishing her frustration, she can admit that she likes him. There’s a steadiness about him, a quiet security that isn’t threatened by ego, so unlike the other knights. She remembers suddenly that Kay is Arthur’s cousin, the same that led Arthur to pull the sword in an attempt to find a blade for a trivial tournament. He does not seem jealous of Arthur’s position; he does what his king asks, without complaint. And now, somehow knowing that she feels inadequate in this crisis, he compliments her. What a strange man.

“Thank you,” she says, a bit awkwardly. They walk in silence for a few moments. “You must love him very much,” she says finally, as they round a corner.

The twist of a smile. “Oh, he makes me want to throttle him sometimes, your majesty,” he says. “But. Yes. I do.”

“I haven’t known him for nearly as long,” she says, fighting her own smile, “but I feel much the same way.”

She’d meant the throttling, but he looks at her for a long moment. Whatever he sees in her face, he nods at. “I’m sure you do, ma’am,” he says quietly.

--

Kay doesn’t tell her anything more about the king’s condition, just leads her to the door of the king’s room and leaves with a bow. She has to shake off the sudden apprehension she feels standing in front of the door, alone. Arthur’s voice is coming faintly through the wood, and that must be a good sign. If he was silent, she reasons, pulling the handle, then she would know something was wrong. Perhaps her fears had been misplaced. Maybe he thought of an idea and simply had to share it with her. She will feel foolish for ending the meeting early, but there are worse things than feeling foolish.

She can see the king chattering at the physician as she approaches the bed. “—just lie still, your majesty,” the physician is saying, sounding haggard, but he turns at her approach. “Ah, my queen,” he greets, bowing hastily. “I’ll leave you—I must get a few things from my apothecary—”

He bustles out of the room before she can ask about the king’s condition.

“Your majesty,” she says, turning to the bed, perching on the chair the physician had left behind. The king in nightclothes now, covered up to his waist by a thick quilt, but he doesn’t look much better than he had in the hallway—pale except for the color high in his cheeks, hair a little mussed. And, she notes, looking closer, not entirely present. He’s quiet now, not looking at her, focused on something in the distance. It’s a familiar expression—when he is really deep in thought, he’ll adopt the same look, standing still in the middle of a room—made chilling by the glassiness of his eyes.

“Your majesty,” she repeats, concerned, “you were asking for me?”—and now he seems to hear her, because his head twitches and his eyes settle on her face.

“Oh, Genny!” he cries. “Merlyn was telling me we’d lost the war in France, but I told him I’d show you to him and prove him wrong. See, Merlyn”—and he’s looking away.

“Your majesty,” she says carefully, “there’s no one here but us.”

He looks at her, blinks dazedly, and there, he seems to see her again. “You are really here, aren’t you?” he murmurs, soft, unsure, raising a hand slowly as if to touch her. “You’re not something I dreamed up?”

Oh, and what if he’s gone mad? What if the fever has taken his brain and she’s left to rule this stoic, cultureless country alone? She tries to take a deep breath. Fevers give terrible dreams sometimes, she reminds herself, and maybe this is something like that. “No, your majesty,” she answers him.

“We really did win the war in France?” His breath is shallower than usual. “Sometimes I thought we’d be fighting forever, you know, just hacking away at the country until it was a bloody piece of meat. I’m not very good with a spear but I can use a sword alright. I don’t know how many people I killed. I don’t ever want to know.”

She is stunned at how forlorn he sounds. “You won the war,” she whispers. “You won me.”

“And then we traded one kind of death for another,” he continues hopelessly, “except it was your death, because we took your choice from you. I can’t begin to apologize for that, I can’t—”

The physician returns then, shattering the moment, and she’s too much in shock still to do much of anything but get out of his way.

“Your majesty, you must rest,” he chides the king. “Here, take this, it will help you to sleep—”

He helps Arthur drink the foul-looking draught he’s brought from the apothecary. It must taste as bad as it looks, for Arthur makes a face. “Merlyn,” he mumbles.

“Rest, milord,” the physician intones, gathering up his empty bottles on the nightstand. Guenevere watches as Arthur shuts his eyes. His brow smooths over. In moments, he’s asleep, vulnerable as a child.

“Is it—” she whispers, and the physician seems to realize she’s still in the room. At his probing look she clears her throat softly. “Is it a—dangerous sickness?”

The physician—she finally remembers his name is Gaius—sighs. “It might not be,” he admits. “It’s the season for fever, milady. Several of the knights have had some form of it in the last few weeks.”

“But?”

“But,” he continues, looking more grave, “it is a higher fever than I’ve seen recently. You’ve seen his moments of delirium. If it doesn’t pass in the next day or so—”

She has no thought for her expression, too caught in the tempest of worry building in her chest, but he must see something in her face because he stops and smiles, grandfatherly. “I’m getting ahead of myself,” he says.

“His dreams,” she says woodenly, meaning to ask a question, not remembering what she had wanted to say. The physician nods as though she had made perfect sense.

“The king has had vivid dreams just about as long as I’ve known him, your majesty. The fever seems to make them more palpable. It’s not a particularly bad sign.”

She swallows, trying not to think about Arthur’s pained expression. “What can be done?”

Gaius gathers up his medicine kit. “Watch and pray, milady,” he says. “I’ll send word if the king is better tomorrow.”