Chapter Text
Leon looked at the rabbit, holding it gingerly out in front of himself. The rabbit stared back with wide, dark eyes, whiskers twitching mutinously.
“…What do we tell Arthur?” the knight asked miserably, feeling increasingly guilty under the weight of that stare.
“We could run for it,” Gwaine suggested, trying – and failing – to wrestle the second, more aggressive rabbit into a better grip. “Take them and make for the border. Or, better yet, tell the princess that they eloped together and we had nothing to do with it. Will you stop kicking, Merlin?”
Leon ignored both suggestions with a glare, finally giving into his charge’s unspoken demands and setting it down gently on the ground. Gwaine dumped his own bunny rather unceremoniously next to it, and the four knights backed up, contemplating their dilemma.
The rabbits hopped closer to each other, huddling together and staring up at them. Leon’s rabbit, at least, looked fairly, well… rabbity – the one that Gwaine had been holding was downright unnatural, its’ almost hectically bright, animated blue eyes darting from one face to another, as though it were daring them to laugh.
Or perhaps Leon should have said as though he were daring them to laugh.
Oh, gods, this was doing his head in.
Leon glanced back in the direction that the sorceress had capered off in, cackling madly all the way. “Do you think that we should have followed her?” he wondered out loud.
“I think we were all more focused on the fact that my sister has been turned into a rabbit,” Elyan pointed out, looking faintly nauseous – and if a bunny ever looked affronted, Gwen-rabbit was doing a fairly impressive job. “We need to take them to Gaius. He’ll be able to fix them. Right?”
“Right,” Leon agreed, thoughts dashing madly around his head. “Right. Percival, you carry them – that is, if you don’t mind, my lady,” he paused momentarily, feeling faintly foolish asking a rabbit for permission to do anything. He tried not to flinch when the smaller of the two creatures nodded hesitantly, her companion chittering huffily beside her. “Good. Well, if that’s sorted-”
He was cut off by a sudden shrieking cry, the sort that rent the forest and sent small animals scurrying for cover, and before Leon could so much as blink, something – no, two somethings – both small and blindingly fast, shot through the air in front of him, swooping low and snatching up the two rabbits from before their very eyes before rocketing off above the tree-line.
Leon blinked, startled. He glanced over at Gwaine, past him to Percival, and then back across at Elyan. He gawped back at the now empty patch of grass in front of him, trying to make sense of what had just happened.
Then he turned and bolted after the fleeing hawks. Because if it would be hard explaining letting a passing sorceress transform the king’s wife and best friend into rabbits, it would be even harder explaining letting them get eaten.
“That way!” Elyan shouted, pounding after him and pointing skywards.
“No – no, I saw them go the other way!”
“That was a sparrow, Gwaine!”
The four knights all but fell over each other – and a various assortment of roots, rocks, streams, small and unassuming animals – in their haste to keep up with the birds of prey and their unfortunate victims, and to keep them in sight through the trees. They sprinted through the forest, and every time an expanse of branches or foliage interrupted their view of the birds’ lazy passage, Leon’s heart jumped into his throat. If the hawks hadn’t been weighed down, it would have been impossible. As it was, by the time the birds reached their eyrie – and thank god that they hadn’t felt the need to range too far in their hunt – Leon was both out of breath and completely and utterly terrified.
At least the hawks didn’t drop them.
He nearly lost the birds as they vanished into their nest, but a flash of white – the lighter colour of Merlin-rabbit’s underside – caught his eye, and he honed it as it vanished into the canopy. “There!” Leon shouted, making a bee-line for the tree and shoving Gwaine out of the way rather unchivalrously when his fellow knight tried to barge in front of him. Above, he could hear the fluttering of wings and muffled squawking, and the knight nearly fainted when he heard a distinct crunching sound. He threw his arms around the tree trunk and bolted upwards, the rest of the knights shouting encouragement and lightly veiled threats regarding his speed as he did so.
It was probably lucky that he didn’t make it very far up, because Leon promptly fell straight back out as an abrupt, ear-shattering – and thoroughly disgruntled – roar split the forest. He vaguely had time to see the two hawks flee skywards with startled, dismayed squawks before he re-made his acquaintance with the ground, the breath pushed violently from his lungs on impact.
“Ow.”
“Are you alright?” Percival had the decency to ask distractedly, lending Leon a hand and helping him to his feet as Gwaine and Elyan peered anxiously up into the trees. He nodded shortly, massaging his back.
“What the hell was that?”
“It sounded like a bloody dragon,” Gwaine said uneasily, and Leon – re-calling his own personal experience with the creatures – had to agree. That was exactly what it had sounded like. But, considering that they hadn’t been barbecued yet, he found himself reluctant to believe that there was an actual dragon in the vicinity.
“It was close,” Elyan called. “Someone get up there and see what’s in that nest!”
Somehow, Leon found himself democratically elected to be the one to re-scale the tree, and he promised himself under his breath – amidst a torrent of colourful insults – that he would get back at all of them during their next training session. Violently. The knight shinned upwards, trying to ignore the ominous way that the branches creaked beneath his weight, and sighed a small breath of relief when he finally came level with the nest.
Remembering the crunching noise with no small amount of trepidation, Leon took a breath and gathered his nerves. Then he peered apprehensively into the haphazard twig structure, fairly certain that he would fall straight back out of the tree at the first sign of blood.
He needn’t have worried. Two sets of wide, bright eyes, one brown, one blue, watched him patiently from over the rim of the nest, and Leon’s heart slowed back to a semi-normal pace, a smile splitting over his face. Although, he thought distractedly, Gwen-rabbit did seem slightly terrified – and, if he hadn’t known better, he would have thought that Merlin-rabbit looked perhaps a little bit smug.
₪₪₪₪₪
Actually getting the two rabbits down from the tree proved surprisingly difficult. And somehow ended with Merlin-rabbit fumbling his way out of Leon’s grip – resulting in a minor heart-attack on the parts of everyone present – and landing squarely on Gwaine’s head like a dark, over-sized and very oddly shaped hat.
“Merlin, get down from there.”
“I think he likes it.”
“Merlin, I swear I’ll drop you. All I have to do is nod my head-”
“If you drop him you get to explain it to Arthur.”
Gwaine sulked as Leon passed Gwen – much more cautiously this time – down into Elyan’s waiting arms, grudgingly holding his head at a stiff angle so as not to upset Merlin’s precarious grasp on balance. “The things I put up with for you, mate,” he sighed, and Merlin chittered back obnoxiously, twitching one of his long ears so that it hung down over Gwaine’s field of vision.
“Cheeky little blighter.”
“Actually, maybe it would be better if we didn’t leave either of them where they might be mistaken for some passing predator’s next meal,” Leon said nervously, still warily searching the shadows for whatever had made that roaring noise as he dropped back onto the ground with a huff. “No need for a repeat of this.” However amusing Gwaine’s new hair ornament might have been.
“Exactly,” Gwaine said in satisfaction, reaching up and grabbing Merlin around the middle – and promptly getting kicked soundly in the face for his trouble. “Oi!” he shouted, exasperated, tucking the smirking rabbit safely under one arm while massaging the side of his face with the other hand. “I’m trying to stop you from being eaten, ungrateful little-”
Leon pretended not to notice Gwen’s rather un-queenly approximation of a rabbit-snicker as their odd little group hastened noisily back along the trail, vaguely in the direction of Camelot. He kept his hand on his sword at first, but nothing – no chimaera, no wyvern, and certainly no dragon – came snarling out of the shadows, and it didn’t take long for the knight to find himself relaxing. The birds wouldn’t have been singing if something so dangerous as a magical creature had been nearby, he realised. Whatever it had been, it was long gone by now.
Or, at least, he very much hoped so. Maybe the local birds were just unusually stupid.
“Gwaine, what are you doing?”
Leon’s attention came back to his companions, and he sighed. “Gwaine, stop annoying Merlin.”
His fellow knight was holding the rabbit carefully out away from his body, scrutinising it seriously and paying very little attention to where he was walking. Merlin was looking thoroughly displeased, kicked out ineffectually and staring pleadingly at the rest of them. Leon could almost see Merlin wondering why he had ended up at Gwaine’s mercy, while Gwen was being carried in quite a placid and dignified fashion by her brother. His lips twitched.
“But it’s not every day one of your friends gets turned into a rabbit,” Gwaine complained. “I mean, look at him. It’s so... weird. He still looks like Merlin. And Gwen still looks like Gwen. But they’re rabbits. And they’re kind of… cute.”
“Yes, Gwaine. Thank you for pointing that out,” Elyan said drily.
Finally fed-up (apparently being called cute was the final straw) Merlin-rabbit growled – actually growled – and bit down savagely on Gwaine’s knuckles with his over-sized buck teeth, eliciting a howl of surprise from his unsuspecting victim. Percival lunged forwards with arms out-stretched as Gwaine dropped his charge like a hot coal, jumping back and wringing his hand before realising what he had done. In the chaos that ensued, Elyan sensibly leapt back out of the way, cradling Gwen close as she strained to get a better look, Percival missed the falling rabbit entirely and barrelled into Gwaine, sending the both of the tumbling to the floor, and Merlin somehow managed to land on all fours with exceptional grace and balance before darting out from beneath the tangle of bodies and scampering up Gwaine’s shoulders and back onto his head, where he settled, eying them all haughtily.
Leon just sighed, feeling dis-inclined to risk life and digit removing him.
He had a feeling that it was going to be a long journey home.
₪₪₪₪₪
Arthur sighed, tossing the last of the reports onto his desk. There. Let the council deal with the rest of them. Gwen and the knights – and Merlin, he supposed – would be back from their picnic any minute now, and he’d be damned if he had to miss whatever stories they had to tell because he was still buried in logistics and paperwork.
There was a hesitant knock on the door, and the king smiled. That would be them now.
“Enter,” he called, glancing up expectantly. His smile lessened somewhat when the door swung inwards and the knights trouped in, a distinct lack of Gwen – or Merlin, come to think of it – among them.
“Where’s-”
Arthur stopped himself, taking in their appearances as the knights fiddled nervously. They were dirty and ruffled one and all, he realised uneasily; bits of twig sticking out of odd places, hair mussed, Gwaine appeared to have a rapidly blackening eye, and – wait, what?
“Gwaine,” Arthur said slowly, “why is there a rabbit on your head?”
His knight’s eyes flicked upwards, but Arthur noticed that Gwaine was ve-ry careful not to tilt his head or otherwise unbalance his passenger as it nibbled staidly on his prized locks. “Erm… well… it’s a long story.”
One of Arthur’s eyebrows took the opportunity to climb up into his hairline. The rabbit glared back at him, far too much intelligence in its manic, oddly coloured eyes – in fact, the longer the king looked at it, the more he felt like it was trying to engage him in a staring contest. Arthur frowned and shook his head, pulling his gaze back to his knights as they shuffled guiltily. Elyan was also carrying a rabbit for some reason, this one more sensibly positioned in his arms; its soft fur deep brown around huge, deeper eyes that watched him quizzically. The king glanced back at Gwaine’s rabbit, a sudden sinking feeling in the pit of his stomach. Black fur. Electric blue eyes. Questionable sanity. Then at Elyan’s. He felt a growing urge to face-palm.
“Please tell me that’s not-”
“There was a sorceress, sire,” Leon said quickly, finding his voice. “She – we had no chance-”
“And then there were the bir-”
For some reason, Percival elbowed Gwaine sharply in the ribs to cover up whatever he had been about to say, and Arthur’s suspicions were confirmed when the jolt sent the slightly larger rabbit sliding awkwardly off of the knight’s head, with an easily recognisable lack of co-ordination, and into his arms with a startled squeak.
“You let a sorceress… turn them into rabbits?”
“Um,” Leon hedged, scratching his head. “Yes, sire.”
Arthur couldn’t help it. He gave into the urge. “Would someone please fetch Gaius?” the king asked in a slightly strained voice, his voice muffled around the palm of his hand, and he heard someone scamper from the room to carry out his request.
“It could be worse,” Gwaine’s voice said, in a poor attempt at cheerfulness. “They could have been eaten.”
“What?”