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It starts with Will's shoulder.
He has an old scar there, an odd twisting line that wraps around his shoulder to his back. Will doesn't remember where it had come from, some old childhood accident probably, and he's used to the pain. It's with him constantly, sometimes a searing burn that makes every swing of his sword an agony, and sometimes just a dull ache he can push to the back of his mind, but always there.
Will understands the pain as a part of the scar, an unwanted companion that follows him everywhere he goes. It's an odd echo of the Prince's curse, too, in the way the scar branches and cracks like the thorns that haunt his friend. Will tells himself that this is a reminder of the Prince, and what he's fighting for.
It doesn't always help. On bad days, when Will has to grit his teeth through the worst of it, he doesn't want to think of the Prince, or the mission. On those days, Will wants to stay in his tiny bunk, curled up as small as he can get, and breathe through his pain.
If only it wouldn't be letting his friends down, he would have done it. But it's not their fault that he's struggling, and they've all followed him so far that he can't even think of disappointing them.
It's only when Neuras gets around to setting up a bath on the runner's deck, that Will learns there can be any kind of relief. On a particularly rough day, after a fight that had strained his shoulder to the point of numbing it, he decides that a shower would be too much to deal with. he fills a bath instead and settles down in the steaming bath sinking so low in the water that it reaches up to his neck.
And the numbness slowly starts to fade. First into a dull throb, and then eventually into something barely even present. Will closes his eyes, and tilts his head back, and lets out one long, slow, steady breath. The ache in his shoulder has been with him for so long, through so many fights, and has survived so many healing spells without fading, that Will has assumed there's nothing he can do about it.
But this...
This helps.
"Are you still up here?"
Strohl's voice, with its startled half laugh of discovery and amusement, brings Will's mind back to the present with a jolt, and he half jerks in some startled instinct before he looks around and spots Strohl several steps away, gaze carefully directed outward so he won't interfere in Will's privacy.
"We were all wondering where you ended up," Strohl continues, a bit of a teasing laugh in his voice. "Gallica said you're going to prune if you stay in the bath much longer."
Will flushes red. "Sorry," he says. "I'll be out in a minute."
"We'll wait on you to start eating." Strohl says, and leaves Will to clamber out of the bath and dress. He does, realizing in the process what Strohl had meant by prune—his fingers have wrinkled in the water, a little like the skin of the fruit. Obviously it's a sign he's been in there too long, and he'll have to be careful to keep his baths shorter in the future, for his friends' sake. To avoid the teasing, and any inconvenience for them.
It's a shame, though. He's just… tired. Hurt.
He wants to rest.
-//-
The next few months see his skin filled with a roadmap of scars. Burns, scratches, and long jagged strikes from swords and spears and daggers. Some of them heal, quick and easy, with the help of spells. But not all of them fade. In fact, the scar on his shoulder seems to be growing and unfurling from its starting point, twisting out across his back, around his side under his ribs, and spreading out like the thorns they so resemble. They seem to almost join together into one long, twining, branching scar.
Into one all over, full body pain.
Will knows better rthan to bring it up. He's already gotten healing, he gets healing every time he's injured, it just… it doesn't work. And if magic isn't going to help him, what else is there for anyone to try? This pain predates when he'd left the sanctum, and he always would have had it, even without the combat.
(Besides)
(This fight is worth the pain)
Still. By the time the curse is broken, and they're finally staggering back to the sanctum, Will is very, very tired. He has more bad days than good, and Louis's spell hadn't done anything to help. It just feels like he's getting worse at hiding it, and he doesn't want that. He doesn't want his friends to worry, especially when they're so close.
So Will grits his teeth, and tells himself keep going keep going keep going, until they make it all the way back to the chamber where his best and oldest friend has been lying, asleep and waiting, for them to find a way to help him.
And just seeing him there, whole and healthy and unburdened from the thorns that have marked him for so long, makes Will's legs go weak at the knees and he feels almost weak with the sheer relief. They've done it. (It's over) He's done. (He can rest)
The last thing he sees, before his legs give out completely and the ground rushes up to meet him, is the Prince's eyes blinking slowly open. That's good. He's done his job, and the Prince is going to be alright. There's so much left to do, Louis and the throne and all the promises he's made to friends. All the promises he hasn't been able to keep, or hadn't had time to keep, or had put off for later because the pain just keeps getting worse and worse.
... but he's saved the Prince.
He loses consciousness before he even hits the ground.
-//-
The Prince, before he's even fully awake, is startled by a sudden chorus of cries from all around him. Someone shouts "Captain!" and another swears, but the name on every other tongue is Will.
It's been so long since he hasn't been ill that the Prince has almost forgotten how it feels, but now he takes deep, full breaths and sits up without any pain at all. He's... confused. He's not sure how long he's been asleep, and...
And when he looks around, there's an odd mix of mostly strangers gathered around—
"Will?" the Prince breathes. He stands (and it's easy, there's no pain) and with barely a pause for thought joins the group gathered around the boy he'd--well, he thought he'd made up. He doesn't know how to help the way everyone else seems to be trying, so in a loss (and because he needs to know) he turns to the most familiar person here, asks Hulkenberg, "Who is this?"
"Your Highness?" She turns to him, eyes already wide in overwhelmed confusion even before she hears his question. That certainly doesn't seem to reassure her, though. "'Tis your own dear friend, Your Highness," she says. "Will."
No, he isn't. Or... or he is, he has in some ways been the best and most constant friend the Prince has ever had. But something is clearly very wrong, and the Prince is missing crucial information. He needs to have a real conversation with these companions of his imaginary friend, and said friend will need to be examined to learn why he's suddenly collapsed.
"Gruidae," he says, standing and backing slightly away from the group. "Are there any heaters available to see to him?"
Gruidae has known him since before he was a prince, his whole life in fact. The Prince is fairly sure she's known his mother for her whole life as well. That's likely why she's hovering nearby, watching him like he's still the same child that had spent his very youngest years here, clinging to his mother's skirts and following her everywhere she went.
"We are stretched a bit thin," Groidae says, letting him down gently, but still letting him down. "After the attack, those healers we have left are focused on tending to our own."
"To your own?" One of Will's group, a nidia with long, blonde hair and eyes that flash with anger, stands and turns to face Gruidae. "After everything Will's done, you won't even call him one of your own? How could you—" her jaw works furiously, and then she repeats, "How?" like the word is being torn from her.
"Nevermind," the Prince says quickly, before an argument can really start. "I've had years of examinations of my own, and enough free time on my sickbed to make a study of various healing texts. I'll do the examination myself."
Gruidae doesn't object to this, and the others seem relieved. The tallest of the group, a paripus man who so far has said nothing, stands and lifts Will with him like a child.
(He's... so small, the Prince realizes)
(In his dreams, his hero has always seemed larger than life)
"Lead the way," the paripus says, and so the Prince does. He directs them toward the nearest empty room he can think of, and begins his examination of Will.
It's an eerie, almost incomprehensible experience. He knows Will on a level that's almost instinctual, but at the same time he has never actually seen him before.
(He has never existed before)
(…he must have, to have all these loyal friends around him, but the Prince has missed it)
Will is small, as small as the Prince, which on some level makes sense—Will is a dream he'd imagined into his favorite stories, because there were never any characters that looked like him. It logically follows that Will would look like him. But... but the Prince had grown up cursed, vines leeching away his energy, and sometimes making it difficult to sleep, to keep food down, to do any of those things that usually help children to grow up.
Will had never been cursed. This isn't fair to him.
The Prince casts the spells he'd learned by having them cast on him. He physically examines Will, looking for signs of whatever had caused him to lose consciousness. He searches Will's bag, feeling slightly ashamed at what is, deep down, nothing but curiosity.
In the bag, the Prince finds his own copy of Utopia, the book that had first sparked the idle daydream that would grow to become Will. The Prince has always been careful with it, but now the book has been thoroughly well thumbed, stained by weather and very well loved. The Prince wonders at that, wonders if Will had perhaps found something in it to love as well. Then he packs it safely back away in the travel bag, along with the hand drawn pictures of places he's never seen, a jar of beetles, an odd collection of healing items. The silent record of an adventure as grand as any the Prince has dreamed up for Will, and the first he's been on that the Prince has absolutely no idea of.
On Will's body, he finds scars. A long, ropey pattern of vine and thorns that to the Prince is unmistakable as being anything else. He has those same scars himself, after all, even if Will's seem to be a mockery of his—a hodgepodge of burns and nicks and unhealed bruises, all joined together as if his body can't keep him from feeling the same pain the Prince does. And does that mean Will's scars are his fault? That he'd imagined Will just like him, and somehow passed along his curse?
And from his spells, the Prince learns the worst thing of all. That Will is pure magla, disguised as flesh and bone, and that magla has been pushed as far as it can go.
Will is as doomed as the Prince had ever been. He is going to die.
"Well?"
The Prince looks up at the clemar who had just spoken. From his accent and dress the Prince assumes he is noble. but the tone in his voice is anxious, afraid. For Will, an elda.
"What's wrong with him?" the clemar asks, words too worried for the bluntness in the tone to hold any bite.
He's going to die. the Prince thinks, looking down at Will. He wasn't made to last, it isn't in his nature to survive forever. Or even for long.
He's going to die.
He's going to...
"I don't know yet." the Prince says, pushing everything he's learned aside in favor of the impossible—the only—other choice. "A type of magical exhaustion, I believe, but I'm not sure of the specifics. We're going to have to create a way of saving him."
He will not allow Will to die.
But he doesn't know what to try, and neither does anyone else, so for the moment there's nothing to be done but invite the group to stay, at least the night if not longer, and make arrangements for Will to be taken somewhere safe to rest. Once that's done...
They can cross that bridge as they come to it.
Several members of Will's group introduce themselves as they drift away. The Prince learns names, and hears a confusing sketch of adventure and travel, an adventure that has brought their strange group together, and bound them up so tightly that it feels to the Prince like they're nursing a jagged wound between them all, where Will is supposed to be. He smiles, and is polite, and thanks them for both their efforts on his behalf, and for Will.
Hulkenberg is the one who sits down with him for a real conversation when everyone else is gone, to tell him the full story of what he's missed. and to profusely apologize for not being able to save him all those years ago.
"It's alright," he says, flushing red at her emphatic and unending apologies, at the mother hen way she watches him, as if waiting for him to collapse back into his sickbed. "It wasn't your fault, and you fought valiantly." He looks down at his hands, scarred across the palms by choking vines, years of the cursed thorns biting into him again and again. He thinks of Will's scars, and aches for the pain he must have been living with. "If anyone was at fault, it was me. I could have run. Or dodged. In the moment, I only froze."
"'Twas not your responsibility to protect yourself," Hulkenberg says. "You were a child."
"Old enough to be taught to hold a sword," the Prince says. "But... nevermind." He takes a deep breath, shaking his head and looking up at her, a faint smile on his face. "There are more important issues to worry over, at the moment." These are insecurities to address later, in private. "Will is still unconscious," he reminds her, the smile already fading.
"Aye." Hulkenberg says. "In truth, 'tis the only time I've seen him sleep this long. He has taken more than his share of night watches."
"What's he like?" the Prince asks. "When he's awake, I mean?"
Hulkenberg laughs. "Surely you know him better than any of us," she says. "You grew up with him here."
Is that what Will had told his companions? That the two of them have been friends since childhood?
...It would have been nice. There are so many times when he'd wished desperately to not just have a friend, but to be one. It's hard to always feel that others are worried about you, without having anyone to support in return.
"But what's he like on a journey like yours?" he asks. "Was he amazing?"
"Yes." Hulkenberg says, as straight to the point as ever. "We would have failed at the outset, were it not for Will."
The Prince smiles, oddly proud at hearing this.
"He often made me think of you," Hulkenberg says. "It was easy to believe him, when he explained you had been hisfriend since childhood."
"How so?" the Prince asks, startled.
She studies him for a long moment, really seeing him. Then she says, "The way you both fidget when you get restless. Your earnest manner. And of course, you look so alike."
The Prince doesn't particularly want herh to dwell on that last part, or to start asking questions of why they look so similar. "Sir Hulkenberg," he says. "Surely you're not telling me that all elda look the same to you?"
She sputters in protest, and before the Prince can back down and assure her that he's teasing, she says, "You and our captain are both extremely important to me. I would never write either of you off as 'merely' elda." She sniffs. "If you two are indicative of your tribe, then I see nothing 'mere' about the elda at all. You may in fact be the noblest of us all."
The Prince goes slightly red, and finds himself stumbling for something to say that would be worthy of her earnest kindness. In the end, he only says, "I'm… glad you found him. And that you were there to keep him safe."
"And I intend to do so tonight." Hulkenberg says. "I will stay up with the Captain. You are to get some sleep, Your Highness. You've only just recovered."
"I'm fine," the Prince says. "Better than I've felt in years."
"Better for now, perhaps," Hulkenberg says. "But not for long if you spurn rest."
She's not going to give an inch, clearly, so the Prince leaves Will in her charge and goes unenthusiastically toward the room that has been his sick bed for as long as he's been here. He doesn't particularly want to go back, to face the sickness and the memories and the smell of it all, so he's grateful for the distraction when someone calls out to him.
"Your Highness?"
He turns—he's in a small passageway with not much room for a second person to hide, but after a moment realizes that the person that had called him is a fairy. One he knows, in fact.
"Gallica?" he asks, truly amazed. "Is that you?"
She laughs, self conscious, and says, "It's been a long time."
She's near the ground, unusually for a fairy, so the Prince crouches in front of her to make better eye contact. As he does so, he notices that for some reason she's dragged Utopia out with her. "Is this really the same fairy that used to pull my hair and pretend to mistake me for a girl?"
"That was a long time ago!" she protests, voice almost a squawk, and the Prince bites back a genuine smile. "I've—changed a lot since then."
"I can tell," he says, eyeing her tiny figure. Unlike most fairies he's ever seen—and there's a fair few, in the hidden elda forests—her whole posture is fierce and determined, a straight line with no wavering hesitation.
"I've been traveling with Will and everyone," Gallica says. "And it's different, having a purpose."
"It seems to have been good for you," the Prince says. He's not quite sure why she'd called out to him. Although she'd flitted in and out of his life in his first few months here, and he'd appreciated that it never seemed to occur to her to treat him like some cursed thing about to break. But they hadn't exactly been close, and he isn't sure what to say.
"Yes," Gallica says. "It has been. But—I didn't want to talk about that. I wanted to ask…" Her small face is a contortion of uncertainty. "I heard some of your conversation with Hulkenberg, and—you of all people have to know that Will… he wasn't here."
She says it like it hurts, and so the Prince settles from his slightly uncomfortable crouch into a cross legged position, the better to sit and talk to her. "I was a little curious about that myself," he says. "But it didn't seem like the right time to ask. Is that what he told people?"
"Yes," Gallica says. "But it's not just that, something strange happened." She puts a hand on her own chest, and says, "I was sent out to find help in breaking your curse, and I was sent out alone. But when I left the village, I came to a patch of flowers in the forest, and Will was there. And when I saw him, I remembered him. It was like he'd actually been here all along, and he'd been sent out of my mission with me. That's what I remembered, and what he remembered too. That he was my partner for the journey, and your closest friend. It was only when we came back here that I started to realize…" Her face is genuinely, truly hurt. "It wasn't true. I never knew Will before we left. You've never known him at all. So why did you let Hulkenberg go on thinking it's true?"
The Prince considers her. The Gallica he'd met as a child, he never would have trusted with this. But now?
"When I was very small," he says quietly. "I read that book for the first time." He points to Utopia. "And for the first time I started to think of a world where everyone could be equal, regardless of tribe, or birth. I wanted… so badly, to live in that world. I thought—" His face burns. "Sometimes, I imagined that I did. And sometimes I imagined that—that a hero from that world would come here, to me. I called him Will, and I imagined that if he was real, he'd be a hero. And an adventurer. But kind, not like the mercenaries I would see in the Palace. He'd be an elda like me, even, but strong enough that when people said elda like a dirty word, he wouldn't be hurt by it. He'd want to lead them to be better."
He says all this quietly, like a confession. His silly, childish dreams brought out into the light, exposing the things he'd so desperately wanted.
"I don't know how he's real," the Prince continues, as Gallica stares at him. "I don't know why you remembered him, or why he thought he'd been here all along. But I knew him the moment I saw him. When I heard he'd ben telling people we're friends, I… I couldn't say that we weren't. It wouldn't be fair to him, while he's not even awake, and I suppose… I wished it was true."
There's a long silence. Then Gallica lets out a long breath and says, "I really don't know where to start with that."
"I'm sorry," the Prince says, looking down at his hands in his lap. "I know how it sounds. It's—rather pathetic, isn't it? Will isn't… he's not the kind of person that would want to be friends with me."
"What?" Gallica says. "No, I just meant the whole story is odd. Will adores you."
"That's—" His face is hot. "Maybe he has to. Because I made him up, maybe he…"
Gallica looks at him, almost pityingly. "Will adores you because of your ideals," she says, and gestures to the little black book. "Because you taught him those ideals. If you really did dream him up out of this book somehow, then I think that just makes it even more true."
The Prince covers his face with his hands, half because he's entirely overwhelmed by everything she's saying, and half because his face has gone completely red.
Gallica pats him on the knee as he gradually recovers himself.
"I wish I could talk to him," the Prince says, when he feels able to pull his hands away from his face. "Then maybe I'd know for sure."
"I might have some good news for you," Gallica says. "Because I've been thinking. It might sound a little strange, but there's this place called Akademeia. Will can reach it by reading this book, or sometimes in his sleep."
"Akademeia?" the Prince echoes, confused.
"I don't really know what it is," Gallica says. "And neither does he. But it's a sort of library-study thing, and the author or the book is trapped there. That's where he goes to study Archetypes."
The Prince nods, a little vaguely, because he's heard a bit about Archetypes from the others by now, but is still struggling to wrap his mind around them.
"It's sort of a longshot," Gallica says. "But if he dreams about Akademeia, why wouldn't he be able to dream himself there when he's in a coma? I brought the book out here because I thought that you're the only person other than him that might care enough about it to be able to use it to reach Akademeia, but if you two are connected like you just told me you are, that's even more of a sign that it might work."
"It's worth a try," the Prince says, still too confused to be truly excited about this proposal. He reaches for the book, lifting it carefully over the top of Gallica's head. "All I have to do is read?"
"I think so," Gallica says. "I usually just tag along with Will, he's the one that really knows how to do it."
"I'll do my best," the Prince says, and lets the book fall open to what seems to be the most well read page. The first paragraph at the top of the page begins, In this world, all are equal—
And the Prince feels his anxiety start to unwind, as he reads. He has always loved the dream of this place.
In this world, all are equal.
There's a change in the air around him, and the Prince is startled out of his reading of the book. He finds himself sitting in a strange blue room, half study and half library, as Gallica had described. And on a couch in front of him, just a few feet away—
"Will!"
-//-
Will half wakes to the sound of his name, and in the strange logic of dreams is not entirely surprised to realize he's curled up in Akademeia, a blanket draped over him, and the Prince hurrying close. "You're here," he breathes, and the Prince gives a firm little nod of agreement as he crouches down in front of Will, both hands closing around one of Will's. "You're alright."
"I am," the Prince says, his voice so achingly familiar and reassuring that Will feels himself relaxing in response. He's still hurting, so so much. He's still tired. But the Prince is here, and everything is going to be fine.
"I'm so glad," Will says, and lets his eyes slip closed again.
-//-
The Prince can't help a sound of despair as Will's eyes flutter closed, and he drifts back into sleep. This isn't fair. Gallica had called this a dream, hadn't she? That means that in the dream, at least, Will should be awake, and safe. They should be able to speak.
Someone clears their throat behind the Prince.
"More!" Gallica says, while the Prince is still turning around. She doesn't sound at all worried about this man-- who the Prince sees, a moment later, is a tall clemar dressed in dark clothes, with horns of a shape and length that wouldn't have looked out of place in the Prince's own family tree—which is reassuring. "Something's wrong with Will."
"I know," More says. He looks tired, but not in the same way that Will does. More's tired gaze, as it strays back to Will, reminds the Prince too much of the way nearly every adult in his life has looked at him since he was cursed. "I don't know how he came to be here, but something is clearly..." he seems a little more hunched over and heavy. "I wasn't able to speak with him, and I was actually hoping when you arrived that you would be able to explain."
"Not really," Gallica says, drifting closer to More, gesticulating as she starts to explain. "We finally got to the Prince,—" she gestures back toward him, and he shifts awkwardly. "But as soon as we did. Will just collapsed. Magical exhaustion."
"That's... not exactly it," the Prince says. "It's something close, but the problem isn't exhaustion. It's that he's made of magla, and the magla's..." he gestures unenthusiastically. "Thin. He pushed too hard."
"He's... are you sure?" More asks.
The Prince nods, body tense. From everything he's heard, Will had only pushed as hard as he had because of him. To try and save him. "And he's so badly hurt, that can't have been good for him."
"Hurt?" Gallica asks. "What do you mean?"
The Prince gestures to his own chest. "The scars," he says. "They're healed, but not very well." He raises his palm to show his own scars, more cleanly healed than any of Will's. "The skin around his scars is tight and red," he says. "And that's—it's literally only skin deep. He would have had pain under it, too, and I'm sure that pain would have taken a lot of his energy. You don't think pain will take that much energy, but... it does."
"Will wasn't in pain, though," Gallica says.
"Yes, he was," the Prince tells her.
"He would have said something!" Gallica insists.
"Perhaps..." More clears his throat, and muses. "He would not be suffering so much now if he hadn't already been hurting."
"That's horrible, though." Gallica says. "We should have… we're his friends. We should have noticed." She shuders a little, still in midair, and says again, "That's horrible."
"It is," the Prince says.
"But maybe we can help him that way?" Gallica asks hopefully. "If he has these injuries, maybe they can still be healed."
"Maybe," the Prince says. He knows, as well as anyone, that some scars stick. "Or maybe we could strengthen his magla, but I have no idea how to do that."
"You need Royal Magic," More says. "It's the only magic that could do that."
The Prince shakes his head no. "That's something only the reigning monarch is meant to be able to use."
"Well," Gallica says, in exactly the same way a hiker might as they stand at the base of a mountain, staring up at the peak. "We'll have to get creative about ir because of how Will was pretending to be you, but the plan was always to have you replace will in the Tournament for the Throne."
"I don't think I could replace Will," the Prince protests. "He's...'' everything I wanted to be and couldn't.
"Of course not," More says. For the first time, he looks straight at the Prince, who is struck suddenly by a strong, if undirected, sense of deja vu. It's those horns again, so reminiscent of his father's side of the family, but it's also the eyes, and the intensity of the expression. The Prince just can't place it, not even as More continues speaking. "No one and nothing could replace Will," he says. "But you will have to stand in his place, if you want to save him. You are very likely the only one that can."
And the Prince does want to save him. Now that he's standing here, uncursed and more or less healed and whole, he realizes that he very badly wants to live in a world that also has Will.
"Okay," he says, voice barely audible. "I'll do that, if that's what it's going to take. But... for tonight, is it alright if we stay here for a while? With Will?"
More's expression softens. "Of course," he says. "There is only so much I can do for him, on my own." He gestures to the blanket draped over Will's sleeping body. The Prince glances back at him too, and realizes a cat has at some point curled up next to him.
The Prince doesn't know what he can do, either, but hesits on the ground in front of the sofa where Will lies asleep, and pulls his knees up to his chest.
After a couple minutes, Gallica lands on one of his knees, and looks up at him. The Prince looks back down at her. After several minutes, the Prince says, "Do you know what's funny?"
"What?" Gallica asks.
"Will was a dream for so long," the Prince says. "He was my secret." He looks at her, at the cat purring into Will's side, at More sitting behind his desk. He thinks of all of Will's friends back in the sanctum. "I'm so glad that he got to have a whole life, and people that cared about him, and…" He thinks of Utopia. "And dreams of he's own."
"And he's going to have more." Gallica says. "More life, and friends, and dreams. And time. We'll make sure."
The Prince nods, and says, "I hope... when we really meet, I really hope he'll still want to be my friend."
It just seems better, in every way, to have a friend than a dream.
(Or maybe, best of all, to have a friend to share his dreams with)
"He'll still want you," Gallica assures him, as they settle in for the night. "Trust me, this is Will. He doesn't leave anyone behind."
-//-
Will half wakes in the middle of the night, to the quiet, absolute stillness of a world quietly waiting for dawn. He doesn't know at first where he is, and only gradually becomes aware of Akademeia, of Plateau purring in a low rumble next to him, and the Prince—the Prince!—sitting in front of him like a guard.
"You're still here," Will whispers, and the Prince turns immediately—but slowly, in deference to Gallica asleep just next to him—to face Will.
For a long moment, they just look at each other. Will feels something in his chest swelling up with pride and affection for this most important person, for the best friend he's known for as long as he can remember.
"I didn't want to leave you until we had a chance to speak," the Prince whispers back.
Will half smiles, but it's hard. He feels so tired, and the ever present jagged ache across his chest stings and itches and hurts. "I missed you," he says, complex feelings made simple by the late hour and his own tired soul. "That's why I fought so hard. I only ever wanted to save you, so that you could take your dreams to the throne."
The Prince laughs, a soft sound. "I can't imagine any dream of mine better suited to the throne than you, Will," he says.
"Mmm," Will answers. That comment doesn't make a lot of sense to him, but he's too tired to mind much. He's happy just to see his friend again, at long last, and to hear his voice. His eyes start to close again, and he makes an effort to force them open.
"It's alright," the Prince assures him. "You can rest, Will. You've done… everything I could have asked for."
"There's still the Tournament," Will says. "Louis—the crown—"
"The rest of us will take care of that," the Prince assures him. "You just need to stay here, and rest."
"But…"
The Prince shakes his head, and stands to reach over Will, and pull a blanket up over his shoulders. Will isn't sure exactly where it had come from, but it seems to have slipped down off his chest as he slept, and… it feels nice. To have someone care for him.
"Let us take care of you," the Prince says. "Let us protect you as you sleep, and find what you need to be healthy, and heal your pain, if we can."
Will's hand, under the blanket, presses tight to his chest. He wants to argue, but doesn't have the energy. And this is the Prince telling him to rest. His best and oldest friend. "Tell everyone I'm alright?" he asks.
The Prince nods. "I will," he says. "I'll make sure they know you're thinking of them."
Will nods. "And… make sure… make sure Gallica introduces you to everyone," he says. "They're… special. You'll like them too. And I want all my friends to care for each other."
"Including me?" the Prince asks, voice hesitant and unsure for reasons Will can't begin to guess.
"Especially you," Will says. "You've always been my friend. But it was just been the two of us, and now…"
He trails off, but the Prince doesn't seem to need any more encouragement. "If you vouch for them," he says. "Then I believe that they're all good people." He puts one hand on Will's head, a gentle, caring touch. "Because you… you are my friend, aren't you?"
He is.
Will falls asleep to the Prince's touch on the side of his head, and the tone of quiet awe in his friend's voice. He slips into a deep, peaceful sleep, cocooned by his friend's voice, and finds a place in his dreams where not even the pain can follow him.
-//-
"You didn't tell him?" Gallica murmurs, and the Prince—lost in the action of caring for Will, comforting him as he slips back into sleep—is startled to realize she's woken up herself.
"That he's imaginary?" the Prince asks. "That we aren't friends?" he looks away from Will to meet Gallica's gaze. "I don't think he'd be in the right place to listen to the first part right now. And as for the second..." He sits again, returning to a position that feels almost like a guard. "Maybe he knows better than me that we are."