(Influences include Calvin and Hobbes and The Squire's Tales)
When Gwaine was seven, his sister pushed him into the pond and called him a scummy little toad for reasons that were absolutely positively not his fault in the slightest, cross his heart and hope to die.
Naturally, he retaliated by gathering up the mushy, half rotten apples from the tree whose yield was always too bitter to eat. He climbed up into its branches and waited for her to pass.
He laughed when he splattered her and her friends and they shrieked, running fast and hard to get out of range.
A wisp of a girl about his age who'd been tagging along with her own sister was the only one who stayed. She danced out of the way of the apples he threw and bent to pick up one of the ones that was more or less intact.
The shriveled skin shivered and then pushed outward, turning bright red again. She bit into it happily.
Gwaine's nose wrinkled. "Gross," he complained.
The girl stuck her tongue out at him and grabbed another apple. She sent it sailing towards his head.
Gwaine yelped and tumbled out of the tree.
The girl ran off laughing. Gwaine thought about chasing after her, but the apple was lying in there, ripe and not at all rotten.
He prodded it thoughtfully. It felt fine.
He dared to bite into it. It tasted fresh and sweet and better than any other apple he'd ever eaten.
Later that night, he curled in on himself as his stomach cramped.
"Oh, dear," his mother fussed. "Little Lorie's sick too. I hope it won't spread."
Gwaine groaned and kept his mouth shut about the apple.
When Gwaine was fourteen, Lorie found work as a maid at the local lord's house.
"I could have lived in a house like that, you know," he told her proudly.
She wrinkled her nose. "It's so drafty in there. Why would you want to?"
That was a good point, Gwaine conceded. And besides, the local lord didn't get to come to the harvest festival and eat apple cakes.
He saved one for Lorie. He blushed when his sister found him out, but Lorie's eyes lit up, and she kissed his cheek before she turned bright red and ran.
Gwaine whistled all the way home.
Gwaine was seventeen when Lorie snuck him a bit of cheese from the lord's manor.
"Try it, I experimented on it."
Gwaine knew to be cautious by now, but he bit into it anyway.
He blinked. "It tastes like apple pie."
"Is it good?" she asked nervously.
"It's perfect," he declared, and he hesitantly took another bite. "And I've just the gift for thanking the fair lady." He bowed with a flourish and handed her the necklace he'd worked all year to earn. It was just a simple scale pendant on a chain, but it was also a promise. A someday, when I've finished my apprenticeship - When things are better -
A promise. One that made her smile in delight to accept.
Gwaine was eighteen when someone realized that Lorie's cooking experiments weren't just cause for caution, they were treasonous.
He was eighteen when they had to hold him back, screaming.
He was eighteen when he carefully picked up a silver chain from the remains of the fire.
Gwaine started walking.
He didn't intend to stop.
He ate apples whenever he could, but they always made his stomach hurt.
Gwaine was twenty-seven when he stopped. Finally. Permanently. With only one road left to travel.
But before that - before that -
"I was having a dream of a cheese that tasted like apple pie. Did anyone else dream that? No? You're missing out."
