Merlin was being weird again. Weirder, Arthur admonished himself. He'd been acting odd all week, with no sign of letting up. Just yesterday, trying to lighten him up, Arthur had thrown a goblet at him and called him a clotpole. Merlin had picked up the goblet, placed it back on the table, and turned back to the armour he had been polishing, a perfect and composed servant.
It didn't make any sense.
Arthur decided to confront Merlin about it that night. He refused to acknowledge exactly why he cared, instead telling himself that the lad was probably after a day off and hoping to get it by moping.
Merlin was a picture of stealth. No, not really, he was bloody useless at sneaking, but Arthur couldn't help but wonder why he was trying to sneak out of the castle
Yes, he followed him. Of course he followed him. And he was actually competent when it came to stealth.
He stole a horse. Arthur stared for a full minute at that. (More like glared actually.) The horse was practically Merlin's, as he used it almost every time they went on patrol, to the point that Arthur refused to let anyone else use it, but still.
Arthur was going to have to have a very serious talk with his servant when they got back.
Or quite possibly while they're there. He hadn't decided yet.
A night of following tracks - interrupted only by what looked like a snack on Merlin's part at a strawberry bush - led Arthur to Merlin, completely oblivious to him, tying his horse to a tree and walking further into the trees. The horse nickered and Merlin jumped, already having forgotten that it was there.
Arthur knew he'd have no problem keeping himself hidden from the boy.
Tying his horse near Merlin's, Arthur crept silently, using moss and thick logs to keep himself silent.
Merlin, by contrast, was walking on dead leaves. He was deafening in the silence of the still-black dawn.
After an hour of walking - Arthur wondered why the boy had left his horse - Merlin paused, listening. Arthur followed suit, and heard the faintest whoosh of water interspersed with the rustling of leaves shaken by the wind.
Merlin tensed. Arthur worried that the lad had heard Saxons or something but could hear nothing of the sort himself (though he did wonder if Merlins large ears somehow aided him in hearing a threat). Indeed, when Merlin ran much faster than someone who had stood so stiffly should, Arthur feared there was some danger about, and drew his sword before racing after him with his usual silence.
His heart leapt to his throat when he heard a thud and saw in the dim light Merlin kneeling before a massive lake, but he refrained from running after him, seeing no injury on the boy and not wanting to to alert anyone who would wish them harm.
His concern for Merlin rose when he heard him.
There was something very wrong with his breathing. It came in little coughs, air leaping into his throat, and rarely. Some gaps were so long that for a split second Arthur thought he had died. Then another heaving gasp came, wracking the boy's whole body, and Arthur let out the breath he had been holding alongside him.
Eventually the strangled noise subsided and Merlin was silent again, as the sun rose and sent brilliant reds across the sky, reflecting onto the lake. Arthur had to pause to appreciate the beauty. He could see why Merlin had come to that spot specifically even if he still didn't know what he was doing there.
After a long period of stillness, Merlin leaned forward, dipping his hand in the water. He reached in further, until his sleeve and elbow were sodden and coated in mud from the bank. He was looking for something.
Arthur moved around in the trees, trying to get a better look at what he was doing. His new position, behind some trees so close to Merlin that he really has to trust the boy's distraction to keep him from being caught, showed him Merlin's face. Immediately, he wanted to abandon the idea of hiding, but decided not to add embarrassment to Merlin's pain.
Tears tracked down his face, which was twisted by an unknowable agony. His arm in the water was searching furiously - whatever he was looking for was precious, but could not be found. With another gasp, which Arthur now recognised as a sob, he wrenched his arm out of the water, ignoring the cold and the wet that besieged it. He clasped his hands - one cold, one warm - on his lap, as if in prayer. His hand, his knee, his eyes and, Arthur now saw, his sweat sodden hair and brow were all soaking. The arm of his favourite jacket looked black with the damp, and his skin was an unhealthy white, emphasised by the red of his eyes and nose.
He reached for a bag on his shoulder and took out a pot. Arthur watched Merlin pull out strawberries, placing them into the water one by one, as gently as he could, watching them float across the water. Merlin was silent as they disappeared, looking like flowers in the distance.
Arthur frowned, but did nothing.
"Freya?" Arthur started when Merlin broke the silence. He was relieved that the boy didn't hear the twigs snapping beneath him.
Merlin's voice was shaky as he hunched over the pond. Arthur had an inkling of who Freya might be, at least to Merlin, but shunted the idea out of his mind. It was too horrible to imagine such a tragedy befalling his optimistic servant.
"Freya," Merlin tried again. "Are you there? I brought you strawberries. You like strawberries." He let out a shaky sigh. "Liked them anyway."
Merlin reached into the water again, but he couldn't find whatever he was looking for. "I know you're there, Freya. You can hear me. You've come out for me before." Tears began to drop from his eyes again and Arthur again forced himself to let the boy alone.
Another gasping sob wracked his throat, so loud that it must have hurt. "Please, Freya. I know I haven't been to visit you as much as I should have. You're lonely, I know." He pressed his hands into the bank, leaning over so that his tears made ripples in the water. His contorted shape showed a spine so skinny that each bone was visible, even through his tunic and jacket.
Another painful gasp made Arthur swallow sympathetically. "You know I would join you, Freya, if I could, you know that I want to, and that I will eventually, when my duties are done." A bitter laugh came, filled with sadness, regret, anger, and, disturbingly, the slightest bit of mirth.
"My duties." The laugh came again, and Arthur began to miss the sobbing. "How tactless of me. You don't care for my duties, do you, Freya? I can't imagine how I'd feel in your situation, separated from someone you love because they're too busy protecting your killer." He sucked in a breath but Arthur want paying attention anymore. Her killer? Why would Merlin protect someone he has every right to despise? To want dead?
Dead. The girl, Freya, was dead. That he couldn't doubt. This was probably where he buried her. How did Arthur not know about this?
'You know I would join you, Freya, if I could, you know that I want to.'
He wants to join her in death. After when his duty is done, he plans to join her. In death. Dead.
Merlin, dead.
A pain crawled into his chest, bringing him to his knees and his vision blurred. For a moment Arthur panicked, worried that he had been injured or drugged, until he found that his strange breathing pattern matched Merlin's, and he tasted salt. Shaking hands touched his cheeks and found them damp. The pain in his chest continued, subsided momentarily by sobs that Arthur forced himself to keep silent.
Merlin couldn't die. Merlin couldn't want to die. The thought was so preposterous, a world without Merlin, a world where Merlin could feel the same as Arthur did right then.
A world where Arthur was such a terrible friend that he had no idea that this was even happening. Where he mistook his friends grieving for laziness, wanting a day off. Where, Arthur realised, Merlin was punished for going off to visit this woman, feeling he had to lie and say he was in the tavern, or garnering herbs, or he just slept in.
Arthur wondered how many times he'd hit Merlin while he was grieving. What kind of punishment he'd doled out on the days Merlin had come here and returned too late, or too tired, or even too sad for Arthur's liking.
Arthur wondered how he had punished Merlin the day he had buried her here.
The ache in his chest spread to his stomach, twisting it into nausea. His throat constricted, muscles taught as his body prepared itself to vomit. He forced the feeling down, escaping narrowly with only the taste and the burn of acid in the back of his throat. Arthur deserved far worse than that for daring to call himself Merlin's friend.
"Freya?" Merlin was never known for his masculinity, but the pitch of his voice, that of a pitiful child, shocked Arthur. The pleading gasp of a word was raw as a fresh wound, as if she had died right there and then, as if Merlin's was watching the life bleeding out of her again. Feeling the coldness leach into her skin and watching her eyes fade, the spark of vitality gone. Closing her eyelids to hide them. Arthur saw in his minds eyes Merlin's crying over a body and not a lake. The woman he imagined was beautiful, not that Merlin's cared about that, her smile was radiant, and only seen when Merlin's told one of his jokes. To her they were gentle, kind, lacking the teasing he had with everyone else. Merlin treated her differently than he had been would anyone else.
Because he loved her.
In his head he saw the boy and his Freya dancing, her dress a white of purity, even though, of course, a fire of passion burned in her chest, as it did with Merlin. The sky was blue above and around them, the blue of their eyes. Their feet swished across the grass in unison. Merlin was dressed in greater finery than he could afford, and it occurred to Arthur that he had seen similar attire on grooms. Neither of them cared about their clothes however, only that the other was as happy as them as they stepped through their dance, slightly clumsy as they refused to allow any inches to separate them.
They parted for an instant so that Freya twirled under Merlin's arm, then she was back at his side, and he at hers. She was gentle, yet strong. Wise, yet young. Downtrodden, yet happy. Her and Merlin, taking on the world together.
Inseperable.
The hazy wraith in his mind became covered in red. It soaked into her dress and the ground she laid on - Arthur couldn't remember seeing her fall. It soaked into the grass and darkened Merlin's tunic as he held her in the same intimate pose that they had had as they danced. Clear drops fell from his eyes onto her pale skin, which grew paler as the ground beneath them darkened with her blood, and as the sky became blacker than night: no stars dared to come out at so unthinkable a time.
Merlin stayed with her all through the darkness, not even closing her eyes, certain that if he remained with her they would brighten of their own accord, if only he believed it.
A long cry of agony, as if he had been the one stabbed, shattered the silence of his night of hope as the sun rose, but she didn't. Pleading followed, shaking and crying, only turning away from her to beg to the heavens, anyone but her!
Cracked blood on Merlin's skin itched and flaked as her carried her unwaveringly to the lake, exhaustion taking over him as he crept out from Camelot to here, walking all the way without allowing her to be jostled or for her journey to break so that he could sleep or eat.
Waiting at the lake was a boat, so pale as to be white. He laid her there, blood somehow gone from her dress but remaining on his hands as he pushed her out, following her into the lake until he was close to drowning. The blood did not wash off of him and the water tried to drag him down. He very nearly let it.
One final sob and he lit the boat on fire, staying as close as he could to her, crying when he realised he would not be able to see her, even one last time, as she drifted across the lake and he found himself too heavy to follow and too light to sink. No way to join her.
He went unnoticed by the uncaring lake. They swallowed the tears that dripped from his chin but ignored him and his pleas to see her again.
After hours of vigilance the boat finally sank, and the broken man returned to the edge of the lake, sobbing until he finally slept, never to wake up whole again.
Arthur picked himself up and left, heading to the horses. He fed Merlin's and prepared his own for departure, not wanting Merlin to know that he'd caught him feeling so raw.
He left with the speed of a man with a demon behind him, but he knew the demons were in his head.