Cross posted from tumblr/AO3 same day.
/ noun
/ 1. things wanted or needed
Arthur glanced out his window on the way out of the kitchen, immediately dropped his fresh coffee on the floor, and slipped in the hot liquid. His head head the floor with a resounding thunk that he knew he would feel later, but when he scrambled to his feet, he was more focused on the man that was still sitting against a tree in Arthur's backyard. Well, 'backyard'. He lived alone just inside a forest for a reason, and the sight of someone invading his privacy uninvited made anger simmer in his chest.
It didn't even occur to him that the stranger was sitting on the freezing wet ground until after he shoved his feet into his boots, grabbed a kitchen knife, and stomped out into the snow. It became quite clear when he got closer though, exactly why there was a stranger in the forest: the stranger was Merlin Emrys.
Merlin Emrys was the most powerful wizard the world had ever seen, and Arthur's own father had been spearheading a witch hunt for him for as long as Arthur could remember. 'For crimes against the crown', he'd always been told, though no one had ever been able to tell him what exactly those crimes were. Emrys had been captured over a year ago, and it hadn't taken long for a video of the event to get leaked to the press. Arthur had watched with a sick stomach as teams of black-clad people swarm a single, petrified man and wrap him in iron before carting him away to places unknown.
Despite Uther's hatred for all magic users, Arthur had never felt the same, and not once had he seen evidence that called for punishment against Emrys, much less magic users as a whole. It felt like a modern-day Holocaust, and that fanaticism was simply terrifying. He'd grown up with nightmares of finding himself with magic and his father burning him at the stake, so he'd never gone to protests to fight for the rights of magic users, but he'd quietly cheered for them in the safety of his own, congratulating every victory. Merlin Emrys being released was the kind of victory that should have been plastered over every channel, but Arthur hadn't heard a peep. Staring down at the wizard bleeding out onto the ground, it was clear why: Emrys had escaped and he'd nearly died doing so.
Arthur approached cautiously, unable to keep his boots from crunching in the snow, and he'd only gotten within a few feet of the man when Emrys' head snapped up. His eyes were wide, his face panicked, and he took one look at Arthur before losing whatever colour had been left at his face.
"Pendragon," he wheezed. His eyes flashed gold and, before Arthur could duck for cover, he was thrown backwards by an invisible force.
When Arthur pulled himself from the snow, it was to see Emrys' back as he hobbled away. The snow he left behind was trampled by his small, stumbling steps and dyed red with his blood, and it made something die in Arthur's chest. It wasn't a terrorist hurrying clumsily away from him, it was a terrified man, and Arthur wasn't going to let him die out in the wild, fugitive or not.
"Wait! Let me help you!" he called.
Emrys' head cranked around, and he promptly tripped over a tree root. Arthur watched for a long minute, waiting for him to get back up, but when Emrys didn't, Arthur scrambled to his feet and ran to the fallen man.
The wizard's eyes were closed, his breaths laboured, and a careful poke with Arthur's boot to a bony arse gained no reaction. Unconscious.
As carefully as he could, Arthur slowly peeled the blood-soaked shirt from the man's chest, and nearly threw up at the blatant signs of torture spread across Emrys' skin. He wondered what Emrys had been through, how he escaped, how he'd gotten here. Most of all, he wondered if the man would live.
Arthur gingerly scooped Emrys into his arms and carried him inside to lay him on the bed in the spare bedroom. He desperately wished taking him to a hospital was an option, but nothing would change that it wasn't, so Arthur wasn't going to waste time. However, he knew that Lance hated the hatred against magic users as much as he did, and he was a good friend who knew how to stay quiet about the important things.
It was possible that Merlin Emrys would die right here in his house before Lance could get here. His injuries could be bad enough that Lance couldn't fix him. He could very well wake up and try to hurt them again, might even succeed. None of that mattered. The very least Arthur could do was try.
FINIS
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