"Merlin – I can't. Please."
Merlin's eyes blurred over with tears for the eighth or ninth time in the past fifteen minutes. Arthur's eyes, gazing up at him pleading, begging, from where he sat in the dark cell, with a gun clenched so tightly that his fist was turning white.
"Arthur, don't make me," Merlin shook his head, willing Arthur to stop, to quit, willing this day to rewind so that none of this had ever happened, so that the two of them were not alone in a cell with a gun.
"You were the one that insisted on coming in here with me!" Arthur's voice was angry but his eyes held no heat, only anguish.
Merlin couldn't argue with that statement, he had followed Arthur up here with all intents to – to do something, something that would fix this, something that would help.
But nothing would help.
Merlin had lost too many people to still believe in miracles.
That didn't stop his mind from being a litany of prayer.
Arthur's forearm was a ruby ringlet of veins all stemming from jagged tooth marks torn through flesh, the infection spreading every second that Arthur's heart remained beating. It had been two hours since the undead had broken into the left wing of their facility and somehow in the heat of battle, Merlin had missed Arthur's fatal wound.
"I'm sorry," Merlin clenched his fists, voice cracking. "I'm sorry. I wish I could – I wish I could change this. If I hadn't been helping Lance seal off the north door –"
Arthur stood up, head shaking and eyes threatening to spill over. He reached out for Merlin uncertainly, with his good hand, but he let it fall to his side. "It's too late for any of that. But I – I only have a few more minutes before it…it starts."
"I know," Merlin swallowed, but where there should have been saliva, there was only bile. "I know."
"I can't do this," Arthur told him, stepping forward so that they were toe to toe, eye to eye. Merlin instinctively pressed his fingertips against Arthur's side, and Arthur sighed into the touch. "I – I can't kill myself, Merlin. I don't have that kind of strength."
"And you think I do?" Merlin let out a helpless, desperate laugh, and Arthur, biting his lower lip and screwing up his eyes, gave a jerky shake of his head.
"No, but you have the strength to kill me."
"I don't, Merlin told him, tears spilling out of his eyes. Arthur's hand went upward immediately, wiping them away, warm and there and alive. "I really, really don't."
"Yes," Arthur moved away from Merlin once again, only a step backward, and offered out the gun in his shaking hand. Merlin eyed it but did not dare take a hold of it. "You can do this, Merlin. You have to. I can't – I won't let myself become one of those things, and I know you want that even less than I do. This is the only solution. And I can't shoot myself, and you're the only person I trust to do the job."
"Fuck," Merlin let out a half-strangled sob. "You're the love of my life, Arthur. How can – How could I ever…"
"I know it's selfish of me," Arthur's infected arm reached toward his own eyes to bat away those ever incessant tears. "But I have to ask."
Merlin closed his eyes, waiting a beat for his eyes to clear up and his hands to stop shaking. Then he lined his body up next to Arthur's again, this time with his left hand meeting Arthur's right, the cool metal of the gun just beneath both of their fingertips.
Arthur sighed as he removed his own hand, leaving the killing device only in Merlin's. Looking down, the gun didn't look so threatening. It was only metal – but then again, Merlin knew what metal could do to a man, alive or dead.
Merlin shut his eyes tightly. He willed the moment to last forever, for time to never move forward again, for Arthur and him to be locked here perpetually, that way no one would ever die and no one would ever kill.
Arthur's voice, soft but commanding, let those hopes die.
"I don't have long."
Wincing at the impact of the sentence, Merlin opened his eyes. Arthur was less than a foot away from him, golden hair and cerulean eyes, and Merlin's heart stuttered with just how much he was going to miss that look Arthur always gave him –
Arthur leaned forward and wrapped Merlin in a tight hug, arms around his waist and head buried in his shoulder, nose pressed against the nape of his neck. Merlin held back just as tightly, reveling in this touch this final touch.
"I love you," Merlin whispered into Arthur's skin, choking back sobs. "I love you so much. I'll never stop."
"I know you won't," Merlin felt Arthur's salty tears against his neck, and he only held tighter. "I love you, too."
Merlin sobbed, angry and terrified and desperate beyond belief. "I'm sorry. I'm so, so sorry."
Merlin moved his head from its resting place on Arthur's shoulder to slide their lips together. Arthur responded in kind, kissing slowly and softly at first, but it somehow evolved into a deep, endless moving of flesh on flesh, desperate for one last tiny moment of peace and clarity.
The gun was pressed too cold in the fingers of Merlin's hand on the small of Arthur's back, and carefully, ever so slowly, he inched it upward, willing himself to keep moving, keep going, while Arthur's lips moved against his rhythmically. In no time at all, the barrel of the gun fit into the crook of Arthur's neck, pointing directly upward.
Arthur's blood and brain tissue would splatter on the walls in an instant.
"I love you, I love you, I love you," Merlin murmured into Arthur's open mouth, his kisses long and breathless, and he hoped beyond all things that Arthur was distracted, that he didn't feel the metal about to destroy his skull, that Merlin was all he was thinking of.
Merlin slid the gun of safety, set his finger lightly against the trigger –
And pulled.
Merlin barely heard the bang, only felt Arthur's mouth go slack against his own, felt the warm trickle of blood on his own skin, knew that the bite marks on Arthur's arm had all but reduced to nothing – Arthur's motionless body fell against his, and Merlin let himself crumple to the ground, Arthur still wound tight in his arms.
Merlin sat there, on the cold cement floor of the dark cell, and held Arthur, with his slack mouth and dead eyes, sobbing. The gun fell from his hands and clattered against the floor resoundingly, echoing in the tiny space. Arthur's skin was still just the slightest bit warm beneath Merlin's, but that wouldn't last long.
Soon he would be cold, and there would be no way for Merlin's hands or his breath to keep the body warm. Merlin would have carded a hand through Arthur's hair, but it was too bloody, too messy, and Merlin already had too much of Arthur's blood on him, literally and figuratively.
So he just held tighter, crying and screaming, muffled against Arthur's shirt, and wishing he was dead, too.
They found him like that hours later, sobbing gibberish and words without recognition, screaming silently, refusing to let go of a body all but destroyed.