Arthur was woken at nearly 7 a.m. by his cell ringing twice. That would be his coach. Arthur groaned and rolled over. A minute later, his phone beeped as a text came through. That would be his coach again. Arthur reached over, nearly falling off the bed in the process. Damn beds were tiny.

Breakfast at 7:15 sharp. Don't stop to chat with anyone. Today is the biggest day of your career.

Arthur frowned and put his cell back down rather indelicately. He hoped Merlin had slept well on the nice, soft, heated air mattress. It wouldn't be a hardship to give up this small, hard bed at all. A niggle of worry bothered his conscience, as it had been on and off since Merlin had made the suggestion yesterday.

After ten hours of blissful sleep, it was hard to say that switching rooms had been a bad idea, but he wouldn't feel better until he knew for sure that Merlin hadn't had a bad night.

He showered and got dressed, reading the two more texts from his coach, the second one again asking him not to talk to anyone on the way to breakfast. Why? Damn press had probably reported something annoying about him.

As Arthur locked and closed the door behind him, he stopped short. An unfamiliar black man was standing and waiting on him, arms crossed behind his back, weight evenly balanced between his feet. If Arthur didn't know any better...

"Who are you?"

"My name is Elyan. I'm your new bodyguard," he said in a clipped but soft voice.

Arthur's gut clenched tight and that niggle of worry grew horns and claws. "And why do I need a new bodyguard?" The man hesitated and Arthur held up a hand. "Never mind. Just-just wait a minute." With as much efficiency as Arthur could manage while his mind was racing, he unlocked the door, closed it and, as a precaution, locked it behind him.

Then he rang his father.

"Arthur? Why are you calling me? And at this hour? You should be-"

"Why do I have a new bodyguard? I'm assuming it was you who hired another one."

"Of course it was me. The other one completely useless. It was only thanks to your good thinking that kept you from ending up in the infirmary. Thank god you had the presence of mind to-"

Arthur felt as he'd been dipped in ice water. It took some time to form words. "Who's in the infirmary? Merlin?"

"Well, I'm sure I don't know his name, but it was the man you petitioned to switch rooms. It was a brilliant move, Arthur, and you can't blame yourself-"

"Can't blame myself for what? What happened?"

Uther sighed. "Can we not we skip the drama, Arthur? If it hadn't been him, it would have been you and to be blunt, he is far more easily replaced-"

"Goodbye, Father. I'll talk to you later," Arthur interrupted, already exited the room again. He locked up and gestured at his security guard before taking off at a jog.

His mind was racing, ticking through all the possibilities-Merlin badly injured, Merlin unable to throw for the curling team, Merlin injured fatally-and all of it, whatever it was, Arthur's fault.

By the time he reached his coach waiting in the cafeteria, Arthur's chest was tight with emotion and his face stiff from showing none of it. Was it his imagination, or was the entire cafeteria more subdued this morning?

George Clayworth stood behind the table, beaming at him, lifting his hands in greeting. "Arthur, welcome to the morning of the biggest day in your-"

"Where's the infirmary?" Arthur said, trying to modulate his tone into something more acceptable.

George looked perplexed. "This is your breakfast, Arthur," he motioned to the two plates dripping with food, "and it's highly important-"

"That I get to the infirmary now. Unless you'd care to explain to me what happened last night in my room and why my bodyguard has been sacked and why the British Curling Team is down one member!" Arthur was yelling by the end of his speech and had slammed his hand down loudly enough to call the attention of every person in the room.

George had gone pale. He squeaked, something Arthur had never seen him do before. "Yes, well, I believe the infirmary is this way," and he walked toward the door, nodding and smiling uneasily at everyone watching.

Arthur stalked after him, furious that his coach had known what had happened and had been trying to keep it from him. It was a good thing that George was walking so quickly, because if Arthur's hands came into contact with his neck it would not be a good thing for either of them, especially on the biggest day of Arthur's career.

Once, George tried to explain, "Arthur, this is unscheduled and ill-advised. You skate in the short program later today and we don't even know the order yet! If you overexert yourself-"

Arthur gave him what he hoped was a death glare and George squeaked again.

"Very well, very well. But breakfast must be eaten, later!" he said raising one finger like it constituted a major proclamation.

Arthur pushed ahead as soon as he saw the open atrium that was the entry to the injury infirmary. Light filtered down from numerous skylights above, making it glow with a blessing from above. It was a modern, beautiful space, but Arthur ignored it in favor of the door leading in. From there, he only glanced at the girl behind the desk and stalked straight ahead where he spied his previous bodyguard lying down on a cushioned cot, one arm thrown over his eyes.

"What's wrong with you?" Arthur demanded, angling his head so that he could look into his eyes.

Chun looked woozy when he lifted his arm, and it took a few seconds for his gaze to find Arthur. "Drugged...with something. Must have been...dinner."

Arthur's mouth tightened. "Why did they drug you? What's happened?" For every second that his bodyguard hesitated, Arthur felt his nerves tighten until he had to clench his fist to control the urge to get an answer forcefully.

The quiet reply stole his breath and when it returned, it brought with it a fury that colored the edges of his vision red. Arthur found that his mouth was moving although he no longer knew exactly what he was saying, only that he was saying it loudly and then he was striding past the nervous Russian lady toward the hallway where more rooms were laid out.

The infirmary was open and airy inside, each room shut off from the hallway by a plexiglass wall that allowed everyone to see what was going on inside. He found Merlin easily. Arthur's new bodyguard moved to prevent him from entering, but there was no need. Arthur was transfixed at the sight of Merlin stretched out on a thin cot, paler than milk except where bruises and blood marred the skin on his face. His eyes were shut tight, his body moving ceaselessly against the sheets in minute motions of quiet agony. His left hand was propped up on a plastic brace. The Russian doctor had a hold on Merlin's left arm while a doctor Arthur recognized from the British team was manipulating Merlin's hand.

Merlin bit his bottom lip bloody until a cry was finally wrenched from him and Arthur jerked as though he'd been shocked. He looked away and began pacing, tension focusing itself between his brows. Guilt and fear and anger and more guilt had him tied up so tight inside that he just couldn't hold it back anymore.

He turned, finding himself in some sort of meeting room with a table and chairs. When he saw the Russian receptionist following him, he bellowed, "What kind of place is this? Why isn't he medicated?"

She began to answer him, placating words about how Merlin had been given something to relax him as they set his hand.

"Relax? You call that relaxed? I call it bloody torture! He's a British citizen and deserves better than this chop shop!" Arthur went on, unable to stop himself from denigrating the Russian people, the Russian medical system and the bloody buggering idiot who designed the injury infirmary who was obviously a sadist.

The lady blinked her pale blue eyes, straightened her shoulders and told him in heavily accented English to calm down. Arthur huffed and turned away. He'd just wasted the full frontal of his displeasure on someone who didn't probably understand English. He focused on breathing instead of how very much he wished he had something heavy in his hand with which he could bash things.

There was a pause and then the lady stepped closer. "Do you...know that man in there?"

Which just pissed him off more. Arthur leaned over the table toward her. "Of course I do. I just have no idea why-how this-what are they doing to him?" He pounded his fist once and pulled away, trying to control himself.

"I know what they are doing," she said tentatively. Arthur gave her his profile, trying to calm his breathing as he listened carefully to what she told him in halting English-the whole story of how an assailant broke into Arthur's room. He attacked Merlin, leaving bruises on his face and contusions on his abdomen and a complex fracture to his left hand.

In fact, the man had stomped on Merlin's hand. On purpose.

Arthur, feeling suddenly light-headed, sat down heavily in a chair.

George, hovering in the doorway, left to get him some water, nattering on about nutrients or something and the biggest day of his career...

Arthur couldn't fathom it.

If Merlin hadn't taken his place, that might be him in there now, with a debilitating injury given purposefully to leave him unable to compete. Apparently, if Merlin's roommates hadn't fought back and chased the assailant down the hall, it would have been worse. Their interference led to the assailant being captured. He was now being questioned thoroughly.

Arthur was up and pacing the length of the infirmary in seconds. There was no way to fix this; there was nothing he could do. Merlin had gone silent and still on the cot, which made Arthur feel both better and worse. This was Arthur's fault. He'd been threatened and now they had followed through on those threats. Why had he let Merlin convince him to switch rooms?

George had returned and was harassing Arthur to drink some water when Merlin's coach Lance Dulac came striding in. He glanced at Arthur before continuing on to Merlin's room.

"Wait!" Arthur called out and hurried over to the man. When faced with such a careful expression of veiled anger, Arthur found it difficult to speak. "Will Merlin...will he be able to compete?"

Lance gave him with a level look. "Not today or even probably tomorrow. It wasn't his throwing hand that was broken, but he's sustained severe bruising to his abdomen. By all rights, he should be in bed recovering for weeks." A sudden, dull moan pulled their attention back to the room for a moment. "But knowing Merlin, he'll want to be up tomorrow and back out on the ice."

Arthur nodded. He couldn't smile over the sick feeling in his stomach. "Please, tell him...I had no idea. It should be me in there. I would trade places if I could."

Lance gave a ghost of a smile. "You have to skate for Great Britain today." He paused, hand on the doorknob. "Merlin's already said he's glad it's him and not you."

Arthur stared, stunned, as Lance slipped into the room. The coach went over to Merlin and stood beside him. Clumsily, Merlin reached up with his right hand and Lance grasped it, bending over to speak softly to him. Arthur forced himself to look away, pinching his bottom lip as his eyes started to water.

Somebody wanted Arthur too injured to skate-too broken and frightened to even have a go. They had incapacitated Merlin, thinking it was Arthur on that bloody air mattress.

A dull rage began simmering in Arthur's gut and his cheeks began to burn hot. There was nothing he could do here. But there was one way he could send a message to the arseholes who were behind all of this.

This time when George fluttered around him, Arthur gave a curt response, drank the damn water and followed his coach. Next, breakfast. Then, warming up for what was going to be the best bloody buggering short program of his life.

Which he would skate for Merlin.

And then he would just see how well those bastards messing with his life would like that.

Merlin was woozy and goofy on pain meds, but still maintained an impressive level of bossiness-which seemed to surprise everyone.

"Why aren't you asleep?" the nurse kept asking him.

"Wanna see Arthur skate," he slurred as he concentrated on not moving his left hand at all. Occasionally, frissons of fiery pain would dart through it and only keeping it absolutely still helped.

"Merlin, you should rest," Lance told him again.

"Nope. Gonna see Arthur skate," he said vehemently. "Then sleep. I meeeeeean, I sleep. Not Arrrrrrthrrrrrr. Not gonna watch Arrrrrthr skate and sleep." There were so many Rs in Arthur's name, but giggling made Merlin's hand hurt, so he had to stop trying to explain.

Finally, to shut him up, Lance got him his laptop and they streamed the broadcast from an British network showing it live. All the top skaters had drawn numbers for the short program. Arthur was in the third group, along with the American Jeremy Abbott and several skaters Merlin didn't know.

He watched a little before giving in and napping, only to wake when the whole curling team stopped by before going to compete against Switzerland. Since Merlin couldn't throw, they had pulled in GB's alternate and chosen Murdoch, their shining Scotsman, to be skip. He would do a great job; Merlin reassured him of that and tried to smile cheerily as he wished them GB's best luck. The team rallied then, saying their goodbyes. There were a few tears mixed in with the sympathy which somehow made Merlin feel both worse and better at the same time. After they left, he was ready to be distracted.

The nurse set up the computer again and he saw that the second group of skaters were taking the ice to warm up. There was the Russian skater Plushenko, whose nose was uniquely Russian and whose name made him sound like a stuffed animal. Merlin giggled to himself, then groaned. He really shouldn't laugh. That pain medication only took the edge off of that horrible, deep bruise in his gut. It hadn't torn the muscle, but the impact of the jab was going to take weeks to fade.

Merlin sobered quickly. The man who attacked him last night had been Russian. It seemed that whoever didn't want Arthur to skate might be Russian, too. It was all some horrible plot and now Merlin couldn't curl at the Olympics because of it.

There was a hot flash of anger in Merlin's gut and his body tensed. The immediate throb of pain made him regret the response. Relax, he warned himself. Just about that time, he realized that he had missed something onscreen. Plushenko was pulling off to the side, wincing. But he hadn't fallen, had he?

Merlin listened in amazement as the commentators explained that Plushenko had landed a jump incorrectly and pulled a muscle. He would be unable to skate. What? The man who had led the Russian team to a gold medal just days ago would be unable to skate for a men's individual medal.

Merlin felt slightly guilty. It almost felt like he'd made that happen...

After another hour of watching, Merlin felt crippled by pain and was glad to see the nurse coming in with more meds. They hadn't built up in his system yet, so the spikes of pain were hard to bear.

He might have even shed a few tears while drinking water to down the pills, but since no one but the sweet, sympathetic nurse saw them, they didn't count. He had to lay flat for a few minutes before the the medicine kicked in. By then they were calling Arthur's group to warm up. Merlin asked the nurse to turn up the volume, which she did with an exasperated glance.

"You should sleep again soon. Yes?"

Merlin agreed, but his attention was Arthur, whose warm-up jumps looked incredible. His face was focused, composed and he looked splendid in his Robin's Egg Blue costume. Merlin tried not to giggle at the thought of Arthur in a robin costume, but with the pain meds apparently came a bit of lunacy as well. It was a stunning image in his mind-Arthur in a bright blue unitard with feathers on the shoulders and a little feathery cap perched on his head. If you looked at Arthur the right way, his nose did look rather beak-like, so it was kind of perfect...

Merlin tried to banish the thought and the inappropriate giggles, but it wasn't until he felt another lightning bolt of hot pain in his hand that he sobered.

And really, Arthur's costume was both manly and un-befeathered, so it wasn't nice to imagine him in something else. Though when Merlin got better, he might try to draw the robin costume for Arthur, just so he could laugh at it, too.

That thought made Merlin smile all the way until Jeremy Abbot's routine. The skater from the United States fell in a horrendous way on one of his jumps, sliding all the way into the wall and eliciting a gasp from the commentators. He looked to be in serious pain, but still managed to get to his feet and skate the rest of his program. Those jumps were so difficult that sometimes it took a fall to remind everyone of the amazing athletic ability of each of these skaters.

Merlin was relieved that Jeremy had the presence of mind to continue on and that he looked grateful to the supportive audience at the end of his program instead of devastated at his fall. Good competitor. But that fall just focused everyone's attention firmly on the next skater: Arthur.

Merlin was watching him with different eyes than most of the world. He was one of the few people who knew of the myriad of pressures on Arthur's back: the media who had declared him a star, his father who apparently had serious gold medal expectations, and an unknown enemy who wanted nothing more than for Arthur to fail and was willing to resort to violence to make that happen.

Merlin felt the first wave of pride that he had been the one to foil that plan, that Arthur wasn't lying in the infirmary but was instead representing GB bravely, in spite of all the threats and problems he'd encountered. How could Arthur have skated with serious bruises or a broken hand or even another night of broken sleep?

So Merlin watched every moment of that triumphant short program with relish and a warm feeling in his heart. Tears pricked his eyes as Arthur landed his first triple with ease and by the fourth jump, Merlin had tears streaming down his cheeks. He didn't try to wipe them away, so it was with blurry vision that he saw Arthur land a quadruple flip and then turn another planned triple into a spur-of-the-moment quadruple, sending the commentators into a frenzy.

When the music finally stopped, Arthur held his dramatic pose a moment, and the cheering started. Merlin wanted nothing more than to applaud as well. Arthur's head was high and his eyes held a fierce message to the watching world, one that Merlin had no trouble translating.

If you were trying to break me, you failed.