a/n: These are getting longer, and also show signs of developing some kind of plot in the future. Hmm.


I n s o m n i a


"They're a prince and a princess and they're a lullaby, but it's just the calm before the storm"


It's summer, and Arthur is burning with a fever that just won't break.

They're at war and people are dying and there's blood instead of rain wetting the scorched earth. It's so far from home and Merlin's by his side, but he can't do more than press cool cloth to Arthur's feverish brow. Everyone is subdued, melancholic, just hoping the King will rise again.

The rich red tent is small and the summer air is stifling, sweating, overbearing. It's a bad time for war and Arthur didn't want it, but it can't be helped, and the men fight on in the battlefield. They're brave, but then they're always brave, so valiantly bearing the Pendragon banner in the name of Camelot and all that they hold dear. For Arthur they'd fight forever in this foreign land.

There's a tang of salt and war and drought in the air and a strange semi-awareness sets in like a thick, muggy cloud, distorting the scarlet drapes and sketching violent, blurry shapes across Arthur's vision. The blue of his eyes is unfocused, like water under a pane of cloudy ice, and he is hardly aware of reality. His mind is not his own, and he can remember little of where he is.

He finds it odd that all he can recognise now are fragments; just little shards of the most deeply embedded memories that never fade away, resurfacing now that fever has stripped away the layers and layers of life that have built up in between.

It's like a summer's day in childhood when it's just too hot to fall asleep, and when he knows he'll stay awake all night just talking, whispering secrets, holding hands (wasn't it easy when he could do that whenever he liked?).

But here the secrets are a distant light, part of another world where steel doesn't ring on steel. At last sleep takes him but it's more like delirium, and all he sees are indigo gowns and willow trees. She's there with him and it's summer, and they're in the long grass where nobody can tie them down. It's childhood and it's all promises they're sure they'll keep; it's Morgana, I'll marry you because you like wrestling too, and he thinks dreams are a cruel kind of magic for making him remember.

They're a prince and a princess and they're a lullaby, but it's just the calm before the storm.

He wakes again in the middle of the night and her name is on his lips like a plea or a curse, but with her there's never been much difference between the two, and he almost weeps for the cruel, cruel twists of fate that leave him this way.

Merlin hurries to his side and pretends not to recognise the anguished sound that falls from his mouth (was Morgana always such a terrible, beautiful word?) just so he'll still be able to look Gwen in the eye, because he knows it's not her face Arthur's seeing now.

But it's nobody's fault the lullaby always ends in tears.