Everything Goes to Shit

On the first morning he was awoken by a screeching noise and light streaming in through a dirty window, giving the room a sepia tint. It was sparsely furnished and filthy, with grime coating the stained walls of light tan wood and only one rickety chair with a solitary spider busily spinning between three legs. The two beds were raised about 15 centimeters off of the ground on rotting wooden contraptions that Arthur had half expected to collapse while they slept. The straw-filled mattresses covered with soiled blankets were splitting at the seams and told stories Arthur would rather not hear. It was the kind of hole he wouldn't want someone to find his bloody corpse in, much less his actual living person. He stretched and let out a groan. He'd never been a morning person.

"Up and at-'em, sunshine!" chirruped a cheery voice from the vicinity of the window. With bleary, dry eyes he made out the half-silhouette of the tavern-keeper in front of the window, grinning over one shoulder and casting a long shadow across Merlin on the other bed. It was this idiot who'd drawn the soiled curtain away and interrupted Arthur's best sleep in ages. He found himself reconsidering his earlier reluctant decision not to murder the guy.

Across the room Merlin laboriously propped himself up on one elbow and then stopped, head hanging, that one effort clearly too much for him. Arthur could relate. Merlin's bed-head bangs fell across his face, casting shadows that obscured the eerie tattoos and the wreckage above. He looked like any other kid, far too young for this. Like Arthur. (Where did that come from? Bad thought. Back to the corner for you.)

Then he seemingly gave up, dropping back onto his face with a groan. He lay there for a minute before rolling over onto his back–and promptly rolling off of the bed. He dropped to the floor with a surprised yelp.

The barkeep (what was his name? Something with a G–Gareth? Galahad? Gwaine), who had been watching with interest and no small degree of amusement, burst out laughing. Arthur couldn't suppress a chuckle. Merlin lay on his back on the ground like a flipped bug, a reluctant smile flitting across the visible side of his face. "Wow. Look at you two prats. Laugh at my pain, why don't you."

Gwaine, still bent double by his cackling, strode over to grasp Merlin's hand and pull him to his feet. He then crossed to rip the blanket off of Arthur, despite the latter's mumbled threats. "Come on. Rise and shine, Princess. Day's nearly over, and I'm under strict orders to clean your sheets."

Arthur pushed himself to his feet and cast a belligerent eye over the bundled sheet. "Those things really get cleaned?"

Meanwhile, Merlin had fallen to feeling along the bedframe with something like reverence. "Wait, are the beds really raised? And these floors are actually wood! And I know we went up a staircase to get here," he gushed breathlessly. "Gods, how much are we paying for this place?"

Gwaine got a mischievous gleam in his eye. "Wow, I've never met someone so impressed by wood planks and water damage. One could almost say you were"–dramatic pause–"floored."

Merlin groaned loudly while Arthur stood in dumb shock. Jesus Christ, a bloody pun! Arthur needed to get out of here and back among sane people as soon as possible.

He wondered how many days he could last in this idiot's company before he took out everyone in the building and then himself. Later, Merlin informed him that he and Gwaine had placed bets on that very question.

~o8o~

They stayed at the inn for two nights. Arthur searched the town up and down for his father's spies, but in the end he only knew their codenames and the drop points to contact them. No one showed up. After he explained his reasoning (well, sort of–he mentioned getting help and implied that he meant coworkers rather than subordinates while simultaneously planting the assumption that if they lived here, the organization was local) Merlin looked guilty and twitched at loud noises more than usual. Arthur remembered what Merlin had said about detecting Maggie and shoved his horror down deep under a generous layer of world-weariness.

On the second night, Arthur got around to the conversation he'd been dreading. He'd ascertained that Gwaine wasn't going to snitch on his own initiative because of some shady business his tavern was involved in, but that didn't mean he wouldn't tell the truth if the authorities came and questioned him. He cornered Gwaine when he came to make their beds. Mind you, this was at ten o'clock at night, and Merlin was already asleep in his. Arthur wondered how this inn was even still running: Gwaine was definitely not the ideal employee if he couldn't even manage six rooms. The beds only had one blanket each; they didn't really require much making.

Arthur got up quietly and closed the door. He could see Gwaine watching him out of the corner of one narrowed eye.

"Hey, Gwaine."

"Yeah?"

"We need to talk about what you've seen."

To his surprise, Gwaine cracked up. He guessed it shouldn't have surprised him quite so much. The guy's sense of humor was in turns a bit twisted and very inane. "Don't hurt yourself glaring like that, Vicky. I already talked to Merlin. Nice kid. I won't snitch on you two."

Huh. Arthur frowned. Was Gwaine really stupid enough to have not noticed–

Gwaine continued, "Plus, even with the armband, his magic is awesome!"

Arthur gaped. "You know he's a sorcerer...and you don't care?"

Gwaine snorted. "What did you think I was going to do? Go after him with a pitchfork?"

Arthur's face must have betrayed that that was exactly what he had been thinking because Gwaine frowned for the first time. "Most of us peons don't really care all that much. Undercover magical creatures are a few of my best customers. But I've heard from Merlin how you feel on the subject. Why do you hate magic so much?"

Arthur scoffed. "Because my fath–I've never seen it used for good. Magic is unnatural, and it destroys people. It has the capacity to destroy everything."

"Well, yeah, big magic does, I guess, but most people can't do that. Some people need magic to survive. How much money can some poor peasant woman save on coal when she can start a fire with a few words? How about purifying the water or saving her child from disease? I'm guessing that with your posh, city-slicker manners you've never had to face those kinds of choices, but I've learned a lot since I hit the road."

Arthur seethed. This was a stupid argument, and how dare this village idiot assume he didn't know anything about hardship. "Yeah, well, maybe people can start using it with good intentions, but magic corrupts the people who use it. It's inherently evil."

Gwaine snorted. "That's complete and utter bullcrap. Who told you that?"

"No one had to! Sooner or later that nice housewife is burning down buildings, flooding her village, and sacrificing her child to some eldritch horror to spread the plague. I've seen it."

"Really? Where are you from?"

Crap. "Here. Essetir."

Gwaine had the gall to laugh. "Oh, yeah, that explains it. With how much magic is repressed here, the only times you hear about it are when it's big and bad and used by terrorists. You don't hear about the good people who do little things every day and fear for their lives because of it. I've been all over. When magicians aren't oppressed, they can do some pretty amazing things! Why d'you have to be so narrow-minded?"

Arthur's blood roiled. Something moved in the corner of his eye, and he glanced around to see Merlin shifting in his sleep, what was left of his brow furrowed. The emotion thing probably went both ways to some degree. He lowered his voice to an incensed growl. "Magic killed my mother." End of discussion.

Or at least, it had been the end when his sister'd had a similar discussion with his father. He still remembered being ten years old and hiding around the corner, cool stone at his back. He remembered the shouting and the echoing sound of a slap. (In that moment, the shadowy corners of his mind whispered, he'd hated his father, hadn't he?)

Gwaine's tone was somewhere between amused, incredulous, and frustrated.He gave Arthur a duh look. "Yeah, well, a sword killed my father. Doesn't mean I've sworn off swords."

~o8o~

Later that night Arthur lay awake for a long time, staring at his Aradonian penknife, turning it over with his hands. He'd been keeping the witch-bind key in the bottom of that knife's sheath, so the tip looked a little dull. Huh. Right. He still had the key. His hand drifted toward the sheath on the floor next to him (against the wall, obviously; not on Merlin's side), but then he realized what he was doing and stopped. Let it be. He turned his attention back to the knife. The light reflected warmly off of the gold inlaid in the handle and coldly off of the wicked blade. He thought the filigree on the handle looked a little more worn and tarnished than it had before this trip. Of course, he'd had to use it quite a bit back at Vortigern's castle to dull it enough so that Maggie could sharpen it. The knife was a gift from his father. He supposed all of his weapons were, really, but this one was personal, given to him on his eighth birthday. "Happy birthday, son. You'll make me proud."

Across the room, Merlin turned over and whimpered in his sleep. He was probably having a nightmare. Understandably, he'd had a lot of them on this journey. Arthur absently hoped Merlin didn't start screaming again.

Arthur didn't blame him; he'd seen his own share of nightmare fuel, but at least he'd had a choice in that. It had always been for a purpose: out of duty to his country and his people.

Merlin turned over again, murmuring something that sounded suspiciously like "please." Does anyone really deserve that?

Arthur frowned to himself. Of course he did. He used magic. If he hadn't wanted to get hurt he shouldn't have used it in the first place. Magic was evil.

But something like that... No! Gwaine's equivocating was just getting to him. He knew the truth. And Merlin had done terrible things with magic! All those bodies on the battlefield that Arthur somehow kept forgetting about... Still, Arthur wondered if magical corruption still counted if you had used it under duress. Maybe he could ask his father to be more lenient once Merlin was in Camelot. As long as it was better than in Vortigern's dungeons, Merlin was still better off, right? And that was a very low bar.

Merlin yelled out hoarsely, his writhing causing the straw mattress to squeak and rustle. Arthur recognized the prelude to a screaming session. In the past he'd just let Merlin ride it out, but he supposed he'd never get any sleep that way, and anyway they were in an inn with other guests and thin walls now. They couldn't afford to attract attention. With a groan he got up and crossed the room. He used the handle of his knife to poke Merlin's shoulder (he had no desire for his arm to end up like Gwaine's had when they'd first met), then jostled him a little bit harder when he failed to awaken. "Merlin. Merlin. For God's sake, Merlin, what are you, some sort of princess? I hope not, for the sake of the kingdom that would have to put your face on things. Wake up!"

Merlin bolted straight up with a huge intake of breath, head moving frantically, and Arthur felt a stab of his panic. "What–where? ...I can't see. I can't see!"

Ugh. What was Arthur supposed to do in this situation? "Yeah, dumbass, you're blind."

Not the most sensitive of approaches, but it seemed to work. One of Merlin's ears turned toward him. "Victor?"

"Yeah. You were dreaming. Go back to sleep." Arthur slumped back to his own pallet.

Merlin laughed breathily and a little hysterically. "Oh. Thanks."

Arthur grunted, and that was that.

~o8o~

On the third day, Arthur and Merlin were having breakfast in the tavern (some sort of beef thing with a lot of veins. Luckily there was also ale or Arthur may not have managed it) and not talking much when Merlin suddenly went rigid. "Do you hear that?"

Arthur's hand automatically dropped to his scabbard. "Hear what?"

"Boots. Lots of boots."

Both barstools were quickly pushed back in, and Arthur led Merlin semi-casually to the back of the room, skirting a group of bearded men playing a rowdy game of cards. He cast an eye around, assessing the tavern's defensibility. The entrance was long and narrow, halved by the bar and stools, and then it opened up in an L shape to a nine- or ten-meter square room filled with round tables, mostly unoccupied, and with a hearth in the back. Arthur moved them to a wall closer to the entrance so they'd be invisible if anyone entered. Arthur put a finger to his lips, then realized the futility of this gesture. He thought about it for a moment before deciding Merlin got the gist. They both held their breath and waited.

Sure enough, there came three loud knocks on the door. Gwaine swept out of the back room with an impatient scowl on his face, then paused when he saw his two guests doing their best to imitate wall hangings and shot them an inquiring glance.

"Open up in the name of the king!" commanded a gruff voice. Arthur watched understanding dawn on Gwaine's face before he resumed his resolute march to the door.

Damn it, damn it. He would have to threaten Gwaine somehow, but there were too many witnesses! How could you threaten someone invisibly from another room? For a moment his thoughts drifted to the witch-bind key still in his ankle sheath...but no. They'd just have to run out the back room, but the alley was probably blocked. Run upstairs and jump out a window? Rooftop chase? Could Merlin manage that?

Never once did it cross his mind that Gwaine could not give them up. Sure, the jovial innkeeper had said he wouldn't snitch, but Arthur had been thinking at the time of just covering his tracks; once they were gone, since as far as he knew there was no reward for mere information, there would be no merit in giving them up. He still should have insisted on bribing the guy rather than taking mere assurances. But that wouldn't have mattered in this situation since they were still in the inn. Betraying them would keep the guards from ransacking everything and finding Gwaine's smuggled alcohol and secret non-human guests (and whatever else he had going on). And they probably were offering some reward if they were being this overt about searching for them.

But then, miracle of miracles, Arthur tuned back in (with the help of a sharp elbow to the ribs from Merlin) in time to hear Gwaine chirp, "Nope. Never seen them."

What? Damn, what had Merlin said to this guy? Or was he just that dense? Well, Arthur wasn't going to look a gift horse in the mouth. He gripped Merlin's arm tightly and started edging toward the side window, the only one out of sight of the front door.

And then he heard some drunk guy at the bar blurt out, "Wait, those guys? They're right around the corner!"

And then everything went wrong.

Arthur skidded around the corner to get a quick assessment of how many were at the front door. Gwaine saw him and pulled a wicked-looking broadsword out from behind the bar while shouting, "Run!" Arthur counted maybe ten armored men, but they were bottlenecked in the small entranceway and could only enter about two at a time. Gwaine was holding his own, hacking and slashing with grace, but unable to wield his weapon to its full potential in the small space. Still, honor dictated that regardless of whatever duties were the priority, if there was any possibility of completing the mission and helping, Arthur couldn't just leave him there. By willingly offering aid to a knight beyond the stipulations of duty or brotherhood Gwaine had activated a part of the Knight's Code that Arthur's father hadn't taught him to ignore. He was honor-bound to help.

First, though, he ran back into the other room and snatched up the fireplace poker. He sprinted to press it into Merlin's hand, ignoring the other's panicked squeak. "Anyone comes near you who doesn't identify himself as me or Gwaine, run him through with this. Okay?" Then he was off, three knives already in hand. The last glimpse he caught was of Merlin, nose wrinkled in confusion, feeling along the length of the rod to the tip.

The bar area was lunacy. About six men had shouldered in, pushing Gwaine back about halfway to the main room. The guardsmen were fighting sloppily, probably in part due to the fear and rage Merlin was radiating from the other room. Arthur had learned to compartmentalize it and work with the rest, and Gwaine seemed to be managing. The drunks had all cleared out or were crouched behind the bar with minor wounds. One guy was flinging empty tankards at anyone and everyone who came near him; Arthur narrowly avoided being beaned on the head by a glass one that shattered against the wall. The three bearded men had pulled pickaxes from somewhere and...taken off their shoes? And lost six inches of height? Dwarves! Arthur didn't want to fight dwarves, too–but then one of them broke from their defensive position in the doorway and rushed at Gwaine's back. Before Arthur could react, the dwarf leapt atop the counter and flipped down into the midst of the soldiers, quickly dispatching one and parrying another. Dwarves fighting on Arthur's side? That was new.

Arthur himself went to join Gwaine, successfully blocking a sword before it could lop off the other's arm after a reckless swing. Gwaine let him take over for a minute to pull his long hair out of his face with one finger. "I told you to run!"

Arthur grunted, sliding onto one knee under a particularly vicious downslash. One knife slid under the chestplate and through a vulnerable leather tie while he used the other leg to sweep the guard's feet from under him, dropping the bleeding man to the ground to trip his companions. "No good options. Do you know another way–agh!" A stray swipe bit into Arthur's arm while he parried another. He quickly stepped on the grounded guard's stomach to flip over the two foremost and drive a knife into both of their ribs. Gwaine stood gaping for a minute before shaking himself and leaping back into the fray.

They were very much at a disadvantage, though. The walls hampered Gwaine just as much as the guards and stopped Arthur from even using his short sword, and the knives only made shallow cuts and stabs. Also, this time he didn't have the element of surprise like in the dungeons. The guards there had been sloppily outfitted and not even wearing helmets; these were fully armored killers.

Hissing from another slice, this time to the back of the neck, and the reminder that he and Gwaine were very much not wearing armor, Arthur shouted, "Fall back!" and started backing away into the main chamber. Gwaine nodded grimly and quit the acrobatics to join him.

At the same time, Arthur became aware of a queasy twinge in his gut, slowly growing greater. His hindbrain started whispering, then more like shouting. Beside him Gwaine coughed, brow furrowed, then made a choked noise. One of the guards Arthur was fending off suddenly gasped and crumpled to the ground.

The drowning sensation got worse the further Arthur stepped back, and clearly others were feeling it, too. Water. Lots of it, all around him. Their steps backward became jilted, slow and lazy like a diver's walking with weights on the bottom of the lake. The pain of his cuts flared and became dull, muted, then stabbed in again. His vision seemed very clear, very in the moment, and yet his brain seemed to be processing time oddly, in jolts and spurts.

From somewhere in the back of the fight came a regular noise. Drip. Drip. An overturned ale on the bar counter, maybe. Or blood.

A sword swung at his face, and as he dodged it seemed to be moving so slowly that he had time to see his reflection in the blade. Distorted. Wide eyes with black rims. Terrified. Was it a reflection in the metal of the sword blade or the water around his neck? When did the light get all weird? Blue and harsh, beams of light swimming and snaking through air that was almost rippling and gelatinous, muffling and bending all sound. Disorienting. The water was up to his ears now, and a silent scream was building up like a hurricane behind his eyes. His eyeballs were going to burst from the pressure. The air was being forced out of his lungs. He tried to gasp out one last desperate breath but all his mouth could do was open wide, too wide in a silent scream...

Slowly and with what felt like immense effort he turned his head, tried to ignore his lungs begging his heart begging his brain for air, please, tried to ignore the bodies of the other two dwarves he almost stumbled backward over, tried to ignore their bugged-out fishlike eyes and drooling devouring mouths as they curled insensible on the floor, tried to ignore the slow drip, drip, driiiiiiip...driving a drill through the roof of his mouth and into his brain, tried to ignore everything and just turn his head to the left to see . . .

Merlin, standing against the wall perfectly still, holding the poker in front of him with a white-knuckled grip. Facing straight ahead, jaw so tense the veins in his neck were bulging out of his skin. Perfectly still, not even breathing, veins like metal, like rock, white knuckles on the poker, like a statue. Holding the poker.

And the scars on his face, they were weird, weren't they? He'd noticed before. They were like burns but also slashes, like something was hot but also sharp...

Damn it.

He started running toward Merlin, but it was running in slow motion and there was no air in his lungs anymore, only water cold and heavy in his mouth and sloppy around his clumsy tongue and clumsy thoughts and slippery electric panic. And then he was there and grasping him by the shoulders and shouting in his face, "Merlin! It's me, it's Arth–Victor! It's me, Merlin! Let go! It's me, you can let go!" And then he was struggling to pull away the poker, trying to pry off, drag off white-knuckled stony fingers like petrified tree roots a million years old before he, Arthur, who's Arthur? He floated away and was lost forever drifting near the ceiling, embalmed in midair in this godforsaken tavern.

And then the finger-roots were finally pried away and he fell backward on the floor and gasped in one long, wheezing breath. The light was back to normal, back to a plain, early-morning white streaming through the dirty windows and falling uncaring upon the broken glass, overturned and shattered stools, stained walls, and the bodies strewn across the floors. That puddle of mead on the bar counter was still dripping steadily onto the floor. Drip. Drip.

Slowly, Arthur pushed himself up off of the wood, warmed by the square of calm light from the side window. He stumbled a little upon standing. Merlin was no longer standing rigid and straight on the dark wall, instead hunched over and leaning with his hands fisted in his hair, gulping in breaths like a drowned man, completely in shadow.

They were the only two people standing in the tavern.

Arthur looked around, a little dazed, focused only on getting his breathing under control. The light shifted a little over the still scene. The bodies were all splayed or slumped in odd positions across the floors or the tables or the bar, but they all seemed to be shifting with gentle breaths. In and out. Breathing.

There was complete silence in the room. No noise from outside, either. Arthur wondered, again. How far it went.

Arthur realized he was still holding the fireplace poker, clutching it tightly in one hand. He threw it away with a gut-twist of revulsion and fear, like it was a snake about to bite him. The dull thunks echoed in the silence.

Across the room, Gwaine was the first to stir. Arthur didn't know how long they'd been standing there, breathing hard. Drip. Drip. The other boy groaned and sat up, one hand on his head. "Ow. Gods above, what the hell was that?"

Merlin made a single choked noise like a sob.

Gwaine, previously so graceful, stumbled to his feet, the hand not on his temple still loosely around the hilt of his broadsword. He looked at it for a minute in confusion, like he didn't recognize it. Then he turned in a full circle to survey the damage around him.

He whistled. "Damn. I am definitely fired."