Disclaimer: Merlin is not mine.

Arthur had maintained, from the moment that real steel had been placed in his hand in place of the child's wooden weapon, that skill was not the most important quality when it came to knighthood. Granted, he had thought this because he had discovered very quickly that his mastery of the wooden blade did not exactly translate entirely into mastery of a real blade, but that wasn't his point. Even as he aged and began to defeat older and more experienced knights in the battles and tourneys, he knew that it wasn't skill alone. It was confidence.

Merlin had never believed him when he'd made such claims. Merlin tended to focus on the tangibles when it came to Arthur's battles, whether they were with blunted competition blades or the legitimate weapons of combat. When a man was bigger than Arthur, when a man was faster than Arthur, when a man was surrounded by his men and Arthur had only Merlin, when Arthur lacked armor, when Arthur lacked a sword…Merlin tended to assume the worst.

But Arthur had always walked headfirst and steadily into such fights. What was the point of wavering or doubting himself when there were lives and victories on the line? Even if all of the odds were against him and he knew that he would probably lose—that he should probably lose—what was the point of fighting as though the most likely conclusion was one foregone? No, absolute confidence was always of the utmost importance to Arthur and, while it may have seemed a rather foolhardy stance to others, Arthur felt that the fact that he was still somehow alive was evidence in his favor. Confidence was a good quality.

So Arthur supposed that he ought not be so unsettled by the confidence that Merlin had shown when he'd expressed his…certainty that he would defeat Morgana. Easily. It was…unnerving, and not least because Merlin had referred to her as "thrice" his age. Morgana had a great deal of magic, Arthur knew, and it was possible that her birth had been something of an unusual event, but if Uther was her father as much as he was Arthur's, there was no way that she was in her seventies, even if Merlin had stated that she didn't look her age. Unless Uther had fathered her shortly after his own birth, Merlin had his math a little bit confused.

At first, Arthur had been afraid that Merlin was beginning to lose it again, even as he had relit their campfire and burnt the summons with the muttering of a few strange words for which Arthur had given up asking for translations. But Merlin still appeared so healthy and relatively normal, even as they now flew on Aithusa's back once more toward whatever destination Merlin seemed to think that they would have no problem finding. And Arthur began to wonder…if Merlin wasn't expecting Morgana, who the hell was he expecting?

Not for the first time, as he clung to Aithusa's back and tried not to suspect that the dragon was making it a deliberately bumpy ride, Arthur thought about simply asking. After all, one of the few things that he and Merlin absolutely agreed upon when it came to Merlin's years of deception was that good communication would have saved them both a great deal of trouble. Of course, the fact that they rarely approached the subject with one another betrayed the fact that they still were not the greatest of communicators, but still. He should just ask.

Yet he couldn't. Arthur wasn't sure if it was because he didn't want to know who it could be that had so initially frightened Merlin or if it was because he hoped that it was not his half-sister that they would be facing. They were going to have to…this would have to be her…he and Merlin would have to end it. Permanently.

That was another thing that he knew that they agreed upon, although neither had dared voice it. Granted, Arthur had been busy being distracted by Merlin's physical and mental breakdown, and Merlin had been busy doing the breaking down, but he had the feeling that, even if this had been a completely uneventful flight, they would not have discussed it. They had gone on so many quests over the years…but they had always felt like adventurers and explorers and men on missions of honor and necessity. Now, Arthur just felt like they were assassins. It was not a good feeling. It was not...honorable.

Even if it was Morgana. She had done so much over the years to harm Camelot and her people that it was almost embarrassing that they had not tried to do this terrible thing already, but Arthur still felt dirty when he thought about what he and Merlin intended. They were on a mission on which the only acceptable conclusion was the death of their enemy. She was just too powerful for them to allow to survive. They just couldn't.

Could they?

Arthur closed his eyes, feeling the wind rush over his face and chap his lips and threaten his grip on the dragon's back. He wished so much that he did not know that he and Morgana were not siblings. This would have been so much easier…he didn't have any family left…but maybe, just maybe, Merlin was right and it wasn't Morgana.

He shivered and considered for half a moment asking Aithusa to slow down for a bit, but he dismissed the thought almost immediately. Once Aithusa had forgiven Merlin for scaring him, he had shamelessly transferred all affection for Arthur right back to the sorcerer. He scowled at the memory. It was completely unfair. Just because he had asked Merlin to summon a pair of wyverns so that they could ride those beasts for a day or so instead of the dragon, Aithusa was now going out of his way to try to frighten Arthur. Even after two days. Who would have known that dragons were so good at holding grudges?

It was so unfair. Arthur had conceded that Aithusa was much faster. He was just concerned for himself and Merlin. After all, the fact that Merlin seemed healthy enough was not enough to banish the horrible memory of the last time that Merlin had been on the back of a dragon. According to Merlin, wyverns weren't the friendliest of creatures, but if either of them were to fall off, it would have been a drop of a few feet. Rather than a hundred.

It hadn't helped that Merlin had immediately sided with the dragon. Arthur was being reasonable!

"Merlin," he'd said, sitting idly on his log and watching as Merlin busied himself packing up their scattered belongings. He was all but yelling; Aithusa had been flapping furiously around above their heads, costing them their fire and any attempts at hair tidying. Merlin said that he was stretching his wings for a long day's flight, but Arthur figured that Aithusa was just trying to get some attention or hurry them up or something equally annoying. Stupid dragon.

"What, Arthur?"

Arthur had been vaguely offended that Merlin sounded exasperated before he'd even heard what Arthur had to say. Couldn't he at least wait to grow judgmental and dismissive until he'd heard what he was dismissing?

"I have an idea!" said Arthur brightly. Merlin just rolled his eyes warily.

"What?"

"Why don't we walk today?" Arthur suggested.

Merlin stopped fiddling with the remnants of their campsite, and the wind from above them began to slow, confirming Arthur's suspicions that the young dragon was flying around so that he could eavesdrop without being too obvious.

"Arthur, no."

Arthur just smiling winningly, hoping for soften Merlin via friendliness. If it worked on Guinevere, why shouldn't it work on Merlin?

"Come on, Merlin! It's a nice day out, and I think that you and I are going to get out of shape by the time that we get to wherever we're going. You maybe be a super powerful sorcerer, but it's not going to help anyone if you get winded by climbing the first flight of stairs. A nice brisk walk would do us loads of good today, I think."

Merlin snorted. "Nice try, Arthur."

Now that Arthur thought about it, that winning smile didn't work on Guinevere very often either. He would have to rehearse it when he got back to Camelot, although his smile rehearsals had gotten somewhat more difficult over the past year. Just because he had punched out a mirror or two in times of upset did not, he felt, mean that his looking glasses should be confiscated every time that he looked particularly stressed.

But that wasn't the point.

"Give me one good reason why we shouldn't."

"I'll give you three good reasons. One: we'll get a million times farther on dragon back than we would on foot. Two: this forest is getting more and more magical the farther that we go, so its probably full of manticores and griffins to attack us and wood-witches to enchant us from their hovels and unicorns for you to viciously kill for no reason whatsoever—"

"Come on! I did that one time—"

"—and all manner of magical beasts that'll slow us down. And three: just because you're still scared of dragons does not mean that we should slow down our travel time."

Arthur had stood up and placed his hands on his hips at that. "I am not still afraid of dragons! I'm afraid that you are going to fall off the dragon and smash yourself into a billion pieces—"

"I only did that once!"

"—and that will definitely slow us down."

Merlin turned to face Arthur, looking annoyed and prepared to toss another retort at the king. However, he seemed to recognize the concern that mingled with the frustration on Arthur's face, for his expression softened. "Arthur, I'll be fine. We burnt the summons and I don't feel sick or compelled to do anything evil or anything. So just…climb on Aithusa and we'll get going. You know that speed is the most important factor here."

Arthur had shaken his head, stubborn. "Fine. How about a compromise: you summon us some wyverns and we ride those. They're fast enough to run away from the monsters and the unicorns that I am not going to kill and they'll get us where we're going quickly enough, I'd say."

Arthur had had just enough time to register the way in which Merlin looked him in the eye and winced and wonder why before there was a massive thump and the earth trembled beneath their feet as Aithusa landed clumsily in the nearby clearing and just stared at Arthur. Glaring. The dragon was glaring at him. There was smoke coming out of his nostrils, but he did not make a sound. Arthur looked at Merlin, puzzled and unnerved. Merlin just shook his head, half apologetically and half chastising.

"Come on, Arthur," he whispered so loudly that Arthur thought that Merlin ought to practice his whispering skills while Arthur rehearsed his smiling. "I told you about Aithusa's feelings about wyverns. And you just had to bring them up as replacement dragons. Honestly, Arthur, have you ever ridden on the back of a sulky dragon?"

Arthur glared. "Have you ever ridden on the back of a sulky dragon?"

Merlin had just shrugged and began fiddling around their campsite once more. "Well, no. But that's only because I know better than to try to suggest that they're not as useful as wyverns. I mean, really, Arthur! Aithusa has been twitchy enough lately already, haven't you noticed?"

Arthur had noticed. Aithusa had been getting jumpier and jumpier as they flew farther over the forest that grew darker by the league. He'd assumed that it had been because the dragon sensed more about Merlin's illness than Arthur did and was nervous out of concern, but the jumpiness persisted, even with Merlin's recovery. As they had restarted their journey, Arthur felt just as he did on one occasion, when he'd had to force his panicking stallion—through sharp words and nudges and eventually a switch snatched by a non-flaming tree to snap at the poor creature's side—to ride through a patch of forest being consumed by flames. It was not a reassuring comparison.

As far as Arthur was concerned, that was just another reason for them to stay aground for the next day or two. Besides, Aithusa really was glaring at him. And he'd thought that they had broken new ground with each other during Merlin's illness…

However, between Aithusa's glares and Merlin's attempts to guilt Arthur into feeling bad for his remarks about the superiority of wyverns vs. dragons, the magical duo had prevailed, and now Arthur was on the back of a cranky dragon thinking about confidence and trying not to focus on what Aithusa was probably thinking about doing to him. Although there was the chance that the dragon's turbulence that day—as well as the day before, when they'd first taken to flight again—was more to do with Aithusa's twitchiness than any dragony desire to scare the hair off of Arthur's scalp. Or both. Dragons seemed peculiarly capable of multitasking.

Still. Pondering the possible imminence of his death via fall from the back of a spiteful dragon was somewhat more palatable than thinking about Merlin and the certainty that he'd displayed when he'd figured out the cause of his illness and proclaimed that they were sure to defeat the sorceress waiting for them. He didn't like thinking about Merlin like that or remembering how Merlin had looked when he'd said it. It was an expression that he'd seen before, although never on Merlin.

Morgana had always been confident.

It wasn't that he thought—even for an instant or even a little bit—that Merlin would turn on him or was in league with Morgana or was engaging in another step of an unnecessarily elaborate ploy for revenge for how Arthur had exiled him. No, he did not doubt Merlin's loyalty. But he did not like it when he saw yet another aspect of Merlin's magical side that paralleled Morgana's. That resolve. Ruthlessness. Dark determination.

For the thousandth time, Arthur thought of how Uther's ban on magic had done more harm than just the slaughter of all of the innocents. Because of Uther's ban on magic, there were people like Morgana and Merlin out there, powerful—too powerful—who had had to live with the knowledge that their king would kill them in an instant qualities beyond their control. Who had had to stifle themselves and suffer for it. How could Arthur blame them for holding grudges, even if they were subconscious? How could he blame them for any lingering bitterness that would accompany the need to try to harness their powers for the sake of the safety of themselves and others in secret? And how could he ignore the fact that being forced to grow up and live and hide in such a way was certain to instill no small amount of darkness in a person?

That, he thought, was why he had backed away from Merlin. Arthur was dreading the encounter with Morgana—or whoever it was—even as he sought it. He just wanted to get there and then have it be over and skip the whole middle part that was going to haunt him until the day that he died. But Merlin…that gleam in his eye…Merlin seemed to be most looking forward to the middle. To the fight. To the battle in which he would be able, for the first time, to unleash his powers upon an enemy without the need the hide himself from Arthur or anyone else.

He was so confident….was this what Merlin had always felt like, when Arthur would be going to fight a man twice his size and speed and stamina and Merlin had advised against it, citing the likelihood that it would not end well? If it was, Arthur thought, it was distinctly unfair. Even if he went hand to hand against an opponent who had never before picked up a sword, that person stood the chance of a lucky blow. If Arthur was distracted or struck by an inconvenient bout of mercy or dropped his shield…it was possible that he'd lose. But this was just so unbalanced…it felt unfair. Any man could train and build muscle and grow skilled with a blade to defeat an opponent. But skinny little Merlin having all the odds in his own favor…

Merlin was just so damn confident. It wasn't as though Arthur wanted him to be weaker. This wasn't exactly an encounter from which he was hoping to emerge the loser. If he lost, there was unlikely to be any emerging at all. But if only things were a bit more balanced…Arthur sighed and chanced lifting one of his hands up off of Aithusa's back, wanting to brush his hair back from his face and move a bit to restore circulation to his body.

Unfortunately, it was a rather ill-timed chance.

He didn't even notice that anything was wrong. He had been so focused on maintaining his grip with his attached hand, and the spin was so swift that Arthur didn't even realize that he was upside down until he heard Merlin shout.

Then, Arthur noticed.

Aithusa was rolling in the air, twisting as though there was some terrible itch somewhere on his body that he couldn't reach and that would surely drive him mad without some sort of relief. Arthur's body went stiff and he absurdly reached for his scabbard as he usually did when his life was threatened.

Battle instincts took over, and time slowed.

His head clearing, he began to evaluate the situation as best he could. He realized that the only reason that he had not plummeted to the ground below was because Aithusa had been spinning with too much speed for them to drop. He was plastered to the creature's back, helpless to do anything but hold on and hope that, when Aithusa calmed enough to stop rolling, he would do it when he was facing upward.

Merlin was shouting again, but Arthur could not understand the words. He was bellowing in that bizarre dragontongue that only only dragons and their lords seemed to understand. Tears streaming down his cheeks from the cold air blowing directly into his face, Arthur saw Merlin moving with no small amount of difficulty up to sit atop Aithusa's head. Arthur could see Merlin only in profile, clothes whipping around his bony frame and hair wild about his head and flush in his cheeks as he tried to steady himself atop the dragon's skull. Arthur couldn't hear anything anymore, but Merlin's lips were moving. His eyes were wide and scared, but he looked as though he was trying to remain very calm. Arthur assumed that Merlin was trying to settle the poor dragon before he crashed into the trees below or dropped his passengers, one of whom certainly lacked the magic to survive it.

It did not seem to be working as intended.

Arthur was so intent on watching Merlin trying to save them that he did not notice that Aithusa's rolls were growing less dizzyingly frantic-although more erratic-slower-until he saw Merlin's unsecured pack begin to fall off of the dragon's back. Fall down.

Instinctively, Arthur's hand shot out to catch it, knowing in the back of his mind that it probably didn't make a damn bit of difference whether or not he tried to hold onto Aithusa anymore. Upside down was upside down, and it wasn't like dragons came with handles on their backs. If he was going to fall to his death, he might as well take Merlin's pack with him.

Arthur felt himself begin to lose contact with the pebbly skin beneath him, the muscles still twisting even as the dragon struggled belly-up through the air. For no reason beyond the fact that he was a warrior and he wanted to die with a sword in his hand, he withdrew Excalibur and remembered the day he'd pulled it from the stone and imagined how much more he could have done and thought that Merlin would probably survive again because he seemed nigh on unkillable and he could probably let Guinevere know what had happened to her husband.

He began to fall.

Strangely calm, he noticed that they weren't that high up. They were certainly high enough that he would be reduced to a pink and red splatter upon landing, but they were much lower than when Merlin had fallen. That was good, he thought. Merlin would almost certainly live, the miserable little sorcerer. It felt like he was cheating. But he was glad that Merlin would make it. One of them ought to.

He fell.

Arthur wondered how long it would take for him to hit. Seconds, probably. Ten, maybe. It couldn't have been more than half a minute since Aithusa had begun to roll. When Merlin had fallen, it had seemed to take an instant. If that. Maybe it felt longer when you were the one falling. He wished that he'd asked Merlin. Of course, it wouldn't matter very much to him in a few moments, he knew, but still. He would have liked to know.

He closed his eyes, not wanting to see. He'd seen the dragon and he'd spied the ground below, but he didn't want to see the descent. He didn't have to see it to know where he was going and that there was nothing that he could do to stop it. He didn't want to see.

This wasn't how he was meant to die. It should have been in battle or in illness or for his people or when he was very old in his own bed with the people that he loved by his side. This wasn't how it was meant to happen.

His body lost all contact with the skin of the dragon who had carried them so far—so very far, that good old dragon—but he didn't see it. He didn't want to see. He just wished that he had enough time to thank Aithusa for carrying them so far as he did. Good old dragon.

He felt himself feeling nothing. Nothing but air.

He heard Merlin shout again. He thought that he heard his name, but he didn't open his eyes. The air was rushing deafeningly in his ears, and whatever Merlin was saying was lost in the wind, unintelligible to Arthur, who wanted to smile. It was just like Merlin to be worried about him when he was surely going to be making the same drop. Good old Merlin. This was so stupid, though. Merlin had already fallen. Now Aithusa was falling, and Arthur along with him. Was there a quota for falling bodies that they needed to fulfill before they could do this thing?

If there was, he hoped that the quota was three.

He hoped…

He wondered if it would hurt. When things happened quickly enough, he knew, they didn't hurt. The ground would do him in right away. It wouldn't hurt, surely.

That was nice.

In one hand, he clutched Merlin's pack, the ratty old bag that he had grabbed and hastened his own fall. He hoped that there was something soft and durable and valuable in there, something that would survive. In his other hand, he held Excalibur tightly. He was a warrior.

And warriors fell all the time.

He was a warrior.

A warrior.

He was not meant to die like this, but if he was going to die, he was damn well going to make it a death worth dying for.

He almost smiled at his logic.

Then, he opened his eyes.

He saw. It was closer now. It was taking so long...but there it was. Closer.

He was glad that he'd opened his eyes. The forest was beautiful, in its own way. And he'd never expected to see it from this particular angle.

Beauty in the little things...

Too late, he remembered something that he needed to say. To Merlin, to Guinevere, to his people, to Morgana. Arthur opened his mouth to try to speak, wondering if he had time to—

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Thank you for reading! Reviews are always very appreciated.

And motivating!