#1 / "Who invented this feeling?" he asks to nobody in particular. "This feeling of like, not being able to go anywhere, even though there's nowhere else left to go? Like I could walk through every corridor in the ARK and still feel like I'm stuck. We're trapped. Forever. For always." / Jasper/Monty. Pre-Earth.

One month. It had been one month since Merlin had disappeared. When Arthur set out to find his missing servant, he hadn't had much of a plan, but he's pretty sure that getting kidnapped and being held for ransom by a morally imbalanced weapons dealer hadn't been part of it. *Friendship, no slash, eventual magic reveal*

After revealing his magic to Arthur due to life-threatening circumstances, Merlin decides it's time he learned to heal. With Gaius off dealing with an illness in the outer villages, Merlin is left to his own methods, bearing some rather costly outcomes.