Disclaimer: Merlin is not mine.

The path of destruction that threatened to topple Camelot from within was subtle, and the patterns difficult to place, with only Merlin familiar enough with the source of the chaos to see that something was wrong. Now that he thought about it, however, perhaps the path of destruction was really more of a series of chaotic stepping stones. The person behind all of these crises wasn't constantly wreaking havoc, after all. These were small but concentrated crises that worried Merlin. Then again, perhaps —

"Merlin!"

Perhaps he was being a little dramatic about the state of Arthur's chambers.

Merlin sighed. The source of the chaos had reentered his chambers from where he'd been lurking in the hallway. He wasn't sure if Arthur was just out of things to do for the day or if he suspected that Merlin was getting lost in his thoughts when he ought to have been cleaning up the monumental mess, but Merlin wasn't feeling overly sympathetic. Arthur had made the entirely avoidable mess himself when he'd slashed the bed with a few strong swings of his sword, sending feathers everywhere, irritating Gwen because it was her bed now too, and worrying Merlin.

After all, Arthur wasn't one to swing wildly with his sword, and certainly not alone in his chambers. And Merlin had followed Arthur into battle often enough to know that these were deliberate slashes, not something accidental or even done in a well-armed fit of pique. But why would Arthur deliberately slice his own bed?

While Merlin spent the better part of the morning trying to find every single feather, as ordered, even though he knew Arthur would never go through with his threat to check every nook and cranny for strays, he found himself wondering if Gaius had a point about needing to stop hitting Arthur over the head to knock him out whenever he needed to perform magic in the king's presence.

In his defense, Merlin had magically whacked Arthur over the head with a goblet less forcefully than usual in the most recent magical incursion into the castle, to the point that Arthur was already awake — if oddly jumpy and reluctant to accept an arm from Merlin — by the time Merlin finished with the creature, got what remained of it out of the castle, and came up with a cover story. Admittedly, the cover story had to be more elaborate than usual, so it took more than a few moments to create. It wasn't that strange that Arthur was already awake, was it?

Merlin had created quite a mess in the throne room that day. By the time the job was finished, banners were slashed, the table was in pieces strewn about the room with chunks bitten out of the wood, and burn marks streaked the walls and what remained of the ceiling. The only thing that had barely moved was the throne itself, which had been tilted over the unconscious king to protect him from the worst of it.

Somewhat obscured as it was by the armrest of the throne, Merlin had been able to see Arthur's face from where he stood near the doorway, and the sight of the helpless king who was usually so fierce gave him the strength he needed to perform magic in this most forbidden of rooms. He used the best and worst of his spells to do what needed to be done, and the magical creature had been frightened before it perished. But Arthur was protected.

Fortunately, the explanation that a fire tornado had blown in through a hole in the roof had struck him as solid enough for Arthur, and it was only Arthur who needed to be convinced. He was king, after all, and Arthur had believed more outlandish stories than this. Merlin wasn't even sure it would occur to Arthur to ask when exactly there had been a hole in the roof for the fire tornado to get in. As for the ashes burned into the floor oddly shaped like an impossibly large but fallen human with an animal's head, well, coincidences happen!

Still, for some reason, Arthur had been pale and strange when Merlin returned. Arthur also didn't look entirely convinced by Merlin's claim that he was windswept because of the fire tornado after it stopped being so fiery. He was troublingly alert, but Merlin supposed a king would snap back to consciousness quite quickly if he woke up to discover the seat of his power looked like it had been ravaged by a fire tornado which, as Merlin informed him with a too-high voice, was definitely a real thing. And Gaius backed him up.

Still, Arthur had been out of sorts and reluctant to summon Merlin for anything for days after that particular event. Merlin had become increasingly concerned that maybe the latest hit to Arthur's head with a blunt object — comparatively gentle as it was — had been one hit too many and Arthur's brain was permanently scrambled. Why else was he behaving so strangely?

"Merlin!"

First, Arthur had started dropping or knocking over everything breakable within reach whenever he and Merlin were alone together, then watching like a hawk as Merlin cleaned it up. At one point, he even pressed up against a window with so much force that it shattered around his left hand, slicing his fingers and palm but fortunately and somewhat miraculously not so much as scraping his wrist.

Arthur seemed to either get his head on straight or run out of things he wanted to break after the window incident. It wasn't much better that he'd moved on to task Merlin with helping him train for battle, as he'd often done in their early years together but mostly stopped when it became clear that, aside from freak accidents that tended to befall only Arthur whenever he'd make a fool out of Merlin for no especially good reason, nothing notable came of these sessions.

The new training sessions went about the same as they always did: ineffectively. Arthur did put plenty of force into banging his sword on Merlin's increasingly battered shield, he almost seemed to take joy in making Merlin run with a shield on his back so he could have some javelin practice, and he even armed them both with maces and started taunting him in a bizarre recreation of their first meeting.

But Arthur's heart didn't seem to be in the taunting, though the words certainly weren't kind. In fact, even as he escalated his commentary to the point that the deferential Sir Leon sent more than a few openly confused glances at the king, Arthur was paying closer attention to Merlin than his own weapon, which is not a safe thing to do when wielding a mace. So Merlin didn't feel the need for any embarrassing freak accidents to befall the king that day. Arthur's behavior felt too… staged, somehow. Insincere. There was something behind his words, but it wasn't fury or disdain or disregard. It was something else, something calculated. No, there were no freak accidents that day.

Nor was that the last instance of the king showing strange behavior. Later that week, Arthur had dropped by Gaius' chambers, where Gaius was poring over a thick tome and Merlin was working the mortar and pestle. He stared suspiciously at Gaius for nearly five minutes, then failed spectacularly at pretending to accidentally knock over a valuable jar of elixir that had taken Gaius months to concoct. Arthur knew what it was courtesy of Merlin chattering on about it for most of those months. Yet, looking pointedly back and forth from Merlin to the jar, Arthur just…knocked it over.

To Arthur's credit, he did look properly ashamed when Gaius told him that he wasn't angry, just disappointed. Arthur had vowed to procure some of the elixir for Gaius, apparently not having listened to Merlin's day of going on about Gaius' special recipe that no one else knew how to make.

Less to Arthur's credit, he seemed to blame Merlin for the break of the jar, as if he had any reason to expect Merlin could have stopped it from across the room. This led Merlin to suspect that the slashing of the bed just a few days later was more an attempt to annoy Merlin than the result of a sword mishap. But was there something more to it?

"MERLIN!"

Merlin finally looked up at the king, whose face still bore the signs of the black eye he'd sustained when melodramatically falling forward in the throne room when he'd been rehearsing for a speech with Merlin as his audience, only to hit his face on the armrest of the throne before bouncing to the ground, his armor clanking on the floor and sword — even in its scabbard — leaving a long scratch that took Merlin a solid three hours to remove…or it would have, had the king not furiously stomped away in search of Gaius and Merlin had the chance to secretly use magic.

If only Arthur had fallen because he'd fainted rather than because his knee gave out, as he somewhat hurriedly muttered to Merlin before leaving the room! Then Merlin could have taken advantage of an out-cold king and prevented the collision altogether. It could be so inconvenient when Arthur was perfectly conscious in times of crisis.

"Yes, Arthur?" answered Merlin, bringing himself back to the present and pointedly not looking at the black eye, which everybody in the castle through mutual but unspoken agreement had decided to overlook whenever the king was in the room.

"Still not done yet?" asked Arthur, his voice as firm as ever, but strained and almost formal. The formality in his voice saddened Merlin, though he wasn't sure why.

Merlin, who was covered with nearly as many feathers as he'd managed to gather so far, felt Arthur's question was one of his less intelligent, but the formality made him feel too stiff and separate to try and rib Arthur about it.

"I am not," said Merlin. "Did you need your chambers for something in the middle of the day?"

"Not particularly," said Arthur, cautiously. "Why?"

"You were waiting in the hallway while I cleaned," responded Merlin, unable to resist and feeling Arthur deserved it for making the mess. "Right by the keyhole, as a matter of fact."

"What makes you say that? How could you know?" demanded Arthur, hopefully. And almost fearfully. Merlin couldn't understand it.

"You always hear me from in here when I'm listening at the keyhole," answered Merlin, shrugging. "I know what it sounds like."

"You didn't… sense it?" asked Arthur..

"With my ears," said Merlin, trying not to sound mouthy when the king's face was beginning to twist into that expression. "Ears are a sense. Hearing, that is."

Arthur snorted and flicked his eyes at Merlin's ears, but didn't say any more. His face was flushed and his eyes were too bright.

"Have you got a fever, Arthur?" asked Merlin, his urge to make fun of the king somewhat lessened by the realization that he'd failed to consider Arthur might actually be sick, and that was the explanation for all of it. He approached Arthur and tried to feel his forehead. Arthur let him at it for a moment before shoving away.

For the first time in all their years together, Arthur shoved himself away from Merlin, rather than the other way around. There was a feather stuck to the sweat on his forehead after Merlin had tried to detect any heat in his brow, and for just one moment, he looked as vulnerable as Merlin had ever seen him. Merlin's heart began to race and a chill ran down his spine. They were both breathing too shallowly, like there wasn't enough air in the room. Like something was ending.

Then the moment passed. Arthur waved his hand in Merlin's direction and stomped out the door, his foul temper returning and putting a damper on Merlin's concerns for the time being.

"Send word for me when you're finished," said Arthur dismissively over his shoulder, "so I can tell Guinevere."

"More like take credit to Guinevere," muttered Merlin, but Arthur didn't hear, because Arthur was stomping down the hallway, far too furiously than Merlin felt the situation warranted. When Merlin was quite sure that Arthur was no longer anywhere near the keyhole and was confident that Arthur was in no mood for Merlin or this mess for at least a few hours, Merlin sighed with relief. He wasn't particularly in a mood for Arthur either.

With a swipe of his hand, he moved the thick table in the center of Arthur's chambers up against the door, blocking it. With a few words, the feathers began to clean themselves up. Satisfied that the work was being done and nobody was getting in, Merlin grabbed one of Arthur's ruined pillows, leaned up against the bed from where he sat on the floor, and shut his eyes.

Somehow, what happened next wasn't a nightmare.

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Happy new year! Sadly, I've broken my own rule about only posting one-shots in this series. "Pitch Black" was getting embarrassingly long, so I decided to split it in two. Sorry about that! Fun fact: it's inspired by something I wrote in "When Blue Was Gold."

It's been a VERY long time since I wrote a fresh reveal, so hopefully this turned out okay. Reviews would be incredibly appreciated, if you have thoughts and a moment to share!