The world has gone quiet again. Arthur isn't sure if it's Merlin's spells or if there's just nothing left to hear. If maybe all the horrors that had crawled up from the depths have ceased their songs and resumed their slumbers.
If maybe there's no one left out there to scream.
Anything could be happening out there. Anything at all. It does no good to stand at the edge of the protective shields Merlin has built and think of it; he can see nothing through them, just the warm golden light that let their crops grow and their remaining cattle survive.
It feels a little like being trapped in a bauble, but he can't complain.
He can't dream of complaining.
"I've been working on a way to make it look more like the sky," Merlin says from behind him, and it takes all Arthur has not to jump. Merlin has gotten noticeably less clumsy these days, and it iss hard, now, to know when he might pop up behind you. "That'll be good for morale, don't you think?"
"Don't strain yourself over it," Arthur says, and he could turn it into a joke, a tease, but it is hard to joke about Merlin's magic.
Hard to say anything to the man who was the only reason your people weren't out there with the rest, bleeding from the eyes, clawing at their ears, screaming, screaming, screaming.
Arthur doesn't remember riding out against the - them. Not really. His mind shies away from it. He remembers Merlin's eyes, though, and his voice that had somehow blocked out everything else as he'd dragged Arthur away. He remembers rounding up whoever he could find as the rode desperately inland, the numbers terribly small and horrifically scarred, until they finally reached a spot of land that had seemed the same as any other to Arthur, but that had made Merlin stand taller.
Here. Here is where Albion is strongest.
And then they had stopped.
"You saved everyone you could," Merlin says as he touches Arthur's shoulder.
The touch is -
The touch is fine. Just a firm gesture of support like a knight would give, like Gwaine still does with his one remaining hand.
The touch is fine.
Just like turning and looking at Merlin would be - fine. It would be.
He doesn't want to, though. When he thinks of Merlin's face, all he can remember is his eyes. Burning gold. More than gold. Searing into Arthur's very soul and burning, burning, burning.
He nods stiffly and hopes it's enough.
"When I'm stronger, we can ride out again," Merlin says. He sounds a little desperate, though Arthur can't begin to guess for what. There's nothing any of them would dream of denying him. "We might find others. And we can avenge them at least. I just need a little more time."
"You're like them," Arthur says, and the words are too flat. "Aren't you? Just . . . younger."
"I'm not," Merlin insists miserably. "I wasn't. I . . . I don't know about now."
That thought is almost comforting. He can have Merlin of before, who was legitimately clumsy and innocent and surprisingly wise, and Merlin of now.
Everyone of the now is different. Maybe he can bear to let Merlin be different too.
Maybe. Maybe. Maybe.
There is a quiet place in his head that he would like to go away to, but he can't quite manage it.
Responsibility stopping him, perhaps.
Or Merlin.
"I'm your's whatever I am," Merlin says quietly, but no less passionate for it. "You are still my king, Arthur. Always and forever."
Arthur does not what to think about just how long that might prove to be.