The Dust of Hope

by fourleggedfish

The prophecy is in motion. It is an undertaking the likes of which Arthur did not expect. (Book 2 of 3, follows The Impersonated Self)

10. Chapter 10

The last thing that Arthur discovered before ceding power officially to Hunith was that Sir Marwen had indeed disappeared the night before. It both encouraged and worried him that Marwen left on foot; his horse was still in the stable. Marwen's rooms also appeared untouched, as if he had not returned to them after the feast, so his flight, if willing, was a spur of the moment thing. If willing. Arthur had left him alone in the dining hall with fourteen druids whose magical specialties had to do with prying secrets and coercion. Marwen's loyalties may have been split, but only between Arthur and Merlin; his interests did not lay outside of Camelot. If Arthur were to lay odds on it, he would bank on trickery. There was nothing to be done about it now, however; not by him. Arthur left it in Hunith's hands, with Leon and Howel to advise her. He had no other choice.

Arthur led a somber troop of men through the streets of the lower town, toward the forest gate near the outermost ring of perimeter walls. They were hastily attired, barely provisioned, and half of them were carrying the more complicated pieces of their armor rather than wearing it because they hadn't had time to don it along with all of the other preparations. Three random squires volunteered to go with them all, as had several stable hands and a few other random servants with packs and what appeared to be a better stash of supplies for them all, including Bern the dog handler and one of the laborers who Arthur also recalled from the fated hunting trip at Samhain. George rode with the latter set of servants, already grimacing at the bruises he would wear later on his bottom. Arthur could relate for once; his backside was killing him.

Out the side of his mouth, Arthur grumbled, "I think I properly broke my tailbone this morning."

Merlin glanced at him, and then down at his bottom where Arthur wasn't actually touching the saddle. All of his weight rested on his feet in the stirrups. "You're going to injure the horse riding like that."

"I'll injure me if I can't sit down," Arthur whispered. "It really hurts. And not in the jolly way where I joke that you're the pain in it."

"I made you a numbing poultice," Merlin whispered back, though he didn't actually take much care to keep it a quiet one. "I even put bruise salve on it myself."

Arthur flushed to the roots of his hair at the reminder of Merlin's hands on him, clinical as they had been. "Well, do something else! Fix it. I'll never make it to the meeting point like this, Merlin; I'll pass out from the pain before we even get close."

After taking a quick glance around the street, and the sober gathering that lined the avenues to see them off, Merlin nodded his head forward and toward the right. "Follow me. I want to speak to Geraint anyway before we go."

Incredulous, Arthur hissed, "I don't want Geraint touching my bottom!"

"He won't be!" Merlin snapped back in kind. "It's an excuse, you idiot. I'll need to touch it if you want me to try using magic to heal it proper. Unless you prefer I just grab your arse right here while we ride down the middle of the bloody street?" He waggled his fingers and made his how can you be such a moron and still be king face. "You seem to enjoy some of the more ridiculous rumors that circulate about us; we could make a few more before we go."

"Yes, don't do that," Arthur replied. But he did enjoy some of them; the maidservants, especially, seemed to have some interesting ideas about what Arthur got up to with Merlin on the nights he stayed until morning, and very few of them were actually carnal. Arthur shook himself as he steered his horse off course and called over his shoulder, "Everyone wait here for a moment. I must see to one last thing."

Because he was an ass, Gwaine cantered his horse after them and asked, "Are you finally going to let Merlin give your precious bottom a proper seeing to?"

Arthur didn't even get mad at that; he was too accustomed to Gwaine's inappropriate commentary. And besides, they'd set this whole competition thing out in the open just a day ago. There was no need to play politely oblivious anymore. "Why, are you jealous?"

"Don't you two start," Merlin interjected. "Or no one's getting their bottom seen to."

"Gwaine's taunting doesn't get to dictate my bottom's upkeep," Arthur replied. "And he was just about to check on the supplies, anyway." He punctuated the malformed command with a pointed look at said knight. "Weren't you."

Chuckling lazily under his breath, Gwaine peeled away and let his horse lope back in the general direction of Arthur's envoy where it backed up and milled about on the main road.

Wincing, Arthur led the way down to Geraint's modest hut as quickly as he could bear to go without jostling his coccyx. There were several people going about physical labor and chores nearby, including Geraint's son, who took off like a shot as soon as he saw his king. Hopefully, the boy only intended to retrieve his father, not flee from Arthur.

As Arthur swung down from his saddle and manfully resisted the impulse to double over as the impact jarred his frame, Geraint himself came hurrying down the street, a pack slung over his shoulder. He seemed slightly panicked and dropped the pack near his hovel in his haste to present himself and bow to the royals approaching him. Arthur knew that Geraint didn't get this flustered at him, so he figured that it was actually Merlin's presence giving him a minor stroke. For that matter, maybe Merlin was also the reason the boy had fled upon seeing them.

Arthur gave Merlin the side eye. "You were supposed to be nice to him."

From atop his horse, Merlin mirrored his look back at him. "I was nice."

"We must have differing opinions of nice, then, because he's clearly terrified of you."

"His terror is nothing of my doing," Merlin returned primly. He dropped lightly to the ground and quirked an eyebrow at Arthur's hitching gait.

Arthur stopped his literal pussy footing by sheer force of will, and changed the subject. "Just how much have you told him of what's going on?"

Merlin replied with a droll look. "Nothing. I haven't seen him all day."

"We both know that you don't need to see him to talk to him."

"We're not all the bloody same," Merlin muttered. "That's not one of his abilities; I couldn't use it on him if I wanted to."

"Really?"

"Yes; he's not a druid." Merlin snatched the reigns from Arthur's hand and looped them around a post along with his own horse's lead. "Anyway, I thought you trusted him."

"Yes," Arthur hedged. "But do you?"

Now only a few feet away, Geraint fumbled behind his back for the door handle and then held it open with as much gallantry as he could, considering its poor state. "My lords."

"By the way," Merlin said, completely ignoring Arthur's question as he leaned in to keep their conversation private from both passersby and Geraint. "I don't need your help making friends."

Arthur cleared his throat and pretended they weren't having this conversation. "Geraint! We're so sorry to impose."

"Not at all, sire," Geraint assured him. He had regained most of his usual composure, at least. And he probably heard part of the previous exchange too because Arthur's life worked like that. "Please, go in," Geraint invited. "I will wait outside while you tend to what ails you." He couldn't quite stop himself glancing down at what ailed Arthur, though his reddening ear tips implied that he had the wrong idea about why it ailed him.

Arthur glared at Merlin and stepped past him into the dim interior. "Thank you, Geraint. I took a nasty fall this morning; guess it's worse than I thought."

"Of course, sire." Geraint nodded. Humoring him, most likely.

Arthur sighed and decided he just didn't care what Geraint, or anyone else thought anymore about the state of his bottom and how it got that way. He looked around the little hut as if he expected it to have changed. If anything, the sight depressed him even more than the last time. The only change was the cold hearth, and the lack of wife and children. They were probably out laboring for their income, Arthur realized. Even the littlest ones.

Behind him, Merlin said, "Hello, Geraint." He was far too cheery.

Geraint began to reply, "Hello, Master Em – "

"Don't call me that."

" – Emmmerlin," Geraint transitioned. Before Merlin could say anything else, Geraint shut the door on him, leaving him alone in his hut with Arthur. A beat passed in silence, and then Arthur heard an unmistakable sigh of relief from the other side of the door.

It wasn't funny – none of this was funny. Arthur still snorted.

"Shut up," Merlin grumbled. "And turn around."

"And you say you don't need my help making friends." Arthur turned around and braced his palms on Geraint's table.

"I don't," Merlin said, voice low and clipped.

As if Merlin could have missed it, Arthur pointed out, "That was not friendly, Merlin; it was practically the opposite."

"It wasn't meant to be friendly," Merlin snapped. "Now hold still and be quiet. I need to concentrate. This one doesn't always work."

Arthur frowned but did as Merlin bade him for once; he was far more interested in figuring out why Merlin wouldn't even want to be friendly with Geraint. Unable to help himself, Arthur asked, "Is there some reason we shouldn't be friendly with him? He seems perfectly respectful to me, and loyal. Especially after he helped us with the druid attack."

Merlin growled low in his throat at the interruption and dropped his hands so that he could make consonant noises in the opposite direction from Arthur's arse. "I don't need more friends, Arthur; they just end up dead. I've all I can take keeping the ones I have left alive, so stop. Alright? Stop making people care about me so that I have to care back."

It took a moment for that to penetrate Arthur's preconceived suspicions, and then he straightened to face Merlin again. Or to face his back, anyway. "What rubbish are you talking now?"

Merlin pinched something in the vicinity of the bridge of his nose; Arthur couldn't see it clearly from behind. "We don't have time for this," he groaned, shaking his head. When he turned around again, Arthur swore he could see something suspiciously similar to hurt around the corners of Merlin's eyes, but it was too dim to be sure. "Put your hands back, please, sire." He indicated the table again.

Arthur smoothed his face out in consternation, but once again, he obeyed. He noted the title, though; he always noted the times when Merlin felt it appropriate to address him properly in private because it meant he was unhappy.

After sucking down a few audible breaths, Merlin stepped up behind Arthur, spread his palm over the small of Arthur's back, and seemed to brace himself somehow. "Þurhhæle dolgbenn."

Arthur could smell the magic on the air, and a warmth permeating his tailbone, but none of the pain lessened. "It still hurts the same."

Merlin sighed, reset his feet, and said again, "Þurhhæle dolgbenn." He put the emphasis on different syllables that time.

It occurred to Arthur like a smack to the side of his head that somehow, Merlin didn't actually know how to pronounce the words of this spell to make it work right. The glow of warm magic suffused Arthur's skin a second time, accompanied by the familiar stormy smell of Merlin's power, but again, it didn't do anything else. Delicately, Arthur cleared his throat. "Try dolgbenne."

Merlin went still as ice behind Arthur. "What?"

Now, Arthur wished he hadn't said a damn thing. "If that's the language I think it is, then it's dolgbenne, not dolgbenn. The, um…grammar has to match." He fidgeted rather too much at the grainy wood of the tabletop. "I told you, Sir Geoffrey has been helping me research magic and the true history of Camelot since Guinevere died. And you with your multilingual speech writing nonsense… I've picked some things up from doing translations." He thought better of it, of course, but he was Arthur Pendragon, so he couldn't stop himself adding, "I thought you would have known, considering you speak it fluently."

"It's less the language and more what you intend for the spell," Merlin replied without inflection. "I never thought about it. It's written that way in the book that Gaius gave me."

Quietly, Arthur suggested, "Maybe that's why it doesn't always work for you, then, if the words aren't the same as what you intend for the spell, and you know they're not."

Merlin shuffled slowly around behind Arthur, like molasses in a jar if Arthur ever needed to assign that a sound. His palm came to rest yet again on the small of Arthur's back, and this time, Merlin muttered, "Þurhhæle dolgbenne."

A tiny sear of pain arced through Arthur's tailbone, and he sort of garbled up a hiss with a grunt as he flinched. But when the lance of magic faded, so did the pervasive ache throbbing through his coccyx. Arthur straightened with a deep breath, and then let out an indulgent moan. "Oh, that's so much better."

He turned to find Merlin watching him as if he had actually failed, rather than delivered Arthur a profound relief. It screamed of embarrassment and shame, neither of which were normal expressions for Merlin to wear, even when he did mess something up; he was more prone to self-directed exasperation than whatever showed on his face now. Before Arthur could comment on it, or dismiss the error by pointing out that Merlin was only doing as his book taught him, Merlin tugged his clothing straight and unlatched the door. "We have to get moving, sire."

Arthur frowned, but they did need to go; they had already dallied more than they could afford over maps and plans, and transitioning certain things into Hunith's care. Merlin barreled out the door even though Geraint was standing right there on the other side of the jamb, startled by the force with which Merlin flung it open. They didn't collide, but it was a near thing. Following at a more reasonable pace, Arthur called, "Didn't you want to speak with – "

Already retreating toward his horse, Merlin called back, "No."

Arthur's mouth remained inverted as he glanced at Geraint and offered his thanks for the brief use of his home. He couldn't say what made it obvious, but Geraint definitely knew what just happened with the spell words, to say nothing of the state of Arthur's rear end. He seemed embarrassed for multiple reasons as his gaze flickered to Merlin and back, downcast. "You did say," Geraint offered uneasily, "that no one trained him. If that is the extent of his error from teaching himself, then it is truly still most impressive."

Arthur nodded, but said under his breath, "I don't think Merlin sees it that way."

Out of earshot, Merlin directed more concentration than necessary toward untying the horses' leads and climbing up onto his own.

"No, sire," Geraint agreed. "But he has been told all his life that he should already know certain things. The fact that he does not, when everyone else insists otherwise, likely feels like failure every time he proves their assumptions wrong, and disappoints."

"True," Arthur muttered. He hated the idea, but still. "I apologize, though. On his behalf." Arthur made a nonspecific gesture meant to indicate Merlin without pointing at him. "He isn't normally so rude."

"That seems to be a theme." Geraint grimaced and looked at the pack dangling from his fingers. "Sire, if I may, I request permission to come with you."

Arthur blinked, and finally tore his gaze from the tense hunch of Merlin's back as he made a completely unnecessary check of both their horses' tack. "No. I appreciate the offer, but you are not a soldier, and this is not the time for grand gestures."

"With respect, sire, I disagree." Troubled furrows sketched a series of wrinkled lines across Geraint's brow as he drew himself up to argue with his king. It was bold of him; Arthur respected that. "You are in this predicament because you broke treaty with Bayard, and you broke treaty with Bayard because of people like me. I cannot respect myself as a man if I do not stand with you to face the consequences of that. We have a responsibility back to you for what you did."

"Geraint…" Arthur turned to face him properly because such words deserved that attention. "You don't owe a debt for this. If there was one, then you paid it in servitude and fear already, during all the years you had to hide yourself from me."

"Then call it personal responsibility," Geraint said. "I owe it to myself to support the king who treats us fair."

Arthur sighed, but it wasn't a weary sound; there was respect in it, if not relenting. He sounded the way Merlin did once, years ago, when Arthur could still inspire him to something other than weariness or fear. Arthur looked away and shook his head. "I'm sorry; I can't risk it."

Before Geraint could devise another argument and try again, Merlin led Arthur's horse over. As he passed the reigns off, he remained engaged in some kind of pointed scrutiny of Geraint. With a guarded look back, Geraint sidled away from them both, dragging his pack toward the door of his hut.

Arthur made a face up at Merlin. "Stop eyeing the poor man to death. I know that you are at odds with each other for some reason, but I want you to get along. It's important to me, Merlin."

Merlin shifted in the saddle and scrunched his mouth up to one side as he peered in another direction from Arthur. "You should let him come," he replied, which was no reply at all.

With a groan, Arthur tugged his horse's saddle to be sure of its placement, and said, "No. It's too dangerous, and we can't afford time to coddle men along who have no experience of hard riding or battle."

"Then I can tell George to stay here?" Merlin quirked an eyebrow down at him.

"Absolutely not." Arthur glared back, which led to him squinting because Merlin had the sun behind him. "Stop being difficult; you don't even like Geraint." He clucked to his horse and started walking back to the gate on foot, leading his horse by the bit. "Why would you want me to bring him with us?"

Merlin wasn't facing him anymore by then since he hadn't moved to follow, but he threw an exasperated look over his shoulder from atop the very nice horse that Arthur had once gifted him. "You really are a turnip head sometimes." He swung his horse around and cantered up to Arthur, only to use the horse's bulk to block any further progress. "Who is most affected if you have to come to an accord with Bayard by going back to honoring the treaty?"

Huffing with sudden anger, Arthur snapped much more loudly than he intended, "I am not going back on my word to my people! And Bayard can stuff it if he thinks I'll be intimidated into such a thing. My decision is final."

"I know that," Merlin said. He smiled down at Arthur, one of those tight-lipped grins, and reeled his horse to face the other way again. Holding one hand out to the side, he added, "And now, so do they."

Arthur blinked at the street empty street, contemplated a chicken coop beside him for a moment, and then turned around. There were easily thirty mounted men and women arrayed on the road behind them, dressed in thick leathers like foot soldiers even if some of the gear looked old and shabby. "Merlin?"

Merlin hummed, looking pleased as a cat in cream.

"Are those my horses?"

"So what if they are?" Merlin asked. "You weren't using them." He sobered at that point and leaned down to murmur too softly to carry far, "Don't blame them; I told them they could. It's only borrowing."

In similar tone, Arthur tipped his mouth upwards and demanded to know, "What are they doing on my horses?"

For once, Merlin didn't dance around the answer. "Coming with us."

Arthur glared at the stirrup in front of his face, and Merlin's boot hooked into it. "And the women on my horses?"

"Coming with us, prat. Unless you want to go tell them they're too delicate to fight for their right to freely be what they are." Merlin leaned down and nudged Arthur's shoulder so that he could extend his index finger an inch away from Arthur's nose without anyone else seeing him point it. "That one, maybe? I'll wait while you tell her she's too delicate to come."

Arthur followed his finger to a…a scary woman. A very, very scary woman sitting on her borrowed horse bareback, and looking like something out of old roman barbarian lore. No way in hell was Arthur going to try to tell her that she couldn't hold her own in battle; she had an axe strapped to her back with a double-bladed head the size of Arthur's much more fragile, fleshy one. There was even a braid of hair dangling from it, and it wasn't the same color as the hair on her head. "I'd much rather not."

Merlin grunted and chirped, "Then I guess they're all coming with us after all."

For crying out loud… "They aren't soldiers. Merlin, this is – " Arthur cut himself off abruptly before he finished that the way he intended.

"Insane?" Merlin said for him. "Arthur, they need this. It doesn't seem like it to you, but this fight is because of them, and they know it."

"This fight is because of me," Arthur countered.

"Yes, like I just said – you don't understand at all."

"No, you don't. I am king," Arthur insisted. "The decisions that led here were mine. What will happen to them if this goes south? They'll be slaughtered."

"They have magic," Merlin argued. "They'll fare better than you think."

Arthur glanced over at the awkward mill of people hanging back to see if they would be welcomed or not. Geraint had joined them at some point, though he stood beside a horse rather than on it, and wore a guilty expression for his apparent subterfuge. Arthur turned back to Merlin and flicked a handful of reluctant fingers in their direction "All of them have magic?"

Merlin averted his eyes and pulled delicately at the reigns tangled about his palms. "You wanted me to be less suspicious of everyone. To reach out. Make things less awkward for you. I tried to do that. It's not perfect – we don't really like each other, or trust each other – but you asked me to try, and they asked me to make this happen for them." He sighed and kept picking at the frayed, worn parts of the reigns. "Arthur, they're frightened, alright? In a game of numbers, if you had to sacrifice some to save the majority in a treaty negotiation, they know that you would. It's your job as king to make hard decisions when you must, and they have always been expendable to you, in one sense or another."

"They're not – "

"I know," Merlin interrupted. "But you only say that; it hasn't been tested yet. They can't afford to just blindly trust you. They want to, I think, but it's not so easy. You have to show them if you want them to believe that you meant what you said. And you might have to show them more than once. It's not their fault their doubts linger."

"It's my fault, is what you're saying? Don't answer that." Arthur sighed and shut his eyes briefly. "You never go in by halves, do you. This is not the time for overtures."

"It is the perfect time. You can't shelter them just because you treated them poorly before; that's not freedom, and it won't make redress. This is their fight too, and they need the closure of finally standing with you. Not behind, and not against. They are not puppies, or the helpless poor. They are men and women of Camelot, and they already survived you."

Arthur flinched at the implication because it was true, and Merlin didn't sugar coat it.

"What is Bayard to them, after that?"

"Don't," Arthur warned. "Don't use guilt to make me give in."

"I'll use whatever it takes to make you see sense," Merlin replied. "If you truly intend to bring them equal to all others, then you need to let them fight the battles that belong to them."

"Is that how you feel?" Arthur asked. "Like I've made you less, or held you back? Made you survive me?"

"No," Merlin replied, "but I'm not one of them. I'm too like you to feel the same."

Arthur puffed out a helpless breath and looked again at the hopeful people waiting on his decision.

"You need magic on your side," Merlin reminded him. "Not just mine."

Arthur shook his head, prevaricated for a moment, and then admonished, "You shouldn't have done this behind my back."

To which Merlin simply replied, "You would have said no."

Arthur rolled his eyes. "When did you even find time?"

"While you were talking to Hunith." At the sharp and searching look that Arthur threw him, Merlin corrected, "My mother. While you talked to my mother. Don't look at me like that; I'm not confused. Just irritated with her."

Arthur wondered about the truth of that, but there was little point, and nothing to be done if it were an obfuscation. "Are they here by their own choice, or because they mistook whatever you said for some kind of order from their Emrys?"

Merlin opened his mouth, but merely to breathe in what looked like a calming gesture. The mood soured in the air between them. "I don't order magic folk to do anything."

"I didn't say you did," Arthur soothed. "But they have ideas about you. They could take things you say the wrong way."

"If they do, it's not my problem." Merlin moved on from fidgeting at the reigns to picking at the leather of his saddle, and then pulled back on the reigns to move his horse a few steps away from Arthur. "Refuse them, then, if the possibility bothers you so much."

There wasn't much question at that point that Arthur would accept them, in the end – not when they already had horses and armor, and stubborn looks on their faces. If he said no, they'd likely just ignore him and follow anyway at this point. Arthur just didn't like being blindsided and made to see his own misconceptions. "I'd only insult them if I did," he muttered. "But if they come, you're responsible for them."

"Whatever you say." Merlin grinned at him, all teeth and hard edges. "Think of it this way; the fact that they're willing to support you, no matter what you want to accuse me of having to do with it, means you've already won them over in the ways that matter. More will follow."

Arthur glared at him sidelong. "I'm not accusing you, Merlin; stop acting like we're at odds with each other over magic." Without giving Merlin a chance to retort, Arthur stepped forward and motioned Geraint back over, since he hadn't gone far.

Immediately, Geraint began apologizing. "We knew it was a risk to insist, and I shouldn't have asked before, but sire – "

"Peace, Geraint." Arthur squeezed his shoulder. "Merlin pled your case. I won't lie that I'm perfectly alright with this, but it's only worry for your safety. I can't guarantee that any of you will make it back of this goes ill."

Geraint nodded, but said, "None of us expect a guarantee, sire."

"Fair enough." Arthur nodded and moved to address the group of magic folk. "We need to ride hard and long. There will be few stops, and no rest until we reach the meeting place. If you don't think you can make it, then remain here with no shame. To the rest of you, we leave now. Your only supplies are what you carry yourselves; there is no extra. Make sure you have what you need before you decide to follow." He paused, and added more gently, "I want you all to know how much I appreciate your willingness to stand with me. It means a great deal, especially since there are still so many old wounds between us which have not yet healed."

A collective sound of relief worked through the assembled riders, and Arthur hid the face he was making as he prodded Geraint toward his waiting horse. With a last sour look at Merlin for his duplicity, Arthur climbed into his saddle. He had to concede, "It is encouraging."

Merlin tipped his head as if he knew that Arthur really meant something more like touching, but said nothing.

They left the citadel soon after and took off at a gallop, their numbers better now than Arthur had hoped. He had to admit that it did lessen some of his concern at the size of their party, but he wasn't about to tell Merlin that. It took him most of the day, though, and passage through a half dozen villages to realize that their numbers only kept growing as they went. By the time they paused at dusk to water the horses and stuff a quick bite of food into their mouths, there were twice as many riders with them, most of whom congregated around the magic folk from Camelot. Geraint seemed to have taken charge of them in some manner, and walked about making introductions.

Arthur stepped away from his horse to stretch his cramped legs and try to un-crick his back, then just hung his arms at his sides and stared for a bit. He should be surprised, or irritated, or at least humbled by the numbers of common folk – presumably common folk with magic – who swelled their ranks without being asked. And maybe Arthur would be one of those later; just then, however, he was tired and worried, and thankfully it left him feeling numb rather than sick with both physical and mental exhaustion. There was no way they would make it to the meeting place before midnight, but he had known that already, given their late start. Since they would surely have no sleep at all this night, Arthur resolved to allow everyone a longer respite here. An hour should suffice, and still leave them time enough to reach their destination before dawn.

After grimacing at the sky for awhile and lamenting his own inability to relax at all, Arthur took to wandering about the camp. He somewhat desperately needed to take a piss, but the darkness made him uneasy for no good reason, and he dawdled along the tree line for a while, just listening to the sounds of horses and men. It was the wards, he eventually divined. As in, he hadn't seen Merlin put any up. God, he was pathetic, wasn't he. Arthur grimaced at the sky, moonless and dusted with stars. Every since he noticed that Merlin marked magical boundaries around their campsites, he couldn't relax without them.

Arthur's dark-adapted eyes picked out groups of people here and there, and a row of tethered horses drowsing over feed bags at the side of the road. Nothing appeared amiss, and he couldn't expect Merlin to draw wards when they weren't staying long. Arthur let out a long, tense breath at the evidence that all was well, shook his head over his own paranoia, however well-deserved, and finally made his way over the leaf-littered ground to find a nice quiet tree.

He was midstream by the time he felt that prickling at the nape of his neck that meant he was being watched. Careful to appear oblivious, Arthur turned his head and then jumped half out of his skin at the pale face peering back at him from the rise of ground at the edge of their camp, not ten feet away.

"Mother of god!" Arthur jumped, tripped, and as luck would have it, ended up with his own pee dribbling onto his boots and the cuff of a pantleg. He stared down, groaned, and then hissed, "Dammit, Merlin!"

Said Merlin's face wrinkled up in telltale humor.

"Look what you made me do."

"Me? You're the one always going on about your aim with deadly weapons."

Arthur squinted in a valiant attempt to convey fury, but Merlin had never been all that intimidated by him, and it was kind of funny. A little. A very little. "Were you just going to sit there and watch me piss?"

"Wasn't my first choice, but here you are."

"Unbelievable!" Arthur pointedly turned away, wiggled a bit, stared up at the canopy of branches against the night sky, and then sighed when nothing more happened around his nethers.

"I was here first. Seems rude of you to just barge in and foul the place."

"Shut up."

"Why? Performance anxiety?"

Arthur twitched. "Stop watching me."

Merlin snorted. "It's not like I haven't seen it before."

"Merlin…" Arthur growled.

"In fact, I've actually held it for you before, so you didn't miss the chamber pot because you were too drunk to see it."

Arthur frowned. "I thought we agreed never to speak of that again."

"I only agreed the first time."

Arthur glared at him, scowled at himself, and then stuffed everything away with a few rather unkind movements. "What are you doing out here anyway? Scaring the servants that wander off?" He climbed up the few steps onto the ridgeline and slid down to sit leaning against the tree next to Merlin's.

Merlin finally stopped watching him as if he were an amusing child in the lower town, and shrugged one shoulder. "Needed a moment to myself."

"Please don't tell me you took someone's watch."

A snuff came from the vicinity of Merlin's downturned face. "Nah. I'm rubbish at that." He raised his head, visible in the darkness as a swatch of pale skin and a rippling bit of shadow. "I still have a funny feeling about this."

"Hm." Arthur cast a critical eye over the surrounding woods. "Persistent. Should I be worried?"

Merlin considered that for a moment and then shook his head. "Not yet. Could just be indigestion." He visibly tensed for a heartbeat and then admitted, "I have wards up. Nothing's crossed them since we stopped."

Arthur raised an eyebrow at him sidelong and then pulled out his boot knife. He absolutely refused to acknowledge his relief at knowing that Merlin's magic surrounded them after all. "Bandits, maybe?" He chose a chunk of semi-soft wood from ground near his feet, and began idly shaving off the jagged bits.

Merlin shrugged, his form small in the darkness. "It has been awfully quiet this winter."

Arthur's hands slowed, his thumb tracing a careful arc over the wet-soft wood. "I still can't believe you were just going to watch me handle myself."

Merlin gave a small start, leaned away to look at Arthur, and then said, overly dramatic, "Oh. Are we talking about your dick again?"

Arthur paused, thought about it, then punched him on the arm.

"Ow! Stop it. I'm not one of your bloody knights."

"I still have to pee."

"Why is that a reason to hit me?"

A twist of his wrist carved a neat furrow into the chunk of wood, and Arthur began chipping pieces out of the shallow with his knife tip. "Because you're a pain in my arse."

"I fixed the pain in your arse. Do you want me to give you another one?"

Arthur started to grin, because Merlin making dirty jokes was just too good. Except that Merlin apparently had no idea he'd basically replied fuck you, and that was even better. Arthur's peel of laughter startled Arthur himself more than Merlin, who just looked annoyed. "Are you offering?"

Merlin's face underwent a series of shifts before settling on wide-eyed.

"Oh relax, Merlin." Arthur rolled his eyes and went back to contemplating his smooth but misshapen hunk of whittling wood. "It's just a joke."

Merlin tapped a stick against his boot, intent on the sight of his own hand, and then clicked his tongue a few times. "Have you…that? Ever?"

"Actually put something in there? Surely not," Arthur laughed. When Merlin didn't, though, he looked over sharply and asked, "Have you?"

Merlin left off tapping at his boot, but only to scratch the end of the stick in his hair instead. The dark shadow of his beard obscured most of the expression on his face, but Arthur caught the disgusted wrinkle of his nose before Merlin could hide that too. "Once."

Curiosity got the better of Arthur's discretion, but only because he knew that Merlin's experience of carnal acts was not what Arthur would call willing, whatever Merlin himself claimed about his boyish interest and the supposed choices he made. "And?"

"And it was unpleasant." Merlin dropped his arm and took up jabbing holes in the dirt with his twig. "Mostly my own fault; I didn't know what I was doing. Thought it just worked the same as with a woman."

"Not remotely the same," Arthur remarked, turning back to his whittling so that he could throttle the handle of his knife.

"Yes, well, I know that now."

Arthur would have given a hundred gold coins to know who it was that handled Merlin poorly, but he retained at least some dignity. It would only make him look jealous to ask, and worse after he carefully removed that man's testicles, whoever he was.

"I don't want to try it again."

That made Arthur stop mangling the chunk of wood and look up, his face soft. "I'm not asking you to."

"Just…" Merlin kicked at something on the ground, too dark for Arthur to see what it was and then poked his stick at the dirt he'd displaced. "I said anything you want, but I didn't mean that."

"Alright," Arthur agreed. It settled something precarious in Arthur's mind about their interactions with each other to know that even if Merlin hadn't said so in the beginning, he did have some limits. Teasing them out of him could be a challenge, but knowing they existed helped. "I have no expectations of you."

The deliberate echo of words spoken on Samhain's eve didn't quite register with Merlin, but he smiled all the same, genuine if uncomfortable.

"All of that other stuff," Arthur continued quietly. "You know, in general – is it still something you might want?" He gentled his hands on his whittling and began shaving the bark from the other side of it. They hadn't approached anything like sex in months, since the disturbing night on the floor before the hearth fire. Arthur didn't even know if the physical aspects of their desires were a long term phenomenon, or just something that Merlin allowed a few times in the past when they were both hurting and had no idea what else to do to relieve it. It happened often enough that two people might find comfort in their shared skin for a bit and then just naturally move on from the need. Arthur loved him, and that part wasn't transient, but it didn't necessarily have to have heat to it if Merlin didn't actually want that part.

"You mean…?" Merlin made a nonspecific and yet lewd gesture. At Arthur's affirming shrug, Merlin turned his question around and asked, "Why? Do you?"

Yes. But if Arthur told him that, he didn't think that Merlin would necessarily give him his own honest answer anymore. It would be colored by what he thought Arthur wanted. "No preference," Arthur lied.

The tilt of Merlin's mouth turned wry. "Liar."

Arthur scoffed at him. "You are not actually irresistible. In fact, some might say you're not attractive at all. The ego on you, I swear."

"It's not ego," Merlin replied, smiling with his eyes. "Now that I know to look for it, I can tell when it crosses your mind." He cocked his head and gave Arthur a sly once-over. "Like now?"

Arthur abandoned his shapeless chunk of wood and turned his head sideways to look at Merlin. "All of this roundabout talk," Arthur complained. "If you want a piece of me, Merlin, be a man and say so."

Merlin averted his gaze and contemplated the trees instead. "Feels selfish to ask."

Immediately, Arthur sheathed his knife back into its sleeve in his boot. That was nothing but a dead giveaway. "Will it help you relax? You're strung tight as a longbow; don't think I haven't noticed."

Merlin's eyes wandered back to his and stayed there. "What, now?"

"It wouldn't be unusual, at a time like this," Arthur assured him. "You've been on enough patrols to see it before. It's normal for men like us."

"Men like you, maybe." Merlin scratched at his scalp again, perhaps merely as a pretense so that he could duck his head into his arm to hide his face. "I'm not a soldier or a knight."

Arthur sighed and frowned at the ground between his feet. "I really wish you would stop disparaging yourself like that. I know I'm partially to blame for the fact that you don't feel you can be one of us, but you are. You have been for a long time."

Merlin snorted. "So, what, then? This is a perk of rank, or something?"

"No!" Arthur groaned. "It's – dammit, you know what it is."

For a while, Merlin didn't say anything else, and Arthur was too irritated to butt into his thoughts.

Eventually, Arthur said, "Look, I know you don't like the way I feel about you – "

"It's nothing to do with liking it."

"Whatever, then," Arthur said. "This doesn't have to be about that every time. It can just be a release, or a way to manage tension. The equivalent of a long soak in a hot bath."

Merlin thought about that briefly, and then asked, "Like in the guard alcove?"

It took Arthur a moment to figure out what he meant, but as soon as Arthur linked it to calming a frantic Merlin before riding out on the holiday hunt, he nodded. "Exactly like that."

Merlin bit the corner of his lip and looked away. "I don't want to impose."

"Coy doesn't suit you," Arthur informed him, in case he didn't know. "We'll be here a while longer while the men and horses rest; it's plenty of time. Come here."

"But – "

"Do you want it or not?" Arthur opened his arms and tried not to look overly eager.

Merlin narrowed his eyes at him, but apparently, he did want it for once. "You're sure?"

Treating it like some kind of reluctant favor equal to rubbing sore shoulders could have put Arthur off, but Merlin didn't ask Arthur for much. In fact, he pretty much never asked Arthur for anything selfish; it was all favors to benefit someone else, or things relating to service or his official duties, or other people's expectations of him. "I'm sure," Arthur replied, utterly certain.

Still hesitant, Merlin explained, "It's just… I'm all a bit scattered and jumbled up, and it makes things quiet."

"You don't need to justify why you want it," Arthur admonished, though the reference to his troubled thoughts did give Arthur a moment of concern. He wanted to ask if Merlin were alright – if he still felt up to the task in front of them, or if he thought he might be slipping – but he knew that if he did, Merlin would just shut down again. "It's alright. Whichever way you choose."

Merlin sucked his cheek and looked down, but a moment later, he shook his head as if ridding himself misgivings. Turning his body toward Arthur, he said, "I'm not in the best frame of mind. Concentrating… It might not work."

"No expectations," Arthur reminded him. He gripped Merlin's elbow to steady him as he shifted over the uneven ground at Arthur's invitation. "Try not to think about anything."

"Easy for you to say." Merlin smiled a bit and flickered his eyes up to Arthur's before breaking contact again. He scooted forward on his knees and at Arthur's prompting, swung a leg over Arthur's lap.

"All bone," Arthur mused as Merlin settled his pointy self down on Arthur's thighs facing him, but he smiled to make sure that Merlin knew it for teasing.

With an awkward grin, Merlin asked, "How can you tell through all the chainmail?"

Arthur gave him a playful swat upside the head, and grinned back when Merlin laughed the way he used to whenever then-prince Arthur chased him around the castle in mock outrage. "I'll have you in chainmail tomorrow," Arthur threatened. Which he would; he'd made sure that George brought along a long mail shirt that would fit Merlin well enough to look like it belonged to him. One of Arthur's own, actually, that he could no longer wear comfortably. From before his belt had quite so many holes in it.

Arthur cupped the back of Merlin's head in both hands and dragged him down before Merlin could make some snide comment about wearing chainmail. He was all teeth, Merlin was, but Arthur expected that. Clumsy and inexperienced, and just generally lacking in finesse. Arthur rather liked it. Even if he did know that Merlin had indulged others' desires often enough for comment – including Sir bloody Roland, apparently – this part was new, and only Arthur could claim to have had it. The kisses and the fumbles, and the newness, and actual want. Something that didn't hinge on rank and entitlement of one party over the other.

A tiny grunt of discomfort worked its way from Merlin's throat and vibrated against Arthur's lips. "Wait – "

"Dammit. Sorry." Arthur pulled back and wrenched at his sword belt so that he could fling it off and stop jabbing the hilt into Merlin's more delicate areas.

Breathing slightly harder than normal, Merlin leaned back and tugged at the buttons of his surcoat while Arthur bothered about removing the many pointy weapons he was wearing. "Do you really want me on top like this?" Merlin asked.

"Like what?" Arthur returned. He kicked his right boot off entirely when he couldn't manage to get at the clasp holding his dagger in place. With that sorted, Arthur grabbed at Merlin's hands and pulled them from his half-undone buttons.

Merlin startled, and then froze with his eyes trained past Arthur's shoulder.

Arthur stopped breathing, ears pricked for the slightest sound, and then he raised his eyebrows at Merlin.

Gradually, Merlin slumped back down in Arthur's lap, and announced, "False alarm."

"You know," Arthur mused, sing-song. "It's a shame there isn't some sorcerer nearby who could, I don't know, magic us a bubble where we won't be disturbed or something."

Finally, Merlin dropped his eyes down to meet Arthur's. His body tensed and then released again, along with the shift of expression on his face from suspicious to blank. "Are you asking me to do magic so that we can have sex in private?"

"Unless you want the whole camp knowing what you sound like when I touch your prick?"

Merlin's face collapsed into a smear of exasperation. "Forswige."

Arthur watched the flash of amber encompass Merlin's irises, grow, and then fade out again. It could have been nothing more than a reflection of firelight flickering close in the darkness, had they been near any flames. Arthur let go of Merlin's hand and reached up to smudge the dust of a long day on horseback out from under his eye. "You hardly ever let me see that up close."

Merlin cocked his head and just watched Arthur look at him.

"Are we alone, now?"

"They can't hear us," Merlin confirmed. The severity of his features lessened as he stared back at Arthur. "They'll be able to see, though, if they wander out here."

"Best be quick, then. Before they come looking." Arthur smiled, soft and fond. It wasn't what they'd agreed upon – Arthur had told him it didn't have to be about Arthur's feeling for him – but he couldn't entirely help himself. "You do realize, don't you?"

It must have shown plain on Arthur's face, what he meant, because Merlin's expression softened like butter in the sun. "Yes," he replied, soft and sad. Sincere. "But we can't, Arthur. Even if you didn't need to produce an heir, it would never work; they'd never let us."

Arthur nodded and breathed deep. "No, they wouldn't." He traced Merlin's jaw with the pad of one finger, down along soft sideburns and into the thatch of wiry hair closer to his mouth. "I hate this damn beard," he finally admitted.

Merlin laughed, just a single short bark of sound. "I know, but it's grown on me."

"Like a thicket," Arthur quipped. "Just as tangled, too."

A flash of teeth showed briefly in the dark, and then Merlin closed his lips again. He shifted in Arthur's lap, an incidental rub of cloth against the leather of Arthur's trousers where Arthur's chainmail split and rode up. "It's not the same as a hot bath, is it?"

Arthur shook his head. "Come here."

Even though he seemed to have reservations about continuing on new, more dangerously personal terms, Merlin did as requested and bent his mouth back to Arthur's. It was slower this time, and sweet even if the taste could be better after such a long day without time to freshen up. Arthur pressed his tongue past Merlin's lips again and again in deliberate mimicry of other, less innocent acts. A hint of sound left Merlin's throat every few breaths, nasally and too short and quiet to be called moans. Arthur chased them along with his tongue and suckled to pull out more. Eventually, Merlin let his whole body engage in the rhythm of kissing, and Arthur smoothed his hands down Merlin's back, counting the ridges of ribs that moved with each breath before skimming his hands around Merlin's waist, into the unbuttoned front of his surcoat, and up the flat plains of his chest.

Merlin's breath quickened and he pressed forward into Arthur's hands, his fingers clenching at Arthur's shoulders through the hard links of chainmail and the thick padding of his gambeson. The rocking felt forced, though; Arthur may have had scant opportunity to learn Merlin's body like this, but he remembered the way that Merlin moved when he responded favorably to Arthur's touch.

Arthur broke the seal of their mouths and used his hands in Merlin's shirt to push him back a little. "What's the matter?"

"Nothing," Merlin grunted, trying to push himself forward again. He was breathing hard, but all wrong, and the shiver coursing through his limbs no longer resembled the tremble that Arthur recalled from other encounters. "Just ignore it. You know I get weird with it sometimes."

Doubtfully, Arthur replied, "You'll tell me if that changes." He had to trust that Merlin would stop him if it really wasn't alright. Not that Merlin had a great track record at certain kinds of things, but he was a grown man, and Arthur couldn't just tell him what to think about his own wants and reactions. Arthur unlocked his elbows and let Merlin fold close again, but Arthur directed him toward the crook his neck instead this time. It seemed less risky, for some reason. "Kiss there like you were just kissing my mouth."

Merlin made an assenting sound and latched onto the skin behind Arthur's ear without giving him any warning that he even knew about the sensitivity there. Arthur's hands fumbled to a standstill, one on the back of Merlin's neck and the other stretching just far enough down to be considered a handful of skinny arse. He clenched his fingers in rhythm with Merlin's suckling and let his eyes drift closed. Just for a moment – just to savor it. Too wet and disgustingly sloppy, but good all the same.

Without sitting up, Merlin shoved his hands between their chests and went back to work on the ties and buttons on his clothes. There was no use trying to get into Arthur's mail; it would take too long, and raise too many questions when Merlin had to put him back into it later. All Arthur needed to do with unlace his breeches and pull his prick out at some point, but for now, he finally wrested his concentration back from where Merlin had sucked it out through his neck, and lent his hands to the task of finding more of Merlin's skin.

Merlin smeared his mouth over Arthur's jaw and then found his lips again, but he didn't engage there. Close as he was, Arthur could still taste him on the humid air huffing from Merlin's open mouth. Arthur pressed their foreheads together to keep them aligned with each other and looked down at the partially open front of Merlin's trousers. At Merlin's wordless urging, Arthur reached down, the angle awkward, and stuffed his hand in. Merlin grunted, teeth bared and clenched, and hooked his fingers in the collar of Arthur's pauldron. He wriggled in irritation and grabbed Arthur's wrist with his free hand as if he meant to forcibly stuff it further into his braes. Nothing on Merlin's face hinted that he found this pleasant anymore, only frustrating. And of course, when Arthur's questing fingers finally found what they were looking for, the soft evidence spoke for itself.

The heat faded from Arthur's blood. "Stop," he ordered, voice hushed with the intimacy of the moment, even gone wrong as it had. "You're not enjoying this at all."

"But I want to," Merlin insisted. He grit his teeth and shoved Arthur's hands off his chest so that Arthur couldn't hold him back anymore. "If you would just do it, it would work."

Arthur twisted his shoulder so that Merlin's chest hit it when he tried to plaster himself up against Arthur again. "No," Arthur said. "Merlin, stop it."

Merlin's face twisted up in something like anguish and he garbled a refusal. He tried harder to somehow make Arthur let him closer, and when that didn't work, he snarled abruptly and thumped his fist against Arthur's chest. Even padded and covered in mail as he was, it still hurt. "Stop being an arse!"

That was it; Arthur grabbed him by the wrists, twisted, and used his hip to topple Merlin off to one side. He didn't let go after that. Arthur followed him over, scrambled briefly while Merlin made a pitchy, furious series of noises, and then slammed Merlin's arms into the dead leaves on either side of his head. Arthur straddled him and held him down when he kicked, twisting and angry between Arthur's legs. "Merlin!"

Merlin struggled against Arthur's hold, and then spat, "You said I could have it!"

Disturbed, Arthur leaned his weight harder over Merlin to try to quell his thrashing. "What the hell has gotten into you?"

When he couldn't get Arthur off, or free his hands, Merlin finally let out a frustrated growl and went limp, panting from his fruitless exertions. If the sound of breaths turned just slightly damp, Arthur kindly ignored it. He let go of Merlin's wrists and braced himself for some kind of renewed attack, but all Merlin did with his freedom was cross his forearms over his face and then stay there.

Arthur pursed his lips and sat back on Merlin's stomach, poor cushion that it was. "If you're trying to goad me into being more forceful with you – "

Into his arms, Merlin exhorted, "I'm not."

"Then what, Merlin?" Arthur spread his arms wide even though the effect was lost on a man who wouldn't look at him. "I know you don't go off the same way that I do, but even considering that, it's clear that you weren't enjoying it."

"How would you know?! It's always like that in the beginning!"

Droll, Arthur replied, "Your face, idiot. The look on your face is how I knew."

Merlin uncrossed his arms and slapped them down into the grass, flung wide like a starfish. "God, what does it matter? We agreed to do it."

Arthur blinked, thought about that, and then blinked a few more times for good measure. "That's…not how these things work."

"Why not? That's how other agreements work."

"Right, so you're a moron." Arthur climbed off of him and plopped down to sit on the ground within the angle formed by his arm and his body. "I shouldn't be surprised; you often are." He never should have trusted Merlin to stop him, if it got to be too much. Or to even know if it were too much in the first place. Arthur knew better; he'd seen it before.

Merlin rolled his head along the ground to look at him, blew an angry breath through his bared teeth, and then sat up. After tangling hasty knots into the laces of his trousers, he yanked at his surcoat and apparently tried to fling his buttons back into their holes. It didn't work. With a sigh, Arthur reached over to do it for him. The wonder was that Merlin just dropped his own hands, stared blankly straight ahead, and let him.

Once he got all of the buttons back where they belonged, Arthur peered up from beneath the trailing edge of his hair and murmured, "I'm sorry." Though he wasn't sure what he had to apologize for. Not exactly. For letting Merlin go on when Arthur had reservations? For trusting him to know his own mind? Either option depressed him.

Merlin lowered his gaze, let out a forcibly even breath, and grit out, "I don't understand why it's different."

Arthur pressed his lips into a thin line and looked away. He was starting to think that maybe what he said to Merlin the first time this ever came up, cruel and drunken as it was, had more truth to it than Arthur realized. Whores made sex like contracts or binding agreements, and Merlin didn't seem to see that the way he approached the act resembled that. Choosing his words carefully, Arthur said, "You and I need to have a frank discussion about this, but now is not the time."

"Fine," Merlin bit out. He catapulted himself to his feet and took no care as to where he flung the leaves he swiped from his clothes.

Arthur wiped shredded bits of leaves from his face and ruffled more from his hair before sighing, "Merlin – "

Without pausing, Merlin snapped, "Maybe you should just finish your piss and fuck off."

Arthur smeared a hand wearily down the side of his face and set about recovering his discarded weaponry, and his boot. Their respite was up, and as much as Arthur wanted to set right whatever just happened, he didn't have the leisure to see it through just then. He buckled his sword belt back on as he made his way toward the horses, and spotted Merlin digging through his medicine pack while George tried to assure him that all was in order, and he didn't need to check it again. Merlin glanced up as Arthur passed, his face suffused with a deliberate nothing, and then went back to ignoring him.

Under his breath, Arthur swore, "Dammit." He still had to pee, too, but it would have to wait.

They resumed their nighttime journey not long after, pressing in to the darkness of a moonless night, their paths lit by Merlin's piercing white faery lights pin-pricking out of the bare air above them like stars. It was a cold light, unnatural and harsh.

---

With All My Heart, Post-Ep (AU)

Merlin stared blankly out into the windswept nothing past the edge of the cauldron path, highlighted faintly by the light of a cold, grey dawn. His outline shivered like a ghost, but he was quiet now, at least. The horror when he finally stirred in Arthur's arms and didn't remember what happened… It could only be matched by the stabbing sensation in Arthur's chest as he realized he would have to explain it all to him. In words, out loud. Things that Arthur could still only barely think, let alone say. In the end, with his throat stuck tight as a clam behind his tongue, and his chest burning at the memories he would have to relate at some point, Arthur merely pointed and let Merlin read the events of the previous day in the sack cloth bound with rope about the corpse of Arthur's wife.

Arthur cringed from that thought and looked down at his fingers where they had picked his knuckles bloody without him realizing. "What do I do now?"

"I don't know," Merlin croaked, his abused voice hoarse. He had howled long and hard over Guinevere's body while all Arthur could manage was to watch with dry, burning eyes as Merlin spent his fresh grief in the dust for a second time.

Exhausted, Arthur turned to look at Merlin's back, his shoulders thin, jagged wings of bone beneath his threadbare servant's clothes. Everything looked washed out and grey up here. The sky roiling and overcast, the path pebbled with charcoal, the sheer cliff faces slate, Merlin's complexion pale and wrung. The sheet shrouding Arthur's wife. The feeling in Arthur's chest, like a blackened bubble of blood waiting to burst and kill him.

"You're too close to the edge," Arthur called. His voice fell as flat as the discolored landscape scrubbed bare around them. "You already slipped off the path once; you might not be so lucky a second time."

The red knot of Merlin's neckerchief rested bright and obscene at the base of his skull – the only spot of color in a grey landscape. The toes of his boots hung over the edge of the path, out into the open where the howling winds scoured at the dirt right out from beneath Merlin's feet. Arthur imagined him slipping away, out into nothing, tumbling like a torn cloth in the gusting wind.

"Merlin! Step back." Arthur heard the reedy thread pulling his voice tight. "You're going to fall."

"How did this happen?" Merlin demanded of the open air swirling above the sharp, long drop to jagged stones below. He still didn't turn, and Arthur felt fractured at how he couldn't glimpse Merlin's face. All he could see was Merlin's back, and that damn red knot around his neck.

The wind whipped Arthur's hair atop his head as it swirled and raced through this place filled with the ghosts of hope and heartbreak. He couldn't answer that, and Merlin wouldn't ask what he really wanted to know: Why didn't Merlin save her? How did his magic fail? Merlin stood there at the edge of a cliff with his secrets intact, unaware that he had already betrayed himself and used magic in front of Arthur, this time while wearing his own face. And Arthur was a coward, so all he said was, "Morgana found us."

It looked like Merlin drew an angry breath to spout off at that, but then he stilled before merely shaking his head. "And then what?"

Arthur inched closer to him, well outside of Merlin's range of vision. "And then you know what." He couldn't bring himself to point at Guinevere's body as the evidence of what happened. "Step back."

Merlin smeared his shoulders through an odd shrug, something that spoke of stiffness or discomfort. A moment later, he began scratching at his arms, both of them at the same time.

"Stop," Arthur breathed, taking another step. "You'll make them bleed again."

"I don't even know what they are," Merlin complained. He clasped his hands to stop himself tearing into his own skin, and re-opening the welts and the cuts like fine thread painting his arms. Fine red thread. Like the cloak that Arthur wore. Pendragon-colored as the wound that must be bleeding unseen in his heart, or in his gut where Guinevere's death stabbed and hurt the most.

Hesitant, Arthur asked, "You really don't remember anything from yesterday? Anything at all?"

"Dammit, Arthur." Merlin clearly didn't mean for Arthur to hear him swearing under his breath, and he scrubbed his hand over his mouth to further cover the hitch in his voice when he did it. Louder, Merlin replied, "No. It's all gone. Why don't I remember any of it?"

"You were concussed, remember? From falling off the bloody path, like you're going to do again if you don't come back here now."

"No." Merlin shook his head, ignoring Arthur's pleas to step on to safer ground. "Something else happened – something's wrong. What aren't you telling me?"

That you used magic in front of me. That you're a sorcerer, and I know. That I watched you nearly die to save her and couldn't bear to let you go through with it. That you thought I hated you and cursed you when you couldn't hide it from me anymore, and I didn't get a chance to set that right. That she smiled. She smiled at us. As we pulled away from her, she smiled. That you did save her – some part of her. You let her have that, and she smiled to die alone, without dragging you down too. She smiled, at the last –

Arthur wrenched himself from his memories and blurted the first semi-innocuous thing that came to mind. "It was Morgana's magic. Whatever was in Guinevere attacked you. That's where the welts came from. Now will you please step back?"

Merlin dropped his eyes from the faraway horizon to the place at his feet where the toes of his boots flirted with the chasm below. After a moment's contemplation, he lifted his arms in front of his face, fingers frog-splayed in the air, and frowned at his wounded skin. "But then how did you get it out of me?"

"That stupid light in the water," Arthur snapped. "Merlin, get back here now!"

Merlin kept staring at his forearms, and then he gradually lowered them to dangle at his sides. He directed a perturbed gaze out into the open air, his hair stirring in the wind. Finally, he acknowledged Arthur, but only to turn his face to one side so that Arthur could just barely see the jut of his nose in profile. "Did you drag me into the water?"

A gust of wind sucked the air from Arthur's lungs, and buffeted Merlin hard enough that he wobbled where he stood. Arthur had to fight to draw breath enough in the maelstrom to respond, "It's doesn't matter; it's over. Now step away before you fall."

"It matters. Answer me, please. Did you drag me into the water?"

Arthur reached out to grab the jut of Merlin's shoulder, a hard knob of bone beneath his hand, sharp and cold. He pulled, and Merlin stumbled back onto solid ground, arms wheeling as Arthur upset his balance. "What the hell are you playing at?" Arthur demanded. His words came out chopped up and throttled, but he was too busy spitting frantic in Merlin's face. "Stay away from the edge! Do you hear me? Stay away from it! I won't have you fall again! I won't! I won't!"

Shock painted Merlin's face pale as fireplace ash. He allowed Arthur to yell at him, and shake him, and dig fingers too hard into the sockets of his shoulders.

Arthur just kept shouting for a while. It fractured in his mind so that he knew he was doing it, but not why, or what he was saying. And then it was quiet aside from the wind, and they were both sitting on the path, propped up on each other's shoulders, watching the clouds roil above them. They needed to leave; this place would suck them both in and destroy them if they didn't. They needed to bring Guinevere back to Camelot, and Merlin needed medical attention. Arthur couldn't carry the both of them if Merlin had another fit. Arthur looked down at the grey pebbles scattered along the ground. He could feel Merlin breathing, the steady swell of his body rocking with each drought of air, like a small boat floating on still waters, peaceful and serene.

They made their slow way back to Camelot over the course of the next several days. Too many people saw them on the road passing dazed and silent through village squares with the body of the queen draped over the saddle of Arthur's horse, and Arthur himself walking penance before it. By the time they reached the farm villages closest to the citadel, word had spread. People lined the roads to see them pass, somber, and flags of black cloth marked the paths ahead of them. An honor guard of knights and lords met Arthur on the road a mile out from the castle walls, and Arthur ignored them entirely as he paced through their midst, numbly leading his dead queen home for the last time.

Merlin didn't ask again about the water, and Arthur didn't have the mental acumen to recall the question at all, after. With only minor hiccups, they went on as they had always done, keeping close all of the fragile secrets that neither of them could bear to face.

---

Arthur let his hands dangle between his knees, still holding the unopened flask that Gwaine had kindly handed him on his way past to take up a watch post. The sky spanned clear and star-speckled above him, the space between lights black as basalt. They had reached the old roman fort ruins just past midnight and set up camp along the outside of its walls. Arthur thought it a better strategy to use the ruins as a barricade instead of occupying it as a camp. It was in a shambles, and nothing within could offer any sort of luxury or protection from siege. Only this one south-facing wall remained passably sturdy. The high stone fortifications should shield them from easy view of Bayard's camp just a mile over the ridge on the plains.

All around him, silence reigned. The horses were all hobbled and their tack muffled. They had no tents, and Arthur permitted no lit fires. He didn't want to take any chances. Most of the men were supposed to be asleep, but Arthur doubted they were, and the servants definitely remained awake, pottering about and keeping an eye on things. It could be worse. If they had been careful enough on approach, Bayard shouldn't realize they'd arrived. It was a very small and perhaps pointless advantage under the circumstances. Arthur wanted it anyway.

Dawn wasn't far off. Arthur was staring right at the place where the sun would crest, and had been for a long time already. He sighed and looked down again, at the dark head of mussed, scraggly hair cushioned on his hands right up against Arthur's boot. "Dog's body," Arthur muttered, because only the occasional special dog displayed the same kind of devotion as Merlin, to sleep at Arthur's literal feet like this just to be near. Arthur reached down and absently moved a few wild tufts of hair off of Merlin's cheek so that he could see Merlin's scruffy face better. They hadn't spoken for the rest of the journey, other than by necessity, but the mutual silence still wasn't enough to keep Merlin away from him.

"I hope you're right," Arthur whispered aloud, though he only meant the words for himself. "I hope that we build a new accord today without bloodshed."

Arthur looked up again at the sky and idly wondered what his life might be like now, had Guinevere lived. Would he have a child? Would Merlin have grown even colder and more bitter until Arthur didn't recognize him anymore? Would Arthur still have undone his father's legacy so entirely? These were questions that would never have an answer, and they filled Arthur with guilt for imagining at least some of the answers.

With a sigh, Arthur muttered, "God, I hope this hasn't been a foolish want of mine. To unite Albion." His gaze dropped again as Merlin shifted to curl more tightly on the ground. "It could be ego, since I intend to rule the whole thing myself. But then we both seem to have a lot of that to go around." Arthur reached down and curled a fingernail into the groove behind Merlin's ear.

Before that touch could graduate into something less proper, Arthur lifted his hand away again. They weren't alone there, leaning against Arthur's chosen patch of cold stone. And they were not unobserved either. However much Arthur suspected that discretion hadn't stopped the rumors of his particular persuasion toward Merlin, it wouldn't do to just behave as he wanted in front of witnesses. An appearance of propriety was far more important than the strict actuality of it, in his position.

Arthur breathed deep and tipped his head back to rest against the pitted crags of the wall. He was exhausted, and he was anxious, and his muscles buzzed too violently with fatigue to allow him a proper rest, like bees under his skin. He closed his eyes anyway because his lids were heavy as lead ingots.

An animal screeched somewhere out in the forest and Arthur jerked awake. The sky threatened to disgorge a premature dawn in front of him, and Arthur unpasted his tongue from the roof of his mouth. His teeth felt fuzzy and tasted foul. Exhausted sleep always made that worse. Down at his feet, Merlin seemed to be dreaming. His cheek ticked repeatedly and none of his respirations held a rhythm. Arthur watched Merlin's ribcage expand in that exaggerated fashion of nightmares, debating the merits of waking him.

Before Arthur could decide, Merlin's entire body jerked and he scrambled himself awake, clawing up the dirt in the process as he shoved himself back and away from something, up onto his knees –

Arthur caught Merlin's elbows before he lurched off the rocks they were sat upon and injured himself. "Merlin. Merlin, look at me. Look."

A hum of distress appeared to startle Merlin before he realized that the sound came from his own mouth. He puffed out a sharp breath and twisted to grip Arthur's arms back. "Arthur."

Arthur nodded and let him brace himself back into the waking world via Arthur's supporting hands. A gentle breeze wafted the scent of a coming storm past them, and Arthur glanced up to see if he could tell when the rain would come. It must have been far off indeed; he couldn't see a single cloud.

"It was those things again," Merlin whispered, winded, drawing Arthur's scattered attention back down. Merlin's heart was probably beating fit to burst. He twisted between Arthur's hands and scrabbled at his sleeves briefly. "Crawling up my arms."

"There's nothing on your arms," Arthur told him, tone cool and reasonable. "It's long past, Merlin. Don't hurt yourself scratching at what's not there."

That was still the only thing that Merlin seemed to remember clearly from the day that Guinevere died, and Arthur swallowed at the reminder. There were other things, of course – bits and bobs that Merlin mentioned offhand on occasion without seeming to realize, or that he remembered as words rather than pictures – but nothing so vivid, according to Merlin, as those screeching mandrake things.

"Do you dream that often?" Arthur asked. It would explain, better than nettle, why he had gouged his skin raw only a few days earlier, and why he seemed to absently scrub at his forearms when irritated. If that memory, that dream, plagued him, then he could act it out without meaning to when stressed or reminded of it.

Merlin shook his head. "No. Only a few times of late. It used to be more though. Right after." He didn't need to specify, right after what.

Arthur gentled his grip and Merlin slipped from his fingers to plop back on the ground next to him. "Alright, now?"

Merlin pressed at his sternum briefly, using it as a ground for his breathing, and then relaxed back to lean against the flat stone that Arthur was sitting on. "Yeah," Merlin mumbled. He still seemed discomfited, but nightmares could do that. "Stupid time for it."

"Stress," Arthur shrugged. "As Leon puts it, we are all fraught at the moment."

Merlin snorted. "Did you see his face as we were leaving?"

Yes, Arthur had indeed looked back to lift a hand in parting as they rode out. Leon's glowering managed to come off even darker than Hunith's. "If anything, he and your mother are united in their disapproval."

Merlin muffled a few completely unmanly giggles and then sighed as if setting down a weight. And thank the gods, he did; Arthur couldn't stand the feigned indifference when Merlin was at odds with him. "At least you know that if anything happens, their collective wrath will cow anyone who tries to approach the citadel."

With a wry breath, Arthur admitted, "Your mother is scarier than I gave her credit for."

"I did warn you," Merlin replied offhand. He fiddled with his clothes, growing remote. "I'm sorry about earlier. I shouldn't have started that."

Arthur sighed and picked at his knuckles. "No, I was too insistent. I'm the one who should be careful with those overtures; I outrank you." Barely, perhaps, but to Merlin, sometimes, that gap still yawned as large as the day they met.

With a dismissive shrug, Merlin replied, "Probably best not to muddy things between us, anyway. It'll just get awkward when you have to – "

"Do not remind me that I'm expected to get a son on some poor woman I'll never love," Arthur warned. "That duty is not relevant to this."

Merlin raised a dubious eyebrow, but all he said was, "Dawn is about to break."

"Yes." Arthur watched it coming for a moment, and then leaned over to recover Gwaine's flask from where it must have slipped from Arthur's nerveless grasp as he dozed. "Gwaine's serious about cutting back on the drink," he remarked, shaking it. "Still full."

Merlin eyed the flask, his features sharpened by the low light not quite come. "Of actual drink?"

Arthur pulled out the stopped and took a swig to check. He coughed afterwards because Gwaine carried around pig swill, apparently. "Yeah, that's…" He pulled a face at the burn and grunted, "That's definitely drink." Then he held it out to Merlin. "I know you shouldn't, but it's just one pull, and I think in this instance, it's justified."

"Judging by the face you just made," Merlin responded, "I don't think I want to."

"Probably wise," Arthur acknowledged. "No, then?" He twiddled the flask.

"Hard pass," Merlin told him, leaning away as if the flask might bite him.

Arthur withdrew and held the flask in his lap. An arc of shamed flashed through him; they were both right the day before – Hubert and Gwaine. Merlin wasn't a drunk at all. An actual drunk would never turn down a flask so casually, or with such obvious ease. Arthur really was an idiot; he had known that, and yet dismissed it for the expedient explanation. He didn't have time to explore the many aspects of that, however. Merlin fidgeted on the ground, jostling Arthur's leg where he leaned against it. Arthur touched a finger to his shoulder in the hopes of quelling all the irritating movement. "What are you doing?"

"S-sorry." Merlin finally found a pocket, apparently, and fumbled something out of it with fingers gone suddenly clumsy.

When he noticed what Merlin was doing, Arthur dropped the flask to help. "Give it here." He took the tiny glass vial without waiting for Merlin to register his words, and slipped down to his knees beside him on the ground.

Merlin made a sound like a snake, which was probably meant as another apology of some kind. He couldn't finish forming the word, though.

"Open," Arthur ordered. He grabbed Merlin by the chin as he pulled the tiny cork from the vial with his teeth and spit it out to be lost in the dark. "Open. Open, Merlin. Come on."

They both fumbled briefly, but Merlin wasn't fighting him, just falling into the vague space before one of those damnable fits. Arthur managed to get the contents of the vial into his mouth, but he had to press his thumb to Merlin's adam's apple to stop him swallowing it. Long seconds passed as Merlin blinked and kept trying to swallow instinctively, his eyes focused on nothing above Arthur's head, breathing too deep like drinking the air. The shivering alarmed Arthur, but as juddering as it was, Merlin didn't seem to be losing himself altogether. Fingers tapped against Arthur's chest, nails skipping over links of chainmail until some of the tension left Merlin's body. Arthur only noticed the arc of Merlin's spine when he unwound and gradually sagged back against the rock.

Arthur looked him over carefully, and then gentled his hand so that Merlin could finally swallow and hang his head down toward the ground again. "In your own time," Arthur murmured.

Merlin shook his head like a dog with an ear ache, lifted a finger as if he meant to make a point, and then cocked his head hard to one side with a wince. It didn't look like real pain, but after glancing around to assure at least the illusion of privacy, Arthur pulled until he could tuck Merlin against his chest. Merlin went easily and sighed as soon as his forehead touched Arthur's shoulder. All of his odd fidgeting stopped, though he kept his hands clenched into the front of his tunic, presumably so that they were out of Arthur's way, however he came by the notion that they needed to be.

With a long exhale, Arthur hooked his chin over top of Merlin's head. His body automatically took up a gentle rocking, side to side. It soothed Arthur just as much as he hoped it did Merlin. And it felt good to touch him; they had left it so poorly earlier that night. At least there were no fated utterings of prophecy in the wake of this near miss, nor the masquerade of such.

From the general vicinity of Arthur's heart, Merlin croaked, "Sorry," again.

"No need," Arthur replied. "Disaster averted."

Merlin nodded, forehead digging hard into Arthur's shoulder.

Only because Merlin often seemed less guarded at moments like this, and Arthur felt no qualms about taking advantage of his vulnerability, Arthur asked, "Do you still feel dread about today?"

"Everything is falling apart," Merlin whispered, and then louder, "I don't know how much longer I can do this."

Arthur squeezed before he realized what he was doing, and violently blinked back the moisture that threatened to streak his vision. "I want to say something pithy to make you laugh, but I can't think of anything."

"No, I'm being glum." Merlin pushed away from Arthur's chest, but only as far as arm's length, since Arthur merely relocated his grip to Merlin's elbows. "I'm a bit fuzzy."

"I know." Arthur allowed himself to smile, even it did wobble.

Merlin's lips curled in response, but there was an absence in it – simply mimicry. He tried to cover it up by adjusting his hopelessly wrinkled clothing, got distracted, and then just slumped where he sat. Blankness stole over his features as he peered at the stone wall behind Arthur.

"Hey." Arthur tapped his cheek and watch Merlin's eyes flicker into focus as they searched for Arthur right in front of him. "On me."

Merlin blinked at him, and the momentary lack of recognition chilled Arthur's heart. A bare instant later, Merlin sharpened, and his gaze flickered out to scribe an uneven path around Arthur's face, just beyond his actual skin.

Arthur braced his hands behind himself and shoved himself up until he was sitting again on his stone like a cold bench in the very dim light. Merlin's eyes rose to follow him, but at a different pace than the rise of Arthur's body. He ended up staring at Arthur's knee, unblinking again, and Arthur had to ask, "What do you see when you look at me like that?"

A private smile washed across Merlin's face like the surf and was gone like the depression left in the sand after the receding water scooped it out to sea. "The same thing I saw on the first morning you were king. You were limned in light."

Contrary to Merlin's fond reaction, Arthur's face pinched of its own accord. He could only refer to the morning after Arthur sat vigil with his father's body, when he emerged from the wake as king, even if the crowning didn't happen until later. "Come on; sit with me and we can forget all about what happened earlier." He patted the rock step as a reminder. "Just be Arthur and Merlin, yeah?"

Merlin grunted an acknowledgement as he brought himself laboriously back to the present, then scooted around on the ground until he could lean against Arthur's leg again. It was awkward at first, and then Merlin sighed and smooshed his cheek on Arthur's knee, eyes trained on the faint glow at the horizon. His demeanor went fuzzy again almost right away as he grew heavier where he sat. "Arthur?"

"Hush; just wait for the fog to pass. I'm preparing myself to face Bayard anyway. Quiet is good right now."

"I know, but I need you to promise me something."

Arthur sighed and rolled his eyes toward the darker part of the sky where the threat of dawn had not yet touched it. "I won't do anything stupid, Merlin. As much as you seem to think otherwise, I do not actually take that many risks."

"Says the man who just rode into a trap on purpose."

"Yes, well, you're here too, aren't you?"

"Only because you are."

Arthur scrunched his face at the shadowy trees and then relented. "Fine. What do you want?"

"If…" Merlin trailed off and made sounds like he wasn't sure how to say what he wanted.

Impatient, Arthur snapped, "Just spit it out."

"I'm trying!" Merlin replied in kind. "God, you are such a numpty."

Arthur sucked the inside of his lip and scowled off to the side. "You know you can ask me for anything. I've said that."

"Yes," Merlin bit back. "I know." He squirmed around at Arthur's feet and then glared out at the coming dawn. His jaw twitched as he clenched it, and Arthur watched the shift of muscle along the bone. With an odd sort of resolution, Merlin intoned lowly. "If I ever – ever try to hurt you – "

Immediately, Arthur interrupted, "I'm not listening to this."

"For once in your life, will you just hear me?" Merlin pleaded. There was a sheer edge to it though, where otherwise he may simply have sounded short. Instead, his desperation came through. "If I ever turn on you – "

"Don't be any more stupid than you usually are."

Merlin plowed through the interruption that time. "If I ever try to hurt you, or do something to you – whether you think I know what I'm doing or not – "

With a muted sort of frantic feeling, Arthur started to get up from the rock.

"Don't you dare walk away from me!" Merlin twisted to grab him by his belt and upset Arthur's balance enough that he plopped right back down to sit. "You promise me, Arthur. Protect yourself. You have to protect yourself, if I can't do it for you."

Arthur grabbed at Merlin's wrist, but couldn't quite pry him off. In a low growl that hopefully did not carry to any of his unsleeping men, Arthur ordered, "Unhand me."

"I am begging you, Arthur." Merlin scrabbled to reclaim his hold on Arthur's person and ended up grabbing the hilt of Arthur's sword. A sword forged in magic that Merlin had once named as an object capable of killing him proper.

The panic came swift and fierce; Arthur clamped down on Merlin's hand and held the sword in place, point digging into the rock wall at Arthur's back. "Get your hand off that."

"Not until you promise." Merlin seemed strangely calm as he maintained his grip, though his eyes remained intense. "If I ever do anything against you – if I ever even try – I need you to promise you'll stop me."

"You would never hurt me, Merlin." Arthur seized at Merlin's wrist with his other hand too, and struggled to pry his fingers loose from the hilt of his sword. "I know you won't."

"You don't know anything of the sort," Merlin replied steadily. "I nearly have, at least once before."

"Only once, and it was an accident!"

"Only once that either of us know of." Merlin rode out Arthur's aimless struggling with the casual indifference of a fisherman riding the waves at sea. "I need to know that you won't let me hurt you. I need that surety, Arthur. I couldn't live with myself otherwise."

Arthur couldn't get his hands off his sword, so he tightened his fingers hard enough around Merlin's wrist that the fine bones threatened to grind together within the thin case of his skin. Getting right up in Merlin's face, Arthur spit under his breath, "You are being ridiculous, and you will stop it now."

Merlin met his furious gaze with a calm and determined one of his own. "Promise, or I will leave, and you will never see me again."

The arrogance of him! Arthur sneered, but they both knew the pathetic power of that threat, and that Merlin was unfair to use it. "You," Arthur ground out, low and threatening, "aren't capable of betraying me."

"Then it's no trouble to promise me this," Merlin replied, infuriatingly even.

Arthur's fury left him abruptly, and with the same sensation as fog clearing in a breeze. What remained felt like sick. On the borderline between a plea and a whine, Arthur whispered, "I can't hurt you."

Merlin swallowed, and that serene façade finally cracked. "I know. But it wouldn't be me. Not really. I wouldn't be there. It would just look like me."

"What the fuck?" Arthur whispered, pitchy with too much breath. "Merlin, I know that something strange is going on with you, but you can't be serious. You are protecting me."

"Yes," Merlin agreed. But then he reminded Arthur, "From myself."

Arthur shook his head. "You cannot put this on me now. I can't have this on my mind when I am meeting Bayard to avert a war any minute now."

Merlin's gaze flickered from Arthur's right eye to his left, then back again. Finally, he nodded. "You're right."

A gust of relief expelled itself from Arthur's chest before he had a chance to catch it.

"I apologize," Merlin said, leaning back. "I shouldn't have distracted you." His grip loosened and Arthur finally pried it away from his sword hilt so that he could fling it back at Merlin's face. "I'm just…"

"Worried," Arthur finished for him. "I know. But you're overreacting. It's just the same panic from yesterday in the throne room. It's the same thing, and the stress of being out here like this, and your bloody nightmare. That's all."

Merlin nodded, unconvinced but docile once again. "Yeah. Must be it."

Arthur forced himself to breathe evenly so that he didn't betray himself, and forcibly turned Merlin around again to sit as he had been, at Arthur's feet, propped against his knee. He wasn't gentle about it, but Merlin offered no resistance or complaint, not even when Arthur scruffed him by the back of his neck to hold him still where Arthur wanted him. Troubled now, Arthur shut his eyes to gather his scattered thoughts like a spill of grain all over the ground. He couldn't afford time for this now. He needed to keep his head, and he needed to focus on Bayard. Only on Bayard.

He was nearly there when Merlin shifted, his shoulders tilting into a contemplative line. "I remember something."

Arthur sighed and let him go so that he could dig his fingers into his brow. "Leave your great uncle's memories alone."

"No, not his." Merlin looked down at his lap and seemed to be checking the cleanliness of his fingers. He probably still had dark lines underneath his nails from his excursion into the woods the night before. "You did drag me in. Didn't you."

Bewildered and irritated, and yes, frightened that Merlin would even think of making such a request as he just had, much less speak it aloud, Arthur snapped, "What are you on about now? I drag you into all sorts of things."

Merlin dropped his hands into his lap where they fell still. He lifted his face to the woods before them, and the bright line of the sun where it would crest any moment now. "Never mind. It's time for you to meet Bayard."

Arthur opened his mouth to argue, but the sun stabbed him in the face as he did so, and his men were already readying themselves to move out into the field. "Bollocks." Arthur shoved himself to his feet and hopped down onto the earthen hillside.

Merlin remained sitting, his legs akimbo like someone tossed a few sticks down and Merlin had sat on them. They were right at eye level now with Arthur stood on the ground in front of the stone foundation of the old fort walls. Arthur had nearly finished turning away when Merlin's voice called him back. "In case I can't say it later…"

Twisted half toward the sun, Arthur squinted back at Merlin – at the softness of his face, and the bright blue of his eyes swimming with the light of dawn. At the red rimming his eyelids, puffy from exhaustion, and the sadness tilting the smile that cut his mouth. "Go on, then. What do you want to say?"

"Thank you."

Arthur narrowed his eyes further and gave him an obvious once-over. "For what?"

"For defending me to your knights, and believing in me. And…and for everything you've done. You've been a good king, Arthur. And you will continue to be."

Arthur's gaze shot up to meet Merlin's, wide and startled. "Why does it sound like you're saying goodbye?"

For a moment – just one, so brief it may have been Arthur's imagination – Merlin seemed on the verge of actually answering. But then he smiled and released the tension that he held with his breath. Sheepish and silly, and all of those gentle things that Merlin was supposed to be, he shook his head. "Just being ridiculous, I guess. In case it all goes pear shaped."

Wrong. That was a lie. The smile was too genuine for truth; Arthur knew him too well to be fooled by that. "Merlin – "

"Sire!"

Arthur jumped at the shout and grabbed his sword hilt as he spun around.

Sir Caradoc jogged up and bowed to them both before telling Arthur, "Bayard is at the meeting place. He has demanded your presence, and refuses to wait much longer. He fears that you are laying him a trap."

"God, that man," Arthur griped under his breath. To Caradoc, he replied, "I'm coming."

"Now, sire?" Caradoc asked. "Only, he is very nervous. We were able to locate several archers in the trees behind him, and there is a good chance that he will order an attack, should we fail to appear."

"Go on," Merlin prompted from behind him. "He wants this meeting, remember? Let him see you; it should calm him down."

Arthur twisted to look at Merlin over his shoulder, unsettled and unable to take the time to identify exactly why. "You're coming," he said. His tone brooked no argument. "I want you beside me; you are not to stray."

Merlin nodded and unfolded his legs before he shoved himself off the rock too. "At your side, as I always have been." He smiled again, empty and flat.

Since Merlin didn't finish that the way that he normally did, Arthur added, "And always will be." Thankfully, it didn't come out as a question the way it threatened to.

"Of course," Merlin agreed. The words rang hollow, though.

Arthur shook himself, glanced at Caradoc, and let the normalcy there reassure him. It was only the current situation and Arthur's own nerves coloring everything odd. Merlin always said semi-profound things like that before a situation where one of them may not come back out alive. All of that honor to serve you nonsense, and empty reassurances, and you're a great king rubbish. Merlin wasn't even the only one; they all did it. It was a habit of soldiers who know that tomorrow is not guaranteed.

Indeed, when Arthur widened his gaze, everyone else in the vicinity was acting just as they should, including George as he hurried up the hill with an armful of chainmail that he seemed intent on foisting onto Merlin. Gwaine followed, and Merlin allowed himself to be bullied into the mail, but he complained the whole time, and made every effort to frown at anyone who snickered over the scene. Just as expected. Just as he should – it was just normal Merlin snark in a tense situation, letting himself be an object of jest so that everyone else could get in one last smile.

"We are all fraught," Arthur reminded himself. He pulled his gloves tight and flexed his fingers to ensure their suppleness.

"What was that, sire?"

Arthur glanced to the side, where Meliot stood armed and subdued, waiting. His poise and flat affect shamed most of the others as they let themselves be amused by the spectacle of Merlin faking weakness under the weight of a full set of mail. "Nothing," Arthur assured him. "Nothing at all."

A few feet away, Merlin shrugged at something that Gwaine said to him and then lifted his arms to allow George to buckle on a sword belt – one of Arthur's own, in fact. Good; it would be a quality weapon. But it was still odd to watch someone kit Merlin out for battle. One of Camelot's signature red cloaks followed, but Merlin snatched that from George's hands and put it on himself.

"I have a bad feeling about this."

Arthur shifted his gaze back to Meliot. "That's not like you, my lord."

"No, sire," Meliot agreed. He glanced past Arthur to where Merlin presumably continued fighting the insistence that he wear regal attire. "I do not wish to worry you, sire, but the last time I tried to manage a situation without telling you, it went ill."

Arthur squared his stance and eyed Meliot with care for his demeanor. "Explain, please, my lord."

Meliot parted his lips to breathe, presumably so that he did not give something away by his respirations. After a moment, he appeared to come to some decision, and stepped forward into Arthur's personal sphere. "Yesterday morning, when I left my chambers, Merlin was there in the corridor. It is not unusual, actually; he has been kinder than I ever could have been in his position, after what I did. I see him often. But this time, he was dressed strangely, and acting quite unlike himself." Meliot hooked his fingers backwards to draw his cloak aside, and reveal the weaponry he wore on his belt.

The burn in Arthur's esophagus could have been exhaustion. In fact, he told himself that it was.

"You recognize it, sire?" Meliot asked. His voice had gone small and trepid, as it had done in the throne room on Samhain.

"Where the fuck did you get that?" Arthur lifted his eyes like a shot to pierce Meliot's in an effort to find lies there. Or plots.

"He gave it back to me," Meliot breathed. His face spoke of fear, and something like reluctance. "Yesterday morning in the corridor. I didn't know he kept it after. I thought you must have put it back in the vaults."

"I did," Arthur informed him coldly.

Meliot nodded, his chest expanding out of rhythm with the air he inhaled. "He instructed me to carry it on my person." Swallowing hard, Meliot looked at anything but Arthur as he kept speaking. "He said that he knew I would do it if I had to, because I did it once before." His face paled at the edges, but turned red in other places as he looked down at the magic-infused dagger at his hip. Shame. "But I can't do it again, sire. It was hard enough the first time – I'm not a murderer, and he's not deserving even if I were."

Since Meliot seemed disinclined to say anything more, Arthur reached out to remove the dagger from Meliot's belt. "He's not been himself."

"Clearly," Meliot chirped, faint. As soon as the dagger left his person, he shut his eyes as if a weight had been taken.

"I'll take care of this." Arthur tugged at his own belt and shoved the dagger into a spare loop just behind the jut of his hip.

"Will you, sire?" Meliot asked. He finally met Arthur's gaze. "Can you, if it comes to it?"

Arthur narrowed his eyes and tried not to snarl, "Thank you for telling me. Now please excuse me; Bayard is waiting."

Meliot stepped back at the dismissal and bowed. "Of course, sire."

"And if you speak a word of this to anyone, I will consider it treason." Without waiting for a response, Arthur whirled around to retrieve Merlin from his laughing attendants. "Merlin! You're holding us up."

The bite in Arthur's tone must not have registered, because Merlin just kept on sniping in good fun. "I wouldn't be if you didn't insist I wear all of this ridiculous pageant metal!"

Once the cloak clasp satisfied him, Merlin fished around under his collar for a moment and then pulled out two pendants – Arthur's, that he had given Merlin just before Samhain to claim him as kin, and Arthur's mother's, gifted on the eve of Lancelot's death and then kept when Arthur never asked for it back. Seeing those two pendants proudly displayed against Merlin's chest made Arthur's insides do uncomfortable things. He couldn't recall Merlin wearing them out like that before – never in public. Arthur hadn't even been sure that he still wore them at all, except that on occasion, he glimpsed the strings tangled in with the knot of Merlin's neckerchief when he fell fast asleep in Arthur's chair at night.

"Why do you even care if I wear all of this?" Merlin kept on griping. "I don't need it."

Thoroughly fed up with the griping about something that was not trivial, Arthur snapped and answered honestly. "Because someone stabbed you five months ago and I had to watch you die."

Everyone within earshot froze, and then found excuses to put distance between themselves and Arthur. Only Merlin approached him, and he hesitated first. "I didn't mean to make light of it."

"Shut up." When he came within arm's reach, Arthur seized the opportunity to adjust Merlin's cloak and fuss with the fit of the chain links covering his collarbones. It was an apology, the act of allowing Arthur to paw at him, even if he said nothing of the sort. "You stay beside me," Arthur ordered. "I don't want you out of my sight."

Merlin nodded without making some snide comment, which was kind of him; Arthur felt brittle, and the slightest hint that Merlin took his own life lightly could have set off Arthur's temper in spectacular fashion.

Finally satisfied with the sight before him, Arthur left off faffing at Merlin's armor and stepped back to survey his work. "Bayard's waiting."

Again Merlin nodded, but this time he also spoke. "You're ready for this."

It wasn't a question, but Arthur made an affirmative gesture all the same before turning to address the rest of his men. "It's time. Everyone, on me."

---

A Servant of Two Masters

Arthur dragged Merlin through the woods, worried that if they stopped, the bandits would find them. They were unusually persistent, and Arthur could still hear them rustling about and shouting as they searched the woods long into the night. At least the sound of them was growing fainter.

In an effort to seem unconcerned at the way Merlin wheezed to breathe, Arthur told him, "A night's rest, and you'll be polishing my armor." He hiked Merlin higher up against his hip and tightened his grip on Merlin's arm where he'd slung it over his shoulder. A few more stumbling steps, and he grit, "It could definitely do with a scrub."

Merlin answered with a wheeze, his knees buckling, and Arthur was forced to lower him to the ground before he dropped him. A bird squawked in the distance, and then another, likely disturbed by the roaming bandits. Arthur glanced in concern at Merlin's clammy face as he pulled at Merlin's neckerchief to get a look at the wound. The jostling made Merlin grimace and suck in a sharp breath, his eyelids fluttering as if he might pass out, and they both looked down at the mottling of severely bruised skin and evidence of a crushed collarbone. A series of darker points showed livid against Merlin's pale flesh where the spike of the mace hit.

Their eyes met briefly, knowingly, and Arthur immediately looked away again. He swiped his thumb over his mouth and then announced, "I've seen worse." Arthur shook his head without meaning to bely that, but still insisted as if trying to convince himself, "I've definitely seen worse."

Merlin grinned and peered up at him sidelong to quip, "On a dead man?"

"You're not going to die, Merlin." The wound had already festered, though, and they were a long walk from Camelot. "Don't be such a coward."

It was odd how Merlin sort of kept smiling after that as if he had forgotten the expression he had put on his face, teeth a flash of white in the dark. The mirth finally faded as Arthur packed his tunic back in place and sort of held him down so that he settled. More lucid than Arthur expected, Merlin asked, "If I do die, will you call me a hero?"

"Probably," Arthur replied plainly. He didn't want to discuss this.

"But whilst I'm still alive, I'm a coward."

Arthur glanced at him and took in the subtle trembling of his head, as if his balance were off. Shock, Arthur realized. He was going into shock, and a gallows humor wasn't the worst coping mechanism he could have chosen. If that was what Merlin needed to stay positive, so be it. "That's the way these things work, I'm afraid. You get the glory when you're not around to appreciate it."

Merlin scoffed. "Well." His words were thicker than normal, out of rhythm. "Unless you're the king."

"Come on," Arthur returned, forcing a casual air. "It's got to have some advantages."

Merlin barely considered that before exclaiming, his words chopped and halting from pain, "You have a very good servant." But he laughed it off afterwards, as if he expected ridicule for saying so, and then faltered entirely as the smile evaporated from his face. He took a shallow breath and the pain showed stark for moment.

Arthur dropped the act. "You're right. I do."

Merlin stilled beside him.

Only briefly considering his words, Arthur admitted what he actually felt, and had felt for a long time, in spite of himself. "A servant who is extremely brave, and incredibly loyal, to be honest."

Suspicion suffused Merlin's features as his gaze tracked along the ground, gradually shifting closer to Arthur's face.

When Merlin finally raised his eyes to meet Arthur's, Arthur added, "Not at all cowardly." How could he be? What he was – a sorcerer in Camelot – and even at the threat of dying, he neither revealed himself to Arthur nor resented him for being the reason for it. Arthur nodded, looked away, and then shook his head at the colossal mess of it all. This was all backwards. All wrong. Merlin didn't deserve this. He shouldn't have to die because of Arthur, either to save his life or his pride, or keep a stupid secret that Arthur already knew. And yet, Arthur still didn't tell him that. So who was the real coward there?

Merlin didn't seem to know how to take Arthur's sincerity, and kept staring him from the corner of his eye. Hesitant and suspicious, he eventually replied, "Thank you for saving my life."

"You'd do the same for me." In a heartbeat; Arthur knew it for fact.

As if it betrayed something to agree, Merlin didn't exactly nod, but the series of short bobs of his head conveyed the same thing. He avoided meeting Arthur's eyes for very long after that, and neither of them spoke again until morning.

---

The last time that Arthur stood before King Bayard of Mercia, he had done so from Uther's shadow. Age and long war seasons had been unkind to the other monarch; Bayard looked every inch his years in a way that Uther himself had not achieved for dying before he reached them. It occurred to Arthur suddenly that other than Nemeth where Mithian sat newly crowned queen in her father's wake, all of Albion's many kingdoms – the five large ones as well as the many small holdings beneath them – sat on the brink of passing from the hands of Uther's generation. Their rulers were old and tired, if not quite spent, and they all must have known it. Arthur was a young man still, in spite of his aches. Compared to all of the rest, at least. A new age threatened Albion more than it dawned.

"My lord Bayard," Arthur greeted as he crossed the field. His men fanned out at his back, the knights as well as the handful of servants and squires. And behind them stood a veritable wall of magic. Camelot's own contingent of soldiers dwarfed Bayard's, and everyone there knew it. Arthur exchanged a troubled look with Merlin. There were too few men on Mercia's side of the field. It barely qualified as a royal escort. It was as if Bayard did not intend to survive the encounter, or waste men on an attempt, should the day go ill. Merlin seemed to think in a similar vein, and his face shuttered before it could reflect his misgivings.

Bayard stepped forward, his movements slower than Arthur recalled. But then, it had been many years since they last met face to face. He eyed the mottled contingent of people arrayed at Arthur's back, and as he crested the small ridge of the agreed-upon parlay line, the additional magic folk must have come into his view as well. Bayard paused as he took in the sight, and then diverted his focus back to Arthur himself. "King Arthur of Camelot." Bayard looked him over, inscrutable, and then shifted to eye Merlin where he stood at Arthur's left hand. "I knew there was something odd about you," he said, his tone resigned. "Something familiar. I should have recognized the way you looked at me when you drank from that goblet. You resemble him."

Merlin swallowed hard enough that Arthur could hear his throat click in the silence of a cold morning before spring brought the noise of the world to bear. "Good morning, my lord," Merlin replied neutrally.

"Is it true?" Bayard asked. It could have been a demand, that choice of words, but Bayard only sounded tired when he said it. "You're the mad prophet's kin?"

"Yes, my lord." Merlin shifted, and Arthur watched his shadow blend in with Arthur's at the edges where they both last cast on the grass between the royal parties. "Though I didn't know until recently." He paused, shadow swaying against the ground, and added, "Arthur discovered it. He told me where I come from."

Bayard nodded, and Arthur met his gaze too briefly to read much of his intention there. When Bayard shifted his eyes again, it was to ask Merlin, "And do you share his gifts, then?"

Merlin sniffed softly in obvious discomfort, and then replied, "I hope not, my lord. Not all of them."

"Spoken like a man trying to hide the truth," Bayard sighed. He finally relegated Merlin to the periphery of his notice and faced Arthur properly. "You were barely more than a boy when I last saw you."

"That was a long time ago," Arthur replied. "And I doubt that you came here to make small talk."

"No," Bayard agreed. "But allow me to at least gauge the lay of the land. I did not actually expect you to come, and yet here you are with a small army."

"You threatened my kingdom," Arthur pointed out unnecessarily. "I was obligated to respond."

"As was I," Bayard said. "You broke treaty, without any warning."

Attempting levity, Arthur told him, "You could have sent an envoy."

"I did," Bayard said. He spread his hands out to indicate himself and his paltry honor guard.

Arthur blinked and regrouped. "My lord, you have invaded my lands. We know about your troops near Isgard and the White Mountains, and your alliance with Queen Annis. That is not an envoy."

Bayard covered his reaction a beat too late, and slowly lowered his hands. So, he had been counting on the element of surprise after all, just as Merlin suggested. "But you have not moved to stop us."

It was Merlin who asked, "Are you certain of that, my lord?"

"Peace," Arthur admonished, twisting to meet Merlin's gaze. "I'm sure that my lord Bayard does not mean to threaten us by it."

Merlin quirked a skeptical eyebrow but said no more.

When Arthur looked back to Bayard, it was to find the elder king watching their exchange with a certain care to things that Arthur suspected he and Merlin gave away without meaning to. Bayard backed down a moment later, though Arthur was hard put to identify how he could tell as much from the simple frown that Bayard directed at the gloves he pulled off one finger at a time.

Without looking at Arthur, Bayard inquired carefully, "Do you know why I never truly respected your father?"

Arthur considered that, but not for long; he did not think that he was meant to guess. "I assume that it stemmed from the dispute over the lands ceded to Camelot after the wars with Vortigern and his sons."

"No," Bayard replied, plain and curt. "I could care less about scrub grasses and plains." He shook his head and quietly admitted, "It was the purge."

"It…" Arthur made an indeterminate sound behind his tongue. "I apologize, but I fail to understand."

"I think you understand well enough," Bayard countered. He finished removing his gloves and handed them to a small, nervous, round-shaped manservant. "There was a power imbalance between magic folk and us, and corruptions to redress. It happens in any time of upheaval, and Vortigern's reign was that. Some followers of the old religion needed to be put back in their place afterward, but I saw no need to pursue all magic to extinction. It has use and value, when tempered properly." With a nod in Merlin's direction, Bayard added to Arthur, "You seem to have reached a similar conclusion, late though it comes."

Arthur did not follow Bayard's gaze; he kept his own eyes trained steadily forward. "My lord, forgive me. You claim that you opposed it, but you participated with as much zeal as anyone else. I find it hard to believe that you are so very different from my father where magic is concerned."

"And until now, I thought the same of you." Bayard glanced aside, eyes not quite leaving the periphery of Arthur's group. "It was a difficult time. I was assailed on two sides. The Saxons and other barbarians battered my shores to find relief from roman mismanagement – they still do – and the tribes allied with the Pendragons threatened from the west. I am, myself, an interloper – a descendent of Saxon settlers, as are many of Mercia's people. When your father stopped his advance at my borders, I saw a chance of reprieve. I chose the lesser evil. I could not fight wars on two fronts, and your father was the only one offering a path to peace. I took it; I had little other choice."

Arthur looked down and nodded. "I understand, my lord. It is regrettable, but I do understand."

Bayard grunted; in any other setting, it would have been rude, but Bayard was not given to social graces. He was, at heart, a warrior, weary though he seemed to be of it.

"We could help you keep them at bay," Arthur offered. "We know the threat of another invasion as well as anyone, and even as a Saxon yourself, you have dealt fair with the peoples of Albion. You are, I think, one of us now."

"That," Bayard breathed, his face turning obscure and complicated, "is something your father never said. It does mean something to me that you do." Bayard lowered his gaze before strafing it off to one side, contemplative. "I may yet be forced to call on you for help. The famine has been terrible across the channel, and this year's planting season is already disrupted by the lingering winter. I imagine that many will attempt to migrate here as the weather allows, and it is not their custom to do so peacefully. But that is not why we are here now." Bayard twisted as he motioned someone forward. "I have concerns of another kind, especially after the tales told by four knights of Camelot who came penniless to my court last autumn."

When Arthur did not immediately parse that out, Merlin leaned close behind him and reminded him, "Sir Erec, sire."

Arthur shut his eyes and then attempted to pass it off as a long blink. "I see. They are here with you?"

"They are deserters and traitors to their king," Bayard replied. "And they reside in my dungeons for the moment. But they told a disturbing story, and were most insistent. I would have proof of its truth or not before deciding whether to return them to you."

Arthur nodded and asked, "What tales, my lord?"

"That you are enchanted by your pretty manservant." Bayard frowned when he said it, though not in disapproval. He seemed more puzzled at the thought of such an accusation. "That he has ensorcelled you either by magic or by wiles, and stolen your affections in a most unnatural and perverted manner. Physically, that is to say. As a clever woman might."

Arthur made a disgusted face at the idea that any physical affection he might share with Merlin could be called a perversion. It wouldn't be the first such opinion, though, and it certainly wasn't the first insinuation of its kind made about the relationship that Arthur shared with his former manservant. That did not make it any easier to hear.

If Bayard noticed Arthur's feeling on the matter, he did not address it; he merely went on relating the tale that Arthur's deserting knights told him. "They claim that now, you do his bidding. Allowing magic, for one. And I hear recently that you have even placed him as your heir, and named him prince."

"Merlin refused that," Arthur snapped. "And not for lack of my insistence."

Again, Bayard frowned in the same manner as he had just a moment earlier. His eyes rested on Merlin for a beat too long, though, and Arthur recalled the royal crests that hung in the open today from Merlin's neck. "Indeed," Bayard said, noncommittal. "But that would also fit their tale. They say that he is cunning and wears a kind face, so few notice his machinations at work. Such a deflection could certainly be more valuable than a claim to the throne itself. It is safer to rule from your shadow and keep the appearance of your figurehead, than to assume that place himself. Your sister could have learned something from him of how to take control of a kingdom that someone else ruled."

Behind Arthur, Merlin stepped backwards and let out a long, aggravated breath, but thankfully, he said nothing and moved no further away than that single step.

"Merlin has stolen nothing from me," Arthur averred. "Certainly not my affections." He said it like a swear word only because Bayard's attitude around the thing annoyed him. "And if Merlin really wanted my throne, free of any blemish or doubt, he could have taken it yesterday when I offered it to him as regent. He refused."

Bayard blinked and swallowed. "I see. That still does not disprove anything. He could still be that cunning."

Arthur scoffed, but he didn't say the first retort that came to mind – that believing Merlin to be clever enough to pull that off was laughable. Merlin was clever, and good at hiding things, but not those kinds of things. Not underhanded things; his guilt and shame would show too clearly for him to ever manage it. Instead of saying that, Arthur merely snapped, "The idea that he has enchanted me is frankly ridiculous; someone would notice."

"Supposedly, someone has," Bayard countered. "Or at least, he claims to."

"Sir Erec is mistaken," Arthur averred.

"Are you willing to prove that?" Bayard asked. The man he had motioned forward earlier now stood at Bayard's side, and at Bayard's gesture, he held open the small box cradled in his hands. "Show it to Camelot."

Obediently, the man stepped across the swath of open grass between their parties so that Arthur could peer warily into the box. Inside sat a small, innocuous stone, milky in hue with its edges polished smooth. Merlin moved to look as well, but he seemed curious more than anything else. Not a threat, then, though it resembled many of the crystals locked in Camelot's own vaults where no one could accidentally touch them for fear of the charms or curses that they carried.

Arthur straightened and nodded at the Mercian man to take his box back to his king. "I am afraid you will have to explain, my lord."

"It is a seeing stone," Bayard replied. He took the box from his servant and the man melted back into the very small group huddled around Bayard. "Or in this case, a telling one. It tells secrets." With another pointed look at Merlin, he clarified, "It reveals enchantments."

Arthur peered over his shoulder, and Merlin told him, "Gaius has books that speak of such stones. They are rare, but in the old days, much sought after."

"Yes," Bayard agreed. "Time was, a treaty negotiation always began with the passing of such a stone, to ensure that all men at the table spoke with their own voice and will. They cannot be corrupted, and they cannot be tricked. No magic can affect them, in fact, once they are made; that is their power. My treaty with your father outlawed these, as it did all magical objects, regardless of their value and utility. But as you have already broken that accord, I see no reason for me to refrain now." Bayard reached into the box and pulled the stone out, cradling it in his fingers. He watched it for a moment, and then cast questioning looks at his men behind him. They all nodded, and Bayard faced Arthur again. "The stone will glow when it encounters enchantment, but to the person holding it, it will always appear dark so that the one afflicted is never aware that others might know."

Arthur furrowed his brow, thought about it, and then even though it might make him sound stupid, he asked, "Why would it matter? If they touched the stone, they would be found out whether they see it or not. Someone under enchantment simply wouldn't agree to hold it."

"You obviously know little of magic," Bayard replied curtly. "A skilled sorcerer could conceal a spell in the host, dormant and unknown until triggered like a trap door. You can imagine the problem this would cause, if a king or a king's wife or trusted advisor fell prey to one but did not know themselves corrupted, and showed no sign to others."

Arthur swallowed to cover his instinctive flinch, his mind immediately going to Guinevere.

"It may even carry safeguards to kill the host if the host discovers it. A dead man cannot tell you who enchanted him. In the right circumstances, he may not even seem to be dead of magic, and no one else would suspect a plot at all."

"I see. That makes sense," Arthur allowed.

Visibly unimpressed, Bayard merely stepped forward, his men tensing as he left their protective huddle. He extended the stone toward Arthur from across the neutral space between them on the ridgeline. Though he remained several feet away, his intention was clear. He stood alone and apart from his men, toeing the parlay line. He took this risk of exposure on himself, only. "Will you hold it?"

"Arthur," Merlin hissed. "We don't know that he's telling the truth."

Arthur turned to shield his mouth and his voice from view as he replied, "Can you sense anything from it?"

"Nothing," Merlin reported. "It has no feeling of magic to it at all. But that doesn't mean it's not a trick – there's nothing to prove it really does what he says. He could use it to lie about enchantment – discredit you, or implicate me and sow discord – to say nothing of curses. And if it were cursed for you, specifically, it could be dormant until you touched it; I wouldn't know until it was too late."

"I don't believe that Bayard would come here like this just to try and curse me," Arthur countered. "And wouldn't he need something of my person to do that, anyway? To key it? Hair, blood – "

"If Erec is in his dungeons, he could have any of those things."

Arthur conceded the point, but he faced Bayard again without giving it much credence. This was not the easiest way to expose an enemy to a magical object; Bayard could have sent it as a present by messenger if that were truly what he wanted. And his affect seemed all wrong; Arthur remembered well enough that Bayard was arrogant and snappish with little care for social grace, but he had honor and he at least tried to be polite in his own way. To slip a curse to an enemy the way a woman may poison a goblet? That spoke of cowardice. Bayard hadn't done such a thing the first time they met, and Arthur could not believe that he would do it now.

Decision made, Arthur stepped forward to meet Bayard in the middle, between their respective lines of soldiers. "Give it here, then." He held out his hand.

Merlin remained conspicuous in his silence as he allowed Arthur to pluck the stone from Bayard's hand. It felt warm, but only from transferred body heat. And it looked like nothing more than a bauble encasing a swirl like soured milk.

Arthur lifted an eyebrow at Bayard, who seemed surprised, and then turned to hold the stone up so that the men of Camelot could see it too. "Well?" Arthur asked at large.

Several of Camelot's men laughed, of all things, and then Gwaine called out, "Soft in the head, princess, but not enchanted."

Arthur twisted his spine so that he could see Gwaine when he shouted back, "Show some respect, Sir Gwaine."

"You first."

Before Arthur could get his royal pride in a tizzy, Merlin let out a huge breath and lumbered forward, chainmail and cloak swaying as he tried to move naturally beneath an unaccustomed weight. "You're perfectly fine, sire." He made a wry face at Bayard too, as if he couldn't resist the urge to sass him too now that his rank allowed it. "Same old cabbage head you've always been."

"Charming." Arthur rolled his eyes. To Bayard, Arthur said, "You'll have to forgive him; being a prince has gone to his head." Arthur looked again at the stone, plain and unadorned, just sitting there innocent in his hand like a shiny field rock. "This is rather a handy sort of thing." To Merlin, Arthur added, "We should see if we have one squirreled away somewhere too."

"I might be able to make one," Merlin mused. Since Arthur was holding the stone out toward him, he took it, fingertips brushing against Arthur's as the cool weight slipped from his palm.

Later, Arthur would only remember the cold washing over him, and the prickle freezing his gut as he watched Merlin take the stone. Arthur wasn't even looking at him anymore when it registered; he saw it instead on Bayard's face as he turned back with a smile, intending to demand a better explanation for this whole setup, and the armies, and his odd talk about the purge. Bayard's eyes grew wide even as Arthur sought them out, and fixed in place past Arthur's shoulder. Everyone on the Mercian side of the parlay line shifted with unease before settling again into a more conspicuous silence. Up until then, Arthur had entertained several of the same doubts as Merlin about whether or not the stone actually did as Bayard claimed; it could have been a paperweight for all Arthur knew. The look on Bayard's face relieved him of those doubts; it wasn't the kind of expression that one could fake.

"It kind of smells weird," Merlin mentioned offhand. "Are stones supposed to smell like olive loaf?"

I think I charmed it to show it's the truth. Never tried the spell before. It might just magically-smell like olive loaf or something.

Arthur couldn't breathe as he looked back, his expression fading to blank.

Did you drag me into the water?

It could have been any moment – dozens of moments when someone might have gotten to Merlin – when Merlin was vulnerable or had his guard down, after a fit, or when he might have been too slow or too inexperienced with the subtleties of magic to protect himself, or detect a quiet attack. But Arthur knew the one. He knew. Like a sinking ship run aground in his spleen, he new exactly which moment it had to have been. And even worse, some part of Merlin must have known it too – had been trying to tell him all along. The whole damn time.

Something's wrong with me.

When Arthur met his eyes, Merlin looked every inch himself. Just Merlin. Just his clumsy manservant. Former dog's body. The not-so-secret sorcerer at Arthur's side. Troubled and afflicted, but so, so loyal it frightened Arthur sometimes. A little bit mad, maybe, and far too eager to die to protect Arthur from anything that might threaten him. Even from himself. Especially from himself.

I am everything your father warned you about.

Merlin held the stone out toward him again. "We should check Geoffrey's inventory. There must be one in there somewhere; your father would have been sure to collect anything like it."

I've told you not to trust magic. It's not safe. I am not safe, Arthur.

"Yes, he would have." Arthur had no idea how he kept a straight face. How he held Merlin's gaze in that moment. His heart felt like lead as he accepted the stone back from Merlin's hand and watched the glow fade away again to nothing.

There were black things crawling up my arms. Trying to get inside.

Merlin frowned as Arthur stared at him, still like prey in a dark wood. "Arthur? Are you alright?"

You did drag me in. Didn't you.

Arthur cleared his throat and turned back to Bayard with the telling stone clutched white-knuckled between his hands. "My lord Bayard," Arthur announced, diplomatic even as his lungs grew cold with panic and his heart thumped so loudly in his ears that a garrison could have marched to its beat. "I must ask your intentions, now that we have established that I am not enchanted."

Bayard recovered without missing a beat and put his own airs back on, though they sat ill on his shoulders now. "I am relieved to know that you act freely. And I am prepared to withdraw my armies in expectation that we will renegotiate our treaty to be more equitable in future."

"What of Queen Annis?" Arthur's joints creaked at the ferocity of his grip on the telling stone. "Is she here at your request, or is her invasion an independent one?"

"She will follow me in this," Bayard assured him. "Our joint fears are put to rest. There is no need for either of us to remain on a battle footing with you."

Arthur had a slew of questions about this whole business, and none of them mattered to him one whit. He knew that he was being too abrupt, and that it would raise the eyebrows of one particular man stood behind him, who couldn't possibly know what had just changed. Arthur looked down at the telling stone, and then back up at Bayard. He needed to extricate himself from this meeting, but just then, he could not find the wherewithal to do it with grace. Instead, he mutely held the stone out for Bayard to take back.

Bayard stepped forward, considered him carefully, and then ushered him away from both of their retinues to stand on the parlay line that divided them. Bayard put his fingers on the telling stone, but rather than taking it right away, he asked too low for anyone else to hear, "I have sharp shooters waiting in the tree line. I can signal them, if you need it; they will have seen it glow in his hand."

"No." Arthur swallowed, aware that his own devastation had to be showing in his eyes, even if his face remained under his control. "I can handle this."

"I know he is important to you," Bayard whispered back. "You nearly died for him the last time we met too. But if he is fallen to enchantment, then he is lost. You must protect yourself."

It was too reminiscent of what Merlin had said to him just minutes before they walked into the field. You promise me, Arthur. Protect yourself. You have to protect yourself… Through his grit teeth, Arthur hissed, "I reject that. And if you so much as think about touching him, I will make my next war with you after all. And we both know that you can ill afford it."

Bayard did not rise to the threat; he merely nodded. "I confess, this is the last thing I expected. They had me convinced, your traitors. I was certain that you had fallen under his influence."

"No," Arthur breathed. "He did guide me this way, but inadvertently, and certainly not through coercion."

"I can see that now." Bayard sighed. "I still believe that you are foolish; he should be put down. But I will not try to convince you. If you change your mind… If you need anything… I consider that aside from the one issue of magic, our treaty and our alliance still stands. I will come."

Arthur nodded, and his lungs finally gave into the incessant beating of his out-of-control heart. Fighting the need to heave in as much air as he could, Arthur replied, "Thank you, my lord. But I have to fight this myself. I owe him that."

"You will write, and invite us to Camelot when it is through?"

Again, Arthur nodded, sharp like shards of rock chipped from a cliff. "Your emissaries are welcome to return as well; we kept their rooms ready."

Bayard nodded. "He was loyal," he offered, carefully watching the impact that his words had on Arthur. "I remember that most about him. Just some skinny serving boy with a mouth on him, but he risked a war between our kingdoms for the privilege of drinking poison for you. I do know the value in that; it is rare."

Arthur shut his eyes on the prickle that clogged his sinuses. He would not cry in front of another king. "He still tastes my food; he won't trust anyone else with my life. There's no way he's fully aware of it, or he would have fallen on my sword already to spare me."

"Then be comforted in knowing that if you cannot reclaim him, he would not blame you for doing what you must." Bayard finally tugged the stone from Arthur's numb fingers and backed away with it. He raised his voice and announced, "Let us part now as friends."

"Friends," Arthur agreed. He wrested his beating heart and his traitorous sinuses and his shaking limbs back under control so that he could return the inclination of Bayard's head without giving himself away to the one man who mattered most behind him. "Have a safe journey home, my lord. We look forward to the reports that your armies have withdrawn."

"You will have it with haste." Bayard finally turned and strode through the collection of Mercian men fanned out opposite Arthur's knights.

Arthur exhaled long and slow, watching Mercia retreat to their tiny camp on the other side of the field where he could see now, clearly, that Bayard had never intended to win any fight. He had come here to either reaffirm their treaty and a new stance on magic, or to die taking out the sorcerer who toppled a king, in the hope that it would save them all.

Soft footsteps and the shush of chainmail sounded at Arthur's back. "Merlin," he guessed.

"What the hell just happened?" Merlin demanded. "Did he do something to you? That stone – I knew I shouldn't have let you touch it!"

The tears that Arthur had been holding back seeped out as he clenched his eyes shut. Olive loaf. That bloody letter to the druids – they were right. Merlin needed help, and Arthur chased them off. You've never noticed before, Merlin said once, while Arthur searched his face for evidence of enchantment. It was more an accusation than Arthur realized at the time. Not an insult at all. How long had Merlin been trying to tell Arthur that something was in there, trapped with him on the underside of his own skin? Chipping away at him piece by piece, wearing him down until bits of him cracked off and broke? All of the offhand comments, all of –

Brennis and the sword at the wellspring, and Merlin trying to taunt him into taking it. Into running him through if Brennis really thought he was a threat. Telling him that he was. Pushing at him with magic, singeing the air so that it lingered in his wake after he stalked away, intact. Not a test, and not a point to be made – a plea. A plea to save his king from him.

Repeatedly telling Arthur that he was dangerous. That he didn't want to hurt Arthur but that he would. That Uther was right. That Merlin wasn't safe to be around. That he should be dead. That if one of Arthur's counselors killed him, it would be in protection of Arthur and it would be right and Merlin wouldn't stop them. Letting Meliot near him again, casually, as if it were nothing, after Meliot did just that. And the dagger – all but instructing him to do it again.

The magic. The swelling magic. The way it clawed and tried to get out, and Merlin suppressed it so violently that it caused fits. Keeping it at bay hurt him, but he refused to find it an outlet when it happened. He said it would be too dangerous to let it out when it rose like that. Because it wasn't Merlin's magic; it was something else. Something that wanted to hurt Arthur. Something that set his rooms on fire, and threatened him from behind Merlin's own face where no one would think to look for it. Something that screeched like a banshee.

Merlin even told Arthur plainly about the screaming in his head – he told him exactly what was going on. That he was tired. That he couldn't do this anymore, ambiguous as it was. That he didn't know how much longer he could keep on, and wasn't sure he even wanted to. That it was all falling apart – precarious, as he said. That he was precarious. Talking about putting an end to this – If I were brave, I'd stop this – his hand on Arthur's sword, standing in the shadows behind Arthur's throne. I can stop it all. Now. Right now. All of his insistence that Arthur shouldn't trust him, shouldn't rely on him, shouldn't be attached to him, and certainly shouldn't ever love him. Because it would hurt Arthur more when they were parted. Because this would be impossible to bear.

You dragged me into the water.

The one thing at the cauldron that Merlin told Arthur not to do. Because anyone afflicted by that magic had to enter the water of their own free will, without trickery or guile, or else be lost. Merlin told him, and Arthur didn't listen; he was too caught up in his own ego and wants. An oblivious fool, ruled by his grief like a coward until he couldn't see it only because he refused to look. Myrddin was right; this was all his fault.

"Arthur?" Tentative and frightened. Just Merlin, worried. "What is it? Are you alright?"

I need to know that you won't let me hurt you.

Arthur gripped the pommel of his sword, his knuckles brushing the intricate hilt of the dagger that killed Merlin once before. I need you to promise you'll stop me. He already knew that he could never do that. He couldn't bear to even try; the first time he made such an attempt still haunted him nearly as much as the corpse of his father over which he had done it. But it wouldn't be me. Not really. I wouldn't be there. It would just look like me. But he was there. It was him. "I'm fine," Arthur lied. It was an obvious falsehood, but he had no other way to say it just then. "Relieved."

"You don't look relieved." Merlin stepped around Arthur's shoulder, so close, his nose inches from Arthur's cheek.

Arthur turned his head to look at him – a lovely, fae vision of a man streaked with the wet of Arthur's own eyes. So close that Arthur could smell him. Herbs and horse, and a night's hard sweat from riding, sour exhaustion and broken sleep, and the wet grass he had trodden through to reach Arthur's side. It was just Merlin standing there. Just the only person left who loved him for real, and thought him worthy of being his own man. The dysphoria threatened to choke Arthur, looking at Merlin like this and knowing that some part of him wasn't actually him. That the not-Merlin part might be the one looking back at him right now. As the not-Guinevere part had. And Arthur hadn't noticed. He still couldn't tell.

Merlin frowned, but it was only concern. "Come on," he coaxed. "You must be exhausted. Bayard isn't much of a threat – or I can handle him if he tries anything. You should rest."

Arthur nodded and smiled because Merlin looked like he needed it, and Arthur still wanted to give him anything he could. Whole kingdoms and peace and a seat in his court, and happiness, and the good destiny that had once shone hopeful and bright in Merlin's eyes at a time when Arthur didn't understand the mystery of Merlin's regard for him. A golden age. A place where he could smile and finally, truly be free. Because he never had been before. Merlin didn't truly know what that felt like, and might never find out now.

Past Merlin's shoulder, Gwaine held himself tense, his face etched in stone, jaw clenched. George stood beside him with Merlin's medicine kit dangling from the strap on his shoulder; his expression betrayed nothing, but George was just that good at what he did. As Arthur exchanged nothing-looks with both of them, Merlin's frown deepened into a more pronounced concern. His movements jerky with uncertainty, he twisted to see what Arthur was looking at.

He could have struck then. Arthur thought about it; his limbs even ticked in readiness. He could grab Merlin from behind, weather the thrashing, shove his knee into the soft part behind Merlin's and fold him down to the ground. Cover his nose, cover his mouth, and wait for the suffocation to steal his consciousness. Merlin wouldn't fight him much, not if Arthur told him not to. Whispered in his ear that it was alright, to just let this happen. He would let Arthur do anything to him. Permit anything. His fingers would squeeze Arthur's forearms, and though he wouldn't be able to speak, the sentiment would be there, so gentle it hurt. It's alright, Arthur. Permission. Like waking up to Merlin's head sharing the pillow beside him, sleep-snuffling and warm. It would cut like knives, so sharp that no sting would give away the moment of wounding. Arthur might not even notice until he saw the blood.

Wary now, Merlin turned back and skimmed his eyes over Arthur from head to foot. Arthur let him, and took care to keep his mind blank. Too many times, he suspected that Merlin somehow heard him even though he didn't speak aloud. Too many coincidences to truly be anything else. He could not let his thoughts stray; he didn't know what might happen if Merlin realized that Arthur knew. Or worse, if Merlin didn't know himself, not really, not in the normal moments, and Arthur's thoughts betrayed it to him plain in the full light of day. There was no way to know just how aware Merlin really was of the dark magic inside of him, or what might happen if he found out. Myrddin had implied that Arthur's attempts to see it, and to make Merlin see it too, were killing him. Merlin couldn't even keep his own mind intact around it; every time he acted as himself, in knowledge, he forgot it all again, and stalemate went on.

George rescued them from their staring contest by the pointed clearing of his throat. "My lords, if you will, a small meal will be ready shortly."

Arthur nodded and touched Merlin's shoulder. It wasn't the kind of gesture he normally made; his nerves rendered it too tentative, rather than possessive as it should have been. Merlin's continued frowning made it evident that he noticed that too, but Arthur didn't leave him time to say anything about it. "I'm just tired, all of a sudden. It's been a long couple of days. Let's eat, and then I'll rest for a bit. And you can gloat about how you were right about everything."

"Not everything," Merlin countered, but his glowering lessened. "I thought something bad was going to happen."

"Well," Arthur croaked. "No one's perfect."

Merlin grunted in acknowledgement and stepped out of Arthur's way so that they could head back to camp.

As they passed the disperse line of Arthur's knights, Arthur held his hand down, palm parallel to the ground, to signal them not to take up arms. A few appeared mutinous, but the lion's share merely appeared as spooked as Arthur felt, or suspicious. Geraint shadowed them at a safe distance, as did several others from his ragtag army who held themselves as if their hands were their first choice of weapon. Uncertain of their intentions, Arthur snagged at Merlin's surcoat where it puffed out from beneath the short chainmail sleeve, and drew him near. "Don't leave my side."

Merlin stumbled closer until their shoulders brushed as they walked, and cast Arthur a puzzled glance. "You're worrying me now; I missed something. Did I slip?"

"Just trust me." Arthur herded Merlin along into the shadow of the old fort ruins, and down toward their temporarily abandoned camp. "You don't have to worry."

Merlin started and yanked himself back, out of Arthur's grasp. "What did you just say?"

Too late, Arthur recognized his own tell. He was so insistent that no one ever use that fated phrase to him; of course, Merlin would notice now. "Merlin…" Arthur reached out to recover his grip on Merlin's sleeve, careful about his movements.

Merlin danced back from him, though, his eyes turning wild. "No. Tell me what's going on."

"Nothing. I – "

"Not nothing!" Merlin turned an alarming shade of pale and stopped backing away. "No. No, no, no – " He twirled around in a tight circle, and several of the trailing knights flinched back. "I don't – it didn't break. There's no break. I swear, I remember it all just as it happened, so what are you on about?!"

Arthur lunged forward and seized Merlin by the ears, harsh and merciless because it was the only way he knew to shock Merlin into shutting the hell up.

Amazingly, Merlin went pliant like that, wobbling between Arthur's hands, and just looked at Arthur for what felt like a long while. Arthur had to glance aside to warn off anyone approaching under the mistaken impression that the big bad sorcerer might be doing something to Arthur with his potent evil eye, or some other ridiculous tripe. Once assured of the compliance of his men, Arthur focused back on Merlin and said, "I need you calm, Merlin. And for once, I need you not to question."

Immediately, Merlin started to question that. "Question wha – "

"Merlin." To Arthur's mortification, the tears he had forced back earlier had only been held in abeyance; they weren't gone, and they cut his voice into pitches now. "You said you trusted me once. I know it wasn't true, but you said it and you thought you meant it."

Merlin blinked, his body swaying below where Arthur held his head still. Alarmed, he said, "Of course I trust you. Why wouldn't I trust you?"

"A hundred reasons, and none of them matter anymore." Harsh and bitten like a flint edge, Arthur pleaded, "Trust me now. Just this once: do as I say, and don't question."

"That doesn't sound like something I'd do," Merlin protested, but there was no mirth in it. No teasing about his lacking obedience or his occasional propensity to dog Arthur with doubts. He was confused and growing more frightened by the second, and Arthur could feel the fine thrum of fight-or-flight shivering through Merlin's limbs as he stared back at Arthur, intent and yet still just as terrifying as he was terrified. "Arthur, tell me what happened. Please."

Arthur looked away again as George approached from behind Merlin's bad shoulder. Gwaine had already looped around them at some point and now stood at Arthur's back, facing everyone else, presumably in case they did anything that Arthur wouldn't like.

Merlin twitched in an attempt to look behind him, but Arthur tightened his hands, catching and yanking at Merlin's hair on accident to keep his eyes forward. "Ow! Arthur – "

"On me, Merlin." Arthur breathed in forced calm, and held Merlin's gaze as best he could. His mind stayed as blank as he could make it, just in case a stray inkling managed to sneak across the meager distance between Arthur and the man he held in place before him. "Look at me."

Merlin's brow wrinkled, but the skin around his eyes went slack. "I always look at you."

"I know" Arthur breathed. He ignored the shadows moving in his periphery and hoped to the gods that he wasn't making a mistake – that George, at least, understood what he wanted, or that somehow Geraint just knew and wasn't about to do something that Arthur would have to hate him for as well as himself –

Merlin startled and broke eye contact just as Geraint shouted, "Swefe nu!"

Arthur lunged for Merlin's weight as his limbs lost their tension, and Merlin crumpled in his arms, dangling like a rag doll, his head tipped back to expose his throat as if inviting someone to place a blade there after all. Arthur fumbled briefly with Merlin's dead weight, made worse by the chainmail in which they had dressed him that morning to make him look the part of the prince that Arthur insisted he be. Before he managed to drop Merlin entirely, both Gwaine and Geraint hooked their arms underneath Merlin's so that they could lower him gently to the ground.

"His shoulder," Arthur blurted. The warble in his voice only struck him after he heard it as an echo in his own ears, but he kept talking anyway. "Don't wrench it; it's barely healed."

Gwaine pulled Merlin away from Geraint, careful to support the shoulder just as Arthur demanded, and then to Arthur's shock, he shoved Arthur's hands off as well. "You," Gwaine growled, "stay back."

Arthur stepped backwards out of surprise more than anything, and then glanced around. There was quite a lot of hostility in the faces around him, actually. More than he had anticipa… Arthur drew himself into a vertical line, his spine moving like sick, and leaned upright rather than straightening properly. The magic folk stayed back and for the most part, they merely appeared concerned or frightened, but Arthur's knights… Arthur's knights wore faces etched from stone, and they directed that at their king.

"What is this?" It occurred to Arthur that Merlin, or some other magic user could be influencing everyone around him somehow. Like a self-preservation instinct, or just plain insidious magic. Except that the air smelled of nothing but grass and chilled dew; there wasn't a single hint of old lightening on it.

Ronhael sidestepped in Arthur's periphery and then strode quickly over to stand between Merlin and Arthur, his face pale through the cold set of his features. Geraint hadn't moved yet, but Arthur took note of his stance, finally, and likened it to the way he had stood in the kitchen corridor when he saved them from overprotective druids and their misguided good intentions. Percival also perched nearby, visibly conflicted, but when Arthur met his gaze, he stepped slowly over to stand above Gwaine. He hadn't drawn his sword, but he hardly needed to; the suspicion mingling with apology on his face said more than enough.

As Arthur breathed shallowly and tried to figure out what was going on, still reeling from the morning's revelation as well as his own guilt, Lamorak approached from amongst the knights to stand tall in front of Arthur. He appeared less hostile than most of the others, but there was no deference in his stance either; he came before his king as a warrior, not as a subject. "You told us," Lamorak said lowly, "that you had not bound him to you by some potion or enchantment. You swore that his loyalty came freely."

Arthur blinked, bewildered. "What?"

"That little potion that you both claimed had medicinal purpose?" Lamorak shifted, hands at his sides in a fighter's stance even though his joints likely ached with age and his fingers curled oddly at the knuckles the way a young man's would not. "You pushed it down his throat again just before dawn to quell his protests, when he expressed his concern that he could not endure this situation much longer. Just as happened before at the wellspring. And then you argued, and he implored you to kill him so that he couldn't hurt you."

Arthur barked an incredulous sound; it hurt his throat on the way out. "You think I've done this to him?" And hadn't he, if only through his own careless disregard?

"Who else could?" Lamorak cut in. "He loves you as most men can only dream of being loved. If my wife ever looked at me with half as much devotion as he looks upon you, I would be drunk on it the rest of my life. Either it's a lie of that potion you keep pouring into him, or he is so pathetically loyal that he would just allow you to bind him because you asked."

Arthur's jaw went slack as he tried to find words to refute that. "This is not my doing," he insisted. Thankfully, anger set in after that and he grit his teeth before saying, "How dare you accuse me."

"Who else would we accuse?" Lamorak demanded back. "That man is a living storm. The only way someone could enchant him is if he let them, and you are the only person he would ever allow the privilege. Did you lie to us about your hold over him?"

Arthur swung without thinking. It was the last straw. His heart had been wrung out and devastated that morning, mere moments ago. He hadn't taken even a moment to process the horrible things churning in his gut at what he had learned, and now they were accusing him? His own knights were accusing Arthur of the most heinous crime he could imagine, never mind that it was his fault – that he didn't need to lay that spell himself to be the cause of it –

Lamorak dodged him because Arthur was clumsy in his rage, and Arthur stumbled to his knees when his momentum shoved him into nothing but the empty air. As soon as he hit, he folded over, grabbed at the front of his armor, and screamed at the top of his lungs. Frustration and fear – the failure, again, to see what was right in front of him – the guilt, and the grief, and the terror that this could never be undone, that he had ruined a precious thing by his own arrogance and desperate carelessness – the self-hatred he had denied ever feeling even though it must have lingered in some form within his breast since long before he ever took his first crown – all of it came out at once in that sound. It tore his throat so brutally that he tasted copper, and everyone near him winced as they stepped back.

The silence deadened the air after Arthur's breath petered out, followed by fading echoes winding out into the scrub wind, leaving a void behind in his chest. He gasped involuntarily to replenish his lungs and then just sat there on his knees, too exhausted for mortification as the tears dropped whether he willed them or not, beyond his control. He had been holding himself tense and brittle as dried flowers for so long he no longer knew what it felt like to be anything else, and he couldn't hold it together anymore. Merlin was the only thing left that kept him from falling apart – kept him grounded and alive – but Merlin…

A firm hand landed gently between Arthur's shoulders. "I apologize, sire." Lamorak. "I had to be sure."

Arthur gulped an odd, broken sound and pressed his gloved hands too hard against his cheekbones to smear them clean of slick water. "You still think that I am cruel and a hypocrite like my father?"

Though he sounded repentant, Lamorak admitted, "I thought it possible, and it was wrong of me. I let my memories of the past influence me, but I should know better. We all should."

"You all thought that of me?" Arthur choked. "All of you?" He shook his head. "Why?" But there was no actual reason, and the silence above him confirmed that. The temper rose again like gorge in Arthur's throat, but it only trickled this time; he had no energy left to make it rage. "Get off me." Arthur jerked his shoulder out from under Lamorak's hand and struggled to his feet. His knees were weak, and the rest of him felt swollen like a fevered limb. He took several shaky steps in a random direction, not even looking where his feet fell, and then stopped.

From a ways behind him, Arthur heard someone – possibly Brennis – ask, "What do we do now?"

Caradoc replied, "We can't bring him home, poor lad. It's too dangerous."

"We can't kill him." Percival. Loyal, steady Percival with his simple heart of gold.

"We may have to," Ronhael said, his voice reluctant. "We have no idea who controls him now."

"Yes, we do," Arthur countered. He gingerly cleared his abused throat and spoke at the ruined fort rather than at his men. If they even were his men anymore; he wasn't all that sure that he even wanted them now, when they could think so poorly of him. "This is Morgana's doing."

A rustling murmur of incredulous sound crested and died at Arthur's back.

"Sire," Caradoc ventured. "You told us that the Lady Morgana was dead."

Arthur nodded at the ground. "She is." He pivoted and searched the grass for Merlin's boot, propped on the ground at an angle while the rest of him sprawled unconscious over Gwaine's lap. "By Merlin's hand. He is the one who killed her." But sadly, not before she managed to deal one last blow. One last hurt to take back.

Gwaine shifted enough on the ground that it jostled Merlin's foot too, and Arthur looked at him. "You never said what really happened," Gwaine remarked.

Low and raw, Arthur replied, "I couldn't." He drew himself up with a will he wasn't sure he had, and sniffed as he wiped his face again. He told himself that it was sweat, and didn't care that it was a lie. "I couldn't face that I'd failed her."

"Sire," Lamorak murmured, drawing his attention back from the grief that might have overtaken him again. "Arthur. Tell us now. It has been long enough. It's time we knew the truth."

Yes, it was. Arthur had been running from the events of that day ever since they happened, and Merlin suffered for his selfish avoidance. Arthur sniffed hard and wet to clear his nostrils and then nodded, but at his hands; he didn't think that he could look at anyone and admit the awful truth of Guinevere's undeserved death. It might not have been Arthur's doing, but he still bore blame for not seeing it. For not protecting her from such an end. "When Morgana kidnapped Guinevere, we thought that we got to her in time." Arthur shook his head and swallowed the mucous that tried to suffocate his words. "We didn't. Our queen never came home from that tower. We just didn't know it."

Gwaine looked away and then down to where Merlin lay draped across his knees. Other knights, faceless in Arthur's periphery, finally backed down and dropped their hands from their sword belts as they, too, looked away.

"I couldn't forgive myself for it," Arthur told the ground. "That she just…wasn't her, and I didn't notice."

Lamorak drew a shallow breath that nonetheless expanded his whole chest. "The assassination attempts, the Sarrum…the poison that nearly killed you. Henbane and whatnot. The murder of the boy who tampered with your saddle and tack. That was the queen?"

Arthur nodded without looking at any of them. "I should have known with the poison. It could only have been two people, and it wasn't Merlin." No one commented on that, thankfully – that it should be odd for a man to trust his servant before his supposedly beloved wife with so little hesitation.

Breaking through the threat of Arthur's brooding thoughts, Caradoc guessed, "She lured you from the castle, then. Another attempt to kill you."

"No," Arthur breathed, his voice rich and soft with feeling. "She said something over supper the night of the Sarrum's death, and it struck me, finally."

A long pause ensued, and then Ronhael asked, "What did she say, sire, to reveal herself?"

Arthur felt the humorless chuckle leave his mouth; he didn't hear it. "That Merlin was gone two days because he was seeing to a girl." He lifted his eyes to the whisps of pale clouds that sat unmoving in the sky. "Merlin doesn't have any use for girls. Guinevere would have known that."

Murmurs answered that just about as definitively as Arthur expected. There was no pretense left at the moment that could cover Merlin's inclinations, innocent as Arthur actually thought they were. Not after the things that Lamorak said, uncontested by Arthur, about the shape of his love for his king.

Pushing on, Arthur said, "He was gone so long during the peace negotiations because he was in the way. Someone poisoned him and left him in the woods for dead. It was the only way to ensure a clear path to me. I followed her after that. The rest…" He shrugged because there was no need to say it, and Arthur didn't want to even if there were. "Merlin promised to help me free her. To bring her back." His voice hitched on that last phrase and he pressed his hand to his chest in much the same manner as Merlin often did nowadays. As if it might relieve the tightness and the ache. "We drugged Guinevere and took her in secret to the Cauldron of Arianrhod. Morgana followed us – I still don't know how she could have, but she did, and she attacked us in the middle of it." Arthur smeared his hand over his jaw and shut his eyes to hide the knowledge of his failure that he knew still shone there. "That's when this happened. I thought… I wasn't paying attention. Guinevere was all but dead, and Morgana was just laughing at us with a sword sticking out of her ribs."

Lamorak swore under his breath and turned to face some other direction, as if the tale were too baldly told.

Arthur covered his face with a hand and rubbed his palm up and down once before dropping it. "Merlin wouldn't let her go. He swore an oath to save her and he's…" A liar. He's a liar and a keeper of terrible secrets. A broken, frightened man, just as Arthur helped make him. A desperate sorcerer, but his desperation wasn't like that of other people. It was a noble thing. It had compassion at its root. "He's a man of his word." Because he was. More than all the rest, he was that. "He refused to break his promise to me. I had to drag him off; it was killing him too. But I fucked up. The spell – he told me it would only work if the subject was willing, and he wasn't. I dragged him screaming into the water. He kept begging me to let him go back to her. To finish – he thought I was stopping him because I hated magic so much that using it to save her disgusted me more than letting her die. He struggled the whole way, and the magic…it needed a host, I imagine, and to get it out of her, he…" His breath finally failed him entirely, and after spending a moment in suffocation, Arthur sucked in a choking gasp of air.

Gwaine looked up in such a way that Arthur had to look back as he struggled to breathe. "He let it have him," Gwaine divined. "He tried to sacrifice himself."

Arthur nodded. "It was crawling up his arms as I pulled him off of her. It was…all over him. In his clothes, and reaching for his face… I thought when the screaming stopped, and the magic faded – when the light died – I thought she'd helped us. That…goddess thing, if that's what it really was. I thought something I said made her finally save him from it." She hadn't, though. More likely, now that Arthur thought about it, was that the moment Arthur tried to offer himself up in trade for Merlin's life, Merlin panicked. And somehow, though he couldn't entirely rid himself of the darkness he had taken on, he could contain it. Temporarily, at least; it wasn't gone, and it didn't lie quiet wherever he put it. It just festered like a suffocated wound, and continued its assault unnoticed, from within.

"Sire?" Geraint circled around Merlin's prone form, but he was no longer prowling a perimeter line. "What was the magic, exactly? What spell did the Lady Morgana use?"

Arthur's mouth moved soundlessly as he conjured up the will to say it out loud after all of this time, and his desperate efforts to forget it. "It was a ritual, not a spell. Teine diaga. Merlin called it a sacred fire."

Geraint exhaled as one gut-punched and looked at Merlin with wide eyes.

"He knew," Brennis spoke into the stunned silence. "In the forest, at the wellspring – when he tried to make me kill him with your sword – this was why. It wasn't a test. He was trying to save you."

Arthur nodded. "And there have been other things – protections and such. He doesn't actually know that it's there, or if he does, it's not all the time. He's not lucid about it. But he knew something was wrong. He tried to tell me dozens of times, and I wouldn't listen. I told him he was being ridiculous, or that it was battle fatigue. I ignored his cautions."

"It's been driving him mad," Gwaine interrupted. "All of these…incidents. The drinking and the acting strangely – it was this…thing." He sucked on his teeth and glared up at Arthur. "How could you not notice?"

Arthur swallowed hard like a spasm. He couldn't answer that; he didn't know what he kept missing.

"It should have overtaken him," Geraint interjected.

"Morgana was dead," Arthur replied, voice choppy with the sensation of his many failures. "There was no one controlling the magic anymore."

"No, sire." Geraint shook his head and looked for support from a few other intrepid magic users who had approached through the line of knights while Arthur spoke. "That is not how that ritual works. It's born of mandrake, and once the initial spell is cast, it has intent of its own. The Lady Morgana didn't need to live to wield it; it fuels itself. It should have overpowered him and transformed his will."

"But it didn't," Brennis snapped. "Merlin kept fighting it; he's stronger than he looks."

Caradoc appeared in Arthur's periphery, his profile troubled. "Any spell from the Lady Morgana would try to target the king, and that lad adores the king. Is it any wonder he found a way to fight it?"

"No," Geraint replied, voice cautious with a tenuous wonder. "No, I suppose it's not." He shook himself from a reverie that appeared disturbingly similar to the mindless fervor with which Arthur had grown accustomed to seeing in devotees of the old religion. "Sire, why did you go to the Cauldron of Arianrhod? What was there that you needed?"

Arthur pulled himself from his melancholy to give Geraint a strange look and reminded him, "The goddess." When that elicited no recognition, Arthur amended, "The white goddess? That's what Gaius and Merlin called it, at least; I don't actually know what it was. All I saw was the light on the water. After he summoned it, it didn't do anything but shine there."

Geraint seemed to attempt something other than complete bewilderment, as if that might insult Arthur. He turned haltingly to ask silent questions of one of his companions – the knitting woman, Arthur realized. The one who had whispered soft words to Geraint to deter him from being overly vitriolic with Byrdde. When all the woman did was shrug and pull down the ends of her knit hat, Geraint faced Arthur again, clearly at a loss. "I know the myth of Arianrhod, sire, but nothing about a cauldron or a goddess. And the magic you describe – if it was indeed that ritual – " He glossed over the fact that he wouldn't say the words of the spell himself, as if syllables could be harbingers. " – then there should be nothing capable of breaking such enchantment."

"They told me that the chances were slim," Arthur allowed. "But there was a chance."

"Forgive me, sire," Geraint said, his words hesitant. "But I don't see how. That ritual is some of the darkest magic there is."

Dark, yes. But she smiled at them, Arthur reminded himself. At the end, Guinevere smiled, and it looked like her when she did it. The real her. It was brutal to recall, but at least this time, the burgeoning pain also carried a kernel of hope that what happened in that terrible moment as he dragged Merlin away from her meant that whatever Merlin did to her worked. That maybe it wasn't just wishful thinking. "She would have come back," Arthur insisted. "If Morgana hadn't interrupted us, she would have come back to me." Through all of the screaming and the fear and the pain, it was the starkest conviction, and the most wrenching hope he could have, because if she was there at the end – if that smile was real – then it meant that Merlin wasn't irretrievably lost either.

Dozens of pairs of eyes flickered away from Arthur, their pity obvious in their avoidance of what he said.

Arthur accepted the pity, but only because he knew that in this one instance, he deserved it. He had been a fool, and pity was the least of his punishments for his failures. "Think what you like, but I know what I saw. I know my heart." The heart which nearly died on that shore with her, and now still might. Arthur turned to Gwaine. "I have to take him back there, and try to undo the damage I caused. Will you come with me?"

Without hesitation, and still very angry, Gwaine replied, "Try to stop me."

"And me," Percival interjected. At the strange looks he received, Percival shrugged. "He's our friend."

George stepped into Arthur's field of view as if he hadn't been there all along, hiding in plain view as servants did. "I will also accompany you, sire. He is my charge. I bear responsibility as well."

"I'll go too," Geraint announced. He added, however, "With your permission, sire. If there is a spirit on this water who can intercede, then someone must call it for you. Someone with magic."

His throat closed at the offers, so instead of speaking, Arthur merely nodded his numb gratitude to all of them.

Lamorak cast a searching glance at the knights around him, and then bowed his head in acceptance. As he stepped forward, Caradoc, Ronhael and Brennis followed. Roland joined them a beat later, and then, to Arthur's surprise, so did Meliot, though he looked like he might regurgitate something as he did it. "We cannot allow you to embark on this quest alone, sire."

The moment should have been rich and reassuring. Profound. It was none of those things. Or if it were, Arthur couldn't see it. "Understand," he said, picking his words the way he might pick his way across a floor laden with obstacles in the dark. "I will not give this up. I've already lost Guinevere to this magic; I will not lose the only other person who loved her as much as I did." Arthur didn't explain further, but he could read the comprehension on the faces of everyone in earshot. In purposeful echo of Merlin's own broken promise, Arthur vowed, "I will find a way to bring him back." No matter the cost. Just as Merlin had done for her.

Still kneeling with Merlin at Arthur's feet, Gwaine lowered his head so that whatever showed on his face would not travel to the notice of others. Lamorak dipped his chin once in understanding, and eventually, the others followed. Arthur knew that if anything went wrong, or turned dangerous, they would probably try to stop him. As they should, Arthur thought. Merlin would expect it of them, and they knew it. They would disobey Arthur in a heartbeat to keep him safe. But they would let him try, at least, because surely, they could see the peril should they give up now and take the sure road to safety – kill Merlin and be rid of the threat of him, as Merlin himself seemed to have tried doing more than once already. It lurked unmistakable in Arthur's face – in the hollowness of his heart where he staved off the grief of another loss not yet come. Uther's kind of grief. A sorrow fit to destroy all that lay before it as sacrifice to the pride of a cognizant fool.

Arthur drew a breath forced into smoothness by will alone, and shut his eyes on the knowledge that if he failed in this, he would walk himself into his own ruin without caring anymore what it made him. He was tired, and precarious, and a king alone could only endure so much before the weight crushed him and left him broken as it had left his father – a splintering that came long before Morgana's betrayal addled Uther with its final blow. There was nothing dramatic or profound in the fall of a living king; it happened so quietly that most of the time, no one even noticed at all.

Arthur shook himself physically to rid his mind of that contemplation, and opened his eyes. His men waited, somber and expectant. They would need to plan quickly, before Merlin woke up. "Time is short, and we have much to do."

---

TBC