Disclaimer: Merlin is not mine.
All in all, Arthur had the feeling that—had he not been so unnerved and woozy and quite possibly dying from what he suspected was brain matter pooling in his ears—he might just have felt rather foolish.
It wasn't as though he didn't happen to have a very good reason for being unnerved and woozy and curious about what was or was not dripping out of his earlobes. It wasn't that he didn't have the right to be frantic or confused, even without taking into account the head injury. It wasn't that the situation didn't call for some sort of reaction that may have been less than dignified. It was just that he would have very much liked to not be the only one reacting.
No one was doing much of anything. No one was speaking or approaching or throwing debris in his general direction. It didn't even look as though anyone was moving at all.
Well, it didn't look as though anyone else was moving. No matter how determined Arthur felt, no matter how many random spurts of energy jolted through his body at the occasional opportune moment, no matter how steadfast were his intentions…there had been too great a toll on his body for him to cut as strong and imposing figure as he would have liked. In what he chose to believe was an at least somewhat convincing attempt to appear in control of his own body, he was in more or less constant motion, shifting his weight from one foot to the other and trying to keep his blood flowing in preparation for whatever—almost certainly unwise—move that he was going to make next. He had to be ready.
So far, he was successfully not falling down.
It could have been worse, he reasoned, resisting the urge to stick an exploratory finger his ear. It could have been much worse. He wasn't leaning or anything.
But none of the others were doing anything. Arthur almost suspected that they were somehow not breathing and were reanimated corpses; he was just beginning to panic again at this fresh absurdity when he realized that they were all somehow inhaling in unison, and it was his own shivering that was making them seem so still.
And so silent.
"I liked it better when they were reanimated corpses," Arthur murmured, more for the sake of hearing his own voice than anything else. Their silence coupled with his panting at the effort of standing was not helping him to remain calm. He wondered if this was why Merlin never shut up. Maybe he was too worried that this would be the day that Arthur would learn the secret and so he talked and talked and talked to keep everything static. Or maybe he was just naturally annoying.
Arthur shook his head and focused on his opponents. Only the thin man whom Merlin had flung over the railing was making any sort of independent movement, and even that only seemed to be because his frame—magically animated or not—was not in solid enough condition to support his body.
The man was not swaying against the others and kept upright merely by the pressure of the other sorcerers at his sides, as Arthur might have suspected. Rather, the thin man was staggering in his stance, as though each of his bones was sporadically breaking and rehealing itself over and over again in some sort of twisted cosmic determination to remain halfway mobile. His breath was ragged—even compared to Arthur's—and rattling, a fact which wouldn't have unsettled Arthur nearly so much if it hadn't still remained in sync with the steady breathing of the other sorcerers.
Merlin, of course, was too busy being dead to contribute much to the whole scenario.
"Lazy to the last," Arthur muttered, irritated.
Still, in the back of his mind, Arthur hated himself for being almost glad that Merlin had nothing to contribute. Arthur wasn't sure how well he would have been able to stand seeing Merlin breathing with all of the others, staring blankly like all of the others, motionless like all of the others. One on one, it had been easy to separate Merlin from the idea of the other sorcerers on the hunt, easy to believe him something other than an enemy. All lumped together, Merlin among them and the same as them, all in uniform…Arthur didn't know what he would have done.
Not that there was a whole lot that he could be doing. Even if he'd had some sort of weapon more impressive than the chunk of his own castle, he couldn't imagine that he could manage any sort of offensive that would be anything other than embarrassing. The best that he could do was to try to arrange himself in some sort of stance—shifting or not—that disguised at least somewhat the extent of his injuries. He was nearly optimistic; the dirt and dust that more or less coated his body-mostly from the destruction of the corridor and the violent slide down the hall that were courtesy of his renegade manservant's magical temper tantrum-almost certainly concealed some of the cuts and scrapes. Actually, from what little he could gather without looking himself over, the dust was serving to clot some of his wetter wounds.
He chose to ignore the medical implications. This wasn't really the time to worry about infection. The damage was probably already done, and it wasn't as though Gaius could amputate his head. What was infection at a time like this?
Still, no amount of dust could hide the fact that he was clutching his right arm to his body in an attempt to keep it stabilized. Besides, even if any of the sorcerers were able to overlook how he held himself, the lack of precision with which he tossed the rock up and down in his uninjured hand surely gave away the fact that he was rather unpracticed with his left arm.
Also, there had apparently not been enough dust on his face to clot the scrape that ran along his cheek. Or the brain matter that was probably oozing out of his ears.
In a way, it was unfortunate; if he'd slid a bit farther, been hurled a bit deeper, fallen a bit harder…maybe there would have been enough grime to hide it all. As it was, Arthur didn't think that the slide had been cumulative enough of the debris to help him into fooling anyone into thinking him the paragon of health and heartiness just then.
"Count on Merlin to slack off," Arthur breathed. He was already half wishing that he'd chosen a less weighty rock. Or no rock at all. It was the brave thing to do, yes. There was something wonderfully tragic and courageous and epic about making a last stand on his two feet with whatever weapon he could manage. The only problem was that the idea of a last stand was seeming much more tragic than epic as the seconds passed. What good was a rock going to do him? Even if he threw it with enough force to actually hit one of them, he couldn't exactly count on it ricocheting off of each of their heads to knock them all out.
Although that would have been a hell of a sight.
But as it was, the rock would probably do him no favors. The last thing that he needed was for one of them to decide to magically disarm him before going for the kill and went ahead to break his other arm. Unpracticed as he was with his left arm, he still did not particularly want to make his last stand a series of kicks.
But he would be damned if he weren't going to be brave about the whole thing.
"Someone once told me that bravery is really only a very particular type of stupidity," said Arthur, louder.
There was no response. Just as well. He couldn't remember who had told him that.
Maybe he really should have just played dead.
It probably wouldn't help his chances that he was standing over another sorcerer's corpses, Arthur realized gloomily. It wasn't as though Arthur had actually had anything to do with Merlin's collapse—which had been much more epic and tragic than anything Arthur was capable of at that point—but it couldn't have looked very good. Arthur had been beaten half to death, and despite his best efforts, it showed; he wondered whether it could seem as though he'd taken the hits as he'd fought Merlin, perhaps striking him down by a lucky blow to the head with a rock that was apparently his weapon of choice. Yes, it probably didn't look too great for Arthur to have killed one of them.
It did seem that at least some of the sorcerers were looking at Merlin rather than at Arthur. It was difficult to say for sure; the gold that overtook even the whites of their eyes obscured any definitive indication of what they might have actually been focusing on. Arthur could only guess by the tiltings of their faces and the angles of their necks. Of course, Arthur and the fallen Merlin practically overlapped; surely it was his own wishful thinking that these sorcerers could be focusing on anything other than a consideration of just how they should go about killing the king.
If that were the case, however, they were certainly taking their time about it. It didn't seem as though there was any magical mandate about leaving Arthur for whoever had cast this spell or that there was some special ritual to be completed before he died. The thin sorcerer and Merlin hadn't wasted any time in trying to kill him. It was only by luck that both had failed at doing so. The overall goal seemed to just be to kill Arthur. It was what made the most sense, he knew. Whoever had cast the spell had to know that there was at least some chance that it would take some time for Arthur to be found, even with Merlin on the prowl; he or she would want Arthur dead without ceremony before the sun had the chance to rise and ruin it all.
So why were they dawdling now?
Arthur supposed that he ought to be glad that they weren't hastening to smack him with rocks or destroy more of his castle or fling him down to the courtyard or blow him up like he was a set of enemy stocks, but his body was aching and his arm was broken and he was dirty and his brain was oozing and it was only force of will that was keeping him conscious by that point, and Arthur was sick of not knowing what the hell was going on. Gratitude might have come a bit earlier, perhaps if there'd been a reprieve between the attacks that were beginning to feel more and more like terribly cheap shots. When he challenged an enemy to a duel, he at least made sure that they had the same weapons. Was there no honor in sorcery?
Still, as much as he was already mourning his manservant, Arthur found himself resenting him for the fact that his body ached and his arm was broken and he was dirty and his brain was probably broken, and all because of Merlin. Yes, Arthur might have been grateful back when he'd still been all in one piece. Now the decision was made and he was staying and—with that choice—all vestiges of graciousness had vanished. Arthur was just annoyed.
"I ought to throw this rock at you," Arthur told the dead Merlin.
His throat was thick, and Arthur coughed.
Why weren't they doing anything?
In a far corner of his mind, where he wasn't annoyed and he wasn't mourning and he hadn't already given himself up for dead, something nagged at him. Something was telling him that he ought to be glad of the delay for some reason other than the obvious. There was something that he wasn't seeing, and it was right there…
But his head hurt and his throat ached and it all seemed so unimportant but there was something and…
And…
And…
And it didn't really matter, did it? He didn't have any control in the matter. He didn't have any power. Now, with the knowledge that Merlin of all people had been a sorcerer, had he ever had control over anything? No, there was nothing that he could do to change a damn thing, and it hurt more than he would have imagined. He was the king, and he didn't have any control…
But then, Arthur thought suddenly, neither did they.
Well, that was a troublesome thought. Merlin hadn't had a choice because Merlin was a sorcerer, and these were sorcerers, and if they didn't have any control and Arthur didn't have any control, what the hell were they fighting over?
That was a question that Arthur Pendragon found that he particularly did not want to answer. But now that he'd gone ahead and thought of it…
"I should have sacked you ages ago," Arthur said conversationally, speaking at Merlin again. "You ruin everything. Oh well. Maybe they'll take mercy and kill me now."
They did not kill him, but he was spared any further immediate consideration of the matter because someone finally, finally moved.
It was a girl.
And all at once, Arthur realized that he'd liked it better when no one was moving. He tensed as best he could without falling over, fighting a bizarre urge to laugh. It was almost funny, he thought; by far the smallest of the assembled sorcerers, this girl had broken ranks and moved forward in her patched apron and flour fingerprints and messy braid, and Arthur was afraid of her. Really, it was almost funny.
But his throat was thick and he couldn't laugh. He coughed instead.
Then, even as Arthur clenched his fingers more tightly around the rock that was his only weapon, he took a closer look at the girl. She had the vaguely familiar look that Arthur tended to associate with most servants, those with specialized duties excepted. Merlin was excepted as well, but that was mostly due to prolonged exposure and the fact that he was spectacularly bad at his job. Most servants were not so notable, Arthur thought. Not to the king, anyway. Arthur didn't even meet many of them, let alone hire them. That's what stewards were for. Arthur could have seen most servants every day and never have bothered to take a good look unless something was done wrong and it wasn't Merlin who'd done it.
Arthur wondered what that said about him. It seemed perfectly reasonable. He was a busy man. Yet...
Still, Arthur was almost positive that this was one of the kitchen girls. He would have seen her a thousand times, eaten meals that she'd prepared, nodded his acknowledgment without really acknowledging, accepted her curtsies as expected courtesies. He would have seen her a thousand times, and she was a sorcerer.
Or sorceress. He was fuzzy on the rules.
Considering it, Arthur thought that he'd've felt like a fool for not knowing about his magical kitchen girl whose name he couldn't even place...if he hadn't had a magical manservant around him for most of his waking hours over the past decade. Compared to the Merlin oversight, the kitchen girl's secret sorcery was almost negligible.
Arthur coughed again, and then he realized.
He may not have known her name, but Merlin would have. They would have known each other, surely, although Merlin had been abrupt and unpleasant for an entire day after Arthur had given the impression that he thought that all servants know one another. But for whatever reason, people seemed to like Merlin. Arthur had always assumed that this was the case because they didn't have to deal with Merlin for a manservant. Not that Arthur couldn't have just gotten rid of Merlin. But that was an entirely different issue that Arthur tended not to think about.
This girl, though…she would have known Merlin. She might have even liked him. Maybe she was one of the kindly servants—amused rather than irritated by the fact that Merlin still hadn't gotten himself sacked or flogged or executed for his behavior—who snuck Merlin food when he didn't have time to dine with Gaius and one of the servants who prepared Arthur's meals anyway when Merlin had forgotten to run down to the kitchens to give notice that the king was hungry and didn't trust any unidentifiable meals that Merlin brought him anymore. She was young enough that she and Merlin might have even been friends.
So that wasn't great for Arthur just then.
The girl walked forward and came very close. Arthur fought he instinct to step backward, not wanting to touch her. She paid him no mind, apparently not so preoccupied with the general motionlessness as Arthur had been. She just bent low over Merlin and—in an act so bizarrely tender and contrary to her expressionless face—tilted Merlin's chin so that he would have been staring straight up if his eyes hadn't been closed.
And if he hadn't been dead. There was also that. Arthur kept forgetting. He coughed again.
The girl knelt at Merlin's side and, as she did so, Arthur could have sworn that the other sorcerers all leant forward to look at the body of the fallen sorcerer, if the directions of their heads were at all indicative of their gazes. He wondered if they were going to light Merlin on fire or move him aside or do something equally strange at such a time. He didn't know how sorcerers usually dealt with their dead. He knew what Uther had usually done with the bodies of dead sorcerers, but Arthur couldn't imagine that they would be so callous with one of their own. Arthur hadn't changed the law forbidding sorcery, but even he couldn't have borne to deal with them as had his father.
Maybe these sorcerers would build a magical pyre for Merlin. He should probably move away from Merlin lest he too be burnt, Arthur thought wildly. His vision swam suddenly, and he shook his head before deliberately shifting his broken arm in the hopes that the pain would perk him up.
It did, and Arthur said a word that always made Guinevere shake her head.
Arthur didn't move away, and Merlin didn't catch fire. The sorcerers just…looked. They leant forward and looked. It was all terribly eerie, and he looked back at Merlin.
Arthur shifted his arm again and coughed.
The kitchen girl had taken Merlin's hand and she now held it in her own for a moment. Arthur was just beginning to wonder if they had perhaps been more than friends—a secret that Arthur would have just yesterday been positive that Merlin would not be capable of keeping—and if her feelings for Merlin were breaking through the spell just as Merlin had broken through for Arthur, but her eyes showed no signs of flickering. She just gently unfolded the fingers and moved his hand up toward his face, and Arthur understood. She flattened Merlin's palm and laid it delicately against the welt that had burned his cheek.
It was almost as bad as when Arthur had first realized what Merlin had done to himself. Seeing the pale and unbroken flesh of the back of Merlin's hand contrasting so vividly with the terrible burn even as the edges matched perfectly was such a reminder of the reality of the mortality of what was happening that Arthur's throat grew thick again and he was so thoroughly uncomfortable that he thought again of making a run for it just to escape having to see it all again.
The girl let go of Merlin's hand, and it dropped heavily to his side, her tenderness apparently spent. Still, she did not rise. Rather, she reached her own hand out and matched her palm to the shape of his on his cheek. Her palm was smaller than Merlin's, and it looked as though she had pressed hers against a larger hand, red palm wider and red fingers longer. She closed her eyes, and Arthur realized for the first time that none of them had been blinking.
Drawing a sharp breath, Arthur waited for something to happen. Would she wake from the spell? Would she decide that Arthur had done this to her fellow sorcerer and that it was finally time for him to die? Would she attack him as had the skinny sorcerer, without prelude, or would she toy with him, as had Merlin? He couldn't say for sure.
But all the same, he started to back away.
He started to back away and—at first—he didn't quite realize that he wasn't doing it of his own volition. It was the sensible thing to do, of course, but he'd been going with the more nonsensical courses of action throughout the entire night. Would there be any point in changing now? He'd meant to stay where he was and hold his ground, insignificant a gesture as it was. He meant to be so brave that he was stupid and so stupid that he was brave. Assuming that his legs wouldn't give out on him, he'd fully intended to stay where he was.
But he was backing away.
More confused than alarmed, he glanced around him. He'd been so focused on the girl that he'd all but forgotten about the others. They were so still and same that even watching the servant girl examine Merlin's injuries had seemed a better alternative to trying to avoid looking any of the others in the eyes. The last thing that he wanted to do was to go ahead and recognize another one of them. That would hardly do him any good. It certainly wouldn't make any of this any easier.
When he twisted around, however, he saw that all but one of the assembled sorcerers were not looking at him but rather at either the girl or Merlin. It was impossible for him to say for certain, but Arthur had a bizarre feeling that they weren't staring at the servant girl. She'd been with them all along, but the sight of the fallen Merlin seemed to have changed something, somehow.
Even as he was backed away, Arthur shivered.
The one sorcerer who was not looking in Merlin's direction happened to be the skinny sorcerer with the broken body.
Of course it was, Arthur thought, nearly laughing again. Of course. Maybe this slow backing away was the skinny man's broken way of exacting his revenge. Arthur wasn't entirely sure about how sorcery worked, but he knew that if he had been thrown off of a balcony, his fighting skills wouldn't have been at their finest either.
Still. Backing the kingly slowly to death down a corridor didn't seem like a feat worth bragging about. Not without some exaggeration, anyway. Arthur wasn't even being eased toward the edge of the balcony.
But that wasn't the point. The point was that the skinny sorcerer was doing something magical to him, and the manner in which he was doing it was either very encouraging or very ominous.
It was also slightly anticlimactic.
Certainly not for the first time that evening, Arthur been expecting some sort of attack, but this was so gentle a sensation that he didn't know what to do. If this was an attack, it was one significantly less effective than what Merlin had unleashed on him. He was just…walking backwards. It wasn't right. Unless one of them had managed to silently collapse a portion of the corridor and he was now being walked into an unseen hole, he did not see how this was much of a completion of the task of killing the king. The only pain that he felt was that which had preceded this new spell. It wasn't right at all.
Then, so abruptly that he would have fallen if he had not been walking away so slowly, the skinny sorcerer released him. As he did so, the assembled sorcerers moved forward to form a semicircle around Merlin and the kitchen girl, who still knelt above him. After a moment, she opened her eyes, and Arthur's heart sank; his admittedly meager hope that Merlin's body was somehow waking her from the spell was now vanished. Her eyes were as brightly golden as they had been when she'd first appeared. She stood up straight and took a place in the semi-circle. They all looked at Merlin.
Arthur waited for something to happen.
Bizarrely, it was the skinny sorcerer who moved forward next. Falling more than kneeling at Merlin's side, he took the place abandoned by the serving girl. Anthur inhaled sharply again. The thin man may have delayed his revenge on Arthur, but Merlin had been the one to fling him over the balcony. Perhaps the man merely intended to do some damage to what was left of Merlin before attacking Arthur. Or maybe doing damage to what was left of Merlin was his way of attacking Arthur.
The skinny sorcerer gave no indication that he intended anything approaching violence. Instead, he copied the movements of the servant girl, placing Merlin's hand over the welt on his cheek and then replacing Merlin's hand with his own. After a minute or two, he forced himself to his feet and staggered back to the semi-circle of sorcerers.
And then came the next.
One by one, the sorcerers approached Merlin and ran their fingers over the handprint blistered onto Merlin's face, tracing the lines of the welt with the sides of his hand, each carrying out a similar but slightly different examination, as though the one who had gone before had surely missed something. They took turns, the malevolence that had been directed at Arthur somehow transformed—in the switched of attention to Merlin—into something akin to curiosity, if that were even possible in their states, Arthur thought. It was so orderly that it was unsettling.
Oddly, Arthur found himself remembering an occasion from when he was a child, before Morgana had come to them, on which he and his father had gone to visit a neighboring kingdom to recognize the birth of a princess. He'd hated the whole thing, only too aware even as a child that this visit would probably end with negotiations for a betrothal between him and the new arrival, but he had his duty. He had no choice but to appear awed and interested and not at all resentful that he might have to marry this infant someday. There had been a line of people—nobles and royalty, of course—passing by the child's crib, stopping to make some comment or smile or cry rapturously or—in his case—wish that she'd been a boy so that he wouldn't have to marry her. They'd each stopped and made the necessary noises and everyone had been so impressed that Arthur had felt guilty for being bored because he didn't understand.
Although far too much on edge to be bored at this particular moment, Arthur found that he didn't understand this orderly sorcerous examination of his dead manservant any better than he had the excitement over a baby girl. Granted, he didn't think that there was much of a chance that anyone was going to insist that he someday marry this object of attention…he just wished that there was some training or some teacher or experience that might have prepared him for this. He also had the vague feeling that he ought to be bothered that these unfamiliar people were handling Merlin's body, but they were so strangely reverential that Arthur was more unnerved than offended on Merlin's behalf. As he watched the strange procession, Arthur felt more objective than he had in what seemed like days.
Even as he looked, it took Arthur a few moments to realize that it had stopped. They must have all had their turn, he realized. It must have been over, this examination of their fallen familiar. It was as over for them as it was for Arthur. Surely, this had just been their way of bidding farewell. Closure was closure, he reasoned, whether you happen to be a king or a murderous sorcerer enchanted to kill the local monarch. Arthur was shivering again, so he twitched his broken arm and coughed.
The sorcerers were in their perfect semi-circle again, Arthur noted, all of them looking down at Merlin.
Minutes passed.
Arthur didn't move.
Then, all at once, as in sync in this as they had been as they'd breathed, the sorcerers collapsed. Some fell backward and some fell forward. Others fell to their sides and collided with another so that they slid to the ground pressed against each other. They were still arranged in a loose semicircle around Merlin, and Arthur was suddenly reminded of the faceless miniature soldiers that Uther and his advisors had always used to strategize on the maps that had seemed so large once and that Arthur had liked to play with, sneaking in when the room was empty and taking a red and gold Camelot doll to knock all of the others down into a heap of enemy soldiers. Arthur would laugh and smile and have his fun above them before he put them all right once more before his father came and realized that Arthur had been playing with the war figures again. But these fallen people were not wooden dolls, they were not so small that Arthur felt a giant above them, they were not toys, they had faces…and Arthur would not just be able to clean them all up again and hide them away so that no one would know that this was somehow his fault. And all that he'd wanted to do was have his way with them, do with them as his father had done…but he wasn't a child anymore and they all had faces now…and Arthur didn't think that these would ever stand again, no matter whether or not he might try to prop them up again.
Even as the sorcerers hit the cracked and broken stones beneath their feet, they never made a sound.
Arthur didn't move. He wanted to leave this place and find his wife and find Gaius and sleep and hunt down whoever had placed this terrible curse and pretend that none of it had ever happened. There was so much that he wanted—that he needed—to do, and none of it involved remaining here, bearing witness to nothing at all.
Arthur didn't move.
Minutes passed.
And Arthur looked.
The kitchen girl who had first approached Merlin had fallen closest to Arthur, one of those who had fallen backwards. He didn't want to touch her; why should he? She was gone, he was almost certain. What point would there be in touching her? He wasn't even sure that he would be able to properly detect a pulse if he tried by fumbling with his left hand. And he didn't need to feel an absence of pulse to know. Her body did not move and her chest did not rise. She was gone.
Still, this was like no death that Arthur had ever seen. He'd witnessed plenty of men dead and dying; no recently deceased person—very recently, in this case—ought to have lost her color so quickly. She was downright gray and, as there was no apparent wound through which she could have lost enough blood to kill her and give her such a pallor, it didn't seem right. The only parts of her that retained its proper pinkness were her lips, and they were so chapped that Arthur could hardly believe that they hadn't cracked and bled on her. If there was any blood in her.
It was all so odd…
So Arthur bent over her, swaying slightly in his crouch as he fought to ignore the instinct to steady himself buy planting his right arm as an anchor. This was stupid enough already; he didn't need to make it worse by breaking the arm even more significantly. He took an extra moment and steadied himself.
Very gently, Arthur lowered his fingers over her right eyes, thumb on lower lid and forefinger on the upper. He slowly eased her eye open and looked, knowing that he could miss a pulse and confuse motionlessness, but when a person was dead, the eyes could not lie. So Arthur opened her eye and looked...
...and if Arthur had had anything left in his stomach and any energy left in his body, he was sure that he would have vomited. Even so, the nausea was tempered by a terrible sadness. Sorceress or not, she had been so young…no one ought to have to go to her grave in this state. Not like this…
Her eyes were gone, the skin lining the socket black and flaky. Her face was quite cool, but as shaken as he was, there was no doubt in Arthur's mind: somehow, her eyes had burned out.
Gaius hadn't told him about this part of the curse. In fact, Arthur thought that he remembered the old man telling him that afternoon—it seemed like ages ago—that the sorcerers would wake from their trances unharmed and unaware. Bile crept up the back of his throat, and Arthur blinked away angry tears that would have usually shamed him. Why would Gaius have lied about this? He would have known that Arthur would find out the truth. Why would he lie and not say that the sorcerers' eyes would burn? He looked down at the girl with no eyes and cursed the physician for the first time in his entire life.
Somewhere in the back of his mind as he looked at the young woman who had been his servant, Arthur realized that he didn't know what color her eyes had been, and it was something that he wouldn't even try to blame on the blow to his head. He'd never known her eye color. She had just been a servant, but now she was dead and her eyes were burnt out and he didn't even know her name. And it wasn't even his fault…why did he feel so guilty about it?
He thought that he probably ought to check the others. Just because she was dead with burnt eyes didn't mean that the others were in the same condition. Just because one had fallen thusly didn't mean that they all had.
But he knew. Suddenly very dizzy, he moved away from her and staggered backward until he hit the wall. He slid down into a sitting position and pulled his knees up. He closed his eyes, wishing that he could unsee everything. But there she was, and her eyes were gone and she was dead and they were all dead but Arthur wasn't and he should have been and it didn't make any sense and he hadn't thought to check Merlin's eyes but they were probably burnt and gone as well and they'd been blue before they'd been gold again when he'd placed his hand on his head and his eyes were probably gone and at least Arthur had known what color Merlin's eyes had been when they were and how on earth was Arthur going to explain this to anyone?
His throat was thick and he began to grow very warm in his armor. He clenched his fists and covered his eyes, already shut though they had been. Maybe she would be gone, maybe he wouldn't see anything at all, maybe he could just sleep for a little bit…
And someone coughed.
Arthur didn't move. He didn't even breathe. He wasn't sure at first that he hadn't been the one to cough and was just so on the verge of passing out that he hadn't the capacity to realize. But his throat was still thick. If anything, he needed to cough. It had been someone else, someone else around him, someone close…
Someone was alive or, at the very least, still dying.
He shouldn't want it to be Merlin. He knew that. Even if it was Merlin who was somehow alive, he'd be blind and his face would be seared and he'd probably be half deaf from the burned ear and his wits scrambled from the intensity…how could he wish for Merlin to be alive and have to live like that? What kind of man would Arthur be if he could wish that life upon his friend? He shouldn't want it to be Merlin.
Still, when Arthur heard the cough and processed that it wasn't his own, his heart leapt into his throat and his fists fell from his face and his eyes began to open. It didn't matter that he should want Merlin to have his rest, that it would be easier and more painless for Merlin to not have to wake, that it was cruel of him to hope. It didn't matter. Arthur had to see. He had to check.
So he opened his eyes.
He opened his eyes, and there was a brightness so sudden and so utterly overwhelming that he was irrationally struck with a terrible fear that his eyes were also burning out somehow, that he too would be blind and dead soon, that he too would be found lifeless in this assembly of fallen sorcerers. Their magic had killed them, and it was somehow happening to Arthur as well.
But there was no pain.
There was no pain at all and, after a moment, he realized why he couldn't see, and he laughed aloud in relief, too exhausted to reflect much on the impropriety of it. His eyes weren't magically burning out. He wasn't going blind or roasting from the inside out. He wasn't going to die, not like this. It wasn't magic at all.
The sun had risen over the courtyard. Arthur was squinting.
And once more, someone coughed.
.
.
.
.
Well, I don't have a whole lot of faith at all in this one, but I felt guilty for leaving the story hanging. I know that can be really annoying.
I've been stuck and unmotivated for a while, partly because I've gotten hooked on another TV show and because this is the only one of my multi-chapter stories that I didn't plan out ahead of time. The "In Media Res" stories can be surprisingly difficult to expand upon. Oddly, I've actually had chunks of this chapter written for well over a month.
But anyway, here's an update! Hopefully there are still a few around willing to read it.
Thank you for reading, and reviews are always appreciated!