Rating: R for violence
Pairing/s: Merlin/Arthur
Camelot_drabble Prompt: 496, resilient
Merlin bingo: captivity
Warning: violence
Author's Notes: unbetaed, Galdre means wizard in Old English.
Disclaimer: Merlin characters are the property of Shine and BBC. No profit is being made, and no copyright infringement is intended.
He didn't remember much. The ache of bruises littering his body, the hard lump at the back of his head, the way he couldn't move as ropes surrounded him. There was the call of slavers laughing at women begging for their lives and irate men promising retribution, then the sound of the lash and screaming.
But as the day wore on, men, filthy with sweat and dried blood, pulled him up, then marched him over to the smithy and bound him with iron manacles.
He fought with teeth and kicks, his fingers scrabbling away at the hands that held him down, but in the end, shackled and exhausted, a thousand knives shoving into him as the manacles snicked shut, blackness took him.
When he woke again, his throat ached as if he'd been screaming, the pain of his mottled skin was nothing to the feel of ribs grinding away. They must have kicked him while he was unconscious.
Everything felt muddy, like the colour had been leached out, and he shook his head, trying to find himself again, but to no avail.
One of the slavers, in his head he called the bastard Bad-Teeth, grinned at him, pulling him up and shoving him towards the others. It was a motley line of young and not so young, men, women, a few teens, all shackled together in a line. No children, no old ones, either. A second later, he was in the same line, chained with the rest.
Then everyone was pulled along, sometimes dragged, but they all tried to keep up. Those who couldn't were left behind, unmoving. Dead.
He tried to see where they were going, how to escape, but his mind was still muddled, and he didn't know where he'd go anyway. He didn't remember his village or his family, or worst of all, his name. Nothing but blank spaces where memories should be.
The brigands began to call him Galdre, wizard, and laugh about it, and what could he say? They had whips and knives and he had no choice but to accept it. Not that he didn't wish them all dead. Especially Bad-Teeth, who was the worst of the lot.
He certainly didn't have any magic, but he shivered whenever they called him that. Galdre meant death in some places, he heard, or imprisonment or torture. Never a good thing.
He tried to keep his head down, trying to make the most of his new life, staying away from Bad-Teeth when he could. But the slaver seemed to enjoy making Galdre's life a living hell, beating him when he didn't work fast enough, touching him in all the wrong places to make him squirm, loaning him out to his fellow scum for mockery or terror.
Sometimes he couldn't take it anymore and he would fight back, using mud and fists, but it never worked. All it got him was pain and scars. And laughter. The bandits seemed to love it when he fought, sometimes making bets to see how long it would take to subdue him. Sometimes, Bad-Teeth would lose and then Galdre would lose, too, with more kicks and pain as his reward.
Sometimes, Galdre thought about fighting until they killed him for it. But he was too stubborn to die just yet. In the desperate jumble in his head, he half-remembered that someone, some shadow figure with gold hair and bright blue eyes, had told him once that he was loved, that they'd always find him.
Galdre wished it true with all his heart. But it had been months and he knew no one was coming for him. Ever.
As the year wore on, there were rumours among the slaves that some prince or other was starting to clear out the slaver camps. More hope than reality, Galdre dismissed it all. He'd seen enough of hope vanishing like smoke and he wouldn't allow himself to dream again.
But screams cutting across the camp, knights riding into the scattering crowds of slaves and slavers, and Galdre began to anticipate escape. If nothing else, the chaos would let him run without Bad-Teeth bringing him back.
He took that chance. Sprinting past one white horse, the knight startled as he ran past, Galdre didn't wait to see what happened next. He was too busy trying not to die, trying not to get caught, trying not to be enslaved ever again.
But hope is a frail thing and easily destroyed.
As Galdre tripped and fell into a space between boulders, Bad-Teeth was right behind him, pulling at his threadbare tunic, pushing him down. "I'll kill you myself if you don't stop squirming," Bad-Teeth snarled. "Once that Camelot scum leave, it's going to be you and me, boy. My Galdre."
In the distance, Galdre could hear the sounds of battle, of slaves cheering, of slavers running away or begging for mercy or screaming revenge before they gurgled their last. Bad-Teeth must have heard it, too, because he yanked Galdre up and started to pull him further into the woods.
But Galdre wasn't about to go. His hand curled around a rock, and he swung it, hard, into Bad-Teeth's face. Blood spurted everywhere and Bad-Teeth howled, but Galdre wasn't done. Again and again, he battered at Bad-Teeth's face, his throat, his chest, anywhere Galdre could reach.
Soon there was no sound but Galdre's screaming fury, and Bad-Teeth stopped, just stopped, his body morphing into blood and guts and a face so battered that it would be hard to recognize it as human.
Galdre kept pounding away, not paying any attention, just making sure Bad-Teeth would never hurt him again.
It was only when someone came up from behind him and wrenched back his arm that he finally dropped the rock. Shivering, weeping for who knows what, trying not to think about what would happen next, Galdre waited for nothing and everything. He was so tired of hope and despair that he just wished it were over.
From behind him, a man said, his voice shaking, "Merlin?"
Galdre looked up to see golden hair and the bluest eyes and began to think again. He didn't recognise the man, but it was better than the alternative. Perhaps the knight might even take the shackles off and let Galdre go free.
The man's smile was nice, the hug even nicer.
So Galdre nodded and hugged back.
After all, Merlin was as good a name as any.
Maybe someday, he would even remember.
