Hello!

Man, what a few months it's been! I got a job, quit that job, transferred Universities, moved to a new place in the mountains, auditioned for (and ultimately got into) a play, declared a new major and minor, and also finally turned twenty-one, which means I can officially buy alcohol legally!

Anyway, this year has been crazy. But here I am with a new update!

As always, let me know if you see any mistakes, as this is unbeta'ed and written in a kind of feverish trance when I have free time.

Enjoy!

~Ra1n

Previously...

His pupils locked onto Arthur's, the cloudiness gone. "You really. are. an ass." he whispered, squinting. The room was still painfully bright. He frowned. "Where's. your. shirt?"

Arthur couldn't keep himself from barking out a laugh. Merlin turned his attention to his clone.

"I'm sorry," he groaned, "I wasn't. there-" He squeezed his eyes shut, still out of breath.

"But you remember now?" the clone asked, and Merlin nodded earnestly, mustering up as much strength as he could to move his head while it was still in Arthur's lap.

The uninjured Merlin seemed like he wanted to say more, but all he wound up saying was,"Well-"

The lights went out.

Something gold glittered in the dark.

It was suddenly far too easy for Arthur to hear his own heartbeat, his breaths loud and labored. It felt like he'd just finished a duel, though all he'd done was watch someone else's discomfort.

Already, he could feel that distinct lack of Merlin, neither kneeling beside him nor in his lap. Just as it had been in Merlin's room at the beginning of the ritual, the warlock had vanished from his original position. The blood that had been spreading across the front of his trousers was already cooling against his skin, growing tacky. Itchy. Arthur ran his palms along his thighs and grimaced at the feeling of coagulated blood on his fingers. He squinted into the darkness, where two pinpricks of yellow light hung in mid-air a dozen or so feet in front of him.

"Are you alright?" Arthur called, recognizing the golden orbs for what they were: a pair of magic-riddled eyes.

The eyes blinked. Arthur got to his feet and made his way over.

"Please," came Merlin's voice, "give me a second."

Arthur stopped. The eyes closed, plunging Arthur into an uneasy darkness, then opened again, a few feet higher. Merlin must have stood up. He took a deep, shaky breath.

"Stay there," his eyes turned and disappeared again. Arthur heard the tapping of his boots moving away.

"And where are you going?"

"Just stay there."

Arthur huffed. His stinging feet were coming to his attention again. Wincing, he lowered himself to the floor and put his legs straight out. For the first time, Arthur wondered what the real-world consequences of these rooms would be. Would he wake up in Merlin's chambers with his feet burned like this? There was very little Arthur could do by way of fighting with his soles blistered and torn. Would his clothing be transferred to Merlin? He didn't think that seemed plausible, because Merlin hadn't been naked when this all began. But then, nothing that had happened had seemed plausible to Arthur until very recently.

Ahead of him, something creaked, and Merlin's dark silhouette appeared in the gray light of a freshly-opened doorway. All Arthur could see were two burning circles of gold set into the black outline of Merlin's face, boring holes into Arthur's forehead.

Cold water slapped at his feet and legs suddenly, and Arthur gasped.

"Just water," Merlin said, then ducked through the doorway. His silhouette doubled over for a moment after crossing the threshold, and Arthur scrambled to get up, splashing through the inch of water on the floor. Before he'd even made it to the doorway, Arthur could hear coughing, then nothing at all.

The room beyond was cool and small, with soft slate walls that dripped with water.

Merlin stood in the center just above a dark, wet heap of fabric that Arthur could only guess was the latest Merlinesque inhabitant.

"He isn't breathing," Merlin said, nudging the heap gently with a booted foot.

Arthur's heart stuttered, and he elbowed him aside to get a better look at the soggy pile of rags. It was another Merlin, alright. With shaggy black hair plastered to his forehead and water flowing from the corners of his mouth and nose.

His lips were blue.

"What do I do?" Arthur looked up at Merlin.

"Make him breathe."

Arthur looked around the room frantically, but there was nothing in sight- just puddles.

"But how?"

"Don't you have magic?" Merlin asked, sounding a little bored.

Arthur stared at him. "How-?"

"Your eyes." Merlin motioned towards his own face. "It's hard to ignore."

Arthur didn't bother to ask why Merlin hadn't brought up the acquisition earlier.

"What do I do, then?"

Merlin shrugged. "Do look like I have magic?"

"What?" Arthur did a double-take. "But you do!"

"Not here, I don't!"

Arthur looked down at the blue-lipped Merlin. He groaned. "Goddammit…" He put his hand in the center of Merlin's chest, where the rise and fall of his lungs had stopped. His blue tunic was sticking to his skin. He hesitated. "I don't know what to do," he said.

Merlin was watching him intently. "Then you'd better hurry up and find out, sire."

Arthur looked at his hand on Merlin's still chest. Was he supposed to say a spell? Wasn't that how magic worked? How was he supposed to know the proper words? He didn't speak the tongue, and he had never bothered to pay attention to the way sorcerers spoke before they tried to kill him. He only knew the handful of words that Iseldir had given him to begin this quest, and the strange guttural roar Merlin had used to summon a dragon all those weeks ago… And even Arthur knew the dragon tongue was different than spell-casting.

And Merlin had never even used spells, had he? Not in all the time that Arthur had watched him from the shadows. It was just a pointed look or a lifted hand, followed by the flash of his eyes. Could Arthur do that? Make magic with a pointed look and a flash of his eyes?

Iseldir had said Arthur's and Merlin's magic was connected, but how did Merlin do it? Casting without words was practically unheard of. Now that he thought of it, he realized he'd never seen anybody else do it successfully. Even the handful of spells he'd seen Morgana cast were muttered or spoken.

Leave it to Merlin to do things the hard way.

"Okay, Merlin," Arthur said, repositioning his hand on his chest. "Your- our- stupid magic must be even a little useful, or else you'd be dead by now."

Merlin's chest was cold and clammy where his shirt was parted.

"You need to hurry, Arthur," Merlin said above him. "We're running out of time."

Breathe, Merlin, Arthur tried to say it as clearly as he could in his head.

His vision blurred for a moment.

Nothing happened.

Arthur grunted in frustration and pushed on Merlin's chest again. Maybe he couldn't do the whole wordless-spell thing. Maybe it needed words. "Breathe, Merlin."

Again, his vision blurred, halos appearing around every pinprick of light the wet floor reflected. His own chest stuttered of its own accord

Merlin remained still.

Arthur pushed down harder. "Breathe, goddammit!" He put his other hand over the first. There was no heartbeat. It unnerved him. His own heart was pounding in his ears.

"You idiot! You know how to breathe, I know you do!" Arthur took a deep breath of his own, then let it out. He tried to visualize Merlin's chest expanding and contracting.

"Sire-" Merlin said above him,but Arthur shushed him.

"Don't say it. It's not too late yet," he said. Myrddin persisted.

"Sire, æðm."

"What?" Arthur looked up. He caught a glimpse of his own eyes in the puddles- Golden spots of refracted light. His stomach rolled.

The Merlin above him had a peculiar look on his face. His brow was furrowed as he chewed on his lip. "Try æðm," He said the strange word again. "I don't know-it feels... right?"

Arthur continued to stare. "It feels right? What if it isn't?"

"Oh, don't look at me like that, it's your fault I can't remember," Merlin quipped. Arthur suddenly felt guilty.

"Fine, right. What was it again? Om-a?"

"Æðm."

"Ae-om," Arthur repeated. He looked down again. He made sure his hands were directly in the center of Merlin's chest, closed his eyes, and said, shaking:

"Ae-om."

His eyes flew open as something burned the inside of his eyelids. The world was brilliant, a warm haze coating everything he could see. His fingertips were framed in light. Merlin's chest was framed in light. Specks of yellow danced through the air.

And then his fingers moved.

Or, rather, the body below his fingers moved. Just slightly. He would have thought he imagined it, but at the same time, the Merlin above him gave a strange little half-gasp and clutched at his own chest.

Arthur said the strange, foreign word again.

This time, the body below him most definitely moved, and with it came a sound- a burbling, scratchy keen. Arthur pulled his hands from Merlin's body and pushed him onto his side, watching as streams of murky water ran from his mouth and nose. Arthur held his own breath as the young man coughed once, twice, and then took a horrid half-breath.

His lungs whistled. Water streamed from his nostrils. He opened his eyes.

They were green.

Arthur was taken aback at the strange color, but only for a moment, as he realized the color he was seeing was a strange in-between shade of blue and gold, as if Merlin himself had cast a spell and stopped halfway through.

Merlin took another wheezing breath, coughing up more water. Arthur pulled him up and patted his back awkwardly, waiting for the hacking to cease.

When it did, the man looked at Arthur and began to sob.

The king had never seen Merlin cry-not like this, not so openly. He'd seen him tear up, hiccup a little. Take a few shaky breaths and move on- but not this, mouth open and red-faced and whimpering. Tears were running down his chin and mixing with the puddles already there, and Arthur had the absurd thought that Merlin was going to drown himself once again.

So he did the only thing he could think of- the one thing he did when Gwen cried, and what Morgana had done when he was young and had cried- he embraced the young warlock.

Both Merlins stiffened at the unexpected contact. Arthur half-expected to be pulled away, but instead both went very still.

Arthur knew he should let go. He'd done so much damage to Merlin, surely the contact was making him uncomfortable. He'd just looked so pathetic-

A pair of arms rested against Arthur's lower back. Arthur's focus was jolted back to Merlin, who was sopping wet, trembling, and… hugging back?

"Lucky bastard," the other Merlin muttered from behind him. "Doesn't remember what I remember," he sighed.

Arthur looked down. This Merlin was so childlike in his posture, curled up in Arthur's arms and making small snuffling noises. He had yet to speak. His wet clothes were impossibly heavy against Arthur's lap. His tears were soaking every inch of Arthur that hadn't already been soaked by the rest of the room.

It was immediately clear what aspect of Merlin this was: his sadness, and it was so overwhelming it had nearly killed him.

Arthur swallowed. What was he supposed to do to fix this? Make him happy? Content? Dry him off? Help him wring out his weighted clothes?

"... He will soon enough, though," the other Merlin was saying.

Arthur felt the weight in his arms shift. The other Merlin knelt in front of them both.

"Give him to me," he said, and Arthur understood that Merlin wanted to do this healing on his own. Reluctantly, Arthur slid the wet bundle to Merlin, who looked down at himself with a bittersweet smile.

""Æðm," he said, but this time Merlin didn't sound at all uncertain. The crying young man stopped sniffling as both of their eyes burned gold.

It only took a moment. Arthur was a but disappointed that, even staring directly at it for the first time, he couldn't tell what happened when the two Merlins merged. There were two and then there was one. There was no transition that Arthur could see, except that the newest version of Merlin stood with his shoulders a little more hunched, and his eyes looked a little more shadowed.

It made Arthur uncomfortable, that the further he explored this place, the more broken Merlin seemed. Or at least the more tired. He knew he couldn't expect Merlin to just be okay, especially in this environment, with only his head torturer as a companion, but he'd hoped something magical would happen to let Merlin bounce back quickly.

This was going so much more slowly than he'd hoped.

"I don't think I need to go through an introduction again," Merlin said, looking at Arthur. "We've been through this three times before, and I know it's you now, and you know it's me. So let's just move on, shall we?"

He turned to the far side of the room, where the last four rooms' doors had been located, and stopped. He was staring at a blank, smooth wall. There was no door set into it. No handle. No outline of a frame. Just unblemished stone.

"Where-?" The young warlock ran his hands along the wall, then whirled to look at Arthur, his eyes wide. "We're missing someone, aren't we?" he asked.

Arthur nodded mutely. Merlin sighed. "We need to get him, then," he said, pushing off from the wall. "Let's go."

Arthur turned to leave the room, but found words spilling out his mouth faster than he could think them through:

"There are chains, though, in the first room. And Merlin was… well he was dead, and then he wasn't, and the only reason I left him was to find something to break him out, but there hasn't been anything in any of the rooms. Not a single blasted thing, and I'm still not sure how to help him get out. If I only had my sword, then maybe I could. I should never have left him, I know, but I didn't have much choice, and-"

Merlin cut him off. "I said we'll go get him. We. Us. I meant it. Let's go."