1x03 – Two Sides of the Same Coin
Books and herbs and plates were swiped off the table without the slightest regard for their well-being. Merlin ignored the loud thudding of the heavier objects and the sound of glass shattering, already moving halfway across the room. His panicky hands fumbled with the knobs of the store cupboard as he flung it open. He grabbed the jar he needed and raced back without wasting precious few seconds closing the cupboard doors.
He thrust the jar into Gaius' waiting hands and ran to fetch water while the master physician cleaned the wounds of the man lying on their table.
Halls and streets passed through Merlin's vision in a blur. He only spared them enough attention to dodge around the other, slower pedestrians. The rest of his mind remained within the physician's chambers, not budging from the injured man.
The holes in his chainmail ringed by red soaked links looked bad enough, but after it was removed a more gruesome sight was revealed. His chest was a mottled discoloured rainbow painted by bruises sickly yellows and greens and purple-reds. These were only the most minor of his injuries, despite professing at least one broken rib. For the sickly rainbow was punctuated by bright red dots spilling over and dripping downwards in a trail of blood.
The unconscious face was twisted in pain, unhindered by the attempt at stoicism that would surely have tried to mask it if the owner had any say in the matter. But the great matted patch of blond hair dyed a crusty red-brown told that no such futile protests would be made anytime soon.
During his months as Gaius' full-time apprentice Merlin had seen worse injuries. Despite all their best efforts, some of their patients died, a fact he was slowly getting used to. But he hadn't yet had someone teetering at the threshold between life and death whom he knew so well. All the calm professionalism Gaius had spent four months drilling into him fled at the familiar face.
He frequently teased Arthur about nearly being killed on a biweekly basis, but he hadn't actually thought that the next time Arthur was dragged through Gaius' door he would already be so close to death.
On one of his trips back, when there were a good number of buckets lined up, Gaius called Merlin over. He instructed him tersely, "Hold him up for me."
Merlin grabbed Arthur's prone form by the underside of his arms, holding his torso upright while Gaius bandaged the multitude of injuries there.
"He's lost a lot of blood," Gaius muttered. His hands were flying as he wound the bandages. In displeasure spawned from worry, Gaius bit out at no one in particular, "What dim-wit took the arrows out without also binding the wounds!"
The knight who'd brought the prince in - Sir Leon, if Merlin recalled correctly - responded even though the question had been rhetorical. "Prince Arthur did."
Gaius' expression on hearing this was black, like he wished he could give the prince a piece of his mind. Merlin alternated between holding Arthur upright for Gaius and fetching supplies for him. The pale cast of Arthur's skin worried him, even after he was bandaged so as not to lose any more blood. Two months into his apprenticeship he'd seen a man with Arthur's milky pallor die from a gash to his leg, an area far less vital than where Arthur had been hit, because his body had been unable to handle the shock of losing so much blood.
Hyper-aware of Sir Leon's presence, inspiration hit Merlin after using up the water in cleaning Arthur's head wound. He held out the bucket to the knight and got rid of him by sending him to fetch more from the pump. Merlin waited thirty seconds after Leon left before he raced upstairs and grabbed his spellbook. He'd bookmarked the healing chapter after the fiasco with the afanc, and so he'd found the right spells before even reaching the bottom of the staircase.
The spell to mitigate head wounds was one he'd gotten much practice in, mostly on Arthur himself, as head wounds had the wonderful tendency to render their subjects either unconscious or otherwise scrambled their awareness of their surroundings, and thus the patient didn't tend to notice when he muttered strange things over their heads. Aside from that spell, the healing spells Merlin was proficient in tended to be ones that he could practice on himself – which, unfortunately, were only spells to heal simple cuts and bruises.
The spell to speed along blood replenishment, therefore, he'd never tried before. He made sure to read it thrice before he incanted it, hand hovering over Arthur's heart as he did so. Merlin peered anxiously at Arthur's face, but there was no noticeable change. Some healing spells needed time to take effect - he desperately hoped this was one of those. He didn't dare redo the spell, even though he wasn't sure it had worked, as the book warned that consecutive dosage was fatal.
Merlin shut the book, stepping away from Arthur and going to hide it away again before Sir Leon returned. His great idea had lasted all of two minutes, and now there was truly nothing more he could do to help except keep Arthur warm and pray. On his way down he caught Gaius' eye. Gaius looked torn between disapproval and approval, unsure whether to scold Merlin for using magic in broad daylight or commend him for upping the odds of Arthur's survival.
About ten seconds later the door flung open, and in walked the king. He loudly demanded the details of his son's condition from Gaius, ignoring Merlin as if he was a piece of human-shaped furniture. Merlin took the opportunity to grab the herb satchel and go pick more of the ones they'd, hopefully, soon need. When he came back the king was seated in silent vigil by his son's side.
Merlin grabbed one of the books Gaius had set for him that day and sat on the second bottom step of the staircase. Unable to keep from sneaking glances at Arthur, it took him an exorbitant amount of time to finish one page. And once he did, he realised he couldn't recall a single thing he'd read and had to start over. After reading the same page about six times and still not having any idea what it was talking about, Merlin slammed the book shut and threw it down beside him.
After several hours had passed the king was called away by something. Merlin took his place by Arthur's bedside, re-securing the blankets around him even though they had barely slipped. Unable to take the inaction any longer, Merlin stood and started grinding up herbs for a pain-relief potion.
Now that the king was gone he could take out his spellbook and study from it while he watched over Arthur's condition, but he suspected he'd have the same difficulties focusing as he did with the medical book. In any case, he'd reached something of a plateau in his magical studies. Most of the spells he hadn't yet tried were either too advanced for him, too conspicuous to use, too dangerous to try without an instructor overseeing his attempts, or needed the consent of other people to practice on. It was only the first category, the ones that were too advanced for him, that he could work towards, but even so it was now taking him days to master one spell when before he could breeze through dozens in that time. It wasn't nearly as interesting to repeat the same words over and over day after day, sometimes for weeks at a time, without seeing any effect. When at last it did work it felt that much more exhilarating to have mastered it, but then he'd move on to the next spell and the long, slow process would repeat.
Immediately following the afanc fiasco he'd spent a good amount of time mastering a variety of disguises, amusing himself by turning up to Gaius with some minor medical complaint and seeing which ones fooled him. After trial and error, he settled on a variant of the ageing spell that held without difficulties - perhaps a bit too well, as Merlin needed a potion to turn himself back to normal - for his future alter ego he'd use the next time he needed to perform magic in public.
In recent months, however, the spells he was learning weren't anything he could see an immediate use for. Someday in the distant future being able to strengthen weapons with the words bregdan anweald gafeluc might come in handy, but Merlin couldn't picture the situation when it would so it hadn't been very thrilling to master.
With the plateau in his magical studies he poured himself more into his education on Gaius' work, to Gaius' great delight. The old man seemed like a little child, eagerly showing off his knowledge in long, animated lectures to accompany the readings. It was a shame that the subject was so technical and boring that Merlin had no great love of it the way Gaius had, and spent most of the lectures struggling to keep from yawning or showing other signs of blatant disinterest for fear of hurting his guardian's feelings. He took to dawdling on his rounds, giving Tyr Seward and other interested castle hired hands mini-lessons on how to read, and chatting at length with each of the patients he was delivering remedies to, anything to draw them out so he could spend less time studying. In that respect, Arthur was a godsend. He had once spent so long bickering with the prince that the great bell had rung to signal midday before either of them noticed they'd spent three hours doing nothing but insulting each other.
Arthur was frustrating, arrogant, brave, and he broke up the monotony of learning things out of old books quite nicely. And now he was incapable of responding to any of the accusations of idiocy Merlin directed at his unconscious form, making the empty silence between Merlin's words stretch too long.
So Merlin made up potions and poultices from directions in Gaius' books, stoked the fire to keep the room warm even though he was sweating buckets and had to keep making trips to the pump to replace the liquids he was losing, and did a rich variety of tasks around the room that didn't strictly need doing, all the while shooting Arthur glances every other minute and wondering if it was just his hopeful imagination that he was looking less pallid than before.
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The last thing Arthur remembered was ringing in his ears and the taste of blood in his mouth. He'd been bludgeoned across the head with the broad side of the sword in a wild swing by a half-dead bandit, and then everything went dark.
Opening his eyes he found himself, unsurprisingly, staring up at the ceiling of Gaius' chambers. He'd been visiting here far too often in recent months, so he was not thrown off to be waking up to the sight as he had been the first few times.
Arthur tried to sit up, but shooting pain in his chest warned him that that was a bad idea. He flopped back onto the table with a grunt. Immediately he heard the sound of footsteps. Merlin's face came into his view, looking down on him with a wide relieved grin. Merlin turned away and reached beyond Arthur's vision for something, reappearing with a clay cup of water.
"Here. You need to replace the liquids you lost."
Arthur would dearly love to retort that he did know a thing or two about recovering from being injured, thank you very much Merlin, but the effort to get sound out of his dry throat seemed ridiculously energy-consuming so he gave it up. It was probably for the best, in any case, as Merlin would take that as an invitation to poke fun at the amount of time Arthur spent in Gaius' chambers.
He took the cup and drank, hating that it seemed like he was obeying Merlin, of all people. Strangely, his pride was never prickled by having to follow Gaius' instructions, but then Gaius was old and wise and didn't insult him every time they met.
Merlin refilled his glass every time it emptied, until finally Arthur couldn't take any more. "Enough!" he forced out of his scratchy throat. "If I drink any more I'll be leaking water out of my ears!"
Not his most witty argument, but with the way he was feeling he thought it was impressive he'd been able to make one at all.
"Oh, forgive me, my Lord," Merlin rolled his eyes, unable to suppress the grin still stretched across his face though it looked like he was making a valiant effort to. "I was slightly concerned that you lost a large amount of blood and then slept for twenty hours during which you couldn't eat or drink, but I apologise. Clearly it was presumptuous of me, though you nearly bleeding out was entirely your fault. Hasn't anyone ever told you that that only suicidals or fever-softened bleat-brains remove an arrow without something on hand to stem the blood flow?"
Unable to think through the pain for a good retort to that, Arthur instead asked, "Where's Gaius?"
"Off tending to the Lady Morgana - she's had another nightmare. Gwen said she woke up screaming something about you and spiders."
"Morgana's been dreaming about me?" he twisted the words, looking forward to their next meeting now he had this as ammunition. "Let me guess, even in her dreams she relies on me to save her from the things?"
In many ways Morgana seemed to disregard her rank, but give her a spider or bee - or any kind of bug that had once bitten or stung her as a curious, adventurous little girl - and she would act as any other noblewoman did: scream and run and yell for the nearest person unafraid of the bug to get rid of it for her. Curiously, she was immune to the fear her peers held towards amphibians and reptiles. Once, soon after she'd come to live in Camelot, she'd given Uther a scare by walking in with a six-foot long serpent wrapped around her neck like a writhing scarf, and refused to eat for six days after he'd ordered the snake killed - officially because it might be poisonous, but Arthur suspected it was more done as a punishment for nearly giving the king a heart attack.
But despite her fearlessness of possibly venomous slithering reptiles, Arthur would never let her live down all the times he'd had to run in and rid her rooms of an eight-legged miniscule being of terror.
"Gwen made it sound more like she dreamed you were being chased by spiders, actually," Merlin replied, looked perversely pleased to be able to burst Arthur's bubble.
"Oh, so she was worried about me," Arthur said, a smirk tugging at the corner of his lips. "That was kind of her."
"Don't worry, I'll be sure to thank her for you." Merlin moved out of Arthur's vision again.
When he didn't reappear, Arthur bit his tongue to keep from complaining like a little child who needed constant attention to be kept happy. After counting the number of tiles on the ceiling, however, he couldn't stand it any longer. He twisted his head first to the left, and when he couldn't see Merlin there he turned it more gingerly to the right. To his surprise his head injury barely stung at the pressure he'd put on it. Recently Gaius must have found some new cure for head wounds, because they seemed to be healing much more quickly as of late.
He spotted Merlin puttering over something by the fireplace, but his turned back concealed whatever it was. "What are you doing?"
"Heating up some broth." Merlin backed away, revealing a large pot hanging over the fire. He fetched a small bowl, and spooned liquid from the pot into it. "If you can drink, you can take in something of sustenance."
Merlin crossed back and held out the bowl to Arthur, revealing an unappetizing thin green-brown liquid within. "Can't I get something... better? Like, oh I dunno, something to go in the broth to make it into real soup?"
"Well that depends: how much do you fancy vomiting up what you eat?" Merlin grabbed one of Arthur's arms and dragged it up, forcing the soup into his hands. Faced with the choice to either close his fingers around it or be drenched in very thin soup, Arthur took the bowl. Staring at the puke-coloured liquid warily, he raised his head and brought the bowl to his lips in a sip, as Merlin hadn't seen fit to provide him with a spoon.
The soup tasted like where vegetables went to die a watery death, with the emphasis on the watery. "Have you never heard of a little something called seasoning?"
"You're welcome for not upsetting your princely hurt little tummy with too much spice." With a grin that was far too wide, Merlin said with relish, "Drink up."
Arthur eyed the bowl with distaste, and Merlin added far too innocently, "Unless you want to lie on that table, weak as a kitten, for the rest of your life. But you don't have to worry; I'm sure Morgana will be more than willing to save you again if you are."
"That didn't happen, not once!"
Nonetheless, Arthur drank the off-putting liquid, making Merlin smile as if he'd won a great battle. Arthur thrust the bowl into Merlin's chest and let go. To Arthur's great amazement, despite Merlin best bumbling attempts and the fact that it was right against him, he didn't manage to catch it. Instead it somehow slipped through his arms and out of Arthur's vision. The sound of clay smashing alerted him to its fate.
Just then the door opened and Arthur hurriedly closed his eyes. He listened to Gaius tell off Merlin for breaking a bowl and Merlin's unheeded protests that it was all Arthur's fault. He heard Gaius' footsteps go to the other side of the room and Merlin's black mutterings as he swept up the fragments. "I know you're faking it; no one can fall asleep that fast."
Arthur didn't so much as twitch in response. It wasn't his fault; anyone with the slightest bit of hand-eye coordination would have been able to catch that bowl. Merlin should blame the fates for decreeing him an uncoordinated buffoon all his life.
"Thanks a lot, you're welcome for the meal, by the way." When Arthur still didn't react, Merlin said unconvincingly, "You know, I liked you a lot better when you were actually unconscious."
Several hours later, ravenous with hunger, Arthur opened his eyes again. That Gaius did not immediately pour cup after cup of water down his throat made Arthur wonder if he truly did believe Merlin that Arthur had been awake earlier. Either way, Arthur got a much better soup as Gaius decreed they could all eat whatever Merlin made for Arthur. Merlin looked disappointed at this news, and Arthur wondered in annoyance if he'd purposely made the soup earlier into a pitiful excuse that hardly merited the name, especially as he could grudgingly admit that this soup was really good - just not aloud.
Come nightfall under Merlin and Gaius' watchful eye, Arthur was allowed to stumble back to his chambers after a visit from his father decreed that his son would not continue sleeping on a common dining table. Arthur and Merlin bickered the whole way, and by the time Arthur had been placed in bed with potions upon potions set out on his bedside table, Gaius looked ready to bash their heads together and be done with it.
Arthur slept well until late the next morning. Scarcely half an hour after he woke Merlin arrived in his chambers, pestering him with a reiteration of the instructions for Arthur's potions and demanding he drink it on the spot. Arthur bristled at the implication he wouldn't drink the foul looking and smelling concoctions unless supervised - a fear that wasn't totally without foundations, as Arthur had something of a history for doing so and it was only the knowledge that he had to look unassailable by the time of King Bayard's visit next week that stopped him from seriously considering it this time.
The days passed like years, each more mind-numbingly uneventful than the last. Even Merlin's visits weren't quite up to their usual standard of interesting, as he spent at least half of them nagging Arthur to drink his potions and calling him an idiot for pulling the arrow out in the first place. Uther embraced Gaius' ban on physical exertion, and thus Arthur was forbidden from training and going on patrol, until he was beginning to wonder if it was possible to go insane from having nothing to do. He'd taken to summoning Merlin for ridiculous made up physical complaints, just to see his hilariously annoyed face as Arthur claimed he felt like he had hot triangles on his arm and cold squares on his feet. Finally, after a tortuous week of waiting, the day of Bayard's visit came.
As it was a momentous occasion Arthur was at last allowed to do something other than recuperate in his chambers. He was grateful for the change of pace, even though without a doubt the day would be incredibly dull, full of long-winded boring speeches and nothing the slightest bit interesting would occur.
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Merlin was breathless by the time he reached the Hall of Ceremonies, having sprinted there all the way from Gaius' chambers. The warning of Bayard's maidservant was still ringing through his ears, and he couldn't believe how stupid he was to believe Arthur could get through a week without nearly dying. It would appear that if he was forbidden to go out seeking deathly threats, they would instead come to him.
Merlin threw open the doors, and saw everyone in the room about to drink in what was evidently a toast. Mind blank in panic, Merlin yelled out, running forward to grab Arthur's goblet, "Stop! It's poisoned; don't drink it!"
It was only then that Merlin fully realised he, a common commoner of the lowliest origins of anyone in that room, was now standing in front of all the highest ranking nobility and warriors from two countries as the centre of attention. He ploughed on with his accusations, desperately telling everyone gathered that Bayard had laced Arthur goblet, and became the centre point between a brewing conflict between those in blue and those in red. And somehow, as his betters argued in front of him, the goblet was passed to him and he was given a choice for his pains in warning them: to die by poison, or to die be the sword.
Uther really needed to work on how he rewarded people for saving his son's life, was all Merlin could think blankly when he heard this.
Arthur tried to take the goblet back, insisting he'd drink it, but Merlin held on. "No," Merlin said, repeating the word over and over to Arthur, hardly able to believe what he was doing himself.
If he drank he'd die, if he didn't drink he'd be given over to Bayard to do with as he will, as Uther had put it. If Arthur drank then Arthur would die, and then what happened to Merlin was anyone's guess. As the king had so callously put Merlin in a no-win situation not a minute before, Merlin was in no way inclined to think he'd take it well when Merlin was proved right too late. The last time Merlin had seen Uther not take news well was during the plague, when he'd condemned Gwen to death for having a father who got better.
So Merlin could choose to drink and save Arthur's life, or let Arthur drink and bank on the uncertain hope that would save his own. Somehow he found himself saying as though he'd already decided when truly he was still torn, "It's all right. I'll drink it."
He looked to each member of the gathered royalty who were watching to see whether or not he died, Arthur the only one who had the decency to look like that would be a terrible thing to happen. He lifted the glass to Bayard, the cause of this all, and to Arthur, who had better not forget this, ignoring Uther as Uther had ignored Merlin's life in his decisions. Merlin lifted the goblet to his lips and swung his head back.
For a moment afterwards Merlin thought he'd been wrong, and he'd placed his life in jeopardy for nothing.
Then he felt a faint tickling in his throat, which fired into an angry itch, spreading down his throat into his lungs and chest. He couldn't breathe, he was suffocating. The world swayed and began to darken.
His last thought was a fervent prayer that Gaius had an antidote.
As blackness consumed his vision, the last thing he saw was Arthur's horrified face.
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He was sinking, through what he knew not, only that it was less than air, a true nothingness. He could feel it all around him, burning hot; the nothingness burned in its absence. He could not describe his surroundings. They were more than black, though black was all that he saw, because the emptiness around him thrummed with the echo of life.
As he descended deeper and deeper he became aware of voices whispering around him. Like the rustle of wind through the branches of trees he could hear them, yet the meaning escaped him. It was soft and melodic, the different pitches and shades of voices calling out, an echo of something familiar that he loved. He sank further, listening, and thought to himself that he should recognize these voices and the words they spoke.
His memory was as undefined as his surroundings. He knew he had not always been here, but he could not call forth an idea of who he'd been or what he'd done before coming here. Even how and when he'd come here escaped him. He tried to attach names to the voices whispering around him and found he could not. He tried to remember his own name, and the answer slipped away like water seeping through his fingers, unable to be retained and going further from his reach the longer he tried to hold on to it.
He knew, without knowing why, that this was not somewhere he had wanted to come. He had been desperate to avoid this place, and it was not good that he was here. He should leave.
He, for the first time he could clearly remember, moved. He flailed his arms as though trying to swim up through the nothingness, and flailed his legs as though they could propel him away. Tendrils of blackness blocked his path up, a solid wall between him and that direction, and he continued to sink.
He wasn't bothered; he didn't know for sure up was the way to leave. Reorienting himself, he dived deeper, riding the force that was pulling him down and down. He pushed through the blackness, peering out into the void, and as he looked closer it seemed to him that the void was veiling shapes.
He wandered closer, looking and guessing at what he saw. The longer he looked the clearer it became; he was in the thread working of a giant tapestry. Dodging through giant fibers, he pulled himself to the other side, and pushed away. If he could see it at a distance, he thought, he'd know what the tapestry looked like. That seemed like the most important thing to know, more than all his missing memories, more than the route out.
This time as he fell he was in control. He stopped himself once he was deep enough to see the pattern of the tapestry, floating in place. He looked to all directions: up, down, left, right, frontwards and backwards. No matter where he looked, he could see it unfolding like a great scroll that had come unwound and was spilling outwards without stop.
He floated closer to examine the cloth, marvelling at the intricacies woven through, each golden thread linking flawlessly into the next. Threads were connected here and separated there, new thread tying in and old threads tying out and more new threads tying in; it repeated in a pattern that subtly changed as it went along. Designs flowered and withered, new designs taking their place only to fade out in their turn, but through it all strands of shining gold linked them.
After a great long time of drifting along, following the pattern in the direction it was traveling towards, the end of the fabric came into sight. There was no hem, however; the tapestry was unfinished. Millions of threads stuck out from the end, fastened to a wall behind them and waiting to be woven into the great pattern. Upon the wall were many criss-crossing inky lines. The lines continued the pattern like a diagram, but in places the model was imperfect. There were large splotches, smudges, multitudes of lines competing to be the chosen pattern, some so violently that all there was was a great splattering of ink that made it impossible to read the layout. In other places, it was not ink at all that marked the pattern. Certain points were made out of solid gold, protruding from the wall itself like they'd been there from the very beginning, immovable.
He traced the golden threads leading to the unfinished edge of the fabric. Some glowed brighter than others; one in particular called out to him, and he knew that it was his. It shone like a reflection of the light of the sun, a pale cast to its light yet so bright in spite of that. Running alongside to it was another, shining just as brightly, more deep golden in hue, like the sun itself.
The two strands of fiber encircled each other, like a two-stranded braid they could not be separated and were stronger together than either was alone. In places another fiber would tug at one or the other, but even when they pulled away neither entirely left. Their path was marked out by many lines after the edge of the tapestry, blotched in places where they intersected with other routes and running through several of the spots of gold.
He moved backwards from the edge, tracing the two strands back to their beginning. The strand that was not his began first, and he reached out to touch it. A great humming arose from all around, and shapes twisted around him in the darkness.
Hark, it seemed to be singing to him, a song born of life and calling out the tale of life, and he did. He watched and he listened, and saw courageous deeds and glory, a young boy born into royalty and destined for greatness.
God sent him to comfort the people; He had seen the dire distress that they suffered before, leader-less a long while; it was for them that the Lord of Life, Wielder of Wonder, granted him worldly honour.
Arthur, the thread hummed, with that name laying the essence of its possessor bare – all his flaws, all his strengths, his moments of loneliness and doubt intermixed with those of triumph and love. All were chronicled along the length of the strand, and the impressions of his counterpart overflowed in the void of his memories.
So ought a youth, by virtue of goodness, give freely while yet under his father's wing. Then, in after years when war comes, steadfast companions shall stand by him still. The people will loyally serve him for, among any of the peoples of the earth, great deeds will prosper a man.
For the first time he could make out the speech of the familiar whispering from the abyss, with one word jumping out to him in the low murmuring. Arthur, the ever present voices whispered to him, could be walking into a trap.
Terrified, he called out the one name he knew, Arthur, Arthur, and followed the bright strings to the end. There, before him, the tapestry was extending. The string that was his was dimming, the outer golden glow fading and only the silvery white core shining still. He ignored it, anxiously watching the route the brighter string was travelling.
It interconnected with another string, one whose strands ran through with a darkness like an infection. The brighter string continued on with it, oblivious to the darkness within.
Arthur, it's a trap.
When war comes, steadfast companions shall stand by him still.
He hovered anxiously, following the progress of the continuing tapestry, tracing the path of the one line. It was coming up to a blotched portion, where different lines strove to continue the path. The threads reached it, and the darkened strand pulled away, veering off on another path. The bright strand, Arthur, remained stuck in the dark blotch, with so many paths warring to be his it was impossible to see which would be.
Arthur. It's too dark.
Give freely while yet under his father's wing.
Give freely, he thought, and pulled on the thread that was his. It was loose around Arthur's now, but still there. If he concentrated he could feel the connection. One hand on each string, he thrust open the link, sending forth the waning light of his string to the other. His awareness swam, and he was fast losing sight of what was in front of him. But he could still feel the two strings under his fingertips, and he continued on as a bridge between the two of them, binding them together even as they were unravelling.
The darkness shifted, becoming tangible. Weight pressed around him, the nothingness felt exorbitantly heavy. He was there, looking down at Arthur hanging onto a cliff and with monsters encroaching from below. He ascended, guiding the way up, bathing the area in light the colour of his dimming thread.
He called out to Arthur, encouraging him to come, and together they escaped from the darkness into the light of day.
Arthur looked wonderingly at him, and he at last let go of the connection. Its use had been served, and he couldn't hold it up for much longer.
He sank forwards, feeling the fabric of the tapestry press against his form, and – too exhausted for thought - knew nothing else for a long time.
Like a jolt of light, something shook his consciousness, waking him from his slumber. The darkness was receding around him, a bright light shone down from above. He reached out to it, and it drew closer. He struggled towards it, the darkness catching on his ankles like vines struggling to hold him down. With difficulty he kicked free of them and, like a diver returning to the surface, propelled himself towards the approaching light, meeting it head on. He was blinded as he entered it, and everything went dark.
The voices that had been whispering the whole while grew louder, like he'd heard them for deep under water and after breaking the surface could hear them as they truly were.
One was high and soft, the other low and slow. The first reminded him of his earliest memories, of four long hollow thin tubes hanging in a window and gently chiming whenever the wind blew. The other reminded him of the sound of wind in a great oak tree, where the steadiness and firmness mellowed the sound. He could attach names to them now, Gwen and Gaius, and he could understand their speech without any difficulties.
As his memories returned to him he knew who he was and why he really should have been trying harder to escape from the darkness. Upon regaining his memories, he realized that the only reason it was still dark was because his eyes were shut.
He opened them and, seeing his good friend and the man who was like a father to him in a tearful embrace, Merlin joked, "That's disgusting. You should be ashamed of yourself; you're old enough to be her grandfather."
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The strange things he'd seen in his near death experience lingered with him. At the time they'd seemed the most natural things to see or do, but upon awaking to reality it was brought home to him how bizarre it had all been. He was left with two explanations: either the most realistic and well-remembered dream he'd ever had had revolved around Arthur, or he'd had an incredibly confusing vision.
When he described what he saw to Gaius, his mentor had been equally torn. On the one hand, the subconscious took events from everyday life and molded dreams from bizarre imaginings of them. The last thing he'd saw before he'd passed out was Arthur, he'd raced into the Hall of Ceremonies for Arthur, he'd drunken the poison for Arthur. It wouldn't be surprising for him to have a dream that revolved around Arthur.
But then there were the unexplainable things. Merlin had apparently been mumbling the song he'd heard, and he hadn't even recited it in the Common Tongue, but in the Old Tongue. That was weird, but not unexplainable; what was unexplainable was that his fevered mutterings had formed some kind of light spell that Gaius had never seen before. Magic did not work that way; you could not just take any old phrase in the Old Tongue and turn it into a spell. Gaius' description of the orb of light he'd created sounded far too similar to the dimming light of his tapestry thread, and the light he'd used to illuminate the cave Arthur had been in.
Which was another thing that didn't add up. Gaius had suggested that even if Merlin didn't remember Gaius' and Gwen's conversation, that he could have registered it on a subconscious level and thus imagined the witch who'd framed Bayard and the cave Arthur had been stuck in. But that didn't explain how Merlin could sketch a perfect replica of the flower Arthur had grabbed, or how he knew that the Caves of Balor were infested with giant spiders, or that there was an opening at the top of the caves.
Merlin flipped avidly in the book on brain physiology that Gaius had left for him while he went out to do his rounds. Seated on a kitchen chair with a blanket wrapped around his shoulders, he started reading the section on dreams, trying to figure out how much of what he saw he should believe, and how much was hokey nonsense conjured by his subconscious.
He'd gotten two-thirds of the way through when the door opened. As there had been no knock Merlin assumed it was Gaius and didn't look up, but when the new voice spoke he almost jumped in the air.
"You seem to have recovered well," Uther Pendragon said, as if that was an adequate greeting.
Considering the only reason Merlin had been dying of poison was because of him, and that he had apparently gaoled Arthur and forbidden anyone from giving Merlin the cure, Merlin really did not feel that was an appropriate thing to say. I'm sorry, would have been preferable, but as that was incredibly unlikely Merlin would have taken an it was regrettable, but necessary. 'You seem to have recovered well', Merlin thought blackly, may well go down as one of the most tactless things anyone had ever said to greet their near murder victims, ever.
It was a wonder Arthur was a decent guy underneath all his princely pride, after being raised by Uther.
"Your Majesty," Merlin said, inclining his head so that he could keep from saying something that would spell his death so soon after he'd evaded it.
"I came to thank you, for once again saving the life of my son," said Uther, surprising Merlin enough to straighten up again.
For a strange moment, Merlin thought Uther was going to apologize. Such ludicrous thoughts were quickly put to rest, however, when the king cleared his throat. "This is the second time you have done so and, though you lost your position due to unseemly conduct, in light of the circumstances under which such allegations against a knight were given, I believe we can put the past in the past."
Merlin wondered who Uther thought he was fooling; as if everyone in Camelot didn't know that everything Merlin had said about Valiant was true. Even Uther looked uncomfortable with what he was saying, like he knew it was unreasonable to blame Merlin for speaking the truth but was unwilling to act as if Merlin hadn't done something outrageous in doing so because he was beholden to whatever bogus code of morality Uther used to measure the world against.
"Your recent actions speak well enough for your character – though not necessarily your wits."
Merlin had to bite his lip to literally hold his tongue. He'd just gotten his life out of jeopardy and he would not place it back in it again. He had more self-control and self-preservation than that and would not.
(Seriously, though, was this how Uther spoke to someone who saved the life of his son, three times as without Merlin's warning Arthur would have been killed by Valiant's shield whether Uther would admit it or not! And this was not counting all the times Merlin had secretly speeded along Arthur's recovery from head wounds, the death defying experience with the afanc, and two weeks ago now when he'd pulled Arthur back from the brink of death.)
"You shall be rewarded." The hairs on the back of Merlin's neck rose with a horrible sense of déjà vu. "You shall be reinstated as Prince Arthur's manservant."
Once again, Merlin was speechless with horror, left wondering how on earth he could keep his head but refuse the position. Just because he and Arthur were sort of friends in a very unconventional way didn't mean he wanted to go back to polishing his armour and mucking out his horses.
Uther misinterpreted the cause of his speechlessness, for he turned to go, looking pleased. "No need to thank me."
He didn't bother to close the door behind him, and Merlin could see Arthur standing right outside. He had obviously heard at least the tail end of the conversation, for he looked just as shocked as Merlin felt. Their eyes met, and then they both looked away.
Of all the ways they could have been thrown together again, it was by decree of the king. This was just like it had been after Merlin saved Arthur from Mary Collins, only now they sort of got along instead of flat-out hating each other. Somehow, that made it worse, because Arthur knew Merlin didn't want to be his servant and, unlike before, Merlin actually cared what Arthur thought, a sentiment Arthur's recent quest for a magical flower to cure him suggested was not just one-sided.
This was going to be unbearably awkward.
/**
Writing Merlin's NDE was very strange.
Apparently Merlin was quoting Beowulf while he was unconscious. That was fun (*cough* not *cough*) trying to find a translation for that didn't translate it into things like 'quit him well' (ummm… what?). The translation's not the most accurate, but it makes a lot more sense than any of the more poetic versions.
Anyways, destiny is a jerk to Merlin. Without Merlin tagging along Arthur gets a whole lot more injuries on his patrols and hunting trips. Inevitably one of these times Arthur would get a fatal wound and die, which destiny doesn't want to happen, so it will reposition Merlin into the position of Arthur's nearly 24/7 babysitter no matter how many times he escapes it.
**/