Merlin didn't stop running until he crashed face first into a stream.

His head hurt from where it cracked against a stone and his chest hurt from where Arthur's sword had cut a clean slice just under his ribcage.

The shock of the cold water and the pain woke him properly to his situation. Arthur's father was dead. He'd killed him. He'd killed Arthur's father right in front of him with magic. What had he done?

He knew he'd pronounced the spell right. He'd done nothing but repeat it as he paced in Gaius' chambers and waited for the candle to reach its mark. He knew his anxiety had not calmed Gaius... Gaius, who had been distressed enough even before his ward committed treason and regicide! Oh Gaius... how would he fare when he heard? But the spell had been right, he'd used the herbs as Gaius had told him to... how had he messed this up?

For all his recriminations his chest rewarded him with a stabbing pain that took his breath away. He leveraged himself to his hands and knees and then toppled as soon as he tipped his weight backwards. Lying on the edge of a stream, looking at the canopy of leaves above him and soaking his shirt with blood he wondered what destiny was even supposed to mean.

He was meant to be Emrys, the greatest sorceror to ever walk the Earth and he couldn't even get one spell right for the sake of his destiny! What was the use of all this magic when he couldn't even heal one man; when he couldn't even keep Arthur's trust. What sort of rotten luck was it to finally have Arthur's trust and friendship honestly and without deceit, to joke with him after having cast a spell right in front of his very eyes, and then for the world to snap back in their faces and show him to Arthur as a despicable traitor. How could this be destiny? If it was his destiny to bring back magic and serve Arthur, then why would the one spell that would finally achieve that do the exact opposite of its intended purpose?

His magic was supposed to do as he commanded it to. He was supposed to be able to control it. How could his magic do this to him? How could that which was innermost to his being turn against him and portray him as something totally other to himself to the one he most desperately sought acceptance from. It seemed to him the most intimate sort of betrayal.

But he was the betrayer. He'd betrayed Arthur, called him a friend, and he had truly never wanted to be anything besides. But he had killed his own friend's father right before his eyes and he knew how that hurt. How could he have become this? How could his own magic have forced him into this position?

He'd never meant to betray Arthur's trust. He'd said so much in the last few hours (and had it really only been so few?) about how he wanted to help, to heal, how he wanted peace. Those words soured in his memory. He knew they would sour in Arthur's too, into the bitterest example of his perfidy.

There could be no forgiveness. If he went back now Arthur would kill him, and he had no defense against that. Arthur had every right to seek vengeance and every right to demand an explanation for this treachery and Merlin had none to give. He shuddered at the thought of dying at Arthur's hand, Arthur whom he had bathed and dressed and fed and guarded. He couldn't face the man as a traitor when he'd never intended to be anything other than a friend.

It was cowardly, but then Arthur had always said he was a coward. He saw no option but to run. Arthur would send out search parties after him, and it was like a knife in his heart that once Arthur sending out search parties for him would have been meant as a rescue, a gesture of friendship and worry. He would have to keep running, he wasn't sure he would ever be able to stop.

He didn't think he would ever want to stop. If he stopped he would have to face himself. His destiny and hope for the future was destroyed by his own magic. He couldn't face that, he refused to. He'd become the duplicitous sorceror lurking in the castle waiting for the chance to strike and he would never forgive himself for that.

His reputation in shambles, his destiny a shadowed wound on his heart, Merlin pulled himself to his feet never setting his gaze to his reflection in the water. The first sob broke through his throat as he set off running again.

His mind whirring this time, he wished for the blankness he'd been gifted before. He knew he deserved no less than this devastation.

He saw no reason to ever use magic again.

XxX

Arthur's first clear memory was of soft gentle hands stroking his own. He blinked to recognise Guinevere's beautiful face as she knelt before him, holding his hands firmly within her own. The strength seemed incongruous with the gentleness of her touch...

The incongruity of a friend and a sorceror. A loyal servant and a traitor.

He drew in a deep yet shaky breath, tugged his hands from Guinevere's, and carefully rose to his feet. He grabbed the nearest object, a vase, and threw it with all the anger he felt. It smashed against the wall. He grabbed the next object. And the next. A cathartic series of shattering sounds that didn't diminish his burning rage that made his vision red or the deep anguish that was crushing his heart. He threw a goblet and wished it slammed into Merlin's head instead of the wall. "The bastard!" He screamed.

"Arthur." A soft voice, repeating his name broke through his towering emotion. Guinevere stood, shaking beside him, her hands raised towards him in innocent entreaty.

"I'm sorry."

"I understand Arthur." How? His heart screamed. "I know how a father's death hurts. There are many ways to react, I would never hold your anger against you."

"Dead. My father's dead." He repeated her words hollowly, the reality still not having quite sunk in.

"I know, it feels unreal right now. There is a desire to deny it. To say it's impossible because you don't understand."

Guinevere's words were meant to soothe and comfort, he understood. Just as he could understand his father's death as a perfectly real possibility, he'd been deteriorating since Morgana. His denial had been in his last ditch attempt to defy fate, to steal his father from death when his time came. Instead he was confronted with the real impossibility, the real unreality.

His father's death hadn't registered yet, but Merlin's betrayal had.

"No, Guinevere. Something has happened much worse than my father dying." It was only after he said it that he realised how improper it was, to put Merlin above his father in any respect; yet it held true. "Merlin came to me and said he could heal my father. Instead, he murdered him right in front of me, using magic."

Guinevere gasped and he glanced over at her to see her eyes widen in horror. "No." She whispered.

"It's true." He forced out. He wanted anything to make it untrue. He wanted Merlin to make it untrue.

"No, it can't be. I- But- But he-"

"There is a desire to deny it. To say it's impossible because you don't understand." He snapped harshly. Guinevere jumped. He wasn't angry at her but there was no room inside him for anything more than the slightest twinge of guilt.

"Yes, I don't understand." She admitted. "It's Merlin."

"And it was Morgana just last year! We never saw that coming either." His voice was bitter and Guinevere's eyes filled with tears as she compulsively shook her head.

"Merlin turned to... magic?" It sounded like a plea to Arthur's ears.

He clenched his jaw and nodded rigidly. He didn't think he could form the movement if he allowed himself any slack.

It was when Gaius entered the room that he realised he was standing in the physician's chambers. The floor dropped out from under him as another revelation appeared before him. Guinevere fled the room in tears before Arthur even opened his mouth.

XxX

Was she blind? She felt blind at the moment and it had nothing to do with her tears.

Unbidden memories flashed through her mind, Morgana dressing her in fancy clothes, Morgana teasing Arthur and Morgana and herself lying in a bed in a silent hut in another kingdom as the lady said "He's here for the same reason we are. Merlin." She remembered purple flowers and a joke about being psychic, shared complaints about Arthur's behaviour whispered as they left the kitchens together and Merlin looking on Arthur with faith and pride as he defied tradition and law to knight commoners in an abandoned ruin. She remembered kind eyes both green and blue, and passion for justice and doing the right thing.

She must be blind for not having seen it this time when she'd already missed it once.

But she had memories of Morgana snapping at her more often, demanding privacy and drifting away before Gwen had seen the golden eyes and the flame in the box. She had no such memories of Merlin's fall. Even if she was blind at the time, in hindsight she could see that the Morgana they found and returned to Camelot was the not the same Morgana; that her friend had never come back after she disappeared with the knights of Medhir. Even in hindsight, Merlin had joked about Arthur's behaviour only yesterday, and had watched the gleeman's act with as much fearful trepidation as her. He had looked on Arthur with that same faith and pride that he had in the Castle of the Ancient Kings and that he had most days when he wasn't calling the Prince a prat. He hadn't drifted. At no point had he become short-tempered or badly mannered or less considerate.

When had Merlin turned against them? There had to have been a moment if she could only find it.

She sank down in a huddle against a corridor wall, hung her head between her arms and knees and mourned. Even if she didn't know when, even if she would never understand why, she mourned. She mourned an open and compassionate heart, she mourned a wit that could cheer Arthur from even his darkest moods, she mourned a bright smile and kind eyes that had always looked out for them and promised loyalty.

She missed her friend already. Both of them.

XxX

"You knew."

It was not in question. There was no way he couldn't have.

"You shall have to be more specific sire." Gaius didn't raise his eyebrow or look at him sternly, the man appeared broken to Arthur's eyes, but that did not make him anymore lenient.

"About Merlin." He accused in a hard voice.

Gaius looked at him straight in the eye and didn't blink. "That he was going to kill the King? No." Merlin had looked him right in the eye too. And lied.

"You must have."

"I confess I knew of his sorcery. But he spoke only of an intention to heal the King, anything further that happened I can swear I have no knowledge or understanding of."

"How could you not know? How could you not know!" But he wasn't sure if he was asking Gaius or himself. He'd looked Merlin right in the eye before he did it, while he did it, he saw those eyes glisten and plead and promise and glow. How could he have missed the truth, the lies?

"I should have you arrested as an accessory to treason and for consorting with a sorceror." But that applied to himself. He'd known of Merlin's sorcery and was going to just... accept it, look past it! He's the one who brought Merlin into the room and asked him to stand over his father and cast that spell. The guilt, the hypocrisy weighed too heavily. "But I won't."

"Sire?"

"I cannot in good conscience arrest you for trusting... someone whom I put my trust in. But if you know anything of where he might have gone now, or how we might find him, it is treason not to tell me."

"I assure you I have no idea of what he could have done or where he could have gone after he left this room to meet with you."

Arthur nodded and felt the unbearable urge to escape. He opened the door to leave, but stopped at the threshold and turned back to look at the door up the small flight of stairs that lead to... well, he knew what it used to lead to, a small cupboard that housed an idiot boy from Ealdor... he wasn't sure what it lead to anymore.

"Someone will be by to seal that door. No one is to ever enter that room again." Arthur ordered, his first command since his father's death, his first order as King in all ways except official. All memory of Merlin of Ealdor would be sealed away.

He turned and left the door leading to unknown places behind. It wasn't like a weight off his shoulders, but it was like removing the axe that had been lodged in his heart and locking his heart in a box. He wasn't freerer or lighter, but he could breathe.

XxX

Arthur knelt on a cold stone floor for the entire night, staring at his father's corpse. There had been commotion and orders and emotion and action. Now in the silence, Arthur finally pieced his thoughts together.

He had trusted Merlin. The man was a sorceror, who even after confessing to being a liar and a criminal, Arthur had been gullible and stupid enough to trust. Merlin had then gone on to murder his father who laid dressed up, stiff and pale before him.

It was simple. This was his fault, for having allowed his father to be stabbed in first place when he was right there, and then again for allowing a known traitor into his father's chambers and expecting loyalty.

It was also complicated for this was also Merlin's fault for ever turning to magic and for betraying Arthur when Arthur had been prepared to protect him. Which meant that again, it was Arthur's fault for not keeping Merlin away from magic, for not noticing, for letting this happen in the first place. His friend was gone, just as his sister was gone. Not dead, but irreparably corrupted. Merlin had been a good man, and Arthur knew he had never been a true friend because he hadn't noticed when that goodness was corrupted, he hadn't stopped it when he should have. He'd failed his friend. But Merlin now, he was no longer that good man. Arthur would remember his friend with bitter longing, and he would hunt down this sorceror until the rage in his heart cooled with an execution.

The ache his heart though, he knew that would never leave him.

He was crowned the next day. His first order as King, offcially, was to hunt down the sorceror Merlin and bring him to justice for the murder of the King.

XxX