A strange light is burning into his eyelids and if Merlin has left the shutters open, again, he's going to send him to the stocks and throw rotten fruit at him himself.
Is that dirt he feels beneath his hand?
Either Merlin has become an even worse manservant than he'd ever imagined or he's sleeping on dirt? Why is he sleeping on dirt, he's certain there's a reasonable explanation and he'll be sure to demand it from Merlin the moment he arrives with the morning breakfast.
"Merlin" Arthur grumbles trying to roll to his feet, and ending with a facefull of more dirt in stead.
He's tied. With ropes.
Then everything crashes down on him all at once and he's remembering scar face, the tent, and Merlin shouting for him.
Arthur wishes he could rewind time, that this may have never happened and he is at home in his bed and Merlin has left the shutters open, again, and this time he's going to throw rotten vegetables. His aim needs practice, he'll say when the guards look at him funny.
He might wish he could rewind time, but he cant so he settles for shuffling closer to Merlin. Ever careful not to startle or wake him.
Arthur runs his eyes over Merlin assessing his injures, noting the breeches are only just covering his hips and as of yet unlaced. There's a smattering of bruises covering his torso and another fanning from cheek to jaw, nothing seems fatal and for that he's relieved. But then of course there's also how he's sleeping on his side with his knobby knees near to tucked beneath his chin.
It would have been adorable, if it wasn't so damnably worrying. Arthur takes heart in knowing Merlin had slept close, back to back, most of the night if his dim memory of warmth and soft breaths are right.
The men are waking rooting for food in there provisions so he nudges Merlins shoulder, once, twice until finally he blinks up at him through sleep muddled eyes.
"G'way m'sleeping" he grumbled swatting Arthurs hand, what was it now?
Always, get this Merlin, clean that Merlin, Merlin I'm hungry! You'd think he was the princes nanny not his manservant. Well, right now Merlin was going to sleep and the prince could bloody well dress himself for once.
Vaguely he thinks his bed is a bit harder than usual and he feels wrong but he pushes it aside. He doesn't want to think about anything, he just wants to sleep.
Arthur drew a sharp fortifying breath waiting for the moment when Merlin would remember, dreading it as though the nightmare were his own. In some ways, it was.
He doesn't know what he had expected. Maybe a fit of tears, some sobbing or whatnot - all of which Merlin is entitled to of course and Arthur is not that big of an arse that he wouldn't be as comforting as he knows how - but his worries are unfounded.
Merlin does none of those things, he just sort of stiffens something dark and haunting passing through blue eyes before he nods sharply with a soft, "Oh, that's really happened then."
Arthur wishes, and he's been doing a lot of that lately, it had been hysterics to this quiet acceptance. He know what to do with a crying woman, mostly, in theory.
But this, there is no precident for this: how to deal with your manservant - whom you're a little in love with - after he's been raped.
All his training, all his experience, came down to nothing when weighed in this moment - Merlin staring off past his shoulder not quite able to meet his gaze directly, clearly he was waiting for something from him - and he'd of glady given his sword arm to know what it is Merlin needs him to say.
In the end he's stuck with both arms and a lack of any idea what course of actions to take.
He thinks of slipping out a pointless 'I'm sorry' or an equally useless 'Its all my fault, forgive me?' but ignored them. This isn't about him, this is about Merlin and while those things might assuage the weight hanging heavy as a yoke around his neck they wont help Merlin.
He doesn't know what to say, so he takes a note from Morgana's book of rules, 'If you don't know what to say then hold your tongue, Arthur.' And this is what he does, he slings an arm around Merlins shoulder and says what he should have from the start, "It will be alright."
It's a blatant lie, of course, but one that needs to be said and what Merlin needed to hear.
Its evening in camp, and the men have left Merlin alone since the incident with scar face. Daub and the others have begun to worry, their messenger is late in arriving.
Arthur would not be over distraught should his father have delivered the man to a long and bloody death, it might be the weather making him cranky and over bloodthirsty but mostly he thinks it's the guilt gnawing at his innards making him crave retribution.
The other two milling about stare at Merlin and him long enough to make his skin crawl, not for the first time he wonders how Merlin can bear it so calmly. If it had been he, well, Arthur dismissed the thought. It wasn't, and he had Merlint to thank for that but enough was enough. It was time for this charade to end.
"Scar face!" he shouted stalking forward squaring his shoulders for the coming controntation, Merlin gasped quietly at his feet hissing, "sit down, Arthur" which he promptly ignored. Scar face looked up from his meal with a scowl, "You do not speak to me like that boy!"
"I am the Crown Prince of Camelot, and you are the scum beneath my boots" Arthur said imperiously, "and I will speak to yo however I wish."
Merlin was staring at him like he was the village idiot.
"He doesn't know what he's talking about" Merlin said his voice quiet and hard, no hint of the usual ramble he usualy had when he lied. "This man is my servant. He's afflicted with a grave mental disease called idiocy" Merlin said somberly slanting a private look to Arthur that could be interpreted as 'what did you think you where doing.'
"He only thinks to shield me."
Scar face rubbed his chin thoughtfully, "An idiot indeed but how very…loyal…of him." Merlin shrugged regally, Arthur hadn't thought it possible for a shrug to be regal and yet it was. Later he would have to ask how he managed that.
"He's eager to heap punishment on himself, isn't he, this servant of yours." Merlin frowned crossing his arms, "Yes, well, like I said, he's a bit of an idiot."
Arthur never knew how Merlin managed it but he convinced these rabble he was a prince, and that the prince was a peasant, and still when he said idiot it sounded a lot like prat, while his eyes said 'hush before you get yourself killed.'
Arthur had never known eyes to be loud before Merlin with his sires that sounded like an insult, and his bows that reeked of impertinence, and now his eyes spoke loudly as words. Of course he did have lovely eyes…which was not at all the point.
The point that between the two of them he was the prince.
"Lies!" Arthur snapped his face dark as storm clouds. He cant believe, well not really, this is Merlon so he can. But still, something inside him is shocked by how far Merlin is willing to carry this charade until he realized, "He's protecting me."
His gut clenches uncomfortably. Merlin is always at his most stubborn - and sometimes most stupid - when he thinks he's protecting Arthur.
Merlin is mimicking him at his most stately, and he really aught to know because he recognizes the set of those shoulders, the strong jut of his jaw and the furrow between his brows, because their his.
Merlin who slouches his shoulders loping around the castle with ungainly strides rather than stalks. Merlin who glares like a kicked puppy, not any angry and dangerous bear waiting for someone to poke it that he might have cause to retaliate, strongly. Merlin, who smiles more than he frowns and laughs more than he shouts.
"He is a well meaning servant, nothing more, and my father would not take kindly to having paid good money for damaged goods" Merlin stated with a pointed look to the men who laugh crudely. Scar face nods thoughtfully.
Arthur flushes hotly grinding his teeth. Merlin made a valid point, chances where he would continue to be left alone because of it. That did not mean he had to like it.
"But of course," scar face says with a sneer and mocking bow, "my little prince."
A small vicious part of him that wants to lash out, to hurt, because he's hurting and he cant logically see why, he's remarkably unharmed with barely a scratch on him, why then does he feel like hes drowning and standing atop a friend to breathe?
The anger bleeds to exahustion and he lets it go like so many shattered dreams and hopes he once harbored. Merlin walks a little closer than he needs to but Arthur welcomes it, "That was almost impressive" he says at last.
"Was just being you" he said with a faint laugh and a smile that does not reach his eyes. "You shouldn't have done it" Arthur says, because he has to, "you know what they will do."
"I'm hoping that your father will send the blasted money, and we can go home and I can sleep for a week in my bed with my blanket and get woken up by Gaius' snoring and your usually list of chores" Merlin said his voice quiet and soft and bordering on desperate.
Arthur doesn't point out that hope was a sorry thing to bet your life on, but he doesn't because whats done it done.
"I could kill them, I really, really want to" Merlin confessed, "if not for this I think I would."
Arthur nods and simply says, "I should hope so Merlin."
"Your not well…angry or anything?"
Arthur pauses mid step, rights himself, and scowls at Merlin in bewilderment, "Why would I be?" he's not sure what Merlin is looking for, but he doesn't find it and he seems to striaghten out when he looks away, with a soft, "Oh."
Arthur get its then and snorts, "Honestly, Merlin. I'd be more worried if you weren't entertaining thoughts of turning these rabble into mice and feeding them to the stable cats."
The curve of Merlin's mouth is bitter and a little vengeful, but its real and Arthur will take that over the stitled smiles that stop short of his eyes because this is real.
"That's a good one, really, I hadent even thought of that" Merlin mutters and Arthur feels like preening at the praise. Over the next hour they explain in vivid detail the ways that a man can be killed and it eases the tension in Arthurs shoulders. Can he do any of these things, no, but it soothes the anger burning like a hot stone in his gullet to imagine it and explain with a dramatic flourish that never fails to make Merlin laugh.
Not his usual one, a faint echo of that only.
But its progress, he'll take what he can get.
Daub pulled hard on the rope, just to make Merlin fall, which he did spectacularly all flailing limbs and sprawling legs, Arthur tried to catch him but that was hard to do without full use of two hands the result was the pair of them scuffed and dirtier than before. Arthur held outhis bound hands and grasped Merlins tugging him to his feet wordlessly.
Merlin stumbles more than usual, and he was limping heavily. Arthur notices and knows that Merlin sees this as his face flushes with shame that he tries to cover with another smile that never quite reaches his eyes.
Arthur says nothing about it, because he hasn't the words for the things roiling about within him. He feels rather like he's lost a joust, his father is frowning down at him from the stands, and he's bleeding out onto the arena from a wound he cannot see.