Title: Know My Rage is Black
Author: inane_rational
Beta: lj user sheswatching
Rating: R
Pairing: Merlin/Arthur
Summary: For what he did, this simple execution wasn't enough. But there were more important matters to deal with.
Word count: 955
Warning: dark!Arthur is dark, disturbing imagery and violence
Notes: Modern!AU, more stories will be written for this verse'. Yet, there's no gaurentee that they'll be posted to this site due to rating restriction.
His hands are shaking, the semi-automatic pistol tight in his grip. Uther had given him this gun when he turned sixteen, the right of a crime lord's son. He learned to use it, practiced on the firing range, and shot at rival organizations. The first person he's ever killed was with this gun, and he's going to do it again.
Arthur's hands didn't shake at the prospect of another's death. He shakes in the anticipation of it, stirs in the wrath that's pushing to freedom, pushing towards this, "sorry piece of shit!" His fist collides with the man's face. The man moans in pain as his nose breaks and blood gushes down. When his head leans forward again, he just looks at Arthur with similar rage.
He can feel a twitch in his eye, and the heaving of his chest. This man has nothing to be angry about.
Arthur thumbs the safety. The manager, off in his corner, hitches his breath. They all know what's coming.
When Uther had told Arthur that someone was looking up information on him, it never occurs to him that it would lead to this. He found out who was accessing various databases, and with his own group of men, broke into this man's apartment.
Everything about it was common. He wonders where the man got the money to pay for Avalon's services, as one of Merlin's regular clients. Everything is the colour of weeds, even less extraordinary, and said nothing to why he would investigate Arthur. The bedroom smells, and the blanket is soiled with cum stains. Arthur opens the bedroom closet, looking for boxes to trifle through. There's nothing out of the ordinary, expect for the silk red robes all hanging in one corner. He pulls one out, noticing it's the same one Merlin had shown him three weeks before. He was the man that "loves pretty dolls," as Merlin had put it.
He walks back to his men, asking if they had found anything. They hadn't. Arthur decides to search the room again, following a nudge in his brain. Then he's back at the closet, and he notices.
"Someone check if the heating on?" He yells out to his crew.
"It's not even on," Leon shouts back.
He feels the pieces linking in his head, as Arthur looks to the floor, and the ceiling. There isn't event a vent inside the closet, yet the enclosed space is unusually very warm for that to be. Arthur began pressing on the walls, running his hand on dirty wallpaper, some of it flaking under his fingers. He finds it: a secret room. It's illuminated by a harsh cool blue, shining from the monitors of television screens and computers. The sound of breakage draws his attention to one small television; movement on the screen is blurrily shifting on the opposite wall.
Arthur doesn't know how he sees and understand so quickly.
Merlin's room. In particular, Merlin's blue bed. He can see the lamp on the bedside table is missing, the light shining from the floor. And Merlin is struggling against the man Arthur is looking for, his skinny arms beat, scratch, and pry at his attacker's arm, rapidly losing strength. The man's thin fingers wrap tightly around Merlin's neck, while he's still inside him. The red robe Merlin's wearing, the one he always wears when he's working for this man, is spread out beneath.
All Arthur can see is Merlin bleeding away, as his face reddened with the struggle, his hands limp in their movements.
Arthur speed dials the situation to Avalon's manager.
Merlin's lips are turning blue, when the security pulls the man off. The man makes his own struggle, still trying to finish the job.
He leaves for Avalon, seeing the on-staff medic arrive on the screen, unaware of his men now present within the secret room. They give him a wide berth to let him through. Even they know how this will end.
He makes only one stop. It takes only one step to turn around toward the exit, and to see the shrine. Arthur can see just fine, where he stands. The pictures are the same: a row of a boy dressed in the red robe, relaxed, prone, and acting lifeless in the last picture, at the end of the row, they actually were. Arthur notes Merlin's row. There are many more pictures there. Arthur calculates there were twenty-seven pictures. One for each month he visited Merlin on fourteenth day, like clockwork. The repeated habit of a serial killer.
The man had obviously gotten around at other establishments.
Arthur tells Gawain to burn it, before leaving.
Now he stands in the manager's office, the man, Mr. Edwin Muirden, tied to a chair, awaiting execution.
Arthur lifts his arm, the pistol is steady in its aim.
Mr. Muirden continues to give defiance: justified in his actions. "You had no right to interfere. The boy was mine "
It's a single-entry point through the forehead, between the eyes, and it explodes out the back. The manager is silent, and frozen. He is pale with shock. Avalon is not the place for ithis/i sort of violence. It's a different business.
"I'll pay for the clean up." Arthur gestures to the state of the office. Spatters of blood and more are covering the cabinets and desk. He moves aside for his men to take the body.
Goodbye, Edwin Muirden. When they all eventually go to hell, Arthur hopes to meet him again, because Merlin was never his.
For what he did, this simple execution wasn't enough. But there are more important matters to deal with.
Outside of the office Arthur finds the medic, and strides towards him, asking after Merlin's condition.