A/N: Thanks for the support and I hope you like this chapter. Lots of angsty angst.

I don't own Merlin.

Chapter 3

Merlin awoke to the sound of birdsong and the deep ache of sitting in one place for far too long. Groaning as his cramped muscles protested, he hauled himself to his feet and blinked several times, reveling in the solidity of the world.

It had worked, sort of. His mind had been carved up brutally, with random memories floating around without any connections. Merlin shuddered when he realized the damage Sigan really could have caused. Luckily, Sigan hadn't made it past his memories to such vital things as the ability to talk or breathe. Still, the amount of reconstruction that Merlin had to do was staggering. Even with Sigan's understanding of mind arts, Merlin wasn't accustomed to submersing himself in his mind, much less repairing extensive damage.

Thus, his fixes were rudimentary, Merlin realized. To anchor the memories, he had just strung them along linearly, and that wasn't the most efficient way to access anything. His thoughts felt sluggish and unresponsive. However, he was just glad that Sigan's memories weren't tainting his anymore. He had sequestered them in a corner of his mind where they couldn't mingle freely with his own memories, which had been disorientating and utterly confusing.

It wasn't that he hated Sigan, Merlin thought. Sigan was… surprisingly human. He wasn't evil and his memories weren't dripping with malice and spite. Sigan, Merlin decided, was a wounded man, his reputation formed by the negative opinions of the court and the lies of his king. However, the abuses of his liege and the scars of his past didn't change the fact that Sigan, evil sorcerer or not, had attacked Merlin's home, and Merlin had no pity for a man who would raze Camelot and threaten Arthur for misplaced revenge.

Thus, he had locked Sigan's memories away, rejecting them and praying that they stayed there, forever locked away from his own. Understanding or not, Merlin didn't want Sigan's bitterness infesting his mind. The language skills he had acquired could have been useful as well as the fiendishly complex spells that Sigan knew, but Merlin felt uncomfortable taking anything from Sigan.

Glancing at the sun, Merlin realized with a start that it was about noon. A sick feeling bubbled in his stomach as he realized that he'd been gone from Camelot for at least half a day. He had completely bungled his interactions with Gaius and Arthur. Gods, the look in Arthur's eyes. Their friendship was so… fragile, sometimes. They never said anything out loud, never had to, so the little things meant so much more. His vicious refusal of Arthur's silent apology… the guilt rose in his throat.

Pushing his worry about Gaius' and Arthur's reactions to the back of his mind, Merlin trudged through the woods for half an hour until the trees ended and he could see Camelot's walls rising toward the sky.

Relived, he made his way to Camelot's main gates, but stopped dead when a thought hit him. How had he known which way Camelot was? It burned brightly in his mind, a orienting point like north to a compass, and he had never felt it like this before, viscerally. The city sang, a welcoming, soothing, familiar… Sigan, Merlin realized with a sense of dread. He had known that his mind repairs were an imperfect solution, but still, he had expected the leakage to be minor. Forcefully calming himself, he entered the city and made his way to the castle, ignoring the welcoming hum of the stone beneath his feet.

He passed the guards without incident and quickly climbed the stairs to Gaius' workroom. Cautiously, he opened the wooden door, hoping fiercely that Gaius was running an errand or collecting plants or…

"Merlin!" Gaius exclaimed, rushing to the cringing boy. "Where were you? Do you know how worried I've been about you?" Merlin gave him a sheepish smile, touched at Gaius' concern. "I hope you have a good reason for your little disappearing act, because Arthur is furious." Merlin swallowed, the guilt and a healthy dose of fear mixing in the pit of his stomach.

"I was collecting plants for you, Gaius," Merlin said, the lie falling effortlessly from his lips. "You said that you needed feverfew and comfrey." Gaius nodded, he had mentioned that several days before, but his faint confusion that absent-minded Merlin had remembered showed in his eyes. "So I went into the forest, and lost track of time. Darkness fell and I decided to sleep instead of getting lost in the woods at night. I woke up a little while ago and came back to the castle."

"I'm glad you came out of your adventures unscathed, Merlin," Gaius said, running his eyes critically over Merlin's body to check for any wounds that would disprove that statement. "But where's my feverfew and comfrey?"

While Merlin would usually freeze and stutter out a string of nonsense, he found himself able to remain composed and calm. "Heh, I dropped my collections when I tripped over a root in the dark and forgot all about my original purpose. Sorry," he said sheepishly.

Gaius cocked one amused eyebrow at him, evidently believing his story. Merlin had to forcibly hold in a sigh of relief. He was usually terrible at lying.

"Well, however well-meaning your disappearance, Arthur is the one you have to beg forgiveness from," Gaius reminded him, and Merlin's stomach sank. Gaius continued, taking a perverse pleasure in his pain, Merlin was sure. "He was infuriated when I told him that you weren't here. He spit out something about being the prince, gathered his armor, and stomped to the training grounds to spar with his knights." Gaius chuckled. "The sounds of him banging away at their armor could be heard from up here. You should go find him and explain your absence."

Merlin blanched. The last thing he wanted was to face an angry and hurt Arthur with a sword. Arthur could be murderous without a weapon; with one, he was downright deadly. But, Gaius' advice was sound. If he didn't report to Arthur now, Arthur would definitely throw him in the stocks for hours when he discovered that Merlin had been hiding from him.

With a sense of doom, Merlin trooped to the training field, the clang of metal growing steadily louder as he approached his demise. He hadn't even polished Arthur's armor, since his magic had simply devastated his mind instead of doing anything useful. Merlin felt a slight urge to turn back and wait for the pompous brat to debase himself begging for Merlin's forgiveness, but recognized it instantly as Sigan's influence.

From what little Merlin had gathered when he had shunted Sigan's memories to the back of his mind, he had determined that Lord Cornelius Sigan hadn't been born noble. His construction of Camelot had netted him a title and land, but the court had mocked him for his peasant background. Merlin understood, as he actually was a peasant servant and the nobles were certainly not respectful to him. However, Sigan's instinct to lash out at anything that threatened his status did nothing to help Merlin, who was most definitely not a nobleman. Hopefully, Merlin would be able to properly apologize to Arthur and shoulder his punishment without Sigan's pride getting in the way.

He wasn't too optimistic about this going well, though, especially when Arthur came into view.

Merlin knew Arthur, inside and out. It was a skill developed in defense, since not knowing Arthur meant that Merlin wouldn't know when just talking to Arthur would cause him to be deluged by chores or when Arthur was about to go harrying off on another ill-considered quest. Arthur's current emotional state hovered somewhere between "furious" and "homicidal," judging by the ferocity of his sparring. Fighting was how Arthur bled out tension, so if half a day of sparring still left him spitting in anger, Merlin knew that it was going to get worse if he allowed Arthur to stew in his negative emotions.

Despair settling on his shoulders like an unwelcome blanket, Merlin trudged to the edge of the training field and waited with dread for Arthur to notice him.

It didn't take long. Merlin sometimes suspected that, like he was hyperaware of Arthur's presence, Arthur was hyperaware of his. In this case, this was not a good thing.

Arthur quickly disarmed his opponent, who was panting with exhaustion, and then sauntered over to Merlin, a fake-cheerful smile plastered on his face. His eyes, Merlin noticed, danced with confusion and wounded anger.

"Merlin!" he cried, and Merlin tried and failed to smile at him. "Finally, you grace us with your presence."

"Arthur, sorry about that; I went into the forest and –"

Arthur lost his smile, and his face turned hard. "That's Prince Arthur to you."

Merlin could do nothing but stare at him, stunned and internally reeling. This was entirely unexpected. He expected yelling and chores, but he did not expect this cold version of his friend. Sigan's memories whispered of a prince that had kneeled in the face of his power and called softly for reverence.

Arthur's cold gaze swept over Merlin. "Go get into armor. You're sparring with me today."

Merlin's feet took him automatically toward the armory, but his mind was still trying to process this string of events. Arthur had been hurt by Merlin's brusque behavior, but Merlin didn't think that his friend could possibly be that frigid towards him. He felt disoriented, felt his grasp on the world starting to slip. One little jolt, and already his slight fixes were beginning to fail.

He began to mechanically don his armor, ignoring the wisps of smoky memory of a young, black-haired man determined to wield the sword better than any pampered nobleman. As he examined the armory's swords, he weakly attempted to push Sigan's memories back into their proper place, but the threads of Sigan's influence leaked into his mind, undeterred by his efforts.

Something about Arthur's few sentences had rocked his control to this extent, Merlin hazily thought, and he wondered what it could be. Was Arthur really such a cornerstone of his life that a change in their relationship would upset Merlin's painstaking organization? He didn't know, and as he drew closer to the field again, it became more and more difficult to think.

Arthur said something as Merlin reached the training ground and the knights jeered at him, but Merlin didn't notice. He crossed the field to a point opposite Arthur and fell into a comfortable familiar pose that his teacher had drilled into him so fervently that he was surprised he didn't sleep like this.

Arthur looked vaguely taken-aback at Merlin's competent stance, but obviously brushed it off as a fluke. Without warning, he rushed at Merlin, sword raised to clip Merlin's helmet with a painful clang.

But Merlin wasn't there anymore, because he wove around the pale boy who hadn't known hardship and would therefore lose every time, because this was a game for him, not a serious validation of his right to carry this beautiful sword.

Arthur thrust and Merlin parried the hopeless blow which couldn't have cleaved a caterpillar and followed with a lunge that the boy barely blocked and which caused him to stumble back a few steps. Arthur's mouth opened and closed, his eyes wide with surprise, and so Merlin pushed the offensive against the burly man that would fall like all of the others under his sword. A thread of fear wove its way into Arthur's stance as Merlin swung and knew that one more blow would end it all, because the king had been so stupid as to accept a duel to the death. His body sang with elation as the king lost his footing. Twyla would be avenged; the king's blood would blot out the sight of his wife's dead, sightless eyes. It was so close, one more stab, and then Arthur would be dead.

With a gasp, Merlin twisted the sword to fall harmlessly on the grass. Arthur stared at him from the ground where he kneeled in front of Merlin, betrayal and confusion and fear flitting across his features. The field was deathly silent and the bile rose in Merlin's throat.

He had been so close, so close, to killing Arthur, killing his master, his friend, his destiny. He looked down at Arthur, guilt flooding his mind as he remembered Sigan's whispers he would kneel at your feet and felt the sword in his hand dripping with the blood of the knight who intervened.

In that moment, he hated himself and Sigan in equal measure, and the brief thought of ripping out his own heart entered his mind, because that would hurt less than the soul-deep terror that resided in Arthur's eyes. Without a word, he dropped the sword and ran.

The cloying silence followed him to the castle.