Title: No Victory
Rating: PG-13 (see warnings)
Spoilers: 4x9, 4x12, 4x13

Warnings: No sex, no non-con/rape, some violence/gore, character death.

Summary: The agonising irony was not lost on him: weeks before she had begged for his forgiveness in this room and now he offered it frantically in the hope she would know it before the end. AU ending to 4x13.

A/N: This was, of course, what Arthur was thinking when he watched Tristan and Isolde's final moments together.

They stood back to back in the throne room, collecting their strength for the skirmish ahead and immediately, Arthur regretted the command that had sent Merlin with Tristan and Isolde after Morgana. It had left him and Guinevere to fight alone and though she was not useless with a weapon nor reserved in her righteous anger, Arthur faced down the serious might of Helios. Guinevere would be left to deal with whatever mercenaries came their way. The presence of Tristan or Isolde alongside her would have eased Arthur's mind a little. They were visibly experienced in combat and Arthur was...fearful for any harm that may come to Guinevere. He tried to convince himself that his fear was rooted in his duty to protect her, a former citizen of Camelot, and was nothing else. Yet he knew that he cared for each hair on her head endlessly...but he could never forgive her, another abuser of his trust in these past awful weeks.

Now they fought: Helios and Arthur. Blades clashed, zinging loudly, the smell of iron and sweat in the air. Arthur's heart raced fast in his chest and he felt his tunic sticky underneath his chainmail, pasted to his back. Helios was large, strong and a veteran fighter, a worthy opponent to Arthur's considerable experience and skills. Yet Arthur could hear Guinevere behind him, exclaiming with each stroke of her blade and he didn't know whether she were glorious in battle or outnumbered by advancing foes.

Helios capitalised on Arthur's divided concentration. The punch sent Arthur reeling to the floor. Doggedly, Arthur swung his sword out behind him as he went down, hoping to wound some part of Helios in the fall. Helios' swift blow in reply sent Arthur's sword skimming across the stones.

Arthur's jaw ached mercilessly as he rolled onto his back and his vision seemed jarred too. As he looked up, blinking and squinting to clear his sight, he saw Helios' blade gleaming high above him. In the blink of an eye, Arthur designed his plan. He would roll forward at the precise moment when Helios brought his blade down, knowing that he had to catch hold of his sword across the floor and then cut a thrust upwards into Helios from below-

A sound – the wet sound of flesh on metal – came from nowhere. Arthur looked at the shape behind Helios. Guinevere had stabbed the villain through the torso: a winning stroke. Helios's face slackened: the realisation that his end had come was present in his eyes. Behind him, Guinevere's face carried a look of angry satisfaction at her deed, but she made no move to defend herself and before Arthur could cry out for her to back away-

Helios was a seasoned fighter, right down to his last moment. He wheeled around and in one final stroke, delivered a quick, efficient thrust of his sword backwards into Guinevere, catching her straight in the stomach. Arthur cried out, his hand reaching forth uselessly. The great bulk of Helios dropped to the floor with a dull thud, his weapon clanging brightly in the gathering quiet.

For the briefest of moments, silence and stillness reigned. Guinevere stood motionless, her eyes closed and for a ridiculous moment, Arthur was too shocked to move, too encased in a preposterous fear that if he moved, he would make it real...

Then it came to life, suddenly and brutally, as Guinevere gasped loudly with the pain. Her eyes cast down at her side to where her hand was pressed, already tinted with the blood finding freedom through her meagre clothing. She looked across to him for just a second, her face held in fear and shock, and then her knees gave way beneath her.

Arthur rose fast then. The ridiculous, self-protective notion that had kept him pinned down in disbelief was gone. His mind raced faster than his battle-tired heart ever had and a great cloak of terror caught hold of him. He was too late to catch her. Guinevere had fallen down and then forward into a heap, gasping, sobbing, hands clutching at her waist and blood glistening on her dark clothing in fragments of candlelight. Arthur fell to his knees beside her, the wound on the opposite side to him. He roughly rolled Guinevere onto her back and pulled at her tattered garments. He pushed her hand away in order to see the injury. Yet he knew, having been on the receiving end of Helios' ferocity and precision that he would likely find a wound past healing and Arthur knew no medicinal skills, save pressure.

Sure enough, her belly was cut open in an admirable slice right from the curve of her waist, inches across and deep, disappearing into her, shades of pink and red and darker red still. The blood spilled out from her side. Small streams of it ran from the wound, around her waist and began to make a puddle across from Arthur. He bunched her clothing up, pressing it into her to stem the blood, his whole weight on just one small spot of her...and her agonised sobs filled the air.

"Help!" Arthur cried out, looking up at the numerous doors, some open, some closed. "Help!"

He listened for a response while he looked to Guinevere, hoping to see her face for the first time and perhaps muster a smile in comfort, but she had angled her head away from him and so he resorted to words.

"Gwen...it'll be all right...it'll be all right," he said, trying to sound reassuring, level and in control, yet feeling nothing but horror and icy fear and panic as his heart thrummed fast in his body and a line of sweat edged its way creepily through his hair.

He looked at her stomach again. The blood kept coming, warm through his gloves, sticky and glossy and indifferent to his efforts. He pushed harder still, even though the wound seemed to swallow the fabric up and spit out more dark fluid in derision.

"Help!" he cried out once more, knowing that he sounded like a lamb calling for its lost mother. He listened more closely, frantically waiting for the sound of footsteps or the distant clash of swords or anything that would indicate arriving assistance. Yet all he could hear was Guinevere's clamour: sobs and gasps and whimpers that were definitely slower and definitely shallower than the previous moments.

Desperate, he resolved to move. He didn't know where he would head but he knew he had to take her to aid if it were not coming to them, despite whatever fighting may take place outside. He awkwardly pushed his arm underneath her shoulders, while he set his other beneath her legs and bent them at the knees. But when he lifted her and she folded in his embrace, she cried out loudly. The noise was so surprising to Arthur that he stopped immediately, almost a little heartened to hear her so vibrant. But the flicker of potential relief was short-lived when he saw the agony in her face as her head fell against his upper arm and he felt her hands reaching for her injury.

"Stop, stop, stop," she whimpered. She held an expression of such pain on her features: her eyes squinted closed, lips pouted and sweat beaded on her blanching forehead. He saw the droplets of tears on her lashes. His heart ached for her, his stomach clenched in fear.

Arthur shook his head, hating himself for hurting her yet knowing he had little choice. He took a wide step over the blood slick that had extended beneath her and set on a path toward the door. He heard her breath take on a new cadence as he walked: a slow inhalation, held for a time, then a fast exhalation wrapped around a pained sigh. Her agony was not to be questioned. As he reached the open door and slowly bent his head into the corridor to check for enemies, her words stopped him.

"No," she said, wearily. Another clunky set of breaths. "No."

"Guinevere, I have to," he said, low and rough. He looked at her, wanting to smile at her, wanting to give her a piece of hope, but her face was still creased with pain and it stripped him of his fleeting optimism. Her eyes were tearful, pleading: a familiar look from recent weeks.

"Please, Arthur..." she sobbed. A coil of desperation worked its way into her voice. Two tears fell simultaneously down her cheeks but then she set her mouth firmly and her eyes resolved into determination. He knew such a look from men he had fought alongside in time before. It was a gaze full of the knowledge that the end was coming and seeing it in her face made him feel sick.

"You can't...you don't mean that..." he said, his teeth tightly set together as though they formed a guard against his burgeoning emotions. Arthur leaned his head back out of the throne room, set on ignoring her and trying to plan a path to Gaius' apothecary when he felt something soft on his cheek.

"I know," he heard her whisper, and as he turned his head, he saw her hand fall back into her lap before he met her eyes.

He looked at her, pressed seemingly safe into his chest, and he hoped to find her the instigator of an ugly joke. He rallied at himself once more to ignore her...but her face knew her determination well, mixed with a new weariness around her puffy eyes.

In the pit of himself, he recognised that they both knew she was going to die here in his arms, on the altar of Arthur's blind trust and on this needless quest for Camelot's reclamation. And how, he asked himself, if he had given up his half his lands for her in recent weeks, how could he now deny her this last, inconsequential, wish for mercy?

He lost her eyes amid his gathering tears and felt his face creased with grief. The world quickly grew watery before him as he slowly, achingly stepped back inside the throne room, his heart like an anvil in his chest. He blinked fiercely to clear his vision, and cast about for a space hallowed enough for her in those last precious moments. Her breathing had changed again, shuddering, slowing and so he turned to back his body against the great wooden door, forcing it shut and then slowly, gently, he bent his knees and slid down to the floor.

He extended her legs out to relieve any pain she may have felt and then cradled her torso close to him, his left arm beneath her shoulders. He yanked his glove from his free right hand with his teeth and softly, he touched her cheek. She was cool, a little clammy there, though whether the dampness was tears or sweat, he knew not. Her face couldn't help but betray the pain she still felt. Her breathing was full of effort now, as though she were saving up her breaths. Her face was the palest he had ever seen it.

Arthur's mind fumbled over his words...so many words to say and yet no time. And he couldn't escape the knowledge that it was the same embrace and circumstance he had held his father in months before. How can it be so unfair that he loses these precious two so suddenly, so much in the same fashion as not to be believed?

"Never...stopped," Guinevere said, tiredly.

"Don't..." he whispered. There was always hope, there had to be. "Save your strength."

"Loving...you," she finished and then she closed her eyes, her brow furrowed with the exertion. Her mouth was half-open as she breathed unsteadily; there was blood on her tongue and around her teeth and the throaty tang of iron hung in the air.

His eyes and nose stung even more then and fat tears fell squarely onto her chest. He looked away from her then because he couldn't bear it. He couldn't bear the knowledge that it was the end, that not one of his tomorrows would live with the promise of her and that he would not rise to her glorious smile nor fade into sleep amid her softness. And worst of all, most crushing to his ailing heart...that she had always loved him. Nobody lied in their final moments: it was always a hope, a confession, a wish.

And then, as though by magic, the right words and gestures found him.

"I love you, I forgive you, I'm so sorry," he said quickly, as though the right combination of words were needed to heal her. His voice was creased with emotion. He pulled the ring reclaimed from the forest from his right little finger and found the cold, slackening fingers of her left hand. He pushed the ring onto her wedding finger with a little difficulty as there was no resistance in her hand to help him. But gently, he twisted and wound the band on and then it was in place.

She opened her eyes halfway, smiled faintly and Arthur felt a tiny sliver of movement in her left hand.

He leaned forward and pressed a soft kiss to her lips. She tasted of salt and blood but her unmoving mouth was still familiar, still the mouth he loved. Then he leaned back from her, caught her eyes as they shuttered closed and hoped his words were enough, that they relayed all the complexities he felt.

"I love you...I always have, I always will, I was wrong..."

He knew the moment he had forced her out that he wanted her back. And in that precious last moment, he felt that a kiss on another man's lips was insignificant if she loved him, that he would forgive her anything if only she would stay with him. His future and hers were bound up in a tight knot that could never be undone. How would he do this without her?

"Forgive me...please...please Gwen...I can't...I need you...I..."

The agonising irony was not lost on him: weeks before she had begged for his forgiveness in this room and now he offered it frantically in the hope she would know it before the end.

"I don't...please...please..."

His grief took him then and he crumpled completely, his words turning to sobs, loud and full of a different kind of agony to Guinevere's. He pulled her close to him and found the soft line of her neck, immersing himself in the smell she exuded: of smoke and fresh air and her sweat and he felt the rough curls of her hair against his temple.

Almost imperceptibly, her weary body slackened in his arms.

He held her tighter then, as though by sheer force he could stop the irrepressible nature of death, his mouth open against her neck and his gasps of heartbreak closeted around his ears.

He didn't know how long he stayed there for. It may have been a minute; it may have been an hour while he wept into her. But Camelot needed the King, even though Arthur needed Guinevere more. He did not want to leave her there, alone and unprotected, but he had to seek out the others and reclaim the castle. He could not fail anybody else.

He breathed heavily as he brought his head up, trying to assert himself over his emotions, looking away from her now to the walls where the colours of Camelot hung in a tapestry. He felt his eyes swollen but knew he must control himself, that he could not give Morgana any satisfaction should they meet. There would be a time for his grief, as dark and unending as Morgana's new hatred of his house, but it could not be now.

With every word an apology, he gently lifted Guinevere up in his arms and slowly walked away from the doors to lay her delicately on the stone tiles in a quiet corner of the throne room. Her red-brown hands fell outward from her body, and still the cavity spewed dark, thickened blood. He straightened her out as he fought his emotion harder than he had fought anything before, trying to forget that it was Guinevere he laid out here, dead. Gingerly he moved across the room, rubbing his eyes in the palm of his hand, and tore the heavy scarlet banner from the wall. It came away from its fixtures with a satisfying ripping sound.

He returned to Guinevere's resting spot, an alcove away from the doors, and knelt alongside her. His movements were laboured, heavy with reluctance: at the necessity of covering her up, at his desertion of her, at his prioritising the castle over his grief, over his love.

Arthur laid the banner over her, slowly and sadly, starting at her feet and stopping only to gaze at her face. Of course, her face was peaceful looking. He had seen her sleep before and had enjoyed watching her in her private repose. Now, he longed to rouse her from that sleep unending. He crouched over her, her face nestled between his elbows and his hands touching her bound hair, to quickly touch a chaste kiss to her half-open mouth, to set his forehead on hers and whisper his love for her once more...then he shut his eyes tight as he fell back onto his heels and reached for her shroud, to let the final lot of tapestry fall over her face.

He could not see her like that, wrapped up in death's profile.

And Arthur stood up and put his back to her, collected his sword...and then hers...from the stones, ignoring the nearby bodies of those slain and as he reached the door, he collected his remaining glove from a small pool of blood. Then he abandoned her alone in that room for the second time. He resolved to reclaim his kingdom, yet knowing that without the prospect of her, such a victory could not be called victory at all...