Past and Present Danger
A/N: As promised, this is a much longer chapter than the last one. Hope you like it. Thank you for the reviews for the last chapter. They'd be just as appreciated for this one!
Chapter 17
The events that followed his abandonment at the Pass were somewhat of a blur to Merlin. The shock of Arthur leaving him had given Morgana the distraction she needed to haul him up and drag him in the opposite direction to where the Prince had gone. By the time Merlin attempted to shout out for help, Morgana had already clamped a hand over his mouth, forcing him into silence.
He attempted to slow her down by struggling and kicking out at her, but it was useless. Merlin knew he wasn't strong -Will had constantly teased him about it when they had play fought and played games together- but it had never bothered him until the moment when he was being dragged away by a woman who he didn't know, but who hated him for what he would one day become. He hadn't been able to stop tears spilling from his eyes as she forced him to go with her. She said nothing to him, but there was amusement in her face. When she looked at him, he wanted to curl up in a ball and hide.
Before he knew it, they were out of the Pass, but they weren't at the entrance that they'd arrived at earlier in the day. Merlin felt his heart plummet as he realised that they were on the other side of the mountains.
'They'll come and find me,' he said as bravely as he could when she had at last taken her hand away from his mouth, although her grip on his arm didn't lessen.
'I think not,' she whispered, smiling smugly at him. In the dull moonlight her eyes and hair seemed to be almost black, while her pale skin looked as white as snow. It gave her an eerie skeletal look that made Merlin shudder. 'No one even knows I have you.'
'Arthur will tell them,' he replied, but even as the words left his mouth he felt uncertainty fill him. Morgana looked at him and a horrible smirk distorted her features.
'I don't think you believe that any more than I do,' she told him. She seemed amused at the idea and Merlin felt like she was laughing at him. 'Arthur is not your friend just yet, Merlin.'
'Arthur wouldn't ever really hurt me,' he whispered, but his voice was shaking so much that the words were barely understandable.
'Pathetic,' Morgana sneered. 'You're just as stupid whether you're a child or an adult.' Merlin felt tears prick his eyes once more at the words, but he blinked them away. That wasn't true. His older self wasn't stupid and neither was he; she was just trying to make him feel bad. 'Do you really think Arthur cares what happens to you? I suppose you haven't heard how your precious King Arthur tried to kill Merlin when he found out about his magic.'
Merlin felt the shock vibrate through him at the words and it must have shown on his face because Morgana laughed once again.
'I thought not.' She began walking again, pulling him along with her. 'Trust me, boy; Prince Arthur won't say a word about what's happened to you. By the time anyone else knows, we'll be long gone.'
Merlin said nothing else. He was afraid that if he tried to speak he would cry and he didn't want her to see how much she was scaring him.
As the night wore on, Merlin made fewer and fewer attempts to escape from her. For one thing, he didn't even know where he was; even if he did manage to escape he would just be lost in the wild and he wasn't sure how long he'd survive on his own. And on top of that, he was exhausted. He hadn't slept in well over a day and the energy that had initially given him strength when Morgana first appeared seemed to have completely evaporated now. He didn't know if he'd be able to get more than a few metres from her without collapsing in a heap.
The only good thing about his faltering state was the fact that it annoyed the witch. Merlin wasn't sure it was a good thing that his lack of movement was irritating her, but it did give him some small sense of power and that helped him to believe that maybe, just maybe, she wouldn't succeed in whatever plan she had for him.
That was another thought that began to occupy his thoughts, however, and it did nothing to ease his mind over the current situation that he found himself in. What was she going to do with him? He wanted to ask her, but the thought of hearing the plans for definite filled him with dread. At least at the moment he could pretend that she would change her mind and let him go back to Camelot safely.
He knew he was being babyish thinking like that. He still remembered King Arthur and Merlin facing Morgana in the clearing; they had been fearful of what she was going to do; they hadn't believed for one second that she meant to do them good. And he remembered her glaring eyes when he and Prince Arthur had been suspended in the sphere. He had seen the murder in her eyes; she hadn't cared that they were children and that they didn't have a clue what was going on; she had only wanted to hurt and kill them.
But she hadn't been able to, he reminded himself. The first glimmer of hope flickered through the dark thoughts in his mind. When she tried to attack them in the sphere, her spell had backfired leaving her powerless and he and Arthur completely unharmed. What had Merlin said? It was something to do with the protection that had originally been on himself and the King being transferred to their younger selves. The sorcerer had explained to him that the spells wouldn't let anyone hurt them. Weapons would be useless and so would magic. Of course, his older self had also said that they would eventually wear off, but it would take a lot to do that and Morgana hadn't got her magic. Or that was how the theory went anyway.
The knowledge began to calm Merlin somewhat. She couldn't actually do anything to him. All he had to do was wait to be rescued. Even if the Prince didn't tell them the truth, as soon as they all got to Camelot it would be obvious. He wondered if Prince Arthur would get into trouble. He found himself hoping that he would.
After what felt like hours –in which time Merlin convinced himself that Morgana was trying to kill him through exercise- they stopped at a small waterfall and lake. For one terrible moment he thought that Morgana was going to try and drown him. He eyed the water warily and took a few stumbling steps back, tripping on the loose shale that littered the shore and falling heavily. Morgana looked down at him with disdain and sneered again.
'You were clearly a clumsy fool at any age.'
He looked at the water again, scrambling backwards and trying to shut out Morgana's words. She laughed again.
'You think I'm going to drown you?' She crouched down and ran a finger down his cheek. The touch was light, but Merlin felt it like a knife; he half expected to feel a trickle of blood running down his face. He closed his eyes, trying to ignore her intense glare and the way she made him feel distinctly unsafe. 'Oh no,' she continued. 'I know what Merlin did that night; transferring his wards onto you. Weapons can't hurt you.' In a move which was as quick as lightning, Morgana pulled a knife from her belt and brought it slashing towards his face. On instinct, Merlin gave a yell and tried to move back, but Morgana's other hand was at the back of his head, holding it in place. Terror ripped through him. He closed his eyes; a terrible plummeting feeling filled his stomach making him feel sick.
But the agonising bite of the knife never came. He opened his eyes and saw Morgana bringing it slashing towards him again, but nothing happened. The knife glanced off his skin as if she had done nothing more than run a feather along his cheek. She laughed at him again, but stopped abruptly and forced his face close to hers.
'No, weapons can't hurt you,' she hissed. 'And magic would take weeks to break through the protection on you.'
'You don't have magic,' he whispered; his voice trembling. She put a hand around his throat and tightened her fingers. It made no difference to him, not with the wards on his body, but the intent in Morgana's eyes terrified him much more. Eventually she let go.
'I will have soon. But even when it returns that won't be how I kill you.'
Merlin closed his eyes tightly, trying to think of his mother and how she would sing to him when he went to sleep, but Morgana's voice cut through the pleasant memories of home; twisting his mother's loving notes into something dark and dangerous. She stood up and looked at the lake.
'Drowning?' she shrugged. 'Maybe; perhaps your wards would protect you. Merlin was coward enough to consider all possibilities.' She smiled to herself and then crouched down again, this time running a hand through his hair. 'But where would be the fun in that? Two minutes and it would all be over.' She cupped Merlin's face in her hand. 'But this way…' she smiled to herself, her eyes un-focusing as if she was imagining. '…this way, Merlin dies slowly. And Arthur has to watch,' she finished. Without saying anything else, she stood up and, much to Merlin's relief, moved away from him, her eyes fixed on the waterfall.
He considered making a run for it, but even the thought exhausted him. And Morgana knew it, he realised. She didn't even turn around as he struggled to get to his feet. He watched her carefully, looking for anymore signs that she was going to try and attack –even if it didn't affect him- but she seemed to be looking for something. Merlin thought back over her words. She evidently wasn't going to drown him or try to wear down his protection, but then what was her plan? He suddenly felt like not knowing was worse than at least having some idea of what to expect.
'What are you going to do to me?' he whispered. She turned and looked at him, a look that was almost one of fondness on her face.
'I'm not going to do anything,' she told him gently. 'I can't get through your wards. But Merlin won't have put anything in place for starvation and dehydration.' She smirked again. 'Do you know that the human body can't survive more than a week without water?' She stepped up to him. 'Tell me, Merlin; when was the last time you had something to eat or drink?'
Merlin felt like a shadow passed through him at the revelation. He had experienced hunger in his village before. The harvests were not always good and the winters could be harsh. Merlin well remembered the hunger pains that had gripped him, the way his head ached, his mother's desperate glances. It was not something that he wished to repeat, but his stomach was already cramping from lack of food. But water as well? He had never experienced that and he never wanted to.
He made his decision in a split second. Forcing his legs to move quickly, he ran towards the lake, determined to jump into it and drink as much water as he possibly could. At least that would give him a few extra hours and give King Arthur a bit more time to find him. But Morgana had seen the look that he gave the water and, as he was about to make a final leap for it, her arm wrapped around his waist and pulled him back. He fought for a bit longer, but again it was useless. Morgana was right. He hadn't eaten or drank for hours; his body was tired and he was tired.
With a yell of frustration, he allowed his body to go limp.
'That's better,' Morgana told him. 'If you fight you'll just die more quickly.'
Those were the words that echoed around his mind as he allowed exhaustion to consume him.
When Merlin woke, his first thought was that he was hungry and his second was that Morgana had captured him. Both realisations were enough to make tears spring to his eyes and he tried to wipe them away, only to find that his left hand was bound with rope which was fastened to a huge metal weight with a loop in the top. He looked around and was forced to squint against the relative darkness of whatever room or cavern he was in.
The floor he was sitting on and the wall he found himself leaning against were evidently rock, and his body ached from having nothing more comfortable to rest on. It looked almost like a tunnel, but the part that he was in seemed to widen to form a room or a cavern of some sort. He could hear the sound of water somewhere off down the tunnel and he wondered whether they had gone behind the waterfall. His clothes did feel damp and he shivered as he realised how cold it was.
He glanced around the room again; it was lit by several small candles -some in lanterns and some resting on candle holders- and was filled with an assortment of odd furniture. In front of him, against the opposite wall, some ten metres away, there was a rickety table that had a collection of jewellery, coins and amulets on it. To the right of that was what looked like a straw mattress, on which lay a few clothes. Merlin frowned into the darkness and was just able to make out a few other small baskets with… Merlin felt his mouth water. There was food in them; just a few small bread rolls and a bit of fruit, but Merlin almost felt like he could taste them.
He glared at the rope on his wrist, studying it as closely as he could. Quickly he checked the room again, listening for any sound that would suggest Morgana was nearby, but there was nothing; nobody else was in the cavern. Convinced that he was alone, Merlin tried to loosen the cords on his hand, but it was useless. The rope was thick and immovable. He wondered if Morgana had used magic to make the knots impossible to undo, perhaps her magical abilities were beginning to come back.
Changing approaches, he tried to scratch away at it with his free hand, but it only grated away at his nails and made his fingers ache. He even tried the spell that Merlin had taught him when he first arrived. He whispered the word several times to get the right pronunciation until finally a small flame appeared on the palm of his hand. He couldn't stop the thin sliver of pride that filled him, and it was with grim relief that he looked at the bright spark in his hand and held it against the rope.
The rope may have been made out of metal for all the impact the flame made on it. With a sigh of frustration, Merlin allowed the fire to disappear along with his hopes for escape. It seemed that for now at least, he wasn't going anywhere.
Arthur slammed his fist down on the table in his room and then lent against it, his head down and his posture tense.
'Arthur,' Gwen's calm voice came, but there was an edge to it; she wasn't impressed with how he was reacting and, to be honest, he couldn't blame her. Yes, what the Prince had done was terrible and there was no excuse, but he was only a child; somewhere inside Arthur understood that. And yet, the more he thought about what had happened, the angrier he got with the boy.
The journey back to Camelot had been a tense one; that was for sure. Percival had loaded Merlin onto Halesha -who seemed to sense that her Master was not well and flitted around nervously while she was waiting to be untied- and the rest of them mounted their steeds. Of course, because Merlin had made his original journey on foot, the Prince didn't have a horse.
Eventually, Gwen had helped the boy onto her horse and given a sigh of frustration at the rest of them: Arthur for ignoring the Prince entirely, not even bothering to look at the boy; and the knights for making no move to offer a ride to their youngest companion. While Arthur didn't think that Percival and Elyan were anywhere near as angry as he was, they certainly weren't going to spare any pleasantries for the person –child or not- who had so callously abandoned Merlin.
And so the journey had been long and quiet. Arthur had kept Halesha tethered to his horse so that he could keep an eye on Merlin. The man had looked pale and tired, but after a gentle shake on the shoulder from Arthur, he had roused himself enough to offer a relatively weak smile. That was all though; he said nothing and made no attempt to sit up and so Arthur let him sleep, keeping his worries, which were rapidly increasing, to himself. He knew that Morgana's capture of young Merlin had something to do with he friend's deteriorating health, but he couldn't understand how it worked and didn't want to dwell on it for fear that his conclusions would do nothing but terrify him more about Merlin's prospects.
When they had arrived back, Arthur had again made no effort to acknowledge the blond haired boy, deciding that he would leave that to Gwen. Percival and Elyan had taken Merlin to his quarters and fetched Gaius to care for him, which suited Arthur fine: his friend's short breaths, white complexion and glazed eyes only tormented the King further. Instead, he had gone to find Leon to see how he was progressing with organising the search. Several parties had left already and a dozen more were getting ready to depart. Leon had it all under control, which left Arthur with nothing to do except consider the events of the day and fume over them. He had planned to join a search party, but he wanted to find out more about what was happening to Merlin and, as said sorcerer was the only person who would have any ideas and was currently unconscious, Arthur was forced to wait around.
'Arthur,' Gwen repeated when he ignored her. Usually Gwen was able to calm him; her gentleness and genuine nature left little room for anger, but this time she had no such effect on Arthur, instead she seemed to heighten his irritation.
'What?' he snapped, turning to face her. She looked a little taken aback by his tone, but shock quickly gave way to annoyance and she narrowed her eyes at him.
'You need to go and speak to him…calmly,' she added after a pause. He was already shaking his head.
'I haven't got time to speak to him and I certainly haven't got the patience to speak to him calmly.' He turned away from her and paced the room, resisting the urge to throw and kick things. What was wrong with him? He wasn't generally prone to such aggressive thoughts.
'Well find it,' she snapped at him. 'He's just a boy.'
'His actions weren't those of an innocent child. They were calculated and malicious,' Arthur shouted, whirling on Gwen and fixing her with a glare. 'I'm not speaking to him.'
'I'm beginning to wonder exactly which Arthur is the seven year old.' She shook her head at him and then walked to the other side of the room where the door that led to her adjacent quarters was. When they had got married, Gwen had agreed to have her own quarters, but she didn't use them very often. They both slept in Arthur's chambers and a lot of her things were there as well. But she did find a sudden interest in her quarters if ever they argued, and their current…conversation…was rapidly climbing up their worst arguments list.
'Don't act like I'm being unreasonable. You know what he did to Merlin-'
'Oh Arthur.' Gwen threw her head back in frustration and then turned back round. 'Look at what you're saying. Think about how you're acting. Don't you understand what's going on?' she asked him. The questions had taken him somewhat by surprise and it tempered his anger momentarily.
'What are you talking about?'
'It's not what he did that's bothering you.'
Arthur didn't bother to hide his utter disbelief at the comment she had made.
'Don't look at me like that,' she warned him. 'If you stopped for a few minutes to actually think, you'd realise that how you're acting is not like you at all, and once you realised that, you'd realise why.'
'I'm quite sure, Guinevere, that getting angry at a terrible wrong that's been done is just like me.'
'Yes, getting angry at first is, but not like this, not this never ending storming and fuming.' She stepped up to him until she was only a few meters away. The look on her face let him know that she expected him to listen to what she was saying. Reluctantly he did; Gwen had never proved to be wrong in these sort of situations in the past. 'This is what I know about you Arthur: you hate injustice and it makes you angry like nothing else does, but I also know that you always find ways of controlling your anger in order to deal with the situation in an objective and wise way. What you're doing now is nothing like that. This…' she gestured to him and the room and everything, '…this anger is something I've only ever seen on a couple of occasions.' He frowned at her. 'Think,' she told him gently. 'When was the last time that your anger was uncontrollable?'
'I…' he began, meaning to tell her that he couldn't remember anytime, but then it hit him. He knew exactly when he had been this angry. When Merlin had been gone for those six months.
Gwen must have seen the revelation in his face because she continued, stepping forward once again.
'You weren't angry with Merlin because of what he was or what he'd done as a sorcerer. You were angry because he'd hurt you. That boy hasn't done anything against you, not you personally. He hurt Merlin. So why are you this angry?'
He hung his head, unwilling to address the question, but now it had been voiced he couldn't let it lie again. He sat down on the chair, leaning back. He knew the answer already; it had been haunting him for the past few hours. He sighed and looked at Gwen.
'I look at him,' he began haltingly and then shook his head. Gwen waited, watching him closely. 'I look at him,' he tried again, 'and I see all my failures, all the parts of me that I've fought to get rid of.'
'You're not that child anymore,' she told him gently.
'It doesn't matter. I see in him the mistakes that I've made, the prejudices that I held against people all those years…I can't look at him, I can't speak to him, because he just reminds me of everything I've done wrong.' He clenched his fists, trying not to think of what the Prince had done to Merlin, but the image rose in his mind again.
'Arthur,' Gwen began slowly. 'When you made mistakes, people were there to point you in the right direction. What better person to do that for Arthur than you?'
'No,' Arthur shook his head again. 'I can't.'
'Arthur.'
'No,' he said again, a firmer tone creeping back into his voice. Gwen looked at him, disappointment on her face. She had wanted more from him, just as he had wanted more from his young self. She gave him a sad smile and then walked out of the room into her own quarters.
Arthur sighed heavily and tipped his head back, wanting, this time, to loose some of his memories. What he had said to Gwen was true, mostly, but that wasn't the reason that he couldn't go and speak to the Prince.
He got and began pacing the room. Until now, he had been able to accept the Prince's actions with nothing more than annoyance and occasionally some amusement. He had been able to detach himself from the boy's deep-rooted prejudices and the terrible things he had done…Until he had fallen and cut his elbow. Arthur gingerly reached under the sleeve of his shirt and touched his elbow, feeling the slight irregularity in the skin there.
Up until the Prince had fallen, Arthur had been able to view the boy with some distance, because he had believed, truly believed, that what was happening to the two boys had not happened to him or Merlin when they were younger. He had convinced himself that everything happening now had not happened for him as a seven year old. How could it have? He had no memory of it and no evidence to show that he had lived through this once before. Until the Prince had fallen.
He ran his finger along the raised skin on his elbow. He squeezed his eyes tightly shut and he fought to stop a tear from escaping. He had a scar on his elbow that he had found when he was seven years old. He had no memory of receiving it, no idea what had injured him and no recollection of ever damaging his elbow.
Until the Prince had fallen.
There was a reason he couldn't speak to Prince and it had nothing to do with the boy.
Arthur headed over to the mirror and looked into it. For the first time in a long time, he didn't see the King he wanted to be looking back at him.
Please review.