A/N: 'Kay, just to be safe. Warning for this chapter: a bit of torture, description of past torture…

Chapter 5: Truth and Freedom

Arthur knew he was not a patient man by nature. It was what got him into trouble when he'd disobeyed his father for Merlin's sake, before. He'd far rather be doing something, than waiting.

He also knew, it was a trait a king ought to cultivate, and be able to employ, if the situation called for it.

All morning, he compromised. Keeping the impatience raging internally, still he flattered himself that he focused on his duties without betraying more than a passing annoyance with anyone, even the boy who showed up with his breakfast. Although, the man he kept glancing over his shoulder for, wasn't Merlin, but Leon.

What, he asked himself, the second day in a row, is taking so long?

He'd glimpsed Gaius crossing the courtyard from his window – that reassured him, though he'd found no opportunity to speak to the old man without obviously manufacturing one – which wouldn't do.

And then he was receiving summons to attend his father in his council chamber – that can't be good – where Leon couldn't even give him a nod or a wink without being marked.

As Arthur turned the last corner, he saw two female figures nearly at the chamber door ahead of him. Light blue skirt, gold-embroidered bodice, tidy knot of curly black hair – his heart jumped forward a beat in spite of himself. Fresh as the morning. Warmth and calm comfort.

The other, in emerald silk, fine and haughty – if a garment could be so described – but the one of the pair he was allowed to address, unless in private.

"Morgana!" he called.

Both girls turned and he hurried his stride forward to reach them for a quick word before they annoyed the king with their tardiness. Both seemed upset, but where Guinevere's expression showed subdued dismay on behalf of the young man Arthur knew was her friend also, Morgana's demeanor seemed a conflicted tension of impatience and trepidation.

"I wanted to ask a favor, but you haven't come out of your rooms all morning," he said.

And instead of teasing him about having something he needed, or requiring payment for whatever action he suggested, she blustered an excuse. "I didn't sleep well and I've had a headache, I'm sure you understand I was ill-disposed for company, under present circumstances!"

"Yes of course I'm sorry I hope you're feeling better now," he said quickly. "I wondered if you might be willing to ask my father a birthday boon." The occasion was only a few days away; Arthur hoped he might have this triumph to celebrate, personally.

"Yes, what is it?" she said impatiently.

Arthur paused – Guinevere by her expression, had already guessed it, and was also surprised that Morgana had to ask. "For… mercy," he said. "For Merlin's life."

For a brief moment, fury glared green at him from her eyes. "For Merlin's life," she repeated. "I should beg mercy from Uther to spare Merlin for attempting to use magic?"

"Er… yes." Guinevere's eyes were wide; she evidently thought Morgana's tone uncharacteristically harsh also. Arthur made a mental note to ask Gwen about that; he had noticed that the air seemed cool between Merlin and Morgana, since they'd rescued her.

"Uther won't listen to me," Morgana went on. "Why don't you ask him?"

"He won't listen to me," Arthur repeated, feeling stupid for doing so. "It's worth a try, Morgana – it's your birthday and my father has denied you nothing since… these past few months."

It seemed to him that her lip curled in disdain, just a bit. "I will look for an opportunity," she said. "We're going to be late."

Flicking a lock of hair over her shoulder, she stalked into the council chamber, shoes clicking, as Guinevere glided unobtrusively behind her. Arthur waited a moment more, so they didn't all arrive at the same time, then paced forward – measured and unhurried. Uther lounged on the great chair, perusing a scroll that curled over his fingers and stretched down toward his lap. There were others present also – council members. Gaius.

Arthur suddenly thought, it's the conclusion of the trial. Sentencing. Even Morgana can't interrupt to beg a favor. He said, "Father?"

"Ah, Arthur." The king rose from his chair, speaking to Arthur but seemingly unconcerned that everyone else could hear. "I'm sorry to say, Arthur, your servant has broken – though it took a bit longer than I expected. If he had been better trained to immediate obedience…" Uther raised an ironic eyebrow at Arthur.

No, immediate obedience never had been one of Merlin's traits – and never would be, Arthur rather thought. He was too inclined to think for himself, first. Perhaps that came of not being raised to service.

"I'm sorry, broken?" he said, keeping his cringe internal, and his voice even. "I don't follow."

"Broken," Uther repeated. "His mind is completely broken – babbling nonsense most of the morning, according to Aerldan."

"What sort of nonsense?" Arthur said. Hoping desperately that it was just a case of Merlin's ridiculously confused tale-telling being unintelligible to someone who didn't already know the full story.

"For instance," Uther declaimed, still tacitly including their audience, as he consulted the scroll. "He claims he captured the goblin, but freed the dragon; he healed Tom the blacksmith with magic, but did not release him from the cells after his arrest."

Arthur looked immediately at Guinevere, as many in the room did. She wore a strange look of thoughtful surprise – he remembered that Merlin had taken responsibility for Tom's healing at the time, hadn't he?

The king went on in a patronizing drawl. "He freed a druid named Mordred from custody in our cells, but not the one named Alvarr. He killed Morgana as well, evidently, and now she wants to kill us."

Mordred. Arthur remembered him; Merlin had been involved in his escape. Morgana was white as a sheet and barely maintaining composure – odd, that. He would have assumed more sympathy for such an obvious misunderstanding; Merlin could not have killed Morgana, here she was.

"He killed Sophia Tirmawr in a lake, and the sorceress Nimueh on an island. He killed both the griffin and the questing beast with a single spell – quite a feat, as those monsters threatened Camelot more than five months apart, if memory serves. Your servant does quite a bit of killing, doesn't he? Perhaps you allow him too much free time." The sarcasm drew several sycophantic chuckles from around the room.

It was lost on Arthur. Sophia… he remembered little of the girl or her visit – though Morgana had teased him so, the incident could not be forgotten – and nothing at all of the recounted elopement. Merlin had claimed, a tree branch that time, hadn't he?

An even vaguer memory. On the edge of consciousness, he'd heard Merlin bellow something half-heard but desperate – he'd seen a glow of blue – before Lancelot was bending over him, worry showing on his face under the visor of the helm he'd worn to charge the invincible creature of magic.

A glow of blue…

"If Merlin," he forced out, "has indeed broken…" What was the truth? "Then surely he is of no danger to anyone. He can be released, returned to his family and village perhaps?"

Uther was already shaking his head, rolling the scroll again. "Unfortunately, one thing was clear," he said. "The sorcerer refused to repent his use of magic, his disregard of our laws – and more significantly, has refused to take any oath whatsoever restricting future use. He is dangerous, Arthur, contaminated beyond saving. Evil."

No! Arthur was quite sure he shouted it, but Uther's expression didn't change from bored distaste.

"Therefore, I am forced to conclude the boy's trial with the order for his execution."

"Father, please," Arthur said, in a low but hard tone, meant for just the two of them. "Merlin doesn't – see things the way that most people do, and he can make the truth sound like – a fantastical story. Let me see him, let me talk to him. Perhaps I can persuade him to contrition and his life may yet be spared?"

Uther took half a step closer, his brows drawing together. "You will not oppose me in this, Arthur," he said, in much the same tone. Arthur held his gaze – not defiance, but resolution. And his father relented. A bit. "But, since it means this much to you, I will allow you this attempt."

"Thank you, my lord." Arthur bowed his head respectfully.

"One attempt. And then you will submit to my judgment in the matter."

If Uther ordered a pyre built – the standard punishment for convicted users of magic; their collaborators were beheaded – it would take an hour, yet. Arthur would probably not be allowed to ride out as Leon had suggested – hunting a ridiculous excuse if his servant was sentenced to burn – but he and Leon could switch places. And he could knock a few heads to see Merlin to safety. As long as he was no more than watched, not restricted, and not restrained.

Because he honestly didn't think he could stand still and watch Merlin burn to death.

"My lord," he repeated, with another half-bow. And an idea struck him. "Perhaps Gaius should accompany me. He is a physician; he might better judge the prisoner's state of mind. He and I together might effectively coerce an oath of renunciation."

Uther gazed at the floor and thought, then gave the stern-eyed physician a keen glance, before he nodded. "I will send half a dozen guards with you," he said, "as a precaution."

"Yes, my lord." Still. It was something.

If Aerldan had tortured the boy to insanity in spite of Merlin's promise to tell the truth – though what was he to make of the contents of the scroll? – Arthur would never forgive himself. But between him and Gaius, they might achieve results that would buy them some time, anyway.

…..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

The heat was the worst.

All around the room in a dizzying whirl of dance and flicker, torchlight bright and hot and inescapable.

Sweat trickled down Merlin's body, bare chest and shoulders and arms, stinging over the bruises and the containment rune cut into his flesh – indistinct now as it had been rubbed through his shirt several times during the night, when he'd dozed off and moved his hands unthinkingly – smeared and swollen and flesh reddened all around its lines.

It burned, as his magic roiled beneath. A force of nature like warming sun or running water – contained and blocked it felt, this morning, much like a pot of liquid simmering over a fire.

The block clattered, occasionally, rattling through his teeth and bones, making him nervous and uneasy. Uncertain what might happen when the pot came to a full boil. Such a block, he sensed instinctively, was meant for users of lesser magic.

He'd seen enough of Gaius' experiments neglected over open flame a moment too long to have a healthy apprehension of what might happen if – when – the block failed. Could he control the result? Was he capable of the concentration and strength of will necessary? He didn't know. Several times he pushed back on the block, stabilizing it over his seething magic.

If he stopped the questioner. By any means.

If he stopped the guards from interfering when that happened. By any means.

He was on the lowest level. How many guards would he face, in trying to escape? One innocent, unintentional death was one too many. What about injuries? Did he have the right to protect his life, his body, by any means? His magic was necessary, for Arthur's life. Therefore, he was necessary, and must continue to live. That was only logic, right? But what if that made Arthur hate him, hate magic? Because he had killed loyal men in saving himself?

That bubbling pot and rattling lid, that slow rising burn in his chest, was distracting and worrying, but he found himself focusing on that more often, as the morning passed.

The better to escape the fierce fiery pain in his hands.

He hadn't expected the truth to set him free. To men like the king and the questioner, the truth was what they decided it should be. Unfortunately, telling the questioner what he thought the man wanted to hear, didn't help. The questioner knew when Merlin lied, and didn't believe him when he told the truth.

He'd lost track of what he'd said, long ago, lost track of every sound that came from his throat except the raw screaming. Often he lost track of what question had been asked.

"So you killed the Lady Morgana – lovely lady by the way, I saw her yesterday at the trial, such lovely hands – because the dragon told you to?"

The condescendingly calm voice dragged him unwilling back to the present. To the burn of the straps buckling his legs to the chair as he strained against them, not for freedom but for any irrational surcease from agony elsewhere. The chair itself hard and splintery behind his back, the back of his neck as he pressed his body ruthlessly into the implacable rigidity of the seat. It was an odd sort of comfort and relief from the pain of –

"Hm, boy?"

Fire shot up his fingers, up his arms, sparked pulse points and nerves and a fresh wave of sweat - cold but not a relief - and he couldn't even scream anymore. The sound that bubbled out of his throat was a twisted moan that trailed into a whimper.

He cracked his eyes open and lifted his head – never had it felt heavier – to see that the questioner had done nothing more than brush the blunt ends of the flat pegs protruding from Merlin's fingertips. Not even a new addition. The simple vibration from ones already there felt like his entire arm was being slowly filleted.

"Yes – no – what?" he panted dizzily.

"The fingertips are so, so sensitive," the questioner mused, stretching his own gloved digits toward Merlin's – he couldn't help a pleading whine of protest. "Incredible, isn't it? Almost I would trade places with you simply to feel once again… almost."

"No," Merlin groaned. Gritted his teeth as that invisible, internal lid rattled insistently. "Please. Please, stop. You have to stop, I've told you everything –" wildly he hoped that wasn't a lie, he couldn't remember what he'd said or what he hadn't – "I can't hold it back forever –"

The questioner's hand hovered, threatening the instruments no longer shiny and pristine but smeared with blood old and new, twisting his fingers, pinning them to the bloodstained arm of the chair.

And he experienced a disorienting flash of fantasy – fire and light exploding out of him, pasting the questioner to the wall where he blazed like a torch himself and the stones rattled together like the lid on a boiling pot, but Merlin was free and whole – and he'd turn to see the scarlet tunics of the guards, engulfing them in screaming flames while above them all stones crumbled, tumbled…

The door slammed open behind him; he jumped and pain flashed and he cursed whoever –

A new voice. The prince's voice.

And another, very close, whispering his name with shattering sorrow.

Merlin extended an incorporeal hand, deep within himself - shaking and broken and dripping blood – to spread over that lid, glowing red-hot, and hold it firmly in place.

"Arthur," he whispered.

…..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

"What do you think?" Arthur was walking almost too fast for the old man to keep up, as impatient as he must have been to reach the young man he was guardian to, now that he had permission to do so. Arthur didn't slow, however; it suited him both to be able to ignore their escort – which included Arrok, by accident or design – and the expression on Gaius' face.

"It is difficult to say, sire. I hesitate to offer a diagnosis before I've had opportunity for examination."

Arthur grimaced to himself, glancing over the handrail of the segmented stair the led to the cells. As ever, the old physician buried his feelings beneath a medical man's detached manner. Much as he often did, with a knight or prince's demeanor.

"You know him best, Gaius," he remarked. And left unsaid the question, better than I do, perhaps?

Almost he didn't hear the old man's response, so privately quiet it was. "He is stronger than most give him credit for… there is every reason to hope it is not as bad as we fear."

Down another level, and the door of the interrogation chamber was not locked; Gaius remained respectfully two paces behind Arthur. The two soldiers on duty to the inside – faces obscured by the nose-guards of their helmets – both jerked to attention.

One said – in relief? – "Oh, sire."

Aerldan, dressed in a black smock, lifted his face in misshapen surprise and retreated toward his seat at the desk by the wall. But Arthur had not come to see him.

Merlin was in the prisoner's chair, facing away from the door, his head dropped down on the high back in exhaustion or unconsciousness. Arthur didn't look away from him as he spoke to the questioner.

"I've come on the king's authority to observe your results for myself," he stated.

Aerldan said nothing, but gestured, as genteelly as any lordling inviting Arthur to a feast.

Arthur might have gone on, had the arm of the prisoner's chair not been in his line of vision. A thick strap held Merlin's wrist and forearm to the arm of the chair, but there were streaks of blood visible at the far end, some darker, some brighter. A single drop fell as his eyes lit on the sight, to splash among a dozen others, on the floor… and the seat of the chair… and the side of Merlin's trousers.

His call for Gaius died in his throat, as the blue-robed physician shoved rather rudely past, to round the other side of the prisoner's chair. Arthur watched horror flash through the old man's expression, before he bent to give attention first to Merlin's face, speaking the boy's name soft and gentle. Merlin's head rolled on the back of the chair, lifted slightly, and Gaius caught Arthur's gaze.

"He's asking for you, sire."

Arthur moved closer, as fast as he was able, and still incredibly slowly. He felt he was caught in some terrible dream, knowing he must act, knowing the shock of what he would discover would increase, but resisting discovery would not change reality.

Merlin's hands were covered in blood. Thick, fresh, scabbed, smeared. His arms purpled with bruises, the skin of his chest carved and smudged with some macabre drawing. He thought of the few spots staining Merlin's shirt during the trial – the more barbaric measures of the Purge – then the old man shifted and Arthur nearly vomited – only just controlling the reflexive gag by clenching his teeth and swallowing several times.

A small metal frame clamped Merlin's left hand to the chair. Arthur had seen one before, but never in use. And this one's screw was fully extended, pinning Merlin's fourth or fifth finger – he avoided looking too closely – to the wood of the chair-arm.

And not only that. Arthur noticed the silver glint of some sort of pin or peg – more than one – interrupting the bloodied fingertips. Jammed right up under the nail-bed.

Merlin's head lifted a bit more, his eyes opened – the blue deep and exhausted and pure in his face, gaunt and deathly pale beneath his bruises. Arthur was on his knees in a rush, crowding into Merlin's knees to catch his friend as he leaned forward; the boy's skin felt both slick and grimy where Arthur touched him.

"You don't have to move," Arthur breathed. "You don't have to –"

Merlin sobbed once, letting Arthur's shoulder support his head, turning his face blindly into Arthur's neck. "I told him… everything," he moaned. "Everything, I swear. He has to stop, Arthur –" Merlin gulped and a shudder ran through his whole body – "you have to make him stop."

He seemed quite lucid. Coherent. Well aware of where he was and what was going on, who he was with and why. Arthur was glad, and then a bit sorry Merlin hadn't escaped to some hidden and insane haven of the mind.

"No more." Arthur spoke to Aerldan without turning. "You're done. The king can base his judgment on your results so far." You're lucky I'm unarmed, and too honorable to kill someone like you – diseased and defenseless.

"He is broken anyway," Aerldan commented, creeping closer and clasping – rubbing – his gloved hands together. "I was almost sorry to do it – I've never seen hands like his."

Merlin's hands. Roughened from scrubbing Arthur's floor, discolored on occasion from the polish used for Arthur's armor, quick and sure as he fitted and buckled him into his protection during training, or a tournament, light and gentle afterwards when Arthur was sore… all ye gods together, Merlin's hands.

He reached to pull a silver pin from the bloody ruin of Merlin's left thumb – and froze as Aerldan gasped, gliding swiftly forward.

"The hands are so sensitive it hurt him so much," he said, nearly babbling in his eagerness. "He asked for you and called for you and cried for you – sire. Do it. To see you his master causing such pain to his hands – extraordinary hands –"

Arthur gritted his teeth and growled in his throat; a helpless whimper escaped his servant, and he held still with an effort.

"Let me, Arthur," Gaius said, and began a low soothing murmur. "We have to remove these now, Merlin, be strong, hold very still…"

Merlin pressed himself back into the chair with sickening vehemence; Arthur surged to his feet, rounding on the questioner. Aerldan took a startled step back again and Arthur pursued him, crowding him back to his little desk and chair, keeping his eyes on the deformed features of the questioner and not the gruesome extraction taking place behind him.

"Are these barbed?" the physician said, raising his voice to address the questioner. Arthur swallowed his nausea once again at the thought, but Aerldan inhaled, straightening as his eyes brightened.

"What a fabulous idea! I must ask a silversmith –"

Arthur shoved his fist into the torturer's face. "Be quiet, or lose your tongue," he threatened darkly. Aerldan's eyes widened, and he bit what remained of his lips together.

Gaius' constant reassuring mumbling continued behind Arthur; Merlin loosed an occasional pained grunt or whimper or moan that made Arthur's nerves freeze and his stomach clench. He heard a faint chime, as one of the metal shards hit the stone floor.

"No, Gaius –"

"I have to, my boy, you know that."

"Give me a minute, please I can't –" A low cry… rising… choked off. Another piece rang lightly on the floor.

Arthur could not keep the look of incredulous disgust off his face. Aerldan dropped his gaze, his bowed shoulders lowered pleadingly. "Exceptional hands," he mumbled. "And he felt it so keenly."

"Not another word," Arthur said coldly. "Or I will remove your own."

The questioner's gloves shuffled together between them, as he spread his hidden fingers for his own absent-minded examination.

A shattering scream rose, hoarse and brief, muffled into a desperate repetition of Gaius' apology for causing additional, unintentional pain. Arthur wheeled round – the physician met his eyes, disregarding the wet tracks down his cheeks.

"Three are dislocated, sire, I apologize, he may lose some use of them if I don't… immediately."

"He won't need them where Uther will send him," Aerldan murmured.

Arthur very nearly backhanded the man as hard as he could, in spite of his infirmity. And maybe he didn't care a bit if his hands were chopped. Ignoring Aerldan, he moved back to join his friends.

Merlin braced himself in the chair, head back and neck corded with tension, every muscle standing out on his bony frame, right hand clenched in a fist below the strap around his wrist that was still in place. Gaius twisted, and Merlin's body jerked – there was blood on his lips.

"One more, my boy," the old man said, before he looked up. "Sire, I think it may help if you hold him – I will have to unscrew the apparatus before trying to re-set the dislocation."

Behind him, Arthur heard the questioner repeat Gaius' words in an insidiously delighted hiss.

He knelt over the body of his friend, pressing against his knees, leaning his forearm though lightly across Merlin's collarbones. "Hold on," he said in a low voice that pinched his throat abominably. "We've got to hurt you to help you."

His response was a heart-wrenching whisper. "Gaius get him away from me before –"

"Hold on," the physician urged. "One moment more."

Squeak.

A shock of sympathetic ice shot through Arthur's nerves; Merlin squirmed underneath his hold, turning his head as if in denial.

Squeak. Oiled or not, the mechanism was probably clogged with drying blood.

"No!" Merlin gasped. "Stop! I can't –"

Arthur swore, shifting to hold the slender frame in place. An arrow at least could be yanked. A wound from a weapon in combat was generally inflicted too fast for thought or realization til it was done. He couldn't imagine how excruciating –

Squeak.

"N- Aaaaagh!"

A great blast of hot air shoved Arthur's entire body. He had a brief moment to realize he was airborne – Gaius tumbling in the other direction, a silver instrument glinting in his hands – Merlin's bonds at wrists and ankles ignited – before he slammed into the stone wall.

Pain spiked through his skull in reds and yellows and he felt the unyielding stone below and behind him. Vaguely he heard voices that seemed at once loud and strident, and slow as a whisper.

"Arthur, Arthur!" That was Merlin, in a torn sob. "Oh, please – please…"

He blinked up at his servant – half-naked, filthy exhausted bloody tortured - and full of alarm for Arthur's well-being. Those damaged fingers feeling for his pulse, trying to coax him to awareness.

"Don't touch me," he said thickly, and Merlin recoiled. "Don't – don't use your hands, Merlin, you idiot, you –"

He struggled upright, seeing red-and-silver pour into the room – fuzzy then bright – one aiding Gaius who was having trouble gaining his feet. Age not injury, Arthur rather thought; one was across the room, kneeling beside the black-smocked questioner's body.

"Dead," the guard pronounced.

"Broken neck, probably." Gaius' voice, before the rest of the swarm descended on Arthur, dragging Merlin back – the boy fought to return to his side, but ineffectually, screaming frustration defiance pain –

"Sire, sire – are you all right?"

That was Arrok's face, shoved too close to his own; he flinched back, and knocked his skull again on the stone behind him – the stars dripped from his eyes to his tongue, slowing and stilling it to a mumble in his own ears.

"Get the prisoner back to his cell!" Arrok shouted over his shoulder. "Someone help me with the prince! Physician, immediately!"

Once again, Merlin was dragged from Arthur's sight as he fought Arrok's cumbersome concern, unable to get his body into a position where he could rise. "No! Wait! Gaius, see to Merlin first!"

The old man gave him a sour grimace – what do you expect, you're the crown prince and he's a confessed criminal - as he took Arthur's head in his hands. He probed the sore lump gently as Arthur winced, tipping his head to inspect his eyes by torchlight – and as one arm was supporting him, Arthur had only one left to try to push off these unnecessary ministrations.

"I'm fine – I'm fine. It's just a bump on the head," he growled. "Let me up. Let me up!"

Three of them took Gaius' place, to pull him to his feet. Brenner, standing over Aerldan's body, said to the room at large, "What was that?"

"Sorcery," Arrok growled. "Clearly. My lord, you should retire to your chamber immediately – Gaius will you please –"

Arthur stalked to the door – yes he could walk a straight line – the half dozen men getting in his way, a helpful hindrance. Two more from the higher cell-levels, who'd no doubt heard the noise, clattered down, unintentionally blocking his view of Merlin by their position and arrival.

Someone said, "He attacked the prince with magic."

It was repeated twice before Arthur could open his mouth to say, no he didn't. He heard echoes from up the stair, no doubt the third guard dispatched to report to the king – and this was the story Uther would believe. In spite of the fact that Merlin's magic, as Arthur understood it, had been blocked before the trial.

The rest were all looking at him.

As they had the night he'd arrested Merlin.

"No one touches him," he ordered, sick to his stomach that he had to resort to this, even if it was for Merlin's own good. "If he's sentenced to death, I want to see it."

A smothering murmur of affirmative replies. Blood pounded through his head.

He sounded so much like his father.

"Why didn't you run when you had the chance?" he shouted in the direction of Merlin's cell. Before marching for the stairs, trailed by half a dozen fighting men of Camelot. And Gaius, damn it all, who wasn't going to be allowed to see the prisoner again, not without a fight.

Now all he could think of was, persuade his father to delay the execution, citing the need for the largest crowd, the punishment an effective deterrent – for any other insanely-protective citizen thinking of using magic to save the prince's life? But there couldn't be more than one of those, Merlin was unique – uniquely stupid, in this instance.

He reached to brush the tender knob swelling under his hair at the back of his head.

But… what was that?

…..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*….. …..*…..

Merlin dropped to a crouch in his cell, bruising his lower back on the stone wall behind him as he didn't use his hands to break his collapse. Instead he raised his arms before his face in instinctive defense – but the guards did no more than march from his cell, close the door with a rusty screech-clang, and lock it.

He cringed through the uncertainty of raised, heated voices he couldn't understand. And then Arthur's – angry, and evidently directed to him, though they couldn't see each other.

"Why didn't you run when you had the chance?"

Don't touch me.

He gulped air, trembling all over. Exhaustion and pain and lack of food or water. And then, the agony of Gaius helping him had distracted him from the lid clattering angrily over magic in a full rolling boil – it had exploded from him in a shock of light and heat.

Gaius was all right, he told himself, clenching his fist weakly and with stabbing pain, but to feel what his mentor had surreptitiously tucked into his sweaty palm, again.

Arthur was all right; the prince was hard-headed, he'd been knocked out before. He'd have a headache, Merlin estimated, two to four hours, depending on whether Gaius gave him a dose of medicine, whether he went out to train under the hot sun, whether he had an argument with his father. He gasped a sobbing breath – that familiarity hurt him to the core, now. Though he couldn't quite bring himself to wish that he hadn't cobbled together a working relationship with his prince that was somehow deeper and broader and more complex and more important than any he'd ever had before. Not even to have avoided this.

And the questioner evidently dead. Merlin felt nothing, when he thought of that. He hadn't meant to hurt the man; he hadn't meant not to hurt him. He'd simply forgotten him at that moment of explosive release. At least, the questioner couldn't hurt anyone else, anymore.

Well, now the prince had seen Merlin's magic at its worst, hadn't he. Capable of killing. He wondered if Arthur hated him, now. Or just magic.

What was there in Camelot that was so important. Arthur, still Arthur. Happy to be your servant til the day I die. Was that day today?

No. It wasn't in him to give up.

He let shaking fingers fall open – a fragment of parchment, now dampened and smudged with his blood, and – he jerked reactively. One of the questioner's pins rang lightly as it struck the stone floor of the cell at his feet. Why…

With difficulty, he tilted the parchment to be able to read Gaius' spidery scrawl.

A spell. And another line below it, of instruction or suggestion.

He read it, mouthed it, felt a stir of power. It was a spell he recognized, but had never used.

Now he understood the reason for the pin.

Shifting where he could see it, between his knees, he picked it up awkwardly, between two relatively undamaged knuckles. Positioned it where he could wield it with enough force and control – and set the point to the skin over his chest.

A/N: I determined to mention a Witchfinder a/u by DwaejiTokki for certain resemblances when I got to this part – unintentional, of course, this was planned before I read that fic...