Okay, let me tell you exactly what it was like yesterday.
Me: *typing innocently and wrapping up the chapter, excitedly wondering how it would end*
Fingers: Let us finish it! It needs a nice closing sentence!
Me: *nodding* Okay, you can take over for the brain.
Fingers: *type last sentence*
Me: *jaw drops*
pause
Me: *looking at fingers, computer then back at fingers* Is there some war with the brain that I don't know about?
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Merlin stared at the woodsman's back with trepidation. He paid no mind to it and continued to sharpen the knife.
Six: I cannot get out.
The small man was going to kill him.
He was completely powerless, exhausted, immobilized and could barely think straight. The pain radiated from the back of his head, bouncing around his skull like a demented echo. Merlin couldn't look at the fire, it was far too bright.
Snick, snick, snick.
The grating scrape grew louder and louder the more Merlin tried to ignore it. Absently, he winced as he recalled how often Arthur had asked he be a bit quieter after he'd woken from an unscheduled knockout, and how scarcely Merlin listened.
I really am sorry, Arthur.
Sorry for hiding. Sorry for not explaining. Sorry for keeping secrets. Sorry for cloaking his life in shadows so well concealed nobody ever knew they were there, sorry for holding back, sorry for being not so different from all the traitors who misused Arthur's trust.
Sorry for failing once more, the last time he ever would.
Snick, snick.
Merlin could tell the small man didn't see him as a person, someone with thoughts and emotions and loved ones. He was seen as a thing, a task to be completed with no more pity than Arthur when he was hunting. Less, actually, because Arthur always made sure the animals didn't know pain before they died.
It struck Merlin that was why he was still alive. Had the small man simply wished him dead, he would have killed him when he was unconscious at the castle. One needed to be conscious before they could fight back.
But, instead, he was a prisoner in what he assumed to be a secluded area, kept weakened, and, from the faint trace of pleasure in the small man's voice when talking of the cuff, his jailer seemed to have a sadistic streak. So not only would he die, but he would die in pain.
And Arthur would follow.
Snick, snick, snick.
No. No. This wasn't how it was supposed to be. This couldn't be how it was supposed to be. Merlin felt the panic closing in again as his headache intensified. Arthur would not, could not die. Everything he had done, everything Merlin had sacrificed was for the sole reason of making sure his best friend lived.
Arthur happened.
The words repeated over and over in his head, shouting for him to say something, do something, fix it. What was the point of giving everything for someone if you ultimately failed in the end?
Instinctively, Merlin reached for his magic, the one thing that had always been there.
The world exploded inside his head.
Colors shifted in and out of his vision, flashing and dancing crazily. The snick, snick of the knife scraped against his brain, stabbing into his ears and the floor pitched and threw itself upwards at a steep slant, sending Merlin tumbling down the slope and warning bells from the towers of Camelot clanged and bonged against his head, crashing into him and shrieking WHERE IS IT WHERE IS IT ARTHURARTHURARTHUR as Merlin distantly realized he was screaming -
And out of nowhere, he felt something in his mind give, and a lightning bolt of power raced through him at the speed of light, obliterating thought as his mind screamed one last time to be free.
The last, disjointed image he saw before falling into blackness was the small man crumpling to the floor like a puppet with its strings cut.