Dark Wings.

Shadow was everywhere. He was empty and nowhere. He couldn't feel his body. He couldn't sense anything at all. No heart beat, no warmth or cold, no breath. He? Him. I. Me. Who? Opening his mouth— He had a mouth. He was human. Opening his mouth he made a noise, a word.

Arthur. He'd just thought of that, hadn't he?

The thought, he heard it, his own voice. There were words in his head. A head but no heart? There were words were different from the others. Not his words. Drakōn. The image flared, dark wings unfurling like leaves that whipped past too quickly to really see in dusk. It was difficult. Another sound, aithos, and warmth hit him. Light, distant, orange, fire, it flickered to life. Life. Bios. The heat disappeared. Moros.

Fate. Thanatos. Death. Athanatos.

Something inside pulsed. A beat, a drum, deep, deep and beating. Athanatos. Undying. Immortal. Another sound moved past in the shadow, agapē. He said it aloud and his heart beat hit louder, deeper. Love.

Stay with me.

A new sound rose up. Water. He could feel it against his skin, the way it filled his mouth. It tasted of salt and iron and blood. An ocean.

'I,' he said into the pressure of the water, processing the closeness of the voice, the way it sounded both inside him and without. Something in the darkness changed. A pull, something pulled him backwards, downwards?

The pull was stronger, forceful, and his heartbeat ran too fast. He was falling. Down and fast. Water rushed away and left only the shadow air below. Something pushed or pulled him or both, fingers which pushed in against his face and tugged at his bones. Him. What did that mean? Something new, it came from nothing, something bad. It felt like he did, it felt bad. He knew he could make it go away, make it stop, but he couldn't remember how. He couldn't understand what it was or where exactly it was. His body reacted, rejected, and he clenched his teeth together. What was it? Feeling? Sensation, emotions? No, physical, body, contact, unpleasant. Pain. Falling.

Darkness broke when he landed. Wind, colours, all flooded in at once. Recognition. Dorocha. Dying. He was dying. He was being killed by a Dorocha.

He could feel a hand on the back of his neck. That's definitely not normal. A man's voice, tight and low, followed him as he fell into the snow. It's face was pressed in towards him, a cold pit in his stomach twisting his body into a seized frozen position. It was bluish-grey against the darkness around him and his lungs burned, his head burned, but someone's hands were on him, someone else was struggling to breathe through him. What the actual fuck?

'Aithos,' he croaked out with a new breath he couldn't have had, but somehow did. Orange, blurry light sparked around his hands and crystallised itself into fire. The creature reacted, its grip, its digging, stopped long enough for him to say it again louder, breathlessly.

Heat swelled in his chest and the fire consumed his hands. His heart lurched in panic at the sight but then it cut through into the creature. It was blinding against the darkness as it tore into the Dorocha's shadowy blue form and swallowed its high-pitched scream. The light burned and rolled out from his hands, recoiling back to his body, around his arms. It started to die away and flicker but he said it again, heart beating fast, muscles aching.

When another two rushed at him, screaming, always screaming, he threw his arms out towards them. The fire swarmed forward as he brought his hands together, palms facing outwards, and it sparked two ways. They recoiled, tried to escape, but he wanted the fire to follow them and it did. It trapped them, broke off into smaller strings that burned through and coiled around them, made them scream until they disappeared. Until it destroyed them.

He drew in a sharp breath, the fire disappeared, and he started coughing. Rough, harsh, choking coughs. He rolled onto his side, pushed himself up onto his forearms and coughed until he felt his head ache. When he opened his eyes Merlin saw the blood against the snow, deep black against the pale dark white. He coughed for a while, bloody, on all fours, wheezing on the ground as it burned in his throat, in his chest. The air scratched at his throat as he tried to breath. When the coughing passed he wiped his wet mouth with the back of his hand and turned to see Arthur. His head swam when he remembered.

Merlin moved over as quickly as he could. Arthur's eyes were closed, skin ashen, and body too still.

'Arthur,' he said and pressed his fingers against his throat to feel for a pulse he couldn't fine. 'Arthur, please don't do this. Please—'

His hands were shaking as he tried to pull on that magic, but all he found was the flicker of orange light and those wings. Merlin rolled them away when he rolled his neck, a twitch or shake of his head, and shook Arthur. His body was limp and didn't respond.

'Arthur!' he yelled and shook him again. The lights in the park were out, and the darkness was making him feel sick, just like the cold.

'Hey, what's going on? Is somebody hurt?' someone asked from the gate of the park. Merlin ignored them and moved up to start chest compressions. Thirty times. Thirty times he'd been trained. He put his hands on Arthur's chest, interlocked them, and pushed down, one pump, again, again, again. Two each second. Fuck. His own heart was struggling to remain steady, his thoughts long gone by the time he'd finished.

Merlin tilted his head back in the snow, pinched his nose and lifted his chin. He took in a large breath of air and locked his mouth around Arthur's. He breathed out as smoothly as he could. Another breath of the cold air and he gave that to Arthur too. Merlin checked for any change but there was none. Panic snatched at him and he let out a strangled whimpering sound.

'I've called 999,' the voice from earlier said. Merlin swallowed the heat and tears and started compressions again.

'You made me promise,' he said as he did. 'Don't you dare do this after everything. Everything we've been through—'

Another two breaths. Thirty compressions. Breaths. Arthur didn't move. He didn't open his eyes. His heart never started beating again. The sound of sirens scratched through the air, wailing and growing louder. Merlin blinked out the burning and realised he was crying. The other person was saying something. Arthur was dead. It was snowing again.

'No,' he breathed, gasping, hands on Arthur's chest. Snow had spotted his dark clothes.

'Hey, they're here, I'll go get them,' the stranger told him and he heard them run away, heard the sirens cut off, heard doors bang open, saw blue light flash against the snow. It didn't make sense. How could he be alive? How could he be alive if Arthur was dead? It wasn't right. It couldn't be real. Only he felt it, he felt the pain eat its way into his heart, the way the ache began slow and deep inside and worked through his blood up to his throat and his eyes and head and made everything hurt. He screamed. Hands balled up and fingernails cutting as deep as they could into is palms, he screamed until he physically couldn't and crying dragged his head down to Arthur's chest.

Something snapped inside. When it broke the bloody water choked him and crashed down over him. He couldn't breathe, and he lost his grip on Arthur's coat and he couldn't see anything. Merlin fought against the currents as they dragged him backwards through the snow. They broke into the ground and took him under. He clawed at the wet earth, at the rocks and roots, as the water beat into him like it had at the bottom of the cliff. Drowning. He was blind and drowning.

He jerked upright gasping for clean air. Eyes wide open he took in the falling snow, the London Eye, the street lamps. Merlin scrambled back to his feet. He was in front of Scotland Yard.

He heard laughter and turned.

'Which is why I haven't decided.'

Arthur. And the man walking next to him was familiar. Dark hair, grown out enough to curl slightly, pale skin when he turned to look at Arthur smiling as they made their way down the steps to the main road. Merlin frowned, mouth open with the shock of it. They were— He was— He wiped his cheeks quickly and followed, listening to their conversation. He was drained of everything, of any feeling, simply numb. It was difficult to focus, to understand what was happening and had happened. Obviously his magic had done something again, like it had when he'd stepped off the balcony, when he'd Vanished with Arthur, only this time he'd gone back in time.

'It probably means this is a trap,' he heard himself say ahead. They were walking in step with each other, Arthur and that other him. After a minute or so of silence they both jumped over the fence and Merlin lost sight of them just as someone walked past him. They had their hood up, lined with fur, hands stuffed in pockets and the wires of ear buds swinging out in front. Merlin's heart started to beat heavily. He waited until the few cars driving past were out of sight and pulled himself up and over the fence as quietly as he could.

'Tell me where the rift is.'

It was unbelievably strange to hear himself several feet ahead in the opening of the gardens. Merlin kept to the bushes and trees lining the edge and got as close as he could until he saw himself, Arthur, and the three Dorocha surrounding them. What was his plan? He had no idea how this worked or if it was even supposed to. He'd read enough books and had a working grasp of relativity to know it would be bad to interfere but he had to. A painful wave of hope, of relief, shifted through him before fear came, and more panic.

He held himself back when the Dorocha attacked them. In a lot of ways he found it worse to watch as they pushed himself and Arthur into the ground, strangled them, the way they fought against it. How each try grew weaker and slower. He felt his pulse in his ears, in his fingertips, skin burning in spite of the freezing temperature. When was he supposed to do something? What was he even going to do? The fire? How had he even done that? He couldn't feel the magic in his veins anymore.

Merlin flinched when the light flared. The Dorocha screeched, an animalistic, inhumane, and loud sound to the point where he knew the whole of Westminster and then some had probably heard. That's when he saw the other two creatures push in towards Arthur. Seconds. He was dealing with seconds. That's when they had killed him. He'd been distracted with the first and they'd killed Arthur. They were about to kill him all over again. Merlin ran forward and yelled out to grab their attention. He ran into them before they reached Arthur.

Their bodies were terrifyingly physical as they pushed back against him, points of hard cold bone jammed into his body as wisps of shadow and cold light lashed out at him like hail in the wind. His cheek burned as one of their claws raked through his skin before fire slammed it to the side and burned it up like paper. He stood over Arthur as the other swept in at him, hollowed out dead mouth gaping open. Merlin watched himself step out with burning hands and blow the creature back into the air, red-orange light wrapping around its form in flaring and wild circles. When they cinched in the Dorocha disappeared into strips of greyish air and shadow.

Merlin knelt down and checked Arthur was breathing. It was faint, but it was there. He double checked for a pulse and found it gentle under his warm skin. He let out a long sigh and sat back on his heels. He saw himself standing there with a deep frown watching.

'You can't be,' the other him said a little breathlessly as the last licks of flame went out with small wisps of smoke along his fingers. He didn't know how to feel as he looked at himself in the poor light, gaunt, eyes dark with a wildness in them he'd never seen before in the mirror. 'Are you me?'

Merlin opened his mouth to respond before he heard the stranger from before call out, 'What's going on in there?'

He turned to see a tall man peering over the fence. When he looked back the other him was gone. Arthur coughed and Merlin knelt down to put his hand on his forehead, brush back his hair.

'Arthur? Can you hear me?' he asked, surprised at how raw and rough his voice was. Arthur groaned and opened his eyes. For a moment he stared up into the sky, peacefully if confused, then the frown cut into his expression and he jerked upright. Merlin put his hand against his chest. 'Try not to move too quickly.'

'Where'd they go?' Arthur asked.

'I took care of them,' he said. 'We have to get out of here, okay?'

Merlin helped him up to his feet with effort as they both shook from shock and struggled to find their balance. They helped each other climb out of the park over the fence and Merlin organised a cab to pick them up. They didn't say anything as they waited in front of Scotland Yard. Three minutes passed by and the black cab pulled up. Merlin opened the door and let Arthur step inside first and then they sat silent in the dim light as it drove through Westminster towards Arthur's South Kensington flat.

Merlin didn't know if he wanted to break the quiet between them. He looked at Arthur who stared out the cab window. His hair was damp with melted snow. Was he supposed to tell him what had happened? Would it make things better or worse? He turned away and watched the buildings and people pass by beyond his own window. Eventually the cab stopped and they made their way up to his flat.

When Arthur turned on the lights and shut the door Merlin couldn't take it anymore. He hugged him as tightly as he could, buried his face in his shoulder and breathed in the cologne that clung to the scarf and black fabric of his coat, the dampness cold against his skin. Arthur's arms moved up around him and squeezed him back.

'It's okay.'

'I'm so sorry,' he said but it was too muffled against the coat. He pulled back far enough to speak and look him in the eyes, arms still around him. His cheek stung from the claw marks, and he knew it probably looked terrible, but he didn't care. 'I'm so sorry, Arthur. I shouldn't have followed them. I shouldn't have let you come with—'

'Hey, you didn't let me do anything,' he cut in. A smile lifted at his lips, enough to reveal his perfectly crooked teeth. He reached up to the wound but Merlin pushed his had away. 'I insisted on going with, remember? And we're okay. You stopped them.'

He put his hand against Merlin's uninjured cheek and brushed it with his thumb. His eyes were so blue, bluer than they normally were, and he started to cry.

'What's wrong?' Arthur asked and his smile fell. Merlin pressed his lips together and stepped away, pushing the palms of his hands into his eyes to make the tears stop, to make the feeling go away. 'Merlin?'

'It's all too much,' he said and wiped away the tears. He paced across the living room, between the coffee table and sofa, behind it, circling as Arthur moved toward him. 'Don't you ever feel like that? There's just so much happening. How can one person handle it? How am I supposed to just keep going?'

'You handled it, Merlin. You did it—'

'No!' he yelled and pushed his fingers up into his hair, grabbing onto it to try and get the the pain, the loss, the anger to stop. He couldn't look at Arthur, he didn't want to see him die again. He didn't want to relive it. 'I didn't. I didn't handle it. I fucked up. I killed you. I couldn't save you.'

Arthur put his hand against his back. 'But you did sa—'

Merlin spun around. He had pushed Arthur against the wall and cracked the glass of the picture frame behind him. Arthur stared at him with wide eyes, challenging him, and didn't move away or say anything. Merlin had snatched onto the front of his coat and his hands were still balled up with clumps of his coat. The tension in his arms flooded out and opened his palms to rest them against Arthur's chest as his breathing evened out.

'Time changed again, Arthur. They killed you and I couldn't save you and then I went back. I didn't mean to, but it happened like the other times and I stopped them,' Merlin said and leaned forward until their foreheads touched. He closed his eyes and focused on the Arthur's warm breath against his face, the way his chest moved with each lungful. 'You died. I lost you. I wasn't paying attention for a second and you died.'

They stood foreheads together in more silence. Merlin didn't want to open his eyes and see resent in Arthur's eyes. He'd just shoved him into a fucking wall. What was wrong with him?

'I'm sorry,' he said and then he felt Arthur kiss him. His lips pushed against his own, soft and barely there, a peck. Merlin followed it before it left and kissed him again, this time deeper. Heat burned in his abdomen, his stomach twisted with butterflies, and he fought off the damp coat, tugged the scarf down between them to the floor, let Arthur take off his own coat. They kept pulling and throwing off layers, lips and tongues and teeth connecting haphazardly until they were stripped down to their underwear and could feel each other's skin. Completely, totally, hands burning and pressing into stomachs and thighs and chests.

They held onto each other everywhere they could and then Arthur pushed Merlin down onto the sofa. He covered him with his warmth and started kissing and biting down his jaw, throat, down his chest then back up again. Merlin craned his head back into the arm of the sofa with a low moan when Arthur's hand pushed in under the waistband of his boxers. His chest was warm and his head was dizzy with some combination of lust and exhaustion.

When he started kissing the inside of his right thigh everything stopped as a voice cut through the sounds of their heavy breathing. It was familiar and tinny and kept asking if he was all right. It stopped a second later as if it had never been there. Merlin frowned but Arthur carried on kissing, and each time his lips burned themselves into the sensitive skin getting closer to his groin Merlin's stomach fluttered and his body reacted.

'Are you all right?'

Merlin gasped and sat up. His right ear had heard that voice as loud as Arthur's had been minutes earlier, but the blonde simply moaned and tried to yank his boxers off.

'Arthur,' Merlin started, heat flushing through him from panic which mixed uneasily with his arousal. In response Arthur tugged harder and then moved up to kiss him properly. He couldn't speak and instinctually moaned into the sensation of being naked and having Arthur push his body against his. The ache of sleep deprivation was hollow in his chest but somehow that didn't matter. He'd waited so long for things to feel right between them, to have this, to have sex, to really be with him.

He hooked his left leg up by the back of the sofa and Arthur pressed in closer, hand reaching down to his hipbone to hold him as he moved his lips across Merlin's cheek to his earlobe which he took into his mouth and sucked. Merlin groaned low and breathlessly and then he felt Arthur's hand leave his hip and looked to see him pulling down his underwear at last. He also saw a small bottle of lube he'd somehow gotten a hold of and a bubble of happiness popped in his chest before the sensation of it cool at first against his skin distracted him.

'I want you,' Merlin said and the possessiveness of it surprised himself. Arthur simply hummed and Merlin closed his eyes again when he felt him push his fingers inside. It could have gone on for hours or seconds, he couldn't tell, because then he felt Arthur's body ontop of his and inside him and he couldn't think clearly anymore. All he knew was the heat, the pleasure, the groans and rush of hot breath against his skin, and the mouth which kept pushing against his urgently and incessantly. He could barely breathe as he hooked his legs up against warm skin and ran his hands down his back, through his hair, against his neck. He was close to climaxing when he heard Arthur breath, 'I'm about to—' and found the willpower to open his eyes into the umpteenth kiss.

Dark curls. Steel blue eyes looked up at him beneath dark lashes. They closed and he moved inside again and the heat in Merlin's abdomen twisted into something hotter, something that pushed itself in deeper. His kiss became devouring, starved, and Merlin's body responded in spite of his panic with a moan caught within their mouths.

'Mordred?' Merlin breathed with panic and confusion. It was choked by heat and next thrust when the lips left his and then pleasure grabbed him inside like a fist and his entire body tensed with the release. His heart pounded slowly, peacefully, in his chest. Cold air rushed up across him and he opened his eyes to see Arthur panting and sat back between his legs with a deep frown. The betrayal was soft and dark in his blue eyes like a bruise.

'Arthur, I don't,' Merlin trailed off as he processed what had happened. He was so tired.

'Did you actually just say his name?' Arthur asked, stiff where he sat.

'He was,' he began, but then embarrassment crashed into him and his cheeks burned. What the fuck? Fuck. Swearing wasn't fucking good enough. It had been a second of strange confusion. 'Arthur, I don't know—'

'Have you even seen each other since the summer?'

'No, no we haven't, I don't—'

Arthur stood up and snatched up his boxers to pull them on quickly. 'I'm exhausted so let's not do this now.'

Merlin tried to grab his hand but he moved out of reach. 'It's not what you think, Arthur, and I know you're thinking the worst thing possible.'

'Actually I'm not because if I were I'd be done. Just fucking done,' Arthur said, voice dark and low, as he stood at the end of the sofa, arms folded across his bare chest. 'Bloody hell. I mean bloody fucking hell.'

Each word hit him like a blow. Merlin's body ached intensely and he frowned as he tried to think out loud, to make sense of it. 'My magic isn't normal. Arthur, I told you what happened this morning, and then with what just happened, we almost died, and I saw him, it wasn't that it was a freudian slip or something, it was just a second. Please. Believe me.'

They stared at each other and the dark look in his eyes softened and his frown relaxed a little. Then his eyes dropped to the side where their clothes were piled randomly.

'I'm going to get seven hours sleep minimum before I do anymore thinking or talking,' Arthur said. He avoided eye contact and his voice had a strange clipped edge to it. 'You can shower before me, sleep on the sofa, and don't even think about leaving. If you're not here in the morning I'm putting out a Missing Persons and calling my father's old marine buddies. Night, Merlin.'

He wanted to push, to make sure he explained it, but he knew if he did it could end things. Make them worse. He'd just watched him die. He couldn't do that. He couldn't open that old scar in their relationship more than he already had. Turn that look of betrayal into one of conviction. So, Merlin found himself alone under the hot stream of the shower for the second time that day. One day. He was emotionally overloaded and numb. His stare grew unfocused and blurred and he turned off the shower. After towelling himself dry, brushing his teeth, hair, and changing into the same jogging trousers from earlier and a new large top, he opened the bathroom door and checked for Arthur.

His bedroom light was on and so was the living room's. Everything else was dark. He heard draws open and shut in the bedroom and wanted to go there. He wanted to step into the soft gold light and wash it all away. The shower hadn't made him feel clean. Why had he seen Mordred? Why then? And that voice? Kilgharrah had said what is uncertain is the affect that kind of transition has on a mind, which meant—

He'd seen Mordred. He'd felt that second breath with his own. It must have been real only he knew it wasn't. He'd imagined the Cailleach. He hadn't jumped because she'd made him. He'd done it because he'd simply wanted to. How could he let himself do that? What was that voice in his head, those words, that language? Was it really his magic doing these things to him? Or was he the one messing up his magic which caused the crazy stuff in the first place? What even was magic?

Merlin tried to calm down and walked into the living room. There he saw that Arthur had made up a bed. He cringed looking at it. He'd said Mordred when they climaxed. Thinking about it clearly definitely made everything worse. Merlin scrubbed his eyes, drank two glasses of cold water, realised it was past midnight, and turned out the lights to collapse onto the sofa. Light from Arthur's room streamed into the corridor and gave the air a strange warm grainy quality. He stared up at the ceiling and studied the shifts in light and shadow until he couldn't keep his eyes open anymore.

(Playlist for Dark Wings:

Fear on Fire by Ruelle

No Light, No Light by Florence + The Machine

An Unkindness of Ravens by Sanders Bolke

Dreams by Gabrielle Aplin and Bastille

Unworthy by Vancouver Sleep Clinic

Circadian Rhythm (Last Dance) by Silversun Pickups

Dangerous Night by Thirty Seconds to Mars

Easy by Son Lux

I Don't Wanna Be In Love by Dark Waves)