Dreams of ice and fire

Everything hurt. Merlin awoke in a seething pit of fire that had him sweating and burning within seconds and then he was in frozen wasteland, freezing to death and shivering. But then he was brought back to the real world, the world where every little tiny inch of him hurt. The world where he was tied down to a horse for reasons that he couldn't quite fathom, he didn't struggle though. It wasn't just that he physically couldn't - it was because the man in front of him was someone he trusted with his life.

He couldn't really feel anything other than his own pain and the only sense that seemed to be working was his hearing. The familiar sound of thudding horse feet on earth suddenly turned to the clattering of hooves on cobblestones. He felt someone untie him from the horse that he had been draped over and felt strong arms carrying him.

The waves of hot and cold kept flowing over him, making him shiver and sweat at the same time. He heard a familiar voice call his name and cracked his sore lips open enough to croak out a reply "Gaius?" A worried, old voice replied to his call.

"Merlin, what happened?" The comforting warm arms left him and he felt something hard under his back - a table? Yes, he must be back in Camelot, in Gaius's patient room.

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Arthur sighed in relief as Merlin's eye flickered open to gaze up at himself and Gaius, the boy hadn't moved since the previous day, other than his thrashing and shivering - it seemed that Gaius's voice had roused him. "What happened to him?" The old physicians question was little more than a whisper as he looked down at his ward in horror.

"Cenred. . .he cut out Merlin's eye . . Sent it to me and then. . .then when we had him cornered . . .he stabbed Merlin." Arthur's voice was choked as he spoke and it stuttered out before he could finish.

Gaius then used an amazing skill that Arthur had only ever seen in him - he turned off all of his emotions so that he could treat a patient. He got straight to work, mixing herbs and pouring fresh water into bowls. "Arthur, take off his clothes, I need to get to the wounds." Arthur nodded and pulled the boy's sweat and blood soaked shirt over his head, he did it as gently as he could but Merlin still cried out in pain. However that cry was as nothing compared as to what happened when Arthur pulled off his dirty trousers.

Merlin's scream was so loud and full of agony that Arthur wanted to clap his hands over his ears. It was only then that Arthur saw the puffy swollen skin around his ankle - the sure signs of a broken ankle. And there, on Merlin's upper leg was a large round, red, pussy wound, that looked like it had come from a crossbow bolt. Gaius hurried over to his ward and began to clean the arrow wound with a sweet smelling liquid that made Merlin hiss in even more pain.

"These wounds have become infected and that ankle has set wrong, we will need to reset it once I have stopped the bleeding and given him something for the fever." Gaius carried on working over Merlin's battered and bloody body, until the only blood was pooling out of the chest wound. Gaius wrapped bandages around Merlin's leg wound and then reached for a needle.

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Something stabbed into Merlin's chest with a cold fury, he yelled out in pain as it stabbed again and again and again. It felt like a sharp icicle was being plunged into the open wound, pulling the flesh together but tearing him apart with the utter agony of it. Merlin writhed in his own personal hell as the stabbing suddenly stopped and was replaced by something much worse and much more familiar - a cool liquid that burned.

The liquid wasn't the same one as before though, this one burned with a good pain, one that Merlin recognized the smell of - Gaius must be tending to his wounds. With this comforting thought - the exhausted warlock finally let himself drift off into the abyss.