Its Weight in Gold

He was doing this. He was doing this. Was he really doing this? Well, of course he was doing this. It had always been a foregone conclusion. Orders were orders; the rest was just...he didn't know. Unimportant? Superfluous? Disposable. That didn't sound right, but that didn't matter. That wasn't how the world worked. Just because something didn't sound right didn't mean it wasn't true. He wasn't a child anymore. Be realistic.

His country needed this. There was no way they could win without an advantage, and the good of the many was more important than the life of one. Then again, without his superweapon Vortigern probably wouldn't want to stay at war with Camelot. The humiliation of Arthur's flight didn't matter: Vortigern would not let the international community find out his asset had been stolen from under his nose by a teenager. They could probably reach a peace settlement with no lives lost on either side.

But he wasn't a tactician, he was a soldier. He was his father's dagger, and daggers didn't make plans. They followed orders. They stabbed people. (In the back, if necessary.)

He was really going to do this. Right? Yeah. He didn't have a choice. Even without the understanding that orders weren't optional, he'd already drugged their two companions. When they woke up they'd know what had happened (especially when they started vomiting their guts up on the hard ground for a while). There was no path back to fireside chats and easy laughter with the calming susurration of some backwoods creek in the background. The deed was as good as done; "take-backs" didn't merit consideration. So yes, foregone conclusion. Doubly a foregone conclusion, doubly not optional. But he was panicking. Why was he panicking? There was a stone at the base of his throat, something scratchy like pumice but heavier than lead. Heavier than cold iron, and it seemed to be soaking up his swallowed saliva from the incessant licking of cracked lips. The stone was expanding as well as getting heavier. He was afraid it would get too big, plug his throat, cut off his airflow before it could get heavy enough to scrape down the sides and drop down with a thunk into his stomach. He just needed it to drop into his stomach.

Thinking about alternatives was stupid since there weren't any. Not anymore, and there never had been. Time to think about the future. To plan. He was good at that.

They would continue down this road. They'd be met by a contingent of guards at the Sinhasana border—his predetermined possible escape routes had all been monitored since he'd first contacted his father. That had been the plan. (And if there weren't guards... No. They would be there. His father stuck to his plans. His father who he hadn't been able to contact for...almost three weeks now... No. No, that was just the paranoia talking. He'd basically been embedded for almost a month; it was understandable. They would be there.) He'd render the asset unconscious, and the guards would take custody. He would get a horse, finally—while he was in great shape, they'd been walking for weeks and his thighs and glutes were doing their best to finish what Vortigern had started. They would go at forced-march pace through the thinnest part of Sinhasana to Camelot and the castle. He could see Morgana and Gwen. (He wouldn't have to see Merlin's face the whole time.) He could visit later, on his own terms. Things would be better for Merlin than they had been with Vortigern, much better. He'd personally ensure it. He could make the other boy understand. (He could make the other boy forgive him.)

. . .

Not that there was anything to forgive, of course. It wasn't like he'd started as an ally and then been tempted into betr—acting against his interests through the promise of money or something. He'd been working toward this from the start. There was honor in that.

There was a voice in his head that sounded almost like his sister's. It came from the black swamp at the back of his brain.

It said, "There's no honor in betrayal."

Oh, wait. That was his own voice.

Stop thinking, stop thinking, stopthinkingstopthinking why can't you just STOP THINKING you piece of TRASH—

Into the awkward silence Arthur hadn't even noticed himself creating, Merlin ventured hesitantly, with an ironic tilt to his lips, "So...what's the weather like today?"

Arthur was glad he didn't have to control his facial expression anymore. The stone dropped into his stomach. It didn't feel any better. Stopthinkingstopthinkingstopfeelingjust stop—

"Arthur?"

Oh, right. He looked up.

It was a beautiful November morning. The fall chill had crept in without their noticing, and their breath plumed in front of them. The sky was so blue it was almost purple, and it stole the air from his lungs.

"It's great." His voice didn't quaver at all. "Not a cloud in the sky."

He silently took out his dagger.

The road they were following came out of the trees and into a wide green meadow. It had recently been cleared of trees—stumps dotted the landscape. Long grasses glimmering with tiny orbs of dew almost brushed their ankles, but this section of road was elevated, so on the left was a small rut and on the right was a long decline down to where the forest fanned out around them.

Distractions. "You've been quiet, too, Merlin."

A beat. "I'm worried about my mother."

Drip. The scales were almost even.

Arthur stopped, staring down at the dirt in front of his feet. He fingered the dagger's grip, feeling the smooth spots and puckered tears in the worn leather. Smiling sardonically a little at himself, he murmured, "I guess I've just been running blind, huh."

Merlin, having continued a few steps down the road, halted as well upon noticing the lack of footsteps behind him. "What was that?"

Arthur was talking more to himself at this point. "I mean, you're so convinced you know where you're going, but you're really just relying on other people's directions. People you trust, people you think know the way better than you do, but it turns out they're misleading you or were lost all along, too."

Merlin frowned. "Arthur, I told you I wasn't mad about your getting us lost . . ."

He trailed off as Arthur continued, heedless. "You trust them to put you on the right path, but they can't see it any better than you can, can they? So you stumble along as best you can while everyone tells you to go somewhere else and you get turned around and end up in a whole other country from where you wanted to be when you started out. Or you fall off the path completely, and end up in a ditch–!" Here he broke off as well, abruptly.

Silence reigned for a few seconds. They both started walking again, almost of one accord. For a few long minutes the only sounds were the swoosh of wind and the grinding of feet on gravelly dirt. Crunch, crunch. Tick, tock. Drip, drip. How much water equals the weight of one troy ounce of gold? How many drips does it take to tip the scale?

Finally, Merlin broke the oppressive atmosphere. Tentatively, he ventured, "But...you kept me on the right path. You could have left me in a ditch a thousand times over, but you didn't. We're still here. So it worked out, right? And actually...I was thinking I might like to help you after all. After making sure my mother is okay, I mean. With the whole Vortigern thing."

There was a pattering sound far away, tickling the edges of his brain. Like thunder. Like a spring storm. Like raindrops in the distance.

And then he saw the dust cloud. Soldiers. Soldiers' boots.

Drip.

Drip.

Drip . . . .

The scale tipped, and Arthur's world was swept away in the flood.

He turned around. Very quickly, like a pit viper striking, only this time, Arthur decided to be a lion, not a snake. He grabbed Merlin's wrist and started to run, jostling the other boy and almost knocking him over. Merlin spluttered a little, then seemed to realize his questions wouldn't be answered and just went with it, just like on that day in the meadow under that perpetual blue sky that he couldn't see but could taste.

A little, surprised part of Arthur's mind whispered, "He never trusted you too much."

As soon as they got far enough back that the woods were near the road again he panted briefly, "We're going off the path! Downhill here!" Staggering down the incline, they ran to the woods. Somewhere in the scramble Arthur dropped his dagger. He found an enormous tree deeper in and surrounded by bushes, and he dragged Merlin behind it before peering back out quickly at the tiny sliver of road still visible. He didn't think they'd been seen, but he couldn't be sure. You can never be too careful.

Merlin ripped his arm out of Arthur's grip and backed away quickly, almost tripping over himself in the process. He stood there, a meter or so away, breathing hard. He was still out of sight of the road, so that was okay. For the first time since the witch-bind's coming off, Arthur could feel the other boy's emotions: the fear and unease were curling off of him like strands of spider silk and wrapping around Arthur's chest, delicate but strong as iron. There was something else, too, like a knife between the shoulder blades. Suspicion. Merlin had his hands on his knees to breathe better, but he kept one ear toward Arthur and stayed standing light on the balls of his feet. He whispered harshly, "Arthur"–gasp–"what the hell was that. Talk to me, Arthur. I thought we were going the right way." He stood up straight; Arthur stayed silent. The strands tightened, quivering with barely-contained panic. "Arthur, what did you see?"

That knife was twisting, twisting between his shoulder blades, rending tendons, ripping flesh, hot plasma oozing sickly down his back. These weren't his emotions, though. He should know that by now.

They were Merlin's.

And Merlin didn't have eyes anymore, but Arthur could feel him looking at him. There was no going back after this.

"Arthur, what did you do."

. . .

"We are on the wrong path. We have been the whole time." Merlin got it but he didn't get it; Arthur needed to explain himself, explain the pressure he was under, his–

No. He didn't. He stopped to collect himself, breathing heavily. In a much quieter tone, he continued, "Merlin. I'm so, so sorry. I have something that I need to tell you."

~o8o~

Merlin stalked ahead of him, almost jogging, evading trees way too well but obviously struggling. Still, he walked doggedly on. Arthur followed at a respectful distance. He should just walk away. He clearly wasn't wanted. But he remembered something his sister had said very quietly to him when he was watching his first public execution: "Just because we're up here and he's down there doesn't mean we're not just as responsible as the man with the sword." And he remembered his nurse telling the story of Tyr. Knowing it wasn't expected of him, knowing he would lose the hand, knowing someone had to do it or all was lost, he volunteered to put his hand in Fenrir's mouth anyway for the good of all.

"Merlin, that's the wrong way."

"Yeah? Well, I know where you are and it's away from you, so I'd argue that it's definitely the right way." Arthur noted that he still turned ninety degrees to stalk away in a different (still not correct) direction.

"You sound like–" Scratch that, you don't get to say that right now. "I...understand and you have every right to be angry, but you're not being logical! You won't survive on your own."

Merlin swung around. "Screw being logical! Being logical is what got me here in the first place!" he hissed, stalking toward Arthur. "I trusted you because I had no choice. And then I trusted you because you seemed like a good person, but I was obviously wrong there. I am sick and tired of not having a choice in where I go and what I do, and I am done trusting other people to do it for me because you, you arrogant, inhuman piece of shit, were going to put me back right where you found me. In hell. Give me one good reason why I should ever go where you say again." He paused a meter away and crossed his arms, seeming to be actually waiting for an answer.

"I...I didn't betray your trust! Not in the end."

Merlin bared his teeth. "That's not good enough! This whole journey has been one long betrayal, and maybe I was being stupid and idealistic and willfully not seeing that, overlooking obvious clues, but you were the one who was willing to do that to another human being."

"I was–I–I didn't see you as a human being!" Arthur cringed. He was self-aware enough to hear how that sounded.

Merlin froze for a second and then actually laughed at that, hard and bitterly. "Oh, great. So this whole time it was just the blind leading the...visually impaired."

"Yeah, okay, but I didn't have a choice in my assumptions! I didn't one day go, 'Let's seek out Merlin and dehumanize him, sounds like a fun weekend activity.' I was told certain things, and I believed them."

"Do you not have a conscience? People have a moral responsibility to do the right thing. That's simple."

"But what I had been told was the right thing wasn't. I trusted someone I shouldn't have, just like you did."

"That doesn't matter! You should be able to perceive the difference between right and wrong!"

"But how? Who's oversimplifying things now?" The guilt and defensiveness were at war within him, and he knew he couldn't have been entirely in the wrong. He couldn't have, because all he'd tried to do was right. Maybe they were just explanations, not excuses, but he realized he did, in fact, need Merlin to at least know his reasons, know him, if just for a moment, because guilt hurt deep in his gut. He wanted it to go away.

"You should–I mean–" Merlin growled. "You just know. If you think about it hard enough, you know, but I'm betting you didn't think about it too hard, did you. I'm betting you tried your very hardest not to even consider the possibility that you were wrong until it had been shoved in your face for a month. That's why you're to blame," he spat. "You didn't bother."

Arthur couldn't think of a response to that. He didn't want to say anything else, continue the argument. He wanted to curl up in a hole somewhere where he couldn't make mistakes because he wasn't doing anything at all. God, he was going to have to live with this feeling, wasn't he? For how long?

Maybe he could do something about that.

"Look, I'm sorry. There's nothing else I can say but that." He took a deep breath. "What I can do is take you back to Gwaine and Freya. And then we can go our separate ways."

Merlin paused for a long second. "And they weren't in on it."

"They weren't. Just me. And they...won't be happy to see me."

Merlin tensed, and for the first time Arthur started to get that danger feeling again as Merlin's tattoos started to writhe. "Did you hurt them?"

"N–well, yes. But they'll be fine! I just made them a little sick; they're okay."

Merlin snorted. The whirling of his tattoos subsided. The clearing held its breath.

"Fine."

Something tight in Arthur's chest released with a snap, and for the first time that day, if only for a second, the world felt right.

~o8o~

Arthur got Merlin back to a pale and dehydrated Gwaine and Freya and then got out of there as soon as possible. It wasn't honorable, and it wasn't right. He just couldn't face their hurt, their blame, in addition to Merlin's and his own. He left them a map and journeyed to the border of Camelot alone.

Arthur went back to his chambers. He made sure that all border patrols waiting for him were immediately recalled, especially those near Kutumbam, where Merlin's mother was. Then he ate his breakfasts, he trained, he chatted with Gwen, and he waited for his king to die.

The kingdoms made peace. All those people dead and in the end neither side even won.

He told his father he'd been forced to terminate the asset. Uther wasn't angry, just disappointed. Arthur was sent on fewer missions, and he rarely spoke at the dinner table.

He talked to Morgana. In his absence, she'd taken to wearing blue brocade robes. Always blue. He won her over to his way of thinking. He barely had to try. She just gave him the coldest look he'd ever seen and said, "Well. Maybe we have a future together after all," then quietly went back to watering the potted fern in her room. Arthur loved his sister, so he tried not to read too much into the statement. He wasn't sure he could take what it implied.

He knew the kingdom would need him as much as much as it needed her. He knew she needed him at her side to curb her more...extreme tendencies. Morgana, no matter how much she hated their father, tended to take his view of justice. She saw situations and people as black or white, good or evil; he wished he could still perceive things as that simple.

The sham trials continued. They would for three years. They would until his father's death. The executions continued. Arthur forced himself to attend every one. In his dreams, the screams became accusations. The faces of the dead condemned him again and again. "This was your fault," they whispered in cracked voices like rustling leaves on a starless night. He believed them. It would be so easy to just slip a knife between his father's ribs, show the man what he'd molded his son into.

However, Arthur also knew that if Morgana took power in a coup, the nation would not accept her. Uther was a war hero king. The economy had prospered under him, and nationalism and fear worked in tandem to keep everyone from thinking too much about things that went bump in the night and people who were gone the next morning. If his daughter tracked blood up the steps to the throne–even if Uther died under slightly suspicious circumstances like simply falling very ill–people would talk and there would be unrest. Camelot's enemies would smell blood in the water and circle closer. With the current diplomatic state of affairs, at least two wars would break out. The kingdom could be decimated. It could even be annihilated. It was too big a risk.

Arthur and Merlin were a bit alike: both a little passive and indecisive. Merlin could maybe make hard choices if he were forced into a tough situation, but it would kill him to make the ones Arthur could make without hesitation. Arthur understood how things worked, could see the forest through the trees. He knew how to sacrifice one innocent life for a hundred, a hundred for a thousand. Most importantly of all, he knew patience. The Pendragons liked to call themselves lions, but in reality they were snakes. Arthur knew how to ignore the hoarse, broken-necked cries of conscience, weld on a cold visage, and make plans for when he got the chance to create a better future. He knew how to wait.

His father had taught him that.

Author's Note:

i am the symbolism gremlin and im here to steal your bones