The interview with King Arthur goes about as well as they expected. Arthur asks Merlin and Gaius question after question about the scene, the body, the circumstances, and only stops when he realizes that Merlin's clipped answers and irritated expression stem from exhaustion and horror, and that Gaius's own hedging is out of concern for his ward. Still, Arthur drags Merlin down to the lower town again and has his manservant watch and answer questions as the king himself surveys the site of the gruesome death.
They find little else in the hut. By the time Merlin and Arthur make their way back to the citadel, Merlin's face has become more drawn, his answers gone from brusque attempts at forming sentences to simple nods.
Arthur finally takes pity in the late afternoon and dismisses his manservant. Merlin, for his part, is too tired to notice the look of concern Arthur gives him as he turns to leave.
The reprieve from his duties would normally be welcome, but not today. All he has waiting for him if he were to rest are more nightmares. More reminders of all his failures and shortcomings and mistakes, painted with gruesome clarity across the back of his eyelids.
Instead of going back to the physician's chambers, Merlin borrows a book from the library and steals away to one of the lesser-used towers. He folds himself against a wall and tries to read. The words slip past his vision like oil over water, and he spends hours flipping past pages of densely packed words he doesn't comprehend until the dim grey of the winter sun descends into night.
He returns to Gaius's chambers after his mentor is already asleep. A bowl of stew waits on the table for him, which he carefully pours out the window before shuttering it and rinsing out the bowl in their wash basin. Then he trudges up the stairs to his rickety old cot and lays down, not bothering to remove his clothes.
The night is dark and quiet. Merlin tries to keep himself awake, conjuring small shapes from the mist of his breath in the cold air before they dissipate, or making the flame on his candle bounce around the room. But, all too soon, his body betrays his mind and he falls into sleep.
It begins again with Freya, shaking apart in his arms, the blood rushing from her side too hot against his skin.
But this time, something changes. Something watches them from the forest. Watching Freya die, watching Merlin fall apart with her. Invading their most terrible and intimate moment. He tries to turn and look at whatever it is intruding on his love's last moments, but sees nothing. And when he turns back, he is no longer sitting on the banks of her lake, but standing in a ruined castle, watching Lancelot give him a sad, knowing smile.
Lancelot's eyes slide over, looking at something just beyond Merlin, then walks to his death.
Merlin turns, trying to see what his friend was seeing, and instead his gaze falls on Balinor, pushing himself in front of Merlin to take the fatal wound, falling to the ground. Merlin collapses with him, trying to keep this man who is his father upright and alive. And Balinor presses the dragon carving into Merlin's hand and his eyes, too, move past Merlin to look just above his shoulder. Someone is standing behind him. Watching his father die.
Merlin tries to glance over his shoulder to see what his father had been looking at–what would tear the man's attention away from his son in his final moments–and Balinor's weight in his arms disappears.
He sees Morgana standing next to him, her pale hands at her throat, betrayal etched into every line of her face. And he sees her look to the left and her expression twists into one of horror. Merlin's brows furrow, he steps toward her, and she splutters and coughs and does not look at him. Merlin begins to turn.
Every scene is the same as it had been for the past week, but now, each time, each betrayal and loss is ended when Merlin tries to see what they had been looking at. It continues for hours on end, replaying and cycling through until finally, something wakes him up.
Someone is in the room with him.
He can feel it. Feels it in the way the hair on the back of his neck stands up, the creeping, tingling sensation between his shoulder blades. He can see in his mind's eye something standing in his room behind him, watching him as he sleeps.
He opens his eyes. At some point in his sleep he had turned away from the window, placing it at his back.
A shadow extends over the room, splashing across him and on the wall across from him. It doesn't move.
Merlin goes to sit up, roll over, something, but finds he can't move. Instead, all he can muster is a flinch.
Panic starts then. Real fear ignites in his stomach and lashes up toward his throat. He tries to move again, but can only manage a twitch of his head. Words try to come, but they become just strangled noises in the back of his throat.
Emrys.
It speaks in the back of his mind, slinking its way from his spine into his head. Something in Merlin twists and cringes away from the wrongness of it all. This is nothing like the Druids' mindspeak. This is an invasion.
Merlin, the voice says again.
Being called Emrys he could have expected. Magical creatures and druids alike know him as that, after all, and seem to be able to identify him on sight. But calling him Merlin in that tone sets his teeth on edge. The voice, despite all its menace and darkness, sounds… gentle. Pitying.
Merlin reaches for his magic then. But it, too, has shied away from the voice. It seems as paralyzed and frightened as Merlin is, both straining to get out and unable to. It thrashes inside him, a living force separate from himself entwined with his panic and restrained by the creature.
What are you? Merlin asks. What have you done to me?
The shadow against the wall moves. Over his own frantic breathing, Merlin hears the floorboards behind him creak. He feels the thing move closer until it's a breath away.
You know me, the creature responds. You know me better than your own reflection, Merlin.
Tears squeeze from the corner of Merlin's eyes and roll down his face. They're too hot and sting as they go. Another strangled sound fights free from his chest only to die in his throat.
I'm so close to you, Merlin, the voice tells him. Always right behind you. But now… now I'm so close…
The shadow on the wall separates from itself, revealing a spindly arm. Five fingers, gnarled, curled, and sharp, flex against the light behind it. It reaches toward Merlin.
"Merlin?" someone asks.
A great pressure relieves itself from his body when his name is called. It's like he is coming up, up, up, after being kept deep underwater for too long.
When he breaks the surface, his eyes fly open and his lungs clamor for air. He sucks in a gasping breath and doesn't fully exhale before taking the next and the next.
"Merlin," Gaius says, voice stern and level. His hand reaches out to grab Merlin's shoulder.
The warlock shudders and looks wildly behind him, then back at the wall in front of him. Only Gaius's hunched shadow plays on the stone. It is only apprentice and physician in the room.
Merlin brings his knees to his chest and continues to fight for his own breath. Gaius's hand tightens on his shoulder.
"Breathe, Merlin," Gaius tells him. "With me. In…"
Merlin sucks a greedy breath his, a pain in his chest flowering with the effort.
"...and out," Gaius tells him.
Merlin lets his exhale shudder and quake. He rubs at his eyes to rid himself of tears. Gaius looks on in concern, but continues guiding Merlin toward deeper and more stable breaths. Merlin tries his best to do as he is bid, but even after several minutes finds himself wandering toward hyperventilating.
"The dreams again?" Gaius asks finally, sitting on the edge of Merlin's bed.
Merlin can only nod.
"I know you don't think it will help–" Gaius begins, but Merlin shakes his head.
"There's nothing for it, Gaius," Merlin murmurs. "I just have to get through it."
"Perhaps," Gaius says tentatively, "we should look through the chambers again."
Merlin gives him a tired nod. Gaius pats his shoulder, squeezes again for good measure, and shuffles toward the door.
"If you will not stay home," Gaius tells him, "maybe you should at least ask for the day off. Arthur would grant it for you."
"Do you need herbs?" Merlin asks blearily.
"No, my boy," Gaius says, voice heavy and apologetic. "I just want you to do something you enjoy."
Merlin looks up at him with a blank face.
"What would that be, Gaius?"
Gaius looks back at Merlin, his physician's mask gone. In its place is naked concern and something else. Something that makes the bile in Merlin's stomach riot and the anger in the back of his head rear up with sudden and white-hot ferocity.
"I don't need your pity," Merlin snaps.
Gaius raises an eyebrow at him. "And you don't have it. What you do have is my worry."
Merlin sighs, looking down at his feet, still clad in the boots he had neglected to take off the night before.
"I know. I'm sorry."
"There is nothing to be sorry for, Merlin," Gaius says. He hesitates, then says, "Perhaps you could go to the woods and practice a few spells. That's always gotten you in a better mood."
Merlin nods. "Sure, Gaius."
Gaius makes the arduous journey down the short flight of stairs back to his workroom, quietly shutting the door behind him. A few quiet minutes pass. Merlin sits on his bed, looking around, trying to find some evidence that something else, something horrible, had been in his chambers just before Gaius woke him.
Nothing is out of place.
Merlin gets up from his bed. He locks the door and turns to survey his cramped chambers.
Then he gets to work. He flips his mattress over, then pushes it off the rickety wooden frame. Then he flips the frame, shaking it, banging it against the ground. He goes to his bedside table and takes out a dagger–one gifted to him by Arthur a year or so ago for his Name Day–and plunges it into the worn wool of the mattress. Straw spills like blood across the ground. He shoves his hands inside and pulls out every last bit of stuffing. Finding nothing, he turns to the rest of the room.
His breathing has quickened again without his notice. A sheen of sweat covers his forehead, which he wipes away with a sleeve. He looks around quickly, the sets his sights on the small cupboard that houses his clothes.
He takes out each piece of clothing one by one and shakes it, turns it inside out. He uses the dagger as a seam ripper on his trousers, taking them apart until he's absolutely certain that nothing has been hidden in the stitching. He goes for his extra pair of boots next, prying the soles from the bottom of the boot, taking them apart piece by leather piece.
Nothing.
He scrambles toward his bedside table, rips the drawer out, overturns everything inside. An extra candle, a ribbon from Gwen he uses as a bookmark, a half-drunk vial of sleeping potion, and a few crumpled pieces of wax paper that once upon a time held sweetmeats falls from the drawer. His long fingers drag across every part of the drawer. He holds it up to the dawn light streaming in from his window to look for runes.
He tosses it aside. Nothing. The sound of his own heartbeat roaring in his ears, the noise of his hastily drawn breaths, drowns out everything else.
His skinny, cramped desk next. The papers on the desk are too familiar and get in the way: notes on anatomy, copied from old books belonging to Gaius; speeches for Arthur littered with revisions; chunky blocks of Greek and Latin copied in his own hand until comprehension had been won. All of them are flung out the window where they flutter to the street.
He's halfway through his desk when the lock to his door shatters against some unseen force. Merlin presses himself to the wall, eyes wide. One of his hands flings out in front of his torso, pointed halfway between the floor and the door.
Arthur looks at him, eyes bright and full of concern.
"Arthur?" Merlin asks, chest heaving.
Arthur looks at him for a moment longer before crossing the room. He knocks Merlin's outstretched hand out of the way and comes to a stop mere inches from the other man.
"Merlin," Arthur breathes. "What the hell has gotten into you?"
Merlin follows Arthur's gaze to take in his room. It's been decimated. His mattress is in tatters, straw strewn about the floor. The bedframe is splintered and sinking toward the stone floor. Every item Merlin calls his own–save the spellbook and the Sidhe staff–is thrown across the floor. His clothes are ripped, torn apart, and scattered onto every available surface.
"I–" Merlin starts, then takes a deep breath. He turns his gaze back to Arthur. He takes in the bright, blue eyes, the frown, the bewildered look fighting for dominance over the outright worry.
Arthur says nothing.
"I don't know," Merlin says, and sinks to the floor. He wraps his arms around his legs, looking at the destruction in his room.
Arthur takes a deep breath in and drops to a crouch in front of his manservant.
"Merlin," Arthur begins. Then his stops himself, mouth drawn into a tight line.
"I don't know," Merlin says again. Even to himself, the last word sounds desperate, cracking and threadbare as it is.
"Merlin," Arthur says again, reaching toward his friend's shoulder.
A vision of the shadow moving toward him comes unbidden to Merlin's mind, and he flinches away. He watches as Arthur's hand curls into a fist, then goes back to his knee.
They stay in silence for a while, Merlin avoiding Arthur's gaze and Arthur searching Merlin's face. Merlin finally looks back up. When he does, Arthur has regained his kingly impassivity.
Except his eyes. They stay crinkled, as if permanently stuck in a frown.
"I don't know, Arthur," Merlin says, voice soft. He casts his eyes back toward the floor. "I don't know what's happening. I thought…"
Arthur, much to his credit, keeps his mouth shut.
"I thought maybe I'd find something," Merlin finishes finally, pressing his lips together.
"Like what?" Arthur asks. His voice gives way to exasperation. Something familiar amid the strangeness of Merlin's behavior, the worrying way he's been acting lately, the absolute manic look he had in his eye when Arthur finally broke the ancient lock on the door and got through. The reaction is a saving hand, pulling him up from a quagmire.
"I don't know," Merlin says again. His voice is tight and strangled against the painful knot in his throat.
It's a rejection of the slim hope Arthur somehow still held onto. The wish that they could continue pretending everything was fine until things really were. It's what they did after Morgana. It's what they did after Uther.
It had worked then. Merlin's unshakeable faith and optimism had shone through.
But not this time.
The thought crosses Arthur's mind for the first time that whatever has been plaguing Merlin might not be fixable.
The thought is pushed down and away with great care.
Arthur gives Merlin single, slow nod.
"Do you know how long I was banging on your door?" Arthur asks finally.
Merlin glances back to take in Arthur's face, and finds himself having to look away again. Impassivity, at this point, is almost worse than pity or concern.
"No," Merlin finally says.
There's a beat of quiet before Arthur informs him, "A long time. I came here because I thought–I don't know–maybe you had finally gotten sick, or you were injured, or you were missing again–"
"But?" Merlin asks. His voice is small. Cowering.
Arthur looks at Merlin for a long time. Merlin studiously avoids his gaze.
The things Arthur wants to tell him crowd at the forefront of his mind and threaten to spill from his tongue.
But I came here to find Gaius at the top of the stairs, yelling for you to open the door. But I tried to call for you, and only heard wordless yells and screams coming from in here. But I thought you had disappeared into thin air, and you were just on the other side of the door and leagues away. But no matter how hard I tried to get in and get your attention, I only hear things crashing and your frustrated voice. But I arrived and a terror I've never properly known before gripped my heart like a vice. But I got here and instead of finding you gone, I feared I would get inside and find you… gone.
"You're taking the day off," Arthur finally says. Merlin opens his mouth as if to protest, but Arthur shakes his head. "You're taking the day off and that's final, Merlin. Two days off. You're to go and do… whatever it is you do in your free time. Go day drinking with Gwaine. Rob Elyan of all his money at a game of dice. Arm wrestle with Percival. Pick flowers from other peoples' gardens."
Merlin finally looks at at him again, blinking doleful eyes at his king.
"You think that will help?"
Arthur sighs. "Something has to."
Merlin nods.
"Okay," he whispers.
"Okay?" Arthur repeats, his voice tinged with a fragile hope.
"Yeah."
Merlin is halfway to Freya's lake before he realizes where he's going. He sinks to the ground against a tree.
You know me, his memory whispers.
He folds himself together. Perhaps, his body seems to say, if he could physically hold himself together his mind would keep from flying apart.
Morning softens into afternoon. He stays on the ground, halfway between Camelot and Avalon. Tears seep from his eyes unbidden. He doesn't stop them. There is no one around to witness his shame, his weakness. His misery and sorrow.
You know me better than your own reflection.
Merlin finally moves as the afternoon light deepens into grey evening. He rubs at his face, trying to erase his tears.
Finally, he weeps while awake, and is too numb to feel something approaching catharsis.
He walks back toward Camelot, the setting sun at his back. His shadow plays against the ground, too-large and mocking.
The guards do not greet him as he returns.
Unbidden by either Merlin or Gaius, a new woolen mattress, accompanying featherbed, and solid wooden bedframe are delivered when neither party are present to replace the ones Merlin ruined in his paranoia-induced mania that evening.
It does not make Merlin's nights more restful. THe had spent the day wandering around Camelot before finally going into the woods. He knew that one of the knights had followed him. Probably Gwaine. He just wandered along a meandering path, picking herbs or plants when he recognized that Gaius had been running low. The second day he went to the tavern and just sat. For horse. Drinking nothing, eating nothing. He finally saw one of the Round Table wander through the doors and excused himself. He wandered up to the turrets again and was undisturbed until he finally stumbled home, drunk with lack of sleep and hazy thoughts.
The two nights that pass are just as full of horrible memories, each strained and contorted. Each person's last gaze falls from Merlin to something just beyond his shoulder.
Merlin never figures out what they're looking at.
Thankfully, there is not a repeat episode of the something appearing in his room. The person or beast that intruded upon him the night he well and truly lost it. The thing that inspired him to rip apart his room to look for some source of enchantment or curse.
He takes apart his room twice more. Methodically, quietly, subdued enough to escape the notice of Gaius and any other that may intrude upon him.
The lock stays shattered and is not replaced, despite the clothes and decor and furniture that arrives without announcement at the door.
On the third day, Merlin and Arthur are making their way toward the training grounds when Leon comes up to them, face drawn.
Another death. Another inexplicable death.
Arthur glances sidelong at Merlin as Leon delivers the news. The site of the death is even more bloody and gruesome. Servants had already been dispatched to see Gaius.
Merlin looks, for all the world, a physician.
His face is somehow drawn yet blank. Taking in the severity of what has happened without blinking an eye. Acknowledge the levity of the situation while not betraying anything other than clinical interest.
He's seen more than this before, his expression says. He can handle this.
The curled fists at his sides tell a different story. Someway, somehow, Merlin's body betrays him.
It always does.
"Thank you, Sir Leon," Arthur says. Leon gives him a curt nod before turning around. He heads not toward the training grounds, but toward the portcullis separating the citadel from the upper town.
Arthur finally turns to face Merlin. The other man does not similarly turn. Instead, he looks after Leon, that same inscrutable expression pasted on his face. Arthur takes a long look at him.
"You should go home," Arthur finally tells him.
It's the much he can muster against the stomach-turning thought that Merlin would have the same impassable mask on when they arrived to the scene.
Merlin isn't have to have seen more than that before. He shouldn't be able to handle this.
Merlin glances at him, his eyes dark and shuttered off.
"I'm needed," Merlin says. He goes after Merlin toward the site of the death.
Arthur watches him go before finally willing his feet to move after his best friend.
The scene is more gruesome than either battle-hardened young man could have imagined.
Not even in their worst nightmares.