Whumptober Day #13: "It comes and goes like the strength in your bones."
He should have known the cold would get to him eventually. He should have known his wounds would inevitably get infected down here. He's the physician's apprentice, for god's sake.
(He misses Gaius. He misses his warm hugs. He misses his fond exasperation at everything Merlin does.)
(Merlin misses a lot.)
(Merlin wishes for a lot.)
But he is cold, and feverish, and oh so tired. He wakes for moments at a time, blearily opening his eyes to see the same dungeon wall, stone on top of stone covered in moss. His wrists ache and his chest hurts and so, he drifts off again.
He sees glimpses of Morgana, but she doesn't do anything more to him, seeming to think the infection will get him soon enough.
Is that good? Would it be a mercy?
After a few more rounds of drifting in and out of consciousness, he realizes, through his muddled mind, that he must be delirious. He chuckles a little, then coughs from the dryness in his throat.
You better come soon, Arthur, he thinks.
This is perhaps preferable to burning on the stake. He's cold and shivering and it's a slower death, but...but it's not burning. He doesn't feel agony. He just drifts...consciousness comes and goes.
When he next opens his eyes without the memory of having closed them, he wonders if it would be better to have a faster death. He knows, distantly, that he is probably feverish, but it certainly doesn't feel like it. He licks his dry, cracked lips, and his head falls as he lets go of consciousness yet again.
Morgana comes and goes. She does not seem so smug anymore.
Probably can't torture information out of me anymore if I can barely figure out my left from right, Merlin thinks, or maybe mutters out loud—slurring every other word—but no one is there to hear.
Arthur is the only thing keeping him remotely together, he knows. His life would have no purpose without Arthur. Arthur needs him; it's his job to keep Arthur alive so he can bring about the age of Albion.
But Albion seems so far away right now.
Could Arthur survive without him? After all, he is the King of Camelot. He certainly has the skill.
Don't think that way, Merlin, Gaius tells him, or- or told him, once. The past and the present and the hallucinations are getting mixed up in his brain.
Who am I without my destiny? Merlin asks him anyways, a comfort before the darkness takes him again.
He thinks this imaginary Gaius will tell him, Nothing. The real Gaius wouldn't say that, but he isn't the real Gaius, is he? Instead, this Gaius says, Magic.
What is magic without a purpose? Merlin asks. No answer. Who am I without Arthur? Water drips onto the ground: plip, plip, plip.
When he next wakes, and Arthur is still not here, Merlin sighs and resigns himself to the fact that Arthur probably could survive without him, that Merlin isn't needed. Arthur doesn't need his clumsy servant around, who's lied to him for years and couldn't even stop himself from getting captured despite apparently being the most powerful warlock in existence.
You shouldn't have been so foolish, Merlin berates himself.
No one contradicts him.