He was half asleep as he listened to them talk. He did not know that, on the way back to Granny's, he began to bleed again. In a panic, they had rushed him to the hospital, as magic cures had failed. In a few touch and go hours, he was stabilized, by a dose of human doctoring and Merlin and Emma's combined magic.
Arthur was groggy and knew nothing of the plan he had helped create at this point. The plan to guard Emma and her son's hearts with magic so that Nimueh could not begin to turn them from afar.
"Now, Henry...this won't hurt..."Merlin's voice was quite distant, cracked with sadness and care. Arthur's eyes fluttered. He was trying desperately to force them open, thinking he had forgotten to do something.
"Are you sure...he's gonna be okay?" Henry's voice floated in and out of the fog around Arthur's mind. Arthur felt his fingers uncurl, trying to reach for them, but it might have been in his mind.
"I'm not sure...but I will look after him. I have, after all, for ages without counting." Merlin smiled at the child. Arthur somehow felt him do so. It was that smile, honest and pure as it had always been, that made him wake.
"Well, look who's decided to join us..."Emma smiled in his direction. Henry's swiveled around and went, cautiously, his mother's hands on his shoulders, to where Arthur lay.
"Hi..."Henry smiled and took his extended hand. Arthur had reached for them, he realized. He was groggy. It felt as if the boy was standing under a great fog, but he could still see him.
"Hello, Henry...how long...have I been asleep?" Arthur forced himself up to sitting.
"Uh..about three hours...before that you were unconscious for about two...Eh, but it makes sense. My Mom told me what happened to you..."Henry knitted his lips.
"Then, Merlin put a spell over our hearts so we can't be captured easily by the witch who killed you..."Henry said the words cautiously. They were scary.
Arthur nodded and laid back. His eyes snapped suddenly to his surroundings, and went wide. His hair stood on end.
"What is that?!" He pointed. His hands shook. A box of buzzing, beeping sorcery sat beside him. His arm also had a clear bag attached by a needle pierced into it and a long, clear tube.
Merlin stood back several feet. His face was ashen. Emma studied him for a beat realizing that he was next to keeling over, and that there was no way he had the energy to explain.
"The box...reads your heart. It tells us when it's beating like it should. The bag lets water flow into you to help your body make more blood, as you, well we thought you were bleeding to death. It looks weird, I know...but...you're in a hospital." Emma's voice was a quiet drone, that undying long suffering tone that only a mother can speak with. Henry smiled up at her, knowing this tone in her voice. She hadn't known him his whole life, but she had adapted to being his mother quite well.
Arthur let a puff. He was anxious, and they could tell. He looked around himself for a moment, hair fanning on the pillow. Then, his eyes settled on Emma, and his panting stopped. He smiled.
"I almost bled to death? Oh, good, for a moment I was worried something terrible happened to me." Arthur chuckled, trying to smile at them. They all look mortified.
Hook was leaning on the door posts.
"David is calling after us..we should resume our watch for the witch..."Hook nodded to Merlin, as Emma and her family began to leave.
Emma turned around. She looked hard at Merlin as he lingered looking after her in the doorway.
"You...you've carried so much. Too much...I-I just have to wonder how you did it without going completely crazy?" Emma held her breath. She was afraid. Afraid of losing herself. Merlin could tell.
His eyes lifted up to where Arthur was now looking at the heart monitor as if it would grow teeth and bite him. He smiled.
"Don't you know, Emma?" Merlin smirked, near tears. Emma tilted her chin up, and smiled vaguely.
"That's all it is? No extra super powers? No spells of sanity?" She laughed.
"None of the above, my dear. Devotion is more powerful than all of that anyway." Merlin bowed to her a little. She nodded and followed her son and husband out.
Merlin crept back into the room. Arthur flinched when he came in.
"This certainly doesn't look much like a hospital...Where are the leeches? The bottles of potion? The bandages and the table for the battle wounded?" Arthur looked about, eyes rolling in his face.
Merlin leaned over him and hugged his head to his chest. Arthur grew still, listening to Merlin's heart beat.
"Never you mind what it looks like...Get some sleep." Merlin's voice cracked.
Arthur took his hand as he tried to pull away.
"I've already been sleeping, though? I worry for you...it won't be long before you are abed in this hospital too...or whatever this is. It certainly does not look like a hospital..."He was talking out of his head, but his tone was one that Merlin knew well. Arthur was fishing for him to tell him what he was silently suffering with.
Merlin couldn't talk for a moment. All at once, he realized, Arthur's worry was quite well founded. He was a basket case, and he needed to change that.
He looked down at Arthur, and his eyes glazed over. Suddenly, he was terrified. He reached into his own chest and pulled his heart out, casting a spell over it.
"MERLIN, what did you just do?!" Arthur flinched as if a snake had been laid on his lap. He stared at Merlin's heart sitting in his hands as if he was looking at a demon's head rolling around there.
"Emma and Henry are not the only ones at risk of being turned, Arthur. You know it well...Heaven forbid, but you know it best of all..."Merlin gulped. His emotions were gone now, as his heart was out of his hands.
Arthur looked up at him, and swallowed the urge to scream. Merlin frowned. He couldn't feel the emotion, but his compassion for Arthur was so intrinsic to all he was that he still reached his hand out and cupped his chin in his palm, trying to stay his panic. There was a vague twinge of something like regret for having frightened him, but it was far away, due to the Spell of Severed Heart.
"It will be safer for all of us, for now...if you hang on to this." Merlin took his heart, tied it up in his scarf, and placed it in Arthur's hands.
"What...what am I meant to do with it?" Arthur gulped.
Merlin smirked.
"Hold on to it for me. Just for tonight. I've a rendezvous with Darkness, to see what I will of the Sorceress' plan. You needn't look so frightened by the prospect. I'm no worse for separating me from that old, broken thing. Rather, I feel it to be a nice reprieve. Besides, you are the force that makes it beat to begin with. Always before, but especially after you gave your life force to keep it living. This is why there's nothing within your human power that you can do to harm it; it is a law of magic." Merlin nodded.
The realization had settled in, and left a childlike expression on Arthur's face. He swallowed, and nodded, folding his hands prayerfully over the heart.
"Wherever you go, please be careful, Merlin. You may not be as much of a fool as you look, but I still have questions..."Arthur frowned, heart not really in his teasing now. He then laid back on the bed and fell asleep.
Merlin studied his still form for a moment. Then, filled with terrible resolve, he spun on his heels and marched all the way from the hospital to the part of the woods where the battle had happened.