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Arthur doesn’t feel anything at first, though he hears the telltale signs immediately. There’s the characteristic rattle of tearing chainmail, carefully forged links ripped from their neighbors, and the squelch of displaced blood and innards spilling into places they shouldn’t be. Above all, there’s the scream that rings across the ravine, guttural, a soldier’s cry for a fallen friend. He’s been in enough battles that the signs come together immediately—someone has been mortally wounded.
Please, not the child, Arthur has just enough time to think, before his knees crash against the dirt. His whole body jerks with the impact, and everything melts into a hazy swirl.
Seconds pass in time to the pounding of his heart. Only then does he realize.
Half like a man in a dream, he looks down at himself to see a blade lodged in the space just above his navel, the barest hint of a serrated edge visible against the chainmail.
He nearly laughs at the absurdness of the picture. A blade doesn’t belong in skin, Arthur thinks absently as light pinpricks of pain bloom in his belly. It belongs in a sheath, a sword belt, it belongs at the throats of Camelot’s enemies. He reaches a trembling hand to grasp the protruding hilt of the blade. It belongs—
His fingers touch the leather, and the world collapses.
A white, blinding, burning agony explodes from deep in his stomach, like a blacksmith’s iron searing his skin, and everything tinges gray before his eyes. The sky begins to slide away, and he manages to keep just enough wits about himself to land on his side as his body gives way.
Still, the blade jostles. Pain rumbles up his spine at the movement, and Arthur screams.
Or maybe that’s only in his head. Arthur can’t tell, can’t figure out how to move his mouth or any of his limbs. He feels strangely disembodied from his physical self, unable to draw breath, the agony smothering, suffocating.
Gods above, it hurts.
“Sire? Sire!” The sound comes through muffled, like he’s hearing from another room with his ears pressed up against the wall. “Arthur!”
Something hard digs into his shoulder. It’s different from the pain, sharper and more tangible, different enough to pull him back into himself like an anchor.
A hand, he realizes belatedly.
“Arthur?”
He blinks. Leon comes into focus above him.
“Leon?” The word comes out garbled, and he tastes blood. Arthur coughs, spits it on the ground beside him, tries again. “Leon, what—”
“Sire, you’ve been wounded.” Something flashes across Leon’s face, a half-expression there and then gone in a blink.
But Arthur knows Leon as well as he knows himself, and he understands. It’s fatal.
“The boy, is he safe?”
“Yes, but—”
“And the men, they are—” Arthur breaks off again, coughing, and has to bite down a groan when the motion dredges up such a well of agony that it nearly pulls him under again. “—unharmed?”
“Sire—Arthur, please, don’t speak. The boy is safe, and the men are wounded but alive.” The hand is back on his shoulder, a firm grip, and Arthur belatedly realizes his eyes have closed again. He wrenches them open, and ignores the patches of black that flicker across his field of vision at every inhale to focus on Leon’s face.
It’s a comforting one, made familiar over many years of steadfast companionship. He will not mourn if the face of his first friend is the last one he sees.
Well. There’s another face he’d quite like to see, sharper and paler, but its absence is Arthur’s own fault.
“We are safe, Arthur. You—you stepped in front of a blade to ensure it.”
Oh. Is that what happened? Everything before pain is blurred and very far away, disconnected from the current moment as though from a different lifetime entirely.
“I’ve sent the boy to Camelot with Gwaine, Elyan, and two more of our fastest riders,” Leon continues, and Arthur starts to piece together that perhaps he has actually been unconscious for quite some time. “They will reach by sundown at the latest. Lancelot has gone in search of a physician to treat you, but the nearest town is a long ride from here.” His voice is grave, but firm. It’s what Arthur likes best about Leon—he speaks plainly and without decorous platitudes, vocalizes truth where few others would. “We’ve made camp to wait. The forest here is thick and well-shielded. No more mercenaries should come upon us tonight.”
Arthur sags in relief, swallowing away the rest of his words. He has no need for them when he has Leon, who can read his mind like a book and wears the mantle of command as naturally as chainmail.
“Just rest, Arthur. Your only job is to stay alive until the physician arrives.” Arthur’s lips twitch. “I’ll take care of everything else.”
Arthur reaches up, wincing as it tugs at his stomach, and clasps Leon’s hand where it still rests on his shoulder. Thank you.
His eyes drift up to the clouds, tracing their lazy path across the sea-blue sky. It would be a beautiful day in Camelot, bright and warm and clear, the Lower Town bustling with life, every crevice of the citadel decorated with flowers to celebrate the arrival of spring. He can picture it in his mind’s eye as clear as if he was standing at the top of the grand staircase, and the pain seems to abate just a fraction in response, as though the mere thought of the castle is enough to drive it away.
She calls to him, his castle, soft and comforting the way home always is. There is no pain there, only memories of happiness, slow and syrupy sweet. Arthur longs to close his eyes and drown in it, but holds back, knows that as soon as he drifts off, he’s likely never to wake again. Pain, at least, means he is still alive.
He only wishes—he only wishes—
The thought, once formed, grips him in a rush of panic, digging into his chest like the claws of a beast—Merlin, he only wishes to see Merlin. A hot, acrid taste rises in the back of his throat as he looks down to see his chainmail and trousers absolutely coated in blood.
He can’t die without seeing Merlin.
Arthur hears the sound of flint scraping against tinder and someone grumbling under their breath about wet firewood. “Percival,” he croaks, hoping he’s placed the voice correctly.
A shadow falls over him in an instant, and a large shape comes into view, blocking the sky. “Sire?” Percival asks.
Arthur bites the inside of his cheeks and turns away as the pain suddenly flares, screwing his eyes shut. Several long moments pass, and he breathes in and out, careful, shuddering breaths that still burn like the blade is twisting deeper each time.
“Lancelot claimed we should keep the blade in, that it would help stem the bleeding,” Percival says hesitantly, the way one might say my son claimed he saw a river fae today. Arthur would snort if he didn’t think half his blood volume might come out if he tried. In any case, he’s inclined to believe Lancelot’s right. “Is there anything you need, sire?”
What he needs is simple. What he needs is currently scrubbing floors and changing sheets half a day’s ride away, most likely furious at him for leaving without a goodbye in the middle of the night.
How he longs to say goodbye now.
“In my satchel, there’s a—stone. Blue.” Think of me and I’ll know, Merlin told him many moons ago, pressing it into his palm. I’ll find you. He’s never had cause to use it before, can only hope blindly that it will work.
He hears footsteps recede, then after a few moments, Percival reemerges with his satchel and unceremoniously empties its contents onto the ground.
Arthur allows his eyes to drift shut to the sound of objects clinking together, as Percival rifles through the items with his characteristic efficiency. Staying awake becomes more and more difficult with every passing moment, the Camelot in his mind beckoning like the crackle of a fire after a night in the cold. To fall into the gentle black would be so easy, just for a moment, just to let the pain ebb—
“Is this the—oh.” Percival’s voice jars his eyes open again, awash with something Arthur can’t place. Awe, perhaps. Or fear. Either way, he uses the sound to ground him in the waking world, focusing on the low timbre as a foothold out of the pain. “Here, sire.”
His fingers are fitted around something small and smooth, and warmth washes over him immediately, the familiar embrace of Merlin’s magic. The stone is cool to the touch and strangely heavy, just as he remembers, the weight indicative of a value beyond the mere luster of the crystal.
It’s almost like having a part of Merlin here, and the very idea is a well of strength.
Maybe that’s what makes him foolish enough to try and sit up a little straighter against the log he’s leaned on.
It’s a stupid idea. The moment he attempts to shift his weight onto his arms and push up, he slips.
After that Arthur knows nothing but waves and waves of relentless, pulsing agony, the world black before his eyes, silent to his ears. He’d be begging if he could, begging to make it stop, but he can’t get ahold of his mouth anyway, or his voice. It’s lost in the sea, nothing but pain and pain and pain—
Please. Merlin, please. Merlin. Merlin.
A warmth. Then a steady, simmering heat. He reaches out for it, for something other than pain and pain and—
Like a beacon, it guides him back.
He’s aware first of his breath, quivering and quick like a hummingbird’s wings, choked with the screams he can’t release. Then of his hand, where the heat pulses, and then of the rest of his limbs, which slowly slot back under his control. Next of the twittering of the forest, the eerie silence bursting.
And then of something sharp just beneath his left shoulder blade, digging into the skin. He doesn’t mind. It’s a good pain, wholly different from the fire crawling in his belly, and at the very least it will keep him awake.
Finally, he manages to open his eyes. Percival and Leon are kneeling beside him, their faces pale and haggard. The rest of their traveling party loiter a few paces away, duties abandoned, watching with barely-concealed worry.
“I’m glad you’re with us again, Arthur,” Leon says, his expression breaking into a relieved grin. “We thought...” Leon trails off, but the message is clear.
Arthur manages a half-smile of reassurance—not dead yet—then moves just his eyes to take in the stone in his hand, pulsing with wave after wave of warmth. No longer blue, it glows a brilliant shade of gold that Arthur would know anywhere.
“You’re coming,” he whispers with reverence, and believes it more surely than he can explain.
Arthur tries to do the calculations in his head—they are a half day’s ride from Camelot, perhaps slightly less if Merlin takes the fastest horse in the stables and gifts it with magical speed, which still means hours and hours of waiting, of keeping himself awake and hoping the blood loss doesn’t kill him first.
No matter. For Merlin, he’ll hold on.
“He’s coming,” Arthur says to Leon, and has to wait only a moment before understanding dawns on Leon’s face. The glowing gold stone, so clearly magical it might as well be labeled gift from a sorcerer, leaves little doubt who he is. “I can’t die before—” He heaves in a rasping breath, tries to force the words out. “Need to hold on.”
“What you need is a physician,” Leon counters steadily. “Then you can return to Camelot in good health and have all the reunions you want.”
“Lancelot should’ve been back by now,” Percival chimes in, casting a glance behind him like maybe the mere insinuation of failure will be enough to make Lancelot materialize with a physician. “We should start moving toward him, cut down his travel time.” Percival gaze sweeps Arthur from head to toe once, surveying. “I know a horse is out of question, but I can carry you if need be, sire.”
The thought of being Percival’s sire in this moment is strangely amusing, given that Percival looms like a mountain while he’s weak and frail and near-death. When will his knights learn, Arthur wonders, that he’s never cared for any title beyond his name?
Leon looks thoughtful, eyes fixed at his navel where the blade still protrudes. “I think that might be a good idea.” Arthur refuses to look down, doesn’t want tangible proof of how much more blood he’s lost and how little time he has left. Hope is all he has, now. “It’ll probably hurt you unbearably to move, but—”
“No,” Arthur interrupts quietly. “We stay here.”
Leon doesn’t immediately say as you wish, sire. Unlike Percival, their years of shorthand mean Leon understands that right now they’re just Leon and Arthur, and he’s no more Leon’s sire than a scullery maid. But Leon also knows the truth of Merlin’s magic, and of them, in a way that few others do, and Arthur hopes that’s enough for him to understand.
“The minutes we spare could save your life, Arthur. You’re hanging by a thread.”
Ever the pragmatist, Leon. Arthur would normally consider himself one as well, but as ever, Merlin is the exception. He is hanging by a thread, and the exhaustion that tugs at him is no longer the gentle promise of respite. Heavy and bleak, it feels as final as a grave.
But none of that matters.
“No,” he repeats, more firmly. From what he recalls of the maps they reviewed prior to this mission, the nearest villages lie to the east and Camelot is exactly west. Merlin is west. That’s what matters.
“The physician—”
“Forget the physician.” Arthur made his peace with dying young a long time ago, has always known any battle or mission could be his last. A boy will live, and Camelot will prosper under Guinevere. It will have to be enough.
“Arthur, we can’t—”
Arthur can tell this isn’t working. I just need to see him one more time, he won’t, can’t bring himself to say, so he tries a different approach.
“Merlin is powerful. He—” He has to pause to gather his breath, and to find the right words. “—could heal the wound.” Another pause, another gasping inhale. His chest feels like it’s being sat on by a very large horse, too tight to draw more than a half-breath at a time. “We stay. For—” Pause. Breath. “—Merlin.”
“I suppose—he is powerful, and Gaius’s assistant,” Leon says, slowly like he’s testing the idea. “If Lancelot’s physician can’t help, it would be good to remain reachable.”
Leon glances back and forth between Arthur and the glowing stone in his hand. Arthur keeps his face impassive and meets his gaze, unwilling to give anything else away. He’ll order Leon as the Prince if needed, but doesn’t want it to come to that.
“Okay,” Leon says finally. When he raises his voice for the rest of the clearing to hear, it’s hollow, tinged with sadness. “We will wait for Lancelot to reach us. Let’s make camp.”
A rumble sweeps through the other Knights, but no one is fool enough to question the decision.
When Leon gives him a solemn nod, stricken but accepting, Arthur thinks maybe Leon really does understand.
After all, Merlin is rubbish at healing magic.
**
Evening falls.
Every breath rattles through his chest, a struggle from start to finish. Arthur keeps himself close to the fire, barely enough energy left to shiver, and thinks of the way Merlin would make dragons and Knights dance in the flames if he were here.
Some time later, arms slide around him. Percival’s. The body heat helps, lets him conserve what little strength he has left.
In the back of his mind, Arthur is more than aware he should be dead. Perhaps it is the stone, a little of its magic seeping into his body, or perhaps the gods do not want him yet.
Please, I just need a little more time, Arthur thinks, shivering despite being cocooned in Percival’s arms. The chill has seeped into his bones, and he knows there’s precious little time left. Please.
The thought of living beyond the night is incomprehensible. Leon will ensure his affairs are in order, the Knights will see to it that Camelot is safe and protected, and Guinevere will rule as a good Queen. She is his right-hand advisor, written into the line of succession for all to see, precisely because that is one of the few things of which he is sure. Arthur longs only for Camelot to prosper, and as long as she does, it matters little in the end whether he lives to see it or not.
No, it’s not his Kingdom or his Kingship that he’s begging for. It’s only to see twinkling blue eyes one last time, to press a kiss to chapped lips and feel long fingers intertwine with his own before they fall still forever. It’s not for his crown or his power or his life, but for his heart, and Merlin’s, which might mean the most of all.
**
Time is a fluid, precarious thing. He doesn’t know how much has passed when the steady heat at his back suddenly disappears, leaving a cold hollow in its wake, and wonders if this is it. Duty or no duty, Percival would not wish to lay beside a corpse.
Then.
“You’re an idiot.”
A laugh sputters out of him. It hurts, but the pain has never been so far away. He might even giggle a little, though he wouldn’t admit to that even now, on his deathbed. “Merlin,” he rasps, and nearly flinches at the sound of his own voice, dry as kindling.
“A complete and utter idiot, I swear to all the gods.”
He can’t see Merlin, still, but he can feel him like a shadow, somewhere unknown and nebulous but close by his side. And mouthy, in a way that shadows rarely are.
He wants to see him. Otherwise, it’s all too easy to think he’s imagining that voice, and that Merlin isn’t here at all, merely a figment of his own desires.
“C’mere,” he says, and it comes out a whisper. He wrenches his eyes open, and within a heartbeat, somehow, somehow, by the gods, Merlin is there before him, lying on the ground with his head turned so their noses nearly touch. Blue eyes, pale skin, messy mop of black hair, lips curved into a devastating smile that is neither happy nor sad, but so very fond.
If he is really dreaming, he never wants this dream to end.
“You came.”
Is that a tear, rolling down Merlin’s cheek? It shines in the flickering firelight.
“Of course I came.” Merlin glances somewhere behind him for a moment, and it’s only then that Arthur realizes what looms just a few paces away, nearly hidden in the shadows—a creature he’d thought long vanquished. When Merlin catches his eye again, there’s something sheepish in his expression. “Don’t mind Kilgharrah. I’ll tell you the full story later, promise.”
The Dragon has a name? The question is on the tip of his tongue, but falls away when Merlin reaches out and threads their hands together. Arthur knows his fingers are crusted with dried blood and dirt, but Merlin doesn’t seem to mind.
All sheepishness gone, however, his face is grave. “Leon told me you gave the order to stay. That Lancelot is coming with a physician, but you refused to move closer and meet him halfway.” He sounds—not angry, not quite, but something close. “Leon seemed to think I could heal you.”
“No. Just needed you.” It doesn’t feel so difficult to say, now, at this last gasp of life, looking at the tears still pooling in Merlin’s eyes. He’s never been a romantic, one for actions over words, but being honest with Merlin is something he learned to do long before they started sharing a bed. “Just—” This. Us. You.
He doesn’t finish the sentence, but the air is thick with understanding. This moment, with Merlin’s hand in his, their knees pressed together, this is all he wanted.
“I’m rubbish at healing magic,” Merlin whispers brokenly. “I always said I’d learn, but I never—Arthur, you brave, noble prat, why won’t you stop dying long enough for me to learn to save your life?”
Arthur laughs, weak but true. The metallic tang of blood coats his mouth, but he ignores it favor of tracing Merlin’s hand, the way the sharp angles and bones dig into his fingers exactly right. If he is to die, he would choose no other way to spend his last moments than this.
He’s long known he can weather any pain, face any fate, as long as Merlin is by his side. And he’s known almost equally as long that Merlin couldn’t perform healing magic if someone had a blade to his throat. Or plunged in Arthur’s stomach, as the case is. That was never the point.
“I love you,” he offers instead of an apology, because he feels no remorse at all for having waited for Merlin. This is happiness, these fleeting moments where they are man and man, lovers, equal, together, and he would not trade the chance at this goodbye for all the chances at healing in the world. “Merlin. I love you.”
“You’re the most right-arrogant, insufferable prat I’ve ever known, and when you make it through this, I’m going to kill you myself.”
Arthur’s lips shape themselves into a smile. Lucky for both of us that I’m not making it through this then, he wants to say, but his eyes start to close as though pulled shut by the weight of the very world, and the words drift away.
“I do love you so, Arthur,” he hears in Merlin’s voice as he sinks into the darkness, and he’s warmed somewhere deeper than Percival’s arms could reach, somewhere in his very soul.
**
“Took you long enough.”
After what feels like the space of a blink, but Merlin tells him is five days, Arthur wakes in the comfort of his own bed in the castle. The blade is gone from his stomach, the only sign it was ever there a pink, puckered scar that already looks as though it’s starting to heal. He takes in a deep breath, in and out, watching his belly rise and fall, and feels no pain at all. Somehow, miraculously, he’s been healed.
But at what cost?
Merlin stands by his bedside, hands resting on his hips. He doesn’t look like he’s moments away from a gruesome death, but Arthur has to be sure.
“How did you heal me?”
Merlin smiles so blindingly wide as he replies, “Why do you think I had anything to do with it?” that it’s answer enough.
Arthur flexes his hands, his toes. It’s a strange feeling, to have looked death so closely in the face yet not fallen over the edge, to find the shape and feel of his body again after thinking it was all but blood and dust. A strange feeling, but a good one. Warm, liquid luck and liquid courage all wound together in one.
But at what cost?
“I was on death’s doorstep. No physician could’ve helped.” His voice is gravelly with disuse, but nowhere near what he remembers it sounding like as he laid there by the campfire in his supposed last moments. And they would’ve been, if not for whatever it is that Merlin has done. “Only magic.”
“Do you really need to know exactly what and how? Can’t it be enough just that you’re here, and you’re okay?” Merlin runs finger across his cheek, soft and reverent, and Arthur reminds himself that it might feel like barely a moment has passed to him, but Merlin has lived with the impending possibility of his death for days now. “I’m so glad you’re okay.”
He wishes he could leave it there, but he can’t. He can’t. The ghost of his mother feels more present than ever, a life for a life—and how dearly she paid. Everything has a price. “Help me sit?”
Merlin huffs, his smile fading, and allows the diversion by clasping Arthur’s arm and helping him sit up. He’s silent as he fluffs a pillow behind Arthur’s head and gets him adjusted to a comfortable position. Arthur moves slowly, tensing every few seconds waiting for a remnant of the scorching pain in his navel to rear its ugly head, but when there’s nothing more than a faint twinge, he relaxes. It feels good to sit, and to be able to look Merlin at eye level.
Well. He would, if Merlin would meet his gaze. But Merlin’s eyes are fixated somewhere by his knee, as though he’s found all the answers to life’s questions hidden in the pattern of his bedsheets, and he refuses to look up.
“Merlin?” Still, he doesn’t look up, though there’s a subtle twitch of his shoulders. “Thank you.” At that, he does, surprise flashing briefly across his face. Magic is still a relatively new acceptance between them, and Arthur doesn’t want Merlin to think he’s unhappy at being healed by it, or by him. It doesn’t bother him at all, except in the only way that it does. “I ask only because if there’s anything you’ve taught me, it’s that magic is a balance. Everything comes at a price.”
All of a sudden, Merlin’s eyes widen with understanding, and his expression shifts into sharp relief. “Oh. Oh, you—” The earlier smile is back in all its wide, easy joy. “Yes, everything has a price. If I tell you this one doesn’t impact me, or Camelot, or anyone else we know—is that enough? I swear it’s okay.”
Arthur can barely breathe with how desperately he wants that to be true. “A life for a life.” He nearly chokes on the words. “That’s what you told me. How—”
“You weren’t dead.” Merlin stumbles on the word, voice hitching, before gathering himself again. “Nearly, but it’s not the same, in the eyes of magic. Made it a lot easier.”
“But Gwen, Gaius—you—”
“I’m fine. They’re all fine. And that’s not changing. I promise you.”
There’s clearly something Merlin isn’t telling him, but he believes him. Merlin has never made a promise to him in bad faith, and never broken one either. He believes him.
Arthur smiles, feels the weight come off his shoulders. Only as the cold dread recedes away does Arthur realize how quite deeply its claws were embedded.
“Does this means I get to kiss you now?”
Merlin raises an eyebrow. Even before he speaks, Arthur knows what’s coming—this game is a familiar one, and Arthur has all the patience in the world for it today. He has what amounts to a new life before him, with seemingly all the time in the world. “Well, it depends. Any other pressing questions to ask me?”
Arthur shakes his head, veins thrumming in anticipation. He gets to have this. He gets to have this for more of his days, in the sunlight, in his home, free of pain or the shadow of death, and it’s everything.
Merlin leans in, and this moment—it’s everything.