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–erlin… Merlin!
Come on, you idiot.
Come back now.
Come back to me.
Please.
There are two spots of heat against Merlin’s cheeks. Sword-calloused but achingly gentle, sweeping tremulous lines along the soft skin beneath his closed eyes.
He has the distinct impression that he’s been propelled into a stone wall by a battering ram, so complete is the blanket of pain over his bones. His magic is a sluggish thing, stirring weakly in his marrow like one of Gaius’ leeches after he's been experimenting with sedation formulas.
He would very much like to never, ever move again.
But the hands cradling his face are shaking slightly, and the poorly concealed desperation in the voice that had beckoned him back to reality still rings in his ears, and for that voice he would push through anything and everything. For that voice, he opens his eyes.
‘There you are,’ Arthur breathes. ‘Back with us?’
‘Did I go somewhere?’ Merlin blinks, and the mildly distorted view of the battlefield (or what remains of it) swims into reluctant focus. Bodies strewn about (fewer wearing Camelot red than of the enemy, thank goodness); pockets of smoke rising in hazy plumes; abandoned pennants and guidons flickering lazily against the grey of looming dusk.
Arthur's face– the streaks of ash and blood along his jaw; the crease between his brows; the tight frown of his mouth; his golden, sweat-mussed fringe; the sharp, fathomless blue of his eyes– settles less reluctantly, always the first thing to make sense to Merlin. The thing around which all else falls into place. The linchpin of Merlin's sight, as his voice is of sound, as his touch is of feeling. He isn't corporeal until Arthur is within the bounds of his senses.
‘Not physically,’ Arthur replies, and his hands are still holding Merlin’s cheeks as if to tether him there. ‘But when you were a complete and utter moron and did whatever the hell spell you did, you–’ Arthur sucks in a breath and his fingers twitch against Merlin’s cheekbones. ‘You were gone, for a bit, after. Blank. I couldn’t rouse you. You just stood there, barely even breathing. Like your soul had left you. And then you just dropped like a stone.’
Merlin remembers, sort of. He recalls the panic and chaos of the battle, the dread of realising Camelot’s forces were vastly outnumbered, of knowing innately what had to be done even though he couldn’t name it. He remembers locking eyes with Arthur, seeing the moment his king registered what must have been an expression of grim apology on his Court Sorcerer’s face. The widening of dismayed eyes, the alarmed, half-formed forbiddance on his lips, and it all gets a bit muddled after that.
A crushing surge of magic that emptied Merlin’s mind of anything but the basest instinct to protect. A flood of heat and light and pain. A void, gaping and magnetic. Distant screams fading to silence. A curious and consuming nothingness.
And then, Arthur’s voice. His hands on Merlin’s cheeks. His face quivering into focus.
‘I think maybe I did go somewhere,’ Merlin murmurs, brow furrowed against the dull throb of concentration. He really would rather be unconscious right now, if he had his druthers. ‘I think my magic sent me… away. To protect me.’
‘I wasn’t sure you’d come back.’ The admission is quiet, frightened, and the rarity of such a thing from Arthur makes Merlin fight a little harder to cling to the waking world.
‘Of course I would. I always come when you call, don’t I?’ That gets him a faintly bemused eyebrow arch, which he returns with a tired grin. ‘When it matters, I mean.’
Arthur’s face softens, and his thumbs stroke once more in gentle sweeps that make Merlin’s eyelids flutter closed again.
‘I suppose you do.’ Merlin feels a soft press of lips against his own before Arthur’s forehead meets his own, enclosing them in a chamber of warmth and breath and closeness.
‘Just promise me you always will,’ Arthur entreats, low enough that the words don’t break the illusion of privacy they’ve conjured for themselves despite the disarray of post-battle cleanup ensuing around them. ‘Promise you’ll always return to me.’
‘As long as you promise the same,’ Merlin counters, beginning to drift.
In response, Arthur kisses him again.
It is answer enough.