Chapter Text
Merlin is running.
Not from a creature of myth.
Not from a threat born of misused sorcery.
Not from some forest beast or bandit.
Not even headstrong towards some unseen, unheard of threat, silently slinking behind drawn curtains towards the crown prince of Camelot, like he so often does.
No.
Merlin is running from a far greater danger.
A monster, the color of blood, with silver scales and teeth. It breaths hot and crushes the brush beneath its feet, leaving a ragged scar through the forest as it pursues its prey.
Any creature with a sprinkle of self preservation has long since abandoned the area, having fled from the path of danger the moment they sensed the horrible panic radiating in waves off the one they know as Emrys. His panic seeping into the dirt, warning beasts both magic and mundane of the impending storm.
At some point the monster had had names that meant something to Merlin.
Percival
Elyan
Lancelot
Gwaine
Leon
Arthur
But not anymore. Now, the group of knights slinks through the forest at break-neck speed, with such a degree of practiced and lethal unison they may as well have been the golden dragon curled on each of their shoulders.
So Merlin is running.
Merlin is running for his life.
——
Merlin isn’t really sure where he is, which is strange for him, because through his various deadly escapades and hours upon hours of herb collection, he had generally gotten a pretty good idea of the layout of Camelot’s forest. Sprinkle in his bizarre Emrys-fueled nature connection and you have someone who doesn’t tend to get lost in the forest.
But Merlin is lost now. Mostly because he doesn’t particularly remember how he got here. He had been in Camelot some amount of time ago, maybe minutes, maybe hours, hell maybe even days, Merlin for one had no clue, all he knows is that the last thing he remembers before ripping through the dense foliage of the deep forest is standing face to face with Arthur, his eyes slowly fading from gold back to blue as he realized his mistake.
His stupid stupid stupid mistake.
All he had heard before he bolted for the gate was one word out of Arthur’s mouth.
“Sorcerer.”
Which, when spoken from the mouth of Arthur Pendragon, son of Uther, crown prince of Camelot. Well. It was synonymous to a death sentence.
Luckily Merlin had gotten the head start, due to the fact that Arthur’s knights had needed to saddle up before heading after the young man.
Unluckily however, they now have the horses, which are, shockingly, faster than Merlin.
Merlin can hear the thundering hooves slowly coming closer and closer, gaining, even as he continues sprinting at full speed. He can hear the horses, and he has no doubt that the knights, trained hunters that they are, can hear him just as well.
He needs someway to deter them, if he doesn’t do something soon the monster claws will close around him.
“Sālnesse”
The spell shoots out of Merlin’s mouth before he even has time to think about it, and with a flash of gold, Merlin is silent.
It’s not that Merlin isn’t talking, it’s that, as Merlin crashes through brush and branches, not a single sound follows. No snap of twigs or crunch of fallen leaves, he may as well be the wind.
Using his new state of silence to his advantage, Merlin turns to scramble down the hill, or river bank, or slanted cliff, or whatever the hell he’s been running along this whole time. Merlin doesn’t really have time to define the geological feature as he essentially rolls (silently) head over heels down it and straight into the rushing river bellow.
The cold hits him like a truck, but trucks don’t exist yet so Merlin doesn’t know that. He doesn’t know exactly what to compare it to, but it is certainly not pleasant when he breathes in a mouthful of the river water through a shocked gasp.
Sputtering to the surface the boy attempts to cough up the foreign body, but the moment his eyes break the surface he spots two raging war horses thundering down the hill he had just turned into a slip and slide.
On the bright side, that did mean the knights had split up.
On the not-so-bright side that meant that 2 knights were coming directly towards him, currently near drowned, in a river.
With his lungs still half full of liquid Merlin dives back under the surface deciding that he can handle drowning better than he can handle a fight with whoever is coming toward him, as it’s much easier to be mad at a river then it is to be mad at your best friends.
Pressing his body against the gravely river bottom Merlin stares up at the 2 dark shadows that appear across the waters surface, praying they will quickly move on. It’s unlikely they realize he fell into the water, as there had been no splash and no yell, which leads Merlin to wonder why the hell they were taking so long up there, don’t they know he’s running out of oxygen down here dammit?
Merlin’s hands dig into the gravel beneath him as his lungs begin to burn. He can’t have been down here too long yet, could he? It feels somehow like he’s only just ducked beneath the water and also like he’s been under there for hours. Are the knights still above him? He can’t really tell through the water and dirt flowing into his eyes, but there’s no way he can risk going back up, not when they could still be there, not when he could still be caught.
But everything hurts. By the Goddesses he wishes he could just breath.
No. Merlin realizes.
More than that. He wishes he didn’t have to breathe.
He wishes he didn’t have to run.
He wishes he could close his eyes and be somewhere else, that his body could just be washed away by the river, away from the knights away from Arthur.
How nice it must be Merlin thinks, vaguely delirious from the distinct lack of oxygenated blood in his brain, to be a river.
Always flowing.
Ever changing.
No thoughts.
No stress.
Unable to be caught.
Unable to be burned.
He could be part of the river
Who is he?
What’s his name?
Where is he?
Well whoever he is, he’s probably alright, that’s of no matter to a river, to water flowing over stones.
It’s cold.
The water is cold, so therefore the river is cold.
But it doesn’t feel cold.
It’s comfortable.
As comfortable as it can be, being a river and all.
How nice it is to be a river Merlin thinks.
Oh.
Merlin.
Right, that’s his name.
——
Merlin opens his eyes, the knights are gone, or maybe he is the one who’s gone? He can’t be entirely sure.
He’s not under the water anymore, that much he can tell. Now he’s laying on a shore with some truly ragged rocks digging into his back.
“What in the name of-” Merlin begins, sitting up, but is unable to continue the thought as water pours out of his mouth. He sputters for a moment, trying to regain his barrings.
When he does, the sorcerer looks around, finally having a moment away from his pursuers to figure out where in Albion he is.
To his shock, the young man actually does find he know his general whereabouts. His powers of deduction really are amazing when he’s not actively being hunted down like a fox!
In any case he can tell he is far from Camelot, certainly not far enough yet, but he’s further than he was. At the end of quite a large bend in the river that flows through the kingdom as near as he can tell.
Coming to his feet Merlin drags his soggy form towards the tree line, despite losing the knights for the moment he still needs to get as far from the castle as possible before nightfall.
As far from Arthur as possible before nightfall.
So he ignores the cuts on his face, and the water in his shoes, and the sorcerer begins to run.
——
At some point Merlin falls back into the kind of haze he had been in earlier. A tunnel vision of sorts, where he really only knows that he’s trying to get away from something attempting to hurt him. So he doesn’t really notice the sky darkening, he doesn’t notice the ache in his calves, he doesn’t notice the cold seeping into his bones and he certainly doesn’t notice the aggressively paranoid thoughts which claw at the edges of his mind in a voice concerningly similar to Arthur’s.
When night does finally come, and the darkness settles deeply enough that Merlin truly cannot risk his trek any longer, he finds a large, ancient tree, who’s roots stretch above the surface of the ground creating a soft, moist alcove, hidden away from the rest of the world.
Merlin finds himself crawling on his hands and knees into the little wooden cave, shoving himself forward with his elbows and tucking his feet up and in, hooking them onto one of the notches in the roots. Some deep memory whispers in the back of his mind of games of hide and seek in Ealdor, that he would objectively take far too seriously. Though. Merlin is oddly grateful for his childhood competitiveness in that aspect.
Who knew his knack for folding himself into cupboard and tree holes would come in so handy when running for his life?
He allows himself, for the moment, to lose himself in the memory, and in the tight grasp of the tree above him, he teeters just at the edge of rest, but is unable to overcome his anxiety enough to truly fall asleep.
——
He must have only been laying there for a few minutes, when he hears something.
Something he really did not want to be hearing.
A horse.
And more importantly the voice of the rider on said horse.
“Sire! There’s a clearing up here. We should take this opportunity, I think it would be unwise for us to continue the search tonight.”
Gods dammit Leon! Why does he have to be so logical?!
For once could he insist that they push on? That they risk their lives in the pitch black of the forest to keep with their mission?!
Merlin doesn’t really want any of them to do that, but he would prefer it if they didn’t set up camp 100 or so paces from his impromptu sleeping quarters when they are literally trying to track him down.
The raven-haired boy presses his face into the decomposing leaves layering the ground and tries valiantly to slow his breathing, to be as unnoticeable as physically possible. He would try to run, but with the knights so close, he knows they would be on him in seconds, like wolves to a wounded deer. So he waits, and he thinks.
It takes them a good 15 minutes to set up camp and get a fire going. They sit around it, probably eating rabbit as far as Merlin can tell. He can’t make out much conversation but he does hear his name at some point, it sounds like Gwaine.
That really makes his stomach twist.
Does Gwaine hate him now? Does Gwaine agree with Arthur? Would he kill Merlin if he was the one to find him here?
The questions don’t stop, and he spirals deeper and deeper into his own mind. As each knights voice blending into the others, Merlin is unable to make out a single word but he’s sure, he’s sure, that they must be spitting vile things about him, about sorcery, about magic, planning how to celebrate his death and wishing for the sweet scent of his flesh as it burns.
It’s all quite a dramatic scene in Merlin’s head, very vibrant. He’s so wrapped up in the day dream, that is neither during the day time nor is it much of a dream, that he doesn’t notice his breathing loudly pick up, or his shaking hands, or the sudden lack of voices coming from around the campfire.
He really doesn’t notice much of anything outside of himself until there is the sound of several pairs of feet far too close to him.
Merlin stops breathing.
The forest stops with him.
The wind holds its breath.
The tree surrounding his body waits in anticipation
Then
A gloved hand grabs his ankle.
Merlin screams.
Screaming, clawing, crawling like a rabid beast, pulling himself with desperate hands deeper into the alcove.
Hands.
There’s hands everywhere.
They are grabbing at him through the gaps in the roots, there’s noises and voice and yelling but Merlin cannot hear them over the near-animalistic shrieks coming from his own mouth.
He doesn’t even know where he’s going, the tree isn’t that big, there isn’t much more room for him to crawl, he’s going to reach the end, a wooden cage where he is trapped, waiting to be taken, to be killed, for his body to decompose like the leaves under his bloody hands, why are his hands bloody, probably because he is clawing at solid wood and batting at metal plated claws desperately trying to get out but he can’t get out he’s going to die hesgoingtoburnhesgoingto-
“ÆTFLĒON” He screams, his voice cracking as gold energy pours from the gaps of his cage, and suddenly in a burst of wood chips and smoke Merlin is free and sprinting away like a man possessed.
His arms bleed, his feet ache, his heart hammers, he feels none of it as he crashes through foliage. Bushes are toppled beneath his feet and saplings crack as he bulls through their home.
He will probably feel bad about that later. If he is alive later that is.
Voices follow him, but no horses, thank the Triple Goddesses. They yell his name, but he doesn’t stop.
The terrified warlock takes each hurdle as it grows from the darkness, uncaring of his direction, or what danger he may be running towards, heck he could be running back towards Camelot, but at least it’s away from the Knights, from the silver plated beast.
Then something catches, a rock on his shin, or a root on his foot, or a branch on his arm, or something, and suddenly he’s hitting the ground hard.
The warlock’s teeth rattle in his head as his chin hits the floors, and in his brief moment of weakness the teeth of the beast wrap around his arm, pulling him back towards them, towards his death.
With glowing eyes and the resolve of a man with nothing to lose the boy, part Merlin, part Emrys, part something unexplained, turns, raises his fist and allows it to collide with whatever and whoever may be in its way.
The punch rattles the bones of everyone involved and suddenly there’s a body slumped against a stump in front of him, wearing a red cloak, and silver amor, with close cut hair and a large frame, far larger than Merlin’s.
Things feel very real for a moment as he stares at Percival.
He can feel his heart and his lung as they pump in his chest and feels his brain as it tells his body what to do, and feel the eyes of his… Friends? Pursuers? Executioners?
And Merlin feels very small, in a very big world, and very much does not want to be viewed as he is, bloody and broken and wracked with fear and something akin to guilt.
So, he decides not to be.
He returns back to those memories of Ealdor, of his highly unfair games of hide and seek with Will, and he lets that feeling wash over him again. That feelings where you know your about to be found, that the curtain is about to be pulled back, the door opened, the corner rounded, revealing you to the world, creating some kind of primal fear inside of you, despite the fact your simply playing a game.
“Fordwīnan.”
And the sorcerer is gone, quite anti-climatically. Where Merlin had been standing there is nothing but empty air, which the knights of Camelot continue to stare at, frozen, while the thing that isn’t quite a man runs as fast as he can away from them, invisible to all who may gaze upon him.
——
By the time the knights track him down again, the sun is up, the invisibility spell has faded and Merlin cannot physically force himself to sprint any further.
When he hears the hooves approaching the raven-haired boy lets out a broken, bloody sob.
Goddesses.
He’s so tired.
He’s been tired for so fucking long.
He just wants to rest.
When he sees the first flash of Camelot red he takes a breath, tightens his resolve, and makes one final attempt at survival.
He grabs a tree branch nearest to his chest, and pulls himself up. He pushes past the burning as his abused muscles stretch and tighten while he drags his body up into the tree.
He climbs, and he climbs, until he reaches the canopy, and he prays that they will pass him by. That they won’t notice him.
Its foolish, it is the plan of a desperate man, and it is the only thing he can do.
Of course, it does not work, if the way Leon says,
“Merlin.”
Is anything to go off.
“Merlin, you don’t have to do this.” Percival
He keeps moving
“Merlin, please, just stop.” Elyan
Merlin does not stop, he pulls himself to the next branch.
“Merlin just… they just want to talk.” Lancelot
He crawls into the next tree.
“Merlin… Mate.” Gwaine
The knights can’t reach him.
“Merlin, it doesn’t have to be like this.” Leon
He’s running out of trees.
“Merlin.” Arthur
He runs out of trees.
Merlin falls.
“…Are you going to be reasonable now?” Arthur asks, as Merlin moves to stand.
But Merlin doesn’t respond. He is far to focused on what’s in front of him.
It’s a gorgeous picture, it would make an excellent painting. The sky, still dusty blue in the morning light, clouds streaking beautifully across the expanse, you can see the mountains of the neighboring kingdom, and the tops of deep green trees over the cliff edge, only a dozen or so feet from where Merlin stands.
Arthur’s been able to read Merlin for a long time, far better than the young warlock thinks he can. So it’s not shocking that Arthur realizes what Merlin’s thinking, probably before Merlin even does.
“Merlin, no. Just- just come back to Camelot with us.”
Its evidently the wrong thing to say, as Merlin begins to walk, concerningly fast for someone who just fell 10 odd feet, toward the edge.
Arthur steps forwards, the knights watch, Merlin turns.
Merlin is 5 feet from the edge, Arthur is 5 feet from Merlin. He doesn’t step forward
He’s scared of me
Merlin thinks.
He’s scared for me
Is the truth.
But Merlin doesn’t know that. And Merlin takes a step back.
“Merlin you can’t do this, please, stop.”
Merlin takes another step.
“This is madness! Why can’t you just stop being so stubborn for once in your blasted life?!”
Another.
“Trying to prove a point?! Well congratulations Merlin! Point proven, now come back!”
Another.
There’s nothing Arthur can say, there’s no words that the man would be willing to speak which can convince Merlin to stop.
Because he has already made up his mind about what Arthur thinks of him.
That being that Merlin is no longer human in Arthur’s mind.
He is a sorcerer.
Something fundamentally different.
That is the difference between Merlin and Emrys.
Merlin is a person.
Emrys is not.
Arthur won’t care.
So he takes the final step back and falls from the cliff.
——
Arthur lunges, arm stretched out, Merlin watches him in the final brief moments before he is tumbling down the rocky cliff.
He feels it as Arthur’s hand brush his sleeve.
And Merlin pulls his arm away.
Then it’s just open air, the world is spinning, he sees the cliff, the sky the ground, Arthur, above bellow to the side of him.
It’s dizzying and confusing and horrible and wonderful, he’s like Icarus, free and falling and nearing his death.
Then, he hits something.
Not the ground, he quickly realizes. A ledge. His thin body can just fit on the small chunk of rock jutting out the cliffside. Somehow, out of everywhere he could’ve fallen, he manages to hit the one single ledge of a smooth cliff face, perching him halfway down the drop.
He hears Arthur yelling.
“LEON! GET ROPE! GWAINE, LANCE, GET THE HORSES AND GET BELLOW HIM NOW! ELYAN HELP ME SECURE THE LINE!”
He keeps yelling, Merlin tunes him out, even when hunting down a sorcerer he manages to sound like a royal prat.
That makes Merlin smile, the softest giggle spilling hysterically out from behind his teeth. It hurts his chest, and makes his eyelids heavier.
At this point, Merlin isn’t even totally sure why he ran. Why he’s still running. Because eternal sleeps sounds extremely nice right about now.
But… well that’s a lie, Merlin knows exactly why he ran. It’s not because he didn’t want to die, not really, hell with everything he’s been through it would be a greater shock if Merlin was scared of death. No, he’s not afraid of death, not even afraid of burning if he really thinks about it. Sure, he wouldn’t prefer it, it would be terrible and horrifying and agonizing, but really it not being killed that scares him at all.
It’s being killed by Arthur.
It’s his friends cheering as he dies.
It’s facing his brothers as he burns.
It’s watching the man he loves light the pyre.
That.
That is something he truly can never face.
Hatred.
Arthur’s hatred.
Oh, and theres Arthur. Attached to a rope, being lowered down the cliff. Towards Merlin. Ah. He’s coming to get Merlin. Fuck, why cant that clotpole just leave him alone to die?
Arthur is looking down at him. There’s an expression on his face, one he is too tired to read. His mouth is moving, but he is too tired to listen to the words.
The warlock doesn’t even really think about it when he rolls himself off the ledge, he just… does it. He doesn’t even remember hitting he ground, or Arthur’s cries, or much of anything after that.
——
Arthur isn’t exactly sure when he stopped caring about magic.
He isn’t exactly sure when he stopped hunting down a sorcerer and started searching for his friend.
And he isn't exactly sure when his mindset switched from betrayed to terrified.
But he’s pretty sure that by the time he sees Merlin so desperate for escape that he tries to walk on a clearly broken leg, he’s already made the switch.
He yells something to Leon, and then he’s being lowered down quicker than is probably safe, but he doesn’t care. His eyes are only on his clever, beautiful, brave, stupid manservant, who is still trying to force his body forward, his leg folding, bending and buckling unnaturally bellow him with each step. The sight only making Arthur propel down the cliff faster.
He’s extremely grateful when Gwaine and Lancelot start trying to carefully (but forcefully) coax Merlin down to ground.
Gwaine, ever so gently wrapping his arms around the raven’s body, restraining him as he weakly fights against the stronger man.
Lancelot, holding his face, clearly trying to talk him down from the horrible panic that he’s gotten himself into.
The moment Arthur’s feet touch the ground he is drawing his sword, cutting the rope and sprinting towards the trio.
Gwaine notices him first, Merlin’s breathing picks up.
“LOSE THE SWORD IDIOT!” Gwaine yells, in a very un-Gwaine way. Arthur doesn’t care, the sword is on the ground ten feet away, and then Arthur is on the ground in front of the man he loves, tears pouring down his cheeks as he looks over his bloodied body.
His legs is, of course, broken. Badly. But what must make it infinitely worse is the way that the muscles of both his legs spam and tense from overuse.
Beyond that, Merlin’s face is covered in lashes from whipping tree branches, each cut encrusted with dirt and dust.
His hands are in a much similar state, three of his left fingers practically don’t have nails anymore and are still wet with their own blood.
It’s clear to the prince that his manservant is also concussed, if the goose-egg on his hairline is anything to go off of, and the worry in Arthur’s chest only doubles when he realizes something is definitely wrong with Merlin’s breathing.
When Arthur replaces Lancelot’s hands on Merlin’s face with his own the young man in question lets out the most horrible series of cries and whimpers that the prince has ever heard.
“No no, hey, hey. Look at me, okay. Nothings- it’s over now okay? Nothings gonna happen.” The blonde tries desperately to explain to his delirious raven.
“Don’ hate- nghhh no noh, es- you hatr. Fire- I can’t fi-fyr, sor-ehhhnghh.”
The words quickly dissolve into wrenching sobs.
Arthur looks up to Gwaine, and Lancelot, who seem just as horrified as him, while their friend continues to whimper and writhe where he still lays against Gwaine’s lap.
“Arthur.” Lancelot begins, the word is some kind of explanation, some kind of plea, some kind of question.
“I- We… We need to get him back to camp.” Arthur responds, trying his absolute hardest to sound controlled during the most out of control moment of his life.