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Arthur has seen men die before.
He has seen men trampled so deeply into battlefield mud that their bodies no longer looked human afterward. He has heard the crack of bones beneath horseshoes and the wet, choking gargle of soldiers drowning in their own blood. He has watched knights scream for God, for mothers, for wives waiting hundreds of miles away who would never know their last words.
He has carried boys barely old enough to shave from the field while they shook in his arms and sobbed that they did not want to die. He has smelled burned flesh. Split intestines. Iron-rich blood steaming in winter air.
Death has followed Arthur for so long it should not still horrify him.
And yet none of it prepared him for silence.
Because Merlin has always been noise.
Even asleep, he mutters. Complains beneath his breath. Steals blankets and then denies it in the morning with complete sincerity. He wakes before sunrise looking half-dead and somehow still finds enough energy to argue with Arthur before either of them have properly opened their eyes.
He fills every room he enters. Every corridor. Every quiet moment Arthur never realized had become dependent on him.
Merlin hums while polishing armor. Talks to himself while organizing herbs. Grumbles dramatically whenever Arthur gives him more work. He laughs too loudly. Slams doors. Trips over absolutely nothing.
Alive in every possible way.
Now he lies still enough to look unreal.
Arthur sits beside the bed and stares at the slow rise and fall of Merlin’s chest because if he looks away for too long—if he blinks for even a second—terror claws up his spine with the certainty that it will stop.
That the next breath simply will not come.
Gaius had said the wound missed his heart by inches.
Inches.
As though that is meant to be comforting.
As though Arthur should somehow feel grateful for a blade that merely ruined Merlin instead of killing him outright.
The room smells thickly of crushed herbs, damp linen, and old blood. Rain taps softly against the castle windows, steady and cold. Somewhere deeper within Camelot, servants are laughing at something. The sound reaches Arthur faintly through stone corridors. A sudden, vicious hatred twists through him. How dare they laugh. How dare the world continue spinning while Merlin lies motionless beneath pale blankets. How dare anyone breathe easily while Arthur feels like every inhale is scraping broken glass through his ribs.
Arthur leans forward slowly, elbows braced against his knees. He has not fully removed his armor. One gauntlet still hangs from his wrist. His undershirt is stiff with dried blood.
There is still some beneath Arthur’s fingernails no matter how many times he scrubbed his hands raw trying to remove it.
He remembers everything too clearly.
The battlefield had dissolved into chaos near dusk. Smoke swallowing the horizon. Horses screaming. Men shouting over the deafening clash of steel. Arthur had been shouting commands until his throat burned raw, trying to force order onto a battle already collapsing into madness.
Then Merlin had appeared.
Arthur does not even remember seeing him approach. One moment he had been fighting; the next Merlin was there between Arthur and an enemy soldier with a sword already descending.
Arthur remembers the sound most.
That horrible, soft sound.
Steel entering flesh.
Merlin jerked violently. His eyes widened—not even in pain at first, just confusion. Genuine confusion, as though he himself could not understand why he was suddenly falling.
Arthur remembers catching him before he hit the ground. Remembers blood pouring through his fingers so quickly it felt impossible for one body to contain that much of it. Hot enough to steam in the freezing evening air.
Merlin had tried to speak.
Arthur remembers that too.
His lips moved weakly, but blood bubbled at the corner of his mouth instead.
Arthur had screamed for help.
The prince of Camelot reduced in an instant to something terrified and helpless and painfully human.
Arthur squeezes his eyes shut now hard enough to ache.
“You absolute idiot,” he whispers.
Merlin does not answer.
The silence feels wrong. Unnatural. Like the world itself has tilted sideways.
Gaius had said he may never wake.
Arthur had nearly struck him for saying it aloud.
Instead Arthur had simply stood there, frozen motionless while something inside him quietly tore apart.
He reaches for Merlin’s hand carefully now, almost afraid to touch him.
It feels too cold despite the mountain of blankets piled over him.
Arthur wraps both hands around it.
“You know,” he says hoarsely, forcing the words past the tightness in his throat, “this is the longest you’ve ever gone without annoying me.”
Nothing.
“I should be enjoying it.”
Still nothing.
Arthur swallows painfully.
“I’m not.”
His voice breaks on the last word. Weak. Humiliatingly weak.
Arthur looks away instantly, jaw locking hard enough to hurt. There is nobody here to witness it, but shame still floods him instinctively. Kings are not meant to unravel beside sickbeds. Knights are not meant to sit helpless while someone else fights a battle they cannot reach.
But Arthur would rather face ten armies than this.
Because at least armies can be fought.
This is only waiting.
Waiting while Merlin drifts somewhere Arthur cannot follow.
Arthur’s grip tightens around Merlin’s hand until his own knuckles ache white. His thoughts spiral helplessly back to the battlefield again and again and again. To blood soaking through his gloves. To Merlin trembling violently in his arms. To the terrifying weight of him suddenly going slack.
Arthur had genuinely thought he died there.
For one endless, horrific moment, Arthur had believed Merlin was dead.
And something inside him had stopped.
Like his own heart had forgotten how to beat.
Merlin shifts faintly beneath the blankets.
Arthur jerks upright so violently the chair scrapes harshly across stone.
“Merlin?”
Nothing.
Only another shallow breath leaving pale lips.
Arthur sags again, exhausted by hope. Exhausted by the way his heart launches itself desperately toward every tiny movement only to crash moments later.
The door slams open hard enough to rattle the walls.
Gwaine strides in like a storm given human form.
He still wears bloodstained armor. There is a cut across his cheekbone dried black with old blood, and his eyes are viciously awake despite the hour. Fury radiates off him so intensely the room itself seems smaller for it.
Arthur rises automatically. “Be qu—”
“Shut up, Arthur.”
The words crack through the room like a whip.
Arthur goes still.
Gwaine looks at Merlin only once.
And Arthur watches something unbearable flicker briefly across his face before rage swallows it whole. Fear. Grief. Terror.
Love.
“This,” Gwaine says quietly, “is your fault.”
Arthur has been blamed before. By enemies. By grieving families. By kings furious over war and death and politics. None of it has ever landed like this.
His jaw tightens. “He chose to step into that fight.”
“Yes,” Gwaine snaps immediately, “because he always chooses you.”
Silence crashes down.
Rain pounds harder against the windows now, rattling faintly against glass.
Arthur says carefully, dangerously, “Mind your tone.”
Gwaine laughs. It is an awful sound. Bitter enough to rot the air.
“Oh, there’s the prince,” he says. “I was wondering when he’d finally show up.”
Arthur feels anger stirring now—thin and exhausted and brittle from days without sleep. “You forget yourself.”
“No,” Gwaine says. “I think you do.”
Arthur stares at him.
Gwaine points toward the bed with visibly shaking hands.
“He follows you into every suicidal situation without hesitation. He throws himself between you and danger like his life means nothing because somewhere along the way you taught him it doesn’t.”
Arthur flinches before he can stop himself.
Gwaine sees it immediately.
“You know what the worst part is?” Gwaine asks, voice roughening. “He’d do it again.”
Arthur cannot breathe properly because yes.
Yes, Merlin would.
Without hesitation. Without pause. Without even thinking about himself first.
And suddenly memories hit Arthur all at once in brutal succession.
Merlin stepping between Arthur and armed men. Merlin taking blame for things that were never his fault. Merlin running toward danger every single time Arthur called his name. Merlin exhausted, bruised, frightened—and still following. Always following.
As though Arthur was something worth dying for.
Gwaine drags a hand violently over his face.
“He was terrified of battle,” he says suddenly.
Arthur blinks. “What?”
“The first time he rode with us.” Gwaine’s voice is quieter now, somehow worse for it. “He thought nobody noticed. Could barely hold a sword properly. Nearly got sick before the fighting even started.”
Arthur stares at Merlin’s motionless face.
That cannot be true.
Merlin complained constantly, yes, but Merlin followed. Every single time. Arthur had assumed—
No.
Arthur had never actually thought about it at all.
“He kept coming anyway,” Gwaine says softly. “For you.”
Something inside Arthur cracks open slowly and catastrophically.
Because he never asked.
Not once.
Never asked whether Merlin was afraid. Never asked whether he was tired. Never asked whether carrying Arthur’s burdens was crushing him piece by piece. Arthur had simply expected Merlin to be there.
Always.
Like breathing.
Like sunlight.
Like something inevitable.
Arthur sinks slowly back into the chair before his legs fully give out beneath him. Merlin does not stir.
Gwaine watches Arthur for a long, terrible moment.
“If he dies…”
Arthur shuts his eyes immediately.
No.
No.
“If he dies,” Gwaine repeats, voice splintering around the edges now, “I don’t think I’ll ever forgive you.”
Arthur cannot answer.
Because the horrible thing—the thing poisoning him from the inside out—is that if Merlin dies, Arthur does not think he will survive it either.
Not truly.
The room falls silent except for rain and breathing.
Arthur looks down slowly at Merlin’s hand still trapped carefully between his own. There are calluses there Arthur has somehow never noticed before. Thin scars crossing his knuckles. Tiny healed burns along his fingers. Evidence of pain Arthur never bothered to look closely enough to see.
How many injuries had Merlin hidden?
How much suffering had Arthur laughed off?
Arthur remembers every careless dismissal now with sickening clarity. Every eye-roll. Every cruel joke. Every thoughtless order barked simply because Merlin would obey it.
And Merlin had stayed anyway.
Arthur bends forward abruptly, pressing Merlin’s cold hand hard against his forehead because suddenly the distance between them feels unbearable.
“I didn’t know,” he whispers.
The confession tears itself out of him raw and ragged.
“I didn’t know.”
His voice shakes violently.
Across the room, Gwaine looks away.
Arthur’s shoulders tremble once before he forces them still again through sheer effort.
The prince of Camelot does not fall apart.
But there is nobody here to witness it except a sleeping man and a furious knight, and Arthur feels dangerously close to shattering anyway.
Days pass strangely after that.
Time loses shape inside Gaius’s chambers. Morning and night blur together until Arthur only recognizes them by the changing light through the windows and the growing ache in his body from exhaustion.
People begin speaking softly around him.
As though grief itself has settled over the castle like fog.
Servants lower their voices when Arthur passes. Knights stop mid-conversation when he enters rooms. Even the court feels muted now, stripped of its usual life.
Gwen brings food sometimes. Warm bread. Soup. Tea gone cold before Arthur remembers to touch it. She sets the trays quietly beside him without asking questions anymore.
None of it gets eaten.
Gaius insists Arthur sleep at least once every several hours. Arthur ignores him so thoroughly that eventually the old physician simply sighs instead of arguing. Leon handles royal duties where he can. Documents pile untouched in Arthur’s chambers. Meetings are postponed.
Arthur barely notices any of it.
His entire world has narrowed down to one bed.
To Merlin’s breathing.
To every tiny movement that might mean waking.
Sometimes Arthur talks because the silence becomes unbearable otherwise.
At first it is practical things. Court affairs. Complaints about treaties. Updates on repairs being made to the western wall after the siege.
Anything to fill the room.
But eventually exhaustion strips away the careful distance Arthur normally keeps wrapped around himself like armor.
“You’ve caused me an unbelievable amount of paperwork,” he mutters one evening while rain rattles softly against the windows. “Leon says half the servants are terrified because apparently I’ve been glaring at everyone.”
Merlin does not move.
Arthur swallows around the tightness in his throat.
“This is all your fault.”
Nothing.
The words echo emptily against stone walls.
Arthur stares at him for a long moment afterward. Merlin looks almost translucent now in the candlelight. Too pale. Dark bruises still stain the skin beneath his eyes. His lips are cracked despite Gaius’s constant efforts to keep him hydrated.
Arthur hates seeing him like this.
Helpless. Fragile.
Human in a way Arthur has never allowed himself to fully understand before.
Late one night, long after even Gaius has fallen asleep at his desk nearby, Arthur finally speaks the thought that has been rotting inside him for days.
“I don’t know how to do this without you.”
The words leave him before he can stop them.
Arthur freezes instantly.
Horrified.
Because it is true.
Not just the practical things, though there are plenty of those. Arthur does not know where half his belongings are without Merlin. He cannot remember which meetings matter. His chambers feel wrong untouched by Merlin’s constant chaotic presence.
But it is worse than that.
Arthur does not know how to exist in a world where Merlin is absent from it.
The realization settles into his chest slowly, terribly.
Merlin has threaded himself so completely through Arthur’s life that pulling him away now feels like tearing stitches from skin.
Arthur stares at Merlin in the darkness, pulse hammering unevenly beneath his ribs.
But Merlin remains unconscious, and the confession hangs unanswered between them.
Arthur laughs once under his breath. A miserable sound.
“Good,” he mutters thickly. “You’d never let me live that down.”
Still nothing.
The worst moments are the hopeful ones.
A twitch of Merlin’s fingers.
A sharper inhale.
A faint crease appearing briefly between his brows.
Arthur lurches upright every single time, heart slamming painfully against his ribs hard enough to make him dizzy.
Every single time it means nothing.
Hope becomes exhausting.
And slowly the fear inside Arthur changes shape.
At first he feared Merlin dying.
Now he fears something crueler.
That Merlin is already gone in every way that matters, and Arthur is merely sitting vigil beside the shell left behind.
The thought makes him feel physically sick.
“No,” Arthur says aloud immediately, violently.
His grip tightens around Merlin’s hand.
“No. You do not get to leave me like this.”
His throat burns painfully.
“You cannot spend years barging into my chambers before sunrise, ruining every meal I’ve ever attempted to eat in peace, insulting me constantly—”
His voice fractures sharply.
“—and then disappear.”
The room blurs.
Arthur bows his head abruptly, shoulders trembling once beneath the weight of something he cannot hold back anymore.
Because suddenly he remembers everything.
Not battlefield memories. Not blood.
Smaller things. Worse things.
Merlin laughing breathlessly while trying to keep up beside Arthur on hunts. Merlin asleep at Arthur’s table after nights spent working too late. Merlin standing at Arthur’s shoulder during feasts looking unbearably bored. Merlin smiling—small and genuine and devastatingly rare whenever Arthur praised him accidentally.
Years of moments Arthur never realized he was collecting until now.
And the horrible truth beneath all of them:
Arthur has loved him for far longer than he understood.
The realization does not arrive gently.
It crashes through him. Sudden and absolute and undeniable.
Arthur loves Merlin.
Not in the abstract way kings love loyal servants. Not in the easy way soldiers love brothers-in-arms.
This is terrifying.
Because Arthur cannot imagine a future without him in it. Because Merlin’s pain feels carved directly into Arthur’s own ribs. Because Arthur would burn kingdoms to the ground before willingly losing him.
Arthur presses Merlin’s hand hard against his forehead like prayer.
“I need you,” he chokes out finally.
The admission strips him bare.
Painful as tearing armor from skin.
“I need you alive.”
For one horrible moment, nothing happens.
Then—
A twitch.
Tiny. Barely there.
Arthur freezes.
Merlin’s fingers curl weakly against his.
Arthur’s head snaps upward so quickly the chair nearly overturns behind him.
“Merlin?”
Merlin’s face tightens faintly, like someone struggling upward through deep water. His breathing catches unevenly.
Arthur is on his feet instantly so fast dizziness crashes through him.
“Gaius!” he shouts toward the other room, voice cracking violently with panic and hope. “GAIUS!”
The old physician startles awake with a curse, nearly knocking books from the table as he rushes over.
“What is it? What happened—”
“He moved,” Arthur says breathlessly. “His hand—Merlin, can you hear me?”
Merlin’s brow furrows weakly.
His lips part slightly.
For one terrible second no sound comes out at all, and Arthur feels fresh panic clawing up his throat—
Then Merlin whispers something too faint to hear.
Arthur bends down immediately, gripping the side of the bed hard enough to ache.
“What?”
Merlin’s eyelashes flutter weakly. His voice is barely breath. Broken and rough from disuse.
“…hungry.”
Arthur stares at him.
Then lets out one sharp, disbelieving laugh that sounds dangerously close to a sob.
Gaius makes a startled noise of relief somewhere behind him, but Arthur barely hears it.
Because Merlin’s eyes are opening.
Slowly. Painfully.
Blue and unfocused and alive.
Alive.
Arthur feels something inside him collapse all at once. Weeks of terror, exhaustion, grief, and desperate hope crashing through him so violently his knees nearly give out.
Merlin squints weakly at him for several long seconds.
“…you look awful,” he mumbles.
Arthur actually makes a strangled sound. Half laugh. Half shattered breath.
“You nearly died,” he says hoarsely. “And you’re insulting me.”
Merlin’s eyes drift closed again briefly, exhausted already. But his fingers remain curled weakly around Arthur’s hand.
“Priorities,” he whispers.
Arthur bows his head sharply before Merlin can see his expression fully break apart.
Because relief hurts.
It hurts almost as much as fear did.
Arthur presses Merlin’s hand against his mouth for one brief, desperate moment before he remembers himself.