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“You would have left me there to rot,” Merlin whispers. He’s not looking at Arthur, not anymore. He’s looking past him, as though Arthur is transparent and not a solid human being standing before him.
Maybe he isn’t. Maybe Merlin’s back there, still locked up, and this is just a dream — a nightmare, because the Arthur he knows, the Arthur he loves would never do something like this to him.
Arthur reaches out his hand when Merlin staggers backwards, probably intending to catch him if he falls, but Merlin flinches away, staring at him wide-eyed.
“Merlin, I—” he starts, but Merlin cuts him off.
“You didn’t care. They told me, but I didn’t believe them,” Merlin says. “Oh, gods. After everything I’ve done for you, you would have left me there to rot!”
“It wasn’t like that!” Arthur protests, and Merlin flinches back again when Arthur starts walking towards him, steps hurried and purposeful, because he looks just like them . He’s full of anger and self-righteousness and no, what if he really is back there and this isn’t Arthur at all? “Merlin, listen to me,” he says.
But Merlin can’t, not anymore. His breathing’s gotten so fast and loud that it’s at the point where he’s stopped being able to discern any sounds other than a soft rustling that seems to be getting louder by the minute. It doesn’t take long for his vision to go fuzzy, and then he’s suddenly sat at the base of a wall, staring at the black spots and listening to the humming in his head grow louder and louder.
“Merlin, please,” he thinks he makes out, but oh, oh, it must be his imagination because he can’t hear, can he?
If this, by some stretch of the imagination, is Arthur, then he doesn’t care about Merlin. He would have left him there, captured and beaten black and blue, bruised and bloody and with his magic all locked up and oh wait Arthur knows about his magic now, maybe that’s why he didn’t want to come find Merlin? But no the magic came later right? Right? Because Arthur did come for him, did get him out of there, and he had done all that despite finding out about Merlin’s magic.
But Arthur didn't want to come for him in the first place, and Agravaine still has his position in court.
He thinks he can feel someone’s hand on the back of his head — a warm presence pressing on his skull right next to the biggest bruise — pushing his head down between his knees, telling him to breathe — telling him to breathe? Why? Merlin doesn’t understand. He’s breathing. It’s fast and shallow and his lungs are burning, starved of air, but he’s breathing.
He think he hears his name again.
His hand is on someone’s chest, he realises between one too-quick breath and the next, and he thinks he can feel that chest rising and falling; he dimly registers someone’s pleas for him to follow their breathing pattern, to feel and try to imitate because if he keeps going on like this, he’s going to pass out and he’s had quite enough of that to last a lifetime, thank you.
After a few false starts, he finally manages to get his breathing pattern to mirror Arthur’s, and yes, this is Arthur, thank all the gods. It's real; he's real — Merlin can see that now that his chest isn't burning and his vision has returned and he can hear again.
“Are you alright?” Arthur asks once he notices that Merlin’s gotten himself under some semblance of control. Merlin doesn’t look at him. He turns his gaze to the floor and nods.
“Do… do you need anything?” Arthur asks, looking a cross between worried and guilty, and it makes Merlin want to laugh. He doesn’t, though, because he’s not sure he’d be able to stop once he started.
“No. Just— no,” he whispers. What he needs, he knows Arthur will never give. And right now, what he needs most is Agravaine dead and rotting at the bottom of a ditch.
Arthur’s looking at him and gnawing on his lip. His hair looks dishevelled — Merlin distantly wonders when that happened.
“Do you want to move to the bed?” he asks after another minute of staring. Merlin thinks for a few seconds, then nods.The bed would be best. The cold stone of the walls is biting into his back, and while it may not have bothered him a few minutes ago, it most certainly does now.
Arthur reaches out to help him up, but Merlin doesn’t take his hand. He pushes himself up and staggers slightly, but thankfully manages to right himself before he falls. Arthur doesn’t move to touch him again as he slowly limps over to the bed, but once Merlin is finally lying down, he doesn’t waste another second before moving to tuck in the covers around him. The bed shifts as Arthur sits down on the other side of it.
“Agravaine didn’t make a mistake, you know,” Merlin whispers, eyes closed so that he doesn’t have to see Arthur’s expression. He does, however, hear Arthur inhale sharply. “It wasn’t a mistake. He lied to you,” Merlin tries to elaborate before Arthur gets the wrong idea.
“Merlin, I—” Arthur starts to say, but Merlin interrupts him, because he really can’t bear to hear Arthur make more excuses for his uncle.
“I’m going to sleep,” he states, and fights to relax his muscles. The exhaustion doesn’t creep up on him so much as it slams into him, and he’s out like a light in minutes.
He’s not sure, but he thinks Arthur doesn’t move from his place beside him all night.