Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Merlin had warned him about travelling this route and he’d ignored him, and now look where they were. Captured and tied up, by some run of the mill bandits, no less. They were outnumbered and overpowered. It had hardly been a fair fight and then one of them had held a sword to Merlin’s neck. Arthur had no choice but to surrender.

“We’ll get out of here, Arthur,” Merlin whispers across to him. They’re propped up against trees facing each other, both with their hands and feet tied. They’d tied Arthur’s hands behind his back, but left Merlin’s in front of him, seemingly feeling less threatened by him.

“Shut up, Merlin, I’m thinking,” he scolds. They’ve been left on the outskirt of the camp, away from the heat of any fire but within plain view. Bandits glance at them every five seconds and they can’t move a muscle without being yelled at. Naturally, his sword had been taken from him and they’d both been roughly searched for any concealed weapons. 

“We just need a plan.” 

“Merlin-” As if he didn’t know that.

“Do you see any-” He’s cut off as a bandit yells at them. A heavy set pair start walking over, scowls on their faces.

“You got somethin’ to say, little man? Me and Alec wanna join your conversation.” One of them sneers at Merlin. He glares up at them silently, unintimidated.

“Nothing?” The other, Alec, says. “That’s weird. I could have sworn I just heard you running your mouth,” he spits as he grabs Merlin’s face roughly.

“Hey!” Arthur snaps. The bandits’ heads twist towards him. “Leave him alone. He doesn’t have the sense to know what he’s doing half the time.”

“Aww,” the other one mocks, turning and crouching in front of Arthur. “He don’t like us touchin’ his stuff.” Merlin yanks his head out of Alec’s grip, who growls and grabs Merlin by the hair, forcing his head back into the tree and making him gasp.

“And this one doesn’t have any manners, Griff.” Alec shakes Merlin’s head, who winces at his hair being pulled and the bark no doubt digging into his scalp.

“Stop that!” 

“What are you gonna do ‘bout it?” Griff sneers, pointedly looking at the ropes binding Arthur. “Charge at me? Run me through? I’d like to see you try.” He laughs in Arthur’s face. He’s trying to humiliate him and it’s working. Arthur feels incredibly powerless. It’s not a feeling he’s used to.

“I don’t know about you, Griff, but I was starting to get bored waiting around for the boss anyway.” In the hand not holding Merlin, Alec is performatively admiring a dagger against the sunlight. “What do you say we have a little fun?” His dry lips pull back sickeningly and reveal blackened teeth. Griff scrambles back towards Merlin and his partner excitedly.

“Good idea,” he drawls. There’s morbid fascination in his eyes and Arthur doesn’t want to know what their idea of ‘fun’ is. 

“Where should I start?” Alec brings the dagger to Merlin’s unflinching face and presses the edge against Merlin’s lip, “His tongue?” 

“Oi!” Arthur shouts. He distantly wonders how many times Merlin’s tongue has been threatened because of his incessant chatter.

Alec ignores him and traces the bridge of Merlin's nose, “His nose? Or his eye?” He runs it across the soft skin under Merlin’s eye, who still doesn’t even twitch.

“Get your hands off him!” He wants to burn both mens’ filthy hands and then scrub Merlin clean of any touches that may linger on his skin. 

 Alec pulls Merlin’s hair to angle the side of his face upwards. The dagger continues to scrape along his skin until he reaches Merlin’s ear lobe and twirls the tip just beneath it. “Maybe I’ll start with his ears.”

“Ears! Ears!” Griff cries, bouncing up and down like an over-excited child.

“Leave him alone, you lunatics!” Arthur yells, jerking forward in his bindings. He feels sick and they’ve barely harmed him yet. Alec finally glances at him now and sighs long-sufferingly.

“Shut him up for me, Griff. I want to enjoy this without his whining.”

Griff gets up and makes quick work of gagging Arthur with a strip of fabric, who twists and clenches his jaw, trying to make it as difficult as possible for the bully. Once he can no longer speak, he gives his most menacing glare but it doesn’t seem to have the intended effect. 

Merlin looks at him with soft, deep eyes, his expression stoic and displaying his usual damnable bravery that gets him into so much trouble. Damn him for being so calm while Arthur sits here losing his shit. Damn him for being right about the route. Damn him for already forgiving Arthur, like he always does, even when this is all Arthur’s fault and he’s not good enough to protect him. He tries to convey all of this and more to Merlin through the fire in his eyes, and if the hint of a tug at Merlin’s lips is anything to go by, then the message was received. 

The men turn their attention back to Merlin.

“Keep still and maybe I’ll make this quick,” Alec hums. He starts applying pressure with the blade and Merlin hisses and jerks away. “I said stay still, you maggot!” 

“Get off!” Merlin shouts, trying to peel himself away with the interest of keeping his ears attached to his body. There’s a small trickle of blood under his ear. 

“He speaks!” Griff cackles, pressing Merlin’s legs into the ground in an attempt to subdue him. 

Alec starts trying to get to Merlin’s ear again and the boy struggles further, sliding down the tree as he thrashes. Merlin throws his bound arms up at Alec and Griff grabs them, and then Merlin kicks out with his legs, catching the bandit in the groin. He roars and swears colourfully. 

“You fuckin’-” Griff stands up and stamps on Merlin’s stomach. Merlin chokes as the wind is knocked out of him. Arthur’s shouts are muffled behind his gag. Alec sheaths his dagger and punches Merlin in the face, sending him sprawling fully onto the ground. He tries to wriggle away but he’s stopped when the bandits descend on him, kicking and punching without restraint.

Arthur tries to scream and shout to draw their attention away from Merlin, but they’re invested in their attack. Merlin continues to struggle and cry out, occasionally trying to curl in on himself, to no avail.

It feels like it goes on forever. Arthur is forced to watch helplessly, yanking against his bindings and rubbing his skin raw in the process. He can feel how flushed his face is as he pants behind the gag, his heart pounding in his ears. His throat aches from screaming, and he wishes more than ever that he could spit fire.

Merlin suddenly goes limp. Arthur watches the world end.

The bandits’ hits wane and they stand there huffing.

“Shit. Did ya kill ‘im, Alec?”

“No! You were hitting him too. Must just be knocked out.”

“You sure? He looks pretty dead to me…” He pokes Merlin with his foot and receives no reaction. 

Arthur stares wide-eyed at his manservant, desperately searching for any movement or sound. 

There’s nothing. He’s not wincing or groaning or lifting a painful hand to his head. He’s not shuffling away from danger or making any move to defend himself, lying completely prone on the floor. There's blood trickling across his forehead, disappearing into his hair and then reappearing on the ground beneath him. He can see the redness around his wrists, mimicking Arthur’s own from where he was struggling so fiercely ten seconds ago. His hands now lay limp against his stomach and his eyes are closed. Arthur is trembling with anger and he can’t steady himself enough to see whether his chest is moving or not.

“Keep your voice down! It’s not my fault! Look how fragile he is, he was gonna snap in the next gust of wind anyway.”

“What are we gonna tell the boss? You know he don’t like it when we kill ‘em without his permission.”

“We’ll just say he was on his way out anyway. He’s sickly looking enough for that to be convincing.” Alec looks around cautiously. “Let’s just- let’s just move him.” He grabs the rope still binding Merlin’s ankles and starts dragging him away by the feet. Merlin is slack and unresisting as he’s pulled along the dirt and into the trees. The sight of him being hauled out of his view is burned into his memory.

Arthur hasn’t breathed since Merlin stopped moving. His chest feels so tight and there’s moisture blurring his vision. He has to force himself to suck in a breath, and then another.

His mind races. Merlin - dead. Merlin being dead. Dead, Merlin. Those words don’t belong in the same sentence. His stomach churns over and over. He can’t be dead. He just can’t fathom it. Merlin always made it out of tight situations. While he liked giving Arthur a heart attack, the close calls were always just that - close. There’s no way today it had been the call. After every close call, near miss, or brush with death, each being far more dramatic than this , this couldn’t have been the one. 

Due to the nature of the situations they found themselves in, Arthur assumed it would be something far grander than some good-for-nothing bandits losing their tempers. It should’ve been as they faced down a great beast in a dramatic flurry of action, or as they defended Camelot to the grave. For it to be over, just like that. It didn’t make sense.

But maybe it did. It’s like they said, Merlin’s only small, and they really hadn’t held back. It absolutely was possible that it had been too much for his body.

There’s some blood streaked on the leaves where Merlin had lain and Arthur can’t tear his eyes away from it. His lungs, which had been underperforming, are now working too much and he has to force his breaths to slow down. Merlin puts so much trust in Arthur and now he’s probably at the bottom of some ditch, oh gods-

“Show me the fresh meat!” A booming voice rips him from his thoughts. He blinks his eyes clear and forces himself to control his breaths. The leader of the bandits has arrived and he’s making his way towards Arthur, Alec and Griff trailing behind him. He’s bigger and rougher looking than the others, clearly battleworn and strong as an ox.

He stops in front of Arthur, looking him up and down as he assesses him. He pulls the gag out of Arthur’s mouth.

“How are you findin’ our hospitality, knight? Comfortable?”

“You’re going to regret the day you were born.” His voice comes out hoarse, but stronger than he expected. The man laughs and stuffs the fabric back into his mouth.

“I like it! He’s got fight!” The two subordinates look pleased with themselves. The boss looks around, searching for something. “Where's the other one then? I was told you got two.”

“Ah, he uh-” Griff stutters.

“He croaked when we got back,” Alec interrupts. “Sickly little thing. Must’ve not been well looked after by his master. We dumped the body.”

The leader grunts, unimpressed. “If I’m told two, I wanna see two,” he growls. Griff flinches slightly at his words. “Prisoners keep dyin’ on your watch. You’re not stupid enough to be killin’ ‘em behind my back, are ya?”

“A-absolutely not, boss.”

“Wouldn’t dream of it, boss.”

The man spits onto the ground in front of them. “Tell me it wasn’t a complete waste. Did you get anythin’ off ‘im? Gold? A sword? Even a ruddy dagger?”

Griff digs around in his pocket and pulls out a piece of fabric. A small, dirty piece of fabric that Arthur would recognise anywhere -  Merlin’s neckerchief. Those bastards. Those vile bastards. First, they beat a spectacular, defenceless man to death, drag him away without a hint of care, and then they loot his body. Arthur has to stop himself from lashing out against his bindings.

“Thought we could use it as a gag or somethin’”

The leader seems to boil with anger. His face turns red and a sweat breaks across his forehead. 

“A rag?! A fuckin’ rag?!” He screams. He rips the fabric from Griff’s hand and stamps it into the ground. He may as well have stamped on Arthur’s heart too. He grabs Griff and Alec by the ears and aggressively pulls them away, stomping back into main camp with each man stammering and whining the whole way.

Arthur sits in silence, getting lost in his thoughts. He tries to stay on track with creating an escape plan, but his traitorous eyes keep straying to the bloody leaves and the neckerchief stamped into the mud. Just as he focuses himself again, a commotion startles him. 

There’s a bang, followed by yelling. He looks over to find that one of the far fires has erupted in height and the surrounding two tents have caught alight. Bandits are scrambling and shouting at each other in a panic. If Arthur didn’t know any better he’d say this was the perfect distraction for an-

“Arthur!” a voice hisses behind him. He snaps his head around and sees a ghost.

“Merlin,” he says into the gag. 

Merlin is crouched in the bushes behind him, looking like hell but he’s breathing and awake and mostly upright. Merlin shuffles forward with a struggle and tugs the fabric out of his mouth. He’s too dumb stuck to say anything else. 

There’s blood streaked across his face where he’s hastily wiped it away, staining his sleeve. The blood under his ear has blended in with the mud coating him, and the lack of a neckerchief displays a nick from the sword held to his throat earlier that Arthur hadn’t noticed, hadn’t been good enough to prevent. His jacket is torn in one place and Arthur doesn’t doubt the majority of his injuries are hidden beneath his baggy clothing. His fingernails are broken, his hands shake and his wrists are a mess of rope burns, but he manages to start on Arthur’s own wrists anyway.

“I’m always doing everything for you, prat,” Merlin says from behind him, the ropes loosening and blood returning to his hands. 

“I thought they killed you. You looked dead. They said you were dead,” he breathes, all too quickly, all too honestly. Merlin gives him a sheepish look. 

“Surprise! Not dead,” he smiles brightly at Arthur, like it wasn’t the worst surprise of his life. He’s never been so glad to see it. “Although, that was the goal - to look dead, I mean. I just didn’t think I was pretending well enough for even you to believe it.”

“I couldn’t see properly and they could, so I assumed they were right,” he says. How silly of him.

“Luckily for us, they’re really stupid. I swear I moved a little at some point. They even untied me to reuse the rope, which was very kind of them.” The ropes around his wrists fall away. He has to flex his hands quickly but then he starts on his ankles, working faster than Merlin can. The bandits are still running around like headless chickens, hopelessly distracted.

He wants to tackle Merlin to the ground, kiss his cheeks and wrap his arms around him, but instead what comes out is, “I’m going to kill you myself, Merlin.”

“Were you worried, Sire?” Merlin teases.

“Yes, about what Gaius would do to me if I brought back a dead ward.” He shakes his legs free of the rope and stumbles to his feet. By the way Merlin still sits awkwardly on the ground, it’s evident that he’s not feeling great. “We need to hurry. Can you walk?” Merlin answers by raising his hands for Arthur to pull him up by.

Arthur gets Merlin on his feet, who sways and wheezes worryingly, but he holds himself up. Arthur tugs Merlin’s arm over his shoulder and wraps an arm around his waist, helping him stumble away from the bandit camp. Merlin groans and winces occasionally, but generally does a good job at hiding how much pain Arthur knows he must be in.

“Is that why you're always cowering in some corner during battle? Playing dead is your tactic?” He asks. Merlin laughs breathlessly.

“Not usually, but it worked quite well this time, so maybe I should employ it more,” he jokes back. “Or maybe I shouldn’t,” he glances at Arthur, “I’m worried you might keel over if I do it again.” 

Arthur just rolls his eyes dramatically, but he agrees wholeheartedly. He’s surprised his heart didn’t stop this time round; he’s not sure he could survive the experience once more. He doesn’t really want to think about how it made him feel anymore, so he focuses on how alive Merlin feels against him. 

Arthur supports Merlin all the way back to Camelot, still fearing the wrath of Gaius, but at least now it’s an injured ward rather than a dead one.

Chapter Text

Arthur is looking very pitiful, sitting against his tree. The ropes restraining him aren’t helping but it's the kicked puppy look he gets when he’s wrong and it gets them into trouble.

“We’ll get out of this Arthur,” he tries to reassure. 

“Shut up, Merlin, I’m thinking,” he grumbles. Uh oh, he’s thinking.

“We just need a plan.”

“Merlin-”

“Do you see any-” He’s interrupted by an angry shout. Maybe he should’ve been a bit quieter. A pair of bandits he’d seen hanging around are making their way over, and they look less than happy.

“You got somethin’ to say, little man? Me and Alec wanna join your conversation.”

Merlin’s first impression of these guys is that they look like idiots. He’s tempted to throw a retort but it seems unwise in his position so he clamps his mouth shut and stares them down.

“Nothing?  That’s weird. I could have sworn I just heard you running your mouth,” Alec speaks with disdain and his sweaty hand grasps his jaw, fingers pressing painfully into his cheeks.

Arthur shouts from his position a few feet across. Stay out of this, idiot.

“Leave him alone,” Arthur challenges boldly. “He doesn’t have the sense to know what he’s doing half the time.”

Great, like that was going to help. 

The unnamed one turns and crouches in front of Arthur. “Aww, he don’t like us touchin’ his stuff,” he jeers. Alec is looking at Arthur too and Merlin doesn’t like the attention straying to him, so he jerks his head out of Alec’s inattentive grip. His defiance is rewarded with a deep, angry rumble and a hand in his hair yanking his head back. The sharp inhale that leaves him is involuntary, but the movement surprised him and the tree is rough against his scalp.

“And this one doesn’t have any manners, Griff,” Alec hisses, shaking Merlin’s head to make a point. He winces and curses himself for the display of weakness. He doesn’t want to paint a bigger target on his back, and more importantly, he doesn’t want Arthur to worry.

“Stop that!” Too late.

“What are you gonna do ‘bout it?” Griff keeps his focus on Arthur. “Charge at me? Run me through? I’d like to see you try.” He laughs at him, which is only going to put him in a worse mood. 

“I don’t know about you, Griff, but I was starting to get bored waiting around for the boss anyway.” Merlin spies the glinting dagger. “What do you say we have a little fun?” Griff is back beside them instantly, expressing his agreement. Good. Leave Arthur alone.

Merlin would be intimidated if he hadn’t dealt with worse literally every day. Merlin walked around with the weight of the world on his shoulders. He’d seen the other side of death’s door, for Christ’s sake. And don’t even get him started on Arthur in the morning.

The dagger meets his lips as Alec contemplates where to start.

“Oi!” he hears Arthur shout. 

His nose and eyes are threatened next. The blade is cool against his skin. It almost tickles as it is dragged across his face. He doesn’t break his hard stare at Alec.

“Get your hands off him!” Arthur growls. 

His neck is stretched uncomfortably sideways and the dagger meanders around his earlobe.

“Maybe I’ll start with his ears,” Alec drawls.

“Ears! Ears!” Griff is practically frothing at the mouth like a disturbed rat.

“Leave him alone, you lunatics!” There’s a hint of alarm in Arthur’s voice that he probably didn’t mean to let slip through, and Merlin wants to be able to calm him down somehow. He can hear the rustle of Arthur’s armour as he struggles against his bindings. Alec sighs and looks to Arthur, which allows Merlin to try and catch Arthur’s eyes.

“Shut him up for me, Griff. I want to enjoy this without his whining.”

Arthur doesn’t make it easy for Griff, but there’s only so much he can do, and soon he’s roughly gagged. The fabric stuffed in his mouth looks less than clean and Merlin doesn’t want to know what it was used for before. 

When Arthur finds Merlin’s eyes, there’s fury and humiliation in them. Merlin meets him with the same steadying gaze he always does when Arthur’s feeling overwhelmed. He knows Arthur will beat himself up for this, ever the protector, but it’s not his fault. 

After this, Arthur might give him that look he does when he’s not feeling articulate enough to voice all of his complex emotions. Emotions pertaining to guilt, worry and more guilt. Merlin will throw another made up insult at him to tell him it’s okay, and hopefully it will get Arthur out of his funk and they’ll go back to normal. 

His place in regency makes Arthur feel like he always has to be looking after everyone, and his fierce protectiveness over his friends is just in his nature. But Merlin is the one looking after Arthur. It’s written in his destiny.

Merlin wants to tell him he needn’t worry about looking after him. Merlin looks after Arthur first, himself second. He isn’t allowed to have any guilt about this. In fact, Merlin is somehow feeling slightly guilty, even though he’s the one with a dagger against his face. Guilty he’s not able to save Arthur the heartache of watching this, guilty he wasn’t able to stop it in the first place.

He’s torn from Arthur’s eyes by Alec telling him to stay still. There’s sharp pain as he feels the blade breach his skin and he instinctually hisses and pulls away.

“I said stay still, you maggot!”

“Get off!” he yells, not going down without a fight.

“He speaks!” Griff pounces on his kicking legs. There’s muffled shouting coming from Arthur.

The weapon moves towards his face again and he tries to knock it out of Alec’s hands, but his movement is stopped by Griff who pulls his arms back down harshly. With the weight off his legs, he kicks upwards and judging by the howl and the expletives thrown at him, he hit the bullseye.

“You fuckin’-” Griff scambles up and brings his heavy boot down on Merlin’s stomach. The air leaves his lungs instantly and he’s unprepared for the fist colliding with his face. He meets the ground on his side and tries to push himself away but then his back explodes in pain, and then his chest, and then his head- Everything hurts and his vision has turned into a blur. It’s impossible to think through the onslaught. He's aware he's fighting, an unconscious effort from his body to survive, but he doesn’t know what to do, how to make them stop. Will they ever stop?

That’s it. He’ll just stop.

He forces himself to go limp and silent. It’s difficult to tell his body not to react to the pain, but he focuses on going as still as possible and pretty quickly, the attack ends. 

He can hear them standing above him, panting.

“Shit. Did ya kill ‘im, Alec?” Yes, I’m dead.

“No! You were hitting him too. Must just be knocked out.” No, no, dead. You’ve killed me.

“You sure? He looks pretty dead to me…” This guy gets it. Merlin almost flinches as he’s poked in the side unexpectedly. He can barely believe this is working, but thank gods it is, because he fears they might actually have killed him if he hadn’t manipulated them into stopping early. It takes a lot of effort to keep his breathing low and unnoticeable, but apparently he’s doing a good job. 

He tries to listen out for Arthur, who is being uncharacteristically quiet as the bandits work through their low-level panic. Surely, he’s aware this is obviously all part of the plan? Perhaps not, Merlin realises regretfully. Arthur had a front row seat on the beating, which Merlin doesn’t doubt wasn’t pretty, and now he has a front row seat on Merlin playing dead with no warning. Hmm… Oops? He’ll make it up to him later, when he saves his life, again. 

“Let’s just- let’s just move him,” he hears Alec say. His feet are hoisted into the air by the rope immobilising him, and they begin to drag him through the dirt. It takes everything he has not to scream. Not only is his poor, aching body being jostled unforgivingly, his back  and head are scraping along the forest floor. His jacket tears on something and his tunic gets pulled up, dirt and twigs making their home in his shirt. 

He’s moved a good distance away. He can’t see behind his closed eyelids but the sounds of the bandit camp fade gradually. 

“I can’t believe ya killed another one, Alec.”

“You dimwit! You started on him first, I was just backing you up. Maybe I should stop doing that. You’re always getting us into trouble.”

“Me?! You were gonna cut his ear off! That woulda got us into trouble.”

“But he would be fucking alive, wouldn’t he?” Alec hisses with venom. They stop moving. His legs are thrown to the ground as Alec makes his point. He keeps himself still, despite the flames under his skin.

“Whatever,” Griff’s voice is angled away and Merlin hears him start pulling leaves from a bush like a sulking child. 

Hands are on him again, fiddling with something. For a moment he’s confused, but then he feels the rope loosening. 

“Whatcha doing?” Griff asks.

“It’s perfectly good rope. There’s no point leaving it on him.”

This is going better than he could’ve hoped. Then, there are hands on his neck, pulling at his neckerchief. Not my neckerchief.

“What are you doing?” Alec says.

“It might come in handy, I dunno.” 

“It’s a rag,” Alec deadpans. Rude.

“Rags are handy!”

They continue bickering about how useful the things on his dead body could be, which is a weird experience he doesn’t think many people go through in their lives. They almost take his boots at one point, but decide against it when they deem them too small. They take the opportunity to make another comment about how small he is. At least he isn’t an overgrown oaf.

One of their big feet meet his side, pressing painfully on a blooming bruise, and he’s tipped over an edge he hadn’t realised was there. He swears he jerks involuntarily at the falling sensation but neither man seems to notice, and he tumbles down a small hill, stopping at the bottom of what he assumes is a ditch. His body is on fire and his head, which had already been spinning, is made worse by the actual spinning.

They argue a bit more above him, before saying something about ‘the boss’ returning, and they walk away. 

Merlin stays still for another few moments for good measure. When he opens his eyes he has to close them again against the light, his stomach protesting. He tries again gingerly, with more success the second time round. 

He’s definitely in a ditch. It feels weird knowing that if they had actually killed him, this would be his resting place. No burial, no burning, just a shallow ditch. He doesn’t expect anything grand, but he hopes Arthur would give him something a bit classier. 

He tests each body part tentatively. Everything hurts, which he already knew, but he thinks it’s mostly fixable. He distantly dreads the scolding he’s going to receive from Gaius. His ribs are cracked, and trying to take a full breath after purposefully breathing so little makes him choke and wheeze. He’s sure there’s more than one sprained joint, and he hadn’t realised how badly the rope had rubbed against his skin. There’s countless weeping cuts and scrapes, mostly on his back, and his head is still bleeding. Hopefully, most of the bleeding is external. Internal bleeding is much more difficult to fix.

Steeling himself against the pain, he pushes himself up and drags himself out of the ditch. The pain had worsened as the adrenaline left, and he silently begs it to come back. He struggles back towards the camp, walking (stumbling) when he could, and dragging himself when he couldn’t. Thankfully, they really hadn’t taken him very far, even though the journey feels much longer than he’d like. 

He spots Arthur through the foliage as he nears the camp. He hasn’t been moved from where they were and he’s sitting slumped against the tree. Merlin wonders how dead Arthur thought he was. Really, actually dead or just a little bit dead? World-endingly dead or ‘Merlin will be fine’ dead? 

Merlin freezes in his spot on the ground as a man walks over to Arthur. He’s big. Bigger than any of the others and very clearly in charge. His would-be murderers are following after him, still looking like idiots with big feet. If they looked into the trees, they would spot him. He isn’t hidden behind anything, but maybe he’s covered in enough mud to camouflage into his surroundings, as long as he doesn’t move and draw their attention.

He can’t hear everything being said from where he is. The leader leans down, pulling the gag out of Arthur’s mouth, who responds in a low voice and the man laughs loudly.

“I like it!” Merlin hears him say. “He’s got fight!” 

He turns to the other bandits and his attitude changes. Alec and Griff look shifty under his gaze. He spits in front of them and then Griff pulls out his neckerchief. He feels bitter watching it get stamped into the mud, but it’s easily replaceable. 

Once the coast is clear, he moves forward again, getting close to Arthur, but he needs a distraction before they can escape. Arthur is still within plain view of the camp, with someone checking on him frequently. A quick scan of the camp gives him an idea. He mutters a spell and one of the fires grows suddenly. It catches some nearby tents and chaos erupts, creating a perfect distraction. Easy work.

“Arthur!” he hisses. Arthur jumps and turns. He’s dishevelled, sweaty and looks exhausted. When he sees Merlin, his eyes go wide and his face goes pale, looking like he’s seen a ghost. 

It was world-endingly dead, then.

“Mrhhn,” he says.

Merlin drags himself closer and frees Arthur of the gag. Arthur just stares at him in silence and it's like Merlin can hear how fast his brain is going. He looks Merlin up and down and lets out a breath. Merlin wants a magical sentence that will turn Arthur normal again, but there isn’t one, so he just tries to keep the tone light.

“I’m always doing everything for you, prat,” he teases as he unties Arthur’s hands. Arthur has done a number on the ropes and his wrists. The rope is frayed and twisted, but still holding strong. His hands are red from the lack of blood flow, his wrists shockingly raw and bound for infection if they don’t clean them soon. 

“I thought they killed you. You looked dead. They said you were dead,” he says quietly and very un-Arthur-like. Merlin feels a pang of guilt in his chest. He should apologise for the grief.

“Surprise! Not dead.” He flashes his best grin. That was not an apology. “Although, that was the goal - to look dead, I mean. I just didn’t think I was pretending well enough for even you to believe it.” Liar. You hoped he wouldn’t believe it.

“I couldn’t see properly and they could, so I assumed they were right.” The guilt gets worse.

“Luckily for us, they’re really stupid. I swear I moved a little at some point. They even untied me to reuse the rope, which was very kind of them.” He doesn’t mention how un kind it was of them to steal his neckerchief, almost steal his boots, insult and argue over his dead body and then push him into a ditch. 

He manages to pull the rope away despite the pains shooting down his arms and Arthur reclaims them in his lap. He reaches for Arthur’s feet but he beats him to it, probably doing a better job anyway. Arthur glances at him, a faint smile tugging at his lips but eyes intense. The smile implies he’s already being forgiven, his eyes imply he’s still very much going through the motions.

“I’m going to kill you myself, Merlin,” he tries to say seriously, the smile betraying him and adding a hint of mirth to his voice.

“Were you worried, Sire?”

“Yes, about what Gaius would do to me if I brought back a dead ward.” That would be understandable, even if he meant it. Arthur hauls himself to his feet, looking strong and unharmed (mostly). He looks down at Merlin and his smile fades. “We need to hurry. Can you walk?” Merlin makes him pull him up.

He thinks he does quite a good job at standing and breathing at the same time, but Arthur’s frown makes him feel otherwise. A new part of his body sets alight every time he moves and he appreciates when Arthur pulls his arm over his broad shoulders and holds him around the waist, even though both of his hands are pressing on sore points. Arthur pulls him along, faster than he’s comfortable of moving, but at a necessary speed. 

“Is that why you're always cowering in some corner during battle? Playing dead is your tactic?” Arthur breaks the silence. The wheeze that escapes him is accidental.

“Not usually, but it worked quite well this time, so maybe I should employ it more,” he entertains the idea. “Or maybe I shouldn’t. I’m worried you might keel over if I do it again.” Frankly, he’s not interested in seeing the haunted look on Arthur’s face again anytime soon. He still feels bad. He’d rather Arthur rolled his eyes and shook his head, just like he’s doing right now.

It’s a painful endeavour, stumbling through these woods with half his body screaming at any given second. He said earlier that Merlin looks after Merlin, but he’s thankful now to have Arthur holding him up and slowing when he needs to.

Tonight’s sleep in Camelot will be nice. Not captured, tied up against a tree or in a ditch somewhere, but warm, clean and in a bed.