Merlin -- Death by Squirrel
Title: Death by Squirrel
Fandom: Merlin
Pairing: Arthur/Merlin
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 9,350
Warnings: some squirrel gore; spoilers through Season 1
Prompt: "those evil black squirrels we have at home"
Summary: Evil squirrels lay siege to Camelot, Arthur and Merlin set out to defeat them, fur flies, and chaos ensues.
Author's Note: Christmas finally arrives for richelle2972! First of all, I'm SO SORRY this is so late, my dear. Hopefully the fact that it refused to end kind of makes up for that. XD Second, I'm not sure why all my fics these days start out cracky then end up having more serious parts. I'm trying to extrapolate this into a witty metaphor about my life... I'm going to have really fun times, then I'm going to die tragically at a young age, and it'll all suck a great deal? Needs work. XD
DEATH BY SQUIRREL
Merlin was struggling not to fall asleep over his breakfast-doing so would likely have resulted in drowning in his oatmeal bowl-and minding his own business.
He had lost track of how many extremely bizarre days had begun this way, but he was pretty sure Gaius kept a tally somewhere.
Merlin blew on a spoonful of oatmeal. The moment his mouth was full, Arthur skidded into the doorway, pink-cheeked, wide-eyed, and puff-haired.
“Merlin!” he gasped out.
“I’ll get the hairbrush,” Merlin sighed, getting up from the table.
“Hurry,” Gaius muttered just too low for Arthur to hear.
“Leave it!” Arthur panted. “Merlin! Squirrels!”
Merlin stared at him.
“This isn’t a drill, Merlin!” Arthur gathered his breath enough to howl.
“Then what is it?”
“It is an invasion!”
“But you said-”
“Will you just get the goddamn hell over here and help me?”
Merlin exchanged a look with Gaius-it was always tempting to tell his guardian to be careful, or his eyebrow would stick that way-and then reluctantly ran after the prince.
He stopped short when they passed a window, through which he glimpsed a courtyard overrun with an old and familiar enemy.
“Heaven help us,” he breathed.
“You recognize those?” Arthur asked, coming to an impatient halt.
Merlin turned to face him, pointing down at the rodents massing their forces below, presumably plotting a coup of Camelot.
“Those are like the kind we have at home,” he explained, “except a lot smaller and less bloodthirsty, if they haven’t slaughtered anyone yet.”
Arthur stared at him. “They’re squirrels, Merlin. You’re good at pest control. Or you were during the Rat Incid-”
“I thought we agreed we’d never talk about that,” Merlin hissed. “And they’re not squirrels; they’re killing machines, thinly disguised as cute forest animals.”
Arthur came up beside him to take another look at the creatures roaming the courtyard. Fortunately, the people of Camelot seemed to have taken note of the current of ominousness singing in the air-no one was outside, though there did appear to be a small skeleton by one of the doorsteps.
“Is that a cat?” Arthur asked incredulously, pointing to the bones, the curved ivory of the ribcage picked clean.
“A better question is ‘Was that a cat?’” Merlin corrected. “And I don’t think we should risk trying to find out.”
Arthur ran a hand through his hair, which exacerbated the existing problem. He was starting to look like a very distressed dandelion. “What do you think we should do, then? What are you, some kind of expert on carnivorous squirrels?”
“Only this kind,” Merlin sighed. He leaned out over the windowsill, squinting. “I wonder if these migrated; I can’t imagine they’re naturally this widespread…”
“You can write a report on their breeding patterns later,” Arthur cut in, grabbing his arm to pull him away from the window again. “For now, shall we focus on making sure nobody dies at their… paws?”
Merlin would have liked to write a report on Arthur’s breeding patterns-especially if it involved in-depth research on the front lines-but he settled with responding, “That would be a terrible thing to put in the logbooks: ‘death by squirrel.’”
“Agreed,” Arthur decided, grimacing. “Let’s make sure we don’t have to. Come on.”
“Where are you going?” Merlin asked, following Arthur down the hall.
“To the armory,” Arthur answered, “of course.”
“That isn’t going to do us any good.” Merlin jogged to catch up. “If they can see a single weakness, they’ll shred you, Arthur. Shreds wouldn’t be flattering, even for you.” Oops. He’d said that out loud. Before Arthur could stare at him, Merlin forged on, hoping the prince might not notice if he covered up fast enough. “Our best bet is probably sneaking out and heading into the forest to see if we can find the source of their power.”
Arthur paused long enough to look at him. “They have a source of power?” he repeated. “What the hell are these things, Merlin? Most squirrels-”
“These aren’t most squirrels!” Merlin protested again. “They’re furry assassins, remember? Is there a way we can get out where they won’t be able to see us and attack?”
Arthur held the bridge of his nose in two fingers. “I can’t believe we’re actually talking about squirrel-escape routes.”
“It’s better than being massacred by rodents,” Merlin pointed out.
“Most things are,” Arthur muttered, leading the way.
-
Having firmly instructed everyone they encountered to stay inside and barricade the doors-and having earned a lot of very weird looks for their pains-Arthur and Merlin descended deep into the castle, deep enough that a jolting, pulsing fear arose in Merlin’s chest. What if they were headed straight for the Dragon? What might that damnable monster say or do to Arthur, given half a chance?
Fortunately, however, they turned off into another passageway before they’d made it all the way down to the Dragon’s cave. Arthur had selected a corridor Merlin had never traversed before, one that began as an extension of the dungeons’ stone, only to narrow and shrink as they progressed, the walls becoming packed dirt instead. Little roots and dangly things protruded from the ceiling, tickling at the back of Merlin’s neck as he bent, trying not to bang his head. He managed to displace an annoying quantity of loose dirt as well, bringing it rattling down around him, crumbling mischievously into his hair and down his shirt.
Merlin would have expressed disappointment at the fact that today was clearly one of those days, but given that every day seemed to be one of those days, it would have felt a bit redundant.
Additionally, he wasn’t sure he wanted to chance opening his mouth right now.
Arthur, trooping along in front of him and holding a torch aloft, glanced back at him questioningly when he coughed into his sleeve. Merlin shrugged, so Arthur went back to trooping along, ducking as the passage contracted further. Merlin could just see a hint of daylight around Arthur’s shoulders as the path started slanting uphill, and he attempted to continue looking at Arthur’s shoulders, rather than admiring Arthur’s arse, which was prominent, attractive, and not at all something he should have been looking at.
Life was full of small and wonderful temptations.
Momentarily, they emerged into the sun, having come aboveground some distance from the castle wall. Arthur extinguished the torch in the dirt and shaded his eyes with one hand, considering.
“What hellish torment comes next?” he asked.
Don’t assk me. Let’s just try to stay posterior about all this. I’m behind you no matter what.
Merlin took a deep breath, trying to clear his head, and then lifted his shoulders once more. “With the ones back home, their power came from the heart of the forest. Will and I tracked down the primary squirrel, which was under some kind of curse, I think-it had bitten all the others in order to pass the possession to them as well. When we killed it, the others were free of the curse and went back to being normal squirrels.”
Arthur was staring at him like he was crazy again.
“You should’ve seen the badgers,” Merlin said.
Arthur threw his hands up and started towards the woods.
“We should go visit sometime,” Merlin suggested, following. “You definitely have to meet the chipmunks.”
Arthur made a sound that could only be called a whimper of dismay.
-
As always, a great deal of trudging through the forest followed. Merlin spent the duration of the journey making a valiant effort not to trip over Arthur’s scabbard, which swung a bit when the prince walked and kept flicking near Merlin’s ankles.
This was all very not-fun.
Merlin supposed he should have figured that when he first uttered the words “death by squirrel.”
They tromped in silence for a while, and then Arthur glanced at Merlin. “Define ‘heart of the forest,’” he said.
Merlin made a face. “The middle?” he hazarded. “I figure we should just go towards the darkest, most foreboding part and poke around until something happens.”
Arthur paused, planting his hands on his hips, and looked around. “I figure we’re going to die.”
“We didn’t die all the other times,” Merlin noted.
“To the effect that the odds are distinctly-”
There was a hail of arrows, shafts searing through the air just inches over their heads.
That should have taught Arthur that pessimism didn’t pay.
“Down!” Arthur barked, dropping behind a bush and slamming his forearm into the backs of Merlin’s knees.
Merlin couldn’t exactly disobey at that point.
Upon getting a faceful of twigs, leaves, and other forest-floor detritus, he raised his head enough to look at Arthur, who was crouched low, his eyes dark, sharp, and shrewd.
“What is it?” Merlin whispered.
Arthur pointed through the intertwining branches at what looked, at this distance, to be a ragtag group of typical varlets. They’d stopped firing, having lost their targets in the shadowy wood, and appeared to be consulting the most ragged among their number, whom Merlin assumed must be the leader of the lot.
“We can take them,” Merlin gauged.
“You mean I can take them,” Arthur muttered. “If I give you a weapon, you’ll cut your own hand off.”
“I can only do that twice,” Merlin said. “It won’t take long. Come on, there are just half a dozen of them; you’re more than good enough.”
Arthur frowned. “The last time I killed a bandit, I ended up in a hedge maze, and then I drank poison on the beach. Forgive me if I’m not too keen on giving it another go.”
“Labyrinth,” Merlin corrected.
“Hedge maze,” Arthur said.
“This is your whole problem.”
“‘Hedge maze’ is only two syllables. It saves time.”
“Not if you spend twenty more syllables telling me why you said ‘hedge maze.’”
“I’m going to cut your hands off myself in a minute.”
“Look, can we just get past them and move on? I promise not to engage in self-dismemberment, and we’ve got to get rid of the squirrels before someone at the castle decides we were joking and goes outside.”
“I hope it’s Morgana.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Shut up. Fine, let’s take a… oh, for the love of God.”
“What?” Merlin leaned over to peek through the bush with Arthur again.
They weren’t peeking at anything anymore.
“I hate my life,” Merlin realized.
Poignantly, one of the bandits chose that moment to slam a sword handle into the back of his head, and everything went black.
-
When Merlin awoke, he was looking at leaves again. This time, his wrists were bound behind him, and his ankles were trussed up, too. He was going to be black and blue from head to toe, at this rate.
And if Merlin knew anything about bruises-which he did, of course-he’d been yellowish and turquoise after that, which was an accessorizing nightmare.
Merlin coughed, ridding his mouth of the most immediate dirt, and managed to raise his head enough to look around. Arthur was sitting right beside him, cross-legged, his hands tied behind his back, his face so dark Merlin thought the prince might spontaneously become a rain cloud.
Merlin risked a glance at the bandits, who were huddled around their campfire-night was falling already; this boded remarkably ill even for one of his and Arthur’s escapades-and then watched the prince, whose eyes were bright and cold.
“Arthur,” Merlin began quietly, ignoring the pounding of his head, “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” Arthur said, his voice flat.
“Not about this,” Merlin told him. “Well-yes, about this, but-”
“What exactly are you raving about?” Arthur inquired, still without having looked at him.
Merlin took a deep breath, inhaled leaves, coughed, spat, cursed foliage to a thousand hells, and then looked up at the prince.
“Arthur,” he said, “do you have a plan?”
“I have hundreds,” Arthur muttered. “Hundreds of plans for what I could do if my hands weren’t tied and six men with loaded crossbows weren’t sitting just before me.”
Merlin swallowed. “Are we stuck, then?”
“Unless someone notices we’re missing, gets past the carnivorous squirrels, and follows the smoke to us where we’re situated in the dead center of the forest,” Arthur noted through gritted teeth, “yes. I’d say we’re a little bit stymied, Merlin, wouldn’t you?”
Merlin’s pulse was throbbing in his ears, like war drums, like a call to arms. His head ached fiercely-the kind of slow, rolling hurt he knew would mean an egg-shaped lump, swelling like a blister.
“I can get us out of this,” he said.
“You couldn’t get yourself out of an armoire,” Arthur retorted, watching the bandits’ movements closely. “It’s one of the things I like best about you-you’re harmless.”
Looking away from the bandits now, Merlin laid his head down on the leaves. They crunched faintly, their edges prickling at his ear, and he looked into his own shadow, broad and black, cast by the firelight.
“What’s the leader doing?” he asked dully.
“What?” Arthur responded, shifting, presumably trying to crane his neck to see. “I can’t-”
Merlin murmured the words beneath his breath, a curl of leaf dust fleeing the soft press of air. Arthur’s bonds obediently snapped, and he heard the prince go still.
There was a long, potent silence.
“Can’t imagine this is quality rope,” Merlin commented weakly. “I mean, bandits aren’t exactly high-class criminals, are they? I wonder if maybe you could break it, Arthur, if you pulled hard enough.”
“Merlin,” Arthur said.
“And if your hands weren’t tied,” Merlin cut in, “perhaps we’d have a chance against them, and we could get back to Camelot. Isn’t that the most important thing?”
“Merlin,” Arthur said again.
Merlin raised his head enough to meet Arthur’s eyes, which were wide and uncertain, the orange light of the flames flickering across his face.
“Go,” Merlin told him.
Arthur closed his eyes, nodded once, and opened them again, turning them on the bandit troupe. They narrowed next, calculating, darting over armaments and physiques, gauging the competition, pinpointing the threats.
“Do yours, too,” he murmured without meeting Merlin’s gaze. “I’m going to need your help.”
Merlin whispered the spell again, and the magic sliced straight through the rope, letting it pool around his wrists and ankles.
“Are you ready?” Arthur whispered, his gaze on their foe.
“Always,” Merlin said.
“I’m going to go for the leader,” Arthur told him. “For his sword. Cover me. On my mark.” He raised his knees, planting both hands on the ground for leverage, every muscle coiled for motion.
Merlin tensed, and Arthur drew a deep breath.
“Now,” he hissed, surging to his feet, a blur of red tunic and single-minded determination, a perfect machine. He headed straight for the bandits’ captain, precisely as he’d said, and six startled villains hefted their crossbows to fire.
Merlin scrambled to a crouch, flinging one hand out, the world slowing as the magic took hold-the breeze coursed gently, buffeting the leaves overhead; the fabric of Arthur’s shirt rippled; crossbow bolts inched through the air. Merlin picked out every one, selected them in sequence, turning each one’s path just a fraction, just enough to send it gliding over Arthur’s shoulder, past his hand, above his head.
Merlin’s arm jolted as time shuddered back to speed, and six bolts seared around Arthur Pendragon, leaving the prince without a scratch.
The bandits dove for their quivers to reload, but Arthur was upon them-planting his boot in one’s ribs, applying his elbow to the nose of another, a whirlwind of honed skill and calculating improvisation. A scruffy man with dark hair unsheathed a poniard, baring his teeth, and Merlin spread his fingers, invoking another spell. The knife’s handle flared red with unnatural heat, and the man dropped it, stumbling backwards and screaming, crashing into one of his cohorts and landing the pair of them in an ungainly heap.
Arthur had reached the leader, a fair-haired man who might have looked respectable in other conditions-had his aquiline nose not been smeared with dirt, had his eyes been smiling instead of frigid, and had he not gripped his sword in one hand and Arthur’s in the other.
“Come and get me,” he snarled.
Another ruffian came up on Arthur’s right, and the prince decked him with one deft blow to the jaw.
Then he sighed.
“Merlin?” he called.
Merlin scurried forward, splayed his hand out before him, and intoned a few choice words, at which the bandit leader’s eyes rolled back into his head, and he crumpled to the ground, unconscious.
Merlin lowered his hand and cleared his throat awkwardly. Arthur bent to pick up his sword, collected his scabbard from the bandits’ disorderly pile of stolen goods, and put himself back together accordingly. Only when his swordbelt was buckled and his tunic was smoothed did he look up at Merlin, his eyes unrevealing, his expression blank.
A very bruised bandit moaned unhappily, and Arthur nonchalantly kicked him in the stomach.
“We should go,” the prince announced.
Merlin nodded silently, and Arthur led the way. At least they were still using plural pronouns. That was a start.
-
They tromped without conversing once they’d left their erstwhile adversaries rolling on the ground in agony, the night thickening around them as they pushed deeper into the woods.
“I always just assumed you were good luck,” Arthur said after a dozen interminable minutes had passed.
“I didn’t know you believed in luck,” Merlin replied.
“I believe in anything that keeps me alive on days like this,” Arthur answered.
That was fair enough.
As they progressed, however, Merlin noticed that Arthur kept falling a few steps behind-lagging, which was something Merlin had never once seen the prince do and, furthermore, would not have imagined to be possible. Maybe they had reached a heretofore inconceivable threshold, and Arthur was tired. Concerned now, Merlin tried to slow down as subtly as he could manage, hoping not to embarrass Arthur, but not exactly raring to ask him to hurry up, either, since that would probably end in his evisceration.
Despite his efforts, Arthur remained a couple feet away. Each increasingly careful change of pace elicited an identical slowing from the prince until they gradually reached a complete standstill.
Merlin looked at his unmoving feet, turned, and looked at the unmoving prince’s feet instead. He then considered the unmoving prince’s empty face, searching it for an explanation.
“Arthur,” he said, politely, he thought, “what the hell are you doing?”
“Keep going,” Arthur ordered, waving a hand.
“You won’t keep pace with me,” Merlin pointed out. “Are you all right? Did one of the ban-”
“I’m fine, Merlin,” the prince gritted out. “I’m keeping pace with you precisely; I’m just-” He bit off the end of the sentence, ungracefully at that.
Merlin’s eyes narrowed. “You’re just what?”
Arthur squared his jaw. “I’m just keeping you ahead of me,” he declared. “I’m keeping you where I can see you. Is that a crime?”
Merlin’s heart did a strange thing-a ripple went through it, and it trembled, but then it hardened and went cold.
“No,” he said lightly. “That’s not a crime. It’s completely illogical, given that I have saved your life a thousand times and never even asked to be recognized, and it’s a bit unethical, given that you profess to give fair judgments, and it’s extremely unkind, given how much I have always sacrificed for you, but it’s certainly not illegal. I’ll give you that.”
Arthur took a deep breath, his face pinching. “It’s not,” he stated slowly, “that I don’t trust you, Merlin. It’s just that I’m a little-” He fumbled for a word. “-uneasy. I’m a little uneasy. I think you can understand that.”
“Uneasy,” Merlin repeated, feeling the cold succumb to a building heat. “Yeah, all right. Uneasy because you don’t trust me. Which is brilliant, Arthur, since I’ve betrayed your trust hundreds of times, haven’t I? Why don’t you name one?”
“Merlin.” Arthur grimaced. “Just walk. We’ve got a kingdom to save, in case you’ve forgotten.”
“Haven’t,” Merlin assured him airily. “But to be clear-you want me to stay in front of you?”
Arthur heaved the Martyr Sigh. “If it’s not too much trouble, I would. Will you just humor me, Merlin?”
“Oh,” Merlin murmured, grinning slowly. “Yes, Sire.”
Arthur frowned at him for a moment.
Merlin took off running at top speed.
The howl of “Merlin!” that resulted echoed wildly through the trees, sending a small flock of black birds winging noisily from their perch. Merlin was too busy bolting to care.
He’d missed times like this-vaulting over logs, ducking under branches, batting thistles aside. Admittedly, usually careening through the forest at night meant that Merlin was running from something with teeth, claws, and a thirst for his blood, rather than merely hoping to drive Arthur insane, but there was nothing in the world like overdosing on adrenaline.
Thorns tugged at his clothes as he leapt over a low bush, and the most mischievous tree root of a massive oak snagged his toes, letting the ground catch up at last.
The ground made a point of bashing the wind out of him and shoving a few more twigs into his face. Merlin had had just about enough of foliage for one day.
He clambered to his feet, brushing himself off, and glanced around, struggling to figure out why the hairs on the back of his neck were waving around in what was either an attempt to caution him or an effort to pull themselves free and escape.
When Arthur came crashing through the undergrowth, looking like somebody had borrowed his sword and brought it back nicked, Merlin realized what it was.
Very wisely or very unwisely, he waved a peremptory hand when Arthur opened his mouth.
“Listen,” Merlin said.
Arthur was more interested in trying to incinerate Merlin with his eyes.
“Listen,” Merlin insisted.
“I don’t hear anything,” Arthur snapped.
“Right,” Merlin replied triumphantly. “Where are the sounds? Where are the night birds? Where are the squirrels?”
The silence was uncanny. Merlin shifted, staring at his feet, appalled by the noise they made.
“The squirrels,” Arthur said slowly, “are right there.”
Quizzically Merlin glanced at the prince, who was watching something, his jaw clenched, his eyes wide. Merlin followed the trajectory of his gaze and discovered the spreading branches of the colossal oak tree that had tripped him up.
Perched on those branches in perfect rows, little claws dug into the bark, were two dozen black squirrels.
“Holy hell,” Merlin said.
The squirrels’ eyes gleamed red.
“Don’t make any sudden moves,” Arthur muttered, carefully setting his right hand on his sword hilt. “We can back away and then run-”
“But they’re here for a reason,” Merlin pointed out, remembering just in time to lower his voice. “Don’t they look like they’re guarding something? Maybe-Arthur, maybe the source is in the tree.”
‘No sudden movements’ aside, Arthur immediately turned to stare at him.
“We are not,” he announced, “going into a tree. And even if we were, how do you propose-”
Keeping one eye on the silent sentinel squirrels, Merlin raised and spread his hand, summoning a spell that sounded right. Gold curled at the edges of his vision, and the oak shuddered with a rumbling sound that started at its base, rattling the branches, the squirrels’ fluffy tails quivering. A prominent crack split the wood of the trunk, which, creaking and groaning, widened until it was almost the breadth of a doorway, half as tall.
“After you,” Merlin bid Arthur, gesturing.
“There is no way in hell-” Arthur began at the top of his voice.
In impeccable unison, the squirrels hissed, their claws flexing, their tails slashing through the air.
There was time to pause, and then twenty-odd squirrel assassins leapt from the tree to fling themselves at Arthur and Merlin, chattering deafeningly.
Arthur’s sword rang as he drew it, hacking at squirrels on all sides. They were scrabbling their way up Merlin’s trouser legs, their claws like tiny knives, pins and needles heralding a much more awful pain. Merlin kicked, smacked, and shook them off, but every squirrel he dispatched was replaced by one of its brethren, as if there was an inexhaustible supply.
“Arthur?” he hazarded.
With a deft stroke, the prince decapitated two squirrels in one go, but there were just so many-
One climbed Arthur’s tunic to the shoulder, tensing to bury its teeth in the prince’s neck, and Merlin blasted it off with a small, well-aimed fireball. The smell of singed fur-and hopefully not singed crown prince-sizzled through their cramped battleground, and the other squirrels scented it and gave a collective squeaky roar.
Enough, Merlin decided, was definitely enough.
He let Arthur slice straight through another diving squirrel, and then he planted both hands on Arthur’s back and shoved him into the hole in the tree, where the prince tumbled out of sight with a discontented cry.
Merlin hurled himself in after, swinging his hand, his tongue stumbling over the spell to close the tree.
Predictably, the squirrels started bounding for the space.
Fighting a nauseating wave of panic, Merlin steadied his hand and his voice, shouting this time, partly from nerves, partly in the vain hopes of making their miniature foes hesitate.
This time, the two sides of the tree cinched shut-though not before a trio of especially agile squirrels darted through the closing gap.
Merlin stepped on one, wrinkling his nose as its skull crushed beneath his heel, and Arthur impaled the other two.
There was a moment of silence but for panting and uncertainty. Merlin didn’t appreciate while it lasted.
“I believe,” Arthur growled then, “that I liked you better when you didn’t think you had leave to save my life. But thank you, Merlin-thank you for rescuing us from the carnivorous rodents, and thank you for trapping us inside a damn tree.”
“We’re not trapped,” Merlin informed him, resisting the urge to add ‘O ye of little faith.’ Instead, he summoned a bit of witchlight, condensing a small sphere in the palm of his hand. “Look behind you; there’s a passageway. Following that should bring us to the source.”
Arthur heaved himself to his feet, dusting off his tunic, and gave Merlin a glare, his face delicately bluish in the witchlight.
“Let’s get to it, then,” he said. “Today cannot be over soon enough.”
As it turned out, when Merlin had said “passageway,” what he should have said was “dark, foreboding passageway too small to stand up in, full of questionable vegetation and damp, musty dirt.” He supposed that he’d gotten the general idea, which counted for something.
“I hate you, Merlin,” Arthur remarked.
“No, you don’t.”
“Shut up.”
Merlin obliged, if only because he didn’t fancy inhaling any more tunnel dirt than he had to.
The air got thicker and moister the deeper they went, Arthur’s boots clomping on the slightly muddy floor, Merlin’s footfalls lighter and less measured.
“Merlin,” Arthur said after a minute or two of trekking in silence, “when you and Will did this last time, how did it go?”
“Well,” Merlin responded, casting back into his wealth of unpleasant and/or freakishly bizarre childhood memories, “we went into a cave, instead of a tree, and at the bottom, we found the giant black squirrel that was in command of all the others.”
Arthur’s shoulders stiffened, as if he wanted to stop and demand confirmation but didn’t quite dare. “So we’re going to be facing a giant squirrel.”
“You sound surprised.”
“I wish I was. How exactly should we go about defeating such a beast?”
Merlin sorted through his hazy, traumatizing recollections of the event, most of which were blemished with strange blackouts and horrified screaming. He didn’t think he’d tell Arthur about that part.
“I think we brought the cave down on it,” he hazarded. “Or I did, mostly accidentally, and Will dragged us out before the section we were in collapsed.”
Arthur made a noise of agreement. “You must have made quite a pair, you and Will.”
“We didn’t go looking for trouble,” Merlin told him-it was an old and tired defense by now, but it was still the best one he had. “It sought us out and went for the jugular.”
Arthur laughed without much real humor. “I think that, deep down, you enjoy it. I think a boring life would drive you mad.”
“Life is never boring with you,” Merlin informed him, aiming for wry and nonchalant and ending up sincere.
He heard Arthur’s smile in the next words. “It was until you arrived, and all the trouble started to find us.”
“You love it, too,” Merlin replied.
Arthur said nothing, but when he glanced at Merlin over his shoulder, he was definitely grinning.
The peace was not destined to last long, of course. Momentarily, the narrow passage opened into a cavern of incredible size, huge roots like stalactites, Merlin’s witchlight making only a small indent of illumination.
They stood on a ledge overlooking the spacious room below, which gave them an excellent view of the pedestal in the center, where a fat black squirrel the size of a horse sat baring its teeth and waving its huge, fuzzy tail. Around it swarmed dozens, if not hundreds, of regular-sized squirrels, darting to and fro, distributing acorns and snarling at each other. What appeared to be glowing mushrooms lit up the main floor, giving them light to forage by, and their eyes gleamed red at every turn.
Merlin gulped.
“This looks like suicide by squirrel,” Arthur noted, which summed up Merlin’s thoughts rather succinctly.
“I guess there are worse ways to die,” he decided, not sure he believed it.
Arthur probably didn’t hear him anyway-the prince was in Primal Hunter Mode, crouching down at the edge of the overhang, eyes intent on their huge, furry target.
“Merlin,” he said, “can you levitate objects?”
“Yes,” Merlin told him, “but I doubt that I could give your sword enough velocity to kill that thing.”
Arthur smiled. “All right.” He shifted his feet, running a hand through his hair. “Can you levitate people?”
Merlin looked him up and down. “I can’t get you all the way there, but I can get you past most of the smaller squirrels, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Arthur grinned. “You’re actually kind of bright, Merlin,” he remarked. “It’s a nice surprise. Get me as far as you can, and cover me.”
“I always do,” Merlin muttered, letting the wichlight dwindle out of being and flexing his hands in anticipation of the next trial.
Said next trial wasn’t long in coming-Arthur gauged a few distances, chewed on his lip, and then glanced at Merlin, raising an are-you-ready eyebrow. When Merlin nodded, he got to his feet, took a few steps back, ran to the edge, and jumped.
Merlin poised both hands, concentrating, hissing through his teeth-Arthur was a feather; Arthur was a fleck of dust. Arthur was… a little too fond of pastries in the morning, was what Arthur was.
Merlin lifted the prince’s trajectory as much as he could, sweat breaking out on his forehead at the strain on his focus and coordination. Arthur sailed through the air, moving forward as fast as he moved down, arcing gracefully until his feet touched ground, where he alighted like a dragonfly.
That done, he drew his sword and eviscerated the nearest squirrel.
There was a distinct possibility that Merlin took more joy in seeing squirrels killed than he really should have, but he felt justified.
Arthur cut a great swath through the squirrel crowd, tiny furry corpses flying everywhere.
Merlin shook himself. His job was to make sure Arthur didn’t get rabies, not to observe the carnage and comment to himself on how elegant the prince’s fatal slashes were. He focused now, calling on the current that beat in his veins, gathering his strength, funneling it to his hands. He thought of fire-proper fire, flames and smoke-and whispered the words, concentrating distinctly on the essence and the attributes of the element. In a heady rush of gold, in a shuddering wave of possibility, he smelled the cinders and felt the heat, and he knew he’d succeeded. There was fire invested in his palms now, bent to his will. The magic had obeyed.
He raised both hands and spread his fingers. Twin torrents of flame seared through the close, dark air, ripples of distortion in their wake, and bore down on the squirrels blocking Arthur’s path.
Merlin hadn’t known squirrels could scream. He rather wished he could have gone the rest of his life without knowing that.
“Could you try something that won’t make my clothes smell like burnt fur for the next decade?” Arthur shouted, whirling, his sword gleaming wetly with blood, and hacked through a few more rodents.
“Better than you smell now,” Merlin yelled back.
Arthur laughed roughly, his breath coming short. “You should talk. I didn’t realize bath-aversion was an actual condition.”
Seemingly only incensed by the roasting of their comrades, squirrels all over drew into a swarm, tails whipping. The lingering flames gave enough light for Merlin to see the tension in Arthur’s shoulders, the anxiety building on his face-this was getting to be too much for him.
Destiny was calling.
Merlin bolstered himself with a spell, channeling the silent, swelling power; owning it, savoring it-and then he jumped.
Wind rushed in his ears, almost hostile, and he landed heavily, his knees quavering, not far from Arthur, who hastily put up his sword.
“What the hell-” the prince began.
“Covering you,” Merlin explained, blasting a squirrel that had climbed to Arthur’s shoulder, its eyes glowing in the dimness.
“You’re going to get us both-” Arthur’s sword flashed, so smooth it was just a streak of silver at the corner of Merlin’s eye, and a squirrel and its head toppled separately from a perch on Merlin’s arm. “-killed, Merlin.”
The giant squirrel stirred, gnashing its teeth. They were nearing it, invading its territory, and it was angry.
It was very angry.
It was clambering down from its pedestal, huge, hulking, and graceless, and lumbering towards them, flexing curved black claws.
“That’s going to get us killed,” Merlin corrected, darting behind Arthur, pushing back the next wave of squirrel paw-soldiers with a spell of broad, invisible force.
Arthur groaned his dismay almost under his breath, hefting his sword. There was blood smeared on his hands and splattered on his tunic, and he watched their enormous enemy, his eyes dark, his features set in perfect resolve.
It would be downright tragic if they died here, the indignity aside, because Merlin loved this stupid, brilliant, lousy prat, and he had never wanted to say it more than he did now.
The squirrel roared.
Merlin hated destiny.
“Merlin-” Arthur started, twirling the sword elegantly, gauging the closing distance between him and the raging squirrel king.
“Right,” Merlin cut in, mustering another spell and using it to cleave a path for Arthur to follow, throwing squirrels every which way.
Arthur took the invitation of the open space gladly, gliding forward and employing a series of anti-beast tactics that had long since grown depressingly familiar-ducking, weaving, feinting, aiming for a limb or appendage to amputate, hoping to strike and retreat instead of sticking around to stab. Merlin tried to keep the periphery clear, shunting smaller squirrels right and left, and it was certainly a compliment to Arthur’s focus that the flailing creatures didn’t even catch his eye.
The giant squirrel lunged surprisingly rapidly, vast muscles bunching, huge ropes of squirrel spit slinging from its massive mouth as it growled loud enough to make the ground beneath them tremble. Arthur hacked at its front paws, but thick fur deflected a severing blow, and the prince drew back, panting, planning, trying to calculate.
Enlarged so grotesquely, the squirrel’s beady eyes were pools of onyx, blank and dumb, infused with no intelligence, the vacancy filled with a cruelty all the purer for its simpleness. The monster knew how to destroy-little more. Destruction for destruction’s sake was its solitary goal.
Not on Merlin’s watch. This behemoth was bigger, meaner, and more accomplished than the one he and Will had bested, but he had Camelot’s golden prince at his side, and Merlin was not backing down.
The monster bounded forward, and Arthur surged ahead to meet it, slashing furiously, encountering nothing but coarse fur at the neck, at the shoulder, at all the points where the beast should have been weak.
Arthur darted out of the squirrel’s reach, grimacing. This time, it followed him, wary of his gleaming blade but gradually overcoming its fear. One huge paw swiped at Arthur’s head with enough force to shatter bone, and the prince ducked narrowly, retaliating with a vicious swing that lopped one of the squirrel’s finger-like claws clean off.
Merlin gulped.
Blood spurted, and Arthur scrambled out of the way. The beast released a shrill, ear-splitting, primal howl, rearing on its hind legs, tossing its head, thrashing out for pain-blinded vengeance. Arthur dove to the dirt in avoidance of a clubbing paw, and chattering drowned out his cry of startled hurt as he landed awkwardly on his right shoulder, barely retaining his hold of the sword hilt.
Screeching, the giant squirrel descended, bleeding still, enraged, teeth and claws angling for Arthur’s flesh.
Merlin was going to have none of that.
“Shut your eyes!” he cried, a sphere of overwhelmingly bright light coalescing in his hand. He held it, eyes averted, until it almost scalded his palm, and then he pitched it right at the creature’s snarling face. He shielded his eyes with his arm as it exploded into yet more and brighter beams, angry red blazing against his eyelids.
When the worst had faded, he raced for Arthur, kicking dazed and reeling squirrels aside. Before he made it to the prince’s side, however, Arthur was on his feet, sword raised to plunge straight into the giant squirrel’s throat.
The roar that erupted-broken, gurgling, but with terrifying force-made Merlin clap both hands over his ears.
Claws swung, wildly, ferociously, and Merlin clenched both fists in the back of Arthur’s tunic and hauled him away. The prince jerked his sword loose, then grabbed Merlin’s arm and returned the favor, heaving the both of them towards the upward incline that lay on the other side of the room.
Merlin cast squirrels aside with abandon, cutting a path through fur and claws and animal confusion. Scrambling, sprinting, dragging each other by their sleeves, they gained the ledge above the fray, where they’d first emerged after forging into the tree.
Here Arthur pulled Merlin to an ungainly halt.
“Bring it down,” he ordered, pointing with his sword to the ceiling of the cave.
Merlin wavered, shying back from the rising tide of squirrels seething up the hill.
Arthur shook him, none too gently. “Merlin,” he shouted, “do it!”
A numb-tongued spell and a last flicker of concentration, and it was done.
Immediately he heard the low, deep, visceral roar of a great thing crumbling, of dust streaming down, of the whole world starting to shake.
Arthur shoved his filthy sword back through his belt, caught Merlin’s hand in a vise’s grip, and made for the exit at a run.
The tunnel they’d taken was falling in, chunks of soil dropping all around them, choking dirt rising in the dense air.
“Arthur,” Merlin coughed out, summoning a feeble bit of witchlight.
“Shut up and follow me,” Arthur fired back, still wringing the life out of Merlin’s other hand.
The tunnel just behind them collapsed with a fwump and a burst of displaced air. Merlin staggered, and Arthur yanked him upright-the prince’s face was muddily streaked, his gold hair blackened by dirt and blood.
Arthur must have had a magic all his own, because he somehow made that look good.
Everything was shaking now, and Merlin’s fingertips were going numb. Somehow, their desperate flight brought them back to the chamber they’d first entered, the hollow within the tree.
Merlin was trying to gasp for breath, but the profusion of dust made it difficult. The witchlight guttered, throwing long, frail shadows on the walls, and his legs were weak beneath him. All the running and excitement, for hours on end, without food, without nourishment-the adrenaline was prematurely fading, leaving him worn out and empty, all his desperate reserves of strength and energy wholly depleted now. He’d used more magic in the last half-hour than he usually called upon in a full week, and there was just nothing left. He was enervated, and he wanted nothing more than to lie down, curl up, and sleep it off.
Arthur tugged on his hand impatiently, glancing with a sharp look of worry at the flickering witchlight burning low in Merlin’s other palm.
“Come on,” he urged, raising his voice over the surrounding sounds of the collapse. “We’re almost there, Merlin; what’s wrong with you?”
“I’m tired,” Merlin managed dizzily, blinking hard. “I’m-I just-”
“Merlin,” Arthur insisted, gesturing violently, “come on.”
Merlin’s knees were insubstantial-his legs wobbled, and the witchlight winked out.
“I can’t-” he managed. “I’m sorry, Arthur, I-” He strove to rally, scrabbling for shreds of the determination that had so often seen him though. “I’ll try, I-”
He swayed in the darkness, complete now and impregnable, and collided with something warm and firm, which felt like Arthur’s chest.
An equally warm, forceful hand landed on either of his shoulders, jerking him to his feet, and the prince’s voice was earnest, his ragged breath stirring Merlin’s hair.
“I am not dying here,” he declared, “and neither are you.”
Merlin almost had time to apologize again before Arthur was kissing him, fiercely and blindly and clumsily, catching the corner of his mouth first in the dark. Slightly sticky, slightly shaky hands buried themselves in Merlin’s hair, thumbs gliding over his ears or grazing his cheeks or dragging down his jaw, and Merlin could feel the prince’s heart banging where they were pressed together, one ungainly mess of warmth and long-since-destined unity.
And it was working, somehow-it was somehow fulfilling, invigorating, regenerative, because it was inconceivable that they should give up and die when there were so many things worth living for.
Never letting Arthur forget about this was high on Merlin’s list.
Never forgetting it himself was even higher.
He wheezed in a deep, dusty breath when they broke apart, his head spinning wildly and then settling with an encouragingly heavy thump.
“Right,” he managed, his voice sounding reedy but resolute. His arm felt strangely light as he raised it towards the crack in the tree, the walls on every side shuddering, the ground quaking fit to knock him off his feet. He sensed rather than felt Arthur at his side, and he intoned the words without so much as a sputter, and the tree trunk parted, moonlight streaming through the gap. Arthur seized Merlin’s wrist and hauled them forward, vaulting up to level ground and swinging Merlin after him, their boots scrabbling against the crumbling dirt. A gasp, a heave, and they were over the rise, rolling amongst the leaves, Merlin’s spine twinging as it became a bit too well-acquainted with a protrusive root.
He coughed up dirt-which was one of the single most unpleasant things he had ever experienced in a long and elaborate history of unpleasant things-and held his hands over his eyes.
Arthur grabbed his elbow and dragged him to his feet. His feet apparently preferred the sleep-forever plan, as they immediately tried to trip him up.
“Come on,” Arthur choked out, pulling them further, working up to a light run.
Merlin’s legs outright boycotted twenty seconds later, going completely limp, and he tumbled to the ground, taking Arthur with him. They were just out of the clearing where they’d fought the squirrels in the tree, and everything was still shaking like the Earth was going to break-
And then it did.
Vast chasms racked the ground, trees creaking, tiny birds taking flight, leaves swirling everywhere as the ground split, sundered, and gave way.
Silent and transfixed, Arthur and Merlin watched as the clearing crumbled into itself. The massive oak tree, its artificial door still gaping, lurched and then fell, disappearing into the pit of seething Earth.
Merlin coughed again, weakly. There was a massive sinkhole where the cavern had been. Shadows settled, and in the blue-silver moonlight, nothing moved.
Unsteadily, Arthur stood, dumbstruck for a moment, then focused enough to start trying to brush the dirt out of his hair.
He made no visible progress.
“Well, Merlin,” he said. “Are you still tired?”
Merlin almost couldn’t link the events in his mind-the Arthur who had grabbed him and kissed him like the world was ending (which admittedly it very nearly had been) existed in a dark, musty reality of receding terror and a stirring hopelessness. The Arthur here, begrimed and straight-faced, visible instead of tangible, simply didn’t seem like the same man.
“No,” Merlin managed. “Just confused.”
Arthur stared at him for a few long seconds, then gave over to a scowl and stormed off into the woods beyond, muttering about mental afflictions and unmistakable signs.
Merlin clambered to his feet and followed. It was probably better to think about the food that Gaius would have at home than to try to process any of this, since any part of it, properly contemplated, might just make his head explode.
He started to rub the dirt out of his eyes, then immediately reconsidered when he discovered that he was only rubbing more dirt into them.
-
Arthur was all huffy too-fast strides for a few minutes. Merlin’s legs were probably longer-and he definitely had less wind resistance-but he was too exhausted to bother catching up. Soon enough, Arthur relented, slowing down enough to let Merlin keep pace.
Merlin waited until he had his breath back before he swallowed a bit of grit and spoke.
“Arthur,” he said, “are you going to… I don’t want to leave.”
Arthur glanced at him. “Where are you planning to go?”
Merlin frowned. “Nowhere,” he said. “I don’t want to go anywhere.”
“Good,” Arthur responded, “because you’re not.”
Merlin had been starting to think he was too exhausted for mood swings, but a visceral relief flooded through him, swift and heady, and he felt himself starting to grin. “But your father-”
“My father did not save my life a thousand times today,” Arthur interrupted, “and he certainly didn’t set fire to any squirrels.”
Merlin was full-out beaming now, and, almost shyly at first, Arthur smiled back.
“I thought you didn’t like me setting fire to squirrels,” Merlin said.
Arthur waved a hand, a hint of a grin flashing brightly beneath the grime, luminescent in the moonlight. Arthur was beautiful in the daytime, neat and tidy; and in a tabard and a circlet, surrounded by worshipers and candles, he was sublime. That was the prince. This-this dirt-streaked, battle-weary young man with the worn tunic and the catlike grace, smiling in the dark-this was the king.
“I didn’t like the smell,” Arthur was replying. “I did enjoy watching the little bastards go up in flames.”
Someday, maybe someday soon, Camelot would be in the best hands the world had to offer.
Arthur watched the shadows dance on the forest floor. Mist was curling white fingers around the trees, reaching towards them in the gathering night. Merlin had no idea how far it was yet to the castle, but now, fueled by hope and contented, he didn’t really care.
“Merlin,” Arthur remarked pensively after a while, “I’ll make you a deal.”
“What deal is that?” Merlin asked, cautious from experience.
“I won’t tell a soul about your magic,” Arthur proposed, barely even stumbling over the word, “if you don’t tell anyone about my recurring nightmares.”
Merlin blinked. “What recurring nightmares?”
“The recurring nightmares I’m going to have about squirrels,” Arthur noted, “starting tonight.”
“Those could be serious,” Merlin responded, struggling not to ruin it with a grin. “Maybe we should bring it to Gaius right away. You know he does wonders for Morgana.”
“Breathe a word of it to Gaius,” Arthur warned him idly, “and I’ll train some squirrels to kill you, Merlin.”
“That won’t work,” Merlin pointed out. “I have too much practice setting them on fire.”
Arthur snorted trying not to laugh.
-
A few eons later, they trudged into the castle, boot heels clicking dully on the cobblestones. All the houses were dark, the streets and the courtyard entirely empty except for the cat’s cadaver they’d seen before they left. Merlin’s skin was prickling, but he suppressed a few cold whispers of fear-if the squirrels had gotten anyone, there would have been more skeletons.
Sneaking a glance at Arthur, Merlin saw the same concern buried just beneath the surface of the usual composure. The prince skipped deftly up the steps, Merlin trailing, and shoved straight through the doors.
“Who’s that?” a rough voice called, and a spear’s point emerged from the shadows of the hall, angled unrepentantly towards Arthur’s heart.
Merlin threw his hands into the air, but the prince stepped towards the weapon. Some days, Arthur’s death wish was a thing to behold.
“It’s us,” Arthur announced, the words ringing on the familiar stone, and one of the knights stepped into a beam of moonlight, staring in disbelief as he lowered the spear.
“Arthur,” he breathed. “We-we thought you must be dead; no one had seen you-”
Merlin scowled. Of course his absence had gone entirely unnoticed.
“-and the squirrels-”
“We know all about the squirrels,” Arthur interjected. “Where’s my father? Where is everyone?”
The knight, a wide-eyed, curly-haired young man who Merlin thought was either Ulfric, Perran, or Riddare, motioned for them to follow as he started hastily down the corridor.
“Half the town is holed up here,” he explained, “and everyone else we told to stay in their homes and board up all the windows and doors.”
Arthur nodded his approval, and Ulfric-Perran-Riddare led them to the dining hall, shooing its equally-bewildered guards aside. The knight slammed his shoulder into the door, which obediently swung, and was shouting “My lord!” before Arthur could even clear his throat.
Uther Pendragon was sitting alone. He looked up slowly. His face was dark, and his eyes were empty-hollow, pale, and dead.
When he saw his son, he froze, incredulous, mistrusting, unwilling to submit to hope. In a fraction of a second, recognition swept in, eliminating the doubt, and the king was on his feet and running.
Merlin had never seen Uther hug his son before, just as he had never seen Arthur bury his face in someone’s shoulder, his fingers clenched in studded velvet, his knuckles white. Watching from a safely respectful distance, Merlin thought he might have to cry on their behalf, because neither father nor son was likely to man up and do the job. Just as he was getting properly teary, however, a dry voice interrupted his thoughts.
“After seeing what those squirrels did to Camelot’s finest,” Gaius remarked, “I was a bit concerned for you.”
Merlin turned to him, grinning, receiving a warm smile in return. “Just a bit, though?” he asked. “Not too much?”
“Oh, come, Merlin,” Gaius scoffed. “I’ve seen you face all manner of evil. Squirrels? That’s almost insulting nowadays.” Eyes twinkling, Gaius folded his arms severely for a moment-and then he opened them, and, laughing, Merlin wrapped both arms around his mentor and hugged tight.
-
Following a long and extremely thorough bath, Merlin had just dressed for bed when he heard a knock at the outer door. He peeked out, and Gaius was admitting Gwen, who spotted Merlin and smiled.
“Arthur’s asking for you,” she reported. “He says it’s urgent.”
“It always is,” Merlin sighed, selecting a clean coat from the floor and shouldering it on over his nightshirt. He bid Gwen goodnight, helped Gaius put out most of the candles in the workshop, and then convinced his weary body that staggering up to Arthur’s room was in its best interests after all, as the prince would otherwise wreak unholy revenge.
As Merlin discovered when he entered without having knocked, some miracle had persuaded Arthur to take care of himself, for once, even if the blessing hadn’t extended to making him leave completely spent servants the hell alone. Arthur, too, had shed a thick layer of dirt and squirrel-related trauma, and looked to be quite prepared for bed as he draped his dusty tunic over one of the chairs. His hair was damp, and his skin was new-scrubbed-pink, and his white shirt was sticking just a little to the small of his back.
“Sire?” Merlin prompted, attempting to ignore the aches in his feet and in his skull, which were trading off throbbing.
“Merlin,” the prince responded equably, approaching with his arms crossed and his expression unreadable. He looked his servant up and down, and Merlin shifted, suddenly remembering a lot of things that the homecoming and all its varied joys had temporarily drowned out.
“Yes?” Merlin asked when a moment or two had passed in silence, the castle’s drafts swirling around and between them where they stood.
“You should sleep well,” Arthur said offhandedly.
Merlin was too tired to soften his Well brilliant thanks for stopping me from doing it to tell me so glare.
A surreptitious hint of a smile tugged at Arthur’s mouth. “Because,” he went on idly, “I want you up at a reasonable hour tomorrow-”
“It’s practically dawn!” Merlin exploded, making an angry gesture so bizarre that he wasn’t even going to think about. “After everything that happened tonight, you can’t possibly-”
“-because,” Arthur continued, talking over him, “I imagine it’s going to take a long time for you to tell me all that you’re capable of.”
Merlin’s heart did a strange, warm, thudding thing. He curled his toes.
“I’m capable of sleeping in past noon,” he said. “I’ll show you that first.”
Arthur smirked. “We’ll see about that. Goodnight, Merlin.”
Merlin mustered the goodwill to turn and start for the door without demonstrating how to turn a prince into a streak of ash on the floor.
“Oh,” Arthur drawled. “And-Merlin?”
Ash was too generous; Merlin wasn’t going to leave any evidence at all. He turned enough to subject Arthur to a sardonic gaze that should have said it all.
Unperturbed, as always, Arthur stepped forward, caught his chin, and drew him into a sleepy and inimitable kiss.
Merlin begrudged the two centimeters that came between them before long.
“Merlin,” Arthur murmured, his breath moist, briefly closing the distance again so that Merlin could feel his smile; “go to bed.”
“You’re a prat,” Merlin mumbled, leaning towards him, knowing nothing but this soft, instinctive need.
“Bed.”
“You’re a tease.”
Arthur’s thumb slid over his cheekbone, and the prince’s eyes were tired but unutterably pleased. “Think of it,” he suggested, “as a safeguard against the squirrel dreams.”
Reluctantly, Merlin ceded that a smile. “Goodnight, Arthur.”
Arthur pushed him out into the hall, ruffled his hair with excessive enthusiasm, and quietly shut the door.
Merlin didn’t particularly remember walking back. He did remember upsetting three different experiments creeping through the workshop, and righting each one carefully, having caught them with magic before they hit the floor.
He definitely remembered grinning stupidly as he shed his coat and kicked off his shoes, and he was still smiling when he buried his face in the pillow and succumbed to sleep at last.
Fandom: Merlin
Pairing: Arthur/Merlin
Rating: PG-13
Word Count: 9,350
Warnings: some squirrel gore; spoilers through Season 1
Prompt: "those evil black squirrels we have at home"
Summary: Evil squirrels lay siege to Camelot, Arthur and Merlin set out to defeat them, fur flies, and chaos ensues.
Author's Note: Christmas finally arrives for richelle2972! First of all, I'm SO SORRY this is so late, my dear. Hopefully the fact that it refused to end kind of makes up for that. XD Second, I'm not sure why all my fics these days start out cracky then end up having more serious parts. I'm trying to extrapolate this into a witty metaphor about my life... I'm going to have really fun times, then I'm going to die tragically at a young age, and it'll all suck a great deal? Needs work. XD
DEATH BY SQUIRREL
Merlin was struggling not to fall asleep over his breakfast-doing so would likely have resulted in drowning in his oatmeal bowl-and minding his own business.
He had lost track of how many extremely bizarre days had begun this way, but he was pretty sure Gaius kept a tally somewhere.
Merlin blew on a spoonful of oatmeal. The moment his mouth was full, Arthur skidded into the doorway, pink-cheeked, wide-eyed, and puff-haired.
“Merlin!” he gasped out.
“I’ll get the hairbrush,” Merlin sighed, getting up from the table.
“Hurry,” Gaius muttered just too low for Arthur to hear.
“Leave it!” Arthur panted. “Merlin! Squirrels!”
Merlin stared at him.
“This isn’t a drill, Merlin!” Arthur gathered his breath enough to howl.
“Then what is it?”
“It is an invasion!”
“But you said-”
“Will you just get the goddamn hell over here and help me?”
Merlin exchanged a look with Gaius-it was always tempting to tell his guardian to be careful, or his eyebrow would stick that way-and then reluctantly ran after the prince.
He stopped short when they passed a window, through which he glimpsed a courtyard overrun with an old and familiar enemy.
“Heaven help us,” he breathed.
“You recognize those?” Arthur asked, coming to an impatient halt.
Merlin turned to face him, pointing down at the rodents massing their forces below, presumably plotting a coup of Camelot.
“Those are like the kind we have at home,” he explained, “except a lot smaller and less bloodthirsty, if they haven’t slaughtered anyone yet.”
Arthur stared at him. “They’re squirrels, Merlin. You’re good at pest control. Or you were during the Rat Incid-”
“I thought we agreed we’d never talk about that,” Merlin hissed. “And they’re not squirrels; they’re killing machines, thinly disguised as cute forest animals.”
Arthur came up beside him to take another look at the creatures roaming the courtyard. Fortunately, the people of Camelot seemed to have taken note of the current of ominousness singing in the air-no one was outside, though there did appear to be a small skeleton by one of the doorsteps.
“Is that a cat?” Arthur asked incredulously, pointing to the bones, the curved ivory of the ribcage picked clean.
“A better question is ‘Was that a cat?’” Merlin corrected. “And I don’t think we should risk trying to find out.”
Arthur ran a hand through his hair, which exacerbated the existing problem. He was starting to look like a very distressed dandelion. “What do you think we should do, then? What are you, some kind of expert on carnivorous squirrels?”
“Only this kind,” Merlin sighed. He leaned out over the windowsill, squinting. “I wonder if these migrated; I can’t imagine they’re naturally this widespread…”
“You can write a report on their breeding patterns later,” Arthur cut in, grabbing his arm to pull him away from the window again. “For now, shall we focus on making sure nobody dies at their… paws?”
Merlin would have liked to write a report on Arthur’s breeding patterns-especially if it involved in-depth research on the front lines-but he settled with responding, “That would be a terrible thing to put in the logbooks: ‘death by squirrel.’”
“Agreed,” Arthur decided, grimacing. “Let’s make sure we don’t have to. Come on.”
“Where are you going?” Merlin asked, following Arthur down the hall.
“To the armory,” Arthur answered, “of course.”
“That isn’t going to do us any good.” Merlin jogged to catch up. “If they can see a single weakness, they’ll shred you, Arthur. Shreds wouldn’t be flattering, even for you.” Oops. He’d said that out loud. Before Arthur could stare at him, Merlin forged on, hoping the prince might not notice if he covered up fast enough. “Our best bet is probably sneaking out and heading into the forest to see if we can find the source of their power.”
Arthur paused long enough to look at him. “They have a source of power?” he repeated. “What the hell are these things, Merlin? Most squirrels-”
“These aren’t most squirrels!” Merlin protested again. “They’re furry assassins, remember? Is there a way we can get out where they won’t be able to see us and attack?”
Arthur held the bridge of his nose in two fingers. “I can’t believe we’re actually talking about squirrel-escape routes.”
“It’s better than being massacred by rodents,” Merlin pointed out.
“Most things are,” Arthur muttered, leading the way.
-
Having firmly instructed everyone they encountered to stay inside and barricade the doors-and having earned a lot of very weird looks for their pains-Arthur and Merlin descended deep into the castle, deep enough that a jolting, pulsing fear arose in Merlin’s chest. What if they were headed straight for the Dragon? What might that damnable monster say or do to Arthur, given half a chance?
Fortunately, however, they turned off into another passageway before they’d made it all the way down to the Dragon’s cave. Arthur had selected a corridor Merlin had never traversed before, one that began as an extension of the dungeons’ stone, only to narrow and shrink as they progressed, the walls becoming packed dirt instead. Little roots and dangly things protruded from the ceiling, tickling at the back of Merlin’s neck as he bent, trying not to bang his head. He managed to displace an annoying quantity of loose dirt as well, bringing it rattling down around him, crumbling mischievously into his hair and down his shirt.
Merlin would have expressed disappointment at the fact that today was clearly one of those days, but given that every day seemed to be one of those days, it would have felt a bit redundant.
Additionally, he wasn’t sure he wanted to chance opening his mouth right now.
Arthur, trooping along in front of him and holding a torch aloft, glanced back at him questioningly when he coughed into his sleeve. Merlin shrugged, so Arthur went back to trooping along, ducking as the passage contracted further. Merlin could just see a hint of daylight around Arthur’s shoulders as the path started slanting uphill, and he attempted to continue looking at Arthur’s shoulders, rather than admiring Arthur’s arse, which was prominent, attractive, and not at all something he should have been looking at.
Life was full of small and wonderful temptations.
Momentarily, they emerged into the sun, having come aboveground some distance from the castle wall. Arthur extinguished the torch in the dirt and shaded his eyes with one hand, considering.
“What hellish torment comes next?” he asked.
Don’t assk me. Let’s just try to stay posterior about all this. I’m behind you no matter what.
Merlin took a deep breath, trying to clear his head, and then lifted his shoulders once more. “With the ones back home, their power came from the heart of the forest. Will and I tracked down the primary squirrel, which was under some kind of curse, I think-it had bitten all the others in order to pass the possession to them as well. When we killed it, the others were free of the curse and went back to being normal squirrels.”
Arthur was staring at him like he was crazy again.
“You should’ve seen the badgers,” Merlin said.
Arthur threw his hands up and started towards the woods.
“We should go visit sometime,” Merlin suggested, following. “You definitely have to meet the chipmunks.”
Arthur made a sound that could only be called a whimper of dismay.
-
As always, a great deal of trudging through the forest followed. Merlin spent the duration of the journey making a valiant effort not to trip over Arthur’s scabbard, which swung a bit when the prince walked and kept flicking near Merlin’s ankles.
This was all very not-fun.
Merlin supposed he should have figured that when he first uttered the words “death by squirrel.”
They tromped in silence for a while, and then Arthur glanced at Merlin. “Define ‘heart of the forest,’” he said.
Merlin made a face. “The middle?” he hazarded. “I figure we should just go towards the darkest, most foreboding part and poke around until something happens.”
Arthur paused, planting his hands on his hips, and looked around. “I figure we’re going to die.”
“We didn’t die all the other times,” Merlin noted.
“To the effect that the odds are distinctly-”
There was a hail of arrows, shafts searing through the air just inches over their heads.
That should have taught Arthur that pessimism didn’t pay.
“Down!” Arthur barked, dropping behind a bush and slamming his forearm into the backs of Merlin’s knees.
Merlin couldn’t exactly disobey at that point.
Upon getting a faceful of twigs, leaves, and other forest-floor detritus, he raised his head enough to look at Arthur, who was crouched low, his eyes dark, sharp, and shrewd.
“What is it?” Merlin whispered.
Arthur pointed through the intertwining branches at what looked, at this distance, to be a ragtag group of typical varlets. They’d stopped firing, having lost their targets in the shadowy wood, and appeared to be consulting the most ragged among their number, whom Merlin assumed must be the leader of the lot.
“We can take them,” Merlin gauged.
“You mean I can take them,” Arthur muttered. “If I give you a weapon, you’ll cut your own hand off.”
“I can only do that twice,” Merlin said. “It won’t take long. Come on, there are just half a dozen of them; you’re more than good enough.”
Arthur frowned. “The last time I killed a bandit, I ended up in a hedge maze, and then I drank poison on the beach. Forgive me if I’m not too keen on giving it another go.”
“Labyrinth,” Merlin corrected.
“Hedge maze,” Arthur said.
“This is your whole problem.”
“‘Hedge maze’ is only two syllables. It saves time.”
“Not if you spend twenty more syllables telling me why you said ‘hedge maze.’”
“I’m going to cut your hands off myself in a minute.”
“Look, can we just get past them and move on? I promise not to engage in self-dismemberment, and we’ve got to get rid of the squirrels before someone at the castle decides we were joking and goes outside.”
“I hope it’s Morgana.”
“No, you don’t.”
“Shut up. Fine, let’s take a… oh, for the love of God.”
“What?” Merlin leaned over to peek through the bush with Arthur again.
They weren’t peeking at anything anymore.
“I hate my life,” Merlin realized.
Poignantly, one of the bandits chose that moment to slam a sword handle into the back of his head, and everything went black.
-
When Merlin awoke, he was looking at leaves again. This time, his wrists were bound behind him, and his ankles were trussed up, too. He was going to be black and blue from head to toe, at this rate.
And if Merlin knew anything about bruises-which he did, of course-he’d been yellowish and turquoise after that, which was an accessorizing nightmare.
Merlin coughed, ridding his mouth of the most immediate dirt, and managed to raise his head enough to look around. Arthur was sitting right beside him, cross-legged, his hands tied behind his back, his face so dark Merlin thought the prince might spontaneously become a rain cloud.
Merlin risked a glance at the bandits, who were huddled around their campfire-night was falling already; this boded remarkably ill even for one of his and Arthur’s escapades-and then watched the prince, whose eyes were bright and cold.
“Arthur,” Merlin began quietly, ignoring the pounding of his head, “I’m sorry.”
“It’s not your fault,” Arthur said, his voice flat.
“Not about this,” Merlin told him. “Well-yes, about this, but-”
“What exactly are you raving about?” Arthur inquired, still without having looked at him.
Merlin took a deep breath, inhaled leaves, coughed, spat, cursed foliage to a thousand hells, and then looked up at the prince.
“Arthur,” he said, “do you have a plan?”
“I have hundreds,” Arthur muttered. “Hundreds of plans for what I could do if my hands weren’t tied and six men with loaded crossbows weren’t sitting just before me.”
Merlin swallowed. “Are we stuck, then?”
“Unless someone notices we’re missing, gets past the carnivorous squirrels, and follows the smoke to us where we’re situated in the dead center of the forest,” Arthur noted through gritted teeth, “yes. I’d say we’re a little bit stymied, Merlin, wouldn’t you?”
Merlin’s pulse was throbbing in his ears, like war drums, like a call to arms. His head ached fiercely-the kind of slow, rolling hurt he knew would mean an egg-shaped lump, swelling like a blister.
“I can get us out of this,” he said.
“You couldn’t get yourself out of an armoire,” Arthur retorted, watching the bandits’ movements closely. “It’s one of the things I like best about you-you’re harmless.”
Looking away from the bandits now, Merlin laid his head down on the leaves. They crunched faintly, their edges prickling at his ear, and he looked into his own shadow, broad and black, cast by the firelight.
“What’s the leader doing?” he asked dully.
“What?” Arthur responded, shifting, presumably trying to crane his neck to see. “I can’t-”
Merlin murmured the words beneath his breath, a curl of leaf dust fleeing the soft press of air. Arthur’s bonds obediently snapped, and he heard the prince go still.
There was a long, potent silence.
“Can’t imagine this is quality rope,” Merlin commented weakly. “I mean, bandits aren’t exactly high-class criminals, are they? I wonder if maybe you could break it, Arthur, if you pulled hard enough.”
“Merlin,” Arthur said.
“And if your hands weren’t tied,” Merlin cut in, “perhaps we’d have a chance against them, and we could get back to Camelot. Isn’t that the most important thing?”
“Merlin,” Arthur said again.
Merlin raised his head enough to meet Arthur’s eyes, which were wide and uncertain, the orange light of the flames flickering across his face.
“Go,” Merlin told him.
Arthur closed his eyes, nodded once, and opened them again, turning them on the bandit troupe. They narrowed next, calculating, darting over armaments and physiques, gauging the competition, pinpointing the threats.
“Do yours, too,” he murmured without meeting Merlin’s gaze. “I’m going to need your help.”
Merlin whispered the spell again, and the magic sliced straight through the rope, letting it pool around his wrists and ankles.
“Are you ready?” Arthur whispered, his gaze on their foe.
“Always,” Merlin said.
“I’m going to go for the leader,” Arthur told him. “For his sword. Cover me. On my mark.” He raised his knees, planting both hands on the ground for leverage, every muscle coiled for motion.
Merlin tensed, and Arthur drew a deep breath.
“Now,” he hissed, surging to his feet, a blur of red tunic and single-minded determination, a perfect machine. He headed straight for the bandits’ captain, precisely as he’d said, and six startled villains hefted their crossbows to fire.
Merlin scrambled to a crouch, flinging one hand out, the world slowing as the magic took hold-the breeze coursed gently, buffeting the leaves overhead; the fabric of Arthur’s shirt rippled; crossbow bolts inched through the air. Merlin picked out every one, selected them in sequence, turning each one’s path just a fraction, just enough to send it gliding over Arthur’s shoulder, past his hand, above his head.
Merlin’s arm jolted as time shuddered back to speed, and six bolts seared around Arthur Pendragon, leaving the prince without a scratch.
The bandits dove for their quivers to reload, but Arthur was upon them-planting his boot in one’s ribs, applying his elbow to the nose of another, a whirlwind of honed skill and calculating improvisation. A scruffy man with dark hair unsheathed a poniard, baring his teeth, and Merlin spread his fingers, invoking another spell. The knife’s handle flared red with unnatural heat, and the man dropped it, stumbling backwards and screaming, crashing into one of his cohorts and landing the pair of them in an ungainly heap.
Arthur had reached the leader, a fair-haired man who might have looked respectable in other conditions-had his aquiline nose not been smeared with dirt, had his eyes been smiling instead of frigid, and had he not gripped his sword in one hand and Arthur’s in the other.
“Come and get me,” he snarled.
Another ruffian came up on Arthur’s right, and the prince decked him with one deft blow to the jaw.
Then he sighed.
“Merlin?” he called.
Merlin scurried forward, splayed his hand out before him, and intoned a few choice words, at which the bandit leader’s eyes rolled back into his head, and he crumpled to the ground, unconscious.
Merlin lowered his hand and cleared his throat awkwardly. Arthur bent to pick up his sword, collected his scabbard from the bandits’ disorderly pile of stolen goods, and put himself back together accordingly. Only when his swordbelt was buckled and his tunic was smoothed did he look up at Merlin, his eyes unrevealing, his expression blank.
A very bruised bandit moaned unhappily, and Arthur nonchalantly kicked him in the stomach.
“We should go,” the prince announced.
Merlin nodded silently, and Arthur led the way. At least they were still using plural pronouns. That was a start.
-
They tromped without conversing once they’d left their erstwhile adversaries rolling on the ground in agony, the night thickening around them as they pushed deeper into the woods.
“I always just assumed you were good luck,” Arthur said after a dozen interminable minutes had passed.
“I didn’t know you believed in luck,” Merlin replied.
“I believe in anything that keeps me alive on days like this,” Arthur answered.
That was fair enough.
As they progressed, however, Merlin noticed that Arthur kept falling a few steps behind-lagging, which was something Merlin had never once seen the prince do and, furthermore, would not have imagined to be possible. Maybe they had reached a heretofore inconceivable threshold, and Arthur was tired. Concerned now, Merlin tried to slow down as subtly as he could manage, hoping not to embarrass Arthur, but not exactly raring to ask him to hurry up, either, since that would probably end in his evisceration.
Despite his efforts, Arthur remained a couple feet away. Each increasingly careful change of pace elicited an identical slowing from the prince until they gradually reached a complete standstill.
Merlin looked at his unmoving feet, turned, and looked at the unmoving prince’s feet instead. He then considered the unmoving prince’s empty face, searching it for an explanation.
“Arthur,” he said, politely, he thought, “what the hell are you doing?”
“Keep going,” Arthur ordered, waving a hand.
“You won’t keep pace with me,” Merlin pointed out. “Are you all right? Did one of the ban-”
“I’m fine, Merlin,” the prince gritted out. “I’m keeping pace with you precisely; I’m just-” He bit off the end of the sentence, ungracefully at that.
Merlin’s eyes narrowed. “You’re just what?”
Arthur squared his jaw. “I’m just keeping you ahead of me,” he declared. “I’m keeping you where I can see you. Is that a crime?”
Merlin’s heart did a strange thing-a ripple went through it, and it trembled, but then it hardened and went cold.
“No,” he said lightly. “That’s not a crime. It’s completely illogical, given that I have saved your life a thousand times and never even asked to be recognized, and it’s a bit unethical, given that you profess to give fair judgments, and it’s extremely unkind, given how much I have always sacrificed for you, but it’s certainly not illegal. I’ll give you that.”
Arthur took a deep breath, his face pinching. “It’s not,” he stated slowly, “that I don’t trust you, Merlin. It’s just that I’m a little-” He fumbled for a word. “-uneasy. I’m a little uneasy. I think you can understand that.”
“Uneasy,” Merlin repeated, feeling the cold succumb to a building heat. “Yeah, all right. Uneasy because you don’t trust me. Which is brilliant, Arthur, since I’ve betrayed your trust hundreds of times, haven’t I? Why don’t you name one?”
“Merlin.” Arthur grimaced. “Just walk. We’ve got a kingdom to save, in case you’ve forgotten.”
“Haven’t,” Merlin assured him airily. “But to be clear-you want me to stay in front of you?”
Arthur heaved the Martyr Sigh. “If it’s not too much trouble, I would. Will you just humor me, Merlin?”
“Oh,” Merlin murmured, grinning slowly. “Yes, Sire.”
Arthur frowned at him for a moment.
Merlin took off running at top speed.
The howl of “Merlin!” that resulted echoed wildly through the trees, sending a small flock of black birds winging noisily from their perch. Merlin was too busy bolting to care.
He’d missed times like this-vaulting over logs, ducking under branches, batting thistles aside. Admittedly, usually careening through the forest at night meant that Merlin was running from something with teeth, claws, and a thirst for his blood, rather than merely hoping to drive Arthur insane, but there was nothing in the world like overdosing on adrenaline.
Thorns tugged at his clothes as he leapt over a low bush, and the most mischievous tree root of a massive oak snagged his toes, letting the ground catch up at last.
The ground made a point of bashing the wind out of him and shoving a few more twigs into his face. Merlin had had just about enough of foliage for one day.
He clambered to his feet, brushing himself off, and glanced around, struggling to figure out why the hairs on the back of his neck were waving around in what was either an attempt to caution him or an effort to pull themselves free and escape.
When Arthur came crashing through the undergrowth, looking like somebody had borrowed his sword and brought it back nicked, Merlin realized what it was.
Very wisely or very unwisely, he waved a peremptory hand when Arthur opened his mouth.
“Listen,” Merlin said.
Arthur was more interested in trying to incinerate Merlin with his eyes.
“Listen,” Merlin insisted.
“I don’t hear anything,” Arthur snapped.
“Right,” Merlin replied triumphantly. “Where are the sounds? Where are the night birds? Where are the squirrels?”
The silence was uncanny. Merlin shifted, staring at his feet, appalled by the noise they made.
“The squirrels,” Arthur said slowly, “are right there.”
Quizzically Merlin glanced at the prince, who was watching something, his jaw clenched, his eyes wide. Merlin followed the trajectory of his gaze and discovered the spreading branches of the colossal oak tree that had tripped him up.
Perched on those branches in perfect rows, little claws dug into the bark, were two dozen black squirrels.
“Holy hell,” Merlin said.
The squirrels’ eyes gleamed red.
“Don’t make any sudden moves,” Arthur muttered, carefully setting his right hand on his sword hilt. “We can back away and then run-”
“But they’re here for a reason,” Merlin pointed out, remembering just in time to lower his voice. “Don’t they look like they’re guarding something? Maybe-Arthur, maybe the source is in the tree.”
‘No sudden movements’ aside, Arthur immediately turned to stare at him.
“We are not,” he announced, “going into a tree. And even if we were, how do you propose-”
Keeping one eye on the silent sentinel squirrels, Merlin raised and spread his hand, summoning a spell that sounded right. Gold curled at the edges of his vision, and the oak shuddered with a rumbling sound that started at its base, rattling the branches, the squirrels’ fluffy tails quivering. A prominent crack split the wood of the trunk, which, creaking and groaning, widened until it was almost the breadth of a doorway, half as tall.
“After you,” Merlin bid Arthur, gesturing.
“There is no way in hell-” Arthur began at the top of his voice.
In impeccable unison, the squirrels hissed, their claws flexing, their tails slashing through the air.
There was time to pause, and then twenty-odd squirrel assassins leapt from the tree to fling themselves at Arthur and Merlin, chattering deafeningly.
Arthur’s sword rang as he drew it, hacking at squirrels on all sides. They were scrabbling their way up Merlin’s trouser legs, their claws like tiny knives, pins and needles heralding a much more awful pain. Merlin kicked, smacked, and shook them off, but every squirrel he dispatched was replaced by one of its brethren, as if there was an inexhaustible supply.
“Arthur?” he hazarded.
With a deft stroke, the prince decapitated two squirrels in one go, but there were just so many-
One climbed Arthur’s tunic to the shoulder, tensing to bury its teeth in the prince’s neck, and Merlin blasted it off with a small, well-aimed fireball. The smell of singed fur-and hopefully not singed crown prince-sizzled through their cramped battleground, and the other squirrels scented it and gave a collective squeaky roar.
Enough, Merlin decided, was definitely enough.
He let Arthur slice straight through another diving squirrel, and then he planted both hands on Arthur’s back and shoved him into the hole in the tree, where the prince tumbled out of sight with a discontented cry.
Merlin hurled himself in after, swinging his hand, his tongue stumbling over the spell to close the tree.
Predictably, the squirrels started bounding for the space.
Fighting a nauseating wave of panic, Merlin steadied his hand and his voice, shouting this time, partly from nerves, partly in the vain hopes of making their miniature foes hesitate.
This time, the two sides of the tree cinched shut-though not before a trio of especially agile squirrels darted through the closing gap.
Merlin stepped on one, wrinkling his nose as its skull crushed beneath his heel, and Arthur impaled the other two.
There was a moment of silence but for panting and uncertainty. Merlin didn’t appreciate while it lasted.
“I believe,” Arthur growled then, “that I liked you better when you didn’t think you had leave to save my life. But thank you, Merlin-thank you for rescuing us from the carnivorous rodents, and thank you for trapping us inside a damn tree.”
“We’re not trapped,” Merlin informed him, resisting the urge to add ‘O ye of little faith.’ Instead, he summoned a bit of witchlight, condensing a small sphere in the palm of his hand. “Look behind you; there’s a passageway. Following that should bring us to the source.”
Arthur heaved himself to his feet, dusting off his tunic, and gave Merlin a glare, his face delicately bluish in the witchlight.
“Let’s get to it, then,” he said. “Today cannot be over soon enough.”
As it turned out, when Merlin had said “passageway,” what he should have said was “dark, foreboding passageway too small to stand up in, full of questionable vegetation and damp, musty dirt.” He supposed that he’d gotten the general idea, which counted for something.
“I hate you, Merlin,” Arthur remarked.
“No, you don’t.”
“Shut up.”
Merlin obliged, if only because he didn’t fancy inhaling any more tunnel dirt than he had to.
The air got thicker and moister the deeper they went, Arthur’s boots clomping on the slightly muddy floor, Merlin’s footfalls lighter and less measured.
“Merlin,” Arthur said after a minute or two of trekking in silence, “when you and Will did this last time, how did it go?”
“Well,” Merlin responded, casting back into his wealth of unpleasant and/or freakishly bizarre childhood memories, “we went into a cave, instead of a tree, and at the bottom, we found the giant black squirrel that was in command of all the others.”
Arthur’s shoulders stiffened, as if he wanted to stop and demand confirmation but didn’t quite dare. “So we’re going to be facing a giant squirrel.”
“You sound surprised.”
“I wish I was. How exactly should we go about defeating such a beast?”
Merlin sorted through his hazy, traumatizing recollections of the event, most of which were blemished with strange blackouts and horrified screaming. He didn’t think he’d tell Arthur about that part.
“I think we brought the cave down on it,” he hazarded. “Or I did, mostly accidentally, and Will dragged us out before the section we were in collapsed.”
Arthur made a noise of agreement. “You must have made quite a pair, you and Will.”
“We didn’t go looking for trouble,” Merlin told him-it was an old and tired defense by now, but it was still the best one he had. “It sought us out and went for the jugular.”
Arthur laughed without much real humor. “I think that, deep down, you enjoy it. I think a boring life would drive you mad.”
“Life is never boring with you,” Merlin informed him, aiming for wry and nonchalant and ending up sincere.
He heard Arthur’s smile in the next words. “It was until you arrived, and all the trouble started to find us.”
“You love it, too,” Merlin replied.
Arthur said nothing, but when he glanced at Merlin over his shoulder, he was definitely grinning.
The peace was not destined to last long, of course. Momentarily, the narrow passage opened into a cavern of incredible size, huge roots like stalactites, Merlin’s witchlight making only a small indent of illumination.
They stood on a ledge overlooking the spacious room below, which gave them an excellent view of the pedestal in the center, where a fat black squirrel the size of a horse sat baring its teeth and waving its huge, fuzzy tail. Around it swarmed dozens, if not hundreds, of regular-sized squirrels, darting to and fro, distributing acorns and snarling at each other. What appeared to be glowing mushrooms lit up the main floor, giving them light to forage by, and their eyes gleamed red at every turn.
Merlin gulped.
“This looks like suicide by squirrel,” Arthur noted, which summed up Merlin’s thoughts rather succinctly.
“I guess there are worse ways to die,” he decided, not sure he believed it.
Arthur probably didn’t hear him anyway-the prince was in Primal Hunter Mode, crouching down at the edge of the overhang, eyes intent on their huge, furry target.
“Merlin,” he said, “can you levitate objects?”
“Yes,” Merlin told him, “but I doubt that I could give your sword enough velocity to kill that thing.”
Arthur smiled. “All right.” He shifted his feet, running a hand through his hair. “Can you levitate people?”
Merlin looked him up and down. “I can’t get you all the way there, but I can get you past most of the smaller squirrels, if that’s what you’re asking.”
Arthur grinned. “You’re actually kind of bright, Merlin,” he remarked. “It’s a nice surprise. Get me as far as you can, and cover me.”
“I always do,” Merlin muttered, letting the wichlight dwindle out of being and flexing his hands in anticipation of the next trial.
Said next trial wasn’t long in coming-Arthur gauged a few distances, chewed on his lip, and then glanced at Merlin, raising an are-you-ready eyebrow. When Merlin nodded, he got to his feet, took a few steps back, ran to the edge, and jumped.
Merlin poised both hands, concentrating, hissing through his teeth-Arthur was a feather; Arthur was a fleck of dust. Arthur was… a little too fond of pastries in the morning, was what Arthur was.
Merlin lifted the prince’s trajectory as much as he could, sweat breaking out on his forehead at the strain on his focus and coordination. Arthur sailed through the air, moving forward as fast as he moved down, arcing gracefully until his feet touched ground, where he alighted like a dragonfly.
That done, he drew his sword and eviscerated the nearest squirrel.
There was a distinct possibility that Merlin took more joy in seeing squirrels killed than he really should have, but he felt justified.
Arthur cut a great swath through the squirrel crowd, tiny furry corpses flying everywhere.
Merlin shook himself. His job was to make sure Arthur didn’t get rabies, not to observe the carnage and comment to himself on how elegant the prince’s fatal slashes were. He focused now, calling on the current that beat in his veins, gathering his strength, funneling it to his hands. He thought of fire-proper fire, flames and smoke-and whispered the words, concentrating distinctly on the essence and the attributes of the element. In a heady rush of gold, in a shuddering wave of possibility, he smelled the cinders and felt the heat, and he knew he’d succeeded. There was fire invested in his palms now, bent to his will. The magic had obeyed.
He raised both hands and spread his fingers. Twin torrents of flame seared through the close, dark air, ripples of distortion in their wake, and bore down on the squirrels blocking Arthur’s path.
Merlin hadn’t known squirrels could scream. He rather wished he could have gone the rest of his life without knowing that.
“Could you try something that won’t make my clothes smell like burnt fur for the next decade?” Arthur shouted, whirling, his sword gleaming wetly with blood, and hacked through a few more rodents.
“Better than you smell now,” Merlin yelled back.
Arthur laughed roughly, his breath coming short. “You should talk. I didn’t realize bath-aversion was an actual condition.”
Seemingly only incensed by the roasting of their comrades, squirrels all over drew into a swarm, tails whipping. The lingering flames gave enough light for Merlin to see the tension in Arthur’s shoulders, the anxiety building on his face-this was getting to be too much for him.
Destiny was calling.
Merlin bolstered himself with a spell, channeling the silent, swelling power; owning it, savoring it-and then he jumped.
Wind rushed in his ears, almost hostile, and he landed heavily, his knees quavering, not far from Arthur, who hastily put up his sword.
“What the hell-” the prince began.
“Covering you,” Merlin explained, blasting a squirrel that had climbed to Arthur’s shoulder, its eyes glowing in the dimness.
“You’re going to get us both-” Arthur’s sword flashed, so smooth it was just a streak of silver at the corner of Merlin’s eye, and a squirrel and its head toppled separately from a perch on Merlin’s arm. “-killed, Merlin.”
The giant squirrel stirred, gnashing its teeth. They were nearing it, invading its territory, and it was angry.
It was very angry.
It was clambering down from its pedestal, huge, hulking, and graceless, and lumbering towards them, flexing curved black claws.
“That’s going to get us killed,” Merlin corrected, darting behind Arthur, pushing back the next wave of squirrel paw-soldiers with a spell of broad, invisible force.
Arthur groaned his dismay almost under his breath, hefting his sword. There was blood smeared on his hands and splattered on his tunic, and he watched their enormous enemy, his eyes dark, his features set in perfect resolve.
It would be downright tragic if they died here, the indignity aside, because Merlin loved this stupid, brilliant, lousy prat, and he had never wanted to say it more than he did now.
The squirrel roared.
Merlin hated destiny.
“Merlin-” Arthur started, twirling the sword elegantly, gauging the closing distance between him and the raging squirrel king.
“Right,” Merlin cut in, mustering another spell and using it to cleave a path for Arthur to follow, throwing squirrels every which way.
Arthur took the invitation of the open space gladly, gliding forward and employing a series of anti-beast tactics that had long since grown depressingly familiar-ducking, weaving, feinting, aiming for a limb or appendage to amputate, hoping to strike and retreat instead of sticking around to stab. Merlin tried to keep the periphery clear, shunting smaller squirrels right and left, and it was certainly a compliment to Arthur’s focus that the flailing creatures didn’t even catch his eye.
The giant squirrel lunged surprisingly rapidly, vast muscles bunching, huge ropes of squirrel spit slinging from its massive mouth as it growled loud enough to make the ground beneath them tremble. Arthur hacked at its front paws, but thick fur deflected a severing blow, and the prince drew back, panting, planning, trying to calculate.
Enlarged so grotesquely, the squirrel’s beady eyes were pools of onyx, blank and dumb, infused with no intelligence, the vacancy filled with a cruelty all the purer for its simpleness. The monster knew how to destroy-little more. Destruction for destruction’s sake was its solitary goal.
Not on Merlin’s watch. This behemoth was bigger, meaner, and more accomplished than the one he and Will had bested, but he had Camelot’s golden prince at his side, and Merlin was not backing down.
The monster bounded forward, and Arthur surged ahead to meet it, slashing furiously, encountering nothing but coarse fur at the neck, at the shoulder, at all the points where the beast should have been weak.
Arthur darted out of the squirrel’s reach, grimacing. This time, it followed him, wary of his gleaming blade but gradually overcoming its fear. One huge paw swiped at Arthur’s head with enough force to shatter bone, and the prince ducked narrowly, retaliating with a vicious swing that lopped one of the squirrel’s finger-like claws clean off.
Merlin gulped.
Blood spurted, and Arthur scrambled out of the way. The beast released a shrill, ear-splitting, primal howl, rearing on its hind legs, tossing its head, thrashing out for pain-blinded vengeance. Arthur dove to the dirt in avoidance of a clubbing paw, and chattering drowned out his cry of startled hurt as he landed awkwardly on his right shoulder, barely retaining his hold of the sword hilt.
Screeching, the giant squirrel descended, bleeding still, enraged, teeth and claws angling for Arthur’s flesh.
Merlin was going to have none of that.
“Shut your eyes!” he cried, a sphere of overwhelmingly bright light coalescing in his hand. He held it, eyes averted, until it almost scalded his palm, and then he pitched it right at the creature’s snarling face. He shielded his eyes with his arm as it exploded into yet more and brighter beams, angry red blazing against his eyelids.
When the worst had faded, he raced for Arthur, kicking dazed and reeling squirrels aside. Before he made it to the prince’s side, however, Arthur was on his feet, sword raised to plunge straight into the giant squirrel’s throat.
The roar that erupted-broken, gurgling, but with terrifying force-made Merlin clap both hands over his ears.
Claws swung, wildly, ferociously, and Merlin clenched both fists in the back of Arthur’s tunic and hauled him away. The prince jerked his sword loose, then grabbed Merlin’s arm and returned the favor, heaving the both of them towards the upward incline that lay on the other side of the room.
Merlin cast squirrels aside with abandon, cutting a path through fur and claws and animal confusion. Scrambling, sprinting, dragging each other by their sleeves, they gained the ledge above the fray, where they’d first emerged after forging into the tree.
Here Arthur pulled Merlin to an ungainly halt.
“Bring it down,” he ordered, pointing with his sword to the ceiling of the cave.
Merlin wavered, shying back from the rising tide of squirrels seething up the hill.
Arthur shook him, none too gently. “Merlin,” he shouted, “do it!”
A numb-tongued spell and a last flicker of concentration, and it was done.
Immediately he heard the low, deep, visceral roar of a great thing crumbling, of dust streaming down, of the whole world starting to shake.
Arthur shoved his filthy sword back through his belt, caught Merlin’s hand in a vise’s grip, and made for the exit at a run.
The tunnel they’d taken was falling in, chunks of soil dropping all around them, choking dirt rising in the dense air.
“Arthur,” Merlin coughed out, summoning a feeble bit of witchlight.
“Shut up and follow me,” Arthur fired back, still wringing the life out of Merlin’s other hand.
The tunnel just behind them collapsed with a fwump and a burst of displaced air. Merlin staggered, and Arthur yanked him upright-the prince’s face was muddily streaked, his gold hair blackened by dirt and blood.
Arthur must have had a magic all his own, because he somehow made that look good.
Everything was shaking now, and Merlin’s fingertips were going numb. Somehow, their desperate flight brought them back to the chamber they’d first entered, the hollow within the tree.
Merlin was trying to gasp for breath, but the profusion of dust made it difficult. The witchlight guttered, throwing long, frail shadows on the walls, and his legs were weak beneath him. All the running and excitement, for hours on end, without food, without nourishment-the adrenaline was prematurely fading, leaving him worn out and empty, all his desperate reserves of strength and energy wholly depleted now. He’d used more magic in the last half-hour than he usually called upon in a full week, and there was just nothing left. He was enervated, and he wanted nothing more than to lie down, curl up, and sleep it off.
Arthur tugged on his hand impatiently, glancing with a sharp look of worry at the flickering witchlight burning low in Merlin’s other palm.
“Come on,” he urged, raising his voice over the surrounding sounds of the collapse. “We’re almost there, Merlin; what’s wrong with you?”
“I’m tired,” Merlin managed dizzily, blinking hard. “I’m-I just-”
“Merlin,” Arthur insisted, gesturing violently, “come on.”
Merlin’s knees were insubstantial-his legs wobbled, and the witchlight winked out.
“I can’t-” he managed. “I’m sorry, Arthur, I-” He strove to rally, scrabbling for shreds of the determination that had so often seen him though. “I’ll try, I-”
He swayed in the darkness, complete now and impregnable, and collided with something warm and firm, which felt like Arthur’s chest.
An equally warm, forceful hand landed on either of his shoulders, jerking him to his feet, and the prince’s voice was earnest, his ragged breath stirring Merlin’s hair.
“I am not dying here,” he declared, “and neither are you.”
Merlin almost had time to apologize again before Arthur was kissing him, fiercely and blindly and clumsily, catching the corner of his mouth first in the dark. Slightly sticky, slightly shaky hands buried themselves in Merlin’s hair, thumbs gliding over his ears or grazing his cheeks or dragging down his jaw, and Merlin could feel the prince’s heart banging where they were pressed together, one ungainly mess of warmth and long-since-destined unity.
And it was working, somehow-it was somehow fulfilling, invigorating, regenerative, because it was inconceivable that they should give up and die when there were so many things worth living for.
Never letting Arthur forget about this was high on Merlin’s list.
Never forgetting it himself was even higher.
He wheezed in a deep, dusty breath when they broke apart, his head spinning wildly and then settling with an encouragingly heavy thump.
“Right,” he managed, his voice sounding reedy but resolute. His arm felt strangely light as he raised it towards the crack in the tree, the walls on every side shuddering, the ground quaking fit to knock him off his feet. He sensed rather than felt Arthur at his side, and he intoned the words without so much as a sputter, and the tree trunk parted, moonlight streaming through the gap. Arthur seized Merlin’s wrist and hauled them forward, vaulting up to level ground and swinging Merlin after him, their boots scrabbling against the crumbling dirt. A gasp, a heave, and they were over the rise, rolling amongst the leaves, Merlin’s spine twinging as it became a bit too well-acquainted with a protrusive root.
He coughed up dirt-which was one of the single most unpleasant things he had ever experienced in a long and elaborate history of unpleasant things-and held his hands over his eyes.
Arthur grabbed his elbow and dragged him to his feet. His feet apparently preferred the sleep-forever plan, as they immediately tried to trip him up.
“Come on,” Arthur choked out, pulling them further, working up to a light run.
Merlin’s legs outright boycotted twenty seconds later, going completely limp, and he tumbled to the ground, taking Arthur with him. They were just out of the clearing where they’d fought the squirrels in the tree, and everything was still shaking like the Earth was going to break-
And then it did.
Vast chasms racked the ground, trees creaking, tiny birds taking flight, leaves swirling everywhere as the ground split, sundered, and gave way.
Silent and transfixed, Arthur and Merlin watched as the clearing crumbled into itself. The massive oak tree, its artificial door still gaping, lurched and then fell, disappearing into the pit of seething Earth.
Merlin coughed again, weakly. There was a massive sinkhole where the cavern had been. Shadows settled, and in the blue-silver moonlight, nothing moved.
Unsteadily, Arthur stood, dumbstruck for a moment, then focused enough to start trying to brush the dirt out of his hair.
He made no visible progress.
“Well, Merlin,” he said. “Are you still tired?”
Merlin almost couldn’t link the events in his mind-the Arthur who had grabbed him and kissed him like the world was ending (which admittedly it very nearly had been) existed in a dark, musty reality of receding terror and a stirring hopelessness. The Arthur here, begrimed and straight-faced, visible instead of tangible, simply didn’t seem like the same man.
“No,” Merlin managed. “Just confused.”
Arthur stared at him for a few long seconds, then gave over to a scowl and stormed off into the woods beyond, muttering about mental afflictions and unmistakable signs.
Merlin clambered to his feet and followed. It was probably better to think about the food that Gaius would have at home than to try to process any of this, since any part of it, properly contemplated, might just make his head explode.
He started to rub the dirt out of his eyes, then immediately reconsidered when he discovered that he was only rubbing more dirt into them.
-
Arthur was all huffy too-fast strides for a few minutes. Merlin’s legs were probably longer-and he definitely had less wind resistance-but he was too exhausted to bother catching up. Soon enough, Arthur relented, slowing down enough to let Merlin keep pace.
Merlin waited until he had his breath back before he swallowed a bit of grit and spoke.
“Arthur,” he said, “are you going to… I don’t want to leave.”
Arthur glanced at him. “Where are you planning to go?”
Merlin frowned. “Nowhere,” he said. “I don’t want to go anywhere.”
“Good,” Arthur responded, “because you’re not.”
Merlin had been starting to think he was too exhausted for mood swings, but a visceral relief flooded through him, swift and heady, and he felt himself starting to grin. “But your father-”
“My father did not save my life a thousand times today,” Arthur interrupted, “and he certainly didn’t set fire to any squirrels.”
Merlin was full-out beaming now, and, almost shyly at first, Arthur smiled back.
“I thought you didn’t like me setting fire to squirrels,” Merlin said.
Arthur waved a hand, a hint of a grin flashing brightly beneath the grime, luminescent in the moonlight. Arthur was beautiful in the daytime, neat and tidy; and in a tabard and a circlet, surrounded by worshipers and candles, he was sublime. That was the prince. This-this dirt-streaked, battle-weary young man with the worn tunic and the catlike grace, smiling in the dark-this was the king.
“I didn’t like the smell,” Arthur was replying. “I did enjoy watching the little bastards go up in flames.”
Someday, maybe someday soon, Camelot would be in the best hands the world had to offer.
Arthur watched the shadows dance on the forest floor. Mist was curling white fingers around the trees, reaching towards them in the gathering night. Merlin had no idea how far it was yet to the castle, but now, fueled by hope and contented, he didn’t really care.
“Merlin,” Arthur remarked pensively after a while, “I’ll make you a deal.”
“What deal is that?” Merlin asked, cautious from experience.
“I won’t tell a soul about your magic,” Arthur proposed, barely even stumbling over the word, “if you don’t tell anyone about my recurring nightmares.”
Merlin blinked. “What recurring nightmares?”
“The recurring nightmares I’m going to have about squirrels,” Arthur noted, “starting tonight.”
“Those could be serious,” Merlin responded, struggling not to ruin it with a grin. “Maybe we should bring it to Gaius right away. You know he does wonders for Morgana.”
“Breathe a word of it to Gaius,” Arthur warned him idly, “and I’ll train some squirrels to kill you, Merlin.”
“That won’t work,” Merlin pointed out. “I have too much practice setting them on fire.”
Arthur snorted trying not to laugh.
-
A few eons later, they trudged into the castle, boot heels clicking dully on the cobblestones. All the houses were dark, the streets and the courtyard entirely empty except for the cat’s cadaver they’d seen before they left. Merlin’s skin was prickling, but he suppressed a few cold whispers of fear-if the squirrels had gotten anyone, there would have been more skeletons.
Sneaking a glance at Arthur, Merlin saw the same concern buried just beneath the surface of the usual composure. The prince skipped deftly up the steps, Merlin trailing, and shoved straight through the doors.
“Who’s that?” a rough voice called, and a spear’s point emerged from the shadows of the hall, angled unrepentantly towards Arthur’s heart.
Merlin threw his hands into the air, but the prince stepped towards the weapon. Some days, Arthur’s death wish was a thing to behold.
“It’s us,” Arthur announced, the words ringing on the familiar stone, and one of the knights stepped into a beam of moonlight, staring in disbelief as he lowered the spear.
“Arthur,” he breathed. “We-we thought you must be dead; no one had seen you-”
Merlin scowled. Of course his absence had gone entirely unnoticed.
“-and the squirrels-”
“We know all about the squirrels,” Arthur interjected. “Where’s my father? Where is everyone?”
The knight, a wide-eyed, curly-haired young man who Merlin thought was either Ulfric, Perran, or Riddare, motioned for them to follow as he started hastily down the corridor.
“Half the town is holed up here,” he explained, “and everyone else we told to stay in their homes and board up all the windows and doors.”
Arthur nodded his approval, and Ulfric-Perran-Riddare led them to the dining hall, shooing its equally-bewildered guards aside. The knight slammed his shoulder into the door, which obediently swung, and was shouting “My lord!” before Arthur could even clear his throat.
Uther Pendragon was sitting alone. He looked up slowly. His face was dark, and his eyes were empty-hollow, pale, and dead.
When he saw his son, he froze, incredulous, mistrusting, unwilling to submit to hope. In a fraction of a second, recognition swept in, eliminating the doubt, and the king was on his feet and running.
Merlin had never seen Uther hug his son before, just as he had never seen Arthur bury his face in someone’s shoulder, his fingers clenched in studded velvet, his knuckles white. Watching from a safely respectful distance, Merlin thought he might have to cry on their behalf, because neither father nor son was likely to man up and do the job. Just as he was getting properly teary, however, a dry voice interrupted his thoughts.
“After seeing what those squirrels did to Camelot’s finest,” Gaius remarked, “I was a bit concerned for you.”
Merlin turned to him, grinning, receiving a warm smile in return. “Just a bit, though?” he asked. “Not too much?”
“Oh, come, Merlin,” Gaius scoffed. “I’ve seen you face all manner of evil. Squirrels? That’s almost insulting nowadays.” Eyes twinkling, Gaius folded his arms severely for a moment-and then he opened them, and, laughing, Merlin wrapped both arms around his mentor and hugged tight.
-
Following a long and extremely thorough bath, Merlin had just dressed for bed when he heard a knock at the outer door. He peeked out, and Gaius was admitting Gwen, who spotted Merlin and smiled.
“Arthur’s asking for you,” she reported. “He says it’s urgent.”
“It always is,” Merlin sighed, selecting a clean coat from the floor and shouldering it on over his nightshirt. He bid Gwen goodnight, helped Gaius put out most of the candles in the workshop, and then convinced his weary body that staggering up to Arthur’s room was in its best interests after all, as the prince would otherwise wreak unholy revenge.
As Merlin discovered when he entered without having knocked, some miracle had persuaded Arthur to take care of himself, for once, even if the blessing hadn’t extended to making him leave completely spent servants the hell alone. Arthur, too, had shed a thick layer of dirt and squirrel-related trauma, and looked to be quite prepared for bed as he draped his dusty tunic over one of the chairs. His hair was damp, and his skin was new-scrubbed-pink, and his white shirt was sticking just a little to the small of his back.
“Sire?” Merlin prompted, attempting to ignore the aches in his feet and in his skull, which were trading off throbbing.
“Merlin,” the prince responded equably, approaching with his arms crossed and his expression unreadable. He looked his servant up and down, and Merlin shifted, suddenly remembering a lot of things that the homecoming and all its varied joys had temporarily drowned out.
“Yes?” Merlin asked when a moment or two had passed in silence, the castle’s drafts swirling around and between them where they stood.
“You should sleep well,” Arthur said offhandedly.
Merlin was too tired to soften his Well brilliant thanks for stopping me from doing it to tell me so glare.
A surreptitious hint of a smile tugged at Arthur’s mouth. “Because,” he went on idly, “I want you up at a reasonable hour tomorrow-”
“It’s practically dawn!” Merlin exploded, making an angry gesture so bizarre that he wasn’t even going to think about. “After everything that happened tonight, you can’t possibly-”
“-because,” Arthur continued, talking over him, “I imagine it’s going to take a long time for you to tell me all that you’re capable of.”
Merlin’s heart did a strange, warm, thudding thing. He curled his toes.
“I’m capable of sleeping in past noon,” he said. “I’ll show you that first.”
Arthur smirked. “We’ll see about that. Goodnight, Merlin.”
Merlin mustered the goodwill to turn and start for the door without demonstrating how to turn a prince into a streak of ash on the floor.
“Oh,” Arthur drawled. “And-Merlin?”
Ash was too generous; Merlin wasn’t going to leave any evidence at all. He turned enough to subject Arthur to a sardonic gaze that should have said it all.
Unperturbed, as always, Arthur stepped forward, caught his chin, and drew him into a sleepy and inimitable kiss.
Merlin begrudged the two centimeters that came between them before long.
“Merlin,” Arthur murmured, his breath moist, briefly closing the distance again so that Merlin could feel his smile; “go to bed.”
“You’re a prat,” Merlin mumbled, leaning towards him, knowing nothing but this soft, instinctive need.
“Bed.”
“You’re a tease.”
Arthur’s thumb slid over his cheekbone, and the prince’s eyes were tired but unutterably pleased. “Think of it,” he suggested, “as a safeguard against the squirrel dreams.”
Reluctantly, Merlin ceded that a smile. “Goodnight, Arthur.”
Arthur pushed him out into the hall, ruffled his hair with excessive enthusiasm, and quietly shut the door.
Merlin didn’t particularly remember walking back. He did remember upsetting three different experiments creeping through the workshop, and righting each one carefully, having caught them with magic before they hit the floor.
He definitely remembered grinning stupidly as he shed his coat and kicked off his shoes, and he was still smiling when he buried his face in the pillow and succumbed to sleep at last.