Disclaimer: Not mine, no money made, etc.

A/N: I'm borrowing a page from April29Roses's book and basing this on a poem by Rainer Maria Rilke, which will be included in the epilogue.

"Don't make me bury you here, Merlin. Not so far from home. Not now. Not ever."

There was no response from the feverish boy curled up under the downy blankets. There hadn't been for hours. He had hardly made a sound since they pulled him out of the wreckage of the mercenaries' camp just after dawn. Arthur leaned back in the wooden chair and pressed his hands to his eyes as though he could wipe the memories of the past few days away with his fingertips. They remained, though, too fresh and brutal to clear away with a thought and a gesture.

Nearly four days had passed since they had gone missing, ambushed while Arthur and the main body of the company were away, leaving Merlin behind with a handful of knights to set up camp. The prince, along with the rest of the knights, followed the mercenaries' cold trail up into the foothills to catch a sense of where they were going before the highland snows wiped away their traces. They had given up an hour before the early winter sunset and returned to the campsite, expecting to find warm tents and a hot meal waiting. Silence greeted them instead; the broken bodies of two of the knights, the splashes of bright blood in the snow, and the wrecked tents told the story clearly enough. The sellswords had split their forces, sending part of their number ahead to lure Arthur with a false trail while the rest of them remained behind to ambush whoever the prince left behind.

Only an idiot should have fallen for such a simple trick, but foolish, half-witted, sot of a prince that he was, Arthur had been taken in by it. Two of his knights had paid in the first moments. Three more had paid across the days of their imprisonment, and Merlin. . .

Leon had picked up the trail that morning, just as the first light of dawn broke through the gray clouds. The scuff of a muddy boot against a rock and the barest of prints the falling snow had not yet covered up. It was enough. Just enough to track them back to their camp, quietly surround it, and take them by surprise. Arthur was hardly winded when the battle was done, pushing the last of the mercenaries off his blade when the first cries rose. They had found the three knights dead- all of them battered, broken, and nearly unrecognizable. And there, at the edge of the camp, they found Merlin's ragged figure hanging by his wrists from a tree branch, his skin as pale as the snow falling around them, his blood bright against the gray tree trunk and the frost-covered ground.

He had been so cold, so still when they broke the rune-etched manacles, falling limply into their waiting arms. Arthur had cradled him like a sleeping child, praying against everything that the bright knife's blade Leon held to the blue-tinged lips would turn cloudy with Merlin's breath, no matter how faintly. His hopes flared anew when it did, and he dared believe that the faint beat under his fingertips was a pulse and not his own desperate imagination.

They left the bodies of their enemies behind to burn and gently wrapped their own dead to take them home. Merlin was carefully hoisted into the saddle in front of Arthur, swathed in thick woolen blankets and soaking in every bit of warmth from Arthur and the horse. He hardly made a sound until he started shivering and the shaking jarred his bruised and broken ribs. The prince did what he could to keep his own cloak draped around the boy and keep the horse to a gentle pace. Anything to ease Merlin's pained gasps until they reached a roadside inn where a handful of gold bought half the rooms and- more importantly- the services of the village's healer.

The woman was more midwife than physician, but she cared for Merlin as she would a newborn babe, her slender fingers deftly peeling away the blood-encrusted remnants of blue cloth from Merlin's back as each stroke of the cloth revealed more bruises and more slashed skin. Though he held his servant close to ease his pained breathing, Arthur could have looked away, could have watched the fire instead of the healer's steady movements, but he didn't.

"This is my fault. Merlin suffers because I didn't look ahead. My men died because I didn't out-think my enemy."

He unconsciously stroked Merlin's hair while the healer worked, willing warmth and wellness into the boy until the woman gently pried him away from the prince and, sip by sip, poured a honey-laden tisane into him. When that was finished, and all his wounds cleaned and bound with linen, they laid him down in the bed, propping him with blankets and pillows so he could breathe more easily. The healer left Arthur to watch over Merlin, a word of thanks on his lips as the door closed behind her.

They left midnight far behind when Arthur drifted to sleep in his chair with the fire roaring in the hearth and the wind howling outside. Neither sound drowned out the faint moan that woke the prince. His eyes snapped open to find Merlin's restless hands pushing at blankets he didn't have the strength to move, his chills having warmed into a fever while the prince slept.

"Arthur?"

Merlin's voice was so faint the prince nearly missed it. He rested a shaking hand against the boy's burning forehead. "I'm right here, Merlin. You're going to be all right."

The sapphrine eyes slowly opened, cloudy and confused by sickness and exhaustion. "Arthur, where are you?" He sounded so terribly lost.

"I'm here, Merlin," he tugged the blankets down over Merlin's shoulders, took one of the boy's hands in his own. It was dry and too warm for Arthur's liking. "You're safe now. Just rest."

Merlin's fingers twitched, his eyelids fluttering shut before he whispered, "Arthur?" again, a plaintive tone that nearly broke the prince's heart. Locked away in his fevered dreams, how could Arthur assure the boy he was out of harm's reach?

With a long sigh, Arthur dipped a cloth in the bedside basin of water and rested it on Merlin's too-hot forehead. "You're safe, Merlin. Just sleep now."