They were hunting.

Well, to be precise, Arthur was hunting. Merlin was grumbling. And carrying. He liked to throw in some variation sometimes, so once in awhile he grumbled about carrying.

When he had scared away the third deer, Arthur turned to him. "Merlin."

"Arthur."

The prince scowled. "I'm hunting-"

"Very good, sire, you can tell what you're doing."

"-and hunting generally requires the use of silence."

"Why are you talking, then?"

There was a momentary lull in the conversation as Arthur processed the ridiculous statement, looking momentarily off-balance. Merlin grinned. Score one for him.

Arthur retaliated quickly. "Well, I'm afraid that you are obvious-"

Whatever he had been about to say was cut off as they crested a ridge. They both stopped at the sight below.

In an enormous valley, an old castle sat near the middle as if it were a stone that had sunk to the bottom of a pond. It was abandoned, tear and wear obvious even from this distance. It was perhaps a little larger than the castle of Camelot, and made of grey stone.

However, they could see the thin trail of smoke rising from what was clearly inside the castle. Several trails, in fact.

"Erm." Merlin was never really one for eloquence. "Where are we?"

Arthur wasn't quite sure either. He hadn't really been paying attention when they had gone out. it was just a simple hunting trip, after all. To relax. They had been traveling for nearly five hours now. They could be over ten miles from Camelot, he realized. He had evidently never been in this area. Even the river a few minutes ago had been unrecognizable.

Not that he was going to tell Merlin that, of course.

"Don't tell me you've lost track of where we are? How you ever even made it to Camelot is a mystery, Merlin."

Merlin had that stupid grin on his face. "You don't know where we are either."

He'd forgotten Merlin knew how to read him better than Guinevere. Idiot.

Merlin, that is. Not him. Though if he didn't get them back to Camelot, he certainly was going to look like an idiot.

Glancing back to the castle, he said in a casual tone, "We could go down there and maybe see if there's any game-"

Merlin whipped around at the sudden cacophony behind them. He vaguely heard Arthur draw his sword, and was somehow on the ground.

He gasped. Something- someone?-had struck him from behind. His vision was skewed, colors dancing around and the world tilting crazily.

Arthur.

Merlin closed his eyes tightly and managed to lever himself up on his hands and knees. He looked around blearily.

There were sounds. Shouting and yelling, metal clanging against metal. People, little more than blurs of color, swept through his field of vision. There were browns and blacks and one blond head moving around. Arthur.

He was holding his own, against nearly twenty bandits. Their sheer numbers meant that only a few could be thrown at him at a time. However, it was patently obvious he could not last long.

Merlin felt so stupid. Smoke trails in an abandoned castle meant it was not abandoned.

He struggled upwards, desperate to...do something. What, exactly? His head felt like a gong that had just been rung.

Arthur was falling back, but there was nowhere to fall back to. He somehow managed to parry nearly all the swipes of the bandits arranged in a circle around him. In the middle of a block, his eyes met Merlin's.

His expression changed to panic.

"MERLI-"

Merlin's world exploded just as he realized Arthur was looking behind him.

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Arthur.

Merlin came to slowly.

Where is Arthur?

Something happened.

Why am I wet?

He cracked open his eyes.

He was on a riverbed.

Oh.

That didn't explain where Arthur was.

Merlin waited until the world started to obey the laws of gravity again before slowly pushing himself up.

"MERLI-"

He flinched, nearly sending himself into the mud again. Bandits. Yes, bandits, Arthur fighting, yelling at him before the world had gone black.

Arthur would be with the bandits. Or he would be-

No. He was with the bandits. He was.

Then why was Merlin here? There had been no river where they had been ambushed. They had, in fact, passed a river before they had been ambushed, but that had to be at least a quarter mile away.

Looking around, Merlin frowned. This was the river they had passed. He remembered commenting on that reddish rock to Arthur, who had told him to stop admiring rocks and start looking for poor innocent deer to slaughter.

Something caught his eye. It was a mass, a lump snagged in the shallows and surrounded by reeds a little further on. Squinting, Merlin made out a mud-caked form, lying faceup and not moving, with matted hair that-

Was blond.

Merlin choked. Arthur. Arthur was here and he was hurt and he wasn't moving.

Merlin scrambled toward Arthur until he was kneeling next to him. Frantically, he placed his fingers on the vein Gaius had shown him, on a person's neck.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

A heartbeat. Slow, but there.

Merlin let out a shaky breath. A ball of ice in his chest he hadn't even realized was there began to melt. With every steady thump of Arthur's heart, it wasted away until there was just an unpleasant memory of it being there. And even that was soon banished by the now-audible breaths coming from Arthur.

He was okay. Injured, maybe, but okay in the immediate sense.

Which, of course, was Arthur's cue to groan and blink open his eyes. When the light hit them he winced, and tried to move. His breathing hitched.

"Don't." Merlin doubted that Arthur would hurt himself excessively if he moved around, but right now he did not want to see him in any pain. It would remind him far too much of what he himself had felt like just a few seconds earlier.

Hearing Merlin's voice, Arthur relaxed imperceptibly. "M'ln?"

"I'm here. Don't move too much. I think you're hurt."

Arthur gave a grunt that sounded suspiciously like a denial.

"Yes, you are."

Arthur frowned a little, and brought his arm up to touch Merlin's hand, still on his neck.

"Oh." Embarrassed, Merlin took his hand away. "I was checking your pulse."

"Mm." Arthur didn't particularly sound as if he cared one way or another. Worried about concussion, Merlin gently shook him.

"Arthur. Stay awake."

Another sound of protest.

"You have to. Being unconscious could make it worse."

Arthur looked as if he was questioning how being unconscious would make it worse when he wouldn't feel the pain then, but complied.

Merlin sighed and checked him over. It could have been worse. Many, many small sword cuts. Not surprising, since he had been fighting an entire bandit troop. A few nastier cuts that should really be tended to, but weren't an immediate threat. And a slight lump on the back of his head, much smaller than the ones Merlin was suddenly aware of on his own.

Wincing, Merlin pulled Arthur up the bank, having to rest twice.

They leaned against a tree, recovering.

As they did, Merlin couldn't help but wonder.

What had happened?

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They found a patrol within two hours of walking.

Needless to say, the knights had been surprised to find their crown prince and his manservant wandering on the very edge of the border, both covered in mud and blood.

Arthur had told Merlin what he remembered, which wasn't much. He had been defeated shortly after Merlin was unconscious, and had been knocked on the head. He'd woken up briefly, and was guarded by three bandits with nobody else in sight.

Even though Arthur didn't admit it, Merlin could tell that he'd been worried about his absence.

When one had gone away for some privacy, Arthur had attacked the smaller one and disarmed him, then dispached the both of them. Same for when the third came back.

Merlin was impressed, not that he'd shown it. Taking on three men while seriously wounded and just recovering consciousness was a notable feat, much less formulating a plan to do it efficiently.

Arthur had stumbled away, hoping to find Merlin, and had come upon the river, whereupon he admitted he couldn't remember much after.

By the time both were back in Camelot, they had been gone for only a day.

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Three weeks later, Arthur insisted on going back to the castle to flush out the bandits.

He was mostly healed by this time, so Gaius acquiesced. Uther supported the idea wholeheartedly, to punish the men that had harmed his son. Arthur was to take twenty knights and leave no bandit standing.

Merlin wasn't sure of whether he wanted to go back or not. He had begun to have painful headaches, as if something was desperately trying to make itself known to him but he couldn't - or wouldn't - let it.

Gaius had told him it was merely the aftereffects of being hit on the head twice by blows that had not meant to be gentle, but Merlin wasn't so sure.

According to the sketchy timeline they had constructed, he had somehow escaped from the bandits around the time Arthur had, a few hours or so after being taken. He had then made his way to the river, despite not knowing where he was and most likely confused. Arthur chalked it up to happy coincidence, while Merlin privately thought that his magic might have had something to do with finding Arthur so quickly. This idea was reinforced by the fact that whenever Merlin thought of it, something in his mind echoed, a faint feeling of desperation and magic and a swirling maelstrom of emotions he couldn't remember.

His headaches worsened when he tried to remember, so he gave up after a while.

Now he was on the mend, enough so that he managed to wheedle permission out of Gaius to accompany the raiding party.

They set off in the middle of the night, so that by the time they reached the river the sun had just begun to rise.

Merlin suppressed a shudder when he saw the place where he had seen Arthur's unmoving body. Besides the headaches, he had been having nightmares, where Arthur had been killed and there was no pulse under his fingertips.

Not that these kinds of nightmares were new. He usually had one or two a week due to the ridiculous amounts of people and things trying to kill Arthur on a weekly basis, but never before had they been so uncomfortably intense.

"It's right over that ridge."

Merlin brought his attention back to the present, where Arthur was briefing the knights on what little they had seen of the castle.

They crested the ridge-

and stopped dead, staring at the valley.

It had been razed to the ground.

Broken masonry was visible from where they stood, stones broken in two, and a few feet of foundation were the highest structures in the vale. Trees had been snapped like twigs, jagged stumps and twisted trunks littering the ground. Bushes and vegetation had been flattened, crushed. It was as if an enraged god had personally destroyed the entire scene.

"Mother of mercy." one knight breathed, and the rest were too shocked to speak.

Merlin felt sick.

His headache doubled, and flashes appeared in his vision.

They will pay.

Walking toward them, the ones who did this, the ones who deserve everything and more.

It is his fault for failing, and it is them who took advantage of that.

He has paid.

Now it is their turn.

Merlin leaned over in the saddle and tried to calm his racing heart.

I did this.

He knew, as sure as he could see Arthur's stunned gaze on the ruins of the castle, that he had wrought this destruction.

Nobody would escape.

He would make sure.

Thieves. Killers. Bandits. Ambushers. Brigands.

MURDERERS.

THEY WILL PAY.

"Merlin?"

With an effort, Merlin brought his gaze up to meet Arthur's. The knight had were ahead, picking cautiously over the twisted landscape.

"Are you alright?"

Merlin stared uncomprehendingly at Arthur's face, and instead focused on his neck, where he had found the steady thump of his heartbeat, telling the world he was alive.

"Merlin?"

"Arthur?"

Pain. Pain radiating from his head, his wrists, everywhere. Where was he?

"'E's awake."

Sharp, glasslike pain exploding in his left side. Gasping, struggling for breath.

Stepping through the debris, heading toward the castle, like he had before, behind him was -

"Arthur?"

"What's 'e muttering about there?"

"Dunno. Sounds like a name."

Where is Arthur?

"Someone named Arthur."

Had he spoken aloud? He couldn't tell.

He didn't see the result of his rage, his anger and -

Pain, pounding on his head, tearing his mind apart.

"Hey, watch some fun."

There was someone talking, voices nearby talking, saying nonsensical -

Words, floating, whizzing by. Can't understand, don't know the meaning. Is someone talking?

"Hey, boy."

So close, so LOUD. Flinching away, too much.

So quiet, when he was remembering things so loud, things that pierced and tore and stabbed -

"Your friend is dead."

Eyes snap open, choke on air. Arthur. Arthur is dead?

"Too much trouble to take back. Maybe you coulda stopped us, but you weren't really contributing. We slit his throat."

No.

The block was gone.

Laughter. Nine men, laughing. Laughing about a dead Arthur.

Arthur, dead.

While nine murderers laugh about killing him.

NO.

He remembered.

He would make them stop.

He remembered.

He would make them pay.

And Merlin realized he wished he never remembered.

He had made them pay.