Chapter 4: The (Re)solution

So tell me when you hear my heart stop

You're the only one that knows

Tell me when you hear my silence

There's a possibility I wouldn't know

"I just don't know," Gaius concluded.

Interrupting an illogical and unfair but very real irritation with the physician – and more deeply, with himself – something made Arthur look over his shoulder.

Merlin was hunched over his knees on the three-legged stool near the door, one hand trailing near the ground, making a rhythmic movement with his blue-tipped fingers. As if he tried to pick up something that wasn't there.

"What's he doing?" Arthur blurted to Gaius.

The physician shifted to see, then sighed. "That behavior is a sign that the fits of vagueness are worsening," he said.

Arthur tried to keep the bleak horror he felt from showing. "This is my fault."

"You were not to know," Gaius said.

Yes, but if he'd listened…

Arthur couldn't bear to watch the mindlessly repetitive jerking of Merlin's hand and wrist, and crossed to kneel beside him. "Can you hear me?" he said, bending to see his servant's eyes, the pinprick pupils in a sea of glassy blue. "What are you doing, Merlin?"

Whether the boy heard him or simply emerged from the fit, he paused, then straightened obediently at the pressure of Arthur's hand on his shoulder. "What?"

"The fits will likely be accompanied by brief memory loss," Gaius said. "Perhaps it would be best to get him into bed."

Merlin twitched in unrelated alarm and exclaimed, "Arthur! Did we kill it?"

The boy was re-living the fight with the water-creature; Arthur struggled to feel amusement, only, not anything else. Not anything else.

He stood, and coaxed Merlin to do the same, leading and prodding him to the patient's bed, where he pressed him down to sitting as he had done with the stool. Gaius bent to lift Merlin's lanky legs onto the couch, and Merlin laid back with childlike submission.

"It's okay, Merlin," Arthur said, with a confidence he didn't feel. "You'll be okay." Gaius turned a stern eyebrow on him, and he said, "There isn't any way to reverse it? An antidote?"

The word implied poison, he realized.

"No," the physician admitted. "We will simply have to wait it out."

"Those records," Arthur said haltingly. "The side effects you mentioned, I thought – I don't know, maybe a headache or a sick stomach, or…"

"I tried to explain," Gaius told him, surprisingly gently, "the severity of the physical symptoms corresponds to the strength of the magic in the user, as the potion has more or less magical ability to overcome and render inert. And Merlin is the strongest I've ever seen."

Twelve more hours, Arthur thought. Already it was this bad, and Merlin had twelve more hours to go. A doubt occurred to him for the first time, whether the boy's body would be resilient enough to contain the struggle of the potion overcoming the magic. Which would prove stronger, and what would be the final cost to Merlin.

"Do you think –" He watched Merlin's eyes drop shut, his head loll tiredly on the thin pillow at the raised end of the bed. "Do you think he'll –"

A quick knock sounded, startling them both into turning to face the guard who leaned head and shoulders into the physician's chamber.

"Sire, the king has requested that you dine with him this evening."

Arthur gritted his teeth. But he couldn't just refuse – his father would ask why, and the excuse my manservant is ill, wouldn't be sufficient. Uther wouldn't care if Merlin was dy- He stopped the thought.

"Notify me of any change?" he said to Gaius, who nodded.

At dinner, he sat across from Morgana and beside his father, in his usual place. In their usual clothes, eating the usual food.

His thoughts, however, were anything but ordinary.

How could he have believed that Merlin's crime deserved this sort of punishment? Even if he returned to find Merlin happy and hearty, eating soup with Gaius and answering Arthur's concerns and commands with impudence. How could he have thought to prescribe this cure to anyone else, even a stranger he wouldn't have to watch suffer? Especially a stranger he wouldn't have to watch suffer. And in spite of his father's opinion on judgments rendered, Arthur wished he could somehow repeal this one.

He watched his father toss bites casually into his mouth and laugh at something Morgana said, and wondered, how his father had ever used the potion as a solution, or a punishment, if there were such side effects.

Such uncertainty.

Perhaps Arthur's crime deserved this punishment of waiting and wondering and… guilt? He shook his head and focused on his plate. Odd thought.

He excused himself early, complaining of a headache – to explain his trip to the physician aside from checking his servant's state of health – but any hope he might have clung to that Merlin had improved, was dashed the moment he opened the door.

Merlin was curled up on his side, small as he could get, and shaking. Arthur could see from across the room how the candlelight caused the perspiration on bone-white skin to sparkle; Gaius sat next to him, hovering but not touching – waiting – haggard.

Arthur opened his mouth and said, "He's worse."

By heaven, when would the boy's magic yield to the potion?

Gaius raised his head at the interruption, but blindly, and didn't respond. Arthur forced his feet to take him nearer the bed, and the tension in the Merlin's body relaxed as he came. The old physician bent over him, brushing dampened hair from his forehead, surrendering his place to Arthur with a single comprehensive glance, retreating to the work-table.

"Did you tell him it would be like this?" Arthur said suddenly. "Did you warn him, at least?"

Gaius snorted; he'd never heard such bitterness and guilt in a single sound. "I could easily have concocted a harmless brew and lied to you both… but he made this choice."

"Why?" Arthur said. An anguished whisper. He dropped onto the stool beside the bed, watched Merlin's eyes open and focus on him, pupils still unnaturally contracted. "Why?" he repeated. "You could have taken your chance to run."

"You would've told your father, and hunted me down," Merlin rasped, surprisingly lucid.

"I might not," Arthur objected. I don't know what I would have done.

Gaius materialized at Arthur's side with a cup of water, tilting the boy's head with a wrinkled hand on the sunken cheek, to pour a few awkward swallows past purple lips.

"I won't run and be chased like a criminal, like a monster," Merlin added, a bit more strongly.

Revulsion rose thick in Arthur's throat. Two days ago he had seen a monster. Horrifying, dangerous, sneaky fast toxic. Merlin had fought the beast just as much as Arthur had, and for the same reasons; he had healed, and more than that, he and Gaius had done for the kingdom what Uther's methods and Arthur's efforts could not. Discovering the cause, and the solution.

"You're not a monster," he whispered.

Merlin swallowed again, his throat – exposed without the neckerchief – appearing ridiculously vulnerable; he turned his head away from the physician's attempts to dab his skin dry fretfully, but kept his eyes locked with Arthur's gaze. Already his clothes were limp and draggled and the faint sour scent of sweat and something else, something like poison, clung to him.

"I was born like this," he rasped. "For a reason… for you. Destiny. If I can't have magic and use it… I might as well be dead. If I haven't got a destiny… then I am a monster."

"Destiny," Arthur repeated, sitting back and looking at Gaius, who had returned with another tiny glass of liquid to pour down Merlin's throat.

"For the headache," Gaius explained to both of them. "I'm sorry I can't do more." He adjusted the blanket that had twisted with Merlin's last spasm, tucking it around the boy, who cuddled down and closed his eyes again.

Arthur put his hand on Merlin's shoulder and rose to follow the physician back to the work-table. "Destiny," he repeated in a lower voice, glancing to be sure Merlin wasn't paying them attention. "Does he really believe in that?"

Most men believed in the supernatural. Something or someone higher, more powerful, beyond the perceptions, a force that decided. The sons of nobles were born to education and training, governing and fighting, serving and dying, and never questioned it was their destiny to do so. Arthur himself had been destined for his father's throne and crown from the moment of birth. Or before. But for a peasant like Merlin…

"He does," Gaius said.

With such certainty that Arthur couldn't help asking, "Do you?"

"Think of all the events, small trifling details, that led his path to cross yours," the physician said, stern but not without compassion. "And then the chances that made your paths merge, rather than intersecting to separate. It is a possibility worth admitting, that it was all by design."

Arthur shuddered. "Why?" he said. "A sorcerer –"

"Warlock is the proper term for a male born with magic," Gaius remarked inoffensively. Arthur blinked and shook his head.

"Why would destiny bring him here and link him to me?"

"Without him, you would be dead," Gaius reminded him bluntly. "Magic was used to save your life, and more than once, you cannot ignore that."

Then perhaps… he owed a debt larger and more nebulous than simply sparing Merlin from execution. If Destiny had decided that this boy and his magic should be placed at Arthur's side…

He found himself moving back to Merlin's.

Then how dare he repay that gift with this? Trying to wrest it from its vessel – fragile, funny, reckless, strong, irreverent, bright, brave vessel –

Trying to purge it. The same way his father had tried to purge magic from the whole land. And if Destiny had granted it to Merlin, and Merlin to Arthur, then what his father had done with the law, the ban, the executions, was wrong.

And he himself guilty of the same sin.

His thoughts were abruptly interrupted by violent movement from the patient bed. This time, instead of curling up, Merlin's lanky body was splayed awkwardly, arms and stocking-clad feet flung beyond the small cot and brittle with tension. Gaius was faster than Arthur to the bedside, but again didn't touch the boy, just hovered attentively.

Arthur rounded the bed, to see clearly and be out of the physician's way. "Gaius, what –"

"Another seizure, and more severe," the old man said shortly, as tremors rippled through the long skinny limbs, worse and faster and worse til Merlin was shaking and convulsing –

Then his head tipped back and his spine arched tautly and a pained cry punched from his lungs.

Punched Arthur right in the gut. "Do something!" he exclaimed, feeling a bit frantic. "He's in pain!"

"No – that was involuntary, too," Gaius said.

Tendons stood out in Merlin's neck and wrists, his shirt clung clammy to each rib and it was an eternity of agony before he collapsed soundlessly.

Arthur awkwardly bundled Merlin's limp arm in the blanket at his side, straightened his legs. Gaius waited for signs of consciousness, peering in the boy's face – moments passed and the old man's dissatisfaction grew.

"Merlin," Arthur said, swallowing the urge to follow the name of his servant with an order that was also an insult. You idiot, wake up. Please.

Not a flicker of response.

Gaius tapped the boy's cheek and said more insistently, "Merlin!" Not so much as a flutter of eyelashes.

The physician took Merlin's hand, seemed to pinch one of his bluish fingertips. Then reached to try the same on Merlin's earlobe, leaving red but useless marks.

"Gaius?" Arthur said uncertainly.

The old man half-stood, leaning on his fist over Merlin's heart to grind his knuckles on the breastbone – Arthur winced, thinking, that'll leave a bruise – then Gaius collapsed with a strange choked cry.

"He is beyond my ability to revive him."

Arthur stared at the tear that found a groove in the old man's cheek to slide down, silent and secret and appalling. Never had he seen that, before. Turning suddenly to kneel on the bedside, Arthur gripped Merlin's shoulders to shake him – and this time, the orders and insults spilled out.

"Merlin, wake up, you lazy fool, there's work to be done," he growled, fear splintering through his chest, as Gaius tugged at the blanket trapped under his knee. "Things that need doing – important things – and you're here lying abed like an idiot –"

Brave idiot.

"Arthur!" Gaius said, in a completely different tone – one of surprise.

He looked down to see the old man shove the stool back from the bedside. His hands weren't even touching the blanket, which seemed to be tugging itself.

Stepping back so quickly it was almost a hop, Arthur watched in astonishment as the thin gray blanket rippled, rose – then folded itself to sail to a cupboard against the wall.

Which opened to receive it upon one of its shelves, then closed again.

Arthur looked at Gaius, who appeared just as bewildered as he, before glancing at the unconscious boy between them. Arthur said, "What was –"

Then jumped, as Merlin's boots leaped up from the floor to fit themselves gently onto his feet, one after the other. On the table, dishes clattered and shifted. In the corner, shards of glass twinkled and spun, up from a refuse bucket, to drop into the pile of dust just below – which the twig broom immediately began to brush across the floor, spreading it out.

"What is going on?" Arthur called to Gaius, who watched the commotion with a bit more calculation than astonishment.

"I believe –"

The broom with its mess reached the work-table, and the glass shards leaped up, merging into a unbroken dose-bottle that wobbled on the edge before scooting itself back safely. Arthur felt his mouth go dry and his throat tighten inexplicably; there was beauty in the ease and the usefulness of the incident.

"I believe his magic is trying to effect a reversal, of sorts," Gaius finished in a softer, almost awed tone. One by one, the candles began to go out, and Arthur managed to snatch one and relight it before its neighbors flickered out. "Just stand still," Gaius advised, providing the example. "I don't think we'll be in any danger."

A single candle was not illumination enough for the whole room; in the dim reaches, Arthur heard furniture shift, cabinet doors open and close.

"How is he doing this when he's unconscious?" Arthur demanded.

"I cannot answer that." Gaius, for his part, was watching Merlin with a look Arthur might have mistaken for fascination. "But I can hope…"

"For what?" Arthur demanded.

But the old man didn't answer.

The clattering, scraping, clinking sounds slowed after a while, and finally stilled. Arthur wondered briefly, belatedly, if the door was locked, then dared to light a few more candles. He dragged Gaius' desk-chair to the bedside, wordlessly offering to exchange it for the stool, in the interests of the old man's comfort.

Then dropped to the stool, opposite, elbows on knees, to rub his face in his hands. Gaius checked Merlin's pulse and breathing.

"I can do nothing else for him," Gaius repeated quietly. "There is nothing left to do but to wait, and to watch."

Hell night.

More than once, Gaius dozed off. Probably Arthur did as well, even uncomfortably hunched over his knees on the stool, before getting up to pace and stretch and get them both a drink of water, ignoring Gaius' offer of Merlin's bed and promise of immediate notification of change.

More than once, his heart stuttered to a stop, sure that Merlin had drifted away and was gone, only to watch his thin chest rise minimally once more. Once more.

How had he ever believed Merlin's life was his to judge? How had he dared to experiment in such ignorance?

Arthur's eyes burned. This time tomorrow we'll know… one way or the other.

"I'm sorry, Merlin," he whispered, barely audible over Gaius' slow soft snores.

That show of magic, orderly and controlled and clearly not of Merlin's conscious doing made it obvious that there was more at work than one skinny sorcerer and one ignorant prince making choices. He hadn't thought there was anything above the law – maybe the king who made it, on rare and careful occasion – but he'd been wrong about that, too. Right and wrong transcended legal and illegal. And destiny.

Arthur added silently – to neither of his companions, but he felt that he was heard anyway – I am sorry.

So tell me when my sigh's over

You're the reason why I'm closed

Tell me when you hear me falling

There's a possibility it wouldn't show

Merlin.

He listened, trying to determine who it was that said his name, in the golden maelstrom of magic that was neither threatening nor frightening.

It sounded like his mother, sweetly amused that she was calling him to wake for the second time. Then Gaius, less patient, less tolerant of delay or neglect of duty. Then the dragon, commanding and powerful.

Merlin.

It was Gwen, he decided. Admiring and scolding both. No, not quite – an unfamiliar female, whispering. Girl, or grandmother, or –

Merlin!
That was Arthur. Not enraged at one of Merlin's many short-comings, but desperate.

It frightened him – Arthur feared nothing, needed nothing – he struggled to respond. Coming, sire! Coming…

Your gift was given to you for a reason. Without you, Arthur will never succeed… there will be no Albion. None of us can choose our destiny, and none of us can escape it… You cannot do this alone…

"I'm sorry."

The whisper brushed his heart, teased his eyelids open. A blur of candlelight – of dawn? – made a halo of the prince's golden hair. Or was it only mussed?

"I didn't understand… But, please. If I could have a second chance – if he could have a second chance –"

Arthur's voice caught in a way that sent a sympathetic pang through Merlin's chest. It set him gasping, and Arthur's head snapped up, abrupt and surprised.

"Sorry," Merlin choked instinctively, though he couldn't have said what for. "Sorry?"

"Merlin, you're –" Arthur's grin lit his face and he let out a single hard laugh. "You're awake! And back! How do you feel? You're going to be all right?"

How did he feel? He could see, and he could breathe and that was an improvement, at least.

"M'wake," he grumbled, casting his eyes around to discover that he lay in the main chamber of the physician's quarters, and that he could see even the smallest items at the far end as clearly as ever he could before. "Didn't know I went anywhere. Feel like you've been making me train all week."

Arthur's mood was undiminished by Merlin's, but his next question was considerably more hesitant. "And – your magic?"

Again, Merlin gasped air so quickly he choked on it, fear spiking.

"My magic," he repeated, trying to sink further into the patient bed.

Then memory rippled cool over that pain – he was outside the council chamber, separate from the roomful of men who could damn him literally. Followed only by his guardian – guarding his prince successfully through another fight – only to follow him into a battle more subtle and deadly than either of them had anticipated.

"Did the potion work?" Arthur said, more slowly. "Or do you still have it to use?"

Merlin stared into the clear blue of the prince's eyes, feeling like the mouse dangled to Valiant's snakes. He could not tell which option Arthur would prefer. He could not tell what he should answer, except…

The fact that you ever had magic stays between us, you have my word.

I'm sorry.

Second chance…

The smile stretched his mouth all on its own; he felt the warmth and glow – a bit like triumph – he felt Gaius' wakening on his other side and the old man's gaze on his face, wary and hopeful, waiting also for the answer.

"Oh, yeah, it's there."

He endured Gaius' thumbing his eyelids and prodding his wrists and couldn't stop grinning, even though he was tired and didn't know quite what to expect from Arthur.

Then he realized, "I'm hungry," trying to remember his last meal, and failing.

Gaius began, "I can just get you some –"

Arthur interrupted the old man. "Gaius, send someone to the kitchens, have them bring my breakfast here – and enough for two more."

"I will, sire." Gaius leaned down to touch Merlin's shoulder. "Again, you amaze me," he sighed, then the eyebrow quirked. "I wish you won't make that a habit." Merlin snuggled into the blanket and bed, weak but weary, as the old man turned and left him alone in the room with the prince.

"What now?" he said.

"I did promise, no further punishment, didn't I," Arthur mused, mostly serious. "I suppose, if destiny gave you magic for a reason and brought you to us…" He hesitated and Merlin heard what he hadn't said, to me. "I will have to… take you as you are."

"And be damn grateful, too," Merlin whispered.

Arthur huffed, but conceded, "And be damn grateful, too." After a moment of Merlin shuffling, trying but without any real energy to find a more comfortable position, the prince added, "What about you?"

"What about me?"

"Are you going to stay?"

The question dropped into a sudden gulf of possibilities between them. Prince and sorcerer, noble and peasant, magic and… just two boys, trying to figure each other out.

Merlin joked, "As much trouble as you seem determined to get into, someone's got to save your royal backside."

Arthur jabbed a warning finger into his face, then reconsidered. "I suppose… if you're going to protect me… I will protect you, too. To the best of my ability."

To Merlin's ears, it sounded quite like a new knight's first solemn vow; the chasm was no more than a ripple in the dust, easily crossed. He hummed contentedly. "If it doesn't change anything for you, it doesn't change anything for me. And I still need a job."

And a good reason to shadow Camelot's heir almost everywhere.

The prince barked out another laugh. "And I need a servant, my chambers still have not been cleaned –"

Merlin allowed a whimper of protest, as his eyes dropped shut of their own accord. "What are my chances of getting today off? At least this morning?"

"It's a possibility," Arthur allowed. Merlin could easily picture the smirk that accompanied that tone, but the brief ruffle of his hair took him by surprise. "However remote."

Merlin heard the truth in his prince's words. The apology, the gratitude, the care and concern. The beginning of understanding.

"Thank you, my lord," he yawned.

It was the morning of a new day, and it was enough.

By blood and by me, and I'll fall when you leave

By blood and by me, I follow your lead

A/N: Thank you so much for everyone who favorited/followed and especially reviewed! Even if I didn't get back to you in a PM, I really appreciated all the comments!

Fyi, if anyone is interested, Merlin's symptoms mimic those of an opioid overdose, only spaced over a whole day. Just because I didn't want to choose symptoms at random.

And, lyrics to "Possibility" by Lykke Li.