Chapter Text
Again? Really? As much as Arthur loved the thrill of a good battle, killing people wasn’t something he was proud of. Already he had killed two people this very day and that could have been so easily three had the third guy not decided to run away. Now looking at about a dozen men running towards them with swords drawn, Arthur couldn’t help but wonder if this hunting trip was cursed.
Shrugging off his reluctance, Arthur rushed in to meet the intruders before they came near enough to spook the horses. Soon, he was lost in the battle with adrenaline pumping through him and every burn of his muscle due to exertion only spurring him on.
After it was all over, he sighed, he had killed two men. But now was not the time to lament. Arthur turned around searching for his incompetent servant. He had a habit of getting into trouble where there wasn’t any.
Arthur spotted him only for his heart to stop. Merlin was smiling fondly at him for some ungodly reason and there was a bandit behind him who was swinging the pommel for his sword towards his head. Arthur saw the moment Merlin realized someone was behind him, but Gods, it was too late.
The pommel smashed against his head. HARD. There were some shouts of ‘Merlin’. His eyes fell shut even before his body started slumping. The bandit took hold of merlin with one arm around his chest and shoulder and the other holding his sword to Merlin’s throat.
“That won’t do you any good. All your… comrades are dead.” The bandit pushed his sword harder against merlin at Arthur’s words. Arthur's heart was working double time by this point. He wasn’t sure how he was forming any coherent thoughts with all the red he was seeing.
“You don’t want to hurt him. Just let him go and walk away.” It was Elyan’s calm and commanding voice that spoke. If Arthur had it in him, he would have been jealous at how Elyan could calm himself when it was needed, just like his sister.
The bandit seemed to weigh his options, all the while tightening his hold and sword on Merlin.
A moment passed and Arthur opened his mouth to threaten this time, but the bandit let go of Merlin right then and ran in the opposite direction. Merlin fell like a puppet with its strings cut.
Arthur rushed to Merlin. Less than a moment later all the knights were surrounding Merlin with Arthur and Gwaine on their knees, on both sides of Merlin. Arthur put his arm around merlin’s shoulder and lifted his head onto his lap, checking how bad the hit was. He could see his chest moving steadily even before he got to check for about checking his pulse, also strong and steady. Though the wound was not bleeding anymore, Merlin’s scalp, the area behind his ear and nape was coated in blood. The dark red giving a stark contrast to how white Merlin had gotten. The sight was doing nothing to subdue Arthur’s panic. Arthur tightened his grip on merlin.
"Is this blood?" Arthur murmured, feeling some wetness on his fingers that were around Merlin's shoulder.
"Are those bandages?" Gwaine said at the same time, pointing at the white cloth peeking from underneath Merlin's tunic.
Arthur lifted Merlin's tunic to check. To his horror, he discovered his whole abdomen covered in bandages, while Merlin lay limp is his arms. And it didn’t stop! Arthur kept lifting his tunic and kept seeing white instead of Merlin’s pale, unblemished skin.
“Help me get this off.” He said to Gwaine. Together they managed to get Merlin’s tunic off of him.
Arthur didn’t understand. Merlin had a set of bandages, one wrapping his stomach and the other covering his chest diagonally, going over his right shoulder and under his left. His covered shoulder was sporting a very big and slowly becoming a bigger spot of red. But when? How? who? He didn’t know how old these injuries were but they couldn’t be that old seeing how easily one of them started bleeding.
“We need to stop that bleeding.” Percival seemingly being the first one to snap out of the unlikeliness of the situation. He looked like he was blaming himself. Arthur understood the feeling very well. How did they let this happen.
“His head needs to be dressed too,” Leon said, his voice thick with emotion. Leon. The one night who puts propriety as his priority. But then he was also the only one who knew Merlin as long as Arthur did.
“His neck could get infected if not treated properly…” Elyan said, inching towards Merlin’s horse, probably for the medical bag. Arthur then realized that Merlin being unconscious also meant that the physician of the group was unavailable. Although every one of the knights knew how to deal with Merlin’s un-bandaged injuries, nobody had treated a wound in years because Merlin was always there, following them into any quest any battle or hunting trip Arthur took fancy to.
“Should we cut his bandages?” Gwaine said seeming to come to the same realization.
“No!” Lancelot said a little panicked. Arthur looked up to him, frowning. “Um… we don’t know the nature of his injuries underneath. We might make it worse by cutting them off.” He continued.
“He’s bleeding through his bandages, opening them would be helping, at least the shoulder,” Gwaine argued.
“yes. But, maybe we should just app- “
Percival interrupted, “Try rousing him. We can just ask him.”
Arthur tapped merlin’s cheek,” Merlin. Merlin?” nothing. Well, Arthur wasn’t giving up that easy. He nearly slapped Merlin this time,” MERLIN!”
Merlin’s eyes snapped open. “I’m not late.” He mumbled. His gaze was unfocused. And he was squinting as if he was trying to focus his sight on something. “What happened? Where are we?” he tried sitting up but Arthur held him down firmly.
“Hey, Merlin. Look at me. How are you feeling?”
“I’m seeing three of you so I guess that’s a concussion.” Merlin brought his hand up to his hair, searching, and hissed when his fingers made contact with the bump on his head. Then his hand travelled lower, searching for more injuries. Upon coming to his neck wound, he said,” Was I held at sword point?”
He was- he was diagnosing himself, with practised ease, while disoriented and concussed, with no memory of how he got there at Arthur’s simple question of ‘how are you feeling’. A shiver ran up his spine. How often did Merlin find himself in situations like these for him to be at such ease with his current predicament?
Merlin’s hand travelled lower and he stiffened,” Where’s my shirt?” he mumbled, panic hinting at his voice. Really this is what he was going to panic about? His shirt? His hand travelled lower and he relaxed when it touched the bandages. He continued his self-diagnosing through the white cloth his hands stopping twice: once at his bleeding shoulder and the other at his right waist. But he didn’t say anything about them.
Once his hand dropped, his eyes started drooping.
“Hey, what are you doing?” Arthur asked knowing perfectly well what he was doing.
“Sleepy…”
“Is that a good idea?”
Merlin forced his eyes open. “No, no sleeping for recently concussed patients.” He recited.
“that’s what I thought.” Arthur murmured, helping merlin sit up with his back against a tree. “Now you are going to stay awake, you hear me?” he said in a stern tone.
“You can’t order me to stay awake, you clo’pole.” He slurred.
“Yeah? Watch me.”
Merlin smiled lopsidedly. Any other time Arthur would have continued with some threat about the stocks or maybe even the dungeons, but Merlin was still looking very out of it and the image of him covered in bandages and bleeding, shut him up.
“Come on, we need to change your bandages.” He said when merlin started drifting again.
His head shot up. though he seemed to regret the fast moment immediately. “No, we don’t.”
“Merlin you are bleeding through your bandages,” Arthur said a bit annoyed.
“Yes, but I’m the physician and I say I don’t need my bandages changed.” For God’s sake. He sounded so pleased with himself for coming up with that.
It was kind of ridiculous, the way he was trying to take control of the situation with slurred speech and an addled brain.
“You are not a physician, Merlin. You are barely an apprentice.” Though Arthur knew that it wasn’t true.
“Arthur,” he said in a tone that implied that Arthur was the one with the addled brain,” Gaius upgraded me to a physician five years ago.”
“Huh.” That long ago?
“you are so oblivious.” He snorted and then instantly his hand shot to his waist.
“Don’t test me. Hurt or not, I will hit you.” Arthur said trying to distract him from what he now suspected was bruised ribs.
“Okay, guys, not the point. Let’s just wait till he gets out of this delirious state then we can change his bandages.” Lancelot said.
“You’re a good friend, Lance,” Merlin said, his head swaying.
“We don’t know how long that will take,” Arthur said, eyeing the spot of red worriedly.
“you’re not a good friend, Arthur”
“Shut up, Merlin. Look at him! He’s not coming back anytime soon.” Arthur said properly annoyed now. He knew Merlin and Lancelot had this thing, where they agreed about everything, but this was getting ridiculous. “Merlin, how did you end up with these injuries?”
“Bandi’s”
Of course, the idiot thought he was talking about his head. “No, I’m asking about your shoulder and your bruised ribs,” Arthur said patiently.
“Cracke’”
“What?”
“My ribs. They’re cracke’ no’ bruise’.”
Why the actual hell did this buffoon agree to come to a hunting trip with cracked ribs?!
“Who did this to you, Merlin?” Arthur’s voice was shaking with anger. He wasn’t sure who it was directed at; the inflictor, Merlin or himself for not noticing. Merlin had looked so peaceful at the start of the journey. There was no sign of pain on his face. He was practically beaming as bright as the spring sun, with his eyes closed. Arthur had seen that content smile on him, the smile that rarely graced his face these days, and known that dragging his grumbling servant had been the right thing to do.
“Bandi’s”
Arthur’s jaw clenched. He wanted to punch something, preferably someone.
“Again-“
“Sire,” Lancelot interrupted. Arthur looked up to find a very guilty looking Lancelot, who continued,” I think he means the bandits from earlier.”
“you knew he was hurt,” Arthur said before he even processed what Lancelot meant.
“No,” he said like he wanted to say the opposite. “I knew something was off, with his horse acting up and then the wine, but I didn’t know what.”
He had taken the wine to clean his wound then. Gods, he hadn’t even considered that, even remotely. Merlin had practically run from them when they took the break for the horses with a change of clothes, and Arthur had just written it off as Merlin’s weirdly small bladder. He had gone to the stream to patch himself up. but why? Why hide this?
He inched his hand closer to the knot that tied off the bandages on his chest and suddenly Merlin had his wrist in a surprisingly strong grip.
“If you really want to play nurse so much, how abou’ you dress my head woun’ firs’, huh?” Merlin's voice had its usual teasing tone with the obvious tiredness to it, but there was something more, something desperate. Arthur didn’t understand. It was like he was missing something and by the look on the faces of the rest of the knights, they heard it too.
Arthur just went with it. He barked orders for the knights to fetch the waterskin and medical bag. It was quite an embarrassing ordeal, all of them fumbled through it and took longer than necessary to patch his head up, haphazardly. By the end of it, Merlin was half unconscious and smiling dopily as if he knew exactly what was going on.
Arthur didn’t hesitate this time. Pulling out the dagger from his boot and cut open the bandages on his chest. There was a sound of protest from behind him, Lancelot, but he pointedly ignored him and so did the rest of the knights.
Putting the bandages aside Arthur’s eyes went straight to Merlin’s shoulder. The only explanation Arthur could come up for merlin’s reluctance was that he didn’t want to be seen. Arthur could respect that, even if he thought it was stupid in the current situation.
The hand with the waterskin paused at the sight in front of him. Merlin had done a good job at stitching himself especially given the angle and the fact that he must have done it with his left hand. But that’s not why he had paused, the way the stitches were ripped open, it looked …painful. Yeah, that was one word for it.
He was about to begin when he heard several gasps. He looked up to see all of the knights staring at Merlin’s chest. Arthur tried, he really did, to just ignore them and get to work, but the look on their faces Had him looking too. They looked horrified and awed and disturbed all at the same time. And when Arthur’s eyes reached merlin’s chest he realized why.
Right in the middle of his chest was a large, perfectly circular burn mark. Its diameter covering the whole of his sternum, starting from the hollow of his neck. The skin was a light pink and smooth like a baby’s, with only the edges of it looking like a naturally old burn mark. Looking at it, Arthur felt a phantom pain on his left shoulder, the kind he only got in the dead of winter or when he was extremely stressed and/or tired. He rolled his shoulder absently and Merlin followed his moment sharply, his eyes wide with panic but still not terribly focused.
Merlin lifted his hand to covers it but then sighed, winced and dropped his hand. That was enough to spur him into action. The questions can come later, right now merlin needed them.
0==[]===========>
After Arthur had cleaned the wound with nothing but water, Elyan followed his lead and quietly took over the stitches. They covered the stitches then took a detour to the nearest village, with Arthur, Merlin and Gwaine on foot and the rest taking the horses ahead to alert a local Healer. Merlin, the idiot had insisted that he had no problem in riding the horse all the way back to Camelot to get treated by Gaius. But Arthur’s face to those words had promptly shut him up. they walked slowly and steadily towards the village in silence only filled with chatter when merlin seemed to drift. Merlin had gone very pale and Arthur felt that somehow it was only partly because of the injuries. Needless to say, it was well after dusk when the trio arrived at the village.
Leon and Lancelot were waiting at the border of the village to lead them to the healer’s house. Percival and Elyan were already waiting at the healer’s workshop. The healer, Jorden, promptly begun to introducing himself and letting Arthur know what an honour it was to be in the presence of the king while completely ignoring the Merin, who was finally looking quite lucid was still leaning very heavily on Gwaine.
Arthur had to order the bootlicker to stop wasting time and check on merlin. It was only when all the bandages fell away from a very resigned looking manservant did Arthur regret not wasting more time.