Video ( broadcast mind )

[king]

"It is my time."

"No. You can't die."

Your hands are sticky with blood where they press over his wounds, your limbs heavy with the drug the assassin had used. Nothing seems entirely real, when adrenaline wars with this drunkenness, but the weight of your father's body cradled in your arms is the realest thing you've ever experienced.

"I know you will make me proud, as you always have." Your chest constricts at the look on his face, a look you had striven every day of your life to see, words you had spent your whole life aching for. But you didn't want them like this. "You will be... a great king."

"I'm not ready," you say. You are not sure you will ever be ready.

"You- you've been ready for some time, Arthur."

"No. I need you..."

"I know I've not been a- a good father. I put my duty to Camelot first. I'm sorry."

Tears prick your eyes. It is not manly to cry, you know that, but perhaps you can be forgiven the droplets that start to slide down your cheeks. Your breath hitches as though you are the one stabbed. "Don't say that."

He continues, regardless, steel in his gaze even at the end. That unwavering strength you have always aspired to, crumbling slowly. "But know this one thing. I always loved you."

His eyes slowly close.

It is your birthday. Twenty-six years ago your mother died bringing you into this world, and now your father seeks to follow her, as you hold him helplessly on the stone floor of his bedchambers and sob.


—


You always saw your father as a large man, clad in mail, sword in hand. Broad of chest and shoulder, as you are growing to be, straight-backed and firm-jawed. Now he lies in state on the bier, crown and red cloak and fingers clasped over his sword, and his eyes closed, never to open again. The room is huge around you both, and your father, he looks so small.

"I'm sorry," you tell him. For all the mistakes you've made, not the least using sorcery to try to save him, the sorcery he's spent his whole life reviling. You're so angry: at Morgana, at the sorcerer who dared to walk into the king's chambers and snuff out the last of his life, at the assassin, at Gaius who had no natural remedy, at your father for not fighting hard enough, at yourself. Most of all at yourself. "I'm sorry, father."

There is no response.

It's a long night. You cry. You rage. You speak in a low voice of memories: the time he threw you in the dungeons to teach you a lesson you still haven't learned. The time he drugged you and fought an impossible foe himself, so that you wouldn't have to. The clash of your blades in this very throne-room after Morgause's lies about your mother's death. The way your feigned death was the only thing that could break a troll's enchantment over him. The blur of rage that overtook you when he had Guinevere dragged away. And smaller things: you remember him in your room as a child when you were sick and feverish, his cool hand on your forehead. You remember the horse he bought you for your eighteenth name day. The way he looked after you won your first tourney (and your second, tenth, fiftieth... always so proud.)

There is a storm of feelings inside of you, but your father taught you that feelings are no way to rule a kingdom. You will not let anger rule you, because it will in turn rule your kingdom. You will not let grief stop you from taking your rightful place on the throne. These feelings feel endless and engulfing and you will never be able to control them. There is too much darkness. Too much sadness. Too much guilt. You have a duty to your people.

So you leave it behind. You drop a kiss one his forehead below the smooth metal line of his crown, pull the heavy white sheet up and over the body, over the face. You wipe away the tears that have streaked your face, and you leave every emotion you have about your father's death behind, in that huge empty chamber, morning sunlight streaming through the high arch windows.

When you open the doors to the ante-chamber, Merlin is sitting slumped against the wall, away from you, looking like all the things you no longer feel.

"Merlin?"

He turns his head, and you regard each other for a moment. His eyes are very blue. At length, you add: "It is a new day," and he seems to take this as some kind of command, for he nods, stands. "Have you been out here all night?"

"I didn't want you to feel you were alone."

You take your first real breath of the last twenty-four hours, feeling it expand in you, clear and good. "You're a loyal friend, Merlin." A pause. All night. "You must be hungry?"

"Starving."

"Me too. Come on... you can fetch us some breakfast."

You walk up the stairs together, side by side.

Comments

voice;

[unparental]

[ not that jenna knows this guy from adam, but the pain of losing a father is one she's familiar with. ]

I'm so sorry. It's-- it's hard, losing a parent.

voice;

[king]

[ Arthur presses his lips together for a moment before speaking, nodding as he does so. ]

It is. But it's ... inevitable, I suppose.