Fic: Hope Yet Lingered

[jade_dragoness]

Title: Hope Yet Lingered
Author: J.D. aka jade_dragoness
Rating: PG
Pairing: Arthur/Merlin
Summary: This is how Arthur got the Mortaeus flower back in his possession.
Warning: Spoilers for ‘The Poison Chalice‘.
Word Count: 593
Disclaimer: Never ever will be mine. *sadness*
A/N: One of the first things I ever wrote in the fandom to try to get a grip on Arthur's voice.
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Arthur strained for the Mortaeus flower. The bars of the cell blocked his shoulders and he could barely graze the plant with his fingertips. He grunted with effort as he pressed himself even tighter against the bars. But no matter how hard he tried, he couldn’t get close enough.

He pulled back, dropped his head and in a violent motion pounded the straw-strewn floor with a fist.

He breathed hard. Frustration, anger and despair mixing inside him. It couldn’t end this way. After all the effort to get the flower. After falling into Merlin’s debt again. He couldn’t just let him lose his life, not when Merlin’s actions had saved his own life. Yet again.

Arthur just couldn’t lose him.

He would have screamed his frustration if there weren’t guards posted a few feet away. It took all his instilled self-control not to throw a royal tantrum of the likes he hadn’t had since he was still a decade of age.

That’s when an idea struck him.

He stood, narrowed his eyes and radiated as much royal authority as he could muster.

“Guards,” he intoned coldly. He could hear an uneasy shift from them.

Finally, one of them answered, “Yes, your highness.”

The nervousness in his voice made Arthur grin fiercely. Usually, the realization that he made his subjects nervous or scared of him made him uncomfortable. But this time? It was exactly the sort of advantage that he needed.

He smoothed his grin away, making his expression even colder. He tried to mimic, from memory, the sort of face his father would have at his angriest. The guard who finally came close enough to see it broke out into sweat. Arthur stared at him, letting his eyes bore into him until the guard broke and dropped his eyes.

Good.

“You will hand me that plant.”

The guard startled and licked his lips in nervousness, “The King said-”

“The King, my father-” Arthur interrupted. “Ordered you to guard me and keep away any visitors. No other orders.”

The guard opened his mouth to protest, his dark eyes looked wide. Near the entrance to the dungeons by the stairs, the much larger guard manning the door looked sympathetic and amused.

Arthur shot him a cool look and his expression became blank.

“I will be out of here in a week,” he continued, his voice heavy with threat.

The guard swallowed, and it was clear that the idea of his prince being angry with him and released from his cell was exactly the sort of thing that nightmares were made of. He quickly bent down to the yellow Mortaeus flower, picked it up and passed it onto Arthur’s waiting open hand.

Arthur gave him a smile of approval, and dismissed him with an imperious nod.

Happy to have escaped the all too real threat of royal disapproval, the guard bowed and returned to his position.

Arthur didn’t care. All his attention was focused on the gently cradled the flower in his hands. He felt pathetically grateful that the force of his father’s throw hadn’t damaged it, beyond a couple of bruises. It would have been incredibly easy for his father to have chosen to grind it into mulch under his heel.

As long as the Mortaeus plant was intact then there was hope. This was a man’s life in his hands.

This was Merlin’s life in his hands.

Now, to find a way to get it to Merlin and save the life of someone he had grown to care for rather deeply.

End.