Arthur and the Pornbats 7/? - From Barndor to the Back Door
~Chapter One~ ~ Chapter Two~ ~Chapter Three~ ~ Chapter Four~ ~Chapter Five~ ~ Chapter Six~
You know the drill. Disclaimer and all that's in Chapter One. Rating's hovering around 14-A, I suppose...thinking movie wise, anyway...
A/N: >:) Hope you like.
The steady beat of their horses’ hooves nearly lulled Merlin to sleep more than once. They had been pushing themselves - and their horses - hard for nearly two days, stopping only when absolutely necessary for food and rest.
Part of the reason for this pace was recovery of lost time - time spent in the bandits’ camp and at the Badgering Shrew. The other part…
Arthur had somehow managed to wall Merlin off from his thoughts, nearly completely. It was almost as though they’d never had this peculiar gift to begin with. Which they hadn’t, really, at least, not in any real sense.
Merlin had always felt connected to Arthur (and though Arthur wouldn’t have admitted it to anyone, he’d always felt connected to Merlin), had always had some sense of what the prince was going to do. It wasn’t something that either acknowledged; it was something that simply was. Until now.
Now…it was like talking to a brick wall. Nothing got in. The closer to Camelot they got, the more withdrawn the prince became. Merlin had a half-formed idea that it was because Arthur was trying to be a good prince and son - good princes and sons, after all, didn’t carry on sordid affairs with their servants. Or did they? It wasn’t as though Merlin knew many princes. Maybe they all carried on sordid affairs with their servants.
Maybe it was something to do with the bites. Maybe the next stage after acute separation anxiety was acute loathing. Merlin really hoped that wasn’t the case. He hadn’t quite made it to the acute separation anxiety stage himself…was that because he was more accepting of this…whatever it was that was between them?
Thoughts like that chased themselves in circles in Merlin’s head, filling up the silence from Arthur’s mind. It certainly didn’t help that absolutely nothing happened on their way back to Camelot from Barndor. The bandits didn’t catch up. Basilisks didn’t appear out of the shrubbery. Nothing even remotely mythic reared its head(s). Rogue sorcerers did not seek revenge for their comrades/family’s deaths at Uther’s hands. It was just the two of them, the pounding hooves, the rushing wind, and the silence in their minds.
Merlin did get an impressive array of blisters on his left buttock, though, but he wasn’t about to count that as ‘eventful’, except that remaining on horseback was not the way to get rid of them.
Some hours after sunset on the second day, they came within sight of the city. Arthur had barely spoken to Merlin in the last hours of their journey, and he didn’t do so now as they slowed their horses to approach the gate.
They went straight to Gaius.
Gaius was asleep. ‘Was’ being the operative word, because when Merlin and Arthur had come crashing through his front door smelling of horse and dirt and waving torches and a leather bag about and babbling of moss and bandits and crazy women in a cave, sleep became the last thing on Gaius’ mind.
“Start again,” Gaius said when it was clear that their story had gotten away from them. And then he frowned, because both the prince and Merlin went red, clamped their mouths shut, and looked at one another.
“Will this help you save Morgana?” Arthur asked first.
Gaius looked down at the bag full of Ivegoth Erpes moss and back up at Arthur and Merlin.
“I don’t know how to tell you this,” Gaius began, but stopped as shock and sudden grief broke across their features in tandem. Merlin reached forward, as though to take Arthur’s hand. Arthur looked back at him, and Merlin hesitated. And then he nodded. And then he made a face and cocked his head to the side. Arthur shrugged and turned away, and Merlin raised one eyebrow.
“When? Was it peaceful?” Merlin asked finally, ignoring Gaius’ questioning looks.
“It was messy,” Gaius said began.
Merlin moaned. “I’m sorry, Gaius,” he said. “We were too late. If we hadn’t lingered at that Inn…” he trailed off under the vicious glare that Arthur was giving him.
“We couldn’t have done her any good in the state we were in, Merlin,” Arthur said forcefully, and as something meant to assuage guilt, it clearly wasn’t doing its job. Merlin looked on the verge of tears. So did Arthur, for all of that.
“Can we see her?” Merlin asked.
Gaius frowned. “At this time of night?”
“You’re right, we should bathe first,” Arthur said. “We’ve had a hard ride. It would be…respectful.”
“She didn’t suffer, though, did she?” Merlin asked. “I mean, you said it was messy, but…”
“Hold up,” Gaius said. “What are you talking about? I was trying to tell you: it turned out that Morgana suffered only from interaction with the poison ivy plant. I cured it with a paste of mint leaves and salve. Not what I usually would have used, because it’s messy, but it got the job done.”
Merlin stared. Arthur stared.
“…What?” they asked in tandem, Gaius’ words reaching them through the fog of their fatigue.
“Morgana’s fine,” Gaius said. “I cured her.”
“But…you said…Sir Peredur…” Merlin said. “He had the same symptoms…”
Gaius said nothing. And then Arthur’s face changed, and he turned slowly to look at Merlin.
“I don’t get it,” Merlin said.
Arthur raised an eyebrow, and Gaius did his level best not to crack up.
Merlin’s eyes grew very wide.
“Oh. Oh.” He blushed to the tops of his ears.
“I’m going to kill her,” Arthur promised. “And Sir Peredur. Right after I sleep. Gaius, I trust you can use this moss in your pursuit of your life’s work,” he added, gesturing to the leather bag full of moss. “Fresh from the Caves of Yargh.”
Gaius nodded, and looked in the leather bag. “Of course,” he said. “But how did you get so much? It is said the Guardians of the Caves don’t let even a small amount pass the entrance without exacting a heavy price…” he stopped, and looked up at them. “What price did you pay?” he demanded, fixing them with a wiggly-browed glare of death.
Arthur and Merlin squirmed. “They didn’t really specify,” Merlin said, and flinched when Gaius opened his mouth to start reaming him out.
“I said I’d pay it wholeheartedly, if by doing so I would save Morgana,” Arthur interjected before Merlin would catch it for Arthur’s sake. “Of course, I didn’t know that you had already cured her.” He shrugged uncomfortably.
Gaius looked worried, and then sighed. “You weren’t to know. But be glad the price wasn’t your life, or Merlin’s. The Pornbats of Yargh rarely let interlopers escape. Their bite is said to be deadly - often it incites chaos and madness in its victim until…why have you both gone so pale?”
Arthur and Merlin shared another one of those damned looks, and then - wordlessly - they pulled back their sleeves.
The scars were nearly invisible, but Gaius saw them all the same. He apparently developed a pressing need to sit down, then, and put his head in his hands. When he spoke, his voice came quickly, sharply. “Have there been any side effects?”
Merlin looked about to speak, and then stopped. He looked to Arthur. Arthur sighed. “We can hear each other’s thoughts,” the prince said.
Gaius said nothing for a long beat, and then, “And?”
“Well…” Merlin began again, and again he stopped. Arthur hadn’t even turned around this time, but Gaius was fairly certain that he’d said something in his thoughts to cause Merlin to be silent.
“Tell us everything you know about these…Pornbats,” Arthur demanded instead.
Gaius sighed again. “Not much is known about them. They hold the Caves of Yargh as their own. Some say they can turn from women to bat at will. Some say they control bats themselves. Either way, they are not human and their bite carries deadly venom. No one has ever been known to survive it, let alone for as long as you must have to get back here.”
Gaius rose from his seat and went to fetch a book from the piles stacked about the room. After some digging, he found the one he was looking for. He brought it back to the table.
“What does it say?” Merlin asked when Gaius opened the book and scanned the passage with his magnifying glass. Gaius’ eyes widened slightly, and then he looked up at Merlin and Arthur.
“That those who resist the madness are eventually consumed by it. And it is a madness of lust and desire for whomsoever the victim counts as his or her greatest friend.”
“Oh. Really?” Merlin asked, striving for innocence and not making it. Arthur was very carefully not looking at Merlin, so carefully that it was painfully obvious that he was very carefully not looking at Merlin.
Gaius resisted the urge to slam his head into the table in frustration, but only just.
“How long does the madness last?” Arthur finally asked.
“It doesn’t say,” Gaius replied. “All of the known victims - save you, it seems - have gone completely insane, to the point of self-destruction, within a few days of being bitten.”
“Because they gave in or because they didn’t?” Arthur asked, face and voice remarkably void of expression.
Gaius shrugged. “There’s no way to say for sure. Do you find the symptoms lessen in each other’s presence?”
“They’re…tolerable,” Arthur said. Which was not what Merlin had been about to say, but Merlin could give away a secret by breathing, and Arthur did not want Gaius to find out about The Adventures of Arty and Marilyn at the Inn of the Badgering Shrew.
“And if you’re apart?”
“The bites itch,” Merlin said.
“And I have…panic attacks,” Arthur said, sounding as though the words were being pulled past his teeth. He hated admitting weakness of any sort. “Look…this isn’t something we have to tell Father about, is it? Not yet? It’s not endangering the kingdom…”
“But it is endangering you,” Gaius said. He sighed again. “I will try to find a cure using the moss that you’ve brought me, but in the mean while you must be careful. If the symptoms were to come upon you in public…Arthur, even you cannot take your servant everywhere with you.”
Twenty minutes later, it was going on three in the morning. Merlin carried Arthur’s bags to his room and dumped them unceremoniously on the floor.
“Are you really going to kill Morgana?” Merlin asked, dusting his hands off. His arms and legs trembled with fatigue, and he yearned for his bed. More accurately, he yearned for Arthur’s bed, but now that they were back in Camelot that was impossible.
“I’m certainly going to try,” Arthur said, flopping over onto his bed and kicking his boots off. Merlin moved to help. “Go to bed, Merlin,” Arthur added. “We’ve had a long ride.”
Merlin shrugged and continued to help his prince undress for the night.
“Do you think Gaius was right about the chaos and madness?” Merlin asked.
Arthur grunted. “He usually is, isn’t he?”
“Then how come we haven’t gone…mad?”
“The gods like us?” Arthur ventured. This earned a shake of the head.
“I think it’s more than that,” Merlin said.
“What, like destiny?” Arthur scoffed.
“Something like that,” Merlin replied. “The…Pornbats did say that they merely opened doors that were already there.”
“Merlin…if this doesn’t wear off…”
“It will. Or Gaius will find the cure. Whether we want it to or not.”
Arthur grunted. Undressed as much as he felt like being, he hauled the covers over top of himself, and grunted when Merlin smoothed them down for him, and set about picking up his clothes.
“Go to bed, Merlin,” he murmured.
“I will, I will.”
“Now, Merlin.”
Merlin smiled in spite of himself, and headed for the door.
If Gaius finds the cure, he added silently, I will miss this.
He turned to go when it seemed that Arthur wasn’t going to answer, either aloud or in thought.
Merlin, Arthur began hesitantly. That separation-induced panic was flickering around the inside of Arthur’s mind, not truly strong enough that denial of it would cause him great pain, but strong enough to remind him of the one time that it had.
Merlin turned.
Stay.
Merlin stayed.
A/N: Good still? Lemmie know...
You know the drill. Disclaimer and all that's in Chapter One. Rating's hovering around 14-A, I suppose...thinking movie wise, anyway...
A/N: >:) Hope you like.
The steady beat of their horses’ hooves nearly lulled Merlin to sleep more than once. They had been pushing themselves - and their horses - hard for nearly two days, stopping only when absolutely necessary for food and rest.
Part of the reason for this pace was recovery of lost time - time spent in the bandits’ camp and at the Badgering Shrew. The other part…
Arthur had somehow managed to wall Merlin off from his thoughts, nearly completely. It was almost as though they’d never had this peculiar gift to begin with. Which they hadn’t, really, at least, not in any real sense.
Merlin had always felt connected to Arthur (and though Arthur wouldn’t have admitted it to anyone, he’d always felt connected to Merlin), had always had some sense of what the prince was going to do. It wasn’t something that either acknowledged; it was something that simply was. Until now.
Now…it was like talking to a brick wall. Nothing got in. The closer to Camelot they got, the more withdrawn the prince became. Merlin had a half-formed idea that it was because Arthur was trying to be a good prince and son - good princes and sons, after all, didn’t carry on sordid affairs with their servants. Or did they? It wasn’t as though Merlin knew many princes. Maybe they all carried on sordid affairs with their servants.
Maybe it was something to do with the bites. Maybe the next stage after acute separation anxiety was acute loathing. Merlin really hoped that wasn’t the case. He hadn’t quite made it to the acute separation anxiety stage himself…was that because he was more accepting of this…whatever it was that was between them?
Thoughts like that chased themselves in circles in Merlin’s head, filling up the silence from Arthur’s mind. It certainly didn’t help that absolutely nothing happened on their way back to Camelot from Barndor. The bandits didn’t catch up. Basilisks didn’t appear out of the shrubbery. Nothing even remotely mythic reared its head(s). Rogue sorcerers did not seek revenge for their comrades/family’s deaths at Uther’s hands. It was just the two of them, the pounding hooves, the rushing wind, and the silence in their minds.
Merlin did get an impressive array of blisters on his left buttock, though, but he wasn’t about to count that as ‘eventful’, except that remaining on horseback was not the way to get rid of them.
Some hours after sunset on the second day, they came within sight of the city. Arthur had barely spoken to Merlin in the last hours of their journey, and he didn’t do so now as they slowed their horses to approach the gate.
They went straight to Gaius.
Gaius was asleep. ‘Was’ being the operative word, because when Merlin and Arthur had come crashing through his front door smelling of horse and dirt and waving torches and a leather bag about and babbling of moss and bandits and crazy women in a cave, sleep became the last thing on Gaius’ mind.
“Start again,” Gaius said when it was clear that their story had gotten away from them. And then he frowned, because both the prince and Merlin went red, clamped their mouths shut, and looked at one another.
“Will this help you save Morgana?” Arthur asked first.
Gaius looked down at the bag full of Ivegoth Erpes moss and back up at Arthur and Merlin.
“I don’t know how to tell you this,” Gaius began, but stopped as shock and sudden grief broke across their features in tandem. Merlin reached forward, as though to take Arthur’s hand. Arthur looked back at him, and Merlin hesitated. And then he nodded. And then he made a face and cocked his head to the side. Arthur shrugged and turned away, and Merlin raised one eyebrow.
“When? Was it peaceful?” Merlin asked finally, ignoring Gaius’ questioning looks.
“It was messy,” Gaius said began.
Merlin moaned. “I’m sorry, Gaius,” he said. “We were too late. If we hadn’t lingered at that Inn…” he trailed off under the vicious glare that Arthur was giving him.
“We couldn’t have done her any good in the state we were in, Merlin,” Arthur said forcefully, and as something meant to assuage guilt, it clearly wasn’t doing its job. Merlin looked on the verge of tears. So did Arthur, for all of that.
“Can we see her?” Merlin asked.
Gaius frowned. “At this time of night?”
“You’re right, we should bathe first,” Arthur said. “We’ve had a hard ride. It would be…respectful.”
“She didn’t suffer, though, did she?” Merlin asked. “I mean, you said it was messy, but…”
“Hold up,” Gaius said. “What are you talking about? I was trying to tell you: it turned out that Morgana suffered only from interaction with the poison ivy plant. I cured it with a paste of mint leaves and salve. Not what I usually would have used, because it’s messy, but it got the job done.”
Merlin stared. Arthur stared.
“…What?” they asked in tandem, Gaius’ words reaching them through the fog of their fatigue.
“Morgana’s fine,” Gaius said. “I cured her.”
“But…you said…Sir Peredur…” Merlin said. “He had the same symptoms…”
Gaius said nothing. And then Arthur’s face changed, and he turned slowly to look at Merlin.
“I don’t get it,” Merlin said.
Arthur raised an eyebrow, and Gaius did his level best not to crack up.
Merlin’s eyes grew very wide.
“Oh. Oh.” He blushed to the tops of his ears.
“I’m going to kill her,” Arthur promised. “And Sir Peredur. Right after I sleep. Gaius, I trust you can use this moss in your pursuit of your life’s work,” he added, gesturing to the leather bag full of moss. “Fresh from the Caves of Yargh.”
Gaius nodded, and looked in the leather bag. “Of course,” he said. “But how did you get so much? It is said the Guardians of the Caves don’t let even a small amount pass the entrance without exacting a heavy price…” he stopped, and looked up at them. “What price did you pay?” he demanded, fixing them with a wiggly-browed glare of death.
Arthur and Merlin squirmed. “They didn’t really specify,” Merlin said, and flinched when Gaius opened his mouth to start reaming him out.
“I said I’d pay it wholeheartedly, if by doing so I would save Morgana,” Arthur interjected before Merlin would catch it for Arthur’s sake. “Of course, I didn’t know that you had already cured her.” He shrugged uncomfortably.
Gaius looked worried, and then sighed. “You weren’t to know. But be glad the price wasn’t your life, or Merlin’s. The Pornbats of Yargh rarely let interlopers escape. Their bite is said to be deadly - often it incites chaos and madness in its victim until…why have you both gone so pale?”
Arthur and Merlin shared another one of those damned looks, and then - wordlessly - they pulled back their sleeves.
The scars were nearly invisible, but Gaius saw them all the same. He apparently developed a pressing need to sit down, then, and put his head in his hands. When he spoke, his voice came quickly, sharply. “Have there been any side effects?”
Merlin looked about to speak, and then stopped. He looked to Arthur. Arthur sighed. “We can hear each other’s thoughts,” the prince said.
Gaius said nothing for a long beat, and then, “And?”
“Well…” Merlin began again, and again he stopped. Arthur hadn’t even turned around this time, but Gaius was fairly certain that he’d said something in his thoughts to cause Merlin to be silent.
“Tell us everything you know about these…Pornbats,” Arthur demanded instead.
Gaius sighed again. “Not much is known about them. They hold the Caves of Yargh as their own. Some say they can turn from women to bat at will. Some say they control bats themselves. Either way, they are not human and their bite carries deadly venom. No one has ever been known to survive it, let alone for as long as you must have to get back here.”
Gaius rose from his seat and went to fetch a book from the piles stacked about the room. After some digging, he found the one he was looking for. He brought it back to the table.
“What does it say?” Merlin asked when Gaius opened the book and scanned the passage with his magnifying glass. Gaius’ eyes widened slightly, and then he looked up at Merlin and Arthur.
“That those who resist the madness are eventually consumed by it. And it is a madness of lust and desire for whomsoever the victim counts as his or her greatest friend.”
“Oh. Really?” Merlin asked, striving for innocence and not making it. Arthur was very carefully not looking at Merlin, so carefully that it was painfully obvious that he was very carefully not looking at Merlin.
Gaius resisted the urge to slam his head into the table in frustration, but only just.
“How long does the madness last?” Arthur finally asked.
“It doesn’t say,” Gaius replied. “All of the known victims - save you, it seems - have gone completely insane, to the point of self-destruction, within a few days of being bitten.”
“Because they gave in or because they didn’t?” Arthur asked, face and voice remarkably void of expression.
Gaius shrugged. “There’s no way to say for sure. Do you find the symptoms lessen in each other’s presence?”
“They’re…tolerable,” Arthur said. Which was not what Merlin had been about to say, but Merlin could give away a secret by breathing, and Arthur did not want Gaius to find out about The Adventures of Arty and Marilyn at the Inn of the Badgering Shrew.
“And if you’re apart?”
“The bites itch,” Merlin said.
“And I have…panic attacks,” Arthur said, sounding as though the words were being pulled past his teeth. He hated admitting weakness of any sort. “Look…this isn’t something we have to tell Father about, is it? Not yet? It’s not endangering the kingdom…”
“But it is endangering you,” Gaius said. He sighed again. “I will try to find a cure using the moss that you’ve brought me, but in the mean while you must be careful. If the symptoms were to come upon you in public…Arthur, even you cannot take your servant everywhere with you.”
Twenty minutes later, it was going on three in the morning. Merlin carried Arthur’s bags to his room and dumped them unceremoniously on the floor.
“Are you really going to kill Morgana?” Merlin asked, dusting his hands off. His arms and legs trembled with fatigue, and he yearned for his bed. More accurately, he yearned for Arthur’s bed, but now that they were back in Camelot that was impossible.
“I’m certainly going to try,” Arthur said, flopping over onto his bed and kicking his boots off. Merlin moved to help. “Go to bed, Merlin,” Arthur added. “We’ve had a long ride.”
Merlin shrugged and continued to help his prince undress for the night.
“Do you think Gaius was right about the chaos and madness?” Merlin asked.
Arthur grunted. “He usually is, isn’t he?”
“Then how come we haven’t gone…mad?”
“The gods like us?” Arthur ventured. This earned a shake of the head.
“I think it’s more than that,” Merlin said.
“What, like destiny?” Arthur scoffed.
“Something like that,” Merlin replied. “The…Pornbats did say that they merely opened doors that were already there.”
“Merlin…if this doesn’t wear off…”
“It will. Or Gaius will find the cure. Whether we want it to or not.”
Arthur grunted. Undressed as much as he felt like being, he hauled the covers over top of himself, and grunted when Merlin smoothed them down for him, and set about picking up his clothes.
“Go to bed, Merlin,” he murmured.
“I will, I will.”
“Now, Merlin.”
Merlin smiled in spite of himself, and headed for the door.
If Gaius finds the cure, he added silently, I will miss this.
He turned to go when it seemed that Arthur wasn’t going to answer, either aloud or in thought.
Merlin, Arthur began hesitantly. That separation-induced panic was flickering around the inside of Arthur’s mind, not truly strong enough that denial of it would cause him great pain, but strong enough to remind him of the one time that it had.
Merlin turned.
Stay.
Merlin stayed.
A/N: Good still? Lemmie know...