Chapter Forty Four (+ OFFICIAL FANMIX)
Author: Val_Creative
Characters: Merlin/Arthur
Word Count: 215709
Summary: The pain is still there, trailing after Merlin, marked in his veins. Pulsing. But not the effect of dark magic that festered from the entrance of the chest-wound. He can't... feel his magic either.
But it flutters weakly, out of his reach, protectively cocooning itself.
Merlin can't smell the wintery pine of the thick forest, or the brittle grass through the heavy, rotted stench of his own blood. Clotted inside his nostrils and lining his mouth and dried crusting to Merlin's clothes.
He doesn't want to think of the state of his clothes, blackened with filth and earth and his lifeblood mingled with Mab's blood. He doesn't want to think of that on Arthur's clothes either. Not that Merlin can think presently other than in ruined fragments, too-worn and thinned.
There had been a war. One of them. Too many. Merlin's blood spilled body-hot through his already dirt-speckled uniform. A scream for a lieutenant over the thunderous noises of firing rounds and bombing. Or maybe it was him. Everything shaking. The peninsula slew with bodies.
Someone threw him down and pushed on the left side of his chest, near Merlin's collarbone. They were staunching the bleeding. They swore at the other officers who cowered and at those busy firing their arms, swore at Merlin, swore at the dead Brigadier, swore at the Turks, swore at their own God, swore and cried and yelled and bled.
Mortals were beautifully messy creatures of emotion. Though Merlin could not die from the gashing wound, and vanished several hours later as 'uncounted' death among the hundreds without names, as their troops admitted a sorry, carnage-filled defeat against enemy soldiers.
No one honored him; no one had known him truly. Merlin burned that dirty, pale brown uniform somewhere in Romania, using a glass bottle of cheap alcohol, am empty street and a striking match.
Though no amount of flammable materials rid the memory.
