Britain Boys, Part 5/10
Aug. 29th, 2011 07:01 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nyxelestiaThe next time it was Merlin’s turn to go to the loo, he nearly fell over again, dizzy, while pissing, and had to put one hand against the wall as he glared at his tired limbs, and wished yet again he could get rid of this collar. He hated this thing, and not just for cutting off his magic. At this point he wasn’t even sure what made him hate it more, the fact that it cut off his magic or how ill it made him.
“Be quick,” Collins had said before shoving him in, so as soon as Merlin felt steady and had finished pissing he zipped up, flushed, and went over to the sink, washing his hands and trying to adjust the collar. On top of everything else, it was uncomfortable as hell. He sighed as he looked at himself in the dingy mirror, his extra-pale and sweaty self, with the silvery collar glinting out from beneath the shadow of his chin and neck. He looked - and felt - like an animal with this thing on. They might as well put a bloody lead on him.
“Hurry up!” Collins snapped, poking his head in.
Merlin hated when he did that. What if he caught Merlin with his trousers down?
That possibility just amplified how much he hated the collar and why.
Indignant, Merlin asked, “Why should I? This is the only time I get to spend outside of that stupid room!”
It was stupid, trying to piss off people who were holding you hostage, but between the collar and the cell, Merlin was starting to think he should just try and provoke something to change, himself.
Collins just seemed amused as he said, “Well enjoy it while it lasts, then, but don’t make it last too long. I’ve got things to be doing.”
“Want me to wank myself and make it even longer?” Merlin challenged, hating how he felt his face heat up even as he said it.
Inexplicably, Collins burst out laughing. “Why bother, when the prince will do it for you?”
What...how did he...no.
Merlin paled, his limbs going cold as he realized, this man knew.
“How...h-h-how do you -”
“What, you think we would just leave you there unsupervised?” Collins asked. “There are cameras in there watching you 24/7. It’s only a pity there’s no audio.” He smirked. “I’m curious to know what you said to him to get him to even touch you, let alone finish you off. Especially since you didn’t return the favor.”
Unbidden, Merlin thought of every fight, every wank, every hug, everything which had been between just him and Arthur, and felt nauseous as he realized they had been watched.
Collins just laughed at the look on his face. “Seriously, how did you get the Prince of Wales to demote himself to wanking someone off? Especially a witchboy, and especially without you returning the favor?” Collins shook his head, and Merlin tried not to feel ill at Collins finding so much hilarity from this. “I wonder what else you could get him to do.”
And now Merlin just wanted to puke.
“Go to hell,” he snapped, swallowing, feeling his Adam’s apple pressed against the hard and unforgiving metal of the collar, worsening his tightening throat as he stared up at the man.
Collins just laughed again, eventually coming inside of the bathroom, apparently amused when Merlin backed away from him.
“What did you enjoy more?” Collins asked. “That it was someone else’s hands on your prick, or that the someone else was Prince Arthur?”
Merlin pressed his back against the wall, trying not to cry. “P-please, stop, just - I’ll be quick, I just need to wash my hands, just-”
“Aww, look,” Collins said, smirking. “Already got used to royal treatment. I feel sorry for your mum - Labour party, too. Not just a sorcerer son, but a gay sorcerer son? Oh, this should be interesting. Serves her right for backing out on everything she promised to those with magic in the election.”
“Don’t say that,” Merlin said hoarsely, suffocating between the collar around his neck and the nearing Collins. “I don’t - I’m not gay-”
“Of course you’re not,” Collins said, as if humoring him.
“And my mum’s Prime Minister, not a dictator - she can’t just make things happen to her whims!”
“Is that what she tells you when she puts you to bed at night?” Collins asked, voice both gentler and colder than it had been a moment before.
“It’s the truth,” Merlin snapped defensively. “The entire point of Parliament and a good deal of the rest of our government is to prevent dictatorship, and that means that one person can’t change things. Not even the King.” There - years of learning politics from listening to Will and watching his mum in a few sentences.
Collins smirked. “If you say so. Still, I would love to see how she plans to get reelected, with a witchboy queer for a son.”
Merlin felt his face heat up and his stomach curl into a little ball of acid, burning right through him. “Stop it.”
The man smirked, but this time he turned and walked away, apparently bored with Merlin now.
Merlin waited until the door was closed before breathing deep and over and over and over again, trying not to break completely down into tears.
Who knows, maybe he was being watched.
I would love to see how she plans to get reelected with a witchboy queer for a son.
He wasn’t. Collins was stupid and a prick and Merlin knew, he knew, he shouldn’t listen to that man.
That didn’t stop from his hands from trembling the entire time he washed them, or from shaking the entire walk back as he was blindfolded and led to their room.
He was enough of a wreck that the moment the door closed behind them, Arthur stood in front of Merlin and asked, “What’s wrong?”
“We’re being watched,” Merlin blurted.
“Huh?” Arthur asked, frowning in confusion.
“There are cameras in here,” Merlin said. We’re being watched 24/7. They can’t hear us, but they can see us.”
Startled, Arthur looked around himself, and Merlin nodded blindly as he stumbled over to the mat, dizziness and fear and revulsion mixing in a terrifying cocktail in his stomach before seeping into his veins as he collapsed onto the floor-like surface.
“...shit,” Arthur said, before sitting beside him.
Merlin shut his eyes and curled up on his side of the mat. “I want to go home,” Merlin said longingly, finally letting a single tear drip down the side of his face and into his sleeve.
For once, Arthur didn’t say anything. Instead, he just put a hand on Merlin’s shoulder and squeezed in empathy.
Merlin wasn’t sure if he wished he didn’t find it as comforting as he did, or if he wished he could draw even more comfort from the gesture than he was getting right now.
Either way, he reached up and curled his fingers around Arthur’s while reminding himself that Arthur wanted to go home, too.
~*~
“We need a bigger room,” Arthur said the next day, after Merlin complained for the tenth time that Arthur’s pacing was making him dizzy.
Merlin snorted in deadened amusement. “Yeah, like they’ll give us one.”
“Well…this is some kind of factory or something…probably some more offices or whatever, and a bigger one to go with it.”
“They probably took the biggest one,” Merlin said tiredly.
“Would it be weird to ask?”
“Yes,” Merlin said. “We’re hostages, remember?”
Arthur stopped to stare at Merlin – or rather, his collar – and said, “Yeah, I know…but still…they’ve been…well, okay, they’re not really treating us well – or at least you – but they’ve not been too bad about it so far, right?” Merlin slowly nodded. “They want us to be healthy, if only because healthy hostages work in their favor. We need a bigger room.”
Merlin rolled his eyes. “Alright, if you say so.” He lay back down to watch the latest repeat marathon on the telly, and Arthur sat down but fidgeted, trying to think of how to help Merlin. Maybe a bigger room would be less stuffy at least, than this one, and while he doubted they’d have access to fresh air, maybe less old air would be good for him.
He hoped. As much as Merlin seemed ill, he’d understood enough of Merlin’s vague explanation to know it was all from the collar. This wasn’t some virus that could be waited out or an infection that could be fought with awful medicines. The only way Merlin could be cured was to get that collar off.
But that wasn’t going to happen, so he would do whatever else possible to help Merlin.
He’d ask…no, demand a bigger room. If they wanted quiet, calm hostages, fine – Arthur could cause enough ruckus for both of them, to get what they needed to be quiet, calm, and healthy hostages.
Merlin nearly fell asleep before dinner while they were watching Due South. It was only Arthur’s repeated shaking of his shoulders that kept Merlin awake. But awake he was, enough to roll his eyes as Arthur got up and started pacing around in tight circles.
Again.
The episode had just finished, when Collins walked in, TV dinner in hand.
“We need a bigger room,” Arthur demanded immediately.
The man raised an eyebrow as he set the trays down on the table, next to Arthur’s empty and Merlin’s mostly-empty breakfast trays from earlier that day.
“You’re a kidnapping hostage, and you’re asking me for an upgrade?” he asked with a dark laugh. “Well, that’s rather rich of you.”
“I mean it!” Arthur shouted. “It’s so tiny, and I’m not asking for you to let us go…I just – we need to stretch our legs!”
“What, with caviar and goose-down pillows, too?” Tom asked with an oddly jovial sneer, lifting up one of the two trays. His sneer vanished as he shoved the tray at Arthur and said, “You’re hostages, sire, get it through your head! Hostage!” With one harsh swat at Arthur’s head, he turned away, unaware of Arthur’s rage.
I’ll make him see it, was all Arthur was thinking as he ripped off that plastic cover form the tray and threw it at Collins back.
The man froze in shock, and for one moment, everything froze with him.
Then Tom whirled around, and Arthur screamed as he felt Tom grab his hair and yank him back, slamming him against the wall.
Merlin shouted as the stars cleared from Arthur’s vision, just in time to see Merlin try to pull the much bigger man away. Without even looking away from Arthur, Collins used his other hand to hold back Merlin, holding him by the collar.
“Please don’t hurt us,” Arthur pleaded, eyes flicking between Merlin and Collins and back again. “Please!”
Collins smirked.
“Not so high and mighty now, are you?” he asked, jerking his head so Arthur’s head was pulled forward, then slammed into the wall again, causing Merlin to shout his protests and Arthur to cry out from the pain. “You’re a hostage, little boy. Do you understand?”
“Y-yes,” Arthur gasped, reeling from the pain and still looking desperately towards Merlin.
Collins gave one last squeeze of Arthur’s hair and let him and Merlin go.
With the human barrier gone, Merlin rushed forward to Arthur, trying to see to him even as he put himself between Arthur and Collins protectively, but Arthur kept his eyes on Collins, himself.
They both watched warily as Collins cast the first magic they’d ever seen him actually doing, waving his hands around himself and incanting a multitude of spells which Arthur was fairly certain even the least skilled of sorcerers didn’t usually rely on, until the plastic and food were both gone.
“Well, I’m not getting you another one, so you’ll have to make do without for a night,” Collins said, before turning and leaving, both boys staring after him until the door was locked behind him.
“Come on,” Merlin said quietly, tugging him over to the pallet and sitting them both down. Merlin walked over to the table and took the plastic fork and his own tray and plopped back down next to Arthur, and started dividing everything into half, taking all the smaller halves for himself. “I’m not hungry, anyway,” Merlin said when Arthur protested, and as much as he hated it he’d noticed how much Merlin wasn’t eating and he was hungry, so he didn’t fight much after that.
They ate in silence, and watched a little telly – for once they weren’t in the news, instead it was some attack in the Middle East near an important embassy of some sort – and then they shut it off and lay down, Arthur waiting until he was sure, sure, sure Merlin was asleep, before finally letting the fear seep in.
He lay there trembling, blood rushing and scalp still aching as he remembered feeling like they were both going to die.
He probably should have been surprised when he felt Merlin roll over to face him, but instead, when Merlin sheepishly smiled in the half-light of the GameBoy and opened his arms, his own desperation showing on his face, Arthur pulled them close to each other, and this time he cried and cried and cried, and Merlin shook and they held each other together as they fell asleep, still clutching tightly onto each other.
Perhaps it was because this of this that Arthur woke up the next morning to Merlin’s feverish shaking, and knew immediately that something was very, very wrong.
~*~
“Merlin?” Arthur asked the next morning, frowning as soon as Tom left after taking the latest picture. Merlin was leaning heavily against him, and the moment Arthur stepped back to take a good look at him, Merlin fell down onto the pallet all together. “Merlin!”
Merlin looked up at him, sweaty and sick. “I don’t feel good.”
Arthur fell to his knees beside Merlin. “I can tell. C’mon, lie down…”
He wasn’t really sure what to do, trying to think of what his nannies usually did when he got ill. He laid Merlin down, tucked Merlin in, and gave him some of his water, but that didn’t seem to help much.
“Merlin, what’s going on with you?” he asked, feeling Merlin’s forehead again. It didn’t tell him anything new, just that Merlin was much, much warmer than he should be, but his nannies did that a lot so maybe it helped somehow.
“…no magic,” Merlin mumbled, leaning into Arthur’s hand. Arthur kept his hand there. “Too long.”
“But it’s not even been that long!” Arthur said, confused. They were kidnapped a week before their birthday, and it was now…3rd January. So… “Three weeks and two days. Don’t some people go for months with this thing on?”
Merlin nodded, then shut his eyes and curled up on the pallet. “Gimme my blanket? I’m cold.”
“You’re sweating,” Arthur said, deciding to ignore that Merlin wasn’t explaining why he was so ill so fast. But he could guess.
It was no secret that Merlin had a lot of magic.
“I’m cold,” Merlin said insistently, and Arthur sighed and nodded, draping the blanket over Merlin and letting him tuck himself in.
“Here,” Arthur said, holding out his water again. “You’re supposed to drink lots of fluids and such when you’re sick.”
Merlin relented, sipping at some before laying his head down on the thin pillow again. Arthur bit his lip as he looked around, before finally giving up and pounding on the door. “Hey! I know you can see me! We need help!”
“They won’t come here,” Merlin said. “They know why I’m ill. My mum said this happened a lot in prisons. Will, too. Magic goes away, im-mun…immunity does too. Germs and stuff get into my body easier and it can’t fight back as well, even just the regular germs and things in a room, let alone a virus.” He shut his eyes as Arthur whirled around to face him. “They’d have to take off the collar. And they won’t.”
“Well they can’t let you just die, that would defeat the whole point of having a hostage!” Arthur snapped.
Merlin shrugged, and Arthur yelled, “You might die from this and you don’t even care?!”
“Too tired,” Merlin answered.
This time when he shut his eyes, he didn’t open them again.
The sound of Merlin’s steady breathing in his ear, Arthur turned around and kicked at the door, before hopping around clutching his foot as spikes of pain radiated up his leg.
Happy with yourself, Prince Arthur? he snapped in his head, before pounding at the door, then waving his arms frantically at the corner where he was fairly sure the camera was.
Within a few minutes, Tom Collins appeared at the door again.
“What the fuck is it?” he growled as he came in.
Arthur gestured futilely at Merlin. “He’s ill. It’s that collar! You can’t leave it on him, he’ll die and-”
“What, you care?” the man sneered. “About a sorcerer? Yeah, I believe that,” he added disbelievingly. But he did crouch beside Merlin, frowning as he brushed the collar around Merlin’s neck. “Damn. Didn’t know he was this powerful.”
Arthur frowned and said, “Well take it off, please, it’s hurting him! You’re magic, aren’t you? You can’t possibly not know what it’s like-”
“I know a hell of a lot more than you think, kid, now shut up,” the man growled.
“No!”
Arthur hadn’t even seen it coming. One second the man was staring at Merlin, and the next, his hand was coming back in a sharp but strong strike, and Arthur screamed as the combined force of the backhand and the magic the man put in it sent him careening across the room, throwing him into the wall.
He landed with a pained huff, back aching fiercely, and looked up in time to see Collins leaving the room, door shutting behind him before he could even get up to try and slip out of it.
He touched the cheek where Collins had hit him, tasted blood on his lip, and sighed, pushing his aching body up and landing beside Merlin on the pallet, grabbing his own water bottle and cleaning up his bloodied lip.
Arthur had just set the bottle back down when Collins reappeared, a small black box that looked like a pager in one hand, and a needle in the other.
And a gun at his hip.
“Move back, kid, I’m dealing with this,” Collins said tersely.
Eyes on the gun and the needle, Arthur moved in front of the prone Merlin and said, “What are you going to do to him?”
“You were right about one thing, that collar needs to come off – but not when he can wake up and use his magic…especially if he’s powerful enough for the magic-suppression to have worked so fast,” Tom Collins said, face impassive and voice sharp. “Now move out of the way before I make you.”
Arthur gulped and nodded, backing up just enough so he could still hold on to Merlin’s hand, before wincing as Collins slipped the needle into a vein in Merlin’s arm and injected whatever it was in there into Merlin’s veins.
Merlin’s breathing became even shallower than before, his skin even paler, and Arthur felt Merlin’s hand go just a little cooler. But he was definitely still alive.
Then Collins took that pager-box thing, unfolding it to reveal a tiny keyboard with numbers on it. He rolled Merlin over and touched the back of the screen to the black square on the collar.
Maybe Collins hadn’t realized it, but Arthur could see the keyboard perfectly clearly, and saw the numbers he entered into the device: 2-1-1-2-1-9-9-2.
He smiled, as he quickly memorized the password, 21121992.
Then he replayed the last four digits in his head, and considered the first four.
21121992. 2112/1991. 21/12/1992.
He was using their birthday as the password.
Even unconscious, Merlin jerked as the collar came off, then stilled.
“It goes back on tomorrow morning before we take the photograph,” Collins said calmly, taking the collar with him when he left the room.
Arthur looked back at Merlin, and winced at how dead he looked. He looked around himself, then decided he really didn’t care anymore if he was a big baby.
That night, he slept right next to Merlin, keeping a hand over his chest, right above his heart.
Tomorrow, the collar would go back on, and they would hold up another newspaper for another photograph to be sent to their parents. But tonight, he could sleep here, making sure Merlin was alive…and working on a way to get out of here.
They weren’t going to be rescued anytime soon – so they might as well rescue themselves.
~*~
Arthur didn’t know what Tom Collins had planned to do to take care of Merlin in this state, but whatever it was, Arthur wasn’t having any of it. When Collins came with water and a protein shake and chicken broth for Merlin, Arthur watched as Collins got a few spoonfuls down Merlin’s throat, the way he tilted Merlin’s head back and rubbed his throat, and couldn’t take watching it anymore, a gesture that was meant to be caring and intimate. He took all that himself, and Collins seemed all too happy.
“Your problem, then,” he said as Arthur stood between Collins and Merlin.
It was. It took ages to get everything down the unconscious Merlin’s throat, but he managed it in the end, and it filled up considerable amount of time, now, too - useful now that he was effectively on his own for the long, long day. He held Merlin close to him, always keeping a hand on the other boy to feel if anything went wrong.
Come morning when the sedatives were wearing off, the collar went back on, and Arthur flinched when he heard Merlin’s whimper.
“Come on,” he said gently, instead. They went to the loo at the same time, and Arthur felt truly grateful that Merlin was mostly still not lucid as he had to hold Merlin’s prick for him while he pissed, washed his hands for him, and sat him against the wall for a moment while he took care of his own business.
They went back, took the photo, and then Merlin was fully sedated again, and the collar came off, and Arthur breathed a sigh of relief as Collins ran off to deliver the next photo, and barely an hour later, still clutching Merlin tightly to himself, he watched the results on the news of today’s picture.
The country was not happy – that was all Arthur could think as he watched the country (and the world) freak out over their latest daily photo. Normally, of course, they were standing against the blank wall, looking scared and indignant at the camera while holding up the day’s newspaper, headlines and the occasional affirmative statement for them, directly from the newspaper, proving they were still alive and well.
Not today, though.
They were sitting instead of standing for this one, Merlin slumped heavily against Arthur, eyes glazed over, looking down and barely hanging on, barely even conscious. Arthur was staring up at the camera, the bruise on his face clearly visible, the newspaper crinkling in his white-knuckled grip. While he had been pleading with Tom to leave the collar off just a little longer, what the camera had captured perfectly was Arthur’s sheer terror shining in his eyes.
He watched grimly as the country exploded at what appeared to be a sharp spike in their mistreatment.
And he watched in horror as it appeared no one cared about Merlin.
There was certainly a lot of commotion in the news over both of them. Everyone definitely wondered about Arthur’s bruise, if there were any more where they couldn’t see, what he was so afraid of…but no one knew the answer to the last one for sure, and no one would get it, because whenever anyone talked about Merlin, all they cared about was how powerful he had to be for the collar to be affecting him so much and so fast. It was like they didn’t see how ill he was.
Arthur wanted to punch the screen and smash their little pixilated faces in every time he saw them talk like that.
Instead, he just wrapped his arms tighter around Merlin’s sedated form – reminding himself that no matter how ill or dead Merlin looked, at least he was alive, his heart was beating, he was alive – and continued watching, looking desperately for a way out.
~*~
Part 6
“Be quick,” Collins had said before shoving him in, so as soon as Merlin felt steady and had finished pissing he zipped up, flushed, and went over to the sink, washing his hands and trying to adjust the collar. On top of everything else, it was uncomfortable as hell. He sighed as he looked at himself in the dingy mirror, his extra-pale and sweaty self, with the silvery collar glinting out from beneath the shadow of his chin and neck. He looked - and felt - like an animal with this thing on. They might as well put a bloody lead on him.
“Hurry up!” Collins snapped, poking his head in.
Merlin hated when he did that. What if he caught Merlin with his trousers down?
That possibility just amplified how much he hated the collar and why.
Indignant, Merlin asked, “Why should I? This is the only time I get to spend outside of that stupid room!”
It was stupid, trying to piss off people who were holding you hostage, but between the collar and the cell, Merlin was starting to think he should just try and provoke something to change, himself.
Collins just seemed amused as he said, “Well enjoy it while it lasts, then, but don’t make it last too long. I’ve got things to be doing.”
“Want me to wank myself and make it even longer?” Merlin challenged, hating how he felt his face heat up even as he said it.
Inexplicably, Collins burst out laughing. “Why bother, when the prince will do it for you?”
What...how did he...no.
Merlin paled, his limbs going cold as he realized, this man knew.
“How...h-h-how do you -”
“What, you think we would just leave you there unsupervised?” Collins asked. “There are cameras in there watching you 24/7. It’s only a pity there’s no audio.” He smirked. “I’m curious to know what you said to him to get him to even touch you, let alone finish you off. Especially since you didn’t return the favor.”
Unbidden, Merlin thought of every fight, every wank, every hug, everything which had been between just him and Arthur, and felt nauseous as he realized they had been watched.
Collins just laughed at the look on his face. “Seriously, how did you get the Prince of Wales to demote himself to wanking someone off? Especially a witchboy, and especially without you returning the favor?” Collins shook his head, and Merlin tried not to feel ill at Collins finding so much hilarity from this. “I wonder what else you could get him to do.”
And now Merlin just wanted to puke.
“Go to hell,” he snapped, swallowing, feeling his Adam’s apple pressed against the hard and unforgiving metal of the collar, worsening his tightening throat as he stared up at the man.
Collins just laughed again, eventually coming inside of the bathroom, apparently amused when Merlin backed away from him.
“What did you enjoy more?” Collins asked. “That it was someone else’s hands on your prick, or that the someone else was Prince Arthur?”
Merlin pressed his back against the wall, trying not to cry. “P-please, stop, just - I’ll be quick, I just need to wash my hands, just-”
“Aww, look,” Collins said, smirking. “Already got used to royal treatment. I feel sorry for your mum - Labour party, too. Not just a sorcerer son, but a gay sorcerer son? Oh, this should be interesting. Serves her right for backing out on everything she promised to those with magic in the election.”
“Don’t say that,” Merlin said hoarsely, suffocating between the collar around his neck and the nearing Collins. “I don’t - I’m not gay-”
“Of course you’re not,” Collins said, as if humoring him.
“And my mum’s Prime Minister, not a dictator - she can’t just make things happen to her whims!”
“Is that what she tells you when she puts you to bed at night?” Collins asked, voice both gentler and colder than it had been a moment before.
“It’s the truth,” Merlin snapped defensively. “The entire point of Parliament and a good deal of the rest of our government is to prevent dictatorship, and that means that one person can’t change things. Not even the King.” There - years of learning politics from listening to Will and watching his mum in a few sentences.
Collins smirked. “If you say so. Still, I would love to see how she plans to get reelected, with a witchboy queer for a son.”
Merlin felt his face heat up and his stomach curl into a little ball of acid, burning right through him. “Stop it.”
The man smirked, but this time he turned and walked away, apparently bored with Merlin now.
Merlin waited until the door was closed before breathing deep and over and over and over again, trying not to break completely down into tears.
Who knows, maybe he was being watched.
I would love to see how she plans to get reelected with a witchboy queer for a son.
He wasn’t. Collins was stupid and a prick and Merlin knew, he knew, he shouldn’t listen to that man.
That didn’t stop from his hands from trembling the entire time he washed them, or from shaking the entire walk back as he was blindfolded and led to their room.
He was enough of a wreck that the moment the door closed behind them, Arthur stood in front of Merlin and asked, “What’s wrong?”
“We’re being watched,” Merlin blurted.
“Huh?” Arthur asked, frowning in confusion.
“There are cameras in here,” Merlin said. We’re being watched 24/7. They can’t hear us, but they can see us.”
Startled, Arthur looked around himself, and Merlin nodded blindly as he stumbled over to the mat, dizziness and fear and revulsion mixing in a terrifying cocktail in his stomach before seeping into his veins as he collapsed onto the floor-like surface.
“...shit,” Arthur said, before sitting beside him.
Merlin shut his eyes and curled up on his side of the mat. “I want to go home,” Merlin said longingly, finally letting a single tear drip down the side of his face and into his sleeve.
For once, Arthur didn’t say anything. Instead, he just put a hand on Merlin’s shoulder and squeezed in empathy.
Merlin wasn’t sure if he wished he didn’t find it as comforting as he did, or if he wished he could draw even more comfort from the gesture than he was getting right now.
Either way, he reached up and curled his fingers around Arthur’s while reminding himself that Arthur wanted to go home, too.
“We need a bigger room,” Arthur said the next day, after Merlin complained for the tenth time that Arthur’s pacing was making him dizzy.
Merlin snorted in deadened amusement. “Yeah, like they’ll give us one.”
“Well…this is some kind of factory or something…probably some more offices or whatever, and a bigger one to go with it.”
“They probably took the biggest one,” Merlin said tiredly.
“Would it be weird to ask?”
“Yes,” Merlin said. “We’re hostages, remember?”
Arthur stopped to stare at Merlin – or rather, his collar – and said, “Yeah, I know…but still…they’ve been…well, okay, they’re not really treating us well – or at least you – but they’ve not been too bad about it so far, right?” Merlin slowly nodded. “They want us to be healthy, if only because healthy hostages work in their favor. We need a bigger room.”
Merlin rolled his eyes. “Alright, if you say so.” He lay back down to watch the latest repeat marathon on the telly, and Arthur sat down but fidgeted, trying to think of how to help Merlin. Maybe a bigger room would be less stuffy at least, than this one, and while he doubted they’d have access to fresh air, maybe less old air would be good for him.
He hoped. As much as Merlin seemed ill, he’d understood enough of Merlin’s vague explanation to know it was all from the collar. This wasn’t some virus that could be waited out or an infection that could be fought with awful medicines. The only way Merlin could be cured was to get that collar off.
But that wasn’t going to happen, so he would do whatever else possible to help Merlin.
He’d ask…no, demand a bigger room. If they wanted quiet, calm hostages, fine – Arthur could cause enough ruckus for both of them, to get what they needed to be quiet, calm, and healthy hostages.
Merlin nearly fell asleep before dinner while they were watching Due South. It was only Arthur’s repeated shaking of his shoulders that kept Merlin awake. But awake he was, enough to roll his eyes as Arthur got up and started pacing around in tight circles.
Again.
The episode had just finished, when Collins walked in, TV dinner in hand.
“We need a bigger room,” Arthur demanded immediately.
The man raised an eyebrow as he set the trays down on the table, next to Arthur’s empty and Merlin’s mostly-empty breakfast trays from earlier that day.
“You’re a kidnapping hostage, and you’re asking me for an upgrade?” he asked with a dark laugh. “Well, that’s rather rich of you.”
“I mean it!” Arthur shouted. “It’s so tiny, and I’m not asking for you to let us go…I just – we need to stretch our legs!”
“What, with caviar and goose-down pillows, too?” Tom asked with an oddly jovial sneer, lifting up one of the two trays. His sneer vanished as he shoved the tray at Arthur and said, “You’re hostages, sire, get it through your head! Hostage!” With one harsh swat at Arthur’s head, he turned away, unaware of Arthur’s rage.
I’ll make him see it, was all Arthur was thinking as he ripped off that plastic cover form the tray and threw it at Collins back.
The man froze in shock, and for one moment, everything froze with him.
Then Tom whirled around, and Arthur screamed as he felt Tom grab his hair and yank him back, slamming him against the wall.
Merlin shouted as the stars cleared from Arthur’s vision, just in time to see Merlin try to pull the much bigger man away. Without even looking away from Arthur, Collins used his other hand to hold back Merlin, holding him by the collar.
“Please don’t hurt us,” Arthur pleaded, eyes flicking between Merlin and Collins and back again. “Please!”
Collins smirked.
“Not so high and mighty now, are you?” he asked, jerking his head so Arthur’s head was pulled forward, then slammed into the wall again, causing Merlin to shout his protests and Arthur to cry out from the pain. “You’re a hostage, little boy. Do you understand?”
“Y-yes,” Arthur gasped, reeling from the pain and still looking desperately towards Merlin.
Collins gave one last squeeze of Arthur’s hair and let him and Merlin go.
With the human barrier gone, Merlin rushed forward to Arthur, trying to see to him even as he put himself between Arthur and Collins protectively, but Arthur kept his eyes on Collins, himself.
They both watched warily as Collins cast the first magic they’d ever seen him actually doing, waving his hands around himself and incanting a multitude of spells which Arthur was fairly certain even the least skilled of sorcerers didn’t usually rely on, until the plastic and food were both gone.
“Well, I’m not getting you another one, so you’ll have to make do without for a night,” Collins said, before turning and leaving, both boys staring after him until the door was locked behind him.
“Come on,” Merlin said quietly, tugging him over to the pallet and sitting them both down. Merlin walked over to the table and took the plastic fork and his own tray and plopped back down next to Arthur, and started dividing everything into half, taking all the smaller halves for himself. “I’m not hungry, anyway,” Merlin said when Arthur protested, and as much as he hated it he’d noticed how much Merlin wasn’t eating and he was hungry, so he didn’t fight much after that.
They ate in silence, and watched a little telly – for once they weren’t in the news, instead it was some attack in the Middle East near an important embassy of some sort – and then they shut it off and lay down, Arthur waiting until he was sure, sure, sure Merlin was asleep, before finally letting the fear seep in.
He lay there trembling, blood rushing and scalp still aching as he remembered feeling like they were both going to die.
He probably should have been surprised when he felt Merlin roll over to face him, but instead, when Merlin sheepishly smiled in the half-light of the GameBoy and opened his arms, his own desperation showing on his face, Arthur pulled them close to each other, and this time he cried and cried and cried, and Merlin shook and they held each other together as they fell asleep, still clutching tightly onto each other.
Perhaps it was because this of this that Arthur woke up the next morning to Merlin’s feverish shaking, and knew immediately that something was very, very wrong.
“Merlin?” Arthur asked the next morning, frowning as soon as Tom left after taking the latest picture. Merlin was leaning heavily against him, and the moment Arthur stepped back to take a good look at him, Merlin fell down onto the pallet all together. “Merlin!”
Merlin looked up at him, sweaty and sick. “I don’t feel good.”
Arthur fell to his knees beside Merlin. “I can tell. C’mon, lie down…”
He wasn’t really sure what to do, trying to think of what his nannies usually did when he got ill. He laid Merlin down, tucked Merlin in, and gave him some of his water, but that didn’t seem to help much.
“Merlin, what’s going on with you?” he asked, feeling Merlin’s forehead again. It didn’t tell him anything new, just that Merlin was much, much warmer than he should be, but his nannies did that a lot so maybe it helped somehow.
“…no magic,” Merlin mumbled, leaning into Arthur’s hand. Arthur kept his hand there. “Too long.”
“But it’s not even been that long!” Arthur said, confused. They were kidnapped a week before their birthday, and it was now…3rd January. So… “Three weeks and two days. Don’t some people go for months with this thing on?”
Merlin nodded, then shut his eyes and curled up on the pallet. “Gimme my blanket? I’m cold.”
“You’re sweating,” Arthur said, deciding to ignore that Merlin wasn’t explaining why he was so ill so fast. But he could guess.
It was no secret that Merlin had a lot of magic.
“I’m cold,” Merlin said insistently, and Arthur sighed and nodded, draping the blanket over Merlin and letting him tuck himself in.
“Here,” Arthur said, holding out his water again. “You’re supposed to drink lots of fluids and such when you’re sick.”
Merlin relented, sipping at some before laying his head down on the thin pillow again. Arthur bit his lip as he looked around, before finally giving up and pounding on the door. “Hey! I know you can see me! We need help!”
“They won’t come here,” Merlin said. “They know why I’m ill. My mum said this happened a lot in prisons. Will, too. Magic goes away, im-mun…immunity does too. Germs and stuff get into my body easier and it can’t fight back as well, even just the regular germs and things in a room, let alone a virus.” He shut his eyes as Arthur whirled around to face him. “They’d have to take off the collar. And they won’t.”
“Well they can’t let you just die, that would defeat the whole point of having a hostage!” Arthur snapped.
Merlin shrugged, and Arthur yelled, “You might die from this and you don’t even care?!”
“Too tired,” Merlin answered.
This time when he shut his eyes, he didn’t open them again.
The sound of Merlin’s steady breathing in his ear, Arthur turned around and kicked at the door, before hopping around clutching his foot as spikes of pain radiated up his leg.
Happy with yourself, Prince Arthur? he snapped in his head, before pounding at the door, then waving his arms frantically at the corner where he was fairly sure the camera was.
Within a few minutes, Tom Collins appeared at the door again.
“What the fuck is it?” he growled as he came in.
Arthur gestured futilely at Merlin. “He’s ill. It’s that collar! You can’t leave it on him, he’ll die and-”
“What, you care?” the man sneered. “About a sorcerer? Yeah, I believe that,” he added disbelievingly. But he did crouch beside Merlin, frowning as he brushed the collar around Merlin’s neck. “Damn. Didn’t know he was this powerful.”
Arthur frowned and said, “Well take it off, please, it’s hurting him! You’re magic, aren’t you? You can’t possibly not know what it’s like-”
“I know a hell of a lot more than you think, kid, now shut up,” the man growled.
“No!”
Arthur hadn’t even seen it coming. One second the man was staring at Merlin, and the next, his hand was coming back in a sharp but strong strike, and Arthur screamed as the combined force of the backhand and the magic the man put in it sent him careening across the room, throwing him into the wall.
He landed with a pained huff, back aching fiercely, and looked up in time to see Collins leaving the room, door shutting behind him before he could even get up to try and slip out of it.
He touched the cheek where Collins had hit him, tasted blood on his lip, and sighed, pushing his aching body up and landing beside Merlin on the pallet, grabbing his own water bottle and cleaning up his bloodied lip.
Arthur had just set the bottle back down when Collins reappeared, a small black box that looked like a pager in one hand, and a needle in the other.
And a gun at his hip.
“Move back, kid, I’m dealing with this,” Collins said tersely.
Eyes on the gun and the needle, Arthur moved in front of the prone Merlin and said, “What are you going to do to him?”
“You were right about one thing, that collar needs to come off – but not when he can wake up and use his magic…especially if he’s powerful enough for the magic-suppression to have worked so fast,” Tom Collins said, face impassive and voice sharp. “Now move out of the way before I make you.”
Arthur gulped and nodded, backing up just enough so he could still hold on to Merlin’s hand, before wincing as Collins slipped the needle into a vein in Merlin’s arm and injected whatever it was in there into Merlin’s veins.
Merlin’s breathing became even shallower than before, his skin even paler, and Arthur felt Merlin’s hand go just a little cooler. But he was definitely still alive.
Then Collins took that pager-box thing, unfolding it to reveal a tiny keyboard with numbers on it. He rolled Merlin over and touched the back of the screen to the black square on the collar.
Maybe Collins hadn’t realized it, but Arthur could see the keyboard perfectly clearly, and saw the numbers he entered into the device: 2-1-1-2-1-9-9-2.
He smiled, as he quickly memorized the password, 21121992.
Then he replayed the last four digits in his head, and considered the first four.
21121992. 2112/1991. 21/12/1992.
He was using their birthday as the password.
Even unconscious, Merlin jerked as the collar came off, then stilled.
“It goes back on tomorrow morning before we take the photograph,” Collins said calmly, taking the collar with him when he left the room.
Arthur looked back at Merlin, and winced at how dead he looked. He looked around himself, then decided he really didn’t care anymore if he was a big baby.
That night, he slept right next to Merlin, keeping a hand over his chest, right above his heart.
Tomorrow, the collar would go back on, and they would hold up another newspaper for another photograph to be sent to their parents. But tonight, he could sleep here, making sure Merlin was alive…and working on a way to get out of here.
They weren’t going to be rescued anytime soon – so they might as well rescue themselves.
Arthur didn’t know what Tom Collins had planned to do to take care of Merlin in this state, but whatever it was, Arthur wasn’t having any of it. When Collins came with water and a protein shake and chicken broth for Merlin, Arthur watched as Collins got a few spoonfuls down Merlin’s throat, the way he tilted Merlin’s head back and rubbed his throat, and couldn’t take watching it anymore, a gesture that was meant to be caring and intimate. He took all that himself, and Collins seemed all too happy.
“Your problem, then,” he said as Arthur stood between Collins and Merlin.
It was. It took ages to get everything down the unconscious Merlin’s throat, but he managed it in the end, and it filled up considerable amount of time, now, too - useful now that he was effectively on his own for the long, long day. He held Merlin close to him, always keeping a hand on the other boy to feel if anything went wrong.
Come morning when the sedatives were wearing off, the collar went back on, and Arthur flinched when he heard Merlin’s whimper.
“Come on,” he said gently, instead. They went to the loo at the same time, and Arthur felt truly grateful that Merlin was mostly still not lucid as he had to hold Merlin’s prick for him while he pissed, washed his hands for him, and sat him against the wall for a moment while he took care of his own business.
They went back, took the photo, and then Merlin was fully sedated again, and the collar came off, and Arthur breathed a sigh of relief as Collins ran off to deliver the next photo, and barely an hour later, still clutching Merlin tightly to himself, he watched the results on the news of today’s picture.
The country was not happy – that was all Arthur could think as he watched the country (and the world) freak out over their latest daily photo. Normally, of course, they were standing against the blank wall, looking scared and indignant at the camera while holding up the day’s newspaper, headlines and the occasional affirmative statement for them, directly from the newspaper, proving they were still alive and well.
Not today, though.
They were sitting instead of standing for this one, Merlin slumped heavily against Arthur, eyes glazed over, looking down and barely hanging on, barely even conscious. Arthur was staring up at the camera, the bruise on his face clearly visible, the newspaper crinkling in his white-knuckled grip. While he had been pleading with Tom to leave the collar off just a little longer, what the camera had captured perfectly was Arthur’s sheer terror shining in his eyes.
He watched grimly as the country exploded at what appeared to be a sharp spike in their mistreatment.
And he watched in horror as it appeared no one cared about Merlin.
There was certainly a lot of commotion in the news over both of them. Everyone definitely wondered about Arthur’s bruise, if there were any more where they couldn’t see, what he was so afraid of…but no one knew the answer to the last one for sure, and no one would get it, because whenever anyone talked about Merlin, all they cared about was how powerful he had to be for the collar to be affecting him so much and so fast. It was like they didn’t see how ill he was.
Arthur wanted to punch the screen and smash their little pixilated faces in every time he saw them talk like that.
Instead, he just wrapped his arms tighter around Merlin’s sedated form – reminding himself that no matter how ill or dead Merlin looked, at least he was alive, his heart was beating, he was alive – and continued watching, looking desperately for a way out.
Part 6
