Britain Boys, Part 9/10
Aug. 29th, 2011 07:15 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
nyxelestiaEven inside the hospital room, the boys wouldn’t separate.
“We’re sorry,” the nurse in charge had stammered out when faced with the King and Prime Minister both demanding explanations the moment they were able to see the boys after their respective treatments. “They kept asking for each other, demanding, really, bless their little hearts. This seemed much easier than us repeatedly having to put them back in their beds.”
“This” being the boys’ beds being pushed together into one large bed, the two boys themselves curled around each other like particularly affectionate kittens.
Both parents had sighed and sat by their sons’ sides while the nervous nurse continued to check on the boys and adjust things accordingly. The boys both had oxygen masks on their faces, with various IV lines and monitors hooked up and tucked in to their bodies. Arthur’s heart rate was still a little fast, his breathing erratic. Merlin’s breathing was shallow, as was his magical influence sphere.
“Both boys will have trouble breathing normally for a while,” Gaius said. “Merlin splinted Arthur’s ribs fairly well, so thankfully once they were treated the damage was minimal. The burns around Merlin’s neck should fade as he regains use of his magic, and his throat may constrict some more, but not completely, and soon the swelling will die down. The physical scars should be minimal.”
“And their mental scars?” Hunith couldn’t help but ask. “How will all of this fare on their minds?”
Here, Gaius sighed and put the boys’ charts back into the racks on the beds. “That remains to be seen.”
“At least they’re recovering,” Uther said, and Gaius had left soon after, pausing only to grumble about the guards asking for identification going in and out of the room. There were body guards, policemen, and soldiers all over the hospital, and covering the entire block. They were putting all their eggs in his handbasket and no one wanted to take any chances.
Not again.
Soon, though, with the exception of two soldiers in the distant corners of the room and one nurse whose entire shift has been relegated to sitting in the room and watching over the boys, they were alone.
“…It’s such a daze,” Hunith murmured, looking down at the boys. “And so heart-wrenching, everything they’ve been through. It’s even worse now than in the pictures.” She paused. “I can’t stop seeing all the bruises.”
“I don’t think we will ever stop seeing them,” Uther said, reaching out to gently brush his fingers through Arthur’s hair. Arthur mumbled in his sleep and leaned into the touch, and Hunith smiled as she wrapped her hands even tighter around Merlin’s, before impulsively leaning down to kiss his reddened knuckles.
“I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to let him out of my sight again,” Hunith said. “At least for a while.”
“I wish I could take Arthur on state visits with me,” Uther said, nodding in empathy.
For a while, they sat in silence again, before there was a timid knock on the hospital door. At a gesture from both of the nation’s leaders, the solider closest to the door opened it.
“Hello, Geoffrey, Godwin,” Hunith said. Geoffrey was an old-time friend and long-standing publicist of Uther’s. While Godwin and Hunith hadn’t known each other for that long in comparison, he’d been a godsend during campaigns and elections, and was a good man and brilliant PR agent.
“We thought we’d update you on the matters of state,” Geoffrey said, holding onto one of his files, Godwin onto another. In the recent weeks as Uther and Hunith has spent more time together than was usual for a monarch and minister (but was perfectly reasonable for worried parents), the two men had worked out some new system to keep up with the overload of information concerning the two leaders coming from the media, and now worked together to manage it all.
“There have been some critics upset about you two suddenly vanishing from the public eye,” Geoffrey started. “Mostly the same ones that were upset about your drops in appearances over the last few weeks. But they are few and far in between – even your opponents are mostly sympathetic, right now, demanding that the nation give you time to properly reunite with your children.”
“Some news columnists are getting tetchy about the amount of time you two are spending together, but most people are thankfully sympathetic...and the number of those columnists who don’t have children certain helps,” Godwin threw in. “The vigils have changed from finding the boys to wishing their good health – most of them have descended into celebratory parties, which is up to you to decide if they are a good thing or bad.”
“There’s the usual lark,” Geoffrey said. “Of people nervous about how close you two are getting. Some worry that the monarchy will try to gain more power than it should.”
“Lovely,” Uther muttered sarcastically.
“There are some tabloids insisting you two have fallen in love, or at least in each other’s beds and arms, in grief-driven passion,” Godwin said, wry and amused, and both leaders winced.
“Some new controversy has arisen, though,” Geoffrey added. “Over magic. Some are insisting this is more proof that we should be tightening rights of magic-users, while others call this proof we should be loosening it.”
“Tightening,” Uther said, while at the same time, Hunith said, “Loosening.”
They both looked sharply at each other, but Geoffrey’s paper-shuffling drew them away for now. This was something they would have to talk about, but later.
They continued down the lists. Various world leaders had expressed congratulations at the boys’ rescue. They’d cancelled several state visits over the last few weeks, and most of those cancelled guests didn’t seem to mind, parents themselves, though a few seemed less than genuine, seeming to express content only due to pressure of so many other leaders doing the same.
Eventually, though, once they were updated on the matters of state, Geoffrey took his leave to go and get updates from his own secretaries and assistants, while Godwin paused at the door to say to them, “William and Leon will be in shortly – they have some security information they wish to share with you.”
Hunith nodded, as did Uther, and they were left alone again.
“We will have to go, soon,” Uther said. “Attend to the nation.”
“I dread it,” she said bluntly as she looked down at the boys.
“So do I,” Uther muttered, before he sighed.
A soft sound came from the bed, and Hunith saw Merlin shifting, and in response, so did Arthur, until both boys were blinking awake to the dim hospital lighting.
“Mum?” Merlin asked.
“Right here, sweetheart,” she said, leaning in to kiss his forehead.
“Father?” Arthur asked from the other side of the bed.
“I’m here,” Uther promised, wrapping his hand carefully around Arthur’s shoulder, smiling down at his son.
Both boys smiled at the sight of their own parents, if smiling nervously at the other parent present. Hunith started straightening the blanket while Uther pressed the button alerting Gaius that the boys were awake.
“How long have we been asleep?” Merlin asked.
“About a day,” Hunith said. “We got to this hospital at about midnight, and you boys slept a whole day and a half, passing midnight again. It’s four in the afternoon, now.”
Merlin stared, while Arthur raised his eyebrows disbelievingly.
“You were sedated,” Uther explained. “And then you woke up at about noon today, barely – you both went back to sleep right after, until now.”
“You must have been exhausted,” Hunith said.
Merlin nodded.
The boys moved closer to each other, and Uther and Hunith shared a look.
This was another thing they would have to talk about later.
Arthur slowly pushed himself up with his Father’s help, and Merlin and Hunith followed suit, until both boys were leaning up against their own pillows, taking in the nurse and the two soldiers.
“Where are we?” Merlin asked.
“King Edward VII’s Hospital,” Uther answered.
Both boys nodded, clasping each other’s hands again.
There was a knock at the door, and a pair of familiar faces walked in.
“Will!” Merlin said happily. “You’re all right! I couldn’t see you after they grabbed me – I wasn’t sure if you lived.”
“I’m tougher than that, kiddo,” Will said affectionately, completely belying the series of scars over his left temple and the bandage he still had taped over his right eye.
“I’m glad you’re all right,” Arthur said more simply to Leon, who wasn’t faring much better.
“Thank you, Your Highness.”
There was a momentary pause, then Merlin said, “Can I have something to eat?”
“Me too,” Arthur said.
“Of course, boys,” Hunith said, and gestured for the nurse, who had fallen asleep in her chair, to be woken up.
After apologizing profusely for falling asleep, she quickly left, and returned scant minutes later, a soldier and two guards behind her, pushing a tray with food brought in by Uther’s people for the boys, tested by the security forces and approved by the hospital. It was almost a small feast, a two-course dinner cramped onto one plate for each boy, and the boys delightedly dug in, famished with only IV-line nutrition in their bodies since their escape.
Hunith and Uther stood up to stretch their legs a little, smiling as they watched the boys easily shift food between their plates so they each had the most of what they liked, gobbling down the food with little care for manners. For tonight, neither of the parents minded – the boys deserved peace.
The moment was broken, though, as the two solemn-faced guards approached them quietly, the boys distracted with the food.
“Ma’am,” Will said quietly, as Leon whispered to the king. “There’s something a little urgent you will have to deal with – we can take you to the conference room and brief you now while the boys are distracted with their meals.”
“Can’t you brief us here?” Uther asked of the two guards.
“…we think it’s best you be able to hear first and decide, if the boys should hear this,” Leon said. “It’s…complicated.”
Hunith sighed, but nodded, and checking to make sure the boys were suitably happy, Uther and Hunith both promised their children they would be back soon, and left, the two heads of security following them.
The floor of this wing of the hospital had been left up to them and their security forces, and Will said, “We’ve got the conference room, door at the end,” and they went in.
“Please have a seat, sir, ma’am,” Leon said as they reached the end of the long table, well away from the few guards grouping together over layouts of the hospital on the other end. Hunith and Uther did, as Will dismissed the other guards, leaving only a few soldiers at the other end of the long room.
“You have heard the boys’ accounts of how they escaped? From after their helicopter landing, before they were airlifted here?” Leon asked, keeping his voice low.
Whatever this was, the two body guards wanted no one to hear, not even the soldiers at the end.
“They were attacked by an irate Collins, managed to knock him unconscious, and took his phone to call for help after they ran away,” Uther said. “That was all they said, really.”
“Tom Collins is what we need to talk about,” Will said as he approached.
“Do you have him in custody?” Hunith asked.
Will and Leon shared a nervous look, before Leon said, “No…the boys appear to have underestimated their strength, physical and magical.”
“What do you mean?” Uther demanded.
“We have Tom Collins’ body in custody,” Will said bluntly.
Hunith felt the blood drain from her face, and beside her, she felt and saw Uther go rigid at Will’s words.
“Are you saying…?” Hunith started.
“They killed Collins,” Leon said, nodding once in affirmation. “It wasn’t immediate, I don’t think – but by the time our extraction team reached the room they were being held in…”
“The boys obviously don’t know, yet,” Will continued. “And obviously, if this information goes public, they will find out.”
Hunith dropped her face into her hands. She knew what a hostile and unprecedented situation it was, but to hear her boy, her little boy, had killed someone, even by accident…
“They are thirteen years old,” Uther said in horror. “Barely! If they find out that they actually killed Tom Collins…”
“We can’t possibly let them find out,” Hunith said without looking up. Her little baby – this would break him.
“If this gets out,” Will said, before he just sighed. “Ignoring what people will say about the barbaric nature of monarchy and how destructive magic is, this will…”
“We know how they managed to get through our security,” Leon said.
“They utilized the fact that the boys were regularly interacting, but we, their respective security teams, were not,” Will said.
“That probably won’t be an issue in the future,” Hunith said. “The boys refuse to leave each other.”
“That might not be a good thing,” Uther said. “They seem more dependent on each other than anything else.”
“Do you want to be the one to split them apart?” Hunith demanded.
Uther didn’t respond.
She sighed, looking up at Will and Leon, who were standing together somberly.
“About the information of Tom Collins’ death?” Leon said, sliding the details across the table.
She read the details, what the coroner said about the death, what the reports said and what the evidence was, but no conclusions were drawn from it just yet. Uther read over her shoulder, before sitting back, rubbing the bridge of his nose.
“…who were the soldiers that were there during the boys’ account and the extraction?” Uther asked.
“Units J, K, and L of the SAS Air Squadron,” Leon said. “Why, sir?”
“See if you can find one who will report that when he got to Tom Collins, the man had woken up and was stumbling around, trying to find his way out – and that upon seeing soldiers, he resisted, and the ensuing violence and trauma to his head was what finally killed him.”
“Perjury,” Hunith said, with a bitter, almost hysterical laugh. But only almost, because she was the Prime Minister, now, she wasn’t allowed to be hysterical.
“Do you have any better ideas?” Uther demanded, before looking to Leon. “Is there any evidence written down of the truth?”
“None,” Leon said. “We have the boys account of their escape, but it’s only the extraction team’s story that Tom Collins was already dead when they got there that confirms the boys were the ones to kill him. Their testimonies haven’t been written down, yet.”
“Make sure they never are, not these versions,” Uther said. “Find a solider who will say our story. If it comes down to it, tell him he will be handsomely compensated, if you can’t find a way to make sure he doesn’t know the truth while saying our spin. Make sure any and all traces of evidence – paper, digital, magical, anything suggesting the boys might have played more than a small part in Tom Collins death – is destroyed. All of it.”
“Yes, sir,” both men responded.
“Downplay all this,” Hunith added. “Speak as little about this side of things as possible.”
“Of course, ma’am,” Leon said.
“This information never leaves this room,” Uther said.
“Never leaves us,” Hunith added, glancing over at the soldiers at the end of the room, the ones who still couldn’t hear them.
The two guards left them to start the process, and Hunith sighed as she leaned back in her chair.
“Let’s go back,” Uther said. “I think we could use it.”
He was right.
Seeing Merlin’s face again, even cut and bruised up as it was, was a breath of fresh air.
He killed someone, the back of her mind said.
And only we will ever know, the rest of her promised, before she strode forward, and wrapped her boy in her arms.
“You’ll be safe, Merlin,” she promised her confused son. “I promise. No one is ever going to hurt you again.”
~*~
Part 10: Epilogue
“We’re sorry,” the nurse in charge had stammered out when faced with the King and Prime Minister both demanding explanations the moment they were able to see the boys after their respective treatments. “They kept asking for each other, demanding, really, bless their little hearts. This seemed much easier than us repeatedly having to put them back in their beds.”
“This” being the boys’ beds being pushed together into one large bed, the two boys themselves curled around each other like particularly affectionate kittens.
Both parents had sighed and sat by their sons’ sides while the nervous nurse continued to check on the boys and adjust things accordingly. The boys both had oxygen masks on their faces, with various IV lines and monitors hooked up and tucked in to their bodies. Arthur’s heart rate was still a little fast, his breathing erratic. Merlin’s breathing was shallow, as was his magical influence sphere.
“Both boys will have trouble breathing normally for a while,” Gaius said. “Merlin splinted Arthur’s ribs fairly well, so thankfully once they were treated the damage was minimal. The burns around Merlin’s neck should fade as he regains use of his magic, and his throat may constrict some more, but not completely, and soon the swelling will die down. The physical scars should be minimal.”
“And their mental scars?” Hunith couldn’t help but ask. “How will all of this fare on their minds?”
Here, Gaius sighed and put the boys’ charts back into the racks on the beds. “That remains to be seen.”
“At least they’re recovering,” Uther said, and Gaius had left soon after, pausing only to grumble about the guards asking for identification going in and out of the room. There were body guards, policemen, and soldiers all over the hospital, and covering the entire block. They were putting all their eggs in his handbasket and no one wanted to take any chances.
Not again.
Soon, though, with the exception of two soldiers in the distant corners of the room and one nurse whose entire shift has been relegated to sitting in the room and watching over the boys, they were alone.
“…It’s such a daze,” Hunith murmured, looking down at the boys. “And so heart-wrenching, everything they’ve been through. It’s even worse now than in the pictures.” She paused. “I can’t stop seeing all the bruises.”
“I don’t think we will ever stop seeing them,” Uther said, reaching out to gently brush his fingers through Arthur’s hair. Arthur mumbled in his sleep and leaned into the touch, and Hunith smiled as she wrapped her hands even tighter around Merlin’s, before impulsively leaning down to kiss his reddened knuckles.
“I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to let him out of my sight again,” Hunith said. “At least for a while.”
“I wish I could take Arthur on state visits with me,” Uther said, nodding in empathy.
For a while, they sat in silence again, before there was a timid knock on the hospital door. At a gesture from both of the nation’s leaders, the solider closest to the door opened it.
“Hello, Geoffrey, Godwin,” Hunith said. Geoffrey was an old-time friend and long-standing publicist of Uther’s. While Godwin and Hunith hadn’t known each other for that long in comparison, he’d been a godsend during campaigns and elections, and was a good man and brilliant PR agent.
“We thought we’d update you on the matters of state,” Geoffrey said, holding onto one of his files, Godwin onto another. In the recent weeks as Uther and Hunith has spent more time together than was usual for a monarch and minister (but was perfectly reasonable for worried parents), the two men had worked out some new system to keep up with the overload of information concerning the two leaders coming from the media, and now worked together to manage it all.
“There have been some critics upset about you two suddenly vanishing from the public eye,” Geoffrey started. “Mostly the same ones that were upset about your drops in appearances over the last few weeks. But they are few and far in between – even your opponents are mostly sympathetic, right now, demanding that the nation give you time to properly reunite with your children.”
“Some news columnists are getting tetchy about the amount of time you two are spending together, but most people are thankfully sympathetic...and the number of those columnists who don’t have children certain helps,” Godwin threw in. “The vigils have changed from finding the boys to wishing their good health – most of them have descended into celebratory parties, which is up to you to decide if they are a good thing or bad.”
“There’s the usual lark,” Geoffrey said. “Of people nervous about how close you two are getting. Some worry that the monarchy will try to gain more power than it should.”
“Lovely,” Uther muttered sarcastically.
“There are some tabloids insisting you two have fallen in love, or at least in each other’s beds and arms, in grief-driven passion,” Godwin said, wry and amused, and both leaders winced.
“Some new controversy has arisen, though,” Geoffrey added. “Over magic. Some are insisting this is more proof that we should be tightening rights of magic-users, while others call this proof we should be loosening it.”
“Tightening,” Uther said, while at the same time, Hunith said, “Loosening.”
They both looked sharply at each other, but Geoffrey’s paper-shuffling drew them away for now. This was something they would have to talk about, but later.
They continued down the lists. Various world leaders had expressed congratulations at the boys’ rescue. They’d cancelled several state visits over the last few weeks, and most of those cancelled guests didn’t seem to mind, parents themselves, though a few seemed less than genuine, seeming to express content only due to pressure of so many other leaders doing the same.
Eventually, though, once they were updated on the matters of state, Geoffrey took his leave to go and get updates from his own secretaries and assistants, while Godwin paused at the door to say to them, “William and Leon will be in shortly – they have some security information they wish to share with you.”
Hunith nodded, as did Uther, and they were left alone again.
“We will have to go, soon,” Uther said. “Attend to the nation.”
“I dread it,” she said bluntly as she looked down at the boys.
“So do I,” Uther muttered, before he sighed.
A soft sound came from the bed, and Hunith saw Merlin shifting, and in response, so did Arthur, until both boys were blinking awake to the dim hospital lighting.
“Mum?” Merlin asked.
“Right here, sweetheart,” she said, leaning in to kiss his forehead.
“Father?” Arthur asked from the other side of the bed.
“I’m here,” Uther promised, wrapping his hand carefully around Arthur’s shoulder, smiling down at his son.
Both boys smiled at the sight of their own parents, if smiling nervously at the other parent present. Hunith started straightening the blanket while Uther pressed the button alerting Gaius that the boys were awake.
“How long have we been asleep?” Merlin asked.
“About a day,” Hunith said. “We got to this hospital at about midnight, and you boys slept a whole day and a half, passing midnight again. It’s four in the afternoon, now.”
Merlin stared, while Arthur raised his eyebrows disbelievingly.
“You were sedated,” Uther explained. “And then you woke up at about noon today, barely – you both went back to sleep right after, until now.”
“You must have been exhausted,” Hunith said.
Merlin nodded.
The boys moved closer to each other, and Uther and Hunith shared a look.
This was another thing they would have to talk about later.
Arthur slowly pushed himself up with his Father’s help, and Merlin and Hunith followed suit, until both boys were leaning up against their own pillows, taking in the nurse and the two soldiers.
“Where are we?” Merlin asked.
“King Edward VII’s Hospital,” Uther answered.
Both boys nodded, clasping each other’s hands again.
There was a knock at the door, and a pair of familiar faces walked in.
“Will!” Merlin said happily. “You’re all right! I couldn’t see you after they grabbed me – I wasn’t sure if you lived.”
“I’m tougher than that, kiddo,” Will said affectionately, completely belying the series of scars over his left temple and the bandage he still had taped over his right eye.
“I’m glad you’re all right,” Arthur said more simply to Leon, who wasn’t faring much better.
“Thank you, Your Highness.”
There was a momentary pause, then Merlin said, “Can I have something to eat?”
“Me too,” Arthur said.
“Of course, boys,” Hunith said, and gestured for the nurse, who had fallen asleep in her chair, to be woken up.
After apologizing profusely for falling asleep, she quickly left, and returned scant minutes later, a soldier and two guards behind her, pushing a tray with food brought in by Uther’s people for the boys, tested by the security forces and approved by the hospital. It was almost a small feast, a two-course dinner cramped onto one plate for each boy, and the boys delightedly dug in, famished with only IV-line nutrition in their bodies since their escape.
Hunith and Uther stood up to stretch their legs a little, smiling as they watched the boys easily shift food between their plates so they each had the most of what they liked, gobbling down the food with little care for manners. For tonight, neither of the parents minded – the boys deserved peace.
The moment was broken, though, as the two solemn-faced guards approached them quietly, the boys distracted with the food.
“Ma’am,” Will said quietly, as Leon whispered to the king. “There’s something a little urgent you will have to deal with – we can take you to the conference room and brief you now while the boys are distracted with their meals.”
“Can’t you brief us here?” Uther asked of the two guards.
“…we think it’s best you be able to hear first and decide, if the boys should hear this,” Leon said. “It’s…complicated.”
Hunith sighed, but nodded, and checking to make sure the boys were suitably happy, Uther and Hunith both promised their children they would be back soon, and left, the two heads of security following them.
The floor of this wing of the hospital had been left up to them and their security forces, and Will said, “We’ve got the conference room, door at the end,” and they went in.
“Please have a seat, sir, ma’am,” Leon said as they reached the end of the long table, well away from the few guards grouping together over layouts of the hospital on the other end. Hunith and Uther did, as Will dismissed the other guards, leaving only a few soldiers at the other end of the long room.
“You have heard the boys’ accounts of how they escaped? From after their helicopter landing, before they were airlifted here?” Leon asked, keeping his voice low.
Whatever this was, the two body guards wanted no one to hear, not even the soldiers at the end.
“They were attacked by an irate Collins, managed to knock him unconscious, and took his phone to call for help after they ran away,” Uther said. “That was all they said, really.”
“Tom Collins is what we need to talk about,” Will said as he approached.
“Do you have him in custody?” Hunith asked.
Will and Leon shared a nervous look, before Leon said, “No…the boys appear to have underestimated their strength, physical and magical.”
“What do you mean?” Uther demanded.
“We have Tom Collins’ body in custody,” Will said bluntly.
Hunith felt the blood drain from her face, and beside her, she felt and saw Uther go rigid at Will’s words.
“Are you saying…?” Hunith started.
“They killed Collins,” Leon said, nodding once in affirmation. “It wasn’t immediate, I don’t think – but by the time our extraction team reached the room they were being held in…”
“The boys obviously don’t know, yet,” Will continued. “And obviously, if this information goes public, they will find out.”
Hunith dropped her face into her hands. She knew what a hostile and unprecedented situation it was, but to hear her boy, her little boy, had killed someone, even by accident…
“They are thirteen years old,” Uther said in horror. “Barely! If they find out that they actually killed Tom Collins…”
“We can’t possibly let them find out,” Hunith said without looking up. Her little baby – this would break him.
“If this gets out,” Will said, before he just sighed. “Ignoring what people will say about the barbaric nature of monarchy and how destructive magic is, this will…”
“We know how they managed to get through our security,” Leon said.
“They utilized the fact that the boys were regularly interacting, but we, their respective security teams, were not,” Will said.
“That probably won’t be an issue in the future,” Hunith said. “The boys refuse to leave each other.”
“That might not be a good thing,” Uther said. “They seem more dependent on each other than anything else.”
“Do you want to be the one to split them apart?” Hunith demanded.
Uther didn’t respond.
She sighed, looking up at Will and Leon, who were standing together somberly.
“About the information of Tom Collins’ death?” Leon said, sliding the details across the table.
She read the details, what the coroner said about the death, what the reports said and what the evidence was, but no conclusions were drawn from it just yet. Uther read over her shoulder, before sitting back, rubbing the bridge of his nose.
“…who were the soldiers that were there during the boys’ account and the extraction?” Uther asked.
“Units J, K, and L of the SAS Air Squadron,” Leon said. “Why, sir?”
“See if you can find one who will report that when he got to Tom Collins, the man had woken up and was stumbling around, trying to find his way out – and that upon seeing soldiers, he resisted, and the ensuing violence and trauma to his head was what finally killed him.”
“Perjury,” Hunith said, with a bitter, almost hysterical laugh. But only almost, because she was the Prime Minister, now, she wasn’t allowed to be hysterical.
“Do you have any better ideas?” Uther demanded, before looking to Leon. “Is there any evidence written down of the truth?”
“None,” Leon said. “We have the boys account of their escape, but it’s only the extraction team’s story that Tom Collins was already dead when they got there that confirms the boys were the ones to kill him. Their testimonies haven’t been written down, yet.”
“Make sure they never are, not these versions,” Uther said. “Find a solider who will say our story. If it comes down to it, tell him he will be handsomely compensated, if you can’t find a way to make sure he doesn’t know the truth while saying our spin. Make sure any and all traces of evidence – paper, digital, magical, anything suggesting the boys might have played more than a small part in Tom Collins death – is destroyed. All of it.”
“Yes, sir,” both men responded.
“Downplay all this,” Hunith added. “Speak as little about this side of things as possible.”
“Of course, ma’am,” Leon said.
“This information never leaves this room,” Uther said.
“Never leaves us,” Hunith added, glancing over at the soldiers at the end of the room, the ones who still couldn’t hear them.
The two guards left them to start the process, and Hunith sighed as she leaned back in her chair.
“Let’s go back,” Uther said. “I think we could use it.”
He was right.
Seeing Merlin’s face again, even cut and bruised up as it was, was a breath of fresh air.
He killed someone, the back of her mind said.
And only we will ever know, the rest of her promised, before she strode forward, and wrapped her boy in her arms.
“You’ll be safe, Merlin,” she promised her confused son. “I promise. No one is ever going to hurt you again.”
Part 10: Epilogue
