Disclaimer: I do not own this story I am reposting it from a LJ form so it's easier to read. I do not own the characters.

TRIGGER WARNING: Suicide Attempt and suicidal behaviors

It had started while Merlin was reorganizing Gaius' stores of various medicines and other useful concoctions when he had come across the last two bottles of hemlock - the very poison he'd used on Morgana.

For a while, he stared at them, Morgana's face, betrayed and terrified and in pain as Merlin looked on regretfully, hating his magic and the dragon and Morgause for all leading up to this. Hating himself most of all, for being able to kill a friend after having already hurt her so much by keeping his secret - even if it was for Arthur.

He put both bottles in their allotted spots and returned this task numbly.

Arthur watched from his seat by the window as Merlin made his bed, reminiscing a time when Merlin would chat about the castle gossip or would talk with Arthur about the happenings of the kingdom or would natter on about Gaius' latest tasks for him...when Merlin would talk.

After so long of Merlin's service, the silence unnerved him.

Merlin never looked up from his tasks, anymore. He was focused. Deferent. Submissive. Quiet...silent.

These didn't just unnerve Arthur - they terrified him.

But whenever he asked anything, anything at all-

"What's wrong, Merlin?"

"Nothing, sire," Merlin would say calmly without looking up. "I'm perfectly fine."

Arthur knew he wasn't.

There was nothing he could do about it.

Merlin next thought of the hemlock when two months after the overgrown lizard's attack on Camelot, Uther had finally, reluctantly, declared that the searches were fruitless - Morgana was dead.

Merlin knew she wasn't - Morgause, for whatever reason, liked Morgana, was willing to sacrifice her much desired murder of Uther for Morgana. There was no way Morgana would be dead after all that, of this he was certain.

But the misery and grief on the royal family's face stayed with him, especially for Arthur. When he collapsed on the bench at the end of the day, he found himself staring at the bottles on the shelf again. Unbidden, a tear trailed down his face as he remembered the day he nearly killed Morgana. The few moments would not stop replaying in his head, along with all his other mistakes. The damage from the dragon attack confronted him every day, reminding him just how much he messed up and what it cost him.

His hand shaking, he gingerly reached up and grasped the bottle, bringing it down to study. It was the same as the other, the sharp Hemlock written on the front, with the skull and crossbones on the front Gaius kept so even those who could not read would know not to drink it.

With tight fingers curling around it, Merlin slipped into his bedroom, sat on the bed, and stared at it.

He wondered what he would look like dead.

He went to sleep.

The vial he kept under his pillow.

He never put it back.

And soon, he started clutching it in his hand under his pillow while he slept. It was comforting in a way Merlin knew it shouldn't be...but remembering his friend's face twisted with so many emotions, seeing the seemingly never ending damage from the dragon...

... it was comforting.

Arthur continued to watch Merlin carefully.

Nothing changed.

And he could admit to himself in his heart that he was scared.

The snapping point had come when less than a month later, Morgana's birthday came around.

Uther held only the barest of duties necessary to keep the kingdom in order. Arthur gave the knights a day off and sequestered himself to his rooms.

Merlin looked out over the city from Arthur's window. There was a particularly big patch of damage in his sight from where the Dragon had just landed on the houses, crushing them all instantly and destroying an entire part of the city.

There were corpses covered in blankets surrounding the buildings.

Merlin watched as a woman stood over four of them, three small and one large, and cried, alone with everyone around her sidestepping her, too invested in their own problems to care about hers.

Merlin shut his eyes and turned away. His fingers curled aimlessly for a vial that wasn't there.

Arthur watched.

When Merlin turned around, he shut his eyes but for the barest crack left open.

But he watched. He could see something had changed in Merlin.

When a little over and hour after Merlin left, when Arthur spied him flitting across the courtyard nervously, he followed.

Merlin spent almost an hour transversing the forest. He had no particular direction - it wasn't like he was going to come back - but simply kept going forward, farther and farther and farther, as far as he could manage.

Finally, simple exhaustion won out, and he stopped, collapsing onto the ground near a nice tree.

It was a good place to die - lots of trees, forming a nice canopy, shading him from the sunlight as he lay there for a moment, staring up.

Propping himself up, he reached into his pocket and pulled out the vial of poison, glancing at the label on the front.

With the way Gaius made this extraction, Merlin knew it would only take a few spoonfuls of the stuff to work. However, he also knew from Gaius that ordinary, mundane poisons didn't work as well on him, not without magic, of which this had none. So it would probably take the whole damn thing to work. Merlin hoped so.

A gentle smile graced his face, before he uncapped the vial, threw his head back, and drained it all in one go.

Just a few dozen yards away, Arthur watched in confusion as Merlin ingested something out of a potion bottle.

Then he watched in horror as Merlin's eyes fluttered shut and he fell to the ground.

And then his chest stopped moving.

Leaping forward, secrecy came second as he scrambled and dropped at Merlin's side, picking up the bottle and frantically turning it in his hands.

He went cold when he saw it. Even without the foreboding skull and crossbones on the front, the hemlock served well enough to drive fear into his heart.

As the prince, he was familiar with poisons. All it would take was a few spoonfuls of this to work, and Merlin had just drained the whole bottle, and...and...

"Why?!" he cried out to Merlin's body hoarsely.

And then...he saw it...

It was a fractional movement, barely there, and if Arthur hadn't been so focused on studying Merlin, he would have missed it.

But his chest moved - he had breathed in.

Merlin was alive.

The following hours were the most excruciating of Arthur's life. He knew the power of the poison Merlin had used, and it was only a miracle, an impossible miracle, that Merlin was not dead already.

As it was, his heart and stomach clenched up every time Merlin stopped breathing, and all he could do was sit there with Merlin in his arms, praying desperately for Merlin to wake up.

A few hours after, he did.