I still feel guilty for not answering my messages yet, just so everyone knows. I'm getting to them...someday. Heh.
I just want to say I'm sorry for taking so long! We've been moving the past week, Thanksgiving was last Thursday, my sister's fourteenth is tomorrow, we have to be out of this house by Friday...it's a mess. Plus, this chapter really did not want to be written for some reason; it was being difficult. I hope all the fluff was worth the wait!
And I always try to address reviewers' questions in a note, just in case someone else would also like the same answer (I usually would). I forgot to address MediEvil Ways's question about where the idea for Merlin's third heartbeat came from. Truth is, I have absolutely no idea. This stuff just sort of appears as I'm writing. Strange? Yes. Fun? Double yes. :) I'm glad you noticed that, though! Any more questions I'll be happy to answer.

Our Brother's Keeper
Chapter iii

When he first felt himself becoming aware, the scent that registered in Merlin's mind was one which he hadn't smelt in a long time—a decade, even. It was that subtle, smooth, hospital antiseptic that had, in his previous years working in various medical capacities, never ceased to remind him of the color white. But he hadn't worked as a doctor for fifteen years, he was sure; perhaps just a few months ago he would have had to take a moment to make certain, but these days, he always knew the very moment he woke up in the morning where he was, and who he was with. A thousand and five hundred years of waiting, he wasn't bound to forget anytime soon.

It was then that two more smells trickled through to his senses, one sweet and the other sharp. Jam on toast and ham biscuits, he realized, Gwen's and Arthur's respective favorites. These were smells that he recognized, and in that, he was immediately at ease.

"Is he waking up?" asked a voice as sweet as her favorite grape jam, pushing through the darkness surrounding him and bringing him more awake.

"I think so," answered back another voice that he knew so well.

Though he started to open his heavy eyes, he felt more relaxed now than before he'd heard them speak. The last he recalled was of terrible flashes of dreams long-buried, of a blazing fire and sad faces and terrible, terrible helplessness. But now they were both here, within his reach, and he didn't feel any of those painful dream-memories anymore, so he didn't stop to remember from where they'd come in his history; he just let them slip from his mind.

"Merlin?"

He latched onto that quiet call and felt himself steadily emerging from his warm, comfortable feeling of slumber. At last, his eyes blinked open right as he felt someone settle onto the mattress beside him. He found himself looking into a pair of expectant blue eyes against a ceiling that was exactly the color he'd been smelling—white. It made Arthur's blonde hair reflect the light of morning even more than usual, like a halo around his head, and maybe Merlin was affected by medicines or something at the moment. He didn't feel quite himself; it was peculiar.

"Good morning, sir," he said, because that's what he always said to Arthur in the mornings when they met in the elevator for work, so it just came out naturally.

There was a small, girlish chuckle from the corner of the room which highlighted Arthur's boyish grin.

"It's about time," the man said instead of answering the salutation. "I will have you know you're probably going to need a copy of the admission papers I had to fill out for you, because I don't even remember what sorts of lies I put in most of the blanks. Don't ever make me lie like that at three o'clock in the morning again. It won't end well, I can tell you that."

"Sorry…" he replied almost instantly, because that was always how he replied when Arthur used that tone of voice; it emerged sounding slightly like a question, as it was that he still had no idea what the other man was talking about.

Arthur, who knew him better than anyone else in the world, even now, simply rolled his eyes in obvious understanding of Merlin's total confusion.

"Just don't do that again, Merlin," he told him firmly.

Merlin's confusion on was on the tip of his tongue, but by the time he sat up in the (also) white bed, Gwen was already at his side. He allowed her to hug him in her own, less-prattish greeting, for he could see by the sleepy smile on her beautiful—if makeup-less—face that she probably needed it more than he did.

"Oooh, Merlin," she said in his ear as she squeezed him with a strength more than what she looked, her tone warm with relief, "you really did frighten us there for a moment."

He was still struggling to remember what it was they were talking about as she pulled back and sat with one leg comfortably under her, her eyes shining in the daylight as much as Arthur's were. His gaze moved around the room—completely starch-white except for the blackened screen of a mounted television directly across from his bed—and he could remember nothing except feeling a bit unwell at dinner, and some, flashing nightmare he'd had. Actually, come to think of it, he did feel a bit thirsty and his arms were weak—muted reminders of the illness he'd felt at dinner.

"Was I sick?" he asked in logical conclusion.

"As always, nothing gets past you, Merlin," Arthur said as he stood up to pour a cup of water from the pitcher nearby. "The doctor said you would be thirsty."

Merlin took it gratefully, and as he downed the paper cup quickly, Gwen told him,

"You had pneumonia, Merlin; Arthur was afraid your fever was so high it was going to cause permanent damage."

"I wasn't worried," the man defended himself a bit too loudly to be believable, as he plopped down in the chair beside Merlin's bed rather dramatically. "I was just telling the doctor that I was much too busy to go hunting for a new assistant if you ended up in a coma."

Merlin started to retort when Guinevere whispered, loudly though she teasingly blocked her mouth from Arthur with her hand,

"He was really worried about you."

Arthur shook his head irritably and looked away, but the fond grin on his face gave open testament to the truth of her statement.

Merlin chuckled a bit at them and tapped his fingers subconsciously against the side of the cup in his hand.

"Well, this is typical," he said ruefully. "I've been mortal for only just over three weeks and already the Reapers are looking to enact their revenge."

Arthur and Gwen gave each other funny looks at this.

"Although," Merlin continued, his finger-tapping halted as he rolled his eyes upward thoughtfully, "I would've thought they'd have invented something a bit more imaginative than pneumonia. Aren't I worth anything more than that? A bit petty that they'd try something so ordinary, don't you think? Wait—what am I talking about? Reapers don't choose their victims' deaths; they just take their souls….So who doesn't think I'm worthy enough for something more…extraordinary?"

Arthur let out an amused bark of laughter as he moved to sit closer on the mattress so that he was facing Merlin once more.

"I think you must still be tired," he told him. "You were pretty sick, Col."

Merlin chuckled at himself as he realized that, yes, Arthur was probably right. He was feeling a bit tired, even now that his throat was not so very dry and his eyes had cleared of all their sleep. He had never been very sickness-prone even before King Arthur's coronation, before he'd ever received immortality, but he could—just very, very faintly—remember a time when he'd been nearly delirious with an awful cold, and Gaius hadn't allowed him to leave his chambers for nearly a week afterward. He wondered if this was how he'd felt then, too, or if perhaps this weariness was due to that nightmare that was still tugging on the edge of his dream-memories.

It was then that he abruptly remembered Arthur's voice, whispering through the brutal images of a burning country home…the terrified screams of two little girls trapped on the second floor…of death he couldn't stop no matter how hard he tried or how loudly he shouted at the men in holy cloaks.

He set the cup aside, suddenly realizing that Guinevere was gone from the room and Arthur had moved closer to him so that his hand was almost touching his friend's.

"Merlin."

Spoken with just the slightest lilt, the modern sound gone from the name to leave just the ancient form of it on the once-king's lips.

"There was a fire," he said, his words spilling out in answer to the unspoken question; he could remember now, Arthur's voice, speaking to him; Arthur knew of the nightmare; he had been there when Merlin had been having it. He looked up into his friend's eyes—curious and concerned dark blue, but not pressing him for more than he was willing to give.

"There were children," Merlin went on, the weight of the nightmare rushing over him once more, just as it did every time he thought of that day, "seven children, none of them even sixteen years old yet. Three of them had magic; the others didn't."

His mind went back to that little clearing in the forest where had stood the home he had created for himself and the seven boys and girls who had loved him. It had stood so tall and proud in the spring, made of clean, red brick and white trim, surrounded by the blossoming trees and the chirps of free birds. At the end of autumn, it was nothing but a charred skeleton surrounded by twisted branches and haunted by the laughter of the seven dead children.

"There was an outbreak of black magic," he continued, his head bent as the images of two such different times flashed across his mind, "in the village a mile from the home I had built for us. The well had been poisoned. I went and found the sorcerer who had done it; I had to destroy him in order to reverse the enchantment and make the people well again. He was too far immersed in black magic. There was no way to save him from what he'd become."

Arthur watched as memories moved across his warlock's downturned face like shadows, so dark and heavy even after the years separating them from the events he described. Merlin had always been one to become close to others once given the chance; the thought of his having children—and seven of them, no less!—was one which both amused and warmed the king at once. But then, to know how this story ended—in their deaths, perhaps the deaths of all of them—made his heart clench for his friend in a way that rarely affected him.

"I should have known," Merlin went on, and it sounded like these were words he had repeated in his mind more than once. "I should have realized that the villagers wouldn't understand. I should have known they'd mistake everything. They didn't trust me already; they had reason to believe that I was a sorcerer. It wasn't against the laws then, but it was against their customs, and that was enough for the father of the sorcerer to accuse me of being the murderer and convince them of the same."

Merlin shifted beneath the blankets, as though he had become suddenly cold, and he pulled his knees up to this chest as a look of bitter anger passed over his still gaunt but handsome face.

"I should have known they would find the children, even after I hid them. I should have known that one of the blacksmiths was following me after I had packed all our things to leave for good." His expression twisted with a centuries-unspoken grief. "I was trying to make the children happier, going back to the house to get Elise's favorite little doll and Julien's favorite book. I should have known how foolish it was, but I did it anyway."

He had unconsciously curled tighter in on himself, his knees pressed against his chin as he spoke, and Arthur tilted his head and moved his hand just a bit closer, silently encouraging him to go on.

"When they came to the place where we'd camped, they had me bound and blindfolded before I was awake enough to realize it."

In his mind, Merlin would never forget that feeling. Chained wrist and ankle like an animal, blinded with intent so that he would not know what was happening until it was seconds too late.

"I wanted to stop them, but it was dark and loud all around and I didn't know where anyone was. They had four of them—Adeline, Gerard, Noel, and Florence—and murdered them right there before I could even get the blindfold off. They'd been planning it the whole day. They must have been."

He wanted to wrap up tighter in the blanket at the awful thought. It had been so long since he'd thought of those precious girls and boys. Adeline, with her flowing brown hair and her soft words…Gerard and Noel, the twins with mischievous faces and a talent for carpentry…Florence, little "Flo" who was as boyish as he'd let her be and loved to laugh at her own pranks…They had been cut down so violently and without cause, and all because of his own ignorance….

"Julien was only fifteen, but he got Desiree and Elise away while I threw down a lot of them. They shouldn't have gone back to the house, but they did. They didn't know where else to go. It was their home that I had made for them. I suppose he thought they would be safe there, just for a little while, until I could get to them."

Arthur watched as Merlin's elegant fingers twisted in the blanket covering his knee.

"Desiree and Elise were only seven and five, barely even old enough to understand anything yet. Once I'd gotten away, I'd just reached the clearing where our house was when someone hit me in the back of my head. They had set the house on fire, wanting to destroy anything cursed, I suppose. In the same instant when I'd stood up from the blow, the second floor collapsed and Desiree and Elise weren't shouting for help anymore."

He still had it, Elise's little doll, in a chest of treasures back at his flat. She was the youngest person he'd ever met to have discovered her magic, aside from himself. Just as Adeline and Flo were, she was learning from him how to use it. She had just mastered a simple levitation spell the day before.

"I was so shocked by it all, I could not breathe for just the shortest moment. In that second, someone stabbed me in my back." He looked up and met Arthur's gaze, pity in his changing eyes. "The townspeople were so angry at all the deaths from the poisoned well. They were desperate for someone to punish. They were frightened, and all of that together made them mad. That's why they did what they did. They didn't understand. Julien didn't even have magic."

The stark-white blanket curved tighter around his tense hands, his shoulders stiff as he spoke aloud this nightmare he'd buried for so many years. Arthur swallowed, because though Merlin may not even realize it, he was describing Camelot between the time of the Great Purge and when he'd freed good magic nearly thirty years later.

"I thought I could save him, but he looked me right in the eyes, I heard him shout my name—'Simon' was what I was called then, and they stabbed him and killed him, too, before I could even speak. There was nothing I could do to stop them, because my magic was useless. It was saving me instead of obeying when I tried to throw it out to save Julien."

Arthur felt like shivering at the bitterness coloring Merlin's voice, but as it was, he could only sit quietly for a moment and allow his friend to calm himself while he pondered what he'd heard.

All in a rush, everything he'd told Guinevere sounded foolish and horribly shallow. Merlin had been acting so happy these past weeks, laughing and telling stories about all the glad times in his life. How stupid of Arthur to assume his past would no longer haunt him now, just because they had found one another again. Arthur knew who he was and what sort of significance his life held, but how could his life make up for the thousand or more years Merlin had spent watching others die? Did he really believe that he was the only person Merlin had genuinely loved? He was as arrogant as he had been as a prince, if he did.

In a sweep of emotion, Arthur reached out and embraced Merlin, without the other man ever having to move first.

Immediately, Merlin's arms went around him in return, seeking comfort after the terrible dream had so disturbed him, stirring up these, some of his most painful memories, and reminding him how much it still hurt.

"I'm so sorry, Merlin," Arthur's voice said softly in his ear.

The warlock did not stop to wonder at how amazing it was that their friendship had changed so much this time, that they truly were brothers now, able and willing to listen to one another and understand each other's pain without any awkwardness or shame or needless hesitation clouding the way. Merlin did not pause to think about it; he only held on, hearing the beat of his friend's—his brother's—heart where his ear was pressed against the other man's shoulder and using the sound to steady himself.

"If there was any way," the king went on (his voice a little too loud, but that was exactly the way Merlin always had remembered it and so that was fine), as he released Merlin and looked him straightly in his eyes, "to go back and change everything that's happened, I would do it. You know I would. I wish with all my heart that you'd never had to endure anything this difficult."

Merlin didn't pull away from Arthur's grip on his shoulders, but he did move one hand to rub at his eyes. A small but peaceful feeling settled over him, past the still-present grief which was finally breaking free, and he said in partial reply to his king's words,

"At least I know that I didn't endure it in vain."

Arthur's face softened at that.

"I'm here now," Merlin said simply, watching the troubled and strangely guilty look flee his friend's face, and he felt the certainty of his statement in his heart. "I'm all right now."

It was true. He was.

Arthur's mouth tilted in a ghost of a smile as he looked down to Merlin's graceful-clumsy hands which held so much power.

"All of that is over," the old warlock went on, seeking to reassure his friend now more than himself. "I won't ever have to worry about something like that happening ever again."

"You should never have had to worry about it at all," Arthur countered with surety. "I know what you've said—that you had to stay behind to increase your magic so you'd be ready for our return, but I know in my heart that you never deserved all of what's happened to you. It's unfair, and I wish…" He looked away, that old hesitation to speak his emotions aloud rising up before he pushed it down, like he was getting better at doing. "…Sometimes I wish that it wasn't you who was chosen, just so you could have had a better life."

There was a heartbeat of silence, during which Arthur could almost feel the surprise take Merlin's expression, and then a firm,

"Arthur."

The younger man obediently looked up, and he saw that Merlin's eyes were shining again, but no longer with tears; now, he was smiling at something which Arthur did not quite understand and never really would.

"I'm happy. Perhaps not with the past, but with the present and future with all of you. If I had to hurt to get here, then so be it. I am happy. Really."

The man blinked at the simplicity of his friend's statement, and when Merlin offered nothing more, he held his gaze for another moment just to take in that look on the paler man's handsome, still-youthful face and in his contrastingly ancient eyes. Merlin meant what he said. He was truly at peace with it all.

Then, Arthur smiled too, because that was all he could ask for, really. And if Merlin was happy, why should he find reasons for him not to be? If Merlin—who had suffered through so much more than Arthur even comprehended—could look at him and smile that old, mischievous smile he remembered from their very first encounter, the least Arthur could do was be happy with him, and be his friend and try, at least, to make up for all that pain he'd suffered.

Merlin's grin grew at the sight of his king's and effectively dispelled the solemnity of the atmosphere, leaving behind just the light, playful air they had always accomplished so easily in years past and always would in years to come.

"What happened to you, Merlin?" Arthur said rather loudly and laughingly, throwing a gentle punch to the other man's shoulder. "You used to find a reason to be miserable about everything back in Camelot."

The old warlock laughed aloud freely.

"Me?" he countered. "What happened to you? You're almost not a prat anymore."

"You still think I'm a prat, do you? After I just hugged you and the whole girly moment without any complaint…."

Merlin made a show of rubbing his arm where Arthur had just punched it and giving a pout pitiful enough to convince a troll to take a bath. Arthur had a fleeting hope that Merlin never seriously asked anything of him with that look, because he was likely not to be able to resist. It looked like he'd been practicing it for centuries just to bother him.

"Well, you're still hitting me, you great dollophead, after all I've done for you…."

Arthur threw his head back with another laugh.

"You should be offering me gold and hot chocolate," Merlin ranted on, looking completely serious but for a glimmer of mirth in his gray-blue, and still slightly tired, eyes.

Arthur stood.

"And oranges?" he suggested.

Merlin leant back in his pillows, suddenly feeling rather sleepy and not thinking at all anymore of past nightmares.

"Chests of them," he agreed with a yawn.

"Well," the sound of Arthur's jacket pocket unzipping punctuated his words, "I've got one, if that'll do."

Merlin gave him a funny look as the once-king made quick work of unpeeling the fruit and placed it in his warlock's hand.

"You carry around oranges in your pocket? You hate them."

Arthur settled in the chair beside his friend's bed and tried not to sniff the strong citrus smell in the air, wrinkling his nose up when a bit of it made his eye water.

"It's to shut you up and stop you fidgeting in meetings, Colin."

Merlin chuckled as he ate a piece of it, grateful for the delicious food as his mouth felt frankly disgusting and his stomach empty. He didn't argue, but they both knew Arthur only carried a small orange around in his pocket just for moments like this, to take care of him the same way he always took care of Arthur…no matter if he could just conjure one for himself if he got the taste for it.

He laughed again.

"What?" Arthur asked.

"I'm like your pet," Merlin told him as he popped another piece in his mouth. "You keep a treat in your pocket for me. You did call me your dog once or twice. 'Why fetch the stick yourself when you have a dog to do it for you,' I believe is how you put it."

Arthur listened to him rattle on, hearing how his words started to run together and seeing his normally sharp, clever eyes dimming, and shook his head a bit to himself.

"You're tired and drugged up on fever medicine, Colin," he told him bluntly, because that was always the best way to deal with a sleepy Merlin. "Go to sleep."

"I'm still eating my orange," the old wizard argued, sounding for all the world like the whiny boy he always had been back in Camelot.

"Then eat it and go to sleep, you clotpole," Arthur ordered in retaliation, feeling a bit weary himself.

"My word," Merlin claimed it in an overly-possessive mutter, even as he snuggled up beneath the hospital blanket, proving how tired he still was by setting aside his cherished orange.

"Limpaþ ðu æltæwe," Arthur said back, because he distinctly recalled that that had always been the conventional response. (1)

As the room got quiet but for the sound of heavy breathing, Guinevere nodded in satisfaction to herself just outside the door. Three weeks of relearning them, and she hadn't yet figured out all the comparisons and contrasts between Ancient Arthur and Merlin from her dreams and the ones with her now; they were certainly different in some ways, but it seemed that whatever had changed had only strengthened them both in mind and heart alike.

She peered in once more, ensuring that Merlin was sleeping and Arthur was nearing it, and then went off with a warm feeling in her heart to get another orange from the hospital cafeteria; the one now sitting half-gone on the side table would be bad by the time Merlin woke up again.

End

(1) Old English: "Suits you perfectly."

That's it for this story! I have tons more ideas for my The Voice in the Dream (TVITD)-world, though, so expect another short fic soon featuring TVITD Merlin and Arthur. One thing I have to say...I really like drugged/sleepy Merlin. He's almost as adorable as sickly Merlin.
(And OHMYGOSH. I just remembered...have you guys heard the news that this is the last season of Merlin? I was so sad when I found out! They are planning to make a movie, though, right? Right? Any info you have would be appreciated, so I don't, you know, DIE OF SADNESS. We have to stick together in this time of grieving.)
I'll probably post another fic soon. See you then!