Category: Gen (canon)
Characters/Pairings: Gwaine, Merlin, Hunith
Rating/Warnings: T
Summary: Post-4x13. Gwaine accompanies Merlin back to Ealdor to assess the damage that Agravaine and his soldiers left behind.
Notes: I took some liberties with the geography surrounding Ealdor, largely because of laziness, but also because the show's general policy is 'lol what is consistency.'

"Gwaine," said a voice, and someone shook him. "Gwaine, it's time to get up."

Gwaine's eyes snapped open, and he grabbed onto whoever it was with a snarl. He needed to save his strength for the ring, it was the only way to get food for Elyan and Gaius, but — but they needed to know they hadn't broken him yet, so they weren't going to get him into that ring without a fight—

"Gwaine," the voice said; the calmness sounded forced. "Gwaine, it's Merlin." Merlin? Merlin wasn't here, Merlin was with Arthur, they were trying to trick him— "You're on the road to Ealdor. My village. Gaius and Elyan are both fine, you saved them. Arthur is back, and Morgana was defeated."

"Defeated?" Gwaine croaked, and blinked; Merlin's face swam into focus above him, his expression carefully neutral, and Gwaine released his death-grip on his jacket with a shuddering breath. "Sorry," he muttered, scrubbing at his eyes.

"Don't be," Merlin said firmly. "I know what it feels like to wake from a nightmare that could be real, and the last thing you need to add to that is guilt." He gave Gwaine a bitter half-smile and then turned away to put out the fire.

How would he know? Gwaine thought savagely, with sudden fury. How would he know anything? He's nothing but a servant, he has nothing to fear— And the anger was enough to get him out of his bedroll, anger at Merlin for his feigned understanding, for seeing the weakness he'd been trying to hide for days; for having the weakness in the first place; at Morgana, most of all, for giving it to him. He wordlessly accepted the breakfast that Merlin held out to him, and ate in sullen silence.

"Ready?" Merlin asked, tying his blankets to his saddle.

Gwaine shook his head as he finished his bread, and took his time in rolling up his bedroll, finding perverse pleasure in making Merlin wait when he was clearly impatient to get going. Merlin, however, took Gwaine's foul mood in stride, and simply checked over the straps on both of their saddles until Gwaine was done.

"We'll be in Ealdor by noon," Merlin said quietly as Gwaine finally mounted his horse, and then rode on ahead without looking back.

Gwaine hung back a bit, stewing silently in his anger before real guilt began to creep in. He had no right to be upset with Merlin — his friend had enough to worry about already, and after all, Gwaine had volunteered to accompany him. He had been so desperate to get out of Camelot, even for a minute, that when he heard that Merlin had gotten leave from Arthur to check on his village, he had practically begged Merlin to let him come. Besides, Merlin would need someone if his fears turned out to be true — and, having heard about the size of Agravaine's forces and having fought their brothers-in-arms, he secretly thought they would.

But now he was being the needy one, while Merlin dealt with it without a word of complaint. Gwaine knew that Merlin was letting him sleep in late; when he awoke this morning there had been nothing for him to do aside from his bedroll, and that meant that Merlin had been up for ages already, taking care of the horses and clearing up the camp, only to have Gwaine treat him like... well, like Arthur. He had always disapproved of the way the king treated Merlin, which (contrary to Merlin's insistence) had not improved with time, yet here he was, acting just the same, and Merlin responded just as he always did, with resignation and a quiet withdrawal into himself.

What a friend he was. He couldn't break Elyan out, couldn't win enough to feed Gaius, couldn't even treat his best friend with any amount of respect. What was he good for, if he couldn't even do that?

- -o- -

Just as Merlin predicted, they reached the ridge overlooking Ealdor just before noon. Gwaine reined up next to Merlin, who was staring down at his old home with an unreadable expression on his face. "How's it look?" Gwaine asked; he'd never been there before and couldn't judge rock from ruin, especially from this distance, and so he watched his friend carefully instead.

"I can't tell," Merlin said with a frown, his voice edged with doubt. "It looks okay... Everything's where it should be, at least as far as I can see from here, but I can't tell if the smoke's from cook-fires, or..."

He didn't need to finish his sentence; they both knew what it meant, both knew that either was possible. Gwaine wished he could tell Merlin otherwise, wished he could offer some sort of reassurance, but in the end they'd just be words, hollow and hopeless, so all he said was, "Well, we'd better get closer then," and spurred his horse onwards.

It took another hour for the road to wind its way down to the valley; Merlin had only gotten quieter in the meantime, and had begun to look from side to side into the trees and undergrowth that surrounded the path, checking the familiar for differences while muttering under his breath all the while. Gwaine rode behind him, helpless and hating it, half-wishing he hadn't been so insistent on coming but knowing, dreading in his heart that he would be needed.

Soon after they emerged from the woods into fields of grass and crops, and it was here that they found the first signs of destruction. Great swaths of furrowed earth had been scorched black, burning whatever had been growing there to ash. "No bodies," Gwaine commented quietly, trying to find a note of hope in what they saw, but Merlin's hoarse reply of, "They attacked at night," showed just how well that worked for him.

The village was close now, and beside him Merlin let loose a sigh of relief. "It looks okay," he breathed. "It looks okay, look, everything looks fine—"

But Merlin's breath strangled in his throat when they rode past the outer walls. The huts on the outskirts were relatively untouched, but past them they could see that the smoke was definitely not from cook-fires — the invaders had set fires there, too, and while the stone structures were still standing, they were blackened and bare where the mud and thatching had burnt away. Here and there a chicken pecked in the dirt, a goat or dog wandered past, but they did so amongst the bodies of their dead brethren, and the blood and mud and ash coagulated in the path to form a quagmire of filth.

Gwaine slid down from his horse into it anyway, and after closing his eyes and drawing a deep breath, Merlin did the same. His friend was paler than Gwaine had ever seen him except after the Dorocha, and the thought of that incident sent shivers down his spine, because this village was almost identical to that one in every way, from the layout to the houses to the eerie, pervasive silence. But the outcome of this had to be different, had to, because this was Merlin's village, his childhood home, and he didn't deserve the alternative.

"This is all my fault," he heard Merlin mutter. "This is all my fault — if I'd just gone somewhere else—"

"Like where?" Gwaine asked, but Merlin didn't seem to hear him; instead he stared at the smoking wreckage with horror in his eyes and didn't even notice when Gwaine left him to peer into the doorways of the houses closest to them.

"No bodies," he called, and Merlin seemed to come out of a daze.

"What?" he said, his breathing shallow and his eyes wide, but still holding it together.

"No bodies," Gwaine repeated. "Animals, yes, but no people — sure, it's quiet here, but they could just be hiding. Who knows where they fled to during the attack or who's been through here since?"

Merlin nodded slowly, but it was distant, reluctant, as if he didn't dare open himself up to hope, so Gwaine reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. "Merlin," he said, but couldn't bring himself to voice the rest: Don't give up. Don't give in. Instead he squeezed gently, shook him once, and dropped his hand, but still that seemed to give Merlin strength, and he closed his eyes once more, looking far more determined once he opened them again.

"Right," he said, squaring his shoulders and starting forward purposefully.

Gwaine followed close behind, keeping an eye out for movement as they wove through side streets and squeezed through the narrow gaps between houses. "Know any hiding places?" he asked, stepping over the half-burnt remains of some small animal.

"All of them," Merlin said with a grim smile, ducking under some soot-stained laundry and taking a sharp right. "I once managed to hide from Will for five hours before he gave up. And that was before they dug the extra storage cellars to hide the harvest from Kanen. I told you about that, right? When we fought off the raiders? That's how Morgana knows where I—"

But then he came to an abrupt halt, and though Gwaine walked right into him he didn't move an inch. "...live," Merlin finished in a whisper, staring ahead of them, and there was such dread on his face that Gwaine was almost afraid to look. They had just emerged from between two houses that were largely untouched, almost at the outskirts of the village, but now he followed Merlin's gaze to the one directly ahead and sucked in an involuntary breath of shock.

The house was completely wrecked, not just by fire but by human effort as well. Half the walls were gone, scorched and toppled and strewn about the muddy street; the thatched roof had been burnt away, the rough-hewn bench in front had been chopped into kindling but somehow spared the fire, and the door hung crookedly off its hinges, split down the middle by an axe that had been left buried in the wood. Animal carcasses littered the yard; blood and feathers dotted and stained the churned earth, and an overturned cart half-rested on the splintered fence. Smoke still rose from within what remained of the house; what little Gwaine could see through the opening had all been burnt to ashes, and suddenly, sickeningly, he realized that the smell of roasted flesh, while strong within the village proper, was nearly overwhelming next to these ruins, and choked back the urge to gag at the implication.

He tore his eyes away from the wreckage and looked at Merlin, who was breathing quickly in and out, in and out, still frozen in place, trembling so hard that Gwaine could feel it moving him too. And Gwaine wished for the forced impassivity of before because anything was better than this, anything was better than the expression of agonized despair on Merlin's face, and it tore him to pieces to know that he could do nothing, say nothing to make this better.

And then the dam burst, and Merlin choked out, "Mother."

"Merlin, no," Gwaine pleaded, trying to grab at him as he moved forward, but Merlin was too quick, too determined, and he bounded towards the smashed-in door of his demolished home before Gwaine could even move.

But then seconds later he came staggering out with a cry like a wounded animal, a noise so devastated and visceral that it chilled his blood, as if Merlin had carved his heart hollow and thrown it to the wind for the world to hear, and it made Gwaine stagger too, even as he followed his friend to the door. He already knew what he'd see, as he heard Merlin retching in the ruined yard, but time passed as if in slow motion as he took it all in: the eddies of ash in the breeze, the blackened bones, the glint of steel through the charred ribcage laid out in the center of the floor.

"No," Merlin said behind him, his voice strangled and ragged and numb. "No, no, no, no—"

Gwaine, slumped against the doorframe, could think of nothing to say. There were no words for this; even his 'I'm sorry' shriveled in his throat because it was inadequate, so he turned away from the bones of Merlin's mother and went to crouch by her son. "Merlin," he croaked, his throat made dry by the smoke. "Merlin, I..."

But Merlin clearly wasn't listening, clearly couldn't hear him in his grief; he was kneeling in the filth of the street, kneading his palms into his legs and staring into nothing, and didn't even flinch when Gwaine put his hand on his shoulder. His breaths came in huge, ragged gulps, as though he couldn't get enough, as though he had to force himself to keep going, and finally he gave a great cry, bowed his head, and slammed his hands to the ground.

There was total silence as the world held its breath, just long enough for Gwaine to go, "Merlin—," and then—

And then the world echoed Merlin's grief, so suddenly and so fiercely that it knocked Gwaine sideways. The ruins around them shed stones like tears as the earth jittered and shook; a wind came out of nowhere and swept the ashes and debris into a blinding whirl; thunder rumbled in the clear blue sky; the very air seemed to hum with a terrible energy that made his skin tingle and crawl, and the animals went wild, howling and screeching and screaming with a frenzy that wasn't theirs — even he felt it, a great and terrible sadness, a great and terrible rage over the death of a woman he'd never met; and it went on and on, interminable and unbearable—

And in the middle of it all was Merlin, curled in on himself, breathing hard and heavy, crying without seeming to realize it, still staring ahead at nothing as the world fell to pieces around him — and through the maelstrom Gwaine could see that his eyes were glowing a brilliant, blinding gold.

But there was no time to process that revelation now, no time to consider how he felt, because if he didn't do something then Merlin would shake the world apart.

"Merlin," he called, then yelled to make himself heard over the wind, shaking his friend, trying to make him see. "Merlin. Stop this."

Then Merlin blinked and shook his head and looked around, and all at once it stopped, leaving nothing but their ragged gasps for air and the sound of stones settling.

"I'm sorry," Merlin whispered, eyes blue and clear and downcast. "I'm sorry, I—"

But as he blinked the ashes from his eyes Gwaine saw something that drove even Merlin's explanations from his mind. "Shh," he hissed, leaping to his feet and standing in front of his friend.

Because Merlin's display had drawn an audience — Ealdor's survivors had emerged from wherever they'd been hiding and were now ringed around them, staring at Merlin in horror.