Sequel time! Thank you bailieboro! :)

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Arthur POV

The mist is hazy, cool and wet against your skin.

But your body is growing colder than the thick air. Red seeps from the wound you find along the sword sticking out of your gut. You cannot stop your hands from shaking as your fingers wrap around the hilt of the sword, a dark colored metal.

Mordred's sword!

Your eyes glance up in disbelief, finding those impossibly bright blue eyes of Mordred's, smiling back at you in triumph. It is your turn to smile when the other man begins to cough up blood, just now acknowledging Excalibur protruding from his body. He falls to the ground, still as the dead, as you fall to one knee.

Impossibly bright, still, unblinking dead eyes stare up at you from the deceased man's face as the corners of your vision begins to darken; small specks of black just beginning to cover the world.

Mordred has impossibly bright blue eyes. The brightest eyes you have ever seen.

No, you have seen a pair more lovely than those! Merlin's gaze surpasses all in rarity.

As your vision darkens, at a faster pace than the life flowing from your body, you begin to remember...

Everything!

All those wild tales of your life flashing before your eyes, seem to be true after all, which means you're just beginning your journey to death.

The memories flood the mind and fill the dark specks of your vision. A small part of your heart begins to warm while your body grows colder as you begin to recall them. Even, see them...

You remember that he fought you for a long time after you saved him from the pyre.

The former manservant didn't try to run. He could barely move from the bed the first week, his arms weakly pushing you back as you leaned over him as you placed a gentle kiss on his forehead.

His hateful blue gaze met yours, those very tired, resenting, wide eyes in a pale face.

"Why didn't you tell me you had magic? Could you show me something?" You asked, placing another kiss on his forehead, down to his cheek, then his lips. You pulled back when he attempted to bite.

"You love me, Merlin. I know you do. You don't have to hide it," you crooned to the pale male. His hatred towards you was unrelenting. He refused to acknowledge his feelings, playing his little favorite game.

Merlin The Victim. He liked to play that!

Merlin, the poor soul who was captured by a monster who would beat and rape him daily; the helpless, former manservant trapped like a mouse between feline paws, awaiting his end.

You remember growing tired of that game after a while, but participated nonetheless. If it made him happy to scream when you hit him, you would do it.

Although you recall, he didn't scream or wail that first week when you had taken him. Only soft, almost inaudible, weak whimpers would escape that mouth when you would pump him up and down the mattress.

After that, his crying and screaming would begin again. The clawing and kicking and biting, his pretending to be hurt and tortured, you could never understand why he would like to act like that, but you loved him regardless.

Why could he never return that love? You knew he loved you just as much.

To better help him, you had everything essential to running a kingdom moved to the bedroom, during the first few months of his recovery, only leaving for minutes at a time to entertain guests in the throne room. Everything else such as the work desk and reports were relocated to one corner of the room by the door, as during the third week, you had caught Merlin several times trying to leave you. He had never gotten far, his body still too weak to do anything more than limp away from the bed before falling, but the actions had struck a cord deep within you.

Why was the warlock still trying to leave you? You had done nothing but show kindness and compassion towards your former manservant. You had healed his wounds with kisses, and spent hours on end nursing him back to health. How many hours each day had you patiently held him, guiding his weak, scrawny legs across the floor towards recovery?

Yet, he used that kindness to hurt you.

He still blamed you for the pain that he had suffered. You had done nothing but gone along with his little game to please him and let him know that you loved him, and in return his big blue eyes stared at you as if you were a demon.

It was by the third month that he had finally said something to you without screaming, pleading, or accusing you of actions you did not commit.

It was late at night, the sky as dark as the disappointment and hurt you felt when Merlin would try to run away.

"Show me some magic, Merlin," you whispered in his ear as you held the frail form against your chest on the mattress. It took him several minutes to respond, his eyes that had recently grown duller took a glace towards you, before glancing away.

"I-I can't," his weak voice replied.

You held his form tighter, giving a quick kiss on his forehead when you sensed something felt wrong within him, as if there were a hopeless, never-ending sadness growing inside your lover's soul.

"It's okay Merlin," you crooned, "We will find a way to get it back. I promise."

It was not long after, you remembered that those lovely blue eyes emptied almost completely. You almost lost him one more time.

It was a difficult two months for you both. You sat on the bed or chair for hours as you watched him lie silently on the mattress, with hopeless eyes and one arm slightly raised from the chain binding him to the bed.

The entire time, you were too worried for his health to properly fulfill any duty of the crown. As well as any in bed as his lover , afraid that any amorous act on your part would somehow send him further back into his mind. The maids quelled your lust in the beginning, but during each act it was Merlin you would imagine underneath you. And, it was Merlin who you eventually returned to, to fulfill your desires, whether he is fully conscious or not.

"G-great Dragon…" His first words in almost two years were painful yet wonderful to hear. It had taken your repealing the ban on magic, and summoning hundreds of sorcerers, hundreds of coins out of Camelot's purse for potions to bring him back to you. Weeks of travel and begging on your knees to repair your relationship with sorcerers, just to bring Merlin home, to hear one word from his lips, for his eyes to gain some life once more.

Yet, it was not your name on his tongue, but of the beast living below, the dragon from which you had heard prophecies and riddles concerning you and your Merlin. Your destiny together.

"Arthur...!" you corrected him, grabbing his chin as you try to redirect his sleepy eyes towards you.

"Arthur...!" you repeated one more time.

Those blue eyes grew wide with fear upon looking at your face; he tried to pull his weak, bed-ridden body away from you and against the wall.

He refused to say your name.

The idiot never could follow orders.

"Don't you ever get tired of playing this game, Merlin?"

Only shivers escaped his lips as his teeth chattered, his body cold and naked as he hung from the center of the enclosed cell. His arms were tied above his head, his small, bare feet barely brushing against the cold flagstones.

You watched him from the chair near the door, eyes fixated on the pale body that hung from the ceiling. His skin was paler than ice, body drenched in cold sweat as the torchlight painted him in a yellow hue. Even in a dark, cold cell surrounded by stone and chains, somehow Merlin still remained elegant and beautiful.

The chair scraped loudly in the silent room as you stand, approaching and wrapping your arms around his torso. His ice-cold skin burned your cheek as you lay your head against his stomach, his sobs and tears dripping down his face and into your hair.

"Why can't you say it Merlin? I know you love me," you whispered into his skin. When he did not reply you dug your nails into his body and he emitted a scream.

"Say that you love me," you plead into his wide, fearful eyes. You did not wish to do this.

However, Merlin could never listen.

You gave a distressed sigh, untying the sheath and sword from your hip. With a silent apology and one quick movement, you shoved the hilt of Excalibur up inside him, ripping a scream along with flesh as you feel the beginning of a trail of blood drip onto your hand. His skinny legs kicked against your chest, but they were too weak to deter the lesson given.

Finally, the game ended.

His vision of you, the monster, began to fade away as he placed a gentle, quick kiss on your lips.

"Don't leave me. It's cold," your lover pleaded as he snuggled up against you on the cold flagstones. It had taken months of isolating him in that room, and several visits a day to finally hear those words. How many things had you to do to him for the stubborn idiot to finally return something you knew he felt all along?

His smaller body tensed as you wrapped one of your arms around him, your chest pressed against his. It must have felt like the dead of winter to him, his muscles small and weak, his body having nothing except you to give him warmth. You stared into his eyes, seeing nothing in them but pain and tears.

And that's when something unexpected happened. You felt something ugly and wrong creep up inside you. A virus of regret and disgust for your own actions, finally reached the center of your heart.

For a minute, the lustful haze began to disperse from your mind, and you truly saw the world for the first time in years. The destruction, you had wrought.

The bruises were the first thing you noticed, the hundreds of black and green spots all over the younger male's face; one on his left eye, and something in the vague shape of a palm on his right cheek that had had a few days to heal.

Then, the marks you had left all over his chest and arms, where you grabbed and scratched him, hit him into submission. The marks you made were only ever wounds which would heal, nothing permanently marring his beautiful features.

You felt something sticky and wet in your hand where you were holding him; where you had repeatedly violated him, raped him.

Bumps are found beneath his hair, where your other hand now rested entangled in the raven threads. You remembered pulling at them, entwining and gripping at his scalp until chunks of his hair fell away.

Then there were his hands. They were wrapped in iron in front of him, the metal cold against your stomach through your shirt. You were fully clothed; the servant was not.

A shiver ran through your body as nothing but disgust filled you.

What had you done?

How could you do that to a friend?

However, before you could stand and then grovel on your knees for forgiveness...

...it all faded away.

The disgust and regret curled back up into your core, before the virus died and the haze, something akin to a spell, enveloped your mind once more.

You no longer saw the bruises all over his body; you saw how you taught him, gave him your attention and love. Each marking was a lesson well, and finally, learned.

You did not feel the blood in your hand, but a sacrifice given so that nothing stood between you during love.

The bumps in his hair were nothing but reminders of all the wonderful times you had shown him how to use his lips, as you curled your fingers in his hair reaching climax.

..and those eyes...

...those big, beautiful blue eyes full of fear and hopelessness were finally yours.

You smiled, returned the kiss, completely unaware of the nightmare which you had almost broken.

The years passed by quickly and heavenly.

You could not have asked for a more perfect partner in your journey through life.

He was always there with you; there was never a day you wished him away from your side.

He was always there to hug and kiss you; support you as you attempted to juggle your kingdom and war. Those lips always whispered kind and loving words to you; the tone low and often sounding almost dead, but you had grown used to his depression through the years.

He clung onto you for sustaining his life and sanity, and you could not have asked for more.

Such powerful words escaped those plush lips, which tore kingdoms asunder and the earth to rise.

Such skilled, soft lips that ripping wonderful sounds from you every night, as he took you into his mouth; lips that screamed ecstasy, when you would push him down on the mattress.

It was the closest, perfect could get in this lifetime.

And all things perfect, you learn, must someday die.

Your thoughts return to the present.

The past, nothing but blissful memories that are growing uglier, the more the haze trickles away along with your blood. The sword is too heavy and deep within your gut to remove, and you kneel on the ground as your entire life becomes so much clearer to you.

Everything had been lies.

Merlin was right.

You were the monster the entire time.

You vision flashes in and out, like a torch in the darkness that cannot stay alight.

And you kneel there in awe at your revelation, stunned at the monstrous acts which you had wrought on a close friend.

Your eyes catch his form in the distance across the battlefield; his face older, bearing all the sins you had committed against him.

The perfection finally breaks...along with words that bubble into your throat along with blood. You have to make something right. You cannot die in peace unless you can beg for a final apology.

"I-I'm sorry Merlin," you begin...everything is too slow and too fast at the same time.

...time, something you are running out of.

He does not hear you through the noise of the battle, and you try one more time. Your body and lips are shaking as you grow colder.

Is this how cold Merlin was in that room?

The thought disgusts you, yet fits, as you feel you deserve nothing less. You try to repeat the words, louder, in hopes that he will hear you as you feel yourself leave for Avalon.

Finally, he sees you through the chaos. You begin to repeat everything, wanting to spill your heart out in hopes of making something right.

As your blue eyes meet, the words are stuck in your throat. Sudden flashes of memories long forgotten invade your dying mind, piercing you like a dagger that stabs, twists and turns your world upside down inside of you.

Vision of your childhood, and meeting a raven-haired boy who would change your life forever, invade your mind. A pale face, Merlin's face, that was so happy and hopeful, seemingly destined for something well beyond the normal life of a peasant.

Then you remember a brief flash of gold in his big blue eyes, a power, a spell, wrapped around you leaving you in a daze for years to come.

And the disgust turns to hate; the regret turns to bitter loathing; thoughts seeping with revenge and blood.

He was the monster.

He was the reason that you had done so many terrible things you had never imaged yourself capable of doing. The epiphany sickens you, you wish nothing more, than to pull the sword from your gut, in the midst of a battle you were fighting to keep him safe, and cut those eyes from his skull.

Your teeth clench weakly, as you cough up more blood and your vision blurs even more.

You fall to the earth, lying on the soiled grass as you stare up into the sky.

Finally, when the last of the world fades, feeling yourself ending your false journey, your consciousness falls into the depths of death, then four silent words escape your lips, releasing your soul forever.

"I hate you, Merlin."