Alexander Vlahos is a gift from the gods, the new series is brilliant, and I ship these two like fedex. That is all.

This chapter is part 1/3.

You left my soul bleeding in the dark
So you could be king
Rules you set are still untold to me and I lost my faith in everything
The nights you could cope, your intentions were gold
But the mountains will shake
I need to know I can still make
Explosions.

- Ellie Goulding, Explosions

His cheeks are a dull crimson, blotchy against the pallor of the rest of his face, and his breath is opaque on the icy air as he drags his numb feet through the thick snow. His clothes are drenched and his hair is sopping, flinging water every time he turns his head. Only his eyes are completely dry, but they are also completely empty, devoid of any emotion whatsoever.

There is nothing and nowhere to be reached if he continues on this path. He walks it anyway.

He doesn't feel the cold. His nerves are still ringing with scorching heat, the heat of only an hour ago, when he stood next to the fire, ash blowing in his eyes, and watched his world come crashing down.

The world is white.

His ragged scarf flutters around his neck, and he pulls at it, fingers scrabbling repetitively as the ringing spreads from his nerves to his ears and doesn't stop. A hole appears after a while, his thumb poking through, and as he yanks his hand down the scarf comes down with it.

He lets it drop to the ground without a thought. It stands out against the pure snow, staining it like the blood of an animal, but he doesn't see because he doesn't look back. Eventually the snow will melt, and it will drop to the ground, dirtied and torn and trodden on, and it will become part of the earth. But not he. If he's learnt anything this past hour, it's that he's the one who carries on.

The first night he tries to keep walking, but the third time he trips and falls he just lies in the snow, freezing and pale and wishing for death. By morning, it has not come, and so he continues to walk. But he sleeps under trees or in caves after that.

Eventually, he realises he cannot walk much further without nutrition of some sort. He knows he could kill a rabbit with the blink of an eye, have it cooked and ready for eating in another, but the mere thought of using magic weighs his mind down to even further depths. Instead, he pulls out a small silver dagger, and waits in silence for the animal to come past. He wounds it on the first stab, kills it with the second, and it almost makes him laugh that he can stay still now, can kill now, just when he doesn't really need to. After all, the only purpose this rabbit serves is to keep him alive, and that is barely a purpose at all. Not any more.

It takes a week for him to realise he's being followed. He hates himself for the weakness, because the blanket of snow makes it impossible for anyone to hide, but something is managing it. And he walks with this knowledge, not doing anything about it and hating himself even more, which is so exhausting. He listens to the rustling in the night, sees the shape dart out of the corner of his eye, and it's so tiring, so hard to just ignore, that eventually he stops.

They stop behind him, and for the longest time they just stand there. Merlin cannot bear the thought of turning around, because he knows what he will see and he knows it will hurt more than anything else has so far.

So instead, he speaks, for the first time since that awful day.

'Please leave me alone.'

It's barely a whisper, but he knows he's been heard. He is met with nothing but silence.

'Fine. Kill me, then. Please. You did it to the rest of them.'

Silence again. He shuts his eyes in resignation, binds what's left of his heart together, and turns around.

Of course, it hurts, and he'd never have expected it not to. But any fragile walls he's built up crumble and slide, and there's just raw desperation as he looks into the face of the murderer that ripped his world to pieces and scattered them at his feet.

They stare at each other. Neither of them blinks. And as he searches the beautiful, cruel face, pure, white-hot hatred boils up inside Merlin until he's gasping for breath.

'You destroyed everything.'

Those perfect eyes do not so much as blink.

'You took everything away from me. You knew, and you did it anyway.'

Nothing.

'I watched them burn. I watched every single one of them burn and I couldn't even die with them.'

He trembles as the memories wash over him, the melted armour and the puddles of blood, the disfigured children barely able to open their eyes and the skinless dragon lying dead in the centre of the throne room.

And finally, there are tears.

He falls to his knees as they pour down his face, clutching at his hair and tearing at is clothes. He falls apart in front of the one person he could never forgive, and Mordred watches, his face expressionless.

'Why?'

The word escapes his lips. He doesn't mean for it to.

For a moment, his companion is as noiseless as he's been so far. Then, without any warning, Merlin feels arms lift him from the ground and carry him forwards. God knows he has no dignity left, and so he collapses into the hold and weeps. Some part of him wrestles weakly for his silver dagger for a moment, but a stronger hand than his closes over it and takes it away. He tries not to inhale, but the man still has the scent of death and smoke around him, and that's when he starts to scream.

Mordred does not react with anything more than a sigh. Instead, he keeps walking as though the writhing form of Merlin in his arms is nothing more solid than air. Merlin screams and screams and screams, the images in front of his eyes not of the snow-capped landscape but of a king sat on what is left of his throne, burnt to a cinder, with the crumbling remains of his child across his lap. And eventually, when there is no breath left in his lungs, he passes out.

The crackling of a fire wakes him. He feels heat shoot through his veins, and his eyes fly open, certain he's back in the courtyard again. His mouth opens, about to scream again, but before he can get the sound out there's a hand over his mouth.

'No.'

That voice makes him want to scream even more. He stares wild-eyed at Mordred, hands flailing, but the stronger wins out.

'No. There are many still out there, and my magic cannot protect us both. Not after… that day. I was drained a little more than I feel comfortable with.'

Why are you trying to protect me?! Merlin tries to shout, but the hand refuses to leave his mouth.

'I am trying to protect you because, believe it or not, none of this was meant to happen, and those like you and I are few enough as it is.'

Merlin doesn't even notice the hand has been removed from his mouth. He is too full of shock. It has been so long since he's had another's mind invade his head, and it hurts.

He opens his mouth to speak, but Mordred silences him with a look. There is ice and contempt in his eyes, but also a softness that strikes Merlin as bizarre. He squints as the face in front of him begins to blur, and his head lolls back as he slumps to the ground. He's so tired, and starving. And no sooner has the thought been formed, than that now-familiar hand is gripping the back of his neck and pulling him upright.

'Eat.'

It's an order, not a request.

The broth is good, better than anything Gaius used to cook him and certainly more edible than the meals he's managed to scrape together the past week. But then, the man who sits across from him was brought up a druid, and knows nature in a way Merlin could never learn.

Mordred seems to have brought everything he could need with him. Exactly how he's been carrying it all on his back, and how he even got it out of Camelot is a mystery to Merlin – the rush to get out of the castle would have taken even the most prepared by surprise – but he refuses to speak to him unless absolutely necessary. No words are needed, if their connection does still exist – and so far, it appears to – but Merlin's thoughts are still consumed with fire and pain, the death of a king, his child and countless others. But he does not think he will cry again. Those tears have been shed because they needed to be, but now he feels empty once more. Just a hollow, desperate hatred for the man who ripped up his world.

Sleep does not come as easily tonight, although he doesn't know why. He fears nothing from Mordred, death would be sweet relief and pain would feel like nothing more that what he deserves. For not committing the one murder he should have, and saving them all.

In the morning, he is woken by a thought.

We must leave, Emrys. We must stay ahead.

He follows his follower blindly, despising him with every inch of his being and yet still relying on him in some sick fashion. They walk the same distance every day, Mordred seeming to have a fixed destination in mind. Merlin finds this amusing in a dark sense, knowing there is nothing in this direction, and keeping it well hidden. The silence between them is never broken, anything the other needs to know passed through their connection. Mordred feeds them, perhaps aware of the knowledge Merlin gained during his time with Gaius about poisonous plants.

They see no one else. Merlin wonders why Mordred is so worried.

One day, Merlin wakes up to find the land completely green, every last trace of snow gone. It astonishes him, to see such purity and goodness all around him, because he never thought anything could ever be good again. As he lies back, feeling almost content for once, he notices the tree branches above him and is jerked back into one of his many memories of hiding with Arthur in the woods. Running from hooded men, chasing bandits and all manner of magical folk – the beautiful simplicity of those days fills him with the deepest longing he's ever known. Back when his magic had still been a secret, and Arthur had trusted him implicitly. Thinking of Arthur of course drags back the night of so many deaths, but unlike other times, Merlin cannot hold the thoughts back this time.

He runs through the castle. He has to find Arthur, has to tell him about Morgana, and about Mordred's true plans. The boy in question is already in the throne room, ready to commit the treacherous act, ready to destroy them all, because Merlin had been unable to stab that knife two hours ago after learning the plans for himself.

The wooden doors do not give, but one look and his eyes glow yellow, bursting them open.

The dragon lies on the floor, its head nuzzling at Morgana's cold body. Arthur's face is wet with tears as he looks at his sister, but his hands are steady as he raises the sword to stab the creature. Gwen holds their child tightly as she stands behind her husband, covers their eyes to stop them from seeing this terrible bloodshed. And Arthur's loyal knights, his men, stand solidly as one by his side, not knowing that one of their own plots the end of them all in just a few short moments.

Merlin's scream of 'No!' reaches Arthur's ears just as the sword comes crashing down.

The room explodes. A burning light emanates from the creature in the centre of the room, lifting Merlin off his feet and slamming him against a wall. Fire licks at his skin, and he claws at the stone, screaming until the flames enter his mouth and fry his tongue. The burning heat must surely be charring his skin off, because how could any living creature survive this? Pain, exquisite pain slices through his body and freezes him to the spot, unable to escape, unable to do anything other than feel. He sees nothing and hears nothing. He feels only agony.

Eventually, it must stop. And it does. He opens his eyes in a daze, casts a swift glance around the room, and vomits all over the floor.

Everything is dead. The knights who stood so tall and proud only minutes ago are reduced to a pile of blackened charcoal and soft, melted armour. The queen lies a short distance away, still in one piece but as utterly unrecognisable as her brother and his companions. The dragon is still whole, but skinless and dead, bleeding out onto the body of Morgana, who despite being the closest to the furnace is completely clean and pure, untarnished by the heat. Merlin notices he too is unmarked, and wonders vaguely why he was saved, but then his eyes fall on Arthur and there is no room for anything in his mind but horror and the feeling that his insides are pouring out of him.

The king is on his throne. Something must have moved him there, because he was standing metres away when his sword fell onto the disfigured creature at his feet. His child, the beautiful, unnamed baby cherished by so many, lies on his lap. Both of them are as charred as if they had burned in hell's flames, and yet their garments remain. They, clearly, must be recognisable. Arthur's crown sits on the remains of his head, making a mockery of his misunderstanding of the situation, and the baby is still wrapped in swaddling blankets bearing the royal crest. Merlin staggers to his feet, sickened to his core, and runs for the door, unable to look back or think of anything but how this is all his fault, all of it…

Some escaped the flames that wreaked the castle. They stand in the courtyard, bleeding profusely, but alive. His eyes cannot linger long on the faces of the children, burnt and swollen and disfigured, and he runs.

Mordred did this. Every single death is his burden. He killed them all, and now he is nowhere to be found.

Merlin knows why he did it. But he cannot understand, not in a single cell of his body. He will never forgive this, and he can never begin to express the desperate cry for the blood of this ruthless killer that he feels welling inside him.

The rage doesn't last. Hollow emptiness takes its place as he begins to leave the castle behind, and the cold takes over. Now all he wishes for is death.

A sudden scream rends the air, pulls Merlin back into the present. He sits up, hands rubbing his face, and his head twisting round, but he soon recognises the yell as that of Mordred. A sickening satisfaction fills him, and a twisted smile spreads across his face. Perhaps the man is meeting his death this second, and Merlin will listen to it vengefully, thinking of those he could never save.

But the screaming doesn't stop. Soon he cannot bear it. It sounds too much like the inside of his head after that horrifying day.

Getting to his feet, he follows the sound, wincing as it gets louder and more pained. He cannot bear the sound of pain anymore. No matter who feels it.

Rounding a clump of trees, he spots a clearing, and a figure standing in the centre. There is just one tree next to the man, and it is raw and damaged. Mordred's sword hangs heavy in his hand, and large chunks of wood litter the ground around him. His face is red, and his eyes are streaming.

Merlin's mind does not quite join the images together before Mordred raises his sword and slices it towards the tree.

It is thick and old, and will not fall. But Mordred hacks at it anyway, face swollen with tears as he screams.

Merlin approaches him silently. Mordred doesn't notice him until he is right behind him, and whips around, eyes wild and sword raised.

'Why are you doing this?'

Merlin's voice is quiet. To see the man he hates reduced to this is jarring, and he is curious.

'This wasn't supposed to happen,' snarls his companion. 'Did you honestly think I would condone this?'

A sharp bark of a laugh resonates through the clearing, and Merlin sees a hint of the old insanity he saw in Morgana reflected in the young man's eyes.

'They lied to me. The dragon dies, Morgana dies, everybody dies. Everybody dies! And you, you stay. You always stay. Why do you always stay? No, no matter, you are of no importance anymore. The world I needed to exist is gone now. I must kill Arthur, I mustn't kill Arthur, my destiny is gone. How much of it was true, Emrys? Why did they lie to me? I didn't want any of this.'

He sinks to his knees, the icy demeanour he has displayed until so recently shattered and gone. Merlin watches, fascinated, as the druid boy cries into the leaves. Clearly, this has been inside him the whole time. The fragile self he had managed to hold together has broken, possibly at Merlin's remembrance of events, and now he has fallen over the edge.

This isn't the cruel killer Merlin has travelled with. This is a little boy lied to, and used, and betrayed, and altogether more human than Merlin has ever seen him. It is impossible for him not to pity the shivering shell upon the forest ground. There is no forgiveness in the sorcerer's eyes as he looks upon the shuddering body, but his eyes light up and he is able to carry his enemy back to their rudimentary camp.

Grief requires rest. Merlin knows this from the exhaustion he felt before. So he watches Mordred's fitful sleep, and although this is the perfect opportunity to slaughter him like a pig, he does not. He simply watches, because maybe this boy is as broken as he is. Besides, he is still curious, and he needs to know of these forces that lied. Even if the liar turns out to be Mordred after all. As the sky darkens, he lights the fire, and impales the remains of a rabbit he had eaten the previous day on a sharp stick to heat it.

For the first time in a week, he breathes.

The next chapter will be uploaded as soon as it's been written. I hope you enjoyed it! Just to let you know, slash is coming, so turn back now if it's not your cup of tea. Thanks for reading!