We'll Always Be The Last To Fall

Prologue

A/N

This fic was written for BBC Merlin Reverse Bang 2022-23! The original idea for this story was given by silk-scarlet-ribbons (on Tumblr), who also created beautiful art for this story. It is embedded in the work itself, and the original art post can be found linked to the end of this chapter. This work is also posted on AO3 under the same title.

CW/TW - Blood and violence, especially in the fourth part. It is a moderately graphic battle scene. Reader caution advised.

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Prologue.

The first time Arthur was nearly killed by sorcery, he was nine summers old and out of bed at a time he really should have been asleep.

There isn't much that he remembers from that day. He remembers that it had been winter, the sky splashed midnight blue, the background for a sea of stars spread into infinity across the dome above his head.

He remembers the stark sight of crimson blood staining the snow beneath him, spreading continuously despite his weak attempts to staunch the flow. He remembers the bright pinpricks of the stars winking in and out of sight as he lost his conviction and lay down in the snow to rest, the cold damp seeping through his clothes and into his bones.

He remembers the feeling that he should not be bleeding this much, the blood rushing and bubbling out of him in a way that reminded him of a river in autumn, during those few weeks where the rain fell down in sheets and flooded the farms on its banks.

What he does not remember, however, is the sheer pain and fear he must have felt, half-dead in one of his mother's old lawns, overgrown in the years since she'd left. He does not remember the feeling of panic rising in his throat at the thought that he would not be discovered before he became nothing more than a dead corpse in a dead queen's garden, an errant child out of bed after hours, no matter the fact that he was a prince.

He does not remember the wild rose bushes that surrounded him, the crimson splashed on the petals of the flowers, a gruesome parody of his own lifeblood spilling out of him. He does not remember the pain.

But what he can never forget is the face of the sorcerer who had loomed over him as he writhed in agony on the winter floor, bitten, wine-red lips stretched over blindingly white teeth, blue eyes glittering with pleasure over the destruction he had wrought. And he can never forget the screams the sorcerer made when he burned.