A/N: Sorry for the delay. Have some Arthur/Gwen!
Arthur can't breathe without tasting smoke, feeling it crawl down his throats, choking his lungs.
Except when he wakes up from his nightmares. Then, he can't breathe at all.
Fighting Sigan didn't go like Merlin had expected. He'd expected attempted possession. He'd expected gargoyles and fire.
He hadn't expected Sigan to smirk and throw a spell almost negligently at the unconscious Arthur. The blue light had sped towards him, and Merlin hadn't known how to stop it, so he'd thrown himself forward onto Arthur in a desperate attempt to shield him.
When the light faded, Merlin opened his eyes. They were in a forest that looked dead, and he could feel things creeping through the trees. Things that made his magic twitch.
He scrambled to his feet. They could be dead, but if they were dead, he didn't think Arthur would still be unconscious, and even if they were dead, he wasn't going to lie there and let Arthur be attacked.
By the time Arthur woke up, the bodies of three beasts that hurt to look at were cooling on the forest floor.
They expect him to be out of practice, out of shape, out of his mind and lost in the fog of a broken enchantment.
He fights like a dragon unleashed and nearly forgets to pull his blows enough to leave his fellow knights alive. He's ever vigilant. His eyes move constantly as he walks through the castle, and every noise sends his hand to his sword. He can't sleep without someone there to keep watch, and he refuses to admit to this weakness, so he ends up roaming the castle at all hours until this somehow turns into him sleeping on the floor in Morgana's chambers, and she, he, and Guinevere take turns keeping awake and watching the others for nightmares.
The only habits he doesn't keep are boiling his water and assuming that all food is poisoned on principle. He eats and drinks like he's daring the world to kill him, and he looks to Uther with his eyes burning with the heat of a pyre as he does so.
Wherever they were, some forest on earth that Merlin had never heard of, some magical realm, or something else entirely, it didn't matter much. Everything here was trying to kill them, and Merlin hadn't the first idea how to get them home.
He tried to keep Arthur's spirits up, but his own were about as low as they could get. Arthur noticed, and he turned and gave Merlin the sort of look he normally reserved for young knights right before their first battles. He put his hands on Merlin's shoulders, and he looked every inch the king he would one day be.
"I will get us home," he promised.
Then something hissed and came flying out of the trees. Arthur whirled and brought his sword up in an arc. It gutted the beast and fell in a heap.
"See?" Arthur said, putting the sword away. "There's nothing here we can't handle. We'll be fine."
"We'll need food soon," Merlin pointed out, "and water. And I don't exactly trust anything we might find here."
"We'll figure something out," Arthur promised, and the fact that he didn't tease Merlin for always thinking of his stomach told him just how seriously Arthur was taking this.
When more of those hissing things came flying out of the trees, Merlin had no choice but to use magic to help Arthur fend them off. He wasn't sure at exactly what point in the hours long battle of fighting back to back that Arthur figured it out, but it didn't really matter.
