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Merlin wasn’t unused to losing apprentices.
It happens. Magic is dangerous. The world is dangerous. It was just as likely for an apprentice to fall under the hands of a great beast as it were for them to fall ill, fall apart, fall, fall, fall away from him and into millions of tiny pieces and not even a wizard as great as Merlin could put them back together again.
Each time Merlin would find his heart— what was left of it, shattered and cold, scabbed over with the losses he’s endured throughout the years— seized by grief and loss and regret. And each time he would ask himself, “Was I too hard on them?” and the lack of surety in the answer would cripple him almost more than the loss itself. The grief would fade. The pain would go. But Merlin would wake up and wake up and ask himself “Was I too hard on them?” and have no answer yet still.
He would push through the waves of mourning and crawl up on the distant shore and brick up his heart so it wouldn’t hurt anymore, so it would hurt less, and with each brick he smiled less and he laughed less and he entertained less— because that would cause the hurt, you see, to entertain the thoughts of another, and let those thoughts transform the bricks into windows into a doorway, a doorway to the most vulnerable and hurt part of himself— and it got easier, after so many of them, just a blur of hair and faces because Merlin couldn’t look all of them in the eye. That made it easier, too.
But Douxie…
Merlin dips his rag carefully in the bucket by Douxie’s bedside. The water is cooling, he notes— before the man can even think about it the bucket floats gently away while Merlin mops the sweat off Douxie’s face. He wrings the rag out, moves instinctively to rewet it, and is not surprised to find a warmer bucket to dip the scrap of cloth in. He repeats this process, up and down Douxie’s face, his neck; he mops the drying salt and water off his hands, his chest, dutifully keeps his sickly apprentice clean.
Merlin is all Douxie has. Douxie was all Merlin had.
There is a soft, pained groan from the bed. And he knows. Merlin knows. He wishes he could help, he is trying to help, but there is so little he can do, so little his magic can do; Merlin tried, and only exacerbated the issue. He is not a medical wizard. There is no place in his world for little more than rudimentary healing magic for shallow battle wounds. Douxie’s cough turned to a hack, and his hack gave way to fever, and his fever gave way to delirium. Merlin was resigned to the ugly truth: this is a fever he would have to sweat out.
If it didn’t kill him.
The wizard watches Douxie’s eyes flutter. The light pains him and Merlin can see it; the curtains are drawn to nothing but a sliver, and the fading light of the evening washes the room in a pale gold, but still the boy winces, sobs quietly and turns his head into his sweat-soaked pillow. “Shhhh,” Merlin soothes, and his hands find their way from his forehead to damp strands of stringy black hair. He pushes the hair away from Douxie’s face, frowning at the slight wince— he must be dehydrated, if such a slight jostle caused him pain. If only he would eat…
There are platters piled high with old food, half eaten food, discarded and forgotten food— mostly soups for Douxie, having long since run cold. Merlin couldn’t get him to eat solids. He wasn’t even sure the boy knew what he was being offered; he hardly seemed to smell it or taste it, and when he pressed bread to his lips Douxie wouldn’t even open his mouth most of the time, or sleep before he had even swallowed. It had been days, and he wouldn’t eat, he wouldn’t drink. He could hardly sit up without clutching Merlin in agony, crying more tears than Merlin thought he could possibly have. Merlin was forced to open Douxie’s mouth and pour in a small spoonful of soup or water and massage his throat to coax the food down to keep him from dying of dehydration or starvation in his sleep. (Then he would have to pray it stayed down. He was rather tired of being vomited on.)
But it wasn’t enough. He knew it wasn’t enough.
“Shhh,” Merlin soothes again, lost in the rhythm of petting Douxie’s wet hair. It had taken little more than a few days for Merlin to fear for Douxie’s life, to go from checking in on him periodically to attending him for an hour or two to constantly nursing Douxie by his bedside. He’s loathe to leave, to grab fresh soup, cooler water to drink, and perhaps something for himself. Yes, the man may be immortal, but he isn’t immune to the more… banal aspects of mortality.
He didn’t know what to do. He was so powerless. A man, full of power, brimming with it, perhaps the most magically potent thing across the entire kingdom— felled like an ancient tree in the face of illness. In the face of Douxie’s illness. In the face of his boy, his Douxie, being sick in a way he couldn’t fix. His gaze sweeps over the pale, waxen face of his apprentice. The chapped lips, stringy, wet hair, the iron grip on the day old blankets he wouldn’t let Merlin change— all of it culminated in one big painful knot in Merlin’s ribcage, beating and beating to the beat of his heart, beating like it’s trying to crack him open and escape, or fold in on itself to a terrible black void and render him to atoms.
Merlin is about to fetch those measly peasant doctors for help, loathe as he is to admit it, when Morgana sweeps in, carrying a steaming plate of something. Her eyebrow arches at the tables full of mess and stacked bowls and plates and for a moment Merlin feels something akin to shame; but shame won’t make Douxie better, so he swallows yet another knot and instead cynically sniffs her rather delicious smelling meal.
“I brought you something,” she says in lieu of hello. That’s all fine and good for Merlin. He doesn’t have time for silly pleasantries. “and something small for your sickly little servant boy. I take it he isn’t any better?”
“He’s my apprentice,” Merlin corrects, but gratefully accepts the food. His eyes never leave Douxie, ever sick, ever worsening Douxie while he eats. “You would do well to remember that.”
She smiles. It doesn’t reach her eyes. “Of course, Merlin. I’m sorry I forgot.”
He has nothing to say to that, so the conversation putters to a halt as Morgana shuffles about his room, examining this, examining that. She shoots him glances as she walks around, and it’s increasingly clear she’s only come to tell him something. Morgana hovers at Douxie’s bedside, though, trailing her fingers across his hot, clammy forehead, down his sweaty arms and back up to pat his head with a heavy hand before she makes yet another circuit. There’s nothing in his room she hasn’t already seen, so— she wants something. He lets her walk about a bit more before asking wearily, “What do you want, Morgana?”
She halts, like she hadn’t been expecting to be asked anything at all— or as if she was still deciding what to say, Merlin thinks, as dread pools like vile acid in his stomach. Morgana takes a moment to speak, opening and closing her mouth like a dying fish, and Merlin is halfway to telling her to spit it out before she says, carefully, “It is quite unlike you to go to such… extents, to ensure the survival of your apprentices.”
“He simply has potential,” Merlin responds icily. “it would be a shame to let that go to waste.”
Morgana laughed, but there was something different about her tone. “You can just admit you like the boy, you know.”
Merlin’s chest tightens. “There’s nothing to admit.” His tone brooks no argument, but the way his fingers shake as he draws his magic to clear all the mess speaks for him. His bowl, forgotten in his lap, clatters noisily to the floor— it’s failure, he thinks, it’s admission, it’s the truth he’s known all along. He can’t lose Douxie. He can’t lose anyone else. Douxie carved a hole into those bricks, knocked down the wall with such ease Merlin was left scrambling for centuries to put his defenses back up. Douxie didn’t build a door— there’s no need for one. There’s nothing stopping him from cradling that soft, wounded part of him Merlin hid for so long. Every entrance into his heart is shaped like him.
Merlin opens his eyes to find himself crouching, holding a sharp shard of ceramic in his hand. Blood drips and mixes with the remains of his food but it doesn’t hurt, can’t possibly hurt more than the idea of losing Douxie to something he can’t stop. “I…” he breathes a heavy sigh and it tastes like his grief. “I can’t lose my son, Morgana.” His voice is so quiet he can barely hear himself.
Morgana is crouching down with him, too, and she pulls him into her arms before he can say no. “I know.”
They clean up the mess together. They clean up Merlin, together, though of course he did most parts alone— when he washes himself, he realized just how dirty he was, just how much he had neglected himself in his attempt to care for Douxie. Merlin is hesitant to leave him, even for a moment, but Morgana reminds him quite firmly that he’s no good to Douxie if he’s not good to himself. So cleans, and she tends, and she cleans, and he tends, and Douxie eats more, he drinks more, and together the minutes turn to hours turn to days turn to nights, and the third night after Morgana visits Douxie’s fever breaks.
Merlin finds Douxie sitting up on his bed, scrubbing the sleep from his eyes and looking thoroughly exhausted. Something in him mends, then; it eases, untightens, bringing him so much relief he nearly collapses from the sheer force of it. He feels sea sick, in a way, but his feet act as anchors as he moves to Douxie’s side.
“Hey, Master,” the boy rasps, looking quite out of it. He smells like three days worth of sweat caked to a teenage body. Which is to say he smells… ripe. This doesn’t stop Merlin from cupping the side of his boy’s face; nor does it stop Douxie from leaning in to it. “do you think I could get a change of clothes, maybe?”
Merlin already has them. (He’s had them for a while now, really, waiting for Douxie’s fever to break, waiting endlessly, folded in a forgotten corner.) “Arms up. And don’t you—”
“But, Master!” Douxie whines, already skyrocketing his arms to the ceiling.
“but Master me.” Merlin smiles before he can help himself, and then he laughs, and Douxie laughs too, quiet and tired and raspy and when Douxie presses his forehead to Merlin’s, he doesn’t stop him.
Merlin built his defenses on the shoreline of the ocean. And Douxie, ever patient Douxie, worked away at the cracks of his walls, came rushing in and filled up his heart and made it start beating again.
Merlin wasn’t unused to losing apprentices. But, Gods, he’d do everything in his power to keep this one.