wickednotevil has had the fabulous idea of setting upmerlinadvent which you should all go join RIGHT THIS VERY MOMENT, PEOPLE, because it is awesome and means that there will be lots of shiny Christmas fic! Even if you don't want to write, go over there and give some prompts. Pretty please? *bats eyelashes*

Also now that the first challenge is done at merlin_las I'm posting my entry over here, and yay! I won the first challenge and survive to the next round! *does embarrassing victory dance of joy* Everyone who voted, you guys rock! So yes, fic!

Title: In Thy Orisons
Rating: PG-13
Pairing: gen (hey look! I wrote gen! Actual gen with no traumatic pairings!)
Warnings: Character death (and there we go, right back to the comfortable realm of the traumatic)
Spoilers: None
Summary: Years in Camelot's future things finally come to a head
A/N: This was written for the prompt of Arthur and Uther

 

Arthur reeks of smoke and steel and ruin, and Uther’s blood pours hot and bright over his hands, soaking through his clothes. He can hear the riots raging outside, the castle besieged, but in here there is only the heaving of ragged breaths and the scuff of boots on bare stone as Uther collapses against him, Arthur’s sword buried to the hilt in his stomach.

‘I only ever wanted to keep you safe,’ Uther rasps.

‘Don’t,’ Arthur grits out; don’t make this mine, he wants to say, don’t lay their deaths at my feet. He wrenches the sword and sweeps it clear. For Gaius, he thinks, burnt alive at Uther’s hands, for Morgana and her unborn child, executed by the closest thing she had to a father; only Merlin’s secret has been kept, but the price is great.

‘It has to stop,’ he whispers. His voice almost cracks but he will not allow it. If Uther has taught him one thing, it is this: whatever festers in his heart, a king must never show weakness. He cannot yield, not even here with his father’s final breath cooling on his cheek.

Uther sags to the floor with a dull thud, the crown tumbling from his head, first gold then crimson. Arthur looks down at the crumpled body and thinks that this is not his father, not this burnt-out husk barricaded behind castle walls, sitting dark-eyed and feverish on the throne in hysterical judgement. As far as Arthur is concerned, Uther has been dead for years; he’s had his time to mourn.

Arthur walks the length of the hall, throws open the doors. ‘The king is dead,’ he declares, voice ringing too loud in the smothered silence. The guards look from his bloodied hands to his steel-blue eyes; they drag Uther’s body from the room and say nothing.

-----------------------

Merlin waits for his liege on the balcony. The square before him teems with the citizenry. A brittle order has returned since Uther passed away, a sacrificial effigy to sate a nation’s fury, but the balance is delicate; ‘murder’ and ‘patricide’ are words not spoken. Arthur is the fulcrum on which everything hinges; he is the standard-bearer for the future. Duty and necessity and a father’s life on his hands: perhaps one day these things will bring him to his knees, but for now, as he must, he remains unbowed, surrendering only behind closed doors.

Arthur does not dress in black – he strides out to greet his people in gold and crimson, a blazing twin to the rising sun; he is not his father. He stares unflinchingly ahead, out and over the assembled crowd, and he speaks. Merlin can almost see the words take shape as they leave his mouth, carving themselves irrevocably into the minds of Camelot’s people. Arthur has power now, one that cannot be defined merely by the crown that weights his brow.

Arthur speaks, and Merlin feels the shifting of an era, an ache that goes bone-deep; he tastes destiny on the wind.