Winter’s First Chill

Merlin has never been cold in his life. Even in Ealdor in depths of winter, on the coldest night with little food and only a fitful little fire burning in the hearth, even then he felt not the slightest hint of chill while his mother huddled deep into thin, scratchy blankets to still her shivering. In all honesty he’s not sure he really understands the concept – he’s touched people and felt their skin so cool and alien against his own, but he can’t imagine what it’s like to feel that throughout his whole body, can’t imagine how anybody’s heart can still beat, how their blood doesn’t freeze sluggish in their veins under the force of such cold.

Merlin is always warm. His magic thrums beneath his skin, smouldering in his eyes whenever he lets it loose. Magic is the air in his lungs and the fire in his blood; it is what keeps him alive, burning at the core of his being, and without it he would wither away, lifeless. Much as he finds the cold hard to understand, he cannot even conceive what it would be to live without his magic, his eternal warmth.

But when Arthur drinks from that goblet, there by the shoreline in the shadow of the labyrinth, when Arthur’s eyes cloud and close and he crumples to the ground, then he feels it for the first time. It’s a chill in his bones and in his heart, so sharp it feels like daggers, like shards of frost in his flesh; it’s ice in his lungs, stealing his breath no matter how he gasps to get it back and making his limbs feel leaden and numb. His thoughts slow to a crawl and his chest seizes up and all that is vital and bright and alive is dimmed from his thoughts. This, he thinks distantly, this is what it must be like to be frozen alive.

And then Arthur breathes, deep in sleep, and Merlin feels the colour rush back into his vision and the blood pump once more in his veins. All at once he feels his magic scorching through him and singing just beneath the skin, chasing away the cold and the frost until he can move and breathe and the icy weight is lifted from his chest. He lays a hand against Arthur’s cheek, and it feels cool; Merlin warms it with a thought – Arthur is heat and light in his life, arrogant and prattish and bright with promise, and in Merlin’s mind he should always be warm.

Merlin felt the cold for the first time in that brief instant, and it is something he prays he will never have to feel again. He will keep close to Arthur, close as he possibly can, and warm him, keep him from the icy talons of that chill, because Merlin has felt the cold for the first time, and it feels like death.