The Battle • Merthur

Gwen's Death Part 2

Merlin's POV
***
"What do you mean, dead, Gaius??" Arthur asks, kneeling next to his wife, not quite believing what he was just told.

"Did you by any chance, encounter, The Loatherium Beast?" Gaius asks, looking between me and Arthur and the other knights. We stared at him, the what now?!

"What does it look like?" Percival was the first to speak, Gaius passed him the book, slowly everyone else looked at it, Gwaine passed the book to me. That's the beast we saw. My face went pale as I read what was on the page. I let Gaius take the book away from me.

"Yes, that was the beast," Gwaine says, breaking the silence of the room. I sighed as Gaius gave me a disappointed look.

"Arthur, can you get the guards and everyone else but you five to leave the room please?" Arthur nodded and everyone else left the room, with the door closed. With Gaius acting like this, Gwen's death is bad. Like real bad.

"The Loatherium Beast, as you are all aware feeds on hate. When it chooses it's victim, that's the bind it has, with itself and the victim. For example when Adam says Arthur will fight it, the beast is binded to those words and  the beast then attatches itself to the person Arthur 'loves'," he says with quotation marks. He knows something else happened. God damn it.

"If something breaks that bind, the beast and the person it was attached to, dies," he finishes. The whole room was silent. None of us new what to say to him. The way Gaius looked, he looked so angry at me, I knew. I knew this was all my fault. Like it always is.

"Gaius," Gwaine asks, and Gaius looks up to Gwaine, frowning. He nods for him to continue.

"If you love beer, and the beast attached himself to beer, does that make him an alcoholic?"

We all stared at him, lost for words. Only Gwaine would joke at a time like this. Percival punches him in the arm, I rolled my eyes.

"Gaius, are you sure there's nothing you can do?" Arthur speaks for the first time in a while. It must be so difficult for him. I could only imagine what he's going through.

Arthur's POV
***
Well, with everything going on, I wasn't actually that upset about her being dead. Maybe I never even cared about her that much. All I knew is, I had to keep up the act. I had to pretend I was fazed by this whole thing.

"Yes, Sire, I'm so sorry," Gaius says, I nodded and got up from where I was sitting. Its time to take charge. Again.

"Right Gaius, can I trust you not to tell anyone what I'm about to tell you?" I asked him, while I could see Merlin looking at me, confused.

"What the hell are you doing Arthur! He doesn't need to know!" Merlin tells me, again no one else heard, I looked at him in the eyes.

"He needs to know what happened. I don't care if it's wrong. I love you Merlin," I replied to him in my head. Merlin smiles and nods for me to continue.

"Sire, what happened will stay strictly between us, I swear I won't tell a soul," Gaius says and I turn my attention back to him.

"Thank you Gaius, what happened back in the forest-"

"Arthur and Merlin are in love!" Gwaine says cheerfully.  I rolled my eyes. He's getting to be really, really annoying.

"Yes, thank you Gwaine," I say, annoyed. Gaius looked between me and Merlin. I was trying to read Gaius's thoughts but I had no idea what he was thinking.

"Well, as long as you both know nothing can really come of it, then, that's fine," he says. I'm not even sure he did say that. That was just a dream. He actually said that's fine and true love is where the heart lies. Merlin's mouth dropped to the floor. He couldn't believe what he was hearing either.

"Wh- what?" I stuttered. I never stutter.

"Camelot will never accept it, only bad things can happen from this. They only just got their heads around you marrying Gwen, a servant. They aren't going to accept... That, any time soon,"