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ohanahoku-ao3 · 3 months

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Whumptober 2023 Day 28

Enjoy some hastily written Gwaine and Merlin!

Teen & Up - Gen - Merlin

Sharing Secrets

Gwaine’s breath misted in the cool air as he laid back against the stone of the cliff face that was providing them what little shelter it could. His head ached, and every breath hurt as his lungs pressed against broken and cracked ribs, his chest dirtied and scratched from the mad dash they made running from their captors. But while Gwaine’s body was bruised to high heaven, he wasn’t concerned about himself as he glanced over at Merlin beside him. Red leaked between the fingers he held to his side, staining his skin and dripping down to soak into the tiny scrap of cloth that barely protected his dignity. Merlin’s skin was pale from the blood loss, his lips a worrying purplish color as the servant panted harshly. There wasn’t enough cloth between them to fashion a bandage, and both were too exhausted to move, their bare feet torn from the rough terrain they’d traveled over.

The knight sighed, looking up at the sky, wondering how long the twilight would last before leaving them in the dark. “You holding up, Merlin?” Gwaine asked, his voice strained as he struggled to inhale a full breath.

A snort came from the other man, followed by a snarky answer. “Better than you.”

Gwaine looked back at him, their eyes meeting for a brief second before they both laughed and winced immediately laughter. Gwaine choked on his breath as his ribs burst in pain. “Okay, laughter is banned. No more laughing.” He said, grimacing harshly.

Merlin chuckled despite the pain, nodding as he rested his head back with a sigh. “Agreed.”

Gwaine looked back at him once he could unscrew his face from the discomfort. Merlin’s free hand was itching at the silver cuff around his other wrist, the skin around it enflamed. “You’re gonna make it worse.” He murmured, though the sight reminded him of how much his own wrists itched under his cuffs.

Merlin just hummed, his brow furrowing as he closed his eyes, his hand closing around the cuff. He didn’t speak or pull on the cuff at all, but the look on his face was clear concentration for a few moments before the man gasped, slumping further against the wall as he grew a few worrying shades paler. Gwaine moved to grab his shoulder, his concern spiking before Merlin’s voice made him freeze. “I’m sorry, Gwaine.”

“The bandits weren’t your fault,” Gwaine said after a pause. “You don’t have to apologize.”

Merlin hummed softly, opening his eyes to glance at him briefly before looking down at the cuff again. “You’re a good friend, Gwaine. I should… If we make it out of this, there’s something I should tell you.”

The knight’s eyes widened, and Gwaine looked back up at the sky for a moment. “Well, we might not make it to the morning, so go on and tell me now.” He said, looking back at Merlin to find his blue eyes on him, his friend’s expression unsure and hesitant. “I have a secret of my own you should know.”

“You do?” Merlin looked startled at the revelation.

“I do. But only if you go first.” Gwaine said, grinning when Merlin tsked and rolled his eyes in fond exasperation. The tension melted away as they shared a light laugh, a comfortable silence settling in as Merlin looked up at the sky and sighed.

“I have magic.” He said, his voice soft. “I always have. I was born with it.” He admitted, glancing hesitantly at Gwaine.

The knight stared back at him, a look of wonder on his face. “Merlin, I am honored that you trust me enough to tell me.” He said, smiling warmly.

Merlin relaxed at his words, his shoulders slumping slightly before he lifted his free hand to glare at the cuff. “These prevent me from using my magic, or I would have gotten us out of there.”

“Ah, I wondered why they used these. I thought it was a claim of some sort for their prisoners.” Gwaine said, glaring angrily at the cuffs now that he knew the truth about them.

Merlin nodded, and for a while, the silence stretched. “What’s your secret?”

Gwaine smiled at the question, looking back to meet Merlin’s curious gaze. “I knew.” He said simply, expanding when he got no reaction from the other man. “I knew about your magic.”

Merlin startled, physically flinching away in shock. “You- But- How?” He asked, swallowing hard.

“The troll. I heard him call you magic. Maybe I’m no genius, but I’m not as thick as Arthur can be either.” Gwaine said with a grin that Merlin reflected with a faint smile. “I didn’t realize until the quest was over, though. Thought he was daft, to be honest. But then things started adding up, small things. Like tree branches falling on bandits’ heads.”

Merlin huffed, looking away briefly in embarrassment before turning back to his friend. “But then, why did you never tell me?” He asked, searching Gwaine’s face.

“It wasn’t my place,” Gwaine said softly. “I wanted you to tell me when you were ready, not because I forced you to admit it.”

Merlin’s eyes watered, and the warlock quickly dashed the tears away. “Thank you.” He said, voice watery but full of gratitude.

Gwaine nodded and then painfully pulled himself to his feet. “Now, what I’m hearing is that if we want to get out of this alive, we need to get those cuffs off.” He said, extending a hand to Merlin. “Let’s go get your magic back, yeah?” He asked, grinning when Merlin smiled and took his hand without any hesitation.

#whumptober2023 #no.28 #we might not make it to the morning so go on and tell me now #bbc merlin #fic #mild blood tw #injuries tw #read on ao3 #fanfiction #ao3 #ao3 fanfiction #ao3 link #fanfic #ao3 fanfic #merlin #gwaine

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actress4him · 6 months

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Whumptober 2023 - Day 23 - The Shadow of Death

This is canon 'verse and takes place after the captivity with Kane. Bruno belongs to Izzy! For this piece I used a different line of the prompt song as inspiration.

Taglist: @painful-pooch , @sssunshinebreeze

Masterlist

No. 23: “Please forgive me I’ve got demons in my head.”

Contains: dude whump, lady whump, PTSD, flashbacks, panic attacks, vaguely implied noncon, beating, stabbing, guilt, romance, mild blood, stitches

She’s not sure what started it all. A nightmare, most likely, he was lying down resting when she left him and probably fell asleep. Reasons and explanations are far from Kamaria’s mind right now, though, all she knows is that she walks back into the clearing to find Bruno deep in the throes of panic.

He’s standing, too close to the smoldering campfire for her comfort when he’s out of it like this, and he looks ready for a fight but in no condition to be in one. His forehead is soaked with sweat, turning his hairline dark. He’s panting, eyes darting around as if seeing an enemy that isn’t there, and as she watches one hand comes up to clutch at his shirt over the scars on his chest.

It hurts her heart to see him like this. He doesn’t deserve to be so afraid.

“Bruno.” She calls to him from a distance to start with, setting down the armload of firewood she gathered. He doesn’t acknowledge her presence, still lost in his memories and fears.

So she walks a little closer, getting in his line of sight, and raises her voice. “Bruno. Istulta!” Sometimes that works. Today it does not. “You’re alright. You’re safe. Can you hear me?”

He stumbles backwards, thankfully away from the fire, and spins around, putting his back to her.

He’s warned her before about getting too close to him when he’s like this. She’s never had to help him out of one this bad, and yes, he’s lunged at her a time or two, mostly when she first wakes him up from a nightmare. But he’s never hurt her. And even if he might, she can’t just leave him to suffer. Hurt is nothing new to her, anyway, she can handle it.

“Bruno.” Circling around, she approaches him slowly from the front. “Come on, amachari, you can do this. Come back to me.”

He’s looking straight past her, straight through her. Talking alone isn’t going to help. Kamaria reaches out, debating for a split second where the safest place to touch might be, then lays her hand gently on his arm.

The effect is instantaneous. His hand closes over her wrist in an iron grip, too quickly for even her normally lightning-fast reflexes to evade, and he slings her to the ground. It wrenches both her wrist and elbow, but she barely notices. She’s too busy trying to scramble back to her feet.

He doesn’t give her the chance for that, though. Before she even rolls over he’s there, punching her across the face. The force of it knocks her back to the ground.

He’s seeing her now, finally. But he sees her as an enemy.

A deeply ingrained, instinctual part of her desperately wants to pull a knife, but she can’t. It’s Bruno, and he’s not trying to hurt her. She has to stay calm, to help him however she can even if she gets hurt in the process.

Even if she wanted to fight back, he’s moving with an intensity that she rarely sees from him. He grabs her by the shoulder and slams her back into the ground, then straddles her hips, pinning her down.

All of the oxygen is suddenly sucked from her lungs. It’s no longer Bruno above her, it’s Kane. It’s happening all over again, she’s trapped underneath him, she can’t escape. She’s already broken for him but it’s never enough. He’ll never stop.

The first punch doesn’t break her from the memory. The second does, if only briefly, long enough for her to see Bruno’s face - both angry and terrified at once. She throws the arm he’s not holding down over her face, trying to protect herself, gasping and sobbing all at once.

“Bruno…Bruno please…”

He tosses that arm aside and presses it into the ground and the moment of clarity is lost. “Please…please don’t!”

There’s blood filling her mouth. Her vision is blurred, ears ringing. Kane’s voice echoes in her mind, laughing at her pain, at how pathetic she becomes as soon as he’s on top of her. She sees Bruno again, but it’s like she’s drowning, coming up for gulps of air and glimpses of reality before she’s plunged back into the turmoil of the past. His fist won’t stop coming down, over and over.

She has to stop him. Has to help him, has to stop him, he’s hurting, she can’t do this again.

A knife finds its way into her hand without her consciously deciding to draw it. She doesn’t know who is hurting her anymore, all she knows is that it has to stop, and that Bruno’s safety depends on it. With what little leverage she has from the position she’s in, she stabs upward.

The man above her cries out, almost crumples on top of her, then rolls to the side and disappears from view. The pressure on her hips vanishes, but still she struggles to breathe. Her face throbs. Kamaria turns over onto her side, wanting to get up and run far away but unable to move any farther with her head pounding and the ground spinning beneath her. She spits out a mouthful of blood, then curls into a ball, shuddering.

She wants to scream.

She does scream, and it hurts all through her nose and cheeks and temples.

“Ka-...Kamaria…”

Bruno.

Shoving her hands into the ground, she pushes herself up to sit, mind still whirling as she tries to place what just happened. There was no Kane, was there? It was only Bruno the whole time. He hurt her. But she can’t hold that against him, not when she knows exactly what it feels like to be trapped in your own head like that. He didn’t mean to. He’s not Kane, not in any capacity.

He’s going to feel terrible when he realizes what happened.

She has to go to him, though, she has to see if he’s okay now. She pulls up her hood that she uses to partially hide her face on missions, knowing it will do very little good but trying to put off the inevitable as long as possible, and crawls toward him.

He’s lying on his back, eyes filled with pain as he spots her. “Kamaria…love…are you…?”

“I’m here.” Her voice sounds raw. “I’m coming.”

As she approaches, she’s alarmed to see blood coating his shoulder. Did she…she did, didn’t she? She just barely remembers it, the feeling of the knife in her hand, the desperate need to get him off of her. She picks up her pace, half crawling, half stumbling.

“You…I heard you scream. Are you…are you hurt?”

“I’m fine.” She drops down next to him, bent over the wound on his shoulder, fingers gently prodding around it. He hisses in response, neck arching.

“What…happened?”

“Don’t worry about it right now. I need to take care of this. It’s not too deep, thankfully.” It’s not through his heart, thankfully.

She gets up, swaying in place for a moment before she can see straight enough to walk over to the bag with the medical supplies. She’ll have to take care of her own wounds, eventually, but his is more pressing. Automatically she’s trying to figure out how she can keep it from him, whether or not she can wash up enough that it isn’t noticeable and how long she can keep the hood on before he gets suspicious.

He’s going to find out, though. Better she focuses on breaking the news as gently as possible.

“I feel like I’ve just run the length of Ethorcon.” He’s got his uninjured arm draped over his face. “Did you…stab me?”

“Perhaps?” Setting the bag down next to him, she rummages until she finds the alcohol and a clean cloth. “This will sting.”

Bruno grits his teeth as the liquid sloshes over the wound, letting out a quiet groan while she begins to pat the area clean. “I’m so confused. I was just lying there, waiting for you to come back with the firewood, thinking about dinner, and…”

He’s starting to understand, she can tell by the way he trails off. “I was afraid. When…when I woke up bleeding, before I ever realized I was injured or heard you scream, I felt afraid.” His arm drops to the ground and he turns his head to look at her. Kamaria keeps her head carefully ducked toward her work. “I did it again, didn’t I?”

She gives a sympathetic smile that he probably can’t really see, split lip smarting in response. “I think you must have had a nightmare. You were awake when I got back, but…”

He lets that sink in for a moment. “Right. That…explains why I’m so exhausted now.” He’s too quiet, still thinking, trying to make sense of it all.

Setting the cloth and bottle to the side, she gets out the needle and thread. “I need to sterilize this.”

The fire that they were supposed to be stoking to cook dinner is nothing but coals, so she busies herself throwing in a couple of the pieces of wood she’d brought and stirring up some flames to hold the needle in. Her body aches with exhaustion, as well. After this, she’ll rest. They both deserve a good rest.

“You stabbed me.”

She turns her head slightly toward him. “Yes. I…I’m sorry.”

“Kamaria, did I…?”

She’s frozen in place, unable to respond. She wants to say no, of course not, she’s fine. But he hates it when she lies about being hurt.

“It’s…you…” She swallows and shakes her head. “I shouldn’t have tried touching you. It was the wrong choice.”

“Kamaria…” He sits up and starts scooting toward her. She keeps her back to him, hands clenched into fists.

“You need to lie back down. You’re going to make it bleed and I’ll have to clean it all over again. This needle is ready, I’ve got to sew you up.”

“Please look at me, love.” He’s sitting right behind her, and the pain in his voice makes her chest hurt. His hand comes up and lightly grasps her hood. She tenses, but doesn’t move to stop him.

Ever so gently, he tugs it off. She ducks her head as she finally turns to face him.

Bruno swears under his breath. “Kamaria. I don’t…I didn’t…”

“You didn’t mean it.” Tear-filled eyes come up to lock with his. “I’m not upset with you, you weren’t trying to hurt me.”

“But I did!” She can see the anger growing in him, fists clenching, ready to hit something until his knuckles bleed as if he can punish himself for his mistakes.

She knows he’s hurting, but she can’t take it right now. Quickly reaching out, she grabs onto his wrist. “Please, please don’t get angry. I can’t…” She can’t handle seeing that expression on his face again, not this soon. “It wasn’t your fault. If it was anyone’s, it was mine, you told me I shouldn’t touch you and I did anyway.” She will again, too, if she thinks it will help him, but that’s a discussion for another time. “And this is nothing compared to…I stabbed you. I could have killed you.”

“I deserved to be stabbed.”

“No, you didn’t. You could never.” She says it firmly, but hunches over after, sucking in a shaky breath. “I didn’t even know what I was doing. I was…confused, you were on top of me and I couldn’t think straight and…I could have killed you!”

“I was on t-...” He cuts himself off and tips his head back to stare up at the sky. “Please, please tell me I didn’t.”

She squeezes his wrist tighter, blinking away the memories of that moment that press at her mind. “It’s okay. Please, you’re…you’re making a bigger deal out of my pain than you should. We both experienced bad memories. Yours lasted much longer. I got cuts and bruises, you got stabbed.”

“You were defending yourself.”

“So were you!”

“From a real threat. You were actually being hurt. By me.”

She shakes her head. “No, you weren’t the one I was trying to stab. If I’d been thinking clearly, if I’d known for sure that it was you, I would have fought you off another way. I would never have hurt you like that…just like you never would have me.”

Looking up at him, she tugs his arm a little to get his eyes on her. They look as wet as hers feel. “We both got hurt because of being stuck in our memories. Neither one of us are at fault.” It certainly doesn’t feel that way, when her knife is still laying nearby with his blood on the blade, but it’s what needs to be said at the moment. “Now please, let me take care of your shoulder before it bleeds any more.”

Lips pressed together, he gives a solemn nod. They spend the next several minutes in silence as she expertly stitches the wound shut and ties it off, dousing it with alcohol one more time to be safe before wrapping his shoulder in a clean white bandage.

He catches her hand in his as she starts putting things away. “Now it’s my turn.”

“You don’t have to -”

“Let me do this.”

She nods, placing her hands in her lap as he gets out a new cloth and pours some of the alcohol onto it. One hand comes up to cup her chin and she stiffens for an instant. Bruno pauses, waiting without touching until she lets out a breath and whispers, “I’m okay.”

His touch is gentle and feather-light, carefully dabbing at her split lip and cheek and bloody nose until they’re clean. He takes a sweet-smelling salve from the bag and spreads it across the cuts and bruises.

“I’m afraid there’s not much I can do for the swelling at this point. Hopefully it will go down soon.”

She helps him repack the bag, then they sit silently for another moment, each staring at the other’s wounds. In the quiet, the exhaustion has settled fully over her, weighing her down. She imagines he feels much the same.

“Will you hold me?”

“Are you sure you want me to?”

Kamaria gives him a half-hearted glare for still thinking ill of himself, then reaches out to take his hand. “I think we both need it.”

Without another word, he holds his arms open, and she moves forward to curl up against his chest, watching his reaction to make sure he’s comfortable with it. Gingerly, he lays them both down next to the remains of the fire.

They both fall asleep entwined in each other’s arms.

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Vaya translations -

Istulta = idiot

Amachari = loved one

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