always and forever is forever young
your shadow on the pavement, the dark side of the sun
In the time it had taken for the king and his sister to receive the message and get to the hospital wing, Fearne had already gathered and stationed two castle guards outside of the long-term ward. It was a precautionary move, but not a reassuring one. Her rather pretty, young face was flushed, although whether from excitement or harassment it was unclear. She turned away from her conversation with the guards and met Arthur and Morgana in the centre of the room when they hurried towards her.

“Your Grace, Your Highness,” she replied respectfully, just remembering her formal courtesies in the nick of time. Her hands were cold in the king’s, in spite of her ruddy complexion. “Well… it seemed very hopeful, for about five minutes. He woke up and started speaking to me – in Spanish at first, but he switched to English very quickly – and seemed to have a good general awareness, wanting to know who I was and what the date was. Then…” She lowered her eyes. “He just went rigid and stopped responding to me, to anything, and then he seemed to be talking to himself… Zed did warn that if he woke up he might not be – himself.”

She paused with a tired little sigh, and asked the million doubloon question. “Do you want to go in?”


The long-term ward was quiet. There were six beds in total, and only one other than Mallos’ was occupied – a sleeping man in his mid-forties who looked dead to the world.

Mallos himself was lying in a bed which ran along the wall nearest the door, propped up on his elbows and frowning at the opposite wall, where a little evening moonlight was shining through the window. He’d seen better days. His hair had grown a little in the three months – noticeable because magic usually kept it at a consistent length – and he’d lost a significant amount of weight. Feeding comatose patients without modern medical equipment or magic was not impossible, but it wasn’t easy or pleasant either. The dull, simple, loose grey hospital clothes looked out of place on him and emphasised his uncharacteristically ashen complexion. In spite of all of that, and what Fearne had said, he didn’t look like a madman. His eyes were completely focused, as if he was watching something which had his full attention, and a rather Mallos-esque expression of hard inquisitiveness on his face, like he was waiting to see how events would play out but what had happened so far wasn’t particularly to his tastes.

He reacted when Arthur and Morgana entered, but it was definitely delayed. He didn’t respond to the sound of the door opening and they’d made it several steps before he snapped his attention to Arthur, apparently not noticing Morgana at all. As he silently watched the king move towards his bed, there was a definite shift in expression. Mallos’ expressions were subtle but distinct: his eyes narrowed a fraction and the muscles around his mouth tightened, indicating strong dislike. Anyone who knew the Spanish deity knew that expressing dislike just wasn’t something he did – at least not in quite such a way. Mallos tended to respond to people he didn’t like by smiling and laughing at them, or by subjecting them to his irritating personality. Sometimes he turned them into mice or chairs. He rarely showed when someone really got under his skin in quite such an emotive way, if at all; to provoke such a response necessitated a special kind of loathing no one present would have witnessed before.


It hurt.

There seemed to be no lasting psychological damage, thankfully, but it hurt. Mallos’ entire brain ached and the weariness which threatened to overwhelm him was only kept in check by his pumping adrenaline. He felt violated. A part of himself, the most private pat of himself, had just been snatched away. Gwythr had opened his mind and perused his memories as if they were printed in a book for all the world to see. Mallos’ arms, twisted behind the wet, stone pillar his back and held in place by a pair of handcuffs, were shaking with emotion. He never shared his full self with anyone, not ever – it was his security, his lifeline. He let others see parts of himself when he felt comfortable showing that side, but it was dangerous, as a diplomat, as a god and as a public figure, for any single person to have a full scope of him. Everyone had secrets. Everyone had things they didn’t want others to know. Gwythr had ripped him open and dragged everything about him which made him Mallos out.

And it hurt, so badly. In more ways than one.

Time seemed to slow down. Gwythr was walking towards him having paced in the opposite direction, muttering under his breath as he tried to psych himself up for whatever he was about to do next. If there was anything worse than taking a man’s memories forcibly from him, Mallos had a feeling he was about to find out. There was nothing he could do. He was chained to the pillar, divine virus streaming down the back of his neck, cold and alone and more scared than he could remember being in a long time. Gwythr had just committed a crime. Simple fact. Criminals didn’t tend to take what they wanted from their victims and then just let them walk free to tell the world. Witnesses were taken care of. Without magic, with his bleeding wrists tied together and his head throbbing, he was hopelessly, laughably, frighteningly helpless.

With each step the High Judge took, Mallos felt a deep surge of hatred and anger such as he had never known before. This man was threatening him. He was threatening his sister. The fury and loathing overtook every other fibre of his being, so that when Gwythr came to stand in front of him, he forgot that he was tied up and incapable of moving. He forgot that the Italian had locked his jaw together and taken his magic away from him. He forgot sense and caution, reason and logic – and he launched himself at his newfound enemy, wanting nothing more than to hurt him. The chains melted away as if they had been merely barriers of the mind.


Even if he hadn’t been in a bed-weakened state, there was little chance that Mallos could have hurt Arthur. The only thing he had going for him was the element of surprise, which was rather diminished by any suspicions which may have been aroused by Fearne, the guards, and his facial expression. Even if he hadn’t been lying unconscious for the past three months on minimal sustenance, Mallos was a diplomat, not a fighter. Without magic, he would never hold up for very long against an experienced warrior-king. The attack itself was clumsy and uncoordinated, driven by solely by emotion, which was a classic amateur mistake.

Mallos had no idea what happened. It happened too fast for his still-sluggish mind to take in, and physical contact forced a blurring of realities. One minute he was jumping to attack Gwythr; the next his head was hitting the ground with a sharp smack and his vision of the pillared room vanished. The dull grey stone of the castle walls snapped into focus, along with Arthur, who had his knee on his chest where he was lying on the ground. There was a general commotion going on nearby – people were coming in through the door and saying things which he couldn’t quite make out – none of which he was really aware of, because he was having to contend with an influx of new memories. He was a grandfather, a father, a father-in-law, a friend. He was on another planet. Caspian was dead. Aura was dead. Gwythr was a branded criminal. It had been over a thousand long, long years since that day in the room with the pillars.

His expression had been cleared of its furious elements once his head hit the ground, and now he gazed up at Arthur with an expression which more closely resembled the familiarity and recognition he usually wore. There was a vague confusion there too.

“Okay,” he said at last, the English more strongly accented and coming slower than usual, “I know it’s you. Get off.”


i can feel you in the silence saying, “let forever be,
love, and only love, will set you free.”