Revenge of a tyrant

chapter 4

Mary paused, "I guess s..he told you. He never could keep a secret long. I'm surprised he lasted this long."

I asked again, "what do you mean you knew this would happen?"

This time it was the Duke who spoke, "w..whn Arthur died. We forgot to check on Alex. we thought he would be okay. That he just needed time. It wasn't until a couple hours later "

We found...him"

I couldn't understand, so i said, "I don't see how that would make think this would happen"

he didn't answer this time, Merlin did, "it's what we found when we did check"

"What did you see?", suddenly i started to feel scared, what had happened, how terrible was it that they thought this would happen?

"We found Alex in a pool of...b..blood, his blood. He was crying, hugging his knees as he wept. He hadn't even put a bandage over the cuts. W..we asked what happend, and he just shook his head. We found out later he drank some potion that was nearby. That was the start of it."

I felt like i couldn't breathe but i needed to find out more, "What do you mean start of it?"

They all fell silent, until Mary spoke, "th..that was the first time. It took the third time for us to realize what was happening. Every time he took those damn potions he would get more and more suicidal. We tried to help him, to make him stop. But h...he couldn't stop, "

She broke down into sobs. The D\uke was the next to speak. He didn't give me enough time to fully comprehend what Mary had just said.

"When we found him the next time it wasn't even an hour later, he was...was yelling, breaking everything, banging his h... it doesn't matter. We..i came up with the idea of pretending to be arthur. I said it was to protect Camelot, we both knew it didn't matter if he did or didn't. It was so he could protect himself from himself.

"What do you mean, protect himself from himself?"

"It kept him going, barely but it kept him alive. But we knew the moment his attention fell on revenge it was just a countdown. You need to understand we coundn't think of another way. He is my nephew, but even with an uncle he couldn't find it in himself to keep going. We..i wanted him to be alive. I didn't want to bury another one of my sister's family."

Horrified at what I just learned, I stood there silent. But it wasn't just what told me, i was more horrified at the fact no one knew. We all knew the king took the prince's death hard, that was clear. But no one knew it was this hard, this bad.

Mary took a deep breath before adding, "it wasn't just Arthur's death that made him...like this. It begain with their parents. But they had each other. They both had nightmares for months and hardly spoke for the first few weeks after that day. Arthur handled it better than Aex, he...suffered more.

"What do you mean?"

"It was when the voices started."

"voices?"

"I don't know the specific details, Arthur knew. He was the one who handled it. From what I knew it was just a voice telling Alex he was powerless, that he caused the deaths. i..it would lead to panic attacks and more nightmares. As I said Arthur handled it. We tried to help, but we soon found out what the trauma did to Arthur."

"What do you mean?", I repeated.

"Arthur was always protective of Alex, just like how Alex was to him. But after he, Arthur, became immensely overprotective of Alex. we assume he just got scared from the...incident that he thought he would lose Alex too. He always did whatever Alex asked, but after that day he would try to do everything for Alex, to the point he would not let others go near. It got beter with time, but as you know it lasted until his death.

"..."

"This caused them to have a closer relationship compared to others. You remember how Arthur never celbated his birthday, he and Alex would just spend the day at their parents grave's. When Arhtur passed, Alex felt like half of him was missing and the remaining part as he put it was 'pathetic and worthless'. Whenever no one one could find him, he was at the graves crying. He would drink those curseded potions mostly. If it was a sane day he would just drown in a bottle of alcohol.

I couldn't help but stare at the king, I should have helped, I should have known.

As I was beating myself up inside Merlin spoke, "it might have been foolish but we encouraged his revenge at times, though we did try to pull him away from it. We never expected him to find anything and the moment he did he didn't have long."

I yelled angrily "so you knew this was going to happen, you knew he was sucical but covered it up and let this happen along the way. Did you even try to stop his death or did you quietly accept it? You could have told the round table."

"And what would that do? You saw how he seemed at the funeral didn't you. Griefing, soulless, half dead. Would he have listened? Did he listen when all of you protested his revenge?"

Duke Richard spoke up, "foolish knight, we did try to stop him. We tried and tried. But he keeped drinking those potions, waking up in pools of blood everyday,"

the count broke down sobbing before he continued his speech, "we prevented all that information he wanted and in ways needed. And what did we get? Hm? After he turned 27 drowned in potions, bashing his head on his own brother's grave, screaming I deserve to die. If you were in our situation wouldn't you do the same"