Title: Nothing Except a Battle Lost
Fandom: Jonathan Strange and Mr Norrell
Rating: PG
Length: 1118
Pairing: Jonathan Strange/Major Grant
Content notes: Major character death
Author's notes: Many thanks to Fen for cheering me on in the writing of this, particularly when the deadline was looming! The title is a quote from Wellington - nothing except a battle lost can be half so melancholy as a battle won.
Summary: After the battle of Waterloo, a messenger tells Grant that Merlin is dead







The young lad in muddy uniform stops breathlessly in front of Grant. “Orders from his Lordship, sir.”

Grant reaches out a hand for the grubby paper and scans it rapidly. Word from Wellington means his brief respite here is at an end. Tired though he is, he calls for someone to bring a horse.

The orderly tending to the cut beneath his ear protests and Grant pushes him gently aside. “Where have you come from?” he asks the boy, who looks barely old enough to be a soldier.

“Hougoumont, sir,” he says.

“With De Lancey?”

The boy hesitates and Grant knows before he says another word what the news will be. He braces himself as he has done so many times today and promises that later, sometime later, he will grieve.

“They said it was hard fighting, sir. He fell when they were closing the gate.”

Grant is silent a moment. The cut on his face stings and throbs, which he blames for his lack of words.

“Did you know him, sir?” the boy asks. When Grant looks at him, his face no longer seems so youthful. He is, Grant realises, a man who has seen a soldier’s grim business today.

“Yes, I did.” He reaches for his flask. “Here, it’s thirsty work taking messages.”

“Thank you, sir.”

“Was… Strange there? The magician?” He hates that his heart beats faster when he speaks, that it is a harder question to ask. So many are dead, so many good men and many of them friends - the loss of one should not make him falter.

"I did not see him, sir."

With the words, Grant feels his heart thump hard in his chest. His lungs seem momentarily paralysed. He forces a breath.

"He is dead, then." It surprises him in a dull way that he can say the words so evenly.

However certain that this news would come, it feels like a shock of cold water and the world an instantly bleaker place for knowing it.

"They did not say so, sir," the boy says, "but... I did not see him there and I've not heard word of him since the battle. They say he grew ivy, all along the wall..." He stops himself, as if remembering he should not be speaking so freely to an officer.

"Thank you," Grant manages to say, "I'll not keep you longer from your work." He reaches for the reins of the borrowed horse they have ready for him. Mounting is agony to sore muscles and his injured arm, but he does it nonetheless. He must go, even if the news is as bleak as the messenger implies. Even if he can do nothing but see that Merlin is really dead, see him one last time, remember for one moment how much... how much he had meant. There is a sharp, tight ache beneath his breastbone and he schools his face to blankness.

He rides at a brisk pace, nothing too much for the horse after the long day, but his outward discipline is utterly at odds with the turmoil in his mind. He feels almost numb, as if the body riding is no more than a puppet, doing what it must without conscious thought. His mind runs in a hopeless spiral of thoughts: that Merlin must be dead, that there is no other logical conclusion, but equally that he cannot be dead. Not Merlin, he thinks, not Merlin, until the rhythm of the words begins to match the thud of hooves.

"You'll not ride him up there, sir."

The words startle him, and he looks about him dazedly. A soldier with a bandaged leg is sitting propped against a gun carriage.

"Ground's too churned up for riding. Best leave your horse here, sir."

"Yes, thank you." Grant can see that the ground has been so thoroughly fought over that it remains nothing but furrowed mud, and whatever else the mud hides. He leaves his horse with the men and proceeds cautiously on foot: he does not dare to ask them for news.

The first thing he sees is poor William, dead in truth and left lying where he fell. The loss of it stabs through the heavy, dazed feeling. De Lancey was a true friend to him: one of those bright young men who seems too alive to die, but when they are dead seem too vibrant to have lived to old age. Still, whatever De Lancey was, he is gone. The body lying there has the utter absence about it that means there can be no mistaking death. Grant prefers to remember the living man.

He looks up, away, and stops.

The man is mud caked, so much so that it disguises every feature. His hair is lank with it, his coat could be any colour, but Grant would know him anywhere. Merlin.

He almost calls to him, but the words freeze on his tongue. Suddenly, ridiculously, he smiles. Dear God, to find Merlin to only alive but apparently unharmed. In the wreck of everything he is still here. He has no idea what to say.

His sudden, momentary joy seems inappropriate when his surroundings come back to him. He thinks sternly to himself that he is being almost hysterical. Merlin has not looked up, only sits twining his dirty hands together as Grant watches him. Oh Merlin. He has never become accustomed to the worst parts of war.

Merlin looks up at Grant as he approaches. He looks dumbstruck, as if he has seen a ghost.
"I was told you were dead," he says, voice very low.

Grant should say that he was told the same. Instead he feels his eyes prickle. Relief perhaps, or only the smoke of the canon still on the air. "I felt certain you would be," he says, the feeling and not the fact he had intended.

The appearance of his Lordship puts an end to whatever else he might have said and the three of them survey the field of battle in silence. As they stand, Grant feels his legs beginning to tremble with the combined shock and exhaustion. Soon, he hopes, he will be allowed to rest, perhaps even to take a moment alone with Merlin so that he can reassure himself that they are both still among the living. He needs time to believe it, and time to mourn. Before them, men move slowly through the dying and the dead. Filled with renewed gratitude that Merlin is not of their number, Grant turns to look at him and finds him looking back, his eyes warm.

"Well gentlemen," Wellington says, "the war is over. What do you think they'll do with us now?"