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Two weeks after Merlin disappears, Arthur gives up.
Morgana, Gwen, and Gaius—and even some of the knights have started—keep giving him pitying looks and, honestly, if it was someone else in his position, he’d probably pity them, too. All this effort, all this insistence to find someone who isn’t even lost, really, just doesn’t want to be found, is pathetic at best. A new form of insanity at worst.
There’s a time and a place to accept it and leave it alone and move on, and Arthur’s just realizing now that maybe he’s two weeks late reaching it.
So what if he’s gone, anyway? So what if he left a single note addressed to a single person with no explanation at all, and then disappeared into the night? Who cares? It’s not like he owed it to anyone to stay. It’s not like it should even matter. Apparently there was nothing keeping him in Camelot and it’s not like they were even friends—
Well, obviously. He doesn’t think any friend would leave without so much as a goodbye.
So Arthur gives up. His father had been giving him increasingly aggravated looks every time he’d set out, and outright withering glares every time he returned, anyway, not fooled for even a second what he was actually looking for. Morgana’s and Gwen’s and Gaius’ shoulders seemed to drop just a little further down every time he came back empty handed, anyway, daring to hope with him just one more time and then maybe once more after that. It was better for everyone, really, that they just move on and give up.
Merlin had left without a word for a reason. He had packed a bag and voluntarily walked out of their lives without looking back for a reason, so who is Arthur to seek him out and drag him back by those stupidly large ears of his and demand some sort of—
It’s better for everyone to just let it go. Arthur can stop angering his father and disappointing Morgana and Gwen and Gaius and making his knights worry about his sanity, and Merlin can move on with his life in peace.
He has other concerns to attend to, anyway. This—Merlin—relative to everything else is nothing. It shouldn’t register; shouldn’t be a thing.
The killing’s have stopped, so the bastet is either dead or gone—and Arthur had been the one to inform the families of its victims; viciously, he hopes it’s dead—but his father is still paranoid over it. Only a few days after the last kill, they’d heard whispers of seeing its vague shape in the night sky, but all further investigations had been fruitless thus far.
That’s what keeps his father unable to rest—it’s a creature of magic that, last they heard of it, was still alive. A creature of magic that Arthur did not defeat, but one that just up and disappeared.
God forbid.
The patrols have been doubled, the outer villages and woods checked and checked again. Everyone is still on high alert, listening too closely, wondering if they’ll hear something new about where it—she—is. Whether she’ll come back for more blood. When. So his knights had been stretched thin as it was. It makes more sense to not waste them on a stupid, pointless hunt.
Not to mention, there’s Morgana, who has never slept well but seems to be sleeping even worse, now. She looks the same as when the witchfinder had come—on edge, afraid, quiet and perpetually somewhere else. She barely ever challenges his father anymore, barely talks during dinners.
He can see how worried Gwen and Gaius are for her, but even they’re not like they used to be. It’s weird, Arthur thinks, how much one person—one with no tangible power, at that—can mess everything up.
But it’s not like—he doesn’t want to blame Merlin. He doesn’t want to give someone who can just walk away so easily this much credit but—but it’s hard, hearing Gaius’ tired sighs and watching Gwen stand alone behind Morgana’s chair during dinners and seeing Morgana’s slumped shoulders and not attributing it to his absence. It’s hard not attributing every difficulty, minor or not, to the fact that he’s just gone.
Nothing’s falling apart, exactly, it’s just that they’re all a little lonelier again.
It’s just that this rediscovered loneliness feels a lot like falling apart. It’s just that—every morning he wakes up expecting some ridiculous greeting, and every time he turns on his horse on patrol expecting to see some dumb grin, only to be met with silence and empty space—it feels like he’s going a little insane.
Merlin’s absence is everywhere, and it’s silly to feel betrayed by empty space, but he does.
It’s silly to feel betrayed just because someone has left without a goodbye, but he feels it rot and fester at the bottom of his stomach, anyway. At night, when the day’s been too long and everything too demanding, Arthur lets himself think about how he wants Merlin to come back, just so he can turn him away. How he wants Merlin to come back just so he can yell at him and let him come back, anyway. How he hopes Merlin won’t ever come back because he’s scared that, if he does, Arthur will skip the yelling and the anger and go straight to relief. To forgiveness.
He hopes extra hard for the last one, because there’s this inexplicable, bone-deep knowledge that he will see Merlin again. It simmers just under his skin and keeps him from going mad with acceptance and betrays him with every second it lingers. Arthur doesn’t know if it’s the lack of closure, or if it’s because Merlin’s presence in his life has felt permanent and unavoidable since their second meeting that makes him unable to accept that the last time he saw Merlin was so—ordinary. So meaningless.
That makes him unable to accept that there was a last time at all; that he’s back to being alone in a way he’d let himself believe he never would be again.
And it’s ridiculous, because he doesn’t want to blame Merlin. Doesn’t want to begrudge him a choice and decision Arthur would give anything to have (the choice to just leave, to choose a life for himself); doesn’t want to give someone he refuses to even think of as a friend this much credit, but—but even if nothing is technically falling apart, he does think everything had always been a little easier to shoulder with Merlin around.
Morgause is a welcome, albeit humiliating, distraction.
He fights her and loses, and doesn’t know if he’s more glad that he doesn’t have to deal with Merlin’s insubordinate mirth or not. He has to deal with Morgana’s grating delight, in any case, and that’s annoying enough on its own to make him think of Merlin’s absence as a positive thing for the first time. He might’ve even thanked Morgana for it, for the small change, if she could just stop bloody smirking. Even Gwen keeps giggling behind her hand whenever she thinks she can get away with it.
He doesn’t want to blame Merlin, but he does miss the days before he came to Camelot and turned everything on its head, when people were more inclined to fear him.
“No, you don’t,” Gwen smiles, just before biting her lip. “Er. Sire.”
“See, this is—”
“God,” Morgana interrupts, not really proving his point because she’s always been like this, “spare us. We’ve already been too indulgent with your self pity.”
Arthur glares at her, not caring at all that she’s too busy inspecting a bracelet he’s never seen before in her hand to notice. For a moment, he wishes that Merlin was actually there, his amusement at Arthur losing and all, just for some backup against Morgana and Gwen. He wouldn’t have taken my side, anyway, Arthur thinks, fidgeting with his mother’s ring, but at least he could’ve ordered Merlin to pretend to. He would’ve rolled his eyes but grudgingly obeyed, and Arthur would’ve done everything to keep himself from smiling.
Maybe Merlin being there would have meant more people making fun of him—though truth be told, had Merlin actually been there, Arthur wouldn’t have sought Morgana and Gwen’s company out in the first place—but he thinks he could bear it if it meant sharing that small moment with him.
There’s this element to finding hollow—just temporarily soothing—reasons why Merlin’s absence is good: they all just remind Arthur of what it was like having him around, and no amount of frustration he remembers can chase away the longing for that sort of presence in his life again.
“What is that, anyway?” He asks, gesturing towards the thing in Morgana’s hand, because it’s been over a month, now, since he stopped searching, and he’s almost convinced himself that it wouldn’t do to dwell. Watching as the candlelight catches on the silver and accents the patterns on the bracelet, he pretends he can’t basically hear his father asking him if he has any dignity at all. “I didn’t know you owned anything like that.”
Morgana snorts. So does Gwen, but at least she tries (though, quite poorly) to hide it behind a cough. “As if you could tell any of my jewlery apart.”
Arthur’s about to protest because, actually, they’d be surprised, but—shockingly—Morgana doesn’t let him.
“But, quite by accident, you happen to be right.” She pauses then, staring down at it a bit more intently than before, as if contemplating something, before looking up at him and adding, “Morgause gave it to me.”
They stare at each other for a moment. She’s clenching her jaw and raising her chin, and it’s a look he’s seen on her before, when they used to sword fight and she would challenge him to a rematch if he’d won. There’s more to it, but any hope he has of her telling him vanishes with the sudden reappearance of her smirk, the steel in her eyes transforming into a glint of mirth.
“I daresay she liked me much more than she did you.”
Arthur groans as Gwen giggles from across the room, and wonders why he even seeks their company more than necessity calls for, anyway.
Not that he really minds either of them, though. These days his free time is spent almost exclusively with Morgana and Gwen, because apparently their insistence on making him miserable is much more preferable to the loneliness and the boredom and the mind numbing conversations with his knights. He can’t help but think that they haven’t been this close since they were all children, can’t help but appreciate their constant company and the fact that they don’t seem to mind his.
He especially quite appreciates them when they agree to help him escape and go meet Morgause after his father confines him to his chambers.
Arthur’s putting on his gloves while Morgana stares out the window he’s going to jump out of. He can see her reflection in the glass, hazy and orange, and promises himself that when—if—he gets back, he’ll find a way to fill the chasm Merlin left, even if it means risking utter humiliation.
“There was something about her. Morgause,” she says, though Arthur doesn’t know if she’s talking to them or herself. Gwen hands him a rope he does not want to know how she got her hands on, and they share a look.
“Oh?”
“It just—it felt like I knew her.”
Arthur fidgets with the knot he’s tying around his waist, just to avoid looking up. “Did you?”
He doesn’t know why Morgause is such a vulnerable topic between them. He doesn’t think she should be.
“No, I’m sure I didn’t. It was just an odd feeling.”
Morgana turns back towards them just as he looks up, and locking eyes with her feels like a trap.
“Just before she left,” he says, breaking eye contact to slide his sword in its place, “she told me she knew my mother.”
Arthur can see Morgana and Gwen turn to each other before turning back to him. He’s glad they keep their distance.
“That’s why you’re so adamant to go,” Morgana says, and it’s not a question.
“I would go either way,” he replies, ”it’s a question of honor.”
“Maybe, but your honor isn’t the only reason why you’re directly disobeying the king.”
Clenching his jaw, Arthur wonders why he ever insists on not being alone when all it does anymore is make him feel exposed and raw. “Do you blame me?”
Morgana eyes him consideringly, and he focuses on that instead of the tender way Gwen looks at him, because he doesn’t know how to handle it.
“I think I might actually admire you,” she says. “For once, that is,” she adds, a second later, and he can’t help the huff of laughter that escapes.
Gwen approaches him, then, handing him his waterskin and a small packed bag. She doesn’t return his smile of thanks, biting her lip.
“Please be careful, sire,” she says, soft and earnest, meeting his eyes. Arthur wonders if she’s worried that he won’t come back for a reason entirely separate from not having the choice to. The thought of it—of leaving now and disappearing—sends a shiver of excitement down his spine. He wouldn’t, of course, but the idea that there’s nothing physically stopping him is—exciting. Freeing, a little.
Arthur nods, a miniscule thing, to them both, and goes to open the window. The night air is cool against his skin, fresh in his lungs, and he thinks that even if he will have to return, being away, alone, from these walls for even a few days will be good for him.
It had been a long journey, but he’d spent most of it in his own head, anyway; too preoccupied with thoughts of finally learning about his mother to really appreciate the escape from the castle.
He’d also had a run in with some of Odin’s men, and with his head elsewhere and no backup, he hadn’t exactly gotten away unscathed.
All in all, the journey could have been better.
Still, though, the cut on his arm from a sword’s blade and the bruise on his cheek from its hilt are nothing compared to the sting of the frigid axe that’s burning a line into the back of his neck.
The wood under his chin is rough and the clearing where this corpse of a castle remains is quiet, save for the wind and the occasional bee. His breaths are ragged through his nose and clenched teeth, and though the air is almost as crisp as it was two nights ago, all it does for him now is sting the back of his throat. Arthur’s shivering, but he doesn’t know if it’s because of the wind on his wet hair, or the situation itself.
He wonders why she had let him live back in Camelot if she was only going to challenge him to die by this axe merely days later, anyway.
He thinks of how his horse knew which direction to go in, and his father’s accusations, and then wonders if maybe it’s the way he dies that matters to her. If maybe she’s trying to make a point.
The cold line of the blade retreats, and this is somehow worse. He’s left on his knees, with the chill of the stone slowly seeping into his body. He knows what’s coming next—any moment now, it will come down again; any moment now, he’s going to die—and all he can do is blindly anticipate it.
He thinks that he maybe understands her point. Or, part of it, at least.
Refusing to close his eyes but desperately wishing he wasn’t so scared of being a coward, just this final time, Arthur lets himself regret not demanding some answers about his mother, first.
He lets himself regret a lot of things; he doesn’t let himself regret coming.
When the axe does come down, though, it’s only to be put away. Morgause walks to stand in front of him and Arthur, in a haste to get away from the damn block as quickly as he can, stumbles a bit while getting up.
“You have shown that you are truly a man of your word, Arthur Pendragon, and for that I will grant you one wish. Tell me what it is that your heart most desires.”
It’s a weird line. If he lets himself think about it too hard, it almost sounds word for word like the things the evil witches would say before deceiving people in his father’s bed time stories from when he was younger. Arthur clenches his jaw and walks towards her anyway. It doesn’t matter, he thinks. It doesn’t matter what she sounds like or what she says or what she is or what the point of this all is. She knew his mother.
“You said you knew my mother,” he says, keeping eye contact and daring her to take her words back, though he’s not even sure why he expects her to. Being so close to finally being able to ask about her seems too surreal; he keeps expecting any last thing to take the chance away from him. “Tell me all that you know about her.”
Morgause tilts her head to the side, looking at him consideringly. It’s not the same aloof curiosity from before. There’s something else there, now, too.
“Perhaps you would like to see her.”
And the thing is, Arthur’s seen snakes materialize from shields. He has seen a blue orb show him the way almost as if it had its own consciousness. He’s seen a man control the wind and knows that the death of a single unicorn can threaten an entire kingdom. He watched his father effortlessly lose his will to that of a troll. He knows the power in magic; knows he, himself, could never understand the full potential of it. And maybe all of that is nothing close to being able to see a woman who’s been dead for twenty one years. Perhaps it’s all a scam.
Maybe he just wants to see his mother so badly he’s willing to consider anything is possible, whether sufficient evidence is provided or not.
But a man controlling nature, a troll controlling the will of a man—surely it’s enough. If magic can bend the laws of nature and man then maybe it’s not completely insane to believe he can see his mother again. And if he can, then—how could he possibly refuse it?
A flash of what his father would have to say to that almost makes him hesitate, but he doesn’t.
“I want that more than anything.”
How could something that’ll finally let him see his mother again be pure evil?
“As you wish.”
She turns away, and it’s like his head is filled with water. Arthur follows her with his heart in his throat.
They enter a new section of the ruins, crawling with vines and aglow with candlelight. There’s something welcoming about it, warm and soft. Morgause moves around like she could map it with her eyes closed, like casting a spell to talk to a woman long dead is just another everyday activity for her, and Arthur tries even harder to just breathe.
She has no idea. No clue how many hours he has spent, agonizing over and repeating again and again like prayer, every last word he would say to his mother if he ever got an opportunity like this.
Morgause holds out her hand and tells him to close his eyes. He lets the ebb and flow of her voice as she recites the spell wash over him—squeezes his eyes shut so tightly that he starts seeing shapes and tries to forget anything that isn’t here right now. Not his father’s rage and how he’ll end up slammed in chains if he finds out nor the loneliness of the past month nor the way his mother may look at him.
He doesn’t even know what she looks like.
It’s a long spell—objectively, he knows this—but it still feels like she finishes it before he can take a proper breath. The leaves rustle and suddenly calm, as if a momentary, strong breeze rushed through them and there’s a voice—
Not familiar, but known nonetheless; it says his name like a plea—like a call and a begging to be recognized; like reuniting after a long separation. “Arthur.”
Arthur opens his eyes before he thinks to let himself, and however much he knows the woman that stands in front of him, she is not, despite what he was expecting, familiar.
He recognizes the colour of her hair, and doesn’t know if it’s the magic or the situation or just the candlelight that makes it look like it’s glowing and shimmering. She’s smaller than what he expected, too—thin and elegant and shorter than him, between Morgana’s and Gwen’s heights.
It’s something he should have anticipated. He didn’t.
He doesn’t know why he imagined she’d be taller.
They look at each other from across the space, and she is beautiful, just like he knew she would be. Even more so. Every bit a queen. Her hair falls in delicate ringlets around her face, and Arthur cannot see the exact shade of her eyes from this far, but he knows they’re the same as his. Gaius told him, once.
They look at each other and he thinks about how he used to look in the mirror when he was younger trying to find someone else reflected back to him. How the sight in front of him, now, is what he has been waiting to find. It’s the only thing he has ever been given, and probably will be the only thing he ever gets; there are no portraits of her, no drawings. No one ever talks about her in much detail, and sometimes he wonders if it’s because they have forgotten, themselves.
Arthur does his best to memorize every last detail.
“Mother.”
I remember your eyes. You were staring up at me.
He wills his horse to go faster; tells himself that the wetness on his face is just his eyes reacting to the wind.
He’d been held by his mother, while she was still alive.
His mother had held him. Not just an apparition, not just the ghost from his childhood imagination. There was a moment in time where he had been held by his mother. His real, living, breathing mother. A moment where they’d locked eyes and—he likes to believe—knew exactly who the other was.
There had been a moment in his life where his mother had known him and held him and seen him.
Those few seconds I held you were the most precious of my life.
A moment where she had loved him. He almost smiles.
It is your father—
Your father betrayed me—
He sacrificed my life—
You were born of magic—
I would have given my life willingly—
Arthur clenches his jaw, tightens his grip on the reins, and wipes his eyes with the back of his right wrist, feeling his mother’s ring burn into the skin of his finger under his gloves.
He pushes his horse to go faster.
He has no concept of how long the journey back took; doesn’t remember if he encountered anything and disposed of it in his grief and rage, or if nothing got in his way at all. Getting off his horse and grabbing his sword, walking to the throne room where he knows the king will be dining, is likewise a blur.
All Arthur knows, opening the doors and laying eyes on him, is rage. Cold and excruciatingly hot, simmering just under his skin.
Uther’s gaze snaps towards him, and Arthur only barely registers Morgana’s presence before they lock eyes.
It is your father who should carry the guilt for what happened.
“Arthur,” he says, looking and sounding relieved. He stands from his chair. “Where have you been? I have had search parties looking for you.”
He was desperate for an heir.
“Arthur.”
He sacrificed my life so the Pendragon dynasty could continue.
“I know,” he grits out, barely able to breathe, “what you did to my mother.”
It makes you no less my son.
Uther stares at him for another second, and it’s a curious thing, how Arthur never realized just how odd it is that he can never see any expression in his eyes that isn’t anger. The way his mother had looked at him—the way his mother had spoken to him—
It makes so much sense now, how angry Uther always is.
So many things make so much sense now.
He says something else, to Morgana this time, but Arthur doesn’t hear him—cannot bring himself to listen. If he concentrates on anything other than tracking every minute movement he’s afraid he’ll miss something else.
There isn’t really a word for this feeling. Looking at someone and only seeing his mother’s murderer is an honour he’d saved only for his own reflection.
Arthur doesn’t know if Morgana leaves, but he does hear the door closing. He grips the hilt of his sword so tightly his fingers go numb and feels the sting of tears in his eyes and nose and the swelling presence of a lump in his throat. It feels like his raised chin and the rigidity of his spine are the only things keeping the bile and the tears back.
“What are you talking about?”
He was desperate for an heir—
I could not conceive—
You were born of magic—
To create a life—
“You were so desperate for an heir, you were prepared to use magic.”
A life must be taken—
“Did Morgause tell you this? She’s lying.”
Your father knew that—
“My mother is dead because of your selfishness and arrogance. Her blood is on your hands.”
He sacrificed my life so the Pendragon dynasty could continue.
“No. That’s not true. But Morgause would have you believe that.” Uther shakes his head, maintains eye contact, and Arthur hates him. He hates him so much he almost hears his own armor shiver from the way it makes him shake. He hates how nonchalant he is, like he’s been rehearsing the same line for three days non stop, like it’s just another rumor going around the castle that he needs to dismiss.
He went to the sorceress, Nimueh—
He went—
“This is what fuels your hatred for those who practice magic—rather than blame yourself for what you did, you blame them.”
He went to the sorceress—
You were born of magic—
“You would believe a sorcerer’s lies over the word of your own father? I can only think that Morgause has enchanted you.”
“You hunted her kind like animals!” He screams, thinking of the axe burning a line across the nape of his neck. “How many hundreds have you condemned to death to ease your guilt?”
You have nothing to be sorry for, it is your father who should carry the guilt—
He went to the sorceress Nimueh—
He has deceived you as he deceived me—
“Those who practice magic will stop at nothing to destroy us! I have only done what is necessary to protect this kingdo—”
“You speak of honour and nobility, you are nothing but a hypocrite and a liar!”
He went to the sorceress Nimueh—
It makes you no less my son, nor me any less proud of you—
“I am your king and your father. You will show me some respect.”
Arthur thinks about every single moment in his life where he has been a king before a father. He thinks of restless nights before tournaments and the mornings, just before, where his hands would only stop shaking if he concentrated enough. He’s had the sword mastered for years, but the approval of a king is something he’d still been working on three days ago.
It makes you no less my son, nor me any less proud of you—
He thinks of the way his mother clutched at him, and looked away, and looked back at him again; thinks of how he knew he didn’t deserve the tenderness she so easily and willingly gave away, but how she gave it to him, anyway.
Now I see you, I would have given my life willingly.
Arthur takes a breath and wonders if the sting of the axe will ever go away; wonders if that is yet another moment he’s going to be stuck in for the rest of his life.
He walks forward and remembers the first execution his father made him attend, thinks about how horrific it is that a ten year old child should learn and know the smell of burning flesh—how horrific it is that a ten year old child should know the feeling of her own flesh burning. He thinks of the first campaign his father let him go on, and the way his hands shook, red and glossy from the wound he’d inflicted and then tried to manage in vain. He doesn’t even have to think or remember the screams from when he was fifteen, and again when he was eighteen, because they haven’t stopped ricocheting around in his head since hearing them the first time.
The clang of his metal gauntlet makes Uther flinch—a small, damning thing—and he thinks he might hear another thing there, too. An erratic breathing that’s just out of sync with his own that isn’t his father’s.
“Have you lost your mind?”
Those few seconds I held you were the most precious of my life—
Arthur doesn’t know how to tell him yes, that he’s been losing it for over a month now; that talking to his long dead mother made him wonder if maybe it’s been a whole lifetime since he’s lost it. Instead he says, “Pick it up.”
He means the gauntlet, but this mess—it’s all of Uther’s making, and so part of him means that, too.
“Arthur, I implore you, think about what you’re doing.”
No, you are not to blame—
What matters is that you lived—
Your father betrayed me—
He went to the sorceress Nimueh—
To create a life, a life must be taken. Your father knew that—
He sacrificed my life—
It makes you no less my son, nor me any less proud of you. Now I see you, I would have given my life willingly.
He hasn’t thought about anything else the moment his mother’s ghost disappeared. “Pick it up.”
“I will not fight you.”
The sword, when he draws it, is weightless in his hands—a barely-there awareness he’s learnt from years of fighting, like it’s another limb that’s supposed to be there; nothing out of place.
“If you choose not to defend yourself, I will strike you down where you stand.”
My son—
It makes you no less my son, nor me any less proud of you—
“You are my son. You will not strike an unarmed man.”
Arthur feels the disgust and rage melt and mix deep in his gut. He hates him. Wants to yell, the way you sacrificed an innocent woman’s life?; wants to yell, the way you murdered children?; wants to scream, like those entire camps you raided and laid to waste?
As if being unarmed has ever mattered to Uther before. He has never felt violence this insistent.
Arthur. My son—
He takes a breath. “I no longer think of myself as your son.”
“Then strike me down.”
His mother wrapping her arms around him; his mother wrapping her arms around herself; the sting of the axe and the echoing screams and the ever present scent of burning flesh and the eyes of ten year olds and mothers and fathers and the red—
A gasp that’s neither his nor his father’s just barely registers as his sword meets another, rather than flesh and bone. If Arthur were anything more intelligent and caring than a soldier, he might’ve appreciated the appropriateness of his father’s contradictions—a self proclaimed unarmed man with a sword. A self proclaimed wronged king responsible for all of it from the beginning. Everything’s a fabricated narrative to fit a whim.
It has always been a game of which his father has been able to manipulate every last detail. His mother is dead, thousands are dead.
“I don’t want to fight you,” Uther says, stepping away, and suddenly it’s just another opponent in just another tournament. It’s easier, even, because he knows how Uther fights; knows better than anyone else, knows better than he will ever know any other opponent.
The space is limited regardless, but the dining table placed in the middle of the room doesn’t afford much leeway to maneuver, either. He stalks closer, sword weightless, and waits for this to feel difficult—waits for some doubt to kick in as he attacks and blocks and attacks again and ducks—
“Arthur—!”
My son.
With every failed strike the rage builds, and it builds and it builds until Uther’s sword is across the floor and he is nothing but another opponent at Arthur’s mercy.
But if there’s one lesson his father has taught him, that he’ll be damned not to teach back, it’s how easily mercy can be discarded when it suits one’s bloody needs.
Arthur presses the tip of his sword right to where the heart is meant to be, and imagines he can see everything that will follow with perfect clarity. The blood and the corpse and the council, once they know what happened, and the people—the magic users—once they learn the truth behind the purge.
Sweat drips into his eyes, and he pretends that’s the only reason why they sting.
“Arthur—my son. Please—”
He presses the tip harder against the fine cloth of his father’s shirt, and wonders if he can actually feel the heartbeat that’s right under it.
“You killed my mother.”
“I loved her—”
The shirt tears. “Don’t.”
“Arthur—”
The sound of the doors opening reverberates through the hollowness of his bones, making him tighten his grip on his sword’s hilt. Uther winces below him, sucking in a breath, but he’s not sure if it’s because of the sudden noise, or if it’s because his grip adjustment accidentally—finally—draws blood.
“Sire—Arthur,” Leon’s voice is too loud, and yet still a faint, far away thing. Arthur feels like he’s watching himself hold his father at sword’s length away, waiting with bated breath to see if he’ll do it or not.
He will. He will.
“Arthur, please—put the sword down—” that’s Gaius’ voice. Arthur wonders if he knew. Of course—of course he did. He’s been here longer than Arthur has.
Your father betrayed me.
He watches the hand holding Uther down start to shake.
“My mother is dead because of him—”
“Killing your father is not going to bring her back.”
He laughs. Doesn’t try to deceive himself into believing that it’s sweat running down his cheeks. He’s not, he wants to say, stop relating me to him—he’s not.
Morgana’s voice startles him, so close and so cold he almost drops his sword. “Do it.”
“My lady—”
“Morgana—”
Arthur pushes the tip harder, sick just from the sound of his voice.
“Do it, Arthur—do you remember how quick he was to sentence Mordred? He killed Gwen’s father just for being seen with—”
He went to the sorceress Nimueh—
You were born of magic—
He was desperate for an heir—
“After everything you’ve done,” he breathes, looking Uther in the eyes and remembering the desperation and sorrow in his mother’s. “You have caused so much pain and suffering. I will put an end to that.”
Gaius and Leon start shouting, and Morgana’s presence by his shoulder waivers. His father squeezes his eyes shut, unable to face his death, and Arthur prays for a hell to exist, just so he’ll know how it feels to burn the way every person he condemned did. A man so ready to kill, so fearful of dying himself.
It’s dishonourable and cowardly, and though that is no longer a surprise given everything, Arthur does feel the shame and grief mounting in his throat and behind his eyes.
He feels stupid and small for ever buying into his ruse; for ever looking up to him and wanting him to be proud; for mourning a character that didn’t exist, that’s always just been an intricate lie.
It makes you no less my son, nor me any less proud of you—
“I love you, Arthur.”
“Don’t,” he whispers, closing his eyes, too, because he’s his father’s son, after all, and no less of a coward. Please.
I remember your eyes, you were staring up at me—
He tries to open his eyes, again. Morgana’s yelling at Gaius, still by his shoulder. Leon’s still trying to get him to stop, still too loud but too hazy, and Arthur wonders where his sword is.
What matters is that you lived—
Uther’s eyes are wrinkled and cold and terrified. Arthur had always wondered why they’d be grey when his own are blue. He supposes that’s one mystery solved.
“I loved your mother—Arthur,” he tries, still, even at the end, “there isn’t a day that passes that I don’t wish that she were still alive.”
“Sire, please—”
Those few seconds I held you were the most precious of my life—
“Do it, Arthur!”
Now I see you, I would have given my life willingly—
Arthur. My son—
“Your highness, just put the sword down—”
“Kill him!”
Do not let this knowledge change you—
“Arthur—”
It’s too much.
He drops the sword, gasping and staggering away, tripping on his heels. The shock of hitting the ground, the clang of his armour and sword hitting the stone floors—none of it registers. Not the sound, nor the pain, nor the sudden deafening silence before three bodies rush to his side.
Someone pushes his head down between his knees, calmly tells him to just breathe, and he hears a click as black swims across his vision. His hands are still shaking, and the sudden heat is too intense for the time of year, but he feels himself sweat more, anyway.
The axe presses down harder.
Arthur wakes up to a warm room and a comfortable bed and genuinely questions, for a moment, if it was all just a dream. A bout of insanity brought on by his brain to keep him too occupied to think about—
But he opens his eyes to Gwen standing at the hearth, watching as Morgana paces, a fury the likes of which Arthur has never seen on her—not to this extent, anyway—rolling off of her in cascades. Not a dream, then.
He does remember what happened after he collapsed, though it’s all fast motion and hazy around the edges. Like a dream that keeps skipping unimportant actions and changing in the middle of whatever setting.
The doors had closed again, sometime between Leon and Gaius’ entrances and his eventual departure from the throne room. It was only after he’d calmed down, able to breathe and process things properly again, that he’d recognized Gwen and Gaius talking to him slowly, coaxing him back. Morgana had been kneeling on the ground in front of him, face hard but eyes soft and scared and—he’ll never tell her, but looking at him in a way that had reminded him of his mother, then.
Arthur doesn’t know where his father was, doesn’t remember seeing him again, or how long it took to get himself off the ground and in a state fit to walk in the corridors on his own, so as not to provoke any rumour mongering. He doesn’t remember why Leon had two swords in his hands, both of which he refused to raise despite the threat to the king’s life, nor why entering his room had made him feel like the ceiling had collapsed on him.
“Your highness,” Gwen exclaims, sudden and relieved, rushing to his side. Morgana stops her pacing, turns towards him like she doesn’t remember what happened or what she’s supposed to do.
Arthur pushes up to lean on his elbows, looking at the two of them for a second. Gwen’s eyebrows are pulled together, concerned and angry, too, he thinks. There’s nothing in Morgana’s expression that he can discern. Nothing he’d want to, anyway.
They all stare at each other, silent, with the cover of the night providing the only comfort. He doesn’t know what Morgana and Gwen are thinking—can guess, probably, but won’t know—
Though that’s not really true either, he thinks bitterly. Gwen’s father was sentenced to death for consorting with a sorcerer; Morgana’s father was killed fighting one of Uther’s many wars against magic; Arthur’s mother—
Yes, he thinks he might understand them perfectly. Thinks they might be the only people who can understand him just as well, in return. What a wretched way to connect to people, and yet still, he prefers this to the loneliness—the loneliness he hadn’t even been aware of.
Collapsing back down with an exhale, Arthur stares at the canopy of his bed. He doesn’t know what he’s supposed to do from here.
Execution rates don’t dwindle so much as they abruptly stop, and Uther’s health—soundness of mind, really—goes with them quite swiftly. It’s almost the most cynical type of poetry: that he should fade with his laws. Like every last sorcerer not prosecuted is all that guilt he tried to ease returning to him in kind.
Arthur refuses to see him. Just the idea of having to walk past his chambers makes his stomach churn. Morgana doesn’t see him, either. They both speak almost as if he isn’t still alive; as if he isn’t just sitting in his room rotting away.
There’s nothing to speak about, anyway. They’re—all of them, save for a few council members, perhaps, and some older knights—just waiting for him to die.
Every law Arthur cannot yet pass, every decision he still cannot make without backlash he wouldn’t get as king—it’s all just another reason why they want Uther dead. Every day seems to yield new reasons.
Three months since Merlin’s left, and a month and a half since he learned the truth of his birth, Arthur has a million new ways to count the passing—ever so slowly, ever so bleak—days.
He counts them with the cracks he finds in the walls of his room, every day a new one to stare at and try to worry over. When he runs out of cracks, he counts them by the number of days since he last saw Uther, wondering if he should miss him and then missing him, anyway, so much it makes him sick. By the number of ever increasing druids within the kingdom’s walls, openly trading and exploring, now cautiously embracing the hope that they no longer need to worry about being arrested.
He counts them by the ever increasing knight-hopefuls that arrive every day, the ones not of noble birth but more qualified by far. By the ever relaxing line of Morgana’s shoulders, every time she shows him a spell she’s been working on and tells him about what she’s learned about her dreams and controlling them from Morgause. By the ever diminishing flinch that he still can’t help, but is working on, whenever he sees magic up close.
He counts them by Morgana’s growing power and the ever enlarging pool of mirth in her eyes; he counts them by every new detail he’s forgotten about his mother and every new magnitude the way he misses her reaches. He counts the days by every new thing he’s done that might keep her proud, and every new apology he thinks of that might let her forgive him for being so negligent where magic and his father was concerned, before.
Mostly, though, Arthur counts the days the same way he has been for the last three months.
He counts them by the nights he spends getting ready for bed alone, wondering where it went wrong or if it was ever really right, and why he should feel so alone now, when apparently he’s been as good as alone the entire time. He counts them by the glances over his shoulder that reveal no one; by the sniping remarks he waits for that never come; by the half-trips he makes to Gaius’ work room before remembering; by the stupid grins and soft smiles he sees that just never live up; by every sire directed at him that sounds lacking and every Arthur that just doesn’t sound right.
He counts the days in every new way Merlin is still glaringly absent, and he pretends that he doesn’t remember him at all.
Gwen doesn’t buy it, and neither do Morgana or Morgause, but that is neither here nor there.
“I’m entirely too busy and important to care what you lot think, anyway,” he explains, refusing to let any emotion show.
Morgause raises an eyebrow and drops a grape—his grape, from his plate, in his room—into her mouth. She points at him and says, “You’re glaring, princeling. You only do that when you’re annoyed at being called out.”
Someone snorts—Morgana, he’s almost certain of it—and it takes everything in Arthur not to sputter and glare more. Unfortunately, the whole day has been filled with rewriting the laws and dealing with the council, so his everything is not quite up to par with what it usually is— definitely not enough to keep his face blank. Morgause smirks at him, and he’s half tempted to kick the both of them out.
Arthur turns to his right to try and bribe Gwen to be on his side, only to see her smiling into her—his, goddamn it, they always steal his food—pastry, already sharing a look with Morgana.
Alright, so he’s fully tempted to kick all three of them out of his chambers, now. Really, he doesn’t even know why they’re all here, they’ve already been spending almost every day of the last month together, working on reintroducing magic efficiently and properly. One would think they’d all hoard the time alone they don’t need to spend together like gold.
Apparently not.
He has been spending entirely way too much time with these women.
“I need to start accepting the knights’ invitations to the tavern,” he groans, stealing back his grapes and pastries, smacking Morgause’s hand away and grudgingly sharing one more—only one—with Gwen.
“Elyan says they have a bet going on whose invitation you will accept,” she grins, taking a sip of wine. “They think it’s a favouritism thing.”
“It is a favouritism thing,” Morgana replies, turning a page in her magic book—that was complete and utter gibberish the last time Arthur secretly tried to read it, by the way—without looking up.
Arthur sputters. “I do not have a favourites.”
This gets all three of them to look up at him with varying degrees of incredulity and, alright. Fine. It’s a complete lie. He absolutely has favourites. But only, like, three or four.
“Whatever.”
“How is Elyan settling in, by the way?” Morgana asks, sliding Arthur’s plate towards herself and raising that wretched, damning eyebrow when he goes to protest. Whatever. He’s too tired to argue with her over a plate of grapes and pastries and chicken and—
He coughs to hide his grumbling stomach.
Gwen turns from her position facing him to smile softly at Morgana, and he makes a mental note to make fun of the blush crawling up her neck tomorrow. “He’s well! Adjusting better than I would’ve assumed he would.”
Arthur leans back and plays with a grape between his fingers, idly listening and only half aware of Morgause sitting down at the table now, too.
The fire in the hearth is built high, washing the black room in oranges and golds, and he’s spent evenings much worse than this one. Gwen, Morgana, and Morgause speak in low and unhurried tones about relatively trivial things, not expecting him to join, and it’s nice. Having the company without any expectation.
He’d learned months ago that it doesn’t do him any good to wonder about Merlin. He can handle remembering him as a person that was once within Camelot quite well, but if he starts thinking about him as the person who left—as a person living a completely separate life away from the kingdom, right now—then it becomes a bit difficult.
There’s this ache that hasn’t, technically, gone away since that first day. It flares and swells in turns and sometimes—when he does think of Merlin living somewhere entirely separate from all of them—becomes so present, so unavoidable, that it almost feels like the ache is trying to compensate for the absence that’s caused it.
Still, it doesn’t stop Arthur from wondering, as the grape turns over and over between his fingers, whether Merlin’s having a night in, full of slow and idle chatter, as well. Whether or not he also can’t help but remember the way he used to swipe food from Arthur’s plate, despite Arthur’s glares and sighs because he never actually tried to stop it. Whether he also thinks about how they used to sit at Arthur’s table as Arthur wrote reports and he polished armour, those nights where they spoke quietly and called each other stupid names and didn’t feel self conscious about grinning at each other over the space between them.
It’s a big table, Arthur thinks, as Morgause starts telling them about what she used to do to perfect her spells quickly. No matter how many people sit at it, there’s always going to be an empty spot.
He sighs quietly and puts the grape in his mouth. It’s probably never going to feel full without Merlin sitting there and stealing his bread.
The dragon beneath the castle is, of course, a problem.
Morgana smacks him upside the head. “Idiot—”
“Ow, Morgana—!”
“We don’t have time for you to point out the obvious—”
“I was just saying—”
“Could you two, please, not do this right now,” Gwen cuts him off, glaring at the both of them. Arthur does not pout, but he does glare at Morgana behind Gwen’s back as she fetches three torches for them.
“Oh, don’t be such a baby,” she glares back. She’s just bitter Gwen didn’t take her side, Arthur thinks, only able to be slightly smug since he’s still annoyed and bitter that Gwen didn’t take his side, either. He elbows her in retaliation.
“You—!”
“So,” Arthur quickly walks away from her, clapping once to drown out Morgana’s curses, and grabs his torch to light it. The dragon is a problem, but not one that will be nearly as insurmountable as Gwen’s wrath. “What are we gonna do about it?”
“Aren’t you always going on about how you’re the regent and in charge and so important?” Morgana mocks, “Why is it suddenly we when you have a problem? You solve it yourself. Maybe Gwen and I have much better and more entertaining things to do. Like watch you deal with a dragon, for one.”
“Oh, stop,” Gwen—the traitor—says, laughing now. “Of course we’ll help, Arthur.”
“Whatever,” he mutters, leading the way down to where it’s lived for the past two decades. Turning to Morgana he adds, “And I could take a dragon.”
She gives him a flat look. “I’m sure,” she says, sounding sure of the exact opposite.
Arthur rolls his eyes and turns back towards the trail. Obviously, they’re going to have to let it go. Maybe.
No, they’re definitely going to have to let it go. He knows its capture and imprisonment was purely symbolic of Uther’s victory over magic; knows that every other dragon is dead and this was just the one chosen to be a reminder. The very idea that a dragon, a creature so large and so obviously made for flight and open air, is condemned to chains and the underground because of Uther is enough to make anyone angry. The fact that it’s all because Uther refused to take responsibility for killing his wife, and had the power to make everyone else pay for his—
Arthur clenches his jaw and takes a deep breath, adjusting his grip on the torch. The whole situation is disturbing and so they will let it go; it’s just—well. The situation is enough to make anyone angry, but especially the dragon that’s in it that breathes fire and can devastate entire kingdoms probably in a blink of an eye.
So, once again, it’s a problem.
“Are we going to negotiate with it?” He asks, only half rhetorically.
“Negotiate with it?”
“Can dragons even speak?”
Arthur pauses, looking at Gwen. Perhaps they should’ve done more research on dragons before coming to deal with one. “Damn.”
“Negotiate with it?” Morgana repeats, incredulous and exasperated. Arthur tells himself that he has been glaring at her way too often to do it again, now. It’s unbecoming.
“Well, it’s not like I know, do I? I’ve never seen a bloody dragon,” he defends.
Morgana scoffs, almost like she’s disgusted with his ignorance, which is just rich coming from her, really.
“Well what do you suggest, then?” He demands, pausing just before the last turn into the dwelling to glare at her in the low light. Unbecomingness be damned. From the edge of his vision he can just make out the bounce of Gwen’s curls as she shakes her head, can just about hear her imperceptible sigh, but he elects to ignore her, too.
“We just release it, Arthur!”
“And give it free rein to destroy Camelot in the process?”
“It’s not like it isn’t entitled,” Morgana mutters.
“Morgana,” he grits out. Endangering his people is out of the question.
She rolls her eyes. “I’m kidding. Mostly.”
“Morgana—”
“Honestly, you two,” Gwen sighs, pinching the bridge of her nose.
Arthur opens his mouth, ready to defend himself, but Morgana cuts him off before he’s able. “Fine. Negotiation with the gigantic dragon it is.”
Which is a lot easier—regardless of how utterly ridiculous it sounds—said than done, because while it can speak, the dragon in question can’t have a single straightforward conversation to save its stupid life.
“You are only one side of a coin, young Pendragon,” it—he, apparently—says again. Arthur sighs, closing his eyes, and rubs his forehead. They have been here for an hour. “Your other half is not far.”
“Look,” Arthur tries again, after several minutes of calming himself down so as not to strangle a cackling Morgana behind him. This is just great—he’s never going to live it down. Other half. Good god. “Morgause will be back with one of those swords needed to break your chains by tomorrow at the latest, and this is really not that difficult. Do you agree to not attack Camelot or harm her citizens in any way once we release you?”
“I hadn’t anticipated that your destiny would arrive so quickly,” the dragon goes on, ponderingly. This time Gwen’s laugh slips through her valiant efforts to remain quiet for his sake.
“Oh, for goodness’ sake,” Arthur mutters. Nevermind the damn dragon. The three of them aren’t getting out of here any time soon, either.
It takes a lot of ultimatums and, frankly, a ridiculous amount of arguing about how the people are not responsible for Uther’s actions and should not have to pay for it—which should be common sense, Arthur thinks bitterly, but perhaps being imprisoned for two decades erodes reason—but, eventually, they come to an understanding. Well. After several detours where the damned lizard started spouting absolute nonsense about destiny, and Albion, and the once and future king, that is. Whatever the hell that means.
Arthur mostly stopped paying attention during those interludes, too busy trying to get the conversation back on track. The damn thing likes to talk (Arthur thinks it’s because it—he—hasn’t had anyone to annoy with riddles in over twenty years, and so he’s overcompensating).
Merlin and him would get along, he thinks.
He hangs his head and closes his eyes, forcing himself to not think about that. Merlin would probably be too suspicious over the dragon to make friends with it, anyway. Maybe.
Sometimes it feels like he barely even remembers Merlin anymore, just remembers that there's something to miss.
“I want your word,” Arthur says again, through gritted teeth, as he lifts his head. The sword is unfamiliar and heavy in his hand, and he focuses on that, instead.
“Like your father’s word to my dragonlord, all those years ago?” the dragon—overgrown reptile, Arthur thinks viciously—snipes back. He clenches his jaw. That’s another thing that wasn’t fun and a bit of overkill, Arthur thinks. The complete detail he’d gone into explaining exactly how Uther had captured and imprisoned him as they awaited Morgause’s return.
“I want your word.”
The scaly bastard says nothing for a long second, and Arthur thinks that maybe his voice was too low to hear. He almost repeats himself, but when he makes eye contact with the damned thing—great big eyes, bigger than Arthur’s fist, drenched in glowing liquid gold, the same way Morgana’s and Morgause’s eyes look when they do magic—he decides against it. He’s pretty sure the dragon did hear him, if the tilted head and considering look he’s being given is any indication.
Vaguely, Arthur thinks that it’s almost the same look Morgause gave him when he’d asked her to see his mother.
“Very well,” the dragon agrees, finally, after several unnecessary minutes. “You have my word, young prince. I will not cause you or your kingdom any trouble.”
Letting out a breath, Arthur nods—more to himself, than anything else—and grips the hilt of the sword with both hands. “Alright,” he says. “Alright.”
Uther imprisoned the great dragon as his final victory in the war against magic. Arthur releasing him, just as they’re on the cusp of reintroducing magic back to Camelot, seems fitting. A sort of poetic justice, if he was a man of poetry, at all.
He’s not. This doesn’t feel poetic in any way. It just feels terrifyingly risky and potentially like the worst mistake he’ll ever make.
Regardless, it all passes in much the same way as all the other decisions he’s made in the past two months have. Slowly and blurrily and so quick he never has time to process any of it until it’s over—or until it forcibly catches up to him in the midst of it all.
He’s aware of the chains breaking easier than he expects them to; hears the clang as they break and fall to the damp stone ground limply. He hears a roar—so loud and animalistic that it jars him back into the realization that this is a dragon. A dragon that does not live by human code, that does not need to keep oaths, that would promise anything with false sincerity if it meant its freedom.
Freedom, Arthur thinks, watching numbly as he flies away. That’s freedom, that sudden and uncontrollable burst of glee. It makes his breath short and unsteady, makes his throat close up a bit, and he doesn’t know why.
Well, that’s not true. He knows why. He’s craved to know that feeling for as long as he’s known what it means to be trapped; has craved to be familiar with it for most of his life. He craves it so much it takes his breath away.
Really, part of Arthur is still stuck in that small and fleeting moment in his room, just before he’d left to seek out Morgause, when it seemed almost possible for him to leave Camelot and just disappear. Just never come back. He thinks that part of him will be stuck there indefinitely.
He misses and envies Merlin in turns.
“Do not worry, young Pendragon,” the dragon says, from somewhere just beyond Arthur’s sight, “he will come back to you. A half cannot live long without that which makes it whole—nor, I suspect, does he want to.”
Arthur doesn’t have enough time to unpack and examine any of that, before the flapping wings fade and he’s left standing in the cool underground alone.
“Who?” he mutters, wiping his forehead with the back of his hand. He leans back against the stone and looks up; takes a breath. “What does that even mean?”
He wonders if dragons are, by nature, lonely creatures.
Morgana, Gwen, Morgause, and him are all cautious and on edge for the first two weeks after the great dragon’s release. As lovely as it would have been to be able to fully trust the word of that dragon with no hesitation, it would have been even more foolish to do so.
First of all, Arthur’s sure if he was tested—could they test the mental state of a dragon?—he would be found clinically insane, which—however understandable given his entire situation—isn’t a point in his credibility’s favour. Also, there’s no reason for the dragon to even honour his word, seeing as he’s a bloody dragon and can do what he wants. Morgana has not let him hear the end of that one.
“Maybe I’m trying to establish a good rapport with the fire breathing beast by showing him I can trust him,” he defends half heartedly, watching as Morgause and Percival circle each other in the field.
She has taken to attending training with them every day—despite his protests, which were rudely shot down after Morgana asked whether he’s so against it because he’s scared of being shown up again. Which is not the case, at all, so he’s had no choice but to grudgingly put up with it to stop anyone else from believing Morgana’s defaming lies.
“What does a good rapport matter if he decimates the entire kingdom?”
“The good rapport and trust are meant to make him not want to decimate the kingdom.”
“Unless he doesn’t take it to be a gesture of good faith and instead recognizes that you’re an idiot.”
“Morgana,” Arthur finally snaps, looking away from Percival being humiliated to give her an annoyed look, “don’t you have something else to be doing that doesn’t involve being your usual irritating self?”
“I could go back to working on that spell that’ll turn you into a cockroach,” she suggests lightly.
“That’s treason—”
She waves her hand in his face, unbothered, rudely cutting him off. Arthur glares at her (he thinks the glares are starting to lose their flare) and mutters something about women and wretched witches that even he isn’t paying attention to before turning back with a huff. Just in time, coincidentally, to see Percival fall on his arse.
That makes him feel a little better about himself.
Together, they watch silently as Elyan helps him up and takes his place in front of Morgause. Leon calls the start of the match.
It’s a good day, one of the ones that don’t feel as empty as the rest. The sun’s white against the castle walls and hot anywhere it touches. The wind is cool on the back of his sweat-slicked neck, and Arthur takes a moment to enjoy the way it sweeps through his hair. He has missed being able to sit outside just to enjoy the weather.
“How are you?” Morgana asks, sudden and so quiet he almost misses it. He doesn’t turn to look at her and knows, from the corner of his eye, that she’s not looking at him, either.
Arthur shrugs. He doesn’t want to admit that nothing has changed; that it’s almost gotten lonelier. “You might have to be more specific.”
This does get her to turn to him. Still, he avoids her eye by watching Elyan duck and parry. Gwen had been surprised by his skill with the sword, but Arthur had been nothing short of delighted. They’d been lacking knights with worthy swordsmanship for a while, so Elyan, Percival, and Lancelot had been a weight lifted off his chest.
“I heard that Gaius doesn’t think he’ll make it past the month,” she says, and Arthur knows that it’s partly Morgana trying to stop herself from talking about someone completely different. He’s glad. He is.
Nodding, Arthur frowns down at his lap. Gaius had told him as much, too. “Yes.”
“Arthur—”
And the thing is, he knows she expects more from him. He doesn’t know why, since Morgana knows damn well he’s never been very good at this part but—still, she expects it. She expects it, and it’s almost flattering, that she thinks enough of him to believe he’s even worth that expectation.
The problem is that he doesn’t really know what he feels, himself. There’s part of him—a large part, truth be told—that has accepted that his father died the second his mother’s spirit disappeared in that ruined castle two and a half months ago. There’s just a corpse rotting in a room, now, that they’re waiting to bury later.
He doesn’t think Uther’s actual, physical death will affect him at all. He doesn’t think it should, in any case.
But the fact of the matter is that sometimes when he’s leading training or fighting one of his knights, he catches himself imagining that Uther is watching from his window; catches himself righting his posture or hardening his voice as a last ditch effort to make him proud; to get some admiration.
Sometimes, after leading a council meeting, he catches himself wondering if Gaius talks about how he’s doing and what he’s doing, and then he catches himself hoping that despite everything—despite everything—Uther still finds something in him he deems worthy enough to make a good king.
Sometimes, after reports of bandits or beasts come, calling for him to ride out and deal with them, Arthur catches himself wondering what would happen if he never made it back; whether Uther would care at all, whether he’d be mourned by him.
He catches himself in a million little moments like those, all because—sometimes—Arthur doesn’t know how to not seek the approval and love of a man that was meant to be his father. Especially after spending his whole life doing just that.
Maybe when Uther does actually die, he’ll be free of that. Or maybe he’ll just spend every moment thereafter hating himself. Arthur doesn’t know, anymore.
He sighs and doesn’t stop himself from putting his head in his hands. “I don’t know, Morgana.”
She’s silent for a second, before she pats his knee lightly and stands up. Just in time for Elyan to knock Morgause’s sword out of her hand. “We’ll talk later.”
“Must we?”
She smirks, kissing his cheek in goodbye, and walks away.
That night, after Morgana and Gwen torture all his emotions out of him with threats of unimaginable humiliation and spitting in all his food, he lies in bed exhausted. There is something extremely draining about talking—about feelings—and for a moment, a single moment in which he temporarily descends into near incurable insanity, Arthur contemplates incorporating it into knight training. As a punishment, maybe.
Really, the only down side of it would be that he’d—rightfully—be accused of being a gigantic girl. But it would be torture enough for his knights for it to almost be worth it. Almost. He also thinks Gwen might be disappointed in him for referring to it as torture, and while it is and he stands by that and does not care if she isn’t impressed with him in that exasperated way of hers, well—alright, maybe Gwen’s opinion does also make him reconsider. A little. Mostly he doesn’t want to be accused of being a girl (he gets enough shit from Leon and Elyan any time he refuses a tavern invitation).
It’s a cloudy night, so the room’s more gray than it is blue from any moonlight. It makes Arthur a little restless. He turns on his side to watch the nothingness outside his window. From this angle, all he can see are clouds.
The new laws regarding magic’s reintroduction to the kingdom were finalized just hours ago. All of them—Morgause a little grudgingly, after talking with Morgana—including the druids they’d consulted, had agreed that it would be best to do it in stages.
Arthur keeps having to remind himself that it’s good. That this is good.
They have a plan, meticulously considered and perfected over months consisting of almost nothing else. They have allies, both from surrounding kingdoms—Nemeth and Gawant, specifically, at the moment—and enough from magic users themselves. There doesn’t seem to be any threat of a dragon attacking them. Everything is the best it can be. This is a good thing.
It’s just that, the problem is he’s still counting the mornings by every insubordinate greeting that doesn’t come.
Arthur rubs his hands over his face and closes his eyes, breathing in as deeply as he can force himself. It’s ridiculous; pathetic. There’s a kingdom on the brink of change right beneath his fingertips. An entire kingdom just waiting to enter a new era within his grasp, and all he ever thinks of anymore is how the space beside him is still so blatantly empty.
He wants to blame Merlin. He wants to send eight dozen knights into the woods and the surrounding kingdoms—never mind that he could be dozens of kingdoms worth of distance away, by now—just to find him and drag him back. He wants to shake him and yell at him and demand to know who the hell just leaves like that; with no goodbye, with no forewarning, with no contact thereafter. Why.
He wants to blame Merlin so badly he almost comes close enough to convincing himself that he has every right to. He wants to blame the person that left so easily and never looked back, the person whose absence was followed by utter hell.
He can’t. He wants to—he can’t.
Every time he tries, there comes an irritatingly logical voice that sounds a lot like a mix between Morgana’s and Gwen’s, reasoning that Arthur can’t know what would have happened had Merlin been there when he met Morgause that first time. That he doesn’t have Morgana’s powers nor Morgause’s nor Gwen’s creepy ability to know people well enough to be able to predict precisely what they will do in any situation just before they do it. That even if he did it wouldn’t matter because at the end of the day, it’d be a guess.
To be honest, he doesn’t think much—if anything—would’ve changed, had Merlin been there.
Perhaps he would have killed his father. Perhaps he would’ve been merciful. Perhaps Merlin would’ve run his big mouth and the dragon would’ve decided to go back on his word, after all, and burnt them all to a crisp the second he was released. Arthur doesn’t know. And that is proof enough that he can’t blame Merlin for any of it.
Still, though. He does think he’d have preferred to have him there. If nothing else, Merlin had always made things easier to bear.
Rolling onto his back, Arthur waits for his eyes to adjust to the new darkness. It’s all so ridiculous. Gwen and Morgana look happy, again, just like he promised himself he’d make them. Magic is slowly returning. His knights are his, now—the people, too. Everything, by all intents and purposes, should be—is—falling into place.
Gwen and Morgana are happy, and here, and he knows what his mother looks like, and the kingdom is better than it was, miraculously, and things are meant to be good.
“I thought he’d come back by now,” he groans to himself, and doesn’t let it be anything more than a whisper. He knows they all miss Merlin still, too. He just doesn’t know why it’s still so debilitating for him.
I thought he’d come back. He didn’t. He should have. He didn’t.
He didn’t.
He does.
A week after Uther dies, four days after magic is—officially, that is—legalized, he comes back.
Like the utter bastard that he is.
Arthur’s not actually in Camelot when he does come back, because he’s out hunting. He doesn’t know how Morgana reacted or where Gaius was or how long Gwen hugged Merlin for; doesn’t know whether people recognized him on his return or what he was wearing when he did enter the city again. Which doesn’t matter. He doesn’t care. It’s just that it means he doesn’t have a chance to prepare for it—no whispers to clue him in or overprotective women (he’s not naming any names, but Morgana and Gwen) to warn him beforehand.
So riding into the courtyard after a good, successful day’s hunt only to be met with Merlin at the top of the steps to the castle, waiting for them—for him—is unexpected. To say the least.
He’s only distantly aware that he freezes, arms halfway outstretched to pass a stablehand the reins.
Arthur had always assumed that, if he did see Merlin again, they wouldn’t recognize each other at all. It’d always felt impossible to assume that Merlin would look the same after all these months that have passed; that he, himself, would be any less different.
So he’s a bit annoyed with himself for being surprised by how much Merlin really has changed, anyway.
It’s more in the mannerisms than anything else—his shoulders are straight and relaxed where they used to be bent and tense; his chin is raised, no longer in defiance but now in a sort of easy confidence. Arthur almost staggers back with the intense feeling of hatred—no, not hatred. Anger, maybe; betrayal—that washes over him.
He doesn’t look sorry, doesn’t look regretful. He doesn’t even bloody look nervous. The nerve to leave without a word, without so much as a glance back, leaving utter hell in his wake, and then to come back like this is amusing, almost. Just as everything’s ending, he’s come back; after his mother’s voice has already started fading from his memory, and his damned father is long dead. After his coronation.
You can’t be here, he wants to yell. I knew you’d come back but I was supposed to be wrong.
He wants to go up to him and take him by his damned jacket’s stupid lapels and drag him out. You can’t just decide you want to be here when things aren’t hard anymore. He wants to say that they were supposed to do it together. He wants to say that he thought they were on the same page.
Arthur climbs the steps without breaking eye contact, and wonders if a hush has actually fallen or if it’s his own head being loud enough to drown out the noise. He doesn’t know what his face looks like—barely has the wherewithal to keep his shaking hands from sight—but it mustn’t be whatever welcoming greeting Merlin had been hoping for. Merlin’s mouth seems to tighten the closer Arthur gets, his shoulders drawing up into that familiar, tense line, and it’s only then that Arthur really notices how different he really does look.
The shirt he’s wearing rests across Merlin’s chest fittingly, where it used to hang off of him before. His shoulders are wider; lined with muscle that Arthur can’t see, but knows enough about the body to discern it’s there. His hair is longer, darker and curlier, and he doesn’t know if Merlin’s eyes are actually different, but there’s something that makes him think they are. He doesn’t know.
Arthur makes it to the top of the steps, and he’d forgotten that Merlin was taller than him—technically, it’s really only by an inch so it doesn’t count—but it seems glaringly obvious, now.
It takes entirely too much effort to control his breathing. Arthur looks at him with clenched teeth, wondering when he became so bitter about the whole affair. He’d stood in front of everyone during his coronation, and for the first time had allowed himself to admit that it didn’t matter how humiliating it would be; that it didn’t matter how many sleepless nights he spent reevaluating whether they were ever really friends—he’d just wanted Merlin back; just wanted to see his face in that crowd. He’d been ready to take him back with open arms.
No such sentiment remains, now, looking at Merlin.
Well—perhaps that’s not entirely true. There’s a keen fondness, still, at seeing his eyes and the slope of his cheekbones; an almost insurmountable need to ruffle his hair and pull him under his arm. It would also be a lie to pretend there isn’t something falling into place just by seeing Merlin back in Camelot—seeing him healthy and confident and good back where Arthur is. Like he’s home.
Yes, fine. There’s definitely a sort of contentment slotting into place; the last piece of the puzzle that’d left him restless and unable to take a proper breath. Of course it’s Merlin.
But he’s too angry to really care about contentment, at the moment.
“Sire,” he says, and it’s—
There’s an entire kingdom in the palm of Arthur’s hand, and it still feels like Merlin’s got the upper hand. It was Merlin that left. It’s Merlin that has come back. It’s always just on his terms.
His sire doesn’t sound right. Or maybe it does, and Arthur’s just too betrayed and angry to respond to it the same. He wants to skip the reunion; doesn’t want to be here when he welcomes Merlin back or when they inevitably talk about it. Arthur doesn’t think he can handle yet another emotional journey, at the moment.
Merlin’s presence only seemed to make things easier when it hadn’t meant he was coming back after four months of utter silence.
“Merlin,” he nods, through clenched teeth, and brushes past him inside. Arthur’s too tired, anyway, and there’s no way he’ll say more to him anywhere outside his own chambers.
No footsteps follow him inside, and his relief is shallow, at best.
Morgana gives him hell for it, but not to the degree he’d expected.
“You can’t avoid him forever,” she tells him, ruthlessly blunt. Arthur really doesn’t know why she feels the need to comment on every last thing in his life.
“I’m the king,” he replies. The, I can do whatever I want goes unspoken. Mostly because if he’d voiced it she would’ve probably argued with him about it. And won, unfortunately.
“That’s never meant much to him, though, has it?”
“I’ve never been king with him around before, actually.”
“Being purposefully obtuse doesn’t suit you, Arthur,” Morgana sighs. “You know what I mean—he’ll wear you down eventually. Might as well face it on your own terms instead of running away at every chance.”
“Are you calling me a coward?”
“Well, if the shoe fits—”
“I am not a—”
“Oh, my god. Will you talk to him?”
Arthur looks away from her. It’s inevitable, of course. Even if it’s not Merlin that ends up cornering him, from everyone else’s descriptions he’s back to stay, now. Eventually, Arthur won’t be able to stop himself from seeking Merlin out. Not that he ever really stopped, but already he keeps catching himself—more and more—looking for him in crowds. In the lower towns, in the corridors, during hearings.
But talking to Merlin is unpredictable. Every time he thinks about it, he comes up with at least three different ways it can go. Arthur doesn’t know where they’d begin, or where they’d end up, or how they’d even get there. He doesn’t know if his anger would get the better of him or maybe his grief. And that’s just himself. Assuming Merlin left for a reason and has returned for a reason—
Well, it’s impossible to guess what he even wants. Let alone how he’ll go about getting it.
And there was a time where Merlin’s unpredictableness was refreshing. A time when Arthur needed it to stay sane, to keep himself from succumbing to the mind numbing torture of routine. But that was a different Merlin; a different Arthur. That was insubordination without history; without any past personal slights tainting it. It was fun and light and an equally acknowledged foundation for the building—though, grudgingly—and established respect.
Now, he knows that it’ll all just feel personal. Cheap and full of malice, whether it actually is or not. And after everything with his mother, everything with Uther and his kingship—
Arthur just—he really doesn’t think he can handle any surprises. There’s a beauty and comfort to routine that he’s only recently begun to appreciate.
“I know I’ll have to eventually,” he concedes, and knows his own voice sounds too quiet. “It’s just—”
After a pause, Morgana pats his hand. “I understand.”
He doesn’t think she does, but that would be unfair to say when they’re actually getting along for once, without any teasing to lighten it, so he keeps quiet. Merlin had relationships with people outside of whatever it was he had with Arthur—he keeps forgetting that—and Morgana is no exception. He knows she’s had her own reservations about approaching him.
Days pass, and nothing really changes. The entire castle becomes a field of hide and go seek, where it’s more him hiding and—from what he interprets from Morgana’s and Gwen’s exasperation and Morgause’s disgust—Merlin seeking, and it’s, admittedly, ridiculous.
Gaius has also been giving him his pointed eyebrow raises in council meetings, and as much as Arthur’s glad Merlin’s return hasn’t caused emotional distress to everyone, it is just slightly annoying having to ignore them. It’s great that Gaius can let it go, whatever. Arthur doesn’t know why he can’t, and he’s not about to start.
Gwen is—different. Truth be told, she hasn’t been very forthcoming about how she feels (which is rich, considering how she and Morgana routinely torture his feelings out of him, in the name of emotional health, or some rubbish), but Arthur thinks she’s happier to have Merlin back than angry that he left at all.
He does think there’s some anger there though. Or—if not anger, frustration. From what he hears from her, Merlin hasn’t really told anyone why he left at all, or why he’s back.
Arthur hears a lot about Merlin, actually.
Four months of complete silence—no word from him, no mention of him outside of themselves—and now, suddenly, Merlin’s a topic he can’t avoid. Morgause keeps wondering why he’s such a big deal, Morgana keeps hounding him about talking to him, Gwen talks about how much he’s changed and—
And, well. The girl and the rogue that followed in his footsteps, through the lower towns and right up the castle steps, are quite the gossip between the three as well. Even his knights are intrigued (nevermind that Percival and Elyan don’t even know him), so there’s literally no escaping it.
From what little Arthur has seen and observed of the two new companions, they couldn’t be any more different from each other, and yet are astoundingly similar to the Merlin he once thought he knew.
The man flirts with anything that breathes. Arthur’s pretty sure he caught Lancelot blushing once, which, alright, isn’t that weird because Lancelot does blush quite often, but still. He’s loud and brash and always laughing at something ridiculous.
Arthur is almost one hundred percent sure Merlin met him in a tavern.
The girl, on the other hand, is quiet. He saw Gwen interact with her once, and she was full of soft smiles and blushing cheeks. From what Gwen tells him, she has taken over Merlin’s position as Gaius’ apprentice. Rightfully, too, Gwen says—says she’s intelligent in the quiet way, wit sharp but subtle; says she’s kind and lovely.
Arthur doesn’t know what to think of either of them, if he’s honest. Part of him already likes them both. Leon tells him how Gwaine—that’s his name, Gwaine, which does sound slightly familiar—joins them in the tavern sometimes; how he seems like a good bloke under all that noise. Arthur believes him—he doesn’t think Merlin would become so close with people anything less than upstanding.
But, in that same vein, Merlin is the exact problem, the one thing keeping him from liking either of them completely.
Yes, Freya seems lovely and intelligent and great, and yes Gwaine seems fun and loyal and great—but. But the fact of the matter is, they’re both reminders that Merlin left and found other people. They’re both definitive evidence that Merlin was having a blast being away, that nothing here was ever the same to Merlin as it has always been to Arthur and so—
It’s just difficult to look at them and not resent them, a little, for Merlin’s actions.
“That’s not very fair,” Lancelot tells him, and he knows. He knows it isn’t.
“I can’t help it,” Arthur replies. He tries his best to be civil to Gwaine and Freya whenever he (accidentally, because avoiding Merlin would be trivial if he doesn’t avoid his two friends, too) encounters them, but sometimes he’s having a bad day and managing the irrational anger with everything else is impossible. It doesn’t help that Gwaine makes no such effort and Freya keeps—looking at him.
“I understand,” Lancelot says, but Arthur can’t tell if he actually does. Lancelot is, without a doubt, one of his best knights. If Leon, Elyan, and Percival weren’t there, he wouldn’t even hesitate to call him his best—he was the first knight Arthur chose for himself, there will always be fondness for him for that. But sometimes Arthur does think he tries too hard to spare his feelings. Sometimes he appreciates it, sometimes he doesn’t.
Taking a gulp of mead, Arthur hangs his head. He’d finally accepted an invitation to the tavern from his knights, and so far it’s been nothing but them coaxing him to knight Gwaine. “If he tries out and is actually good, I’d be able to look past it, though.”
Elyan pats his arm, as the others nod understandingly, and well—Arthur doesn’t know when they all became so morose after three rounds, but here they are.
“I think he has some vendetta against nobles,” Percival says.
Arthur rolls his eyes, mutters, “Great.”
Of course Merlin would go befriending noble-hating, loudmouthed drifters. The knowledge makes everything worse, a bit. He knows he’s probably overreacting, but even that small detail feels like its own world of betrayals. Did they bond over how much they hated nobles, Gwaine talking about his reasons and Merlin talking about Arthur? Did Merlin spend all those months they’ve been apart gossiping and insulting him to strangers who laughed and joined in?
The fact that he can’t even confidently rule out the possibility makes him feel sick. Small and tired and stupid. He has spent these last four months turning himself inside out and hollowing himself out wanting Merlin back while simultaneously dealing with—with everything, and Merlin—
Merlin left of his own volition, made new friends with people who apparently abhor Arthur’s very existence, and came back just when Arthur had finally started to feel some semblance of normality again. And he still doesn’t even know why he’s back in the first place.
He doesn’t know when things between them will stop feeling like personal slights.
If they ever even will.
“Well if it isn’t the lads!”
“Oh, great,” he scowls, because of course Gwaine decides to turn up now. Arthur looks up to see his—admittedly, though with no little reluctance—handsome face, and accidentally makes eye contact with Merlin instead. The alcohol’s too well settled in his system to let him stifle the groan, but it’s not so debilitating that he can’t control it a little, at least.
Still, Arthur’s pretty sure the way he looks at the ceiling cannot be interpreted in any way other than defeat and displeasure. He looks back down and Merlin hasn’t wavered; is still looking at him so intently that he almost seems familiar.
But then Gwaine throws an arm around his shoulder and he’s just another stranger again.
The two of them manage to squeeze in and settle around the table across from him. It’s not ideal, because it puts them both in his line of sight, but he does infinitely prefer having to watch them over talking to them, so he deals with it. Leon and Elyan keep him too occupied to notice much, anyway.
Minutes or hours pass—he stopped really being able to tell the difference months ago—and everything goes by fine. It’s impossible to not let his eyes wander, so he stops really trying after the first few times. Arthur thinks he’s entitled, just a bit. Besides, he’s the king. He can stare at whoever he wants.
At one point, though—when he looks over to see Merlin laughing and smiling, caught in a conversation with Gwaine and Percival and Lancelot—it becomes too much. He doesn’t know what exactly it is about the picture that makes his stomach turn the way it does. Maybe it’s because two years of the closest friendship Arthur’s ever had were suddenly followed by four months of utter silence, all for it to lead here: where they’re sitting in the same room, barely meters apart, and aren’t acknowledging each other at all. Maybe it’s because he still doesn’t know why Merlin left—still doesn’t understand how something so important to him could’ve been so worthless to Merlin.
Maybe it’s because everything’s so easy for him. Leaving was easy, making new friends was easy, coming back was easy, laughing is easy, existing is easy.
And Arthur’s still trying to convince himself Morgause didn’t actually use the axe.
He puts his cup of mead down and rubs his face with both palms, taking deep breaths. This is why he doesn’t like going out with his knights. Gwen and Morgana know what to do with him if he gets like this; what to say if he starts thinking too much about the last few months and everything he’s learned and everything he still needs to do and everything he still needs to get over.
“Sire,” Leon’s voice filters in through the buzzing in his ears, and it’s low and unhurried, which means that Arthur hasn’t caused enough of a scene to make him worry too much. That’s good, then.
Arthur looks up, the light of the tavern, though dim, not helping the cold, nauseating pain in his head. He doesn’t let himself dwell on which of his knights have noticed the momentary blunder. “I should go.”
Leon nods. “Of course. Shall I—?”
“No—no. I will go alone.”
Leon bites his lip, no doubt unhappy with that decision (Morgana and Gwen are not, unfortunately, the only overprotective people in his life. He supposes the knights do make more sense, given the nature of their jobs, but it’s gotten to the point where they’re forgetting that Arthur can, actually, fight quite well—so much so that he leads their training, and thus is not in need of their protection for every last—well. It’s only slightly annoying), but thankfully holds his tongue.
Arthur makes his farewells, thinking that he’ll push training back tomorrow, and then wondering if that’s why they invited him in the first place. He leaves with a nod aimed at Gwaine and Merlin, looking at their eyebrows in order to avoid their eyes in the most dignified way he can get away with.
Unfortunately, Merlin does not get the hint.
Given that Arthur’s had to actively avoid him, he doesn’t know why he’s even surprised, honestly.
“Arthur, wait—” His hand grabs Arthur’s arm, and it’s too soon; too sudden of a surprise for him to stifle his reaction into something neutral, something aloof.
“Don’t—” He hisses, wrenching back so viciously that Merlin stumbles back a bit, as well. He’s surprised at his own vehemence. “Don’t.”
Merlin’s biting his lip, looking less startled and more hurt. “We need to talk.”
And it’s—it’s almost laughable, actually. It really is quite hysterical that he’s completely serious about it, too.
He can’t help it. A laugh trips its way out of his mouth, disbelieving and so unbelievably bitter that Arthur feels a little embarrassed for himself. He doesn’t understand why he can’t move past it; doesn’t understand why, if anything, it feels like it’s getting worse.
“You want to talk,” he says, voice too detached to trick anyone into thinking he doesn’t actually care. “That’s a bit rich coming from you, don’t you think?”
“Arthur—”
“Just—Don’t.”
Turning away is difficult. He wants to yell a million different things; scream a million more. He doesn’t even know where he’d begin; just that he wants to pin Merlin to the wall and shake him and banish him just to never see him again on his own terms. Just that he wants to go back and stop the last four months from ever happening and forget that they ever did.
“You can’t keep running away!”
Arthur stops dead, the fury building in his stomach so violent and catastrophic that when he turns around it feels as if he’s been knocked out of his own body. Oddly enough, this is the calmest he’s felt in Merlin’s presence all night.
“Yes, you’d know a lot about running away, wouldn’t you, Merlin?” He watches Merlin falter; watches his eyes flicker down and his shoulders slump. It’s not the victory he’d hoped for. “Come to think of it, you’re quite knowledgeable in many things. Running away, disappearing, going months without a word.”
Merlin steps back, but Arthur doesn’t stalk forward. This isn’t a hunt—this isn’t a game. He doesn’t want to win or be here or get the last word in some shallow attempt at retribution. Part of him can barely even stand to be this close, alone, with Merlin at all.
Morgana was right—it really would have been better if he could’ve done this on his own terms. Everything—everything—seems to be on Merlin’s. This just makes him feel like a cornered animal lashing out.
“I’m sorry,” Merlin says, voice soft; pleading. “I had to.”
There’s nothing defensive about his posture: head bent forward like a bow, eyes downcast in subservience, body directly facing Arthur in full focus. It’s all of the loyalty Arthur had once thought Merlin possessed presented in a way completely unlike the Merlin he remembers. He almost regrets it—almost wants to take it back.
“You had to,” he laughs instead, humourless and too loud. Arthur can hear the laughs and chatter from inside the tavern still, muffled and loud. It feels like they’re in a space between worlds. A little pocket of existence outside the usual one.
“Yes,” Merlin replies, voice a little harder now; eyes back up and narrowed. Good—this is what Arthur wants. This is something he can fight—something that finally looks familiar. “I did.”
“You had to leave with no explanation? No goodbye?” Arthur challenges. “You had to disappear without so much as a word for months?” He yells.
“I—”
Panting between his gritted teeth, Arthur prays his face stays dry. “Where’ve you been, Merlin? Why’d you come back?”
He wants to ask if Merlin even knows the hell that he left in his wake; wants to ask if Merlin knows who Morgause is and why she’s here and what she revealed. If he even knows the half of it—of everything that's been unearthed and everything that's changed.
Camelot’s starting to look almost like a different city, with the ever increasing druids; with every new sorcerer that becomes comfortable enough to actually practice magic publically. But with every difference in the city, Arthur feels the change like a wound in himself.
Gwen sometimes tells him the city feels fuller—and, logically, it makes sense. He can tell from Morgana’s mirth whenever she talks to new druid’s about the old religion; can tell every time Gwen laughs at Elyan’s missteps during training when Morgause uses magic to trip him in jest. The city’s come alive in a way Uther had tried to stifle twenty years ago, everyone else can see it.
So then it must be Arthur himself that feels so hollowed out; that’s why he can’t.
No reply comes, and after a second, Arthur laughs again, void and dry and unsurprised. Of course.
Unable to look at Merlin, he turns on his heel and heads back towards the castle.
The town is quiet enough, the dark penetrated by a few scattered stars, half a moon, and the occasional candle-lit window. Arthur takes a few deep breaths and can’t stop himself from remembering the night he’d set out to meet Morgause.
The cold air is refreshing as it fills his lungs, and with every exhale, he imagines it’s cleansing him from the inside out.
Maybe tomorrow he’ll stop looking for a beaten up, brown coat in every goddamned crowd.
He doesn’t, of course, but it does stop looking for him.
Arthur’s not disappointed, really. He’s mostly relieved; does think to himself, at least he finally got the hint, but—still. He does acknowledge the sorrow he feels for it. More than anything, this is what feels like the end. Not even the months of silence felt like such a definitive break.
Freya finds him two weeks after the confrontation outside the tavern. He’s been seeing a lot of her, now that she’s the one responsible for bringing Gaius’ various concoctions for his muscles, but they rarely talk more than convention calls for.
Idly, he wonders what Merlin’s up to, now that he’s neither a servant nor Gaius’ apprentice.
“Thank you,” he says, not looking up from the document he’s already finished with. It’s not the most dignifying thing, perhaps, to pretend to be busy just to avoid as much contact as possible with a girl half his height and probably a quarter of his weight, but Arthur does not care at all.
She doesn’t reply, doesn’t bow or go away, and it takes several seconds before he gives in. Sighing, Arthur puts the parchment away and looks up. “What—?”
In an unforeseen turn of events, she isn’t looking back.
The thing about Freya, that he’s thus far learned, is that she isn’t really as shy or timid as a first glance in her direction may suggest. She always looks Arthur in the eyes, never looks away, and sometimes even smirks at him when he’s being a bit too obvious in his avoidance, as if she’s making fun of him. It’s a trend between the three of them, Arthur’s noticed—the utter lack of respect for status; the allergy to subservience.
It both intrigues and annoys him in turns. He is no closer to deciding whether he actually likes Freya and Gwaine or not (he’s no closer to moving on from the fact that the only thing he doesn’t like about them is what their place by Merlin signifies).
So given Freya’s general quiet defiance, the sight of her looking down, looking almost scared, is a little off-putting.
“Freya?” He asks carefully, wanting to stand up, to try and comfort her in some way, but not wanting to startle her. “Is everything all right?”
“I—” she finally looks back up at him. She’s biting her lip, eyebrows pulled together in what resembles an anxious sort of frown, and Arthur just barely notices the way she’s wringing her hands together from the corner of his eye.
He puts his hands on the table and leans forward, softens his voice—makes himself less intimidating. “What is it?”
“It was me.”
Arthur tilts his head minutely, trying to not show the extent of his confusion. Asks, slowly, “What was you?”
“The bastet. That was me.”
“I’m sorry?”
“I was the bastet that Camelot dealt with months ago.”
If he’s honest, he’s really sick of all these revelations.
Blood’s rushing in his ears, and Arthur vaguely thinks that he should be better at dealing with surprises by now. Nothing should have the ability to leave him momentarily paralyzed like this, anymore.
The two mothers he’d had to sit with as they wept. The terror throughout the city even long after it’d—she’d—disappeared. The bounty hunter telling them that even the druids had been wary of her.
Arthur clenches his jaw and his hands into fists, takes a low and barely controlled breath. “What are you saying?”
“It’s not anymore,” she hastens to add, biting her lip. Arthur’s been adept at recognizing fear on anything for at least half his life, now. For some reason, he can’t find the same worry for her as he did moments ago.
“You’re going to have to elaborate.”
“It was—it was a curse, put on me. I—”
“Are you still under the curse?” he asks, voice low and dangerous. They haven’t had any reports of the bastet returning, he’s heard nothing about any citizens being killed, so she can’t be an immediate threat, at least. Surely she would not have waited this long if she was still—
“No, I—sire. That’s what I’m trying to tell you,” she trips on her words, but Arthur’s mind is too busy racing to notice her use of the title. “It’s not like that anymore.”
Arthur stares at her, trying to figure what the hell, exactly, that’s supposed to mean. “Freya, I neither have the patience nor the time for this. What are you trying to say? Are you a threat to Camelot?”
“No, I’m—I’m not, I promise. I got help, the curse has been lifted—”
“You’re sure?”
“Yes.”
A breath he’d barely noticed he’d trapped rushes out of him. Arthur still doesn’t look away, unable to understand why she’d even tell him this if it’s not relevant, anymore.
“Merlin and I met here, in Camelot. He’s the one who helped me escape the bounty hunter, before he knew about the curse, and then the one who got me out after I told him.” Freya lets out a breath, looks Arthur straight in the eyes and—this looks more like her. “He left Camelot because of me. With me. We were going to make a life outside of—I mean, I had to flee and he—well. He said he’d come.”
Merlin stealing his food; Merlin with a dress; Merlin being questioned and acting innocent—Arthur defending him; Merlin shirking his duties those few days that the bastet was terrorizing Camelot, always distracted and itching to leave. Merlin running out after hastily finishing his duties one night and then disappearing for four months.
Well. That answers one question.
“Did he know?”
“No. He only found out when you cornered me in the citadel. We fled that same night.”
“Why,” he takes a breath to try and calm himself down. “Why are you telling me this?”
He doesn’t really know what he’s feeling.
Freya bites her lip, and Arthur wonders how he can justify doing nothing in light of this information; how he can justify doing anything. She’s just admitted to killing three people in this kingdom, under his watch. His people.
But she was under a curse. It was something making her.
He can’t punish her for something out of her control. Morgana and Morgause and the druids specifically helped him put laws in place to protect people like her from unjust treatment during trials. But it was still her—
Arthur never realized how big of a headache would come with actually being told things.
“He wouldn’t tell you himself because it wasn’t his secret to tell. But you’d get nowhere with each other if you didn’t know, so—”
“I’m sorry?”
“Well, now you know why he left,” she trails off, looking at him like it’s all the explanation he needs.
But Arthur doesn’t know how this could change anything, anyway. Merlin still left. Merlin still found it easy to leave two years of—whatever it was, between them—for a stranger he knew for a few days. Merlin still didn’t say goodbye. Merlin still stayed away.
If anything, this makes it more obvious how meaningless it all was to him in the first place.
“I see.”
He looks back down at the parchment on his desk. And wants to tell her that it’s none of her concern, anyway. That she shouldn’t be poking her nose into something that’s none of her business.
It’s unbecoming, so he doesn’t, but he wants to.
“Sire,” Freya hesitates, and then seems to decide against saying whatever she was going to say. Arthur doesn’t look up to know whether she bows before she quietly leaves. He doesn’t even know why it’s important, anyway.
The rest of the day he spends in a vague state of detachment. So Merlin left to help a girl—of course he did—was obviously successful in helping her, given that she’s no longer cursed, and came back because—what? They just now succeeded in curing her? That can’t be right, because Freya said they were going to—
Freya said that they’d wanted a life outside of Camelot, just them.
It’s sickening really, that the simple idea should affect him this much. Arthur’s never even really told anyone about that particular dream of his—Merlin certainly never knew—so it’s ridiculous. He knows it’s ridiculous. Still, though. It makes him feel a little exposed; makes him feel a little hollow. That was a dream that was his—that he could imagine sometimes when things got too bad—and now it’s almost tainted. Now it’s something someone actually got to know.
He doesn’t understand why Merlin came back. He doesn’t understand why he had to come back and mess everything up even worse.
Almost like it was planned, Merlin finds him three days after Freya does. It was probably planned, he thinks resignedly. They seem to have their hands together in everything.
“Where’s George?”
“He’s sharpening your sword.”
“I didn’t ask him to do that.”
Merlin shrugs. “That’s not what I told him.”
Arthur sputters—the utter nerve is enough to render him speechless. “You. You can’t—”
“Arthur, we need to talk—”
“No!” He stands up a bit too suddenly, catches himself on the table in front of him. “You can’t just come here after four months of nothing and act like nothing’s changed! You have no authority over my staff—you have no right to speak on my behalf and corner me in my own chambers, Merlin!”
Merlin straightens, and Arthur tries to not notice the way he clenches his jaw; the way his eyes narrow and shoulders straighten. He really does look like a completely different person.
“Well then maybe you should stop avoiding me, sire.”
The title has always been a mockery coming from Merlin’s lips, but where it was exasperating at worst and endearingly amusing at best back then, it’s now just another blow into an already crumbling history. Arthur lets himself straighten as well.
“Yes, because only one of us is allowed that right, I assume?”
Merlin lets out a breath and shakes his head, almost in disbelief. He doesn’t recoil the same way he did back outside the tavern—doesn’t retract and try another, more meek tactic. Arthur’s almost glad. He doesn’t like Merlin meek, even when he’s trying to not like Merlin at all. It would be insulting, anyway, for him to start pretending again. Still though, some part of his pride feels the sting that Merlin doesn’t even feel bad about it.
“You can’t do that, Arthur.”
“Excuse me? I can’t—”
“No, you can’t!” Merlin moves forward, and there’s no longer half a room worth of space to carry everything between them, only just a few steps. Arthur can almost physically feel the tension of it. “You can’t be angry with me for leaving and not explaining myself, while simultaneously not giving me a chance to! I—”
“I know why you left,” he says bitterly. He is so, so tired. “Freya told me everything. All I don’t understand is why you—”
“No, you don’t! You—She didn’t.”
Arthur’s eyes snap up. “What?”
“Freya. She didn’t tell you everything.”
He knows another damned revelation is coming before Merlin even finishes the sentence. He wants to laugh until he coughs his stomach up; wants, a little, to cry and lie down in his bed until he rots. There has got to be an end to perspective altering information, Arthur’s just scared his heart’s not going to be able to endure the stress for long enough to see that time.
For a moment, he’s tempted to just send Merlin away. To just remain ignorant of this one thing because maybe it’ll only stop when he stops it. But that’s ridiculous and childish, so he rubs a hand down his face and asks, because what other choice does he have: “What are you talking about?”
“She wasn’t the only reason why I left.”
What is it with the two of them and not just getting to the fucking point? “Just spit it out, Merlin. I’ve no patience—”
“I have magic.”
Arthur can do nothing but stare at him. He wonders if he looks as stupid as he’s sure he’ll feel in a few minutes.
“Don’t be ridiculous,” he says after a frozen moment, but it feels more like a plea than anything else. Because Merlin can’t be a sorcerer. Because if he is, there’s no way Arthur wouldn’t know. “Of course you don’t.”
“Arthur—” he looks sad, and he looks sorry, and Arthur knows what that means, but he refuses to believe it anyway.
“No. No, you don’t. I would know.”
He thinks of Merlin bursting into a council meeting and declaring himself a sorcerer just to save Gwen. I cannot let her die for me, he’d said, and it hadn’t been a false confession like they’d all believed, then, it had been an explanation.
He thinks of Ealdor, when Merlin begged him not to think any differently of him, when he stood with his friend in front of unnatural winds and begged his friend not to take credit. Will, don’t, he’d said, and it wasn’t concern for how Arthur would react; wasn’t concern for his friend’s life, it was a request to not lie for him.
He thinks of the witchfinder, the woman who saw a shape in the smoke and called Merlin as a witness, only for him to deny it. I have nothing to hide from him.
Arthur collapses back into his chair, puts his head in his hands and presses his palms against his eyes so hard he goes dizzy with the shapes and colours that dance behind his eyelids. He tries to breathe deeply the way Gaius showed him; to hold it for a few seconds and then exhale.
“How long?” He asks, wondering if Merlin will hear him, or if it’s just the blood pounding in his own ears that are drowning out every noise.
“I was born with it,” Arthur hears. He releases a sharp breath. That doesn’t have to mean anything, he tries to reason. Maybe all those past instances were coincidences. Morgana was born with her magic, too, and she only realized her powers a few months ago. There’s no real reason to think that Merlin has been hiding—lying— the entire time they’ve—
Even the most desperate part of his mind can’t believe it. But it’s impossible not to at least ask, just as a last ditch effort. Arthur looks up, knows his gaze is too intense, and tries to even his voice. “Did you know about it while you were here?”
Merlin furrows his eyebrows, like he’s confused. “Yes. I’ve been using it since before my first birthday.”
Arthur closes his eyes. Well, it’s not like he didn’t expect it.
“Arthur?”
“So everything was a lie, then.”
“What? No—”
He doesn’t even hear Merlin under his own laugh, grim and bitter even to his own ears. “You’ve been lying to me for two years. From the moment we met you have been—”
“No! The only thing—I just didn’t tell you about the magic. That’s not the same thing!”
“It’s close enough!”
He doesn’t know if that’s really true—Morgana’s not a different person now that she’s able to practice and use her magic. Now that they know she even has it. If anything, she’s just more herself. The same but not so held back by being herself.
Merlin’s nostrils flare, and for the first time, Arthur watches as liquid gold seeps into his irises. The candlelight in the room flickers and flares, and the doors to his chambers lock, but—embarrassingly—the only thing he can bring himself to think of is how pure the gold in Merlin’s eyes looks. They glow like treasure and sunlight and honey ought to.
Arthur doesn’t know if it’s an objective memory, but from his experience, the gold in the eyes is usually muted; more on the orange or yellow side—not glowing, per se, just a different colour than the usual green or brown or blue.
He’s never seen eyes like this. To see them on Merlin, of all people, feels surreal.
“It’s not. You know it’s not. The magic is something I couldn’t tell you about.”
Arthur looks away, his own attitude towards magic during his father’s reign coming back in cascades.
“You think I would’ve condemned you to burn?” He asks, because he doesn’t actually know himself. Arthur feels sick with the realization that he was fully capable of becoming so angry that he would; he feels harrow and betrayed that Merlin would even think that because of course he wouldn’t.
It’s a raging war because he doesn’t know. He can’t imagine learning of this while his father still ruled—can’t imagine himself like that anymore, given everything that’s happened. His memory serves as a reminder that he would have been capable of doing the worst Merlin could imagine of him, but it also serves as a reminder of who Merlin was—is—to him.
He was capable of doing the worst. He doesn’t know if he would’ve been capable of doing the worst to Merlin, regardless of anything else.
“No,” Merlin amends, he looks softer again. Not fully relaxed, but perhaps not so defensive. “I think you might have sent me away, though.”
And the thing is—he’s probably right. Arthur’s been itching to banish him for something as ridiculous as disappearing without a word, just in retribution. It’s childish and silly and a complete abuse of power, so he never would, but the irrational desire is there.
Finding out about Merlin’s magic before all that’s happened since he left—that would have been a completely different situation. That would have been learning of Merlin having magic at a point in his life where he believed magic to be the ultimate evil. That wouldn’t have felt irrational or silly—there would’ve been nothing substantial enough to stop him, then.
He can almost see it in his own head—the yelling, the screaming, the refusal to make eye contact or any form of contact ever again. He can almost hear the threats he wouldn’t have stopped from spilling, the black betrayal that would’ve grown in his chest with every step that grew between them. Arthur can almost see the person he would’ve become.
Maybe he wouldn’t have killed Merlin physically—maybe he would’ve just tried to erase the fact that he ever existed. He thinks of what Camelot would’ve been like now, under those conditions. He thinks of Morgana and wonders how he would’ve taken the truth of his mother’s fate under those conditions. Maybe Merlin was right not to tell him then.
Still. He thinks he would’ve appreciated being given the chance to choose.
“So you decided to leave before I could.”
It’s not even petty—there’s nothing about the logic that Arthur can critique. It doesn’t matter how much Arthur would’ve liked to have been given the ability to choose the right thing. The fact of the matter is that it’s more likely he wouldn’t have—the fact of the matter is Merlin’s life depended on his one decision that he can’t even be sure he would have correctly made.
If anything, it’s a wonder Merlin even lasted two years.
He can’t help the bitterness that he feels, anyway.
“I decided to leave because I didn’t want to hide anymore,” Merlin corrects, voice hard but also a little pleading, trying to make him understand. “My magic—it’s the only thing I had that was mine that I thought was worth anything, and I had to push it down and hide it every day. Do you know how—how lonely that is?”
It’s not the same thing, but he thinks he might. He’s always been able to embrace the power his station and swordsmanship afford, so it’s different—he’s never feared for his life and needed to pretend to be something he’s not. But loneliness is just loneliness, isn’t it? No matter what causes it, it’s still the same.
And it’s something Arthur’s been intimately familiar with for years.
Merlin takes a step forward, after he’s been silent for too long. “Sire?”
The use of the title is insulting in more ways than one, really. To pretend he cares about respecting Arthur’s position anymore—now—is laughable; his intentions are easy to read and though offensive, they’re made even worse since he’s trying to cover them.
“Why’d you come back, then?”
Because that’s the question, isn’t it? They left because they wanted a life together outside of the noise—they left because Camelot was a place where they were in danger and trapped. They got out. From what Merlin’s said, this place can be nothing but a reminder of a time full of terror and loneliness. A dark corner of a hiding place that they left behind.
He thinks of Gaius and Gwen, and how they might be explanation enough if Arthur didn’t know any better. Merlin could’ve sent letters, Merlin could’ve let them visit or visited them himself. He didn’t need to come back. Arthur doesn’t understand why he did.
Arthur doesn’t know how he could. He wouldn’t have been able to.
Merlin’s silent for a moment, unmoving. “You know the answer to that.”
They make eye contact, and he’s looking at Arthur confused and a little bit desperate. “I would not ask if I did.”
“Arthur I—”
“You got out of the kingdom that caused you so much turmoil, so why would you come back?” He stands too suddenly again. He doesn’t know why he’s so angry again.
“You repealed the laws! You were—are—this place was—is—home.”
I just didn’t fit in anymore, he’d said about Ealdor. I wanted to find somewhere that I did.
There’s not a single bone in his body that doesn’t envy and resent Merlin, just a little. For being able to leave places he doesn’t feel he belongs on a whim. For being able to choose when to come back because the place shapes itself into what he needs.
“So that’s that, then,” Arthur intones. He doesn’t know what he’d expected, what he hoped for, really, but the entire conversation’s just left him a little empty. “Welcome home.”
Merlin won’t stop looking at him—looks at him so intensely, it makes him feel like he missed something. After a second, he lets out a frustrated groan and walks until they’re only inches apart. Merlin’s eyes flare gold, and before Arthur has a chance to doubt him, a cold light from below catches his attention.
It’s a glowing blue orb. It looks familiar.
“Do you see this?” Merlin demands. “Do you know what this is?”
Bayard—the sorceress; the flowers and the poison and the never ending darkness until—
“It was you?” He breathes, eyes burning from not blinking and the brightness of it.
“It was me,” Merlin agrees, voice softer now. “From the first week we met, my magic has been yours. I only ever used it for you, Arthur. How could you not know why I came back?”
“Merlin—”
“Every single night,” he pushes, voice hard like he won’t let Arthur misunderstand him. “I thought of this—of coming back. I couldn’t tell you about the magic, but gods, Arthur, there was no one I wanted to tell more.”
Arthur bites his lip, lets his hand hover over the glowing orb for a moment, wanting to touch it but not knowing what to expect. It flares and brightens under his hand; it doesn’t feel like anything but air, but he can feel the magic wash over his skin regardless. He flexes his hand, and feels the warm rush of it spread to the tips of his fingers.
Merlin doesn’t meet his eyes when he looks up at him, consideringly and trying so hard to figure him out, too busy looking at their hands—only centimeters apart, now. Arthur can feel his own heartbeat, imagines he can see his chest move where it’s pounding from the corner of his eyes.
When they do finally meet eyes, Merlin’s gaze is intense and unwavering.
Arthur exhales and keeps looking at him. Merlin keeps looking back. It’s the same question asked again and again and the same answer given each time.
He falls back into trusting Merlin with little dignity and even less care.
It’s not really that dramatic. It’s just that Morgana and Gwen always smirk at him and Morgause keeps rolling her eyes and the knights—well, at least he can do something about them with laps and endless drills.
The most he can do to Gwen and Morgana is give them boring reports to read for council meetings, but that just makes Morgana threaten to turn him into a rat and Gwen to pinch him and create more work for him from her reports. Morgause he’s genuinely afraid of, so doing anything about her is out of the question entirely.
(There’s something about Morgause that he’s started associating with the memory of his mother. He doesn’t know what it is, because he’s not even sure he likes her very much, but still. She’s the one person who did not keep his mother from him. She feels a little untouchable regardless of her magic, swordsmanship and status as high priestess because of this.)
He’s just getting sick of being a laughing stock just because he’s bad at staying wary of Merlin. It’s tiring overthinking every interaction, wondering if maybe he should still be upset about the lies or the disappearance or the constant uncertainty about what the thing between them is.
Because it doesn’t feel the same as it used to. Arthur hadn’t expected it to, really, but the reality of the fact still throws him off.
“Arthur?” A voice snaps him out of his head. He hadn’t even noticed anyone coming in.
“What—Merlin,” he sighs.
They’re reintroducing magic to Camelot in stages, and while it’s going fine, it’s also been a little bit overwhelming. Morgana almost poked his eye out an hour ago after he spaced out one too many times.
He still needs a court sorcerer, she keeps refusing him, and he knows who the best person for the job is but—he still needs to find a way to ask.
“I brought you your lunch,” Merlin says, still standing by the door. He raises his arm as if to display the dish resting in his hand, and Arthur frowns. It’s really hard to think of Merlin as a powerful sorcerer—and Arthur knows he has to be powerful, he remembers Morgause talking about how those that are born with their magic usually are—sometimes.
“Merlin, you do know that’s not your job anymore, don’t you?”
“I mean, technically I didn’t quit. And you didn’t fire me, either.”
As if Arthur firing him would’ve made any difference at all. He leans back in his chair, idly wondering where George is, and watches as Merlin walks forward to put the plate in front of him.
Admittedly, he’s been watching Merlin a lot, since that night in his chambers. Things have changed between them in a way he hadn’t anticipated, but also not in a way Arthur fully understands yet. So he’s taken to studying Merlin in the hopes of figuring something out through him.
And also because it’s become increasingly hard to look away from Merlin, now that he’s actually here to look at again.
“You can’t have missed this,” Arthur reasons, trying to decide whether Merlin’s fingers have always been so mesmerizing, or if it’s a new development. The cup he’s pouring wine into fits as snugly into the palm of his hand as the orb did. Arthur wonders what would’ve happened if he’d let their hands touch that night.
“Trust me,” Merlin mutters, “I’m surprised too.”
But when Arthur huffs out a laugh, he can see the small, pleased smile that tugs at his lips.
Once his cup’s full and his plate’s set in front of him, he expects Merlin to leave—make his excuses or simply bow out—and tries, fruitlessly, to find a reason to get him to stay. No excuse comes to mind, but it’s not needed, anyway. They’ve both been lingering in each others’ presence lately, and now is no different.
Merlin stands by the side of the table, hands clasped behind his back. Arthur kicks out the chair to his left and gestures for him to sit. He stares at the grapes scattered across the plate as Merlin settles, and thinks of a night, months ago, when he sat with Morgana and Gwen and Morgause.
That night crashes over him in waves, and he can’t help remembering the churning loneliness of it; how he couldn’t bear thinking about Merlin, but couldn’t not. Looking at him now feels like finally being able to breathe again. Looking at him now feels dizzying and overwhelming.
Arthur knows why he left, knows he’s accepted the explanation and forgiven it. But there’s been one thing that he hadn’t dared ask that night, a week ago. One thing that shouldn’t be important but—
“Do you regret it?” he asks, because both of them have been silent for too long and it was only a matter of time before it slipped out from between his clenched teeth, anyway. He doesn’t know what answer to expect—doesn’t know what answer he wants; which one he needs.
On the one hand, he thinks it would be almost insulting for Merlin to regret it at all—would almost feel like all the stress and misery of the last few months were in vain. If he regrets it, then it could’ve all been avoided, and the possibility of that—Arthur’s not sure whether he’d feel more frustration because of it, or whether he’d be a bit listless over it.
He can’t say he’s entirely content with everything that’s happened, or that he would’ve chosen any of it at all, if there’d been a choice, but he is quite proud of what’s been made of it. Gwen says that the people are happy with him—that they’re satisfied with his reign. His knights are all in better shape than they’ve been for years, because he’s no longer confined to only being able to consider noblemen. The druids bring good trade and knowledge—are the reason Camelot seems to glow, these days.
Yes, Arthur’s quite proud of the kingdom that’s come of everything. Part of him does wonder if he would’ve arrived here anyway, whether learning about his mother’s fate was necessary, but all that does is get him stuck on what ifs, so it feels wrong to regret anything that led him here. Just in case it was all necessary.
On the other hand, he doesn’t know if his ego can handle Merlin’s no. He knows how much the time away has been good for Merlin, too; knows that without it Freya would still be cursed at best, dead at worst; knows that Gwaine is one of the closest and most loyal friends Merlin’s ever had; knows he used a lot of that time to work on his magic and learn more about magic in general from some of the druids.
He knows, at least on a surface level, how important the time away has been for Merlin. It’s not a time nor a decision he should regret—not something Arthur really wants him to regret.
But, still. He doesn’t know how he’ll handle a definitive no—how he’ll handle the confirmation that being away and separated from him was better and more preferable, no matter what else it brought.
Merlin takes a second to look at him, and he thinks about how he’d said, every single night I thought of this—of coming back. Thinks about how it shouldn’t matter that he doesn’t regret leaving, because he chose to come back. Wanted to come back.
“Yes and no,” Merlin says. Arthur bites his tongue to stop himself from rolling his eyes, and opts to quirk an eyebrow in question—it always works for Gaius and Morgana. Merlin lets out a breath and leans back in his chair, chews on his lip for a minute before straightening again.
“I don’t regret helping Freya, or meeting Gwaine—although I do go back and forth on that every few minutes, so that’s bound to change—” Arthur snorts, smiles down at his plate because it’s unbecoming to indulge Merlin, and then rolls his eyes when Merlin grins at him, like he’s proud of himself. “I don’t regret learning more about magic, either,” he continues, a little carefully, “but—”
Arthur watches as Merlin fidgets with the sleeve of his tunic, playing with a loose thread. “But?” He coaxes when the silence stretches for too long.
Their eyes meet. Arthur doesn’t mean to, but he finds himself holding his breath. “But I regret that you weren’t there. I think I—I don’t think I’ll ever prefer not having you there.”
His breath evens out. He tries not to smile and fails. That’s an answer he can understand—one he can more than happily live with.
Unfortunately, though not at all surprisingly, Merlin opens his mouth again and ruins it. “Can’t begin to know why though, given how big of a prat you are.”
“You just came back because you’d been missing the stocks, didn’t you? You could’ve just started with that.”
Merlin laughs, exhales and leans back in his chair. The sun’s out and washing over him and Arthur knows he’s not glowing—knows magic doesn’t exactly work like that—but it takes a second to convince himself, anyway. He wants to take his hand and throw a grape in his face and give him everything he could ever think to ask for. It’s good to see Merlin happy and relaxed; nice to see him content where he is—where he’s meant to be
Arthur clears his throat and clenches his jaw. “There was something,” he says, then stops.
“Arthur?”
“You can’t bring me any of my meals, anymore. Or take over any of George’s other duties, either.”
Merlin frowns, shoulders tensing as he leans forward to protest. “But—”
“Shut up, Merlin,” he cuts him off, raising a hand as an extra measure in case Merlin decides to be difficult, as he’s wont to do. “I can’t be seen treating my court sorcerer like my manservant. Even as king, it would be frowned upon.”
It’s always been easier offering things to Merlin when he didn’t need to offer them, so much as pretend they belonged to him already. Unfortunately, he hasn’t tried using this tactic for things more significant than a cloak, before, so its success rate isn’t completely accurate. Unsurprisingly, because Merlin has always made everything difficult, it doesn’t work.
“Your—?” Staring with his mouth hanging open is a look Arthur finds quite endearing on Merlin. Not when he wears it for longer than two minutes, though, because at that point it just becomes concerning.
“Merlin?”
“Your what?”
Arthur sighs, because acting put upon is much more preferable to being embarrassed. He clears his throat and feels the heat rise to his cheeks anyway.
“You don’t actually have a mental affliction, do you?”
“Well it would explain why I put up with you,” Merlin scowls. Just as Arthur opens his mouth to protest, however, because he is the king and actually Merlin still is not allowed to speak to him like that, he continues. “Is this—? Are you trying to—I mean. Your court sorcerer?”
“Well, I suppose you’d have to accept the offer first, but yes.’
“Offer—” Merlin exclaims, disbelievingly, staring at him.
Arthur doesn’t know if this is another part of that change he’s yet to understand, or if he’s just remembering wrong, but looking at Merlin and staying still as he looks back feels private and full like nothing else has for a long time. It feels almost like that night did, after the tavern, when he wouldn’t listen and Merlin wouldn’t say anything, anyway. The way the air between them had felt like its own world—how it felt impossible that anyone else existed outside of that space.
Arthur doesn’t know how anyone can exist outside of this room right now; the whole world’s in Merlin’s eyes, and he only sees himself reflected back in them.
He can’t say how long they stay there. He thinks he’d have been able to stay there forever.
“What about Morgana?”
Arthur shrugs. “She declined my offer the first time.”
He wants to say that ever since Merlin told him of his magic, there could’ve been no one else, anyway. That all his grumblings about Morgana’s rejections have become half hearted at best—the relief behind them poorly hidden.
He doesn’t, but it doesn’t matter anyway. Merlin smiles at him, soft and small and known but unfamiliar. A flush stains his pale cheeks pink, and Arthur forgets what it was like not being able to see him at all. He’s here now, pleased and finally fully content. It’s as good as him having been here all along.
“Alright,” Merlin nods, then looks up to grin. “Do I get more days off?” He asks, leaning forward, and really—Arthur should’ve known no moment would last long without Merlin being a complete idiot.
Pretending to think about it, Arthur leans in closer, too. “I think you used up all of your time off these last four months, no?”
Merlin sputters, staring at him with a gaping mouth. Really, it’s only fair that he makes sure Merlin never lives his disappearing act down. He’s the king, after all—can’t have people thinking he’s too lenient.
Arthur grins, collapses back in his chair, and takes a bite of bread in order to stifle the sudden, overwhelming urge to press a kiss to Merlin’s cheek. Maybe help close his mouth with his own.
Once he’s recovered, Merlin breathes out a surprised laugh. Rolls his eyes and looks at Arthur like—like maybe Arthur should stop letting his mind wander. He’s still relearning how to be around Merlin.
“You’re a prat.”
“And you’re very new and original with your insults.”
“You just don’t inspire much imagination, I’m afraid.”
It’s Arthur’s turn to sputter. “You can’t talk to me like that.”
“Of course sire,” Merlin grins. He stands and walks forward until his hip is leaning on the corner of the table—which really can’t be comfortable—and doesn’t say anything when Arthur looks up.
They’re locked in that pocket of space again, and Arthur wants him to get closer; wants him to straighten up and leave. He doesn’t understand what’s happening and even though he knows it's not bad—it’s still managing to terrify him with how significant it feels.
They keep getting too close to each other and it keeps feeling like it’s more than just—than just being close
“Merlin,” he says, voice too low and hoarse to lie to himself.
“I want—”
His breath catches in his throat when Merlin’s fingertips brush against his cheek. Arthur doesn’t move, somewhat because he doesn’t know if he’d be able to if he tried, but mostly because he can’t convince himself that he even wants to.
It feels like those moments during tournaments, just before the real fighting begins and just after the start of the match has been called, when he’s measuring his opponent and they’re both circling each other and holding their breaths waiting to see which one of them will attack.
This won’t be an attack, he knows. It won’t be anything so dramatic. Still, the anticipation is even worse.
Merlin licks his lips, swallows, and Arthur watches the way his bottom lip glistens; the way his throat moves. He doesn’t know when he became so aware of Merlin’s body—whether it’s new or just obvious because he’s been starved of it for so long.
“You—”
He’s not sure what he was going to say, but it doesn’t matter anyway. Merlin presses the unfinished sentence back into his mouth, using one hand to cup the back of Arthur’s neck and tilt his head up.
The timid brush of fingertips becomes a sure palm cupping his cheek too quickly for him to track the progression of the touch, and the air’s gone from his lungs and the space between them even quicker. Arthur’s hands both latch on to Merlin’s wrists, the grip too desperate to be anything other than a way to get closer.
The wetness of Merlin’s bottom lip slides on the skin just beneath his own, and Arthur parts his lips without even meaning to. It’s a hard, dry kiss—both of their lips are chapped and Arthur’s aware of every single thing touching his skin; Merlin’s thumb rubbing the nape of his neck; Merlin’s palm pressing upwards beneath his jaw; Merlin’s eyelashes fluttering against his cheek.
His own shirt feels too rough against his skin where it shifts as they move and find a better angle and nothing—nothing—has felt like this before. Nothing was ever supposed to feel like this.
A sound he doesn’t want to name escapes the back of his throat and gets trapped between one kiss and another, and Merlin presses forward dizzyingly hard before pulling back slowly, but not entirely.
Still, Arthur can’t stop himself from chasing his mouth even if it’s only across a few centimeters. Merlin releases a heavy breath, like maybe he can’t stay away as much as Arthur can’t have him far, and presses another kiss to the corner of Arthur’s mouth.
When he does, finally, manage to properly pull back, he only pulls back far enough to let the tips of their noses and foreheads rest against each other.
“Merlin,” he says, voice fainter than a feather landing, but gets no further. It’s all he knows how to say, anymore.
Merlin shifts, moving back only so they can make eye contact again. Arthur knows he can’t be comfortable like that, bending down, but he’s a bit too out of it to tell Merlin to sit down properly. All he can focus on is how pink his lips are and how dark his eyes are and that it’d be perfectly okay with Arthur if he never looked at anything else ever again.
“I want to be your court sorcerer.”
Arthur has just enough wherewithal to give him an annoyed look, but not enough to keep his gaze from wandering down again a second later. “Good,” he says, leaning forward for another—
Merlin pecks his cheek, just under his eye, moves down to his top lip. “I want to be here with you—I want to tell you everything.”
“Yes, fine, Merlin just,” Arthur tugs on his arm, trying to get him anywhere that’ll press them closer, until his chair’s half turned away from the table and Merlin’s kneeling between his spread legs. “Just come on.”
The bastard dodges every attempt Arthur makes to slot their lips together again, instead nuzzling their noses and dragging grinning half kisses up and down Arthur’s jaw. “I want this,” he continues, “I want to stay.”
“Would’ve preferred it if you’d never left,” Arthur snipes, but it’s mostly in jest. Merlin pinches his waist and kisses him again, understanding.
The floor’s too hard for Merlin to stay there for long, and Arthur’s own dignity starts protesting being teased and cornered into his chair while somewhat being ravished so—before long—Merlin’s back in his seat almost like nothing happened between them.
Almost, because his hair’s a little mussed and his lips are even more swollen and red. Almost, because Arthur’s not sure he looks any better. Almost, because his ankle is hooked with Arthur’s under the table which is the most casual touch they’ve allowed each other since Merlin’s return.
Merlin’s stealing his bread and grapes, sitting at his table, and Arthur finally understands what everyone means by Camelot feeling full.