Work Text:
Arthur had gone mad. Merlin had always suspected it would happen someday, and that day was today. They had survived dozens if not hundreds of attacks, magical and mundane alike, they had lost Camelot and won it again, and secured it for good, and now, at the height of their victory, Arthur had gone mad.
Really, it was unfair. If anyone had a right to be mad in this situation, it was Merlin. He’d been doing all the work, and now he was going to have to put up not only with a mad king, but with a mad lover too. It was like something out of a bad ballad.
“You want to legalize magic?”
“Yes.”
“We want to all this effort, to secure your father’s kingdom for you, his legacy for you, and now you just want to… legalize magic?”
“Keep up, Merlin.”
“But every sorcerer you’ve ever met has been trying to kill you!”
Arthur, who had obviously gone around the bend, laughed. “They’re not doing a very good job of it then, are they?”
“Are you telling me you want to legalize magic because all the people trying to kill you aren’t doing a good enough job?”
Arthur… didn’t respond. He didn’t push back. He just rolled his eyes theatrically, like the prince he’d once been, and walked off.
Not mad, Merlin decided. Enchanted, probably.
--
Three different spells and a concoction that was supposed to produce an ‘odor most foul’ in those affected by magical compulsions showed no sign of any such thing.
--
“Arthur’s mad.”
Gaius didn't bother looking up from the scroll before him. "What does he think you've done now?"
"He's not mad at me!"
"Then do you have a problem?"
Merlin seriously considered throwing up his hands and walking out like an angry teenager. Only, he hadn't really done that to Gaius when he was a teenager. At least, not much.
"Our king is mad. Afflicted. His mind is failing him. Of course it's a problem!"
At last Gaius turned away from the scroll. Over his shoulder, Merlin caught a glimpse of what looked like a very elaborate drawing of a hat. Then the scroll rolled closed.
Very seriously, he said, "I haven't seen any signs of illness or enchantment in any of our meetings recently."
"Why is Arthur meeting with you if he hasn't been sick?" Merlin rejoined, in the tone of a man pointing to his winning dice.
"Strangely enough, he thought consulting with an expert about the legalization of magic might be wise."
Gaius said this as if it was a completely normal thing to have done.
--
There was a particular enchantment that stoked a madness in two people, the corruption in their minds feeding on each other. The cure involved grinding old snail shells, making a paste with goat's milk, and drawing a spiral on the foreheads of each of the involved parties. Gaius allowed it, frowning the whole time, and Arthur, Merlin found, often slept deeply when they shared his bed – it was easy enough to push that sleep a little deeper with a burst of magic and draw it on, shattering the enchantment.
The next morning, Arthur sent him off to the tailors with orders for a new outfit in Pendragon red, designed especially for the ceremony to legalize magic.
--
Merlin and Gwen spoke more now than they ever had when she was a servant right alongside him. She maintained her own household now – it was Lancelot's household as well, though he seemed happy to follow Gwen's direction whenever possible – but she was always up at the castle as a member of Arthur's council, and when Arthur left her with something on her mind, she always spoke with Merlin. She said it was because he was a person Arthur trusted enough he'd never care about her sharing council business, and it was only an accident he wasn't on the thing himself already.
Despite this, it took him a certain amount of nerve to approach Gwen with his fear. The events of her life, the loss of her father, of her closest friend, so nearly of her husband, had given her a loathing not of magic itself, but of something far more peculiar for Camelot.
Gwen loathed the war. She was subtle about it – in Uther's Camelot she'd had to be, and the habit never really broke – but Merlin could tell. She hated the burning of sorcerers, and also the small unkindnesses, and the times good people were forced to do terrible things because Camelot had made their lives unlawful.
She hated that wherever she was, there was no path, not ever, for Morgana to come home.
And so when Merlin sat her down, and explained himself, she took it seriously, listened to his evidence, and she agreed to keep an eye on Arthur in the meeting Merlin himself was barred from. But she didn't panic as much as the situation probably deserved.
Three days later, she returned to him. She'd taken to wearing braids in her hair, and sometimes a veil over it, making it abundantly clear to all that she was a married woman of some considerable standing. Though none of these gestures could convey so high a standing as the cloak pin of a sword that marked her as equal to all the knights of Camelot.
She said, "he's not enchanted."
"Madness, then."
"No more so than usual." There was a certain amusement in her voice. "Merlin… have you actually talked to Arthur about this?"
"How do you think I knew he was planning it?"
She very nearly rolled her eyes at him, breaking the illusion that she was entirely a noble lady now. Gwen had always been odd in that way – too noble as a servant, and now entirely too human as a noblewoman.
"You see each other a dozen times a day," Gwen said, "maybe spend one of them actually asking him why he thinks legalizing magic is a good idea. Maybe it will give you an opportunity to explain why – for some reason – you don't."
--
The problem with the advice, of course, was that it wasn't that Merlin couldn't accept the legalization of magic. Or, well, he couldn't but not for any of the reasons she thought. He wasn't irrationally, idiotically prejudiced against magic. He wasn't ignorant. The problem was the opposite. Merlin knew magic. He'd learned it through brutal trial, down to his very bones. He knew what it could do.
He knew that he was the most dangerous person in Camelot, and could feel sometimes, at the tips of his fingers, exactly what that meant.
Arthur might –somehow – think magic was alright. He might have convinced himself Camelot could handle it. But the truth was that he didn't know, and could never know, how ill-prepared Camelot was for magical threats. Only the grace of one sorcerer held the kingdom together.
And if the legalization of magic made him unable to do that, well, then magic would have to remain as it had been under Uther's reign, even if saying so made Merlin a traitor to his own people. A traitor to the thing he wanted most desperately for himself.
--
In the end, Gwen never had to force Merlin to sit down and speak to Arthur – as she threatened more than once to do over the subsequent week – because one morning Arthur, upon receipt of his breakfast, ordered Merlin to sit. He wore such a solemn expression that Merlin didn't bother with any of his usual deflecting. He simply sat, and watched as Arthur ate a strip of bacon. He always moved either luxuriously or with a warrior's economy, depending on his mood, and this morning it was all the latter.
When he was finished he looked at Merlin and said, very casually, "why are you so afraid of magic?"
Merlin stared at him, mouth agape. Arthur ate another piece of bacon before, realizing Merlin wasn't going to answer, he added, "you've known magic since boyhood. You must realize that my father's law has done more ill than good. Gaius must have told you what Camelot was like before the ban. What it cost. He wouldn't have kept it from you."
All of this was true, of course, but it took Merlin a while to remember the lie that explained why Arthur thought all this. It had been so many years now since that lie, and it was one among many. "Will was a good man. But he wasn't a sorcerer when we were children. I only realized when you did."
Arthur glared at him. It was unsettling. For all their arguing, it was very rare, these days, that they fought. Rare even that their bickering wasn't fond, perhaps a knowing prelude to something else. "Don't lie to me, Merlin."
"I'm not. You think I would have let the prince of Camelot anywhere near my sorcerer friend?"
"You didn't 'let' me do anything," Arthur returned. "Now, are you going to answer the question or not?"
"Why would I need to answer the question? You know what magic's done here. You have to realize that what we've seen now is only a fraction of what could happen if we made magic legal."
Merlin could stir no more compelling a defence than that. He couldn't speak the specifics, half because they were secrets, and half because he wanted it too badly to let himself.
"It's true," agreed Arthur. "I have more reason to be afraid of magic than you do."
"You're being protected from magic all the time. You have no idea what it can really do."
Arthur raised an eyebrow at this preposterous statement, and no doubt it was preposterous from what little he knew. He had no idea how many times Merlin had saved him from dangers he didn't understand. He had no idea the power of the lightning that danced just beneath Merlin's skin.
Arthur said, "no, but I am sharing my breakfast with the most powerful sorcerer in Camelot."
"You're not sharing anything."
Arthur pushed the plate with the remaining two pieces of bacon across the table at him, and rolled a hardboiled egg along after. Merlin only barely managed to catch it before it fell to the floor. "Eat, you moron."
That was a little harsh. Usually Arthur's insults were more playful.
Wait.
"Oh balls," Merlin said, and Arthur, the bastard, laughed so hard he knocked his barley-water off the table.
--
Merlin had always known he would never be crowned queen of Camelot no matter what he shared with the king, but, contrary to what some no doubt imagined, it was difficult to be entirely content as Arthur's servant. Perhaps, in part, because Arthur had always voiced a desire to marry for love, to treat the one he loved – who ever he loved – as his closest equal, in public as well as in person But he had never been able to do so with Merlin, and so Merlin had consigned himself to the knowledge that he was Arthur's perfect equal, the castle on the inverse of his coins, even if no other would know ever.
But Arthur had been paying more attention than that.
"Lightning bolts," he listed off, "falling tree branches, swords bursting into flames, beasts only killed by magic suddenly vanquished by mortal men, sorcerers and bandits becoming irrevocably and bafflingly clumsy. And, oh yes, my lover who casts spells in his sleep, which made it rather suddenly easier to put the pieces together."
"I don't," Merlin objected, but there was no heat to it. He was too busy grinning.
"Oh, not usually. But sometimes if you're very relaxed…"
Merlin kicked him under the table. It was his only recourse. Arthur was grinning too, like he was enjoying this spectacle immensely.
"You arse. Why didn't you just say? Why all the… whatever this is?"
"An excellent question, Merlin." Arthur steepled his fingers, still clearly prepared to milk this for whatever it was worth and more besides. "I've been king of Camelot for five years now. Your lover for one, and your friend for longer. Why all the… 'whatever this is?'"
He supposed he should have been grateful that all Arthur's revenge, for years of lying, had been a few confusing and stressful days. But he still had to confess,
"There's more you don't know," and, over excruciating hours, he told Arthur everything. When he was done, and the joy nearly gone from the room, he said, "I'll leave you alone," and they spent three brutal, awkward days apart for the first time in years.
--
On the fourth day, Merlin found that when he went to Arthur's chambers to clean, Arthur, who was supposed to be in a council meeting, was sitting on the edge of his bed. He waved Merlin over to join him, and for a moment they only sat side-by-side, casual in their touch like boys who hadn't yet learned embarrassment.
Merlin said, "Magic is dangerous. Your father wasn't wrong about that. I'm dangerous."
Arthur snorted. "Dangerously incompetent, maybe."
"You know that's not true."
They both knew, now. Everything bare in the open. All the treason, and the lying, and the power too.
"Dangerous maybe," Arthur agreed, "but not evil. And dangerous for me. Because I needed you to be. If it weren't for me, you never would have learned to kill anyone with magic."
"I already knew I could, that day we met. I as good as told you so."
"But you didn't know how to then. That was for me. You learned to fight for me – for Camelot – just as every knight I trained with, and I never noticed."
"For you mostly," Merlin admitted. "Sometimes to spite you, to prove to myself I could do better than you could. Sometimes I hated it – mostly at the beginning. It wasn't that long before I saw the man you were. The king you would become."
Arthur put a hand on his knee, too serious and too gentle all at once.
Merlin continued, trying to bring light back into the room, "a petty, scheming king taking his vengeance out on his poor servant, and I couldn't let anyone else bear the burden of that."
Arthur snorted. "A great burden, of course. I have one just like it. Years of suffering to spare the rest of my court from the worst servant in Camelot."
They were going to be alright, then.
"Think you can keep bearing the burden?"
Arthur looked at him like he was a moron. "Did you not actually look at what I had you order from the tailor?" Without waiting for Merlin to answer, he sighed. "Of course you didn't. I do everything around here."
"See if I don't let you wash your own royal socks from now on," Merlin called after him as Arthur got up and went to the wardrobe. He stopped the bag flung at his head in response with an economical wave of his hand and a flash of magic in his eyes. It sent a thrill through him to know that Arthur, standing over by the wardrobe, could see it.
Then, opening the bag where it still floated in midair, Merlin drew forth the clothes and realized they weren't Arthur's. They wouldn't fit Arthur – he knew Arthur's measurements intimately enough to be well aware – and they didn't fit the Pendragon style anyways. This heavy cloak was too severe and serious, too unfit for battle, and this brocade vest…
"Are these meant to be dragon scales?"
"No, Merlin," said Arthur, long-suffering, "I didn't ask my experts what the right garb for a court sorcerer was? Why would you think that? And of course, when I was told that you already had a title as dragonlord, I certainly never asked anyone what, exactly, a dragonlord is entitled to, and whether that was a fit title for a king's bosom companion."
"Arthur." Merlin found himself unable to keep genuine emotion from his voice.
"You also own three border villages, by the way."
Well, annoyance was a genuine emotion too. "Arthur!"
"I expect you to do your duty by them. It's a serious responsibility, Merlin."
Merlin flipped Arthur's tunic up over his head with a wave of his hand, but the royal prick just slid down out of it, landing shirtless on the ground, and laughed.
After a moment considering the abject ridiculousness of the situation, Merlin couldn't help himself; he slid off the edge of the bed and joined Arthur on the floor, chest shaking with mirth as Arthur's shirt gently floated down and landed atop his head. The only spells on him were Merlin's own.
Just as it should have been.