Chapter Text
Forgotten. Arthur had forgotten him.
After everything he had done to save Gwen, Arthur had forgotten him. He was the one that had done almost all of the work. Arthur worried and waited, but Merlin had provided the answer.
Gaius had given up almost immediately, but Merlin had persisted until they had found a solution.
Merlin had been the one to administer the belladonna. He had wheeled her out of the citadel. He had done the magic to heal her.
He had been the only one in all of Camelot that realized their queen was enchanted, and Arthur had forgotten him.
He could forgive Gwen, she had just been released from a serious magical influence.
He could forgive Mordred, he hadn’t known what they were truly doing and Merlin had never been particularly nice to him. Mordred probably thought he had wanted to be left behind so he could slip out of the Dolma disguise or do some other magical mission, and besides all that, he was a knight and had to focus on the king and queen.
Arthur should have noticed. Arthur should have remembered him.
Merlin angrily changed back into his own clothes, hurt and disbelief warring in his chest, but he finished dressing and gathered up the black dress and there was still no Arthur coming back to look for him.
He glared at the ground, dropping the dress in a careless pile and igniting it with a glance, his magic sparking a larger fire than he intended as it flared with his frustration.
How dare Arthur? How dare he?
After all the perils they had faced to get to the cauldron, his king had forgotten him?
It would have been one thing if they had been taking a trip to the market, or through a neighboring castle’s citadel, or somewhere that Merlin’s safety would be mostly assumed, but they had almost died countless times to reach their destination.
Arthur didn’t know that wyverns weren’t a threat to Merlin. Arthur didn’t know that the Dolma was no threat to his manservant.
Merlin had come up with an explanation of keeping the king’s servant hostage as an assurance that Arthur would not harm the Dolma, but Arthur had never even asked where his servant had disappeared to before Mordred had demanded to know what had happened to him.
Arthur had been satisfied with three simple sentences from an unknown sorceress and immediately refocused on his wife, completely forgetting the man who had served him for almost a decade.
Arthur had demanded no proof, no real assurances Merlin would be returned. Arthur had no idea she hadn’t killed his servant, and he hadn’t even glanced back.
Arthur had no idea that Merlin’s magic could help stave off infection in his leg, which was clearly bleeding, even though the head injury had been a bigger concern when he was unconscious.
Arthur had no idea that the effects of the head injury had actually passed, rather than being pushed away with the constant adrenaline of the last day and a half, and his king had left him.
The dress stopped burning, and Merlin climbed up the ridge with the faint hope that the group would be standing around the horses in confusion, discussing where he could be.
They weren’t.
The only thing to show they had ever been there were hoof prints and a few dusty boot prints that Merlin knew to be Arthur’s from the sheer number of times he had cleaned similar markings off the man’s floor.
They had actually left him. They had put Gwen on Merlin’s horse, and they had left him.
He tried to swallow down the emotion that rose at the realization, trying to summon his anger to hide the sadness, but found only a hollow ache as the situation fully set in.
He forced himself to move his feet, set on his path to walk the journey back to Camelot that took two days by horseback, knowing he should be hurrying out of the area that Morgana had occupied less than an hour before, but unable to summon the energy for anything beyond a heartbroken trudge.
He walked for hours, wishing he hadn’t stashed his canteen in the bag that Arthur had picked up and loaded onto the horses. He had never once helped load the bags in the entire tenure of Merlin’s employment, but the one time bags held Merlin’s water, food, and bedroll, he suddenly found the urge to help.
Merlin grit his teeth and trudged on.
As he walked, he idly wondered if he should collect some herbs for Gaius since he was traveling on foot anyway. He didn’t have a basket or satchel, but perhaps he could fill his pockets, and that would be enough.
Eventually, he let himself sit heavily on a felled log, injuries throbbing, feet aching, and throat dry. He shivered, the cold air catching up to him as he stopped moving, and pulled his thin jacket tighter around himself, longing for the blanket that Gwen would no doubt be using for the night.
Well, more likely Mordred. The quality of Merlin’s sleep kit was not fit for a queen, Mordred was most likely ordered to offer his instead if he hadn’t already done it of his own accord, which was also likely.
Merlin idly wondered if they would realize they had left him as they set up camp for the night, or if the combination of Mordred’s ability to fulfill a servant’s duties combined with Arthur’s inability to take his eyes off of Gwen would mean they didn’t realize until they got to Camelot.
If they hadn’t noticed when they got to Camelot.... surely the other servants around the castle, and the knights, and Gaius would notice....
Well, Merlin admitted to himself, eyes falling to his lap, the servants might not. He did have a sporadic schedule, and it was difficult to tell if he was gone or just serving other duties. He reluctantly realized it might be up to a fortnight before any of them truly raised the alarm. He hoped to be back before a fortnight.
The knights might not notice either, he thought with a pang. At one point he would have been sure that Gwaine at least, if not the others, would notice the second Arthur was back in Camelot, but... but Merlin had been more and more disconnected with them by the day, it felt like.
The lamia had been the spark, and the chasm had only grown from there. The knights had spewed words Merlin had never thought he’d hear from them, and they had been enchanted, but in the back of his mind Merlin wondered if that was how they actually felt.
The divide had grown over the months as Elyan was possessed and only Arthur stepped in to stop Elyan from almost murdering Merlin on the training grounds, and not a single knight said a word in his defense as he was accused of poisoning the king.
Except for Arthur’s awkward and stilted apology, there had been no mention or acknowledgment of the event, no apologies from the knights, no comment that it had ever happened. Merlin’s hurt grew.
It grew, and it grew, until he wondered if they even saw him as anything beyond Arthur’s servant. Wondered if he had been delusional to think they had ever seen him as a friend.
Gwaine used to sit with him while he did chores, or polished boots right beside him, but as he was accepted into the folds of knighthood, Merlin was replaced with the nobles Gwaine had always claimed he hated.
Percival used to sit with Lancelot and Merlin when Merlin was down by the laundry lines, hanging Arthur’s clothes out to dry. They would talk, and joke, and enjoy each other’s company.
After Lancelot died, Percival stopped coming. At first, Merlin thought it was because it was a painful reminder after Lancelot’s death, but as the months dragged on, Merlin realized it was because he was never the one that Percival had wanted to visit.
When Elyan was first knighted, he and Merlin would sit in the armory for hours, sharing tales of their adventures while they polished chainmail and sharpened swords.
As Elyan grew more comfortable with his noble title and all that entailed, he began to ask the servant assigned to maintain the knights’ armor to cover the duty, at first occasionally, and then more and more until it was a bizarre sight to see him doing it himself.
Merlin had naively hoped he would still come down and talk, but after weeks of lonely hours polishing, he resigned himself to dropping polishing back to one of his least favorite things to do, talks with Elyan the only reason it had ranked higher.
Leon had been the one to teach Merlin to ride, and at first, as they went out on patrols, he would make sure he rode nearby to note corrections and tips.
As Merlin got better, Leon talked more than he taught, telling Merlin what it was like to live in the castle with Arthur and Morgana as children, and how he had been childhood friends with Gwen.
Merlin had loved it. He had loved the talks, the quiet, steady friendship, but as more knights were added to Arthur’s trusted few, the further away Leon rode, at first keeping an eye on the new additions, and then being pulled into the bantering, joking exchanges the knights of the round table favored until Merlin had abruptly realized that Leon didn’t talk to him on patrols anymore beyond asking when the food would be done.
The realization had stung, but he had buried himself in the mission of protecting Arthur, and drifted even further away from them all.
He swallowed hard, wondering if it was always going to happen as they were accepted into the groups of people they actually wanted to spend time with, or if he could have kept them if he had just tried harder.
He stood, walking further in an attempt to escape the thought, and reluctantly noticed it was getting dark. The sun was setting, and if he didn’t find a stream and some food, he would be hungry and thirsty as well as cold and hurt as the night set in.
He hadn’t studied the map of the route with the intensity he usually did, preoccupied by the magic he would have to do directly in front of the king of Camelot, and distracted by the rush of organizing the pieces that would need to fit together for them to be successful.
Usually he knew where the surrounding rivers and streams were, but in his rush to get everything done, he hadn’t looked beyond the route itself they planned to take.
He sighed, finally admitting it was growing too dark, even if he risked being caught and used his magic to light the way, and turned his attention to finding a place to make camp for the night. Not that there was any camp to make. He had no food, no canteen, no bedroll, and no blankets.
He found a flat patch of ground and tiredly gathered moss and leaves to use as insulation between himself and the cold earth, and collapsed onto his make-shift mattress, the full weight of his sadness sinking back in as he was no longer able to distract himself with the journey.
He was hurt, thirsty, hungry, injured, and cold, but it wasn’t cold enough to freeze him, and his injury wasn’t severe enough to risk death. He had gone longer with an empty stomach, and he could last at least three days without water.
It would take two days for the rest of them to get back. Gaius would realize when Merlin didn’t go to his room for the night that he was missing, and he would raise the alarm.
Arthur would begrudgingly agree that his idiot of a servant couldn’t survive without rescue, and would ride out at first light, getting to him in about a day’s ride as he kept walking toward Camelot.
He could hold out for three days. Luckily, it was not a longer journey back, because three days was pushing Merlin’s limits, but he could survive for three days.