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Merlin was exhausted. Three days' journey should have been more than enough for anyone to tire of conversation, but it turned out that “anyone” did not include Gwaine. The knight was famous for his insatiable need for constant chatter, and while others would wear down after hours of unabating chatter, the knight always seemed to content to continue the conversation long after everyone else had lost interest. It could be uplifting, given the circumstance, but after three days on horseback and four more journeying to the outskirts of the kingdom, it was beginning to wear in Merlin's nerves.
“I need to send an envoy,” Arthur had said abruptly the previous week. Merlin hadn’t looked up from the chest plate in his hands, keeping his eyes pointedly averted. Arthur was pacing- never a good sign- and sure enough, a boot came sailing through the air, hitting Merlin square in the head. “Merlin.”
“Ow,” he let the cloth drop to his side, rubbing the back of his neck and turning round accusingly. Arthur was sat on the end of his bed, the remaining boot in hand. He tossed it from hand to hand indecisively and Merlin regarded it warily. “What?”
“I need to send an envoy,” he said again, looking up. When that still didn’t provoke any kind of response, he raised his voice. “To Tintagel.”
“And?” The other boot came sailing towards him, but Merlin ducked and it slammed into the wall behind him. He turned around reproachfully, but Arthur merely raised his eyebrows and inclined his head. "Did you want me to go and find someone-” he was interrupted by an audible sigh and broke off.
“You know, one day, Merlin,” having run out of hurlable objects within reaching distance, Arthur got up and walked over to his desk. Merlin eyed the inkpot suspiciously, but Arthur didn’t seem to notice. “One day, you’re going to understand what I’m trying to say to you the first time around, and everyone within the vicinity of the incident is going to die of shock.”
Merlin folded his arms and scowled. “What do you want?”
For the first time, Arthur’s expression clouded, and he twiddled a quill between his thumb and first finger. A dark, bluish spot of ink splashed onto his shirt, the colour bleeding through the linen and turning dull as it dried in the summer heat. “I want you to go.”
Merlin nearly dropped the chest plate in his hand. “You what?”
“You heard me,” Arthur looked down at the stain on his shirt and started to rub his thumb against the fabric. Merlin opened his mouth in protest, but the colour had already seped into the surrounding fabric, leaving a large smear on his chest, and he abandoned it quickly. “I want you to go to Tintagel.”
Merlin shook his head. "It’s a week’s round trip, Arthur. Surely one of the knights-”
“You’ll be fine,” there was a curtness to his tone that should have been a warning not to argue, but Merlin was not in the habit of listening.
“But what about you-?”
“I’ll ask George to fill in for you for a week. God knows my chambers could use someone who actually knows how to clean them.”
Merlin let that last comment slide, but glanced guiltily at the pile of laundry in the corner and the dust floating in the sunbeam streaming in the window. It was true Merlin rarely performed the role of servant to the standards expected of a member of the Royal household, but to be fair to himself, he did a lot more than was expected of him as well.
“May I ask why you’re asking me, of all people?” he said eventually, looking back to Arthur
There was a pause, and Arthur looked down at the flagstones, a curious expression brewing on his face. Merlin frowned, unsure whether to comment or let the subject drop, but when Arthur raised his head again, there was a set to his jaw that Merlin knew all too well. "Because I need someone I can trust," he said, teeth gritted and Merlin's expression softened. Arthur dropped his hands to his sides and looked up. "Please, Merlin. I won't order you to go, but as a friend, I'm asking you... I need-" he broke off and cleared his throat, then made a valiant attempt at a smile. "Well, you're not clever enough to organise an attempt on national security."
Merlin had any number of acerbic retorts ready to say, but he bit the sides of his mouth, keeping any rebukes under wraps. "Alright," he said eventually, and Arthur's shoulders sank, just a little. Mer;in swallowed. "Arthur-"
"What?"
Merlin sucked in a breath. "I know Agravaine was-"
"Please, Merlin," he said tersely, and Merlin stopped, biting his lip. Arthur's tone had lost the hard anger it had carried in the first weeks after his uncle's betrayal, but the mention of his name was still enough to turn any conversation, any humour or wit, straight into ashes. It had been months now since Morgana and he had attacked the citadel, but the wound could open at any occasion, and Arthur's pride often prevented it from being tended to. Merlin tried, where he could, but it seemed the subject was still too raw to address outside formalities.
Arthur still didn't know it had been Merlin who had killed him. Merlin didn't know if his oblivion was a blessing or a curse.
It took a moment of melancholy silence before he cleared the dust to say something else. “Fine,” he said eventually, and Arthur nodded solemnly. As he did so, the beginnings of a grin began to twitch on Merlin’s face and Arthur’s own expression turned from pensive to stony. “So you trust me-” Arthur didn’t bother throwing anything this time, marching across the room to his manservant. He grabbed Merlin by the head and ruffled his hair while the other man squawked indignantly.
“Shut up, Merlin.”
“Noted,” Merlin ducked out from Arthur’s grip and attempted to flatten his hair, a futile attempt. “So, what is it I need to take to Tintagel?”
That had been little over a week ago, and having dispatched wherever sensitive document Arthur had required the delivery of, he was at a stale midpoint in their journey back to Camelot. But Arthur’s apparent trust in Merlin seemed matched only by his stubborn insistence that he take someone with him to assist the journey. His reasoning, Arthur had explained, being that while Merlin was to be handed the task of looking after the documents, another would be handed the task of looking after Merlin, and it was from that sentiment that he found himself deep in the forests of Wessex with none other than Gwaine. At the start of the journey, Merlin had been glad to have the company of a friend, but after a week of incessant babble with no end in sight, the initial euphoria of his company was beginning to wear down.
“You look awful, Merlin,” Gwaine was a man in possession of the uncanny ability to make conversation about anything, even things whose mundanity could probably be used to bore listeners to sleep, and Merlin sighed fondly. He had learned early on into their friendship that humouring the knight’s remarks was vastly preferable to listening to him soliloquise to an imaginary audience for hours on end.
“That’s from putting up with you,” he said bitterly, but he offered a tired smile which betrayed the underlying affection in the comment. Gwaine caught his tone and grinned impishly.
“Oh, don’t be like that,” he brought his horse forward and came up to ride alongside Merlin. There was still moss in his hair from the night before, and his eyes too were shadowed with a purple ring of fatigue. “I’m not that bad.”
“You say that, but you haven’t had to listen to three days of your jokes about horses.”
Gwaine’s mouth formed an indignant ‘o’. “Bastard.”
“Correct, actually.” Merlin flashed a smile and drove his horse- thankfully free from the various ailments and characteristics that populated Gwaine’s lousy attempts at tavern humour- onwards and down an offshoot of path into some beech trees. Their leaves were soft and bright- almost yellow in some lights- at this time of year, and a light wind rustled through the undergrowth and blew last autumn’s litter around the floor, skipping over the horse’s feet like dancers. The light was dappled here and the forest less dense, and Gwaine finally had the space to come up alongside Merlin without the danger of their feet knocking together.
“This isn’t the way we came in,” he said, all traces of argument evaporating and replaced by a kind of awed curiosity that Merlin didn’t like to admit surprised him.
“It’s not, Merlin drew his horse to a halt and took a moment to observe the scenery. There was a tranquillity around here that could rarely be found in woodlands, least of all those close to Camelot or other large settlements; it was the innate peacefulness of a place untouched by the ravages of humanity or the meddling of false trades and building. It was a place where magic shone through the very fabric of reality, setting Merlin’s mind’s eye ablaze with a rare sense of fulfilment of which it was so often deprived. Such places were rare now, as even the holy sites were now scarcely trodden with reverence and vines grew across their doors, closing themselves off from a hostile world that no longer understood what they were. Even as Merlin's own power grew, he felt that of the Gods dwindling, their once omnipotent touch being extinguished, like the night air prickling on skin as the last dregs of sunset disappear on the horizon, and Merlin didn't know if that particular sun would ever rise again.
Places like this practically throbbed with magic, not just because of the physical power they held, but because there were so few of them left.
Merlin blinked and shook his head, glancing back apologetically at Gwaine, but the other man didn't seem to be bothered. He too had drawn up his horse, and was sweeping a slow gaze over the woods around them in the way one might regard a particularly fantastic sunset or a piece of art. Merlin frowned at that; tranquillity was an expression one seldom saw on Gwaine's face, the knight's elated chatter often closing over the canyons of though Merlin knew lurked beneath every smile. Even when divulging secrets or stories, his friend would often be more guarded than he first appeared. It was atactic of wearing his heart on his sleeve, as if showing it off would detract from what was in his blood. And it worked, for the most part, but once he let go, the façade would not so much crumble but come roaring down, and Merlin would once again be reminded of secrets they could never share.
“It’s beautiful…” he said. Then: “how did you know how to get here?”
Merlin shrugged and struggled to keep his expression even. His pulse skipped against his throat, but he swallowed it before he worked up even the slightest nerve to tell the truth: telling Gwaine that their he could no sooner tell Gwaine that he had been using his mind’s eye to guide them all the way there and back to Tintagel than outwardly admit his identity to the king himself, but it felt wrong to so blatantly lie to someone who he considered in all respects a friend.
“Maps,” he blurted eventually, and Gwaine's eyebrows rose. It wasn't a complete lie- he merely left out the part that the maps in question were magical senses ins=side his own mind, but he shrugged off Gwaine's obvious scepticism. “You would do well to look at one sometime. Might one day find your way home from the tavern."
And with that, the pensive equanimity that had come over them both was shattered, and Gwaine’s immediate outage soon broke into an amicably malicious grin. “You little shit-”
Merlin raised a eyebrow and almost smiled to himself. Living under the same roof as Gaius often rubbed off on him in the least expected ways, and the old physician was a master of this particular skill. “Coming from someone who called me a bastard not so long ago-”
“And you admitted to its truth.”
“Oh, in every sense of the word,” Merlin dodged a swipe at his left ear by veering left and back into the darker undergrowth. “But I speak nothing but truths myself!” his voice escalated to a shout as they charged onwards, incomprehensible but undoubtedly filthy insults spewing from between Gwaine’s laughs. So much for peace and pensivity, Merlin thought as he swerved round a hawthorn hedge.
The chase continued for near on five minutes before, gasping for breath, Merlin slowed his horse to a trot and Gwaine did the same, the embers of mirth still glimmering in both their eyes.
“And you think I’m poor company,” Gwaine said between breaths, shaking his head in mock disapproval.
“Not all the time,” Merlin allowed, turning back. The walking pace of the horses seemed almost comically slow after their previous speed, and he turned his head once again to his surroundings, some of his previous calm returning. They walked in silence for some time, each deep in their own thoughts, but when Gwaine finally broke the silence, it was with something that Merlin would never have expected in a million years:
“These feel different to the woods in Camelot.”
Merlin didn’t speak for a moment, his surprise evident on his face. To most people, particularly knights who served the crown and were used to the bustle of life in the citadel and saw the countryside only as needed terrain for hunting and acts of war. He supposed the magic here must be strong to get through to Gwaine frowned.
“Don’t you feel it?” he asked, looking faintly nervous now, although Merlin wasn’t sure why.
“I feel it,” he said, smiling at his friend, hoping to be reassuring but missing the mark slightly, and he saw Gwaine's own smile falter a little too. “I just didn’t think you would.”
Gwaine frowned at that, looking away. “Is that a bad thing?”
Merlin shook his head fervently, and a little colour returned to Gwaine’s cheeks. “No- Gods, no, Gwaine. I’m just surprised, 'sall.”
“Alright,” Gwaine said after a minute.
Merlin fidgeted uncomfortably; where moments before they had both been alight with mirth, the troubles and quarrels of the real world forgotten for a moment, drowned beneath the laughs of a personal friendship that could swallow any conflict for a time, that harrowing discord of secrecy and slightly-too-obvious lies could creep in at any time, causing whatever laughter that had existed before to wither like fallen petals left in the sun. He was about to say something, but he was once more stopped by a hesitant question from Gwaine.
“Can I ask you something?”
Merlin blinked, surprised, but nodded his assent. “Go on,” it would have been an easy moment to close the strange void that had opened between them, but he left it open, more than anything else curious about what Gwaine might have to say.
The knight checked for a more affirming nod of consent before asking. “Why do you always say “Gods”, instead of just “God”?” he asked. Merlin froze, his horse grinding to a halt before he spurred it onwards apologetically.
“What?” he said faintly, then coughed, trying to banish the tremor that had crept into his voice to little avail.
Despite his monosyllabic answer, Gwaine seemed to warm inexplicably to the question. “It’s just-” he ran a hand over his face and looked at Merlin, an odd fascination in his eyes. “Arthur, the knights, Gwen… everyone else I know, really, just swears against God. Singular. But you don’t.”
Merlin shrugged, and tried to push some light into his tone to save from coming off flat. “I don’t know. I wasn’t born in Camelot. Not every kingdom worships- and swears, I suppose- the same god. Or gods,” he added. It was a poorly veiled lie, and if Gwaine thought about it in too great a detail, the inevitable falsity of it would be revealed.
In truth, his mother had frowned upon swearing, and he had many a time received an earful for picking up various profanities from people in the village- notably Will, he thought with a slight smile. He could use someone like Will right now. But the fact remained that he had only made a habit of swearing after his arrival in Camelot, but no matter how good a friend Gwaine had been to him over the years, it would undoubtedly be a mistake to reveal his native faith, and subsequent identity even in light-hearted conversation.
Gwaine didn’t seem convinced by the lie. “You come from Ealdor... that's Cenred’s kingdom, right?” he asked, and Merlin nodded again. “But most people there worship just one god, don’t they? Or at least swear against one.”
Merlin’s throat closed. “It doesn’t matter really,” he said eventually, and cringed at the clipped quality to his words and the tightness in his throat. “It’s just something I say. Nothing to worry about.”
“Hey-” Gwaine came up next to Merlin in his attempt to move away. “I’m not mad or anything. I was only curious because… Merlin mate, stop looking at me like I’ve just killed a man…
Merlin fidgeted and looked down. “Sorry.”
But Gwaine seemed more concerned than offended and leant forward to catch his friend’s eye. “Seriously, it’s okay.” No, it’s not- “I only asked because I used to say it too.”
That stopped Merlin. The trees whispered, Merlin’s secrets no doubt already carried in the wind, whistled through the hearts of the trees and branches before descending in a web of unsaid words and unsung melodies until the whole forest quivered with the truth of it: the truth that the great warlock was living a lie. And perhaps, Merlin thought as he studied the earnestness on the knight’s usually facetious face, Gwaine’s secrets were woven among them too.
“You did?” he said. He was barely speaking in a whisper himself, and coughed. His voice was curiously hoarse, as if from disuse, but he had other things to worry about in the moment.
Gwaine smiled, and if Merlin didn’t know him better, he would have judged the fleeting look that passed over his face as reminiscent. “Yeah, I did. I used to do a lot of things, you know,” he added, then his smile faded. “I stopped when I came to Camelot though. Didn’t want to give the wrong impression, y’know. Especially when Uther was still knocking around.”
Merlin’s eyebrows practically shot up to his scalp, not sure which bit of Gwaine’s speech carried the most shock value. It was fairly common knowledge that the knight had disagreed with Uther on a number of counts, his loyalties to Arthur and friendship with Merlin being the only thing that really bound him to his service in Camelot. But it was what was left unsaid, the implications of his offhand remarks that really stopped Merlin in his tracks.
Gwaine must have noticed Merlin’s surprise and looked down. “Sorry. Must be the… woods...” this time, it was he who tried to move on ahead, but Merlin kept pace with him, tired of the constant stop-start of the conversation.
“No, it's okay,” he said earnestly, mirroring his friend’s assurances from only moments before. Gwaine, however, remained unconvinced and Merlin cleared his throat before adding: “To be honest, I never really agreed with Uther on a lot of things either.”
“Could have fooled me,” Gwaine said, though it wasn’t quite the truth. “From what I know, you always seemed fairly ready to lay down your life for him.”
Merlin fidgeted. “I was just doing my job.”
Gwaine nearly laughed at that. “Your job? Last I checked, your job was to look after Princess back home.”
“Exactly,” Merlin nodded, and Gwaine cut himself short. “It was always going to be harder to do that if Arthur was harbouring a grudge against his father, or someone who tried to kill said father. So, I suppose that's what made his life worth trying to save, even if he was an arse-faced twat.”
The last remark was meant to spark a laugh, but Gwaine still looked thoughtful. “What was it you disliked about Uther,” he asked, slowly. It could have been a fairly innocent request, but the unsaid, or perhaps unthought, implications of the question struck a chord in Merlin’s brain that was just a little close to the core. He waited a moment before replying, choosing his words perhaps more carefully than could have been considered innocent.
“Uther was a good king, in some respects,” he said finally, “but he wasn’t fair to everyone. Though he did… what he did… often in the name of peace…” Merlin flinched at the doubt in his tone, “genocide isn’t something I would ever support. Too many innocent people died under him for me to respect him in that sense,” he looked over at Gwaine, waiting for some kind of rebuke, but to his bewilderment, the knight was merely smiling. “What?” Merlin asked, and for the first time, he felt a little of the tension begin to thaw.
Gwaine looked away. “So you don’t believe all that shit he and Arthur kept- and keep, I suppose- spouting about sorcerers being evil?”
Merlin looked around, the white of his knuckles gripping the reigns betraying the relatively nonchalant façade he was imitating, though his heart had pumped its way up to his mouth. “I didn’t mention sorcerers specifically.”
Gwaine shrugged, still excruciatingly careful. Merlin had to marvel at the deranged hilarity of it, both of them dancing round the answer of a question neither of them would ever dare ask, even though he thought they both knew the answer.
“You didn’t need to,” he said slowly. “But don’t worry, I won’t tell.”
There was a little weight to those last few words, as good of an invitation as Merlin could ever get, but he kept back a little. “In that case… yeah. Why do you ask, anyway? Do you think it’s all shit as well?”
Gwaine’s laugh was small, his expression clouded with thought as he studied his friend. “Magic isn’t evil,” he said after a moment. Merlin felt his heart skip.
“I know.”
He looked at Merlin then, and Merlin saw his own longing reflected in his friend’s eyes. Golden and tarnished, kept alive by an impossible hope that had all but withered to nothing. Something unspoken passed between them. It was greater than words, greater than feelings. It was like music and colours all at once but simultaneously the absence of sense at all. Leaves fluttered around their feet and the trees rustled contentedly, and Merlin felt something stir within him and reach out to his friend; twin souls. Twin secrets. A friendship that had unwittingly extended itself to something else: kin.
“Merlin,” Gwaine said, his voice a ghost as they moved through the trees. “Do you think the gods can hear you?”
Merlin smiled and looked up through the branches and into the August blue of the sky. There were no clouds today. He thought, perhaps that it could be an omen. But omens could only ever be an imitation of what would always be. “I don’t know. But we go on, you and I.”
It was something Merlin had never dared to hope for, you and I. it was the subtle erasure of a line that threatened to be crossed, and the creation of a bridge across the chasm that magic had carved between them- between them and the rest of the world.
Gwaine nodded, half happy, half sombre. “Yeah. You and I.”