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The half hour after the successful defeat of Morgana at Camlann was the worst of Merlin’s life. And that was saying something.
There was a lot of screaming, a couple clashes of the sword, the revelation that Gwaine had somehow known all along? And also a fair amount of crying. In the end Gwen came running from her tent and thrown herself between Merlin and the many swords pointed at him to confess Merlin’s deepest held secret of having saved Arthur’s ass multiple times. (Gwaine chimed in his own revelations to that effect and all of it left Merlin feeling quite exposed and a little bit betrayed.)
The half hour after that may have been the best of Merlin’s life. Arthur, miraculously, came around to see Gwen’s point of view, and after some prodding from Gwen and Gwaine actually sort of thanked Merlin for winning the day. Well, almost. Not to mention he actually promised to repeal the ban on magic when they got home, something Merlin knew he’d tattered on the brink of once or twice, and the idea that he himself had been the catalyst for such a change-
Well, Arthur yelled at him again, but this time for “crying like a girl.”
But, even after the legalization of magic, things were still difficult. Camelot, the knights, and Merlin in particular, were experiencing growing pains.
Merlin crouched in front of the pile of soggy wood he’d collected, sparking his flint with increasingly cold fingers. The knights were standing in a circle around him, watching with growing impatience, so there was no chance of him being able to light it through other means without them noticing.
“Merlin, could you hurry up, we’re freezing,” Leon said.
“I’m doing my best,” Merlin retorted, not quite keeping the edge out of his voice.
“Just use magic!” Gwaine snapped.
Merlin froze, stiff fingers fumbling his flint and drawing the attention of the knights fully onto him.
“Very funny.”
“I wasn’t kidding?”
“Just do it, Merlin,” Arthur snapped.
“I told you already, I’m doing the best I can!”
“Use magic, Merlin!”
No one else was speaking, so it Merlin’s sharp intake of breath was perfectly audible.
“Merlin,” Gwaine tried again, gently this time. “Merlin magic is legal now, remember? We know about your magic.”
Merlin’s shoulder’s jerked, his entire body visibly stiffening before relaxing again bit by bit.
“Right,” he said, voice strange, “I forgot.”
He extended a lightly shaking hand and whispered something too quiet for them to hear, but a flame sprang to life in front of them and all the knights crowded gratefully around it.
“How on earth you could forget a thing like that, I’ll never know,” Arthur said, extending his hand toward the flame.
“Well when all you’ve ever known is fear, it’s hard to let go,” Merlin said quietly. Silence met his words.
Honesty, Merlin had found, was coming almost as hard to him as open displays of magic.
“What’s it been, two weeks since Camlann? One since the official repeal? You just need time,” Gwaine said, patting him roughly on the shoulder. “Don’t worry, we’ll help you. I’ve a great number of chores that i don’t want to do that you could probably manage with a snap of your fingers!”
Merlin shot him a disbelieving look, unable to hide his smile.
“Wait a minute!” Arthur protested, sitting up from where he’d reclined. “Is that how you’ve been doing your chores this whole time? With Magic?”
“Only sometimes,” Merlin admitted, mouth tweaking at the corners. “You give me so much work, there’s no way I could have done it all without magic!”
“So now I know that you’ve been slacking off this entire time!”
“Slacking off? I just told you I had to regularly commit treason just to finish my chores and you still think I was slacking off? I risked my life to launder your stinking socks!”
“How hard can it be to polish armor with magic, Merlin? I don’t know why you complain about it so much!”
Merlin laughed in disbelief, shaking his head. “Except I couldn’t just use magic whenever I wanted, I had to wait until the middle of the night so I wouldn’t be executed!”
“Well now you haven’t got to do that, so I expect all my chores to be done in record time.”
Merlin made an affronted sound that had all the knights laughing, and the last of the tension in Merlin’s shoulders faded away.
Merlin sat on the foot of Arthur’s bed, legs crossed, scrubbing away at Arthur’s boots, while the floors were being scrubbed and Arthur’s armor being polished by magic all around him. The door swung open and Arthur strode in.
Merlin’s body reacted instinctively. He dropped the enchantments working the mop and armor, which both clattered to the ground noiseily. Arthur jumped badly as Merlin rolled off the bed backwards, placing it between them as he backed away, hands held up in placating gesture.
“Merlin, what the hell.”
“I’m sorry! I can explain!”
“Please do!”
“You startled me!”
“Okay? So you threw my armor on the ground for revenge?”
“No! I just- forgot. Is all. I was doing magic and you walked in here and scared me!”
“For heaven’s sake, Merlin, you woke me up using magic this morning!”
“Yeah, well, that was this morning! You caught me off guard I wasn’t expecting you! Have you ever heard of knocking?”
“To enter my own chambers?”
“Yes! It’s called being polite!”
“When you enter someone else’s chambers. Not your own.”
“I don’t think it’s too much to ask you to knock!”
“And I do and I’m the king, so guess who wins the argument?”
Merlin glowered, but was slowly able to calm his racing heart as he took his seat on Arthur’s bed again, taking a deep breath before setting the mop and the polish back to work and crawling slowly back onto Arthur’s bed.
“See? Now that wasn’t so hard, was it?” Arthur teased, sidestepping the rag scrubbing the floor.
“How would you know how hard it is? You’ve never done magic.”
“Well it can’t be that hard if you’re doing it.”
Merlin glanced up, annoyed, and snapped Arthur’s belt with a flash of his eyes.
“Merlin!” Arthur snapped, “I know that was you!”
“I don’t know what you mean, Arthur!”
“Merlin!”
Merlin danced between slashing blades as he always did, head on a swivel to keep an eye on everyone at once, looking for openings.
There he snapped a man’s belt and when his pants fell Leon took advantage of his surprise to strike him down. Merlin spun around to check on the others, missing the amused look Leon sent him.
There he broke a man’s saddle strap and didn’t bother to watch and see the man’s neck snap upon impact with the ground. Gwaine swore under his breath and cast Merlin an impressed look, but Merlin’s eyes had already turned to Arthur.
Arthur was fighting against three men, one of them was bound to get the better of him eventually. Merlin just needed an opening. He looked up and saw a branch above them, positioned just right. His eyes flashed gold and the limb came crashing down, managing to crush two of the men flat. Arthur reeled back in surprise, barely having the wherewithal to dispatch the final man before gazing up at the tree in wonder.
“What a stroke of luck,” he murmured, looking dumbstruck.
“Luck, sire?” Gwaine asked, amused.
“Something like that’s happened before, more than once come to think of it,” he looked around, taking in the knights amusement, until Leon patted Merlin on the shoulder with a laugh. “Was it you, Merlin?”
Merlin flinched, shaking his head.
“Merlin,” Gwaine said, “remember.”
Merlin looked at him, eyes wide, before huffing out a panicked breath and nodding. By now the knights were used to this, Merlin’s panic. The occasion’s were slowly becoming less, but the knights looked no less stricken for all they knew now that it was to be expected.
“And you’ve done that before?” Arthur asked.
Merlin nodded again, still with difficulty.
“All those time I caught you hiding during a fight, is that what you were doing? Helping me, with magic?”
“Well I was hiding,” Merlin joked, trying to eas the tension.
“But not from them, you were hiding from me,” Arthur said grimly.
Merlin gulped, casting his eyes to the ground, regretting opening his mouth.
“I was just doing my job,” Merlin said quietly. “It wasn’t anything really. Just little things.”
This did not seem to console Arthur.
An assassin was after Arthur. Had been all week. Merlin was fairly certain that he’d been sent by Bayard, but before killing him and finding his contract it would be impossible to tell. It could always be one of Morgana’s few living followers. It really didn’t matter. What mattered was that this assassin was trying to kill Arthur, so Merlin was going to kill them.
Except this assassin was so fast.
He’d slipped through Merlin’s fingers and gone running through the servant halls, and Merlin gave chase, sides burning from exertion.
The assassin burst through a set of doors with Merlin hot on his heels, slowing momentarily to navigate around the table and Merlin wasted no time in using magic to throw him bodily across the room. He landed with a crash on the table in the middle of the room, bringing it to the ground in a pile of splintered wood.
Before he had a chance to get to his feet Merlin snapped the chain holding up the (convieniently pointy) chandelier in the middle of the room and it came crashing down, piercing the man’s chest and ending his life.
Merlin had barely half a beat to catch his breath.
“What the hell, Merlin?” Arthur asked, standing at the doorway with a horrified look on his face. He was accompanied by two similarly wide eyed guards.
“I-I can explain!” He stammared, eyes widening as Arthur strode into the room, looking incredulously between Merlin and the man he’d just killed.
Merlin stumbled back, terror overcoming adrenaline as he backpedalled out of Arthur’s path.
Gwen walked past in the other direction, stopping when she noticed the scene within.
“What’s going on in here?”
“Merlin just killed this man?”
“Another assassin? She asked, turning to Merlin. “Who sent him?” Her utter lack of alarm helped Merlin snap back into the present.
“Another?” Arthur repeated.
“Not yet.”
“Asassin?” Arthur prodded.
“Merlin you must know you’re not in trouble right?” Gwen asked, giving him a surveying look.
“Yeah, of course, yeah. Arthur just scared me, is all.”
“I scared you?” Arthur shot back, rounding on him. “I was minding my own business, walking through the halls of my own castle, when happen upon you committing a murder via a chandelier, so if anything you scared me!”
“He’s been trying to kill you for a week, Arthur! Was I supposed to wait another so that you didn’t get startled?”
“Oh, Merlin,” Gwen said, shaking her head.
“A week. You mean to tell me that there’s been an assassin in my castle for a whole week and you didn’t think to tell me?”
“I’m sorry!” Merlin said.
“Arthur, give Merlin a break, he’s still not used to asking for help!”
“Well he had better get used to it because I don’t want to make a habit of walking in on him killing people with chandeliers for goodness sake.”
“Well fine then, next time I’ll use a candleabra!” Merlin snapped, throwing his hands in the air.
Arthur seemed to swell up in rage, and Gwen could feel him preparing to shout himself hoarse when Gwaine strode in, munching on an apple like absolutely nothing was amiss.
“Ah, Merlin, I see you finally killed that assassin. Creative use of the chandelier.”
Arthur swore in exasperation and simply strode out of the room, without another word.
“What’s up with the princess?”
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