Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

Even empty, the boat seemed a flimsy thing. It bobbed and weaved like a drunkard at high noon, and as the knights began to climb in, it settled low in the water. The sides rose barely a foot above the lake’s glassy surface. Shrouded in heavy canvas, the mast loomed high above the little craft. Too high, Arthur thought as Leon reached for the sheets and snapped the sails open. Top-heavy, he thought as he took his place at the stern.

He wanted to tell them to get out. He wanted to tell them that they would walk, that he would find them some horses, somehow. Instead he put his hand to the tiller.

It was raining steadily. It had been raining steadily for days, and Arthur had to commend the weather for its stubborn commitment to being awful. The quest that had brought them out from Camelot had led them further than they had anticipated, and lasted longer than they would have liked, and had ended— well, it had actually ended better than quests usually did. The monster slain, the village saved, the knights alive and unharmed.
But they were tired and hungry and far from home, and soaked through, and so the edge of victory that would normally give them strength for the journey home was dulled.

Now, the knights sat close together in the narrow benches, scabbards held awkwardly across their laps, shields propped against their feet. Curled up as they were, their armour seemed to swallow them.

Leon looked resigned, Gwaine downright mutinous. Mordred, stony-faced, gazed out at the water. None of them moved. Maybe their armour had finally rusted through and fused into a single, immobile piece.

Merlin sat in the prow, bound hands steadying the knights’ bags. He did not look at Arthur. The cuffs around his wrists rattled and clinked. Even the noise was cold.

They had been running since sunrise. They had woken to knives at their throats and strangers rifling through their bags, and their horses slit-bellied and fly-swarmed at the edge of the clearing.

We got away, Arthur reminded himself, but the thought was chased with a bitterness. With Merlin, who should never come with bitterness.

A reluctant, rain-bloated wind filled the sails, and the boat pulled forward. Arthur steered them away from the rock-studded shore and out into open water, where the wind was brisker and the rain lashed down in a sharp diagonal.

Sinking westward, the sun was dim and sullen, hanging in the sky like an unlanced boil. The knights collapsed slowly into their armour, and the lake stretched out beyond the horizon. It was ten miles across, Arthur thought. They had skirted it on their way out from Camelot, and that had taken nearly a full day on horseback. They had no horses now— but they did have a boat.

Arthur had found it beached like a dead thing on the shingled shore. He had called to his knights, beckoned them over. Look! he had said. Look what I found. This will cut our journey down by half.

He wished, traitorously, that Merlin would complain about the boat’s tenuous grasp on buoyancy. That he would tell Arthur he was bad at steering, or say it was his fault, somehow, that it rained yet. But Merlin remained steadily silent.

“What’s that?” asked Mordred suddenly.

Arthur looked up, following Mordred’s gaze, and saw— the boat listed suddenly, turning with Arthur, and he had to throw his weight to one side to wrench the tiller straight again.

“What did you see?” he asked, eyes on the horizon.“I don’t know,” said Mordred. He was half-risen, leaning out over the edge of the boat.

“Something moving. It was— fast, I think. Faster than a wave, and darker.”

The boat shifted uneasily.

“Sit down,” said Arthur, sharp-tongued.

“There it is again!”

“Mordred, sit down.”

Mordred sat. He was still looking out. The other knights were, too.

“Do you see anything?” Arthur asked.

The tiller was slick with water.

“I think it’s coming towards us,” said Leon quietly.

Arthur looked, careful not to angle his body away. Nothing. Then, cutting through the leaden water— a shadow. A patch of liquid darkness, long and sinuous and powerful. Before them, the horizon stretched flat. Blank. Empty.

“Merlin,” he called. His mouth was dry. “Merlin, can you still see the shore we left?”

Merlin shook his head. Arthur gripped the tiller hard. As if that would make any difference.

“Draw your swords,” he ordered.

The boat tipped as the knights moved, the mast above their heads swaying unsteadily. But they had their swords now. That is what mattered. Arthur let himself linger, just a moment, on the way the damp light slid along the steel. Let himself take comfort in how cleanly the blades cut through the mist.

The waves picked up, rippling out from the swiftly-moving thing in the water. They battered at the boat, tugged hungrily at the keel and the rudder. Arthur’s sword, bound in its leather sheath, rolled beneath the knights’ bench. Merlin lunged for it, moving with fluid, startling grace through the cradle of the boat’s rocking even as the cuffs pinched his wrists together. He reached the sword just as the floor swung dangerously up, and crashed into the wall to Arthur’s right.

Wordlessly, eyes fixed on the strand of water about to split, he picked himself up and held out the sword. For a single, unspooling moment between one heartbeat and the next, Arthur hated him. He hated that he could move so well even with the cold iron cuffs; he hated that when he had moved, it had been to Arthur’s side; he hated that Merlin was the sort of man who’d hand someone a sword hours after they had put him in chains. Then Arthur stood, and his hand closed around the sword, and Merlin took his place at the stern, and the boat’s course didn’t even waver.

The bottom of the boat seemed to fold, like it was made of heavy, sodden cloth. Like it would crumple beneath Arthur’s feet and close around him and drag him down. He grabbed desperately at the sheets looped around the mast as the boat shuddered.

Beside him, the knights stood with their shoulders braced together. He loved them. They were his brothers, his friends, his sons, his subjects. They would be, he realized with a jolt, his martyrs.

And then the thing rose out of the water.

Arthur saw black-glinting scales— deep-set rows of fish-bone teeth— fins like oiled glass. He saw, beneath and behind it all, the tightly coiled muscles, the abject, unstoppable might of this thing bearing down on them.

He drew his sword.

He glanced back at Merlin, white-knuckled at the stern.

“Can you—” He hesitated. Tried again. “Can you do something?”

They had not spoken of it yet. They had barely spoken at all, but even their silence had seemed to bend around this, to shy away from this. From that morning, from the knives at their throats— and from their sudden absence. From the bodies breaking against the ground.

Merlin looked at Arthur like he had then, pale and silent. Betrayed, Arthur’s mind supplied, and he dutifully ignored it. The fear in Merlin’s eyes was an animal’s fear. A vermin’s.

Arthur did not wait for him to answer, but staggered towards him. The key missed the lock, once, twice, three times. Then it went in. It turned. Arthur tore the open cuffs away and stuffed them into his belt.

Merlin opened his mouth, and the boat shattered. It lifted from the water, and seemed to fold in on itself, a strange elasticity, and then it shattered. Splintered. Wood once more.

In the second before he hit the water, Arthur thought, Merlin.

But it wasn’t Merlin. It was the beast. The flat-headed, wide-mouthed, serpent-like thing had split the boat in two and circled now around the knights, the king, the sorcerer in the water.

Arthur’s armour was heavy. Too heavy, even, to take off. He turned towards his knights just as the beast reached them, and watched— could do nothing but watch— as it seized Gwaine in its needled jaws and dragged him down.

He didn’t even have time to scream before the water closed over his head.

“Gwaine!”

Mordred dove after him.

Arthur struck out towards the spot where they had disappeared, but he could barely stay afloat. There was water in his eyes, in his mouth, in his lungs.

With a gasp, Mordred surfaced.

“I’ve got him!” he cried. “I’ve got him.”

Gwaine was limp in his arms, pale and glassy-eyed, and around them spread a stormcloud of blood. The beast’s tail whipped out as it circled faster and faster.

Arthur turned, reaching out blindly. His hand closed around Merlin’s shirt and he wrenched him close.

“You said it was for me,” he managed through sharp, panting breaths, “only for me. Were you lying?”

Merlin’s hands reached for his wrists.

“Not about that,” Merlin said desperately. “Never about that, never about you.”

“Prove it, then,” Arthur snarled. “Save us.”

Merlin’s face went carefully, deliberately blank. His hands trembled as he pried Arthur off him, and for one long, terrible moment, Arthur thought he would just leave. He could, he realized. He could just leave them there.

And then Merlin was swimming out towards the beast. He moved to one side just before the serpent reached him, and caught it as it plunged past by one knife-like fin. He crawled up along the beast’s side, clinging to the thin, tight-packed scales as it twitched and writhed. He came to its face, braced himself there— and drove his hand hard into the centre of one white, rolling eye.

The beast screamed.

A thin, high sound that stripped the air from Arthur’s lungs and made the tossing white water shiver. Then the surface did fold.
It puckered, and twisted, and fell with an awful swoop into a tightly coiling funnel, dragging the beast, and Merlin, and the knights, and Arthur swiftly down to the bottom of the lake.

Arthur hit the ground hard. It was hard, and dry, like the mud there had been baking in the sun for decades. He crawled over to Gwaine, who lay like a broken wing beside him.

“Gwaine!”

He turned him over. Blood streamed from the neck of his armour, from the gap beneath his arm, but he was alive.

Arthur looked wildly around. Leon was picking himself up on the far side of the lake bed-clearing, Mordred helping him up. Between them and Arthur was Merlin.

Merlin had the beast pinned by its blood-burst eye to the bottom of the lake. Its tail thrashed above them, whipping the water into a dizzying column of bone-white foam.

Another cry, pitiful and broken. Merlin’s arm jerked, and the beast fell still. Its black-scaled coils crumpled to the lake bed in a jagged circle, along the perimeter of the clearing.

Merlin stood. His right arm was coated in blood and a strange, translucent liquid.

Gwaine slumped into Arthur’s side and cold terror gripped his throat.

“Merlin!” he cried.

Merlin stumbled over to them, falling to his knees with a sharp crack.

“Lay him down,” he said.

His hands were deftly, infinitely gentle as he removed Gwaine’s armour. Beneath it, his shirt was stained a dull, muted red where the blood had become diluted; by his shoulder, though, it burned in its brilliance.

Mordred, standing behind Merlin, swore, then blushed furiously.

Merlin spoke to Gwaine in a low, soothing voice as he peeled the shirt back to expose the ragged edges of the wound.

“There, see?” he murmured. “It’s not so deep.”

“I think this might be the one that sticks.”

“Do you?” Merlin laughed, packing the wound with a rag Arthur hadn’t even seen him take out. “Shows what you know. Mordred, can you hold this here for a moment?”

He scooped up Gwaine’s discarded helmet, and climbed over the body of the beast. He dipped the helmet into the wall of water beyond it.
Arthur followed him and caught him by the elbow.

“How bad is it really?”

Merlin ducked his head. He gripped the helmet with both hands.

“It’s bad, sire,” he said quietly.

“Can’t you help him?” Arthur demanded.

“What do you think I’m doing?”

“I meant with— with magic. Couldn’t you heal him?”

Merlin’s head jerked up, and Arthur’s hand went slack. Before him, set deep in Merlin’s pale face, were two blazing points of fire. Endless, unyielding gold.

“Yes,” Merlin hissed. “Yes, I could, if we were on dry land, and I wasn’t keeping an entire lake from coming down on us. But unless you want that to happen, Arthur, I suggest—” He stopped. Took a breath. Stepped away. When he spoke again, his voice was stiffly light. “I’m sorry, sire. I didn’t mean to speak sharply. No, I can’t heal him with magic, but I will do all I can.”

And he returned to Gwaine’s side, and started washing his wound. Arthur let himself drop onto the beast’s scaley back.

The clearing was wide. Twelve, thirteen paces, Arthur thought. Scuffed where the bodies, human and monstrous, had fallen, and scattered with fragments of the little, ill-fated boat.

Slowly, slowly, the water stilled around them until it seemed like nothing more than badly warped glass. Beyond it, strange, dark shapes ripped in the lake’s depths. Arthur tilted his head back. From here, it looked almost like the column of air held up the sky. Like the sky was the lid of a deep, deep well.

At length, Merlin stood. Gwaine’s shoulder was wrapped in bandages torn from the hem of his cloak. Arthur shivered. The dye made it look like he had bled through the dressings already.

Merlin looked up, and found Arthur watching.

“Mordred, could you—?”

“Yes, of course.”

Mordred took Merlin’s place by Gwaine’s head and began his vigil. Merlin stretched, spoke quickly to Leon, and then came over to where Arthur sat. He joined him, though he sat further than he normally would.

“He’s sleeping,” he said quietly. “I told Leon to get some rest too. He bruised his ribs when he fell— just bruised, though, I think, nothing’s broken. With luck, we can start for Camelot tomorrow.”

“How?” Arthur asked. “In case you hadn’t noticed, Merlin, we’re at the bottom of a lake.”
Merlin sighed. His hands were clean, but his clothes were stained beyond repair.

“We were going north, right? It’s only early winter. For a few hours around tomorrow, we’ll be able to see the sun. We can use that to orient ourselves, and cross the lake on foot. I’d say we could use the stars at night, but it would be hard to see. And Gwaine and Leon need their rest.”

“But the water—”

“I’ll move it with us. It will be slow going, but it should work.”

His clean hands were shaking. Arthur ached suddenly to still them.

“Merlin, that’ll take days.”

“I know,” said Merlin. “Trust me, I know.”

“Trust you,” Arthur scoffed.

He meant it to be a joke, but Merlin only bowed his head. Guilt pressed at Arthur’s lungs. Does it hurt? he wanted to ask. Is it heavy?

“Do you still have those cuffs?” Merlin asked.

“Yes,” said Arthur, a little blankly. “I do. But Merlin, I won’t—”

“No, I know. We need to get out.”

It was dark, outside their little circle. Fish flashed silver in the depths of the lake, but all around them was a soft, sickly green abyss. It was eerily silent. He couldn’t even hear the waves, this far down.

“How did you learn magic?” Arthur asked. “In Camelot? Or was it Will who taught you?”

Merlin stiffened.

“I won’t give anyone up,” he said shortly. “I know I betrayed you, Arthur, but I didn’t send you to your death. I’m— I am not a good man, but I am better than that.”

“I didn’t mean it like that,” said Arthur quickly. “I only meant— Merlin, I don’t know what sort of man you are now.”

“You’ve said.”

Arthur winced. He had said. He had said many, many things.

“But,” Arthur continued doggedly, “I’d like to learn.”

Merlin looked up at him. “Really?”

“Really.”

Merlin stared out into the darkening water. Intently, like there was something lurking in that dull-edged blackness. Then Merlin blinked, and his eyes focused on the clearing once more. It was another moment before he spoke.

“It wasn’t Will who taught me,” he said quietly. “No one taught me, and Will wasn’t a sorcerer.”

“But he— oh. That was you.”

“That was me.”

“He was… very young.”

“He was.”

“I’m sorry. He seemed like a good friend.”

Merlin rubbed his face. It wasn’t only his hands that were shaking, Arthur realized, but his shoulders, too, his chest, his whole thin frame.

“Are you alright?” he asked.

Merlin laughed. It made Arthur jump.

“I’m alright,” he said. “You just— you never get used to it, do you? Killing?”

“I— no. No, you don’t.”

Merlin pressed his fists to his eyes. His breath trembled on the way out.

“It was beautiful. Gods, Arthur, it was ancient. It had seen the mountains when they were twice the size they are now. It had seen giants. And I killed it. I killed it.” His hand brushed the cold expanse of scales. “The last of its kind.”

Above them, the small medallion of sky was streaked a bloody red.

For you, Arthur, only for you.

“Thank you,” said Arthur. It was clumsy and abrupt, but Merlin looked so surprised by it that Arthur ploughed ahead. “Thank you for saving us. It can’t have been pleasant.”

“You’re welcome,” Merlin said cautiously.

His eyes really were very gold. Arthur’s thoughts were slipping by too quickly for him to follow. He reached desperately for something, anything, any fractured knowledge of magic— what it was, what it did, how it worked. He found nothing. Nothing worth holding, anyway.

“If no one taught you,” he started. Stopped. Merlin shifted uneasily. “Merlin, if no one taught you, then how do you know?”

Merlin turned his face away.

“I was born with it.”

He said it like it was a confession, an admission of guilt. It was, Arthur realized. It was a confession, because magic was a crime.

“But you don’t practice it,” he said. His words were tripping over each other in their haste. “You don’t practice it, you just— you just exist, so— how many others?”

“What?”

“How many others were born with it?”

“I don’t know. Maybe to practice magic you have to have something there already. Some sort of… seed. Or a stain that spreads.”

“But the laws—”

“Arthur,” said Merlin wearily, “I know. I’m sorry. But I had to be in Camelot, alright?”

They had thought themselves so clever, so grown-up, but they were children when they met. Merlin had been a child.

“No,” said Arthur. “No, it isn’t alright. You could have died. You— why would you stay?”

Merlin closed his eyes. The lake bed seemed a little colder. A little darker, without the gold.

“Do you believe in destiny?” Merlin asked.

“I don’t know. Do you?”

Merlin hummed. “I always believe in you.”

He opened his eyes. His gaze seemed— brighter, yes, like the gold had been polished by his eyelids, but clouded, too. Distant.

“What’s that supposed to mean?” Arthur snapped, because he never knew how to speak in fear.

“There’s a prophecy,” Merlin said, waving his hand dismissively. “You’ll be a great king and unite all of Albion, and I’ll, you know, be there.”

“You’ll be there,” Arthur repeated.

“If you want me to be.”

“It’s a prophecy, Merlin. You’ll be there whether I want it or not. Wait, so that— that’s why you stayed, all this time? Out of duty?”

“No,” said Merlin, suddenly, earnestly serious. “No, Arthur— look, the prophecy exists because you are my destiny, alright? Because I chose to tie myself to you. Not the other way around.”

Arthur didn’t recognize him, this golden-eyed man who spoke so steadily of fate. He turned towards him, sitting cross-legged on the serpent’s broad body.

“How long have you known this?”

“Since I came to Camelot. Before, then, probably, even if I didn’t have the words for it.” He hesitated. “I recognized you, you know. That first time I saw you.”

“You didn’t know who I was.”

“No,” Merlin agreed, “but I knew you.”

“And you’ve been working towards that prophecy all this time?”

“I guess,” said Merlin. “Mostly I was just, you know—”

“There?”

“Yeah.”

“Well, I’m glad you were.”

“Me too,” said Merlin. He smiled. It didn’t reach his eyes. It barely even reached his mouth. “I was happy. I’d have stayed there until the day I died.”

Arthur’s throat was tight.

“You can still come back,” he said. “I won’t say anything. I won’t—”

I won’t have you killed.

But that wasn’t enough, was it? It wasn’t enough to say he would never send Merlin to the pyre or the gallows or the executioner’s block, because he still had that right. He still had that power, and it sat like a razor against Merlin’s pale throat. And no matter how much Arthur promised never to exercise that tyrant’s right, that king’s power, it would always sound conditional. Always sound like he was granting Merlin some boon, performing some great act of mercy, by allowing him to live.

Merlin turned, staring intently at the water.

“What lake is this?” he asked.

“What?”

“The lake,” Merlin repeated, a little more urgently. “What’s its name?”

“I don’t know,” said Arthur. “Why?”

Merlin stood, looking frantically about him.

“There’s— I don’t know. I think there was a lake— no, there will be a lake, and you— you— oh.”

He staggered, and crumpled, and fell to the ground. He hid his face in his hands.

“Merlin?”

Arthur knelt beside him.

“What’s wrong?” he demanded. “What is it? Are you hurt?”

Merlin shook his head. Arthur’s hands twitched over his arms, his knees, before settling on the back of his neck. He barely seemed to be breathing.

“Look at me,” Arthur said. Ordered. “Merlin, look at me.”

Merlin raised his head. His face was ashen, bloodless and terrible. His eyes were molten. They cast a pale, dusty yellow light across his cheekbones, his brow, the bridge of his nose.

“The Boar of Cornwall will be swift and he will trample the hills beneath his feet,” he whispered. His hands rose to cup Arthur’s face, nails digging into the skin. “His end will be cloaked in uncertainty. He will be celebrated by the voice of the people and his deeds will be food for poets.”

“Merlin,” Arthur choked out. “Merlin, stop.”

“Was I not a man who stood by Arthur?”

“You were,” Arthur said desperately. “You are.”

The water was moving again, shuddering like some great thing lay imminent in its darkness, and Arthur knew he should be afraid. He knew he should reach for his sword, the cold iron cuffs, put some distance, at least, between himself and this thing with the burning eyes— but it was Merlin. It was Merlin.

He was shivering. Arthur took off his cloak and wrapped it around him.

“You’re alright,” he whispered. “You’re here, you’re alright. Whatever you see isn’t— it isn’t real, it can’t hurt you. I’m here. I’m here.”

With a low, ragged whine, Merlin sagged forward into Arthur’s chest. Arthur held him. Held him. Held him.

“What’s going on?” Mordred asked.

Merlin tensed. He swayed to his feet and stood over Arthur. His eyes were unlit again, but still a brilliant gold. His mouth was a hard, thin line, the kind carved into the faces of only the oldest and weariest of soldiers.

“Mordred,” he rasped.

Mordred stepped forward as if to steady him, and Merlin jerked back. Mordred’s hands fell to his sides.

“Are you alright?” he asked hesitantly.

Merlin’s eyes went— tender, Arthur thought. Frightened, and sad, and tender. He touched Mordred’s cheek as a father might.

“I’m fine,” he said softly. “Why don’t you go get some rest, hm?”

Something in Mordred’s expression flickered, but he nodded. He seemed about to speak, then thought better of it. He reached up, and pulled Merlin into his arms.

Merlin froze. Slowly, carefully, he hugged Mordred back.

“Get some rest,” he said again when they parted. “I hope you— I hope you sleep well, Mordred.”

Arthur and Merlin watched as Mordred crossed the clearing and curled up with his back to them.

“Here.”

Merlin was holding out the cloak.

“Keep it,” said Arthur. “You look cold. Merlin…”

“Arthur.”

“What happened? Did you see something in the water?”

Merlin pulled the cloak tight about himself. His expression was shuttered.

“I can’t tell you that,” he said flatly.

“Don’t you think you’ve kept enough secrets?”

It was a low blow. Mean. Merlin barely seemed to hear it. He stumbled back to the serpent’s coiled body and sank down. He would not meet Arthur’s eyes.

“This one isn’t mine to tell or to keep.” He sounded dazed, like someone had struck him on the head. “It isn’t even mine to know.”

Arthur woke in darkness. It was so complete, so absolute, that it was as though the moon and stars were not just covered, but gone. Like they had never existed.

He remembered being a child, and begging for a candle to be left burning in his room at night. He remembered the shadows on his nurse’s face as she bent to blow it out, how they seemed to swarm towards her mouth like scuttling, many-legged things.

You are a man, his father had told him once. You do not fear the dark. You do not indulge the animal its fear.

But there had never been a darkness like this in Camelot. Even in the depths of winter, when the clouds snagged on the turrets and the sun barely seemed to rise above the hills before it was sinking again, it had never been this dark.

Arthur sat up. He was unmoored. He could not see the ground or the sky or the glassy walls of the lake. He reached behind him, and found the cold, chainmail skin of the dead creature.

From somewhere to his left, warm honey, poured a low and mournful voice:

Dinogad’s smock, speckled, speckled,
I made from the skins of martens.
Whistle, whistle, whistling.

For all his scolding, Arthur knew Merlin was a good servant. An exceptional servant. He was clever and discreet, quick to notice when anything was amiss, and quicker still to fix it. He gave good counsel, knew how to mend clothes so the stitches disappeared into the fabric, and followed Arthur into all manner of danger.

And he was honest. When it mattered, when it counted, he was honest. Unflinchingly loyal.

A spear on his shoulder, a club in his hand,
He would call to the nimble hounds,
“Giff, Gaff, catch, catch, fetch, fetch!”

He always forgot to take the candle away at night.

Arthur followed the curve of the serpent’s body until his hand met Merlin’s leg. The singing stopped. Two faint golden circles blinked into being.

“Arthur?” Merlin’s slim hand found the edge of Arthur’s jaw. “Did I wake you?”

“No,” said Arthur. “I just woke up. What were you singing?”

“I don’t know. Something my mother used to sing.”

Arthur shuffled closer until he sat with his shoulder against Merlin’s knee.

“Wish it wasn’t so dark,” he mumbled.

“It won’t be for long.”

Merlin’s hand passed slowly through Arthur’s hair. The dark sifted down around them. Arthur sank into the soft, muted infinity of a half-sleep.

“‘M glad you’re here,” Merlin breathed. “Kept seeing things, in the dark.”

Arthur raised his head.

“Bad things?”

“Good things, really. When they were mine. When I was theirs.” He laughed. “They’re just nothing, now.”

Arthur didn’t know how to reconcile the Merlin that still existed in his head, big-eared and clumsy and glib, with the one who sat beside him, who saw not-things in the dark with his golden eyes and spoke in so hollow a voice.

Maybe no one did. Maybe no one should.

Merlin was humming. It was a different song. Sadder. Above them, the circle of sky slowly drained of all colour. It wasn’t light, exactly— but it wasn’t dark. The night was bleeding out.

“You didn’t say anything,” Arthur said at length.

“Hm?”

“To do this. To bring us here, to save us. I thought at first I’d just missed it, but I’ve been turning it over and over in my mind, and you didn’t say anything. There wasn’t a— a spell, or an enchantment or whatnot.”

Merlin sniffed. It was a neat, pointed little sniff, the kind Merlin made when he knew he was being clever. He’d picked it up from Gaius.

“But I thought sorcerers needed spells,” Arthur pressed. “To— to channel the magic. Otherwise it would just be exploding all over the place.”

“Exploding all over the place?”

Arthur flicked his knee. “You know what I mean.”

“Yeah,” Merlin smiled, “I do. But for most people, magic is like— like a well. You need a pump or a pulley to bring it to you, and a pail to carry it, and then, I don’t know, a basin or a kettle or a jug or something to use it.”

“Alright,” said Arthur slowly. “And that’s what spells are? Pulleys and pails and basins?”

“Yeah.”

“But it’s different for you?”

“It is,” said Merlin. He sighed. “For me they’re— a dam, I suppose. Or a rudder.”

They watched together as dawn flooded their penny’s worth of sky. It was a soft, greyish kind of dawn, but clear. Cloudless, at last, for all the good it did them down here.

A fish flashed close to the edge of air, then darted quickly away. The water billowed gently, implacably. Arthur had seen Merlin reach into it yesterday, but looking at it now, it seemed as though nothing could break its surface. Like it was only miles and miles of ice, and it was only an illusion that it seemed to move at all.

“You’re… you aren’t just some sorcerer, are you?” Arthur whispered. He could see Merlin now. Shadow-eyed and drawn. He could see how his expression pinched when Arthur spoke. “You’re powerful. Really powerful. You could hold the whole world in your hands.”

Merlin glanced down at him.

“So could you.”

There was that thing in his chest again. The one that had first taken root the day his father sat him on his knee as he heard his people’s grievances, and grown, and grown, and grown. Bloomed when his father fell sick. Born fruit the day he died, the day Arthur took the crown. It was grief, maybe, that tangle of thorns. If one could grieve for things to come, or things that never would.

Yes, it was grief. As much as he loved his people, as proud as he was to serve them and belong to them, it was grief.

“And instead you have— what, my laundry? My bathwater, my armour, my meals?”

Merlin turned Arthur’s face to his. To the sun, though they wouldn’t see it for hours yet. The first, immaculate refractions of light gilded his features. There was a callous on the pad of his thumb, a little notch of roughness catching on Arthur’s cheek. His eyes were so very gold.

“I will hold anything you tell me to,” said the god at the bottom of the lake.

Chapter Text

“I can carry him,” said Arthur stubbornly.

They were gathered around Gwaine’s sleeping body. Feverish, pale, sleeping body. Leon was listing to one side where he sat, one hand cupping his ribs. Mordred looked like he’d been crying.

“I know,” said Merlin wearily. “But Arthur—”

“Don’t. Do not. I won’t leave one of my men behind.”

“And I wouldn’t ask you to. But I won’t tell you that that will save him, either.”

Gwaine’s bandages were tangled on his chest. The wound was puckered and swollen, the skin around it streaked a blistering red. 

Infection, Merlin had said. Venom, he had said. Arthur didn’t care, right now, how beautiful or ancient the beast had been. It had taken Gwaine, was taking Gwaine. There was nothing in the world more monstrous than its corpse. 

Leon shuffled upright. Winced. Did not slump.

“What can we do?” he asked.

Merlin did not answer for a long time. He smoothed Gwaine’s torn shirt. Pressed at the pinkened skin, and watched the white mark of his finger slowly, slowly disappear. 

“We have nothing,” he answered at last. “I have nothing. I have no tonics, no poultices, no ingredients to make them. Gods, Leon, we don’t have a fire.” He sat back on his heels and ground the heels of his palms into his eyes. “I’m sorry,” he gasped wretchedly. “I’m so sorry.”

There was gold in his tears. Dust, maybe, or light. He scrubbed them away. Stained his fingertips. And Gwaine was dying. 

Gwaine was dying. 

“Merlin,” Mordred said rigidly, “could I speak with you?”

“Mordred—” he sobbed. 

“Please, Merlin.”

Merlin stood. Stumbled a bit, and righted himself. He followed Mordred to the far side of the clearing. 

There was a crease in the collar of Gwaine’s shirt. A deep, jagged thing. It had dried like that. It would need to be ironed. It would need to be washed, and mended, and ironed.

“We’re going to have to burn that shirt,” Arthur said. 

“Gwaine will have your head,” Leon warned him mock-seriously. “You know it’s his favourite.”

Across the clearing, Merlin and Mordred were arguing, their voices a low, constant thrum. 

When Mordred returned, he was not wearing his cloak. He held it crumpled in his white-knuckled hands. His face was pale, very pale, except for two spots of colour high in his cheeks. Merlin, standing at his shoulder, would not meet Arthur’s gaze. 

“Sire,” Mordred said, and his voice was level, “I need to tell you something.”

Arthur frowned. He tried to speak gently, but knew before he opened his mouth that he would fail. 

“What is it?”

Mordred’s eyes flicked to Merlin, then back to Arthur. He seemed to steel himself. 

“I have magic.”

Silence. Taut, drum-skin silence. Of course. Of course. Of course.

“I see.”

“I would like your permission to try and heal Sir Gwaine,” Mordred said. 

And Arthur— Arthur looked to Merlin. Traitorously, inevitably, he looked to Merlin. 

“You knew?” he asked. 

“I knew.”

He would be angry, when all this was done. When Gwaine was well, and they were back on land that had always been dry, he would be furious, and terrified, and viscerally lonely. He would have time for that. He would make sure they had time. 

He took a breath. Two. Three. Mordred was still a boy. There was still a softness to his face, and a child’s fear in his eyes when Arthur looked up at him. No, not a child’s fear. Fear like that should never touch a child’s world, never even brush up against its borders. 

“Thank you for telling me,” he said, and Mordred ducked his head. Arthur stood and gripped him by the shoulder. “Truly, Mordred— Sir Mordred. Thank you.”

Arthur stepped back as Merlin and Mordred knelt over Gwaine. 

“Tell me what to do,” Mordred whispered. “I don’t— I never learnt any healing spells.”

“Put your hand out over the wound,” Merlin replied quietly. “But don’t touch it. What do you feel?”

“I can feel his— his heartbeat. Through the air.”

“Good. Concentrate on that. There are his lungs, too, filling and emptying. His muscles, his bones, his veins.”

Mordred shivered. “Yes.”

“Can you feel the wound? The sickness?”

Mordred’s hand trembled, his fingers arching with the strain, above the bloody wound. He dropped his hand. Shook it out. Tried again. 

“It’s like there’s a tangle. A tear. Something… wrong .”

Pus was gathering in the wound, and some black, clinging thing like tar. Merlin wiped it away. 

“Tell me.”

“There’s— it’s—”

Mordred shuddered, and Merlin seized his hand. Held it firm in the air above Gwaine’s wound. 

Around the edges of the clearing, beyond the serpent’s body, the water quivered. Far above their heads, the circle of sky began to curl in on itself. The walls of water bulged and warped and began to dip slowly down towards the lake bed, and the thumb-print of sky disappeared. Melted wax. A blown-out candle. 

“Merlin—”

Arthur’s voice was small.

“I know.”

“Merlin, the lake is—”

“I know.”

A cry, a gasp, and Gwaine’s body jerked. Merlin fell back, breathing hard. 

Everything, every single thing, went still. The air was thick. Darkness from Gwaine’s shoulder streamed into the darkness of the ground, and all about them was a murky, glassy green. 

“Merlin?” Gwaine asked shakily. “What’s happening?”

“You’re alright,” Merlin panted. “You’re alright, you’re safe.”

He looked up, and his eyes were like a beacon through the gloom. A promise. 

The bubble of air was small, barely taller than Arthur even at its centre, and hemming them in close on all sides. Five men. Five sets of lungs. 

They turned to Merlin. 

He stood and staggered to the centre of the clearing. Out there, beyond the edge, the serpent’s body swayed gently in the current. Lifted, in places, from the lake bed. Merlin reached up, and put one hand to the low ceiling of the flood. 

He took a deep breath. 

His eyes flared.

Air whipped upwards, outwards, tearing through the water like a wolf, and light spilled down to them once more. Gold, heavy as gold, it fell upon Merlin. His knees buckled, but—

“I’m here,” Arthur gasped. “I’m here, I’m here, I’m here.”

He lowered him to the ground. 

“I’m here,” he said again.

Merlin slumped forward, eyes wide and burning bright. Arthur caught him, tucked his head against his shoulder. He was still wearing Arthur’s cloak. It pooled around them.

“Just need to catch my breath,” he croaked. 

“As long as you need,” Arthur promised.

Merlin shook his head.

“The sun. We need—”

“I’ll tell you when I see it, alright?” Arthur said into his hair. “Just catch your breath. I’ll tell you.”

When the sun crested the edge of the water, they set off. The serpent’s body slid slowly out of alignment with their little clearing as they pushed north, and Arthur’s heart pinched as he left its circle completely. It had not really been any kind of boundary. If the clearing had been safe that whole long night, it was because Merlin had made it so. If the water had not broken its line as they slept, if nothing with teeth or talons had come crawling in, it was because Merlin had not allowed it. 

But there is comfort in a wall.

Arthur clambered over it, and turned to help Merlin across. Mordred and Leon next, supporting Gwaine between them. The water closed around the serpent’s corpse, and split in two before them.

They made slow progress. Gwaine was pale and silent, pain etched deep into his face. Merlin had explained that though the sickness was gone, the wound remained. Would have to remain, since Mordred could do nothing about it. Merlin himself walked at the head of their group, looking as though he had lived a hundred years, and felt every single one. 

Arthur stopped them often, to sit, to rest, to pass around the one skin of water that had escaped the flood. Their armour weighed them down, but they had no horses or bags to carry it, and they would have been fools to leave it behind. At his side, his sword was singularly useless. When the waterskin came to him, Arthur raised it to a closed mouth. 

It was a truly barren landscape. No moss or grass to soften the ground, or trees to give shade, and what logs and stones there were were shapeless, colourless things. Water-weeds lay in tangled, brittle clumps. Beyond the clearing, around the clearing, the lake was a living thing. Fish spilled from current to current, plants swayed to an unheard rhythm. The light, strained through water, was diffuse and otherworldly. It was all made, by their passing, skeletal. 

Arthur counted his steps. He counted his breaths. He counted Gwaine’s sudden lapses into silence, and the scattered, precious words that broke from Merlin’s lips. The silences grew. The words did not. Arthur counted his steps. 

The sun disappeared without warning or sign. It was still light out, would be light out for hours yet, but the sun itself was gone, and the clearing cast in shadow. The lake’s walls rose high and murky. Arthur stared at the spot where the lake had swallowed up the sun, but there was nothing— no stain, no print. 

There were things, in this lake. Dark things. Hungry things. Things that watched and waited and snickered, and Arthur would not give them the satisfaction of seeing him lead his men in circles. 

Merlin was still trudging forward. Arthur caught him by the hand, and he stopped. He stood— crookedly, somehow. As if he was only upright because his bones were stacked atop each other. 

“Merlin?”

Merlin blinked. The rest of his face looked faded, next to the gold. 

“Let’s— let’s sit down, alright?”

“Alright.”

There was a narrow, splintery mass of rock on the corner of the new clearing, covered by some green, filmy stuff that probably should have been slimey, but wasn’t. Arthur led Merlin to it, and helped him take a seat. He knelt before him, looking up into his tired face. 

Across the clearing, Mordred and Gwaine were settling in to sleep. It was only mid-afternoon, but there was nothing else to do. Leon watched over them. He met Arthur’s eyes, and smiled wearily. 

Some friend of an uncle’s grandfather’s cousin, hoping to curry favour at Uther’s court, had once given Arthur a puppet. It had had a delicate, finely painted face, wooden limbs, and a head full of sawdust. Clothes of silk and velvet, with fragments of coloured glass standing in for jewels. And it had been so cleverly made— perfectly round joints set deep in the smoothest sockets, white horse hairs running up to a little cross of wood. The courtier had brought it from far away, and someone had brought it to him from even farther. Beyond the sea, and the Saxons’ lands; beyond the mountains sleeping in their snowy coats. 

Arthur had snapped its arm the first time he played with it, and this thing, this curious, enchanting, beautiful little thing had become, in a single moment, utterly grotesque. Tangled and gaudy and damning.

He was still holding Merlin’s hand. 

“I’m sorry,” Arthur said brokenly. “I’m so sorry, Merlin. I never should have asked you to do this.”

Merlin had his eyes closed. Light from his pupils pulsed through his eyelids. The shadows of his lashes ran down his cheeks like cracks in porcelain. 

“I think it only worked because you asked. Think I only tried because of you.”

Arthur flinched. He placed Merlin’s hand down on his knee, patted it once, and then stood. Cleared his throat.

“Can you sleep?” he asked jerkily. 

“Hm? No. No. ‘S alright, though. My magic’ll keep me going.” Merlin opened his eyes. “Arthur?”

“Yes?”

“Oh. I thought you were here.”

“I— I am here.”

“So you are,” Merlin laughed. 

Arthur looked across the clearing. Mordred and Gwaine asleep, Leon lost in thought. He turned back to Merlin and took his face in his hands. Brushed a thumb across his cheek. Reverent. 

“You can stop,” he whispered. “If it hurts, if it’s too much, you can stop. I would forgive you. I do forgive you, for all of it. You are a good man, Merlin, and the best friend I could ever have, and I am so, so sorry.”

It was like his strings were cut. It was like his arm was broken. It was like some great, godly child somewhere had grown afraid of his ivory face, his golden eyes, and thrown him into the darkest corner of the room. 

He sagged forward.

“I can’t stop,” he cried. “I can’t stop. I can’t die.”

Arthur’s heart broke. No, not his heart. His lungs. His ribs. His tongue and teeth and hands and feet, his eyes, his mind, his soul broke— but not his heart. His heart was here, whole, and weeping, and lying tangled in the darkest corner of the room.

He gathered him up and folded him to his chest.

Sundown, and Mordred was collecting water-weeds. He peeled them in long, shivering strips from the hard-packed ground, and piled them in the middle of the clearing. They looked insubstantial, there. A goose-down nest.

Exhaustion gnawed at Arthur’s bones. Hunger. Thirst. In his lap was Merlin’s drowsy head. Between his fingers, Merlin’s dark, matted hair. Tearstained, the light from his eyes spilled across Arthur’s knees. 

Beside the heap, Mordred knelt with a fistful of water-weeds. He was shredding them into tinder. Leon watched him warily, Gwaine with bare-faced interest. Mordred tipped the feathered pieces of water-weed out of his palm and onto the top of the pile. 

He looked questioningly at Arthur; Arthur nodded.

A quick-twisting word, and through the blue-green gloaming, twin flashes of gold— Mordred’s eyes, a shower of sparks. The water-weeds caught instantly, and warm, living light flooded the clearing. 

This, at least, was familiar. This circle of ruddy light, and around it, the swiftly deepening dark— but the lake did not swallow the light as a forest would. Dull-eyed fire slid across its surface like oil. 

Mordred sat back on his heels. He looked cautiously proud. He looked like he had the first time he managed to disarm Arthur on the training ground. 

“Well done,” said Arthur, as he had then. 

The fire curled its fingers into the black-shadowed water-weeds. It was a strange fire, crawling low like a starving, greed-some thing, but it burned hot enough. 

It was Leon who caught the fish, scooping them out of the water with his bare hands and cracking their skulls with the pommel of his sword. Three fish, drawn to the light, the strange well-shaft of air. Curious things. Stupid things. He scaled and gutted them, and buried them in the embers to cook. 

He cast the entrails back into the water. Washed his hands. His ribs would be aching fiercely after a day on his feet and a night on the cold, hard ground, but he stood unerringly upright. 

They ate of the fish’s soft white flesh, and swallowed the ashes gladly. Mordred fed the fire, and it curled down as if to sleep. Around it, the men sat deep into the night. Talking, mostly. Gwaine talking, mostly. It was good to hear his voice. 

Merlin sat still and silent. His eyes were closed. The bright shadows of his irises bloomed across his eyelids, and his chest rose and fell, rose and fell. Steady. Deliberate. Light from the fire painted his skin a bright, beating red. He listened to Gwaine’s rambling, to Mordred’s bemusement and Leon’s concern, with a quiet, private smile. 

Merlin had many smiles. He wore a sly one when he was teasing, and a polite, placating one for Uther; a comforting one for lost children and dying men, and a broad, boyish grin— Arthur’s favourite— in untempered victory, in brilliance and pride and delight. 

But this— Arthur could not look away from this. It was an old man’s smile, a hearth-stone smile, wistful and wise and unspeakably fond. And it was familiar. It was so familiar. This was the smile he saw every day when he woke, when he dressed and ate and prepared for meetings; when he was petty, when he was kind, when he turned a blind eye. 

How had he never noticed it?

They talked. They told stories and riddles and jokes. They sang, low-voiced in the rustling water, and Arthur’s hand found Merlin’s in the golden dark. Sleep came, but did not take a seat around the fire with them. They dozed. They stared into the flames as, far above, the gods lit one by one the uncountable stars. 

“There was a man,” said Merlin. “Once, there was a man. He who saw the deep, who knew all, was wise in all matters.”

Around the fire, the knights stirred, emerged blinking from their half-sleep. Merlin’s eyes were still closed, but his eyelids were lit up in their entirety, as if, behind the thin screen of skin, there smoldered two white-hot coals. He stared straight ahead. In the water, his twin’s face. Fear burrowed into Arthur’s heart. 

“He saw what was secret, discovered what was hidden, and brought back a tale from before the Flood.”

“Merlin,” Arthur said sharply. Merlin’s grip had gone tight, his whole body rigid. “Merlin, come back.”

“He, who broke open the mountain’s passes, and dug wells in the steppes, took the sea as his road to sunrise.”

“What’s happening to him?” Gwaine demanded. 

“I don’t know! I don’t— Merlin, stop.”

“Who combed the world over, searching for life, from the day he was born. The day he was born— two-thirds of him god, and one third of him human.”

And his voice was without form, and void. And darkness was upon his face, and it flooded the clearing, and drowned the fire, and swept up towards his glowing eyes. His grip was iron in winter. 

“Merlin, you’re hurting me!”

A gasp. Light. Light from the fire, and from the fire alone. 

And in that flickering, familiar light, Merlin’s face. His hands, white and trembling, over his mouth. 

“I’m sorry,” he whispered faintly. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean—”

Arthur looked down. A broad stripe of raised, reddened skin ran across his palm. On the back of his hand, it split into stripes. Four fingers and a thumb. He touched it, carefully. Not a bruise, not pressure marks, but a burn. Fire. Lye. 

He began to laugh. It was dragged out of him in great, jagged, hysterical lungfuls. He couldn’t help it. He laughed, and laughed, and his body folded and his face hurt and his muscles strained, and he laughed. He was at the bottom of a lake, and his hand stung like salt, and Merlin’s eyes were wide and terrified and not blue, and Arthur laughed. 

Arthur was keeping watch. Merlin was, too, up on the craggy steeple of rock, but Arthur had led his men for a long time. Too long to sleep through the night. Besides, Merlin wasn’t watching really— he had his back to the fire, and was gazing out into the water. 

Arthur knew the moment Gwaine woke up. He couldn’t hear his breathing change over the fire and the slow-moving lake, but he could hear his stillness. He could hear the careful tension in Gwaine’s limbs as he waited for whatever dream he’d left to drain away, could hear his sudden awareness of his physical self in the world once more.  

He added another handful of water-weeds to the fire, and was wiping his hands of dust when Gwaine sank down with a groan beside him. 

“How are you feeling?” Arthur asked.

“Awful,” Gwaine grinned. 

He was being flippant, of course. He was Gwaine. But there was something else there, some true and genuine thing that Gwaine could not quite hide, and which was Arthur’s duty and privilege as his king to see.

“I’m glad,” he said finally, “that you’re here to feel awful.”

“Yeah,” Gwaine breathed. “Me too. I suppose,” he added, looking at Arthur calculatingly, “that I have you to thank for that, princess.”

“I don’t see why,” Arthur said. “I was fairly useless.”

“Well, you didn’t kill the men who saved me. That seems pretty useful from where I’m standing, at least.”

“Do you really think I’d let you die?”

“No,” said Gwaine cuttingly. “But I think you should’ve. I don’t like being an exception.”

A face, so like Arthur’s own, young and whole again in a ruined castle. Only for a moment. Only for a single conversation. 

I know what you did to my mother.

Arthur closed his mind to that day. To those lies. 

“I’ll never punish a man for saving another,” said Arthur. “It wouldn’t be fair. It wouldn’t be right.”

“Your father had women hanged for trying to soothe their babies. Tell me, sire, was that right?”

“I am not my father.”

Harsh, cold anger. The kind that had made Arthur cry as a boy. Gwaine said nothing. He looked at him with pity.

The fire was beginning to fade, and there was no more fuel at hand. Arthur got up, and went to search the perimeter. He returned a few minutes later with an armful of water-weeds. Gwaine was still there. He shuffled aside to let Arthur tend to the fire, but did not look at him when he sat down again. 

“I’m sorry,” said Arthur stiltedly. “I shouldn’t have spoken to you like that.”

Gwaine stretched, kneading carefully at his shoulder. 

“Thank you,” he said.

He did not absolve him. Arthur didn’t want him to.

“Did you know?” Arthur asked presently. “About Merlin?”

“No.”

“Were you surprised?”

Gwaine sighed.

“I don’t know. I think if anyone could have someone that powerful on their side, even if they didn’t know it, it would be you. You’re sort of… bright, you know. Like a lighthouse, or a candle left in the window. You draw people to you. Lancelot, Guinevere, Percival. Those are good, kind, brave people, and I— you know, I see them, and I speak to them, but even then it’s a little hard to believe in them, somehow. Like I already know that they’ll be in history books someday, and I’m just waiting to see why.

“Besides,” he added ruefully. “I don’t think any other, you know, incomprehensibly powerful being beyond our mortal ken would be willing to put up with you.”

“No,” said Arthur, “I don’t think they would. I— I’m glad he is.”

Gwaine glanced at him. Frowned. 

“He doesn’t really,” he said. “Put up with you, I mean. He puts up with your temper and your hardheadedness and your ridiculous amount of chores, but he doesn’t put up with you.”

Arthur took a shard of water-weed in his hand, but he did not give it to the fire. It had a strange texture. Leathery, but tearing as easily as birch bark. 

“I think I’m scared.”

“Of him?”

“No. I don’t know. For him, maybe. Of him, a little. I didn’t know magic could do this. I’m still not sure it can. Do you— Gwaine, do you think he’s keeping anything else secret?”

“Oh, probably,” said Gwaine easily. “Secrets aren’t always these great big things. Sometimes it’s just a time you cheated at dice.”

“Merlin does cheat at dice, and he’s not very good at hiding it. Even if he were, it wouldn’t matter. But you know that’s not what I’m talking about.”

Gwaine smiled. It was a taunting, catlike thing.

“I’d still say probably.”

“Would you tell me, if you knew?”

“Princess, you wound me. I am nothing if not loyal. Of course I wouldn’t.”

From this side of the fire, Arthur could see only a sliver of Merlin’s face. The sweep of his cheekbone, one shell-like ear. 

“Good,” said Arthur. He couldn’t see Merlin’s hands; they were clasped before him, and so in shadow. He said, “For him. It’s for him that I’m scared. This is— changing him. It’s taking him away. And I am selfish,” he continued, voice pinched. “I am weak. A corrupt and cruel Merlin doesn’t frighten me half so much as one who is simply gone. At least then, I could hate him.”

“No you couldn’t,” Gwaine countered.

“No,” Arthur sighed. “I couldn’t. But I am frightened.”

Gwaine stretched out onto his back.

“He probably is, too.”

“Do you know what the world is?” Merlin asked.

Arthur pulled himself up next to him on the rock. In the water, he could see how brightly Merlin’s eyes shone. Otherworldly, but not, he thought, strange. He settled next to him, and took his hand.

“No,” said Arthur. “I don’t.”

Merlin’s hand was cool, now. It soothed the burn on Arthur’s. 

“The world,” Merlin whispered, “is a raindrop. A great, glittering raindrop falling forever through the cosmos. And there are so many worlds. A flood’s worth of worlds, but there is no ground. No sky. How can they fall, if there’s only—?

“It’s the stars, I think. Not pearls or painted things, but fire. Lightning, wound like yarn, and the raindrops fall around them. Until they unwind, and swallow the rain. And there is darkness, between the lightning and the rain. And it is without end. 

“And I— I am so small. I am so lost, and it is so cold. It is cold and stupid and blind. And I’m here, I’m right here, and I’m alive, and I can see everything, but it can’t see me.”

Arthur gripped his hand.

“I see you,” he said. “I’m here, with you, and I see you.”

Merlin sobbed. “I miss you.”

“I know,” said Arthur. His voice shook. “I know. But you’ll see me again, alright? When this is done, when we’re out, you’ll see me again. I swear it.”

Merlin’s hands, Arthur thought, were made to hold his face. The heels of his palms against the corners of his jaw; his thumbs in the soft hollows beneath his cheeks; his fingertips to the thin, vulnerable skin of his temples. His temples, where a single blow could kill him— where Merlin worshipped now. 

“There are so many of you,” he murmured, sweeping his thumb up the ridge of Arthur’s cheek. “So many men you could have been, or could become.”

“This is the one I’d choose,” Arthur said, grasping Merlin’s wrists. “Every time, every life, I would want to be the man you’ve made me.”

Merlin’s hands curled softly shut. “Sometimes,” he confessed, “you kill me.”

Arthur’s throat was tight. “And other times?”

“Other times,” said Merlin slowly, like the words were honeyed, languid things that he would speak forever. He smiled. “Other times, my lord, you love me.”

They were glorious, here, between the firelight and the star. In the air born so they could breathe, on this rock that grew to hold them, shrouded in water that hung like the gods’ own shield.

“And you?” Arthur asked, because this night, this man, made him brave. 

Merlin kissed his palm. 

“And I,” he whispered, “am yours. Every time, I’m yours.”

The inside of his wrist. White as snow, in the moonlight, beneath Merlin’s lips. Arthur put a hand to his cheek, and sun spilled over his knuckles. A day, just for him, in Merlin’s eyes. This close, his eyes were manifold things. Finely wrought. They shifted continuously, unfolding outwards. Flowers. Water coming to the boil. 

One morning, early in his reign, Merlin found Arthur still seated at his desk, in yesterday’s clothes, staring at the long, meandering strings of words that had stopped making sense five hours earlier. 

Merlin’s broad, teasing smile had settled into something gentle. Careful, and a little grim. He set Arthur’s breakfast down on the table, and took the quill from his hand. 

I don’t think I can do this, Arthur had whispered, watching Merlin cap the ink-bottle. There’s so much to do, so many— treaties to draw up again, and leases to renew, and— and they keep sending all these letters and gifts, and I have to thank them for it, when I know they’ve all had their eyes on Camelot since my father began to fail. And I can’t— I can’t do anything. I can’t even think. It’s like my head is full of… flies. Carrion birds.

Merlin gathered the papers up.

Tell me about the treaties, he said.

What?

Start with Essetir, Merlin suggested, perching on the corner of his desk. What do they want?

They talked until the sun was high in Arthur’s window, picking slowly through every demand and request and offer of condolences that had whirred senselessly around Arthur’s mind all night. The papers lay in a tidy stack on Arthur’s desk, ordered from most pressing to least. 

That night, for the first time in a month, Arthur had slept well. Merlin had woken him the next morning by throwing a sock at his head, and life had resumed its normal course.  

Now, in the lake, in the light, Merlin’s features were chased with weariness. Dark circles beneath his eyes, like some tearing claw had gouged at the skin there. 

“Tell me what you see,” Arthur said quietly. “In the everything, what do you see?”

Merlin took a breath. He turned his half-lidded gaze out towards the darkest water. 

“I see great metal birds with their bellies split open, and hell seeping through the seams. I see a sickness that makes the blood run black, and one that wrings the breath from the lungs. I see wanderers turned away, and strangers starved. I see ships, and chains in their holds. I see women burning. I see men swallowed whole by the earth. I see children—”

He broke off. Arthur squeezed his hand. 

I’m here. I see you.

“I see a candle that never goes out,” he breathed. “I see houses that will not burn. I see a man in the cradle of the moon. I see orchards full of fruit we have never even heard of. Oranges. Pomegranates. Persimmons.” He said it like he’d said— other times . “I see lovers. Heads bent, hands clasped. Lovers, in the night. In a park. In a bedroom, early in the morning. In secret. In the sight of God.”

His eyes were nearly shut now. His shoulders bowed. Weary. Artless. Arthur drew him close, and brought his head to rest against his shoulder. 

“I see the dreams the honeybees dream,” he whispered, “and the braided web of mushrooms that holds the forest’s mind. I see the sea in all its depths, and fish like stone castles singing to their young.”

Merlin curled into him. 

“I see you,” he laughed. “My Arthur, I see you.”

Chapter Text

Midday bloomed cold and fathomless across the stop-gap sky. Arthur watched as the first arch of sun crossed the boundary of the water. There was no wave of relief, no renewed sense of purpose, just a quiet, aching kind of determination that sat heavy in the pit of Arthur’s stomach. 

He had fallen asleep sometime after midnight last night, and not woken until well after dawn. He had found Merlin crouched by the dying fire, face palely impassive. Paper skin. A thin-pressed, painful mouth. He would not meet Arthur’s eyes. Would not speak. Would not eat or drink. Arthur had sat down next to him.

Even with a few inches between them, Merlin’s body felt rigid, his muscles wound into a tight and snarled knot. His fingers were white where they gripped his elbows. 

Around them, the knights were gathering up their things. They worked slowly— much more slowly than Arthur had trained them to— but at last they could not delay any longer. 

“Sire? We’re ready.”

Arthur stood hastily, and glanced at Merlin. “I don’t know if—”

“It’s alright,” said Merlin faintly. “We should travel while we can, yeah?”

He got to his feet. His movements were jerky and stuttered, like Arthur was seeing him by the light of a guttering candle. 

“Yeah,” Arthur repeated. His hand hovered by Merlin’s elbow. “But we could wait. Rest, you know, until tomorrow.”

It was something Arthur had said to countless injured and stubborn knights, and it had no place here. They couldn’t wait. Merlin couldn’t rest. He knew that. He knew, before he’d even finished speaking, that it would only make him seem naive, make him seem ignorant. But these were the only kind words he knew. The only ones his father had thought worth teaching him, and the only ones he’d ever bothered to learn. 

“Sounds boring,” Merlin sniffed. He smiled when Arthur laughed. 

It was a small smile, a little threadbare, but it settled something in Arthur. He took his hand, and guided him to the northern side of the clearing. The knights gathered behind them. Shuddering, the water parted. 

A bead of blood formed beneath Merlin’s nose, and he swiped it away. It left a pinkish smear on his cheek. 

They walked. The ground was softer today, like it was in the outside world after a night of rain. It smelled of distant rot, and clung to their shoes if they stood still too long. 

There were, by Arthur’s estimate, a little over three miles between them and the shore. It took over an hour to cover one. The lake gave up ground only reluctantly. The clearing grew smaller and smaller as they went, and Arthur hoped it was lighter this way, easier to move, but by the time they had walked that first mile, Merlin had stopped bothering to wipe the blood away. It trickled, startlingly dark, down his lip, down his chin, down to the growing stain on his neckerchief. 

Arthur drew his arm across his shoulders, and Merlin sagged wordlessly against him. Didn’t protest. Didn’t tease him. 

This close, Arthur could see the light shifting uneasily beneath Merlin’s skin. A slick of gold around his cheekbone, skimming the delicate bones of his hand. His eyes, when Arthur saw them, glowed so bright that the whites were swallowed up in the flare. He tightened his grip around his waist, his wrist, and pushed forward. 

Two miles. The water bowed and warped around them, curling like a snake about to strike. Blood seeped from Merlin’s eyes. The water loomed, but did not fall. 

Three miles, and Merlin’s knees buckled. He crashed to the muddy ground. 

“Merlin!” Arthur demanded. He shook him. “Merlin, look at me.”

Merlin grasped clumsily at his wrists.

“The shore,” he gasped. “How far’s it?”

“Not far,” Arthur promised. “A quarter of a mile. Just a quarter of a mile and then we’re out.”

Merlin shook his head. Slowly, jaggedly, he levered himself upright. Arthur reached out to steady him, but he brushed his hands away.

“Gwaine,” he said, “Leon, how are you feeling?”

“Fine,” Gwaine bit out. “I’m fine.”

“Leon?”

“I’m alright. But Merlin, what—”

“Merlin,” said Mordred carefully, and Arthur wanted to tell him to stop, to shut up, because he could already hear the fear in his voice, he already knew that this would wreck him. “Merlin, are you… dead?”

And the world cracked in two.

“I am.”

His voice was level. Arthur, trying to hold the world together, heard only that— the solemnity— for several long, lonely heartbeats. And then the meaning hit him. 

“No,” he rasped. 

“I’m sorry. It just— I just— I’m so sorry.”

Arthur’s jaw ached. His hands shook as he reached for Merlin’s wrist, and maybe that is why he let him take it. Let him press two calloused fingers to his pulse point. 

The skin was warm. Soft. 

Still.

Arthur let go, and Merlin curled his hand protectively to his chest. 

“But you’re— you’re here,” Arthur said weakly. He sounded like a child. “You’re talking, you’re—”

“I told you,” Merlin interrupted. “My magic will keep me going. But I don’t know how much magic I have left.” He smiled. Tried to smile. Wiped the blood from his eyes. “So I’m going to open a road now, alright? And you’re going to run.”

“What do you mean, you? You’re coming with us.”

“I need to stay here.”

“No. No, Merlin, you can’t ask me to do that. You can’t ask me to leave you.”

Merlin pulled him into his arms. Arthur held him tight, like if he were only strong enough, only head-strong enough, he could put them back together. There was a sob caught halfway up his throat. He could barely breathe around it. Merlin’s hair was soft against his cheek. 

“Arthur,” Merlin whispered. “My Arthur. I’m not asking.”

And he stepped away. He spread his arms wide, and, with a cry, wrenched the water apart. A path, straight as an arrow, shot north towards the shore. 

His eyes were blinding. Blood streamed down his face, streaked with gold so that it was a molten thing. Terrible. Beautiful. Arthur’s cloak flowed from his shoulders, soaked in the gold and the blood, and whipping in the sudden, frenzied wind. 

Arthur stood transfixed. 

“Run.” 

The ground trembled at his voice. Leon grabbed Arthur’s arm and hauled him forward. The king and his knights stumbled up the road, shoulders knocking, heads down, as the wind wailed and the water heaved. Beside him, Leon wheezed, arm braced around his ribs; Mordred dragged Gwaine along. Mud tugged at their feet. In the water, long strands of drowned things danced madly. 

The ground rose sharply, and just beyond its crest, a jagged line of trees. Safety.

“Go,” Arthur panted. “Go, get to shore.”

And he turned, and ran back the way he’d come. Arthur could hear the others calling for him, but he ignored them. Ploughed ahead. The mud was up to his ankles now, the water closing in. Ahead of him, Merlin was a beacon. A bonfire. A candle in a child’s darkened room, like all the light in the world was gathered in his being.

The ground shifted and writhed. Underfoot, mud coalesced into wriggling, dry-drowning fish that twisted themselves into seals, into baying hounds. A wolf broke from the ground and fled, whining to shore; a boar; a snake; a hundred scuttling, new-made things. 

It was Merlin. Merlin’s blood, and the rich, dark, lake-fed earth. At his feet, where the gold and the blood fell into the clay, life burst and bounded and howled forth. 

Arthur stopped before him. His lungs burned. His heart was a sparrow’s heart. 

“Merlin,” he breathed.

Merlin’s mouth twitched. “Arthur.”

Smoke poured from between his lips. Ruddy flames licked at his throat, his hair, his arms. Arthur reached out and put his hand to Merlin’s burning cheek.

“Don’t,” said Merlin. “The fire—”

“I don’t care.”

“You can’t be here,” Merlin hissed. “You can’t. You’ll drown. You’ll burn.”

“There is nowhere else I could ever be,” Arthur said, “but at your side.” His hand blistered and cracked. He pressed his forehead to Merlin’s. “This,” he whispered, “is one of the other times. Now tell me how to save you. Tell me how to bring you home, because I’m not leaving without you.”

Merlin sobbed.

“Please, Merlin.”

“The cuffs,” he forced out.

Arthur’s heart went cold.

“No, Merlin,” he said hollowly. “No, not that. You’ll die. Your magic’s all that’s keeping you here.”

“I’m already dead. Don’t make me kill you too. I don’t think I could bear it. At least now— at least now you could bring me home.”

“Merlin—”

“Please, Arthur.”

And Arthur was weak. He could not deny him anything. Even if it broke him. He nodded. Stepped away. The cold-iron cuffs were still at his belt, heavy and damning. With shaking hands, he opened them. 

Merlin offered him his wrists, and it was so like, so unlike, that morning with the robbers that Arthur’s breath caught in his throat. 

“Ready?” he managed. 

And Merlin kissed him. Driving rain, and lightning wound like yarn, and the endless, untouched, private dark. He smiled against Arthur’s mouth, and it was dizzying. There was blood on his lips, on his tongue, and fire, and something bright and pure and good that could only be his magic. 

The cuffs clicked shut. The water rushed in, and in the second before it closed around them, in the whirling, tight-furling light, Merlin’s eyes flashed a brilliant blue. 

The waves broke into silver, pearled bubbles. Sand kicked up glittered in their wake. Arthur and Merlin hung suspended in the shining green. Heads bent, hands clasped. The lake fell around them like a favourite blanket. Slowly, slowly, they sank into the dark. 

Then Arthur pulled Merlin’s limp body close, and struck out towards the rippled, distant, sunlit surface. 

He swam.

Water between his fingers, beneath his palms, in his mouth and ears and eyes. Merlin’s head against his shoulder, above the water, though he did not breathe. Could not breathe. Would never breathe again. 

He swam.

He pulled Merlin along. The horizon shattered against the waves, fractured in Arthur’s jagged gaze. He gasped. The lake was sweet in his lungs. 

He swam.

His knee split against a rock. Broad hands gripped his arms and dragged him to shore. Across the stones and the rough-hewn sand, through the tangle of clinging, grasping water-weeds. They tried to take Merlin away, but he could not let them. 

They were all speaking at once, the voices of the hands, but their words slid together into a low, whirring hum. The key. The cuffs. Bare, reddened wrists. Unspeakably still.

He fell into the hands, into the waiting arms, and cried. 

West of the lake, black hills rose to enfold the sun. The last few rays of light were a burning, gold-drenched red. It would be fine tomorrow. 

Tonight, Arthur washed Merlin’s body. He wiped the blood and the dust from his face. His arms. His hands. His chest. His legs. His feet. He picked the dirt from beneath his fingernails. He combed his hair until it shone. 

He dressed him again in his own poor servant’s clothes, cleaned and dried by Mordred’s magic. The neckerchief didn’t look right. It was too tight. The folds were too deep. He tied and untied it a dozen times before Gwaine made him stop. 

There were rabbits roasting on make-shift spits. Arthur ate, because Leon handed him a portion on a wide, flat leaf, and it was easier than saying no. Better, too. He knew it was better to eat. He had lost men before. 

He had never lost Merlin before.

He ate. His skin ached. He did not think of pyres. 

They went to their separate corners while light still lingered, and lay in blunt, sleep-like silence. Night spread her cloak across the sky. One by one, the stars flickered on. Someone began to weep. Muffled it in knuckles and clenched teeth. The moon broke free of the treeline. Arthur reached out, and took Merlin’s hand. 

“I was— there was a girl, last summer. Young. Nine, maybe. She had magic, and I… let her go. She was playing with a stray cat, making lights for it to chase. It had a— a black spot on its left ear, and a sort of grey one on its back. The girl wasn’t hurting anyone, but my father would have had her killed for less. My father would have had me kill her for less. And I’ve been thinking, since then. I’ve been thinking that maybe, if my father was wrong about this one child, then maybe he was wrong about— everything, really.

“I didn’t like thinking about it. Because there’s a difference, you see, between Uther my father and Uther my lord. And I’d much rather think that I was just a bad son than that he was a bad king. But he was, wasn’t he? To you, to that girl, he was. But I didn’t want to think of it, so I didn’t. And maybe— maybe if I had thought about it more, I would have been kinder to you, when I found out. No, not kinder. It’s not kindness, is it? Not being cruel? Better, I suppose. I should have been better to you.”

He tried to press warmth into Merlin’s hand, but this wasn’t another cold night, another hunt in winter. There was no living blood, no beating heart, beneath Merlin’s skin. There was only Arthur. He might as well have tried to warm the moon. 

“Doesn’t feel like enough to wish,” he whispered. “Or want. It’s a need, I suppose, but even then. I need you. It’s not heavy enough, is it? Even love. It’s so much more than that. I don’t need myself. I don’t love myself. I just— am. I am you. But you aren’t me. Not anymore.” Up above, the stars bled like spilled ink. Arthur wiped roughly at his eyes. “You know, this— this is why I have you read my speeches over. I don’t make any sense without you.”

The next day, they walked. Arthur and Mordred took turns carrying Merlin. They had wrapped him in Arthur’s cloak. It kept slipping. 

“In the hills over Camelot,” Arthur told Merlin that night, “there’s a clearing. It’s ringed all about with birches. Pale, but not very sad. In the moonlight, they look like they’re made of marble. And it’s all— in the spring, it’s all covered over in flowers. I used to go there, when I was a boy. When I needed quiet. When I felt alone, or when I needed to be.”

They lay shoulder to shoulder on the cold ground. Their hands did not touch.

“I haven’t been there in years.”

Even so, Arthur could feel the emptiness. The absence of warmth, of life.

“I was thinking,” he said softly, “that you might like it. To sleep there, beneath the flowers, with the birches and the moonlight and the brook. And I could— I could come, to visit you. To talk with you, if you wanted me to.”

He closed his eyes. The red glow of the fire beat dully against his eyelids. 

They’d reach Camelot by sundown tomorrow. Gaius would be waiting. Gaius, with his weathered face and steady hands. The courtyard was a wide, empty space. A hundred windows opened onto it, a dozen doors and arches and alleys. Servants everywhere, merchants, courtiers. They would see. They would talk.

Gaius’s heart would break before Arthur could even tell him why. 

“But I will tell him,” Arthur promised. “I’ll tell him what you did. How brave you were.”

Gaius would hate him for it. Or, worse, he wouldn’t. 

He stretched his fingers out, and found the rough, raised skin where the cold iron had touched Merlin’s wrists. He turned his mind to that. To the seam of clear skin and burned. To the guilt, the self-hatred. 

These were comfortable things. Familiar things. Things, Arthur told himself, that he could work into weapons. Things against which he could brace himself. Break himself. 

It didn’t work. The flare of anger, hot and aching, did not come. Bitter hatred did not pool on Arthur’s tongue. 

Because Merlin’s hand was cold, but it was still his. 

Look, he had said once, on one of Arthur’s darker days, there’s no point hating yourself. I already hate you more than you ever could, so you’re just wasting your time. It had startled a laugh out of Arthur, and Merlin had grinned. Worry had pinched at the corner of his mouth. 

It should be harder to hate, he had said earnestly. It is so ugly, so dangerous, so— so hungry, and it demands so high a cost, but it is easy. It’s always right there at your elbow. You can be sad, you can be angry, but Arthur, you must put a name to it, or hatred will do it for you. 

“I don’t know how to mourn,” Arthur whispered. ”I don’t know how to be sad, how to miss you, without telling you about it. But I’m not meant to mourn you. I’m barely even meant to know your name.”

And yet, if you took a knife to Arthur’s heart, if you split it open, it would be Merlin’s name that came spilling out. 

“It’s like I’m only real because of you. When I’m with you. Because I don’t exist, you know, really. Kings never do.”

He opened his eyes, and turned to trace Merlin’s profile. Stark and white now, but he knew it softened with compassion, with sympathy, flushed with righteousness and anger. Creased with a teasing smile, or solemn and startlingly wise.

Arthur could never be frightened or indecisive again. Never wrong, never hasty, never reckless. He couldn’t afford to be, with Merlin gone. Couldn’t afford for anyone else to see him. From tomorrow until the day he died, he could only ever be King Arthur. And in King Arthur’s heart, there was nothing but blood, and it ran Camelot red.

Arthur wanted to drown in it. Wanted to want to drown in it. He tucked his head against Merlin’s shoulder, and tried to breathe. 

And then.

And then, on the very edge of Arthur’s senses, a single, unsteady beat. 

Arthur sat up. In his throat, his heart was a beating drum. His fingers brushed over Merlin’s wrist, over the scarred skin and the smooth, and hesitated over the divot at the corner of his palm.

“Please,” Arthur choked out, “please.”

His hand shook. He curled it into a fist. Arthur knew how to pray. His father had taught him, his nurses, his tutors. He knew the plain prayers of a child, and the ornate ones of a king. He reached for them now, the beautiful words and the old, and found only three. 

“I love you.” 

He opened his hand.

“I love you.”

Put his fingers to Merlin’s wrist.

“I love you.”

And waited.

The forest fell around him like heavy velvet. No sound but Arthur’s stumbling heartbeat. No air but the air he forced in and out of his lungs. 

There.

Pale as a raindrop, faint, hushed, but there. There.

Dizzy with relief, Arthur sagged forward to press his forehead to Merlin’s chest. His hands were shaking. His bones were hollow as a bird’s. 

Another drop. A halting step. 

It would beat in Arthur’s fingers, in his ears, for the rest of his life. He pressed a trembling kiss to Merlin’s wrist. And he found another prayer. The oldest one.

“Thank you.”

He drew himself up. His heart clattered at his ribs, fast and frantic and terrified, and Arthur wondered distantly if it was his heart that was pulling Merlin’s forward. 

“Leon!” he called, feeling slightly mad. “Gwaine, Mordred!”

As the night wore on, life trickled back into Merlin’s body. Piece by piece. His heartbeat, slow and faltering at first, began to quicken. Hours in, as the moon began to droop, he took a breath. Shallow. Hallowed. 

“There are… stories,” Mordred had said, after the disbelief, and the pity, and the grim resignation, and the sudden, dazzling hope. They’d sat around Merlin’s sleeping body and watched him come to life, and Mordred had folded his hands in his lap, and said, “There are stories, about Merlin. Emrys, the druids call him.” 

And he’d told them. Dredged up the prophecies, and the oldest rumours, and handed them like a hangman’s rope to Arthur. And Arthur had sat, and listened. He had not let go of Merlin’s hand. 

Dawn came, and the knights left in search of horses. They had no money, but they had their swords and their armour. It would be enough to buy five horses. 

Arthur stayed in the glade, with Merlin. He sat very still. A statue of a man holding vigil. Light poured down through the trees, and washed over Merlin’s face. There was colour in his cheeks again, deepened by the newborn sun into a heady, stained-glass red. 

His eyelids flickered.

“Merlin?”

A sound like a cracked rib. Pain. Fear. It was on his face, too, all tight and wretched. 

“I’m here,” Arthur promised, seizing his hand and holding on tight. “I’m right here.”

“Arthur.”

“Right here,” he whispered. 

“’S cold.”

“You were— you were gone for a while,” he said carefully. 

His hand in Merlin’s was clumsy with warmth, rough and bruising in its unabashed life. Merlin made a soft, broken sound, and curled his hand weakly around Arthur’s.

“Never been gone so long before,” he murmured.

The implications of that caught in Arthur’s throat. 

“Do you— do you remember it? Being gone?”

Merlin shuddered. “Yes.”

There were tears gathering at the corners of his eyes, slipping down his white temples into his midnight hair. Gently, Arthur wiped them away. 

And Merlin opened his eyes. 

His lashes brushed against Arthur’s palm. His eyes looked like— like Merlin’s eyes. That was all. Not the sky or the sea at noon, not a field of forget-me-nots or bluebells or cornflowers. They were the eyes Arthur woke to every morning, and the last ones he saw at night, and the ones he met over a thousand campfires and desks and training-grounds in between. Nothing in the world was like them.

Shakily, Merlin raised his hand to Arthur’s face. Traced the shadows beneath his eyes, the tear-tracks, the burns.

“I’m so sorry,” he whispered. 

Arthur caught his hand. “Don’t be.”

“I hurt you.”

“You came back,” Arthur said. “That’s all that matters. You came back.”

“For you,” said Merlin wryly.

And it was— it should have been— enormous. Incomprehensibly vast, and heavier than any crown. But it made sense, really. Arthur had been living for Merlin for years. He had lied for him, defied his father for him, fought for him. Merlin’s eyes were a keen and weary blue, and Arthur knew he would always be looking for them. He knew that he could be dead a thousand, two thousand years, and would drag himself out of whatever heaven, hell, or warriors’ field he found himself in if Merlin only asked. 

His thumb skimmed the curve of Merlin’s cheek.

“How are you feeling?” he asked quietly.

“Better. Alive. But it’s— it’s a strange kind of life, now that I’ve known the other. Small, you know. And…”

“And?”

“Well. And nothing.”

His jaw had hardened a little. He wouldn’t quite meet Arthur’s eyes, but was staring steadily at a point just above his left eyebrow.

“And your magic?” Arthur guessed. Merlin nodded tightly. “You can tell me, you know. If you want to.”

“I can’t, though, can I?” said Merlin bitterly. “It wouldn’t be fair to you, because you— I can’t. I can’t make the king party to treason.”

“You wouldn’t be.”

Merlin stared. “What?”

Arthur blinked back. “I didn’t mean to say that. Or— well, I did. But not like that.”

“You’re… lifting the ban?”

“I’m going to try. For you.”

Merlin tried to sit up, and failed spectacularly. Arthur caught him before he hit his head. 

“You can’t do that,” he said as Arthur tucked the cloak around him.

“You don’t want me to?”

“Of course I want you to!” Merlin snapped. “But I— I am not reason enough to upend your kingdom, Arthur, to undo everything your father worked for. I have done… awful things, I’ve— and this cannot be for me, for what I’ve done this week. It has to come from you. It has to be for all your people, not just—”

He coughed, curling in on himself as his shoulders jerked and twitched. Arthur took the waterskin from the ground beside him, and held it while he drank.

“Thank you,” Merlin rasped.

“I misspoke,” said Arthur, capping the waterskin. “I’m not doing it for you. I’m doing it because of you. Because you are honest, and you are good— you are, Merlin— and because you are everything I want for Camelot. Everything I dream Albion could be, if we just gave it a chance. Because I am the man you’ve made me more than I am my father’s son.”

Merlin’s cool fingers pressed against his chin, and he let himself meet his eyes. Merlin scrutinized him. 

“You really mean it,” he said at length.

He sounded startled. A little awed. He let his hand fall. 

“I do,” Arthur said earnestly, taking it. “I really, really do.”

Merlin grinned up at him. “Well then,” he said. “My magic.”

“Your magic.”

Merlin laughed giddily. “My magic. Like we say it every day.” He sobered, casting his eyes down to their joined hands. “It’s… I don’t know. It aches, I suppose.”

“Badly?”

“No, not very badly. It’s just— not there. Like a missed step.”

“Will it come back?”

“I did. It will, too.”

“Like— like a pulled muscle, right? Or a sprain. You’ve stretched it too thin, or twisted it too far out of shape, and it needs to settle before you use it again.”

“Yeah,” said Merlin, soft, surprised. “Yeah, like that.”

“So I,” said Arthur, affecting a tone of pompous magnanimity, “shall grant you a day off.”

“A whole day, sire?” Merlin said. “I’m honoured.”

“You should be,” Arthur informed him. He brushed the hair off Merlin’s forehead. “Really, though. Take as long as you need to recover. Fully recover, mind you. Not like last year, with the cold. And— and you don’t have to come back to work at all, if you don’t want to.”

“Trying to get rid of me, then?”

Arthur laughed. It didn’t sound quite right. “Trying to let you go.”

“Don’t bother,” Merlin said, and his tone was light but his eyes were suddenly quite serious. “I’d only come back.”

“Would you?”

“Every time.”

“Doesn’t feel right, you doing my laundry.”

“I don’t actually do your laundry. I bring it down to the laundresses, and then I bring it back.”

“You know what I mean.”

“Yes. I do. But I like it, you know. I like taking care of you, and not just with— giant serpents and things. I like making sure your shirts are mended, and your floors are clean, and your bed made. I like bringing you your meals. Hearing about your day. That’s what I was most afraid of losing, when you found out.”

“Me too,” Arthur said. “Terrified.”

“But we can still have it, can’t we?”

His voice was blurring at the edges, all soft and drowsy. He was— lovely, like this. In this light, in this life, in this moment. Gingerly, Arthur stretched out beside him, lying on his side so that their faces were only inches apart. Their hands were clasped loosely between them.

“Anything,” he whispered. 

Merlin’s palm was growing warm against Arthur’s. With his other hand, he circled the ridge of Arthur’s knuckles. 

“And do you think…”

“I try my best.”

“Hush.” Merlin tapped his wrist. “I’m being serious.” He tilted his chin up to meet Arthur’s eyes, and Arthur’s breath caught. “What you said in the lake, before I went,” he said slowly. “Could we have that, too?”

And Arthur was— weak. He was a coward. And his weakness and his cowardice choked him, so that all he could say, shattered and thin, was, “Merlin.”

“It’s alright,” said Merlin gently. “If you can’t say it, or if… or if you don’t want to say it, it’s alright.”

He meant it. Arthur could tell he meant it. He was offering him oblivion, absolution, and Arthur could have taken it as he had taken so much before. 

“No,” he managed. He gripped Merlin’s hand tightly. “No, I have to say it. I must say it, for you. You are… braver than I will ever have to be. You have given me your life. All I have to offer you is my heart, and even then I’m terrified. I— care about you. More than I can say, I always thought. But I owe it to you to try.”

Merlin pressed their foreheads together. His breath was warm on Arthur’s cheek.

“Go on, then,” he said.

Arthur took a steadying breath. Merlin’s hand curled a little tighter around his.

“I love you,” Arthur said shakily, “with everything I have. And even if I had nothing, that nothing would love you too. You are my favourite madness, and the only thing that keeps me sane, and the days you were dead were the loneliest I’ve ever lived.”

“I love you, too,” Merlin whispered. “I love you in every way I know how to love.”

His smile was a soft, delighted thing. Arthur tucked a kiss into each sweet dimple, into the laughing, intoxicating corner of his mouth. 

Soon, the others will be back with the horses. Soon, they will be on the road again, and Camelot’s towers will bloom across the horizon. Soon there will be laws to pass, treaties to amend, council members to convince and to placate. 

A kingdom to run. A golden age to usher in.

Now, though, the trees are whispering together, heads bent, and the clouds sway down to catch their secrets. Arthur’s cloak is thick and warm.

Soon the world will catch up. But for now, for the first time in a long time, it does not snap at their heels. Sun-drenched, hand in hand, they watch it lope towards them, and speak drowsily of what it will bring. They share lazy kisses. They press open palms to beating hearts. They make promises they never thought they’d make, but always knew they’d keep. 

The world is coming. But they have time.

They have time.