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Chapter Text

People with magic whisper.

Seldom do they speak, even in the quietest places of Camelot, deep in its forests and along the sun-lit edges of its moors where wandering kings do not roam for fear of spying another king and breaking the fragile peace between their kingdoms.

Morgana has grown used now to the whispering.

The ever-present susurrus lulls her to sleep and wakens her with all the gentleness her dreams in Camelot were missing.

She is alone these days: no sister, no leader. Power is her companion, and she grows it as old crones do primroses and meadowsweet around the doorways of their dilapidated huts.

It is a beautiful thing to sit in the forest and grow one’s magic beneath the rays of sunlight that pour through the gaps of the canopy of leaves overhead.

It is peaceful.

Long ago, Morgana lost her shoes.

Her gown from Camelot was the first thing she lost. No longer does she carry with her the thousand stitches made by Guinevere’s hand. The shift she wears now belonged once to Morgause, and before her to another woman with a greater bust and a wider set of ribs than Morgana’s own.

It fits well enough. Just like her new boots and the belt given to her by the druids.

They give her all sorts of things; much more than she needs as she no longer has a room to fill with treasures and baubles.

And yet, she has never felt so pampered, so tended to and fed and trusted.

She is their priestess. To them, her magic—a disgusting, writhing, slimy thing to Uther—is a riverbed. It gives life, it takes it. It flows through them all, and those who feel its touch shiver in gratitude and if not gratitude than awe at all it can do.

Morgana is used to being beautiful. She has spent the majority of her life as a cut sapphire polished and polished to ever-greater gleam.

Since leaving the custody of her jewel-smith, she has discovered that her beauty is not in her face, but in the flow of her rivers, her blood, her waters, her hair, her sinew.

The only thing more beautiful than her magic’s life will be its memory, and somehow, that thought is a peaceful one.

Or rather, it was.

The druids worship her as their priestess, but only that. There is another who she is to worship herself, for she is their priestess, not their god.

The natural world and the magic it makes is the druids’ true north and deity, and while it takes many shapes, lake guardians and moons and the triple goddess herself, there is one shape that roams among men which is particularly captivating to all who whisper.

And she means all the whisperers. Not only the druids.

The lake guardians, the moons, mushroom spirits and sidhe and pixies and trolls and fairies join in whispering the name of this magic.

Emrys, they say.

Immortal wisdom, they mean. Its birth was heralded with flowering boughs on every tree of the forest, great wreaths of evergreens, piles of acorns, and gleaming fish scales scattered along the edges of rivers.

The child Emrys never bore witness to this glorious celebration of its birth; for it was born in Uther’s kingdom soon after the Purge, which is so ironic that its mere mention drives many magical beings to find graves to roll in and throats to throttle in their frustration.

To all, at the very least, Emrys’s arrival means that hope for a better future is upon the horizon in these otherwise extremely dark times.

Morgana’s dreams and those of seers long past offer glimpses of a golden age of magic heralded in by this Emrys and his staff.

Seers past did not have the advantage that Morgana does with these visions. They did not recognize Emrys’s face in their dreams and scrying pools and smoke.

Morgana does however, and the druids do too.

It’s all a little awkward.  

It isn’t that Emrys is disappointing, it’s just that he’s.

Well.

He’s kind of upsettingly normal.

Merlin has quiet, mousy eyes and a lip like Cupid’s indomitable weapon. He flirts with maids and teases children; he goes about with hay-covered clothing and sleeve cuffs covered in layers of darning. Morgana knows for a fact that he has not tasted more than a mouthful of meat in all his life.

He is a poor boy, a servant, and an apprentice.

The druids tell Morgana that he doesn’t quite seem believe them when they’ve explained to him who he is, and they have tried to explain everything to him multiple times.

Merlin thinks they’ve got, in his words, ‘the wrong guy.’

He has other mentors—Gaius, for one and curiously, the dragon Uther imprisoned—and while he is more likely to listen to their word over the druids’, Gaius and this dragon have told him the same exact thing and Merlin allegedly remains convinced that this has all been some great, cosmic mistake.

The druids are not offended by his stubbornness, though Morgana is on their behalf, but more than she is offended, she is perplexed.

Merlin does not appear, in her view, to trust anyone.

Perhaps he listens more closely to Gaius and the dragon, but each time she has seen him since her departure from court, she has been met with the wild, terrified gaze of a spooked stallion.

Morgana has tried speaking directly to Merlin on a few occasions when she’s gotten him alone, but he is seldom keen to stay and hear reason.

He goes back to Arthur’s side every time, and when Arthur is not present for him to return to, he calls lightning down from the sky and winds from the corners of planet; he bleeds stones dry and melts flesh from bones.

The druids believe this is a natural reaction.

They say Merlin is following a series of chaotic, wildly destructive instincts to relocate himself to Arthur’s side without realizing he is doing it precisely because he is Emrys.

For apparently, all things must be in balance; and while Merlin’s power as Emrys is and will be forever unmatched, he is but an arrow in a bow.

Without someone to aim him, he serves no purpose and falls, useless and harmless, to the ground.

In fact, Merlin as Emrys will forever struggle to act in service of himself because Fate has specifically not given him an innate sense of personhood or right and wrong the way She has given almost all other men.

Therefore, through no fault of his own, Merlin will never feel whole. He will forever be searching for an archer, or as some say, the other side of his coin.

Unfortunately for him, the vast majority of magic beings believes that other side is supposed to be Arthur, who they think is the mythical ‘Once and Future King’—an unparalleled warrior-king said to protect the land of magic in past, future, and present.

But the thing is—and Morgana means this in the kindest possible manner—even if he is meant to become the Once and Future King, Arthur is an utter cabbagehead now.

He has no idea that Merlin is fighting tooth and nail to keep him from being murdered by all manner of murderous things, and he has no idea that his treatment of Merlin, which frankly is worse than he treats most of his damn dogs, is not only an insult to the druids that he claims to seek peace with but also is limiting his access to what would otherwise be an endless and terrifying supply of magical might.

If he treated Merlin better, if he understood what Merlin was and what he could be, and if he led Merlin properly instead of leaving him scrambling to make decisions Merlin has no way of making on his own for lack of education, experience, and God-given common-sense, then they’d already all be sitting in a goddamn Golden Age and Morgana would be wearing matching boots.

Not that she doesn’t appreciate her boots.

She very much appreciates her boots.

Thank you, Bryn for making them.

It’s just frustrating to sit back and watch her brother point an arrow directly at his own face while their so-called father goes about congratulating himself on slowly ruining his kingdom.

If Morgana was feeling petty (and she is today, thank you), she would say that she’d do a better job handling Emrys than either of those fools any day of the week.

She talks to Iseldir about it later along with a small council of other elders.

They exchange nervous glances among themselves before telling her what she already knows, which is that there is a prophecy, Arthur and Merlin are two sides of a coin, etc. etc.

She begs them to consider, however, that she is as good as Arthur in all ways royal and kingly, and should something terrible happen to her sweet, empty-headed half-brother (God forbid, may fortune find him, and so on and so on), she would ascend to the throne, regardless of what Uther says or claims about her.

Therefore, it may well be that Arthur must die for the Golden Age to commence and if he dies and takes Emrys with him unwittingly, well, that would be a problem wouldn’t it?

More nervous glances are exchanged around her.

Eventually, the elders say that, while they’re not fully sure that that is how the prophecy is meant to work itself out, it couldn’t hurt for Emrys to become more familiar with magic practitioners besides the esteemed physician he spends his time with.

Any sort of influence to help him in that direction could only be a boon in their eyes.

This is as close to permission as Morgana is going to get, and so she thanks the elders for their wisdom and promises to bring Emrys back from Camelot.

Morgana sets off on a cold morning that turns itself into a languid, lolling hot day. The air in the forest is warm and so thick that even moths struggle to fly.

She forgets until she is stood, panting, on the edge of Camelot’s border that she looks nothing like the noblewoman she is meant to.

Her hair is a right mess. Her hands are reddened and chaffed from scrounging for acorns and edible herbs. She hiked her skirts up miles back to ease her gait.

If Merlin sees her like this, he’ll think that she’s trying to spirit him away to do hard labor in the sticks for the foreseeable future.

She stops by a river and attempts to put herself to order, though she has no comb and no salve to soften her calloused hands with. A few plaits piled up on the crown of her head take care of the first problem and a quick bath in the water takes care of her body’s smell if not the roughness of her palms.

She reminds herself of her dignity as she takes up her skirts again and struts on towards Camelot.

Uther will be there.

Arthur will be there.

Gwen will be there.

And Morgana will have to ignore all of them.

Her eyes must remain on the greatest prize of all.

Said prize is sitting outside in the shade of a parapet when Morgana finally makes her way to the castle gates. Getting through Camelot-town was more of a hassle than expected.

For all her lack of finery, every suitor and nobleman’s son in all of Camelot seems to have remembered her face and forgotten her total lack of interest in their romantic fluttering. Worse than the suitors are the bakers, who swore allegiance to her some years back for some piece of legislation she harangued Uther into adopting, though it has been so long now she cannot remember which, only that it benefited town and village bakers all over.

She hoped they would have forgotten by now. She only wanted to make her way unnoticed.

Alas, they have not, and alas, a journey that should have taken an hour at most has taken two and she has received—despite her public estrangement from the king—no fewer than four marriage proposals.

How she coped with all this before she fled, she has no idea. No druid man has ever bothered her with an offer of his hand except to help her up into a tree she could not climb on her own.

Still, finally at Camelot’s gates, she spots Merlin right away.

The heat must have driven him out of the castle the way water does rats from the corners of houses. His head hangs between his bent knees. A dampened cloth soaks the back of his neck.

Gwen takes it away and lays a gentle hand on Merlin’s wet nape.

Morgana shakes her head in disbelief.

Merlin and Gwen?

Are they—?

Surely not.

She watches with raised eyebrows as Gwen plunges the cloth into a small bowl of water and re-lays it where it was before.

Merlin sags ever-more forward.

Gwen smiles a little and looks up, directly at Morgana. Morgana catches herself in her surprise and steps back behind one of the wooden gates. She gives a little wave.

Gwen’s bowl tips right out of her lap as she starts to stand, looks down at Merlin and then back. Morgana gestures minutely behind her and steps away.

Gwen knows where to find her. Only minutes later they collide with each other on the other side of a small hedge of wild brambles by a duckpond near the castle’s western gate.

“Morgana?” Gwen gasps. “What are you doing here?”

Morgana holds a finger to her lips.

“Stealing,” she whispers.

“My lady.”

“Some lady,” Morgana titters. “I’m sorry, Gwen. I’ve had no time to explain anything to you.”

“Where is Morgause?”

“No longer.”

“And Cenred? Are you here on Cenred’s business?”

“I am here on business of my own,” Morgana says.

Gwen’s gaze narrows.

“You cannot rely on me to keep your secrets,” she says.

“I have no need to. With you, I’ll be nothing less than honest. I am a new woman, Gwen. Test me, I’ll tell you anything you want.”

It’s been a long time since she and Gwen were able to talk so freely. Is that Morgana’s fault? Yes, yes, okay. Perhaps it is. But it is only her fault as much as it is Uther’s for driving her away as it is.

“What are you here for, then?” Gwen asks.

“Merlin,” Morgana says.

“Merlin?” Gwen repeats as if Morgana has told her to expect a beetle in her stocking on the morrow for good luck.

“He is valuable to the druids,” Morgana says.

“What, Merlin is?”

“He has magic,” Morgana says. “They have magic. I have magic. So you see: valuable.”

Gwen stares at her.

“Are you sure we are talking about the same man?” she asks.

“Very sure,” Morgana says.

“Merlin doesn’t have magic, my lady. He has heatstroke,” Gwen says. “And once he’s through having that, he’ll have six hours of duties to attend to and maybe some sleep after.”

“I said I would be honest. I didn’t say I would make you believe me,” Morgana says, “Can I borrow him?”

“You must mean Arthur. I’m sure if he knew you were here, he would be so pleased to see you—”

“He would not,” Morgana says quickly. “I was thinking Merlin. Can you tell him I’m looking to borrow him for a time?”

“Are you needing a servant?”

“No, dear, I’m needing a Merlin. Please, Gwen?”

“You must mean Arthur. Let me get him—”

“NO. I mean, no, no. I am not seeking an audience with his highness, truly,” Morgana says, clearing her throat. “I am aware of my insults and crimes against his honor and people and I have been well-warned of his impending fury should we meet again.”

“Oh, but he has missed you, Morgana,” Gwen says. “I swear it, we can all see it. He and the king have left your quarters untouched.”

“How lovely for them. Can you ask Merlin if he’s got a moment?”

“My lady.”

“Pretty please? Please, please, please? I’ll go off into the woods right after and never bother you again.”

“Who said I don’t want you bothering me again?” Gwen asks, now with her fists on her hips. “You must talk to the king. You must explain yourself and apologize so that you may come back home. The longer you are away, the more trouble you find yourself in. I can’t stand to watch you be used by man upon man and woman upon woman.”

“Gwen, I would raze mountains for you, but I assure you I am done being used by man upon man and woman upon woman,” Morgana pleads. “I only want to speak with Merlin.”

“For what purpose?” Gwen asks.

“Druid purposes,” Morgana says.

“Such as?”

“Oh, you know. Carving sigils in trees, venerating geese, sacrificing children. The usual.”

Gwen blinks slowly at her. Morgana takes a moment to remember that she’s supposed to be telling truths.

“He’s magic,” she says. “I want to talk to him, to save him from being found out.”

“Like you were?” Gwen asks, softening.

Morgana returns her tender smile.

“Not at all,” she says.

“What?”

“It’s a long story, Gwen. I’m sure you have better things to do than listen to me natter on.”

“I’ve got the rest of the day off, actually,” Gwen says.

Damnit.

Gwen arches a brow.

“Are you in a hurry?” she asks.

Morgana grits her teeth and forces herself to smile.

“Yes,” she says.

“Is speaking to Merlin a matter of urgency?”

“More convenience than urgency.”

“Then I have good news, he’s not going anywhere for a good while,” Gwen says, “Walk with me.”

She holds out her crooked arm. Morgana glances up at the towers overhead. Their windows appear empty, though her skin crawls with the thought of Uther peering out of one at the exact wrong moment and recognizing her stride or her plaited hair.

“Let’s go towards town,” she says.

Gwen smells like flowers, like roses specifically and the realization is so startling that Morgana finds herself barely hearing what Gwen is saying over the need to breathe deep and then deeper.

Everyone who passes them turns their heads to watch them stroll slowly by. One lad runs into a tree.

Morgana squints in fascination.

Gwen says something more about Arthur.

“Are you wearing rosewater?” Morgana asks.

“Wh-oh. Yes?” Gwen says.

Morgana twists her head and stares into Gwen’s dark eyes until she looks away and fans herself with a hand.

They both know that Gwen would never spend her wages on something as frivolous as rosewater. Which means someone gave some to her. Which means someone is courting her.

“Was it Merlin?” Morgana asks.

“It was not Merlin,” Gwen says pointedly.

“Was it that knight with the hair?”

“His name was Lancelot, thanks, and no.”

“Some other man, then.”

“Does it really bother you so much?”

“It does not bother me,” Morgana says.

It only makes her want to slam two rocks together until one crumbles to shards.

“No one is good enough for you, Gwen,” she says.

“Really. No one at all?”

Ah.

It was Arthur. Good to know.

Morgana stops the two of them in their tracks and turns them back towards the castle. Gwen, forced to come along by their interlocked arms, begins protesting and going on about how they’ve barely walked at all.

Morgana sees no issue with this. The more time they spend walking that way, the longer it will take her to find her sweet, darling baby brother and crush him to dust.

“My lady—”

“You are so worthy of being a princess, do you know that?” Morgana says as she brings both herself and Gwen to an abrupt halt.

“I—what?”

“I said, you are worthy of being a princess. Everything about you is princess-ly, look at you,” Morgana says, fluffing Gwen’s spirals and cupping her cheeks.

“Okay?” Gwen says.

“Let me introduce you to another prince,” Morgana says.

Gwen scoffs.

“A druid one?” she teases.

Morgana stares.

“We don’t have princes,” she says. “But I know of a ghost knight, a deer king, a frog prince, a sleeping beauty—”

“Wait, wait.”

“—There’s a headless one, not a prince, but a hard worker if you’re open to ex-nobility.”

“Morgana,” Gwen says. “What are you going on about?”

“Magic,” Morgana says, not bothering to whisper, nor bothering to acknowledge the townpeople who leap into the air at the mere mention of the word. “I’m surrounded by it now. The men are so much better among them, Gwen. Truly, you have no idea. Not all of them, obviously, you’ve got your cheats and your jesters, of course, but if you must have a man, don’t settle for Arthur of all people.”

Gwen gapes.

“Settle?” she repeats. “You think I’m settling?”

Morgana does not know how to say ‘obviously’ any more than she already has and so she devolves into a frantic series of hand and arm gestures that she hopes conveys this instead.

“Are you out of your mind?” Gwen says. “I’m not settling for Arthur. I’m—he—it is a mutual affection.”

“But why?” Morgana blurts out.

“Why not?” Gwen asks, drawing her neck up proudly. “You said I am worthy of being a princess, didn’t you?”

“To literally any other prince,” Morgana says.

“You mean any other prince that you choose?”

“What else could I mean?” Morgana asks.

Gwen’s gaze is at first irritable, but it breaks into good humor before Morgana’s face. She laughs, and Morgana watches her, wondering what, exactly, is funny.

“It is so strange to see you acting so much like your old self,” Gwen says. “I missed you.”

Morgana does not know what that means, nor does she wish to.

“I have…missed you as well,” she admits. “But do you really mean to involve yourself with Arthur?”

“As long as he proves himself honorable,” Gwen says.

“See,” Morgana says, “This is the exact issue I am having. On this? We agree.”

“On what?”

“On this. His honor. It is deficient. It is negligible at best.”

“No, not Arthur.”

“Yes, Arthur,” Morgana says. “Do you see how he treats Merlin?”

“Since when did you care so much about Merlin?” Gwen asks. “Unless?”

Absolutely not.

“I would rather drown,” Morgana says. “This isn’t about that.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

“I’m only saying.”

“Well, I’m only telling.”

“He’s a fair young man, you know. No one would blame you. The kitchen maids adore him.”

“Gwen,” Morgana says, stopping them again so they can get this straightened out here and now. “The last man I want to tie myself to forever is my brother’s unholy manservant. This is not an issue of romance. It is a matter of efficiency. Necessity. Merlin is a catalyst.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Gwen says. “Why are you so serious?”

“It means that he is the cause of future change, great future change,” Morgana says.

“Merlin is?”

“Yes. He is Emrys. Emrys. The immortal wisdom. The greatest sorcerer this land and any shall ever know,” Morgana says.

Gwen’s brow twists in silence.

“I think you’re confusing Merlin with Gaius,” she says. “Not that Gaius does that kind of thing anymore.”

“I’m not,” Morgana says. “Gaius is my third problem. I will deal with him once I’ve cleared the other two from the field.”

“You’re not making sense.”

“It is too much to explain,” Morgana sighs. “What matters is that Arthur is being irresponsible with Emrys, and Emrys cannot be the greatest sorcerer of all time when he’s in a constant state of seeking approval.”

“Okay?” Gwen says. “I’m pretty sure that Arthur would know if the ‘greatest sorcerer of all time’ was looking to him for approval.”

Morgana stares.

Gwen stares back innocently.

Morgana sighs.

“Take me to my foul brother,” she says. “Let’s just get this over with.”

Chapter Text

Arthur starts with a grimace that he attempts to turn into an embrace which Morgana side-steps with grace.

She informs him that he is a boorish, hollow-headed, ignorant prince and while she does not approve of his romancing of Guinevere, she is willing to overlook it and keep it a secret from Uther if Arthur does her the singular favor of handing over Emrys.

Arthur takes a long, long time to understand all those words together and asks Gwen if Morgana is acting like herself. He asks Gwen. When Morgana is standing right in front of him.

There is no greater proof that he is undeserving of the gifts the goddesses have granted him.

“I believe so, my lord,” Gwen says with a bobbing curtsey.

“Right,” Arthur says. “Well, er.”

“Emrys, now,” Morgana says.

“I don’t know who that is,” Arthur says flatly. “And even if I did, I can’t just give you a servant. You know that.”

“I’m not asking for a servant, I’m asking for a sorcerer,” Morgana says.

“Keep your voice down,” Arthur hisses. “You know there are no sorcerers here in this castle but for yourself.”

“If you won’t give him to me, I’ll be forced to take him,” Morgana says.

“Take who? For what?” Arthur says. “Morgana, listen. Let us talk somewhere private.”

“I’m alright, thanks very much. I’ll just be taking his Greatness and tromping off,” Morgana says.

“Sister.”

“Ah-ah. No. We’re not doing that,” Morgana says. “Give me Emrys.”

“Sister,” Arthur says again. “Please. Let us speak together honestly and openly. You are so…”

He trails off, seeking out Gwen’s face as if she knows how to more politely describe Morgana’s disheveled appearance and ruddy hands.

Morgana waits.

“Unlike yourself,” Arthur eventually lands on. “Father’s heart would break if he saw you like this.”

“It’s a good job he won’t be, then, isn’t it?” Morgana says.

“Morgana.”

“I did not come here to listen to people singing my name.”

“What will you have me do?” Arthur asks. “Why did you come here? What can I offer you that will convince you to stay?”

“I already told you what I am here for, and there is no need for threats or accommodations. I live with the druids now,” Morgana says.

“And that woman,” Arthur scowls.

“That woman is dead,” Morgana corrects him. “And she was my sister, so I’ll ask you to have some respect.”

“So she may be your sister, but I am not your brother?” Arthur scoffs.

“You may be half by a technicality.”

“Wow.”

“Give me Emrys, Arthur. This is a waste of both of our time.”

“Father must see you.”

“Father can choke.”

“How dare you.”

“Well, well, well,” Morgana croons, “Where has your passion gone, brother-mine? That was the weakest ‘how dare you’ I’ve ever heard. Perhaps now that you are also affected by Father’s disproval, you finally have begun to understand why I cannot stand to be in his sight?”

Arthur shifts his weight and raises his arms to cross them over his chest. He has gotten taller somehow in Morgana’s absence. She liked him better when they were the same height.

She liked him best when he was away at Sir Ector’s estate during his early summers as a squire.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Arthur says mulishly.

“I’m sure you do,” Morgana says, glancing again towards Gwen. “You know how Father feels about affectionate servants.”

Arthur’s proud chin holds steady.

“You can speak his name like poison, but it will not change the fact that he is yours as much as he is mine,” he says. “You belong here with us.”

“Please. The moment he discovered what I am, he was content to throw me away with the other riff-raff,” Morgana says. “But the jest is upon him now. I am content with the druids. I am happy to be rid of this place and its daily horrors, let me tell you. But on behalf of those who do accept me, I have returned and, in their peaceful name, I ask you one more time to release Emrys from your service. If you cannot bear to release him entirely, I understand, in that case release him into my service and I will do what need be done.”

“If he is in my service, then I will release him happily on one condition,” Arthur says.

“Alright,” Morgana deadpans.

“You will speak to Father.”

“Fine,” Morgana says. “Bring out the torches, see if I care.”

Everyone in this castle is just so emotional. Morgana is weary of them. She did not come here to be pleaded with or held at arm’s length and wept over.

Merlin is still laying around outside, defenseless and probably rotting away into bones as she stands here and endures some awful speech about how Gaius learned how to divest himself of his magic ways and how there is surely hope for her to do the same.

She finds herself growing ever more impatient and snappish.

“I do not want to divest myself,” she tells Uther and his dribbling tears. “This is who I am.”

“No. No, you have been manipulated, my poor girl,” Uther says. “Morgause convinced you that this is the only way you can live.”

She didn’t, actually, though not for lack of trying.

“Father,” Morgana says as sweetly and patiently as she would to a child, “I did not become this way to hurt you. I did not wake up one morning and ask God to become the very thing you most despise. I simply woke up. And there I was. And there you weren’t. So what was I to do? My options were to risk the loss of your affection and burn on a pyre or to stand proud as your enemy. Would you have rather I have stayed here so that you could slay me yourself?”

Uther’s blunt, bare fingers cup the air under her chin. She can feel their warmth.

It does not move her.

“Losing an arm would be less painful than losing you,” Uther says.

Were she in any other mood, Morgana might have taken pity upon him then and there. She might have choked upon a matching set of glistening tears and thrown herself into his arms the way she did as a child.

But frankly, they’re burning daylight and Emrys is not going to come quietly, so she needs to get this show on the road if she hopes to put some distance between these people and his and her beautiful partnership.

“I do not pretend that you are not standing at the crux of an impossible decision, my lord,” she says. “I am humbled by the war I see in you between your heart and your principles.”

“Morgana,” Uther pleads.

“Allow me the kindness of making the decision for you,” Morgana says. “I am the priestess of the druids.”

“Morgana, no.”

“We are a peaceful people. I have pledged to them to be peaceful myself, though they know there is yet anger in my heart for my treatment by the people and court of Camelot. However, I am now guided by their principles, and I wish only to negotiate for the release of a servant of this court into our care for such a time to be decided between yourself and me.”

“Why?” Uther asks.

“Because,” Morgana says. “He is to be the greatest sorcerer of all time, and your son has failed to appreciate the power he has been dealt by fate and your own kindness, my lord.”

“Gaius is the only sorcerer remaining in this court,” Uther says. “And you know he no longer practices, and though I was once privy to the whole of his power before our laws prohibited such things, I am afraid that, er—well, I would hardly call such magic the ‘greatest of all time.’”

Morgana arches an eyebrow as she watches Uther do a rather peculiar dance around this subject. It gives her the impression Gaius used to take regular shots at his pride for sport in the days of yore, and though he was not impressed by the sting, he is not in a hurry to forget it either.

“I’m not talking about Gaius,” she says. “I’m talking about Emrys. Do you know the prophecy of Emrys?”

Arthur tsks and opens his mouth, but Uther, to Morgana’s surprise, holds a hand out to silence him.

“I am aware of this prophecy,” he says.

“Sorry, what?” Arthur says.

“But it is only that,” Uther says. “Not all prophecies come true, Morgana. Surely the druids have taught you this.”

“What prophecy?” Arthur asks.

“This one is confirmed,” Morgana says. “Emrys has been identified among our people. He is confirmed to be himself. The Once and Future King remains to be witnessed.”

A muscle in Uther’s cheek jumps in irritation.

“Emrys is a druid, then?” he asks.

“No,” Morgana says. “He is a servant, my lord.”

“Does he know he is Emrys?” Uther asks.

“Who’s Emrys?” Arthur asks.

“He has not adopted the title,” Morgana says.

“He has not adopted it or he has refused it?” Uther asks.

Morgana’s lips curl without her permission. Uther huffs in amusement.

“The greatest sorcerer of all time,” he says, “Doesn’t believe the druids?”

“He will be convinced,” Morgana says. “I will convince him.”

“My dear daughter. Your prophecy links your sorcerer to a king, not a priestess,” Uther says.

“So I’ll kill Arthur first and then you,” Morgana says.

“A king, my girl,” Uther repeats, then chuckles. “The Greatest sorcerer of all time,” he repeats. “And he is in…Arthur’s service, is that what you think?”

She said too much.

“I am asking that you release him into mine. I will remove him from your court. Camelot will be pure once more,” she says.

“And in doing so, I will give the druids a weapon unlike any this world has known?”

“You don’t like magic, Uther.”

“I am not a fool. If the servant’s talents wither under Arthur’s command, then let them wither. There is no benefit for Camelot in any other arrangement.”

“Emrys is chaotic,” Morgana counters. “If he is not appropriately directed, he will succumb to madness and attack his own side and himself. You know magic. You know what it does to those left unmoored. Is it worth the risk to keep him in this court? How long do you think you can stave it off? How long do you think he can resist his destiny without someone to aid him? Ignorance is not bliss, Father. Look what happened to me.”

That actually seems to give Uther pause. Morgana seizes the moment before he can get another word in.

“You cannot execute him,” she says. “Emrys cannot die. Your pyres, your swords mean nothing to him.”

Uther’s nostrils flare as he draws himself up to his full height.

“Sorry,” Arthur says, literally inserting himself between him and Morgana, “Can we go back to the—”

“Emrys is a sorcerer,” Morgana hurls at him. “It has been foretold that he will aid the Once and Future King in uniting kingdom of Albion and in turn, the Once and Future King will aid him in bringing upon us a golden age of magic. One cannot exist without the other. That Emrys has risen means the Once and Future King has, too.”

Arthur looks to Uther.

“Kind of a vague prophecy, don’t you think? The Once and Future King? Could be anyone,” he says.

Uther stares at Morgana.

“You’re suggesting that Arthur is the Once and Future king,” he says.

“Aren’t you proud?” Morgana says with the sharpest smile she can muster. “Or are you upset that it isn’t you?”

“Arthur will not bring magic to Camelot,” Uther says.

“I know,” Morgana says. “So, really, I’m doing you both a favor. If I leave Emrys here, fate will undo all your hard work.”

“Arthur is standing right here,” Arthur points out. “And I know for a fact that there are no sorcerers in my service.”

Morgana and Uther consider him.

“I suppose you will not reveal his name to me,” Uther says.

“If I did, would you give him to me?” Morgana asks.

“If I did, will you use him against this kingdom?” Uther counters.

“The druids are a peaceful people.”

“I am not asking about the druids.”

“You have no need to worry,” Morgana says, “Emrys is compelled to seek his King’s counsel; if I ill treat him, he will simply kill me and return to his king’s side.”

There is a long pause.

“Morgana,” Uther says, “I cannot give you someone who would slaughter you for so little.”

“Why not?” Morgana demands.

“Because you are my daughter.”

“That did not matter to you before.”

“Who said it did not matter?”

“YOU did in everything you EVER did.”

“I did what I needed to, to protect you—”

“No, you did what you needed to, to protect Arthur.”

“Voices,” Arthur pleads.

“You cannot inherit the throne. Were things different—”

“You could make them different.”

“You of all people know that is not true. This kingdom is fragile, loyalty is paramount. I cannot afford to upset the balance of power.”

“I am no longer asking you to upset it, I am only asking that you give me Emrys.”

“I shall not. The risk of his betrayal is not worth your life.”

“You don’t care about my life. I have magic.”

“I don’t care that you have magic.”

“I CAN’T UNDERSTAND YOU.”

“It is not magic that will destroy this kingdom, Morgana,” Uther roars, “It is the betrayal of those who wield it which will be its undoing.”

“So you mean that we are untrustworthy?” Morgana says. “You think we have no honor?”

“Magic has no honor,” Uther says.

“Magic does not have honor because it simply is,” Morgana snarls. “It will exist with or without your permission. It will be here no matter what you do. Magic cannot die. That is the point of Emrys, Father. He exists as proof to us us that our wisdom, our energy is immortal, that we will always be here. It is up to you to decide if you will strengthen your kingdom with our alliance or not.”

“Give me his name,” Uther says. “And if you can prove to me that he will not betray this kingdom, I will let you have him.”

Morgana laughs out loud.

“You cannot prove Emrys’s loyalty without proving first that Arthur is the Once and Future King,” she says. “Which none of us can do.”

“None?” Uther says.

“If you don’t believe me, then ask your court physician,” Morgana says.

“There is a way,” Gaius says.

Morgana screams silently into her hands. Uther straightens his spine at the other side of the table in triumph.

“Does it involve magic, Gaius?” Uther asks.

“None needed, my lord,” Gaius says in an almost bored tone that makes Morgana want to suffocate him.

“You can’t know that,” she says. “Iseldir doesn’t even know this.”

“With all due respect,” Gaius says with a sharp, disproving glance her way, “I am not a druid, my lady. They have their ways of knowing the world, and I have mine.”

“What does that even mean?” Morgana growls.

Gaius turns his peaked brow upon Uther. They hold each other’s gaze for several long beats before Uther says,

“There are as many kinds of magic as there are practitioners.”

Gaius seems pleased with that answer.

“You might call them schools of thought,” he says. “Those of us interested in the healing arts have developed a series of proofs to help us ascertain whether a being of prophecy is who they are said to be. We are methodical like that you see, where our friends the druids are more inclined towards trusting the impressions they receive from the various elements out there in the woods.”

“Emrys has rather obvious criteria,” Gaius goes on before Morgana can inform him firmly that those ‘elements out there in the woods’ have yet to steer her wrong, “A natural affinity for casting and lifting spells without the need for verbal articulation, an innate ability to manipulate natural phenomenon, and limitless shape-shifting. If all three criteria are not met, the person is not Emrys. If all three are met, the person is likely Emrys, though a healer might check for a soul bond next or a seer might ponder his future for greater confirmation.”

“And the king?” Morgana asks.

“The king is not said to have magic, so his identity will be harder to gauge,” Gaius says. “The most efficient way to know would be to check for a soul bond with Emrys, since the Once and Future King will be the only bond that Emrys has.”

“And how do you check for a soul bond?” Morgana asks.

“Poison,” Gaius says.

“Alright,” Uther says before he’s even finished.

“Or venom,” Gaius adds.

“No venom,” Uther says in a tone that makes Morgana feel like he’s had this conversation before.

“Certain rocks.”

“Physician.”

“When I was a boy, we’d stand the two in the light of a full moon and check their shadows for extra heads.”

“Gaius, we have discussed this.”

“The most humane way is to simply ask the patient in question,” Gaius carries on, “We have found that those who do have such bonds are often aware of them, even if they do not have words for the sensation.”

All eyes go to Arthur.

“Do you have any particular compulsions towards someone, my lord?” Gaius asks.

Arthur blinks.

“Such as?” he says.

“A desire to protect or defend? Uncomfortable sensations when you are apart from another?”

“Uh.”

Morgana drags a hand down her face.

“Do you find yourself ruminating on someone or something in particular?” Gaius asks. “A reoccurring dream, perhaps?”

“Oh,” Arthur says. “Well. Maybe it’s, er, nothing. But I dream of a dragon fairly often.”

“A dragon?” Uther repeats.

“Yes,” Arthur says.

“What sort of dragon, son? Our crest?”

“No,” Arthur says with a frown. “I don’t know how to explain it. It’s a dragon, but it’s—it’s not like a dragon that I see. It’s a, it’s like a feeling about a dragon. There’s someone—it’s this soaring feeling. Like a when you’re falling asleep and you dream that you’re falling from the sky.”

Gaius’s herb-filled chambers are filled with sunlight; the silence that follows feels out of place in them.

“How do you know it’s a dragon?” Morgana asks.

“I just know,” Arthur says.

Gaius hums and nods.

“Is that it?” Arthur asks. “I mean. People dream of things all the time, don’t they?”

“They do,” Gaius says.

“It doesn’t make it some kind of—some kind of soul bond, does it?”

“Not necessarily.”

“So I could be normal, right? Not this prophesized whatever, yes?”

Gaius looks to Uther when he says, “You could be.”

Uther passes a hand over his chin and lips. The sound of his unshaved whiskers against his equally rough skin is so familiar that Morgana is struck by a pang of biting nostalgia in her stomach.

“What says the dragon on this?” Uther asks.

“What dragon?” Gaius says airily.

“I know you consult with him.”

“Ah. That dragon,” Gaius says. “Well, he is rather set on the idea that Arthur is, without a doubt, the Once and Future King.”

“Since when?”

“Since he was born, sire.”

“And you did not tell me?”

“Nimueh did, did she not?”

There comes a long pause.

“Did she not?” Gaius asks again.

Uther clears his throat.

“I do not trust her word,” he says.

Gaius’s expression could melt sand into glass.

“Yes, well. Occasionally, her crows and magpies do deliver clear knowledge upon her,” he says.

“Did,” Uther corrects.

“Forgive me for saying so, but no one has tried to hide this from you, my lord, nor from her lady Ygraine. We all agreed that the boy would be legendary and were sure to say so to both yourself and her lady. It was not flattery, though I suppose I presumed incorrectly that you already knew that.”

“Me?” Arthur says. “Wh—why?”

“Why?” Gaius asks him back. “Why? Arthur, you are a child born of magic. You are, as far as magic is concerned, part of it and one with it. Why would those who practice the old ways not see in you a great power and destiny?”

Morgana is not gloating. She is above gloating. She is only looking with very large and sympathetic eyes upon her father.

That’s all she’s doing.

“So we’re both tied up in this?” Arthur finally realizes in a quiet voice.

Gaius laces his fingers together.

“Your father has sought only to protect you,” he says, obviously to placate the king. “Magic is a dangerous art. The majority of practitioners choose to pursue it, but now and again certain persons are born into it without a choice of their own.”

“Like me,” Morgana says.

Gaius inclines his head her way in an extraordinarily satisfying admission of what Morgana knew all along.

“And Emrys? He was born into it? Like me?” Arthur asks.

“Like Morgana,” Gaius corrects him.

“So—so he can’t help it.”

Arthur looks to Uther with pleading eyes.

“He can’t help it?” he asks in a more boyish tone.

Uther will not look at him. Morgana wants to seize his face and force him to.

She does not, however.

Iseldir will be so pleased with her.

“Emrys is a threat to this kingdom,” Uther says.

“Emrys does not have the same capacity for moral reasoning that Arthur does, no,” Gaius says.

“You flatter me, Gaius,” Arthur says.

“Yes, well. Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Gaius says. “I did not say that your moral reasoning was yet up to par, my lord.”

“What?”

“You are young,” Uther says.

He refrains from tacking ‘and wildly immature’ onto the edge of that statement, but Morgana hears it anyways.

“Does Emrys know how to serve his purpose?” Uther asks Gaius.

“Emrys is Arthur’s junior in both age and world experience, my lord,” Gaius says. “Most fish are better aware of their lives’ ambitions than he.”

“Can he be informed?”

“He has been informed. He simply refuses to believe those of us doing the informing.”

“He does not believe he has a purpose?”

“He does not believe he is Emrys,” Gaius corrects.

“Is—what—is there are reason for that?” Uther asks.

“Well,” Gaius says. “I think, if you knew who he was, you would understand.”

This is an understatement. Morgana nods in pitying agreement.

“But you will not tell me,” Uther says.

“Only the Once and Future King can, my lord,” Gaius says, turning to Arthur.

Uther rounds upon him, too. His fists find his hips and Arthur startles himself into princely posture.

“If I knew, Father, I would say immediately,” he says.

“So say,” Uther says. “Who do you think is Emrys?”

“I know of no magic user in Camelot—”

“Son, put that aside for now. No one in their right mind would use magic in front of you. I am asking you to ask yourself who it is that you feel bonded with. Is it Leon?”

“What? No. Leon is like a brother to me.”

“Gwaine then?”

“If it is, we’re all doomed.”

“This is not funny, Arthur.”

“I’m not trying to be.”

“Be serious.”

“I don’t know,” Arthur says with wide, empty palms held out in front of him. “How could I possibly know?”

“You must,” Uther says. “Morgana says Emrys is in your service.”

“So a servant? George? Dafyyd? Efa? Why can’t she just tell us?”

“That’s not how this works,” Morgana says. “If you can’t confirm, you aren’t the Once and Future King, and if you aren’t, then Emrys should not be wasting his time with you, and I will be the first to tell him that so that we can go and find that king.”

“But you know,” Arthur says, “And—and Gaius knows, don’t you, Gaius? So this is some test just for me? How is that fair?”

“Son,” Uther groans. “It’s fine if you don’t know. But you must at least try.”

“Because you want me to be this Future king now? You want me to be forever entangled with this Emrys? With magic?” Arthur demands.

“You’re already entangled,” Morgana says. “Look. We know you don’t want Emrys, so we are willing to do whatever we can to un-couple the two of you if need be, and once he is with us, this will no longer be your problem. And if you aren’t actually the Once and Future King, that’s even better. We will take Emrys off your hands and help him find the real one, so they can fulfill the prophecy miles and miles away from here. It’s a winning situation no matter how it works out, you see?  

Uther makes a sound that suggests disagreement, but Morgana ignores him.

“Just feel,” she says. “Just let your heart guide you.”

Arthur clearly does not know how to do this, but he is a good sport about it and stands with his feet a shoulder’s width apart and his knuckles planted on his hips.

He closes his eyes.

“Relax,” Morgana says.

His shoulders slope incrementally.

“Think of the dragon,” she says.

Magic flares around her, curling like fingers in the hair at the very back of her skull.

Emrys has woken outside.

“Do you feel it?” she asks.

Arthur frowns and tilts his head.

The fingers in the back of Morgana’s hair begin to lift at the same time the sunlight in the Gaius’s chambers’ windows begins to fall away.

Uther notices the darkness and glances urgently towards Gaius.

Arthur’s brow, now deeply furrowed, tilts the other way with his head as he, likely for the first time, begins following the thread he has never before noticed in his mind.

He opens his eyes just as the chambers’ door bangs open.

He opens his mouth.

“Get out.”

The room is so dark now, it may well be night. Rain has started chattering on the wooden beams outside.

“Well, well, well,” Morgana says. “Look who’s finally decided to join us.”

Merlin throws the door shut behind him. Anyone looking closely would see that his fingers never actually touch it.

“Get away from him,” Merlin orders.

Arthur stares at him like he’s never seen him before.

“Merlin?” he breathes.

“I said, get away from him,” Merlin says.

Morgana steps back and holds her hands up.

“Easy,” she says. “I’m not touching him.”

“What brought you here? Who let you through the gates?” Merlin demands.

“I wish you no harm.”

“Merlin, stop.”

Immediately, like a hound on a chain, Merlin’s fury locks into place. It is as if he has frozen. That alone is proof enough in Morgana’s books.

She looks to Arthur with bouncing eyebrows.

Arthur does not see her; he stares at Merlin in a mixture of horror and amazement.

“Merlin,” he says softly. “Merlin, no.”

“Whatever she told you is a lie,” Merlin says. “Who let you through?”

“You mean, who found a hole in your enchantment?” Morgana asks. “What will you do to them if I tell you?”

Merlin’s eyes blaze in the dark; they are not yet as gold as they should be with all the magic he’s currently handling, but that’s just the thing about Emrys: this is all child’s play to him. He could call thunder and rain in his sleep.

“Name them,” he says.

“Come with me,” Morgana says. “You’re wasted here.”

“It was Gwen.”

Alright. Alright, maybe backtracking a little now.

No one said anything about telepathy.

“Emrys,” she says.

“I am not your Emrys,” Merlin snarls.

“Merlin, stop,” Arthur says again.

The look he receives as Merlin’s jaw locks in place is nothing short of mutinous.

“You’re a sorcerer?” Arthur asks.

Merlin sneers at Morgana.

“He thinks I’m trying to harm you,” Morgana says. “I’m not, by the way. They aren’t any use to me anymore, Emrys. I’m here for you.”  

Merlin’s rage begins expressing itself by banging the shutters of Gaius’s windows against the castle walls outside.

He says nothing, still.

“Let him speak,” Morgana murmurs to Arthur.

“What?”

“Tell him he can speak.”

“Merlin, explain yourself.”

The order falls away from Merlin’s shoulder like a silver chain to the floor. He steps over it to stand so close to Morgana that she can feel the linen of his tunic scraping against her own chest.

He towers over her like this.

Hair as black as blood at night. Eyes so pale, the edges threaten to vanish into the whites. Magic forms tightly coiled and writhing clouds around him. It builds as a storm does in the heavens and threatens to unleash an unholy downpour from the rafters of these very chambers.

How she ever mistook him for a servant, Morgana does not know.

He is something far more beautiful and unearthly than that.

“Look at you,” she says. “I was wrong to cross you.”

She is aware that Uther and Gaius are arguing on the other side of the room, but it doesn’t really make a difference to her.

She raises a hand and cups Emrys’s jaw. He jerks towards it as if he means to bite.

Morgana smiles.

“How wild,” she says.

Merlin arches his long neck as if absorbing the compliment.

“Your secret is out now,” Morgana says. “What will you do, Emrys?”

“I will strip the flesh from your bones and bury you where no one will find your grave,” Merlin tells her.

“You won’t,” Morgana croons. “You’re too soft.”

Merlin moves as if to seize her throat, but Arthur’s hand is faster. His fingers clench hard around Merlin’s wrist. The touch seems to finally bring Merlin’s awareness out of his instinctive, protective fog. He wrenches his hand away, twisting so hard against Arthur’s thumb that Arthur cries out.

“Forget,” Merlin tells him.

Arthur stares.

“Forget,” Merlin says again.

“You’re trying to enchant me,” Arthur realizes.

“It won’t work on him,” Morgana says. “Not when it’s about this, Emrys.”

“I was never here,” Merlin plows on regardless. “Your manservant is named George. Forget.”

“His enchantments don’t work on me?” Arthur asks Morgana.

“Forget.”

“They usually will, but this is Fate. He can’t change Fate.”

“So says you,” Merlin snarls.

“Prove me wrong,” Morgana says.

This is, in hindsight, a mistake. Merlin holds up a hand in front of her face and before she knows what’s happening, Arthur is shouting and the room is all up in a commotion.

Her throat convulses with every breath. Her upper arms ache from the grip Uther has on them as he lowers her rigid body to the floor. Arthur crowds Merlin in a corner of the physician’s chambers until his back is nearly flat against the wall.

“You listen to me,” Arthur threatens him. “You will not touch her like that ever again, do you understand?”

“I thought you said he was bound to obey Arthur?” Uther hisses at Gaius while Morgana recovers the ability to breath.

“He is not bound to obey as of yet, he allows himself to be directed,” Gaius says. “If he does not trust Arthur to direct him, then he’ll do what he feels he must to protect him.”

“Morgana is not a threat.”

“The issue is about trust and connection, my lord, not individuals.”

“This arrangement is untenable.”

“It is only so because it has not been honed.”

“How long have you concealed this from me?”

“Merlin is not a threat to others, sire,” Gaius says. “He is, at most, a threat to himself. He will do anything for Arthur. Anything.”

The word silences Uther as its meaning sinks into his bones.

He turns away and, in the gap between his shoulders and Gaius’s, Morgana catches sight of Merlin’s wild eyes. His cheeks are white. Upset rolls down his face as rain does over a stone’s surface.

He has never disappointed Arthur like this, never at least totally bared to Arthur for what he is, and no matter what Arthur says to him now, Morgana can see Emrys shrinking away from him faster by the second.

No platitudes can fill that widening gap. While Arthur talks on and on about ground rules and him not needing protection, Merlin’s pale eyes sink lower and lower until they stop. 

Arthur takes hold of his shoulders at the same time Merlin reaches between them for the hilt of Arthur’s sword.

Arthur goes quiet.

“Merlin,” he says. “What are you doing?”

The fingers fall away.

“Just leaving, my lord,” Merlin says suddenly without a trace of emotion. “My apologies for having let you down. It will not happen again. I wish to thank you for your tolerance over these past many years.”

“Tolerance? You lied to me; I didn’t know what I was tolerating, and if I had, if you’d just been honest—” Arthur says.

“There is no need,” Merlin says before he can finish. “You will be an excellent king, sire. I am honored to have stood by your side as long as you have allowed it.”

He takes Arthur’s dagger from his tunic, where he no doubt placed it that very morning.

“A parting gift,” he says with a smile.

In that moment, Arthur understands. He catches Merlin’s wrist again.

“Stay,” he orders. “Don’t leave here.”

“Stay,” Merlin echoes back to him with a condescending smile, “Don’t leave here.”

His body seems to flicker.

In the next moment, he is gone, dagger and all.

Chapter Text

It takes four and a half days to locate Emrys.

By then, Morgana’s boots have holes in them from walking through field upon forest upon prairie.

She started with Ealdor, where there was nothing but the scent of wet, warming soil, then moved on to a few bowers on the outskirts of Camelot’s town where journeymen are known to take refuge as they make their way northward. 

Nothing. Nothing. 

There was a dead body bloated in a ravine between those bowers and Camelot-town. It belonged to no one she knew. 

A trio of orchard farmers on the outskirts of the Darkling woods claimed to know a man who fit Emrys’s description. They pointed Morgana towards a tavern with broken floorboards. Inside a man with black curly hair sat drinking strong ale all on his lonesome. 

His eyes were brown and puffy; his lips were reddened and wet with spittle as he raised his mug to Morgana and asked what a beauty like her could want from a washed-up old man like him.

He is not Emrys. 

Emrys is curled up on dry ground outside a cave in the high mountains.

He is so far north that the Druids in the area speak a different dialect from the one Morgana has learned from the ones in her current company. The cave his body lays near to looks to have once been inhabited. Rugs and a bed with crudely woven blankets fill the space in the deepest part of its cavern. There is an unused hearth a little ways away from these, protected by the partial overhang of stone overhead.

Emrys has painted something Morgan cannot quite make out on the stone beneath his head and shoulders. His eyes alone follow her as she fetches a disused stool from the corner of the cave and brings it over to sit before him.

The paintings are all the color of wet rust.

Who knows where the dagger went after he extracted the color he needed for that sickening mural. 

“I did not intend for it all to be this painful,” she admits.

Emrys huffs derisively and closes his eyes.

“I knew you might be protective,” she says. “I did not realize how strong your compulsion would be.”

Emrys still does not answer her. His chest rises and falls as if he is falling asleep. His legs are bent at strange angles. It is too cold out here in the morning and night to lay on the stone wearing only linen. He must have numbed himself to the temperature.

Or maybe his blood has always run cold. He’s never appeared especially well fed in all the years Morgana has known him, despite him working within the castle walls.

“Your loyalty is admirable,” she says. “Arthur wanted me to tell you that.”

“Fuck him.”

Morgana nearly chokes on her own tongue.

“Emrys,” she says. “You don’t mean that.”

Emrys huffs again, this time in amusement.

He turns his head away.

“You must be cold,” Morgana says.

“Why are you here?” Emrys drawls.

“To apologize.”

“There’s no point.”

“You should know that Arthur does care about you; he has always cared about you. I was hasty in my assumptions—”

“Perhaps he cared in fits,” Emrys says.

Morgana tucks her fingers under her knees to warm them. The temperature is dropping all around them. 

“He thought he needed to protect me from you,” she says.

Emrys says nothing.

“Has he ever—do you ever feel like he protects you?” Morgana asks.

Emrys looks at her finally.

He smiles. It’s a jagged wound in his drained and gaunt face.

“Some things aren’t meant to be,” he says. “It’s alright. Had me mum. Had this other friend, Will.”

“And Gwen,” Morgana points out.

“And Gwen,” Emrys agrees. “Might last with her. Who knows, though. Turns out people don’t like people who lie.”

“Emrys, you are not alone now—“ Morgana says.

“What, ‘cause you’re here?” Emrys says before she can finish. “Yeah, a fat lot of good you’ve done me. You can see yourself the fuck off.”

The trees above them rustle in the wind. They throw the other side of the summit into shade. 

Their whisper is peaceful, though lonely in its quietude.

“You’re right to be angry with me,” Morgana says. “I was not thinking about how things would be for you when it happened.”

“Doesn’t matter anymore.”

“Emrys.”

“My name is Merlin. Merlin.”

Morgana hesitates.

“Merlin,” she says.

But Merlin is no longer looking at her. He’s looking over the edge of the stone beneath him at the growing darkness of the mountain’s side and foothills. The blue and green and purple of treetops seems to go on for miles.

“You’re cold,” she says.

“Fuck OFF already.”

“No one knows if you can die. I can’t leave you like this.”

“Well, guess what? I know,” Merlin says nastily, “And I can. So leave a man in peace, thanks and god be with ye.”

Morgana swallows and stands.

“I’ll be back in the morning,” she says.

Merlin does not move as she replaces the stool where it was and hikes down from the cave to the forest floor.

The next morning, Merlin is exactly where she left him, though so still in the sun’s light that Morgana is compelled to come closer and hold her hand over his lips and nose to feel for breath.

It’s there, but barely.

She uses magic to drag him into the cavern proper and covers him in the blankets from the dwelling’s bed. There is a small stack of wood in the corner of the room. She carries pieces to the burnt-out hearth and stacks them so that she may coax a flame forth from their base.

It takes nearly half an hour for the pile to begin burning on its own. Morgana’s hands are stiff by the time the its warmth begins filling the cave.

How strange it is that it is so cold here in the mountains when Camelot is sweltering only a few days southwest.

Merlin sleeps on for some time. When he awakens, he does so in silence and watches the hearth the same way. 

Morgana offers him a bowl of broth.

He calls instead a dragon from the base of the fire. All he needs is to twist his weakened fingers and there it is, beating its wings and flapping around in tight circles in the flames. They both watch it until Merlin is too exhausted to hold up his arm any longer.

He sleeps again.

The broth goes cold on the stone ground next to him.

It occurs to Morgana on the seventh day of this routine that the person next to her is a truer version of the man she knows as Merlin.

He’s not dopey. He’s not flirty.

He is quiet and dour and lazily attentive to the fussy world around him the way barn cats are. He does not show interest in deep conversation no matter how many times Morgana attempts to kindle one between them.

She finally asks him if he was always so pensive and receives a shrug for her trouble, which tells her more than she thinks Merlin means to.

He doesn’t seem know what kind of person he is, either.

On the eighth day, he sits up and on the ninth, he isn’t in the cave when Morgana goes to check on him.

She checks again around mid-day and finds him in the cave’s bed, covered by a flock of rabbits. They all share heat.

When she makes broth that day, she leaves her usual strips of dried meat aside in favor of dried mushrooms.

He drinks this one. 

“You don’t eat animals,” she realizes.

The rabbits come and go in waves, but they are content with Merlin at this moment. They pour themselves across his hips and stretch their soft bellies over his shins.

Merlin strokes their long ears and says nothing. His eyes have darkened over the past few days.

“Does Arthur know?” she asks.

“It does not affect him,” Merlin says.

“It does if he thinks himself generous for feeding you his table scraps,” Morgana says.

“It isn’t his job to know,” Merlin says.

Morgana’s jaw twinges regardless. She drags her stool closer, closer than Merlin has allowed her to be so far.

“I thought you two knew everything about each other,” she says.

“You’ve never been in service,” Merlin says.

“I told Gwen everything.”

“Seems like a good way to get poisoned.”

Morgana can’t help but smile.

“Where do you go at night?” Merlin asks.

“To the druids,” Morgana tells him. “They’re worried about you. They did not realize you could die.”

“I’ve given them no reason to care.”

“You don’t need to be pleasant to be worth their concern,” Morgana says. “Take it from me.”

There is a long pause. The fire crackles.

“Do you like having someone tell you what to do?” Morgana asks.

Merlin separates two arguing rabbits and brings one up to his chest to cradle in his long, gentle hands. He pointedly does not respond.

“He’s not coming, Merlin,” Morgana says.

“Good.”

“Gaius knew you would be here, didn’t he?”

“This was my father’s home.”

“Yes.”

“Arthur knows where it is.”

“That makes you nervous.”

“He’ll frighten them.”

He means the rabbits.

Morgana holds out her hands when one bravely ventures over to her and stands on its hind legs. It is softer than she remembers anything in the world to be when she lays it in her lap.

“He’ll have to go through me first,” she says.

The next day, Merlin is waiting for her at the base of the mountain. His rabbits are nowhere to be found. He looks unwell; pale and bonier than she’s ever seen him. A flush has painted itself across the highest parts of his cheeks, nose, and ears.

Morgana knows just how little he has been eating. She’s not sure he ought to be standing to start.

“Do you like owls?” Merlin asks her.

“I do,” she says.

“Do you want to see some?”

“Show me,” she says.

It is fascinating to watch the change come over Emrys as a fortnight of separation passes between him and Arthur.

He has become, not docile exactly, but much less tense and talkative.

He loves animals and they respond to him in kind. All of them—deer, rabbits, schrews. He is so trusted by them that they bring him their babies to him within only days of knowing him. He tucks them down the front of his tunic to keep them warm while the parents scratch around for food.

Emrys does not come closer to the druid camp, though he allows Iseldir close enough to his person to touch his face and turn it this way and that in search of wounds or swelling.

Iseldir tells Merlin he must eat more and the next day, he does. Morgana finds him cracking hazelnuts between stones and picking the flaky skins off the nutmeat inside. 

He offers her a handful of roasted nuts he’s already broken open for her. She eats two and sneaks the rest into the pile he is sharing with a mouse no bigger than his thumb. 

Morgana offers him a sack of barley from camp. He accepts it and gives her a hastily-woven basket of fat hen leaves in return.

Iseldir is surprised by this development. 

He and Morgana and the other elders hold a brief conference on what to do next.

Emrys is obviously unmoored at the moment, and yet he resists re-setting the equilibrium by returning to Arthur’s side. It seems to Morgana and the others that this behavior is calculated.

Merlin has been waiting for the end of that relationship.

He prepared himself for it, followed through, and is now settling in.

That night Morgana brings him some herbs for the cough that has settled into his lungs and sits with him in front of the hearth.

She can make broth, but she is no cook. Merlin’s skills in this area have been sharpened by service and his apprenticeship under Gaius.

“I want to apologize again,” she says.

Merlin glances her way as he pinches salt into the small cooking pot he’s arranged over the hearth.

“What for this time?” he asks.

“For my treatment of you since we met. I was cold to you.”

“You were discovering a hard way of living,” Merlin says. “I forgive you.”

“You don’t need to.”

“You want my forgiveness. I am giving it.”

“But you don’t have to give it,” Morgana tells him.

Merlin frowns her way.

“I don’t understand,” he says.

“I mean, you can remain angry with me,” Morgana says. “I did horrible things to people you loved. I take responsibility for it.”

“You don’t beat a starving man for stealing food,” Merlin says. “It’s pointless.”

He stirs the pot.

“Do you forgive Arthur?” Morgana asks.

“Do you?”

“I wish I could.”

Merlin watches her. Each of his blinks reminds Morgana of a deer’s long lashes skating over its liquid eyes.

“Do you want me to do it for you?” Merlin asks.

“What, forgive him? What good will that do me?” Morgana asks back.

“I don’t know. Is it the right thing to do?”

Well. Yes.

It is the right thing to do.

Probably.

“I could do it for you then,” Merlin offers. “Does it matter who does it?”

How…peculiar.

“It does matter,” Morgana says. “Don’t you think it matters?”

“I suppose.”

“You suppose?”

“I mean, as long as it gets done, it’s fine, right? So I suppose not.”

Fascinating.

“If you forgive him for me, would you be upset if you saw him again?” Morgana asks.

Merlin fusses with the cuff of his boot.

“I’m not upset with him,” he says quietly.

“I think you are,” Morgana says. “And I think you’re justified in it.”

“He has the right to be upset. I lied to him,” Merlin says.

“You had to.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Merlin, you had to. They could have killed you at any moment.”

“I know,” Merlin says. “But if I hadn’t lied as much as I did, things would be different.”

“You would be dead.”

Merlin shrugs and tugs at his boot again.

“Did he ever hurt you?” she asks.

“Never laid a hand on me,” Merlin says immediately.

“That’s not true. I saw him myself. He grabbed you.”

“It didn’t hurt.”

“He threw things at you.”

“Not to hit me.”

“You were truly never frightened?”

“A goblet’s got nothing on a cobble stone, my lady,” Merlin says.

They sit in silence for a long enough that the first star starts twinkling in the sky above them.

“Do you think Arthur would like this version of you?” Morgana asks.

“No,” Merlin says immediately.

“Not even a little?”

“People don’t like sorcerers.”

“I’m not talking about people. I’m talking about Arthur.”

Merlin watches the star overhead.

“Do you like me?” he asks it, but really Morgana.

She chews her lip.

“I don’t know,” she says. “I didn’t. You come across as a try-hard in Camelot. But this version of you, I don’t think I mind.”

Merlin twists back to see her.

“This me?” he asks. “You don’t mind this me?”

“What, are you offended?”

“Everyone else likes the other one.”

“Does that please you?”

“People like to be liked.”

“You talk like you’re not one of them.”

“I want to be,” Merlin says.

Morgana’s breath catches. Merlin turns away from her and wraps his arms around his knees. A star falls high above them, its long tail streaks past the one from before.

“I want to be, too,” Morgana says.

Chapter Text

There are probably other things that he should be doing, Merlin realizes when he’s about a third of the way into the abandoned well in the eastern quarter of the forest. 

Useful things: collecting firewood, raking roots, finding planks for the barrel he ought to build before the next storm. 

“I feel like this is turning into a life lesson,” he tells the white rabbit on his shoulder. 

It conveys its confusion through some rapid nose-twitching.

“Something-something-prioritization,” Merlin says. 

His boots scrape ominously on the wall opposite his shoulder. Old, crumbling mortar smeared haphazardly between stones along the well's tunnel cracks under his boots' pressure. Pieces plummet toward the well’s black bottom and land with ominous plops in the water below. Both Merlin and the rabbit watch it fall. 

“Something-something-no-self-preservation-instincts,” Merlin adds on to his earlier assessment.

The rabbit shakes its head and tucks itself in closer to his neck, which is just as well. It is rather cold now that Merlin is fully inside the well, and with his shadow blocking the light overhead, he’s also lost track of the glittering thing in the water that inspired him to climb down here in the first place. 

“The good news is we haven’t hit rock bottom yet,” he tells the rabbit. 

Its fellows, all crowded around the top of the well, peer down at them with doubt in their shivering ears. 

Merlin resumes alternating pressure on his shoulders and feet until he is able to crawl, like a very strange, very flat crab to the well’s bottom. About a foot or so from its water’s surface, he leans over and stares into it. 

His shadow thwarts him again. 

“Mind yourself,” he tells his rabbit companion.. 

He ignites a ball of light and holds it over his side. Now, he can see right through the water, clear to the shallow bottom. The majority of the space is filled with old, brown leaves and bird droppings. Pollen and a swirl of iridescent oil form a film upon its surface. 

It smells like must and wet metal.

Merlin arches his neck and cups his companion’s back to keep the poor thing from falling into the water. He adjusts his light until he spies that little glint again. 

There it is between leaves.

“Gotcha,” he says. 

He coaxes the rabbit up and over the curl of his neck as he lowers one foot and then the other into the water. His trousers are immediately soaked through. The water is cold enough to be snowmelt, but thankfully only rises to the middle of his calf. 

He thought it would be deeper. 

It looked so much deeper. 

He searches for stable ground with his toes and ends up sliding forward and flailing for a moment before his hands find the grime-covered walls around him for support. 

The water sloshes around him, throwing up clouds of settled sediment, but the sound that comes up from Merlin’s stumbling boots is unmistakable: coins.

Coins upon coins. 

There must be thousands of them. He raises his light so that it hovers higher on its own over his shoulder and plunges his hand through the water’s surface. It comes up with so much slick, silty metal that the pieces slide between his fingers back into the water like grains of wheat into a sack. 

He’s never seen anything like them; most are perfectly round, though of various sizes, and each is so finely carved that Merlin can make out the most intricate crests upon them all. Here a lion wears a crown. Here a crown wears three enormous feathers. All have a face upon their other side so beautifully and tenderly engraved that if Merlin saw those their owners in the street he might recognize them from the coins alone. 

”Who’s wasting their coin on an old well?” he asks the rabbit. 

It doesn’t know, and after a few moments, Merlin finds that he doesn’t especially care. 

He has no use for money this far out from towns and villages, and he doesn’t feel like climbing back to the top of the well weighed down with metal he doesn’t know how to forge into something worth the effort. 

He pours out his hands and rifles through the coins until the bones of his wrists begin to ache from the water’s chill. It’s getting dark outside the well, and he’s just resolved to call the adventure a disappointment when his little finger brushes on something in the hoard much larger than the rest of its pieces. 

It is a hard object with squarish corners, and when he shakes it clear of the money, it reveals itself to be a box of some sort with five sides painted a wonderfully pale purple-ish tone. The last serves as polished black face. There are a few other polished, black circles on the opposite side. 

“Hello? A mirror?” He asks. 

His companion rabbit pokes its head out from his kerchief and wriggles its nose at it. 

“It’s not money,” Merlin tells it. “So it’s not stealing.” 

He looks up to the well’s mouth.

Morgana will be waiting for him at the cave. 

In his younger days, Merlin could have scrambled up the well in only a matter of minutes, but his muscles are still weak from all the blood he wasted in his outburst over Arthur. 

As such, he ends up wasting a good half an hour getting himself from one end of the well to the other and then needs to flop around uselessly for a while on the grass around it to catch his breath. 

He distracts himself with the polished stone.

He reasons that it is most likely some lady’s mirror thrown into the well along with the rest of her nobleman’s coffers. He’s never seen a square hand-mirror before, but what does he, a peasant, know about the whims of his betters?

What he does know is the mirror fits nicely in his pocket. He takes it with him back to Balinor’s cave and finds that Morgana grew impatient waiting for him and went back down the mountainside. She left behind a fire still burning and a self-stirring pot of poison. 

The the pile of young ash keys Merlin left for the snake-bitten child in her druid settlement is gone.

Merlin pours the pot out over the cliff before refilling it with water and setting it again upon the small hearth. He unburdens his pockets of handfuls of wild garlic and a few mushrooms pinched on the way home. These and a healthy scoop of salt and barley make themself into a meal while he sits with his flock of rabbits and takes stock of the day’s findings. 

The mirror, obviously, is the greatest treasure, but a few pieces of cloth and a rusted metal wheel with thin spokes are just as useful. 

Merlin found a similar wheel in his earlier forest explorations. He only needed one to make a functional barrow, but two can make a wagon if he finds the timber for it. 

He sets the new one by the old one on the cave wall and begins untangling the bits of cloth. One is a single white-grey stocking with a tightly knit ribbed top. The other appears to be a pair of very thin trousers that someone forgot to sew the legs and laces onto.

Both are filthy. They’ll need to be laundered before Merlin can make any use of them. 

He’ll take them to the river with the rest of his clothes in a few days and beat the soil and stains out of them. Or maybe, since no one is around to care anymore, he’ll magic them clean. 

No. Best not.

“Habits and all that,” he tells the rabbits. 

They understand. 

Merlin brought home a small basket of chickweed and flower heads for them to eat, which they have since upended and distributed among their ranks. He joins them in nibbling when his meal is ready to eat, and afterwards, they all pile into Balinor’s old bed together for a few hours of rest. 

It’s a nice bed, nicer than the ones Merlin has slept in before. Deep in its fibers, Merlin thinks he can still find little wafts of sweat and nettle. With next to no effort, he convinces himself that these are the smells of his father. They wrap themselves around him as he sleeps deeper than he ever did within the castle’s walls. 

That’s also a kind of magic, he decides. 

In the morning, the rabbits are gone, which leaves Merlin to entertain himself with the mirror. He observes himself in it for a short while. His hair is longer and curlier than he usually would tolerate, but in the mirror, he thinks it looks rather nice, actually. 

When Morgana arrives to pester him with her daily nonsensical questions and thinly veiled pity, Merlin introduces her to it. 

She tells him that it is the strangest and most useless mirror she’s ever seen, and she has certainly seen proper mirrors. 

This one, according to her, is too dark to do anything about one’s appearance in, and moreover its metal is a displeasing color and shape. 

She asks where he found it. 

“An old well,” Merlin says. 

“Is that where you go all day?” She asks. 

Merlin decides against following this line of conversation.

He could tell her the truth. What he does in the daylight hours is not especially interesting or incriminating. They are all the usual things a man would do in a village, but some bratty part of him insists day in and day out that her ex-excellency ought to mind her own business.

Her guilt over ruining his life does not grant her the right to his whims and interests. Further, he does not appreciate her daily trespassing in the home of his late father. 

“Other druids will be passing through the forest in the coming days,” Morgana says. “We told them that you might be out on the trails.” 

Merlin wonders when precisely she began treating him like a breathing, eating omen. 

Her tone is sculpted to be even and soft. He supposes she thinks that he is fragile, or perhaps something as holy as it is cruel, since the druids have got in their heads that he is less human than magic. 

Merlin is not sorry to disappoint them, and Morgana least of them all.

He told them from the start that he was only a man and never meant to be their savior, and look, he was right:

Arthur is gone and the prophecy is as good as shattered. 

Their Emrys has no significant purpose outside the Once and Future King’s, which just feeds this dark, burbling part of Merlin’s soul that revels in the contaminating sprawl of tarrish hopelessness.

Serves them right, he thinks. Serves them right. 

He does stranger and stranger things out in the woods while Morgana and the Druids continue to pray feverishly for magic’s salvation. 

Climbing down the well barely scratches the surface. Merlin has found himself hacking away at the innards of trees to cram all that he can of his body into their hollow stumps. He has knelt in putrid swaths of algae and drank the fetid water beneath. He is tracking, in several parts of the forest, the melting of certain corpses left hidden in the shadows of boulders and rotten logs, and goes out at night to follow lost travelers with no inclination to point them in one direction or another. 

Their fear does not move him like it would have before. 

He only wants to watch them. 

If the urge to do these things was not all consuming and immediate, he might have thought himself numb to the world around him, but the teetering euphoria that arises from every bizarre action makes him forget the hazy, listless trance that comes before the compulsion until it is all over and he is laying, alone, in Balinor’s bed with the rabbits. 

He doesn’t speak a word of these bouts of madness to Morgana. 

She and the Druids are watching him closely enough as it is, and he does not want to stand in the face of their or any other magic being’s gloating triumph as he becomes exactly what the seers dreamed him to be:

Power, unlimited.

Wisdom, immortal.

Their salvation, King or no King. 

He waits until Morgana leaves him for the day and casts a spell of light upon the mirror to brighten its dark, polished face. 

Moments later it lets out a yelp, and so does Merlin. 

The rabbits and birds that came to join him for some food on the edge of the cave’s cliff scatter. Merlin himself flattens as much of his body as he can manage against the stone by the cave mouth. 

The mirror moans and, with a whine like a harp, goes still and quiet again. 

Merlin creeps slowly over to peer at it.

His magic seems to have worked a little too well. A light has gotten trapped behind the mirror’s face now. It has lit up markings on the surface that Merlin didn’t notice before. 

He nudges it with the toe of his boot. 

It sings again. Loudly. Raucously. Merlin takes cover and waits until the mirror has lost the energy to do so. 

When he returns, it has produced a tiny portrait on its surface. The portrait vanishes for a moment, then appears again along with the singing. 

Merlin doesn’t know what to do. There are little arrows on the polished face now that point upwards towards the face of the portrait. They seem to be indicating some kind of direction. 

He wraps his hand in his sleeve and picks the whole thing up and tosses it off the edge of the cliff. 

After a few moments, the animals return. They all watch after it together. 

“Do you think that was maybe a bad idea?” He asks the trio of finches gathered on his shoulder. 

They consult each other and then his chin. 

“Fuck me,” he says. “Alright, I’ll go get it.” 

The mirror should be at the foot of the cliff, but by the time Merlin makes his way to the area it fell in, it is gone. 

Someone else must have seen it and snatched it up. 

Good riddance, he says. And good bye. 

He turns around to head back up the mountainside and finds himself face to face with a traveler. 

He blinks. 

The traveler stares back. He appears to be a knight of some kind, though he has had his body’s armor made out of soft leather and his helmet forged in the most peculiar fashion. It sits on his neck like a giant black egg, and he stands astride a creature like nothing that Merlin has ever seen. 

It could be a hound or it could be a horse. Whatever it is, it is black as pit and growling. 

The knight lifts his arm, and Merlin locates the mirror at the end of it, jutting out of the man’s glove. 

The knight says something and gestures with the mirror. 

A thousand thoughts pass through Merlin’s mind, none of which he can even begin to hold onto when the man speaks again. 

“Is this your phone?” The knight says.

Still utter gibberish.

Instinct says to deny, deny, deny regardless of intention.

“No, thank you, I’m just passing through,” Merlin says. 

“I said, is this your phone?” the knight says.

He pauses. Now that Merlin’s had a moment to take it in, his helmet appears to be made of the same material as the mirror. Merlin can see his reflection in it, distorted and eerie and blue-ish-green like the oily film on top of the well-water. 

“Are you alright?” The knight asks. 

It is easier to talk to squirrels. 

“I don’t have any money or grain, carry on,” Merlin tries to tell him.

Neither of them moves. 

Merlin becomes aware then that the knight is looking at the edges of his sleeves which are still stained from his stupidity at Arthur’s inevitable rejection. 

Morgana hasn’t cared much about the marks, and Merlin forgot they were even there. He’s washed this tunic, but he didn’t have salt the first time he did it, so the stain set. 

“Hey, mate, what’s your name?” The knight asks. 

Ha. Ha. Sounds threatening. 

Merlin is running now.

Merlin is never going past that well ever again. He’s never touching another mirror. He’s going back to Camelot, he’s going right to Kilgharrah, and he’s asking to be flown to the farthest kingdom that exists on this planet. 

Once he gets there, he’s changing his name, he’s growing his hair, he’s chopping off one strategic finger and wearing a false nose for the rest of his very long, or possibly very short existence. 

“PUT YOUR HANDS UP.” 

“Jack, he’s fucking terrified, put that thing away—“ 

The knight has multiplied. There is now a whole fleet of them and a team of wailing, snarling covered wagons surrounding the part of the forest Merlin is trying to pass through to get back to the mountain trail. He'd only gotten ten minutes or so back towards his trail when they ambushed him and began chasing him from copse to copse, blocking his way and screaming at him.

Their wagons are equipped with myriad lanterns that flash blue and white, and there are knights are everywhere, shouting at each other from every direction and wearing jackets a color that cannot decide if it wants to be yellow or green, but does know that it wants to be visible from at least two hundred miles away. 

They are all somehow convinced that Merlin is worth kidnapping and beating to death, no matter how many times he’s told them that he doesn’t want any trouble and has no money. 

He might have started crying a little. 

It might not have been on purpose. 

Why magic doesn’t work as well in this part of the forest, he does not know, and he does not care. He only knows that the way out of this mess must be the same way he got into it, so he’s going to have to break that mirror. 

If only the knights weren’t making that borderline impossible. 

If only Merlin had thought to bring the dagger he stole from Arthur. 

He ends up overtaken in an attempt to cross a hard stone path that cuts through two banks of trees a ways away from the commotion, and is soon crushed by many, many knights. 

His ribs crack. Two get off him so that a third can twist his arms behind his back. Their hands latch like iron cuffs over his wrists and in that contorted posture, he is forced to his feet and half-dragged, half-carried into one of their wagons, which proves to have some sort of cage inside its soft, cushioned interior. 

There, a knight twists back so that he can see Merlin through the cage. He speaks and Merlin pushes himself as far away from him as he can manage.There is a strange cut out in the very back of the wagon that is covered in a hard, transparent shield. He can't fit his whole body back against it, but he tries anyways and covers his head so the knight's eventual blows land on his arms first.

The knight works his jaw and kicks open the door on his side of the wagon. It slams shut after him. Through the transparent covering on the wagon's side, Merlin can see him walk up to another knight, this one wearing a bizarre hat. They converse. The first knight gestures back at Merlin's twisted-up body in his wagon.

The second adjusts his hat.

Merlin is seized again by his arms and dragged out of the wagon. The knights haul him towards the backside of another, much blockier one with an enormous square exterior. There, two people dressed in dark green tunics take holds of his shoulders and tie him down onto a cot with strange legs and three sets of straps. 

That wagon, he escapes from, and thank God, he does so while it is hurrying away from all the other ones. The shock of seeing a man throw himself their rattling, shrieking, speeding box distracts the soldiers inside the box and the knights climbing back into their wagons behind it for long enough that Merlin is able to scrabble his way up from the hard stone path. 

He runs fast enough to make back into the trees before they do. 

His shoulder screams with pain, as does his right shin, but still, he runs. 

Voices shout after him. He can hear thudding feet. He can feel himself growing tired. The sun has just about set entirely now on the distant horizon, but the dark doesn't faze the knights or the green soldiers.

This is how rabbits meet their ends.

A light as bright as the sun and as white as new linen breaks through the trees behind Merlin as he stumbles.

More footsteps begin thundering across the forest floor. 

A hand nearly catches ahold of the back of Merlin’s tunic. It vanishes barely a blink later only to be replaced by a hold stronger and tighter. So strong and so tight, in fact, that Merlin has no choice but to move where that grip moves him, which is to hands and knees in the duff. 

That blinding white light beams through the branches of trees in front of him. 

A half-circle of knights has formed in front of the light. They hold their hands out in front of them and poised low near their waists. But between them and Merlin stands a silhouette planted on two firm feet, haloed all around, holy and proud.

Merlin would know it as his vision faded on his dying day.

Arthur.

Arthur gets low and raises his blade. His red cape pours into itself all around his feet.

One of the knights clad in yellow-green says something in a tone that sounds like disbelief. He calls out to Arthur. 

Arthur does not rise to his bait. He holds steady. 

“Get up,” he says lowly.

Merlin realizes that he’s talking to him. Euphoria like that he felt while following the lost travelers surges through his chest. A sudden weight lifts from his torso so swiftly that it leaves him unbalanced and dazed. 

He must not move fast enough, because before he knows it, Arthur’s grip is back in his tunic and he’s physically dragging him to his feet.

The knights start talking louder. They seem to be speaking directly to Arthur now. 

“Arthur,” Merlin breathes. 

“Go.” 

“No.” 

“He’s just jumped out of an ambulance, man. Come on, look. He’s clearly unwell; we’re just trying to get ‘im somewhere safe, alright? Let’s, er, let’s put the sword down.” 

The wagons snort and roar in a line all along the edge of the forest. Arthur does not acknowledge them at all. His eye is on the man in dark green advancing upon them. 

“On my mark,” Arthur says. “Run. No backtalk. No nothing. I’m going with you.” 

“There, see? Not so scary, right? I’m a paramedic. Not one of them, yeah? Do you know this man?” the soldier in green says.

“Ready?” Arthur asks under his breath. 

Merlin swallows. 

“Now.” 

Two things happen in that moment. The first is Arthur’s sword coming down in arch over the approaching man. It sweeps to maim, not to kill. Merlin doesn’t see the blood because the second thing that happens is him turning back and lunging towards the darkness beyond the trees. 

Someone screams. He barely hears them over the sound of his own breath juddering into and out of his lungs. 

At first, a piercing pang terrifies him-–the thought that Arthur is not at his side. 

It is immediately put out, however, by the arrival of a familiar fist around his wrist. 

Arthur is faster than Merlin. He’s stronger and perpetually aware of the world around him. He could find north in a storm and light in a cavern. His and Merlin’s arms swing together as they run.

Merlin does not look behind him, though he sees Arthur checking over his shoulder several times until finally, after what feels like forever, Arthur brings their sprint to a gallop to a jog to a halt in a clearing.

He drags Merlin with him to take cover behind a split trunk surrounded by shrubs. They tuck in close to each other and hold their breath. 

Ahead of them, in the direction they just came, darkness settles into the comforting embrace of the forest’s nightly mist. 

There are no lights, no lanterns or shouting. 

They wait several minutes in absolute silence, listening hard to every drop of water that falls from the overhead branches and every cracking twig. Then Arthur’s tense grip on the waist of Merlin’s tunic relaxes, and Merlin feels himself slump in relief. 

He lays his head against the bark of the split trunk and shakes so hard he can feel the vibrations rolling through his chest in waves. 

He doesn’t realize that he’s been pried away from the trunk until he is shuddering in open air, and suddenly he’s never felt colder. 

“Hey,” Arthur says, “It’s okay. Look at me.” 

Merlin does. 

It’s all he can do. 

“It’s okay,” Arthur says. 

His lower lip is shining, and his hair is still glowing, though now from the light of the dim moon overhead. He is wearing his crown for some ungodly reason, and there is sweat beading all over the back of his neck. Merlin can see it. He can see him. 

“I’ve got you, Emrys” Arthur says so softly, so fucking softly that everything that has been wrong, that Merlin hasn’t even realized was wrong, becomes right. 

A sob rushes out of his chest, horrible and wrenching and ugly, and so powerful that his back bows. He clutches at parts of himself he’s never felt as they are stretched open and left to bleed like yawning, hungry maws.

Arthur follows that arch of pain with his own body. He fits himself around Merlin’s spine. His heavy, mail-covered arms mold themselves into the space beneath Merlin’s own, holding them up and tight over the jagged edges of the trembling pain in Merlin’s belly. 

Merlin can feel his warm, slick forehead pressed tight against the cold sweat on the nape of his own neck. 

Arthur is shushing, Merlin realizes through the waves of distress and relief and pain wracking him.

He’s shushing as if Merlin is something to be comforted. As if Merlin was made to be held. 

All thoughts form a river then; their chaos plaits itself into a stream in Merlin’s mind. The current is too strong for him to break free of. 

He can only shake and groan out miserable sounds of unresolved terror. 

Arthur falls into prayers behind him in a language that Merlin does not know, but whose cadence makes such a rhythm that the shudders passing through every sinew of Merlin’s body take heed and slow as called horses do. 

As Arthur’s voice rises, the tremors soften, and soon Merlin’s muscles begin to loosen. 

It is Arthur’s breath that is shuddering when Merlin finally begins listing forward. His swollen eyes feel three times their size.

Merlin is so exhausted.

Despite everything, he could sleep right here. 

He is drifting already when Arthur ends his prayer with a single word and a cool press of his lips to the knobs of Merlin’s sweat-soaked spine. 

There settles between them a long silence. Neither of them moves to break it. 

There is no coming back from what has just happened. 

“Emrys,” Arthur eventually says. 

Merlin’s skin shrivels into gooseflesh, he feels himself stretching forward unbidden all over again. 

Arthur hesitates. 

“Emrys?” he says again. 

Merlin can’t stop the noise he makes as his body tries again to convulse. 

“Fuck,” Arthur whispers. “Emrys.” 

“Stop. Please,” Merlin pleads. 

Arthur’s chest rises in time with his own and he feels…whole. 

They breathe as one.

“How didn’t I know it was you?” Arthur asks. 

Merlin has no witty reply. He is adrift in the enormity of this wholeness. 

“Is this what it’s supposed to feel like?” Arthur asks. 

If it is, then Fate has never been crueler.

Chapter Text

Emrys surrenders between breaths. One moment, he is sobbing, and it is all Arthur can do not to let the tears that rise in his own vision fall, and the next he is quiet, still, and settled. Arthur does not want to pull them apart, but he must.

They cannot stay here in this clearing for much longer. The line of soldiers and their lightning-made torches are out of sight for now, but they will have gone back to their king to report and will return with twice as many men.

“Merlin,” Arthur says as gently as he can. “Where are you living now?”

Emrys—no, Merlin’s pale blue eyes lift his way. Their swollen edges catch the moon’s light.

He does not respond.

“Talk to me,” Arthur pleads as he kneels beside him.

Blood is collecting in the center of Merlin’s lower lip. There is too much of it for the lip to contain. When Merlin moves his head, the bead breaks and drips onto his chin.

His expression is so vacant, that Arthur cannot help but cringe.

“Merlin?” he asks.

Merlin stands with effort. His tunic has seen better days. His hair is longer than Arthur can ever remember it being.

Speaking of memory: Arthur looks around and realizes that this clearing is actually familiar. They have stopped here before, him and Merlin. Years and years ago.

“We came through here to find Balinor,” he says.

Merlin's empty expression gives no sign of yielding.

Arthur swallows.

“He was like you,” he points out gently. “You two really got on, didn’t you?”

Finally, slow and syrupy, Merlin blinks.

He looks back behind himself towards the heart of the forest and, without a word, begins picking his way through over fallen, rotting trees and mounds of stone in the dark.

Arthur stands and follows his lead.

The last dragonlord’s cave is high up in the mountains. It takes hours to reach it, by which point Arthur is sure that Merlin’s pain has doubled if not tripled. His steps never faltered on the climb up but at his back, Arthur watched as one of his trouser-legs gradually became glued to his shin.

The cave-dwelling is well-kept and lived in. The addition of approximately five thousand rabbits scattered like dandelion heads across the top of Balinor’s mattress gives it a very Merlin-like flair.

Merlin doesn’t go near them. He slips away when Arthur isn’t looking and when Arthur turns back, he is alone on the mountain's ridge.

He doesn't panic. He does call Merlin's name with urgency. He might scrounge around a bit inside the cave, to the left of it and to the right.

He finds Merlin up high, crouching with his eyes closed and his knees tucked into his chest on the steep stone on the other side of the cave’s upper ceiling. The nape of his neck shines with a fine layer of drying sweat in the darkness.

“You must be tired,” Arthur says. “Come lay down.”

Merlin doesn’t move.

“Emrys.”

Merlin recoils as if Arthur raised his hand over his head.

His stomach swoops in alarm.

None of this makes sense.

He and Merlin are now what they were always meant to be. They’ve both accepted their fates. They’ve overcome what, for anyone else, would be impossible to surmount, and yet here Merlin flinches from Arthur the way a beaten dog hides from its master.

Arthur is breathless.

Speechless.

“You don’t want this,” he realizes.

Merlin wraps his palms around the tips of his elbows.

“Speak,” Arthur orders. 

“I fucking hate you.”

“That’s what I get for saving your life?” he asks.

“Forget.”

“That doesn’t work on me, Merlin,” Arthur says bitterly.

“Forget.”

“Tell me the truth.”

“Don’t.”

“Tell me the—”

“Arthur, listen to me,” Merlin says suddenly in a tone so gentle that Arthur forgets what he was about to say right then and there.

“I’m—I’m listening,” he says.

Merlin lifts his head from his nest of arms and passes a thumb over the scab forming in the very center of his lower lip.

“I fucking hate you,” he says.

Arthur's blood sinks to the small of his spine and begins to curdle there.

“But we were meant to be,” he says. “You were there the whole time, waiting for me to wake up and notice.”

“I never wanted you to notice.”

“No, you did. You must have. Your people—all the magic people in Camelot were depending on you making me notice.”

“Yeah, fuck them, too.”

Arthur feels like he just stepped into a cold spot in marsh water. His mind is a sloshing bowl of ale. Nothing he’s hearing is what it should be.

“Merlin, they’re your people,” he says.

“I don’t have people,” Merlin says.

“What are you talking about? You have loads of people. Your mother, Gaius, Guinevere, me.”

“Lucky me.”

“Wh—what did I do?”

“Beside bind yourself to me for the rest of eternity? Nothing much, I guess.”

“We were made to be bound. Gaius says so. Everyone says so.”

“Yeah, a walking prophecy, we are,” Merlin mutters under his breath.

Arthur flounders.

“What did I do?” he pleads. “Did you—did you really not want this?”

“Aye, he does gets there in the end, though, we have to give him that,” Merlin tells the horizon.

“Tell me why not,” Arthur says.

“Is that another order, your royal highness?”

The whirling world comes to a stop.

Speak, he’d said, and Merlin had spoken.

Tell me the truth, he’d said and Merlin told it to him.

“You’re following my orders,” he says.

“Look, a thought after all,” Merlin says bitterly.  “Obviously, I’m following your orders, you fucking pumpkin.”

“You don’t swear this much.”

“You don’t know the first thing about me,” Merlin sneers.

“And who’s fault is that?” Arthur demands.

Merlin throws his head back and lets out an ugly, barking laugh.

“Got me there; he's got me there,” he mumbles at the horizon.

“Merlin, talk to me,” Arthur says. “I’m trying to understand.”

“Look it doesn’t matter. You wanted the moon to your sun, congratulations, you’ve got him now," Merlin snaps at him.

Arthur draws back and holds his cheek in his hand.

“I’m not king yet,” he realizes. “It’s too early.”

Merlin glowers down at him.

“You weren’t ready,” Arthur says.

Merlin huffs through his nose and settles back into his arms.

“Forget,” he says, so quietly that Arthur almost misses it.

His heart squeezes.

“Okay. Okay, Merlin, what can I do to make this right?” he asks.

“Kill me," Merlin says.

“Besides that.”

“Go back in time and tell your father to kill my father.”

“I’m serious.”

“Kill your father, then. Don’t let me stop you.”

“No one is dying,” Arthur says. “That includes you. Now, come down here. Those soldiers put their hands on you. What else did they do to you?”

“It doesn’t matter.”

“It matters to me.”

“Never has before.”

“You never let me see it before.”

“You wouldn’t have cared.”

“Do you really think so?”

There is a pause.

“Yes,” Merlin says.  

Heartache is not one of Arthur's favorite sensations. The pangs of guilt upon him at present ought to soften him, but in truth they only try his patience.

“Come down here,” he says.

“People lie,” Merlin insists out of nowhere.

Arthur tells himself not to raise to the bait.

“I know they do,” he says.  

“I did to you.”

“I’m not angry about that anymore," he lies.

“Yes, you are."

“Alright, well. I understand why you did it.”

“Whatever they told you I am, I’m not.”

“They only told me that you’re a sorcerer, Merlin.”

“No, they didn't. They told you the prophecy," Merlin says.

"They told me a prophecy." 

"And here you came looking. I knew you would. You're not the first."

"Merlin."

"The greatest sorcerer of all time," Merlin recites.

Arthur swallows.

"The greatest sorcerer of all time," he says.

He waits with his hands on the stone ridge.

“Not yet,” Merlin admits.

“You weren’t ready,” Arthur agrees gently.

No one speaks.

“I’m not to be trusted in making decisions,” Merlin says.

“That’s alright, I’m good enough at it to get us through the next hour,” Arthur says. “Are you stuck?”

“No.”

“Then can you come down? I’ve got a lot of not-caring to do here, and I can’t do it without you.”

In all their years cycling through the ritual of dressing and undressing together, Merlin has touched Arthur thousands of times. They’ve been brief scrapes of skin and bone. Merlin’s hands are smooth on their outsides and calloused along the meat of his thumb and the top of his palms.

Arthur has not returned that touch barehanded nor on purpose, and never did it cross his mind that Merlin might have made things happen that way.

He leans sharply away from Arthur’s fingers and stretches every other part of his person as far as he can while Arthur washes grit from the wound on his shoulder and shin.

The scars beneath the raised rashes are manifold. They tumble across Merlin’s bare shoulders and dribble down the length of his spine, mercifully landing on either side of the protruding line of bone soldiers there.

“You need to eat more,” Arthur says.

Merlin begins to sink towards his folded legs.

“I’m serious,” Arthur says.

"I am."

"Man cannot subsist only upon bread."

“I don’t want to eat them.”

“Hm?”

“I don’t want to eat animals.”

…what?

“I can’t eat animals,” Merlin amends.

Arthur looks over his shoulder to the cascade of rabbits, which has migrated now to the foot of Balinor’s bedframe to wiggle their many noses his way in righteous judgment.

“What do you eat then?” Arthur asks.

“Anything but.”

“At home, I mean.”

“Gaius makes what’s mine without meat.”

“I don’t understand.”

“They feel like myself,” Merlin says.

“The animals?” Arthur asks.

“I feel like I’m one of them.”

“Even animals eat animals, Merlin.”

“I know. It’s not like that. It’s—nevermind.”

“Tell me what you mean,” Arthur says. “I just—I don’t know what you mean when you say you ‘feel like’ you’re something else. I never feel like anything but what I am.”

"Nevermind it. It doesn't matter."

"It does."

"It doesn't." 

"Merlin just fucking tell me, alright? We're stuck together now whether we like it or not."

“Emrys is a shape shifter,” Merlin says without turning around.

Arthur waits and soon discovers that this is all he’s going to get.

“That’s magic?” he asks.

“I haven’t figured out how to do it yet.”

Oh.

“But Emrys is a shape shifter,” Merlin repeats, insistent like this is an argument he’s trying to win.

“If you could shape shift right now, what would you become?” Arthur asks.

As long as Merlin’s talking, he’s not writhing away from Arthur’s hands, which would be good if Arthur still had rash and scab to wash.

He doesn’t, though. Not anymore.

He’s selfishly exploring Merlin’s thinly muscled shoulders now. They’re warm under his palms and smooth despite their scars and freckles.

The sensation feels like coming home, though they are miles and miles away.

“A deer,” Merlin says.

“A stag?”

“No. A deer.”

“What about if you couldn’t do a deer?”

“Something dead.”

Arthur sighs.

“Are you always trying to get yourself killed or is that just something you do around me?” he says.

“I want to know what it feels like.”

“That’s a strange thing to want,” Arthur says.  

Instantly, he regrets it. Merlin slips out of his reach and hunches over himself.

For a man so universally beloved in Camelot’s castle and so respected in her lower town, Merlin is skittish. Aggressive, too, in his own furtive, quiet way.

Arthur’s known soldiers who react intensely to movement in the corners of their eyes, real and imagined. Merlin’s jerky movements in the face of even the slightest rebuke remind him of them.

“What happened to you to make you want that?” he tries asking instead of sighing as his body wants to.

“Everything. Nothing.”

“That’s not an answer.”

“You’re talking a lot.”

“And you aren’t.”

“I can talk more,” Merlin offers.

“You could, but would you be doing it because you want to or because you think that’s what I want?”

Merlin pulls his undershirt and tunic back over his head in one motion and stands to put even more distance between them.

“You should go back,” he says. “Your father will be displeased. I’ve ruined Gaius’s credibility.”

“Father is not displeased,” Arthur says.

“HA.”

“He’s upset,” Arthur clarifies. “But not at you. He’s upset with Gaius for lying to him.”

“I could fix that,” Merlin offers, “I could make them all forget.”

Arthur doesn’t like how casually Merlin speaks as he shoos rabbits away from the closer half of Balinor’s bed. With effort, he lays himself down on his back.

“That wouldn’t fix anything,” Arthur says.

“Says you.”

“No, not says me. You can’t spend your life fixing mistakes by scrubbing them from everyone else’s memories. That doesn’t make the mistake go away.”

“If no one remembers it happened, then it did not happen.”

“No, if no one but you remembers it happened, then you’re left with no way to make amends,” Arthur says.

A bold spotted rabbit climbs up from the foot of Balinor’s bedframe to his mattress and then onto Merlin’s now-horizontal sternum. Its long legs splay out behind it as Merlin begins stroking the length of its little body.

He doesn’t reply. He seems more relaxed now that he’s laid himself down.

“Have you done that before?” Arthur asks.

“Forget.”

That’s a yes.

Arthur sighs and pushes himself up from the ground.

“Gaius would do anything for you,” he tries. “Wouldn’t it be a better honor to him to return to his side as his apprentice?”

“The greater honor to my noble uncle would be for him to have an apprentice actually interested in his craft.”

“You’re a tremendous physician, Merlin.”

“Nope, but thanks for trying.”

“The whole town knows your name,” Arthur says. “You’ve spared God knows how many people.”

Merlin continues to stroke the rabbit. He doesn't respond.

Arthur could just about throttle him.

“Were you always this stubborn?” he asks.

“Yes. And contemptuous.”

“Contemptuous?”

“And difficult.”

“Who taught you how to read?”

“My mother. Gaius for the magic books.”

“Contemptuous,” Arthur repeats.

“We can’t all have tutors, your highness, but some of us peasants do manage to kindle the occasional flame of intelligence,” Merlin says loftily.

“What could you have even had to read?” Arthur asks.

“Books,” Merlin says. “Mum wrote some for me. The others we borrowed or bothered Gaius to send us. Poetry, mostly. He didn’t believe in sending me anything that might please one of your people’s priests.”

Arthur isn’t sure what to say to that. His literacy began from hymnbooks and the Bible. It grew with writings from distant lords and poetry Father had commissioned, and that Mother brought with her from her family's collection.

“What languages do you know?” he asks.

“This one and that of the Old Religion,” Merlin says.

“Latin?”

“Bless you, sire.”

“No. Latin, the language, I mean?”

Merlin arches a brow at the rabbit, which shimmies upwards to tuck its nose in the warmth of his throat.

“He thinks me a scribe, he does,” he says.

“Well, are you?” Arthur asks. “I’ve seen you write before.”

“Thinks me a monk, too,” Merlin tells the rabbit. “Imagine his face when I tell him it’s all for my own benefit.”

“Did Hunith hope to have you apprenticed to a true scribe?” Arthur asks.

“Did Hunith hope—what world do you live on? Mum hoped I wouldn’t be burned on a pyre or hung before I was old enough to stack hay,” Merlin snaps.

Arthur clenches his jaw.

Right.

He forgot himself there for a moment.

“I’m sure Gaius has told her you fled, Merlin,” he says.

“She knows,” Merlin says, turning not just the other cheek, but the whole of his battered body away from Arthur to face the cave’s inner wall and the rabbits between.

“You would have her have a coward for a son?” Arthur asks.

“Go on, keep treating me like one of your knights. See how far that gets you, your highness.”

Goddamn him.

“When did you get so clever?” Arthur demands.

“I’ve always been clever. I’m wisdom itself. Go ask the druids.”

“I’m not leaving you here. You’re injured and my father expects us both back.”

“So he can have the satisfaction of hanging me in the square? No, thanks. He can go fuck himself.”

“How dare you.”

“You can, too,” Merlin says. “Thanks for the save, my lord. Come back when you’re king and maybe we can do this all over again.”

Merlin has always been argumentative. Arthur can count on one hand how many times he’s gone to do a task without some kind of backtalk before it, but this is a whole new level of insubordination.

Disobedience is one thing; Arthur can work with disobedience.

Apathy?

There is no punishment nor protestation against apathy which will not increase it trifold. The longer Arthur tries to draw Merlin out of the sinking, sucking marsh he’s waded into, the more distance Merlin will put between them.

All Arthur can do is sit by as Merlin cycles through cooing and tending his rabbits until he eventually falls asleep with them.

Arthur, too, has been up all night, but no matter what way he lays on the stone ground just outside the cave, the sun’s light pours onto his eyes, turning the world to red and pink.

He can’t sleep like this.

He ends up rolling onto his side and watching Merlin sleep instead.

What unbothered bliss after so long a tantrum. If only they could all be so indulged.

No, now Arthur is starting to sound like his father. He is not looking at a tantrum. He is looking at one of his friends forced into permanent servitude—a result embittered by the fact that he fully intended to kneel in submission on his own in due time.

Arthur can’t even imagine what Merlin felt as he trudged step by step through the forest from the clearing. He had hours to ruminate on his loss of freedom and his new, eternal dependence on Arthur’s word.

Meanwhile Arthur walked at his flank, never more pleased with his place in the world.

Ecstasy is not too strong a word for the feeling that overcame him when Merlin allowed himself to be taken into arms, embarrassing though that description may be.

Did Merlin not feel it as well?

Or did he, like an unwilling lady, endure the rush of orgasm for the sake of a peaceful night with her husband?

The imagery that accompanies that thought brings blood and heat to Arthur’s face. He rolls away to stare at the trees upon the horizon instead.

“I don’t know how to fix this,” he tells it.

Surprisingly, speaking the words aloud does loosen the tightening knot in his chest somewhat.

“It’s not impossible if Father is flexible,” he says.

And that’s true.

Father is less offended by Merlin’s magic than he is by the fact that Merlin used his magic to threaten Morgana. He’s protective of Morgana first and suspicious of their talents second. Arthur suspects too that he is proud that Arthur has been tapped as the Once and Future King but confused as to what that means for all that he has worked to accomplish in his kingdom.

Because if the prophecies Morgana laid out for them in Gaius’s chambers are correct, then Arthur is meant to be a friend of magic.

He is a friend of magic already—if magic’s name is Emrys and it hates everything in the world except rabbits.

Anyways, it is too late now to try for a second heir, so Father has no choice but to accept this about Arthur, and by extension then, to accept Merlin.

But the damage has already been done to Merlin. He’s seen the executions. He’s crafted a mask—a whole other persona, it seems—to keep people’s eyes from landing on him when cries of sorcery ring out in the town.

He has no reason to believe Arthur when he says that Father will not harm him within Camelot’s boundaries, and try as Arthur might to reason with him, the truth is that he’s right to be wary.

For all his education and careful upbringing, no one taught Arthur how to soothe his father’s fears.

“There has to be something,” he tells the horizon.

Evening settles upon the mountain, and still no solution presents itself. Arthur slips away from the cave to collect water from a nearby stream. He takes the dead dragonlord’s buckets and yoke with him to carry it back.

The water is painfully cold to the touch. If Arthur squats next to it, splashing around like a child to spare himself a few more minutes in Merlin’s frustrating presence, that that is between him and his maker.

Eventually, he must carry his burden back up to the cave. When he arrives, he discovers Merlin frowning at him with his hair standing up every which way.

“You’re awake,” he says.

Merlin squints at him.

“You should eat,” Arthur says. “I’ll start a fire.”

“You left?”

“Only to find water.”

One long leg follows the other out of bed to the cave’s floor. Merlin rises and snaps his fingers at the hearth.

Instantly, fire erupts in the coals left from the day before. Merlin scrounges around a bit on the side of the cave and comes back with kindling to break apart and feed it.

“You didn’t have to do that,” he says, raising his chin at the water.

“Someone had to,” Arthur says, trying and failing fantastically at remaining casual in the face of unspoken magic.

“Is—you’ve never done that before,” he says.

“Around you, no,” Merlin says.

“Can—can you all do that? Gaius, Morgana—all of you?”

Merlin tosses the kindling into the fire and goes back to pick through the larger pieces of kindling he’s gathered between Balinor’s bed and what seems to be a pile of clothing needing mending.

He holds out a few pieces which Arthur takes and stacks dutifully on top of the newborn flame.

“Gaius doesn’t cast around me,” he finally says.

“Ever?”

“Ever.”

“But you’re his nephew. You’d never sell him out.”

“He takes his vows seriously,” Merlin says, then pauses and clears his throat. “Once, when I was very small, he came to visit us in Ealdor. He showed me how to bring water into barrels. Like so.”

He moves his hand in a swirling gesture at the wrist, and the buckets Arthur hauled up from the stream begin to slosh and bubble until the liquid inside them bulges over their edges.

Arthur realizes his jaw has come loose.

“Just like that?” he asks.

“Same water, same stream,” Merlin says with a shrug. “It has to come from somewhere, though. You can’t conjure what you haven’t seen.”

Amazing.

“Father says most sorcerers say magic words to do things like that,” Arthur says.

“I’m not most sorcerers,” Merlin says.

“You don’t need them?”

“There are more complex spells which do require an incantation,” Merlin says. “But things like this? No.”

“Are there rules to magic?” Arthur asks.

“Yes,” Merlin says.

“What are they?”

“Too many to tell you all in one breath.”

“The big ones, then,” Arthur says. “Like, never stand in a fairy circle.”

Merlin, despite himself, chuckles.

“Fairies have better things to do than wait around for someone to drop into their gardens,” he says. “The big rules are about balance. You cannot conjure more of something than that which already exists. You cannot give life without taking it. The production of gold from lesser things is a matter of alchemy, not sorcery.”

Arthur watches Merlin scrape sand out of an iron cooking pot on Balinor’s small table.

“So you could never enrich yourself,” he says.

“You can, but you’d have to do it through trickery,” Merlin corrects. “You can make lead coins appear silver, and you can then trade them for real silver. But again, the metal stuff is sort of beyond your typical practitioner.”

“What about healing?” Arthur asks.

“You mean, how does Gaius do it?” Merlin asks. “It’s—It’s not really intuitive, if I’m honest. See, the world around us is made out of stardust, and the particular properties of everything depends on how much of this or that mineral is contained within its dust. With magic, Gaius can encourage the properties of his medicines towards various purposes. You can achieve a similar effects for all those things without magic if you are outrageously, annoyingly tedious in your blending and measurements, but it will take longer for everyone involved and the medicine’s abilities will be limited.”

“Is that what he teaches you? The er, measuring and blending?” Arthur asks.

Merlin sets the cleaned pot over the fire and pours a good bit of water inside.

“It’s rotten work,” he says.

“You don’t like it?” Arthur asks.

“Would you?”

“I dunno. Sounds interesting. Stardust and all that.”

“Figures you’d be excited about dust.”

“Are you still angry with me, Merlin?” Arthur asks.

Merlin considers him and after a long moment, sighs.

“Nothing much has changed, has it?” he says.

Arthur sinks with him onto the stone ground by the fire. Merlin hangs his elbows on his knees.

“I’ve been trying to think of a way to convince my father that you would not betray Camelot,” Arthur admits.

“It’s not worth it. He hates me.”

“He really doesn’t. I don’t think he’s thought much about you at all until now.”

“My type, then,” Merlin says.

“Magic frightens him,” Arthur says. “It took my mother. He was helpless as she died.”

“Magic didn’t take your mother,” Merlin says. “Nimueh only made it so that your mother could give her life to you. There was no malice there from the magic itself.”

“I understand that,” Arthur says. “But you must also see that, to Father, it looked like and felt like magic betrayed him and my mother.”

“I see only man who did not want the natural laws to apply to him,” Merlin says.

Right.

Okay.

That’s…fair. Or something.

“I have bound myself to you,” Merlin says. “But I don’t need to return to Camelot. I can stay here.”

“You’d be alone,” Arthur says.

“Maybe certain people are meant to be,” Merlin says.

The fire pops and crackles as it finds little pockets of sap in the wood they’ve piled on top of it.

“Why here?” Arthur asks. “Why did you come back here of all places?”

Merlin huffs in amusement and curls his fingers into his palms.

“I suppose it’s my inheritance,” he says. “I felt a right to it.”

“Your inheritance? I thought you were a bastard.”

“Balinor was my father.”

Ice shoots down the small of Arthur’s back.

“Balinor?” he repeats. “How—how do you know?”

“He told me. Well, I worked it out, but we both knew in the end.”

“I’m so sorry,” Arthur breathes.

“It’s alright.”

“It’s not. I didn’t even realize—”

“I can feel him here,” Merlin says. “I can still feel his magic in his things. That’s how it works. Magic never truly dies.”

“He accepted you for what you were,” Arthur says.

“He thought he was the last dragonlord,” Merlin says to the fire.

Arthur swallows.

“But you are now,” he says.

Merlin inclines his head, rocks back and pushes himself up to standing to go rifle through some sacks and baskets on the shelves behind Balinor’s table. He comes back with salt and lentils and a fistful of roots with their herbs still clinging to them.

With the purpling sky behind him and the fire shining in his eyes, Arthur can see the resemblance to the hermit who once cooked his meals on this very place.

“You sent the dragon away,” he says.

“Yes, t’was I, Emrys the Wise and the Wild,” Merlin says in a craggily voice that makes Arthur laugh until he cuts himself short.

“Wait,” he says. “Was that Dragoon?”

“No idea who that is. Next question.”

“That was you all this time? What the hell was that beard, Merlin?”

“Excuse you. Dragoon’s beard is a work of art and imagination. You wouldn’t know because you don’t have any.”

It is so easy to fall back into their usual banter. Arthur tugs at the tips of his fingers while fighting down a smile.

None of this is helping resolve the issue of Father being Father.

“If Father could accept Morgana for all that she is now, he could accept you,” he says.

Merlin lifts his gaze without moving his head.

“Arthur,” he says. “It’s not just going back to the castle that’s an issue here for me. I lied to everyone.”

“You had to,” Arthur says.

“That’s not how people will take it,” Merlin says.

“They will take it how I command them to take it.”

“No, they’ll just lose faith in your judgment,” Merlin says.

“Be my favorite,” Arthur blurts out.

There comes a long, pregnant pause. Merlin blinks rapidly at him over the fire.

“I’m sorry, I’m gonna need that again,” he says.

“Be my favorite,” Arthur repeats. “We’ll tell them I fell in love with you.”

“Are you out of your mind?”

“It’s a natural progression,” Arthur says. “Manservant to sorcerer, sorcerer to lover.”

“They’ll think I enchanted you,” Merlin says.

“Not if I bind you in some kind of way.”

“Bind me?”

“Cold iron binds magic, doesn’t it?”

Merlin is not impressed.

“Let me get this straight,” he says, “You want to take the greatest sorcerer of all time, who’s power, need I remind you, stands at your beck and call, and to—yes, bind all that to make said sorcerer all but fucking useless, Arthur? Are you hearing yourself?”

“A sorcerer is not a threat once his magic is bound,” Arthur says.

Merlin is still not on board. His expression could melt ice.

“How, praytell, do you intend to bind me in this hypothetical and insulting scenario?” he asks.

Arthur fidgets.

“Well,” he says. “How—how would you want to be bound?”

“Not.”

“In a knot?”

“No, you turnip. Not bound at all.”

“Well, obviously. But people don’t know how magic works, and we could just do it a little bit. You could still have access to most of your power, right? Maybe I could make you a ring to wear.”

“A ring,” Merlin deadpans.

“Or a circlet?” Arthur offers.

“Of cold iron. You are out of your mind.”

“Come on, work with me, Merlin. It’ll convince Father, too. He had a favorite once when my uncle was still living.”

“I did not hear that. I did not ask for that. I am purging that information from my mind as we speak.”

“A necklace? An earring?”

“An earring.”

“Yeah.”

“Like a woman’s?”

“Not if you don’t want it to be. I’d have it made just for you.”

Merlin scowls.

“You are not getting near my face with a needle,” he says.

“I’m not hearing a no,” Arthur says.

“Iron rusts,” Merlin says.

“So it’ll rust.”

“No one will believe I’m really bound if I can take whatever it is you bind me with off.”

“So we’ll make it so that you can’t.”

“And then I’ll really be bound.”

“Yes, but not much.”

“How?”

“Be my favorite and I’ll tell you,” Arthur says.

The edge of Merlin’s lip twitches as he fights a sneer at the very thought.

“If I say yes, will you make it weird?” he asks.

“People have to believe it, Merlin.”

“Remind me what’s in this for me.”

“Proximity to your friends and family. More freedom to move around Camelot. Lack of death at my father’s hands. A nicer bed than the one in Gaius’s chambers.”

“Hm.”

“Pretty good, hey?”

“What the hell,” Merlin says. “I’m already yours.”

Whether it’s the words themselves or the breakthrough that has Arthur throwing himself into Merlin’s lap, he’s not quite sure.

Either way, he ends up caught and bitched at and scolded, and it is nearly as nice as the first time they held each other. So much so that when Arthur catches Merlin’s chin, Merlin allows him to angle his head and lean in.

And that is explosive.

Fire and fallen stars all at once.

Arthur is only aware that he exists outside of the body suddenly pressed against his because the arm wrapped around his waist feels like it’s buried under a thousand layers of linen when it should be smashed tight against his skin.

He might let out a pathetic little sound of frustration at that as Merlin breathes and sinks deeper into his mouth.

He might then immediately be indulged by clever fingers which have dressed and undressed him for seven years, and which know every way in and out of this mail and tunic and all underneath.

“Jesus, Merlin,” he whispers as those bare, bony fingers sink into the skin on his side, on his hip, on his waist, and dig deep into the flesh.

Merlin mumbles something Arthur doesn’t quite catch as he maneuvers Arthur so that he’s straddling his lap.

His hands feel twice as wide than they should wrapped around Arthur’s bare waist like this, and it’s so fucking nice that Arthur is going to lose himself here in a moment if he’s not careful.

“Hold on. Hold on,” he says.

The pressure on his hips eases off.

“Too much?” Merlin asks.

“Too much,” Arthur says.

He can feel the flush burning its way from his forehead to his neck.

Merlin licks the blood on his re-cracked lower lip and surveys the damage he’s wrought over Arthur’s clothes and composure.

“I’d say that’s pretty convincing,” he says.

Haha.

Yeah.

Christ.

Arthur maybe did not think this one all the way through.

Chapter Text

There are two rules that Mum laid out in the name of family honor and good sense before Merlin left for Camelot. 

Two rules, and two rules alone. 

Mum never said precisely what would happen if Merlin broke either of them. It isn’t her way to do things like that, which Merlin understands now to be the most evil type of parental manipulation. But the fact of the matter is that even he ought to be capable of following two rules. 

The first rule is never to take food out of a poor man’s mouth to satisfy one’s own. 

Merlin has been fantastic at that. Never once had a problem, doesn’t see one on the horizon. 

His manners are, when in use, impeccable, and among his fellow peasants, he has developed a fair reputation for providing service to the sick, the poor, and the infirm.

The second rule, however, is never to share a bed with one’s employer. 

Merlin does not know the ins and outs of that second rule, and he would very much like to right now, please, because he is willing to wade through a good many horrible things in service of magic, Camelot, good will to all men and so on and so on, but Mum’s disappointment is not one of them. 

Technically speaking, Merlin did not bed his employer. 

Technically speaking, there was no intercourse of any kind. 

Necking? 

Alright, yes. There might have been some necking. 

But there had been some necking with Will too in the golden days of Merlin’s youth, and Mum only raised her eyebrow at that. 

Moreover, Arthur is not Merlin’s direct employer. King Uther is, and there is no sum that exists on this planet that could persuade Merlin into Uther’s bed. 

No, sire. Absolutely not. 

Arthur is Merlin’s employer the same way that the steward is. He can end the terms of their contract, yes, and it is his role to oversee any deductions in Merlin’s wages, but he did not hire Merlin nor set the parameters of his position. 

So he’s not really his employer, is he?

Besides, they only slept. Merlin on one side of Balinor’s bed and Arthur on the other, and in between them a mountain of rabbits. 

They only slept. 

After. Well. 

Some necking. 

It doesn’t matter. 

Merlin isn’t letting it matter. He has more important things to do than to sicken himself on the dos and don’ts of some arbitrary family law.

Arthur took off at first light and won’t be back for (ever if Uther Pendragon can help it) at least 6 days if all goes according to his bone-headed plan. Which is fine with Merlin as he needs both daylight and distance from that walking tangle of confusion to find the knight that sold him out to those other knights over the mirror and to make him rue the day he dared insult Emrys the Wise.

Is he being petty? 

Yes. 

Is he going to do this anyways? 

Well, the only person who can order him not to now is on his merry way back to Camelot, so, yes. He is. 

That monster won’t even know what hit him. 

Finding the knight means retracing his steps from the mountain to the clearing that Arthur dragged him to. Merlin somewhat remembers the direction. He picks his way through trees, searching around for impression of his own boots as he goes. His are less easily found than Arthur’s. He was not, after all, wearing half his own weight in chainmail. 

Arthur’s footsteps, therefore, take Merlin to the roots of a tree that breaks off into two twin trunks at its base. 

There, he does several unhelpful circles until he looks up and discovers an owl watching him. 

It hoots. 

He hoots back at it. 

It shuffles its feet and sinks low on its branch. 

Merlin follows suit to squat low on the forest floor.

It hoots. 

He hoots. 

It turns its head and stares through the trees at something Merlin cannot see. He watches, though, and when it turns its head to look back, he’s ready to mimic that gesture, too.

Gaius once told Merlin that shape-shifting takes years to master, and most of who imbibe only do so partially. They might change their lungs out for gills if pushed unexpectedly into water or change their arms into wings if dropped over the edge of a staircase or parapet.

Merlin doesn’t know if he will ever manage a partial shape-shift.

His muscles cramp when he’s in the forest. He sometimes wants to carve out the insides of his bones and take off at a run towards a cliff. His lungs seize up when he stares too long into water.

He can feel himself constantly trying to crumple into something smaller or something softer or something with blacker eyes.

He just can’t quite feel his way through how, and so he is left to mimic his teachers—the owls and the rabbits and the deer and the horses in Camelot’s stable, all of whom seem to pity him and his fruitless desperation.

The owl he follows now keeps stopping in trees, waiting for him to catch up to it on his clumsy, human feet before it takes silent flight again, deeper and deeper into the brush.

It brings him to a dense area of trees and saplings and alights on a branch in plain sight. Its feet tuck themselves comfortably under its wings. Here, it seems to say.

Merlin follows its gaze towards the light before him. It seems that they (he and the owl) have come within twenty or so yards from the end of the tree-line. On the other side, a wide path has been cut and paved by human hands and tools.

It looks, from the distance, like a flat, blackened river that curves effortlessly in and out of the trees until it vanishes out of sight.

Merlin screws up his eyes and notes a series of humans walking on both sides of the path. On the side closest to him, there is a man on an extremely spindly wheeled contraption, huffing and puffing and wearing the most peculiar half-helmet Merlin has ever seen.

It is the color of peat bogs in autumn, and yet it looks to be crafted out of some kind of metal?

It’s the only armor the man has chosen to wear, too, which is certainly…a decision.

Trailing behind him by several paces (though not moving at any greater speed) is a crowd of children all dressed in green livery with matching patches sewn into the same places on their chests and arms. They chatter among themselves so loudly and so brightly that Merlin feels himself squinting with irritation.

It’s a forest, he wants to say. People are trying to sleep and do business.

Alas, he is not here to scold herds of squires into better manners.

He is here to find that damn knight.

He thanks the owl with a tip of his head and goes crunching through fallen leaves and twigs westward.

There are many, many people bumbling around on the paved road to the west. There is, for example, another herd of patched-up squires, these ones older and dressed in drab brown and broken up into groups of two and three. There are several people wearing enormous traveling packs made out of bright cloth on their backs weaving around those couples and trios, and, off to the side of the whole lot, there is a man done up in the most incomprehensible black jacket.

He stands out from all the others due to the length of his pitch-colored trousers and the way he’s tied a long ribbon under the flaps of his standing bleached collar. He appears to be talking to his reflection in the mirror he holds up to his face.

Merlin watches him for some time, trying to work out if his mirror is the same one which his enemy knight stole only for the man to turn around in place several times and stomp his foot.

He says a spell that sounds like “Just send me a pin,” and, to Merlin’s alarm, his mirror lets out a little song in response.

The man sighs and taps grumpily on the mirror’s face before starting to walk Merlin’s way.

Merlin prepares himself to shove only for the man to abruptly stop and start walking the opposite direction with his mirror held out in front of him.

He swears continuously as he ambles around.

Merlin waits for him to clear the area before daring to start moving again.

There is a place where the ground flattens about half a mile or so further. The space is wide and green and positively deserted. Merlin can count the number of trees around the area on one hand. Under each is a table with a long bench on each side. Some ways from all the trees and tables, there is a strange structure made of brightly painted metal. Someone has planted it firmly in the center of a moat of woodchips.

Merlin watches as the green-clad squires from before turn into this wide, rolling area. They are led by several half-dressed young men who appear to be older. These leaders claim one of the many tables and the squires sling sacks off their back into a chaotic pile around the thing’s benches before rushing off in lines to attack the painted structure.

Aha.

Merlin understands now.

This is a practice area for burgeoning knights.

To whom these squires belong, Merlin still has no idea. He doesn’t recognize their particular shade of green, nor can he understand why they are gathered out here in the mountain’s foothills, so far from the forts on either side of the border.

One of the children’s attendants’ catches sight of him lurking in the trees and raises a hand in greeting.

Merlin raises his own to show he is not a threat.

This is a mistake.

As he starts moving, one of the attendants begins walking his way.

He could just be coming over for a piss in the brush. He could be looking for kindling.

Merlin picks up his pace regardless. 

This is also a mistake.

The attendant picks up his pace, too, and soon Merlin is sprinting through the wounds on a smarting shin from the night before.

The attendant is, unfortunately, much, much faster than he seemed from afar, and upsettingly also in possession of a mirror, which he is holding to his face and shouting at while he hunts Merlin like fucking hound.

“—just like the one on the board at the entrance,” the man says at his mirror between breaths. “Christ alive, he’s fast. Hold on—Hey!! Hey!! Don’t be afraid, it’s okay! Are you lost? Hey!”

This is unbelievable.

Chased down like a hare twice in as many days?

Who are these people?

Whatever kingdom they come from must be two, if not three times as prosperous as Camelot for all its peasants to be this nosy and energetic.

“Forget,” Merlin pants as he finds a long branch of a tree and hauls himself upwards to the next one.

“—Are you kidding me?” his assailant says at his mirror. “He’s climbin’ a fuckin’ tree, officer. God, man. Were you born a lemur? Right, okay. Sorry, can you hear me up there? Hello?”

“Forget,” Merlin hisses down at him.

“What was that?”  

“Forget.”

It doesn’t work. Merlin lets out a low, hoarse growl of frustration as he squints down at the squire’s attendant and strains his ears to make sense of the gibberish he’s spewing at his reflection.

There’s a lot of it.

Merlin snaps at his own ears to make the magic translate. Nothing happens.

“Burn this kingdom to the ground,” he grumbles to himself.

“Right, so. He’s probably fifteen or twenty feet up there. Should I—alright, you said fifteen, right? Fifteen, one-five? Yeah, I can manage that. Uh, no, I don’t think he speaks English. Uhhh, let me see.”

The attendant begins to walk away from the base of the tree, which raises Merlin’s spirits briefly only to crush them as the man returns to his previous spot to carry on nattering away to his mirror.

“Red shirt, yeah. Very skinny. Bandana ‘round his neck, that’s the one.”  

“A pox upon you,” Merlin whispers down at him. “A fever. Warts and bunions and the bloody flux.”

The attendant raises his head and then looks away only to greet—

For fuck’s sake.

Another attendant.

The two begin conversing. In short time, they are surrounded by their collection of squires, all of whom throw back their heads and widen their mouths and point Merlin out to their horrible little friends. Their relentless noisemaking persists despite their attendants’ attempts to quiet it.

Merlin can literally feel his patience throbbing in the veins in his neck.

He checks overhead to see if there is anywhere higher to climb.

The attendants below begin making a ruckus even louder than that of the squires. Merlin resolutely does not give them his attention.

All this for revenge?

For his pride?

It might not be worth it.

If Merlin had known things would get this complicated, he would have cursed that mirror the moment he climbed out of the well. That way at least he’d be able to track it down.

Though, that said, he thinks he can hear wailing now in the distance, familiar, rumbling wagon-like wailing, and that makes him think that all these people’s mirrors are connected to the local king’s militia.

He does not want nor need to be connected to any man’s militia.

He just wanted to get back at that one knight.

Merlin balls himself up at the base of his present branch like an owl and watches as the attendants below begin herding their flock to the side to allow a man through to the bottom of the tree.

He’s wearing the bright green that the men chasing Merlin the night before were.

He looks directly up.

Merlin looks directly down.

“Hello, there,” the man says. “Are you stuck, mate?”

These people must be Saxons.

Arthur knows Saxons. He spent a good many years of his youth fighting them in the northern borderlands and then begrudgingly negotiating with them at Uther’s behest.

Merlin, meanwhile, was raised by the eastern border.

He has met precisely one foreigner in all his life, and that was Gwen’s father who came from a faraway place as a little boy and grew up the rest of his life in Camelot alongside everyone else so basically was like everyone else.

So, thinking about it now, Merlin maybe has met no foreigners.

Huh.

Perhaps he ought to try to be welcoming.

He leans forward to catch the eye of the newly arrived knight.

The man brightens and holds up a hand in greeting.

Merlin considers it for one additional, long moment and decides swiftly that he is, actually, Emrys the Wise, the Wild, the Bard, the Great, the most powerful sorcerer of all time and he has no reason to hide from other men at the top of a tree.

He takes hold of the tree’s trunk and begins climbing down.

This time, when his boots hit dry soil, Merlin does not run. He is no longer afraid of these Saxons. He has no weapons on him and so they have no grounds upon which to take him prisoner.

Besides, he’s made up his mind: it’s not the knight who stole his mirror that offends him. It’s the fact that the well lead him to the mirror in the first place. If it weren’t for the well, he wouldn’t be in this mess—definitely wouldn’t be bound forever to his royal highness.

So he is letting go of the knight and the mirror and setting his sights on the true nemesis here: the well. 

This is big of him, he knows.

“Woah, friend. Where are you going there?” the brightly-colored Saxon knight says as Merlin tries to shoulder past him in the direction of home.

“Move aside,” Merlin says with a wave of his hand.

Finally, the weak magic of this place sputters. It isn’t much at all, but it is enough to carry the suggestion and the knight, gaping, steps aside.

The ring of children begins to titter.

“Did his eyes—”

“Did you see his eyes?”

“They changed color. I saw it. Did you see?”

Merlin begins walking eastward. Eastward, he’ll go, until he runs into the river. Then he’ll go south towards Camelot. The well won’t be far from there.

He gets about as far as the strange paved road when the box-y, wailing wagon from the day before rolls wailing up next to him. He keeps walking as it passes.

Within a few moments, its other side comes up upon him and slows to match his pace as he trudges on with his head held high.

A strange vibrating sound brings his attention to the side where he is greeted by a face.

“Need a lift?” the Saxon driver says.

Merlin ignores him. He wants to walk on the hard paved road. Everyone else is walking on the hard paved road.

The box-y wagon rumbles on next to him, annoyingly keeping pace.

“Sprechen Sie Deutsch?” the man says.

Merlin has half a mind to shove both man and box into the middle of the road. Alas, the magic of this place has again fizzled out to nearly nothing.

Someone ought to condemn the whole place as wasteland. 

“Parlez-vous Français?” the man says.

“My name is Emrys,” Merlin snaps at him.

“Wyt ti'n siarad Cymraeg?”

“There you go again,” Merlin says. “Look. I’m not Saxon. I’m not Saxon.”

“¿Hablas Español?”

Merlin stops. The wagon stops too.

“Where’re you headed, then, bub? Certainly not very far from the looks of you,” the man asks.

Merlin takes stock of the door between him and the man. It has what looks to be a dent on its side which is fitted in with a hinged piece of metal.There is nothing else on the door which could open it, therefore, this must be its knob or bolt.

Merlin looks up into the man’s neutral, unreadable expression.

Its smoothness annoys him.

“I’m much nicer than the coppers, you know, and the man your buddy sliced through yesterday if it’s not too unprofessional to say,” the man says. “Ten minutes in the back and not a second more. That’s all I need, and I’ll send you off on your way.”  

Merlin feels his skin pulling into gooseflesh down his flanks and spine. 

He pushes his own magic into the hard paved road beneath his feet. It sinks in and immediately, half of it fizzles out. The other half makes it into the earth. It breaks into nets of energy, searching and searching for something to latch onto.

Half of the seeking portion dies.

The man in his wagon is still talking. A crowd has begun to gather on the paved road in front of and behind the boxy wagon, effectively trapping both it and Merlin in a single length of road with perhaps twenty or so yards in each direction.

Another half of the seeking magic dies beneath Merlin’s feet.

Annoyance begins building in his heart as his patience moans like twisting metal.

The longer the man talks to him with that deadened voice; the more he can feel his magic gagging, writhing, suffocating in this soulless land.

He feels his own expression cooling into the smooth, round face of a stone with every second.

With a curdling whimper, the last of his seeking magic dies.

He steps off the paved road onto true soil at the base of the tree-line.

Here, there is a single vein of energy in one root of the nearest oak. He can feel it pulsating, barely there, just barely.

He is sorry for the tree.

He is not sorry for anything else when he reaches up high over his head and calls a bolt of lightning down from the sky.

The sound of lightning is never anything less than deafening. For an instant, there is nothing but light—no shapes, no movement—then there is shadow. A shower of sparks erupts around the wagon, and in the aftermath, onlookers scream. They swear; they clutch at each other.

Merlin lowers his arm, still staring the wagon-driver in the face while the top of his boxy container smokes and hisses.

“Holy fuck,” the man says.  

“My name is Emrys,” Merlin says.

“Oh my god. You’re a fucking wizard.”

“Tell your King he can keep all his mirrors. I have no use for them anymore.”

“Is—I have no idea what you’re saying, mate, but yeah. Right on. Whatever you need.”

“I’m going now,” Merlin says, gesturing towards the woods.

The driver, aghast makes trembling shooing motions.

This is pleasing. Merlin revels in finally being understood.

“Your land is dying beneath your feet,” he says. “You all should look into figuring what’s going on with that.”

“Exactly. Yeah,” the driver says.

Merlin helps him understand by gesturing with a flourish to the scorched, burning tree at his side. He gestures then to the hard, paved road so that the rest of the onlookers to understand as well. They mostly gape at him while holding their mirrors high Merlin’s way.

“Great,” Merlin says, giving everyone two very encouraging thumbs ups.

None of them speaks so much as a word as he turns and walks back into the forest past the burning tree.

The thing is that Arthur is, objectively speaking, handsome and powerful. And Merlin cannot pretend that he has not considered, on one or two occasions, what it might be like to have all that handsome, powerful attention directed at himself.

Not that he has been lacking in Arthur’s attention over the years. God, no. If anything, he is full up with Arthur’s attention; he is drowning in Arthur’s attention. These last few weeks in the wilderness, though lonely, have given him a rather lovely reprieve in that respect.

But that does not stop him from wondering as he follows overgrown deer-trails what it might be like for Arthur to look upon him as he did last night more often.

Not every day, of course. Merlin is but a man, and if he had to endure that slackened expression for more than a minute at a stretch, he might explode like a pig’s bladder filled with too much air.

But now and again, it might be…nice?

Would it be nice?

Or has Merlin become so isolated out here in the woods that he’s beginning to crave human interaction of any variety—good or bad?

He can’t say.

Morgana might know better. She seems to be able to pluck the most uncomfortable thoughts from his mind and make sense of them without much trying. 

He stops in a clearing made by some magic being into a bower. Ribbons hang from the woven vines overhead along with the tattered remains of strips of linen. A few of the ribbons have bells strung onto their ends. A few have seashells with insides glistening all colors of pearl. Together, they make a chime of sort that dances in the wind. 

A circle has been drawn in the middle of the shady place at the far end of the clearing and marked with a linen sack wrapped in rope. Merlin sidesteps the whole lot with care and carries on along the deer path heading some damn direction. He’s not sure which anymore. Magic is guiding him more than any inborn compass now.

He follows its tugging a little ways further into another clearing, this one set up with a proper altar at one end and covered in a blanket of moss. A little stone throne stands proud in the only patch of sunlight that has managed to break through the canopy of leaves overhead.

A bouquet of flowers with big, healthy heads sits at the foot of the throne.

Merlin observes it, and after a moment, approaches the bunch. Roses and thistle and foxglove. All vibrant and beautiful, but seasonal and for that reason, not much of a gift for whatever lord or lady presides over this glade.

Merlin curls a hand over the head of the palest rose and dreams of the sweet scent of hyacinth, the proud stalks of daffodils, and the demure bow of snowdrops.

The bouquet remakes itself under his hand.

The heat makes its blooms more fragrant than they would be in their proper season.

“Your majesty,” Merlin says as he takes a bow before the throne.

He rises, and the magic tugs him back on task.

Arthur, yes.

Merlin has to focus on Arthur. He is bound now to him, bound heart and soul—though, in truth he already was.

Is he angry that Arthur did not wait until he was properly a king before wiring them together like this?

Yes.

Does it make him want to leap for joy and weep in self-pity and vomit all at the same time?

Also yes.

But it’s happened now, and someone has to figure out a truly sensible way forward.

Uther will not tolerate Merlin’s presence in Camelot, no matter what Arthur claims about binding and cold iron. Further, no one in their right mind will believe that Merlin is Arthur’s favorite.

Arthur is known far and wide to fancy strong-willed ladies and perhaps Leon if one must stretch their imagination into the realm of impractical but possible options.

Merlin has nothing in common with any such persons.

He is gawky and bony and sarcastic, bordering on churlish. He burns in the sun. His clothes reek of sweat. He’s an unrepentant gossip, and he’s a fucking murderer on top of all that. 

There cannot be a more repellant man in all of Camelot, and if there is, Merlin is sure to find him and kill him soon enough.

Ah.

He’s found the well.

The easiest way to destroy a well is to fill it, cover it, and leave it forever. Merlin would do exactly that but for one problem: this one is already filled to overflowing.

Mirrors and coins and thick, torn clothing; brooches and rings fitted with fat, gleaming gemstones. Every color of silk handkerchief. It’s all piled up so high that the well’s thatched shelter has broken off its stilts and crashed down sometime during the night onto the hardpacked soil nearby.

Necklaces hang from the edges of mounded hoard that has risen from the well’s mouth; they look like saliva stretched between the jaws of a dragon.

Merlin has to do a triple take to make sure that he’s looking at the same well from the other day.

“Did the fuckin’ elves find you or something? Good God,” he swears.

The well gives off a nonchalance that makes him grit his teeth.

Arthur felt very nice in Merlin’s lap, that is absolutely true.  Though clearly, he is not used to necking with men.

His lips and tongue were far more hesitant and delicate than Merlin would have expected from someone with such a large personality and insistence on being in charge.

He became overwhelmed much sooner than Merlin anticipated, too—which is good actually, on the one hand, because it means Rule Two is still intact, and bad on the other, because Merlin’s mind is now doing laps around the chances of any of those sensations reoccurring.

They certainly aren’t high, he tells himself as he deposits a healthy armload of coins and jewelry into the pit he’s spent the last hour digging into the earth at the side of the well.

But they aren’t nil either, he thinks as he begins spreading dirt upon that armload in anticipation of the next layer of valuables.

He’s placed a spell on the whole hoard to start to sink deep into the packed soil once he’s gotten the first layer of dirt over it.

He can’t say why this particular method of hoard-disposal impressed itself upon him, only that it is extremely satisfying to follow through with it, which feeds right into his theory that Fate and Magic are using him to set the stage for a thousand-million futures and prophecies which must go off without a hitch or else the world will end.

Honestly, he doesn’t even really mind if that’s the case.

It’s kind of fun.

Is being Emrys supposed to be fun?

What would Arthur think about Emrys having fun?

Merlin sighs as he hauls up another armload and walks it over to the pit.

“There has to be some way to make this work,” he says.

He’s not sure whether he’s talking about going back to Camelot or being Emrys anymore, but the magic doesn’t care, so neither does he.

Chapter Text

Gaius has cast a spell over the threshold of the physician’s chambers. He did it fully in front of Uther’s face with the same amount of remorse a cow gives a boy she’s kicked in the stomach.

Then he told everyone in town he was retiring and was to be left alone while he procured lodgings for himself on the grand tour he wants to take before he dies on a hill he saw in a dream.

The spell prohibits Uther from setting foot beyond the shadow of the doorframe. Only Uther. Everyone else can traipse in and out as they please, which has unfortunately reduced Uther to conducting negotiations with his good (ex?) friend via carrier chicken.

It is not the pinnacle of dignified conversation, no, but it is at least something, and at the moment, sans crown prince, ward, and advisors whose solutions to the situation at hand are not simply ‘make another prince’ or ‘make a regent of your brother-in-law,’ Uther will take something over nothing at all.

Arthur vanished nearly three days earlier; he left the castle before dawn and ordered the courtyard guards to let him through the gates. No one has seen him since.

Uther will not pretend that his son has not been difficult since the departure of his young manservant. He has been sullen, withdrawn, and short-tempered. The servants who have taken over Gaius’s nephew’s duties have been treated to the most pernicious stares and silence.

Uther tried reason with Arthur about that—scolded him even and received no expression of repentance whatsoever.

Arthur, in fact, told him that he, Uther, cannot be angry with Merlin for using his magic to protect he, Arthur, from what he thought was a living, breathing threat to Arthur’s person. When Uther explained that it was not Merlin’s protectiveness that he was upset with, but the fact that Merlin could have killed Morgana and any number of loyal subjects in court, he was treated to a whole new fit of hand waving and cut-off exclamations.

“I want him by my side,” Arthur said. “He is meant to be by my side.”

To that, Uther had to explain painstakingly, though not unkindly, that legends and prophecies only come true if the people in them make them. If they don’t, then they don’t. And life goes on.

“Don’t be childish,” he said.

And Arthur reeled back as if he had raised his open hand over his head.

“You don’t understand. You never understand,” Arthur said then, and, without leave, excused himself to training.

“You never understand” is exactly what Uther told his dear, dead brother Aurelius before mounting a horse and galloping off into battle at the ripe age of twenty summers.

Aurelius shouted after him, threatening to whip him, but when Uther returned triumphant, soaked in Saxon blood, he wilted a bit and fidgeted about with his hands on his hips before relenting and saying that now and again, he could probably at least try to understand Uther’s perspective.

So long as it “wouldn’t get us all bloody killed.”

Not understanding worked with Aurelius. It did not work with Father.

It worked for Morgana, too. Uther cannot count how many times she stripped him of his outermost pride with those barbed words.

When she came to live in Camelot’s castle, she’d curled herself into a tiny, curly-haired ball and hidden behind her bed. She was used to Gorlois’s scent and thick hands; she wanted her elder sisters, her mother—anything familiar.

Instead, she was treated to a hulking giant of a man wearing the blood of the man she’d called Father since her first breath. Uther marveled even then at her green-eyed beauty and wondered how on earth he could have contributed to the life of such a wonderful, fragile thing.

As an older girl, ‘you don’t understand’ became a code, of sort, for Uther breaking one of the thousands of promises he made her.

The last ‘you don’t understand’ that fell from her lips took her from him and delivered her into the arms of her wicked sister and the druids.

Uther cannot lose his son this way, too.

Arthur is all that is left of Ygraine. The thought of begetting another son with some woman who is not her curdles Uther’s stomach.

He does not know if he can love any child as much as he loves the two he already has.

And because he can admit that he is being sentimental, and because he can admit that Arthur’s raw eyes and trembling chin affect him more than they should, he does what he must and goes out to the grounds to find a raven.

Gaius is out feeding a small herd of magpies when Uther arrives to the field where wild birds gather to hunt worms and vermin in the grass. Gaius throws handfuls of dried wheat and peas out before him with the practiced, never-to-be forgotten technique of a boy-farmer.

Uther approaches on soft feet and stands unobtrusively to the side.

“Your shadow offends me,” Gaius informs him without looking away from his flock. “Have you come here to insult my family further or have you come to apologize?”

“Neither,” Uther says. “I was hoping to send a message via raven.”

“To Morgana, I presume.”

“Yes.”

“God be with you, then, my lord,” Gaius says gruffly as he shakes what remains in his wooden bowl into the soil.

“Thank you, kindly.”

“It won’t be a raven that’ll get to the druids, though,” Gaius says as he walks away. “Try a magpie.”

“I hear the seaside is good for bad lungs,” Uther says after him. “Might be a good place to retire.”

“I’ll retire when I’m dead, you know-nothing royal buffoon, and not a second sooner, no matter your wishes.”

That's not quite forgiveness, but it seems that Gaius’s rage has gone from a boil to a simmer.

That is promising.

“I will pray for your long life, then,” Uther says.

Gaius struts off tsking back towards his chambers, which leaves Uther to catch a magpie in relative peace.

The magpie is not easily caught, but once it is and a message tied securely upon its leg, it beats its wings and takes off right into the forest.

Within hours, it returns to peer into Uther’s chambers’ window with a missive of a darker hue tied where his once was.

In that letter, Morgana explains that, had Uther listened to her heart as she poured it out before him years before, they would not be where they are today.

She accuses Uther of teaching Arthur to become like himself and points out that, for all his princely whinging, Arthur almost never asks anything of him.

It is an astute observation trimmed with the begrudging affection of an older sister, and Uther appreciates her honesty and clear-headedness on the matter. He appreciates it so thoroughly that the rebuke comes as a relief to his otherwise spinning thoughts.

Arthur, despite his hot temperament, is a good and obedient prince. Others of his status would demand more sumptuous clothing, more suitresses and maids upon which to lavish attention, and greater allowances to waste away gambling and drinking.

Arthur, however, is not much interested in any of that, and his desire to please Uther is evident enough even to outsiders that there has not been one courtier for years that Uther has had to tell off for whispering in his son’s ears.

In any other circumstance, he would grant Arthur’s wish, but this one, as he writes to Morgana, is at odds with everything he believes in and has spent his life making.

Her response is simply: ‘Did you not make this world for us?’

Bitterly, he must admit defeat in the face of that truth or else stoop to contemptuous hypocrisy and denial. 

Does he want to allow Arthur to link himself forever to a sorcerer?

Absolutely not. But there maybe some benefit here. For all that Morgana insists that there is no place for magic in Camelot, Emrys is still young yet.

He has procured better armor for Arthur and looked after his every need. Uther has witnessed his loyalty with his own eyes, and he can think of no greater weapon for his son to learn to wield than that of the boy born to be ‘the greatest sorcerer of all time.’

‘Better with him than against him,’ so the saying goes.

Suffice to say, on the day that Arthur finally does return from the woods, Uther has prepared a whole speech on the matter.

He’s thought it through for days and met with Morgana on the edge of the forest to hammer out the uncomfortable, emotional parts about valuing Arthur as a son first and a subject second and after those things a prince.

Uther welcomes Arthur home, ignores the irritable rustling of his courtiers’ tailfeathers, and invites him to rest and then come to his personal chambers to discuss his absence.

Arthur bows low and deep and follows the instructions to the letter.

When Uther arrives to his quarters from court later that evening, he finds him dressed in new clothes and flushed from hot bath water.

“My son,” he says.

“My father,” Arthur greets. “I bring word from Emrys.”

Uther tries not to wince. He’d hoped to get at least a few lines into the speech before they broached the subject of Merlin.

“Quite a journey,” he notes. “I would have liked to know where you went prior to your departure.”

“You would have stopped me,” Arthur says. “My lord, I have returned to beg your indulgence.”

No. Nope.

There is a whole speech—

“I would like to take a favorite, my lord.”

Uther deflates and grasps for the pain already starting up behind his eyes.

“I presume Emrys is the favorite?” he says.

“He is,” Arthur says.

“And I presume he agreed to becoming said favorite?”

There is a pause.

“Yes,” Arthur says.

That pause is telling.

“Enthusiastically, Arthur?” Uther asks.

The second pause is worse than the first.

“He did agree,” Arthur says.

“Enthusiastically?”

“It doesn’t matter how.”

“Does he know what is required of a favorite?”

“He’s not interested in courtly duties.”

“That’s not what I asked you,” Uther says.

“He cannot enchant me. I assure you he tried and failed every time.”

“He tried to enchant you to make him your favorite?” Uther deadpans.

Arthur flounders a little.

“No,” he says. “No, he. He tried to enchant me to—nevermind.”

“Not nevermind. This boy harbors enormous power, Arthur. He has deceived us before. Now is not your turn to do the same.”

Arthur cringes inwards, but rallies and decides to say whatever he has to with his full chest.

“He told me to fuck off,” he says.

Ah.

“Several times, in fact.”

Er.

This feels familiar. 

“But fear not, sire, I convinced him. He is my other half. I felt it. I feel it now. When we are together, I can do anything, Father.”

Uther is sorry to have to do this. He didn’t think he would have to but—

“What does Merlin think about that?” he asks.

“He thinks that it’s better than dying on a pyre,” Arthur says.

This is not the resounding triumph he thinks it is.

“Alright. Yes, so. I’m hearing that he has some doubts on the arrangement,” Uther says as tactfully as he can manage.

“Nothing that cannot be overcome,” Arthur says. “I told him I would convince you. I told him that he should allow himself to be bound with cold iron as a sign of his loyalty to us. To me.”

“And he said?” Uther asks.

“He consented.”

“Consented in a tone like ‘better than dying on a pyre’ or like ‘yes, how wonderful, I’ll do anything you ask, you brave and honorable knight?’”

The moment of pondering over that question speaks for itself.

“I’ve underestimated Merlin,” Arthur muses. “He altered his personality as my servant to please me.”

“Right,” Uther says.

“He’s quite a grumpy soul, you know,” Arthur says.

“Your mother was famously grumpy on the occasion,” Uther deadpans.

“Precisely,” Arthur says. “He is dour and sour and serious and I’m the one, me, who isn’t. So we go together, see?”

Uther pities the wizard, frankly.

“Son of mine,” he says.

“Now, I know what you’re going to say,” Arthur interrupts, “It’s not a fair match and Merlin has betrayed us in the past. But things are different now. He truly is compelled to obey me.”

“Is he?” Uther asks.

“Yes.”

“By what means?”

“Our bond. The soul bond.”

“You bound yourself to him?”

“Yes, sire. By accident. I did not realize it would—don’t be angry, please.”

“I’m not angry,” Uther says. “I’m puzzled at how you persuaded a sorcerer of Emrys’s ability to give up his autonomy.”

“I saved him,” Arthur says. “There was a line of knights from the other side of the border who attacked him. I intercepted them. He was grateful and upset still when I helped him to safety, so I said his name, his real name, and held him. The rest did itself.”

“Held him?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Arthur, I have brought dozens of young ladies to this court for you to hold.”

“I hear you, I do. But it was different, sire. It was right. You had a favorite once—”

“We are not talking about my favorite, we are talking about Emrys,” Uther says.

“But you know what it feels like when it’s so right,” Arthur insists.

Unfortunately, Uther does. Because of Ygraine, though, not Osric. God, never Osric. 

“I fear that if you take this favorite, you will lose interest in any and all suitresses,” Uther says outright.

“I shall not, my lord,” Arthur says.

“I’ll believe that when I see it.”

“No, I promise you. Merlin—he is—” Arthur licks his lips. “He understands that this move is political.”

Uther arches a brow.

“He does not feel for you as you do for him?” he asks.

“I think he feels it,” Arthur says. “But it does not…” he trails off.

“Please him,” Uther finishes for him. “I see. Does that not offend you, son? His presence will cause rumors. It will not be easy for him, and I fear Gaius will stab me in my sleep if either of us insults his family further.”

“Merlin belongs here in Camelot,” Arthur says.

“Yes, but does Emrys?” Uther impresses upon him. “Magic like his is not meant to put down roots. He is liable to wander.”

“He will be bound to me,” Arthur says. “I’ll always know where he is. And his magic will be bound, too, so he won’t be able to cause that much property damage.”

Yes, that is the other part of all this that Uther will need to see to believe.

“Father, I beg of you,” Arthur says. “I know he is dangerous. I know he upsets you. But I don’t know if I can live without him now that I know what it feels like to stand at his side the way he has stood by mine for the last seven years. He left here and slit his wrists because he could not imagine a world without me.”

Yes, but he didn’t die, now did he?

“Father.”

“A trial,” Uther allows. “We will allow him a trial.”

“As my favorite,” Arthur says. “And I will do your word to the letter. I will ask nothing of you from now until the end of my days.”

That’s laying it on a little thick, but sure. The boy is certainly passionate about all this.

“I will need to see him bound in iron to be certain of his loyalty,” Uther says.

Arthur agrees heartily, then hesitates in a way that has Uther sighing and rolling his eyes yet again.

“You don’t know how to bind him, I presume?” he asks.

Because this is a trial run and Uther is disgustingly indulgent, he endures Arthur’s six billion ideas for subtle ways to bind Emrys’s power such that the cook and steward wouldn’t be able to tell it was done.

Arthur has grand ideas about all sorts of things—rings and anklets, bracelets and circlets. He suggests a charm to be worn about the neck and then discovers the possibility of a bell while traipsing around that train of thought and at that point, Uther tunes him out.

Those things which Arthur is fixated on will not provide much if any true strength in binding.

A tattoo would be more effective than all of them, though Uther cannot see Emrys submitting to a permanent mark by the court before Arthur is himself king.

He consults Morgana on the matter via magpie.

She replies that the Druid elders do not approve of this plan. Emrys is not an entity meant to be tethered. He is meant to roam. He is meant to wander. If he does not, then he cannot root the thousands of prophecies that rely on his doing so.

Uther understands that, but he also can’t let a lad who, in his dreams, might call thunder down upon them all meander around at his pleasure.

He writes as much and receives word that the druid elders have tentatively agreed that some sort of iron adornment worn near the skin but not against it is a fair compromise on the matter. It must not be large, however. If other magic beings spy obvious signs of mortal tethering, they will riot.

Uther is too old to put down a magical revolt in the borderlands, and the last thing he needs is for any of those people to elect leaders among themselves.

While Arthur does laps around the castle, Uther commissions a brooch.

It is iron mostly, with a few small red, enamel accents. It is tasteful—not so rich as to invite thieves, but not so plain to suggest that Camelot cannot afford to dress its least noble members of court.

Emrys will need to wear it with a cloak or veil of sorts. He already, if memory serves Uther right, tends to wear a kerchief about his throat. The brooch will require something more substantial than that to maintain a barrier between itself and the skin according to the druid’s parameters.

He speaks with Morgana’s maid on the matter. She suggests a bluish cape and volunteers to get right to work.

Both brooch and cape are finished by the time Arthur’s patience runs out.

He is drawn back into the forest. Uther can see it in his eyes every time he mounts his steed.

He’s searching for Emrys, feeling for him the way that only souls intwined can.

If only he could feel so strongly for a maiden.

Ygraine might have been pleased regardless.

Uther unleashes his golden child upon the woods as soon as he is able. The court, skeptical of Emrys returning to Camelot as Arthur’s favorite and even more skeptical that he will not cause chaos through mass enchantment, bids Uther a cold farewell.

He considers on the ride past town having a few of them picked off to remind the remainder of their place in the world.

He would ask Arthur for his input on which ought to be the unlucky martyrs, but Arthur is already half a mile ahead of him.

There is no need for a map with him rustling around in the trees on foot.

Gaius warned Uther that he might become somewhat single-minded in the newness of his and Emrys’s bond. He also told Uther to bring food with him. Morgana said the same thing.

Emrys is not quite a deity to their people, she explained, but he is to be treated with the utmost respect. He will occasionally accept offerings, though only if they are things which he can eat. Everything else, he moves along to some place to hide or bury.

These, many believe, will become magic objects sought out in the future by questing knights and the children of cursed or destitute parents. If Uther wants no part in those stories, he ought to bring something immediately useful. 

He packs three additional loaves of new bread. 

The forest is, at this time of year, unusually pleasant to ride in. The heat of the day does not sink much beyond the topmost canopy of branches and leaves. Below, the air is pungent and warm, but not oppressively so.

Twice, Uther has had to dismount to go drag Arthur away from little shrines and circles set up on old, moss-covered stumps.

They are not tempting fate today, thank you.

He orders Arthur back onto his horse the second time, and when that quickly falls apart in the face of a third, threatens to make him ride in front of him on his own steed like Arthur did when he was an infant.

That threat has teeth enough to get them through a half-day or so of travel, but only that much.

Arthur dismounts again in a glade nearby a river. Uther dismounts to join him at its edge. Insects agitate each other in great swoops around the tall grass there.

Uther does not need to ask Arthur if he senses his sorcerer. The answer is written in the width of his pupils, which have turn his blue eyes near black.

Uther strokes his hair, which snaps him out of his trance.

They cross the river.

On the other side, the forest is dense. They tramp for about an hour into a tunnel of trees that grows increasingly narrow until the trunks and branches thin out into a flat meadow. Deer walk through it in families, munching the heads of yellow flowers as they go.

At the far end is a shady place.

Arthur throws himself into the meadow’s mud without a care in the world for his boots and mail.

He calls for Merlin, and the shape that stands in the shadow at the other end of the meadow breaks into a whisper of beating wings. It is gone by the time Uther joins Arthur under the enormous oak.

“Merlin?” Arthur calls. “Merlin??”

He stops and bumps into Uther; both of their gazes fall to the ground where a small pile of rabbits has appeared around their boots.

They’re fearless. There must be nine or ten of them, all stacked up upon each other, wriggling their soft noses at Arthur.

“Oh. Hello. Yes, I’m back,” he tells them.

The rabbits settle into each other comfortably.

“Where did he go?” Arthur asks.

The rabbits turn their heads all about in all different directions.

“That way?” Arthur asks them.

One of the pack wriggles out from the rest and stands on its back legs. It makes little digging motions at Arthur, at which he cocks his head.

“Right, okay,” he says. “You lead, I’ll follow.”

They are following rabbits through the woods now.

Uther fears his soul has begun to leak out of his ear.

He’s done more absurd things in his life, he’s sure. He just can’t recall any of them right now.

That is corrected in due time when the forest opens up to a perfectly round clearing. In the middle of it sits the shattered remains of a water well.

The earth all around its base is freshly turned. The concrete between the mass of cracked stones piled up next to the remnants of its walls is pale and unbothered by moss.

Whoever caused this carnage did so recently, and then planted approximately four thousand daffodils, each merrily blooming out of season, across every inch of soil from one edge of the clearing to the other.

“Um?” Arthur says to the rabbits.

With worry in their furry little faces, several stand up and make digging motions again.

“Jesus Christ,” Arthur says. “Go on then.”

They discover Emrys by a stream washing his clay-covered hands in the water. Like a deer, he stills upon first sight.

Mud is smeared across his cheeks.

Uther notes cloudy water along the stream bed and follows those clouds to the other side of the bank where an ancient hermit’s hut has been left to decay. The hut is untouched, its garden, however, is thriving and full of herbs, each and every one the color of new snow.

Emrys scratches at the side of his head as he straightens up.

The tree which serves as the base of the hermit’s hut has been treated to a recently built ladder that winds up the stout trunk into its branches. The lowest visible branches are all covered in a thick layer of mud that reaches from the base of each limb to its tip.

The ladder is as filthy as the rest of the ensemble.

“Got an itch for the plow there, Merlin?” Arthur asks lamely.

Emrys looks from him to the tree and back.

He holds out a ruddy hand and gestures vaguely in its direction. He supplies no words to explain the mess or the gesture.

Uther cannot help but note that his clothes hang off him in a manner reminiscent of long moss and cobwebs. His cheekbones compete with his nose for the highest point on his face. 

Arthur gives no sign of noticing the boy’s sickness. He approaches Emrys and, sloshing right into the stream, scoops water in his hands to scrub his cheeks with.

Emrys tears himself away and curls his lips back to show his teeth. Arthur talks to him anyways, telling him what he must have told him before he left the first time.

“Father came to witness the binding,” he eventually says.

It takes a long moment for Emrys to come back to himself. His shoulders slacken and his eyes grow darker. His fingers search out his soaked sleeve and, upon finally noticing his poor state of dress, he ducks his head respectfully in Uther’s direction.

He does not speak. Whether it is from shame or fear, Uther can’t quite tell yet. 

He raises his chin experimentally and watches as Emrys curls even deeper into himself. 

Fear, then. 

Arthur lays a hand on Emrys’s shoulder.

“Why don’t we sit down?” He asks.

The boy is starving out here on his own.

Uther is hesitant even to offer him bread, unsure if his constitution can tolerate it.

From what he is able to gather from Arthur and Merlin’s stilted conversation, it sounds like Merlin has spent the last several days following impulse upon impulse out here in the depths of the forest as well as in the foothills below the peak to the north.

He seems to think that the well he tore apart is evil.

He tells Arthur that it contained layers and layers of mirrors inside it when he got past all the coins and jewelry someone had piled upon them.

Arthur doesn’t know what he’s talking about.

Merlin insists that the mirrors are what caused the knights who Arthur intercepted the week before to assault him. He draws one in the dirt and mimics the sound he says they make when he’s not looking.

He explains that when he got to the first layer of mirrors in the well, they all sang at once over and over, and when they got tired of singing together, they began singing to each other in little chirps.

All that is fine, except for the part where the mirror he drew is definitely not a mirror by any noble standard and mirrors, more importantly, do not make sounds of their own.

Uther does not especially want to speak on that yet. He wants to see how Arthur confronts it and more generally Emrys’s suggestible state of being out here on the forest.  

“And the gardening?” Arthur asks meanwhile. 

“Its herbs,” Merlin says. “Only the white ones. She only wanted the white ones. You ever seen a white herb? I hadn’t.”

“She?” Arthur asks.

“She,” Merlin says, pointing to the massive tree beyond the hut.

“Huh,” Arthur says. “How did you make them white?”

Merlin stares at him, slack jawed.

“How’d I—I don’t—they’re white,” he says. “She wanted white, so they’re white.”

“Yeah, but how did you make them white?” Arthur asks, “Herbs aren’t white on their own.”

Merlin wrinkles his nose as he tries to make sense of Arthur’s extremely sensible question.

“She wanted them white,” he says with exaggerated pauses between the words.

Arthur’s responding expression is blistering.

“I thought you were trying to shape-shift,” he says. “Isn’t that more useful than painting herbs white?”

“I didn’t paint them.”

“Bleach them, then.”

“I didn’t bleach them. I just found all the white ones.”

“I thought you said you’d never seen one.”

“Well, I hadn’t, but obviously now I have.”

“Yeah, but how?”

“What do you mean, how?”

“I mean how’d you find the white herbs?”

“I looked. With my eyes. You know them things in the top holes of your face—”

“Merlin.”

“Yes.”

“You’re being annoying. Where did you find the herbs.”

“All over, but mostly around white stones.”

“Thank you. That’s all I wanted to know.”

The sorcerer yields. 

That bodes well for future training. 

Uther is intrigued to see that the lads’ general rapport has not much changed since the discovery of Emrys’s power. Emrys is disarming no matter his situation. It could be his quaint, rural accent or perhaps the childish gleam in his eye. Both reveal a natural desire to please that peeks through even his most brazen displays of disrespect towards Arthur.

Truth be told that is an unusual thing to see in a sorcerer around Emrys’s age. In Uther’s experience, which he admits consists chiefly of the two loudest personalities to ever exist in the history of magickind, the last thing a healthy young sorcerer wants to do is to please a knight or a lady. 

Gaius told him to drop dead the first many times Uther attempted to hire him.

He made thousands of excuses as to why Uther could not speak with him, saw him coming from yards away and ducked under window sills and behind granaries only to vociferously deny his own presence when Uther addressed him. 

He only began to accept Uther’s attempts at conversation when they came scratching to the door of his rented room in the form of carrier chickens, which, unfortunately, is a sign of how tense their current relationship has become.

Uther does not want to think about that. 

He should be pleased that Emrys seeks Arthur’s positive attention.

Nimueh did the same with Ygraine once—granted, she routinely threatened to drown Ygraine in a basin from the start of their friendship to the end of it, and when first Ygraine introduced her to Uther, she took her not very far aside at all and said, “darling, tell me you’re joking.” 

She drank herself sick at their wedding and told Uther that she couldn’t believe Ygraine actually went through with it. And then, as soon as Gaius moved into the castle, she started a war with him on the basis that he talked too firmly to Ygraine one time when she stumbled on the hem of her skirts. 

Uther has no doubt that she would have tried to kill him over some similarly insignificant slight if Ygraine had survived childbirth. 

There are just some kinds of loyalty that one cannot buy. 

“You seem poorly,” Arthur says, ignorant to his father’s misty eye. 

Merlin looks down at himself.

“I’ll have a bath later,” he says.

“More than that. Your face is thinner than when I was here last. Are you hungry?” Arthur asks.

Merlin shakes his head as he stands.

“Merlin.”

“What.”

“I know you’re hungry. Come eat.”

“The king is here.”

“I am aware. I brought him. Come eat.”

“No. It’s rude.”

“It’s not rude. Sit down.”

“Is that an order?”

“You tell me, great wizard of Ealdor,” Arthur says.

Merlin’s dark-eyed, hunted gaze goes immediately to Uther. Tension rises in his shoulders.

“Sit, Emrys,” Uther says. “You must eat.”

“Someone is calling me, sire,” Merlin says, “You will excuse me.”

Arthur stands as Merlin begins to remove himself with haste.

“Emrys,” he says.

Instantly, Merlin’s shoulders lock up and force his arms to fan out at his sides in strange, uncomfortable angles. Just as quickly as his body contracted, it slackens and Merlin whips around to face them again with new fire burning from the top to the bottom of his sharp face.

“I told you. To stop. Doing that,” he warns in a low rumble.

“Come sit,” Arthur orders.

“Not while he’s here.”

“Emrys.”

“For FUCK’s sake, you tottering—”

“Sit next to me.”

Merlin’s skin goes absolutely translucent with fury. He stands his ground for several long, awkward beats.

From the boy’s shaking muscles, Uther can see that he is compelled by magic to obey Arthur, even when Arthur’s order is at odds with his own will and interest.

He can resist that compulsion, but it takes a hair more strength than Merlin presently has in him after so many days of hard labor.

If Arthur pushes any hard, the lad will break, and all that happens after will only brew resentment. 

Like with Nimueh. 

“Leave it be, Arthur,” Uther orders.

“I hate you. I HATE YOU.”

Uther lifts his head to accept the onslaught only to realize that it is directed at his son—his son who stands with his lower lip jutting out and his mulish jaw held firm.

“We had a deal,” Arthur says.

“I’ve thought more about your deal,” Merlin says.

“We already agreed, Merlin. Don’t be like this.”

“Why? Because it might embarrass you in front of him?”

“We’re both here to bring you back to Camelot.”

“I’m not going back to Camelot.”

“Yes, you are.”

“Arthur,” Uther warns. “Leave it be.”

“Your father is talking to you, my lord.”

“We agreed, Merlin. You want to come home.”

“I lied.”

“You didn’t.”

“I’m not going back. You’re not binding me.”

“You said you would allow yourself to be bound.”

“No.”

“Merlin. I’m asking you not to be difficult right now. The king is extending to you his good graces and indulgence.”

“I am already forsaken and cursed to live the rest of my days bound to you,” Merlin says. “Now you ask me to obey him? You won’t even do me the honor of reaching solid rock bottom, my lord? I changed my mind—unless I am no longer allowed that privilege in which case, you can consider everything here between us done.”

“Alright, that’s enough,” Uther intervenes before things escalate. “Emrys, I will not force your hand in this matter.”

Merlin takes a step back.

“Arthur, I have told you time and time again that agreements and resolutions must be conducted with their due urgency. You gave him time to reflect on his decision, and he has the right to withdraw his offer within the frame given him. This is a failure in our diplomacy,” Uther says. “And though you are free to walk away from here and I expect that you will, Emrys, your uncle insisted that I offer you bread.”

“I don’t want it.”

“It does not matter if you want it. The point is that it is an offering. You are an entity worshipped by other men. I do not have to ascribe to those beliefs to know that our disrespect of you will make it back to those worshippers and cause greater problems between us and them in the future,” Uther says. “You may do whatever you see fit with it afterwards. That is the way of your people anyways, is it not?”

Merlin hesitates. Uther can see his discomfort in his raw lower lip.

Most peasant children would dream of being worshipped like a god.

“If it is from my uncle, I will accept it,” Merlin says.

“I don’t understand,” Arthur says quietly.

Uther will deal with his hurt later. Now, he focuses on producing linen-wrapped packages from his traveling pack. There are three loaves, each individually wrapped. They will go stale before Merlin can eat all of them, but that is not Uther’s concern.

He offers all three. Merlin selects two and leaves the third in its sack on the stones before him.

“May God be with you, my lord,” he says.

“And with you,” Uther says. “Arthur, come. Our business here is finished.”  

Arthur’s heart is so heavy that it weighs down his every step back towards the place where he and Uther left their horses. The air of the forest around them, once pleasant, grows oppressive as that misery swells into unacknowledged tears that shine and pool in the rims of his blue eyes.

Uther eventually stops walking. Arthur goes on for a few steps before realizing, then comes back to stand at his side without a word.

They are far enough away from Emrys now that Uther can safely peel off a glove and wipe at his son’s cheeks. Arthur twists his face to the side and swallows. He speaks not a word, though the tears thicken their trails down to his chin as quickly as Uther dashes them away.

What is there to say?

His boy is in love with his other half. There was never going to be a way to avoid that.

“Merlin is dear to you,” he says.

Arthur cannot bear to meet his eye.

“I am sorry for wasting your time, my lord,” he says hoarsely and softly to the forest floor.

“Emrys is connected to a king, Arthur,” Uther explains, realizing that this is the exact issue at hand as he speaks it.

“To be with him as king means I must lose you first, and I love you too much to relish the thought of my future as an orphan,” Arthur admits.

Uther’s shoulders relax.

“Your loyalty and affection makes this father proud and very, very soft,” he says.

Arthur sucks in a shaky sigh. He lets out the breath and inclines his head.

“I felt so whole,” he says. “Will I disappoint you if I fail to become the Once and Future King?”

Uther almost laughs that this is what has been weighing so heavily on his boy’s mind this whole journey.

“I already told you, Arthur, prophecies are like doors,” he says. “When one closes, another opens. I did not raise you to be the Once and Future King. I raised you to be King Arthur of Camelot, and as long you become that man, I shall not be disappointed. Have I given you cause to doubt that is the truth?”

“No, Father. I—I suppose I only wish you had told me that magic beings could be so capricious,” Arthur says.

Uther sighs and passes a hand over his forehead and crown.

“I hoped I would not have to,” he says.

“Gaius isn’t like this.”

“Gaius is exactly like this.”

“Fine. Nimueh wasn’t.”

“Nimueh was, too.”

Arthur’s face reddens as he tries to come up with some sort of example to disprove Uther’s contradictions.

He won’t find one.

Uther has been king for decades now. Before Arthur’s birth, he arbitrated countless disputes between the magic and non-magic people of this kingdom. Arguments over stolen beans and broken fences and blessed spindles and cursed needles and cattle and pigs and chickens and children and swords and quills and coins plagued him day and day out.

Nimueh would help him understand the importance of this or that nonsensical affair when she was not otherwise preoccupied with Ygraine or building an army of personal nemeses. 

Gaius refrained from helping until threatened or bribed.

“This is what comes with letting these people into your life,” Uther says. “You cannot accept Merlin without accepting all who accompany him. Emrys is more important than a king to magic people. As we take communion, they look to him as magic embodied. He carries their way of life through time. If he binds himself to your will, then all who honor him must do the same.”

Arthur finally looks up.

“That’s why you’d allow it,” he realizes.

Uther will not pretend that he is doing this for Arthur alone. If he cannot banish magic from this kingdom, then he must be able to steer it. 

“Yes. And that is why he refused you upon your second request,” he explains. “You cannot think of him as only Merlin now, Arthur. You must treat him as Emrys. You must understand that this—” he shows Arthur the brooch, “Is as good as a treaty between yourself and magic.”  

He gestures for Arthur to hold out his hand and places the brooch in it.

“People like Merlin are difficult subjects to rule,” he says. “He does not want a warm bed. He does not want land for his family. He wants someone to do what he cannot.”

“Which is?” Arthur asks.

Uther raises an eyebrow at him and looks back the way they’ve come.

“I think it’s rather obvious, don’t you?” he says.

Arthur stares at him for long enough that Uther starts to worry maybe it isn’t obvious or worse, Arthur cannot see its obvious-ness.

“He can’t take care of himself?” Arthur says.

Well.

Close.

“He cannot lead,” Uther corrects.

Arthur’s fingers clench into a fist around the brooch.

“But I can,” he says. “I’ll be back. Stay until nightfall. Can I have that last loaf of bread?”

Chapter Text

Merlin cannot have gotten far so long as he didn’t use his magic to transport himself somewhere else. He isn’t anywhere by the mud-covered tree and its white herb garden. He’s not by the stream, nor crunching around in the grass with the rabbits.

He must have headed back to the cave.

Arthur will be later to get back to Father than desired, but this is more important.

Merlin’s scars line his shoulders and trickle down his spine. He’s not a knight, but he is a warrior, and he wanders this kingdom seeking someone worthy to fight for.

He’s chosen the weak. He’s chosen the needy. The delicate, the sick, the mute and the blind. He wants to know death so that he does not fear it when it comes upon him because, until this moment, no one has done what he does for them, and Merlin is clever, by God, he’s clever. He knows that soon enough, he will be cut down where he stands. The weak and the needy, the aged and the sick, the babes yet to be born and the starving masses, animal and human and forest alike, will all die with him. 

The greatest sorcerer of all time, he’d said, but finished that thought with not yet. 

The one time Arthur knowingly threw himself into the fray specifically on Merlin’s behalf, their jagged edges fit together like pieces of a broken coin. 

But it isn’t enough.

Arthur’s affection for Merlin, his selfish need to hold him, to feel again that euphoric wholeness, does not even touch all that Emrys truly is.

Father is right. This isn’t about Merlin.

This is about magic.

“MERLIN,” he bellows into the trees. “Come on, Merls. One last word, I swear—Give me one more and I’ll leave you in peace.”

“Will you?”

Arthur staggers to a halt and looks directly up into the branches of an old, gnarled oak. He expects to see gangly limbs and shaggy black hair.

But no one is there.

“Merlin?” he asks. “Are you there?”

No. The tree is empty. He searches the others.

“Merlin?” he asks.

“Emrys,” someone whispers against the shell of his ear.

His spine locks into place.

“Emrys?” he asks.

The whisper rushes past him on a sudden billow of wind, taking with it the hollow echo of laughter.

Arthur shivers. Ahead of him, the forest is more shadowed than it is behind him and all around. That isn’t the way to Balinor’s cave, but the new wind at his back is blowing him towards that darkness.

He takes a step.

A hand clasps his shoulder. He can feel each of its five fingers, gloved and solid, and without even thinking, he whips around with an elbow held out sharply at his side.

The face he whirls into has deep set eyes and hair the color of straw in August.

He’s seen it a million times, in buckets and lakes and the polished back of silver trays placed on the same wooden desk by the same man for seven years.

“Pretty good, don’t you think?” his own voice says with a gut-wrenching slick, red smile.

“Merlin?” he asks.

“Six days in the forest,” Merlin says, lowering Arthur’s gold eyelashes just to drag them back up as he takes in every inch of Arthur. “Turns out time’s not quite right here.”

“You did it. You shapeshifted?” Arthur realizes.

“Six days for you,” his own face tells him. “I found that well and broke it to pieces.”

“How long did it take you?” Arthur asks.

“Long enough,” Merlin says, sweeping his red cape over his shoulder in such a practiced, perfect motion that Arthur can only marvel at him.

“You don’t like it?” Merlin asks gesturing to his tunic and mail.

“Was that—was that you who refused me?” Arthur asks. “Or was that someone else?”

The man in front of him vanishes. Arthur staggers back and searches around himself only to find Gwaine, of all people, laying languidly above him on a branch with a trio of crabapples moving like dice in his palm.

“What do you think?” Gwaine asks him.

Arthur doesn’t know what to say besides, “That’s, er. Eerie.”

Gwaine drops his legs over the edge of the branch and swings himself down only to land in the shape of Balinor, the dragonlord.

Every step closer to Arthur makes him re-evaluate his own height.

Was Balinor always this tall?

Arthur takes a step back.

The man’s long, loose coils heave with each inhalation. Arthur licks his lips.

“You’re, uh, very good at that,” he says.

Balinor’s eyes are clouded and dead. They bore into Arthur’s regardless. Their milkiness clears as the air around the man’s face falls away as rain sluices down the crest of a shield.

Merlin remains as he was, hair long and curling around his ears in the base of his neck in lose coils. His eyes are the color of a frozen lake.

He’s not angry, per se, but his presence feels like nothing it has before.

Arthur’s breath comes shallower and shallower in his cold presence alone.

“Your father told you a story of magic, did he?” Merlin asks.

Arthur swallows against a dry throat.

“You were listening,” he says.

“It feels so right,” Merlin says with a slow-growing smile. “You ever felt so right, my lord?”

“Yes,” Arthur says. “But you mean the shape-shifting.”

Merlin lifts a thumb and places it directly on the cleft in Arthur’s chin. His fingers are freezing cold.

“I can do anything,” he says.

“Not anything,” Arthur says.

“I am Emrys,” Merlin says.

“You’re trying to scare me away,” Arthur says.

“Is it working?”

“No, it’s er, making me want to kiss you, actually. Again.”

There comes a pause.

Merlin takes his thumb away. His frozen eyes narrow along with his lips.

“You’re not supposed to say that,” he says.

“No?” Arthur asks, still watching those lips.

“Stop.”

“Stop what? Watching you?”

“Be afraid.”

Arthur scoffs aloud and lets his posture go loose. He wraps his arms over his chest and lets his hip jut out a bit—cocky, yes. Immature, probably.

But the color is draining from Merlin’s face. He’s so angry he could spit, and Arthur can’t stop looking at every inch of him, grinning.

“Is that all you’ve got?” he asks.

“Damn you.”

“Come on. Let’s talk.”

“I hate you. I loathe you. I curse you.”

“Yeah, alright. And let me guess—forget?”

“Forget.”

“Six days for me—where’ve you been Merlin? Jumping around through time? Was that what you found at the bottom of that well before you destroyed it?”

“Who asked you?” Merlin demands. “I told you, I’m not going with you.”

“Forget that,” Arthur says.

“Go back to your father. Go back to Camelot. He’s wrong. I need no savior. I need no leader. I am Emrys. I am here, now, and forever—”

“You hate being Emrys,” Arthur counters. “You hate that your fate is tied up with mine. You’re terrified of immortality.”

“I’m not,” Merlin snaps.

“You don’t want to be alone,” Arthur plows on, “You’re tired of fighting. Tired of losing. You can’t fight these impulses, can’t fight all this magic. Nothing you do turns out right. It’s getting easier by the second to give yourself over to it all.”

“You don’t know anything about me, your highness,” Merlin says.

“I know that I want you,” Arthur says.

“No,” Merlin says. “You want Gwen. You want Camelot. You want to be king.”

“I never wanted to be king, I never asked for any of this,” Arthur says. “You say I know nothing about you, but what do you know about me, Merlin? You think I stand here, yearning for the day that my father dies?”

Merlin’s expression closes off as he straightens himself out.

“Forgive me, those were my own hopes escaping me,” he says. “I’ll go.”

“I want you to stay.”

“A stranger has no grounds to speak so boldly to royalty,” Merlin intones as if he is reciting poetry.

“I want you to do what you did to me before I left,” Arthur says. “I want to protect you—"

“Stop talking,” Merlin interrupts.

“I want to go to sleep next to you—”

“Arthur. Stop.”

“—and wake up with your breath upon my shoulder—”

“I’m not going back with you.”

“—rabbits be damned. I want to protect you, Merlin. I want to protect magic.”

“No,” Merlin says sharply. “You don’t. You want an alliance. You want a powerful kingdom. You want Emrys at your beck and call.”

“My father wants those things,” Arthur says.

“So should you.”

“I won’t pretend that they wouldn’t be of comfort to me,” Arthur says. “But more than that, I want you, my friend, to be here with me forever, never so far ahead that I cannot follow, never so far behind that I cannot hear you calling my name.”

“We don’t know each other,” Merlin says.

“Not yet,” Arthur says.

And fuck him if he doesn’t start feeling the tiniest tendril of warmth down in his nethers at the implications of that.

It’s inappropriate.

He means they have time to come to know who they are outside of this routine they’ve built up as Arthur and Merlin.

They have time to learn how to be Emrys and the Once and Future King.

Merlin has to see that.

“Are you blushing?” Merlin asks.

“No,” Arthur says before he can stop himself.

“You are,” Merlin deadpans.

“I’m not.”

“Why in God’s name are you blushing now?”

“I’m not. I’m—I’m emotional, Merlin. I’m trying to make you see—”

“Christ, you actually like me.”

The words shrivel in Arthur’s mouth.

“I—what?” he says.

“I said, you actually like me. Me being Emrys,” Merlin says.

“I thought that was obvious,” Arthur says.

“You want me to be your favorite. You mean that.”

“I—I didn’t, when I first spoke of it.”

“No, I think you did,” Merlin says with a strange, swanlike arch to his throat and eyebrow. “Why?”

“Why? You mean, why do I like you?”

“Yes.”

“Er. Well. I mean, physically, you’re nothing to write home about, don’t misunderstand.”

“Do you like the idea of owning something uncanny and wild, my lord?” Merlin asks.

“No? I—”

“Does it get you off?”

“Merlin, that’s not—”

“People all have their things, I suppose.”

“I like you because you kissed me,” Arthur blurts out. “I like you because you’re—you’re so confusing and—you did—I don’t know what you did, but I—it was nothing like anything I’ve ever felt before, and I want—I wanted you to do it forever.”

Merlin blinks.

“The necking?” he asks.

“The what?” Arthur says.

“The nec—nevermind. I see now. Okay, look, that was a one-off.”

“It was a what?”

Arthur flushes all over again at the break in his voice. Merlin, however, rather than being embarrassed on his behalf, seems totally taken aback by it.

“I mean,” he says. “I meant—you’re my—we—look, it’s—”

“You didn’t feel the same?” Arthur creaks.

“Wh—now hold on.”

No, no.

Arthur doesn’t need to hear anymore.

“Okay,” he says. “No, that’s fine. I—I misunderstood.”

“Arthur,” Merlin says in soothing tones, “You’re my employer. It’s not right for us to—”

“I AM NOT YOUR EMPLOYER.”

“Right, okay. Bad choice of words. I meant you're a prince.”

“Is that what you think of me?” Arthur demands breathlessly. “You think I go ‘round fucking every servant girl what breathes?”

“No. No, that’s not what I think,” Merlin says.

“I’ve never let a man so much as touch me, and here you come—”

“Alright, listen: it was a poor choice of words. I only meant that I’m a peasant, and it’s improper for us to be involved, yeah? That’s all.”

“What if I loved you?” Arthur demands.

“Don’t,” Merlin says.

“No. No, you tell me: what if I really loved you?”

“You don’t, so there’s no need to go there,” Merlin says. “You’re going to be king, my lord.”

Arthur could take a goddamn swing at him right here right now if his stupid eyes weren’t stinging all over and his stupid lungs would take in air and the voice in his head would stop whispering ‘he doesn’t feel it, he’s already whole. It’s just you. It’s just you who’s half.’

“Arthur,” Merlin pleads. “You’re upset. God, look. Don’t cry.”

“Don’t touch me,” Arthur snarls before Merlin’s filthy tunic sleeve touches his face. “I hate you, too.”

There comes a long pause.

“Ah,” Merlin says.

“Fuck you,” Arthur says.

“That's, yeah, alright."

“Take this,” Arthur says, thrusting his hand into his pocket and tearing the brooch out of it. “My father had it made for you. Throw it away. Burn it. Give to the fucking fairies. I don’t care.”

“Arthur, wait.”

“No. We’re done here. I wish you the best.”

“Arthur—”

“Stop, Emrys. Leave me be. That’s an order. Your last from me.”

Merlin’s hands hang in the air in front of him for a beat. His expression drops and Arthur turns to head back into the trees before his self-control totally breaks into pieces.

“What if I loved you, too?” He hears behind him. 

No.

No, no, no no no no no no no.

"Let's just say for a moment, I did."

"I told you to leave me be," Arthur says. "I commanded you."

"Some spells don't work on me."

"Forget me then. Curse yourself to forget. Curse me to forget."

"I would, except someone once told me that it won't solve my problems," Merlin says.

Arthur's going to break. He's going to start weeping right here under these godforsaken trees. 

“I did think about you,” Merlin goes on. "I am right now, as a matter of fact."

What?

"You are rather handsome, I suppose. And decent, yes, as far as knights go. And you followed me, a servant, into the unknown. Could there a braver man be?"

Arthur shivers with a horrible laugh that wracks his body worse than a sob. His knees are turning to water.

"I think I'll follow where your banner goes," Merlin continues. "If only, if only because I do know, that there is no greater man who can sow the seeds of my future freedom. That alone, however is not the reason that I shall follow no matter the season, for to me, your imperfection is just as charming as your face is darling, my knight. And I fear that the more I think, I'm drawn ever closer towards the brink of falling forever into your depths, and loving you endlessly, fiercely and senselessly, Arthur. My King.”

Every tear breaks into a million crystals.

Every crystal is a star.

Every star is a senseless sunburst of sensation and utter emptiness all at once.

Arthur doesn’t know how, but he can feel Merlin’s lips in a smile. He can feel the whole of the forest churning in infinite cycles of wonder and dread, birth and decay, hunger. So much hunger.

His heart is going to burst.

“Breathe, my lord,” Merlin’s voice says.

Arthur’s lungs do.

“Breathe,” Merlin says again.

“Stop,” Arthur pleads. “Make it stop.”

“You’re alright,” Merlin tells him, so close now that Arthur can feel the heat of his gaunt, gawky body.

Solid flesh wraps around his wrists while the cosmos are birthed and the stars form sickening stripes in the sky.

“Shhhh.”

Slick heat over hard bone lands on Arthur’s forehead. A stripe of warmth bleeds through the spinning chaos. His tears are a layer between it and his own skin.

“Sit with me,” Merlin’s voice says.

Obedience is not an option. It is the only thing.

“There, you are,” Merlin croons. “My King.”

Oh God. Not again.

Merlin chuckles as Arthur’s body shudders against his own and treats him to another vomit-inducing, mind-melting bout of euphoria.

It goes on and on, digging with sharp claws through the meat of Arthur’s heart. 

He hears himself whimper but can do nothing to stop it. All he can manage is to dig his own fingers into the nearest solid thing. 

Eventually, the sensation slackens.

He finally manages to pry his eyes open, only to find himself buried in the comforting heat of Merlin’s neck. There is skin against his lips. His chest judders as he breathes in a sigh and as he lets it out.

“That was horrible,” he slurs.

“That was magic,” Merlin says.

“Fuck me.”

Merlin laughs. Arthur suddenly finds that he still wants to punch him. He settles for forcing Merlin to take even more of his weight.

“I love you, too,” Merlin says after a long moment.

It hurts to hear it. The ache is so deep that Arthur cannot muster the energy to do anything more than endure its throbbing in his chest. 

“You are my person,” Merlin says. “My king and my shepherd. You are that which makes me whole.”

“Please stop,” Arthur creaks.

“I couldn’t tell if you were taking me seriously.”

“Clearly, I was taking you seriously, you fucking pumpkin.”

Merlin laughs again, this time at the theft of his own insult, and Arthur burns with irritation that he feels better upon hearing it.

“I am a poor favorite to choose; you have so many better options. Respectful ones, pretty ones,” Merlin says as he and Arthur peel themselves apart.

“I’m aware,” Arthur says.

“This will do nothing to me,” Merlin says, showing him the brooch. “Whoever made it couldn’t believe your father would ask for something as simple as iron. They mixed it with other metals.”

Arthur feels his mind begin to liquify in the face of this information.

“But that can be our secret,” Merlin says.

Oh?

“I don’t have anything to wear it on,” Merlin says.

Arthur’s memory lights up suddenly with an image of the cape Guinevere made still folded up in his pack with the horses and father.

“You do,” he says. “But for now you can wear it on this.”

He takes off his cape. There is a far too much fabric in it for it to sit neatly on Merlin’s spindly shoulders, but Merlin doesn’t seem to mind. He watches Arthur’s face with every movement until there is nothing left to do but to apply the brooch to the overlapping edges of the cape on his chest.

Arthur hesitates. Merlin takes over. His fingers apply the brooch with the expertise of a man who’s dressed others for years. The final spin of the thing locks the fabric in place and leaves them both sitting awkwardly in a clearing, Arthur somehow again in Merlin’s lap.

“Come with me,” Merlin says after a moment, “If your father sees your face like that, he’ll kill me for reasons having nothing to do with sorcery.”

Some copious bathing in a freezing nearby stream is followed by some even more self-conscious walking through the forest, this time flanked by a frothy tide of rabbits. Merlin said he didn’t need to go back to Balinor’s cave. It is as it should be and will be waiting for him the next time he needs it.

Arthur doesn’t doubt him, though he’s sure that Father is going to have a lot to say about the hoard of vermin’s place in the castle. He chooses to remain silent on both matters and trudges along until he and Merlin spy a familiar set of horses grazing along the edge of a dark meadow up ahead.

Merlin forces Arthur to walk ahead of him from there in case of any ‘murderous, nocturnal instincts’ on Father’s part.

Obviously, nothing of the like happens.

Father is dozing on the other side of a tree trunk when Arthur finds him. He doesn’t startle when Arthur touches his shoulder, only cracks open one eye and then the other and says, “You’re early.”

“It’s all done,” Arthur says, offering his hand to help the old man up.

Father takes it and, once standing, takes in Merlin as well, who is quite literally drowning in Arthur’s cape.

“Forgot his in your hurry, I see,” he says.

He hasn’t noticed the rabbits yet.

“I suppose I should welcome you back to Camelot, Emrys,” Father says.

“I am bound to your son and your son alone,” Merlin informs him without so much as a tip to his head.

“I respect that,” Father says. “Your loyalty shall not go unrewarded, though I will ask that you refrain from using your talents for the terrorization of my daughter.”

“His affection is reward enough, my lord,” Merlin says. “And her lady and I have come to a better understanding about where we both stand with regard to each other. It is dark now.”

Father takes in the state of the path beyond them and the munching horses.

“It is,” he acknowledges.

“Shall I light the way, sire?”

“There is no need. Your good uncle believes that the moon’s light might do me some good.”

“I fear my good uncle might have been referring to you being bitten by a roaming werewolf, sire.”

Arthur nearly chokes. Father doesn’t acknowledge the ugly sound and, to his surprise, doesn’t appear even the least bit surprised by Merlin’s cheek.

“Is your mother also afflicted with the curse of wit, Merlin?” he asks.

“And the misery of intelligence, too, my lord.”

“A pity.”

“If it is some comfort to you, my father would not have known a joke if it crashed into his head. His contributions to the family, as you can imagine, were small but imperative in that way.”

“Your father,” Father echoes, “Gaius did not mention such a man. In fact, he told me many years ago that you are a bastard.”

Merlin shrugs.

“Doesn’t make much difference, does it? He’s well-dead now. Anyhow, shall I lead?”

“No,” Father says. “You’ll eat first, and you’ll tell your uncle you did so the second we set foot beyond the castle gates.”

Arthur and Father stand on the edge of the meadow, watching as Merlin feeds half of his loaves of bread to the rabbits and the horses while placing the occasional morsel in his own mouth. Arthur can feel Father’s irritation at this waste of supplies wafting off him in clouds of heat.

Arthur fidgets a bit in the moon-cast shadow of his annoyance.

In the meadow, Merlin welcomes two deer and a spotted fawn into his circle of poor nutrition.

“Are you pleased?” Father asks.

Arthur nearly jumps out of his skin.

He straightens his spine and clears his throat.

“Yes, sire,” he says.

“I must confess, I did not believe you would return with him,” Father says.

“Did you hope I would not?” Arthur asks quietly.

“His demeanor is much changed. Morgana mentioned that he was more articulate that he let on in our service; I did not appreciate how great the difference would be.”

“Are you having doubts, my lord?” Arthur asks.

“Doubts of letting this young man into my home?” Father asks in a flat tone.

“Yes?”

Merlin, out of bread to distribute, drops to his knees in the in front of the fawn and opens cupped hands low where it can see what is inside them. Arthur tries not to smile as the tender yellow head of a dandelion sprouts from his palms.

“The decision has long passed,” Father says.

“But you are still hesitant?” Arthur asks.

“I am again thinking about what I shall have to do to direct your attention to the court ladies.”

Ah.

“And pondering about how your preference for peasants, no matter how committed you are to our family and kingdom, never fails. Your stubbornness on the matter, I must admit, confounds me.”

Arthur tries not to cringe. Someone, somewhere (probably Morgana) must have mentioned his and Guinevere’s recent courting.

“I intend to produce an heir, Father,” he says.

“With that one? I hope not.”

“No, not with Merlin. With someone else, I meant.”

“I don’t even know where he’d put it.”

“Father.”

“Hm?”

“I will marry a woman,” Arthur promises.

“You are either a much more foolish or courageous man than I,” Father says. “If I had, had to balance two, I would have fallen on my own sword out of self-pity.”

Arthur coughs to cover his laugh.  

“I won’t pretend I think he will be easy to manage. What happened to your favorite?” he asks, watching Merlin feed the fawn the dandelion and the few leaves he conjured with it.

“Your uncle tried to maim him often enough that he left Camelot to raise pigs in Lot’s kingdom.”

What.

“That was…unkind of Uncle,” Arthur says.

“He wrote many letters,” Father goes on. “Was insistent that I should forsake the crown and join him.”

“Did you ever consider it?”

“Absolutely not. As it turned out, he had been poisoning Aurelius for the entire duration of our acquaintance. I was rather upset with him.”

“I—”

“He did write when I became king. At least once per season.”

“Did he?”

“Your mother very kindly wrote him back on my behalf once. He did not write again after that.” 

Arthur swallows nervously.

“Is that—is that what happens with all favorites?” he asks.

“No,” Father says, rubbing at his chin as Merlin stands and shows his empty hands to the animals all around him. “I think you’re in for something far stranger.”

Chapter Text

It is a long way back to the castle. Merlin insists he can make it shorter. He does laps around Arthur all wrapped up in the blue cape that Guinevere made him when he gets bored with walking.

He bothers the horses, and vanishes once for nearly two hours before bursting out from a stack of rotting logs and dragging Arthur across the path to take cover behind another stack.

Father walks on.

A herd of children splits around him as water does before the bow of a coracle. They duck their heads to father to bow and scurry up onto the stack of logs.

Merlin swears at them in their language and takes off running again, this time leaving Arthur to endure the gibberish of the children while they nudge at his armor.

“I’m sorry, I don’t understand,” he says. “Are you druids?”

The children stare at him with wide eyes. All at once, they abandon him and take off scrambling and staggering into the night mists.

Merlin returns shortly after that and crashes into Arthur’s shoulder. He straightens himself up, adjusts his new cape and tells Arthur to look straight ahead until he says so.

“Are they human, Emrys?” Father asks without turning around up ahead.

“Just walk,” Merlin says. “Don’t look, don’t talk, just walk.”

They’re ghosts—spirits of children lost in the woods. Some are hundreds of years old. The youngest is a druid. Merlin has been playing with them over the last few weeks when he’s caught sight of them.

He says they’re used to him and easily jealous. They won’t like the idea of Arthur taking their plaything away from them.

“Is there anything normal about you?” Arthur hisses.

Merlin arches a brow.

“Nevermind. Forget I asked,” Arthur says.

“I can do a card trick.”

“I said nevermind, Merlin.”

“I can do some nonsense with dice, too.”

“Cheat.”

“Now who’s jealous?”

Arthur passes yet another stale loaf of bread on the side of the path and finally stops to point at it.

“Who are these for?” he asks.

“That one? The boggart.”

“What boggart?”

“The one that lives in that tree.”

“And this one?” Arthur asks, gesturing to a sack suspended directly above his horse’s head.

“That one? Erm. Well, someone tall, I suppose.”

“And all the flowers?” Arthur demands, flailing slightly at the wreaths that have begun to accumulate on the ground and branches and tied onto ivy vines all around them.

“Those,” Merlin says, “Are for us.”

Arthur’s arms droop.

“Us?” he says.

“Yes.”

“For what?”

“They’re congratulations.”

“For us?”

“Yes, my lord,” Merlin says, very slowly and very sweetly, like Arthur is one a particularly stupid child. “Watch.”

Merlin holds a hand aloft and slowly curls his fingers inward.

The wreathes all around them come to life; their buds unfurl into countless petals. Their leaves brighten and lengthen. Their stems grow, too, some form loosely woven baskets while others sprout roots which latch onto the stones and branches and moss upon which they’ve been laid and hung.

The roots send up fresh shoots of greenery, which itself bursts into new buds and blooms.

“Now their makers will know we’ve been here and appreciated their offerings,” Merlin says.

Arthur, a bit dazed now, finds himself touched that all these people—whoever they are—have put together such a display on short notice.

“The druids did this?” he asks.

“Not only,” Merlin says.

“Who else?”

“Gods, guardians, fairies, trolls,” Merlin says casually.

“Will I meet them someday?”

“We’ll see.”

They arrive to the castle gate with little fanfare. Morgana is waiting for them out in front of the gate, sharing a cape with Guinevere.

When Morgana stands, Guinevere goes with her.

“Emrys,” Morgana says with a flourishing bow.

Merlin’s expression flattens.

“My lady,” he says.

“So many developments, so little time.”

“Don’t pretend you had nothing to do with this,” Merlin tsks.

Guinevere takes that opportunity to clear her throat, which Merlin reacts to like a man thrown into a lake.

“Gwen,” he stammers. “Oh. Hello. Hi. You’re, uh. Looking lovely this very early—”

Guinevere arches her neck, raises her brows, and purses her lips, all of which reduces Merlin into a pile of babble. What he is trying to convey to her, Arthur has no idea. He leaves them to hash it out as he dismounts.

Father is already speaking with Morgana when Arthur joins them.

“—blooming half the forest,” Father is saying.

“Rather that than summoning lightning, which by the way, Emrys, we all saw you do. Leon and his father are waiting for you inside, my lord. Iseldir and the others would like a conference with Merlin before he joins your court.”

“He’s not joining anyone’s court,” Merlin says from between the hands he put up on each side of his face to escape Guinevere’s scorching, silent stare.

Father considers him.

“Do what you must,” he tells Morgana.

“My lord,” she says.

She waits until he has passed before giving Arthur a once-over.

“I suppose I should congratulate you,” she says.

“For stealing your thunder?” Arthur asks.

“I suppose that if someone must unite Albion, uniting Camelot is a good first step,” Morgana says. “I cede to you your victory.”

“My victory is yours,” Arthur says. “It seems Father has found himself yet another advisor.”

Morgana presses her lips together in false innocence.

“Who, me? I’m just a priestess, your royal highness,” she says.

“Thank you for looking after him.”

“I do what I can,” Morgana says. “You must be tired. I won’t keep you or Emrys long.”

She and Arthur both look over to where Merlin has now fully transformed into a wilted human rose in front of Guinevere’s tapping toe. Any more of that and he’ll make himself into a donkey next.

“Be gentle,” Arthur says.

“I’ll be gentle,” Morgana hums.

“I mean it. Be gentle.”

“Yes, yes, yes. I heard you. Go rest. Emrys, I’m borrowing you.”

Merlin looks up as she approaches him and contorts himself as if to run. Morgana tells him that if he even thinks about it, she’ll tie him to a post and if not that, the nearest set of stocks.

Arthur leaves them to it.

Leon is waiting up inside the armory. Usually a servant helps Arthur out of his armor, but Leon clearly needs an excuse to shake Arthur around a bit to get his residual worry out.

“Merlin came back with you?” he eventually asks.

Arthur raises his arm so that Leon can reach the straps across his sides and chest.

“He did,” he says.

“You must be very pleased, my lord,” Leon says.

“I am.”

Arthur turns so that Leon can reach the other side’s straps.

“You seem subdued,” Leon says.

“Just tired.”

“Subdued in the heart.”

Arthur gasps at the release of metal weight from his shoulders.

“I expect he made you some sort of promise?” Leon asks.

“Is this you asking or are the gossips at the tavern?” Arthur asks.

Leon smiles.

“Can’t it be both?” he asks.

“It can, but only one can hear the God’s honest truth.”

“Consider it me, then.”

“I love him.”

Leon’s whole body goes still mid-stoop to place Arthur’s chest plate and pauldron on the armory’s hay. After a moment, he completes the motion and stands up properly.

“Arthur,” he says, “Merlin is a sorcerer. This is a dangerous line you’re walking.”

“I know,” Arthur says, stripping himself of his mail so that he does not have to see Leon’s grave expression.

“And yet you are unafraid?”

“He isn’t who we thought him to be,” Arthur says. “You’ll see once you speak with him.”

“That concerns me more,” Leon says. “Does your father know?”

He does. 

Arthur doesn’t want to think about that too deeply.

“There have been many rumors among the servants of this castle,” Leon says. “They will not readily accept him back into their ranks without a good excuse.”

“They don’t need to,” Arthur says. “He is to be my favorite. It has already been written.”

He can practically hear the breath as it is punched out of Leon’s lungs.

“My lord,” he warns. “You are already having trouble finding a good match for a wife.”

“Having a favorite is normal for a king and even more normal for a prince,” Arthur reminds him. “I did not come here to be interrogated, Leon. Merlin is to be my favorite—unless you would rather I let him walk around this castle as a sorcerer, un-tethered and free to do whatever nonsense springs first to his mind?”

Leon’s eyes narrow. He holds out a hand in silence demand for Arthur’s gloves, which Arthur gives him without a word.

“He must have worked a marvelous spell on you,” he mutters.

“He actually rejected me no fewer than ten times,” Arthur sniffs.

“And you’re proud of this, sire?”

“I am pleased, yes.”

“Why would he reject you so many times if he returns your interest?” Leon asks.

"He was afraid."

"Afraid?" 

"Of being trapped here the way we trapped the dragon and forever bonded to someone who wanted him only for what he could do for others. Both of which I think are understandable fears, don't you?"

Leon considers this as the room lightens from daybreak.

"I'll follow your lead, my lord," he says.

Arthur longs for bed. Someone has made a fire in the hearth of his chamber. Probably George or Dafyyd. The rest of the room has been impeccably made up. Water has been drawn for a bath and left in the tub. It’s gone cold to the touch. They must have thought he would arrive much sooner than he did.

Alas.

Bath must come before bed.

Arthur soaks a cloth and has begun working its frigid edges all over his arms and chest when a knock sounds at the door. He glances up, huffs, and shakes his head.

“Did she finish with you already, Merlin?” he asks.

The door creaks open. It closes. Arthur plunges his rag in the water.

“Do you want a bath?” he asks. “You could certainly use one after all that capering around.”

Merlin’s long pale fingers dip into the water.

“With this?” he asks.

Arthur searches around for a second cloth. He finds one and offers it to Merlin. Merlin only looks at it.

Arthur becomes aware suddenly, that they are both back where it all began. This very room, that very desk, those sheets, this bath. Year after year after year, they’ve done this dance. It has never gone but one way.

Arthur has never offered Merlin a cloth like this to bathe.

“It’s cold,” he warns him.

Merlin accepts the folded linen in his hand and lays it on the edge of the tub.

“Was cold,” he says.

Steam licks at Arthur’s knuckles as proof. When he looks at the water again, clouds are wafting off it.

“Are you trying to boil me?” he asks.

Merlin strides behind him to tear the tucked blanket off the bed. He sneers and replaces it exactly where it was before, though this time with the top edge folded over.

“Merlin,” Arthur drones.

Merlin ignores him to move the chamber pot to a different place under the bed. His sharp gaze latches onto something on the desk, which he hurries over to rearrange.

“Merlin,” Arthur repeats.

“What?”

“Come have a bath.”

“In a minute.”

“No. Now.”

“In a minute.”

Arthur rolls his eyes and dunks the cloth into the water. It’s not as scalding as it appears. The cloth is not as satisfying as submerging oneself but he’s fairly sure that if he steps into that tub, he’s falling asleep right in it.

He’s so deep in his own thoughts and exhaustion that he nearly startles when Merlin’s hands join his in the water.

He looks up, surprised, and finds pale skin before him.

Merlin took off his shirt. His scars, the ones Arthur felt with his own bare hands, are smoothed out by the dimness of the room.

“Ogling,” Merlin says.

Arthur clamps his jaw shut and clears his throat.

“Guinevere was upset, I suppose?” he says.

“She will be more hurt when she learns what you’ve made me.”

That’s a low blow, and one Arthur deserves.

“Are you hurt that I have involved myself with her?” he asks.

“There is no sense in trying to be. If there is anyone who deserves a prince, it is her.”

Arthur steps back and begins dabbing a dry cloth against his skin. He takes in the shape of Merlin’s fingers as he cups handfuls of water and works it through his hair and across his cheeks.

He bends at the waist as monks do when they pray. He seems longer and more graceful than he was in the natural world beyond these walls. Or maybe that’s the fire feeding Arthur’s tired mind images of churches and tapestries.

“I do love you, Merlin,” he says. “You know I meant it, don’t you?”

“And I you, for better or worse.”

“Why are you so unhappy?”

“I’m not unhappy. I’m only tired and my dear uncle has piled all of his belongings onto that which used to be my bed.”

Ah.

“I suppose that means you’ll have to share mine,” Arthur says.

Merlin’s ablutions come to a halt. He shakes water out of his hair and holds out a hand for the dry cloth in Arthur’s. Arthur gives it to him and pretends not to be affected when he stands to dry himself off.

Dawn is breaking outside. The new sun softens the curve of Merlin's jaw and paints minuscule pearls of light on the tip of his nose and in the corner of his eye. The small of Arthur's back urges him forward, though he remains exactly where he is.

“You’d like that, wouldn’t you?” Merlin says.

“I might."

“Too bad. There’s a mat in the antechamber.”

“Merlin.”

“I’m kidding,” Merlin says with a slow growing smile.

Arthur schools his own face and looks around. He frowns.

“Where are the rabbits?” he asks.

“Locked them out,” Merlin says. “They don’t need to see what I’m hoping to do to you.”

“To me?” Arthur chuckles. “What makes you think—”

Merlin’s face is totally serious.

Right.

Well.

In that case.

“You’ve got exactly one-quarter of an hour before I become dead to this world,” Arthur warns him.

“A man can do a lot with a quarter of an hour,” Merlin says. “Get on the bed, sire."

Chapter Text

The skin under Merlin’s finger is warm and slightly slick. It rises and falls. His other arm tingles with numbness. Arthur’s neck lays heavily on top of it.

Gwen’s heartache is written there among the individual, criss-crossing hairs at his nape. Merlin is no master of divination, but the brevity of this affair is marked there in the hair. 

He does not press his lips there; he didn’t the night before either. 

Mum will be disappointed.

Merlin slips his legs out from under the heavy blankets and hunts for his trousers. When he gathers them in his hands, their odor hits him. His tunic is also foul. Holding both, he glances again at Arthur’s rising and falling ribs. 

He could vanish away the whole mess of stains, sweat, and forest filth. He could imagine and summon the second tunic he left somewhere in Gaius’s chambers.

He could even vanish himself back to Balinor’s cave, where the scent and shape of his body was of no concern to others. 

His heart feels as if it is shrinking. 

He stands and takes his clothing with him and leaves Arthur to his rest. 

Gwen finds him scrubbing his hands raw in front of a tub. It is nearly evening now; he and Arthur slept away the morning.

His skin is bare for her to see.

Though she has seen it before, she’s not seen his scars like this. Merlin can sense her alarm as it lands on the knobs of his bruised spine. It travels downward, back and forth, back and forth, across the smattering of moles and lumps of webbed, thickened skin the way a broom sweeps a floor. 

“Merlin.” 

He lifts his tunic from the tub. Sudsy water streams from its edges back into the sloshing pool beneath it. 

Not clean enough. Back in it goes. 

Gwen dithers for a moment. Her presence is less caustic than it was in the earlier hours. She's softened.

Merlin pays no attention to her approaching step. He works the stains under his hands even as new cloth is wrapped around his throat. The dry edges of that cloth trail down his spine, covering the worst of the marks on his shoulders. 

Gwen’s fingers apply the false iron brooch to the folds gathered between Merlin’s collarbone and jaw as if she has done it a hundred times.

She strokes over it and fusses with the rest of the fabric. 

“Blue is your color,” she says after a long time. 

Merlin lifts his tunic again and deems it clean enough to start wringing out. 

“Even though you’re his,” Gwen says so softly that Merlin almost doesn’t hear her over the stream of splashing water. 

”Legends. Prophecies. They are what we make them,” Merlin says. 

“I’ve decided I’m not afraid of you.” 

“If I had been more careful, you would not be in this position. For that I’m sorry. I never meant to hurt your heart," Merlin says.

Gwen breathes deep and then plops herself down into a squat next to Merlin’s stool. 

“My heart will recover,” she says. 

”His affection for me will wane,” Merlin assures her. 

“His affection for me will wane,” Gwen mocks gently, “You don’t even sound like yourself.” 

Merlin looks at the tightly wrung mass in his hands. 

“Do you not want me to apologize?” He asks. 

“I don’t know what I want,” Gwen says. 

“He’ll lose interest in a short time here.” 

“Merlin.” 

“As soon as I feel it heading that way, I’ll let you know and go back.” 

”Go back to where? Where were you?” 

In the mountains, in the caves, in those strange clearings where time and magic are as thin as silken gossamer threads. In that place where mirrors mean everything to everyone, where people carry them around in their pockets and pile them, some shattered, some singing, in old wishing wells. 

“I went to the place my father lived,” Merlin says. 

“Is that where the magic is?” Gwen asks in a voice just over a whisper. 

Merlin huffs. 

“Wherever I am, magic is,” he says.

Gwen strokes at the woven threads stretched tight over her knees.

”Is it beautiful? That place you were? Is that why you didn’t want to come home?” She asks. 

“Yes.” 

“To which?” 

“Both.” 

Merlin unfurls his tunic and pushes the tub of suds away with his foot so he can shake it out.

“Lady Morgana said you’re like a saint to people with magic,” Gwen says.

“I didn’t ask to be what they call me.” 

“Same goes for most saints. Can you just tell me this: did you fall in love with him before you left or after?” 

There it is.

Merlin stands and gestures for her to come with him. 

On the other side of the castle's laundry lines, where the walls are low and the land outside them breaks into rolling hills and distant plots of crops, there is a sunny, dry place tucked up between two small hedges of briars. The dirt there is sandy and uncomfortable to sit in, so someone years ago brought over a few stones for visitors to rest upon while they hide from the rest of the world.

Everyone who works in the castle knows this place.

Merlin shakes the last bit of water out his tunic there then blows away the residual dampness into complete dryness before Gwen’s eyes.  He shrugs it on over his head.

Its sleeves are so thoroughly stained that the only way to save them now will be to embroider something all around each arm at least five inches wide. It’s not a skill Merlin’s especially good at.

Gwen checks the thinness of the linen between her fingers. 

“Can’t you magic it done?” She asks. 

“Can’t do anything with magic I don’t know how to do myself.” 

“There are rules, then.” 

“There are rules.” 

“Did you love him?” 

“Differently.” 

“What changed?” 

“He found out what I am, and cared, I suppose, in spite of that.” 

“Merlin,” Gwen says like a sigh. “People here love you. When you left, it was all anyone spoke about.” 

The sun feels nice this late in the evening. Merlin raises his face to it. 

“Are you still a servant?” Gwen asks. 

“I am Arthur’s favorite.” 

“So an advisor?” 

Merlin has no answer to that. The steward has not informed him of his dismissal from his duties nor assigned him any new ones. No one, as a matter of fact, seems to know that he’s back besides the royal family and Gwen.

Gwen leans her cheek on her palm and watches ants crawl around in the dry soil while Merlin wraps his arms loosely around his knees.

“Do you hate us?” Gwen asks. “For everything we’ve said about magic, I mean—do you hate us?”

Merlin rocks himself forward and pushes himself to his feet. 

“You’ve been kind to me, Gwen,” he says. 

Gwen stands, too. Her jaw firms up with determination, as do her eyes. Merlin respects that. 

The briars waver as the air over hot soil does in the corners of Merlin’s vision. Tiny flecks of energy begin flickering around their thorns and hairy blossoms.

“I am not the man you thought me to be,” he says. 

“No, you’re much better spoken,” Gwen says. “It’s quite upsetting, actually.” 

Merlin smiles.

“I’ve been told,” he says. 

“You look like you’re going to run from here.” 

“I’m not going to run,” Merlin tsks. “I’m just hot.” 

“So make it rain,” Gwen says. 

Merlin arches an eyebrow at her and then hunches over and curls his fingers. 

“Perhaps, if you there listen to me, I’ll grant ye wishes three,” he says in a raspy voice. 

“Stop it, Merlin.” 

“—but only in return for the true-guessin’ of my good name—“ 

“Who is that even supposed to be?”

“That’s Dragoon,” Merlin says as he straightens up. “He’s saved more lives than anyone you know, notwithstanding your and Arthur’s flagrant disrespect for a good disguise. Anyways, I’m a modern sorcerer, Guinevere, give me some credit. I won’t run, and if it rains today, it won’t rain tomorrow. There are only so many clouds in the sky.” 

“More rules,” Gwen says.

“So many rules,” he says.

“You did hate us,” Gwen says. 

“Not all of you,” Merlin confesses, sweeping around her so that her hands are just over his when he conjures fistfuls of long wheat shafts with fat, greenish heads right into them.

Her eyes go wide at the new greenery.

”Who did you hate?” She asks. 

“You know what the boys in Ealdor used to do? Used to get a length of rope and chase me ‘round and ‘round with it. They wrote songs about me. I was the most popular lad in the village.” 

“So, most people,” Gwen translates.

“Not you,” Merlin reminds her. “You were kind to me from the first day.” 

Merlin makes a circle of his finger and thumb and holds it up to encircle the sun. His heart catches on the memory of one of those high, rattling shells up in the chimes in the forest. Its mother-of-pearl inside gleams in that sky, and then again in the circle of his fingers.

He brings it down to offer Gwen, who takes it and turns it around to see that it’s real. 

“Is there anything you can’t do?” She asks. “Morgana can make fire. She can see the future.” 

“Can’t make gold,” Merlin says, leaving her to clutch the wheat and shell. He tosses his drooping cape back over his shoulder. ”Or create life from nothing.” 

“Could you make a king?” Gwen asks. 

“My dear, anyone could make a king if they set their mind to it,” Merlin says. 

“That’s murder.” 

“And that’s why no one calls Emrys a saint,” Merlin says. “Aren’t you angry with me? About Arthur?” 

“I’m not angry,” Gwen says. “I’m just trying to understand.”

“You are angry,” Merlin says.

“Why are you acting like a completely different person?”

“I’m not,” Merlin says.

“You are, Merlin, you ARE. Can’t you see that?”

“I’m not acting,” Merlin says. “I was before. But I’m not now.”

Silence takes hold between them.

“What?” Gwen says.

“People like someone who makes them feel strong, wise, special,” Merlin says.

His lips are dry. He can’t look into Gwen’s face so he watches the gleam of the shell in her hand until she notices and puts it and the wheat shafts down on top of the sitting stones.

“I don’t believe you,” she says. “I can’t believe that you would have made up a whole other person to be to me, to Arthur, to your own uncle—”

“Arthur is repelled by it, too, and Morgana,” Merlin says. “It’s okay.”

Gwen’s brow folds in on itself.

“What part of this is okay?” she asks. “What part could ever be okay?”

Merlin sighs.

“I don’t want to argue,” he says.

“Merlin—”

“Look, I’ll keep out of your way, alright? It is what it is now.”

“I don’t want you out of my way, I want to understand.”

“You’ll never understand,” Merlin snarls before he can even stop himself. “No one, ever, in this whole fucking world will ever understand. I don’t expect you to, I don’t want you to, I am the only being like this that has ever and will ever exist. I’m the only fucking one, alright?”

His throat is suddenly burning under the cloth wrapped around it.  Sweat slicks the sides of his neck. He wants to strip every thread of it off, to shred it and burn it and to boil the brooch upon it back into the bead of metal it once was.

“Merlin?”

His eyes are burning now, too. He can’t control himself. He needs—he needs to go somewhere where no one can find him.

“Leave him, Gwaine.”

“What the hell is going on with you? Shouting at a woman like that? Who the fuck do you think you are?”

He’s calm.

He’s calm.

He’s calm.

An elk. A fish. An owl flying on silent wings.

“Gwaine, don’t touch him. Merlin, it’s okay. You’re allowed to be upset.”

Rabbit burrows lined with fur.

Yellow, lazy water lilies.

His fingers are digging into his scalp. His neck is sweating. It's more than slick now, he can see it gleaming in his mind’s eye, just like the mother-of-pearl.

He’s choking.

He’s burning.

He can’t do this.

“Don’t touch me,” he creaks.

No one speaks, but the warmth of flesh and bone hovering near his wrist and ear slips out of his awareness. He’s sure that Gwen and Gwaine are speaking through looks and gestures at the moment, but he no longer cares.

The memory of the cave is so close and so real, and his throat is narrowing by the second. Swallowing does nothing to stop it, and yet he keeps doing it compulsively.

“Jesus, Merls,” Gwaine says softly. “You’re killing me, kid. Let us help.”

There is no help.

They don’t want him. They don’t know him. They want the person he was before they knew what he was. That happy-go-lucky jester of a man, the incompetent servant and innocent farm boy.

He stands here among friends and yet never more alone.

He wants to go home so badly he’s choking.

“Move. Move.”

One touch is all it takes for the gathering storm in Merlin’s head to gasp. The image of the cave vanishes, and the world becomes an ocean, a sea, a lake sloshing with waves. His forehead lands on something solid; the sun licks a stripe up the nape of his exposed neck.

“Find me a rabbit.”

“My lord?”

“That one.”

“Wh—”

“Give it to me. Here. Merlin, take him. Look.”

There is silk beneath his fingers, warm and living. It’s a familiar silk and a familiar weight in his lap. The waves crashing over him now are all homesickness.

“I’m sorry,” he pleads.

“You’re alright,” Arthur says. “We’re all alright.”

“I’m sorry, I’m so sorry.”

“Merlin.”

“I can’t be who you want me to be, anymore. I can’t do it. I can’t do it.”

No one speaks.

“He’s the cause of all the rabbits then?” Gwaine eventually says.

“He’s a shape-shifter,” Arthur says quietly. “He feels kinship with animals. You’re lucky he didn’t become one and clear out of here.”

There comes another pause.

“Could you do that, Merls?” Gwaine asks.

Merlin manages to swallow and lifts his head skyward to get ahold of himself.

“Yes,” he says.

“Brilliant.”

Merlin could just about sob.

“Alright, then,” Gwaine goes on. “You, er, sort of look like shit, mate. Not going to lie. Are we sure you should be out and about like this?”

“Stop,” Merlin says as Arthur starts trying to help him up by his arms. “I’m fine. Leave it.”

Arthur knows better, of course. Merlin can feel his worry gnawing along the edges of his own nausea.

He doesn’t want to vomit. He forces himself to stand up with the rabbit clutched to his chest.

“I’m sorry,” he says again to Gwen, though he doesn’t dare meet her eyes. “It’s not so easy to go back now to the Merlin you knew before. It wasn’t easy to lie to you to begin with. I wanted you to think I was normal; this is the only place where people didn’t throw stones. I just wanted to be part of it.”

“Merlin,” Gwen sniffles.

“Everyone dies,” he goes on. “Will called himself a sorcerer so no one would look at me when he died. We burnt him. It should have been me. Lance gave himself for me, not Arthur. Freya—I did everything I could, and I carried her to the lake and I put her in the water, Gwen—”

There are arms around Merlin’s waist now; they’re so tight that his arms are awkwardly contorted around the rabbit. He’s not sure who’s crying, only that he can’t let the rabbit get too squashed or else he won’t be able to breathe.

“I don’t want to carry you when you’re gone,” he pleads. “I don’t want to watch you die like the others.”

“You won’t have to,” Gwen swears. “I’ll never make you.”

The promise alone is almost enough to cut Merlin’s strings.

Arthur takes the rabbit out of his arms without him having to ask so that he can wrap himself around Gwen the way she has already wrapped herself around him.

“Jesus Christ,” Gwaine rasps.

Through blurry eyes, Merlin sees Arthur hand him the rabbit. He can’t help but laugh, which makes Gwen laugh, too.

And finally, after weeks upon weeks of warring hurt and anger, the tension breaks.

Chapter Text

Gwen helps Merlin unpack Gaius’s chambers that evening before he comes back to them. This task is assigned to them by Gwaine who doesn’t want anyone to so much as speak on an emotional issue for the next three days.

He doesn’t like to cry.

He’s made his position on that exceedingly clear.

So while he is off, cleansing himself of any trace of emotion by making every squire and knight on the training grounds run for their lives, Merlin and Gwen empty the baskets and crates Gaius has stacked on either side of his chambers’ door.

The old man takes his time to return.

According to Arthur, he has been bullying Geoffrey in the library for the greater part of the last few days, trying to take back possession of some magic books he gave away during the Purge.

Arthur has to hold court on behalf of the king for now since Uther is preoccupied with mediating that increasingly hostile frenemy situation.

Merlin adds a handful of cord to the basket he and Gwen have set aside for collecting it. He liberates a nest of medicine pots from its linen cloth covering and carries the whole lot over to their usual shelf.

He does not place them on their usual shelf. Gaius refuses to admit that ladders are hazards to his aging bones, but Merlin and Gwen know better. They are careful to place things in the general area they once were, and that is about where their adherence to the former organization stops.

Gwen seems relieved to have a task.

She asks him about magic, about Morgana and the druids and why he doesn’t get on with them as well as Morgana wants.

She shares her distaste for her brother’s latest love interest, who she thinks, thinks he has greater wages than he does.

Her voice is a comfort, her presence, too. And so, to please her, Merlin makes the crystals hung in the topmost half of Gaius’s window spin lazily. They throw flecks of rainbow-colored light all around the space as the two of them work.

The steward eventually arrives to the door; he enters with barely concealed disgust at the chaos and clears his throat until Merlin leans back from the ladder.

“Merlin? Are you available?” he stammers.

“Sire,” Merlin greets.

“Come down here, boy. I’ve received your assignment via his majesty.”

“Which one?” Merlin asks.

“The king,” the steward deadpans.

Right.

Merlin clambers off the ladder. Gwen pokes her head out from the storage room. The steward curls his lip at her as he always does, then hems and haws and coughs his throat dry.

“His majesty states that you are to serve as a special informant and servant to the prince on top of your apprenticeship to the royal physician,” he says.

“Special informant,” Merlin echoes with a raised eyebrow.

“Yes. He seems to believe that you have certain information and relationships which are valuable to the crown,” the steward says, “He has given you leave to come and go from the castle gates as is necessary for the execution of your duties. You are expected to give the prince notice of your comings and goings, and to request a knight’s accompaniment should you expect your journey to last longer than a day’s time.”

Ew.

A chaperone? In this economy?

“Am I assigned to any particular knight?” Merlin asks.

“Not at this moment,” the steward says. “Though, I can imagine that should your conduct prove to be as disappointing as it has been in the past, you will be assigned one in due time.”

Fun.

“So everything else is the same, then?” Merlin asks.

The steward puckers his lips.

“Not quite,” he says. “His majesty has decided that the prince must take a page boy and squire. You will oversee their care and the execution of their duties.”

Haha.

That sounds like management.

“I’m humbled by his highness’s faith in my abilities—” he starts.

“I’m awed,” the steward says.

“—but surely there must be some mistake?” Merlin says.  

“Rest assured I have already asked on your behalf,” the steward says.

“And?”

“His majesty stated that God gave him a duty to ensure that all persons under his care receive tasks which aid them in their spiritual and intellectual growth. I presume you are learned enough to understand what that means? If not, I am happy to interpret.”

“I am, as a matter of fact, learned enough,” Merlin says.

The steward looks him up and down with cool skepticism.

“The prince has requested your quarters be joined with his,” he says.

“I decline,” Merlin says.

“You may not decline.”

“I decline.”

“You may not decline.”

“It’s my right to have a place to sleep.”

“And so you have been given one.”

“I’m bound to serve my uncle. He has already provided me quarters.”

“The royal physician’s chambers are to be temporarily split while the library is renovated.”

“I beg your pardon?”

“You heard me,” the steward says with great self-importance. “Your uncle has no room for you in these chambers. Therefore, his majesty has moved you to more comfortable quarters. You ought to be grateful.”

Gwen rolls her eyes and returns to the storage room to spare herself the indigestion that comes with any significant time in the steward’s presence. Merlin yearns to join her there.

“I am so grateful,” he deadpans instead. “When am I to meet the page and squire?”

“When the prince selects them,” the steward says. “Chin up, Merlin. You could have been beheaded.”

“Yeah, fuck you, too,” Merlin says under his breath.

“What did you say to me?”

“Oh, my apologies, sire. That was the sorcerer in me. I can scarcely control him. He’s a wild thing.”

The steward’s nostrils tremble as he looks Merlin over.

“Clearly,” he says. “I always knew there was something about you. Something rotten.”

“Perhaps a tooth is bothering you, sire?” Merlin asks innocently. “I have something for that.”

“I would not have a draught made by your hand if I was dying of plague.”

“Suit yourself,” Merlin says. “The wizard is wild, but he does have a knack for medicine. There’s a barber my uncle can recommend should you wish for a more permanent fix. Good day, sire.”

“Good day.”

Merlin snaps the doors to slam the second the man has crossed the threshold. Gwen erupts from the storeroom with a flush high in her cheeks and forehead.

“How dare he speak to you like that,” she says.

Merlin sighs.

“I’m used to it,” he says.

“He ought to be ashamed of himself.”

“Leave it, it’s not worth it. I can’t change their minds.”

Gwen’s eyes narrow. She sets the jug in her hands on the room’s long wooden table with a ‘thunk.’

“We’ll cast a spell on him,” she says. “Tell me what we need to do it.”

They don’t cast a spell. There’s no point in it. Merlin, however, lets Gwen think that’s what she’s doing until she is holding a sleeping draught. She jabs him in the ribs when she recognizes the smell and carries on abusing him until Gwaine opens the door.

He takes in their faux-innocence, the half-unpacked baskets all over the table, and the contents of the mortar between it all.

He wags a finger, then asks if they’re doing witchcraft ‘and such.’

These people.

Merlin loves them so dearly.

He says yes when Gwen says no. Gwaine doesn’t need more than that, he shuts the door in a hurry and comes over to ask who they’re bewitching and if it’s the steward.

Clearly the man is making his rounds.

Arthur is already in his chambers when Merlin leaves Gaius’s rooms for the night. His hands feel empty without a supper tray. One has already been laid on the desk; Arthur’s moved it to the far corner so he can read the ledgers given to him by some nobleman’s scribe.

Merlin closes the door and notes that a nicer bed, one with a wooden frame and straw mattress, has replaced the woven mat in the room’s antechamber.

It has a pillow. His fingers trail over its topmost edge.

“Feeling better?” Arthur asks from his desk.

“Somewhat,” Merlin says.

“I’m pleased to hear it. Gwaine did my job for me on the training field.”

“He means well,” Merlin says.

Arthur turns a page to skim its other side.

“Percival asked if you turn people you don’t like into frogs,” he says.

Merlin swallows a laugh.

“I thought my magic was a secret,” he says. “The steward knew.”

“Nothing is a secret inside these walls,” Arthur says. “You’re all incorrigible gossips.”

That’s fair.  Merlin sits down on the bed. Two rabbits peep out from beneath it. He waves at them.

“They can sleep there,” Arthur says.

“You gave them a bed.”

“Well, they can’t live in ours.”

“Yours.”

“Ours.”

“Arthur.”

“Merlin.”

“Sire, Gwen has such affection for you, and you for her, I know.”

“I find her ability to make you upset troubling.”

“She did not mean to upset me. Don’t hold it against her.”

Arthur turns another page.

Merlin waits.

No one speaks.

“I want you to have a lovematch in marriage,” Merlin says.

“Is that Emrys telling me what to do?”

“No, it’s Merlin trying to stop you from making an ill-thought-out decision.”

“So my advisor.”

Merling takes one of the rabbits up into his lap.

“Your advisor,” he agrees.

“In that case,” Arthur says, laying down his papers, “My advisor ought to know that his concern is appreciated.”

“But?”

“But Guinevere and I are not married, and as I said before, I am in love with you. To my demise and betterment all at once, I suppose.”

Merlin tsks and takes up the other rabbit.

“If you break her heart, I’ll break yours and then my own,” he sniffs.

“I don’t doubt it. Though I fear Morgana has already claimed that right and privilege, as if I don’t see through her jealousy.”

“Morgana is not jealous of you,” Merlin says.

“No, Morgana is jealous of you,” Arthur says simply.

“She wants to be Emrys.”

“No, Merlin. She wants Guinevere to fawn over her the way she fawns over you, turnip-head.”

Ah.

Merlin deserves that.

“Gwen doesn’t know Morgana feels so strongly,” he says.

“Yes, well, that’s not Morgana’s way; though I can assure you that her threats of castration, which I promise will soon be headed in your direction, are not made in jest.”

Okay.

Er.

“But you do love Guinevere?” he asks.

“I won’t pretend that I don’t,” Arthur says. “Does that upset you?”

“You know what I think on this matter already.”

“And does it offend you that I am yielding to my sister at this moment?”

“Yes, but only because I am disgustingly petty,” Merlin says as he tips over onto his side. A third rabbit he didn’t see before huffs on the ground by the too-tall bedframe.

He’ll need to make them a little ladder or ramp so they don’t have to climb over each other in future.

“Good, be petty. It’s sorted for now,” Arthur says.

Hm.

“I’ve hardly been able to walk all day.”

“Wonder why that could be,” Merlin hums.

“You said you’d be gentle,” Arthur pouts.

“I was gentle,” Merlin says, stroking the nearest set of long ears. “You’re the one who said you wanted more.”

“Whatever.”

Merlin laughs out loud this time, which makes Arthur preen.

“Did you eat?” he asks.

No.

“Come eat with me.”

Yes, alright.

Arthur sleeps heavily, though his nightmares come on in waves throughout the night. They scurry away before Merlin can fully understand why the body at his side has stiffened. He eventually opens an eye to find Arthur’s hand laid out across his eyes with its palm facing upwards.

He doesn’t like it.

He cranes his neck until he can see the inside of the cup its fingers make.

It’s empty.

Merlin just had to be sure.

He reaches over and turns the whole limb so that it faces downward, then gets up to check on the rabbits and see if a list of possible squires has been passed along from the armory yet.

When he comes back, Arthur is awake again, though drowsy and glaring at Merlin as if that is his fault.

Merlin comes over to offer him the list.

“I don’t want to work,” Arthur groans. “Lay with me.”

“You’re too sore.”

“Not like that.”

“Who are all these people?”

“Noblemen’s sons.”

“I thought squires roamed in packs.”

“Will you lay down, for god’s sake?”

Merlin does. Arthur immediately takes possession of his shoulder and waist with a chin and arm respectively.

Within moments, he’s dozing again. Merlin turns the page over and discovers a patchwork of crests on the back.

“Does it have to be a noble boy?” he asks.

Arthur snores in his ear.

Merlin tries not to wriggle away, but he’s getting that same, strange itchy feeling he had when he buried all that gold from the wishing well.

His eyes catch on a name towards the bottom of the list; he nudges Arthur until he snorts himself awake.

“Who’s this one?” Merlin asks.

Arthur blinks blearily at the name for a few moments.

“S’Bedivere’s brother,” he says.

“Take him.”

“What?”

“As squire. Take him.”

“Why? His cousin is nothing but bandit bait. I’d run out of fingers if I had to count how many times that man has gotten himself snatched off his damn horse.”

Merlin rolls onto his shoulder so that his and Arthur’s noses are just about brushing. He widens his gaze to make Arthur widen his own.

“Take him,” he says, making his eyes glow silver in the dark.

Arthur swallows.

“Alright, alright,” he says, tearing himself away. “I’ll have him brought in for a trial. Put that down. Go to sleep.”

“Can’t, the babes need a ladder,” Merlin says. “This is for you.” He lays the list on Arthur’s face and dashes away before he gets caught up in the resulting tantrum.

In the morning, Merlin goes on a walk with a missive in hand. His walk begins at the castle entrance and ends at the door of one Sir Bedivere in his upper-town residence. Said knight opens said door, closes it, and then opens it again with a wooden cross in hand.

“Beware,” he says.

Merlin blinks as slowly as humanly possible.

“Foul celestial thing,” Bedivere goes on, waving his cross around. “Beware.”

Merlin reaches over, plucks the cross from his fingers and hurls it over the row of dwellings across the road and into the nearest field. He turns around before it lands.

“Not bad,” Bedivere says, watching the thing descend over Merlin’s shoulder.

A distant cry sounds out.

Merlin ignores that.

“His highness the prince requests the presence of your young brother for his inspection,” he says.

“My brother? Little Lucan?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Oh, I am so honored,” Bedivere says. “Our father will weep in gratitude.”

Okay?

What does that have to do with the child?

“Oh, now? You want him, now?”

“Is he here?” Merlin asks.

“Er. Uh. Yes, my apologies. One moment,” Bedivere says.

He closes the door. Merlin crosses his arms over his chest and waits until the almost inevitable ‘do NOT disgrace this family’ discussion inside the house is complete. The door opens and Bedivere comes out, ushering a brown-haired boy absolutely covered in straw.

Merlin blinks.

The boy gapes up at him.

“He loves horses,” Bedivere says.

“I can see that,” Merlin says.

“Lucan, this is Prince Arthur’s—Prince Arthur’s—”

“My name is Merlin,” Merlin takes over. “I’m the prince’s personal sorcerer. Are you afraid of me?”

The boy, still gaping, slowly shakes his head.

“Good,” Merlin says. “You like horses, do you? Can you run very fast?”

The lad nods this time.

“Great. Come along, then. Royalty hates to be left waiting.”

The boy says good bye to his weeping older brother and jogs after Merlin towards town.

Merlin delivers the boy to the training grounds.

Arthur is skeptical, but Merlin is certain. This little thing is meant to be here in the castle.

“Are you positive?” Arthur asks, deaf as per usual to the nearby whinnies of unimpressed horses and men trying to mock-murder each other. “What kind of luck have you, boy?”

“Tremendous luck, sire. I was born with a caul, sire,” Lucan says.

Merlin gestures emphatically.

Arthur remains unconvinced.

“That’s fine for a tournament, Merlin, but we’re talking about a battlefield here in ten years time.”

“What’s better needed than luck on a battlefield? Look at him. Never seen a fitter boy in all my life,” Merlin says.

“He looks like a peasant—you look like a peasant,” Arthur tells the child. “Does your father not dress you?”

“I came before I could dress for the day, my lord,” the little one says. “I was out with the cows, you see. Your sorcerer was in a hurry, too, sire. I didn’t wish to hold him up.”

“Respectful,” Merlin points out. “Frugal. Lucky.”

Arthur stands up out of his stoop and breathes in a sigh that Merlin can practically feel in his own chest.

“Lucky,” he points out again.

“Are you trying to pack my court, Merlin?”

“Me? No. I’d sooner murder your father.”

“WOW, how funny he is. Isn’t he funny? No one would ever really do such a thing would they?” Arthur says to the child through clenched teeth.

Merlin stares at him. Arthur stares back.

“If you don’t want him, I’m smuggling him in, in a trunk and giving him to the cook,” Merlin says.

“Merlin.”

“Arthur.”

“Shouldn’t you call him ‘prince,’ sire?” the boy asks Merlin.

There is a pause.

“Respectful,” Merlin points out.

“For the love of God. Fine. Fine,” Arthur says. “Lucan, you’ve got your trial. There is a tournament in three days time. I ask you to be my squire for it, are you willing to do that?”

The child looks briefly like he might stop breathing.

“I’d be so willing,” he whispers.

“Right. Er. I will speak with your father, then. Thank you. Merlin will take you back home. Come in my colors, you hear?”

“Yes, sire,” Lucan says.

“Polite,” Merlin mouths over his head.

“Get fucked,” Arthur mouths back.

Merlin salutes him and guides the boy by his shoulder back to Bedivere’s doorstep. He has a new wooden cross waiting.

Merlin hurls that one into the fields, too.

It starts with Lucan, but it doesn’t end there. The itching is ceaseless. For a week, Merlin does nothing but sniff out squires from the list. He finds one for Percival, finds one for Elyan. Gwaine takes the list and insists on coming with while Merlin rifles through the upper town for his.

There are numerous boys in the upper town. They all look damn near the same. Gwaine says that it’s because noblemen like to marry their children together. The result is that a lot of families start sharing features.

Merlin tells him that this is what happens in Ealdor, too.

“Do you have cousins?” Gwaine asks him.

“What? No. Gaius is my only uncle.”

“Not even one cousin?”

“Do you have cousins?” Merlin asks.

Gwaine raises an eyebrow.

“I have enough cousins to raise a barn,” he says.

“Oh, do you? Where?”

“Ah-ah. Nice try.”

“Are they older?”

“Some.”

“Younger?”

“Some,” Gwaine says cheerfully.

“Are any of them squire-ly?” Merlin asks.

“They have to be pages before they can be squires, Merlin.”

Hogwash and nonsense.

“My dear knight, I pray for your protection,” Merlin says.

“What do you want now?” Gwaine chuckles.

“To cause problems east of here,” Merlin says. “Can I, please, oh please, oh please, have your companionship?”

Gwaine’s squire is older than Merlin. He doesn’t care. Gwaine doesn’t much either, though Arthur does and gives them both a talking-to that might have been effective two or three years ago.

As it is, Merlin cares more about resolving his itches than he does court etiquette.

“He’s never even been a page,” Arthur exclaims.

Gwaine’s squire hangs his head.

“So he’s a late bloomer,” Gwaine says. “Who among us is not?”

Arthur begins pinching his fingers together in front of Gwaine’s chest like a man trying to pick an imaginary crabapple.

“Page,” he says.

Gliglois—the should-be squire in question—smiles at Lucan who has taken to carrying Arthur’s shield around with him like a little champion. Lucan waves.

“PAGE,” Arthur demands again.

“He can be trained,” Merlin says.

“I’m up to here with you, Merlin.”

“What could a child do that a man can’t?” Merlin maintains.

“You don’t even know what it takes to become a knight,” Arthur says. “I have all these people out here. I can’t spend my life teaching each one the very basics—”

“So Gwaine will teach him. That’s the point isn’t it?”

“Come here.”

“No.”

“No, come here. I just want to talk.”

“No. I’m defenseless. I’m frightened. Someone save me. Gwaine, save me.”

“Gwaine, don’t you help him. He made this bed and he’s making you lie in it with him.”

“I dunno,” Gwaine says loftily. “Not really made for raising up the little ones, am I?”

Arthur gapes.

“I’m saying no,” he says.

“No, no, no, you’re saying yes,” Merlin tells him.

“Absolutely not.”

“But it’s meant to be, Arthur.”

“I’m taking you to that forest and leaving you in a river.”  

“Oh, please?”

Gwaine gets his squire. Merlin straddles Arthur’s lap the same night and wraps his arms around his neck while Arthur sinks teeth into his collarbone.

He smells different these days, Arthur does. It’s a scent that Merlin thinks smells oddly like home. Like Ealdor-home and Balinor’s cave-home and the castle-home all at once.

He realizes, when Arthur has finished inside him and rolls them over to lay wet kisses down his chest, lower and lower, that they probably smell the same these days.

His fingers rake through Arthur’s hair.

Is he packing Arthur’s court of future knights?

Yes. He thinks he is.

Why?

He doesn’t know. It’s the well and the mirrors and the white herbs all over again, except Merlin feels like he’s being rushed along, like if he stops—

He loosens his fingers and calls Arthur up from his hips. At first, he receives an unimpressed stare, but a second round of battered shoulders brings his handsome, extremely grumpy prince back to face-level.

“I expect you’re about to say something utterly incomprehensible,” Arthur says. “And I ask you, before you do that: is it better than my mouth on your cock? Just think about it, if you can. If only for a moment—”

“I think someone who shouldn’t is trying to enter this kingdom,” Merlin says.

Arthur grunts as if Merlin pinched his inner thigh.

“Go on,” he eventually sighs.

“I would if I could,” Merlin says, “But I’m not a seer.”

“You had this epiphany while I was fucking you?”

“More or less.”

“Great. Good to know it was going that well for you.”

Merlin smiles and pulls Arthur close enough that he can scrape his growing stubble along the matching roughness on Arthur’s jaw.

“The cat thing doesn’t work on me, anymore,” Arthur drones.

“You’re so wise and brave,” Merlin croons.

“You want to go back to the forest, don’t you?”

“Yes.”

“Jesus help me. Now? Do you think these people are coming now?”

Merlin wiggles his hips.

Arthur drops his head and sighs warmly against Merlin’s throat.

Uther, for his many, many faults, does give Merlin a fair say these days, at least when the impulses he is taken by are related to politics.

Only politics, however. Uther prefers to speak to Morgana on any other topic related to magic.

Merlin is not offended. If Morgana wants to take up the banner to save all magic from King Uther’s axe, he’s not going to stop her.

His role here is to support Arthur and to flit around, setting in motion wheel upon wheel of fate.

This wheel, though, as he tells Uther, feels wrong, somehow. He struggles to articulate it. The wrongness starts low in his belly and bleeds and bleeds until it has filled up all that space. It then begins pushing upwards into his lungs and heart.

His heart beats rabbit-quick in his chest. Arthur notices his palms sweating.

The forest well keeps coming to mind, and the knights and squires.

Uther tells them to wait until light before going into the forest to see what has become of the well.

By morning light, however, the wrongness has broken through Merlin’s insides. It climbs, as hives, from Merlin’s wrists to the backs of his ears.

He cannot stay in Arthur’s chambers.

He paces the length of the corridor until Arthur opens the door and begins walking the length of the hall with him.

Their pace has sychronized when one of the maids opens the kitchens door and asks Merlin if he’s seen the cook.

The water jugs sent down for her to clean have all shattered in the wide stone basin outside the scullery entrance. By the time Arthur and Merlin go to have a look, pieces are vanishing into the soil around it one after the other.

Merlin mends the jugs with a snap of his fingers. The soil by the stone basin wriggles as if occupied by a beetle or mole.

Arthur pushes Merlin behind him.

“Don’t touch it,” Merlin warns.

“I won’t touch it,” Arthur says.

He takes off his glove and throws it. It lands nearly on top of the moving mound. They hold their breath, only to see, to their horror, a bare human hand emerge from the dirt. It gropes for the glove, finds it and sucks it down into the place where its wrist should be.

“Found the invader,” Arthur says weakly. “Suggestions?”

Merlin’s mind races through all his readings on homunculi, ghouls, and revenants.

Seldom does he reach for the texts on necromancy. Gaius knows more since medical magic has historically spent more time dancing with that devil. Everything he and the books ever taught Merlin are a blur now, though. Especially as the hand comes back, filthier than before, to feel around in a wider circle, searching for God knows what.

“The hoard,” Merlin realizes. “I buried the hoard.”

“What?”

“I have to—I need to lead them to the hoard. By the well in the forest.”

“Lead them? How? It doesn’t have eyes,” Arthur says, cringing with disgust.

“What else could it want?” Merlin demands.

Arthur glances from him to the hand.

They cover the hand with a half-barrel and leave Gwen to ward the maids well away from it. Her job won’t be hard; the girls are already refusing to set foot in the courtyard. Arthur calls Percival, Leon, Elyan and Gwaine to ride with them into the forest.

They’ve scarcely mounted the horses when a hand springs up from the stable floor and seizes hold of Gwaine’s horse’s ankle.

Before their very eyes, the whole limb rots until all the horse stands on is decaying, aged bone.

The animal panics and pitches both itself and Gwaine into the stable wall. The wood cracks; the stables buckle.Merlin, without thinking, grips the hoof of the flailing, dead limb and blows on it with all the air in his chest.

The rot traveling up into the things shoulder halts in its track.

The horse struggles and cries out as the stable boys, squires, and knights struggle to get Gwaine’s leg out from beneath it.

“Easy, easy,” Merlin soothes the creature while they work.

Its wild brown eyes spin in its sockets while flesh and bone knit themselves back over the bone. Fur comes in last, at first downy and then thicker until the leg is entirely recovered.

Merlin releases the hoof then and gets back before it lands in the side of his head.

Gwaine swears as the horse rolls to its side and staggers back up to its flesh feet. It snorts and shies away from the broken soil beneath it where the hand was and is no longer.

“Right, I’m not losing a leg for that,” Gwaine says. “One of you get me another horse. Mind your feet.”

“Get up with Arthur,” Merlin tells Lucan as the stableboys break apart at Gwaine’s order.

Arthur takes Lucan’s hand and pulls him up to sit in front of him in the saddle.

“My lord, what about Merlin?” the boy asks.

“Don’t worry about Merlin,” Arthur says, though his eye asks Merlin the same question.

“I’m going ahead,” Merlin says, stripping off his cape and brooch and stuffing it into Lucan’s lap.

“Like hell you are,” Elyan says. “Those things are faster than you are, unless you’ve got some magic boots we don’t know about.”

“I’ll do you better than boots,” Merlin says.

He rushes out of the stable and looks skyward.

Skyward.

His fingers are long.

His fingers are white.

His fingers are hard in their center and silk on the edges.

He travels up high with soundless steps.

It is.

It is.

Night.

“Oh my god.”

It is.

It is.

White.

“Merlin? Is that Merlin doing that?”

It is.

It is.

Time to fly.

Chapter Text

Emrys is a shapeshifter. Everyone says this, when the knights have inquired about the truth of his magic, Arthur has repeated it as he has the rest of the legend.

Emrys is a shapeshifter. He is wisdom, immortal. He will unite Albion with the Once and Future King and will thereafter bring magic back to Camelot.

The bits he’s added to soothe the fears of his men are, ‘He is not hostile to us, though he has been ill-treated in this kingdom until now. You may make your own decisions in his presence, but be aware that his end and mine are one in the eyes of Fate.”

It’s all been a rather mystical and dreamy recitation, much like any other myth told around a fire at night, but it is one thing to know and experience Emrys’s power himself and another to see others see it in its full glory for the first time.

Merlin calls night upon the day, and so the sky darkens.

He reaches towards the blackened heavens with outstretched arms.

His tunic and trousers billow around him. With little more than a flash and a small arc of light, the whole of him bleaches, shrinks and smooths into the white wings and moon-face of an owl. 

Lucan gasps in front of Arthur as the owl takes immediate flight towards the north mountains.

There is no way they will reach the old well before the disembodied hands all around will harm someone, but there is no other choice at this moment than to follow Emrys’s instincts.

Arthur urges his horse onwards.

There are no hands in the forest at first. Even if there were, it is now too dark to see them. It is so dark, in fact, that Arthur nearly tramples Morgana when she leaps out into the path.

Her arms are full of druid children. One’s hand is nothing but aged, brittle bone. It clutches sickeningly at her loose hair.

“Tell me this is happening to Camelot,” she half-shouts at Arthur’s stalled steed as the other knights catch up to him.

“Magic can reverse its course,” he says.

“I tried already,” Morgana says over the child’s weeping.

“Merlin thinks it has something to do with those mirrors he found,” he says.

“Wh—how?”

“I don’t know. I’m trusting him. Stay here.”

“Go that way,” Morgana says with a jerk of her head. “I’ll get you a guide to get you there faster.”

“Thank you,” Arthur says.

“Go.”

The horses thunder through the dense trees until they reach a clearing with no obvious path from it, but for the one leading the way they just came. Arthur’s heart pounds as he searches for some sort of indication or person.

He nearly tumbles off his horse and takes Lucan with him when he catches sight of a hound-sized shadow ahead to his right.

He rights himself while the knight gather up into formation at his flank.

The hound-sized shadow lengthens, then shortens.

“Who goes there?” Arthur asks.

It lengthens again.

“I am Prince Arthur of Camelot,” he says. “Were you sent here by my sister?”

The shadow shortens and leans forward. The motion it makes as it approaches is familiar. Sleek and measured. It stands before Arthur’s horse now and lengthens before it.

The horse takes a step back.

Arthur pulls at the reins as he tries to understand what the hell is happening.

The shadow is a shadow no longer, but a giant rabbit. It sits upon its haunches, the way that Merlin’s flock does when he feeds them sprouted barley from his pinched fingers.

Its coat is brown like forest duff with a white star bleeding down the center of its forehead. On top of its head, before the roots of its ears begin to rise from its skull, lays a rudimentary metal circlet from which springs several old fangs of increasingly larger size, a broken shard of bluish glass, and a red, cracked ruby.

“My god, it’s a king,” Gwaine says behind Arthur.

The word ‘king’ sets Arthur’s mind back into motion.

“Your highness,” he says, “My apologies for my rudeness. I did not realize my sister would send someone of your status to greet us.”

The king of hares wriggles his massive nose and takes another slow, smooth step forward. It paws at the hoof of Arthur’s horse.

Merlin’s rabbits do this, too. They stomp when they’re upset with him and dig at his ankles when they want his attention.

Arthur urges Lucan to dismount with his hands. He follows after and the king of hares comes to him. It stares into his face with its liquid eyes, then turns and begins moving towards the edge of the clearing.

The knights dismount, one at a time, as Arthur follows the rabbit to what looks to be a tree trunk split in half right down the center. The hole in its middle is hidden by the leaves of the new saplings and root suckers that have sprung up all around its base.

The rabbit clambers up and through the hole with difficulty. Arthur watches it take a few steps and then look back at him.

“Mate, that’s a fairy circle, that is,” Elyan warns.

Yes, well. Arthur is having regular sex with a man who can turn into an owl at will. As long as the king of hares has safe passage, they probably won’t die. Not all of them.

“Squires, stay put,” he orders.

“Love it. Eaten by fairies. Someone mark it on my grave,” Elyan says, though he’s already trudging ahead of Arthur.

“Feels naughty,” Gwaine says right on his heels.

Percival says nothing at all. Leon put a hand on Arthur’s chestplate to keep him from going anywhere before he does.

It’s a tight fit through the circle for most of them. Percival has to crawl through one half of his body at a time. Leon crunches his arms as flat as he can into his chest and ducks awkwardly.

They manage, however. On the other side of the fairy circle, they can see the squires staring back at them in various states of shock and horror.

Arthur reminds them to stay and puts Gwaine’s squire in charge should they not return.

The king of hares scratches at the ground to get them all back on task.

The fairy circle dumps them all out nearby the river where Merlin planted white herbs high in the branches of a tree. It’s been weeks and the garden has taken root. The tree practically glows in the darkness. The sprouts and fronds thickly layered over its limbs sway in a breeze that Arthur can’t feel.

The well isn’t far from here. He and Father passed through it first. They need to backtrack a bit.

He thanks the king with a low bow and receives a shallower one in return then gets to his feet and calls for the others to stick close behind him.

It’s only a ten minute walk. The low vibrations of Merlin’s voice snatches Arthur’s chin up. The others hear it, too.

“—Galahad—”

“I don’t care who you are. You led them here, and you will lead them out.”

“I’m like you.”

“You led them here.”

“I followed you. You’re Merlin. The Merlin. Which means this is Britain’s darkest hour.”

“That is not my name, human.”

“What? Sorry. I’m—you’re talking too fast. I’m sort of new to this.”

“I do not know that name.”

“You do—”

“NOT know that name.”

“Name?”

Leon’s spine straightens ahead of Arthur. Arthur comes to his side and wraps a hand over his shoulder.

“What’re you thinking?” he murmurs.

“Never heard an accent like that,” Leon murmurs back. “Saxon?”

Probably.

“Can you all understand what he’s saying?” Percival asks.

“Somewhat. Shit grammar, though.” Elyan says.

“Merlin doesn’t speak English,” Arthur whispers to Leon.

“I don’t speak English,” Gwaine volunteers unhelpfully.

“Great, thanks,” Arthur says. “Anyone else?”

Percival puts up a sheepish finger. Elyan clears his throat softly and wavers a hand in front of himself.

Arthur grips Leon’s shoulder and shakes him slowly.

“Me and you, then. As per usual,” he says.

“I’ll go ahead,” Leon says.

“Hold on,” Arthur whispers. “Merlin’ll spook if it’s just you. Let me just—Emrys.”

The voices in the clearing cut off.

“Hello?” the stranger says. “Uh? Can you hear me?”

“Go,” Arthur says. “I’m right behind you.”

Merlin’s pupils are all but gone when Leon slips through the trees with his hand on his blade. Over his shoulder, Arthur spies the stranger: a tall, broad shouldered man with swoops of chestnut colored hair. His clothing is peculiar. It is lined with visible seams which have been stamped into place with obvious stitches.

He is wearing a traveling pack which has been dyed the brightest blue Arthur has seen in his life. It is covered in strange nets and cords and black and white markings. A word is marked in white on its side using large, curling letters which make no word in Latin or English that Arthur can recognize.

He is holding a mirror in his hand, a squarish thing with a polished face. Arthur vaguely recalls one of the knights who attacked Merlin ages ago holding a similar object.

“Who goes there?” Leon asks in English.

Merlin’s curiosity widens his pupils for but a moment before they vanish again.

“Oh—OH. You speak—oh my god,” the stranger says. “You speak English?”

Even his English is absolutely bizarre.

“Are you a Saxon?” Leon demands.

“Am—am I a—”

“You do not know your own language, Saxon?” Leon asks.

“Oh, this is like nothing I could have imagined,” the stranger says. “It’s—what—Am I a—”

“Saxon?” Leon repeats, louder than before.

“A Saxon!” the stranger realized. “Oh my god. A Saxon, of course. Ye—no. No, I’m, I’m Welsh like you.”

Leon puts himself in front of Merlin, which allows Arthur to enter the clearing while the stranger is distracted.

“What is ‘Welsh?’” Leon says. “Is that or that not Saxon?”

“It’s, well, it’s sort of Saxon. I mean, there’s been a lot of intermingling since you people, I mean, since the uh, sixth century. This—this is the sixth century, isn’t it?”

“If you are Saxon, you must return to your king’s land,” Leon says. “This is the kingdom of Camelot. Your people were driven from here years ago.”

 “Oh. Oh, no, you’re mistaken,” the stranger says. “I’m here because of Merlin. Him. See? Here, look. He—he showed up in my time. He burnt this tree and shocked the living shit out of that ambulance. Haha. Yeah. See that?”

Leon is not interested in the stranger’s mirror, though the stranger seems utterly tickled by it.

How annoying.

“Saxon,” Arthur says from behind the man. “You have crossed the border. This is Camelot land. Get to your knees.”

The stranger turns around with a gaping, stupid mouth to find Arthur standing with sword in hand.

“Holy shit,” he says. “Holy shit, that crest. You’re King Arthur?”

“I am Prince Arthur of Camelot. These lands are my father’s territory. You insult us by setting foot here. I have slaughtered your people, and will do so again if I must,” Arthur says.

“You speak Old English,” the stranger squeals.

“Can I just kill him already?” Merlin asks.

“Stand down,” Arthur orders.

“He’s the godforsaken knight who took the mirror I found in this well. He’s gone and brought all these people to this place in another time,” Merlin says. “They’re digging on their side, trying to break through to this one. We have to get rid of the mirrors or else make him make his people leave.”

“How can they be digging?” Leon asks.

“Time doesn’t move the way you think,” Merlin says. “Worlds of possibilities and different paths exist on top of and next to each other. The space between them is thin in this forest. I did not understand it before, but I see it now.”

“Wow,” the stranger says. “So that’s what it sounds like. Here, don’t mind me. I’m just going to record all that. Go on.”

Merlin’s rage hardens his jaw. Arthur can sense that he’s one insult away from shredding this man into bits of gore and setting the whole valley ablaze.

“What is your name?” Arthur asks the stranger in slow, careful English.

“What is my—my name! Obviously. Yes. Of course. My name is Sir Galahad. Or, rather, I know I’m Sir Galahad to you. To my people, I’m Gabe. Gabriel.”

Generals don’t yammer on as much as this man does.

“Galahad,” Arthur repeats.

“One of your knights,” the stranger called Galahad says. “I’m Sir Lancelot’s son.”

“Sir Lancelot has no son. He is dead,” Leon says.

Galahad’s expression sinks.

“What?” he says, still smiling despite that. “No? No. He’s—he exists at the same time as you. So he’s definitely still here.”

“Sir Lancelot is dead,” Arthur confirms. “He died years ago. What purpose have you in coming to this place?”

“No, that’s not right. He’s supposed to—you and him fight over Guinevere.”

“I know nothing of which you speak. I will ask you once more what your purpose is. If you do not answer, you will face execution before my father,” Arthur says.

“Execution? Is that what you said?”

“He’s going to cut your head off, mate,” Merlin deadpans at the guy.

This, unfortunately, has the effect of reminding the man that Merlin exists.

“Merlin,” he says. “Merlin, tell them. I’m Sir Galahad. I’m from the future. Reincarnated. You know, born again. I’ve known all my life it was true, and then you showed up out of the blue. I knew it was time. It’s time, right? That—in my time the world is falling apart. We’re all in danger. You—you and Arthur, you’re supposed to come back in Britain’s darkest hour. I want to help.”

“He’s talking nonsense,” Leon says.

Arthur agrees. He’s calling it now.

He gestures behind him for the others to come and subdue the man, which inspires Galahad to start talking faster. His accent is already difficult to work through, but now, to Arthur’s ears it is all but mush and gibberish.

“It won’t stop the others,” Merlin warns by the well.

“Understood,” Arthur says. “Can you break all the mirrors you hid here underground?”

“I can try.”

“Try. Break his, too. We don’t want to take any chances. Did he come through that well?”

“Unfortunately,” Merlin says.

And true to form, the once-ruined well stands totally repaired, surrounded by the swaying heads of daffodils.

“This is above our heads,” Arthur says. “We need some kind of temporary solution to keep those hands away from people and livestock.”

Merlin trails a finger down his lips and looks upwards at the dark sky.

“How far are we out from the wheat harvest?” he asks.

“A month or so,” Arthur says.

“Will rain ruin it?”

“How much rain?”

“How much is too much? Ten minute downpour?”

“Why?” Arthur asks.

“Well, people generally don’t like to put their hands in dark wet places, my lord,” Merlin says.

Ah.

“Glad you’re caught up. Ten minutes? Twenty?”

“The wheat can take an hour at most,” Arthur says. “Drown them.”

Merlin unfurls before his very eyes.

“As you wish, my king,” he says.

And there, he calls down the heavens once more. 

Father speaks excellent English. He and Arthur’s late uncle, the previous king, spent their youth slaughtering Saxons and Romans alike. They spoke English and Latin with each other to practice. Father spoke English with Arthur and Morgana when they were children in case either of them was ever snatched up while passing through territories or sidelines.

The stranger, therefore, seems utterly shocked when Father can more or less understand him despite his strong accent and complex sentences.

“You are not comprehending,” Father tells this poor man. “The table and knights belong to me. I am king of this territory. Not Arthur.”

“Yes, but—”

“No buts. You say you are Sir Galahad. No such knight stands in my court. The man you claim to be your father is long dead here. He died with no children to this court’s knowledge, nor was he the son of any king known to us.”

“But—”

“Your insistence upon arguing these basic facts insult me.”

“No. No, sir. I didn’t mean it like that. I only meant that I—I know this to be true in my heart.”

“In your heart?” Father scoffs. “I care not for what you know in your heart. I have two court sorcerers here telling me that you are the cause for the curse upon this kingdom. Such magic is outlawed in this territory. You have two choices: lift this curse or be hung by the neck until dead.”

“It’s not a curse, your highness,” the man says. “They’re archaeologists. They’re looking for proof of your way of life.”

“You are one of them.”

“Well, a hobbyist.”

“You led them here.”

“I mean, I gave them a tip. I didn’t think they’d tear up the road like this.”

“Everything they touch here withers,” Father says. “There are innocent people, children, now legless because of you. Tell me, if it is not a curse, then why does it kill all it touches?”

Galahad swallows.

Father sits back on the throne and curls his fingers around its arms.

“That’s what I thought,” he says. “Make your choice: hang or lift the curse.”

“It’s not—not a really just sort of justice here, is it?” Galahad says. “What—what does the prince think?”

Arthur almost swallows his tongue at the nerve of this man.

He starts to stand. Father puts a hand on his arm in silent command to remain seated.

“I do not know what type of court you think this is,” Father says. “But the prince does not have a say in this decision. It is mine to make and mine alone.”

“So he’s supposed to watch you? I mean, what’s the point of the table then? Isn’t it supposed to be all about democracy?” Galahad says.

“I see you are not interested in lifting the curse,” Father says. “In that case, you will be hanged.”

“WAIT.”

“I will see it done tomorrow at daybreak in the square. May God have mercy upon your soul. Sorcerers, please meet me in the hall to discuss what is to be done.”

Gaius inclines his head at the same time as Merlin. Merlin offers his arm to his uncle to help him out of the court. The nobles remain where they are until Father takes his leave.

The well is the issue. Merlin is confident he’s shattered all the mirrors he buried around it. But between the well and what Gaius calls a ‘natural thinness’ in certain magic spaces, it seems that there is no immediate or permanent solution to this situation. The only way to keep people from other places and other times from finding Camelot is to cast a protection spell large enough to encompass the whole kingdom’s borders.

Even Merlin isn’t powerful enough to make that happen on his own.

It is going to require magic people. Lots and lots of magic people with enough talent and know-how to follow a ritual.

There are two issues with that, the first is obvious: magic has been banned from Camelot for so long that such person are few and far between. The second is that Merlin couldn’t teach them to cast the right spell even if he wanted to.

He never learned how. The knowledge was born with him.

Now, Gaius could teach the ritual, but he cannot draw a crowd. Other magic people don’t trust him. His loyalty to Father has marked him a traitor in their eyes for the rest of time.

Father holds his forehead as he tries to think.

“What about Morgana?” Arthur asks. “The druids are respected among magic persons, are they not?”

Merlin nods.

“What if Emrys asked Morgana?” Arthur tries.

“If there is no other way,” Father says with a long exhale. “Emrys.”

Merlin straightens up and dips his head in acknowledgement.

“I am asking for your generosity,” Father says. “Will you spare Camelot from this curse?”

Merlin clears his throat.

“Your highness, if I may be so bold: might I offer a bit of advice?” he says. 

The corners of Gaius’s eyes fold into a thousand, proud wrinkles as Father stands taken aback with his cape askew on his shoulders.

“I, yes. I suppose you may,” Father says.

“It’ll go down better if it comes from him,” Merlin says, lifting his chin Arthur’s way.

“Will it?”

“Yes, my lord.”

“In that case, Arthur?”

When did this moment become so great?

When did this feeling of soaring, of flying, overtake everything else in his heart?

The rightness, the wholeness, everything that Merlin and Emrys are when Arthur holds him—they’re here in this moment, too.

It’s time.

“My king?” Merlin prompts gently.

“Emrys,” Arthur says. “Tell them I want them here in Camelot.”

“Yes, my lord,” Merlin says.

“Tell them I want them to protect this kingdom. To live in this kingdom. To be a part of this kingdom.”

“Yes, my lord.”

“Tell them I believe in their power, and I am sorry for the mistakes I’ve made.”

“Arthur,” Father warns. “Let us not be too hasty.”

“No,” Arthur says, turning to him. “No, you and Gaius and Mother and Nimueh were friends once, all of you. You love them and you love Morgana. You loved magic, and magic gave you me. I owe it everything, I owe all of you everything. And it is my order for Camelot, not yours. Tell them, Emrys.”

“You already did.”

Merlin’s eyes are dancing with embers. He raises himself from his bow and holds a hand towards the window.

“Shall I get started now, sire?” he asks.

“Yes,” Arthur says.

As soon as he’s said it, the shadow of an owl darkens the window.

And then once again, Merlin is gone.

Merlin comes back.

Hours and hours later, yes.

But he comes back and whispers ancient words in Arthur’s ears, words he can’t understand that have not been spoken for centuries if not millennia.

He buries his face between Arthur’s shoulder blades and kisses a prayer there. Arthur reaches for him blindly and Merlin flattens their bodies together. His fingers wrap around Arthur’s middle and his long, unruly hair spills over Arthur’s own on the pillow.

“Hey,” he says, after a while of them breathing and sinking into the sensation of their wholeness.

“Hey,” Arthur says.

“I made a spell just for you. For protection. Want to hear it?”

Arthur turns over and holds Merlin’s face steady in his hands.

“Go on,” he says.

“White rabbits, white rabbits, white rabbits.”

“That’s it?”

“That’s it. Easy to remember. Perfect for you.”

“How so?”

“Because you’re lucky to have me.”

“Hm.”

“Come on, come on. Good, isn’t it?”

Arthur rolls back over and settles in as he was before.

“You keep trying, Merlin,” he says. “We’ll get there eventually.”