[Fic] Post hoc, ergo propter hoc (‘After this, therefore because of this.’) - derryere
[ Part I] | [ Part II] | [ Part III] | [ Part IV] | [ Part V]
(Part VI)
Merlin briefly closed his eyes and swallowed. Being caught in Arthur’s glare seemed like what the fly might feel trapped in the clutches of the spider, helpless and frantic with the need to take flight and escape certain death. Arthur had him trapped against the door, and though no parts of them were touching the roiling emotion coming off the Prince was enough keep Merlin effectively immobilized. He had to nowhere to go except admit the truth. "Arthur… we promised to always speak the truth to each other. One day… I said one day I would tell you my secrets."
Arthur’s shoulders seemed to tense up at the reminder, and then his eyes widened, surprise and something else flickering through them. He stepped back unexpectedly. "That voice…" he whispered, his eyes darting across Merlin’s face, searching. "I know that… I know you."
Merlin lowered his hands slowly, his fingers curling and he forced them to relax as he nodded, meeting Arthur’s disbelieving gaze. He saw the exact moment the pieces fell together in Arthur’s head.
"It was you!" Arthur all but shouted, and his head twisted around to look at where Archimedes was shuffling along his branch. "It was you. I- I had thought… but it didn’t make sense, and… it was you all along."
"Arthur, I-" But Arthur stepped out of Merlin’s reach and began pacing restlessly, shooting wide-eyes at Merlin and the room and Archimedes.
"Do you have any idea how long… for weeks I thought, right after it happened, but I told myself it was impossible, that there had to be another explanation. But he seemed to know me so well, and there was the owl, and the horse! Did you realize I found out that the horse he gave me was from our own stables? I thought, surely, it had to have been, the way you spoke and how you babbled on and on, but you didn’t sound alike, and your ages were different and… nothing made sense… I gave up…"
"You did figure it out," Merlin said, a sudden burst of pride warming him from the inside. "You were absolutely right, Arthur. When I heard you’d been taken I rode out as soon as I could. I had to make sure you were safe."
Arthur had stopped in his tracks and was staring at Merlin like he was seeing something entirely new, and there was genuine alarm there. "You’re a sorcerer."
Merlin wilted inwardly at the look - it was the one he’d been trying so hard to prevent from happening when this moment came. There was no use denying the truth, but Merlin couldn’t help hesitating anyway, his throat nearly locking up on the words. "Yes," he choked out.
"And all this?" Arthur said, forcing out his words past the clench of his teeth, and he swept his arm around to indicate the room and them. "Was all that a lie too? A way to get close to the Prince? All those stories, those histories, were they to fill my head and manipulate me?"
"No!" Merlin cried, heart sinking further as he stepped away from the door. "None of that was a lie. We made a promise together, and I have honored it every day. I have not once lied to you."
"But you didn’t tell me about this!" Arthur shouted, his voice cracking in a way it hadn’t for months now, and Merlin saw for the first time the hurt that was buried in the Prince’s eyes. It was the same look of betrayal that he’d had to face down once before already, and it twisted Merlin’s gut with a cold shock of guilt. The thought of being responsible for hurting Arthur chilled him, but it was the thought of losing him again after all this time that scared him even more.
"I… I would have. I wanted to. I thought… hoped someday I could tell you the truth. I didn’t intend to hide it from you, not like that," Merlin pleaded, throat tight with remorse.
"But you did," Arthur spat, advancing on Merlin again as if sensing a weakness to exploit. "You said you would always be truthful with me, but you were lying every day. You deceived everyone, me, my father, this whole castle. Your word means nothing!"
And that hurt, to have his promises thrown back in his face when Merlin had been trying so hard to embrace a life of honesty. Arthur would never know how difficult it had been, how many years Merlin had spent afraid to trust, fearing the truth like it was poison. The truth had never done anything but destroy his life one tragedy at a time, and yet it had been Arthur who had made him change his mind in the end, who had made him see that the truth could also be good. And now Arthur was the same one calling those vows worthless, and it hurt.
"How was I supposed to tell you when you were going to react like this!" Merlin yelled, and there was a grim satisfaction in watching the way Arthur faltered as his own pain and anger rose to the surface.
Arthur seemed taken aback by the outburst, but he collected himself quickly. "You can’t blame me like that! You’re the one who’s been lying all this time!"
"Did it never once occur to you, that this-" Merlin swept his hand out, mirroring Arthur’s earlier gesture. "That everything, the histories, the lessons, everything I ever told you about magic was because I wanted to prevent exactly this kind of thing? I lied, and I am sorry for it, but I had to know you wouldn’t try to have me arrested first!"
"So this is my fault?" Arthur yelped incredulously. "Are you saying I wasn’t trustworthy enough?"
"No, I… that’s not what I meant," Merlin said, and his anger seemed to leave him as quickly as it had come. "There are so many things… so much I wanted to show you. The wonders I have seen, the beauty of magic, I wanted to share it all with you. But you are Uther’s son, I had to be sure…"
"So now I am to blame for my father’s actions," Arthur snarled, low and bitter. "You would judge me based on the actions of another man, and not on my own. I spared your life!"
"You also tried to kill me the first time we met!" Merlin snapped back. "Pardon me for wanting to be a little more cautious the next go around!"
Arthur’s jaw clamped shut with a look of contrition. "I wouldn’t have tried to kill you," he protested quietly.
Merlin’s headache seemed to return with a sudden vengeance, or perhaps it had not left at all and only his evaporating anger was giving it leeway to be more noticeable. "I... I know that. I do trust you, I was just afraid," Merlin admitted, and his knee found one of the stools and he sat down on it hard, rubbing his forehead tenderly. "I was more worried you’d be angry, or that you’d hate me, or that you’d send me away from Camelot. I couldn’t risk it. I’m sorry."
Arthur shuffled quietly toward the other end of the room, and under his hand Merlin saw him crossing and uncrossing his arms and shooting glances at Merlin and Archimedes both. He looked upset but at least a little more reasonable, and there was more sullen anger than true fury lining his face. A log crumbled inside the grate of the stove, and it sounded unnaturally loud in the silent room, save for the rain still beating against the windows. Merlin’s feet were growing colder and his headache was showing no signs of abating.
"You came back early," Merlin noted, and Arthur shot him a brief, scrutinizing glare, one that Merlin refused to rise to. "It’s been raining so much, no one thought you’d be back until tomorrow."
"The men agreed to push on to Camelot," Arthur explained with a bit of gruff reluctance. "We would have had to risk crossing the floodwaters if we’d waited any longer."
"It must have been bad already," Merlin said, and frowned. "That was a very risky thing to do."
Arthur huffed dismissively. "We managed. Perhaps it was fortunate, or I would not have come back to find you… redecorating," he said with a pointed glance around the room.
Merlin stifled another sigh and rose from his seat. Arthur did not move, but Merlin saw the way his shoulders stiffened at the motion; he was still wary, still uncertain, and maybe still a little fearful of the expose sorcerer in his midst. It hurt more than Merlin wanted to admit to see that careful stance braced for danger, as if Merlin would ever harm him in any way. Merlin turned to walk the other way around the far side of table to the opposite end of the room. He sat down at the edge of his bed to dry his feet with the corner of the sheet and put on his boots, feeling the rough scrape of the leather over the numbed flesh. When he looked back up, Arthur was watching him, scrutinizing.
"What? I was tired of the room always looking the same," Merlin explained a bit defensively.
"Is that what it was?" Arthur drawled, and he bent down to pick up a book by his foot and placed it atop the table.
Merlin stood impatiently and put his hands on his hips, opening his mouth, but stopped before a sound could escape and pressed his lips together. He looked back at Arthur. "Does that rule about no spells still apply, sire?"
Arthur looked startled by the question, and he blinked warily. "Are you saying, this whole time…?"
Merlin couldn’t help chuckling softly, though it may have come out sounding more harsh than he would have liked. "No. I’ve gotten too used to it to stop completely. But I thought, well it seemed the polite thing to ask. You look like you’re ready to gut me if I so much as breathe magically."
Surprisingly, Arthur looked slightly abashed by the observation. "Well it isn’t the sort of thing one hears every day, is it?" he pointed out in his defense. He still looked wary, however. "What sort of spell is it?"
"Just something to clean this mess up. You might enjoy it, actually."
Arthur’s look was doubtful, and he watched Merlin silently for a long moment before nodding, once, slowly. Merlin smiled, giving quiet thanks for the trust Arthur was showing in him. He looked around the room and whispered a word, "Hámsidhe."
The spell was old and familiar, and Merlin had used it more times than he could remember while living on his own after being exiled from Camelot. He felt the magic of the spell leave him, the warmth rushing through his veins and tightening the muscles behind his eyes, and then things began to move. The books stood upright on their spines and began marching obediently back to the bookshelves; the dinner plate picked itself off the floor and chucked the cold leftovers into the stove; the blanket and sheet on the bed behind him rustled and flattened out straight; his pillows flipped over and fluffed themselves; his quills banded together and returned to their holding cup; an old rag flung itself on the puddle Merlin had stepped in earlier and mopped up the mess before hanging itself in front of the stove to dry, and every bit of parchment spread out on the table slid into neat stacks or rolled up out of the way. It was beautiful, organized chaos, and Arthur stood in the middle of it, mouth hanging open and eyes open in a look of surprised wonder that Merlin had never seen before.
When the last book had succeeded in flinging itself up onto one of the higher shelves (having missed twice already), Merlin nodded at the job well done. "That was faster than usual," he said with a small grin. "I think they were trying to show off for you, sire."
"What," Arthur breathed when he eventually found his voice, "was that?"
"A little clean-up spell," Merlin explained, walking back to the table. "I’m kind of lazy - okay a lot lazy, and it comes in handy. It’s just a shame I didn’t discover it until after- that is, never mind. You can see it’s quite harmless, just makes things put themselves back where they belong."
"Do they always… do that?" Arthur asked, and his eyes were trained on the wet rag that was flipping itself over in front of the open grate on the stove.
"Hm? Oh! Well, see," Merlin began, warming up to the topic and encouraged by the fact that Arthur was stepping closer to the towel in fascination rather than backing away from it. "I took it a step further. I started off with simple things, the necessities, like my boots and the teapot because you’d be surprised how often those go missing, but eventually I just started giving it to everything. The spark of life. Just a little bit of free will, enough to know how to follow an order and get back to where it belongs."
"These things are alive?" Arthur asked incredulously. He made to grab for the wet rag and got slap from a corner on his wrist in return.
"Not exactly. More like… the illusion of life. All they know are their intended purpose. They can’t think or feel or die. Harmless, really, unless you… I really wouldn’t do that, sire," Merlin warned as Arthur made another grab for the towel, a mischievous grin slipping across his face.
"Why? You said that- ow!" Arthur yelped as the warm towel wriggled out of his grasp and slapped him soundly on the arm. It lifted itself into the air and came to land on one of the empty branches of Archimedes’ perch, and Arthur pouted when the owl moved to shuffle in front of it protectively. He crossed his arms. "I thought you liked me, Archimedes. After all, you’ve been following me for days."
Merlin coughed, half in surprise and half to stifle the sudden urge to laugh. "Archimedes was just doing what I asked him to," he clarified, smiling sheepishly.
Arthur spun around in surprise. "My god, Merlin, you’re worse than an old nursemaid!" he accused. "And I know that’s not the first time you’ve sent him after me, either. Did you really think I wouldn’t notice the same owl following our party day after day?"
"He was supposed to stay out of sight. I only sent him to look after you, since I couldn’t be there," Merlin explained, shrugging unapologetically.
"You were serious - what you said earlier, about being in Camelot to protect me."
Merlin nodded, threading his fingers together and then releasing them to hang by his sides. "Yes, it’s my duty."
"Why?" Arthur blurted. He’d crossed his arms, shoulders hunched, and the scowl on his face did not mask the confusion Merlin could also see there, or how much Arthur was probably simmering with resentment over the very idea. "I don’t need protecting. Who told you that you had to?"
That was a loaded question if Merlin had ever heard one, and it forced him to draw a deep breath, uncomfortably aware that he was honor bound to answer Arthur honestly even though the truth was so close to his final secret that it made the words sit thick and heavy on his tongue. He might not need to even mention the dragon’s involvement in his earlier years, but Arthur could cast him out anyway, deny him his place at his side, and Merlin would be left watching from afar and praying that his actions had not brought about the downfall of the kingdom once more. The irony was that this had been so much easier to say the first time when he’d thought he would be dead by the next day.
"I know it might sound hard to believe, but there was once someone who told me of a great destiny - yours and mine, and that we’re tied together. But it was my choice to make, and I chose to stay by you and keep you from harm. You’re Prince Arthur Pendragon, the future King of Camelot, and one day the kingdom will need you to lead her. Even if that means… even if I have to give my life, I will do everything in my power to see that happen. That is why I am here, sire."
Merlin had to avert his gaze from reading whatever expression had fallen over Arthur’s face, his heart thumping erratically and his skin prickling with nervous sweat. He could feel the echo of another conversation years old in this moment, one that had not even occurred yet and might never need to. The last time he’d told Arthur the very same words, the Prince had been too heavily medicated to do more than muzzily accuse Merlin of being thick and making no sense - but here he was again, pledging his life to Arthur and the Prince wasn’t even old enough to grow a beard. It was ten kinds of foolish but Merlin knew he was in too deep not to at least give Arthur the chance to make his own decision. He was laying his soul bare and if Arthur was any good at discerning what his own eyes had probably given away, the Prince knew how monumental the admission was.
"I thought magic hated Camelot," Arthur said weakly after a long interval, but the words were hollow, rhetorical.
Merlin passed a hand over his eyes and shook his head slowly. His headache had lessened now that the yelling had stopped, but he could still feel it thrumming under his temple with every heavy pulse beat. That bit of magic earlier had been fun, but Merlin could feel the cost of it now. "You know that’s not true, Arthur. After everything I’ve taught you? You know better than anyone that magic is a tool, that it is an instrument of faith, and that people are the ones who choose to hate or love and whether to use magic for good or evil. They can use it to protect people they care about, or use it to fight a war. It is what it is."
"You’ve said that before," Arthur admitted quietly, and Merlin lifted his head to watch him. The Prince was still standing in front of the stove, arms crossed and warming himself by the heat being given off, and Merlin could see how much color had returned to his face and that his hair had curled up around his neck and ears as it dried. He looked older than Merlin remembered, as if a week had somehow made him grow a little taller, made his chest a little broader, and that little boy he’d met only a year ago seemed so far away. And yet, this Arthur seemed more familiar somehow, closer to the Arthur he remembered, the prat Prince of Camelot that had teased him and dragged him everywhere and had laid his life down for Merlin and his people and had been a friend unlike anyone Merlin had ever known. And he missed him.
"Merlin?" Arthur asked. He was returning Merlin’s stare, and his eyes were puzzled by whatever expression had stolen over Merlin’s face in his moment of introspection. Merlin couldn’t help flushing a bit at the scrutiny.
"Sorry. It’s nothing. Are you… are we alright?"
Arthur kept his arms crossed bit his bottom lip, his chin falling as he looked upon some unremarkable spot on the floor. Merlin had to clench his hands to keep them from trembling. "I understand why you hid your magic," Arthur said slowly. "Camelot isn’t safe for your kind and… the fear is understandable. And it’s true you’ve taught me many things about its histories, opened my eyes to the world and the things my father would deny exist. I can acknowledge that, and that you have saved my life once already. I believe your words to be true. But there is one thing I do not understand." At that, Arthur lifted his head and looked at Merlin directly, and there was something fierce and determined in his eyes. "You hid your face from me that night so that I could not identify you, but you have contradicted your own words - you said that you feared being recognized. I have never seen you before; therefore there is someone else whom you do not wish to see your true face. Who is it? Is it my father? What have you done that should warrant such deception? I deserve to know the whole truth, Merlin."
Merlin winced inwardly. Once again, Arthur had proven himself more perceptive than Merlin had given him credit for. He shook his head. "No one knows my face. I swear it. It’s… this is hard to explain, Arthur."
"Try," Arthur said stiffly. "Your sense of duty might think it permits you a place here, but I will not allow you to stay in Camelot if I cannot trust you."
They were harsh words, and Arthur had spoken well to drive his intent to the heart of Merlin’s greatest fear. It said much for his abilities as a future ruler, or perhaps that he simply knew Merlin too well after a year spent in each other’s company. Merlin’s throat had gone dry but he nodded, accepting the terms. Arthur was leaving him with little choice, but it was a bit of a relief too, to have the decision taken out of his hands before he could stumble and be caught lying again without realizing he’d even done so. In his own way Arthur was keeping him honest, but Merlin hated not knowing what price there would be to pay for it this time.
"You were right, this isn’t my first time in Camelot," he confessed. His feet had begun to move of their own accord and he was pacing by the table, looking anywhere but Arthur. He found it easier to speak when he had something else on the room to focus on besides the Prince’s expressionless face. "Right now, in a tiny village on the edge of Cendred’s kingdom, lives a boy and his mother. You asked about it once before: Ealdor. This boy… he’s not much younger than you, only by a year or two. He’s a pretty happy child; his mother is kind and he has a best friend, and they’re the only two people who know that he’s… different. You see, he has strange powers and can move things with his mind, or make things suddenly appear just by wishing, and he can make time slow down just by thinking about it. He doesn’t know anything about magic or spells, or why he can do what he does. It just is. Not good or evil, just a boy."
Merlin paused with his back to Arthur. The tower chamber was warm from the heat of the stove and Merlin could feel it through his clothes even on the opposite side of the room. But there were goosebumps breaking out across his arms and his neck, and his heart had only picked up its nervous pace with each word that fell from his lips. Admitting the truth had never felt so difficult until that moment, and he had to clear his throat before continuing. "In a few years, that boy’s mother will send him away to Camelot to become an apprentice to Gaius. Except the boy is very cocky, practically stupid at that age, and he runs into this bloke who’s bullying one of the squires. He tries to stop him and they get into a fight, but even when the boy finds out he just tried to throw a punch at the Prince it doesn’t change how much he thinks he’s a prat. But then some stuff happens - a witch tries to kill the Prince in revenge and the boy ends up saving his life, so the King rewards him by making him the Prince’s manservant. The boy and the Prince don’t get along at all and they fight all the time at first, but the boy realizes after awhile that the Prince isn’t always a prat, and sometimes he’s good and thinks of other people first; so the boy decides he’ll keep on using his powers to save the Prince’s life when he’s being especially idiotic. Pretty soon they become inseparable and… you could almost say they were friends.
"But you see, the boy was an idiot too. He got stronger and learned new spells and kept on saving the Prince’s life from monsters and sorcerers, but he never once told the Prince his secret. He kept it hidden because he was scared of putting his friends in danger and being forced to leave Camelot where he couldn’t protect the Prince anymore. But mostly he was afraid of hurting the Prince, and putting him in a position where he’d have to choose between his manservant or lying to his father. So he said nothing, and the Prince began to hate magic when more and more sorcerers tried to use it to kill him or deceive him, all the while never knowing that it was saving him, too. And then one day the saved the Prince’s life in front of the entire court, where everyone saw him using his magic do it, and it… changed everything. It was the worst day of his life."
Merlin had to stop moving or risk wearing a hole in the floor, so sat down where he’d stopped, which happened to be at the edge of his bed. He couldn’t help rubbing his shoulder where the scar of Arthur’s blow lay hidden under the tunic, as if he could somehow unconsciously push back the pain of the memories. Arthur had not spoken once, but Merlin couldn’t bring himself to look up; there was so much left to tell, and one wrong glimpse might cause him to lose his nerve entirely.
"The King tried to have the boy arrested, but he ran away and hid in the forests outside Camelot. The King had Gaius taken instead for helping him and sheltering him under his roof, and he… the King burned him alive. Burned him and everything he owned, all of his books and medicines, everything. So the boy came back to try and explain everything to the Prince, to tell him the truth about their destiny and tell him how many times he had saved his life. But it was too late. The Prince was angry… so hurt, so betrayed, that some said later that he went mad with it. The boy ran away but the Prince marched the armies of Camelot after him. His father let him lead his men, and they burned everything magical in their path. The Druids took up arms, gathered their forces, and war broke out. A horrible war that used magic against men who had no protection against it, peasants that had been drafted with only spears and shields. The Druids thought they would win, but their numbers were so vastly different - for every sorcerer there were at least a hundred of Camelot’s men. The battles went on for years."
At a soft noise, Merlin looked up to see that Arthur had moved from the stove and taken one of the stools to sit down as well. His face was drawn and his mouth was nothing but a thin, serious line. They shared a silent look. "And the boy?" Arthur asked tautly. "What did he do?"
Merling sighed. "If he’d had a choice, he would have run away for good. Somewhere far away where he wouldn’t have to fight or kill anyone else. But he was given no choice: the Druids told him to fight by their side, or be killed as a traitor. And he agreed, because the Prince’s armies were ruthless and they were killing anyone with magic or who tried to protect their families, and he couldn’t let that happen. He was still loyal to the Prince, to the man he used to be, but he knew it would be wrong not to protect those who couldn’t protect themselves. So he used his magic to shield and heal the wounded, and he stopped the needless bloodshed when he could. But it wasn’t enough. It was… all wrong. Nothing had happened the way it was supposed to. He blamed himself for the war, for all of the deaths, for everything that had taken place. He knew he had to do something, to find a way to fix it, to change the present into something better and stop the war from ever happening.
"He secluded himself from the Druids and studied all the books and old magic he could find. He spent a whole year trying to find an answer, for a way to end the war and change the course of history. And when the time came, when everything was done and he’d learned all that he could, he opened a doorway into the past. A doorway that led him to a time years before the war, before his magic was revealed, even before he’d come to Camelot. And he swore a promise to ensure things happened differently. To make sure that there would be no war. And that meant he would have to hide his face so that no one would recognize him when his younger self came to Camelot a few years later.
"The only thing he didn’t plan on was meeting the Prince by the side of the road just days after his arrival, or that he would save his life from a wild boar. And he didn’t plan on being appointed the Prince’s tutor, or being given somewhere to live in the castle. But he decided to make do with what he’d been given, and hoped that if he could teach the Prince about magic, about its history and its peoples, that maybe it would be enough to-"
"Stop," Arthur rasped, rising so suddenly that the stool toppled back on its legs and clattered to the floor. Merlin jerked at the noise and looked up, but Arthur had turned away so that only his back was facing him, both hands fisted at his sides in tight, tense balls.
Merlin did not think he could continue speaking even if Arthur had commanded him to - his throat felt raw with the memories he had been asked to relive, and there was a tight pain in his chest that only stretched and moved to envelop every inner organ the longer he watched Arthur struggle to collect himself. The only sound in the room was the light tap of scattered rain on his windows and the crackle of the fire; even Archimedes’ familiar whistle while he slept was absent in the heavy atmosphere that had fallen, and Merlin felt like the tension could be snapped with a single word. So he said nothing, and waited, and watched.
Eventually Arthur moved, a stumbling half step that he seemed to catch himself on before he began to stride across the room, away from Merlin. Merlin was on his feet before he remembered moving. "Arthur? Are you-"
"Shut up!" Arthur snapped, his profile only half visible. The grim frown on his lips did not bode well, and Merlin felt the physical weight of it on his heart. "I will hear no more. You will… we will not speak of this."
Arthur had the door open before Merlin’s feet could bring themselves to move, but when he reached the open exit, Arthur had already descended the flight of stairs and his back was a rapidly disappearing shadow along the narrow corridor below. Merlin carefully shut the door and leaned against the solid wood, feeling the rough grain under his fingertips, but it was a muted sensation, far away and disconnected from where the rest of his mind was. His only lucid, slightly panicked thought, was to wonder if he should start packing.
Somehow he ended up sitting on the floor, his back still leaning against the closed door, and the candles in the room flickered out one by one until he was left in nothing but the dim, orange light of the open stove. Outside the castle the wind howled, and Merlin shivered.
*~*~*
Merlin nearly did pack up and go, once he’d managed to get up off the cold floor and think a little more rationally beyond the litany of oh god I messed up I messed up I messed up running through his head. But whether it was the wretched rain still falling outside, or the thought of making Archimedes fly through that again when he’d only just gotten indoors, Merlin put off shrinking his possessions and came to the decision that there was no harm in waiting it out a bit longer. Arthur hadn’t told him to leave, and he’d threatened it with enough serious intent that Merlin knew the Prince would have no compunction about sending Merlin away if he felt he couldn’t trust the sorcerer or his story. Running away had always seemed like the better option before, but this time he was not facing down the broad side of a sword and a Prince enraged beyond sanity. It was difficult to think past his own pain and desperation at the Prince’s reaction, but Merlin knew that Arthur needed time, time to decide whether to tell Merlin to go or stay, and Merlin owed it to him to wait and see. But Merlin was nearly certain Arthur wouldn’t speak to him for at least a week, and he tried his best to settle in for a long, miserable wait.
But to his surprise, not three days later (three horrible, depressing days later), Arthur showed up at Merlin’s door with a polite knock that brokered no eye contact, and sat down to continue his lessons as if nothing were amiss. Merlin was so tense throughout the two-hour long meeting that he dropped no less than four books, broke the nib on two quills, and nearly overturned his inkpot, all which took place in between the fumbling attempts he made to explain the history of the Grecian school of philosophy. Any efforts he made toward casual conversation were met with stony silences and even stonier glares if he pushed, and when the two hours were up and Arthur had left with nary a backwards glance, Merlin promptly fell upon his bed with a heaving sigh, feeling as though he’d just survived his first battle all over again.
The pattern continued in the same manner - every other day, Arthur appeared at his door and Merlin picked up where the prior lesson had left off. They rarely made eye contact and Merlin’s initial nervousness gradually wore away to a gloomy resignation that he had condemned the rest of his time with Arthur to nothing more than bland recitations on Albion’s long history of invading conquerors or having Arthur silently calculate the volumes of whatever empty vessels Merlin could locate around his room. They did not speak of the mundane comings and goings of castle life, or share thoughts on the contribution of the bow and arrow to modern warfare, or attempt to make the other laugh with poorly composed jokes in other languages, or make any mention whatsoever of magic. Arthur dutifully did his work, and Merlin in turn diligently checked his answers and his translations, and they lived as two strangers that barely spoke, with separate lives that only overlapped for two hours, once every other day.
There was one time, and one time only about a week after Arthur had stormed out of his rooms, when Merlin had attempted to bring up the topic of their recent estrangement. It had gained him one horrifying glimpse of Arthur’s face, suddenly so full of hurt and anger, that Merlin had nearly fallen off his chair from the intensity of emotion being barely kept in check by the Prince. After that time, Merlin did not dare attempt to bring it up again.
A month passed in this manner and Merlin grew more despondent of there ever being reconciliation between himself and Arthur. Some days he wondered whether exile would have been better, for at least that would have spared him the daily reminder of his mistakes, watching Arthur take to his training out on the field with a focus and intensity that even the squires watched in rapt astonishment, or listening to the fast clatter of hooves as Arthur rode out of the castle courtyard on horseback toward whatever wild game could appease his anger. Merlin overheard the more matronly castle servants speculating that the Prince was simply going through a phase like all young boys do, with his sullen glowers and short temper and sudden enjoyment of all manner of violent things. But Merlin knew better, knew the true cause of the Prince’s broken spirit, and his ambitions for changing the future seemed more like a fool’s errand than the grand scheme of Albion’s most powerful warlock. There seemed to be little hope for change but Merlin stayed anyway - partly out of loyalty, and partly out of stubbornness, but mostly because there was nowhere else he wanted to go.
The air grew warmer each day with the onset of summer, and the rains that had washed all of the color from Camelot ceased completely to be replaced by a prickling humidity that Merlin could have sworn he’d only just managed to escape from a few months prior. There were beautiful days of sunny weather for a time, cool breezes like an afterimage of better days in the spring, and the earth seemed to practically shimmer with green. Blue-green in the leaves of the hedgerows and verdant in the tops of the highest trees, azure skies like the painted glass in Camelot’s hallways, and with summer’s golden light even the darkest forests and the lowest hollows and the wide open pastures were no less beautiful for it. The land was lush and seemed to brim over with blossoming wildflower fields and purple tipped heather, and on some days the air was so clear that Merlin could see the hazy borders of distant shores from atop his solitary tower.
With his sudden accumulation of free time, Merlin offered his services to Gaius for making rounds and deliveries out into the city and lower town. He remained tight-lipped on the reason even when Gaius made liberal use of his silent eyebrow to prompt some sort of explanation for Merlin’s unusual desire to leave the castle whenever possible. If Gaius thought that Arthur’s changing moods had also resulted in pushing Merlin away from the irritable Prince, then Merlin would not be the one to correct his thinking. Running errands for Gaius was so familiar and so much easier without the added pressure of knowing that he had to return promptly to the castle and attend to a Prince that got grumpy when his boots weren’t perfectly spotless by noontime, and Merlin made fair use of his afternoons to roam wherever his feet dared to travel.
He walked the low towns and the wide fields and the hillocks that stood just a little above the valley Camelot proper was nestled in to take in the view of a land unspoiled by warfare and listen to the bleating of unconcerned sheep; he ventured into the King’s forest and helped himself to the herbs and roots he remembered by sight and smell, walked the game trails and listened to the hoof beats as the wild creatures turned tail at his approach, whistled back at the curious birds and watched Archimedes turn dives in and out of the trees, graceful with every silent wingbeat. Some days he felt adventurous and joined the nimble footed as a hart or a hare or a tree-dwelling squirrel, jumping from branch to branch fearlessly, chasing nothing but the smell of sweet wild grasses as the wind rushed through his coarse fur, and at the end of the day Merlin joined his friend in the highest branches to watch the sun set across Albion and see the white towers of Camelot turned burnished gold by the light. It was the most freedom Merlin had ever been granted in his life, but there were times, prompted by some memory or bit of reality encroaching on his sun-dappled wanderings, when the warm air thickened like syrup through his lips and he was reminded of the root of his estrangement from Camelot. He hadn’t run away quite yet, but even Merlin was smart enough to admit that all of this was a near enough thing to making it real.
*~*~*
It was after mid-summer, going on three months since Arthur had last spoken to Merlin about anything beyond that day’s lesson plans, when Merlin came back to his rooms from another late-afternoon circuit around the lower town doling out a surplus of Gaius’ favorite brew for hay fever to find his room already occupied.
A rather more comfortable looking chair than anything Merlin had been fortunate to have in his room, in this time or the past, sat just below one of the tower’s western facing windows, and in it Arthur was slumped with an open book across his lap, head tipped back and mouth slack with sleep. The last rays of an impressively bloated red sun cast enough light to pick out the golden highlights in Arthur’s hair and the sweep of his darker lashes where they fanned against the tops of his cheeks, and there was a smattering of angry looking oily blemishes on the skin in the hollow of his right cheek. He looked unusually young while softened with sleep, or perhaps the illusion was only a product of comparison with Merlin’s memories of a much older and age-lined face. The book across his knees looked ready to tip onto the floor and Merlin crossed the room silently, easing the worn pages out from under the Prince’s calloused fingertips (clean, though; Arthur never turned a book’s pages with dirty hands), and it was telling of Arthur’s exhaustion that he did not stir or sniffle as Merlin placed the book on top of the table.
Merlin was at a loss of what to do with a soundly sleeping Prince in his chambers, and though he’d never spied this chair in its vicinity before, he had a feeling that Arthur had not stolen away to the farthest room in the castle for the sake of reuniting with Merlin. He had heard the rumors, along with most of the serving staff, of the mounting tensions growing between Odin, King of Wessex, and Uther Pendragon. Uther might not yet be aware that it was Odin, or someone within his court, that had arranged for the kidnapping of Arthur the year prior, but it seemed that regardless of the incident things were still coming to a head, with tension mounting on both sides over attacks on border holdings and broken trade agreements and surely over any other number of things that the two kings could find to piss about. War had become a more frequent whisper with each passing week, and if it hadn’t begun already, Uther would be grooming Arthur into a position that would give him the necessary training to lead Camelot’s men into battle. Whether that particular encumbrance had driven Arthur to seek sanctuary elsewhere in the castle, Merlin could not say, but that gaping hole in his chest felt a little less empty knowing that some part of Arthur still considered Merlin’s rooms to be a safe haven.
Merlin quietly summoned a plate of dinner from the kitchens for the Prince, closed all of the windows but one to prevent a draft from coming through, and exited the tower as soundlessly as possible. Perhaps not all hope had been lost, but there was still a long way to go.
*~*~*
Merlin voiced some of his thoughts one evening over a shared dinner with Gaius, having already gone over the issue in his head so many times that was starting to give him headaches just contemplating the idea and its implications. Time travel itself seemed relatively straightforward - to think oneself at a certain point in time and then to arrive was simple enough, a point A to point B type of movement; it was the actions after arrival that were giving Merlin reason to feel uncertain and out of his depth. For all he knew, he was the first warlock to ever achieve something so pioneering, and he had to wonder what precedents he might be inadvertently setting in all of his hapless fumblings. The world had not fallen to pieces yet, but Merlin had begun to wonder if that was no longer a matter of if, but when.
"Gaius, do you think some things have to happen anyway? Like with this war - we thought maybe I’d stopped it by rescuing Arthur, but it seems like it’s going to happen anyway. Did I really make any difference, or would it have happened all along? Can it even be changed?" he’d asked, frustrated and morose and poking at the half empty bowl of stew Gaius had made for them that night.
"I think you’re talking about Fate, Merlin," Gaius had advised sagely. "They say that some things are written in stone, that some events are fixed in time. Perhaps rescuing Arthur only delayed the inevitable. We cannot know for certain, not now when you have already changed the events of the past to such a great degree."
Merlin had clasped his hands under his chin and chewed on the skin of his knuckle a moment before speaking. "But what if I tried to change them even more? What if I were to go over to Wessex right now and kill Odin; do you think it could stop the war?"
Gaius had shaken his head, more out of uncertainty than in the negative. "No one can say for sure whether that would work. Killing Odin might ignite a civil war worse than what might have transpired between Camelot and Wessex, or it might simply delay what is meant to inevitably happen. I don’t think there’s any way for you to know absolutely for certain how the future will turn out, Merlin. This might be something that you have to accept as a consequence of coming to the past - you have altered things to such a degree that only the most important events, the most significant turning points in history remain constant."
"But what if that means I can’t change anything?" Merlin had asked quietly, finally voicing aloud the fear at the heart of all his speculations. "If I can’t stop this war from happening, does it mean I can’t stop the one between Camelot and the Druids either? Gaius, what if I came back for nothing?"
Gaius had gently pulled Merlin’s bitten knuckle around from his mouth and clasped it between his cool, dry fingers. "My boy, you did a wonderful and brave thing by coming back here. I have faith that if you can stop those terrible things from happening, you will find a way."
Merlin had found himself with nothing to say, and Gaius had released him with a consoling pat on the back of his hand. For the rest of the meal Merlin had sat with his head bowed and his thoughts whirling, feeling what he thought must be the looming shadow of Fate taking perch on his shoulders. Heavy, oppressing, and impossible to shake off.
*~*~*
Merlin did not catch Arthur sleeping in his rooms again, but the plush chair remained a fixed feature under the western window, and Merlin did it not question its presence when he and Arthur met up for their lessons in the afternoon. Merlin did not think it was his imagination that the air had begun to feel less tense between them, and Arthur seemed less likely to throw things about in anger as the days wore on. But where before the Prince had been vibrant with energy and virility, he seemed to become diminished as time wore on, which was odd to think when in fact he only grew taller and his shoulders broadened and his arms became thicker as his training continued on into the start of the harvest season. Merlin heard the gossip as well as anyone who had lived in the castle for as long as he had, and he knew that Arthur was gaining increasing notoriety for besting all of Uther’s older knights one by one. Some of the younger but experienced lot were even matches for the Prince, if not better at times, but Arthur’s progress was still astounding, and the peoples of Camelot grew each day to adore their Prince all the more for it.
But few saw Arthur the way Merlin did; if not every day, than often enough to know that Arthur had probably not forgiven Merlin, not entirely, but that his focus now lay elsewhere. He almost expected Arthur to show up late nowadays to their lessons, and he knew that the Prince was being held over in council meetings with his father and the King’s advisors, plotting campaign strategies and discussing prospective crop yields for supplying an army. Arthur did not speak of these meetings and Merlin did not pry, but he did his best to sprinkle Arthur’s lessons with some of the better documentations of past battle formations and successful executions of warfare over a variety of terrains and across a multitude of cultures. Whether Arthur took these bits of information to the planning table, Merlin never knew, but he took comfort when Arthur retired from the tower with a book tucked under his arm, something renewed and contemplative in his eyes.
It didn’t strike Merlin immediately what the change was that had come over the Prince, but as the days began growing incrementally shorter the shadows under Arthur’s eyes seemed to mirror the approaching night, losing their shine and any lingering traces of the innocence that he had held in such vast and jubilant amounts when they’d first met. It seemed completely unfair for Uther to shoulder so much responsibility upon his son when he was not even fifteen years old, to expect him to be able to face down an opposing army without flinching or turning tail to run back to Camelot. Arthur was not old enough to become a paragon or a warlord, and Merlin resented every dawning day that brought the whispers of battle that much closer to a head, and that he was helpless to do nothing but lend his silent support to Arthur in the only way he knew how. In the only way he was allowed to. They had not spoken once about magic since that night so many months ago, and it felt like a lifetime gulfing between them when he thought of the boy he’d known and the trust and the laughter they had shared, and to gaze upon this man who did not let his glances linger on Merlin or smile when they were in the same room together.
Wars and the kings who fight them are anything if not predictable, and once the last of the autumn harvest was brought in and the granary stores capped to their fullest, Merlin found himself looking down on a courtyard that suddenly looked much smaller with the number of bodies packed to its edges dressed in Pendragon red and with gleaming spear tips wavering in the air. Uther and Odin had declared war; Odin’s troops were reported to be on the move, and with enough food backed behind their armies to last through to the winter (but not beyond, oh they made no mention of afterwards) each were marching their troops toward the southern borderlands. Merlin watched the first waves of cavalry leave the cobblestone square from atop his tower, watched the empty farmland surrounding the castle become a temporary resting ground for the foot soldiers and the slower caravans that would roll behind the army, blacksmiths and bakers and woodcutters and whores alike, and with every campfire that sprung into being across the horizon as night fell, Merlin swore he could already smell the burning flesh and taste the bitter wash of ash on his tongue.
*~*~*
"You have to take me with you!" Merlin shouted, bursting unannounced into Arthur’s chambers.
Dawn had barely touched the sky yet the room was ablaze with light, a fire burning hotly in the hearth and every torch on the wall lit to chase away the faintest of shadows. Arthur stood between two squires tugging and fastening him into his pieces of armor, and all three of them turned at the noise to look upon Merlin with varying degrees of shock. The Prince’s initial reaction of irritation, mouth open for a retort, quickly slipped into genuine astonishment, and then just as quickly disappeared into a fierce scowl that Merlin knew he was taking a huge risk not heeding by turning and immediately leaving the way he’d come.
"Take me with you," Merlin pleaded once more, hands open in supplication.
"Leave us!" Arthur barked, and the two squires scurried from the room faster than the time it would have taken Merlin to make out their faces. The doors closed behind them with a dull clang as the iron handle rattled in the wood.
"Arthur…"
"No!" Arthur snapped. "Go back to your chambers, Merlin. We’re not having this discussion."
"You know what I can do!" Merlin insisted, taking a few steps farther into the room. In a fit of brash obstinacy, he banished the glamour and watched Arthur freeze as his true face was revealed. "Let me come with you. I can protect you, I can protect everyone."
Arthur visibly roused himself, shoulders tense and head shaking. "And let my father- no. The answer is no. Your skills are not desired or needed on the battlefield. Camelot can hold her own against Odin’s forces."
"Do you really believe that?" Merlin pressed. Two steps more took him in front of Arthur, and it was the closest they had been to each other in months. "Are you completely, absolutely sure you can win? What about how many men will die, how many people will be slaughtered just for the sake of this stupid-"
"They will lay down their lives because that is their duty," Arthur interrupted with an air of barely concealed impatience.
Merlin gaped and balled his fists. "You have the chance, you have the tools to save lives in this war. How can you turn that away? What about your life? I have to protect you, Arthur. Let me help."
"My answer remains no," Arthur said, turning his head and tugging at the leather straps on his vambraces. "Go back to your room before I have you escorted out."
Merlin ran both hands through his hair and growled in frustration. "Why are you always so stubborn!"
To Merlin’s surprise, Arthur’s chest heaved and his nostrils flared dangerously. He pinned Merlin with the most furious look he had ever seen from the Prince. "Do not compare me to him," he spat venomously.
"What?" Merlin blinked, completely derailed by the sudden turn. "Arthur, what are you talking about?"
Arthur turned aside and grabbed his sheathed sword off the long table. "If you do not leave my sight immediately, I swear that this will be the last time we lay eyes on each other," he warned.
Merlin blanched, stomach tensing. "Arthur, no, you don’t mean-"
"Get out!" Arthur bellowed, one hand gripping the pommel of his sword so tightly that Merlin could hear the leather creak under the strain.
Merlin, for once in his life, did as he was told.
[ Part VII]
(Part VI)
Merlin briefly closed his eyes and swallowed. Being caught in Arthur’s glare seemed like what the fly might feel trapped in the clutches of the spider, helpless and frantic with the need to take flight and escape certain death. Arthur had him trapped against the door, and though no parts of them were touching the roiling emotion coming off the Prince was enough keep Merlin effectively immobilized. He had to nowhere to go except admit the truth. "Arthur… we promised to always speak the truth to each other. One day… I said one day I would tell you my secrets."
Arthur’s shoulders seemed to tense up at the reminder, and then his eyes widened, surprise and something else flickering through them. He stepped back unexpectedly. "That voice…" he whispered, his eyes darting across Merlin’s face, searching. "I know that… I know you."
Merlin lowered his hands slowly, his fingers curling and he forced them to relax as he nodded, meeting Arthur’s disbelieving gaze. He saw the exact moment the pieces fell together in Arthur’s head.
"It was you!" Arthur all but shouted, and his head twisted around to look at where Archimedes was shuffling along his branch. "It was you. I- I had thought… but it didn’t make sense, and… it was you all along."
"Arthur, I-" But Arthur stepped out of Merlin’s reach and began pacing restlessly, shooting wide-eyes at Merlin and the room and Archimedes.
"Do you have any idea how long… for weeks I thought, right after it happened, but I told myself it was impossible, that there had to be another explanation. But he seemed to know me so well, and there was the owl, and the horse! Did you realize I found out that the horse he gave me was from our own stables? I thought, surely, it had to have been, the way you spoke and how you babbled on and on, but you didn’t sound alike, and your ages were different and… nothing made sense… I gave up…"
"You did figure it out," Merlin said, a sudden burst of pride warming him from the inside. "You were absolutely right, Arthur. When I heard you’d been taken I rode out as soon as I could. I had to make sure you were safe."
Arthur had stopped in his tracks and was staring at Merlin like he was seeing something entirely new, and there was genuine alarm there. "You’re a sorcerer."
Merlin wilted inwardly at the look - it was the one he’d been trying so hard to prevent from happening when this moment came. There was no use denying the truth, but Merlin couldn’t help hesitating anyway, his throat nearly locking up on the words. "Yes," he choked out.
"And all this?" Arthur said, forcing out his words past the clench of his teeth, and he swept his arm around to indicate the room and them. "Was all that a lie too? A way to get close to the Prince? All those stories, those histories, were they to fill my head and manipulate me?"
"No!" Merlin cried, heart sinking further as he stepped away from the door. "None of that was a lie. We made a promise together, and I have honored it every day. I have not once lied to you."
"But you didn’t tell me about this!" Arthur shouted, his voice cracking in a way it hadn’t for months now, and Merlin saw for the first time the hurt that was buried in the Prince’s eyes. It was the same look of betrayal that he’d had to face down once before already, and it twisted Merlin’s gut with a cold shock of guilt. The thought of being responsible for hurting Arthur chilled him, but it was the thought of losing him again after all this time that scared him even more.
"I… I would have. I wanted to. I thought… hoped someday I could tell you the truth. I didn’t intend to hide it from you, not like that," Merlin pleaded, throat tight with remorse.
"But you did," Arthur spat, advancing on Merlin again as if sensing a weakness to exploit. "You said you would always be truthful with me, but you were lying every day. You deceived everyone, me, my father, this whole castle. Your word means nothing!"
And that hurt, to have his promises thrown back in his face when Merlin had been trying so hard to embrace a life of honesty. Arthur would never know how difficult it had been, how many years Merlin had spent afraid to trust, fearing the truth like it was poison. The truth had never done anything but destroy his life one tragedy at a time, and yet it had been Arthur who had made him change his mind in the end, who had made him see that the truth could also be good. And now Arthur was the same one calling those vows worthless, and it hurt.
"How was I supposed to tell you when you were going to react like this!" Merlin yelled, and there was a grim satisfaction in watching the way Arthur faltered as his own pain and anger rose to the surface.
Arthur seemed taken aback by the outburst, but he collected himself quickly. "You can’t blame me like that! You’re the one who’s been lying all this time!"
"Did it never once occur to you, that this-" Merlin swept his hand out, mirroring Arthur’s earlier gesture. "That everything, the histories, the lessons, everything I ever told you about magic was because I wanted to prevent exactly this kind of thing? I lied, and I am sorry for it, but I had to know you wouldn’t try to have me arrested first!"
"So this is my fault?" Arthur yelped incredulously. "Are you saying I wasn’t trustworthy enough?"
"No, I… that’s not what I meant," Merlin said, and his anger seemed to leave him as quickly as it had come. "There are so many things… so much I wanted to show you. The wonders I have seen, the beauty of magic, I wanted to share it all with you. But you are Uther’s son, I had to be sure…"
"So now I am to blame for my father’s actions," Arthur snarled, low and bitter. "You would judge me based on the actions of another man, and not on my own. I spared your life!"
"You also tried to kill me the first time we met!" Merlin snapped back. "Pardon me for wanting to be a little more cautious the next go around!"
Arthur’s jaw clamped shut with a look of contrition. "I wouldn’t have tried to kill you," he protested quietly.
Merlin’s headache seemed to return with a sudden vengeance, or perhaps it had not left at all and only his evaporating anger was giving it leeway to be more noticeable. "I... I know that. I do trust you, I was just afraid," Merlin admitted, and his knee found one of the stools and he sat down on it hard, rubbing his forehead tenderly. "I was more worried you’d be angry, or that you’d hate me, or that you’d send me away from Camelot. I couldn’t risk it. I’m sorry."
Arthur shuffled quietly toward the other end of the room, and under his hand Merlin saw him crossing and uncrossing his arms and shooting glances at Merlin and Archimedes both. He looked upset but at least a little more reasonable, and there was more sullen anger than true fury lining his face. A log crumbled inside the grate of the stove, and it sounded unnaturally loud in the silent room, save for the rain still beating against the windows. Merlin’s feet were growing colder and his headache was showing no signs of abating.
"You came back early," Merlin noted, and Arthur shot him a brief, scrutinizing glare, one that Merlin refused to rise to. "It’s been raining so much, no one thought you’d be back until tomorrow."
"The men agreed to push on to Camelot," Arthur explained with a bit of gruff reluctance. "We would have had to risk crossing the floodwaters if we’d waited any longer."
"It must have been bad already," Merlin said, and frowned. "That was a very risky thing to do."
Arthur huffed dismissively. "We managed. Perhaps it was fortunate, or I would not have come back to find you… redecorating," he said with a pointed glance around the room.
Merlin stifled another sigh and rose from his seat. Arthur did not move, but Merlin saw the way his shoulders stiffened at the motion; he was still wary, still uncertain, and maybe still a little fearful of the expose sorcerer in his midst. It hurt more than Merlin wanted to admit to see that careful stance braced for danger, as if Merlin would ever harm him in any way. Merlin turned to walk the other way around the far side of table to the opposite end of the room. He sat down at the edge of his bed to dry his feet with the corner of the sheet and put on his boots, feeling the rough scrape of the leather over the numbed flesh. When he looked back up, Arthur was watching him, scrutinizing.
"What? I was tired of the room always looking the same," Merlin explained a bit defensively.
"Is that what it was?" Arthur drawled, and he bent down to pick up a book by his foot and placed it atop the table.
Merlin stood impatiently and put his hands on his hips, opening his mouth, but stopped before a sound could escape and pressed his lips together. He looked back at Arthur. "Does that rule about no spells still apply, sire?"
Arthur looked startled by the question, and he blinked warily. "Are you saying, this whole time…?"
Merlin couldn’t help chuckling softly, though it may have come out sounding more harsh than he would have liked. "No. I’ve gotten too used to it to stop completely. But I thought, well it seemed the polite thing to ask. You look like you’re ready to gut me if I so much as breathe magically."
Surprisingly, Arthur looked slightly abashed by the observation. "Well it isn’t the sort of thing one hears every day, is it?" he pointed out in his defense. He still looked wary, however. "What sort of spell is it?"
"Just something to clean this mess up. You might enjoy it, actually."
Arthur’s look was doubtful, and he watched Merlin silently for a long moment before nodding, once, slowly. Merlin smiled, giving quiet thanks for the trust Arthur was showing in him. He looked around the room and whispered a word, "Hámsidhe."
The spell was old and familiar, and Merlin had used it more times than he could remember while living on his own after being exiled from Camelot. He felt the magic of the spell leave him, the warmth rushing through his veins and tightening the muscles behind his eyes, and then things began to move. The books stood upright on their spines and began marching obediently back to the bookshelves; the dinner plate picked itself off the floor and chucked the cold leftovers into the stove; the blanket and sheet on the bed behind him rustled and flattened out straight; his pillows flipped over and fluffed themselves; his quills banded together and returned to their holding cup; an old rag flung itself on the puddle Merlin had stepped in earlier and mopped up the mess before hanging itself in front of the stove to dry, and every bit of parchment spread out on the table slid into neat stacks or rolled up out of the way. It was beautiful, organized chaos, and Arthur stood in the middle of it, mouth hanging open and eyes open in a look of surprised wonder that Merlin had never seen before.
When the last book had succeeded in flinging itself up onto one of the higher shelves (having missed twice already), Merlin nodded at the job well done. "That was faster than usual," he said with a small grin. "I think they were trying to show off for you, sire."
"What," Arthur breathed when he eventually found his voice, "was that?"
"A little clean-up spell," Merlin explained, walking back to the table. "I’m kind of lazy - okay a lot lazy, and it comes in handy. It’s just a shame I didn’t discover it until after- that is, never mind. You can see it’s quite harmless, just makes things put themselves back where they belong."
"Do they always… do that?" Arthur asked, and his eyes were trained on the wet rag that was flipping itself over in front of the open grate on the stove.
"Hm? Oh! Well, see," Merlin began, warming up to the topic and encouraged by the fact that Arthur was stepping closer to the towel in fascination rather than backing away from it. "I took it a step further. I started off with simple things, the necessities, like my boots and the teapot because you’d be surprised how often those go missing, but eventually I just started giving it to everything. The spark of life. Just a little bit of free will, enough to know how to follow an order and get back to where it belongs."
"These things are alive?" Arthur asked incredulously. He made to grab for the wet rag and got slap from a corner on his wrist in return.
"Not exactly. More like… the illusion of life. All they know are their intended purpose. They can’t think or feel or die. Harmless, really, unless you… I really wouldn’t do that, sire," Merlin warned as Arthur made another grab for the towel, a mischievous grin slipping across his face.
"Why? You said that- ow!" Arthur yelped as the warm towel wriggled out of his grasp and slapped him soundly on the arm. It lifted itself into the air and came to land on one of the empty branches of Archimedes’ perch, and Arthur pouted when the owl moved to shuffle in front of it protectively. He crossed his arms. "I thought you liked me, Archimedes. After all, you’ve been following me for days."
Merlin coughed, half in surprise and half to stifle the sudden urge to laugh. "Archimedes was just doing what I asked him to," he clarified, smiling sheepishly.
Arthur spun around in surprise. "My god, Merlin, you’re worse than an old nursemaid!" he accused. "And I know that’s not the first time you’ve sent him after me, either. Did you really think I wouldn’t notice the same owl following our party day after day?"
"He was supposed to stay out of sight. I only sent him to look after you, since I couldn’t be there," Merlin explained, shrugging unapologetically.
"You were serious - what you said earlier, about being in Camelot to protect me."
Merlin nodded, threading his fingers together and then releasing them to hang by his sides. "Yes, it’s my duty."
"Why?" Arthur blurted. He’d crossed his arms, shoulders hunched, and the scowl on his face did not mask the confusion Merlin could also see there, or how much Arthur was probably simmering with resentment over the very idea. "I don’t need protecting. Who told you that you had to?"
That was a loaded question if Merlin had ever heard one, and it forced him to draw a deep breath, uncomfortably aware that he was honor bound to answer Arthur honestly even though the truth was so close to his final secret that it made the words sit thick and heavy on his tongue. He might not need to even mention the dragon’s involvement in his earlier years, but Arthur could cast him out anyway, deny him his place at his side, and Merlin would be left watching from afar and praying that his actions had not brought about the downfall of the kingdom once more. The irony was that this had been so much easier to say the first time when he’d thought he would be dead by the next day.
"I know it might sound hard to believe, but there was once someone who told me of a great destiny - yours and mine, and that we’re tied together. But it was my choice to make, and I chose to stay by you and keep you from harm. You’re Prince Arthur Pendragon, the future King of Camelot, and one day the kingdom will need you to lead her. Even if that means… even if I have to give my life, I will do everything in my power to see that happen. That is why I am here, sire."
Merlin had to avert his gaze from reading whatever expression had fallen over Arthur’s face, his heart thumping erratically and his skin prickling with nervous sweat. He could feel the echo of another conversation years old in this moment, one that had not even occurred yet and might never need to. The last time he’d told Arthur the very same words, the Prince had been too heavily medicated to do more than muzzily accuse Merlin of being thick and making no sense - but here he was again, pledging his life to Arthur and the Prince wasn’t even old enough to grow a beard. It was ten kinds of foolish but Merlin knew he was in too deep not to at least give Arthur the chance to make his own decision. He was laying his soul bare and if Arthur was any good at discerning what his own eyes had probably given away, the Prince knew how monumental the admission was.
"I thought magic hated Camelot," Arthur said weakly after a long interval, but the words were hollow, rhetorical.
Merlin passed a hand over his eyes and shook his head slowly. His headache had lessened now that the yelling had stopped, but he could still feel it thrumming under his temple with every heavy pulse beat. That bit of magic earlier had been fun, but Merlin could feel the cost of it now. "You know that’s not true, Arthur. After everything I’ve taught you? You know better than anyone that magic is a tool, that it is an instrument of faith, and that people are the ones who choose to hate or love and whether to use magic for good or evil. They can use it to protect people they care about, or use it to fight a war. It is what it is."
"You’ve said that before," Arthur admitted quietly, and Merlin lifted his head to watch him. The Prince was still standing in front of the stove, arms crossed and warming himself by the heat being given off, and Merlin could see how much color had returned to his face and that his hair had curled up around his neck and ears as it dried. He looked older than Merlin remembered, as if a week had somehow made him grow a little taller, made his chest a little broader, and that little boy he’d met only a year ago seemed so far away. And yet, this Arthur seemed more familiar somehow, closer to the Arthur he remembered, the prat Prince of Camelot that had teased him and dragged him everywhere and had laid his life down for Merlin and his people and had been a friend unlike anyone Merlin had ever known. And he missed him.
"Merlin?" Arthur asked. He was returning Merlin’s stare, and his eyes were puzzled by whatever expression had stolen over Merlin’s face in his moment of introspection. Merlin couldn’t help flushing a bit at the scrutiny.
"Sorry. It’s nothing. Are you… are we alright?"
Arthur kept his arms crossed bit his bottom lip, his chin falling as he looked upon some unremarkable spot on the floor. Merlin had to clench his hands to keep them from trembling. "I understand why you hid your magic," Arthur said slowly. "Camelot isn’t safe for your kind and… the fear is understandable. And it’s true you’ve taught me many things about its histories, opened my eyes to the world and the things my father would deny exist. I can acknowledge that, and that you have saved my life once already. I believe your words to be true. But there is one thing I do not understand." At that, Arthur lifted his head and looked at Merlin directly, and there was something fierce and determined in his eyes. "You hid your face from me that night so that I could not identify you, but you have contradicted your own words - you said that you feared being recognized. I have never seen you before; therefore there is someone else whom you do not wish to see your true face. Who is it? Is it my father? What have you done that should warrant such deception? I deserve to know the whole truth, Merlin."
Merlin winced inwardly. Once again, Arthur had proven himself more perceptive than Merlin had given him credit for. He shook his head. "No one knows my face. I swear it. It’s… this is hard to explain, Arthur."
"Try," Arthur said stiffly. "Your sense of duty might think it permits you a place here, but I will not allow you to stay in Camelot if I cannot trust you."
They were harsh words, and Arthur had spoken well to drive his intent to the heart of Merlin’s greatest fear. It said much for his abilities as a future ruler, or perhaps that he simply knew Merlin too well after a year spent in each other’s company. Merlin’s throat had gone dry but he nodded, accepting the terms. Arthur was leaving him with little choice, but it was a bit of a relief too, to have the decision taken out of his hands before he could stumble and be caught lying again without realizing he’d even done so. In his own way Arthur was keeping him honest, but Merlin hated not knowing what price there would be to pay for it this time.
"You were right, this isn’t my first time in Camelot," he confessed. His feet had begun to move of their own accord and he was pacing by the table, looking anywhere but Arthur. He found it easier to speak when he had something else on the room to focus on besides the Prince’s expressionless face. "Right now, in a tiny village on the edge of Cendred’s kingdom, lives a boy and his mother. You asked about it once before: Ealdor. This boy… he’s not much younger than you, only by a year or two. He’s a pretty happy child; his mother is kind and he has a best friend, and they’re the only two people who know that he’s… different. You see, he has strange powers and can move things with his mind, or make things suddenly appear just by wishing, and he can make time slow down just by thinking about it. He doesn’t know anything about magic or spells, or why he can do what he does. It just is. Not good or evil, just a boy."
Merlin paused with his back to Arthur. The tower chamber was warm from the heat of the stove and Merlin could feel it through his clothes even on the opposite side of the room. But there were goosebumps breaking out across his arms and his neck, and his heart had only picked up its nervous pace with each word that fell from his lips. Admitting the truth had never felt so difficult until that moment, and he had to clear his throat before continuing. "In a few years, that boy’s mother will send him away to Camelot to become an apprentice to Gaius. Except the boy is very cocky, practically stupid at that age, and he runs into this bloke who’s bullying one of the squires. He tries to stop him and they get into a fight, but even when the boy finds out he just tried to throw a punch at the Prince it doesn’t change how much he thinks he’s a prat. But then some stuff happens - a witch tries to kill the Prince in revenge and the boy ends up saving his life, so the King rewards him by making him the Prince’s manservant. The boy and the Prince don’t get along at all and they fight all the time at first, but the boy realizes after awhile that the Prince isn’t always a prat, and sometimes he’s good and thinks of other people first; so the boy decides he’ll keep on using his powers to save the Prince’s life when he’s being especially idiotic. Pretty soon they become inseparable and… you could almost say they were friends.
"But you see, the boy was an idiot too. He got stronger and learned new spells and kept on saving the Prince’s life from monsters and sorcerers, but he never once told the Prince his secret. He kept it hidden because he was scared of putting his friends in danger and being forced to leave Camelot where he couldn’t protect the Prince anymore. But mostly he was afraid of hurting the Prince, and putting him in a position where he’d have to choose between his manservant or lying to his father. So he said nothing, and the Prince began to hate magic when more and more sorcerers tried to use it to kill him or deceive him, all the while never knowing that it was saving him, too. And then one day the saved the Prince’s life in front of the entire court, where everyone saw him using his magic do it, and it… changed everything. It was the worst day of his life."
Merlin had to stop moving or risk wearing a hole in the floor, so sat down where he’d stopped, which happened to be at the edge of his bed. He couldn’t help rubbing his shoulder where the scar of Arthur’s blow lay hidden under the tunic, as if he could somehow unconsciously push back the pain of the memories. Arthur had not spoken once, but Merlin couldn’t bring himself to look up; there was so much left to tell, and one wrong glimpse might cause him to lose his nerve entirely.
"The King tried to have the boy arrested, but he ran away and hid in the forests outside Camelot. The King had Gaius taken instead for helping him and sheltering him under his roof, and he… the King burned him alive. Burned him and everything he owned, all of his books and medicines, everything. So the boy came back to try and explain everything to the Prince, to tell him the truth about their destiny and tell him how many times he had saved his life. But it was too late. The Prince was angry… so hurt, so betrayed, that some said later that he went mad with it. The boy ran away but the Prince marched the armies of Camelot after him. His father let him lead his men, and they burned everything magical in their path. The Druids took up arms, gathered their forces, and war broke out. A horrible war that used magic against men who had no protection against it, peasants that had been drafted with only spears and shields. The Druids thought they would win, but their numbers were so vastly different - for every sorcerer there were at least a hundred of Camelot’s men. The battles went on for years."
At a soft noise, Merlin looked up to see that Arthur had moved from the stove and taken one of the stools to sit down as well. His face was drawn and his mouth was nothing but a thin, serious line. They shared a silent look. "And the boy?" Arthur asked tautly. "What did he do?"
Merling sighed. "If he’d had a choice, he would have run away for good. Somewhere far away where he wouldn’t have to fight or kill anyone else. But he was given no choice: the Druids told him to fight by their side, or be killed as a traitor. And he agreed, because the Prince’s armies were ruthless and they were killing anyone with magic or who tried to protect their families, and he couldn’t let that happen. He was still loyal to the Prince, to the man he used to be, but he knew it would be wrong not to protect those who couldn’t protect themselves. So he used his magic to shield and heal the wounded, and he stopped the needless bloodshed when he could. But it wasn’t enough. It was… all wrong. Nothing had happened the way it was supposed to. He blamed himself for the war, for all of the deaths, for everything that had taken place. He knew he had to do something, to find a way to fix it, to change the present into something better and stop the war from ever happening.
"He secluded himself from the Druids and studied all the books and old magic he could find. He spent a whole year trying to find an answer, for a way to end the war and change the course of history. And when the time came, when everything was done and he’d learned all that he could, he opened a doorway into the past. A doorway that led him to a time years before the war, before his magic was revealed, even before he’d come to Camelot. And he swore a promise to ensure things happened differently. To make sure that there would be no war. And that meant he would have to hide his face so that no one would recognize him when his younger self came to Camelot a few years later.
"The only thing he didn’t plan on was meeting the Prince by the side of the road just days after his arrival, or that he would save his life from a wild boar. And he didn’t plan on being appointed the Prince’s tutor, or being given somewhere to live in the castle. But he decided to make do with what he’d been given, and hoped that if he could teach the Prince about magic, about its history and its peoples, that maybe it would be enough to-"
"Stop," Arthur rasped, rising so suddenly that the stool toppled back on its legs and clattered to the floor. Merlin jerked at the noise and looked up, but Arthur had turned away so that only his back was facing him, both hands fisted at his sides in tight, tense balls.
Merlin did not think he could continue speaking even if Arthur had commanded him to - his throat felt raw with the memories he had been asked to relive, and there was a tight pain in his chest that only stretched and moved to envelop every inner organ the longer he watched Arthur struggle to collect himself. The only sound in the room was the light tap of scattered rain on his windows and the crackle of the fire; even Archimedes’ familiar whistle while he slept was absent in the heavy atmosphere that had fallen, and Merlin felt like the tension could be snapped with a single word. So he said nothing, and waited, and watched.
Eventually Arthur moved, a stumbling half step that he seemed to catch himself on before he began to stride across the room, away from Merlin. Merlin was on his feet before he remembered moving. "Arthur? Are you-"
"Shut up!" Arthur snapped, his profile only half visible. The grim frown on his lips did not bode well, and Merlin felt the physical weight of it on his heart. "I will hear no more. You will… we will not speak of this."
Arthur had the door open before Merlin’s feet could bring themselves to move, but when he reached the open exit, Arthur had already descended the flight of stairs and his back was a rapidly disappearing shadow along the narrow corridor below. Merlin carefully shut the door and leaned against the solid wood, feeling the rough grain under his fingertips, but it was a muted sensation, far away and disconnected from where the rest of his mind was. His only lucid, slightly panicked thought, was to wonder if he should start packing.
Somehow he ended up sitting on the floor, his back still leaning against the closed door, and the candles in the room flickered out one by one until he was left in nothing but the dim, orange light of the open stove. Outside the castle the wind howled, and Merlin shivered.
*~*~*
Merlin nearly did pack up and go, once he’d managed to get up off the cold floor and think a little more rationally beyond the litany of oh god I messed up I messed up I messed up running through his head. But whether it was the wretched rain still falling outside, or the thought of making Archimedes fly through that again when he’d only just gotten indoors, Merlin put off shrinking his possessions and came to the decision that there was no harm in waiting it out a bit longer. Arthur hadn’t told him to leave, and he’d threatened it with enough serious intent that Merlin knew the Prince would have no compunction about sending Merlin away if he felt he couldn’t trust the sorcerer or his story. Running away had always seemed like the better option before, but this time he was not facing down the broad side of a sword and a Prince enraged beyond sanity. It was difficult to think past his own pain and desperation at the Prince’s reaction, but Merlin knew that Arthur needed time, time to decide whether to tell Merlin to go or stay, and Merlin owed it to him to wait and see. But Merlin was nearly certain Arthur wouldn’t speak to him for at least a week, and he tried his best to settle in for a long, miserable wait.
But to his surprise, not three days later (three horrible, depressing days later), Arthur showed up at Merlin’s door with a polite knock that brokered no eye contact, and sat down to continue his lessons as if nothing were amiss. Merlin was so tense throughout the two-hour long meeting that he dropped no less than four books, broke the nib on two quills, and nearly overturned his inkpot, all which took place in between the fumbling attempts he made to explain the history of the Grecian school of philosophy. Any efforts he made toward casual conversation were met with stony silences and even stonier glares if he pushed, and when the two hours were up and Arthur had left with nary a backwards glance, Merlin promptly fell upon his bed with a heaving sigh, feeling as though he’d just survived his first battle all over again.
The pattern continued in the same manner - every other day, Arthur appeared at his door and Merlin picked up where the prior lesson had left off. They rarely made eye contact and Merlin’s initial nervousness gradually wore away to a gloomy resignation that he had condemned the rest of his time with Arthur to nothing more than bland recitations on Albion’s long history of invading conquerors or having Arthur silently calculate the volumes of whatever empty vessels Merlin could locate around his room. They did not speak of the mundane comings and goings of castle life, or share thoughts on the contribution of the bow and arrow to modern warfare, or attempt to make the other laugh with poorly composed jokes in other languages, or make any mention whatsoever of magic. Arthur dutifully did his work, and Merlin in turn diligently checked his answers and his translations, and they lived as two strangers that barely spoke, with separate lives that only overlapped for two hours, once every other day.
There was one time, and one time only about a week after Arthur had stormed out of his rooms, when Merlin had attempted to bring up the topic of their recent estrangement. It had gained him one horrifying glimpse of Arthur’s face, suddenly so full of hurt and anger, that Merlin had nearly fallen off his chair from the intensity of emotion being barely kept in check by the Prince. After that time, Merlin did not dare attempt to bring it up again.
A month passed in this manner and Merlin grew more despondent of there ever being reconciliation between himself and Arthur. Some days he wondered whether exile would have been better, for at least that would have spared him the daily reminder of his mistakes, watching Arthur take to his training out on the field with a focus and intensity that even the squires watched in rapt astonishment, or listening to the fast clatter of hooves as Arthur rode out of the castle courtyard on horseback toward whatever wild game could appease his anger. Merlin overheard the more matronly castle servants speculating that the Prince was simply going through a phase like all young boys do, with his sullen glowers and short temper and sudden enjoyment of all manner of violent things. But Merlin knew better, knew the true cause of the Prince’s broken spirit, and his ambitions for changing the future seemed more like a fool’s errand than the grand scheme of Albion’s most powerful warlock. There seemed to be little hope for change but Merlin stayed anyway - partly out of loyalty, and partly out of stubbornness, but mostly because there was nowhere else he wanted to go.
The air grew warmer each day with the onset of summer, and the rains that had washed all of the color from Camelot ceased completely to be replaced by a prickling humidity that Merlin could have sworn he’d only just managed to escape from a few months prior. There were beautiful days of sunny weather for a time, cool breezes like an afterimage of better days in the spring, and the earth seemed to practically shimmer with green. Blue-green in the leaves of the hedgerows and verdant in the tops of the highest trees, azure skies like the painted glass in Camelot’s hallways, and with summer’s golden light even the darkest forests and the lowest hollows and the wide open pastures were no less beautiful for it. The land was lush and seemed to brim over with blossoming wildflower fields and purple tipped heather, and on some days the air was so clear that Merlin could see the hazy borders of distant shores from atop his solitary tower.
With his sudden accumulation of free time, Merlin offered his services to Gaius for making rounds and deliveries out into the city and lower town. He remained tight-lipped on the reason even when Gaius made liberal use of his silent eyebrow to prompt some sort of explanation for Merlin’s unusual desire to leave the castle whenever possible. If Gaius thought that Arthur’s changing moods had also resulted in pushing Merlin away from the irritable Prince, then Merlin would not be the one to correct his thinking. Running errands for Gaius was so familiar and so much easier without the added pressure of knowing that he had to return promptly to the castle and attend to a Prince that got grumpy when his boots weren’t perfectly spotless by noontime, and Merlin made fair use of his afternoons to roam wherever his feet dared to travel.
He walked the low towns and the wide fields and the hillocks that stood just a little above the valley Camelot proper was nestled in to take in the view of a land unspoiled by warfare and listen to the bleating of unconcerned sheep; he ventured into the King’s forest and helped himself to the herbs and roots he remembered by sight and smell, walked the game trails and listened to the hoof beats as the wild creatures turned tail at his approach, whistled back at the curious birds and watched Archimedes turn dives in and out of the trees, graceful with every silent wingbeat. Some days he felt adventurous and joined the nimble footed as a hart or a hare or a tree-dwelling squirrel, jumping from branch to branch fearlessly, chasing nothing but the smell of sweet wild grasses as the wind rushed through his coarse fur, and at the end of the day Merlin joined his friend in the highest branches to watch the sun set across Albion and see the white towers of Camelot turned burnished gold by the light. It was the most freedom Merlin had ever been granted in his life, but there were times, prompted by some memory or bit of reality encroaching on his sun-dappled wanderings, when the warm air thickened like syrup through his lips and he was reminded of the root of his estrangement from Camelot. He hadn’t run away quite yet, but even Merlin was smart enough to admit that all of this was a near enough thing to making it real.
*~*~*
It was after mid-summer, going on three months since Arthur had last spoken to Merlin about anything beyond that day’s lesson plans, when Merlin came back to his rooms from another late-afternoon circuit around the lower town doling out a surplus of Gaius’ favorite brew for hay fever to find his room already occupied.
A rather more comfortable looking chair than anything Merlin had been fortunate to have in his room, in this time or the past, sat just below one of the tower’s western facing windows, and in it Arthur was slumped with an open book across his lap, head tipped back and mouth slack with sleep. The last rays of an impressively bloated red sun cast enough light to pick out the golden highlights in Arthur’s hair and the sweep of his darker lashes where they fanned against the tops of his cheeks, and there was a smattering of angry looking oily blemishes on the skin in the hollow of his right cheek. He looked unusually young while softened with sleep, or perhaps the illusion was only a product of comparison with Merlin’s memories of a much older and age-lined face. The book across his knees looked ready to tip onto the floor and Merlin crossed the room silently, easing the worn pages out from under the Prince’s calloused fingertips (clean, though; Arthur never turned a book’s pages with dirty hands), and it was telling of Arthur’s exhaustion that he did not stir or sniffle as Merlin placed the book on top of the table.
Merlin was at a loss of what to do with a soundly sleeping Prince in his chambers, and though he’d never spied this chair in its vicinity before, he had a feeling that Arthur had not stolen away to the farthest room in the castle for the sake of reuniting with Merlin. He had heard the rumors, along with most of the serving staff, of the mounting tensions growing between Odin, King of Wessex, and Uther Pendragon. Uther might not yet be aware that it was Odin, or someone within his court, that had arranged for the kidnapping of Arthur the year prior, but it seemed that regardless of the incident things were still coming to a head, with tension mounting on both sides over attacks on border holdings and broken trade agreements and surely over any other number of things that the two kings could find to piss about. War had become a more frequent whisper with each passing week, and if it hadn’t begun already, Uther would be grooming Arthur into a position that would give him the necessary training to lead Camelot’s men into battle. Whether that particular encumbrance had driven Arthur to seek sanctuary elsewhere in the castle, Merlin could not say, but that gaping hole in his chest felt a little less empty knowing that some part of Arthur still considered Merlin’s rooms to be a safe haven.
Merlin quietly summoned a plate of dinner from the kitchens for the Prince, closed all of the windows but one to prevent a draft from coming through, and exited the tower as soundlessly as possible. Perhaps not all hope had been lost, but there was still a long way to go.
*~*~*
Merlin voiced some of his thoughts one evening over a shared dinner with Gaius, having already gone over the issue in his head so many times that was starting to give him headaches just contemplating the idea and its implications. Time travel itself seemed relatively straightforward - to think oneself at a certain point in time and then to arrive was simple enough, a point A to point B type of movement; it was the actions after arrival that were giving Merlin reason to feel uncertain and out of his depth. For all he knew, he was the first warlock to ever achieve something so pioneering, and he had to wonder what precedents he might be inadvertently setting in all of his hapless fumblings. The world had not fallen to pieces yet, but Merlin had begun to wonder if that was no longer a matter of if, but when.
"Gaius, do you think some things have to happen anyway? Like with this war - we thought maybe I’d stopped it by rescuing Arthur, but it seems like it’s going to happen anyway. Did I really make any difference, or would it have happened all along? Can it even be changed?" he’d asked, frustrated and morose and poking at the half empty bowl of stew Gaius had made for them that night.
"I think you’re talking about Fate, Merlin," Gaius had advised sagely. "They say that some things are written in stone, that some events are fixed in time. Perhaps rescuing Arthur only delayed the inevitable. We cannot know for certain, not now when you have already changed the events of the past to such a great degree."
Merlin had clasped his hands under his chin and chewed on the skin of his knuckle a moment before speaking. "But what if I tried to change them even more? What if I were to go over to Wessex right now and kill Odin; do you think it could stop the war?"
Gaius had shaken his head, more out of uncertainty than in the negative. "No one can say for sure whether that would work. Killing Odin might ignite a civil war worse than what might have transpired between Camelot and Wessex, or it might simply delay what is meant to inevitably happen. I don’t think there’s any way for you to know absolutely for certain how the future will turn out, Merlin. This might be something that you have to accept as a consequence of coming to the past - you have altered things to such a degree that only the most important events, the most significant turning points in history remain constant."
"But what if that means I can’t change anything?" Merlin had asked quietly, finally voicing aloud the fear at the heart of all his speculations. "If I can’t stop this war from happening, does it mean I can’t stop the one between Camelot and the Druids either? Gaius, what if I came back for nothing?"
Gaius had gently pulled Merlin’s bitten knuckle around from his mouth and clasped it between his cool, dry fingers. "My boy, you did a wonderful and brave thing by coming back here. I have faith that if you can stop those terrible things from happening, you will find a way."
Merlin had found himself with nothing to say, and Gaius had released him with a consoling pat on the back of his hand. For the rest of the meal Merlin had sat with his head bowed and his thoughts whirling, feeling what he thought must be the looming shadow of Fate taking perch on his shoulders. Heavy, oppressing, and impossible to shake off.
*~*~*
Merlin did not catch Arthur sleeping in his rooms again, but the plush chair remained a fixed feature under the western window, and Merlin did it not question its presence when he and Arthur met up for their lessons in the afternoon. Merlin did not think it was his imagination that the air had begun to feel less tense between them, and Arthur seemed less likely to throw things about in anger as the days wore on. But where before the Prince had been vibrant with energy and virility, he seemed to become diminished as time wore on, which was odd to think when in fact he only grew taller and his shoulders broadened and his arms became thicker as his training continued on into the start of the harvest season. Merlin heard the gossip as well as anyone who had lived in the castle for as long as he had, and he knew that Arthur was gaining increasing notoriety for besting all of Uther’s older knights one by one. Some of the younger but experienced lot were even matches for the Prince, if not better at times, but Arthur’s progress was still astounding, and the peoples of Camelot grew each day to adore their Prince all the more for it.
But few saw Arthur the way Merlin did; if not every day, than often enough to know that Arthur had probably not forgiven Merlin, not entirely, but that his focus now lay elsewhere. He almost expected Arthur to show up late nowadays to their lessons, and he knew that the Prince was being held over in council meetings with his father and the King’s advisors, plotting campaign strategies and discussing prospective crop yields for supplying an army. Arthur did not speak of these meetings and Merlin did not pry, but he did his best to sprinkle Arthur’s lessons with some of the better documentations of past battle formations and successful executions of warfare over a variety of terrains and across a multitude of cultures. Whether Arthur took these bits of information to the planning table, Merlin never knew, but he took comfort when Arthur retired from the tower with a book tucked under his arm, something renewed and contemplative in his eyes.
It didn’t strike Merlin immediately what the change was that had come over the Prince, but as the days began growing incrementally shorter the shadows under Arthur’s eyes seemed to mirror the approaching night, losing their shine and any lingering traces of the innocence that he had held in such vast and jubilant amounts when they’d first met. It seemed completely unfair for Uther to shoulder so much responsibility upon his son when he was not even fifteen years old, to expect him to be able to face down an opposing army without flinching or turning tail to run back to Camelot. Arthur was not old enough to become a paragon or a warlord, and Merlin resented every dawning day that brought the whispers of battle that much closer to a head, and that he was helpless to do nothing but lend his silent support to Arthur in the only way he knew how. In the only way he was allowed to. They had not spoken once about magic since that night so many months ago, and it felt like a lifetime gulfing between them when he thought of the boy he’d known and the trust and the laughter they had shared, and to gaze upon this man who did not let his glances linger on Merlin or smile when they were in the same room together.
Wars and the kings who fight them are anything if not predictable, and once the last of the autumn harvest was brought in and the granary stores capped to their fullest, Merlin found himself looking down on a courtyard that suddenly looked much smaller with the number of bodies packed to its edges dressed in Pendragon red and with gleaming spear tips wavering in the air. Uther and Odin had declared war; Odin’s troops were reported to be on the move, and with enough food backed behind their armies to last through to the winter (but not beyond, oh they made no mention of afterwards) each were marching their troops toward the southern borderlands. Merlin watched the first waves of cavalry leave the cobblestone square from atop his tower, watched the empty farmland surrounding the castle become a temporary resting ground for the foot soldiers and the slower caravans that would roll behind the army, blacksmiths and bakers and woodcutters and whores alike, and with every campfire that sprung into being across the horizon as night fell, Merlin swore he could already smell the burning flesh and taste the bitter wash of ash on his tongue.
*~*~*
"You have to take me with you!" Merlin shouted, bursting unannounced into Arthur’s chambers.
Dawn had barely touched the sky yet the room was ablaze with light, a fire burning hotly in the hearth and every torch on the wall lit to chase away the faintest of shadows. Arthur stood between two squires tugging and fastening him into his pieces of armor, and all three of them turned at the noise to look upon Merlin with varying degrees of shock. The Prince’s initial reaction of irritation, mouth open for a retort, quickly slipped into genuine astonishment, and then just as quickly disappeared into a fierce scowl that Merlin knew he was taking a huge risk not heeding by turning and immediately leaving the way he’d come.
"Take me with you," Merlin pleaded once more, hands open in supplication.
"Leave us!" Arthur barked, and the two squires scurried from the room faster than the time it would have taken Merlin to make out their faces. The doors closed behind them with a dull clang as the iron handle rattled in the wood.
"Arthur…"
"No!" Arthur snapped. "Go back to your chambers, Merlin. We’re not having this discussion."
"You know what I can do!" Merlin insisted, taking a few steps farther into the room. In a fit of brash obstinacy, he banished the glamour and watched Arthur freeze as his true face was revealed. "Let me come with you. I can protect you, I can protect everyone."
Arthur visibly roused himself, shoulders tense and head shaking. "And let my father- no. The answer is no. Your skills are not desired or needed on the battlefield. Camelot can hold her own against Odin’s forces."
"Do you really believe that?" Merlin pressed. Two steps more took him in front of Arthur, and it was the closest they had been to each other in months. "Are you completely, absolutely sure you can win? What about how many men will die, how many people will be slaughtered just for the sake of this stupid-"
"They will lay down their lives because that is their duty," Arthur interrupted with an air of barely concealed impatience.
Merlin gaped and balled his fists. "You have the chance, you have the tools to save lives in this war. How can you turn that away? What about your life? I have to protect you, Arthur. Let me help."
"My answer remains no," Arthur said, turning his head and tugging at the leather straps on his vambraces. "Go back to your room before I have you escorted out."
Merlin ran both hands through his hair and growled in frustration. "Why are you always so stubborn!"
To Merlin’s surprise, Arthur’s chest heaved and his nostrils flared dangerously. He pinned Merlin with the most furious look he had ever seen from the Prince. "Do not compare me to him," he spat venomously.
"What?" Merlin blinked, completely derailed by the sudden turn. "Arthur, what are you talking about?"
Arthur turned aside and grabbed his sheathed sword off the long table. "If you do not leave my sight immediately, I swear that this will be the last time we lay eyes on each other," he warned.
Merlin blanched, stomach tensing. "Arthur, no, you don’t mean-"
"Get out!" Arthur bellowed, one hand gripping the pommel of his sword so tightly that Merlin could hear the leather creak under the strain.
Merlin, for once in his life, did as he was told.
[ Part VII]