Fic: Negation
Title: Negation
Words: 6k
For: creepy-secret
Prompt: Cendred wants Merlin to come back to his kingdom to serve the court. He knows Merlin's secret but doesn't tell, but Merlin knows he knows and is blackmailed into going, but Arthur feels betrayed.
Notes: This is ridiculous. I just wanna make Cendred totally gay for anyone/everyone before they take it all away from me and pair him off with Morgause ;-;
Part i
The parchment arrived early one night in summer, when August was closing in on autumn and there was merely a whisper of disputes at the fringelands which bordered Cendred’s kingdom. It was brought by a messenger on horseback, whose name no one caught, and the missive was passed through the guards at the drawbridge and then from hand to hand until it reached Arthur’s chambers where Merlin was the first to answer the door, but only because he was about to leave to get another fruit pie from the kitchens four floors down.
“Just stick your head out into the hallway and shout for someone,” Arthur told him. He was behind his screen, struggling out of a particularly ropey tunic. The fire in the hearth was burning merrily enough to render the room positively cheery, but it wasn’t quite yet dark enough outside for the light to make much difference. The prince’s voice sounded just as bright.
“I can’t just call out to someone to bring me pie,” Merlin told him, his hand on the door latch. “I’m not the prince, after all.”
“Might as well be,” Arthur muttered.
“What was that? I‘m sorry, I couldn't quite make that out," Merlin said. He smiled over at the partition, though Arthur couldn't see him.
“I said,” came Arthur’s voice, louder this time. “You act like bloody royalty, and you work for me, so by extension you could just - ”
"I'm not going to be rude, Arthur, just because you order people around for a living."
It was then that the knock came at the door, and Merlin swung it open to a chambermaid he knew quite well.
“Note for you,” she said. She was the one who was the same age as Merlin’s mother, and, thinking this, he felt a twinge not unlike homesickness. The woman smiled and left him, quiet like all help in the castle were on evenings such as this, when the air was warm with promise of an early night’s rest and all seemed to be right.
“Thanks,” he said after her. He tossed the note on the picnic bench of a table and said, loudly, “Message for you, sire. Read it while I fetch your third dessert, if you ever manage to dress yourself.”
With that, Merlin took off at a jog down the long hallway, and wended along, down stairwells and across those strange indoor-bridges, to the kitchens.
*
Arthur had learned to read when he was seven, having been too precocious to be tethered to any sort of desk before then. At seven he had held the fine books in limp, unexcited hands and often ripped pages. The path to literacy continued to be a difficult one. He felt victimized, like he was pretty much constantly being screwed by medieval semicolons and Latin, with its collection of confusing declensions. Religious texts had been distracting at best, with little flowers to festoon every third letter, and the whole dusty-tomes-versus-sunlight-and-swords argument was a weak one.
He wished he hadn’t learned to read. There were kings who couldn’t, just one generation ago, he had heard of them. Illiteracy was normal just ten years before his birth, maybe. But Uther had assured him that times were changing, one hand heavy on Arthur's shoulder when Arthur was fourteen and had been struggling to grip the ink pot between a forefinger and thumb because his other fingers had been bruised during a training lesson with the mace. After that, life increasingly had to do with reading things that did not sit well with the royal head.
Tonight's parchment was folded, crisp and clean despite the distance it had traveled, but Arthur was not aware of its origins, and indeed suspected it to be a missive from his men who he had sent to camp out near the border of Mercia due to unrest in that direction. The parchment was sealed with green wax. This would have meant something, too, had Arthur given any thought to the fact, but he was at his most vulnerable and distracted, daydreaming idly of the strawberry pie he knew his manservant would somehow manage to filch from the larder. He only began to think it odd when, upon ripping the seal, another folded parchment fluttered out, this one thin and transparent with faint lining visible, traces of the writing inside.
He’d ripped it open with a mind so careless of the possibilities that lay within, and only just had time to remember himself, to remember his mistrust of the written word that always seemed to cause him such trouble.
He scanned the three lines within with a jaw that began to clench in resolve, and when he went in for a second-read he sat himself on the edge of the table, no longer so relaxed.
*
This was how Merlin, pie in hand, found Arthur of the stony jaw. At the sound of the opening door, Arthur laid the gauzy sheet of ill-tidings flat, face-up on the table, and said, “Well you’d better be going.”
“Oh no you don’t,” Merlin said. He dropped the tin onto the table and wiped sticky sauce on his neckerchief, which was the entire reason he wore the thing. “There's no way you’re eating this entire thing yourself. I know you’ll try, but even a future king must admit his shortcomings, sometimes.“
He laid a hand on Arthur’s shoulder as if to push him down onto the bench, but Arthur was immovable. Merlin pushed that bit harder but to no avail.
“Well?” Arthur asked. Merlin took a step back to let him stand. Once he had walked over to the fireplace, Arthur motioned to the letter. He didn’t watch as Merlin picked it up in a somewhat cranky fashion, saying something to the extent of, “you are a ridiculous person, Arthur Pendragon.” and instead he sat in the armchair and listened to Merlin smooth the paper and then heard him still as the message sunk in.
“Ah.” Merlin said. “I can…”
“Can you?” Arthur said. He examined the hearth before him, ashy as far as hearths in the castle went, because Merlin had spent the evening explaining why, exactly, Arthur should teach the knights stealth rather than add a supplemental course in battleaxe to their training, instead of doing any honest-to-God work. “I’d love some sort of explanation.”
“I-” Merlin said. Then, “I’m sorry, sire. I can't.”
“You’d better be going, then,” Arthur told him. There was a long stretch, and he finally made a vague gesture towards the door.
After this, Merlin paused only long enough to heft a basket of laundry onto his hip to carry down with him. The click of the closing door was the last Arthur heard from his manservant for a very long while.
*
Autumn went.1
It went and Arthur hardly noticed, so caught up was he in the steady training of his men, and the rebuilding of a castle post-dragon fire, and the more secretarial concerns like making sure the stores of grain and other stable foodstuffs were bursting rather than petering out due to bad maths and poor delegation. His father left this work to Arthur these days. He was caught up in some subtle game of bargaining involving small chunks of land that were apportioned to lords, which were then traded in and out of the stores of the local monarchs like fine horses.
Due to such a hefty to-do list, Arthur had little time for extraneous concerns. So what if he sometimes wondered after Merlin, wondered if he was planning to return or wondering what exactly those three casual lines from the actual hand of the foreign king had meant. And it wasn't as if Arthur wasn't well taken care of. With the Lady Morgana still absent, Gwen had the time to clean his chambers and bring him the occasional meal, and if Arthur ever found himself looking out the window towards the forests at the border with anything close to a whist or longing, it could probably be attributed to a strong tendency towards Seasonal Affective Disorder and a pretty solid case of messed up childhood, and not to the lack of one lanky, if intriguing, bit of Ealdorian.
________________________________
1 Yeah, that was a Twilight reference.
*
“Oh good lord,” Arthur said. It was bright, January now, and the frost crunched like gravel beneath his boots, and his face felt raw and wind-whipped from practice.
“I’m sorry, sire,” the target knight stuttered out. “Forgive me, it was rude of me to ask.”
Arthur made a deep rumbling noise that shut the man up pretty adequately.
He rounded on the rest of his men who were standing in rigid lines across the expanse of the courtyard. Arthur spread their courage thin with a good, round glare. Having their full, if skeptical, attention and respect, he spoke loudly with a timbre to his voice meant to command:
“I am nothing, if not fine,” he told them. “I have suffered nothing at the hands of Cendred. The whispers at the borders are but rumors, and my father has sent reconnaissance teams that have returned with little to no proof of conspiracy. The peace treaty, however our people may doubt it, holds true to this day, ten years later.”
His breath misted before him, and the only sound was the dripping of some iced-over gargoyle above them, melting in the direct, afternoon sunlight.
“I am growing tired of those of you who ask what you can do to help,” he told them. "You have your orders." He tried to catch eyes, but not one of them met his gaze. Smart men. “I am growing tired of inquests regarding my general emotional state, and whether or not I am, and I quote, ’lonely without that big-eared guy with an accent.’
"And as to the most ridiculous question of them all: no. The answer is no, I am not, after four months with no word, about to ride across the border to retrieve my past, poor excuse for a servant, who couldn’t even straighten the bed sheets without lying down to take a nap.”
All throughout this impromptu example of a verbal beat-down, Arthur’s men had stood stock still in their formation before him. All thirty of his most loyal knights - men who had been taught, over the years, not only the most advanced battle techniques, but whom had been allowed black-ops training as well upon completion of a very rigorous test, administered by the King himself - all thirty of these men had remained stoic and cool under the stormy gaze of their frustrated young prince, thanks to such training.
But at the word "nap," there came a rogue snickering from among their ranks.
“Yes?” Arthur asked. The courtyard fell again into the deepest silence. Not an echo was heard, despite the fact that this courtyard in specific was perfectly built to allow for the greatest amplification of the smallest sound. It was a masterpiece in the nascent field of physics, a field which only Gaius knew anything about, and his knowledge might die with him soon, God rest its soul. Even the icy statues refroze so as to maintain that perfect pacific.
But Arthur had his suspicions.
“What is it, Leon?” Arthur frowned down at the man, stood just in front of him down the steps.
And he had been correct, he could tell from the way Leon's left eyebrow twitched, just so, out of his control. Arthur may have towered over them all at the moment, but Sir Leon was a giant of a man with a heart of near proportional size, so Arthur let this transgression slide. All the men kept their eyes trained straight ahead, but there was a feeling of interest as Sir Leon toed carefully around what he was trying to communicate.
“Sire, might I make reference to an event not in the far past?” Sir Leon said.
“You may.”
“His royal highness made a brief trip into Cendred's land not long ago, or so I have been made aware,” Sir Leon said. There came a shifting from the ranks at the news, a slushing of snow underfoot, but Arthur’s gaze was trained on the knight before him.
“Go on.”
“Was that not to honor the esteem between you and Mer- your manservant, sire?”
“That was for the purpose of saving an entire village, Sir Leon.”
“Yes, but it was Ealdor, was it not? The town where your manservant grew up. Where his moth-”
“Don’t mention Hunith, Leon. And no, if there was a secondary motive, it was indeed very secondary. As prince, with great resources at my command, it is my duty to see to it that the people do not go hungry and definitely that they are not attacked by bandits. The town of Ealdor is situated close enough to the border so as to be nearly under Camelot’s jurisdiction.” 'Or so I decided' was heavily implied.
“As you say, sire,” Sir Leon said. “But might I also make mention of the journey you took to retrieve an antidote to a poison your manservant had drunk. How is this any different? And when-”
“Enough.” Arthur said.
“But sire,” Sir Owen spoke up, and only flinched minorly at Arthur’s frown. “Sire, many among us would be willing, nay, honored, to aid you in your quest.”
“It is not my quest, Owen,” Arthur said. He gripped his sword hand on his hilt in impatience. “Merlin went to serve his king, King Cendred, who so happens to be his lord and master, before me, it seems, as Merlin was apparently never a legal immigrant to this territory in the first place.”
His words seemed to strike home with these men who put so much stake in their identity as citizens of Camelot, and Sir Leon looked down to the flagstones, and Sir Owen bit at his lip a bit. The sky seemed like slate above them and Arthur nodded once. He thought of how he sorely needed a bath and a good lie-in before the meeting with his father’s ministers for bi-weekly conference about grain distribution.
“Dismissed,” he said, and pivoted to stalk up the steps and into the darkness of the entryway.
“But-” A voice began behind. Arthur wheeled back around, angrier than he remembered being in a long while. His men were still standing as he’d left them, like they hadn’t heard his last words.
“Don’t you see?” Arthur said. “He went back to King Cendred of his own free will. He doesn't want to be here.”
Arthur's voice echoed out around the courtyard, and his men looked on. He stalked back up the stairway and went quietly to his chambers.
*
Despite everything, when Sir Leon knocked at the chamber door an hour later to remind him of the meeting, Arthur already had a bag packed for a three day’s journey, and a map, riding boots, and his favorite laptop-sized case of daggers piled by the door.
Leon shrugged and shouldered a bag, and Arthur sighed as if to say, “Well, this is embarrassing.”
Part ii
The walls of the castle and its scarce decorations were rough, compared to those of Camelot, and there often weren’t enough candles to provide adequate lighting. It was a good thing this kingdom hadn’t given up magic. The room was well-lit by a decentralized magical light diffuser
“Each person has, within him, a store of energy,” the king’s adviser was explaining. Merlin had his head propped up on a hand, and was keeping it there, however much his face kind of desperately wanted to plant onto the pillow of the open book on the table.
“A store of energy,” the wizened numpty said. He waved a pointer stick at Merlin, “that one may tap,” he thwacked the table with the stick, causing Merlin to sit up straighter, “and utilize, if one is trained according to the philosophies of,” he struck the tome at Merlin’s hands, “this book.”
The two men stared at each other, one young and one very, very old, until the younger finally looked away. Classes usually went like this, the adviser expounding on the ways in which Merlin might use his abilities to aid his king, while Merlin thought about food or just sat there yawning and blinking his eyes slowly.
The library was small, modest, much like Geoffrey of Monmouth’s little cave back in Camelot, but this one was covered with scrolls and works in progress, rather than three-inched with dust. However poor the castle might have seemed by comparison when Merlin first arrived, one thing could be said for life here, and that was that men and women roamed these halls with papers and books more often than not, and there was a suspicious absence of burly men in armor. These men and women were great scholars, he’d been told, but Merlin had never met any before, didn't know what that entailed really, so he didn't know for certain.
“Have you done your reading,” the man was asking him now, words barely intelligible due to the giant beard that clouded his mouth and chin. Merlin scratched a ragged fingernail along the table grooves, and kept his tongue. “You haven’t done it?” the man said.
Merlin frowned up, and then looked back and away, out of the window. Snowflakes were raining past, like flower petals.
“If you don’t do your studies,” the man said, tapping Merlin with the stick not too harshly on the shoulder. “You’ll never be able to access that power I know lies somewhere within. Don’t you want power?”
“Yes,” Merlin finally said, honest.
"Ah, he speaks," the man said. "Really, it's been months of this, young man. I know you're here against your volition, possibly yearning for the sunnier climes of Camelot, but let's not forget what would happen to you if you were still there."
"But I'm needed," Merlin said.
"And you're needed here," the adviser said. “Well then, since you didn’t do your reading, we might as well work on your practical application. How does that sound?”
Merlin slumped down in the creaking chair. He adjusted the sleeves of the black turtleneck he’d been made to wear since day one, rolling his hands in cloth. The adviser thought he was edging him along towards realizing some great power, while really Merlin had discovered it long ago on the Isle of the Blessed, a place this adviser referenced as somewhere inaccessible to wizards such as Merlin and himself. Best to keep his head down. That's what Gaius had told him once, his first week in Camelot, but difference was, this time around he would heed that warning.
The adviser was still waiting, so finally Merlin sighed, and reached out with his right hand, and nudged a spurt of energy up and out his fingertips. “Forbaern,” he whispered. And a small flame bit into a scroll that lay before him.
“Spec-tacular!” the man cried. He gave a little jump, and he twisted his facial hair in both hands. Merlin bit his lip, and watched as the fire grew into an unmanageable thing that was quickly devouring each of the scrolls on the tabletop. He felt a strange pricking behind his eyes.
Just then came a knock on the door frame, and when he turned, Merlin saw a woman that he knew vaguely, carrying an armload of bound books.
“Hello there, Merlin,” she said, as more parchment flamed up behind him. “His royal highness desires-"
"My eternal allegiance?"
"Yes, but more specifically your presence. He's in his day room.”
“Right there,” Merlin said. He turned back to the table, where there were but charred remains of his work, and he felt a small leap of amusement edging past resignation. He stood to go.
"Have a nice afternoon, Merlin. And remember, you're not a prisoner here, this kingdom is your home, and King Cendred is your lord."
Merlin nodded, and took his leave. And as much as he wanted to hate the older man for being a steward of the king who held Merlin there, he couldn’t quite quash the warmth in his chest region when he took a quick glance back at the man’s obvious joy even as he was sweeping the ashy leftovers of important documents into a bin. Although Merlin was showing the man what would be the equivalent of a magical hiccough, he felt secretly just that little bit pleased. No one had ever really been happy about his magic before.
*
They were passing the second ridge. Arthur knew it to lead up to the gorge one had to cross to finally come within view of Cendred’s castle. The castle was well-fortified, surrounded by forest and mountains on all sides, but the shelter made it weak in some ways. Take Ealdor, for instance: Cendred’s men had to work their way through the foothills and then the one mountain pass, through the snow, if they were to reach the outlying town to answer its cries for help. The distress had been called in the summer, so there was no excuse there, but Arthur saw how the topography could render the land difficult to manage.
The lay of the land was no issue for Arthur. He was limited in his ideas; he saw only one possible outcome to most situations, and that was victory. He was the real straight shooter type. Arthur‘s land was point A, and the Border was point B, and Cendred‘s Kingdom made C, and when he got there, well, he did not need a real plan, he never did, because at that point one just needed heft their title around a bit, sell off some grain or oil, and then that would be that: one servant errant back in pocket.
Arthur had had anxiety dreams all three nights, regardless. So when the turrets came into view past snowy tree level, hung high with pennants, he mentally scolded himself in his fathers voice, and outwardly said, "Sir Leon." They two rode down the slushy path, the going slow, the horses moving softly through the two-toned world.
*
Sometimes Merlin imagined he was so close to Ealdor he could taste it, like it was summer again and there was straw dust in the air and dirty well-water in a jug on the table, just waiting for him.
In December he’d nearly requested his mother come to the castle to visit, the king would have allowed it, but these were cold times and he wouldn’t cause unneeded suffering just because he felt the occasional pang of homesickness. Also, what would she think of him now? No, best that she imagine him still safe (moderately) in the castle at Camelot, with a man who was possibly his elderly uncle, and a prince behind him. Arthur would come if he called for him, as well, Merlin knew this without a doubt, but he was even less inclined to send that message. Cendred would not take lightly to those who asked favors of enemies.
Yes, enemies. Arthur and Cendred had never met, the king had told Merlin this one morning in his day room over hot, bitter tisanes drunk by people in these parts. Merlin had sat, rigid in the ornate chair situated in his own shaft of sunlight, while the king had pushed his mug around with a lazy hand.
He imagined them meeting, how Arthur might approach the young king with all of the grace Merlin knew him to possess, only to be taken aback after the initial shock of speaking with such an insane character. Because King Cendred was insane, oh yes. It was subtle, but sometimes unnerving, and kind of sweet, if Merlin was honest with himself, which he wasn't.
In his daydream, Arthur would arrive in a sweep of capes and nobly demand King Cendred gave Merlin up, for a hefty ransom if need be. The King would ask Arthur to another of his tea parties, and Arthur would be thrown for a loop, but no worries, because Merlin would intercede, for just a moment, so that he might relay to Arthur in low tones what King Cendred's adviser had told Merlin the first day, leaning in close and bearded to whisper, “His majesty is what you might call an airhead. Don't worry about it too much.”
But with each passing day, the memory of Camelot seemed more like the golden visions of a past life, or maybe a fool's dream, and Arthur just a symbol of all Merlin had lost. King Cendred, with his swarthy good looks, and easy, uncomplicated laughter when he had Merlin tell him a story about his childhood (Merlin told him how he'd felled a tree on someone's house trying to magically pluck apples) seemed realer by the day.
Merlin expected the two might get along, in a way. They would be amused by each other, at least, but politics would forever keep them apart. The two had never met, but Arthur’s father had been a sworn enemy of Cendred's father even before he had lit the first pyre, and the peace treaty was more an agreement to never speak again, nor infringe on one another’s territories.
Up to that point, Merlin had not understood what great risk Arthur had taken in traveling to Ealdor that day two years ago to help a poor, starving village. For a moment, Merlin thought perhaps Arthur had been ignorant of the high stakes himself, but then he thought of the daily meetings that Arthur attended, hours and hours of sitting at the grand table with King Uther's ministers and discussing everything from food to treatises to appropriate technology involving magnification and the boiling of water. He had gone into the fire for Merlin. He must have known.
*
The day that Arthur and Leon came to bust Merlin out of Cendred’s castle was also the day that Merlin had decided to reveal his true abilities to his monarch. The snow outside was piling up and Merlin was just sick of sitting in his makeshift classroom with this well-meaning magical adviser, bored off his ass because he was too afraid to tell the truth.
He was sitting by the window in the throne room. Cendred paced the floor.
While Cendred spoke with a minister of some sort, Merlin considered the possible negative ramifications of telling Cendred that he could talk to dragons, use staffs belonging to Sidhe, and sometimes control lightening.
The only reason he had found against exposing himself was that he might be used as a weapon against Camelot, but he had cased the situation well, he thought, and found that King Cendred harbored no plans to invade Camelot, had no plans to use magic for battle unless provoked...had no plans to use magic for much of anything other than every day pleasures, really, like fondue for instance, and Merlin was beginning to suspect that maybe, just maybe, he and Cendred could really be friends.
As coincidence often seemed to strike Merlin, it made sense that, just as he had opened his mouth to say: "Excuse me, hey Cendred," there came a sudden crashing open of the large, iron doors of the throne room, and in stormed Arthur with Merlin's favorite knight, Sir Leon the lionfaced.
King Cendred swung around at this, and Merlin tried to imagine how Arthur must appear to him. Arthur looked frightfully unwashed and a little damp around the ankles where he had doubtless been tramping around in the snow after dismounting outside, but still generally exuding an impression of golden Junes, and privilege. He was wearing the circlet his father had given him the night Arthur had been crowned prince, which meant something because Arthur never wore the circlet. Behind him, Sir Leon looked like a lion in man's form.
"You must be Prince Arthur, then," Cendred said to Arthur, and then waved in Merlin's direction. "I've never seen him smile like that. I should give him back to you on principle alone."
"King Cendred," Arthur acknowledged. Merlin imagined that Arthur was judging the man just as Merlin had that first time, noting how young he was, thirty at most but probably not, and how he was handsome, how he looked dangerous. He reached to the hilt of his sword as Cendred advanced quickly upon him, but then stood in place in surprise when Cendred reached out a gloved hand, and said, in wonder: "Your abs, they’re so firm."2
Merlin thought of explaining the king to Arthur, but he couldn’t, it just wasn't possible at this time, not like it had been in his daydream, so Arthur was left to deal with the situation as best he could.
"Just as I'd been told," Cendred said, and Arthur looked quickly over to Merlin, as if to imply it was somehow his fault.
“No, not from Merlin here,” the king continued. “From that scribe of yours, I read all the articles of course, all the legend released in the Albion Annals. You're even more attractive in person."
"Could you please stop touching me?"
"No. Now, what is it that you want here? And might I also say, 'Pleased to meet you at last.'"
Merlin stood and went quietly to Cendred's elbow. Arthur looked over Merlin's dark attire, and Merlin just pretended to sigh, but he was so happy to see Arthur, who had apparently come to rescue him, that he nearly laughed instead.
Arthur rolled his eyes, before turning back to the king, and saying: "I’ve come to hold audience with you, Cendred, under the name of the peace treatise forged a decade past by our venerable fathers, King Uther and King Deadred. I would ask that you give Merlin free passage to Camelot, where he might resume his duties as my hapless servant."
“By your leave,“ King Cendred told him. "Please, make your case. But might I first point out that Merlin, however long he did take up residence in the kingdom of Camelot and in your service, emigrated to your father's territories in an illegal manner." He then whispered to a man who had appeared by his side, and seemed to give him some sort of direction. After a moment, the man scuttled off.
While he was speaking to the man, Merlin saw Arthur glancing about the room, at the five men and women along one wall standing like guards, but completely unarmed to the naked eye. The warrior within him must have suspected magic, though. The confidence with which they stood bespoke competence.
"Might I ask why it is that you wanted Merlin in specific?" Arthur asked, and Merlin attempted to look innocent. "And where exactly the code was in your note. The message was rather vague, and I can't help but wonder-"
"Ah, a fair question," Cendred said. He looked to Merlin, looked him up and down and then smiled and turned back to the prince. "I just wanted a friend."
“A friend,“ Arthur repeated. He too looked Merlin over, but skeptically, and Merlin bristled at the implication. "And how did you choose Merlin in specific?"
“Oh, you know," Cendred said. "I had certain standards, and when I found that Merlin had crossed the shared border of our kingdoms on the sly,” Cendred told Arthur. “It seemed reasonable to call him back. It is his duty, after all, and what better punishment than to spend all of his time with the head of state.”
"All of my time," Merlin repeated.
"Oh, hush," Cendred told him. "You enjoy it."
“Yes,” Arthur said slowly. “That is quite reasonable. I hadn’t thought of it that way.”
“Arthur!” Merlin said. But he could see from Arthur’s introspective look that the appeal had struck a chord with him, that of course the young king’s actions had not seemed as insane as Merlin had thought them, because Arthur was, above all things, royalty. Yes, that came with a hefty load of responsibility, but at the end of the day, he was accustomed to listing off his desires and having them met. If he wanted a friend with dark hair and a shitload of magical ability, he would have done the very same thing.
Cendred kept on talking: “We‘ve had a great time of it. At first he was reticent, but I think boredom got the better of this one, and eventually he came out to play. We have daily rounds of this game of chance that Merlin created at my request. It includes six dice in a cup. You see how I’ve been providing for him? His dreadful calluses have gone away, since I’m not the type to force him into any sort of gritty, physical battle situations, and he hasn’t had any allergic reactions as of late because I don’t allow others to pelt fruit at him. You know that he’s intolerant to tomatoes? And of course, Merlin has proven an excellent adviser.”
Where Arthur was looking considering, as well as a bit saddened, now he gripped the hilt of his sword on impulse. “Adviser!”
“No, Arthur, I haven’t told him anything I swear,” Merlin said, although he couldn’t for the life of him think of any secrets he knew worth telling.
“You misunderstand me,” King Cendred said. He waved off the guards that had taken steps towards them. “My fashion adviser, of course.”
“Merlin,” Arthur said again.
“He designed this leather vest himself,” Cendred said, taking a hand off of Arthur to run his hands over the studded jacket-shirt combo that he now wore daily.
“I can see I’ve got a lot to answer for,” Merlin said. “but might we just make a decision instead of turning the discussion once again towards haranguing me.”
“You see why I need him?” Cendred said. “How amusing!”
"If I may, sire." They all turned, and saw that it was the lion who had spoken.
"You may," Cendred said.
"I know a rogue knight," Sir Leon said. "He is honorable, and he is brave. He is not allowed in Camelot by self-imposed exile, and although he is not quite so amusing as Merlin, you would find in him all of the qualities of a friend."
"Are you offering me this knight, then, as replacement for Merlin here?" King Cendred asked, clearly amused.
"I myself deem it a fair trade." Arthur said.
"You do, do you?" King Cendred asked. "Well, I've no doubt that I'll be seeing Merlin here soon enough as it is, so I suppose I won't have cause to miss him too much."
"Cendred," Merlin said. Cendred looked to him to smile mysteriously his way, and Arthur and Sir Leon looked at him, appalled, because he'd used a monarch's first name. But they really had no idea, Cendred was on a first name basis with most of his subjects, however bad a ruler he was. But just as Merlin was about to speak, a man entered the hall with a scroll, and handed it to the king.
The king handed the papers to Merlin.
"For you," he told Merlin, and then took him by the hand. Arthur coughed, as Cendred put two fingers lightly to Merlin's forehead. He whispered: "Be free."
"I will send men to find Lancelot immediately," Arthur said.
"See that you do," King Cendred said. "Feel free to stay at my castle for as long as you need, but I warn you that men may come slaughter you in the night. We do have a peace treaty to uphold, you know how these things go."
"Understood," Arthur told him, unflapped. They made their goodbyes.
Nothing was said on their way out. Merlin clutched his papers and nodded to servants and scholars that he knew. He was glad to be leaving, especially as the amount of tea parties had been horrifying.
He may or may not have seen a blonde woman, familiar with heavy eyeliner and -1 bracelet, speaking with a man in a side hallway, but Merlin didn't want to think about that now, he just wanted to go back to Camelot where it wasn't quite so cold or wet.
"Well, Merlin, now that you're back with us," Arthur said, tossing Merlin his bag of heavy blades. Merlin caught it against his chest. "Now that you're back, I'll have someone to carry my crossbow on hunts."
It was then that Merlin realized he'd been having tea parties with Arthur this whole time.
And he liked it.
______________________________
2 SPN
AND THAT IS HOW HE CHOSE HER AS HIS BEST FRIEND AND COURT SORCERER:
Words: 6k
For: creepy-secret
Prompt: Cendred wants Merlin to come back to his kingdom to serve the court. He knows Merlin's secret but doesn't tell, but Merlin knows he knows and is blackmailed into going, but Arthur feels betrayed.
Notes: This is ridiculous. I just wanna make Cendred totally gay for anyone/everyone before they take it all away from me and pair him off with Morgause ;-;
Part i
The parchment arrived early one night in summer, when August was closing in on autumn and there was merely a whisper of disputes at the fringelands which bordered Cendred’s kingdom. It was brought by a messenger on horseback, whose name no one caught, and the missive was passed through the guards at the drawbridge and then from hand to hand until it reached Arthur’s chambers where Merlin was the first to answer the door, but only because he was about to leave to get another fruit pie from the kitchens four floors down.
“Just stick your head out into the hallway and shout for someone,” Arthur told him. He was behind his screen, struggling out of a particularly ropey tunic. The fire in the hearth was burning merrily enough to render the room positively cheery, but it wasn’t quite yet dark enough outside for the light to make much difference. The prince’s voice sounded just as bright.
“I can’t just call out to someone to bring me pie,” Merlin told him, his hand on the door latch. “I’m not the prince, after all.”
“Might as well be,” Arthur muttered.
“What was that? I‘m sorry, I couldn't quite make that out," Merlin said. He smiled over at the partition, though Arthur couldn't see him.
“I said,” came Arthur’s voice, louder this time. “You act like bloody royalty, and you work for me, so by extension you could just - ”
"I'm not going to be rude, Arthur, just because you order people around for a living."
It was then that the knock came at the door, and Merlin swung it open to a chambermaid he knew quite well.
“Note for you,” she said. She was the one who was the same age as Merlin’s mother, and, thinking this, he felt a twinge not unlike homesickness. The woman smiled and left him, quiet like all help in the castle were on evenings such as this, when the air was warm with promise of an early night’s rest and all seemed to be right.
“Thanks,” he said after her. He tossed the note on the picnic bench of a table and said, loudly, “Message for you, sire. Read it while I fetch your third dessert, if you ever manage to dress yourself.”
With that, Merlin took off at a jog down the long hallway, and wended along, down stairwells and across those strange indoor-bridges, to the kitchens.
*
Arthur had learned to read when he was seven, having been too precocious to be tethered to any sort of desk before then. At seven he had held the fine books in limp, unexcited hands and often ripped pages. The path to literacy continued to be a difficult one. He felt victimized, like he was pretty much constantly being screwed by medieval semicolons and Latin, with its collection of confusing declensions. Religious texts had been distracting at best, with little flowers to festoon every third letter, and the whole dusty-tomes-versus-sunlight-and-swords argument was a weak one.
He wished he hadn’t learned to read. There were kings who couldn’t, just one generation ago, he had heard of them. Illiteracy was normal just ten years before his birth, maybe. But Uther had assured him that times were changing, one hand heavy on Arthur's shoulder when Arthur was fourteen and had been struggling to grip the ink pot between a forefinger and thumb because his other fingers had been bruised during a training lesson with the mace. After that, life increasingly had to do with reading things that did not sit well with the royal head.
Tonight's parchment was folded, crisp and clean despite the distance it had traveled, but Arthur was not aware of its origins, and indeed suspected it to be a missive from his men who he had sent to camp out near the border of Mercia due to unrest in that direction. The parchment was sealed with green wax. This would have meant something, too, had Arthur given any thought to the fact, but he was at his most vulnerable and distracted, daydreaming idly of the strawberry pie he knew his manservant would somehow manage to filch from the larder. He only began to think it odd when, upon ripping the seal, another folded parchment fluttered out, this one thin and transparent with faint lining visible, traces of the writing inside.
He’d ripped it open with a mind so careless of the possibilities that lay within, and only just had time to remember himself, to remember his mistrust of the written word that always seemed to cause him such trouble.
He scanned the three lines within with a jaw that began to clench in resolve, and when he went in for a second-read he sat himself on the edge of the table, no longer so relaxed.
*
This was how Merlin, pie in hand, found Arthur of the stony jaw. At the sound of the opening door, Arthur laid the gauzy sheet of ill-tidings flat, face-up on the table, and said, “Well you’d better be going.”
“Oh no you don’t,” Merlin said. He dropped the tin onto the table and wiped sticky sauce on his neckerchief, which was the entire reason he wore the thing. “There's no way you’re eating this entire thing yourself. I know you’ll try, but even a future king must admit his shortcomings, sometimes.“
He laid a hand on Arthur’s shoulder as if to push him down onto the bench, but Arthur was immovable. Merlin pushed that bit harder but to no avail.
“Well?” Arthur asked. Merlin took a step back to let him stand. Once he had walked over to the fireplace, Arthur motioned to the letter. He didn’t watch as Merlin picked it up in a somewhat cranky fashion, saying something to the extent of, “you are a ridiculous person, Arthur Pendragon.” and instead he sat in the armchair and listened to Merlin smooth the paper and then heard him still as the message sunk in.
“Ah.” Merlin said. “I can…”
“Can you?” Arthur said. He examined the hearth before him, ashy as far as hearths in the castle went, because Merlin had spent the evening explaining why, exactly, Arthur should teach the knights stealth rather than add a supplemental course in battleaxe to their training, instead of doing any honest-to-God work. “I’d love some sort of explanation.”
“I-” Merlin said. Then, “I’m sorry, sire. I can't.”
“You’d better be going, then,” Arthur told him. There was a long stretch, and he finally made a vague gesture towards the door.
After this, Merlin paused only long enough to heft a basket of laundry onto his hip to carry down with him. The click of the closing door was the last Arthur heard from his manservant for a very long while.
*
Autumn went.1
It went and Arthur hardly noticed, so caught up was he in the steady training of his men, and the rebuilding of a castle post-dragon fire, and the more secretarial concerns like making sure the stores of grain and other stable foodstuffs were bursting rather than petering out due to bad maths and poor delegation. His father left this work to Arthur these days. He was caught up in some subtle game of bargaining involving small chunks of land that were apportioned to lords, which were then traded in and out of the stores of the local monarchs like fine horses.
Due to such a hefty to-do list, Arthur had little time for extraneous concerns. So what if he sometimes wondered after Merlin, wondered if he was planning to return or wondering what exactly those three casual lines from the actual hand of the foreign king had meant. And it wasn't as if Arthur wasn't well taken care of. With the Lady Morgana still absent, Gwen had the time to clean his chambers and bring him the occasional meal, and if Arthur ever found himself looking out the window towards the forests at the border with anything close to a whist or longing, it could probably be attributed to a strong tendency towards Seasonal Affective Disorder and a pretty solid case of messed up childhood, and not to the lack of one lanky, if intriguing, bit of Ealdorian.
________________________________
1 Yeah, that was a Twilight reference.
*
“Oh good lord,” Arthur said. It was bright, January now, and the frost crunched like gravel beneath his boots, and his face felt raw and wind-whipped from practice.
“I’m sorry, sire,” the target knight stuttered out. “Forgive me, it was rude of me to ask.”
Arthur made a deep rumbling noise that shut the man up pretty adequately.
He rounded on the rest of his men who were standing in rigid lines across the expanse of the courtyard. Arthur spread their courage thin with a good, round glare. Having their full, if skeptical, attention and respect, he spoke loudly with a timbre to his voice meant to command:
“I am nothing, if not fine,” he told them. “I have suffered nothing at the hands of Cendred. The whispers at the borders are but rumors, and my father has sent reconnaissance teams that have returned with little to no proof of conspiracy. The peace treaty, however our people may doubt it, holds true to this day, ten years later.”
His breath misted before him, and the only sound was the dripping of some iced-over gargoyle above them, melting in the direct, afternoon sunlight.
“I am growing tired of those of you who ask what you can do to help,” he told them. "You have your orders." He tried to catch eyes, but not one of them met his gaze. Smart men. “I am growing tired of inquests regarding my general emotional state, and whether or not I am, and I quote, ’lonely without that big-eared guy with an accent.’
"And as to the most ridiculous question of them all: no. The answer is no, I am not, after four months with no word, about to ride across the border to retrieve my past, poor excuse for a servant, who couldn’t even straighten the bed sheets without lying down to take a nap.”
All throughout this impromptu example of a verbal beat-down, Arthur’s men had stood stock still in their formation before him. All thirty of his most loyal knights - men who had been taught, over the years, not only the most advanced battle techniques, but whom had been allowed black-ops training as well upon completion of a very rigorous test, administered by the King himself - all thirty of these men had remained stoic and cool under the stormy gaze of their frustrated young prince, thanks to such training.
But at the word "nap," there came a rogue snickering from among their ranks.
“Yes?” Arthur asked. The courtyard fell again into the deepest silence. Not an echo was heard, despite the fact that this courtyard in specific was perfectly built to allow for the greatest amplification of the smallest sound. It was a masterpiece in the nascent field of physics, a field which only Gaius knew anything about, and his knowledge might die with him soon, God rest its soul. Even the icy statues refroze so as to maintain that perfect pacific.
But Arthur had his suspicions.
“What is it, Leon?” Arthur frowned down at the man, stood just in front of him down the steps.
And he had been correct, he could tell from the way Leon's left eyebrow twitched, just so, out of his control. Arthur may have towered over them all at the moment, but Sir Leon was a giant of a man with a heart of near proportional size, so Arthur let this transgression slide. All the men kept their eyes trained straight ahead, but there was a feeling of interest as Sir Leon toed carefully around what he was trying to communicate.
“Sire, might I make reference to an event not in the far past?” Sir Leon said.
“You may.”
“His royal highness made a brief trip into Cendred's land not long ago, or so I have been made aware,” Sir Leon said. There came a shifting from the ranks at the news, a slushing of snow underfoot, but Arthur’s gaze was trained on the knight before him.
“Go on.”
“Was that not to honor the esteem between you and Mer- your manservant, sire?”
“That was for the purpose of saving an entire village, Sir Leon.”
“Yes, but it was Ealdor, was it not? The town where your manservant grew up. Where his moth-”
“Don’t mention Hunith, Leon. And no, if there was a secondary motive, it was indeed very secondary. As prince, with great resources at my command, it is my duty to see to it that the people do not go hungry and definitely that they are not attacked by bandits. The town of Ealdor is situated close enough to the border so as to be nearly under Camelot’s jurisdiction.” 'Or so I decided' was heavily implied.
“As you say, sire,” Sir Leon said. “But might I also make mention of the journey you took to retrieve an antidote to a poison your manservant had drunk. How is this any different? And when-”
“Enough.” Arthur said.
“But sire,” Sir Owen spoke up, and only flinched minorly at Arthur’s frown. “Sire, many among us would be willing, nay, honored, to aid you in your quest.”
“It is not my quest, Owen,” Arthur said. He gripped his sword hand on his hilt in impatience. “Merlin went to serve his king, King Cendred, who so happens to be his lord and master, before me, it seems, as Merlin was apparently never a legal immigrant to this territory in the first place.”
His words seemed to strike home with these men who put so much stake in their identity as citizens of Camelot, and Sir Leon looked down to the flagstones, and Sir Owen bit at his lip a bit. The sky seemed like slate above them and Arthur nodded once. He thought of how he sorely needed a bath and a good lie-in before the meeting with his father’s ministers for bi-weekly conference about grain distribution.
“Dismissed,” he said, and pivoted to stalk up the steps and into the darkness of the entryway.
“But-” A voice began behind. Arthur wheeled back around, angrier than he remembered being in a long while. His men were still standing as he’d left them, like they hadn’t heard his last words.
“Don’t you see?” Arthur said. “He went back to King Cendred of his own free will. He doesn't want to be here.”
Arthur's voice echoed out around the courtyard, and his men looked on. He stalked back up the stairway and went quietly to his chambers.
*
Despite everything, when Sir Leon knocked at the chamber door an hour later to remind him of the meeting, Arthur already had a bag packed for a three day’s journey, and a map, riding boots, and his favorite laptop-sized case of daggers piled by the door.
Leon shrugged and shouldered a bag, and Arthur sighed as if to say, “Well, this is embarrassing.”
Part ii
The walls of the castle and its scarce decorations were rough, compared to those of Camelot, and there often weren’t enough candles to provide adequate lighting. It was a good thing this kingdom hadn’t given up magic. The room was well-lit by a decentralized magical light diffuser
“Each person has, within him, a store of energy,” the king’s adviser was explaining. Merlin had his head propped up on a hand, and was keeping it there, however much his face kind of desperately wanted to plant onto the pillow of the open book on the table.
“A store of energy,” the wizened numpty said. He waved a pointer stick at Merlin, “that one may tap,” he thwacked the table with the stick, causing Merlin to sit up straighter, “and utilize, if one is trained according to the philosophies of,” he struck the tome at Merlin’s hands, “this book.”
The two men stared at each other, one young and one very, very old, until the younger finally looked away. Classes usually went like this, the adviser expounding on the ways in which Merlin might use his abilities to aid his king, while Merlin thought about food or just sat there yawning and blinking his eyes slowly.
The library was small, modest, much like Geoffrey of Monmouth’s little cave back in Camelot, but this one was covered with scrolls and works in progress, rather than three-inched with dust. However poor the castle might have seemed by comparison when Merlin first arrived, one thing could be said for life here, and that was that men and women roamed these halls with papers and books more often than not, and there was a suspicious absence of burly men in armor. These men and women were great scholars, he’d been told, but Merlin had never met any before, didn't know what that entailed really, so he didn't know for certain.
“Have you done your reading,” the man was asking him now, words barely intelligible due to the giant beard that clouded his mouth and chin. Merlin scratched a ragged fingernail along the table grooves, and kept his tongue. “You haven’t done it?” the man said.
Merlin frowned up, and then looked back and away, out of the window. Snowflakes were raining past, like flower petals.
“If you don’t do your studies,” the man said, tapping Merlin with the stick not too harshly on the shoulder. “You’ll never be able to access that power I know lies somewhere within. Don’t you want power?”
“Yes,” Merlin finally said, honest.
"Ah, he speaks," the man said. "Really, it's been months of this, young man. I know you're here against your volition, possibly yearning for the sunnier climes of Camelot, but let's not forget what would happen to you if you were still there."
"But I'm needed," Merlin said.
"And you're needed here," the adviser said. “Well then, since you didn’t do your reading, we might as well work on your practical application. How does that sound?”
Merlin slumped down in the creaking chair. He adjusted the sleeves of the black turtleneck he’d been made to wear since day one, rolling his hands in cloth. The adviser thought he was edging him along towards realizing some great power, while really Merlin had discovered it long ago on the Isle of the Blessed, a place this adviser referenced as somewhere inaccessible to wizards such as Merlin and himself. Best to keep his head down. That's what Gaius had told him once, his first week in Camelot, but difference was, this time around he would heed that warning.
The adviser was still waiting, so finally Merlin sighed, and reached out with his right hand, and nudged a spurt of energy up and out his fingertips. “Forbaern,” he whispered. And a small flame bit into a scroll that lay before him.
“Spec-tacular!” the man cried. He gave a little jump, and he twisted his facial hair in both hands. Merlin bit his lip, and watched as the fire grew into an unmanageable thing that was quickly devouring each of the scrolls on the tabletop. He felt a strange pricking behind his eyes.
Just then came a knock on the door frame, and when he turned, Merlin saw a woman that he knew vaguely, carrying an armload of bound books.
“Hello there, Merlin,” she said, as more parchment flamed up behind him. “His royal highness desires-"
"My eternal allegiance?"
"Yes, but more specifically your presence. He's in his day room.”
“Right there,” Merlin said. He turned back to the table, where there were but charred remains of his work, and he felt a small leap of amusement edging past resignation. He stood to go.
"Have a nice afternoon, Merlin. And remember, you're not a prisoner here, this kingdom is your home, and King Cendred is your lord."
Merlin nodded, and took his leave. And as much as he wanted to hate the older man for being a steward of the king who held Merlin there, he couldn’t quite quash the warmth in his chest region when he took a quick glance back at the man’s obvious joy even as he was sweeping the ashy leftovers of important documents into a bin. Although Merlin was showing the man what would be the equivalent of a magical hiccough, he felt secretly just that little bit pleased. No one had ever really been happy about his magic before.
*
They were passing the second ridge. Arthur knew it to lead up to the gorge one had to cross to finally come within view of Cendred’s castle. The castle was well-fortified, surrounded by forest and mountains on all sides, but the shelter made it weak in some ways. Take Ealdor, for instance: Cendred’s men had to work their way through the foothills and then the one mountain pass, through the snow, if they were to reach the outlying town to answer its cries for help. The distress had been called in the summer, so there was no excuse there, but Arthur saw how the topography could render the land difficult to manage.
The lay of the land was no issue for Arthur. He was limited in his ideas; he saw only one possible outcome to most situations, and that was victory. He was the real straight shooter type. Arthur‘s land was point A, and the Border was point B, and Cendred‘s Kingdom made C, and when he got there, well, he did not need a real plan, he never did, because at that point one just needed heft their title around a bit, sell off some grain or oil, and then that would be that: one servant errant back in pocket.
Arthur had had anxiety dreams all three nights, regardless. So when the turrets came into view past snowy tree level, hung high with pennants, he mentally scolded himself in his fathers voice, and outwardly said, "Sir Leon." They two rode down the slushy path, the going slow, the horses moving softly through the two-toned world.
*
Sometimes Merlin imagined he was so close to Ealdor he could taste it, like it was summer again and there was straw dust in the air and dirty well-water in a jug on the table, just waiting for him.
In December he’d nearly requested his mother come to the castle to visit, the king would have allowed it, but these were cold times and he wouldn’t cause unneeded suffering just because he felt the occasional pang of homesickness. Also, what would she think of him now? No, best that she imagine him still safe (moderately) in the castle at Camelot, with a man who was possibly his elderly uncle, and a prince behind him. Arthur would come if he called for him, as well, Merlin knew this without a doubt, but he was even less inclined to send that message. Cendred would not take lightly to those who asked favors of enemies.
Yes, enemies. Arthur and Cendred had never met, the king had told Merlin this one morning in his day room over hot, bitter tisanes drunk by people in these parts. Merlin had sat, rigid in the ornate chair situated in his own shaft of sunlight, while the king had pushed his mug around with a lazy hand.
He imagined them meeting, how Arthur might approach the young king with all of the grace Merlin knew him to possess, only to be taken aback after the initial shock of speaking with such an insane character. Because King Cendred was insane, oh yes. It was subtle, but sometimes unnerving, and kind of sweet, if Merlin was honest with himself, which he wasn't.
In his daydream, Arthur would arrive in a sweep of capes and nobly demand King Cendred gave Merlin up, for a hefty ransom if need be. The King would ask Arthur to another of his tea parties, and Arthur would be thrown for a loop, but no worries, because Merlin would intercede, for just a moment, so that he might relay to Arthur in low tones what King Cendred's adviser had told Merlin the first day, leaning in close and bearded to whisper, “His majesty is what you might call an airhead. Don't worry about it too much.”
But with each passing day, the memory of Camelot seemed more like the golden visions of a past life, or maybe a fool's dream, and Arthur just a symbol of all Merlin had lost. King Cendred, with his swarthy good looks, and easy, uncomplicated laughter when he had Merlin tell him a story about his childhood (Merlin told him how he'd felled a tree on someone's house trying to magically pluck apples) seemed realer by the day.
Merlin expected the two might get along, in a way. They would be amused by each other, at least, but politics would forever keep them apart. The two had never met, but Arthur’s father had been a sworn enemy of Cendred's father even before he had lit the first pyre, and the peace treaty was more an agreement to never speak again, nor infringe on one another’s territories.
Up to that point, Merlin had not understood what great risk Arthur had taken in traveling to Ealdor that day two years ago to help a poor, starving village. For a moment, Merlin thought perhaps Arthur had been ignorant of the high stakes himself, but then he thought of the daily meetings that Arthur attended, hours and hours of sitting at the grand table with King Uther's ministers and discussing everything from food to treatises to appropriate technology involving magnification and the boiling of water. He had gone into the fire for Merlin. He must have known.
*
The day that Arthur and Leon came to bust Merlin out of Cendred’s castle was also the day that Merlin had decided to reveal his true abilities to his monarch. The snow outside was piling up and Merlin was just sick of sitting in his makeshift classroom with this well-meaning magical adviser, bored off his ass because he was too afraid to tell the truth.
He was sitting by the window in the throne room. Cendred paced the floor.
While Cendred spoke with a minister of some sort, Merlin considered the possible negative ramifications of telling Cendred that he could talk to dragons, use staffs belonging to Sidhe, and sometimes control lightening.
The only reason he had found against exposing himself was that he might be used as a weapon against Camelot, but he had cased the situation well, he thought, and found that King Cendred harbored no plans to invade Camelot, had no plans to use magic for battle unless provoked...had no plans to use magic for much of anything other than every day pleasures, really, like fondue for instance, and Merlin was beginning to suspect that maybe, just maybe, he and Cendred could really be friends.
As coincidence often seemed to strike Merlin, it made sense that, just as he had opened his mouth to say: "Excuse me, hey Cendred," there came a sudden crashing open of the large, iron doors of the throne room, and in stormed Arthur with Merlin's favorite knight, Sir Leon the lionfaced.
King Cendred swung around at this, and Merlin tried to imagine how Arthur must appear to him. Arthur looked frightfully unwashed and a little damp around the ankles where he had doubtless been tramping around in the snow after dismounting outside, but still generally exuding an impression of golden Junes, and privilege. He was wearing the circlet his father had given him the night Arthur had been crowned prince, which meant something because Arthur never wore the circlet. Behind him, Sir Leon looked like a lion in man's form.
"You must be Prince Arthur, then," Cendred said to Arthur, and then waved in Merlin's direction. "I've never seen him smile like that. I should give him back to you on principle alone."
"King Cendred," Arthur acknowledged. Merlin imagined that Arthur was judging the man just as Merlin had that first time, noting how young he was, thirty at most but probably not, and how he was handsome, how he looked dangerous. He reached to the hilt of his sword as Cendred advanced quickly upon him, but then stood in place in surprise when Cendred reached out a gloved hand, and said, in wonder: "Your abs, they’re so firm."2
Merlin thought of explaining the king to Arthur, but he couldn’t, it just wasn't possible at this time, not like it had been in his daydream, so Arthur was left to deal with the situation as best he could.
"Just as I'd been told," Cendred said, and Arthur looked quickly over to Merlin, as if to imply it was somehow his fault.
“No, not from Merlin here,” the king continued. “From that scribe of yours, I read all the articles of course, all the legend released in the Albion Annals. You're even more attractive in person."
"Could you please stop touching me?"
"No. Now, what is it that you want here? And might I also say, 'Pleased to meet you at last.'"
Merlin stood and went quietly to Cendred's elbow. Arthur looked over Merlin's dark attire, and Merlin just pretended to sigh, but he was so happy to see Arthur, who had apparently come to rescue him, that he nearly laughed instead.
Arthur rolled his eyes, before turning back to the king, and saying: "I’ve come to hold audience with you, Cendred, under the name of the peace treatise forged a decade past by our venerable fathers, King Uther and King Deadred. I would ask that you give Merlin free passage to Camelot, where he might resume his duties as my hapless servant."
“By your leave,“ King Cendred told him. "Please, make your case. But might I first point out that Merlin, however long he did take up residence in the kingdom of Camelot and in your service, emigrated to your father's territories in an illegal manner." He then whispered to a man who had appeared by his side, and seemed to give him some sort of direction. After a moment, the man scuttled off.
While he was speaking to the man, Merlin saw Arthur glancing about the room, at the five men and women along one wall standing like guards, but completely unarmed to the naked eye. The warrior within him must have suspected magic, though. The confidence with which they stood bespoke competence.
"Might I ask why it is that you wanted Merlin in specific?" Arthur asked, and Merlin attempted to look innocent. "And where exactly the code was in your note. The message was rather vague, and I can't help but wonder-"
"Ah, a fair question," Cendred said. He looked to Merlin, looked him up and down and then smiled and turned back to the prince. "I just wanted a friend."
“A friend,“ Arthur repeated. He too looked Merlin over, but skeptically, and Merlin bristled at the implication. "And how did you choose Merlin in specific?"
“Oh, you know," Cendred said. "I had certain standards, and when I found that Merlin had crossed the shared border of our kingdoms on the sly,” Cendred told Arthur. “It seemed reasonable to call him back. It is his duty, after all, and what better punishment than to spend all of his time with the head of state.”
"All of my time," Merlin repeated.
"Oh, hush," Cendred told him. "You enjoy it."
“Yes,” Arthur said slowly. “That is quite reasonable. I hadn’t thought of it that way.”
“Arthur!” Merlin said. But he could see from Arthur’s introspective look that the appeal had struck a chord with him, that of course the young king’s actions had not seemed as insane as Merlin had thought them, because Arthur was, above all things, royalty. Yes, that came with a hefty load of responsibility, but at the end of the day, he was accustomed to listing off his desires and having them met. If he wanted a friend with dark hair and a shitload of magical ability, he would have done the very same thing.
Cendred kept on talking: “We‘ve had a great time of it. At first he was reticent, but I think boredom got the better of this one, and eventually he came out to play. We have daily rounds of this game of chance that Merlin created at my request. It includes six dice in a cup. You see how I’ve been providing for him? His dreadful calluses have gone away, since I’m not the type to force him into any sort of gritty, physical battle situations, and he hasn’t had any allergic reactions as of late because I don’t allow others to pelt fruit at him. You know that he’s intolerant to tomatoes? And of course, Merlin has proven an excellent adviser.”
Where Arthur was looking considering, as well as a bit saddened, now he gripped the hilt of his sword on impulse. “Adviser!”
“No, Arthur, I haven’t told him anything I swear,” Merlin said, although he couldn’t for the life of him think of any secrets he knew worth telling.
“You misunderstand me,” King Cendred said. He waved off the guards that had taken steps towards them. “My fashion adviser, of course.”
“Merlin,” Arthur said again.
“He designed this leather vest himself,” Cendred said, taking a hand off of Arthur to run his hands over the studded jacket-shirt combo that he now wore daily.
“I can see I’ve got a lot to answer for,” Merlin said. “but might we just make a decision instead of turning the discussion once again towards haranguing me.”
“You see why I need him?” Cendred said. “How amusing!”
"If I may, sire." They all turned, and saw that it was the lion who had spoken.
"You may," Cendred said.
"I know a rogue knight," Sir Leon said. "He is honorable, and he is brave. He is not allowed in Camelot by self-imposed exile, and although he is not quite so amusing as Merlin, you would find in him all of the qualities of a friend."
"Are you offering me this knight, then, as replacement for Merlin here?" King Cendred asked, clearly amused.
"I myself deem it a fair trade." Arthur said.
"You do, do you?" King Cendred asked. "Well, I've no doubt that I'll be seeing Merlin here soon enough as it is, so I suppose I won't have cause to miss him too much."
"Cendred," Merlin said. Cendred looked to him to smile mysteriously his way, and Arthur and Sir Leon looked at him, appalled, because he'd used a monarch's first name. But they really had no idea, Cendred was on a first name basis with most of his subjects, however bad a ruler he was. But just as Merlin was about to speak, a man entered the hall with a scroll, and handed it to the king.
The king handed the papers to Merlin.
"For you," he told Merlin, and then took him by the hand. Arthur coughed, as Cendred put two fingers lightly to Merlin's forehead. He whispered: "Be free."
"I will send men to find Lancelot immediately," Arthur said.
"See that you do," King Cendred said. "Feel free to stay at my castle for as long as you need, but I warn you that men may come slaughter you in the night. We do have a peace treaty to uphold, you know how these things go."
"Understood," Arthur told him, unflapped. They made their goodbyes.
Nothing was said on their way out. Merlin clutched his papers and nodded to servants and scholars that he knew. He was glad to be leaving, especially as the amount of tea parties had been horrifying.
He may or may not have seen a blonde woman, familiar with heavy eyeliner and -1 bracelet, speaking with a man in a side hallway, but Merlin didn't want to think about that now, he just wanted to go back to Camelot where it wasn't quite so cold or wet.
"Well, Merlin, now that you're back with us," Arthur said, tossing Merlin his bag of heavy blades. Merlin caught it against his chest. "Now that you're back, I'll have someone to carry my crossbow on hunts."
It was then that Merlin realized he'd been having tea parties with Arthur this whole time.
And he liked it.
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2 SPN
AND THAT IS HOW HE CHOSE HER AS HIS BEST FRIEND AND COURT SORCERER: