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superangsty · 5 days ago

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just discovered a merlin WIP I started a couple of years ago and I'm feeling INSAAAANE over it. but probably will never finish it bc i don't remember what the Plan with it was. So anyway. please enjoy what I've got:

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Someone’s screaming, Arthur thinks, in his half-awake haze. Merlin. Merlin’s screaming. Merlin’s screaming in a language he’s never heard before, and then suddenly he feels himself being hoisted up onto something – a horse? Too big. But what else –

A dragon. So that was another lie, then. How many more secrets can one man have?

Arthur will never know, now.

They’re in the sky when Arthur closes his eyes for the last time, Merlin’s arms wrapped tightly around him as the dragon’s wings move in great lumbering motions. He’s not in pain anymore, wonders if it’s the magic or if it’s just one last moment of relief that the body affords to the dying. As he drifts away for the final time, he feels Merlin’s hand pressed over his heart and he thinks, ten years and a hundred battles too late, oh.

---

Arthur wakes up.

---

Arthur wakes up, and he feels warmer than he has done in days, weeks even. When he opens his eyes, there’s a plush red velvet canopy hanging above him, there are birds singing outside his window, and he’s still not in any pain.

He runs a hand over his side wonderingly, feels nothing but smooth skin and hard muscle.

Magic?

Gaius had said Merlin is the most powerful sorcerer who ever lived, and it’s not that Arthur doesn’t believe him, but surely no amount of magic can bring a man back from the dead. And Arthur had been dead, or as close as you can get. He’s sure of that.

Maybe they’d been lucky, maybe the dragon had helped them in time. But even so, that sort of thing doesn’t come without a cost.

A fuzzy memory pulls itself to the surface, Merlin, much too young and much too bold, telling Arthur I’m happy to be your servant. ‘Til the day I die. He’d thought Merlin was making fun of him, at the time. Or that Arthur’s brush with death had shocked him into acting with some degree of deference.

Nobody was meant to survive the questing beast’s bite. But Arthur had. And Merlin has magic, and it finally dawns on Arthur that he had been saying goodbye.

Because magic demands a price. A life for a life. It had taken his mother, and it was meant to take Merlin too, though how Merlin had got out of that one – just one more secret, one more conversation they’ll need to have.

But this time, Arthur hadn’t just been close to death. He had died. He had died, and Merlin hadn’t been able to save him, and now here he is. Awake. Alive. Healthy.

A life for a life.

Oh, God. Merlin.

---

He doesn’t bother to get dressed, just pulls on his boots and throws a coat over his nightclothes and runs across the castle to Gaius’ chambers, bursting through the door without bothering to knock.

He stands in the doorway, panting, and Gaius, always impossible to phase, just raises an eyebrow. “May I help you, Sire?”

“Where is he,” Arthur demands, pacing through the room towards the door on the other side.

“Where is who, Sire?” Gaius asks, and Arthur’s not sure why after all this time he’s being deliberately dense, but he opens Merlin’s door and –

And nothing. There’s nothing in there. The room is crammed with stacks of crates and dusty old supplies, and there’s a small wooden bed frame pressed against one wall, but it holds no mattresses, no blankets.

“Gaius,” he says slowly, taking it all in, “where is he?”

“I don’t know who you’re talking about, Sire, I live alone. Are you quite sure you’re feeling alright?”

There’s a knock at the door.

Gaius looks at Arthur with a confused frown, then potters back through to the main chambers to answer it. Something seems off about him, somehow, though Arthur can’t quite put his finger on what it is.

The answer comes soon enough, because when the door is opened and the visitor walks in, Arthur finds himself facing a dark haired boy with piercing blue eyes.

He can’t be older than twenty-three.

Arthur feels like he’s going to be sick.

He rushes over to the foggy old looking glass that Gaius keeps in a corner, tosses the scarf covering it to the floor, and looks with horror at his own reflection.

In his hurry to get to Gaius, he’d briefly wondered what the guards and courtiers must think of the sight of their king sprinting through the castle in his night clothes.

Now he realises that they probably hadn’t thought anything at all, because they hadn’t seen their king running around in his night clothes. They’d seen his son.

He’s not even of age yet. He’s not crown prince, he’s nobody. Arthur Pendragon, the spoiled brat who would be king, who runs around the castle like he owns the place because he’s arrogant in his surety that one day he will.

This cannot have been Merlin’s doing, because the boy he’d tried to fight all those years ago is staring at him curiously, not a trace of recognition, and if he had done this then surely he would know.

Merlin didn’t sacrifice his life for Arthur’s. Merlin is alive. Uther is alive. Lancelot, Elyan, Morgana – everyone Arthur thought he’d said goodbye to for good. All safe. Arthur is twenty-four years old again, and someone, somehow, has given him a second chance.

He faints in the middle of Gaius’ chambers.

---

When he comes to, there’s a damp cloth pressed against his forehead and three sets of eyes peering down at him.

“It doesn’t appear to be a fever, my lord, but I can see no other cause for his delirium. I think it would be best if he rested for a few days.”

“Very well,” says Uther, and Arthur wants to weep in relief.

He’d been bracing himself, waiting for a voice twisted by bitterness and cruelty, the one which a spectre had used to list each of his failings in excruciating detail. Or maybe the hollow, broken mutterings of a man half-mad.

All these years, and he’d almost forgotten the sound of his father’s voice.

He’d forgotten these moments, where he could allow himself to be more father than king. Uther had never been gentle, never been kind, but there is a warmth behind his carefully controlled words that speaks to a lifetime’s devotion to his only son.

“I will send someone down to return him to his chambers,” he continues. “Thank you, Gaius, and – what was your name, boy?”

“Um. Merlin, Sire. I’m Gaius’ new apprentice.”

Uther gives him a nod of acknowledgement and then leaves, his cloak sweeping behind him as he goes.

---

A hand slides behind Arthur’s shoulders, gently raising him up to meet the glass of water being held out for him, and he can’t help but flinch away.

At Merlin’s hurt expression, he tries to put on a haughty glare. “Don’t touch me.”

Merlin straightens up, puffs his chest out. He meets Arthur’s glare with one of his own, and Arthur’s missed this. When did he stop being so – himself? “I can’t help you if I can’t touch you,” he argues, “believe me, I wouldn’t be doing this by choice.”

Arthur snorts at that. “I’m the prince, and I said don’t touch me. I’m not actually ill, I can handle myself.”

He doesn’t mention that the last time he’d felt Merlin’s hands on him, he’d been bleeding out in his arms. The last time he’d felt Merlin’s hands on him, their fingers had been laced together until Arthur’s hand went slack.

Merlin calls him a royal prat, and Arthur has to stop himself from grinning.

The weight of the last ten years rest heavily on Arthur’s shoulders, and he knows that second chances do not come for just anybody. Arthur is destined to return magic to the kingdom and unite the lands of Albion. He did not succeed in either of these missions, and whatever went wrong, whatever altered his fate so drastically, was not just a simple mistake made in battle in the final days leading up to his death.

Something is broken in Camelot, something has been broken since he and Merlin first met, maybe even earlier. He just wishes he knew what.

Arthur sits at his desk and grabs a quill and a scrap of parchment, tries to write down everything, every failure, every mistake, every injustice. He’s still writing when the sun begins to set, still trying to make sense of a list that is far too long.

So, he tries to take stock of his current situation. What might be in his power to fix.

-- Merlin has magic. -- Morgana has magic. -- Magic is banned. -- Uther will never lift the ban on magic.

It’s hard, not knowing everything that might have been at play when he lived through this the first time round. What Merlin might have kept from him, what might have been discovered or resolved in the shadows, carefully hidden from Arthur.

He picks up his quill again.

-- There is a dragon under the castle.

There is a dragon. Under the castle. And in a few short years, it will try raze the city to the ground.

-- The last Dragonlord is –

Except that he’s not. Dead, that is. The last Dragonlord is still alive. Everyone is still alive. Maybe this is something Arthur can fix.

He turns to tell Merlin to prepare the horses, but is met with an empty room.

That’s one last problem to add the list.

-- Merlin is not my manservant yet.

---

Arthur stands in front of the throne, suddenly feeling very small in the face of his father. But he has been a king. He has been a better king, so he steels himself and holds his head high.

“My Lord, I have come to raise a growing concern of mine.”

Uther waves him ahead casually. He probably thinks it’s about something trivial, like the knights’ training schedule or some servant’s performance.

When Arthur says “I wish to ask why you hold a dragon under the citadel without its Lord.”

There’s a grim satisfaction that Arthur feels when he sees Uther pale. He watches his father’s eyes dart frantically around the room, looking for someone to accuse, but when they find nothing they meet Arthur’s.

“I am doing no such thing,” he lies.

“We could go beneath the cellars right now, if you like. Or would you rather save yourself the embarrassment?”

Morgana, sat silent and obedient at Uther’s side, glances between the two of them, her brow creased. As Uther’s face reddens in rage, she widens her eyes at Arthur, lips tightly pursed, and jerks her head at his – at their father. She’s trying to tell him to walk it back.

Arthur ignores her and holds Uther’s gaze.

“You insolent boy,” Uther says, slow and steady and perfectly in control. “What do you know of dragons? Of dragonlords? You were an infant when they were purged from these lands.”

“I only know that I do not wish to see Camelot burn,” he replies. “And that to ensure it does not, we will need a dragonlord.”

“There are none left.”

#evening reblog ✌️#read my fic...

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superangsty · 6 days ago