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bitsandbobsofwriting · 1 year

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A Perfect Home, Part 2

Conversations are both had and overheard;

Part 1 Part 3(coming soon)

TW: Still some not-much-gore :)

No words are exchanged as they untack and unpack the horses, but by the time they get back inside, Freya is gone and the kitchen is spotless.

Mordred leans against the table in the formally bloody room, his long forgotten injured arm being softly cleaned and bandaged, magic free, by Merlin; they mutter to each other quietly, in a volume that’s barely a whisper, with hesitant smiles on their faces. The whispers and the smiles alike drop when the others enter, and Mordred nods wordlessly to the other room. They pause for a moment, Arthur at the helm of the gathering, but Leon once again gently encourages him through the door with a hand to the shoulder, to what appears to have been a storage area. Lancelot is just finishing up with his rearranging of the furniture; a table and several crates and boxes and chests have been pushed to the walls, and a pile of blankets waits in the corner to be distributed.

Lancelot sighs as he vaguely gestures around the room in invitation, and after dumping their stuff they all settle on the floor against the walls.

Mordred wanders in, tight-fisted and tense.

Also alone.

He doesn’t say anything, doesn’t even pause to look anyone in the eyes as he crosses the room to sit by Lance. Merlin and Freya are nowhere to be seen for a little while, but if the knights concentrate, they can hear quiet footsteps and even quieter conversation, unintelligible through the floor, from the rooms above them.

They continue to stay silent as the passing time eats away at them, perhaps in the hopes that they’re about to be snapped out of a nightmare: Elyan will be bounding around unhurt, Gwaine will be drunk again but endearingly so instead of worryingly so, Leon and Arthur won’t be so tired, Mordred won’t be so wistful and angry, Percival will be more talkative, Lancelot will be more agreeable. Merlin will still be with them. Well. He’ll still be with them and he’ll want to still be with them.

Unfortunately, the silence stretches so long that all hope of waking is dashed, and after three slowly-paced loops of the herb strewn back garden and a poke around in the aforementioned shed for horse blankets, they realise, all of a sudden, that night has fallen and they’re rather starving. They’d been heading back to camp for their evening meal when they’d been attacked, and though it felt like years had passed since then, it had only been a few hours at most; darkness and hunger alike had descended quickly once the emergency had passed and their emotions had settled.

The sparse conversation that had occasionally sparked up had long since disappeared for good when they re-enter the house to sit uncomfortably on the floor of their shared room again, unsure whether it would be rude to begin eating the few rations Leon had managed to pack, or whether they should wait for their semi-willing hosts to re-join them. Lancelot and Mordred sit hip to hip in the corner, though they don’t mutter to themselves as is custom when they’re together; Arthur, and indeed the others, have to stop themselves from angrily interrogating them, but they’d already kept Merlin’s secret for so long. With their lost friend only a couple of doors and a flight of stairs away The King doubts they’d be willing to share now.

Just as the hunger pangs grow almost too painful—they all realise at some point that they hadn’t eaten lunch either—Merlin wanders into the room, alone, and with a scowl on his face that speaks to very strict instructions to not yell or hit:

“How much food do you have?”

He gets straight to the point, looking somewhere over Leon’s shoulder as the First Knight stands, quickly followed by everyone else. Arthur is the first to speak though, his voice gritty and unused:

“Merlin, will you please-”

“How much food do you have?”

The second time he asks he looks much closer to lashing out, his arms crossed tightly on his chest and his hands white-knuckled and stiff. His eyes are a dark, steely grey, no traces of sky blue—nor gold—to be seen. A wounded noise crawls from the back of Arthur’s throat when Merlin interrupts him, but Leon spares him the briefest of pitying glances before answering quietly, still not managing to get Merlin to meet his eye:

“Enough for a small portion tonight, crumbs for breakfast as well, if we really stretch it. We can make do.”

The knight tries to smile comfortingly, but it looks more like a funeral grimace and Merlin sighs, looks down to the floor, and leaves the room without a word. The still-standing men all frown at each other, unsure if that was simply meant to be an “Ok. Make do, then.” or a “Follow me.” or a something else entirely. Thankfully he returns less than a minute later, just as they’d all begun shuffling uncertainly towards the door, one large fabric bag in one hand and two smaller ones in the other. He tosses each bag to a knight at random before muttering to the floor:

“We’ve not much meat left, so a couple of you will have to go hunting tomorrow so we can feed everyone. If you need anything during the night, figure it out yourself or wait until morning.”

The harshness has dropped from his voice, but what it leaves behind is so much worse than the anger. Merlin sounds aggrieved, like he’d lost everyone and everything, like he’d had to abandon every fight that had ever come his way despite knowing he could win, like no one had ever cared for him and he’d only just figured that out. No one responds, no one can, and he leaves the room again, shutting the door behind him properly this time. There’s an immediate pause in the footsteps, like he’s waiting for something, but it doesn’t last long before the knights hear him continue his pace through the kitchen, out into the corridor, and up the stairs.

The knights, after their blanket shock has passed, open the bags and pass around the contents, sharing it out equally but being sure to take less than they really need, afraid of overstepping or misunderstanding or putting the... the family out. The two loaves of bread that had been in the larger bag are split apart and shared and squirrelled away first, then the apples and strawberries that had been in the other bags. The knights each wonder privately how they’d managed to get such fruits to grow in such weather. It was nearing winter at this point, though everything around the house seemed green and vibrant still, even amongst the rest of the forest’s oranges and reds and yellows and browns. They remember the events of the evening, and they quickly stop questioning it, trying hard to think of other things instead.

Gwaine, his voice clear from the confusion of alcohol that they’d become so used to, but tired and blurred and teary all the same, sparks up from the darkness after what feels like hours:

“Do you think he... do you think everything will be ok?”

He’s never sounded so unsure in his life, and when no one answers, when no one can answer, silence descends for real, and they all fall into an uneasy limbo.

When Arthur opens his eyes to the near pitch blackness, his heart jumps and his breath freezes. He, after a moment in which he allows his fear to fester, mentally scolds himself and forces the freezing tendrils of his most recent nightmare back into the depths of his mind, before resuming as close to his normal breathing pattern as he can. He untenses his muscles, eyes focusing on the low glow coming from behind the curtained windows into the back garden.

A whisper, one that takes him a moment or two to place, reaches him from a few feet to his left:

“We’re all awake, Princess, you can relax.”

He breathes out, properly this time instead of the short, measured exhalations he’d been giving before, and rolls his eyes as he hears Gwaine’s empty snicker:

“Why are we being so quiet then?”

Percival responds, his voice characteristically quiet:

“You were asleep, and you seemed like you needed it. Plus, Merlin and... and Freya went out the front and round to the back garden an hour or so ago, we didn’t want to disturb them.”

Arthur sits up and shuffles so his back is pressed against the stone wall as he raises a judging eyebrow, though no one can see it:

“So you’re eavesdropping.”

There’s a pregnant pause before Gwaine is replying again, his whispers more indignant than tense:

“They’re being quiet, and they’re a ways from the house, I think. We can’t hear what they’re saying really, we just catch the odd word here and there.”

Arthur nods with an air of sarcasm, and, on second thought, hums sarcastically as well. It’s almost like mag... hmm. It’s a most annoying and blessed and horrifying coincidence that a moment later, they hear quiet footsteps approach the house. The blue glow, a mighty familiar one to Arthur, grows slightly brighter as they hear the tell-tale sounds of the bench against the wall of the house being sat on:

“... and besides, that isn’t the point.”

Merlin sounds tired, exhausted, and though it’s late at night—or early in the morning—Arthur knows he’s run on less sleep before. He swallows against the guilt of barging into his home and causing him so much stress as they hear a soft sigh:

“Honestly, Merlin. Are you really not happy to see them? Not even a little?”

Though everyone feels horrible that they now are eavesdropping, it’s too dark to gesture and too risky to murmur that perhaps they should do something about it, and the knights, even Mordred, sit in the darkness in silence.

Merlin sighs, and Arthur, even after all of these years, can picture perfectly the frown on his face and the way he fiddles with his hands in his lap. Or perhaps his hands are being held by his wife? Arthur wonders if he knows him at all anymore:

“No. I’m... glad to know that they’re alright, for the most part, but I could’ve found that out by sending Lance a letter, or Gaius, or even my mother. I didn’t need, didn’t want, to see them. Especially here. I promised I’d keep you safe.”

“I am safe, Merlin. You can’t think any of them would hurt me? Not after we helped them?”

Merlin scoffs, and Arthur gulps, pointlessly closing his eyes in an effort to prepare himself for what’s coming next:

“Arthur already almost killed you once, out of blind fear and hatred. And they’re from Camelot, all you have to do is profess a strong enough hatred of magic and extreme homicidal feelings towards anyone who uses it and they’ll give you a title, a position in court, and a chunk of land.”

He sounds bitter, and no one in the little room can feel put out by that, not when they know now that it’s the truth. Freya takes a moment to pause; she also knows he can’t argue his point: Uther had made fast friends with anyone who claimed to hate magic despite their other vices, and Arthur had kept those friends when he inherited the Kingdom. She changes tack:

“They’re still your friends.”

“No,-”

Merlin’s mildly harsh response is heartbreakingly rapid:

“-I was their friend, they were never my friends, bar perhaps Lance. None of them knew who I am, and that was a specific choice I made, because I knew that they would strap me to a pyre or hang me by the neck or just slaughter me where I stood if they’d ever found out. I don’t like that they’re here, I left for a reason,-”

His voice loses it’s righteous anger and instead goes soft and loving:

“-and that reason, was to live a nightmare, terror, tyrant free life with my beautiful wife and our wonderful son. I don’t intend to ever let them take that from me, and I certainly don’t intend to let them stay longer than necessary. Once they leave, we’ll have to move, find another place to live.”

Freya seems soft and receptive at first, her smile audible in her hum, but she quickly huffs and tuts and responds:

“Come now, Merlin, really? It’s not as if Arthur is going to get back to Camelot just to send an army after us for using magic, we just saved his wife’s brother.”

There’s another pause, and though the knights can hope that Merlin is thinking over and carefully considering her point, their hopes are, once again, dashed, when he opens his mouth maybe a minute later. His voice is quiet but strained, though over the strain it’s brushed in the confidence of a man who has never, at least on this particular subject, been proven wrong:

“You don’t know Arthur like I do.”

Arthur lets his head fall back onto the wall as a tear finally overflows, and he’s grateful for the muffled sound and disguising darkness. A heavy silence follows Merlin’s confession; considering Merlin had said Arthur had already almost killed Freya, and yet he had no recollection of her, they know she has no leg to stand on, just like them. Merlin is right, she doesn’t know Arthur like he does. No one knows Arthur like Merlin had, bar perhaps Gwen.

As a shaking hand reaches out blindly in the dark, large and calloused and shaking—Gwaine’s—Arthur considers the legacy he’d built. He limply lets Gwaine squeeze his wrist and then tentatively move down to intertwine their fingers, comforted and annoyed and indifferent, as he tries to think clearly but just can’t can’t can’t. He knows somewhere in the back of his mind, as he hears Freya and Merlin disappear and then re-enter through the front door, that Gwaine would normally be the first to blame him and punch him and curse his name. But he also knows that Gwaine is feeling guilty just like the rest of them, and the warmth of Arthur’s hand in the darkness is just as much a comfort for him as it is for Arthur.

He slips off again, his mind fogged and jumbled and not understanding why Merlin couldn’t have just talked to him. Yelled at him. Hit him, even. Anything but leave.

Anything.

The King wakes early, just as rays of sun start darting through the window but before the sun has truly risen. At the first shiver of a cold morning, he assumes that he’s the first up, but as he sits against the wall and rubs his aching eyes, he realises that Mordred and Lancelot are already awake, once again sat in the corner and back to muttering quietly to each other, and Leon and Percival are missing from the room entirely. Gwaine still sleeps, curled into a ball and snoring quietly a few feet away, but Arthur can’t find it in himself to be annoyed at that; truth be told he worries about Gwaine the most. He knows the man had only stayed in Camelot for Merlin, and he’s genuinely surprised every morning he wakes to find he hasn’t disappeared in the night time.

Neither conspirators notice him, too wrapped up in their tense looking conversation, until he clears his throat of grit, swallows against the pang of hunger and thirst, and quietly mutters:

“Where are the others?”

They look up to him sharply; Arthur ignores the way Mordred immediately looks away again and Lancelot gives the younger knight an odd expression, half pitying, half annoyed, before meeting his King’s eyes:

“Merlin packed them off early to hunt. They’ve taken one horse between them, just to carry the kills and equipment. Said they should be back before dark. I don’t know where Freya and Merlin are; they’ll be about somewhere.”

Arthur nods, trying and failing not to flinch at Merlin’s name, but Lance pretends he doesn’t notice:

“Hmm. And Elyan? Is he ok?”

Mordred huffs, and, whilst still staring out the window to the right of his held up knees, responds. His voice is quietly angry, much in the same way Merlin’s had been yesterday, before the sadness, but after the explosiveness:

“Merlin would’ve told us if he weren’t, My Lord.”

Mordred’s sadness had long since turned to frustration towards Arthur, and whilst The King had assumed it was something to do with Merlin’s disappearance and how it was all his fault, the younger man’s complete dismissal of him since they set foot in this house only acts as proof. Arthur had been grieving the loss of his youngest for a while; Elyan and Merlin had been the same age as him, everyone else is older, but Mordred... he was somewhat of a younger brother in The King’s eyes, though he’d never said so to anyone.

Arthur sighs but doesn’t rise to the challenge, simply looks to the floor for a few moments before dragging himself to stand, his limbs stiff and heavy and his head pounding, overwhelmed from yesterday’s action and last night’s lack of sleep:

“I best go... find him. I... hmm.”

It’s as if he’s about to explain why he must find Merlin, but then it’s as if he figures out he doesn’t need to explain, though Lancelot is quick to follow him into standing, his eyes marginally wider:

“I don’t think that’s a good idea, Arthur. He’s still... angry, on edge. We’re already intruding, so just... give him a little time, let him approach you. We’ll be here a few days at least, anyway.”

Arthur’s eyes flash, though a snored murmur at his feet reminds him to keep his voice low:

“Well you’re certainly not intruding, because you certainly knew. Didn’t you?”

Lancelot looks taken aback but covers it quickly, and Mordred scoffs again before standing and stiffly exiting into the back garden. Arthur barely pays him any attention, instead waiting for an answer from his seemingly most and least loyal knight:

“I...-”

Lance sighs and runs a hand backwards through his hair before leaning against the wall and sighing again:

“-sort of, I suppose. Come on, we should leave him to sleep.-”

When the knight leads Arthur out into the garden, Mordred is already no where to be seen, but Lance doesn’t seem worried as he settles on a patch of grass that’s already been warmed by the sun through a gap in the tree canopy. Arthur argues within himself over sitting next to him or standing over him, but decides that this whole situation is delicate enough without reminding everyone that he’s The King. He sits, barely a foot of space between them, and looks to Lance with an expectant frown.

Lancelot sighs again, looking back with narrowed, pitying eyes:

“-I... Merlin and I stayed in touch, vaguely. A few letters a year at most, really. And he only brought me here once, years ago, near the beginning, just so I would know where he was in case of emergencies or something. That doesn’t mean I’m... welcome. I think... I think it all just came to a head for him. He went from adoring Camelot and... and you, and being grateful for me and Gaius, to... well... to hating all of it, all at once. He... resents me, for being so loyal to you, though he’d never say so. I think he wishes I’d stood up for him earlier on, encouraged him to leave earlier, instead of telling him that everything would be ok eventually and he should just stick it out.”

Arthur’s frown deepens; he’s ignoring the way his eyes tear up, ignoring the way he has to blink away the moisture so it doesn’t drip down his cheeks:

“Stick what out?”

Lancelot frowns and tilts his head as if confused, and then, then, the corner of his mouth twitches down in time with his next exhalation, one that’s ever so slightly sharper than normal; he’s annoyed, not quite angry, but almost. All of a sudden.

Arthur isn’t really sure what to make of that, so he stays quiet and waits; if Merlin’s disappearance had taught him anything, it was how to be patient:

“Do you not remember any of yesterday? Arthur... Merlin has a wife, a child, and most importantly in this context, magic. And you are the King of Camelot, Arthur, son of Uther, the monster who started the meaningless genocide against Merlin’s people. And you, his son, who continued it, despite repeated admissions that you don’t really believe in it. Despite your repeated uses of magic to your own gain. I don’t understand how you can be so genuinely confused as to why Merlin hates you?!-”

He looks away with a quiet huff and a clench of his jaw and a furrow of his brow:

“-Hates all of us.”

Arthur takes in a breath, blinking in surprise. Merlin’s magic had been... a shock, a terror, and it had made sense. A lot of sense, but he still doesn’t understand why Merlin couldn’t have just talked to him. He picks up on something else first, though:

“I’ve... I’ve never used magic for my personal gain.”

Lancelot scoffs, and though before he’d seemed a little patiently annoyed, he now seems to be venturing into actual anger. Fuelled by frustration with Arthur for being... Arthur, or himself for failing Merlin all those years ago, Arthur isn’t quite certain:

“Are you sure about that? You seemed eager to accept the help from that magical light all those years ago when you were collecting the morteous flower. You didn’t mind using the Horn of Cathbhadh to speak to your father. You didn’t mind speaking to your mother made corporeal with magic, or trying to save your father with magic, or saving Gwen with magic, or Mordred, or yourself. Over and over, Arthur, you happily allow magic, even seek it out, sometimes, to help you, the people you care about, for your own needs and comforts. What about Merlin’s needs? What about the fact that Freya would have died, innocent and in pain, years ago, if Merlin hadn’t used magic to save her from the gallows and used magic to cure the curse she’d been plagued with? What of everyone you’ve watched your father tie to the pyre? What of every Druid you hunted through the woods like an animal? Were they not worthy? Did they simply not have the Noble intellect required to use magic only when it’s right and proper? You can’t see beyond your own greed, Arthur, you never have.-”

He stands, a certain amount angrier now than he had been at the beginning of the conversation:

“-Even when you think you’re using magic for the Kingdom, you aren’t. You’re using it for yourself in one breath, and in the next you spout your shit to anyone within twenty feet of you. Merlin had to listen to that for ten years, and Gaius and I told him to grin and bear it.-”

The angered knight paces away slightly, hands clenched tightly and held stiffly to his sides. His shoulders move up and down with deep breaths and Arthur, wide eyed and all of a sudden understanding, follows him up. Before he can let go of the air in his lungs and say “I know. I know. I never believed what I said I believed and it crippled my Kingdom and my friendships and my family. It took Morgana from me and it took friends from me and it took Merlin from me”, Lance turns around, eyes teary, but apologetic instead of angry:

“-I... I’m sorry. This isn’t... entirely, your fault. I shouldn’t get angry at you, it’s not helping anyone.”

Arthur’s responding smile is small and weak and transparent, but it relaxes Lancelot’s spine nonetheless, and he allows his King to respond without interrupting:

“No, you’re right. I’ve been hypocritical, and cowardly. This...-”

Arthur sighs and looks away. He is both grateful and humiliated that of all of his closest knights, it’s Lancelot he’s having this conversation with; Gwaine, Mordred, or Elyan probably would’ve still been yelling at him, Percival wouldn’t be able to bear blaming him aloud but would be unable to hide his blame nonetheless, and Leon would get that... disappointed look on his face that always had Arthur crying in shame as a child:

“-this is all my fault, all of it, and I should blame no one but myself. I chose to follow my father’s footsteps, I chose to build my Kingdom the way I did, I chose to favour ignorance and fear and my dungeons over the true happiness and prosperity of my people. Merlin has no one to blame his hatred on but me.”

Lancelot’s sigh is long and drawn out, and though he looks like he’d love nothing more than to blame it all on Arthur, to accept his apology and let him fix it himself, he’s never been the type of man with that in his bones:

“It’s... yes. But also no. It may be your fault that Merlin hates you, hates Camelot, but it’s my fault that Merlin hates me, and I think it’s time I face that. Time we both face it.”

“Time we face...-”

Gwaine’s words, deep and croaked and interrupted with an obnoxious yawn, have both men jumping and spinning around, hands automatically going to their sword-less hips:

“-face what?”

Arthur sighs, but once again finds himself unable to be too annoyed—he feels as though all the anger has been sucked out of him in the last twelve hours, to be replaced by more intense versions of every other emotion—as Lancelot rolls his eyes. It’s The King that answers in Lance’s place, looking Gwaine straight in the eyes and not glancing away from the barely hidden intensity:

“That Merlin hating us is entirely our own fault, and we need to fix it.”

The intensity fades, the anger, the blame, the guilt, the pity in Gwaine’s eyes all dwindling to a pitiful flutter instead of a roaring flame as he sighs and looks to the floor:

“And how do you suppose we do that, Princess?”

Before Arthur can answer, not even mildly fazed by Gwaine’s nickname—he’d missed it, in all honesty—there’s something flying through the air towards the knight’s stomach; the axe hits him handle first and Gwaine only just manages to catch it as he bends over with a harsh “oomph”. Everyone once again whirls around, only this time they see Merlin, his sleeves rolled up and a frown on his face as he stalks passed them:

“You can start by chopping wood. Pile is at the side of the house, stack it in the room across from the kitchen when you’re done.-”

He disappears through a gate and behind the tall growing lavender, looking only marginally put-out that the axe hadn’t hit sharp end first as he throws over his shoulder:

“-And don’t ruin the rug, Fee will kill you.”

He’s gone between one word and the next, and though logically they know he’s barely twenty feet away, the density of the shrubs and the finality of his words make it feel as though he’s disappeared, over a cliff edge or into an endless maze. Both Arthur and Gwaine appear as though they're about to follow him anyway, but Lance stops them with a look and a subsequent nod to the other side of the house. They traipse after him when he goes, only to find the entire wall of the cottage covered up by logs. There’s also a chopping block, a pile of empty crates—ready to carry the wood through the house, they presume—and a few pairs of thick gloves.

Arthur sighs as he looks at the immense amount of work, and though a part of him preens and whistles at the chance to get tired and sweaty and lost in repetitive, physical labour, the rest of him sags; he’d never been good at words, but now he finds all he wants to do is grab Merlin by the shoulders and talk and talk and talk. And yell and be yelled at, and cry, and be cursed out and given an ultimatum and hugged and hated and forgiven.

Lance is the first to move once again, donning his gloves before grabbing the first log and steadying it on the chopping block before moving to line the crates up. Gwaine is quick to get to work, and the three of them soon find a rhythm, Gwaine chopping, Arthur ferrying splintered wood and crates too and from what appears to be a living room, and Lancelot moving logs from the wall to the block, and split wood from the floor to the crates. They switch over occasionally, every half hour or so, but other than the odd “mind your fingers” or “swap, my arms hurt” or “fucking splinters”, no words are exchanged until Leon and Percival, their horse weighed down with two deer and a few small rabbits, appear from the forest.

Time is an odd thing in this place, but Arthur would hazard a guess that it’s about halfway between high noon and sunset. He knows how fast he chops wood, and they’re about two thirds of the way through the pile when they abandon the axe, stretch out their aching shoulders, and help the other two unload. After a few exchanged words, they realise that no one has seen Mordred since early this morning, but Lancelot’s silence at the topic and the youngest knight’s apparent connection with Merlin means they don’t think on it much.

Freya stumbles upon the group of men as they stand around the neat pile of carcasses, scratching their chins over what exactly to do with them now they’re dead: the meat can hardly be eaten all in one go, but it will rot if they don’t figure out they can preserve it. Perhaps Merlin has a great barrel of salt somewhere:

“Gentlemen! I was wondering where you’d got to. I didn’t spot you come in for lunch, so I left some food on the table in the kitchen for you.”

The nerves seem to have completely melted from her persona, unlike the knights, who shuffle uncomfortably and hold their hands in front of them, as if they were being told off for something. Percival, the gentle giant, the most at ease out in the middle of the forest, is the first to reply, his voice only slightly strained:

“There’s no need, My Lady, really, we-”

She interrupts him with a scoff and a wave of a knife in their general direction, though the effect is the opposite of a threat:

“Don’t be silly, I insist. And Sir Percival, if you ever call my My Lady again you really will be in trouble.”

He smiles, ever so slightly, but before anyone can say anything Mordred turns the same corner Freya had come from, a worried frown on his face. He’s wiping his dirty hands off with a scrap off cloth, but there’s still earth under his fingernails and smudged across his cheek and a leaf in his hair. Option one is that he’d gone a little feral in the woods, option two is-:

“Merlin sent me to look for you, got worried.-”

He glances over to Arthur before looking back to the exasperated woman:

“-Everything ok?”

She huffs and rolls her eyes:

“Yes, Mordred, everything is fine. You’re just as bad as each other, one might think you’re brothers.-”

If Freya, if indeed anyone, notices the slight uptick at the corner of Mordred’s mouth, no one mentions it:

“-I was just offering them food. After they eat, would you mind showing them the ice? We can leave out enough meat for a big meal tonight, but the rest can be put downstairs, after it’s been prepped.”

Mordred nods and smiles, though it’s short loved as he once more glances to his King. His former King, Arthur thinks?

He stands in place, obviously not intending to move until Freya leaves first, and though she rolls her eyes and sighs again, she does walk back around to the front of the house after sending one last apologetic smile to the knights.

Mordred clenches his jaw, letting out a deep breath and blinking before saying, his voice monotonous:

“Go inside and eat, I’ll come back in half a mark to show you what to do with that lot. You can just leave it in the shade for now, it’ll be ok.”

He doesn’t wait for an answer, doesn’t even wait for a reaction, just follows Freya around the corner without another word.

A few hours later, after Mordred had shown the baffled knights, with a grin on his face, the magically maintained frozen room dug into a basement under the house, and the deer and rabbits had been skinned and gutted and hung, Arthur finds himself sat sideways on the second to bottom step of the staircase. His back is to the wall and he stares up onto the floor above with an odd sort of desperation and a weight in his chest that feels like it’s attached via flimsy string to his throat. He feels as though, if the weight were to drop, he’d gasp deeply and sharply and never be able to stop.

Percival had long since suggested going into the forest again, this time to forage, and Gwaine had eagerly, or as eagerly as he could when miserable and self hating, accepted the request. Arthur had nodded his thanks to the giant when the other knight’s back had been turned, and it had been returned with the shaky smile of a man who didn’t know how to look after everyone, but knew how to look after someone. Lancelot is asleep, tossing and turning and pretending he isn’t waking from a nightmare every five minutes, in the room they’d slept in the previous night, and Leon, after a gingerly made request had been met with a wary clenched jaw and an even warier nod, had settled in the room adjacent the living area, a library, to read.

Arthur had been on the step for a while and his back was growing stiff, but he felt, of all spots in the house he could perch and think, this is possibly the best. It seems unobtrusive, even though there's a higher chance of being seen and questioned. But Merlin had walked past him at least three times since he had sat down and hadn’t even spared him a glance.

It’s the fourth time that he walks past, in the front door and towards the kitchen, that he pauses, looks to the floor, sighs, and turns around again. He can’t, or won’t, meet Arthur’s hopeful eyes, but he also doesn’t yell or clench his fists so tightly, so The King waits with baited breath:

“You can go see him, if you really want, though he’ll probably be asleep. Door on the right when you get to the top. Don’t wake him up, and if you do, don’t let him move.”

He waits only for a moment, just long enough for Arthur to blink in shock that he’d been directly, and solely, addressed—something that hadn’t happened since yesterday’s “you don’t get to speak-”—before turning around and walking into the kitchen again. He shuts the door this time, despite the fact that it’s been propped open all day for ease of movement, and Arthur gets the feeling that his serv... that the physician won’t be leaving any time soon, and if he does, it won’t be through the hallway entrance.

He glances up the steps, but it takes him another moment or two before he stands up, twists his back out with a satisfying series of pops, and drags his aching body upstairs. The sudden fighting and desperate riding had ruined him in terms of pulled muscles, but the wood chopping had forced into existence aches and pains that Arthur had never, in the two decades since he’d first attempted to lift a sword, experienced before. It takes him an embarrassing length of time for him to reach the top and turn to the right, but when he does, the door Elyan lays behind—that he could see from the bottom of the stairs and had ignored, mistakenly assuming his brother would be hidden in some unseen chamber out of Arthur’s reach forever—almost mocks him with its plainness.

He doesn’t like the implication: that it isn’t important, that it hides nothing precious, like Elyan isn’t his brother in everything bar blood, though even then, will still share blood with his children, one day.

Gods, Gwen.

Arthur had barely spared her a thought in the last day or two, but his heart beats wild and fast for her as he stares—glares, really—at the harsh slab of wood in front of him, unlocked and within reach. Logically, he knows he would’ve been told if Elyan hadn’t.... survived, but equally illogically, before he opens the door and looks in, his brother could be dead or alive, either, or maybe both, and Gwen... sits on her throne at home, commanding the council and the guards and the staff as though she were born too-

[Arthur looks at her sometimes, all golden hard edges and dark softness, and thinks that perhaps she was born to, that she was always going to end up besides him, his equal, his partner, his whole heart. Though equally he knows that she panics still even now, in the privacy of their chambers, about whether she’d said the correct words, done the correct thing, thought the correct thoughts.]

-under the impression that her husband, brother, and friends, are almost reaching their destination, happy to be out in the woods once more. She doesn’t know that Elyan had almost died, that Leon had broken his hand, that Mordred had gashed his arm, that... that Merlin is alive and well and so very very angry. Arthur can’t conceive of ever lying to her; his wife knows his greatest doubts, his most horrifying night terrors—and his silliest dreams—his plans for the future, his regrets for the past, his everything. And yet. Would he tell her of this? Of Merlin, hidden away in the woods, hating him, hating their Kingdom? Of the secret Lancelot, the only person who had almost filled Merlin’s shoes for her when he’d first disappeared, had kept all these years? Of Mordred’s resentment? Of Percival’s teariness, and Gwaine’s confusion, and Leon’s quiet sadness?

He knows he’ll tell her; had it been anyone else, anyone else at all, he thinks he could manage an omissive lie—it’s not lying if he just never says anything either way—but even the thought of doing that deepens the pit in his stomach to heretical levels and he pushes the traitorous idea from his mind.

The King, though he feels like so much less out here surrounded by scorn and pity and nothing else, sighs, lifting a clammy hand to the doorknob. With a mutter consisting of something along the lines of “Oh for fuck’s sake, get on with it”, Arthur pushes through into the dark room, careful to remain quiet despite his rigid, clumsy muscles, and deep breathing. Before his eyes can even adjust, a coarse murmur reaches out to him from the darkness:

“I heard you coming up the stairs, wondered how long it would take you to come in, highness.-”

Arthur’s body relaxes all in one go, the relief at hearing Elyan’s voice, though exhausted and scratchy, almost enough to bring him to his knees. Before his joints buckle, Elyan clears his throat, groans quietly from the movement, and continues:

“-Do us a favour and crack the curtains. I’ll still be half convinced I’m dead and this is all some weird nightmare until I can see the sun.”

Arthur lets out a short huff of air in what could be construed as amusement as he spies a barely twitching lump on the bed through the darkness. He uses the light bleeding through—just barely—from downstairs to stumble his way to the curtains and open them. Half a foot of exposed windowpane floods the room with sun, and when Elyan groans again and turns his closed eyes away, unable to even lift his arm to cover his face, Arthur steps in front of him to block the glare.

“You want me to close them again? I can light some candles instead, if you like.”

“No, no, I’ll get used to it. At least I know I’m not hallucinating anymore.-”

Arthur huffs again, more joy bleeding into his face as he realises he is here, talking to Elyan, who is awake and breathing and joking and alive. He waits for his knight’s ever so slight nod of approval before abandoning his protective post and wandering over to stand by his side instead; Elyan twitches his hand in a way that Arthur correctly interprets to mean “sit down” and he does so, ever so gently, on the edge of the bed. Once again, Elyan speaks before The King can even string a single sentence together:

“-How’re you holding up?”

Arthur laughs for real this time, tipping his head back as he does so. It’s short and bitter, more of a fox’s bark than a laugh, and he grabs his brother’s hand to squeeze as he answers:

“Me? I should be asking you that.”

Elyan looks up at his with dark, bloodshot eyes, the bags below them more noticeable than any Arthur had ever seen. His lips are cracked and pale and his brow is sweaty and feverish, and yet he still looks better than Arthur feels; he still refuses to believe that Elyan isn’t mistaken in asking him his... state:

“The first time I woke up I laughed and stopped fighting, because I saw Merlin’s face over mine, looking so... different. The worry in his eyes was normal, but... he’d aged, matured, and in the worry there was anger too. I thought I was dead, and I gave up. I can only imagine how you’re feeling.”

Arthur frowns, able to focus on only one thing:

“Why would you think you were dead?”

Elyan turns away here, but before he does Arthur can see the dull spark of heavy shame in his eyes:

“I... maybe it was the coward’s way out but... I’d half convinced myself Merlin was dead. It was a... choice, and I trained myself into believing it. It was easier somehow to think that he wasn’t choosing to not come back. If Merlin was dead, and I was seeing him... I was dead too.”

Arthur sighs but nods in understanding. Elyan, despite clocking right away that Arthur looked like shit, had yet to show even a speck of pity, so Arthur will show him the same courtesy in not judging him; in all honesty, Arthur truly thinks he understands:

“I get it, I do. Why do you think I was so determined to believe he’d been taken forcibly for so long? I couldn’t cope with the fact that I’d driven him away, that it was my fault. It was... yeah. But I understand now, he has this place, his family, his... yeah.”

He’s not quite sure he can bring himself to say it yet, the M word but he needn’t: Elyan is turning back around again with a confused frown on his face:

“Family?”

Arthur’s jaw clenches but he doesn’t look away. With how protective Merlin had been, he’s unsurprised that he hadn’t allowed Freya to be in the same room as Elyan, and his... the child had left before the injured knight had even made it off the kitchen table:

“We’re in his home, a mile or so East of the border. He has a wife and a dog and a... there’s a child, too. Though he sent the child and dog away, to be safe elsewhere, I think. It’s a whole mess. You were near dead and he hated us so much he almost sent us away, he meant to, tried to, but Freya, his wife, told him to let us in, and Lancelot convinced him in the end. He’s barely even looked at us since, it’s clear he wants us gone as soon as possible.”

Elyan tears up at that, that Merlin had a whole family, and whole life, and had so desperately not wanted his friends to ever be a part of it:

“Why, though? I don’t-”

He interrupts himself with a cough but Arthur is quick to react, lifting his head with one gentle hand, and putting the cup from the side-table to his mouth with the other. Elyan drinks slowly, flushing slightly when Arthur smirks as he lovingly wipes the dribbled water from his chin:

“-thanks. I just don’t understand why. I’ve thought about the days previous to him leaving, the weeks previous, over and over and over, and nothing happened. Nothing. I don’t understand what could possibly have occurred to make him leave and never come back.”

Arthur gulps and looks away, but it only serves to make him look more guilty; he becomes even more impossibly grateful when the next words out of Elyan’s mouth aren’t “what did you do?” and are instead:

“What happened, Arthur? Did you figure it out? Did he tell you?”

There’s another gulp, another teary look, and another sigh before Arthur’s gaze falls to his lap, where his hands are still absent-mindedly playing with his brother’s calloused fingers:

“He’d been hiding Freya away in the woods for too long, and he got sick of it. And he... he has magic. A great deal of it, and he hates us all because... because we hated him first. We just didn’t know it.-”

There’s a long silence, and though Elyan’s eyes drift emptily to the ceiling, he looks less surprised than Arthur thinks he should. He finishes quietly, almost as though he thinks the words he says could fracture the disturbingly calm scene in front of him like a hammer taken to a frozen spider’s web:

“-He used it to heal you, when you were bleeding too much for him and Freya to stop.”

Elyan hums lowly, nodding his head barely half an inch, but it’s enough for Arthur to know that he’s heard him, understood him; the blonde knows perfectly well how intelligent his closest friends are, and he doesn’t deign to interrupt Elyan’s thoughts until the knight looks at him with a sigh on his lips:

“I thought that was a dream. Or... I don’t know what I thought, only what I felt. And it wasn’t... natural.”

He curls his lip, but it’s more in confusion and curiosity, not even touching the sides of disgust. Arthur can’t help but lean forward and ask, in a low voice as though he were afraid of anyone finding out he wanted to know:

“What was it like? His magic? To be healed by it, touched by it?”

Elyan’s eyes clear, just for a moment, and for that brief moment he seems calm and serene and truly happy. It disappears quickly, and he clenches his jaw and looks away:

“Soft, golden. I could just feel this... warmth, spread out, replacing the pain bit by bit. I had been so scared of falling asleep, knowing I would never wake up and see my sister again, but suddenly... sleeping wasn’t so terrifying anymore. It felt less like sleeping and more like... like... drifting. Like I was so comfortable that I was thinking less and less until I didn’t even realise I wasn’t thinking anymore. I... it was odd. I thought I was dying, logically, but at the same time I’d never felt more wonderful.-”

He looks back to Arthur, the embers of shame sparking again, and The King frowns:

“-I’d never hated magic, not before I came back to Camelot. In fact, Uther’s... laws... it was one of the reasons I first left. But then I came back, and things were better, but at the same time they were the same as they’d always been, and in some ways they’d even been worse, and I didn’t... I pushed it aside. And gradually I found myself being... scared of magic, hating it, in ways I’d never felt before. I’d been wary, sure, but more curious than wary, and more impressed than curious. Camelot is... I love it, truly, but it’s toxic. It’s like there’s something in the air that makes all logic go out the window when it comes to magic, makes you frightful and hateful when there’s no reason to be. Merlin’s magic... it... it wasn’t painful, it wasn’t scary, and it reminded me of who I was before. How could I have grown to hate something so... so... so Merlin? Gods, no wonder he stopped coming over for dinner. No wonder he never came back.-”

Arthur sits captivated, unable to look away but feeling equally unable to look Elyan in the eyes. His mind spins and spins as he considers a million possibilities; how many in his Kingdom hadn’t believed his father’s say-so? How many had been stronger than him? For years?

Elyan and Gwen are family, the closest pair of siblings he’d ever come across, they share everything. Did Gwen believe the same? Was she sitting on her Throne unable to Rule the way she saw fit, the way she knows is right? Because of Arthur? Did she have nightmares of her father on a pyre still, whilst Arthur slept soundly besides her in their shared bed? A pyre that apparently wouldn’t have been earned even if he had been guilty of magic?

His thoughts continue to spiral, chasing shadows of everyone he’d ever conversed with through his mind as though he’d be able to ask them their beliefs, but Elyan quirks his eyebrow, ever so slightly, and sighs again before continuing softly:

“-Don’t do that to yourself, Arthur. You couldn’t of known. No one could. Maybe I wasn’t anti-magic, but I also didn’t grow up under Uther, training to be a knight. I can’t imagine there was much escape from the vitriol in the castle.”

Arthur’s face cracks slightly:

“Yeah, but still, I-”

“Arthur, you were a child then, there was nothing you could do, but you’re an adult now. Don’t wallow, just fix it. We’ll have your back... always.”

He starts off powerfully, or as powerfully as he can with his energy as low as it is, but he wains quickly. His voice goes soft and his eyes droop, and when he squeezes Arthur’s hand, the King can feel the tremor in his fingers and see the fear creeping into his eyes; he pushes aside his childish need for reassurance and instead smiles softly and nods:

“Thank you, Elyan. Get some sleep, you’re exhausted still and Merlin and Freya will kill me if they find out I stressed you too much. Sleep.”

When Elyan’s grip finally loosens and his eyelids fully droop, Arthur stands carefully, tucking his brother’s hand back by his side before he draws the curtains again, quietly as he can, and leaves the room. He stands in the corridor for a moment, staring once again at the shut door; his heart beats a lot slower this time, and though he’s still aware of the thud thud thud against his ribcage, it no longer makes him feel nauseous. He takes a deep breath, the anxiety swirling in his stomach as if he were only seconds from the telling the council he plans on legalising magic. He knows logically he has a few weeks; to plan, to research, to bring people on side quietly. But it’s still a terrifying endeavour, and unlike all previous terrifying endeavours, he has no guarantee, not even the smallest chance, that Merlin will be besides him.

His thoughts are interrupted as he glances down the stairs, to where he can just about see the front door. He doesn’t move, not when he hears a muffled exclamation of exasperation from Freya, and not when he hears a muffled whoosh of air. His eyebrows twitch inwards slightly and he cautiously takes the first two steps down, halting when the front door crashes inwards, swinging shut after Merlin rushes into the hall, red with anger and blurred with speed. He moves to the end of the hallway, out of Arthur’s sight, and before The King’s second thought of “I should stay out of his way” kicks in, his first thought of “What’s wrong?!” drives him quickly down the rest of the stairs.

Before Arthur even has time to turn around, a pair of strong hands grab his shoulders, spin him, and slam his back into the wall by the bottom step. His wide eyes meet Merlin’s furious stare as he catches his breath, but the former servant just pushes him further into the wall as he growls lowly:

“I swear to any God you may perhaps believe in, Arthur, if you even think about laying a single finger on him, not your armour, not your army, not your big stone walls, will stop me from burning your Kingdom to the ground with you trapped right in the middle, under the rubble and choking on the smoke of a thousand pyres.-”

All Arthur can do is nod despite his confusion, even as Leon bursts through the door not even two feet to his left, obviously having come running at the slamming and cursing and yelling. Merlin pays the other knight no mind, and the three of them remain stock still for another moment or five, until there’s another whoosh from outside and the Warlock seems to remember himself. He drops Arthur to the floor and takes a step back, dropping his face to his hands and seemingly losing all his energy in one fell swoop:

“-Oh, in the name of the Gods let’s get this over with.-”

He looks up with a wry smile and gestures towards the door, glancing at both of them:

“-After you.”

The two knights glance at each other, trying to ignore the sudden thought of “He’s finally decided to kill us and that’s why Freya seemingly left; she didn’t approve.” that flashes through their minds as they make their way into the front garden.

The day had moved into late afternoon whilst the knights had been absent-mindedly occupied; the sun hangs low in the clear sky, blinding them through the trees, and though there’s a biting chill to the wind, the brightness gives a momentary illusion of summer. When they lower their hands, blinking in the orange light, they’re met with a softly grinning Freya, a perfectly poised (to attack?) dog, and a curiously fidgeting child staring at them.

They recognise him as the boy from before, and all of a sudden Merlin’s threat makes sense.

END of Part 3!!

Things will get cuter and better in the next (and hopefully last) part!! I promise!! When he has a son who is too curious for his own good and wants to make friends with everyone (I wonder where he get’s it from), Merlin doesn’t really have any choice but to start getting along with anyone.

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