Chapter Text
Kestrel was almost seven years old when his sister spoke to him about destiny. He was old enough to know why some people would say that he shouldn’t call her his sister. He was old enough to start to understand some of what had always been said of him rather than just ‘knowing’, though it would take him much longer to understand what wasn’t said and what was meant by those silences. He could see all the creatures bustling about under the rock, but he didn’t know what they were doing or why. He couldn’t see himself among them.
He didn’t know if he’d wanted to belong but he had realized that he never would before he had a chance to recognize a chance lost.
Ingerid belongs to something larger than their family. She didn’t fit in for different reasons than Kestrel, but he felt that it still bound them together in a way that was usually outside of his reach. He didn’t know what she thought about it, looking back. She made time for him. That meant something, even if he can never truly figure out what. She told him stories of what she could see, and he thought she had usually kept them to herself. Perhaps she just wanted someone she could tell.
“You have two paths before you,” she told him the day before she left. It was far more direct than her usual care with the nature of destiny.
“Which should I choose?” He had felt something stir in his heart that he’d never felt before. Perhaps it was what he had always been waiting to hear. Perhaps it was something overwhelmingly new. He had never thought of his future.
Ingerid’s expression grew unusually soft. Her path was not an easy one, and so she had to learn ways to protect herself early. Yet she was still young, even if she seemed full grown to his eyes. “You won’t know that you had a chance to choose until after it’s happened.” Perhaps it was that moment which truly sealed his destiny.
He watched her walk away until even he couldn’t see her.
“Who was my father?” Kestrel asked his mother, when he held the thread while she weaved.
“Not who some people wanted him to be,” his mother said. It was all that she’d ever said about it.
“I’ve heard what they say,” he’d tried. It was true. Perhaps it would’ve been true no matter what he looked like, but for all he shared his mother’s features there was too much that stood out. He might have shared a chin with a cousin, but no one paid attention to that when they could instead see the red in his hair and the pale grey of his eyes.
Later, he pieces together that the comments addressed towards him had often been just as much for his mother. Later still, he understands more of what she’d chosen and why. Then, he’d just been endlessly curious, and had made an artful attempt at using not-always-friendly teasing as a lever to try to get answers.
His mother turned away from her loom for a moment, reaching out to tap him on the forehead. “I named you for your sharp eyes, and for sharp sight.” Sharp enough to see the worth in others’ words, or the lack of the same. He tried to live up to her words, because he knew that they mattered.
His mother never seemed affected by any of it. Kestrel knew that his grandfather had been more than a little displeased by his daughter bringing home a bastard, even if the man had softened over the years. Kestrel can’t say he saw that softness often, so it took a feat of imagination to picture it. There was a truce between father and daughter, because she had weathered any storm. But his grandfather didn’t show much softness with any of his grandchildren, so Kestrel wouldn’t say that he had truly seen a difference, even when his cousins claimed it existed.
His world was what it was, and what it had always been.
After Ingerid’s words, he wondered if it was his mother’s choice that shaped the choice that he would never know he had made.
Kestrel could never forget Ingerid’s prophecy. When they met again, she didn’t speak of it, and he didn’t either. She knew that he remembered. He knew that she regretted laying it on him. But he’d been a grown man by then, and so he could understand that his sister hadn’t yet truly known what would come of what she had meant as a gift of sorts. She hadn’t shared such a secret with anyone else.
Kestrel could put it out of his mind for long stretches of time, but it would always come back to him. He would wonder all over again when they came back. Was it asking to be sent to his mother’s younger brother rather than the older? Was it deciding to travel inland instead of taking the coast? Was it going to Camelot to learn, or was it when he left? Was it when Galahad begged to go to Camelot, and he’d agreed to escort him that far? Was it when he’d seen the uncertainty in the dark haired boy’s face and given him a room?
He would never truly know, and yet he felt that it was most likely tied to Camelot.
Kestrel remembered Camelot as it had been when he’d gone there, barely older than Merlin. He liked to think he’d been rather better at disguising his awe, but he’d been a different sort of boy, and one who had thought himself a man.
Uther had no longer been the young conquer he still was in stories, but instead the solid king of a prosperous kingdom. He had brought peace that allowed the land to flourish. There was much to be said about making a living without constantly keeping in mind the knowledge that there was a good chance soldiers would come through like locusts, and that was the best case as soldiers rarely did nothing more than take whatever food they could.
Uther granted gifts to those who had joined him, and kept a firm grip on those who might otherwise feel like they could disobey. A new king, but what did most care about a change of name when they felt a change in their lives for the better? And he had welcomed magic to his land, in a way that no other kingdom did.
It was said that when Uther had been accused of using magic to take his new kingdom, he had laughed. It was a story oft repeated, and yet one whose meaning Kestrel never felt he fully understood. Perhaps because the meaning changed with the teller. And Kestrel had not come to Camelot to see the nature of the king. He came because of the stories of the physicians that had come with him. He had been able to claim a name and rank high enough to be acknowledged – and that they were both foreign meant he proved himself worthy of his position due to his own skill.
Kestrel had realized that he wasn’t meant to be a physician by the end of his first week. Not a physician as Gaius was. Kestrel found himself fascinated by the body, but he found it far harder to think of the person or take real interest in their day to day aliments. It had been hard to take as someone who had rarely failed before. He had still taken in everything that Gaius taught him and had served as an able apprentice, but that was because he wouldn’t throw away a chance to learn.
Gaius had seen it in him. Kestrel suspected he had seen it before Kestrel had. Gaius hadn’t turned him away, even so. Gaius had other apprentices, but it was Kestrel – far away from everything he’d known and so unsure of who he was underneath his surface level pride – that he’d taken in. It was Kestrel he spoke to of all there was to learn in the world, and shared the mysteries that still baffled him.
Kestrel had learned that a man could admit to failures without being weak. He had learned what it meant to be a physician, in spirit and not just in skill. Gaius had given Kestrel a purpose. He had given him a home. Even young and proud and still better at diagnosing problems than caring about them, he had sight enough to understand that it was a gift. It wasn’t enough to understand that there was so much he hadn’t learned.
Gaius hadn’t tried to stop him from leaving, even as he’d given him as much advice as he could fit in. Kestrel was his own man, and he wanted his own life. He traveled and found that he did take pleasure in being a wanderer. He found he took pleasure in being a physician too. At first his offers of help had been because it gave him welcome wherever he went and would stay longer if there was some interesting case. Yet with time came more patience, too. Gaius had shown him that a physician could always learn more, and that listening to others was a chance to be seized whenever he could. He eventually learned the lesson that Gaius held unspoken: that just because he hadn't been ready to be a physician than didn't mean he never would.
Occasionally he heard rumors of Camelot, but that had been of a land that wasn’t his own. He grew old enough to tell stories about the young man he’d been without removing the foolishness, and to tell stories about life in court that hadn’t been about him. He had told stories often during the long winter that made him grateful to the village that had taken him in. When the snow melted and Galahad begged Kestrel to take him to Camelot, Kestrel didn’t have the heart to tell him that he hadn’t meant his travels to go in that direction.
He didn’t mean to stay.
Kestel grew even more certain that he’d leave Camelot as soon as he could when he’d taken up the role of court physician. He would stay long enough to make sure that Galahad had a place – and that Merlin had a place – which would’ve been unlikely if he’d denied the king’s ‘request’, but in his heart it had always been temporary. He’s grown wise enough to know there are aliments he can’t cure.
Gaius had been close to the king, and so Kestrel had watched the court almost in spite of himself. He remembered Uther and his laughing young bride. Uther had smiled easily in those days when he’d felt flush with power, but there had been love there. He remembered Uther walking with Nimueh, their heads unconsciously tilted towards each other as they spoke of the future. He remembered a court full of magic, and a city where you could look up and see a dragon flying overhead.
Kestrel sees Uther’s dark haired ward and his golden son and wonders.
Kestrel sees the damage Uther has done to himself and knows that he can’t fix it. Perhaps those who had called Uther a bloody handed conqueror would be pleased that he’d turned that on his own kingdom, but Kestrel has never taken pleasure in trying to see the worst of the world.
Kestrel does his best to keep himself busy as he waits. It takes time for news to spread, but he’s sure that the letters he’s sent out will bring someone better suited sooner rather than later. He looks towards that future, instead of the past. He follows Gaius’ recipes and is grateful for the occasional strange injury. He cares for the dead, but that doesn’t change that he finds more fulfillment in diving into strange poisons and plague even now he has the patience for the day to day work asked of him.
Then Edwin arrives.
Edwin should be the answer to Kestrel’s problems. He seems an able enough physician, and Kestrel could stay long enough to make sure that impression is true. He’s also a sorcerer. Kestrel has always been able to recognize sorcerers. He’s also able to count back years and think of the most likely answer to how a young boy might have gained such burns.
Kestrel has heard stories of the purge. He can see it in Uther. He can see it in others, even if it usually doesn’t run quite as deep. It’s been years since there was serious magic in Camelot – until the recent resurgence that matches the years he sees in Edwin – but that hasn’t healed it.
Kestrel has heard stories of the purge, and he knows that Gaius had remained at Uther’s side. He can think of reasons. He knows the love that had been between them and can imagine Uther with almost everything lost to him reaching out and knows that Gaius would never have been able to turn away from the wounded. He knows that Gaius had seen himself as a tempering influence, even when Uther’s temper had been more controlled. He knows that there’s a chance that Gaius could’ve used his position at Uther’s side to protect people. He knows that Gaius had always been wary himself – not of magic, perhaps, but of those who used it freely on others.
Kestrel knows that he’ll never get a true answer to his questions. He had heard stories and traveled further from Camelot rather than towards it. He hadn’t wanted to hear what might be said, and so he’s left without words to answer others' questions.
“I can’t let you kill him,” Kestrel tells Edwin plainly, in the room he’d spent so many hours in as a youth.
“Why not?” For all the scorn in the response, there’s a place open to hear an answer.
And so, Kestrel has to have an answer. He can’t avoid it as he has been since he came back to Camelot. “Because I’m a physician. And because you are, too.” Once those had been Gaius’ words. It’s lucky that Edwin doesn’t hear that.
Instead, Edwin just scoffs. “That’s not enough.”
“Nothing could be enough. If you kill Uther with magic, it won’t bring it back. It won’t bring back your parents, or anyone else who died.” It won’t save those who took part. “I think you do better as a healer than a killer.”
Kestrel meets Edwin’s gaze for a long, steady moment.
Kestrel doesn’t follow him when he leaves.
“Edwin said Gaius had magic,” Merlin says, staring down at his pestle with unusual focus.
Kestrel studies his apprentice. Some day the boy might find his own way towards working as a physician. “When I knew him, he did.” When Kestrel knew him, he loved him. He still does.
Merlin doesn’t look up from his paste. He doesn’t say ‘but Uther let him stay’. He doesn’t ask what he’d done. Kestrel can see he wants to ask both, and more, but doesn’t know how.
“I don’t understand,” he says, finally.
“There are times when you won’t find an answer.” Kestrel tells him. It’s not a lesson he expects Merlin to accept easily. Kestrel wouldn’t have, at his age. Nor, he can admit, at a far greater age than Merlin is now.
“You’re not from Camelot. Why do you stay?”
“I have work here.”
Merlin is clearly unsatisfied, but he’s known Kestrel long enough not to expect a better answer.
Kestrel returns to the sleeping draft he’s been working on. It’s far too routine a matter to hold his attention. He thinks instead of dead sorcerers and burned children. He thinks of sicknesses he can’t heal. When he’d been young, he wasn’t able to stand dealing with people he knew he wouldn’t be able to truly heal. He hated feeling helpless and so had placed that above any smaller comfort he could offer. It hadn’t seemed like there was any meaning to it.
Gaius had never let the inevitable stop him from offering what comfort he could along the way.
For once, Kestrel chooses without thinking of destiny.