Work Text:
Fandom: Merlin (BBC)
Prompt: “You look tired.”
There are bad days.
Days his armor feels less like the second skin he’s been told it is, days where the sword in his hand still bleeds as he cleans it in the washbasin, days where his helmet is as heavy as the many corpses he’s seen on the battlefield. On these days, when he meets with the smiths in their armory, he looks at all the armor and says this plate should be thicker and we need more support here when we have to fight on foot and this can’t be this heavy we need to be able to move and what is the point of armor if it doesn’t protect those who must wear it?
Elyan’s forge is calm amidst the storm, saying they’ve loosened the panel, if this is changed the rest will have to become heavier to compensate, they can’t finish the armor quite yet because the forge isn’t hot enough and even she can’t make the coals heat faster.
On these days, he takes his sword and swings at the practice dummies until straw is flying across the field and sweat drips into his eyes until they sting with the salt. Sometimes he can’t tell whether it’s his sweat or his tears.
On these days he sits in his chambers and just looks at his hands. They shake and he turns them over, looking at the calluses from the gauntlets and the scars from where the metalwork pierced his skin. From when the leather grip of his sword rubbed the skin raw from fighting without gloves. The stains from the blood that he just can’t wash off.
He stands and strides to the washbasin but it’s empty. He yanks open the door and shouts for water. A servant pours it into the basin and he plunges his hands in. The servant warns that it’s too warm, he’s to burn his hands, but he can’t feel the heat. He just needs to get the blood off his hands and he knows it’s gone but then why are his hands so red? Why do they leave little red traces in the water? He scrubs harder, and the water becomes redder so it must be working, the blood must be washing off and as he scrubs, the water gets redder and redder.
The servants find on his knees next to the washbasin, hands burned and rubbed raw, bleeding from the knuckles and his head bowed low, hair hanging limply in his face, tears drying on his cheeks.
There are bad days.
There are good days.
Days when the sun doesn’t glint like malice off the shoulder plates, days where the squires laugh and roughhouse and wrestle in the grass like the children they are, tumbling down with grass stains on their tunics and coming up with breathless smiles on their faces. Days where he can come to terms with the fact that all of those who are gone are not his fault, but the fault of some careless ruler too bloodthirsty for the crowns they wear upon their heads, soaked in the blood and tears of their subjects. On these days, he spends his time learning mending skills from Guinevere, sister of his brother-in-arms, the needles feeling like tiny sticks in his calloused hands, the soft fabric, and coarse leather sliding through his fingers. Sometimes he’ll prick his fingers and she will scold him for staining the fabric, smacking the side of his head lightly with a spool. He trains with the new gauntlets he’s made, pointing out how they’ll work and listening to the explanations about how their manufacture affects their performance.
On these days he sits on the castle steps and watches the marketplace go back and forth. The little children who run underfoot and gleefully flock to the stalls they know and people they’ve never seen before. It’s so relieving to see children growing up unafraid of learning, or of outsiders, instead of being raised to believe everyone that isn’t them is an enemy.
A group of them run around a stall that sells flowers grown on the banks of the river that runs through the center of the seaward farming community. As he watches, the stall owner reaches into a basket and plucks out a bunch and hands them to the children. They take them and whisper to each other. One of them scans the marketplace and fixes their gaze on him. He looks behind him. He looks back. He waves. Their faces light up and they scamper towards him.
On days where the sun makes him squint and he wears his gauntlets outside, he would tense, ready for the rocks to be thrown and the children to tear his armor from him. But today, where his tunic is loose-fitting and the fingerless gloves over his hands are the soft wool from the garment district, he lets his breath go and waits as they get close.
“You’re Sir Leon, right?” The first one blurts. She’s a pretty young thing with wild eyes and strong wrists. Her mother must be a farmer. “The King’s second-in-command?”
“You can’t just ask people like that!” Another young one, hair pulled up into a twist. She must be the forge apprentice; Elyan and Guinevere have similar marks on their arms from the glove work. “And you have to address knights as ‘sir,’ all the time.”
“No, you needn’t bother with such formalities,” Leon says. The children nod. “My name is Leon. What are your names?”
“Allena,” the wild-eyed one says.
“Amura,” the forge apprentice says.
“Dannel,” a stocky boy says. He holds the flowers in his large hands. Leon is vividly reminded of how his fingers feel when they’re holding Guinevere’s needles.
“Tazo,” the last one says. They have a blond streak in their hair, and a flower tucked behind one ear.
“It is nice to meet you,” Leon says, nodding to each one in turn. There’s an awkward silence. Leon’s experience with children is limited to the young ones who never had a chance to be young back when —
Back.
He’s saved from turning the good day into a bad day when Allena asks: “Can we braid your hair?”
“We like putting the flowers in the braids,” Dannel explains, gesturing to the braids in Allena and Amura’s braids.
“But our hair is too similar to give us practice,” Allena rushes on, “and Tazo and Dannel don’t have hair long enough.”
Leon reaches a hand up to tug lightly at his hair. “I am afraid my hair may be too dirty for your pretty flowers.”
“Actually,” Tazo says quietly, “it makes it easier for the braid to stay in shape. Then the flowers can stay in for longer.”
Leon smiles. Children, when they set their minds to something, will not stop until they get it. “What would you like me to do?”
Amura scoots behind him, running her fingers through his hair, snagging on tangles and knots. She yanks. Leon’s head goes back and his hand flies to hers in his hair. “Please, be gentle with me. I am an old man, I am not as strong as you.”
“You’re not old,” Allena corrects, producing a pine-needle brush from one of the cavernous pockets in her apron and handing it to Amura, “your hands still work.”
“Not as well as they used too,” Leon admits, holding his hands up for the children to see, “see how they shake?”
Tazo takes one of his hands in theirs, running fingers over the scars. “How did you get these, Leon?”
Leon sighs. “Fighting. And from the Queen’s needles,” he admits to the laughter of the children, “I am not as adept as she is at making sure I sew the fabric and not myself.”
“You’ll get better,” Allena promises as Dannel takes the side part of his hair and begins to twist, “you can learn how to. That’s what Dannel’s doing down in the garment district.”
“I am old,” Leon protests, smiling lightly as Allena shoots him a glare. It is surprising how much it mimics that of his King. “I am older,” he corrects himself, “my mind is not what it once was. I cannot learn as quickly as you.”
“But you can still learn,” Amura declares as she works.
“Yes,” Leon smiles, “I can. I am, at this moment. I have learned that dirtier hair can hold its shape better, and I have learned all of your names.”
“What’s my name?”
“Allena, of course.”
“Who am I?”
“Amura.”
“Me?”
“You are Dannel.”
“And me?”
“My friend Tazo.”
“See?” Amira says triumphantly, “you can still learn.”
Leon allows his rigid posture to relax, shoulders losing their strain and hands falling open, focusing on the little fingers running through his hair.
"You look tired."
He feels two soft hands on his face and looks up at Tazo. They look concerned. “Why do you look so tired?”
Leon lets his face scrunch up, moving Tazo’s hands around and making the child giggle. He smiles. “I am tired. I am quite old, much older than you, and I have seen and done many things.”
“Bad things?” Amura asks bluntly.
Leon looks away. “Yes.”
He expects the children to leave, to run away, but instead, he finds himself with a lapful of Tazo and Allena, Dannel and Amura working on his hair. He winds his arms around the two in his lap in disbelief. He just told them he did bad things and their response is to…cuddle him?
Allena looks up at him. “You’re not a bad person, Leon.”
The rest hum their affirmations. Leon takes it. “Thank you, my friends.”
“I understand,” Tazo says, and for a moment a horrible pit threatens to swallow Leon’s throat and shout how can you understand, “you’ve lived a lot, and that’s why you’re tired. Unlike those people that have been here for ages but they’re not tired, cause they haven’t done that much.”
“Yes,” Leon says quietly, “that is right.”
“Is that why you feel so old?” Daniel asks.
“That and because I cannot do all the things I used to,” Leon agrees.
The tugs in his hair stop and all the children step away.
“All done!”
“It looks good!”
“It was good to practice on another person for a change.”
“Do you like it, Leon?”
Leon smiles and lifts his hand to gently feel the braids and flowers. “Yes, I do. Thank you, my friends.”
“Sure!”
“No problem!”
“Can we do this again?”
“We have to go! Allena, your mother’s calling.”
They wave goodbye and scamper off. Leon’s hand is still raised in a gesture of farewell when they vanish behind the stall. As the sun dips below the castle turrets and the flowers begin to fall from his hair, he thinks that Amura is right.
Everyone can learn.
And there is always another day after the last.