Chapter Text
"What should I do, Merlin? What do you think I should do about Mordred?"
- What will you do? Merlin had asked of him first. Quiet, almost gentle as his voice often was, when not rising and cracking and bleating out dissent. He seems so...tired, almost as much so as the king of Camelot feels, as they sit together, facing one another across a fire. Warmth that Arthur feels incredibly grateful for.
I don't know. Arthur's body, his very tongue feels heavy, as if he could nearly choke upon the words. My heart says do anything I can to save Mordred. ...But I have seen what misery unfettered sorcery brings. Before my father outlawed magic, Camelot was almost destroyed by sorcery. In - and in my own time, Morgana has used it for nothing but evil.
What would you do? What would you do in my place?
The words hammer in Arthur's ears as they pass his lips, dropping like a gauntlet into the space between himself and his manservant; his friend, his advisor, confidant. Merlin sucks in a breath, eyes grown shiny from... Something. Likely the weight of this, which curls in Arthur's stomach like some great writhing thing as heavy as any aspect of this job has been for him.
Heavier, even.
Because it is a job, being king. A duty, one he's been taught and set up, groomed for by his father; pushed and pulled hither and yon in early years (the betrayal of Agravaine still makes him feel sick, causes his lip to curl in disgust, yet mostly, almost only at himself, this time. He should have realised. He ought to have known.)
He ought to have listened to Merlin, then. So many times, on so many occasions. And that rankles only slightly less so than it would have previously in their relationship, though not as much from pride anymore - no, he is proud to have Merlin's ear. His sharp tongue, his outbursts of frustration and wheedling and yes, wisdom; all mean much to Arthur now, after years. Years of not seeing his value and feeling guilt over that. And yet he'd seen Mordred's value as he'd grown - this boy he remembers vaguely through the mist of years, of grief and time and childhood; and of the murkiness of magic, the sort his friend carried when she arrived, the sort Arthur registers in the young knight, lancing out of his eyes and crackling over his chainmail, whirling through the raven waves of his curling hair and skipping along his fingertips. Ancient, cold and hungry, strange and slightly terrifying power.
It ripples through Mordred and through the girl, stronger as they are in Camelot together, and Arthur had felt the need to separate them. Yet to condemn the girl, and to imprison Mordred, that choice causes him to balk, to feel as though his veins have turned to ice and his joints to mud. Sluggish and slow. An idiot, as usual, Merlin will certainly say; but Arthur cannot stop himself. He cannot keep from asking.
"Merlin, what do you think I should do?"