Chapter Text
I take back what you have stolen,
and in your languages I announce
I am now nameless.
My true name is a growl.
– Margaret Atwood
Cynefin
Arthur does not speak for hours.
He rides ahead of Merlin, not at his side, even though they are alone, and his white-knuckled hands clutch the reins. His mood is not lost on his mare, who nickers and rears her head. It earns her a sharp rebuke from her master. Merlin can feel her distress rippling off her.
Even the dull, unvarying clip-clop of hooves is a serrated sound, excruciating against the silence. It makes his skin itch.
Merlin would give much and more to get away, if only so he could breathe, and they have only just begun their two-day journey. The idea of suffocating in this tense air all the way to the druid camp and back makes him suck his teeth.
He and Arthur had stumbled back to Camelot, crusted in blood and dirt and staying upright through sheer force of will, and been greeted by Gaius and Gwen and Leon in the courtyard. Merlin took one look at Gaius, thought giddily, He’s alive, and blacked out.
He woke late the next day in his room to find his wounds cleaned and salve spread across his bruises. Faint sounds of clinking glass wafted through the door. I’m in my bed and Gaius is in the next chamber, he thought. His eyes were dry even though he was relieved enough to cry. He squished his nose against his pillow and breathed in the musty scent. The pillow was a part of his bedroom of ten years with its locked door, piles of dusty books, and warm duvets that weren’t cleaned often enough. It didn’t belong in the same world as Arthur’s blue lips and stained chainmail and clicking throat.
After a while he dragged himself out of his room, rubbing his eyes, to Gaius setting down an indulgent breakfast of crisp bacon and fried bread and mushrooms. Merlin had only eaten so well when he’d stolen off Arthur’s plate. He threw his arms around Gaius, blessed him thrice over, and was about to pick up his spoon when a knock came at their door.
The page who entered stood about as high as Geoffrey’s desk. He informed Merlin that he had been dismissed as Arthur’s servant, but that he was free to stay at the palace if he wished. (He didn’t miss the wording: free, not welcome.)
Merlin didn’t mean to shout. “Who the hell is going to serve him, then?” The breakfast sat forgotten, days of choking down tough broiled rabbit be damned.
The page stuttered and backpedaled and tripped over his own feet, and when he was on his behind he squeaked, “George, Si – Master Merli – Sir.”
After he scuttled out, Merlin railed in Gaius’ general direction till he was red in the face. Then he curled up by a window with his head on his knees. Gaius held him and rubbed his back and admonished him for how bony he’d gotten, then sat Merlin at the table and pushed the fried bread at him.
Merlin couldn’t keep it down – the knot in his stomach wouldn’t let him. He wished he could fall asleep again.
There was no paid work. The stables did not need another groom. The head cook gave him a dirty look when he asked if he could be a kitchen boy. Merlin had all the time in the world to think about Arthur bleeding his life out in Merlin’s arms and Arthur brushing the tears from Merlin’s face with his thumb and Arthur not wanting Merlin around anymore.
Over the next couple of days he scrubbed the leech tank till it sparkled and re-organised the bookshelves and made medical runs to every hut and shanty in the lower town. Gaius’ eyebrow nearly disappeared up into his hair. When there was nothing left to do, Merlin trotted off to help Gwen with her laundry. She took one look at the grey smudges beneath his eyes and told him, politely, to get the fuck out.
He spent six weeks cramming more knowledge about magic and medicine into his skull than he had in the past two years. By the end of it he could recite a chapter from Gaius’ tome on infectious diseases backwards, in his sleep, in Latin. He didn’t have to wake up before dawn anymore, or muck out the horses, or polish Arthur’s innumerable boots, and he wanted to stomp outside and raze half the forest to the ground.
On the rare occasions Merlin encountered Arthur, in the training grounds or corridor or the great hall, Arthur would either ignore him or respond with brief, abrupt words. Yes. No. In there. Hm. Thanks.
The first time it happened, Merlin marched back to Gaius’ chambers and swept all the heavy books off the table with a grunt. Loose sheets of medical records scattered everywhere and dust rose in a fine cloud, shimmering gold in the sunlight. He stood there, chest heaving and cheeks hot. After a moment he grimaced, stuck the heels of his palms into his eyes, and bent down and cleaned up the mess. He couldn’t bear the idea of Gaius having to do it himself.
And then one grey, drizzly spring morning, Arthur stood at the balcony overlooking the courtyard, the knights stationed below, and declared magic legal.
For a long moment, nobody seemed to know what to say or do. The knights glanced at each other, some appearing puzzled, others outraged. One or two quietly relieved. The crowd shuffled and murmured. Some shook their heads. A couple of jubilant shouts went up.
Then, to Arthur’s visible astonishment, flowers blossomed across the balcony railings, lush pink climbing roses that curled around the masonry. Within seconds, nearly all the stone was enveloped. Petals drifted down into the square, falling among the knights; some of them darted for their sword hilts. Leon tentatively held out a hand with a look of half befuddlement, half wonder.
Amid this, Merlin had stood stock still. Icy, wet cobblestones bit into his knees and he realised he’d sunk to the ground. There was heat on his cheeks; he was crying. A laugh spilled from his mouth. He tipped his head back and felt the rain patter over his face. He laughed again. He raised his eyes to Arthur, who seemed resolute but uncomfortable, unsmiling, and wished desperately that he could take his face in his palms and press their foreheads together. He wanted to ask him, Can you hear it? The singing? The leaves, the water, the sky – they’re singing. I’ve never heard anything so joyous.
The same afternoon, Arthur drew up rough plans for offering lands to magical communities in Camelot. Merlin was not there; he found out through Gwen, who had been told by Percival.
Merlin clamped his hand over his mouth, because if he started talking he would start yelling, and he did not want to yell in front of Gwen.
Why hadn’t Arthur told Merlin, if not consulted him? Did he think Merlin didn’t deserve to know? Did he think it wasn’t Merlin’s business?
He snipped as much to Gaius, who appeared tired and resigned, stooped in his chair. Merlin felt a little bad for complaining to him when he already had so much on his plate. When the lines on his face were already so deep.
“Isn’t this what you wanted?” asked Gaius. “For magic to return to Camelot? For Arthur to extend his friendship to sorcerers?”
Merlin said, “Yes,” and turned smartly and kicked over a bucket filled with dishwater. He bit back a grunt; he’d ripped off a toenail again, he just knew it. Before Gaius could give him the eyebrow or point him to the leech tank, he retrieved a rag and got to work mopping up.
Eventually, Arthur’s decision reached the wrong ears – of course it did. Just because magic was legal didn’t mean that everyone was happy about it. Scouts brought word of self-proclaimed vigilantes raiding druid camps and attacking people suspected of having magic.
The thought that bore into Merlin was this: Not even in a world where his kin were tolerated were they safe. The taste of metal was in his mouth; he’d bitten through his lip.
To curb the violence, Arthur sent out a selection of his knights – that is, he excluded Bors and Kay and others still too loyal to their dead king to trust in his son. This, Merlin could appreciate, even amid his vexation with Arthur. At least Arthur was treating the druids like his people.
His jaw still hit the ground when Arthur showed up at Gaius’ chambers that night, chin stuck out in a way that was both unneeded and obviously insincere. It was late, but he was dressed in his boots and sword and all. It made Merlin antsy. He crossed his arms and glared a hole into the floor while Arthur and Gaius spoke at the table in low voices, trying desperately to ignore them. Goosegrass for breaks, he thought, sage for digestion, crosswort for headaches, Sidhe magic for wounds caused by swords forged in a drago – no, no, shit, uhh, boneset for lesions, what the hell is used for fungal infections again?
At length Arthur turned to him and said, “As you know,” and Merlin rolled his eyes. Arthur sounded ridiculous when he was trying to be formal – over-rehearsed, at odds with himself. “We are planning to provide land to the druid communities as a compensation for my fa - for Camelot’s wrongs against them.”
Merlin’s fists were clenched on his lap. “That’s a nice way to put it,” he spat.
Arthur powered on as if he hadn’t heard him. “We can never make it right. Nothing we do will ever be enough for what they have suffered. There are no reparations that will bring back the dead. But this is a start.” He exchanged a meaningful look with Gaius and that, strangely, was what made Merlin angry. What right had Arthur to share any kind of look with Gaius? He’d been willing to believe that Gaius was a traitor easily enough. “I cannot approach the druids with the knights – not that there are that many here now anyway. They would take it as a show of aggression, and understandably so. Which is why I want you to come with me, Merlin.”
Merlin was so thunderstruck that he only stared, open-mouthed, till Arthur came over, frowning, and snapped his fingers under Merlin’s nose.
“The camp is a two-day ride from Camelot,” Arthur said, turning and heading for the door. Merlin wanted nothing more than to throw one of Gaius’ leeches at him. “We will ride tomorrow morning at dawn.”
And so here they are.
Merlin watches Arthur’s back, stewing. An uncomfortable thought has been turning over and over in his head: How much of what Arthur had said that time had been the ravings of a dying man?
When night falls, Merlin is glad to go gather firewood; it gives him some reprieve from Arthur’s pinched face.
He wipes his brow with his sleeve and huffs as he picks up branches and twigs. He had kept forgetting to cut his hair, and it flops over his ears and brow in loose, thick coils. It’s making him heat up unpleasantly. (A week back one of the stable hands had told him, “Well, your ears were rather unfortunate.” Merlin didn’t know how offended he should have been, so he just walked away.)
He hesitates when he inspects his bounty. He is carrying a flint – he always does when he goes on trips. But...he has already used magic in front of Arthur.
He lights it without even an incantation.
He casts a wary look at Arthur, who is gazing at the fire with an inscrutable expression. Merlin has long since learned that that means Arthur is furious and close to not hiding it.
They unpack their bread and hard cheese and pickled meat and sit at a respectable distance from each other, on opposite sides of the fire. Arthur rests his back against a gnarled old tree and fixes his attention on the ground, and Merlin picks at his food unenthusiastically even though he really can’t afford to lose weight.
When they are finished and Merlin reaches out to put another branch into the dwindling fire, Arthur says, “Show me.”
Merlin starts, still crouching. “What?”
Arthur’s eyes are shards of ice. “Magic.”
“What do you want to see?” asks Merlin, wary. He wipes his greasy hands on his pants.
“You’re clearly a lot smarter than I gave you credit for. Come up with something.”
Merlin’s lips thin at the bitterness of Arthur’s tone. The part of his brain screaming That’s not fair is overshadowed by the sense of self-preservation that always quashed that feeling down.
He raises his hand. He incants. And despite himself, his shoulders relax, and life seeps into him. It’s everywhere. The spaces beneath his nails. The dips of his bones. The crevices of his heart. He can feel the magic in the trees, in the grass, in the night birds. From the embers, a swarm of butterflies rises like a breath. It goes round and round up into the air, transforms into a falcon that swoops low and turns a somersault, and bursts into miniature fireworks above the kindling wood.
Merlin lets out a laugh, delighted. He can’t control it. His cheeks hurt and he realises he has been smiling widely. His hand is still raised. Then he remembers Arthur. He turns slowly to him, wondering how Arthur will react.
Arthur seems to have deflated, all but slumped against the tree. There are dark smudges beneath his eyes that Merlin hadn’t noticed before. “I was half hoping you would hurt me,” he says quietly.
Merlin stops breathing.
“I wanted my anger justified,” continues Arthur. He shifts, rubs his lower lip with his finger; his mother’s ring glints in the firelight. “But it wasn’t. It couldn’t be.”
“How could you think that of me?” Merlin whispers, stung beyond expression – beyond reason. He feels as though everything they had shared, every laugh, every teasing exchange, has been left behind in a hazy world he can no longer touch. He finds himself thinking, absurdly, of when Arthur had said, If I ever need a servant in the next life with a smile that was...carefree is not the right word. It was more like he knew he was probably going to die, but he had been preparing for that moment all his life and he’d not allow regret to take him. “I told you, I use my magic for you. I would never use it to harm you.”
He hates how his voice cracks at the end, and he bares his teeth at the ground. How could Arthur not hear the truth in his words? What would Merlin have to do to prove it? What hasn’t he already done?
It was your choice, he reminds himself fiercely. His fingernails press half-moons into his palms. It would have been easy enough. He had – has – a destiny, but he could have disregarded it, no one had been forcing him to stay. He could have walked away for a life in Ealdor working alongside his mother and secretly getting drunk with Will and playing dice with Will and shelling peas and eating them raw with Will.
Merlin’s throat closes and his eyes sting. The arrow. The pyre. The dust, the damn dust. Will’s stupid loyalty. Merlin’s stupid fucking choice to let Arthur come, to let Will fight, to not wipe out Kanen and his men himself.
Sometimes – more than sometimes, of late – his life feels like one terrible decision after the next leaving a trail of his friends’ bodies in their wake. It always seems like the right thing to do at the time. It always ends in flames.
He ducks his head and draws deep, shaking breaths. If Arthur notices, he does not mention it. “I’ll take first watch,” he gabbles, desperate to end the conversation.
Arthur appears as though he has something to say, but then nods and rolls himself into a blanket, facing away from Merlin.
Merlin means to only glance at Arthur, but his eyes linger on his stiff back, on the glint of his unkempt hair, already starting to grow greasy with dirt. Merlin used to brush it for him every morning with an ivory comb Uther had gifted him on his fifteenth birthday. It was a routine, a steady hum against the backdrop of their days. Merlin always brought the comb along on hunts. He even used it before Arthur’s battle with Queen Annis’ champion, and wondered how his hands were not shaking.
He thinks, Arthur will never let me comb his hair again.
***
“What can you tell me about the druids?” asks Arthur the next day. His tone is a balancing act, a knife edge, and there is no safe direction to tip.
Merlin shrugs, feigning nonchalance. “Nothing you don’t already know. They’re peaceful, by and large. They have many skilled healers. They have the triskelion symbol on their skin.”
Arthur gives him an incredulous, scrutinising look. “Really? You’re supposedly the most powerful sorcerer that’s ever walked this earth and that’s all you know?”
At that, something that Merlin has been holding in check for a long time shatters. “What do you want me to say?” he snaps. “I was raised in Ealdor, which is secluded, and about as magical as a cauliflower. Then I came to Camelot, where magic users were executed without trial – that was the first thing I saw there, by the way, thanks for asking – and never left. Gaius would know more about druids than I would."
Shock is etched in Arthur’s face, and the beginnings of regret.
Merlin doesn’t want to see it. He urges his horse forward, internally cursing in every language he knows. Anger bubbles and rises and spreads out across his limbs and he squeezes his eyes shut.
Then, as quickly as the anger came, it dissolves. He feels a bizarre, strong longing for small irritations, and has to suppress a hysterical giggle.
It is, he decides, a luxury to be annoyed at petty things. He wants to grouse at not being able to find herbs for Gaius, or at a scullery maid spilling a drink on a tunic he just cleaned, or at Arthur for saying that scrubbing the floor is easy. He is sick to death of this overgrown weariness, this haze of sadness that has draped over his life; he wants to tear it off, cast it away like an old cloak. He can’t complain about the small things because they seem utterly insignificant against the Colossus of everything that’s happened in the past few months.
He purses his lips and draws deep breaths, holding and releasing at irregular intervals the way Gaius taught him.
He never imagined it would be this way. He has daydreamed of this for so long he’s not sure how he’s supposed to feel now. He thought it would happen a lot sooner, for one. He’d pictured himself, Arthur and the knights marching grandly to magical settlements. It would be spring. They would drink cool mead and break bread and sing around campfires with magic users, and they’d all become fast friends.
It is not spring. Merlin doesn’t have the heart to sing by a long shot. And there are no knights. The druids would have been exasperated but fond of Gawain. They would have loved Lancelot.
A lump forms in his throat. If he cries now, it’s going to be ugly, and after everything that’s happened between them, he’d just feel stripped, on display.
It’s a start, he tells himself fiercely. It’s not perfect but it’s something. That counts. That is good. This will set us on the path to a long peace.
Whatever his role now, he will play it. It will be an even smaller one than before; he isn’t even Arthur’s servant anymore. He’s just a country bumpkin who’s loitering around the castle and leeching off the physician’s salary because the king decided to let him stay out of charity or some misplaced sense of honour.
It is another day before they reach their destination, and Merlin is at his wits’ end. The edge of his thumbnail has been chewed right off. But even now, he is eager to see how they will respond, whether they will cry, or smile, or remain stoic and blank-faced with only an undertow of emotion in their voices to show what they are feeling.
“There.” Arthur points northwest. Merlin squints to find the hint of a clothesline behind a net of branches. “I can see the camp.”
Something is off. Merlin frowns, disquieted. Then he goes still. The hairs on his forearms are raised. It is the middle of summer, so warm that he’s not even got his neckerchief. “Listen. What do you hear?”
Arthur tilts his head. “The birds,” he says slowly, some of that old, achingly familiar mockery in his voice. “Some squirrels. It’s a nice, sunny day, everything’s out. Are you trying to joke?”
“I don’t hear any people.” According to the reports, it is a small settlement, barely fifteen people. But even fifteen people will make noise, druids or no.
Arthur’s expression quickly changes.
Merlin swings off his horse, hurried enough to lose his balance a little, and ties her off to a tree trunk. Arthur does the same.
There is no wind. The tents and their flaps are motionless as paintings. Merlin inches forward, his heart oddly steady; he hasn’t registered the extent of whatever has happened here. Part of him does not want to. Arthur falls in step by his side. Their breath seems loud, disturbing, as if it risks awakening a sleeping beast.
No one comes out to greet them, though they had sent a messenger ahead.
Dread coils and settles like a stone in the pit of Merlin’s stomach. He is caught between rushing forward to check for damage and grabbing Arthur and dragging him away. He glances at his friend, and wonders if his own expression is the same – tense, furious, and beneath that, terrified.
“You should leave,” he whispers through his teeth to Arthur, who scoffs. It sounds uneasy.
“What would be the point? If they can catch you, they can catch me.”
That is a truth Merlin does not want to grapple with.
Then he sees it.
A body, lying prone over what looks like a wicker basket. A feathered arrow sticks out from his back. His rheumy eyes stare blankly at them, half veiled by thin strands of greying hair. Around his frail wrist is a bracelet; the colourful beads on the string are loose, as if a child had put it together.
Merlin thinks, Oh god, oh god, oh god.
Arthur’s sword is drawn in less than a second. He holds it before him with his knees bent, baring his teeth. “Get behind me, Merlin,” he begins, and then jolts, seeming to remember that Merlin is capable of protecting himself. But he does not take it back, his lips a thin line.
Merlin would dwell on Arthur’s concern – it seems disjointed, like a bowl that was broken apart and haphazardly stuck together again – but this is not the time.
To the right, there is a tent with its flap pulled to one side and tied to a pole. What little Merlin can see of the inside is dark, nondescript. As if in a daze, he moves towards it. If he goes in, he tells himself, he will stumble upon a family going about their business, and he will be horribly embarrassed, and the spell will be broken. And even amid this he knows that there is a man shot dead in the middle of the camp, which means that no one had moved his body, which means –
Inside, a roughly hewn stool has been knocked over. There are bunches of herbs tied neatly with string on the small table: Agrimony (for stomach problems, his brain supplies), comfrey (for ulcers), calendula (for rashes). Some others he is unfamiliar with.
There is a shape half-hidden in shadows in a corner. A wooden toy cart, upside down.
Merlin backpedals rapidly out of the hut. He clamps a hand over his mouth, closes his eyes and wills the nausea down, taking deep breaths.
There is still a chance that they are mistaken. They haven’t been to the other tents. Someone might still be here. Yes, of course. They will go to another tent and discover someone doing something mundane like knitting or peeling fruits and the person will say, The others just left to prepare for the funeral ceremony. Merlin and Arthur will offer to do what they can to help. Tonight, at fireside, they will listen to how it happened and mourn the dead with the druids and they will give a proper description of the proposals tomorrow.
“Arthur,” he calls, turning to look at him.
Arthur is not there.
“Arthur?” he says again, alarmed.
There is a sharp sting at his neck. The world tilts, tumbles, and goes dark.