Chapter Text
Arthur would have wanted him to return to Camelot. So he did.
Arthur also would have wanted him to be by Gwen’s side, but just because the man was fucking dead didn’t mean that Merlin was going to start following his every whim.
Dead.
Oh gods.
Usually Merlin was fine. Not great, but, whatever. He didn’t really interact with anyone except Camelot’s latest challenges and baddies. Sometimes, he’d have a quiet dinner with Gaius. Mostly, he just drifted through the shadows of the castle and its grounds like a ghost. Perhaps part of him had passed on with Arthur.
Sadly, this evening’s events put him in a position that made avoiding all his friends — or what was left of them — a little difficult.
Percival managed to spot him even though he crept through the servant’s entrance. Although the knight had always been quiet, he barely spoke a word now. Or so said the gossip Merlin overheard.
“Merlin!” he exclaimed excitedly, as if spotting a rare butterfly instead of a spectre of a man.
The warlock darted behind a crowd of servants with dishes and made his escape as he morphed into an exact replica of the girl, Bella, beside him, conjuring a bountiful plate of roast duck atop his palm.
He felt Percival’s eyes searching him; his pulse, at first rising at being spotted, still quick with guilt.
Percival didn’t know he could transform like that. Nobody did. To be fair, they thought all he did anymore was mope around the castle. But he was powerful. Every day that he fought another enemy of Camelot, he grew stronger. This Golden Age of Peace came at a price beyond the death of its king. But they didn’t need to know that.
Nothing had changed. And everything had.
“Really, Merlin. He misses you.”
He edged towards the other side of the room, where Lord Gale was sitting near Guinevere. Of course.
Glancing to make sure the real Bella was not nearby, he stepped forward to assess the situation. He could simply have vines crawl up from the cold stone floor and restrain him, or walk right up to the man and teleport them both, but Merlin had grown skilled in subtlety over the years, and found it worked best in all situations. Magic was no longer outlawed, but he couldn’t really bring himself to do magic in front of people anyway, not if he could help it.
He’d tried to explain this to his mother when he went to visit sometime after the ban was lifted.
“I thought you would be happy that magic is finally being embraced,” she said. “This is what you have been working for all this time; right, Merlin?”
He should have been happy. He wanted to be.
(He did want to be — didn’t he?)
Arthur, bleeding out, trying to turn away from him, trying to get away from the sorcerer. Looking at him like he was a stranger. Like he was an enemy. “I’m not sure how they would react.”
“Arthur told you he didn’t want you to change,” Hunith reminded him kindly. “That’s what you said.”
Yeah, he had, when he was dying and possibly delirious. Merlin nodded, then shrugged. Looked away. “Mum,” he said gently, sadly, “You— you don’t know what I’ve done.”
“Oh, honey—”
“I’m not proud of half of it,” he said, rather heavily.
“Merlin,” she reassured him, reaching out to grab his shoulder, “Now is a time of change and peace. You can start over in the light of a new day.”
He was silent for a moment, before gently easing her hand off himself.
He left with a cloud of words he couldn't speak aloud.
All that power. All those years. All the forewarning and I couldn’t save him. My magic was for him. Why should anyone else see it?
Maybe Merlin could enchant his shoes. Hopefully, Lord Gale would be confused enough that he wouldn’t make a scene.
Soon Gale was striding down the hall, gait just starting to grow strange as he tried to fight it. Merlin commanded the man’s own cloak to restrain him as they continued to a slightly more private area of the castle.
Ignoring the obscenities hurled his way, the warlock asked calmly, “Where’s the real Lord Gale?” His voice gritted a bit with disuse. It was the first he’d spoken today.
The man blinked at him, then scowled. “And who are you, girl?”
Bella’s brown skin melted away to reveal Merlin’s ghostly pallor.
“Emrys,” gasped the man.
“This castle is under my protection,” Merlin said stiffly. “I will not repeat myself again. Where is the real Lord Gale?”
Gale’s body shrank as the sorcerer returned to his true, skinnier form. “Now why would I tell you that?”
He began to fade away, but Merlin touched his arm and was transported with him.
A harried looking Lord Gale sat gagged and bound before them. Merlin shot the imposter an unimpressed glance before tapping the lord and teleporting him back to the castle.
“What just happened? You’re a sorcerer? Who are you?”
“Don’t worry about it,” Merlin muttered, helping him stand. “I will fix this.” He left the man in his room and disappeared again.
The sorcerer jumped when he realized Merlin had returned. “You—”
“I don’t take kindly to people who try to hurt my friends,” he monotoned.
“Is that what you’re calling them?”
Merlin froze as if suddenly struck by an arrow, taking a second to conceive the pain even as blood gushed out of the wound.
“You’ve hardly been treating them as such. I mean, when’s the last time you’ve even spoken to Guinevere?”
The sorcerer eyed him with confusion, and Merlin cleared his throat. “I’ll let you off with a warning. If I catch you again, trust that I will not be so kind.” He looked over the man disdainfully before returning to the castle in a blink.
“Quite scary now, aren’t you, Merlin?”
Merlin barely heard this. The previous sentiment was still echoing in his head.
It’s better this way, he assured himself. They can never understand this side of you.
He walked down the hall past the room Gwen kept furnished for him and set for patrolling the hallways. None of us are quite the same anymore, anyways.
—
Merlin woke up from where he was slumped over a table and realized he was in Arthur’s room. A few years ago, he’d have been leaning across the table to steal a sausage or strawberry.
He straightened, cursing as his back cracked several times. He shouldn’t be in here. Not that anyone would have stopped him. But it wasn’t healthy. He’d been doing so good lately. Usually he tuckered out from his rounds in one of the towers, out of the way of everyone else. Sometimes he slept in his old room, but that produced the most nightmares. He couldn’t bring himself to sleep in the room Gwen offered him. A room fit for a Court Sorcerer, or a friend of the crown. A room he didn’t deserve.
“I’m surprised you didn’t sleep in my bed. It’s like you suddenly respect me or something.”
And there went his mind with its twisted humor, placing worse and worse ideas in his head.
Not long after Arthur’s death, he began to hear his best friend’s voice. After spending so much time with him, Merlin knew what Arthur would say in almost any situation. At first it was a sort of comfort, a way to keep Arthur alive. But now the voice worried him. The clarity of the voice was almost foreign, distinct from his own thoughts, automatic. Uncontrollable. He didn’t so much think the words as they suddenly came to him.
He was probably losing his mind.
Merlin stepped out into the hall and peeked down the hallway to see if anyone was nearby. He stilled when his eyes latched on the next door down. It was ajar. Someone was in his room.
When Gwen first gave him the room, Arthur joked that it was a good thing he was dead now because he could hardly stand Merlin right beside him. After a month of Merlin waking up random places around the castle, the king told him he “might as well sleep in the damn room you’ve been given” and “I’d have given it to you anyway, eventually, if I could’ve made you Court Sorcerer.”
That hurt. Hearing that hurt a lot. Hurt imagining a different ending. One where Arthur was still king and where he was the Court Sorcerer. Imagining the ending. . . that he’d always imagined. Before it became impossible.
In any case, Arthur’s words were concerning. They were a little too gracious, even despite the usual irritated tone. His brain was trying to ease its own guilt and convince him to sleep where he didn’t belong. Well fuck that. He might have been losing it, but at least he knew he was losing it.
Maybe Gwen finally gave the room another purpose. That could be it. Still, not knowing if something was amiss unnerved him. He could risk an undesired encounter with his friends for the sake of their safety.
He tread lightly the few steps down the hall and peered inside the room.
Simply put, it was beautiful. It remained exactly the same as when Gwen had first shown it to him — a generously sized bed with a rich royal blue spread, golden embroideries like stars in a night sky. A matching upholstered chair too fine to sit in. A grand, sturdy desk unnerving for its cleanliness, clearly unused.
His eyes settled on the tall brunette in the corner of the room. Her curly hair was dark and stretched down to her waist. The dress she wore was somehow both disheveled and elegant, like a queen’s gown long serving a meal for moths. She was playing with something; he couldn’t quite see what. Not that it mattered. There was nothing of value to him in this room.
“Merlin Emrys,” she said, only turning a beat after she had spoken. “I’ve been looking for you a long while now.”
He frowned at this. “What for?”
Just then she held up what was in her hands. Merlin’s mouth opened, but no sound came out.
The sigil. Arthur’s mother’s sigil. The one he shouldn’t have in the first place.
His hand dove into his pocket to find nothing but cloth. “How did you—?”
She held it out to him, an unkind smile curling her lips, but he hardly noticed, didn’t think at all as he darted forward to snag it. As his fingers closed on the edge of the metal, the world around them dissolved.