Archive of Our Own

“How did you know this place was sacred?”

Merlin’s heart jumps up his throat, but he does not break his stride to their tiny campfire. He stares at Arthur, laying like a lout against a fallen log and sprawled across the ground. The king’s gaze is fixed up at the canopy of leaves above them, his head pillowed with his blanket roll. Despite being fully armored, Arthur looks remarkably relaxed and at peace.

Merlin knows better. 

They haven’t spoken a word to each other since leaving the Disir’s presence, a thick tension blanketing the pair as they set up camp, each of them caught in a whirlwind of their own design. Merlin can imagine what Arthur’s is like if he takes the moment to try. 

He doesn’t. It is enough to try wrangling his own. 

The offer to replenish their stock of firewood was a thinly veiled excuse to get some distance, to clear his head. For all the good it did, really. Merlin’s heart returns just as heavy as it was when he left, his mind just as chaotic and troubled as before. 

Arthur’s face, tilted to the sky, looks chiseled from stone. The expression has not changed in the time Merlin’s been gone. 

And after all that time alone, this is the question he chooses to ask first? Merlin wonders where this is leading. He wonders what Arthur is thinking. He wonders if any of what he says will matter at all.

He’s tired. So very tired.

“That’s obvious,” he finally answers, a hint of ridicule in his voice as he crouches to relinquish his load. 

Arthur doesn’t rise to the bait. “Pretend it isn’t.”

Merlin brushes his hands against his coat. He hears and recognizes the tone in Arthur’s voice. He’s asking for honesty, for someone to listen. He’s asking for help on this puzzle he can’t quite finish piecing together himself; for a second opinion to keep him from sinking so far into his own tangled thoughts he can no longer find a way out. 

Maybe what Merlin says will matter here. Maybe it will make a difference.

Merlin doesn’t have much faith anymore. 

Merlin turns toward the span of forest surrounding him, and he allows the magic of the place to pulse against his skin. It truly is a wonder. If he ignored what led them to the Disir, as well as the ultimatum that awaited them at dawn, he would have said he did not regret coming here, not one bit, if only to have felt what was to feel here.

 “Everything here...is so full of life,” he says. He doesn’t often have the opportunity to share this part of his life with Arthur, and he finds himself more eager than usual to answer this direct question from his king. “Every tree, every leaf, every insect. It’s as if the whole world is…vibrating.” A small, unbidden smile touches his lips. “As if everything is so much more than itself.”

When Merlin turns back to Arthur, he finds Arthur sitting upright, staring at him with contemplative eyes. “You feel all that?” the king asks.

“Don’t you?” 

Arthur slowly shakes his head. 

Merlin’s smile fades as he cuts himself off from the ebb and flow of magic around them, crushing the bud of disappointment rising in his breast like a stray wildflower beneath his boot. He’s not a boy anymore, fantasizing about what he cannot have, and it does not do to fall back into those old patterns, not when such a severe, life-threatening fork has appeared before them in their branching paths of fate. 

(That boy once thought he could mold fate with his bare hands). 

Merlin rises from the campfire, only to settle onto his thin blankets and face Arthur. “What will you do?” Merlin dares to ask. 

Arthur shifts, sighs. “I don’t know,” he admits, focusing on the dancing and crackling flames before him. “My heart says do anything I can to save Mordred.” This much Merlin had expected to hear—this is the king Arthur is, lionhearted and true—yet his mouth goes dry as sand. 

“But I have seen what misery unfettered sorcery brings. Before my father outlawed magic, Camelot was almost destroyed by sorcery,” Arthur continues, tone changing to something lightly disdainful, as though he cannot believe he has to say these things aloud. “In my own time, Morgana has used it for nothing but evil.”

When Arthur cuts his gaze away from the fire and refocuses on him, Merlin almost wishes he’d taken a longer walk. A much longer walk.

“What would you do?” Arthur asks seriously. “In my place?”

“Me?” Merlin asks. He does not want to answer this question. He does not want his biases pushing him any deeper into an inescapable rut, nor does he want them influencing Arthur. Not in this. Not for this. 

Why is it that destiny cannot decide what it wishes of him? To protect Arthur—his king, his friend—is his purpose. To help bring about a golden age of peace—an age in which all people are accepted for who and what they are…

That is his dream. 

Both were promised to him by prophecy. There should be no either-or. It is not one or the other. It is meant to be both. 

It is meant to be both. 

To make him choose? To thrust him here, where he cannot swim to the surface, where he cannot see the light at the end of the tunnel? Fate cannot be so cruel. It has taken enough already. 

“I’m just a lackey,” Merlin jokes without humor. “A maker of beds.”

“Lackeys can be wise,” Arthur replies, leaning forward, eyes boring into his.

Merlin blinks and shakes his head, unable to look the king in the eye. It is another opportunity to speak as an equal, to share his mind, and he cannot take it. He will not. 

Arthur deserves better.

The flash of disappointment and suspicion in Arthur’s suddenly narrowed eyes shames Merlin to his toes. The pebble lodged in his throat triples in size.

“It’s not like you to be silent,” Arthur states. He isn’t jibing so much as he is accusing. 

“The kingdom’s future is at stake,” Merlin says immediately. It is nothing but the truth, but he still cannot face his king.

“And a man’s life.”

A man who will kill you, Merlin doesn’t say. 

“You must protect Camelot,” he hedges instead. “You must protect the world you spent your life building—a just and fair kingdom for all.”

Perhaps this is the only way Merlin can salvage both threads of destiny. Saving Arthur and speaking up against the Old Religion now implies he can still help Arthur return magic to the land later, doesn’t it? There will be another time. 

Always a “next time.” Merlin ignores the little voice darkly reminding him how often he’s hold himself that over the last ten years.

He pretends he doesn’t hear another voice begging him to remember that saving Mordred may also imply he can still find a way to prevent Arthur’s fate entirely. Perhaps saving Mordred will ultimately divert them all from ending up at Camlann. Perhaps advising Arthur to accept magic now will prevent Mordred from turning in the first place.

(If Merlin hadn’t been burnt so badly before, he may have just believed it).

Arthur must be searching for a particular answer because he picks out the one thing Merlin didn’t say. “You’d have me sacrifice a friend.”

Merlin feels cold. Bile rises in his throat. He wants to screw his eyes shut. To throw back his head and scream himself hoarse. Above all, he wants to throw all of his magic back into the world. Let it choose another, someone far more worthy than he. Someone who doesn’t continuously compromise his morality beyond all recognition, nor advise others to do the same.

“I’d have you become the king you were destined to be,” Merlin says.

Arthur sits forward abruptly, eyes flashing with something Merlin cannot read. “If I do save Mordred, all my father’s work will be for nothing. Sorcery will reign once more in Camelot. Is that what you’d want?”

That isn’t what Merlin said either. He doesn’t know what he wants anymore. Blood pounds in his head, heart galloping in his chest.

He doesn’t know what to do.

Arthur stares at him, and Merlin feels naked and vulnerable, as though Arthur is peering right into his black-marked heart and analyzing every last inch of it.

“Perhaps my father was wrong,” Arthur continues, “I have treated with the Druids without consequence, multiple times even. They continue to remain peaceful, despite the number of them possessing magic. Perhaps the Old Ways aren’t as evil as we thought.”

Merlin knows Arthur is hunting for an excuse to follow his instincts and save his knight. He knows Arthur is trying to find a way out so that he does not have to see a good man die. He likely does not believe in the potential good of magic, not really, but it doesn’t matter. This is the closest Merlin has been to an opportunity to change Arthur’s mind about magic in years —since Uther Pendragon’s death, probably—and the temptation nearly rips him apart. The pressure behind his eyes blazes like fire, and he cannot swallow over the boulder in his throat. 

“So what should we do?” Arthur asks this time.

We. Arthur said ‘we.’ Not I. 

“Accept magic?” Arthur continues. Merlin exhales heavily. “Or let Mordred die?”

A noose of indecision and fear and indignation slips around Merlin’s throat. His magic, unsettled and frothing at the bit, stings as it rushes madly beneath his skin. How is this fair? he wants to demand of the Old Gods. Why now? Why this? 

Arthur does not deserve to be tied to him so, wretch that he is. What kind of man is he, anyway, unable to choose between an entire people who lived in fear of the decades-long genocide that ravaged their homes and families….

And the life of a single man?

His best friend.

He can’t do this.

He looks up at Arthur. 

We, he’d said. Because Arthur trusts him. Because Arthur believes and values Merlin’s counsel. Because Arthur sees Merlin and he, too, thinks confidant, friend, brother.

The Merlin of a few years ago would never have imagined he’d one day have this: his king’s ear, his friend’s respect. The Merlin of today would give anything to go back to the time Arthur really did think he was an idiot. He’d give it all up if it meant he and Arthur could make one—just one—choice that would divert them from this path, that wouldn’t bring them right back to this very spot, this very moment, in time. 

But they cannot go back. They can only go forward.

We. What should we do? Arthur asked. 

Merlin makes his decision.

This is not the first time he has sacrificed for Arthur Pendragon. He vows it will not be the last.

What is his dream of freedom, after all, if Arthur isn’t there to share it with him? What does any of it matter, if it means Camelot will lose her king? If it means Albion will not have the continued peace and prosperity Arthur worked so hard to culminate?

Each word is a flaming shard of glass up his throat and past his lips, tearing and shredding and ravaging. The noose around his neck tightens, as though attempting to choke him out before he can finish spitting the bloody, unrecognizable pieces of his soul out before his king. 

“There can be no place for magic in Camelot,” Merlin whispers.

There is no taking it back now. For all his cold determination, Merlin hates himself, deeply and irrecoverably, a pit of dread and self-disgust slithering in his gut. He tries to hold Arthur’s eyes, but Arthur has gone blurry, misty. For one horrifying, logic-defying moment, Merlin fears he’s lost Arthur already. 

He blinks furiously, and his vision clears.

Arthur hasn’t left. He is sitting back, his arms folded. Silence hangs like a thick veil between them. Even in the darkness, the king’s eyes glitter blue like the sea.  

“It is not like you,” Arthur muses suddenly, and very, very quietly, “to lie to me.”

Merlin’s lungs freeze in his chest. “What ?” he chokes out.

Arthur doesn’t immediately respond. He finally breaks eye contact and makes a show of shifting forward again to reach for some firewood. He tosses a stick in. The wood crackles and pops as the flames dance.

“You are lying to me.”

“What?” Merlin repeats, incredulous. “Arthur, I—”

Arthur throws up a hand. “No. Don’t say a word.” The command is delivered flatly, without a single bur of anger to enforce it. When Merlin’s slack jaw clicks shut, Arthur grimaces at him. “You think I cannot tell? I thought we—” 

He shakes his head abruptly, cutting himself off. Merlin works at swallowing. He doesn’t succeed. His head buzzes, stuffed full of thick sheep’s wool.

“What I don’t understand is why,” Arthur says, and there is still more frustration and confusion than there is rage or betrayal in his voice. His expression softens, nonjudgmental and open. “It is not like you,” he says again, and this time, Arthur isn’t just talking about the perceived lie. “What is going on, Merlin?” 

Merlin breaks. He doesn’t intend to, but Arthur’s stripped away the last trappings of station for him in that one question. It isn’t Arthur Pendragon, King of Camelot, who is asking.

It is just Arthur. The same Arthur who, long ago, once laid beside him on the floor of his mother’s home in Ealdor and asked him why he left.

And if he’d had any luck finding a place where he fit in.

Merlin’s not sure why that particular memory comes back so profoundly, so vividly, but he remembers that trip home in a way he hasn’t in years. 

If it comes to a choice, he remembers confessing to his mother, between saving people’s lives and revealing who I really am…

Dear gods. What is he doing?

The full realization of what Merlin had nearly done, of what he’d become, slams into him like a feral Questing Beast.

Gaius looks at him like he doesn’t recognize him anymore. He and Gwen rarely speak as friends, let alone friendly acquaintances. Gwaine has stopped calling on him. He doesn’t laugh anymore, nor does he indulge or join the knights when they do. He…he hasn’t written his mother in months. 

He can’t remember the last time he slept, much less the last good dream he had.

He cannot remember eating this morning.

He’s not so sure he’s eaten anything for the pleasure of it in quite some time. Not since he Foresaw Arthur’s death at Mordred’s hand.

Not since before then, probably. 

(Right about the same time Merlin remembers being genuinely, truly happy).

And here Arthur sits, waiting patiently for answers Merlin should have given him years ago, seeing him and accepting him as he was, is, and always will be. 

But this isn’t him. It can’t be. It…

It is. 

(He doesn’t want it to be).

He can’t do this anymore.

Fat tears spill down Merlin’s cheeks, and chest-heaving sobs wrack his frame. He curls in on himself and flinches violently when a light touch glances off his shoulder.

“Easy, Merlin,” Arthur says. He’s moved across the campsite to crouch at his side. “Easy.”

Merlin hiccups a dark laugh. “There’s nothing easy about it, Arthur.”

Arthur hesitates and stretches out a hand again. Merlin doesn’t quite shy away this time. “Tell me,” the king requests, squeezing Merlin’s shoulder. When Merlin buries his head into his knees without responding, thoughts whirling, Arthur guesses, “Is someone blackmailing you?”

Arthur’s tone is hard and unrelenting as stone, promising swift retribution. Merlin shoots upright and scrubs at his face. “No,” he denies vehemently. “No, it isn’t that.”

Arthur frowns and studies Merlin carefully. Merlin’s skin crawls the longer Arthur stares, but he can hardly control his rapid gasping, let alone find the necessary breath to snap at him to cut it out.

“Then what is it you know that I do not?” Arthur asks. “What are you so afraid of?”

“YOU!” Merlin roars.

The very second it is out of his mouth, Merlin wishes he can take it back. Arthur looks as though he’s just been slapped, and a cold mask shutters over his face before Merlin can truly see all the hurt he’d painted there.

“Me,” Arthur echoes numbly. “After all we’ve been through, do you truly think anything you say or do would make me think less of you?”

Merlin sniffles. “Perhaps you should reconsider that,” he suggests in a whisper.

The mask fractures as Arthur’s brows furrow. “What is this about, Merlin?”

“It’s about you,” Merlin snaps. Images of Mordred’s blade sliding through Arthur’s ribs flash before his eyes, Arthur’s shocked expression from the vision superimposing over the grimy travel-weary face before him. He remembers being told Arthur’s bane isn’t Mordred so much as it is Arthur himself. “I can’t lose you.”

Arthur’s beginning to look at Merlin as though he’s lost his mind. Maybe he has. “I’m not going anywhere,” he says slowly. 

Anger and fear bubbles like water in a boiled kettle, and in that instant, Merlin is sick of himself. He’s sick of the lies and the subterfuge and the weight he’s borne without complaint, alone and weary to the marrow.

“Mordred is destined to kill you, Arthur Pendragon,” Merlin blurts, scrambling to his feet. His blanket nearly trips him on the way up. “And I will die before I allow it to happen, do you understand me? Dying is the least I will do to keep you safe.”

Arthur follows him to his feet, eyes narrowed speculatively again. “That’s ridiculous,” he says. He shakes his head, as if to dispel a bothersome fly. “You can’t possibly know that.”

They are well past the point of no return now. Merlin can’t withhold the truth any more than he can prevent more tears from falling. His voice breaks. “A Seer has spoken.”

“To you?” Arthur scoffs. He paces the little clearing, turning heel after fewer than half a dozen steps. “No offense, Merlin, but—”

“I’ve Seen it too, Arthur.”

Arthur hesitates. “I don’t understand. How could you....?” He pauses mid-sentence, understanding dawning, each gear clicking into alignment with its cog. Merlin sees him consider, deny, and then consider again, bargaining with himself over the revelation he thinks he’s had...and isn’t sure he can accept.

Merlin’s eyes flutter closed. 

“You can sense this place,” Arthur finally says aloud, tone dead. 

And there it is. Out in the open, dangling like a torn spiderweb in the breeze.

Merlin bows his head and breathes, “Yes.”

A muscle in Arthur’s jaw twitches. He opens his mouth a few times, purses his lips. “You...said there can be no place for magic in Camelot,” Arthur says eventually, hoarse and severe. 

There isn’t quite a question in Arthur’s voice, but Merlin hears one last opportunity to deny it all, to play it off and go back to the way things were.

Merlin’s fingers and hands tremble, and the quakes carry into his voice. “Yes.”

Arthur’s exhale shudders too. He runs a gloved hand through his hair and falls backward onto his haunches. Merlin’s pulse thunders in his ears, palms clammy with sweat. 

It feels as though centuries pass before Arthur speaks again. “Why.”

Arthur can be asking any number of things with that one strangled word. Why magic? Why you? Merlin doesn’t answer either of those questions. Instead he lowers himself so that he is crouched in front of Arthur, and with a courage he hasn’t managed to garner in a long, long time, he looks his king in the eye. 

“Dying is the least I will do to keep you safe,” he repeats earnestly, tone uncompromising.

 Arthur scans Merlin’s face. “You would do,” he murmurs. “You have done. I know. God, do I know.” He pulls his gloves off, whipping them to the side as he settles into a more comfortable position. “I know that, at least, is not a lie.”

Merlin winces, and he swallows over the returning lump in his throat. Anticipation prickles at his skin. He doesn’t deny he’s lied before. He doesn’t imagine telling Arthur why he lied for so long would do much good.

“Sit, Merlin,” Arthur requests, sounding exhausted. “I would like to know what you really think of all this.”

It takes far longer for the request to register with Merlin than it should. “... What ?” he croaks in astonishment.

Arthur rolls his eyes. “Are you deaf? Sit. Down.”

Merlin’s arse hits the ground hard as he shifts off his heels. His gaze flicks to Arthur's sword and back again. The king hasn't once twitched toward the blade sticking up out of the ground. “You’re not...about the magic?”

“Oh, I am,” Arthur snarks, a bite returning to his voice. “But if half of what I suspect is true…” He folds his knees. “I feel as though that is the very least of our problems now.”

“It isn’t a problem,” Merlin grumbles. When Arthur’s brows raise, Merlin flounders. “It just... is,” he says weakly. “It’s—it’s been with me since birth.”

Arthur starts. “That’s...”

“Impossible?” Merlin finishes dryly. He gestures toward himself mockingly. “Not quite.”

It looks like Arthur has a million questions and comments on the tip of his tongue. “It can’t be common,” he ends up venturing. “Otherwise…”

Merlin jerks his head once. “It isn’t. Not like me. But that doesn’t mean the potential can’t be there from youth. Choice...choice doesn’t always have anything to do with it.”

“How often, then?”

Merlin shrugs a single shoulder. “Often enough. Maybe every one in three or four, according to Gaius.”

“That many,” Arthur breathes. "Morgana?"

Merlin nods wordlessly, and Arthur's eyes flash, lips twisting into a scowl. “Ten years, Merlin. And you would have me continue living in ignorance the moment I ask you outright?” Each word is sharp and pointed like a dagger stab. “You would continue to hide this, live like this and allow others to live like this, too, all the while hearing me denounce magic time and time again? Just because you believe I might die otherwise?”

Arthur's disappointment is a red hot brand against Merlin's heart. In all of his wildest nightmares of this moment, Merlin had never imagined this. Rejection, hatred, banishment, the pyre...they have nothing on this.

“I don’t know what more you want me to say, Arthur,” Merlin says, wiping his face. Arthur traces the motion, looking exasperated and disgusted, and Merlin’s sure he’s smeared more dirt across his face than he has cleared it of anything else. 

“I want you to tell me the truth,” Arthur commands. “Unfiltered, unabridged, unedited. Nothing held back. I can’t afford anything less.” His gaze rises above the treeline, hunting for the moon. “We have but a few hours left until dawn.”  

“I have told you what I know about Mordred.”

Arthur flaps a hand. “We make our own destinies, Merlin. No. I want to hear what you truly think of magic and its place in Camelot.”

Merlin stares, a glimmer of tangled emotion swelling in his chest. “I’m not sure I—”

“I have only ever been influenced by one perspective on sorcery. One very, very skewed perspective.” Arthur props his chin on his knees. “You are exactly the person I want to hear from. I’m sure it’ll be quite enlightening.”

Merlin gapes, and Arthur rolls his wrist impatiently. “Well?”

“It’s...magic is…” Merlin stutters to a halt, the reality of what just happened settling on him awkwardly, as though he’d been draped in a cloak that didn’t quite fit across the shoulders. “This is really weird, you know.”

Arthur snorts dryly. “Is it, Merlin? Is it weird for you?”

Merlin gives his friend a deadpan look. “I was raised to keep the secret, always. No one could know. No one. It was more than my life I’d be risking. Everyone I associated with was in danger, by mere association.”

“And yet you practiced. In Camelot.”

It seems they are going to do this after all. Alright.

“Magic is breathing to me,” Merlin says. “It’s blinking, moving, living, existing. It flows through me like the blood in my veins. It is always there. It’s always been there. And I know it’s everywhere around me, too. It’s...Look. Here.”   

Arthur doesn’t flinch when Merlin reaches across the way to grasp his hand. With a mere flicker of concentration, he allows his magic to merge with that of the sacred land around them. He spreads Arthur’s fingers open and gently flips his hand palm up. “Do you trust me?”

Arthur is watching him with a guarded expression, hesitation warring with budding curiosity. “When you have to ask, I wonder if I should say yes.”

Merlin barks a laugh. A genuine laugh. Warmth spreads from his center through his limbs, and he feels giddy, alive. 

He feels like himself for the first time in a long time.

“Pay attention,” he whispers, grinning, “And be still.” Instinctually, he opens himself up to Arthur too, sharing a glimpse of his power with the king as gently as the touch of a loose dandelion seed. 

His eyes flare with gold. 

Arthur gasps, and he almost jerks his hand from Merlin’s. Merlin would let him go, if he was that uncomfortable, but Arthur is not one to back down from a challenge Merlin posed. The tension bleeds from Arthur’s shoulders as he blinks around them, awe overcoming discomfort with every second. 

The forest around them shimmers with a vibrancy that outshines sunlight itself. Blacks are deeper, greens brighter and browns richer. The ring of light cast by their fire frolics and skips, enhancing every living thing in sharp contrast with the shadows they cast. Trees breathe in time with the breeze playing at their upper boughs, every rustling leaf and scuttle in the underbrush singing in tune with the chirping crickets and trickling creek nearby. Merlin’s magic hums in harmony, resonating through both of them. 

“You feel all this?” Arthur asks in a breathless murmur, fingers flexing against Merlin’s. “This is what it is like for you?”

“Not all the time,” Merlin says, equally quiet. “There isn’t much magic left in Camelot. But it’s there. It won’t ever fade entirely, you know. Not if you know where to look.” 

“My father would have snuffed out every last bit. I would have done the same.”

“Uther’s Purge...it was an exercise in futility, in some ways,” Merlin admits. “A roaring success in others. The land, the air and sea? They know magic. They remember. They always will.” He smiles wearily, sadly. “Men’s memories are far shorter.”

“And what don’t men remember?”

“That magic itself is woven into the fabric of the world, Arthur. It does not understand good or evil, much in the same way rain does not understand the damage its floods can cause, nor the prosperity it can promise a farmer’s crop.”

Silence reigns. Merlin holds his breath, watching the firelight catch on the planes on Arthur’s face. Arthur marvels at the world around them, wide-eyed and childlike.

“So there is the root of your lie,” Arthur muses eventually. “Magic always has a place, regardless of what men decide or otherwise wish to believe.”

Merlin slides his hand away from Arthur’s. The gold shimmer in his eyes fades away. “I’m sorry, Arthur. This...this wasn’t how I...”

“Don’t sound so miserable, Merlin,” Arthur says brightly. His eyes are alight in a way that makes Merlin wary. Very wary. Many a bad idea or downright insane plan started with that light in his king’s eye. “This is progress.”

“How is this progress?” Merlin demands. “Mordred is going to kill you, if you’ve forgotten! I certainly haven’t!”

"I was not summoned because of Mordred. The Disir called me well before Mordred involved himself, before he was injured.” 

“They’re soothsayers, Arthur. They likely knew—”

Arthur started shaking his head even before Merlin finished speaking. “Perhaps. Perhaps not.” His finger’s tap at the dirt beside him. “You told me before we left that judgement is wasted on those who do not listen. Gaius said they only call forward those they find wanting. Do you remember the unicorn?”

Merlin stares, unable to follow the logic. “Yes? That happened years ago, Arthur. What does the unicorn have anything to do with…?”

“Never once did they say they’d save Mordred specifically in exchange,” Arthur argues. “‘Save everything you hold dear,’ they said. ‘Save your kingdom.’ Never ‘save the boy.’ Never ‘save your knight.’” Arthur’s gaze snaps to Merlin. “Just how often have you used your magic in the name of this kingdom, Merlin?”

“Just about every day since I’ve arrived,” Merlin answers flippantly, still not following. “But, Arthur, listen, magic as a whole and the Old Religion are not mutually exclusive. The Old Religion can be cruel, and at its very core it demands balance.” Merlin scowls, remembering Nimueh. “In my experience, followers of the Old Religion are not always as impartial as they claim to be. A life for a life is not outside its realm of demands, and this is so much bigger than one person.”

“That’s rich coming from you,” Arthur retorts under his breath. 

“You are the key to uniting Albion!” Merlin shoots back. “You’re the Once and Future King! Mordred is not either of those things.”

Arthur’s lips twist. “More of your destinies, Merlin?” 

“Yes, ” Merlin hisses. “Because I was born to serve you, and even if I wasn’t; even if I didn’t have a magical bone in my body to use to protect you or this kingdom; even if I didn’t believe with every fiber of my being that you are the greatest king of the age and all ages to come, you are my friend, and I could not bear to lose you for this!”

“As flattering as that is to hear, Merlin, you’re not listening to me!” Arthur’s voice rises. “Mordred’s health is a distraction. One I ultimately am responsible for after disrespecting the Disir, but a distraction nonetheless. My supposed death? Another distraction. The Disir never mentioned either, did they? Just ‘all I hold dear’ and ‘my kingdom.’”

“Your life is kind of integral to both of those things,” Merlin snarks.

Arthur chooses to ignore Merlin’s comment entirely. “You just told me there is no either-or in this scenario because magic is as nature, and neither nature nor magic itself views this world in black and white. I doubt the Disir, as the mouthpieces of the Triple Goddess, view it that way either. Don’t you see? Even you thought this was an impossible bargain they forced us into, but that isn’t it at all, is it? I requested a boon, and we assumed.”

And suddenly, Merlin understands what Arthur is saying. And Arthur is right: the Disir never did say they’d grant the boon if Arthur did what they wanted. Never once did they outright promise an explicit if, then.  

“‘Consider carefully,’” Merlin murmurs, remembering aloud and feeling as though he’s been struck by lightning. “Not choose carefully.”

“There is no choice to make,” Arthur says. “Not about Mordred, anyway. This was a test—a warning —and they want to see how I will respond.”

It was a warning. This whole time…

Merlin reviews everything the Disir said in a new light, assigning new meaning and implications to their words. “They’re not asking you to renounce your values or sense of justice,” Merlin says. “They’re not asking you to be who you aren’t. They’re not asking you to submit to the Goddess, either.”

“Merely asking I try to understand those who do,” Arthur finishes. He’s staring past Merlin, out into the vague distance. 

“They’re asking for your humility before Her,” Merlin adds. “For you to show compassion toward those you do not understand. They wish you to recognize the cycle that keeps repeating and folding in on itself, over and over again, and do something about it before it tears us even further apart.” 

“My father, the Purge…” 

“Morgana,” Merlin adds. 

“You.”

Merlin flinches and picks at some of the grass underneath his bent knees. “Me,” he whispers, huffing a dark chuckle. He rubs the torn blades between his fingertips, watching them fall away, his throat swollen and raw. 

The time of Albion upon them, and Merlin nearly missed it. The Triple Goddess Herself intervening, and in his arrogance and crippling fear of the future, he…

Merlin had nearly doomed them all.

Gods. Gods. 

Arthur watches him speculatively. “Morgana is currently the biggest threat to the kingdom. To all I hold dear. I always thought it was her magic that turned her against us.”

“In a way, it was,” Merlin admits. 

“Then why hasn’t yours?”

Merlin considers and, after a short beat, smiles. It reaches his eyes. Renewed faith and hope and a deep, pure joy radiates from his center. “Do you really have to ask?” he wonders aloud, already knowing the answer. 

“No,” Arthur says anyway, eyes clouded with memories. “No, I suppose I don’t.”

Merlin’s smile broadens, and the avalanche of emotion nearly sweeps him away. He should have known better than to forget there was always another side to his coin. 

“I’ve been so foolish,” Merlin realizes aloud. His cheeks itch, and he rubs away the new tear tracks, even as he smiles. “So blind.”

“Glad we agree.”

“I should have trusted you with this long ago.”

“You should have.”

Merlin shoots a halfhearted glare at Arthur, who looks annoyingly satisfied with himself. “I cannot believe how easily you’re taking this,” Merlin complains, giddy disbelief negating all accusation in his tone. “I have magic.”

“You have magic,” Arthur agrees, as though tasting the words on his tongue. 

“Yeah,” Merlin says softly, soberly. “I have magic.” This is how he should have told Arthur. Arthur catches the mood shift. “I never fit in because of it. I never knew what it was for or why I had it. Not until I found my place by your side.”

Arthur inclines his head, an acknowledgement and wordless acceptance in that simple gesture. 

In that moment, it feels as though the rotting horse carcass of stress and fear and self-hatred crushing Merlin’s chest has disappeared. He hadn’t been aware of its suffocating weight and rotting poison until it was gone, and now he’s light enough to lift off and take wing. He feels like the boy he once was, and he doesn’t want to let him go again. 

Is this freedom? Merlin wonders, exhilarated and awed by the relief of release. Is this what I could have had, years ago?

“I have so much to tell you,” he says, long disregarded enthusiasm racing through his veins like adrenaline. “There’s so much I’ve always wanted to tell you. You truly have no idea just how often I have saved your royal arse.” Possessed by a sudden whim, Merlin flicks his magic, and an invisible finger pokes at Arthur’s hip. 

The king jumps out of his skin, eyes widening in shock and fury. “Did you just—?”

If the lingering glimmer of gold in Merlin’s eye didn’t give him away…well. Merlin laughs uproariously.

Arthur’s red-faced indignation fades as he watches Merlin laugh, an odd expression on his face. “Incredible,” he mutters, when he catches Merlin’s attention on him again. “Is this what you’d use your highly-illegal magic for? Irritating your king?”

“Only part of the time,” Merlin says, playing along and willfully ignoring the empty threat. “And especially if he’s being a prat.”

Arthur goes so still Merlin stops laughing, and for one blinding moment, he’s worried he’s misread this entire situation, only to have Arthur exclaim in a disapproving hiss, “You bloody cheater! I knew there was no way a simple country boy could be so skilled with a mace!”

He’s talking about their ill-advised and raucous fight in the Lower Town, back when Arthur was a spoilt prince and Merlin fresh off the road from Ealdor, but that isn't what Merlin focuses on first. “Oi!” he exclaims, offended. Simple ? Simple, Arthur says? Well. Merlin’ll set him straight. 

(Because he can do that now. He can tell Arthur everything).

“Perhaps we should consider thanking that simple country boy for stopping time to pull you out of the way of a homicidal sorceress’s flying dagger instead?” Merlin asks. He feels a rush of vindication when Arthur mouths stopping time? at him. “The country boy in question doesn’t think he actually ever did get a thank you for that. Noooo, he just got saddled with a job as your manservant!”

“I cannot believe you,” Arthur retorts. “Using magic like that? Within days of arriving in Camelot? Are you completely mad?”

“You were insufferable,” Merlin says in his own defense. “And needed to be knocked down a few pegs. You're welcome.”

Arthur rolls his eyes. “Please tell me you never used magic in front of my father for something so stupid. Please tell me you have a little more self-preservation than that.”

Merlin hesitates. “Well…”

“Merlin!”

It is so easy to talk like this, to fall into banter and reminisce as though they don’t have the future of a kingdom and all of Albion balancing on the tip of a precipice, hours away from falling to one side or another. They talk as though they have nowhere better to be and nothing better to do.

They talk until dawn. Oddly, Merlin doesn’t once mention his or Arthur’s destiny. Merlin doesn't once linger on Kilgharrah's warnings. Somehow, between stories of magical beasts and enchanted weapons, between stories of Sidhe enchantresses and assassins and lying Witchfinders, it doesn’t come up.

No, not once.

~...~

“You’ve returned,” the first Disir greets.

Arthur stands before the trio, proud and tall. Merlin hovers half a pace behind his right shoulder. Gray sunlight, dull and misty, presses against their backs. It barely reaches the hooded cloaks of the women in front of them. The entire scene should feel ominous.

It doesn’t.

“I have,” Arthur proclaims. “And I have something to say.”

The Disir wait, motionless, but it is clear they are listening. Merlin is too. 

He doesn't know what Arthur has decided, has no idea what exactly is going through his friend's head, and for once...he isn't afraid.

Arthur lowers himself to his knees. “I have much to learn,” he says. “In the last few hours, I have discovered just how many more questions I need to ask, as well as how many more answers I need to hear. I’ve come to understand something of magic, and having never been allowed to think differently while under my father’s rule...and while still allowing my father’s legacy to drive my own…”

Arthur’s voice falters, and Merlin takes a half-step forward, pressing his leg against Arthur’s back, reminding him he’s there, no matter what happens here.

“It is no excuse,” Arthur continues. “I am not my father. I never will be. And after what I have learned last night, I do not wish to continue to lend my name to this part of his legacy. The Pendragon name itself may not count for much, especially after all the desolation and fear that has been sown under the dragon banner, but…” 

Briefly, so briefly Merlin is sure he imagined it, Arthur's gaze flickers away from the Disir, and over his shoulder, at him. “But as King of Camelot, I vow to take your counsel. I vow to spend more time understanding what I can do to atone for the sins committed against those I was raised to misunderstand and fear. I vow, from this day forward, no one with magic should fear death for merely possessing it, nor should any man, woman, or child balk to cross Camelot’s border who follows either the Old or New Religions, not so long as they come in peace.”

Ferocious pride nearly cripples Merlin. Legs as weak as jelly, he staggers to a knee at Arthur’s side, too, head bowed. 

My power is at his disposal, he projects at the trio of women. Awed gratitude for their intervention soaks into his words, which are rather bulky and clumsy in comparison to Arthur’s, but no less ardent or sincere. They were not any more planned than the king’s were. For better or worse, and for all of time to come. And now he knows it.

The Disir remain silent, observing the two kneeling men. 

“You honor the name Pendragon, young king,” the first says eventually.

“And you already begin to atone,” her sister says.

Merlin may be imagining it, but he thinks the third is smiling. “You may yet see your dreams realized...” 

“...your kingdom saved from that which would destroy it...”

“...And fate may yet prove moldable by those who are bold enough to dare.”

Merlin stiffens in surprise, and he looks up. Their cowled faces have not altered, but he senses their eyes on him.

“The Triple Goddess accepts your vows,” they announce in unison.

This time Arthur stiffens beside him, as though he can hardly believe what he’s hearing.

“Go in peace, Arthur Pendragon and Merlin Hunithson.”

“Be brave.”

“Be true.”

“Be bold.”

“Go in peace,” they repeat in a fading whisper, melting into the shadows. 

And so they go.

Merlin releases a shuddering breath. Arthur does the same. They share a glance, a quick one.

“That...was it?” Arthur asks, rising to his feet.

“I suppose so,” Merlin mutters, following. 

The expressions flickering across Arthur’s face are too fast and variable to track. “Alright then,” he says, clapping his gloved hands together and then grasping one of Merlin’s shoulders. “Let’s go home.”

“Home,” Merlin agrees.

It goes without being said they have a lot of work to do. And a lot of time to make up for.

Arthur ducks out of the cave before Merlin, already calling at him to hurry up, and Merlin’s about to retort when an unnatural chill brushes along his spine.

Emrys, the Disir call.

Merlin only half-turns an ear toward the invisible presence. 

Warmth floods their collective voice. You’ve done well.