Archive of Our Own ^beta

Chapter Text

The scar slashed across his upper arm, from front to back, shoulder to elbow like an ‘s’ pulled out of shape. Arthur couldn’t stop running the pads of his fingertips over it. He needed, compulsively, to trace the ragged line of messily knit skin, puckered and white, to make sure it was really there. The divots and edges were monstrous but mesmerizing. And it helped him remember, too, and that he had to do at any cost, even if his hand was burrowed halfway up his sleeve in front of all these somber people with their big, veiled hats and their black suits and handkerchiefs.

He’d never been to a church, but he knew it was a place of austerity and silence and that it required decorum. A quick glance around showed plenty of people with their hands discreetly over their mouths or holding a soft tissue at their nose, or even balled into white-knuckled fists, but none tunneling improperly up their sleeves like Arthur’s.

He wanted to stop, to be respectful, but he couldn’t; he felt it was the only thing he could safely focus on under the dazzle and heat of the stained glass and the eye-less horror of the life-size carving of a man, hewn from dark mahogany, hanging by his wrists on a cross with a crown of thorns to show how merciless people’s fear was, and the echoing hugeness of the ceiling. Next to him, his spine like a tall ladder, Arthur’s father clenched a book with a piece of paper sticking out of it, his eyes straight forward and minutely focused.

And then the voice of the priest, intoning steadily until now, ebbed away, and Arthur’s father stood like a shot, shocking Arthur into momentary stillness, and went to the podium.

It was his father, the height and breadth and look of him, but it wasn’t his voice. That was strong and clear and assured, often quite cross, especially with Arthur. This voice was whispery and faint and full of shaky pauses. Arthur couldn’t absorb the words, their quality or their meaning. Without thinking, he shrugged out of his suit jacket, let it fall off the pew to the floor. Panicky fingers pushed back his sleeve as far as it would go but it wasn’t far enough, he couldn’t reach the whole scar. He had to feel the top, where it started, over to the back of his underarm where the skin stretched taut and shiny before the edges collided into a jagged mountain range of flesh, each dip and valley and peak begging to be accounted for by Arthur’s fingers. He had to, he had to, or he would forget.

What had she said that day? Something about him being kind? Was it that he had been or he needed to be? He couldn’t remember. The bump of skin was cool, but his hands were damp with sweat. He had to get to the beginning of it. It would be easier from the top, just undoing a button or two would be enough to reach. His fingers brushed the unnaturally silky skin there, where the gash began, plunging against it like diving into a pool on a hot day. Now he remembered; he’d begun to pack an extra pencil in his case because his desk mate never had one and was always in trouble for it. And when he’d told her about it she’d said…called him generous, but she’d been wrong, it wasn’t generous, it was because Arthur didn’t like hearing the teacher get frustrated every day because his desk mate couldn’t remember a stupid pencil, and he’d tried to say that part, but she had smiled at him with pride and said, "You’re a generous person, Arthur; I want you always to be so kind."

He remembered now. He had to write it down in the little book, so he wouldn’t forget. He searched every pocket before remembering it lay at home in his room; his father had made him leave it. He had to do something, so he wouldn’t forget; he had to close his eyes and concentrate, try to hear it exactly, feel it exactly, before -

but there was a strange absence of sound, echoing emptiness all around him, like a rushing void, and then his hand was yanked out of his open shirt and he couldn’t help the surprised yelp that came out of him. His eyes flew open. Father towered above him, an expression twisting his features that Arthur had never seen before. He didn’t look at all like himself.

“Stop it, Arthur! Stop! Stop! Just stop this – this damned – this damned –!”

The stones of the church bounced his father’s voice around until suddenly they absorbed it and nothingness resounded.

And then noise broke like birds riled up in a storm. The priest rushed forward and put a calming hand on Arthur’s father, who wrenched himself away yelling, thundering words that got tangled in their own reverberations, resounding until the rumblings chased away everything else in Arthur’s head.

It wasn’t his father; it wasn’t him at all. Arthur quivered, lost in a nightmare from which he had to wake up. But he also had to remember.

But remember what?

Chapter Text

He’d gone immediately for his notebook when they finally got home, but try as he might, he couldn’t think of the thing he’d wanted to write down. The other things he’d written were still there, small and vague against the pages.

She’d grabbed him by the arm and it had hurt, but not because of her grip. There was a big tear in his sleeve and it was supposed to be white but inexplicably it was now completely red. Such a strange jolt; he knew the shirt had been white before, he’d been told not to stain it at lunch.

He wished he could still feel her hand on him, even though it had stung. He knew where she touched, though, right over the scar. It wasn’t loving like an embrace, but it had been tight like one and he wanted it.

That was why he’d wrapped up in one of her blouses, pulling it tight around his shoulders, just pretending, when his father found him huddled in her dressing room as the sun went down in a bloody sky.

Arthur heard the rip of fabric and saw buttons flying in all directions long before he heard his father’s voice. When he did it wasn’t echoing as it had in the church, it was clear and strong and full of a venom that Arthur feared.

“Get out! Don’t touch her things, Arthur! Don’t move anything, don’t disturb anything! Get out!”

Arthur got out.

*

Arthur huddled behind the small shed in the back garden of their townhouse, hoping he wasn’t visible from any of the windows. In his trouser pocket the mobile phone his mum had given him on his 9th birthday for emergencies pressed against his thigh. He’d never used it, but he remembered showing it proudly at school – he was the only person with one – and how she’d said she trusted him to be careful with it and use it wisely. There were only three numbers in the contacts: hers, his father’s and their family friend, old Mr. Gaius, who used to live nearby but moved away last year. He’d been at the funeral but after the whole incident Arthur hadn’t gotten a chance to talk to him or see if he’d brought him any fascinating trinkets like he used to.

He selected Mr. Gaius’ number and pressed the call button.

It rang a few times and then Mr. Gaius said, “Yes, hello?”

“Hello, it’s Arthur Pendragon,” Arthur said.

“Hello Arthur,” Mr. Gaius said pleasantly. He was always calm and never yelled. Arthur liked that.

“Can I come and live with you?” Arthur wondered. “I hate London.”

Mr. Gaius made a sympathetic sound. “Why is that, Arthur?”

“I just hate it,” he said. “And my dad won’t mind. He probably won’t notice if I leave.”

“I’m sure he’d notice,” Mr. Gaius said patiently, and Arthur didn’t think it would be polite to disagree.

“Maybe eventually.”

“It must be hard for you, Arthur. I can’t imagine what you’re going through. But are you sure leaving London is a good idea? It’s your home, after all. Where your friends and family are, your school, your favorite places?”

“I just don’t love it anymore,” Arthur said, trying to order his thoughts. “I don’t want to be here.”

“Have you talked with your father about that?”

“He doesn’t talk to me. He hardly ever leaves his room. And when he does he gets angry over everything.”

“Is that so?” Mr. Gaius sounded surprised.

“It’s so,” Arthur insisted. “So, I’d really like to leave.”

“How about this: I’ll call up your father and have a chat with him and we’ll see if we can’t work something out. Will that do for now?”

“He doesn’t care,” Arthur persisted. “I don’t think we have to tell him.”

Mr. Gaius chuckled. “Well, that might be a little too cavalier, don’t you think?”

“I guess,” Arthur shrugged, but only because he wasn’t sure what cavalier meant.

“All right, good. Then I’ll call your house to let you know.”

“OK,” Arthur said. “Thank you.” He remembered his manners in the last moment, but he couldn’t help feeling dejected. He hadn’t made the urgency of the situation clear and if Mr. Gaius told his father Arthur called him he’d probably be angry again.

*

Night had fallen by the time Arthur tried to sneak back inside. He crept through the kitchen door, relieved to find it still unlocked. He toed off his shoes and slid silently across the tiled floor, only to have the blood freeze in his veins to see his father slumped at the counter in the dark.

His heart beat madly, the moment stretching long, but his father never lifted his gaze from the empty crystal glass in front of him. On the lightest feet, Arthur tiptoed past, hardly daring to breathe until he was all the way upstairs and huddled in his room.

*

Several days later Arthur was disembarking a train in Wales. He’d been bundled off post-haste, told by his father only that he’d be summering in the country with a friend of Mr. Gaius’ just as a car arrived to take him to the train, without any of his other questions answered. Before the driver had even closed Arthur’s door his father had vanished back inside the house, as if swallowed by the shadowed maw of the entryway.

Arthur didn’t look back.

He’d never ridden a western railway train alone. He felt grown up and only a bit nervous as his father’s driver led him through Paddington station, with people and noise and light swirling all around. He had a reserved seat on the train and that was good, because he couldn’t lift his luggage onto the rack, but no one tried to sit next to him, so he put his large bag, packed by the housekeeper, at his side and settled in. When the train began to pull away from the station, he felt a jolt of fear. He’d never been out of London on his own and he’d never been to Wales. But then again, what did it matter where he went? His father didn’t want him there anymore and his mother was not in London or anywhere else, so why should Arthur be there?

The sights were remarkably interesting for a time, but then the towns gave way to fields and soon all the fields looked the same. He remembered what his father’s driver had said – he’d have to get out of the train in Swansea and look for the one to Abergwesyn. He got the help of a nice train lady doing the tickets and found the correct train with only a minimum of worried lip-biting. She even helped him with his bag, and he felt proud and worldly as he sat for the last leg of his journey to wherever he was summering. He wondered if Mr. Gaius’ friend was another old man and if he’d have to spend the summer sitting still and reading, or playing lots of bridge. The idea wasn’t pleasing but it was better than being at home with his father and all his angry misery.

All told, the trip lasted a little over six hours and by the time Arthur stepped onto the platform, dragging his massive suitcase into the bright, gentle breeze, he was too eager and restless to worry about the rules of bridge and whether or not he’d have to learn them.

“Arthur!”

At his name, Arthur swiveled his head and saw Mr. Gaius billowing towards him. The breeze fluttered his linen top and the dark brown hair of a lady with a friendly face who walked next to him. Next to her, upper arm held firmly in her grasp, wobbled a small, skinny boy with two scabbed knees. He looked a little younger than Arthur and certainly didn’t look as though he played bridge.

The moment Mr. Gaius reached him, he pulled Arthur into a hug. Having gotten unused to that sort of thing, Arthur was delayed and awkward in hugging back. The small boy watched him with unabashed blue eyes.

“Arthur, I’d like you to meet my dear friend, Hunith. You’ll be staying in her house this summer.”

Arthur looked up at her and formally held out his hand. She wore a simple summer dress and some of her hair was wrapped with a scarf. She smelled like honey.

“We’re so happy to have you,” she said, giving him a hug instead. Her voice was low and gentle. “We’re going to have lots of fun this summer. Arthur, this is my boy, Merlin. He’s just a little younger than you and I know you’ll get along splendidly.”

Arthur didn’t know how she knew that, but he accepted it and turned to Merlin. “Hello,” he said, eyeing a smudge of dirt on the boy's neck.

“Hi,” Merlin drawled, holding the vowel in his mouth like it was a sweetie, before spitting it out to fit a smile on his face. “I made you this.” Merlin held out a dark, oval rock, onto which had been chiseled the thin outline of a door, two windows and a minuscule roof with angular scratches to look like thatch.

Arthur took it. It fit perfectly into the indent of his palm, the stone smooth and cool to the touch. “Thank you.”Only Mr. Gaius had ever given him anything without it being his birthday or Christmas. A cold little drop of embarrassment slipped into his chest. “I don’t have anything for you.”

“That’s okay.” Merlin immediately waved his worry away. He seemed much more concerned with the rock in Arthur’s hand than the fact that he was getting nothing in return. “Do you like it?”

Arthur nodded automatically, manners on display. “Yes, I like it a lot. Thank you for thinking of me.”

Merlin smiled in a self-satisfied way. “Yeah, it’s my best rock. Well, your rock, now. I got it out of the river. We can go there later if you aren’t tired, which mum says you might be. Are you?”

“Um.” Arthur didn’t know what to say. He didn’t want to contradict Merlin’s mum, who was letting him stay, but he also was curious about seeing a river.

“Let’s get home,” Ms. Hunith suggested. “And help you get settled, Arthur. And then you can decide.”

The drive to Ms. Hunith’s house took about an hour. Arthur was amazed to see so much space everywhere. He felt there was too much sky and too many mountains to fit, and yet, that was the whole point, that they were huge and unending and there was room for them.

Merlin talked nonstop. His mother turned to look at them several times where they were buckled together in the back seat to tell Merlin to give everyone some peace. What interested Arthur was that Merlin wasn’t talking to anyone. He made observations about the scenery, he narrated the flight path of a bird that seemed to be traveling their way, he mused about what might be hiding in mountain caves both near and far, but he didn’t wait for a response. He didn’t seem to need participation in order to continue voicing his thoughts, and since he always slipped right back into his audible monologue a few minutes after Ms. Hunith told him to be quiet, he clearly wasn’t in search of anyone’s approval.

It astonished Arthur. He always did exactly what his father said, except, of course, recently, because to do otherwise was very bad behaviour. But Ms. Hunith didn’t get more than exasperated and Merlin was obviously not trying to defy her. It was a puzzle that Arthur wanted to solve, but just as soon as he’d realised it all, and begun to think on it, the small car eased down a long, quiet lane along which grew tall, swaying grasses and meadow flowers, into a dusty spot in front of the only house Arthur could see or had seen for miles.

He knew he was very far from London.

Chapter Text

Mr. Gaius and Ms. Hunith and Merlin lived in the lone cottage at the end of the lane, set back from the road and absolutely besieged by flowers. Everywhere Arthur looked, colourful blossoms teemed out of neat beds and hanging pots, splashed up out of big wooden planters, bobbed cheerfully in the breeze from bright window boxes, and swayed merrily in beds along narrow stone footpaths. It looked like a fairytale garden where you could easily catch a glimpse of fey, magical creatures on their way to a fete. Even as he drank in the sight like ambrosia, a jewel-bright hummingbird flitted soundlessly by to sample nectar from a bulging bush of red honeysuckle. Bees hummed happily from deep within the petals and he even saw a chipmunk dart through the grass. The stone paths led to more flowers and a large greenhouse round the back. A true city boy, Arthur had never seen such things outside carefully cultivated public gardens. He couldn’t look away. It was wild and natural, and Arthur couldn’t find the words for it, but he felt hidden among the scented air. He felt safe.

He hadn’t realized he’d stopped to stare until a little grunt from Merlin cut the air.

Arthur turned to see Merlin struggling to drag his suitcase up the path. He’d left it lying, in his daze, by the boot. Hunith was laughing at Merlin and decidedly not helping, since he’d insisted, “I can do it myself!”

Arthur hurried back.

“Oh, no, I’ll take it in. Sorry.” He made to retrieve it, but Merlin said, “No, I have it,” with great confidence and waved him off, continuing to drag it along, scraping the couture, red-varnished sides along the stones.

Merlin, shorter than he was, with pokey, knobby limbs and black, fluffy hair, looked like an ant trying to lift a strawberry.

Arthur shuffled around, intent on helping, but Merlin stopped to push Arthur away. “No thank you,” he sniffed. “You’re the guest.”

Merlin’s mum, who Arthur noticed was turning pink trying not to laugh anymore, shared a look with Mr. Gaius that he couldn’t interpret and ruffled Merlin’s hair as she passed. “Helpful wee thing.”

Arthur would have been mortified if his parent had called him ‘wee thing’ in front of anyone, but Merlin lifted his chin higher with a look of determination and redoubled his efforts.

Feeling a bit bad, Arthur followed Ms. Hunith inside, but he presently forgot about Merlin’s little sounds of effort drifting in through the open doorway when the cottage unfolded before him.

It was a true cottage, of the kind seen on idyllic postcards of the British countryside. Thick walls of weathered grey field stone, deep-set windows on whose wooden ledges sat more flowers in vases, picture frames, books, candlesticks and any number of other treasures that spoke of a home welcomed him gently. Low ceilings with wooden beams crossing at not-quite-equal intervals seemed to smile down at him. Some of the stone had been plastered over with white, but most of it was exposed, especially around the big rustic fireplace that stood at one end of the room with an open grate giving way to a flag-stone skirt, not at all like the elegantly carved, refined wooden and marble mantle pieces in Arthur’s house. A narrow, wooden stairwell that turned abruptly at a minuscule landing led up to a second floor, shadowy from below. It was nothing like any of the homes Arthur had been to in London that were all sleek metal and LED lighting or gleaming marble and thick velvets. He felt as if a gnome would pop out of some mossy crack and rush to stir his tiny cauldron at the back of the fireplace, or animals would saunter in from the fields and help with chores.

Merlin’s shocked voice drifted through the thick walls. “It has wheels?!”

Ms. Hunith chuckled and gave Arthur a bracing pat on the back, which startled him. “This used to be an old granary,” she explained, perhaps misinterpreting his frozen state. “On a big estate. But the main house is long gone, now. We’ve kept this place up as well as we could. Let’s go through to the kitchen, love. You must be hungry.”

Arthur realised he hadn’t eaten in many hours, and he sat down obediently when Ms. Hunith gestured to the rough-hewn chunk of wood fashioned into a table. She rummaged in the fridge (it was robin egg blue) and brought out a chipped green glass plate covered with cloth. Removing the cloth and placing the plate in front of Arthur, she said with a gentle smile, “This is a potato cake,” pointing to a golden, flakey pie-looking thing. “And this is a summer salad,” she went on, indicating the green and purple and red leaf mix. “Everything is from the garden here. Does any of it look like something you’d like to eat?”

Arthur was not aware one had a choice of meal. He ate whatever the cook put in front of him or he ate nothing. “Yes, thank you,” he said and took the fork she held out.

Before he had taken a bite, Merlin wandered in looking flushed and sweaty. He hopped up onto a chair and sat expectantly at the table, swinging his feet and making the tablecloth flutter.

Ms. Hunith took another plate out and placed it in front of him. When the cloth came off Arthur saw it held the same things as his plate. Merlin gave him a big grin when he noticed Arthur looking. “I love potato cake,” he said. “Do you?”

Arthur had never had one, but he nodded, not wanting to offend Merlin or his mum. He took a bite and found that it was delicious. The potato was mashed and felt creamy and cool against his tongue and the crust was flakey and buttery and melted pleasantly. He thought it would be a little nicer warm, but it was good cold, too, and he finished it all, and all the salad, while Merlin ate and talked, his voice filling the summer-warm, cosy space.

Arthur could hear Ms. Hunith and Mr. Gaius talking in the back garden through the open door behind Merlin, through which also traveled a fresh, flowery breeze sweetened with birdsong. Otherwise, it was completely silent. He couldn’t hear any traffic or crowds, or aeroplanes or trains.

“Want some tea?” Merlin wondered, when his plate was finally clear. Without waiting for an answer, Merlin slid off his chair and headed for the stove, a great iron contraption that seemed sentient. Moving a small stool around, he grabbed down the heavy kettle and filled it in the sink, before placing it back on the hob. Then, to Arthur’s astonishment, he lit a match, turned a knob that began to click, and suddenly there was fire underneath the kettle.

“Whoa,” Arthur couldn’t help but say. “That was brilliant.”

Merlin looked around himself like he’d missed something. “What? Where?”

Arthur kept a little grin in check. “No, you. Lighting the fire.”

Merlin didn’t laugh but his face looked like he was laughing. “Ooohh,” he said. “Aren’t you allowed to do yours at home? I was just finally allowed when school ended!”

“Ours is automatic,” Arthur said. He had never once used the stove or the oven or the kettle by himself. The cook did everything.

Merlin looked as agog about that as Arthur had been about the match. “It lights itself?”

Arthur did laugh at that. “Yeah, of course.”

Even though he’d just met him, Arthur could already tell that Merlin was gearing up to say a lot about that, but just as his mouth popped open, Ms. Hunith and Mr. Gaius came back inside.

“Honey, why don’t you show Arthur where he’ll be staying?”

“I’m making tea for me and Arthur,” Merlin said, climbing on the stool to get down two teacups from a cupboard. Arthur didn’t know what to say. If Ms. Hunith wanted them to go, Arthur wanted to oblige. At home, if he was doing something and his father wanted him to do something else, he did it. Ms. Hunith took the cups from Merlin, though, as he was preparing to jump down, and went to the kettle herself.

“How about I finish the tea and once you’ve shown Arthur around you can come back and have it.”

“OK.” Merlin agreed easily, much to Arthur’s relief. Then he beckoned Arthur back into the lounge. “Come on!”

*

After learning where the loo was (just one in the whole house!), Arthur also learned that he was to share Merlin’s room and that Merlin was delighted about it, which was the opposite of how Arthur would have felt if Merlin had suddenly arrived to stay at his house. “We’ll be good friends,” Merlin promised, leading Arthur up on the narrow stair. “I’ll be nice to you, so don’t worry. You can play with any of my things. Well, except for the wooden dragon on my desk. Don’t touch that. But everything else is within limits. I asked mum why isn’t it on limits, have you ever thought of that? Off limits but not on limits?”

Arthur had not kept pace with Merlin’s chattering, too busy noticing the details of the house as they passed, like the dark, gnarled wooden floorboards in the corridor, illuminated by a circle of sunlight coming from an open door to their left. He glimpsed the one loo as Merlin pointed it out, painted creamy linen with a round window like a boat set high in the wall, and then Merlin was waving him inside another room with a sloped ceiling painted to look like the night sky and wooden beams sectioning each plane of the room, and he struggled to parse the last few sentences. “Huh?”

“She didn’t answer, not really. She said it’s to give me something to natter about so she can be sure to meet her weekly grey hair quota. But I know people were saying off limits before I was even born.”

“I never thought about that.” Arthur still wasn’t entirely sure what Merlin was talking about, but that didn’t seem to matter.

Merlin turned around and spread his arms to showcase his room. “That’s okay. Here we are.”

Arthur’s room at home had high ceilings and was white from top to bottom. It was a neat and orderly place because his father wouldn’t abide anything less; he abhorred clutter and trinkets and tried to instill that hatred in Arthur. Each year, as Arthur had outgrown clothes and toys and books they’d simply disappeared, without a word to Arthur, so that his bedroom was just that – a room, that, for a time, held some of his transitory possessions.

Merlin’s room was a mess. There were books and clothes everywhere and all manner of curio – rocks in a jumble, feathers grouped by color, seeds in little dishes, strings wound tightly around sticks, little metal fasteners strewn about the desktop, teacups in various states of emptiness. There were some toy horses of different breeds and sizes, wooden and plastic, even a few old tin ones that looked hazardous. A pile of what seemed to be little bones sat on Merlin’s desk, along with the off-limits wooden dragon that stood proudly and safely at the back edge, all debris cleared from it in a wide circle like a fairy ring. Merlin’s bed sheets were a dark blue tangled heap, and he had a million pillows in grey cases scattered over the whole mattress, so that Arthur couldn’t even tell which end was the head and which was the foot.

“Mum says it’s a cesspit.” Merlin said, some hesitation in his voice. “She said I had to clean it, or you’ll think I’m a heathen.”

Arthur looked at the tottering stack of interwoven stick architecture, the bucket of dirty tools, child-sized but obviously well used if the battered hammer and dirt-covered trowel were any indication. He breathed in the scent of earth and laundry, felt the age of the walls and the faded carpet, sensed the peace of the waning sunlight through the old, slightly dusty windows. He spied, half stuck under a pillow, a plush yellow and red dragon that had been much loved.

“It’s like a treasure trove.” He wasn’t sure why he said that, except that he wanted to look at everything, touch and explore each little item to uncover the thing that made it special, but Merlin beamed so brightly it made Arthur blush.

With a hand sweeping over the general vicinity of the room, Arthur observed, “You’re into a lot of things, aren’t you.”

Merlin shrugged, still smiling. “I guess so. I just like seeing how things work and how things are. Well, some things. For example, I don’t care at all how my mum’s mobile works. She said building machines and things, like electronics, is a useful skill if I’m interested in learning it but I’m not. I want to know other stuff, though. Right now, I’m trying to make a mouse skeleton, want to see?”

Merlin navigated the piles of stuff to get to his desk and motioned Arthur over.

“So they are bones,” Arthur said, when Merlin began to delicately handle the spindly pieces.

“Yep. It was sad. I found it half eaten in the field. Probably an owl got it. I was going to bury it but mum said that there was still good meat on it for some carnivore, so I left it. But then when I went back after a couple weeks it was still there. The meat was gone and most of the guts and I think some of the bones are also missing, because they were a little scattered, but Gaius helped me sanitize it so I could reconstruct the skeleton. I got this book on rodent skeletons, see?”

Arthur nodded at the book Merlin held up. “And I got these little metal things to hold everything in place. Want to work on it together?”

“I think rodents carry diseases.” Arthur bit his lip uneasily, thinking of what his father had once said when a rat had run across the pavement. “It’s not a good idea to handle them.”

Merlin cocked his head. “We cleaned it. The bones won’t hurt you. We used so much cleaner stuff my nose ran!”

Arthur worried his lip further. He did want to help Merlin put it together, but he couldn’t imagine what his father would say if he knew they were handling bones of dead animals. “Your mum says it’s okay?”

Merlin bobbed his head. “Yeah, she doesn’t mind. Just not in the kitchen.”

“Okay, then,” Arthur said, a tiny thrill-shiver running down his back.

“Brilliant,” Merlin said and turned his huge smile on Arthur again.

*

Until he'd arrived, Arthur thought he was staying by himself with an old man friend of Mr. Gaius’ and he was greatly relieved when he’d found he’d misunderstood. Even better, Mr. Gaius lived with Ms. Hunith, too. Well, he lived in a converted barn at the edge of her back garden. It had all the things a house had, like a loo and a kitchen, as well as a bedroom and a little lounge. But it also had a wide-open, airy, meticulously kept space that was Mr. Gaius’ workshop. Mr. Gaius was an herbalist and made homeopathic medicines and other wellness products from the extensive herb garden he tended. Arthur was beginning to understand that all the land around Ms. Hunith’s house that was cultivated was not just for looks, but for medicines and salads and seasonings and the flower business that Ms. Hunith owned, too.

Beyond the huge gardens, wide meadows bedazzled with wildflowers and softly rustling grasses undulated wave-like beneath a domed blue sky. Beyond rose a thin tree line which thickened fretfully into a deep wood that eventually stretched up into the mountains, according to Merlin. These woods also housed the river that Merlin was longing to get to in the heat of the summer evening.

Once Merlin’s tour of the immediate grounds wrapped up, he led Arthur into the kitchen through the back door. Two teacups sat, curling their steam into the golden light of sunset.

“Thank you!!” Merlin shouted into the empty room.

“Welcome,” came Ms. Hunith’s call from somewhere in the house. “See if Arthur wants a biscuit!”

Merlin turned to Arthur with a happy smile. “Yay! We have jam ones and cream ones. I like both. You can have both, too, if you like.”

Arthur didn’t know what the right answer was, so he only nodded. He watched Merlin drag the stool back to the counter and clamber up onto it, where he reached to the top of the fridge and took down a tin. “Catch,” he said, and Arthur had just enough time to lurch near and catch it against his stomach as Merlin dropped it from on high.

Predictably, some of the biscuits were broken, but Merlin didn’t seem to mind. “We should eat up all the broken pieces, too, or they’ll just turn to crumbs,” he offered reasonably. He fished out non-broken jam and cream options for Arthur and placed them next to Arthur’s tea, then he sprinkled some of the chipped bits beside them.

He did the same for himself, except, Arthur noticed, his biscuits were both cracked into several crumbly pieces and only held together by the jam and cream centers. It reminded Arthur of a disappointment he’d had once.

For his eighth birthday there had been a chocolate tart. A few large, juicy chunks of strawberry slices were artfully arranged on top, and he’d had it in his mind that he’d like to have a piece with strawberries, but when the tart was cut, only three slices ended up with the bright red fruits. His father had gotten the first slice and his mother the second. Arthur looked hopefully at the third and last slice, but this was passed under his nose to his uncle. His own piece was plain chocolate. He felt a twinge of something like shame, because he knew that if he fussed his father would say he was greedy and spoilt. And he must be, since he still wanted it, even knowing it was wrong to want it.

There was no one else at the gathering, so the cook whisked the rest of the tart away, disappearing into the kitchen.

He ate his tart in glum silence, listening to his uncle talk about money and other inscrutable things called stocks and economies, while his father cut in about precious metals and the politics driving up the price of gold. Arthur looked away when the ruby fruits vanished into his uncle’s mouth.

And then, with his piece half gone, he looked back and there, on its top, sat a beautiful strawberry, fanned into three wedges. His father’s plate was clean. To his left was his mum. There was a watery indent in the shape of three wings and a few minuscule seeds still clinging to the sticky chocolate of her slice.

He didn’t know what to say or do or even feel, because he’d wanted it and she’d known and now she wouldn’t get any strawberries, but she didn’t look upset at all. She looked happy and she smiled at him.

“Enjoy,” she whispered.

And it wasn’t a disappointment he’d had at all, but a very complex happiness that he couldn’t name.

*

Chapter Text

The sun was saying farewell in a jubilant blaze of red and yellow and purple as they licked their biscuit crumbs, giggling. Arthur didn’t drink much tea at home. Apparently, it stunted one’s growth. But Ms. Hunith had made it, so Arthur supposed it was fine.

He felt very grown up because the teacups were fancy, not ceramic like he was allowed, but china. Both had little chips in them that exposed the sandy texture beneath the polish, but they were still lovely, and Merlin kept poking his little finger out when he drank and waiting ‘til Arthur noticed to laugh.

Because the sun was setting Ms. Hunith informed them it wasn’t a good time to go to the river. Merlin took it in good stride and asked for a fire in the back garden instead. This they were allowed, but only after they set up Arthur’s bed in Merlin’s room and if Arthur wasn’t too tired after.

The bed was not a mattress but a thick futon cushion. It had appeared in the upper hallway while they’d had their tea, but now Arthur helped Merlin push and tug it into his room. Merlin darted in to move his piles of things so that there was enough space and the cushion fell with a whump against the old rug. Merlin went to a linen closet in the loo and came back with a heap of airy, slightly stiff sheets, and he instructed Arthur on how to put the crinkled corners over the corresponding corners of the futon so that the cushion turned into a bright, puffy marshmallow. They opened the top sheet over it, flapping it up and up a few times to revel in the breeze it made and the scent of clean, sun-dried laundry it wafted, then they watched it settle down light as a feather. There was a heavier blanket that Merlin tossed to the edge of the futon in case Arthur got chilly in the night.

“OK, all done, come on!” Merlin shouted. He raced out of the room and thundered down the steps. For such a small person, Arthur thought, he could really make a lot of noise.

The back door was ajar, so Arthur went out. On a small stone patio attached to the house was a large metal fire pit. Mr. Gaius was already seated before it with a glass of something in his hand that glittered caramel and amber in the fading light. Merlin was looking over a huge stack of logs with his mother.

“I can,” he was insisting confidently, holding out his arms. With a look of fond skepticism, Hunith gently lowered two thick chunks of wood into the grasp of Merlin’s outstretched twig appendages. He swayed, and his knees were a little closer to the ground, but he held firm and nodded.

“Got it?” she asked, as he tottered away toward the fire pit. When he arrived at its singed edge, he shrugged the logs in and then beamed at his mother, who gave a big cheer.

“Yeah!” He sounded quite satisfied with himself. Arthur ambled over and held out his own arms to Hunith.

“I can take some,” he offered. She gave him an appraising look, but it wasn’t glazed with disapproval like his father’s often were.
Rather, she poked a finger into his biceps and said, “Very promising.” Arthur felt a swell of pride as she dropped two big logs into his arms.

They were certainly heavy, but Arthur could handle it. He did fencing and running at school, so he could carry some logs. Merlin’s perpetual grin was proud when Arthur looked at him after depositing his logs in the pit.

Ms. Hunith had long matches that she let both Merlin and Arthur strike against a big flint and then hold to the erection of logs and paper that she’d finalised. As the flame took and the fire started burning, an unexpected feeling rushed over Arthur. The vastness of the starry sky above dwarfed him, but the safety of the house behind enfolded him. He knew that Ms. Hunith and Mr. Gaius were kind. He knew Merlin was strange but friendly. He felt all those wonderful things and then suddenly, within him, he wished he was home in his own room looking out at the city lights. But he pictured his father, haunting the corridors and now always smelling like he did sometimes after coming home from a party, back when he went to parties, and he thought of the emptiness and darkness in every room when the cook and the housekeeper had gone for the day and he realised he didn’t want to go home to now, he wanted to go to his past home, when his father had been stern but tempered by the wise and loving smile of Arthur’s mother and she – she smelled of roses and Arthur could always find her and tell her anything.

He longed desperately to look up and see her next to Ms. Hunith.

But she wasn’t.

*

“Have you burnt your fingers?” Merlin asked him.

Arthur looked down at his match. It was just a crispy black curl in his hand and his thumb and forefinger did sting a little.

“Oh, no,” Ms. Hunith said, very gently. “Are you alright?” She knelt in front of him and wiped his face with her thumbs, but he wasn’t sure why. “Let’s get you some salve.”

Mr. Gaius stood like he’d been summoned and strode off to his barn. “I’ll be right back.” Then he vanished among the flowers.

Merlin hovered at the edge of Arthur’s vision like an anxious puppy. “It’s okay,” he was saying softly. “I’ve done it lots.”

Ms. Hunith hummed a little laugh. “That’s true. Merlin is the expert.”

Arthur looked at his fingers. They were a little red, but it wasn’t so bad. Ms. Hunith gave his cheeks a final swipe and kissed his forehead. “We’ll patch you right up.”

He wasn’t sure why a little sting was such a big deal. Mr. Gaius returned and treated Arthur’s fingers with a pasty salve and then wrapped the two affected tips in a soft, white gauze. When Mr. Gaius sat back on his heels, satisfied, Arthur thanked him. He wished everyone would stop looking at him.

“Better?” Merlin asked solicitously.

“I’m fine,” Arthur growled. Then he remembered his manners again. “Thank you.” His heart was still beating uncomfortably in his chest, like there was a little hole in it and some air had got in and hurt it, like when he got water down the wrong way drinking or swallowed a hiccough.

“Here, have a sparkler,” Merlin said, thrusting a thin metal stick at him. “You don’t have to stick yours in the fire. You can light it on mine. It’s safer.”

Arthur didn’t know what a sparkler was, but Merlin demonstrated by placing his little metal stick into the flames, where it promptly bloomed into a star of sparkling fire. Merlin hurried over and pressed the end of his to Arthur’s and the stick in his hand blossomed the same way in a whoosh.

Merlin showed Arthur how he could write things in the sky and see them in the trail of light left over. There was a whole box of the sparklers, so they wrote their names over and over and then each other’s and then Merlin insisted they spell words they were fond of. “Like ‘juice’ and ‘catastrophe’!” he shouted, but it turned out he wasn’t sure how to spell catastrophe, despite liking the sound of it.

Ms. Hunith wasn’t disappointed in Merlin at all. “That’s a big word!” she told him fondly. “Let’s spell it out together.”

So the sky filled with diamond edged catastrophes and over-bright, swooping Merlins, glittering peculiars and streams of bold, shining Arthurs.

*

It was fully dark and the stars winked benignly overhead. After the sparklers they’d played in the tall grasses with reedy stalks for swords until they couldn’t see well, and Ms. Hunith called them back to the seats in front of the fire.

“Arthur does FENCING!” Merlin shouted, hands on his mother’s knees as a brace for jumping.

“How impressive,” Ms. Hunith said indulgently. “I saw he very much outmatched you.”

“Yeah!” Merlin agreed, without any bad feelings. “He’s going to teach me moves.”

“That’s nice of Arthur.” Ms. Hunith met Arthur’s eyes, and he felt a little spike of pleasure shoot through his chest. “Make sure to say thank you.”

Merlin turned back to Arthur, seated on a comfy cushion. “Thank you,” he said, with a soft, happy, half-lidded smile.

Arthur was feeling tired, too. The train ride was tiring, even though he only sat still. Meeting Merlin and Ms. Hunith was tiring, even though he liked them a lot.

Merlin must have been tired, too, because he didn’t join Arthur on the short bench but crawled into his mother’s lap and arranged himself against her chest. Without any hint of self-consciousness, he leaned back against her and stuck his thumb right in his mouth. Her hand came up to smooth his fringe.

Arthur leaned into the hard, lifeless back of the bench and stared into the fire, seeing nothing.

*

Ms. Hunith had to carry Merlin to bed because he’d fallen asleep outside in her lap. She laid him down on top of his nest of blankets, then beckoned Arthur back down to the lounge where his suitcase sat, forgotten.

This she opened, letting the lid drop against the floor like she wasn’t worried about damage to the hardwood underneath.
“Is your toothbrush in here?” she asked, holding up a small red bag that matched the suitcase.

“I think so.” He was embarrassed to say he hadn’t packed his own bag. It had just appeared at the foot of the stairs, like the driver, waiting to take him to the car.

She unzipped the pouch and found it did hold his toiletries. She rummaged in the suitcase until she found a set of Arthur’s pajamas and then he followed her upstairs closely, wary of the unfamiliar shadows.

“There are fresh towels and facecloths in here,” she said, opening the linen closet where Merlin had gotten the sheets for Arthur’s bed. “You can use Merlin’s toothpaste, or mine, whichever you prefer. Do you need anything else?”

Arthur shook his head.

“OK, darling, then I’m going to let you wash up and then I’ll come tuck you in, sound good?”

Arthur nodded again. When the bathroom door closed behind him, he looked about himself, unsure why he was at a loss. He changed into his night clothes. He got out a facecloth. He placed it on the sink. He washed his teeth. Merlin’s toothpaste was a bright blue gel with glittery bits in it. It tasted like fruity chemicals. Arthur spat it out. Ms. Hunith’s was a white paste that tasted like mint. He liked that one better.

He felt he had been told to wash his face, so he did that. The cloth was fluffy and slightly rough, and it felt good after sitting in front of the fire. He washed his hands. He used the toilet. He washed his hands again.

When he couldn’t think of anything else to do, he opened the door. The hallway was dim and empty. The strange shadows loomed in the dusty, moon-shot silence.

“Ms. Hunith?” he called softly. She came out of the first room on the landing.

“All set?”

He nodded and held up the wet cloth and the small pile of his clothes that he’d folded clumsily. “I don’t know where to put these.”

“Oh, you can toss everything in the laundry basket.” She pointed to a wicker basket next to the shower. Arthur obeyed and followed her to Merlin’s room, but before they entered, she paused.

“Arthur,” she said softly, crouching down to his eye level. “You can just call me Hunith, okay?”

Mr. Gaius always said a similar thing. Now Arthur realised that Merlin said only ‘Gaius,’ but he didn’t feel like it was really okay. He looked at the floor, his words sticking in his mouth and nose. “But…I have to respect you.”

Surprisingly, Hunith laughed. She held both his hands in hers. “Arthur, I promise that I do not equate titles with respect, and while I appreciate the gesture, it would make me much happier if you would call me Hunith.”

Arthur nodded, eyes still downcast. That wasn’t the way he knew the world to be. Older people had to receive your respect, or you were offending them. But Ms. Hunith said she’d be happier without the title...

He had to believe that she, as a grown-up adult, knew what was right. It occurred to Arthur that she certainly knew what she liked and wanted, since she was her own self.

“OK,” he agreed.

“Good.” Hunith squeezed his hands. “Shall we get to our dreams, now?”

She led Arthur through the detritus maze in Merlin’s room and brought the sheet to his chest. “I’m so glad you’ve come to stay with us, Arthur,” she said. “Merlin is very happy, too.”

Arthur didn’t know the words to say he was glad and sad and grateful and uncertain, so he said, “Me too. Thank you.”

Then she kissed him on the forehead and smoothed his hair for a moment before telling him she’d be right down the hall within reach if he needed her.

Then he realised that what she’d brushed away in front of the fire earlier were tears and that if she’d stayed a moment longer, she’d certainly have seen the need to do so again.

*

Merlin was a very early riser. Arthur heard him rustling about in his blankets before the light was more than a grey filter over the darkness. Then he heard Merlin get up, dress, and leave the room. He wanted to go back to sleep. The futon was comfy, and the room was pleasantly dim still, and the only sounds were birds and insects.

But after a while a persistent beat, like a taut drum skin being twanged, pulsed into his consciousness. It sounded far off, but it had to be nearby, perhaps in the yard. He tried to think of what could make a noise like that, but he came up with nothing at all. In the end, he crawled off the futon and peered out the window over the fields and gardens.

The sun was almost up now, the light clean and golden and eager, filling the leaves of the far away trees with an exuberant green aura and polishing all the flowers into glowing gems. In the distance, between the grey trunks of trees, Arthur thought he saw the shine of water. And looking that way he noticed a small figure, perhaps midway between the house and the tree line, sitting in the meadow on a huge, checkered blanket and hammering two pieces of wood together.

Arthur focused his eyesight. It was Merlin and he was all by himself. Arthur got up immediately and tiptoed to Hunith’s room. He could hear her breathing softly, still asleep.

He crept down the sturdy old steps and grabbed an outfit from his suitcase. He changed in a hurry right in the living room and then he hurled himself out the back door and ran in the direction of Merlin’s blanket.

Merlin looked up when he heard Arthur’s footfalls coming fast. “Hi!”

“Hi,” Arthur replied. “Are you allowed to be out here alone?”

Merlin turned back to his project. “I’m not alone. Mum and Gaius are right there.” He pointed to the house and the barn like he was concerned Arthur hadn’t noticed each large structure.

“But,” Arthur started and then didn’t know what to say after. In London you could not just leave your house alone and go play wherever you wanted, especially not while your parents were sleeping. Maybe it was different in Wales, though. Arthur sat on the blanket. “What are you building?”

“A bat-house.” He pushed a printout at Arthur. It had instructions for building a small house for local bats. “I cut out all the pieces already with mum,” Merlin went on. “Now I can nail them together. See? I’m on step eleven.”

Arthur saw. It looked complicated, but he couldn’t be sure. He’d never done a woodworking project.

“Why do you want to house bats?” Arthur wondered, giving the paper back to Merlin, who shrugged.

“I like them. I like how they use echolocation and that they eat all the mosquitos. And I like their wings, they’re so cute.”

“Can I help?”

Merlin nodded enthusiastically. “Yeah, can you hold these two pieces together? I can’t keep them lined up while I hammer.”

They passed a pleasant hour or so chatting and hammering, before Hunith wandered over the meadow in her bathrobe. Arthur feared they’d get scolded for leaving the house alone, but Hunith only yawned and gave them both a kiss.

“I thought in honor of Arthur’s first morning here we could have scones and cream. Does that sound good, Arthur? Or if you don’t like scones, we can make something else.”

“Who doesn’t like scones?” Merlin asked incredulously, but Hunith shushed him with a laugh.

“It’s okay if you don’t,” she said. “Your choice, Arthur.”

Arthur liked scones and he said so. He really did, but it didn’t hurt that Merlin gave him a look of angelic adoration when he said scones would be very nice.

*

After the lovely breakfast treat, which included cream and jam and honey, Merlin begged his mother to let them go to the river.

“Can you swim, Arthur?” she asked.

He’d had a few private lessons in a big, gleaming, heated pool. The pool was at his father’s club and the ceiling was all windows. Arthur’s lessons were in the evenings when the pool was mostly empty. The sky was always dark and sometimes the moon floated in, its ghostly light reflected in the water where Arthur was learning to hold his breath and do a free stroke.

“A little.” He’d never progressed fast enough in his lessons to please his instructor, to be certain of his ability. But it wasn’t as if a river were a pool. He’d never played in one, but the children in his adventure books always seemed to have a deep, secret river nearby with a rope to swing out over it. It had never occurred to him that he might someday get to go in a river himself and now he desperately wanted to.

When Hunith asked if he wanted to go he said yes, and he got to experience Merlin’s excited grin all over again.

They loaded themselves with towels and snacks and sunscreen and tromped across the meadow into the cool green shade under the trees. The ground turned mossy and spongy and Arthur could hear the river sloshing in its banks.

Merlin ran ahead and he was already down to his swim trunks when Hunith and Arthur arrived.

“Watch!” Merlin shouted and flung himself into the river with a big splash.

“Merlin!” Hunith said to the air, eyes heavenward. When the little dark head resurfaced, she chided, “I haven’t got your sunscreen on yet.”

Merlin looked put out by this announcement and it was the first time his face was the true opposite of a smile. “No,” he whinged. “I hate it.”

“Sorry you feel that way,” she said matter of factly. “But you’re wearing it for your own protection.”

A mischievous, creeping smile stole over Merlin’s face and he dove back under the water and paddled to the far bank, out of reach unless Hunith waded in herself.

Hunith didn’t yell or even say anything at all to Merlin. She looked once more to the treetops, like she hoped she’d find a basket of patience ready to upend on her head, but that was it.

Arthur felt a little like a kiss-up when he stood docily to allow Hunith to slather him with a thick white paste. It smelled sort of nice, but it wasn’t a great feeling to be covered in goop. He could understand Merlin’s distaste.

“My own recipe,” Hunith informed him as he stood still under the application. “Safer for the river ecosystem. A little thicker than store-bought, though, hence our little friend’s reluctance.”

Arthur looked over to where Merlin was paddling around out of reach, pleased with his escape.

“The rocks can be slippery so be careful,” Hunith warned when Arthur was well protected. She sat on the bank and opened a book as Arthur shuffled carefully into the cool, clear water.

Merlin, it seemed, could swim, but he had no proper strokes, or at least not any Arthur had been taught. He splashed around, and he could get far underwater, moving like a pale eel beneath the dappled light. The river wasn’t deeper than their waists, even in the shadowy parts, and Arthur found it much more enjoyable than the pool with its steamy chemical smell and murky underwater lights like ghost vapours.

The pretty area under the trees was cool and private. Birds chirped overhead and the branches swayed above them in the dry summer breeze. It seemed like London summers were always rainy, but here the sun was strong and warm.

Merlin sank underwater and brought up smooth river stones and mossy silt and slimy twigs for Arthur’s perusal. They splashed water at each other, laughing and shrieking. They had contests for holding their breath underwater and finding the shiniest rocks and swimming in circles. They swim-raced from one tree to another, with Hunith shouting, ‘go!’ for them.

By lunch time Arthur was happy and tired as he flopped onto the blanket. Merlin sat next to him and their wet legs touched. Merlin’s were tinged pink and so were his shoulders and his face and his back.

“Ouch,” he said, sighing. “Sunburn.”

Hunith said nothing and Merlin soon roused himself and passed out the snacks. There were crispy apple slices with a little pot of peanut butter for dipping, red plums tight in their skin, and a bowl of cubed watermelon floating in its own pastel juice.

Merlin went straight for the apples and Arthur chose a plum. They ate and lounged and then Merlin wanted to go back to the river.
“Come here,” Hunith said, with a distinct mum-tone.

Merlin went and stood in front of her grimacing as she covered him in thick smears of sunscreen. “You’re already burnt,” she said grimly. “And it’s going to hurt later, but you’ll avoid making it worse.”

Merlin frowned and huffed. Arthur could see he clearly didn’t care much for the future consequences, he just wanted to play. It was a curious way to experience things, Arthur thought, as intriguing and terrifying as venturing into a mysterious old attic or down a long, dark tunnel without knowing if it was safe or not. He’d always been told to think three steps ahead of every action. He could have spelled the word ‘consequence’ with Merlin’s sparklers as easily as most children spelled ‘cat.’ There was something unspoken in those lessons, thinking back to the way his father’s face would pucker and the lines around his mouth deepen. Arthur understood it now because the unspoken thing slipped into his mind like a drop of poison. It asked if Merlin was very stupid for not considering the outcome of his actions.

But Merlin knew all sorts of things Arthur didn’t know. He knew things Arthur had never even heard of. So maybe Arthur had misunderstood what his father meant. Surely not thinking ahead didn’t mean you were stupid, it just meant you went about things differently.

He wondered if he could ever be a person who didn’t think of all the things that could go wrong.

Later, though, Arthur felt bad for Merlin. His skin was fairer than Arthur’s by several shades. Even though the sun hadn’t been fully on them under the trees, Merlin’s shoulders were an angry red and his pink cheeks made it look like he had a fever. He squirmed as Hunith rubbed him with aloe.

“Next time, you can avoid all this with some preventative sunscreen,” she said, kissing his flushed face. “Hear me?” she wondered, looking into his eyes.

“Yes, I do hear you,” he said, a little defiantly still. When she held his gaze, he wriggled. “Can we go look for rabbits, please?”

Arthur had been taught to fear the consequences of unplanned action, but maybe there were times when it was okay to jump right into a river you’d been longing for. Maybe it wasn’t about avoiding bad results but finding out which results were worth the risk.

*

Arthur was glad that his new friend’s spirit was not really dampened by his discomfort. It gave Arthur a lot to think about. But there also seemed to be no end to the list of things Merlin wanted to do every day and that kept Arthur busy. Merlin always rose at dawn and always embarked on a new project as soon as the old one was complete. They finished the bat house and started on a small footbridge made of fallen branches that Merlin wanted to use to span the river. After that they made insect houses like the ones already in Hunith’s gardens and scattered them throughout the forest.

There were always new activities, too. They swam often and ran themselves ragged in the meadows. Arthur taught Merlin all the fencing moves he knew. Merlin was a fast learner, though he wasn’t very skilled, so Arthur always won, but Merlin didn’t seem to care. He was just as happy watching Arthur demonstrate the moves as he was trying them himself. They followed frogs and badgers to find their homes, traced hawks with a huge old pair of binoculars, helped Gaius mash berries and leaves, hung the washing on long lines of rope that crisscrossed the yard for Hunith.

They planted things in the garden, climbed trees and buried treasure. Merlin had his own little plot of land in which he could plant whatever he wanted, and it was a terrific jumble of flowers and herbs and what Arthur would call weeds but Merlin would not. Arthur noticed that although Hunith was always around, usually nearby, and so was Gaius, Merlin often acted like he lived alone. In the sense that, he didn’t ask to go outside or play in the farther fields, he just went. He sometimes made his own breakfast or lunch, along with pots of tea whenever he wanted. He didn’t wonder if his mother thought it was okay to climb quite so high or jump from so far, he judged for himself whether it was, sometimes rightly and sometimes not. When he got hurt, which he did remarkably often, he’d find Hunith or Gaius and sit while they gave him a plaster and a kiss and sent him on his way again, or more serious aid that involved strong-smelling poultices or tinctures like Arthur had seen in his school history book, but no one seemed really concerned. Not that they didn’t care, but that Merlin was trusted to look after himself to a certain degree that was much higher than Arthur had been trusted at home.

Merlin was, incredibly, allowed to make his own decisions.

After a while, Arthur learned that Hunith was always there, and would always come when they called her, but she wasn’t always watching. It gave Arthur an uncomfortable and excited sense of freedom that he’d never felt before and was thrilled to indulge in with Merlin at his side.
*

Chapter Text

Arthur’s father did not call. There were a few times when Arthur thought of him and wished to hear his voice. He charged his mobile regularly, but it never rang. He wanted his father to say how much he missed Arthur and that he’d love for him to come home and finish the summer in London. That they could go to museums and boat parties on the Thames like they had last summer, with his mum.

But Arthur didn’t want to leave Hunith’s house, either. It was a confusing jumble in his chest. He asked Gaius (he had given in to just ‘Gaius’ since that’s what Merlin called him) if his father was okay and if he maybe wanted to talk to Arthur, but although Gaius said that he was ‘making progress’ he never answered the bit about him ringing up for a chat.

One day, a huge thunderstorm swept over the mountains and dropped down onto the fields like a heavy, wet curtain. One moment Arthur was chasing Merlin through the tall grass and the next a huge clap of thunder nearly knocked him off his feet.

They both stopped and looked up at the dark, swirling sky. “Whoa,” Merlin breathed. “We better run!”

At that moment Hunith’s voice came from somewhere in her vast flower garden. “Merlin! Home, now!”

A giant dagger of lightning stabbed the sky overhead, followed immediately by another ear-splitting thunderclap. Merlin shrieked, but he was laughing. “Come on!”

They ran. They’d gotten quite far from the house and big, fat drops began to plunk down like ripe fruits before they were halfway back home. The air darkened, the breeze shifted, cool and restless. Arthur felt like the entire earth was rising and gathering with electric expectancy; each cloud and flower and blade of grass and molecule of atmosphere were buzzing with energy like they were finally arriving at a party they had greatly looked forward to.

It was as dark as twilight. The lightning overhead cut the world into stark shapes as they ran. It was scary and exhilarating to fly through the grass with Merlin a step behind his shoulder. They were nearing the house now – Arthur could see Hunith’s silhouette framed black against the yellow kitchen light at the edge of the patio as she waited for them.

Arthur put on a burst of speed. He had neared the edge of the flower beds when he thrust his foot out into the air. It came down on empty space where the ground should have been.

His balance lurched. His body kept moving forward as his foot finally touched earth – earth that swallowed his foot to the ankle and wouldn’t let go.

Impact.

*

A clamourous crack of thunder jolted Arthur awake. Rain hurled itself against the windows, sounding as if it were made of little metal springs.

He was inside. In Merlin’s room, on his futon. “Oh, welcome back,” Hunith murmured in a soft, motherly tone. “You gave us a scare.”

“I’m sorry,” Arthur said automatically. Then he remembered what had happened and his ankle shot a wave of white-hot pain up his leg and his forehead throbbed. He grimaced and tried not to groan, but a small one escaped.

“Gaius is coming back with something for the pain,” she said soothingly, smoothing her fingers over his fringe. “You rolled your ankle and got quite a bump on the head. Can you see me clearly, Arthur?”

He bit his lip against the flaming pulses in his leg and foot, but nodded. He had the sensation of wanting to shake the flames out, but movement hurt too much. He squeezed his eyes shut, taking big breaths. Hunith’s fingers in his hair and against his cheek were warm and gentle, but he wished…

“I want my mum,” he whispered and when Hunith said, “I know,” in a very understanding tone he lost the battle within himself.

She let him cry without saying shush or that’s enough or stop. She said nothing at all, just continued stroking his hair and his back when he wriggled away to hide.

He knew Mr. Gaius had come in, but he didn’t care. He sobbed into his borrowed pillow and it seeped deep into his bones that, no matter what happened to him his mother would never be there again; she could never give him a necessary word or touch, whatever the future held.

He only had a father who didn’t care about him anymore. He was all alone.

His eyes burned from crying and his throat ached and his nose was sticky and full of mucus bubbles. He was very hot. Arthur blinked his heavy eyes open. Hunith was sitting on the floor by his futon with her hand on his shoulder, moving in slow, serene circles and Mr. Gaius was perched on Merlin’s desk chair. He stirred a little pot and poured something from a phial into a glass. A tray sat on the desktop with four teacups on it, still steaming into the dim glow of Merlin’s pink salt lamp, which was the only source of light.

Arthur flopped his head to the other side. Merlin’s face was right next to his, shoved into his neck, his short black hair tickling Arthur’s nose.

He turned his head back and Hunith was smiling at him. “Want some tea, my love?”

He nodded cautiously, acutely aware that he’d cried himself to distraction in front of everyone. “Yes, please,” he whispered and even his whisper was raw and powdery, a violin bow without rosin.

He sat up. His foot throbbed in anger and Merlin stirred beside him. “Me too, mumma,” he said sleepily.

Gaius handed the tray over, keeping one cup at the desk and placing the glass he’d been pouring things into in its place. “That’s for you, too, Arthur.”

Hunith gave him the medicine first and told him to drink it all, which he did in a big gulp. It tasted mostly awful, but there was an aftertaste of citrus that helped Arthur to avoid too obvious a face of disgust. He sipped a lot of the peppermint tea immediately after.

“Have this, too,” Merlin piped up beside him. He’d risen on his knees to lean over the tray his mother held out and he grabbed a saucer of biscuits, piled precariously high. “I brought all the flavors.”

Arthur looked to Hunith for permission and she nodded, smiling. He chose an orange cream and sat back against his stack of pillows. Merlin took a chocolate biscuit and snuggled up right next to him, slurping and munching contentedly.

The pain was slowly ebbing from Arthur’s leg and it was cosy to be in a small circle of light, wrapped up warm, sharing delicious treats as the storm howled and shrieked outside. The stars painted on Merlin’s ceiling shone gold just enough to wink out from the dark and the thick blue of the painted sky absorbed the softly spoken words drifting from Merlin and Hunith and Gaius.

He couldn’t have his mother and he missed her so much it was a thousand times worse than the pain in his ankle, but maybe he didn’t have to be alone. Maybe he could have something new.

Chapter Text

The next day was overcast and rain fell intermittently in fitful gasps and shudders, like a person continuously seeing ghosts. Arthur was instructed to stay in bed and let his foot start to heal. He was prepared for a day of boredom, but after Hunith took away his breakfast tray (breakfast in bed!), Merlin, who’d been gone from the room before daybreak as usual, ambled in and plopped down on Arthur’s futon.

“Want to read some books about dragons with me?” he wondered. “Or whales? Or trees?”

“Uh,” Arthur said, unsure. “You choose.”

“Okay, dragons.” Merlin scooted to his overflowing bookshelf and selected several titles. There were large picture books, smaller, soft covered chapter books, glossy novelty books with interactive pages and more. Merlin fanned them out. “Which do you want first?”

Arthur chose a book with a bright gold dragon on the cover, draped in scarlet flags with a castle in the background.

“Good choice,” Merlin appraised gently. “That’s one of my favorite stories.”

Arthur settled against his pillows, eager to see why Merlin liked it so much. It was about a king and his skillful knights and all the great deeds they did to help people in the kingdom find happiness and peace. Arthur liked the adventures they went on and the descriptions of forests and rivers and golden hills and castle towns. He was surprised when the dragon finally appeared – it wasn’t the enemy, as Arthur expected, but a powerful and mysterious friend to the king and his knights. In the end, the dragon was the key to saving the kingdom. Arthur was a little disappointed that there wasn’t any fire-breathing mayhem, but he liked that everybody was friends in the end and that everyone lived. He didn’t like to read about death.

When he finished, Merlin put down his own book (Dinosaurs and Dragons – A Scientific Comparison for Curious Kids) and asked Arthur all sorts of questions about what he liked and who his favorite character was, which scenes were the best and if he didn’t wish he could be a knight and befriend a dragon.

“Want to have another?” Merlin wondered, getting excited. “Or have a new topic? Do you like bugs?”

“Could we watch a film, maybe?” Arthur asked. He was a bit sleepy from the medicines Gaius kept sending up and he wanted to be distracted from the ache in his leg and head.

“What’s a film?” Merlin asked, face open, like he was ready to be thrilled with the answer.

Arthur’s mouth dropped open. “You don’t know what a film is?”

Merlin shook his head.

“It’s like…” Arthur didn’t know what to say. “A story you watch on the telly.”

“Oh!” Merlin said excitedly. “Yeah, I do know about the telly very well. My mum’s friend talks about it all the time and I watched something at her house in the winter about Jack Frost. I liked that story. But we don’t have one at home.”

Arthur felt disappointed, but he was more interested in solving the mystery of why Merlin’s house didn’t have a telly. He hadn’t noticed before, having been outside from dawn til dusk before he got stuck indoors.

“How come you don’t?”

Merlin shrugged. “I asked mum because her customers are always talking about the stuff on it. She said you don’t have to have one. And I asked what if you wanted one and she said you could have one then, but she didn’t want one, so she doesn’t have one.”

“Don’t you want one?” Arthur asked.

Merlin shrugged again. “I don’t know. I’m kind of busy.”

Arthur laughed. “You are,” he agreed. “But it probably has shows about dragons.”

“Maybe.” Merlin picked at the blanket. “But then you just have to sit still inside and watch, right?”

“Well, it’s no different from sitting and reading.”

“Oooh,” Merlin breathed, as if this were a great revelation. “OK, I understand. Maybe we can ask mum again.”

This statement made Arthur slightly panicked. He hadn’t meant to convince Merlin a telly was necessary, he just wanted to understand why Merlin didn’t care about not having one. At Arthur’s school, not having a telly was the same as not having indoor plumbing. It just wasn’t done. “No, it’s okay,” he said hastily. “If she doesn’t want one, it’s okay. I want to read, anyway. And in a few days, I can go outside again.”

“OK,” Merlin said easily, and Arthur felt relief swamp him.

“Which book should I read next?” Arthur wondered, soliciting Merlin’s help to leave the telly conversation for good.

Arthur read what Merlin suggested and they passed the rest of the day reading and talking. When they got tired of concentrating Merlin would pop up and bring all his treasures over for Arthur to look at. Merlin told tales of how he acquired them, and he asked Arthur for stories of London and his life. It wasn’t painful to tell Merlin any of that because he was so curious and eager that Arthur felt happy to regale Merlin with things he wanted to hear, about a place so different from his home.

*

The next day was sunny and Arthur was sure Merlin would vanish into the morning and return at dusk, but he came back after breakfast and flopped down next to Arthur again. This time he had little projects for them making daisy chains (midsummer is soon!) and etching pictures into rocks, like the little house he’d given Arthur the day they met. They built miniature structures out of twigs and had fun knocking them over, only to begin again with grander and more elaborate ideas for construction.

Gaius came in and out as he had the day before, administering short ice baths for Arthur’s foot, then wrapping his ankle in a compression bandage and finally massaging his foot and lower leg to promote blood flow. Arthur would have been embarrassed by all the attention, but Merlin would either keep playing or reading while the procedures took place, alone in his own little world, or he’d sit in front of Arthur and give energetic accounts of all the injuries he’d sustained over his seven year life.

“Then the rock moved because it was not secure, but I didn’t notice so I stepped and then SMASH I fell. I got a huge bruise on my BUM. I cried a lot, but it was funny, too, I was just scared. Because when I fell all the air left my lungs, so I had to lie there without any breathing happening for a while. Then I could breathe again, so it was okay.”

Gaius nodded along to Merlin’s story. “Yes, that was quite a sight out of my window. A little boy coming out of the sky like a leaf.”

Merlin’s grin was huge and silly but vividly unrepentant. “I had to climb the wall to get some apples.”

Gaius lifted a sharp eyebrow. “Or you could have gone around through the gate and picked any within reach.”

Merlin seemed to consider this and then he said, “Yes, but I wanted to try one from the top in case it was different.”

Gaius looked very cross for a moment and Arthur tensed, but then he let go a small sigh that managed to convey disapproval without anger. “You need to use your head, Merlin.”

“Arthur is here, now,” Merlin said confidently, as if his meaning were obvious.

Gaius lifted an eyebrow. “And what does that signify?”

Merlin thought a moment and then looked Arthur full in the face. “Arthur will help me use my head. We look after each other now.”

Arthur’s heart raced. Did they? He'd never looked after anyone before, but he wanted it to be true.

Gaius was nodding as if Merlin had said something very wise. “And what will you do for Arthur?” he asked in his grumbly, warm voice.

“I will help him not use his head,” Merlin said with a big grin, and he meant it very seriously.

*

It took a week for Arthur to feel stable on his feet again. After all that time indoors and only limited play in the garden the next few days, he was absolutely fizzing for a real adventure.

Merlin was even more eager. He had stayed with Arthur, even when the weather was perfect, and even when Arthur caught him staring longingly out the window now and then, even on midsummer night when all Arthur could do was hobble to the firepit and watch Merlin expend all his pent up energy in bursts of jumping and running and dancing around the flames. Arthur didn’t know how to say how grateful he was – to any of them – but especially Merlin, who could have run off into the woods at any moment to return to his life of solitary freedom and self-government.

But he’d stayed with Arthur. They’d made Merlin’s room into an even bigger mess – evidence of their many projects littered every surface like a workshop in a fairy world – and when Arthur could stand up again he made a point to wash all the teacups that had grown into the landscape like hard toadstools. Finding them all was a scavenger hunt that sometimes yielded mouldy results, but he felt a sense of pride when they’d uncovered the last one and he’d sunk them into a sink of cool, soapy water, scrubbing until even the oldest forgotten specimen was gleaming again.

Arthur got a head scratch and a kiss from Hunith for his efforts and really, if that was the reward, he was willing to do all kinds of cleaning and couldn’t understand why Merlin was so averse to it.

At last, the day dawned when Gaius pronounced Arthur fit to go back outside, really outside, and have an adventure. The sky was overcast, and a wet breeze blew over the fields. Merlin suggested the woods as the perfect spot to find something amazing in progress and Arthur agreed. They tromped over the field, breathing in great gulps of fragrant, cool air, and into the tree line, but instead of veering to the best swimming spot (they weren’t allowed a swim without Hunith or Gaius watching), Merlin turned right and followed a narrow, overgrown path deeper into the woods.

There were all sorts of things to see. Huge old trees, weathered Greystone, like the kind Merlin’s house was made of and massive chunks of bluestone (like the smaller stones at Stonehenge, Merlin informed him breathlessly) pretty songbirds, lush, dripping leaves and shy woodland flowers. There were tiny, darting mice, nubbly brown toads, chipmunks with fat cheeks and chattering squirrels to delight in, which Merlin did in gusts of whispers so as not to scare anyone off. They came at last to a small clearing covered in springy moss underfoot and bathed in a warm, silver light above.

“Want to see my wizard’s den?” Merlin asked, a little uncertainly, his usual confidence banked like nighttime embers.

Arthur nodded. “Yes please. What’s a wizard’s den?”

Merlin smiled, the fire back to blinding. “I’ll show you!” He scurried across the clearing and vanished between the trees.

Arthur was wary of running full speed, but he soon caught up. Merlin hadn’t gone far. Two meters beyond the clearing, Merlin stood outside a small dwelling made of logs and sticks and spidery branches, with an angular plywood roof laid flat across. The structure looked like the wooden version of Irish dolmens that Arthur had seen pictures of in his mother’s huge, glossy travel books. But in Merlin’s den the gaps in the logs were plugged with mud and leaves and even living moss that grew up the sides. The plywood roof was covered in lichen and leaf litter. To anyone passing through, it might look like a natural part of the forest if you didn’t look too hard.

Merlin stood outside the little wooden door, expression caught between pride and fear.

Arthur knew about secret places. Even though he liked Merlin very much, he would still hesitate to show Merlin his mother’s closet. So he knew it was an honour to be invited to Merlin’s special hideout and it was easy to show how happy it made him to be trusted.

“Wow! It’s amazing!” he exclaimed and liked how Merlin vibrated in excitement at his enthusiasm. “Did you build this all yourself?”

“My mum helped me cut the roof and carry the biggest logs, but I made the plans and did the other bits myself!”

“Your mum is so nice,” Arthur said and what he meant was that he wished he could share her a little. His father would never waste his time on something like this and his mother, whether she would have or not, Arthur would never know. “Can we see inside?” he wondered, because he couldn’t very well ask Merlin if he could share his mum with Arthur as a sometimes-mum.

“Yes!” Merlin lunged for the entrance. The door was made of several round logs nailed to two horizontal support beams, like a small garden gate and the handle was a weathered piece of rope looped through a drill hole. Merlin opened this with a flourish, like he was opening the doors to a grand ballroom.

Arthur caught his breath.

Inside the light drifted peacefully, dotted in greens and blues. Arthur knew that sunny afternoons would be golden within the walls, and the air was fresh and earthy. It filled him like a flower that had just been watered, anchoring him to all the other life around him, giving him the ability to grow as he should.

He didn’t know how else to describe the feeling. “It’s really magical in here.”

Merlin stepped in after him and beamed. “Yeah, of course. It’s my wizard den.”

There was a small, rough-hewn wooden table made of a tree stump in the far-left corner, still rooted in the earth. A log with a smaller circumference was plopped beside it as a stool. The only other furniture was a wooden chest like the ones Arthur had seen in British period dramas that were always full of lacy dresses, frilly bonnets, and pale blue ribbons. He giggled to think of Merlin in a puffy bonnet and how it would clash with his eternally dirty overalls and trainers.

There were little golden hooks screwed into the plywood ceiling from which hung bundles of herbs and flowers, a handmade bow with two arrows tied all together with a vine, a pair of binoculars and one translucent colorful glass ball that refracted every color of the rainbow as it spun dreamily on its string. There was a bucket by the door that held miscellaneous items like muddy rocks, sticks of various length, another hammer, some slightly rusty nails, a small handsaw, a green ball of twine, scissors, small terracotta flowerpots, and a trowel.

“I need to get another stool,” Merlin announced, interrupting Arthur’s wide-eyed inspection. “For you.”

“I can help,” Arthur offered. He wanted to belong to this place, like Merlin did. He wanted to sit in the quiet breath of the woods and feel it pump through his blood, safe and accepted, every inhale filling him with the essence of this place, making him more like it, autochthonous, every exhale thrilling with possibility for the life swirling all around him.

“Okay, come on!” Merlin picked out the handsaw from his bucket and beckoned Arthur back into the woods. Arthur didn’t want to leave the little haven yet, but he knew the faster they found a suitable stool, the faster they’d return.

It was fun hunting through the woods with Merlin. He had very strict criteria for what made a good seat. Wide enough for a comfortable recline, tall enough to reach the tabletop easily, not so big as to take up too much of the limited floor space.
They rejected big, flaky stones and damp, rotted logs. There was a moss-covered branch that Arthur liked the look of, but which Merlin pointed out was too thin. “It’ll hurt your bum,” he said wisely. “Even with the moss.”

At last, they found a fallen branch that was a little wider than the bucket in the den and Merlin pronounced it sufficient.

“We have to cut it to a good height,” he said and held out the saw. “Want to do it?”

Arthur gingerly took the tool. “I’ve never used one of these.”

“Oh, OK, I can show you,” Merlin said simply. “Watch. You can hold it like this and then you drag it across where you want to cut. Back and forth. See?”

Arthur did see. The little flakes of wood swirled in the air where Merlin had cut a shallow line. Arthur gripped the saw again.

“Be careful of your fingers,” Merlin warned. “Don’t cut them off.”

That was alarming. Arthur did not want to lose any fingers. “Um, Maybe you’d better do it.”

Merlin shook his head gently. “No, no, you can do it. It’s easy to keep your fingers safe. Just keep your other hand away from the teeth. Put your hand,” He came over and moved Arthur’s free hand to grip the log away from the cut, “right here. And see? Now you’re safe.”

“OK,” Arthur said, but he felt nervous. He gave the saw a tentative push. A few flakes coughed out of the wood, but it was half of what Merlin had done.

“Press the saw a little harder,” Merlin suggested.

Arthur tried. It worked a little better. He tried again with Merlin’s encouragements in the background. It was hard to push the teeth through the wood – they got caught easily and the wood was unyielding but after a time he learned how to create a rhythm and the wood dust flew around his head.

“Oh, I forgot to get the goggles,” Merlin said, sneezing out particles. “I’ll be right back!”

He was off like a spooked deer, disappearing down the shadowy paths and out of sight. Arthur dragged the saw halfheartedly a few more times, but his arm was sore from exertion, and he was glad for a break. He’d carved a line about an inch deep. There was probably half a meter to go. He lay down on the forest floor and closed his eyes.

It was peaceful and the trees were full of birdsong. There were little skittering noises in the underbrush nearby and Arthur could hear the river gurgling merrily. Although he was grateful to be back outside, he could admit that he was a teeny tiny bit nervous – he’d never been alone in the woods before. And even though Merlin was galloping about somewhere nearby, he was far enough away that Arthur couldn’t hear him. Arthur didn’t know which way Merlin’s den was. He honestly didn’t even know which way the house was. But he was also a little bit thrilled. He felt a little bit grown-up to be alone in a big forest. He was learning to use a saw and he was going to have a seat in Merlin’s wizard den. He sat up, satisfied with himself, taking a big breath of warm, green air.

And that’s when the giant appeared.

Chapter Text

Arthur wanted to scream. He felt a big, round, terrified sound fill his lungs but his throat had become the width of a noodle and he couldn’t fit that big sound through it. It clamoured in his chest and weighed him down.

The giant loomed only a few paces from him. He towered into the treetops, shadowed in leaves. His clothes were raggedy and so was his long iron hair. He had a big wooden club that Arthur was sure was used to clobber little children to soften for stew.

The scream still wouldn’t budge and that was almost scarier than the hulking shape in front of him. He couldn’t do anything for his mum on that day, and he couldn’t do anything for himself now.

A crash came through the bracken and Merlin appeared wearing a pair of goggles with yellow lenses, making him look like an enormous bug. He was behind where Arthur lay, and Arthur knew the moment he saw the terrifying creature hulking not twenty paces from Arthur’s feet.

Merlin grabbed the handsaw that Arthur had left atop the branch, and he pointed it at the giant.

“Arthur,” Merlin said quietly. “Run home.”

Those quiet, serious words from his strange little friend galvanized Arthur. He sprang to his feet. “Come on,” he urged, but Merlin had both hands on the saw and didn’t look at him when he said, “Your foot. Get a head start.”

Arthur obeyed. He ran flat out. He didn’t know which way to go. His foot twinged badly. He heard nothing behind him and panicked, but when he spun to look back Merlin was sprinting through the underbrush toward him.

Arthur couldn’t tell if they were being pursued or not.

Merlin grabbed him and tugged him in a new direction and Arthur followed. They ran until Arthur’s lungs felt kicked and his foot throbbed. They came to the river, to a section Arthur had never seen. It was shallower here, the sandy bottom visible and dotted with smooth stones.

“Let’s cross,” Merlin said. “You can’t be tracked through water.”

Merlin waded in and promptly lost his footing on a slippery rock. Arthur plunged after him and pulled him up, even though there was little danger of anything worse than a wet bum. Holding each other’s arms for support they crossed to the other side and took off running until Merlin slowed and turned back to listen.

“I think we lost him,” he said, his breath coming in little hitches.

“What was that?” Arthur asked.

Merlin shrugged. “Troll?”

“Vagabond?” Arthur offered, remembering an enigmatic character from the story about knights.

“Something scary!” Merlin pronounced and gave a nervous little laugh. “I think we’re safe now, though.”

Later Arthur would realise that the profound difference between them was this: that Merlin’s world was inhabited by creatures and spirits and Arthur’s by villains and ghosts.

*

Hunith was not at home when they finally wended their way back to the house, taking a circuitous route designed to thwart enemies. Gaius was out in the back garden, sitting in a lawn chair with a huge old book on his lap and he waved when they emerged out of the tall field grass.

“Nice day out, boys?” he wondered.

“Yeah,” Merlin said, plopping down on a patch of dirt in one of the flower beds. He did not utter a word about their fright. Arthur zipped his lips. “Can we have lunch?”

“Your mother left something inside for you,” Gaius said. “Do you want any help?”

“No,” Merlin said, rolling up and dusting himself off.

“Thank you,” Arthur said and followed Merlin inside.

There were sandwiches in foil and cups of creamy broth for each.

Once they were at the table Arthur asked, “Shouldn’t we tell Gaius about what we saw?”

Merlin swallowed an enormous bite. “Oh,” he said, like it had never occurred to him. “Do you think we should?”

“What if it’s dangerous to go back out?”

“No, I think it’s fine,” Merlin said, shrugging. “I’ve never seen a thing like that before. It’ll probably go away overnight since it couldn’t eat us.”

Arthur was not convinced but two things held his tongue. One, Merlin was two whole years younger than him, and he wasn’t afraid, so why should Arthur be? And two, he didn’t want to be told that they couldn’t go to the forest anymore. He wanted to go back to Merlin’s den and play there, in their own little world, all summer long.

*

In the end, they didn’t see the scary creature the next day, and as the weeks floated by, Arthur forgot all about the incident. He remembered briefly when he and Merlin had to search for the handsaw that Merlin had flung as he ran. But then they had the sawing to occupy them, and it was difficult, and even taking turns an entire afternoon slunk by as they hewed the piece off and rolled it back to Merlin’s little house.

After Arthur had his own seat they played there often, taking their projects and their games and their snacks under the roof and passing many happy hours.

Arthur was making a mobile out of pine cones to hang from Merlin’s ceiling. Merlin was lying on the ground, his hands over his stomach and his feet straight up in the air just for somewhere to put his energy.

It was very hot in the house and Merlin had already mused about cutting more windows four times, but he stayed where he was, smacking his heels together and occasionally watching Arthur. They’d shed their shirts but sweat still dripped down Arthur’s forehead and spine.

“Where did you get that one?” Merlin asked and Arthur had to wait a minute while he carefully strung the thread through the needle before he could see what Merlin was pointing to.

It was the scar, a pink river wending a lazy ‘s’ down his arm. “Oh,” he said. And then, “My mum.”

Merlin sat up, eyes wide as saucers and mouth agog. Bits of dirt and pine needles clung to his back and hair. “Your mum?!”

No, of course not, that wasn’t what he meant. Obviously. But it was too fuzzy to remember, like a chalk picture after rain, blurred and distorted. “No,” he said. She was there, he could see her, holding his arm and he could see his own bone, like a grey, slimy pole, her hands all red, and her dress, too, and everything hurt and was too bright, so that nothing had edges and colours swirled into everything else until the memory was a great, throbbing, wet pain in his mind. “She died.”

Merlin scooted over to him and knelt at Arthur’s feet, putting both his clammy hands on Arthur’s knees. “I know,” he said softly. “I’m really sorry, Arthur.”

“I miss her a lot.”

“We can share mine,” Merlin promised earnestly. And even though Arthur wanted that, had thought of it himself, hearing it from Merlin’s mouth made it both more and less attainable, because now he had permission to think of Hunith as a little like his mum without hurting Merlin’s feelings as her real son, but the permission alone signified that she wasn’t Arthur’s mum and never would be. It meant he had no real mother left.

“Thanks,” Arthur said.

One of Merlin’s reedy fingers pressed into Arthur’s scar. “Did it hurt really badly?”

Arthur nodded.

“Did you cry?”

Crying was not a big deal to Merlin, Arthur knew, but still he was embarrassed to admit it, so he compromised. “Yeah, a little.” He hadn’t felt the pain until he was in the hospital room waiting for his mum to come get him. He’d been lying on a stiff, white bed and everything was beeping like mechanical crickets, frantic noises everywhere, and his arm was wrapped in gauze that was a rusty pink and oozy yellow and when he’d peeked under it there were thick, clear stitches zippering his skin together and then it hurt so much he cried and cried, but no one came to comfort him.

“Does it still hurt?” Merlin wondered. He was peering at it from very close, his nose almost touching Arthur’s skin.

Arthur shook his head. The ridged scar tissue had no nerve-endings and it felt like he was touching someone else when he ran his fingers over it. Merlin leaned forward abruptly and mashed his mouth against it.

“Kiss,” he said, when he’d pulled back. “Feel better?”

Arthur blinked and pulled his arm closer to his body, shielding it with his shoulder. “I said it didn’t hurt.”

“I know, but wounds always need a kiss to be better.” Merlin blinked right back. “Didn’t you know?”

Arthur had gotten kisses from his mother sometimes, but he wasn’t in the habit of getting hurt the way Merlin was. And if his father was around, he had to do his best to be tough and strong.

He wasn’t sure it even counted if it wasn’t from someone grown up. It was weird, getting a kiss from Merlin as if he were a mum or a nanny, like he could make everything better. It made Arthur confused and uneasy.

“You’re really interesting,” Merlin said, cocking his head to the side. “I think London must be a wild place.”

“You’re really interesting,” Arthur bit back. Merlin’s tone wasn’t insulting, but Arthur couldn’t help but be a little offended. London was wild? At least there were rules to follow so one knew how to behave, so one knew right from wrong and safe from unsafe. Not like out here, where they were alone and left to the wilderness and its dangers, come what may.

“Thanks,” Merlin said. He was so good-natured he didn’t even know when Arthur was trying to insult him. Arthur deflated with a long breath. After all, Merlin was just trying to be a good friend. It wasn’t his fault that Arthur didn’t know how to be one back.

“I really want some tea, but the thermos is empty,” Merlin announced, flouncing back to the floor. “Want to go home?”

“OK,” Arthur agreed. “I’m almost done with this mobile. Let me finish.”

He strung the last of the pinecones through the thread and knotted them, presenting Merlin with his three-tiered rustic masterpiece. It was a little uneven, but Merlin loved it and said so, giving it pride of place on the hook directly over the table.

“Fancy,” he judged once they’d stood back to admire Arthur’s work. “Just like you.”

Then he’d laughed and raced Arthur home, yelling and whooping through the trees and grass, dirt and bits of leaf flying off him, the wind tousling his hair.

Chapter Text

One breezy morning Arthur noticed the flowers had begun to fade, their petals strewn across the paths, and the grasses were turning the color of wheat and straw. Leaves fluttered down in muted green-yellows and the nights and mornings now carried the crispy scent of colder air. Their peppermint teas and fruit tisanes became apple cinnamon cider and Merlin excitedly pointed out the tiny apples that would grow big as the autumn progressed. Before he knew it, Arthur was helping Hunith track down all his belongings and stuffing them back into his red suitcase, considerably more scuffed than when it arrived.

Arthur had not heard from his father all summer, but Gaius explained that he had missed Arthur deeply and was looking forward to having him home.

Arthur did not want to leave, but he did want to see his father. He looked out of the car window down the entire drive as they left for the train station, trying to imprint the little cottage on his memory. At the station platform, Hunith gave him a long, warm hug and slipped a folded piece of paper into his pocket. “That’s our phone number at the cottage,” she said. “You can call anytime.”

Gaius also gave him a hug and quick hair ruffle and went over the instructions for the train journey with him once more.

Merlin hung back, quieter than usual and glued to his mother’s hand. He looked really little, Arthur thought, though he couldn’t say what made him seem so.

“Bye, Merlin,” he said, as the train began to fill up. He wanted to find his seat and get settled, like a passenger was supposed to.

“Bye,” Merlin said to the ground. “Thanks for playing with me.”

Arthur somehow felt that was his line. “It was the best,” he said and made sure to look at Hunith, too. “Thank you for everything.”

“You had better find your seat, love,” Hunith said kindly. “We’ll wave to you from the window.”

The train attendant helped Arthur lift his bag up and pointed him to his seat. By the time he’d arranged himself to his comfort the train had just begun to move. He pressed his face to the window. Hunith and Gaius had walked a few paces up to where he was and were waving merrily. Arthur waved back, looking for Merlin. Then he noticed him squatting behind his mum, face in his knees. Arthur’s heart clenched very painfully, and he couldn’t stand it. He got up on the seats, even though he knew he shouldn’t, and pulled back the little sliding window.

“Merlin!” he shouted. Merlin’s red face peeked out, like a swimmer taking a breath. “I’ll miss you a lot!”

A watery smile hesitantly lifted just the corners of Merlin’s mouth, and he uncurled enough to shout, “I’ll miss you more!”

The train picked up speed and Arthur could just make out Hunith scooping Merlin into her arms and Arthur knew without a doubt that Merlin would cry all the way back to the car, until Hunith offered him a kiss or a biscuit or both.

Even though he felt bad for his friend, Merlin’s tears made Arthur inexplicably happy, because it meant he had mattered to Merlin. It meant he was loved.

*

Arthur felt different on the train ride back. More independent, a little less afraid. It was still nerve-wracking to do the change and then really nerve-wracking to get out at Paddington and gaze around the busy station, looking for a face he knew. Gaius had said his father would meet him, but Arthur couldn’t see his father anywhere. There were people in suits on their mobiles and families with hundreds of bags and ladies in circles with some boys on the fringes, all talking loudly. Arthur looked and looked until at last his father’s driver, an older man called Mr. Monmouth, with a calm demeanor and pure white hair, strode up to him.

“Welcome back to London, Arthur.”

*

On the drive back to the townhouse, Arthur learned from Mr. Monmouth with some surprise that the school term started in only a few days and that he was being sent to Camelot, the boarding school his father had attended as a boy. Irrationally, Arthur had expected a sort of second summer once he got back to London, time left to spend with his father.

But mostly, as he passed through the familiar old entrance from the busy street outside to the austere and silent hall within his house, and was greeted only by the housekeeper, he’d expected his mum.

He couldn’t explain it, but he’d believed with all his heart that when he returned from the balm of Merlin’s messy room and bright fields that she would be there after all, everything reset.

But she wasn’t.

And neither was his father.

*

“He’ll come and see you off,” the housekeeper promised, several listless days later. Like most of the people who worked for his father, she was older than middle-age. She had a mop of salt and pepper hair, and Arthur was instructed to call her Ms. Hilda, but Arthur’s father always said “Grunhilda” in a very sophisticated and serious way. Warmth didn’t radiate out of her, but she could be kind when she wasn’t harried with tasks or reminding Arthur of all the household rules.

“Where is he?” Arthur hadn’t been able to ask before now, not even when she'd promised, not because he didn’t have the opportunity, but because he was ashamed that his own homecoming wasn’t enough, apparently, to call his father back from whatever place he was in. Now, though, on the morning of his departure for a school he’d never even seen, he desperately wanted to know what place held his father’s interest so keenly.

“France,” Ms. Hilda said shortly, as though she disapproved, but whether she disapproved of France, Arthur’s father being there or Arthur’s question, he had no way of discerning.

Arthur oscillated between wishing for his father so desperately he could barely breathe – using every wish presented to him by dandelions and shiny pennies he found to ask for his return – and hardly caring if he ever saw his father again. It was easier, a little, not having to creep silently around, hands tucked into his pockets to prove he wasn’t trying to touch his mum’s things. It was easier to touch his mum’s things without having to listen for his father’s tread on the floorboards. With held breath and clenched heart, he’d slipped into her closet again and again. Her light scarves still held the softest whiff of her perfume. Her winter coat had several strands of her long blonde hair held in its weave. In awe one early morning, the sunlight filtering pinkly into that silent memorial to her life, he noticed the foggy glass bottle of the perfume he was sniffing off her clothes like a drug, standing almost full on a shelf, it’s grey, shelled edges delicate and ghostly. He was too afraid to touch it, but in a strange, empty way, he was relieved to know it was there.

After nearly five days home with only the staff to look after him, Ms. Hilde sat him down the night before leaving for Camelot and explained that the school was very prestigious and his father expected him to do well. She reminded him how honoured he should feel for getting accepted. Arthur listened dully, unable to care enough to ask questions or put up a protest. A tiny part of his brain, that, nonetheless, held a lot of sway, wasn’t at all surprised he was being made to leave. It made him shrug and think, ‘whatever happens, happens,’ which was to become something of a mantra with him for things out of his control for a long, long time.

Arthur’s belongings were packed by the staff and ready to go the next morning. Ms. Hilda woke him up with a pert knock on the door and a measured, “Time to get up, Arthur. Today’s the day.”

She laid out his new school uniform and he dutifully dressed in it. She set a plate of eggs and sausage before him and he ate it. The course work that she’d packed into his red suitcase, and which had never made it out of its plastic folders in Wales, now sat in his schoolbag, hastily completed in the days he’d ghosted through the rooms of the big, silent house, next to the same, more travel-worn, case.

They double-checked his luggage; Ms. Hilda added one more winter hat and one more scarf with a tender fretfulness that Arthur had never seen from her.

He sat through a strange and stiff morning tea with Ms. Hilda and Mr. Monmouth in the kitchen. Sirens wailed occasionally and the traffic honked and trundled in the distance as they asked him questions about his thoughts for courses at school and his prospects on the sports teams and underneath it all the insistent ticking of the kitchen clock as the hands glided unendingly forward, until Mr. Monmouth shared a heavy look with Ms. Hilda and declared they had to depart or Arthur would be late.

His father did not appear.

*

No one mentioned Uther as Arthur was guided to the car and driven out of the city. Arthur didn’t ask, unsure when he lost the hope that his father would arrive at the eleventh hour.

Chapter Text

Arthur saw nothing the whole long ride, lost in a strange fog, until they drove through an impressive iron gate illuminated by spotlights, the car crunching over the stones of the drive.

Arthur was helped from the car by Mr. Monmouth, who said over-gently, “Here we are, my boy.”

A woman appeared at the car like a spirit, her hair in a neat chiffon and her mouth unsmiling. She spoke with Mr. Monmouth quietly as the bags were unloaded.

Arthur was brought perfunctorily to a dormitory through the thickening twilight, Mr. Monmouth pushing a luggage cart behind them until they came to the wide stone entrance. Then, out of nowhere, men in uniforms appeared to whisk all Arthur’s things into the building at the word of the woman who walked next to Arthur. She had instructed Arthur to call her Ms. Caerleon in a crisp, precise voice that Arthur knew meant business.

Arthur was too busy trying to absorb the expansive grounds, hidden by the darkness and distance, to listen to the conversation between Mr. Monmouth and Ms. Caerleon, but then Mr. Monmouth turned to Arthur a little awkwardly, and said, “Take care. You may call the house any time you like.” He gave Arthur an avuncular squeeze on the shoulder and looked, almost pityingly, down into his face, before vanishing back the way he’d come.

Arthur watched until he disappeared, waiting for the snap of the tether that would sever his connection to the life he had before with detached resignation. He couldn’t name the sense of helplessness he felt at the new direction he was being forced to take. It was as if he was alone on a raft at sea – no oars, no sail, no one to take refuge with or rely on. His fingers curled around the perfect river stone in his pocket, nails catching on the chiseled lines of a tiny door, searching for a handle to turn.

Ms. Caerleon, with an abrupt, “Come on now,” guided Arthur into the massive building of battered brownstone, taking him up stairs and along corridors that seemed over-full and maze-like with all the tapestries and plaques and busts on pedestals everywhere. Arthur heard muffled voices behind the thick wooden doors they passed – laughing, reciting, teasing, arguing.

At the very end of a corridor, Ms. Caerleon stopped in front of a door with ‘4’ emblazoned on it in gold, knocked, and then, barely waiting for the quiet “Yes?” before opening it to reveal a dimly lit, medium-sized room with plush red carpeting, two each of darkly stained wooden bed frames, desks and wardrobes, castle-like casement windows looking out into the night, and a tall boy with curly, dark-blond hair.

“Mr. Knight, this is Mr. Pendragon.” Ms. Caerleon spoke efficiently. “You’ll be boarding together this year. I expect you to get on and to behave in a civilised manner throughout your time here together. The welcome assembly is at eight tomorrow in the main hall, directly after breakfast. Be on time. Goodnight, gentlemen.”

With that, the teacher closed the door on the two boys, leaving expectant silence in her wake. Arthur flopped onto the free bed, noticing all his luggage had been stacked in the corner.

“I’m Arthur,” he said to the ceiling, tired and unable to care much about anything.

“I’m Leon,” the other boy replied in a friendly way. “I’m from London.”

“Me too,” Arthur breathed. He sat up slowly and eyed this Leon. “Have you ever been to Wales?”

“My grandma’s from Wales,” Leon replied happily. “I like it a lot.”

“I think we can be friends,” Arthur said airily. He remembered what Merlin had said to him when he’d arrived at his house and how comforting it was to hear. He modified it slightly for the unknown territory he was in. “I’ll be nice to you if you’re nice to me.”

Leon smiled, maybe a little surprised. “That sounds fair.”

Chapter Text

Arthur had not always been a diligent student, but he’d managed to get adequate marks without trying much. Now though, far from home in his new school, he found it hard to concentrate on the textbooks and the words of the teachers. This frustrated him because he had never had trouble focusing before. When he got his first quiz back marked 2 out of 10 the blood in his veins evaporated and he had to look again and again to process what he was seeing.

His father, when he heard, would be livid. The teacher, Mr. Taliesin, also looked disappointed, but to Arthur’s surprise, only took him aside and asked if he’d had trouble understanding the material. Wary of the boys still lingering in class watching him, Arthur had vehemently protested, but he’d hung back once they’d all gone and admitted in a small voice that he’d been having trouble processing the information. After the teacher explained it to him one-on-one, Arthur found it very clear, much to Mr. Taliesin’s delight. He couldn’t account for why it hadn’t made sense the first time.

Arthur waited days to receive an angry phone call from his father, his stomach in knots whenever the headmaster came into the dining hall with the phone message sheet in his hand. He couldn’t tell in his own heart if he didn’t want to hear from his father, or if he did.

But a week came, then two and then three, with no message for good or ill, no matter how many nights he spent tossing and turning, waking in cold sweats when his dreams depicted his father raging at his incompetence. Those days always started shaky, without focus and without appetite and he could never force his thoughts back in. It was no surprise that classes were often a disaster after such nightmares.

Arthur had been, miraculously, allowed to retake the quiz after his private study session with Mr. Taliesin. He slept only slightly fitfully the night before and received 7 out of 10, which was more his usual mark these days. His teacher looked at him proudly, but Arthur was still annoyed with himself.

7 out of 10 was average and no one who was average got commendatory phone calls.

This was a critical moment in Arthur’s school career, though he didn’t realise it himself. He wanted recognition and he wanted praise. There was a crucial difference in this desire than wanting, simply, attention. And it was because of this difference that Arthur decided to commit himself to excellence, no matter how hard it was, rather than to anything and everything that would foster notice.

He swallowed both his pride and his fear to show up at office hours, to hang back after class with questions, to haunt the library, to ask for help from Leon, who gave it easily and made Arthur question why he'd been nervous to ask. Despite this, the voice in his head that sounded like his father continued to warn of weakness. Asking for help when it was as good as an admission that he was lacking was a grave tactical error – this refrain tumbled through Arthur’s head twenty times a day. And he wasn’t sure what his mother might have said to counter his worry, so there was nothing to whisper to himself at the close of each difficult day.

When he looked back at all the hours he spent waiting alone, his weakness on display, it seemed obvious that he’d left himself open to attack. His only real surprise was that it took as long as it did for the other boys to act.

The trees stretched toward the sky as though begging for alms, their leaves falling continuously against a grey sky, whipped as they were through the air by cold breezes that swept over the fields. Huddled against a wooden door three times his height, a coat of arms on the lintel above heralding the science rooms, Arthur buttoned his coat and shoved the assignment he’d just been working on with his teacher into his schoolbag, his stomach rumbling in search of food. The hour given for lunch was half over, but if he hurried there would be plenty of time to eat before the next class.

He crunched through the leaves in a rush, puffs of breath streaming behind him. There was a group of upper-level boys on the quad testing something they’d made in their engineering class. Arthur almost walked into a bench watching them with wide eyes, and, hurrying away in case anyone saw his near accident, he failed to look ahead. He strode right into the midst of another group of boys from his year, loitering under one of the archways.

He looked up just a second too late, already among them, before noticing the ringmaster, Valiant, a tall, scowling type who took all opportunities to prostrate himself on the abused altar of masculinity, begging to be accepted.

Arthur had rarely spoken to him and never outside of class, but he knew he was a target for a boy like this, who hated everyone because no one stopped him doing it, which he took as a failing of the world at large, it seemed, one he was hungry to point out.

“Lads, we caught a fat fly,” Valiant crowed to the four boys hanging on his every word as they came to stand directly in front of Arthur. “Empty your pockets."

Arthur shoved his hands deep into his trousers, fingers curling around a smooth, flat stone, and found some courage. “Get out of my way.”

Valiant loomed over him. “Lads,” he drawled again, chewing a wad of gum loudly, “Pendragon thinks he can talk to me.”

“Maybe you don’t know the difference between talking and ordering,” Arthur sneered, modifying something he’d once heard his father yell into a phone.

Valiant whistled low, catching the eyes of his gang. Arthur’s blood fizzed in his veins. His head buzzed with the need to both flee and fight. A beautiful vision flashing through his mind of Valiant bleeding from Arthur’s punch enthralled him as much as it terrified him.

“I doubt you know much of anything. You’re the dumbest person here,” Valiant spit, eyes flashing. “You can’t even understand simple concepts, and everyone knows you need extra help from the teachers ‘cause you’re too stupid to keep up. You’re only here ‘cause you’re rich, otherwise you’d be shipped straight off to the military.”

This stung, if Arthur had to admit it. At his young age, it didn’t occur to him that most of the boys there came from wealthy legacy families who were never asked to submit proof of their child’s academic abilities, only proof of their incomes. He was so resolved to do better, to be better, he hadn’t truly thought others might look down on him for it. Which was annoying, because he wasn’t standing here threatening anyone for not trying.

“You can go to hell,” Arthur advised in his snottiest, most unbearable voice. He lifted his knee up as fast as he could between Valiant’s legs, smirking when the boy fell to the ground howling.

His pleasure, however, was short-lived as the other boys pounced on him, tearing at his bag, his coat, his hair. He was punched and kicked to the ground, where two boys held him down as the others went through his pockets and his bag. Arthur kicked and squirmed with all his strength but still the rock came out. It was immediately deemed worthless and thrown across the quad toward the pond skirting the distant sports fields.

Arthur screamed.

Chapter Text

In the end, the engineering teacher pulled everyone apart and marched them all to the headmaster.

Arthur thought it was perfectly obvious that he had not marched up to five pugnacious boys and picked a fight by himself, but he was still given detention for brawling – although only three days compared to the two weeks the others were given, and he was spared a phone call home, unlike the others. Still, Arthur felt helpless to articulate how unjust it felt to Leon when they made it back to their dorm room for bed.

“They started it. I was just trying to get some lunch.”

“Exactly,” Leon said helpfully. His roommate had turned an interesting shade of red when Arthur had been escorted to class late sporting a black eye and a busted lip, quivering even now with relentless despair. “Were you supposed to stand there and not hit them? If you’d just taken it, would the headmaster say you don’t have to do detention? So, do we have to let ourselves get beaten up so he can know we’re for sure not the fighter? I don’t like that.”

Arthur nodded miserably. His face hurt and so did his pride, but mostly his hands kept searching his pockets for his stone. He’d gotten used to gripping it when he needed reassurance. Now there was only the instinct and no comfort to allay the panic.

“They ripped my schoolwork and threw my rock into the pond,” Arthur admitted in a small voice.

“The one with the house on it?” Leon asked.

The tone of Leon’s voice made Arthur lift his head. There was such friendly concern in it, alarm that only came from caring.

“Yeah.”

“Let’s go look for it,” Leon suggested, standing from his bed with sudden purpose.

“It went in the water. And we’ll get in trouble.” Arthur flopped onto his pillow and buried his face, trying not to wail. “I can’t get in any more trouble or my father will never speak to me again. He already hasn’t in months.”

“Oh,” Leon breathed, deflating. “I don't want that to happen.”

Arthur pulled himself together and gave a watery smile. “Thanks anyway.”

They turned the light off, but Arthur could hear Leon tossing and turning across the room. He couldn’t sleep either, but he felt paralysed, unable to fully process the whole day. The fight, the boiling aggression for no reason, the loss of his most prized possession, the punishment. He never wanted to be in trouble again. Not because he was afraid of fighting, or even of pain, but because of the helplessness he felt when trying to explain and having no one truly believe him. His chest burned thinking about he had tried to make it clear that he wasn’t bad and yet he was being treated as such; he had kicked first, he'd freely admitted to it, but how could he describe the certainty that if he hadn't they'd never, ever leave him alone again? Why, even as a victim, had he been made to defend his actions, and, in the end, been labelled and punished, too? He had no words to express these thoughts, these first inklings of injustice, but they tumbled in his head all night long and followed him like a shadow everywhere he went.

There was no such thing as fairness. People were not capable of it. There was no great tally sheet out in the universe making sure things stayed balanced. Without a concept of fair or unfair, people’s mums died and aggressors ruled and injustices kept piling up.

Without the calming capabilities of the smooth river stone, Arthur had only his mantra to repeat, day after day, as if to fool himself he needed no response and had no hand in whatever came his way.

Whatever happens, happens.

Chapter Text

Despite Arthur’s feelings of slow drowning, school went on in mundane order. Valiant sneered at him and tried out increasingly crude gestures when the teachers’ backs were turned, but Arthur made subtle kneeing motions and Valiant didn’t know how to respond. Leon stuck to his side, a bright spot in the monotony, often joining Arthur when he stayed after class for help or went to office hours.

“I want to make sure I get it, too,” he kept saying earnestly, warming Arthur’s grey heart.

From his dorm room as he studied and studied, Arthur could look out the window over large fields tapering to a stone wall, behind which loitered a dark battalion of trees. The landscape sunk, wheat and slate and bark. Autumn withered, scraggly and sudden, not the honey-slow, golden-yellow it had mellowed to at Merlin’s house. Up in his tower, separated from everything he knew by the empty fields and fortress-like buildings of the campus, Arthur felt isolated and forgotten by the outside world. Had he always been here? Would he always remain here, trapped in a pattern of longing, not fully real?

He had Hunith’s phone number in his pocket, but he couldn’t bring himself to call during their evening break like most of the other boys in his year eagerly ringing home. He never used his mobile, even though he still had it, hidden away in his sock drawer. He didn’t want to call Merlin just to complain to him or make him worry he was unhappy. He didn’t think he could bear to be soothed by Hunith’s motherly tones or to hear her gentle questions and encouragements. He was afraid to try Gaius’ number in case the moment that familiar voice sounded he’d blurt out how lonely he was and how much he wished, almost as much as he wished his mother would come, miraculously, to sweep him away, that he could go back to Wales.

No, he wanted to call them when he had something good to report. He wanted Merlin to say, “WOW!” in that feral, amazed way he had. He wanted to hear Hunith and Gaius say how proud they were of him. He wanted to be good enough to make them ask him to come again, as soon as ever he wished.

*

As much as he wanted to be whisked away, he was grateful to remain by the side of his one friend. Leon stuck with him and never wavered. He was unerringly kind and thoughtful, he never made trouble and he didn’t seem to have any enemies, which Arthur thought was quite a feat. Arthur’s father had often regaled dinner guests with stories of his youth at this very school: all the academic victories, all the social conquests, all the trouncing he’d done to boys he didn’t like or who got above themselves. Arthur’s mum had always made a gently disapproving face and said not to fill Arthur’s head with such aggressive ideas. This kind of admonishment almost always led the men of the party, including his father, to dismiss her as naïve, sheltered, and unable to comprehend the true order of the world. Arthur’s attendance would then come to an abrupt end as she excused herself with a tight smile, citing Arthur’s bedtime, even when it wasn’t.

Despite those lessons, Arthur had already experienced the social catastrophe of school very personally, but Leon seemed to exist in a quiet, controlled world outside of everything Arthur had been taught about boarding school. He was taller than most boys in their year, even Valiant, and more removed from their boisterous doings, reading his books and studying without seeming to long for either friendship or approval.

Arthur thought Leon was above almost everything, but his speech about justice rang out in Arthur’s head one evening as he and Leon entered a classroom to see Valiant pushing around a boy in the year below them. Arthur was already turning to run for a teacher, but Leon marched into the room snarling, really snarling, grabbed up Valiant’s bag and threw it out the window into a rain barrel two stories below.

Valiant, from a safe distance, eyes bugging and mouth spitting, threatened him with telling the headmaster, but Leon got right into his face, unconcerned for his physical safety, and hissed out, “Do it,” with such taunting challenge that Arthur knew no one in the room would ever breathe a word of what had happened.

He took secret pleasure in Valiant having to explain why all his assignments were waterlogged the next day, whether it was right or wrong.

As he walked the grounds at Leon’s side, autumn dissolved into winter. The stone buildings sat frosted with snow and the fields disappeared under blankets of white. Archways became wind tunnels. Pathways became ice rinks. Dull grey pervaded the heavy sky, absent all of birds. Real fires roared in the gigantic dining hall fireplaces, but never totally cut through the chill. Everyone wore the same uniformed sweater and winter boot. Arthur frequently felt that he was in a medieval castle, especially when passing by the draughty windows, and would often hold conversations about it in his head with an imaginary Merlin chiming in, his hand reaching for the river stone that was long gone, despite Arthur’s furtive searching whenever he'd had a free moment.

“Dragons love castles!” Merlin would coo in his mind as Arthur passed through a snowy stone courtyard on the way to Maths. “Look up! They’re probably in the tallest tower in their special winter nest.”

After a particularly satisfying first success in his science lab, Merlin’s happy laugh would go off between Arthur’s ears like a reward.

“You’re a prince and a scholar!”

For more of Merlin's imagined accolades, Arthur joined the fencing team since he’d been on it in his last school, and because it felt princely, since Merlin mentioned he kind of was one – sort of. Because the pool was heated, Arthur joined the swimming club, watching snow fleece down outside as he bobbed on his back, the shouts of other boys echoing off the wet walls, his thoughts lost to the amniotic flow of water.

With wet, chlorine-scented hair he would run across the lanes and fields of campus with night deepening around him, just a blurry shadow under the walkway lamps. In the evenings he did nothing but study, so determinedly focused he never once realised he would have loved a cup of tea or a biscuit to munch on as he read page after page, or wrote until his hand hurt, or solved sums until he dreamt of personified numbers. Merlin was four, of course, and he was nine. Leon was seventeen some nights and eighteen others. Arthur didn’t try to understand it. He didn’t care how Merlin appeared in his dreams, as long as he kept appearing. In this way, the days wound down with the daylight hours and suddenly classes were reviewing and revising for mid-year papers and exams.

All of Arthur’s time was devoted to study. He could be found either in the library or his room, nose deep in a book – not that anyone besides Leon ever looked for him. He only saw the sun from behind a window and never for long. Calluses developed on his thumb and middle finger from incessant writing. It was as if he’d plunged underwater and remained there until the assignments and tests finally, finally ceased. He’d done what he could. He’d have to wait for the results to know whether or not he actually was an idiot, like everyone said.

*

On the last day of class, with exams safely behind them, Arthur received his first term paper back with a bold 91% circled on the first page. His fingers curled around its edges protectively as he stared at the mark.

It was there in red ink. 91.

He wasn’t dumb.

He could tell Merlin. He could call Hunith and talk to her and to Gaius.

He could really, finally do it.

Chapter Text

Arthur burst into his room holding the paper aloft.

Leon sat on his bed folding a small tower of clothes in a diligent but, Arthur noticed, haphazard way that would never pass muster at his house. The whole room smelled like the industrial washing powder used in the school laundry. When Leon had finished with all the shirts in his pile, he dropped them into a suitcase on the floor.

“Are you going somewhere?” Arthur asked, his paper forgotten in his hand.

“Home,” Leon said, looking over at Arthur in confusion. “It’s end of term,” he continued, as if explaining two plus two to a loveable kitten. “There’s a month break?”

Arthur nodded quickly. “Right. I know. Uh, yeah, I guess I forgot.” He laughed, forcefully, but Leon only smiled and nodded peacefully before resuming his packing.

Of course, he had known about the break, but he hadn’t done much thinking about it beyond being glad he’d get a break from studying.

“When are you leaving?” Arthur wondered, twisting his paper in his hands.

“Tomorrow. I can’t wait.” Leon’s serious face lit up with a smile. “My parents are going to cook all my favourite meals!”

“Brilliant,” Arthur said, collapsing onto his bed. He shoved his crinkled term paper away.

“Don’t you need to pack?”

“Uh, I’ll do it tomorrow,” he lied.

Leon turned to look at him and his eyes fell on the wadded-up test. “What’s this?” He reached for it and smoothed it out before Arthur could stop him. He didn’t know what to say about it without sounding either pathetic or bragging.

“Wow, Arthur!” Leon’s eyes were wide and his mouth was turned up. “This is better than mine!”

A small smile fought its way across Arthur’s mouth. “I’m sure it’s not,” he demurred, his blood singing.

“No, it is. I got 89%. 91 is legendary!”

Arthur felt all his energy ricochet through his limbs in pleasure. It was his best mark at Camelot. His mum would be so proud when she saw the –

He sank to his mattress in dumb shock.

“Arthur?” Leon’s concerned voice seemed far away.

Of course, she wouldn’t be proud because she couldn’t be. She couldn’t be anything. Why did he keep forgetting, when even in his dreams he searched and searched for her and never found her? He’d already dragged himself through the realisation that she would never be part of his life again, so why did his thoughts always run straight to her?

“Arthur?”

Leon’s voice pierced through his haze and when he looked up his friend was right in front of him.

“My mum died,” Arthur heard himself say. “In the spring. Even if I do go home, which I probably won’t, since my dad hates me, she won’t be there.”

Leon sat heavily next to him, leaning his shoulder into Arthur’s with slow precision. They passed a long time in silence as Arthur’s heart thundered against his ribs, trying to get anywhere where it didn’t feel so oxygen deprived.

At last, Leon whispered gently, “Do you want to go look for your rock?”

*

Leon had a small penlight that illuminated a thin strip of ground at a time. Their noses close to the frosty grass, the two boys crawled by the edge of the pond, batting away fallen leaves and other detritus, looking for the shine of a grey rock. They spoke little and then only in whispers. If they were caught out after curfew, well, Arthur didn’t even want to guess what the punishment would be.

It had been so long, weeks and weeks, since one of Valiant’s idiots had thrown Merlin’s gift with all his might. It had snowed and thawed and snowed and thawed and every last leaf had come down. Arthur didn’t have any hope, but it was better than crying in his dorm room about his mother, who had no way to be found.

Intermittently the penlight flashed across Leon’s face, highlighting the concentrated pucker of his brow and the determined set of his mouth. He was risking his whole perfect school record just to look for a rock that meant something to Arthur.

Maybe his father had never called to say when or even if he’d retrieve Arthur from school for break; maybe Arthur was facing the prospect of staying at school alone, perhaps until he graduated. Maybe his father would never think of Arthur again. Out in the dark cold, their breath rising to the invisible dome of the sky, it didn’t matter much, suddenly. Somewhere far away Merlin was probably reading illicitly under his blankets, hugging his red and gold dragon. And right next to Arthur, gasping as he pulled up a muddy, icy rock with familiar diligent scratchings, mouth agog in happiness, was Leon.

Two friends.

Two friends who liked Arthur just as he was.

Leon pressed the stone into Arthur’s palm, grinning in disbelief.

“Let’s be friends forever,” Arthur whispered.

If any teacher had been listening remotely, they might have thought the pact quaint, adorable even, between two boys just shy of ten, but the sincerity between them, on their stomachs in the frozen grass, far outstripped any cynical opinions on the sustainability of such a promise.

Chapter Text

The moment Leon’s parents’ car disappeared down the school’s long drive the next morning, Arthur fought off the sensation creeping up the back of his neck – that everyone, eventually, drifted far beyond his reach, never to return – and ran full speed to the phone bank for student use.

The ringing lasted perhaps five hundred hours as Arthur fidgeted, fingers curled around the rock once again lodged against his thigh, until a small but loud voice said, “HELLO???!!!”

If Arthur had to describe the months of pressure, uncertainty, self-doubt and loneliness, he would say it was like all the veins and muscles in him were being winched tauter and tauter every day, until he could hear the tension vibrating at the back of his skull in a high-pitched whine, as his heart battled against ruin. Every day everything took more and more effort. He couldn’t swallow without thinking it through. He couldn’t swim without considering what it would be like to drown. His thoughts spun, always through an abstract haze, toward a single thin spotlight in the fog that was whatever assignment came due next.

Until, a vibrant voice from far away, right against his ear, marked a fixed, safe point.

He laughed and Merlin joined in.

“Arthur!” He could hear Merlin jumping around on the wooden floorboards, very enthused. “When are you coming over again? Guess what? I have three news books. Do you know what they’re about? Sorcery! They’re from Gaius! How about you come over and let’s read them together! Ask if you can!”

All this was said in Merlin’s fast, breathless way where he was happy to supply both question and answer.

“It’s my winter break at school,” Arthur explained, biting his lip against rising hope. “So maybe I could come?”

“Yep, you can,” Merlin assured him confidently. “Talk to mum, here she is.”

Once Arthur got through all of Hunith’s nice mum questions that had him glad no one was around to see him hide his face against the wall as they talked, she said Arthur could come and stay if he wanted, but he had to ask his dad.

So, despite all of Arthur’s misgivings, and despite his fear that his father would order Arthur to stay at school alone, three days later a car arrived for Arthur to drive him all the way to Merlin’s house. Although he had not been able to reach his father personally, Mr. Monmouth had made all the necessary calls and gotten everything arranged.

It was a long, long trip. Arthur fell asleep more than once, even though he was nearly breathless with excitement whenever he woke up.

But at last, wake he did to a change in the car’s motion – slower and quieter, more purposeful than on the motorway.

Coming down the long lane to the cottage was totally different from his arrival in the summer. Then the flowers had burst harmoniously, and the light shimmered high and golden; the air wafted like perfume and creatures peered out from every nook and cranny. Now the fields were silent, sleeping under snow, no movement near or far. All the flower boxes and pots stood empty, waiting, their dirt frozen under an inch of powder that fell slowly from the sky as the car pulled up.

The tyres crunched the frozen gravel and Arthur pressed his face to the window.

The cottage stood just the same, cosy and snug, frosted with snow-icing; candles glowed in each window; a holly wreath hung on the door. Arthur spotted several small, lopsided snowpeople populating the yard. Snow creatures also sprung up here and there. They were either dogs or dragons. Arthur knew which one to bet on.

Just as the car rolled to a stop the front door was flung open and Merlin nearly fell out of the cottage in his eagerness. Arthur could hear Hunith scolding Merlin to put shoes on, but Merlin had selective hearing and bounded out in his fuzzy green socks. Arthur leapt from the car to meet him, scooping his friend up in a hug so he wouldn’t be standing in the wet.

“You finally came back!” Merlin shouted, his mouth close to Arthur’s ear. “I was waiting and waiting!”

He could have easily explained that if he’d had any choice in the matter he wouldn’t even have left in the first place, but he knew that Merlin knew that, in an unspoken way, so he simply said, “I’m back.”

Hunith, carrying small green boots, wrapped them both in a hug, since Merlin was velcro-ed to Arthur still.

“Welcome back, Arthur,” she said warmly. “There’s tea and biscuits inside.”

*

Arthur’s bag was brought in, this time by Geoffrey, who could be prevailed upon to stay for tea and treats, and stashed in Merlin’s room. Standing under the painted night sky again, it sunk into Arthur’s consciousness that he was really back. He wasn't alone. Merlin and his messy room still existed. This place, hidden from the rest of the cruel, grey world, was still safe.

Chapter Text

A folded sheet hit Arthur in the legs and a burst of Merlin’s laughter followed.

“I’ll get my two corners before you get yours!” he challenged, grin and eyes huge.

Arthur didn’t even try to put his side of the sheet on the futon faster. Well, he tried, but only for show, so that Merlin would do the pleased little dance – dance? It wasn’t that coordinated – that he did whenever he was feeling silly and proud of himself.

Arthur laughed dutifully at the exaggerated movements of his friend, pleased that even after all this time, Merlin still wanted to make Arthur happy.

“You’ll stay for Christmas,” Merlin said suddenly, throwing himself onto the futon. “Mum says.”

“Oh. Good.” Arthur hadn’t thought of Christmas. It was always a fairly uptight experience in is opinion. There were his father's colleagues that descended on the house toting bottle after bottle of glittering liquids, dressed in finery that must itch and pull in the wrong places, since that what Arthur’s always did. Each year he was given a new suit and a bow tie and a pocket square and tight shoes were laid out on his bed on Christmas morning to be worn for the whole long, dutiful day. He had to stand and talk to adults who asked him things like, “Have a girlfriend yet? Are you a heartbreaker like your father? How’s your portfolio, my boy? You’ll be in the boardroom soon enough, are you ready to work with your old man?”

Those people ought to know that all those questions were quite stupid to ask a child, but they did it anyway and laughed when Arthur gave the vague, polite answers that his father had drilled into him.

There was always a long musical performance to stay awake to – his mother’s fingernails pressing ever so intently into his shoulders to help him achieve that end – and then there were speeches and toasts. On no other night was Arthur ever more grateful to be allowed to go to bed.

Shedding the suit was freedom. Washing his face removed all the kisses and pinches that he hadn’t wanted but was made to endure. Jumping into bed meant his mother was there to kiss him and hand him his Christmas present.

“It’s our secret,” she’d whisper, her voice breathy, smelling like mint liquor.

The gifts were always small – things that easily blended into what he already had, so his father wouldn’t wonder where they’d come from. A few had already been lost to the annual clear-out of his room, so he’d learned to hide them better.

Come to think of it, he hadn’t looked in his secret box in nearly a year. He wondered if it was still in his room or if it had been trashed. He stopped that line of thought at the first pinch of his heart.

Anything could be hidden in Merlin’s room and never found again. Maybe he could find a way to bring his box here. Or, maybe, since Merlin didn’t have a dad, he didn’t have to hide his gifts?

It raised a question. “Is it okay if I’m here when your mum brings your present? Before bed? Or, I mean, I won’t tell anyone.”

Merlin went still from his wild roll on the futon and looked up at Arthur. “Huh?”

“For Christmas?”

“We do presents in the morning in front of the tree. Do you wait all day for your presents?”

“Uh. Yeah?” Arthur was confused but it occurred to him that maybe that a big, boring, glitzy party and secret gifts was not a universal way to celebrate. Merlin's house couldn't even begin to hold the number of people that usually came to Arthur's house.

“Oh my gold, that’s too long to wait! I’d combust.” And perhaps to illustrate, Merlin launched himself off the bed and thundered away downstairs in a burst of energy.

Arthur blinked and asked an empty room, “Did he say oh my gold?”

*

Arthur woke in the morning to absolute silence, so he knew it must be snowing. The dim light through the window confirmed it. Not for the first time, he felt he’d escaped to a fairytale land, tucked away from the dour busyness of the real world, where it was easier to be happy.

He was not surprised to roll over and find Merlin’s bed empty. The nest of pillows and blankets seemed long abandoned, so Arthur threw off his own duvet and hurried into his clothes, afraid to miss out.

As he hopped down the stairs at a pace he’d never be allowed at home or school, voices drifted from the kitchen. The door was open. Merlin’s messy bedhead was visible at the table, along with Hunith and Gaius.

“Good morning, Arthur.” Hunith smiled brightly, teacup in hand. “Are you ready for some breakfast?”

“Yes, please.” He slid into the chair next to Merlin, who grinned at him.

“Want to go outside after and do snow games?”

“Yeah,” Arthur said eagerly. “Uh, if it’s okay?” This he directed at Hunith, who nodded as though her permission was obvious. It was a fairy world, or maybe an opposites world. At Merlin’s house, it seemed that everything was allowed, except what was expressly forbidden. In the whole rest of the world, Arthur found that everything was forbidden, except what was expressly allowed.
At school and at home, he’d spent so much time and energy trying to obey where required, be independent where required, walk the thin line of ‘being good’ at all times. It was so hard. And… and he was punished when he didn’t understand what was required to be good – even if he was earnestly trying to be.

How much nicer it was at Merlin’s, where they were never guilty of being bad, only uninformed or unthinking or in need of another perspective. And then Hunith or Gaius would help them to think through why this or that wasn’t an idea to internalize and they could be on their way again. He wished his father would come here and let Hunith show him, but there was a better chance of flying to the moon on homemade wings.

“Arthur, are you finished?”

Merlin’s face was close and eager as he stared pointedly at the oatmeal still left in Arthur’s bowl. It took three large bites and Hunith saying, “Merlin, if we rush eating, we might choke. Or get hiccoughs. The snow will still be out there in five minutes,” for Arthur to finish.

Merlin gave his mother a silly, wild salute to show he’d heard which made Arthur laugh and he almost did choke, but soon enough they were in boots, coats and caps, and sliding out the back door into the empty garden where the snow still fell in feathery wisps against a white sky.

Chapter Text

Merlin shot off across the fields as soon as he promised his mum they’d be back for lunch. Arthur followed, snow crunching satisfyingly under his boots. Merlin was shouting something incoherently excited and Arthur let out a whoop of his own. They seemed like the only people in the world. Blue shadows deepened the snow at the edge of the tree line like a barrier against all bad things. If he’d stopped to notice, Arthur would have understood that the simple freedom he felt was a thing to be treasured, but he was too busy running after Merlin and laughing when his friend threw himself face down in the puffy snow to catalogue it.

Arthur joined him more carefully on his back. “What did you do that for?”

“It feels good,” Merlin breathed. “I like to be cold.”

“Why?”

Merlin shrugged and started a complicated swim to turn onto his back, making a strange snow angel in the process. “I want to climb that tree.”

Arthur followed Merlin’s thin finger to a large grey tree, it’s mighty and very high branches bobbing in the wind.

Arthur did not say that it was way too tall and therefore dangerous and scary to climb, but he remembered that he was supposed to help Merlin use his head in times like this and instead said, “It’ll be slippery with the snow. Maybe when it’s dry?”

“I’ll be careful,” Merlin promised, already up and making his way to the base of the trunk.

Arthur stumbled after him, a million consequences rushing through his head. “Why this one, though? How about an easier one?”

“If I fall out of the tree, I think the snow will save me.”

Arthur blinked several times. He didn’t want to think about Merlin falling out of such a big tree. He wasn't perfect at math or physics, but he didn't think there was enough snow to cushion a whole boy falling from such a height. “No,” he insisted, his worry blossoming large. “Don’t be dumb, you’ll die.”

Merlin stopped gazing up and up looking for the place to start his ascent. His dark brows drew together. “I won’t be dumb,” he said slowly. “I’ve thought it all through.”

Although Merlin’s tone wasn’t angry, Arthur felt chastised. Merlin would have spent hours and hours picking the tree and deciding how to climb it. Arthur knew that about him. Feeling like he didn’t have control over Merlin’s choices shouldn’t have made him call Merlin dumb, either. That was what bullies did to people they wanted under their power.

Merlin had control of Merlin’s choices. Arthur could only give advice and hope for the best. Whatever happens, happens.

By the time he came out of his musings, Merlin already stood balanced on a branch above Arthur’s head. He supposed this tree made sense to climb – it had low hanging branches that Merlin could reach, and there seemed to be a lot of them close together instead of a Merlin-length apart.

Arthur watched as his friend pulled himself up with small grunts until they were quite far from each other. He couldn’t read the decal on Merlin’s coat.

“Are you okay?” he shouted.

He's too high. If he falls, he'll splat.

“This is the best!” Merlin’s voice spiraled down to him like a snowflake. “You can see everything!”

“That’s nice.” Arthur was too distracted watching Merlin’s hands wave about to even pretend to imagine what Merlin could see from so high up.

His throat felt thick and he walked in fraught circles, willing nothing bad to happen.

“Come here!”

Perhaps Arthur had heard wrong. “What?”

“Come up here and see this!” Merlin shouted. His words echoed back, spreading over the barren fields. Arthur almost hoped Hunith would hear Merlin’s invitation and come running. “Please, Arthur?”

Well, that settled it. How could he say no to such a hopeful little voice? And the little voice was Merlin’s, so, yeah, he was done for. He swallowed the knot in his throat, but it only made his stomach sick.

“Okay,” Arthur called, trying to make his voice strong. “Stay there and wait for me.”

“Yes! Woo!”

Arthur stared at the place where Merlin had begun his climb. He put his hands around a rough branch, breathing in the bark and the cold air. Oh god. His breath was an anemic, thin cloud in the cold.

Arthur pulled himself up. The bark scraped his palms, but he found purchase for his feet. Okay. Yeah.

He did it again. Why was it hard to really focus on the next branch and the next? He could see them, but he felt he was moving frantically, without his brain processing a singe thought. He tried to look up to where Merlin was sitting on a branch high above him, but it made him feel wobbly. If he left finger indents in the branches he clung to, he wouldn’t be surprised. oh god.

“You’re doing so good!”

Merlin’s voice still sounded far away. Arthur could hear his own breathing and he could feel his heart beat to the tips of his shaking fingers. Looking down was for people who wished to fall straight out of the tree and end their suffering. Arthur forced his legs to lift and bend, noodles though they were, and stopped thinking about anything except survival. oh my gold.

“Nearly here,” Merlin said helpfully.

Arthur chanced a look up. He was level with Merlin’s feet. There was a branch almost perfectly across from the one Merlin was lounging on and Arthur gripped it, hauling himself to it by force of will. He did not sit. It seemed too tricky to get up again.

“You did it!” Merlin shouted. “Look over there!”

Without letting go of the branch that was now responsible for his safety, Arthur swiveled to look out over the fields, past the house and barn. He could see the road covered in snow. Beyond, the world was white and flat. Snow came down like powdered sugar.

“A snow globe,” Arthur breathed.

“Yeah. And look.”

Arthur followed where Merlin pointed, far out to the horizon line. Above it, a break in the clouds shone purple, streaked with gold.

“Wow.”

“I’m glad you came up here,” Merlin said simply.

“Me too.” He never would have if Merlin hadn’t asked. But maybe it was like Leon suggesting they chance trouble to find Arthur’s rock. It was like Merlin's long-gone sunburn. It was worth the risk. Being able to share this moment with Merlin seemed worth falling out of a tree. And despite his fear of their falling, so far, he hadn't.

Arthur watched Merlin watch the sky, snowflakes catching in his eyelashes and on his hat. There were things you could do with a friend alongside you, Arthur thought, that you might not do alone.

Well, he did know that, didn’t he? Valiant never beat anyone up unless all his stupid lackeys were with him. But, it didn’t have to be about feeling safe in a group to do crimes. It could be about discovery and adventure, trying things you might not even have thought to try. It was a way to be better because of and for your friend. And, it was much, much better than being without a friend – Arthur knew that very well, too.

He wasn’t sure how long they stayed, but Arthur began to wonder when his fingers began to throb from cold.

“Shall we go down and get lunch?” Merlin wondered. The sunrise had long faded and been hidden by the clouds again.

“Oh. Yeah. How do we…do that?”

“Watch me.” Merlin slid off his seat and clambered down like he was raised by monkeys.

“Wait!” Arthur cried, his heart hammering once more. “Let me follow.”

Merlin dutifully stopped, guiding Arthur to each branch with confidence. “Yeah and now to the left. Perfect. Then below your right foot you can reach the next branch. Brilliant.”

Arthur came level with Merlin and they clambered down together. At the final branches Merlin held back and again talked Arthur through the best way down.

When Arthur’s feet hit the ground, he felt a wave of relief and happiness and, maybe, pride. That had been awesome! He had really done it!

Just above his head he heard the sharp snap of a thin branch and Merlin landed in a heap in front of him.

Arthur was locked in a moment of panic, unsure whether to run for help immediately or run to Merlin, when Merlin laughed.

“Ow.”

“Are you okay?!”

Merlin nodded and sat up. “Oops. But, see, the snow did save me!”

“Let’s get some lunch.” Arthur hurried off ahead of Merlin in a desperate bid to prevent further frights. He didn't think he could take it right now. Besides, no one ever got hurt eating sandwiches.

*

Hunith was not amused by Merlin’s wild tale. “I only fell from the last branch. I didn’t even get hurt.”

“Small miracles,” she sighed, gripping her hair too tightly. “Another sandwich, Arthur?”

New adventures made one hungry and so Arthur nodded.

“Me too!” Merlin said and at Hunith’s expectant look, “Please.”

After sandwiches, Hunith built a huge fire in the old stone fireplace that had so arrested Arthur’s attention the first time he’d arrived in the summer, perhaps to lure them away from adding more danger to the day. Arthur was happy to lounge on the cushions in front of the flames with Merlin, trading stories and jokes and sharing a plate of biscuits and hot chocolate.

“Arthur, what do you want for Christmas?” Merlin asked, his mouth full of shortbread.

“What? Nothing!” An embarrassed flush smacked its way onto Arthur's face.

Merlin cocked his head. “You have to want something.”

“No,” Arthur insisted. “I’m…I’m all set.”

One of Merlin’s eyebrows arched skeptically. “Weird. But you don’t have to tell me.”

Arthur did receive a gift from his father every year, of course, in the shape of a check that went directly into his trust or savings or something. He’d been taught very early that the amount was substantial and would take care of his every need when he grew up. It was childish and silly to want anything else, not to mention unbefitting of a little boy who already had everything.

Arthur, therefore, hadn’t asked for anything since he was five. He could still remember the shouting his father had done about him wishing for a bike.

Merlin leaned closer. “I’m going to tell you what I want, though. Are you ready?”

Arthur nodded, unsure.

“I want you to stay here forever.”

Chapter Text

The shadows lengthened in all the windowsills and corners, and light flickered over the squashy armchairs. Winter evenings came early, and the thickening snowstorm brought darkness even sooner, cocooning them in wind-blown quiet. Merlin’s face glowed in the firelight as he glanced up at Arthur, hardly blinking. He looked so unhuman that Arthur’s breath caught.

“I want you to stay here forever.”

Was it possible to live suspended in one moment? He’d been carrying time around in his chest for months now – flashes of his mother, all the moments he’d written down in his little notebook – where was it? – as a talisman against forgetting, but it was so painful sometimes, even though the memories were wonderful. But this moment, with Merlin right now, was perfect. He’d stay in these exact few seconds forever if he had the choice.

“You do?” A vivid daydream caught hold of him – staying all winter and watching spring come, watching life and colour and warmth return. Exploring with Merlin and forgetting everything that came before in favour of this feral, free life, dictated to only by nature and never by people. He wouldn’t have to go back to school, that remote place of endless cold striving. He’d miss Leon, but he’d have Merlin. And maybe Leon could visit someday and they could all roam near and far together.

“I want that, too,” Arthur admitted, digging his fingernails into the plush of the rug. “Do you think I could?”

“Yeah, why not?” Merlin shrugged. “You can stay in my room; I don’t mind at all.” He sat up and rummaged in the tin for another biscuit. “Want chocolate or cinnamon?”

“Either,” Arthur said around a tightness in his throat.

As the biscuit was passed over, Arthur’s fingers touched Merlin’s. He wanted to grab hold of Merlin and never let go – because if he held on then he couldn’t be sent away again, because Hunith would never part with Merlin. Or maybe if he took up both Merlin’s wrists, they’d finally be transported to that magical realm – the place always waiting just around the corner, always in his peripheral here – and they could disappear into sunshine and endless gardens. No school, no empty houses, no angry fathers, no hateful bullies, no sadness.

Sunlight and flowers forever.

*
When morning light expanded over Arthur’s face the next day, he lifted his head to check Merlin’s bed as was his habit, and as usual, it was empty.

The sun was out, a pale spectre hovering over fields frosted thickly with snow. A bready scent wafted up the stairs and through Merlin’s door, teasing Arthur’s nose. He didn’t want to be late to whatever Merlin’s plans for the day were, so he tried to sit up and found he couldn’t. Something held the blanket down.

He swiveled face-first into a fluffy nest of black fur. “Uegh!”

The fluffy creature stirred, revealing a face and hands.

“Merlin!” Arthur gasped, truly shocked.

“Hi,” Merlin yawned.

“Why are you over here?”

“Mmmm.”

Within this humming Arthur heard either ‘I don’t know’ or ‘I’m hungry,’ but no real answer. Merlin flopped around, throwing his limbs from side to side like a restless cat and making sleepy grunts. His friend usually left so quietly Arthur had never heard him wake up before. He thought this might be a silly performance for his benefit.

“Sleepyhead,” Arthur teased. “Usually, you’d have made twenty snow creatures by now or something.”

“It’s soooo warm in here,” Merlin sighed, indicating the blankets piled on top of them. “You’re like a heater.”

Arthur smiled. “You said you like to be cold.”

“And I do!” Merlin sat up like he’d been shocked. “So let’s gooooooo!” He untangled himself from the blankets and hopped to his chest of drawers, pulling out whatever clothes were at hand and scurrying into them.

Arthur followed, bounding down the stairs behind Merlin. Porridge was steaming on the stove and there were peach slices to put on top with cream. Hunith listened to their plans for the day with interest and advice.

“Don’t forget your mittens this time,” she reminded them. “Also, Alice will be visiting Gaius today and she’ll want to say hello to you both so don’t go out of earshot, please.”

“Okay,” Arthur agreed. He didn’t know who Alice was, but Hunith rarely told them to stay close, so he knew it was important to listen. He nudged Merlin under the table.

“Okay,” Merlin said, hiding a mischievous grin by stuffing a spoonful of porridge in his mouth.

Arthur knew Merlin would listen though. He just had a lot of energy and got excited about things, sometimes to the point of forgetting to listen or to think, but he wasn’t deliberately disobedient. Hunith seemed to understand that part of her son well, so she gave Merlin an equally mischievous battery of kisses while he laughed and shrieked, instead of a preemptive lecture.

*

Clouds crowded in as Arthur and Merlin took turns dragging each other around on a wooden sled that Gaius showed up with as soon as they ran outside. If pressed, Arthur wouldn’t have been able to answer clearly about what they were up to all day, but the hours passed so happily that time went unnoticed until Gaius appeared once again at the large windows of the barn and shouted for them to come in and have lunch with Alice.

Arthur was interested. All summer no one had come to the cottage. Mere mortals probably couldn’t even find it without a fae guide, so he was keen to meet another person who was allowed into the sacred space.

They tumbled in to Gaius’ lounge, removing winter gear in a jumble of limbs and dripping clothes. There was a gigantic fireplace, even bigger than the one in Merlin’s house, and a huge mantle hung over it that sported a thousand different jars of interesting plants in every state – growing, drying, ground into powder, turned into flakes, combined with other things and made creamy, dark green viscous liquids and light green watery liquids.

Everything in Gaius’ house was interesting. The knickknacks that Gaius always brought Arthur clearly originated from his home, or at least, would fit in very well here. He had old maps and globes, shining metal statues and tools, stacks and stacks of papers full of drawings and spidery writing. He had furniture that looked a hundred years old and creaked when you walked by it too fast. He had big squashy sofas (two!) and fluffy blankets along the back of them. The dishes in his cupboards were a lightweight china, patterned in white and sage and they matched the teacups. His rugs had burn marks all over them. He said they were from experiments and Merlin’s eyes had gone twice their normal size, even though Arthur was sure that Merlin had heard those stories already and perhaps had participated in some. Merlin’s house had a fresh, young sapling kind of magic to it and Gaius’ had a settled, ancient magic that pervaded even the dust. It made Arthur feel incredibly calm and sometimes sleepy.

Once they’d divested themselves of coats and hats and mittens, a woman appeared in the doorway. She wasn’t as old as Gaius, but nearly. Her gentle face broke into a smile.

“Hello Merlin, darling,” she cooed. “It’s lovely to see you. Who’s your friend?”

Merlin looked at Arthur, smiling. “Arthur Pendragon,” he told Alice. “From London.”

Something about Merlin’s voice sounded majestic talking about Arthur like that – if it wasn’t immodest for Arthur to think so. He liked the way Merlin made him sound known, like anyone could and should have heard of Arthur Pendragon, London.

“Hello Arthur,” Alice said sweetly. “I think the last time I saw you, you were still in a pram.”

Arthur didn’t know what to say to that, except a hesitant and awkward, “Was I with my mum?”

“Yes, my dear.”

Arthur recognised the tinge of sadness in Alice’s voice. Everyone who talked about his mum had that tone.

“Did you know her?” A twist took hold in Arthur’s heart. Gaius had known her, but Arthur had never thought to talk about her with him. He didn’t know why he suddenly wanted to hear about her from a stranger instead.

“A little bit. Not very well, I’m sorry to say. But she was lovely, Arthur, just like you.”

He didn’t know how she knew if he was lovely or horrible, but it would be rude to tell her so, since she had clearly formed an opinion. But, did it mean that she was just saying that about his mum, too, without really knowing?

“Am I lovely?” Merlin cut in with such intense delight in his obviously absurd question – of course he was – that Arthur burst out laughing.

“No!” he shouted and tackled Merlin to the sofa, feeling weirdly elated when Merlin fought back with wild glee.

*

Alice was a medical professional. She said so over the spinach concoction that Gaius had laid out for lunch. Arthur, therefore, did not fully trust her. In his, admittedly limited experience, hospitals were a horrible mix of business and blood, suffering and indifference. People died there, sometimes all alone. He watched her carefully while trying to both understand the conversation and figure out how he was going to smuggle this spinach goop off his plate and into an abyss.

Merlin would eat a tiny bite and then gag and then repeat the process. Arthur noticed that after a few mouthfuls most of what was on his fork ended up flung – blindly – into the potted plant behind him. Some was oozing into the floorboards, having missed the target.

Arthur, worse luck, had only an antique china cabinet behind him stacked with beautiful dishes that might explode upon contact with the spinach brew – it contained a heretofore unknown chemical compound, Arthur was certain.

“Arthur, are you alright? You’ve hardly touched your food.” This concern came solicitously from Gaius and Arthur panicked.

“Uh, I’m fine. I’m, erm, thinking about something. Ehhrm, my mum.”

From the two adults came the looks that accompanied that sad tone – pitying and regretful. Having predicted exactly that outcome, he swallowed and looked away.

“You must miss her terribly,” Alice said. She sounded so professional – Arthur had been too preoccupied with the spinach to get a definitive sense of her during the meal – and so kind. Guilt and embarrassment came over him. He’d eat the spinach if everyone would just stop looking at him. Merlin had his head tilted like he could see through Arthur from that angle. “It was a tragedy, especially someone like her. All because of that – ”

Through the burn in Arthur’s cheeks, he saw Gaius lay a quick, silencing hand over Alice’s wrist. “Arthur, I have some pictures of her in an album, if you’d like to see. I’ve been meaning to dig it out for ages to show you.”

“Yep!” Merlin chirruped, jumping out of his chair. Despite Merlin’s efforts there was still a greasy, soupy pile of spinach congealing on his plate. “Can we see it now, Gaius?”

“Well,” Gaius began, “I don’t think Arthur has finished his lunch ye – ”

“I’m done!” He jumped up after Merlin. “But, ehm, thanks Gaius. For making it for us. It tasted, ehm, healthy.”

*

So they had a narrow escape from too much of Gaius’ cooking, because he found the album in a set of cupboards and let Arthur and Merlin sit on either side of him on the sofa while Alice leant over Gaius’ shoulder behind them.

“Here we are,” Gaius said in his grumbly voice. “That’s the day we first met. I was having a little soiree and she came with her brother – he was a student of mine for a short while.”

Arthur leaned in, trying to reconcile the image he had of his mum – an all-knowing protector – with the sun-washed image of this young woman in cut off shorts and a blousy top. Her hair was short, as short as his was now and she was standing among two people with a serious, attentive expression. He did know that look, so he knew it was her.

“I like her hair cut,” Merlin piped up.

“Pixie cut,” Alice said. “It suited her.”

“She always had long hair when…” Arthur didn’t know how to end that sentence. When she was his mum? She still was she just wasn’t… here.

“I’m sure that’s your father’s influence,” Alice said. Arthur looked back just in time to see her roll her eyes like Ms. Hilda did sometimes when she thought no one was looking.

“Alice.” Gaius’ voice held a soft warning.

“What?” she asked, her eyes big. “I think Arthur knows plenty well what his father’s like and we can’t tiptoe around it forever.”

“He’s nine,” Gaius insisted.

“I’m almost ten,” Arthur said, not sure of the subtext, but sure it was there. His parents had often spoken like this – saying something without saying it, glancing here or there in significant ways, mouths tight and voices urgent.

Gaius quickly flipped the pages until he came to the next photo. He tapped it carefully. “Your mother was so delightful, Arthur, at my soiree, smart and incisive and rather witty, so I invited her to my next do as well. I’d also invited your father and this photo is their first together, I believe.”

“For good or ill,” Alice cut in.

Arthur leaned closer to the photograph. His mother was in a group of about ten people all posing for the photo. Gaius was on one end looking shockingly young in a nice suit, though it couldn’t have been taken all that long ago. And there was his father next to Gaius. His hair wasn’t as grey and he had that self-satisfied smile that Arthur supposed was just his normal smile. He did look relaxed though, a bit, even though he was in designer clothes and his watch was as big as his hand.

His mum was very beautiful. Her smile was gigantic. She seemed to be caught mid-laugh. Her hair was a little bit longer, a bob maybe, and she wore a well-fitted black dress that adults might call daring.

“Mumma!” Merlin crowed, pointing to a willowy dark-haired woman in a bottle-green pant suit.

“Oh right,” Gaius said. “They were there, too.”

“Who’s they?” Arthur asked. He dragged his eyes away from his young mum’s face just long enough to see Gaius cover someone with a thumb.

“Both your mothers,” Gaius replied, much too quickly, Arthur thought.

“Hmph,” Alice breathed. She ruffled Arthur and Merlin’s heads suddenly. “But you’re both such sweet boys, thank god. Never change.”

Arthur had a weird urge to bite Alice’s hand – not maliciously, more like when a cat gets tired of pets and chooses danger – but he was human, so he fought that urge and shared a glinting look with Merlin, who, he was sure, knew exactly what Arthur had been thinking.

*

A bright knock on the door took the attention off biting and photographs. Hunith let herself in, stomping snow off her boots.

In an instant Merlin was in front of her. “I saw your plant costume and it’s the BEST.”

“My what?”

“That striking green suit you wore to Gaius’ retirement party,” Alice called over.

“Oh that,” Hunith laughed. “Why is it a plant costume?”

“It’s green and you’re a plant queen,” Merlin explained. “Right?”

“Love that,” Hunith said. “Plant Queen – shall we change the name of the farm?”

“Yeah,” Merlin nodded earnestly. “It sounds more magical than Emrys Herbs & Flowers.”

“It’s not called Emrys Herbs & Flowers,” Hunith laughed, endeared and endeavoring to hide it.

“Oh. Really?” Merlin seemed thoroughly confused and Hunith couldn’t stop laughing, despite trying.

Arthur grinned at Merlin. He really loved that Merlin lived so much in his own world that he didn’t know the name of his mum’s business, just it's description, basically. “It’s Emrys & Albion.”

“Mmmkay," Merlin said skeptically. “Who’s Albion?”

“It’s a magical place,” Hunith supplied. “Where everyone is equal and safe no matter what.”

“Makes sense to me,” Arthur said. His first and lasting impression of the cottage was that it was magical. Merlin knew it. He was glad Hunith knew it, too. “Hunith, do you want to come look at my mum’s photos?”

They all ended up jumbled together on the sofa, even Alice. Merlin sat in Hunith’s lap and Arthur slid in next to him. Hunith put her arms around them both as Gaius flipped through the pages of parties and outings and special occasions. It seemed that’s all they ever did in the past, but Gaius said that was the only time most people thought to take photos.

There were a few more photographs where Gaius’ fingers covered a half or a third, but Arthur didn’t care that much. The pictures revealed pieces of his mother that he would never know, but they were preserved, an invitation, a gift. It wasn’t too sad to look, because the woman in the pictures wasn’t his mum, not yet. She was just herself and that made her more accessible, somehow. She wasn’t the mythical figure of his mum, she was a person. There were pictures of her with Hunith more than once. Arthur hadn’t known that they knew each other.

“Oh yes, for a time,” Hunith said. “We were thrown together in this crowd fairly frequently. But then I moved here and we lost touch, what with everything. I lost touch with everyone.” Hunith trailed a fingertip over the nearest photo absently – or perhaps not so absently.

“Except me,” Gaius said with cheerful smugness.

“And what would I do without you?” Hunith tilted her head lovingly.

“It was better you came here,” Alice opined. “Get yourself a fresh start.”

Arthur felt Hunith shrug against his arm. “I needed the space so this one could be wizard of the wilderness.” She squeezed Merlin and pressed a few kisses into his cheek. “I knew you’d be a wild creature before you were even born!”

Merlin leapt away and she got up to chase him. They made a happy ruckus as the fire blazed warmth into the room. Arthur watched, unsure how to understand what he was seeing. Hunith was Merlin’s mum and she definitely was in charge, but she was also like a friend, willing to play games and be silly. His mum played, but she wasn’t ever silly. Not that you had to be. It was confusing. At his own house, Arthur wasn’t really supposed to be silly either, but that was because being silly often led to being loud and noise annoyed his father. Everything had to be quiet. Arthur and his mum and the house.

But he got to have this second mum – sort of. Who was young still and wild like her son. And both kinds of mums were good. So…?
It came to Arthur. He was trying to compare something that should not be compared. He was annoyed at his own inclination to do it. That was his father’s way – always out for the best, the most, the only. But two mums could be totally different and still equally good. Alice had called him a sweet boy. He didn’t want to be like his father, always judging, never sweet. He wanted to be like Merlin, like Hunith, just accepting, ready to be kind. He wanted his father’s attention when he achieved good things, but not at the expense of becoming like him.

And – he’d done what his father was doing. He’d used his mum’s death as a…a tool. A method to get out of eating the spinach. He’d used her because he didn’t like the meal and he’d even been rewarded for it, technically. His father used everything and everyone as a means to an end, whatever the consequences. For good or ill, as Alice had said.

Arthur thought about it all night, even when Merlin once again curled up beside him after the lights were out. What kind of person took advantage of their own mum’s death like that? And the answer revolved unendingly but stayed the same: a person like Valiant – a person like his father.

Merlin rolled over, snuffling, his arms curled around his dragon plush.

He didn’t want to become someone he didn’t even like.

He was so thankful to have been made aware of himself like that that he finally drifted to sleep, asking the universe to help him be different.
*

Chapter Text

The bready smell that had greeted Arthur upon waking the day before turned out to be a homemade loaf that Hunith was turning into French Toast when Arthur and Merlin appeared in the kitchen the next morning.

“Tomorrow is Christmas Eve,” she told them as soon as they sat down, forks ready to dig in. “So we’ll decorate the tree and bake our favourite treats together, how does that sound?”

“Biscuits!” Merlin beamed.

“Yep, and some buns and actual food as well,” Hunith said brightly. “So I’d like you both to gather up all your outside energy and expend it wildly today, so we can focus on our Christmas preparation tomorrow.”

“Yes, we will,” Merlin agreed solemnly, mouth full of buttery, syrupy eggy bread.

*

After breakfast had vanished (with record-breaking speed), Arthur and Merlin ventured out. Crows streaked across the far-away white sky, calling urgently. They ran across the fields below, a mirror to the birds, letting go their own squawks and shrieks.

“To the forest!” Merlin commanded, a gloved finger pointing away toward the trees. Arthur nodded emphatically. He hadn’t been in the woods since he’d been back, only to its edge and he'd been longing to see it. All the summer greenery was gone, save the occasional pine with outstretched branches dripping. Arthur felt he could see straight through the wood. Well, not entirely, because there was no hint of what existed beyond it, but all the lush verdant things had hidden themselves and the browns and greys had taken over. Naked branches made a lace canopy above and snow hid the base of every tree.

Arthur shouted and his voice echoed once, twisting up past the tips of the branches toward space. Merlin, very much grounded on Earth in winter, threw his arms around a bare young tree.

“We planted this one for YOU,” he called, bringing Arthur back to the present. “Right after you left.”

At Arthur’s confused look, Merlin went on. “We plant trees in here all the time so the forest can get bigger. This one is a hawthorn and it’s for you. I have a bunch, some have fruit, and mum has a bunch and Gaius has three.”

“Wow,” Arthur breathed, coming closer, unable to catalogue the big emotion rising at Merlin's announcement. He laid his fleece-clad hand on the bark. “That’s brilliant.”

Merlin smiled contentedly at him. “We’ll plant loads more together. We’ll cover the whole world in this forest!”

“Yeah,” Arthur agreed, happiness spreading warmly through him. “That sounds perfect.”

He liked that Merlin thought of him when he wasn’t here. He thought of Merlin pretty often. He couldn’t name the contentment he felt knowing they were each somewhere, thinking of the other, at any given time.

*

Merlin guided them on until they came to the river. The liquid brown ribbon it had been was now a cloudy-white one, the result of snow and rain freezing together.

“Whoa,” Arthur gasped. It seemed they could step onto it and be transported elsewhere like children in books.

“It’s so quiet!” Merlin leaned in using an exaggerated whisper. “Mum says we can’t step on it unless she’s here because we might fall through, and we might not be able to get out and we’ll drown or die of hypothermia.”

“Yikes.” Arthur didn’t like the sound of that. He held an arm out across Merlin’s middle and backed them up a few steps. “It is really pretty, though.”

Merlin nodded, looking around with pink cheeks and puffs of icy breath for a long moment before asking, “Want to go to my wizard den?”

“Yes!” Arthur had been hoping to go there, but it didn’t feel right to ask to be invited to such a sacred place. He hoped that he still belonged.

Merlin was off, clomping through the trees and leaping over fallen logs and rocks as though they weren’t hidden by the snow.

Arthur lost all sense of direction, but it didn’t matter as long as he had Merlin’s blue coat in sight. To his credit, Merlin never went more than five meters without looking back and making sure Arthur was close by.

The secret hideaway was enveloped in snow, but there was a faint path where the door opened that showed Merlin must have been here recently. Arthur wondered when he'd had the time. Merlin shoved his way in and beckoned Arthur, hovering outside the doorway.

It was magical. Arthur knew he described everything to do with Merlin as magical, but it really was. The light inside was dim and sweet, all noise softened. The pine cone mobile he’d made months ago swung in a lazy spiral from its place over the table, fitting well in the season. Both stools stood waiting, as if frozen in time.

There was a blanket folded on top of the table and a very crusty travel cup on the floor. Some snow had blown in, but otherwise the dirt floor was uncovered, hard as a rock.

Along a new scrap-wood shelf, Merlin had arranged a dozen tiny wooden constructions. A frog-sized raft, a person on a horse or maybe a cow, three little buildings, a cube, and other things that seemed fanciful rather than actual. As he admired these things, a box appeared under Arthur’s nose full of twigs and sticks and other natural material.

“We can make more,” Merlin offered, shaking the box to show all the opportunities it held. “Want to?”

Arthur wanted to and he said so. Merlin moved their stools next to each other instead of opposite and plunked the box on the table. Once they’d sat, he wrapped the blanket around both their shoulders.

Arthur loved doing projects with Merlin. He’d never really done any before the summer they spent doing nothing but projects. He was glad to learn they could still be done in winter.

How many hours passed as they created dragons and trees and boats and mountains, Arthur would not have been able to say, but the table was fully covered in their creations when they finally started to speak of hunger. He'd nearly forgotten that this was Merlin's way of life, busy and absorbed to the exclusion of all else - until hunger crept in.

“We could go back for some soup,” Merlin suggested. He always seemed to know what would be on offer.

Arthur could eat, but he didn’t want to leave just yet. Wrapped in a blanket with Merlin, their shoulders always bumping as they constructed masterpieces, Arthur was neither cold nor bored.

“Let’s just finish this one.” He pulled the biggest piece forward, their lopsided castle that still lacked a tower.

“Yep, okay.” Merlin reached for the ball of twine and began wrapping several thin twigs together. “What if we make a column like this and then we can put a stone or a feather on top. Do you like that for a tower?”

“I love it,” Arthur said heartily. He gathered more sticks and Merlin wrapped them. They found paper thin birch bark and twisted it into a cone for the top, adding a feather in the remaining opening.

“It’s perfect,” Merlin announced.

Arthur nodded. “What do we call the kingdom?”

“Mmmm.” Merlin scrunched his face up. “I don’t know. I need soup to think.”

It had been a while. Arthur was properly hungry, too. “OK, let’s go back.”

They stashed their treasures on the shelf and put all the materials back in the box. Merlin pulled his hat back on and opened the door for Arthur.

*

The whole forest was quiet. They’d taken maybe five steps, the crunching snow the only sound, when Arthur stopped. He wasn’t an expert on forests, but it seemed, maybe, too quiet. A totally silent city was unnatural and a totally silent forest was, too.

“Merlin, do you think – ”

Just as he spoke, Merlin cocked his head like a bird and spun on his heel. Slowly, Arthur turned to look back.

His breath caught in his throat.

'Merlin.' But he couldn’t get the air to make any sound.

The giant stood, hair lank and long around it’s face, towering into the trees.

'Merlin.' Still nothing came out.

Why, why, why didn't they go home when Merlin had first suggested it? Arthur felt so selfish, so stupid!

“Merlin.”

That hadn’t been him. The giant could speak.

“Hi,” Merlin said evenly. Arthur couldn’t believe it. Was Merlin under a spell? Was he in a trance? He wasn’t running. He was greeting it?!

Arthur grabbed him and pulled as hard as he could to get Merlin to move. It took several forced steps for Merlin to finally shake his head, like he was dazed and start to run with Arthur.

“Faster!” Arthur hissed. He nearly pushed Merlin to the ground urging him to pick up the pace. Glances over his shoulder showed the huge creature unmoving, watching them go in a stupefied way.

They made it past the river and finally back to the open field, the house in view. Arthur could see his breath billow like a smokestack as they neared Hunith’s back garden. He collapsed onto one of the benches, his side splitting.

“Why does it know your name?” Arthur wheezed.

Merlin, not so out of breath, kicked his toe into the snow. “Welllll.” He spoke like he didn’t want to say more, which made an unknown alarm go off in Arthur’s chest.

“Boys!”

Hunith had appeared in the doorway, looking pleasantly surprised to see them. “Ready for some soup?”

“Yep!” Merlin said forcefully. He ran past Arthur into the kitchen, kicking off his gear.

Arthur followed a bit glumly. He ate his soup, dutifully listening to Merlin detail their adventures to Hunith, without mentioning the last, most vital bit.

“And, we also saw something in the woods,” Arthur cut in. “It was – ”

“A cardinal,” Merlin cut right back.

“Lovely,” Hunith said. “A family of deer came through this morning. Maybe you’ll see them as well.

And then Arthur felt quite a kick to his shin and the surprise of that and Merlin’s communicative face made him bite his tongue.

“Yeah, that would be brilliant,” Arthur said instead.

Hunith went off to finish her things, leaving them alone again, but Arthur didn’t know how to ask Merlin what had happened and why it was a secret.

It wasn’t until Hunith had tucked them into their beds and turned the lights out that Arthur found the courage and the words.

A Christmas candle (electric) glowed in Merlin’s bedroom window. It threw comforting gold light a few inches into the dark and Arthur focused on that while speaking.

“Today, when that giant appeared, I thought you, and me, might get hurt. So I wanted to run. But it talked to you and it knows your name. You didn't run. Why?”

He could hear Merlin flopping around in his duvet. “I can’t tell you, Arthur. Sorry.”

Arthur's heart burned at those words. “I won’t tell anyone.”

“I know. But I just can’t.”

“Well, I’m sorry then, because I think it’s dangerous, so I’m going to tell your mum what’s out there.”

Merlin’s shadow flung itself across the room and soon Merlin himself was hovering over Arthur on his futon.

“Don’t tell her.”

“Then tell me what's going on.”

Merlin let himself sink down so that his face was a few inches from Arthur’s on the pillow.

“Okay, but don’t tell anyone. Do you promise?”

“Yes.”

Merlin’s eyes got huge, flecks of gold from the candle illuminating the blue.

“That’s my dad.”

*

Arthur tossed and turned all night long. Surely, Merlin’s own dad wasn’t a horrible monster. But then, why was he haunting the woods and appearing out of thin air like a lunatic?

Maybe Merlin’s dad was a fae creature. That would explain Merlin quite a bit. And those fae could be tricky. Clever but a bit mischievous. Yes, well, Merlin exactly.

He should probably tell Hunith. She was a grown-up and she would know what to do. And fathers, well, they were a bit…complicated.
But if he told, Merlin would be… actually, what would Merlin be? He’d never once seen Merlin angry. But he had seen Merlin upset and that was even worse. What if Merlin felt betrayed? That would devastate Arthur.

When cold light at last seeped across the room and onto Arthur’s wide-open eyes, he still had no answer. He trudged to the bathroom, vision bleary. He could smell something cinnamon-y wafting from the kitchen and Hunith was singing along to the radio, some old-fashioned Christmas tune.

That’s right. Today they were doing Christmas prep, so he and Merlin wouldn’t be playing outside. So he didn’t have to worry just yet. There were a few days ahead where they’d be safe in the company of Hunith and Gaius. Arthur let out a sigh of relief. He had time to think of a way to keep Merlin safe, if he needed to be kept safe, without betraying him. Arthur didn’t think he could bear to lose a friend like Merlin, even if the cost of keeping him was higher than Arthur could pay without pain.

Chapter Text

Hunith had augmented the pale morning rays coming through the kitchen windows with bright overhead lights and many candles. They were real, not like the one in Merlin’s window. Arthur was enchanted by the audacity of that many flames in a busy kitchen and he was pleased that Hunith trusted them enough not to catch themselves or the house on fire.

Breakfast was pancakes, fluffy and soft, with a winter-berry tea. Something was already baking in the oven that smelled of cloves and nutmeg. Festive instrumental music crooned out of an ancient radio on the windowsill.

Gaius shuffled in the back door just as breakfast got underway.

“Well lads,” he said gently, “Are we ready for a lovely holiday together?”

“Yes,” Merlin said confidently. “Are we going to make the garlands?”

“We certainly are.”

Arthur wondered what a ‘lovely holiday’ meant to Gaius. It didn’t seem possible that Hunith and Merlin would host a big party like his father always did, but Gaius might. He had pictures to prove he did such things. Arthur wouldn’t tell anyone, but that wasn’t a lovely holiday in his mind. The trouble was, he couldn’t decide how a good holiday would look. Or feel.

“Is anyone coming over?” His curiosity and, if he had the word, his anxiety, needed an answer. He wasn’t ready for anyone to break into this sacred, warm kitchen. Alice had been enough. What if a whole host of besuited and begowned people arrived and he had to listen to a cello performance for hours while standing quiet and still? Arthur glanced over at Merlin, chewing his pancakes and fiddling with a tiny wooden snow elf Hunith had put out for company until her boys had woken. Merlin, certainly, could not abide a stuffy, boring day like Arthur was used to. He’d combust, as he was fond of saying. So, was there really anything to worry about?

“Just a couple friends in the evening,” Hunith said brightly.

Although this did not settle the insecurity oozing through Arthur’s gut, it lessened the volume. He piled pancakes on top, shoveling them into his mouth determinedly to bury the fear.

After breakfast, the material for the promised garlands appeared on the table in big wooden bowls. Sprigs of lush holly, crinkly dried cranberries, translucent orange slices bereft of juice, papery folded stalks of a plant Arthur didn’t know, waxy bundles of feathery juniper tips. To Arthur it seemed a wonderful feast for the realm just out of sight.

Flames from the candles flickered and, Arthur was sure, kept time with the music. Gaius handed each of them a thick bone needle.

“Careful boys. It’s not that sharp but it will still hurt if you jab any bits.”

Arthur took up the instrument with awed hands.

“Whose bone is this?”

Merlin’s question struck Arthur in the gut. It hadn’t even occurred to him.

Gaius made a face of careful thought and then shook his head once. “That’s a wonderful question, Merlin, but I’m sorry to say I don’t know.”

Merlin shrugged, holding his bone needle up to the light. “Thanks for the bone, mystery person.”

“It’s not a human bone,” Gaius assured them, eyes wide.

“I know,” Merlin said, undisturbed. “Everyone’s a person though.”

Arthur laughed. “No, they aren’t. A bug isn’t a person! A badger isn’t a person.”

Merlin swiveled big, liquid eyes on him. “Why not?”

This momentarily stumped Arthur. “Because they don’t go to school. Or,” he tried to think of the most person thing he knew of. “They don’t study economies and gold prices.”

“I don’t do those things either,” Merlin said, his voice caught between hard and soft. “So am I not a person?”

A twist of confusion curled into Arthur’s chest. He didn’t know when the moment had become so serious. “You go to school,” he offered feebly.

“No,” Merlin said. “I learn from home. I don’t go away like you.”

Arthur did not know what that meant exactly, but he had to extinguish a flame of jealousy rising up his throat. Merlin’s description was what he’d wanted for months now. To stay tucked away here, safe and secret, never having to venture beyond the long drive without Merlin at his side.

“Oh,” he said softly. “I didn’t know that.”

Merlin let his shoulders rise and fall again, threading his bone needle, the source of Arthur’s strange free fall, and skewering a cranberry. His voice, however, when he spoke, was its usual joyful one. “You don’t have to know anything about anyone to know they’re a person. It’s quite easy.”

Arthur accepted this. The alternative seemed to lead only to argument and the thought made his palms sweaty. He wanted to say, but what if you did know a person, and they were bad? What if they fought you and tried hard to make your life horrible? Or what if they didn’t even mean to, but they hurt you anyway? But somehow, he knew that wasn’t what Merlin was saying. He knew that Merlin wasn’t talking about human people or their inherent person-hood at all. How many people did Merlin even know, secluded at the cottage all his life? No, he was talking about animals because they were who he knew best.

A cold drop slipped down Arthur’s throat, settling icy and intrusive against his heart. He tried not to feel it freezing there, growing a shield over his chest. The feeling was new, indescribable, something his gut held fast to, but his brain rebelled against. What had just happened with Merlin? Disagreement? Superiority? Disappointment? Chastisement? He'd never come near a single one of these feelings with Merlin by his side. The moment didn't seem big enough to make Arthur so unsteady, yet he couldn't stop shuddering against the chill lodged in his chest, the idea that something like a wall had appeared between them.

It would take many, many years to realise that what he felt was the first dark whisper of their inevitable parting, the mismatch of who they were meant to be. Merlin’s path stretched away into a cool wood and Arthur’s marched him unswervingly to a blazing city far, far away.

*

Arthur swallowed around the ice in his chest. “Merlin,” he said.

Both Gaius and Merlin looked up in alarm. He’d nearly shouted. He could feel the rags of the scream still pulling in his throat.
Merlin dropped his garland and spun around the table, mouth full of surprise in the shape of a plum.

Arthur spun too. He crashed into Merlin in the middle of the kitchen, small hands grappling for any part of his friend. Merlin was like angled water, sharp and sloshing, hard to pin, but at last after an eternity, in a split second, he had a fistful of Merlin’s waffled shirt and then he had his shoulders. Arthur didn’t know what to do with that much surface. His brain lolled in a haze, but his hands shook with fever. He needed Merlin in his line of sight so desperately he couldn't breathe.

Merlin titled his head in his bird way. Then his arms twined like vines under Arthur’s armpits and around his back.
Arthur was aware of Gaius moving with concern toward them, of Hunith stepping cheerfully into the house from the back and shuttering to stillness. He was aware of everything, it seemed, in a way he never had been before. The honeyed music and the clock’s pulsing tick, the rich scent of cloves and nutmeg baking, the worn softness of Merlin’s shirt, the tiny pricks of Merlin’s short hair pressing against his cheek.

“It’s okay,” Merlin murmured.

I know, Arthur wanted to say. Nothing is wrong. But just because he couldn’t name it didn’t mean it went unfelt.

At his side, Hunith sunk down to Arthur’s eye level and enveloped both boys in her arms. “She’s right here with us, Arthur,” she whispered.

Arthur had been moved by a frantic desire to simply have proof of Merlin, whole and real beside him. If he could keep Merlin close, he’d reasoned, then nothing would change. They wouldn't ever be made to part.

But Hunith was right, of course. Her long fingers, strong from toil, followed a familiar curve over his face, brushing tears away. Having suffered a loss, it had dawned on Arthur that he was incapable of preventing another. Even if he had control over his life, what could he do? No one, not even someone as magical as Merlin, could be perfectly safe.

“Arthur, did you know that tonight is Modranicht? Night of Mothers. It’s the day before Yule.”

Merlin’s whisper was helpful. “You said we’re calling it Christmas for Arthur.”

Hunith chuckled and Arthur felt it vibrate through his cheek. “Yes, that’s right. But there’s an older holiday, a more ancient one than Christmas, Arthur,” she went on. “Night of Mothers is like Christmas Eve. And Yule is like Christmas. So, tonight, Modranicht, is a night we venerate our ancestors, particularly our mothers, who are responsible for all life on earth. Your mum is very close to you, Arthur, and she’s not going anywhere.”

The sob in his throat wouldn’t be suppressed, so he poured it into Hunith’s neck. If time could only stop right here, he thought, for the second time in only a few days. Not because he was happy, but because he was unhappy and he was wanted anyway.

*

As if Merlin had seen the foundational tremors beneath Arthur’s skin threatening his stability, he stayed within a hand’s reach all day.

Snow began to fall in fat, wet clumps, muffling the world in grey, dimming the light further. It suited Arthur for the sky to sweep so close and the noise to fade, all the universe distilled down to the circles of light the candles cast from the table and the windowsills.

Everything else glowed vibrantly by comparison. Merlin’s hair was the blackest it had ever been, a sheen of impossibility in the way it caught the bleed of other object’s light. Their garlands lengthened with holly so luminous Arthur understood why the ancient people prized it. All other senses stayed as sharpened as they had been in the hug earlier. Arthur smelled only pine and nutmeg, as if nothing else dared muddle the perfume of the day. Merlin’s laughter flitted loud and precious about the room, blanketing the low ceilings and Arthur's heart.

He was fascinated by the stories Hunith and Gaius and Merlin shared about Yule.

Hunith told him about a way to honor ancestors and promised him they’d light a candle and arrange an alter for his mum at dusk. He could put anything he wanted on it, she said. In the green house you can take any flowers you like.

He knew the offer was astonishing, because he’d heard Hunith tell Merlin to keep out of the large, clammy greenhouse a dozen times in the few days he’d been here. It was their biggest source of winter income, and she couldn’t risk their wild games getting out of hand.

When the garlands were hung with much fanfare across doorways all over the house, Hunith shepherded them back into the kitchen, where Gaius had laid out all manner of bakeware.

There were buns and biscuits to bake, a hearty stuffing with plump raisins and chewy croutons and amber broth to cook. Vegetables were steamed and uncanned to be stirred into creams. Fruits were arranged in bowls, candied and fresh. Arthur took great pleasure in watching Hunith cover a huge ball of cheese with nuts and spices and arrange it artfully among a spiraling flower of crackers and vegetable sticks.

Every minute, Merlin’s breath was in his ear, his hands always hovering near Arthur like a bee over a flower, his eyes tracking Arthur for signs of need. As a rule, Arthur had been taught not to be fragile, but with Merlin buzzing gently, he thought that there was an acceptable necessity in the fragility of a flower to a bee. If it were too unbending, it wouldn’t withstand rain or wind. If it were too hard, a bee, a creature vital to every good thing, would never visit. He wanted to think further, contemplate the difference between fragility and rigidity, between softness that was required to prosper and firmness that kept one alive – but a jaunty knock sounded at the door, thudding into his head and demolishing the tentative stream.

“Oh!” Hunith said, her hands still covered in the soft cheese. “Merlin, will you please?”

Earlier, Gaius had wandered back to his own fire to prepare a few things, he’d said, winking down at them before disappearing into the snow, so Merlin was on the job.

He grabbed Arthur’s arm and darted through the lounge to the front door.

This is the moment, Arthur thought. He’d find out if he had to stand like an automaton for the rest of the night.

Merlin pulled the door open with a flourish. Arthur peered into the swirling grey.

“Merlin, my wild elfling, Blessed Yule!”

A woman materialised out of the snow. Arthur looked up and up to see her face. She was exceedingly tall and bundled in a bright red coat that went from her throat to her ankles.

“Blessed Yule,” Merlin said dutifully, bowing his head with so much solemnity that Arthur had to clamp his mouth shut around an escaping laugh. “Mum’s in the kitchen.”

Hunith stuck her head out. “Throw your coat anywhere, Nim. I’ll be right out.”

The coat came off to reveal a dress the exact same shade of red underneath. Silky brown hair cascaded away from her throat and her lips were so red Arthur could only think of violence. He traced his fingers over his arm in an unconscious gesture.
“And you are you, darling?”

Her piercing eyes pinned him like a rare butterfly on a collector’s board.

“Arthur Pendragon,” he said, trying to sound formal and polite the way he’d been taught.

Because he was staring at her, he saw in full detail the way her mouth pinched and her eyes narrowed, but as soon as he’d catalogued the expression it was gone, smoothed over with a sharp smile.

“Blessed Yule, Arthur Pendragon,” she said. It sounded like she was cutting the words out with a knife while they still lived and placing them before Arthur to peruse.

“Blessed Yule.” The words fell out of his mouth automatically. He mimicked Merlin’s movement, letting his head tilt slightly over center, eyes on the ground.

“Hmm.” The woman shifted onto the sofa in what Arthur thought might have been approval, like he’d passed a test he didn’t know he was sitting for.

“Nim!” Hunith bustled out of the kitchen holding her arms out. “I’m so glad you’re here. Was it horrible getting over?”

They hugged and a real smile stretched onto the woman’s face.

“Nothing I couldn’t handle. Blessed Yule, my friend.”

Hunith returned her greetings, holding her tightly. “Have you met Arthur?”

“Arthur Pendragon,” Nim said precisely. Arthur couldn’t tell if she meant she remembered his full name or something else. “A cast away? Or a refugee?”

“Merlin’s dearest friend,” Hunith said, playfully tugging a strand of Nim’s crimped hair. “And my second son.” Or perhaps not so playfully, because Hunith’s tone was quiet and serious, the kind she used when making sure that Merlin understood he could not, under any circumstances, do a dangerous thing.

But it all left Arthur’s mind immediately – everything did. There was enough happily empty space in his brain for his body to float away toward the stars. My second son.

Merlin’s fingers were in his, pulling away toward the kitchen. “Want hot cocoa or tea?” he asked. His voice left the same impression on Arthur as his hovering had. A symbiosis of protection and nourishment.

*

Gaius tromped back in with a few clumsily but lovingly wrapped packages and he laid them under the small tree that Hunith had constructed some time after the boys had gone to bed the night before out of fallen pine branches. Two more people arrived, another woman with dark hair and a musical voice called Helen and a blonde woman with an air of practicality to her that seemed out of place in Hunith’s house called Vivien. With their mugs in hand, they’d shuffled back out to the lounge to greet the newcomers. There was an air of pleasant cacophony, the handing off of coats and bags, the squeezing of hugs and the wet suck of kisses to cheeks. Merry voices filled the little space. Arthur found himself smiling, letting his shoulder press up against Merlin’s when they’d been released from all the affection.

Arthur was shocked, therefore, to see that one more person stood in all the noise – a young woman, though she seemed quite old to Arthur’s eyes, hovered by the door, her arms crossed sullenly over her chest.

“Morgause,” Vivien chirped. “You remember everyone, don’t you? Hunith, Nimueh, Helen? And Merlin and Gaius? And – ” here she looked to Hunith.

“Arthur,” Hunith said, like his name was a long-awaited sunrise.

Arthur pasted a smile over his face, feeling it was expected. Morgause raised an eyebrow in the direction of both boys and said, “Yep,” to the ceiling. She clearly didn’t care about remembering anyone and Arthur found it intimidating.

He hoped that he and Merlin wouldn’t be lumped in with her just because she wasn’t totally grown up yet.

“You look like a lion and a queen,” Merlin told her suddenly.

She raised the other eyebrow. “A lion queen?”

“No,” Merlin said confidently. “Whatever a cross between those two things are. A crown that’s very shiny and very pointy, maybe. Made of stars and knives.”

This is exactly what Arthur loved about Merlin, but Morgause didn’t seem as impressed.

“Okay,” she said, shrugging down her nose at them.

Absolute treason, in Arthur’s opinion. He stood protectively in front of Merlin, who didn’t seem to understand the massive slight he’d just been handed.

“Merlin,” he said, like he was calling the name of a king, “Let’s refresh our cups.”

He pulled Merlin away to the burst of laughter that shunted out of Morgause’s nose. They still had mostly full cups, but he couldn’t bear the dismissive look in her eyes at Merlin of all people on earth. He hoped she’d come to regret her cavalier attitude. He’d finally asked Gaius what that meant, and he was glad, because it perfectly described her indifference.

In the kitchen, the door safely closing them in, Arthur took both their mugs and set them on the table. Then he placed his hands on Merlin’s shoulders, close to his neck. “What a twat coat,” he hissed.

“Who? Morgause?” Merlin asked, leaning in conspiratorially. “Why?”

“She laughed at you! And me! She doesn’t like us. I won’t like her, either.”

Merlin folded his lips into his mouth and creased his eyebrows together. “I think she’s just lost her imagination. Mum says it happens sometimes when you grow up and that we should never. Lose it, I mean. So she couldn’t imagine what I was saying. And I couldn’t describe it well. She’s more like, a hawk or a river. They’re so beautiful if you’re us, but a hawk isn’t beautiful to a mouse. And a river isn’t beautiful to someone drowning. Do you know what I mean?”

Arthur screwed up his face against the gasp of his heart. “You think she’s beautiful?”

Merlin bit his lips again. “I mean, sometimes a thing can be two things at once, even if those things are at odds with each other. A hawk far away is so beautiful, but a hawk up close is dangerous. And if you’re a mouse, a hawk is never, ever beautiful.”
Arthur struggled to parse Merlin’s meaning. He understood it as Merlin spoke, but when his words stopped, Arthur felt like he’d been trying to memorise smoke.

“I see,” Arthur said, though he wouldn’t take a bet. “So you don’t think she’s beautiful, you think we need to be careful.

“To her, we’re just mice. To us, she’s good at a distance.”

Arthur felt relief pool into his knees. Merlin thought of her as a talon-armed speck in the sky. Even if they were all made to pass the evening together, Arthur had no fear that Merlin would come to prefer Morgause over him.

Hunith found them giggling in the kitchen, mouths pressed to the rims of their mugs as they tried to be quiet enough to be forgotten.

“There you are my lads. Arthur, we’ll set up the little alter, are you ready?”

Arthur nodded, laughter trapped in his throat like a fortifying bubble of happiness. He followed Hunith through the small, jovial group to the windowsill perpendicular to the fireplace. The heat blazed, throwing orange on the walls and into the dark panes of glass, so it seemed fires crackled in repetition forever over the cold, empty fields.

Arthur was comforted by the consistency of the chatter. He didn’t want everyone to watch him.

“Here, my love.” Hunith handed him a small wooden plinth on which she had already placed a picture of Arthur’s mother. It was one from Gaius’ album, the edges curled with age. His mother was on a sidewalk, probably in London, and snowflakes fell, suspended forever with the click of the shutter. She wore a stylish fedora and looked at the camera peacefully, calmed, maybe, by the silence of a city under snow. The photo exuded contentment and Arthur thought Hunith had picked it for that reason.

She placed a tealight in his palm. “Put it here in the middle.” She tapped the spot and Arthur laid it down, his eyes glued to his mum. He wanted to step into the picture, wrap himself in her arms and the stillness there, let her mood wash over him. “Now, my love, run and get flowers. Whichever you’d like. You can take Merlin, or you can go alone. Then we’ll arrange them and light the candle.”

Merlin, watching silently behind them, made a small noise that sounded like ‘eep!’ when Arthur grabbed his hand and tugged him through the house with all the affection he could allow to spill out.

*

Merlin knew what every flower meant. Arthur didn’t know flowers had meanings.

Merlin moved through the humid air, strange and silky after the brief winter chill as they ran between doors. It felt very wet. Arthur swallowed.

“These purple lilacs mean spirituality. And peonies,” Merlin ran light fingers over the beautifully jagged edges of the flower, “Mean happiness and romance and beauty. Lavender means love and lilies mean innocence. Ooh, carnations! A pink carnation means mother’s love. Oh, and – ”

Arthur stopped in front of the carnations as Merlin ambled on, listing flowers and interpretations. Blue-green stems jutted up from the rich soil, the rippling petals opening like a hundred loving arms. He plucked a single stem, holding it as though someone would pry it from him.

He stopped again a few feet away and plucked, fingers shaking. When at last he was ready, he called, “Merlin, I’m done.”

Merlin reappeared, his silhouette dark and watery. He looked at Arthur’s arms and nodded. “Perfect.”

He’d let Merlin transfer his flowers into a small box for the journey back. Hunith met them at the door and together they made a processional through the house back to the alter, serious and silent.

Arthur arranged his cuttings, blood rushing in his ears. When he’d finished, Hunith handed him a matchbox. “Say whatever you want to say to her,” she whispered just to him. “And then light the candle.”

He felt Hunith and Merlin step back and join the party, giving him privacy, but he hoped Merlin left his eyes on Arthur’s back. He felt he needed watching over.

There was an infinite combination of words he could string together to tell his mother virtually anything. She’d never cared about the importance of the words, the profundity, the simplicity. She’d merely cared about the words’ existence, as if anything Arthur had to say mattered greatly. He could tell her about Merlin, about Hunith, the way they'd lodged in his heart like a hand tucked into another. He could tell her about father, that he barely existed and Arthur hadn't seen him in months. He could tell her he missed her more than anything, that sometimes he felt like the air was so thin in his lungs when he thought of her that he’d die, and how that wouldn’t be so bad, because he could crawl into her lap again like when he was just a toddler and be safe. He could tell her about loneliness and happiness and how scared he was all the time. He could say, sorry and I love you.

Both Hunith and Merlin kept their eyes on Arthur. He never once opened his mouth, but when he got up to leave, the candle burning cheerfully, there was a single pink carnation amidst a sea of lavender.

Love upon love upon love.

Chapter Text

Arthur heard the back door creak several minutes after he’d slipped out of the lounge to the stone patio. Thick ribbons of cloud spread over the sky, dropping globs of snow onto Arthur’s upturned face. Between the ribbons, a dull black sky glimmered. It seemed far enough away as to not even exist. Just the concept of a sky and an earth and stars, spinning in his head, making him believe he was standing there desperate to shiver himself out of his thoughts, made him wonder if he existed either.

Merlin slipped into his shadow, letting their shoulders touch.

“I guess you haven’t talked to her that much.”

Arthur wondered what made him so easy for Merlin to understand. Or maybe it was something about Merlin and had nothing to do with him.

He had not talked to her. He had thought of her, aching with longing. He had thought of her happily and dreamily. But whatever shape the thought came in, its edges caught between his ribs and dragged chunks of his vital parts, stringy and bleeding, right to the surface. To talk to her directly was to lack self-preservation. It was to seek destruction. To be ripped apart.

It was too soon. Someday, he’d be strong enough to call for her and not fall into a void. One day he’d sit down and tell her everything. He had time. She would always be gone. It hurt him to feel he was making her wait, but he knew, without being able to say how he knew, that this was a step he could not take now and survive. That she understood.

“I can’t,” he whispered, watching his confession stretch and sink in the air.

“No need,” Merlin said, with that confidence he seemed to pull from the depths of the earth. “You were her once. She knows what you’re up to.”

Arthur said nothing, mouth open soundlessly to the pull of the universe.

“That’s what night of mothers is,” Merlin went on, following Arthur’s upwardly searching gaze. “Knowing that you were her before you were you. Saying thank you. Keeping the balance.”

“If I was her, was I also my dad?” His breath was smoke without fire.

Merlin, fatherless even with a supposed father haunting the woods, grinned widely. “Mum says you’re carved out of your mother and your dad spares a glance for you. I don’t know what the percentage is.”

Arthur didn’t understand any of it, but he laughed because if he didn’t, he’d never break into a softer night. It would always be dark and cold and wet and infinite.

“If you need to tell her something that can’t wait, you could write it down,” Merlin suggested. “Or you can tell me. She’ll hear it.”

If Merlin knew the gravity of what he’d offered, he didn’t show it. Arthur knew him, though, strange and solitary, loving and wild. A small vessel for wisdom that Arthur could barely comprehend. A person who understood.

“Okay.”

*

He followed Merlin back inside, sparing a final glance for the distant stars, the snow falling out of darkness.

It was unbearably warm. Everyone had crowded close to the fire, the mood hushed and sweet. Laughter murmured over happy voices, the air rich with something honeyed.

“Hello.” Hunith held her arms out to both boys and Arthur didn’t hesitate to curl up against her with Merlin. “We were just going to serve cake. I think maybe you’re interested in that?”

Merlin laughed and nodded up at her, twining his fingers into her hair gently. “Mumma, I want to give Arthur a present.” He whispered, but since Arthur was right beside him, he heard. His face flushed. He thought maybe they’d do it privately, like he did with his mum. Otherwise receiving gifts was such an embarrassing affair, so formal, so many manners. Not that he wasn’t grateful, but he never managed to convey his gratitude in a way that his father approved of.

“Go ahead, darling.”

Merlin jumped up and rummaged under the tree, carefully laying other packages aside until he found one wrapped in dark red paper, a cross of green twine tying it closed. This he dropped in Arthur’s lap and settled himself back down against Hunith.

“Thank you,” Arthur whispered. His reverence was genuine, but self-conscious as he picked at the twine. Then he remembered to look for a card or address, guilt sending a prick of sweat under his arms, but he couldn’t find one.

“It’s from me,” Merlin assured him, interpreting Arthur’s search rightly.

As he tried to carefully pry the paper open without ripping it, Gaius came around, handing out plates of cake.

“Just destroy it, if you want!” Merlin giggled, his mouth already full of the honey apple cake and mimed ripping the paper apart. “You won’t break it.”

Arthur let himself think about it for one second and then he tore into the wrapping, dismembering his worry. He lifted out a chunk of wood, polished and flat on both sides. Into it had been chiseled, with great care, “Merlin & Arthur!”

His hands trembled. He looked up at Merlin in astonishment. “Is it for…”

“Yep,” Merlin nodded. “Our wizard’s den.”

“But I’m not a wizard.” Arthur’s voice wouldn’t go above a thin, raw breath.

“I know, but you’re a knight. A wizard and a knight go together.”

It was as if every candle flared at once, as if the music from the radio swelled, as if the wind roared like a dragon.

He drew Merlin into his arms and held tight, not even caring about the tears tickling his nose. “Really?” he whispered, right into Merlin’s ear.

“Yes, really.” Merlin patted him and then squeezed once, hard.

Arthur wanted to fall asleep like that. Peace pervaded him. His heart felt swollen like a fruit at perfect ripeness.

“I want to give you something, too,” he said, once his tears stopped. He shuffled out of the embrace and echoed Merlin earlier as he searched under the tree. He found the little box and held it out to his friend, pressing it gently into Merlin’s fingers.

Merlin smiled. He obliterated the wrapping, a piece of blue construction paper Hunith had given him and on which he’d drawn a few little stars.

He lifted the lid as though it were to a treasure chest. Nestled inside on a few folded tissues was a small cloth and porcelain figure of a wizard with dark hair, blue eyes and a wide smile, just like Merlin. Arthur had nearly driven Geoffrey to distraction stopping at so many shops on the way from school to the cottage, but he’d finally found the right one.

“It’s you.” Not because he thought Merlin didn’t understand, but because he wanted Merlin to know that Arthur saw him that way, full of power and joy.

“Thank you, Arthur. I’ll treasure him.”

It was quite a formal thing for Merlin to say and Arthur wasn’t sure if that meant he loved the wizard or didn’t. But then Merlin smiled, a glint in his eyes. “He needs a friend!”

Then he was up and running and Arthur knew he was supposed to give chase, but the moment he shot to his feet, a heavy thud reverberated against the front door.

Merlin skidded to a halt. Everyone looked at each other.

Gaius spoke into the sudden stillness. “Hunith, is anyone else coming?”

“No.” She shook her head, rising from where she’d been sitting with the boys on the floor. Arthur felt a thin layer of tension creep into the room in the moment it took for Hunith to cross the floor and put her hand on the doorknob. Inexplicably, Arthur wanted his father.

The door creaked open. Merlin, having snuck to his mother’s side, said, “Oh, hi,” as Hunith’s hand rushed to her mouth.

The giant, the troll, Merlin’s father stood in the doorway, his hulking form taking up the whole frame. Arthur watched everyone stand except Morgause, who raised an annoyed eyebrow as usual. If they were reacting it meant they could all see the man looming on the threshold. He wasn’t a creature of imagination.

“Balinor!” This hushed word came from Gaius, who was moving over to Hunith with surprising speed.

“I’m sorry, Hunith.” Balinor’s voice was deep and lilting, rough as if he hadn’t used it in a while. “I didn’t mean to appear like this. I didn’t think you’d have company, but – ”

“Get out.” Nimueh had stridden forward, and she jabbed her pointed nails into his chest as though she’d like to claw out his heart. “How dare you!”

“Alright.” Hunith lifted Nimueh’s hand away. She spoke calmly, like when she was explaining something complex to him and Merlin. “Enough.” She looked up into Balinor’s haggard face. “Tea?”

*

Chapter Text

Though Nimueh screeched and Morgause gleefully ate the tension in the room with a spoon, Balinor followed Hunith into the kitchen silently, ducking under the low lintel and disappearing behind the soft snick of the closed door.

Arthur sought Merlin, who watched his parents disappear with searching, confused eyes. He didn’t seem upset, but it was the first time Arthur noticed uncertainty flit across Merlin’s face. He wondered how Merlin’s dad knew where the house was. Both times they’d run away from him, was it for nothing, if Balinor could just show up at the door?

“Merlin? What can we do?”

Merlin shrugged, but caught Arthur’s hand and crept toward the kitchen door as the cacophony of indignation and bewilderment swirled around the hearth, until Gaius stepped into their path.

“Let those two talk, alright Merlin?”

“About what?” It was a fair question, Arthur thought, but Gaius lowered his brows, nonplussed.

“Well, I’m not sure.”

“He’s my dad,” Merlin announced, as if Gaius might not know. “So maybe I should go in there. Mum might want me.”

This statement made Gaius creak down to their level and look them straight in the eyes. “Who told you that?!”

“Balinor.” Merlin raised his dark brows at Gaius, as if asking whether Balinor had lied to him.

“Oh.” Gaius eased back up. “I’m sorry to make you wait, Merlin, but I think that’s something you should talk with your mother about.”

Arthur didn’t like the atmosphere that pervaded the room, like they were all being wrapped in fabric tighter and tighter until they were wound up in an involuntary chrysalis. He was trapped, trying to make sense of his fear as anger billowed and strained among them, tangling with a heavy sorrow, weighted as a wet blanket.

Nimueh paced and muttered what seemed to be curses under her breath, her eyes intent on the fire as though she could will it to destruction at her hand. No one dared approach her, it seemed, not even Gaius. Helen worried her hands together, her thoughts turned in on herself so deeply Arthur couldn’t pretend to understand her state. Vivien tried to sit straight, her face held in a way as to model calm. Arthur got the impression she was pretending nothing had happened or perhaps that she was utterly removed from the strange proceedings. Morgause made a wicked face at Arthur when she caught him looking and snapped at him like, he supposed, the lion she’d thought Merlin had attributed to her.

He tugged Merlin’s hand, still in his. “Let’s go upstairs.” The pleading note rang plainly, but there was no other option open to him. The storm brewing was too like those that had so often rained in his own house. His heart slammed against his ribs, urging him to hide before the lightning began to strike.

“Okay.”

Arthur led the way, his hand clammy in Merlin’s. Every step up felt like passing a gate to safety, leaving a barrier between them and the onslaught. They crept down the hall to Merlin’s room and Arthur threw himself in, pulling Merlin, who yelped at the unexpected force. Arthur shut the door and put his back to it.

Merlin stared at him, his eyes wider than they’d ever been.

But Arthur couldn’t help himself. He had never, ever felt like this here, among the embrace of the fields and woods, consoled in the sanctuary of Hunith’s care. Until now, he had been able to let his eyes wander to Merlin, his perpetual grin and dirty trainers, his fluid hands always at work, and appease his sadness, his fear, his solitary longing. Here there was the possibility of eternal assurances, of a softness that had been unbroken.

But this was the way the arc turned, Arthur realised, a hand scrunching his jumper over his chest. Everything ended, everything came to ruin. He had been stealing peace for so long here, when he knew his allotment was up, that he had nearly forgotten he’d been dodging payment, trying to stretch a little further in the shadows to the light, hoping to go unnoticed.

“Arthur?”

He sunk down to a crouch, a cold hollow thing, a dead thing, opening inside him, pushing all the warmth of earlier out vein by vein. Tears stung his eyes and nose, clogged his throat, but the relief of releasing them didn’t come. He was too empty.

Merlin knelt in front of him. Arthur couldn’t look up to meet his eyes, sure Merlin would see the change in him and he didn’t want comfort or understanding, because those went away, too, the more you sought them, needed them, the harder they were to find, and when no one was there to give them you were lost and useless, a needy, contemptible child whom no one could love, not even your own father.

“Arthur? What’s wrong?”

Not even Merlin, who knew everything about Arthur, understood this. There were no words in his head to explain that he was afraid of the possibility of a hundred outcomes, that even though he heard no screaming, no smashing of whatever object was nearest, his breath wouldn’t come thinking it might happen. How could he tell Merlin, who on the first day they met showed he didn’t much concern himself with consequences or forethought, that Arthur lived every minute of his life doing whatever was necessary to avoid this exact moment, this feeling of sinking so deeply into his own panic and terror and abject helplessness that he couldn’t reach the surface again. Humiliation burned through him as Merlin put both his hands on Arthur’s knees and tipped forward to align their gazes, despite Arthur’s still being fixed to his own chest.

“I thought he was scary, too, that first day, remember? That was nuts. But, Arthur, I found out, he’s not. He won’t hurt us. Or mum.”

He nodded, letting Merlin talk, unable to parse his meaning from so far beneath the surface, but desperate to swim toward the sound of his friend’s voice. At school he had to hide folded into himself in his closet or the toilets, gulping and shaking, gripping his own wrists to try to slow his raging heartbeat, wretched and angry at himself and trembling that someone might discover him in such a powerless state.

Merlin went on, his cadence so familiar and beloved that at last Arthur caught its thread, holding tight as the cloying emptiness receded.

“Hi.”

Arthur swallowed. “Hi.”

“You went somewhere.”

“Yeah.” His neck twinged and he let his head fall back against the door. All his muscles hurt after drowning in this way and he slumped loosely. “Water overtakes me sometimes.” He didn’t know how else to illustrate how completely separated from himself he became, the way the current of his panic dragged him down and down and down.

Merlin’s thin hands fluttered before him and then glided to his neck, gripping his nape as though hanging on. “Why?”

“I don’t know,” he shrugged. “I get nervous.”

“About what?”

Images and ideas flooded his brain and for a moment he thought he would slip under again, but Merlin’s fingers squeezed right by his ears, and he let that warm pressure anchor him. “Everything.”

“It's okay. Nothing bad will happen, Arthur.”

A flare of white hot incredulity seized him, raking, searing across his chest. Merlin smiled with such conviction, pulsed his hands so soothingly, but a different kind of separation cleaved Arthur from himself - a slimy, slithering repulsion that fed on resentment, degradation and doubt. He pushed Merlin hard in the chest and watched him tumble onto his back among the familiar rubble of his room.

He stood, towering over his friend unable to stop the poisonous words from pouring out.

“Everything bad already has! You’re not safe either! Just because you have your mum here doesn’t mean you’ll be protected! You’re stupid if you think so! Whatever is going to happen will happen, Merlin and there’s nothing you can do about it!”

He breathed as though he'd been running, unable to fill his lungs enough to get oxygen anywhere necessary to calm his roaring blood.

Merlin levered himself up on his elbows and stared openly at Arthur, who under his gaze was suddenly blistering with shame.

As fast as his rage had come it now abated, a wave going out to sea so quickly even the ocean would falter and shake.

He couldn’t believe himself. What kind of person did that to his friend, to his very best friend in the whole universe?? Who hurt others and yelled when those were the very things he’d been desperate to avoid downstairs??

Arthur scrambled away. He didn’t know what to do with his sweaty hands. His brain abandoned him. “Sorry, sorry,” he kept whispering it like a mantra but he couldn’t even see Merlin anymore. His eyes clouded over. His lungs deflated. He ran.

*

He didn’t stop until he’d gone to the edge of the woods and collapsed in the snow beneath the first sentinel trees. He needed to get farther, but the intimidating blackness that spread under the bare boughs stopped him short.

There had been a blurry moment as he thundered downstairs and flung the front door open, where shouting penetrated the haze obscuring him, but he hadn’t stopped to think on it. Now, his breath streaming in icy gusts up to the cosmos, his back rooted deeply into the frozen ground, snow circling him warily, he shut out the shock of the party guests at his dash and the clear, unbruised way Merlin had regarded him. He didn’t want to remember anything. He wanted to stay out in the frigid air and crystalise, turn into a million snowflakes so no one would ever find him, so he could melt away when spring came and be part of the earth. He would let the trees drink him up so the forest Merlin loved so much would be him, too. In that way they would never be parted and he would never make Merlin look so disillusioned ever again.

It wouldn’t be bad to see every sunrise and mark every new star, to let birds season in his arms, to watch Merlin run out of the little house toward him every day with such joy, to shelter him and grow tall and calm in this safe place. To stay always.

And when the time came, he’d wither away, unremarked on, a natural separation of elements that would start life anew in some other form. It sounded so peaceful. The complexity of a tree was foretold, few surprises bent its branches. There was only growing toward the light, drinking deep of the earth, guarding those that favored you.

Arthur’s arm drifted up, his palm open to fate. I’m right here, he thought. Are you here, too?

*

A slow, methodical crunching drifted over him, until he recognised booted footsteps. If ever there was a moment for the snow to bury him, he wished for it now, but the cottony flakes spiraled softly and left him exposed, an offering at the door of the forest.

It wasn’t Merlin or even Hunith who hunkered down next to him.

“Hello, Arthur.” Gaius sounded just like he did all those months ago when Arthur had called him despondently, desperate for a kind voice.

He breathed a wet sigh, throat too thick yet for words.

“What brings you out here so late?”

He shrugged, an indent of quite the sluggish snow angel beneath him.

“I myself am glad for a bit of fresh air.”

Arthur nodded. His tears were frozen to his eyes and blinking required more effort than usual.

“Tonight was more than you or I bargained for, wasn’t it. And here I was, thinking I’d left all the excitement and drama for a quiet life in the countryside. You never know what life has in store.”

This sentiment, the exact opposite of what Merlin had said, validated Arthur just enough for him to sit up and look at Gaius, bundled up in a long wool coat and hat.

“I hate that part,” he admitted. “I want to know.”

Gaius pressed his lips together, nodding at Arthur. “That’s a common feeling, I assure you, Arthur.”

“But what can I do? How can I know?”

“I’m afraid, my boy, that you can’t.”

Arthur flopped back into the snow. “I want to stay here forever. Then I can know.” He’d whispered the truth of his heart, and like most secret desires did when put to words, his hope grew exponentially.

A small clomp of wet snow landed on his cheek and slid down his neck. “Hey!”

Gaius smiled gently. “Did you know that was going to happen?”

“No!”

“Come on, then! Throw one back.”

Arthur rose to his knees and scooped a small, cottony ball of snow into his stinging hands. He lobbed it at Gaius, who didn’t even try to move, and hit him on the shoulder.

Gaius retaliated and so Arthur crafted another, sending it sailing to disperse in Gaius’ long hair. Gaius shook it out, laughing and praising Arthur’s aim.

“Do you know something, Arthur?”

He stood still, watching Gaius look around them in contentment.

“I never thought I’d have a snowball fight again. I haven’t had one since I was at college.”

Arthur couldn’t even pretend to imagine how long ago that must have been and Gaius saw it in his face.

Chuckling, he nodded. “Yes, so long ago as to be ancient as far as you’re concerned. But I enjoyed myself very much just now. Did you?”

“Yes.” It was in the unexpected way, where your body wasn’t prepared to absorb any fun, so it left you strangely relaxed and grateful, the subsequent memory richer in the remembering than the moment itself.

“Arthur, life is unknowable, and that does mean it can be very hard. But there will also be wonderful surprises, big and small, that make the not knowing sweeter. I promise you, you won’t always hate it.”

As usual, he wasn’t sure how Gaius knew how Arthur would come to feel, but instead of simply accepting it this time, he asked.
“How do you know?”

“Because I have lived a long time and I’ve learned something useful. Which is, absolutely nothing stays the same forever. Not good things, not bad things. But guess what? You can seek out as many things as you like along the way! You can look for good things, Arthur. When they leave you, there is always another just around the corner waiting for you to notice.”

“Are bad things waiting, too?”

“Arthur, honestly, sometimes they are. But that is why I believe so much in training yourself to find good things. Then, in the midst of all that’s wrong, there’s also good.”

“Like coming here. After…” he sighed. His head drooped heavily. Emotions were weighty possessions.

“Just like that,” Gaius confirmed, giving his shoulder a squeeze.

But his approbation twinged the guilt that had already built up in Arthur’s chest. “I was mean to Merlin. I shoved him really hard and I said rude things.”

“Why do you think you did that?”

Arthur huffed. “Because he has to learn!”

“Learn what?”

“A bad thing will come, just like you said. Merlin has no idea. A bad thing will come and he’ll…” He’ll be as unprepared as Arthur was. He won’t have said so many things to his mum, he won’t have treasured anything enough for it to suddenly vanish irrevocably. He’ll wish and wish, thinking wishes worked, he’ll do it even after knowing they don’t because hope was tenacious and foolhardy. A hole will open inside him before he has defenses or means to close it up safely. He’ll be lost, just like Arthur.

“Arthur, what do you mean?”

He twisted his hands in frustration. “A bad thing…will make him just like me. But I want him to be happy.”

“Do you feel like you’re always waiting for a bad thing to happen?”

“Of course.” Didn’t everyone except Merlin?

“I see. That must be hard, Arthur.”

Arthur looked up at Gaius, unsure if he was receiving pity or understanding. “I have to be ready. Right?”

Now Gaius sighed, the rumbly sound of it dispersing above them. “Arthur, I have to apologise to you. I have failed you. I think,” and he crouched down again and held Arthur’s arms bracingly, “that you might benefit from having someone to talk to.”

“I’m talking to you.” He smiled a little, like Gaius had made a joke he was supposed to enjoy.

“Have you ever heard of psychiatry?”

“Uh.” He had heard of it somewhere. His father’s voice rippled back to him, the tight and sneering way his father had stared down at some black clothed mourner outside the church after he’d gotten in trouble because of his scar. ...for weak-minded, gutless melancholics or idiots prone to hysteria! The safest answer seemed to be, “Not really.”

“There are people who are trained in just the type of experiences you’re going through who will help you navigate the good and bad things.”

Arthur lifted onto his toes, intrigued. “Where are they?”

“In offices you can visit. Would you like to?”

“Maybe.” He didn’t fully grasp how someone who didn’t know him and whom he didn’t know could talk about his experiences and thoughts that even he didn’t understand a lot of the time, but still, Gaius sounded so sure that Arthur would like it that he found himself agreeing. “Probably.”

“All right.” Gaius spoke as if a decision had been made and then he shivered dramatically. “Are you not cold? How about we return to the fire?”

But Arthur found his feet were frozen to the iron ground. He wanted to apologise to Merlin - he’d been wanting to the moment he saw Merlin’s face. The worry that kept him immobile, staring into the uncertainty of the darkness, was whether or not Merlin would forgive him.

Gaius held out his gloved hand, though, and Arthur startled at how numb his own uncovered fingers were. And then awareness cascaded and he felt his ears and cheeks throbbing with cold, his eyelashes frosted and heavy. He slipped into Gaius’ grip and turned to look back at the house.

The downstairs windows blazed, but only a single light shone in the upstairs windows. Haloed by soft yellows, the flat blackness of Merlin’s silhouette pressed to the glass was unmistakable. Arthur couldn’t see his eyes from such a distance, but he felt their light on him.

This was a good thing he could search for, Merlin’s eyes forever watching him, even when Arthur didn’t deserve it. He could fix this. He would make Merlin forgive him by telling him how sorry he was and by never being such a bad friend again. In this, he could claw back control. He could keep what good he had and this time, he would guard it more carefully.