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Arthur has always known that Merlin is keeping secrets.
He has known it when Merlin stood up to him in a marketplace, eyes full of defiance and not a shred of fear to be found. He has known it when Merlin swung a mace at him even though it was clear that he had never handled one before, refusing to cower before anyone, prince or not. He has known it when Uther had made Merlin his servant, and Merlin looked as if he would walk out of Camelot right then and there.
Arthur has always known that there are parts of Merlin he isn’t privy to, that Merlin keeps carefully guarded and concealed, as if Arthur uncovering them would take away something essential.
From the first day they’ve met, Arthur never wanted anything more than for Merlin to consider him worthy of each and every part of him.
It is not something he is consciously aware of, for those first few months.
When Merlin tells him that Valiant is using magic to win the tournament, Arthur thinks he is just a servant. He thinks there is no reason why a servant who barely knows me should care this much. He thinks I believe you, and it scares him more than he cares to admit.
Merlin is right, even after Arthur lets his temper get the better of him, and Arthur spends a week wondering why Merlin would care. Why he seems so goddamn happy that Arthur takes him back into his service after he has done his damn best to drive Merlin away.
Arthur isn’t used to people caring about him, not for his sake. People care about him as their prince, as their future king, but the image of Merlin’s enraged face when Arthur insisted that he had to fight follows him into his sleep, and there isn’t a part of him that is able to make sense of it.
He cannot put his finger on it, still, but he knows that there is something about Merlin—something else, something more, and no matter how loudly the voice of his father at the back of his mind insists that a prince cannot trust anyone, Arthur’s mind replays ‘I wouldn’t lie to you,’ over and over and over, and he finds that for the first in a long time, he actually believes it.
The better he gets to know Merlin, the more he notices the parts that Merlin keeps carefully tucked away, the way he deflects questions with mindless rambling, how he smiles a little too brightly when Arthur seems to get too close to whatever it is that Merlin wants to keep from him.
In those first few months, it bothers Arthur, makes him want to peel away the layers Merlin so skilfully keeps wrapped around himself. They fall into a strange sense of rhythm, though, and Arthur never stops wondering what it is that Merlin believes he cannot tell Arthur, but it grows to be less about suspicion and more—
Arthur isn’t entirely sure if he’s honest. He tests the boundaries, keeps asking incessant questions and catalogues all the ways in which Merlin avoids the answers—stupid jokes and artful ways of changing the subject, going silent and leaving Arthur to himself. He pushes and pushes and pushes, behaving worse than the prat Merlin always accuses him of being, and still, Merlin never leaves.
Merlin doesn’t leave, but he keeps being there whenever Arthur needs him most, keeps offering a steady shoulder and words brimming with faith, and it becomes less about suspicion and more about intrigue, about the wish that someday, Merlin might trust him enough.
It gets to the point where Arthur knows that Merlin is keeping something from him, something important, but Arthur trusts him enough not to care, to believe that there is little Merlin could hide that would make Arthur disregard everything that Merlin has become to him.
It is more terrifying than Arthur wants to consider. The fact of it makes it easier to understand why there may be things that Merlin still won’t tell him.
“It is once again clear to me that those who practise magic are evil and dangerous, and that is thanks to you,” Arthur says, and the grief is clawing through him as mercilessly as it has ever since he turned his back on Morgause’s fortress.
In the corner of his eye, he can see Merlin stiffen, can see the terrible smile carve its way across Merlin’s face.
Merlin says, “Glad I could help,” and Arthur feels it again, the distinct impression that he is missing something, that something is slipping through his fingers that he does not even know the shape of, much less how to hold onto.
Merlin leaves, and the hollow space within Arthur’s chest expands, twisting and snarling around his ribs as if it were shouting at him to understand.
Arthur doesn’t; there have always been countless, scattered pieces of Merlin that eluded him no matter how much he tried to make sense of them. The image of his mother is still burning at the back of his eyelids, treacherous words spun in gold, meant to make him guilty of murdering his second parent, too, and so he pushes it away yet again.
He wants just one part of his life to be simple, and he knows, he knows that Merlin is keeping secrets. He has to believe that it is not something wrapped up in the stinging pain of betrayal, too.
The thing is, Merlin’s secrets seem to grow. The thing is, Arthur keeps pushing closer, fingertips itching to reach for skin, palms yearning to uncover each and every layer that makes up Merlin, and Merlin—
And Merlin seems to be drawing further and further away.
There is a line that Arthur is not allowed to cross but desperately wants to, and no matter what he does, Merlin keeps himself wrapped up in his defences and distractions as if he believes that Arthur doesn’t notice all the blind spots.
The thing is, Arthur still trusts him more than he trusts life itself. Maybe he hasn’t yet earned the trust to be allowed those pieces; he is well aware that too often, he lets his temper run its course around Merlin, that he has pushed and snarled and raged one too many times.
It becomes harder and harder not to draw up the balance, not to weigh up all the secrets, all the ugliness he has allowed Merlin to witness and compare it to the carefully curated version of himself that Merlin shows him, day after day after day.
His father is unresponsive, Camelot is under siege, and Merlin tells him that this battle will go down in history, that this is his destiny.
Arthur does not understand how anyone could have such trust in him if they do not deem him worthy of their secrets, but he believes it, all the same. He does not understand how Merlin, without armour or training and nothing but a fool’s luck, could plunge himself right into the midst of it and make it out unscathed.
Arthur feels his presence beside himself though, even though he shouldn’t.
When it comes to Merlin, there are so many things he shouldn’t do; he shouldn’t trust someone who so clearly does not return that same amount of faith. He shouldn’t know that Merlin is anywhere but in the tavern when he disappears for days on end, and be certain regardless that it has nothing to do with the enemy’s invasion. He shouldn’t let the overwhelming fondness brimming through his veins disregard every little piece of knowledge his father and his tutors have ever installed in him, but—
But. Merlin is the truest person Arthur has ever met, and maybe Merlin is keeping secrets, and maybe Arthur does not know the extent of them—but.
His trust in Merlin is as large as the responsibility of Camelot, and all Arthur can do is hope that one day, he will be the kind of man that Merlin can trust, too.
Except.
Except, the years pass by, and Morgana betrays them all, and Arthur’s father dies, and people never seem to tire of plunging their knives into Arthur’s back. The years pass, and Merlin never seems to deem Arthur trustworthy enough to reveal the parts of himself that he has been hiding since Arthur met him for the first time and thought, there is something about you that I recognise, that I know better than I know myself.
Weeks and months and years pass by, and the closer Arthur feels to Merlin, the more of his own fears he reveals, the further Merlin seems to slip away. Arthur knows he should stop, that he should cease piling his own secrets on Merlin when so clearly there is a divergence in what they both are willing to reveal, but he can’t bring himself to.
Merlin is his lifeline, and somewhere along the way it has stopped mattering whether Merlin feels the same way, whether Arthur is making a fool of himself, because he does not know how to face everything his kingdom keeps throwing at him without clenching his fingers into every little part of Merlin that he can reach, no matter how insubstantial.
Merlin is always there, and Arthur has stopped asking questions in return; he has stopped trying to unearth the answers to where Merlin has disappeared, has stopped himself from teasing and prodding Merlin for explanations for all the inconsistencies in Merlin’s half-hearted excuses, and somehow put more weight on making sure that Merlin will smile for another day, has made it his mission to wipe the ever-growing gloom from Merlin’s face until the lines of a frown between dark eyebrows are replaced by dimples in accentuated cheeks.
Some days, Arthur feels like a fool destined to make the king laugh; it leaves an acrid pit burning in the depths of his stomach, but it is easier to bear than the tangible distance Merlin tries to establish between them.
Merlin has always kept his secrets, and Arthur has learnt to arrange himself with them, if only it meant that Merlin would stay with him for another day.
There are times when Arthur is more aware of the immeasurable distance between them than usual.
Morgana has taken his kingdom once more, and it has been a long time since Arthur felt the reality of how little he is the right person to protect his people, since the doubt has eaten through him this ruthlessly.
It has been a long time since he has looked at Merlin and seen all the secrets tugged away in the furrow of his brows, the tense lines around his mouth. Since Arthur looked at him and wondered, why are you still here if you of all people trust me so little? If you of all people seem to barely tolerate me some days?
The questions burn and burn and burn beneath his tongue, but he knows that he would not be able to bear the answer, and so he doesn’t ask. He follows Merlin on the wild chase through Camelot and Escetir he leads them on, and he follows him once more when he says that he needs to show Arthur something.
There are times when Arthur is more aware than usual of how he trusts Merlin with everything, no matter Merlin’s faith in him. When Merlin tells him that he will be able to pull a sword out of solid rock and Arthur believes him, the tightness enveloping his chest is so great, he doesn’t think he can go on like this another day.
He has to save his kingdom, though, and so he does. He always does.
Arthur has long since understood how much of a fool this makes him. He has long since accepted that he will live with anything that Merlin chooses to give him and swallow the hurt and the doubts that come with the knowledge that he will never be enough to be offered everything.
Sometimes, Arthur isn’t sure whether Merlin is drawing further and further into himself, or if the longing to be let in simply increases with each passing day.
Other times, Merlin sits across from him, a campfire burning between them, and Arthur can watch him fracture apart, one piece at a time.
He remembers the boy who walked into Camelot all those years ago, brightness shining in his eyes as he said, “That is enough, my friend.”
There is little of that boy left in the man who is now staring at Arthur, countless lifetimes caught in the tears shining in his eyes when he says, “There can be no place for magic in Camelot.”
Arthur does not believe him, but his fatal flaw has always been that he trusts Merlin more than he knows him.
Some nights, he wonders who Merlin’s secrets will ruin first, and what it says about him that he wants it to be himself, before Merlin breaks for good.
“You’re not a sorcerer, Merlin. I would know,” Arthur says, but even as he does, he doesn’t believe it. Not really.
Merlin has always been keeping secrets, and Arthur has always wondered why, but never what. He has always trusted Merlin more than he knew him, and there are a hundred, a thousand moments racing through his head, interspersed with the pain in his chest and the knowledge that he is dying, coating his words in bitter poison.
Arthur has always known that Merlin is keeping secrets, but he never thought it would be this; the same thing that took Morgana from them, that has torn his family apart over and over, has taken almost everything he ever loved from him.
“Leave me,” he says, and he regrets the words as soon as they drip from his lips, but he cannot take them back, cannot explain how he didn’t mean them, not like that; how he wishes that he had never met Merlin, not like they were, in a world that has always been set on pitching them against each other.
“But I also do this because you are my friend,” Merlin says, and it tears through every muscle and sinew of Arthur’s body, leaving the pain of Mordred’s sword to pale in comparison.
How can you be my friend if I never knew you, he wants to ask, wants to question every single moment they ever shared, stolen glances and soft words across campfires, careless brushes of fingertips and knowing smiles that never were as careless as they made them out to be. How can you be my friend, but Arthur knows the answer, has known it for as long as he has known Merlin.
Because in the end, it always comes back to this; in the end, it has never mattered what Merlin didn’t tell him, what Arthur didn’t know. In the end, he has always loved Merlin despite, despite, despite, has always known that there was nothing in the world that could possibly change it.
And as Arthur learns to understand, life bleeds out of him, one excruciating mile at a time. He knows, long before Merlin—with his stubbornness and his determination and his overwhelming, frightening love for Arthur so much as considers accepting it—that he will not make it.
In the end, Arthur understands, and it doesn’t change anything.
“Just hold me, please,” he begs, and he has always shown more to Merlin than he should have, has always said more than was proper for a king to say to his servant, but this might be the easiest confession of them all.
“Stay with me,” Merlin pleads, and Arthur wants to, he does, but for once he cannot do as Merlin asks of him.
The last thing scattering through his mind is how at last, he finally got to know. How it is only due to the fact that he is dying, and how he would still take it over never getting to see who Merlin truly is.
His last thought is about how he loves Merlin, and how, if he had been more courageous, it might have saved them both.
“Where have you been?” Arthur asks, and his voice is rough with disuse, his fingers ice-cold where they clench into any part of Merlin they can reach.
What he remembers is this; a life full of secrets. A death full of pain and revelations. An eternity of blank space and a whisper, repeating one name, over and over and over.
The anguish twisting Merlin’s face into something incredibly worn is real, though, and Arthur traces the lines of it with the pad of his thumb. Thinks, no more; I will no longer let him keep all the parts from me that he considers ugly.
The shore of Avalon is wet and solid beneath him, and Merlin presses their foreheads together, their breathing loud in the silence between them.
“I will tell you everything,” Merlin says, and the vow in his words is heavier than any kingdom. “I promise, I will tell you everything, and then I will tell you all the things that don’t matter, but I will make you listen anyway.”
Arthur closes his eyes and breathes in, Merlin’s skin warm beneath his fingertips. He breathes out and thinks, this is how it begins.