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It reminds him of the months in which Morgana came back, before her final betrayal. Eyes watch each movement too intently, and every word is regarded with utmost care, examined from twenty different angles so no potential hidden meaning would go amiss. It is second nature by now, and Merlin would want to feel appalled by how little he minds, only he does not. There is little that reaches the depths of his heart now.
He has come a long way. His gaze is no longer wide-eyed as it was the days he first stayed in Camelot. He used to be this fairly impressionable, naïve young man holding one secret too many, recklessly and thoughtlessly challenging the crown prince himself to end up as his servant, walking directly into the grip of destiny. His alleged purpose scared him, back then, weighed him down like an anchor tied to his feet pulling him down to the seabed, drowning him in expectations for things too great and far beyond his understanding.
Over time, he finds that he and Arthur have grown into the vessels that were shaped for them, filling the empty spaces and losing substance elsewhere, forced into comprimising more often than not. Sometimes when Merlin looks into the mirror, he is not sure he likes what he sees. There is a man now, a man with eyes a few shades too dark, plaintive and unforgiving. If he were to look closer, he could see the sharper cut of a jaw, the once-soft slope of a back hardened into a steely line, forced to carry the one secret that blossomed all too quickly into innumerable more. If Merlin wished to see his heart, he would have to seek for a long while.
The boy has grown into a calmer, more reasonable man, having lost a bit of that youthful impulsiveness. The man has grown restless, though, after years of hiding. If he tilted his head just a bit to the side, there would be a flicker of gold in the clouded gaze, the flicker of an ever-burning fire. The fire has not yet caught a spark, has not yet reached the pyre that would set it ablaze in a furious, scorching storm to devour all the silence. For silence it was; once more Merlin feels himself forced to accommodate into a shape that is too small to him, pressing against his shoulders as if to make them sag, against his throat as if to crush his windpipe. His eyes are watchful, imperceptibly following the Druid boy’s every step, listening intently to the silence in case he could catch hastily whispered words.
For all they have changed, some things have not. Arthur will still not see traitors when they bow before him and reside in his home. He will always offer someone refuge in Camelot, especially if it serves as acknowledgment for the debt of owing someone his life. Arthur gives credit where credit is due, only, so Merlin feels, he frequently gives it to the wrong people. Once more Merlin is left almost alone in his suspicion, in his obligation to watch over the King as the bright-eyed Druid boy smiles coldly and a little too detached whenever they cross paths. And Merlin ensures they cross paths often, fingers restlessly curling into loose fists at his side, waiting for the moment they could unleash a fierce torrent of magic. He knows that he will eventually have to.
If Merlin wished to see his heart, he would have to seek for a long while. After all these years, having seen all the terrors of war and death, he has clad it in armour. He has realised that his tears clouded his judgement, and the King needs a wary, sharp-minded man by his side whose gaze is clear and undimmed. These days, however, he sees his heart more often than he cares to—the barely breathed words of Arthur’s bane reside constantly in his mind, and if there is one thing that can pierce effortlessly through the adamantine layers of his chest, it is the very notion of Arthur’s death. It chokes him at night, breathing too light and unsteady, pulse fluttering madly. Merlin has long since accepted that there is nothing in this world—in his world—if it were not for Arthur, his mere existence the condition for Merlin’s equilibrium. It does not anger him anymore, his dependency on Arthur. For it is not that Arthur is the keystone without which Merlin would be lost; it is much more that one cannot possibly exist without the other. They are bound by interdependency, truly two sides of the same coin, possessing no face and sense of self except those that they give one another. Like a symbiosis, they learn and grow and thrive simultaneously, clumsy hands shaping their other half from clay, creating the missing counterpart. They hold the keys to each other’s existence in their hands, and it should be that they know the other person better than their own self.
Yet fate has played a trick on them, for all that they should share a destiny. The shadow will always remain in Merlin’s eyes for as long as Arthur cannot see him fully, cannot see him for what he really is. Merlin does not care about getting his share of the credit, does not care whether his repeated rescuing of Arthur will ever be acknowledged. No, he merely wants to answer the question Arthur asked him when they met for the first time, when Merlin told him he could beat him with less than a blow. It makes the spit in his mouth turn sour, the air around him feel foul when he thinks about how he can never truly answer that question. It makes him remember the night before the great battle of Ealdor, makes him shake when he will never be able to tell Arthur that he may have found his home—his home is at Arthur’s side, whether in Camelot or in a dismal cave in nowhere—but the door is locked.
The door is locked, and Merlin will remain standing motionlessly before it, waiting for the permission to enter that he is sure will (can) never come. Arthur has laid himself bare before him, has shown him all the light, all the dark, and Merlin cannot do the same. His hands may have shaped something extraordinary from the clay, but Arthur’s hands will forever remain fumbling unsurely around a shape he can never quite determine, around a person that keeps escaping him.
In the beginning it scared him, when he has come to realise the extent of what he would do for Arthur. It is natural for him now, as it is equally as natural to hide who he is. He is not sure if he will ever be able to tell Arthur of the other Merlin, the one that he never met. The one that has and will raze entire kingdoms down to herald the kingdom of once and future. He has and will murder brutally, will lie and die himself, but he cannot give him this. It is almost like living two separate lives, and Merlin grieves with each inch the chasm between them gapes open further, because it means he will never be able to wrap his skin around Arthur’s, like a second layer to warm his aching bones. Merlin grieves, because they are so close and yet so far apart, intertwined by fate and yet separated by an entire universe. He is mad in his grief, his screams heard among entire landscapes, thunder cracking the sky open to let a tempest rage the ire he cannot express otherwise. His fingers clench and the sky blackens, and the torrent of violent rain pelting against his face washes away all the tears he does not cry.
“There’s something about you,” Arthur would say, still the same after six long years, blue eyes appraising and never quite able to hide the wonder. And Merlin would swallow the lump in his throat, shove the distinct image of a closed door aside, and give Arthur a crooked, false grin. Would say, too softly, “But you cannot put your finger on it.”