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People say a witch lives in the woods.
They say she can work the weather and make the trees grow any which way she wants.
They say she can cure any sickness with a single glance, and turn a man into a toad with another.
They say she can even bring the dead back to life.
None of this seems even remotely plausible when applied to the slender young woman Gwaine is looking at. Hair roughly cropped close to her head and skirts covered in mud, she looks more like a forest orphan than the all-powerful sorceress the local villages had warned him about.
There must be something to the tales, though; she doesn't look the faintest bit scared to be facing down three armed bandits without even a knife for a weapon. Gwaine, a great believer in leaving things to chance except when there's the chance someone (usually him) might get killed, dismounts and draws his sword.
The leers drop of their faces when he rounds a tree and into their view, their weapons lifting into positions that resemble fighting stances. “Now now, how about we leave my friend alone, eh?”
“Your friend?” One of them sneers, the leer reappearing.
“Well, with three against one I'm hardly going to be your friend now, am I,” Gwaine says with a grin. None of them look trained, but there are still three of them to one of him. His grin widens; the worse the odds, the better he usually enjoys the fight.
When none of them make a move he shrugs and attacks, laying the first one down with a punch as he barrels past and straight at number two, the meanest-looking of them all; he swings at Gwaine with an axe, making him duck and spin in time to see the third go down with a thud as a branch leans down from a nearby tree and knocks him out.
The woman grins at him and shouts a warning as number one gets back up, swiping inexpertly at Gwaine. He goes down again just as fast, thanks to another handy branch throwing itself into his knees and Gwaine's sword hilt solidly hitting his head.
The second one, left standing on his own, loses any confidence he'd had and parries Gwaine's strokes worse and worse with his axe, until finally Gwaine sends him into an unconscious sprawl on the floor out of pity than anything else.
“That was fun,” he says, and grins at his newfound friend. She rolls her eyes, though she smiles at the same time.
“Knights,” she says, as though it's something catching. “You're all the same.”
“Ah, but I'm not a knight,” he tells her, helping to relieve the men of their weapons and anything useful. He always reasons that they must've nicked it from someone else, so there's no harm in him doing the same to them.
She straightens, looking surprised. “Really?”
“You've never met any other wandering men who're handy with a sword and don't mind coming to the defence of a woman in distress?” He smirks, can't help it really, and she sighs at him with a slight smile on her mouth.
“Only one, but he makes up for it by being an enormous prat the rest of the time. And he is a knight,” she adds.
“Poor him.” He holds out the hand that isn't carrying an axe and two knives. “I'm Gwaine, by the way.”
“Merlin,” she replies, taking his hand. He lifts it to his lips and kisses it, more to see what she'll do than for any ulterior motives. His morals are a bit low, but not that much. At least, not while he's sober. She rolls her eyes again, but laughs, and gestures for him to follow her. After pausing to collect his horse, he does so.
“I hope you weren't intending on keeping those,” she remarks as they walk down a faint forest track.
“I'd considered it.”
“Unconsider it,” she says, and points for him to turn off the path towards a huge rocky outcrop. “The local villages need all the help they can get. You've got a sword, you don't need two more. Not to mention that axe you keep swinging.”
“Sorry,” he grins, not meaning it, and stops. “Why do they need weapons?”
“Bandits,” she says with a laugh and starts climbing, swords held in one hand and her skirts roughly gathered up in the other. He shakes his head at her back, grin turning wry, then fastens the reins of his horse to a handy tree and follows.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
There's a cave hidden up amongst the rocks, cleverly concealed by a rockfall that looks fresh; Gwaine thinks about the branch that knocked out the third bandit, and lifts his eyebrows. Not just a hedgewitch, then. Merlin disappears from view for a short while, calling for him to put the weapons with the rest. After a moment he finds a cache tucked under an overhang, and adds his small haul to the pile.
As far as caves go it's a nice one, he supposes. The rockfall was evidently meant to make the entrance smaller, probably as protection against the wind, and when he ducks into the sizeable chamber beyond he can feel the temperature rise, enough to be noticeable. He still can't see Merlin, so he guesses there's a second chamber somewhere, hidden in the shadows where neither daylight nor illumination from the small fire reach.
He ducks out again and settles down to check his sword over, pulling a whetstone from his pack. The sound of a cup being set on the rock by his elbow makes him look up from adding a little more oil to the blade, his concentration broken.
“Thanks.” Merlin smiles and pulls the cache of weapons out into the open, mirroring Gwaine's efforts as she starts to check each one over. “Here, pass us half.”
“Sure?”
“Least I can do,” he says. She lifts her eyebrows, surprised or curious, or both maybe.
“You-” she hesitates, grinning, “-saved me. I should be thanking you, not the other way around.”
“Ah, but,” he starts, and then pauses to actually think about what he's saying. Merlin's no barmaid or farmer's daughter; there's a very good chance he wants to come back to see her, providing he leaves unscathed this time. He settles for, “I'm pretty sure you let me save you,” and she laughs.
“I might've,” she says with a smile, and then adds, “I'm not the helpless damsel people keep assuming I am, you know.” It comes out dryly amused but with a weary edge, and he wonders who keeps making that mistake.
“Not everyone can knock a man out using a tree,” he says, to bring back the bright grin that's starting to make him a bit weak at the morals, and gets rewarded with a laugh as well.
“True.”
They check the rest of the weapons over, fixing any nicks in the blades as they go, Gwaine with his whetstone and Merlin with a golden-eyed look that stops him in his work every damn time. The air goes cool around them, night on its way and Gwaine no further along his way than he was at mid-morning.
“You can stay tonight,” Merlin says, as if she knew what he was thinking. Then again: sorceress. It's entirely possibly she did. “There's more than enough room.”
“My horse--”
“Will be fine. No one troubles me here. Well,” she adds with a slight smile, “no bandits, at least.”
Given the choice between riding at night through a forest he doesn't know all that well and a night spent in relative comfort with good company, well. Gwaine doesn't really see that as a choice. He grins. “In that case, I'd love to continue our acquaintance a little while longer.”
She grins back, setting the last of the weapons aside. “Good. You can cook dinner.”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
In the end it ends up being another split, him skinning a couple of rabbits while Merlin chops some vegetables, both from a well-stocked and cool corner of the cave; when she sends him back for herbs, he notices some neatly folded sacks and a tightly woven basket that look too fine to be from the local villages, and he wonders which wealthy noble is sending her food, but doesn't ask.
The stew is a better meal than any he's had at a tavern in the last month or so, not since he charmed his way into a place at Lord Wryden's dinner table.
“Didn't he suspect?” She asks, with a sly glance at his worn clothes and sword-callused hands.
“Only when I was halfway out the door with a flagon of his best wine,” he says, and listens to her laugh.
Despite what she says about them being safe, he still takes a quick check around a rough perimeter when he clambers back down the rocks to feed and secure his horse for the night. Merlin gives him a knowing look when he ducks into the cave, but doesn't comment.
“Sleep where you want, there's plenty of room.”
“What about-” he starts, and bites down on the words when he sees her eyes flash gold as she turns away into a dark corner of the cave. If he went outside now, he doubts he'd be able to find the entrance again, even if his nose were an inch away. He sees the movement of fabric, and guesses there's a hanging across where she sleeps; he resists putting his blankets down across the path of anyone looking to enter, mostly because he thinks she'd laugh at him if he did that.
“Powerful sorceress,” he whispers to himself, “not a helpless maiden. Get a grip, man.”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
For the next month or so, he doesn't stray more than a few hours ride away from Merlin's little home in the forest. He helps out with the local bandit problem, and almost doubles over laughing in the middle of a fight when he recognises the axe one of them is holding as one he'd confiscated the first time he'd met Merlin, and ended up giving to a farmer two villages over.
He nicks it back again and keeps it this time, reasoning to Merlin it just keeps making its way back to him, and he should just hold on to it.
“If it'll stop you having a laughing fit when someone's about to run you through, fine,” she says coolly, and does something to the gash on his side that makes the pain flare up badly and then fade away into a dull ache.
“Twas only a momentary distraction,” he assures her, and lifts her hand from his side to press a kiss onto the back of it. Merlin pulls her hand away and rolls her eyes, but he sees the hint of a smile at the corners of her mouth, and grins. “I promise on- on this very axe that I shall never laugh in the middle of a brawl again.”
Shaking her head, her smile widens. “That promise will last as long as the axe,” she says, and send him out to show some of the local men how to unhorse someone.
Merlin's right, of course; the very next fight he's in, he recognises one of the bandits as a blacksmith's apprentice he's met once or twice before, and he's laughing before he remembers the promise. And, because she's got a vindictive streak to go with the powerful sorcery (just Gwaine's luck), the axe handle splits straight down the middle with the first blow by his opponent's club, leaving him with what amounts to some mouldy wood and a lump of metal.
He chucks it away, draws his sword, and lays the apprentice out with a well-aimed hilt to the head.
“I could've been killed,” he complains to Merlin later. She tucks her skirts out of the way and kneels by a villager with a nasty leg wound, concentrating.
“No you couldn't,” she says over her shoulder. “You really think I'd let that happen just because you laugh at the stupidest of times?”
Gwaine looks at the skin knitting together under her fey gaze. “No, but that's not the point.”
“Stop pouting, and fetch me some vervain.”
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
The early morning mist hasn't faded yet, and he's already a good three miles on his way, Merlin's directions to avoid a flooded ford committed to his memory. He'd offered to stick around again, help her to hand over the assorted weaponry to whoever was coming to collect it, but like last time she'd shaken her head with a grin and sent him packing.
Despite his misgivings, he reminds himself how handy she is with tree branches, and feels a twinge of pity for anyone thinking to get the better of her. Grinning, he kicks his horse into a trot and hopes that she can't truly read minds. For all his early start, it's a long ride through the dense forest to where he's aiming for, made longer by the detour Merlin recommended, but it's a pleasant enough day and the going is easy enough.
Until he runs into an ongoing skirmish, that is.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
“Leon,” says the man pulling Gwaine off the floor. “Knight of Camelot, and the reason your head isn't spread over the ground.”
“Much obliged,” Gwaine says, and gingerly feels the back of his head. “Gwaine, knight of nowhere, not that I mind.” There's nothing broken, at least; his skull feels like it normally does, apart from the rising bruise and accompanying ache.
“Thought so. Come on, Arthur wants to speak to you.”
Gwaine drops his hand, grimacing as walking makes his head feel like it might not be so whole after all. “Arthur who?”
“Pendragon,” Leon - Sir Leon, must be – says, and Gwaine promptly fights the urge to find his horse and ride very fast in the opposite direction.
“Bugger,” he says to no one in particular.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Two weeks later and he's back in the forest, scrambling up the rocky outcrop while keeping a watchful eye out for suspiciously mobile branches. Merlin greets him with a hug and a smile, pulling him inside the cave that feels much more like a home than his simple room in Camelot's great castle.
“I hear you've got a new job,” is the first thing she says, throwing the comment over her shoulder as Gwaine lingers near the entrance, watching her sort through a collection of fresh herbs.
“Dunno what I've done to deserve it,” he says.
Merlin looks at him, mischievous in the poor light. “Something terrible, knowing you.”
“I barely managed to stop him knighting me,” he grumbles, and Merlin laughs.
“That must've been hard, convincing him not to let a ruffian like you into Camelot's elite force.”
“Tricky enough,” he says with a grin. “But you know me; silver tongue, and all that.”
Still smiling, Merlin finishes with the herbs and stands, pointing to a large basket sitting against one of the cave's wall. “If it's not too much work for you, mister almost-a-knight, you can carry that for me.”
Rolling his eyes at her back, and knowing she'll see it anyway, Gwaine grunts at the unexpected weight as he lifts the basket. “What've you got in here, woman? It weighs more than you do.”
“Not that you'd know,” is Merlin's tart reply from her little room.
“I can make a good guess,” Gwaine says, grinning. Merlin steps back through the hanging, a cloak over her dress and another, smaller basket over her arm, her expression unimpressed. “If I weren't so frightened of you, of course,” Gwaine adds, bowing. She swats him on the arm as she walks past him and out of the cave, Gwaine following with another grin.
“Where're we going?”
“To do some washing.”
Gwaine looks down at the basket and lifts an eyebrow, wondering how heavy it'll be when the contents are all soaking wet. He's managed to miss laundry day every time he's visited her, and this, he supposes, is her little revenge.
Her vindictive streak is still going strong, then.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
At the edge of the lake, far enough from the path that they wouldn't be disturbed, there was a small, smooth-edged pool that was certainly not natural. Gwaine watches with interest as Merlin kneels and holds her hands over the still water, speaking words he feels flick over his skin as her eyes flash gold. A moment later, steam rises from the water.
“Very clever,” he says, and she smiles at him, open and happy.
“Wash in here,” she instructs, “and rinse in the lake itself.”
There's a handy flat stone for pounding any stubborn stains – of which he guesses there are many, because he knows her habit of wiping her hands on her skirts when she's brewing herbs – and several other rocks that look like they'll make decent places to lay the clothes out flat to begin drying.
They work together in the relative silence of the forest for a while, only broken by the sound of skin on skin when Merlin slaps Gwaine's hand away from her underclothes.
“Stick to the rest,” she says, not quite hiding a smile. Gwaine gives her his best smile back, and finds himself perversely glad when it has absolutely no effect at all.
What Gwaine hadn't bargained for was that when Merlin said washing, she'd not just meant the clothes.
He sees her stand out of the corner of his eyes, and looking up he almost swallows his tongue as she slips off her dress and dives into the lake in one smooth movement, a brief flash of pale skin and dark hair before he can barely see her, just the merest flicker of movement under the water.
She swims out to where the water is almost black, even in the sunlight, and Gwaine loses sight of her as she dives down into the depths. He watches the smooth surface of the water until she resurfaces, sleek and strong in the water like the selkies Gwaine has heard tales of, and then he bends to his task.
Later, much later, when Merlin's hair has dried and her clothes are packed away with fragrant herbs folded into them, Gwaine saddles his horse and accepts the extra bag of things to take back with him.
“Be safe,” is all Merlin says, but there's a wealth of meaning behind the words, and Gwaine sees how her hands clench in the folds of her skirt.
“I will,” he says in return, with all the sincerity he possesses, and sees her hands relax a little. “I'll visit when I can.”
She smiles in reply, and he turns his horse in the direction of Camelot.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
Gwaine is drunk. That or the walls of Camelot have suddenly become a lot more uneven, and either way he's got enough sense left to know when to cling onto the nearest solid object. Which happens to be Percy. Gwaine clings, and Percy laughs, and they carry on walking towards the castle.
“Hey,” Percy suddenly says, changing course. “Did I ever tell you about the big fight year ago?”
“No,” Gwaine says, lurching along with one hand tightly holding onto Percy's arm. “Please stop moving.” Somewhere next to him Elyan laughs, loud and probably more than a little drunk as well, and pulls Gwaine's other arm over his shoulder.
“Fight, Percy?” Elyan says with another laugh. “Trust the big guy here to call it that, it was a straight up battle to the rest of us small fry.”
“It was fun,” says Percy, with the cheerful indifference of a man who knows he's bigger, faster, and can hit harder than pretty much any opponent he's likely to meet. “My point was-”
“That half of Camelot got melted.”
“-yes, that half of Camelot got melted, thanks, Elyan.”
Gwaine rocks to a halt, squinting up at Percy in the darkness. “Melted.”
“Yup. C'mon.”
Percy starts walking again, and as Gwaine is still gripping his arm that means he has to go along as well, and Elyan too. They all three wander through the town until they reach a section of the wall that's being repaired, rough stone blocks neatly stacked next to a tumble of rubble. Gwaine trips over a piece of stone and swears, then looks properly and frowns.
He picks the stone up, and even despite the drink it looks wrong. Still turning it over in his hands he looks up at the wall, looming behind Percy and Elyan, and whistles low and long.
“Magic?” He asks, because it has to be, but there's some pretty nasty weapons coming out of Mercia and the eastern kingdoms recently, none of which need a drop of magic to operate. Elyan nods, leaning on the stone that looks like a waterfall Gwaine had once seen in winter, frozen in mid flow. “Their side?”
Percy shook his head. “Ours. They got ladders close enough, under archer fire, and got up there. Sorcerer burnt them off the walls, and the stone as well.”
Elyan nudges him. “Sorceress, idiot.”
“Magic's magic,” Percy said with a shrug and an easy grin.
Gwaine thinks of a small cave, a wicked smile and gentle hands on a wound. “I need another drink,” he says, because there's stupid and then there's blind, and he's been both.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
She's washing her hands of blood when he next sees her, kneeling by a stream with her healers basket on the bank beside her. She spares him a nod and a smile as she scrubs at her nails, and Gwaine drops down onto the grass next to her.
“Birth?”
“Twins,” she says, reaching for a clean rag to dry her hands. “Hale and hearty, with a pair of lungs to match their mother.”
“Congratulations,” he says, and then, before he can stop himself, says “did you melt half of Camelot's outer walls, by any chance?”
Merlin looks up, expression turning unreadable. “Yes,” she says. “Why?”
“Percy and Elyan told me,” Gwaine says, catching some of what Merlin is trying to keep under her suddenly blank mask and fumbling for an easy tone. “I got worried that there might be another axe-sabotaging sorceress living around here.”
“Not likely,” Merlin says, sitting back on her heels and smiling slightly. “You'd have found her by now, and annoyed her to death as well.”
“I'm wounded,” Gwaine says with an easier laugh, clutching his chest dramatically. Merlin's smile widens, most of the tension bleeding out of her shoulders.
They part easily enough, but Gwaine wonders about that tension, the blank mask falling over a wealth of emotions, on the long ride back to Camelot.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
There's been gossip and rumour recently, about Uther's health, enough that Gwaine isn't completely surprised to see Arthur's horse tethered at the base of the slope up to Merlin's cave one dismal afternoon. He's got leave for a couple of days, but knows Arthur is meant to be leading a patrol to the north.
After a moment's thought he unsaddles his horse and moves his gear up to an overhang, where it's dry and sheltered enough from the rain that he can wait without getting soaked. His weapons all need a good going-over, and he sets to, ignoring the occasionally raised voices coming from the cave behind him.
Arthur stamps out as Gwaine is carefully checking his sword for nicks, and stands looking out over the forest with a grim expression.
“Do you-” he starts, then shakes his head. “She is the most stubborn, pigheaded woman I've ever met.”
“You live with Lady Morgana,” Gwaine points out, because his sense of self-preservation is about the same as it was when Sir Leon pulled him off the forest floor, but he's learnt when he shouldn't push things, and when he can get away with it. Arthur snorts.
“True enough.” He glances at Gwaine, and sighs, annoyance turning to resignation as his shoulders hunch. “You didn't see me.”
“Course not,” Gwaine says, “you're on patrol in the north.” He grins up at Arthur, and Arthur rolls his eyes, straightens his shoulders, and makes his way carefully down the slope without another word. Gwaine watches him frown towards the cave for a moment and then he's gone, pushing his horse into a gallop as he heads north.
“Did you hear any of that,” Merlin asks from behind him, silent as ever. Gwaine shakes his head.
“None,” he says, “although I can make a good guess if you like.”
She sighs, sitting down next to him in the shelter of the overhang. She smells like herbs and the rain, body warm where it presses against him. “What do you think I should do?”
Gwaine thinks about it, considers the question carefully as she leans against him. Eventually he sighs, casting aside several very selfish reasons for wanting her to return to Camelot, and shifts so that he can put an arm round her. “I think you should stay, until the time is right for you to come back.”
She rests her head on his shoulder, and makes the raindrops dance in front of them. “Arthur thinks I'm just waiting for Uther to die.”
“Aren't you?”
“Partly,” she says after a long moment, “but that's not all of it. If he lifted the ban on magic in Camelot I'd come back now, but I can't. I have...well.”
“Other allegiances,” Gwaine finishes for her, because not all the rumours are about Uther's health. He feels Merlin twist to look at him, and shrugs, still looking out at the raindrops she has spinning lazily. “There are still those who remember,” he says, “and those who talk.”
“Dangerous,” she says, but that's the end of it; they linger outside until the rain becomes a downpour, and then she tugs him inside the warmth of the cave, to sit beside the fire and help her sort through another batch of weapons.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
That winter is a particularly harsh one, snowstorms and wild winds blending together to keep everyone indoors. There's more to it than that, though, or so Gwaine's instincts tell him; he's been around long enough to have picked up a feeling for wrongness, an edge to the wind that sets his nerves on edge.
Merlin rides into Camelot on the heels of the worst storm yet, her cloak spotted with melted snow and her hair a mess where not even her magic was enough to keep the weather out.
“I need to see Gaius,” she shouts over the wind, and he nods, already passing her horse off to a stablehand brave enough to venture outside to help. He wraps an arm around her waist and feels her arm slip around his, both of them leaning forward against the wind, and he wonders if she knew he'd be near the gate this evening.
He wouldn't put it past her.
“Thank you,” she says when he finally gets her inside. She shakes the snow off her cloak and starts up the steps to Gauis' corridor, then turns. “Please, don't mention that I'm here.”
Of the dozen replies that spring to mind, Gwaine knows he really only has one option. “I won't,” he says, and watches the relief pass over her face.
He waits until she's vanished down the corridor, then turns on his heel and gets as far away from Gaius' rooms as he can without leaving the castle. Leon should've left me on the floor, he thinks.
- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -
On the fifth day after the coronation, Arthur tells Gwaine to fetch their horses, and together they ride out to Merlin's cave. Arthur is weary and careworn with grief and responsibilities; already the enemies are baying at the borders, seeing how much they can push against the authority of the new king. Gwaine stands back, at the bottom of the rocky slope, and for the first time hears Arthur beg.
“You're needed,” he says quietly, “I can't do it on my own. No matter how good my men are, we need you.”
Gwaine stands aside as Arthur picks his way back down the slope, and looks up at Merlin, standing still at the cave mouth, her hands twisted in the fabric of her skirt. Arthur puts one hand on Gwaine's shoulder as he draws level, bows his head.
“If she- if she decides to come, will you help?”
“Of course, sire,” Gwaine says, because sometimes he knows what's appropriate, and what Arthur needs to hear more than anything else right now is that he will be obeyed; Merlin stands outside that, because only to her will Arthur beg, but Gwaine does not.
“Good.” Arthur's hand tightens briefly and then he's gone, not once looking back.
When Gwaine reaches the entrance to her cave, Merlin is packing, like he knew she would be. There's history here, in the way Arthur had seemed about to go down on his knees before her, in the way she'd fairly crackled with magic, but that's not Gwaine's place. In this he stands outside, like everyone else, but still he knows Merlin.
“We-” she begins, and he shakes his head, moving past her to start packing jars of medicine in her basket.
“Not my place,” he says, and he doesn't mean for it to come out rough and awkward, because he understands, he does, but still it's there in his tone. He reaches for the pile of rags to wrap the pottery jars in, and feels her cool fingers close around his wrist.
“Yes, it is,” she says gently, and pulls him round until their foreheads touch. “I don't sabotage just anyone's axe,” she tells him, and Gwaine laughs. He nods, and feels her let go of his wrist.
Later he will carry her back to Camelot with her arms wrapped around his waist, will see her stand by Arthur's side during diplomatic negotiations, during battle talks, and on the walls of Camelot with magic flaring from her fingertips. He will watch her become the most powerful sorceress in the land, will know exactly what she is capable of, and will love her through all of it.
But for now he listens to her grumble about having to come back for some of her medicines, remembers the fierce woman in mud-splattered skirts who used a tree to knock out a bandit, and grins.