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Sometimes, he wonders why he does not simply turn his back on Camelot. Why does he remain in this city that has brought him so much grief? It would be so easy to leave.
He can picture it now as he fights to hold back the emotions which roil and writhe within him after another impossible, thankless stretch of days protecting this city’s future. When next Gaius requires his ward’s well-honed herb-gathering services, Merlin can fill the large herb satchel and line it with his few spare tunics and smallclothes. A bout of flirting with Mara, the sweetest of the assistants in the castle kitchens, and he will have more than enough food to last him a few days’ journey. After making his way to the fields beyond the city, he will simply keep walking.
The yearning to pick up and start anew anywhere but here hits him hard, and the pain of it finds an echo in the series of bruises he can feel lining his torso: both a map of his lord’s recent frustrations and a souvenir of the solitary life he leads, throwing himself in between the ungrateful prat and harm’s way. Merlin, much like the bird after which he is named, is a passionate spirit that is meant to fly free.
So far all that Camelot has brought him is a hood and jesses - without the guarantee of extra food, which multiple sources, on multiple occasions, have informed him he requires after tutting over his continued lankiness and pallor.
He stares out of his window at the pinks and purples and oranges of the new dawn, signaling the end of yet another sleepless night, and then looks to the place where land meets sky. His back straightens, his arms fall open, he rises to the balls of his feet, his heart begins to race, entranced and beckoned by the great beyond. Forget the pretenses, forget the planning. He is ready, right at this moment, to leap, to leave it all behind.
And yet -
People need him here.
For all that his scientific explorations bring Gaius joy, they cannot bring him back his youth, and time is truly beginning to take its toll. Lancelot is here, still pining for Gwen, and he never asks, but sometimes he needs a willing ear to hear how he misses her, how it both overjoys and destroys him to see her so happy with another. Gwaine threw his lot in with the knights for Merlin and Merlin alone, and that is a precious gift Merlin can never even begin to match.
And though the jesses of his position sometimes chafe, and the hood of his secrets separates him from the rest of the world, Merlin, unlike a true bird of prey, can and does love the one who became his master before he fully understood how to fly.
His heels fall back to the ground, his arms rest at his sides, his shoulders slump, his heartbeat slows.
He stays to serve his lord another day.