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When the letter arrived, Merlin was still laughing at his prince.
As he had been, naturally—for six hours. Truly, was it Arthur’s fault that Merlin couldn’t be bothered to show up on time in the morning? No, of course not. And yet, somehow the joke was on Arthur when his bumbling manservant finally arrived to find the prince hopelessly lost in the confines of his tunic. To add insult to injury, Merlin had let him suffer for nearly a full minute while he tamed his laughter and dryly offered unsolicited advice on Arthur’s skills at…
Well.
Everything.
Arthur had spent the entire morning listening to his idiot poke endless, subtle fun at the prince’s expense.
He would have spent another month in the same condition to keep that letter from ever arriving.
Mail regularly arrived from surrounding villages for the servants who staffed the castle, and it wasn’t unheard of for Merlin to receive one or two or ten. His mother, single and with only one child, was incredibly invested in her son’s life to a degree that made Arthur’s heart sit low in his chest with something suspiciously like—but certainly not—jealousy.
So when the letter arrived, and the messenger placed it in Merlin’s hands, and when Merlin opened it with a bright smile in the expectations of a good day becoming better, and his eyes scanned the page, and his smile started to wane…
The eventual expression on his face when the letter dropped from his numb and useless fingers had been haunting.
Arthur tried not to push. He begged leave from his father to accompany his servant to Ealdor, but his companionship was silent. He hovered like a shadow when Merlin slowly, hauntingly made his way into his childhood hut, and watched with a stone in his gut as the young man reverently brushed a lock of hair from his mother’s cold, gray forehead.
It took everything in him not to turn and flee like a coward, but he didn’t.
With Merlin’s back to him, Arthur could only tell that he was approaching some unseen precipice by the tension that gathered in his shoulders. They curled inward slightly, like someone was setting a heavy pack on his shoulders. Then, in the utter silence of the otherwise empty hut, Arthur heard a sniffle.
Just one.
But it was low and strained and open-mouthed, reminding him of a powerful jet of water shooting from the cracks in a dam.
When Merlin’s shoulders started to shake almost imperceptibly, Arthur suddenly and desperately wished that he had thought to ask for Gwen’s company.
Helplessly, he watched as his friend folded ever-so-slowly over his mother’s body until his forehead rested on her shoulder. Those barely-there sounds of suppressed agony sounded far too compressed inside Merlin’s body, like a silo packed too full and preparing to burst.
For a long moment—an eternity packed into a handful of seconds—Arthur dithered by the doorway, utterly and uncharacteristically unsure of himself. No one had ever offered him a shoulder to cry on for his mother’s death. Did that mean that Arthur was supposed to give him space? Offer comfort? Punch his shoulder and tell him to “chin up,” like a knight after a lost match?
He grimaced to himself; he couldn’t have possibly dreamt up a worse idea.
When Merlin’s shoulders started to shake in earnest as he curled his whole body over his mother’s, Arthur sighed and glanced at the ceiling. The sounds of grief were too faint, too pitiful; he couldn’t let his friend suffer like this.
Not alone, anyway.
Uncertainly, Arthur approached the table. He made his footsteps loud, hoping not to startle his servant, but Merlin didn’t so much as twitch in response to his proximity. He was engrossed in his anguish, blind and deaf to a future where he might believe that Arthur would poke fun at him for his feelings; his tears.
Arthur would sooner sever his sword hand and toss it as a gauntlet at the feet of his enemy.
Silently, he settled a hand between Merlin’s shoulder blades. When he felt the trembling, the intensity of it, Arthur shook his head and steeled himself before reaching down to gather his friend away from his mother’s body.
To his surprise, Merlin didn’t fight him. He went as one half-asleep, meek and incoherent, as Arthur guided his forehead to rest on his own chest. He held it there with a hand on the nape of Merlin’s neck and wondered, not for the first time on this trip, if he was helping at all or just making it unbearably awkward.
But if so, Merlin didn’t seem to notice. He grasped the front of Arthur’s tunic in both hands, shaking apart in near-silence.
The prince didn’t shush him or tell him it was alright or offer meaningless platitudes. With his mother’s body lying less than a foot away, it would have been a cruel insult. All he could offer were arms that held him back, as Merlin stained his tunic with rapid and unending tears.
The servant became strangely catatonic after that, and Arthur was only grateful that both Gwen and Gaius had made the journey with them; he wasn’t sure that he’d have known what to do with his servant for an entire trip back. Instead, while they rubbed Merlin’s back and murmured soothing nothings and forced him to eat and drink and rest, Arthur made himself useful by making arrangements to bring Hunith’s body back to Camelot with them. This had been her home, yes, but she should be near her son.
In hindsight, the whole trip was much shorter than it had seemed in the moment. Merlin had been utterly, frightfully silent; Gaius had drugged his ward every night to force him to sleep; Gwen alternated between letting Merlin cry silently on her shoulder, and crying openly on Arthur’s; and Arthur hovered. Incessantly. Like a useless dolt.
It was all just too much, he reasoned as they finally arrived back at the castle. Merlin’s loss made that yawning pit inside of him where his mother belonged feel fresh, like a new wound.
So when Gaius steered Merlin towards their chambers immediately when they arrived, Arthur felt that he had nothing to offer him. So he let them go.
“Arthur.”
Jolted from dark thoughts, the prince turned and blinked at Guinevere, who was watching him with too much sympathy. When she had his attention, she nodded after the pair who had just disappeared inside the castle.
“Go talk to him.”
Arthur blinked.
Of course, the thought had crossed his mind—countless times. Merlin was, against all odds, his friend. He was hurting, and Arthur understood this hurt to some degree. But what was he supposed to say? Sorry? I understand? Hollow. No amount of sympathy or understanding would heal these wounds.
Besides, Arthur had always been a man of action; words were his father’s forte.
“I can’t help him, Gwen,” he said simply, when her gaze made it clear that she wouldn’t release him so easily.
“You’re important to him, Arthur,” she insisted. “More than you think. Go and sit with him, at the very least.”
Clenching his jaw, the prince turned and watched with a stony expression as their procession respectfully bore Hunith’s body into the courtyard.
After a pregnant pause, Arthur moved towards them to take over without a word.
It took less than an hour to arrange everything; Arthur already knew of a fitting place for the grave, and since Merlin was too dazed to add his opinion, he could only hope that it was good enough. He sent men to start digging, and visited the stonemason to order a marking made. Once again, Merlin couldn’t help. But while Gwen was sitting with the servant, Gaius was able to provide what Arthur hoped would be the right words for engraving.
This was all painfully new, and the prince selfishly wished that it had stayed that way.
As the day drew to a close, Arthur wondered with increasing urgency whether he should check on his servant. He wrestled with the decision while he stopped by the steward’s chambers to ask for another servant to fill in for the foreseeable future, while he checked to ensure that the gardeners were digging the grave in the correct place, while he argued with his father about duties and the shirking thereof.
(“Duty comes first, Arthur,” he recited from rote, pacing behind his throne in the council room. “It is not something to be set aside when fancy strikes, and it is certainly not something to be replaced by… senseless trips to villages in neighboring kingdoms.”
“I felt that this was my duty, Father,” Arthur countered, smooth tone belying the tension beneath. “I have a duty to the wellbeing of every citizen of Camelot, and Merlin—”
“Is but one servant!” Uther slammed his palm on the council table, clearly losing patience. “The kingdom requires your undivided attention!”
“The kingdom is made of people, Father! Without people, there is no kingdom! And how am I to assume responsibility for tens of thousands of lives, when I cannot tend but one?”)
They had gone back and forth for quite a while, but it was the late hour which finally saw them separated under an uneasy truce. Then the question returned to plague him. Would Merlin appreciate the company, or would Arthur be intruding and forcing him to retreat inside himself? Gods knew that they weren’t usually open about their… Arthur grimaced… feelings. Their routine was filled with sharp tongues and ear flicks and smacks upside the head. Merlin probably wouldn’t know how to be sad around Arthur. And while the thought didn’t settle well with the young prince, he finally decided that Merlin deserved the space to sort through his feelings without an audience.
So it came as quite the surprise when, at the break of dawn, the curtains flew open with the familiar cry of,
“Rise and shine, Sire!”
Startling upright, Arthur threw his hands up to shield his eyes. “Ah! Merlin! What do you think you’re doing?”
The servant didn’t pause as he went about collecting Arthur’s strewn clothes—the casualties of last night’s battle to undress himself—and tossing them on the floor beside the open door.
“Picking up after you, as usual,” he said lightly. Merlin was always insufferably cheery in the mornings, but there was something…
The details of the last few days slowly crept back into Arthur’s waking mind, and he watched with a deepening frown as his servant flittered about the room like a nervous bird, never alighting anywhere for long.
“Merlin…”
“Training on the grounds in a mark,” he said airily as, to Arthur’s shock, he scooped the cold ashes out of the fire pit and directly onto the floor, missing the bucket entirely.
“Merlin—”
“The knights are a bit miffed about you being away all week—throwing a fuss, complaining to servants, punching each other. You know—knightly behavior.”
The servant didn’t seem to find anything wrong with his actions as he flung another scoop so far over his shoulder that it struck one of the dining chairs. Then, leaving most of the ashes still in the fireplace and the rest on the floor, Merlin abandoned the fire pit and descended on the pile of clothes beside the door. He scrambled to pick them up, his sooty hands and sleeves leaving black marks everywhere, and his feet leaving ashy tracks on the floor.
Feet which, Arthur noticed with wide eyes, were still bare.
“I’ll just fetch these to the laundry,” Merlin was saying. “Be back with your breakfast, Sire!”
But when he looked, Arthur saw that his servant had already brought in his plate and set it at the head of the table.
“Merlin!” Tossing aside the covers, he rushed to catch up with the younger man before he wandered off and tossed the clothes into the courtyard, or something equally irrational.
Merlin was halfway down the hall by the time that Arthur caught him by the arm, turning him back around.
With the first close look at his friend, words died on Arthur’s tongue.
Merlin’s eyes were bloodshot from lack of sleep, red-rimmed from too many tears, his face gaunt and pale from too many missed meals. His neckerchief was missing, as was his jacket, and his hair was in utter disarray. His gaze, when it locked onto Arthur, was glassy and slightly entranced. And when he smiled, it was a disturbing and unnatural thing, as out of place as it would be amidst a battlefield of the dead.
“Did you need something, Sire?”
Arthur blinked, but the sight didn’t vanish. Shaking his head, he tugged on his servant’s arm.
“Get back inside.”
Merlin followed willingly. His lack of protest was so utterly uncharacteristic that Arthur was unexpectedly shot through with a bolt of fear.
When they were once again inside his chambers, the prince threw his door shut and bolted it. Merlin’s behavior had set him so close to the edge that he almost wished for a sword in his hand, something to battle the unseen enemy conjured by his unease.
Turning to face his servant, he frowned when he found that Merlin had already wandered off again and was trying to tug the unmade bed into some semblance of order.
“Merlin,” Arthur snapped in frustration. When he grabbed his friend’s arm once again, Merlin turned to him with a look of such confused innocence that Arthur wondered, quite suddenly and seriously, if the boy had lost his mind.
“What on earth do you think you’re doing?” he repeated. “You’re supposed to be resting.”
Merlin blinked. “Resting? I don’t need rest. I’ve got to get your armor polished—”
“Polishing comes after training,” Arthur corrected incredulously, and his friend blinked once more.
“I knew that. I meant I have to get your armor on you, so we can get to the training grounds.” With that, he tried to slip his arm out of Arthur’s grasp without even a glance at the chaotic tangle of blankets and pillows that he was leaving behind.
But Arthur wouldn’t relent. Instead, he gave Merlin’s arm an almighty tug that sent the servant tumbling to his ass on the edge of the mattress.
“Sit,” he ordered. “Now look at me.”
Merlin frowned. “I am looking at you.”
“Shut up and listen to me for once.” And then, because he felt that he was looming much too high above his friend for comfort, Arthur crouched down and towed Merlin’s entrapped wrists forward until the servant was half-folded over his own lap, and their faces mere inches apart.
From here, Arthur could see through the fog in Merlin’s eyes. The boy was exhausted, dazed, and confused, but he was perfectly aware that he wasn’t fooling anyone. That this wasn’t just another morning. That everything wasn’t fine.
When he finally found the hurt, buried beneath a desperate grasp for normalcy, Arthur softened his grip and his gaze.
“You always were a terrible liar, Merlin,” he said softly.
Merlin didn’t seem to have anything to say to that. He blinked rapidly, but the same action meant to banish his tears only sent them rolling down his cheeks. His gaze trailed far to one side, desperately avoiding Arthur’s own.
“Arthur—” he choked, but the prince could already hear a deflection in his voice, and he didn’t want to spend the day feeling the bleeding shadow of his wounded friend at his every step.
“If you did not feel for her in death,” he interjected, squeezing Merlin’s wrists in a silent bid for his attention, “then you did not feel for her in life. And any man who did not feel for his own mother is not one I would be proud to call my friend.”
Merlin’s face twisted as if in physical agony.
“I would cry for my mother, Merlin,” Arthur whispered, words trapped in the bubble of space between them. “I would shed a tear for every moment I’ve loved her, if I wept for eternity. My grief could water her grave into gardens, and I would never apologize—not even to my father. No man is diminished for tears shed of love.”
Merlin’s tenuous grip on his composure, if it had ever been that, slipped. He dropped his head so far that Arthur lost sight of his face, but he could feel the tension thrumming through his servant from the grip he had on his wrists; his pulse danced with all the frenetic energy of a prestissimo.
Instead of gathering him into his arms as Gwen would have done, or wrapping him in a blanket as Gaius might have, Arthur guided Merlin’s head between his bony knees and let him gasp for breath. Around them, the bed remained unmade; the floor was covered with ash and soot-stained clothes; a forgotten plate of breakfast sat untouched on the table; and the sounds of swords clashing took up the silence in the courtyard below without their prince there to train them.
But leaving now was unthinkable. Arthur had opened the dams, released the flood, and to leave now would be to let Merlin drown in it. Maybe his timing had not been perfect. Perhaps he should have sent his servant back to bed, or at least sent for Gwen or someone else more qualified than he. But then, he supposed, Merlin didn’t need a caretaker; he didn’t need platitudes, the age-old reassurances for the grieving; he just needed a nudge. A reminder that tears and pain were infinitely better than the terrifying caricature that he had painted for appearances.
When Merlin finally exhausted himself, Arthur steered his servant upright and then back until he collapsed onto the bed, too tired to argue. It was a strange contrast to most mornings; almost the perfect opposite—Arthur pulling a blanket up to Merlin’s shoulders as the younger man drifted to sleep, instead of Merlin wrestling the blanket away from Arthur just to wake him up.
The thought brought a faint smile to the prince’s lips. Shaking his head fondly, he scratched at his temple as he padded towards the mountain of paperwork on his desk. Training could wait for a while.