Work Text:
Merlin had never cast an enchantment so powerful. His eyes burned, either from magic still pouring out of him or from the despair of seeing Lancelot ride to his death. Power stormed around him and through him: he was nothing but its conduit, buoyed by its waves.
Jitters shot down Merlin’s torso, panic-electric, and a heady smell of ozone hit his nose as a streak of lightning charged past him, nearly blinding his burning eyes. The magic storm took hold of Lancelot and made him its strike. Clamping shock-frozen fingers around his lance, Lancelot galloped toward the griffin.
Merlin had only rapid heartbeats to admire him: carving his path across the night, the rider looked like a mythical creature himself – a blessed warrior, courage incarnate. Against the looming shadow of the beast, unflinching in the face of its bloody jaws, Lancelot moved with absolute, dangerous grace. In that moment, Merlin saw: Camelot would never know a better knight.
His lance struck true, and the griffin’s great body thudded onto the ground. The sound of hooves pattered out; silence rushed in to stifle the beast’s dying shriek. The smell of fresh blood prevailed over the clearing, battling with ozone— all of it got into Merlin’s head, into his lungs, as he laughed and laughed, drunk with relief, with life.
Still shivering from the electric discharge, he blinked the burning from his eyes to better see Lancelot’s face. His friend seemed breathless; triumph overflowed him as he met Merlin’s gaze with a disbelieving grin that only made Merlin laugh harder.
A gasp nearby made him choke on his chuckle and turn his head.
His eyes met Arthur’s. The prince was deathly pale, and Merlin nearly made a mistake of stepping closer: he leaned forward, he raised his foot, before the truth of Arthur’s hard stare finally pierced him.
How long had Arthur been awake?
The remaining jitters flew downward to his legs, nature’s power escaping him through the earth, as he put his foot a step back. Powerless and high-strung from exertion, Merlin looked over the prince. Blood glistened off his armor— would that explain his pallor? His legs thought on their own as his mind warred with his heart, and Merlin took another step back.
Arthur was frozen mid-rise, propped on one arm, eerily still, as if he had halted between one breath and another— as if, in his panic, Merlin had stopped time again and wrapped him tight in its invisible strands. Dirt smeared Arthur’s cheeks, yet it couldn’t hide his icy-blue eyes, fixed entirely on Merlin.
Caught in their gaze, Merlin froze. Air left his lungs all at once, as if the griffin had come back alive to trample on his chest – it would have been a kinder fate than the one reserved for him at Pendragon’s hand.
“Sorcerer,” Arthur doomed him in one quiet, wheezing breath. He must have choked out something else, as his mouth kept moving, but Merlin couldn’t hear him over the crushing sound of ice filling his veins, over the hammering of his heart against the cage closing on it.
He knows.
Merlin took another staggering step back, his foot nearly catching on an overturned stone. Arthur shouted for him, scrambling to stand on disobedient limbs. Merlin’s legs were full of lead, too heavy to let him bolt— where? All around him, the fallen knights were groaning, coming out of their daze. Soon, they would join their prince, trapping him in their circle.
The road away from the castle was barred: Lancelot stood still over the griffin’s corpse. As their eyes met, the knight urged his steed forward.
“Merlin?” Lancelot’s voice broke through his haze. Triumph left his face, chased away by exhaustion and something hard that Merlin couldn’t name in the dark.
As the horse trotted closer, fear gripped Merlin’s limbs; like a string puppet at its will, he took another step back from Lancelot. The knight’s face fell; his horse stopped. For a brief moment, Lancelot’s eyes left him as he glanced at Arthur. Merlin should’ve used the moment to flee into the woods, launching over the bodies, even knowing that their sharp blades wouldn’t hesitate to cut into his wings.
Yet he couldn’t move, still caught in Arthur’s betrayed, confused gaze. The prince struggled for breath from the exertion, all while keeping his eyes only on Merlin; fear struck his features — a twisted mirror of himself, his other side of the coin.
As the men around them woke up, Arthur still didn’t say another word. Uneasy, he glanced around and reached weakly for his sword. The moment he took it would mean an end to everything; Merlin had to stop him.
He broke free from the freezing spell and reached for the strands of time. He gripped them with trembling fingers, yet they unraveled in his hands, slipping through the gaps. Time fled from him, unstoppable, and left him only weaker in its wake.
And yet, Arthur’s hand fell to the ground – he never reached his sword.
“Arthur,” Merlin choked out a plea and halted: what was there to say that Arthur hadn’t already seen?
A hard line set over the prince’s brows: he must have reached a decision. Wicked, icy fire sparked and spread in Merlin’s stomach, only an echo, a promise of what awaited him. It ate fast through him, burning through the hope the Great Dragon had inflicted on him, ash filling his lungs.
He never got to hear it. Suddenly, Lancelot kicked his horse into a trot, and Arthur's stumbling words got swallowed by the clatter of hooves. He stopped next to Merlin, hiding Arthur’s slumped figure from sight, and reached out a hand for him.
This close, worry was apparent on his friend’s sweat-drenched face. However hard he looked, he couldn’t find a speck of judgment in Lancelot’s earnest eyes.
“I’ll get you out of here,” Lancelot gasped. “Let’s go!”
The world shrank to the gloved hand; nature fell silent around him. His breath caught as he stood over a precipice.
Merlin took Lancelot’s hand and vaulted right over it.
As they rode away, leaving dust in their haste, Merlin expected shouting— Arthur’s last call for him, or for his knights. Yet as Merlin looked back until the forest swallowed his figure, he couldn’t help thinking that Arthur, in his cruel kindness and respect for their bond that stretched thin with every gallop of the horse, was letting him go.
*
Their ride here had been silent. Merlin had spent it pressed to the knight’s cold back, clutching tight to the metal rings on his stomach, trying and failing to come to terms with what he was leaving behind, as Lancelot led them wherever his gut told him.
They were fugitives on the run. Even if Prince Arthur had let both of them go, staying within Camelot’s borders was unwise. They had no supplies, no goal, and no home to go back to. All they had was each other, and a stolen horse they would have to release come morning. It didn’t seem to upset Lancelot, as they settled near a creek in the woods.
Merlin lifted his hand over the sticks and glanced at Lancelot in a silent question. Maybe the heaviness of it was lost under the poor moonlight, as that only got him a weak, puzzled smile in return. Magic surged to follow his wish, and a bright campfire roared to life.
The light swam gently over Lancelot’s features. His mouth hung open in surprise, and then he grinned, fire’s sparks warming his eyes.
“Neat,” he whispered.
Merlin hummed. The easy acceptance and trust scratched oddly against his heart.
“What else can you do?”
Merlin shrugged. Whenever he had tried to define the limits of his magic, restraining it to simple words or thoughts, it fought against him, always breaking out to do its whims.
“Hors.”
A steed appeared out of the fire. Its coat shimmered with reds and golds as it galloped across the air. He envisioned a tiny knight with a lance atop it— alas, he didn’t know the proper word in the Old Tongue. Instead, he poured more magic into the flame, heating its mane to resemble the white-blue enchantment that felled the griffin.
“Beautiful,” Lancelot whispered, transfixed on the prancing horse.
As Merlin got distracted by the open awe on Lancelot’s face, the horse threw its head back—blue flames spread across its body in a frightening show, and dangerous sparks fled into the air. Merlin stifled all of it in panic: with a clenched fist, he pulled the reins on his magic, and the little horse disappeared.
Merlin gauged Lancelot’s reaction to the uncontrolled outburst and was surprised to still see the awe on his face. It should have gladdened him to receive it, yet it chafed against the scratches on his heart. Lancelot defied his expectations, and Merlin felt unsettled, unmoored in the murky waters of yet-unknown limits of Lancelot’s trust.
The knight couldn’t have accepted him so easily, when the rest of the world would see him on a stake. He wasn’t beholden to do so by the blood in his veins, or ten years of friendship, or his mother’s letter. Something was very wrong with Lancelot, or with the whole world.
“Why aren’t you afraid of me?” Merlin blurted out.
“Should I be?” Lancelot played coy.
No, he wanted to say, obstinately, almost launching into the rehearsed excuses he hadn’t had the chance to say to Arthur.
Magic rumbled in his gut, settling uneasily into the confines of his body. Over the couple of months he’d spent practicing with Gaius and his ancient book, Merlin got somewhat better at controlling his magic, at confining it to the clear conduit of words and expectations. Without them, sooner or later, it would ambush him: acting out beyond his will in a moment of danger, or running away from him in a carefree surge, drunk on Lancelot’s trust.
Merlin was dangerous: if not for his outbursts, then for the knights and witchfinders that would follow in his steps. For the same reason, he couldn’t go back to Ealdor: if Arthur didn’t keep his silence, if anyone else saw, he couldn’t bring the knights of Camelot to his mother’s doorstep again.
Lancelot stoked the fire: it grew weaker with the flaming horse’s death.
“I don’t know what to think,” he said quietly, then turned his inquisitive gaze on Merlin.
Merlin was too drained to squirm under it; he let Lancelot’s eyes roam over his body in search of something – he had nothing more to hide. At last, his knight huffed and shook his head.
“But it’s you,” he said simply. “I refuse to believe that evil lives in your heart, or that it belongs to a demon. It cannot be.”
“Even if I made you lie?” Merlin pressed. “Beguiled you by granting your dream? Is it not a demon’s work?”
Merlin had never considered a demon moniker before, only ever thinking of himself as a monster. It seemed a right fit, and Gaius’s accusations of playing God echoed in his head— indeed, how could he, when all of his deals came with a heavy price? Gwen had almost paid it with her life; Lancelot’s was a searing brand of shame and loss.
“Would a demon save me from the griffin?” Lancelot countered him with a grin. His eyes stayed warm and earnest; magnetic, they pulled the words out of Merlin’s mouth.
“How could he not?” he whispered before slumping on the cold ground in defeat.
Once again, they had only a single pillow—a repurposed horse saddle—and after some wiggling, Lancelot rested his head on Merlin’s chest, sharing body heat against the chill of the night.
Only a day ago, they lay like this after the feast. They had to support each other’s weight on the road to his room—too many stairs for Merlin’s clumsy legs—and when Merlin, giggling, had stumbled onto his bed, Lancelot fell right after him, both of them too drunk to stand. Lancelot’s hair tickled pleasantly across his throat; the battle-hardened skin was warm and pliant under his touch. Honored and overjoyed, he was beautiful. Meeting his half-lidded, sleepy gaze, Merlin had almost kissed him.
Lancelot sighed into his neck and shuffled closer, winding a warm arm across his middle. The campfire hissed its dying tune, and for a moment, Merlin was content.
“I’m sorry you had to give up your knighthood,” he breathed out. This close, Lancelot would hear each quiet word, and the beating of his heart in the gaps.
“Do you truly think Uther would have given it to me?“ Lancelot sounded tired.
“He must!” Merlin seethed, indignant. “You slayed the griffin!”
“Not I,” Lancelot chuckled. “You did.”
“That’s ridiculous.”
“You’re ridiculous,” Lancelot huffed into his neck and closed his eyes.
As his knight fell asleep, his breath pleasantly warm on Merlin’s collarbone, each exhale kissing his skin, Merlin looked at the stars. He wondered if the destiny the Great Dragon had ascribed to him was still woven among the constellations. As a shooting star passed above him, unraveling the tapestry of the night sky, he closed his eyes.
It must have been a fairy tale. Maybe he would tell it to Lancelot another night.