Merlin Fic - The Tempest - Part 1
Summary: “There was a plague,” Merlin tells them, “And there was a battle. And there was a storm. But first there was a lie. No. There were many lies.” Merlin tells the tale of how Arthur discovered his magic.
THE TEMPEST
PROSPERO
...I have bedimm’d
The noontide sun, call’d forth the mutinous winds,
And’ twixt the green sea and the azur’d vault
Set roaring war. To dread rattling thunder
Have I given fire, and rifted Jove’s stout oak
With his own bolt; the strong-bas’d promontory
Have I made shake, and by the spurs pluck’s up
The pine and cedar. Graves at my command
Have wak’d their sleepers, op’d, and let ‘em forth,
By my so potent art. But this rough magic
I here abjure;... I’ll break my staff,
Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
And deeper than did ever plummet sound
I’ll drown my book.
(William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act 5, Scene 1)
Sometimes Merlin thinks it is his curse to relive all the old sins of his past - to feel the old scars, the hopes and the pain. To lay himself bare to all those who come calling for stories of Arthur. The hopeful wanderers - seekers of dreams.
There seem to be more at his door every day, ferreting his stories away from him. Mostly he does not begrudge them, though now he has grown tired. A long ache in his heart that he fears he shall not escape again. His bones are still strong, his legs and arms still sprightly, his mind still sharp. There is much he should be thankful for, but the curse is heavy on him, the constant retreading of old paths slowly wearing him away.
But this was not a path Merlin tread often, though it was one that gained curious enquiries from those who knew the history of Uther’s Camelot. When they ask, he smiles and rambles and plays the part of the kindly old man whose mind has wandered away. Or he lies.
He doesn’t know why he does it, though he’s come up with dozens of excuses. Arthur would have said that was just like him - that he had barely finished the crime, before he started inventing a way to wriggle out of it.
Perhaps it is because he is never sure how to tell the tale - to form the emotions in ways that other people could comprehend. He cannot make the words dance. The task is just too difficult. It’s a feeble excuse.
Perhaps it is the fear of how the stories will make Arthur look, that it might tarnish his shine. Or tarnish Merlin’s.
Perhaps it is simply that teenage boys are endlessly fools and it is infinitely kinder for people to forget and forgive their fears and indiscretions.
Perhaps it is because when you remember a beginning, you can also taste its end.
Whatever the truth, the fact remains that people know there was a time when Arthur did not know of Merlin’s magic and then there was a time when Arthur did. Something must fill the gap in between and sometimes Merlin feels that there are endless processions of seekers for that story.
Usually when he reluctantly agrees to speak to those who are too persistent, he fills the gap with tales and dreams. They spin effortlessly from his lips, almost forming themselves. Like magic. Each time is different, until a dozen such stories exist. Each with that extra edge of truth, because they spilled from Merlin’s mouth - each listener believing that his story is the truth. Until there are a dozen or more definitive answers drifting through the world.
They are all lies.
Arthur would have loathed them. Merlin can see his frown, in that part of his mind that is reserved just for Arthur. He was never built for lies and secrecy - sometimes it had seemed they were poisonous to his very essence. That was the reason so many people had been able to hurt him.
Perhaps it is because the thought has been lurking for a few days, Arthur’s frown, that when a new and earnest set of curious eyes arrive at his door, he makes a different choice. He lets those eyes steal the truth from him, just once, lets it loose amongst the other stories. As doubted and doubtful as all the others. But at least now it is free. It exists.
Or perhaps it is because they have come on this day, for it is anniversary of sorts. A memory of a change in the weather from long ago. Perhaps he is allowing that to make him maudlin and sentimental. Arthur would have mocked him for it.
He lets them settle before he starts, though in truth it takes longer to settle himself.
“There was a plague,” Merlin tells them, “And there was a battle. And there was a storm. But first there was a lie. No. There were many lies.”
* * * * *
Uther adjusted his gloves, fixing them tighter, an unpleasant look on his face. Distaste. “Magic?” He asked.
“It’s possible,” Gaius admitted.
Arthur tore his eyes away from his father and looked back at the man upon the pallet. Large boils had covered his face, a few already burst and his skin was slimy with sweat. He was pale, almost green and Arthur could hear his breath rasping across his throat.
“Very well,” Uther said. “Do what you can, see if you can discover a cure. Arthur, search Camelot, I expect you to locate the sorcerer who has committed this atrocity.”
Arthur nodded sharply as his father left the room. This was the fifth victim, a child had died that morning. Whatever it took to stop more deaths, he would do. He met Gaius’ eyes for a moment before he left and was already halfway down the corridor when he realised that Merlin had completely failed to follow him. Again.
With a sigh born completely of annoyance, he spun on his heels and went to fetch him. He found him crouched by the man, one hand softly against his cheek.
“Merlin,” Arthur said and the boy started guiltily, looking up at him and pulling his hand away so quickly it was like he had been burned. Arthur had no idea what to make of him sometimes.
“I... I thought I should stay and help Gaius,” he said, stumbling awkwardly to his feet.
“And how were you planning to do that?”
“Ummm... I could pass him things.”
“For hell’s sake, Merlin. You’ll only get in his way and as much as it pains me to say it, I might be able to find a use for you.”
There was a moment’s hesitation and Arthur had the sudden feeling he wasn’t being told something but then Merlin was back by his side and his mind could turn back to the search.
* * * * *
Much later as the days had grown short and his beard had grown long, Merlin had come to accept that it had only ever been a matter of time before Arthur discovered the truth about his magic. Even later than that he could admit that a part of him had longed for it. At the time, as it happened, it had felt like he was dying.
The plague had descended on Camelot almost overnight. Like a dark hand gripping its citizens and squeezing - fathers, sons, daughters, mothers, the elderly, the children, the infirm, the strong. Merlin could only remember the first few cases, the first few victims - his magic unable to touch them or heal them.
He remembered their eyes mostly - above the pustuled skin, the sweats, the green tinge - but it was the eyes that haunted him, staring in terror at nothing. Nothing that he could see anyway.
After those first victims, those few, then the hand had gripped him and squeezed.
He’d seen it then, that invisible monster, the face of death. The thing they had been staring ar. Or at least he thought he had.
Merlin couldn’t remember. Once the plague had got him, all the memories were wrong - fractured, rootless, like pages torn from a book and lost in the water, floating away just out of reach. He fears that one day old age will make such a mess of all his history.
“I grew ill,” he tells his guests, trying to capture the lost pages for them.
He remembers the face, or thinks he does.
He remembers Gaius leaning over him.
He remembers retching, just once, though maybe it had happened more than that.
He remembers vines of ivy climbing thickly up the walls of his room, growing before his eyes and knowing they could not be real. Turning the inside to outside. Then Gaius’ had come in, horrified and Merlin had known it was his magic - his magic, going wrong. Once the fever had passed, Gaius’ had told him he’d had to rip the plants from the walls and burn them in the night.
He remembers the fevered itching, that had made his skin feel like it was the wrong way round and the belief that it would never end - but now those long, endless hours are compressed into one single moment.
None of the memories are quite real. They have a sheen upon them, like he is seeing them through frosted glass, like they belong to someone else. Except for one memory. One memory is vivid and real and never changing. Fixed within him. He can still feel every second of it.
Gaius is arguing with Arthur, he can hear them. Arthur wants to see him and doesn’t understand why he can’t. Merlin isn’t scared, he knows Gaius will solve this, will stop Arthur. And the fever is burning inside him, beyond that, everything else is just outside noise.
At first he’d barely noticed the fever was mixing with his magic, spilling outside his body.
Then Arthur had burst into the room and found him, hands filled with fire, trying to hold it to himself, ignoring the burning because he couldn’t risk the flames getting free. The expression in Arthur’s eyes terrified him - guilt and anger and fear. He tried to get to his feet, still clutching the fire, tried to get to Arthur and the world twisted round him until he couldn’t stand it anymore and he fell.
By the next memory Arthur was gone.
Slowly the plague had ebbed away, leaving him cold and weak and lonely. Gaius thought it was his magic that had saved him; most of the other victims had died. He’d called it a blessing. It hadn’t felt like a blessing.
Arthur hadn’t come back. Merlin had managed to wait two days before he’d tried to see him - head filled with explanations and excuses and lies. All for nothing. Apologetic serious faced guards had told him the Prince did not wish to see him.
“He hasn’t told Uther,” Gaius had said when he had returned defeated. “That has to mean something. Give him time.” Merlin had wanted to believe him but there had been too many reasons why Arthur might not have told Uther. None of them had meant he would come back.
Merlin had stayed in Gaius’ rooms, had tried to help with finding the cure but he’d felt dull and useless and tired. It was if the world had turned grey. Gaius had believed it to be the lingering of the plague, Merlin had known it to be otherwise.
Even when Morgana and Gwen had visited him, eyes concerned, lips filled with questions about Arthur - they hadn’t brought any colour into his world. Instead he’d lied to them, not told them anything, brushed away the questions and, in annoyance, they had snapped that Merlin and Arthur were as bad as each other. He couldn’t even remember who had said it - though it was probably Morgana.
“I was not sure he would speak to me again,” he tries to add a chuckle for the benefit of his listeners, to soften the thought, but it cannot get past the lump in his throat. The memory is making his soul feel old.
Without Arthur it had felt like... even far in the future that memory falters. It doesn’t matter. The feeling had ended - Arthur had come back. All annoyance and spite and anger and had said sorry, sort of, without quite saying it. But Merlin had thought things were falling back together.
The world had started shining again; even the plague had lost its power, lost its grip, drifted onwards.
He hadn’t realised then that Arthur’s return was under the assumption that they wouldn’t talk about magic again, that he wouldn’t use it. That they would both pretend it hadn’t ever happened.
* * * * *
Morgana came to him in a rage and having spent the day wandering the broken remnants of the kingdom, Arthur was too tired to fight her off. He sank onto the bed. “I don’t have time for this, Morgana.”
“How can you do this to him?” She demanded. A different approach to the wheedling attempts to find out what had happened. “Have you even seen him?”
“No,” Arthur replied, aware his voice sounded dead, “I haven’t seen him.”
“He’s been ill, he looks like he just about died - his clothes are hanging off him,” she hesitated for a second. “Even more than usual and he’s miserable.”
Arthur didn’t reply, he didn’t want to think about Merlin. He’d spent the last two weeks with images of the boy lurking in the corners of his eyes - he didn’t even know why he was there - why he couldn’t shake him away. He was just a servant, just a face that could be replaced and had been.
For god’s sake Arthur was even being nice to the new one. Pretending he liked him.
“Whatever he did - it was a mistake and I know-”
“You don’t know.”
“No, because you won’t tell me anything.”
He’d thought about telling her, thought about telling them all - angry and hurt and betrayed and wanting to lash out at Merlin. But it would have meant Merlin’s death, Merlin’s head on the block. Would he have stood, impassively and watched as he had every time before. Could he? Even though Merlin didn’t matter, he couldn’t think about that.
“You won’t talk to anyone. You’re acting as if this doesn’t even matter.”
“It doesn’t - he’s just a servant. He doesn’t matter.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“Why? Why wouldn’t I mean that? Have you seen what’s happening out there, Morgana. What’s already happened? So many of them have died.” It hurt to say it. “How could one person matter against that?”
“Is that what this is about?” She asked. “Is this some sort of punishment? This isn’t your fault, none of this is your fault.”
The memory of Anhora is still sharp and with it comes more thoughts of Merlin and a goblet and his willingness to die.
“How can you know that?” He asked. “What if it is my fault? What if I did something? What if someone else did...”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Since when did anything involving magic have to make sense,” he snapped at her, hearing the hidden question echoing through his mind. Since when did Merlin knowing magic make sense?
Morgana’s face sharpened, focused, became angrier. He’d seen her look at his father this way.
“He’s sorry,” she said, the anger in her voice a counterpoint to the tears on her cheeks. “Whatever it was, I know he’s sorry and if you don’t accept that, if you don’t let him back in, I think it’ll kill him.”
The pain was sudden and sharp, as if a sword had plunged into his gut and twisted. He bit down on the feeling, staring at the floor, trying to swallow the sensation, to master it. He saw the swirl of her brightly coloured skirts as Morgana moved closer, kneeling in front of him.
She took his hands first, lifting them from where they were curled against his bed. He felt her flinch as her fingers found the half healed burns. Turning his hands over, she traced the scars and he couldn’t hide his sharp, pained intake of breath. The skin was still new and tight and sore. The palms of his hand and, though she couldn’t see it, the skin of his chest - irretrievably, endlessly scarred.
For two weeks he had been hiding those scars away, hands encased in rough, itchy gloves. Wondering how his father coped with having his hands always enclosed. People had not noticed or had pretended not to. Perhaps they had thought he was mimicking his father or perhaps they had believed him too scared to touch the plague victims. Both ideas hurt.
“What happened?” Morgana asked.
“Nothing - an accident,” he said with a shrug, refusing to look at her. His eyes were filled with other visions. He could still see Merlin, wreathed in flame; could still feel how he burned as he tried to catch him. Tried to save him. Feeling as if his heart would burst if he failed. He didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to acknowledge that feeling.
There was a long pause as Morgana considered what she would say next, whether to accept the answer, whether to chase him. In the end she must have decided that other things were more important. Instead she took his face between his hands and forced him to look at her. Her eyes filled with compassion again.
“And you’re miserable too,” she told him, “Everyone sees it. You need him. Please, Arthur.”
* * * * *
Merlin had never discovered what Arthur thought had happened in his room that day but it hadn’t taken long to see the truth of Arthur’s forgiveness and then suddenly it was as if nothing had changed. He had still been hiding and pretending and not being himself. The difference was the deceit had tasted more bitter now Arthur had made himself part of the lie.
There were times that Merlin had caught Arthur watching him, when he thought he wouldn’t notice - doubt and suspicion still in his eyes, even if he was trying to hide it. Arthur had even stopped mocking and teasing him. Their relationship had suddenly become oddly professional.
In truth it had become the sort of relationship Merlin had imagined and dreaded when Uther had first pressed him into Arthur’s service. They had both been lying and Merlin had hated it.
And then there had been the execution.
Merlin could no longer remember his name, the victim - it had felt like it was burning inside him at the time and now it had just vanished as if it had never mattered. What Merlin remembered now was that he had been innocent. Some of them weren’t, but he had been. He’d barely even known any magic, he’d just been trying to save his daughter from the plague.
It hadn’t worked and Arthur had found him and then they’d both been damned. Child and parent.
Arthur had turned him in, like the others before him but that time it had suddenly been different - because now Arthur knew what Merlin was and he’d still done it. For the first time Merlin had felt like he could truly hate him.
He’d been angry, all those youthful feelings fighting within him and most of all he’d wanted to hurt Arthur - show him that he was wrong - that what he’d let Uther do was wrong.
There had been a fight, just him and Arthur and people who were angry at Uther - as always. Perhaps it had even been because of the execution, he didn’t remember, but then perhaps this memory loss wasn’t down to the dangers of old age, perhaps he’d never known, sometimes they hadn’t.
Arthur had been in the thick of it and Merlin had seen the danger when he hadn’t. A chance of proving him wrong even as he’d tried to convince himself that Arthur wouldn’t even notice because he never had before. All those times. So he’d rearranged the world a little until the danger was gone.
Of course, he’d been wrong, Arthur had known.
* * * * *
Arthur’s fists clenched as he watched the last of the attackers disappearing over the horizon. He’d forced himself to wait at least that long. He forced himself to wait longer, knowing that Merlin was stood just behind him. He forced himself to wait until even the sound of them had vanished and then, unable to wait any longer, feeling the anger surge through him in short jagged breaths, his fist curled into a ball he turned with a single motion and punched Merlin.
Merlin sprawled backwards onto the ground, powerless as a doll. His body jarring painfully. One part of Arthur was thinking that he was still too skinny, too weak, too fragile from the disease - the other part wanted to tear him apart.
“Did you think I wouldn’t notice? Did you think I couldn’t do this without you and... and... that?” He demanded. Merlin looked up, blood spilling down from his nose and from a split in his lip. Arthur saw the various answers flashing across Merlin’s face, clear as day - he could see him considering which new lie to spin. “Do you really think I’m stupid?”
“Sometimes,” Merlin said angrily, wiping a hand under his nose and smearing the blood across his face as he climbed unsteadily to his feet.
Arthur hit him again, but this time Merlin was ready, he slipped sideways so Arthur’s fist only caught him a glancing blow. Knocking him but not felling him and then Merlin was seizing his shirt and they were struggling together.
It was hardly a fair fight, but for a moment it almost seemed it - it was certainly messy and undignified - as they clung together, hot and breathless. Then Arthur’s fist found Merlin’s jaw and the other boy was staggering backwards.
Arthur followed him, all the hurt and betrayal spilling out, his mind set on destruction and as Merlin looked up he saw those emotions reflected back at him. It didn’t shock him, it almost felt natural that this was what they’d become. He reached for him, joining them in this if in nothing else - his hands almost upon him when Merlin’s eyes turned suddenly golden and Arthur felt every muscle in his body freeze.
He couldn’t move, it was if something was holding him and then whatever it was began to squeeze. Even his throat felt like it would be forced closed - his head threatening to explode. Through pained eyes he could see Merlin, fury etched on his face and then sudden horror, his eyes fading back to blue.
The pain retreated, the invisible grip loosening.
“Arthur, I...” Merlin started, stepping closer.
Without thinking, Arthur seized his shirt, still angry but Merlin’s bloody face was scared and sorry and his rage ebbed away. Instead he stayed for a second, fingers still wrapped in the material, both trembling.
“Why? Why that? You didn’t even think about it, you just reached for that right away. Why?” Arthur wasn’t even sure if he wanted an answer. He didn’t want to know how deeply lost in the evils of magic Merlin had become.
“I-” Merlin began, but Arthur couldn’t listen to it. He shook him again silencing him. Then he pulled him closer until their foreheads were resting together.
“If you keep doing this,” Arthur told him, “if you don’t stop - I won’t be able to save you - to protect you. Please...”
Their eyes met, so close they filled the entire world and locked together.
“I promise,” Merlin said.
PART 2
THE TEMPEST
PROSPERO
...I have bedimm’d
The noontide sun, call’d forth the mutinous winds,
And’ twixt the green sea and the azur’d vault
Set roaring war. To dread rattling thunder
Have I given fire, and rifted Jove’s stout oak
With his own bolt; the strong-bas’d promontory
Have I made shake, and by the spurs pluck’s up
The pine and cedar. Graves at my command
Have wak’d their sleepers, op’d, and let ‘em forth,
By my so potent art. But this rough magic
I here abjure;... I’ll break my staff,
Bury it certain fathoms in the earth,
And deeper than did ever plummet sound
I’ll drown my book.
(William Shakespeare, The Tempest, Act 5, Scene 1)
Sometimes Merlin thinks it is his curse to relive all the old sins of his past - to feel the old scars, the hopes and the pain. To lay himself bare to all those who come calling for stories of Arthur. The hopeful wanderers - seekers of dreams.
There seem to be more at his door every day, ferreting his stories away from him. Mostly he does not begrudge them, though now he has grown tired. A long ache in his heart that he fears he shall not escape again. His bones are still strong, his legs and arms still sprightly, his mind still sharp. There is much he should be thankful for, but the curse is heavy on him, the constant retreading of old paths slowly wearing him away.
But this was not a path Merlin tread often, though it was one that gained curious enquiries from those who knew the history of Uther’s Camelot. When they ask, he smiles and rambles and plays the part of the kindly old man whose mind has wandered away. Or he lies.
He doesn’t know why he does it, though he’s come up with dozens of excuses. Arthur would have said that was just like him - that he had barely finished the crime, before he started inventing a way to wriggle out of it.
Perhaps it is because he is never sure how to tell the tale - to form the emotions in ways that other people could comprehend. He cannot make the words dance. The task is just too difficult. It’s a feeble excuse.
Perhaps it is the fear of how the stories will make Arthur look, that it might tarnish his shine. Or tarnish Merlin’s.
Perhaps it is simply that teenage boys are endlessly fools and it is infinitely kinder for people to forget and forgive their fears and indiscretions.
Perhaps it is because when you remember a beginning, you can also taste its end.
Whatever the truth, the fact remains that people know there was a time when Arthur did not know of Merlin’s magic and then there was a time when Arthur did. Something must fill the gap in between and sometimes Merlin feels that there are endless processions of seekers for that story.
Usually when he reluctantly agrees to speak to those who are too persistent, he fills the gap with tales and dreams. They spin effortlessly from his lips, almost forming themselves. Like magic. Each time is different, until a dozen such stories exist. Each with that extra edge of truth, because they spilled from Merlin’s mouth - each listener believing that his story is the truth. Until there are a dozen or more definitive answers drifting through the world.
They are all lies.
Arthur would have loathed them. Merlin can see his frown, in that part of his mind that is reserved just for Arthur. He was never built for lies and secrecy - sometimes it had seemed they were poisonous to his very essence. That was the reason so many people had been able to hurt him.
Perhaps it is because the thought has been lurking for a few days, Arthur’s frown, that when a new and earnest set of curious eyes arrive at his door, he makes a different choice. He lets those eyes steal the truth from him, just once, lets it loose amongst the other stories. As doubted and doubtful as all the others. But at least now it is free. It exists.
Or perhaps it is because they have come on this day, for it is anniversary of sorts. A memory of a change in the weather from long ago. Perhaps he is allowing that to make him maudlin and sentimental. Arthur would have mocked him for it.
He lets them settle before he starts, though in truth it takes longer to settle himself.
“There was a plague,” Merlin tells them, “And there was a battle. And there was a storm. But first there was a lie. No. There were many lies.”
* * * * *
Uther adjusted his gloves, fixing them tighter, an unpleasant look on his face. Distaste. “Magic?” He asked.
“It’s possible,” Gaius admitted.
Arthur tore his eyes away from his father and looked back at the man upon the pallet. Large boils had covered his face, a few already burst and his skin was slimy with sweat. He was pale, almost green and Arthur could hear his breath rasping across his throat.
“Very well,” Uther said. “Do what you can, see if you can discover a cure. Arthur, search Camelot, I expect you to locate the sorcerer who has committed this atrocity.”
Arthur nodded sharply as his father left the room. This was the fifth victim, a child had died that morning. Whatever it took to stop more deaths, he would do. He met Gaius’ eyes for a moment before he left and was already halfway down the corridor when he realised that Merlin had completely failed to follow him. Again.
With a sigh born completely of annoyance, he spun on his heels and went to fetch him. He found him crouched by the man, one hand softly against his cheek.
“Merlin,” Arthur said and the boy started guiltily, looking up at him and pulling his hand away so quickly it was like he had been burned. Arthur had no idea what to make of him sometimes.
“I... I thought I should stay and help Gaius,” he said, stumbling awkwardly to his feet.
“And how were you planning to do that?”
“Ummm... I could pass him things.”
“For hell’s sake, Merlin. You’ll only get in his way and as much as it pains me to say it, I might be able to find a use for you.”
There was a moment’s hesitation and Arthur had the sudden feeling he wasn’t being told something but then Merlin was back by his side and his mind could turn back to the search.
* * * * *
Much later as the days had grown short and his beard had grown long, Merlin had come to accept that it had only ever been a matter of time before Arthur discovered the truth about his magic. Even later than that he could admit that a part of him had longed for it. At the time, as it happened, it had felt like he was dying.
The plague had descended on Camelot almost overnight. Like a dark hand gripping its citizens and squeezing - fathers, sons, daughters, mothers, the elderly, the children, the infirm, the strong. Merlin could only remember the first few cases, the first few victims - his magic unable to touch them or heal them.
He remembered their eyes mostly - above the pustuled skin, the sweats, the green tinge - but it was the eyes that haunted him, staring in terror at nothing. Nothing that he could see anyway.
After those first victims, those few, then the hand had gripped him and squeezed.
He’d seen it then, that invisible monster, the face of death. The thing they had been staring ar. Or at least he thought he had.
Merlin couldn’t remember. Once the plague had got him, all the memories were wrong - fractured, rootless, like pages torn from a book and lost in the water, floating away just out of reach. He fears that one day old age will make such a mess of all his history.
“I grew ill,” he tells his guests, trying to capture the lost pages for them.
He remembers the face, or thinks he does.
He remembers Gaius leaning over him.
He remembers retching, just once, though maybe it had happened more than that.
He remembers vines of ivy climbing thickly up the walls of his room, growing before his eyes and knowing they could not be real. Turning the inside to outside. Then Gaius’ had come in, horrified and Merlin had known it was his magic - his magic, going wrong. Once the fever had passed, Gaius’ had told him he’d had to rip the plants from the walls and burn them in the night.
He remembers the fevered itching, that had made his skin feel like it was the wrong way round and the belief that it would never end - but now those long, endless hours are compressed into one single moment.
None of the memories are quite real. They have a sheen upon them, like he is seeing them through frosted glass, like they belong to someone else. Except for one memory. One memory is vivid and real and never changing. Fixed within him. He can still feel every second of it.
Gaius is arguing with Arthur, he can hear them. Arthur wants to see him and doesn’t understand why he can’t. Merlin isn’t scared, he knows Gaius will solve this, will stop Arthur. And the fever is burning inside him, beyond that, everything else is just outside noise.
At first he’d barely noticed the fever was mixing with his magic, spilling outside his body.
Then Arthur had burst into the room and found him, hands filled with fire, trying to hold it to himself, ignoring the burning because he couldn’t risk the flames getting free. The expression in Arthur’s eyes terrified him - guilt and anger and fear. He tried to get to his feet, still clutching the fire, tried to get to Arthur and the world twisted round him until he couldn’t stand it anymore and he fell.
By the next memory Arthur was gone.
Slowly the plague had ebbed away, leaving him cold and weak and lonely. Gaius thought it was his magic that had saved him; most of the other victims had died. He’d called it a blessing. It hadn’t felt like a blessing.
Arthur hadn’t come back. Merlin had managed to wait two days before he’d tried to see him - head filled with explanations and excuses and lies. All for nothing. Apologetic serious faced guards had told him the Prince did not wish to see him.
“He hasn’t told Uther,” Gaius had said when he had returned defeated. “That has to mean something. Give him time.” Merlin had wanted to believe him but there had been too many reasons why Arthur might not have told Uther. None of them had meant he would come back.
Merlin had stayed in Gaius’ rooms, had tried to help with finding the cure but he’d felt dull and useless and tired. It was if the world had turned grey. Gaius had believed it to be the lingering of the plague, Merlin had known it to be otherwise.
Even when Morgana and Gwen had visited him, eyes concerned, lips filled with questions about Arthur - they hadn’t brought any colour into his world. Instead he’d lied to them, not told them anything, brushed away the questions and, in annoyance, they had snapped that Merlin and Arthur were as bad as each other. He couldn’t even remember who had said it - though it was probably Morgana.
“I was not sure he would speak to me again,” he tries to add a chuckle for the benefit of his listeners, to soften the thought, but it cannot get past the lump in his throat. The memory is making his soul feel old.
Without Arthur it had felt like... even far in the future that memory falters. It doesn’t matter. The feeling had ended - Arthur had come back. All annoyance and spite and anger and had said sorry, sort of, without quite saying it. But Merlin had thought things were falling back together.
The world had started shining again; even the plague had lost its power, lost its grip, drifted onwards.
He hadn’t realised then that Arthur’s return was under the assumption that they wouldn’t talk about magic again, that he wouldn’t use it. That they would both pretend it hadn’t ever happened.
* * * * *
Morgana came to him in a rage and having spent the day wandering the broken remnants of the kingdom, Arthur was too tired to fight her off. He sank onto the bed. “I don’t have time for this, Morgana.”
“How can you do this to him?” She demanded. A different approach to the wheedling attempts to find out what had happened. “Have you even seen him?”
“No,” Arthur replied, aware his voice sounded dead, “I haven’t seen him.”
“He’s been ill, he looks like he just about died - his clothes are hanging off him,” she hesitated for a second. “Even more than usual and he’s miserable.”
Arthur didn’t reply, he didn’t want to think about Merlin. He’d spent the last two weeks with images of the boy lurking in the corners of his eyes - he didn’t even know why he was there - why he couldn’t shake him away. He was just a servant, just a face that could be replaced and had been.
For god’s sake Arthur was even being nice to the new one. Pretending he liked him.
“Whatever he did - it was a mistake and I know-”
“You don’t know.”
“No, because you won’t tell me anything.”
He’d thought about telling her, thought about telling them all - angry and hurt and betrayed and wanting to lash out at Merlin. But it would have meant Merlin’s death, Merlin’s head on the block. Would he have stood, impassively and watched as he had every time before. Could he? Even though Merlin didn’t matter, he couldn’t think about that.
“You won’t talk to anyone. You’re acting as if this doesn’t even matter.”
“It doesn’t - he’s just a servant. He doesn’t matter.”
“You don’t mean that.”
“Why? Why wouldn’t I mean that? Have you seen what’s happening out there, Morgana. What’s already happened? So many of them have died.” It hurt to say it. “How could one person matter against that?”
“Is that what this is about?” She asked. “Is this some sort of punishment? This isn’t your fault, none of this is your fault.”
The memory of Anhora is still sharp and with it comes more thoughts of Merlin and a goblet and his willingness to die.
“How can you know that?” He asked. “What if it is my fault? What if I did something? What if someone else did...”
“That doesn’t make any sense.”
“Since when did anything involving magic have to make sense,” he snapped at her, hearing the hidden question echoing through his mind. Since when did Merlin knowing magic make sense?
Morgana’s face sharpened, focused, became angrier. He’d seen her look at his father this way.
“He’s sorry,” she said, the anger in her voice a counterpoint to the tears on her cheeks. “Whatever it was, I know he’s sorry and if you don’t accept that, if you don’t let him back in, I think it’ll kill him.”
The pain was sudden and sharp, as if a sword had plunged into his gut and twisted. He bit down on the feeling, staring at the floor, trying to swallow the sensation, to master it. He saw the swirl of her brightly coloured skirts as Morgana moved closer, kneeling in front of him.
She took his hands first, lifting them from where they were curled against his bed. He felt her flinch as her fingers found the half healed burns. Turning his hands over, she traced the scars and he couldn’t hide his sharp, pained intake of breath. The skin was still new and tight and sore. The palms of his hand and, though she couldn’t see it, the skin of his chest - irretrievably, endlessly scarred.
For two weeks he had been hiding those scars away, hands encased in rough, itchy gloves. Wondering how his father coped with having his hands always enclosed. People had not noticed or had pretended not to. Perhaps they had thought he was mimicking his father or perhaps they had believed him too scared to touch the plague victims. Both ideas hurt.
“What happened?” Morgana asked.
“Nothing - an accident,” he said with a shrug, refusing to look at her. His eyes were filled with other visions. He could still see Merlin, wreathed in flame; could still feel how he burned as he tried to catch him. Tried to save him. Feeling as if his heart would burst if he failed. He didn’t want to think about it, didn’t want to acknowledge that feeling.
There was a long pause as Morgana considered what she would say next, whether to accept the answer, whether to chase him. In the end she must have decided that other things were more important. Instead she took his face between his hands and forced him to look at her. Her eyes filled with compassion again.
“And you’re miserable too,” she told him, “Everyone sees it. You need him. Please, Arthur.”
* * * * *
Merlin had never discovered what Arthur thought had happened in his room that day but it hadn’t taken long to see the truth of Arthur’s forgiveness and then suddenly it was as if nothing had changed. He had still been hiding and pretending and not being himself. The difference was the deceit had tasted more bitter now Arthur had made himself part of the lie.
There were times that Merlin had caught Arthur watching him, when he thought he wouldn’t notice - doubt and suspicion still in his eyes, even if he was trying to hide it. Arthur had even stopped mocking and teasing him. Their relationship had suddenly become oddly professional.
In truth it had become the sort of relationship Merlin had imagined and dreaded when Uther had first pressed him into Arthur’s service. They had both been lying and Merlin had hated it.
And then there had been the execution.
Merlin could no longer remember his name, the victim - it had felt like it was burning inside him at the time and now it had just vanished as if it had never mattered. What Merlin remembered now was that he had been innocent. Some of them weren’t, but he had been. He’d barely even known any magic, he’d just been trying to save his daughter from the plague.
It hadn’t worked and Arthur had found him and then they’d both been damned. Child and parent.
Arthur had turned him in, like the others before him but that time it had suddenly been different - because now Arthur knew what Merlin was and he’d still done it. For the first time Merlin had felt like he could truly hate him.
He’d been angry, all those youthful feelings fighting within him and most of all he’d wanted to hurt Arthur - show him that he was wrong - that what he’d let Uther do was wrong.
There had been a fight, just him and Arthur and people who were angry at Uther - as always. Perhaps it had even been because of the execution, he didn’t remember, but then perhaps this memory loss wasn’t down to the dangers of old age, perhaps he’d never known, sometimes they hadn’t.
Arthur had been in the thick of it and Merlin had seen the danger when he hadn’t. A chance of proving him wrong even as he’d tried to convince himself that Arthur wouldn’t even notice because he never had before. All those times. So he’d rearranged the world a little until the danger was gone.
Of course, he’d been wrong, Arthur had known.
* * * * *
Arthur’s fists clenched as he watched the last of the attackers disappearing over the horizon. He’d forced himself to wait at least that long. He forced himself to wait longer, knowing that Merlin was stood just behind him. He forced himself to wait until even the sound of them had vanished and then, unable to wait any longer, feeling the anger surge through him in short jagged breaths, his fist curled into a ball he turned with a single motion and punched Merlin.
Merlin sprawled backwards onto the ground, powerless as a doll. His body jarring painfully. One part of Arthur was thinking that he was still too skinny, too weak, too fragile from the disease - the other part wanted to tear him apart.
“Did you think I wouldn’t notice? Did you think I couldn’t do this without you and... and... that?” He demanded. Merlin looked up, blood spilling down from his nose and from a split in his lip. Arthur saw the various answers flashing across Merlin’s face, clear as day - he could see him considering which new lie to spin. “Do you really think I’m stupid?”
“Sometimes,” Merlin said angrily, wiping a hand under his nose and smearing the blood across his face as he climbed unsteadily to his feet.
Arthur hit him again, but this time Merlin was ready, he slipped sideways so Arthur’s fist only caught him a glancing blow. Knocking him but not felling him and then Merlin was seizing his shirt and they were struggling together.
It was hardly a fair fight, but for a moment it almost seemed it - it was certainly messy and undignified - as they clung together, hot and breathless. Then Arthur’s fist found Merlin’s jaw and the other boy was staggering backwards.
Arthur followed him, all the hurt and betrayal spilling out, his mind set on destruction and as Merlin looked up he saw those emotions reflected back at him. It didn’t shock him, it almost felt natural that this was what they’d become. He reached for him, joining them in this if in nothing else - his hands almost upon him when Merlin’s eyes turned suddenly golden and Arthur felt every muscle in his body freeze.
He couldn’t move, it was if something was holding him and then whatever it was began to squeeze. Even his throat felt like it would be forced closed - his head threatening to explode. Through pained eyes he could see Merlin, fury etched on his face and then sudden horror, his eyes fading back to blue.
The pain retreated, the invisible grip loosening.
“Arthur, I...” Merlin started, stepping closer.
Without thinking, Arthur seized his shirt, still angry but Merlin’s bloody face was scared and sorry and his rage ebbed away. Instead he stayed for a second, fingers still wrapped in the material, both trembling.
“Why? Why that? You didn’t even think about it, you just reached for that right away. Why?” Arthur wasn’t even sure if he wanted an answer. He didn’t want to know how deeply lost in the evils of magic Merlin had become.
“I-” Merlin began, but Arthur couldn’t listen to it. He shook him again silencing him. Then he pulled him closer until their foreheads were resting together.
“If you keep doing this,” Arthur told him, “if you don’t stop - I won’t be able to save you - to protect you. Please...”
Their eyes met, so close they filled the entire world and locked together.
“I promise,” Merlin said.
PART 2