Fic: windy side of the law
Title: windy side of the law
Author: emei
Fandom: Merlin
Rating: R
Length: 3500 words
Pairing: Arthur/Merlin
Warnings/spoilers: Spoilers for the first season, Ep 5, 10 and 13 in particular.
Summary: Secrets will out, Merlin should know. She has too many of them. (The third part in the Shakespearean heroine!Merlin 'verse.)
Notes: This follows Fire in her hands (originally written for kinkme_merlin ) and its companion Hope Is A Waking Dream. The title comes from Shakespeare, Twelfth Night. All comments are very appreciated!
After the Griffin is slain and Lancelot has left, refusing to take the credit, Arthur is quietly angry and sulks for days. Merlin can’t tell how much of it is for losing a new-found excellent knight, for having been deceived by said knight, and how much it is because he himself failed to kill the Griffin when it evidently was possible. The fact that he’s figured out that Merlin let Lancelot share her bed doesn’t help Arthur’s mood.
They were only sleeping, mind, and Merlin really can’t see what’s so improper about it. Arthur is Not Pleased anyway.
“He still thinks I’m a boy, Arthur!” Merlin exclaims over Arthur’s breakfast tray, exasperated by the latest jab about the tragically insensitive disappearance of her latest paramour. “How could there possibly have been anything going on? Not all of us have beds as big as our egos, you know. Country boys and simpler folks do share beds when necessary, there’s nothing improper about that!”
Arthur smirks. “Are you honestly telling me, Merlin, that you think that indecent things only happen when a man and a woman end up in the same bed?”
“Er,” says Merlin, “Um. I’ll take this to the kitchen, okay!”
She’s pretty sure she’s blushing all over. Arthur catches her with an arm around her waist when she tries to leave, and kisses her light and quick. Merlin balances the tray against the table and says to Arthur’s mouth: “There really wasn’t anything, with Lancelot.”
“I know,” Arthur replies. “Don’t do it again.”
Merlin splutters just a little bit.
---
When they rode to Ealdor Arthur accompanied Merlin on her search for firewood, telling Morgana that Merlin obviously couldn’t be expected to defend himself should anything happen. He had much more faith in Morgana’s skill with a sword and common sense, and therefore he felt duty-bound to leave her and Gwen on their own in the camp.
“Off you go,” said Morgana and looked perhaps a little too knowing.
They made it out of hearing range and then Arthur took Merlin against a tree.
“Thank you,” she whispered to his mouth. “For coming with me.” Arthur draws back and looks serious.
“Merlin. It’s armed men, probably with the training of knights and the ruthlessness of outlaws. You may be passable with a crossbow, but there is no way I’d let you go fight on you own. You’d get yourself killed. And I won’t allow it. You’re my little idiot.”
Merlin thinks about the fact that they’re still far too few to defend Ealdor by swords, and about how if Arthur wasn’t there to see it she could defeat Kanen’s men in a rush of heartbreaking power, how happy she is that he’s doing this for her and for the people who aren’t his. She also thinks that with the lives of Ealdor in the balance, her choice is made already. She can’t say any of it, so she kisses him instead.
The villagers in Ealdor are careful to keep out of the way, shooting her wary glances when they get close. Merlin thinks that they’re considering themselves lucky that the freak left and wondering why she’s back. Only Will reacts openly.
“What the hell, Merlin? What have they done to you?” he asks, and Merlin feels more than sees Gwen’s shock and Morgana’s surprise.
“Nothing. Nobody’s done anything to me, Will.”
Will starts to say something more and Merlin can tell he wants to argue. She knows that quirk of his mouth. So she cuts him off, saying that this is my choice, what I want.
Hunith looks at her lit up with pride. For that alone Merlin would face all of Kanen’s men and anyone who dared object. Arthur is every inch a prince and makes nice with the villagers, distrustful as they are. Gwen follows Morgana closely and seems to be looking at her constantly - studying her body dressed for battle, unrestrained and self-assured in a different way.
The night before the fight, they gather in one of the barns, Arthur talking strategy and trying to convey hope. Jenny, the farmer’s daughter living next door to Hunith, says with her gaze locked in Merlin’s: “If you fight, I’ll fight too.” There’s a spark there, a raw power, intrinsically human, of courage.
“We will fight,” Hunith says, and all of the women step to join her, one by one.
“It’s their village too,” Gwen says. “Their lives at stake.”
Eventually Arthur gives in. He’s not happy about it, and keeps shooting Merlin alternately annoyed and worried gazes.
When it’s just the two of them, in the familiar shadowland of Hunith’s cottage, Merlin tries to re-find her courage and soothe her fears in Arthur’s arms. She rests her cheek on his shoulder and says in almost a whisper: “Whatever happens tomorrow, please don’t think less of me.”
“How could I ever,” says Arthur. “You’re my Merlin, no matter what. Besides, everyone is frightened by battle. You should be. And you should be careful.”
Merlin goes to find Will later, in private. He’s a muddle of distrust and jealousy and confusion. Finally she yells at him that she hadn’t gone skipping off to Camelot for the joy of it and to make him envious. She had to leave, the villagers were too suspicious, and Will knows it. He asks if she trusts them, those nobles. She says yes.
“Do you let them know you?”
“Arthur knows who I am,” Merlin says.
Will knows her too well. “Doesn’t know about your talents, though, does he?”
She fidgets, looks away, can’t answer. She must look worse than she thinks because Will lifts her chin with his thumb and says “Hey there,” like he did when they were children and something had gone wrong in the kind of spectacular way it only did when Merlin was involved. She knows they’ll be all right.
Only then they aren’t because Will’s dying before they have time to be. He’s dying to save Arthur, which really means for you Merlin, for your love and your trust, and hold me it hurts. There’s nothing she can do. The arrow has hit too fast too deep. She feels his life trickling out in drops of blood under her fingers, their childhood disappearing with every breath he takes. And then he gives her freedom, trading his right to be remembered in honour to free her from suspicion. He tells Arthur that he’s the sorcerer. Arthur’s face darkens. Merlin folds over Wills shoulders and cries, whispers a last word of love in his ear as he thrashes once more before falling still.
The ride back to Camelot is quiet. Merlin falls into herself. They stop for the night and Merlin sits cross-legged in front of the fire, watching the shapes she thinks none of the others see. Kanen’s men snapping like twigs for her magic. The arrow hurtling towards Will’s chest. A hubbub of chickens fleeing from a fire Merlin never figured out just how she started, long ago. Will running like the devil was after him, his arms full of fruit. Merlin’s eyes are dry and itchy from the smoke.
“Come sleep,” Arthur says and draws her down on his bedroll. She feels like a shell in his embrace, empty.
---
Morgana’s dreams are visible in the smudged bruises of her eyes.
Merlin tells Arthur she loves him before she leaves for the Isle of the Blessed. He looks at her with tender, tired wonder. Perhaps it’s cruel to leave him like this, when he lies regaining his life, with a promise of commitment that she knows will end a few hours away.
The death of Nimueh rains down on her skin, heavy in the storm. Magic splinters, disintegrates, and reforms. The pattern changes. It fills Merlin to the brim, threatens to overflow. She feels like a too small vessel for this power. It could pour out through her skin, but it doesn’t. She laughs and twirls, the feeling explosively heady.
Merlin knows this magic will not hold silent for long.
It doesn’t.
---
The beast is at the gates of the castle. A child hangs like a broken doll in its claws. Merlin runs across the courtyard as Arthur readies the knights to charge. The beast rears up to its full height and aims a frightening blow towards Arthur and for a moment the fate of Camelot hangs suspended like Merlin’s magic in a glittering web over their heads.
Then blue flames throttle the beast and it crumbles to the ground. A small body rolls over the cobblestones, released from its claws. Arthur turns slowly and stares at Merlin, who’s standing in the gateway with her hands stretched out and the taste of magic on her lips. Behind Arthur a woman rushes forward to the child and falls to her knees, crying, and commotion breaks out. Merlin disappears into the shadows. She know she should be devastated, terrified.
The magic within her feels deeply satisfied.
---
When Arthur finds her she’s packed all of her belongings and is ready to leave Gauis’ chambers.
“Be angry,” she tells him. “Rage against my treason and my lies for all to hear. Be furious and betrayed.”
“Merlin!” he says and takes her hands in an iron grip. “You. I… You saved lives. That is not treason.”
“This isn’t your secret. It’s my burden. I won’t place it on your shoulders.” And that is what she’s been telling herself ever since letting Arthur know her first secret. She’s not sure any longer if it’s a valid defence for her deceit.
“Do you trust me so little,” Arthur says and it’s not really a question.
“I don’t want my prince to commit treason to his king and country. Please don’t make me the reason for that.”
Arthur hesitates, says: “Don’t go.”
Merlin has to close her eyes to able to say: “Soon, someone will have told the king. Be furious. But remember me.” She bends the world around her and opens her eyes in the stables. She’ll dream of that moment for years to come - the look on Arthur’s face that she refused to see. She’ll dream him enraged, betrayed, hateful, sad, and one day she will dream of Arthur looking indifferent and feel as though the world was shattering.
Merlin cannot find Gwen or Morgana to say farewell. It’s a risk she’s not willing to take - to deepen the suspicion that will fall on them as her shadow.
She steals a horse and rides from Camelot hunched over its neck. She never raises her head to look back at the white castle walls. She’s driven apart by the visceral pull back (to Camelot, to Arthur) and the equally strong push away. It’s a wild chase without goal or prey across the lands.
---
Merlin keeps to her old country boy disguise. It’s useful, inconspicuous. At times, she helps it along with a bit of magic. It’s only glamour, illusion, but she’s found that appearing slightly taller and more muscular makes all the difference. It can get her a few days hard work at a farm, in exchange for bread and a place to sleep. It also makes passing thugs less likely to find her a suitable victim for a quick and easy robbery. Not that she has much worth stealing, anyway. She’d rather avoid the confrontation. Or, well, she’d like to pick the place and time for it herself. Once she’s decided which thief is a thief made from starvation, and which is made from greed.
She passes through Ealdor only in the night, tries to read the village like a storybook, to find signs in the buildings that’ll tell her how the inhabitants have fared. The crops seem good, this year. They’ll grow faster when she’s left, a bit better nourished and protected. She sneaks around Hunith’s cottage - repairs a hole in the roof, quietly, de-weeds the garden and leaves three apples tied together with wildflowers by the door, and thinks that Hunith’ll know it was her.
---
The autumn is turning towards winter cold. There’s not much farmwork to be done and Merlin is tired of freezing in the forest nights. She turns her spare pair of trousers into a skirt. There’s more fabric needed for the skirt than the trousers, and there’s only so much magic can do, so it turns out a bit flimsy, but it’ll have to do. She lets her breasts out (it’s an odd, half-forgotten feeling, to have them unbound like this), and wraps a neckerchief around her head to cover her too short hair. In a tavern in one of the bigger villages on the outskirts of Camelot’s domains, she gets herself a job.
She’d thought it would be freeing to openly be a girl again, to not have to try so hard to keep up appearances. It isn’t. Playing the barmaid is just a different part, another cover to keep up, and one she likes less.
She’s picking up the empty cups from the old men’s table and avoiding their hands when someone new comes in. He’s not from around here. He has the air of a traveller, and there’s something familiar in the way he walks. He sinks down on a bench by an empty table, tiredly, and she can see his face. Lancelot. Here, of all places.
“An ale, if you’d please,” he says.
She pours it and sets it down in front of him. He looks up, does a double take, and a third.
“Merlin?”
“Yes. Hello,” she replies, smiling.
“Funny nickname you’ve got there, hun,” old man Verner calls out.
“Indeed,” she says, wryly.
“What are you - how did you...?” Lancelot looks a bit dumbfounded.
“Tell you what. Meet me when I’m finished here, and we’ll talk properly.”
“Ooh,” whoops old Verner, “The lad’s a lucky fella!”
Lancelot sits at his table, brooding over his ale until Merlin has closed up for the night and shooed all the old men out. They take a stroll outside the village, away from curious ears.
“Is this the real you?” Lancelot asks. Merlin tries not to feel a little offended.
“Well. I was born like this, if that’s what you mean. Um. Not literally born in a dress, of course, but you know. Yeah.”
Lancelot looks conflicted.
“This isn’t any more real than Merlin the manservant, tough. They’re both me,” she adds.
“You let me share your bed!” blurts Lancelot.
“I did. And Arthur was so annoyed when he figured it out, you have no idea.”
And he blanches at that. “I will never be able to show my face in front of him again.”
“Oh, come off it. Arthur wasn’t really angry with you. He can be a bit of an egocentric, possessive prat sometimes, that’s all.” It comes out more wistful than she’d intended.
Lancelot really does wear his heart on his sleeve, his thoughts on his face, Merlin thinks. He’s staring at her now. “You and the prince were… Oh gods. Gods.”
There’s no news of Camelot in the stories Lancelot has to tell. (All bandits, monsters, poor starving folks.) He didn’t even know that Merlin’s wanted for high treason. She’s sure that “Merlin, son of Hunith” is quite high on the list of criminals and sorcerers the King’s men search and warn for when they ride out patrolling.
The old men heard Lancelot calling her Merlin, and they will remember it, she knows. It’s impossible to stay here much longer, too dangerous. If Arthur hears about an odd girl with too short hair and a smart mouth, nicknamed Merlin, he’ll know. Oh, how he’ll know. She needs to leave. Lancelot feels guilty and insists that they keep company. Merlin tells the owner of the tavern that she’s going to travel with her cousin, home to his sickly parents. It’s a decent story. The whole village probably thinks she’s leaving with a lost and re-found lover, anyway.
Having company on the road is a warming feeling, like coming home to something long forgotten. Lancelot is kind and nice and has many new interesting stories to tell. But he won’t stop trying to be chivalrous to her, and it is slowly driving Merlin crazy. Eventually (when he’s offered to carry her over a tiny creek in the woods) she yells at him that she isn’t a lady at court, damn it, she’s a sorceress on the run wanted for treason, if he hasn’t noticed, and she can bloody well walk across rivers and take care of her own ass, thankyou very much.
Lancelot doesn’t quite get it. Oh, he tries, he’s kinder to her than ever, but it is only more infuriating, and how can you tell someone that you’ll start to hate them if they don’t stop being so nice to you?
They part ways shortly after. In a small village there’s talk about raiding brigands further to the east. Lancelot feels compelled to search them out and fight them: Merlin encourages him. She also firmly insists that she needs to travel westwards. She isn’t worried for Lancelot’s sake, she’s sure he can handle brigands. And besides, he would be a needed addition to Arthur’s court and then it’s better if he doesn’t get himself a reputation as one who keeps company with outlaws and sorcerers.
She herself is also less memorable a traveller on her own in country boy clothes, than as a girl travelling with an unusually brave and beautiful young knight. She does not want a reputation.
---
Merlin hikes through woods and over hills, feeling alone, wild, free. Once she ventures close enough to Camelot to see its white walls and turrets in the distance. She bites the back of her hand hard and has to force herself to turn away. The pull is still there, as visceral as ever, to Camelot, to Arthur, Arthur, Arthur. His big crinkling grin, his sure hands, his laugh. To have him burning like fire in her hands again, her warrior prince. So close, so impossibly far away.
---
There are many stories told about Camelot. One tells of a king, fiercely protective of his people. The enemy took his queen and spread sorrow throughout the land. The enemy is a snake in the grass, always waiting to strike, to sink its teeth into a child’s unprotected ankle, spreading its poison. Corrupting. The story tells the people to be as watchful as the king, to never let their guard down. The traitor might be anyone, anywhere.
Another version is told more quietly, further from Camelot. It tells of a king mad with hunger for power, overcome by jealousy of those who wield a force he could never make his. It tells of traitorous simple men turned killers, of persecution, of innocent children murdered. It whispers of the superior power that will rise again one day, soon, and give its people their rightful place above mere men like the tyrant king.
Merlin tells a third story, in the light of a campfire or in the dusky corner of an inn, in the sunlight of a village square. She tells of the balance of the world that must always be upheld, of the king that wasn’t told so. The king lost his queen and grieved and raged, and undertook a misguided quest for justice. The king suffered and so did his people. Then she tells of a prince, golden and fair, the bravest warrior in the land, who cares for all no matter their station. She tries to tell a story of hope and change to come. She wills it to be true, still.
---
There are rumours, just whispers, spreading through the country. They reach Camelot as gossip in the kitchens. Gwen tells Arthur what she hears, the kind of stories no one dares repeat in the presence of Uther’s son. There’s talk of a mighty sorcerer, with a power not seen in these lands for many years, concealed in the body of an ordinary boy. Others say it is a powerful sorceress travelling from village to village to heal the ill and soothe the restless minds. The stories converge. They tell of a sorcerer neither man nor woman, a creature of magic, of the Old Religion, a like of the fay. Where the sorcerer passes, the crops turn bountiful; the grasses of the hills lush and the fires burn brighter in the evenings. Not until the stranger has left do the villagers realise what has happened. The sorcerer never gives his name, demands no payment for his help.
No one mentions how the appearance of the sorcerer coincides with when the prince’s manservant disappeared, accused of treason.
Arthur waits.
---
One day, Merlin tells herself like a mantra when she’s forcing Camelot to disappear again into the blue distance of dusk behind her. One day. She travels, she waits. One day, to Camelot, to Arthur. It will come.
Author: emei
Fandom: Merlin
Rating: R
Length: 3500 words
Pairing: Arthur/Merlin
Warnings/spoilers: Spoilers for the first season, Ep 5, 10 and 13 in particular.
Summary: Secrets will out, Merlin should know. She has too many of them. (The third part in the Shakespearean heroine!Merlin 'verse.)
Notes: This follows Fire in her hands (originally written for kinkme_merlin ) and its companion Hope Is A Waking Dream. The title comes from Shakespeare, Twelfth Night. All comments are very appreciated!
After the Griffin is slain and Lancelot has left, refusing to take the credit, Arthur is quietly angry and sulks for days. Merlin can’t tell how much of it is for losing a new-found excellent knight, for having been deceived by said knight, and how much it is because he himself failed to kill the Griffin when it evidently was possible. The fact that he’s figured out that Merlin let Lancelot share her bed doesn’t help Arthur’s mood.
They were only sleeping, mind, and Merlin really can’t see what’s so improper about it. Arthur is Not Pleased anyway.
“He still thinks I’m a boy, Arthur!” Merlin exclaims over Arthur’s breakfast tray, exasperated by the latest jab about the tragically insensitive disappearance of her latest paramour. “How could there possibly have been anything going on? Not all of us have beds as big as our egos, you know. Country boys and simpler folks do share beds when necessary, there’s nothing improper about that!”
Arthur smirks. “Are you honestly telling me, Merlin, that you think that indecent things only happen when a man and a woman end up in the same bed?”
“Er,” says Merlin, “Um. I’ll take this to the kitchen, okay!”
She’s pretty sure she’s blushing all over. Arthur catches her with an arm around her waist when she tries to leave, and kisses her light and quick. Merlin balances the tray against the table and says to Arthur’s mouth: “There really wasn’t anything, with Lancelot.”
“I know,” Arthur replies. “Don’t do it again.”
Merlin splutters just a little bit.
---
When they rode to Ealdor Arthur accompanied Merlin on her search for firewood, telling Morgana that Merlin obviously couldn’t be expected to defend himself should anything happen. He had much more faith in Morgana’s skill with a sword and common sense, and therefore he felt duty-bound to leave her and Gwen on their own in the camp.
“Off you go,” said Morgana and looked perhaps a little too knowing.
They made it out of hearing range and then Arthur took Merlin against a tree.
“Thank you,” she whispered to his mouth. “For coming with me.” Arthur draws back and looks serious.
“Merlin. It’s armed men, probably with the training of knights and the ruthlessness of outlaws. You may be passable with a crossbow, but there is no way I’d let you go fight on you own. You’d get yourself killed. And I won’t allow it. You’re my little idiot.”
Merlin thinks about the fact that they’re still far too few to defend Ealdor by swords, and about how if Arthur wasn’t there to see it she could defeat Kanen’s men in a rush of heartbreaking power, how happy she is that he’s doing this for her and for the people who aren’t his. She also thinks that with the lives of Ealdor in the balance, her choice is made already. She can’t say any of it, so she kisses him instead.
The villagers in Ealdor are careful to keep out of the way, shooting her wary glances when they get close. Merlin thinks that they’re considering themselves lucky that the freak left and wondering why she’s back. Only Will reacts openly.
“What the hell, Merlin? What have they done to you?” he asks, and Merlin feels more than sees Gwen’s shock and Morgana’s surprise.
“Nothing. Nobody’s done anything to me, Will.”
Will starts to say something more and Merlin can tell he wants to argue. She knows that quirk of his mouth. So she cuts him off, saying that this is my choice, what I want.
Hunith looks at her lit up with pride. For that alone Merlin would face all of Kanen’s men and anyone who dared object. Arthur is every inch a prince and makes nice with the villagers, distrustful as they are. Gwen follows Morgana closely and seems to be looking at her constantly - studying her body dressed for battle, unrestrained and self-assured in a different way.
The night before the fight, they gather in one of the barns, Arthur talking strategy and trying to convey hope. Jenny, the farmer’s daughter living next door to Hunith, says with her gaze locked in Merlin’s: “If you fight, I’ll fight too.” There’s a spark there, a raw power, intrinsically human, of courage.
“We will fight,” Hunith says, and all of the women step to join her, one by one.
“It’s their village too,” Gwen says. “Their lives at stake.”
Eventually Arthur gives in. He’s not happy about it, and keeps shooting Merlin alternately annoyed and worried gazes.
When it’s just the two of them, in the familiar shadowland of Hunith’s cottage, Merlin tries to re-find her courage and soothe her fears in Arthur’s arms. She rests her cheek on his shoulder and says in almost a whisper: “Whatever happens tomorrow, please don’t think less of me.”
“How could I ever,” says Arthur. “You’re my Merlin, no matter what. Besides, everyone is frightened by battle. You should be. And you should be careful.”
Merlin goes to find Will later, in private. He’s a muddle of distrust and jealousy and confusion. Finally she yells at him that she hadn’t gone skipping off to Camelot for the joy of it and to make him envious. She had to leave, the villagers were too suspicious, and Will knows it. He asks if she trusts them, those nobles. She says yes.
“Do you let them know you?”
“Arthur knows who I am,” Merlin says.
Will knows her too well. “Doesn’t know about your talents, though, does he?”
She fidgets, looks away, can’t answer. She must look worse than she thinks because Will lifts her chin with his thumb and says “Hey there,” like he did when they were children and something had gone wrong in the kind of spectacular way it only did when Merlin was involved. She knows they’ll be all right.
Only then they aren’t because Will’s dying before they have time to be. He’s dying to save Arthur, which really means for you Merlin, for your love and your trust, and hold me it hurts. There’s nothing she can do. The arrow has hit too fast too deep. She feels his life trickling out in drops of blood under her fingers, their childhood disappearing with every breath he takes. And then he gives her freedom, trading his right to be remembered in honour to free her from suspicion. He tells Arthur that he’s the sorcerer. Arthur’s face darkens. Merlin folds over Wills shoulders and cries, whispers a last word of love in his ear as he thrashes once more before falling still.
The ride back to Camelot is quiet. Merlin falls into herself. They stop for the night and Merlin sits cross-legged in front of the fire, watching the shapes she thinks none of the others see. Kanen’s men snapping like twigs for her magic. The arrow hurtling towards Will’s chest. A hubbub of chickens fleeing from a fire Merlin never figured out just how she started, long ago. Will running like the devil was after him, his arms full of fruit. Merlin’s eyes are dry and itchy from the smoke.
“Come sleep,” Arthur says and draws her down on his bedroll. She feels like a shell in his embrace, empty.
---
Morgana’s dreams are visible in the smudged bruises of her eyes.
Merlin tells Arthur she loves him before she leaves for the Isle of the Blessed. He looks at her with tender, tired wonder. Perhaps it’s cruel to leave him like this, when he lies regaining his life, with a promise of commitment that she knows will end a few hours away.
The death of Nimueh rains down on her skin, heavy in the storm. Magic splinters, disintegrates, and reforms. The pattern changes. It fills Merlin to the brim, threatens to overflow. She feels like a too small vessel for this power. It could pour out through her skin, but it doesn’t. She laughs and twirls, the feeling explosively heady.
Merlin knows this magic will not hold silent for long.
It doesn’t.
---
The beast is at the gates of the castle. A child hangs like a broken doll in its claws. Merlin runs across the courtyard as Arthur readies the knights to charge. The beast rears up to its full height and aims a frightening blow towards Arthur and for a moment the fate of Camelot hangs suspended like Merlin’s magic in a glittering web over their heads.
Then blue flames throttle the beast and it crumbles to the ground. A small body rolls over the cobblestones, released from its claws. Arthur turns slowly and stares at Merlin, who’s standing in the gateway with her hands stretched out and the taste of magic on her lips. Behind Arthur a woman rushes forward to the child and falls to her knees, crying, and commotion breaks out. Merlin disappears into the shadows. She know she should be devastated, terrified.
The magic within her feels deeply satisfied.
---
When Arthur finds her she’s packed all of her belongings and is ready to leave Gauis’ chambers.
“Be angry,” she tells him. “Rage against my treason and my lies for all to hear. Be furious and betrayed.”
“Merlin!” he says and takes her hands in an iron grip. “You. I… You saved lives. That is not treason.”
“This isn’t your secret. It’s my burden. I won’t place it on your shoulders.” And that is what she’s been telling herself ever since letting Arthur know her first secret. She’s not sure any longer if it’s a valid defence for her deceit.
“Do you trust me so little,” Arthur says and it’s not really a question.
“I don’t want my prince to commit treason to his king and country. Please don’t make me the reason for that.”
Arthur hesitates, says: “Don’t go.”
Merlin has to close her eyes to able to say: “Soon, someone will have told the king. Be furious. But remember me.” She bends the world around her and opens her eyes in the stables. She’ll dream of that moment for years to come - the look on Arthur’s face that she refused to see. She’ll dream him enraged, betrayed, hateful, sad, and one day she will dream of Arthur looking indifferent and feel as though the world was shattering.
Merlin cannot find Gwen or Morgana to say farewell. It’s a risk she’s not willing to take - to deepen the suspicion that will fall on them as her shadow.
She steals a horse and rides from Camelot hunched over its neck. She never raises her head to look back at the white castle walls. She’s driven apart by the visceral pull back (to Camelot, to Arthur) and the equally strong push away. It’s a wild chase without goal or prey across the lands.
---
Merlin keeps to her old country boy disguise. It’s useful, inconspicuous. At times, she helps it along with a bit of magic. It’s only glamour, illusion, but she’s found that appearing slightly taller and more muscular makes all the difference. It can get her a few days hard work at a farm, in exchange for bread and a place to sleep. It also makes passing thugs less likely to find her a suitable victim for a quick and easy robbery. Not that she has much worth stealing, anyway. She’d rather avoid the confrontation. Or, well, she’d like to pick the place and time for it herself. Once she’s decided which thief is a thief made from starvation, and which is made from greed.
She passes through Ealdor only in the night, tries to read the village like a storybook, to find signs in the buildings that’ll tell her how the inhabitants have fared. The crops seem good, this year. They’ll grow faster when she’s left, a bit better nourished and protected. She sneaks around Hunith’s cottage - repairs a hole in the roof, quietly, de-weeds the garden and leaves three apples tied together with wildflowers by the door, and thinks that Hunith’ll know it was her.
---
The autumn is turning towards winter cold. There’s not much farmwork to be done and Merlin is tired of freezing in the forest nights. She turns her spare pair of trousers into a skirt. There’s more fabric needed for the skirt than the trousers, and there’s only so much magic can do, so it turns out a bit flimsy, but it’ll have to do. She lets her breasts out (it’s an odd, half-forgotten feeling, to have them unbound like this), and wraps a neckerchief around her head to cover her too short hair. In a tavern in one of the bigger villages on the outskirts of Camelot’s domains, she gets herself a job.
She’d thought it would be freeing to openly be a girl again, to not have to try so hard to keep up appearances. It isn’t. Playing the barmaid is just a different part, another cover to keep up, and one she likes less.
She’s picking up the empty cups from the old men’s table and avoiding their hands when someone new comes in. He’s not from around here. He has the air of a traveller, and there’s something familiar in the way he walks. He sinks down on a bench by an empty table, tiredly, and she can see his face. Lancelot. Here, of all places.
“An ale, if you’d please,” he says.
She pours it and sets it down in front of him. He looks up, does a double take, and a third.
“Merlin?”
“Yes. Hello,” she replies, smiling.
“Funny nickname you’ve got there, hun,” old man Verner calls out.
“Indeed,” she says, wryly.
“What are you - how did you...?” Lancelot looks a bit dumbfounded.
“Tell you what. Meet me when I’m finished here, and we’ll talk properly.”
“Ooh,” whoops old Verner, “The lad’s a lucky fella!”
Lancelot sits at his table, brooding over his ale until Merlin has closed up for the night and shooed all the old men out. They take a stroll outside the village, away from curious ears.
“Is this the real you?” Lancelot asks. Merlin tries not to feel a little offended.
“Well. I was born like this, if that’s what you mean. Um. Not literally born in a dress, of course, but you know. Yeah.”
Lancelot looks conflicted.
“This isn’t any more real than Merlin the manservant, tough. They’re both me,” she adds.
“You let me share your bed!” blurts Lancelot.
“I did. And Arthur was so annoyed when he figured it out, you have no idea.”
And he blanches at that. “I will never be able to show my face in front of him again.”
“Oh, come off it. Arthur wasn’t really angry with you. He can be a bit of an egocentric, possessive prat sometimes, that’s all.” It comes out more wistful than she’d intended.
Lancelot really does wear his heart on his sleeve, his thoughts on his face, Merlin thinks. He’s staring at her now. “You and the prince were… Oh gods. Gods.”
There’s no news of Camelot in the stories Lancelot has to tell. (All bandits, monsters, poor starving folks.) He didn’t even know that Merlin’s wanted for high treason. She’s sure that “Merlin, son of Hunith” is quite high on the list of criminals and sorcerers the King’s men search and warn for when they ride out patrolling.
The old men heard Lancelot calling her Merlin, and they will remember it, she knows. It’s impossible to stay here much longer, too dangerous. If Arthur hears about an odd girl with too short hair and a smart mouth, nicknamed Merlin, he’ll know. Oh, how he’ll know. She needs to leave. Lancelot feels guilty and insists that they keep company. Merlin tells the owner of the tavern that she’s going to travel with her cousin, home to his sickly parents. It’s a decent story. The whole village probably thinks she’s leaving with a lost and re-found lover, anyway.
Having company on the road is a warming feeling, like coming home to something long forgotten. Lancelot is kind and nice and has many new interesting stories to tell. But he won’t stop trying to be chivalrous to her, and it is slowly driving Merlin crazy. Eventually (when he’s offered to carry her over a tiny creek in the woods) she yells at him that she isn’t a lady at court, damn it, she’s a sorceress on the run wanted for treason, if he hasn’t noticed, and she can bloody well walk across rivers and take care of her own ass, thankyou very much.
Lancelot doesn’t quite get it. Oh, he tries, he’s kinder to her than ever, but it is only more infuriating, and how can you tell someone that you’ll start to hate them if they don’t stop being so nice to you?
They part ways shortly after. In a small village there’s talk about raiding brigands further to the east. Lancelot feels compelled to search them out and fight them: Merlin encourages him. She also firmly insists that she needs to travel westwards. She isn’t worried for Lancelot’s sake, she’s sure he can handle brigands. And besides, he would be a needed addition to Arthur’s court and then it’s better if he doesn’t get himself a reputation as one who keeps company with outlaws and sorcerers.
She herself is also less memorable a traveller on her own in country boy clothes, than as a girl travelling with an unusually brave and beautiful young knight. She does not want a reputation.
---
Merlin hikes through woods and over hills, feeling alone, wild, free. Once she ventures close enough to Camelot to see its white walls and turrets in the distance. She bites the back of her hand hard and has to force herself to turn away. The pull is still there, as visceral as ever, to Camelot, to Arthur, Arthur, Arthur. His big crinkling grin, his sure hands, his laugh. To have him burning like fire in her hands again, her warrior prince. So close, so impossibly far away.
---
There are many stories told about Camelot. One tells of a king, fiercely protective of his people. The enemy took his queen and spread sorrow throughout the land. The enemy is a snake in the grass, always waiting to strike, to sink its teeth into a child’s unprotected ankle, spreading its poison. Corrupting. The story tells the people to be as watchful as the king, to never let their guard down. The traitor might be anyone, anywhere.
Another version is told more quietly, further from Camelot. It tells of a king mad with hunger for power, overcome by jealousy of those who wield a force he could never make his. It tells of traitorous simple men turned killers, of persecution, of innocent children murdered. It whispers of the superior power that will rise again one day, soon, and give its people their rightful place above mere men like the tyrant king.
Merlin tells a third story, in the light of a campfire or in the dusky corner of an inn, in the sunlight of a village square. She tells of the balance of the world that must always be upheld, of the king that wasn’t told so. The king lost his queen and grieved and raged, and undertook a misguided quest for justice. The king suffered and so did his people. Then she tells of a prince, golden and fair, the bravest warrior in the land, who cares for all no matter their station. She tries to tell a story of hope and change to come. She wills it to be true, still.
---
There are rumours, just whispers, spreading through the country. They reach Camelot as gossip in the kitchens. Gwen tells Arthur what she hears, the kind of stories no one dares repeat in the presence of Uther’s son. There’s talk of a mighty sorcerer, with a power not seen in these lands for many years, concealed in the body of an ordinary boy. Others say it is a powerful sorceress travelling from village to village to heal the ill and soothe the restless minds. The stories converge. They tell of a sorcerer neither man nor woman, a creature of magic, of the Old Religion, a like of the fay. Where the sorcerer passes, the crops turn bountiful; the grasses of the hills lush and the fires burn brighter in the evenings. Not until the stranger has left do the villagers realise what has happened. The sorcerer never gives his name, demands no payment for his help.
No one mentions how the appearance of the sorcerer coincides with when the prince’s manservant disappeared, accused of treason.
Arthur waits.
---
One day, Merlin tells herself like a mantra when she’s forcing Camelot to disappear again into the blue distance of dusk behind her. One day. She travels, she waits. One day, to Camelot, to Arthur. It will come.