lady_ragnell (![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png)
lady_ragnell) wrote2010-08-25 03:06 pm
lady_ragnell) wrote2010-08-25 03:06 pm
Entry tags:
Less Than One Blow
Title: Less Than One Blow
Summary: Season 1 as it might have been if Merlin were born female.
A/N: From the kinkme_merlin prompt: 16 year old Merlin is captured by bandits on the road to Camelot for the first time. 22 year old Arthur, more arrogant than ever, saves her. After getting yelled at for his efforts, he falls hard and begins to "court" her, while she mostly just thinks he's an idiot. Normally I'm not a big fan of genderswitch things but the prompt sort of attacked me and wouldn't let go, and I'm very glad of that.
Disclaimer: I do not own Merlin.
“Let me go!” a girl shrieks from the woods, shrill enough to make Arthur’s horse jump. He holds a hand up, halting his knights where they ride. They’re meant to be searching for the sorceress who had disappeared from the courtyard earlier that day, but Arthur has never been one to ignore a lady in distress, and there are always bandits in the woods preying on any girl foolhardy enough to go out on her own.
“Forward. It shouldn’t take too long,” Arthur whispers, and wheels his horse off the road, hand already on his hilt.
When Arthur bursts into the clearing, the knights following him as he’d known they would, there are only four bandits, child’s play for his well-armed and well-trained men. One is rifling eagerly through a pack, one has a loaded crossbow that Pellinor is rapidly convincing him not to use, and two are holding a struggling, skinny village girl, one who’s spitting abuse at them.
Arthur rides at them full-tilt, sword through the taller bandit’s neck before he even turns around. The girl lets out a half-strangled screech and stamps hard on the other bandit’s foot. And then has the temerity to turn around and glower at Arthur while his knights dispatch the rest of the bandits quite easily.
Leon is the first to turn to the girl after they’ve all stopped panting with the quick adrenaline of unexpected battle. “Are you all right, miss?”
Arthur doesn’t consider himself an arrogant man, but Camelot is his country, and they are less than an hour’s ride from his castle and his city. He expects to be noted, acknowledged. This girl, though, all impassioned blue eyes and cheekbones and messy black braids (and reminding him strangely of Morgana a few years ago, before his father insisted she be a lady, when her fire still ran hot and on the surface and not in the cool mockery she shows him now) is glaring at all of them without a hint of fear or respect. “I had it under control.”
The girl’s words are unexpected, not to mention ridiculous when it’s clear that a child could probably snap her in half, and Arthur can’t help the laugh that bubbles out. She transfers the whole weight of her glare to him, and the only reason he manages not to quail is because he spent the morning with Morgana in a temper and then the afternoon with his father in one after the sorceress disappeared. She couldn’t be half as intimidating. “They could have taken you apart in one blow!” he manages after a moment.
“I could have taken them apart with less,” she spits, and straightens her gown, not seeming to notice the blood staining it. She strides over to Owain, who’s repacking her bag as best he can, though it doesn’t seem to contain much. “If you’ve all quite finished poking your noses where they aren’t wanted, you can get back to your business, as I’m sure it’s very important.”
“You could thank us,” says Arthur, and ignores Leon’s disapproving look. They can discuss chivalry later, when there aren’t village girls complaining about being rescued.
“Oh, well, of course, my lord,” she says with the sort of vicious sarcasm he doesn’t even allow Morgana these days, “I prostrate myself at your feet with gratitude.”
Arthur raises an eyebrow. “I don’t see you walking on your knees,” he says, and right, well, perhaps now he does deserve Leon’s pointed cough, because there’s a difference between lack of chivalry and outright rudeness. Still, he blusters on. “And actually, it’s more correctly ‘sire’ or ‘your highness,’ not ‘my lord.’”
There is a long moment of silence, and then the girl speaks again. “Oh, bollocks.”
*
Merlin is having a very trying day. It was meant to be a good one, which makes everything even more trying. She was due to arrive in Camelot in the morning sometime, to find her mother’s old friend Gaius, but was running late because she’d decided going through the woods might be safer for a girl alone than walking the main roads. And it was much safer, until she stumbled right into a bandit camp.
That wouldn’t have been so bad, really. Merlin knows her power, and while she prefers to use it to heal, or to do silly little things for her mother or for Will, she would have had no trouble dropping the bandits in a hole in the middle of the forest with their trousers tied in knots. She was about to do so, even, when her “rescuers” showed up, and that plan went right to hell.
Hunith had told her daughter a hundred times to be careful in Camelot. “I’m only sending you, Merlin, because I trust Gaius to look after you. Your powers aren’t safe in a town like Ealdor, but they’ll get you killed in Camelot if you aren’t careful.” Merlin asked each time why she was being sent there, then, instead of to distant cousins at Cendred’s court, where sorcery is at least accepted, if not loved. Her mother never answered her, and now it’s too late, and Merlin has caught the attention of the prince of Camelot before entering the city’s walls.
She is, in fact, sitting on his horse. She’d told them to go on, she had no need of assistance, really, thank you, and his knights seemed inclined to agree, one of them telling Prince Arthur darkly that the sorceress will get away (making Merlin’s throat close off in panic that the idiot of a prince misinterpreted, assuring her that the witch would be found, there was no need to worry). The prince, however, asserts (probably accurately, Merlin admits grudgingly) that she’d disappeared from the courtyard, and if they haven’t found her by now, they likely won’t anytime soon. And then gives her a frankly terrifying look and says that anyway, there’s a maiden to escort to the city’s walls, and wouldn’t she--what was her name?--get up on his horse and allow him to escort her?
Despite her objections, which were numerous and probably louder than was decorous, Merlin is still sitting in front of the prince on his horse while he cheerfully tells her about all the sights, since she’d informed him that she’s new to the kingdom, visiting Gaius (“yes, of course I know him, he’s the Court Physician, and you must be the new apprentice he was mentioning”). He delivers her, under his knights’ disapproving and watchful gazes, to Gaius’s door, and the old physician raises his eyebrow at her while he invites her in.
Later, after she effortlessly keeps a tumble of glassware from meeting its end after jostling a table, she discovers that Gaius has his eyebrow raised more often than he doesn’t.
She settles into Camelot a little too easily, despite the voice she thinks she hears calling to her in the night. She delivers remedies to Gaius’s patients and studies the books he sets in front of her, determined to be a good apprentice even if she’s only ever had the talent for getting into trouble. She meets Gwen, maid to the king’s ward, who is immediately friendly, when she delivers a remedy to prevent Lady Morgana’s nightmares. She sees the idiot prince again, throwing knives at a target that a man is still holding, and almost stops him. Before she can, one of his knights jostles his shoulder and nods in her direction. She suspects he catches her glare, but she loses herself in the crowd before he can take so much as a step in her direction and goes to deliver a tonic to Lady Helen, a new arrival who sets Merlin’s teeth on edge, though she couldn’t say why.
(The voice calling out to her turns out to be a dragon, who seems a bit shocked when she arrives, like he wasn’t expecting her--like he wasn’t summoning her, even. And he keeps calling her “young warlock” before correcting himself, and yes, Merlin is flat-chested, but she’s also wearing a skirt. Perhaps the dragon just has terrible eyesight to go along with the fact that it is obviously insane and has a great many very disturbing conjectures on her future with the Idiot Prince.
Two sides of the same coin indeed.)
*
Arthur sits on the floor and tries to look anything but dumbfounded. His father is staring down at him, there is a dead sorceress who just tried to kill him, and he is practically in Merlin’s lap. Because she pulled him out of the way of a flying knife. And is not covered in cobwebs, oddly enough. And looks rather tempting in what is obviously her best dress, even if she is wearing an ill-advised kerchief over her dark braids. “You saved my life!” he accuses.
“Don’t be an ass, Arthur,” hisses Morgana, regaining her equilibrium unnervingly fast and shaking the king out of his stare at the pair on the floor to glare at her.
As always, Morgana’s disdain moves Arthur into action, and he half-leaps to his feet and offers Merlin his hand. She stares at it like it’s a snake and stands on her own, brushing off her dress and giving his father a panicked look when he comes closer. She’s certainly a nervous little thing. “You saved my son’s life,” Uther declares for all the world to hear, and she turns bright pink, which clashes horribly with her red kerchief. “How can I ever reward you?”
Arthur bites his tongue, because for one glorious second he remembers that he’s currently without a personal servant and the thought of Merlin’s glares and bright blue eyes and graceful hands at close quarters with him every day is tempting, and then he remembers that his father has strict views on taking advantage of servants and propriety and his vague hopes are dashed.
Merlin, for her part, still looks terrified. “Oh, really, your Majesty, it was just ... I was just ... it was instinct.”
“Nonsense,” says Morgana, stepping forward with her most terrifying grin. “Arthur would have been pinned to his chair if it weren’t for you.” Merlin looks a bit green. Arthur feels a bit green, so he can’t blame her. “It’s Merlin, isn’t it? Gaius’s new apprentice?” Merlin nods, as if she isn’t sure if she wants to admit to that. Morgana turns to Uther. “Gaius’s quarters certainly aren’t large, and if she’s to be a physician someday she’ll need some of her own. Perhaps a place to stay would be a suitable reward.”
Arthur doesn’t know what Morgana is planning, but he imagines it’s going to end badly. Especially when she makes a point of telling him where the room is.
For a while, it seems he can’t turn around without seeing Merlin and her stupid kerchief and her skirts a few inches too short because she’s several years younger than him and growing out of her clothes still, whether she’s chatting with Gwen at the well or delivering potions or ... or standing behind Morgana when Morgana stands tall in the middle of a tournament and accuses Sir Valiant of using sorcery to win. Sir Valiant who had pinched her right in front of everyone when she was serving at a banquet, and that alone makes Arthur long to face the man in the tournament finals and grind him into dust.
The whole incident turns embarrassing, with everyone thinking Arthur is hiding behind Morgana’s skirts and Merlin coming to his room to shout at him and tell him to trust her (which he does, though he’s not sure why) and Valiant looking oddly alarmed when the snakes come out of his shield during the final and Merlin looking oddly pleased with herself afterwards.
Just as Arthur thinks it’s about time to get to know Merlin better, plague comes to Camelot, and Morgana’s servant is thrown in the dungeons, and somehow Merlin is attending Morgana and bursting into the council chamber to announce that she’s a sorceress.
And Arthur, who should be laughing, remembers her standing in the forest, arms akimbo, saying she could have taken the bandits apart with less than one blow and thinks Oh. Right and sets about convincing his father that she’s just protecting her best friend.
Later, after Merlin and Gaius tell him they’re fighting an afanc and Merlin trails Arthur and Morgana into the water supply to kill the thing and Arthur shouts for Morgana to do something to distract her while Merlin does something highly illegal that makes her eyes flash gold, Arthur decides he might need to develop a chronic illness that will require a potion to be delivered regularly.
Just to keep an eye on her.
*
Merlin is a bit horrified with herself for grabbing a poisoned goblet right out of Arthur’s hands in the middle of a diplomatic banquet, but the friendly serving girl had made Bayard’s plan clear and the prince may be an idiot, but she’s sort of starting to believe she’s meant to protect him, if only because he’s clearly too hapless to protect himself from anything. But she’s far more horrified with herself when she faints right into Arthur’s arms.
Later, when she wakes with Gwen and Gaius hovering over her, afraid she’s died, she’s almost disappointed that Arthur isn’t there, after she risked her life for him. And then she’s told that he’s in the dungeon after going to look for a cure for her. And then Gwen leaves and Gaius informs her, with his eyebrow at the tilt that means “I really don’t want an explanation for this,” that she was doing magic and chanting Arthur’s name in her sleep. She decides not to mention that to the dragon.
Arthur stops by a few nights later, and they thank each other, a bit awkward while Gaius looks on, quelling a smile. The prince says, deliberately casual, that he thinks perhaps he caught a chill in the dungeons, and would Gaius mind sending Merlin with the usual tonic the next day? Before Merlin can tell him he is a dirty liar and certainly not getting ill, he breezes out of the room.
After the chill, Arthur “has a sore shoulder,” and then he hasn’t been sleeping well, and Merlin knows he’s finding excuses to see her and suspects why, but won’t give him the pleasure of seducing the innocent country girl. Even if he casually says sometimes that “Oh, Merlin, I got an extra apple with breakfast, have it, won’t you?” Or hands her a copy of a poem that “I thought Gaius would like.” Or asks after her day and insists that he really is interested in the answer--and then talks about it the next time she comes. It’s all ... very odd. But he is clearly just out to seduce her, because she’s younger and not worldly and saved his life a few times. Clearly.
And then Lancelot comes. Lancelot, to be quite frank, is lovely. Of course, she’s inclined to think well of him because the first thing he does upon meeting her is save her from the griffin. So of course she tries to help him become a knight, even going so far as to forge a seal of nobility for him. He’s more interested in Gwen, that’s plain enough for anyone to see, but she grits her teeth and helps him anyway, as a friend would, and she shouts at Arthur when he doesn’t even give Lancelot a chance.
In the end, it all comes tumbling down. It all has a tendency to, around her. And Lancelot knows about her magic and she wants so much to ride off with him, but she thinks of Gwen’s wistful looks and the dragon’s words and her mother’s disappointment if she were to leave Gaius. She thinks of Arthur, who apologized to her when she almost threw his bottle of sleeping potion at him while Lancelot was in the dungeons and said “I’m sleeping better now, Merlin. You may tell Gaius so.”
And somehow Lancelot is riding away without her, to do great deeds that will go down in song and story and she sulks about it to the dragon and he says “I honestly don’t know what’s going to happen to him, young war--sorceress. Destiny’s been looking a bit different since you showed up.”
“But I’m still supposed to be the other half of Arthur’s coin,” she says, just to be sure. The dragon laughs and flies off his ledge.
She doesn’t see much of Arthur until he comes pounding on her door one morning, telling her Morgana won’t wake, and she asks him why he’s come to her and not Gaius and he goes stomping off to do just that, which is confusing. Morgana’s illness casts a pallor on the whole palace, when there’s no one around to make Uther smile or irritate Arthur. And then Edwin shows up.
Afterwards, she hates herself for everything that happened while Edwin was in the palace. She let the King lose faith in Gaius. She trusted Edwin instantly, dazzled when he showed her all that magic could be, when he offered to train her. He wasn’t handsome or particularly charming, as Lancelot had been, but he didn’t look at Gwen, hardly glanced at Morgana. When he trailed his scarred hand down her neck, she didn’t flinch away. She would have done anything, because she thought he knew her, was like her, wanted her (all of her, not just her body the way Arthur wants her, not just who he thought she ought to be like Will had). She’s glad, in the end, that she had the strength to kill him when she saw what he was doing to Gaius. She’s glad he didn’t poison her so much that she refused to save the king. It’s a small comfort.
Arthur certainly doesn’t know half the story, but after the king has rewarded Gaius, called him a free man of Camelot, the prince strides up to the pair of them. “I’m afraid I’ve strained my shoulder again,” he says, and when he smiles at Merlin, it’s a bit tentative.
*
Afterwards, the whirlwind of days with Sophia seems like a dream to Arthur. He knows this much: he ran into Merlin in the woods, picking herbs for Gaius, and was more than pleased to see her, because he’d wanted more than a five-minute conversation with her for an age. And then there’d been bandits, and then there’d been Sophia.
Sophia, who was everything Merlin wasn’t, though neither of them was probably any older than sixteen. She was gentle and noble and didn’t glare at him and it was easy to sink into infatuation. He’d stopped sending for potions from Gaius and Merlin again, that he knew, but there was little else: the impression of Merlin covered in rotten fruit and looking like she might cry. Sophia’s lips pressed against his. The girls arguing, heated, while Merlin told him not to trust Sophia. Water, endless water, over him and beneath him, and the near-relief of sinking into it while the world crackled around him.
And then he wakes up in his own bed with a headache, and Merlin tells him that she hit him with a tree branch when she found him eloping with Sophia and he wonders what sorcery she had to do, what danger Sophia was to him, and doesn’t ask any of the questions he should if he were a better son to his father. Instead, he sees Merlin’s tight, miserable expression and wants very much to make it better and doesn’t dare hope that any of it was jealousy. Gaius looks over his shoulder as the two of them leave, and Arthur knows it’s his only warning to be careful.
Things return to a near-equilibrium after that, at least for a little while. He invents maladies, and Merlin brings him oils and salves and vials, none of which smell like anything but fragrant herbs, not the real ones he knows from actual injuries. Then he has to search for the druid boy.
Arthur is not a fool. He’s always felt more comfortable with a weapon in his hands than a book, and knows Morgana mocks him that he can’t read people quite so well as she can (and really, the incident with Sophia proved that in the most embarrassing manner possible), but that doesn’t mean he’s an idiot. He knows that Merlin and Morgana together are protecting the druid boy, but he turns a blind eye until he can’t anymore. And then ... and then Morgana tries all her wiles, the ones that have always worked on him, and he wavers but is proud of himself for not giving in--but then he melts like ice before flame when Merlin looks at him, mouth trembling, and offers to help. He takes the boy from Camelot, even if Merlin seems unsure about it at the last.
Sometimes, after that, she lingers in his room when she’s delivered his latest fake bit of potion, talking a bit about her latest conversation with Gwen, or about her life in Ealdor. He speaks of training the knights, and growing up as a prince, and he gives her little gifts that hopefully won’t arouse suspicion. And he wants her.
But he almost forgets about her, for a few days (and it’s the first thing that’s managed to get her out of his head since that cry of “Let me go!” while he was searching for one sorceress and found a different one, not counting the Sophia Affair), when the Black Knight comes. When two of his best knights die. (He remembers her again, abruptly, after Pellinor’s death, knowing he was the one of his knights who she would speak to without rolling her eyes, and doesn’t look at her because he doesn’t want to know if she cried.) When his father almost dies, because Merlin, somber and large-eyed and without a kerchief over her hair for once, drugged him and whispered apologies while he slipped away.
(He denies, later, that he wondered then if it had been her plan all along, to win his trust and kill him, and wants to apologize when he realizes it’s his father’s orders, his father perhaps understanding his weakness for a skinny servant girl from the country who can look at him and make him want to be better, if only so she’ll stop rolling her eyes. Even Morgana never managed that.)
He speaks to his father, after the Black Knight is defeated (and again, he is no fool. The whole situation has “Merlin” written all over it), and finally manages to say that he thinks himself a disappointment. His father’s reassurances seem empty when he doesn’t know the extent of his son’s crimes, but they’re a comfort nonetheless.
Once again, things go back to normal, or as normal as they have ever been since Merlin arrived in Camelot, and Arthur continues to strain his shoulder because he runs out of other excuses, so when there’s a knock on his door one afternoon, he does expect Merlin. He doesn’t expect her with empty hands, half-frantic and stepping forward instantly to grab his sleeve. “My mother’s here,” she explains, “and she needs to see your father. I know she’s not really of Camelot, but we need help and there’s no one else. Please, Arthur.”
As if she needs to plead. As if he wouldn’t fall over his feet like an idiot village boy to get her silly unguarded smile back on her face. Arthur gets the audience, and quells the surge of dislike for his father that arises when Uther apologizes to Hunith and tells her she cannot be helped.
So of course he follows Merlin. Morgana and Gwen do, and that means that four women he respects and cares about have gone off to get themselves killed by this Kanen, and he’s not about to let that happen. He wouldn’t have to Merlin alone, come to that, or maybe any of them alone (though he’s not sure about Morgana, especially not when she smirks when he shows up at their campfire that night, the memory of Merlin’s goodbye on the balcony fresh in his mind, her slim hand on his sleeve, the fact that she thanked him even though he couldn’t help her as he’d wanted to).
Ealdor is ... strange. He trains the men, and the women when Gwen insists. He reminds himself that he has no claim on Merlin when she’s greeted with a tight hug from a man named Will, who hates Arthur on sight. The feeling is completely mutual. She spends a great deal of time with Will over the next days, while they prepare themselves. They all sleep in her mother’s hut, and he catches her awake late one night. “Don’t think less of me, if anything happens during the battle,” she says, and he knows this is the time to tell her that he knows, but instead he tells her it’s okay to be scared, and he thinks maybe that was the right thing to say as well.
She is everywhere during the battle, though he expressly told her to stay on the edges of it when he saw her deplorable aim with a sword. He sees the windstorm she makes, and sees the difference between the clumsy Merlin who does magic in theory but only to kill magical creatures and the Merlin who holds her hand out, standing with Will, and makes a wind that throws people off their feet, people on both sides, and he sees a man’s spine snap because she threw him so strongly. And he’s not proud, but he’s afraid, so he blusters his way towards them afterwards, asking which one of them did it, almost begging the gods for there to be two hidden sorcerers in front of him so Merlin won’t be a murderer.
Will takes a crossbow bolt for him, and takes the blame, and Arthur knows from Merlin’s shaking hands and horrified gaze that it was her, all of it, and he hates himself. He leaves her alone with the village man and her sobs follow him out the door. Gwen shakes her head at him and Morgana calls him a fool and Hunith turns away and Arthur wants to tell them that he panicked, that Merlin killed men, that he wouldn’t have, couldn’t have, would never kill her.
He thinks about speaking to her at the pyre, but her mother comforts her more than he could, and he’s still shaken by the rush of power and wind that had nearly blown him back. The ride back to Camelot is heavy with silences, and Arthur doesn’t dare to break them.
*
Merlin can’t bring herself to deliver Arthur’s useless potions for a few weeks. Gaius takes them instead, on his rounds, and never once reproaches her. She delivers Morgana’s sleeping potion and little else, instead choosing to relegate herself to studying her magic in defiance of Arthur’s horrified expression and anatomy and herbs to please Gaius, and because it becomes more interesting the better she gets at it. She mourns Will, her best friend, the man who’d wanted to marry her (even if he’d wanted quiet Merlin, sweet Merlin, sweeps-the-floor-with-magic Merlin, not the one who’d run around Ealdor carefree with him when they were younger, even though she would always be both), and eventually gets past the choking grief and finds herself happy again.
It’s too good to last. “You’ve been avoiding me,” says Arthur one day in the woods when he’s caught her gathering supplies. She makes a note to pay better attention to the hunting schedules.
“I have done no such thing, sire,” she starts to say, but he hushes her, amazement crossing his face, and points behind her, and she forgets that she has decided it’s best to stay away from him and turns. It’s a unicorn, and she takes an involuntary step forward, amazed and delighted and remembering a hundred stories from her childhood.
And then he kills it. Merlin cries, hates herself for it, can’t stop. Won’t let Arthur touch her, because by the time he’s realized that she’s still standing stock-still and upset, he’s touched it, its blood on his hands, and she flees for the palace, the sight of a figure watching from the trees going almost-unnoticed.
Camelot seems to fall apart. The grain dies, the water turns to sand, and Merlin watches with helpless, impotent fury. Morgana and Gwen give food to the beggar children, she sees them, and wishes she could have the comfort of thinking that would help. Arthur paces, argues with his father that the people should be fed just as much as the army. Merlin loses sleep studying her magic book and knows there’s nothing she can do.
Arthur knocks on her door late one night. “A man. A sorcerer. There’s a sorcerer named Anhora who says I did this, by killing the unicorn. Do you think it’s true?” Merlin nods, because she’s too tired and angry to lie. “He says I’ll be tested.” Merlin nods again, not knowing what else to say. “Do you hate me, Merlin?” he asks at last.
“No,” she says, and drags out books from Gaius’s shelves on tests and unicorns.
She’s there when he fails the second test, and begs Anhora for another chance, for Camelot. For Arthur, who looks so wrecked and guilty that she can’t hate him, as much as she wants to, because he brought her bread before dragging her to the woods, and asked if she’d ever had to eat rat in Ealdor, because there’s one eating through his boots and his manservant can’t catch it.
She follows him to the Labyrinth of Gedref and isn’t quite surprised when Anhora captures her and drags her to a beach to sit at a table and wait for Arthur. And Arthur isn’t quite surprised to see her there, it seems. And then Anhora tells them about the test.
“Listen to me,” Merlin says five minutes later, when she’s come up with the right solution and said it aloud when she should have kept it to herself and just done it. “I’ve done it before for you, and I’ll do it again. What’s a physician’s apprentice to a prince, in the eyes of a kingdom?”
“That’s the wrong question, Merlin,” he admonishes her. “What’s a physician’s apprentice to a prince in the prince’s eyes? She’s worth a bit of poison, I’d say.”
And then he’s half out of his chair, pointing behind her, and she turns, automatic, wondering what new threat is there, wondering whether the poison or some creature will kill her first, and he’s filled his goblet with both of them and downed it. “What have you done?” she yells, halfway to tears.
He doesn’t answer. He just falls backwards, and before she knows what she’s doing, she’s trying to wake him uselessly. “He’s not dead. He has proven himself pure of heart,” says Anhora, and disappears before Merlin can scream at him for scaring her like that.
Arthur is oddly solicitous of her after that. If he goes down to the town, he’ll often stop by with a sweetmeat or a kerchief or a little wood carving afterwards. He sits her down when she delivers his useless potions and makes her talk to him. Merlin, more confused by the day, avoids him when she can.
She doesn’t even bring his potions to him when Gwen’s father is arrested, too busy holding Gwen together and then holding Morgana and Gwen both together when Gwen’s father is killed for trying to escape and Morgana gets herself thrown in the dungeons. Morgana goes to men who try to kill Uther, and for half a week, Merlin hardly sees the palace as she walks around it, hardly hears Arthur when he stops her in the hall and asks if she’s well. She goes to the dragon again and gets none of the help she wanted. Can she condemn Arthur’s father just because Arthur might be a better king?
She is glad when Morgana takes the choice out of her hands and doesn’t do it after all.
Everything comes to a head when the Questing Beast comes to Camelot. She sneaks after the knights, watches it beat Arthur back, and kills it herself in a rush of magic and steel before stealing away, back to Camelot to await his return. He doesn’t come on his feet, but carried, collapsed, unconscious, his father and then his knights carrying him while he bleeds from the shoulder and Merlin thinks, half-hysterical, that the lie was bound to become truth eventually.
And she thinks of Arthur. Stupid, insensitive Arthur, who kills unicorns and caused her best friend’s death because of his fear of sorcery, who bothers her to distraction. Who gives her little things to make her smile and was thrown in the dungeon for her and followed her to Ealdor and drank poison so that she wouldn’t. Who is so stupidly noble and just showing signs of being the king that dragon keeps talking about.
Merlin talks to Gaius and the dragon and goes to the Isle of the Blessed and offers her life for him, for that little piece of hope, that belief that Arthur will be a great man. She meets Nimueh and hardly cares that she is the enemy, that she is the serving girl who got Merlin punished. There is no love lost between them, but she has no reason to avenge herself on her.
(Until she does. Until she calls down lightning and blows her into a million pieces because she will not let the bitch touch another person she loves. Wouldn’t Merlin’s life be enough for her? Wasn’t that what she wanted, in the end, since she was not meant to kill Arthur?)
She takes the water she is given and pours it down Arthur’s throat and tries not to be jealous of Gwen for being the one to tend to him.
*
Arthur tries not to be disappointed when he wakes from feverish dreams to find that the cool hand on his forehead is not Merlin’s, but Gwen’s. That the whispered words about his future as a good king weren’t Merlin keeping faith with him despite all the hurt he’s given her. That she isn’t there to tease him about the injury to his shoulder finally being real. But he thanks Gwen, and when Morgana visits, apologizes for not listening to her. “We should listen to your dreams more often,” he whispers, and she looks at him, startled, before she smiles.
When Merlin does come, it’s not as he expects. She is shaky, eyes red-rimmed. “We need to talk,” she tells him, and he thinks that yes, they do, and opens his mouth to tell her that she knows she’s a sorceress, that she’s probably saved his life again, and thank you, thank you, thank you, I love you. “You’re an ass,” she says, and that puts paid to those thoughts.
“Perhaps you’ve forgotten I’m the prince,” he says, rubbing his shoulder.
“You’re a royal ass, then,” she says, a bit impatient. “And you need more people who tell you so. Listen to Morgana once in a while, if I’m not around. She’ll tell you.”
He’s still slow with sleep and illness, but he catches on one phrase and freezes. “You aren’t leaving?”
Merlin smiles, shakes her head. “No. No, I’m not. I just wanted to let you know. You’ll be a great king one day, if you ever grow out of being an ass, and I’m just trying to help you grow into that a bit sooner.”
Arthur is surprised to realize that he knows when she’s lying, but what can he say? “I’ll keep it in mind.” Neither of them speaks for a moment. “Is something wrong, Merlin?”
“Get some rest, Arthur. You’re still recovering,” she says, and leaves before he can tell her that she isn’t allowed to be saying goodbye, she can’t leave him, he needs her. Arthur curses and stares into the fire.
Morgana tells him the next morning that both Merlin and Gaius have disappeared and that Merlin’s mother is ill in Gaius’s rooms, being tended by Gwen. Arthur’s stomach twists as he wonders what Merlin has done to save his life this time. Wonders if his life is worth it.
Gaius shows up at his door the morning after that, looking exhausted but acting as if nothing out of the ordinary has happened, checking Arthur’s shoulder and clucking over it. “Merlin,” says Arthur and Gaius freezes. “Is she ... is she all right?” Gaius nods, slow. “Send her to me, will you? If she’ll come?”
Merlin arrives on his doorstep, her kerchief askew, fifteen minutes later. She looks even worse than Gaius. “You asked for me?”
“What happened this time?” he asks, and decides the time for lying is over. “What sort of magic was needed to save my life, and what gives you the right to try to throw your life away for me again?” Merlin gapes at him, then turns as if she would flee. “I won’t hurt you, Merlin. I just want to know if you’re well.”
She takes a few shaky breaths and turns back around, meeting his eyes from where he’s still resting on the bed, restless but not allowed out of his chambers until he can move his shoulder without wincing. “Everything’s fine now,” she says at last, like she can’t quite believe it. “You knew?” He nods. “How long?”
“The afanc.” She looks terrified again. “I should have told you before. Come here, would you? I won’t hurt you.”
For a minute, he thinks she’ll flee. Maybe even flee Camelot. Arthur decides that shoulder be damned, he would ride after her in a second. But there’s no need. She walks to the edge of his bed, and he grabs her hand and tugs her to sit there. “Arthur?” Hesitant, a question.
“I’m going to train you out of trying to die for me,” he informs her, and tugs her again until she’s close enough that he almost goes cross-eyed looking into those blue, blue eyes that sometimes go gold, and then he has to kiss her. “I love you,” he whispers, too-soon and a little bit awkward and wishing he could just show the damn girl and hating the fact that for once his shoulder really does hurt. “I love you, Merlin, and I would never, never let anything hurt you. I will never hurt you.”
And Merlin ... Merlin smiles, glorious and bright as the sun, and the shadows under her eyes nearly disappear. “As if you could,” she says, and presses a soft kiss against his lips. “I could take you apart in less than one blow.”
Arthur laughs. “Yes, you really could.” They smile at each other for a minute. “But I’d rather you didn’t.”
*
Far, far below, a dragon gives up on what it thought the future was supposed to look like and decides to just see what will happen.
Summary: Season 1 as it might have been if Merlin were born female.
A/N: From the kinkme_merlin prompt: 16 year old Merlin is captured by bandits on the road to Camelot for the first time. 22 year old Arthur, more arrogant than ever, saves her. After getting yelled at for his efforts, he falls hard and begins to "court" her, while she mostly just thinks he's an idiot. Normally I'm not a big fan of genderswitch things but the prompt sort of attacked me and wouldn't let go, and I'm very glad of that.
Disclaimer: I do not own Merlin.
“Let me go!” a girl shrieks from the woods, shrill enough to make Arthur’s horse jump. He holds a hand up, halting his knights where they ride. They’re meant to be searching for the sorceress who had disappeared from the courtyard earlier that day, but Arthur has never been one to ignore a lady in distress, and there are always bandits in the woods preying on any girl foolhardy enough to go out on her own.
“Forward. It shouldn’t take too long,” Arthur whispers, and wheels his horse off the road, hand already on his hilt.
When Arthur bursts into the clearing, the knights following him as he’d known they would, there are only four bandits, child’s play for his well-armed and well-trained men. One is rifling eagerly through a pack, one has a loaded crossbow that Pellinor is rapidly convincing him not to use, and two are holding a struggling, skinny village girl, one who’s spitting abuse at them.
Arthur rides at them full-tilt, sword through the taller bandit’s neck before he even turns around. The girl lets out a half-strangled screech and stamps hard on the other bandit’s foot. And then has the temerity to turn around and glower at Arthur while his knights dispatch the rest of the bandits quite easily.
Leon is the first to turn to the girl after they’ve all stopped panting with the quick adrenaline of unexpected battle. “Are you all right, miss?”
Arthur doesn’t consider himself an arrogant man, but Camelot is his country, and they are less than an hour’s ride from his castle and his city. He expects to be noted, acknowledged. This girl, though, all impassioned blue eyes and cheekbones and messy black braids (and reminding him strangely of Morgana a few years ago, before his father insisted she be a lady, when her fire still ran hot and on the surface and not in the cool mockery she shows him now) is glaring at all of them without a hint of fear or respect. “I had it under control.”
The girl’s words are unexpected, not to mention ridiculous when it’s clear that a child could probably snap her in half, and Arthur can’t help the laugh that bubbles out. She transfers the whole weight of her glare to him, and the only reason he manages not to quail is because he spent the morning with Morgana in a temper and then the afternoon with his father in one after the sorceress disappeared. She couldn’t be half as intimidating. “They could have taken you apart in one blow!” he manages after a moment.
“I could have taken them apart with less,” she spits, and straightens her gown, not seeming to notice the blood staining it. She strides over to Owain, who’s repacking her bag as best he can, though it doesn’t seem to contain much. “If you’ve all quite finished poking your noses where they aren’t wanted, you can get back to your business, as I’m sure it’s very important.”
“You could thank us,” says Arthur, and ignores Leon’s disapproving look. They can discuss chivalry later, when there aren’t village girls complaining about being rescued.
“Oh, well, of course, my lord,” she says with the sort of vicious sarcasm he doesn’t even allow Morgana these days, “I prostrate myself at your feet with gratitude.”
Arthur raises an eyebrow. “I don’t see you walking on your knees,” he says, and right, well, perhaps now he does deserve Leon’s pointed cough, because there’s a difference between lack of chivalry and outright rudeness. Still, he blusters on. “And actually, it’s more correctly ‘sire’ or ‘your highness,’ not ‘my lord.’”
There is a long moment of silence, and then the girl speaks again. “Oh, bollocks.”
*
Merlin is having a very trying day. It was meant to be a good one, which makes everything even more trying. She was due to arrive in Camelot in the morning sometime, to find her mother’s old friend Gaius, but was running late because she’d decided going through the woods might be safer for a girl alone than walking the main roads. And it was much safer, until she stumbled right into a bandit camp.
That wouldn’t have been so bad, really. Merlin knows her power, and while she prefers to use it to heal, or to do silly little things for her mother or for Will, she would have had no trouble dropping the bandits in a hole in the middle of the forest with their trousers tied in knots. She was about to do so, even, when her “rescuers” showed up, and that plan went right to hell.
Hunith had told her daughter a hundred times to be careful in Camelot. “I’m only sending you, Merlin, because I trust Gaius to look after you. Your powers aren’t safe in a town like Ealdor, but they’ll get you killed in Camelot if you aren’t careful.” Merlin asked each time why she was being sent there, then, instead of to distant cousins at Cendred’s court, where sorcery is at least accepted, if not loved. Her mother never answered her, and now it’s too late, and Merlin has caught the attention of the prince of Camelot before entering the city’s walls.
She is, in fact, sitting on his horse. She’d told them to go on, she had no need of assistance, really, thank you, and his knights seemed inclined to agree, one of them telling Prince Arthur darkly that the sorceress will get away (making Merlin’s throat close off in panic that the idiot of a prince misinterpreted, assuring her that the witch would be found, there was no need to worry). The prince, however, asserts (probably accurately, Merlin admits grudgingly) that she’d disappeared from the courtyard, and if they haven’t found her by now, they likely won’t anytime soon. And then gives her a frankly terrifying look and says that anyway, there’s a maiden to escort to the city’s walls, and wouldn’t she--what was her name?--get up on his horse and allow him to escort her?
Despite her objections, which were numerous and probably louder than was decorous, Merlin is still sitting in front of the prince on his horse while he cheerfully tells her about all the sights, since she’d informed him that she’s new to the kingdom, visiting Gaius (“yes, of course I know him, he’s the Court Physician, and you must be the new apprentice he was mentioning”). He delivers her, under his knights’ disapproving and watchful gazes, to Gaius’s door, and the old physician raises his eyebrow at her while he invites her in.
Later, after she effortlessly keeps a tumble of glassware from meeting its end after jostling a table, she discovers that Gaius has his eyebrow raised more often than he doesn’t.
She settles into Camelot a little too easily, despite the voice she thinks she hears calling to her in the night. She delivers remedies to Gaius’s patients and studies the books he sets in front of her, determined to be a good apprentice even if she’s only ever had the talent for getting into trouble. She meets Gwen, maid to the king’s ward, who is immediately friendly, when she delivers a remedy to prevent Lady Morgana’s nightmares. She sees the idiot prince again, throwing knives at a target that a man is still holding, and almost stops him. Before she can, one of his knights jostles his shoulder and nods in her direction. She suspects he catches her glare, but she loses herself in the crowd before he can take so much as a step in her direction and goes to deliver a tonic to Lady Helen, a new arrival who sets Merlin’s teeth on edge, though she couldn’t say why.
(The voice calling out to her turns out to be a dragon, who seems a bit shocked when she arrives, like he wasn’t expecting her--like he wasn’t summoning her, even. And he keeps calling her “young warlock” before correcting himself, and yes, Merlin is flat-chested, but she’s also wearing a skirt. Perhaps the dragon just has terrible eyesight to go along with the fact that it is obviously insane and has a great many very disturbing conjectures on her future with the Idiot Prince.
Two sides of the same coin indeed.)
*
Arthur sits on the floor and tries to look anything but dumbfounded. His father is staring down at him, there is a dead sorceress who just tried to kill him, and he is practically in Merlin’s lap. Because she pulled him out of the way of a flying knife. And is not covered in cobwebs, oddly enough. And looks rather tempting in what is obviously her best dress, even if she is wearing an ill-advised kerchief over her dark braids. “You saved my life!” he accuses.
“Don’t be an ass, Arthur,” hisses Morgana, regaining her equilibrium unnervingly fast and shaking the king out of his stare at the pair on the floor to glare at her.
As always, Morgana’s disdain moves Arthur into action, and he half-leaps to his feet and offers Merlin his hand. She stares at it like it’s a snake and stands on her own, brushing off her dress and giving his father a panicked look when he comes closer. She’s certainly a nervous little thing. “You saved my son’s life,” Uther declares for all the world to hear, and she turns bright pink, which clashes horribly with her red kerchief. “How can I ever reward you?”
Arthur bites his tongue, because for one glorious second he remembers that he’s currently without a personal servant and the thought of Merlin’s glares and bright blue eyes and graceful hands at close quarters with him every day is tempting, and then he remembers that his father has strict views on taking advantage of servants and propriety and his vague hopes are dashed.
Merlin, for her part, still looks terrified. “Oh, really, your Majesty, it was just ... I was just ... it was instinct.”
“Nonsense,” says Morgana, stepping forward with her most terrifying grin. “Arthur would have been pinned to his chair if it weren’t for you.” Merlin looks a bit green. Arthur feels a bit green, so he can’t blame her. “It’s Merlin, isn’t it? Gaius’s new apprentice?” Merlin nods, as if she isn’t sure if she wants to admit to that. Morgana turns to Uther. “Gaius’s quarters certainly aren’t large, and if she’s to be a physician someday she’ll need some of her own. Perhaps a place to stay would be a suitable reward.”
Arthur doesn’t know what Morgana is planning, but he imagines it’s going to end badly. Especially when she makes a point of telling him where the room is.
For a while, it seems he can’t turn around without seeing Merlin and her stupid kerchief and her skirts a few inches too short because she’s several years younger than him and growing out of her clothes still, whether she’s chatting with Gwen at the well or delivering potions or ... or standing behind Morgana when Morgana stands tall in the middle of a tournament and accuses Sir Valiant of using sorcery to win. Sir Valiant who had pinched her right in front of everyone when she was serving at a banquet, and that alone makes Arthur long to face the man in the tournament finals and grind him into dust.
The whole incident turns embarrassing, with everyone thinking Arthur is hiding behind Morgana’s skirts and Merlin coming to his room to shout at him and tell him to trust her (which he does, though he’s not sure why) and Valiant looking oddly alarmed when the snakes come out of his shield during the final and Merlin looking oddly pleased with herself afterwards.
Just as Arthur thinks it’s about time to get to know Merlin better, plague comes to Camelot, and Morgana’s servant is thrown in the dungeons, and somehow Merlin is attending Morgana and bursting into the council chamber to announce that she’s a sorceress.
And Arthur, who should be laughing, remembers her standing in the forest, arms akimbo, saying she could have taken the bandits apart with less than one blow and thinks Oh. Right and sets about convincing his father that she’s just protecting her best friend.
Later, after Merlin and Gaius tell him they’re fighting an afanc and Merlin trails Arthur and Morgana into the water supply to kill the thing and Arthur shouts for Morgana to do something to distract her while Merlin does something highly illegal that makes her eyes flash gold, Arthur decides he might need to develop a chronic illness that will require a potion to be delivered regularly.
Just to keep an eye on her.
*
Merlin is a bit horrified with herself for grabbing a poisoned goblet right out of Arthur’s hands in the middle of a diplomatic banquet, but the friendly serving girl had made Bayard’s plan clear and the prince may be an idiot, but she’s sort of starting to believe she’s meant to protect him, if only because he’s clearly too hapless to protect himself from anything. But she’s far more horrified with herself when she faints right into Arthur’s arms.
Later, when she wakes with Gwen and Gaius hovering over her, afraid she’s died, she’s almost disappointed that Arthur isn’t there, after she risked her life for him. And then she’s told that he’s in the dungeon after going to look for a cure for her. And then Gwen leaves and Gaius informs her, with his eyebrow at the tilt that means “I really don’t want an explanation for this,” that she was doing magic and chanting Arthur’s name in her sleep. She decides not to mention that to the dragon.
Arthur stops by a few nights later, and they thank each other, a bit awkward while Gaius looks on, quelling a smile. The prince says, deliberately casual, that he thinks perhaps he caught a chill in the dungeons, and would Gaius mind sending Merlin with the usual tonic the next day? Before Merlin can tell him he is a dirty liar and certainly not getting ill, he breezes out of the room.
After the chill, Arthur “has a sore shoulder,” and then he hasn’t been sleeping well, and Merlin knows he’s finding excuses to see her and suspects why, but won’t give him the pleasure of seducing the innocent country girl. Even if he casually says sometimes that “Oh, Merlin, I got an extra apple with breakfast, have it, won’t you?” Or hands her a copy of a poem that “I thought Gaius would like.” Or asks after her day and insists that he really is interested in the answer--and then talks about it the next time she comes. It’s all ... very odd. But he is clearly just out to seduce her, because she’s younger and not worldly and saved his life a few times. Clearly.
And then Lancelot comes. Lancelot, to be quite frank, is lovely. Of course, she’s inclined to think well of him because the first thing he does upon meeting her is save her from the griffin. So of course she tries to help him become a knight, even going so far as to forge a seal of nobility for him. He’s more interested in Gwen, that’s plain enough for anyone to see, but she grits her teeth and helps him anyway, as a friend would, and she shouts at Arthur when he doesn’t even give Lancelot a chance.
In the end, it all comes tumbling down. It all has a tendency to, around her. And Lancelot knows about her magic and she wants so much to ride off with him, but she thinks of Gwen’s wistful looks and the dragon’s words and her mother’s disappointment if she were to leave Gaius. She thinks of Arthur, who apologized to her when she almost threw his bottle of sleeping potion at him while Lancelot was in the dungeons and said “I’m sleeping better now, Merlin. You may tell Gaius so.”
And somehow Lancelot is riding away without her, to do great deeds that will go down in song and story and she sulks about it to the dragon and he says “I honestly don’t know what’s going to happen to him, young war--sorceress. Destiny’s been looking a bit different since you showed up.”
“But I’m still supposed to be the other half of Arthur’s coin,” she says, just to be sure. The dragon laughs and flies off his ledge.
She doesn’t see much of Arthur until he comes pounding on her door one morning, telling her Morgana won’t wake, and she asks him why he’s come to her and not Gaius and he goes stomping off to do just that, which is confusing. Morgana’s illness casts a pallor on the whole palace, when there’s no one around to make Uther smile or irritate Arthur. And then Edwin shows up.
Afterwards, she hates herself for everything that happened while Edwin was in the palace. She let the King lose faith in Gaius. She trusted Edwin instantly, dazzled when he showed her all that magic could be, when he offered to train her. He wasn’t handsome or particularly charming, as Lancelot had been, but he didn’t look at Gwen, hardly glanced at Morgana. When he trailed his scarred hand down her neck, she didn’t flinch away. She would have done anything, because she thought he knew her, was like her, wanted her (all of her, not just her body the way Arthur wants her, not just who he thought she ought to be like Will had). She’s glad, in the end, that she had the strength to kill him when she saw what he was doing to Gaius. She’s glad he didn’t poison her so much that she refused to save the king. It’s a small comfort.
Arthur certainly doesn’t know half the story, but after the king has rewarded Gaius, called him a free man of Camelot, the prince strides up to the pair of them. “I’m afraid I’ve strained my shoulder again,” he says, and when he smiles at Merlin, it’s a bit tentative.
*
Afterwards, the whirlwind of days with Sophia seems like a dream to Arthur. He knows this much: he ran into Merlin in the woods, picking herbs for Gaius, and was more than pleased to see her, because he’d wanted more than a five-minute conversation with her for an age. And then there’d been bandits, and then there’d been Sophia.
Sophia, who was everything Merlin wasn’t, though neither of them was probably any older than sixteen. She was gentle and noble and didn’t glare at him and it was easy to sink into infatuation. He’d stopped sending for potions from Gaius and Merlin again, that he knew, but there was little else: the impression of Merlin covered in rotten fruit and looking like she might cry. Sophia’s lips pressed against his. The girls arguing, heated, while Merlin told him not to trust Sophia. Water, endless water, over him and beneath him, and the near-relief of sinking into it while the world crackled around him.
And then he wakes up in his own bed with a headache, and Merlin tells him that she hit him with a tree branch when she found him eloping with Sophia and he wonders what sorcery she had to do, what danger Sophia was to him, and doesn’t ask any of the questions he should if he were a better son to his father. Instead, he sees Merlin’s tight, miserable expression and wants very much to make it better and doesn’t dare hope that any of it was jealousy. Gaius looks over his shoulder as the two of them leave, and Arthur knows it’s his only warning to be careful.
Things return to a near-equilibrium after that, at least for a little while. He invents maladies, and Merlin brings him oils and salves and vials, none of which smell like anything but fragrant herbs, not the real ones he knows from actual injuries. Then he has to search for the druid boy.
Arthur is not a fool. He’s always felt more comfortable with a weapon in his hands than a book, and knows Morgana mocks him that he can’t read people quite so well as she can (and really, the incident with Sophia proved that in the most embarrassing manner possible), but that doesn’t mean he’s an idiot. He knows that Merlin and Morgana together are protecting the druid boy, but he turns a blind eye until he can’t anymore. And then ... and then Morgana tries all her wiles, the ones that have always worked on him, and he wavers but is proud of himself for not giving in--but then he melts like ice before flame when Merlin looks at him, mouth trembling, and offers to help. He takes the boy from Camelot, even if Merlin seems unsure about it at the last.
Sometimes, after that, she lingers in his room when she’s delivered his latest fake bit of potion, talking a bit about her latest conversation with Gwen, or about her life in Ealdor. He speaks of training the knights, and growing up as a prince, and he gives her little gifts that hopefully won’t arouse suspicion. And he wants her.
But he almost forgets about her, for a few days (and it’s the first thing that’s managed to get her out of his head since that cry of “Let me go!” while he was searching for one sorceress and found a different one, not counting the Sophia Affair), when the Black Knight comes. When two of his best knights die. (He remembers her again, abruptly, after Pellinor’s death, knowing he was the one of his knights who she would speak to without rolling her eyes, and doesn’t look at her because he doesn’t want to know if she cried.) When his father almost dies, because Merlin, somber and large-eyed and without a kerchief over her hair for once, drugged him and whispered apologies while he slipped away.
(He denies, later, that he wondered then if it had been her plan all along, to win his trust and kill him, and wants to apologize when he realizes it’s his father’s orders, his father perhaps understanding his weakness for a skinny servant girl from the country who can look at him and make him want to be better, if only so she’ll stop rolling her eyes. Even Morgana never managed that.)
He speaks to his father, after the Black Knight is defeated (and again, he is no fool. The whole situation has “Merlin” written all over it), and finally manages to say that he thinks himself a disappointment. His father’s reassurances seem empty when he doesn’t know the extent of his son’s crimes, but they’re a comfort nonetheless.
Once again, things go back to normal, or as normal as they have ever been since Merlin arrived in Camelot, and Arthur continues to strain his shoulder because he runs out of other excuses, so when there’s a knock on his door one afternoon, he does expect Merlin. He doesn’t expect her with empty hands, half-frantic and stepping forward instantly to grab his sleeve. “My mother’s here,” she explains, “and she needs to see your father. I know she’s not really of Camelot, but we need help and there’s no one else. Please, Arthur.”
As if she needs to plead. As if he wouldn’t fall over his feet like an idiot village boy to get her silly unguarded smile back on her face. Arthur gets the audience, and quells the surge of dislike for his father that arises when Uther apologizes to Hunith and tells her she cannot be helped.
So of course he follows Merlin. Morgana and Gwen do, and that means that four women he respects and cares about have gone off to get themselves killed by this Kanen, and he’s not about to let that happen. He wouldn’t have to Merlin alone, come to that, or maybe any of them alone (though he’s not sure about Morgana, especially not when she smirks when he shows up at their campfire that night, the memory of Merlin’s goodbye on the balcony fresh in his mind, her slim hand on his sleeve, the fact that she thanked him even though he couldn’t help her as he’d wanted to).
Ealdor is ... strange. He trains the men, and the women when Gwen insists. He reminds himself that he has no claim on Merlin when she’s greeted with a tight hug from a man named Will, who hates Arthur on sight. The feeling is completely mutual. She spends a great deal of time with Will over the next days, while they prepare themselves. They all sleep in her mother’s hut, and he catches her awake late one night. “Don’t think less of me, if anything happens during the battle,” she says, and he knows this is the time to tell her that he knows, but instead he tells her it’s okay to be scared, and he thinks maybe that was the right thing to say as well.
She is everywhere during the battle, though he expressly told her to stay on the edges of it when he saw her deplorable aim with a sword. He sees the windstorm she makes, and sees the difference between the clumsy Merlin who does magic in theory but only to kill magical creatures and the Merlin who holds her hand out, standing with Will, and makes a wind that throws people off their feet, people on both sides, and he sees a man’s spine snap because she threw him so strongly. And he’s not proud, but he’s afraid, so he blusters his way towards them afterwards, asking which one of them did it, almost begging the gods for there to be two hidden sorcerers in front of him so Merlin won’t be a murderer.
Will takes a crossbow bolt for him, and takes the blame, and Arthur knows from Merlin’s shaking hands and horrified gaze that it was her, all of it, and he hates himself. He leaves her alone with the village man and her sobs follow him out the door. Gwen shakes her head at him and Morgana calls him a fool and Hunith turns away and Arthur wants to tell them that he panicked, that Merlin killed men, that he wouldn’t have, couldn’t have, would never kill her.
He thinks about speaking to her at the pyre, but her mother comforts her more than he could, and he’s still shaken by the rush of power and wind that had nearly blown him back. The ride back to Camelot is heavy with silences, and Arthur doesn’t dare to break them.
*
Merlin can’t bring herself to deliver Arthur’s useless potions for a few weeks. Gaius takes them instead, on his rounds, and never once reproaches her. She delivers Morgana’s sleeping potion and little else, instead choosing to relegate herself to studying her magic in defiance of Arthur’s horrified expression and anatomy and herbs to please Gaius, and because it becomes more interesting the better she gets at it. She mourns Will, her best friend, the man who’d wanted to marry her (even if he’d wanted quiet Merlin, sweet Merlin, sweeps-the-floor-with-magic Merlin, not the one who’d run around Ealdor carefree with him when they were younger, even though she would always be both), and eventually gets past the choking grief and finds herself happy again.
It’s too good to last. “You’ve been avoiding me,” says Arthur one day in the woods when he’s caught her gathering supplies. She makes a note to pay better attention to the hunting schedules.
“I have done no such thing, sire,” she starts to say, but he hushes her, amazement crossing his face, and points behind her, and she forgets that she has decided it’s best to stay away from him and turns. It’s a unicorn, and she takes an involuntary step forward, amazed and delighted and remembering a hundred stories from her childhood.
And then he kills it. Merlin cries, hates herself for it, can’t stop. Won’t let Arthur touch her, because by the time he’s realized that she’s still standing stock-still and upset, he’s touched it, its blood on his hands, and she flees for the palace, the sight of a figure watching from the trees going almost-unnoticed.
Camelot seems to fall apart. The grain dies, the water turns to sand, and Merlin watches with helpless, impotent fury. Morgana and Gwen give food to the beggar children, she sees them, and wishes she could have the comfort of thinking that would help. Arthur paces, argues with his father that the people should be fed just as much as the army. Merlin loses sleep studying her magic book and knows there’s nothing she can do.
Arthur knocks on her door late one night. “A man. A sorcerer. There’s a sorcerer named Anhora who says I did this, by killing the unicorn. Do you think it’s true?” Merlin nods, because she’s too tired and angry to lie. “He says I’ll be tested.” Merlin nods again, not knowing what else to say. “Do you hate me, Merlin?” he asks at last.
“No,” she says, and drags out books from Gaius’s shelves on tests and unicorns.
She’s there when he fails the second test, and begs Anhora for another chance, for Camelot. For Arthur, who looks so wrecked and guilty that she can’t hate him, as much as she wants to, because he brought her bread before dragging her to the woods, and asked if she’d ever had to eat rat in Ealdor, because there’s one eating through his boots and his manservant can’t catch it.
She follows him to the Labyrinth of Gedref and isn’t quite surprised when Anhora captures her and drags her to a beach to sit at a table and wait for Arthur. And Arthur isn’t quite surprised to see her there, it seems. And then Anhora tells them about the test.
“Listen to me,” Merlin says five minutes later, when she’s come up with the right solution and said it aloud when she should have kept it to herself and just done it. “I’ve done it before for you, and I’ll do it again. What’s a physician’s apprentice to a prince, in the eyes of a kingdom?”
“That’s the wrong question, Merlin,” he admonishes her. “What’s a physician’s apprentice to a prince in the prince’s eyes? She’s worth a bit of poison, I’d say.”
And then he’s half out of his chair, pointing behind her, and she turns, automatic, wondering what new threat is there, wondering whether the poison or some creature will kill her first, and he’s filled his goblet with both of them and downed it. “What have you done?” she yells, halfway to tears.
He doesn’t answer. He just falls backwards, and before she knows what she’s doing, she’s trying to wake him uselessly. “He’s not dead. He has proven himself pure of heart,” says Anhora, and disappears before Merlin can scream at him for scaring her like that.
Arthur is oddly solicitous of her after that. If he goes down to the town, he’ll often stop by with a sweetmeat or a kerchief or a little wood carving afterwards. He sits her down when she delivers his useless potions and makes her talk to him. Merlin, more confused by the day, avoids him when she can.
She doesn’t even bring his potions to him when Gwen’s father is arrested, too busy holding Gwen together and then holding Morgana and Gwen both together when Gwen’s father is killed for trying to escape and Morgana gets herself thrown in the dungeons. Morgana goes to men who try to kill Uther, and for half a week, Merlin hardly sees the palace as she walks around it, hardly hears Arthur when he stops her in the hall and asks if she’s well. She goes to the dragon again and gets none of the help she wanted. Can she condemn Arthur’s father just because Arthur might be a better king?
She is glad when Morgana takes the choice out of her hands and doesn’t do it after all.
Everything comes to a head when the Questing Beast comes to Camelot. She sneaks after the knights, watches it beat Arthur back, and kills it herself in a rush of magic and steel before stealing away, back to Camelot to await his return. He doesn’t come on his feet, but carried, collapsed, unconscious, his father and then his knights carrying him while he bleeds from the shoulder and Merlin thinks, half-hysterical, that the lie was bound to become truth eventually.
And she thinks of Arthur. Stupid, insensitive Arthur, who kills unicorns and caused her best friend’s death because of his fear of sorcery, who bothers her to distraction. Who gives her little things to make her smile and was thrown in the dungeon for her and followed her to Ealdor and drank poison so that she wouldn’t. Who is so stupidly noble and just showing signs of being the king that dragon keeps talking about.
Merlin talks to Gaius and the dragon and goes to the Isle of the Blessed and offers her life for him, for that little piece of hope, that belief that Arthur will be a great man. She meets Nimueh and hardly cares that she is the enemy, that she is the serving girl who got Merlin punished. There is no love lost between them, but she has no reason to avenge herself on her.
(Until she does. Until she calls down lightning and blows her into a million pieces because she will not let the bitch touch another person she loves. Wouldn’t Merlin’s life be enough for her? Wasn’t that what she wanted, in the end, since she was not meant to kill Arthur?)
She takes the water she is given and pours it down Arthur’s throat and tries not to be jealous of Gwen for being the one to tend to him.
*
Arthur tries not to be disappointed when he wakes from feverish dreams to find that the cool hand on his forehead is not Merlin’s, but Gwen’s. That the whispered words about his future as a good king weren’t Merlin keeping faith with him despite all the hurt he’s given her. That she isn’t there to tease him about the injury to his shoulder finally being real. But he thanks Gwen, and when Morgana visits, apologizes for not listening to her. “We should listen to your dreams more often,” he whispers, and she looks at him, startled, before she smiles.
When Merlin does come, it’s not as he expects. She is shaky, eyes red-rimmed. “We need to talk,” she tells him, and he thinks that yes, they do, and opens his mouth to tell her that she knows she’s a sorceress, that she’s probably saved his life again, and thank you, thank you, thank you, I love you. “You’re an ass,” she says, and that puts paid to those thoughts.
“Perhaps you’ve forgotten I’m the prince,” he says, rubbing his shoulder.
“You’re a royal ass, then,” she says, a bit impatient. “And you need more people who tell you so. Listen to Morgana once in a while, if I’m not around. She’ll tell you.”
He’s still slow with sleep and illness, but he catches on one phrase and freezes. “You aren’t leaving?”
Merlin smiles, shakes her head. “No. No, I’m not. I just wanted to let you know. You’ll be a great king one day, if you ever grow out of being an ass, and I’m just trying to help you grow into that a bit sooner.”
Arthur is surprised to realize that he knows when she’s lying, but what can he say? “I’ll keep it in mind.” Neither of them speaks for a moment. “Is something wrong, Merlin?”
“Get some rest, Arthur. You’re still recovering,” she says, and leaves before he can tell her that she isn’t allowed to be saying goodbye, she can’t leave him, he needs her. Arthur curses and stares into the fire.
Morgana tells him the next morning that both Merlin and Gaius have disappeared and that Merlin’s mother is ill in Gaius’s rooms, being tended by Gwen. Arthur’s stomach twists as he wonders what Merlin has done to save his life this time. Wonders if his life is worth it.
Gaius shows up at his door the morning after that, looking exhausted but acting as if nothing out of the ordinary has happened, checking Arthur’s shoulder and clucking over it. “Merlin,” says Arthur and Gaius freezes. “Is she ... is she all right?” Gaius nods, slow. “Send her to me, will you? If she’ll come?”
Merlin arrives on his doorstep, her kerchief askew, fifteen minutes later. She looks even worse than Gaius. “You asked for me?”
“What happened this time?” he asks, and decides the time for lying is over. “What sort of magic was needed to save my life, and what gives you the right to try to throw your life away for me again?” Merlin gapes at him, then turns as if she would flee. “I won’t hurt you, Merlin. I just want to know if you’re well.”
She takes a few shaky breaths and turns back around, meeting his eyes from where he’s still resting on the bed, restless but not allowed out of his chambers until he can move his shoulder without wincing. “Everything’s fine now,” she says at last, like she can’t quite believe it. “You knew?” He nods. “How long?”
“The afanc.” She looks terrified again. “I should have told you before. Come here, would you? I won’t hurt you.”
For a minute, he thinks she’ll flee. Maybe even flee Camelot. Arthur decides that shoulder be damned, he would ride after her in a second. But there’s no need. She walks to the edge of his bed, and he grabs her hand and tugs her to sit there. “Arthur?” Hesitant, a question.
“I’m going to train you out of trying to die for me,” he informs her, and tugs her again until she’s close enough that he almost goes cross-eyed looking into those blue, blue eyes that sometimes go gold, and then he has to kiss her. “I love you,” he whispers, too-soon and a little bit awkward and wishing he could just show the damn girl and hating the fact that for once his shoulder really does hurt. “I love you, Merlin, and I would never, never let anything hurt you. I will never hurt you.”
And Merlin ... Merlin smiles, glorious and bright as the sun, and the shadows under her eyes nearly disappear. “As if you could,” she says, and presses a soft kiss against his lips. “I could take you apart in less than one blow.”
Arthur laughs. “Yes, you really could.” They smile at each other for a minute. “But I’d rather you didn’t.”
*
Far, far below, a dragon gives up on what it thought the future was supposed to look like and decides to just see what will happen.