carved my name wrong on that gravestone (you don't even know my date of birth)

Posted originally on the Archive of Our Own at http://archiveofourown.org/works/65401267.

Rating: Mature
Archive Warning: No Archive Warnings Apply
Category: M/M
Fandom: Merlin (TV)
Relationships: Merlin/Arthur Pendragon (Merlin), Merlin & Arthur Pendragon (Merlin),
Gwen/Morgana (Merlin), Gwen/Arthur Pendragon (Merlin), Gwen &
Merlin (Merlin), Gwaine & Merlin (Merlin), Knights of the Round Table
& Arthur Pendragon (Merlin), Arthur Pendragon & Uther Pendragon
(Merlin), Morgana & Arthur Pendragon & Uther Pendragon (Merlin)
Characters: Merlin (Merlin), Arthur Pendragon (Merlin), Morgana (Merlin), Gwen
(Merlin), Gwaine (Merlin), Leon (Merlin), Uther Pendragon (Merlin),
Knights of the Round Table (Merlin)
Additional Tags: Soul Bond, Self-Fulfilling Prophecy, Alternate Universe - Canon
Divergence, Merlin's Magic Revealed (Merlin), Merlin Leaves Camelot
(Merlin), Self-Harm, Eating Disorder Not Otherwise Specified, Time
Shenanigans, Fairy Tale Elements, Lies and Lying, Cell Phones, Rabbits,
Emotional Hurt/Comfort, Past Abuse, Accidental Bonding, Fake/Pretend
Relationship, Eventual Romance, Merlin's Happy Go Lucky Self is a
Mask, Arthurian Mythology References, to be clear this is canon era
Merlin and Arthur, this is not a modern au
Language: English
Stats: Published: 2025-05-09 Updated: 2025-05-11 Words: 16,947 Chapters:
4/?
carved my name wrong on that gravestone (you don't even know my
date of birth)
by deniigiq

Summary

“Arthur, listen to me,” Merlin says suddenly in a tone so gentle that Arthur forgets what he
was about to say right then and there.

“I’m—I’m listening,” he says.

Merlin lifts his head from his nest of arms and passes a thumb over the scab forming in the
very center of his lower lip.

“I fucking hate you,” he says.

(Arthur accidentally reveals Merlin's magic to the world, then accidentally bonds them
together before he's king, thereby throwing their prophecy way off course. He tries to make it
up to Merlin by making a place for him in Camelot, but that proves to be far more
complicated than he can manage on his own. Meanwhile, Merlin finds a smartphone in a
wishing well and tries to electrocute a paramedic.)

Notes

This fic is done, but I can't fucking count. We're going to find out together how many
chapters it is.
 Chapter 1

People with magic whisper.

Seldom do they speak, even in the quietest places of Camelot, deep in its forests and along
the sun-lit edges of its moors where wandering kings do not roam for fear of spying another
king and breaking the fragile peace between their kingdoms.

Morgana has grown used now to the whispering.

The ever-present susurrus lulls her to sleep and wakens her with all the gentleness her dreams
in Camelot were missing.

She is alone these days: no sister, no leader. Power is her companion, and she grows it as old
crones do primroses and meadowsweet around the doorways of their dilapidated huts.

It is a beautiful thing to sit in the forest and grow one’s magic beneath the rays of sunlight
that pour through the gaps of the canopy of leaves overhead.

It is peaceful.

Long ago, Morgana lost her shoes.

Her gown from Camelot was the first thing she lost. No longer does she carry with her the
thousand stitches made by Guinevere’s hand. The shift she wears now belonged once to
Morgause, and before her to another woman with a greater bust and a wider set of ribs than
Morgana’s own.

It fits well enough. Just like her new boots and the belt given to her by the druids.

They give her all sorts of things; much more than she needs as she no longer has a room to
fill with treasures and baubles.

And yet, she has never felt so pampered, so tended to and fed and trusted.

She is their priestess. To them, her magic—a disgusting, writhing, slimy thing to Uther—is a
riverbed. It gives life, it takes it. It flows through them all, and those who feel its touch shiver
in gratitude and if not gratitude than awe at all it can do.

Morgana is used to being beautiful. She has spent the majority of her life as a cut sapphire
polished and polished to ever-greater gleam.

Since leaving the custody of her jewel-smith, she has discovered that her beauty is not in her
face, but in the flow of her rivers, her blood, her waters, her hair, her sinew.

The only thing more beautiful than her magic’s life will be its memory, and somehow, that
thought is a peaceful one.
Or rather, it was.

The druids worship her as their priestess, but only that. There is another who she is to
worship herself, for she is their priestess, not their god.

The natural world and the magic it makes is the druids’ true north and deity, and while it
takes many shapes, lake guardians and moons and the triple goddess herself, there is one
shape that roams among men which is particularly captivating to all who whisper.

And she means all the whisperers. Not only the druids.

The lake guardians, the moons, mushroom spirits and sidhe and pixies and trolls and fairies
join in whispering the name of this magic.

Emrys, they say.

Immortal wisdom, they mean. Its birth was heralded with flowering boughs on every tree of
the forest, great wreaths of evergreens, piles of acorns, and gleaming fish scales scattered
along the edges of rivers.

The child Emrys never bore witness to this glorious celebration of its birth; for it was born in
Uther’s kingdom soon after the Purge, which is so ironic that its mere mention drives many
magical beings to find graves to roll in and throats to throttle in their frustration.

To all, at the very least, Emrys’s arrival means that hope for a better future is upon the
horizon in these otherwise extremely dark times.

Morgana’s dreams and those of seers long past offer glimpses of a golden age of magic
heralded in by this Emrys and his staff.

Seers past did not have the advantage that Morgana does with these visions. They did not
recognize Emrys’s face in their dreams and scrying pools and smoke.

Morgana does however, and the druids do too.

It’s all a little awkward.

It isn’t that Emrys is disappointing, it’s just that he’s.

Well.

He’s kind of upsettingly normal.

Merlin has quiet, mousy eyes and a lip like Cupid’s indomitable weapon. He flirts with maids
and teases children; he goes about with hay-covered clothing and sleeve cuffs covered in
layers of darning. Morgana knows for a fact that he has not tasted more than a mouthful of
meat in all his life.

He is a poor boy, a servant, and an apprentice.

The druids tell Morgana that he doesn’t quite seem believe them when they’ve explained to
him who he is, and they have tried to explain everything to him multiple times.

Merlin thinks they’ve got, in his words, ‘the wrong guy.’

He has other mentors—Gaius, for one and curiously, the dragon Uther imprisoned—and
while he is more likely to listen to their word over the druids’, Gaius and this dragon have
told him the same exact thing and Merlin allegedly remains convinced that this has all been
some great, cosmic mistake.

The druids are not offended by his stubbornness, though Morgana is on their behalf, but more
than she is offended, she is perplexed.

Merlin does not appear, in her view, to trust anyone.

Perhaps he listens more closely to Gaius and the dragon, but each time she has seen him since
her departure from court, she has been met with the wild, terrified gaze of a spooked stallion.

Morgana has tried speaking directly to Merlin on a few occasions when she’s gotten him
alone, but he is seldom keen to stay and hear reason.

He goes back to Arthur’s side every time, and when Arthur is not present for him to return to,
he calls lightning down from the sky and winds from the corners of planet; he bleeds stones
dry and melts flesh from bones.

The druids believe this is a natural reaction.

They say Merlin is following a series of chaotic, wildly destructive instincts to relocate
himself to Arthur’s side without realizing he is doing it precisely because he is Emrys.

For apparently, all things must be in balance; and while Merlin’s power as Emrys is and will
be forever unmatched, he is but an arrow in a bow.

Without someone to aim him, he serves no purpose and falls, useless and harmless, to the
ground.

In fact, Merlin as Emrys will forever struggle to act in service of himself because Fate has
specifically not given him an innate sense of personhood or right and wrong the way She has
given almost all other men.

Therefore, through no fault of his own, Merlin will never feel whole. He will forever be
searching for an archer, or as some say, the other side of his coin.

Unfortunately for him, the vast majority of magic beings believes that other side is supposed
to be Arthur, who they think is the mythical ‘Once and Future King’—an unparalleled
warrior-king said to protect the land of magic in past, future, and present.

But the thing is—and Morgana means this in the kindest possible manner—even if he is
meant to become the Once and Future King, Arthur is an utter cabbagehead now.
He has no idea that Merlin is fighting tooth and nail to keep him from being murdered by all
manner of murderous things, and he has no idea that his treatment of Merlin, which frankly is
worse than he treats most of his damn dogs, is not only an insult to the druids that he claims
to seek peace with but also is limiting his access to what would otherwise be an endless and
terrifying supply of magical might.

If he treated Merlin better, if he understood what Merlin was and what he could be, and if he
led Merlin properly instead of leaving him scrambling to make decisions Merlin has no way
of making on his own for lack of education, experience, and God-given common-sense, then
they’d already all be sitting in a goddamn Golden Age and Morgana would be wearing
matching boots.

Not that she doesn’t appreciate her boots.

She very much appreciates her boots.

Thank you, Bryn for making them.

It’s just frustrating to sit back and watch her brother point an arrow directly at his own face
while their so-called father goes about congratulating himself on slowly ruining his kingdom.

If Morgana was feeling petty (and she is today, thank you), she would say that she’d do a
better job handling Emrys than either of those fools any day of the week.

She talks to Iseldir about it later along with a small council of other elders.

They exchange nervous glances among themselves before telling her what she already
knows, which is that there is a prophecy, Arthur and Merlin are two sides of a coin, etc. etc.

She begs them to consider, however, that she is as good as Arthur in all ways royal and
kingly, and should something terrible happen to her sweet, empty-headed half-brother (God
forbid, may fortune find him, and so on and so on), she would ascend to the throne,
regardless of what Uther says or claims about her.

Therefore, it may well be that Arthur must die for the Golden Age to commence and if he
dies and takes Emrys with him unwittingly, well, that would be a problem wouldn’t it?

More nervous glances are exchanged around her.

Eventually, the elders say that, while they’re not fully sure that that is how the prophecy is
meant to work itself out, it couldn’t hurt for Emrys to become more familiar with magic
practitioners besides the esteemed physician he spends his time with.

Any sort of influence to help him in that direction could only be a boon in their eyes.

This is as close to permission as Morgana is going to get, and so she thanks the elders for
their wisdom and promises to bring Emrys back from Camelot.
Morgana sets off on a cold morning that turns itself into a languid, lolling hot day. The air in
the forest is warm and so thick that even moths struggle to fly.

She forgets until she is stood, panting, on the edge of Camelot’s border that she looks nothing
like the noblewoman she is meant to.

Her hair is a right mess. Her hands are reddened and chaffed from scrounging for acorns and
edible herbs. She hiked her skirts up miles back to ease her gait.

If Merlin sees her like this, he’ll think that she’s trying to spirit him away to do hard labor in
the sticks for the foreseeable future.

She stops by a river and attempts to put herself to order, though she has no comb and no salve
to soften her calloused hands with. A few plaits piled up on the crown of her head take care
of the first problem and a quick bath in the water takes care of her body’s smell if not the
roughness of her palms.

She reminds herself of her dignity as she takes up her skirts again and struts on towards
Camelot.

Uther will be there.

Arthur will be there.

Gwen will be there.

And Morgana will have to ignore all of them.

Her eyes must remain on the greatest prize of all.

Said prize is sitting outside in the shade of a parapet when Morgana finally makes her way to
the castle gates. Getting through Camelot-town was more of a hassle than expected.

For all her lack of finery, every suitor and nobleman’s son in all of Camelot seems to have
remembered her face and forgotten her total lack of interest in their romantic fluttering.
Worse than the suitors are the bakers, who swore allegiance to her some years back for some
piece of legislation she harangued Uther into adopting, though it has been so long now she
cannot remember which, only that it benefited town and village bakers all over.

She hoped they would have forgotten by now. She only wanted to make her way unnoticed.

Alas, they have not, and alas, a journey that should have taken an hour at most has taken two
and she has received—despite her public estrangement from the king—no fewer than four
marriage proposals.
How she coped with all this before she fled, she has no idea. No druid man has ever bothered
her with an offer of his hand except to help her up into a tree she could not climb on her own.

Still, finally at Camelot’s gates, she spots Merlin right away.

The heat must have driven him out of the castle the way water does rats from the corners of
houses. His head hangs between his bent knees. A dampened cloth soaks the back of his
neck.

Gwen takes it away and lays a gentle hand on Merlin’s wet nape.

Morgana shakes her head in disbelief.

Merlin and Gwen?

Are they—?

Surely not.

She watches with raised eyebrows as Gwen plunges the cloth into a small bowl of water and
re-lays it where it was before.

Merlin sags ever-more forward.

Gwen smiles a little and looks up, directly at Morgana. Morgana catches herself in her
surprise and steps back behind one of the wooden gates. She gives a little wave.

Gwen’s bowl tips right out of her lap as she starts to stand, looks down at Merlin and then
back. Morgana gestures minutely behind her and steps away.

Gwen knows where to find her. Only minutes later they collide with each other on the other
side of a small hedge of wild brambles by a duckpond near the castle’s western gate.

“Morgana?” Gwen gasps. “What are you doing here?”

Morgana holds a finger to her lips.

“Stealing,” she whispers.

“My lady.”

“Some lady,” Morgana titters. “I’m sorry, Gwen. I’ve had no time to explain anything to
you.”

“Where is Morgause?”

“No longer.”

“And Cenred? Are you here on Cenred’s business?”

“I am here on business of my own,” Morgana says.

Gwen’s gaze narrows.

“You cannot rely on me to keep your secrets,” she says.

“I have no need to. With you, I’ll be nothing less than honest. I am a new woman, Gwen. Test
me, I’ll tell you anything you want.”

It’s been a long time since she and Gwen were able to talk so freely. Is that Morgana’s fault?
Yes, yes, okay. Perhaps it is. But it is only her fault as much as it is Uther’s for driving her
away as it is.

“What are you here for, then?” Gwen asks.

“Merlin,” Morgana says.

“Merlin?” Gwen repeats as if Morgana has told her to expect a beetle in her stocking on the
morrow for good luck.

“He is valuable to the druids,” Morgana says.

“What, Merlin is?”

“He has magic,” Morgana says. “They have magic. I have magic. So you see: valuable.”

Gwen stares at her.

“Are you sure we are talking about the same man?” she asks.

“Very sure,” Morgana says.

“Merlin doesn’t have magic, my lady. He has heatstroke,” Gwen says. “And once he’s
through having that, he’ll have six hours of duties to attend to and maybe some sleep after.”

“I said I would be honest. I didn’t say I would make you believe me,” Morgana says, “Can I
borrow him?”

“You must mean Arthur. I’m sure if he knew you were here, he would be so pleased to see
you—”

“He would not,” Morgana says quickly. “I was thinking Merlin. Can you tell him I’m looking
to borrow him for a time?”

“Are you needing a servant?”

“No, dear, I’m needing a Merlin. Please, Gwen?”

“You must mean Arthur. Let me get him—”

“NO. I mean, no, no. I am not seeking an audience with his highness, truly,” Morgana says,
clearing her throat. “I am aware of my insults and crimes against his honor and people and I
have been well-warned of his impending fury should we meet again.”
“Oh, but he has missed you, Morgana,” Gwen says. “I swear it, we can all see it. He and the
king have left your quarters untouched.”

“How lovely for them. Can you ask Merlin if he’s got a moment?”

“My lady.”

“Pretty please? Please, please, please? I’ll go off into the woods right after and never bother
you again.”

“Who said I don’t want you bothering me again?” Gwen asks, now with her fists on her hips.
“You must talk to the king. You must explain yourself and apologize so that you may come
back home. The longer you are away, the more trouble you find yourself in. I can’t stand to
watch you be used by man upon man and woman upon woman.”

“Gwen, I would raze mountains for you, but I assure you I am done being used by man upon
man and woman upon woman,” Morgana pleads. “I only want to speak with Merlin.”

“For what purpose?” Gwen asks.

“Druid purposes,” Morgana says.

“Such as?”

“Oh, you know. Carving sigils in trees, venerating geese, sacrificing children. The usual.”

Gwen blinks slowly at her. Morgana takes a moment to remember that she’s supposed to be
telling truths.

“He’s magic,” she says. “I want to talk to him, to save him from being found out.”

“Like you were?” Gwen asks, softening.

Morgana returns her tender smile.

“Not at all,” she says.

“What?”

“It’s a long story, Gwen. I’m sure you have better things to do than listen to me natter on.”

“I’ve got the rest of the day off, actually,” Gwen says.

Damnit.

Gwen arches a brow.

“Are you in a hurry?” she asks.

Morgana grits her teeth and forces herself to smile.

“Yes,” she says.

“Is speaking to Merlin a matter of urgency?”

“More convenience than urgency.”

“Then I have good news, he’s not going anywhere for a good while,” Gwen says, “Walk with
me.”

She holds out her crooked arm. Morgana glances up at the towers overhead. Their windows
appear empty, though her skin crawls with the thought of Uther peering out of one at the
exact wrong moment and recognizing her stride or her plaited hair.

“Let’s go towards town,” she says.

Gwen smells like flowers, like roses specifically and the realization is so startling that
Morgana finds herself barely hearing what Gwen is saying over the need to breathe deep and
then deeper.

Everyone who passes them turns their heads to watch them stroll slowly by. One lad runs into
a tree.

Morgana squints in fascination.

Gwen says something more about Arthur.

“Are you wearing rosewater?” Morgana asks.

“Wh-oh. Yes?” Gwen says.

Morgana twists her head and stares into Gwen’s dark eyes until she looks away and fans
herself with a hand.

They both know that Gwen would never spend her wages on something as frivolous as
rosewater. Which means someone gave some to her. Which means someone is courting her.

“Was it Merlin?” Morgana asks.

“It was not Merlin,” Gwen says pointedly.

“Was it that knight with the hair?”

“His name was Lancelot, thanks, and no.”

“Some other man, then.”

“Does it really bother you so much?”

“It does not bother me,” Morgana says.

It only makes her want to slam two rocks together until one crumbles to shards.

“No one is good enough for you, Gwen,” she says.

“Really. No one at all?”

Ah.

It was Arthur. Good to know.

Morgana stops the two of them in their tracks and turns them back towards the castle. Gwen,
forced to come along by their interlocked arms, begins protesting and going on about how
they’ve barely walked at all.

Morgana sees no issue with this. The more time they spend walking that way, the longer it
will take her to find her sweet, darling baby brother and crush him to dust.

“My lady—”

“You are so worthy of being a princess, do you know that?” Morgana says as she brings both
herself and Gwen to an abrupt halt.

“I—what?”

“I said, you are worthy of being a princess. Everything about you is princess-ly, look at you,”
Morgana says, fluffing Gwen’s spirals and cupping her cheeks.

“Okay?” Gwen says.

“Let me introduce you to another prince,” Morgana says.

Gwen scoffs.

“A druid one?” she teases.

Morgana stares.

“We don’t have princes,” she says. “But I know of a ghost knight, a deer king, a frog prince, a
sleeping beauty—”

“Wait, wait.”

“—There’s a headless one, not a prince, but a hard worker if you’re open to ex-nobility.”

“Morgana,” Gwen says. “What are you going on about?”

“Magic,” Morgana says, not bothering to whisper, nor bothering to acknowledge the
townpeople who leap into the air at the mere mention of the word. “I’m surrounded by it now.
The men are so much better among them, Gwen. Truly, you have no idea. Not all of them,
obviously, you’ve got your cheats and your jesters, of course, but if you must have a man,
don’t settle for Arthur of all people.”

Gwen gapes.

“Settle?” she repeats. “You think I’m settling?”

Morgana does not know how to say ‘obviously’ any more than she already has and so she
devolves into a frantic series of hand and arm gestures that she hopes conveys this instead.

“Are you out of your mind?” Gwen says. “I’m not settling for Arthur. I’m—he—it is a
mutual affection.”

“But why?” Morgana blurts out.

“Why not?” Gwen asks, drawing her neck up proudly. “You said I am worthy of being a
princess, didn’t you?”

“To literally any other prince,” Morgana says.

“You mean any other prince that you choose?”

“What else could I mean?” Morgana asks.

Gwen’s gaze is at first irritable, but it breaks into good humor before Morgana’s face. She
laughs, and Morgana watches her, wondering what, exactly, is funny.

“It is so strange to see you acting so much like your old self,” Gwen says. “I missed you.”

Morgana does not know what that means, nor does she wish to.

“I have…missed you as well,” she admits. “But do you really mean to involve yourself with
Arthur?”

“As long as he proves himself honorable,” Gwen says.

“See,” Morgana says, “This is the exact issue I am having. On this? We agree.”

“On what?”

“On this. His honor. It is deficient. It is negligible at best.”

“No, not Arthur.”

“Yes, Arthur,” Morgana says. “Do you see how he treats Merlin?”

“Since when did you care so much about Merlin?” Gwen asks. “Unless?”

Absolutely not.

“I would rather drown,” Morgana says. “This isn’t about that.”

“Are you sure?”

“Positive.”

“I’m only saying.”

“Well, I’m only telling.”

“He’s a fair young man, you know. No one would blame you. The kitchen maids adore him.”

“Gwen,” Morgana says, stopping them again so they can get this straightened out here and
now. “The last man I want to tie myself to forever is my brother’s unholy manservant. This is
not an issue of romance. It is a matter of efficiency. Necessity. Merlin is a catalyst.”

“I don’t know what that means,” Gwen says. “Why are you so serious?”

“It means that he is the cause of future change, great future change,” Morgana says.

“Merlin is?”

“Yes. He is Emrys. Emrys. The immortal wisdom. The greatest sorcerer this land and any
shall ever know,” Morgana says.

Gwen’s brow twists in silence.

“I think you’re confusing Merlin with Gaius,” she says. “Not that Gaius does that kind of
thing anymore.”

“I’m not,” Morgana says. “Gaius is my third problem. I will deal with him once I’ve cleared
the other two from the field.”

“You’re not making sense.”

“It is too much to explain,” Morgana sighs. “What matters is that Arthur is being
irresponsible with Emrys, and Emrys cannot be the greatest sorcerer of all time when he’s in
a constant state of seeking approval.”

“Okay?” Gwen says. “I’m pretty sure that Arthur would know if the ‘greatest sorcerer of all
time’ was looking to him for approval.”

Morgana stares.

Gwen stares back innocently.

Morgana sighs.

“Take me to my foul brother,” she says. “Let’s just get this over with.”
 Chapter 2

Arthur starts with a grimace that he attempts to turn into an embrace which Morgana side-
steps with grace.

She informs him that he is a boorish, hollow-headed, ignorant prince and while she does not
approve of his romancing of Guinevere, she is willing to overlook it and keep it a secret from
Uther if Arthur does her the singular favor of handing over Emrys.

Arthur takes a long, long time to understand all those words together and asks Gwen if
Morgana is acting like herself. He asks Gwen. When Morgana is standing right in front of
him.

There is no greater proof that he is undeserving of the gifts the goddesses have granted him.

“I believe so, my lord,” Gwen says with a bobbing curtsey.

“Right,” Arthur says. “Well, er.”

“Emrys, now,” Morgana says.

“I don’t know who that is,” Arthur says flatly. “And even if I did, I can’t just give you a
servant. You know that.”

“I’m not asking for a servant, I’m asking for a sorcerer,” Morgana says.

“Keep your voice down,” Arthur hisses. “You know there are no sorcerers here in this castle
but for yourself.”

“If you won’t give him to me, I’ll be forced to take him,” Morgana says.

“Take who? For what?” Arthur says. “Morgana, listen. Let us talk somewhere private.”

“I’m alright, thanks very much. I’ll just be taking his Greatness and tromping off,” Morgana
says.

“Sister.”

“Ah-ah. No. We’re not doing that,” Morgana says. “Give me Emrys.”

“Sister,” Arthur says again. “Please. Let us speak together honestly and openly. You are
so…”
He trails off, seeking out Gwen’s face as if she knows how to more politely describe
Morgana’s disheveled appearance and ruddy hands.

Morgana waits.

“Unlike yourself,” Arthur eventually lands on. “Father’s heart would break if he saw you like
this.”

“It’s a good job he won’t be, then, isn’t it?” Morgana says.

“Morgana.”

“I did not come here to listen to people singing my name.”

“What will you have me do?” Arthur asks. “Why did you come here? What can I offer you
that will convince you to stay?”

“I already told you what I am here for, and there is no need for threats or accommodations. I
live with the druids now,” Morgana says.

“And that woman,” Arthur scowls.

“That woman is dead,” Morgana corrects him. “And she was my sister, so I’ll ask you to have
some respect.”

“So she may be your sister, but I am not your brother?” Arthur scoffs.

“You may be half by a technicality.”

“Wow.”

“Give me Emrys, Arthur. This is a waste of both of our time.”

“Father must see you.”

“Father can choke.”

“How dare you.”

“Well, well, well,” Morgana croons, “Where has your passion gone, brother-mine? That was
the weakest ‘how dare you’ I’ve ever heard. Perhaps now that you are also affected by
Father’s disproval, you finally have begun to understand why I cannot stand to be in his
sight?”

Arthur shifts his weight and raises his arms to cross them over his chest. He has gotten taller
somehow in Morgana’s absence. She liked him better when they were the same height.

She liked him best when he was away at Sir Ector’s estate during his early summers as a
squire.

“I don’t know what you mean,” Arthur says mulishly.

“I’m sure you do,” Morgana says, glancing again towards Gwen. “You know how Father
feels about affectionate servants.”

Arthur’s proud chin holds steady.

“You can speak his name like poison, but it will not change the fact that he is yours as much
as he is mine,” he says. “You belong here with us.”

“Please. The moment he discovered what I am, he was content to throw me away with the
other riff-raff,” Morgana says. “But the jest is upon him now. I am content with the druids. I
am happy to be rid of this place and its daily horrors, let me tell you. But on behalf of those
who do accept me, I have returned and, in their peaceful name, I ask you one more time to
release Emrys from your service. If you cannot bear to release him entirely, I understand, in
that case release him into my service and I will do what need be done.”

“If he is in my service, then I will release him happily on one condition,” Arthur says.

“Alright,” Morgana deadpans.

“You will speak to Father.”

“Fine,” Morgana says. “Bring out the torches, see if I care.”

Everyone in this castle is just so emotional. Morgana is weary of them. She did not come here
to be pleaded with or held at arm’s length and wept over.

Merlin is still laying around outside, defenseless and probably rotting away into bones as she
stands here and endures some awful speech about how Gaius learned how to divest himself
of his magic ways and how there is surely hope for her to do the same.

She finds herself growing ever more impatient and snappish.

“I do not want to divest myself,” she tells Uther and his dribbling tears. “This is who I am.”

“No. No, you have been manipulated, my poor girl,” Uther says. “Morgause convinced you
that this is the only way you can live.”

She didn’t, actually, though not for lack of trying.

“Father,” Morgana says as sweetly and patiently as she would to a child, “I did not become
this way to hurt you. I did not wake up one morning and ask God to become the very thing
you most despise. I simply woke up. And there I was. And there you weren’t. So what was I
to do? My options were to risk the loss of your affection and burn on a pyre or to stand proud
as your enemy. Would you have rather I have stayed here so that you could slay me
yourself?”
Uther’s blunt, bare fingers cup the air under her chin. She can feel their warmth.

It does not move her.

“Losing an arm would be less painful than losing you,” Uther says.

Were she in any other mood, Morgana might have taken pity upon him then and there. She
might have choked upon a matching set of glistening tears and thrown herself into his arms
the way she did as a child.

But frankly, they’re burning daylight and Emrys is not going to come quietly, so she needs to
get this show on the road if she hopes to put some distance between these people and his and
her beautiful partnership.

“I do not pretend that you are not standing at the crux of an impossible decision, my lord,”
she says. “I am humbled by the war I see in you between your heart and your principles.”

“Morgana,” Uther pleads.

“Allow me the kindness of making the decision for you,” Morgana says. “I am the priestess
of the druids.”

“Morgana, no.”

“We are a peaceful people. I have pledged to them to be peaceful myself, though they know
there is yet anger in my heart for my treatment by the people and court of Camelot. However,
I am now guided by their principles, and I wish only to negotiate for the release of a servant
of this court into our care for such a time to be decided between yourself and me.”

“Why?” Uther asks.

“Because,” Morgana says. “He is to be the greatest sorcerer of all time, and your son has
failed to appreciate the power he has been dealt by fate and your own kindness, my lord.”

“Gaius is the only sorcerer remaining in this court,” Uther says. “And you know he no longer
practices, and though I was once privy to the whole of his power before our laws prohibited
such things, I am afraid that, er—well, I would hardly call such magic the ‘greatest of all
time.’”

Morgana arches an eyebrow as she watches Uther do a rather peculiar dance around this
subject. It gives her the impression Gaius used to take regular shots at his pride for sport in
the days of yore, and though he was not impressed by the sting, he is not in a hurry to forget
it either.

“I’m not talking about Gaius,” she says. “I’m talking about Emrys. Do you know the
prophecy of Emrys?”

Arthur tsks and opens his mouth, but Uther, to Morgana’s surprise, holds a hand out to
silence him.
“I am aware of this prophecy,” he says.

“Sorry, what?” Arthur says.

“But it is only that,” Uther says. “Not all prophecies come true, Morgana. Surely the druids
have taught you this.”

“What prophecy?” Arthur asks.

“This one is confirmed,” Morgana says. “Emrys has been identified among our people. He is
confirmed to be himself. The Once and Future King remains to be witnessed.”

A muscle in Uther’s cheek jumps in irritation.

“Emrys is a druid, then?” he asks.

“No,” Morgana says. “He is a servant, my lord.”

“Does he know he is Emrys?” Uther asks.

“Who’s Emrys?” Arthur asks.

“He has not adopted the title,” Morgana says.

“He has not adopted it or he has refused it?” Uther asks.

Morgana’s lips curl without her permission. Uther huffs in amusement.

“The greatest sorcerer of all time,” he says, “Doesn’t believe the druids?”

“He will be convinced,” Morgana says. “I will convince him.”

“My dear daughter. Your prophecy links your sorcerer to a king, not a priestess,” Uther says.

“So I’ll kill Arthur first and then you,” Morgana says.

“A king, my girl,” Uther repeats, then chuckles. “The Greatest sorcerer of all time,” he
repeats. “And he is in…Arthur’s service, is that what you think?”

She said too much.

“I am asking that you release him into mine. I will remove him from your court. Camelot will
be pure once more,” she says.

“And in doing so, I will give the druids a weapon unlike any this world has known?”

“You don’t like magic, Uther.”

“I am not a fool. If the servant’s talents wither under Arthur’s command, then let them wither.
There is no benefit for Camelot in any other arrangement.”
“Emrys is chaotic,” Morgana counters. “If he is not appropriately directed, he will succumb
to madness and attack his own side and himself. You know magic. You know what it does to
those left unmoored. Is it worth the risk to keep him in this court? How long do you think you
can stave it off? How long do you think he can resist his destiny without someone to aid him?
Ignorance is not bliss, Father. Look what happened to me.”

That actually seems to give Uther pause. Morgana seizes the moment before he can get
another word in.

“You cannot execute him,” she says. “Emrys cannot die. Your pyres, your swords mean
nothing to him.”

Uther’s nostrils flare as he draws himself up to his full height.

“Sorry,” Arthur says, literally inserting himself between him and Morgana, “Can we go back
to the—”

“Emrys is a sorcerer,” Morgana hurls at him. “It has been foretold that he will aid the Once
and Future King in uniting kingdom of Albion and in turn, the Once and Future King will aid
him in bringing upon us a golden age of magic. One cannot exist without the other. That
Emrys has risen means the Once and Future King has, too.”

Arthur looks to Uther.

“Kind of a vague prophecy, don’t you think? The Once and Future King? Could be anyone,”
he says.

Uther stares at Morgana.

“You’re suggesting that Arthur is the Once and Future king,” he says.

“Aren’t you proud?” Morgana says with the sharpest smile she can muster. “Or are you upset
that it isn’t you?”

“Arthur will not bring magic to Camelot,” Uther says.

“I know,” Morgana says. “So, really, I’m doing you both a favor. If I leave Emrys here, fate
will undo all your hard work.”

“Arthur is standing right here,” Arthur points out. “And I know for a fact that there are no
sorcerers in my service.”

Morgana and Uther consider him.

“I suppose you will not reveal his name to me,” Uther says.

“If I did, would you give him to me?” Morgana asks.

“If I did, will you use him against this kingdom?” Uther counters.
“The druids are a peaceful people.”

“I am not asking about the druids.”

“You have no need to worry,” Morgana says, “Emrys is compelled to seek his King’s counsel;
if I ill treat him, he will simply kill me and return to his king’s side.”

There is a long pause.

“Morgana,” Uther says, “I cannot give you someone who would slaughter you for so little.”

“Why not?” Morgana demands.

“Because you are my daughter.”

“That did not matter to you before.”

“Who said it did not matter?”

“YOU did in everything you EVER did.”

“I did what I needed to, to protect you—”

“No, you did what you needed to, to protect Arthur.”

“Voices,” Arthur pleads.

“You cannot inherit the throne. Were things different—”

“You could make them different.”

“You of all people know that is not true. This kingdom is fragile, loyalty is paramount. I
cannot afford to upset the balance of power.”

“I am no longer asking you to upset it, I am only asking that you give me Emrys.”

“I shall not. The risk of his betrayal is not worth your life.”

“You don’t care about my life. I have magic.”

“I don’t care that you have magic.”

“I CAN’T UNDERSTAND YOU.”

“It is not magic that will destroy this kingdom, Morgana,” Uther roars, “It is the betrayal of
those who wield it which will be its undoing.”

“So you mean that we are untrustworthy?” Morgana says. “You think we have no honor?”

“Magic has no honor,” Uther says.

“Magic does not have honor because it simply is,” Morgana snarls. “It will exist with or
without your permission. It will be here no matter what you do. Magic cannot die. That is the
point of Emrys, Father. He exists as proof to us us that our wisdom, our energy is immortal,
that we will always be here. It is up to you to decide if you will strengthen your kingdom with
our alliance or not.”

“Give me his name,” Uther says. “And if you can prove to me that he will not betray this
kingdom, I will let you have him.”

Morgana laughs out loud.

“You cannot prove Emrys’s loyalty without proving first that Arthur is the Once and Future
King,” she says. “Which none of us can do.”

“None?” Uther says.

“If you don’t believe me, then ask your court physician,” Morgana says.

“There is a way,” Gaius says.

Morgana screams silently into her hands. Uther straightens his spine at the other side of the
table in triumph.

“Does it involve magic, Gaius?” Uther asks.

“None needed, my lord,” Gaius says in an almost bored tone that makes Morgana want to
suffocate him.

“You can’t know that,” she says. “Iseldir doesn’t even know this.”

“With all due respect,” Gaius says with a sharp, disproving glance her way, “I am not a druid,
my lady. They have their ways of knowing the world, and I have mine.”

“What does that even mean?” Morgana growls.

Gaius turns his peaked brow upon Uther. They hold each other’s gaze for several long beats
before Uther says,

“There are as many kinds of magic as there are practitioners.”

Gaius seems pleased with that answer.

“You might call them schools of thought,” he says. “Those of us interested in the healing arts
have developed a series of proofs to help us ascertain whether a being of prophecy is who
they are said to be. We are methodical like that you see, where our friends the druids are
more inclined towards trusting the impressions they receive from the various elements out
there in the woods.”

“Emrys has rather obvious criteria,” Gaius goes on before Morgana can inform him firmly
that those ‘elements out there in the woods’ have yet to steer her wrong, “A natural affinity
for casting and lifting spells without the need for verbal articulation, an innate ability to
manipulate natural phenomenon, and limitless shape-shifting. If all three criteria are not met,
the person is not Emrys. If all three are met, the person is likely Emrys, though a healer might
check for a soul bond next or a seer might ponder his future for greater confirmation.”

“And the king?” Morgana asks.

“The king is not said to have magic, so his identity will be harder to gauge,” Gaius says. “The
most efficient way to know would be to check for a soul bond with Emrys, since the Once
and Future King will be the only bond that Emrys has.”

“And how do you check for a soul bond?” Morgana asks.

“Poison,” Gaius says.

“Alright,” Uther says before he’s even finished.

“Or venom,” Gaius adds.

“No venom,” Uther says in a tone that makes Morgana feel like he’s had this conversation
before.

“Certain rocks.”

“Physician.”

“When I was a boy, we’d stand the two in the light of a full moon and check their shadows
for extra heads.”

“Gaius, we have discussed this.”

“The most humane way is to simply ask the patient in question,” Gaius carries on, “We have
found that those who do have such bonds are often aware of them, even if they do not have
words for the sensation.”

All eyes go to Arthur.

“Do you have any particular compulsions towards someone, my lord?” Gaius asks.

Arthur blinks.

“Such as?” he says.

“A desire to protect or defend? Uncomfortable sensations when you are apart from another?”
“Uh.”

Morgana drags a hand down her face.

“Do you find yourself ruminating on someone or something in particular?” Gaius asks. “A
reoccurring dream, perhaps?”

“Oh,” Arthur says. “Well. Maybe it’s, er, nothing. But I dream of a dragon fairly often.”

“A dragon?” Uther repeats.

“Yes,” Arthur says.

“What sort of dragon, son? Our crest?”

“No,” Arthur says with a frown. “I don’t know how to explain it. It’s a dragon, but it’s—it’s
not like a dragon that I see. It’s a, it’s like a feeling about a dragon. There’s someone—it’s
this soaring feeling. Like a when you’re falling asleep and you dream that you’re falling from
the sky.”

Gaius’s herb-filled chambers are filled with sunlight; the silence that follows feels out of
place in them.

“How do you know it’s a dragon?” Morgana asks.

“I just know,” Arthur says.

Gaius hums and nods.

“Is that it?” Arthur asks. “I mean. People dream of things all the time, don’t they?”

“They do,” Gaius says.

“It doesn’t make it some kind of—some kind of soul bond, does it?”

“Not necessarily.”

“So I could be normal, right? Not this prophesized whatever, yes?”

Gaius looks to Uther when he says, “You could be.”

Uther passes a hand over his chin and lips. The sound of his unshaved whiskers against his
equally rough skin is so familiar that Morgana is struck by a pang of biting nostalgia in her
stomach.

“What says the dragon on this?” Uther asks.

“What dragon?” Gaius says airily.

“I know you consult with him.”

“Ah. That dragon,” Gaius says. “Well, he is rather set on the idea that Arthur is, without a
doubt, the Once and Future King.”

“Since when?”

“Since he was born, sire.”

“And you did not tell me?”

“Nimueh did, did she not?”

There comes a long pause.

“Did she not?” Gaius asks again.

Uther clears his throat.

“I do not trust her word,” he says.

Gaius’s expression could melt sand into glass.

“Yes, well. Occasionally, her crows and magpies do deliver clear knowledge upon her,” he
says.

“Did,” Uther corrects.

“Forgive me for saying so, but no one has tried to hide this from you, my lord, nor from her
lady Ygraine. We all agreed that the boy would be legendary and were sure to say so to both
yourself and her lady. It was not flattery, though I suppose I presumed incorrectly that you
already knew that.”

“Me?” Arthur says. “Wh—why?”

“Why?” Gaius asks him back. “Why? Arthur, you are a child born of magic. You are, as far
as magic is concerned, part of it and one with it. Why would those who practice the old ways
not see in you a great power and destiny?”

Morgana is not gloating. She is above gloating. She is only looking with very large and
sympathetic eyes upon her father.

That’s all she’s doing.

“So we’re both tied up in this?” Arthur finally realizes in a quiet voice.

Gaius laces his fingers together.

“Your father has sought only to protect you,” he says, obviously to placate the king. “Magic
is a dangerous art. The majority of practitioners choose to pursue it, but now and again
certain persons are born into it without a choice of their own.”

“Like me,” Morgana says.

Gaius inclines his head her way in an extraordinarily satisfying admission of what Morgana
knew all along.

“And Emrys? He was born into it? Like me?” Arthur asks.

“Like Morgana,” Gaius corrects him.

“So—so he can’t help it.”

Arthur looks to Uther with pleading eyes.

“He can’t help it?” he asks in a more boyish tone.

Uther will not look at him. Morgana wants to seize his face and force him to.

She does not, however.

Iseldir will be so pleased with her.

“Emrys is a threat to this kingdom,” Uther says.

“Emrys does not have the same capacity for moral reasoning that Arthur does, no,” Gaius
says.

“You flatter me, Gaius,” Arthur says.

“Yes, well. Don’t get ahead of yourself,” Gaius says. “I did not say that your moral reasoning
was yet up to par, my lord.”

“What?”

“You are young,” Uther says.

He refrains from tacking ‘and wildly immature’ onto the edge of that statement, but Morgana
hears it anyways.

“Does Emrys know how to serve his purpose?” Uther asks Gaius.

“Emrys is Arthur’s junior in both age and world experience, my lord,” Gaius says. “Most fish
are better aware of their lives’ ambitions than he.”

“Can he be informed?”

“He has been informed. He simply refuses to believe those of us doing the informing.”

“He does not believe he has a purpose?”

“He does not believe he is Emrys,” Gaius corrects.

“Is—what—is there are reason for that?” Uther asks.

“Well,” Gaius says. “I think, if you knew who he was, you would understand.”

This is an understatement. Morgana nods in pitying agreement.

“But you will not tell me,” Uther says.

“Only the Once and Future King can, my lord,” Gaius says, turning to Arthur.

Uther rounds upon him, too. His fists find his hips and Arthur startles himself into princely
posture.

“If I knew, Father, I would say immediately,” he says.

“So say,” Uther says. “Who do you think is Emrys?”

“I know of no magic user in Camelot—”

“Son, put that aside for now. No one in their right mind would use magic in front of you. I am
asking you to ask yourself who it is that you feel bonded with. Is it Leon?”

“What? No. Leon is like a brother to me.”

“Gwaine then?”

“If it is, we’re all doomed.”

“This is not funny, Arthur.”

“I’m not trying to be.”

“Be serious.”

“I don’t know,” Arthur says with wide, empty palms held out in front of him. “How could I
possibly know?”

“You must,” Uther says. “Morgana says Emrys is in your service.”

“So a servant? George? Dafyyd? Efa? Why can’t she just tell us?”

“That’s not how this works,” Morgana says. “If you can’t confirm, you aren’t the Once and
Future King, and if you aren’t, then Emrys should not be wasting his time with you, and I
will be the first to tell him that so that we can go and find that king.”

“But you know,” Arthur says, “And—and Gaius knows, don’t you, Gaius? So this is some
test just for me? How is that fair?”

“Son,” Uther groans. “It’s fine if you don’t know. But you must at least try.”

“Because you want me to be this Future king now? You want me to be forever entangled with
this Emrys? With magic?” Arthur demands.
“You’re already entangled,” Morgana says. “Look. We know you don’t want Emrys, so we
are willing to do whatever we can to un-couple the two of you if need be, and once he is with
us, this will no longer be your problem. And if you aren’t actually the Once and Future King,
that’s even better. We will take Emrys off your hands and help him find the real one, so they
can fulfill the prophecy miles and miles away from here. It’s a winning situation no matter
how it works out, you see?

Uther makes a sound that suggests disagreement, but Morgana ignores him.

“Just feel,” she says. “Just let your heart guide you.”

Arthur clearly does not know how to do this, but he is a good sport about it and stands with
his feet a shoulder’s width apart and his knuckles planted on his hips.

He closes his eyes.

“Relax,” Morgana says.

His shoulders slope incrementally.

“Think of the dragon,” she says.

Magic flares around her, curling like fingers in the hair at the very back of her skull.

Emrys has woken outside.

“Do you feel it?” she asks.

Arthur frowns and tilts his head.

The fingers in the back of Morgana’s hair begin to lift at the same time the sunlight in the
Gaius’s chambers’ windows begins to fall away.

Uther notices the darkness and glances urgently towards Gaius.

Arthur’s brow, now deeply furrowed, tilts the other way with his head as he, likely for the
first time, begins following the thread he has never before noticed in his mind.

He opens his eyes just as the chambers’ door bangs open.

He opens his mouth.

“Get out.”

The room is so dark now, it may well be night. Rain has started chattering on the wooden
beams outside.

“Well, well, well,” Morgana says. “Look who’s finally decided to join us.”

Merlin throws the door shut behind him. Anyone looking closely would see that his fingers
never actually touch it.
“Get away from him,” Merlin orders.

Arthur stares at him like he’s never seen him before.

“Merlin?” he breathes.

“I said, get away from him,” Merlin says.

Morgana steps back and holds her hands up.

“Easy,” she says. “I’m not touching him.”

“What brought you here? Who let you through the gates?” Merlin demands.

“I wish you no harm.”

“Merlin, stop.”

Immediately, like a hound on a chain, Merlin’s fury locks into place. It is as if he has frozen.
That alone is proof enough in Morgana’s books.

She looks to Arthur with bouncing eyebrows.

Arthur does not see her; he stares at Merlin in a mixture of horror and amazement.

“Merlin,” he says softly. “Merlin, no.”

“Whatever she told you is a lie,” Merlin says. “Who let you through?”

“You mean, who found a hole in your enchantment?” Morgana asks. “What will you do to
them if I tell you?”

Merlin’s eyes blaze in the dark; they are not yet as gold as they should be with all the magic
he’s currently handling, but that’s just the thing about Emrys: this is all child’s play to him.
He could call thunder and rain in his sleep.

“Name them,” he says.

“Come with me,” Morgana says. “You’re wasted here.”

“It was Gwen.”

Alright. Alright, maybe backtracking a little now.

No one said anything about telepathy.

“Emrys,” she says.

“I am not your Emrys,” Merlin snarls.

“Merlin, stop,” Arthur says again.

The look he receives as Merlin’s jaw locks in place is nothing short of mutinous.

“You’re a sorcerer?” Arthur asks.

Merlin sneers at Morgana.

“He thinks I’m trying to harm you,” Morgana says. “I’m not, by the way. They aren’t any use
to me anymore, Emrys. I’m here for you.”

Merlin’s rage begins expressing itself by banging the shutters of Gaius’s windows against the
castle walls outside.

He says nothing, still.

“Let him speak,” Morgana murmurs to Arthur.

“What?”

“Tell him he can speak.”

“Merlin, explain yourself.”

The order falls away from Merlin’s shoulder like a silver chain to the floor. He steps over it to
stand so close to Morgana that she can feel the linen of his tunic scraping against her own
chest.

He towers over her like this.

Hair as black as blood at night. Eyes so pale, the edges threaten to vanish into the whites.
Magic forms tightly coiled and writhing clouds around him. It builds as a storm does in the
heavens and threatens to unleash an unholy downpour from the rafters of these very
chambers.

How she ever mistook him for a servant, Morgana does not know.

He is something far more beautiful and unearthly than that.

“Look at you,” she says. “I was wrong to cross you.”

She is aware that Uther and Gaius are arguing on the other side of the room, but it doesn’t
really make a difference to her.

She raises a hand and cups Emrys’s jaw. He jerks towards it as if he means to bite.

Morgana smiles.

“How wild,” she says.

Merlin arches his long neck as if absorbing the compliment.

“Your secret is out now,” Morgana says. “What will you do, Emrys?”
“I will strip the flesh from your bones and bury you where no one will find your grave,”
Merlin tells her.

“You won’t,” Morgana croons. “You’re too soft.”

Merlin moves as if to seize her throat, but Arthur’s hand is faster. His fingers clench hard
around Merlin’s wrist. The touch seems to finally bring Merlin’s awareness out of his
instinctive, protective fog. He wrenches his hand away, twisting so hard against Arthur’s
thumb that Arthur cries out.

“Forget,” Merlin tells him.

Arthur stares.

“Forget,” Merlin says again.

“You’re trying to enchant me,” Arthur realizes.

“It won’t work on him,” Morgana says. “Not when it’s about this, Emrys.”

“I was never here,” Merlin plows on regardless. “Your manservant is named George. Forget.”

“His enchantments don’t work on me?” Arthur asks Morgana.

“Forget.”

“They usually will, but this is Fate. He can’t change Fate.”

“So says you,” Merlin snarls.

“Prove me wrong,” Morgana says.

This is, in hindsight, a mistake. Merlin holds up a hand in front of her face and before she
knows what’s happening, Arthur is shouting and the room is all up in a commotion.

Her throat convulses with every breath. Her upper arms ache from the grip Uther has on them
as he lowers her rigid body to the floor. Arthur crowds Merlin in a corner of the physician’s
chambers until his back is nearly flat against the wall.

“You listen to me,” Arthur threatens him. “You will not touch her like that ever again, do you
understand?”

“I thought you said he was bound to obey Arthur?” Uther hisses at Gaius while Morgana
recovers the ability to breath.

“He is not bound to obey as of yet, he allows himself to be directed,” Gaius says. “If he does
not trust Arthur to direct him, then he’ll do what he feels he must to protect him.”

“Morgana is not a threat.”

“The issue is about trust and connection, my lord, not individuals.”

“This arrangement is untenable.”

“It is only so because it has not been honed.”

“How long have you concealed this from me?”

“Merlin is not a threat to others, sire,” Gaius says. “He is, at most, a threat to himself. He will
do anything for Arthur. Anything.”

The word silences Uther as its meaning sinks into his bones.

He turns away and, in the gap between his shoulders and Gaius’s, Morgana catches sight of
Merlin’s wild eyes. His cheeks are white. Upset rolls down his face as rain does over a
stone’s surface.

He has never disappointed Arthur like this, never at least totally bared to Arthur for what he
is, and no matter what Arthur says to him now, Morgana can see Emrys shrinking away from
him faster by the second.

No platitudes can fill that widening gap. While Arthur talks on and on about ground rules and
him not needing protection, Merlin’s pale eyes sink lower and lower until they stop.

Arthur takes hold of his shoulders at the same time Merlin reaches between them for the hilt
of Arthur’s sword.

Arthur goes quiet.

“Merlin,” he says. “What are you doing?”

The fingers fall away.

“Just leaving, my lord,” Merlin says suddenly without a trace of emotion. “My apologies for
having let you down. It will not happen again. I wish to thank you for your tolerance over
these past many years.”

“Tolerance? You lied to me; I didn’t know what I was tolerating, and if I had, if you’d just
been honest—” Arthur says.

“There is no need,” Merlin says before he can finish. “You will be an excellent king, sire. I
am honored to have stood by your side as long as you have allowed it.”

He takes Arthur’s dagger from his tunic, where he no doubt placed it that very morning.

“A parting gift,” he says with a smile.

In that moment, Arthur understands. He catches Merlin’s wrist again.

“Stay,” he orders. “Don’t leave here.”

“Stay,” Merlin echoes back to him with a condescending smile, “Don’t leave here.”
His body seems to flicker.

In the next moment, he is gone, dagger and all.

 Chapter 3

It takes four and a half days to locate Emrys.

By then, Morgana’s boots have holes in them from walking through field upon forest upon
prairie.

She started with Ealdor, where there was nothing but the scent of wet, warming soil, then
moved on to a few bowers on the outskirts of Camelot’s town where journeymen are known
to take refuge as they make their way northward.

Nothing. Nothing.

There was a dead body bloated in a ravine between those bowers and Camelot-town. It
belonged to no one she knew.

A trio of orchard farmers on the outskirts of the Darkling woods claimed to know a man who
fit Emrys’s description. They pointed Morgana towards a tavern with broken floorboards.
Inside a man with black curly hair sat drinking strong ale all on his lonesome.

His eyes were brown and puffy; his lips were reddened and wet with spittle as he raised his
mug to Morgana and asked what a beauty like her could want from a washed-up old man like
him.

He is not Emrys.

Emrys is curled up on dry ground outside a cave in the high mountains.

He is so far north that the Druids in the area speak a different dialect from the one Morgana
has learned from the ones in her current company. The cave his body lays near to looks to
have once been inhabited. Rugs and a bed with crudely woven blankets fill the space in the
deepest part of its cavern. There is an unused hearth a little ways away from these, protected
by the partial overhang of stone overhead.

Emrys has painted something Morgan cannot quite make out on the stone beneath his head
and shoulders. His eyes alone follow her as she fetches a disused stool from the corner of the
cave and brings it over to sit before him.

The paintings are all the color of wet rust.

Who knows where the dagger went after he extracted the color he needed for that sickening
mural.

“I did not intend for it all to be this painful,” she admits.

Emrys huffs derisively and closes his eyes.

“I knew you might be protective,” she says. “I did not realize how strong your compulsion
would be.”

Emrys still does not answer her. His chest rises and falls as if he is falling asleep. His legs are
bent at strange angles. It is too cold out here in the morning and night to lay on the stone
wearing only linen. He must have numbed himself to the temperature.

Or maybe his blood has always run cold. He’s never appeared especially well fed in all the
years Morgana has known him, despite him working within the castle walls.

“Your loyalty is admirable,” she says. “Arthur wanted me to tell you that.”

“Fuck him.”

Morgana nearly chokes on her own tongue.

“Emrys,” she says. “You don’t mean that.”

Emrys huffs again, this time in amusement.

He turns his head away.

“You must be cold,” Morgana says.

“Why are you here?” Emrys drawls.

“To apologize.”

“There’s no point.”

“You should know that Arthur does care about you; he has always cared about you. I was
hasty in my assumptions—”

“Perhaps he cared in fits,” Emrys says.

Morgana tucks her fingers under her knees to warm them. The temperature is dropping all
around them.

“He thought he needed to protect me from you,” she says.

Emrys says nothing.

“Has he ever—do you ever feel like he protects you?” Morgana asks.

Emrys looks at her finally.

He smiles. It’s a jagged wound in his drained and gaunt face.

“Some things aren’t meant to be,” he says. “It’s alright. Had me mum. Had this other friend,
Will.”
“And Gwen,” Morgana points out.

“And Gwen,” Emrys agrees. “Might last with her. Who knows, though. Turns out people
don’t like people who lie.”

“Emrys, you are not alone now—“ Morgana says.

“What, ‘cause you’re here?” Emrys says before she can finish. “Yeah, a fat lot of good
you’ve done me. You can see yourself the fuck off.”

The trees above them rustle in the wind. They throw the other side of the summit into shade.

Their whisper is peaceful, though lonely in its quietude.

“You’re right to be angry with me,” Morgana says. “I was not thinking about how things
would be for you when it happened.”

“Doesn’t matter anymore.”

“Emrys.”

“My name is Merlin. Merlin.”

Morgana hesitates.

“Merlin,” she says.

But Merlin is no longer looking at her. He’s looking over the edge of the stone beneath him at
the growing darkness of the mountain’s side and foothills. The blue and green and purple of
treetops seems to go on for miles.

“You’re cold,” she says.

“Fuck OFF already.”

“No one knows if you can die. I can’t leave you like this.”

“Well, guess what? I know,” Merlin says nastily, “And I can. So leave a man in peace, thanks
and god be with ye.”

Morgana swallows and stands.

“I’ll be back in the morning,” she says.

Merlin does not move as she replaces the stool where it was and hikes down from the cave to
the forest floor.
The next morning, Merlin is exactly where she left him, though so still in the sun’s light that
Morgana is compelled to come closer and hold her hand over his lips and nose to feel for
breath.

It’s there, but barely.

She uses magic to drag him into the cavern proper and covers him in the blankets from the
dwelling’s bed. There is a small stack of wood in the corner of the room. She carries pieces to
the burnt-out hearth and stacks them so that she may coax a flame forth from their base.

It takes nearly half an hour for the pile to begin burning on its own. Morgana’s hands are stiff
by the time the its warmth begins filling the cave.

How strange it is that it is so cold here in the mountains when Camelot is sweltering only a
few days southwest.

Merlin sleeps on for some time. When he awakens, he does so in silence and watches the
hearth the same way.

Morgana offers him a bowl of broth.

He calls instead a dragon from the base of the fire. All he needs is to twist his weakened
fingers and there it is, beating its wings and flapping around in tight circles in the flames.
They both watch it until Merlin is too exhausted to hold up his arm any longer.

He sleeps again.

The broth goes cold on the stone ground next to him.

It occurs to Morgana on the seventh day of this routine that the person next to her is a truer
version of the man she knows as Merlin.

He’s not dopey. He’s not flirty.

He is quiet and dour and lazily attentive to the fussy world around him the way barn cats are.
He does not show interest in deep conversation no matter how many times Morgana attempts
to kindle one between them.

She finally asks him if he was always so pensive and receives a shrug for her trouble, which
tells her more than she thinks Merlin means to.

He doesn’t seem know what kind of person he is, either.

On the eighth day, he sits up and on the ninth, he isn’t in the cave when Morgana goes to
check on him.
She checks again around mid-day and finds him in the cave’s bed, covered by a flock of
rabbits. They all share heat.

When she makes broth that day, she leaves her usual strips of dried meat aside in favor of
dried mushrooms.

He drinks this one.

“You don’t eat animals,” she realizes.

The rabbits come and go in waves, but they are content with Merlin at this moment. They
pour themselves across his hips and stretch their soft bellies over his shins.

Merlin strokes their long ears and says nothing. His eyes have darkened over the past few
days.

“Does Arthur know?” she asks.

“It does not affect him,” Merlin says.

“It does if he thinks himself generous for feeding you his table scraps,” Morgana says.

“It isn’t his job to know,” Merlin says.

Morgana’s jaw twinges regardless. She drags her stool closer, closer than Merlin has allowed
her to be so far.

“I thought you two knew everything about each other,” she says.

“You’ve never been in service,” Merlin says.

“I told Gwen everything.”

“Seems like a good way to get poisoned.”

Morgana can’t help but smile.

“Where do you go at night?” Merlin asks.

“To the druids,” Morgana tells him. “They’re worried about you. They did not realize you
could die.”

“I’ve given them no reason to care.”

“You don’t need to be pleasant to be worth their concern,” Morgana says. “Take it from me.”

There is a long pause. The fire crackles.

“Do you like having someone tell you what to do?” Morgana asks.
Merlin separates two arguing rabbits and brings one up to his chest to cradle in his long,
gentle hands. He pointedly does not respond.

“He’s not coming, Merlin,” Morgana says.

“Good.”

“Gaius knew you would be here, didn’t he?”

“This was my father’s home.”

“Yes.”

“Arthur knows where it is.”

“That makes you nervous.”

“He’ll frighten them.”

He means the rabbits.

Morgana holds out her hands when one bravely ventures over to her and stands on its hind
legs. It is softer than she remembers anything in the world to be when she lays it in her lap.

“He’ll have to go through me first,” she says.

The next day, Merlin is waiting for her at the base of the mountain. His rabbits are nowhere
to be found. He looks unwell; pale and bonier than she’s ever seen him. A flush has painted
itself across the highest parts of his cheeks, nose, and ears.

Morgana knows just how little he has been eating. She’s not sure he ought to be standing to
start.

“Do you like owls?” Merlin asks her.

“I do,” she says.

“Do you want to see some?”

“Show me,” she says.

It is fascinating to watch the change come over Emrys as a fortnight of separation passes
between him and Arthur.
He has become, not docile exactly, but much less tense and talkative.

He loves animals and they respond to him in kind. All of them—deer, rabbits, schrews. He is
so trusted by them that they bring him their babies to him within only days of knowing him.
He tucks them down the front of his tunic to keep them warm while the parents scratch
around for food.

Emrys does not come closer to the druid camp, though he allows Iseldir close enough to his
person to touch his face and turn it this way and that in search of wounds or swelling.

Iseldir tells Merlin he must eat more and the next day, he does. Morgana finds him cracking
hazelnuts between stones and picking the flaky skins off the nutmeat inside.

He offers her a handful of roasted nuts he’s already broken open for her. She eats two and
sneaks the rest into the pile he is sharing with a mouse no bigger than his thumb.

Morgana offers him a sack of barley from camp. He accepts it and gives her a hastily-woven
basket of fat hen leaves in return.

Iseldir is surprised by this development.

He and Morgana and the other elders hold a brief conference on what to do next.

Emrys is obviously unmoored at the moment, and yet he resists re-setting the equilibrium by
returning to Arthur’s side. It seems to Morgana and the others that this behavior is calculated.

Merlin has been waiting for the end of that relationship.

He prepared himself for it, followed through, and is now settling in.

That night Morgana brings him some herbs for the cough that has settled into his lungs and
sits with him in front of the hearth.

She can make broth, but she is no cook. Merlin’s skills in this area have been sharpened by
service and his apprenticeship under Gaius.

“I want to apologize again,” she says.

Merlin glances her way as he pinches salt into the small cooking pot he’s arranged over the
hearth.

“What for this time?” he asks.

“For my treatment of you since we met. I was cold to you.”

“You were discovering a hard way of living,” Merlin says. “I forgive you.”

“You don’t need to.”

“You want my forgiveness. I am giving it.”

“But you don’t have to give it,” Morgana tells him.

Merlin frowns her way.

“I don’t understand,” he says.

“I mean, you can remain angry with me,” Morgana says. “I did horrible things to people you
loved. I take responsibility for it.”

“You don’t beat a starving man for stealing food,” Merlin says. “It’s pointless.”

He stirs the pot.

“Do you forgive Arthur?” Morgana asks.

“Do you?”

“I wish I could.”

Merlin watches her. Each of his blinks reminds Morgana of a deer’s long lashes skating over
its liquid eyes.

“Do you want me to do it for you?” Merlin asks.

“What, forgive him? What good will that do me?” Morgana asks back.

“I don’t know. Is it the right thing to do?”

Well. Yes.

It is the right thing to do.

Probably.

“I could do it for you then,” Merlin offers. “Does it matter who does it?”

How…peculiar.

“It does matter,” Morgana says. “Don’t you think it matters?”

“I suppose.”

“You suppose?”

“I mean, as long as it gets done, it’s fine, right? So I suppose not.”

Fascinating.

“If you forgive him for me, would you be upset if you saw him again?” Morgana asks.

Merlin fusses with the cuff of his boot.

“I’m not upset with him,” he says quietly.

“I think you are,” Morgana says. “And I think you’re justified in it.”

“He has the right to be upset. I lied to him,” Merlin says.

“You had to.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“Merlin, you had to. They could have killed you at any moment.”

“I know,” Merlin says. “But if I hadn’t lied as much as I did, things would be different.”

“You would be dead.”

Merlin shrugs and tugs at his boot again.

“Did he ever hurt you?” she asks.

“Never laid a hand on me,” Merlin says immediately.

“That’s not true. I saw him myself. He grabbed you.”

“It didn’t hurt.”

“He threw things at you.”

“Not to hit me.”

“You were truly never frightened?”

“A goblet’s got nothing on a cobble stone, my lady,” Merlin says.

They sit in silence for a long enough that the first star starts twinkling in the sky above them.

“Do you think Arthur would like this version of you?” Morgana asks.

“No,” Merlin says immediately.

“Not even a little?”

“People don’t like sorcerers.”

“I’m not talking about people. I’m talking about Arthur.”

Merlin watches the star overhead.

“Do you like me?” he asks it, but really Morgana.

She chews her lip.

“I don’t know,” she says. “I didn’t. You come across as a try-hard in Camelot. But this
version of you, I don’t think I mind.”

Merlin twists back to see her.

“This me?” he asks. “You don’t mind this me?”

“What, are you offended?”

“Everyone else likes the other one.”

“Does that please you?”

“People like to be liked.”

“You talk like you’re not one of them.”

“I want to be,” Merlin says.

Morgana’s breath catches. Merlin turns away from her and wraps his arms around his knees.
A star falls high above them, its long tail streaks past the one from before.

“I want to be, too,” Morgana says.

 Chapter 4

There are probably other things that he should be doing, Merlin realizes when he’s about a
third of the way into the abandoned well in the eastern quarter of the forest.

Useful things: collecting firewood, raking roots, finding planks for the barrel he ought to
build before the next storm.

“I feel like this is turning into a life lesson,” he tells the white rabbit on his shoulder.

It conveys its confusion through some rapid nose-twitching.

“Something-something-prioritization,” Merlin says.

His boots scrape ominously on the wall opposite his shoulder. Old, crumbling mortar
smeared haphazardly between stones along the well's tunnel cracks under his boots' pressure.
Pieces plummet toward the well’s black bottom and land with ominous plops in the water
below. Both Merlin and the rabbit watch it fall.

“Something-something-no-self-preservation-instincts,” Merlin adds on to his earlier

assessment.

The rabbit shakes its head and tucks itself in closer to his neck, which is just as well. It is
rather cold now that Merlin is fully inside the well, and with his shadow blocking the light
overhead, he’s also lost track of the glittering thing in the water that inspired him to climb
down here in the first place.

“The good news is we haven’t hit rock bottom yet,” he tells the rabbit.

Its fellows, all crowded around the top of the well, peer down at them with doubt in their
shivering ears.

Merlin resumes alternating pressure on his shoulders and feet until he is able to crawl, like a
very strange, very flat crab to the well’s bottom. About a foot or so from its water’s surface,
he leans over and stares into it.

His shadow thwarts him again.

“Mind yourself,” he tells his rabbit companion..

He ignites a ball of light and holds it over his side. Now, he can see right through the water,
clear to the shallow bottom. The majority of the space is filled with old, brown leaves and
bird droppings. Pollen and a swirl of iridescent oil form a film upon its surface.

It smells like must and wet metal.

Merlin arches his neck and cups his companion’s back to keep the poor thing from falling
into the water. He adjusts his light until he spies that little glint again.

There it is between leaves.

“Gotcha,” he says.

He coaxes the rabbit up and over the curl of his neck as he lowers one foot and then the other
into the water. His trousers are immediately soaked through. The water is cold enough to be
snowmelt, but thankfully only rises to the middle of his calf.

He thought it would be deeper.

It looked so much deeper.

He searches for stable ground with his toes and ends up sliding forward and flailing for a
moment before his hands find the grime-covered walls around him for support.

The water sloshes around him, throwing up clouds of settled sediment, but the sound that
comes up from Merlin’s stumbling boots is unmistakable: coins.

Coins upon coins.

There must be thousands of them. He raises his light so that it hovers higher on its own over
his shoulder and plunges his hand through the water’s surface. It comes up with so much
slick, silty metal that the pieces slide between his fingers back into the water like grains of
wheat into a sack.

He’s never seen anything like them; most are perfectly round, though of various sizes, and
each is so finely carved that Merlin can make out the most intricate crests upon them all.
Here a lion wears a crown. Here a crown wears three enormous feathers. All have a face upon
their other side so beautifully and tenderly engraved that if Merlin saw those their owners in
the street he might recognize them from the coins alone.

”Who’s wasting their coin on an old well?” he asks the rabbit.

It doesn’t know, and after a few moments, Merlin finds that he doesn’t especially care.

He has no use for money this far out from towns and villages, and he doesn’t feel like
climbing back to the top of the well weighed down with metal he doesn’t know how to forge
into something worth the effort.

He pours out his hands and rifles through the coins until the bones of his wrists begin to ache
from the water’s chill. It’s getting dark outside the well, and he’s just resolved to call the
adventure a disappointment when his little finger brushes on something in the hoard much
larger than the rest of its pieces.

It is a hard object with squarish corners, and when he shakes it clear of the money, it reveals
itself to be a box of some sort with five sides painted a wonderfully pale purple-ish tone. The
last serves as polished black face. There are a few other polished, black circles on the
opposite side.

“Hello? A mirror?” He asks.

His companion rabbit pokes its head out from his kerchief and wriggles its nose at it.

“It’s not money,” Merlin tells it. “So it’s not stealing.”

He looks up to the well’s mouth.

Morgana will be waiting for him at the cave.

In his younger days, Merlin could have scrambled up the well in only a matter of minutes,
but his muscles are still weak from all the blood he wasted in his outburst over Arthur.

As such, he ends up wasting a good half an hour getting himself from one end of the well to
the other and then needs to flop around uselessly for a while on the grass around it to catch
his breath.

He distracts himself with the polished stone.

He reasons that it is most likely some lady’s mirror thrown into the well along with the rest of
her nobleman’s coffers. He’s never seen a square hand-mirror before, but what does he, a
peasant, know about the whims of his betters?

What he does know is the mirror fits nicely in his pocket. He takes it with him back to
Balinor’s cave and finds that Morgana grew impatient waiting for him and went back down
the mountainside. She left behind a fire still burning and a self-stirring pot of poison.

The the pile of young ash keys Merlin left for the snake-bitten child in her druid settlement is
gone.

Merlin pours the pot out over the cliff before refilling it with water and setting it again upon
the small hearth. He unburdens his pockets of handfuls of wild garlic and a few mushrooms
pinched on the way home. These and a healthy scoop of salt and barley make themself into a
meal while he sits with his flock of rabbits and takes stock of the day’s findings.

The mirror, obviously, is the greatest treasure, but a few pieces of cloth and a rusted metal
wheel with thin spokes are just as useful.

Merlin found a similar wheel in his earlier forest explorations. He only needed one to make a
functional barrow, but two can make a wagon if he finds the timber for it.

He sets the new one by the old one on the cave wall and begins untangling the bits of cloth.
One is a single white-grey stocking with a tightly knit ribbed top. The other appears to be a
pair of very thin trousers that someone forgot to sew the legs and laces onto.

Both are filthy. They’ll need to be laundered before Merlin can make any use of them.

He’ll take them to the river with the rest of his clothes in a few days and beat the soil and
stains out of them. Or maybe, since no one is around to care anymore, he’ll magic them
clean.

No. Best not.

“Habits and all that,” he tells the rabbits.

They understand.

Merlin brought home a small basket of chickweed and flower heads for them to eat, which
they have since upended and distributed among their ranks. He joins them in nibbling when
his meal is ready to eat, and afterwards, they all pile into Balinor’s old bed together for a few
hours of rest.

It’s a nice bed, nicer than the ones Merlin has slept in before. Deep in its fibers, Merlin thinks
he can still find little wafts of sweat and nettle. With next to no effort, he convinces himself
that these are the smells of his father. They wrap themselves around him as he sleeps deeper
than he ever did within the castle’s walls.

That’s also a kind of magic, he decides.

In the morning, the rabbits are gone, which leaves Merlin to entertain himself with the mirror.
He observes himself in it for a short while. His hair is longer and curlier than he usually
would tolerate, but in the mirror, he thinks it looks rather nice, actually.

When Morgana arrives to pester him with her daily nonsensical questions and thinly veiled
pity, Merlin introduces her to it.

She tells him that it is the strangest and most useless mirror she’s ever seen, and she has
certainly seen proper mirrors.

This one, according to her, is too dark to do anything about one’s appearance in, and
moreover its metal is a displeasing color and shape.

She asks where he found it.

“An old well,” Merlin says.

“Is that where you go all day?” She asks.

Merlin decides against following this line of conversation.

He could tell her the truth. What he does in the daylight hours is not especially interesting or
incriminating. They are all the usual things a man would do in a village, but some bratty part
of him insists day in and day out that her ex-excellency ought to mind her own business.

Her guilt over ruining his life does not grant her the right to his whims and interests. Further,
he does not appreciate her daily trespassing in the home of his late father.

“Other druids will be passing through the forest in the coming days,” Morgana says. “We told
them that you might be out on the trails.”

Merlin wonders when precisely she began treating him like a breathing, eating omen.

Her tone is sculpted to be even and soft. He supposes she thinks that he is fragile, or perhaps
something as holy as it is cruel, since the druids have got in their heads that he is less human
than magic.

Merlin is not sorry to disappoint them, and Morgana least of them all.

He told them from the start that he was only a man and never meant to be their savior, and
look, he was right:

Arthur is gone and the prophecy is as good as shattered.

Their Emrys has no significant purpose outside the Once and Future King’s, which just feeds
this dark, burbling part of Merlin’s soul that revels in the contaminating sprawl of tarrish
hopelessness.

Serves them right, he thinks. Serves them right.

He does stranger and stranger things out in the woods while Morgana and the Druids
continue to pray feverishly for magic’s salvation.

Climbing down the well barely scratches the surface. Merlin has found himself hacking away
at the innards of trees to cram all that he can of his body into their hollow stumps. He has
knelt in putrid swaths of algae and drank the fetid water beneath. He is tracking, in several
parts of the forest, the melting of certain corpses left hidden in the shadows of boulders and
rotten logs, and goes out at night to follow lost travelers with no inclination to point them in
one direction or another.

Their fear does not move him like it would have before.

He only wants to watch them.

If the urge to do these things was not all consuming and immediate, he might have thought
himself numb to the world around him, but the teetering euphoria that arises from every
bizarre action makes him forget the hazy, listless trance that comes before the compulsion
until it is all over and he is laying, alone, in Balinor’s bed with the rabbits.

He doesn’t speak a word of these bouts of madness to Morgana.

She and the Druids are watching him closely enough as it is, and he does not want to stand in
the face of their or any other magic being’s gloating triumph as he becomes exactly what the
seers dreamed him to be:

Power, unlimited.

Wisdom, immortal.

Their salvation, King or no King.

He waits until Morgana leaves him for the day and casts a spell of light upon the mirror to
brighten its dark, polished face.

Moments later it lets out a yelp, and so does Merlin.

The rabbits and birds that came to join him for some food on the edge of the cave’s cliff
scatter. Merlin himself flattens as much of his body as he can manage against the stone by the
cave mouth.

The mirror moans and, with a whine like a harp, goes still and quiet again.

Merlin creeps slowly over to peer at it.

His magic seems to have worked a little too well. A light has gotten trapped behind the
mirror’s face now. It has lit up markings on the surface that Merlin didn’t notice before.

He nudges it with the toe of his boot.

It sings again. Loudly. Raucously. Merlin takes cover and waits until the mirror has lost the
energy to do so.

When he returns, it has produced a tiny portrait on its surface. The portrait vanishes for a
moment, then appears again along with the singing.

Merlin doesn’t know what to do. There are little arrows on the polished face now that point
upwards towards the face of the portrait. They seem to be indicating some kind of direction.

He wraps his hand in his sleeve and picks the whole thing up and tosses it off the edge of the
cliff.

After a few moments, the animals return. They all watch after it together.

“Do you think that was maybe a bad idea?” He asks the trio of finches gathered on his
shoulder.

They consult each other and then his chin.

“Fuck me,” he says. “Alright, I’ll go get it.”

The mirror should be at the foot of the cliff, but by the time Merlin makes his way to the area
it fell in, it is gone.

Someone else must have seen it and snatched it up.

Good riddance, he says. And good bye.

He turns around to head back up the mountainside and finds himself face to face with a
traveler.

He blinks.

The traveler stares back. He appears to be a knight of some kind, though he has had his
body’s armor made out of soft leather and his helmet forged in the most peculiar fashion. It
sits on his neck like a giant black egg, and he stands astride a creature like nothing that
Merlin has ever seen.

It could be a hound or it could be a horse. Whatever it is, it is black as pit and growling.

The knight lifts his arm, and Merlin locates the mirror at the end of it, jutting out of the man’s
glove.

The knight says something and gestures with the mirror.

A thousand thoughts pass through Merlin’s mind, none of which he can even begin to hold
onto when the man speaks again.

“Is this your phone?” The knight says.

Still utter gibberish.

Instinct says to deny, deny, deny regardless of intention.

“No, thank you, I’m just passing through,” Merlin says.

“I said, is this your phone?” the knight says.

He pauses. Now that Merlin’s had a moment to take it in, his helmet appears to be made of
the same material as the mirror. Merlin can see his reflection in it, distorted and eerie and
blue-ish-green like the oily film on top of the well-water.

“Are you alright?” The knight asks.

It is easier to talk to squirrels.

“I don’t have any money or grain, carry on,” Merlin tries to tell him.

Neither of them moves.

Merlin becomes aware then that the knight is looking at the edges of his sleeves which are
still stained from his stupidity at Arthur’s inevitable rejection.

Morgana hasn’t cared much about the marks, and Merlin forgot they were even there. He’s
washed this tunic, but he didn’t have salt the first time he did it, so the stain set.

“Hey, mate, what’s your name?” The knight asks.

Ha. Ha. Sounds threatening.

Merlin is running now.

Merlin is never going past that well ever again. He’s never touching another mirror. He’s
going back to Camelot, he’s going right to Kilgharrah, and he’s asking to be flown to the
farthest kingdom that exists on this planet.

Once he gets there, he’s changing his name, he’s growing his hair, he’s chopping off one
strategic finger and wearing a false nose for the rest of his very long, or possibly very short
existence.

“PUT YOUR HANDS UP.”

“Jack, he’s fucking terrified, put that thing away—“

The knight has multiplied. There is now a whole fleet of them and a team of wailing, snarling
covered wagons surrounding the part of the forest Merlin is trying to pass through to get back
to the mountain trail. He'd only gotten ten minutes or so back towards his trail when they
ambushed him and began chasing him from copse to copse, blocking his way and screaming
at him.

Their wagons are equipped with myriad lanterns that flash blue and white, and there are
knights are everywhere, shouting at each other from every direction and wearing jackets a
color that cannot decide if it wants to be yellow or green, but does know that it wants to be
visible from at least two hundred miles away.

They are all somehow convinced that Merlin is worth kidnapping and beating to death, no
matter how many times he’s told them that he doesn’t want any trouble and has no money.

He might have started crying a little.

It might not have been on purpose.

Why magic doesn’t work as well in this part of the forest, he does not know, and he does not
care. He only knows that the way out of this mess must be the same way he got into it, so
he’s going to have to break that mirror.

If only the knights weren’t making that borderline impossible.

If only Merlin had thought to bring the dagger he stole from Arthur.

He ends up overtaken in an attempt to cross a hard stone path that cuts through two banks of
trees a ways away from the commotion, and is soon crushed by many, many knights.

His ribs crack. Two get off him so that a third can twist his arms behind his back. Their hands
latch like iron cuffs over his wrists and in that contorted posture, he is forced to his feet and
half-dragged, half-carried into one of their wagons, which proves to have some sort of cage
inside its soft, cushioned interior.

There, a knight twists back so that he can see Merlin through the cage. He speaks and Merlin
pushes himself as far away from him as he can manage.There is a strange cut out in the very
back of the wagon that is covered in a hard, transparent shield. He can't fit his whole body
back against it, but he tries anyways and covers his head so the knight's eventual blows land
on his arms first.

The knight works his jaw and kicks open the door on his side of the wagon. It slams shut
after him. Through the transparent covering on the wagon's side, Merlin can see him walk up
to another knight, this one wearing a bizarre hat. They converse. The first knight gestures
back at Merlin's twisted-up body in his wagon.

The second adjusts his hat.

Merlin is seized again by his arms and dragged out of the wagon. The knights haul him
towards the backside of another, much blockier one with an enormous square exterior. There,
two people dressed in dark green tunics take holds of his shoulders and tie him down onto a
cot with strange legs and three sets of straps.

That wagon, he escapes from, and thank God, he does so while it is hurrying away from all
the other ones. The shock of seeing a man throw himself their rattling, shrieking, speeding
box distracts the soldiers inside the box and the knights climbing back into their wagons
behind it for long enough that Merlin is able to scrabble his way up from the hard stone path.

He runs fast enough to make back into the trees before they do.

His shoulder screams with pain, as does his right shin, but still, he runs.

Voices shout after him. He can hear thudding feet. He can feel himself growing tired. The sun
has just about set entirely now on the distant horizon, but the dark doesn't faze the knights or
the green soldiers.

This is how rabbits meet their ends.

A light as bright as the sun and as white as new linen breaks through the trees behind Merlin
as he stumbles.

More footsteps begin thundering across the forest floor.

A hand nearly catches ahold of the back of Merlin’s tunic. It vanishes barely a blink later
only to be replaced by a hold stronger and tighter. So strong and so tight, in fact, that Merlin
has no choice but to move where that grip moves him, which is to hands and knees in the
duff.

That blinding white light beams through the branches of trees in front of him.

A half-circle of knights has formed in front of the light. They hold their hands out in front of
them and poised low near their waists. But between them and Merlin stands a silhouette
planted on two firm feet, haloed all around, holy and proud.

Merlin would know it as his vision faded on his dying day.

Arthur.

Arthur gets low and raises his blade. His red cape pours into itself all around his feet.

One of the knights clad in yellow-green says something in a tone that sounds like disbelief.
He calls out to Arthur.

Arthur does not rise to his bait. He holds steady.

“Get up,” he says lowly.

Merlin realizes that he’s talking to him. Euphoria like that he felt while following the lost
travelers surges through his chest. A sudden weight lifts from his torso so swiftly that it
leaves him unbalanced and dazed.

He must not move fast enough, because before he knows it, Arthur’s grip is back in his tunic
and he’s physically dragging him to his feet.

The knights start talking louder. They seem to be speaking directly to Arthur now.

“Arthur,” Merlin breathes.

“Go.”

“No.”

“He’s just jumped out of an ambulance, man. Come on, look. He’s clearly unwell; we’re just
trying to get ‘im somewhere safe, alright? Let’s, er, let’s put the sword down.”

The wagons snort and roar in a line all along the edge of the forest. Arthur does not
acknowledge them at all. His eye is on the man in dark green advancing upon them.
“On my mark,” Arthur says. “Run. No backtalk. No nothing. I’m going with you.”

“There, see? Not so scary, right? I’m a paramedic. Not one of them, yeah? Do you know this
man?” the soldier in green says.

“Ready?” Arthur asks under his breath.

Merlin swallows.

“Now.”

Two things happen in that moment. The first is Arthur’s sword coming down in arch over the
approaching man. It sweeps to maim, not to kill. Merlin doesn’t see the blood because the
second thing that happens is him turning back and lunging towards the darkness beyond the
trees.

Someone screams. He barely hears them over the sound of his own breath juddering into and
out of his lungs.

At first, a piercing pang terrifies him-–the thought that Arthur is not at his side.

It is immediately put out, however, by the arrival of a familiar fist around his wrist.

Arthur is faster than Merlin. He’s stronger and perpetually aware of the world around him.
He could find north in a storm and light in a cavern. His and Merlin’s arms swing together as
they run.

Merlin does not look behind him, though he sees Arthur checking over his shoulder several
times until finally, after what feels like forever, Arthur brings their sprint to a gallop to a jog
to a halt in a clearing.

He drags Merlin with him to take cover behind a split trunk surrounded by shrubs. They tuck
in close to each other and hold their breath.

Ahead of them, in the direction they just came, darkness settles into the comforting embrace
of the forest’s nightly mist.

There are no lights, no lanterns or shouting.

They wait several minutes in absolute silence, listening hard to every drop of water that falls
from the overhead branches and every cracking twig. Then Arthur’s tense grip on the waist of
Merlin’s tunic relaxes, and Merlin feels himself slump in relief.

He lays his head against the bark of the split trunk and shakes so hard he can feel the
vibrations rolling through his chest in waves.

He doesn’t realize that he’s been pried away from the trunk until he is shuddering in open air,
and suddenly he’s never felt colder.

“Hey,” Arthur says, “It’s okay. Look at me.”

Merlin does.

It’s all he can do.

“It’s okay,” Arthur says.

His lower lip is shining, and his hair is still glowing, though now from the light of the dim
moon overhead. He is wearing his crown for some ungodly reason, and there is sweat
beading all over the back of his neck. Merlin can see it. He can see him.

“I’ve got you, Emrys” Arthur says so softly, so fucking softly that everything that has been
wrong, that Merlin hasn’t even realized was wrong, becomes right.

A sob rushes out of his chest, horrible and wrenching and ugly, and so powerful that his back
bows. He clutches at parts of himself he’s never felt as they are stretched open and left to
bleed like yawning, hungry maws.

Arthur follows that arch of pain with his own body. He fits himself around Merlin’s spine.
His heavy, mail-covered arms mold themselves into the space beneath Merlin’s own, holding
them up and tight over the jagged edges of the trembling pain in Merlin’s belly.

Merlin can feel his warm, slick forehead pressed tight against the cold sweat on the nape of
his own neck.

Arthur is shushing, Merlin realizes through the waves of distress and relief and pain wracking
him.

He’s shushing as if Merlin is something to be comforted. As if Merlin was made to be held.

All thoughts form a river then; their chaos plaits itself into a stream in Merlin’s mind. The
current is too strong for him to break free of.

He can only shake and groan out miserable sounds of unresolved terror.

Arthur falls into prayers behind him in a language that Merlin does not know, but whose
cadence makes such a rhythm that the shudders passing through every sinew of Merlin’s
body take heed and slow as called horses do.

As Arthur’s voice rises, the tremors soften, and soon Merlin’s muscles begin to loosen.

It is Arthur’s breath that is shuddering when Merlin finally begins listing forward. His
swollen eyes feel three times their size.

Merlin is so exhausted.

Despite everything, he could sleep right here.

He is drifting already when Arthur ends his prayer with a single word and a cool press of his
lips to the knobs of Merlin’s sweat-soaked spine.
There settles between them a long silence. Neither of them moves to break it.

There is no coming back from what has just happened.

“Emrys,” Arthur eventually says.

Merlin’s skin shrivels into gooseflesh, he feels himself stretching forward unbidden all over
again.

Arthur hesitates.

“Emrys?” he says again.

Merlin can’t stop the noise he makes as his body tries again to convulse.

“Fuck,” Arthur whispers. “Emrys.”

“Stop. Please,” Merlin pleads.

Arthur’s chest rises in time with his own and he feels…whole.

They breathe as one.

“How didn’t I know it was you?” Arthur asks.

Merlin has no witty reply. He is adrift in the enormity of this wholeness.

“Is this what it’s supposed to feel like?” Arthur asks.

If it is, then Fate has never been crueler.

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