Disclaimer: I do not own Merlin in any way, shape, or form other than DVD sets, but those are not exactly the same as owning Merlin.
Author's Note: I have been wanting to write a Leon Lives story for a while now, so though this is not necessarily compatible with the canon of the show, it was fun to write. I want to stress that I know toads do not cause warts, and all references to any such myth were made with that in mind. Toads are fun to catch, however. My sister and I used to catch them in our back yard when we were little, put them in a bucket of water, and watch them swim for a few minutes before releasing them again.
Leon glanced around, holding out his hand to motion Gwen to keep still behind him. They could just make out the river through the trees, and he wanted to make sure none of the knights were around before they stepped out into the open. At twelve, Leon was nowhere near being a knight himself, but he was training hard and knew that remaining unseen on a special mission was an important skill to have.
No one seemed to be there, so he moved forward, Gwen following closely behind and carrying the basket. She was not as quiet as he was, but she was only eight and did not have any knighthood training, so he did not mind. Suddenly she darted past him and flopped down on the muddy bank, barely avoiding crushing the basket.
She sighed. "I missed. It was too fast."
Leon held back a sigh. "You need to move slower when you approach it, remember? Otherwise the frogs will get scared." She still seemed upset. "Come on, we can try again. I'll go that way, and you can look over there. We'll catch so many frogs that Elyan will be sure to come next time." For some unknown reason, Elyan was not interested in catching frogs; but Gwen loved it whenever her brother came, so Leon tried to invite the other boy even though he did not know him as well as he did Gwen. After all, Elyan was training to be a blacksmith like his father, so there was no reason for him to join his mother and Gwen while they worked at Leon's house.
Gwen nodded reluctantly, too young to see how much fun it was sneaking around in the dark. "How far are you going?"
"Not far. You still have the basket for the frogs, after all."
"Okay."
Leon watched her walk off a little ways, then turned and began creeping along the riverbank. It was their first frog-hunt this summer, and she was not used to them anymore, so he knew he had to be patient until she was. He listened carefully for any noises of croaking or splashing, moving carefully along the river's edge. He examined little pools in the banks and looked carefully in the tall grass, but he did not find any frogs. Suddenly he realized that he must be a long ways off from Gwen now and decided to turn back. After all, knights were supposed to protect the people, and he did not want Gwen to trip and fall into the river.
Suddenly he heard a loud croak right beside him, and he reacted on pure instinct. The next thing he knew, he was lying in the mud with a dark, squishy shape between his hands. He rolled over and held it up in the moonlight. It was not a frog.
It was a toad.
He nearly dropped the thing in his shock. Everyone knew that toads gave you warts if you touched them, and Leon did not want warts However, he had always wondered what it would be like to touch one, so now that he was already holding a toad, it seemed a waste to let it go.
He peered at it as carefully as he could in the dark, but he could not make out much. It was larger than a frog, and its skin was a lot more bumpy, but that seemed to be it. He was just about to go run after Gwen to show her when the toad startled him so much he nearly dropped it.
"If you let me go," it said, "I will grant you one small wish."
At first Leon was not sure the toad actually spoke, but he had seen its mouth move with the words. Besides, the voice was so deep and rough that he could not imagine it coming from anyone other than a toad. "How do I know you can actually grant wishes?" Somehow it seemed like the only logical reply.
"I am a magic toad," it replied. "How else could I be talking to you?"
"Magic is against the law."
"I can't help it that I am magic," the toad replied, "I just don't want you to kill me."
Leon thought about that. It sort of made sense. "What wish will you grant?"
"When you picked me up, I could instantly tell what your greatest wish is. I will grant it."
"But I don't even know what my greatest wish is."
"Nonsense. Everyone knows their greatest wish. It's just that humans are usually reluctant to admit it. But I'll go ahead and tell you, since you seem too stubborn to see for yourself. I grant your wish that you cannot be killed. You can still die if you get sick, but you can now learn to be a knight without having to worry about being killed during sword training or horse training or combat. You can die of sickness and old age, but that is all."
Leon did not know if he trusted the toad, but it seemed unfair to keep him captive, so he lowered the toad to the ground. "Before I let you go can I ask you one thing? Will I really get warts from touching you?"
The toad chuckled. "No, that's just a myth we use to keep people from trying to catch us."
"And you're just telling me that?"
"Of course. There's no chance of you telling anyone in Camelot that you consorted with a magical toad. As for you, I can easily warn all the other toads to avoid you now that you know. Besides, your greatest wish has already been granted."
"What if my greatest wish changes?"
"Toads can only fill one wish at a time. You would have to give up the wish I granted for a different one to be filled. I think you'll find that mine is far too valuable to give up that easily."
From that day on, Leon did his best to avoid toads. It was hard, since Gwen was so sad that he no longer wanted to go catch frogs, but the increasing amount of time that he had to spend training to be a knight was a good enough excuse, even if he did miss her company. No one seemed to realize that he had caught a toad since he never got any warts, but he did not want anyone to ever see him with one on the off chance that they knew toads were secretly magical. Personally Leon thought that the toad he caught that night had been a bit of an idiot since it instantly used magic to grant him a huge wish in exchange for letting it go, which he was planning to do anyway, but he was glad that the toad had stopped him from showing it to Gwen. The last thing he needed was to accidentally get her involved with magic.
As for the magical wish-granting itself, Leon was not sure what to think. The king said magic was evil and corrupted people, but Leon himself had not used magic. It was more like he had been enchanted. The king sometimes granted mercy to enchanted people as long as they were not hurting other people, so Leon decided that the best thing he could do was to simply not hurt anyone who was not an enemy of Camelot. There were times when it did not work very well.
"Leon," Gwen said one evening, "please help me catch frogs tonight. It's such a good night for it."
"I can't. I need to train." Leon felt bad about lying, and he was terrified that it was the first sign of becoming evil, but he needed to keep both himself and Gwen away from toads. There was nothing inherently evil in trying to protect a friend.
"But you never have to train after supper."
"I do tonight."
Gwen just gave him a sad look that was almost powerful enough to make him change his mind, but he resisted, and she went home that night disappointed in his failure to play with her. The scene continued to play out in many variations, but they became less frequent, and eventually the formerly close friends were drawn away by their separate stations in life. Leon always made sure he kept a protective eye on her when he could, especially after he heard that Elyan left, but they did not interact much anymore.
Leon never forgot the toad, but for many years he had no particular reason to believe that the toad was telling the truth. What it said to him stuck in his mind, and it gave him a certain daring confidence that he had never had before. But sometimes that seemed like a false confidence.
And then Leon became a knight. "Sir Leon," they would say. Some people would add, "Someday his list of achievements will be longer than my arm," and other people would add, "Looks like he's never seen the sharp side of a razor." Personally Leon liked his beard.
But what Leon noticed even more than the peoples' comments was the obvious fact that he had not been killed. Not by bandits on patrols. Not by griffons. Not by questing beasts or undead in-laws of the king or dragons or druids or enchanted swordsmen in his sleep or even by sorcerers. Leon felt that either he was the luckiest knight since Prince Arthur or the toad had told him the truth. He would not die as a result of being a knight. The dress almost did him in, but Gwen was the only one who knew about that.
Sooner than he believed possible, Leon found that Arthur was king and Gwen was queen. Years had passed, and they were all so much older. Many knights had died during that time, including both Lancelot and Elyan. It broke Leon's heart to think that he might lose more friends, but he knew of nothing he could do about it.
Then one evening he was walking through the city. Gwen was there, and they caught a young boy hopping over the walls. He claimed he was out catching frogs, Gwen asked if he remembered when they used to do that as well, and suddenly Leon knew exactly what he should do. It took about an hour, but he managed to ditch the rest of the patrol, and he headed out to the river.
The trees were dark around him, and the moon shone bright overhead. There was no one else around as he walked beside the river, doing his best to find what he sought. Suddenly he heard it, further from him than on that night all those years ago, but desperation gave him speed. The next thing Leon knew, he was flat on his stomach and covered in mud, but happily holding a croaking toad firmly in his grasp.
"Toad," he said, "I know you can tell what my greatest wish is. If you grant it, I will let you go."
The toad regarded him in silence for a few seconds before speaking. "Are you sure? This is a great wish indeed, and I'm afraid it will cost something that your last wish did not."
Somehow Leon knew exactly what the toad meant. "I am willing to pay it."
"Very well," the toad grunted, and Leon put it down. He stood and made his way back to Camelot.
History was changed in two very important ways after that day, and no one in Camelot, magical or otherwise, even knew that it happened. First, no one Leon considered a friend ever died of anything other than sickness or old age. Second, the day after Leon changed his wish, he began treatments for a very mild, yet life-long, case of warts.
Author's Note: Yes, I managed to save Arthur and Gwaine using Leon's discovery of magical toads. I could not save Lancelot or Elyan, since Gwen's comment in the show did not happen until after their deaths, but 50% is not bad. Still a failure, but better than 0%.