Brief off-shoot drabble based off of Episode 8 of Season 1 of the BBC's Merlin, where Arthur and Morgana help Mordred escape from Camelot. This is also the episode where Merlin learns that Arthur will be killed, eventually, by Mordred.
Destiny
"If you're not there, we'll surely be caught," Arthur is saying.
"I can't," Merlin replies, wretchedly.
"Merlin!" Morgana gasps, disbelief bleeding into outrage.
"Why not?" Arthur snaps, obviously gearing up for an argument.
Merlin can feel the answer bubbling to his lips, can feel the words crowding in his throat, and he tries to swallow them down, he really does, but Arthur is being so pushy and Morgana is being indignant and—
"Because he'll kill you!"
The words seem to echo in a terrible void of sudden silence as both Arthur and Morgana stare at Merlin.
"What?" Morgana whispers, aghast.
"He'll kill you, Arthur," Merlin repeats, the words dragged from his lips as though they were weighted with stones.
"Merlin, you really are an idiot," Arthur finally manages to say after several moments of silence. "He's a boy. A Druid boy, but still a boy."
"He'll still kill you. Not now, not today," Merlin says, desperate and terrified and just so very tired, "but he will return and you will die and there will be nothing I can do about that unless…" Merlin swallows convulsively. He shakes his head, unable to continue. "I can't let that happen," he says instead, his voice rough.
"Merlin—" Morgana starts to say, only to be cut off.
"I will not let it come to pass," Merlin says, nearly growling now. "You think I want this? You think I want to know that the boy has to die? No! But could I live, knowing that you will die because I did nothing?"
Arthur and Morgana are stunned into silence; they have never heard a wretchedness of the kind they hear now in Merlin's voice, despair and desperation and heartbreak and determination all rolled in to one.
"I will not let it come to pass," Merlin repeats. "Not while I draw breath." Here he snorts, as if amused, though the sound is humorless. "And from what I understand, that is going to be a very long time." He turns solemn blue eyes to the two royals. "I have spent every waking moment since I arrived here keeping you alive, Arthur. I have spent every waking moment saving you. I am not going to let one boy change that."
"What?" Arthur asks, completely bewildered.
Merlin offers a crooked smile—nothing at all like his usual smiles, and this unnerves both Arthur and Morgana—and shrugs one shoulder.
"Destiny," Merlin says quietly.
Silence reigns between the three of them.
"How do you know?" Morgana asks at last, taking one step forward, only to be stopped by Arthur's outstretched arm.
Again the crooked smile, only this time tinged with resignation and something entirely humorless.
"Sorcery," Arthur says after a moment, voice flat and hard. "You're a sorcerer."
"Actually, a warlock," Merlin quips. "Since birth," he adds as an afterthought. He crooks another awful grin at Morgana. "Didn't you ask me just the other day if maybe the magic chooses us? Apparently it does." Merlin gestures rather sardonically towards himself.
Arthur is still silent.
"If throwing me in the dungeons will keep you alive, I'd lock myself away," Merlin says. "If me being dead would keep you alive, I'd jump off the tallest tower and use every spell I knew to make me as heavy as possible." He takes one step forward. "If I thought something would keep you alive, I'd do it."
"And this?" Arthur's voice is still flat.
"This I know will keep you alive," Merlin says simply.
END