The gate creaks open with a shudderingly loud sound as Merlin swings the wrought-iron outward. Sighing, he makes a mental note to oil the hinges as soon as possible - he really can't keep coming down here, making such a racket. Though, with his luck, eliminating one source of noise would upset some cosmic balance he has yet to learn about. Maybe, when he oils the hinges, the universe will decide he's got to make hysterical amounts of noise some otherway and send him tripping down the stairs, hitting his head on each step before falling to his doom in the river snaking miles below the castle. That would just be typical Merlin fortune, honestly.
Shaking his head at himself, Merlin flicks the torch in his hands idly as he descends the stairs, mind whirling. For no real reason, he finds himself counting the steps, taking them in sets of fours with a muted rhythm, far removed from his normal energetic demeanor. Instead of the rapid pace he usually sets, he walks with a dull, slow one-two-three-four that echoes mournfully off the walls. Or maybe that's just his overactive imagination.
The walls of the cave are damp and slick his jacket with clogged moisture as Merlin leans against them, sliding to a seat. He places the torch in one of its two holders, magicking it away with a distracted flick of his hands. He leans his head back, baring his throat to the chilly air, and stares at the ceiling with blank eyes.
Air currents whip around him as the dragon arrives next to him. With a great flap of his wings that buffets Merlin's hair from his face, the dragon lands on his typical outcropping of rock, the closest he can come to Merlin without choking himself on his chain. Sometimes, the primal part of Merlin calls to him, urging him to free the dragon from his chains, until the other part of him - the one that puts Arthur above all else - protests with both reason and emotion. And, as always, Arthur must come first. One day, when magic is free in the kingdom, he will release the dragon; but until then, in this cave the dragon must stay.
"What brings you here today, young warlock?" the Great Dragon rumbles, his tone a remarkably human combination of exasperation and irritation, like a father expected to set the broken leg of a child's pet.
"Hello to you too," Merlin replies quietly, wishing he had a name with which to address the dragon. Even if their contact is limited to exchanges of advice and spells, he is curious. What could he call such a majestic (and ungodly irritating) creature? "I just wanted to think."
"I hear the library is a fine place to be pensive and moody," the dragon replies dryly, shuffling its wings around its body.
From Merlin's seat on the damp, uncomfortable floor, he rolls his head along the wall to look at the dragon. With a hint of mirth, he replies, "But the floor creaks too much under the sheer weight of its avid youth."
The dragon huffs out an amused breath. "I am inclined to believe that I would sooner perish than see any library crumble under the feet of youngsters in pursuit of knowledge, addlebrained as you all are."
Merlin inclines his head in the smallest of nods, making brief eye contact with the dragon before closing his eyes and tilting his head back toward the ceiling. Some distance from his shoulder, he can sense the dragon radiating curiosity at him. To be fair, normally Merlin has a motive for visiting. He's never quite found reason to pay a simple courtesy call before.
No better time than the present, as Gaius would say. Or at least, he'd say something like that. Gaius is full of these adages and sayings, most of which he uses to motivate Merlin to do his chores in a timely manner, instead of delaying a scrub of the leech tank for two weeks.
Merlin huffs a small sigh. He's not here to think about Gaius.
A couple of minutes trickle by, accumulating in drops of stale water at the back of Merlin's head and rolling down the fringes of his hair to drip sluggishly onto his shoulders. The quiet in this cavern is pervasive, immense; everywhere Merlin looks, even when he reaches out with his magic, there is little of interest save the dragon watching him from behind slitted eyelids. Merlin's pretty sure he's pretending to sleep.
Only this morning, he'd led Arthur and his men - however inadvertently - straight toward the Druid camp, after directing Morgana toward their care. And Arthur, in the typical Utherian fashion, strove to leave no survivors. In his head, Merlin can still hear the desperate wailing of orphans in the aftermath, the clinking of the charms set up above mounds of dirt to mark their final resting places. Whatever Gaius would say to console his apprentice, the deaths of the Druids rest solidly on Merlin's conscience.
Merlin shakes his head a second time, feeling a pinch of irritation at his own self-recrimination. He hadn't come down here to ponder the destruction he wrought, either. Rather, wherever he looks from behind closed eyelids, he can only see Morgana's face, aching and desperate to hear the word magic. To have someone else, anyone else, acknowledge that she was suffering. To validate her concerns. To empathize with her.
Merlin is intimately familiar with that sort of isolation. In his youth Merlin could never understand why the birds liked him better than the rest of his playmates, why he never got sick from the running water in the rivers, why the flowers might spring up under his palm while chatting with Will beneath the shade of an oak, winding their stems around his finger. Back in Ealdor, when all he had was his mother, then Will, he could feel the scorn of his peers wherever he traveled, could not help but notice the muttered tension from the adults. He'd grown up alone, his mother's fear of discovery infecting his every waking hour, plagued with nightmares he could not fully understand. He'd had no one.
Actually, no, he couldn't empathize. Not really. He'd had support - Hunith and eventually Will. Morgana, however, had no one.
Sure, life for Merlin in Camelot was lonelier, without his mother and with his best friend dead. Sure, the stakes of hiding his magic had only grown tenfold, and of course protecting Arthur made it that much harder to keep his gifts a secret. Sure, Morgana had to face none of that - no sleepless nights trying to divine a new spell to save Arthur from poisoning, no bargaining with dragons for ancient spells and mist-hidden islands. Sure, she just got nightmares.
But Merlin had Gaius, and Merlin knew what he was. He knew he was a warlock, and could take solace in the fact that, at the end of the day, he could talk to Gaius as a confidante and advisor and maybe, if he were to listen to the feelings at the core of his heart, as a father.
Morgana had none of his support. And considering everything - Uther's ruthlessness and Arthur's stubbornness, the glorification of the Purge and the executions every other week at dawn and cries of "sorcery!" and the guards and the books dedicated solely to the evils of magic - Merlin cannot help but conclude that, hard as it is to protect the most royal prat to ever grace Albion with his behind, it would be harder to live in Morgana's position, under constant fear of detection with the threat coming from the king himself. Uther acts as a father toward Morgana, Merlin knows, and he tries to imagine a life where Gaius would kill him without hesitation if Merlin revealed his true nature.
He can't. His heart clenches, painful and leaden in his chest, at the mere thought. He can't even bear the thought.
"What troubles you, young warlock?"
Merlin's eyes flick open, almost beyond his rational control. "Morgana," he replies simply, mind still alight. However he tries, he cannot banish the image of an imagined Gaius staring at him with hatred and fear.
"The witch?" the dragon hisses, dropping the pretense of sleep, as a shiver of anger like wind whipping sand off the shoreline thrills through the dragon's body, the emotion so ill-contained that Merlin can feel it, far from the dragon as he is. "Has she yet revealed her true nature?"
"I think I should tell her I have magic," Merlin says pensively, choosing to ignore the dragon's fiery words.
"What?"
"I think I should tell Morgana that I am a warlock," Merlin repeats calmly.
"The witch is to be your doom, Merlin!" the dragon roars, and a spear of heated air blasts by Merlin's face, ruffling his hair. "Imagine the destruction she could cause with this knowledge. You cannot tear the threads of destiny so lightly!"
"Even so," Merlin says, unmoved. "I can't let someone - even someone who should be my enemy - suffer so greatly. Even I can't imagine what it's like, living in fear as she does. Shouldn't I try to help her? Isn't that what magic is supposed to be for, to help people?"
"Should you do this, you will provide her with a weapon more powerful than any other at her disposal," the dragon growls, haunches high and wings alight, arched over his back. Merlin has no doubt that, were there no chain fastened around his neck, the dragon would crouch right in front of him, scalding his eyes with a furious breath to accompany each word he hisses. "She could turn you in, could attempt to kill you herself, could turn Arthur against you. Is this what you want?"
"No, but -"
"No. This is sheer foolishness, young warlock, however much your morals may tell you otherwise."
"Why?" he asks simply, finally turning to face the dragon.
"Why is this foolishness?" the dragon asks him incredulously.
Merlin nods.
"Because this will only hasten your downfall!" the dragon shouts, finally turning his head upward to loose a small stream of flame. So great is the dragon's agitation that, even from here, Merlin feels an ember loose from the fires and singe his hair. Merlin is suddenly grateful for the chilled moisture in the cavern. "Do you not want to live to realize your destiny? To help the Once and Future King?"
"Of course I want to help Arthur. But I can't let that blind me to other people." With every word he speaks, Merlin convinces himself a bit more, tastes a bit more of the truth. He has to do something, though what that something is he's not sure yet. He can't let Morgana suffer in silence, watch her lose herself. "Arthur is so important to me, as a friend and as my destiny, make no mistake. But if my magic is to help people, then I should help more than just Arthur."
The dragon sobers, watching Merlin's face, and whatever he sees there increases the intensity in his voice manifold. "The witch cannot be trusted. Merlin, if you have ever valued your destiny - no, the destiny of the Prince - if you have ever valued Arthur's life, do not do this."
There's something akin to fear in the dragon's eyes. Merlin's not sure if that fear is for his wellbeing, or for the dragon's own sake. He's inclined to believe the latter, and that inclination tempts him to disregard the dragon's advice entirely.
But that would be foolish, to discard such counsel. Instead, Merlin leans his head once more against the wall. "Tell me more about my destiny, then."
The dragon sits back, surprised. His wings lower slightly. "I cannot."
"Why not?"
"To have such foreknowledge is dangerous," the dragon replies, then draws another breath, as if to say something more.
Merlin cracks open an eye, pulling himself around to study him. His facial expression is, yes, quite distinctly that of one warring with oneself over whether or not to continue speaking or shut up. Vaguely, Merlin wonders when he became adept at reading the facial expressions of a dragon. Maybe it's some inborn gift, he thinks wryly. Given everything else that he is, he wouldn't even be surprised. "Why not?" he prompts.
"Because to do so would alter your course of thinking," the dragon says slowly, tasting each word slowly as if searching for a better substitute even as he speaks. "You might attempt things that would otherwise seem folly."
"For example, to refuse to help a friend," Merlin points out evenly, shutting his eyes again.
The dragon snorts in obvious exasperation, fueled by impatience and rage, plus something encroaching on fear. "That is different!"
"I do not see how."
The dragon doesn't appear to have a response for that. "Merlin, please."
Merlin does not respond. Instead, he tilts his head back again, letting his eyes fall shut, and continues to think.
