It had been two weeks since Arthur took the throne. Two weeks since Uther's death. Two weeks since Merlin failed in trying to save him. Arthur's grief was still visible in his eyes, but his appetite had finally returned to normal and he responded better to Merlin's jokes than he had only last week. He was still hurting, but things were finally looking brighter.
Merlin had promised himself. He had promised himself that when Arthur was king he would tell him the truth. Under Uther's rule, he had held it off with the excuse that he didn't want Arthur to choose between him or his father. In reality, he might not have trusted that Arthur would protect him, or maybe even considered accepting him, but he could no longer excuse keeping it a secret from him. Not from Arthur who deserved to know the truth. He had told Arthur that he wasn't his father, he knew and believed that Arthur wasn't like Uther, and this would be his way of showing him. This would be his way of showing him that even through all the lies, his faith in Arthur had never wavered. His loyalty, friendship and devotion weren't lies.
It was not an easy decision to make. Or maybe it was. He knew he had to do it, and he knew he shouldn't wait long, but he was afraid of Arthur's reaction. Even if he accepted his magic (which with the circumstances of his father's death looked unlikely), Arthur had a right to at least be upset. Upset that Merlin had not trusted him with his secret.
He waited until late evening. Hoping that Arthur would merely dismiss him and then sleep on the matter. He put away Arthur's sword and armor, just for safety, because Arthur could be quite violent when he wasn't thinking straight and while Merlin at least expected things to come flying, he would like to avoid Arthur swinging a sword in his direction.
"Anything else, sire?" Merlin asked when he had finished off his last duties in Arthur's chambers.
"No, that will be all," Arthur answered, clearly not aware that Merlin was about to drop a truth bomb on him.
Merlin took a deep breath: "Can I tell you something?"
"Will it matter if I say no?"
"Probably not."
Arthur sighed, but not in a way that made it seem like he was already in a bad mood. Merely in the way he usually sighed when Merlin was about to do something he didn't understand. Usually this was followed up by Merlin saying that he had a feeling about something, which Arthur would then dismiss and then later Merlin would be proven right. It was a tiring cycle, but sometimes Merlin thought that Arthur was slowly beginning to trust his funny feelings. Although, if this conversation went well, he wouldn't have to excuse anything with funny feelings anymore.
"You're a good king," Merlin began, trying to make it clear to Arthur that he was as loyal as ever.
"I've been king for two weeks, Merlin, I don't think we can judge my reign just yet."
"You will be a great king."
"Thank you for thinking that. Was that it?"
"I don't think you will be great king, I know it," Merlin insisted, "And I will help you, in any way I can."
"You can barely clean my room, but thanks for offering," Arthur said dismissively and clearly expected that to be the end of it.
"Arthur, please," Merlin begged, "I'm trying to- I'm telling you that I can help you, and protect you, and…" Merlin was rambling, he hadn't thought about how to say this (he had only managed to convince himself to finally do it), but he looked at Arthur and found him smiling at him.
"Go on," Arthur pushed, "What else will you do? I certainly hope that polishing my armor is among one of your list of duties."
Merlin almost got frustrated by Arthur's density around this highly occasional moment and decided to just rip off the bandaid: "I have magic, Arthur," he blurted, "Magic that I use for you."
Silence fell in the king's quarters. But only for a second, because when Merlin looked at Arthur again, he was still smiling. Maybe he didn't believe him. Maybe he would have to show him. After all, Merlin had told both him and Uther's about his magic before and Arthur had saved him from the flames by guaranteeing his father that Merlin couldn't possibly be Arthur kept smiling, Merlin knew that was the case. Arthur probably wouldn't believe he had magic until he turned him into a rabbit.
But Merlin didn't get to show Arthur, because the king looked at him, like a friend and said: "I know."
And Merlin did not understand, because surely, this did not make sense. No, he was clearly dreaming. Perhaps he had been imagining the best possible way this conversation could go and his magic had given him a hallucination of it, because while this was a nice dream, it was certainly not real.
"What do you mean, you know?" Merlin practically demanded. Even in the dream he was baffled.
"What do you think it means, dollophead?"
"That's my word."
"People don't own words, Merlin."
"But I don't understand, if you knew, why didn't you tell me?"
"Says the person who didn't tell me about his magic."
"Arthur." Merlin said, knowing that if Arthur both knew and was seemingly okay with it, then he must have understood why Merlin didn't share his secret.
"Sit down, take an apple."
"Take an apple?"
"You fidget with your hands when you are nervous and you are clearly nervous now, so I'd rather you have something to hold than drive me crazy by tapping relentlessly with your weirdly long fingers."
Merlin did as Arthur asked and prepared himself for whatever Arthur could have in store for him. He tried to think of when he could have been caught, or when Arthur could have possibly found out, but nothing really came to mind. Arthur was usually unconscious or not around when Merlin used less subtle magic. And hardly no one could tell when he used the subtlest of magic. Unlike most sorcerers, Merlin could perform magic wordlessly.
"So," Merlin said when Arthur didn't start speaking immediately, "When did you find out? What did you see me do?
"Nothing."
Nothing? That didn't make sense either unless… "Who told you then?"
"No one did."
"Come on, Arthur, if you saw nothing and heard nothing, then how could you know?"
"I guessed."
Merlin stared dumbfounded at him, and Arthur was clearly enjoying this. Perhaps this was punishment for not telling him, "Explain it to me then," Merlin said frustrated. He had really thought Arthur would be the angry one during this conversation, but his king was riling him up, and Merlin was confused, while Arthur just kept on smiling. Merlin was beginning to think that this wasn't a dream at all. In his dreams, Arthur was less annoying (at least in the good dreams).
"Well, it began when you drank poison for me."
"That soon? But I didn't even use magic then?" Definitely not a dream. His dreams weren't this cryptic.
"You did, or at least I suspected that you did, when you sent the light."
Merlin was confused, "What light?" He had been dying and knew for a fact that he had never used any magic. Hell, he hadn't even seen Arthur during the whole ordeal after he had drunk the damn poison.
"You really don't remember?"
"Has it occurred to you that might not have been me?" Merlin answered cheekily.
"At the time I thought it might have been, you were dying after all, but I am certain now. Your magic feels different from everyone else's. At least, I always assumed that it was your magic."
"Why me?"
"Because you're always gone when things happen. And even if you are there, weird things happen, it had to be you."
"So you believe me now when I say I was never in the tavern?"
"Oh, I never believed that anyway," Arthur said and made a gesture, "The first time Gaius told me you were in the tavern, I went to get you, but you weren't there. The owner didn't even know who you were, so I knew you were doing something else. Because I suspected you had magic, I just thought you were doing something I couldn't know about."
"I still don't get it," Merlin wondered out loud, "If you knew, why never tell me? Why did you let me keep it a secret."
"At first I was going to make you confess. I was quite angry with you, because I thought you were extremely dumb for practicing magic in Camelot."
"So why didn't you?"
"Because you drank poison for me. Because you seemed so ready to die for me, even back when we didn't get along very well. I thought that if someone as loyal as you had magic, then it would be best to keep it hidden. My father had always been irrational in his hatred of magic, everyone knew that, even when I thought that he was right about how it corrupts, I still thought that his ways were too brutal, too fanatic. And I couldn't risk losing the one proof I had that magic could be used for good."
"So you protected me."
"Don't get so full of yourself, Merlin, you are still a horrible servant," Arthur paused briefly, but then looked at Merlin more sincerely than he had that whole evening, "But, yes, I protected you."
Merlin smiled. Arthur was his friend, and of course he would chose to protect him. One cannot truly hate that which makes it whole. That was what Kilgarrah had said, and it seemed that he was right once again.
"I decided to watch out for you, make sure you were never caught. I felt foolish in the beginning, since I wasn't entirely certain, but with time, it seemed like the only possible conclusion I could draw to everything that happened. I mean, there can only be so many falling branches during ambushes before it stops being luck. I'm sure there is much that I don't know, but I do know that you have saved my life, and probably the entire kingdom, more times than I have given you credit for."
"I don't think you've ever given me credit for saving the kingdom," Merlin remarked and Arthur punched him lightly in the arm.
"Thank you," Arthur said, half as an apology and half in gratefulness, "Thank you for everything that you have done."
They sat in silence for awhile, Merlin fiddling with the apple that Arthur had made him take. It hadn't occurred to him that he should eat it, but he wasn't really hungry. He didn't know where to go from here, and perhaps Arthur didn't either.
"Did you ever consider telling me?" Merlin asked after awhile, and Arthur stayed silent for a moment, possibly observing Merlin and his every move.
"Yes," Arthur answered, "A couple of times. Especially in Ealdor. That's when you tried to tell me, right?"
"I did."
"When we started becoming friends, I thought about telling you, and I wondered why you didn't tell me. I could understand why you wouldn't want my father to know, but I had hoped that I had shown you that I wasn't like him. It hurt," Arthur said and suddenly Merlin felt the guilt that he had been feeling in all the days leading up to what was supposed to be the day he revealed his magic to Arthur. Even though it had all taken an unexpected turn, Merlin still felt guilty. Perhaps even more so now that he knew that every single day, Arthur would have wondered why he didn't trust him with his secret. Merlin had always urged Arthur to tell him everything, to rely on him when he wanted to talk or had no one to lean on. Merlin had always been there for Arthur, but he had never even given Arthur the chance to be there for him. Merlin thought that if their roles had been reversed, he would have felt hurt. Perhaps even betrayed.
"It hurt, but only for a while," Arthur continued and Merlin looked up hopefully, "I told myself that if you, the person who would give their life for me in a heartbeat, couldn't tell me about yourself and your magic, it was because I hadn't shown that you could trust me. Honestly, I'm still slightly hurt that you never told me, especially because I have a feeling that a couple of people in the castle knows-"
"Only Gaius really," Merlin muttered.
"Lancelot knew too, didn't he?"
Merlin nodded, and Arthur merely continued: "I think that knowing that you were keeping it a secret made me a better person. It made me rethink my choices and question my father's orders. Even with things that weren't related to magic. And I hoped, I believed, that when I became king, you would tell me," Arthur smiled, "And I was right… Although you could have done it a little earlier." Arthur punched him again, but Merlin merely laughed.
"I still can't believe you knew. All this time, and I never even thought of the possibility."
"Well, you are an idiot. Magic or not."
"What will you do now?" Merlin asked, when it seemed they had gone through everything important, "What about the law? What about me?"
Arthur grinned, "As far as you're concerned, you can just do what you do every day, except now you can tell me when you go out to defend the kingdom," Merlin laughed, "And the law? Well, there are some perks of being king. Unfortunately, my father didn't trust me enough to make the law easy to change, so I will have to get the council on my side, but I'll make it work."
"Do you want any help with that?" Merlin asked hopefully, but Arthur shook his head.
"Let's keep your magic secret a little longer," Arthur decided, "As long as Morgana is still a threat, I think it would be wise to have a secret weapon. Don't you?"
"A wise decision, sire."