FF – Merlin
Manoeuvre
Or, Observations, Progression, Manoeuvres.
Warnings : None
Characters : Merlin, Prince Arthur
Summary : Maybe change wasn't necessarily a bad thing.
A/N : Headcanon is that Merlin doesn't actually do any chores, unless he's being watched, or otherwise uses magic to do everything. Also, this piece sounded a lot better in my head, I swear.
One.
Arthur notices that Merlin has hands and fingers that are smoother than the silk of the highest quality. It was a rather accidental observation, in his defence, and he only realised that because he had been watching Merlin help Gwen with the flower wreaths for the Midsummer festival, and the discrepancy was startlingly obvious, because Gwen had calloused fingers, while Merlin's were pale, long and delicate.
His next thought was that Merlin was such a girl, because only dainty princesses like Morgana had hands like that.
It wasn't until the next day when Merlin was helping him into his armour that he noticed his servant's rather smooth fingers again, and that something was rather off, because then he recalls that his previous servants all had worn fingers. Merlin seemed to be one of the exceptions.
Of course, granted, that his own fingers were rough and hardened, but his was through the incessant combat training that he took part in.
It takes a while more before he remembers that Merlin wasn't born into servitude. Unlike Gwen, whose mother had been a serving maid in the castle, Merlin was born a free man. Peasant as he may be, coming from the distant village of Ealdor, Arthur realises that Merlin had no obligation to do such menial labour for him, and he feels a slight pang of guilt, because Merlin had probably been pampered all his life by his mother, being an only child and had only been forced unfairly into being a servant by the king, right after Merlin had saved his life, no less.
So yes, Arthur decides that Merlin was definitely rather spoiled, and he wonders why he never noticed, because Merlin was always complaining and whining about chores, the fact that he only did them occasionally notwithstanding.
He makes a mental note to maybe get another servant to do the work, for Merlin's sake.
Two.
Arthur used to spend the afternoons practicing target practise on the (unwilling) servants. There would be the, admittedly rather over-aged, squires, haughty and smug without much actual combat talent around as well, and it was very much amusing to have them cheer him on, bootlickers as they were, as every knife of his hit the running target.
He wonders momentarily when there had been a change in that. Nowadays, he would be quite willing to join Merlin in the afternoons, Arthur, for the purpose of hunting, as he insists, wandering about the nearby woods gathering herbs that weren't sold in the market. Or worse, in the case of those that were, he would be following, definitely not escorting, Merlin around the marketplace as he ventured from herbalist to apothecary.
On one such day they spotted Elewick and Sanerd, snorting as they taunted a servant whose arms were laden with tomatoes. Arthur must have had a look of longing or amusement of sort, because whatever expression that had graced his face encouraged a kick from Merlin to his shin.
He had turned to glare and threaten to have him thrown into the dungeons because manservants, or anybody for that matter, do not simply give royal Crown Princes a good kick and assume that they could get away with it, when he notices Merlin glancing at the servant, then nodding at him, encouraging him forward.
He spares the servant a look, realising that it was the same person whom Merlin had attempted to rescue from Arthur on the first day they met. He almost smiled in memory of it, but because he's too proud to do so, he settles for huffing in irritation and going up to the squires and telling them off, and to stop with their derision. He supposes for a moment that it might have been a kind of betrayal, because Elewick and Sanerd had been rather good and loyal bootlickers, but Merlin had this way of prodding your internal conscience quietly without a word, and it was suddenly very wrong to be bullying children that were at least ten years younger than him.
Elewick and Sanerd must have thought the same, because they stared at him openly, slack-jawed and mouth agape, before hurrying out apologies and running off. The servant boy blanched when he moved towards him, and he is considering scowling and blaming Merlin when the boy muttered his thanks gratefully, albeit rather shyly, and dashed off as well. He smiles just a little, and Merlin comes up to him, beaming like a proud parent of sorts.
"Well, that's a start."
Arthur blinks, realising how much of an influence Merlin had been on him, and marks it as rather astonishing because he knows himself to be the second most stubborn character in Camelot, right after his father, of course.
When Merlin enters his chambers later with an orange for him, telling him that it was a gift from the servant boy from that afternoon, Arthur confirms inwardly that maybe change wasn't necessarily a bad thing.
Three.
Arthur thought Merlin was a bit thick.
Making remarks that, in retrospect, may have been rather well-thought out, was one thing. Making those remarks during the court meetings was an entire subject altogether, especially when those remarks questioned the actions of the royals.
Morning court with Merlin in attendance usually left someone fuming for the entire day, and for Merlin, it mostly means a day in the stocks.
Merlin sometimes swears that he's only talking out loud, and Arthur would only sigh.
It's years later when Arthur would take Merlin's words a little more seriously, and it's only then that he does realise what a fool he's been all along.
Four.
Accidents always happened around Merlin.
To say that could be a little misleading, because while accidents did happen within the vicinity of Merlin's presence quite frequently, Merlin himself was rather accident-prone as well. Stepping on dry twigs and tripping over himself were the least of it, and he was quite possibly the clumsiest person to walk in Camelot.
The only redemption that came with Merlin being an accident magnet was that for one reason or another, luck was usually on their side.
The first time Arthur noticed it, happened during an ambush in the forest. He would never expect bandits to fight with nobility like the knights of Camelot, but all the same, he detested the underhanded approaches the thieves enjoyed employing. Throwing sand into his face was one of it, and he had been blinded, becoming just a bit closer to being run through with a sword, when the tall trees above dropped broken branches onto his opponent. He might have pondered upon that lucky coincidence, but he was quickly drawn back into the fight, and it was quickly pushed out of his mind.
The second time occurred when a manic ex-noble escaped from the dungeons and had Arthur and his men chasing for him across and around Camelot, when Merlin pops up from an adjacent room and is immediately taken hostage with a jagged rock. It would have been a very unfortunate turn of event, if not for the fact that Merlin would slip in his footstep, pulling his captor down into a messy heap.
Five
Merlin had magic.
When he notices this for the first time, he surprises himself with his lack of anger at that. It's completely by chance that he finds out, when he returns earlier than expected after a patrol and finds his armour polishing itself while Merlin sleeps on a chair.
His immediate reaction had been to close the door and head for the training grounds to take his confusion out on the training dummies in the field.
Merlin doesn't talk about it and he ignores it as much as he can. But Merlin is careless about it at times, and Arthur winds up chasing after him to hide his very conspicuous tracks.
He thinks Merlin ought to be pretty grateful about the whole thing, because what kind of a prince would allow himself to stoop to the level of a manservant? He wants to berate Merlin about it, let him know that Prince Arthur himself was more or less running as his page, but he doesn't, because bringing it up would be pretty odd and awkward.
It's something that sits in his mind and gets him all grumpy when he thinks about it, until the next time he wakes up at the end of a fight and their magical adversary mysteriously beaten, and his manservant grinning at him at like a loon.
It's a two-way relationship, he supposes.