Gaius knows what is right. He knows what should be.
And he has watched thousands of innocents burned, and has long since trained his eyes not to leak even the slightest tear, to not let the slightest expression slip onto his face as he watches, no matter the terrible, horrible guilt and sadness that shoots through his heart.
He can feel them watching him from the pyre. He can feel them watching him in his nightmares.
He knows this cannot last forever, but he also doesn't see a sign of it stopping. Gaius sees a dynasty. A long line of handsome, chivalrous blondes raised ignorantly, their minds poisoned with hate, with consequences that will exterminate everything ma-
Gaius can barely think the word, he is so trained not to. Twenty years of hiding and lies can do that to a man.
And then a boy comes barging in, a boy with great gifts and a greater destiny, and Gaius can see hope for the first time in a very long time. He raises Merlin, Emrys, the savior of the magical people, a young man searching for guidance. They converse in loud laughter in the daylight and gold-lit murmurs at midnight. They learn to read each other, hint the truth to each other underneath their lies to the court. They learn how to survive in Camelot as well as save it, guard Merlin's secret with careful words and magic used when no one's watching. Gaius says, "Look over here," and they look, and Merlin saves them with a quick spell.
And so the hidden guardians of Camelot weave their shadowed web and use its silken strands to control the puppets around them.
Gaius waits for the day they can tear the web down, and let the sunlight stream in. Twenty years, and the secrets have only piled up. He's sick of them.
.
Lancelot's time in Camelot is the most confusing thing that has ever happened to him.
Before Camelot, it was parry, slash, train, save, learn, be noble, be brave, help, and find a way to become a knight.
Within a week of arriving in Camelot, he has saved the prince's manservant, become a knight with the best forgery of noble papers a man could ask for, "slayed" a griffin, been un-knighted, and discovered the biggest secret in Camelot: Said manservant is actually an incredibly powerful sorcerer who quietly saves Camelot and hands off the credit.
Or in this case, the blame.
Arthur wants to knight him, Uther wants him executed, and this tells him all he needs to know about the two. Frankly, he thinks Merlin should tell Arthur the truth, but he's been here for a week. Maybe there's more going on than he thinks. Or maybe Merlin's scared.
Maybe it's not really any of his business.
It doesn't matter. He might be a good swordsman, but seeing Merlin, it's obvious he's lacking. He could do nothing against the griffin, and seeing the extent of one man's selflessness…There is always someone to beat.
Besides, he wants to be a knight, but he knows now what men- which king- he wants to protect, and that's what being a knight is really all about, after all. So there's no point in sticking around. He'll come back some day, when Camelot will hopefully take him and the king's crown is on a different head.
"When you are king."
They are words that ring like funeral bells, and Arthur does not smile, but he does not frown.
Lancelot points to a random spot on the map, climbs on his horse, and rides.
He still has a whiles to go, and a while to wait.
.
Gwen has a secret that she keeps closed up in her heart.
When Lena the serving girl whispers of the handsome new stable boy, and asks if any boys have caught her eye, Gwen flushes a little, but presses her lips together and laughs, no, of course not, she's forever chaste Gwen, devoted to Morgana, of course.
She tells no one. No one of the dangerous kisses, or the secret glances, or the smile from the corner of his mouth he flashes at her as he sits with his crown and his chainmail gleaming, and all Gwen can do is smile demurely back in her pastel serving dresses and wonder at what point her life became so strange.
She knows the point, but she refuses to think of that day, or that specific pyre that smelled all too familiar.
It is dangerous, his eyes say. Her eyes say, okay, I'll wait. His eyes thank her, and all the while they converse, acquaintances, prince and maid, of the weather and of Merlin and Morgana.
They try, once.
Gwen sees her own pyre that day, built and waiting for her in the square. They do not try again.
Time passes, and what might have been quenched early only goes stronger through longing and stolen glances and her demure smiles and the grins he gives her from the corner of his mouth.
Gwen feels like a traitor, because she says, "When you are king" to him, and knows what those words are saying, what those words mean for Arthur.
She cannot bring herself to care.
Guinevere waits. She waits for the people's king. She waits for blonde hair ruffled from a crown and warm kisses and freedom.
.
Morgana has waited, and is done waiting, and damn those who try to stop her.
Merlin and Gaius know, and she thinks Gwen suspects, but no matter, it is two servants and a physician against the king's beloved "ward", and woe on those who speak a word against her.
But it is delicious, to see Merlin glare at her from the audience while she smiles oh so innocently on her throne, to walk out of the room and feel his wary gaze following her, tracing the smirk that she allows to shadow her innocence only when he is watching.
The king is a fool, and Morgana is done waiting, and she will smash this frozen court, waiting for a new king, to pieces. From them, she will build her own court, her Camelot, and she will laugh, and Merlin and Gaius and Gwen and Uther will all burn like she might have.
Morgana waits, maybe, but the waiting periods are breaks between plots, and no one is invincible.
.
Gwaine has never seen a noble that isn't also a prick, but you know, miracles happen. At first, he can't quite figure out why Merlin smiles at him and says this one is "different", but after a while, he can start to see what Merlin might mean.
When Arthur fights beside him, Gwaine doesn't feel like he's fighting beside a prince, but that he's fighting beside a friend. Someone you can trust to cover your left side when you go for that tricky move that tends to leave it open.
But that realization comes at a cost, and as he hears Arthur defend and Uther hate, and realizes that there is a quiet anger in the prince's voice when he tells Gwaine he would have acted differently, Gwaine finds he does not doubt this noble's words.
Change is coming to Camelot, and he'll be damned if he serves under Uther…But Arthur? Well, Arthur might just be a king worth waiting for, and worth dying for.
So Gwaine will leave, and he will roam the taverns and listen for news of a new king, and he will wait.
Hopefully, not for too long.
.
Merlin waits.
He waits with blue eyes that secretly flash gold. He waits with one hand pouring Arthur a drink, and the other behind his own back, killing and manipulating before the threat ever emerges from the shadows if he can help it.
Gaius and he are the silent protectors, a half step behind the prince and the king, out of sight and out of mind as Gaius tells him the steps and Merlin dances, carefully, so carefully.
Camelot is a court built on trust and loyalty, but its impervious walls are lies strung together with spiderwebs and magic.
The secrets begin to pile up, spilling over the floor, creating two Camelots: The Camelot everyone sees, and the Camelot a few inhabit.
Gwen hides, and enters with a sweet smile and eyes that follow the future king as his eyes follow back.
Lancelot lies, and enters with a noble grin that seem out of place in the muddle of treasonous secrets they are all caught in. Lancelot may not stay in Camelot, but he is too deeply caught up in its secrets to ever be truly apart from it.
Gwaine might not stay either, but he is another in a long line of secrets, and he takes his place in line and in the hidden Camelot patiently, another of those who wait for a new king.
Morgana smirks, and enters in a murderous rage that simmers just below the surface, even as Merlin watches her with golden-careful eyes and deflects and stops and protects just so.
Because Merlin waits for Arthur, like everyone else, for when Arthur is king, things will be different. That is what he tells himself every day. That is what makes it worth it.
.
Arthur knows that being a prince means he will one day be a king.
He also knows that day will be the day his father dies.
The court is stopped, paused, stagnated, and even if he wants to deny it, he hears whispers of "When you are king." Some say it straight to his face, and Arthur knows many are waiting for his reign, even if he doesn't want to even think of it. Except sometimes he does, and this scares him even more.
Arthur feels like he is trapped in the center of a ring of dancers, as everyone else dances around him in a dance he does not know, and they watch him and his father with dangerous, eager eyes.
He can already feel the foundations of his reign, feel them in Merlin and Gwen and Lancelot, feel them in Gwaine. Feel them in the magic books Gaius keeps, feel them in his people that look at him with hopeful faces and in destiny and in those creeping thoughts that come to him sometimes, the ones that say his father is wrong, if only he was king, he would- no, he can't think that. He can't. Arthur wants to stop, wants everything to stop. He wants to call out that no, why is this happening, father is a wonderful king right?, so why does he feel a court building itself, rising around him, brick by brick, man by man? Arthur feels like a traitor, his turn to rule and decide and protect lying in wait with baited breath for his father to draw his last.
Arthur waits, and some days he wishes the wait would last forever.
.
Uther looks down at his court, full of trusty nobles and knights and servants, and to his side, at his children, and out to the rest of Camelot, at his loyal citizens, and smiles.
His only worry is magic.
Around him, shadows dance.
His people stare back at him with gleaming smiles and eyes that await his death.