Chapter 2: Guess I Was Wrong (Arthur)
When Arthur came back to his room, the upcoming confrontation with the Saxons at the forefront of his mind, the last thing he expected to find was all his armor spread out on his table, cleaned and polished perfectly, and Merlin standing by it, saying almost nervously, "I think you'll find that's everything, sire."
"Impressive, very impressive," Arthur said reflexively. "More like it, not from you, anyway," he added.
Merlin huffed a brief laugh. "Thank you, sire," he said.
Something was strange here. Merlin wasn't as bad a servant as Arthur liked to claim he was, but preparing all Arthur's gear far ahead of time wasn't usual for him, and neither was his nervous air. Perhaps Arthur was just on edge with the sense of battle hanging over his head, but something didn't seem right. Following their usual habit of bantering with each other he tried to figure out what it was.
"So, what are you after?" he asked, walking across his room to find the map of Camlann he'd originally come to his room for.
"After?" Merlin returned, sounding baffled.
"Come on, Merlin, you're the worst servant in the history of the world, and now this," Arthur retorted quickly. "Is it money?" He ignored Merlin's hushed, "No," as he finished, "No, it can't be that; you've already won all of mine." He snatched up the map he was in search of and spun to go back to Merlin. "Time off," he continued musing aloud, continuing down the usual checklist of why a servant would be so helpful. He already knew Merlin's reason wouldn't be on that list – he wasn't a usual servant at all – but maybe this would get Merlin to admit the real reason.
"Arthur," Merlin began, but Arthur ignored him again. "No, it can't be that either," he added rather teasingly, as he unrolled the map; "you don't really do anything."
"I just wanted to make sure you had all you needed for your journey to Camlann, the days ahead," Merlin told him, but his voice was heavier than usual, as though he was unhappy about something.
"Thank you," Arthur returned, frowning, as he tried to work out what had sounded so wrong in that sentence. A moment later it hit him. "Merlin, what do you mean my journey?" he demanded quickly.
Merlin finally turned to face him. "I'm afraid I won't be coming with you, not this time," he said, and Arthur felt as though his world had come crashing down. Merlin had always, always been by his side, for years now, no matter how dangerous the task or difficult the journey. He had taken for granted that whatever happened at Camlann Merlin would be there by his side to meet it with him. Apparently Arthur had been wrong, and the bite of loss and betrayal that he had felt so often by now – but never by Merlin's hand – stung again.
Merlin was blathering on with excuses as Arthur tried to make sense of the world again. "I'm sorry," he was saying. "I have an urgent errand to run for Gaius, vital supplies that I can't obtain here."
"Vital supplies," Arthur echoed numbly, knowing Merlin wasn't telling him the truth, from the sheer vagueness of that term if nothing else.
"Yes," Merlin answered quickly. "Is that –"
"No, no," Arthur cut him off quickly, not wanting to hear anything else. He looked down, unable to face Merlin just then. "It's fine," he said, surprising himself with how level his voice came out. He glanced back at Merlin, who was still staring at him. "It's fine," he repeated, looking away. "I understand."
He'd never understood anything less in his life.
"Arthur –" Merlin began again, and of course he knew Arthur well enough by now to know he was upset. Apparently not enough to know how much Arthur wanted him by his side in this one last battle, though.
Arthur was fully aware in that moment that this could very well be the last time he spoke to Merlin. He was torn between being honest enough to let Merlin know for once what he had meant to him over all these years and an angry urge to make Merlin as miserable about this desertion, this cowardly act he was carrying out, as Arthur himself was.
"You know, Merlin," he began, not knowing himself where he intended to go with this, "all those jokes about you being a coward – I never really meant any of them."
He glanced up, saw the light dawning in Merlin's eyes at the unexpected and unusual compliment. "I always thought you were the bravest man I ever met," he added honestly.
Merlin was staring at him, eyes wide with hope as he took that in. And Arthur should have left it there, but his pettiness won out suddenly, and he added, "Guess I was wrong."
Crumpling the map in his hands, he spun and walked away. He had just paid Merlin the highest compliment of their friendship and then torn it away from him. Somehow he couldn't bear to watch the light die from Merlin's eyes as the truth sank in that Arthur really believed he was a coward.
The best and worst thing about being in Avalon was the display of the current events in Camelot usually flung on the underside of the lake's surface overhead. Freya did it, of course, even in the early days when Arthur almost never saw her.
To begin with, he was wary about the obvious use of magic involved, even as he longed fiercely to be able to see Gwen again, to know Merlin would recover and Camelot would survive even in his absence. Then he realized that his best friend had magic, his beloved wife was thinking of freeing magic, and the fact that he was here waiting to go back to the world in this strange lake instead of moving on to the afterlife was due to magic. He was absolutely surrounded by magic, and there was nothing he could do about it. In which case, he might as well make use of the magical display overhead to follow the lives of those he could no longer be with, at least for a time.
Once he realized Gwen was pregnant, not even the most potent fear of magic could have dragged him away from wanting to know what became of his son.
As Gwen worked toward making magic legal in Camelot, Arthur began to realize something about Merlin that worried him. For some reason Merlin believed he was a coward.
"Did Arthur know?" Leon asked, after he had been let in on the secret.
Merlin ducked his head and shook it slowly. "Not until the very end," he answered quietly. "I was a coward."
"No, you weren't," Arthur said indignantly to the swirling surface of the lake. By this time he had mostly gotten over not being let in on the secret earlier, especially after conversing with the knights here with him and realizing that only Lancelot had known before him.
Well, Freya very well might have known too. Arthur hadn't really had a chance to talk to her much.
When magic finally became legal, there were almost as many different reactions as there were people in Camelot. Almost no one was indifferent. Many were overjoyed; many were fearful; some were highly skeptical that a new Purge wouldn't be needed in a few years, and some thought the legalization of magic should have been done years ago. There were almost as many different reactions to the revelation that Merlin had been a warlock all these years and now held the official position of Court Sorcerer, although shock was the common factor between all the different reactions.
The one Arthur hadn't expected, though, was the reaction that thought Merlin should have made who he was clear much sooner and tried to make magic legal years ago. Coward, was what these people whispered under their breath.
"The situation was more complicated than that," Arthur hissed at them. Freya had flicked the images away from Camelot once to show the reaction of a druid camp to the news that they no longer had to live in fear. The rejoicing in that camp, half-hysterical, half-tentative, had made Arthur wish suddenly that he had made magic legal during his reign. He didn't blame the fact that he hadn't on Merlin, though, and he was astonished at how many magic users seemed to subtly resent Merlin for the slow return of magic.
What stunned him further was that Merlin seemed to agree with them. He never made any effort to refute what they said, and Arthur knew the look in Merlin's eye, knew the way he hunched his shoulders whenever those whispers met his ears. For some strange reason he agreed with them.
Arthur was aware by this time that fear had probably played a fairly large role in why Merlin had never told him the truth until the end, first fear for his life and then fear of losing Arthur's trust and friendship. That didn't mean his friend, who had followed him into so many dangerous places, who had drunk poison for him, who had saved his life a thousand times over, was a coward.
There was a night when Merlin slipped back to his room, utterly exhausted after a day of meeting with a group of druids who had been almost completely open about blaming Merlin for the state of fear they had lived in for the past ten years at least. Arthur sat alone on a rock, watching Merlin with an aching heart as he sat down on the edge of his bed and buried his face in his hands. "Coward," the warlock whispered to the silent night. "Coward." His lips formed more words, words Arthur couldn't make out.
"Why does he believe it?" Arthur asked the night, anguished by his friend's suffering and his own utter helplessness to do anything about it.
He didn't in the least expect a reply, but a feminine voice suddenly said quite near him, "When you're told you are something often enough, you start to believe it."
Arthur jumped and turned. Freya was sitting perched on a rock a few yards from him, hands clasped around her knees, staring pensively at Merlin's still shape. She showed no sign of noting Arthur's surprise.
"Who told him he was a coward?" Arthur stammered, unable to think of a less inane answer at that moment. Freya hardly ever interacted with him, much less alone without the buffer of the other knights.
"You did, of course," was her unexpected reply. "Over and over again." She didn't even turn to look at him.
"I never meant those comments," Arthur retorted angrily. "He knew I was only joking with him. He was the bravest man I ever knew."
"And yet the one time you told him that, you took it back moments later," Freya answered implacably.
Arthur stared at her for a moment, before the memory came back to him. I always thought you were the bravest man I ever knew . . . the bright hope in Merlin's eyes . . . guess I was wrong.
"I was wrong," he said aloud, angry with himself now. He could see it suddenly, Merlin memorizing that moment as one of the last things Arthur had ever said to him, adding it to all the jokes over the years and all the people who whispered about cowardice now, and internalizing it as how he thought of himself. Arthur wished with sudden furious helplessness that he had never had a temper, certainly that he had not turned it on Merlin in that moment.
"And now I can never make it right," he burst out bitterly.
"You will see Merlin again," Freya told him, the hint of comfort in her voice as unexpected as her answer. "Say what you mean then, Arthur Pendragon."
And with that she slipped off her rock and vanished into the night.
It was an hour before dawn on the day when Arthur was due to lead his second battle against the Saxons. This time, Merlin was by his side as they prepared; his armor wasn't spread out across a table, polished, but being put on him by hands that had learned their task well by years of practice. Arthur didn't know if Merlin was remembering that other day before the last battle, but it was on Arthur's mind. Once again, there was no guarantee that he or Merlin would live to see another dawn, and this time he was determined that Merlin would know that he was no coward before they went to face the battle.
Amhar was there too, watching them with curious eyes, perhaps the greatest difference between this time and the last. "You're very good at this, Uncle Merlin," he said, sounding awed, and Arthur remembered watching his son learning his first lessons in how to put on armor back in Avalon.
"A decade of practice," Merlin answered lightly, tugging a buckle tight.
For some reason, that brought back memories to Arthur of Merlin's early days as his servant, and he took advantage of not thinking about the Saxons for a moment as he lost himself in memory and chuckled. "You wouldn't be saying that if you could see the first few times he did it," he remarked to his son. "You were absolutely hopeless at helping me back then, Merlin."
"I'd hardly ever seen anyone wearing armor, much less tried to help anyone into it," Merlin protested. "If you knew how little I actually knew about anything when I first started serving you, you might give me a bit more credit."
He said it cheerfully, but the truth of his words made Arthur feel guilty suddenly. He had never taken into account when Merlin was first learning to be his servant how little the country boy would know about the endless duties Arthur expected of him. He wished he'd not been such an insulated prat back in those days. "How did you figure out the armor?" he asked, suddenly curious. "I seem to remember you knowing how to help me by the time I faced Valiant." And that had been early on in their association together.
It was Merlin's turn to chuckle. "I asked Gwen for help," he admitted, turning to put on his own chain mail. "We were friends, and she was the blacksmith's daughter. She knew everything there was to know about armor."
"Helpful," Arthur commented, helping Merlin fasten on his plate metal. He was taken back suddenly to the first day he had helped Merlin into armor, the day they had fought for Ealdor together, equals for perhaps the first time. Merlin had fought fearlessly for his hometown then, as he had faced every other challenge they had met bravely by Arthur's side, as they would face the Saxons today.
Arthur turned suddenly to Merlin and put his hand on his shoulder, making Merlin look at him.
"I just wanted to say," he began awkwardly, then cleared his throat and added decidedly, "Merlin, you're the bravest man I've ever known."
He had finally said it, said the truth he had thought so often in Avalon. Merlin's eyes widened as they met his, and by the look on his face Arthur knew Merlin expected him to take it back again. Somehow that hurt worse than anything else. He met Merlin's eyes steadily, sincerely, and shook his shoulder a bit for emphasis. He meant it from the depth of his heart this time.
Merlin suddenly smiled, his wide, full, bright smile, nodded, and stepped back. "Thank you, Arthur," he said quietly.
Arthur nodded back. For now, Merlin believed him; it was a beginning. But if he had really been the first one to make Merlin believe he was a coward, as Freya hinted, it was high time he let Merlin know how much of a hero he really was.
First, though, they had to defeat the Saxons. Arthur turned and strode from the tent, Merlin on his heels. This time, they would face them together.
Arthur enjoyed the journey home to Camelot from the battle. He had always enjoyed the outdoors and the wild, and coming back from a victory with his family and closest friends around him, newly King of Albion, finally getting Merlin to tell him the truth of years gone by, was the best experience of the wild there was.
He had not forgotten his determination to make sure Merlin knew he was brave, either, or his delight in teasing his friend. As he settled down between Gwen and Amhar to eat supper around the campfire, surrounded by the knights of the Original Round Table, he glanced to Merlin, sitting beside Amhar, and asked, "Is the bravest man present going to continue his story?"
There was a brief silence before Merlin glanced at him incredulously, obviously not having realized the question was directed at him for a moment. "I'm hardly the bravest man here," he objected, half-laughing.
"Doesn't mean you're not brave," Gwaine retorted cheerfully; he had been as disturbed by Merlin's estimation of his bravery as Arthur had been in Avalon. "Come on, mate; you're surrounded by knights. We're meant to be the bravest men in Camelot!"
There was laughter, and Arthur could have let it rest at that. The old Arthur certainly would have.
Say what you mean, Arthur Pendragon.
He had spent years in the lake of Avalon wishing he could say and unsay many things. He had determined long ago that his pride was worth nothing against those he loved knowing what he really meant.
"I meant what I said," he insisted quietly, staring at Merlin until the warlock met his eyes. "Not many men could have spent years under the shadow of death, risking their lives over and over again to save the life of a completely oblivious prince and being rewarded by being called a coward. You, Merlin, have more courage than anyone else I've ever met."
The group was silent for a long moment, and the look on Merlin's face echoed the look he'd worn years ago when Arthur had first told him he was the bravest man he had ever met. This time, Arthur was not going to dash that hope to pieces.
"I agree," Amhar piped up suddenly, cutting through the tension. "Uncle Merlin's the bravest man ever. Now are you going to finish the story? You haven't gotten to the part where Gaius licks the gold yet!"
Merlin gave a short laugh, slightly choked, and everyone politely ignored the sheen of tears in his eyes as he picked up the thread of the story again.
It was a start, Arthur thought contentedly as he ate his stew and laughed at the goblin's antics of long ago. He'd just have to find a way to work bravest man into a nickname for Merlin.
It didn't quite have the ring of idiot, but it was much nearer the truth. And after all these years, he owed Merlin that.
A/N: I'm so very sorry I haven't gotten this chapter up sooner, or responded to all your lovely comments - I appreciated all of them so much! Christmas break has been very busy for me, so I haven't had much time to write. I will try to get one more chapter added to this before I go back to college, though.
It was the idea for this chapter that made me first realize I wanted to add some one-shots from different perspectives to my tale of Amhar; the scene where Arthur tells Merlin he's the bravest man he knows is from chapter 12 of Future of a King, but obviously Amhar doesn't realize the significance of the moment! So here is Arthur's perspective at last.