Disclaimer: Merlin is not mine.

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II / VII

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As it turned out, going to see Merlin to confront him about the note had not been one of Arthur's better ideas.

If he was to be honest, he was more mad at himself than he was at Merlin. After all, if Arthur had had the good sense to not go down to the dungeons in the first place, there would be nothing for him to be stewing about. He had already made it two and a half days; all that he really needed to do was take a few deep breaths, introduce the new manservant to the joys of training with the knights, and then go to have an aloof and dignified conversation with Merlin at the end of the week, as he had planned.

But no, he just had to go barging down to the dungeons the minute that he got word of Merlin.

Of course, Merlin's sorcery and subsequent confinement to the dungeons was a major point of discussion throughout the entire town. Unfortunately for Arthur, kings aren't usually privy to the most tantalizing of gossip until it is either proved or disproved and even then, not until days later. The only reason that he could even be sure that Merlin was a hot topic for debate was because it seemed that he could always hear Merlin's name mentioned in the whispers that tended to cease as soon as Arthur entered a room.

And he had told his guards when they first came to report of Merlin's successful containment that he never wanted to hear news of the sorcerer ever again. It would seem that he'd said it with such vehemence that his men did not think it wise to question him on the matter. All that he'd had to do was give his orders in a particularly stern and eye-bulging sort of manner, and apparently he was free to go about his daily business, pretending that he didn't care at all with such fervency that he would hopefully soon forget that he was pretending. After all, if his citizens and his men were too afraid to give him any information about Merlin, if Arthur never had any news about his life in the dungeons, then everything would…work itself out without Arthur having to do much of anything.

Merlin was turning him into a coward.

That damn note. It was ruining all of his plans. When he caught hold of whoever had sent it, he would do…something. He would do the hell out of something!

But he was beginning to think that he would never find out. It wasn't that he was doubting his own investigatory skills; it was more that he was becoming increasingly aware that everyone in the castle seemed to know that Arthur would do the hell out of something to whoever had sent the note, and no one wanted to see the hell out of something happen to one of their friends for an offense so minor as sending a note.

Merlin had once called it the "Servants' Code" and said that it was very much as important as the Knights' Code, if somewhat different in guidelines. The Servants' Code was simple: a servant does not tell of any other servant's transgressions unless they were so severe as to cause significant harm to someone or something else. According to Merlin, there were precious few servants who would turn on another of their status without serious cause. Merlin was likeable enough—there were probably people within the palace more than willing to keep his secrets for him. In fact, for all that Arthur knew, Merlin's magic had already been common knowledge amongst the servants prior to his outing as a sorcerer. He may have spent most of his time with the king, queen, and knights rather than among those of his same societal standing, but Merlin was still a servant and still enjoyed the protection of the Servants' Code. If Merlin's magic was kept secret among the servants, as it very well could have been, then there was no way that any of them would come forward to cast blame at any of their own for something so simple as passing a note.

Perhaps this was an issue that Arthur needed to work on. Not the dissolution of the Servants' Code; from the impression that he had gotten from Merlin, any attempts at that would just lead to extra gossiping among the servants about his motives and more unidentifiable meats in his meals. But maybe he needed to work at encouraging open discourse among everyone in the castle, maybe even everyone in Camelot. After all, if his citizens did not feel safe telling the truth to him, how could he run a country? How else could he protect their best interests and know what facts he should be considering when creating the laws that affect them all if they felt uncomfortable speaking to him?

He'd been told more than once that he needed to be more in touch with the people.

Perhaps the Knights' Code and the Servants' Code should not be as separate as they had always so insistently been. Couldn't there just be a…code?

That damn note!

Arthur was starting to wonder if he was developing an unhealthy tendency toward obsession. First it had been the fire room, then it was keeping purple candles out of his chambers, then it was wondering whether or not Guinevere was amusing herself by supplying the purple candles, then considering a stakeout to see who was slipping him purple candles, and now it was the note.

Guinevere said that obsessing over small and specific problems was just his way of avoiding focusing on the real issues that demanded his attention. He still wasn't sure if this was her way of trying to gently guide him toward the wisest courses of action or whether he was onto something with the candles and she was trying to steer him away from discovering the truth.

This was one of those moments that he most missed Merlin. Not necessarily as his advisor; he was coming to respect Guinevere's ideas the same as he did any of his council members, and it was to her he turned with Merlin gone. Her advice had never led him wrong, and really, it was usually guidance more than actual directions; she suggested how he should approach things, whereas Merlin basically showed him his options and then, whether his opinion was asked or not, told Arthur which he thought was best.

Together, Merlin and Guinevere made a formidable team.

But this time, he wasn't missing Merlin's contribution as an unofficial advisor. There were more pressing matters with which he could have used Merlin's help. Merlin understood when some issues had to be tabled to deal with those of greater gravity, something that his wife seemed rather inadequate with in regards to certain problems facing the king at that time.

,Merlin would have understood where Arthur was coming from with the candles and Merlin would have been willing to man the stakeout whilst Arthur did various kingly duties that were of arguably more importance. Merlin could have been trusted to keep quiet and laugh at it only when Arthur was in the room.

That, or Merlin would have been the one sneaking him the purple candles just to annoy him.

Enough about the candles. Maybe Guinevere had a point about his preoccupation with insignificant details when there were larger affairs at hand. Even Arthur knew that the situation that was stagnating down in his dungeons was getting out of hand if purple candles were diverting his thoughts back to his erstwhile servant. They were starting to invade his suspicions, his sleep, and his sleuthing.

So, it was with gritted teeth and bags under his eyes that he stomped his way back down to the dungeons for the second day in the row to visit-no, not to visit, to interrogate—the criminal lounging in the farthest cell. Probably enjoying himself, Arthur mused. He certainly had to exert himself far less in jail than he did as Arthur's servant.

Once again, Arthur burst through the door without so much as a pause for pleasantries with the sentry, who seemed so taken aback that he held the door open for far longer than was necessary after Arthur's entrance.

Then Arthur realized why. In the majority of his past visits to the dungeons, Merlin had been trailing a few feet behind him. This had apparently become such the expectation throughout the castle that workers seemed to be instinctually acting as though Arthur still had his two shadows, one far more talkative than the other.

Arthur spared a moment to turn back and glare at the sentry, who turned bright red and closed the door softly, clearly not knowing why the king was so irritated with him.

Having finishing taking his silent anger out on his sentry, Arthur stomped his way down to the farthest cell, where Merlin was already standing, as though waiting for Arthur. Arthur briefly wondered if Merlin was using some sort of dark magic to inform him of when the king was approaching, or if maybe he was just standing at readiness all day, just in case Arthur came for a visit.

Or, maybe he used his ears when Arthur came banging into the echoey corridor between the cells. That was another possibility. The first two, however, were more pleasantly illegal and pathetic, so Arthur chose to assume that it was one of those.

"Hullo, Arthur! Fancy meeting you here. How has life been up among people?" Merlin put on a bright smile, his tone so annoyed that Arthur had to suspect that he had made the smile extra perky just to emphasize the disapproval in his voice.

Arthur nodded with as much solemn dignity as he could muster. "Merlin."

Merlin nodded with far less dignity, then began to speak very quickly. "A lot has happened since we last spoke, Arthur. I have lots of news to share, among other things. But first, tell me, do you know the identities of the people who have been bringing me my food?"

This was hardly a question that Arthur would have expected to be a prelude to news. But of course, this was Merlin, and he was in jail, so maybe his definitions of news just then were some different than Arthur's. But wait…

"What do you mean? No, of course not. You're not meant to be receiving meals."

Merlin nodded again, seemingly only hearing the first half of Arthur's statement before absorbing the second. "Okay, good. Then…wait, what? You weren't going to be feeding me?"

Arthur winced. It sounded a lot worse when said aloud rather than written on an angry decree to the guards. And when the person doing the saying aloud was his pale and skinny prisoner. Plus, he'd forgotten about that particular order, so rashly given…no food…but, he would show no mercy! The man was a criminal.

Okay.

"You're a traitor to the crown, Merlin! Did you think that you were going to be getting the guest treatment?"

"Still!" Merlin glared at him, then shook his head slightly. Or else could not stop himself from shaking from lack of sustenance. One of the two. Either way, it seemed a very dismissive movement. "So, then, you don't know who have been giving me food?"

Arthur matched his glare. "No, I don't."

"Ah. Good, then I can give you these." Merlin reached his hand out past the bars, trying to pass something wrapped in cloth to Arthur.

Arthur backed away and put his hand to the hilt of his sword instinctively. The automatic movement somewhat embarrassed Arthur, given his audience. But this was the dungeon; dangerous things tended to happen in dungeons. One must always be prepared.

Merlin rolled his eyes. "Come on, Arthur. If I wanted to attack you, do you really think that I'd be pulling for a fistfight? You would snap me like a twig. Besides, I'd just blow your head up from here or something if I really wanted to kill you."

Arthur glowered and snatched the package away from him, seizing the opportunity to avert his eyes. "Can you really do that? Blow people's heads up?"

Merlin leaned thoughtfully on the horizontal pole that ran through the bars of his cell. "Never tried. I can't imagine that it would be too hard, though."

Arthur raised his eyebrows, still leisurely unwrapping the parcel. "Do you spend a lot of time thinking about blowing up people's heads, Merlin?"

Merlin shook his head seriously. "No, but I've been blowing up melons through the grate in my cell all morning, and how different can heads really be, explosion-wise? And did you know, King Arthur, that those bloodthirsty children out there have taken to throwing melons at people in the stocks? Whole melons? It's inhuman! And extremely wasteful! Anyway, I felt honor bound as a veteran of the stocks to dispense with ammunition that large and…solid. And I haven't had much else to do down here." He exhaled very seriously, as though he had just reported a major crime to the king and could now sleep easily at night, trusting in justice.

"Is that so?" Arthur wasn't really listening. He was unrolling the package that Merlin had handed to him very slowly and cautiously. He knew that Merlin probably hadn't passed him anything dangerous, especially if he was spending all of his time so seriously considering the explodability of the human head, but there were guards watching, and he was king; there were ways that things were done. Proper procedures to be followed.

It didn't hurt that he was also somewhat enjoying hearing Merlin prattle on, even if he wasn't really absorbing the content.

Then he saw what was in the package. "What the hell? Merlin, where did you get these?"

Merlin grinned through the bars. "Did it really take you that long to unroll that little piece of cloth? Which I'd really appreciate having back, actually, if you wouldn't mind very much." He spoke very fast again.

Arthur wanted to punch something. Merlin was the most tempting of options, but the young man really didn't look as though he'd been eating for the past three days, and Arthur was wearing his armored gloves. It would hardly have been a fair hit. He was a knight, after all, and while chivalry tended to focus more on courtesy to women, he'd always imagined that hitting Merlin, really hitting him, would be basically the same as hitting a girl. He did not want to be unkind.

Also, the bars were much too narrow for him to reach a fist through with his gloves on.

At that moment, anyway, his favorite punching fist was very tightly clenched around the items that Merlin had wrapped in cloth and passed through the bars with his bony little wrist, and it did not seem to want to unclench anytime soon.

They were keys. Three different keys.

The first was a skeleton key that would have worked on just about any known type of lock in the five kingdoms. Skeleton keys were assigned only to knights, for emergency use should they ever get into sticky situations in enemy hands.

The second looked like it was the original key; it was certainly old and tarnished enough to match the lock on Merlin's cell. There were fresh marks on its handle that made it evident that the key had recently been wrenched from its place on an iron ring. Arthur didn't bother checking the bunches of keys at his belt to see for himself that he was missing one.

The third matched the outline of the original key exactly, but the metal was new. There were no scratches along its length, no rough patches or scrapes…even the head of the key looked as though it had never once been inserted into the lock for which it was designed. Arthur was fairly certain that it had never once been used.

Arthur fixed his gaze on Merlin, feeling murderous. Judging from the expression on Merlin's face, he looked murderous. The sorcerer certainly seemed to suddenly find the bars that separated them much more reassuring.

"Where did you get these?"

Merlin lay down on the cot that someone had smuggled into his cell and leaned back against the wall, interlocking his fingers behind his head; in fact, if it were it not for the wary alertness of his eyes, he would have looked as relaxed as Arthur had ever seen him. "Call them garnish."

"Merlin!" Arthur growled.

Merlin sighed. "Fine. In the bottom of a bowl of soup, baked into a loaf of bread, dunked in a flagon of mead."

"Who brought them?" Arthur's voice was deadly quiet, all thoughts of the Servants' Code vanquished from his mind.

It still, however, seemed to be prominent in Merlin's. He inhaled dramatically. "You know, I can't quite recall. Although I'll give you three guesses on the mead."

Arthur ignored the fact that Merlin had sounded just like his former self on his second sentence. There were far more important matters, and it wasn't entirely surprising anyway; Merlin had heard Arthur use that tone when discussing everything from slave traders passing through Camelot to the state of imperfectly polished boots. "When did you get them?"

"I've averaged one per day."

Arthur threw his hands up in the air, his bewildered frustration evident in every line and movement of his body. "Well, then why the hell are you still here?"

Merlin shook his head, suddenly very serious, looking as though he was honestly trying to help Arthur to understand, wearing that same urgent expression that Arthur had seen when he had walked away from Merlin the day before. "I told you, Arthur. I don't want to escape. I don't want to have to escape, that is. And even if I did, a key would probably just slow me down."

Arthur's glare intensified. Every word that Merlin spoke seemed to make the king feel more and more less in control of everything. As king! So, as was his custom, he responded rationally, hoping to resolve the situation as calmly and maturely as possible.

"You keep saying things like that, Merlin, but I don't believe that you can. You lit a room on fire and smashed a witch with a table. Big displays of brute force, which is a sentence that I never thought would apply to you, of all people, Merlin. You do anything like that to escape, you'll be heard, and half the guards in Camelot will come rushing down to catch you before you get so much as—"

The lock on Merlin's cell clicked, and the door creaked open.

Merlin raised his eyebrows and gestured for Arthur to keep talking.

Arthur slammed the door shut with so much force that it bounced open again, its hinges creaking and the gap even wider than when Merlin had magicked it open. Arthur was seething beyond speech by the time that he finally got the door properly closed and started fumbling for one of the three keys with his thick gloves. Helpfully, Merlin's eyes glowed, and the lock clicked again.

There was a full minute in which the two men glared at each other, not so much in anger as in unfamiliarity, as each tried furiously to guess what the other was going to do next, as each tried to reconcile the so familiar image of his counterpart with the actions that they were seeing before them, actively attempting to make unknown what was so known and to completely shift from closest of friend to most fundamental of enemy. Trying to make sense of it all.

Or was that just Arthur? Ever since he had found out about Merlin's secret and how closely entwined sorcery really was with his own life, it had been increasingly difficult for the king to realize where one man stopped and the other began.

Why was it so difficult for him? Arthur closed his eyes first, breaking their visual contact.

Merlin was first to break the silence. Arthur felt that it was nice to see that some things never changed.

"Ready to stay and listen to me properly yet?"

Stay and listen properly? At that moment, Arthur could barely stay and breathe properly. He had to get out of there, to think everything through, to not have to look Merlin in the eye as he made decisions that would make or break his existence, he had to…he had to give them both a chance to breathe. That simply could not happen just then.

"No."

And Arthur turned on his heel and began storming out of the dungeons with as much violence as he had entered. As he left, he was so confused by what he could seem to not do that he almost did not notice as he automatically slowed his pace to see if Merlin would call out another a request, as he had the last time that Arthur had left him in his cell alone.

There was silence but for the ringing in his ears as he marched out of the dungeons.

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Arthur had no choice but to stop once he reached the corridor and to lean against the cool stone wall of the dim hallway. He took several deep breaths and began to focus on one sense after the other. He had learned after so many bouts of unconsciousness that this was an excellent way of regaining one's bearings.

Eyes. His eyes seemed to be working. He could see the flickering light and tentative shadows that danced with one another in their eternal battle for dominance in the firelight.

Ears. He could hear perfectly fine. The corridor was deserted, fortunately, but he heard the hissing of the candle at the wall adjacent to his ear, clearly burning close to the bottom and soon to run out of wax and wick.

Nose. Yes, that definitely smelled like a candle just minutes away from becoming no more than a few lingering wisps of smoke.

Taste. Sticking his tongue out, he found that the air around him seemed relatively without flavor, as could be generally expected of…air. But there was a coppery taste in his mouth and a sting at the sudden exposure to clean air that made him realize that he had bitten his tongue.

Touch. He was positive that his sense of touch was quite intact, for he soon became aware that he still held in his hand the keys and cloth that Merlin had handed him. Merlin had asked for the cloth back, Arthur remembered.

Good luck to him with that.

Vaguely curious and very tired, Arthur held the package up to the dying light to see just what Merlin had wanted returned to him. After squinting for a few moments, Arthur finally saw what they keys had been wrapped in.

It was Merlin's neckerchief.

Of course, it had to be Merlin's neckerchief.

He should burn it.

Then, sniffing and laughing self-consciously under his breath at the absurdity of the thought, he looked at it. It certainly did not seem long for this world as it was; Arthur had been right when he had decided that Merlin's stock of the ever stylish accessory would soon need replenishing.

The king examined it a little more closely. For all of the countless hours that he had spent with Merlin, he'd never really been able to handle a neckerchief that wasn't covered with his own blood. Oh, if only Arthur had just gone with the tourniquets and bandages, this might have never happened…

This one was different from that which Arthur had stolen to use as a pattern for his birthday present. It was made of the same kind of cloth—rough homespun that had been all that Merlin had ever touched before coming to Camelot—and had the same cut and stitch. Or something like that. He had learned most of these words from Guinevere and was still unsure what was what when it came to the art of sewing. This did not particularly bother him.

But this neckerchief was different. As he ran his fingers over it, he felt an abnormality in the stitching along one of the edges. Judging from the patterns of fading that were mottled across the majority of the fabric—colors shifting and warped from months of sun and rain and sweat and blood—the stitching was on the portion that Merlin apparently always kept close to his skin. It was the only part of the neckerchief that did not seem to be faded.

Then he held it more closely to the choking light of the nearby candle bracket and saw that it was not an abnormality in the sense that it was a mishap in the sewing or accident in the needlepoint—letters had been stitched onto the blue cloth with the same sort of homespun thread that all of Merlin's original clothes had been sewn with.

As the candle burned closer and closer to its end, he was still able to read the writing in the flickering light. There, lovingly stitched into the fabric with a hand obviously infinitely more graceful and steady than that of the neckerchief's owner, was a name. Merlin.

Arthur smiled.

Merlin had told him this story once; Arthur had just never made the connection. Merlin had said that his mother had been making quite a fuss when he was getting ready to head for Camelot. The exodus had been her idea and she had wholeheartedly supported his journey, for she wanted with all of her heart for nothing but safety and happiness for her only son, her baby boy, her only remnant of the man that she had once so loved. Merlin was guaranteed neither this safety nor this happiness if he were to stay with her in Ealdor. She was his mother and she loved him more than anything else in the world; so she sent him away.

But not before taking a needle and thread to just about everything that he owned that could hold a stitch. They did not have the money or means to buy all sorts of new things for his new life so far away from their small village, and Hunith had taken it upon herself to make sure that Merlin never lost track of or confused the few items that he did have. So she had gathered up all of the thread that she could find and stitched his name into all of his clothes and neckerchiefs.

Merlin said that he had always thought that she truly wanted to feel that she was with him, protecting him, even if she could not do it in person. She may not have been able to call him home every night and serve him dinner and see for herself as he grew into the man that he would become, but she could protect his neck from sunburn, and with every stitch that marked each neckerchief as his, she was marking him as hers, and she as his.

Arthur tended to make fun of Merlin whenever he started on his long-winded tales of life in Ealdor, usually launched into whenever Arthur was complaining about having to do some minor task. Whether intentionally or in his normal absent-minded way, Merlin tended to tell the same stories over and or again. Arthur usually yelled at him to stop before he got more than a sentence or two into a tale that he'd already been told, but when Merlin talked of his mother?

Arthur liked those stories.

He tucked the neckerchief into his pocket, his fleeting thought of conflagration gone as though it had never existed. Perhaps one day, he would have the chance to return it to its owner. He would think of a plan, but…later. Right then, Arthur was thinking only of Hunith and Ealdor and the simple life that Arthur had always said that he would hate and of how he knew without even bothering to consider the matter that Hunith's heart would wholly break when she heard of…whatever was going to happen to Merlin and how, no matter how many people loved him as completely as they possibly could, the only person who could wholeheartedly live for him at every moment was his mother and oh, what would Arthur have given to have had a mother and…how it had never occurred to him?

How had Arthur never thought of how this happened to every sorcerer's mother and father and sister and brother and son and daughter and husband and wife whenever another Pendragon execution struck one more blow against magic? How spouses would lose spouses and parents their children and how so many children would grow up without knowing a mother or father? Hell, the first witch who had ever tried to kill him was only doing it because Uther had killed her son.

How had he never seen before? Hunith was just the face of how many hundreds, even thousands who were destroyed not by magic's existence but by its persecution.

And of course, she had to be a lovely person…

Yes, he would think of a plan later. But for now, he would keep Hunith's needlework safe. He could do that, at least, for her. Even if it was too late for him to keep her son safe.

But really, truly…was it? Was anything too late for him? He was the king, damn it, and if anyone in Camelot had the leisure to choose as to how people should live and how they should be allowed to love and what they should be allowed to learn and how no mother should have to outlive her son and no son should have to live without a mother…

No, this was up to him. He had spent so much time working to protect the choices that his father had made for the kingdom because they seemed to be working that he had not bothered to make any choices of his own that could maybe, just maybe, work even better.

Then he remembered…when isolated together in the fire room, Arthur had asked Merlin how many lives he could have saved, and now he suddenly felt ashamed. After all, he had been prince and now he was king. How many lives could he have saved?

The candle finally burnt out, and Arthur was left in the total darkness.

When he was later able to think clearly once more, Arthur realized that he had been lucky with the candle's timing; once extinguished, no one would have been able to see him as he stood in the corridor and wept.

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Sorry for the super long chapter! I got started and then never stopped.

Thank you all so much for the reviews! I'll wake up not in the mood to write, and then I'll see that I have feedback and get right back into writing.