Disclaimer: Merlin is not mine.
Merlin was back.
Merlin was back and, by all accounts, perfectly healthy and perfectly capable of speech and perfectly ambulatory, probably frolicking around the castle with Arthur and doing all kinds of stupid things and trying to hide them from the queen and having grand old times and acting altogether like a child, as though he had never left in the first place. It was completely inappropriate.
As if Gwaine couldn't do those things! And he could absolutely manage them without doing something like neglecting to run a kingdom, unlike someone else! And, to top it all off, he'd had to hear about it from a pair of gossiping servants! And now the castle was falling apart? Did nothing make sense?
Gwaine swung out of his bedchambers irritably, stomping in his boots so as to make a satisfactorily loud clumping noise as he turned randomly down the hallway, going nowhere in particular. All that he had known was that he needed to be moving, andlying on his bed and fuming wasn't nearly as cathartic as stomping around and scowling. Besides, after his room had exploded and his door flung open, it was like fate was tempting him to leave.
And he certainly wasn't going to clean it all up any time soon.
Yes, Merlin was back alright, and he was not going to be receiving an open-armed welcome from a certain knight.
At least, not right away. But how annoying it was that his room—and apparently, the rest of the castle, judging by the state of the corridor as he walked—had thrown itself into disarray on its own and that all he could focus on was the fact that his friend had returned and he wasn't sure if he should be furious or happy.
Not that he wanted Merlin executed on the spot, or dragged to the dungeons, or whatever was the equivalent of punishing a sorcerer capable of turning them all into radishes if the mood ever struck him. Or so Merlin had said. Gwaine had never been sure if he should believe that particular claim. A spell to turn people into radishes seemed awfully specific. Although it probably would have been fun to see. He would have liked to see that one in action.
Gwaine had enjoyed spending time with Merlin back when he'd thought that the young man's most defining qualities were being an inexplicably still-employed servant to the king, almost universally friendly, capable of engaging a man in heart-to-heart conversations at the strangest of times, and so bad at holding his ale that he was an irreplaceably entertaining companion at a tavern.
But then he'd found out that Merlin was a sorcerer, and once his mind had taken the four and a half seconds that it needed to stop reeling at the revelation and accepted it for what it was, as Merlin had healed the wounds that had afflicted the better part of Gwaine's sword arm, he'd realized that having a sorcerer for a friend was all in all a pretty great development. And why the hell not? Gwaine was allowed his sword, Leon his crossbow, Arthur his temper tantrums. If he could make objects float around and heal burn wounds and turn people into radishes, all the better for Merlin. And now that his magic was out for everyone to know about, Merlin would have been completely invaluable on the many ill-conceived missions into the forest.
Which Gwaine had told him.
Which Merlin had seemed to find very touching at the time, no matter what Arthur said about how easy it was to get Merlin to tear up.
Which was still apparently not enough for Merlin to given him so much as a wave as he walked out of the castle forever. Forever! It didn't even matter than Merlin was back now. It was the principle of the thing. They had been friends, Gwaine thought indignantly, still stomping determinedly.
Unfortunately, however, he'd been thinking indignantly that he'd forgotten to watch where he was going, and he tripped over a fallen tapestry and landed heavily on his knees, his palms stinging where they'd been thrown in front of him to keep him from bashing his face into the stone floor. His scowl somehow managing to become more pronounced, he shoved himself to his feet, and saw with a perverse sort of pleasure that the tapestry had apparently been hung in order to cover a scorch mark. Stupid Arthur. As if a tapestry would never be moved! The truth would come out eventually—it always did. Well, it was there for everyone to see now. Gwaine did nevertheless tend to have sympathy for burn victims. Apparently, even if it was a wall.
Well, stranger things had happened.
Although everyone whom he had passed in the hallway so far had seemed far more preoccupied with the amazing self-propelled objects that had jettisoned themselves from their places fifteen minutes earlier than with revealed scorch marks. He could concede that it was bizarre and certainly worth investigating, but he didn't really understand the fear on so many of their faces. It seemed that no one had really been injured. Even the things that had been scattered seemed miraculously undamaged. A little bit of cleaning and it would all be back to normal. Besides, freak accidents happened in Camelot all the time. As long as nothing was on fire and the council chamber was intact, Gwaine wasn't too upset by something so victimless.
Well, not at the state of the castle, anyway. He did half hope that either Arthur or Merlin had been sitting on a chair when it decided to throw itself across the room. They wouldn't have to die or be seriously injured or anything. Just a little banged up. Maybe a smidge embarrassed. Gwaine wouldn't have protested.
It wasn't that mean, he thought defensively, beginning to stride furiously and aimlessly down the hallways once more.
While he admittedly had not had a relationship quite so unhealthily constant as had been the relationship between the king and his former manservant, he'd thought that he and Merlin had had a strong enough bond to merit a goodbye, he mused as he jumped over a fallen vase—still somehow intact—that obstructed his path through the corridors. Even a short one with Merlin so choked up about his banishment that he could only manage a few words about the eclipsing importance of their friendship. That would have been enough. Gwaine had heard whispers that Arthur hadn't gotten a goodbye either, but that had been fine, as far as Gwaine reckoned. Arthur had banished Merlin in the first place, and after imprisoning him for the better part of a month. He didn't deserve a goodbye.
Unlike some people!
When he'd heard that Arthur was working on legalizing magic and the surprise at the fact that Arthur was actually working on anything had worn off, Gwaine had supported it wholeheartedly. If it had the potential to bring Merlin home or to make Merlin's life easier, even if from afar, then it would have Gwaine's support.
Because at least he knew how to be a good friend.
It was not as though he was blind to the dangers of magic in the wrong hands, Gwaine reflected grouchily. He'd been imprisoned by Morgana and forced to fight for scraps of food barely edible, and hers was the most powerful magic that he'd ever witnessed.
Up until the fire room that Merlin had conjured after one of the occasions on which the council room had nearly collapsed—Gwaine had lost count—and that had nearly cost him use of his arm, anyway. But perhaps it was because Morgana had used her magic for destruction and Merlin had used his to be completely awesome that Morgana's powers seemed so much more potent. And they had nearly led to Gaius' death down in the dungeons.
Anyhow, nearly losing his most important limb to that fire room didn't make it any less amazing to have seen. The room comprised of fire had been amazing to behold. Not so amazing to feel, but the pain had faded. Gwaine's impression had not.
Yes, Gwaine knew that he could not judge all sorcerers by Morgana. Wasn't Merlin proof enough of that? He just figured that sorcerers were defined more by their personalities than by their magic. Gwaine hadn't exactly been banished or threatened with execution because of his skills with a sword. Granted, he had been banished and threatened with execution more than a few times in the past, but those had been mostly unrelated to his general ability to use a blade. They were generally related more to who he chose to threaten with that blade. Which could happen to anyone, honestly.
Besides, from what he could decipher from the vague deflections that Merlin had tossed in his direction when he'd asked about how Morgana had turned out the way that she had in one of their conversations through the bars of Merlin's cell door back before his banishment, Gwaine had gathered that part of what had contributed to Morgana's descent into what Gwaine had come to describe wholeheartedly as evil had been the way in which she had been forced to bear the burden of possessing magic—a trait that she could have apparently not prevented, had she wanted to—in complete secret. It was just such a shame that the people of Camelot seemed to base all of their opinions of magic on her.
Which, as Gwaine had figured, was why Merlin needed to come back. It was just like how in his own past, when he had shunned his own lineage as nobility and assumed that the lords and ladies of the lands all but exhaled disdain for the people of lower classes.
Then he had met Arthur.
Of course, Uther had been a prime example to confirm Gwaine's beliefs about the self-perceived superiority of the royalty, and he'd had something of an aggressive encounter with a pair of men posing as knights in defense of Merlin's life and had been the sole party of the affair to receive punishment, due to his lack of title.
But that wasn't Arthur.
Well, that wasn't entirely Arthur. But Arthur had been so fundamentally contrary to what Gwaine had expected of a crown prince. Relatively respectful to Gwaine, despite his projected lower status. Willing to speak up for Gwaine to at least try to prevent his banishment from Camelot. Strangely attached—if not particularly kind—to a servant whose status in life was just about the opposite of his own, and Gwaine knew that that was no spellwork. It was Arthur.
Besides, Gwaine had the distinct impression that Arthur would have stepped in to keep the two imposter knights from killing Merlin just as aggressively as he had. He just wouldn't have been banished.
And that one example—Arthur—had made Gwaine rethink his bias against the nobility. That one example of fairness and willingness to listen had changed everything that Gwaine assumed of others of such stations in life. Arthur had been a good example.
Up until he'd insisted on banishing every other person who offended him. First Guinevere, then Merlin…Gwaine half believed that Arthur was just working his way through his list of favorite people and banishing them, one by one. He didn't know why Arthur would do such a thing, but a lot of the things that Arthur did seemed to defy logic. Maybe he just got confused and mislabeled his lists. Gwaine had gone through nearly a full day—admittedly a day tainted by something of a hangover—wondering if Arthur was in fact only a few steps above illiterate. What kind of king moved his lips as he read? Gwaine also half-believed that Arthur that only reason that Arthur read all of his prepared speeches ahead of time was so that he could sound out all of the words to make sure that he could pronounce them semi-properly. Gwaine entirely believed that Arthur didn't know what half of the words in his own speeches actually meant. Having shared this belief with Elyan, he'd found himself most vehemently disagreed with. When he'd pointed out that it was very unlikely that Arthur had one style of handwriting for how he labeled his doodles and one for how he wrote his speeches, Elyan had most loyally to his king refused to change his position.
When making bets, however, loyalty could be very costly. Gwaine grinned as he walked past the kitchens, seeming to surprise a pair of grim-faced maidservants who knelt on the ground, picking up cutlery that had been flung from a cart just outside the doorway. Gwain paid no notice and instead spared another moment for his bet with Elyan regarding Arthur's speeches…all that he needed was proof…
But that wasn't the point. It was a good point, but not the point just then, Gwaine mused. The point was that if Arthur's good example of nobility could countermand Gwaine's negative views on that whole portion of the population, why couldn't Merlin serve as a good example of sorcery and work to countermand the negative views on magic as held by a significant portion of the overall population? Why couldn't Merlin have stayed? Surely Arthur could have come up with some other way of punishing Merlin for the betrayal.
Although Gwaine had a hard time believing that a man keeping a secret that, if known, would lead to his own execution should be considered a betrayal of any sort. After all, if Merlin's secret had come out only a few years before it had, it would have resulted in Uther condemning him to death rather than Arthur banishing him, so reluctantly. And what a waste it would have been to execute Merlin! And what a waste it must have been to execute all of the other sorcerers who had been taken to their pyres over the years! It wasn't even the waste of the magic that could have been used for good that was the most galling to Gwaine. It was the loss of life. It was why he drank and caroused acted in all sorts of manners unbefitting a knight of Camelot. He lived.
He was somewhat ashamed that none of this had occurred to him until Merlin had stuck himself in the middle of it all. But then, Arthur had done the same thing. He could pretend to be as honorable as he liked in front of his council members, claiming that it had been a natural progression of his growth as a king that had led to his decision to repeal the laws against magic, although probably doing so using words far more monosyllabic. But no one believed it, not really. Especially those who knew Arthur. He hadn't truly thought about legalizing magic until it concerned Merlin.
Merlin, the man who had decided that being a damn martyr to his own cause included not seeing certain of his friends before he left forever. He was as bad as Arthur. Did they really think that by making themselves more miserable that the results would be more poignant? For two such different men, they always seemed to agree on the most annoying things.
Still, Gwaine wished that he understood more about Merlin's magic. There was so little that he knew, other than that Merlin was good. He didn't need to know about what spells Merlin had cast in secret over the years to know that Merlin was good. Anyone who knew Merlin ought to have known that. But Gwaine just wished that he knew how it all worked. When he'd finally given up on his silent treatment of Arthur after Merlin's departure—which had lasted an impressive two and a half weeks, despite their frequent interactions—he'd asked the king as sullenly as possible what he knew of what Merlin could do. If he knew what Merlin could do, maybe that would help him understand what Merlin had done and allow him to focus all of his anger on Arthur, rather than splitting it between the two.
It was always more fun to complain about a king than to complain about a servant.
He shouldn't have bothered; the question had been little more than a waste of breath. Arthur had just muttered something incomprehensible about fire rooms and curtains and blows to the head and something that sounded strangely like "horse language," although Gwaine assumed that he'd misheard the last one. But honestly, if Arthur couldn't lie about what he knew of Merlin's magic, he could have at least admitted that he was as much in the dark as the rest of them! Gwaine would grant him the fire room—after all, he'd all but burned off his own arm in trying to penetrate its walls in a bout of admittedly poorly thought-out gallantry—but curtains and head wounds and equine communication? Gwaine may not have had Arthur's years of largely ineffectual tutoring, but he wasn't an idiot.
Gwaine, still scowling, turned a corner in the corridor, jumping over the debris of what had once been a chandelier than had fallen from the ceiling during the disruption of a few minutes ago, or whatever it had been. He just had time to wince as he heard a series of crinklings beneath him that told him that he'd managed to crush some of the fallen glass when he saw the king walked toward him. That damn corner had kept Gwaine from spotting Arthur ahead of time, and they were too close for Gwaine to have snuck away before having to talk to him.
"Sir Gwaine," said Arthur, nodding tiredly but allotting the respect owed to a man with the title of "Sir." He must have been truly exhausted indeed to not have noticed the look on Gwaine's face.
"Arthur," Gwaine responded as snottily as he could manage, lifting his chin as high as possible in what he hoped was a gesture of complete disapproval and ignoring Arthur's proper title.
Gwaine was unsurprised to see Arthur roll his eyes at Gwaine's tone. While his sulkiness toward the king had somewhat lessened as the weeks following Merlin's banishment passed, it still tended to crop up in random bursts from time to time. Although Arthur probably shouldn't have been surprised this time—Merlin's not-so-secret return was certain to bring out the bitterness.
When Arthur had finally called him on it after a particularly long and trying trip through the forest—apparently Arthur did not know "horse language" or else he would have had no lack for conversation during the journey, still apparently missing the constant chatter of his former manservant on such occasions—Gwaine had compared his bouts of silent treatment to a lifelong disease that could lie dormant for years at a time with unexpected outbreaks that could occur at just about any time. And that, if a person was not careful, could be very contagious.
Gwaine had been slightly disappointed that Arthur had not asked what disease Gwaine was referring to. And how it was caught. That would have been entertaining. Ever since he'd been married, Arthur had turned into such a prude. Arthur would have turned so very red…Gwaine smiled. Oh, the things that a man could learn in a tavern…
Besides, Arthur had all but invented snotty gestures of disapproval. It would have been like Merlin threatening Gwaine with a sword. Just…unwise.
Gwaine bit his lip, trying to decide whether or not he would try to spite Arthur by coming up with a particularly biting slight on his looks or just remaining completely silent and pointedly refusing to look him in the eye. Both were appealing options.
Then he noticed something about Arthur. The king did not look merely exhausted. He looked distinctly like he had just committed a murder and was doing a very poor job of covering up the evidence. There was blood everywhere. For an instant, Gwaine's concern jumped up over his annoyance with the king, and he opened his mouth to inquire what had happened. If Arthur needed a shoulder to lean on whilst going down to Gaius' chambers for a healing potions and set of bandages or a pair of hands to help him move a body to a more secluded location, Gwaine could manage. Hell, if there was any of his knights to help him move a body, Gwaine was probably the best choice.
Arthur was walking, though. And he didn't look as troubled as a man with Arthur's moral compass would if he had killed someone outside of battle. He wasn't even stumbling, although he did seem to have something of a limp, and there was a bandage wrapped around one of his hands. There was blood on his trousers, and his tunic seemed bizarrely fresh in comparison. He must have changed it before leaving wherever he'd been bleeding, although why he hadn't thought to change trousers or wash up was beyond Gwaine. Arthur looked chastised more than anything else. And very confused, but Gwaine barely even registered confusion on Arthur's face anymore. It was like how he had grown able to hold tremendous amounts of ale that would have felled far larger men—once he was exposed to something often enough, he just got used to it.
But…was that confusion? Now that he thought about it, his confusion seemed to be tinged with what looked very much like sadness. Devastation, even. And so very tired. And…old. Arthur had never looked so very aged. It was as though his weariness had added a decade to him.
Or maybe he was just really confused, Gwaine rationalized. It did seem like Arthur spent a lot of time confused. And not the sort of confused that garnered any sympathy from Gwaine. The last time that Gwaine had felt even slightly bad for Arthur's confusion had been sporadically during the weeks of Merlin's incarceration, generally when he was not cursing the king for locking Merlin up or cursing Merlin for not escaping despite all of the refused opportunities and still holding onto the hope that the whole thing was just typical Arthur taking a month to understand something.
Then Merlin had been exiled and Gwaine found his sympathies for Arthur's confusion far less prominent than before.
Besides, it was hard to feel sympathetic every time that Arthur was confused by the prospect of dressing himself or getting out of bed on time like an adult or what to call an apparently mind-boggling meal that was later than breakfast and before lunch. From what Gwaine had gathered from one of Arthur's more talkative advisors, he'd spent a good portion of a council meeting pondering that massive conundrum. They usually had no way of telling what it was distracting Arthur during any particular meeting, the man said, but Arthur had apparently on this particular day begun to wear that pained expression that he always wore when he was thinking before sitting up and very suddenly yelling out "Lunkfast!"
In the months since Merlin's departure, Gwaine was never sure whether or not he should be laughing as hard as he usually was when he heard stories like this or fearful for the state of the kingdom.
Or perhaps if he was being a little hard on the king.
Or if Arthur understood how some of the things that he did looked to everyone else. Making up new words for mundane concepts like the union of breakfast and lunch during council meetings was really not the best way to make his legislative crusades seem the most rational.
Or if no one really understood the ways that Arthur had to try to cope with being a king, if yelling out or carving unidentifiable shapes into tables or thinking random thoughts kept him from nodding off during dull meetings when he'd probably been up all night, unable to sleep for worrying about something legitimate—about his kingdom or his people or his health or his hairline.
But honestly. Lunkfast? Was it so difficult to just say that he was eating a late breakfast or an early lunch? Or calling it something more sensible like…"brenchfast?" Arthur was lucky that kings obtained power by inheritance rather than selection. Some of his decisions were just nonsensical. He should just leave the invention of new words to Gwaine.
"Brenchfast." Now that was a word. He should probably track down Geoffrey of Monmouth and get him to write that one down, he thought absently. Arthur should just focus on eating his meals at the proper time and saving himself the very real possibility of a headache that did not stem from one of his surprisingly many—although strangely decreasing in frequency over the past few months—blows to the head.
But "lunkfast?" Who on earth had Gwaine sworn fealty to?
Not that Gwaine was holding a grudge about anything.
Or slightly suffering from his own headache from the activities of the night before. Although at least he'd managed to play a certain tavern game without stabbing himself in the hand like an idiot. Even if he had, Gwaine would have at least had the good sense to be drunk past the point of reason by that point. Arthur should probably practice before he tried something like that again, he thought, then snorted. As if Arthur would practice anything that did not concern physical prowess or the attractiveness of his own signature!
Although he was covered in blood.
"How have…things been progressing as of late? Your…duties?" asked Arthur, clearly trying to imbue some sense of authority into his voice as he ran his fingers through his hair with his bandaged hand. Gwaine saw that there was blood on the king's face, and knew this wasn't the first time that he'd rumpled his hair in frustration.
Gwaine pondered how to answer the question. His sympathies were being aroused, despite himself. But there was a reason that Arthur had inquired after Gwaine's "things" and "duties" with such vagueness. Arthur had been all but nonexistent among the knights for the past several days, and he clearly had no idea what they'd been up to. If it hadn't been for Sir Leon, they would have undoubtedly been doing nothing productive.
"The things with out duties have been progressing just as you intended them, sire," answered Gwaine stiffly. He may have been growing sympathetic, but that didn't mean that he should let Arthur bluff his way through pretending that he knew what had been going on. If he was to be king, he ought to act like it, no matter what little thing was bothering him.
"Good," said Arthur distractedly, Gwaine's blow clearly not landing. "Good, I'm glad."
He didn't sound glad.
Gwaine crossed his arms over his chest, wishing that he'd worn his sword. It wasn't that he would have drawn it against his king, but he usually felt more comfortable with it at his hip. More imposing. More respectable. "How have your things and duties been progressing, then, sire?"
Arthur roused himself enough to look mildly surprised. Gwaine didn't usually ask questions such as that, and he certainly didn't usually ask them in such a tone. "They've been…fine."
He didn't look fine.
How was it possible for a king to be such a poor liar? At least he was young, Gwaine mused. There was time for him to become duplicitous. "I hear that Merlin's back."
Gwaine hoped that that sounded much more aloof to Arthur than it did to his own ears.
Arthur looked up suddenly, then shrugged, looking tired once more. "What? Oh, yes. He's back. Got back this morning. Destroyed the council room again. Fixed it, though. So that wasn't bad."
Arthur certainly didn't sound like a king whose direct order against returning had been disobeyed by an exiled sorcerer. He didn't even sound annoyed with Merlin. Even the sentence about the council room's destruction had been curiously flat. And that was a topic usually certain to rile him up.
Gwaine was uncertain how to continue. "Is he going to be staying, then?"
Arthur shrugged again, and Gwaine started to get angry. How could Arthur be so nonchalant about Merlin staying? What else could possibly be on his mind at a time like this? What could possibly eclipse Merlin's future in Camelot? Arthur could be so self-centered!
"Or is he going to enjoy another month in the dungeons while you make up your mind again?"
Arthur gave him a sharp look, the expression in his eyes curiously contrasted by the stoicism of his face. "Sir Gwaine, I would suggest that you not try to sound as though you know anything about what's going on."
Gwaine was pushing it, and he knew it. "Off to see him, then? Have you found another way to destroy his life?"
Well, that just sounded childish, but Gwaine kept a straight face. He was Sir Gwaine, knight of Camelot, dashing swordsman, drinking champion. He regretted nothing.
Arthur hadn't seemed to register the second question. He'd exhaled with such force after the first that Gwaine figured that the rest of the world had been drowned out.
"If I can find him."
That sounded awfully honest. Arthur seemed to be vacillating bizarrely between regal distance and intimate truthfulness as they spoke. Gwaine, on the other hand, was vacillating between the urge to punch him in the face or the urge to punch him in the arm. That was Arthur's favorite method of providing comfort.
"It shouldn't be too hard. Merlin's all anyone is talking about. Everyone's trying to figure out what he's doing back. You should hear all the theories."
For some reason, that seemed to shake Arthur into something resembling alertness. "They shouldn't talk about what they know any more than you should."
The urge to punch him in the face was beginning to take the lead. "Well, maybe they should be told something."
"Yeah, I'll get right on that."
"I'm sure," retorted Gwaine, not troubling to disguise his sarcasm.
It did not go undetected. Arthur's voice began to rise and he answered. "I have more important things to do right now, Gwaine!"
"I'm sure you do. Are you actually planning on doing them today?"
"Gwaine, don't you have something you should be doing right now?"
"So sorry, sire. I'll let you get on with your looking for Merlin. Good luck with that," sniped Gwaine, suddenly ready for them to part ways for the moment.
Arthur nodded dismissively. It was apparently fine for Gwaine to get the last word so long as Arthur got to be dismissive at the very end.
That was fine. It just wouldn't be the end. Before Arthur could move past him and down the corridor from which Gwaine had appeared, Gwaine stepped in his way and kept speaking.
"Well, when you find him, make sure that you tell him that he needn't come to see me whenever he remembers that I exist, and give him a kick up the—"
"No." Arthur was beginning to get annoyed, but Gwaine was surprised with the brevity of the answer. He'd expected at least a lengthy denial of Gwaine's request, with plenty of thin reasons behind the response. The cursory "no" just seemed…off.
"What?"
Arthur sighed and ran a hand through his hair again. There was blood on the tips of his bangs, standing out starkly against the shine of his blond. "I'm not going to do that, Gwaine."
"Fine. I'll do it myself," he answered, sounding so snobby that he almost wanted to hit himself for it.
Arthur restrained himself from doing the hitting on Gwaine's behalf. Perhaps Merlin had trained him so well in tolerating insolence without any real violence better than Gwaine had thought. "Gwaine, just—don't. Not now."
"Why not?"
Well, thought Gwaine, at least that one wasn't snobby. Petulant, maybe. But not snobby. Nothing wrong with that.
"It's…you'll understand later," responded the king, a note of finality in his voice that hinted with a distinct lack of subtlety that Gwaine should be finishing up his side of the conversation in the very near future.
"Well, if it's something that you understand, it shouldn't take me too long to figure it out."
"Sir Gwaine," Arthur snapped, and that was enough. Gwaine could finally hear the warning in his voice. He was surprised that it had taken Arthur this long to get fed up with him. Gwaine usually didn't go so far to provoke him, and Arthur was his king. He was due a certain amount of respect. Besides, whatever Gwaine might think of him and whatever he thought he knew about how Arthur tried to rule the kingdom, there was no denying that Guinevere would not marry a fool and Merlin would not so resolutely have stood by the side of a man completely heartless and Uther would not have had so much trouble controlling Arthur if Arthur had not been a man so unlike his father. He respected Guinevere and missed Merlin and hated the memory of Uther. He could count on those feelings even when he could not count on his own. After all, family was more than blood, wasn't it?
Stupid Arthur.
Stupid Merlin.
Stupid Merlin and Arthur. Some people said that they brought out the best in each other. Others said that they brought out the worst in each other and that Arthur would have never befriended or married a servant before Merlin came along and that Merlin would have never grown so insolent if Arthur hadn't let him get away with it. Gwaine said that they brought out the craziness in each other and were just lucky to have good enough intentions that it usually worked out for the best. "Endearing" was another popular descriptor among those willing to look past the differences in status in favor of the unlikely friendship.
When in something of a temper, Gwaine preferred "codependent."
He had only said that aloud a few times, however. Merlin tended to just look sad and Arthur would just treat Merlin particularly poorly for the next few days, as though trying to prove to the universe that he certainly did not need Merlin for anything other than a fondness for shoddy serving skills that only Merlin could satisfactorily provide. It would almost seem as though they did not need each other for some completely inexplicable reason.
But then Uther would order Arthur off on a solitary mission and Arthur would immediately seek out Merlin and order him to start packing for the both of them, Arthur would forget his duty in battle in order to rush away a wounded Merlin, Arthur would use all of his resources his king to track down a missing and probably dead Merlin, Arthur would have at his right hand Merlin as he sat at a certain round table and made decisions that would define the king that he would become, Arthur would volunteer to fight to the death in Merlin's place despite the fact that his own life was worth infinitely more than that of his servant's, Arthur would seek Merlin's advice over almost anyone else's, Arthur would stand up for Merlin to his father time and time again, Merlin would know more of Arthur's secrets than Arthur's wife, Merlin would deal with having things thrown at his head and insults thrown in his direction for the better part of a decade without leaving his post, Merlin would ride toward what was likely to be his death so that Arthur would not have to do it alone, Merlin would mouth off to the crown prince so that he would become a king with some semblance of tolerance and mercy, Merlin would neglect himself to care for Arthur…
Merlin and Arthur would spend half their time trying to either kill or die for each other and it was all so stupid that it was almost sweet and Gwaine loved Merlin as his first genuine and selfless friend so that he had to love Arthur almost as much because he'd never had brothers and now he did and they were such an unlikely pair of friends that it was so annoying to try to understand and he was so glad that Merlin was back and Arthur didn't deserve it but they were brothers, all of them, and now it could all be whole again and Gwaine didn't want to shout at Merlin but he would because they were brothers and Arthur was his king and his commander and his savior in so many ways that Gwaine didn't want to be mad at him either but he could, damn it, and he would because they were brothers and they would all end up loving each other anyway.
So Gwaine said, "Go tell him whatever the hell you want. I couldn't care less about any of it."
And he walked away.
And smiled.
It was all going to be okay again.
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So, I know that Merlin hasn't popped up for a while, but I have to finish these interludes. There's only one more, and then it's back to form. Merlin will actually have a POV in a few chapters. Also, in case the grammar has gotten annoying, it tends to reflect emotional state, so the more run-ons and italics, the more upset, usually. Or with Arthur, that's just how he thinks.
Anyway, thanks for reading! And reviews are always very appreciated!