After Merlin had dragged Arthur to the training field on the fifth day, he didn't return to the old physician's chambers.
On the sixth day, Arthur didn't leave his room.
Before Brigit entered his room every morning, she'd knock on the door. Sometimes Arthur would call out and sometimes he wouldn't, but the maid would always let herself in anyway. It was polite, she had explained patiently, to make yourself known to little princes, and it was good practice for when Arthur was old enough to lead hunting parties of his own. Such practice would help avoid embarrassment, she'd said, but she had never told him what he could possibly have to be embarrassed about.
When Brigit knocked on the door to his chambers on the sixth day, Arthur didn't call out, but Brigit pushed the door to let herself in anyway.
"Arthur?" she called out, after she had tried several times to open the door. For the life of her, it wouldn't move.
Next to Merlin, Arthur sat on his bed, feeling oddly pleased with himself. He'd woken up very early, and after he had shaken Merlin awake, he'd forced Merlin to help him push and pull at the desk near his window which he used to draw and do his work on—work which Geoffrey of Monmouth assigned him after they'd had a lesson they both knew he hadn't paid as much attention to as he should have done. There had been a pile of parchment on the desk which Arthur had still not finished, and he'd paid Geoffrey of Monmouth and the old man's likely disapproval no mind as the prince had thrown them to the floor. Merlin had frowned in the same way Arthur was used to Geoffrey of Monmouth frowning, and the black-haired boy had spent the next ten minutes collecting all of the bits of parchment and stacking them neatly on Arthur's bedside table.
"Your father will be angry," Merlin had said as he'd first began gathering the parchment. Arthur hadn't been entirely sure whether Merlin had been talking about Arthur's ingenious plan or the mess Arthur had made.
"We can't run away, you idiot," Arthur had replied as he'd stood before his desk with his hands on his hips, carefully contemplating the best way to move it. "The last time I tried they caught me before I got out the citadel." He'd turned away from the desk and looked down to Merlin, who was still scrambling on the floor with parchment around him. "Are you gonna help me or what?"
Eventually Merlin had helped, and Arthur was becoming increasingly proud of himself as he heard Brigit throw her weight against the door several times over.
"Arthur?" Brigit called again, panic rising in her voice. "Sire? Are you alright?"
"Yes," he said, because he knew he would find his father and his knights breaking down the door if he didn't let the maid know that he was alive. Arthur was confident that he stood a better chance of making his disappointment and his fury known to the whole castle if he managed to keep his desk against his door for as long as possible. Once they knew he was okay, they'd leave him and Merlin alone and his father would begin to promise all sorts just so that they would leave the room.
They didn't leave him alone, and Uther didn't promise all sorts.
"What in the name of Camelot is going on? Arthur! Open this door at once! Now!" his father bellowed less than half an hour later.
"No!" Arthur yelled back. "Tell Gaius that Merlin needs to stay! He can't leave! You will tell him to let Merlin stay in Camelot, Father, and then we will come out!"
"We?!"
Merlin whimpered and covered his ears. The king was nearly as frightening as Kane, who wasn't in Merlin's dreams so much anymore. It didn't make Kane any less scary, though. "I told you he'd be angry."
"Don't worry," Arthur said, bumping Merlin with his shoulder. "It's gonna work."
"You are seven years old!" Uther shouted from the other side of the door. "You do not order the king!"
"I'm nearly eight!" Arthur shouted indignantly, just before four knights and one king pushed their combined weight against the door. It shoved the desk which had been put against it across the stone floor with great force, and the doors opened enough for Uther to be able to see into his son's chambers.
On the bed, Merlin still had his hands clamped over his ears and his knees tucked under his chin, while Arthur was beyond furious that the desk had been moved. The prince jumped to the floor, and Uther was sure that he had never seen his son stamp his foot before.
"Father!" Arthur whined loudly.
"I know that you want to stay," Gaius began as he sat a plate of bread and ham in front of Merlin, "but there are better ways to stage a protest, my boy. It isn't a good thing to anger King Uther."
There he went with the 'good' and the words which Merlin didn't understand again.
"I didn't mean for Arthur to get into trouble," he replied quietly. His eyes were still red from where he had been crying, and he looked very much like he had the day before when he'd dragged Arthur off to the training field. "Arthur says that people must know you're upset, because if they don't nothing will get done, but that sometimes you gotta do it yourself to make them listen first."
"Arthur Pendragon knows much more than he should, Merlin," Gaius said with a reproachful look, and Merlin giggled nervously at the old man's tone. He was right. Arthur knew lots of things.
"Did it work? Did his father listen?"
"I'm afraid not, Merlin."
"Is my father still coming?"
"I'm afraid so, Merlin."
Merlin sighed and slumped in his chair. He took no notice of the food which had been placed in front of him, and neither of them spoke again until Gaius had cleared his own plate and had begun picking at the red grapes in the bowl on middle of the table.
"I won't be able to see him again before I go, will I?"
Gaius swallowed a grape. "No." He had been waiting for the boy to speak first.
"Okay," Merlin replied. He straightened in his chair, thoughtful. "But you can, right?"
"Yes."
"Okay," Merlin said again, and he leapt off his chair and ran into his room with a fierce determination which Gaius had not seen the boy possess before.
Arthur was not to leave his room. It would have been alright, he thought, if Merlin had been allowed to stay with him.
He didn't try and move the desk again. It would have been much harder on his own, but he would have tried if his father hadn't ordered the four knights to place it on the other side of his chambers between his wardrobe and the even fancier treasure chest which Arthur kept all of his toys in against the wall. Not even Merlin would have been able to help him.
Uther had ordered the four knights to remove anything which Arthur had a chance of dragging along the floor from his room so that Arthur only had his bed to sit on, and then his father had ordered the four knights to stand guard outside.
"I won't have that wretched boy putting nonsense into your head," he'd said, before expressing his disappointment in his son. Arthur had simply nodded and let his father's words wash over his head. He'd kept quiet, in case his father had realised that he'd allowed Arthur to keep his many bed sheets.
Arthur was busy making a rope when Gaius knocked on his door. The guards had let him past, for Uther had only forbidden a raven-haired boy knocking at his son's door.
"Go away!"
Gaius let himself in.
"Go away, Brigit!" Arthur sounded panicked. He was between the space of the wall and his bed, where he knew he could not be seen and would have time to hide his bed sheets should anyone let themselves into his room. "I'm not hungry!"
"Sire?"
"Gaius!" Arthur leapt to his feet and ran around the side of his bed, though his face fell when he saw that the physician was alone. "Where's Merlin?"
"Getting ready. It is almost twilight."
"You're letting him go?" Arthur asked, outraged. He didn't seem to notice what Gaius was holding as he stared up at him. "You're really letting him leave?"
"I have no choice, sire," said Gaius. It was hard to not reach out to the prince, when you had a broken wood in your hands. "He must be with his father."
"You promised."
"I was on my way to the kitchens, to gather some food for Merlin," Gaius continued, as if the prince had not spoken. He'd dealt with more tantrums in the last month than he had in his whole life, and one more would likely see the rest of his hair turn grey. "He wanted me to give you this."
The older man held out the fractured pieces of the stool which Merlin had broken with his magic on the fourth night after Hunith's death.
"He wants me to tell you that he really does think you can break it," Gaius told Arthur with an amused look. "And he says maybe he'll show you how he did it the next time he sees you."
"Really?"
Gaius was torn between a shrug and a nod. He'd promised Merlin that he would tell Arthur, but he'd also made Merlin promise in return to keep his magic a secret until the time was right. It was about as much as a six-year-old could understand, without throwing around the words 'destiny' and 'Kilgharrah said' and 'Emrys' and 'two sides of the same coin'.
"Really," Gaius said. "Are you going to take it or not?" He held out the two parts of the stool impatiently, and Arthur seemed to jump on his feet before rushing forwards.
"I'll fix it," Arthur announced. "Then there will be more for him to break."
As Arthur went back to tying his bed sheets in knots, now preparing to escape and find a skilled craftsman, Gaius returned to his chambers with enough food for a week.
"Did you give it to him? What did he say?"
"He's going fix the stool," Gaius said, refraining from reminding the boy that it was his stool which Merlin had given Arthur.
Merlin grinned, and as the boy wrapped his arms around the man's middle Gaius thought that another stool surely couldn't be that hard to come by.