Chapter 45

The next time they saw Hunith after the incident when she'd hit Merlin was the twins' birthday and it was clear she couldn't remember ever hurting him.

"Merlin, sweetie, what on earth did you do to your face?"

Merlin hesitated a bit, "Nothing, mum. It was an accident, I just bashed it."

She reached a shaking hand up and ran her thumb over the bruise, "So clumsy."

"Yeah," he chuckled, "Ready to go?"

"Go?"

"For lunch, mum."

"Oh, of course. Let me just grab my coat."

"You're already wearing your coat, mum," Merlin told her gently.

"So I am," she smiled, "Let's go then."

It turned out to be a good day. They didn't keep Hunith out long and had her back in her room barely a few hours after she'd left. On their way out, one of the carers pulled Merlin and Freya to one side.

"She has a hospital appointment tomorrow, are either of you going to take her or shall we arrange transport."

"I'll take her," Freya said, "I've already organised the day off work for it. I'll pick her up at half nine?"

"Brilliant. See you in the morning."

"Do you fancy walking the dogs with me?" Merlin asked Arthur later that day, "I want to show you somewhere."

"Sure, now?"

"If that's ok."

Arthur nodded, "Let's give the birthday girls some time with their parents."

They pulled their shoes on, wrapped up in coats and whistled for the dogs. Merlin popped his head around the living room door to tell Freya they were going for a bit and then joined Arthur on the doorstep.

"Where are we going then?" Arthur asked as he laced his fingers with Merlin's, "Not another secret childhood hideout?"

"This is the last one, I promise. And it really is a secret, even Freya doesn't know. Will didn't either."

"Is there a story to it?"

"Of course," Merlin laughed, "Do you want to hear it?

"Of course. Is it linked to a disaster?"

"Of course," Merlin smirked, "Is anything to do with my family not?"

"A few very select, very rare things."

"So I don't know if you'll believe this but Will used to be more of a trouble-maker than me."

"Freya mentioned it before."

"Yeah. He used to sneak out all the time and end up lost or stuck up a tree or in the middle of a river. It was my job to find him, usually rescue him and bring him home while Freya occupied mum so she didn't know Will was ever gone. Will just struggled with dad being gone. It was easy for him to look at his friends, see them with their fathers and get jealous or angry because we didn't have that. I think he liked to get out the house so he could pretend nothing had happened. Anyway, this was when I'd just moved up to a different school so Will was struggling with the fact if he needed me through the day, he couldn't just run up to me in the lunch hall. One night he had a sports club after school or something and I was a couple of minutes late to pick him up and he threw a fit. Start shouting at me about leaving him and never being there for him anymore. How he'd had to give Freya his lunch money that day because she'd forgotten hers and I wasn't there to take care of it like I used to. It's this way," he pointed down a path between some trees, quite difficult to spot unless you knew.

"So what happened, did he run off?" Arthur asked.

"Yeah. I turned to open the door and he just scarpered. Mum was still at work so I had to go in to tell Freya what was happening."

"She was home alone?"

"Just while I'd gone to collect Will. You know where the school is, only a fifteen minute walk down the road. I was only gone half an hour and she had homework to do. So I went off looking for Will and she stayed at home in case mum came back. I'd checked all the usual places for him and couldn't find him anywhere so I came down this path here. By that point I thought that clearly he didn't want to be found so when we came to this split off here, I figured he wouldn't have taken the more obvious path. It made more sense for him to have gone down there," Merlin nodded to a track. If Arthur had thought the previous one was concealed well, this one was invisible.

"Come on," Merlin dragged him down it and didn't speak until they reached a clearing. There was a large tree lying across the middle of it with thick branches strewn all around it. Behind it there was a mucky pond overrun with algae and reeds.

"It's lovely," Arthur said sarcastically.

"Shut up," Merlin rolled his eyes, "I thought Will must have been hiding somewhere behind one of the logs so I started searching for him. But it was starting to get dark and I tripped over a log. That one there," he pointed. He led Arthur over and placed his hand one on a tiny little stump where a twig had clearly been snapped off, "The stick that was there went straight through my leg. In and out. I fell, twisted my ankle, heard a snap and- because I was an idiot- assumed it must have been the branch."

"You broke your leg?"

Merlin nodded, "It was agony. But all I could think about was Will and if he was injured. I realised I must have thought too far into the whole path thing and obviously he'd just gone down the main path. So I picked myself up, and made my way back. Now let's bare in mind that I was not the master of hopping back then that I am now. And my leg was burning, I'd never felt pain like it."

"Did you find Will?"

"Yeah, he was walking back down the path on his way home again. I hid the limp, took him home, made him a warm drink and got him into bed. Will and Freya were too worked up to notice I was hurt. Once Will was settled, I went into the bathroom, yanked the twig out of my leg and washed it then bandaged it up tightly. It was gross. Swollen, bleeding, black and blue. I couldn't walk on it properly for months."

"Did no one notice?"

"Of course they did. But I told mum I'd twisted it at school and the nurse had said it wasn't serious. Eventually it was easy enough to hide and everyone dropped it."

"If the bone was broken didn't it heal badly, though?"

Merlin nodded, "Yeah. It was really wonky and painful. But it was rebroken in the car crash when dad died and fixed properly."

"You were only off work for a few days. Broken legs don't heal in a few days."

"No."

"You came back to work with a broken leg? You weren't limping!"

"Of course I was. I had a full moon boot thing on for two months."

Arthur's face fell, "I would have noticed that."

"Apparently you wouldn't."

"You're joking!"

"Ask Gwaine he was waiting on me at home. My leg was broken."

Arthur stared at him in horror for a few seconds before bursting out laughing. "Wow I was an idiot. I'm sorry, Merls."

Merlin shook his head and laughed too. Within seconds they were both crying from laughter. Arthur got his phone out and opened their friends' group chat.

'How many of you knew that Merlin broke his leg in Ireland once when we all worked in Camelot?' Arthur typed.

'When?' Morgana's reply popped up immediately.

'After his dad died.'

'When he was wearing that CAM moon boot?'

Merlin smirked and Arthur looked mortified.

'I knew,' Gwaine joined the conversation.

'So did I,' Lancelot said.

'Me too,' Percival typed.

'Ok, let me rephrase, did any of you NOT know?' Arthur typed angrily.

There was complete silence even once everyone had seen the message. "Oh my god," Arthur said out loud.

'Hey Pendragon,' Gwaine messaged, 'Is this your way of telling us you didn't notice that your PA and the love of your life had broken his leg and was injured for weeks?'

'No…' Arthur typed defensively, 'Maybe.'

'I'll never figure out how you got him to marry you,' Lancelot teased.

'Shut up.' Arthur put his phone away and turned to Merlin, "I'm so sorry, gorgeous."

"It's ok. I wanted it hidden."

"I can't believe you got impaled by a twig."

Merlin laughed, "I'd show you the scar if it wasn't on the leg I no longer have. Come on, let's go back, it's getting cold."

Arthur took Merlin's hand, "Hang on. Did you live with Gwaine before Will moved from Ireland?"

"You really knew nothing about me, did you?"

Arthur blushed.

"Gwaine and I moved in together when he agreed to get help with his alcohol addiction so he could work for you. When Will arrived for uni, he was only going to stay with us temporarily until he could move into university accommodation. He just wanted to be here earlier to get to know the place and spend some time with me before his course started. You know, build up some money, meet a few people so it wasn't a huge change all at once. Obviously he never actually got to uni but I'm glad he at least got to be in the city he wanted to be in."

Arthur nodded in understanding, remembering what Hunith had told him all that time ago about how Will had only moved from Ireland for Merlin, not for his uni course of his dreams. Not that Arthur would ever tell Merlin that. If he knew, he'd blame himself for Will's death.

"I like learning about your past," Arthur said thoughtfully, "It's interesting."

"I have plenty more stories."

"Yeah, like what?"

"Like how once when Will and I went camping, we woke up and the top of the tent was gone completely. Never figured out where it went or how it happened but we were saving up for months to get a new one. Used old tarpaulins and duct tape until we could afford a new one."

Arthur laughed, "What else?"

Merlin looked at him sceptically.

"I'm not going to get upset with you," Arthur promised, "I never should have anyway."

"Ok," Merlin squeezed his hand, "One time Freya was going across the stepping stones and turned a bit to look downstream but then forgot she'd turned and thought all the stones had vanished in front of her. Then Will went across to get her but she got such a fright when she saw him that they both ended up in the river."

"Will really was the trouble maker," Arthur chuckled.

"You don't need to tell me. I used to find him hanging upside from trees, stuck underneath boulders, squashed in rabbit holes."

"And you kept it all from your mum?"

"Most of it. You know how much she was struggling with dad. She tried to kill us all! Obviously we didn't know it was that bad but we could tell something was wrong. She was working loads to try and look after us all and put so much into giving us the best opportunities she could. We couldn't pile more onto her."

"So you took on all the responsibilities."

Merlin shrugged

"How old were you?"

"Dad left when I was about six or seven. He died when I was twenty one. So I was basically parenting Freya all her childhood. Will for most of his. It's sad. Freya's only memory of dad was that last dinner all five of us had together. She and Will headed home thinking we'd all be meeting back at mum's for lunch the next day. She was too young when he left to remember him from before he left."

"Do you mind me asking how it happened? The crash."

"Of course not."

"I know you, your mum and your dad were in the same car and it crashed but that's about it."

Merlin took a deep breath, "We went in a taxi. It was a celebration, alcohol would be involved. So dad was in the front, mum and I were in the back and this other car slammed straight into us head on. The bonnets smashed together completely crushed and the fuels started the fire. I passed out, woke up outside of the taxi in the middle of the road. Some random pedestrians who'd been nearby were dragging everyone out. The driver of our taxi was already dead, died on impact. Slammed straight into the steering wheel with such force it broke all his ribs and caused his lung to fail," Merlin swallowed thickly, "The car had been so compressed that the seat in front of mine squashed my legs- that's how I broke one. I'd also smashed my head through the window and had some pretty back bruising and breaks from the seatbelt."

"You don't have to keep going," Arthur said sympathetically.

"No, you deserve to know what happened, I want you to."

"Ok. Just take your time."

"I saw dad lying on the ground a few feet away. He'd been sitting in the seat in front of me in the taxi. Both cars were completely up in flames and emergency services were starting to arrive. The people who's helped us out were working on the other car. I crawled across to dad as best I could and he was just lying there, gasping for breath, no hope left in his eyes." Tears began streaming from Merlin eyes, "I made sure he knew he wasn't alone. Held him, spoke to him, promised I'd look after everyone. The very last thing he did was apologise. He couldn't stop talking about how it was all his fault because he was a member of the Druids. How he was responsible for us not having a father, and that I had to raise Will and Freya. I told him I'd always protect them and no one blamed him for anything. We all thought he was so brave."

He broke down and took a few minutes to recompose himself, "He died," Merlin choked as if Arthur didn't know, "And I was the only one he got to say goodbye to after everything. The last thing I said to him was a promise to look after Will and Freya and mum. Will died barely a year later. I'll always blame myself for that because I made a promise that I didn't keep because I didn't get to Will in time. Every single day I wake up and look down to see only one leg and all it does is remind me of that."

Arthur held Merlin for a few minutes and soothed him.

"Anyway, I was telling a story," he smiled a tiny bit, "I was sitting there, holding my father's body next to two flaming cars when they exploded. The only reason mum and I survived is because those random pedestrians chose to go to our car first instead of the other one. We were the only two who survived. The people who were helping us, the family in the other car, our taxi driver and dad. All of them died, only mum and I walked away. I woke up in hospital to find Will sitting at the end of my bed in tears."

"Why didn't you stay in Ireland for a bit? I'd have given you time off."

"I didn't want it. Arthur, I'd been given my father back and had him torn away again within a day. My entire life was flipped upside down twice within twenty four hours. I didn't want to stay at home with my mourning family and be upset about it. I wanted to be with you where there was normality."

"Why didn't you go to his funeral?"

"I already got my goodbye. I couldn't face another one."

"The things you've been through," Arthur joked lightly.

"And I'm not even anywhere near forty yet," Merlin grinned.

"You're quite close."

"Am not."

Arthur laughed, "Do you want to go back?"

Merlin nodded, "That's enough story time for one day. And there's a piece of birthday cake with my name on it."

"You will tell me more though, right? More stories?"

"Happier ones," Merlin said.

They spent the rest of the day playing with the twins and eating cake. They had an early night and cuddled up in bed together. Arthur handed Merlin his sleeping pills, "Are we going to talk about why you need these at this time of year?"

"I'd love to if I knew why it was happening."

"Is it the usual nightmare? Camelot and everything."

"Yeah. Exactly the same."

"I suppose you've been thinking about it a lot recently with what's happening to your mum and everything."

"It sucks."

"Are you sleeping alright, though?"

"With the pills, yeah. But they're already getting worse, imagine how bad it's going to get nearer the actual time."

"We'll deal with that when we get there," Arthur promised, "Are you worried about your mum's appointment tomorrow?"

Merlin nodded, "They always throw up bad news."

"I know it seems like that."

"Because it is like that."

"It's our day off tomorrow, if you wanted to go with Freya to the hospital, you can."

Merlin shook his head, "I do feel bad that it's always Freya's responsibility but I can't face it."

"I get it," Arthur assured him, "It's ok."