A/N: Now that I've made it a pattern to have an author's note at the beginning of each chapter, I feel like it looks weird if I don't. But I don't necessarily have anything to say. Oh. Uh. I don't think I ever put a disclaimer. Merlin's not mine. Gerund's mine. Carthis is mine. All those within Carthis are mine. I am Carthis' god(dess). No rights to anything else.

**EDITED**

Arthur lay flat on his back now, refusing to give into the desire to toss and turn, to provide a physical outlet for all his agitation. Judging by the restless shifting from across the fire, sleep was eluding Merlin as well. He wasn't surprised. Arthur turned his attention away from Merlin. Or tried to, really, but he seemed hyperaware of every sound, every shift and rustle of the blankets, every frustrated huff of breath.

Arthur wondered if part of his own sudden insomnia couldn't be attributed to sharing a camp with two sorcerers. Gerund, at least, was a fighter by trade, highly trained in offensive magic, and that meant that he was extremely dangerous. But so far the man had been nothing but polite and hospitable, as any good host was expected to be. Except for the whole 'luring them out here under false pretenses' bit, but Arthur felt like there was probably more to that than he wasn't getting and so decided to reserve judgment on that point until he had all the facts.

All of it in order to tell Merlin that his father had been a prince. To offer Merlin the crown that was his by right of birth. Really, now that he had thought it all through, and with more and more instances of potential magic use becoming evident in his memories, he was having more trouble accepting that Merlin was royalty than that he was a sorcerer.

Merlin was royalty. Merlin who tripped over his own feet and made funny faces during important council meetings to distract Arthur from the matter at hand or to keep him awake, depending on his level of interest in the subject and the monotone of the council member speaking at the time. It just didn't make any sense.

But then, Merlin had never exactly been the model of subservience, even when he made the effort. He had none of the deference and regard for those of higher status that most of common birth displayed. He had a way of standing his ground and refusing to be dismissed that Arthur had never seen before in someone coming from such a humble background. Maybe it stemmed from some innate feeling of worth, of standing and authority.

Or maybe it was just Merlin and Arthur was overanalyzing everything now. He sighed.

What the hell was he going to say to his men in the morning? How was he supposed to tell his knights that his manservant was a magical Dragonlord king? It sounded absolutely ridiculous even in his head and he couldn't imagine saying it out loud. They wouldn't believe him. He wouldn't have believed it himself if Merlin's sincerity hadn't been written in the tears on his face.

Maybe Merlin would want to tell them himself; they were his friends too, after all. Although, if the evil eye Gwaine had been giving him earlier was anything to go by, he had quite possibly already been informed on the matter. Or maybe he had already known. A pang of jealousy mixed with the bitterness of always being the last to know curdled in his stomach. Maybe he could let Gerund explain the situation. This was all his fault, really.

The steady, rhythmic sound of Leon sharpening his sword while he kept watch was soothing in its own grating way. Arthur tried to focus his mind of that instead of on Merlin's increasingly agitated fidgeting, hoping to lull himself to sleep with its familiar monotony.

He might have managed it if Merlin hadn't chosen that moment to give up on sleeping entirely. He rolled out of his bedding and sat up, scrubbing the sleepiness out of his eyes and shaking his head as if to clear it. He nodded at Leon and promptly disappeared into the woods, mumbling some sort of excuse that Arthur couldn't hear but already knew was a lie all the same.

Arthur watched him go with narrowed eyes, half of him suspicious and the other half vaguely ashamed of the former. He sat up, fully intending to follow Merlin, and then hesitated. Knowing what he knew about Merlin now—namely, that he didn't really seem to know anything about him at all—he wondered if he might not see something he wasn't prepared for. But this might be his only chance to talk to Merlin alone before he left for Carthis.

Decision made, Arthur stood and nodded imperiously to Leon, who looked inquisitive and impatient, but not so much so as to impeach his honor by sneaking out after to eavesdrop on them. Safe in that thought, Arthur strode confidently into the trees in the direction in which Merlin had gone, trying to look as if he knew what he was doing and hoping Leon wouldn't ask him why. He followed Merlin's trail—which was rather difficult in the dark, and when Merlin seemed to be taking extra pains with his stealth—deeper into the woods, past the clearing Arthur had used earlier to vent his anger, and into a large open field. What he saw there robbed him of breath and rooted him to the spot.

The dragon, the same one that had rained molten fire down upon Camelot and gouged deep furrows out of the stone of the battlements with its razor sharp talons, was sitting peacefully in the middle of the field, its enormous diaphanous wings folded neatly along its scaly sides and its golden eyes fixed on the slight figure silhouetted in moonlight before it.

Arthur's first instinct was to attack, to draw his sword and rout the beast in the name of all those it had slaughtered, but experience told him that plan was very, very unwise. His next impulse was to dart forward and pull Merlin out of the way, the idiot, before he was…

Then he remembered. I am a Dragonlord. The last Dragonlord. He cannot disobey me. Looking between the two incongruous figures, the surety that he had heard in Merlin's voice when he made that claim was overshadowed by Arthur's surety that Merlin was about to be roasted and eaten.

But that wasn't happening. Instead, the dragon was simply observing, making no move to attack the vulnerable human at its feet. Merlin's arms were flying about and he seemed to be shouting at the creature. Unable to hear what was being said, Arthur crept carefully closer and hid himself behind a bush at the edge of the clearing.

"You had no right to keep this from me, Kilgharrah. No right!" Merlin was saying.

From his new vantage point, crouching in a manner more befitting a child than a king, Arthur could see just how angry Merlin was, his face red and his stance tense and aggressive.

"It was unimportant," the dragon said in an off-hand sort of way, giving what looked to be the dragon equivalent of a shrug.

His voice was low and hoarse, echoing a bit in the silence of the night, and Arthur wondered why no one had ever seen fit to inform him that dragons were capable of such intelligent speech. If he'd known that, he would have tried to reason with the dragon when he'd attacked, instead of taking his knights and riding out to fight him to the death. He wondered if the approach would have changed anything, if it would have made a difference.

"Unimportant?!" Merlin repeated disbelievingly. He had to turn away for a moment, absolutely speechless in his anger. "You didn't think it important to mention that my father was a damn prince? That never crossed your mind as something that I might like to know? That it might eventually have an effect on my life?"

"It has no bearing on your destiny, young warlock."

"No? Well, it's certainly interfering with it now," Merlin spat.

Arthur looked between them confusedly. Destiny? What sort of destiny could Merlin possibly have? Although, he seemed to recall Merlin having spoken about destiny before. He said that he'd read a book on it. Apparently he had more firsthand experience than that.

"I can't very well protect Arthur from three days away, can I? And not when he hates me."

Arthur flinched, eyes drawn involuntarily to the bruises round his servant's neck, which were barely visible in the darkness but seemed to stand out like a beacon anyway.

"A half cannot truly hate that which makes it whole," the dragon intoned sagely, though there was an undercurrent of frustration to it. "I have told you this once before."

Merlin scoffed.

"Yes, well, that was before eleven years' worth of lies blew up in my face," he said bitterly. "He has every right to hate me. I can't blame him for that. But it makes my job a lot harder."

His job? He had thought that Merlin's only job was to clean his chambers and wash his socks, but apparently Merlin disagreed on that front. Did he really see it as his job, his destiny even, to protect Arthur from harm? Arthur wanted to laugh at the thought of needing a sorcerer's protection, but the ever-growing pile of instances where it seemed he had kept him from doing so.

"You must stay in Camelot, Merlin. It is your destiny to stand at Arthur's side," the dragon insisted. Merlin scowled up at him, fists clenching spasmodically.

"I can't justify letting an entire kingdom fall into civil war for the sake of one man," he said through gritted teeth.

"He is not just a man, Merlin, he is the Once and Future King," the dragon said, as though this made all the difference in the world.

Again, Arthur felt as though he had heard that term before, from Merlin's own lips no less. He didn't know its significance, but the weight it carried was obvious. It did little to sway Merlin's stance, though.

"That doesn't make him worth more than the hundreds, thousands, of people who will suffer from this war! Carthis will destroy itself unless I take the throne!" he said.

"It is not your destiny to be king, it is Arthur's," the dragon asserted, leaning forward to loom over Merlin in a very frightening display of massive teeth and glistening scales, but Merlin was far past being intimidated by him, if he ever had been.

"You think I don't know that?" Merlin bellowed, looking a bit frantic now, just shy of pulling his own hair out. "I'm not a king! I don't know how to be a king, that's Arthur's job, and I would be quite happy to leave it to him if lives weren't on the line. But as it is, it falls to me. I can't afford to be a coward, Kilgharrah, not in this. And I will not abandon my father's kingdom just because I'm scared out of mind."

Merlin stopped, his chest heaving and his face flushed, and the dragon didn't seem to have any response to that. Arthur certainly didn't know what to say and was glad that he didn't have to say anything at all, hidden as he was. Guilt welled up at the realization that he was intruding on what suddenly seemed a very private moment. Merlin was cracking, falling apart at the seams. This wasn't something he would have wanted Arthur to see, but he didn't think he could sneak away without drawing attention to himself.

Merlin moved like he was going to run his fingers through his hair but changed his mind halfway through, the aborted motion leaving his hand hovering awkwardly in the air before falling back to his side limply.

"I don't have a choice," he said in a small, broken voice, looking up beseechingly, as if hoping the dragon would be able to fix all this, but the creature just shook his giant head sorrowfully. Merlin's face fell and he took a deep, shuddering breath, working to hold himself together as his world fell apart.

"Have faith in yourself, Merlin," the dragon said in a tone much gentler than anything Arthur would have expected from a beast of that size as he leaned down to be on a level with Merlin instead of looking down on him from such a great height. "You must not underestimate your abilities."

"I don't know what I'm going to do, Kilgharrah," Merlin admitted, his voice so quiet that Arthur almost didn't hear it. It sounded almost as though the confession was wrenched from him against his will, like he wanted nothing more than to appear strong but just couldn't manage it any longer. "I don't want to fail. I've already let down so many people. I can't afford to do so again."

"You will not," the dragon said. "Your destiny is a great one, young warlock, and you would not have been chosen for it had you not been worthy of it."

Merlin searched the dragon's face for a long moment and then ducked his head and sniffed, dragging the back of his sleeve across his eyes to get rid of the tears he wouldn't allow to fall again.

"You said this has nothing to do with my destiny," Merlin pointed out, but Arthur noticed that he seemed a bit reassured all the same.

"Perhaps," the dragon mused, tilting his head to the side like a very large cat. "But then again, perhaps not. Destinies are troublesome things, as you well know. They do not always advance in the way one expects them to."

"Great, more riddles. I love those."

Arthur knew just from his petulant tone that Merlin was rolling his eyes. The thought made him smile, if only a bit, his heart panging at the familiarity of it all, at how Merlin could be just as he always had been while still being so different.

"Take heart, young warlock. Your and Arthur's paths lie together, that much has been known for time immemorial. No one ever said that the path would run smooth. If your bond is broken, then it will heal, and it will be stronger for having been tested."

Merlin nodded, but he didn't respond, his head still down. After a moment, he shifted on his feet, an uncertain motion that was somehow reminiscent of a child about to ask for something he didn't think he deserved but still wanted anyway.

"What's…" he started tentatively, his voice small. "What's Carthis like?"

The dragon smiled, or at least Arthur thought he did; it was hard to tell on that reptilian face.

"It is a beautiful kingdom," he said in a rather wistful tone. "One where magic is free and the Old Religion still respected and practiced. The people are in balance with the magic of the land that nourishes them; they do not take it for granted the way some do."

"And…will I fit in there?"

There was something so raw in Merlin's voice, in the almost childlike desperation to the question, that Arthur felt the need to look away. He was taken back to Ealdor, years ago, when he had asked Merlin why he'd left his village for Camelot. I just didn't fit in there. I wanted to find someplace that I did. Apparently he was still looking. Camelot had never been that place for him, it couldn't have been.

"You know where you belong, Merlin," the dragon said simply.

Then, with a sudden flapping of wings, he took to the sky and left Merlin staring after him as he disappeared into the blackness. Arthur watched his manservant's thin form for a moment before realizing exactly what it was he was doing and all the reasons he shouldn't be doing it.

As quickly as he could without alerting Merlin to his presence, Arthur straightened up slightly from his crouch, wincing at the way his knees and hips protested the movement after so long in one position, and tiptoed back the way he had come, doubling back again to meet his servant when he returned to camp.

It was several minutes before he heard Merlin's footsteps coming his way through the trees. Arthur made as though he had only just taken to following Merlin's tracks, not keen on admitting that he had hidden behind a bush to eavesdrop on Merlin's conversation with the dragon. Merlin was so preoccupied with his own thoughts that he nearly ran into Arthur before he noticed him and then almost jerked himself right off his feet in surprise when he did.

"Arthur!" he yelped, flinching when his voice resounded in the empty woods. "W-what are you doing here?"

His eyes darted around and he looked back over his shoulder, shifting guiltily. His hand came up to adjust his neckerchief, absently trying to cover up as much of the bruises as possible, but it didn't do much good, and he flushed darkly when he saw Arthur's eyes follow the movement, dropping his hand quickly.

Arthur cleared his throat uncomfortably.

"I, er… I came looking for you," he said, not able to make eye contact.

"Why?" Merlin asked.

Arthur's stomach gave an unpleasant lurch at the barely noticeable, but still present, note of fear underneath the more obvious uncertainty.

"I wanted to apologize," Arthur said slowly. He heard Merlin's sharp intake of breath but he still couldn't bring himself to look at him. "My behavior in the tent was unwarranted and unacceptable."

"You're not angry?" Merlin whispered with a fragile sort of hope. Now Arthur raised his gaze to meet Merlin's.

"Of course I'm angry, Merlin. I'm furious," he said, his tone hard enough to convey just how upset he was.

Merlin's face fell, his hand returning to his neck seemingly without his noticing. Arthur took a deep breath before he continued, trying to force his ire back to a more manageable level.

"But I acknowledge that your actions speak only of loyalty and good intentions. I should not have repaid that with violence. My actions were reprehensible, and I'm sorry for them."

Merlin's eyes were bright in the light of the moon, but he didn't allow any more tears to fall, for which Arthur was selfishly grateful; he had no desire to be cruel to Merlin, but he was also in no position to be at all comforting. Merlin looked down at his boots, scuffing one toe along the ground and swallowing hard around the lump in his throat.

Arthur waited for him to gather his composure a bit, averting his eyes from the disconcerting sight of a truly upset Merlin, which was something he had very rarely seen even in eleven years of nearly constant companionship.

"I'm sorry, Arthur," Merlin choked out eventually, his voice hoarse and scratchy from so much crying and yelling over the last few hours. Arthur was sure his own rough treatment had to have contributed to the harshness of Merlin's voice. Merlin couldn't seem to lift his head, like he had a weight pressing down on him. "I'm so sorry, for everything."

"I know."

And he did, he could see that much clearly. But it didn't fix anything. There was nothing else for him to say. Merlin nodded to the ground, knowing that as well as Arthur did. They lapsed into a painfully tense silence, plenty needing to be said between them and neither of them ready to say it.

Finally, Merlin lifted his head, sniffing and drying his face on his sleeves as surreptitiously as possible.

"We should get back. Leon's probably getting worried," he said, clearing his throat after as if his voice had come out louder than he'd intended it to.

"I think he's well past worried by now," Arthur sighed, his temple giving a nasty throb.

"What are you going to tell them?" Merlin asked tentatively, as if he wasn't at all sure that he still had the right to ask such questions of him.

Arthur squeezed the bridge of his nose between his fingers, trying to will away the headache but it stayed stubbornly put where it had taken up residence just behind his eyes.

"The truth, of course. I can't very well tell them anything else. This isn't exactly something that be swept under the rug, Merlin." It came out harsh and accusatory, making Merlin flinch. Arthur couldn't bring himself to feel overly bad about that at the moment. "It's just a little unbelievable, is all. Maybe Gerund could explain it to them."

"Yes," Merlin said immediately, latching on to the out when it was offered. "Yes, let's have him do it."

"Most of this is his fault anyway."

"Exactly."

They hovered awkwardly again for a moment. Then Arthur determinedly turned back toward the camp and began walking. He heard Merlin fall in behind him, his steps making loud shushing noises over the carpet of fallen leaves. A familiar crashing noise told him that Merlin had tripped and nearly gone sprawling over the forest floor. It almost got a smile on Arthur's face, the thought that not everything about Merlin had been a lie, even if his clumsiness had to be the most honest trait.

But he didn't reach out to steady Merlin as he might have done before, didn't throw out a jibe or a friendly insult about his lack of grace. He just kept walking and Merlin pulled himself to his feet and carried on behind him without a word.

Leon scowled at them when they passed into the light of the campfire but he didn't comment on their nighttime excursion as they returned to their bedrolls. For Arthur, at least, the relief of having made the decision to pass off the task of filling the knights in on all that had come to light to Gerund in the morning was enough to grant him the forgetfulness of sleep. As he went under, though, he heard a rustling of blankets from across the fire. Merlin, it seemed, would not be granted the same mercy.