It was requested that I post the more serious version of the second chapter that I had written. Well here it is! It has a much different tone than the other chapters and it's set sometime after Gwen becomes queen but before Mordred returns. I made Merlin much more defensive and so he's lying to cover his use of magic but not his other illegal actions.
"I think we should discuss the many illegal things Merlin has apparently done." Arthur started, turning to stare directly at his manservant. The king had called a meeting of the round table to force Merlin to admit to his wrongdoings in front of everyone and to determine if any of them had also known about the illegal activities that were apparently going on under his nose.
The eyes of the knights around the table all raised at the same time as Merlin's eyes widened in panic. "The what?!"
"Illegal activities?" Gwaine said with just a touch too much excitement.
Arthur ignored the knight and addressed Merlin. "I know you've been doing illegal things behind my back and I want to know what they are."
"Arthur, just leave it be." Merlin pleaded; he didn't want to have to lie to his king and his friends, but if Arthur continued pushing this he'd be forced to.
"Absolutely not; don't be an idiot, Merlin." Arthur's tone didn't leave room for argument. "You are going to tell me every illegal thing you've done."
Merlin knew he wouldn't be able to get out of this conversation completely. "You can't possibly expect me to remember every time I lied to your father on your behalf!" It was a long shot, but deflection was his go to when he could no longer play dumb.
Arthur snapped at him. "I don't believe for a second that that is the most illegal thing you've done." The other knights murmured in agreement.
Merlin scoffed harshly. "I'm a model citizen." He managed to shove down the flight response that was yelling at him to run away. Gwen looked at him significantly, she saw right through that lie and so did the knights, based on the looks they all proceeded to give him.
The men didn't dare to vocally interrupt Arthur and Merlin as they were arguing now; there was bite to the words and no knight wanted both men to turn their anger on them. Gwen, on the other hand, had no such qualms.
"I believe I can share a good example of Merlin's illegal activities." Gwen interjected with the hope of diffusing some of the tension.
"What illegal things do you know about?" Merlin's eyes widened slightly as his mind raced to connect what Gwen knew about and what she didn't.
"What illegal things do I not know about?" Gwen asked Merlin, eyeing him.
"Nothing." He answered too quickly and Gwen's eyebrow did a very good impression of Gaius' Eyebrow of Doom.
"Alright, alright." Leon held up a hand. "We've established that Merlin has definitely committed some illegal acts." The disapproval was evident in his tone and Merlin scowled, causing Gwaine to snicker. Gwaine seemed to be the only one enjoying the conversation.
Leon ignored his fellow knight and continued, "What specific event or events are you referring to, your highness?" He asked Gwen.
"I was referring to Mordred and that time with the snake thing in your neck."
The group's eyes collectively widened with curiosity at the term 'snake thing' and Merlin quickly tried to deflect the conversation despite the relief he felt that she didn't know the worst of it.
"Gwen!" Merlin squeaked. "We don't need to tell those stories. They're... not interesting." He waved his hand in the air to make his point, but it only served to make the others more curious.
"Snake thing?" Arthur questioned.
Merlin put his head in his hands and groaned. "May the gods have mercy on me." He mumbled.
"Please do share with the group Merlin. I don't believe you've ever shared these stories with me." Arthur said with a glare at his manservant.
Merlin looked up. "Yes, Sire, because I definitely feel inclined to tell you about potentially illegal things that I've done."
Arthur turned serious. "Merlin, have you ever harmed Camelot?"
"Of course not!" Came the automatic reply, filled with indignation. Slower and while looking directly at Arthur, Merlin vowed. "I have never willingly harmed you, or the crown, or Camelot." He tried to subtly add in the 'willingly', but it did not escape the king's notice.
Arthur's eyebrows shot up in alarm. "Willingly? So you've unwillingly harmed me, the crown, or Camelot?"
Merlin winced, though he at least had a convenient story to explain away his word choice, thanks to Gwen. "That would be the snake thing. Fomorrah, it was called a fomorrah."
Arthur crossed his arms angrily. "Do tell, Merlin."
Merlin winced again. "Do you remember when I was injured by mercenaries and then separated from you by a rockfall and spent three days in the woods before you found me?"
"Yes." The King's eyes were boring holes into Merlin, demanding he get to the point.
"Well I didn't spend three days in the woods. I spent the first two days being dragged to Morgana and chained in a hovel."
Alarm made everyone sit up straighter, except Gwen who smiled grimly remembering the events of the few days after.
"Why didn't you tell me this?" Arthur yelled.
"I'm getting to that bit, you impatient prat." Merlin snapped. "Morgana healed the wound I had gotten from the mercenaries so that she could take the head of this magic multi-headed snake thing, the fomorrah, and stick it in the back of my neck." Merlin made a face of disgust as he gestured to where the scar still marred his neck. "Essentially the fomorrah took away my free will and she ordered me to kill you. Frankly, I don't remember much of what happened after that until Gaius paralyzed the fomorrah."
Gwen offered up her knowledge. "I uh, believe I can shed some light on the interim. Merlin tried unsuccessfully to kill Arthur multiple times before Gaius and I discovered why he was acting strangely."
"You tried to kill me?" Arthur sounded hurt.
"Not willingly, Arthur." Merlin emphasized his lack of choice in the matter.
"As I was saying," Gwen interrupted, "I knocked Merlin out before he could try again-"
"You knocked him out?" Gwaine interrupted, an impressed smile on his face.
Gwen winced with an apologetic look towards the victim. "I had to. Gaius cut the fomorrah out of Merlin's neck, but it grew back and Merlin tried to kill Arthur again, but of course we managed to stop him and paralyze the fomorrah a second time."
"I then uh-" Merlin stuttered. He couldn't exactly reveal that he knew where Morgana's hut was the entire time. "I went out in search of Morgana's hut."
"You what?" The knights all exclaimed.
"How could you be so stupid, Merlin?!" Arthur said.
"Well I didn't find it, exactly..." Merlin defended.
Gwen chewed nervously on her lip. She had never heard this part of the story and she had never asked. Merlin had stopped the magical creature from growing back and causing him to try and kill Arthur, and that was enough for her, she didn't question how he did it. It was part of the unspoken agreement in their friendship. He had helped her without question when she betrayed Arthur and she would do the same for him when his method of doing things was unquestionably illegal.
Merlin swallowed hard, not wanting to lie to his friends again, but not wanting to tell the truth and unable to tell them the full truth. "I kind of found Dragoon the Great instead."
"The sorcerer?!" Arthur slammed his hands on the table in outrage at the name.
"Wait I remember we met him in the woods around that time." Elyan said, skillfully distracting Arthur from his own anger for the briefest of moments. "He threatened the King's life!" Back to the anger.
"He used us as stairs!" Percival reminded the knights that had been there.
Arthur had to forcibly calm himself down to ask, "Merlin, are you telling me you found the sorcerer that killed my father and threatened me and kept that information from me?!" The hurt in his voice tugged at Merlin's heart.
"Arthur... he didn't kill your father, Gaius proved that. All he did was try and heal him. And I don't know exactly what Dragoon said, but had you stopped him I might have killed Arthur once the paralytic on the fomorrah wore off. And he did find and kill the fomorrah to stop me from killing you, so there's no way I could, in good conscious, turn him in."
"So you're defending and hiding a sorcerer." Elyan summed up the illegal parts nicely.
"Not hiding, he disappeared after he told me he killed the fomorrah." Merlin clarified and it wasn't technically a lie.
"So just defending him?" Leon asked, unhelpfully.
"Yes! He saved your life." Merlin stared Arthur in the eye, not backing down. Their staring went on for a few moments of silence before Arthur changed the subject.
"Fine, we'll come back to that later. But that story doesn't explain what Gwen meant when she said Mordred or the serket sting I saw on your back this morning."
"Serket sting!" The knights exclaimed all at once.
Merlin paled. "Yes well..."
"Serket sting? No one survives those. You've been stung by a serket, Merlin?" Gwaine said.
"Once." It wasn't meant to be ominous; Merlin meant to brush it off but it was hard to brush off what was supposed to be impossible.
"Yes because that makes a difference with an incurable poison. How the hell did you survive?" Arthur said, his voice heavy with sarcasm.
"Says the first man to ever survive a wound from a questing beast." There was the deflection again, hopefully just enough to distract the knights and change the subject.
"You were bit by a questing beast?" Percival asked Arthur.
Arthur narrowed his eyes at Merlin, ignoring Percival's question. "Don't evade the question, Merlin. We'll come back to that questing beast comment later. How did you get and survive a serket sting?"
"Serket poison isn't incurable, I'm certainly not the first to survive it."
"How?" Arthur growled.
This was where Merlin had to lie. He didn't particularly want to outright change the events, but he wasn't about to admit to being a dragonlord and not killing the great dragon and having said dragon heal him. "Years ago I uh, may have followed Morgana out into the woods because she was meeting Morgause and I wasn't quite as quiet as I could have been."
"You really do have a death wish, don't you?" Gwaine commented.
"Oh shut up and listen." Merlin said. "Morgause chained up and left me in the woods where I was stung by a serket. It was not a pleasant experience." It was time for the lie. Merlin shuddered slightly, seemingly in remembrance of the pain, but mostly because he hated lying to his friends, even if it had to be done. "I was found and saved by a druid clan leader. Serket stings are always fatal when traditional medicine is used to treat it, but the druids have long been able to treat them. They saved my life."
"So you've been consorting with druids as well."
"I haven't been consorting with them, they're not your enemy, Arthur. And keep in mind I'm not the only one at this table to have been healed by druids." Leon and Percival both looked towards their king, knowing that Merlin was referring to them.
"If you've been meeting with druids and sorcerers this whole time," the bite in Arthur's word choice was clear to everyone at the table, "then why are you always so jumpy when magic is mentioned? I was always under the impression you were afraid of it, when clearly that isn't the case."
"I'm not any more afraid of magic than I am of, let's say," Merlin flailed his hand around looking for an appropriate analogy, "fire. Fire can burn you, can hurt you, but it also allows us to stay warm, to have light in the dark, and to cook. Magic can heal wounds, but it can also create them. I've seen both happen. But magic in Camelot is a death sentence; if you have it, if you're near it, even if you just mention it, magic can get you killed here. And despite what you all think, I don't have a death wish."
Arthur's jaw flexed. "You speak treason."
"He's already admitted to treason, what's a little more?" Gwaine said.
"Gwaine." Leon cut off Gwaine before he could anger the king further.
"Can we return to the questing beast comment? Or the Mordred comment from earlier?" Elyan asked. "Who is Mordred?"
"Mordred was a druid boy." Gwen answered.
"He was being hunted down by the guards, they were going to kill him and I hid him in the castle." Merlin gave the shortest version of the story, not daring to mention how he knew Mordred needed help or the fact that he hid the druid in Morgana's chambers.
"I remember that!" Leon exclaimed. "King Uther was livid that a child evaded the knights' searches."
Arthur looked down at the table as Merlin answered. "The knights couldn't find him because Arthur helped me smuggle him out of the castle and return him to the druids."
All eyes were on Arthur now instead of his manservant. Merlin felt a bit guilty at the wave of relief he felt being out of the hotseat for a moment, even though he knew Arthur was uncomfortable.
"Merlin, how did I recover from the questing beast bite?" Arthur asked quietly.
Panic shot through the manservant. He had made the initial comment but even with the lie he had come up with it wasn't something he wanted to share. He fidgeted in his seat until Arthur said his name again.
"You were dying." Was all he would admit.
"How did I recover, Merlin?" It was clear that Arthur's patience was wearing thin.
Merlin took a deep breath before answering. "Your father told Gaius to use whatever means necessary to heal you, but I was the one to get the cure." Merlin's tone conveyed the weight of Uther's actions. The man was a hypocrite.
"My father—"
"Loved you more than he hated magic. And had he not, I would've gone anyways." Merlin looked directly at Arthur, impressing on the king how much he meant the words. "The only way to save you was to have you drink water from the cup of life. Since you were dying, there had to be an exchange of life; a life for a life."
Everyone at the table went perfectly still. "Who died for me? WHOSE LIFE DID YOU BARGAIN?!" Arthur demanded.
Merlin flinched slightly at the outburst but managed to keep his calm as he replied. "Mine." Shocked silence followed that statement. It hung in the air like a sword waiting to strike.
"If you bargained your own life for Arthur's, then how are you still here?" Gwaine asked in a gentle tone he rarely used.
"The cup of life was being held by a sorceress named Nimueh. I bargained my own life but Nimueh traded my mother's life instead of mine. I don't know why. My mother came to Camelot the next day, very sick, and I was still perfectly fine. I traveled back to the isle of the blessed to confront Nimueh." There were so many holes about where he got his information in this story, but Merlin really hoped that none of the others would notice.
It was Gwen that interrupted this time. "I remember Hunith coming, but she didn't die from that sickness so what happened during your confrontation?"
"Nimueh admitted to trading my mother's life instead of mine so I threatened her and she tried to kill me. I can only assume she had thought I was dead and when her back was turned I killed her and her life was taken to save Arthur's."
"How did you know it was her life that was taken?" Leon asked, always the logical one.
"Well I suppose I don't, not definitively. But Arthur, my mother, and I are all still alive and Nimueh exploded when I stabbed her."
"Exploded?" Elyan asked.
Merlin just nodded, a slight frown on his face. "It seemed like magic to me."
"You're saying you managed to get the drop on a powerful sorceress after you had already been injured?" Percival sounded like he didn't believe the story Merlin made up.
The manservant scowled; he may have actually killed her with magic, but he could have killed her the normal way. It wasn't like he was pretending to have fought her with a sword.
"I agree with Percival," Arthur added, "you don't even carry a weapon and you're saying you killed a sorceress, not possible."
"I had a dagger and she thought I was dead." He didn't have a dagger, but at this point it was about the principle of it all.
"I believe you, Merlin." Gwaine supported the manservant and a twinge of guilt settled in his stomach because Gwaine had unwavering faith in him and he was lying through his teeth.
"I don't believe it." Elyan said; the tone of the knights was becoming more teasing which made Merlin feel better as the conversation went on. They would forgive him.
"While I think the knights are right and there's definitely something fishy about you managing to kill anyone, I do want to say… Thank you, Merlin. We will have another conversation about you hiding all of this from me but thank you for all you've done for me." Arthur's words were sincere and Merlin almost burst into tears right at the table.
Before the emotion got the best of the two friends, Gwen asked Merlin, "Tell me, was it you that released the goblin?"
"It was an accident!" Merlin defended.
"YOU DID WHAT?" Arthur shouted.