Summary: Because who gave the Druids the right anyway?
Set at some nebulous point in time after Gaius was tortured by the Witch-Hunter.
Gaius looked around at the Druids gathered before him, and for the first time in a very long time, felt absolutely no guilt under the accusing stares that some of them tried to subtly throw his way. The Traitor, the Coward, the Butcher's Pet. Gaius had spent so long labouring under these accusations, but it had recently dawned on him that the persons who threw them about like flowers at a wedding had absolutely no authority to do so. And the realisation that they were patently wrong helped as well. Gaius had given up everything to stay behind in Camelot to try to mitigate Uther's excesses and save those he could, as well as to try to get Uther to see sense. He was the one left in Camelot to spearhead any effort to smuggle magical children out of the citadel, to send families who had discovered their magical children on journeys to the forest to find these same Druids to shelter them - and they knew that Gaius was responsible for many of the people who had come to them during those early days of the Purge. The problem was that after so long hearing himself disparaged by the same people he had sacrificed to help, he had begun to believe it. Eventually, when he could no longer do any of what he had stayed for, but also couldn't leave because the rest of the magical community had turned on him (and because eventually, he was the last person left in Camelot with any sort of knowledge of herb lore or healing and he couldn't in good conscience abandon the peasants who were no better off than he was at this point), he had unwittingly become what he'd been called. He had learned to fade into the background out of sheer self-preservation, had learned to hold his thoughts to himself because "Uther" had at some point become "Sire" and the two were very different, had resigned himself to the fact that many of his patients would die because Uther would not allow even his healing magic anymore.
He had broken.
And it had taken Merlin, and an effort by Uther to kill him, for him to finally pull whatever remaining pieces there were of the man he once was back together again. The Druids, hiding in their camps, and doing nothing to help themselves, had no leg to stand on in the face of what Gaius had done, had tried to do, and now did, living in a place that would see him dead, if only to be able to help in some way the few loved ones he'd managed to gather over the years.
Having overheard enough of the previous conversation, he finally spoke up. Merlin, his poor, overwhelmed, sweet boy, had already begun to fall prey to similar accusations, and looked to be feeling buried under guilt that was absolutely not his to shoulder. Well, he now had something that Gaius hadn't had all those years ago - someone to stand up for him and explain to him why he owed his accusers no apology, why their grievances were not his responsibility, and why his efforts were good and valid and not to be condemned, especially by people who have made no efforts themselves.
"And where were you all the last twenty years of The Slaughter?" he asked calmly. He looked around, expression neutral in the face of the mutinous countenances of the older Druids who were at the stage of life of being old and crotchety and miserable enough that people wished they'd move on, but wouldn't dare voice it. Some of the younger ones - Merlin's age, give or take a few years - looked at him like he was a bit off for asking a question that seemed to have an obvious answer.
"I would think that twenty years of being hunted like frightened game should have taught you to build better defences, yet a determined enough woodsman could track his way to your camp, if he knows what to look for," he said mildly. "I've not been out to a camp since before Merlin was born," he continued, and no one missed the emphasis he'd placed on his ward's name. "And still I've found it because your habits have not changed and all the signs are familiar, if perhaps more muted. And do recall that there was a time that Uther and his knights visited your camps and were welcomed among your people and that he has proven himself very determined with a goal. He would not have forgotten how to find you, and don't doubt that he has taught his knights the same. The newer ones may have less experienced eyes, but evidently, by your own indirect admission, the teaching they've received has been sufficient for them to be able to continue picking you off like newborn fauns in a herd. You are the foremost known magic-users in Camelot, and for some unfathomable reason, you refuse to use it to protect yourselves."
One of the seniors among them, a woman even older than himself, weathered skin bearing lines that suggested she was not normally any more pleasant than she appeared now, spat at him with a voice surprisingly strong for her frail stature and advanced age: "You, Butcher's Pet, have no place to say anything about customs and traditions older than Camelot itself when you've been hiding, safely tucked away in your master's castle in exchange for innocent blood!" A few others nodded along with her assertion, righteous indignation on their faces.
"Then you will all die in these forests along with your traditions and customs, just like every other Druid camp Uther has found over the last twenty years," Gaius answered frankly. From the corner of his eye, he could see Merlin's jaw drop at his rather blunt declaration. But he needed not only the Druids to understand their folly, but Merlin to understand that he was not responsible for the deaths of their people. Before the shocked outcries could become a riot, he continued. "A hare will change its coat in winter to avoid being picked off by a hawk for standing out against fresh snow. That does not make it any less a hare, but it does mean that it survives to see the next spring and shed its disguise. Even if you do not use your magic for violence or warfare, there is no reason you should not have developed and erected better magical perimeters and alerts, or layered more spells for misdirection around your dwellings."
Someone in the crowd, he couldn't determine who, yelled something about the difficulty and danger of creating new spells. "So you'd prefer to leave yourselves to certain death rather than take a risk to preserve your lives," he answered sharply. "By that token, your own fear and inaction will be your downfall."
Gaius didn't move from his position, but he managed to look over everyone gathered before him. "You stand here to blame a youth who has just barely reached his majority for thousands of deaths caused by years of your own negligence and pride, even before he was born. You call him Emrys and demand his service, but where were you all his life? A child growing up with magic at the height of Uther's Purge, who you claim has some destiny to save you all from a danger he has lived with his entire life. Why should he accept this job you're forcing on him when he doesn't even know his own family among you?"
There was a choked splutter from Merlin's direction, and he stared at Gaius, finally unheeding of all the eyes on him. "What?" came the incredulous demand. Gaius felt bad revealing it to him this way, but he needed to do it to further drive his point home to Merlin that he owed the Druids nothing. "Family?" He looked overwhelmed, shocked, dismayed, and hurt all at once.
It was unbelievable to Merlin. To think that he had grown up alone with his mother in Ealdor, struggling through the winters with drafts in the rickety cottage, going hungry because there was nothing to eat that day, being odd and apart because he had magic and either people sensed something weird about him, or he couldn't control it well enough for his mother to allow him out among them, worrying about his mother and the stress of raising him by herself. He had family. Gaius was his uncle, but he lived in Camelot, so it was obvious why they couldn't go to him. He had magical family, who could have helped him learn how to control his magic, to keep a fire burning throughout the night, to grow vegetables in the winter for survival, who could have helped him not feel so alone. And he hadn't known.
Apparently, it was news to the Druids gathered before him as well, judging by the gasps going around. But that was not Gaius' concern because their ignorance was still their own fault.
"Your father never did forgive Elewys for marrying my brother over him and leaving the tribe," Gaius said to Iseldir conversationally.
Iseldir's surprise showed on his face, but he had the presence of mind to ask "Elewys, the healer?"
Gaius nodded. "The same-"
Before he could continue, he was cut off by a man, a few years younger than himself, pushing his way to the front of the gathered crowd to demand. "He is of my sister?"
"Considering your people disowned her when she left, I believe I should say not," Gaius said mildly, arms folded into his sleeves. The man looked about ready to swallow his own tongue, bristling fit to rival any insulted bird. He had the same brown eyes that Hunith did, set in a face that was besieged by laugh lines, barely noticeable with the thunderous expression he currently wore.
"Had you chosen to contact my sister at any point in the years after she had married, you may have found out about her daughter, who is Merlin's mother," Gaius continued without compassion, his words making the man flinch. He could recall him now, Gwychardus, Elewys' younger brother, who had loved her fiercely and had been very upset that she was choosing to leave their family and everything they'd known. He had been too young to be able to speak out when she was essentially exiled for her decision, but old enough to get caught up in the general furor over the situation and spout the criticisms and prejudices he'd heard. Elewys having been disowned, he couldn't rightly call her his sister anymore. Gaius, who was her brother by marriage, had been very good friends with the young healer over the years following her marriage, and had learned much from her.
But Gwychardus, as close as the two had been, had never reached out to Elewys that Gaius knew of, for all the years that she had been away before she died taking care of a village beset by a plague. Gaius, for his part, was not going to tell anyone here anything of her life. There were rules, of course, about disowning a fellow Druid, but children and friends usually ignored those or found ways around them if they were determined enough. That no one present seemed to know that Elewys had had a daughter, much less that that daughter had a son who they were now trying to strong-arm into doing their dirty work, spoke volumes.
Merlin watched the exchange, hurt and confusion churning in his gut as he listened to a history he hadn't even known he'd had. And Gaius hadn't even had the decency to warn him before coming here.
The man, his great-uncle apparently, glowered at Gaius with an intensity that was enough to make Merlin wary, surrounded as they were by these people he didn't know, who apparently didn't know as much about him as they'd claimed. Gaius returned the glare with a steely gaze that Merlin hadn't seen since sweet Lady Eira's most trusted maidservant had visited Gaius' quarters one evening to discretely request a tincture for bruises that were nowhere to be found on her own person. It was commonly known that while Lady Eira had had four beautiful daughters, her husband had always wanted sons. That she could not seem to bear him any ...displeased Sir Uwen immensely (and he had been a rather formidable knight before a border skirmish took his right eye).
"All of magic in the Five Kingdoms knew the exact moment that Merlin was born," the old physician enunciated. His tone dared anyone to argue. "I felt the shift in magic, just as your Seers did." More than that, he had been there to deliver Merlin, born quietly with blazing gold eyes, and to ensure that Hunith was okay. She had written him in code to say that she believed the child would have magic and she wanted his help for a safe delivery, as her mother had been dead almost seven years by then. He had seen Merlin, just days old, spark every candle that Hunith had and light her firepit to a roaring blaze in a fit of temper because of a soiled diaper. They had both stared aghast for a moment before Gaius extinguished the candles with magic and tried to wrestle the firepit under control before the blaze consumed the tiny dwelling, Hunith still too exhausted and sore to be able to do much.
How Hunith had managed to raise Merlin with only the one friend discovering his magic, only the goddess knew. It was unprecedented in Gaius' experience that a child would actually be born with that much magic. Even the more powerful wizards were only known to have manifested any abilities after at least their sixth summer - and even that was rare. He had watched, on a visit months later, as Hunith continually scrambled to retrieve whatever object had garnered Merlin's fancy enough for him to float it over his cot and coo at. The infant tended to take it as a game more often than not, but when he didn't, she'd have to drop everything - literally - to console him in an effort to prevent the floating mage lights, or the clatter of her few belongings going flying about the room, or the sparks that came dangerously close to the thatched roof.
"And rather than going to seek out your great and long-awaited Emrys to offer your support for saving your own lives," Gaius continued with a sneer, fueled by the memory of how trying it had been for Hunith and his own remembered frustration at how little he had been able to truly be there to support her due to his tenuous position, the political climate, and the distance. "You remained cowering away in the forests with your illusions of safety as you allowed Camelot's patrols to continue picking you off. But you knew that Emrys had appeared." Gaius remembered the sheer terror he'd felt when whispers had reached Camelot of the arrival of Emrys and the Once and Future King. Merlin had been an infant, still toddling behind Hunith's skirts as she went about her day, blue eyes bright and a gummy smile etched onto his little round face. Uther had reached new heights of ruthlessness and brutality that the Gaius of ten years before would have thought him incapable of. "The common folk had never known that the legends of Emrys and the Once and Future King were actually prophesies. They were barely known at all outside of the Druids and other magical sects."
He looked around with thunder in his pale eyes, and despite the fact that Merlin knew that Gaius was only just recovered from his bout of torture, he could read the danger in the old man's face. This was the man who had fought with Uther to reclaim Camelot, and Merlin had never actually seen that side of him.
One of the children, in that awkward stage between childhood and true adolescence, and full of all the defiance that came with it, argued, his little chest puffed up with the knowledge that he was right and this old man had no right to talk to them this way. "Emrys is the most powerful wizard to ever be and he was supposed to come and stop the Slaughter and save magic!"
"Emrys," the old survivor spat, with none of the usual gentleness he reserved for children, even at their most difficult with illness, "was an infant, and your parents and grandparents spreading rumours about 'magic's champion coming to slaughter the Butcher' only increased the growing zeal for the Purge!"
The boy's eyes widened with shock and he shrank back at the vehemence and venom behind Gaius' statement, a reaction echoed to varying degrees by others behind him.
The same older woman from before refused to be cowed, expression still mulish. "And what is his excuse now that he stands at the side of the Once and Future King in the lion's den? It is his destiny, and people are dying!" Merlin got the impression that she was one of those people who refused to die purely out of spite.
Gaius' infamous eyebrow rose, and he somehow managed to give the impression of being singularly unimpressed with her argument. "What makes you think he had any knowledge of his alleged destiny?"
The disbelief from that statement was almost palpable. No one had ever once entertained any thought that Emrys would not know that he was Emrys. It was inconceivable. He was Emrys - of course he would know that people were waiting on him to do his duty.
But even after realising that Merlin had had no knowledge of this whole Emrys business when they first met, Iseldir had not offered to properly explain, instead only telling him in that manner that Druids tended to favour that made them sound all-knowledgeable and mysterious, that essentially it was his sole responsibility to protect Arthur and save magic. He had not offered assistance to the boy standing before him, had not welcomed him the way that a much-awaited leader ought to have been. Instead, he had dumped onto Merlin all the responsibilities of a mythical man's post, without any of the consideration, guidance or teaching that the boy would have needed. Gaius had failed Arthur enough by allowing him to grow up believing all of Uther's terrifically inaccurate propaganda and lies about magic, but he would not fail Merlin (any more than he already had).
"I certainly was not going to tell my toddling nephew that a bunch of people who had disowned him before he was even born were now announcing to all and sundry that he was now, for some reason that only they knew, supposed to risk life and limb for them. Merlin didn't even live in Camelot, but he'd lived all his life in fear of it," Merlin's uncle went on, as calm and placid as he was when telling Merlin that he was again late to wake Arthur. "If you think for one moment that I had any intention of letting my nephew anywhere near to the man who had started The Purge, especially to save people who wouldn't even do anything to save themselves, you should be checked for some illness of the mind."
"You claim to know a great deal about Emrys, of which I have since begun wondering how much is accurate, but you still refuse to acknowledge that the person standing before you is Merlin first and foremost, and that he is not your hunting hound, nor is he responsible for a war that was started before he was even born."
Even through all the shock of the afternoon, Merlin was still able to find that last bit ironic, since he was essentially Gaius' dogsbody (and Arthur's, but that was beside the point). But he could also appreciate better now the depth of Gaius' concern for him since he'd arrived in Camelot, and why he had not been as supportive or helpful as Merlin wished or knew he probably could be since he'd learned that he was Emrys. There were a tangle of emotions running through him; he was upset that Gaius had kept all this hidden from him, but to be fair, although discovering he was Emrys finally gave him a reason and a use for all his magic, it had also come with a responsibility that threatened to suffocate him every time he thought about it. He was disappointed and hurt that he had other family that he'd never known about and Gaius had kept from him.
Most of all, he felt...betrayed was probably the best word for it...about what he was realising about the Druids. He'd been so excited to meet other peaceful magic users, and to realise now how they'd been using him - because that's what it was - left a pain that felt bone-deep if he let himself dwell on it.
(So he didn't. He couldn't deal with it at the moment; not where anyone could see the pain it caused.)
Because it was true; Gaius had made many salient points. The Druids had done nothing really to help him besides agreeing to take in Morgana, and he'd had to beg them to do that much. What was more, they had apparently done less than nothing for him, disowning his grandmother and never checking up on him or his mother, or even looking for Emrys after he'd been born. By Gaius' tirade (as subdued as it was), they meant to treat him as a hunting hound, to point him in the direction of their enemies so that they wouldn't have to sully their own hands. They didn't even really respect him for being Emrys; just demanded that he solve problems that he'd had no hand in making, and tried to make him feel guilty for not doing anything about a situation they themselves were running from.
"You would have kept Emrys away?" asked a young voice, small with confused disbelief. Gaius looked around and found a young girl, perhaps eight summers, her green eyes wide in her freckled face. "So that the Slaughter would go on forever?"
Although he pitied her fear at the idea, he knew the truth. "I would have given my life to ensure that Merlin never had to fight to save people who would have just as soon turned on him. Your elders have done it before and continue to," he said, nodding around them. "How do you think that innocent magic-users fleeing Camelot managed to find any Druid camps?" The Eyebrow was back up again, somehow emphasising his statement better than any intonation could have. "Your parents and grandparents were certainly no more keen to step out from hiding in the forest then than they are now."
"I was the only person who willingly stayed in Camelot to try to save the children who would be born during the Purge and get them out. Your wise and benevolent elders agreed to take them, but never put in the effort to look for people who were fleeing, to go and help rescue those who desperately needed it. They hid in these forests and only accepted those who stumbled across them by luck." Gaius straightened and drew himself up to his full height - all the way up to the level of Merlin's chin - and somehow managed to appear to tower above the people before him, even in his regular old robes. "And somehow, the long memory of the Druids has completely forgotten who tried to warn them to leave when the Purge first began."
Gaius looked directly at Iseldir, who returned his gaze stoically. "Your people's deaths are regrettable and a travesty, a fact I would never deny," he stated. "What I will take umbrage with is your blaming Merlin for deaths caused by your own passivity." He could almost feel the collective group before him bristling at him daring to blame them for the deaths of their families and friends. He couldn't really be bothered to care, considering they were blaming his nephew for those same murders. "None of the murders committed by Uther's men on Uther's orders are in any way Merlin's fault. You may claim a collective disdain for violence and warmongering, but here you all are, trying to force a young man with no training to be a one-man army at your beck and call. More than that, you expect him to kill for you."
"If you are all so intent on the prophesies coming to pass, why have you not revealed yourselves to your Once and Future King, who is arguably the one who will actually make the laws that free you, to make these demands of his time and person?" The Eyebrow was back. "Surely someone among you has by now decided that he is Arthur Pendragon. Why do you not demand your much-awaited King do your bidding the same way you demand it of your vaunted Emrys?"
A few persons blinked in surprise. The obvious answer was that no magic user without a death wish would dare approach the son of Uther Pendragon to demand he repeal the ban on magic and kill his own father.
Merlin, standing beside him, started, head swiveling to Gaius. He'd honestly never considered that aspect of the whole thing either. The druids had been demanding miracles of him since their first meeting, and subtly nagging at him to change Arthur's mind on the premise that it was their destiny. But Arthur had been raised all his life to know magic as a horror and blight on humanity. At best, he thought that some magic users might have been misguided and desperate to have turned to something so evil for any reason, even if to heal a grave wound. At worst, he thought the lot of them truly evil with no redeeming qualities.
The bitter old woman had gone silent, though by the fury on her face, she had plenty to say. It was just that none of it would be a response to Gaius' question.
"Maybe it is Merlin's destiny to someday save magic in Albion," Gaius told them. Because who was to say they hadn't just picked the first over-powered warlock they came across and tossed him at their problems? "But that point is moot if you all just roll over and let all the magic in Albion die before he can do it. What I do know is that right now, Merlin is a young man whose only duty is to stay alive. He owes your people no loyalty or apologies." He turned to make his way out of the encampment, but stopped to add, "And neither do I."
When I think back on the series, I get really irritated with the Druids. They never really helped Merlin at all despite all the demands they made of him. They sheltered Morgana once. That doesn't in any way equate to trying to make him a hired gun. And if they knew his destiny, how on earth did they not know Mordred's? And why would they send him to Camelot before their Once and Future King took the throne? Whether it's plotholes or just that the Druids were trifling, it still bothers me.
Regarding the previous snippet, someone asked me how I would have Merlin resolve Morgana's sleep spell without murder.
...I don't know...
That's why it's a snippet and not a full fic! Suggestions are welcome though, and if I can get it to work, I'd use it :D