Strongest of the Warlocks: Chapter Twenty-Two: A Heart's Belonging
AN: Its crazy that so many people are excited about where this fic is going, because half the time I either forget or throw canon out the window.
Reminder that this fic is still on hiatus, which means that I'm not actively working on it but wander back from time to time, so you guys probably won't be getting another update after this one for a while.
There was sweat and blood intermingling on Merlin's face, her hair was dark and matted, and she looked terrified, like she wanted nothing more than to flee.
Morgana had known that Merlin had never liked the king very much, Uther might not've noticed the contempt on her face when his back was turned, but Morgana had.
"Speak, woman! Or I'll have you thrown in the dungeons!"
Morgana wasn't sure what she expected of Merlin, maybe her arms snapping up over her ears, her lips a thin white line, her eyes squeezing shut, maybe even screaming, but Merlin did none of that. In fact, what she did worried Morgana far more.
It was like she just stopped. Merlin was looking dead ahead but with a sort of vacancy that reminded Morgana of the first time she'd seen a corpse.
"Father!"
"Threatening her won't do you any good," Gaius' tone was sharp as he spoke to the king. He was perhaps the only one that could get away with speaking to the king in such a manner. "I surmise that she's had a powerful man of status threatening her for the better part of a month. In her mind, you're no different from Cenred…it looks like she developed a way to…dissociate from her body when she's afraid of being hurt."
It was one thing for Uther to use intimidation on his enemies, but to do it to one of his own citizens? One who was traumatized and terrified and probably didn't know where she even was? Something dark festered deep inside Morgana as she approached Merlin swiftly, one hand resting at the small of her back, the other cupping her shoulder.
Merlin didn't even seem to notice.
Morgana could understand Uther's desire to know what had happened, but he was doing it for the wrong reasons and in the absolute worst way. Merlin was the maidservant to the crown prince, the one he'd had for the longest period of time (not for lack of trying, Morgana was pretty sure Merlin had tried to get herself sacked no less than ten times in the first month before giving up), one who happened to know the ins and outs of the palace, every nook and cranny, every secret passageway in and out, and one that happened to have the ability to poison you and not leave a single trace.
She didn't think that most people considered how dangerous Merlin could actually be.
Morgana pressed Merlin's head against hers as she hugged her tightly, humming a soothing song that her mother had once done for her as a child. It didn't have much of an affect, unfortunately. She might as well have been unconscious, because she was being about as responsive.
She could barely hear the combined efforts of Arthur and Gaius attempting to placate the king, a tough job, she was sure, but at least they were making some headway where Morgana was coming up short.
Morgana wasn't sure whose idea it was to remove her from the room entirely, but she really would kiss that person. She and Gwen coaxed Merlin slowly out of the room, steering her slowly in the direction of the spare room beside Morgana's.
"She'll probably feel better after a bath," Gwen said, putting on a brave face as Merlin sat on the edge of the bed looking like a lost puppy. They were both a little out of their depth right now. They didn't even know what Merlin had endured to silence her voice so much.
Her clothes hung off her frame so much that Gwen ended up taking an old nightgown of Morgana's -at her insistence- and taking it in a bit to fit Merlin. It fit all right, but Merlin still seemed to drown in it when she helped her out of the tub. Gwen tried not to look too upset at the sight of the bruises and healing cuts and the mangled fingers that Gaius would need to break and straighten before the day was done.
There was a dark pattern over her skin, a triple spiral between her shoulders that Gwen had never seen before. It seemed vaguely druidic in nature, probably not a mark she should be bearing in Camelot, whose king was well-known for hating druids and had so many killed during his purge of magic.
But Merlin had grown up dancing between trees, singing Gaelic songs, mixing herbs together, righting wrongs, healing hurts. She was a friend to druids and her godfather was a Chieftain…maybe that was where her hatred of the king stemmed.
Gwen helped her into the nightgown, before working on combing her way through Merlin's mess of hair. It probably would've been easier to just have cut it off, but Gwen wasn't sure how Merlin would feel about that.
"Cook is going to have tea brought up, whenever you're ready," Gwen informed her conversationally. "The kind you like, sweetened with honey…she was going to send up a lot of food too, but Gaius told her it might be too hard on your stomach, so she's got some broth for you…after Gaius sets your fingers." Gwen winced at the thought of doing so, but Merlin had probably dealt with broken bones before; this was undoubtedly something familiar for her.
Merlin seemed to blink and reassert herself as Gwen brushed away the last tangle, relaxing into the cushions, blue eyes warily taking in her surroundings (Gwen was pleased to note that she only completely relaxed when she saw Gwen).
"Camelot," rasped out of her throat and Gwen doubted that speaking much was something she was capable of but Gwen bobbed her head quickly.
"Yeah, that's right." Her smile was painful.
"Arthur," Merlin almost sighed. "Cursed."
Gwen's brow furrowed. "Arthur's cursed? What do you mean?"
Merlin opened her mouth but no sound came out and she made an annoyed gesture, pointing at her forehead and drawing it outwards.
"Oh! You mean the unicorn?" That was what they had caught and killed when they'd been out hunting that day, Gwen remembered the sight of the unicorn horn on the pillow presented to the king. It didn't seem quite right for the knights to kill something so pure and beautiful.
"Magnificent," Uther had said with a delighted grin like he hadn't spent the past few minutes traumatizing a recently escaped prisoner of another king just for the thrill of it. "It's the first one I've seen…Gaius look at this." He'd lifted it and showed it to the physician.
"It is very impressive, My Lord," Gaius had said in a tone that was clearly less than impressed, and it was a tone that Uther had picked up on.
"What is it, Gaius? Speak your mind."
Gaius had glanced from the horn to the king's face. "Unicorns are rare and mystical creatures. There is a legend that says that bad fortune will come to anyone who slays one."
That had only made Uther scoff -which didn't surprise Gwen in the slightest. "Nonsense. We will be the envy of every kingdom."
And that was the last Gwen had heard of the unicorn's horn before she and Morgana were maneuvering Merlin out of the hall.
Merlin always seemed to know the most of mystical and magical things and there were some days where Gwen had to wonder…was it just because she'd grown up around druids? Or was it something else? There was something about the look in her eyes, the sly way she smiled…something that felt…off from time to time.
Like she was playing at being the clumsy maidservant to the crown prince when they knew just how steady she could be on her own two feet, steady and silent.
"Don't worry about that right now," Gwen spoke gently. "We're just going to focus on getting you better, all right?"
Merlin gave a sort of half-hearted nod.
"Want me to send Gaius in now?"
She scowled before sighing. They'd been fighting, Gwen remembered, before Merlin had been kidnapped. Gwen didn't know what it was about -no one did- but she did know that whatever it was was intensely personal. She'd once walked into the tail-end of one of their arguments and it hadn't been pretty ("How can you expect me to trust you?" Merlin demanded. "After what you've pulled? After what you've done?"). They'd been getting better in the weeks leading up to her kidnapping, but their relationship was still frayed at the edges.
Finally, Merlin nodded and Gwen squeezed her too-thin shoulder, getting up to move to the door and allow the physician to enter, only briefly sidetracked when Morgana stepped within to murmur a question to Merlin and if Gwen could use a word to describe the expression on her face, it would be a desperate longing and she gave Morgana a nod, leaving Morgana to send a quick letter off with a raven that Gwen had seen waiting on Morgana's window ledge for more than a day.
"How did she seem?"
Gwen shrugged helplessly. "She wasn't totally in a stupor when I got through her hair, and she seemed to know where she was…she still isn't talking very much, but she said 'Camelot' and she said something about Arthur being cursed."
Arthur cross his arms and scoffed. "She and Gaius! All over a unicorn!"
If something had Merlin worried, Gwen was likely to believe it was serious.
"What did you ask her about?" she opted to ask Morgana instead, that was a safer topic.
"I wanted to know if she wanted to have Percival sent for," Morgana said, still fingering the letter with Merlin's name in an unfamiliar script. "I've sent a letter."
"Oh!" Gwen's brown eyes widened in surprise. Of course! Percival must've been worried about her, she knew they exchanged fairly regular letters, to not hear from her in more than a month must've been concerning. The upside would be that they would actually be able to meet the one that had claimed the unrelenting Merlin's heart, the downside would be having to explain to her lover what had happened to her.
"Percival?" Arthur's brow furrowed in complete confusion. "Who's that?"
That made both Morgana and Gwen stare at him, both just barely managing to stop from gaping at him. It hadn't occurred to them that Merlin had never told Arthur about the man that she was so clearly exchanging letters with, but Merlin tended to keep private things private and she didn't feel the need to illuminate everyone regarding her relationship status, which was her right.
"Percival is the man she's in love with," Morgana spoke the words slowly, carefully, like she was wondering how he'd react to that information.
Predictably, Arthur's eyes bulged in his eye sockets and his head snapped, looking from one to the other. "She's what?" he had never sounded aghast. "Is that even allowed?"
They both glared at him and he floundered. He'd never had a personal servant that was in a relationship while being under his employ, he was already out of his depth.
Luckily for him, they were all a bit sidetracked when the door creaked open to allow Gaius out, bag in hand. He was unsurprised by the conglomeration of individuals outside the room.
"She's sleeping," he informed them. "Her cuts and bruises will heal, but the one at her brow went deep, that one will likely scar, even with it being stitched up. Her fingers are splinted, so she's going to find it a bit difficult to do things for a few weeks until they heal in the right direction…her voice I'm not so sure about…it could be from disuse, but it could also be that she's afraid to speak now." There was a pain in his aged eyes that was clear to see.
"She's lost a lot of weight but it'll take time to get her back into eating properly, because I very much doubt that she'd been getting very many meals in captivity…She wouldn't tell me what happened to her, but you might have better luck…though I'd wait to try after she's had some broth and tea, that might help her throat a bit more."
Gaius clasped his bag a bit more firmly shut. "Now, if you'll excuse me, I need to send a letter to her mother."
Gwen felt a pang in her chest. They'd completely forgotten about Hunith! Of course, she'd be worried about her daughter! Merlin could've been dead for all she knew after all this time.
"She's sleeping now, but you can go in and see her."
They all peered inside the room as Gaius headed off in the direction of his private quarters, and she did indeed appear to be asleep, slumped against the pillows, swathed in blankets so much that she was practically cocooned in them and impossibly small.
"She looks terrible," Arthur said, having to stifle a loud yelp moments later when Morgana smacked his arm and glared. "What's your problem?"
"Why don't we get you locked up for more than a month, without as much food as you'd like, getting beaten and bruised and having to rebreak your fingers when they don't set right?" Morgana asked him archly and Arthur faltered slightly.
The truth was, he didn't know how he'd react. Merlin was…different, and complicated. What he knew about her was only a fraction of what she was. Morgana and Gwen seemed to know more about her at any given point in time -a fact that he was starting to find irritating and insulting, seeing as he spent the most time with Merlin, you would think he was privy to more of her secrets, but evidently not- and he was finding himself even deeper in the sea of what he didn't know.
Still, Arthur thought his father had gone about it the wrong way, interrogating Merlin. She'd looked like she was a second away from making a break for it, and given how well she knew the castle, it was incredibly likely that she would've gotten away, too. Arthur could understand his father's concern for the kingdom, but he knew with absolute certainty that he wouldn't have reacted the same way when speaking with -not yelling at- someone so clearly traumatized.
Was it really any wonder that she didn't like his father?
Merlin stirred in her sleep slightly, causing them all the abruptly quiet, but all she did was roll slightly to the side, her arms flopping a bit with the movement so that they could see the splints on her hands. Her brow furrowed with brief pain then relaxed as she settled into a deeper sleep.
"Do you really think she's ever going to be all right after this?" Gwen murmured.
Morgana squeezed her hand. "Merlin's tough."
But that wasn't a 'yes' or a 'no'.
Merlin dreamed something strange.
She was in the forest just before the Perilous Lands, the very place that Iseldir had taken her when she was twelve and begging to see it. Merlin recognized the pattern of trees without too much difficulty, but something about it seemed different.
Merlin's feet were bare as she stepped through grass and dirt to approach the rickety old bridge that was the only way into and out of the Perilous Lands. There was a deep gorge that made it impossible to cross any other way, and there were sharp jutting rocks where it met the sea that would've destroyed any ships that attempted to come that way. But this time the Keeper of the Bridge, Grettir, was nowhere to be seen.
The Perilous Lands had another name, Iseldir had told her. It had once been a kingdom called Elmet, a great and prosperous kingdom of magic, but the land began to sour after its king, a man whose name had been forgotten in time so that he was known only as the Fisher King, had been injured in battle. And because the well-being of the kingdom depended on the well-being of its ruler, as his injuries festered, his mighty kingdom was reduced to a wasteland, neither living nor dead, which spread the belief that the Fisher King was in the same state.
Nature was Merlin's gift, growth and healing was where her heart was at, not offensive magic or anything else she'd used during her time in Camelot. She wanted nothing more than to go back to her roots, to not be afraid to show who she was, what she could do.
She still remembered what it was like when she'd crossed the bridge for the first time. She'd felt the magic swell around her, under her, through her…it was everywhere. It was beautiful and it was so very tragic. She could feel everything…it was like it called to her, the magic of the land seeking her.
Merlin wanted to fix things, to make them grow, make them change. Seeing the Perilous Lands had left her devastated and in awe all at the same time; seeing what they had become, seeing what they could be again.
But things were different in her dream. In her dream the Perilous Lands were full of lush greenery and murky mudholes were instead pools of clear blue. It was beautiful and exactly as it should be…and there was someone else there.
It was a man in threadbare white cloak with a twin-pronged wooden staff.
"Who're you?" she demanded before then everything faded into darkness once more.
Percival left in the middle of the day, mere minutes after the letter arriving from Kenelm -who could be very fast when he wanted to be, though he was sure magic played a part- from a woman named Morgana, specifically, the Lady Morgana, ward to King Uther of Camelot. Merlin had mentioned her and Gwen quite a lot in her letters (on top of complaints about Arthur and grudging pride when he actually acted decently, "character growth," she'd written, "you know, given how bad he was before we met.") so Percival had no reason to doubt her words, about Merlin's condition.
He'd thought maybe he'd over-stepped his bounds in when he'd written her and that was why she hadn't responded in over a month and it was simultaneously better and worse to know the truth.
If he rode hard and fast he could be there sooner than later, at least, that was the hope.
Merlin slept through the whole night so it was late morning by the time she attempted to drink some tea -cumbersomely- and swallow down some broth.
"Gaius said not to force yourself," Morgana reminded her kindly as Merlin's stomach curdled at the thought of eating anything remotely solid. "But I hear Cook is personally going to make you anything and everything that you want to eat while you're recovering."
A faint smile brushed across Merlin's lips. Liana had a harsh demeanor but she liked Merlin and Merlin always found her spare herbs when she was out collecting for Gaius, free of charge. She liked to say that Merlin was the most honest about business in Camelot, but Merlin thought that was just because she was getting herbs without paying.
"Feeling better?" Gwen was beaming widely at her, mostly out of relief, but Merlin appreciated it either way.
Merlin gave a vague sort of gesture, which was about all that she could manage. "Better," she forced out of her throat.
Evidently, that was enough.
"Merlin…while you were -gone," Morgana winced at the word choice, "a letter came for you…I think it might be from Percival." Merlin's eyes grew clearer at the mention of the man in question, almost seeming to brighten without meaning to. "Would you like me to read it to you?"
Merlin faltered, indecision flickering across her face, then she nodded.
Morgana finally opened the letter that had languished on her vanity for weeks. "Merlin," she read, "I'll keep this short, you know I'm not much one for speaking much to start with." Merlin huffed a chuckle. "I love you. I love your mind and your kindness and your fierceness. I love everything about you, everything that I know, and everything that I don't. One day I want to wake up beside you, because there is place that I'd rather be, because I love you utterly and completely, and my heart is yours, always. Percival."
It truly was a beautiful and succinct letter and Morgana looked up when Merlin made a sort of choked noise. The hand that only had her first finger splinted was brought to her mouth, her eyes shining with a sort of emotion too strong for Morgana or Gwen to have recognized in a mirror.
Even if Merlin's throat was cooperating, Morgana was certain she'd be too choked on emotion to even begin to attempt speaking.
Morgana opened her mouth, she didn't know what she was going to say to Merlin, Merlin who was bent and bruised but not broken, Merlin who was perhaps worldlier than Morgana would ever dream of being, but she was distracted by a sudden knock at her door. "Lady Morgana?"
"Yes?" she called out and the door opened to reveal one of the guards. "What is it?"
"There is a man in the courtyard here to see you."
Morgana blinked, thinking of the letter she'd only sent the previous day. Either that raven flew frightfully fast, or he'd ridden through the night (Percival was from Mercia, wasn't he? That had to be more than a day's ride away, right?), or both.
"I'll be right back," she promised Merlin, leaving her with the short letter, still beyond words, and so utterly tired. Morgana was starting to wonder if she'd even still be awake when Morgana returned.
The courtyard was bathed in sunlight, it was a beautiful day, but Morgana's eyes were drawn to the man the guards had indicated.
Honestly, she didn't know what she expected. Percival was tall with a square jaw and muscles that Arthur would've been jealous of. He didn't seem the type to bear his soul in a letter to his dearest love, but Morgana had been wrong before.
"Percival?" she guessed and the man gave a short bow before straightening.
"Highness," he said in voice that was rough and deep. Somehow it made him more attractive, if that was possible; Merlin was a lucky lady.
Morgana spared him a smile. "Would you like to see her?"
His eyes gleamed but his own smile faltered as he followed after her. "Is she…well?"
"She's better than she was yesterday," Morgana admitted as they took to the stairs. "I'm afraid the king thought that interrogating her upon her return to Camelot was a good idea…she didn't react well to that, but she's a little better this morning. She had some broth, slept through the night…the letter you sent her a few weeks ago, I read it to her, and she was fairly choked up."
His entire expression softened. No wonder Merlin was so smitten.
"She'll be happy to see you," Morgana told him with certainty as she pushed the door open to permit them both inside.
Gwen's eyes widened as she looked Percival up and down, clearly not expecting him to look as he did, which made Morgana feel better.
"She fell back asleep," Gwen whispered to them both, "I don't think she did much sleeping in Essitir and last night didn't cut it…but you can sit with her, I think she'll like to see you when she wakes up."
"Thank you," Percival said, though his eyes were fixed on Merlin, stepping around Gwen to reach the chair at her side. She was breathing in and out evenly as she slept on, her eyes roving behind her eyelids, curls framing her cheeks.
His fingers trailed over her cheekbones before trailing up to where her skin had been stitched together by Gaius. His jaw tightened, then he bent down to press his lips firmly to her brow.
She sighed under him, almost seeming to curve herself closer to him as he smoothed his fingers through her hair.
Morgana knew viscerally and completely that if she could ever find someone half as attentive to her as Percival was to Merlin, she would never want for anything.
But she settled for her and Gwen politely excusing themselves. There would be time to speak a bit more fully later, but for now they'd let her sleep knowing she was looked after by the one who loved her best.
AN: Percival has appeared! He and Merlin will actually interact face to face in the next chapter!
In other news, Uther's a dick, but who's surprised.
I might be slightly headcanoning the idea of Merlin bringing magic back to the Perilous Lands and being the Fisher King's successor, but we'll see ;)
As always: PLEASE PLEASE PLEASE REVIEW!
