The man standing before Arthur was gaunt, but the barest hint of a smile touched the corners of his eyes as his gaze flicked between him and Gwen.
Arthur didn't see what there was to be amused about.
"Why do you come to me for aid?" he asked.
"Ah, yes." The man cleared his throat. "Apologies, my lord. My name is Merlin."
Arthur wasn't sure why, but the phrase my lord sounded like an insult coming from this peasant.
After such a long day listening to requests and settling disputes, his patience was starting to wear thin. "What do you want?"
"Right. I'm a sorcerer," Merlin turned and announced to the court. "Do you have a spare room I could crash in, perhaps? I walked all the way from Ealdor."
Arthur blinked.
Considered running his finger in his ear to make sure he'd heard Merlin correctly because surely he'd heard that wrong.
Surely.
Because no one in their right mind would ever admit to being a magic user in front of Arthur Pendron, son of Uther Pendragon - the instigator of the Great Purge.
"Excuse me?" he asked as a murmur flew across the room.
A bit of annoyance flashed across Merlin's face. "I said do you have a spare room I could crash in, perhaps?"
"Before that."
"My name is-"
"After that!"
"I'm a sorcerer." Merlin rolled his eyes. "As I was saying, do you have a spare room I could stay in, my lord?"
Arthur laughed. "You must be out of your mind."
"I have been told that several times, yes."
The guards along the walls and the other people waiting for their turn were exchanging incredulous glances. Beside Arthur, Gwen coughed.
"The only room you're going to be staying in is the dungeons until your execution. Guards!"
Oddly enough, this Merlin person didn't seem concerned as he was dragged away.
In fact, he looked a little bored.
…
"Arthur, are you really going to execute Merlin?" Gwen asked as she brushed her hair.
It took him a second to connect the name to the person. "The idiot from earlier? Why on earth wouldn't I?"
Making eye contact with Arthur through the mirror in front of her, she pursed her lips. "He seemed like an honest man."
At the notion, Arthur laughed. "An honest man? Gwen, he confessed to being a sorcerer."
"See? He's honest."
"He's either extremely stupid or extremely insane, and on top of that, he uses magic. Camelot's safer without him."
Although Gwen didn't look appeased, she didn't press the matter any further, and Arthur deemed the topic closed.
A few days from then, the sorcerer would be executed, and they would put the whole bizarre matter behind them. This Merlin person would be entirely forgotten about.
…
Arthur was fairly certain he was dying.
Every time he breathed in, he swore he could hear his lungs rattling around in his ribcage like a child's toy, and his head was beginning to pound, making it difficult to focus on anything anyone wanted him to do.
His nose was starting to throb.
Before he could wreck the sleeve of his shirt again, he reached for the nearest handkerchief.
"Oh, my, you do sound terrible."
Startled, Arthur dropped the piece of fabric at the same time he sneezed -
All over his important papers.
Glowering, he looked up.
Merlin.
"What the blue blazes are you doing here?" he demanded. "Guards!"
"Oh, they went for a lunch break," Merlin informed him, picking up Arthur's handkerchief and passing it to him.
"Lunch break?"
He didn't give his personal guards lunch breaks. They organized shifts for a blasted reason.
And his sword was on the opposite side of the room.
Fantastic.
"I'm not going to kill you." Without asking for permission, Merlin dragged a chair from the table to Arthur's desk and sat in it. Ignoring Arthur's stare, he propped his feet up on the edge of the desk as though he didn't have a care in the world, crumpling several papers in the process.
"Well, that's just wonderful," Arthur retorted. "How did you escape?"
"The guards let me go."
If this trend kept up, Arthur was going to have the court physician check his hearing. "The guards let you go?"
At the cocky look Merlin was giving him, Arthur seethed before coughing into his sleeve.
He was going to have them all fired.
"Yep. Seems they've been all having problems with gout lately - you might want to look into proper ventilation in your dungeons, by the way - and after I helped heal them, they were more than happy to let me out in return."
"You healed them…of gout?"
Merlin snapped his fingers. "Like that."
"Like that."
"Like that," Merlin confirmed. "So…I was wondering - about that spare room?"
Arthur had had enough of this nonsense. "Absolutely not." After standing up, he crossed the room to retrieve his sword.
The whole while, Merlin didn't move an inch.
"Come on." With one hand, Arthur shoved Merlin's smelly boots off his desk. "It's back to the dungeons for you to await your execution." He pointed his blade at Merlin's throat.
Once again, Merlin did not give an iota of concern.
…
When Arthur personally fired all three guards, Merlin gave him a cheeky wave from his cell.
Arthur ignored him.
…
And that was that.
Arthur gave orders for a pyre to be built in the middle of the square.
…
When Merlin popped out of a doorway in the hallway, Arthur swore.
"So, Arthur-"
"It's King Arthur to you." He cast around a glance to see if anybody else was as concerned about this as he was.
"I just thought you should know that burning me isn't going to work."
"Oh, it isn't?" Keeping an eye on Merlin, he retrieved a handkerchief from his pocket and blew his nose into it.
Blasted cold.
"Nope," Merlin said cheerily. "Not a bit. I just thought you should know. Before you do it publicly and embarrass yourself."
"I'll keep it in mind," he snapped. "Who let you out this time?"
"The cook."
Arthur made a mental note to fire her - after finding a replacement, of course.
His head was starting to ache.
A cough was building up in his chest. When he cleared his throat, he could feel snot sliding down like an eel.
Sympathetically, Merlin patted him on the arm. "You've got a bad cold there. Want me to heal it for you?"
"Don't touch me, sorcerer. I'm getting rather sick of you."
"I see what you did there, sire. Rather clever of you."
Arthur glared.
"Back to the dungeons?" Merlin guessed.
…
Discreetly, Arthur ordered what little of the pyre had been already built to be disassembled.
After all, he figured a simple beheading would do. There was no need to make it a public spectacle.
…
Idly, Arthur lay in bed, his fingers laced over his chest, staring up at the ceiling as he listened to Gwen chat about her day.
"It was the funniest thing. Merlin told me-"
At the name, Arthur sat up and stared at her. "Merlin? Merlin - as in, that idiot who confessed to magic and keeps escaping?"
"Yes, that Merlin. He told me-"
"Since when have you been speaking to Merlin?"
"Since I delivered his meal to him this afternoon."
"Since when did you hand-deliver meals?"
"Since we've become friends. One of the guards told me Merlin's been rather lonely down there all by himself, so I thought-"
"Wonderful!" Even though his body felt sluggish, Arthur threw off the covers on his side of the bed and began throwing on his boots.
"Arthur?"
"I'll be right back," he said. "I've got to go throw someone back into his cell."
…
He found Merlin lounging in one of the castle hallways with Gwaine, of all people.
"Arthur, mate, I thought you were-"
"You!" he hissed, pointing his sword at Merlin.
"Hello."
"You've met Merlin, then?" Gwaine asked.
"I'm surprised the whole of Camelot hasn't met Merlin yet."
"Oh, I'm working on it," Merlin promised. "Give me a few days."
Arthur laughed.
Merlin was supposed to be dead in a few days.
"Hey, princess!" Gwaine hollered after them. "Don't be too hard on him. He healed Leon's broken collarbone and my sprained wrist and-"
(On the way back to the dungeons, Arthur stopped for a coughing fit, and Merlin politely waited for him, hands clasped behind his back.)
…
"And then Lady Eleanor-"
"Which Lady Eleanor? There are two of them."
"Oh, I haven't met the second one yet. The one with the blonde hair-"
"Both of them are blonde."
"I'm not sure then."
"Well, go on, anyway."
At the sound of Gwen's voice amid the throng of ladies, Arthur paused outside the room.
The person to whom she was talking was oddly familiar, but his head was foggy with a steady ache.
His pocket was crammed full of disgusting handkerchiefs that he hadn't had the opportunity to dump off on the nearest servant.
"Her husband was furious-"
"I can imagine," Gwen laughed.
"Gwen?" Arthur asked, poking his head inside.
In the middle of a stitch on some embroidery thing, Gwen looked up. "Oh, hello," she said as Arthur's gaze slid over the rest of the room's occupants.
A bunch of ladies, who stood to curtsy.
And, sitting with his legs crossed in the middle of them as though he didn't have anything better to do, Merlin.
He narrowed his eyes.
Merlin.
"Looks like my presence is required elsewhere," the sorcerer announced.
A general chorus of disappointment circled the room.
Merlin.
Gossiping with Gwen and her ladies-in-waiting.
After extracting himself from their clutches, Merlin walked past Arthur out the door.
On the way past, he asked, "How are you feeling, sire?"
Arthur swore.
When he sneezed, all of the ladies tittered.
…
Arthur was miserable.
His head constantly ached, he could barely find enough energy to drag himself out of bed to attend to his normal duties, and on top of that, Merlin was still alive.
He didn't understand how one person - one sorcerer - could be such a nuisance while being nice about it.
Camelot was practically cured of - well, cured of everything except his blasted cold.
As he walked through the hallways, he heard tales about how Merlin had practically destroyed illness and ill will (except Arthur's) throughout Camelot.
("If he's so brilliant, why don't they crown him?" Arthur complained to Gwen, who ignored him, the traitor that she was.)
Why would a sorcerer go out of his way to help them?
By all accounts, the whole castle should have been dead by then.
It just didn't make sense.
It also didn't make sense how the blasted idiot kept escaping, so Arthur found himself down in the dungeons, standing opposite Merlin's cell and staring at him as though that would press the secret from him.
Sourly, he noted that somehow, Merlin had acquired a small wooden table, a candle, a woolen knitted blanket, a steaming mug of something, and a book.
It was nice to know that his stay in the dungeons was no great hardship.
Through the bars, Merlin was playing cards with the guards.
"Did you need something?" he asked without looking up.
Nervously, the guards looked between Arthur and their prisoner.
Prisoner. Ha.
More like resident freeloader.
"Yes, actually." He needed Merlin to be dead.
Although the longer he found this going on, the less he felt like executing him, and that was an alarming concept for Arthur Pendragon, son of Uther Pendragon, the instigator of the Great Purge.
"Well, it's about time," Merlin declared, throwing down his cards.
"I beg your pardon?"
"I've been tired of listening to you sneezing, sneezing, coughing, and wheezing for days. It's about time you came to me. I'll have you up and running in a jiffy."
"No, you misunderstood me," Arthur tried to explain, but the guards were already unlocking the door to let Merlin out.
The sorcerer rubbed his hands together.
"I said no!" Arthur yelled.
Merlin paused.
The guards stopped.
Arthur sneezed.
With a little too much glee, Merlin whacked him on the back until the bit of congestion in his throat dislodged.
"Why?" Arthur demanded.
"Why what?"
"Why did you come here? There's got to be something you want. What is it? Revenge? Money? Power?"
"A spare room."
Arthur threw up his hands. "For the love of-"
"No, seriously," Merlin said. "I'm not here to kill you, I promise. I just want a roof over my head and a warm meal every now and then."
"But why?" Arthur couldn't understand. "You're supposed to kill me."
"Oh, the thought was tempting. You're somewhat rude, arrogant, and selfish. But I don't kill people even if they are the greatest prats to walk the earth."
Arthur wasn't going to give him the satisfaction of asking what a prat was.
"You practice magic."
"Arthur, if everyone who practiced magic tried to kill you, you would be dead right now. Have you ever stopped to consider that magic might not be as evil as you think it is, or did you just continue on with what your father told you to do because it's what you've always done?"
On any other day, Arthur would have had Merlin thrown right back into his cell and gotten the execution over with then and there..
Now, because of his headache, he was having trouble processing all of this.
Scarily enough, it made sense in his feverish state.
"You can lock me back upl, but I'm warning you, I'm just going to escape again."
It was a bit of a pain to keep dragging him back and locking it up.
"He held my rotten tooth," one of the guards offered. "Made it as good as new again."
Fantastic. The court physician was going to love being run out of business by one intentioned sorcerer.
Unless, of course, Arthur apprenticed him to Gaius…
The sorcerer - no, Merlin - didn't kill them.
People continued getting healed.
Arthur was rid of this serious cold.
It was a win-win situation.
At least, he thought it was.
(He was sure that he was going to wake up one morning when his head cleared and regret this.)
"If I start sprouting flowers out of my ears or turn into a toad, I will have you executed," Arthur threatened.
"Turning you into a toad would be redundant," Merlin informed him in a consulatory manner.
"Excuse you? I'm the king of Camelot, you-"
Merlin whacked him on the back.
…
"There is a sorcerer among us, my lord," the witchfinder announced with grandiose, "and that sorcerer is him." He pointed at Merlin, who was hovering somewhere nearby along the wall like he always did.
The court gasped.
Arthur yawned.
"My lord?"
Beside him, Gwen gave him a sharp elbow.
Right. Sighing, Arthur straightened. "Duly noted. You will be paid for your services. Next!"
But the witchfinder didn't move. "Aren't you going to execute him?" he demanded, gaze flicking between Merlin and Arthur.
"My wife - the queen - would be rather furious if I executed her best friend."
Gwen beamed.
"Besides," Arthur continued, "it would be foolish of me to do away with the court physician, don't you think?"
A murmur of agreement went around the room.
Very foolish, indeed.
The hunter's jaw twitched.
"I can fix that corn on your foot," Merlin offered, rubbing his hands together.
Without another word, the hunter whirled around on his heel and marched from the room.
…
Just as the witchfinder was about to swing up onto his horse, the call of a castle servant stopped him.
"Master witchfinder!"
Removing his foot from the stirrup, he turned. "Yes?" he snapped. "What is it?"
The servant bowed. "A message from His Majesty." She held out a piece of paper.
Glaring, the witchfinder snatched it from her hand and unfolded it as she scurried off.
Witchfinder -
You came to Camelot with the intention of destroying innocent lives with fire. If you ever attempt to threaten Merlin again, you will find yourself in the center of the flames.
You will also discover that the knights of Camelot are far less lenient than any sorcerer.
In disgust, he ripped the paper in half and threw it to the ground.
On the way out, his horse trampled it into the mud.
…
"Hey, Arthur, since you value my services so much, does this mean you're finally going to give me a raise?"
"Absolutely not."