Hey! Here's another Merlin fic! Just a note, I am not an expert on sign language so some of this stuff will probably be inaccurate. On top of that, I'm acting like it was a communication system Merlin's mother came up with, but it's really just ASL. Remember, I don't own Merlin. I hope you enjoy!
Also, this is done with the utmost respect for the deaf community. I am not trying to offend anyone. If this is offensive, please just try to disregard it. I'm simply trying to give a very real struggle to a character I greatly appreciate.
Arthur was bored.
That was an understatement. Arthur was beyond bored.
Training was over for the day. He had attended the morning council meeting just as was expected. He had reviewed the new law on property ownership his father had given him, stating it was good practice for when he became king. He had eaten lunch and seen that the stables were properly cleaned, and the guest rooms prepared for Lady Helen's arrival later in the week.
Now, he was sitting idly at his desk while he gazed out the window, watching the people who would one day be his people go about their daily lives in the courtyard below. He watched as a mother toted her two young children towards the market, basket of bread in hand and determined look on her face, despite the clear whining from both children. Morgana's maidservant, Guinevere, hauled a bucket of water, fresh from the pump, across the sunlit cobblestones and into the castle. A stableboy slumped against the citadel wall and gorged on an apple, clearly ravenous from the morning's work.
Nothing new, nothing exciting. Arthur grumbled and slumped in his seat, indulging himself since no one was around to berate him on his posture.
The figure of an old man with long white hair and red robes caught his attention: Gaius, the court physician. It was odd for him to be out and about at the current hour unless he was delivering medicine but seeing as he had his medicine bag slung over his shoulder, that was probably the case.
What, or rather who, really caught his attention wasn't the physician, but the boy walking alongside him.
From what Arthur could tell, he was tall and thin, his limbs gangly and a bit disproportionate to the rest of his body. He had hair as black as coal. He couldn't be sure, but the boy looked to be a few years younger than himself, maybe sixteen or seventeen summers old. Despite Gaius' age, the boy was taking quick strides in order to keep up with him.
The prince had never seen him before. While that by no means meant he wasn't from the lower town, Arthur seriously doubted it. Why would he suddenly be following Gaius around when the old physician had never expressed interest in an apprentice before?
Gaius rummaged around in his bag as they approached the castle. After a few moments, he looked up and said something to the teen, his hands moving in peculiar motions as he did. The physician forced something into the boy's hands and gestured towards the castle. Immediately, the boy bounded up the stairs with all the energy of a puppy and disappeared within.
Gaius ran a tired hand down his face before following the boy, taking the stairs significantly slower than his companion.
Arthur raised an eyebrow. That was the strangest thing he'd seen all day. For whatever odd reason, the prince found himself wanting to see the boy again.
And he had the funniest feeling he was going to get his wish very soon.
0000
Arthur didn't see the boy again until two days later, on the training field.
He'd had a bad morning. His father had shouted at him in front of the entire council over writing what he deemed to be an inadequate speech for the celebration in two days' time.
Yes, he understood it was a landmark celebration commemorating twenty years since the eradication of sorcery from Camelot, but that didn't mean Arthur was any good at writing speeches. He was quite awful at it, really, despite his tutors' best efforts.
He was only working out his frustrations. Marcus was never in any true danger. Of course, he would have stopped throwing the knives if he had thought he was going to injure the man other than some bumps and bruises. He was upset, but he wasn't a monster.
But then the idiot had to go and drop the shield, sending the wooden disk rolling across the field. Arthur rolled his eyes and bit back a growl of anger. Just as he was about to bark at Marcus to go pick the bloody thing up and start again, the shield suddenly stopped in its movement much too soon with a quiet thump.
Arthur's head snapped up to see the shield pinned under a boot, a boot which was attached to a young man, a young man with gangly limbs and coal black hair.
The boy he had seen with Gaius only the day before.
Up close, Arthur could get a better look at him. He was just as tall as him with skin so white it was nearly translucent. His ears stuck out unnaturally under his raven locks, making him look a little stupid. The blue shirt combined with the red neckerchief and worn, brown leather jacket wasn't helping his cause, either.
Overall, he looked idiotic.
So, why the hell did Arthur find himself slightly endeared by the whole get-up?
"Hey," the boy said, "Come on. That's enough."
Arthur looked him up and down, smirking despite the thoughts swirling through his head. There was something off about the boy's voice.
"What?" Arthur demanded.
The boy matched his smirk. "You've had your fun, my friend."
Something was definitely off about the way he talked. It wasn't the accent exactly, though the accent wasn't one native to Camelot's regions. No, it was the way he formed his words. Not quite pronouncing some of them correctly, but correctly enough for someone to look past it or only question it for a moment.
Arthur couldn't look past it.
He was so caught up in his thoughts, he barely had time to process what the boy had even said to him. The prince strode towards the young man, lifting his chin into the air just enough to show everyone who had the authority in this exchange.
"Do I know you?" Merlin's gaze was planted on his lips. So, he was insubordinate and rude.
"Uh, I'm Merlin," the raven said, holding out his hand.
Arthur barely looked at the outstretched hand. As if he'd shake hands with a commoner like this Merlin. "So, I don't know you then?"
Merlin dropped his hand. "No."
"Yet, you called me 'friend'." A thrill of excitement had definitely not run down his spine at the term.
Merlin sucked in his lip like he was trying not to laugh, his eyes looking Arthur up and down.
Why did the simple action make Arthur want to blush? What the hell was wrong with him?
"That was my mistake."
"Yes, I think so."
Merlin shrugged. "I've never had a friend who could be such an ass."
Arthur was completely taken aback. Who did this peasant think he was talking to? He could have him executed with a single word! No one dared to speak to him in such a manner.
He scoffed, the only thing he could seem to retaliate with as Merlin began to walk away. "Or I one who could be so stupid."
Arthur had expected some sort of reaction. Anger, fear, hell he had expected Merlin to whirl around and take a swing at him. He had not expected Merlin to keep walking, displaying not a single emotion at the prince's words.
This greatly irritated the blonde. He would not be ignored by this treasonous peasant. He stepped forward and clamped down on the raven's shoulder.
He was met with wide, panicked, azure eyes. Arthur snuffed out the guilt he irrationally felt at startling Merlin. He had just insulted the bloody prince after all. He could have him executed for that. Why should he of all people feel guilty? He was the prince; he never did anything guilt worthy.
"Tell me, Merlin, do you know how to walk on your knees?" The phrase did its job. The blush that spread across Merlin's prominent cheekbones was well worth the innuendo.
Not that he had looked at his cheekbones.
Wait, why the bloody hell did he want to see Merlin blush? Gods, he needed a drink.
Once again, Merlin's eyes flicked to his lips. "Nope." There was the speaking thing again. His words just sounded off.
"Would you like me to help you?" Why did he say that?!
That cheeky grin was back in place. "I wouldn't, if I were you."
Arthur couldn't help but laugh. The thought of this gangly boy posing any sort of threat to him was too funny. The prince would be willing to bet he barely weighed 130 pounds soaking wet. "What're you going to do to me?"
"You have no idea," Merlin breathed like he was sharing a private joke with himself.
Arthur grinned, stepping back and throwing his arms open. "Be my guest." When Merlin made no move to come any closer, Arthur decided to try and get a rise out of him. "Come on. Come on." He leaned forward mockingly. "Come on."
Ah, so there was the punch he'd expected the other boy to take. It was sudden yet expected. Merlin was by no means strong, and his form was absolutely dreadful, but with the amount of force he put behind the swing, it would have done some damage had Arthur's training not kicked in. He caught Merlin's wrist and twisted it behind the raven's back in one swift motion, effectively pinning Merlin.
"I'll have you put in jail for that," Arthur growled beside his ear. Irrational anger curled in his stomach. He didn't care who this boy was or where he had come from; no one attempted assault on royalty and got away with it.
Merlin once again had no reaction to the sentence that would have most men quaking in their boots aside from the slight grunt of discomfort from their current position. If Arthur hadn't been directly next to Merlin's ear, he would have thought he hadn't heard him. Either he was the stupidest man he'd ever met or the bravest.
Something told the prince it was a bit of both.
Merlin turned his head. "Who do you think you are? The king?"
"No. I'm his son, Arthur."
The blonde shoved Merlin in the direction of two guards who had wandered over during the commotion. The boy stumbled and would have faceplanted had the guards not grabbed him and not-too-kindly began to drag him away.
Arthur whirled around, dozens of emotions bubbling in him like a cauldron about to overflow. Most were ones he didn't understand or refused to, but one he knew like an old friend.
"What're you all looking at? Stop standing around like buffoons and do something!" He roared at the gawking knights.
Anger. He could deal with anger.
0000
Two days later, he was still fuming.
If it had only been that one encounter, Arthur could have gotten over it. He could have written it off as some arrogant peasant not yet knowing his place, and Arthur was more than happy to put him in it.
But no. Only the next day did Arthur run into the unruly man yet again, this time in the market. They had experienced much of the same encounter, insults and threats flying on both ends. Arthur had to give it to him. For such a skinny boy, Merlin had guts.
Once again, however, Arthur had seen the same odd behavior on the raven's part. His speaking, his clumsiness that was beyond clumsy, and the way Merlin seemed to ignore people if his back was turned to them.
Arthur had certainly learned he was rude.
The meeting ended in a mace fight between the two men, a fight which Arthur had almost lost, much to his great horror. If it hadn't been for Merlin getting distracted by Gaius in the crowd, he would have.
Now, Arthur was expected to sit at the banquet and act like the man he was fuming at wasn't standing in the doorway right beside the head table.
He barely registered his father giving his speech. It was the same speech he gave about sorcery every other day: how it was evil and needed to be eradicated from their lands at all costs. Even Arthur was getting sick of hearing it.
The prince was more invested in the exchange going on between Merlin and Gaius, though. Out of the corner of his eye, he could see the physician motioning to Merlin in the same manner he had seen through his chamber window that very first day. Merlin was watching the old man's hand intently, while Gaius watched Uther.
The guests' sudden clapping startled Arthur, and he barely managed to keep himself from jumping as Lady Helen took the stage in front of them. Her voice was elegant and powerful, the foreign tongue sweeping over the crowd like a wave. Arthur shivered.
The words filtered into his ears, resonating in his mind and making him tired. The slow melody was a perfect pitch to lull him to sleep, almost like the lullabies he vaguely remembered his nannies singing to him when he was a small child. His eyes sluggishly searched the room and found guests all around slumping to the table, eyes closed. Even as his eyelids fell to half-mast, Arthur managed to gaze over at Merlin, finding the raven completely fine, shaking a slumbering Gaius in panic and gazing around the room with fear-filled eyes. Arthur didn't have the energy to wonder why he wasn't affected. He barely had the energy to feel bad for the clearly distraught boy.
A voice was screaming in his mind that something wasn't right, that this was a trick, a spell and Lady Helen was a sorceress. Somewhere he knew if he fell asleep, there was a good chance he wouldn't wake up again.
He promptly told the voice to shut up. He was tired.
The world went dark.
0000
When Arthur came back to consciousness, it was covered in cobwebs. He could feel his father stirring next to him and quickly surveyed that the rest of the guest were also just now waking up. His father shot from his chair at the sight of Lady Helen, or the sorceress who was supposed to be Lady Helen, pinned under a fallen chandelier. Arthur hastily followed suit.
The prince watched as the old witch shifted beneath the chandelier. He thought she was trying to crawl away in a last pitiful attempt to escape her imminent sentence or something equally plausible. However, with a final surge of energy, she shot up from beneath her metal prison, an object glinting like steel flying through the air.
Too late Arthur realized it was a dagger.
He knew he would die. Everyone died eventually. And he, more than most, was likely to die at a young age. Leading armies of knights straight into battle and fighting with his men on the frontlines greatly lowered his life expectancy. Couple that with the constant threat of assassination, Arthur had always known he was going to die much sooner than most people.
He, of course, had not awoken that morning expecting it to be at the banquet, his goblet of wine only half drank and the chicken on his plate barely touched.
His mind froze. He wasn't scared, princes didn't get scared. He was a knight, too, which meant if he died, he would die knowing he had fought hard to protect his people in life. He would open whatever he faced in the veil with open arms.
He expected pain. He expected an excruciating knife wound in the middle of his chest, blood gushing down, and air leaving his lungs.
Air did leave his lungs, but it wasn't from blood flooding into them. It was from the blur of red and blue that had just tackled him to the ground.
Arthur laid there for a moment on the cold, stone floor, watching as the dagger that was supposed to be in his chest, embedded itself in the back of the chair he had been sitting in only moments ago.
Merlin scrambled up at the same time as Arthur. The entire banquet hall was silent, everyone watching to see what their king would do next. Merlin watched Uther approach, and Arthur could see the fear plain as day in the raven's azure eyes. He almost felt bad for him.
The king waved for two guards to collect the now dead sorceress' body. Still, the hall remained silent as if they were all holding a collective breath. Uther looked Merlin up and down.
"You saved my boy's life. A debt must be repaid," Uther said, a look of shock on his face. He must have made the same deductions Arthur had upon their first meeting: Merlin was as skinny as a rail. Yet, he had somehow managed to tackle the prince to the ground just seconds before he would have been mortally wounded.
Arthur thought they hated each other. Merlin was the last person Arthur had expected to save his life.
That's when a huge question made itself known. Arthur narrowed his eyes in suspicion at the younger boy. "Hang on a moment. How were you aware enough to tackle me in the first place? Last I saw before I fell asleep, you were the only person still fully conscious."
Uther raised an eyebrow, his face falling into one of identical suspicion as his son's. Merlin's eyes flicked between the two, not meeting either royal's eyes. He took a visible step backward.
Uther matched him with a step forward. Now his face wasn't just suspicious, it was accusatory. "Perhaps you were working with the sorceress all along," he said darkly. Merlin twisted the bottom of his shirt around in his hands nervously. His eyes were dutifully trained down from the king's eyes, but he looked on the verge of tears.
"I-I," he began to say, his pale hands shaking as they moved over the fabric.
Uther's face lit with rage, and he took another menacing step forward. Arthur thought about stopping his father, he had no idea why he had the urge when this awful boy was so clearly guilty, but he knew it would do neither of them any good.
A hand suddenly appeared on Merlin's shoulder, rooting him to his spot. The raven's head snapped up. Gaius ignored him and gazed at the king.
"Sire, if I may, Merlin is not guilty here."
The king turned towards one of his knights, murmuring something to the man. Soon, the soldier began to clear the hall out until no one was left but Uther, Arthur, Merlin, and Gaius. Even Morgana had been ushered out. The king turned back to his old friend.
Uther looked at the physician apprehensively. "And how would you know this, Gaius? The boy's circumstances are suspicious, you must admit."
"Yes, sire, but I know Merlin firsthand. He's my nephew and has come to live with me in hopes of training as my apprentice."
"That does not prove his innocence."
"Yet, I can explain. Merlin did not succumb to the sleeping spell not because he was consorting with the sorceress, but because he simply did not hear it. Merlin is deaf, sire."
Well, if that revelation didn't smack Arthur in the face. All the strange behaviors he had seen from the raven in the last two days began to make sense. He wasn't being rude by not answering when his back was turned to a person, he simply didn't even know he had been spoken to. The strange way his words were formed was because he couldn't hear himself talk to know if he was saying them completely correct. The overabundance of clumsiness was because he was so focused on his surroundings that he missed things directly in his path.
And didn't Arthur now feel like an absolute ass. All the assumptions he had made about the boy had been completely wrong. Of course, the raven still had a wicked tongue and was still rude beyond belief, but Arthur was willing to admit to himself that he had judged Merlin before he knew the entire story.
"Ah, thank God. I thought you were deaf as well as dumb." His own words from the market played through his head. Something that felt questionably like guilt began to fill Arthur. He realized now Merlin hadn't heard them seeing as his back had been turned to him at the time, but the fact that he had even said it didn't help to squash the absolute shitty way Arthur was feeling about himself.
Something still wasn't making sense. "How is it Merlin's able to speak then? And hold a normal conversation? It's not like he can hear us talk."
A faint smile tugged at Gaius' lips. "Merlin wasn't always deaf, sire. He learned to speak when he could still hear, so he doesn't struggle as much as he would, had he been born accordingly. As for following a conversation, you might have noticed Merlin hardly ever looks anyone in the eye while speaking. This is because he has learned over the years to recognize the shape people's lips make when speaking and follow a conversation just as you or I."
Arthur really wanted to finish his wine.
Merlin waved at Gaius. He pointed to his chin with his index finger and moved it outwards, gestured towards Arthur and his father, and then made a few circles in the air around each other with his index fingers. Gaius nodded along like he understood what Merlin meant.
"Merlin says to tell you about his signs. When Merlin was small, his mother made up a whole new language for him using only hand motions so Merlin could communicate with her easily. I have learned it as well and it is quite useful, especially when Merlin cannot see the person actively speaking or he is simply too tired to speak."
Arthur glanced at his father. The man's face was impassive. How, Arthur didn't know. He was sure his own face conveyed a dozen wild emotions he was desperately trying to get a rein on.
Finally, Uther spoke. "No matter. For your deed, you shall be rewarded."
"No, honestly, you don't have to, your highness," Merlin murmured softly. Arthur tried to kill the butterflies he felt at the sight of the fine blush dusting Merlin's cheeks.
"No, absolutely. This merits something quite special."
Merlin shrugged shyly. "Well…"
"You shall be awarded a position in the royal household." He clapped Arthur on the back. "You shall be Prince Arthur's manservant."
Arthur glanced at Merlin's shocked face. He needed that bloody wine.
This was originally supposed to be a one shot, but it was too long, so I broke it up. The next part should be out soon!
