A/N: Okay so this chapter is a day earlier than I said it would be for two reasons. 1) I have no chill and even less patience and who was I kidding when I said once a week? I am not capable. And 2) my google doc somehow glitched out and managed to lose 2k of my work yesterday and I am now really disheartened and my morale is shot. So I really need a boost to get me past my frustration and writing again cuz I haven't written a word in a day and a half and that's not cool. =(
Mordred, Cecily, and Raime were indeed waiting for Merlin in the stables when he arrived, just as Arthur had predicted. Raime was busily trying to stuff four days' worth of food into a pack only fit for two, while Mordred and Cecily brushed down their steeds and chatted. They all looked up when he came in the door, smiling innocently as if they weren't taking great pleasure in the fact that he'd just been as thoroughly chastised by Arthur as he had been by Ellison three days previous.
Merlin dismissed the castle guard who had insisted on escorting him all the way to the stables despite knowing full well that Merlin had practically lived in there for eleven years' time. He was one of the few who still did so, claiming now that he was looking out for the Carthisian King's safety rather than keeping on an eye on the dangerous sorcerer invading his kingdom and making sure he didn't run amok.
Luckily, the majority of the more antagonistic guards and knights had lost their fervor when Sir Bruin, the knight who had drawn his sword on Merlin and only not been executed for it due to his target's merciful impulses, had been assigned to duty in the farthest reaches of the farthest outposts of Camelot. The dissenters were reduced to passive aggression now, which was unsurprisingly ineffective. This one left with little fuss, only a hard backward glance.
"So are we going to Ealdor?" Mordred asked.
"We are," Merlin confirmed. "But you're not."
"What?" Mordred cried.
"Arthur has requested that you be available to carry information back and forth between him and Ellison during his summit meeting. It's a very important task that I would entrust to no other," Merlin said.
Mordred scowled at him, seeing straight through his attempt to make it seem like some magnanimous gesture instead of the glorified errand-running it was.
"It's alright, Mordred," Cecily said, putting a comforting hand on his arm. "It's not like Ealdor's going to be thrilling or anything. You've probably got the more exciting job."
"I bet he was just looking forward to seeing Merlin get scolded by his mum," Raime said, taking a hunk of cheese out of the bag to make room for the two loafs of bread he hadn't managed to fit in there yet.
"Well, he won't get to," Merlin said, taking the bag out of Raime's hand. He got everything packed in properly and handed it back. "Raime, run back to Gaius real quick and see if he finished that letter he wanted to write my mother. He hasn't seen her in longer than I have and I know he wanted to get back in touch.
Raime nodded, strapped the bag onto Llamrei, and headed for the stable doors. He stopped before he reached them and looked back, suddenly sheepish.
"I don't actually remember where Gaius's chambers are," he admitted.
"I do," Cecily said with a sigh. "Come on then." She dragged him out by the arm, her long braid swinging behind her.
Merlin turned to see Mordred staring after her with a smile on his face that probably qualified as dopey. Merlin had to smother a laugh in his hand and resisted the urge to snap his fingers in front of Mordred's face to wake him up from his love-struck daze. He turned his attention to Llamrei and waited for him to come out of it on his own.
"Merlin?"
"Yes?"
"I wanted to—well, I was wondering if—I just—"
Merlin turned to look at Mordred curiously, not used to hearing the assured young knight so uncertain. Mordred had a blush on his cheeks.
"I just wondered…what you thought I should do…about Cecily," he finally managed.
Merlin raised an eyebrow. "Do about her?"
"I mean, I really like her," Mordred admitted in an embarrassed rush. "But I don't know what to do about that."
Merlin chuckled. He turned back to Llamrei, checking over her tack with the efficiency of years of practice. "Mordred, if you're looking for advice on how to court a girl, then I'm afraid that you have come to the wrong man."
Mordred came up alongside him, frowning lightly. "What do you mean?"
"I mean that I have just as little as experience with women as you do, if not less," Merlin said with a sigh.
"Really?" Mordred said, sounding gratifyingly surprised.
Merlin shrugged. "I never had the time. Arthur was always my first priority. I focused all of my time and energy on keeping him safe. There was no room for anything else."
"There's really never been anyone?" Mordred asked. "But you're—!" He gestured expansively at Merlin's person.
Merlin had to smile at that. "Thanks, I guess. For whatever that means. But if you're referring to the kingship, then it's rather new. And the Dragonlord-and-powerful-warlock bit was sort of secret, and one that I worked very hard to keep that way. Even before I came to Camelot, I could never bear the thought of lying about it to someone I was supposed to be intimate with. Relationships are built on trust, and I couldn't afford to offer anyone mine."
"Did you never want to?"
"Sometimes," Merlin admitted, turning to lean his shoulder against Llamrei's flank, soaking up her solid warmth. "But they wouldn't have understood me, you know? No one in Camelot could truly understand, even if I did confide in them about the magic. It wasn't until—"
Merlin stopped, a pain long-buried rearing its head making his heart clench in his chest. He swallowed hard against the feeling.
"Until what?" Mordred asked, his voice hushed and rapt.
"Until whom, you should say," Merlin said with a small smile that pulled at his cheeks rather reluctantly. "There was one girl. A druid girl who'd been captured by a bounty hunter, brought before Uther to be sold and executed. Even chained up in a cage, dressed in rags and covered in dirt, she was still the most beautiful thing I'd ever seen. I rescued her, hid her away in the tunnels beneath the outer walls, and swore that I would keep her safe.
"I was nineteen years old, twenty maybe," he told Mordred. "At that age when you're just so certain that no one else has ever felt the way you do. But then Freya said that she was a monster, and I looked at her and I thought 'yes, I've felt that way too.' And suddenly there was someone who knew me better than anyone, someone who really understood. I could be myself around her more than anyone else. I didn't have to hide anything. She knew all of my deepest secrets and she still looked at me like I was a hero, like my magic was something special and beautiful."
Merlin shook his head. "She was so afraid though," he mused, more to himself than to Mordred. "Of herself more than anything. When she said she was a monster, I thought she meant that her magic made her a monster, like I sometimes thought mine made me. It never occurred to me that she might mean it more literally than I did."
"Literally?"
Merlin looked up, startled; he'd almost forgotten that Mordred was there with him. Mordred's eyes were wide and wet, unbearably sympathetic, as if he already knew how this story was going to end. And of course, he did, considering Freya wasn't still at Merlin's side. Merlin faltered, unsure if he could bring himself to actually say the words. It had been so long since he had thought of Freya and all the pain that came with her memory, and he had never shared the full story with anyone before, not even with Gaius.
But he couldn't stop now that he'd started. He couldn't let the ache in his chest and the hollow in his stomach settle there or he would never be free of the grief he had never truly allowed himself to feel. Even just acknowledging it now was like leeching poison from a snakebite.
"She was cursed," Merlin said. He looked away from Mordred's gaze, still stinging at the unfairness of it all, at the darkness such an innocent soul had been forced to carry. "A bastet."
Mordred's gasp of horror told Merlin he needn't explain any further.
"There were six people dead already, but I didn't make the connection until later. She tried to flee the city on her own, but without my help she didn't even make it to the gate before she got cornered by Arthur and his men."
"Oh Merlin," Mordred sighed, the pity in his tone almost overwhelming.
"And, you know, I can't even blame Arthur for it," Merlin said with a laugh that came out much bleaker than he'd intended. "Especially not now, when I know exactly how far I would go to protect my own people. Freya was dangerous. Even if she didn't want to hurt anyone, it didn't matter because she wasn't in control of herself. I can't blame him for eliminating a threat like that."
"I don't think I could ever be as forgiving as you are, Merlin," Mordred said, shaking his head sadly. "If it were Cecily…"
"It's alright," Merlin said, moving on to Raime's horse to check it was saddled properly. "Like I said: it's not like I had time for romance anyway. And I only knew her for a few days."
"That doesn't mean you didn't love her."
Merlin's busy hands slowed and stopped. He sighed.
"No, it doesn't. I loved her from the first time I saw her. And I haven't looked at another woman since the day I lost her."
Mordred was quiet for a long time. Merlin finished checking over Raime's horse and moved on to Cecily's. When he was finished with that, he cast around for something else to do and found Arthur's gelding in his stall. Hengroen whickered when he approached, straining his neck to reach him. Merlin patted his nose fondly. Hengroen's coat was smooth and sleek under his hand, the thick muscle of the horse's neck bunching and releasing as he moved.
It wasn't so different from the bastet's fur, warm and soft in that moment before Freya had returned to her human form, wounded and dying.
"Do you love Cecily?" Merlin asked, his quiet voice loud in the tranquil atmosphere of the stables.
"I don't know," Mordred said, incredibly vulnerable in his honesty. "But I know that her laugh is my favorite sound in the world. And that when she smiles I can't help but smile back. I know that I've never felt this way before, and I never want it to stop."
"Does she make you happy?"
Mordred didn't need to think about it. He simply smiled and said, "More than anything."
Merlin smiled back. "Then tell her. Don't wait. You never know how long you'll have with her."
"Have what with who now?"
The loud voice made the both of them jump as Raime came around the corner into the stalls, looking curious. Mordred stuttered, trying to think of a sound cover-up. Merlin just said, "None of your business, you nosy thing. What have I told you about eavesdropping?"
"You've never told me anything about eavesdropping!" Raime said indignantly. "And what about all the eavesdropping you did as a servant? It saved Camelot plenty of times!"
Merlin ruffled Raime's hair vigorously, making the boy squawk in protest and bat at his hands. "You're not gonna save Camelot or Carthis by eavesdropping on me. Keep your ears to yourself, little one."
"Not little…" Raime muttered darkly, trying to stand taller without making it obvious.
"If you're still shorter than me, then you are still undeniably little," Cecily said as she breezed past. Raime scrunched up his nose and stuck out his tongue at her back.
"Mordred," Merlin said, ignoring Raime proving how young he really was. "Arthur's on the training grounds. He said you could meet him there."
"Alright," he said.
Mordred's hand fluttered toward Cecily's as if he was going to take it, but it fell back to his side. The two of them smiled at each other instead, small and private. Then Cecily darted forward to press a kiss to Mordred's cheek before hastily turning back to her saddlebags. Mordred stood for a moment, stunned, until Merlin nudged him in the back. He left with a blush firmly on his cheeks and Merlin smiling after him fondly.
She plucked a daisy from the ground and added it to her ever-growing pile, already a hand's width high by her knee. Another flower came soaring over her shoulder, missing the pile by several inches, and she turned to give Mordred a disapproving look. He smiled at her—that big, unrestrained smile that always made her feel warm inside—and held out another flower, blue this time and definitely not a daisy.
"You can't have one of those in a daisy chain, silly," she said. "It wouldn't be a daisy chain anymore." She took it from him anyway.
"I know," he said, sitting down close beside her, careful not to knock over the flower pile. "But it's pretty anyway. You can wear that one in your hair until you're done with the daisy chain, can't you?"
"I suppose I could," she said, trying not to smile. She sniffed at the flower, the petals soft against her nose. It was her favorite smell, but then Mordred knew that. He knew lots of little things about her, all the perfect ways to cheer her up if she needed it. Not that she needed it now; it was hard to be anything but happy when Mordred was leaning his shoulder against hers.
"Here," he said. He tugged the bloom from her hand and threaded the short stem into the hair behind her ear instead, fussing about until he was certain it would stay there. Then he sat back and beamed at her. "Lovely!"
She ducked her head to hide the growing pinkness in her cheeks.
"You can help, if you want," she said quickly, pushing half the pile of daisies toward him. "I bet you could even spell them to weave themselves together if you wanted to!"
"I don't know any spells for daisy-chain-making. And besides, where would be the fun in that?" Mordred asked, beginning to knot the stems together the way she showed him. "Flower crowns always turn out better when you make them by hand."
"But what's the point of having magic if you don't use it?" she said.
"You can't use magic for everything, you know."
"Well, you could," she insisted. "Only, the elders won't let you."
"There are rules to how we use magic," Mordred said, putting down his flowers to look at her intently. She didn't meet his gaze, focusing on knotting her flowers together, the stems fraying under her fingers as she twisted them too tightly. "It's a sacred gift and there is a right way to use it and a wrong way."
"And who's to say what's right and what's wrong?" she burst out. "Why shouldn't we get to decide that for ourselves?"
"The elders are—"
"The elders are ancient and going batty, that's what they are!"
Mordred sighed. He reached out to take her hands, carefully prizing them open to rescue the poor strangled flowers from her hold. "You know I don't like fighting with you," he said softly, fingering a ripped petal.
"I'm sorry," she said, her indignation doused by the sad, almost disappointed look on Mordred's face. "I don't want to fight either. I shouldn't have shouted."
Mordred tossed aside the ruined chain and picked up a new daisy. "Here," he said, a grin creeping onto his face once more. "We can start another."
"It'll be even longer than the last!" she said, relief flooding through her that Mordred wasn't angry with her.
He scooted closer and put his arm around her shoulder, hugging her tightly. She turned into the embrace so that she could wrap her arms around his waist.
"The longest we've ever made," he promised. "It'll go on forever and forever."
"Just like we will," she whispered. She pulled back to look at him but she didn't let go where she'd fisted her hands into his shirt. "Right? You and me. We'll be together forever, won't we?"
"Don't be silly," Mordred said, beaming. "Of course we will, Kara."
