A part of Arthur knew it was a dream, even as the now familiar scene began to take form. Clinging to that knowledge he fought to rouse himself from sleep. He was tired of this memory. Weary from the guilt and questions it stirred within.
The thin veil of awareness he attempted to secure himself in was torn away as boredom thrummed up every inch of Arthur's four-foot stature. Try as he might to focus on the history lecture, his eyes kept glazing over. The tantalizingly blue sky outside the high windows drew his attention far more effectively than any lesson. It would be a perfect day for sparring; instructor Bluegrass had praised Arthur's form just yesterday. The young prince had been doing shoulder strengthening exercises every evening, and he was handling the weight of a real sword nearly as well as he had his wooden training one!
Across from him, Morgana's foot swung out to dig sharply into his shin under the table. He hissed in protest, scowling at her.
She glanced significantly towards the door and Arthur turned, sitting up straighter as he saw the tall, imposing figure of his father.
"I hope I'm not interrupting," said Uther.
Tutor Havishim swept into a low bow, the front of his velvet brocade doublet stretching near to bursting over a portly stomach. "Not at all, your grace. We were just detailing the events of the Dark Days which lead to The Great Purge."
"Ah, yes. I had heard from Lady Morgana that it was to be your subject this week," mused the king."I wonder, Lord Havishim, if you'd begrudge an old man a moment to reflect on the matter?"
Arthur's tutor chuckled, sweeping out a magnanimous arm. "Your insights would be most valued, my King."
Uther linked his hands behind his pack, pacing thoughtfully along the length of Arthur and Morgana's shared work table. Unlike when his teacher had been speaking, the young prince waited with rapt attention. His father rarely had the time to involve himself in Arthur's formal education; this would be a rare opportunity to impress him.
"No doubt it is a difficult subject for ones so young. I would that we lived in a world where I could preserve your innocence for as long as possible. I fear doing so would only leave you vulnerable. In the days before the Great Purge, Magic ran rampant. It corrupted even the hearts of the pure, and innocent. Ignorance to the truth of its insidious nature left many defenseless to its influence. Magic is too great a temptation. Inevitably, it leads people to misuse it. To prevent its chaos ever from returning to our land we hunt anyone who would seek to wield it. We find them, and we execute them. There is no place in Camelot for those who would flout the laws which have kept us safe and made us strong."
The idea was an affront to Arthur's growing sense of justice. The more he thought of it the more confused he became.
"But how do you know?" He asked.
Uther paused, head tilting, "What do you mean?"
Arthur glanced at Morgana, who widened her eyes in warning. Arthur ignored her.
"You said we hunt them because people misuse magic, how do we know they will misuse it? We're just assuming they're bad people and that's not fair!"
His father's eyes flashed and Arthur shrunk back in his seat.
"That doesn't seem fair," the young prince amended, quietly. "Not to me."
Uther's mouth twisted wryly. "Not yet, but it will. I know it can be difficult to believe, you have seen little of the world. Within these castle walls you have been sheltered from the evils of those who would hurt you. This is wisdom that will come with time. For now, it doesn't need to make sense to you. As my heir, it will be your duty to uphold the law and protect the realm from any who would threaten peace. Questions of morality are decided by those wiser than you."
If there was a note of finality to Uther's explanation, Arthur did not hear it.
"But what about healers?" Arthur persisted. "Those people aren't dangerous! Why should I- why should we- kill them for helping people?"
"Sorcery is evil," Uther said coldly. "There is no fire that won't burn those who touch it. Any who do not desist from using magic are dangerous fugitives from the law. We are the law. Only decisive action will prevent a return to the Dark Days.
The King who had laid waste to the Old Ways studied his son's face for continued dissent. Finding none, his voice softened.
"Magic of any kind is dangerous, and above all it is deceitful. The help it appears to offer is a seductive masquerade, but it is only a trap. We are tasked with protecting our people by securing its elimination from these lands. You are still young. For now, you must trust me, and choose to believe that I know what is best. In time, I know you'll grow to be a young man I'm proud to call my heir."
Arthur nodded eagerly, young heart swelling at the thought. The lingering trepidation he felt paled in comparison to the longing for his father's approval. If Uther's acknowledgment was infrequent, that just made Arthur strive all the harder to achieve it. And, after all, his father would know best. He was the smartest person Arthur knew.
"I'll make you proud, father!"
"Good. Now then, carry the corpse," Uther said, gesturing behind Arthur.
There was a twinge of confusion as Arthur's conscious mind fought to the surface just long enough to register a single thought. This isn't what happens next.
"The corpse?"
"He's hanging from the hawthorn tree."
Turning to see where Uther had indicated, the world above stretched like it was being torn away.
The lecture hall was gone. He and his father now stood under a blood red sky, as far as the eye could see were fields of dead wheat. The stalks were so tall they came halfway up Arthur's young chest, dry husks hissing as he moved.
Arthur saw him then; a rope around his neck, body swaying as if in a non-existent breeze.
Back and forth, back and forth.
Watching the body shift, hypnotized by the motion, Arthur approached slowly. The corpse's eyes opened. Pupils milky white, Merlin raised his arms towards Arthur as if for an embrace.
"But father, he's alive." Arthur said, his youthful voice merely observant, emotions strangely detached.
"Kill him," Uther commanded.
Rising to the full height of a now powerful adult frame, Arthur moved to obey. Stepping up onto a stone pile brought the prince eye level to Merlin. The pale gaze was silent, pleading. Arthur looked away. He was afraid to not obey. And he was the child, and he was the man, and neither was himself.
Between one blink and the next the tree vanished. He and Merlin were standing now in shallow waters, the ruby sky reflecting up at him from a mirror calm surface. The water was so hot it felt close to scalding.
"Kill him!"
Another blink and Arthur was atop Merlin, straddling his chest, holding the manservant under. Merlin flailed, clawing at Arthur's forearms, bubbles of air erupting from his mouth. He fought with panicked strength.
Arthur was stronger.
Merlin bucked, flailed, twitched, and finally fell still. Muscles relaxing, pupils dilating, the young man's arms rose as his hands floated to the surface. A grisly mockery of the way he had held his arms out in supplication as he swung from the tree.
Arthur kept him under for so long the surface of the water stilled again, the only disruption the ripples of his own hard breaths. Blinking, he saw in his reflection a boy no more than eight summers old.
Through the transparent image of his own face, he could glimpse another child under his hands in the water. One with wild black hair drifting about a pale face and high cheekbones.
Hauling a young Merlin from the shallows he struggled to lift the waterlogged body into his arms, stumbling. Finally, he managed to get under the boy, lifting with his legs as he'd been taught, shifting it onto his back like he might during a childhood game.
In the distance, echoed a nearly forgotten lullaby his nursemaid used to sing to him.
When your father used to go to hunt,
with his shaft on his shoulder and his club in his hand,
he would call his speedy dogs,
"Giff, Gaff, catch, catch, fetch, fetch!",
he would kill a fish in a coracle,
as a lion kills an animal.
Uninterrupted water stretched as far as he could see in every direction. With no indication which way he should go, Arthur chose one and began wading; stumbling, searching for his father.
When your father used to go to the mountain,
he would bring back a roebuck, a wild pig, a stag,
a speckled grouse from the mountain,
a fish from the waterfall of Derwennydd
Whatever your father would hit with his spear,
whether wild pig or lynx or fox,
nothing that was without wings would escape.
"Forgive me," the corpse whispered, its cold lips moving against Arthur's ear.
Arthur paused, only mildly surprised that the dead could talk.
"Forgive you for what?"
The corpse sighed. And Arthur realized it was no longer his friend's body he was carrying; It was Morgana's. Her dead eyes regarded him solemnly, peering at him from a nest of ratted hair. "You're a good and loyal son, Arthur."
He blinked, and it was Uther's body he carried.
He started screaming. The ground disappeared under him and he couldn't swim, unseen hands in a vice grip around his ankles, pulling him down. Burning water poured down his throat as he clawed at his own clothes. The sound of fluttering wings, somehow clear in his ears, pulled his attention to the surface. Above him, his mother's face peered down. Her golden hair tumbled over one shoulder in a braid, eyes sad and gentle as she smiled.
She held out her hand to Arthur.
He awoke with a start, drenched in sweat. His own hand reaching up towards the ceiling above, stretching out to his mother to save him.
Gazing intently at the unfamiliar reflection in a small hand mirror, Merlin studied his own profile. Four thin red scars trailed down the left side of his face, tracing from his cheekbone to his jaw, and down the side of his neck. Faint to any other eye, the marred flesh was now the first thing he noticed when he looked at himself. And no matter how he rearranged his mess of black hair, it was impossible to hide that a large chunk of his upper left ear was simply gone.
Tugging on the dark strands in dissatisfaction, Merlin willed them to be longer. It seemed it was maybe time to grow his hair out.
Flexing his wrist to angle the mirror's surface down, the solemn young man contemplated five unfamiliar pitted scars sunk into the skin on his bare chest. His first day awake, as Gaius had assisted him with undressing for a bath, Merlin had explored each change to his body. The silent mental inventory ran up alongside numb acceptance. It wasn't the first time his body had borne the consequences of various adventures.
Nearly each mark paired with a memory from the duel. All except… these, positioned in a circle around where his weary heart once more beat behind his ribs.
There was a memory there, teasing, lingering delicately on the very edge of remembering. The tips of his fingers rested over the five small indentations, feeling the ghostly weight of a hand pressing over his chest, phantom nails burrowing into the flesh. And… no. Even the certainty of those details dropped away, tumbling like a lost coin into the depths of a well.
Frustration tightened his grip around the looking glass as his teeth ground together.A sense of unease persisted like the tired burn of a strained muscle. The Old Power demanded balance. It cared nothing for how, only that it was accomplished. Despite this law of life and death, he'd been unable to find evidence of anyone he knew suddenly meeting an untimely demise.
As Arthur is the Once and Future King so you are his sentinel. My sentinel. Éower widsiþ gewitan hæfde begunnon.
The unfamiliar words hadn't been a spell, like he'd first assumed. Or, if it was a spell, it was unlike anything Merlin had heard before.
"Your long watch has begun," He recited for the hundredth time, thinking aloud.
Gaius had provided him with the translation, eventually. Only after two days of Merlin impatiently allowing himself to be coddled.
Huffing out a breath, the young sorcerer set aside the mirror, staring forlornly at his clothes. The reluctance he felt to finish getting dressed could easily be explained by the profound lack of structure in his days. Daydreaming of getting time off was a thing of the past; now he was drowning in it.
No one had explicitly forbidden him from leaving the physician's quarters, yet the glimpses of guards still stationed outside the doors had so far been enough to keep him from making an attempt. The idea of boldly strolling down the hallway when he jumped like a startled rabbit at every knock on the door was laughable. Each echo of footsteps down the hallway was a set of guards coming to drag him to an executioner's block. Each time he looked out the window, he was convinced people were staring back.
The uncertainty of it all had reduced him to a nervous wreck.
If there was one thing he was good at, though, it was carrying on. And if what fueled him was stubbornness and desperation, if he woke up each night from nightmares that left him drenched in sweat, then he and Gaius didn't talk about it. Gwaine tried, when he was able to visit. It had taken Merlin threatening to curse him to get him to stop.
The weakness permeating each sinew and bone ebbed steadily. Recovery was helped along by every exercise Gaius bullied him into and each elixir the old goat coaxed down his throat. But his body remained frustratingly infirm. Still, working on his physical state had been a welcome distraction from the instability of what was sitting inside his chest.
It gave him something else to think about that wasn't Arthur.
Arthur, who he hadn't seen again in the two days since their fight.
His thoughts turned to what lay concealed inside his bedside had discovered it a few hours after he'd been dragged out of the lake; hidden in a pouch on his unconscious body.
Had Arthur…
He shook his head violently as if the movement could shake away the thoughts. No! He was done thinking of Arthur. It was useless wondering, waiting. There is no point.
Reaching for the rumpled heap of his clothes he angrily shook them out. The shirt he managed to put on without aid. When he lowered his head to slip on his pants, his infuriatingly enfeebled body toppled over, hitting the floorboards with a thump.
"Would you like some help?"
Twisting around on the ground, Merlin caught an upside-down glimpse of a dark curly-haired head peeking through the door into his room. Mordred. The knight looked solemn, his expression, as usual, too serious on his young face. "I volunteered to bring you dinner, from the kitchens. Gaius mentioned you were cleaning up, so I was waiting. Then I heard… Are you okay?"
Grunting in a non-committal way, Merlin flipped onto his stomach, untangling himself from the now twisted pant legs only with difficulty. The whole situation was utterly humiliating, and he felt heat rising in his cheeks.
Mordred had the grace not to crack a smile. Silently, he pulled Merlin back to his feet before assisting him with the uncooperative garments.
Once Merlin was presentable, the knight handed over the staff he'd been using to get around. Leaning heavily on it, he paused, assessing the man who had been born and raised a druid. Well, he thought, things can't exactly get worse. Why not?
"Mordred, what can you tell me of the Gods of the Old Religion?"
The knight quirked his head to one side. "I know a bit. The elders of my camp primarily followed the teachings of the Earth Mother, Nemaine. Why do you ask?"
"I think I've been having… visions. Or dreams or… I'm not sure."
Moving to the dinner table, the two made an awkward pair. Merlin had always felt uncomfortable around Mordred, even to the point of avoiding interactions with him. He was intensely aware of the role he himself had played in leading Camelot's men to the druid camp a young Mordred had been sheltered in. While unintentional, the outcome had been a slaughter.
This man had every reason to hate him. And despite his doe eyed appearance, Merlin never forgot he harbored immense power. It went against every instinct he had to confide in someone who had so much motivation to be his enemy. And yet, he found himself with nothing left to lose. Always so cautious, the uncharacteristic recklessness of it beckoned like a siren's song.
The offerings from the palace kitchens of salted pork with a side of bread and boiled potato were pushed to one side as he described what little he could remember of the place empty of all things but consciousness. He spoke of the magic which had summoned him back, and the scraps of the dream he'd been able to retrieve where he'd heard the same voice.
There will be a price.
Mordred drank it all in, nodding, occasionally asking questions. Merlin did his best to answer, even pulling up his tunic to show Mordred the unfamiliar scars.
Reaching out one hand, Mordred hesitated, "May I?"
Receiving Merlin's nod of assent, the knight's fingertips lightly touched his skin over each point. His eyes stretched wide. "You've been marked."
"You mean the scars?"
"No, nothing so literal. To be marked by a God or Goddess isn't something you can see with your eyes. It's like a brand, but on the soul. And you…" his eyes hummed with a soft flash of light, almost brief enough for Merlin to miss it.
"You carry the mark of the Triple Goddess. The brand burns so brightly that it's nearly blinding."
The hair rose along the nape of Merlin's neck. He knew precious little of the goddess, aside from the name of her last two priestesses. Both of whom he'd killed. He couldn't help remembering, too, that this last time he'd invoked her name before doing so.
He swallowed hard.
As for what she expected from him, or why she would send Freya to intercede on his behalf, he hadn't the faintest idea. "How can you tell?"
"We have the same eyes, Merlin. You and abilities have always set us apart. We look at the world in a way that makes others uncomfortable. We are not afraid to look, when others turn away. To see where others are blind."
That wasn't an answer. It wasn't a subtle dodge, either.
"Arthur doesn't realize it, but it's one reason why he keeps you with him– because you see in the dark places where he is afraid to look. Where he can't see. Arthur is a good man. There are things he can't, that he won't see, because he wants to believe the best of others. It's a strength, and it's also his blind spot. Perhaps that's why she named you a sentinel."
Discomforted by the shift in the conversation's direction, Merlin tried to parse out if Mordred was delivering a compliment or an insult. In a way, Merlin might have perversely prided himself and the transformation from naïve boy to secret world-weary bodyguard, morbidly happy with the calloused carapace which had grown around his once tender sensibilities.
He cleared his throat. "Do you know what it means to be marked?"
"I only know it means you need to be very careful. If the Goddess has taken notice of you, it will be for a reason."
Brows pulled low as he thought, Merlin nodded.
"Merlin, may I ask you something?" hedged Mordred.
Merlin's guard, which had lowered steadily as they'd talked, slammed back into place. "What is it?"
"I wasn't there, my patrol didn't get back in time to join Camelot's forces on the field. I was four days in the wrong direction. I've heard… stories. It's all anyone seems able to talk about, and I've heard at least a dozen different versions by now."
One corner of Mordred's mouth quivered in a reluctant smile. "One man swears on his mother's grave that at one point you grew tall as a giant and stomped so hard you cracked open the earth."
Merlin snorted, familiar with the imagination of ale-soaked soldiers.
The young knight's gaze dropped to his hands, a finger tracing the wood grain of the table. "I know the things Morgana did were terrible. You had no other choice, when you killed her. My only regret is that she never found her way out of the darkness and back to the light of the person who put her life at risk to save me as a child. I just…" His eyes flicked back up.
Seemingly unable to bring himself to say the words out loud, Merlin instead heard the question within his mind. "Did she suffer?"
Merlin's defenses melted, the tension in his shoulders relaxing. The knight before him was a long way from the injured boy hidden in Morgana's bedchamber. Still, he could understand what drove him to ask. To need to know.
The two of them were some of the very few people left in the world who would care about the pain of Morgana Pendragon.
"She…" his voice broke and he cleared his throat, mastering the brief surge of emotion. "She wasn't alone."
Both of them could hear what Merlin hadn't said.
Mordred stood, expression unreadable. "Thank you for your honesty. I should leave you to eat your meal."
Almost regretfully, Merlin watched the knight's back as he disappeared in the closing sliver of the open door. Rain began to strike the windows and he turned to see the skies open, drenching Camelot in a downpour as bleak as his mood.
Faintly from outside in the hallway, Merlin heard Mordred's voice, "Your majesty."
Gwaine tugged at the buckles and straps of his armor with unnecessary aggression, tossing each piece to the ground rather than hanging it neatly up as he ought to. He flicked sopping wet hair from his eyes, shaking out hands sore from clutching a sword through the icy rain which had poured down on the training field. The last several days had been full of even more grueling training sessions than their usual drills. To his eyes, at least, it had been obvious Arthur was channeling all his emotions into the fighting– one of the only outlets that he had. The emotionally stunted prick.
The cold water had sobered Gwaine up effectively, clearing the last of the wine fog from his mind. In its place he was left with a splitting headache, and raging thoughts.
He needed a drink.
"You should treat your equipment with more respect," scolded a disapproving Leon.
Spite raised its head in Gwaine's chest. He maintained eye contact with Leon as he flung his other gauntlet atop the pile, getting a satisfyingly loud clatter. "Respect? You want to talk about respect?"
Arthur, always quick to pick up on rising tensions between his men, stepped forward. Percival, Elyan, Bedivere, Kay, and another half dozen knights Gwaine couldn't care to remember the names of, pretended not to watch.
"Enough, both of you. We are all tired, cold, and hungry. There is time enough for quarreling once you have had a warm meal to cool your tempers."
The equipment room, just off the inner citadel's training field, was cold enough Gwaine saw visible steam rising from his king's body, blood still hot from the hours of relentless drills and exercises. The noble's clothes were as sodden and muddy as any of theirs. The sight only enraged Gwaine further.
As the last few hours had passed, he'd become increasingly frustrated with his King. Now that he didn't have a sword to channel that emotion into swinging violently at Arthur's head, that frustration spilled out of his mouth at the slightest invitation.
"It shouldn't still surprise me that your new favorite solution is to sit around and wait."
Percival shouldered his way over, looming. "Gwaine," he said, warningly.
Arthur stilled, turning his full attention on his snarling knight with the weight and authority of a mountain. "No, it's alright Percival. Do you have something you'd like to say to me, Gwaine?"
Shoving Percival aside, Gwaine squared up to Arthur. He bundled up all his feelings, all his accusations, packing them into a few words before hurling them at Arthur. "Merlin is your friend!"
The young manservant had been desolate the last few days, the light having drained from him. The memory ripped at him like barbs in his mind.
The knights around the room had dropped any pretense of cleaning up, and Arthur's eyes darted slightly to each side before his chin set in a hard edge. "My first duty is to the law, Gwaine. Truth is, though I have known him always, I hardly know him at all. You've spent years under this roof, within these halls. Can you say with any conviction that you know him? Or understand the desires that drive him?"
The rising aggression inside the enraged knight broke against a pillar of profound disbelief. Baffled, he squinted at Arthur.
"How much of an idiot can you be? Do you know what he said, when Gwen asked him what he wanted? He said 'to wield my power openly for the love of a Kingdom, for my belief in a brighter future, and for my devotion to the King who would lead us into a golden age of peace'."
Taking a step closer, Gwaine searched for anything recognizable in the leader he'd thought worthy of his life.
"Does that sound familiar?" He leaned in even closer, bristling with hostility, "That man you're so quick to doubt, he was the first. He may not have sworn the oaths we do as knights but he's been living them every day of his life. Not because he was forced to. Because he believes in you. Because he chose you."
Gwaine couldn't keep the disgust from curdling his voice. "If you've no gratitude, then have you no shame?"
The flinch in Arthur's face was nearly imperceptible, noticeable only to someone who had spent years alongside him. Gwaine could see his words hit home, noting the way his pupils contracted. The room was so quiet he could hear the water dripping from his fingertips to plop on the floor. He sucked in a shuddering breath.
"When I knelt before you, it was because I thought that you were noble and just; a good man. I decided then that my life would be well spent even if all I ever accomplished was to spend it in service to Arthur Pendragon. When I swore my oaths I did not kneel before a throne I knelt before you! You, Arthur, and the world I saw you were fighting for. Tell me now if that just world of yours is only reserved for a select chosen few. If it is, I want no part in it."
"Careful Gwaine, you're speaking treason in front of your King," said Arthur quietly.
For the first time Gwaine experienced true disappointment in Arthur, feeling like he was watching a childhood hero be exposed as a fraud.
"What a sad world it is, where when truth is spoken it's considered treason."
With that he stormed out, leaving only stunned silence behind him.
