Chapter Text
Merlin had always known there would be a reckoning for his lies; no secret between friends lasts forever, after all. He just hadn’t thought it would happen like this. In his deepest dreams, he’d imagined it as a righteous, glorious moment. Uther gone, Arthur’s heart already shifted and Merlin finally able to come clean, the loyal servant who had shouldered weight that shouldn’t have been his to bear for years, if only to make the life of his master a little easier. Sometimes, when he played the eventual reveal in his head, he told it as a joke, in some light-hearted, quippy bit that would make it all instantly okay. In other daydreams, Arthur had always known and loved him for what he’d done, but kept quiet for the sake of their friendship, patiently waiting for Merlin to come out of the metaphorical closet. Sometimes, the confession ended with a tight embrace that would stop the world, other times with a kiss that would shatter it. This was not like his daydreams.
An arrow came whistling from the crest of the hill, the only shot from a cowardly bandit who could barely work up the nerve to step from behind the oak and release his shot. Arthur was glorious in battle, all flashing steel and flopping golden hair. Merlin could have sworn the sun smiled down on him, bringing him strength instead of sweat. That was all it took - one brief moment caught in the breathlessness of Arthur’s glow - and everything he had ever dared pray for crumbled into dust. He should have seen the bandit, the shot, the arrow before it had even neared Arthur, should have been able to inconspicuously strike the man with a falling tree branch or even shout a warning. Instead, his eyes flashed gold and his hand raised, not to make some instinctual attempt at catching the arrow midflight, but to burn it to ash.
There are some moments in which time slows to an oozing flow and each detail becomes painfully clear in the kind of way that etches itself into your memory for all eternity. This was not one such moment. Instead, each miniscule second bled indeterminately into the next as Arthur turned white-knuckled to face his loyal servant and saw all of their time together flash by for what it was. Of course, there was no room in this particular moment for a reckoning and Arthur turned back to the foe at hand, dispatching him handily with a stab through the gut, becoming a whirl of sword and shield that no mortal man should dare stand against. One might have witnessed this from afar and thought that nothing was amiss, that one man had saved another’s life and that the look shared between them had been a mutual unspoken bond of gratefulness. But Merlin had seen the look in Arthur’s eyes, the sharp, aching glint of a deep betrayal, and he knew nothing would ever be alright again.
Time hadn’t yet slowed when they stood back to back, gasping for air in the center of a circle of corpses. It hadn’t slowed when Merlin dropped to his knees in front of the man who would become king, pleading wordlessly for the forgiveness and acceptance he had always imagined but barely dared hope for. It hadn’t slowed when Arthur dropped his chin and turned away, a bitterness creeping into every jerking edge of him as he walked away. His servant rose heavily, Atlas bearing the world in his hands, and followed him dutifully away, knowing he would rather walk to his death at the hands of Uther than betray Arthur one more time in fleeing. Time didn’t slow until they crossed the bridge into Camelot and the staccato of the horse’s drumming hooves beat to a halt. Then, the world snapped back tightly around Merlin, causing him to stumble in a moment of incoordination that under normal circumstances would have led to a miniature battle of wits.
They stood in the hallway a long time at the fork that would ordinarily send them crashing their separate ways: Arthur off to the throne room to report any news to his father and Merlin to Gaius’s chambers to confess the true story of the events that had transpired. It was Merlin who found the nerve to speak first.
“Arthur…” he murmured, and he started to say he was sorry, hoping that one word would tell the story of the devotion and loyalty and love that had led him to the lies, but Arthur cut him off.
“Go to your quarters, now.”
There was no friendly banter and no reassurances and no promises but no threats either and so Merlin mustered all the courage he could pull from the cold knot in his stomach. He turned away and stumbled his way back to his room in a daze, dreading with every second the goodbye he would have to make to his dear friend and mentor, Gaius, who would forever rue the day he sent Merlin off with Arthur on a trip to gather herbs that was supposed to be harmless addition to the Lady Morgana’s nightly sleeping draught.
On the other side of the castle, the side that was decorated with rich velvet banners and glistening trophies of war instead of leach tanks and dried leaves, Arthur stood shaking outside the solid doors of the throne room. Uther had told him magic was the ultimate power and that ultimate power always ultimately corrupts. Uther had told him his own mother had died because of a treacherous sorceress who only wanted to kill for the sake of it. Uther had taught him that those with magic were as snakes, carefully laced through the grass, lying in wait for you to forget your greaves or bend down to smell the flowers. Arthur was not such a young boy now that he believed everything told to him. He had seen the childish innocence of the young Druid boy, Mordred, and thought him worth saving. He had seen the sickening amount of men hung simply on suspicion of casting a small spell to warm themselves in the cold winters. He had also seen the way his father ordered Gaius, the former court sorcerer, to do acts that he knew could only be accomplished by magic but accepted the physician’s deflective explanations of some flower or another as the answers to his problems when it benefitted Uther. Arthur could sometimes be a bit thick, but he had seen all this and it was in conflict with what he had been told of magic.
But to him, it seemed as though Merlin had confirmed every nasty suspicion he’d ever had about magic. In his heart, Arthur knew the bottomless loyalty he had been given from his clumsy servant, but in his head, the voice of Uther hissed.
“He has ingratiated himself into the royal family, likely through magic. He swore himself yours and lied at every turn. Who knows how many threats to the Pendragons came from Merlin himself, part of some sick game to earn your trust and then shatter it into as many pieces as there are grains of sand? He deserves to hang.”
And so, Arthur Pendragon swallowed down his bright memories of Merlin, dressing him lovingly for a tournament and scrubbing his armor for hours afterwards, and he marched into the throne room, ready to sentence his friend and his Judas to death.
“Father. I have some news,” he said and he started at the beginning, with the simple expedition to pick herbs for Gaius and the Lady Morgana. He told his father of the bandits who ambushed them in the forest and whose armor bore no crests. And then, in a rush of breath, he told his father that he had almost died and that Merlin had saved him.
There was a second here, the smallest of seconds, in which Arthur could have turned back. Of course, Uther was curious as to how the scrawny and uncoordinated Merlin could have saved his bear of a son, but it could have been explained away easily as a stroke of luck or even an accidental rescue as it had before. His father would have believed that Merlin had tripped over a root and blocked the fateful arrow with his shield as he fell. Arthur was not still a naive boy but he was not yet the noble king he would become, and he tasted the bitter iron of betrayal on his tongue.
“With magic.”
There was again the briefest silence. Uther himself, a king of Camelot, had noticed the immense loyalty Merlin had for his son. He had, in lonely hours, been jealous of it, for he had never inspired it in others, and could not believe that a boy willing to drink poison or throw himself in front of a knife or save his son could possess that horrid corruptor - sorcery. But if it was true, and he believed his son, the servant must hang.
“There is only one thing to be done,” Uther said stiffly. “He has broken the sacred laws of Camelot and must die for his crimes at dawn.”
It was as if all air had been banished from Arthur’s lungs. He had allowed his temper to rule him and snuffed out the very moon itself. The betrayal he tasted on his tongue had been his own.
“Father, please,” he choked out. “Have mercy. He was only trying to save me and without him I would have surely died!”
“You know the law.” Cold. Harsh. Just?
Arthur had been an actor in this scene before. An innocent was sentenced to hang and he had played his part, the steadfast son to Morgana’s womanly hysterics for justice. He wanted dreadfully to switch roles, to weep on the floor and batter himself against his father’s chest, pleading for mercy not just for Merlin but for him and his mistake. His condemnation of the closest friend he would ever know, who had wanted only to save him. Instead, he gathered himself.
“I’m not asking you to let a sorcerer waltz free through Camelot. But I shall not let a man burn on my behalf,” Arthur said as calmly as he could manage. “Let me keep him, in the dungeons, of course. But please, let me keep him alive and I won’t ask anything of you ever again.”
He could see Uther’s will bending…
“He saved my life, it is because of his actions that I can stand before you now, asking for just this one thing. Please.”
It could have been because of fate, because Merlin still had that pesky destiny to fulfill. It could have been because Arthur reminded Uther of himself, both brave and terrified, hopeful and daring not to hope for anything. It could have been because only weeks ago, that servant boy had saved his life, talking Arthur down from patricide. It could have been anything or nothing, just a passing whim of mercy, but whatever it was, Uther nodded.
“I am not without a heart, Arthur. I will spare him,” Uther proclaimed. “But know this, he will never step foot from those cells an unbound man or I will have him killed on sight. He is your responsibility now.”
And with that, Uther waved his son lazily from the room, suddenly exhausted by the whole affair.