48Title: These Are Our Lives
Fandom: Merlin
Rating: K
Pairings/Characters: Merlin and Arthur.
Spoilers: None.
Warnings: None.
Disclaimer: If you're looking for the owners of Merlin in this corner, I'll tell ya right now: go fish.
Summary: The most powerful sorcerer in the world living in the shadows as a servant? Arthur wants to know why.
AN: This story has been sitting in my folder for a while now, I just now managed to finish it. Enjoy!
Chapter Nine: First Impressions
It was not quite Merlin's worst nightmare, but close. As he was marched to the dungeons, he replayed Arthur's shocked and betrayed look over and over again, torturing himself with the fact that he had waited too long, the end of their friendship was irrevocably here. He felt ill with the thought that they were probably already building up the wood in the courtyard. He wondered if, should anyone come to rescue him, would he have the heart to go with them? His whole life, his whole future, had been based around Camelot, around Arthur, and it was over now.
He told himself not to be so dramatic, that he had a life outside all of that, but the depressing fact was, he couldn't quite think what that life was.
"Why?"
Merlin jumped at the intrusion. Arthur was standing before him, mostly hidden behind the bars and the darkness of the dungeons. Merlin could not tell what he was thinking.
"Why what?"
"Why everything. Why did you study magic? Why did you even come here? Why am I not dead? Why are you my friend? Just . . . why?"
Merlin gulped; this was it. Don't you mess this up, Merlin. You've been rehearsing these lines for five years now. "I didn't choose to have magic," he said quietly. "I was born this way. I decided to actually study and learn spells because I was uncontrolled, wild. It would have gotten me killed if I hadn't learned to hone it." Of course, now it's going to get me killed anyway, he thought, but didn't speak that out loud.
Arthur said nothing, just raised an eyebrow. Merlin took that as a sign to continue. "I came to Camelot because . . ." I can't tell him about Gaius! Uhhh . . . ". . . as an incentive to control myself?" It definitely came out as a question and Arthur's lip curled. "I guess it worked, sort of." Obviously not.
"But you have control now," the king pointed out, "and yet you stayed. Why?"
This was definitely personal territory. "I didn't want to, at first. But then, well, I don't really know quite what happened," Merlin admitted. "When I first came to Camelot, I was told that it was my destiny to protect you on your way to becoming king, that together we would bring magic back to the kingdom. Well, you remember what our relationship was; you can imagine my reaction. But the more time I spent with you, the more I realized that maybe it wasn't so impossible." He laughed a little. "At least, not impossible in the way I thought it would be. You may have been an arrogant clotpole, but there was so much more to you, so much potential that I had missed. So much of you that I had passed over."
Merlin sighed and gripped the bars a little tighter. "I came to Camelot for a host of reasons, most of which weren't that good or defendable, but I stayed because of you. Because you were good, and I thought that you were a man who deserved my loyalty, someone who deserved every service I could render him, no matter how mediocre."
For a long time, Arthur didn't say anything, just watched the warlock with his head to one side, brows drawn together. Finally, he said, somewhat sarcastically, "All for me?"
Merlin blinked and straightened his shoulders. "Don't get a big head; there was Gwen and Gaius as well."
Arthur smirked. "And the fact Gaius was teaching you magic?"
"I don't know-" Merlin said immediately, but Arthur broke in with: "Gaius already told me."
The warlock sighed, muttering. "I'll take it as a good sign that he hasn't been dragged down here as well."
Arthur looked affronted. "Merlin, Gaius has been a good and faithful servant for years now, and he's an old man. I've given him a stern warning not to leave the city until we have this straightened out, but I'm not going to throw him in the dungeons."
"And me?" Merlin asked quietly, his heart seeming to prickle uncomfortably at the king's words. "Have I not been your servant?"
"You have, and a better friend I could not have asked for, but the law is the law, Merlin. I cannot set it aside because I want to. We will go about this in a right and proper manner, and when I say right, I mean you can set any fears of being burned at the stake aside. I know you well-though perhaps not as well as I thought-and I'm going to hear you out before doing anything rash."
He caught sight of Merlin's expression; the servant was almost laughing. "What's so funny, Merlin?" he demanded in exasperation.
"I was just thinking that you have changed so much since we first met. You've become that man that I saw on the inside, on the outside as well." He shook his head, grinning with all his might. "I have never been so happy that my first impression was wrong."
Arthur smiled. "The feeling is mutual."
"Thy earnest words have filled my soul / And kept me near thy side."
-Lowrie Hoffard
Feelings and thoughts are welcome :)