Chapter Text
Wake.
Hunith blinks open her bleary eyes. Dark. This place is very dark.
The surface she finds herself on glistens in a very particular way. White, blue, and black are the only colours that seem to exist here. The world has been robbed of all else.
Hunith peels herself up off of the uneven floor, finding herself strangely unaffected by her odd position. In fact, she feels serene and light as she hasn’t in… well, maybe she just hasn’t.
She’s in a cave. Rock formations bubble randomly up and down, building off of each other. In natural perforations of varying sizes and natures, the purest crystals she’s ever seen hum and glow some strangely warm light, all white. White and blue and black.
“Mum?”
Her head snaps up at the sound. Where? Where’s-
Merlin pulls her into a bewildered but tight hug, his long limbs wrapping around her shorter form and eclipsing her.
“Oh, baby, what are you doing here? What are we doing here…?”, she asks hesitantly, spinning in place to look at their surroundings before focussing all of her attention on her boy. She takes his face in her hands and turns it, left, right, looks him over. No injuries.
“I’m fine, mum. I don’t… I just woke up here.”
She starts to nod when other voices reach them. Her first instinct is to clutch her son close and hide, but he has other ideas.
“Arthur?”
She almost panics when he disappears behind a spire, quickly hustling after him.
They follow the voices- she wants to tell him to stop, wait, but he’s too quick. He leads her over treacherous blue rock that nevertheless stays firm beneath their feet. As they go, she realises the crystals are lighting up in a pattern… a trail. Showing them the way.
She needn’t have worried. The others they find are all Merlin’s friends, he informs her, and they all seem to have woken up in similar circ*mstances.
When she asks Merlin to introduce her to a bewildered looking young man no one seems to have noticed yet, he stills.
“Lancelot?”, he asks breathlessly.
The man meets his eyes and something passes between them. The room hushes as the others take notice.
Merlin is the first to react. He cries out, flying at Lancelot in a desperate hug. He returns it and something seems to break. He clutches back at Merlin fiercely, as though his presence isn’t guaranteed, as though he could fade should he loosen his grip even slightly.
Similar reactions follow. Hunith fades into the background. She doesn’t listen to the reunions too closely- it’s not her business. All she catches is her son choking out through tears, “You’re back. You’re back. How? You’re supposed to be dead.”
Lancelot chuckles a little, and something passes between them again.
“Sorry.”
Be at peace.
The world stops as something speaks, resonating, humming along Hunith’s whole body, up and down her nervous system like streams, echoing through her bones like caverns.
My child has done enough in solitude. The time has come to share. You are here to watch him grow again, and this time, not alone.
Hunith feels the reverb of the voice through every bit of her, feeling like a gong someone’s hit. She looks at her son again.
“What was that?”, she asks in a whisper. Her voice is heavy and grating after hearing- if that is indeed the right word- one so otherworldly. Hers, in comparison, is as a twig to a tree.
Surprise lights Merlin’s features. “You heard it?”
“Who’s there?!”, Arthur’s stronger tone demands, brave and afraid all at once. He reaches for a sword that’s not there, spinning to face an enemy that doesn’t exist.
“Magic,” someone breathes reverentially. “That was Magic.”
The group spins to the newcomer as one. Hunith feels there’s something familiar about her, but she can’t say what. They’ve met before, but not like this. This is not the same woman.
This one is little more than a wraith. Her very being is proud as the cut of her jaw, but her eyes, pale as mist on the mountains but with a clarity altogether different, are distant. She’s the palest person Hunith’s ever seen, even more so than Merlin. She resembles the dead. She’s thin enough, even as her hair falls around her, rich and beautiful, and she steps forward on fine soles.
Gasps sound around the room.
“M-Morgana,” Arthur whimpers, eyes flickering.
A raw, wounded cry rings out and Guinevere collapses where she stands. The rest of the group immediately turns to face the ghostly lady Morgana, warning in their stances.
“I…” she chokes, watching Gwen, looking as though she’s being stabbed. Tears bubble up in her eyes, fighting for dominance, and a few fall.
None shall be harmed. There has been enough.
This time, Hunith watches everyone’s faces. Clearly they hear it- feel it- too.
Each person in this room has played a part in my child’s destiny. It is time you understand.
“Understand what…?”, Percival asks quietly.
“Your child?”, Arthur echoes, much more forceful.
Hunith’s face whips to Merlin. His brows are drawn together, his eyes so distant, on something unfathomable. This is the part of her son Hunith can’t reach. This is beyond her.
As much as it pains her, Magic was his mother first.
Relearn the past. It will become clear.
Hunith turns around. Something’s lightening behind her. She gasps. Eventually the whole room can no longer ignore what she’s seeing.
Light, like daylight, seemingly without source, hangs in the air. Crystals reflect it, filling the room with more and more as she watches. Every crystalline surface it reaches increases the intensity exponentially, but it’s concentrated. It’s such a natural thing to watch even as unnatural as the thing is. Soon there is a portion of the cave completely whited out.
As Hunith watches, her eyes start to play tricks on her. Fuzzy tendrils of colour tease her through the whiteness, but she can’t look away. And as she keeps looking, they take shape.
Images.
There is such mesmerising intricacy in their abstraction. Some things in startling clarity have the countenance of fuzzy clouds, dissipating and dreamlike. The sharpness strikes in the most unexpected places, and with such power as to leave her breathless. It’s beautiful. And it’s moving, nothing the same for even a second. Everything pulls together to make it just so, and then again, and again, pulling itself apart and clashing in a different way again.
Hunith watches the young boy she sent to Camelot walk through the woods, cresting a hill with that smile of his, a pack on his back.
She tears her eyes away to look at Merlin beside her, and he’s just there- real as anything else, eyes fixed on the screen of light. His own almost reflect it, like it’s working through him as a conduit, easily as Gaius’ potions reside in their vials. Gwen reaches out tentatively, but the younger Merlin doesn’t seem to notice them. He’s only a vision.
These are memories.
“Whose?” Hunith asks.
Mine.
“This is the day you came to Camelot, isn’t it?”, Gaius asks. Merlin nods. The confirmation strikes the old man like lightning. He snaps to Merlin, face pulling with alarm, grabbing him by the arm and fixing him with a warning look.
“I know. I… I can’t do anything.” He purses his lips, a thousand thoughts swimming through his head. “It’s alright.”
“Merlin, you can’t…”
“No. It’s alright,” he repeats, putting emphasis on the word. “Magic says so. It has a plan.”
That sounds an awful lot like destiny to Hunith. She grabs Merlin’s hand, suddenly as worried as Gaius is.
“Magic? It didn’t say that,” Elyan says.
“Not to you.”
Arthur marches up to his servant, pulling his gaze away from Morgana and Lancelot for the first time since they arrived.
“It spoke to you? You alone?”
“We have to watch,” is what Merlin says.
“Let this serve as a lesson to all,” Uther’s voice announces.
Every head in the room snaps back to the vision. Drums are banging. Merlin’s made his way through the crowd in Camelot’s square. He’s taller than most of the crowd, so he doesn’t need to crane his neck so much to see the man being dragged up before them.
“This man, Thomas James Collins, is adjudged guilty of conspiring to use enchantments-“
Hunith gasps, clutching her son closer. She feels him put a hand on hers.
“They’re executing him,” Percival breathes.
“I remember,” Morgana whispers.
“This is what you saw?”, Hunith asks her son. He looks at her, sorrow in his gaze. As if she is the one to comfort.
“Oh, Merlin,” she hears Lancelot sigh quietly, no small amount of regret in his voice. She whirls to face him. He’s resting a hand on Merlin’s shoulder, and Hunith knows he knows.
“What a welcome,” Gwaine says darkly as Uther continues to speak.
“-I declare a festival!”, he’s saying, “to celebrate twenty years since the Great Dragon was captured, and Camelot freed from the evil of sorcery.”
Arthur watches this past Merlin’s face, the hard set of his jaw, the way his eyebrows have drawn tight. He looks so upset. Arthur’s rarely ever seen a face like that on his servant. Was this the first time he saw a death?
They watch as a woman, withered much deeper than the skin, pronounces that the evil in this land is Uther. Arthur takes a step back as if struck when he notices the tears in Merlin’s eyes. They watch her tell him that he took her son, and he will know her pain. A son for a son.
“This all happened the day you came?”, Percival asks incredulously. “This is horrible!”
“Wasn’t nice,” Merlin agrees quietly. He wonders if they’ll stop talking to him once they know. It won’t be long now. He saved Gaius before he even said hello.
“Is that…?”, Elyan interrupts, drawing their attention back to the screen. The past Morgana is closing her window and retreating.
“Me,” she admits with a sad smile. Arthur swallows. It’s hard to see her like that again. This wraith of a sister he sees now, hiding in the corner of the room with a face full of sincere regret… he doesn’t know what to do with her. He doesn’t know her, but she bears hallmarks of someone who was family once. He knows he can’t hurt her here, but he has no idea if he could anyway. He doesn’t even know who she is.
“Where would I find Gaius, the court physician?”
“It’s so strange to think of you as not knowing the way,” Percy hums. “Like there was a you without Camelot. Or a Camelot without you.”
“I always thought he was just born knowing all the servant’s secret passageways,” Gwaine agrees. “Merlin’s a fact of the place, more ingrained into it than those dog statues by the stairs.”
Merlin knocks on the door of the Physician’s chambers, poking his head in.
“Hello?
“Oh, what?!”, Arthur exclaims, affronted. “You knock for him?! Did you forget how?!”
“Quite on purpose,” Merlin nods. His smile is shaky. Arthur frowns in concern. Something’s wrong.
“It looks different now,” Elyan notes without thinking, eyes trained on the crystalline image. He looks around, realising he’s brought attention to himself. “Gaius’ chambers,”, he clarifies.
“Things were very different before Merlin. It was a long time ago, and… well, before Merlin,” Gwen says fondly. Merlin smiles at her.
“He’s certainly changed things up,” Gaius agrees.
“Gods, he’s so cute,” Gwaine coos at past Merlin.
“You look so young,” Elyan muses.
Everyone waits for Merlin to answer, but he’s strangely silent. He doesn’t take his eyes off the screen.
“My boy,” Gaius, says all of a sudden, very grave. His words are certain and powerful. He looks Merlin in the eyes. “I am so proud of you.”
The first tear falls. Merlin knows what Gaius is doing and he appreciates it so, so much. Gods, what would he do without Gaius? He wouldn’t have made it five steps. He can’t even begin to voice any of that, if he even could, because he hears the railing snap.
Everyone freezes when past Gaius falls. The knights shoot forward in alarm. Merlin flinches violently. Hunith gasps, covering her mouth with her hand. Gwen screams.
Merlin’s eyes shine gold, as though spun by the sun itself. Around him, time freezes. Gaius falls as though through molasses. Merlin looks around, unbothered, and it’s very clear that he is the reason the bed moves as if of its own accord. The lack of sound is deafening. The bed aligns itself under Gaius as he falls, and time resumes for him to collapse into it.
The effect is not immediate. Gwen gasps, hands flying to her mouth. Elyan’s head snaps back and forth, eyes wide and fiery. Leon claps a hand over his beard, pitching forward as if suffering a blow to the gut. Percival looks at Merlin with simple astonishment, rendered still as the castle’s dogs, and Gwaine is looking at him with utmost desperation, as if begging him- begging him to say it’s not true.
But Merlin’s gaze is set dead on the King. Arthur blinks uncomprehendingly as though he’s been struck.
Lancelot has moved to shield him, staring down his King. His movement spurs Gwaine into action, hurrying into the same position in a clear message. You’ll have to get through me first.
But the first to speak isn’t Arthur, or Gwaine, or Lancelot. It’s Morgana. It’s more of a choked sob that sounds like an attempt at Merlin’s name. A broken, questioning thing.
Merlin cuts his hands in between Gwaine and Lancelot, parting them gently like the Red Sea. He takes two steps forward, his mother’s hand falling out of his and Gaius falling behind, to bring himself in front of Arthur, who looks back in shock. Without a word, he kneels.
Merlin has kneeled in front of him before. No, perhaps what cracks the normalcy of the action is when he bows his head.
“No!”, Gwen sobs brokenly, “No, Merlin, no…”
“Merlin,” Lancelot gasps pleadingly. Merlin doesn’t move.
Arthur doesn’t feel himself move. He’s on his knees though. He can’t look at Merlin this way, he needs to see his face. He puts his hands on either side of his head and pulls it up. There he is.
Merlin is crying in earnest. Silent tears chase each other down his face. His lip is wobbling against how hard he’s set his jaw. He looks like he’s being stabbed and someone is twisting the knife around and around in the wound. Arthur thinks he can feel it too.
“Talk to me,” Arthur begs. His hands don’t fall from Merlin’s face. He can’t move. This is exactly where he needs to be, and he’ll stay here forever if he needs to. “Talk to me. Tell me.”
Merlin tries to open his mouth and his chin shakes so much he has to snap it shut again. Weak huffs of air fumble past his lips as his breathing quickens, getting more desperate.
Arthur can’t stand it. He can’t stand to see him like this. Merlin should never, ever suffer like this, and every tear is another twist of the knife.
Merlin has magic. So what? It’s Merlin. He’s so scared. Gods, did he think…? He did. He thought that… that Arthur would… but he’s Merlin! Arthur would tear down the kingdom before he saw Merlin cry like this, over anything!
If Merlin has magic, it can’t be evil. It’s not magic making Merlin cry right now. It’s him.
Arthur drags his servant into a fierce hug. His own eyes well up. Merlin… Merlin thought he’d hurt him, thought Arthur would hurt him. He was so scared. Scared of him. On some level he processed the situation objectively, from a far off, stone cold throne, as a betrayal. The fact that Merlin could ever think he would hurt him made it feel like the betrayal was his. He had hurt Merlin. Merlin was suffering, his Merlin, lazy daisy rise-and-shine Merlin, and all he can think is what he’s done wrong. How could he have let this happen?!
All Arthur can do is sit there and let his eyes slip shut. Press his cheek against the side of Merlin’s head. Stroke his hair. Murmur things. And all Merlin can do is sob into his shoulder, cries muffled against his tunic.
“You should’ve told me. Merlin, Merlin. You should’ve just told me. I’m so sorry.”
Arthur puts his own pain- twisting, horrible, gut-wrenching pain, scooping his insides out- aside as he recognises the signs of a panic attack. He tries to pry himself back, but as soon as his grip loosens Merlin drags him back with a terrified wail.
“Okay, okay, I won’t move. We’ll stay like this. We’ll stay like this, Merlin. I’m not going anywhere.”
Asking him to breathe is pointless, Arthur doesn’t think Merlin can hear him and he’s not sure what he can make himself do either. If he tried to stop the steady stream of assurances flowing out of him he might break. If he thinks of anything but helping Merlin, he definitely will.
He settles for schooling his own breath into the exercises he knows well. He finds them surprisingly hard. Belatedly, he realises he might be on the verge of an attack himself. He’s definitely filled with panic.
It takes Arthur a while, but his breathing steadies. Thoughts leap into his mind unbidden, little sparks of the reality he’s juggling, and screws it up again, but he manages to bring himself back each time. Merlin follows much more slowly.
Even when they’re both breathing deeply, no sobs interrupting them, neither move.
Merlin falls asleep in Arthur’s arms. It’s like he poured all of him into the last few moments and he’s wilted. Attacks will do that to you. Arthur is exhausted himself. There is the concern of Morgana that he hasn’t forgotten, but he is with his five best knights. They won’t let anything happen.
So Arthur falls asleep too.
